Coautoría funcional

Romm- Vilna Florence Jerusalem Munich Karlsruhe42

יאטחו םיער/riches/wall/sniffing out balsam/Rav Yose (Yosef) Payment for oxen/orphan/ford/bricks

Garlic and onion Garlic and onion Garlic only Garlic and onion Garlic

4 Judges 4 Judges 6 Judges 6 Judges43 _{4 judges}

Miscarriage Miscarriage Miscarriage Miscarriage Miscarriage

Ass's Ear Ass's Ear Ass's Ear Ass's ear Ass's ear

Injury/bleeding Injury/bleeding Injury/bleeding Injury/bleeding Injury/bleeding ( אתוסא)

Ford -fuller Eliezer - assault Eliezer - assault Eliezer - assault Ford - fuller? Eliezer - assault Party - Eliezer Bed- Eliezer Ford - fuller Eliezer assault?

Bed - Eliezer Ford - Laundryman Party - Eliezer Bed - Eliezer Party

Crosses Garment

Assault (Judges rule)

Poor given coins Bed - Eliezer Poor given coins Poor given coins Bed

Party - garment Poor given coins --- --- ?

Young girl Young girl Young girl Young girl Young girl

42. The Karlsruhe MS is not available on the HUJI web-site and the order is not always clear from Rabinovitz,

Dikdukei Sofrim.

43. The Munich manuscript lists only four judges, and originally seems to have read 'four' but was corrected to 'six'. See manuscript on http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/talmud and Rabinovitz, Dikdukei Sofrim, ad loc.

The Florence manuscript resembles the printed Romm-Vilna edition most closely, in that it contains all the episodes which are in the printed edition, whereas in the Munich manuscript the party is missing and in the Jerusalem the episode of the fuller is missing.

However, the order in the printed edition differs from all the manuscripts. It is more coher- ent. The judgements for wounding and payment for the ford lead to the episode of the fuller crossing the ford (D). The fuller is made to pay for the injury that is done to him. A fuller may be specified here because his occupation would be considered lowly, involving dirty, smelly work. Fullers are also seen elsewhere as ignorant and insolent, eg. bBava Metzia 83b. It may also be because his occupation involved work at the river, and so the charge for cross- ing it would affect him particularly severely. The fuller is forced to pay the price exacted from him.

This episode is immediately followed by Eliezer, Abraham's servant, appearing before the judges, assaulting the judge and demanding payment (E). Eliezer uses the perverse judge- ment against the fuller to his advantage against the judges. This order also gives continuity to the narrative about Eliezer, as his refusal to sleep in the bed (F) follows with less intervening material.

Curiously, in the manuscripts, Eliezer claims he has taken a vow not to sleep in a bed since the death of Sarah. However, in the Romm-Vilna edition he refers to the death of his mother. The uniformity of the reading 'Sarah' in the manuscripts suggests that there was a deliberate change to 'his mother' in the printed edition.

The Eliezer narrative is then interrupted to tell us that if a poor person arrived in Sodom, he would be given a dinar by everyone, but no-one would give him a loaf of bread (G). When he died, each would reclaim his dinar. This interruption emphasises the callousness of the

Men of Sodom. They are well aware that what they do will result in the death of the poor man. This is up to now the nearest they come to direct murder, and serves to further prepare us for the climax of the narrative.

By contrast, the next episode, concerning the party (H), which returns to Eliezer, is comical. It tells of how he further subverts the customs of Sodom, where it is forbidden to invite a stranger to a feast on pain of removing one's garments. Eliezer claims that each of the guests in turn has invited him, so each is forced to remove his garments. This serves to lighten the narrative before the climax, an effective dramatic device. It also takes us back to a part of the Job verse (actually a conflation of Job 24 verses 10 and 7) which was quoted earlier and has not yet been interpreted: 'They cause him to go naked without clothing, that they have no cov- ering in the cold'. Where this might appropriately have been used to describe the fate of visit- ors to Sodom, in the end it is the inhabitants of Sodom who have their garments removed. Like the episode of the orphan and the oxen, this subverts the meaning of the previously quoted verses from Job.

The final part of the section relates the fate of the young girl who offers food to a poor person (J). This is uniformly the ending in all manuscripts. It sums up the enormity of the wrongdo- ing of Sodom. A young girl, representing the most vulnerable segment of society, is acting with compassion and humanity, embodying all that the Men of Sodom are not. She, alone of all the inhabitants, does what should be done. Because of her act of kindness, she is subjected to a cruel punishment. The manner of her death also involves something sweet, honey. How- ever, instead of being used for good, which should include food for the poor, it is used to in- flict suffering and death. From the point of view of the Men of Sodom, there is also an ele- ment of 'middah keneged middah' in her punishment. She provides food for another when she should not have done so, and she in turn is coated with food and made to be food for the bees.

Her punishment causes her to cry out, so that her cry reaches to heaven and the punishment of Sodom is confirmed, not only in this world but for eternity.

The section ends with a verse linking the Talmudic narrative back to scripture and serving as a fitting conclusion.