Divinity Atlas
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Showing 1 of 608 questions, filtered to 1 specialty.
Rabbinic literature; Roman-period Jewish history 1
Lag BaOmer
Does the tradition that a plague killing the students of Rabbi Akiva ceased on Lag BaOmer preserve a memory of the Bar Kokhba revolt?
Open Lag BaOmer
Why It Is Open The rabbinic sources report the deaths of Akiva's students as a plague and do not connect them to the revolt. A reading that treats the plague as a veiled account of wartime losses is in circulation, and the counter-reading takes the sources at their word. This pass found no source it could verify on either side, so it wrote no relation between the holiday and the revolt.
What Would Settle It A study of the talmudic and geonic witnesses to the Akiva tradition set against the documentary and archaeological record of the revolt, establishing whether the connection is ancient or a later harmonisation.
Expertise Needed Rabbinic literature; Roman-period Jewish history
Question posed in
Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.