Sanhedrin 057

13:
The Biblical origins of the disqualification of near relatives is to be found in the Torah [Deuteronomy 24:16]. According to the Peshat [the obvious, surface meaning of the text] the verse is concerned with the responsibility of the individual for his actions. "Fathers shall not be done to death for their sons and sons shall not be done to death for their fathers: each person shall die for his own sin". Thus the Peshat of the verse teaches that in the system of Divine retributive justice the actions of one generation have no consequences for the fate of another generation. And this meaning of the verse is not only echoed but is stressed and re-stressed by the prophet Ezekiel:

But it is also obvious that this Peshat clashes discordantly with the understanding of the system of Divine retributive justice that is to be found in other parts of the Torah. One has only to recall the famous passage in the Ten Commandments that describes God as being

And there are, of course, many other verses in all three sections of Scripture that echo this philosophy.

14:
In view of what he have said in the excursus we made recently concerning the origins of Torah, we can, of course, quite simply say that each of these two philosophies reflects a different stage in the development of human understanding of "the system of Divine retributive justice". We could say that in an earlier stage of development, in the patriarchal stage of society in the desert and in the agricultural economy of the pre-urbanization, it seemed obvious that the fate of all members of the family was inextricably bound up one with the other with consequences even over the generations. But after the onset of the process of urbanization, during the period of the Monarchy, this philosophy began to fall apart and Ezekiel, in the 6th century BCE, is propounding the new philosophy also enshrined in Deuteronomy. All this we could say; but the sages would not. I think that the reason that the sages would not do so is not only because they did not have the insights into the origins of Torah that modern scholarship teaches, but also because they saw that the concept of the fate of generations and persons being intertwined was appropriate to life as observed (even if it offends our sense of justice). We, sixty years after the death of Sigmund Freud, should surely have no difficulty in recognizing that the actions of the fathers does have consequences for the fate of innocent sons…

15:
Thus, when the sages came to contemplate Deuteronomy 24:16 they had reason to choose not to understand the verse according to its obvious, surface meaning.

In the Gemara [Sanhedrin 27b] the sages see a flaw in the wording of the law:

According to the interpretive system of the school of Rabbi Akiva no words and phrases of the Torah are redundant or serve a purely decorative literary function. "Rabbi Akiva would interpret even the particle "et" that introduces the accusative" (see Pesaĥim 22b for an example). In this he was at odds with his great contemporary Rabbi Yishma'el, who taught that "the Torah speaks using human language" (see Sifré, Va-etchanan 9 for an example of an altercation between these two giants on this very point. I refrain from quoting these passages here in order not to interrupt the flow of our discussion with extraneous topics – however interesting.) It was the interpretive system of Rabbi Akiva that won the day, and the majority of the sages who came after him seem to have accepted as axiomatic that the Torah is a carefully worded document and an interpretive meaning can and must be ascribed to every seeming redundant word or phrase, to every instance of what seems to be no more than mere literary embellishment.

16:
Thus the sages are satisfied that Deuteronomy 24:16 does not clash with Exodus 20:5, but teaches that parents may not be witnesses to the fact in cases involving their children and vice-versa. From here it is but a simple process of expansion to include other near relatives. In the list of disqualified relatives in our mishnah we can discern expansion in three directions: paternal relatives, maternal relatives and relatives by marriage. Rambam [Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Edut 13:1] points out that only paternal relatives can be deemed as disqualified by the Torah; all the others are disqualified by rabbinic expansion.

To be continued.