The Holy Scripture
Chapter XLV
Come, and I will show thee the Curtain of MAQOM (the Divine Majesty) which is spread before the Holy One, blessed be He, (and) whereon are graven all the generations of the world and all their doings, both what they have done and what they will do until the end of all generations.
And I went, and he showed it to me pointing it out with his fingers like a father who teaches his children the letters of Tora. And I saw each generation, the rulers of each generation, and the heads of each generation, the shepherds of each generation, the oppressors (drivers) of each generation, the keepers of each generation, ?the scourgers of each generation,? the overseers of each generation, the judges of each generation, the court officers of each generation, the teachers of each generation, ?the supporters of each generation, the chiefs of each generation,? the presidents of academies of each generation, the magistrates of each generation, the princes of each generation, “the counsellors of each generation,‘ the nobles of each generation, “and the men of might of each generation,4 the elders of each generation, and the guides of each generation.
And I saw Adam, his generation, their doings and their thoughts,’ | Noah $and his generation, their doings and their thoughts$, and the generation of the flood, their doings and their thoughts, Shem and his generation, their doings and their thoughts, Nimrod and the generation of the confusion of tongues, and his generation, their doings and their thoughts, Abraham and his generation, their doings and their thoughts, Isaac and his generation, their doings and their thoughts, ‘Ishmael and his generation, their doings and their thoughts,’ and their doings; the teachers of children in the nations of the world, their generations, their works and their doings; the counsellors (interpreters) of Israel, their generation, their works and their doings; the counsellors (interpreters) of the nations of the world, their generation, their works and their doings; all the prophets of Israel, their generation, their works and their doings; all the prophets of the nations of the world, their generation, their works and their doings;
and all the fights and wars that the nations of the world wrought against the people of Israel in the time of their kingdom. And I saw Messiah, son of Joseph, and his generation and their works and their doings that they will do against the nations of the world. And I saw Messiah, son of David, and his generation, and I6 so E. From here to the end of the verse there follows a short eschatological piece. R. Ishmael, through the medium of the Curtain of the Throne, sees the events of the last times. The end of the course of the present world is marked by the appearance of Messiah ben Joseph and Messiah ben David in whose times there will be wars between Israel and ‘Gog and Magog; the final consummation will then, so it seems, be brought about by the Holy One Himself. Vide also Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, ii. 729, Schoettgen, Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae, i. 139, 267, 360-5, Wuensche, Die Leiden des Messias, pp. 65 seqq., Castelli, 7/7 Messia secondo gli Ebrei, pp. 224-9. It will perhaps be best to follow Klausner (and Dalman) in assuming that the origin of a double Messiah was the realization of the duplicity inherent in the traditional Messianic picture, e.g. the political and military traits as against the spiritual and ethical (esp. of Isa. xi and Zech. ix. 9). “ Die Doppelnatur des Messias muss in einen Doppelmessias umgesetzt werden" (Klausner). (Cf. Dalman in a somewhat different vein: ‘es muss als möglich gelten, dass überhaupt ein etwa durch die hadrianischen Verfolgungen neu hervorgerufenes Interesse an dem Trost der Messiashoffnung zu erneutem Schriftstudium trieb.. . Alles was in der heiligen Schrift darauf zu deuten schien, dass Edom-Rom gestürtzt und Jerusalem, wenn auch nur vorläufig, an Israel zurückgegeben wird, musste dad en Forscher an- ziehen, und das Unbestimmteste gewann für das nach Erlósung dürstende Gemüt deutliche Umrisse und konkrete Gestalt. Was sollte nun der zweite Messias anders sein, als Josephite, bezie- hungsweise Ephraimite" [Messiah ben Ephraim is sometimes a variant of Messiah ben Joseph, vide below]). Also should be noted Klausner’s remark that it “is highly all the fights and wars, and their works and their doings that they .probable that Bar Kochba's death as hero in the war with the enemies of Israel, after having for a time been victorious and even reigned as a king, became the starting-point (Vorbild) for the conception of a Messiah who at first is victorious but in the end is overcome by the enemies of Israel”. This is, most probably, the right explanation of the conception of a Messianic forerunner of the real Messiah: One had long been conscious of the duplicity in the Messianic picture; the Hadrianic persecutions and the Bar Kochba incident forced the attention on the Messianic ideas and hopes; the circumstances made one conscious of Israel’s fate of having to go through many tribulations, temporal victories followed by severe debacles: from this consciousness grew the picture of a forerunner-Messiah whose essential characteristic was described by the words of the Baraztha (TB. Sukka, 52 a): “he will be killed ". | | Dalman explains the designation ‘ben Joseph’ from Deut. xxxiii. 17 ( His glory is like the firstling of his bullock and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh’). “ The ‘firstling of his (Joseph’s) bullock’ is nearly as much the emblem of Messiah ben Joseph: Ren. R. Ixxv. 6, Ex. R. to xlix. 14 acc. to Pugeo Fidei, Num. Buber, 82 b, as the ‘foal of an ass’ of Zech. ix. g is the emblem of Messiah ben David. ‘‘ Was dort (Deut. xxxiii. 17) von Joseph gesagt ist, führt den Gedanken an das spätere Königtum Ephraims, oder, wenn man das Wort zu der messianisch verstandenen Weissagung auf Juda in Gen. xlix in Parallele setzt, an einen in der Endzeit auftretenden mächtigen König Israels aus Josephs Stamm, einen Messiah ben Joseph. Die Rabbinen, welche in Deut. xxxiii. 17 wirklich einen Messias geweissagt glaubten, wurden dann in diesem Glauben durch ein Wort Jeremias bestärkt (viz. The identity he found established already in TB. Acc. to Friedmann (Seder Eliyah, Introduction, 20) the conception of Messiah ben Joseph goes back to the expectations among remnants of the tribes belonging once to the Northern Kingdom in Palestine for a Messiah from Dירפא minsn. Bertholdt (in Christologia fudaeorum, 157) conjectures that the origin was from certain Messianic speculations among the Samaritans. Bar Kochba, who OHB | IO will do with Israel both for good and evil. And I saw all the fights had been proclaimed as Messiah even by the great R. ‘Aqiba (so Yer. Ta‘an, iv. 68 d) was made to retain his Messianity by the formation of the doctrine of Messiah ben Joseph as the forerunner of the victorious Messiah ben David. He points out how Messiah ben Joseph and Alexander (in the Koran) both are represented as horned. Cf. above on Dalman’s theory.] The conception of a Messiah ben Joseph goes back to Tannaitic times. The most important passages speaking of Messiah ben Joseph are found in TB. Sukka 52a, dated by Levy, Hamburger, Friedmann, Dalman and Klausner as post- Hadrianic. One of the said passages is a Baraitha (}227 }3N) running as follows: “Messiah, the son of David, who will shortly be revealed in our days, to him says the Holy One, blessed be He: ‘Beg of Me anything and I will give thee’ as it is written (Ps. ii. 8): ‘Ask of me, and I shail give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. As soon as he (i.e. Messiah ben David) saw Messiah, the son of Joseph, that he was (or: would be) killed, he says before Him: ‘Lord of the Universe! I do not ask of ‘Thee anything but Life. He says to him: ‘Life! Before thou didst say it, David, thy father, has already prophesied (this, 1.e. life) concerning thee, as it is written (Ps. xxi. 4): He asked life of thee and thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever’”, _ | The other passage (according to Klausner, “eine amoräische Überlieferung einer tannaitischen Deutung ") runs: **(Zecb. xii. 12): ‘And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; They say: ‘Must not the rule gal wachomer (a minori ad majus) be applied here: if with reference to the time to come when they are occupied with wailing and the evil inclination does not have power over them, the Scripture says “men apart and women apart” how much the more (ought this to be the law) now when they are occupied with pleasure and the evil inclination does have power over them?’ This wailing, what does it really signify? Rabbi Dosa and our teachers are divided on this point. The one says: ‘It (refers) to Messiah the son of Joseph who is (will be) killed, and the other says: ‘It (refers) to the evil inclination which will be exterminated. Surely (the right lies) with the one who says (that it refers) to Messiah the son of Joseph who will be killed, according as it is written (Zech. xii. 10): ‘And they shall look upon the one whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son’”. ‘En Ya'agob preserves the following version of TB. Sukka, 12 b: “‘(Zech. i. 20, Hebrew Bible, ii. 3): ‘And yHwH showed me four charashim'. What are they (i.e. the charashim)? R. Chunna bar Bizna says: R. Sim'on the Chasid says: this means Messiah ben David, Messiah ben Joseph, Elijah and the Priest of Righteousness.” Targ. Yer. x to Ex. xl. 11 speaks of Messiah the son of Ephraim through whom Israel will in the end of time overcome Gog (“‘uthérabbé yath kiyyura wéyath bésiséh uthégaddesh yatheh métul Yehosu™ méshumshanakh rabba dé-Sanhedrin dé ‘ammeh dé'al yédoy ‘dthida ’ar‘a de-Israel le-ithpélaga uméshicha bar Ephraim denafiq minneh de‘al yédoy ‘athidin beth Israel liménagha le-Gog ulési‘atheh besof yomayya"). Targ. Yer. to Canticles iv. 5 and vii. 4 speak of Messiah ben David and Messiah ben Joseph as deliverers of Israel like Moses and Aaron. The earlier passages represent Messiah ben Joseph merely as the forerunner of Messiah ben David and as the Messiah “who is killed”. The passage in our book CH.XLV| METATRON SHOWS R. ISHMAEL SECRETS 147 and wars that Gog and Magog will fight ® in the days of Messiah, and all that the Holy One, blessed be He, will do with them in the time to come.
1? And all the rest of all!? the leaders of the generations and all the works of the generations both in Israel and in the nations of the world, 2°both what is done and what will be done hereafter” to all generations until the end of time, (all) were graven on the Curtain of MAQOM. And I saw all these things with my eyes; and after I had seen it, I opened my mouth in praise of MAOOM (the Divine Majesty) (saying thus, Eccl. viii. 4, 5): “For the King’s word hath power (and who may say unto him: What doest thou?) Whoso keepeth the commandments shall know no evil thing". And I said: (Ps. civ. 24) ‘‘O Lord, how manifold are thy works!"