Wolfson, ER - Fishbane's Rabbinic Mythmaking, (2006) 96 Jewish Quarterly Rev 233

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THEJEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, Vol. 96, No. 2 (Spring 2006) 233238

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Mythopoeic Imagination and theHermeneutic Bridging of Temporal

Spacing: On Michael FishbanesBiblicalMyth and Rabbinic Mythmaking

E L L I O T R . W O L F S O N

BI B L I C A L MY T H A N D RA B B I N I CMY T H M A K I N G (Oxford UniversityPress, 2003) is a capacious examination of the mythic potential in the

Jewish hermeneutical imagination expressed in biblical, rabbinic, and

kabbalistic sources. As we have come to expect from Michael Fishbane,

this monograph is replete with exacting analyses of primary texts that

serve the aim of grounding larger theoretical assumptions that pertain to

Jewish textual practices in particular and to the mythopoeic sensibility

in the history of religions more generally. The author himself instructs

the reader early on that the purpose of the book is an attempt to retrieve,study, and even reconstruct the phenomenon of monotheistic myth over

the course of two millenniafocusing on its first literary articulations

in the Hebrew Bible and continuing through the increasingly intensified

process whereby mythmaking occurs in classical rabbinic Midrash and

the medieval Kabbalistic book ofZohar, by means of hermeneutical re-

formulations of scriptural myths and language (p. 13).

Prima facie, the locution monotheistic myth may strike the ear as an

oxymoron, but Fishbane is one of several contemporary scholars whohave challenged the older antiquated depiction of ancient Israelite mono-

theism as a rejection of pagan mythology. On the contrary, from Fish-

banes perspective, not only is it inaccurate to view monotheism in this

light but Scripture should be seen as the wellspring of thecultural forms

and theconcrete expressionsof a vital mythic imagination, found in classical

texts of the Jewish monotheistic tradition. These myths, accordingly,

do not occur either as private or inchoate musings, but as processed and

particular statements made at specific times and passed on as part of avast cultural enterprise. We may say that the myths do not occur in the

The Jewish Quarterly Review (Spring 2006)

Copyright 2006 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved.


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234 JQR 96.2 (2006)

abstract, but always as bound formsbound to a given genre or occasion

or citation from Scripture (p. 308). The motor that makes the many

myths of Scripture manifest is identified as exegesis, for the interpretive

gesture extends and transforms older motifs . . . In ever artful ways,new myths and narratives are produced; and in ever creative ways, the

resources of tradition (Scripture, Midrash, and Kabbalah) are integrated

and projected into transcendental domains (p. 305). It follows, therefore,

that the exegetical bond between Scripture and myth, which comes to

light in the homiletical dicta of the rabbis and the theosophic ruminations

of the kabbalists, implies that this canonical source conceals a deeper

dimension about the acts and nature of God, and thus the language of the

readable text is but the surface of another narrative about divine deedsor divine feelings hidden from immediate view. To know how to read

rightly is thus to know that the historical character of Scripture is but the

verbal outcropping of another narrativenot an account of Israel but of

God, and not of the events of the earth but of the hidden acts of the Lord

in heaven (pp. 30809).

In Fishbanes reconstruction of the exegetical trajectory, there is a cru-

cial difference between the rabbis and kabbalists: the former considered

Scripture to be the measure of myth, whereas the latter, and especially

the Castilian circle responsible for the zoharic anthology, maintained thatScripture is itself the myth of God. Alternatively expressed, the aggadic

explication of Scripture on the part of the rabbis was inspired by the

hope of finding exegetical proof or warrant for Gods sorrows and sym-

pathies, and for His decision to share in the fate of Israel. To be sure,

the kabbalists shared this goal as well, but they went beyond it as their

ceaseless scriptural exegesis and interpretation of its mysteries consti-

tuted a mode of mythical living, for there is no separation between living

the truth of Scripture and living within the truth of God . . . Scripturesuffuses all; for it is the real myth of God, insofar as this is ever or at all

sayable in human speech or accessible to the human imagination. Gods

truth is refracted in fragments of myth bound by the syntax of Scripture

(p. 309). It is not always clear that this distinction can be upheld, and I

think it fair to say that Fishbane himself is not unaware of the point of

convergence. Indeed, one of the most important ramifications of Fish-

banes study is the narrowing of the alleged gap between midrashic and

kabbalistic perspectives. The boldness of the zoharic exegesis notwith-standing, the close readings of midrashic texts offered by Fishbane dem-

onstrate the inherent mythopoeic properties of rabbinic theology, and

thus his corrective to previous scholars who have insisted that mytho-

poeic images employed by the rabbis are merely metaphors or figurative


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MYTHOPOEIC IMAGINATIONWOLFSON 235

tropes sapped of their mythic vitality. Medieval kabbalists revised the

earlier material, but there is good reason to accept their claim that they

were explicating secrets embedded in the aggadic dicta.

A crucial aspect of Fishbanes study, indeed a notional pillar uponwhich the whole edifice rests, although it is not thematized as such, in-

volves the intricate relation between time and hermeneutics. In the re-

mainder of this brief note, I wish to delve more deeply into this matter.

Underlying the emphasis on exegesis as the power that energizes and

revives older myths is a presumption regarding the dialectic interplay of

innovation and preservation, hermeneutical conditions that are correlated

with the temporal categories of change and repetition. In one passage,

Fishbane addresses the issue by noting that the real cultural issue athand is determining whether or not the mythopoeic activity exemplified

in medieval Kabbalaha protean exegetical energy that turns biblical

verses in every conceivable direction in order to reveal their esoteric

truthis a new birth or a rebirth of older processes?; and, Is this the

return or invasion of alien pagan elements, or the recrudescence and re-

formulation of inner-Jewish images and topics? (p. 10). The response

to these hypothetical questions is unequivocal on Fishbanes part: the

preponderance of myth in kabbalistic doctrine is not a new birth but a

rebirth, the mythmaking is not the grafting of some foreign element ontothe body of Judaism but a recrudescence, a revivification of creative ele-

ments that lay dormant beneath the surface.

To appreciate the full force of these claims, we must again raise the

issue of time in relation to the hermeneutical presuppositions of Fish-

banes argument. I do not think it disrespectful to say that the book would

have been enhanced philosophically had the author offered the reader a

sustained discussion of this topic, but even in the absence of such a dis-

cussion there is surely enough material to allow the conscientious readerto elicit the conception of temporality that undergirds Fishbanes herme-

neutical orientation. The persistence of mythic structures through time is

assumed, but in such a way that they are renewed by exegetical concerns

that ensue from the exigencies of particular moments in history. Thus, in

one passage, Fishbane writes of the anthropomorphic and anthropo-

pathic imagery of Scripture that was variously developed and intensi-

fied by its midrashic and kabbalistic inheritors, who also received the

mythic figures of antiquity and extended them through bold and innova-tive exegetical strategies (p. 11). Eschewing an approach to myth that

would ignore specific historical contexts and cultural locations in favor of

atemporal archetypical paradigms, Fishbane insists that the more imme-

diate cultural task that is required is to reconsider certain biblical and


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236 JQR 96.2 (2006)

rabbinic evidence in the light of related comparative phenomenon (p.

12).

Methodologically, Fishbane wishes to have his proverbial cake and eat

it too; that is, he insists on considering historical context when evaluatinga mythic confabulation, but he is not enslaved to a historicist understand-

ing of historical context. The identification of external correlations must

then be supplemented by more nuanced evaluations of their respective

meanings and functions in context. Such a procedure will allow us to

consider the nature and vitality of the imagery involvedaided by an

analysis of the modes of discourse involved and the cultural strategies

that the specific topics encode. Certainly no definition of myth will give a

fixed Archimedian point, agreeable to all; but it may provide somethingof a wobbling pivot around which we may analyse certain cultural data

from a comparative and even more universal perspective (pp. 1213).

The implicit issue of time and hermeneutics is addressed somewhat

more directly in the following statement:

In what follows, I shall adopt a typological approach that will isolate

several paradigmatic configurations overall, and use these types to ex-

plore the varied character and construction of monotheistic myth in

the sources, as well as its patterns of thematic continuity and transfor-mation. Such a methodological strategy will permit a synchronic analy-

sis of central topics in each separate period (with due attention to the

diversity of motifs and structures), and facilitate their diachronic corre-

lation and comparison in different corpora. (p. 13)

Utilizing the terminology of Ferdinand de Saussure, who distinguished

between synchronic linguistics, the study of language at a particular point

in time, and diachronic linguistics, the study of the history or evolutionof language, Fishbane seeks to adopt a methodology that is attentive

equally to the permanence of mythic structures through time and to the

evolution they undergo relative to changed historical circumstances. Illus-

trating what he calls the principle of parsimony from the specific theme of

divine combat, Fishbane concludes that a mythic topic in Hebrew Scrip-

ture . . . can undergo a recontextualization in the exegesis of rabbinic

Midrash but still remain the same mythic topic overall, if the terms re-

main the same and if there is no wholesale theological or literary transfor-mation. This granted, it must nevertheless be stressed that every new

occurrence of a mythic topic (in its new context) produces a new myth

overall, insofar as the concerns and purposes of the latter varies. The

principle of parsimony does not therefore mean that a myth or mytholo-


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MYTHOPOEIC IMAGINATIONWOLFSON 237

gem in its various renditions is always one and the same but only that

similar images should be assumed to be the same and have the same semi-

otic value unless there are good textual reasons to conclude differently

(p. 18).Another consequence of Fishbanes study as it relates to the question

of time and hermeneutics is his challenge to the assumption that myth-

making is a feature of degeneration and decreased spontaneity. Rather

than viewing literary evolution within a specific cultural matrix in linear

terms as a progression from a primitive mode of mythic imagination to

more abstract forms of rational thinking, Fishbane understands myth as

a key factor in the revitalization of earlier sources and a sign of ongoing

cultural creativity (p. 20). By insisting that the process of exegeticalmythopoesis is predicated on a complex synthesis of enduring mythologic

symbols and ever-changing modalities of mythmaking, Fishbanes think-

ing is a subtle and sophisticated reinscription of the very process that he

sets out to describe in scholarly terms. He is to be commended, for pro-

viding a path that avoids the extremes of empiricist reductionism and

archetypal essentialism. Discerning structures that cannot be reduced to

time-bound eventualities does not preclude the necessity to examine the

historical contexts that inform the exegetical process of revisioning and

reformulating older mythologoumena. Quite to the contrary, the sophisti-

cated hermeneutical model constructed by Fishbane enables the reader

to stand at the intersection of the two seas, the sea of permanence and

the sea of fluctuation. The process of mythmaking in the Jewish religious

sensibility so deftly described by Fishbane ensues from that very point of

junction where the temporal is eternalized and the eternal temporalized.

The point is well illustrated by Fishbane in his comments on the theme

of divine pathos and the longing for reunion in a passage from the Zohar

(3.42a-b). The cry of the Shekhinahabove and her yearning for cohabita-

tion with the holy One parallel the lament of the people of Israel below

and their hope for redemption from exile. Reflecting on the symbolic

parallelism between events in the divine and human realms, Fishbane

draws the following conclusion:

Where myth ends and history begins is just as mysterious as where

history ends and the myth begins. For the teachers who speak here,

neither the one nor the other is truly the truth. In fact the two are

really one, under the two aspects of time and eternity. It remains for

the reader to ponder and to wonder at this mystery, so boldly ex-

pressed in these teachings of the book ofZohar. (p. 297)


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238 JQR 96.2 (2006)

Myth and history are correlated respectively with eternity and time. The

mythical suffering of the divine corresponds to the historical suffering of

the Jewish people. The mystery brought to light in the dark luminosity

of zoharic Kabbalah consists of the fact that there is one truth with twomanifestations, the eternal and the temporal. The mythic and historical

are not to be set in binary opposition, but they are rather two sides of one

coin.

As is well known to philosophers, intellectual historians, and scholars

of religion, there has been a tendency to correlate linear time with the

historical and cyclical time with the mythical, and a further association of

the former with ancient Israel and Judaism and the latter with either

Near Eastern or Hellenistic models of religious philosophy. But the con-ceptions of time that one may elicit from the tripartite of biblical, rabbinic,

and kabbalistic sources is a convergence of history and myth that renders

the more standard perspective dubious. Fishbanes insight regarding the

nexus of myth and history lends support to the suspicion that the modal-

ities of linear and circular time are not easily separated in the case of

Judaism. Recurrent patterns transpire within the narrative framework of

linear successionthe timelessness of lived time extending in the attenu-

ated circle of returnyielding a temporality that is at once interminably

ephemeral and ephemerally interminable. An appreciation of the mytho-poeic dimension of the Jewish exegetical imagination meticulously docu-

mented inBiblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmakingrequires that one fathom

the mystery of the eternality of time from within the cloak of the tempo-

rality of eternity.


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T H EJ E W I S H QU A R T E R L Y RE V I E W , Vol. 96, No. 2 (Spring 2006) 239249

Making and Living Myth: On MichaelFishbanesBiblical Myth And Rabbinical

MythmakingW I L L I A M S C H W E I K E R

I T I S A D E L I G H T A N D H O N O R for me to respond to Professor Michael

Fishbanes magisterial work, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking and,additionally, to do so within the pages ofThe Jewish Quarterly Review. Any-

one who cracks the covers of his book will be humbled and also ennobled

by Fishbanes breadth of learning and depth of insight. Of course, this

also means that any response, especially a relatively short one, will never

plumb the wealth of his work. What is more, I am not a biblical scholar

or a scholar of Jewish thought and tradition, so the distinct pleasure of

response brings with it special trepidation. Happily, given the richness of

his work there is sufficient intellectual overlap to allow a theological eth-

icist like myself to isolate topics of common concern. Rather than storm-

ing disciplinary gates, my interest is to learn from and to engage this

fascinating book and also, hopefully, make some addition to its scholarly

assessment.

The structure of Fishbanes book is clear enough. The three parts of

the volume move from myth in the Hebrew Bible, through rabbinic myth-

making as a kind of exegetical activity, to, finally, the Zohar and myth-

making in the Middle Ages. Through this massive historical sweep,

Fishbane traces a set of myths of Gods action and personality, likeGods struggle with primordial waters and the divine pathos for the suf-

fering of Israel. These paradigmatic myths provide a template upon which

the author charts permutations in mythmaking across periods of Jewish

This essay was originally given in a different form at the Deans Forum onMichael Fishbanes book March 31, 2004, at the University of Chicago DivinitySchool. I want to thank Dean Richard Rosengarten for the invitation to partici-

pate in this event as well as Reverend Cynthia Linder, the other respondent.

Most important, I want to thank Professor Fishbane for the clarity and subtly ofhis insights and for his deep collegial spirit.

The Jewish Quarterly Review(Spring 2006)



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240 JQR 96.2 (2006)

history. In the process of this history, if I read Fishbane correctly, there

is increasing intensification such that, by the time of the medievals, the

myth itself, as an inward and spiritual reality of divine Being, is unsayable

and unknowable on its own terms; and only becomes knowable and say-able in the terminology of Scripturewhen this is properly understood

(p. 301). Stated most pointedly, God is mythologized, the myths are in-

scribed in exegetical practice, and, what is more, reality itself is theolo-

gized, as it were. This theological intensification, if I can call it that, is

correlated, as we will see, to an intensification and interiorization of

human action. What is disclosed in this complex historical process, ac-

cording to Fishbane, is the texture and tenure of Jewish monotheism as

well as the articulation of a distinctive way of life, a way of being religioushumanly. So Fishbane concludes near the end of the book that monothe-

ism is consonant with this comprehensive view of the Godhead, and it is

variously expressed through myth . . . The two repeatedly intertwine and

are mutually reinforcing (p. 304).

One could dig into each of the moments of tradition that Fishbane

isolates and note, as he does, changes in mythmaking. Rather than sum-

marizing the text, which would in any case be a paltry thing on my part

in comparison to the richness of the actual work, I am more interested in

itsSache, the thing or subject matter of the book. By carefully parsing thequestion of myth and mythmaking, I submit that one can grasp the schol-

arly, human, and religious reach of Fishbanes work. So at the far end of

these reflections I will pose questions not about living myth but, rather,

the living or inhabiting of myth, mystically and morally. In the final analy-

sis what Fishbanes book provokes is the question of the shape and orien-

tation of religious understanding and the possibilities, if any, for

contemporary appropriations of very traditional religious forms. Stated

otherwise, monotheism and the intensification of human action and con-sciousness are the deepest concern of this work. Fishbane aims to show

the ways in which exegetical practices as distinct forms of mythmaking

enable those living in profoundly different times and places than the those

of the biblical texts to enact and to encounter the reality of God. The

question will then become the extent to which there are constraints or

limits to the labor of hermeneutical enactment. In order to make these

points, I must begin with Fishbanes engagement with myth and myth-

making.

M Y TH AN D M Y THM AKI N G

The question of myth has occupied much modern and now postmodern

thought about culture and the religions. In many ways, scholars at the


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MAKING AND LIVING MYTHSCHWEIKER 241

University of Chicago Divinity School (Wach, Eliade, Meland, Kitagawa,

Tillich, Ricoeur, Gilkey, Betz, Smith, Tracy, Doniger, Lincoln, Fishbane)

have helped to define the modern and contemporary study of culture and

myth. There is of course no unified line of argument among these think-ers. Furthermore, definitions of myth, like its theories, are legion. How

does Fishbane define myth?

We shall understand the word Myth to refer to (sacred and authori-

tative) accounts of the deeds and personalities of the gods and heroes

during the formative events of primordial times, or during subsequent

historical interventions or actions of these figures which are constitu-

tive for the founding of a given culture and its rituals. (p. 11)

A myth is an account (in whatever form, narrative or not) of actions and

persons (divine and heroic; cosmogonic or historical) that are culturally

constitutive.

It is important to grasp the force of this definition.1 The definition Fish-

bane gives of myth includes but does not reduce it to literary form

(narrative structure); to some event illo tempore; or, more generically, to

any authoritative story in a culture. Further, Fishbane also avoids, rightlyin my judgment, the temptation to reduce myth to a veiled discourse of

power aimed at political obedience or to inflating the concept so that

every cultural form is really mythic. By avoiding these extremes and

pitfalls he clarifies myth and mythmaking in Jewish thought but also, on

my reading, advances scholarly work on myth along three lines: (a) myth

and exegesis; (b) myth and monotheism; and (c) myth and logos. My

reasons for noting these topics will become clear by the last turn of ques-

tions in these reflections on Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking. Let meconsider these three topics.

1. It is important to note when in the flow of inquiry a thinker ought to engagein the work of definition. Is it possible to specify a definition prior to unfolding

the phenomenon in question? While Fishbane begins his book with matters ofdefinition, it is my sense that he does so more in terms of the order of knowing

than, as the medievals put it, the order of being. That is, I assume that Fishbanesdefinition of myth flows from rather than determines the direction of his historical

and hermeneutical inquiry. This is crucial because it means that the impulse ofthis book is to think within and through the forms of thought and tradition it isattempting to explore. It is beyond the scope of this essay to take up the problem,

philosophically, of definition or even to debate the various accounts of mythfound in current scholarly work.


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242 JQR 96.2 (2006)

Myth and Exegesis

One feature of the modern study of myth has been to locate it at the

ostensive point of difference between the historical and the archaic

mind. Some scholars, one thinks of Eliade, drew a distinction betweenmythic cultures and the forms of thought, life, and cultural activities that

arise after the end of those cultures.2 The idea is that somehow the mythic

imagination is archaic and the activities of the worlds so-called great

religions, including their exegetical and commentarial acts on sacred

texts, at best work with fragments of the archaic. The great religions

signal the fall into history and thus a rupture in human consciousness

from its archaic dwelling in a sacred cosmos. In this sense of the term,

Judaism must somehow be a postmythic religion and culture, and thesame needs to be said of Christianity, Islam, and the great religions

flowing out of Indian and China. This rupture in consciousness is taken

as the decisive fact in human religiousness.

Fishbanes work challenges the use of myth as the obvious point of

differencebetween cultural and religious forms. As he notes, For anyone

who might think that myths die with the death of comprehensive mythic

cultures, and that exegesis is a post-mortem activity that takes over the

shards of old images and at best patches together old vessels for a morepotable content, the phenomenon of Jewish myth and mythmaking is

instructive (p. 305). Fishbane demonstrates that the intellectual practice

of exegesis is itself a form of mythmaking and thereby challenges the use

of myth as the marker between the archaic and the historic. He exam-

ines this point in terms of how the myth of divine combat forms a link

between creation and the exodus in the biblical texts (see pp. 6369),

how the theme of the primordial waters is explored among the rabbis (as

on pp. 11224), and, finally, the myth of the serpent in the Zohar whereinthis radical myth of evil, the cunning serpent is part of Godand thus

a part of all being created from His Being (p.284). These shifts in a myth

of origin, and so events in primordial time, through exegetical practices

enable the scholar to engage the domain of the mythic free from the de-

mand to differentiate the archaic and its residual fragments in the herme-

neutical practices found in Judaism. The force of this insight is to

provoke a reconsideration of the temporal structure of human conscious-

ness in relation to the history of religions.

2. See, for instance, Mircea Eliade,Cosmos and History: The Myth of the EternalReturn(New York, 1963), and Eliade, Myth and Reality (New York, 1963).


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Myth and Monotheism

The first point, then, is that through his study of rabbinic mythmaking,

Fishbane debunks a long-standing figure of thought found within modern

approaches to religion, namely, that myth configures a shift in humanconsciousness and cultural forms that we conveniently designate as ar-

chaic versus the historical or the domain of the world religions. The

shape and dynamic of religious consciousness displayed in the history of

Judaism is more complex than the oppositional categories archaic and

historical seem to allow. Insofar as Jewish practice is exemplary of

human religiousness, then we must, in the light of Fishbanes work, re-

consider assumed categories in the study of religion.

Fishbanes second important insight is to contest the wildly popularnotion that myth and monotheism are at odds. The claim, one made by

Jews and Christians alike, is that Israelite monotheism and the revelation

of the living God in history means that myth does not pertain; myth is

a pagan concept for a different understanding of human time and a

pantheon of deities. One might see this as a subset of my first point: the

biblical religions enter what Eliade called the terror of history while

the archaic religions were mythic but not historical and so at one with

nature. Jewish and Christian thinkers, especially in the mid-twentiethcentury, jumped on the bandwagon to say that the Bible has a linear

conception of time whereas the pagan mentality is mythic and circular,

sunk in the realm of the unchanging eternal. The apologetic strategy of

numerous Jewish and Christian thinkers aimed to show the uniqueness

of biblical faith and its incomparability with religion and myth.3

Fishbane rejects this way of discounting the importance of myth in

biblical religion and its legacy in Judaism. The full force of his claim

3. The wide array of thinkers who made this claim is astonishing. They rangefrom Gerhard von Rad to Martin Buber, from Karl Barth and Rudolph Bult-mann to Abraham Heschel, and from Paul Tillich to Arthur Cohen. One shouldnote that the same claim, albeit it in different form, continues in a good deal ofso-called postmodern discourse. It is not at all clear to me that thinkers like Em-manuel Levinas or Jacques Derrida or so-called narrative theologians amongChristians have really made any revision in the supposed opposition of the bibli-cal and the mythic already basic to the earlier apologetic discourse. It is also

the case that the sharp distinction between the biblical religions of history and

religions supposedly more friendly to nature is a mainstay of current ecologicaltheology and ethics. The question of the validity of the distinction is one whichfor now can remain unresolved, but suffice it to say that Fishbanes work isrightly pressing basic questions for constructive Jewish and Christian thought.


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244 JQR 96.2 (2006)

should not be missed. Rabbinic mythmaking pictures the divine personal-

ity such that Gods own nature is thus mythically portrayed as affected

by Israels life, and never abstract or abstracted from human personali-

ties (p. 239). In rabbinic mythmaking, human action, in a way not trueof biblical myth, has great effect on divine judgment and mercy. And with

the Zohar, the hidden myth of Divine Being is encoded in the words

and sentences of scripture, and it is precisely in the exegetic pyrotechnics

applied to these words and sentences that the great mystery is articu-

lated (p. 303). The balance of power, he notes, is given into the hands

of humans, whose every action is deemed a crucial component of the

divine whole (p. 313). As noted at the outset of these reflections, the

intensification of myths about God into the idea, found in the Zohar, thatScripture itself is the myth of Gods being is correlated to an intensifica-

tion and even interiorization of human action. The reality of God in all

things becomes articulated in the exegetical act of mythmaking which

thereby opens a mode of mythic living. A human act, the act of exege-

sis, enacts the divine being in all things. This means, importantly, that

access to the divine is freed from the sociocultural conditions of the origi-

nal revelation or production of the text. Myth cannot serve as the prin-

ciple of differentiating archaic from historical religion. Yet it is also the

case that Jewish monotheism, with its insistence on the one living God

beyond all images, is vitalized and living precisely in the labor of myth-

making. What is made possible in this development is a mode of participa-

tion in the divine life, a form of religious consciousness, within disciplines

of interpretation.

Myth and Logos

I have argued that Fishbanes work foils long-standing strategies that usemyth to differentiate and classify religions (archaic/historical) or which

deploy it, often apologetically, in order to accent the supposed uniqueness

of biblical religions focal conviction against other kinds of religion (mon-

otheistic/mythic). The book also makes an advance around another ex-

tremely long-standing line of thought and debate: myth and logos. The

contention has been that myth is rhetorical and symbolic window dress-

ing for what ought to be rendered into philosophical categories (logos).

Myth, on this account, is, as Fishbane notes, really an allegory for deeper

truths better stated in dialectical form. This strategy runs from the Greek

philosophers up through Hegel and to some twentieth-century thinkers,

like Rudolf Bultmann, who argued that one could demythologize the


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biblical texts to get at their real existential meaning.4 Fishbane notes with

delicious irony that for the early Greek poets, like Hesiod and Homer,

logos was an unworthy and crafty form of discourse. Yet when philoso-

phers brought things down to earth, valuations began to change. Logosand not mythos ought to guide human life, and the guidance of life by

logos becomes the definition of the philosophical quest. The purgation or

taming of myth, as Fishbane calls it (p. 3), by philosophers continued in

Jewish culture influenced by Greek rationalism. The same can be said

about the rise and development of Christian thought.5

Fishbane labors against the grain of this entrenched assumption about

the superiority of logos to mythos, and, thereby, philosophys assumed

priority over exegesis. As previously indicated, the force of his argumentis to isolate a novel and distinct way of life intertwined with forms of

mythmaking. Mythopoesis, he notes, is a symbolic form of the imagi-

nation which brings a kind of narrative world into being. For Fishbane

this does not mean a celebration of emotion or fancy, a festival of noncog-

nitive accounts of the world. Fictive realities (or hermeneutical inven-

tions) make truth claims that can and ought to be lived. There is, he

continues, a dimension of truth which the mythmaker (and his disciples

or heirs) inhabits through his hermeneutical inventions, and which may

be accepted or transformed by successive stages of mythopoesis (p. 25).

Fishbane even suggests, provocatively, that scholarship can revive old

myths and thus is an intriguing and intricate case of logos in the service

of mythos (p. 27). Here we are, I think, at the heart of Fishbanes project

about myth, monotheism, and religious consciousness.

Plato, the first and maybe most trenchant critic of myth, grasped that

any myth makes both cognitive and moral claims. That is to say, any

myth makes claims about how to understand reality and also about how

human beings ought rightly to orient their lives within reality so de-

4. The question is not about the need for philosophical concepts in the articu-lation of mythic truths, a point that seems obvious enough. The problem is whenone assumes that the concepts exhaustthe meaning of myth so that the mythic

becomes a disposable form in the hands of the philosopher. On this point I judgethat Plato, and probably Bultmann too, were wiser than the grand mind of Hei-delberg, G. W. F. Hegel. Certainly the so-called left-wing Hegelians (Feuerbach,Marx, and others) and their fight against ideology got the point missed by their

master.5. On this point seeThe Beginnings of Christianity: A Collection of Articles, ed. J.

Pastor and M. Mor (Jerusalem, 2005) and Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. T.Frymer-Kensky et al. (Boulder, Colo., 2000).


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246 JQR 96.2 (2006)

picted.6 Plato understood that there is no myth without morals and, con-

versely, there is no morality that is not intertwined with some picture

of reality, the space of human actions that necessarily exceeds empirical

knowledge. Not surprisingly, the great modern critics of myth (Nietz-sche, Freud, Marx, and others) attacked the cognitive and moral preten-

sions of myths. They sought to uncover the illusion of myth and what

they took to be the suppressed nihilism of its moral outlook, as Nietzsche

might put it. Yet the smartest of the critics, from Plato to Nietzsche, also

knew that an alternate myth would be needed to debunk illusion simply

because actual human beings never meet reality without imaginative

forms used to orient their lives. So, Plato dialogically reinvents myths,

Nietzsche has Zarathustra perched on a mountain, and Freud plumbs thedepths of Moses and Monotheism in the realm of the psyche. The smart-

est minds knew that one dispels a myth only with better, or at least differ-

ent, myth.

If one grasps the complexity of this point, then a strategy other than

the priority of philosophy to myth or the creation of (supposedly) new

myths might also be true, as Fishbane shows. Basic inherited myths can

generate patterns of mythmaking by means of which a cultures vibrancy

pushes through time to meet new and uncertain challenges. Human reli-

gious consciousness is thereby defined not by markers between the ar-chaic and the historical, it is not defined by the conflict between reason

(logos) and fancy (myth), but, more importantly, through hermeneutical

strategies of participation. That option is precisely what Fishbanes book

traces. The strategy culminates, in his reading, in texts like the Zohar

in which a mode of life simply is the ceaseless scriptural exegesis and

interpretations of its mysteries (p. 309). This is a kind of mysticism,

maybe even Gnosticism. For those in the know, there is no separation

between living the truth of scripture and living within the truth of God(p. 309). More profoundly, through the interiorization of the mythic

dramas, the person assimilates the modalities of the divine reality and

strives to actualize its truths in every thought and action (p. 314). Her-

meneutical invention, a work of the imagination, enacts the truth of Gods

being. The inner landscape of the soul is to be conformed to God. Jewish

mythmaking, especially in this mystical form, is logos in the service and

6. The complex relation between claims about reality and morality (how

one ought to live humanly) is the story of Western and now global moral thought.On this point, see the various treatments of the topic in The Blackwell Companionto Religious Ethics, ed. William Schweiker (Oxford, 2005). More specifically, oneshould consider Fishbanes contribution to this volume, Text and Canon,6077.


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production of mythos; it is a reasonable, yet mythic, way of life enacted

in the ceaseless labor of interpretation. There is in this hermeneutic ven-

ture a formative identity between the act of exegesis and the texture and

tenor of religious understanding.

M AKI N G AN D LI VI N G M Y TH

I hope that through this reading ofBiblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking

I have grasped its hermeneutical subject matter and also something of

Fishbanes exceedingly complex argument. I have tried to show that his

account of mythopoesis enacted through exegetical labor and invention is

also and simultaneously a depiction of a way of life and even a form of

mysticism or shape of religious self-understanding. If this reading is at all

correct, it enables me to pose questions with which I can conclude these

reflections, and, in doing so, return, happily, to theological and ethical

inquiry. Each of my questions indicates a specific limit or constraint on

mythmaking in our present situation which, on my reasoning, needs seri-

ous consideration if we are to trace out the implications of Fishbanes

argument for current thought and life.

First, if there is a connection between the cognitive and moral dynam-

ics of myth, what does it really mean to live a myth? Is it significant, for

instance, that a culture is formed around a myth of divine combat butalso a God manifest in pathos for a suffering people? It is well-known

that many religions, not just Christianity and Judaism, warrant forms of

death and death-dealing on the belief that the divine or sacred brings

life from death. Surely it is important that each of these traditions has

countervoices that challenge obedience to a logic of life-through-death.7

How might these different accounts of a tradition and images of life,

death, and combat variously shape the landscape of the soul? And how

in Judaism does that shift made by the rabbinic intensification of humanaction via the myth bear on the very being and action of God? Stated

otherwise, it would be fascinating to trace in detail the lived meaning of

the symbolic imagination and mythopoesis from covenantal obedience to

the mystical state and ask if these are not, in fact, virtually different forms

of culture, different modalities or ways of life. Put starkly, what norms

can and do and ought to guide how a myth is reactivated through exe-

getic action into actual life? The question here is about the normative

limitations or constraints on living or inhabiting myth.

7. This is of course one of the most pressing issues in current religiousthought. On this, see Jonathan Glover,Humanity: A Moral History of the TwentiethCentury(New Haven, Conn., 2000), and Darrell J. Fasching and Dell deChant,Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach (Oxford, 2001).


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248 JQR 96.2 (2006)

Second, I would find it illuminating to learn more about relevant and

valid forms of nonmythic knowledge operative within the various periods

of Jewish myth and mythmaking. With medieval texts like the Zohar it

seems, as Fishbane notes, that the theosphere embraces the biosphere,so that for the mystic the biosphere is really a modality or an actualization

of the all-embracing theosphere (p. 313). What does that really mean?

How exclusive or how tight, if I can put it like that, is this mythical

outlook and what does that say for other advances in knowledge found

in the history of Jewish culture? This would seem especially germane in

determining the possible place of mythmaking in current life when a sim-

ple return to a medieval or premodern outlook is not possible. Is mysti-

cism via a kind of mythmaking or hermeneutical invention still open tous, and if it is open, then who is the us? To be sure, Fishbane labors

mightily to show that one can participate anew in these actions and prac-

tices and thus enact in our situation a kind of traditional religious con-

sciousness. Yet the question remains about cognitive distances that

cannot be bridged and the extent to which nowadays we must insist that

certain insights, say from the natural and social sciences, rightly limit

what one can legitimately say about the divine in relation to our all-too-

human reality. The question here is not about normative limits on herme-

neutical reenactment but, rather, constraints on exegetical practice fromother modes of human knowing.8

A final question can be posed from within the wealth of Fishbanes

historical insight. Can his work aid us in understanding the expressions

that various religions, at least those with strong exegetical and comment-

arial practices, can and do take within the present world scene? Are there

any hints to be found for how scholars within those traditions might de-

fuse their traditions worst tendencies and vitalize its most creative and

life-sustaining insights? Might that not too be logos in the service of my-thos, not only mystical but also (dare I say it!) ethical and theological?

Could that be the most profound point of the book, a claim, let us admit,

about the landscape of the scholars soul? Perhaps at the horizon of this

book is not just an insight about how to renew the human participation

8. I am, then, in complete agreement with Fishbane that within religious tradi-tions like Judaism and Christianity understanding is a kind of enactment ofmeanings. The questions I am posing are about the extent to which we must also

insist on constraints or limits to the power of enactment. On this, see WilliamSchweiker, Mimetic Reflection: A Study in Hermeneutics, Theology, and Ethics (New

York, 1990). For a helpful recent discussion of the intersections between religiousreflection and other forms of knowledge, see James M. Gustafson, An Examined

Faith: The Grace of Self-Doubt(Minneapolis, Minn., 2003).


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in the being of God but also how to reclaim, with all due modesty and

limitation, a new religious humanism. After all, other human communities

place constraints or limits on our own labors of enactment and mythmak-

ing. Surely it is the case that we exist in an age in which many people areliving within and through their inherited myths amid the global compres-

sion of the world. 9 If that is so, how does the study of the history of

myth and mythmaking in one tradition contribute to assessing the current

religious situation in which human beings and all realms of life are pro-

foundly endangered? This is, admittedly, a diagnostic and reflexive ques-

tion intertwined with my other questions about the limits and constrains

of hermeneutical enactment provoked by this brilliant book

I conclude by returning to where I began the inquiry. Once again I want

to voice my profound gratitude for this text and my admiration for Mi-

chael Fishbanes stellar addition to the study of Jewish thought and life.

I applaud his contribution to the venture shared by scholars who wrestle

from within our distinctive disciplines with the wild dynamics of the reli-

gions. And if I have him right, I want to join Fishbane in the grand

venture of reclaiming a religious sensibility for our time that is also, and

always, an acknowledgement of the dignity and vulnerability of human

beings.

9. For an account of the relation of myth and religious and ethical thinkingamid global dynamics, see William Schweiker, Theological Ethics and Global Dy-

namics: In the Time of Many Worlds(Oxford, 2004).


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T H E J E W I S H QU A R T E R L Y RE V I E W , Vol. 96, No. 2 (Spring 2006) 250261

Jewish Myths between Text andEthnography: On Michael FishbanesBiblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking

E L I Y A S S I F

T H E C O NC E P T O F M Y TH has been discussed in Jewish studies almost

since its beginning. While in those initial steps discussions about mythadhered solely to the Hebrew Bible, during the next stages of the devel-

opment of Jewish studies the discussion expanded to other periods of

Jewish culture, raising new questions and issues, so much so that it be-

came almost an independent discipline. Still, when a seminal study on

Jewish myths is published, one that covers three successive periodsthe

Hebrew Bible, rabbinic literature, and medieval Kabbalahand opens

major theoretical and historical questions for a new discussion, this is

undoubtedly a scholarly event. Such a book has been written by MichaelFishbane. While the long-term impact of this important study cannot be

foreseen, we should not refrain from an attempt to assess the contribution

of such a central publication.

The outstanding contribution of this study is its range. Fishbane delves

into three complex historical periods that, in spite of great differences,

are connected to each other in overt and covert relationships. One obvi-

ous link is tradition; each period builds on the motifs, thought structures,

and models of the prior generations. It is impossible to understand themythical creativity of the Kabbalah without the mythical derashah (ser-

mon) in the Talmud and midrash; or, in turn, the mythical thinking in

rabbinic literature without the foundations built in the Hebrew Bible.

The Hebrew Bible is another link binding all three eras. Fishbane also

looks at the sustained and evolving apperception of the one Godan

image that is the basis of the mythic worldviewas well as particular

themes such as the struggle of God with the primaeval creatures, and the

participation of God in the nations sufferings.Despite its scope, the book does not neglect the details. We could say

The Jewish Quarterly Review(Spring 2006)



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MYTHS BETWEEN TEXT AND ETHNOGRAPHYYASSIF 251

that here, no doubt, God is found in the details. The author did not rely

for his arguments on this or that representative text but brings another

text and another one, each one with detailed explication founded on the

severest philological principles: the manuscripts, the language, thesources, the variants, the background. One of the truly impressive char-

acteristics of this book is the fact that its author never surrenders to any

temptation toward popularization. The book is difficult and rigorous, de-

manding maximum concentration and professionalism. The best example

for that is appendix 2, The TermKivyakholand its Uses. In this appen-

dix, Fishbane collects all the instances of the term from every existing

source in manuscript or printed book and examines the context and place

of each among the other instances of the term. He also categorizes all theinstances according to their themes and forms and assesses their function

and meaning in Jewish culture. This is exemplary philological research,

and only very few like it have been published in recent years. In conclu-

sion, this read is not easy going, and is not intended to be.

One of the main interests of the study is its reassessment of the concept

of the monotheistic myth. This concept changes, in many aspects, the

way we understand myths in Jewish culture, and not only in the Hebrew

Bible, where Fishbane uses it the most. The general scholarly understand-

ing of biblical myths (and in many cases of those in rabbinic literature aswell) is that they are either fragments or remnants of pagan myths,

or metaphors through which creators of Jewish myths tried to express

other ideas. This sort of reading has dominated Jewish studies for dec-

ades, and I myself used this approach in my studies of biblical myths.1

According to this paradigm, biblical myths were not living expressions of

biblical religiousity but either were inserted there incidentally, as rem-

nants of older, primitive religions, or should be grasped as rhetorical

models, used as vehicles to express other religious truths. With the helpof dozens of examples taken from these two formative periods of Jewish

culture, biblical and rabbinic, the author attempts, and to my mind suc-

ceeds convincingly, in changing this approach. Myth did not append itself

incidentally to Jewish culture, and it is not an empty rhetorical or linguis-

tic vessel. It is instead an essential element of the monotheistic worldview,

and one of the most important venues used to express its creativity and

spirituality.2 The monotheistic myth posits one God in the center of a

1. Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning (Bloomington, Ind.,and Indianapolis, 1999 [Hebrew original: 1994]), 1015.

2. The great Hebrew poet Uri Zvi Greenberg (18971981) expressed thesame idea profoundly in his poetry, already in the beginning of the twentiethcentury, however with the inner, emotional conviction of a prophetical poet.


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252 JQR 96.2 (2006)

divine drama, as the dominating force of nature and the leader of human

history. Looked at in this way, the God of the Hebrew Bible or of rab-

binic literature is not different from the gods of other cultures in the

ancient Near East, as Fishbane proves here again and again. However,this deep similarity is not to suggest, as previous scholarship did, that

these are borrowings from or remnants of those cultures, but that biblical

myth is profoundly and genuinely creativeIsraelite mythmaking at its

best.

The mythical worldview of the talmudic rabbis is always confusing.

Since the pioneering attempts of the great nineteenth-century folklorist

Max Grunbaum to define and survey myth in rabbinic literature, there

has been no serious attempt to assess rabbinic mythology until the presentbook.3 Scholars did not consider the mythical worldview of rabbinic liter-

ature important or central for understanding rabbinic culture. The pres-

ent book must change this attitude in a seminal way. Leading the reader

through dozens of closely analyzed examples from across rabbinic litera-

ture, Fishbane shows us a rich and powerful mythical corpus in which

the rabbis invested much thought and creativity. The outstanding charac-

teristic of these myths is not the creation of new mythical narratives but

the creation of complex and imaginative ties between myths and biblical

verses. This creative utilization of biblical verses is also a technique usedto Judaize pagan myths or to transform older myths into new narra-

tives that express the rabbis revolutionary ideas.4 Such is the myth of the

exile ofShekhinah and Gods participation in the suffering of his people.

By creating one mythical motif, the rabbis transform God from being

director of Jewish history into a participating God who is going with his

people into exile and suffering hand in hand with them. In the biblical

book of Lamentations there is no hint of a lament by God himself. Fish-

bane suggests boldly that the rabbinic myth of Gods own lament over thedestruction of Jerusalem was created by the imaginative interpretation of

biblical verses, and the outcome is similar to the lament of the gods of

ancient Near Eastern mythologies over the destruction of their cities.

3. It is to be regretted that the present book did not make any attempt toacknowledge these pioneering studies. See Max Grunbaum, Beitrage zur ver-gleichenden Mythologie aus der Hagada, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlan-dischen Gesselschaft31 (1877): 183359, and reprinted in his Gesamelte Aufsaze zur

sprach- und Sagenkunde(Berlin, 1901).4. The process of Judaization of folk narratives was formalized earlier by Dov

Noy, The Jewish Versions of the Animal Languages Folktale (AT 670): ATypological-Structural Study,Scripta Hierosolymitana22 (1971): 171208; Yassif,The Hebrew Folktale, 26582.


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These insights into rabbinic mythmaking shed new light on some of the

most widespread rabbinic texts and invest them with new status and

meaning.

Like most rabbinic traditions, rabbinic myths do not come anony-mously but in the names of tradents and with a line of transmission. An-

other critical novum of the book is Fishbanes observation that the major

rabbinic myths were created and recreated by few schools. This changes

the perception of mythmaking in the rabbinic period from anonymous

and obscure texts to a definable creative process, with background and

historical context.

The last important insight I will list is methodological. Fishbane shows

that mythical traditions are transmitted by nonmythical genres. As it is inthe Hebrew Bible, via poetry, prophecy, historiography, wisdom litera-

ture, so it is in rabbinic literature, via the derasha (or homily). In this

context, a full chapter in the book is dedicated to uncovering mythical

motifs in the piyyut(liturgical poetry) of Late Antiquity and the early

Middle Ages. Through its outstanding form and poetical language, the

piyyut expresses much original mythical worldview and creativity. Al-

though this observation, in principle, is not newit was used, for exam-

ple, in the study of Greek myths in epic poetry, drama, and philosophical

literatureit had not previously been applied to Jewish culture.I will leave the question of the present books treatment of myth in

Kabbalah, and its contribution to the work of Gershom Scholem and

Yehuda Liebes, to experts in this field.

The contribution of the present book to Jewish studies cannot be over-

stated; it is more questionable, however, what its contribution is to the

study of folklore and anthropology. Let us start with the working defini-

tion of myth used here:

We shall understand the word Myth to refer to (sacred and authori-

tative) accounts of the deeds and personalities of the gods and heroes

during the formative events of primordial times, or during the subse-

quent historical interventions or actions of these figures which are con-

stitutive for the founding of a given culture and its rituals. (p. 11)

It is understood that a definition can never be accepted by all, especiallywhen it relates to such a complex and disputed concept as myth. The

present definition, I have no doubt, was chosen carefully and is intended

to serve the texts this work deals with. For this reason, I am not going to

criticize the present definition in itself, or compare it to others that folk-


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254 JQR 96.2 (2006)

lorists or anthropologists would prefer.5 However, I will look at the con-

sistency of this initial, working definition throughout the book. Thus,

when the author speaks of the myth of the Exodus from Egypt as it

was transformed from the Hebrew Bible to tannaitic literature, he writes,[these are] teachings which transform the biblical account of Israels

historical redemption by God into a mythic event that includes God as

well (p. 142). And then again, when he speaks of the peoples weeping

over the destruction of Jerusalem in the book of Lamentations as trans-

formed in the midrash into Gods lament, he writes, But just this is the

mythic view that midrash makes possible, transforming Israelite Heilsge-

schichteinto a divine drama (p. 154). Myth is presented here as an oppo-

sition to sacred history.6 According to this view, and different from his

initial definition, myth could be considered only that which is a divine

drama, a narrative that its protagonist is only God, not human beings.

This is why I could not find, although I have looked hard throughout the

book, even one myth whose protagonist is a human being. Not even the

Exodus from Egypt with Moses at its center, nor even tales of Samson,

David, and Goliath,7 or the tale of Elijahs ascension to heaven; and of

course no treatment of such figures such as Rabbi Ishmael who ascended

heaven in the midrash, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi who duped the Angel of

Death and entered alive into heaven, Raba bar-bar Hannah who met themythical Dead of the Desert,8 or the deeds of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai

and his group in the Zohar. Of course, an author may decide to deal only

with the figure of God in Jewish myths, but such a decision should be

announced loud and clear, along with an explanation for this choice. The

narrowing of myth to the domain of acts and deeds of God alone in fact

omits much that is essential to Jewish mythmaking in the periods this

book covers (and of course in later periods as well).

5. The dozens of definitions found in the textbooks used by folklorists andanthropologists are not mentioned or used here at all. See William G. Doty,My-thography: The Study of Myths and Rituals (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2000).

6. See the classical definition of myth, which opposes strongly such an ap-proach, in Alan Dundes, ed., Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth(Berkeley, Calif., 1984).

7. Heda Jason, The Story of David and Goliath: Folk Epic? (Hebrew),Hasifrut23 (1976): 2341; English translation: Biblica60 (1979): 3670.

8. Rabbi Ishmael ascends to heaven to annul the death verdict for the tenrabbis, inMidrash ele ezkera, in Aharon (Adolph) Jellinek, ed., Bet ha-midrash(He-

brew; Jerusalem, 1967); Rabbi Joshua ben Levi dupes the Angel of Death,jumps alive into the Garden of Eden, and steals the Angel of Deaths sword inbKett 77b; Raba bar bar Hanna, the talmudic traveler and tall-tales storyteller,meets in the desert the hoards of exiles from Egypt who died in the desert anddid not enter Canaan (bBB 73a-74b).


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The last word in the aforementioned definition is rituals. It is some-

how odd that the concept is included in the initial working definition,

since it holds almost no place in the analysis or interpretation of the doz-

ens of texts in the book (indeed, the references to the word ritual in thegeneral index are misleading). At best there, we find textual analyses of

a few texts from the Bible or rabbinic literature that describe rituals (as

on pp. 18487), but without any attempt to present the place and function

of these mythical texts in the context of Jewish rituals. It is a general

opinion today among folklorists and anthropologists that no serious dis-

cussion of myth can be conducted without some kind of reference to

ritual. After the great debate that dominated mid-twentieth-century an-

thropological discourse, against the myth-ritual theory, a careful and bal-anced approach replaced it, an attitude that recognizes the essential place

of ritual in mythical praxis and sees it as a central element for understand-

ing its meaning and function.9

From my vantage in folklore, the almost total disregard for the ritual

basis of myth is confusing. I am not saying here that the rituals with

which these myths are affiliated are somehow out there and that the au-

thor disregards them. Rather, because the materials with which he grap-

ples are textual, not ethnographical (they are not based on ethnographic

fieldwork), the social function of these texts, in which ritual acts are cen-tral, should have been taken into account. For example, the battle of God

and the sea monster in the Hebrew Bibleone of the central themes

discussed in the bookis repeated again and again in different variants

in the Psalms. Does this poetical repetition of the motif in the Psalms

have any ritual implications? Is it possible that in public events, either in

the Temple or in other sacred locations, it was part of a ritual commemo-

rating or symbolizing the mythical battle? The interpretation of this myth

could benefit much from such considerations. Or another central themein this book, the participation of the Shekhinah in the events of the De-

struction and Exile, which, as Fishbane convincingly proves, is the most

important myth created by the rabbis: might we consider the possibility

that the public context of the myth, at least in later generations, is the

Ninth of Av? That the crying and moaning on the Ninth of Av, echoed,

as it were, the voice of God himself? Again, ritualistic considerations of

9. The concentrated critique could be found in Joseph Fontenrose,The Ritual

Theory of Myth (Berkeley, Calif., 1971). The anthropological balancing ap-proach started already with Klyde Kluckhohn, Myth and Rituals: A GeneralTheory,Harvard Theological Review 35 (1942): 4579, and resumed with the in-fluential Victor W. Turner, Myth and Symbol, International Encyclopedia of theSocial Sciences, ed. D. L. Sills (New York, 1968), 57682.


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256 JQR 96.2 (2006)

the myth could add much depth to its meaning and especially to its func-

tion in life (Sitz im Leben).

That ritual is sidelined here is symptomatic of a more general observa-

tion: the book is text-bound to the extreme. There are almost no ethnolog-ical or anthropological, hence human, considerations. It is true, of course,

that when we deal with the biblical or rabbinic periods, the vast bulk of

the evidence is textual. Any ethnographic hypotheses would remain of

necessity hypotheses. However, we should not forget, throughout the dis-

cussion of these texts, that human beings created them and expressed

themselves through them. These are human beings who projected their

fears, their tensions, their hopes, and not just textual creations and text-

bound insights (as Fishbane puts it: the priority of exegesis, p. 108).The author argues again and again that the myths he analyzes are part

of a living myth, and not just a dead metaphor or a remnant from ear-

lier, pagan times. However, it is regrettable that he does not elaborate

here and explain what exactly he means by a living myth. Does it mean

that the myth was enacted ritually in real life? Or that the storytellers

and their audiences (readers, in this case), believed in them in the way

suggested by Paul Veyne?10 Or perhaps that it was created as an answer

to a disturbing question regarding real society? For example, when Fish-bane claims that the myth told by R. Levi in Genesis Rabbah (32.2)the

copulation of the upper and the lower watersis a rabbinizing of a liv-

ing myth (p. 107), it makes one wonder who in the time of Rabbi Levi

was still interested in such myths? What did they mean and what function

in real life did they have, to enable them the definition of a living myth?

I accept Fishbanes conclusion, although not his reasons, that these

myths, especially in rabbinic literature, are not folk-creations but learned

literature. These are what we might call desk myths, created mainly atthe writing or study desk and not in real life. They were created in

order to serve, as Fishbane proves convincingly, the text-bound world-

view of the rabbis, and their brilliant exegetical insights. When I surveyed

the folk literature of the rabbinic period in my bookThe Hebrew Folktale,

I did not include these texts in the survey,11 as I did not think they could

be defined as folk literature, but for different reasons. They did not fulfill

the basic condition of folk narrative, being multiple existence (multiple

variants of a given narrative), the major index proving whether a tradi-

10. Paul Veyne,Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?, trans. from the Frenchby P. Wissing (Chicago, 1988).

11. Yassif,The Hebrew Folktale, 70370.


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tion was accepted by society and became part of folklore.12 Most of the

myths presented and analyzed in the present volume did not pass the

folk barrier; they remained textual, learned myths on the pages of

the Talmud and midrash and did not exit from there into real life to be-come living myths.

However, there are myths studied in depth by Fishbane that are also

exemplary folklore. Such is the ancient myth of the fertilization of the

virgin land by the Baalthe husband or male organwhich is not an

original rabbinic myth but was adopted by the rabbis using their usual

exegetical techniques. Or, much more interesting, is the myth of the exile

of theShekhinah. Even if we will accept Fishbanes suggestion that this is

a learned myth as it is founded on brilliant verse homily, still it is a folkmyth at its best: it is found in rabbinic and medieval sources in dozens of

variants; it became an oral tradition repeated again and again by various

layers of Jewish society; and it was used intensively as part of the ritual

of Ninth of Av. Even if it has been proved that the source of a certain

myth is learnedthat it was created within the walls ofbet ha-midrash,

for exampleit could still be a folk myth, because of its function in soci-

ety. I want to refute here a too-often-accepted misunderstanding, which

considers the source of a given narrative to be the main criterion for its

characterization as learned or folk. The rabbis, either in bet ha-midrashor outside it, were part of Jewish society and not a separate spe-

cies. As such, their works are neither folk nor learned (could their degree

of learning be measured? What if a certain rabbi is only half learned,

as was a man like Raba bar bar Hannah?). It is the afterlife, not the

origin of a motif, that should determine its status. If a folktale or a myth

was created by a rabbi and it never broke through to the real life of the

community, remaining only on the pages of the Talmud or midrash, it is

learned. However, if such a creation overcame the folk barrier, andsociety found it useful or meaningful for its life, and it told and retold it

again and again in different variantsthis is a folk narrative, regardless

of its source.

We may use here a concept that could be termed mythical mentality,

that is to say, the mental or psychological state of a person or society

that creates myths. Freud called it in his Totem and Taboo (1913) the

omnipotence of thoughts, in which he saw the mental state that was

the foundation of religions: Men mistook the order of their ideas for theorder of nature, and hence imagined that the control which they have, or

12. Alan Dundes, Introduction, in A. Dundes and C. Pagter, eds., UrbanFolklore from the Paperwork Empire(Austin, Tex., 1975), xiiixxii.


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258 JQR 96.2 (2006)

seem to have, over their thoughts, permitted them to exercize a corre-

sponding control over things.13 Such is the foundation of the mythical

mentality, that which describes God as having hands and legs or smelling

the odor of sacrifices. We can accept or reject Freuds historical observa-tions on the origin of religions, but it is difficult to deny that the basis of

mythmaking could not have been an artificial construct or logical argu-

mentation but that same mythical mentality that projects its creations on

the external world. Another, somewhat forgotten great scholar of rab-

binic literature, Isaac Heinemann, proposed the concept of organic

thinkinga type of mentality the rabbis shared with other primitive

cultures, which was a concrete, open, and creative worldview.14 Thus,

although I agree with Fishbane that most of rabbinic myths are learnednot folk creations, the fact that there were certain rabbinic schools that

chose this particular way to express their ideas is a proof for some kind

of mythical mentality existing in the basis of their religious and literary

thought. Is this what Fishbane means by living myths?

However, it does not seem right to go into this matter only halfway, to

define these texts as myths and stop there. If in the basis of rabbinic

religious thinking lies some kind of mythical mentality, and it is impos-

sible to think otherwise, then these mythical images like the hand of God

smashing the monster of the sea, or his weeping eyes on the destructionof Jerusalem, were created inside the rabbis thoughts and projected af-

terward to God, hence a rabbinic omnipotence of thoughts. The way

from here to full admission that the very concept of God was created in

the minds and souls of human beings is not very far.

On this background, it seems, we can understand, from a different

angle, the term kivyakhol that, as I mentioned above, is studied in this

book in an exemplary fashion. With the support of the three interpreta-

tions Fishbane suggests there, it is possible to understand the term as aclear statement of rabbinic theology. Understanding the danger inherent

in mythical personifications of God that they were created in their minds

and thoughts (while explicating biblical verses), the rabbis felt the need

to limit such imaginings to the exegetical realm and keep it from the

13. Sigmund Freud,Totem and Taboo, trans. J. Starchey [the standard edition,vol. 13] (London, 1958 [1913]), 83 (the quotation is founded on earlier work ofthe British anthropologist Sir James Fraser).

14. Isaac Heinemann, Darkhe ha-agada (Jerusalem, 1954). On the personifi-cation of Gods attributes as emerging from organic thinking, see pp. 1520. Itshould be also noted that the present book could benefit much from Heinemanns

profound and pioneering discussion of the ways rabbinic literature utilizes thebiblical verses.


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ontology of God himself. Or to put it differently, the rabbis, through this

termkivyakhol, acknowledge an omnipotence of thoughts that does not

apply to the very existence of God. As this conviction has to be a constant

and essential presence, it is repeated again and again, as Fishbanes studyproves. I am trying to argue here that we cannot understand the mythical

creativity even in a learned case like that of rabbinic culture without

acknowledging, in full and without fear, the mythical mentality on which

it is founded.

The term kivyakhol is revealing from another folkloristic perspective,

and this is the tension between the monotheistic-spiritual concept of God

and the pagan-concrete one. I am not trying to argue that this dichotomy

is always valid, or that it could exist at all in real life. However, in its basicconceptualization, a dichotomy like this lived in the minds and feelings of

those who developed a monotheistic worldview. The term kivyakholen-

ables the rabbis to grasp, side by side, both concepts of God: to continue

holding to a purist belief in the spirituality of the one God, and to describe

immediately and in the most concrete way, the body of God and his

human activities. At the same time that we accept in principle a basic

recognition of the forceful creativity invested in the monotheistic myth

for the rabbis, still it is important to emphasize that one of the sources of

its strength is a powerful tension. There is a recognition in the rabbismonotheistic mythmaking that the personifications it creates and uses,

although they refer to the one God, emerge from a mythical mentality

that cannot be but pagan. The most ostensible expression of this tension

is the concept ofkivyakhol, and we can see and feel it in almost every

occurrence of the word.

This tension is represented in the Hebrew Bible in well-known exam-

ples that Fishbane chose not to include in his discussion:

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children

of men were building. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one,

and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now

nothing will be withheld from them, which they have schemed to do.

Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they

may not understand one anothers speech. (Gn 11.57)

God descends to earth to determine whether mans deeds might pose athreat to his dominion (why cannot the Almighty see it from above?!).

When the rebellious character of the builders of the city and the tower

becomes evident, the third-person-singular voice changes to the first-per-

son plural, and a number of gods descend from the heavens for a struggle


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260 JQR 96.2 (2006)

with the recalcitrant children of men. There is something in this of a

general declaration of war between gods and mortals who would pur-

sue the course of rebellion. The transformations in this text from the

singular to the plural and back are a clear expression of the tension be-tween the pagan basis of this myththe plurality of gods and their

human characteristicsand the monotheistic tendency which the book

of Genesis tries to promote. In the second example this tension is even

bolder:

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the

earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God15 saw

that the daughters of men were fair; and they took them wives of allwhom they chose. And the Lord said, my spirit shall not forever abide

in man, for that he also is flesh: and his days shall be a hundred and

twenty years. There were Nefilim in the earth in those days; and also

after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and

they bore children to them; the same were mighty men of old, men of

renown. (Gn 6.14)16

The birth of the giants is a challenge against divinely ordained mortality,

for the hybrid offspring of god and man would be immortal. Thesebeings are the Nefilim (i.e., the giants or the great culture heroes of an-

cient mythologies). This version of the myth emphasizes that my spirit

shall not forever abide in man, for that he also is flesh: and his days shall

be a hundred and twenty years (Gn 6.3). In other words, the existence

of demigods who, according to common mythological beliefs, are immor-

tal is denied.

That is how the tension between the basic pagan beliefs (the multiplic-

ity of gods, the gods family [sons of gods], the human-like feelings ofthe gods such as lust for women, the birth of the giants/culture heroes)

and the basic monotheistic conception of the one and only heavenly being

is expressed here. It is impossible, to my mind, to understand in all its

depth the mythical creativity in the domain of Jewish culture in each of

the three periods this book is dealing with without the acknowledgment

15. In almost all Jewish translations of this text, I found substitutes for theexpression sons of God [or gods], such as heavenly host, divine beings,

angels, etc. I consider such a deliberate confusion between translation and in-terpretation, because the original biblical expression interferes with someonesbeliefs(!), as pure chutzpah.

16. For some of the abundant scholarship published on these myths, see Yas-sif,The Hebrew Folktale, 46365, n. 5.


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of the continuous and powerful tensionmental, theological, and liter-

arybetween the open and concrete worldview of the pagan myths and

the monotheistic demand for spiritual unity of the world and the God

who governs it.The disagreement between me and the author of this important mono-

graph emerges mainly from a different orientation: mine is more reality

bound and society oriented, his is more textually bound and intellectually

oriented. However, any kind of disagreement cannot weaken the seminal

achievement of this book and its contribution to any future discussion of

this and related themes.

Wolfson, ER - Fishbane's Rabbinic Mythmaking, (2006) 96 Jewish Quarterly Rev 233

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