AN UNUSUAL HOMILY

Pesikta rabati 34, on the eschatological vindication of the Mourners for Zion, is one of the most remarkable homilies in one of the most remarkable of the rabbinic midrashim. It belongs to a series of piskaot, or ‘chapters’, composed for the seven ‘Sabbaths of Consolation’ following the Ninth of Av. This liturgical setting is important and gives the piska a polemical edge: its rhetoric is strong, challenging the congregation to identify with the Mourners so as to be sure of sharing in their end-time reward. Within the homilies in Pesikta rabati associated with the Ninth of Av (26–37), Piskaot 34–37 have long been regarded as forming a distinctive group. Certainly 34 and 36–37 hang together thematically in a notably coherent way, but, as Goldberg has argued, we should probably detach 35. Yet we should be careful not to harmonize the three related piskaot too systematically together: despite their striking agreements it is not at all obvious that they are by the same darshan (homilist). Significant differences include the fact that while 36 adopts an astonishingly universalistic stance—its messiah bears the sins of the world—34 focuses in more traditional fashion on the redemption of Israel. These piskaot have received a lot of scholarly comment, from Dalman, Bamberger, Goldberg, Fishbane, and others, and in particular their doctrine of the suffering and atoning messiah has engendered sharp debate. While we would no longer be as confident as Scholem in identifying political messianism as normative for Judaism, there can be little point in denying that the ideas adumbrated here are not mainstream: one has only to compare them with the messianism of a core text like the Amidah to make the point.

CHRISTOLOGY

The parallels with Christology are obvious, and the question of Christian influence inevitably arises. Christianity may be somewhere in the background, but I am inclined to agree with Fishbane that the doctrine advocated here can just as easily be seen as an inner-Jewish development. We must not allow apologetics to lull us into thinking that Judaism after 70 CE became uninterested in theology or theologically impoverished: the theological richness and creativity of later Judaism remained undimmed. After all, as Christians have always argued, the Christian doctrine of the atonement can be rooted in Jewish tradition. Our homilists could easily have tapped into the sources on which Christianity drew.