In this chapter, I contextualize the discourse of orality as the privileged medium of revelation through three corpora; rabbinic idea of Oral Torah, the Manichaean claim that the Kephalaia contain Mani’s Oral Revelation not found in his Written Revelations, and the Pseudo-Clementine’s argument that only Orality (not vision) can guarantee prophetic truth. I ultimately argue that all three drew from a common fund of discursive tools to thematize orality as a privileged site of revelation. After a summary of contemporary discussions on rabbinic Oral Torah, I show how the Kephalaia itself emerged from an “Oral Performative” contexts that was largely independent of textual exegesis of Mani’s books. I argue that, like the rabbis, the Manichaeans privileged the orality because it allowed them to claim that they were simply continuing the revelation that Mani had begun. I then turn to the Ps.-Clementine Homilies and show it thematizes orality in ways that are surprisingly congruent with both the rabbis and the Manichaeans.

It is impossible to understand the rabbis and the works they produced without a grasp of the Jewish world they inherited. In this chapter, we will review that world and the documents that reflect its qualities. The evidence for the Jewish world in Palestine before the rabbis begins with the Hebrew Bible. What were the worldviews, theologies, literary styles, and systems of practice supported by the canonical books? The pre-rabbinic Jewish library also includes other literary compositions, including the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Dead Sea Scrolls. We may also learn a great deal from the writings of early Christians. There were also received oral traditions that ultimately influenced the teachings of the rabbis. To what extent was the rabbis’ “Oral Torah” grounded in the oral traditions of the pre-Christian centuries? The difficulties in answering these questions will be addressed so that we may later consider the traditional or innovative quality of rabbinic productions. Lastly, it is impossible to understand the world of Jews in Palestine without gaining some sense of the broader Greco-Roman environment. In this chapter, we examine all this evidence and more.

How did the Mishnah become the canonical rabbinic work of such influence? To what degree was it, in fact, accepted as canonical, and to what degree did the supplementary and even contrary teachings of earlier rabbis gain traction in the burgeoning rabbinic communities of the Galilee and Babylonia? Before answering these questions, we focus on methodological problems that make confident answers difficult. We begin with the fact that rabbinic “Torah” was, at least to a significant extent, oral, and ask how this reality impacts the nature of the tradition we preserve. We then study the words of the rabbis of the Mishnah’s successor generations, known as Amoraim, and seek to determine how their attentions shaped the text and status of the Mishnah and other earlier rabbinic teachings. In what ways do Amoraim, in their commentaries on earlier teachings, pay respect to the authority of those teachings, and in what ways do they forge their own, new directions? From the laws and commentaries of the Amoraim emerged a new style of rabbinic study that would give birth to two Talmuds and thus shape Jewish culture for generations to come. In this chapter, we learn something about its beginnings.