Material Culture, Experimentation, and Household Lighting in Early Rabbinic Judaism

Abstract

This paper examines how the materiality of lighting influenced the development of ancient rabbinic teachings that would later become the foundations of Jewish law. Drawing on ideas and frameworks from scholarship on material religion, I bring together archaeological finds, experimental archaeology, and references to objects in classical rabbinic literature to argue that the ways that lighting was used provided the earliest rabbis with tools and fodder for developing new expressions of piety that could be performed in one’s household. How lamps, oils, and wicks were used in Roman-era Palestine (second-third century CE) played an influential role in the development of rabbinic Judaism. I show this through rabbinic prescriptions on lighting lamps on Friday evening to mark the onset of the Sabbath, as the different wicks and oils created opportunities for one to choose to perform the custom in rabbinically-prescribed ways. I next demonstrate how the rabbis drew on common lighting practices to reinterpret biblical laws on the now-destroyed Jerusalem Temple cult into expressions of piety that can be performed in households throughout Roman Palestine. In this way, the materiality of light contributed towards the ancient rabbis’ role in transforming Judaism in the post-Temple age.

Keywords: :

• materiality
• material culture
• light
• lamps
• judaism
• rabbinic
• archaeology
• roman
• experimental archaeology

Notes

1 I thank Carey A. Brown, the anonymous readers, and the journal’s editorial board for their helpful feedback. My research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and fellowships at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2020) and Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan (2021). I alone am responsible for all remaining errors.

2 Psalms 13:3, 119:105; Prov 6:23, 20:20, 24:20; Job 18:5–6; Sifre Deut. 32; Smith (1966, 9). Abbreviations of biblical and rabbinic texts follow Collins, Buller, and Kutsko (2014). My citations of rabbinic texts in this article refer to the Hebrew editions of Language 2017–2022; Lieberman 1955–1988; Weiss 1862; Horovitz and Rabin 1931. This article focuses on how these objects were used by the end user. How lamps, wicks, and oils were produced also has important implications for material religion; see Gardner (2023).

3 For overviews of late antique rabbinic literature, see Goodman and Alexander (2010) and Strack and Stemberger (1996). While rabbinic literature’s accounts of the past cannot be taken at face value, scholars generally find incidental details (including descriptions of household objects) to be more reliable than programmatic texts that seem to directly serve the rabbis’ broader socio-religious goals (Gardner 2023; Goodman 2000; Hezser 2010b; Kraemer 2010).

4 An exception is a study of the residue found in a sample of 78 ceramic lamps, which predominantly testified to the use of olive oil; see Namdar et al. (2017, 2018).

5 I agree with Stern (2016, 221–25; 2018; 2023, 227–228), that we ought to question the bifurcation between private and public or communal acts of devotion, and material culture often works to elide those distinctions. While lamp lighting for other purposes surely took place in the synagogue, the available sources from this period suggest that Sabbath lamps were only lit in private homes.

6 See similarly, Klein (2012, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2021), who argues that knowledge of Roman architecture, urban planning, and land survey influenced the creation of rabbinic culture.

7 Translation is my own and based on the Hebrew edition of Weiss (1862, 40a). I have consulted the translations of Neusner and Silverstein.

8 As Stern (2023, 190), notes, in the Middle Ages the Karaites would critique rabbinic Jews for mimicking Temple lighting practices.

9 The rabbis tighten the concept by casting it as negative commandment—a “though shalt not” instead of a positive “though shall” command. One fulfils the commandment by refraining from refusing to light a lamp or close the door. Negative commandments are more airtight obligations, while positive commandments are incompletely or “imperfectly” defined, as aspects are left to the actor’s discretion (Buchanan 1996).

10 Moullou, Doulos, and Topalis (2018, 120); see also Vaiman (2020, 14–15). Cf. Elrasheedy and Schindler (2015, 40).

11 Perhaps for reading and studying Torah, which the rabbis held should be free from interruptions (Schofer 2004).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gregg E Gardner

Gregg E. Gardner is Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor of Jewish Studies and Diamond Chair in Jewish Law and Ethics in the Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies at The University of British Columbia, where he specializes in Judaism in late antiquity. [email protected]