RABBINIC AUTHORITY- POWER SHARING

age. As Jacob Neusner has pointed out,’ it had its roots in the earlier Persian and Arsacid Empire . But we hear only vague echoes and nothing definite about that. In the Sassanian period the Jewish community along with other minority communities within the empire exercised a good deal of self government. They were left autonomous as long as these minority populations were loyal and quiet. The Jewish secular power lay in the hands of the Exilarch. This ruler claimed his authority through Davidic descent. The position was sometimes directly hereditary while at the other times different branches of the family produced a new leader. During the centuries, there were long periods in which the Exilarch and the rabbinic leaders of the great academies got along very well. At other periods there was intense strife over political power. One of the problems for the rabbinate during these periods of struggle was the claim of Davidic descent of the Exilarch; which lent power and prestige, particularly in the eyes of the general population(*The scepter shall not depart from Judea nor a law giver from between his feet”).> Such descent could hardly be challenged by rabbinic authority.

The accounts of struggles have come down to us in the form of anecdotes and historic reminiscences often vague and altered through long periods of transmission. For much of the chronology we are dependent on the account of Sherira Gaon. > Many of these battles centered around the appointment of the heads of the great rabbinic schools. Eventually the Exilarch succeeded in obtaining the right to make those appointments. He thus gained control over the rabbinate and through it a large number of the judicial appointments throughout the empire and in the subsequent period in more distant lands as well. The bad treatment of rabbis by Exilarchs is mentioned in various places in the Talmud . All of this led to strong expressions of dislike on the part of some rabbinic authorities for the Exilarch.® As Neusner points out, at the end of the Talmudic Period when the Exilarch had control over the surviving academies, the members of his family attended those

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