You can't go home again: The Bavli's story of Honi's big sleep as inversion of the Yerushalmi's account

Moshe Simon-Shoshan

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

This article presents an original reading of the Bavli account of Honi's 70-year sleep. It argues that printed editions present a corrupt reading of Honi's initial statement, which originally read 'Seventy years like a dream!', expressing Honi's existential dread of his own mortality. The story must further be understood as a conscious inversion of the Yerushalmi's version of the tale, rejecting the Yerushalmi's optimistic vision of the role of individual holy men in Jewish history in favour of a tragic account of individual loneliness.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)257-282
Number of pages26
JournalJournal of Jewish Studies
Volume72
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 2021.

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