Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self

By Dina Stein

As they were entering Egypt, Abram glimpsed Sarai's reflection in the Nile River. Though he had been married to her for years, this moment is positioned in a rabbinic narrative as a revelation. "Now I know you are a beautiful woman," he says; at that moment he also knows himself as a desiring subject, and knows too to become afraid for his own life due to the desiring gazes of others.

There are few scenes in rabbinic literature that so explicitly stage a character's apprehension of his or her own or another's literal reflection. Still, Dina Stein argues, the association of knowledge and reflection operates as a central element in rabbinic texts. Midrash explicitly refers to other texts; biblical texts are both reconstructed and taken apart in exegesis, and midrashic narrators are situated liminally with respect to the tales they tell. This inherent structural quality underlies the propensity of rabbinic literature to reflect or refer to itself, and the "self" that is the object of reflection is not just the narrator of a tale but a larger rabbinic identity, a coherent if polyphonous entity that emerges from this body of texts.

Textual Mirrors draws on literary theory, folklore studies, and semiotics to examine stories in which self-reflexivity operates particularly strongly to constitute rabbinic identity through the voices of Simon the Just and a handsome shepherd, the daughter of Asher, the Queen of Sheba, and an unnamed maidservant. In Stein's readings, these self-reflexive stories allow us to go through the looking glass: where the text comments upon itself, it both compromises the unity of its underlying principles—textual, religious, and ideological—and confirms it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Release date: Oct 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9780812206944

Book preview

Textual Mirrors

DIVINATIONS: REREADING

LATE ANCIENT RELIGION

Series editors

Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, Derek Krueger

A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

TEXTUAL MIRRORS

Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self

DINA STEIN

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

PHILADELPHIA

Copyright © 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Published by

University of Pennsylvania Press

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

www.upenn.edu/pennpress

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 978-0-8122-4436-6

For Avigail

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1. Simon the Just and the Nazirite: Reflections of (Im)Possible Selves

Chapter 2. A King, a Queen, and the Discourse Between: The Riddle of Midrash

Chapter 3. The Blind Eye of the Beholder: Tall Tales, Travelogues, and Midrash

Chapter 4. Being There: Seraḥ bat Asher, Magical Language, and Rabbinic Textual Interpretation

Chapter 5. A Maidservant and Her Master’s Voice: From Narcissism to Mimicry

Epilogue: Midrash, Ruins, and Self-Reflexivity

Appendix: bBava Batra 73a–75b

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

The Book of Genesis tells us that soon after Abraham (then still called Abram) arrived in Canaan, the land to which God had sent him, famine forced him to leave the Promised Land for Egypt. But his trials and tribulations were not over. Crossing a geographical line, Abraham confronted another set of boundaries, those delineating his sovereign masculinity. According to the biblical narrative, Abraham fears that Pharaoh will kill him in order to obtain Sarai (later Sarah), his beautiful wife. He therefore instructs Sarah to declare that she is his sister, not his mate—meaning that she is unattached and available to Pharaoh.¹ Unsurprisingly, the Sages of the early centuries of the Common Era, the authors of the corpus of rabbinic writings that includes works of midrash (rabbinic exegetical reading of scripture), were troubled by this episode in the life of the Jewish people’s founder. They retold the story placing reflection, or self-reflexivity, at the center:

[Abram and Sarai] went. As they arrived at the pillars of Egypt and stood at the Nile, Abraham saw the reflection of Sarai in the river and she was like a radiant sun. From this our Sages learned that all women compared to Sarah are like monkeys compared to human beings. [Abram] said to her: "Now I know what a beautiful woman you are (Gen. 12:11). From here one learns that prior to that, he had not known her as a woman. He said to her: The Egyptians are immersed in lewdness as it is written ‘whose flesh was like that of asses’ [Ezek. 23:11]. Therefore I will put you in a casket and lock it, since I am frightened for myself that the Egyptians might see you."²

This short narrative, from Midrash Tanḥuma, explicates Gen. 12:11, As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife, Sarai, ‘Now I know what a beautiful woman you are.’ Since by this time they had been married for many years, Abram would certainly have noticed by this point that his wife was beautiful. The anecdote addresses this apparent quandary by adducing a reflective episode in which Abram gains a new insight, one that changes the nature of the biblical narrative. According to this midrashic tale, the pious Abram had never actually looked at his wife prior to this event and thus had not had intimate relations with her. Struck by her radiance, he knows her for the first time (perhaps implying that he not only sees her face but actually knows her in the biblical sense). At this very instant, he realizes that her radiant beauty may be a danger to him. If they know that Sarai is his wife, the Egyptians are likely to kill him in order to obtain Sarai for themselves. Clearly, the tale seeks not only to gloss the odd phrasing of the biblical verse (Now I know what a beautiful woman you are) but also to mitigate the dubiety of Abram’s decision to conceal Sarai’s relationship to him.³

According to the midrash, that moment at the Nile was one of transformative epiphany, possibly coupled with shock. Newly enlightened, Abram was impelled to take preventive measures. But, according to this retelling, his first move was not, as the biblical narrative has it, to tell Sarai to declare herself his sister. Here, the reflective moment—Abram literally sees his wife’s reflection in the river—implies new awareness on Abram’s part, one that informs his subsequent actions. Notably, Abram does not see his own reflection—he sees Sarai’s. It is nevertheless a moment of actual reflection that transforms not only her identity (as she is perceived by her husband) but his as well. He views himself differently thereafter—as the husband of a desirable woman. Moreover, the reflective gaze recognizes desire itself. Only when Abram himself desires his wife can he realize that the Egyptians, known for their lustfulness, will desire her as well. Desire and danger become the rationale for the continuation of the midrashic narrative.

Identity, narrative, and midrash, as this example teaches us, are inextricably connected to reflection and self-reflection. Self-reflectivity, it tells us, not only informs the identity of the figures in the tale but directs the text, motivating its chain of events. In the most basic sense, the mirroring moment is a crucial point, on which the identities of the evolving figures and the text as a whole hang.⁴ Moreover, the reflective moment is directly associated with a textual practice: Abram immediately cites scripture, and thus his scriptural source of knowledge becomes in part analogous to that of the Sage, who couches this entire tale as an exegesis of the biblical narrative in Genesis 12. Abram’s self-reflection is mirrored by textual self-reflexivity.

In reading the story, I used the term self-reflectivity, since it refers to the human—animated—domain where a person becomes the object of his or her own gaze. The reflection of another (Sarai) implies, as I suggested, self-reflection, and it is clearly human reflection that is at play here. There are but few instances of explicit human reflection in rabbinic literature—stories in which characters see their own or someone else’s reflection.⁵ But, as I will argue in this book, self-reflexivity—a meta-poetic aspect of a text whereby the text refers to itself—operates in, and is central to, rabbinic texts that do not necessarily involve an explicit image of reflection. However, because I address the text as a staged self and see it as a cultural animated self, I use the terms self-reflectivity and self-reflexivity interchangeably.

In the chapters that follow, I will point out mirroring moments that serve as pivotal discursive underpinnings of rabbinic textual production. That is, I will suggest that when rabbinic hermeneutical and institutional discourses become the object of reflection, they become central to the formation of rabbinic cultural identities. For us, as readers, they shed light on an underlying process that may otherwise be seen only at its endpoints—be it the identity of the Sage, the hegemony of the rabbinic institution, or the authority of midrash as scriptural interpretation. These apparent endpoints constitute what we recognize as the identity of rabbinic culture(s). Mirroring, self-reflective moments bring us, as it were, backstage in rabbinic theaters, where the participants comment on the play being enacted onstage. These comments not only undermine the unity of the apparent, seemingly coherent, performance but also, paradoxically, facilitate it. Human (or textual) performance is contingent on self-reflexivity, or, as Kenneth Burke put it, it is through "the reflexive capacity to develop highly complex symbol systems about symbol systems that humans act upon themselves and others."⁶ Put differently, in the narrative about Abram discussed above, self-reflectivity involves Eros, an animating force that motivates the character and his actions. In this story, Eros determines Abram’s identity and the identity of the entire tale. Self-reflexivity, then, when it appears in a text, can be seen as its underlying, facilitating force.

Self-reflexivity is an aspect of any text that comments on itself as a text and as language, or on its own processes of production and reception.⁷ Self-reflexivity, as I use the term here, refers to those ways by which rabbinic texts look at their own textual and discursive principles. The question of self-reflectivity, of how one sees oneself when one becomes the object of inquiry, has long since expanded beyond the realm of individual psychology.⁸ Since the notion of identity has become suspect, whether it is the identity of a text, a social identity of a given group, or an identity of an academic discipline, self-reflexivity has become part of any discussion that looks at discourse as culturally constructed. Here, it relates to rabbinic discourse as the object of reflection.

Midrash and Self-Reflexivity

Rabbinic texts offer a particular example of self-reflexivity because of their specific intertextual nature. They constantly, and explicitly, refer to other texts, biblical and rabbinic, and such references expose their means of production as well as the textual and linguistic concepts implicated in such a productive process.⁹ Midrash is composed of two explicit layers: scripture and rabbinic commentary. The Talmud is likewise built from two layers: Mishnah and Gemara, with those two layers containing, in addition, numerous midrashic expansions. In other words, the seams of the rabbinic cloth are, at least partly, sewn on the outside, making visible the process by which it was made. I suggest that this intertextual quality of rabbinic texts is a marker of self-relexivity.

The most basic form of self-reflexivity in rabbinic texts is their covert awareness of their linguistic constitution. That is, the overall midrashiccitational quality of rabbinic texts evinces, by its very nature, an awareness of the linguistic operations that form the texts. Within that general awareness, there are specific diegetic (that is, the characters or speakers in the text are aware that they are narrating a story or participating in a text) as well as non-diegetic, overtly self-reflective, narratives. These overtly self-reflective narratives will be the focus of this book.¹⁰

In addition to the two layers of scripture and rabbinic explications that characterize midrash, its intertextuality is further enhanced by its unique strategy of reading scripture. By linking together different scriptural sources, midrash anchors its authority in scripture. Scripture is taken to contain its own interpretative keys. The Sage, the interpreter—unlike his predecessors of the Second Temple period—does not hear a ministering angel (as does the author of Jubilees), nor does he record a firsthand account of Jacob’s sons (as in the Testaments of the Patriarchs).¹¹ His authority derives from the text itself, which situates him simultaneously inside the text and outside of it.

Midrash, as I have noted, is the cornerstone of rabbinic culture not only as it is found in the practice of direct explications of biblical law and lore but also in the model that such exegesis posits (mutatis mutandis) for subsequent texts, namely, the talmudic explications of the Mishnah. And, as the dominant form in the rabbinic literary poly-system, midrash was also a discursive model to which the rabbis adapted other genres. Such was the case with the Second Temple rewritten Bible, comprising certain apocryphal and pseudo-epigraphical ex-canonical texts that retold biblical stories. When the rabbis engaged in these kinds of retellings, they did so in midrashic fashion, with textual citations and fragmented narrative.¹² To be sure, a general characterization of rabbinic culture as a scriptural-exegetical culture may at first seem trivial.¹³ It also may seem to subsume a multifaceted enterprise under one single practice. Nor is it possible to reduce a corpus of texts that span six hundred years and different geographical and cultural environments to a single rabbinic culture. Yet the importance of the rise of midrash as a central, distinctively rabbinic, hermeneutic method cannot be overstated. For it was the early rabbinic choice of scriptural commentary as a communicative medium¹⁴ that distinguished the rabbinic exegetical enterprise from earlier traditions.¹⁵ That is not to say that midrash was created ex nihilo by the rabbis, but rather that in the rabbinic corpus, it occupies a central nexus that informs the entire rabbinic textual system. As such, it becomes the distinctive hallmark of rabbinic literary creativity in a manner that sets it apart from earlier proto-midrashic practices (for example, Qumranic Pesharim or Philo’s scriptural exegesis).

Midrash is a propagator of reflection in and of itself, as well as being a generative and metonymic model of rabbinic hermeneutical practices in a wider sense. For the Sage, the midrashic stance of being inside and outside the (biblical) text at the same time implies a position of liminality. It is precisely this liminality that is inextricably connected to self-reflection. If we understand self-reflection to be directed at categorical boundaries and at systemic shortcomings, the source of reflexivity should emerge from those very same ambiguous or liminal categories.¹⁶ Put differently, it is through liminal states that we come to know ourselves and our world, to know how we know, and to reflect on our own interpretative process.¹⁷ Rabbinic discourse(s), so heavily saturated with midrash and the liminality it entails, are hence self-reflective by definition, rendering the texts self-reflexive.

Modern scholars have noted the liminal, betwixt-and-between position of midrash. The impetus (and paradox) of early rabbinic hermeneutics has been described as a demand to be both the same and other than scripture;¹⁸ similarly, the poetics of amoraic (later rabbinic) midrash has been explained as an expression of a certain type of dialogical consciousness, of being both inside and outside the text at the same time.¹⁹ These characterizations, although they do not say so explicitly, imply that rabbinic midrashic discourse produces a liminal, hence reflective, subject. And, of all rabbinic discourses, scriptural exegesis—midrash—has most frequently elicited discussions of self-reflexivity. Moshe Halbertal, for example, has demonstrated that rabbinic exegetical practice is a self-reflective cultural project;²⁰ Christine Hayes has argued that the rabbis, from a very early stage, reflected on contextual versus non-contextual exegesis;²¹ and David Stern has instructively characterized the rabbinic exegetical stance as a conscious belatedness, implying self-reflexivity.²²

The Boundaries of Rabbinic Reflection, Self-Reflexivity, and Self-Reflectivity

Self-reflection, is (or was, in the wake of postmodernism)²³ too fashionable a concept to be endorsed unreflectively.²⁴ One question that the concept elicits has to do with the scope and range of such reflexivity: Can rabbinic discourse extend beyond its own boundaries? To put it differently, to what extent can one talk about self-reflexivity without the reflected self being incorporated into the reflective gaze?²⁵ David Stern has noted that any consideration of the relationship between theory and midrash might do well to begin with the self-reflexivity of contemporary theory—thought turned upon its own operations—and that of midrash, in which even theoretical statements about exegesis are couched in the language of scriptural exegesis.²⁶ Accordingly, the ultimate superiority ascribed to the Torah as the arch-paradigm in the system of interpretation precludes any self-reflective statement that is situated beyond its hermeneutical boundaries.

Daniel Boyarin devotes his book Socrates and the Fat Rabbis, which addresses the notion of rabbinic self-reflexivity, to breaching and ridiculing these same hermeneutical frameworks.²⁷ His book, like this one, stresses instances where epistemological uncertainties are reflected upon in the rabbinic corpus. It also implies, as I am suggesting, the notion that there is a self that is the object of reflection.²⁸ Boyarin offers a provocative thesis that seeks to account for the unique character of the Babylonian Talmud, for its mixing together of what Boyarin sees as the serious and the comic, the holy and the grotesque. He posits that this mixed bag, especially the outlandish biographical narratives of the rabbis, come from the Hellenistic Menippean literary tradition, which combines the lofty with the debased, the spiritual with the physically grotesque. What is of particular interest in the context of our discussion is that this (deliberate) hybridity of subject matter is used to criticize paramount cultural practices. In the Hellenistic context, the object is philosophical discourse, while in the Jewish context it is rabbinic Torah study and legal-exegetical discourse, with its implied claim of truth. In other words, the Menippean aspect of the Babylonian Talmud, as presented by Boyarin, displays self-reflectivity (and self-reflexivity) regarding its own knowledge or lack of knowledge, and it is, as he repeatedly suggests, a critique from within that does not delegitimize the foundations of the Babylonian rabbinic enterprise. In this sense, the self-reflexive texts are a form of a carnivalesque expression that is embraced and manipulated by the establishment.

Boyarin, although not addressing the issue explicitly, struggles with the distinction between self-reflexivity and self-reflectivity, between the (meta-) textual, self-reflexive, markers of the Bavli (the Babylonian Talmud) and an equally reflecting (rabbinic) agency to which these markers may attest. The Menippean tradition, with its ridicule of the philosophical pursuit of Truth, as it manifests itself in the Talmud, is ultimately ascribed by Boyarin to an implied author or, more accurately, to two implied authors (to which the different materials correspond). The complex, detailed argument that Boyarin makes to support this assertion is crucial for his understanding of the cultural forces at play and for his explanation of why specific texts were chosen, consciously or unconsciously, for inclusion in the Talmud. Are the texts self-reflexive, and/or are the authors self-reflective? Are the rabbis in control, or are they not? Boyarin concludes that the texts are self-reflexive and that the agency that is implied by the texts is equally self-reflective.²⁹

These two points of Boyarin’s—the boundaries of rabbinic (self-)critique and the relationship between textual self-reflexivity and human self-reflectivity in the Bavli—are crucial for my analysis. Boyarin restricts himself (if restricts is indeed the right word) to the Babylonian Talmud, particularly to its final editorial stamp, and to specific outrageous—and, at times, seriocomic—narratives. The biographical legends that serve Boyarin are very different in tone and texture from the narratives that will be the focus of the following chapters. The comic or humoristic component of some of the narratives discussed in this book does not derive from an exaggerated, grotesque style. Clearly, then, Boyarin is addressing a different literary phenomenon of self-reflexivity. In addition, the texts that I read reside in a wide variety of rabbinic compilations. Yet I would argue that the self-reflexivity that Boyarin identifies in the Bavli is but one case of the basic self-reflexivity of rabbinic texts in general. My claim is that the exegetical premise of rabbinic practice (midrash) opened it up, to begin with, to this specific Menippean mode of self-critique. The question of the ability of the self-reflexive text to transcend the reflective gaze in which it is couched becomes a nuanced question when applied to self-reflexive texts that do not bear—by and large—outlandish traits and that cannot be ascribed to one particular milieu (or editors). As the following chapters will show, the self-reflexive and self-reflective boundaries are simultaneously breached and maintained, while any implied agencies ascribed to the texts are deemed obscure, even more so than the ghost-like dual figures of Boyarin’s Bavli. However, as mentioned earlier, since the text’s self-reflexivity operates, in my view, as a self that is reflected on in a wider, cultural, sense (but not as a specific social group), I use reflexive and reflective interchangeably.

Self-Reflexivity and an Imagined Rabbinic Self

Self-reflexivity is applied in this book to a body of texts.³⁰ The object of my observations is not the human psyches of specific characters within the texts. Instead, the self I address is an emergent entity that results from rabbinic discourses and discursive processes. These processes, in turn, explain, argue for, negate, and validate. In short, they produce moments of cultural subjectivity. But there is another aspect of the cultural self that I am interested in, one that is ostensibly given rather than constantly constructed and one that is an object of reflection. I have suggested that one central rabbinic discourse, that is, one discursive self, is midrash. Since this pivotal rabbinic discourse implies self-reflexivity in and of itself, it is not surprising to find midrash as an object of relection. In this case, the exegetical rabbinic discourse itself becomes a theme of discourse and is provided with an array of reflective lenses through which it is examined. Indeed, most of the texts examined in this book involve, in some way or another, a reflection on midrash. The last chapter addresses rabbinic discourse in a broader sense, as an institutionally governed enterprise. It, too, should be seen in relation to rabbinic discourse’s overall propensity, triggered by midrash, for self-relexivity.

My claim that there is an imagined rabbinic-discursive self that, in turn, becomes an object of reflection should be viewed in the context of much current work on rabbinic cultures. Recent cultural studies of rabbinic texts have tended to question the pure, clear-cut contours of rabbinic identities. Cultural heterogeneity has been explained, for instance, by the discursive mixture of folk and elite elements,³¹ or by the underlying contact between distinct but not entirely separated ethnic and religious groups. Bakhtinian social-literary polyphony and postcolonial theory’s hybridity have provided rich frameworks for discussing rabbinic identities: Galit Hasan-Rokem has demonstrated the polyphony in rabbinic texts,³² and Joshua Levinson has argued for their hybrid identities.³³ While their premises ring true and their specific readings convincingly indicate that rabbinic cultures were anything but monolithic, these studies may overlook a crucial aspect of (rabbinic) identity formation: they do not necessarily acknowledge that a sense of an essentialized self is an immanent aspect of identity formation without which an individual—or here, a culture—cannot function. The notion of a unified self, as some have argued, may rest on a misguided, insatiable nostalgic yearning.³⁴ But to deny the experiential components that give rise to such an imagined entity is to overlook a powerful engine of identity formation.³⁵ To dismiss these experiences as individual or cultural fantasies would mean overlooking a central rabbinic force in which a unified self is imagined.³⁶ That is not to say that a unified cultural self is an exclusive rabbinic fantasy; nor is it to say that it ever existed beyond any textual boundaries. Also, quite clearly, religious and ethnic external others played a key role in self-reflexive processes and cultural identity formations of Judaism in late antiquity. Thus, to offer but one example, rabbinic Judaism reflected on and formed itself in relation to Christianity—to an external (or gradually externalized) synchronic other.³⁷ As Christine Hayes notes, external and internal others in rabbinic literature "serve as means by which a group can explore its own internal ambiguities, experiment with alternative possibilities, embrace negativities.³⁸ In the following chapters, I refer to some of the characters and discourses as others." Yet these, I suggest, should be construed within the conceptual framework of possible selves, which accentuates their role in a self-reflective, introspective process.³⁹

Rabbinic Possible Selves

Rabbinic self-reflexivity resides in, and is triggered by, its pivotal practice of midrash. This midrashic capacity is further enhanced by reflective figures that populate rabbinic narratives. The textual mirroring points of the narratives engage a variety of characters who serve as discursive junctions through which the main, however tentative, discourses are reflected upon. Where these figures come from, what they do, what they say, and how they say it constitute their performative persona: they may originate in bygone biblical and Second Temple days, occupy a lowly social position, belong to the female gender, speak in riddles, or think magically. The figures may seem to resemble rabbinic contemporary prototypes or they may be imagined, initially, as their virtual opposites. Embodying an ambivalence of sameness and otherness, their appearance in the rabbinic corpus plays out alternative choices and ideas, constituting what Hillis Miller terms possible selves. According to Miller, the characters that operate in a narrative allow the reader to whom it is addressed to "experiment with possible selves and to learn to take … place in the real world, to play … [a] part there."⁴⁰ However, for the sake of discussion, I have modified Miller’s insightful term by differentiating between what can be seen as the main self in a given text and other figures that not only represent other possible selves but also comment on that main—however tentative—self. Furthermore, while the concept of a possible self applies to the characters in the text, it can be carried further, beyond the personified principle suggested by Miller, since the rabbinic self—a midrashic self—is a discursive self. Accordingly, discourses that have distinct structural and thematic features but that are not necessarily centered on a character—such as the genre of tall tales (Chapter 3)—might also be seen as an experiment with possible selves, or as ways of reflecting with this genre on the midrashic self of a rabbinic text.⁴¹

From a Nazirite to a Maidservant: Five Readings of Self-Reflexivity

This book is composed of five readings of rabbinic texts in which self-reflexivity plays a prominent role. The chapters were written separately, over the course of the last fifteen years. It is only in hindsight that I realized that they addressed similar issues. Their shared themes derive from my idiosyncratic interests. Yet without ignoring the book’s (auto)biographical component (or fallacy), something in the texts themselves has always drawn my attention to their self-reflexive quality. In retrospect, I see that I sought to understand the self-reflexive impetus of rabbinic texts that I, in turn, identified with their midrashic core. As I reflected on essays that I had written in the past and on my ongoing project, it became clear to me that reflexivity is a driving force in rabbinic literature and that the notion of a self is important in the formation of cultural identity.

The readings draw on different methodologies—mainly, literary theory, folklore, semiotics, and anthropology. While following basic philological guidelines concerning matters such as the dating of texts and lexical meanings, my readings at times transcend what may seem indisputable (or seemingly safe) philological grounds. As we have learned from Mikhail Bakhtin, a text—any text—produces meaning via its relation to other texts (what I term in Chapter 2 its co-texts).⁴² It does not stand alone. The reconstruction of possible echo chambers that not only form the background to a given text but that determine its meanings is contingent on reading practices. What are the relevant texts that one may consider when reading a given text? The answer is not simple, and it at least partly relates to the space—or abyss (depending on the eye of the beholder)—that lies between strict philological criteria and possible wider semiotics. In this context, we should also bear in mind that rabbinic texts that provide the basis for philological pursuits are only the tip of the iceberg insofar as they are remnants—maybe only partial in and of themselves—of a predominantly oral culture (this largely holds true also for