Talmudical Hermeneutics - Classes of Rules

Classes of Rules

Compilations of such hermeneutic rules were made in the earliest times. The tannaitic tradition recognizes three such collections, namely:

1. the 7 Rules of Hillel (baraita at the beginning of Sifra; Avot of Rabbi Natan xxxvii.)
2. the 13 Rules of Rabbi Ishmael (baraita at the beginning of Sifra; this collection is merely an amplification of that of Hillel)
3. the 32 Rules of rabbi Eliezer ben Jose HaGelili. These last-mentioned rules are contained in an independent baraita (Baraita on the Thirty-two Rules) which has been incorporated and preserved only in later works. They are intended for haggadic interpretation, but many of them are valid for the Halakah as well, coinciding with the rules of Hillel and Ishmael.

It must be borne in mind, however, that neither Hillel, Ishmael, nor Eliezer ben Jose sought to give a complete enumeration of the rules of interpretation current in his day, but that they omitted from their collections many rules which were then followed. For some reason they restricted themselves to a compilation of the principal methods of logical deduction, which they called "middot" (measures), although the other rules also were known by that term (comp. Sifre, Num. 2 ).