The Jewish War: Last half of book 5

[cahn]

Last week: Titus saving the day single-handedly as a millenium-old trope. The synoptic gospels foreshadowing these events, and discussion of the abomination of desolation. The Yom Kippur service description of the priest in his vestments. How much Titus might have intended the destruction of Jerusalem, and when, and how much that question may be different from how Josephus feels like he needs to justify it? A mention of R. Yochanan ben Zakkai, which all of you should definitely tell me more about :D

This week: Jerusalem is under siege. It's quite awful for those under siege, what with famine inside the city and getting crucified by Romans if they try to escape. Titus and Josephus continue to be blameless and awesome.

Next week: First half of Book 6: "...from its rebuilding by Haggai in the second year of the reign of Cyrus to its capture under Vespasian was 639 years and 45 days" (270).

Comments

The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[zdenka]

I was looking up R. Yochanan bar Zakkai (I'll write up something about him later), but this passage was immediately before and I thought it was interesting. (Note that the Talmud often tells stories to make a symbolic point and this may or may not have been literally/historically true.)

The Roman authorities then sent Vespasian Caesar against the Jews. He came and laid siege to Jerusalem for three years. There were at that time in Jerusalem these three wealthy people: Nakdimon ben Guryon, ben Kalba Savua, and ben Tzitzit HaKesat. .... These three wealthy people offered their assistance. One of them said to the leaders of the city: I will feed the residents with wheat and barley. And one of them said to leaders of the city: I will provide the residents with wine, salt, and oil. And one of them said to the leaders of the city: I will supply the residents with wood. The Gemara comments: And the Sages gave special praise to he who gave the wood, since this was an especially expensive gift. As Rav Ḥisda would give all of the keys [aklidei] to his servant, except for the key to his shed for storing wood, which he deemed the most important of them all. As Rav Ḥisda said: One storehouse [akhleva] of wheat requires sixty storehouses of wood for cooking and baking fuel. These three wealthy men had between them enough commodities to sustain the besieged for twenty-one years. There were certain zealots among the people of Jerusalem. The Sages said to them: Let us go out and make peace with the Romans. But the zealots did not allow them to do this. The zealots said to the Sages: Let us go out and engage in battle against the Romans. But the Sages said to them: You will not be successful. It would be better for you to wait until the siege is broken. In order to force the residents of the city to engage in battle, the zealots arose and burned down these storehouses [ambarei] of wheat and barley, and there was a general famine. (Gittin 56a)

Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[selenak]

That's fascinating, as the Sages vs Zealots conflict does correspond to the priests vs zealots Josephus describes. Does this count, in journalistic terms, as two independent sources backing each other up? Or do you think whoever authored this particular section of the Talmud is likely to have read Josephus? (Only available in Greek for a long time.)

Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[zdenka]

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the Talmud to say. I also haven't studied the Talmud enough to know when you could take it as a historical source and when they're making a point by telling a story which is obviously not historical.

For context, the section right before this one is like: btw the emperor Nero converted to Judaism and this other famous rabbi is descended from him. Which very obviously didn't happen and I don't think anyone seriously thought it happened?? So you would need an actual Talmud scholar to know the context of all this, and sadly I am not one. :)

I have the sense that the Sages are the rabbis/scholars/Sanhedrin rather than the priests (kohanim), but there might have been overlap?

Side note: I'm going to be away for a few days, and I might not have time to write up R. Yochanan ben Zakkai before that, but if not, I will when I come back!

Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[selenak]

Yes, obviously Nero didn't convert, but..... his second wife Poppea might have. At the very least, Josephus not in this book but in both "Jewish Antiquities" and his brief autobiography describes her as favourably inclined not just towards Jewish affairs but towards Judeaism - he even calls her θεοσεβής ("religious"). (And he did meet her personally when he brought a petion to free some prisoners to Rome, so he's not talking based on gossip alone.), (Googling just gave me the exact term in Greek, so I didn't have to rely on my German translation.) So you can see where the Talmud, in a garbled fashion, might be basing converted!Nero on.

(I still get a kick out of the idea of a famous rabbi claiming descend from Nero, though. I mean, of all the ancestors to claim... would make him related to both Mark Antony and Octavian/Augustus in a direct blood connection, too.)

Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[cahn]

Oh lol wow! That's kind of amazing.

Poppea

[selenak]

Mind you: Poppea has a terrible image in both Tacitus and Suetonius as an evil femme fatale who encouraged Nero to off his first wife and kill his mother and who had her eye on being Empress even when marrying Otho, so Josephus - who writes before Tacitus and Suetonius but at a time when Poppea and Nero are dead and Nero-as-evil at least is official Flavian policy - presenting her in a positive light as a generous patroness who intercedes with Nero on behalf of the Jews at least twice, even calling her “religious” (which earlier influential Romans who did have Jewish clientel like Mark Antony or Caesar where definitely not called) is all the more remarkable. It’s not like he’s gaining brownie points from his own patrons from this, which makes me believe it must be true, Poppea Sabina was actually interested in Judaism and Josephus did witness her interceding on behalf of Jewish causes twice.

(She does appear in this capacity early in the first novel of Feuchtwanger’s trilogy, you might recall, and also that readers were bewildered on Poppea showing up in a non-evil femme fatale capacity.)

(The other source for pro Poppea material are inscriptions in Pompeii, which was her hometown, and apparently she was a generous patroness for the locals since there are a lot of dedications and praises to her. Bear in mind that Pompeii was destroyed/frozen in time during the reign of Titus, i.e. if said Poppea praising inscriptions were just for show during Nero’s reign because the inhabitants had to, they would have had all the years of Vespasian’s government to erase them again and praise the Flavians instead.)

All of which, btw, doesn’t mean she was totally innocent of what Tacitus blames her for - I mean, minus the usual percentage of Roman/Tacitan misogyny and trashing any prominent woman who is not Cornelia mother of the Gracchi -; I totally buy that when marrying Nero’s bff Otho while Nero was already interested in her, she also had her eyes in the main chance. Naive about how lethal imperial family politics could get, she was not. Especially given Messalina gets blamed for the death of her (Poppea’s, not Messalina’s) mother So if she wanted to be Empress, she might have considered Nero would just divorce Octavia (divorce being relatively easy in Roman society), but also to prefer the more lethal solution. And Agrippina had been the most influential and dangerous woman in Rome for years and years at this point; Agrippina had been against Nero ending his marriage with Octavia and marrying Poppea. So yes, I’m also completely willing to believe Poppea encouraging Nero to kill his mother once that was on the table.

But clearly, “beautiful, ruthless wife of dictator” wasn’t all there was to her personality. People can be complex, including ruthless go-getters. Let’s just remind ourselves here of that most famous of Imperial converts, to wit, Constantine. Who was interested in Christianity and promoting it years and years before finally converting on his death bed. In between supposedly seeing the sign of the cross telling him he would win in this sign against Maxentius on the Milvian Bridge and his deathbed conversion many years later, and after sponsoring the first great economic Council, the Council of Nicea, at which he was present, Constantine killed his oldest son and his wife and some of his half siblings. Strangely, this never got him as bad a press as Poppea.

Re: Poppea

[cahn]

But clearly, “beautiful, ruthless wife of dictator” wasn’t all there was to her personality. People can be complex, including ruthless go-getters. Let’s just remind ourselves here of that most famous of Imperial converts, to wit, Constantine. Who was interested in Christianity and promoting it years and years before finally converting on his death bed. In between supposedly seeing the sign of the cross telling him he would win in this sign against Maxentius on the Milvian Bridge and his deathbed conversion many years later, and after sponsoring the first great economic Council, the Council of Nicea, at which he was present, Constantine killed his oldest son and his wife and some of his half siblings. Strangely, this never got him as bad a press as Poppea.

Ah, yeah, thanks for this!

Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[cahn]

No worries if you don't get around to it! We are very chill :) (uh, we have to be, because sometimes I have commitments for a few days myself and am late with commenting / replies to comments :) ) The only thing is that I'm not entirely sure if everyone is checking the old posts, but if you post to an older post I'll mention it in the new post (or you can) and then everyone will come check it out :D

Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[cenozoicsynapsid]

I don't really know, but I'd venture to say that the sources are likely to be independent. The earliest phase of the Talmud (the Mishnah) reflects oral laws and traditions from the land of Israel, of approximately this period. The Tannaim--- the teachers--- created and propagated a body of material which was eventually written down a bit over a century later. (The next phase of the Talmud, the Gemara, contains post-exilic commentaries; the larger and more commonly read source is the Babylonian Talmud.)

The Pirke Avot (Precepts of the Fathers) section of the Talmud starts with "Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly..." but by the era we're talking about, we're solidly in the territory of attested people who would have been eyewitnesses to these events. I'll let zdenka tell you the story of how R' Yohanan escaped the siege, but "Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai received [the oral tradition] from Hillel and Shammai. He used to say: if you have learned much Torah, do not claim credit for yourself, because for such a purpose were you created. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai had five disciples and they were these: Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, Rabbi Yose, the priest, Rabbi Shimon ben Nethaneel and Rabbi Eleazar ben Arach"." These guys are all over the Talmud; Eliezer in particular is very highly cited (https://drewkaplans.blogspot.com/2011/07/rabbinic-popularity-in-mishnah-vii-top.html, which I admit I found on Wikipedia), in many of the tractates... which I think clearly establishes that these are real people who existed, even if some of the legends about them (R Eliezer also did magic!) are not true. So we have a plausible chain of transmission from eyewitnesses to the events, down to the period when the text is written down. On the other hand, the Tannaim basically never cite Hellenistic literature. (There are some mathematical tractates which make this very clear. It's a completely independent mathematical/logical tradition--- you don't get any sense that these guys have heard of Euclid or Archimedes.) Because the Mishnah isn't a history to begin with, I don't think there's as much of a perceived value in bringing in accurate historical sources in the same way that the Roman/Greek historians use earlier books to supply what they don't know themselves.

Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[cahn]

This is fascinating! I'm really glad that you guys are telling me more about this.

(There are some mathematical tractates which make this very clear. It's a completely independent mathematical/logical tradition--- you don't get any sense that these guys have heard of Euclid or Archimedes.)

Huh, this is really neat. So do they come up with something that works sort of like Euclidean geometry, or...?

Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[cenozoicsynapsid]

I don't remember geometry specifically, I was talking more about the proof strategies. What I read at one point was this article: A Mathematical Proof of Kinnim 3:2, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40914641
See section seven "The role of mathematical proof" for the "quasi-inductive" nature of the arguments.

Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[cahn]

Argh, I am having trouble logging into jstor tonight but this does sound really interesting! Will return if/when I am able to get in...

Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[cahn]

Wow! Yeah, that's super interesting! It does sound like a very familiar conflict from last week and this week...