A Philosophical Session in a Tannaite Academy

Commenting on the verse which reports the devastation of Jerusalem by Nabuzaradan, that ‘he burnt the house of the Lord, and the king's house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great man's house,’the Midrash makes the following remark:And to what does the clauseevery great man's houserefer? That's the academy (bet midrash) of Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai. And why is it calledbet gadol[literally, the house of the great one]? Because there theshebah(shevah) of the Holy One, blessed be He, was rehearsed, related, recited— the verb used isteni,which means not only to recite but to study and to teach. To translateshebahby the neutral word ‘praise’, is to miss the real intent of the statement.Shebahin the present sentence, as in a great many others in talmudic-midrashic literature, is clearlyδόξα; and one of the traditional commentators on our midrashic passage has already correctly explained it: in Johanan ben Zakkai's academy they were engaged in the Creation and Merkabah (Chariot) speculations. The parallel passage in the Palestinian Talmud bears him out.