124 CHAPTER THREErashimmakes it likely that the rabbinic movement was mainly urban.^65 When
villages are mentioned in the Palestinian Talmud, they are usually in the
immediate vicinity of Tiberias or Sepphoris, the main rabbinic centers. Even
so, it seems to me that such non-Palestinian cities as Bostra, Naveh (the main
town of Batanaea), and Tyre figure more prominently in the Palestinian Tal-
mud than even big, quasi-urban Lower Galilean villages like Arab and Beth
Shearim. The densely packed Jewish population of Upper Galilee and the
Golan, so important in archaeology, is hardly mentioned in the rabbinic litera-
ture at all. It is perhaps noteworthy that in one story a rabbi who ventured out
of Tiberias into the Galilean countryside is said simply to have “gone outside”
(nafaq lebara).^66 The geographical diffusion of rabbinic culture in Palestine
and vicinity was thus identical with that of Greco-Roman urban culture.
The story of the rabbi who “went outside,” which goes on to make the rabbi
answer the locals’ legal questions (incorrectly, it turns out), implies that though
rabbis were not a regular presence in rural Palestine—notwithstanding their
work in some big villages and occasional visits even elsewhere—they were not
entirely without prestige there. It is striking that the Palestinian Talmud and
midrashimrecord few complaints about rabbis being treated wit hopen disre-
spect in the countryside,^67 perhaps in part because rabbinic literature tends to
ignore what its protagonists were powerless to change. Or perhaps rabbis pre-
ferred to go where they knew they would be well received; the Talmud does
record many instances of the rabbis’ failing to intervene to stop practices of
which they disapproved.^68 Nevertheless, it seems certain that they enjoyed a
limited and compartmental, perhaps gradually increasing, influence.
The rabbis did notcontrolanything in rural Palestine—not synagogues,
not charity collection or distribution, nor anything else. But as acknowledged
experts in Jewis hlaw, prote ́ge ́s of the patriarch, and so on, they might be
approached (and given that most of them lived in the cities, the villagers had
to take the initiative) with some regularity for some purposes. By the fourth
century, then, the rabbis may have lacked formal authority for the most part,
but they were not without a certain compartmentalized and largely informal
influence (acquired through the hard work of fund-raising, preaching, and
setting themselves up as intermediaries between common folk and the power-
ful). Thus they constituted a limited and marginal but nevertheless discernible
part of the system.
(^65) See discussion in Hezser,The Social Structure, pp. 157–65. Hezser herself is mildly skepti-
cal. But the matter now seems settled by H. Lapin, “Rabbis and Cities.”
(^66) Y. Betza h1.4, 60c; and see Sokoloff,Dictionary,s.v.br. Neusner’s translation is seriously
misleading.
(^67) See material collected by Levine,Rabbinic Class, pp. 98–133.
(^68) For example, Y. Berakhot 5:3, 9c, containing several pericopae in which rabbis in syna-
gogues witness but fail to correct what they regard as errors in liturgical practice; contrast Y.