Rabbis would, of course, also occasionally address the public, whether on the street, in the market or synagogue. But it is unlikely that they did so by using the literary forms which are transmitted in the written documents. Neither the brief exegetical comment nor the longer midrashic proem are imaginable as actual sermons delivered in synagogues. Even the parables usually presuppose a certain amount of Biblical knowledge which the ordinary person is unlikely to have possessed. They may have served rabbis to clarify certain aspects of biblical verses during the oral instruction of their student rather than providing moral and theological instruction to the populace. Apophthegmata or pronouncement stories memorialized rabbis’ wit and wisdom. Again, later generations of students would have been most interested in transmitting and preserving such stories about their teachers to make these teachers immortal and to maintain the reputation of their “schools”.

Catherine Hezser, “Form-Criticism of Rabbinic Literature”, in The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, eds. Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García Martinez, Didier Pollefeyt and Peter J. Tomson (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010), 108.

…text editing is a necessary hermeneutic tool for students and scholars of Jewish studies. Every student should be introduced to the world of text-critical analysis and avoid considering any edition as a revelation from Sinai. Or rather, he or she should consider the text as written revelation, as Torah she-bikhtav, and apply to it the same rules applicable to the written tradition, i.e., that the text can become meaningful only by the intervention of a reader/interpreter. As the Midrash Sifra states it with an ironic dictum of R. Yishmael, quoting Rabbi Eliezer:

R. Yishmael said to him: You say to the text (katuv): be silent until I explain you!
א”ל רבי ישמעאל: הרי את אומר לכתוב שתוק עד שאדרוש

The silence of the text is the indispensable premise for revelation to happen through the commentary.

Giuseppe Veltri, “From The Best Text To The Pragmatic Edition: On Editing Rabbinic Texts”, in The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, eds. Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García Martínez, Didier Pollefeyt, Peter Tomson (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010), 77-78.

The decisions underlying halakhic teachings and case stories may have once been applied to specific legal situations. But the abbreviated and stylized versions which we find in rabbinic documents will have been devised for the specific purpose of transmission within rabbinic circles. In this form, they would not have been recited before the general public. In their concise form, they are often only understandable within a specific halakhic context and require a large amount of biblical and halakhic knowledge in order to be intelligible. They clearly point to a scholarly context with regard to their formulation and circulation.

Catherine Hezser, “Form-Criticism of Rabbinic Literature”, in The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, eds. Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García Martinez, Dider Pollefeyt and Peter J. Tomson (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010), 108.

The comparison of parallel versions of a narrative or legal statement in different rabbinic documents may allow us to distinguish between tradition and redaction and to determine the form of a tradition before its inclusion into the broader redactional context. It should be clear, though, that synoptic comparisons of rabbinic texts can never lead to the detection of an “Urtext”, because such an “Urtext” is out of reach, if it ever existed at all. Various versions of a tradition will have circulated at one and the same time, and they will have been constantly changed and adapted to new circumstances. Synoptic comparisons may therefore indicate the main traits of a tradition before its inclusion into the present context, but not the exact words in which it was created or circulated.

Catherine Hezser, “Form-Criticism of Rabbinic Literature”, in The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, eds. Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García Martinez, Dider Pollefeyt and Peter J. Tomson (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010), 104-105.

The midrashic unit consists of the quotation of a biblical verse followed by its rabbinic interpretation or comment, which may consist of a short sentence only or be expanded, including various types of narratives, lists, or discussions.

Catherine Hezser, “Form-Criticism of Rabbinic Literature”, in The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, eds. Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García Martinez, Dider Pollefeyt and Peter J. Tomson (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010), 103.

Without denying the primary literal sense of the story, therefore, can we also understand the term רגל nonliterally, or as a Latin term? There is one clear instance in which some scholars have taken רגל in a nonliteral sense, and in relation to a Latin term, but in an entirely different context, namely the talmudic expression רגל רדופין, which they tend to equate with the Latin regale repudium (royal divorce), which in turn they posit as a possible corruption from legale repudium (legal divorce).

Raphael Jospe, “Hillel’s Rule,” The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 81, No. 1/2 (July-October, 1990), 50.