YISHMAʿEʾL BEN ELISHAʿ

YISHMAʿEʾL BEN ELISHAʿ (c. 50–c. 135 ce), Palestinian tanna. Yishmaʿeʾl was ʿAqivaʾ ben Yosef's most famous contemporary; rabbinic tradition has constantly placed the sayings of these masters in opposition to each other.

Although some have argued that Yishmaʿeʾl was a member of the priestly class, nothing in the traditions attributed to him supports this claim except for a number of dubious passages (B.T., Ber. 7a, Ḥul. 49a–b; Tosefta Ḥal. 1.10; Avot de-Rabbi Natan 38 [cf. Mekhiltaʾ de-Rabbi Yishmaʿeʾl, Nez. 18]). One story recalls that as a child he was captured by the Romans and placed in prison, where he was discovered by Yehoshuʿa, who predicted great things for the child (B.T., Giṭ. 58a); however, not all manuscripts containing this story mention Yishmaʿeʾl, and his appearance here is suspect. He is said to have studied with Yehoshuʿa, Eliʿezer, and, especially, Naḥunyaʾ ben ha-Qanah, who is said to have taught him the importance of exegesis of the Torah by means of logical arguments (B.T., Shav. 26a). The Talmud states that he rejected the study of Greek wisdom; he argued that one should study Torah day and night (B.T., Men. 99b), and his sayings demonstrate a tendency to reject Gentiles and their wisdom (ʿA.Z. 1.2, 2.3, 4.1).

Yishmaʿeʾl's importance has been based on his role as a biblical exegete. The opening of Sifraʾ, a collection of exegetical comments on Leviticus, states that Yishmaʿeʾl's exegesis of the Bible relied on thirteen principles. Based on this passage, most scholars of rabbinic Judaism have contrasted Yishmaʿeʾl's "logical" method of interpreting scripture with the more "imaginative" techniques employed by ʿAqiva.ʾ Yishmaʿeʾl is said to have ignored such things as the repetition of words or phrases in biblical verses and the appearance of certain adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions, while these supposedly were crucial to the exegetical enterprises of ʿAqiva.ʾ Yishmaʿeʾl's statement that such features of biblical Hebrew should be ignored because "Scripture speaks in the language of common men" (Sifrei Nm. 112) is taken as the underlying assumption of his exegetical techniques. However, recent scholarship has challenged this traditional picture.

It has been demonstrated that Yishmaʿeʾl and ʿAqivaʾ often used the same "logical" exegetical techniques normally attributed to Yishmaʿeʾl and that they both employed the more "imaginative" exegetical methods usually assigned to ʿAqiva.ʾ In addition, it has been shown that we have no evidence that Yishmaʿeʾl employed the majority of the thirteen exegetical techniques attributed to him in the opening of Sifraʾ. In fact, he most often employed methods not found in that list, such as the analogy, but that were commonplace among the Hellenistic rhetoricians of his age.

Given the fact that the traditions attributed to Yishmaʿeʾl and ʿAqivaʾ do not support the common scholarly picture, we must consider what has happened. It is likely that toward the end of the rabbinic period, two major schools of biblical exegesis had developed, one "logical" and one "imaginative." In an attempt to claim that these opposing views were very old, the later sages attributed their creation to Yishmaʿeʾl and ʿAqiva,ʾ for the importance of ʿAqivaʾ in all areas of rabbinic thought, including biblical exegesis, had by then been well established. Thus Yishmaʿeʾl's importance probably stems from the frequent juxtaposition of his sayings with those of ʿAqiva,ʾ one of the most important sages of Jewish history, and not from anything he actually said or did, or at least not from anything attributed to him in the sources we have at hand.

See Also

Tannaim.

Bibliography

For traditional views of Yishmaʿeʾl, see the Encyclopedia of Talmudic and Geonic Literature, edited by Mordechai Margalioth (Tel Aviv, 1945), vol. 2, pp. 599–605; Aaron Hyman's Toledot tannaʿim ve-amoraʾim (1910; reprint, Jerusalem, 1964), vol. 2, pp. 817–824; and Samuel Safrai's "Ishmael ben Elisha," in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971), vol. 9, cols. 83–86. Marcus Petuchowski began the serious study of Yishmaʿeʾl with Der Tanna Rabbi Ismael (Frankfurt, 1894). For a critical modern approach to the corpus of his work, see my four-volume study The Traditions of Rabbi Ishmael (Leiden, 1976–1982) and the bibliography given therein. On the problem of rabbinic biography, see William S. Green's "What's in a Name? The Problematic of Rabbinic 'Biography,'" in his Approaches to Ancient Judaism (Missoula, Mont., 1978), vol. 1, pp. 77–96.

New Sources

Abusch, Raʿanan. "Rabbi Ishmael's Miraculous Conception: Jewish Redemption History in Anti-Christian Polemic." In The Ways That Never Parted; Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, edited by Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, pp. 307–343. Tübingen, 2003.

Finkelstein, Louis. "Rabbi Akiba, Rabbi Ishmael, and the Bar Kochba Rebellion." In Approaches to Ancient Judaism, New Series, vol. 1, edited by Jacob Neusner, pp. 3–10. Atlanta, 1990.

Ilan, Tal. "'Daughters of Israel, Weep for Rabbi Ishmael:' The Schools of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael on Women." Nashim 4 (2001): 15–34.

Gary G. Porton (1987)

Revised Bibliography