The Suffering of the Righteous in Palestinian and Babylonian Sources
An investigation of passages dealing with the problem of theodicy in both Talmuds and the earlier Palestinian midrashim indicates that Palestinian sources preferred to deal with this issue in a more indirect way, without going much beyond the standard tannaitic responses. Babylonian sources, on the...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Penn Press
1990
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| In: |
The Jewish quarterly review
Year: 1990, Volume: 80, Issue: 3/4, Pages: 315-339 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | An investigation of passages dealing with the problem of theodicy in both Talmuds and the earlier Palestinian midrashim indicates that Palestinian sources preferred to deal with this issue in a more indirect way, without going much beyond the standard tannaitic responses. Babylonian sources, on the other hand, face the question more directly, and acknowledge that the righteous often do not receive their just deserts; they suggest some mechanisms to account for the phenomenon. The existence of these distinctive approaches is confirmed by an examination of the exegeses of some dozen biblical passages which advert to the (generally unmerited) suffering of the righteous. Palestinian sources either ignore these verses, or interpret them in ways which do not present a threat to faith, i.e., historicizing them so as to limit their applicability to the past, or generalizing them so that the suffering referred to is that of the world as a whole rather than of the righteous in particular. Two categories of righteous suffering are mentioned in Palestinian sources, however: "sufferings of love" meant to refine the righteous, and vicarious atonement. Several explanations are suggested to account for this difference in approach. It may be that Palestinian sources reflect popular homiletics, while Babylonian aggada is grounded in the culture of the rabbinic class. Another factor is the greater receptivity of Babylonian culture of what-ever provenance to the activity of demonic forces in the world. Finally, one arresting passage, found only in the Mekhilta and BT, may have entered the Mekhilta from Babylonia. |
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| ISSN: | 1553-0604 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The Jewish quarterly review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/1454973 |