The Mishnah records that Honi ha-Meagel, Honi the Circle-Drawer, drew a circle during a drought, stood inside it and refused to leave until God sent rain, which fell first too lightly, then too violently, then exactly as requested. Josephus separately records a rainmaker named Onias active in the same period, generally identified with Honi, whose story ends differently: stoned to death for refusing to curse a besieged faction during a civil war. This entry carries both accounts and the discrepancy between their endings.
Facts
Disputed
Investigation VerdictJosephus's Antiquities independently describes a renowned rainmaker named Onias, active in the same period, whom most historians identify with the Mishnah's Honi. 2 The Mishnah records Honi ha-Meagel, a first century BCE Jewish miracle-worker, drawing a circle and refusing to leave it until God sent the rain he asked for during a drought. Flavius Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews independently records a renowned rainmaker named Onias, active in the same general period, whom most historians identify with Honi despite the two accounts describing his eventual fate differently. The atlas's cited edition is the eighteenth century Antiquities translation compiling Josephus's history of this period. The method is comparative textual identification, weighing the two accounts' shared reputation for rainmaking and rough contemporaneity against the fact that neither text names or cross-references the other directly, the kind of evidence that would make the identification certain. Because the identification rests on shared reputation and contemporaneity rather than mutual naming, it is widely accepted as the best explanation but is not treated as certain. Skeptical ExplanationJosephus reports Onias was stoned to death during a civil war for refusing to curse a besieged faction, while rabbinic tradition tells later stories of Honi's life without recording that death. 2 Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews reports that Onias, the rainmaker most historians identify with the Mishnah's Honi ha-Meagel, was stoned to death during a first century BCE civil war after refusing to curse the faction besieging his own community's leader. Rabbinic tradition, by contrast, tells later stories about Honi's life, including a report of a lengthy sleep, with no account of a death by stoning. The atlas's cited text is the eighteenth century Antiquities edition carrying Josephus's account. The method is comparative source criticism, reading the two traditions' endings for the same figure against each other for whether they can be reconciled as the same life differently remembered or represent a genuine discrepancy. Because no surviving source reconciles the two endings, historians treat the unresolved ending as the strongest evidence against certainty in the Onias-Honi identification, even though the identification otherwise remains the most widely accepted reading. The Claim
The ClaimThe Mishnah records that Honi ha-Meagel, asked to pray for rain during a drought, drew a circle, stood inside it and refused to leave until God sent rain, which fell first too lightly, then violently, then moderately as he specified. 1Tradition: Rabbinic Judaism Learn More
The Circle and the Rain
Mishnah Taanit 3:8 tells of a drought severe enough that the people asked Honi ha-Meagel to pray for rain. Honi drew a circle in the ground, stood inside it and declared to God that he would not move from that spot until mercy was shown to his children, invoking, according to the text, the intimacy of a son with his father. A light drizzle fell; Honi rejected it as insufficient, saying he had not asked for that. A violent downpour followed, threatening flood; he rejected that too as excessive, asking instead for rain of blessing, generosity and grace. Then a moderate, beneficial rain fell, filling the needs of the city.
Shimon ben Shetach, head of the Sanhedrin at the time, is reported rebuking Honi for the presumption of addressing God so familiarly, in words a court could otherwise have excommunicated him for, while acknowledging in the same breath that God grants Honi's requests the way a father indulges a demanding son. The episode is preserved as a model of a certain kind of unauthorized, personally intimate access to God that sat uneasily beside, even as it was tolerated by, the developing rabbinic legal establishment Shimon represented. The story is retold in later rabbinic literature as a byword for both remarkable efficacy in prayer and the danger of presuming too far upon it.
Two Stories, One Man
Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, written independently of the Mishnah and roughly a century closer to the events it describes, tells of a righteous man named Onias, renowned for having once successfully prayed for rain during a drought, who was caught up in the civil war between the sons of Alexander Jannaeus. One besieging faction demanded he curse the other side, then holding out inside Jerusalem. Onias prayed instead that God would judge fairly between both sides, refusing to take part, and was stoned to death by the besiegers for it.
Most historians identify Josephus's rainmaking Onias with the Mishnah's Honi, on the strength of the shared reputation and the closeness of the names, though the two accounts do not agree on how his story ends: Josephus has him killed during the siege, while the rabbinic tradition preserves separate legends about a later period of Honi's life, including a well known story of him falling into a seventy year sleep, without recording a death by stoning at all. The sources do not resolve the discrepancy, and the identification, though widely accepted, remains an inference rather than a certainty. Historically, the episode is read as evidence of a wider late Second Temple phenomenon: independent holy men whose personal, charismatic standing with God existed alongside, and sometimes in visible tension with, the formal legal authority the Sanhedrin was consolidating in the same period.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Setting of Josephus's account of the siege.
Related To
The doctrine is the general treatment of miracle claims across traditions; what is described here is one specific claim.
Sources
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