EXOD439 The biblical theology of reward and punishment (see chapter 1 of this volume) surely underwrites much of the rabbinic concept of obeying the law [E.g., M. Makkot 3:16, the homiletic end to a tractate on the application of the biblical punishment of forty lashings. "Rabbi Hananiah ben Akashiah said: The Holy One of Blessing wanted to provide an opportunity for merit to Israel, and therefore multiplied the Torah and its Commandments." We may also think of the rabbinic pleasure in detecting -- constructing, rather -- "measure for measure" relationships between an act and its perceived consequence, displayed in M. Sotah 1:6-7 et al. The rabbis add the notion of earning life in "the world to come" in the biblical notion of "reward," M. Pe'ah 1:1, also added to the morning blessings in traditional prayer books, and in many other places (e.g. Leviticus Rabbah 35:5-6)], but talmudic texts are all too aware that that equation is anything but easy to decode. Here we may think of the famous story of Elisha ben Abuya (B. Haggigah 14a-15a), who is one of "us" but then turned into Aher, the paradigmatic "Other," by abandoning the whole idea of Torah observance after watching a boy, following his father's command to get eggs from a bird's nest, climb up and shoo away the mother bird, but then he falls off and dies in contradiction to the Torah's promise of long life for honoring one's parents (Exodus 20:12) and for shooing away the mother bird (Deuteronomy 22:6–7) [Milton Steinberg's 1939 novel As A Driven Leaf, incorporates this story--AJL] -- all in all one of the central rabbinic narratives for the question of the odyssey], and it is not generally put forward as an incentive for observance. (By Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, “Ethical Theories in Rabbinic Literature”)