The Forgotten Sage

Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah and the Birth of Judaism as We Know It

Maurice D. Harris

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781498200776
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

Just after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., there lived a poor and ugly nail-maker who was also, for a time, the leading rabbi of his generation. His name was Joshua ben Hananiah, and he helped give us the Judaism we know--the complicated, word-filled tradition of debates, multiple viewpoints, and endless questions. Through his humanity, humility, and occasional audacity, Joshua helped set Judaism on its course towards becoming the decentralized, multi-opinionated, exile-surviving, other-religion-respecting, pragmatic-yet-altruistic, wounded-yet-hopeful religion that it is at its best. And yet, inside and outside the Jewish community, few people know about him. This book wants to change that. In these pages, people of all faiths or backgrounds will find accessible and vivid translations of some of the most stunning stories in the Talmud and in Midrash. Rabbi Maurice Harris is a friendly guide through the texts and dramas of early rabbinic Judaism, providing general audiences with clear and compelling explanations of complex narratives, legal issues, and historical contexts. Venture inside this book and discover Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, one of the bravest and humblest heroes you'll ever meet in sacred literature.

1

Setting the Stage

One of my goals with this book is to make the stories surrounding Rabbi Joshua and the early rabbis accessible to a wide, general readership. The chapters that follow this one focus in depth on a series of stories about Joshua and other key early rabbis found in the major works of ancient rabbinic literature, especially the Talmud and various collections of Midrash. In my experience as an adult educator in the Jewish community, and as a guest teacher in churches and interfaith learning settings, I’ve found that, because most people aren’t familiar with the world of rabbinic literature, it’s really helpful for me to start with a sweeping big picture of the stories I plan to discuss, and then come back to focus on each important part of that big picture and bore into the juicy details.

So, in this chapter you’ll find: a very quick recap of the mythic story arc of the Hebrew Bible, an overview of the early rabbinic story that precedes Rabbi Joshua’s lifetime, and then a quick encapsulation of the drama of the early rabbis in the era that Joshua lived (roughly 50 C.E. to 130 C.E.). If you’re already well-acquainted with any or all of these things, you might want to skip parts of this chapter.

Before we dive in, a quick word for readers who aren’t familiar with how the word “myth” is used in scholarly writing about religion. In this book, I use the words myth and mythic to refer to stories that intend to express timeless cosmic meaning and serve to orient people in the world. When I use these words, I don’t mean them in the casual way they get used in modern English to mean “lies,” as in, “oh, that’s just a big myth!” While I don’t believe that the mythic stories of any religion should be taken literally, I also don’t mean to diminish the insights and truths found within sacred stories by using the word “myth.” Okay, now onward!

The “Back Story” to the Story of the Early Rabbis (or the Story of the Hebrew Bible in a Nutshell)

Most Jews, Christians, and Muslims know at least the highlights of the great mythic foundation story of the Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy). In case you need a quick recap, here’s one:

God creates the world; Abraham becomes the first monotheist and moves with his family to the land of Canaan; God promises Abraham that his descendants will inherit Canaan (the Promised Land); Abraham’s offspring, the Hebrews, end up in Egypt, where they multiply greatly and a paranoid Pharaoh enslaves them; God sends Moses to liberate them; after ten nasty plagues and the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, the Hebrews are free; at Mount Sinai God gives them the Ten Commandments; Moses leads the Hebrews’ through the desert for forty years en route to the Promised Land; on the eve of the Hebrews’ arrival at the edge of the Promised Land, Moses gives his farewell address to the people and dies, unable to cross over the Jordan River with them.

This famous story is the mythic bedrock of Judaism, and it’s a crucial part of the foundation of Christianity and Islam.

The Torah only includes the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament for Christians). The rest of the books of the Hebrew Bible tell a lengthy and dramatic post-Moses story that begins with Moses’s successor, Joshua, leading the Israelites in conquest of the Promised Land.

Following Joshua’s successful conquest of Canaan, the Hebrew Bible goes on to describe roughly eight centuries of Israelite civilization in that territory, beginning with several semi-anarchic, early generations of Israelite society. The books of Joshua and Judges describe the adventures and misadventures of the loosely confederated Israelite tribes during this era of decentralized government and ad hoc leadership.

Then comes the legendary rule of Israel’s most famous kings, Saul, David, and Solomon. We read about the building of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem (a.k.a. the First Temple), around 957 B.C.E., and we hear descriptions of the gifts and sacrifices the Israelites would bring to the Temple priests at the appointed sacred times.

The epic story of the Hebrew Bible goes on to tell about the exploits of many generations of Israelite monarchs who followed—some faithful to God’s teachings, and some . . . not so much. In addition to kings and priests, this story also features charismatic messengers of God known as prophets. Some of the prophets are seers of what is to come, some are ardent social justice advocates, some counsel kings, some work miracles, some are poets, some re-frame God’s laws—and some are combinations of much of the above. Often, the prophets warn the powerful and the weak alike when they have strayed from God’s ways.

In its last episodes, the Hebrew Bible describes the Babylonian empire’s horrific destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem (around 586 B.C.E.) and the exile of the privileged classes of ancient Israel to Babylon (as in, “by the waters of Babylon, we lay down and wept for thee, Zion.”1) The greatest prophets of this era, such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel, counsel the Jews that God has brought this misfortune upon them due to their failure to follow God’s laws (particularly those pesky ones about not worshipping idols and not exploiting the poor). But they also comfort the Jews by telling them that one day God will redeem them from their exile and defeat, and that by repenting sincerely they can help bring about national redemption.

The biblical story finally ends on a hopeful note.2 The Babylonians get taken over by the neighboring Persians (around 540 B.C.E.). Then, we learn that the Persian king, Cyrus—a more enlightened sort of emperor than his Babylonian predecessors—decides to authorize the return of the Babylonian Jewish exiles and the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple. It all comes to a close in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah as hope and renewal have been restored. Construction of the Second Temple begins (about 515 B.C.E.) and a new generation of Jewish leaders starts re-teaching the common Israelites the laws and customs of the Torah.

* * *

After the conclusion of the epic saga of the Hebrew Bible, the official mythic stories of Judaism and Christianity diverge sharply. Christian tradition begins its next round of sacred storytelling about five centuries after the Second Temple had been rebuilt. At this point, some two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire was dominating the region and had come to occupy the Jews’ homeland. Christian scriptures go on to tell one of the most famous stories in the world: the story of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Following those events, the Christian mythic story3 goes on to focus on the teachings, insights, and organizing activities of key followers of Jesus, most famously Paul. The sacred stories about the earliest centuries in the life of the community of Christ are filled with tales of cruel Roman persecutions as well as the spread of Christianity. Martyrs and missionaries, house churches and internal church debates fill out the arc of early Christianity’s great mythic story.

Unbeknownst to many people, there is also another round of ancient Jewish mythic storytelling that is foundational to Judaism—an epic saga that takes place during roughly the same timespan as the early Christian mythic story that I just described above. This is the story of the early rabbis, and the Joshua who is the central character of this book is one of the leading figures of that story. This story can be found mainly within the rabbinic sacred writings known as Midrash and Talmud. In this book, we’ll jump into that story sometime after it begins and jump out sometime before it ends, with the events bookending Rabbi Joshua’s life framing the telling.

Setting the Scene

Let’s set the scene by looking at the situation in the Holy Land around 30 B.C.E., about eighty years before Joshua ben Hananiah was born. For three decades now, the Roman Empire has occupied and ruled the country. Rome’s appointed king, the infamous Herod the Great, is in power. The native Jews are deeply divided socially, politically, economically, and religiously. Political unrest, uncertainty, and factionalism abound.

In Jerusalem, Herod is busy enlarging the Second Temple in a massive construction project designed to make it one of the jewels of the Roman Empire. An iron-fisted client king of the Romans, Herod imposed heavy taxes on the Jewish peasantry to help pay for his audacious building projects. As a pair of scholars of the period, Richard A. Horsley and John S. Hanson, put it:

So that the ruthless Herod could pay for the many building projects arising out of his passionate devotion to Hellenistic civilization, he had to force maximum economic exploitation of both the land and the people he ruled. The burden, of course, weighed heavily on the peasantry, and the disaffected were many. But Herod maintained stringent political and social control . . .4

The Jewish priests and the Jerusalemite upper classes—referred to in both the New Testament and rabbinic literature as the Sadducees—are for the most part politically aligned with their Roman overlords and their power structure. In the rabbin...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Setting the Stage
• Chapter 2: The Rabbis Also Have a Resurrection Story
• Chapter 3: After the Holocaust
• Chapter 4: Clash of the Early Rabbinic Titans —Part I
• Chapter 5: Clash of the Early Rabbinic Titans —Part II
• Chapter 6: Boom!
• Chapter 7: Eliezer’s Gaze Burns Everything It Touches
• Chapter 8: Diplomacy, War, and Passing the Torch
• Chapter 9: Don’t Trust This Book—It Could Be Wrong
• Chapter 10: Why This Rabbi Matters Now
• Chapter 11: About Joshua Podro
• Bibliography