Requesting reference to Yigal Ben Nun’s words
Yigal Ben Nun (the historian in vogue among the Israeli “intelligence”) that the Mishnah and the Talmud were only written in the tenth century CE. Likewise, the sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud are all literary figures invented by writers in the ninth and tenth centuries. And the proof is that in Josephus, who lived in the first century and described the great revolt in detail, there is no mention of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and the rest of the generation’s Tanai, nor of the founding story of Yavneh and its sages. How is it possible that these great events occurred and the most important Jewish historian of the period did not write a single line about it? Would you please address these arguments?
You were right when you said he was a fashionable historian, because I’ve heard so much nonsense about him that only fashion can save him and make him popular. The man seems to me to be completely ignorant and quite an idiot. (He even accompanied and moderated Isakov’s stupid lecture that I analyzed here in column 676.)
Sorry for referring to the person rather than the substance of the matter, but I cannot avoid this introduction, especially in light of what I will write now (which I have no information about the substance of his claims and therefore find it difficult to address).
Regarding these claims, I have not examined the facts (what appears and does not appear in Josephus) and the claims. I suggest that you turn to those who deal with this. On the face of it, I do not see a need for a historian to write about the Riv”z. He describes the wars and their conduct. It is about like asking why a twentieth-century historian did not write about Radin and the Chafetz Chaim, when Jewish tradition speaks more about him than about World War I. For Jews, the angle of interest is the sages and spirituality, and therefore the focus is the Riv”z and the Chafetz Chaim. Historians were more interested in political processes and wars.
But as I said, I didn’t check, and I’m just writing a guess from a book. If I were Yigal Ben-Nun, they would have already quoted my words here as a scientific source and I would have received a headline in Haaretz.
It is very typical of this sensation-seeker to take one difficulty, even if it is significant (and as I said, I don’t know if it is), and build an entire populist edifice with its head in the sky on it. Infantile historical gibberish that denies the existence of an entire period against thousands of testimonies and living tradition. This is the only way to get a headline in Haaretz and an academic chair in the sciences of slander.
Yigal Ben-Nun is a historian like Tomer Persico is an intellectual. Both are very stupid and also very ignorant. All that makes them popular is their ranks in academia.
I actually disagree about Persico.
Alex Zeitlin did a project called "Coming to the Professors" in which he went to professors (and other scholars) in the Bible and archaeology and understanding other cultures and the like who gave him filmed lectures. It was very interesting. At a certain point, a strange process happened. On the one hand, he had pretty much run out of interesting topics and people, and on the other hand, the number of viewers had already increased and he himself wanted more (better quality of photography and editing, the possibility of making a living from it, expansion into topical discussions such as wars and armies, greater personal dominance). This led him - according to my impression - to join hands with the strange charlatan Yigal Ben-Nun as a way to break into additional audiences and continue to manipulate the channel. At first I thought Alex was an intelligent and serious man, even if he wasn't exactly well-informed, but when I saw that he appreciated Yigal Ben-Nun so much, and actually brought him on as a partner, I realized that Alex probably harbors embarrassing charlatanism as well. By the way, the strange process I described is actually not strange at all, but common. Pumping the oil reservoir, which has accumulated over millions of years, allows the operation to be expanded, and in the end we end up with a large operation with a depleted reservoir. Then the operation wanders off, looking for a new destination, and sometimes has difficulty meeting the benchmark it set for itself, because now the rate of renewal has to catch up with the rate of consumption.
Alex is actually knowledgeable about a lot of materials and a lot of topics
and shows during a conversation and sometimes in a kind of messiah manner, impressive knowledge in so many fields
While the interviewees are usually experts on a particular subject, he is not a bad nerd at all
Yigal ben Nun's logic is very puzzling. After all, even if there was no person named Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, it is still difficult to understand why Josephus did not mention the name of another spiritual leader who lived and influenced the same generation. Should we conclude from this that the Jews did not have any spiritual leaders with public influence, contrary to what has always been customary in all religions?
What answers all the questions in almost one line is that Yigal Ben-Nun is a fictional character created by artificial intelligence (in the 25th century). The best proof of this is that Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel (who lived in the 20th century) does not mention him in any of his writings.
The name Yigal Ben-Nun also raises suspicions of anachronism with the period of Joshua Ben-Nun, who actually redeemed the people of Israel from wandering in the desert and gave them the land. It is reasonable to assume that the appearance of the character Yigal Ben-Nun during the early period of Zionism is an attempt by the narrator to compare the entry into the land from Egypt to the entry into the land from exile. And now that we have realized that the author tends to use fictional characters, we must assume that Joshua Ben-Nun is also a purely literary character. After the secular Zionists received a promise from the British government to establish a national home for them at the far end of the British Empire, they set about creating an entire myth that would tie them to that piece of land. Thus was the name Israel invented, which was originally an anti-Semitic nickname for the bartender at the inn in a town that was mostly Jewish - Yisrael - and attached to the piece of land, and thus the character Joshua Ben-Nun was created. With a sober look, it is possible to understand that the land in question also does not exist and never has existed outside the imagination of the narrator, whose goals we may and may never know. You, my reader friend, also do not exist at all, unfortunately. There is nothing in this world except a giant pool of melted marshmallows in which all the isosceles triangles float peacefully.
Sometimes you act like the last of the keyboard criminals. If Yigal Ben Nun responds here, you will immediately apologize and try to philosophize your way out of the situation, just like what happened in the column with Arna Cousin Talit”a.
You heard nonsense seasoned with arrogant decisiveness (3…2…1…) also on the podcasts with Aviv Franco and Elam Gross, and yet you elegantly returned the right things and kept the insults and stings inside. May we be blessed to see you insult people in the real world as well, and say amen.
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