The Nephew of Titus

תָּא חֲזִי מָה בֵּין פּוֹשְׁעֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לִנְבִיאֵי אוּמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם

"Come and see the difference between the rebels of Israel and the prophets of the nations." (Gittin 57a)

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A man is thinking of changing his life, and he does what people do. He asks around. He wants an outside opinion, from someone who has no reason to flatter him and nothing left to gain.

There is a reason he had to go that far for an opinion. He belonged to the imperial family. Any Roman he asked would tell him what a Roman is supposed to say, and any Jew he asked would be talking to the emperor's nephew and would know it. He needed a witness with nothing to gain from him and nothing to fear from him. The dead were the only people left.

The man is a Roman nobleman. The people he asks are dead. And what makes the story worth reading is not the strangeness of the method. It is that all three of them give him the same fact and three different pieces of advice.

The story

The Talmud has just finished telling how Titus destroyed the Temple, and what became of him afterward. Then it turns, in one line, to his family:

אוּנְקְלוֹס בַּר קְלוֹנִיקוּס בַּר אֲחָתֵיהּ דְּטִיטוּס הֲוָה. בָּעֵי לְאִיגַּיּוֹרֵי

"Onkelos bar Kalonikos was the son of Titus's sister. He wanted to convert."

He was the nephew of the man who burned the Temple. And before he converted, he went and raised the dead, and asked them for their advice.

He raised Titus first. Who is important in that world? Israel, said Titus. Should I attach myself to them?

מִילַּיְיהוּ נְפִישִׁין, וְלָא מָצֵית לְקַיּוֹמִינְהוּ. זִיל אִיגָּרִי בְּהוּ בְּהָהוּא עָלְמָא וְהָוֵית רֵישָׁא

"Their rules are many, and you will not be able to keep them. Go and make war on them in that world, and you will become the head."

Whoever afflicts Israel becomes the head, Titus said, and quoted a verse for it. Then Onkelos asked him what his own judgment was. Every day, Titus answered, they gather my ashes and judge me and burn me and scatter me over the seven seas.¹

He raised Balaam next, and asked the same two questions. Who is important in that world? Israel. Should I attach myself to them?

לֹא תִדְרוֹשׁ שְׁלוֹמָם וְטוֹבָתָם כׇּל הַיָּמִים

"Do not seek their peace or their good, all your days."

And his judgment? Balaam told him, and it was not gentle.

He raised a third. The Talmud, at the end of the passage, files him under a heading of its own: one of the rebels of Israel, meaning one of Israel's own who broke away.² Onkelos asked the same two questions. Who is important in that world? Israel. Should I attach myself to them?

טוֹבָתָם דְּרוֹשׁ, רָעָתָם לֹא תִּדְרוֹשׁ, כׇּל הַנּוֹגֵעַ בָּהֶן כְּאִילּוּ נוֹגֵעַ בְּבָבַת עֵינוֹ

"Seek their good. Do not seek their harm. Whoever touches them is as one who touches the apple of His eye."

Onkelos asked him too what his judgment was. He answered. His punishment was the harshest of the three, and he gave the reason: whoever mocks the words of the sages is judged so.

Then the Talmud stops the story and says one sentence to the reader. Come and see the difference between the rebels of Israel and the prophets of the nations.

Onkelos converted.³

The lessons

Three men, two questions each, and the answers do not line up the way a reader expects. A few things here are worth slowing down for. Why does the Talmud make him ask the same two questions every time? Why do all three enemies agree on the first answer? And why does the one who is judged most harshly speak of Israel most warmly?

1. He asked twice, and the two questions are not the same

Look at what he asks, and in what order. Onkelos never asks anyone whether the Torah is true. He asks who is important in the next world, and then he asks whether he should join them.

The first is a question about facts. The second is a question about what to do.

Titus says Israel. Balaam says Israel. The Jewish rebel says Israel. Not one of the three hesitates, and not one of them has any reason to be generous. Titus destroyed the Temple. Balaam was hired to curse. The third is someone the Talmud places outside the camp. On the question of fact, the enemies of Israel are unanimous.

Then Onkelos asks the second question, and the agreement falls apart at once. Do not join, says Titus. Never seek their peace, says Balaam. Seek their good, says the third.

The Talmud has separated something that people usually run together. A person can see clearly what is worth having and still be advised, by someone who saw it just as clearly, to stay away from it. Knowing is not the hard part. Nobody in this story is confused about the facts.

Notice too that Onkelos never reverses the order. He asks what is true first and what to do second. He is not looking for permission and then a reason to go with it. He settles the fact, and only afterward asks what the fact requires of him. That is why the three answers to the second question cannot unsettle him. Whatever the advice turns out to be, Israel is still what all three of them said it was.

2. Each of them handed back his own life

Now read the three pieces of advice again, and notice that each man answered with his own biography.

Titus, who made war on Israel and rose to the top of the empire by doing it, tells Onkelos: make war on them, and you will become the head. That is not analysis. That is a man describing his own career and calling it a plan.

Balaam was hired to curse Israel and could not, and spent the rest of his life looking for another way to harm them. He tells Onkelos: never seek their peace or their good, all your days. Again, that is his own life, offered as counsel.

And the third, who came from inside and broke away, tells Onkelos to seek their good and never their harm. He too is speaking out of what he knows. He is the only one of the three who was ever one of them.

Titus adds one more thing, and it is the only honest warning in the passage. Their rules are many, and you will not be able to keep them. He is not wrong about the difficulty. He is a Roman aristocrat telling another Roman aristocrat that the thing he is considering is a great deal of work.

Onkelos heard that, from his own uncle, from the far side of death, and went ahead anyway.

It is worth saying what going ahead meant. He was not choosing between two religions on paper. He was giving up a family, a rank and a city, and taking on a way of life that his own uncle, who knew him, had just told him he would fail at. He does it without argument. The passage does not record one word of reply from him to any of the three. He asks, he listens, and then he acts.

3. The one who left still could not say harm them

The Talmud does not leave us to draw the comparison. It draws it out loud: come and see the difference between the rebels of Israel and the prophets of the nations.

The word the passage uses is not the ordinary word for a sinner. Its root means to rebel, to break faith with an agreement. It is used of a province that revolts against a king. The person it describes is not a stranger who never belonged. He is one of the household who walked out.

And he is the one who tells a Roman to seek Israel's good. Not Titus, who is Rome. Not Balaam, who is the prophet the nations produced. The man who left.

Something in him did not leave with him. He is described in the passage as being under judgment, and the passage says plainly what for. His standing is not being defended. But asked by a Roman whether Israel is worth joining, he does not hesitate, and his answer is the warmest of the three, warm enough that he reaches for the tenderest image in Scripture for it. Whoever touches them touches the apple of His eye.

That is the Talmud's comparison, and it cuts in an uncomfortable direction. A prophet of the nations at his best still counsels distance. One of Israel's own at his worst still counsels love. Belonging leaves something behind in a person that leaving does not remove.

I do not think the passage says this to comfort anyone. It is not telling a person who has left that he is fine. The man in the story is under judgment and the passage says so plainly. It is telling the reader something about the reach of an upbringing. What a person is raised inside goes on working in him at a depth he did not choose and cannot resign from. Asked a question quickly, with no time to arrange himself, he answered out of that layer.

Coda

Onkelos had asked three men, and he had received one fact and three verdicts, and the only encouragement in the whole seance came from the one under the heaviest judgment. On that footing he went and converted.

It is worth noticing what he did not get. No sign, no vision, no teacher sitting with him and persuading him. He got three interviews, one accurate warning about how hard it would be, and one warm sentence. That was the whole of it.

The tradition remembers what he did afterward. It credits him with the Aramaic translation of the Torah, which he set down from the mouths of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua, and which is printed in the margin of Jewish Bibles to this day.⁴

He had used Aramaic to question the dead. He spent the rest of his life using it to hand the Torah to the living.

What the empire did about all this is the second half of the story.⁵

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Notes

1. Gittin 56b. The Talmud tells Titus's own end just before this, and Onkelos's question about his judgment is the last line of it. Titus had said in his lifetime that he burned the Temple and nothing happened to him; the passage answers that at length.
2. The Talmud names this third figure, and manuscripts and printed editions of the Talmud differ over him, some removing him entirely. This essay uses instead the term the passage itself reaches for when it sums the three of them up in its closing line, which is also the most exact description of what he is in the story: one of Israel's own who broke away.
3. Gittin 57a. The two questions are put in the same words to each of the three, which is how the passage makes its comparison possible. The judgments the three report are each stated in the text and are each different; the reason is given only for the third.
4. Megillah 3a: "The translation of the Torah — Onkelos the convert said it from the mouth of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua." The same passage says the translation of the Prophets came from Yonatan ben Uziel. Historians debate how the name attached to the text we have. The tradition's claim is about transmission: Onkelos did not invent it, he wrote down what he was taught.
5. Avodah Zarah 11a, told in Part II. There the empire tries three times to arrest him, and the essay follows what happened to the soldiers.