Rabbinic Examples of Wise Written Tahrif
As the generations and the centuries pass, some words change their meaning; or add new meanings to the old meanings which are sometimes even lost. So Rabbi Judah said: If one translates a verse literally one is a liar; if one adds or subtracts anything, one is a blasphemer and is accused of libel.” (Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 49)
Religious charges of Tahrif, the corruption of sacred scriptures, did not begin with Islam; they were already found within second century Judaism and Christianity. For example, Muslims charged that the Jewish rabbis changed sacred scriptures with their creative interpretations of ancient texts. But Muslims themselves added sacred names of Allah to those in the Holy Qur’an. Out of the traditional 99 Names of Allah (Asma ul-Husna), 81 are explicitly mentioned in the Quran, while the remaining 18 names are established by the wisdom of Sunnah scholars (hadith). This is not Tahrif. Only evidence of written material might be Tahrif
Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 provides an initial view of the importance of the preservation of life. After a discussion of how to ensure witnesses understand the ramifications of their testimony, we learn that “…anyone who destroys one soul from the Jewish people, it is if he destroyed an entire world…and conversely, anyone who sustains one soul from the Jewish people, the verse ascribes him credit as if he sustained an entire world.”
Note the reference to the Jewish people’ (lit. ‘from or within Israel’). The corresponding BT section (Sanhedrin 37a) has similar language, which also is particularistic to Israelite lives. The Jerusalem Talmud reference, by contrast, does not show the particularistic label (JT Sanhedrin 4:12, a very difficult text to find online, but we succeeded; Sefaria was not helpful this time…).
Our colleague, Jonathan Biatch, asks why some of the classical Jewish texts emphasize the importance saving Jewish lives alone while others are more universalistic. Adin Steinsaltz noted that there were manuscripts of the Mishnah and the Rambam that contain the universalistic rendering of the text. He suggested that the original intention was clearly universalistic, since the conclusion that every life is precious can be drawn from the fact that only one human couple was created in the creation story and there were clearly no Jews around at that time.
He pointed out that the addition of the word “miYisrael” occurs in the context of examining witnesses that appear before a Beit Din in capital cases involving Jews. This conclusion was also drawn by Prof. Urbach. Micky Boyden
A note on Jonathan Biatch’s query. Back in 1971, Efraim E. Urbach published in TARBITZ an exhaustive study of the textual history of M. Sanhedrin 4:5. His conclusions:
1. In almost all the manuscripts of the mishnayot (i.e., texts of the Mishnah without the Gemara), the text appears in its “universalistic” version, that is, WITHOUT the word “miyisrael”.
2. The manuscripts of the Bavli (Sanhedrin 37a) are split: the Munich MS does not read “miyisrael,” while MS Florence includes the word. Urbach suggests that this testifies to two textual traditions.
3. The evidence from parallels (Avot d’Rabbi Natan, several aggadic midrashim, and B. Bava Batra 11a) is mixed.
4. As you have already noted, the Talmud Yerushalmi (MS Leiden) does not include the word “miyisrael” in the text of the mishnah.
5. Rambam (Mishneh Torah, Hil. Sanhedrin 12:3) reads “ba’olam” in place of “miyisrael” – universalism on steroids.
From all of this, Urbach concludes that the original reading was “whosever destroys one life,” that is, without the adjective “Jewish.” He supports this with a good S’VARA of his own: the mishnah learns this idea from the story of Cain and Abel, which deals with humanity in general and not the Jewish people in particular. The “nefesh” under discussion here is a human life and not specifically a Jewish one.
So what happened? The earliest printed editions of the Talmud, including Venice (Bomberg), 1520, DO include the word “miyisrael,” possibly under the influence of the textual tradition represented by MS Florence (see #2, above). Most subsequent printed editions of the mishnayot follow this reading.
In the 19th century, some maskilim began to print editions of the mishnayot WITHOUT the word “miyisrael” in this text, either out of liberal tendencies or fear of censorship. But the printed editions of the Bavli continue to read that word in the text. Clearly, if we decide to excise it, we stand on strong historical, textual, and moral grounds. Mark Washofsky
