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Usury and Poverty: A Case Study of the Post-Rabbinic Moment in Midrash and Piyyut

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2021

Amit Gvaryahu
Amit Gvaryahu*
Affiliation:
Martin Buber Society of Fellows, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; amit.gvaryahu@mail.huji.ac.il
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Abstract

The Hebrew Bible prohibits lending at interest. This is usually linked to care for the poor. A similar connection is found in post-biblical literature as well. In Deut 23:20–21, however, usury is disconnected from the poverty laws. Classical rabbinic literature (second to sixth centuries) follows Deuteronomy in sharply de-coupling usury from poverty: the usury prohibition in that corpus regulates commerce and property, and is not intended to benefit the poor. In a sharp break with classical rabbinic tradition, the usury prohibition is reassociated with the poor in piyyut and in the Tanhuma midrashim, two late antique genres of Jewish literature associated but not entirely contiguous with classical rabbinic literature. Both genres bring this tradition to the fore through the use of earlier rabbinic materials, which do not espouse it. This combination of usury and care for the poor mirrors fourth-century Christian writings on usury.

Keywords

moneyusurylendingmidrashpiyyutTanhumarabbinic literaturephilanthropy
Type
Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 114 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 72 - 95
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College

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Footnotes

*

Immeasurable thanks to A. J. Berkovitz, Madeline Brown, Peter Brown, Alyssa Cady, Elena Dugan, Gregg Gardner, Jon Henry, Martha Himmelfarb, Yedidah Koren, Ari Lamm, Yitz Landes, Mark Letteney, AnneMarie Luijendijk, Shlomo Naeh, Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Brent Shaw and Jack Tannous, who read drafts and made invaluable suggestions and corrections. I first presented this paper at the graduate workshop of the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity section of the Princeton University religion department; a Hebrew version of this article is found in chapter 8 of my dissertation: Amit Gvaryahu, “Lending at Interest in Rabbinic Literature: Law, Narrative and Cultural Contacts,” (PhD Diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2019; Hebrew). The Hebrew University Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, the Princeton University department of Religion, and the Martin Buber Society of Fellows, provided support in both material and non-material forms.

References

1 Samuel E. Loewenstamm, “נשך and מ/תרבית,” JBL 88 (1969) 78–80; Thomas Moser, “The Old Testament Anti-Usury Laws Reconsidered: The Myth of Tribal Brotherhood,” Économie et Sociétés 33 (1999) 139–50; Hillel Gamoran, “The Biblical Law against Loans on Interest,” JNES 30 (1971) 127–34.

2 Philo, Spec. 2.74–78; Virt. 82-87. See Harry A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Jewish Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948) 218–22; Katell Berthelot, Philanthrôpia Judaica: Le débat autour de la “misanthropie” des lois juives dans l’Antiquité (JSJSup 76; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 265–300; Giovanni Battista Bazzana, “ ‘Basileia’ and Debt Relief: The Forgiveness of Debts in the Lord’s Prayer in the Light of Documentary Papyri,” CBQ 73 (2011) 511–25.

3 Robert Renehan, “The Greek Philosophic Background of Fourth Maccabees,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 115 (1972) 223–38. H. Anderson, in OTP 2:537–39, notes that the discussion of usury in 4 Macc 2:7 is an adoption of “Stoic language and echoes Stoic views.”

4 Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shim’on ben Yoḥai, ad Exod 22:24 (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Šim‘on b. Jochai [ed. Jacob Nahum Epstein and Ezra Zion Melamed; Jerusalem: Mekitsei Nirdamim, 1955] 212 [Hebrew]).

5 m. B. Metz. 5:11.

6 For “imagine” see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 2006). See now also Jörg Rüpke, Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018) 353–58.

7 Tannaitic charity laws can be seen as similarly motivated by egalitarian and civic concerns. See Alyssa M. Gray, “Redemptive Almsgiving and the Rabbis of Late Antiquity,” JSQ 18 (2011) 144–84, at 150–52; Gregg E. Gardner, “Who Is Rich? The Poor in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” JQR 104 (2014) 515–36; idem, The Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) 33–35, 75–79. Per Gardner, “organized charity” in Tannaitic literature was meant to limit begging; it also shifted the focus of “charity” from the individual recipient to a civic institution. Gray notes a similar erasure of the poor in the story of Monobases of Adiabene, in t. Pe’ah 8:14 (and parallels, y. Pe’ah 1:1, 15b; b. B. Bat. 11a), in which Monobases “scatters his treasuries in years of drought.” The poor, who are ostensibly the recipients of this scattering, are not mentioned. Gray compares this absence with Cyprian’s depiction of the poor as holy containers which lift the donor up to God in his De Opere et Eleemosynis. See Susan R. Holman, The Hungry Are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia (OSHT; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 12; see also eadem, “Constructed and Consumed: The Everyday Life of the Poor in 4th c. Cappadocia,” in Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity (ed. W. Bowden, A. Gutterdige, and C. Machado; Late Antique Archaeology 3.1; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 441–64; Geoffrey D. Dunn, “Cyprian’s Care for the Poor: The Evidence of De Opere et Eleemosynis,” StPatr 42 (2006) 363–68. For Christian authors, the poor are present in body, and are to be cared for by the wealthy. Their presence, as poor people, is a necessary vessel for the redemption of others. The relative absence of the poor in Tannaitic literature, conversely, is because they are presumed to be equal in status to everyone else. The erasures then are not commensurate.

8 See e.g. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor, 2000); Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Cambridge: Belknap, 2011).

9 Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002); idem, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); idem, Treasure in Heaven: The Holy Poor in Early Christianity (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016).

10 Marc Bregman, “Tanḥuma Yelammedenu,” EncJud 19:503–4. See also Dov Weiss, “Divine Concessions in the Tanhuma Midrashim,” HTR 108 (2015) 70–97; idem, Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism (Divinations; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) 21–49.

11 The parallels in the printed Tanhuma on Lev 25 (Behar 1) and some fragmentary editions of the Tanhuma that record a lection beginning at Lev 25:35 do not mention usury. In this they are similar to their source, Leviticus Rabbah 34. See Jacob Mann, The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old Synagogue (2 vols.; Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1940–1966) 2:141.

12 On these sermons see Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen, They Who Give from Evil: The Response of the Eastern Church to Moneylending in the Early Christian Era (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012) 134–83.

13 Mann designates it seder 61 of the cycle. In a Targum scroll (T-S 20.155), it is seder 16 of Exodus; see Michael L. Klein, Genizah Manuscripts of Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1986) 282–97.

14 I used the following editions, with the invaluable assistance of Maagarim: 1) Printed Tanhuma, ed. Mantua: Giacommo Ropinelo, 1563 with MS Cambridge 1212 and other MSS listed in Marc Bregman, Sifrut Tanhuma-Yelamedenu: Te’ur Nusaheiah ve-Iyyunim Be-Darke Hithavutam (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2003). 2) Tanhuma ed. Buber (Printed as Solomon Buber [ed.], Midrash tanhuma ha-kadum ve ha-yashan, Vilna: Romm, 1913), based on MS Oxford 154. 3) Exodus Rabbah, with Ayelet Lazarovsky, “Midrash Shemot Rabbah: Mahadurah Mada’it ve-iyyun ba-sipurim” (MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005) based on Exodus Rabbah, MS Jerusalem, National Library, 2o 4 5977. 4) Sefer ve-hizhir (ed. E. M. Freimann; Leipzig, 1873), based on MS Munich 205. 5) MS Vatican Ebr. 44. 6) Midrash Hadash or Tanhuma ed. Mann, printed first in Mann, Bible as Read; re-edited by Gila Vachman, Midrash ḥadash ʻal ha-Torah (Jerusalem: Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies, 2013) 22–39, based on MS JTSA 5029.

15 Biblical citations in rabbinic sources, italicized, are adapted from the King James Version except where noted. In order to replicate the dialectical distinction between verse citation and midrash (between Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew), I use the KJV because it is intelligible to modern English readers but dialectically marked as archaic and different.

16 NB that I use “homily” as the technical equivalent for Hebrew דרשה. It does not imply the setting for which these literary sources were created or performed.

17 ונקחדתלא cf. Exod 22:24 LXX: καהשנכ=νωγίεπετ; and the Palestinian Targum tradition (MS Neofiti 1, MS Neofiti marginalia, Fragment Targum V, and Genizah Targum A): רמכקחדבוחי.

18 וילע ףקוע; see Amit Gvaryahu, “Twisting Words: Does Halakhah Really Circumvent Scripture?” JJS 68 (2017) 260–83, at 263.

19 “Exodus Rabbah” parashot 1–14 are a running commentary on Exodus which uses Tanhuma materials. Parashot 15–32 are an edition of Tanhuma on Exodus, similar to Tanhuma ed. Mantua. See Marc Bregman, “Midrash Rabbah and the Medieval Collector Mentality,” Proof 17 (1997) 63–76; and a survey of literature and manuscripts in Benjamin Williams, Commentary on Midrash Rabba in the Sixteenth Century: The Or Ha-Sekhel of Abraham Ben Asher (Oxford Oriental Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) 1–9.

20 See Piotr Steinkeller, “The Ur III Period,” in Security for Debt in Ancient Near Eastern Law (ed. Raymond Westbrook and Richard Jasnow; CHANE 9; Leiden: Brill, 2001) 47–62, and the documents in Claudia Kreuzsaler et al., “Capital,” in Law and Legal Practice in Egypt from Alexander to the Arab Conquest: A Selection of Papyrological Sources in Translation, with Introductions and Commentary (ed. James G. Keenan, Joseph Gilbert Manning, and Uri Yiftach-Firanko; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) 226–75.

21 m. B. Metz. 5:3, translation adapted from The Mishnah: A New Translation (trans. Jacob Neusner; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

22 See also t. B. Metz. 4:2. From b. B. Metz. 63a and b. Arak. 31a it seems Boethus was the borrower but the Tannaitic materials say he was a lender. This fits with the portrayal of Boethus as a wealthy individual with business interests: see e.g. m. Avod. Zar. 5:3; t. Shab. 3:4; t. Pesah. 2:19, 10:12. For lender as huckster see Ambrose, Tob. 23–24.

23 The quote is from Exod. Rab. 31:4 (Lazarovsky, “Shemot Rabbah Mishpatim,” 34).

24 מזהיר להם. This term is found in rabbinic literature only in Song. Rab. 5.16.4: Midrash Hadash (ed. Vachman), 229 l. 34.

25 Josephus, Ant. 9.47; English translation in LCL, 26–27. See also: Christopher T. Begg and Paul Spilsbury, “Ant. 9:47–50,” in Flavius Josephus Online (ed. Steve Mason) http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004320079_fjo_AJ_9_00047. See Christopher Begg, Josephus’ Story of the Later Monarchy: (AJ 9, 1-10,185) (BETL 145; Leuven: Peeters, 2000) 69, see also n. 2 above.

26 One manuscript of Targum here has עבדיה בעלי מית (“Obadiah my husband is dead”) instead of עבדך בעלי (“your servant my husband”), which incorporates the identification of Obadiah into the scriptural text itself.

27 Cf. Ps 37:25–26.

28 Kimhi’s toseftot are cited as (K) in Alexander Sperber, The Bible in Aramaic: Based on Old Manuscripts and Printed Texts (4 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1992). See also Rimmon Kasher, Toseftot Targum le-nevi’im (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1995) 137–41 (Hebrew).

29 Kasher, Toseftot Targum, 138.

30 See Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt (ed. and trans. Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni; 4 vols.; Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1986) 2.B3.1, B4.2. Loans at interest are also found at Al-Yahudu; see Laurie E. Pearce and Cornelia Wunsch, Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer (CUSAS 28; Bethesda, MD: CDL, 2014).

31 On this verse, see Gary A. Anderson, Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013) 35–52.

32 That Obadiah borrowed at interest mirrors his wife’s reward: a cruse of oil which never ceases to produce more oil, like capital lent at interest which breeds capital.

33 Cf. Did. 4.5: “Do not be one who reaches out your hands to receive but draws them back from giving” (The Apostolic Fathers [trans. Bart Ehrman; 2 vols.; LCL 24–25; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003] 423–25).

34 See m. B. Metz. 5:11, Sifre Deut 262 (Louis Finkelstein [ed.], Sifre ad Deuteronomium, [Berlin: Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland, 1939] 284), b. B. Metz. 60b, 70b.

35 Wisdom literature (and its echoes in Deuteronomy) has little patience for borrowers: “The borrower is the slave of the lender,” says Prov 22:7. Leviticus and Exodus, however, cast borrowers as members of the protected “poor” class, and place the responsibility on lenders to help them.

36 Lois Miles Zucker, “S. Ambrosii De Tobia: A Commentary with an Introduction and Translation” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1933) 43. In the last sentence, Ambrose interprets Prov 29:13 (LXX), “When creditor (δανιστήζ) and debtor (χρεοφειλέτηζ) meet each other, the Lord makes an inspection (ἐπισκοπήν) of both.” For Ambrose, however, the “inspection” finds one party more guilty than the other.

37 On salvific or redemptive giving in the Talmuds, see Gray, “Redemptive Almsgiving.”

38 The allegory hinges on reading the expression “coming of the sun” עד בא השמש, to mean “sunrise,” rather than “sunset.” For other attestations of this reading see Daniel Boyarin, “La-leksikon ha-talmudi IV,” Teuda 6 (1988): 63–75, at 67–69, 73–75.

39 Exod. Rab. 31:10.

40 T. Jud. 24.1 (Marinus DeJonge [ed.], The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs [Leiden: Brill, 1978] 76–77). This text joins Mal 3:20 with Num 24:17, a verse which was read as messianic from a very early time (see, e.g., CD 7:16 and y. Taʿan. 4:6, 68d).

41 Luke combines ἔλεοζ with ἀνατολή, invoking the only combination of זרח and צדקה in the Hebrew Bible. See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB 28; 2 vols.; Garden City, NY: Doubleday: 1981–1985), 1:387; François Bovon, Luke 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1–9:50 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 77. Ayelet Wenger noted, in a private conversation, that Luke 1:17 quotes Mal 3:24, and she suggests that messianic readings of Mal 3:20 emerge from reading it in light of 3:24.

42 E.g. Clement, Protr. 11.114.3; Origen, Cels. 6.54, 6.79, 7.22, 7.31; Origen, Comm. Jo. 32.24.

43 See Catherine Hezser, “ ‘For the Lord God Is a Sun and a Shield’ (Ps. 84:12): Sun Symbolism in Hellenistic Jewish Literature and in Amoraic Midrashim,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, (ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser; TSAJ 163; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016) 213–36. Joseph M. Baumgarten, “The Heavenly Tribunal and the Personification of Ṣedeq in Jewish Apocalyptic,” in ANRW II 19.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1979) 219–39. Cf. Targum Ps.-Jonathan to Deut 24:13.

44 See Ambrose, Tob. 31–32. Tanhuma and Ambrose both highlight that Isaiah’s God claims that Israel were passively sold for their sins. See also Aphrahat, Demonstrations 5.21 (The Homilies of Aphraates, the Persian Sage [ed. W. Wright; London: Williams and Norgate, 1869] צו); English translation in The Demonstrations of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage (trans. Adam Lehto; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2010) 163.

45 45 For sin as debt in Second Temple literature, see Gary A. Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). MH uses זכות and חובה for commandments and sins, and bears this metaphor out in parables, e.g. m. Avot 3:16, t. Pe’ah 1:3.

46 Rabbinic halakhah emphasizes accurate measuring, and it is tempting to connect this to the “measures” of divine justice. However, this connection is never made explicit. See Shlomo Naeh, “ ‘Polishing Measures and Cleaning Scales’: A Chapter from the Tractate of Weights and Measures,” Tarbiz 59 (1990) 379–96, at 393–94 (Hebrew); Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Measure for Measure as a Hermeneutical Tool in Early Rabbinic Literature: The Case of Tosefta Sotah,” JJS 57 (2006) 269–86, at 269.

47 See Zvi Meir Rabinowitz, “The Qerova of Yannai to Ex. VII-VIII and the Question of the Date of the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu Midrashim,” Bar-Ilan 1 (1963) 207–19 (Hebrew); Shulamit Elizur, “From Piyyut to Midrash,” in Rabbi Mordechai Breuer Festschrift: Collected Papers in Jewish Studies (ed. Moshe Bar-Asher; 2 vols.; Jerusalem: Academon, 1992) 2:383–97 (Hebrew); Gila Vachman, “Poets’ Language and Hints of Piyyutim in ‘Midrash Chadash Al-Hatorah,’ ” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 24 (2011) 55–71 (Hebrew); Tzvi Novick, “Liturgy and Law: Approaches to Halakhic Material in Yannai’s Kedushta’ot,” JQR 103 (2013) 475–502.

48 On this lectionary see Shlomo Naeh, “On the Septennial Cycle of the Torah Reading in Early Palestine,” Tarbiz 74 (2004) 43–75 (Hebrew); Ezra Fleischer, “Remarks Concerning the Triennial Cycle of the Torah Reading in Eretz Israel,” Tarbiz 73 (2003) 83–124 (Hebrew).

49 MS JTS ENA 960.8, published in Benjamin Löffler, “ונוסף עוד: נוספות על נוספות למחזור יניי על פי עיבודו של פלטיאל בן אפרים החזן [Additions to Additions to the Mahzor of Yannai, Redacted by Paltiel b. Efraim the Hazzan],” Assufot: Sefer Shanah le-mada‘ei ha-yahadut 14 (2002) 191–210. I examined the fragment at Princeton University Library in December of 2016.

50 For the place of “fives” in the wider structure of the kerovah, see Novick, “Liturgy and Law,” 481 n. 19. Here, this synthesis leads to an understanding of the laws that is different from the one in classical rabbinic literature.

51 The fragment ends here, as does the piyyut.

52 Novick, “Liturgy and Law,” 485–89.

53 I believe this is the proper understanding of “dust” in the Tosefta as well. For this definition see Gvaryahu, “Lending at Interest,” 125–26.

54 For this curse, see Gregory of Nyssa, Against the Usurers (Ernest Gebhardt [ed.], Gregory Nysseni Opera; 10 vols [Leiden: Brill, 1967], vol. 9: 205), trans. Casimir McCambley, “Against Those Who Practice Usury by Gregory of Nyssa,” GOTR 36 (1991) 287–302.

55 For this meaning see Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period (3rd ed.; Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2017) 176 and the literature cited there. See also Zvi Meir Rabinowitz, Halakha and Aggada in the Liturgical Poetry of Yannai: The Sources, Language and Period of the Payyetan (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1965) 159 n. 10 (Hebrew).

56 Saul Lieberman, “Two Lexicographical Notes,” JBL 65 (1946) 67–72; Tzvi Novick, “Blessings over Miṣvot: The Origins of a Category,” HUCA 79 (2008) 69–86, at 84–86; Sokoloff, Dictionary, 329. Some Tannaitic sources reflect a positive commandment to lend money to the poor. See Mek. RI Kaspa 1 and m. Shevi. 10:3. This commandment appears nowhere else in the Mishnah. In the piyyut discussed below, מצוה is used in this sense as well. That the commandment is “pure” alludes to Ps 19:9, reflecting a reading of this verse as about charity, which enlightens the eyes, following Prov 29:13. Dispelling anger (עברה) is also a function of charity, as seen in Prov 11:14. See also Anderson, Charity, 53–82.

57 Haim Saul Horovitz and Israel A. Rabin (eds.), Mechilta d’rabbi Ismael (Frankfurt: Kauffmann, 1931), 315; Assaf Rosen-Zvi, “Text, Redaction and Hermeneutic in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Tractate Kaspa” (Ph.D. diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2017) 159 ll. 11–12 (Hebrew).

58 This line, missing from all textual witnesses of the Mekhilta, was reconstructed by Rosen-Zvi, “Text, Redaction and Hermeneutic,” 26–28.

59 See Zvi Meir Rabinowitz, The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai According to the Triennial Cycle of the Pentateuch and the Holidays (2 vols.; Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik and Tel Aviv University, 1985–1987) I:473–78 (Hebrew).

60 For the parallel in Ecclesiastes Rabbah 11.1 see Burton L. Visotzky, Golden Bells and Pomegranates: Studies in Midrash Leviticus Rabbah (TSAJ 94; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003) 121–34. This composition does not associate charity with the avoidance of usury or with loans.

61 חונן is synonymous with מלוה (e.g. in Ps 112:5); see Norman M. Bronznick, The Liturgical Poetry of Yannai (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2000) 260 ad l. 48 (Hebrew).

62 Isaac Hirsch Weiss (ed.), Sifra Deve Rav hu Sefer Torat Kohanim (Vienna: Schlossberg, 1862), 109b; Rabinowitz, Halakha and Aggada, 55.

63 This sense is apparent in Sifra Behukotai 2:5 (ed. Weiss, 112b).

64 Robert Brody, חיבורים הלכתיים של רב סעדיה גאון (Halakhic Works of Rav Saʻadya Gaʼon), (Jerusalem: Yad Ha-Rav Nissim, 2014) 342–49.

65 See both commentaries on Exod 22:24.

66 See Ephraim Kanarfogel, “Changing Attitudes Toward Apostates in Tosafist Literature, Late Twelfth-Early Thirteenth Centuries,” in New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations (ed. Elisheva Carlebach and Jacob J. Schachter; BRLA 33; Leiden: Brill, 2011) 297–327, at 311–17; David Malkiel, “Jews and Apostates in Medieval Europe: Boundaries Real and Imagined,” Past & Present (2007) 3–34; Jacob Katz, “ ‘Though He Sinned, He Remains an Israelite,’ ” Tarbiz 27 (1958) 203–17 (Hebrew). Simcha Emanuel showed that Katz’s reconstruction of the sources was erroneous: see Simcha Emanuel, “Teshuvot Ha-Geonim Ha-Ketsarot,” in Atara L’Haim: Studies in the Talmud and Medieval Rabbinic Literature in Honor of Professor Hayyim Zalman Dimitrovsky (ed. Daniel Boyarin et al.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000) 439–459, at 447–49 (Hebrew). For additional primary sources, see Beit Yosef ad Tur Yoreh deʿah 159:2 and the sources cited there.

67 See Robert Brody, Saʻadya Gaon (trans. Betsy Rosenberg, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013) 29–31.

68 Brody, Halakhic Works, 346–49.

69 Sa’adia also offers a list of permitted investments, as a response to a possible objection that the usury laws stifle trade. For the juxtaposition of usury and trade, cf. Qur’an Baqarah 2:275.

70 For this term, see Yakir Paz, “From Scribes to Scholars: Rabbinic Biblical Exegesis in Light of the Homeric Commentaries” (Ph.D. diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2016) 84 (Hebrew).

71 I use this term following Clifford Geertz, “Common Sense as a Cultural System,” in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 2000) 73–93.

72 See Caroline Humphress, “Poverty and Roman Law,” in Poverty in the Roman World (ed. Robin Osborne and Margaret Atkins; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 184; Evelyne Patlagean, Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance, 4e-7e siècles (Paris: Mouton, 1977) 11–17.

73 Brown, Poverty and Leadership, 1–44.

74 Brown, Eye of a Needle, 53–71

75 Anderson, Sin, 131–51.

76 E. E. Urbach, “Political and Social Tendencies in Talmudic Concepts of Charity,” Zion 16 (1951) 1–27, at 7 (Hebrew). Similarly, Yael Wilfand, Poverty, Charity and the Image of the Poor in Rabbinic Texts from the Land of Israel (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014) assumes a historic continuity in giving practices described in both Tannaitic and Amoraic works. She assumes both spontaneous and organized giving changed little in practice in the classical rabbinic period. This may be true as a matter of practice, but the shifts in discourse are readily apparent, as shown by Gardner, Origins of Organized Charity, 180–92.

77 See Gardner, “Who is Rich?”; Yael Wilfand, “From the School of Shammai to Rabbi Yehuda the Patriarch’s Student: The Evolution of the Poor Man’s Tithe,” JSQ 22 (2015) 36–61. For a poverty line of 200 denarii see also Modestinus in Justinian’s Digest 48.2.10, and the discussion in Humphress, “Poverty and Roman Law,” 197–200.

78 See m. Avot 5:13. A comparison of the occurrences of the word צדקה in the Mishnah and in the Hebrew fragments of Ben-Sira using Maagarim yields 4 occurrences for the former (ca. 188,000 words) and 11 occurrences for the latter (ca. 13,000 words).

79 E.g.: donations are collected and distributed in and by the town (m. Pe’ah 8; t. Pe’ah 4). Poor from one’s own town precede those of another town for charitable lending (Mek. RI Kaspa 1). Charitable gifts are given to the gentile poor, “for the ways of peace” (m. Git. 5:8, t. Git. 3:13) but these too are collected and distributed in a civic setting. The additional prayer (תפילת המוספים) on the Sabbath is said only in the presence of a חבר עיר, i.e. a town assembly (m. Ber. 4:7), and the מעמד envisioned by Mishnah Ta‘anit occurs in a city (m. Bik. 3:4; m. Taʿan. 4). On the Sabbath a person can walk in the borders of the city and around the city, but not from city to city, and Mishnah Eruvin details a procedure for surveying this border (m. Eruv. 5).

80 Gardner, Origins of Organized Charity.

81 Gregg E. Gardner, “Cornering Poverty: Mishnah Pe’ah, Tosefta Pe’ah and the Re-Imagination of Society in Late Antiquity,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (ed. Raʻanan S. Boustan et al.; 2 vols.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013) 1:205–16.

82 The loci classici for charity in Amoraic literature are Lev. Rab. 34, y. Pe’ah 8:7–9, 21a–b; b. B. Bat. 7b-11a. See discussion in e.g. Visotzky, Golden Bells, 121–34; M. L. Satlow, “ ‘Fruit and the Fruit of Fruit’: Charity and Piety among Jews in Late Antique Palestine,” JQR 100 (2010) 244–77; Seth Schwartz, Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society? Reciprocity and Solidarity in Ancient Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010) 130–35; Gray, “Redemptive Almsgiving”; Tzvi Novick, “Charity and Reciprocity: Structures of Benevolence in Rabbinic Literature,” HTR 105 (2012) 33–52; Gardner, Origins of Organized Charity, 180–92.

83 In the earliest Christian documents there is little discussion of usury. See Matt 5:42 and Luke 6:34–35 (and cf. Sir 20:15). Also see Ihssen, They Who Give, 80–91; Robert P. Maloney, “The Teaching of the Fathers on Usury: An Historical Study on the Development of Christian Thinking,” VC 27 (1973) 241–65, at 241. For a survey of the earliest Christian literature on usury see Ihssen, They Who Give, 92–133; Thomas Moser, “The Idea of Usury in Patristic Literature,” in The Canon in the History of Economics: Critical Essays (ed. Michalēs Psalidopoulos; London: Routledge, 2000) 24–44; Robert P. Maloney, “Early Conciliar Legislation on Usury: A Contribution to the Study of Christian Moral Thinking,” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 39 (1972) 145–57; idem, “Teaching.”

84 See Gvaryahu, “Lending at Interest,” 221–53.

85 Hillel I. Newman, “Early Halakhic Literature,” in Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures (ed. Robert Bonfil et al.; Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 14; Leiden: Brill, 2011) 629–42. For a terminus ad quem of the Palestinian Talmud see ibid., 630.

86 Raʻanan S. Boustan, “Rabbinization and the Making of Early Jewish Mysticism,” JQR 101 (2011) 482–501. Boustan offers a critique of views of ancient Jewish mysticism and magic as dichotomously divorced from rabbinic Judaism and presents a complex model of the ways in which various literary corpora from late antiquity existed in “overlapping, though not identical domains.”

87 Cf. the debate on the fourth century in Uzi Liebner, “Settlement Patterns in the Eastern Galilee: Implications Regarding the Transformation of Rabbinic Culture in Late Antiquity,” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern (ed. Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz; TSAJ 130; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) 269–95; Jodi Magness, “Did the Galilee Experience a Settlement Crisis in the Mid-Fourth Century?” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity (ed. Levine and Schwartz) 296–313. For the 5th century see Doron Bar, “Rabbinic Sources for the Study of Settlement Reality in Late Roman Palestine,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 9 (2006) 92–113; idem, “Population, Settlement and Economy in Late Roman and Byzantine Palestine (70–641 AD)” BSOAS 67 (2004) 307–20; idem, “The Christianisation of Rural Palestine During Late Antiquity,” JEH 54 (2003) 401–21.

88 Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017) 199–245. For the date see ibid., 206. Harper’s reading of events has not been uncontested. See, e.g., Lee Mordechai et al., “The Justinianic Plague: An Inconsequential Pandemic?,” PNAS 116 (2019) 25546–54.

89 Codex Justinianus 4.32.260, from 13 December 528, halved interest rates across the empire. See Demetria Gofas, “The Byzantine Law of Interest,” in The Economic History of Byzantium (ed. Angeliki E. Laiou; Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2008) 1096–1104, at 1096–98.