Bloodymydimaryallaloneontherocksafterthedeluges???

If
we were
to take seriously
all these historical judgments
some arguments would simply, positivistically,
be wrong because the martyrdom of the 'real' Rabbi Akiva was earlier than that of Polycarp,
the first of new Christian martyrs. Someone's very embarrassment in looking for a moment in which Jews were being persecuted en masse and also in which so-called pagans wished to convert in numbers is indi-cative of the difficulty of this approach to reading certain texts.
People have become very adept
to adapt:

We can,
& do, imagine
whatever we want to suit our feelings,
thoughts, dreams, actions
and discoveries?!

The final act
of historiographical desperation
was committed by someone, who wrote of our passages:
"The remarks must have been made just before the Bar Kokhba rebellion and the subsequent cruel decrees of persecutions. After the rebellion, it would no longer
have been possible for gentiles to observe:
'YOU ARE PLEASING [BEAUTIFUL],
YOU ARE MIGHTY
[HEROES] ...!'

On
the contrary
... the failure of the rebellion
was interpreted as the failure of Judaism
& its 'g d'. As a result. mass
proselytizing activity
ceased.

The mention of dying
and killing does not refer to suffering
the penalty of death for KIDDUSH HASHEM -
to sanctify "G d's name", but to all persons
who accept the yoke {'juk'/'yoga'}
of the Kingdom of Heaven!"

Their need
to distort the meaning of
'for him you are being killed all the day'
into a form of 'white martyrdom' speaks as loudly as a trumpet. In our view, they,
& all of the other historians are looking [sometimes] in the wrong place for a historical context for these
[& other] texts as long as they are looking only at the lifetime of Rabbi Akiva and seeking there historical persecutions and mass conversions of pagans.

It's the same old story concerning
our time, space
& spirit!

I find it
much more plausible
to assume that "the nations of the world"
in Rabbi Akiva's midrash refers to Christians,
and not to pagans at all! The context is not the early second century and the life of Rabbi Akiva,
but the mid-third century, when the text probably was produced, and Rabbi Akiva is a symbol here, an icon for martyrdom. This is not to say that the matter was invented then out of whole cloth. Christian martyrology may very well have entered Jewish consciousness as early as the late second century (cf. the
polemic between a certain Justin Martyr and his fictional but realistic rabbinic opponent,
but this midrash probably found its form in the third century, a time of massive
persecution of Christians and of the development of Christian martyrology,
the period of the persecution of Christians under Decius in 250-251 &
under Valerian at the end of the decade!! What does it matter,
who cares and how many details we need in order to be able
to construct more plausible versions of our
interpretations of past,
present and
future?

In
either case,
our texts are part of these contestations
over martyrdom, not about pagans who wanted to
convert to Judaism, there is little evidence, if any, that at any time sincere converts were completely rejec-ted on the grounds that "G d" is exclusively the lover of Israel according to the flesh. We thus can find lots
of exhaustive documentation of rabbinic ambivalence toward converts, but no suggestions of a complete rejection of converts anywhere in these texts. The first 'international' humanistic discoveries came into ex-istence exactly in those times & places that were full of mutual threats,
anger, hate, crualty
& superstition.

However,
if the gentile Christians
were claiming that they had a part in him,
owing to thier experience of martyrdom, then it starts making more sense
- but no inevitably so - that a late antique rabbinic Jewish text might respond:
'This martyrdom and the experience of divine favor and love that it brings are only for Jews - including converts who accept the commandments!'

This picture
is considerably less irenic
than the one painted by others.

There is no contradiction necessry of course,
because different texts may have [very] different positions.

This explanation is to my mind, a much more plausible one also
to explain the other texts some cite in their papers than this highly questionable hypothesis that Jews were included in the Decian persecutions. The Sages living at the end of the thiurd and beginning of the fourth century C.E. gave a deeper justification to the ideological basis of the concept of martyrology,
but doesn't seem to be able to explain why, in spite of the fact that some suggested
the answer many years previously. Thus, while we cannot speak of any precise
historical background that determines the misdrash, we can grasp hold in it
of a crucial cultural moment, one common to late antique rabbinic
& Christian Jews, the moment of the creation of the idea
of martyrdom as a positive and
EROTICIZED RELIGIOUS
FULFULLMENT.

In
the past,
there also was a concept of martyrdom,
but it was very different from this one. The previous model was that of the Hasmonean period, in which the martyr refused to violate his or her religious integrity and was executed for this refusal! NOW we find martyrdom being actively sought as a spiritual requirement and as
the only possible fulfillment
of a spiritual
need?

To
put this
in more classic Jewish terminology,
in the past, martyrs refused to violate a negative commandment ~ to worship idols. NOW we can find more martyrs fulfilling through their deaths
a positive one ~
'to love
"G d"!'

In
1 Maccabees
we can find the diametric opposite
of a martyr-consciousness; even in 2 & to a lesser extent in 4 Maccabees, the models are more of the noble death, like that of Scrates or Antigone, certainly one of the tributaries of the river that became late antique martyrdom, rather than the truly theologized and
eroticized forms that we can find later
among both Christians
and rabbinic
Jews.

This
is entirely
consistent with the
picture that we are drawing here
of a common history of
cultural development.

One
interpreter of
some old school,
is not really too far
from some others in certain respects:
'The martyr consciousness evoked no real echo among Jews in Palestine ... On the other hand, a martyr-consciousness became increasingly prevalent among the gentile nations, and was especially frequent both as o phenomenon in real life
as a conscious attitude and ideal
among the philosophers
and seekers of
LIBERTAS
at Rome and
the provinces!'

Are
those texts
about saying 'yes' or 'no'
& are they protocols of refusal or
acceptance [of certain degrees
of 'martyrdom']?

We
are suggesting
that the late
antique texts, both rabbinic & Christian,
are somthing else than
protocols of
refusal!

They
are about
saying "yes," not "no," and
it is the shared nature of this
ostensibly (and actually)
bitterly rivalrous
"Judaisms!"

It
is in
this formulation
that we can find the 'eroticization
of the martyr's death'
as well!

This
text, then,
certainly gives
the lie to Freuds's ratio that
'the Jew might accept death rather than deny the law.
The Christian gave thanks that he had been offered the chance of martyrdom!"
Freud could make such a statement only because
for him, 'the Jew" was
a creature that no longer
existed in late
antiquity
...