The Authenticity of Infrequently Mentioned Names in Rabbinic Literature

This paper will focus on figures who are mentioned infrequently in rabbinic literature with some occurring but once in such vast literature. What criteria, if any, exist to heighten our confidence beyond gullibility regarding the attributions. In particular, I shall focus on the rare names in Mishnah, Tosefta, Tractate Derekh Eretz, Shir HaShirim Zuta and the Talmud Bavli and Yerushalmi. Some of the criteria developed will include 1) external corroboration in roughly contemporaneous, non-rabbinic sources; 2) corroboration by rare independent citation in another rabbinic textual corpus; 3) the rarity of linguistic markers that indicate a degree of authenticity. Finally the question will be addressed whether the authenticity of rarely occurring citations of a given personality helps to improve the degree of confidence we have in sages mentioned more frequently. On some occasions we may thereby recover the ipsissima verba of particular sages mentioned more often thereby adding interesting details to their biographies.