הרצף שבשלשלת מסירתה של התורה: לבירור ההיסטוריוגראפיה המקראית בהגותם של חז"ל

The Rabbis maintained a historical outlook, but lacked historiography. They utilized the Bible both for the derivation of moral lessons beyond a given time and place, as well as for purposes of tendentious projection of contemporary events or persons. A comparison of the well-known saying at the beginning of Tractate Aboth — "Moses received the Law from Sinai and committed it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets committed it the men of the Great Synagogue" — with the information provided in the Bible itself regarding the transmission of Torah, emphasizes the lack of any priestly role in the Rabbinic scheme. In the scriptures the priests serve as guardians of the book, its teachers and judges. Conversely, prophets are hardly mentioned as being involved with either the propogation or dispensation of the Law. Thus, the saying in Aboth I, 1 is not an accurate description of what really happened. Rather, it appears that a conscious effort was made to remove the priests from the list, and insert the prophets in their stead. When were these words recorded? The fact that the Rabbis would not attribute to prophets such a prominent role in the world of Torah and Halakhah after the end of the 1st century CE, and this because of the confrontation with Christianity, may serve as a terminus ante quem. As a terminus post quem one may cite the schism between the Hasmoneans and the Pharisees, towards the end of the 2nd century BCE. From this period on the degeneration of the high-priesthood becomes more and more evident, and negative attitudes towards the priesthood can be found not only in Rabbinic literature. In any case, Rabbinic thought projects a definite attitude regarding continuum and continuity in the chain of Torah transmission. In direct contrast to this approach the writings of the Dead Sea Sect (Damascus Document V,2) contend that the Torah was not known at all from the era of the Judges until the end of the First Temple period. Even after the destruction, they maintain, the Torah was not really understood until the founding of the sect. It would appear that the Rabbis functioned on the dual bases of tradition and logic, and thus the halakhah developed through an evolutionary and organic process, by stages, with the confrontation of tradition and reality being resolved through the application of reason. It was this process that insured continuity. The Dead Sea Sect, on the other hand, appeared at the beginning of the 1st century BCE as a revolutionary and innovative group, possessing neither ideologically nor in its halakhah any claim of tradition or continuity. The sect could not rely on any such tradition or custom, or for that matter on either precedent or logic, as a defense of its halakhah. Wishing to separate itself — halakhically as well — from the major body of Israel which it deemed "sons of the pit" (בני שחת), the sect nevertheless had to prevent having itself accused of being a revolutionary upstart. It therefore claimed that its halakhot were in fact the only accurate interpretation of Moses' Torah, an interpretation totally removed from the eyes of the rest of Israel (cf. Manual of Discipline, VIII,22). To this end the sect utilized an elaborate system of Bible hermeneutics: "Midrash Ha-Torah". This system, with the techniques of the Hellenistic γραμματικοί serving as its source, was adopted by the members of the sect during their exile in Damascus. While certainly a novel system among the people of Israel, the halakhot thereby derived were considered by the sect to be explicit in the Torah itself (cf. The Temple Scroll, LVI, 2ff.). But inasmuch as some of these halakhot were in contradiction to the Prophets and Hagiographa, the sect was forced to claim that the Torah itself was unknown over a long period of time. Thus the sect denied the very idea of continuum, and in fact adopted a diametrically opposite outlook, one of crisis and rupture in the transmission of the Torah and its understanding, wishing thereby to deflect the accusation of being innovators. It is quite possible that the position taken by the Rabbis at the beginning of Aboth, stressing continuity and eliminating the role of the priests, was adopted in part as a response to the ideas of the sect, which in fact did away with continuum while placing great stress on the priests.