Posts
1. In my reading today of Messianism Within the Scriptural Scrolls of Isaiah, Randall Heskett says (on page 224) that “some views” in “later Judaism after the death of Simon Bar Kosiba (135 C.E.)” embraced the concept of a suffering Messiah, drawing from Isaiah 53. Here is a page that lists such passages. One is from Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 98b, and it talks about a Messiah who is a leper scholar, since Isaiah 53 refers to the Servant as someone who is stricken with a disease. Ruth Rabbah 2:14 applies to the Messiah the part of Isaiah 53 about the Servant being wounded for our transgressions. The Babylonian Talmud dates to 500-600 C.E., and Ruth Rabbah probably came about in the same century (see here). Yet, they often refer to earlier rabbis.
I wonder what role Simon Bar Kosiba’s death played in the development of the suffering Messiah idea within Judaism. I don’t think that rabbinic Jews thought Bar Kosiba would rise from the dead and become the Messiah. But the Roman defeat of Bar Kosiba may have convinced them that the Messiah would take power from Israel’s Gentile captors after much difficulty, even pain. The application of Isaiah 53 to a Messiah who would suffer appears in rabbinic texts that came about long after the death of Bar Kosiba. Yet, the rabbis had a long memory, for they tell stories about Israel’s defeat at the hand of the Romans. That was when the temple was destroyed, after all. Bar Kosiba’s death may have lingered in the memory of the rabbis, reminding them that the Messiah’s rise would not be a cake-walk.
2. In my reading today of Jacob Neusner’s Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah, I read (on page 296) Peter Haas’ piece on Maaser Sheni in the Mishnah. Haas states that many laws there are attributed “to authorities who lived before 70 C.E.” But how can we be sure that those authorities were actually the source of those laws? There are cases in which we can’t be sure. According to Haas, post-70 authorities debate the same issues after 70 C.E. that Hillel and Shammai supposedly debated before 70. Haas skeptically aks: Why would the post-70 Yavneans and Ushans “reopen debates already resolved a generation or two earlier”? Haas concludes that later authorities put their own views “into the mouths of earlier masters.”
But, for Haas, if later (post-70) authorities appear to “carry forward” or “refine” an earlier law, then that law is probably pre-70. I’m not sure what Haas means by “carry forward.” Perhaps he’s saying that later authorities seem to agree that an earlier law is valid. Moreover, if the later authorities are refining a law, then that law is probably early. After all, why would later authorities need to refine a law that they themselves made up? Couldn’t they make it up in its refined state? Therefore, Haas concludes that, if there’s a law that is attributed to an early sage, and a later sage tries to refine that law, then the law probably really did come from the early sage.
