Avodah Zarah 039

1:
Mishnah 1 of our present chapter was concerned with statues and other figures of pagan worship. Mishnah 2, which we now consider, is concerned with parts of such a statue or figure.

2:
If a Jew finds shards – pieces of a a broken statue – he may use them for his own purposes: in other words he may derive material benefit from them. The reasoning is that having been broken they have lost all their potency for a pagan as an object of worship. It is even possible that a pagan destroyed the object – in a fit of peek or for some other reason. Whatever the situation may be our mishnah determines that shards of broken statues are permitted to Jews.

3:
However, a complete hand or a complete foot could certainly constitute an object of pagan worship. It matters not whether the complete limb was a part of an original statue or whether it was made by the artist in its present form. We may presume that for a pagan it could be an object of reverence.

4:
We now turn our attention to Mishnah 3. Tanna Kamma in our mishnah states that "if someone finds utensils and on them are drawings of the sun, the moon a dragon he should take them to the Dead Sea." The artistic representations mentioned are, of course, only examples of any depiction which might reasonably be assumed to have religious significance for a non-Jew. Tanna Kamma says that a Jew who finds such objects should destroy them. (Throwing them into the Dead Sea is just an example of the way such an object can be destroyed.)

5:
Over the years we have explained the technical term tanna kamma on many occasions. (See, for example,
Berakhot 031, explanation #2.) Here let us just briefly say that the term is used here to identify the otherwise anonymous sage (or sages) whose majority view is disputed by Rabban Shim'on ben-Gamli'el and by Rabbi Yosé.

6:
Rabban Shim'on ben-Gamli'el holds that the view of Tanna Kamma does not always hold good. He claims that if the utensil was a 'respectable' one – such as a piece of jewellery – then the view of Tanna Kamma holds true because such an object could well be an object of reverence. However, if the article was 'common' a Jew may assume that the figure depicted on it was only for decorative purposes. The problem with the view of Rabban Shim'on ben-Gamli'el is, of course, that there is no real criterion available for determining what is 'respectable' and what is 'common'. In the Gemara [AZ 43b] the Amora Rav has a go:

His colleague, Shemu'el, understood the words differently:

The Gemara then quotes a barayta which supports the interpretation of Shemu'el:

7:
Rabbi Yosé takes issue with the suggestion of Tanna Kamma and says that that such objects should be destroyed by grinding them down and scattering them to the wind. The sages (who are represented in the mishnah by Tanna Kamma) retort that the ground down residue cast to the winds by Rabbi Yosé could eventually become absorbed into the ground, serve as manure (or some other useful purpose) and thus be of benefit to a Jew – which is forbidden. The only safe way is to dispose of it in such a manner that it can never be of benefit to anybody.

8:
The rest of the sages quote to Rabbi Yosé the relevant verse from the Torah [Deuteronomy 13:18]:

The verse occurs in a passage which is concerned with the destruction of the property of a township all of whose inhabitants had been lured into idolatry:

For a full discussion about the 'idolatrous township' see Sanhedrin 144.

In the previous shiur we encountered statues holding objects in their hands. The text of the Gemara [AZ 41a] in these cases is very convoluted. A literal translation would read something like this:

Amnon Ron'el writes:

The statue sees itself as a bird or orb above the whole world?

I respond:

No. We have here an example of euphemistic circumlocution. The Gemara turns summersaults to avoid attributing any kind of divinity or power to these figures.