Chaim Katz
The identification of R. Akiva’s students as soldiers of Bar Kokhba is a reframing of the Talmudic text that mentions their deaths. This non-traditional, recent interpretation that the students died while serving as soldiers in Bar Kokhba’s army contextualizes the text, but leaves us with a narrative that has more than a few problems.
It was said that R. Akiva had twelve thousand pairs of students between Gibbethon and Antipatris who all died in the same period because they did not show respect to each other. The world was a wasteland until R. Akiva came to our rabbis in the south and taught them: To R. Meir and R. Yosie and R. Yehuda and R. Shimon and R. Elazar b. Shammua. They set up the Torah at that time. It was taught that they [the first students] all died between Passover and Atzeret (Yevamot 62b).[1]
Rav Sherira Gaon summarizes and quotes the text this way:
R. Akiva raised many students. But there was a persecution against the students of R. Akiva.[2] The people of Israel relied on R. Akiva’s second students as the Rabbis have said:
R. Akiva had twelve thousand students between Gibbethon and Antipatris who all died between Passover and Atzeret. The world was an unending wasteland until the rabbis of the south came and he taught them.[3]
The parallel in Genesis Rabbah 61:3 adds the names of two more students who were among R. Akiva’s second set of disciples: R. Yohanan of Alexandria[4] and R. Eliezer b. Yaakov.
The Talmud doesn’t associate the loss of these students with an event we recognize, nor does it mention Bar Kokhba.[5] Even Rav Sherira Gaon’s addition of “a persecution” doesn’t provide any clarity. All we have is a sequence: The students of Rabbi Akiva die. Rabbi Akiva raises a second set of students. Rabbi Akiva dies.
We can compute approximately when Rabbi Akiva died.
Rabbi Akiva was forced to debate the wicked Tineius Rufus [and was tortured]. The time of reciting shema arrived. Rabbi Akiva began reading shema and laughed. He said to Rabbi Akiva: old man, old man, you are either a sorcerer or one who slights torture (Yerushalmi Sotah 5:5).[6]
Tineius Rufus was governor of Judea between 130 and 133.[7] He was the commander of the tenth legion of the Imperial Roman army and its auxiliaries. The first phase of the Bar Kokhba revolt ended with the defeat of the tenth legion and its retreat from Judea. The second phase of the rebellion began with the arrival of Poblicius Marcellus, the governor of Syria. He and his legions (and legions from Egypt) were also not successful in overpowering Bar Kokhba. The third and final phase of the war began with the arrival of legions from the Danube area in Central Europe, under the command of Julius Severus.[8]
Julius Severus reached Judea in 133, and crushed Bar Kokhva’s revolt in the subsequent two years. I think R. Akiva’s death occurred in 133 or before, while Rufus was still the governor and military commander, but his death might have occurred later. R. Akiva was jailed for about two years[9] before he was killed.
The Talmud discusses R. Akiva’s death and the last phase of the Bar Kokhba war.
When the report that R. Akiva was killed in Caesarea reached R. Yehuda b. Bathyra[10] and R. Haninah b. Teradion, they stood, put on sackcloth and said: Israel our brothers, listen to us. R. Akiva wasn’t killed because he was suspected of robbery, or of not learning Torah with all his might. R. Akiva was killed as a prophetic sign as it says “Ezekiel will be a prophetic sign to you.” (Ezekiel 24:24) Soon there will not be any place in the land of Israel that isn’t strewn with murdered corpses. As it says: “the dead bodies will lie [scattered everywhere] like manure on the surface of a field”. (Jeremiah 9:21) … It was said: soon the war came and upset the entire world. During the next 12 months the city councils of Judea stopped functioning … By the time 12 months had passed, everything they had predicted had occurred. – Semahot 8:9
According to this Baraita: not long after Rabbi Akiva’s death, “the war came.” The 12-month period of the war was probably the first year of Julius Severus’ campaign.
Severus did not venture to attack his opponents in the open at any one point … By depriving them of food and shutting them up, he was able – rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger – to crush, exhaust and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived … Five hundred and eighty thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out … Thus, nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate – (Cassius Dio, Sections 69.13.3 – 69.14.2).[11]
Whether Rabbi Akiva’s death was before the war or before the third phase of the war (or even after the war), the date supports the claim of Prof. Gedaliah Alon, who wrote:
The death of the “first” students of R. Akiva preceded the Bar Kokhba revolt. For afterwards R. Akiva taught his “second” set of students: R. Meir and R. Yehuda etc. However, there was insufficient time for that to occur in the short period that R. Akiva lived after the end of the war.[12]
We can bring further support for the notion that R. Akiva’s students died before Bar Kokhba’s time:
R. Yohanan the Alexandrian disguised himself as a peddler and walked past the jail where R. Akiva was held. He called out. “Who wants needles? Who wants sewing hooks? What if she performed halitsa when there were no witnesses present? R. Akiva looked at him through the window of the cell, and answered: Do you have reeds? Do you have… kosher. (Yerushalmi Yevamot 12:5)
R. Akiva was jailed after the Romans had already banned the teaching of Torah.[13] R. Yohanan of Alexandria belonged to the second set of R. Akiva’s students. He was very close to R. Akiva and could be trusted.[14] The story implies that R. Akiva’s first students had already died and R. Akiva had been teaching a second cohort of students before he was arrested.
R. Meir said. One time we were sitting before R. Akiva. We were reciting the Shema, but we weren’t pronouncing the words aloud because of a quaestor (police agent) who stood guard at the doorway. (Tosefta Berakhot 2:13)
This account describes a period before R. Akiva’s arrest, when teaching Torah in public was still permitted. R. Meir, who was one of the second-generation students, was already R. Akiva’s disciple. Elsewhere, the Talmud indicates that R. Meir studied with R. Akiva for a number of years.
It happened that seven students of R. Akiva gathered together in the Galilee to decide whether to add an additional month to the lunar year … R. Meir said, this is what I heard from R. Akiva. R. Yohanan of Alexandria replied. I studied standing before R. Akiva longer than you studied sitting (Yerushalmi Hagiga 3.1)
The junior students stood before their teacher. The more senior students sat. R. Yohanan was claiming that his memory of R. Akiva’s decision was more accurate than R. Meir’s because he heard it as a junior student. The Talmud determines that R. Meir didn’t spend all of his junior years with R. Akiva:
Initially R. Meir came before R. Akiva, but was incapable of grasping his approach. He came before R. Ishmael and learned the traditions. Subsequently he returned to R. Akiva to learn how to reason analytically (Eruvin 13a).
We have a report of another two students, members of the second cohort, who studied with R. Akiva for at least a decade before R Akiva was arrested:
R. Hanina b. Hakhinai[15] was leaving for the academy of the rabbis at the end of R. Shimon b. Yohai’s wedding feast. R. Shimon asked him to wait so that they could go together. He did not wait, but went and sat in the academy for twelve years. (Ketubot 62b)
Hanina b. Hakhinai and R. Shimon b. Yochai went to learn Torah before R. Akiva in Bene Barak and stayed there for 13 years. (Genesis Rabbah 95:30 ed. Theodor and Albeck, Leviticus Rabbah 21:8)[16]
If Rabbi Akiva was arrested around 130 or 131, then these two students began to learn with him around 118. The previous year (117) corresponds with the Lusius Quietus campaign against Judea.[17]
The emperor … ordered Lusius Quietus to clean the Jews out of Mesopotamia. Quietus organized a force and murdered a great multitude of Jews there, and for this accomplishment was appointed governor of Judaea by the Emperor. (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Book 4, 2:5)
The Quietus expedition against Judea is mentioned in our sources as well.
After the war of Quietus[18] [the sages] banned the crowns of the brides and decreed that a father should not teach his son Greek (Mishnah Sotah 9:14)
It’s possible that around the time of the Quietus war, R. Akiva’s first set of students died. The second set of students began their studies soon after that war ended. This solves the chronological problem: Rabbi Akiva’s first set of students died long before Bar Kokhba’s war, leaving R. Akiva ample time to raise a second set of students.
This chronology provides a solution to another difficulty. The Talmud relates that R. Akiva’s first set of students died between Passover and Atzeret. How could it be that his students died in a period of only seven weeks?
Quietus’s expedition to Judaea lasted a short time. He arrived before the end of the winter in 117.[19] However, his patron, the emperor Trajan, had fallen sick in the spring and had set sail from Parthia back to Italy. The emperor died before reaching his destination. Some say that Trajan died in the beginning of August 117, while others say he died in the beginning of July 117.[20] His trip from Singara[21] (modern day Sinjar – a city in Northern Iraq) to Selinous, where he died, took about 35 days (2000 km).[22] Thus he left Singara either around the end of May or around the end of June.
Trajan had not chosen a successor and Quietus was certainly planning for his chance to become the emperor of Rome. Probably, he paused his campaign in Judea. He would need all his troops to fight off any other competitors. This tactic is exactly the way Vespasian commanded his troops after the death of Nero. Quietus’s expedition to Judaea was basically over. It lasted from the beginning of the spring to some time in May. It’s difficult to translate between Jewish Holidays and corresponding Gregorian dates, but Passover and Atzeret both fall on that timeline.
Unfortunately for Quietus, Hadrian, because of his connections, became the emperor immediately after Trajan’s death. There was no war of succession. Quietus was afterwards accused of conspiring against Hadrian and was put to death. (Historia Agustus 1:7).
Hadrian immediately deprived Quietus of the command of the Moorish tribesmen who were serving under him, and then dismissed him from the army, because he had fallen under the suspicion of having designs on the throne.[23]
In conclusion, R. Akiva’s “first” students did not die in the Bar Kokhba war. They died much earlier; maybe as a consequence of the Quietus war. They died in a relatively short time frame – about two months. His “second” students spent many years with him. They mostly survived the Hadrianic persecutions and passed the Torah of R. Akiva to future generations.
[1] This exact wording is from Hagadot Ha-Talmud, printed only once (1511, Constantinople).
[2] This sentence is missing in all versions of the French recension and in two of the four Spanish accounts collected by Dr. Levin (see next footnote).
[3] Binyamin Menashe Levin, ed., Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon (Heb). Haifa-Frankfort-Berlin, HaHevra LeSifrut HaYahadut, 1921, 13.
[4] R. Yohanan HaSandlar.
[5] Saul Liebermanl. Ridifat Da’at Yisrael. Salo Wittmayer Baron – Jubilee volume, Vol 3, (Jerusalem, American Academy for Jewish Research,1974), “The Talmud Bavli never says that Rabbi Akiva supported Bar Kokhba or recognized him as messiah” (226, n. 92).
[6] R. Akiva did not survive the torture (Berakhot 61b). See Lieberman, 224, n. 71.
[7]Werner Eck (1983). “Jahres-und Provinzialfasten der senatorischen Statthalter von 69/70 bis 138/139”, 169-173. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Tineius_Rufus_(consul_127).
[8] Gedaliah Alon. The History of the Jews in the Land of Israel in the Times of the Mishnah and Talmud. (heb), Tel Aviv: Kibbutz Ha Meuhad, Vol 2 (1971), 37. Available in translation.
[9] Lieberman, 230 n. 117.
[10] Yehuda b. Bathyra is in the text of the Oxford Bodleian Library, https://maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il/Pages/PMain.aspx?mishibbur=614000&page=8. Other versions have Yehudah b. Baba.
[11] https://www.livius.org/sources/content/cassius-dio/cassius-dio-on-bar-kochba/ Dio doesn’t say it openly, but Severus was successful because he systematically burned down town after town.
[12] Alon, 43.
[13] R. Akiva was arrested for teaching Torah (Lieberman, 226 n. 92).
[14] See Lieberman 230 n. 114. Someone wanted to learn Torah from R. Akiva when he was jailed. R. Akiva did not teach him, not even discreetly.
[15] Hanina is mentioned (according to one opinion) in Genesis Rabbah 61:3 as one of R. Akiva’s second set of students.
[16] The tradition that the students went to Rabbi Akiva matches the text of Rav Sherira Gaon’s epistle, but doesn’t match the tradition of the Talmud that R. Akiva went to them.
[17] Miriam (Marina) Ben Zeev Pucci. The Revolt at the Time of Trajan (Heb.), in Studies of Jewish History in the Mishnaic and Talmudic Period, ed. Isaiah Gafni (Hebrew) Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar LeHeker Toldot Ha’am Hayehudi (1994), 98.
[18] This is the correct text per the Kaufmann Manuscript of the Mishnah. Other versions have “Titus.”
[19] Ben Zeev Pucci, 98.
[20] Dio and Historia Augusta give a date around 9 August. The Chronograph of 354 records his death as 9 July.
[21] I don’t know if he started his trip from Singara. It’s possible that he started from further east, and started earlier.
[22] https://orbis.stanford.edu/ The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World
[23] Historia Augusta, Volume 1:5, The Life of Hadrian, David Magie, translator, published in the Loeb Classical Library, 1921. Quoted from: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/Hadrian/1*.html
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