Duvduv

By definition one would assume that Amram Tropper would consider the entire Talmud and midrashim all to be "legend." In which case there is nothing to discuss since such a perspective assumes historical events in ancient times involving Jewish leaders and the Jewish people in general to be mere legends.
However, one ignores the fact that in 2000 years of commentary on the ancient texts, rabbinical writers indicate where an event is to be taken literally and where not. One of such people was Rabbi Shmuel Eidels, known as the Maharsha, who lived in Cracow between 1555 and 1631.
As far as I know, not a single such authority has ever described the story involving R. Yochanan in anything but a literal manner. Of course R. Yochanan had the profile for such predictions unlike Mr. Josephus who is unknown in any traditional ancient Jewish texts.

aa5874

Your claims are unsubstantiated and expose your willingness to make statements about Jewish writings which must be fallacies. It is completely absurd to even suggest that you know or have read all ancient texts of rabbinical writers for the last 2000 years and that they indicate what events were literal or legends.

Now tell us what Rabbi Shmuel Eidels about the Torah??

What events in the Torah were literal and what were fictional according to Shmuel?

Somehow it would seem that you merely used Wikipedia or a similar source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharsha

Jaybees

It's easy to confuse fiction with fact even in this age of advanced communication devices. Look at how many times the news media, politicians, and other similar creatures have picked up stories that originated in The Onionand repeated them as being true. The only thing that saves us these days is the fact that we can check on sources.

Kinda hard to do that when one has only pieces of millennia-old scrolls to work with.

Roger Pearse

May I respectfully point out that, if we believe this, that no ancient history exists. The entire ancient world just vanished, if we agree with this argument. It is obscurantism; finding words to claim that we do not know what in fact we do know, and are fortunate to know.

Almost every literary text from antiquity survives by the process of copying. That process can introduce damage, and also heal it. The people who suppose that nothing can survive the centuries of copying tend to be those who do not read the classics, the people who just don't know what is preserved; the histories, the annals, the letters, the orations, plays, poems, technical handbooks, and so on.

These people, who don't know what is in this package transmitted in this way, also tend not to know that the modern world was created by the discovery of this "box of data from antiquity". The rediscovery of classical literature, the rebirth of ancient ideas, the renaissance, is the end of the middle ages and the beginning of modern times. To say that we have no idea what these pages says is nonsense; we do. The image conveyed by them was powerful enough to transform the world. Even though the manuscripts available then were usually the worst available ones at the time, they had this power.

Most of the ancient texts that have reached us have done so in a single copy. For Latin that copy is never older than the 9th century AD; for Greek it is often no older than the 16th century; for Syriac it may well be a 20th century copy (since scribes were still at work before WW1 in the Ottoman empire, and into the 40's). But the thoughts of the author come through.

Yes, there is damage. But this is not as serious as you might imagine, because of counter-factors. Let me give an extreme example. Go and look at the Latin text of Tertullian's "Ad Nationes", at the end of book II. This survives in a single 9th century manuscript, where the edges rotted and had to be cut off, taking the ends of the lines. The Latin, therefore, is not preserved and is printed as "..." every few words in the modern texts. But then go to the English translation of it. You will find no dots. Why? Because, although the actual words have been destroyed, the words form part of syntactical constructions, part of clauses. The clauses make up sentences, the sentences paragraphs, the paragraphs convey ideas. So we usually know what is being said. That is, we know what Tertullian was saying, even though we don't have his words!

The reason that people sometimes get hung up on "copyist errors" is because a theological argument - rather than a historical one - is lurking somewhere in the background. The theological argument is "unless every letter of the originals of the bible is preserved, then the bible cannot be the Word of God". It is a curious theological argument, given that no copy of the scriptures held by Jesus himself can have passed it; but the point is that it creates this impossible standard, as a means to debunk the divine origin of scripture. But we are not concerned with this. It matters nothing, to a historian, whether Cicero wrote et or ac or atque -- all meaning 'and' -- because it is rarely the case that sound history is based solely on a passage where we don't know for certain what the text is! We take what we get, and we use it.

In short, we need not worry, for any practical historical purpose, whether the texts of antiquity are more or less accurate and entirely usable for our purposes. They are.

Whether what those authors had to say was accurate, even in their own time, is, of course, another matter entirely.

All the best,

Roger Pearse
PS: Anyone wishing to know about the transmission of texts is best advised to start with the standard university handbook, L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson, "Scribes and Scholars", Oxford. I think the 3rd edition (1994) is the latest but I haven't looked. There's a nice paperback, and it's fairly readable.

Duvduv

So what would you like me to do? Scan pages of his commentary from the back of the Talmud volumes for your benefit?? Spend time studying his commentaries and then come back and discuss it. In the meantime, get back to the original points I was making about Josephus.

Jaybees

Got it! Aphrodite used to reek havoc on the Greek forces before the walls of Troy. Hera replied in kind against the Trojans. Plagues were arrows shot by Zeus against the warring parties.

You're right. We can't be sure the authors of ancient texts were accurate. Where in the world are we disagreeing?

Steve Weiss

If one is honest one must admit that by any objective set of criteria most of what is accepted as ancient canon is based upon a consensus among observers past and present who have not a leg on which to stand. Some information is quite probable, such as Julius Caesar was Emperor of Rome. We have lots of accounts, coinage, and some artefacts, so one can be reasonable sure that such a person existed. What he said and did is an entirely different matter. That is largely conjecture. Even current politicians are the subject of speculation, so imagine how much more guess-work there must be from 2000 plus years ago. Too bad we will never know what happened in the ancient past, but the same applies to yesterday's news. We have spin-doctors to thank for that, and perhaps that profession is an ancient one comparable to the oldest profession.

semiopen

2000 years might be accurate if there were two numbers 1000 and 2000 and you rounded up, however that is arguable since we don't really get commentary on that until the 10th Century CE.

We've discussed aggadah before and how it used to be taken literally, therefore you comment that there are clear indications in each occurrence is puzzling.

It's possible my understanding is deficient but then why not give some references, otherwise you just seem to be making wild claims.

Your Josephus claims are so weird that no one seems to discuss them directly.

I just attached the article by Dr. Topper because it discussed the Yohanan legends. I simply pointed out that he apparently doesn't consider the possibility that the Rabbinic legends were before the story in Josephus. It's possible that I misstated his position, so I don't understand your invective against him.

Here, you discuss the story as if it is a single story, however as the article notes there are four stories.

JOHANAN BEN ZAKKAI

The quote notes that the stories are substantially different.

The quote also mentions Josephus' prediction, again it seems with a very subtle hint that may have been the basis for the Talmud story.

My recollection of the Yohanan prediction might be hazy, but I think the main idea is that he called Vespasian emperor after the vote in Rome but before Vespasian heard about it. Thus Yohanan was technically correct. This reminds me of the nerd correcting someone who says good morning when it's 12:01pm. Since Neusner seems to prove that they could only have met in 68 CE, this doesn't seem possible.

I just don't see you making a case.

Duvduv

I don't understand the problem. According to Jewish chronology the temple was destroyed on the 9th of Av - August 2 - of 68 CE. R. Yochanan ben Zakkai met him BEFORE the Temple was destroyed, which would have been in 67 BCE. That's a two-year difference from the secular calendar in which Vespasian became emperor, i.e. in December of 67 BCE according to the Jewish calendar.

But so many people are stuck on the sanctity of Josephus, without batting an eyelash, ignoring the possibility that the story was adopted from the Jewish story of R. Yochanan. As I said and repeated, Josephus could not possibly have had any qualifications as a Jew to predict anything. He is not mentioned ANYWHERE in ancient Jewish literature as a general, rabbi, priest, teacher, writer, historian or anything else. Not even a hint.

semiopen

Second_Temple

I'm not sure when you get 68, but the Haredi play games with the dates because it's theoretically supposed to be 480 years.

The Destruction of the Second Temple

A Life of Yohanan Ben Zakkai, Ca.1-80 C.E by Jacob Neusner

which I quoted above

It seems that the dates don't work out right to have Vespasian being at Jerusalem when he was informed of his promotion.