Great Assembly - Other Activity

Other Activity

The list of Biblical personages who have no part in the future world (Sanh. x. 1) was made, according to Rab, by the men of the Great Synagogue (Sanh. 104b), and an aggadic ruling on Biblical stories beginning with the phrase "Va-yehi bayamim" (And it came to pass in those days) is designated by Johanan, or his pupil Levi, as a "tradition of the men of the Great Synagogue" (Meg. 10b). This is merely another way of saying, as is stated elsewhere (Lev. R. xi.) in reference to the same ruling, that it had been brought as a tradition from the Babylonian exile. There are references also to other aggadic traditions of this kind (see Bacher, "Ag. Tan." 2d ed., i. 192; idem, "Die Aelteste Terminologie," p. 107). Joshua b. Levi ascribes in an original way to the men of the Great Synagogue the merit of having provided for all time for the making of copies of the Bible, tefillin, and mezuzot, stating that they instituted twenty-four fasts to ensure that wealth would not be acquired by copyists, who would cease to copy if they became rich (Pes. 50b). A aggadic passage by Jose b. Ḥanina refers to the names of the returning exiles mentioned in Ezra ii. 51 et seq. (Gen. R. lxxi. et passim), one version reading "the men of the Great Synagogue" instead of "sons of the Exile," or "those that returned from the Exile" ("'ole goleh"). This shows that the men of the Great Synagogue included the first generation of the Second Temple. In Esth. R. iii. 7 the congregation of the tribes mentioned in Judges xx. 1 is apparently termed "men of the Great Synagogue." This is due, however, to a corruption of the text, for, according to Luria's skilful emendation, this phrase must be read with the preceding words "Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue"; so that the phrase corresponds to the "bene ha-golah" of Ezra x. 16.

There is, finally, a passage of three clauses, which the Mishnah (Ab. i. 12) ascribes to the men of the Great Synagogue as stated above, and which reads as follows: "Be heedful in pronouncing sentence; have many pupils; put a fence about the Torah." This aphorism, ascribed to an entire body of men, can only be interpreted as expressing their spirit and tendency, yet it must have been formulated by some individual, probably one of their number. At all events, it may be regarded as a historical and authentic statement of the dominating thought of those early leaders of post-exilic Israel who were designated in the tradition of the local schools as the men of the Great Synagogue. It must also be noted that this passage, like the majority of those given in the first chapter of Abot, is addressed to the teachers and spiritual leaders rather than to the people. These three clauses indicate the program of the scholars of the Persian period, who were regarded as one generation, and evidence their harmony with the spirit of Ezra's teaching. Their program was carried out by the Pharisees: caution in pronouncing legal sentences; watchfulness over the schools and the training of pupils; assurance of the observance of the Law by the enforcement of protective measures and rulings.

An attempt has thus been made to assign correct positions to the texts in which the men of the Great Synagogue are mentioned, and to present the views on which they are based, although no discussions can be broached regarding the views of the chroniclers and historians, or the different hypotheses and conclusions drawn from these texts concerning the history of the period of the Second Temple. For this a reference to the articles cited in the bibliography must suffice. Kuenen especially presents a good summary of the more recent theories, while L. Löw (who is not mentioned by Kuenen) expresses views totally divergent from those generally held with regard to the Great Synagogue; this body he takes to be the assembly described in I Macc. xiv. 25-26, which made Simeon the Hasmonean a hereditary prince (18th of Elul, 140 B.C.).