This Noble House. Arnold E. Franklin
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as the redactor of the Mishnah. Though in a number of texts Judah is accepted as an unquestioned descendant of King David, in one rabbinic source he confesses that his claim to a royal pedigree goes through the maternal side and is therefore inferior to that of the Babylonian exilarch.5 The ambivalence toward the Davidic lineage of Judah ha-Nasi in this passage would seem to reflect tensions within rabbinic circles over the legitimacy of the patriarchate, a dynastic institution of leadership whose authority was buttressed by the claim of a royal pedigree.6 As Albert Baumgarten observes: “The conclusion seems clear…. The ‘confession’ of poor Davidic genealogy is the product of some opponent. It is a subtle response to the Patriarchal claims: to deny these claims outright might have been too dangerous; to reinterpret them so as to make them practically worthless would have been safer.”7 And yet while such sources may, in their opposition to the patriarchate, question the ancestry of particular individuals and families, they do not dispute the more fundamental notion that legitimate members of the Davidic family continued to exist in Jewish society. Indeed, as the tradition about Judah ha-Nasi amply demonstrates, challenging the genealogy of one Davidic claimant might go hand in hand with an endorsement of that of another.
The tradition about Judah ha-Nasi’s genealogy highlights a second point as well: when rabbinic sources evince an interest in Davidic ancestry, they almost always do so to the extent that it is a qualification for some particular function—either in a real and immediate form, as represented by the hereditary offices of exilarch and patriarch, or more remotely, as when embodied in the eschatological figure of the messiah. Rabbinic texts, in other words, seem to be either unaware of or largely uninterested in claims to Davidic lineage that are detached from communal functions.8 Judah ha-Nasi’s alleged descent from David was a matter of importance because his descendants in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries used it to justify their patriarchal prerogatives. But the patriarchs also claimed to be the descendants of Hillel, an important first-century sage. And so it comes as little surprise that Hillel’s ancestry, too, was taken up in rabbinic texts, again with a view to providing the patriarchate with firm genealogical credentials. Rabbi Levi, a third-century sage, reports that “they found a genealogical scroll in Jerusalem, and in it was written, ‘Hillel is from David.’”9 With such proof of Hillel’s own royal pedigree, the dual ancestral claims of the patriarchate—as descended from both Hillel and King David—could apparently be harmonized.
Much as the status of the patriarchate triggered discussions of Davidic ancestry, so too did questions about the status of the Babylonian exilarchs. Deliberating on the protocol during public readings of the Torah, the Talmud questions the appropriateness of a Babylonian custom to lower the scroll to the exilarch rather than obliging him to go up to it. This, we are told, was an honor previously reserved only for kings and high priests. Justifying the Babylonian practice of extending it to exilarchs as well, Yosi ben Bun argues that they should indeed be treated in the manner described “because the seed of David is infused there.”10 It is important to note, however, that the Davidic pedigree of the exilarchate is brought up in order to explain a puzzling ritual. It is in fact peripheral to the real concern of the passage (determining whether the Babylonian custom is justifiable) and is already assumed to be true when introduced into the discussion.
The most frequently cited allusion to the pedigree of the exilarchate comes in the form of a gloss on the first half of Genesis 49:10 (“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, and the ruler’s staff from between his feet”), a verse that in its most straightforward sense relates to the monarchy founded by Judah’s descendant, King David. “‘The scepter shall not depart from Judah’—this refers to the exilarchs in Babylonia who rule over Israel with scepters; ‘and the ruler’s staff’—this refers to the descendants of Hillel who teach the Torah in public.”11 The rabbinic interpretation extends the allusions to royal authority in the verse to include later claimants to the Davidic pedigree as well, providing scriptural sanction to the exilarchal and patriarchal offices. Like the previous example, however, the tradition simply assumes the existence of a genealogical connection to David without making an effort to demonstrate it or establish its accuracy.
Besides acknowledging that descendants of David could be found in the ranks of contemporary Jewish leaders, rabbinic sources also identified a continuation of the royal line in the person of the anticipated redeemer, often referred to as the “messiah son of David” or simply “the son of David.” Present and future claimants might even be merged. Several statements imply that Judah ha-Nasi, for instance, was regarded as a messianic figure by some of his contemporaries.12 But here again Davidic ancestry is construed largely as a precondition for power. Davidic pedigrees assume importance and merit discussion in rabbinic texts because they qualify their claimants for positions of leadership and authority; divorced from these they seem to possess little or no intrinsic significance.
As the examples cited above illustrate, in rabbinic sources claims of Davidic ancestry might be alluded to (as in the gloss on Genesis 49:10), asserted (as in the statement that “Hillel is from David”), or even challenged (as when Judah ha-Nasi concedes his genealogical inferiority to the exilarch), but they are never substantiated with genealogical evidence. Given their apparent investment in such traditions, rabbinic materials exhibit surprisingly little interest in detailing the exact line of ancestors through which patriarchs and exilarchs would have traced themselves to King David. Indeed, beyond the vague assertion that the patriarchs were descendants of David “on the maternal side,” the only specific information rabbinic sources seem to know about their pedigree is which of King David’s sons they could claim as an ancestor.13 We are on a similarly bad footing when it comes to reconstructing the precise lineage of the exilarchs. Given that rabbinic sources implicitly affirm the ongoing importance of the Davidic line in Jewish society, their disregard for the details of the Davidic pedigree is striking.14 And the absence of precise genealogical information for the Davidic family appears that much more surprising when compared with its documentation in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Commenting on this situation and noting an important distinction between vague ancestral claims and hard genealogical evidence, Marshall Johnson observes that while rabbis attempted “to exalt the memory of admired predecessors by providing them with honorable ancestry … such attempts were not always based on genealogical records.”15
Rabbinic sources thus appear to display only a limited interest in the postbiblical line of David. While they acknowledge and discuss contemporary claims to Davidic ancestry, rarely if ever is that pedigree, in and of itself, the true focus of their attention. Instead, they tend to be preoccupied with the narrower question of how ancestry and power intersect—with the way Davidic pedigrees might or might not support succession to positions of formal authority in the Jewish community. Considered by themselves, however, claims to membership in the Davidic line seem to have held little meaning for the editors of the rabbinic corpus. Furthermore, rabbinic literature devotes surprisingly little attention to genealogical documentation. Both in supporting and in rejecting claims of Davidic ancestry, rabbinic sources noticeably avoid discussing the actual lists of ancestors upon which such claims would have had to rely. Indeed, rabbinic sources seem profoundly uninterested in the genealogical intermediaries by means of which an individual could link himself to an ennobling ancestor in the mythic past. Ancestral claims may have mattered to the rabbis, but rabbinic literature reveals only the vaguest awareness of, or interest in, how such claims would have actually been substantiated.
Medieval Continuities
When we consider the situation that emerges from medieval sources, we encounter a number of important continuities with the rabbinic past. First, the Middle Ages witnessed the perpetuation of structures of Davidic authority that had their origins in the rabbinic period. While the patriarchate was abolished by the Romans in the year 425, the exilarchate continued to operate throughout the Middle Ages, even expanding its jurisdiction under Islamic rule. With respect to the institutional configuration of the Davidic family, then, the medieval period seems to manifest an affinity with the rabbinic past.
Second, those who claimed royal ancestry in the Middle Ages always traced their lineage through Davidic dynasts mentioned in the rabbinic corpus. While the overwhelming majority of nesiʾim regarded themselves as descendants of the line of the exilarchs, a few connected themselves