Q&A: Interpretive Constructions in Sanhedrin 8
Interpretive Constructions in Sanhedrin 8
Question
Hello Rabbi Michael Abraham.
It would have been fitting for me to begin by taking the opportunity to offer at least some minimal thanks, praise, and appreciation for the excellent content on your site (and outside it as well, even before it existed), for your direct and well-reasoned style, and for the high level of accessibility and availability (many thanks as well to those who maintain the site). Fortunate are we that we have merited this. Unfortunately, what the heart desires, time steals away, so for now I will have to make do with these general words (I always prefer to be more specific, so that it should not look like mere conventional politeness, but that it be clear it comes from a real and sincere place). Thank you very much.
Following the fascinating article on interpretive constructions (“A Platonic Look at Interpretive Constructions”), I wondered what you think about the passage in tractate Sanhedrin 8a—the Amoraim setting up the dispute between the Sages and Rabbi Meir regarding one who brings a defamatory claim against his wife. (In general, at the beginning of Sanhedrin the Amoraim came in with a lot of energy. For every question and difficulty there are loads of answers and resolutions…) Aside from Ulla and Rava (Rabbah), according to whom one might still explain that the Mishnah comes to teach a principled law that is expressed specifically in the case of a defamatory husband, the other Amoraim make their dispute depend on general issues (an unspecified warning, the warning of a learned associate, etc.), and my questions relate to their explanations:
- It is very hard for me to see here a model of a principled law that just needs to be isolated into “laboratory conditions.” We are talking about a complete displacement of the subject under discussion.
- In terms of language, context, and structure, is it really plausible to say that this is what they were disputing, when the whole Mishnah is dealing with the number of judges required for different kinds of cases? (Suppose an unspecified warning can incur capital punishment, and then we establish the case as one of an unspecified warning, and they dispute whether in that case there is capital liability or not. The number of judges is a secondary and necessary consequence of the underlying principled discussion, which is not at all unique to the defamatory-husband case.) This question relates not only to the model you proposed, but to the words of the Talmud themselves.
Thank you very much, and abundant blessings!
Answer
Oshri, hello.
Many thanks.
As for the Sanhedrin passage, every such question requires analysis of the passage, and I do not have enough time. So I will write off the cuff.
Abaye’s explanation speaks specifically about the defamatory-husband case, because the law of a defamatory husband is unique in that it contains both a monetary dimension and a capital dimension. And that is the dispute: whether its monetary aspect is judged by three, or whether that too requires twenty-three. Now they consider in what scenario this would find expression, and they say that it is in a situation where there is liability only for monetary matters—for example, when she was warned without mention of the punishment. True, the Sages argue that there is no scenario in which there is discussion only of the monetary aspect without the capital aspect, because such a warning is sufficient even for capital matters. It is true that their dispute is about warning, but for our purposes they disagree about whether in a defamatory-husband case there can be a scenario in which they judge only the monetary aspect or not.
And so too with all the explanations brought later on (a learned woman, a warning for lashes, etc.).
Now, the passage had two possible ways to explain the dispute between the Tannaim:
- They disagree whether, when judging only the monetary aspect, twenty-three are still required, because there is a capital aspect involved. This is somewhat like the reasoning of some medieval authorities, that for a prohibition that does not involve an action, if there is some possible way to violate it through an action, one is flogged for it. And there are exactly opposite views as well.
- They disagree whether there is any such scenario at all in which only the monetary aspect is judged.
The Talmud chose option 2, apparently because it was obvious to it that if there were a scenario of monetary liability without capital liability, the Sages would agree that it is judged by three. But under either possibility, it seems to me that my explanation of the mechanism of the interpretive construction fits here too.