Megillat Taanit (Hebrew: ), lit. "the Scroll of Fasting," is an ancient text, in the form of a chronicle, which enumerates 35 eventful days on which the Jewish nation either performed glorious deeds or witnessed joyful events. Despite the name of the scroll, these days were celebrated as feast-days. Public mourning was forbidden on 14 of them, and public fasting on all. The work was probably written late in the Second Temple period, perhaps from 40–70 CE in the 1st century. The last event dated without dispute is Emperor Caligula's order to place a statue of himself in the Second Temple (c. 39 CE). A few scholars think it references events after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, but references to it in other literature suggest it certainly existed by the 2nd century. The author of the work is unknown, although various rabbinic works speculate on how it was composed.

History of the feast days

The events described therein date to several time periods: the pre-Hasmonean period, the Hasmonean era, the early Roman period and the period of the Great War against Rome, with the majority of the entries relating to the Hasmonean period. Almost half of theses events cannot be conclusively identified. Nearly all commemorate victories in battle, especially those events centered around the Hasmonean period. The days are enumerated, not in the chronological order of the events they commemorate, but in the sequence of the calendar. Megillat Taanit contains twelve chapters, each chapter contains the memorial days of a single month, beginning with Nisan (the first calendar month), and ending with Adar. While J. Schmilg argued that these memorial days become festivals by being incorporated and recorded in Megillat Taanit, later scholarship has concluded that the days had been known and celebrated by the people long before that time (as Schmilg himself was forced to admit in the case of some of them). The celebration of these festivals or semi-festivals evidently existed as early as the time of Judith. The compilers of Megillat Taanit merely listed the memorial days, and at the same time determined that the less important should be celebrated by a mere suspension of fasting, while public mourning was to be forbidden on the more important ones.

Structure

In most editions Megillat Taanit consists of two parts, which are distinct in language and in form, namely: The many quotations from Megillat Taanit in the Talmud are all taken from the Aramaic text and are introduced by the word "ketib" = "it is written". This text, which had been committed to writing and was generally known, was explained and interpreted in the same way as the Bible. The Talmud does not include a single quotation from the scholium. Although the comments found in the scholium are mentioned in the Talmud, they are not credited to Megillat Taanit, but are quoted as independent baraitot, so that the scholium took them from the Talmud, and not vice versa. Schmilg provides references intended to prove an earlier origin for the scholium; however, these sources merely prove that the scholiast intended to make his work pass for a product of the tannaitic period. As the text and the scholium of Megillat Taanit are distinct in form and in language, so do they differ also in historical accuracy. The text is an actual historical source, whose statements may be regarded as authentic, while its dates are reliable if interpreted independently of the scholium. The scholium, on the other hand, is of very doubtful historical value and must be used with extreme caution. Although it contains some old baraitot which are reliable, the compiler has mixed them with other, unhistorical, accounts and legends, so that even those data whose legendary character has not been proved can be credited only when they are confirmed by internal and external evidence. In some editions, a third section appears: the "final discourse" (Hebrew ma'amar aharon) which lists days on which one should fast (in contrast to the rest of Megillat Taanit, which lists days on which fasting is forbidden). This section dates to the period of the Geonim.

Authorship of the Aramaic text

The Talmud, and the scholium to Megillat Taanit itself, provide slightly different accounts of the authorship of Megillat Taanit: Modern scholarship rejects Schmilg's view that the scholium is incorrect, since there is both internal and external evidence in favor of its authenticity. The account in the Talmud and that in the scholium may both be accepted, since not only Hananiah the father, but also Eleazar the son, contributed to the compilation of the work. Eleazar, one of the central figures in the war against the Romans, endeavored to strengthen the national consciousness of his people by continuing his father's work, and increased the number of memorial days in the collection, to remind the people how God had always helped them and had given them the victory over external and internal enemies.

Interpolations

Eleazar did not, however, complete the work, and several days were subsequently added to the list which was definitively closed in Usha, as is proved by the fact that the 12th of Adar is designated as "Trajan's Day," and the 29th of that month as "the day on which the persecutions of Hadrian ceased". Furthermore, Simeon ben Gamaliel II, who was nasi at Usha, says that "If we should turn all the days on which we have been saved from some danger into holidays, and list them in Megillat Ta'anit, we could not satisfy ourselves; for we should be obliged to turn nearly every day into a festival." This indicates that the work was definitely completed at Usha in the time of R. Simon, in order that no further memorial days might be added.

The scholion

The scholion is written in Mishnaic Hebrew combined with some more ancient terminology; there are also some influences from later Babylonian Aramaic. Some stories in the scholion are ancient and reliable, mentioning historical facts nowhere else appearing in Tannaic literature; while others are midrashim taken from a variety of sources. Vered Noam has shown that the scholion currently printed is a medieval hybrid of two independently written commentaries, nicknamed "Scholion O" and "Scholion P", after the Oxford and Parma manuscripts in which they are found. Often these two commentaries contradict each other, offering entirely different stories for the origin of a holiday. In general Scholion O has more overlap with Genesis Rabbah, the Talmud Yerushalmi, and other sources from Israel; while Scholion P is closer to Babylonian sources. The current Scholion, nicknamed the "Hybrid Version", was created in the 9th or 10th centuries by combining Scholia O and P. Scholia O and P may be just two examples of a genre of commentaries on Megillat Taanit, with a partial scholion in the Babylonian Talmud being a third example, and the other examples not surviving.

Editions and commentaries

Megillat Taanit is extant in many editions, and has had numerous commentaries. The best edition of the Aramaic and Hebrew text is that of Vered Noam, which has supplanted A. Neubauer's as the authoritative work in the field. In addition to meticulous philological scholarship, Noam's edition includes rich annotation and a groundbreaking interpretation of the stemmatic history. Of commentaries the following may be mentioned: Abraham ben Joseph ha-Levi, double commentary (Amsterdam, 1656); Judah ben Menahem, double commentary (Dyhernfurth, 1810); Johann Meyer, Latin language translation published in his Tractatus de Temporibus, etc. (Amsterdam, 1724). Derenbourg and Schwab have made French versions of the Aramaic text.

Selected entries

Among the dates penned in Megillat Taanit and which were all forbidden to fast thereon, and for others also forbidden to lament the dead thereon, are to be noted the following:

Scroll of Fasts

The Scroll of Fasting should not be confused with the similarly-named "Scroll of Fasts", an obscure work extant in a Babylonian version and a Palestinian one. It is a list of 22–26 days where fasting should be observed, generally due to the death of Biblical figures or sages. It does not appear to have been a very influential work.