[Avodah] Dating of bo bayom

Ben Bradley bdbradley70 at hotmail.com
Tue Jun 22 05:14:40 PDT 2021


There is some discussion as to the year of the important historical event of the deposing of R Gamliel of Yavne. I haven't seen any rigorous analysis but keep hearing rumour of claims that it was within a couple of years of the churban in 70CE.
I don't think that can be correct, and I'm going to plump for a significantly later date, of 10 to 20 years after the churban. So 80-90 CE.
This dating has ramifications for the other famous maaseh of that time, the seder in Bnei Brak, with largely the same protaganists. Which people also date as straight after the churban, also incorrectly I think, for the same reasons I'll show.
 Here are my thoughts leading to this dating.

  1.  The age of R Akiva. Assuming, if you, will that his age at death was literally 120 as stated by Chazal, and given that he died in the Bar Kochba revolt in about 135, then he was born in about 15 CE. So he started learning Torah at age 40 in 55 CE. He was famous and had students by 24 years later at his second visit home, in about 79. The main gemara about bo bayom in brachos makes him a candidate for nasi if not for his yichus, and he seems highly unlikely to have achieved this status before about 80 CE given these dates. If the aggadeta about his age is not literal then he was younger than 120 in 135 CE and this would push the date of bo bayom later.
  2.  The age of R Eliezer at the time. He was a talmid of R Yochanan b Zakai before the churban, dates there are uncertain but unlikely more than 20 years before the churban.. He was also a rebbe of R Akiva, who as, above, was advance in his career by bo bayom, making E Eliezer quite elderly by that time. He was also not yet in cherem, ie this is before tanur shel achnoi, because he appears in a mishna, in Lod, in conversation with another tanna, explicitly dated at the time of bo bayom. So he was elderly but well short of his last years. That puts it well after the churban.
  3.  R Yehoshua, also a rebbe of R Akiva, is clearly elderly in the story.
  4.  R Shimon b Yochai is also in the story as the trouble stirring bochur who started off the commotion with his query and context was probably a teenager then. He died in about 160 well after the Hadrianic persecutions. Even if he was 100 at his death, which seems unlikely, then bo bayom has to be no earlier than about 175-80
  5.  Absence of R Yochanan b Zakai from the story, the previous nasi. Presumed deceased by this time, so again probably some years after the churban.

So, in summary, it has to be late enough for R Akiva's rebbeim to be old and him to be a gadol hador, and early enough for his talmid to be very young. The 80s then seems about right. If that's correct then they probably weren't hiding from the Romans in Bnei Brak, because persecution was not high in the 80s as far as I know
Thoughts?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20210622/d0058550/attachment.html>


More information about the Avodah mailing list