Great Assembly


According to Jewish tradition the Men of the Great Assembly or Anshei Knesset HaGedolah, also known as the Great Synagogue, or Synod, was an assembly of 120 scribes, sages, and prophets, in the period from the end of the Biblical prophets since the early Second Temple period to the early Hellenistic period. It comprised such prophets as Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, Nehemiah b. Hachaliah, Mordechai and Zerubabel b. Shaaltiel, among others. Sometimes, the Great Assembly is simply designated as "Ezra and his court of law".
Among the developments in Judaism that are attributed to them are the fixing of the Jewish Biblical canon, including the Book of Ezekiel, Daniel, Esther, and the Twelve Minor Prophets; the introduction of the Feast of Purim; and the institution of the prayer known as the "Shemoneh 'Esreh" as well as the synagogal prayers, rituals, and benedictions.
Some modern scholars question whether the Great Assembly ever existed as an institution as such. Louis Jacobs, while not endorsing this view, remarks that "references in the Rabbinic literature to the Men of the Great Synagogue can be taken to mean that ideas, rules, and prayers, seen to be pre-Rabbinic but post-biblical, were often fathered upon them".

Membership

The role of prophets

The members of the Great Assembly are designated in the Mishnah as those who occupied a place in the chain of tradition between the Prophets and the tannaim:
The first part of this statement is paraphrased as follows in Avot of Rabbi Natan:
In this paraphrase, the three post-exilic prophets are separated from the other prophets, for it was the task of the former to transmit the Law to the members of the Great Assembly. It must even be assumed that these three prophets were themselves included in those members, for it is evident from the statements referring to the institution of the prayers and benedictions that the Great Assembly included prophets.
However if the three post-exile prophets who were separated from the pre-exile prophets by many generations received from them through writings, then naturally this would assume that the later prophets of the Great Assembly who received from the previous prophets could have also done so through inheriting their writings, and this suggests that the transmission of the Law did not require their attendance at the Great Assembly.
In reality the Great Assembly took place 100 years after the events of Haggai and Zechariah, which were during the reign of Darius I. Haggai and Zechariah were most likely dead in 410 B.C and their attendance at the Great Assembly can be attributed to post-rabbinic tradition.
Darius I was the obvious King at the time of Haggai and Zechariah as the statements made of "These seventy years" from Zechariah 1:12 refer to exactly seventy years from the 6th year of Darius I, when the 2nd Temple was completed, which when counted inclusively, from the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C equals exactly seventy years.

The number of members

According to R. Johanan, the Shemoneh Esreh were established by the "men of the Great Assembly". Similarly, R. Jeremiah, who attributes the establishment of Shemoneh Esreh to "120 elders, including about 80 prophets". These 120 elders are undoubtedly identical with the men of the Great Assembly. The number given of the prophets must, however, be corrected according to Megillah 17b, where the source of R. Jeremiah's statement is found: "R. Johanan said, and some say it was taught in a baraita, that 120 elders, including several prophets, instituted the Shemoneh Esreh." Hence the prophets were in a minority in the Great Assembly. According to the Babylonian Talmud, the date of Purim was fixed by the men of the Great Assembly, while the Jerusalem Talmud speaks of "85 elders, among them about 30 prophets" enacting the holiday. These divergent statements may be reconciled by reading in the one passage, "beside them" instead of "among them" in the Jerusalem Talmud; "30" instead of "80" prophets in R' Jeremiah's teaching.
The number 85 is taken from ; but the origin of the entire number is unknown. It was undoubtedly assumed that the company of those mentioned in Nehemiah 10 was increased to 120 by the prophets who took part in the sealing of the covenant, this view, which is confirmed by Nehemiah 7:7,14, being based on the hypothesis that other prophets besides Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi were then preaching in Israel. These passages indicate that this assembly was believed to be the one described in Nehemiah 9–10, and other statements regarding it prove that the Amoraim accepted this identification as a matter of course.

As a single generation

According to Abba bar Kahana, "Two generations used the Tetragrammaton: the men of the Great Assembly and the generation of the shemad". This suggests that the Great Assembly lasted only for a single generation.
Many sources indicate that this generation was the generation of Ezra. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi even derived the term "Great Assembly" from Ezra's choice of words in ; indicating that he viewed the Great Assembly as being present at the ceremony in Nehemiah 9. Other sources specify Nehemiah 9:5, 9:6, 9:7, and 9:18 as being spoken by the Great Assembly, while in the Bible these verses refer to a ceremony led by Ezra. Other sources assert that Ezra uttered the Tetragrammaton; paired with Abba bar Kahana's statement quoted above, this too suggests that Ezra was a member of the Great Assembly's generation.
Nechemiah, too, was considered to have been a member of the Great Assembly. Since Nehemiah himself was a member, Samuel b. Marta, a pupil of Rav, quoted a phrase used by Nehemiah in his prayer as originating with his colleagues. Ezra was, of course, one of the members, and, according to Nehemiah 8, he was even regarded as the leader. In one of the two versions of the interpretation of Song of Songs 7:14, therefore, Ezra and his companions are mentioned, while the other version speaks merely of the "men of the Great Assembly". In the targum to Song of Songs 7:3, in addition to "Ezra the priest" the men mentioned in Ezra 2:2 as the leaders of the people returning from the Exile—Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Mordecai, and Bilshan—are designated as "men of the Great Assembly." In the same targum, the leaders of the exiles are called the "sages of the Great Assembly."
An aggadic passage by Jose b. Hanina refers to the names of the returning exiles mentioned in Ezra 2:51 et seq., one version reading "the men of the Great Assembly" instead of "sons of the Exile," or "those that returned from the Exile". This shows that the men of the Great Assembly included the first generation of the Second Temple. In Esther Rabbah 3:7, the congregation of the tribes mentioned in Judges 20:1 is apparently termed "men of the Great Assembly." However, this is due to a corruption of the text, for, according to Luria's skilful emendation, this phrase must be read with the preceding words "Ezra and the men of the Great Assembly"; so that the phrase corresponds to the "bene ha-golah" of Ezra 10:16.
It appears from all these passages in traditional literature that the idea of the Great Assembly was based on the narrative in Nehemiah 8–10, and that, furthermore, its members were regarded as the leaders of Israel who had returned from exile and laid the foundations of the new polity connected with the Second Temple. All these men were regarded in the tannaitic chronology as belonging to one generation; therefore Abba bar Kahana speaks of a single "generation of the men of the Great Assembly".
According to the rabbinic chronology, the period of Persian rule lasted just 34 years, at the beginning of the period of the Second Temple, confining the Great Assembly's activity to this generation. As the last prophets were still active during this time, they also were included.
Rabbinic chronology also held that prophecy ceased with the conquest of Alexander the Great.
In view of these facts, it was natural that the Great Assembly should be regarded as the connecting-link in the chain of tradition between the Prophets and the scholars. It may easily be seen, therefore, why Simeon the Just should be termed a survivor of this body, for, according to rabbinic tradition, it was this high priest who met Alexander the Great, and received from him much honor.
It is thus evident that, according to the only authority extant in regard to the subject, the Great Assembly's activity was confined to the period of the Persian rule, and thus to the first 34 years of the Second Temple; and that afterward, when Simon the Just was its only survivor, there was no other fixed institution which could be regarded as a precursor of the academies.
Though the Great Assembly was limited to a single generation, some similar governing council may have existed in the centuries that followed it, using a different name. The term "Great Assembly" primarily referred to the assembly of Nehemiah 9–10, which convened principally for religious purposes—fasting, reading of the Torah, confession of sins, and prayer. Since every gathering for religious purposes was called "knesset", this term was applied also to the assembly in question; but as it was an assembly of special importance it was designated more specifically as the "Great Assembly". For similar reasons, another important religious gathering in this period was known as the kehillah gedolah.

Rulings

In addition to fixing the ritual observances for the first two quarters of the day, the Great Assembly engaged in legislative proceedings, making laws as summarized in. Tradition therefore ascribed to it the character of a chief magistracy, and its members, or rather its leaders, including the prophets of that time, were regarded as the authors of other obligatory rules. These leaders of post-exilic Israel in the Persian period were called the "men of the Great Assembly" because it was generally assumed that all those who then acted as leaders had been members of the memorable gathering held on the 24th of Tishri, 444 BC. Although the assembly itself convened only on a single day, its leaders were designated in tradition as regular members of the Great Assembly. This explains the fact that the references speak almost exclusively of "the men of the Great Assembly", the allusions to the "Great Assembly" itself being very rare, and sometimes based on error.
As certain institutions assumed to have been established in the early Second Temple period were ascribed to Ezra, so others of them were ascribed to the "men of the Great Assembly". There is, in fact, no difference between the two classes of institutions so far as origin is concerned. In some cases Ezra is mentioned as the author, in others the entire Great Assembly mentioned; in all cases the Assembly with Ezra at its head must be thought of as the real authors. In traditional literature, however, a distinction was generally drawn between the institutions of Ezra and those of the men of the Great Assembly, so that they figured separately. But it is not surprising, after what has been said above, that in the Tanhuma the "Tikkunei Soferim" should be ascribed to the men of the Great Assembly, since the author of the passage in question identified the Soferim with them.
The following rulings were ascribed to the men of the Great Assembly:
An attempt has thus been made to assign correct positions to the texts in which the men of the Great Assembly are mentioned, and to present the views on which they are based, although no discussions can be broached regarding the views of the chroniclers and historians, or the different hypotheses and conclusions drawn from these texts concerning the history of the period of the Second Temple. For this a reference to the articles cited in the bibliography must suffice. Kuenen especially presents a good summary of the more recent theories, while L. Löw expresses views totally divergent from those generally held with regard to the Great Assembly; this body he takes to be the assembly described in I Maccabees 14:25-26, which made Simeon the Hasmonean a hereditary prince.