Dov Weiss, Sins of The Parents in Rabbinic and Early Christian Literature

Sins of the Parents in Rabbinic
and Early Christian Literature*

Dov Weiss / University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
For over two millennia, Jewish and Christian theologians have grappled
with the biblical notion that God punishes children for the sins of [their]
parents (Exod. 20:5).1 This doctrine, found in the Decalogue, has posed
an obvious question for many readers of the biblical text: Why should one
person suffer for the sins committed by another? Does this method of di-
vine providence correspond with a loving, fair, and just deity? From the sec-
ond to the fifth century CE, various Gnostics, Marcionites, Valentinians,
Pagans, and Manicheans used this passage to proveagainst the emerging or-
thodox Christian positionthat the Old Testament God is not synonymous
with the Supreme Deity.2 For them, the Old Testament God is either morally
imperfect or, worse, outright evil. Early Christian thinkers (prior to Augus-
tine3) who defended the Old Testament God against this accusation were thus
* I want to thank the following people for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this
article: Shayndi Raice, Michael Fishbane, Eliyahu Stern, Sarit Kattan Gribetz, and Zalman
Rothschild. Unless otherwise noted, rabbinic texts mentioned in this article rely on the best man-
uscripts as selected by the Historical Dictionary Project of the Academy of the Hebrew Language,
which can now be found, free of charge, here: http://maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il/Pages
/PMain.aspx. I accessed these texts in April 2015.
1
While I take full responsibility for Bible translations in this article, I have relied on The Jew-
ish Study Bible, ed. Adele Berlin, Marc zvi Brettler, and Michael A. Fishbane (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004). Original texts for all Hebrew Bible citations in this article are based on
Michigan-Claremont Bible text encoded in 198182 at the University of Michigan (accessed
through Bible Works version 10).
2
See Jacob Albert van den Berg, Biblical Argument in Manichaean Missionary Practice: The Case
of Adimantus and Augustine (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 107, 108; Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: The Gos-
pel of the Alien God (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1990), 69; Julian, Against the Galileans, trans. R. Jo-
seph Hoffmann (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2004), 102; Samuel Thrope, Contradictions and
Vile Utterances: The Zoroastrian Critique of Judaism in the Skand Gumanig Wizar (Ph.D. diss.,
University of California, Berkeley, 2012), 170. Also see the Testimony of Truth, in James M. Rob-
inson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 455. For an analysis
of this document, see Birger Pearson, Gnostic Interpretation of the Old Testament in the Testi-
mony of Truth, Harvard Theological Review 73, no. 1/2 (1980): 31119.
3
In his polemic works against the Pelagians, Augustine often cited Exod. 20:5 as a proof
text for his doctrine of original sin. See Augustine, Anti-Pelagian Writings, ed. Philip Schaff,
trans. Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, vol. 7 of A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene
2017 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
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All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
The Journal of Religion
forced to adopt a number of exegetical techniques to neutralize the moral

problem.4 These charitable reinterpretations of Exod. 20:5 were based on
an early Christian guiding principle: as a perfectly ethical being, God would
never punish one person for the sins of another. Accordingly, the Exodus pas-
sage should not be understood according to its plain sense: indeed, God
never punishes innocent children for their parents sins.
How did the rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash read the dictum of inter-
generational punishment? Did they affirm or oppose a theology that pun-
ishes children for the sins of the parents? Here, the evidence is less clear.
In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars of early Judaism
understood the rabbinic position as conforming to the early Christian posi-
tion (pre-Augustine): they argued that the rabbis rejected intergenerational
punishment. For example, Solomon Schechter used the rabbinic exegesis
on Exod. 20:5 to posit that the prophetic view [of Ezekiel that rejects in-
tergenerational punishment] is the one generally accepted by the rabbis.5
More recently, A. Melinek posited that, without qualification, the rabbis dis-
missed ancestral guilt as it relates to righteous children.6 Representative of
this approach, Bernard Jackson argues that in the early rabbinic period . . .
[Divine] justice . . . [would be] on an individual basis.7
Moreover, Jewish studies scholars typically assumed that the rabbis, like
early Christian thinkers, dismissed the plain sense of Exod. 20:5 (that af-
firms ancestral guilt) because otherwise it would compromise Gods good-
ness and justness. For example, Reinhard Neudecker asserted that the rab-
bis felt reluctant to speak of God as transferring guilt and punishment to
later generations . . . [because] the Jewish sages experienced God overwhelm-
ingly in his quality of goodness and mercy. This experience . . . did not allow
Fathers (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1887), 303. Also see Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Answer
to the Pelagians III, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Roland J. Teske, vol. 25 of The Works of Saint Augus-
tine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1999), 77, 289315. Earlier in his
life, however, Augustine reinterpreted Exod. 20:5 so as to reject the possibility that God would
punish righteous children for the sins of the parents: see St. Augustine, The Manichean Debate,
ed. Roland J. Teske (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2006), 184.
4
The only exception I could find was Tertullian (160225), the early Latin church father from
Carthage, who defends the doctrine of patrum delicta (Latin phrase for sins of the fathers) as
rational and just because it serves to curb the hardness of the [Israelite] people and their
overwhelming predilection toward sin; Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, trans. Ernest Evans (Ox-
ford: Clarendon, 1972), 129. On Tertullians critique of Marcions view of transgenerational pun-
ishment, also see Meira Z. Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God: The Divine Courtroom in Early Jewish and
Christian Literature (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 29092; Heikki Raisanen, Marcion and the
Origins of Christian Anti-Semitism, Temenos 33 (1997): 129.
5
S. Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (New York: Schocken, 1961), 188.
6
A. Melinek, The Doctrine of Reward and Punishment in Biblical and Early Rabbinic
Writings, in Essays Presented to Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday,
ed. H. J. Zimmels, J. Rabbinowitz, and I. Finestein, Jews College Publications New Series, No. 3
(London: Soncino Press, 1967), 287.
7
Bernard Jackson, Religious Law in Judaism, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt 2,
no. 19 (1979): 45.

Sins of the Parents
them to take such texts as Exodus 20:5 in their literal meaning; rather it
shaped the interpretation of these disturbing texts.8 Moshe Halbertal, too,
in his groundbreaking work Interpretive Revolutions in the Making, cites rabbinic
rereadings of Exod. 20:5 as part of his larger project to show how the rabbis
consciously justified their reinterpretations of scripture with the hermeneuti-
cal principle that God is perfectly moral.9 With this presuppositionthat God
would never administer vicarious guiltthe rabbis, according to Halbertal,
were driven to modify the Decalogue against its simple sense. After reading
Neudecker and Halbertal, one is left with the impression that the rabbis sys-
tematically applied ethical principles to their conceptions of God, much as in
the dominant early Christian position.
This article challenges the aforementioned scholarly claims and impli-
cations and highlights broader and underappreciated theological, herme-
neutical, and ethical differences between rabbinic Judaism and early Chris-
tianity. It does so by examining in detail the rabbinic interpretations of the
doctrine of intergenerational punishment (Exod. 20:5) alongside their con-
temporaneous Christian interpretations. This exploration reveals a central
feature of rabbinic hermeneutics not noted by prior scholars. That is, unlike
early Christian exegetes who openly valorize the ethical dimension as a key
theological tool in their exegetical enterprise, the rabbis typically refuse to
grant morality explicit interpretive weight in their theological project. While
Halbertal is undoubtedly correct that the rabbis at times employed ethics as
a central criterion of interpretation, and while they probably did so when
reading Exod. 20:5, he downplays the crucial fact that the rabbis typically
do not admit to this way of thinking.10 This underappreciated difference
whether the ethical factors animating biblical interpretation are explicit or
notexposes a larger and more important contrast between these two an-
cient religious traditions. In early Christianity, the moral hermeneutic is pre-
sented as an unchanging exegetical principle; by contrast, for the rabbis, the
moral dimension, when there is one, only reaches the level of exegetical im-
pulse. While principles are presented explicitly, impulses are often not.
Since the ethical dimensions fueling rabbinic theosophy are exegetical
impulses, not exegetical principles, there is less need for consistency. Im-
8
Reinhard Neudecker, Does God Visit the Iniquity of the Fathers upon Their Children?,
Gregorianum 81, no. 1 (2000): 22.
9
Moshe Halbertal, Mahapekhot Parshaniyot Behithavutan: Arakhim Keshiqulim Parshaniyim Be-
midreshey Halakhah ( Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 13536.
10
Ibid., 186, 91. This can be seen most starkly when Halbertal draws a fundamental parallel
between rabbinic exegesis and Maimonidean exegesis. For Halbertal, both of these interpre-
tive traditions apply a priori concepts when interpreting scripture: the rabbis use ethics as a
hermeneutical tool, while Maimonides uses metaphysics as a hermeneutical tool. In this con-
text, Halbertal regards the greater explicitness of the Maimonidean project, in contrast to the
rabbis, as a mere technical difference. By contrast, this article argues that the greater explic-
itness in the Maimonidean (and early Christian) traditionwhen compared to the rabbinic
traditionpoints to the distinctive character of rabbinic biblical interpretation.

pulses are not static, but fluid. Unlike set principles that are fixed and log-
ically worked out, impulses are intuited and, thus, often change depend-
ing on context. Impulses are flexible, dynamic, and unpredictable, and,
as I will demonstrate, they juggle various feelings, pressures, and values. Be-
cause they consciously avoid concretization or systemization, the rabbis of
the Midrash are afforded the textual latitude to present contradictory per-
spectives on any given issue (and without even alerting the reader to the
problem of contradiction). In other words, works that are unsystematic
and evince a weak editorial hand tend to be less concerned with inconsis-
tencies. This value flexibility of the rabbis corresponds, at least to some ex-
tent, to the rabbinic conception of God: a human-like deity who is similarly
inconsistent, dynamic, and unpredictable.11 That is, beyond the fact that
the moral intuitions of the rabbis are often shifting, the rabbinic God
to whom the rabbis apply these ethical valuesis also presented as a shift-
ing character. This lack of fixity, in both the ethical and theological arenas
(as opposed to the human-legal arena), explains the rabbis inconsistent
depictions of divine behavior and, more specifically, the inconsistent rab-
binic attitude toward our subject: Gods punishing of a sinners descen-
dants. As this article highlights, sometimes the rabbis reject intergenera-
tional punishments; other times they support it. This latter fact has been
problematically passed over by prior scholars who assume that the rabbinic
God operates according to set moral principles, as in the early Christian tra-
dition. While the aforementioned Jewish studies scholars are correct that
the rabbis shied away from affirming inherited punishment in their inter-
pretation of Exod. 20:5, they have largely ignored the seventy-five or more
instances in which the rabbis, from tannaitic sources onward, employ inter-
generational punishment as a hermeneutical, rhetorical, and polemical
tool.12 Strikingly, in these pro-inherited punishment passages, the rabbis
do not engage with the dictum of inherited punishment as presented in Ex-
odus or its refutation in Ezekiel 18. They simply assume the reality of an-
cestral guilt or, alternatively, anchor this theology onto other biblical verses
that ostensibly have nothing to do with ancestral guilt.13
11
David Stern, Imitatio Hominis: Anthropomorphism and the Characters of God in Rab-
binic Literature, Prooftexts 12 (1992): 15174.
12
While Max Kadushin (18951980) has discussed a few of the rabbinic passages affirming
ancestral guilt, he downplays their significance when asserting that the rabbis preferred to
employ the conception of distributive justice as it applied to individuals rather than that
of corporate justice (The Theology of Seder Eliyahu: A Study in Organic Thinking [New York:
Bloch, 1932], 182). Moreover, Kadushin posited that the few rabbinic voices advocating cor-
porate (divine) punishment were mere vestiges of a problematic biblical conception of jus-
tice. He avers, for example, that if, for one reason or another, the rabbis could not surrender
[completely] the idea of corporate justice . . . they were no means blind to the ethical diffi-
culties it involves (ibid., 180).
13
In the early twentieth century, Arthur Marmorstein presented a few of these passages,
but with little analysis and only as an afterthought to his larger project of tracing the rabbinic

Sins of the Parents
In short, this article argues that, unlike early Christianity, ancestral guilt
played a central role in rabbinic culture and was in no way incidental or
overly burdensome to the rabbinic mind. In support of that claim, I dem-
onstrate how the rabbis, when the need arose or context required, adopted
counterintuitive readings of the Hebrew Bible to generate a theology of in-
tergenerational punishment. Before examining the rabbinic and early Chris-
tian exegetical tradition, we first turn to the biblical background.
I. THE HEBREW BIBLE
The dictum of ancestral guilt (or, in Hebrew, avon avot, literally sins of the
parents), appears twice in Exodus: once as part of the Decalogue in chap-
ter 20, and once as part of the list of divine attributes in chapter 34. While
Bible scholars have debated the chronological ordering of these chapters
(i.e., whether Exodus 20 predated or postdated Exodus 34),14 they agree
that one of these authors appropriated the dictum from one context to
meet the needs of its new context. This was no small feat, since the literary
settings of these two Exodus passages emphasize opposite dimensions of
divine justice. On the one hand, the context of Exodus 20 is divine harsh-
ness: God employs avon avot as a motivating and even threatening device to
ensure Israelite compliance with the prohibition against idolatry:
You shall not bow down to them [idols] or serve them [idols]. For I, the Lord your
God, am a jealous God, visiting the guilt of the parents [ ] upon the chil-
dren upon the third and upon the fourth generations of those who hate Me [],
but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep
My commandments. (Exod. 20:5, 6)15
This passage illustrates the consequences of sinning. Not only will sinners
suffer for their transgressions, but their progeny will as well. On the other
hand, Exodus 34 cites the principle of transgenerational punishment in the
context of accentuating divine leniency, not divine harshness:
The LORD passed before him [Moses] and proclaimed: The LORD! the LORD! a God
compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithful-
ness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, trans-
gression, and sin; yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of par-
ents upon children and childrens children, upon the third and fourth generations.
(Exod. 34:6, 7)
idea of ancestral merit () . He also, problematically, makes no mention of the rabbinic

exegesis on Exod. 20:5. Arthur Marmorstein, The Doctrine of Merits in Old Rabbinical Literature
(London: Oxford University Press, 1920), 18588.
14
See the literature cited in Bernard Levinson, You Must Not Add Anything to What I Com-
mand You: Paradoxes of Canon and Authorship in Ancient Israel, Numen 50 (2003): 3839.
15
The same version appears in Deut. 5:9.

In this context, Yochanan Muffs has convincingly argued that avon avot ex-
presses, albeit counterintuitively, Gods mercy, not wrath. Rather than em-
phasizing that children brutally suffer for the sins of their parents, the dic-
tum teaches that God does not punish sinners immediately, but compassionately
delays their punishments until later generations.16 Notwithstanding the dif-
ferences between the presentation of avon avot in Exodus 20 and Exodus 34,
both passages establish, in principle, that innocent children are punished
for the sins of the parents.
As centuries passed, however, the avon avot theology disturbed some later
biblical authors who subtly rejected the older Exodus tradition.17 Most fa-
mously, after justifying his abrogation of transgenerational punishment by
appealing to a revelatory experience (And the word of the LORD came unto
me . . . [Ezek. 18:1]), Ezekiel formulates his new theology not as a repudi-
ation of an ancient Israelite tradition (found in the Decalogue!) but only as
repudiating a folk parable.18 No mention is made of the older Exodus the-
ology: What do you mean by quoting this proverb upon the soil of Israel,
Parents eat sour grapes and their childrens teeth are blunted? As I livede-
clares the Lord GODthis proverb shall no longer be current among you
in Israel. Consider, all lives are Mine; the life of the parent and the life of
the child are both Mine. The person who sins: only he shall die (Ezek. 18:2
4). What motivated Ezekiel to reconfigure the system of divine justice? Ac-
cording to Jon Levenson, Ezekiel generated this new theology as a method
to communicate to the Judeans that the guilt of the ancestors which caused
the destruction of the Juhadite kingdom and the ensuing exile does not con-
demn their current descendants to unending misery.19 Ezekiel is not the only
classical prophet to abrogate the older theology: Jeremiah does as well, al-
though Jeremiah proclaims that the abrogation will take place at some future
time.20
Classical and modern exegetes have struggled with how the Pentateuch
in Exodus 20 and 34 could endorse a theology that punishes an innocent
person for the sins of another. Can this punitive doctrine be reconciled with
Gods attributes of mercy and kindness? Moreover, the rabbis and church
fathers also had to face a second problem: for whereas Exodus 20 and 34 af-
16
See Yochanan Muffs, Love and Joy: Law, Language, and Religion in Ancient Israel (New York:
Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 1622. Muffss position coheres nicely with
the context of Num. 14:18, and also with Rabbi Ishmaels view found in Sifre Numbers 112
that transgenerational punishment does not apply to idolaters. For other biblical texts that
affirm transgenerational punishment, see Lev. 26:39, Num. 14:18, and other verses cited in
Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 34750.
17
See Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 33345; Levinson, You Must Not Add, 150.
18
See Levinson, You Must Not Add, 3136.
19
Jon Douglas Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God
of Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 177. For a similar argument, see Fish-
bane, Biblical Interpretation, 337.
20
Jer. 31:2829. See, however, 32:18.

Sins of the Parents
firm transgenerational punishment, the prophetic texts reject it. Here the
problem is not a theological-ethical one, but literary: the Bible contradicts
itself.
II. ETHICS AS AN EXPLICIT HERMENEUTIC?
A number of rabbinic sources limit or undermine completely a straightfor-

ward reading of Exod. 20:5 and 34:6. In these rereadings, the rabbis were
able not only to reconcile the Exodus passages with Ezekiel but also to neu-
tralize a morally problematic biblical theology. The rabbinic ethical solu-
tions to these biblical texts can be placed under three broad categories:
(1) limitation, (2) retranslation, and (3) concession. As we shall see, early
Christian reinterpreters of Exodus 20 will adopt the first two methods (lim-
itation and retranslation), but not the third (concession). Instead, some early
Christian exegetes employ an interpretative solution not used by the rabbis:
allegory.
In what follows, besides noting these convergent and divergent Jewish
and Christian exegetical techniques, I highlight, more importantly, their
contrasting hermeneutical justifications. I show that whereas the rabbis typ-
ically justified their reinterpretation via formal and technical exegetical
proof texts and, thus, ignore or sideline the ethical factor, early Christian ex-
egetes, by sharp contrast, proudly admit that moral considerations animate
their interpretative choices.
A. Limitation: Continuity of Sin

The circa third-century rabbinic work Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael affirms in
principle the notion of transgenerational punishment but conditions its appli-
cability on the continuity of sin across three generations (emphasis mine):
Visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children etc. the fourth generation [Exod. 34:7]:
During a time when there is no skipping [ ]or a time when there is skipping?
According to which position? An evil person [who is] the son of an evil person, [who
himself is the son of an evil person.21 Rabbi Nathan22 says: A cutter [who is] the son of
a cutter [who is the son of a cutter]. When Moses heard this thing he bowed low to the
ground in homage [Exod. 34:8] and said: Holy One, Blessed be He, Heaven forbid! There
is not in Israel an evil person the son of an evil person [the son of an evil person].23
21
The additional phrases in the brackets are not found in MS according to Oxford 151, but
are found in MS according to Munich 117 and Vatican 299. These Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael
manuscripts and others were obtained in April 2015 via Bar-Ilan Universitys Institute for the
Computerization in Jewish Life and can be accessed online here: http://www.biu.ac.il/JS
/tannaim/. The project is overseen by Shamma Friedman.
22
Since the majority of manuscripts, such as MS Oxford 151 and MS Vatican 299, have
Rabbi Nathan instead of Rabbi Joshua, I will use Rabbi Nathan. (MS Munich 117 has R.
Joshua.)
23
Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Bah odeh, 6 according to MS Munich 117.

An anonymous teaching found in this early Midrash posits that a child of

the third generation would only be punished for the sins of his grand-
parent if there were a continuous line of evildoers from the grandparent
to the grandchild. If the grandparent, parent, or child were righteous, then
the child would not be punished for any of his or her ancestors sins. This
interpretation radically limits the application of the biblical doctrine to
wicked children alone. As a close reader of scripture, the author of this an-
cient Midrash derives this condition of continuity by noticing that the words
upon the third generation [ ] in Exod. 34:7 are superfluous. The
prior phrase childrens children [ ] in the same verse would have suf-
ficed to teach that grandchildren would be punished for the sins of grand-
parents. Thus, the extra words upon the third generation, which appear
redundant, teaches that for the punishment to apply, three continuous gen-
erations must be evil.24 Markedly, the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael has Moses
react to this interpretation, an interpretation supplied by God, declaring
that this dictum would never in actually be in force since the Israelites will
never have an actual case of an evil person the son of an evil person the
son of an evil person.25 Notably, the early Midrash makes no mention of
any ethical factor that might have influenced its interpretive decision. Rather
its reinterpretation is driven by (amoral) formal exegetical clues embedded
within scripture.
By conditioning the applicability of transgenerational punishment to
those who continue in their parents and grandparents evil ways, this tan-
naitic text is more limiting than another early rabbinic text found in the Sifra
(commentary on Leviticus), which similarly adopts an important limitation
on the theologys application. According to the Sifra, ancestral guilt would
apply even if only one wicked generation followed in the footsteps of one
of the immediate ancestors, while the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael requires
three straight generations of sinning (with no skipping) in order for the
dictum to apply.26 Notably, like the Mekhilta, the Sifra derives its teaching
from the language of scripture, and the ethical dimension makes no appear-
24
Also see the slightly different version of this Mekhilta found in the medieval anthology
Midrash Hagadol, which Hoffman extensively used to reconstruct Midrash Tannaim, ed. David
Tzvi Hoffman (Berlin: Itzkowski, 1908), 5:19, 21. Unlike the Melkhilta, Midrash Hagadol de-
rives the condition of continuity from the word ( of those who hate me) at the end of
Exod. 20:5, which is now taken to refer to the second, third, and fourth generations (and not
to the parents generation as a straightforward reading would suggest).
25
Midrash Hagadol has Moses react with fear when first hearing of the Exodus dictum:
when Moses heard this he withdrew backwards and became frightened. God then appeased
Moses by announcing that only sinning children will be punished for their parents sins. Note
also that in Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 25:3 (MS Oxford 151), Moses rejoices upon hearing Gods
condition of continuity.
26
See Sifra Behuqotai 2:7 (according to MS Vatican 31), which bases its exegesis on Lev. 26:
39. This teaching would be cited hundreds of years later by BT Sanhedrin 27b and BT
Berakhot 7a. Also note that, like Sifra, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael according to MS Oxford 151
also only requires one continuous generation of evil.

Sins of the Parents
ance. While it is fair to conjecture that moral factors drove this reinterpreta-
tion, we cannot know with certainty.27
The dominant reading of Exod. 20:5 among fourth- and fifth-century
Christian exegetes would echo the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmaels and Sifras
condition of continuous sin.28 However, in marked contrast to the Mekhilta
and Sifra, Christian interpreters such as Augustine (354430) and the fourth-
century Italian Ambrosiaster explicitly invoke ethical principles when weigh-
ing their interpretive decisions. For example, Ambrosiaster argues:
Why is it that God, who is declared just, promised that he would assign blame for the
fathers sins to their sons up to the third and fourth generation? It is insane to doubt
that the Lord does or says nothing unjust. Thus . . . what is thought to be not just at all
[Exod. 20:5] will be considered upright. . . . God indeed bound himself to assign
blame for the fathers sins to their sons, but to those who hate him, that is to those who
serve idols, having remained in their fathers evils, just as their fathers did.29
Reading who hated me at the end of Exod. 20:5 as referring to the chil-
drens generation and not the parents generation, Ambrosiaster rejects the
possibility that babies are born carrying their parents guilt; children inherit
their parents sin only when they imitate the misotheism of their parents;
sin is not generated biologically. Most importantly for us, note how Ambro-
siaster recognizes that his interpretation conflicts with a straightforward
reading of Exod. 20:5, which, if left uninterpreted, would be not just at
all. However, according to Ambrosiaster, because it is insane to doubt that
the Lord does or says nothing unjust, the referent for those who hated Me
must refer to the children, not the parents. Echoing Ambrosiaster, Augus-
tine also highlights the ethical character of God as animating his exegesis.30
Thus, while both rabbinic and early Christian exegetes limit the doctrine
of intergenerational punishment to those children who follow in the wicked
ways of their parents, their hermeneutical justifications are markedly dif-
27
The condition of continuous evil also appears in Targum Onkelos with reference to Exod.
20:5 and Pseudo-Philos Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (11:6). For these sources, see Outside the
Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture, ed. Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Law-
rence H. Schiffman, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2013), 496; and Menachem
Cohen, Mikraot Gedolot Ha-Keter (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1992).
28
These figures also include Jerome (347420) and John Chrysostom (347407). John Chry-
sostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 10 of A Select Library of Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1888), 428; Jerome, Commentary on Jeremiah, trans.
Michael Graves and Christopher A. Hall, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Ac-
ademic, 2011), 9.
29
Pseudo-Augustine, Quaestiones Veteris Et Novi Testamenti Cxxvii, ed. Alexander Souter, vol. 50
(Vindobonae: F. Tempsky, 1908), question 14; emphasis mine. I would like to thank Anthony
Thomas and Stephen Hill for translating this text.
30
It was correct to say that God punished children who hated him for the sins of the parents.
For from the addition, who hated me [qui oderunt me], it is understood that he punishes
for the sins of their parents those who have chosen to continue in the same wickedness. Such
people, after all, are punished not because of Gods cruelty but because of His justice and their sinfulness . . .
it is quite clear that God is not brutal but that each person is brutal to himself when he sins.
Against Adimantus, 7:1, found in Augustine, The Manichean Debate, 184; emphasis mine.

ferent. The rabbis rely on formal exegetical markers within the text to pro-
duce their limitation; by contrast, Christian exegetes highlight the ethical
principle driving their reinterpretation.
B. Retranslation: From Ancestral Guilt to Ancestral Merit

Some rabbis and church fathers adopt a second strategy to neutralize the
biblical doctrine of ancestral guilt. Instead of limiting ancestral guilt by gen-
erating new conditions (such as, the children must be wicked as well), they
retranslate the passage in order to reverse its meaning. Consider, for exam-
ple, the following text found in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai (circa
third century):31
Poked means remembers [], and so it says and God remembered [ ]Sarah [Gen. 21:
1] and it says I will surely remember [ ] you [Exod. 3:16].
Rabbi Yehuda [the son of Ilai] says: I [God] will collect [ ]their sins to my
hands and suspend [punishment] [ ]until four generations like Jehu the son
of Nimshi. And so it says Children until the fourth generation will sit on the throne of Israel [2 Kings
15:12]. And it was so. . . . If the fathers are meritorious then He will suspend for them,
and if the fathers are not meritorious than He will not suspend for them.32
This Midrash cites the view of Rabbi Yehuda, the son of Ilai who inverts the
entire force of Exod. 20:5 by retranslating the word poked as an optimistic
verb, to remember, instead of a pessimistic verb, to punish, as a simple
and contextual reading would suggest. Remarkably, with this interpretation
the passage no longer signals divine harshness, but divine tolerance; not
vicarious guilt, but vicarious merit. To defend its retranslation, Mekhilta de-
Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai provides two examples where scripture uses the
word poked to denote divine favor and rescue: first, when God provided Sarah
with a child (Gen. 21:1), and second, when God decided to rescue the Israel-
ites from Egypt (Exod. 3:16).
31
From the writings of the Orthodox German Jewish scholar David Zvi Hoffmann (1843
1921) and onwards, scholars of rabbinic Midrash have theorized that, excluding Genesis, two
early rabbinic commentaries on the Torah were produced for each book: one emerging from
the school of Rabbi Ishmael (third century CE), and another from the school of Rabbi Akiva
(third century CE) (see Menahem Kahana, The Halakhic Midrashim, in The Literature of the
Sages, ed. Shemuel Safrai (Assen: Fortress, 1987), 1740). Unfortunately, only the Ishmaelian
commentaries on Exodus and Numbers survived (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael and Sifre Num-
bers), and only the Akivan commentaries on Leviticus and Deuteronomy survived (Sifra and Sifre
Deuteronomy). Thus, Hoffman and those that followed him sought to reconstruct the lost Akivan
and Ishmaelian Midrashim (1) by amassing medieval citations of these works, (2) by excerpting
out tannaitic material quoted in medieval aggadic anthologies, and (3) by collecting midrashic
fragments found at the Cairo Genizah. These attempts yielded, inter alia, the publication of an
Akivan Midrash on Exodus entitled the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai (Simeon bar Yohai
was Akivas student). Yet, due to its reconstructed nature, contemporary scholars use Mekhilta de-
Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai cautiously.
32
Mekilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, ed. Jacob Epstein and Ezra Melamed ( Jerusalem: Beit
Hillel, 1955), 148; emphasis mine.
10

Sins of the Parents
With poked understood as remembering rather than punishing, Ye-

huda reads the passage this way: God remembers sins (and does not exact
punishment) for the fathers of four generationsthe children, the chil-
drens children, the third generation, and the fourth generation. In other
words, in most situations God automatically suspends punishment for
those who sin; they are not punished. This merciful gesture on Gods part,
however, has limits. It only applies when a persons ancestors have been mer-
itorious. Otherwise, if someones ancestors for four straight generations
have acted perversely, then God punishes the children of the fifth genera-
tion, but only for their own sins. In this reading, Yehuda inverts the simple
meaning of the verse. Rather than four generations being punished for
their ancestors sins, four generations are protected from their own sins! In-
terestingly, Yehuda places this interpretation into Gods mouth: I [God]
will collect their sins to my hands and suspend [ ]them until four gen-
erations like Jehu the son of Nimshi. And so it says Children until the fourth gen-
eration will sit on the throne of Israel [2 Kings 15:12]. Here, for exegetical sup-
port, Yehuda has God cite the example of King Jehu (2 Kings 15), whose
sinful offspring ruled continuously for four generations, but only collapsed
in the fifth generation. Crucially, the word ( the fourth generation) ap-
pears in both Exodus 20 and 2 Kings 15 and serves, for Yehuda, to conceptu-
ally link these contexts. In other words, the case of Jehu is a case of avon avot.
For Yehuda, inherited guilt was never a principle found in the Decalogue,
only inherited merit. Indeed, children are not punished for the sins of their
parents or any of their ancestors. Only the opposite: a parent or grandpar-
ents righteous actions could help their progeny by suspending their sins.
In short, ancestors can only help, but not hurt, their descendants, and avon
avot is not a doctrine of imputed guilt but rather of imputed merit. Notably,
Yehudas is the only early rabbinic voice I am aware of that completely de-
nies that Exodus 20 and Exodus 34 propound any notion of transgenera-
tional punishment.33 Note here as well that this rabbinic decontextualized
reading of Exod. 20:5 relies on formal linguistic features and completely ig-
nores the moral factor that likely fueled this forced interpretation.
33
My reading of this passage in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai follows Schechter, Aspects
of Rabbinic Theology, 187. The early medieval midrashic work, Mishnat R. Eliezer (circa eighth-
century Palestine) also transforms Exod. 20:5 from a theology of imputed guilt to a theology
of imputed merit; see H. G. Enelow, Mishnat Rabbi Eliezer (New York: Bloch, 1933), 95. Unlike
Mekhilta de-Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, however, the imputed merit moves from child to parent,
not parent to child (as in the Mekhilta). More importantly for us, Mishnat R. Eliezer openly de-
clares its reinterpretation to be driven primarily by moral sensibilities. The author denies a lit-
eral reading of Exodus 20 on the basis that vicarious guilt is neither merciful nor just, and God,
who governs the world through these values, would never command that children be punished
for the sins of parents. We do not find this level of moral explicitness in pre-medieval rabbinic
texts on ancestral guilt. For a full analysis of this Mishnat R. Eliezer text, see Dov Weiss, Between
Values and Theology: The Case of Salvation through Children in Rabbinic Thought, Milin
Havivin 3 (2007): 68.
11

In his Commentary to the Gospel of John, the fifth-century bishop and anti-
Nestorian theologian Cyril of Alexandria (375444) embarked on a reinter-
pretation similar to the one offered in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai:34
It is only a result of their own ignorance that they suppose that the sins of parents
are actually visited upon children and that Gods wrath extends so far that it reaches
the third and fourth generation, unjustly punishing the innocent for the sins of
others. After all, would not any who are wise have to think, as is fitting, that the source
of righteousness and morality would not do such a shameful thing? . . . It is quite incred-
ible, therefore, and not far from complete idiocy to think that God attributes to
himself love and gentleness towards humanity and, at the same time, such im-
mense irrational anger.35
According to Cyril, God does not punish the son instead of the father
but rather cancels punishment to sinners for as long as four generations.36
On the other hand, unlike Mekhilta de-Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, Cyril of
Alexandria proudly announces that his ethical sensibilities and the image
of a just God fueled his rereading.
C. Concession: A Divine Mistake

In late rabbinic literature, in a set of midrashic texts (circa seventh century
CE) often referred to as the Tanhuma-Yelammedenu literature, a new read-
ing of the Exodus theology emerged with no analogues in the writings of
the church fathers.37 Rather than using formal exegetical clues to radically
reinterpret or retranslate Exodus 20 and 34, this midrashic method simply
34
Hans Van Loon dates Cyrils commentary to John between 420 and 428, while Geoffrey
Dunn has it written in the few years before the outbreak of the Nestorian controversy; Geof-
frey Dunn, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, and the Pelagian Controversy, Augustinian Studies
37, no. 1 (2006): 82; Hans van Loon, The Pelagian Debate and Cyril of Alexandrias Theology,
Studia Patristica 68 (2013): 74.
35
Cyril of Alexandrias Commentary on John, vol. 2, ed. Joel C. Elowsky, trans. David R. Maxwell,
Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2015), 2425; emphasis mine.
Cyril also rejects the theology of ancestral guilt (to innocent descendants) in his treatise Against
Julian; see William J. Malley, Hellenism and Christianity: The Conict between Hellenic and Christian
Wisdom in the Contra Galilaeos of Julian the Apostate and the Contra Julianum of St. Cyril of Alexandria
(Rome: Universit gregoriana, 1978), 32728.
36
In the fourth century, the Syriac Church father, Mar Ephrem (306373) also adopted this
explanation. See Ephrems interpretation to Exod. 20:5 in Ephraem, Sancti Ephraem Syri in
Genesim Et in Exodum Commentarii, ed. Raymond Tonneau, 2 vols., Corpus Scriptorum Christian-
orum Orientalium (Louvain: L. Durbecq, 1955). The text can also be found online here:
http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/.
37
The term Tanhuma-Yelammedenu ( T Y ) should best be understood as a genre or
group of rabbinic texts that share the same general form and characteristics, rather than as re-
ferring to a specific set of books. The vast majority of the T Y material developed toward the end
of Byzantine rule in Palestine (sixth and early seventh century CE). Texts from this group can be
found in the following midrashic works: (1) Midrash Tanh uma, both the standard and Buber
editions; (2) Exodus Rabbah II, chaps. 1552; (3) Numbers Rabbah II, chaps. 1523; (4) Deu-
teronomy Rabbah, both the standard and Lieberman editions; (5) Pesiqta Rabbati, chaps. 114,
12

Sins of the Parents
retells the biblical narrative anew. Strikingly, in these texts God retracts
his original theology of ancestral guilt as found in the Decalogue after
Moses launches an ethical protest. The fullest description of this narra-
tive appears in Numbers Rabbah II (a section associated with Tanhuma-
Yelammedenu):38
This is one of three instances where Moses said something before God and He re-
sponded: You have taught Me something []. . . . The second instance: When
the Holy One, Blessed be He, said to him: visiting the guilt of the parents upon the chil-
dren [Exod. 20:5], Moses said: Master of the World, how many evil people give birth
to righteous people? Shall they take [punishment] from the sins of the parents?
Terah worshipped idols, and Abraham his son was righteous. And also Hezekiah
was righteous, and his father Ahaz was a wicked man. And also Josiah was righteous,
and his father Amon was a wicked man. Is it appropriate that righteous people shall
receive lashes for the sins of their parents [ ?] God
said to him: You have taught Me something. By your life, I will nullify My decree
and establish your word, as it says: Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor chil-
dren be put to death for parents [Deut. 24:16].39 And by your life, I will write it in your
name, as it says: in accordance with what is written in the Book of the Teaching of Moses
[2 Kings 14:6].40
Numbers Rabbah II has Moses protest Gods doctrine of ancestral guilt as

found in the Decalogue. Moses rhetorically asks, Shall they [the righteous
people] take [punishment] from the sins of the parents? After providing
a few biblical cases where righteous children are born to wicked men, Mo-
ses asks again, Is it appropriate that righteous people shall receive lashes
for the sins of their parents? Upon hearing Mosess critique, God concedes
the point and nullifies the theology of inherited punishment. God declares,
strikingly, You have taught Me something [], By your life, I will nullify
My decree and establish your word.41
19, 25, 29, 31, 33, 3845, 47, and supplements 1 and 2; and (6) hundreds of T Y fragments found
at the Cairo Genizah. For more on Tanhuma-Yelammedenu literature, see Dov Weiss, Divine
Concessions in the Tanhuma Midrashim, Harvard Theological Review 108, no. 1 (2015): 7075.
38
The designation of Numbers Rabbah II as a T Y text composed in the sixth or seventh century
follows the philological findings of Marc Bregman; Marc Bregman, Sifrut Tanh uma-Yelammedenu:
Teur Nush eha We-iyunim Be-Darke Hithawutam (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2003), 15.
39
This Midrash views the rejection of transgenerational punishment in Deuteronomy 24 as
referring to Gods system of justice (rather than just human justice, as Bible scholars argue).
40
Numbers Rabbah II 19:33 according to Manuscript Paris 150; emphasis mine. I obtained this
manuscript at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem in October 2009.
41
Menachem Fisch nicely emphasizes the radical nature of this Midrash: God is astonishingly
described as having produced a morally deficient early draft of the Torah, [and then] Moses is
portrayed as having refused to comply, and having challenged it on moral grounds . . . [the the-
ology] is subsequently described as having been happily revised by virtue of God accepting
Mosess superior moral judgment; Menachem Fisch, Judaism and the Religious Crisis of Mod-
ern Science, in Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions, 1700Present, ed. Jitse M. van der
Meer and Scott Mandelbrote, Brills Series in Church History (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 552.
13

This Tanhuma-Yelammedenu teaching depicts a dramatic confrontation

between Moses and God that does not appear in scripture. The new narra-
tive solves the ethical problems with the Exodus doctrine by placing differ-
ent Torah passages (Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 24) in dialogue and de-
creeing that one has superseded the other. Ultimately, the ethical intuition
of the human Moses emerges triumphant, albeit with Gods consent. By
adopting this radical literary motif, the author of Numbers Rabbah II does
not attempt to resolve the moral problem by hiding behind formal exeget-
ical reinterpretations and limitations (as in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael and
Sifra), but by turning to an ethical dimension. Yet, even here, the Midrash au-
thor uses a biblical hero, Moses, to express its ethical concern; he does not
confess his own ethical discomfort. This act of ventriloquism is a standard rab-
binic technique whereby the rabbis transfer (consciously or not) their own
anxieties and concerns with biblical passages or traditional Jewish teachings
into the mouths of others.42
D. Allegory
Origen of Alexandria (185254 CE) and other early Christian exegetes af-
filiated with the Alexandrian school adopted the allegorical method of
reading scripture.43 This afforded them with a hermeneutical tool to moral-
ize the ethical irritants of scripture. Interestingly, the rabbis never employed
this interpretive method in their rereadings of the Hebrew Bible. As Daniel
Boyarin notes, even in their interpretations of the Song of Songs, the rabbis
rejected allegory as they continued to read the Song as a concrete historical
moment.44
42
A less radical rabbinic text that posits that a historical nullification of intergenerational
punishment is found in Babylonian Talmud Makkot 24a (emphasis mine): Moses said: Who
visits the iniquity of parents upon children [Exod. 34:7], and Ezekiel came and nullified it: The per-
son who sins, only he shall die [Ezek. 18:4]. This Talmudic view, attributed to Rabbi Yosi b. anina
(third-century Palestine), maintains that Moses decreed the doctrine of inherited punish-
ment and Ezekiel subsequently annulled it. The teaching openly acknowledges that the Ex-
odus theological dictum only applied for a limited period of time. In addition, the institution
of inherited punishment is attributed not to God but to Moses, who now becomes the pro-
claimer of the thirteen divine attributes (Exod. 34:67).
43
On Origens use of morality as an hermeneutical tool, see Peter William Martens, Origen
and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 16190.
44
Daniel Boyarin, The Eye in the Torah: Ocular Desire in the Midrashic Hermeneutic,
Critical Inquiry 16 (1990): 549. Jewish allegory would only fully reemerge with Maimonides
and other medieval philosophical exegetes; see Warren Zev Harvey, On Maimonides Alle-
gorical Readings of Scripture, in Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period, ed.
Jon Whitman (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 18188; Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, The Bible in the Jewish
Philosophical Tradition, in The Jewish Study Bible, ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (New
York: Oxford, 2004), 104875. Both David Stern and Max Kadushin have highlighted Arthur
Marmorsteins problematic use of allegory to describe the rabbinic school of Ishmaelian
exegesis; see Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, 2nd ed. (New York: Blaisdell, 1965), 277,
278; David Stern, Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis and Contemporary Literary Studies (Ev-
anston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 76.
14

Sins of the Parents
With regard to ancestral guilt, Origen defends the Exodus doctrine by

turning to allegory.45 And, unlike the rabbinic texts cited above which do
not admit the role morality plays in their reinterpretation of the avon avot
passages, Origen is characteristically explicit. In fact, Origen offers up a
prayer that God show him the correct moral interpretation: Now let us also
see what follows, how the sins of the fathers are said to be avenged on the
sons in the third and fourth generation. For the heretics are accustomed
to scoff at us on this word because they say it is not a word of the good
God which says that one is punished for the sins of another. . . . It remains,
therefore, that we pray that the Lord might show us how these precepts are in har-
mony with a just and good God.46 In the pages following this quote, Origen fig-
uratively interprets the term parents in Exod. 20:5 as referring not to hu-
man beings, but to the devil, the Father of Sin, and his retinue. He bases
this reading on the Gospel of John 8:44, where Jesus declares that his oppo-
nents are the sons of the devil: You are of your father [pasq] the devil
[diab kt] and the lusts of your father you will do. According to Origen,
when people are persuaded to sin, they receive the seed of the devil. After
that, when a person finally commits the sin, he or she is labeled a child of
the devil. And, for Origen, the third and fourth generations are those
who assist the children in their sinning.
E. Explaining the Contrast

How can we explain this hermeneutical contrast? Why do the rabbis typi-
cally refrain from announcing their use of ethics as an exegetical tool in
constructing their conceptions of God, while early Christian exegetes ex-
plicitly admit to it? Part of the answer relates to literary genre. The rabbis
do not produce single-authored works. Unlike early Christian thinkers who
produced voluminous books in their own name (Irenaeus, Justin, Origen,
etc.), rabbinic documents such as Mishnah, Midrash, and the Talmud pre-
sent themselves as anthologies, wherein sage teachings are recorded and
the voice of the narrator or author can seldom be heard. As such, there are
fewer first-person meditations concerning the motivations behind exegetical
choices. Aggadic teachings in Midrash are typically terse and fragmentary and
do not lend themselves to extended discursive reflections.
45
Here, Origen follows Philo of Alexandria, who also interprets the passage allegorically.
See Philos On Sobriety 47, 48, found in C. D. Yonge, The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 231. There was also an allegorical reading of Exod. 20:5
rejected by the early Church. In his Excerpta ex Theodoto, Clement (ca. 150215), who headed
the Catechetical School of Alexandria before Origen, quotes Basilides, an Alexandrian Gnos-
tic, who interpreted Exod. 20:5 as a statement about reincarnation. According to Basilides,
fathers refers to the previous lives of a particular soul, and sons, grandsons, and great-
grandsons refers to the later lives of that same soul. See Robert Pierce Casey, The Excerpta ex
Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria (London: Christophers, 1934), 28.
46
Origen, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, trans. Ronald E. Heine (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1982), 329; emphasis mine.
15

Second, the rabbis do not present their conceptions of God philosoph-

ically or rationally but mythically. Their theology, if one can even call it
theology, is what Michael Fishbane has termed exegetical theology: ev-
erything is rooted in scripture.47 As a result, external values and universal
rational principles, as they apply to God, are rarely accordedopenly, that
issignificant interpretive weight.48 The rabbis think more empirically and
more on an ad hoc basis, as they interpret the verses and co-verses in front
of them. To be sure, rabbinic values play a significant role in their herme-
neutic enterprise, as Halbertal has shown, but these values are unstable, typ-
ically un-concretized, and evade classification. They are in flux. Stated differ-
ently, the rabbis generally do not work with a set of ethical or theological
principles when interpreting scripture; rather, they work with impulses.49
By contrast, early Christian thinkers placed greater weight on abstract and
philosophical soundness when generating their theological views and doc-
trines. Their conception of God was more rational and presented in a more
systematic fashion. As a result, early Christian thinkers sought a fixed defini-
tion of God based on a priori moral principles and philosophical consistency,
and they used that definition as a central hermeneutical tool.
These two factorschoice of literary genre and the acceptance or rejec-
tion of a philosophical theologyshould not be regarded as completely sep-
arate points. As David Kraemer has argued, ones religious worldview affects
choice of genre, and genre in turn affects ones religious worldview; they
mutually reinforce each another.50 A philosophical theology can be expressed
best via first-person ruminations; on the other hand, a mythic theology fits
quite comfortably within a fragmentary and anthological framework. Both
of these factorsgenre and theologyhelp explain the distinctive herme-
neutical postures of rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity.
A third factor, unrelated to the first two, is historical context. There was
much that divided second-century Gnostics, Marcionites, Valentinians, pa-
gans, and later Manicheans. But they all had one thing, at least, in common:
they cited dozens of morally problematic Old Testament passages as a way
to refute the emerging orthodox Christian position that the Old Testament
47
See Michael A. Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 2. On the problematic use of the term theol-
ogy with regard to rabbinic thought, see Yair Lorberbaum, In Gods Image: Myth, Theology,
and Law in Classical Judaism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 9294.
48
On the irrationality of divine law in rabbinic Judaism, see Christine Hayes, Whats So Divine
about Divine Law? Ancient Perspectives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 24686.
49
The moral-exegetical impulse of the rabbis to reject inherited punishment is explicitly
expressed in relation to human justice and law. At times, the explicit impulse proves decisive,
as in BT Sanhedrin 44a (case of Achan). But, at other times, the ethical impulseto reject
ancestral punishmentis ultimately rejected, as in Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:16 (case of Sauls
protest), and Leviticus Rabbah 32:8 (case of Mamzer).
50
David Kraemer, Embodied Judaism, Emplaced Judaism, in A Legacy of Learning: Essays in
Honor of Jacob Neusner, ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 267.
16

Sins of the Parents
God is the same God as the Supreme Deity.51 Looking over their shoulders,
early mainstream Christian thinkers who produced apologetic or polem-
ical works to defend the Old Testament and the Old Testament God grap-
pled openly with these moral-theological critiques. While Arthur Marmor-
stein has speculated that these intra-Christian debates might have reached
the rabbis, these ethical critiques of scripture certainly were not directed to-
ward the rabbis.52 This helps explain why the morality of God became a
near-obsession for early Christian thinkers but not for the rabbis.53
I I I . R A B B I N I C A F F I R M AT I O N S O F A N C E S T R A L G U I LT
Until now, we have seen how, through a variety of methods (i.e., limitation,
retranslation, and concession), the dominant rabbinic reading of Exod. 20:
5 rejected ancestral guilt, at least for innocent children. Many scholars, such
as Neudecker and Halbertal have conjectured, and I concur with them, that
these rereadings were driven at least in part by a desire to mitigate the moral
problem.54 That said, it would be a mistake to extrapolate from these inter-
pretations (of one verse alone!) that the rabbis rejected ancestral guilt com-
pletely and consistently, as Melinek and Neudecker do. The opposite is surely
the case, as rabbinic literature contains seventy-five or more midrashic pas-
sages wherein the rabbis employ ancestral guilt to satisfy various other im-
pulses. We can place these impulses into four broad categories: (1) theodicy,
(2) polemic, (3) rhetoric, and (4) hermeneutic. In what follows, I present one
or two examples of each. (More examples are found in the footnotes.)
A. As a Theodicy
Section 22 (version b) of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan presents a debate concern-
ing why bad things happen to good people.55 According to Rabbi Akiva,
51
See above, n. 1.
52
Arthur Marmorstein, The Background of the Haggadah, Hebrew Union College Annual 6
(1929): 141204.
53
The following early Christian exegetes make explicit reference to external critiques of the
Old Testament Gods morality when addressing the question of intergenerational punishment:
Tertullian (Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, 2:15), Origen (Origen, On First Principles [New York:
Harper & Row, 1966], 271, 72), Ambrosiaster (Pseudo-Augustine, Quaestiones veteris et novi testa-
menti Cxxvii, 50, question 14), Augustine (Augustine, The Manichean Debate, 184), and Cyril
(Malley, Hellenism and Christianity, 32728).
54
These readings also solve the problem of biblical contradiction between Exodus 20 and
Ezekiel 18.
55
Avot de-Rabbi Nathan is a rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah Avot. While the precise
dating of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan is uncertain (it has been dated anywhere from the third to
the ninth century), the work only contains names of early rabbis (tannaim) (see Hermann Le-
berecht Strack and Gnter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. Markus N. A.
Bockmuehl [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996], 22527). Thus, regardless of when Avot de-Rabbi Na-
than reached its final form (the work exists in two recensions, known as a and b), it presents itself
as an early rabbinic work. Moreover, while Avot de-Rabbi Nathan contains late rabbinic material,
scholars are convinced that the work also preserves early traditions, perhaps even authentic tan-
naitic traditions.
17

God causes the righteous to suffer as a means of inspiring them to become

completely righteous [ ] 56 But for those who are already perfectly
righteous, no suffering is required. One of Akivas students, Rabbi Yossi
ben Halafta, disagrees, offering this alternative theodicy: Righteous person
and evil is to himthis is a righteous person the son of a wicked man. His
deeds are good but his fathers deeds are not good. His father did not lay
up merit for him [the son] to enjoy in this world, but he [the son] has laid
up merit for himself to enjoy in the life of the world to come.57 According to
Yossi, all children, even the righteous, are punished for the sins of their par-
ents. Yossi appropriates the doctrine of ancestral guilt as a quasi-theodicy,
explaining why only some righteous children suffer, but not others. For
him, God causes righteous people to suffer because they have wicked par-
ents; and to other righteous people, God grants happy lives because they
have righteous parents.58 While this theodicy fails to offer an ethical defense
of God for punishing the innocent, it does provide a rationale for the seem-
ing randomness and arbitrariness of life, that is, why some suffer, and oth-
ers do not. Yossis perspective is rooted in a belief that humans are only re-
warded and punished for their actions in the next world. By contrast, this
world is a place where ones fortunes, at least to some extent, are deter-
mined by the actions of ones parents. Uncharacteristically, no scriptural
proof is adduced to justify the distinction; the claim is just made.
B. As a Polemic
Instead of employing ancestral guilt as a theodicy (as Yossi does), Rabbi Gam-
liel and Rabbi Joshua appropriate it as a polemical tool:
Minors, who are children of the wicked [ ] of the land, do not have a
share in the World to Come as it says: For lo! That day is at hand, burning like an oven.
All the arrogant and all the doers of evil shall be straw, [and the day that is comingsaid the
LORD of Hostsshall burn them to ashes and leave of them neither root nor branch [Mal. 3:
19]. These are the words of Rabbi Gamliel. Rabbi Joshua says: They have a share in
the world to come . . . [But they both agree] that gentile children of the wicked will
not live or be judged [in the World to Come].59
Chapter 13 of Tosefta Sanhedrin contains numerous discussions about who

will merit a place in the World to Come. It begins with Gamliel (second
century) claiming that young Jewish children of the wicked will not receive
56
Abot de Rabbi Nathan, version b, ed. Solomon Schechter (New York: Feldheim Press, 1967),
46. The translation is mine, though I made use of Anthony J. Saldarini, The Fathers According to
Rabbi Nathan (Abot De Rabbi Nathan) Version B (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 138.
57
Abot de Rabbi Nathan, 46.
58
See BT Berakhot 7a, where Yossis theodicy is placed into the mouth of God. For another
use of ancestral guilt as a theodicy, see Midrash Psalms 1 (God killed the children of the Gen-
eration of the Flood for the sins of their parents).
59
Tosefta, Sanhedrin 13:1; emphasis mine.
18

Sins of the Parents
a share in the Next World () . For scriptural support, Gamliel re-

interprets two phrases in Mal. 3:19. For Gamliel, the day that is coming
( ) is not the destructive (for this world) Day of the Lord, as the con-
text suggests, but the afterlife or Messianic Era. Second, the phrase neither
root nor branch is not read metaphorically as indicating total destruction
for the wicked, as a simple reading implies, but rather as the children of the
wicked. They, too, according to this interpretation, will totally perish, thereby
missing out on the World to Come. Disagreeing with Gamliel, Joshua inter-
prets root and branch so as to include Jewish children of the wicked in the
World to Come. However, the Tosefta adds that Joshua agrees with Gamliel
that gentile children of the wicked will not live [in the World to Come]
[] . No proof text is adduced to support Joshuas distinc-
tion between Jew and Gentile.60
Instead of finding ways to limit or deny intergenerational punishment,
Gamliel embarks on a counterintuitive reading of Mal. 3:19 to generate a the-
ology of intergenerational punishment (albeit for the World to Come alone).
And Joshua, too, who agrees with Gamliels position as it relates to Gentile
children (of the wicked), fails to offer any scriptural backing. Thus, since these
rabbis generate cases of intergenerational punishment without any scrip-
tural pressure to do so, this points to the rabbinic privileging of ancestral guilt
over individual responsibility. In other words, had Gamliel or Joshua wanted
to deny the theological premise of ancestral guilt, they could have easily done
so by rendering the unambiguous passage in its simplest fashion. Their deci-
sion to generate a theology that includes ancestral guilt, then, seems to have
been driven by their animosity toward Gentiles or wicked Jews.61
C. As a Threatening Device
The rabbis also utilize ancestral guilt as a rhetorical tool to motivate Jews
to comply with specific rabbinic laws. For example, according to the Jeru-
salem Talmud, Rabbi Yehuda states that because of the sin of vows, children
die [] . 62 The rhetorical agenda becomes clear when
one notes the strained use of the biblical source. In Jeremiah 2, God tells
the prophet that Gods multiple chastisements against the prophets people
(literally, children) were unsuccessful. It did not motivate them to repent:
To no purpose did I smite your children [ ;] they would
not accept correction ( Jer. 2:30). Yehuda, however, transforms the mean-
ing of the phrase. n its context, the term means for nothingthat
is, God regards His chastisements against the Israelites (literally, Jeremiahs
60
For parallels to the Tosefta, see BT Sanhedrin 110b, Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version a)
36, Ecclesiastes Rabbah 9:2, and JT Berakhot 9:1.
61
Also see Sifre Deuteronomy 332, which similarly distinguishes between Jew and Gentile.
62
Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 2:6 according to MS Leiden.
19

children)asuseless.Reading without attending to context, however, Yehuda

has refer not to Gods actions, but to the Israelites who sinfully make
vain vows (see Exod. 20:7). Simply put, according to Yehuda, the verse no lon-
ger shows God bemoaning His ineffective punishments, but rather God de-
claring that He would punish the righteous children of certain sinning Isra-
elites.
While the Jerusalem Talmud has Yehuda rely on a passage from Jeremiah
to prove that children die for the sins of (unfulfilled) vows, the Babylonian
Talmud (Shabbat 32b) has Yehuda turn to a passage from Ecclesiastes: Do
not let your mouth bring you into disfavor [via unfulfilled vows], and dont
plead before the messenger that it was an error, but fear God; else God may
be angered by your talk and destroy the work of your hands []
(5:5). According to the Babylonian Talmud, Yehuda reinterprets the last
phrase, the work of your hands, not as your possessions, which would
be the simple reading, but as your sons and daughters. Thus, the verse is
now read to mean that God will destroy the children of those who make un-
fulfilled vows.
In addition to the sin of unfulfilled vows, the Babylonian Talmud cites other
examples of sins that generate inherited punishment: failure to study Torah,
failure to erect mezuzot (a place on the doorpost where one places sections
of the Torah), and failure to wear Tzizit (fringes on four-cornered garments).
In each of these Talmudic cases, ancestral guilt served as a mechanism to
frighten late-antique Jews into submitting to rabbinic law. My reading is
strengthened by the fact that the redactional contexts for these teachings
include many grave punishments for relatively minor transgressions. More-
over, the proof texts for the cases of inherited punishment are forced and
counterintuitive, and thus indicate a rabbinic agenda to promote vicarious
guilt when it serves their interests.63
D. As a Hermeneutical Key
In dozens of passages, the rabbis claim that God punished sinning biblical
heroes by afflicting their progeny. By doing so, the rabbis were able to jus-
tify moments of suffering throughout the biblical period and Jewish history.
Here are just a few examples: because Abraham questioned God, the chil-
dren of Jacob were enslaved in Egypt for four-hundred years;64 because
Abraham signed a peace treaty with Abimelech (Gen. 21), his descendants
would face the sword;65 because Jacob referred to himself as a God, Ja-
63
For other examples where the rabbis use inherited punishment as a threatening device to
inure compliance with specific Torah laws, see Deuteronomy Rabbah 8:4, BT Yoma 38b, BT Ke-
tubot 8b, BT Shavuot 39a, M. Semahot 4:3, and M. Kallah 1:20, Tanhuma (Buber) metzorah 3.
64
Tanhuma (Buber) kedoshim 13.
65
Genesis Rabbah 54:4.
20

Sins of the Parents
cobs daughter Dinah was raped;66 because Jacob deceived Esau, his descen-
dant Mordechai experienced pain;67 because Judah ( Jacobs son) failed to
finish the mitzvah of rescuing Joseph, his two children died;68 because Jo-
sephs brothers sold Joseph into slavery, the Israelites were enslaved in
Egypt,69 and ten rabbis in the second century were martyred by the Romans.70
In these cases, just as above, the rabbinic proof text counters a simple reading
of the biblical verse.
In many of these instances, the theology of intergenerational punishment
supplied the midrashic author with a method of critiquing the actions of a
biblical hero even where scripture makes no mention of any indiscretion.71
This appropriation represents the flip side to using ancestral guilt as a the-
odicy: it explains not the suffering of the innocent, but an earlier unpun-
ished crime that generated unexplained suffering. These rabbinic teachings
reaffirm that God strictly administers justice, even after many years, and also
underscores the interconnectedness of all of Jewish history.
The sages also use ancestral guilt in a second hermeneutical fashion: to
explain the seeming arbitrary juxtaposition of biblical sections. For exam-
ple, justifying the unexplained connection between the purity laws of men-
struation (Leviticus 12) and the laws of leprosy (Leviticus 13), Leviticus Rab-
bah posits: who causes a new-born child to be leprous? Its mother, who did
not observe her days of menstruation impurity.72 To re-anchor the reality
of ancestral guilt, Rabbi Avin cites Ezekiels famous parable that parents
eat sour grapes and their childrens teeth are blunted (Ezek. 18:2).73 This
interpretation is quite remarkable, since Ezekiel himself, via divine revela-
tion, repudiates the folk parable in the very next passage: As I livedeclares
the Lord GODthis proverb shall no longer be current among you in Israel
(Lev. 18:3). Avin, however, completely ignores the prophetic rejection. This
problematic proof text thus underscores the extent to which the rabbis, when
they were so inclined, interpreted scripture counterintuitively in order to
produce theologies of intergenerational punishment.
I V . M U LT I V O C A L I T Y : M I D R A S H V E R S U S TA L M U D
How can we reconcile the two sections of this article? Why would the rabbis
reject the notion that innocent children are punished for the sins of their
66
Ibid., 79:8.
67
Ibid., 67:4.
68
Ibid., 85:3; Deuteronomy Rabbah 8:4, BT Sotah 13b, Tanhuma vayeshev 13.
69
Exodus Rabbah 30:7
70
See Midrash Mishlei (Proverbs) 1:13 and Midrash Bereshit Rabbati, ed. Chanoch Albeck
( Jerusalem: Wagshal, 1984), 177.
71
On the rabbinic tendency to lay blame on biblical heroes, see Ari Schwat, Innocent in
Scripture, Guilty in Rabbinic Literature, Talele Orot 12 (2006): 1399.
72
Leviticus Rabbah 15:5.
73
Ibid.
21

parents when interpreting Exodus 20 but at the same time produce new
teachings that promote ancestral guilt? While this inconsistency might
point to differences of opinion among individual rabbis, it more probably
reflected internal tensions within rabbinic culture at large. Indeed, the rab-
bis privileged individual responsibility as a default position, but they also
argued for familial responsibility, even for the innocent, when respond-
ing to certain impulses, pressures, and concerns, such as those mentioned
above: theodicean, polemical, rhetorical, and hermeneutical.74 These vary-
ing rabbinic agendas naturally generate inconsistent teachings.75
Competing rabbinic voices and values inhere comfortably within the lit-
erary discourse of nonlegal Midrash, which, by its very nature, is terse, frag-
mentary, and unsystematic. The redactors/editors of Midrash almost never
concern themselves with reconciling contradictory opinions. We have no
rabbinic hierarchy, as we do in the Jerusalem Talmud or Babylonian Tal-
mud, where the status of a particular sage is determined by the century in
which he lived. Moreover, I would suggest that the rabbinic sidelining of
specific ethical or theological principles as factors of interpretation gave
the rabbis greater flexibility in adopting inconsistent views and interpreta-
tions. In other words, the rabbis could claimin response to the charge of
inconsistencythat local scriptural anomalies dictate the interpretation at
hand, not broad unchanging principles. By contrast, had the rabbis estab-
lished fixed moral or theological concepts by which the Hebrew Bible must
be read, they would have had a harder time ignoring conflicting voices em-
bedded discreetly within the midrashic corpus. Using our topic as an exam-
ple, had the rabbis openly acknowledged that their reinterpretation of Exo-
dus 20 was driven by ethical unease about vicarious guilt, their subsequent
affirmation of intergenerational punishment in other contexts would have
been more difficult to justify.
74
Even one theologian, Augustine, changed his views on intergenerational punishment due
to shifting polemical context; see above n. 3.
75
A related example would be whether the rabbis conceive God killing innocent people
when flooding nearly the entire world in Noahs days. To highlight the egregious nature of cer-
tain sins, Leviticus Rabbah (23:9) argues in the affirmative: The Generation of the Flood was
blotted out from the world because they were steeped in whoredom [ ]. . . in every instance
where you find the prevalence of whoredom, an androlepsia [a Greek word meaning to snatch
people] comes upon the world and slays both the righteous [ ]and the wicked [].
While Leviticus Rabbah invokes Gods collective punishment as a rhetorical tool to critique
sexual promiscuity, a later passage from Tanhuma (Buber) Bamidbar 32 subtly inverses and un-
dermines the earlier tradition to emphasize the value of individual responsibility (emphasis
mine): The nature of God is not like the nature of flesh and blood. In the case of a king of flesh
and blood, when a province rebels against him, he acts against it with an indiscriminate punish-
ment [androlepsia] and kills the good along with the bad without considering: this one has
sinned and this one has not sinned [] . Instead he kills the whole of it [the prov-
ince]. Now, God is not like that, but rather at the time when a generation provoked Him, e
saves the righteous and destroys the wicked. . . . For example, the generation of the Flood pro-
voked Him. So He destroyed them, as stated: And all existence on earth was blotted out [Gen. 7:23]
but He rescued Noah as stated: And Noah found favor with the Lord [Gen. 6:8].
22

Sins of the Parents
Thus, the distinctive exegetical theology of the midrashic rabbis is fun-

damentally interconnected with the multivocality of midrashic discourse. Be-
cause rabbinic biblical interpretation is an empirical enterprisethat is, it re-
sponds to a particular text under discussionrabbinic teachings can more
readily shift their theosophical assertions. On the other hand, had rabbinic
biblical interpretation been based on and fueled by explicit, preexisting theo-
logical, philosophical, or moral principles as in early Christianity, then rabbis
would have had a more difficult time overcoming overt contradiction.
Until now, I have commented on rabbinic exegesis and theology as found
in the various Midrashim (e.g., Mekhilta, Sifra, Numbers Rabbah, Tanhuma-
Yelammedenu). Late rabbinic discourse in the Babylonian Talmud and the
medieval Midrashim, however, is quite another story. While the Babylonian
Talmud, like the Midrashim, can be described as a multivocal work, it is, un-
like the Midrashim, obsessed with coherence. Consequently, discovering in-
ner-rabbinic inconsistencies and contradictions is central to the Talmudic
project. To be sure, the editors of the Babylonian Talmud do not always rec-
oncile these competing voices; at times they acknowledge, quite proudly,
rabbinic differences of opinion. But even this admission of debate should
be understood as a method by which the Talmudic editors achieve coher-
ence. In these cases, the Talmud recognizes inconsistency, and then resolves
it via multivocality. This literary mode sharply contrasts with the aggadic mid-
rashic compilations, both early and late, wherein inconsistencies are rarely ex-
posed and differences of opinion rarely occur.76 Not surprisingly, the Babylo-
nian Talmud is the first rabbinic work to problematize conflicting voices with
regard to intergenerational punishment. After presenting both opinions, the
text ultimately rejects the notion that God punishes innocent children for the
sins of the parents.77
76
On multivocality in rabbinic literature, see Daniel Boyarin, Socrates and the Fat Rabbis (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); David Charles Kraemer, The Mind of the Talmud: An In-
tellectual History of the Bavli (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Barry S. Wimpfheimer,
Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories, 1st ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, 2011); Richard Hidary, Dispute for the Sake of Heaven: Legal Pluralism in the Talmud,
Brown Judaic Studies (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2010); Steven Fraade, Rabbinic
Polysemy and Pluralism Revisited: Between Praxis and Thematization, AJS Review 31, no. 1
(2007): 140; Stern, Midrash and Theory, chap. 1.
77
BT Berakhot 7a. While the Babylonian Talmud evinces a greater concern for consistency
and coherence than the Midrashim, it mirrors aggadic Midrash in that it eschews, generally
speaking, the early Christian appropriation of ethical principles when engaged in exegetical
work. That said, I would hypothesize that the Babylonian Talmud, more than aggadic Midrash,
openly acknowledges that ethical impulses (rather than ethical principles) animate its exeget-
ical decisions. Perhaps relatedly, the Babylonian Talmud overtly utilizes the independent cate-
gory of reason ( )to discover divine laws (see Eliezer Berkovits, Not in Heaven: The Nature
and Function of Halakha [New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1983], 38). These two dimensions
of the Babylonian Talmudgreater ethical explicitness and the use of reason as an indepen-
dent legal categorymight reflect a stronger editorial hand than in aggadic Midrash. Further
study on these issues is a desideratum.
23

Like the Babylonian Talmud, the early medieval Midrash Bereshit Rabbati
(circa eleventh century) notes the conflicting rabbinic attitudes on inter-
generational punishment and then favors one of the views.78 Remarkably,
however, Bereshit Rabbati relocates the setting of the debate. No longer an
earthly contest, we now have a heavenly argument: The archangel Michael
argues against intergenerational punishment, and the Attribute of Justice
(now distinct from God) argues for intergenerational punishment. The
martyrdom of ten well known rabbis in the second century CE at the hands
of the Romans was the historical moment that triggered the mythic contest.
As noted above, rabbinic sources had theologically justified the legendary
Roman murder of ten second-century rabbis, including most famously Rabbi
Akiva, by regarding it as vicarious punishment for the sale of Joseph. Moshe
ha-Darshan, the French composer of Bereshit Rabbati, likely struggled
with this rabbinic justification because it conflicts with the biblical position
that children are not punished for the sins of their ancestors. As a method
to resolve the issue, Bereshit Rabbati reified the struggle into a heavenly de-
bate.
Echoing the Babylonian Talmud, Bereshit Rabbati acknowledges the in-
consistent rabbinic attitudes toward inherited punishment, but then places
them into the mouths of mythic characters. This late Midrash nicely illus-
trates the cultural tensions surrounding ancestral guilt in the early medie-
val period. On the one hand, a theology that promotes punishing innocent
descendants for the sins of ancestors committed thousands of years prior
seems not only unjust, but even counters scripture, as even Exodus 20 only
applies ancestral guilt for a few generations. On the other hand, a theology
of inherited punishment could provide consolation and justification for the
tragic and unexplained murder of ten great rabbis. It could also explain why
the sinful actions of Josephs brothers, at least in the Bible, go unpunished.
Ultimately, Bereshit Rabbati has God accepting the arguments of the Attri-
bute of Justice; the martyrdom of Rabbi Akiva and others is theologically sanc-
tioned. Thus, whereas the Babylonian Talmud accords victory to the anti
avon avot camp, Bereshit Rabbati champions the most radical avon avot
position: punishment can be inherited by the righteous even after four gen-
erations.
V. CONCLUSION
This essay problematized the rabbinic attitude toward individual responsi-

bility. It argued that, unlike early Christian exegetes, the rabbis championed
a theology of intergenerational punishment when it met a particular im-
pulse (rhetorical, polemical, etc.). Otherwise, they sought ways to limit the
moral problem of vicarious punishment through reinterpretations of Exo-
78
Midrash Bereshit Rabbati, 177.
24

Sins of the Parents
dus 20. This rabbinic multivocality in the realm of theology is linked with a
distinctive hermeneutical feature present in Midrash: in contrast to early
Christian thinkers, the rabbis did not openly employ moral principles as in-
terpretive tools.79 By hiding or dislocating the particular value or impulse un-
dergirding their exegesis, the rabbis could acquire greater flexibility to adopt
contradictory positions.
The central role played by ethical principles in early Christian hermeneu-
tics is summed up by Augustine, who writes that whatever appears in the di-
vine Word that does not literally pertain to virtuous behavior . . . you must
take to be figurative.80 Moreover, beginning in the time of John Cassian
(fourth century) and reaching its peak in the writings of Aquinas, the Church
maintained a fourfold scriptural interpretation that included the tropologi-
cal or moral level of meaning, which corresponded to the virtue of love.81
Conversely, the accepted fourfold Jewish interpretation of scripture as con-
cretized in the medieval period does not contain a moral level of meaning.
This crucial hermeneutical contrast was not born in the medieval period
but has its roots further back in late antiquity.82
79
This type of Jewish hermeneutic would only emerge in the ninth century with Saadia
Gaon; see Saadia ben Joseph, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. Samuel Rosenblatt (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948), 265, 330.
80
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson (New York: Liberal Arts Press,
1958), 87, 88.
81
See David Steinmetz, The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis, Theology Today 37, no. 1
(1980): 30, 31.
82
On the fourfold method as a medieval Jewish hermeneutic, see Moshe Idel, Absorbing Per-
fections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 42937.
25


Dov Weiss, Sins of The Parents in Rabbinic and Early Christian Literature

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Sins of the Parents in Rabbinic

and Early Christian Literature*

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forced to adopt a number of exegetical techniques to neutralize the moral

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I. THE HEBREW BIBLE

idea of ancestral merit () . He also, problematically, makes no mention of the rabbinic

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II. ETHICS AS AN EXPLICIT HERMENEUTIC?

A number of rabbinic sources limit or undermine completely a straightfor-

A. Limitation: Continuity of Sin

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An anonymous teaching found in this early Midrash posits that a child of

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B. Retranslation: From Ancestral Guilt to Ancestral Merit

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With poked understood as remembering rather than punishing, Ye-

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C. Concession: A Divine Mistake

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Numbers Rabbah II has Moses protest Gods doctrine of ancestral guilt as

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This Tanhuma-Yelammedenu teaching depicts a dramatic confrontation

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With regard to ancestral guilt, Origen defends the Exodus doctrine by

E. Explaining the Contrast

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Second, the rabbis do not present their conceptions of God philosoph-

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God causes the righteous to suffer as a means of inspiring them to become

Chapter 13 of Tosefta Sanhedrin contains numerous discussions about who

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a share in the Next World () . For scriptural support, Gamliel re-

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children)asuseless.Reading without attending to context, however, Yehuda

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Thus, the distinctive exegetical theology of the midrashic rabbis is fun-

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This essay problematized the rabbinic attitude toward individual responsi-

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