Fathers 1:1 - The Paradigm Shift

We ended the previous discussion with the suggestion that the first mishna in Avos, through its wording, indicated to us that there were two major paradigm shifts in Torah transmission from the times of Moshe to this mishna. The use of the word "mosar" ( gave over) only when referring to transmission from Moshe to Joshua and from Prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly, alludes to some major, perhaps cataclysmic change, not only in the way the Torah was given over but also in its role within the religious life of the people.

Let's look at this a bit more.

It is easy to understand why the transition from Moshe to Joshua represents a paradigm shift. Like other such transitions, it came abruptly and unexpectedly and the people were not prepared.

When Moses was dying, he told Joshua to ask any remaining questions. Joshua responded that, as it is written in the Torah, he had never left Moses' side. Immediately, Joshua forgot 300 laws, and 700 uncertainties developed in his mind. The people wanted to kill Joshua. Gd said to him, "It would not be possible to teach these laws to you; distract the people with war, instead.": Temurah 16a
Three thousand laws were forgotten during the mourning for Moses. The people asked Joshua to ask Gd to re-teach them, but he refused because the Torah is "not in Heaven." Samuel and Pinchas refused, too, arguing that a prophet is not permitted to institute anything new: Temurah 15b-16a
Seventeen hundred Talmudic analyses were forgotten during the mourning period for Moshe, and Atniel ben Kenaz re-derived them: Temurah 16a

No longer was direct revelation easily available or even admissible. From now on, revelation ceased and interpretive activity took its place. Moshe "gave over" the Torah not as he received it but in a formulation that Joshua could teach to the people. Not everything that Moshe received, did he teach to the people ( See Ramban to Shemos 19:20). In the realm of Halacha, at least, interpretation and derivation now took the place of Revelation ( clearly the Prophets continued to teach and record new ideas; on the idea of Progressive Revelation in Judaism and the attempts to explain new revelations of the Prophets see  http://www.avakesh.com/2007/04/context_and_the.html )

The second paradigm shift came as the era of Prophecy came to an end. To understand this, I elaborate on the idea that I had first seen in R. Arye Kaplan's writings. More recently I found it in R. Berel Wein's prologue to Echoes of Glory.

While clearly the same religion and the same quest, it is no secret that the Judaism  portrayed in the Prophets has quite a distinct flavor from that of the Rabbis. There many ways of bridging the difference between them. What R. Arye Kaplan suggested is that it can be properly understood by realizing that the goal of religious life between Joshua and the Second Temple period was prophecy. Every single Jewish man and woman aspired, and often succeeded in obtaining a prophetic experience of some kind. All ritual, behavior and experience was focused on fostering meditative awareness, moral perfection and a rich prayer and sacrificial life - so as to attract and to be worthy of Divine revelations. Man sought God in direct experience, not in a text. In this setting, Torah study  would have been an important but contingent condition for prophecy, not the sine qua non of religious life that it would subsequently become. When Prophecy ceased, the Men of the Great Assembly were faced with the task of reformulating Judaism, so it may survive, from an experiential to text based religion. When we discuss the teachings of the Assembly, we will consider their reformulation at greater detail. It suffices to say at this point that Torah study and rabbinic fences were the mainstays of their approach.

Why did Prophecy cease? I saw the following explanation quoted in the name of Vilna Gaon's commentary to Seder Olam. There, on the passages dealing with Alexander the Great, the Gaon explains that the pre-Hellenistic world was characterized  the great sense of human weakness and dependence upon the powers of nature personified as various gods. Man was small, not trusting in his own ability to sustain himself, in constant danger from the capricious and unreliable elements, and religious faith and dependence on faith was in the very air that he breathed. Man struggled to be a part of the supernatural because it was his refuge from the vagaries of the natural order. On one hand this presented a challenge to the belief in one God and promoted idolatry. Sages say that the Men of the Great Assembly "killed" the evil impulse of idolatry (Yoma 59b). On the other hand, it made religious experience and prophecy natural and accessible.

The Greeks swept over the world with Alexander and dramatically overturned the old order. They demonstrated the power of man, his abilities to control and dominate nature, the acuteness and forcefulness of human mind, the artistry and beauty of his aesthetic and artistic sensibilities. Within a generation, the immediacy of religious experience was in retreat throughout the Hellenistic world. That is not to say that remnants of rituals and perception did not remain in the multitude of mystery religions, magical teachings and temple rites. Yet, it was no longer as natural as the air that man breathed, for the very assumptions of society and individual were radically transformed. Think of the non-self conscious and deep spirituality of the "alter heim yidden" and compare it with its pale American reflection, and you will get a glimpse of how quickly transformative, brutal and total, cultural change can be.

The Great Assembly is characterized as "120 elders and among them many prophets (Megillah 17). Why is the inclusion of prophets important. It is surely not to add authoritativeness to its enactments, for prophets cannot (halachically) "add or detract". Rather is hearkens back to the concept alluded to by our mishna. Prophets were a part of the Great Assembly so that they assist in guard in the process of translating Prophetic Judaism into the language of the  Rabbinic religion, the same authentic revelation vouchsafed by Hashem to Moshe but in a new formulation for the new age.

Comments

[yitz..]

the content is really interesting, but for some reason when you start talking about pirkei avot, you add many typographical errors -- perhaps in the hurry to get the ideas out? There was even a "teh" in there.

[Shlomo]

I like the idea that Hellenistic rationalism removed the attraction to idolatry, while simultaneously making it harder to have transcendent religious experiences.

And that the mention of prophets is meant to demonstrate continuity between the "prophetic" and "rabbinic" models of leadership.

But when you say
All ritual, behavior and experience was focused on fostering meditative awareness, moral perfection and a rich prayer and sacrificial life - so as to attract and to be worthy of Divine revelations.
I think - weren't "meditative awareness, moral perfection and a rich prayer and sacrificial life" sufficiently valuable in their own right, without the experience of prophecy?

Also, there are prophets such as Yirmiyahu (I think) and Yonah who would have loved not to be burdened with prophecy. Prophecy certainly doesn't sound like their personal spiritual goal.