Halachah Lema\u27aseh: Narrative and legal discourse in the Mishnah

This dissertation examines the role of narrative as a tool for halachic transmission in the Mishnah. It seeks to set new directions for the study of narrative, in rabbinic literature, in general, and the rabbinic sage stories, in particular. Previous scholars have focused on narrative in rabbinic texts as an aggadic/literary phenomenon. However, I argue that most rabbinic narrative material is neither aggadic nor manifestly literary. Rather, it is an integral part of the rabbis\u27 halachic discourse. In order to explore the implications of this argument, I systematically analyze the narrative elements of Mishnah Seder Mo`ed. In part one, I discuss the role of narrativity in the Mishnah. I propose that narrativity is best understood as referring to the extent to which the qualities of narrativity and specificity inhere in a given text. Texts whose narrativity reaches a certain critical mass may be defined as stories. I demonstrate that the Mishnah presents law through a distinctive mix of narrativistic and non-narrativistic forms. This style can be seen as reflecting a dialogic tension between static-universalistic and dynamic-specific views of the nature of law. While this distinguishes the Mishnah from its Near Eastern predecessors, a similar tension can be found in roughly contemporaneous Roman legal writings. In part two, I focus on stories in the Mishnah. When taken as group, these stories represent a wider discourse of authority within the Mishnah. These stories almost invariably represent rabbis interpreting, transmitting, practicing, or legislating halachah. They contain within them an ongoing dialog about the nature and role of rabbinic authority in the halachically committed community. I identify three major genres of Mishnaic story: case stories, etiological stories and exempla. Each genre reflects a different aspect of this power dynamic. This dialog is ultimately open-ended. On the one hand, these stories advocate total rabbinic control over Jewish practice. Simultaneously, they deconstruct the role and position of the rabbi as unquestioned embodiment of the living Torah. The Mishnaic story emerges as a complex and ambiguous form, which reflects the authors\u27 ambivalences as much as their ideological agendas