168 CHAPTER FIVEProklosandHisQuestionBy the time of the compilation of the Mishnah and associated documents,
therewererealpagancriticsoftheHebrewBibleanditsJewishandChristian
interpreters, Celsus and Porphyry, for example. But at least some of the
learned pagans whosparsely populate the pages of rabbinicliterature see mto
function as safe mouthpieces for the expression of the rabbis’ own concerns
about their version of Judaism.^14 The pagans’ questions thus tend to have a
coherence and rigor that the rabbinic responses (which, as products of pro-
found systemic tensions, often combine laxity and overdetermination) lack.
Proklosbeginsbyquotingaversethat,whenreadinitsbiblicalcontext,isnot
precisely relevant. Deuteronomy 13:13–19 concerns an Israelite town whose
inhabitants have been seduced into the worship of strange gods. Yet in their
expansionofthebiblicallawsofidolatry,therabbisthemselvesremovedverse
18 fro mits context and understood it as a foundation for the laws of idolatry
in general, with no necessary connection to the seduced Israelite city. For
example,therabbisderivefromtheversetherulesthatanIsraelite’sidolmust
be destroyed in such a way as to make impossible any potential contact even
with the fragments, and that monetary benefit derived from idolatry must
likewise be destroyed without a trace. Thus, when “Proklos” uses the verse,
oddly,todemonstratetheimproprietyofRabbanGamaliel’sbehavior,hisuse
conforms to that of the rabbis elsewhere. By your standards, Proklos is made
tosay, thisbath isherem, whichmeans thatwhether ornot youdestroy it,you
may not use it; why then are you here?
This powerful question reveals several anomalies at the very core of the
rabbinic treatment of paganism. How, in the first place, could the rabbis sim-
ply ignore the images that decorated both private and public spaces in the
cities and larger villages? It is true that the rabbis demanded going to tremen-
douslengthstoavoidevenindirectlyencouragingpaganworship.Thetractate
opens by prohibiting the conduct of business with a pagan for three days
before his festival, apparently so that he would not offer thanks to his god for
his success.^15 One may not even walk toward a city whose inhabitants are
celebratingafestival(1:5);sincepagansareassumedtobeconstantlypouring
libations, theirvery contactwith wineis enoughto renderit forbidden.Yet in
other circumstances,they seemedto havelittle objectionto images. Notonly
is it permissible to enter places decorated with images of the gods, such as
(^14) Modern treatments of this issue, in their single-minded attention to the identification of
the real identity of the interlocutors, are characterized by the most naive pseudohistoricism; on
“Antoninus and Rabbi,” see above; on the “Rabbi Yosi and Matrona” stories, T. Ilan, “Matrona
and RabbiYose,”JSJ25 (1994):18–51; onGamaliel andProklos, A.Wasserstein, “RabbanGam-
liel and Proclus the Philosopher,”Zion45 (1980): 257–67.
(^15) M. Avodah Zarah 1:1, following Rashi, ad loc., who was himself extrapolating from the
editorial response to the opinion of R. Judah at the end of the Mishnah.