Birkat HaMinim
The Vineyard at Yavneh
When Yochanan ben Zakkai escaped from the siege of jerusalem in a coffin, he went to Vespasian and asked for permission to start an academy of the sages in the city of Yavneh. The city sits on the Mediterranean coastal plain. The Romans referred to it as "Jamnia." The city had a large, mixed population of Jews and Gentiles. King Herod bequeathed it to his sister Salome. She left it to Caesar Augustus. Caesar made it into a Roman city in the land of Israel. It belonged to the Caesars as their personal property. This explains why Yochanan ben Zakkai believed that Yavneh could provide a safe refuge for him and his school of colleagues and sages during the Jewish War with Rome.
By the time Yochanan ben Zakkai started the school at Yavneh, he was already quite old. Near the end of his life, he withdrew from the politically charged world of the sages at Yavneh and retired to his home in the village of Beror Chayil. He opened a small academy of Torah in that village, and he died there.
When he left Yavneh, his disciples and the other sages at the academy appointed a successor. They chose Rabban Gamliel ben Shim'on to take the position as head of the academy at Yavneh. They elected him as Nasi (presi-dent) over the Sanhedrin primarily on the basis of his pedigree. His family claimed Davidic descent (maternally). He was the great, great grandson of Hillel the Elder and the grandson of Paul's teacher, Gamliel the Elder. His father Shimon, his grandfather Gamliel, and his great, great grandfather Hillel had all served terms as presidents over the Sanhedrin.
Gamliel also had a family connection with Yochanan ben Zakkai's chief disciple, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. Eliezer married Gamliel's sister Ima Shalom. The marriage firmly united the disciples of ben Zakkai and the royal house of Gamliel.
The academy at Yavneh functioned both as a school of Torah learning and as a high court modeled after the Sanhedrin. Gamliel cleared his new position of authority with the Roman government. His predecessor, Yochanan ben Zakkai, received authorization for establishing the Sanhedrin at Yavneh directly from Vespasian. Gamliel traveled to Antioch to present himself before the Roman governor and receive permission to take charge of the academy. That Roman validation increased the weight of Yavneh's authority.
The Talmud refers to the academy as "the vineyard at Yavneh." Rashi explains that they called the academy a "vineyard" because the scholars sat in rows before the teacher like rows in a vineyard. Our Master's parable of the vineyard also seems pertinent. In the parable, He compared the Sadducean high priests and aristocrats who dominated the Sanhedrin in His day to the wicked vine-growers sharecropping in someone else's vineyard. When they refused to give the owner of the vineyard his due, he sent messengers to them, but they persecuted and killed the messengers. He sent his son, but they killed him, too. Our Master promised, "The owner of the vineyard will bring those wretches [i.e., the Sadducees] to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons" (Matthew 21:4I).
The sages at Yavneh wanted to bring unity to the Jewish people. Prior to the destruction of the Temple, the Jewish people had been divided into many sects, and several of the sectarian movements were hostile to one another. The sages believed that Jerusalem was destroyed as a punishment for the baseless hatred between Jews, and sectarianism had contributed a great deal to that hatred.
The academy at Yavneh began to consolidate Judaism. Gamliel did not hesitate to enforce his own authority as the president of the Sanhedrin; he often did so harshly and with severity. He used the instrument of the ban relentlessly against those who opposed his decisions. He quickly earned a reputation for legal despotism. He justihed all of his rulings and his actions on the basis of unity. He claimed that he made his decisions without regard to his own honor or the honor of his father's house, but only so that factions might not multiply in Israel.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Substituting For the Sacrifices
One obvious question facing the Sanhedrin at Yavneh involved the absence of sacrifices. Without the Temple, the sacrificial services mandated by the Torah could not be resumed. The Romans refused to allow the Jews to rebuild the Temple. Until that policy changed, what could the Jewish community do to compensate for the sacrifices?
The New Zion community in Jerusalem had already developed a theological answer to the question of practicing Judaism without sacrifices. They regarded the sacrificial system as a reflection of a greater, heavenly reality that culminated in the sacrificial, atoning death of the Son of God. They taught that Jerusalem on earth is only a temporary city: "Here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come" (Hebrews 13:14). They believed that they could substitute for the earthly sacrifices with prayer. They based that conclusion on a passage in Hosea:
Take words with you and return to the LORD. Say to Him, "Take away all iniquity and receive us graciously, that we may present the fruit of our lips." (Hosea 14:3[2])
The apostles invoked the same passage:
Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. (Hebrews 13:15-16)
Gamliel and the sages at Yavneh followed the same interpretation and used Hosea 14:2 as the key proof text for offering prayers in the place of sacrifice at the daily times of sacrifice.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Shimon Ben Klofi and the Amidah
b.Berachot 28b
Gamliel knew that if the daily prayers must substitute for sacrifices until the Temple could be rebuilt, then the daily prayers needed to be prayed with the same regularity and solemn obligation as the offering of the daily sacrifices in the Temple. That required standardizing the prayers and making them obligatory on Israel.
In his day, the prayers were much looser, and different parties had different traditions about the form of the prayers. Cantors had wide leeway in their formulation of the blessings. The common people did not necessarily know the retinue of daily prayers. Jewish liturgy had not been canonized.
Furthermore, Gamliel realized that the liturgies of the Temple needed to be adapted to reflect the current state of things. For example, prayers that said things like, "Please accept the fire offerings of your people Israel," needed to be reworded and adapted to life without a Temple.
The central prayer of the Temple that corresponded to the daily sacrifices is called the Shemoneh Esreh, i.e., the Eighteen. It consists of eighteen bless-ings. We commonly call it the Amidah ("standing prayer") because the rubrics for the prayer require worshipers to pray the blessings standing, facing toward the Temple.
Legend says that Ezra and the men of the great assembly wrote the prayer to accompany the offering up of the daily continual burnt offerings. In Gamliel's day, several versions of the prayer existed. (Obviously, the Sad-ducean priesthood did not use the version we have today.) Nevertheless, the sages considered the blessings of the Amidah as sacred text and inspired by God. Gamliel did not feel that he and his colleagues at Yavneh had the right to formulate or edit new versions of the Amidah because they were not prophets.
To establish a common liturgy, Gamliel needed to appeal to authority from the past. He looked to the previous generation, who had been most involved in the prayer services in the Temple. He found an elderly man, an expert in the Temple liturgy, named Shim'on HaPekuli, who arranged the blessings of the Amidah:
Shim'on HaPekuli arranged the eighteen benedictions in order before Rabban Gamliel in Yavneh. (b.Berachot 28b; b. Megillah 17b)
According to Rashi, the name "HaPekuli" might mean "cotton seller." More likely, Pekuli emerged from a typographic distortion of Klofi, that is, Simeon the son of Clopas.
Simeon the son of Clopas was an obvious candidate to help the sages at Yavneh draft a new, post-Temple version of the Amidah. He presided as the head of the Notzrim, a Temple sect that had religiously attended the Temple prayer services on a daily basis for nearly forty years. That gave him credibility as a liturgical authority. According to tradition, Simeon son of Clopas was already over seventy years of age at the time of the destruction of the Temple, and by the time Gamliel was organizing the Amidah, he must have been in his eighties.
Jewish sources ascribe the composition of several important pieces of the synagogue liturgy to Simon Peter. The same sources, however, have confounded the name Shim'on Kefa (Peter) with Shim'on bar Klofo (Clopas).
Although several of his compositions have been wrongly attributed to Simon Peter, Simeon son of Clopas, evidently, actively contributed to the composition and editing of the synagogue liturgy. That makes it even more plausible that he is the mysterious Shim'on HaPekuli who arranged the eighteen blessings of the Amidah for Gamliel in Yavneh.
Hebrew University scholar Yehudah Liebes suggests that one of the blessings in the Amidah betrays the influence of the Jewish believers (Yehudah Liebes, "Who Makes the Horn of Jesus to Flourish," Immanuel 21 [1987]: 55-67). Liebes points out that the Hebrew wording of the blessing for the restoration of the house of David intentionally draws the name of Yeshua into the text:
May You cause the Branch of David Your servant to sprout forth quickly, whose horn will be raised with Your salvation, for we hope for Your salvation all day long. Blessed are You, O LORD, who causes the horn of salvation (yeshuah, ny») to sprout forth. (Amidah 15)
Liebes argues that the awkward Hebrew that concludes the blessing results from an edit to the original. He believes the original form of the blessing concluded with the words, "Who causes the horn of David to sprout forth." The early believers wanted to make it explicit, in their own prayers, that Yeshua is that promised Messiah, the predicted horn of David that has sprouted forth from the house of David. By wording the conclusion of the blessing as, "Who causes the horn of yeshuah (salvation) to blossom forth," they made it possible for non-Yeshua-believing Jews to pray the same prayer. Liebes finds further support for the messianic origin of the formulation in the fact that, after the excommunication of the believers and the introduction of the blessing against heretics, the sages withdrew the blessing about the "horn of salvation" from the synagogue liturgies in the land of Israel. The blossoming forth of salvation in that blessing alludes back to the resurrection language in the second blessing of the Amidah: "You are a King who causes death and resurrects, and you make yeshuah (salvation) blossom forth. Blessed are you, O LORD, who resurrects the dead" (Amidah 2).
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Three Times a Day
b.Berachot 28b
Assuming that the above speculation is on the mark, Simeon the son of Clopas arranged, organized, and edited the Amidah for daily recitation. He harmonized different versions and textual traditions to present an authorized version before Gamliel and the sages at Yavneh.
Gamliel wanted to make the recitation of the Amidah a mandatory obligation for all Jewish men. He argued that since we can no longer bring sacrifices, we offer the "bulls of our lips" instead. Therefore, it should be incumbent upon Jewish men to pray the Amidah-the prayer that accompanied the daily sacrifices-at the times of the morning and afternoon sacrifices.
Simeon son of Clopas may have suggested adding the Amidah to the evening prayers as well, at the time of the recitation of the evening Shema. The disciples of Yeshua already religiously prayed the Lord's Prayer during their times of prayer three times a day (Didache 83). He could point out that Daniel prayed toward Jerusalem three times a day while he was in exile in Babylon (Daniel 6:10).
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai's disciples objected. Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus did not like the idea of requiring people to pray rote prayers. He said, "If a man makes his prayers into a fixed task, they are no longer genuine supplications." Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah, another disciple of Ben Zakkai, agreed with the logic of praying the Amidah at the time of the morning sacrifice and the afternoon sacrifice, but he could see no reason to pray it again in the evening when there was no corresponding sacrificial service to memorialize. Furthermore, he argued that, in some situations, such as traveling or when in imminent danger, a shorter prayer might be more preferable.
In the end, Gamliel won the arguments. The sages at lavneh declared the recitation of the Amidah to be a thrice-daily obligation for all Jewish men.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
The Lamp and the Donkey
b.Shabbat IIба-b
Now in those days, there was a certain Gentile philosopher who had a good reputation among the Jews as a known God-fearing believer. He lived in the vicinity of Yavneh, and he served as a judge on a local, secular court of law. The local Jewish community held him in high esteem. They claimed that he could not be bribed. Many of the Jewish people in the area began to use this judge to settle their law cases.
Gamliel had doubts about the man's integrity, and he did not like the idea of Jews going to a Gentile law court instead of a proper Torah court of law. He and his sister, Ima Shalom (Rabbi Eliezer's wife), concocted a plan to expose the judge.
Ima Shalom brought the man a gift. She gave him a fine, golden lamp. Later, she brought her litigation before him. She told the judge that she wanted to sue her brother Gamliel. She and her brother approached the court.
She said to the judge, "I want to receive a share from my dead father's estate." Her father was Simon son of Gamliel, who had died in the siege of Jerusalem. The judge ruled on her behalf. He instructed Gamliel to divide the estate and give a portion to his sister.
Gamliel objected, "But for us Jews, it is written in our Law, that when there is a son, a daughter does not inherit" (Numbers 27:8).
The judge replied, "Since the day you people have been exiled from your land, the Law of Moses has been superseded, and a new book has been written which says, 'A son and a daughter inherit equally." The "new book" was the gospel.
Gamliel knew the Jewish believers, and he knew the gospel. He might have been familiar with the Hebrew/Aramaic versions used among the Jewish believers, but Gamliel was fluent in Greek, too. He probably had read the Greek text of the Gospel of Matthew. He knew that no version of the gospel says, "A son and a daughter inherit equally."
The next day, Gamliel returned to the court with a Luvian donkey, that is, a particularly strong and esteemed breed worth a great deal of money. He gave the donkey to the judge as a gift.
When the judge reconvened the case, Gamliel said, "Go down to the end of the book wherein it is written, I come not to subtract from the Law of Moses' (Matthew 5:17). And in the Law of Moses, it is written, Where there is a son, a daughter does not inherit." The judge ruled in Gamliel's favor.
Ima Shalom objected with another quotation from the previous verse in the Gospel of Matthew. She cried out to the judge, "Let your light shine forth like a lamp" (Matthew 5:15-16). With these words, she alluded to the expensive gift she had given to the judge.
Gamliel replied, "A donkey came and kicked over the lamp."
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Superseding the Torah
The story of the believing judge, the lamp, and the donkey demonstrates that a post-Jewish form of faith in Yeshua had already begun to take root among the God-fearing Gentile believers in the late first century. The atrocities against Jews and God-fearers during the war years and the nearly two decades of the Fiscus Judaicus (the Jewish tax) had created —almost by necessity—a new type of Gentile disciple.
The new breed had little connection to apostolic leadership, and not many apostles were left with which to connect. The new breed had limited interaction with the New Zion community of believers in Jerusalem. Their scriptures consisted of one or more of the Synoptic Gospels, the popular collection of Paul's letters, and the Septuagint. As yet, they could not be described as particularly anti-Jewish, but they were increasingly anti-Torah. They believed that Jesus had canceled the law. Their proof for that proposition lay in the fact that they themselves-the disciples of Jesus-did not keep the ritual and ceremonial aspects of the law. Therefore, those things that belonged to the old must have been canceled by the new.
They misunderstood the entire argument about distinct identity and roles for Jewish believers and God-fearing Gentile believers. They believed that since the apostles had not taught them to keep the Torah like Jews, the Torah must no longer be valid for anyone. That interpretation allowed them to keep their distance from Jewish practices, which might associate them with the hated Jewish community or, worse yet, make them liable to pay the Jewish tax. The anti-Torah interpretation of Paul's teachings had been making the rounds among the believers since the middle of the century. A quarter century before Gamliel and Ima Shalom met the Christian judge, Jewish believers were already slanderously saying, "Paul teaches all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs" (Acts 21:21). This indicates that the supersession of Torah and the replacement of Jewish identity with a new Christian identity first began as a result of misinterpreting Paul.
The encounter with the Christian judge must have alarmed Gamliel. His efforts to unify Judaism after the Temple depended primarily on Jewish allegiance to the revelation of Torah. Without the Temple, the Jewish people had no other common bond to sustain their identity and nation other than their covenant obligations to Torah. If the disciples of Yeshua now undermined that allegiance by teaching that the Torah had been superseded or replaced, they became a threat to the work at Yavneh and to the survival of the Jewish people. They ceased to be a part of the Jewish people.
For example, once it happened that Chanina, a nephew of Rabbi Yehoshua, encountered an enclave of sectarians in Capernaum. He fell under their spell and accepted their teachings. They taught him to violate the Sabbath. He was seen riding on a donkey on the Sabbath day (Ecclesiastes Rabbah I:8 f 3-4 [1:25]). This troubling story illustrates the rising tensions between the rabbis and the new, emerging expressions of Christian and Gnostic Yeshua-believers that they encountered. They recognized dangerous trends at work among the Yeshua-believers.
The mysterious sect at Capernaum might have belonged to one of the new Christian groups who believed that the gospel canceled the Torah like those that the Apostle Jude warned against in his epistle, or they might have been Gnostics like the proto-Gnostics. In the land of Israel, Simon Magus and Thebuthis had many followers. Outside the land of Israel, Gnostic teachers like Cerinthus propagated the same distortions.
The Gnostics identified themselves with Yeshua, but they taught a complete reversal of Judaism. They believed that the God of the Bible was not the true God. They considered Him to be a corrupt, lower emanation of the true God. They considered His creation irredeemably polluted and corrupt. Therefore, they believed that the laws of His Torah were unnecessary impediments that pertained only to the evil, material system He had created. As true spiritual beings, the Gnostics felt that they had transcended the need to observe the commandments.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Torah-Keeping Believers
Although the rabbis encountered early Gnostic and Gentile Christian versions of Yeshua-faith, those were exceptions to the rule, not the norm. Most Jewish believers in those days were strictly Torah-observant and devout Jews. That made it hard to disenfranchise them from Judaism. It made it hard even to identify a Yeshua-believer from any other Jew.
A medieval collection of anti-Christian, Jewish folklore titled The Story about Shimon Kefa preserves early traditions about the Jewish believers. In that story, the sages were distressed about the number of Nazarenes among the Jewish people, and they sought some way to distinguish between Jewish believers and other Jews. They conceived of a plan to discourage Jewish believers from observing circumcision, the Sabbath, and the Jewish calendar. Although the legend has no real historical value, it does accurately preserve the memory that, initially, the Jewish believers were Torah-observant and indistinguishable from other Jews.
Rabban Gamliel wanted to be able to push the Jewish believers away as "sectarians" like the Sadducees or Essenes. He saw them as a rival form of Judaism that needed to be extinguished. He rejected the counsel of his saintly grandfather, who had said, "Stay away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or action is of men, it will be overthrown; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them; or else you may even be found fighting against God" (Acts 5:38-39).
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Gamliel’s Harsh Rulings
b.Bava Metzia 59b; b.Berachot 28a
Gamliel had a reputation for being harsh and unrelenting in his efforts to homogenize Judaism into a single, monolithic practice. He did not hesitate to assert his authority, even if it meant stepping on his own superiors and elders. He often locked horns with Yochanan ben Zakkai's two most eminent disciples, Eliezer ben Hyranus and Yehoshua ben Chananiah, even though they were his elders and far exceeded him in Torah scholarship. Ultimately, he excommunicated Eliezer for dissent and publicly humiliated Yehoshua.
As time went on, Gamliel became more despotic than ever. He began to ban sages, disciples, and scholars from the academy at Yavneh on the basis of character assessments. He made a rule, stating, "No disciple whose inside does not correspond to his outside may enter the house of study" (b.Berachot 28a). In other words, he banned hypocritical scholars who appeared pious in their dress and appearance but did not behave piously. Gamliel may have based the new policy on the teaching of Yeshua and His denouncement of hypocrisy among the sages (Matthew 23:25-28). As we have seen, Gamliel knew the sayings of the Master, and he had contact with the believers.
Although it sounds like a worthy policy, Gamliel himself was the final judge. He could ban anyone he wanted from the academy on the basis of a perceived character deficiency. He placed guards at the door to the hall and did not allow those on the ban to enter.
The other sages began to object to his heavy-handedness. When they saw him once again publicly humiliating Rabbi Yehoshua in the study hall, they said, "Come, let us depose Rabban Gamliel and appoint another in his place."
The sages looked for a candidate capable of replacing Gamliel. He had to be a learned man of noble heritage, full of Torah, and flush with money. The position required sufficient wealth for dealing with the Roman authorities. They offered the position to a young man named Eleazar ben Azariyah. He had pedigree as a tenth-generation, direct descendant of Ezra the scribe. He had sufficient wealth to back up the office. Most importantly, he was well-studied and wise in questions of Torah.
His only disadvantage was his youth. According to the Talmud, he was only eighteen years old.
He went and consulted his wife. She warned him, "Perhaps they will depose you later." Ben Azariyah agreed, but he said, "A man should drink from the cup of honor for a single day even if it be broken the next."
She said, "You are too young. You do not even have a single white hair." A miracle happened, and his hair turned white.
This is why Eleazar ben Azariyah says in the Passover Haggadah, "1 am like a man seventy years old."
On that day, they removed the guard from the door of the study hall. The sages that Gamliel had barred from the academy returned. Some say that they had to add four hundred chairs to the academy that day. Rabban Gamliel swallowed his pride and attended the lectures, too.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Gamli’el Apologizes
Gamliel realized that he needed to make amends with Yehoshua, whom he had publicly humiliated in the study hall. He said to himself, "I will go and apologize to Yehoshua."
He went to visit Yehoshua at his home in the village of Pekiin. He was surprised to see the respected rabbi's impoverished living conditions. Soot blackened the walls of his house.
Gamliel said, "From the walls of your house, it is apparent that you burn a lot of charcoal."
Yehoshua made his meager living as a type of smith called a needler. He specialized in various types of needles and fine metal implements. The soot was from his smithy work. He replied sharply, "Alas, for the generation that has you for its leader, seeing that you know nothing of the troubles of the scholars or their struggles to support and sustain themselves!" Gamliel said, "1 apologize. Please forgive me."
Yehoshua ignored him until Gamliel begged, "Forgive me out of respect for my father."
Then Yehoshua pardoned Gamliel for the many insults. He sent word to the sages at lavneh that they should receive Gamliel back. His message said, "Let the man accustomed to wearing the robe wear it. Should a man unaccustomed to wearing it say to him, 'Take off your robe, and I will put it on?"
Rabbi Akiva heard that Yehoshua had forgiven Gamliel. He said, "Lock the doors before the servants of Gamliel try to force their way in." The scholars in the study hall refused to admit Gamliel. Yehoshua himself came and knocked at the door. Still locked outside, he reasoned with Akiva and the scholars inside, begging them to forgive Gamliel and reinstate him to his position.
They reached a compromise. They returned Gamliel to his position, but he had to share it with Eleazar ben Azariyah. They gave ben Azariyah the privilege of lecturing on every fourth Sabbath. Gamliel lectured on the other three.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Trip to Roma
Near the end of Domitian's reign, Rabban Gamliel made a voyage to Rome to meet with Caesar. He did not go alone. Ben Azariyah, Yehoshua, and Akiva went with him. Rabbinic literature contains many anecdotes about this journey and the stay in Rome, but none of them record the precise details that necessitated the trip. The urgency of their mission can be deduced by the fact that the sages set sail in the fall, before the holy days and when navigation was no longer safe. Whatever the matter that compelled them to travel, it forced them to sail during the hazardous season right through the fall holidays (just as Paul had done). The nature of the emergency most probably pertained to Domitian's plans to persecute the Jewish people in connection with his discovery of the God-fearers. The apocryphal Acts of John at Rome confirms Domitian's plans to strike the Jewish community, but it limits the proposed action to an exile of all Jews from the city of Rome. Claudius had done the same thing several decades earlier.
Flavius Clemens might have alerted the rabbis. According to the Midrash Rabbah, he knew of anti-Jewish legislation pending in the senate. He told the Jewish community, "The Roman Senate issued a decree that within thirty days, no Jew would be found in the world" (Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:25).
Domitian's anti-Jewish policies directly related to his paranoia about another Jewish revolt, his alarm at the number of God-fearers in Roman society, and his confusion around Jewish identity and the Jewish tax. The deeply religious and superstitious Domitian believed that Jews were responsible for proselytizing Romans, turning them into Jewish atheists, and causing them to abandon the gods. He did not understand the overwhelming God-fearer phenomenon was primarily the fault of only one sect of Judaism: the Christians.
Gamliel and his colleagues may have realized that Domitian's inability to discern Jews from God-fearing Gentile Christians threatened the safety of Jews throughout the empire. As soon as they heard about the pending measures against the Jews, they abandoned everything and made an emergency trip to Rome.
They sailed first to Antioch, where they raised a contribution of money from the large and prosperous Jewish community in that city. They needed the money to bring a gift/bribe to the emperor. The Jews of Antioch wanted to see the embassy to Domitian succeed, and they generously contributed to the cause.
The rabbis spent a long time in Rome, negotiating and lobbying on behalf of the Jewish people. They worked closely with Jewish sympathizers and God-fearers in the government. Their first task was to avert the disaster that hung over the Jewish people.
They came to Rome primarily to settle the question of "who is a Jew" for purposes of the Jewish tax and to disassociate the Jewish people from the unpopular sect of the Christians/Nazarenes (see Marius Heemstra, The Fiscus Judaicus and the Parting of the Ways [Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2010]). They may have tried to introduce reform to the Fiscus Judaicus laws that would simplify the system by clearly identifying who is and who is not Jewish. They wanted to harmonize Roman and Jewish definitions of Jewish identity and make it clear that the Gentile Christians, whatever they might be, were not Jews.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
The New Christians
The rabbis took lodging in the Jewish community and began the work of lobbying, bribing, and influencing Domitian and the senate. Their sojourn in the Roman Jewish community gave them the opportunity to meet and interact with Gentile believers. The encounters did not always leave a favorable impression.
Rabbinic literature contains several anecdotes about exchanges between Gamliel and "sectarians (minim)." The ambiguous word "sectarian" might refer to Jews belonging to any non-Pharisaical sect of Judaism, such as the Sadducees, the Essenes, or the believers. It ordinarily refers only to Jews, but in some cases, the term seems to include God-fearing Gentile Christians as well. In one example, a sectarian said to Rabban Gamliel, "You are a people rejected by your God." The sectarian went on to try to prove from the Scriptures that God had rejected Israel (b. Yevamot 102b). The story illustrates the early indications of replacement theology and supersessionism entering Gentile Christian thinking.
Some of the sectarians with whom Gamliel and his colleagues interacted were surely Jewish Christians who embraced the same ideas. The emerg-ing, anti-Jewish aspects of Gentile Christianity attracted Hellenized Jews in the Roman Era. The new trends in Christianity allowed them to shed their Jewish identity without shedding their attachment to monotheism, the Jewish Scriptures, and the God of Israel. The idea that the Torah did not have jurisdiction over them any longer gave them a sense of religious justification for the secularized lifestyle they already embraced. These Jewish Christians were nothing like the devout believers that Gamliel knew in Jerusalem. At the same time, he could see how the presence of God-fearing Gentiles in a Jewish community could eventually erode Jewish identity and allegiance to the Torah.
Persecution Under Domitian
According to Acts of John at Rome, when Domitian announced his plan to banish all the Jews from Rome, some "courageous Jews" stepped forward and presented him with a written document entreating him to repeal the measure. The document clarified the differences between Jews and the "new and strange people... under the strange name Christian." It placed the blame for violations of Roman "laws, and practices, and policy" on the new sect.
If there was such a document, could the "courageous Jews" who authored it have been Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariyah, Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbi Akiva?
In any case, the lobby worked. Domitian turned his attention from Jews in general to focus his efforts against the believers, their leaders, and the house of David. This accounts for the arrest of John and his subsequent exile to Patmos and the arrest of the grandsons of Jude.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Domitian Assasinated
The persecution against the believers did nothing to alleviate the emperor's growing sense of paranoia. He had a premonition of his looming death, and he suspected conspiracy everywhere. He believed that everyone was trying to assassinate him.
Fearsome omens frightened him. For eight months, heavy lightning storms visited Rome repeatedly. Lightning bolts struck the temple of Jupiter Capitoline. Lightning struck the temple of the Flavian family. Lightning struck the emperor's palace. Lightning even struck Domitian's own bed-room. Finally, Domitian cried out, "Well, let him now strike whom he will!" (Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars: Domitian 15).
He visited oracles, but the oracles were bad. Astrologers predicted gloomy things for Domitian and his house. Domitian dreamed that the goddess Minerva, to whom he was particularly devoted, came to him and warned him that she could no longer protect him. By means of omens and portents, Domitian anticipated the day and hour of his death.
His court officials conspired against him. His own chamberlain authored the plot. A steward of the exiled Flavia Domitilla, who was himself under investigation for embezzlement, joined the conspiracy and agreed to do the deed. Several others joined the effort. They murdered Domitian in his own bedroom on September 18, 96 CE.
The members of the Roman Senate were so overjoyed by the news that they ran to fill the senate house, where they gave full vent to their pent-up hatred for the emperor. They ordered crews to immediately go through the city and tear down all the idols and images of Domitian and smash them to the ground. They passed an official decree (damnatia memoriae) that his inscriptions should be erased from public buildings and dedicatory plaques, and that all record of him should be erased. His coins and statues were melted down, his triumphal arches were pulled down, and his name was blotted off of public records.
If Rabban Gamliel and his colleagues were still in Rome at the time, they must have been astonished at the sudden reversal as they saw the images of the emperor come crashing down.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Nerva
On the same day that Domitian died, the Roman Senate appointed the sixty-five year-old consul Marcus Cocceius Nerva to the imperial seat. As the new ruler of the empire, Nerva vowed to restore the liberties that Domitian had taken away. He immediately declared amnesty for everyone Domitian had sent into exile. He vowed that no senator would be put to death while he was in office. He called for an end to trials for treason against majesty and other crooked judicial practices. He returned properties confiscated by Domitian to their owners. Most importantly, he launched a series of sweeping tax reform policies. To the disappointment of the Jewish people, he did not repeal the hateful Fiscus Judaicus, but he did completely reform it. He issued a new coin, similar to the Judea Capta series, celebrating the reformation of the law. The coin bears the legend, "fisci ludaici calumnia sublata," written around a palm tree. The palm tree image, borrowed from the Judea Capta coins, represents the Jewish people. The inscription means "abolition of malicious prosecution of the Jewish tax." The coins began to circulate only months after Nerva took power. Apparently, Nerva and the senate felt that reformation of the Fiscus Judaicus laws needed to take top priority for the new administration.
What does it mean that Nerva abolished "the malicious prosecution of the Jewish tax"? The Roman historian Cassius Dio helps fill in the picture:
Nerva put to death all the slaves and the freedmen who had conspired against their masters. He prohibited that class of persons from lodging any accusations whatsoever against their masters. No persons were permitted any longer to accuse anybody of majesty-crimes or of adopting the Jewish mode of life. (Cassius Dio, Roman History 68.I.2)
The Roman law courts would no longer hear cases about people accused of secretly being Jews or drifting into Jewish ways. Moreover, God-fearing Gentiles (and perhaps even Jewish believers) were taken off the tax rolls for the Fiscus Judaicus. Jewish sympathizers no longer needed to fear prosecution under the tax code. The Roman authorities no longer considered Gentile believers as tax-evading, crypto-Jews guilty of "leading a Jewish life." They were henceforth exempt from the tax. Unfortunately, the change in policy did not exempt them from the charge of atheism and the crime of being Christians, crimes punishable by death.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Birkat HaMinim
b.Berachot 28b-29a
Rabban Gamliel and his colleagues might have had significant input into Nerva's momentous tax reform decision. They probably helped the Roman government distinguish between Jews and believers. Now, they needed to do the same thing in the synagogues. Rabban Gamliel wanted to eliminate sectarianism by reconciling all Jews into one monolithic form of Judaism. He had no hesitation about cutting off the disciples of Yeshua if it could help achieve that goal and reduce the threat of Roman persecution.
Back in Yavneh, he asked the sages, "Is there anyone among you who can compose a blessing against the sectarians (minim)?"
The Hebrew word min means "species, type, or kind." It also means "sect" or "sectarian." It corresponds to the Greek word (hairesis), from which we derive the English word "heresy," but in those days, the word did not yet have that connotation. It simply meant "sect." Josephus used the word hairesis frequently when discussing the various sects of Judaism: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots. The Jewish people referred to the disciples of Yeshua as the "sect of the Nazarenes."
To be clear, the term "minim (sectarians)" is broader than just the disciples of Yeshua. From the perspective of the sages at Yavneh, it referred to all non-Yavneh forms of Judaism.
Gamliel asked if there was anyone who felt competent to compose a new blessing for the central prayer of Judaism. It was a daunting thing to ask. The Amidah was sacred text. The men of the Great Assembly who originally composed the Amidah had prophets in their midst. Adding a blessing was like adding a book to the Bible. Rabban Gamliel sought someone who could write a blessing on the same lofty and inspired level of prophecy.
Shmu'el HaKatan (Samuel the Little) felt confident that he had the ability to do that. He arose and composed it. The "blessing" is actually a "curse" against apostates, heretics, sectarians, informers, and especially against believers in Yeshua.
The blessing has undergone several edits throughout the centuries, partially due to censoring from the Christian church. A version of the blessing found in the Cairo Genizah may or may not better represent the original form of the blessing. In any case, the Cairo Genizah version goes back to the fourth century:
For the apostates let there be no hope. And let the arrogant government be speedily uprooted in our days. Let the Nazarenes (Notzrim) and the sectarians (minim) be destroyed in a moment. And let them be blotted out of the Book of Life and not be inscribed together with the righteous. Blessed art thou, O LORD, who humbles the arrogant. (Birkat HaMinim, Cairo Genizah Version)
Synagogues enforced the recitation of the imprecation against believers and other sectarians by removing any cantor or prayer leader who refused to recite the blessing. The rule was, "If a cantor errs in his recitation of any other blessings, they do not remove him, but if he errs in the recitation of the blessing against the sectarians (minim), they remove him because we suspect him of being a sectarian" (b.Berachot 29a). That meant that Jewish believers who refused to pray the blessing were no longer allowed to lead the prayers. It made it clear that they were not welcome in the synagogues any longer.
At least by the early second century, the imprecation against the believers seemed standard in most synagogues, and it was understood as a curse targeted against believers. Justin Martyr knew about the blessing. In his Dialogue with Trypho, he says, "For you curse in your synagogues all those who are called from Him, 'Christians, and [the Romans] effectively carry out the curse, putting to death those who simply confess themselves to be 'Christian"" (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 16:4, 47:4, 96:2).
The imprecation wounded the disciples of Yeshua. They could not help but resent the maltreatment. It furthered their sense of otherness and estrangement from the Jewish people. It fed the fire of anti-Jewish and anti-Torah teaching that had already taken root in many places. It forced many Jewish believers, particularly in the Diaspora, to find fellowship in Gentile contexts, which led to rapid assimilation and loss of Jewish identity.
Not all believers abandoned the synagogues. Ironically, God-fearing Gentile believers had less trouble maintaining their footing in the synagogue world than Jewish believers. The synagogues tended to look at the God-fearing Gentile believers the same way they looked at other Gentile sympathizers. They treated them as guests in the community without worrying about the particulars of their beliefs. Jewish believers, on the other hand, did not have the privilege of guest status.
The transition did not happen all at once. Some synagogues accepted the authority of Yavneh; others probably did not. Even if they all did, it would take many years for changes in liturgy to circulate, take root, and institutionalize. As a rule, liturgical structures resist innovation.
The Jewish tax, however, accelerated the process of forcing a distinction and separation between Jews and believers. If Nerva did agree to categorize Jewish believers as "Christians" and exempt them from paying the Fiscus Judaicus, that exemption officially declared that Jewish disciples of Yeshua were no longer Jews in the eyes of the Roman government. For purposes of tax registration, synagogues and Jewish communities had to scrutinize their congregations and populations and draw up detailed lists of "who-is-a-jew" according to the new standard. They needed to know exactly who qualified as Jewish and who did not.
If Yavneh made their decisions in concert with official Roman legislation pertaining to the Jewish tax, then Roman authority added significant muscle to the influence that lavneh might have asserted over the Jewish world. Whether it happened all at once or little by little, believers found themselves outside the synagogue in the end. These things fulfilled predic-tion. Our Master warned His disciples, "They will make you outcasts from the synagogue" (John 16:2). So it had come to pass, just as He predicted.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.