[Avodah] R Akiva

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 10:25:41AM +0300, Eli Turkel wrote:
: The problem is that many of these legends are contradictory.
: According to this story he had a son and then went (returned) to learning
: at the age of 40. According to the other story with Rachel (BTW her
: name isnt mentioned)

R' Marcus Lehmann does a good job at weaving together these stories
without having a contradiction. So I don't see this question as so
muchrach.

But the question isn't a "problem", since the point of the stories isn't
biographical, but metaphoric. Whether they are biographical or not is
off topic.

E.g. RML has R' Aqiva learn with Nachum Ish Gamzu before leaving his
wife. In fact, if he only left his wife for a total of 12+12 years,
returning then to tell his talmidim "sheli veslakhem..." and one takes
the 3 x 40 year patter literally, he lived with his wife 16 years before
needing to leave to study under the generation's leaders. Plenty of time
to raise chldren.

You ask what happened to his children. By 14, in those days, R' Yehoshua

: More generally it is unclear when he lived. He dies about 135 during
: the Bar Kochba revolt.
: Accepting the standard calendar (which is too exact 40+40+40 just like
: R. Yochanan Ben Zakai), he was born about 15 CE. He started learning
: (or relearning) at age 40 in

... and Moshe. And it's not the only way R' Aqiva is compared to MRAH,
such as when Moshe visits his class. As I said, medrash is about our
learning values, not history.

:                                            Why did he go to R. Yehoshua and
: R. Eliezer and not R. Yochanan ben Zakai or R. Shimon ben Gamliel?

At that time, he was still a non-name learning with Nachum Ish Gamzu.

But again, I don't think it's likely to be historical any more than you
do. However, I don't see these questions as major ones -- neither in
topic, not in proving ahistoricity. More may be historical than you
appear in your post willing to accept, even if not 40+40+40.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A life of reaction is a life of slavery,
micha at aishdas.org        intellectually and spiritually. One must
http://www.aishdas.org   fight for a life of action, not reaction.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            -Rita Mae Brown