Messianism and Rabbinization

This essay traces the development of messianic ideas and attitudes toward messianism among the rabbis from the amoraic to the geonic era. Classical rabbinic literature, here exemplified by Genesis Rabbah and the eschatological collection of b. Sanhedrin 96b-99a, is notably unenthusiastic about messianism, but by the 10th and 11th centuries leading proponents of rabbinic culture such as Saadya and Hai have come to embrace it. This development is in part a result of the process of rabbinization. In the era before the dominance of rabbinic culture, the rabbis viewed popular messianic traditions such as those preserved in Sefer Zerubbabel as threatening because of their potential for destabilizing society and their obvious engagement with Christian traditions. But once rabbinic culture was no longer the purview of the elite only, such traditions could be retouched to make them more compatible with rabbinic norms and integrated into geonic messianism.