Of Sages and Hell's Fire

On the heels of a discussion on the Golden Altar (mizbeach ha-zahav) and its susceptibility to impurity (tumah), the Talmud in Chagigah 27a states:

א"ר אבהו אמר ר"א ת"ח אין אור של גיהנם שולטת בהן ק"ו מסלמנדרא ומה סלמנדרא שתולדת אש היא הסך מדמה אין אור שולטת בו ת"ח שכל גופן אש דכתיב (ירמיהו כג) הלא כה דברי כאש נאם ה' על אחת כמה וכמה

This description of the salamander (or something akin to it) is quite well known and widely attested in the ancient world. Indeed we find it in Aristotle's Historia Animalium 5.19

"Now the salamander is a clear case in point, to show us that animals do actually exist that fire cannot destroy; for this creature, so the story goes, not only walks through the fire but puts it out in doing so."

Now the Talmud's use of the salamander in an argument a minori ad majus is quite witty, but what are we to make of the Sages as fire?

At the very least our passage's use of fire as a quality of the Sages' bodies is a positive one insofar as it protects them from the fires of Hell (Gehinom). However a fiery sage may be harmful to those who draw near to them as we find in the following passage from Mishnah Avos 2:13:

והוי מתחמם כנגד אורן של חכמים, והוי זהיר מגחלתן שמא תיכווה--שנשיכתן נשיכת שועל, ועקיצתן עקיצת עקרב, ולחישתן לחישת שרף, וכל דבריהם כגחלי אש

Eliezer ben Hyrkanus' description is fascinating and requires further study, but I merely quote it in reference to our Chagigah passage so as to problemitize the sage/fire equation.

In order to better understand this equation I think it would be helpful to turn to other sources from antiquity. Especially interesting is the Stoic conception of fire, in particular pur technikon, 'creative fire,' which is closely linked to the logos of the world (see New Pauly 2004, entry Fire and Smith, Heraclitus and Fire, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1966).

Now in returning to our Chagigah passage one might wonder why it is that the talmidei chachamim would be anywhere near the fires of hell in the first place? Again, a look at an outside source proves helpful. Close in language to our Chagigah passage is this from Lacantius, a third century Church Father, in his Divine Institutions 7.21:

"But when He shall have judged the righteous, He will also try them with fire. Then they whose sins shall exceed either in weight or in number, shall be scorched by the fire and burnt: but they whom full justice and maturity of virtue has imbued will not perceive that fire; for they have something of God in themselves which repels and rejects the violence of the flame. So great is the force of innocence, that the flame shrinks from it without doing harm; which has received from God this power, that it burns the wicked, and is under the command of the righteous."

Lacantius's work includes summaries and paraphrases of The Oracles of Hystaspes, a Persian apocalyptic text, and other eschatological and apocalyptic passages in Divine Institutions closely resemble the eschatology of the Avesta. Both the righteous and wicked will be judged by fire as is apparent in Yasna 43:4:

"Then shall I recognize thee as strong and holy, O Mazda, when by the hand in which thou thyself dost hold the destinies that thou wilt assign to the Liar and the Righteous, by the glow of thy Fire whose power is Right, the might of Good Thought shall come to me."

and in 51:9,

"What recompense thou wilt give to the two parties by thy red Fire, by the molten metal, give us a sign of it in our souls - even the bringing of ruin to the Liar, of blessing to the Righteous."

For more on Persian apocalypticism, see Hultgard's essay on the subject in the Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, ed. by John J. Collins.