Rabbinic topographical texts (1)

Text
One text genre which appears to offer clues to similar curricula in both Babylonian and rabbinic scribal training is a type of text which catalogues aspects of what we might call urban. Within the Babylonian curriculum students had to learn lists of the names of the streets and the locations of temples and shrines in the city of Babylon; students also had to learn the exact measurements of the dimensions of major temples, all recorded in a text known as Tintir, the Sumerian name of the city of Babylon. There were probably several good pedagogic reasons for learning this text, such as mathematical exercises of the area, and analyses of temple names which could be explained through notariqon, i.e. dividing a name into component parts and etymologizing each part of the name separately. The text was probably studied long after the layout of Babylon had changed in late periods, but the text was concerned with the structure of Babylon at its zenith, as an intellectual execise. A similar exercise can be found in the Mishnah Tractate Middot, in which every aspect of the Jerusalem temple, including gates and exact measurements of rooms, etc., is specified. The text was copied and studied long after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and similar texts were preserved in the Apocrypha as descriptions of the ‘heavenly Jerusalem’.

Bibliography

Mark Geller

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