הטקס שלא היה: מקדש, מדרש ומגדר במסכת סוטה, מאגנס, ירושלים תשס"ח (original) (raw)

הטקס שלא היה: מקדש, מדרש ומגדר במסכת סוטה, מאגנס, ירושלים תשס"ח

2008

The first three chapters of Mishna Sotah describe the biblical ritual meant to examine a husband's suspicions regarding his wife’s fidelity, in great detail. Diverging significantly from its origins, in the book of Numbers (cap. 5), The Mishnaic ritual was traditionally read by scholars as an "ancient Mishna", narrating an actual ritual practiced in the second temple. The book claims, in contrast to this generally accepted view, that while Sotah does contain some traditions which are possibly rooted in the Temple era, its overall composition has a clear ideological and academic form. Furthermore, comparisons with parallel Tannaitic sources reveal the ideological redaction of the Mishna, which carefully selected only those opinions which support its re-writing of the ritual as a public punitive ritual, while rejecting all reservations and opposition to its specific punitive character – even ignoring the possibility of innocence of the suspected adulteress. This led the author to the groundbreaking conclusion that, regardless of the form the real ritual did or did not take at the temple, the specific Mishnaic ritual was (re)invented by the rabbis in the second century C.E. Its existence, therefore, from its very inception, was purely textual, reflecting rabbinic imagination rather then memory. After establishing this thesis the author moves to examine its wider implications on three larger spheres of rabbinic studies: the place of the temple in Tannaitic literature, the role of Mishna as a composition, and, lastly, sexual ethics in rabbinic literature.