Q&A: Jewish Morality and… Was Rabbi Akiva a Christian?
Jewish Morality and… Was Rabbi Akiva a Christian?
Question
“Love your fellow as yourself”—as is well known, a similar rule appears in many religions, and that does not bother me at all, except for one small point, perhaps with no practical significance: was Rabbi Akiva a Christian?
Rabbi Akiva was born around 50 CE—the Gospel according to Matthew is dated to 80–90 CE…
Seemingly, Rabbi Akiva learned this principle from the Gospels, or perhaps he was a Christian (maybe even after his conversion???).
It is interesting that the book Wisdom of Solomon (the “Pharisaic” book), which held an orderly doctrine of ethical teaching, disappeared (or was made to disappear), so that there are almost no Pharisaic moral sayings. And in general, did our Sages oppose ethical teachings?
Answer
Obviously. Maimonides too was born in the 12th century, some six hundred years after Muhammad, so obviously he converted to Islam. This is all well known.
Discussion on Answer
You “make assumptions” about the date of composition of every book.
But seriously, compare it with non-Christian works such as those of Josephus, the Talmuds, the writings of Tacitus and Pliny the Younger, and draw proper conclusions after in-depth study.
As for the second part of your comment, see my question above; at first glance it seems that the Pharisees refrained from engaging in ethical teachings, and that is what puzzles me… ???
“Love your fellow as yourself” is not Rabbi Akiva’s—it is an explicit commandment in the Torah…
As for Wisdom of Solomon—it disappeared like some 30 other apocryphal books. Not because it is moralistic. The proof is that they did preserve Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, etc., which do contain moral teachings, so clearly it has nothing to do with that. It most likely disappeared because it was sectarian and later than the canonical books.
In Eisenstein’s Treasury of Polemics there is a booklet in which he goes statement by statement through Jesus’ moral sayings and shows that they appeared in our sources.
P.S. I should remind you that Jesus himself was most likely a Pharisee, and apparently he himself was influenced quite a bit by the traditions of the Sages, presumably in the moral sphere as well
There are indeed a number of sayings of the Sages that have parallels in the New Testament. If I remember correctly, I even heard from Rabbi Michael himself that Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook wrote glosses on the New Testament, apparently in that vein, and it gave him great satisfaction. It could be a case of “learn from every person,” or perhaps both of them actually learned from a third source.
I didn’t understand—Maimonides converted to Islam?
There were claims like that. Sounds to me like just a bizarre speculation
First of all, you are making assumptions about the time their book was written and about its reliability.
In any case, it may also have been a period in which they emphasized such things more….