, a famous Rabbin, who flourished a little after the destruction
, a famous Rabbin, who flourished a little after
the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, was a Jew only by
the mother’s side, and it is pretended that his father was
descended from Sisera, general of the army of Jabin king
of Tyre. Akiba, for the first forty years of his life, kept
the flocks of Calba Schwa, a rich citizen of Jerusalem, whose
daughter is said to have induced him to study in hopes of
gaining her hand, if he should make any considerable progress. He applied himself accordingly to his studies with
so much assiduity and success, for upwards of twenty years,
that he was considered as one of the most able teachers in
Israel, and was followed by a prodigious number of scholars. He declared himself for the impostor Barchochebas,
and asserted that he was the true Messiah; but the troops
which the emperor Hadrian sent against the Jews, who under the conduct of this false Messiah had committed horrid
massacres, exterminated this faction, and Akiba was taken
and put to death with great cruelty. He lived an hundred
and twenty years, and was buried with his wife in a cave
upon a mountain not far from Tiberias. The Jewish writers
enlarge much upon his praises, and his sayings are often
mentioned in the Mishnu and Talmud. When he died,
they say, the glory of the law vanished away. This happened in the year 135. He was in truth a gross impostor,
and the accounts handed down to us of him are entitled to
very little credit. He is said to have forged a work under
the name of the patriarch Abraham, entitled “Sepher Jezirah,
” or, “The Book of the Creation,
” which was
translated into Latin by Postel, and published at Paris in