Sources from the Mishnah and the Talmuds:

There are a number of sources in Tannaitic literature which take it as a given that candles are lit for shabbat. [1] See e.g. the second chapter of Mishnah Shabbat, esp. mishnahs 6-7. While it seems to have been accepted that shabbat candles were lit, there is NO source in either the Mishnah or the Talmuds which says that one must recite a blessing when shabbat candles are lit. [2] On Shabbat 25b lighting shabbat candles is designated as a חובה, a term whose definition is unclear, but there is no mention of any blessing. While there is no Talmudic source which mentions a blessing, a source which will become important later on is Pesachim 7b, which requires that all blessings be recited before the performance of the mitzvah with which they are associated, כל המצות מברך עליהן עובר לעשייתן.

It is also unclear from the Talmud whether lighting shabbat candles is kabbalat shabbat or not. There are two important sugyot which in my opinion suggest that lighting shabbat candles is not kabbalat shabbat, although their interpretation was disagreed upon by later commentators. On Shabbat 35b there is a discussion of the sequence of shofar blasts which heralded in the shabbat. It says that,

When the third blast was begun, what was to be removed was removed, and what was to be stored away was stored away, and the lamp was lit. Then there was an interval for as long as it takes to bake a small fish or to place a loaf in the oven; then a teki’ah, teru’ah and a teki’ah were sounded, and one commenced the Sabbath.

Later commentators disagreed about the meaning of the phrase “ושוהה כדי צליית דג קטן, או כדי להדביק פת בתנור” (“Then there was an interval for as long as it takes to bake a small fish or to place a loaf in the oven”), whether this was a description of what people were actually able to do after candles were lit, or if it was just a designation of a certain amount of time, similar to כדי אכילת פרס.

The other important Talmudic source is found on Berachot 27b.

Has not R. Abin related that once Rab said the Sabbath Tefillah on the eve of Sabbath and he went into the bath and came out and taught us our section, while it was not yet dark? — Raba said: He went in merely to perspire, and it was before the prohibition had been issued. But still, is this the rule? Did not Abaye allow R. Dimi b. Levai to fumigate some baskets? — In that case there was a mistake. But can [such] a mistake be rectified? Has not Abidan said: Once [on Sabbath] the sky became overcast with clouds and the congregation thought that is was night-time and they went into the synagogue and said the prayers for the termination of Sabbath, and then the clouds scattered and the sun came out and they came and asked Rabbi, and he said to them, Since they prayed, they have prayed? — A congregation is different, since we avoid troubling them [as far as possible].

This discussion is predicated on the belief that it is prayer which initiates the observance of shabbat, therefore any prohibited behavior after one prayed would be problematic.

Next: The Geonim.

[1] It is important to note that all of the Talmudic sources use the phrase נר שבת, the “shabbat candle” in the singular. It isn’t until the medieval period that there is a discussion of נרות שבת, shabbat candles. Despite this fact, because of common usage, שגרת לשון, I will write shabbat candles.
[2] There are a number of medieval sources which claim that in the Jerusalem Talmud there is a source which requires a blessing on shabbat candles, but we will see that there is no such source in the Jerusalem Talmud.

Aharon Shemesh has a new book coming out soon, Halakhah in the Making: The Development of Jewish Law from Qumran to the Rabbis.

Halakhah in the Making offers the first comprehensive study of the legal material found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and its significance in the greater history of Jewish religious law (halakhah). Aharon Shemesh’s pioneering study revives an issue long dormant in religious scholarship: namely, the relationship between rabbinic law, as written more than one hundred years after the destruction of the Second Temple, and Jewish practice during the Second Temple. The monumental discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran led to the revelation of this missing material and the closing of a two-hundred-year gap in knowledge, allowing work to begin comparing specific laws of the Qumran sect with rabbinic laws. With the publication of scroll 4QMMT-a polemical letter by Dead Sea sectarians concerning points of Jewish law-an effective comparison was finally possible. This is the first book-length treatment of the material to appear since the publication of 4QMMT and the first attempt to apply its discoveries to the work of nineteenth-century scholars. It is also the first work on this important topic written in plain language and accessible to nonspecialists in the history of Jewish law.

It will be published by the Univerisity of California Press which is having an online sale until Oct. 31. (hat tip) They have some good books at reasonable prices.

וכבר שלחה מלכות שני סרדיטיאות ואמרה להם לכו ועשו עצמכם יהודים וראו תורתם מה טיבה הלכו אצל רבן גמליאל לאושא וקראו את המקרא ושנו את המשנה מדרש הלכות והגדות בשעת פטירתם אמרו להם כל התורה נאה ומשובחת חוץ מדבר אחד זה שאתם אומרים גזילו של גוי מותר ושל ישראל אסור ודבר זה אין אנו מודיעים למלכות.

The government (of Rome) once sent out two officials, ordering them, “Go and disguise yourselves as Jews, and find out what is the nature of their Torah.” They went to Rabban Gamaliel at Usha, where they studied Scripture, Mishnah, Midrash, halakah and aggadah. As the officers were taking their leave, they said to the Sages, “All of the Torah is fine and praiseworthy, except for one thing, and that is your saying ‘That which is stolen from a non-Jew is permitted, while that which was stolen from a Jew is forbidden,’ but we will not report this exception to the government. (Sifre on Deuteronomy, Piska 344, trans. Reuven Hammer, p 356)

There are a number of differences between the different versions of the story and I will point out a few of them. The first is that according to the Babylonian Talmud, the two Romans studied with the generic “sages of Israel, while in the Sifre and the Jerusalem Talmud they studied with Rabban Gamliel. Many scholars identify him as Rabban Gamliel II, also known as Rabban Gamliel of Yavneh, despite one text of the Sifre associating him with Usha and not Yavneh. Another difference is with regard to the areas of Jewish law which the Romans found objectionable. In the Sifre, the only law mentioned is that one is not obligated to return the stolen property of a non-Jew. In the Babylonian Talmud the law mentioned is that when the ox of an Jew gors a non-Jew’s ox, the Jew is exempt from paying damages, while if the ox of a non-Jew gors the ox of an Jew, the non-Jew has to pay full damages. [2] In the Jerusalem Talmud there are two, or possibly three, laws mentioned: 1. That a Jewish woman is prohibited from helping a non-Jewish woman give birth, yet a non-Jewish woman helps a Jewish woman give birth; [3]; 2. That a Jewish woman is prohibited from nursing a non-Jewish child, yet a non-Jewish woman nurses a Jewish child; [4] 3. That one is not obligated to return the stolen property of a non-Jew; 4. That when the ox of an Jew gors a non-Jew’s ox, the Jew is exempt from paying damages, while if the ox of a non-Jew gors the ox of an Jew, the non-Jew has to pay full damages. In the Jerusalem Talmud after no. 3 is brought, it says that “באותה שעה גזר רבן גמליאל על גזילת נכרי שיהא אסו’ מפני חילול השם” (“At that moment, Rabban Gamliel decried regarding the stolen property of a non-Jew [that it would forbidden] because of the profanation of God’s name”).

Both Gedaliah Alon and M.D. Herr read this story in the context of the attempt of Jewish courts and the Patriarch to receive official recognition.

These officials engage Rabban Gamliel in argument about whether Jewish law discriminates against gentiles. Apparently, then, their mission was somehow connected with the proposal to give status to the Jewish courts. [5]

It seems that discussions about the granting of some partial official recognition to the status of R. Gamliel of Jabneh, or at all events to the judicial status of the Jewish law courts led to the visit of military officials at his Academy in order to determine the nature of Jewish Law.[6]

Saul Lieberman reads this story in the context of Jewish courts which existed in the diaspora with government recognition.

It is therefore natural to expect that the Roman government in Syria was interested in the fairness of Jewish civil law. A delegation was accordingly sent to the authoritative academy in Palestine to learn something about Jewish law…The delegation was primarily interested in Jewish civil law, as far as only Jews are concerned. All the unfair laws were limited to relations between Jew and Gentile. However, such cases would rarely come before the Jewish courts, as it is obvious from the character of these laws. The knowledge of such laws was outside the aim of their mission, since they had no practical application. The Roman delegation had no moral obligation to reveal these unfair laws to the government. [7]

Shaye Cohen reads the importance of the story a little differently. He translates “לכו ועשו עצמכם יהודים” as “Go and make yourselves Jews”, and not “Go and disguise yourselves as Jews”. Subsequently he says,

It is hard to imagine Romans pretending to be Jews, entering a rabbinic academy, there to study the entire rabbinic curriculum, without once blowing their cover or revealing their true identity. The accents, their looks, their initial ignorance of things Jewish and rabbinic (an ignorance that we may freely assume must have been quite impressive)-did none of this give them away? Apparently not.

…

If my analysis is correct, this story, as redacted by the editor of the Sifrei, told of Roman soldiers pretending to be Jews and successfully surviving the scrutiny of R. Gamliel and his colleagues. If you knew what to say and do, apparently it was easy to pass as a Jew. [8]

There was no need for the Roman soldiers to disguise themselves as Jews, because they all looked and sounded alike.

I think that the interpretation of the story which I find most compelling is that of Boaz Cohen. Cohen, while doubting the historical interpretations mentioned above, does see an authentic kernel to the story.

While the setting for this incident may be apocryphal, the criticism rings authentic. [9]

For Boaz Cohen, the most reliable part of the story may be the criticism which these two Romans made of certain discriminatory points of Jewish law. Cohen points out that these laws were similar to the laws of other nations in antiquity, but the criticism still had validity. There may have been some historical kernel to the story of which we have but an echo, but I do not think that a story such as this would have been preserved primarily in order to relay some information about a visit by Roman officials to the beit midrash. The larger questions about the relations between Jews and non-Jews as seen through the lens of Jewish law and how this is perceived by non-Jews loom too large and don’t allow us to limit the significance of this story solely to an event of possible political importance.

[1] The story appears in Sifre Devarim, Piska 344, p. 401 in ed. Finkelstein; Jerusalem Talmud Baba Kama 4:3, 4b; Babylonian Talmud Baba Kamma 38b. See the discussion of the different versions of this story by Catherine Hezser, Form, Function, and Historical Significance of the Rabbinic Story in Yerushalmi Neziqin, pp. 15-24.

[2] Mishnah Baba Kamma 4:3.

[3] Mishnah Avodah Zarah 2:1.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Gedaliah Alon, The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age: 70-640 C.E (70-640 C.E.), p. 121.

[6] M.D. Herr, “The Historical Significance of the Dialogues Between Jewish Sages and Roman Dignitaries”, Scripta Hierosolymitana, 22, 132-133.

[7] Saul Lieberman, “Achievements and Aspirations of Modern Jewish Scholarship”, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 46, 375-376.

[8] Shaye Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties, 38.

[9] Boaz Cohen, Jewish and Roman Law, p. 25.

Sources:

Y.D. Gilat, Yad Le-Gilat; Jonathan Goldstein, The First Book of Maccabees in the Anchor Bible Series; M.D. Herr, “Le-Baayat Hilchot Milchamah Be-Shabbat…”, Tarbitz 30.