Babylonian Talmud

Rodkinson 1918 — source 16, scan section 4

said to them : You have falsified your Torah, but you have nothing in your hand to say that there is no hint of resurrection. Does it not read [Num. xv. 31] : " That person shall be cut off, his iniquity is upon him " ? Upon him — when ? Does it not mean after he shall be cut off? Hence it means even in the world to come. (Questioned the Gemara 🙂 Above, this passage is explained by R. Aqiba and R. Ishmael. But neither of them has explained what means " his iniquity shall be upon him " ? They may explain it as in the following Boraitha : Lest one say that he will be cut off even after his repentance, therefore " the iniquity is upon him " means only when it is still upon him, but if he repented it is no more upon him. Queen Cleopatra questioned R. Mair thus : I am aware that the dead will be restored. As it reads [Ps. Ixxii. 16] : " And (men) shall blossom out of the city like herbs of the earth." My question, however, is : When they shall be restored, will they be naked or dressed? And he answered : This may be drawn by an a fortiori conclusion from wheat. A grain of wheat which is buried naked comes out dressed in so many garments : the up- right, who are buried in their dress, so much the more shall they come out dressed in many garments. TRACT SANHEDRIN (SUPREME COUNCIL). 269 Caesar questioned Rabbon Gamaliel : You say that the dead will be restored. Does not the corpse become dust? How, then, can dust be restored? And the daughter of Caesar said to R. Gamaliel : Leave the question to me and I myself shall answer it. And she said (to her father) : If there were two potters in our city, of whom one should make a pot from water and the other from clay, to which of them would you give preference? And he said : Certainly to him who creates from water ; for if he is able to create from water, he is undoubtedly able to create from clay. (And she said : This is an answer to your question.) The school of R. Ismael taught : One may learn it from glass- wares, which are made by human beings, and if they break there is a remedy for them, as they can be renewed : human beings, who are created by the spirit of the Lord, so much the more shall they be renewed (restored). There was a Min who said to R. Ami : You say that the dead will be restored. Does not the corpse become dust ? How, then, can dust be restored ? And he told him : I will give you a par- able showing to what this thing is similar. A human king said to his servants : Go and build me a palace in such a place, where there is no earth and no water. And they did so : and after it collapsed he commanded the same to build it for him in a place where there was earth and water. And they answered : We can- not do so. And he became angry, saying : When you could build it in such a place where there was no earth and no water, ought you not to be able to build it where they are ? And if you don't believe it, go into a valley and see a mouse, which is half flesh and half earth (it being believed that there is a species of mice developed from earth), and to-morrow it multiplies and be- comes all flesh. And should you say that it takes much time till it becomes so, go up into the mountain, and see that to-day you cannot find even one helzun,^ and on the morrow, after rain, you will find the mountains full of them. There was another Min who said to Gebiah b. Psisa : Woe to you, wicked, who say that the dead are restored. ' The living die — should the dead come to life ? And he answered : Woe to you, wicked, who say that the dead will not come to life. That which has not existed at all comes to life — shall those who had * It is explained elsewhere that the color of its body is like to that of the sea, the body itself like that of a fish, and that it comes out once in seventy years, and also that with its blood the Tkheles were dyed. See also the description of it in S'hOnhack's Dictionary. 270 THE BABYLONIAN TALMUD. life once not come to life again ? Said the Min to him : You call me wicked. If I arise, I will kick thee and level thy hump from off thee (drive out thy conceit). And he rejoined : If you do so, you will be a specialist physician, and you will receive a great reward. The rabbis taught : On the twenty-fourth of Nissan the con- tractors of duty were taken off from Judah and Jerusalem. This was when the Africans summoned Israel before Alexander of Macedonia, claiming that the land of Canaan belonged to them. As it reads [Num. xxxiv. 2] : " The land of Canaan according to its boundaries " — and that they were the descendants of Canaan. Said Gbiah b. Psisa to the sages : Permit me, and I will appear before Alexander as advocate of the defendant Israel, and if they defeat me, say to them, " You have defeated an ignoramus among us " ; and if I defeat them, say to them, " The law of Moses has defeated you." He got this permission, and did so. Then he said to them : What is your evidence ? And their answer was : From your Torah. Then said he : I in defence will also bring my evidence from the same. It reads [Gen. ix. 25]: "And he said. Cursed be Canaan ; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." Now, to whom belongs the estate of a slave, if not to his master. And not this only, but I summon you before the king for the many years you have not done any service for us. And Alexander commanded them to give answer, for which they requested from him three days' time. And he gave it to them. And as they could not find any right answer at the ap- pointed time they fled, leaving their fields, which were sown, and their vineyards, which were planted. And this year was a Sab- batical one. It happened again that the Egyptians summoned Israel before Alexander of Macedonia, demanding from them the gold and silver which they had borrowed from them at the time of their exodus. As it reads [Ex. xii. 36] : " And the Lord hath given the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians, so that they gave unto them what they required ; and they emptied out Egypt." And Gbiah b. Psisa requested from the sages permission to be the advocate of the defendant Israel, with the same reason men- tioned above. He got this permission, and did so. Then he said to them: What is your evidence? And their answer was: From your Torah. Then said he : I in defence will also bring my evidence from the same, which reads [ibid., ibid. 40] : " Now the time of the residence of the children of Israel, which they dwelt TRACT SANHEDRIN (SUPREME COUNCIL). 271 in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years," Hence I demand of you the wages for the labor of six hundred thousand men whom your parents compelled to work for them all the time they