“Since Rabbi Joshua died, good counsel has ceased in Israel” (Sotah 49b). This was a contemporary opinion of the value of Rabbi Joshua been Hananiah’s leadership and the effect of his death on the Jewish people.

Born in Pontius Pilate’s procuratorship, he lived under thirteen emperors, some crazier than others, but almost all of them gods in their own eyes: Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vittellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Narva, Trajan, and Hadrian. A competent Greek scholar, he knew not only his own people but their enemies. He may well have realized how vulnerable the Roman Empire was to concerted attack, for not only the Jews but the Parthians and the German barbarians were watching for an opportune time to strike. Yet Joshua struggled with the people against the temptation to revolt. He belonged to a school founded by Hillel, which taught that the public good must be considered in terms of the misery or happiness of individuals. The Hillelite motto, “Seek peace and pursue it” (Psalm 24:14), amounted in the present context to the preaching of non-resistance, and Joshua declared himself for peace when the provocation to take up arms was almost irresistible. He gained the title of “good counselor” and, indeed, no one so truly translated into everyday action Hillel’s humanitarian principles. He was an enemy of foolish piety, of hypocrisy, of visionary fanatics who tried to negate the values of this world by harping on the next. He opposed the imposition of additional ceremonial and legal burdens because the people might find them hard to bear. He did not, however, attempt to make life easier for himself.

While already famous as the outstanding religious authority of his generation he continued to work in an atmosphere of smoke and soot, earning a meager living as a smith. He was at the same time an eloquent defender of the Jewish faith before the outside world. If he lived frugally, it was because he would not “use the Torah as a coronet” or as a “spade with which to dig” (Aboth I. 13; IV. 7).

Rabbi Joshua was the representative of a universalist Judaism which combined the prophetic with the Rabbinical outlook, and without inner contradiction. He believed in Judaism as a universal religion in which room could be found for all humanity. The doctrine of racial purity did not impress him. His attitude toward the admission of proselytes to Judaism was a revolutionary one. He argued that the circumcision was not necessary, only baptism (Yebamoth 46a). Whether he made this statement mainly to take some of the sting from Paulinist propaganda is a matter for speculation, but he certainly made the most liberal concessions to all foreigners who wished to meet under the “wings of the Shechinah.”

Joshua converted the Emperor Hadrian’s nephew, Aquilas. Whereas Eliezer the Shammaite distrusted prospective proselytes and became impatient at their questions, Joshua showed the patience of his master Hillel when confronted with those who came to scoff but stayed to learn. Aquilas did not come to scoff, but he might have been lost to Judaism but for Joshua’s sympathy and friendship (Koheleth Rabbah VII. 8).

Like Yohanan ben Zakkai, his master, whom he carried in a coffin, disguised as dead, through the Roman lines around Jerusalem, Joshua was prepared to be misunderstood and called a traitor in his efforts to avoid suffering. He realized that the Jews had to live with other nations, and he set himself to reduce bitterness and international discord.

Though one of the greatest figures of post-prophetic Judaism and, under Trajan and Hadrian (until the outbreak of the Bar Kokeba war), factually the leader of all Israel, Joshua is little known to non-Jewish historians. Not a single adequate biography of him exists. The references to him—as an authority, an opponent, or a witness—in both Talmuds, Sifre, Sifra, Mekilta, and other Midrashim occur in connection with subjects with which he was in many cases only incidentally concerned. Most of these references are only indirectly biographical, and cite opinions rather than events, yet we catch an occasional glimpse of his personal life from them. I have here tried to fit his life’s story together from the scattered fragments. This has involved a reconsideration of the chapter in Jewish history with which his name is associated.

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Joshua was born, probably in Jerusalem, about the year 35 C.E. He was a Levite, and he himself records that he sang in the Temple choir (Arakin 11b). Since a Levite could not have taken part in the Temple service before the age of thirty, he must have reached that age by 67 C.E. Nothing is known of his father, but it may be assumed that he served in the Temple in one of the many trades and professions open to Levites, who worked as masons, potters, carpenters, doorkeepers, singers, money-changers, butchers, musicians, and so on. It is said that Joshua’s mother used to bring him in his cot to the Beth Ha-Midrash so that his childish ears should become habituated to the sound of the Torah. Though perhaps figuratively intended, this is not a posthumous legend but a story told by a man older than Joshua himself, his colleague, Dosa ben Horkinas (Jer. Yebamoth I.6).

Joshua’s childhood must have been spent in an atmosphere of continuous complaints against the High Priestly families, to whom the Temple service was now a mere formality. Their way of life resembled that of any aristocracy anywhere; scarcely involved with the life of the people, they were allied politically and economically with the Roman invaders. Joshua may well have been sent to a Pharisaic school at a very early age; certainly his later education was given him by men who had openly declared war against the “rulers of the Temple.” The war was fought mainly in the lecture hall. The Pharisees taught the people not to depend on their priests for theological or even ecclesiastical service. In the 1st century the Pharisees spoke with authority on all vital matters of doctrine and Scriptural interpretation, while the priests’ domain was limited to such matters as animal sacrifice, the diagnosis of leprosy, and the collection of tithes.

The thirty-odd years of Herod’s rule—when most political activity was driven underground—had given the Pharisees an opportunity to work among the people, teaching them to read, to pray, and even to study. By the time Herod died the Pharisees had won a powerful hold over great numbers of Jews, and by the time of Joshua’s birth, forty years later, education was almost wholly in their hands. Despite their economic and social disadvantages, the active left wing of the Pharisees, namely the Hillelites, were not only more numerous but more influential than the Shammaite right wing, who came from a richer part of the community. A spontaneity of approach, an unconcern with the dignities of rank, and, above all, a love of peace for the people’s sake are implied in the Hillelite view.

Rabbi Joshua inherited this tradition from Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, who often quoted the words of the prophet: “Not by arms, not by power, but by My spirit” (Zechariah IV.6). Rabbi Yohanan was Hillel’s youngest disciple, but the fact that the Pharisees offered him their leadership at the death of Hillel’s grandson, Gamaliel, suggests that he was also the worthiest.

The rigid discipline which later controlled the relations of master and disciples seems to have been unknown in his day: Yohanan treated disciples as friends and equals, praising them without stint when he saw the orchard in which he had labored beginning to bear fruit. He greatly encouraged the art of debate. Skillful debating was a necessity at this period: the Pharisees must “know how to answer the Epicurean” (Aboth II.14). Disruptive forces threatened not only from outside, but from within; many parties and sects claimed to possess the whole truth, and each treated the others as impostors. The smaller the sect, the larger its claim, the more vociferous its argument, the more insolent its attitude toward the rest of Jewry. A skillful debater himself, Yohanan trained his disciples to become defenders of the faith in accordance with the teachings of Hillel. Here Joshua emerged as his most capable pupil. Endowed with a dry scholarly humor, conversant with several languages, he was later to debate with Agnostics, Christians, Epicureans, Gentile philosophers, and potentates, including even the Emperor Hadrian. But it is in Joshua’s formulation of attitudes to the problems of living, drawn from his interpretation of Judaism, that his true importance lies.

When new religious doctrines were aired before him, he showed none of the petulance that would have been expected from his contemporary, Rabbi Eliezer, but always said simply: “This must be an innovation of the scribes, and I have no comment to make” (Kelim III.7). Rejecting the “other-worldly” movement of those days, he looked upon life in this world as an important field of action, not without joy, and belonging to the “children of men.” Pain and suffering were real, and he made it his task to reduce them wherever possible. He was, as I have said, against the imposition of new duties or restrictions upon the Jews: “Do not put on the people more obligations than they are capable of bearing” (Baba Bathra 60b).

Unlike his predecessors, he felt that there was a pressing need to prevent from hardening into law what had been originally only theoretical speculation or optional practice. Previously, the need had been to adapt the written law to changed social conditions by oral COMMENTARY; now this COMMENTARY had led to excessive control and needed a less rigid restatement. Thus in matters of Halachah, Rabbi Joshua was the leader of the “lenient” as opposed to the “strict” teachers. His opinion on the Rabbinic laws relating to vows, for example, was that “. . . the laws on Sabbath, Feasts, and Desecration of Holy Things have little Scriptural authority: many Halachahs are like mountains hanging on hairs with nothing on which to support themselves” (Tos. Hagigah 1.9).

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Extremism, both during and after the war against the Romans, was the curse of the nation. On one hand stood the remnants of a defeated and embittered Jewish army; on the other, numerous mutually hostile sects, each making extravagant claims. Among these was the sect called “Christian” in Antioch, whose members began to claim that they were the real Chosen People and all others worthless leavings, and who vied in piety with the Essenes and the other apocalyptic groups engaged in continuous prayer and in other “other-worldly” practices. But Rabbi Joshua reminded the people that they had work to do—“Six days shalt thou labor”—and had no right to abandon their normal occupations. Though not wishing to belittle the importance of Scriptural study, he suggested that “if one studies two Halachahs in the morning and two in the evening, it is counted as if one had fulfilled the whole of the Torah” (Mekilta Beshallah).

He commented icily on those who indulged in excessive fasting and mourning:

Our Rabbis taught: “When the Temple was destroyed for the second time, ascetics who would not eat meat or drink wine increased in Israel: Rabbi Joshua approached them, saying: ‘My sons, why do you neither eat meat nor drink wine?’ They replied, ‘How could we eat meat when it was once sacrificed on the Altar which has now ceased to be?’ He replied ‘In that case let me refrain also from bread because the meal offerings have ceased.’ They replied ‘Yes, we could live by eating fruit.’ Joshua said: ‘No, we should not eat fruit because the offering of first fruits has also ceased.’” (Baba Bathra 60b)

When the people of Ludd declared a fast on a day of Chanukah, possibly to commemorate some local calamity, Joshua told them: “And now you should fast again, to win forgiveness for having fasted on a holiday!” (Tos. Taanith II.5).

He tried to inculcate a practical and clearheaded attitude at a time when the apocalyptic visionaries had made converts in the most unexpected quarters. He poured cold water on the widespread belief that the present troubles were the “Pangs of the Messiah” and that the end of the world was imminent. He said:

I received a tradition from Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai who received it from his teacher [Hillel], and his teacher from his teacher, as an Halachah given to Moses on Sinai, that Elijah will not come to declare unclean or clean, or remove afar or to bring near, but only to remove afar those families that were brought near by violence and to bring near those that were removed afar by violence. (Eduyoth VIII.7)

He meant that the return of Elijah, foretold by Malachi as a preliminary to the coming of the Messiah, would have as its sole object the return to Israel of those Jews who had been carried away from it, and of the removal of the non-Jews who had been settled in Israel in their place. Joshua’s interpretation is directed, apparently, not only against the Pauline Christians, who claimed that Jesus as the Messiah hailed by “Elijah”—John the Baptist—had annulled the Mosaic distinction between clean and unclean, but also against the Essenes and all others who expected Elijah to recognize their exceptional holiness and give them preferential treatment in the world to come, after destroying the rest of the people. In effect, Joshua was warning his fellow Jews not to indulge in exaggerated hopes of new heavens and new earths, but to be content with the expectation that the Messiah would reunite Israel and inaugurate an era of peace.

In the name of common sense he also opposed arguments based on an appeal to miracles. In a memorable discussion with Rabbi Eliezer, Joshua uttered what was in those days a very daring opinion: that human beings should take no notice of heavenly voices (Bath Kol). The discussion concerned ritual, in which Joshua as a rule showed much less interest than did the conservative-minded Eliezer. The latter’s position was rejected by an overwhelming majority of the scholars, whereupon he appealed—or so a picturesque legend has it—to magic. Eliezer said:

If the Halachah be according to my view, let this carob tree prove it!” Whereupon the carob tree was rapt a hundred cubits out of its place or, as some say, four hundred cubits. The [scholars] replied: “One does not bring proof from a carob tree.” He said again: “If the Halachah be according to my view, let the stream of water prove it!” Whereupon the stream flowed backwards. “One does not bring proof from a stream of water,” they replied. Again he said: “If the Halachah be according to my view, let the walls of this schoolhouse prove it!” Whereupon the walls made as if to fall. Then Joshua turned and rebuked the walls, saying: “When scholars are engaged in a dispute over Halachah, what business is it of yours to interfere?” So the walls did not fall—in honor of Rabbi Joshua; yet they also did not resume their upright position—in honor of Rabbi Eliezer.

The argument did not, however, end there. Rabbi Eliezer invoked the heavenly voices to bear witness that his opinion was the correct one.

If the Halachah be according to my view, let it be proved from Heaven!” Whereupon a heavenly voice cried out: “Why argue with Rabbi Eliezer, considering that in all such matters that have to do with Halachah his view is the correct one!” Then arose Rabbi Joshua and exclaimed: “It is not in heaven—hut very nigh unto thee in thy mouth and in thy heart to do it” (Deut. 30:12 and 14). [The Talmud continues] What did R. Joshua mean by this? Rabbi Jeremiah answered “[He meant that] the Torah had already been given [once] at Mount Sinai, and we should pay no attention to a heavenly voice, because Thou, O Lord, has long since written in the Torah: After the majority must one follow (Ex. 23:2).

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Joshua recognized that never had there been such need in Israel for common sense and moderation as after the crushing defeat by Rome. A steady untroubled routine of living was required if the wounds were to heal, and he opposed the extremists in both camps: the revolutionaries who advocated continuation of the war by guerrilla methods, and the Rabbis who wanted every waking hour to be devoted to study, without considering how the scholar was to earn a livelihood for himself and his family.

Mutual mistrust and even hatred clouded the relations between the scholars and the common people. Joshua was one of the few Pharisees who showed real tolerance and understanding in this matter. The term am ha’aretz (man of the land) was not limited to the farmers, for the alleys and side-streets of Jerusalem were thronged with people who were called am ha’aretz; it implied either ignorance or a careless rejection of the Torah as interpreted by the Pharisees. Yet the Talmud contains a “favorite saying” dating from this time that is described as “a pearl in the mouth of the Rabbis of Yavneh”:

I am His creature and my fellow [the am ha’aretz, according to the Rashi] is His creature. My work is in the town; his work is in the country. I rise early for my work and he rises early for his work. Just as he cannot excel in doing my work, so I cannot excel in doing his work. Say, if you will, that I do much [study] and he does little? [The answer is], as we have learnt, that one may do much and one may do little; but what matter so long as each directs his heart to Heaven (Berakoth 17a).

This saying is attributed to the “Rabbis of Yavneh,” yet it is known that most Rabbis distrusted the am ha’aretz. Alone among the Tannaim at Yavneh, Joshua respected labor, being himself a worker in a physically exacting trade, and he may have been the sole author of this saying; in any case it is known that he tried to bridge the gap between the learned and the people.

Joshua grouped the over-pious with the evil-hearted and hypocritical as enemies of mankind, and said:

“Foolish saints, cunning scoundrels, women ascetics, and the plague of the Pharisees are destroying the world” (Sotah III.4). The Gemara explains what Rabbi Joshua meant by a foolish saint: “If a woman is drowning in the river such a man would say: ‘It is improper for me to look upon her (which I would have to do if I rescued her).’” Rabbi Huna defines a cunning scoundrel as: “He who is lenient with himself and strict with others.” By the “plague of the Pharisees,” Rabbi Joshua meant those who pretended to imitate the true Pharisees, but were impostors and hypocrites. This passage has been misunderstood by Christian theologians who tried to find in it confirmation for the charge of hypocrisy leveled against the Pharisees in the New Testament.

Joshua held, further, that a holiday must not be devoted entirely to God: half should be devoted to God and half to merry-making. In this spirit he ridiculed the fasters, the wailers, and the over-pious.

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There was one respect in which Joshua’s objectivity failed him—at any rate in general theory, though perhaps not in practice: I mean in his attitude to women.

His own domestic life was a sad one. He married a priest’s daughter who contracted, probably soon after the marriage, a sickness from which she never recovered. He seems never to have married again nor to have had children. He made one cryptic remark about his married life: “Aaron was not pleased that I should cleave to his seed, and that he should possess such a son-in-law as me” (Pesahim 49a). This may mean that the marriage was opposed by the bride’s parents, who may have been wealthy and influential Jerusalemites; or that it proved a failure since there were no children and the marriage was short-lived. He cannot have implied that fate was unkind to him, since this would have been to question God’s purpose. But this personal experience may well have contributed to his negative outlook on woman’s character in general—or perhaps it was this general outlook which made his marriage difficult. He would not accept a woman’s word when she claimed that she had been raped unless she could produce some proof of her disinterestedness (Ketuboth 1.6). He maintained that if a married woman were seen in the street with a man unknown to her husband, her protestations that he was an honorable man, or even a priest, were to be rejected unless she could produce witnesses to attest to the innocence of the meeting. He once said: “A woman has more pleasure in one cab [measure] with lechery, than in nine cabs with modesty” (Sotah III.4). Women’s defects, he held, were a physical inheritance from Eve. To the question “Why is it harder to pacify a woman than a man?” he answered: “Men were created from dust; pour a drop of water on dust and it softens at once. But Eve was created from bone; though you pour on bone any amount of water, it will not soften” (Bereshith Rabbah XVII.14).

Nevertheless, he advised men to marry: those particularly who had already been married in their youth should take another wife, even if widowed in old age (Yebamoth 62b). He did not, however, follow his own advice—perhaps his lack of physical attractiveness was the obstacle (Taanith 7a). When Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai had asked his favorite disciples to answer the question: “What is the best thing to which you could cling?” Joshua’s reply was “a good companion”—one with whom to share one’s learning, confidences, and possessions, and to be bound to in reciprocal loyalty—rather than that good wife whom Solomon had rated above rubies (Aboth II.2).

Joshua’s outbursts against women are quite out of keeping with the gentleness he otherwise displayed. Yet even his misogyny did not obscure his vision when dealing with particular cases. It is related that a Gentile woman came before Eliezer and asked to be converted. He inquired into her past. She replied: “My youngest son comes from my eldest son.” Eliezer dismissed her, so she went to Joshua and confessed her past to him. He accepted her for conversion. His disciples said to him: “R. Eliezer drove her away, yet you brought her near!” Joshua replied: “As soon as she made up her mind to accept the Law she ceased to live in her [former] world: as it is written: None that go unto her return, if they do return [to their former ways], neither do they attain unto the path of life (Prov. 2:19).” He meant that the past was dead to anyone, even a woman, who sincerely wished to reform.

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Two relationships, with Akiba and with Gamaliel, reveal much of Joshua’s personal character, and show also his status in Jewry and his political vulnerability.

The Talmud records that Akiba studied under Eliezer before becoming Joshua’s disciple. But Eliezer took so little notice of him as not even to be aware of his existence, until one day Akiba, now with Joshua, surprised Eliezer by his outspokenness. The discussion was one between Eliezer and Joshua on the proper sacrificial procedure when a Passover fell on a Sabbath, and Akiba intervened in support of Joshua. Though Eliezer would allow his friend Joshua to contradict him, he was not prepared to let Akiba, whom he all but accused of trying to uproot the written law, do so. Joshua’s comments on this occasion are not recorded, but on another he twitted Eliezer with having failed to recognize the brilliant scholar who had sat at his feet for years and was now his most formidable opponent. He quoted the Scriptural sentence: “These are the people you despised, now go out and fight against them!”

Joshua ordained Akiba as a Rabbi and even dared instruct him in the mystic secrets known as the “works of the Chariot,” which were reserved for men of superlative wisdom and holiness. He watched Akiba closely, allowed himself to be defeated by him in argument, and apparently felt pride in his pupil’s extraordinary grasp of the Torah.

His relations with Gamaliel, who was in his early twenties when elected president of the Beth Din, of which Joshua, then aged forty-five, was vice-president, is highly revealing with regard to the character of the national leadership of that age. The name Beth Din was given to the Sanhedrin as it reconstituted itself at Yavneh, after the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple: it continued to legislate as the Jerusalem Sanhedrin had done and gradually obtained the recognition of Jewry as a whole. The Patriarchy was the presidency of this body, which was occupied by descendants of the house of Hillel, with two exceptions, Yohanan ben Zakkai and Eleazar ben Azariah.

Gamaliel stressed, and even overstressed, the need for unity. Since the Jews seemed incapable of achieving unity of their own accord, he was determined to impose it upon them by every means at his disposal. That he was less experienced than his colleagues, some of whom were twice as old as himself, may have induced a certain nervous arrogance in him, and his autocratic tendencies and his tactless treatment of his colleagues, particularly Joshua, are frankly admitted in the Talmud, where no attempt is made to cover up or justify any of his unjust acts. We should remember, however, the unhappy condition of the people whom Gamaliel was called upon to guide. No effective orders or prohibitions could be issued in Palestine by any Jewish authority. The Beth Din wished to become a national center of authority, but was divided against itself. The struggle was not only between those who accepted the unwritten law of the Pharisees and those who rejected it, but also between the Hillelites and Shammaites, who threatened to divide the Torah into two Torahs, and therefore the people into two peoples. Joshua, too, sought unity in Israel, but did not believe that Gamaliel’s iron discipline would achieve it.

Gamaliel, as a wealthy aristocrat, must have felt uncomfortable in Joshua’s authoritative presence, perhaps feeling the latter’s independence of mind to be rooted in a plebeian attitude of opposition. Clashes between the two would probably have occurred often but for Joshua’s forbearance. None of the three momentous incidents that, as recorded in the Talmud, culminated in the dethronement of the Patriarch, and led to far-reaching reforms and changes at Yavneh, were of Joshua’s seeking: furthermore, in all three he was the loser.

The first incident concerned a debate about the “fixing of the new moon.” This most important prerogative belonged to the Sanhedrin, who presumably had delegated their authority to the Patriarch. The fixing of holidays depended on the first sighting of the new moon, and the matter was of particular importance in the months Tishri and Nissan, when the most important feasts occur. Once, on the eve of Tishri, two witnesses came before Gamaliel and testified that they had seen the new moon. Gamaliel accepted their testimony, but a very old and influential councilor, Dosa Ben Horkinas, did not. According to his calculations, the moon could not yet be visible and he declared that the witnesses had perjured themselves. Joshua, an astronomer himself, agreed with him, as did Akiba, but Gamaliel would not give way. As vice-president of the Beth Din, Joshua was himself qualified to fix the calendar (Eduyoth VII.7), but Gamaliel decided to make an example of him for having dared to challenge his decision. Joshua was ordered to appear in court in working clothes, with stick and wallet, on the day which, according to his own calculations, would be Yom Kippur.

Gamaliel sent this order to Joshua by Akiba. Joshua was so distressed at receiving it that he cried, “Rather would I lie on a sick bed for a year than bear this!” Akiba consoled him but advised submission. Joshua went to Dosa, but he too said that Gamaliel, as president of the Sanhedrin, must be obeyed. So on the day which he regarded as Yom Kippur Joshua dressed himself as ordered, took his stick in hand, threw a wallet over his shoulder, and presented himself to Gamaliel. As he entered Gamaliel stood up, kissed him, and said: “Welcome my master and my disciple! You are my master in wisdom, and my disciple for obeying my summons. Happy the generation when the great listen to the small!” Though this should have mollified those who resented the outrage to Joshua’s conscience, the incident left a painful impression and Joshua’s admirers in the Sanhedrin were determined to forestall any further attempt to undermine his dignity.

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The second incident was that of the “blemished first-born animal.” Joshua had opposed a number of Halachahs approved by Gamaliel, and though he refrained from public opposition once the vote had been taken, he nevertheless stated his views to his colleagues in private. This, Gamaliel seems to have regarded as a breach of discipline. Many Jews were at this time not only still paying their tithes to the priests, but even handing over to them those of their first-born animals which before the destruction of the Temple would have been sacrificed on its altar. What was to be done with a sheep or goat that could no longer be dispatched with the correct ritual? The Halachah agreed upon was that it should be allowed to graze with the priest’s flock, but the priest might not claim and use it for his own purposes unless he discerned a blemish which made it unfit for sacrifice. But could a priest be trusted in a case like this? Might he not himself inflict a blemish on the animal and thus acquire it without delay, instead of allowing it to graze for many years at his own expense. Joshua held that if the priest were a Pharisee his honor should not be questioned. He was overruled, the court deciding that every priest, whether a Pharisee or not, whose animal had suffered a blemish must rest under suspicion until he could prove that it was of natural origin.

Rabbi Zadok, who was a priest, privately confided to Joshua that one of the first-born animals grazing in his field had cut its lip while grazing. “Am I under suspicion?” he asked. Since Zadok was a fellow Pharisee and reputedly a man of honor, Joshua replied: “I cannot suspect you.” But when the question was referred to Gamaliel, the latter said that so far as this Halachah was concerned there was no difference between Zadok and an am ha’aretz.

The more closely the case is studied, the more probable does it appear that Rabbi Zadok was acting provocatively. If the Halachah had already been decided by a majority vote, why did he privately ask Joshua for his opinion? Even if he had really wanted Joshua’s opinion, why did he then reveal it? When the next public session of the court opened, Gamaliel asked: “Does anyone here challenge the truth of the accepted Halachah of the blemished first-born beast?” Joshua had no alternative but to admit that it was unchallengeable. It never occurred to him that his private assurance to Zadok, “I cannot suspect you,” would come before the tribunal. But Gamaliel called on Zadok to testify that Joshua had expressed a view contrary to the Halachah. Not satisfied with this humiliation, he called upon Joshua to remain standing in his place until the end of the session. The temper of the assembly had now reached the boiling point. A third incident brought the opposition to Gamaliel to a head.

It was under Gamaliel that the Sh’moneh Esreh (the Eighteen Benedictions) were at last edited, and their repetition three times a day was made obligatory. Joshua, thinking how few of the uneducated would be able to learn this complicated prayer by heart or spend so long a time in prayer, composed a shortened version of the Eighteen Benedictions, which is recorded in the Talmud by Mar Samuel. This provoked no incident, but Joshua’s equally definite views on the evening prayer of Ma’arib led to his third clash with Gamaliel. It seems to have been started, perhaps innocently, by a third party. The Ma’arib had just been made obligatory by Gamaliel and accepted by the Beth Din, despite the opposition of Joshua, who believed that it was optional. Soon after the decision had been taken a young scholar named Shimeon ben Yohai privately asked Joshua whether the prayer was optional and was answered in the affirmative. The matter came to Gamaliel’s ears, and he regarded it as an affront to his authority. He said to Shimeon: “Wait and see what happens when the Baale Tresin [the armored ones¹] arrive in the Beth Ha-Midrash,” and then arranged for someone to ask, as soon as the session opened: “Is the evening prayer obligatory or optional?” Gamaliel himself answered at once that it was obligatory. He then turned to the assembly and asked: “Does anyone present dispute the ruling?” Joshua, realizing that the challenge was directed against himself, replied, “No.”

This clearly contradicted his private opinion. (The only plausible explanation for his disowning his private opinion is that he did not wish to injure the interests of national unity.) Gamaliel showed his dissatisfaction with this brief “No” by pressing him: “Are you not reported to me as having said that the prayer should be optional? Stand up, Joshua, and let a certain man testify against you!” Rabbi Joshua stood up and said: “If I were alive and the witness were dead, the living could contradict the dead. But since both of us are alive, how can the living contradict the living?”

Gamaliel did not give Joshua leave to sit down again, but left him standing while he proceeded to expound a passage in the Torah unconnected with the prayer. In the end, both achieved the contrary of what they wanted: Gamaliel, instead of enhancing his authority, lost it, and Joshua, who had submitted to humiliation in the hope of unity, provoked disunity. For when the assembly saw Joshua standing before them like a punished schoolboy, while Gamaliel was proceeding with his normal exposition, “. . . all the people began to shout ‘. . . how long will you continue to insult him?’” (Berakoth 27b). Reminding Gamaliel of other occasions on which his lordly ways had caused resentment in the House, they cried: “Who has ever avoided being the victim of your ill will?” (Jer. Taanith VI.1). That same day they deposed Gamaliel from his presidency.

Not a voice was raised in his defense. He left his exalted chair and took his place, without a word, among the ordinary members. Realizing that he had overstepped the mark, he behaved with serene nobility; instead of sulking, he took an active part in subsequent debates and did not try to oppose the new, “revolutionary” conditions in the Beth Din, which lasted until he made his peace with Joshua.

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It was difficult to find a successor to Gamaliel. Though Joshua was older and more learned, he was never proposed—probably because he was the cause of the upheaval, and no one wished to humiliate Gamaliel as he had tried to humiliate Joshua. Besides, Joshua was poor, and the Talmud, with strong historical backing, explains why a rich man was required as president; nor did he even come of a distinguished family. The next most worthy candidate would have been Rabbi Akiba, but he, too, was poor and had even less claim to distinguished ancestry than Joshua, having been an am-ha’aretz in his younger days and being descended from a proselyte. Nonetheless, Akiba expressed keen disappointment at being passed over in favor of a man younger even than Gamaliel, namely Eleazar ben Azariah, who is described in one source as having been eighteen years old at the time, and in another as having been no more than sixteen. He cannot have already been a member of the Beth Din, because with his appointment its membership reached the unusual number of 72, instead of 71. Akiba grumbled: “It is not that he [Eleazar] possesses more knowledge than I, but that he has a more illustrious family: happy are those for whom their ancestors create privileges, happy are those who have a peg to hang themselves upon!” (Jer. Berakoth IV.1).

On the day of Gamaliel’s deposition all restrictions were annulled that barred from the Beth Din scholars who did not comply with the standards he had set. When its doors next opened, several hundred scholars crowded in. The Talmud hints tactfully that they had hitherto been excluded in error as not being, as Gamaliel believed, “worthy disciples.” At the same time Joshua’s motion to abolish the exclusion of Ammon and Moab was passed.

Gamaliel must have realized that he had underestimated Joshua’s influence among the people; feeling, no doubt, in the wrong, he decided to ask his pardon. On his arrival at Joshua’s home, he was astonished to find it a miserable, soot-blackened hovel. He faltered: “From the walls of your house it would seem that you are a smith.” Joshua replied: “It is a pity that you have taken so long to find that out. Woe to the generation whom you have led, men ignorant of the straits in which scholars live, and with what difficulty they make ends meet.” Gamaliel said: “I am humbled, forgive me.” When Joshua did not reply, Gamaliel said: “Forgive me for my father’s sake,” whereupon Joshua accepted his apology.

When their reconciliation became known, a movement was started for Gamaliel’s reinstatement as president. Akiba, however, led an energetic opposition; he had the doors of the Academy locked to prevent Gamaliel’s followers from entering and “causing confusion among the Rabbis.” Joshua, however, said: “Let him who is accustomed to wearing the robe [of office] wear it.” Akiba protested to him: “Did we act for any other reason than to defend your honor?” But Joshua induced him to change his attitude, and Gamaliel was restored to the presidency.

Yet, despite his apparent victory, it was Joshua who came out the most discomfited. Gamaliel was restored, but the only way to remove young Eleazar ben Azariah without doing him deep offense was by appointing him vice-president of the Sanhedrin in place of Joshua. Perhaps it was then, and not earlier, that the latter moved to Peki’in, a small town between Yavneh and Lydda.

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Joshua was around eighty at the accession of Hadrian, the thirteenth Roman emperor to whom Judea had been subject during Joshua’s lifetime. Trajan had won the reputation of a bloody and vindictive ruler; Hadrian began as a man of peace and surrendered almost without a fight what was left of Trajan’s conquests: Armenia, Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Parthia. He became the famous traveler, the brilliant conversationalist, the polymath, the philosopher king concerned for the welfare of his subjects. He bestowed freedom wherever he would ultimately have been forced to do so anyhow—Trajan had bequeathed him so many uneasy conquests that hardly a corner of the Empire remained placid.

Roman finances were in a confused, if not desperate, state. The Parthian war and the Jewish insurrection against Trajan had devastated rich districts at the expense of the Roman treasury, which was largely supported by provincial taxation; the need for pacification impressed itself on Hadrian, and he was willing to make large concessions to that end. Joshua led the negotiations with him. He hoped for the immediate granting of two urgent requests: the dismissal of Lucius Quietus, then Legate of Judea, and permission to rebuild the Temple. Hadrian complied with the first by having Quietus, whom he regarded as a possible rival, executed. The Jews, ignorant in all likelihood of his real reason, concluded that Hadrian had removed their arch-persecutor to gratify them, and considerable relief was expressed.

It was not difficult for Joshua, as a well-known pacifist, to gain Hadrian’s confidence and persuade him to grant his second plea, which after all demanded no political innovation. There is every reason to believe that it was Joshua who obtained the earlier promise from Trajan of permission to rebuild the Temple, the retraction of which had caused the latest Jewish rebellion. That this second promise was taken seriously is shown by the feverish activity reported from all Jewish communities. The story (by a Christian Father, Epiphanius) that Hadrian appointed Aquilas as the new governor of Jerusalem would mean, if true, another conciliatory gesture on the emperor’s part.

As in the time of Ezra, the rebuilding of the Temple was opposed by Israel’s neighbors, and also, it must be supposed, by the Pauline Christians. The Midrash gives the following account, which appears to have telescoped two incidents but may nevertheless signalize Joshua’s position after the rescinding of the second promise. (Bereshith Rabbah LXIV.7):

In the days of Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah the wicked Kingdom ordered that the Holy House should be rebuilt. Thereupon Pappus and Lullianus established exchange stations [“tables”] from Acco to Antioch so as to provide the olim [Jews from foreign countries] with their needs in silver, gold, and the like. Then came the Kutheans [Samaritans] and said: “Let it be known to the Emperor that when the city is rebuilt and its walls are established they will not pay toll, tribute, or custom.” The Emperor then said: “What are we to do? I have already given the order [promise].” “Tell them,” they counseled, “to build the Temple on another site, or to increase or decrease its size by five ells; then they will withdraw by themselves.” The people were thickly assembled in the Valley of Beth Rimmon and when the letters written in this sense arrived they broke out into weeping and wished to revolt. Then said [those in charge]: “Let the sages come and pacify the people. Let Joshua ben Hananiah arise, for he is wise in the Law.” Whereupon came Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah and said: “A lion destroyed his prey, but a bone caught in his throat: he offered a reward to anyone who would remove the bone. A long-beaked Egyptian crane thereupon came and removed it. When the crane asked for the promised reward, the lion said that it was enough reward that she could boast of having put her head into a lion’s mouth and suffered no harm. So let it be enough for us to boast that we faced this people and escaped in peace.

Joshua had lived through wars and rumors of wars, witnessed the gradual impoverishment of the land, seen how after every struggle the common people had become more brutalized, forlorn, and embittered than before. The Zealots still believed that war would restore their political power and allow them to rebuild the Temple for themselves. Joshua was convinced that no human effort could restore national sovereignty, but only God—and His hand could not be forced. He spoke with authority to this effect. His colleagues do not appear to have contradicted him, and at the Valley of Beth Rimmon he succeeded in averting an open revolt—which may have been due in part, it is true, to a lack of arms among the Jews.

So far from regretting his broken promise, Hadrian decided subsequently, it seems, that the Jewish religion, which recognized solely its own God as master and king, and had spread far beyond the bounds of Palestine, constituted a threat to the Empire. The record of the unyielding Jewish attitude to Rome ever since Pompey may well have convinced him that the only way to overcome it was to destroy the Jewish religion. There seems no other explanation for his ban on Jewish rites, especially circumcision, which, like his plan for erecting a pagan temple in Jerusalem, probably preceded Bar Kokeba’s revolt. Hadrian’s severity toward the Jews may have been aggravated, moreover, by wounded pride: wherever else he traveled he was received and worshiped like a god; these people alone would not offer him sacrifices.

In 130 C.E. Hadrian broke his journey down the Syrian coast from Antioch to Egypt to visit Jerusalem. Sixty years had passed since the city had been sacked by Titus, yet he saw Jews still clinging to the ruins of what had once been the symbol of their nationhood. He decided to abolish the Jewish religion by wiping out every sign of Jerusalem’s former splendor and replacing the Temple with an edifice dedicated to Capitoline Jupiter and to his own divine glory. This was taken by the Zealots as a direct challenge and they prepared to resist. Aware of the hopelessness of any armed struggle against the Romans, Joshua exhorted the people to submit. But he now stood alone. Akiba, hitherto a staunch member of the peace party, had at last been won over by the Zealots. Joshua was over ninety when he made his last attempt to dissuade Hadrian, then in residence at Alexandria, from his plan to make Jerusalem a heathen city. He went alone to Egypt; even the once faithful Akiba considered his attempt futile and stayed at home.

An echo of Hadrian’s arguments at his last audience with Joshua may be recognized in a passage in the Midrash. He is reported as telling Joshua: “How great is the sheep that stands up amongst seventy wolves” (Esther Rabbah X.11). This was doubtless said ironically: Hadrian was pointing out the futility of the Jews’ attempt to be different from the rest of the world. “Seventy wolves” means the seventy other nations of the world that are mentioned in Genesis, which Hadrian could not have been familiar with, but there is no reason to believe that he did not make the equivalent remark in Greek. The Midrash gives Joshua’s reply: “Great [rather] is the shepherd who rescues his sheep and crushes the wolves; as it is written No weapon that is forged against thee shall succeed (Isa. 54:17).

Joshua’s efforts to make Hadrian show consideration for the feelings of an outraged community were nonetheless doomed to failure. He died soon afterwards. The death of the Tsaddik (Just One) is, in Jewish tradition, a signal for the advent of calamities. In this case they lasted for eighteen hundred years.

At Joshua’s deathbed the wise men cried: “How shall we now defend ourselves against the unbelievers?” (Tos. Sotah 15.3). Joshua’s answer was dry: he quoted Jeremiah 49:7 thus: “If good counsel has gone from the Children [of God], so has also the wisdom of the others failed.” In other words, the Jews were not wise enough to refrain from violence; but neither were the Romans clever enough to destroy their religion. He may also have been thinking of the Christians. Perhaps he did believe that Pauline Christianity, now spreading far and wide, lacked the strength to overcome Judaism, even though spiritual life in Palestine had greatly decayed since the days of Hillel.

The Jews rose almost immediately after Joshua’s death, Akiba having acknowledged Bar Kokeba as Messiah despite the protests of a few prudent men. His colleague Yohanan ben Torta said, “Akiba, grass will be growing through your cheeks before the Son of David comes” (Jer. Taanith IV.7).

Though starting out with brilliant successes, the revolt ended in utter ruin. The Talmud comments briefly: “For seven years have the Gentiles manured their vineyards with the blood of Israel.”

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¹ This is what the leading members of the Yavneh Sanhedrin were called; a reminder that the place was a battlefield on which those who fought were “armed” with learning.