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In Quest of the Historical Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Jacob Neusner
Jacob Neusner
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
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Extract

Concerning the effort to recover rabbinic biographies, Professor Judah Goldin writes:

… Such works are hardly biographies in the serious sense of the word, … for not only do the primary sources disappoint us deeply in the amount of reliable historical detail they provide, but even as regards the opinions and teachings of the Sages, one is left to guess what is early and what is late. In short, there is practically no way to get at development, surely and desperately necessary for the historian and biographer. These books therefore are filled with speculation, sometimes plausible, sometimes not. As reflections of the author's own imagination and interpretation, however, and as collections of data about the specific sage, they are informative exercises.

My research exhibits, alas, the deplorable qualities to which Goldin points. At the same time, I have continued to reflect on what we know about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. Here are some of the results.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , October 1966 , pp. 391 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1966

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References

1 Adams, C. J., ed., A Reader's Guide to the Great Religions (N.Y., 1965), 223.Google Scholar

2 A Life of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, Ca. 1–80 C. E. (Leiden, 1962).

3 Ibid., 3–4, n.1

4 Louis Finkelstein, M'vo LeMasekhet Avot veAvot de Rabbi Natan (N.Y., 1950), 38–43, 60–61, and Y. N. Epstein, M'vo-ot leSifrut HaTannaim (Jerusalem, 1957), 40–41, 295–96, 399–401.

5 Birger Gerhardsson (Memory and Manuscript, Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, [Uppsala, 1961]) completely ignores this fact. We do not have adequate evidence to determine the methods of transmission used either in the early churches or in pre-70 Pharisaism. Gerhardsson admits that rabbinic Judaism differed from pre-70 Pharisaism, as the latter differed from the rest of pre-70 Judaism, but holds that the educational systems may have been substantially the same. His evidence is utterly inadequate to prove it. His view of Jesus as a kind of Pharisaic-rabbinic teacher, ignoring express statements to the contrary, suggests that we know more about the Pharisaic rabbis from Hillel to the destruction of Jerusalem than we do.

6 Life, 120–29.

7 See Bab. Talmud Bava Meẓicah 36a, and my History of the Jews in Babylonia, II: The Early Sasanian Period (Leiden, 1966), 249–85.

8 E.g., Mishnah Shabbat 16.7, recovering a scorpion on the Sabbath so that it shall not bite. “R. Judah said, Such a case once came before R. Yohanan ben Zakkai in Arav, and he said, I doubt whether he is not liable to a sin-offering.” See also 22.3. R. Judah never knew R. Yohanan ben Zakkai, of course. The data in 16.7 and 22.3 may well have been in a collection of Arav sayings, which R. Judah or his teachers revised for their own purposes in compiling the Mishnah. A similar, fragmentary collection of Jerusalem sayings is clearly in Mishnah Ketuvot 13.1 and 13.2, as well as the sayings in Avot 2.8–9, which reflect the conditions of the Jerusalem circle, as we shall note below.

9 Life, 147–72.

10 “Debate on the Loyal Sacrifices,” HTR 53, 93f., and Life, 104f.

11 Life, 147f.

12 G. Alon, Mehkarim beToldot Yisrael (Tel Aviv, 1957), I, 273, n. 86.

12a I have tried to explain why they did not in “Religious Uses of History: Judaism in First-Century A.D. Palestine and Third-Century A.D. Babylonia,” History and Theory V, 2, 1966.

12B The same story, in the same form, is told about R. Eleazar b. Shamu'a and R. Yohanan HaSandlar, in the same passage of Sifre Deut. We have a formal narrative applied first to four men, and then to two, the occasions of whose migrations from Palestine were remembered. See my History of the Jews in Babylonia, I: The Parthian Period (Leiden, 1965), 122–23, n. 1.

13 Judah Goldin, “Mashehu ʻal Bet Midrasho shel Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai,” Harry A. Wolfson Jubilee Volume (N.Y. 1965), Hebrew Section, 69–92.

14 Life, 27f.

15 Life, 96–104.

16 Ibid., 44–58.

17 Ibid., 70f.,175.

18 Avot de R. Natan, ch. 14.

19 Life, 28f.; see especially the saying, “Oh Galilee! Galilee! You hate Torah,” Pal. Talmud Shahbat 16.8.

20 Ibid.., 33f.

21 Cited above, n. 1.

22 Life, 33–34, 41–43.

23 Ibid., 24–25.

24 Ibid., 49–57.

25 Y. N. Epstein's M'vo-ot leSifrut HaTannaim, cited above n. 4, and his M'vo-ot leSifrut HaAmoraim (Jerusalem, 1962), S. Lieberman's Talmud of Caesarea (in Hebrew, Supplement to Tarbiz II, 4 [Jerusalem, 1931]), Louis Ginzberg's “The Mishnah Tamid,” Journal of Jewish Lore and Philosophy, I, 33f., as well as Lieberman's Tosefta Kifshuta (N.Y., 1955f., 7 vols. to date), provide the obvious starting-points for such literary studies.

26 Professor Jonathan Z. Smith, University of California, Santa Barbara, provided extensive criticism. Professor Brevard S. Childs, Yale University, offered the comments upon which the final paragraph is based. I am grateful to both for their kindly interest in this paper, though alone responsible for its limitations.

27 In Hyatt, J. Philip, ed., The Bible in Modern Scholarship, Papers Read at the 100th Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Dec. 28–30, 1964. (Nashville, 1965), 227–51.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., 242, n. 41.

29 Life, 135–38.

30 'Agadot Tanna'e 'Ereẓ Yisra'el, I, i, 26, n. 4.

31 Life, 115–20.

32 Life, 115–67.