INTRODUCTION

The literature with which we shall be dealing in this volume is that of the group known variously as the Pharisees, the Ḥakamim (‘Sages’), or the rabbis, the religious group that proved to be the most significant for the development of Judaism up to modern times.

The literature is extensive and comprises a world-view of great nobility, unity and comprehensiveness. Yet hardly any of it is ‘literary’, in the sense of being the sustained composition of a single author presenting an individual vision. It is characteristic of this literature that it is presented as the work of an anonymous compiler, bringing together the views of a large number of named rabbis, sometimes reinforcing each other, but more often conflicting without rancour. The total impression is of a corporate literary effort, in which a large number of experts, belonging to successive generations, is engaged in a common enterprise: the clarification of Scripture and the application of it to everyday life. To find a similar type of literary activity in other cultures is not easy. The work of the Alexandrian scholars on Homer and other Greek classical writers is similar in some ways, but very different in others. The nearest analogy is probably the organization of scientific research in modern times: the feeling of comradeship in an enterprise of great theoretical and practical significance; the background of agreed assumptions, combined with great freedom for difference of opinion among qualified researchers; the submission of views to the criticism of the general body of experts; the acquisition of fame and reputation for individuals, but only within a framework of shared effort, so that no individual can become dominant, or acquire a type of authority different in kind from that of his fellows.