“Save yourselves from this corrupt generation!” But how? The sages reply
A common perception is
that things are going from bad to worse. Even the best of times, in the
perception of those who experience them, seem like the worst of times. Political
or economic uncertainty, not to mention plain old paranoia, contribute to or trigger
the perception that disaster hangs over our heads. A sense of moral decline, a
feeling that violence is on the rise – of which there are always
tell-tale signs – inevitably lead to the question: how will it all end?
The sages whose
teachings are preserved in the Talmud respond to communal and personal angst
with a call for dedication to traditional, God-given rules of behavior (Torah).
According to them, if these rules were kept, if even one Sabbath were kept, redemption would come
immediately.
In this post, I discuss
two questions - how is one saved, and from what - according to a passage found
in Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 118a. I make comparisons with answers given to the
same questions in the Hebrew Bible and early Christian literature.
Those who believe in a
God of justice necessarily look forward to future events to rectify occurrences
in the past. It is expected that God, within history and beyond it on a day of
judgment, will mete out deserved consequences consistent with past behavior. This
is enough to instill a certain amount of fear in individuals with a frank
estimate of their own moral stature.
The question therefore arises, in the famous words of the Philippian jailor, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30). Just as poignantly, after an audience of pilgrims in Jerusalem for Shavuot hear a sermon by Peter in which he points out that the last days are upon them, with the sun about to turn to darkness, and the moon to blood, they inevitably ask: “Brothers, what then should we do?” (Acts 2:37)
Peter, like John the
Baptist before him, calls on his fellow Israelites to repent and undergo
baptism as if they were proselytes entering the covenant for the first time. He
invites them to believe that Jesus, who had just been crucified, and, according
to Peter, raised from the dead, was the Lord and Messiah of whom David spoke
in Psalm 110.
The sages, for their
part, do not question the need for salvation. They understand the need in terms
of the eschatology and cosmology they inherited, as did Peter and the first
Christians, from Judaism of the preceding centuries. They expect that God will
realize redemption on the historical and cosmological planes in the future, but
they make the nexus connecting observance of commandments in the present with redemptive
realizations in the future as tight as possible.
The eschatology and the
cosmology the sages take for granted are based on passages from the Hebrew
Bible, but cannot be identified with the content of those passages. They are a
distillation, systematization, and development from those passages within a
cultural context, that of Greco-Roman antiquity, in which Judaism assimilated
ideas from the environment and adapted them to the core affirmations of
Israelite faith.
Thus we read:
א"ר שמעון בן פזי
א"ר יהושע בן לוי משום בר קפרא
כל המקיים שלש סעודות בשבת
ניצול משלש פורעניות
מחבלו של משיח
ומדינה של גיהנם
וממלחמת גוג ומגוג
מחבלו של משיח
כתיב הכא יום וכתיב התם
הנה אנכי שולח לכם
את אליה הנביא
לפני בוא יום
מדינה של גיהנם
כתיב הכא יום וכתיב התם
יום עברה היום ההוא
ממלחמת גוג ומגוג
כתיב הכא יום וכתיב התם
ביום בא גוג
R. Shimon
b. Pazzi said:
R. Jehoshua
b. Levi said in Bar Kappara's name:
Whoever maintains
the three meal Sabbath ordinance
is saved
from three retributions:
the travail to
come with the Messiah,
the judgment
of Gehinnom,
and the
wars of Gog and Magog.
The travail
to come with the Messiah:
day is written here and here:
Take note! I
will send you
Elijah the
prophet
before the
coming of the day.
The judgment
of Gehinnom:
day is written here and here:
a day of
wrath/crossing is that day.
The wars
of Gog and Magog:
day is written here and here:
on the day
of Gog’s coming.
The mitzvah to
eat not the usual two, but three meals on Shabbath, the third meal, Seudah Shlishit,
becoming an occasion of great joy, is derived from the threefold occurrence of יום
in Ex 16:25:
ַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה
אִכְלֻהוּ הַיּוֹם
כִּי־שַׁבָּת הַיּוֹם
לַיהוָה
הַיּוֹם לֹא תִמְצָאֻהוּ בַּשָּׂדֶה
Moses said:
Eat it [= the manna] today,
For today is a
Sabbath of the Lord;
today you will not find it in the
plain.
Bar Kappara depends on the threefold occurrence of יום as a hook for
his paraclesis.[1] The three occurrences of יום
in Ex 16:25, the three traditional Shabbat meals, and the three eschatological retributions
are coordinated. The retributions are occurrences one
wishes to be saved from, either in the sense of avoiding them altogether, or
surviving them.
The travail to come with
the Messiah,
literally, ‘the travail of the Messiah,’ refers to the tremendous anguish to be
experienced at the time of his coming. According to traditional
interpretation of Mal 3:23 reflected in the New Testament and the Talmud,
Elijah will be sent ahead of the Messiah; thus Bar Kappara’s textual citation:
הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי שֹׁלֵחַ לָכֶם
אֵת אֵלִיָּה הַנָּבִיא
לִפְנֵי בּוֹא יוֹם יְהוָה
הַגָּדוֹל וְהַנּוֹרָא
Take note! I
will send you
Elijah the
prophet
before the
coming of day of the Lord,
that great
and terrible day.
A linking of the coming
of the Messiah with cataclysms of unparalleled proportions is not explicit in
the Hebrew Bible, unless one counts Dan 12:1, with Michael the great angelic prince
understood as identical to the Messiah, and Zech 12:8, 11a, in which victory and great lamentation,
with the house of David “like a divine being,” are predicted
to co-occur:
וּבָעֵת הַהִיא יַעֲמֹד מִיכָאֵל
הַשַּׂר הַגָּדוֹל
הָעֹמֵד עַל־בְּנֵי עַמֶּךָ
וְהָיְתָה עֵת צָרָה
אֲשֶׁר לֹא־נִהְיְתָה
מִהְיוֹת גּוֹי עַד הָעֵת הַהִיא
וּבָעֵת הַהִיא יִמָּלֵט עַמְּךָ
כָּל־הַנִּמְצָא כָּתוּב בַּסֵּפֶר
At that time
Michael will appear,
the great
prince
who stands
beside the members of your nation.
A time of
distress will come,
unlike any
since the
nation came into being until that time.
And in that
time, your nation will be spared –
all who are
found inscribed in the book.
Dan 12:1
בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא
יָגֵן יְהוָה בְּעַד יוֹשֵׁב יְרוּשָׁלִַם
וְהָיָה הַנִּכְשָׁל בָּהֶם
בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא כְּדָוִיד
וּבֵית דָּוִיד כֵּאלֹהִים
כְּמַלְאַךְ יְהוָה לִפְנֵיהֶם
בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא
יִגְדַּל הַמִּסְפֵּד בִּירוּשָׁלִַם
On that
day,
the Lord will shield the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
And the one
most inclined to fall
on that day
will be like David,
and the
house of David will be like a divine being,
like an
angel of the Lord before them.
On that
day,
mourning in Jerusalem will be great.
Zech 12:8,
11a
בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא ...
וְהִשְׁאַרְתִּי בְקִרְבֵּךְ
עַם עָנִי וָדָל
וְחָסוּ בְּשֵׁם יְהוָה׃
On that day . . .
I will leave in your (= Zion’s) midst
a poor and humble nation,
and they will find refuge in the name of the Lord.
To be continued.
[1] Paraclesis is admonition motivated by promised
consolations and/or by correlative threats of judgment. The term is a fitting
one for a species of didactic discourse attested across a wide swath of
religious and philosophical literature of Greco-Roman antiquity, and has been
widely adopted by New Testament scholars.
[2] "Snatching": literally, that is what ניצול
means. Cf. Zech 3:2. In the Talmud text under study, as often, it is a washed out metaphor. In earlier tradition, “snatching” language may have contributed
to the expectation of a Rapture.
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