166 CHAPTER FIVEthe Jewish God demanded to be worshiped, according to the book of Leviti-
cus, or because they are elements in a Mediterranean cultickoine.Everyone
knows that pouring a libation is a cultic act. Finally, and most interestingly,
in this category, the acclamation of a god (I take this to be explanatory of the
clause it follows: we can tell if someone “accepts” a god only if he has ac-
claimed him) also counts as first-order worship. Next, and less severely pun-
ished, is second-order worship, characterized not as ambivalence about a god
or as acts indicating ambivalence, but as unambiguous acts of reverence for
an idol that stop short of full worship,^9 or their verbal equivalent—the oath,
that is,a speech act thatunambiguously indicates belief butdoes not amount
to acclamation. The Mishnah’s final category is the ambiguous act, which
looks like an expression of disrespect but is actually a first-order cultic act. It
is not entirely clear what punishment the Mishnah prescribes in this case:
perhaps an effort is to be made to detect the intentions of the actor. It is
characteristic that one “case,” that of Ba’al Pe’or, is presumably derived en-
tirely fro mbiblical narrative with no known correlate in Syro-Palestinian reli-
gious life of the second century, while the other seems a reference to a piece
of common Palestinian folk piety, notwithstanding its Latin name.^10 For the
rabbis,theworldoftheHebrewBiblewasatleastasrealastheworldinwhich
they actually lived.
The Mishnah’s basic law of “idolatry” is founded on two principles. The
first of these is that only cultic actions (including speech) matter and the
second is that pagan worship is primarily directed at fetishes. Though both of
theseprinciplesarederivedfromPentateuchallaw,theyreflectaratherreduc-
tivereadingofit.TheBibleprohibitsnotjustactsassociatedwiththeworship
ofstrangegodsintheformofidolsbutalsoawiderangeofactivitiesassociated
onlyperipherallywithpagancult,including“havingothergods”(Exodus20),
whatever that may mean. To be sure, M. Sanhedrin is primarily concerned
with court procedure, not paganism, so it does not legislate about beliefs,
about speech that ambiguously expresses belief in other gods, about what
attitude Jews should have to the ethos and physical trappings of paganism, in
sum, about how one should cope with the realities of a life in which the
images of gods, places associated with gods, items offered to gods, and the
people who worship the mwere absolutely everywhere.
Such subtler issues do, however, constitute the main concerns of M. Avo-
dah Zarah: how, the tractate asks, to avoid any semblance of participation in
or collusion with pagan cultic activity, how to treat items associated or sus-
pected of being associated with such activity (especially images and wine),
(^9) Indeed,as farassomepagans wereconcerned,bathingand dressingtheimages ofgodswere
acts of profound devotion requiring the presence of a priest; see Clerc,Culte des Images,p.33.
(^10) SeeHadas-Lebel,“Lepaganisme,”pp.403–5foradifferentview.Foraremarkableexplana-
tion of “po’er et ’atzmo leba’al pe’or,” see Sifre Numbers (ed. S. Horowitz), pisqa 131.