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On Honi the Circle-Maker: A Demanding Prayer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Judah Goldin
Judah Goldin
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

One spring in the latter half of the month Adar, some time after the death of Salome Alexandra (76–67 B.C.), “there was a certain Onias, who, being a righteous man and dear to God, … in a rainless period prayed to God (ηὔξατο τῷ Θεῷ) to end the drought, and God … heard his prayer and sent rain …” The story of Honi (Onias), so plainly told by Josephus, is reported much more dramatically in the talmudic sources. According to one source, the drought had lasted three years.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , July 1963 , pp. 233 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1963

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References

1 See B. Taanit 23 a.

2 Ibid., and cf. Derenbourg, J., Essai sur l'histoire et la géographie de la Palestine, Paris, 1867, pp. 112 fGoogle Scholar.

3 Josephus, Antiquities, XIV, 22 (Loeb, VII, 459 f., R. Marcus's trans.).

4 See the references in Taanit, B. 19 a in the edition of H. Malter, N.Y., 1930, p. 73Google Scholar, col. b, and cf. the variants and comments in his notes ibid., and 23 a, pp. 96–98. In addition to the references supplied by Malter, cf. Tabo, Tanhuma Ki4 and Gaster, Exempla, London-Leipzig, 1924, p. 164Google Scholar, # 422.

5 Taanit, Megillat, ed. Lichtenstein, p. 92, HUCA, VIII–IX, 1931–32, p. 348Google Scholar.

6 See also the Palestinian Talmud, J. Taanit III, 66 d.

7 On the expression “member of household,” ben bayyit, see Büchler, A., Types of Jewish-Palestinian Piety, London, 1922, p. 203Google Scholar, n. 1; Melammed, E. Z. in Leshonenu, XX, 5716 (1956), pp. 110–11Google Scholar; recently Albright, W. F. in BASOR, # 163, Oct. 1961, p. 47Google Scholar, and notes 54–56; but above all Ginsberg, H. L., Koheleth, Tel Aviv-Jerusalem, 1961, p. 68Google Scholar, commentary to v. 7.

8 Thus, for instance, Trachtenberg, J., Jewish Magic and Superstition, N.Y., 1939, p. 121Google Scholar: “The circle is another ancient and universal magical symbol. The invocation of demons is a dangerous business, and the magician must take steps to protect himself in the event that his spirit adjutants get out of hand. What simpler or more obvious device than to exclude them from his immediate environment? ‘Those who invoke demons draw circles around themselves because the spirits have not the power to trespass from the public to a private area,’ explained Menahem Ziyuni. By this magic act the ground and atmosphere surrounding the magician become a private, forbidden precinct. One of the most picturesque of ancient Jewish miracle-workers was Honi Ha-Meagel (first century B.C.E.), whose penchant for standing within a circle while he called down rain from heaven won him his title, ‘the circle-drawer.’” See also the note ibid.

9 Goldin, J., The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, New Haven, 1955, p. 187, n. 25Google Scholar. Note also Daiches, S., Babylonian Oil Magic in the Talmud and in the Later Jewish Literature, London, 1913, p. 33Google Scholar: “That the ‘circle’ was an important element in the [magical] ceremony we also see from the fact that the miracle-worker Honi mentioned in Talmud Babli, Taanit 19 a and 23 a ff., was called meagel, ‘the circle maker,’ after the circle which he used to make and in the midst of which he used to stand when he adjured God to grant his request and to cause rain to fall. Honi's actions showed a curious blend of pure monotheistic belief and faith in the efficacy of magic (see also Blau, Das altjüdische Zaubcrwesen, p. 33).” Frazer's discussion of the magical control of rain has nothing relevant to our story; see further below, n. 12, for Bϋchler's comment. On rain-making see also recently J. A. Bellamy, Kitāb ar-Rumūz, in JAOS, LXXXI, pp. 230 ff., and notes ad loc.

10 Cf. the idiom in M. Taanit and Talmud ad loc, and the commentators on mithate. The view that Honi was an Essene, pressed by K. Kohler and others, is utterly gratuitous, as is amply demonstrated by Bϋchler, op. cit., pp. 199 ff., 246 ff.

11 B. Berakot 19 a. Moreover, see Bϋchler, op. cit., p. 201, n. 2 for a tradition that meaggel may reflect a place name and not refer to circle-drawing — this tradition is not to be dismissed cavalierly: whatever else one may say, ‘wg and ‘gl are not the same root.

12 In a footnote, op. cit., p. 247 (end of n. 2, p. 246): “A comparison of Honi's method with the various magical and other practices all over the world for obtaining rains, in Frazer, Golden Bough 3, I, 1, 247–311, and Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, X, 1918, 562–5Google Scholar, shows that Honi applied none of them, nor any magic at all; for even the circle which he drew and which reminds us of the circle drawn by Popilius Lacnas round Antiochus IV Epiphancs in Egypt (Livy, XLV, 12; Schürer, Geschichte, I3, 197), has nothing in common with the magical circle drawn by the conjurer for his own protection from the ghost (Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion, VIII, 321 ff.).” But Büchler's subsequent statement (p. 254) that “The apparent presumption of Honi … is not in agreement with general Jewish principles, and reminds one of the methods of a magician or a heathen priest in praying for rain,” is virtually a retreat from his earlier observation, and the sources do not support the statement that what Honi did is not in agreement with Jewish principles. See further n. 16 below. — Other points discussed in the body of the present paper are not referred to at all by Büchler.

13 Cf. Bickermann, E., Der Gott der Makkabäer, Berlin, 1937, pp. 13Google Scholar and 162.

14 Loeb VI, 90 f., W. R. Paton's trans.

15 See the references cited by Schürer, Geschiehtc, I4, 197. n. 33 and add Plutarch, Moralia, 202 F; cf. Walbank, F. W., A Historical Commentary on Polybius, Oxford, 1957, p. 217Google Scholar: “In fact, the ultimatum delivered by C. Popilius Laenas to Antiochus Epiphanes in 168 … was both sensational in itself and catastrophic in its result.”

16 Examples of “demanding prayer” are not wanting in midrashic literature. First, note Midrash Psalms 77:1 (ed. Buber, 172 a), where it is said of the prophet Habakkuk that he “drew the figure (of a circle)” — ṣr ṣwrh, a play on the word mṣwr of Hab. 2:1 — “and standing inside it said before the Holy One, blessed be He: ‘I shall not stir from here until Thou hast told me how long Thou wilt be long-suffering with the wicked in this world’”; cf. also op. cit. 7:17, 36 a, for the same idiom. Second, the Midrash also speaks of a special talent enjoyed by some in prayer: they know how to present their petitions cleverly, and so are not refused whatever they ask for; cf. Leviticus Rabbah 5:8, ed. Margulies, pp. 122 ff. and references ad loc. In B. Berakot 34 b Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai is reported as acknowledging that he would not have been able to prevail in prayer (during his child's illness), whereas his disciple Hanina ben Dosa could: “for the latter is like the king's servant” (Rashi: enjoying entree to the king at all times), “whereas I am like the king's officer” (and hence can be admitted only by appointment, and therefore am not on such intimate terms with the monarch).

17 Cf. the Midrash Psalms reference in the preceding note.

18 And perhaps Popilius too dared to act so arrogantly because he was representing not merely himself. See indeed Polybius's own reflection on Popilius's neglecting the conventional sign of friendship.

19 Abot de-Rabbi Natan, ed. Schechter, p. 41; sec also p. 156, where the clause “and beseeched mercy in her behalf” is omitted (!, as understandable) and Schechter's note 28, p. 41.

20 Goldin, op. cit., pp. 55 f. On the conception of prayer in behalf of another, see also Midrash Psalms 2:2, 13 a.

21 Bet Hamidrash, ed. Jellinek, I, 120, which reads: “and stood up (= began) to pray, and said, I shall not stir,” etc.

22 And therefore L. Ginzberg, Legends, III, 418 is to be corrected accordingly.

23 Abot de-Rabbi Natan, XXIX, p. 88 (my trans., p. 122, top).

24 Lit., “he does not (= shall not) stir from there until they forgive him at once.” The identical idiom in Mekilta Bahodesh, VII, ed. Lauterbach, II, 250, except for the last word, “at once,” miyyad (which does not occur in ed. Horovitz-Rabin, p. 228, either), and in all essentials in all the parallel passages (see Lauterbach's references).

25 Abot de-Rabbi Natan, XL, p. 120 (my trans., p. 164). See also Leviticus Rabbah 19:6, p. 439, and cf. B. Sanhedrin 14 a on the death of Judah ben Baba.

26 Cf. Trachtenberg, op. cit., loc. cit.

27 Josephus, Antiquities, X, 215.