RABBIS AND PATRIARCHS ON THE MARGINS 121the perspective of the Jewishprimatesthemselves, this division of authority
was highly problematic, since all law was religious law, whereas for the state,
the category of Jewish religious law would, by analogy with Christian religious
law, presumably have been limited to such issues as liturgical practice,kash-
rut, and so on. Marriage, divorce, guardianship, inheritance, and similar mat-
ters of critical halakhic importance were arguably outside the jurisdiction of
the Jewish judges, who thus, even at the height of their post-Destruction au-
thority, had in fact precious little jurisdiction at all.
Like the authority of theprimates, a category I assume included rabbis,
patriarchal authority, especially before the fourth century, too dependednot
on the existence of an embedded institutional structure but on something far
less formal: the power of patriarchs and rabbis depended on the consensus of
the ruled.^59 This is so notwithstanding the patriarchs’ genuinely growing
wealt hand influence, claims of royal descent, and occasional displays of regal
high-handedness. My emphasis on the limitations on patriarchal power dis-
agrees with most modern accounts of the patriarchate after Judah I. But those
historians who extrapolate entire institutional histories from rabbinic literature
often neglect to mention the isolation of the anecdotes they depend on so
heavily, or their literary function or context. A characteristic case is the com-
mon treatment of the anecdote that serves as the centerpiece of all standard
accounts of patriarchal control of rural Palestinian religious life. It is worth
quoting the anecdotein extenso:
T he people of Simonias came to Rabbi (Juda hI) and said, “We wis hyou to give
us one person who will be a preacher, judge,hazan, teacher of Bible and Mishnah
(safar [u]metanyan), and will fulfil all our needs.” He gave them Levi bar Sisi.
They made him a bigbemaand set him upon it, and asked him, “How does an
armless woman perform thehalitzahceremony?” and he did not answer them.
“And what if, in thehalitzahceremony, she spat blood?” and he did not answer.
They said, “Perhaps he is not a master of [legal] instruction. Let us ask him a
question ofaggadah.”...hedidnotanswer. They returned to Rabbi and said, “Is113a—I thank Eliezer Diamond for this reference) seems relevant, but it is difficult to know how:
“A gentile w ho comes to be judged in accordance wit hJewis hlaw may be so judged. If t he
judgment is tending (to favor the gentile, then he is to be judged—by the Jewish judge) according
to the laws of the nations, but he may not be judged crookedly, lest the Name be desecrated. And
he (the gentile) must write acompromissum[a document authorizing arbitration] for the judg-
ment he is requesting” (J. Mann, “Sefer Hama’asim Livnei Eretz Yisrael,”Tarbiz1 no. 3 [1930]:
8). This rule is puzzling because Roman law had long since forbidden Jews to judge Christians;
and it is also unclear whether thecompromissumis required because Jewis hjudges are always
consideredarbitrior because their jurisdiction (de facto or de jure?) does not extend to Christians.
Since the case in question is obviously civil, not religious in a narrow sense, it seems unlikely
that the Jewish judge could have had formal jurisdiction of any sort.
(^59) For criticism of the “institutional history” approach, see my review of Goodblatt,The Monar-
chic Principle,JJS47 (1996): 167–69; and “The Patriarchs and the Diaspora.”