Abstract
Rabbinic literature contains various discussions of reliability and suspicion in social relations as part of a sustained legal attempt at regulating these relations. In this paper, I analyze the concepts of “suspicion” and “trust” as they appear in the Mishnah, the earliest legal code of rabbinic Judaism. Through minute reading of several units from tractate Demai—which discusses the status of produce from which tithes may or may not have been taken—we will see that the Mihsnaic conceptualization is not a matter of interpersonal, subjective relationship, as we are used to think about trust, but rather of social policy, and is therefore subject to generalized rules.
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Notes
- 1.
See e.g. s.v. אמן in NIDOTTE 1:427-433 and the bibliography there. For the danger of anachronism in discussing Biblical “faith” see Fredriksen 2014, idem, 2014a.
- 2.
- 3.
“Suspect” (hashud) and “unreliable” (eino neeman) are interchangeable terms. See e.g. Mishnah, Maaser Sheni 5:3.
- 4.
In her dissertation, Alster (2009) claims that Mishnah, Demai is made of two disparate collections of mishnayot, and that “reliable” means different things in each section: in the ‘am ha-aretz section “reliable” is attributive, whereas in the section on demai it is predicative. She further claims that only the former collection is directed at “he who is reliable regarding tithes,” who is responsible for tithing everything that comes under his control, while the second collection—earlier in provenance—is addressed to the common Jew and offer guidelines for general behavior. See Alster 2009. See however my critique below, n. 9.
- 5.
Hatred between sister-wives is famous in rabbinic literature. The rabbis even apply in this context the verse “let me die with the Philistines” (Judges 16:30), meaning that a wife may be even willing to harm herself just in order to harm her sister-wife as well (b. Yevamot 118b, 120a).
- 6.
The latter law is about Samaritans. On the Mishnah’s inclusive attitude towards them, especially in its earlier layers, see Elizur 1999.
- 7.
Thus, the second half of Mishnah Bekhorot 4 is devoted to distinguishing between items which may or may not be bought from various “suspect people.”
- 8.
On “Am-Haaretz” see Oppenheimer 1977.
- 9.
Alster (see above n. 5), only looked for places where the terms “reliable” and “’am ha-aretz” explicitly appear, and thus did not notice this characteristic. But in fact this is the logic of the entirety of chap. 3 in tractate Demai, and what distinguish it from chapter 4, which discusses the consumers who are responsible only for themselves. For the “reliable” as a “professional tither” who tithes all the produce he comes into contact with see Furstenburg 2010.
- 10.
The Tosefta adds “robbers and plunderers (hamsanim)” (t. Sanhedrin 3:5) to the list. See Malka 2014, 22–26.
- 11.
Malka believes that this reading can be applied to the exclusion of women from testimony as well. Women are disqualified from testimony in matters that require two witnesses (i.e., a quorum), not because of lesser reliability—they are believed as single witnesses—but because they are of lesser civic status.
- 12.
See y. Hagigah 3:6, 79d and b. Hagigah 26a. See also Knohl 1991, who dates this polemic to Second Temple times.
- 13.
- 14.
Indeed, in t. Terumot 2:1-2 R. Judah uses this rule to relax a sweeping suspicion, but ends “but it is all according to his character,” (lefi ma she-hu ish).
- 15.
This is the original version of the Mishnah (Furstenburg 2010, 274).
- 16.
In truth, this motivation would be more fitting for an aggadic discussion. The only “joke” on idolatry with legal implications might be Mishnah, Sanhedrin 8:6 which rules that Baal-Peor is worshipped by defecation (po’er atzmo, a pun!). See also the expansive (and hilarious) description in Sifre Number 131 and b. Sanhedrin 60b. This is still however a far cry from the detail and seriousness of the laws of libation in Mishnah, Avoda-Zara 4-5.
- 17.
In the next sentence in the Sifra the binary assumption is manifested in the picture of the “nations” as having one king, Nebuchadnezzar, who is contrasted to God, the king of the Jews: “And I will separate you from the nations for me—If you are separate from the nations, you are to be mine, and if not, you shall belong to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and his companions”.
- 18.
Cf. Wisdom of Solomon 14:20–25: “and the multitude, attracted by the charm of his work […] and all is a raging riot of blood and murder […]”; Philo, Spec Leg I 30: “Moses, being well aware that pride had by that time advanced to a very high pitch of power, and that it was well guarded by the greater part of mankind”.
- 19.
See Beavis 1987, who claims that the section is outspokenly anti Egyptian, while seeking to remain on the same side with (educated) Greeks. Cf. Philo, De Spec Leg III 22-23.
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Rosen-Zvi, I. (2016). Usual Suspects: On Trust, Doubt, and Ethnicity in the Mishnah . In: Alon, I., Bar-Tal, D. (eds) The Role of Trust in Conflict Resolution. Peace Psychology Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43355-4_7
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