come.

did not deny the ultimate appearance of the Messiah, nor did the Talmudic dates imply that the Messiah has already The Salvation of His Annointed is divided into two parts. The first is a discussion of chapter 39 of Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, and the second is an analysis of numerous Talmudic and Midrashic Messianic passages. The second part is divided into four themes.

The P. R. E. states that the rule of the four kingdoms would last one day of God, or a thousand years. Assuming that the "day" began with Nebuchadnezzar's reign (1319 A. M.) the Messiah would appear in the year 4319 A. M., or 559 c. E.-a date long since past. Abarbanel resolves this difficulty by pointing out that the day which is equal to a thousand years is the "daylight day" made up of twelve hours.57 Hence a full day, which is clearly the meaning of chapter 29, and which contains twenty-four hours, is equal to 2000 years. The rule of the four kingdoms would therefore end in the year 1559 c. E. When you deduct two-thirds of an hour5s which is equal to 56 years, from this date, you will get the year 1503 c. E., the very year established in the Wells.59

In the second part of his book Abarbanel takes up the passages found in San. 97a, b, which seem to indicate that the Messiah would appear in the fifth century. He meets the situation by laying down a general rule that in all Messianic calculations there are three possible terminals: (1) The period during which the Messiah cannot come; N' MY 1; (2) the period during which he may come, contingent upon the merit of the people, and (3) the period when he must come, п

60

The first period ended 400 years after the destruction. Prior to that time the Messiah could not come. The exile had to last at least 400 years. This was in the mind of the Rabbis when they pointed to the fifth century as the Messianic age. It marked the beginning of the age during

which the Messiah could come. The period when he must come is indicated in the story of the mysterious scroll found in the archives of Rome, which declared that the world would come to an end in the year 4291 A. M., or 539 C. E.61 Abarbanel accepts as an emendation the reading of Rabbi Aḥa son of Raba, "after 5000 years."'62 This gives 5291, or 1591 c. E., which is Abarbanel's ultimate Messianic year.63

Abarbanel devotes considerable space to the startling dictum of Hillel, namely, that there is no longer a Messiah for Israel, for he had already been consumed in the days of Hezekiah. He offers two explanations. The first is that the true intention of Hillel was that the Messiah can no longer come in the "contingent era," by the merit of the people, for all such merit had already been "consumed" in days of Hezekiah. The second explanation is that Hillel did not deny the ultimate Redemption at the hands of a Redeemer, but insisted that his name would not be

The future Redeemer will not be .(אין משיח לישראל) Messiah

annointed, for he will not be king over Israel. God alone will be king; the Redeemer will only be their prince (); "And my servant David will be prince (~~» over them forever."'65

Abarbanel also explains Akiba's belief that Bar Kochba was the Messiah, and his statement that the Lost Ten Tribes would never return. Akiba may have believed that God had repented Him of his decree and hastened the day, even though Israel was still living in the period when the Messiah could not come, just as God had reduced the 400 years of the Egyptian bondage to 210 years. Or Akiba may never have regarded Bar Kochba as the true Messiah, for the latter was not of the house of David, nor was he a judge. Bar Kochba was only the instrument of God to punish Rome. Such messengers of God are frequently called Messiah (e. g. Cyrus), and only in this sense did

61 San. 97b.

62 Ibid.

63 Op. cit., p. 21b.

4 Ibid., 25b-26a. See also his Intro. to nye 'wp, p. 2c, and л, p. 18b. 65 Ezek. 37.25,. 26b-28a.

Akiba regard Bar Kochba as the Messiah. As regards the Lost Ten Tribes, Akiba had reference only to those of the Ten Tribes who never returned to Judea and to the neighboring provinces, and were therefore never absorbed by the people of Judea. Those who did return are, of course, counted among the Judeans, and they will return with the return of Judea. The former, however, Akiba maintained, will never return, and Akiba was entitled to his opinion, for he could find many Biblical texts to substantiate it. Abarbanel himself was inclined to believe in the return of the Lost Ten Tribes in the traditional sense.66

The first theme closes with a polemic against Joshua Lorki's Christian interpretation of the passage in 'Ab. Zar. 8b: "Forty years before the destruction of the Temple the Sanhedrin was driven from the chamber of the Hewn Stone in the Temple (Lishkat ha-Gazit) and met in the market." According to Lorki this event coincided with the year of the crucifixion of Jesus.

Abarbanel also contradicts Lorki's deduction from Yeb. 82b and Nidah 46b: "Rabbi Jose said the Bible reads, 'and the Lord thy God will bring thee into a land which your fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it.'67 From this you may learn that they will have a first and a second possession (restoration, i. e. from Egypt and Babylon), but not a third." Lorki maintained that this meant that the Jews would never return to Palestine. Abarbanel answers that the second possession refers to the ultimate restoration; for the return from Babylon to Palestine was not in the true sense of the word a possession: "Cyrus gave them persmission to return. The land was not conquered by Israel."68

The second theme is devoted to Talmudic passages, which imply that the Messiah was already born, especially to the famous passages in Ekah R. 1.57 and Jer. Ber. 4a, in which the lowing of an ox announces the destruction

66 Op. cit., p. 33b.

67 Deut. 30.5.

68 Op. cit., pp. 37b-39a.

of the Temple and the birth of the Messiah. Lorki interpreted these passages to refer to Jesus. The apostate Pablo Christiani made similar use of them in his disputation with Naḥmanides and forced Naḥmanides to declare that he was not bound to accept the individual opinion of a Rabbi in matters Aggadic. Abarbanel says that both the literal and allegorical reading of this passage contradict the conclusions of Lorki.69

The third theme is devoted to an anti-Christian exposition of the character of the Messiah to prove that the Messiah is man, not God, and to bring Talmudic passages into accord with this thought.

In the fourth theme Abarbanel sets out to prove that with the advent of the Messiah the Torah, in part or in full, will not be abrogated. The apostate Pablo de Santa Maria (c. 1351-1435) devoted the eighth chapter of his Dialogus Pauli et Sauli to establish the very opposite thesis.70

Abarbanel's purpose in writing his third work, Announcing Salvation, was to refute those among his people and others who construed the Messianic prophecies of the Bible to apply to the first restoration. He also sets himself to contradict the belief that the coming of the Messiah is only a tradition of the Elders (o' nan) and has no Biblical authority. Among those whom he specifically singles out for criticism are Judah ibn Balaam of Toledo, Moses ibn Gikatilla of Cordova and Ḥayyim Galipapa, whose epistle on Redemption is mentioned approvingly by Albo. Abraham ibn Ezra, too, according to Abarbanel, is somewhat tainted with this heresy."1

Abarbanel undertakes to investigate each and every passage in the Scriptures containing a Messianic prophecy, in order to establish that in each case the reference is to

69 Ibid., pp. 39a-43a.

70 "In primo capitulo (Distinctio Octava) ostenditur ut legi mosaice posset aliquid addi vel diminui. . . In secundo capitulo ostenditur ut deus promisit dare populo Israhelitico novam legem aliam a lege mosaica. . . (ed. Mantua, 1475).

71 ¡yı' yɩawa, ed. Offenbach, 1767., Intro., p. 2b.

the ultimate Redemption." According to Abarbanel there are seventeen announcers of the Messiah mentioned in the Bible, from Balaam to Daniel, sixteen of whom he discusses in this book; the seventeenth (Daniel) he had already discussed in full in the Wells. All together, sixty-three prophecies are analyzed in detail: Balaam, 1; Moses, 4; Isaiah, 15; Jeremiah, 7; Ezekiel, 10; Hosea, 1; Joel, 1; Amos, 1; Obadiah, 1; Micah, 2; Habakkuk, 1; Zephaniah, 1; Haggai, 1; Zechariah, 4; Malachi, 1; and Psalms, 12.

2. Abraham Halevi (early 16c.), Spanish exile and Kabbalist, calculated the Messianic year to be 1530 c. E. His treatise on Daniel which contains his calculations was written in 1508 in Seres, Greece, and was published two years later in Constantinople, under the title Mashre Kiṭrin "The Loosener of Knots."

At the outset Halevi craves indulgence for embarking upon calculation. He is not a prophet and his conclusions are not the results of prophetic insight, but rather the simple findings of logical deduction. If time will prove them false why, greater men than he have erred. Witness the great authorities who pointed to 1358 as the Messianic year! Again, only such as would despair of the Messiah, if his predicted advent at a given time were not to materialize, are enjoined from calculating. Others may. Further, the injunction was valid in earlier times, but not now when the Messianic period had actually begun.73 It began with the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, and this conquest will be followed by the fall of Rome." He quotes as his authority the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel on Lam. 4.21.75 as well as Obad. 1.20: "And the captivity of this host of the children of Israel that are among the Canaanites unto Zarephath (n= unto France, i. e. there will be no Jews in France at the time of the Redemption) and the captivity of Jerusalem

72 Ibid., Intro. p. 3a.

73

.p. 4b ,משרא קיטרין

ולדעתי כי מעת שנכבשה קוסטאנטינ' על ידי המלך הגדול התוגרמי מאז התחילה עת קץ 14

ibid., p. 5a.

75 See supra, pp. 112-13.