1. Plato Republic 514a; B. Shabbat 33b. I am drawing on the translation of the Republic by Paul Shorey, the translator for the Loeb Classical Series (1930), as well as that by G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve. I would like to thank Jonathan Schofer and Jeffrey Rubenstein for their careful reading of the manuscript of this article, which provided much helpful advice.

2. P. Shevi‘it 9:1, 38d; Bereshit Rabba, par. 79:6 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 2:941); Kohelet Rabba 10(11); Esther Rabba 3:7; Midrash Tehillim 17, siman 13 (ed. Buber, 134); and Kahana, Pesikta de-Rav, Va-yehi be-shallaḥ, pis. 11:16 (ed. Mandelbaum, B. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1987, 191–92)Google Scholar.

3. Levine, Lee, “R. Simeon b. Yohai and the Purification of Tiberias: History and Tradition,” Hebrew Union College Annual 49 (1978): 182Google Scholar, points out that already in the eighth-century CE apocalyptic work, The Mysteries (Nistarot) of R. Simeon, Rashbi had become known as a master of mystical lore, lore that was acquired during his sojourn in the cave.

4. See esp. Levine for historiographical purposes, namely, to establish the historicity of the purification of Tiberias, as the title of his article (see n. 2 herein) explicates. All subsequent readings build on Levine's piece. Ofra Meir's chapter on “The Story of R. Shimon bar Yohai and His Son in the Cave—History or Literature?” in her Sugyot ba-poetikah shel sipure Ḥazal (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Po'alim 1993), 11–35, provides a detailed analysis of the version in the Palestinian Talmud, in comparison with the Bavli's version. Most recently, Holger Zellentin has suggested that, at the very least, the version recorded in Bereshit Rabba, but perhaps the Bavli's version as well, can be read as a parody or subversion of Matthew's version of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. I thank Zellentin for sharing an early draft of the first chapter of his dissertation with me, titled “Rashbi from the Cave to the Bathhouse: A Rabbinic Response to Christian Asceticism and Providence.” Jeffrey Rubenstein focuses on comparing the Palestinian and the Babylonian talmudic versions, mostly to establish the Babylonian editorial work on the story, to be attributed to the stammaim. See the chapter on “Torah and the Mundane Life: The Education of R. Shimon bar Yohai (Shabbat 33b–34a)” in his Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 105–39. I will not analyze all the details of the story, as this has been beautifully done by Rubenstein. Rather, I will focus on what establishes the case for a Platonic parallel and perhaps even subtext to the Babylonian Talmud's story. It should be clear from the following that I find Rubenstein's argument for a late editorial composition of the story entirely convincing.

5. For a meditation on the figure of echo as a way of relating texts to each other, see Hollander, John, The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981)Google Scholar. Hollander distinguishes echo from modes of more overt literary allusion in various ways, some of which are useful for this current study. He considers “echo” as “a way of alluding that is inherently poetic, rather than expository, and that makes new metaphor rather than learned gestures” (ix).

6. This is not to say that both stories operate the same way literarily. Plato's narrative can much more easily be defined as an allegory, recent references of “analogy” or “parable” notwithstanding. The Socrates of the Republic does formulate the story in terms of unnamed, hypothetical figures, although the referents are rather clear. By contrast, the Babylonian Talmud constructs its story with known characters in the rabbinic universe, namely, Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai, his son Rabbi Eleazar, and others. In other words, the Talmud does not tell a completely abstracted story, which is precisely what has allowed scholars in the past to even consider the historicity of the contents of the story.

7. See n. 4 herein.

8. Here I am drawing on Andrea Nightingale's recent study of what she at times calls the “fable of philosophy in Plato's Republic,” and more often “analogy of the cave,” in her Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Context (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 94–139. Nightingale argues that Plato does not “oppose the contemplative to the practical life; rather he differentiates between the philosophical and the political life” (133).

9. In a note, Levine graciously attributes the idea for such a connection to an oral communication by Elias Bickerman (“R. Simeon b. Yohai and the Purification of Tiberias,” 191 n. 154).

10. See Levine, “R. Simeon b. Yohai and the Purification of Tiberias,” 182: “A number of elements in the Epimenides tradition bear a striking resemblance to the R. Simeon account: a city faced with a problem of defilement which seems to have been a recurrent issue, an esteemed figure of old purifying it, and the removal of corpses. The resemblance, moreover, goes even further. Tradition has it that Epimenides spent a long period of time in a cave before purifying the city.” But as a good philologist, Levine remains cautious about the influence of the Greeks on the rabbis and concludes, “Whether or not the R. Simeon cave tradition owes its association with the purification story to the Epimenides episode cannot be definitely ascertained. All that can be said is that the parallels are striking and the possibility of influence intriguing” (184).

11. As Levine points out, the city is named in most Palestinian versions of the story but not in the Babylonian Talmud's version, in which the city remains unnamed (“R. Simeon b. Yohai and the Purification of Tiberias,” 167).

12. See Ofra Meir and Jeffrey Rubenstein, cited in n. 3 herein. In addition, Ben-Shalom, Israel, “Rabbi Judah B. Ilai's Attitude toward Rome,” Zion 49 (1984): 9–24Google Scholar, has already argued that the introductory section of the Aggadah, featuring Rashbi in conversation with his colleagues about the nature of Rome's prowess, discussed later, is the Babylonian Talmud's construction rather than a reflection of an actual conversation. See Ben-Shalom's article in particular for references to historiographical works since the nineteenth century that have consistently used the story as a historical source.

13. See, e.g., Becker, Adam H., Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Becker focuses mostly on the scholastic culture of the Church of the East and advocates for more studies of rabbinic and Christian interactions in the Sasanian world, especially with respect to their respective scholastic cultures. Daniel Boyarin follows up on this point in a chapter on “Hellenism in Jewish Babylonia,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte Fonrobert and Martin Jaffee (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 336–65, which draws on Becker's study in its argument. It should be noted that already Cohen, Shaye J. D., “Patriarchs and Scholarchs” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 48 (1981): 57–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, invokes the Hellenization of Babylonian rabbinic Jews. For bibliographical reference on concrete evidence of the importation of Neoplatonism into the Sasanian world, see below.

14. Republic 473c–d. Cf. Republic 499b, 540d a.o. Shorey points out that “this is perhaps the most famous sentence in Plato, followed by abundant reference from antiquity to modernity” (vol. 1, 473d), an issue that will be revisited later. Charles Griswold has kindly provided me with a draft of his essay on “Socrates' Political Philosophy,” to be published in the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Socrates. Griswold also emphasizes that this is not only the most revolutionary, but quite probably most famous, argument of the Republic.

15. Republic 473d, 499b, 540d.

16. It remains unclear in Socrates' analogy what prompts the philosophers' release from his shackles in the cave. Socrates says, “Consider, then, what would be the manner of the release and healing from these bonds and this folly if in the course of nature [physei] something of this sort should happen to them: When one was freed from his fetters…” (Republic 515c). Later on in the philosopher's ascent from the cave, when he himself would rather turn back than face the light, Socrates continues, “And if someone should drag him thence by force up the ascent” (515e). Nightingale assumes that “someone” implies a theoretical philosopher who educates the person about to be liberated (Spectacles, 102). Of course, one of Plato's major issues in the Republic is precisely the nature of adequate philosophical education.

17. Others have noted the omission of the explicit reference to Rome, which is not entirely out of character with the Bavli's style. See Rubenstein, “Torah and the Mundane Life,” in Talmudic Stories, 344 n. 12. However, perhaps we can push this point a little further and suggest that the omission of the explicit reference here, as well as of the name Tiberias for the city in which Rashbi becomes active after his return from the cave at the end of the story, add to the parabolic character of the entire construction rather than to some kind of historiographical intent on behalf of the Babylonian sages.

18. As pointed out by Ofra Meir and Ben-Shalom and much elaborated by Rubenstein, the reference to “the deeds of this nation” and Rashbi's evaluation that these acts were done only “for their own needs” echoes another Babylonian discussion of imperial power, this one in an eschatological garb, namely, at B. Avodah Zarah 2b. In that context, the Roman and Persian empires defend their acts (i.e., their imperial prowess of construction and building) in front of the Holy One Blessed Be He on the day of judgment by insisting that they had committed those acts “for the sake of Israel, so that they could engage themselves with the study of Torah” (B. Avodah Zarah 2a). But here it is God himself who exposes the empires as having done all these things “only for themselves” (2b). All three scholars mentioned assume—correctly, I think—that the narrators of the Rashbi story drew on the material from B. Avodah Zarah and not vice versa. Rubenstein devotes an entire chapter to the passage in B. Avodah Zarah 2a–3b, “Torah, Gentiles, and Eschatology (Avoda Zara 2a–3b),” in Talmudic Stories, 212–43.

19. In what follows, I am neglecting the presence of Rashbi's son, Rabbi Eleazar, in various stages of the story. The story exhibits a curious back and forth between focus on just Rashbi and on both of them. At times, Rabbi Eleazar seems to drop completely out of sight of the narrators. Admittedly, I have as yet no cogent explanation for why the rabbinic story would even add the son rather than focus on the figure of the solitary sage in light of Plato's tale, other than that the narrators merely assume the culture of rabbinic dialectic, so that even in the utopia of extreme solitude of study (in the cave), a study partner is an absolute imaginary and therefore narrative necessity.

20. Scott, James C., Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990Google Scholar). Scott's concept of hidden transcripts has been widely used and reapplied in postcolonial studies, but it will not be applied extensively here in the context of this essay. It is Daniel Boyarin who introduced Scott's work into the arena of Jewish Studies. See Boyarin's essay on “Massada or Yavneh? Gender and the Art of Resistance” in Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies, ed. Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 306–29; Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).

21. See p. 136, insertions are mine. That “vast territory” is, of course, what his book is attempting to map. Interestingly, he does not consider silence as one of the options of “voice under domination,” the title of his sixth chapter.

22. There is discussion in the literature cited so far on Yehudah ben Gerim's character, namely, whether he is an informer by design or by accident (“he went and retold their words, and it became known to the government”). For my purposes, the distinction does not matter much.

23. As demonstrated by Levine's synoptic presentation, only the version of the story in Kohelet Rabba 10:8 mentions a persecution as the reason for Rashbi's retreat into the cave. Based on Lieberman's historical argument, Levine adds the clarification of “(Hadrianic) persecution” (“R. Simeon b. Yohai and the Purification of Tiberias,” 150). Because of the complicated question of dating the rabbinic literary traditions, such a supplementation is difficult to substantiate.

24. Which is, in fact, what Kohelet Rabbah 10:8 does, which mentions a shmad (persecution) as a background; see previous note.

25. See Rubenstein, “Torah and the Mundane Life” in Talmudic Stories, 340 n. 61, for references. He notes that “while caves (especially burial caves) figure in many rabbinic miracle stories (bBM 84b–85a, 85b; bBQ 117a; bMQ 17a; bBB58a; yTA 3:10, 66d), the figure of a sage hiding in a cave is unparalleled and cannot be considered a motif” and then proceeds to provide biblical precedents.

26. Of course, there is the story about Epimenides mentioned earlier. As Levine points out, the story about Epimenides' dwelling in the cave was widely cited, starting with Plato himself, through Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius and Clement (“R. Simeon b. Yohai and the Purification of Tiberias,” 181).

27. Nightingale, Spectacles, 96.

28. We will return to this in the next section.

29. Nightingale, Spectacles, 35. This is distinguished from private theoria, not very common and frowned upon by Plato; see p. 48.

30. Ibid., 48.

31. Ibid., 29.

32. The reference is to Laws 950d–952c.

33. Nightingale, Spectacles, 48.

34. Ibid., 70.

35. For a helpful discussion and bibliography, see Mahoney, T., “Do Plato's Philosopher-Rulers Sacrifice Self-Interest to Justice?” Phronesis 37 (1992): 265–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. See also Dominic O'Meara, , Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), 10Google Scholar. I thank my colleague Tom Sheehan for this helpful reference.

37. For a comprehensive discussion of the scholasticism of the Babylonian Talmud and its praise of Torah study as the apex of devotion, see esp. Rubenstein, Jeffrey, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

38. Rubenstein reads this burial of the body in terms of structuralist anthropology, as part of nature (in the cave) versus culture (baths, etc.): “[T]he image of neck-deep burial in sand portrays them as an integral part of the natural terrain, similar to carrots or tubers with the vegetable body comfortably hidden below. Submersion in the sand of the cave contrasts with their subsequent immersion in the waters of the bathhouse, and the resulting damage to the sages' bodies is the opposite of the pampering which RSBY associated with Roman baths” (Talmudic Stories, 113). Again, I do not necessarily disagree, rather I suggest that the burial of the body for the sake of study carries more significance, especially in light of my suggested Platonic inversion. Rubenstein further emphasizes that “perforce [the scene] is very close to nature; with all time and effort invested in study, there is no way to produce food, build shelter or weave clothes” (ibid.). To me, this kind of pragmatic reading simply seems to underestimate the symbolic weight of the depiction. Beyond Plato's obvious trouble with the body, it seems to me—drawing once again on Hollander's figure (see n. 5 herein)—that somehow there is an “echo” of Plato's cave dwellers “having their legs and necks fettered from childhood” (Republic 514a). Consider also the following image: “When the eye of the soul is really buried in a sort of barbaric mud [borborw barbarikw tini], dialectic gently pulls it out and leads it upwards” (Republic 533c–d). Bobonich, Christopher (Plato's Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002], 53)CrossRefGoogle Scholar comments, “Plato's phrasing here echoes his description of the fate of nonphilosophers in the Phaedo. There the souls of nonphilosophers, on arriving in Hades, will ‘lie in the mud’; in this passage from the Republic their souls … now really are buried in the mud.”

39. See also Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 117, for a more detailed analysis of this scene.

40. Philo, De Migratione Abrahami, 90; emphasis added.

41. Najman, Hindy, “Towards a Study of the Uses of the Concept of Wilderness,” Dead Sea Discoveries 13, no. 1 (2006): 99–113, esp. 107–9 on PhiloCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. It is true that Rashbi's study in the cave is accompanied by prayer, perhaps the other side of the coin of talmudic devotion. But in the end, this does not undermine the emphasis on absolute devotion and contemplation.

43. Even though there are no exact counterparts, this kind of juxtaposition is common in Plato. In the Republic, see, e.g., 525b: “he [the student of philosophy] must rise out of the region of generation and lay hold of essence” (cf. 525c, 526e, 527b a.o.). The juxtaposition of genesis and ousia is common in the Republic. The temporal element of this juxtaposition is emphasized in his discussion of the study or appropriate knowledge of geometry, which is “the knowledge of that which always is (tou aei ontos gnwsews) and not of a something which at some time comes into being and passes away (ti gignomenou kai apollumenou)” (527b).

44. The Vorlage in the Palestinian Talmud actually has Rashbi go out himself: “At the end of the thirteen years, he said: ‘Perhaps I shall go out and see what is happening in the world.’ He went out.” The change in the Bavli's version, which emphasizes the moment of reluctance, supports my hypothesis of the Bavli's critical engagement of the Platonic allegory.

45. Nightingale, Spectacles, 48

46. Republic 517a.

47. For references, see Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 340 n. 62. In our own narrative, Rashbi still kills by eyesight at the end of the narrative, first a certain old man who mocks him and then finally Yehuda ben Gerim from the beginning of the story.

48. Republic 516e–517a.

49. Nightingale, Spectacles, 104.

50. For a recent discussion of the ‘ammei ha’areẓ, see Christine E. Hayes, “The ‘Other’ in Rabbinic Literature,” in Fonrobert and Jaffee, Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, 243–70.

51. Here, I think, my reading of the Rashbi narrative as a critical inversion of the Platonic allegory can serve as a slight corrective to such descriptions of stammaitic and therefore talmudic culture, as in Rubenstein, Culture of the Talmud, 141.

52. M. Avot 2:5: ‘al tifrosh min haẓibbur. For a survey of the various terms for “public” used in Palestinian rabbinic literature (ẓibbur, rabbim, parhesia), see Hezser, Catherine, “‘Privat’ und ‘öffentlich’ im Talmud Yerushalmi und in der griechisch-römischen Antike,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, vol. II, ed. Schäfer, Peter and Hezser, Catherine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 423–579Google Scholar.

53. By Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair, now identified as his son-in-law. Rubenstein emphasizes that this scene is about Rashbi's reintegration into the world and acutely observes that the “seemingly superfluous datum that Pinhas is RSBHY's son-in-law emphasizes that the sage rejoins the family he had abandoned earlier” (Talmudic Stories, 117). More sharply, then, kinship ties are the primary ties to the civic community. However, once again I would emphasize the political emphasis inherent in the Bavli's juxtaposition of Rashbi's initial rejection of the Roman bathhouses in the political introduction to the story, discussed earlier, and Rashbi's visit to those very bathhouses upon emerging from the cave. Rubenstein does observe the chiastic structure and the return to the beginning of the story here at his end.

54. This is my emphasis. The whole verse reads (following the NRSV translation), “And Jacob came safely to the city of Shekhem in the land of Canaan, upon arriving from Padan Aram; and he encamped before the city.” See Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 338, on medieval commentaries on this verse. He surely is correct when he notes that “the exegetical play on ‘he settled’ (vayihan) as ‘he graced’ (vayahon) evokes R. Yehuda's initial opinion that these institutions are ‘pleasant.’ RSBY's valuation now coheres with the opinion he formerly rejected!” (118). Suffice it to say that the subsequent biblical chapter (Genesis 34 on Dinah) hardly suggests the reading of the verse put forward by the midrash here, reading “encamped before” as “gracious to”!

55. Or, as Rubenstein suggests, the money recalls the bridge tolls (Talmudic Stories, 338 n. 46).

56. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 119.

57. In the famous Aggadah of Rabbi Eliezer and the “Oven of Akhnai,” Rabbi Eliezer is represented as the only one who has access to divine knowledge and therefore to the answer of the status of purity of the oven in question (B. Bava Meẓi‘a’ 59b). But his opinion is exactly the one that is rejected in favor of the majority decision. So also in B. Bava Meẓi‘a’ 84a, in which Rabbi Eleazar decides the questionable menstrual cases in favor of sexual intercourse, and the story celebrates the assertion of his authority in spite of the uncertainty. So also here, where Rashbi's assertion of declaring pure what might actually be impure is met with criticism, which he promptly squashes.

58. This paragraph is a response to the very generous and indeed helpful anonymous reader of the manuscript of this article.

59. For an extensive discussion of this story and the anti-Persian bias in the Greek sources, see Walker, Joel T., “The Limits of Late Antiquity: Philosophy between Rome and Iran,” Ancient World 33, no. 1 (2002): 45–69Google Scholar. Walker argues for extending the horizons of what we all have come to designate as the world of late antiquity to include the Sasanian world. Damascius's flight plays a central role in Walker's argument, as he advocates the intellectual openness of the Persian court of at least Khosrow Anoshirvan (531–79 CE), contrary to the Greek sources depicting the event, which previous scholarship had trusted all too much. See pp. 61–63 for a discussion of scholarship that all too readily accepted the view of the Persian court as intellectually and culturally inferior.

60. For neo-Platonic political philosophy, see O'Meara, Platonopolis. O'Meara discusses the extensive neo-Platonic commentary literature of Plato's Republic.

61. Both Becker and Boyarin (see n. 12 herein) advocate work with the Syriac Christian sources as a way to suggest that even in talmudic Babylonia, Christianity established a not insignificant presence, allowing for further work on the close connections between Judaism and Christianity and Jews and Christians even there.

62. I should point out that Holger Zellentin reads the Rashbi story as a parodic imitation and a subversion of Christian models of cave asceticism, which suggests yet another way to bring the story in conversation with another literary culture. I have not had access to the last and definite version of his dissertation, but he graciously shared an earlier version of the relevant chapter with me (see n. 4 herein).