Akiva and Gamliel II
Modesty is a favorite theme with Akiva, and he reverts to it again and again. "He who esteems himself highly on account of his knowledge," he teaches, "is like a corpse lying on the wayside: the traveler turns his head away in disgust, and walks quickly by" (Ab. R. N., ed. S. Schechter, xi. 46). Another of his sayings, quoted also in the name of Ben Azzai (Lev. R. i. 5), is specially interesting from the fact that Book of Luke, xiv. 8–12, is almost literally identical with it: "Take thy place a few seats below thy rank until thou art bidden to take a higher place; for it is better that they should say to thee 'Come up higher' than that they should bid thee 'Go down lower'" (see Prov. xxv. 7).
Though so modest, yet when an important matter and not a merely personal one was concerned Akiva could not be cowed by the greatest, as is evidenced by his attitude toward the patriarch Gamaliel II. Convinced of the necessity of a central authority for Judaism, Akiva became a devoted adherent and friend of Gamaliel, who aimed at constituting the patriarch the true spiritual chief of the Jews (R. H. ii. 9). But Akiva was just as firmly convinced that the power of the patriarch must be limited both by the written and the oral law, the interpretation of which lay in the hands of the learned; and he was accordingly brave enough to act in ritual matters in Gamaliel's own house contrary to the decisions of Gamaliel himself. Concerning Akiva's other personal excellences, such as benevolence, and kindness toward the sick and needy, see Ned. 40a, Lev. R. xxxiv.16, and Tosef., Meg. iv. 16. Akiva filled the office of an overseer of the poor.
Eminent as Akiva was by his magnanimity and moral worthiness, he was still more so by his intellectual capacity, by which he secured an enduring influence upon his contemporaries and upon posterity. In the first place, Akiva was the one who definitely fixed the canon of the Tanakh books. He protested strongly against the canonicity of certain of the Apocrypha, the Wisdom of Sirach, for instance (Sanh. x. 1, Bab. ibid. 100b, Yer. ibid. x. 28a), in which passages קורא is to be explained according to ḳid. 49a, and חיצונים according to its Aramaic equivalent ברייתא; so that Akiva's utterance reads, "He who reads aloud in the synagogue from books not belonging to the canon as if they were canonical," etc.
He has, however, no objection to the private reading of the Apocrypha, as is evident from the fact that he himself makes frequent use of Sirach (W. Bacher, Ag. Tan. i. 277; H. Grätz, Gnosticismus, p. 120). Akiva stoutly defended, however, the canonicity of the Song of Songs, and Esther (Yad. iii.5, Meg. 7a). Grätz's statements (Shir ha-Shirim, p. 115, and Kohelet, p. 169) respecting Akiva's attitude toward the canonicity of the Song of Songs are misconceptions, as I.H. Weiss (Dor, ii. 97) has to some extent shown. To the same motive underlying his antagonism to the Apocrypha, namely, the desire to disarm Christians—especially Jewish Christians—who drew their "proofs" from the Apocrypha, must also be attributed his wish to emancipate the Jews of the Dispersion from the domination of the Septuagint, the errors and inaccuracies in which frequently distorted the true meaning of Scripture, and were even used as arguments against the Jews by the Christians.
Aquila was a man after Akiva's own heart; under Akiva's guidance he gave the Greek-speaking Jews a rabbinical Bible (Jerome on Isa. viii. 14, Yer. ḳid. i. 59a). Akiva probably also provided for a revised text of the Targums; certainly, for the essential base of the so-called Targum Onkelos, which in matters of Halakah reflects Akiva's opinions completely (F. Rosenthal, Bet Talmud, ii. 280).
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