Yehoshua ben Hananiah

Yehoshua ben Chananja (older form of name: Josua b. Chananja), simply called R. Jehoshua in the Mishnah (more than 140 times), one of the most important students of Yochanan b. Sakkais (by whom he - together with Eliezer ben Hyrkanos - was ordained before the temple was destroyed and whom he helped to the adventurous, later legendary glorified escape from Jerusalem) was an authority as a Jewish scholar of antiquity and belonged to the Tannaites of the 2nd generation .

Yehoshua, who was of Levitic descent, had many harsh controversies with Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and was the one who advocated the more progressive interpretation of the two, while Eliezer was more conservative.

Yehoshua was a supporter of the Hillel family , took a more liberal view of the proselytes and was against any form of rigorism.

Yehoshua, who was also educated in Greek, lived in poor conditions in Peqiin and was in the "worldly profession" needle maker (needle maker; according to others, he was a blacksmith). He had sung along as a choir singer in the temple, was probably already 30 years old at the time of the destruction of the (2nd) temple (70 AD) and handed down the ceremony of drawing water on Sukkot as an eyewitness .

He had conversations with the Romans (including even Emperor Hadrian ), but also with the Jewish Christians . Apparently, he often served as a mediator between Jews and Romans, traveling to Rome and Alexandria and trying to prevent a renewed uprising against Rome. In Javne he came into conflict with Rabban Gamaliel II as Vice President of the Beth Din .

literature

• JN Epstein : Introduction to the Text of the Mishna . Jerusalem 1948 (Hebrew)
• J. Podro: The Last Pharisee. The Life and Times of R. Joshua ben Hananiah . London 1959
• S. Lieberman: Greek in Jewish Palestine . 2nd edition, New York 1965
• Israel Konovitz: Rabbi Eliezer - Rabbi Joshua. Collected sayings . Jerusalem 1965 (Hebrew)
• R. Loewe: Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah . In: Journal for Jewish Studies . 1974
• WS Green: Redactional Techniques in the Legal Traditions of Joshua ben Hananiah . In: Festschrift M. Smith . Leiden 1975

Web links

• Yehoshua ben Chananja in the Jewish Virtual Library
• Solomon Schechter, Wilhelm Bacher:  JOSHUA B. HANANIAH. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906.