The Haggadot of the Yerushalmi

The Haggadot of the Yerushalmi.

The haggadic portions of Yerushalmi are also characteristic of its style. As in Babli, they frequently have only a slight bearing, sometimes none at all, on the subject of the mishnaic section and its Talmudic interpretation, being added to the passages in which they are found either because they were mentioned in the academy on account of some subject under discussion, or because, in the process of the redaction of the treatise, this haggadic material, which was valued for some special reason, seemed to fit into the Talmudic text at the passage in question. Many haggadic portions of Yerushalmi are likewise found almost word for word in the earlier works of Palestinian midrashic literature, especially in Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, PesiKta di-Rab Kahana, Ekah (Lamentations) Rabbati, and Midrash Shemuel. These parallel passages do not always prove actual borrowing; for the same earlier source may have been used in the redaction both of Yerushalmi and of the midrashic works. The haggadot of the Palestinian Talmud were collected and annotated by Samuel ben Isaac Jaffe Ashkenazi in his "Yefeh Mar'eh" (Venice, 1589), and they were translated into German by Wünsche ("Der Jerusalemische Talmud in Seinen Haggadischen Bestandtheilen," Zurich, 1880).

Linguistically, the Palestinian Talmud is Aramaic, in so far as its framework (like the elucidations of the mishnaic text by the members of the academies and the amoraic discussions connected with them) is redacted in that language; the greater portion of the terminology is in like manner Aramaic. The same dialect is employed in general for the narrative sections, including both the haggadot and the accounts of the lives of the sages and their pupils. The Aramaic portion consequently comprises all that is popular in origin or content. The Hebrew sections, on the other hand, include the halakic sayings of the Tannaim, the citations from the collections of baraitot, and many of the amoraic discussions based on the tannaitic tradition, together with other sayings of the Amoraim. This linguistic usage is due to the fact that both in Palestine and in Babylon the Halakah was for the most part elucidated and expanded by the Amoraim themselves in the language in which it had been transmitted by the Tannaim. In the academy the Hebrew of the Mishnah held its place side by side with the Aramaic, thus giving to the latter a certain coloring, especially from a lexicographic point of view. Hebrew was retained in great measure also in the amoraic Haggadah. The Aramaic, which assumed a fixed literary form in Yerushalmi, is almost the same as that of the earlier Palestinian midrashic works, differing from them only in a few peculiarities, mostly orthographic. This idiom, together with that of the Palestinian Targum on the Pentateuch, has been analyzed in G. Dalman's "Grammatik des Jüdisch-Palästinischen Aramäisch" (Leipsic, 1894; 2 ed. 1905).