מעשה שעשו אנשי טבירייה הביאו סילון של צונין לתוך אמה שלחמין
אמרו להן חכמ’ אם בשבת כחמין שהוחמו בשבת אסורים ברחיצה
ובשתייה ואם ביום טוב כחמין שהוחמו ביום טוב אסורין ברחיצה
ומותרין בשתייה
There was a case / It once happened that the people of Tiberias brought a pipe of cold water through a branch of the hot springs. The sages said to them: If on the Sabbath, these waters have the status of water heated on the Sabbath, they are forbidden for use in bathing or drinking; if on the festival day, they have the status of water heated on the festival day, they are forbidden for use in bathing but permitted for use in drinking. (Mishnah Shabbat 3:4)
In this story, when the rabbis inform the people of Tiberias that the water from their “pipe of cold water running through a branch of the hot springs” cannot be used on the Sabbath and can be used only for drinking on festivals, they take for granted that these “commoners” should be following rabbinic law. At the same time, the story suggests that the people of Tiberias have already created heated water in a manner that the rabbis see as permitted only in very limited circumstances, and they have done so without consulting any rabbis. As Moshe Simon-Shoshan points out, even after the fact, these people of Tiberias do not seem to have solicited the rabbis’ opinion.71 The rabbis inform the people about the correct law, but it is never clear whether the people follow the rabbinic ruling in the end. From the rabbinic perspective, this group of Tiberians seem to be members of the people of Israel whom they hope to bring under their orbit so that they will conform to what the rabbis believe is the correct way of practicing the traditional Judaean way of life.72
Presumably, however, these Tiberians—and, for that matter, each of the overlapping subgroups of Judaeans—had their own ritual authorities who determined how they would practice these and all traditional rituals. As Annette Reed writes with respect to Judaean believers in Jesus, “contrary to the tendency to treat the rabbis as the sole arbiters of halakha in late antique Judaism, some of [the late antique authors and communities who appear to have accepted Jesus as a special figure in salvation history] seem to have been no less preoccupied with matters such as dietary restrictions and ritual purification.”73 It is possible that these other Judaeans simply decided on their own what this practice should be, yet I find it far more likely that they turned to alternative authoritative arbiters of the tradition. Part of the reason for this conclusion is that a unique understanding of what was proper observance often defined difference between subgroups. For the rabbis of the Mishnah, for instance, differing observance defined the ‘am hā’ārets, the “sinners,” and perhaps the people of a given city. So, too, according to the Mishnah, a particular approach to the Temple and possibly to menstrual purity laws helped define the Samaritans.74 The Christian text Didascalia Apostolorum, likely contemporaneous with the Mishnah, provides similar evidence that even among Judaean believers in Jesus, a unique version of how rituals should be practiced was also defining of difference. Describing different groups of heretical Christians, the authors write: “Again others of them taught that a man should not eat flesh, and said that a man must not eat anything that has a soul in it. Others, however, said that one was bound to withhold from swine only, but might eat those things which the Law pronounces clean.”75 For each of these two groups of (Judaean) Jesus-believing “heretics,” a distinct view on proper biblically based ritual practice defines them against the other as well as against “proper” Christians (in the authors’ view).76 Each subgroup thus seems to have tied its identity to a particular view of correct practice and so must have had its own ritual authorities and experts to determine what this practice should be.
Who were these other ritual authorities? The people of cities and towns—common Judaeans—likely had their own leaders and, in the case of Sepphoris and Tiberias, perhaps even official leaders. Local leaders, even if they embraced Roman culture and ritual practice, may have claimed authority to determine how Judaean ritual or hybrid Judaean-Roman ritual should be performed. Alternatively, there may have been experts, perhaps scribes or others devoted to the interpretation of Torah and traditional law like the rabbis, to whom the leaders may have delegated this responsibility or to whom the people turned. Two types of individual Judaeans may have been particularly suited to function as legal-ritual experts for the common Judaeans of cities or villages: the priest and the synagogue leader. Priests traditionally served just this role of legal-ritual expert, as evidenced by Josephus’s claim that in his youth (he was a priest), the high priests would consult him for his expertise on ta nomima (“customs,” “legal matters,” or perhaps traditions of the Torah).77 Abundant evidence, including that of the Mishnah, shows that despite the loss of the Temple, many continued to be identified as priests.78 These priests may not have formed separate groups—as evidenced by the presence of a number of priests in the rabbinic group—yet individual priests may have continued to claim traditional authority to determine ritual practice, and groups of Judaeans may have sought (non-rabbinic) priestly expertise.
Though there are no explicit references in the Mishnah to such competing priestly authority, there are hints of such competition. On more than one occasion, brief narratives recall courts of priests in Temple times that seem to stand in contrast to and in competition with the main court or with sages—groups that, I will argue, the rabbis saw as their predecessors in Temple times. Thus in Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:7, a certain doctor named Tōviyāh (Tobias), together with his freed slave, witnesses the first sliver of the new moon: “and the priests accepted him and his son but invalidated his freed slave. And when they came before the Court [bēit din], they accepted him and his freed slave, but invalidated his son.”
The story is presumably set in Temple times (indicated by “the Court”), but in depicting a group of priests who form an alternative to the (pre-)rabbinic Court, it is quite likely projecting contemporary tension with competing priests back into Temple times.79 In another passage, Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai, of the earliest generations of rabbis, criticizes the priests’ interpretation of a verse that tends to serve their own advantage. Though it is unclear whether in the story Yoḥanan ben Zakkai refers to priests of his own generation, and thus whether the text imagines groups of post-destruction priests who claim competing legal-ritual authority, the passage suggests that such competition may have existed even in the time of the Mishnah.80
In addition to priests, a second type of functionary who may have exerted authority over ritual practice was the synagogue leader. Though there is no uncontested archaeological evidence of monumental synagogues—large-scale decorated synagogue buildings of a variety of architectural types—in Roman Palestine at the time the Mishnah was produced, the Mishnah and several early Christian texts presume that the institution of the synagogue (בית הכנסת [bēit hakkĕneset] in the Mishnah) existed, and there is evidence that there were non-monumental synagogues at the time.81 On a number of occasions in the Mishnah and Tosefta, there is mention of leaders or functionaries in the synagogue (rōsh hakkĕneset or ḥazzan hakkĕneset) who play a central role in the performance of its ritual.82 If, as some argue, the rabbis had no authority in the synagogue, these leaders or functionaries of the synagogue may have been the ones to determine how ritual was practiced, and so may have been competition for the rabbis.83 This may be why there is a case story in Tosefta Terumot 2:13 in which a synagogue head (rōsh hakkĕneset) consults with Rabban Gamliel over a matter of ritual practice. The story of such a functionary asking a rabbi to tell him how to act may well be a fantasy in which the competing ritual authority actually depends on a rabbi in order to know the proper way of doing the ritual. Despite the portrayal in this toseftan story, synagogue heads—who