rabbis in the east (70 to 1000 ce) 287
possible only to speculate quite how the curse on the minim might have
worked in practice, since min was not a self- description of any Jew
(including Jewish Christians). In the late fourth century, Jerome reck-
oned that the synagogue curse was aimed specifically at a group of
Jewish Christians whom he differentiated from the mainstream Church.^29
In any case, within earlier rabbinic theology unacceptable views were
indicated clearly enough by the assertion that certain groups would not
inherit the world to come:
All Israelites have a share in the world to come, for it is written, ‘Your
people also shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land for ever; the
branch of my planting, the work of my hands that I may be glorified.’ And
these are they that have no share in the world to come: he that says that
there is no resurrection of the dead prescribed in the Law, and [he that
says] that the Law is not from Heaven, and an Epicurean. R. Akiva says,
‘Also he that reads the heretical books, or that utters charms over a
wound.’Assertions by specific rabbis in the second century of other behaviour
deemed to merit the same divine punishment suggests considerable
interest in such limits. But perhaps this was an academic exercise more
than a way of dealing with a real threat of heresy:
They added to the list of those [who have no portion in the world to come]
he who breaks the yoke, violates the covenant, misinterprets the Torah,
pronounces the Divine Name as it is spelled out ... R. Akiva says, ‘He who
warbles the Song of Songs in a banquet- hall and makes it into a kind of
love- song has no portion in the world to come.’^30
Similarly academic are the early rabbinic discussion of Samaritans,
who were treated at times as if they were Jews (for example, for inclu-
sion in a group of three gathered for grace after meals) but at other
times as gentiles, so that Samaritan bread is forbidden by R. Eliezer in
the strongest terms: ‘Whoever eats the bread of a Samaritan, it is as if he
had eaten swine’s flesh.’ Such ambivalence, sometimes resolved by the
assertion that Samaritans are simply to be treated as gentiles (as decreed
by third- century rabbis in Palestine, according to the Babylonian Tal-
mud), shows oddly little awareness of the existence, revealed to us by
their political activities against the Roman state, of a real and powerful
Samaritan community in Palestine in the fourth to sixth centuries.^31
By contrast, rabbinic responses to Karaites (see Chapter 12) were
specific and direct. They tackled Karaite theology head on, reflecting the