נדר האיסור בתקופת הבית השני ובספרות התנאים: מוצאו ומשמעו

The term neder, 'vow', is used in two senses in rabbinic literature. A dedicatory vow is a promise to devote something or someone to the temple; a prohibitive vow is a ban placed on a specific property, barring its use by the votary himself or by another person mentioned in the vow. A votary can either devote his property to the temple outright, or liken his property to dedicated property with formulae such as 'qorban ("offering") is that which I/so ־ and ־ so shall eat', prohibiting its use as if it were an offering. The rabbis conceived of both of these as biblical institutions. Contemporary scholarship has taken the rabbinic conception at face value. References to prohibitive vows in the Damascus Document, Philo, the New Testament, and an ossuary inscription discovered in the Kidron Valley are interpreted by most scholars as rabbinic-type prohibitive vows, in which the banned object is likened to a temple offering without actually being donated to the temple. Following the rabbis, scholars assume that this type of vow is of biblical origin, and therefore are not surprised to encounter it in Second Temple sources. They often note, however, that the texts themselves are obscure, and seem to indicate that an actual offering to the temple may be contemplated. In fact, the prohibitive vow is nowhere mentioned in the Bible; biblical vows are all dedi-catory. The notion of likening property to an offering is quite strange in its own right. More-over, analysis of the formulae used in prohibitive vows in both Second Temple and rabbinic literature suggests that originally prohibitive vows were actually dedicatory vows, in which the votary donates to the temple the very property from which he or the person named in the vow will derive benefit. This type of vow is paradoxical: how can the votary donate property that is used by himself or another? However, in such cases, the votary has no intention of actually donating the property to the temple. The only practical effect of this ostensibly ded-icatory vow is to create a personal prohibition on the person named in the vow. The dedication takes effect the moment the person mentioned in the vow derives benefit from the property, and the beneficiary thus finds himself making illicit use of temple property. This type of vow represents a transitional stage between the biblical dedicatory vow and the rabbinic vow likening property to an offering. Second Temple prohibitive vows are all of this type. Most rabbinic vow formulae also fit this mould. However, with the destruction of the temple and the abolition of votive offerings to the temple, the dedicatory formula was no longer relevant. The rabbis therefore reinterpreted this type of vow as likening property to an offering.