revise the Mishnah’s rulings by introducing new distinctions and differen-
tiations without the limitations imposed by Mishnah’s rhetorical requisites.
This is not to say that the Tosefta’s cases are any more reflective of real-
world situations than are the Mishnah’s. We simply cannot know that.
Rather, the Toseftaintroduces a greater differentiation of its world, and is
less limited and constrained in doing so, than is the Mishnah.Therefore,
there seems to be more flesh on the bones in the Tosefta’s attempt to map
the world rabbinically—i.e., a higher degree of verisimilitude, even though
theToseftaalso may not be dealing with real cases.
Even if the cases themselves are not real, however, the Tosefta’s rhetor-
ical penchant for greater social differentiation and verisimilitude may well
represent a shift or development within the real life of the rabbinic guild.
That shift could be characterized as a movement from an internally focused
preoccupation with initial guild formation, cohesion, and continuity (as
reflected in the Mishnah’s rhetoric and preoccupation with an ideal Temple-
centred world) toward a greater participation, qua guild members, in the
real life of the south-central Levantine world of the local Jewish population.
The ideal world, which is the object of contemplation in Mishnaic rheto-
ric, was mapped as a series of concentric circles of holiness, cleanness, and
increased exclusion of the other as one moved inward from the periphery.
In such an imagined world, the non-Jew is a carefully managed minority
relegated primarily to the periphery; perhaps, an apt homology of the ini-
tial social formation of the rabbinic guild. One might speculate that the
increased use of members of the rabbinic guild by the patriarchate’s admin-
istration of the Jewish communities of the south-central Levant occasioned
the shift from Mishnaic to Toseftan rhetoric. Framed in terms of the third
conclusion expressed at the beginning of this chapter, Toseftan rhetoric
reflects an immediately post-Mishnaic evolution in the guild expertise
required by the rabbis (again, I am indebted here to comments by Leif E.
Vaage).
It is in light of the Mishnah’s and the Tosefta’s respective, and quite dif-
ferent, literary traits and rhetorical conventions that, once more, I have
come to the methodological and conceptual propositions spelled out at the
outset of this paper:
- Religious rivalry is a subset of a larger category, namely, differentiation
of the social world. - The way in which a text differentiates the social world does not neces-
sarily reflect, and should not be confused with, the way in which its
author(s), or the authorial community, differentiated the real social
world.
My Rival, My Fellow 91