Shemuʾel the Amora

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SHEMUʾEL THE AMORA

SHEMUʾEL THE AMORA (c. 180–c. 263), called Mar Shemuʾel, was a first-generation Babylonian amora, son of Abbaʾ bar Abbaʾ. With his contemporary, Rav, Shemuʾel spread the Mishnah—edited in Palestine—and thus laid the foundation for the rabbinic movement outside the Land of Israel. He learned the Palestinian tradition primarily from masters who had been in Palestine and combined it with the native Persian Jewish heritage.

Shemuʾel's influence as a teacher was enhanced by his authority as a judge in the Jewish court of Nehardea, a city on the Euphrates River. He probably functioned not as a head of an actual academy but rather as a rabbi with a circle of disciples. The prestige he enjoyed is reflected in the portrayal of him as a master devoted to Torah study, extremely honest, enjoying divine protection, friendly with the exilarch and the Sasanid king Shāpūr, an expert in monetary law, and unusually well versed in dreams, medicine, astronomy, and other natural sciences (B.T., Ber. 18b, 19a, 56a, 58b; Shab. 129a; Goodblatt, 1975).

Shemuʾel played a pivotal role in the history of Judaism in that he enabled the Mishnah to become not only a central work of study but also a source of guidance in the actual life of Jews. The present arrangement of his and Rav's dicta in the gemaraʾ is probably the result of a decision to use them as a literary framework for post-Shemuʾel traditions. Many of Shemuʾel's teachings in their original, oral form may have consisted of brief explanatory glosses to individual mishnayyot. Longer traditions of Shemuʾel used the Mishnah as a point of departure for extending its teachings. Although Shemuʾel comprehensively treated the Mishnah, including those laws inapplicable in the Diaspora, he especially responded to topics relevant to a third-century Babylonian audience.

Following the rise of the new Sasanid empire in 226 and the disruption of the existing relationship between the Persians and the Jews, Shemuʾel worked out a modus vivendi with King Shāpūr I (r. 241–272?) and thereby provided guidelines for a Diaspora Jewish life. He declared that for certain matters, "the law of the kingdom is the law" (B.T., Giṭ. 10b), and he offered a "realistic" definition of the messianic age as entailing the end of political subjugation for the people of Israel and not a supernatural transformation of the world (B.T., Ber. 34b). He drew from the Book of Esther the message that Jews can live peacefully in the Diaspora.

He was concerned with establishing the proper prayer texts and, especially, with the need for the right intention in praying (e.g., J.T., Ber. 2.4). By asserting that the divine presence is found in the whole world, he made traditional liturgical and other religious language applicable in the Diaspora.

Shemuʾel believed that learning the Mishnah lengthens one's life, that explicating one's Mishnaic learning gives one peace of mind (B.T., ʿEruv. 54a, Hag. 10a), and as seen in his formulation of a blessing that is to be said before Torah study (B.T., Ber. 11b) that studying enables a person to achieve an experience of the sacred.

Bibliography

Shemuʾel's traditions are discussed from a literary perspective in Abraham Weiss's Hithavut ha-Talmud bi-shelemuto (New York, 1943) and Jacob N. Epstein's Mavoʾ le-nusaḥ ha-Mishnah, 2 vols. (1948; reprint, Jerusalem, 1964), pp. 211–234. Jacob Neusner's A History of the Jews in Babylonia, 5 vols. (Leiden, 1966–1970), esp. vol. 2, and David M. Goodblatt's Rabbinic Instruction in Sasanian Babylonia (Leiden, 1975) address historical questions. See also my books Samuel's Commentary on the Mishnah (Leiden, 1975) and Post Mishnaic Judaism in Transition (Chico, Calif., 1980), which, after raising the methodological problems in studying Shemuʾel and his teachings, comprehensively treat his traditons and attempt to place his work within an intellectual history of Judaism.