Baraita of The Thirty-Two Rules
A Baraita in the introduction to the Midrash HaGadol giving the thirty-two hermeneutic rules according to which the Tanakh is interpreted. Abul-Walid ibn Janah is the oldest authority who drew upon this Baraita, but he did not mention it by name. Rashi makes frequent use of it in his commentaries on the Torah and the Talmud. He either briefly calls it the thirty-two rules (Hor. 3a) or designates it as the "Baraita (or sections ) of R. Eliezer ben Jose HaGelili" (Gen. ii. 8; Ex. xiv. 24). Also the Karaite Judah Hadassi, who incorporated it in his Eshkol HaKofer, recognized in it the work of this R. Eliezer.
It has not been preserved in an independent form; and knowledge of it has been gathered only from the recension transmitted in the methodological work "Keritot," by Samson of Chinon. The beginning of the Baraita in this recension reads as follows: "Whenever you come across the words of R. Eliezer ben Jose HaGelili, make a funnel of your ear." Though this sentence already existed in the Baraita as known to Hadassi (see Bacher, in "Monatsschrift," xl. 21), it is naturally a later addition taken from the Talmud (Ḥul. 89a); but it shows that the Baraita of the Thirty-two Rules was early regarded as the work of Eliezer ben Jose HaGelili. There are strong grounds for the supposition that the opening sentence of the Baraita ran: "R. Eliezer, the son of R. Jose the Galilean, said." This is the reading of Joshua ha-Levi and Isaiah Horowitz (see Bloch, p. 53); and it is believed that the name of the author did not drop out until the addition of the sentence from the Talmud. Consequently, no adequate reasons exist for doubting the authorship of R. Eliezer.
Distinction must, however, be made between two different constituent elements of the Baraita. The enumeration of the thirty-two hermeneutic rules in the first section constitutes the real Baraita as composed by R. Eliezer; and the explanations of each rule in the following thirty-two sections form, as it were, a Gemara to the real Baraita. In these thirty-two sections sayings are cited of the tannaim Akiba, Ishmael, Jose, Nehemiah, Nehorai, Rabbi, Hiyya, and of the amoraim Johanan and Jose ben Hanina. Although these names, especially the last two, show that portions of the Baraita were interpolated long after Eliezer ben Jose, yet no general conclusions may be drawn from it with regard to the whole work. The terminology is prevailingly tannaitic, even in the second portion. Bacher ("Terminologie der Jüdischen Schriftauslegung," p. 101) correctly remarks that the exclusively tannaitic expression "zeker le-dabar" is found at the end of section ix. (compare also the archaic phrase "hashomea' sabur" for which "at sabur" is usually said). The second part, therefore, leaving later interpolations out of consideration, may also have sprung from the tannaitic period, probably from the school of R. Eliezer. It is noteworthy that the old scholars make citations from the Baraita that are not found in its present form, thus casting a doubt upon the correctness of the present recension (see Reifmann, pp. 6, 7).
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