Past Continuous: The Yerushalmi’s Account of Honi’s Long Sleep and Its Roots in Second Temple Era Literature

The Palestinian version of the seventy-year sleep of Honi Hamʿagel in y. Taʿanit 3:9 (66d), is an example of a rabbinic narrative deeply rooted in the culture of pre-rabbinic Judaism. Its authors were familiar with three distinct literary-historical traditions found in earlier texts: the depiction of Simon the high priest in Ben Sira; the account of Nehemiah hiding and restoring the fire of the temple altar in 2 Maccabees; and the story of Abimelech’s decades-long nap preserved in 4 Baruch and The History of the Babylonian Captivity. These three traditions were already connected to each other as part of a wider network of texts, traditions, and collective memory about the Babylonian exile and the return to Zion. The creators of the Honi story built on and extended this body of cultural materials, creating an original work about the continuity of Jewish life and tradition from the biblical era to their own.