{"id":86654,"date":"2020-07-13T17:32:55","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T23:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=86654"},"modified":"2020-07-15T18:55:48","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T00:55:48","slug":"revision-1-11-yohanan-ben-zakkai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/07\/revision-1-11-yohanan-ben-zakkai.html","title":{"rendered":"Revision 1.11 “Yohanan ben Zakkai”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"Jerusalem<\/a>
This model of Jerusalem as it looked in AD 66, just before the First Jewish Revolt and the city\u2019s destruction at the hands of the Romans, is one of my very favorite teaching devices. It is located at the Israel Museum, near the Knesset.
(Public domain photo from Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Furthermore, the ruling classes of Jewry, including the chief families of hereditary priests, had perished along with the temple and the state they had served. Roman administrators were busily monitoring, harrassing, and persecuting descendants of the Davidic line, including the leaders of the Sanhedrin, in order to prevent them from serving as the nucleus of any new revolt. The prophets were long gone. Only the rabbis were left to become the leaders of a new Torah-centered Judaism. And, of course, since the Torah was their specialty and since their knowledge of it was the source of their authority, they were uniquely qualified to take over. Jewish tra\u00addition records that the great rabbi Yohanan (or Johanan) ben Zakkai, deputy head of the Sanhedrin, was smuggled out of the city of Jerusalem in a cof\u00adfin just before it fell to the Romans in 70 A.D., not for fear of the besieging armies but because his fellow Jews, the Zealots, were guarding all exits to prevent anybody from escaping the doomed city. Rabbi Yohanan, a priest and a Pharisee, was a realist. He favored peace and rejected fanaticism. He had opposed the revolt and, in fact, had long felt that Judaism would actually do better without the corruption and the distraction that seemed necessary accompaniments to a Jewish state. Thus, when the state disap\u00adpeared, he was spiritually and intellectually prepared to go on and, more importantly, to help his people to go on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rabbi Yohanan sought and received permission from the victo\u00adrious Roman authorities to set up a Jewish religious center at Yavneh (also Jab\u00adneh<\/em>, or even Jamnia<\/em>), to the west of Jerusalem. There, with the Jewish state gone and its traditional leadership destroyed, an assembly of rabbis met and, still under the title of \u201cSanhedrin,\u201d set about to answer the questions that arose among Jews as a result of the radically new conditions in which they found themselves. There were many of these questions. Jews had been accustomed to praying toward the temple, for example.[1]<\/a> Now, with it gone, where should they pray? The Sanhedrin had always met within the temple precincts. How could it function now? The tithes and dues and offerings that were so important to Jewish practice were almost all tied up with Jerusalem and the temple. What now? Could Passover still be cele\u00adbrated with the sacrificial lamb? These questions had to be answered, and in order to do so, the rabbis had to create or discover new resources among the treasures of their ancient heritage. Rabbi Johanan and his associates took decisive steps in this direction. To his disciples and to the Jewish people in general, who were dis\u00admayed by the fall of the temple and who wondered where the sins of Israel could now find atonement, he taught: \u201cMy son, do not dis\u00adtress yourself, we have another atonement that is like it; and what is it? Charity: `For charity I desire, not sacrifice.\u201d\u2018[2]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

It was under Johanan ben Zakkai that the process of canoniz\u00ading the Psalms and the so-called \u201cwisdom books\u201d of the Hebrew Bible was completed. Previously, while all Jews had agreed to accept the so-called \u201cfive books of Moses,\u201d the Pentateuch, some\u2014notably the Sadducees\u2014had refused to recognize the other books of our Old Testament as canonical. It\u2019s noteworthy, in fact, that the old sectar\u00adian divisions among Jews\u2014between Zealots, Essenes, Sadducees, various schools of Pharisees, and the like\u2014virtually disappeared. Only rabbinic Judaism survived, focused intensely on the Law and sustained by a consensus among Jews that this, and this alone, was or should be the true center of a pious Jewish life for both the indi\u00advidual and the community. As time passed, the new Sanhedrin at Yavneh took on most of the functions of the old one that had oper\u00adated when the temple was still in place. The Sanhedrin became the executive body within Jewish community life, as well as the inter\u00adpreter of the Law and an academy for training new generations in the intricacies of the Torah.<\/span><\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> This practice was attested in Daniel\u2019s day (Daniel 6:10).<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Cited by Shmuel Safrai, in H. H. Ben-Sasson, A History <\/em>of <\/em>the Jewish People <\/em>(Cam\u00adbridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 321. Rabbi Yohanan is himself citing the great statement of Hosea 6:6.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Posted from Park City, Utah<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 \u00a0 Furthermore, the ruling classes of Jewry, including the chief families of hereditary priests, had perished along with the temple and the state they had served. 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