Babylonian Talmud

Rodkinson 1918 — source 19, scan section 5

kept together the scattered colonies of Israelites, which strengthened them to bear the yoke of the Romans, to hope for brighter days, to be patient unto the end. lo THE HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. CHAPTER III. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE THE FALL OF BETHEL THE MASSACRE OF THE SAGES OF THE TALMUD, TILL THE WRIT- ING OF THE MISHNA IN THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRD CEN- TURY. The Temple had been destroyed; Rabban Gamaliel and many of his colleagues were dead ; the family of the Nasi extir- pated, excepting only his son R. Simeon, who succeeded to his father as Nasi and established a college at Usha ; and new per- secutions, awful in their extent, were directed against those who were engaged in the compilation of the Talmud. The sages, the chief men of Israel, were slaughtered without pity by Trajan and his successors through the entire period of fifty- two years from the destruction of the Temple to the fall of Bethel. Some of these founders of the Talmud who forfeited their lives for its sake are known to us only by their names : R. Ishmael, Simeon b. Azai, Papus b. Jehudah, Yishbab the Scribe, Huzpeth the Dragoman (interpreter), Jehudah the Baker, Hananiah b. Tra- dion and Aqiba ; the last, the main pillar of the Talmud, and who contributed much to its diffusion and completion, died with joy at being enabled to sacrifice his life for it. One of the causes of the great revolt against the Romans at this time was the prohibition by the Roman government of the study of the Torah, wherein alone the Jews found comfort, since only in their houses of learning could they enjoy complete peace and freedom. But as the death penalty had been de- creed against all who occupied themselves with religious study and observed its precepts, and as this prohibition deprived them of their only source of consolation, they rebelled, led by Bar Kochba. R. Aqiba was the first to become his adherent, who journeyed from town to town, inciting the Israelites to rebel, and bringing them the message that a saviour of Israel had arisen in Bar Kochba, the Messiah. It is not surprising, therefore, that Hadrian, when he had ascended to the throne, was not content barely with the massacre of the sages of the Talmud, but was intent also on the destruction of the Talmud itself. Unable to find a pretext for killing all the sages who kept it up, he decreed that if any of the old rabbis should THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRD CENTURY. n qualify a young rabbi for Israel, both should be put to death, and the place in which such took place should be destroyed, be- lieving that with the death of the elder generation the Talmud would be forgotten and Israel would blend with the nations and its memory be obliterated ; because he very well knew that as long as the Talmud existed there was little hope for the assimi- lation of the Jews with other nations. This decree, however, was not executed, and his murderous plan was further frus- trated by R. Jehudah b. Baba, who, forewarned of the decree and comprehending its consequences, betook himself to a place between two great mountains between Usha and Shprehem and licensed six of the older men of R. Aqiba's disciples to be rabbis (i.e., teachers of the Talmud) : R. Meir, R. Jehudah b. Elai, R. Jose b. Halaphta, R. Simeon b. Jochai, R. Eleazar b. Shemua, and R. Nehemiah. Having done this, and feeling sure that as long as these men lived the Talmud would be kept alive, he thus addressed them : " Fly, my sons, and hide from the wrath of the enemy. I alone will remain, and will offer my body to satiate their vengeance." And in fact the Romans pierced his body with three hundred iron lances, so that it resembled a sieve ; but the newly consecrated rabbis were saved, and with them the Talmud. (See Sanhedrin, p. 30.) Thus the efforts of Hadrian met with no success, so that at last he said to himself: " Great is the sheep that stands among seventy wolves." He saw the Talmud still existing, bringing to naught his plan for converting the Jews, uniting Israel into one people, and establishing it still more firmly as a national and a religious whole. For the six rabbis named above very soon became the soul of Talmudic study ; some of them were with R. Simeon, the Nasi, in Shprehem, and others founded col- leges of their own. Through them the Talmud regained its former power and influence, and one of them, R. Ilai, became the chief teacher of R. Jehudah the Nasi, the compiler of the Mishna. The translation of the Bible (written law) into Greek also contributed very much to the popularization of the Talmud. As long as the Torah was in the sacred language only (for the Aramaic version of the time of Ezra had been concealed or de- stroyed as early as the time of Rabban Gamaliel the Elder, the son of Simeon who had been slain, or probably even during the 12 THE HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. life of the latter),* all Jewish sects and foreign scholars inter- preted it in their own way. But a wise Greek, a convert of Judaism, Aquila the Proselyte, who received the doctrines of the Talmud from the disciples of R. Johanan b. Zakkai and also from R. Aqiba, translated the Bible into Greek. This version was not acceptable to the Jewish believers in Jesus (Messian- ists) — who must already at that period have constituted a large sect — because their construction of many passages in the Mes- sianic spirit was flatly disregarded by the new translation ; nor to the Romans, because all expressions seeming to imply the materiality of the Deity were translated in a figurative sense — as for example, "the hand of the Lord"; "the glory of the Lord, ' ' which the statue-worshipping Romans could not en- dure with equanimity, and further because by this translation the nature and doctrines of the Talmud became known to many nations, who found no evil in it. In our opinion the version of Aquila was the sole cause of the despatch of censors from Rome to revise the Talmud, and these censors avowed that its teach- ing was true. Be it as it may, in studying the history of the Talmud during the first three centuries the reader is easily con- vinced of the great courage and patience of the sages of the Tal- mud. For no year of that period passed without trouble from its external as well as from its internal foes, as R. Simeon b. Gamaliel, the Nasi of Jamnia, himself testifies. (See above, p. 9.) For even after the death of Hadrian it enjoyed but a short re- spite, for Antoninus Pius renewed the decree of Hadrian, and only with much trouble and at great risk of his life did the Nasi succeed in inducing R. Simeon b. Jochai and R. Josi to go with him to Rome to petition the Caesar to repeal the decree, which, according to the tradition of the Talmud, they effected only through the intervention of " Ben Temalion " (a demon, accord-