He apologizes for the many calculators of the past whose prophecies have not come true. Even Daniel miscalculated. These calculators, like Baḥya, did not mean to imply that their calculations were absolutely certain. They merely tried to guess at the end. Some of them, like Rashi, merely tried to explain the meaning of those Biblical passages which contained prophetic dates. It is likely, too, that their prophecies would have come true had the people merited Redemption. As it is, they will have to wait upon another terminus, for there is more than one possible terminus to the exile. He expresses the view that it is not at all desirable to calculate the end. The people will despair if the appointed time fails to materialize the Messiah. He notes the expectations popularly entertained in his day that the Messiah would come not later than the year 5170=1410 c. E. The basis of this belief was that the third Temple would last as long as the durations of the first and second Temples combined (410+420-830 years). The world must end in the year 6000; hence the Messiah must come not later than the year 5170 (6000-830) = 1410 c. E.62 But he insists that there is no binding authority to this belief. It is sufficient to believe that God will hasten the day according to His own pleasure. Redemption depends entirely upon the merit of the people. It may come just one day prior to the close of the sixth millennium. 15. Abraham Saba (15-16c.), preacher in Castile and Spanish exile, author of the commentary on the Pentateuch, Zeror ha-Mor, Kabbalist and mystic, expresses opposition to Messianic speculation. His commentary is replete with Messianic allusions. The theme of Redemption runs through it all like a golden thread. Hardly a passage but what contains some animadversion upon it. Whenever the number 4 is suggested in the Bible, Saba finds an allusion to the four kingdoms. And yet he deprecates calculation. He follows Naḥmanides and Baḥya in his interpretation of the sixth day of Creation, finding in it a 62 Ibid., p. 104a. reference to the Redemption which will take place in the sixth millennium.63 The Redemption will follow hard upon the fall of Rome. Saba wrote after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and Jewry read in this event the beginning of the end. But the time of the end is hidden. Commenting on Deut. 32.24, "Is it not hidden with Me, sealed up in My treasures?" Saba writes, "And if a man will ask how long, O Lord?" or "When will be the end of the wonders?" He answered, "Thou hast not asked wisely. For this is a thing which no eye has beheld and it is hidden with Me, sealed up in My treasuries. I have not revealed it to any man. I alone foresee it.'"'65 16. Azariah dei Rossi (c. 1513-1578), author of Me'or 'Enayim, was clear and outspoken and systematic in his condemnation of all Messianic speculation. Dei Rossi devotes four chapters in his book to this subject, and his is the first thoroughgoing and elaborate criticism of it. He marshals his facts admirably, and his arguments are crushing. His approach is novel. He begins with a critical analysis of Jewish chronology. He demonstrates that our calendar-the Aere Mundi-is inaccurate and that more years have elapsed since Creation than the calendar would indicate. This leads him to the statement that all those who had based their Messianic computations on the Creation calendar have clearly gone astray, and that the Messianic year 5335 A. M. (1575 c. E.), eagerly awaited by his contemporaries, is now long since passed. He maintains that his findings are not hostile to the highest interests of the people. On the contrary, they will save many from the dangers which always lurk in Messianic calculation. Hastily he reviews the history of Messianic computation from Talmudic times to his own. He shows where all prognostications have proved futile. He points to the Rabbinic prohibition of computation. The calculators of his own day are permitting themselves to violate 6311, ed. Warsaw, 1879, I, p. 67. .כי עיקר גאולתנו תלויה בחורבן רומא 64 65 Op. cit., V, p. 68. the injunction of the Rabbis. Especially erring were those men who, like Abraham bar Ḥiyya and Isaac Abarbanel, had endeavored to derive their knowledge of the end from astral calculations. This, according to Dei Rossi, is clear heresy. Their writing should be "hidden."66 Israel is not subject to astral influences, and God does not speak through the signs of the Zodiac. He quotes Halevi, Bar Sheshet, Arama, Ibn Ezra and Maimonides to prove his contention. "The fortunes of Israel and their hope of Redemption do not depend upon planetary computations. The Lord alone is our salvation, and He alone knows the time thereof." There is here a remarkable consonance of views between the Jewish critic and his Christian contemporary, Montaigne, who also attacks all forms of prognostication and astrology, in the ninth chapter of the first volume of his essays. The present day calculators, continues Azariah, should have learnt their lesson from those who preceded them. Nahmanides, the wise and the learned, who wrote a book on Redemption which was so convincing that, were the author a contemporary of his, he would have believed in his calculations, maintained that the Messiah would come in the year 1358. Others, according to Isaac Abarbanel, believed similarly: Saadia, Abraham bar Ḥiyya, Rashi, Gersonides, Baḥya. Abraham Zacuto and Abraham Halevi calculated that he would come in the year 1530. They all had a sweet but unreal dream. Their hopes were vain. The present writers might have learned wisdom from them. They commit an additional wrong in prognosticating a day that is near at hand. What will happen if these prognostications are proved false? What disillusionment would overtake the people! One need not accept his premise. The calendar may be right or wrong. His contention is nevertheless true. One should not fix his hope upon a definite year, but.only upon a general faith in Redemption which the Lord will effect in His own time. The statement of Maimonides in San. 10 .ed מאור עינים see הלא הספור כלו חתיכא דאסורא וראוי לגנזו שלא יראה החוצה 68 Wilna, 1865, II, Chap. XLIII, p. 98. sums up his views completely. Azariah apologizes for Maimonides' lapse from his own position in giving a Messianic date by adducing the troubled conditions in Yemen as extenuation.67 A contemporary of Dei Rossi, and a fellow countryman, who likewise evidences the broadening influences of the culture of the Italian Renaissance, was the eminent preacher of Mantua, Judah Aryeh Moscato (d. before 1594). Like Dei Rossi, he was a student of classic literature, and his sermons, for all their orthodoxy and mysticism, are distinguished by a refinement and elegance which are rare in the homiletical literature of the sixteenth century. In one or two instances Moscato indicates his opposition to Messianic calculation. On the text of Is. 21.11-12, he builds his homily, "The burden of Dumah" (in Hebrew silent). This refers to the last exile in which Israel must be silent, not knowing when the end of its exile would be for it was revealed to no one. This last exile cries unto God, "Watchman, how much longer will this exile, likened unto night, still last?" And the Guardian of Israel replies, "The morning cometh, and also the night." At any given moment it is both morning and night. For everything depends upon repentance. You have the power to cause the sun of your Redemption to shine even in the middle of the night-"if ye will inquire"—if ye will seek God and return unto Him.68 = 17. Elijah de Vidas (16 c.), disciple of Isaac Luria, in his Reshit Hokmah, an ethical treatise of primary importance and strongly tinged with Kabbala, makes the Redemption entirely contingent upon the perfect observance of the moral law. This is significant, coming as it does from a Kabbalist and a follower of Luria. "If you will keep these two, charity and justice, at once will I (God) redeem you in perfect Redemption."69 18. Isaac ben Abraham Troki (1533–1594), anti-Christain polemist, in his Hizzuk Emunah is not primarily inter 67 Ibid., Chap. XLIII, passim. 68 1717” NIXIÐI ¶¤, Venice, 1588, p. 230; also p. 207. 69 ', ed. Constantinople, 1736, p. 277a. ested in the subject of Messianic speculation, but in the process of refuting the tenets and claims of Christianity. He is inevitably led to a discussion of the conflicting Jewish and Christian views concerning the Messiah. He desires also to persuade his people not to despair because the exile lasts so long.70 Chapter VI of his work is a reply to the Christian contention that the Biblical prophecies of restoration refer to the Babylonian exile and to the first restoration and not to the present exile. He reviews briefly the Biblical passages and shows wherein the prophecies were not fulfilled in the first exile and the first restoration. He follows closely the argument of Abarbanel's Announcing Salvation, though he does not mention him by name. He enumerates twenty distinctive features of the Redemption based on the prophecies of the Bible, none of which has as yet been fulfilled. Abarbanel enumerates fourteen." Troki is elaborating also on the eight features enumerated by Joshua Lorki in his letter to Solomon Ha-Levi, the apostate (Pablo de Santa Maria), written at the close of the fourteenth century.72 These features, according to Troki, are: (1) the return of the Lost Ten Tribes, 73 (2) the destruction of Gog and Magog; (3) the Mount of Olive shall be cleft asunder;75 (4) the Red Sea and the Euphrates shall be dried up;76 (5) living waters shall go out from Jerusalem and prodigious fertility shall be in the land;77 (6) ten men out of all the nations shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, "We will go with you";78 (7) the yearly pilgrimage of the nations to Jerusalem;79 (8) the nations shall worship .(8 .ed. Sohran 1873, p חזוק אמונה see) ולאמץ ברכים כושלות מאורך קץ גליותינו 70 71 See пу' y'ow, pp. 39a-41a. 72 See 'pib yon, ed. Landau, 1906, pp. 5-12; also 'n m”, pp. 12-13,17. 73 Ezek. 37.15-22. 74 Ezek. 38.3. 75 Zech. 14.4. 76 Is. 11.15. 77 Zech. 14.8; Ezek. 47.1. 78 Zech. 8.23. 79 Zech. 14.16. |