Johanan ben Zakkai

Johanan ben Zakkai (flourished 1st century ad) was a Palestinian Jewish sage, founder of an academy and an authoritative rabbinic body at Jamnia. He had a decisive influence on the continuance and development of traditional Judaism after the destruction of the Temple (ad 70).

As is the case with all the Talmudic teachers (the rabbis who interpreted and applied the Oral Law), little strictly biographical information about Johanan ben Zakkai has been preserved: Talmudic and Midrashic sources (commentative and interpretative writings) are principally devoted to the teachings of the sages and of what they came to represent. Thus, what can be reported essentially about Johanan is this: even before ad 70 he acted as a leading representative of the Pharisees in debate with priestly and Sadducean authorities. (The Pharisees stressed rigorous observance of the Law, inclusion of the oral tradition as normative, and an interpretative adaptation of traditional precepts to new situations; the Sadducees, an elitist conservative group, accepted only the Written Law as authoritative and were more literalist and static in their interpretation.) Johanan’s school was apparently famous, and one in search of learning would go to extremes, if need be, to be admitted there. Furthermore, Johanan was opposed to the policy of those who were determined on war with Rome at all costs. By quitting beleaguered Jerusalem according to most accounts in 70 (though it is possible that he left as early as 68) and being brought to the Roman camp, he somehow succeeded in getting permission to set up an academy in Jamnia (Jabneh), near the Judaean coast, and there he was joined by a number of his favourite disciples. Two of them, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and Joshua ben Hananiah, who are credited with having smuggled their master out of Jerusalem in a coffin, were to become, by the end of the century and the beginning of the following one, the leading teachers of their generation and had a profound influence on the greatest scholars of the next generation.

It is therefore hardly excessive to say that Johanan’s teachings are to be traced not merely to the relatively few statements specifically attributed to him but to many views that become articulate during the 2nd century: for example, that acts of loving kindness atone no less effectively than the former Temple sacrificial ritual and are indeed at the core of the universe since its creation; that the study of Torah (the divine instruction or Law) is a central purpose of man and a paramount form of serving God; that a number of ceremonies and regulations once confined to the Temple were to be adopted even outside the Temple complex “to serve as memorials of the Sanctuary”; at the same time, despite the unique sanctity of Jerusalem, basic decisions regarding practice and instruction were now to be permitted to the authorized scholars wherever circumstances compelled them to sit in session. Such views, truly radical in origin, became normative rabbinical teaching and permanent components of Judaism.

Thus, it may be said that, by establishing in Jamnia a major academy and authoritative rabbinic body, Johanan fixed the conditions for continuing Judaism’s basic traditions after the destruction of the Temple; and that, by his lively sense of the need for reinterpreting inherited concepts in new circumstances, he laid the foundations on which Talmudic and rabbinic Judaism built their structure.

The chief preoccupation of Johanan and his students was the study and continuing development of the Law (Halakha). He and they also engaged in the study of nonlegal subjects (Aggada), especially in connection with biblical exegesis (Midrash), explanation and interpretation of the biblical contents. In addition, he was interested in esoteric themes related to the subject of creation and the visions of the Merkavah (the divine chariot of Ezekiel 1), discourses on which were even delivered by some of his disciples. And, at least before the destruction of the Temple, if not thereafter as well, he seems to have held occasional sessions when certain ethical-philosophical questions, typical of Hellenistic-Roman popular philosophical discussion, were raised and explored. His homiletic interpretations of scripture often unite the symbolic with the rationalistic in a remarkable way. Why were not hewn stones permitted in the building of the altar? Because iron is for weapons of destruction, and the altar of God is intended to bring peace, he answers. Why is the ear of one who prefers servitude to have a hole bored in it? Because we are God’s servants, and man heard at Sinai with his own ears. Let the unlistening ear be bored. Such are typical comments by Johanan. Although he had discouraged what must have seemed to him unwarranted messianic proclamations, a saying attributed to him in his last illness suggests that messianic speculation was not alien to him.

Of all the Palestinian Jewish sages of the 1st century ad, none apparently proved so fundamentally influential in his own time and for subsequent generations of scholars and spiritual leaders as Johanan ben Zakkai. In the history of Talmudic literature and thought, Johanan is rightly seen as continuing the Hillelite tradition, although this should not be interpreted to mean that he inherited only Hillel’s teachings.