1. My original article appeared as, “Rabbinic Polysemy and Pluralism Revisited: Between Praxis and Thematization,” AJS Review 31, no. 1 (April 2007): 1–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and will herein be referred to as “Fraade” followed by the page number(s). The response by Yadin-Israel, Azzan appeared as, “Rabbinic Polysemy: A Response to Steven Fraade,” AJS Review 38, no. 1 (April 2014): 129–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and will be referred to as “Yadin-Israel” followed by the page number(s).

2. For broader characterizations of Boyarin's argument, see Fraade, 2–3, 5–7. Since Yadin-Israel never questions either my characterization of Boyarin's argument, or the argument itself, I must assume that he accepts both, even though, as I shall demonstrate, he himself seriously mis-characterizes Boyarin's position.

3. Henceforth I shall not place the word tannaitic in quotes so as to differentiate tannaitic contents from early amoraic redaction, but it should be understood as such.

4. For example, Random House Unabridged Dictionary, second edition (New York: Random House, 1993)Google Scholar, 1501, defines “polysemy” as: “diversity of opinions,” “with many significations.”

5. The closest Yadin-Israel comes to providing an example of a text that would satisfy his unstated definition is the famous passage in B. ʿEruvin 13b (“these and these”) (Yadin-Israel, 130, 134), to which I shall return below. However, earlier, less fully developed versions of that tradition, cited as a barayta, are found in Y. Berakhot 1:4 (3b); Y. Qiddushin 1:1 (58d); and Y. Yevamot 1:6 (3b), belying Boyarin's claim for stammaitic Babylonia as the birthplace of theological polysemy. In any case, in neither its Babylonian nor Palestinian setting does the text exemplify interpretive polysemy but legal multivocality. On this Yadin-Israel and I agree. See Yadin-Israel, 130; Fraade, 4 n. 9.

6. Yadin-Israel also cites approvingly David Stern's definition, “every verse has several meanings,” which, so far as I can tell, is indistinguishable from mine.

7. See my treatment of Sifrei Devarim Haʾazinu, pis. 306, to Deuteronomy 32:1 (ed. Finkelstein, pp. 308–335), wherein I count thirteen interpretations of the first two or three words of the verse: Fraade, Steven D., “Polyphony and Plot,” in From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), 123–62.Google Scholar

8. Texts 1 and 2 in Fraade, 8–12.

9. See, for example, Post, Robert C., “The Supreme Court Opinion as Institutional Practice: Dissent, Legal Scholarship, and Decisionmaking in the Taft Court,” Minnesota Law Review 85 (2000–2001): 1267–1390Google Scholar. <http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/186>. I am indebted to Judith Resnik of the Yale Law School for this reference.

10. It is worth asking whether we can speak of rabbinic discursive “doctrines” of any sort. Elsewhere (Yadin, Azzan, “The Hammer on the Rock: Polysemy and the School of Rabbi Ishmael,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 10 [2003]CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 17; idem, Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004], 79)Google Scholar, Yadin-Israel speaks of B. Sanhedrin 34a as containing a “polysemic manifesto.” Not only is that text hardly a “manifesto” (in its own textual context), but it fails another of Yadin-Israel's criteria for inclusion in his restricted definition of polysemy. See below, n. 25.

11. Elsewhere (134) Yadin-Israel says: “In the anonymous stratum of the Bavli, the conflicting views of the Houses of Hillel and Shammai give rise to a clear statement of the multivocality of received traditions: ‘These and these are the words of the living God’ (B. ʿEruvin 13b). Not so the Mishnah, which eschews theological justification for this practice.” In its redacted context in the Babylonian Talmud, the dictum “these and these” refers, specifically and respectively, to the conflicting legal opinions (unspecified) of the Houses of Hillel and Shammai, and not to scriptural polysemy in any sense of the term or to legal multivocality in general. We also know that elsewhere in the Babylonian Talmud there are those who question the authority of this statement (“these and these”), articulated as it is by a bat kol (heavenly voice), which not all accept as an authoritative decisor in halakhic matters. See B. Berakhot 51b–52a, B. ʿEruvin 6b–7a, B. Bava Metziʿa 59b. Cf. Y. Berakhot 1:4 (3b) and Y. Qiddushin 1:1 (48d). It is only in the later reception history of this story that the dictum “these and these” is understood, in Yadin-Israel's words, as “a clear statement of the multivocality of received traditions” (Yadin-Israel, 134) in any overarching way, but not in its Babylonian talmudic redactional setting. I will return to this source below, where it will again confound Yadin-Israel's argument.

12. The bibliography in support and illustration of this comparative enterprise is too vast to cite here, but several of my own articles, republished in Fraade, Steven D., Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 147 (Leiden: Brill, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, hew this path. For a more recent article along these lines, see Weigold, Matthias, “Ancient Jewish Commentaries in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Multiple Interpretations as a Distinctive Feature,” in The Hebrew Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Dávid, Nóra et al. , (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 281–94Google Scholar.

13. See Fraade, Steven D., “Looking for Legal Midrash at Qumran,” in Biblical Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Proceedings of the First International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 12–14 May, 1996, eds. Stone, Michael E. and Chazon, Esther G., Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 28 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 59–79Google Scholar; reprinted in Fraade, Legal Fictions, 145–167.

14. “‘A Heart of Many Chambers’: The Theological Hermeneutics of Legal Multivocality,” forthcoming in Harvard Theological Review, which compares in great detail T. Soṭah 7:11–12 and B. Ḥagigah 3b, taking into account previous scholarship.

15. See his p. 134. As he suggests here and notes previously (130), however, this passage is about legal multivocality and not interpretive polysemy. See my previous comments on this text, above, nn. 5, 11.

16. For another instance of Yadin-Israel's argument that polysemy and multivocality do not exist if the text expresses a preference between “right” and “wrong” traditions or interpretations, see Yadin-Israel's treatment of Text 7 (134–135).

17. Yadin-Israel makes the same claim (137) with respect to Text 12.

18. For an extreme case in a tannaitic midrash of multiple (thirteen) interpretations linked repeatedly by davar ʾaḥer, see above, n. 7.

19. See also Yadin-Israel, 133. For more on anonymity and redaction in tannaitic legal midrashim (again concentrating on the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael), see Fraade, Steven D., “Anonymity and Redaction in Legal Midrash: A Preliminary Probe,” in Malekhet Maḥshevet: Studies in the Redaction and Development of Talmudic Literature, ed. Amit, Aaron and Shemesh, Aharon (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011), 9*–29*.Google Scholar

20. Fraade, 1–2, esp. 2 n. 4 for others who rain on the parade.

21. Compare Yadin-Israel, 133, where, with respect to Texts 3 and 4, he naively demands pure celebration unadulterated by problematizing as the entrance fee for inclusion.

22. See above, n. 11.

23. Similarly, in B. Ḥagigah 3b, legal multivocality is both theologized and problematized, as it is in Text 13 (T. Soṭah 7:11–12), to which I shall return later in this response.

24. Compare Y. Megillah 4:1 (74d): “Even that which an advanced disciple will one day teach before his master was already revealed to Moses from Sinai.”

25. See also Yadin-Israel, 135. Similarly, the famous midrash of the “hammer on the rock” in B. Sanhedrin 34a, another parade example of rabbinic polysemy for Yadin-Israel (see Yadin-Israel, 129 n. 3, 131 n. 10, and 137 n. 27) although not cited as such in his critique, does not say that the multiple meanings that derive from each scriptural utterance are in conflict or debate with one another. Thus, by Yadin-Israel's latest added qualification to his accruing definition, the talmudic text should not be considered to exemplify rabbinic interpretive polysemy any more than the present text from Sifrei Devarim. See above, n. 10. Cf. Azzan Yadin, “The Hammer on the Rock,” 1–17; idem, Scripture as Logos, 69–79. I shall return to this midrash and its talmudic parallel below.

26. Fraade, “Re-presenting Revelation,” in From Tradition to Commentary, 25–68.

27. See above, n. 14.

28. See more fully my response to Yadin-Israel's critique of my inclusion of Text 8, above.

29. How this is qualitatively different from “these and these” (B. ʿEruvin 13b), Yadin-Israel's parade example of rabbinic polysemy (actually, legal multivocality), which also problematizes halakhic disputes (as I have argued above), escapes me.

30. For this judgment, see Hidary, Richard, Dispute for the Sake of Heaven: Legal Pluralism in the Talmud, Brown Judaic Studies 353 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010)Google Scholar, 22 n. 78. See also above, n. 14.

31. For an argument that the latter (“many meanings”) is chronologically later than the former (“seventy languages”), see Yadin, “The Hammer on the Rock,” 16–17; idem, Scripture as Logos, 76–79. While I am not persuaded that the direction of linear development can be so confidently determined, it is irrelevant to my argument here, which does not depend on these talmudic texts, but rather on their tannaitic antecedents.

32. See M. Soṭah 7:5 (beʾer); M. Sheqalim 5:1 (darash). For fuller treatment see Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, 123–24, 259 n. 2; idem, “Before and After Babel: Linguistic Exceptionalism and Pluralism in Early Rabbinic Literature,” Diné Israel 28 (2011): 31*–68*Google Scholar, esp. 45*–49*, 48*–49* n. 42; idem, “Moses and Adam as Polyglots,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Boustan, Raʿanan S., Hermann, Klaus, Leicht, Reimund, Reed, Annette Yoshiko, and Veltri, Giuseppe, with the collaboration of Alex Ramos, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 1:185–94Google Scholar. Here I wish to reiterate that there is no reason to doubt (as does Yadin-Isreael) that the polyglossia of revelation (whether in four or seventy languages) is midrashically imagined to be simultaneous. Note in this regard “Before and After Babel,” 47*–48* n. 39, where I refer to Sifrei Devarim Haʾazinu, pis. 306, to Deuteronomy 32:1 (ed. Finkelstein, 340), where the four hemistiches of that verse are similarly interpreted to refer to the four directions (representing the whole compass), which are called upon by Moses to bear witness, presumably at the same time, against Israel. For a recent concurrence with my understanding of a degree of hermeneutical proximity between polyglossia and polysemy, in relation to the same Sifrei Devarim 343 passage and contra Boyarin and Yadin-Israel, see now Smelik, Willem F., Rabbis, Language and Translation in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 35–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Yadin-Israel makes the same reductionist presumption (137–138 n. 27) with respect to Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael to Exodus 20:8: if it is responding to a biblical crux (again, a seeming scriptural redundancy), it cannot be expressing a “general principle” of scriptural polysemy. See, in this regard, his publications listed above, n. 25.

34. I have subjected, above, several of the talmudic “poster children” of rabbinic polysemy and multivocality (especially “these and these,” but also “hammer on the rock” and “make your ear like the hopper”) to his definition and conditions and have not found any that passed his test, which is not to diminish their dialectical natures and importance for our subject, but to highlight the impression that Yadin-Israel's accumulating criteria for definitional of exclusion resembles an argument of reductio ad absurdum. For a list of such rabbinic texts and the disproportionate attention that has been lavished on them (at the expense of their no-less-interesting and significant tannaitic antecedents), see Hidary, Dispute for the Sake of Heaven, 26–27.

35. As I repeatedly note in my article, many of the thematizing midrashic and mishnaic texts that I cite are themselves set among multiple interpretations or opinions. There is nothing “weak” in this editorial praxis of interpretive polysemy or legal multivocality. See above, at n. 19. For the more general pattern of the relatively late articulation of legal principles in rabbinic literature, see Moscovitz, Leib, Talmudic Reasoning: From Casuistics to Conceptualization (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002)Google Scholar.