Mashiach according to Rabbi Hillel

[Harel13]

After going through all of the Otzar sources, and then moving on, at a friend's suggestion, to looking for sources on Google Scholar but not finding anything with any dramatic new spin, I momentarily turned my attention to something interesting I came upon when looking into Martini's Pugio Fidei. Apparently Martini had a source that stated there were two Bar Kozibas, one descended from the other. I only read this in an essay on PF, and haven't looked at the text itself. But what's interesting is that Ra'avad Ha'rishon also writes this in his book Sefer Hakabbalah. Not having yet seen the story in PF, I can't say whether Martini explicitly stated that Sefer Hakabbalah was his source or not.

In any case, I started moving from the subject to subject, and eventually came across an interesting essay by Samuel Levey. He opined that in Chazalic sources, Rabbi Akiva was the original Mashiach ben Yosef. Sources about Mashiach ben Yosef only come after R"A's time (I haven't looked into this yet, but that's his view). He pointed out that Mashiach ben Yosef arrives (and dies) before the coming of Mashiach ben David, and - though he doesn't say this - Rambam after all called Rabbi Akiva Bar Kochva's arms-bearer (נושא כליו).

Thinking about this for a few minutes, I realized that the idea ties into an idea I had years ago, when I was in the army: Rabbi Akiva's name has the root עקב, heel - as an arms-bearer, he may walk at the heel of Bar Kochva. But a deeper understanding is that he is the literal עקבתא דמשיחא, the heel of the Mashiach, which comes before the Mashiach himself.

And then it hit me: What if Rabbi Hillel, when he said that Mashiach was "eaten" in the time of Chizkiyah was calling Rabbi Akiva Chizkiyah? Now my focus is to see whether there's evidence to connect the two. One strong piece of evidence is that it's said that in the days of Chizkiah people from Gevat to Antipras knew Torah, and those are the two boundary-markers of the students of Rabbi Akiva according to the gemara, as well as the markers of towns destroyed by Hadrian during the Bar Kochva Revolt.

There might be some conceptual connection also with the idea that R' Yehudah Leib Yafo brought, that Chizkiyahu took apart the Israelite blockades but the Israelites didn't come to Yerushalayim, and Rabbi Akiva is the one who stated that the Ten Tribes won't be redeemed.

There's also the idea that Rabbi Akiva was one of the greatest proponents of Shir Hashirim as a holy text and Chizkiyah and his men were the ones who edited it.

As for Rav Yosef, I just came across an idea by the Chida. He wrote on the story of Rabbi Akiva and the sages, asking how it's possible that R"A doubted the fulfillment of Zechariah's prophecy, and explained that R"A wasn't sure whether Zechariah's prophecy was only applicable to Bayit Sheni or was also applicable to Bayit Shlishi. Upon seeing that Uriah's prophecy came true both after Bayit Rishon and Bayit Sheni, he knew that the same would be true for Zechariah's prophecy.
It's possible - but of course, it's late at night and I need to think about all of this with a clear head - that Rav Yosef's intention was to remind Rabbi Hillel that Zechariah's prophecies were still applicable. There will be a time in the future where Bat Tzion will rejoice greatly, which did not really happen while Bar Kochva waged war against Hadrian.

 

[Harel13]

Nothing is 100% perfect, but I am getting comfortable with the above suggestion that Chizkiyah = Rabbi Akiva. First, it makes me happy that I can still somehow salvage the Bar Kochva idea. More importantly, Chizkiyah isn't some unknown, possibly nonexistent person from the other side of the diaspora. He's a very central figure both in general and with regards to Bar Kochva, his status as Mashiach and the revolt in general. In this sense, it's even better than a random Resh Galuta.

Having thought it over, I concluded that Rabbi Akiva isn't a perfect match to Chizkiyahu. Rabbi Akiva is not always presented as a match-for-match type of Chizkiyahu. Just a few examples of differences: Chizkiyahu was a direct descendant of David while Rabbi Akiva was a son or descendant of converts; Chizkiyahu was born into the monarchy while Rabbi Akiva was born poor, and so forth.

In some regards, Rabbi Akiva is actually more like Yeshayahu. Both announced the coming of a mashiach-type leader (Yeshayahu said the famous verses "For a child has been born to us, a son has been given us. And authority has settled on his shoulders. He has been named “The Mighty God is planning grace; the Eternal Father, a peaceable ruler”. In token of abundant authority and of peace without limit upon David’s throne and kingdom, that it may be firmly established in justice and in equity now and evermore. The zeal of the LORD of Hosts shall bring this to pass." and Rabbi Akiva announced Bar Kochva as Mashiach) and both, according to Chazal, were put to death by evil rulers - Yeshayahu by Menashe and Rabbi Akiva by Hadrian.

But there are two main parallels between Rabbi Akiva and Chizkiyahu:

1. Both are said to have spread Torah in Yisrael, and their "Torah kingdoms" were confined by the same two places: Gevat and Antipras [Antripatris] (towns on the southern and northern borders of Judea).

2. Rabbi Akiva was critical of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai's actions during the Great Revolt. R"A thought RYB"Z should have gone all the way in protecting Yerushalayim. In this R"A can be compared to Chizkiyahu because the gemara in Sanhedrin states that Shevna sent a message to the Assyrians stating that he and his men were willing to surrender while Chizkiyahu and his men were not. So, Chizkiyahu = Rabbi Akiva - those unwilling to back down; Shevna = Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai - those willing to back down and save what's possible. Shevna was always viewed as a traitor whilst RYB"Z was sometimes in a grey area. The later Avot Derabbi Natan uses the same frame of the Shevna story in its depiction of RYB"Z's story.

On this latter point, the gemara says אמר ר"ע ואיתימא אמר רב יוסף, which has struck me as strange for some time now - how can you mix up R"A and R"Y (other than R"A being the son of Yosef)? But a couple of months ago I remembered once reading that sometimes ואיתימא doesn't mean that either person said this, but that both said this. So we have here a connection between R"A and Rav Yosef. I'll have to find a source for this understanding of ואיתימא.

Rav Yosef's comparison between Chizkiyah and Zechariah may be a drashic reminder to Rabbi Hillel of R"A's statement that Zechariah is dependent on Uriyah/Micha (Uriya's prophecy appears in Micha; both are referred to as living in the time of Chizkiyahu by Yirmiyahu) as both are edim (and edim are dependent on one another (perhaps this is the reason the story is brought in Makkot?)), or in other words, the promise of a coming Mashiach still stands. This explains why Rav Yosef chose a Mashiach-based verse from Zechariah - because Zechariah is the only prophet who can be argued per Tanach to have prophesied about Bayit Shlishi, by the mere fact that his prophecy is intimately tied to that of Uriyah/Micha, prophets from the time of Chizkiyah.

There's still the matter of why Rabbi Hillel called Rabbi Akiva Chizkiyah. True, there are conceptual parallels. It's possible that there was a habit in those days of connecting sages to people from Tanach. We do find the מגילת יוחסין sources that trace various sages to figures from Tanach. There's also the case of Rebbi's codephrase with Rabbi Chiyah regarding קידוש החודש, "David King of Israel Lives" (דוד מלך ישראל חי וקיים). I don't know. I need to look up more sources for this.

To sum up, I would understand the gemara as such:

Rabbi Hillel saw the Meshichi excitement in his time (Rabbi Chiyah and Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta walking in the Valley of Arbel; Rebbi's Davidic codephrase; (more sources?)) and announced his disagreement with all of this: The last potential attempt for a coming Mashiach was the Bar Kochva Revolt as announced by Rabbi Akiva, and that ended badly (due to sin), and people should tone things down. Rav Yosef, a few generations later, argued: a. In the time of Rabbi Hillel, Rav replied to him that Yisrael will still enjoy the time of Mashiach in the future. Rav did not base his claim on any verse, as Rabbi Hillel didn't either. b. Rav Yosef then brought an argument to strengthen Rav's argument: The Zechariah connection, as first pointed out by Rabbi Akiva himself. Zechariah is the prophet who shows us that Yisrael will still enjoy the Mashiach in the future.

So, not 100% perfect, but I think it has good potential and could work. I'll write it down and move on to the next sections of the paper - Eliyahu sources and archeological evidence. By the way, another thought occurred - Rabbi Akiva was buried by Eliyahu himself!
(which is by the way tied to a story from his own youth - he went to bury a מת מצווה and carried him for many miles until he found where to bury him. Then he was rebuked for having done so, because a מת מצווה buys his place as his grave. But we see that Eliyahu and the student that went with him also carried him a certain length).

 

[Harel13]

I haven't updated in a while because I've been hard at work at writing down the new theory about Rabbi Hillel's statement and every now and then jumping forward to work on the Eliyahu chapter, which is coming along nicely.
I'm in the middle of rereading Rabbi Eliyahu Zeini's essay on Bar Kochva in his book עץ ארז. He points out something amazing: Chazal actually called the destruction of Beitar חורבן בית מוקדשא! He infers this from the gemara in the Yerushalmi that brings all of the stories about the BK Revolt, where it says that Rebbi knew old people who survived the revolt and the חורבן בית מוקדשא is also referenced. One cannot say that these old people also lived in the time of the Churban, because even if they had been only 5 years old or so, by Rebbi's time they would have been around 130 or more, which is hard to accept (Chazal usually draw the line at 120). So, we must say that חורבן בית מוקדשא refers to the destruction of Beitar.

Based on this and the rest of the theory, I summarized Rav Yosef's refutation as follows:

דברי רב יוסף:​	משמעות דבריו:​
חזקיה אימת הוה?	רבי עקיבא מתי היה?
בבית ראשון.	בממשלת בר־כוכבא.
ואילו זכריה קמתנבי בבית שני, ואמר: "גילי מאד בת ציון הריעי בת ירושלים וגו'".	[רבי עקיבא בעצמו הוכיח שנבואת זכריה עתידה להתקיים לעתיד לבוא], וזכריה הרי ניבא שיבוא המשיח, שנאמר: "גילי מאד בת ציון הריעי בת ירושלים הנה מלכך יבוא לך צדיק ונושע הוא עני ורוכב על חמור."

or in English:

:Their meaning​	:Rav Yosef's words​
?When did Rabbi Akiva live	?When did Chizkiyah live​
During the time of Bar Kochva's reign​	During the time of the First Temple
Rabbi Akiva himself proved that Zechariah's prophecy will yet come to pass in the future, based on the connection with Uriyah and Zechariah prophesied that there will come a Mashiach, as it says: "גילי מאד בת ציון...הנה מלכך יבוא לך..."​	While Zechariah prophesied during the Second Temple and said: "גילי מאד..."​

 

[Harel13]

One thing that bothers me about Rabbi Zeini's own views regarding the BK Revolt is his view of Rabbi Yochanan ben Torta (or Torata as I once heard it should be pronounced, from the Aramaic תורא, bull). Rabbi Zeini, like quite a few people in the world, think that Rabbi Yochanan ben Torta was a chutzpadik younger student with not enough torani credit to his name to dare to stand up against Rabbi Akiva, yet he did so anyway.
Unfortunately, there was a time I accepted this view and even stated it out loud in a conversation once, and immediately regretted doing so. Who am I to rate rabbis, particularly tannaim?
But this view is even more flawed than that: It ignores the fact that about 99% of the mishna, as well as a large percentage of tannaitic midrashim are based on aliba d'Rabbi Akiva, and Rebbi himself was a student of students of Rabbi Akiva. So, in other words, no wonder Rabbi Akiva (and his students) are quoted more than other sages! No wonder their teachings were preserved more. I'm chalilah not saying that Rabbi Akiva wasn't a giant. But the mere fact that his teachings appear in the sources hundreds of times more than those of Rabbi Yochanan ben Torta is not a strong argument against the latter's wisdom.

 

[Harel13]

I was supposed to give a short lecture on my paper in the middle of Iyar but the student who was supposed to give a lecture on Wednesday bailed for some reason, so my professor (I assume, knowing that I had already accumulated a lot of material) asked me to give mine this week. I agreed, the main reason being that my professor asked. While it means my lecture will be less organized than what I'd hoped, I'm sure my professor will take that into account.

Now for something absolutely priceless:
Patricia Crone and Michael Cook in their sensationalist book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, 1977 ed., p. 34, wrote:
"The mourners of Zion may one day have beauty for ashes; but Ishmael has no redeemer, they enjoyed him in the days of 'Umar the Faruq."

'Umar is thought to be the early Islamic messianic figure according to Crone and Cook's reinterpretation of early Islamic history.

 

[Harel13]

The lecture went very well, though it was hard to tell whether anyone other than the professor and maybe one other student in the class was really interested in my topic. But that was pretty much expected (considering the general atmosphere of the class, the length of each lecture, and, of course, to each his own interests). My professor suggested a few sources to check out. One in particular was very interesting. As Rabbi Zini said, Chazal referred to the BK Revolt as "חורבן בית מוקדשא". He mentioned that some time ago a piece of some kind of document written by a certain Jewish woman was found, and it was dated to שנה ד' לחורבן בית ישראל (Fourth Year to the Destruction of the House of Yisrael). Scholars debated whether it referred to four years after the destruction of the Mikdash or four years after the BK Revolt. Ultimately, Prof. Chanan Eshel z"l proved that it was to be dated to four years after the BK Revolt. This means, of course, that not only Chazal saw the Revolt as equal to the destruction of the Mikdash, but also to the common people. It was almost the end of the world to them. Meaning, the destruction that came because of the loss of the Revolt was so horrid and so massive, that was like all of "Beit Yisrael" was destroyed.

 

[Harel13]

I made an amazing discovery on Friday: Shlomi Efrati published two papers a few years ago on a Genizah MS that included large portions of Perek Chelek and Perek Megillah from the Bavli. This MS features a highly unique textual witness of the Talmud, featuring phrases, sentences, variant names and even whole paragraphs not known from any other textual witness!
And yes, he included a transcription of the MS and yes, it includes parts of Rabbi Hillel's statement and Rav Yosef debate. Unfortunately, it wasn't perfectly preserved. But it's still significant:

צ"ח ע"ב​

צ"ט ע"א​

Unfortunately the second quote is significantly illegible, but the first quote, from 98b, features a significantly different reasoning:
"אין ימות המשיח לישראל". Similar to some textual witnesses, the first quote does not mention Chizkiyah, and we can see that Chizkiyah is only mentioned on 99a. However, this version fits with the classic commentators that understand the reference to being about the Days of Mashiach and not Mashiach himself. Indeed, we can see that he probably said the same thing on 99a, since it says "אכלום", plural, and not "אכלוהו". Although, of course, there's also Avner of Bourgois' tradition that "שני" means "two mashiachs", so there's always the slight chance that "אכלום" refers to plural mashichim. But that seems unlikely.

Another point is that this version states "אכלום בימות חזקיה" and then Rav Yosef says "...מיכדי ימות חזקיה בבית (ראשון)". So the emphasis is on the time of Chizkiyah, not Chizkiyah himself.

It's difficult to know what to make of unique textual witnesses, in all fields of research. Though on one hand, the scribe here made many spelling mistakes (for example, he spells Hillel as היליל (this appears a few more times in the Genizah), and מנחם as מנחים), on the other, given that there are so many unique features to his text, it is difficult to argue that all of them were made by adding marginal notes into the text itself, or something like. So we remain with the question of the what to do with this textual witness. Was he simply adding in an explanation, or is that what he found in the textual witness he was copying from? In other words, how authentic is this version?

 

[Harel13]

After discovering Efrati's reading of the genizah manuscript, I decided it would be worth my time and the quality of the research of this topic to try to collect as many textual witnesses of these sections of the gemara as possible. So far, I've collected 12 + the Vilna edition. These include all versions at the genizah website, a handwritten book similar in concept to Ein Yaakov called Aggadot Hatalmud, MS. Basel of the Pugio Fidei, the first printed edition of Pugio Fidei (1651), Avner of Bourgeois' letter and Rabbi Chaim Mussan's letter. I decided to omit two of the earlier printed editions and stuck with the Venice printing and the Vilna printing. I organized everything very nicely and (hopefully) professionally:

Along the way, I made a few important discoveries:
First, I tracked down the original manuscript of Avner's letter. Originally I had posted here quotes from a published edition by Rosenthal. As it turns out, Rosenthal either misread or corrected the original text. The bit about משיחי and משיחים is not there..! Now, it may be possible to infer such an understanding from the context of Avner's letter, but that's another matter in itself.

Second, there are three textual witnesses that are particularly unique: MS. Harav Herzog, MS. Florence 8-9 and the genizah MS. But all three appear to have their own defects. I was originally planning on comparing all versions to the Vilna edition, but that also has defects. Not knowing what to do, I regrettably had to compare everything to the Rabbi Herzog MS.

Third, I tracked down two digitized Pugio Fidei editions that include the Hebrew text and are considered important in the textual tradition of the PF. One is the Basel MS. which is thought to have been copied from the Genevieve 1405 MS, which in turn is thought to be an original version copied by or at least copied under the authority of Raymond Martini himself. Unfortunately, the Genevieve MS, though still extant, has not been digitized. A team of scholars have been working for over a decade now to create a critical edition of the PF based on the Genevieve MS, but they haven't finished yet.
The other edition is the first printed edition, which, according to the editor, was based off of four different manuscripts, some no longer extant. Interestingly, there is a very slight variation between the two quotes:
In the Basel MS it says: ר' הילל אומר אין להם משיח לישראל שכבר אכלוהו בימי חזקיה"
While in the Paris edition it says: "ר' הלל אומר אין להם משיח לישראל שכבר אכלוהו בימי חזקיהו". The differences are slight, but they seem to strengthen the likelihood that neither copied the talmudic quotes from a printed Talmud (both were created after the Talmud had already been printed several times).

I'm still on the hunt for other textual witnesses. The comparison of the 13 versions leads to the conclusion that these sections are very faulty, so I'd like to see as many witnesses as possible. I may go on Sunday to the NLI to access a digitized MS that can only be viewed from the building. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing whether that manuscript would be helpful.

Earlier today I came across another genizah manuscript, purportedly of Sanhedrin 96-99. That was exciting, but immediately I wondered why it wasn't among the textual witnesses of the Bavli. As it turned out, the handwriting is very difficult to interpret and a transcription hasn't been made yet, though it was digitized. After looking it over myself, I find myself agreeing with the opinion of one of the Genizah researchers who looked it over and stated that was a collection of Talmudic aggadahs. So, not actual pages from the gemara. The reason I think so is because the scribe skipped over a number of aggadahs in 96-99, including, sadly, the Rabbi Hillel section in 98b. The part that brings the braita in 99a is unfortunately mostly torn off. You can just make out the words of Rabbi Eliezer that open the braita...

Another option I'm looking into are Rishonim that addressed these quotes and whether they have extant early manuscripts.

 

[Harel13]

I somewhat lucked out with regards to Pugio Fidei. As it turns out, one of my lecturers has connections with the PF Critical Edition project, so I asked him about it, got to talking about my project, and he sounded interested in my idea to collect different textual witnesses. He agreed to check whether he could access MS Genevieve 1405 (supposedly authored or okayed by Raymond Martini himself), as well as consider other sources I could check.

Meanwhile, I'm at the most annoying part of my project: Going back and completing all of the footnotes I skipped over during the initial writing phase.

 

[Harel13]

I'm proud to announce that the first draft of my paper is complete! What I mean is that I filled in all of the empty citations and technically could hand in the paper right now. But a few days ago I came across a fascinating master's thesis on the 'Beitar was captured' (נלכדה ביתר) aggadahs in the Yerushalmi and I've already found material to include in my own paper, so I want to finish reading that. I also borrowed the same person's doctorate, which is on a related topic. I also want to ask the course's lecturer if he'd be willing to look it over before I officially hand it in. I estimate this will all take about two more weeks.

In terms of chapter divisions:
The first chapter discusses the limits of the research: First, an explanation of why the 3rd and 4th centuries were chosen as chronological limits for the paper (the real reason is because that's what the lecturer recommended, but you can't say that...). I suggested more inherent reasons: The late 2nd-early 3rd centuries were the time of Rabbi Hillel and the 4th century is the time of the closing of the Yerushalmi, which is one of the topics of the course. I then explained the geographic limits (none, unless there's no relevant evidence). Lastly, I discussed the last limit, which is what "messianic hopelessness" means in the discussed time period.

The second chapter, which is the longest, is about Rabbi Hillel. Here I discussed the Rabbi Akiva and Bar Kochva theory, as well as what I think Rav Yosef meant by his refutation. Lastly, I suggested reasons for why Rabbi Hillel might have said what he said.

The third chapter is about Eliyahu's rise in popularity. For this I found both textual evidence and archeological evidence, which is cool. The main piece of archeological evidence is the Eliyahu-not-Helios in the Zodiac in shuls theory.

The fourth chapter is about people, including sages, who opposed Avilei Tzion of the mid 3rd century CE. I don't know if I mentioned anything about this here, but in chapter 34 of Pesikta Rabbati there are statements about a group who believed strongly in the coming of the Mashiach and it's stated there that Rabbi Yossi b'Rabbi Chaninah and others doubted their faith. Rabbi Yossi then stated that they had since changed their minds and regretted for not believing as the Avelim did.

The conclusion from ch. 2-4 is that there were certain periods which featured some form or other of messianic hopelessness within particularly groups in Am Yisrael.

At the end of the paper I added an appendix featuring all of the textual witnesses I could find for the relevant sections from Sanhedrin 98b and 99a.

 

[Harel13]

That moment you discover the Buber edition of Eicha Rabbah is so seriously flawed that you need to go over two manuscripts yourself and correct all of the ER references and quotes...

 

[Harel13]

After receiving a good mark on my essay, and some deliberation, I decided to send it in to a journal called Hayo Haya, which was established as a way of publishing select seminar papers written by history students. I was told it would take some time until they get around to reading it, because they only read papers during the school year (which starts in about a month and a half). Presumably others have sent in papers as well, so that will also push back the time they get around to reading mine.