The Jewish Annotated New Testament (150 page)

At the same time, alternative traditions that are not reflected in Jewish apocalyptic texts or in the New Testament are frequently found, such as the ideas that the messiah will come in a generation that is either completely righteous or completely sinful (
b. Sanh
. 98a), or that the messiah will come either in glory on the clouds of heaven (Dan 7.13–14) if Israel has been faithful, or humbly riding on an ass, if it has not (Zech 9.9) (
b. Sanh
. 98a). Playful and ingenious interpretation of the Bible characterizes a number of traditions, such as the debate about the name of the messiah in which rabbis compete with each other in producing biblical verses that would identify the name of the messiah with the name of their teachers (
b. Sanh
. 98b). The last voice identifies the messiah as “the leper scholar,” citing Isa 53.4, “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken [with disease], struck down by God, and afflicted” (cf.
b. Sanh
. 93b, where Isa 11.3 is interpreted to mean that the messiah will be loaded with good deeds and suffering). The connection of the messiah with people suffering from leprosy is also reported in
b. Sanh
. 98a, where R. Joshua b. Levi is said to have been told by Elijah that the messiah is present in the world, bandaging the sores of people with leprosy, yet ready for his mission at any moment. These passages could be a response to Christian associations of Jesus with the “suffering servant” of Isaiah 53 (see Mt 8.17; 1 Pet 2.22). A passage not found elsewhere, but likely based on a popular tradition, reports that the messiah son of David will be granted his request to bring back to life the slain messiah son of Joseph (
b. Sukk
. 52a; cf. Zech 12.10–12), who probably represents the ten northern tribes who were exiled by the Assyrian empire in 722/721 BCE. The slain and resurrected Messiah son of Joseph, however, is not identified as a suffering messiah.
Pesiqta Rabbati
, an early medieval text possibly influenced by Christianity, gives the name Ephraim (a son of Joseph) to the messiah, who suffers for the sins of Israel. Unlike the Messiah son of Joseph in
b. Sukk
. 52a, this figure does not die, and there is no mention of any additional messiah (chs 36 and 37).

Critiques of Messianic speculation are also voiced, such as the traditions attributed to R. Samuel b. R. Nahmani on the authority of R. Jonathan, “Blasted be the bones of those who calculate the end” (
b. Sanh
. 97b), or the saying of R. Yo
ḥ
anan b. Zakkai, “If you have a sapling in your hand, and it is said to you, ‘Behold, there is the Messiah’—go on with your planting, and afterward go out and receive him (
Avot de R. Natan
B.11). There is even a rabbinic view reported that there will not be a future messiah, “since Israel enjoyed him in the days of Hezekiah” (
b. Sanh
. 99a), a tradition the medieval commentator Rashi (1040–1105) explains as derived from the idea that God alone will redeem Israel.

In evaluating the rabbinic evidence, it is important to keep in mind several things: (1) messianic themes represent only a small fraction of rabbinic literature, and much of the messianic material is concentrated in one lengthy passage (
b. Sanh
. 96b–99a); (2) all of these statements are from non-legal material (
aggadah
), in which multiple traditions are often cited for the purpose of edification and even entertainment, with no interest in producing a single authoritative opinion; (3) while the expectation of a future redemption and belief in a resurrection of the dead and final accounting are fundamental principles of the rabbinic worldview, most rabbinic literature focuses on sanctifying this world by studying and keeping the commandments and repenting for sin by deeds of mercy and piety (see, for example,
b. B. Bat
. 10a,
b. Shabb
. 118b, and
b. Sanh
. 97b for statements that these, and not supernatural intervention, are the acts that will bring redemption). Finally, in no Jewish sources of antiquity—biblical texts, Dead Sea Scrolls, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Josephus, rabbinic writings—is the messianic figure ever either identified with God or worshiped.

MESSIANIC MOVEMENTS IN JEWISH HISTORY

Although intense interest in messianism has not been the norm in Jewish history, times of suffering have given rise to messianic literature and movements. For example, the wars among Byzantine, Persian, and Islamic armies in the Near East in the first part of the seventh century are the backdrop for Hebrew messianic speculations in the Hebrew apocalypses
Sefer Eliyyahu (Elijah)
and
Sefer Zerubbabel
, which combine the themes of classical apocalyptic literature with rabbinic traditions. The massacres of Jews in seventeenth-century Europe were a major factor in the rise and rapid expansion throughout the Jewish world of the movement centered on the messianic claims of Shabbetai Tzvi (1626–76). In our own times, intense messianic speculation has attracted a small minority of Jews, such as some adherents of the Chabad (Lubavitch) movement who believe their late leader (rebbe) Menahem Schneerson (1902–94) is the Messiah and will return soon. For the vast majority of Jews, however, messianic concerns are projected into a distant idealized future, if they are held at all. Since the nineteenth century, the Reform Movement, which represents a large percentage of American Jews, has rejected the concept of an individual messiah and other features of traditional Jewish eschatology in favor of the idea also found in the Bible (see Isa 2.1–5; Mic 4.1–5) of a messianic age of peace and justice achieved through human efforts.

JEWISH MIRACLE WORKERS IN THE LATE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD

Geza Vermes

Jesus is portrayed in the Gospels as a charismatic miracle-worker who heals the sick, raises the dead, exorcizes the demon-possessed, and feeds the hungry. These features also appear in the broader context of prophetic-charismatic religion of biblical and early postbiblical Judaism.

The Bible attributes such phenomena to the influence of the Spirit of God or divine power. This power is the source of revelation, thaumaturgy, and ecstasy. The earliest scriptural events of this kind are associated with Moses, the performer of signs and wonders (Deut 34.10–12), and with the elders in the desert, especially Eldad and Medad (Num 11.24–29). Charismatic prophecy begins with Samuel: prophetic ecstasy in his day is regularly displayed by the “sons of the prophets,” who, possessed by the Spirit, worked themselves up into ecstatic states that could be contagious and affect passersby like the first Israelite king, Saul (1 Sam 10.6,10).

The golden age of charismatic prophecy comes with Elijah and Elisha. These men of action were endowed with superhuman power. Elijah bested the prophets of Baal by calling down fire from heaven (1 Kings 18; see also 1 Chr 21.26; Lk 9.54) and eliminated two companies of soldiers sent to arrest him (2 Kings 1.9–12). Elisha routed the Syrian army that besieged Samaria (2 Kings 7.6). However, these prophets were mostly remembered for their beneficial miracles: healing (2 Kings 5.1–19), resuscitating (1 Kings 17.17–24; 2 Kings 4.11–37), bringing rain (1 Kings 18.41–46), wondrous feeding of the hungry (1 Kings 17.8–16; 2 Kings 4.1–7), and other prodigies.

Stories of such wonder-working prophets continue into later biblical and postbiblical Jewish writings as well as in Flavius Josephus and in the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash. Ben Sira in the second century BCE (Sir 48.1–14) recalls the “zeal,” “wondrous deeds,” “glory,” and “marvels” of Elijah and Elisha. Josephus depicts Elisha as a doer of “paradoxical deeds” (
Ant
. 9.182), an expression used also in the
Testimonium Flavianum
, the passage about Jesus (
Ant
. 18.63), whose partial authenticity is recognized by many scholars. Josephus also mentions a Jewish contemporary, called Eleazar, who practiced exorcism before Vespasian and Titus (
Ant
. 8.46–48). (See “Josephus,” p.
575
.)

Thus the miracles and signs ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels and to his followers in the Acts of the Apostles are not anomalous in Jewish culture. Ecstatic behavior plays a significant part in the story of the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2), the descent of the Holy Spirit on new believers (e.g., Acts 4.31; 7.55; 8.17; 10.44; 19.6), and the charismatic activity outlined by Paul in 1 Cor 11.4–11 and 14.1–33.

The principal representatives of charismatic Judaism in the age of Jesus are
Ḥ
oni, surnamed “ha-Me‘agel,” “the Circle Drawer” (because on one occasion when he prayed for rain and it did not commence, he drew a circle and stood inside it, saying he would not move until the rains came);
Ḥ
oni’s grandsons Abba
Ḥ
ilkiah and
Ḥ
anan; and the Galilean holy man
Ḥ
anina ben Dosa. Josephus mentions
Ḥ
oni under the Hellenized name of Onias; all four figures appear in the Mishnah and the Talmud.

Josephus, who reports that
Ḥ
oni was stoned to death by the supporters of Hyrcanus II for refusing to curse Aristobulus, the rival Hasmonean candidate for the throne, dates this wonder-worker to the period shortly before Pompey’s conquest of Jerusalem in 63 BCE (
Ant
. 14.22–30). His grandsons must have lived in the second half of the first century BCE and the beginning of the Christian era.
Ḥ
anina ben Dosa, probably a younger contemporary of Jesus, is described in the Talmud (
b. Ber
. 34b) as a disciple of Yo
ḥ
anan ben Zakkai and is linked to Rabban Gamaliel, possibly Gamaliel the Elder, (see Acts 5.34–39). All four were known for their miraculous rain-making power, which associated them with the prophet Elijah. Abba
Ḥ
ilkiah, who modestly attributed to God the arrival of the rain, was told by his rabbinic interlocutors: “We know that this rain has come
through you
” (
b. Ta’an
. 23ab).

In addition to rain making,
Ḥ
anina ben Dosa was renowned for curing the sick, even curing the son of Rabban Gamaliel from a distance (
y. Ber
. 9d) as Jesus healed the servant of the Roman centurion without visiting him (see Mt 8.5–13; Lk 7.1–10; Jn 4.46–54). One legend (
m. Ber
. 5.1; see also
b. Ber
. 33a) uses
Ḥ
anina’s piety to illustrate the importance of the
Shemoneh Esreh
(the eighteen benedictions or
Amidah
prayer): “Once while he was reciting the Prayer, a poisonous lizard bit him, but he did not interrupt [his prayer]. His students went and found it dead at the entrance to its hole. They said, ‘Woe to the man who is bitten by a lizard. Woe to the lizard that bit Ben Dosa.’” He is also celebrated as a saintly exorcist who controlled Igrat, the queen of the demons (
b. Pesah
. 112b).

Ḥ
anan “the hider” (so-called because he would hide when people came to ask him to make it rain) is accounted a wonder-worker. The Babylonian Talmud (
b. Ta’an
. 23b) reports that when the world needed rain, the sages would send schoolchildren to
Ḥ
anan: the children would plead, “Abba, abba [father, father], give us rain,” and
Ḥ
anan would pray, “Master of the Universe, act for the sake of those who cannot distinguish between the Abba who gives rain and the abba who does not give rain.”

Not surprisingly, traditionalists were occasionally critical of these wonder-workers, as they were suspicious of Jesus. For example, Simeon ben Sheta
Ḥ
, a Pharisaic leader, reproached
Ḥ
oni for showing lack of respect for God and wanted to, but dared not, excommunicate him (
m. Ta’an
. 3.8).
Ḥ
anina was implicitly charged with disregard toward the command of avoiding ritual impurity—he picked up a dead animal (
b. Ber
. 33a)—and with unseemly behavior by walking in the street unaccompanied at night (
b. Pesah
. 112b). The efficacy of his miraculous prayer was either questioned by rabbinic envoys or was attributed to the merits of the patriarchs and not to his closeness to God (
y. Ber
. 9d;
b. Ber
. 34b;
b. B. Kamma
50a;
b. Yebam
. 121b).