Stuart S. Miller: Sages and Commoners in Late Antique Erez Israel: A Philological Inquiry into Local Traditions in Talmud Yerushalmi (Texts & Studies in Ancient Judaism)

Abstract

Stuart Miller is the premiere historian of Palestinian Rabbinic culture in North America today. Through a series of works, beginning with his Studies in the History and Traditions of Sepphoris (Leiden, 1984), and continuing to the present volume, Miller has focused like a laser beam upon the complex relationships between text history and the social history of the ancient Rabbis, with broad implications for contemporary scholarship. Sages and Commoners in Late Antique Erez Israel is indeed what Miller claims in the subtitle, A Philological Inquiry into Local Traditions in Talmud Yerushalmi This book is a period piece, reflecting the concerns and debates highlighted by Arnold Goldberg, Peter Schafer, and Jacob Neusner in the 1970's and eighties for close and disciplined formal analysis as a prerequisite to historical research. Having taken on this methodological approach as early as his dissertation, Miller has worked since the eighties to refine it and to merge its concerns with real historical questions and concerns. Thus, he set his work at a balance point between Goldberg/Schafer and Neusner and traditionalist historiography as epitomized in the work of J.S. Zuri, Gedaliah Alon, Samuel Safrai, and Benzion Rosenfeld. His closest contemporary fellow traveler both in literary form and conclusions is Catherine Hezser, with whom Miller is in constant dialogue throughout this book particularly regarding what he refers to as "The Extent of the Rabbinic 'Movement' and its Relationship to Other Jews," where Miller finds himself in broad agreement with Hezser's scholarship. The book begins with of a series of studies of significant terms used to describe local communities of Rabbis, specifically Zippora'ei (Sephoreans), Tibera'ei (Tiberians), Deroma'ei (literally "Southerners," meaning Judaean plains) and other local traditions as they appear in Miller's control document, the Jerusalem Talmud. By following through on each of these terms