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For three years God endured the inhabitants with strength to withstand the onslaughts of the enemy, in the hope that the Jews would amend their evil ways and abandon their godless conduct, so that the threatened punishment might be annulled. Among the many heroes in the beleaguered city that was bidding defiance to the Babylonians, one by the name of Akiba was particularly distinguished.
Thou has permitted me to behold this man's learning, let see also the reward which will be meted out to him." God said: "Go, return and see." Moses saw them sell the flesh of the martyr Akiba at the meat market. He said to God: "Is this the reward for such erudition?" But God replied: "Be silent, thus have I decreed."
It was not till about the fourteenth year of Hadrian's reign that the final revolt broke out. When the Jews of Palestine launched forth upon the war, the doctor Akiba gave place to the warrior Barcochebas.
But the report of the good fortune of the Alexandrian branch of our family had reached Judea, and Ben Akiba thought that he would do like our father Abraham, and he sent me, his Eliezer, into a strange land to win the daughter of a kinsman to wife for his Isaac. Now, who and what the young man is, and the esteem in which he and his father are held by men "
Akiba, now at the extreme point of his protracted existence, like Samuel of old, nominated the new David to the chiefship of the people. He girded Barcochebas with the sword of Jehovah, placed the staff of command in his hand, and held himself the stirrup by which he vaulted into the saddle.
He places the differentiation in their contrasted doctrines of fate and immortality. The Pharisees ascribe all to fate, but yet allow freewill a Hellenizing version of the saying ascribed to Rabbi Akiba, "All is foreseen, but freedom of will is given" and they say all souls are immortal, but those of the good only pass into other bodies, while those of the bad suffer eternal punishment.
On a bitter cold winter night, Akiba could offer his wife, who had been accustomed to the luxuries wealth can buy, nothing but straw as a bed to sleep upon, and he tried to comfort her with assurances of his love for the privations she was suffering. At that moment Elijah appeared before their hut, and cried out in supplicating tones: "O good people, give me, I pray you, a little bundle of straw.
Above all, Akiba, the greatest of the rabbins, the living oracle of divine truth, espoused the claims of the new Messiah; he was called the standard-bearer of the Son of the Star. Of him also wondrous stories were told. The first expedition of Barcochab was to the ruins of Jerusalem, where a rude town had sprung up. Here he openly assumed the title of king.
But the report of the good fortune of the Alexandrian branch of our family had reached Judea, and Ben Akiba thought that he would do like our father Abraham, and he sent me, his Eliezer, into a strange land to win the daughter of a kinsman to wife for his Isaac. Now, who and what the young man is, and the esteem in which he and his father are held by men "
Rabbi Akiba, the wise and dearly-loved Jewish scholar, was taken prisoner and scourged, until he expired under his sufferings. Jerusalem was turned into a Roman colony called Aelia Capitolina, and no Jew dared appear in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, under penalty of death.
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