As Dan Gruber reveals in Rabbi Akiba’s Messiah, religion and politics were pretty much the same thing from about the time of the Maccabees to the fall of Jerusalem, the period of time in which the Pharisiacal rabbinic movement rose to power and strengthened its hold on all of Jewish life and culture. The interesting thing is that although this may have been true of Jewish society even earlier, never before did those in power elevate themselves to a position of power over even the G-d of Israel. The rabbis did.

Certainly, King David’s rule could have gone a lot smoother had he elevated himself to a positon of authority over G-d, as did Rabbi Akiba. Why, there would have been no penalty for stealing another man’s wife. And he could have built the temple himself, rather than waiting for his son, Solomon, to do it. David was called to account by G-d through an indepedent and outcast prophet. That possibility still existed in Israel prior to Rabbi Akiba.

Akiba, perhaps fearing a prophetic challenge to his power similar to what David faced, implemented a rather ingenious idea; simply by declaring it so, the Akiba movement declared that only rabbis could prophesy legitimately and that all other prophets were illegitimate. They justified their claim by twisting the meaning of scripture to fit their exegetical agenda, as was Akiba’s habit, and that was that.

It was like saying that to be a prophet, you have to have business cards that prove it, only in an even more concrete and exclusive way. Of course, only those rabbis who supported Akiba were granted this rather exclusive prophetic status. Goodbye, prophets. Goodbye Adonai. Hello, absolute rabbinic authority.