The Book of Zerubbabel is extant in several manuscript and print recensions. What may be the oldest manuscript copy is part of a prayerbook reportedly dated to about 840 CE.[9]
The first publication was in 1519 in
S. A. Wertheimer in his Leqet Midrashim (Jerusalem, 1903).[4] The fullest edition of the work was prepared by Israel Levi in his book L'apocalypse.[4]
Because the book gave an unequivocal date (1058 CE) for the return of the Messiah, it exerted great influence upon contemporary Messianic thought.[5] The book is mentioned by Eleazar of Worms[5] and supposedly[4] by Rashi.[5]Abraham ibn Ezra criticized the book as "unreliable."[4]
One edition of the Pirqe Hekhalot gave a figure of 890 years until the return of the Messiah, making the Messianic year 958 CE, within a decade of the birth of Saadia Gaon.[5] That date perhaps led to a message sent by Rhenish Jews to Palestine inquiring after rumors of the Messiah's advent.[5]
Contents
The
Davidic Messiah[2] and the ultimate triumph of righteousness.[1] The original author expected the Messiah would come in the immediate future; subsequent editors substituted later dates.[5]
Set after
destruction of the Temple (approximately 1058 CE).[5]
Five years prior to the coming of Hephzibah,
Messiah ben David, the Messiah ben Joseph, Nehemiah ben Hushiel, will appear but he will be slain by Armilus.[5] Afterwards, the Messiah ben David will resurrect him.[5] The Sefer Zerubbabel mentions Gog and Armilus rather than Gog and Magog as the enemies.[11]
In the narrative, Zerubbabel is led to a "house of disgrace" (a
Virgin Mary).[1] With Satan as the father, the statue gives birth to the Antichrist Armilus.[1] Forces associated with Armilus and the antitemple come to rule over the entire world.[1] But in the end, these forces are defeated.[1] The work concludes with Zerubbabel's vision of the descent of the Heavenly Temple to earth.[1] Thus, the "form of the eternal house" is revealed; unlike the Second Temple, it is made in heaven.[1]
According to
Talmud Yerushalmi, dealing with the mother of the Messiah Menahem ben Ammiel, Sefer Zerubbabel is the only early Jewish text to import a mother of the Messiah into Judaism.[12] In the Sefer Zerubbabel, Menahem is Menahem ben Ammiel, and his mother is Hephzibah, the same name as the wife of Hezekiah and mother of Manasseh.[13] Hephzibah plays an important role as she finds and uses Aaron's rod.[14]
^Martha Himmelfarb, The Mother of the Messiah in the Talmud Yerushalmi and Sefer Zerubbabel, in Peter Schäfer (ed.) The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman culture: Volume 3, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2002, p. 369, "Through the centuries the Virgin Mary has played a central role in Christian piety. Unlike so many aspects of Christianity, veneration of the ...Here I wish to discuss two texts that actually import a mother of the messiah into Judaism, a passage from Tractate Berakhot in the Talmud Yerushalmi and the Hebrew apocalypse Sefer Zerubbabel. As far as I know, these two texts, together with several reworkings of the story from the Yerushalmi that appear in later rabbinic collections, are the only texts to make this daring move. The Talmud Yerushalmi took shape in Roman.."
^Raʻanan S. Boustan From martyr to mystic: rabbinic martyrology and the making of Merkavah Mysticism (Studies & Texts in Ancient Judaism) (9783161487538) Page 107 2005 "Martha Himmelfarb has rightly argued that the figure of Heftsibah, the mother of Menahem son of Ammiel, the Davidic Messiah in Sefer Zerubbabel, "should be understood as a counterpart to the figure of the Virgin Mary in contemporary "
