How Two Tanchuma Passages Defended Hebrew Grammar Against the Minim

Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit preserves two adjacent passages, sections 7:1 and 8:1, that record arguments between rabbis and outside questioners over the plural and singular forms of a few key Hebrew words in the early chapters of Joshua and Genesis. The arguments are technical. The stakes were not.

The Minim Press Rabbi Simlay on Joshua 24:19

The first passage opens with the minim, the rabbinic term for sectarian opponents, questioning Rabbi Simlay. They asked him how many deities had created the world. Rabbi Simlay proposed that the two sides inquire of the Torah together.

The minim opened with Joshua 24:19, which reads For he is holy gods. The Hebrew noun elohim in that verse is plural in form. The minim pressed the point. If the Torah called God by a plural noun, was the divinity itself plural?

Rabbi Simlay's answer turned the verse back on them. He instructed them to read the rest of the verse, where the corresponding pronoun is singular, he, not they. The grammar of the verse, taken as a whole, agrees with a singular subject.

The passage then layers in additional rabbinic interpretations. Rabbi Berekhyah, in the name of Rabbi Abba the Edomite, asked why the word holy stands in the plural form in Joshua 24:19. His answer was that God is holy across every category of holiness. Rabbi Aha bar Hanina extended the list. God's way is in holiness. His processing is in holiness. His speech, the uncovering of his arm, his beauty and glory, all are in holiness. The plural form, in this reading, enumerates the kinds of holiness rather than the number of deities.

The minim then pressed Genesis 1:1, which uses the plural noun elohim for God in the act of creating. Rabbi Simlay countered with the same grammatical argument. The verb created in Genesis 1:1 is singular, not plural. The verb agrees with a singular subject. The plural noun does not denote a plural agent.

Rabbi Akiva and the Two Tiny Particles

The second passage records an in-house argument between Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva had been interpreting two Hebrew particles, akh meaning but and raq meaning only, as exclusionary, and two other particles, et the accusative marker and gam meaning also, as inclusionary.

Rabbi Ishmael challenged him on Genesis 1:1. The verse uses the accusative marker et twice, before heaven and before earth. Rabbi Ishmael argued that et in this case is simply a grammatical clarification of the sentence, not a hermeneutic flag that signals additional content.

Rabbi Akiva's answer cites Deuteronomy 32:47: For it is not an empty thing for you, where it refers to the Torah. Rabbi Akiva drew an explicit theological conclusion from the particles' presence. If Genesis 1:1 had said only heaven and earth, the verse could have been read as positing two deities, one for each domain. The two et particles establish that the verse refers to those two creations and to what was created along with them, not to two separate creating agents.

Why the Tanchuma Editors Paired the Two Passages

The editorial choice of Midrash Tanchuma Buber's compilers is visible once both passages are read together. Section 7:1 records an argument the rabbis had with outsiders. Section 8:1 records an argument the rabbis had with each other. Both turned on the same grammatical question. How do small Hebrew words, plural nouns and singular verbs and accusative particles, regulate the theological content the Torah carries?

The Tanchuma editors placed the two passages next to each other to make a methodological point. The defense of Jewish monotheism, in the rabbinic period, was conducted through Hebrew grammar. Whether the opponents were sectarians outside the rabbinic circle or fellow rabbis pressing for a different hermeneutic, the field of contest was the same. Particles, pronouns, verb forms.

What the Tradition Was Protecting

Read in sequence the two passages preserve a coherent picture of the rabbinic project. The Torah was a text written in a language whose grammar was assumed to be load-tested theology. A plural noun followed by a singular verb did not authorize a plural deity. An accusative particle in a creation verse did not authorize a second creator. The grammar of the Hebrew language was, in the rabbinic reading, an instrument that had to be defended against misreadings whether those misreadings came from outside the tradition or from within.

Midrash Tanchuma Buber preserves both arguments in their full form not because the answers needed to be reached again but because the method of reaching them needed to be remembered. The work of Hebrew grammar, the way it organizes pronoun against noun and verb against subject and particle against context, was the work the rabbinic tradition assigned itself as the guardian of how the Torah was read.

The compilers stitched the two passages into a single editorial unit so the methodology would not be forgotten. The defense was always grammatical, and the grammar was always the rabbinic field of battle.