Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai received it from them. . . .
Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai had five disciples. These were Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah, Rabbi Yosé the Priest, Rabbi Shimeon ben Netanel, and Rabbi Elazar ben Arakh. (Pirke Avot 1–2)
First, I should point out that the very notion of a meritocracy in which socioeconomic class has little bearing is itself a democratic ideal of Hellenistic philosophy. That Yehoshua, an elderly charcoal maker, could engage in debate with a patrician like Gamaliel must have seemed outrageous to the younger rabbi. Yet among the Stoics of the Roman Empire, we find philosophers who are emperors, such as Marcus Aurelius, and philosophers who are slaves, such as Epictetus. Following the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Jews might have chosen to restore the power of the priesthood, a dynasty, or the power of the Davidic kingship, another dynasty. Instead, they opted for the power of Torah and intellectual endeavor—the most salient characteristic of Greco-Roman philosophy.
Many scholars think that Pirke Avot was once the capstone to the Mishnah and that this chain of tradition justified the rabbis’ teaching of “Oral Torah,” by tracing it back to God at Sinai. No doubt this is true, but there is much else at work in this text that might be characterized as rabbinic propaganda. I have virtually eliminated the content of what the ancients taught in favor of focusing on its form. The list above has been abbreviated—the two Yosés are actually the start of a listing of five “pairs” of pre-rabbinic leaders, culminating with the Elders, Hillel and Shammai. They, in turn, pass on the traditions to their disciple Yohanan ben Zakkai—the very rabbi who survived the siege of Jerusalem and brought his students to Yavneh. Rabbi Yohanan and his boys provided the political opposition to Gamaliel and his family. Ultimately, though, the dynasty won out—Rebbi Judah the Patriarch, editor of the Mishnah, was a direct descendant of Gamaliel. Given this battle with dynasty, it is notable that neither priests nor kings are mentioned in the chain of tradition. If anything, the priesthood is slyly co-opted by Rabbi Yohanan when he counts Rabbi Yosé the Priest among his disciples. Because the priesthood was scattered at the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple where they had once served, it was useful to claim them as among his disciples. It gave his disciple circle a certain standing and prestige.
This famous passage of Pirke Avot justifying rabbinic teaching actually displays a great deal of its Greco-Roman background. The text famously begins, “Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua.” In fact, each successive generation “receives” the tradition and “transmits” it to the next generation. The use of receive and transmit is not merely the stuff of navy radiomen plying the oceans during World War II; it is technical terminology used in both the church and in the Greco-Roman philosophical schools for passing on the authentic teachings of the previous generation. Here, too, the rabbis have quietly declared that they stand within the Greco-Roman orbit. In fact, the very notion of a “chain of tradition” has its origins in the philosophical schools. There, when a new leader of a philosophical school took his place at the head of his disciples, he would produce such a chain, tracing his intellectual lineage back to the founder of that school. So, a Stoic like Marcus Aurelius might trace his academic pedigree back to Zeno; or an Epicurean might trace his lineage back to Epicurus.
Chains of tradition buttressing the right to rule the school were commonplace among the Greek philosophers. Each of these “chains” shares an odd common trait with the others: no matter what the actual chronology may be, each chain of tradition is fourteen links from the founder to the newest head of the academy. It does not make any difference whether those fourteen generations took one hundred years or five hundred years—accuracy in counting years is not the point. Getting from the newest head of the academy back to the founder of the school in but fourteen links is what it’s all about. This oddity also can be observed in the New Testament, where Jesus’s lineage is traced in groups of fourteen (father to son, rather than teacher to disciple). And were we to laboriously count out the chain from Moses at Sinai to Rabbi Yohanan and his disciples, we’d get the same magic number: fourteen. No one knows why fourteen seems to be the “correct” number of links, but Pirke Avot joins with all the philosophical schools in tracing its newest leader’s lineage back to the founder in fourteen generations.
Pirke Avot also has other affinities with Greco-Roman philosophy, specifically Stoicism. When Pirke Avot was formulated, around the turn of the third century CE, the ethos of the Roman Empire was broadly Stoic, much as we might characterize the American ethos today as one of liberal democracy. Stoics were famous for not showing emotion and for being content with what they had. Yohanan ben Zakkai conducted a veritable philosophical session when he instructed his disciples:
“Go forth and see, what is the Good way a man should cling to?”
Rabbi Eliezer said, “Generosity [literally: a good eye].”
Rabbi Yehoshua said, “A good companion.”
Rabbi Yosé said, “A good neighbor.”
Rabbi Shimeon said, “One who sees that which is born.”
Rabbi Elazar said, “A good heart.”
Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai said, “I prefer Elazar’s answer, as his words include all that you say.”
My teacher Judah Goldin explained that the philosophy Rabbi Yohanan’s students exhibit here is classical Stoicism. “The Good” was a mainstay of Stoic philosophy, and the search for the Good was the task of the philosopher. Rabbi Yosé opted for good neighbors. Whom you lived among determined what you were; much as his contemporary, the Stoic thinker Epictetus, taught: “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”
In our bit of Pirke Avot, Rabbi Shimeon’s maxim that the Good way is “One who sees that which is born” is usually taken to mean that one should anticipate the consequences of his actions. To do so is good. To not do so is selfish and irresponsible. Rabbi Elazar has the last word and opts for a good heart. Among Greek philosophers as well as rabbis, there is a debate as to what one might find “in the heart.” For some, the heart was the seat of intellect, just as we today would locate it in our heads. For others, the heart was the place from which our emotions flowed. Whether cognitive or affective, the heart was an important organ in ancient thought. I suspect that the fact that the Midrash teaches us that Rabbi Elazar was Yohanan’s chief disciple and surrogate son may have influenced the master’s preference for his disciple’s maxim.
In Pirke Avot, the dialectic back and forth on the Good is followed by a similar question-and-answer session on the Bad way, which must be avoided. Each disciple replies to his master with the negative of what he is recorded as saying above. Rabbi Shimeon, again the odd man out, says that the Bad is “to borrow and not repay.” This is surely true of one who does not recognize the consequences of his actions, and who is selfish and irresponsible. At the end of the dialogue, Pirke Avot makes clear that it has Stoic doctrine in mind, as Rabbi Elazar teaches (Pirke Avot 2:14), “Know how to refute an Epicurean (Greek: epikurus).”
The Stoics and Epicureans often debated one another in the marketplace or agora of the towns of the Greek-speaking East. They each believed in doing the Good, but for different reasons. For the most part, the Stoics believed in divine providence, which is to say that the gods cared what one did. By and large, Stoics counseled that one should strive to do the Good. Ironically, Epicureans, who are often caricatured as believing one should “eat, drink, and be merry,” also believed in striving for the Good. They differed from the Stoics in that they taught that the gods were utterly indifferent to humankind. There was neither judge nor judgment. This sharp sentiment led some to “eat, drink, and be merry,” but Epicurus and his Epicureans counseled that all else being equal, one may as well do good. This is not unlike the philosophy found at the end of the biblical book Ecclesiastes (12:13): “The end of the matter when all has been sa
id: revere God and perform God’s commandments.”
To the rabbis, however, it was not only the outcome that mattered. Rabbis fervently believed that there was a judge, God, and that there would be judgment; be it on the High Holidays, when one’s deeds are weighed, or at the time of bodily resurrection, when all of one’s deeds are reviewed by God and appropriate reward or punishment is meted out. To say there was neither judge nor judgment was the ultimate blasphemy the rabbis could imagine. And so, Rabbi Elazar counseled, “Know how to refute an Epicurean.” Ultimately, the name Epicurus (Hebrew: apikoros) became an epithet for any Jewish heretic or blasphemer. In this passage of Pirke Avot, the rabbi’s disdain for Epicurean doctrine is explicit. Avot tilts decidedly in favor of Stoicism.
Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher and slave, teaches, “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” A good thought for a slave to have, that! He also taught, “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” The rabbis teach this as a paradox in Pirke Avot (4:1): “Who is wealthy? One who is satisfied with his lot.” One more Epictetus quote also deserves our notice and comparison with Pirke Avot. He taught, “Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.” Rabbi Shimeon, son of Rabbi Gamaliel and a contemporary of Epictetus, taught it this way: “All my life I was raised among the sages and I have found nothing better for myself than silence” (Pirke Avot 1:17).
The Greco-Roman Stoic philosophers also taught the value of self-control (sophrosyne). The late-second-century writer Philostratus, in his Greek work The Lives of the Sophists, says, “A prince is really superior if he controls his anger . . . if only it be kept in check by reason.” The rabbis seconded this virtue, and it becomes especially apparent when they apply their worldview to their model Moses, who famously had an anger-management problem. In his youth, Moses struck and killed an Egyptian (Ex. 2:12). Even as an elder leading Israel, Moses grew impatient as he tried to produce water for the Israelites in the wilderness and struck the rock, rather than speak to it as God had commanded (Num. 20:11).
In the earliest rabbinic commentary to the book of Numbers (Sifre #157), Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah notes that in three places Moses gave in to his anger and as a result forgot his “Torah.” The consequence of Moses’s loss of self-control was forgetfulness and error in the law. These two phenomena are interlinked, because for the rabbis the law is Oral Torah, which is memorized. If anger causes one to forget, it causes one to err in teaching. That any rabbi might consider that Moses, the lawgiver, could have erred in his teaching, is a sure sign of how highly the rabbis valued the Greek virtues of self-control (sophrosyne) and avoidance of anger (a-pathia). Rabbinic teachings conformed very closely to Stoic virtues, even to the extent that the rabbis, like the Stoics, sought to refute Epicureans.
The Stoic Epictetus also taught, “We are like travelers at an inn or guests at a stranger’s table.” A similar sentiment is attributed to the rabbis’ “founding father” Hillel the Elder, in this chreia recorded in a fifth-century rabbinic commentary to Leviticus (34:3) that I quoted earlier:
Hillel was once taking leave of his disciples and preparing to go on his way when they asked him, “Master, where are you going?”
Hillel replied, “To do a good turn for the guest [Greek: ksenos] who is staying at my home.”
They asked, “Do you then have a guest [ksenos] every day?”
He replied, “Is not my poor soul a guest [ksenos] in my body? One day it is here and on the morrow it will be gone.”
Epictetus might be speaking about the transitory nature of life in general. But for Hillel, as well as the rabbis who came after him, body and soul were distinct entities, with the pure soul being eternal. The earliest rabbinic commentary on Exodus (Mekilta, Beshalach 2, p. 125, restored with Leviticus Rabbah 4:5) imagines the following conversation:
The Emperor Antoninus asked Our Holy Rabbi [Judah the Patriarch]: “When a person dies and the body decays, will the Blessed Holy One resurrect him for judgment?”
He replied, “Do not ask me only about the body, which is impure, but rather ask about the soul, which is pure. It may be analogized to a king of flesh and blood who had an orchard, within which were beautiful young figs. He set two guards therein, one lame and one blind, that they might guard it.
“He said to them, ‘Be careful of the fruit.’ Then he left them and went on his way. The lame one said to the blind one, ‘I see beautiful young figs.’ The other one said, ‘Let’s eat!’
“The first one said, ‘Can I walk?’ The blind one said, ‘And can I see?’ What did they do? The lame one rode on the back of the blind one and so they took the fruits and ate them. Then they each went and sat in their original places.
“Some days later the king came and asked them, ‘Where are my fruits?’ The blind one said to him, ‘Can I see?’ The lame one said to him, ‘Can I walk?’ The king, who was wily, what did he do? He made the lame one ride on the back of the blind one and tortured them together. He said, ‘Thus did you eat them!’
“So, in the Coming Future, the Holy will say to the soul, ‘Why did you sin against Me?’ She will say to God, ‘Master of the Universe, was it I who sinned against you? It was the body that sinned, for from the day I have departed from it, have I sinned at all?’
“God will ask the body, ‘Why did you sin?’ The body will say to God, ‘Master of both worlds, it was the soul that sinned, for from the day she has departed from me, am I not tossed out like a potsherd on a garbage heap?’
“What will the Blessed Holy One do? God will restore the soul to the body and judge them as one.”
This story teaches us a number of aspects of rabbinic philosophy: belief in the world to come when there will be bodily resurrection of the dead, subsequent judgment, and punishment for sins committed. The body and soul are judged together for the sins they commit as one, yet the soul is deemed pure, while the body is not. That said, despite privileging the soul, the great rabbi holds the soul culpable for sin.
It is perhaps not coincidence that the metaphor of the blind and lame is found in the Byzantine collection called The Greek Anthology. Once again the rabbis shared an image with the Greco-Roman world. But in this instance, the narrative about the blind and lame guards is uniquely applied by the rabbis as a metaphor for the relationship of body and soul, while in the Greek text it is simply a metaphor for synergy. The tables are turned when the good rabbi instructs the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus on the intricacies of the relationship of body and soul.
Thus far I have shared texts in which the rabbis imagine conversations between Rabbi Judah the Patriarch and the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. The rabbis also quote Homer, who is not exactly a philosopher, and we have seen them mention Epicurus, who is. But the rabbis catch us all by surprise when they name Oenomaus of Gadara as one of the greatest of Roman philosophers. Oenomaus was an actual philosopher who lived in the second century in the Northeast of the province of Roman Palestine, in the town of Gadara—a Greek-speaking city. In truth, Oenomaus was quite obscure. His work is briefly quoted by the church father Eusebius, and later St. Jerome lists him in a chronicle. He apparently wrote a work titled “On Philosophy according to Homer.” The rabbis list him among “the greatest philosophers,” most likely because they knew him as a boy from the neighborhood.
But what about Plato, the man who truly was the greatest Greco-Roman philosopher? The rabbis never quote him by name. This may indicate that the rabbis did not study in depth the abstract thought of the Greek sages. On the other hand, they did know certain ideas from Plato. These were probably gleaned from the writings of the first-century Alexandrian Jewish sage Philo. Philo quotes Plato in his work “On the Creation of the World.”
In that book, Philo reworks ideas from Plato’s Timaeus. Plato suggested that in order fo
r the universe to be created, an ideal form had to be imagined first. Only afterward could the “ideal” be concretized into reality. Philo, in turn, explains Plato’s philosophy by likening it to a king who hires an architect to build a great city. The architect first sketches his plan in wax, and only after that does he build. Philo goes on to suggest that this is how God created the universe.
In the fifth century CE, the rabbis comment on the creation story of Genesis with this analogy:
The Torah says, “I was the artisanal tool of the blessed Holy One.” In the way of the world, when a human king builds a palace [Greek: palatin], he does not build it of his own knowledge, but uses the knowledge of an artisan. And the artisan does not build it of his own knowledge, but has parchments [diphtheraot] and wax tablets [pinaksot] to know how to make the mosaics [psayphosim]. Thus the blessed Holy One looked in the Torah and then created the world.
The rabbis seem to depend upon Philo and/or Plato for their analogy. God etches forms onto wax, as Philo suggests his architect might do. Indeed, the rabbis’ artisan might well be an architect, although I think it more likely that it is the artist who lays down mosaic floors, and I have translated accordingly. No matter whether we translate the text as being about an architect per se or about a mosaicist, the Platonic ideal has now been “read into” the biblical creation story. Sweetest of all, the Platonic ideal for the rabbis is the Torah itself.
We’ve all heard about that other Platonic ideal: the so-called platonic relationship. My father, may he rest in peace, used to remind me that it was ideal, not real. Like the rabbis, my dad loved to pun; so he would say of such a romanticized notion of nonerotic platonic love between the sexes, “For him it’s play, for her it’s tonic.”
Plato and my dad’s observations are a good introduction to both Roman and rabbinic images of women. Being my father’s son, I want to see if we can put the “Roman” in romantic. The rabbis certainly could imagine romance; but they were quite practical about taking a Platonic ideal and protecting it through well-grounded realities of rabbinic law. Indeed, they were in accord with Greco-Roman realism when it came to the hard-nosed negotiation of a prenuptial agreement. Both Greco-Roman and rabbinic cultures were male dominated; and women were expected to play their roles in the home (thank you very much, ladies). Men were decidedly at an advantage in contracting marriage. And men often were intemperate when it came to constructing images of their wives. After hearing the men of Late Antiquity describe their spouses, I imagine that people commented to the women, “Funny, you don’t look shrewish.”
Aphrodite and the Rabbis Page 14