Traditional readers of rabbinic literature have read stories for inspiration or
as folklore.
When modern Jewish historiography became robust in the 19th century,
historians used these stories to represent Jewish life during the Rabbinic Period.
Since the 1970s though, critical scholars have recognized great challenges in using
these stories to write history.
The parallel versions of the present story provide a great cautionary tale.
Since comparison makes it clear that the story was embellished over time,
one would be hard-pressed to accept all but the earliest and
most minimal version of the story as history.
Beyond the introduction of new facts and
scenes, the freedom with which the editors embellished the stories
communicate something to us about even the original version of the story.
That artfulness plays a role in the production.
For the past couple of decades, scholars have been shifting the lenses which they
employ from those of historians to those of literary critics.
That process has proved very productive as scholars have mined Rabbinic stories for
literary rather than historical lessons.
The Talmud's final edition, Rav Aha's rejection of Judah 's voice has an uncanny
quality insofar as Rav Aha is rejecting Judah's logical argumentation for
an arena of ghostly afterlife.
A literary critic might might argue that Rav Aha shares with the people
a strong investment in the ghostly afterlife of the victim
that almost perversely does not allow Judah to rest.
Rav Aha's commentary makes the voice from the cemetery something like the tell-tale
heart of Edgar Allen Poe's famous short story.
And one of the consequences of uncanny features,
like The Tell-Tale Heart, is that they are not easily explained or
resolved, which makes the reader uncomfortable.
What seems to be happening as the story evolves within the Rabbinic period
is that successive readers struggle with what is fundamentally most
problematic about the story.
That this scholastic hypothetical masked the death of a real person,
cloaking it in scholarly language.
The first edit thought it could mitigate this problem by making the death
meaningful.
It was part of a sectarian polemic and it caused a crisis of confidence.
The second edit wanted to bring the guilt to light by embodying
a prostrate Judah in the cemetery.
But that edit is also not satisfying.
Like the beating tell tale heart, the dead witness persists and
will not let Judah rest.
Even when Judah dies and it is only his logic that needs to rest,
Rav Aha will not let it rest.
The ghost of the dead witness survives long after everything else in the story.
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