Megillat Taanit (Hebrew:
מגילת תענית) is chronicle which enumerates 35 eventful days on which the Jewish nation either performed glorious deeds or witnessed joyful events. These days were celebrated as feast-days. Public mourning was forbidden on 14 of them, and public fasting on all. In most of the editions this chronicle consists of two parts, which are distinct in language and in form, namely:
- The text or the Megillat Ta'anit proper, written in Aramaic and containing merely brief outlines in concise style.
- Scholia or commentaries on the text, written in Hebrew
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
.
The days are enumerated, not in the chronological order of the events they commemorate, but in the sequence of the calendar, the Megillat Ta'anit being divided into twelve chapters, corresponding to the months of the year. Each chapter contains the memorial days of a single month, the first chapter dealing with those of the first month,
NisanNisan is the first month of the ecclesiastical year and the seventh month of the civil year, on the Hebrew calendar. The name of the month is Babylonian; in the Torah it is called the month of the Aviv, referring to the month in which barley was ripe...
, and so on to the 12th chapter, which treats of those of the 12th month,
AdarAdar is the sixth month of the civil year and the twelfth month of the religious year on the Hebrew calendar. It is a winter month of 29 days...
.
Five Groups of Feasts
The festal occasions which these days were intended to keep alive in the memory of the people belong to different epochs; and on this basis the days may be divided into five groups, namely:
- pre-Maccabean
- Hasmonean
The Hasmoneans were the ruling dynasty of the Hasmonean Kingdom of Israel , an independent Jewish state. The Hasmonean dynasty was established under the leadership of Simon Maccabaeus, two decades after his brother Judah the Maccabee defeated the Seleucid army during the Maccabean Revolt in 165 BC...
- ante-Sadducean
- ante-Roman
Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
- Jewish Diaspora
The Jewish diaspora , the presence of Jews outside of the Land of Israel, is a result of the expulsion or emigration of Jews from Israel...
, comprising memorial days admitted after the destruction of the TempleThe Temple in Jerusalem or Holy Temple , refers to a series of structures located on the Temple Mount in the old city of Jerusalem. Historically, two temples were built at this location, and a future Temple features in Jewish eschatology. According to classical Jewish belief, the Temple acts as...
.
There are also a few days which do not refer to any known historical event, and are, therefore, chronologically uncertain. All these memorial days did not become festivals by being incorporated and recorded in the Megillat Ta'anit, as J. Schmilg has attempted to prove (
Ueber die Entstehung und den Historischen Werth des Siegeskalenders Megillat Ta'anit, pp. 11-20), but had been known and celebrated by the people long before that time, as he himself is obliged to admit in the case of some of them; indeed, the celebration of these festivals or semi-festivals evidently existed as early as the time of Judith (
Book of JudithThe Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint and in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible, but excluded by Jews and Protestants...
viii. 6). The compilers of the Megillat Ta'anit merely listed the memorial days and at the same time determined that the less important should be celebrated by a mere suspension of fasting, while public mourning was to be forbidden on the more important ones.
Authorship
In an old
baraitaBaraita designates a tradition in the Jewish oral law not incorporated in the Mishnah. "Baraita" thus refers to teachings "outside" of the six orders of the Mishnah...
(Shab. 13b) the question as to the authorship of the work is answered as follows: "Hananiah ben Hezekiah of the Garon family, together with a number of others who had assembled for a synod at his house, compiled the Megillat Ta'anit." According to an account in the
Halakot Gedolot, Hilkot Soferim (ed. Vienna, p. 104; ed. Zolkiev, p. 82c), the members of this synod were the "Ziḳne Bet Shammai" and "Ziḳne Bet Hillel," the eldest pupils of
ShammaiShammai was a Jewish scholar of the 1st century, and an important figure in Judaism's core work of rabbinic literature, the Mishnah....
and
HillelHillel is a Hebrew name of several prominent historical men and modern organizations.-Biblical:* Hillel was the father of Abdon, a minor character in the Book of Judges.- Talmudic :...
. The Megillat Ta'anit must have been composed, therefore, about the year 7 CE, when
JudeaJudea or Judæa is the name given to the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel , an area now divided between Israel and the West Bank Judea or Judæa (Hebrew: יהודה,
Standard Yəhuda
Tiberian , "praised, celebrated"; Greek: Ιουδαία, Ioudaía; ) is the...
was made a
RomanThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
province to the great indignation of the Jews (comp. Schmilg, l.c. pp. 20-36). This calendar of victories was intended to fan the spark of liberty among the people and to fill them with confidence and courage by reminding them of the victories of the
MaccabeesThe Maccabees were a Jewish rebel army who liberated Judea from the rule of the Seleucid empire...
and the divine aid vouchsafed to the Jewish nation against the heathen.
The scholium (commentary) to Megillat Ta'anit, xii., end, evidently quoting an old
baraitaBaraita designates a tradition in the Jewish oral law not incorporated in the Mishnah. "Baraita" thus refers to teachings "outside" of the six orders of the Mishnah...
, says: "Eleazar b. Hananiah of the family of Garon together with his followers compiled the Megillat Ta'anit." This Eleazar is identical with the Zealot general
EleazarEleazar ben Simon was a Zealot leader during the First Jewish-Roman War who fought against the armies of Cestius Gallus, Vespasian, and Titus Flavius. From the onset of the war in 66 A.D...
, who took a noteworthy part in the beginning of the revolt against the Romans, vanquishing the garrison at
JerusalemJerusalem is the capital of Israel and its largest city in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if disputed East Jerusalem is included...
, as well as
AgrippaAgrippa II , son of Agrippa I, and like him originally named Marcus Julius Agrippa, was the seventh and last king of the family of Herod the Great, thus last of the Herodians. He was the brother of Berenice and Drusilla...
's troops, and Menahem's Sicarian bands. According to this account, therefore, the Megillat Ta'anit was composed by the Zealots after the year 66 CE, during the revolution (H. Grätz,
Gesch. iii., note 26), although it is not necessary to correct the Talmudic account to agree with the scholium, and to read, as does Grätz, in Shab. 13b, "Eleazar b. Hananiah," instead of "Hananiah."
On the other hand, the view of Schmilg (l.c.) that the scholium is incorrect is erroneous, since there is both internal and external evidence in favor of its authenticity. The account in the Talmud and that in the scholium may both be accepted, since not only Hananiah the father, but also Eleazar the son, contributed to the compilation of the work. Eleazar, one of the central figures in the war against the Romans, endeavored to strengthen the national consciousness of his people by continuing his father's work, and increased the number of memorial days in the collection, to remind the people how God had always helped them and had given them the victory over external and internal enemies.
Interpolations
Eleazar did not, however, complete the work, and several days were subsequently added to the list which was definitely closed in Usha, as is proved by the fact that the 12th of Adar is designated as "Trajan's Day," and the 29th of that month as "the day on which the persecutions of
HadrianPublius Aelius Hadrianus was emperor of Rome from AD 117 to 138, as well as a Stoic and Epicurean philosopher...
ceased" (comp. Brann in
Monatsschrift, 1876, p. 379). Furthermore, R. Simon ben Gamaliel, who was
nasiNāśī’ is a Hebrew title meaning prince, in Biblical Hebrew, Patriarch in Mishnaic Hebrew, or president, in Modern Hebrew.-History:...
at Usha, says in the
baraitaBaraita designates a tradition in the Jewish oral law not incorporated in the Mishnah. "Baraita" thus refers to teachings "outside" of the six orders of the Mishnah...
Shab. 13b: "If we should turn all the days on which we have been saved from some danger into holidays, and list them in the Megillat Ta'anit, we could not satisfy ourselves; for we should be obliged to turn nearly every day into a festival" (comp.
RashiShlomo Yitzhaki, better known by the acronym Rashi , , was a medieval French rabbi famed as the author of the first comprehensive commentary on the Talmud, as well as a comprehensive commentary on the Tanakh .Acclaimed for his ability to present the basic meaning of the text in a...
ad loc.). This sentence clearly indicates that the work was definitely completed at Usha in the time of R. Simon, in order that no further memorial days might be added.
Hebrew Commentary
The Hebrew commentary on the Megillat Ta'anit was written much later, the author, who did not live earlier than the 7th century, having before him the text of both the Talmudim as well as that of Bereshit Rabbah (comp. Brann, l.c. pp. 410-418, 445-451). The commentator collected those baraitot of the Talmud which contained comments on the Megillat Ta'anit, and jumbled them uncritically with accounts from other, unreliable sources.
The Text and the Scholium
The references of Schmilg's (l.c. pp. 36-41) merely prove that the scholiast endeavored to make his work pass for a product of the tannaitic period. As a matter of fact, however, the
TalmudThe Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
knows only the Aramaic text, which alone is meant by the term "Megillat Ta'anit." This text, which had been committed to writing and was generally known (Er. 62), was explained and interpreted in the same way as the
BibleThe Bible contains the central religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the Hebrew language, with some small portions in Aramaic...
(Yer. Ta'an. ii. 66a). The many quotations from the Megillat Ta'anit in the Talmud are all taken from the Aramaic text and are introduced by the word "ketib" = "it is written," as in Ḥul. 129b; Meg. 5b; Ta'an. 12a and 18b; there is not a single quotation from the scholium. In Ta'an. 12a, the single passage, "bi-Megillat Ta'anit," from which Schmilg tries to prove that the Talmud quotes the scholium as well as the Megillat, is a later addition (comp. Brann, l.c. pp. 457 et seq.), and is not found in the Munich manuscript (comp. Rabbinowitz,
Ha-Meassef, iii. 63). Although the comments found in the scholium are mentioned in the Talmud, they are not credited to the Megillat Ta'anit, but are quoted as independent baraitot, so that the scholium took them from the Talmud, and not vice versa.
As the text and the scholium of the Megillat Ta'anit are distinct in form and in language, so do they differ also in value. The text is an actual historical source, whose statements may be regarded as authentic, while its dates are reliable if interpreted independently of the scholium. The scholium, on the other hand, is of very doubtful historical value and must be used with extreme caution. Although it contains some old baraitot which are reliable, the compiler has mixed them with other, unhistorical, accounts and legends, so that even those data whose legendary character has not been proved can be credited only when they are confirmed by internal and external evidence.
Editions and Commentaries
The Megillat Ta'anit is extant in many editions, and has had numerous commentaries. The best edition of the Aramaic and Hebrew text is that by A. Neubauer, which is based on the edition princeps and the Amsterdam edition of 1711, compared with the codex De Rossi (Parma MS. 117) and some fragments of a manuscript in the
Bodleian LibraryThe Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...
, Oxford (Neubauer,
M. J. C. ii. 3-25, Oxford, 1895).
Of commentaries the following may be mentioned:
Abraham ben Joseph ha-LeviAbraham ben Joseph ha-Levi was a Polish commentator born at Cracow. In consequence of the persecution of the Jews of Poland by the Cossacks in 1656, he fled from his native city and sought asylum in Hamburg. Here he produced a commentary upon Megillat Ta'anit, which was printed at Amsterdam, in...
, double commentary (Amsterdam, 1656); Judah ben Menahem, double commentary (Dyhernfurth, 1810); Johann Meyer, Latin language translation published in his
Tractatus de Temporibus, etc. (Amsterdam, 1724). Derenbourg and Schwab have made French versions of the Aramaic text.
Jewish Encyclopedia bibliography
- Grätz, Gesch. iii., notes 1, 26;
- J. Derenbourg, Hist. pp. 439-446;
- J. Schmilg, Ueber Entstehung und Historischen Werth des Siegeskalenders Megillat Ta'anit, Leipsic, 1874;
- J. Wellhausen, Die Pharisäer und die Sadducäer, pp. 56-63, Greifswald, 1874;
- Joel Müller, Der Text der Fastenrolle, in Monatsschrift, 1875, pp. 43-48, 139-144;
- M. Brann, Entstehung und Werth der Megillat Ta'anit, pp. 375-384, 410-418, 445-460, ib. 1876;
- P. Cassel, Messianische Stellen des Alten Testaments, Appendix, Berlin, 1885;
- Weiss, Dor, ii. 254-257;
- B. Rattner, in Rabbinowitz, Ha-Meassef, 1902, pp. 91-105;
- M. Schwab, La Megillath Taanith, in Actes du Onzième Congrès International des Orientalistes, pp. 199-259, Paris, 1898.
External links