THE LETTER OF SHERIRA
Though all Israelites are brothers, they do not admit that they are all members of the same family. “Of good genealogy” is the proudest boast of the modern, as it was of the talmudic, Jew. It is, accordingly, not wonderful that we find our notabilities from Hillel to Abarbanel claiming, or having assigned to them, descent from the Davidic line. Of Sherira the same was said. He ruled over the academy in Pumbeditha during the last third of the tenth century. A scion of the royal house of Judah, he was rightful heir to the exilarchy, yet preferred the socially lower, but academically higher, office of Gaon. The Gaon’s sway was religious and scholastic; the exilarch’s secular and political. Sherira’s ancestry might have given him the latter post, but for the former it was intrinsic, personal worth which qualified him and his famous son Hai. Who shall deny that he made a worthy choice?
Sherira’s fame rests less on his general activities as Gaon than on the Letter which he wrote about the year 980, in response to questions formulated by Jacob ben Nissim, of Kairuwan. One of these questions retains, and will ever retain, its fascination, although the answer has now no vital interest. Historically the Letter has other claims to continued study. To quote Dr. L. Ginzberg (Geonica, i, p. 169): “The lasting value of his epistle for us lies in the information Rabbi Sherira gives about the post-Talmudic scholars. On this period he is practically the only source we have.” Without Sherira, the course of the traditional development would be a blank for a long interval after the close of the Talmud. “But,” continues Dr. Ginzberg, “we shall be doing Rabbi Sherira injustice if we thought of him merely as a chronologist.” And this same competent scholar launches out into the following eulogy of the Gaon: “The theories which he unfolds ... regarding the origin of the Mishnah ... and many other points important in the history of the Talmud and its problems, stamp Rabbi Sherira as one of the most distinguished historians, in fact, it is not an exaggeration to say, the most distinguished historian of literature among the Jews, not only of antiquity, but also in the middle ages, and during a large part of modern times.”
This must suffice for the general estimate of Sherira’s work. What is of more striking interest is just the one question, the answer to which does not much matter. As Dr. Neubauer formulated the question put to Sherira, it ran thus: “Was the Mishnah transmitted orally to the doctors of the Mishnah, or was it written down by the compiler himself?” Judah the Prince, we know, compiled the Mishnah, but did he leave it in an oral or a documentary form? Was it memorized or set down in script? The answer does not much matter, as I have said, for sooner or later the Mishnah was written out, and it is not of great consequence whether it was later or sooner. And it is as well that Sherira’s answer matters little, for we do not know for certain what Sherira’s answer was! Most authorities nowadays believe that the Gaon pronounced in favor of the written compilation; but this was not always the case. For Sherira’s Letter was current in two versions which recorded opposite opinions. In the French form the oral alternative was accepted, but the Spanish text adopted the written theory. Which was the genuine view of Sherira? There are many reasons for preferring the Spanish version. As Dr. Neubauer points out, “books, letters, and responsa coming from the East, reached Spain and Italy before they came to France and Germany.” Hence the Spanish text is more likely to be primitive; while, when the Letter was carried further, it might easily have been altered so as to fall in with the talmudic prohibition against putting the traditional laws into writing. It will, again, come as a surprise to some to note another argument used by Dr. Neubauer in favor of the Spanish text. “From the greater consistency of the Aramaic dialect in the Spanish text, a dialect which, as we know from the Responsa of the Geonim, they used in their writings, it may be concluded that this (the Spanish) composition is the genuine one.” The Gaonate was able to maintain a pretty thorough Jewish spirit without insisting on the use of Hebrew as the only medium of salvation. Actually Dr. Neubauer saw in the more consistent Aramaic of the Spanish text an indication of its superior authenticity over what may be called the French text!
But all these points are secondary. The real interest lies in this whole conception of an oral book. Tradition necessarily must be largely oral; ideas, maxims, and even defined rules of conduct not only can be, they must be, transmitted by word of mouth. But is there any possibility that a whole, elaborate book, or rather series of six books, should be put together and then trusted to memory? A new turn to the discussion was given by Prof. Gilbert Murray’s Harvard Lectures on “The Rise of the Greek Epic.” To him the Iliad of Homer appears in the guise of a “traditional book.” No doubt the Mishnah belongs to a period separated from Homer by well-nigh a millennium. But the phrase holds. A book can be the outcome of tradition, can be carried on by it, expanded and elaborated, just as much as an oral code or history or poem. When, then, we speak of a traditional book, it does not necessarily mean that the book was not written down. The written words become precious, and the fact that they are written does not of itself spell finality or stagnation. There never was any danger of such an evil result until the age of printing and stereotyping. Nor can we conceive of a traditional book as the work of one mind. Judah the Prince neither began nor ended the chain of tradition because he wrote the Mishnah. There had been Mishnahs before him, just as there were developments of law after him.
Yet, on the other hand, it is not incredible that Judah the Prince’s traditional book remained an unwritten book. It is improbable, but not at all impossible. A modern lawyer of the first rank must hold in his mind quite as many decisions and principles as are contained in the Mishnah. Macaulay could repeat by heart the whole of the Paradise Lost and much else. Many a Talmudist of the present day must remember vast masses of the traditional Halakah. Before the age of printing, before copies of books became common and easily accessible, scholars must have been compelled to trust to their memory for many things for which we can turn to our reference libraries. When Maimonides compiled his great Code, he must have done a good deal of it from memory. Not that men’s memories are worse now than they were. But we are now able to spare ourselves. It is not a good thing to use the memory unnecessarily. It should be reserved for essentials. What we can always get from books we need not keep in mind. Besides, in olden times men remembered better not because they had better memories, but because they had less to remember.
On the whole, however, it is safer to conclude that Judah the Prince made a contribution to written literature, that he set down at a particular moment (about 200 C.E.) the traditional book which had been writing itself for many decades, partly by the minds of the Rabbis, partly by their pens. He started the book on a new career of humane activity. Sherira and the Geonim were what they were because Judah the Prince was what he was. This is the essential fact about tradition. The more we give of our best to our age, the more chance is there for all future ages to transmit of their best to posterity.