Comparing Judaism and Christianity: Common Judaism, Paul, and the Inner and the Outer in Ancient Religion 978-1506406077

Table of contents :
Also by E. P. Sanders xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xv
Abbreviations xvii
1. Comparing Judaism and Christianity
An Academic Autobiography
1
Part I. Early Judaism and the Jewish Law
2. The Origin of the Phrase “Common Judaism” 31
3. Covenantal Nomism Revisited 51
4. The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews
Commonalities, Overlaps, and Differences
85
5. Common Judaism and the Synagogue in the First
Century
125
Part II. Paul, Judaism, and Paulinism
6. The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the
Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic
Judaism
141
7. God Gave the Law to Condemn
Providence in Paul and Josephus
175
8. Literary Dependence in Colossians 197
9. Was Paul a Prooftexter?
The Case of Galatians 3
219
10. Did Paul Break with Judaism? 231
11. Did Paul’s Theology Develop? 241
12. Paul’s Jewishness 267
13. Jewish Association with Gentiles and Galatians
2:11–14
287
Part III. Inner and Outer in the Study of Religion
14. “By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them”
Inner Governs Outer
311
15. Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing
Hypocrisy and Sincerity
327
16. Tithing Mint, Dill, and Cumin
Triviality and Rituals
345
17. Defenses against Charges of Hypocrisy and
Triviality
361
18. Faith and Works in Ancient Judaism 379
19. Faith and Works in Early Christianity 395
20. Insider and Outsider in Ancient Judaism 407
21. Insider and Outsider in Early Christianity 417
22. Christianity, Judaism, and Humanism 429
Index of Names 447

Citation preview

Few scholars have so shaped the contemporary debate on the relation of early Christianity to early Judaism as E. P. Sanders, and no one has produced a clearer or more distinctive vision of that relationship as it was expressed in the figures of Jesus of Nazareth and Paul the apostle. Gathered for the first time within one cover, Sanders presents formative essays that show the structure of his approach and the insights that it produces into Paul’s relationship to Judaism and the Jewish law. Sanders addresses matters of definition (“common Judaism,” “covenantal nomism”), diversity (the Judaism of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Diaspora), and key exegetical and historical questions relative to Jesus, Paul, and Christian origins in relationship to early Judaism.

sanders

Insights into complex relationships

These essays show a leading scholar at his most erudite as he carries forward and elaborates many of the insights that have become touchstones in New Testament interpretation.

E. P. Sanders was professor of religion successively at McMaster, Oxford, and Duke

Universities and is a fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has written numerous landmark books, including, from Fortress Press, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (1990; Fortress edition 2016); Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (1992; Fortress edition 2016); Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought (2015); Jesus and Judaism (1985); and the national award winning Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (1977).

Religion / New Testament

comparing

Preface Part I: Early Judaism and the Jewish Law Part II: Paul, Judaism, and Paulinism Part III: Inner and Outer in the Study of Religion Index

Judaism & Christianity

Contents

comparing

Judaism & Christianity Common Judaism, Paul, and the Inner and the Outer in Ancient Religion

e. p. sanders

Comparing Judaism and Christianity

Comparing Judaism and Christianity Common Judaism, Paul, and the Inner and Outer in the Study of Religion

E. P. Sanders

Fortress Press Minneapolis

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY Common Judaism, Paul, and the Inner and Outer in the Study of Religion Copyright © 2016 Fortress Press. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Visit http://www.augsburgfortress.org/copyrights/ or write to Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440. Cover image: Mosaic decoration from the Synagogue. 3rd century. © Vanni Archive/ Art Resource, NY. Cover design: Tory Hermann Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-0607-7 eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-0608-4 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984. Manufactured in the U.S.A. This book was produced using Pressbooks.com, and PDF rendering was done by PrinceXML.

In Memory of

Heikki Räisänen 1941–2015 Peerless Scholar, Dearest Friend

Contents

Also by E. P. Sanders Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations

1.

Comparing Judaism and Christianity An Academic Autobiography

xi xiii xv xvii

1

Part I. Early Judaism and the Jewish Law 2.

The Origin of the Phrase “Common Judaism”

31

3.

Covenantal Nomism Revisited

51

4.

The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews

85

Commonalities, Overlaps, and Differences

5.

Common Judaism and the Synagogue in the First Century

125

Part II. Paul, Judaism, and Paulinism 6.

The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism

141

7.

God Gave the Law to Condemn Providence in Paul and Josephus

175

8.

Literary Dependence in Colossians

197

9.

Was Paul a Prooftexter?

219

The Case of Galatians 3

10.

Did Paul Break with Judaism?

231

11.

Did Paul’s Theology Develop?

241

12.

Paul’s Jewishness

267

13.

Jewish Association with Gentiles and Galatians 2:11–14

287

Part III. Inner and Outer in the Study of Religion 14.

“By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them” Inner Governs Outer

15.

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing Hypocrisy and Sincerity

16.

Tithing Mint, Dill, and Cumin Triviality and Rituals

311 327 345

17.

Defenses against Charges of Hypocrisy and Triviality

361

18.

Faith and Works in Ancient Judaism

379

19.

Faith and Works in Early Christianity

395

20.

Insider and Outsider in Ancient Judaism

407

21.

Insider and Outsider in Early Christianity

417

22.

Christianity, Judaism, and Humanism

429

Index of Names

447

Also by E. P. Sanders

From Fortress Press Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (1977) Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (1983) Jesus and Judaism (1985) Jewish Law between Jesus and the Mishnah (first published 1990; Fortress Press edition 2016) Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (first published 1992; Fortress Press edition 2016) Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought (2015)

xi

Preface

The original idea that led to the publication of these essays and lectures was that several of them are helpful companion pieces to my recent book, Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought (Fortress Press, 2015). In the introductory essay (“An Academic Autobiography”) and in part 2, on Paul, Judaism, and Paulinism, one will find aspects of the history of the development of my thinking about Paul and especially about his Jewishness. Moreover, some of these essays treat aspects of Paul and Judaism more thoroughly than was possible in the new book. Since one cannot write about Paul without writing about Judaism, my second thought was to include some of my essays on Judaism (part 1). I think that these essays will clarify my previous positions about “covenantal nomism” and “common Judaism.” These two topics are relevant not only to the study of Judaism but also to understanding Paul. The thirteen essays in parts 1 and 2 would not have filled the pages available, and I have attached, as a special section, part 3, on Inner and Outer in the Study of Religion. One will understand the meaning of inner and outer in this context if one thinks of familiar biblical phrases like “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and “by their fruits you will know them.” These lectures focus on views about hypocrisy, doing good deeds in public, and so on in Christianity and Judaism, but they sometimes range outside those parameters. The lectures, which have not been published previously, were given at the University of Birmingham as the Cadbury Lectures of 1999‒2000. Those ten days or so with congenial colleagues stand out as a very satisfying and heartwarming experience. I have thrown in for good measure (as the saying goes) an essay on “Christianity, Judaism, and Humanism.” I had intended to write a short xiii

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

treatise, to be called “Democracy, Christianity, and Fundamentalism.” After about three years of study, I concluded that I would not be able to write about the Enlightenment in a few dozen pages, because the Enlightenment was complex, and I love to study details and complications. I would wander off into comparisons between (for example) the English and the Scottish Enlightenments. What survives of this intention is chapter 22 in the present volume. Rebecca Gray, my beloved wife, once again spent numerous days helping to prepare the manuscript for the press. Some of these essays required restoration, partly because they were written using now outof-date software. Becky’s assistance was invaluable. I am deeply grateful to our friends Wendy Bernhardt, who typed a corrected version of chapter 8, and Megan Chobot, who re-typed the Greek text in chapter 9. E. P. Sanders Durham, North Carolina April 2016

xiv

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 was presented at “New Views of First-Century Jewish and Christian Self-Definition: An International Conference in honor of E. P. Sanders,” at the University of Notre Dame, April 2003, and subsequently published in Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders, edited by Fabian E. Udoh with Mark Chancey, Susannah Heschel, and Gregory Tatum, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008). Republished courtesy of the University of Notre Dame Press. Chapter 2 was presented at “‘Common Judaism’ or a Plurality of ‘Judaisms’ in Late Antiquity: The State of the Debate,” conference sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, May 2003. It was later published in modified form in Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism, edited by Wayne McCready and Adele Reinhartz (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011). Chapter 3 was a plenary lecture at the Annual Meeting of the MidAtlantic region of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature, March 2004, and was subsequently published in Jewish Studies Quarterly 16 (2009): 25–55. Republished courtesy of Mohr Siebeck. Chapter 4 was published in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, edited by Timothy H. Lim and others (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000). Republished courtesy of T&T Clark. Chapter 5 first appeared in Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural Interaction during the Greco-Roman Period, edited by Stephen Fine (London: Routledge, 1999). Republished courtesy of Routledge. xv

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Chapter 6 was published in Jews, Greeks and Christians: Religious Cultures in Late Antiquity. Essays in Honor of William David Davies, edited by R. Hamerton-Kelly and R. Scroggs (Leiden: Brill, 1976). Republished courtesy of Brill. Chapter 7 was first published in The Impartial God: Essays in Biblical Studies in Honor of Jouette M. Bassler, edited by Calvin Roetzel and Robert Foster, New Testament Monographs 22 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007). Republished courtesy of Continuum Books. Chapter 8 was published in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul & John in Honor of J. Louis Martyn, edited by Robert T. Fortna and Beverly R. Gaventa (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990). Republished courtesy of Abingdon, with revisions by E. P. Sanders. Chapter 9 first appeared in Journal of Biblical Literature 85 (1966): 28–45, and is republished courtesy of the Society of Biblical Literature. Chapter 10 was presented at the Society of Biblical Literature in 2008. It is based in part on an earlier presentation at the University of Notre Dame in 1993, entitled “Proof-texts, Theological Deduction, and Revelation in Early Christianity.” Chapter 11 was presented at the University of Lausanne and, in German, at the University of Bern in 1996. Chapter 12 was presented at the University of Copenhagen in 2003 and subsequently published in The Word Leaps the Gap (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). Republished courtesy of Eerdmans. Chapter 13 was published in Paul’s Jewish Matrix, edited by Thomas G. Casey and Justin Taylor, Bible in Dialogue (Glenville, SC: Ambassador Books, 2011). Republished courtesy of Ambassador Books. Chapters 14 to 21 were originally presented as the Edward Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham in 2000. Chapter 22 was presented at Baylor University and the Jewish Federation of Waco, 2007.

xvi

Abbreviations

1 Clem.

1 Clement

1QH

Qumran Hodayot [chapter 2] or Thanksgiving Hymns [chapter 4] or Hymns [chapter 18]

1QM

Qumran War Scroll

1QpHab

Qumran Commentary on Habakkuk

1QS

Qumran Community Rule

2 Macc.

2 Maccabees

3 Macc.

3 Maccabees

4QMMT

Qumran scroll of Some of the Precepts of the Torah

11QTemple Qumran Temple Scroll Aboth or Avot

“The Fathers”; Pirkê Avot, “Sayings of the Fathers.” A collection of Rabbinic sayings in the fourth section of the Mishnah.

Add Esth

Additions to Esther

Ag. Ap

Josephus, Against Apion

Ant.

Josephus, Jewish Antiquities

Arist or Let. Aris.

Letter of Aristeas

T. Abraham

The Testament of Abraham

BJS

Brown Judaic Studies

b. Šabb

Babylonian Talmud on the tractate Šabbat (Sabbath)

CD

Qumran Damascus Document

xvii

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Cher.

Philo, On the Cherubim

Creation

Philo, On the Creation of the World

Did.

Didache

Embassy

Philo, On the Embassy to Gaius

‘Erub

‘Erubin

Good Person

Philo, That Every Good Person is Free

Hag.

Hagigah

Heir

Philo, Who Is the Heir?

Histories

Tacitus, The Histories, trans. C. H. Moore (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931)

Hypothetica

Philo, Hypothetica

Jdth.

Judith

Jub.

Jubilees

J. W.

Josephus, Jewish War

Jos. Asen

Joseph and Aseneth

L. A. B.

Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum

Let. Aris.

Letter of Aristeas [see “Arist.” above]

Life

Josephus, The Life

Mek.

Mekilta of R. Ishmael, Rabbinic commentary on Exodus

m.

Mishnah

Migr.

Philo, On the Migration of Abraham

Moses

Philo, On the Life of Moses

Philo

Philo, 10 vols., trans. F. H. Colson and R. Marcus (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929–62)

Pseudo-Philo

Psalms of Solomon

Repub.

Plato, The Republic

Šabb.

Šabbat

Sanh.

Sanhedrin

Saturae

Juvenal, Saturae (English: Satires); trans. G. G. Ramsay (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918)

xviii

ABBREVIATIONS

Seneca

Seneca, Epistulae Morales (English: Moral Epistles); trans. R. M. Gummere (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917–25)

Sifra

Rabbinic commentary on Leviticus

Sifre Devarim or Early rabbinic commentary on Deuteronomy Sifre Deuteronomy Sifre

Reuven Hammer, Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)

Spec. Laws

Philo, On the Special Laws

Stern

Menachem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism: From Tacitus to Simplicius, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1980)

Suetonius

Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, trans. J. C. Rolfe (LCL; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1913)

t.

Tosefta

Talmud

Soncino Babylonian Talmud, ed. I. Epstein (London: Soncino, 1934)

WUNT

Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

Yad.

Yadayim

xix

1

Comparing Judaism and Christianity

An Academic Autobiography

In April 2003 I was invited to participate at an international conference, titled “New Views of First-Century Jewish and Christian Self-Definition,” given in my honor at the University of Notre Dame. I wish here to thank the organizers for their invitation, my dear friends Mark Chancey, Susannah Heschel, Gregory Tatum, and Fabian Udoh. The original idea of this address was to respond to some twenty-four papers. I soon realized that this would be impossible. At best I could have discussed only a few points. I decided instead to give an account of the circumstances in which I wrote some of my books. More precisely: what did I think that I was doing? I do not think that my intellectual biography is either impressive or important, and there are dangers in later reflections. Hindsight may serve as rose-colored glasses, and thinking about one’s youth may be merely self-indulgent. Thus I was by no means confident that I should write an academic autobiography. After I presented it at the conference, however, the remarks of others led me to think that it serves a useful purpose. I still think that my books addressed important topics, and it may be worth something if I say how I came to write three of them. I shall begin with a brief account of my youth.

1

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Childhood and Education I grew up in Grand Prairie, Texas, in the 1940s and 1950s. Although Grand Prairie is close to both Dallas and Fort Worth, families such as mine, which was at the lower end of the economic spectrum, lived almost entirely in our small town, seldom traveling to the nearby cities. Besides being separated from the influence of major cultural attractions, we were also very remote from the world of advanced learning. Thanks to my mother’s college textbooks, I read extensively in English literature and world history, but despite this I had no conception of a life lived as a scholar and (of course) no idea of what such a life would require. The struggle to learn languages became a dominant factor in my life. I did not meet a foreigner, or even someone who spoke a foreign language, until I went to college. Before I started high school (at age sixteen), the only foreign language available was two years of Spanish (though Spanish speakers had not yet settled in the area where I lived). Thanks to the influence of my boyhood friend Dudley Chambers, who was the son of the superintendent of schools, two years of Latin became available when we began high school. Dudley and I, together with a few others, dutifully worked in Latin. I attended the only college I could afford, Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth, which generously provided a scholarship and arranged for a part-time job. There the only language available was French, which I studied for three years, gaining fair fluency in reading. We had no language labs, and I did not acquire the ability to comprehend spoken French. I have been asked why I did not go elsewhere, for example, Europe, to learn modern languages. There are two answers: (1) I did not think of it, nor did anyone mention it to me; and (2) I could not have afforded it. Since travel is now very cheap relative to incomes, I shall offer an anecdote from a novel, published in 1946, that describes small-town America in the 1920s and 1930s. In it, a mind reader is explaining the trick of knowing what is in a person’s mind. First, one must realize that there are only a few subjects: health, wealth, love, travel, and success. The most-asked question was, “Am I ever going to make a trip?”1 Money was not quite as scarce, nor was travel quite as rare, in the 1950s as it had been in the 1920s and ’30s, but the circumstances 1. William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley (New York: Rinehart, 1946), reprinted in Robert Polito, ed., Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s, Library of America 94 (New York: Library of America, 1997), 517–795.

2

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

of my own family were not much different from the period of the Great Depression. A round-trip (return) ticket to Europe would have cost more than my father’s annual income, and we were not entirely abnormal. One of my teachers, a member of one of the town’s more prosperous families, once spent a week in New York, and her description of the trip filled us schoolchildren with wonder. It was the first time I had ever heard of anyone traveling so far (except, of course, to fight during World War II). I knew of only one small group of Grand Prairians who went abroad before I graduated from college. The teachers and many other people in Grand Prairie knew that I had abilities. They talked to me about how well I could do in the professions. A local doctor, William Colip, offered to guarantee my expenses in medical school if I made A’s in premed courses. Alas! I was only interested in the humanities, especially history and literature, and the only well-educated people I knew were in the three professions that flourish in small towns—law, medicine, and ministry. I learned many things from going to church, but not that reading the Bible required Hebrew and Greek, nor that understanding it required German and French. I had local boosters, but none who could point me in the right direction. I knew from the time I was in college (1955–59) that I wanted to study ancient history and specialize in religion. But I did not know what I needed to know, nor did anybody tell me, until I went to the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas (1959–62). There, it readily became apparent that I needed to learn Greek, Hebrew, and German (as well as French). I took all the language courses I could while at SMU (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac), and I took summer courses in German (besides selling cookware, which, along with scholarships and work in local churches, supported me). My life basically changed when William R. Farmer, the senior New Testament scholar at Perkins, decided that I should have a year of study abroad. Bill and Samuel Crossley, a friend and former employer who was then director of Christian education at University Park Methodist Church, set out to raise money. A large contribution came from a member of First Methodist Church in Fort Worth (where Sam and I had formerly worked). Bill Farmer, for his part, contacted Rabbi Levi A. Olan of Temple Emanuel in Dallas, who received a very large anonymous donation from one of the members of the temple. I felt overwhelmed by their generosity, and I especially vowed that the gift from Temple Emanuel would not be in vain. Altogether, Bill and Sam

3

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

raised about $10,000. Bill wrote some letters of introduction. I had met two major scholars when they lectured at SMU, and both were very helpful at this stage of my life (as well as later). David Daube encouraged me to come to Oxford and said he would help me if I were there. Morton Smith contributed letters of introduction and advised me on people who could be helpful in Israel. Most fruitfully, both Bill Farmer and Morton Smith wrote to Yigael Yadin. And I set off on my adventure (1962–63). I studied German in Göttingen from June until October 1962 and then went to Oxford to see what David Daube could arrange. This resulted in my working on rabbinic Hebrew for two terms. Dissatisfied with my progress, I decided to study modern Hebrew to learn how to read unvocalized texts, and went to Jerusalem. There Yigael Yadin twisted the arm of Mordechai Kamrat, who accepted me as a private pupil, and I began to acquire a serious amount of Hebrew. Almost all of the people mentioned in the previous paragraphs are now dead, and some did not live to see whether or not their selfless assistance to a poor, ignorant boy paid off. I hope that I have been half as helpful to a few as these great, busy men were to me. Paul and Palestinian Judaism In September 1963, when I started graduate school at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where the New Testament faculty members were John Knox, W. D. Davies, and Louis Martyn, I had three views about the field that I was entering and what I would like to do: (1) Religion is not just theology, and in fact is often not very theological at all. New Testament scholarship then (as now) paid too much attention to theology and not enough attention to religion. Bultmann, who came out of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, bore a lot of the responsibility. His turn toward Lutheran theology was part of a larger movement, and I mention him only because he was so influential in New Testament studies. (2) To know one religion is to know none. The human brain comprehends by comparing and contrasting, and consequently comparison in the study of religion is essential, not optional. (3) New Testament scholars ought to study Judaism. I cannot now say what had convinced me of numbers 1 and 2 (too much theology, comparison necessary). Bill Farmer had told me number 3 (study Judaism), and I simply believed him. That explains why, before beginning doctoral work, I had gone to Oxford, where

4

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Daube got me into a class, taught by David Patterson, that was translating Mishnah Sanhedrin, and also why I went to Israel to study modern Hebrew. It was furthermore the intention to study Judaism that led me to Union. W. D. Davies was the leading New Testament scholar who wrote about the rabbis, and he had also argued in favor of the interpenetration of Judaism and Hellenism.2 Moreover, Union was across the street from Jewish Theological Seminary, where I took some courses. Although I do not know for sure why I thought that students of religion should not concentrate so exclusively on theology, I do know some of the things I had read. My two favorite books were E. R. Goodenough’s By Light, Light3 and C. H. Dodd’s The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel.4 I liked the mysticism that was so obviously important in the study of Philo and John, and at the time I identified it as part of “nontheological religion”: it is more about experience than about thought. Dodd’s detailed use of passages from Philo and the Revelation of the Thrice-Great Hermes to illuminate John was, I thought, marvelous. And I found Goodenough’s portrayal of mystic Judaism enticing. While at Union, I also started working my way through Goodenough’s Jewish Symbols,5 which impressed me almost as much as By Light, Light. I spent some weeks reading about ancient astrology, which I then started seeing on lots of the pages of the New Testament. Astrology constituted more evidence of a fairly nontheological form of religion. Even if I could, I would not now take you through the rest of my reading list. I found that meeting the requirements of a doctoral program distracted me from my true studies, and I also knew that I could not write a comparative doctoral dissertation. It was bound to take a long time, and I wanted out. So I hopped through the hoops with as much alacrity as I could and finished in two years and nine months. My doctoral dissertation was called “The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition.”6 It dealt with a question of form criticism: did the Gospel tradition change in consistent ways, becoming (for example), longer, 2. W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (London: SPCK, 1948; repr., Mifflintown, PA: Sigler, 1998). “Interpenetration” is the subject of chapter 1. 3. E. R. Goodenough, By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1935). 4. C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). 5. E. R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 13 vols., Bollingen Series 37 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953–68). 6. E. P. Sanders, The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 9 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

5

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

more detailed, and less Semitic? The question went back to the interest in synoptic studies that Bill Farmer had planted in me,7 although I did not write on the “Synoptic problem” as such.8 The dissertation left me knowing less about the “authenticity” of the synoptic tradition than Bultmann (for example) had known, since it argued that there were no “laws” of the tradition that governed change. The material had altered in the course of transmission, but I concluded that we do not know in what ways it had changed. At the time, I did not see any way of beginning work on the historical Jesus, but I wanted to postpone that anyway, since I intended, after graduation, to begin a career as a comparativist. Having written a doctoral dissertation that was substantially influenced by the agenda of Bill Farmer, I proposed after my doctoral work to take up a project that would be more like the work of W. D. Davies. My plan was then to return to Israel to begin reading rabbinic literature. I won a scholarship, but job offers began to arrive. The year was 1966; the United States had recently learned that the Constitution did not prohibit teaching about religion in tax-supported universities. The baby boomers were arriving in full force; universities were expanding; departments of religion were springing up and growing. Growth and expansion affected Canada as well. Eugene Combs of McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario) phoned and asked if I would come for an interview. I replied, as I had to others, that I was going to Israel. Eugene, however, proposed that I come for two years and then take leave to go to Israel; they wanted to get New Testament studies started in their new department. So that’s what I did. I remained at McMaster from 1966 to 1984, though I spent a few years away, either on leave or as a visiting professor elsewhere. Why study the rabbis when what interested me was Hellenistic astrology and mysticism? I had thought of a Jewish topic that was not theological and that allowed for comparison and contrast—the three points that I regarded as essential. First, I would carry out an intraJewish comparison. Then I would figure out a way to compare something Jewish with something Christian. My conception of project 7. While I was a student at Perkins, William R. Farmer was writing The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Review of the Problem of the Literary Relationships between Matthew, Mark, and Luke (New York: Macmillan, 1964). 8. Much later, my interest in both the Synoptic problem and form criticism led to E. P. Sanders and Margaret Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989). I contributed the sections on source criticism, form criticism, and life-ofJesus research. Meg wrote the section on holistic readings.

6

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

number one, an intra-Jewish comparison, was largely determined by E. R. Goodenough. I had read in his Jewish Symbols—and of course I believed it—that George Foot Moore’s Judaism9 really existed, though it was a long way from being “normative.” Moore’s rabbinic Judaism, rather, was a small island in a vast ocean of Hellenistic Jewish mysticism. Goodenough was not expert in rabbinic literature, though, as Samuel Sandmel observed, by reading it in English he “absorbed a tremendous amount of its quantity and quite a bit of its quality.”10 Perhaps out of modesty, Goodenough had little to say about how Moore’s rabbinic Judaism and his own Hellenized Judaism related to each other, except that they were quite distinct and that Hellenized Judaism was by far the larger kind of Judaism.11 I had read Wolfson12 and Belkin13 on Philo, and so I knew that there were studies of Philo and the rabbis. But I thought that Goodenough’s Philo—not Wolfson’s—was the real Philo, and that therefore the real Philo had not yet been properly compared and contrasted with the rabbis.14 I also knew that there were lots of things that I could not do, such as study all the legal topics common to Philo and the rabbis. Nor, I thought, was it necessary, in view of previous work. Since mysticism was appealing, I first thought of comparing Philonic mysticism with rabbinic, but I decided against it on the grounds that mysticism was generally not 9. George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of Tannaim, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927–30). 10. Samuel Sandmel, “An Appreciation,” in Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of E. R. Goodenough, ed. Jacob Neusner, Studies in the History of Religion XIV (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 8–9, 10. 11. I have been unable to find the source of the analogy “like a small island in a vast ocean.” On the two kinds of Judaism, however, and their relative scope, see Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 12:185–90, 197–98; 4:3–24. In By Light, Light, Goodenough had hesitated about the relative size of “normative” and nonnormative, mystical Judaism: the latter was the Judaism of “at least an important minority” (p. 5; similarly, 9). Even here, however, some of his claims were strong: “if Judaism in the circles that were using the Septuagint had come to mean what I have indicated . . .” (9). In any case, it seems to have been the work that went into producing Symbols that resulted in his confidence that mystic Judaism was far larger than rabbinic Judaism. 12. Harry A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, rev. ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962). 13. Samuel Belkin, Philo and the Oral Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940). 14. My only published effort at comparing Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism is E. P. Sanders, “The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism,” in Jews, Greeks and Christians: Religious Cultures in Late Antiquity: Essays in Honor of William David Davies, ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly and Robin Scroggs, Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 21 (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 11–44, which is reprinted as chapter 6 of the present book. I wrote this when Paul and Palestinian Judaism was almost finished, and so the section on Palestinian Judaism repeated covenantal nomism (although I made use of 2 Baruch, which I decided not to include in Paul and Palestinian Judaism). I proposed that Joseph and Aseneth and the “real” Philo (Goodenough’s Philo) reflect forms of mystical Judaism, but that, nevertheless, in parts of Philo the importance of the covenant (called by him the politeia, “commonwealth”) shines through, as does the view that the law should be obeyed.

7

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

very important in rabbinic literature.15 Apart from mysticism and astrology, I knew of another nontheological aspect of religion: pious practices. I usually called these “practical piety,” but “pious practices” is a superior term. I did not know anything about ancient pious practices. Well, I knew about prayer and—very vaguely—sacrifice, and I also knew from Goodenough that mysticism might include mystic rites. Guided by ignorance and a few clues, I thought that there must be bunches of pious practices, that I would be able to find them, and that by comparing rabbinic and Hellenistic Jewish practices I could make a contribution to understanding the relationship between Goodenough’s Judaism and Moore’s Judaism. Thus I could do a Jewish, comparative study on a nontheological aspect of religion and eventually follow it up by turning to pious practices in early Christianity. To say that at this stage I “saw through a glass darkly” would be to claim far too much. In any case, the plan was hatched: compare the pious practices of the rabbis and Goodenough’s Jews (Philo and Jewish symbols). I realized that I would have to dig for the pious practices. Moore and Goodenough did not give sufficient information. Cheered on by my colleagues and the administration at McMaster,16 I won a fellowship and headed to Israel to study the rabbis (1968–69). 17 I should confess that it never occurred to me that I could not do what I proposed. Along with a great deal of ignorance, I carried out of Texas the simple assumption that anyone could do anything. Ignorance, in a way, was bliss. Had I know the difficulties, I probably would have tried something much more modest. But, as things were, I wrote a grant application, referees wrote letters, and a committee approved the application. The project appeared feasible, given a bit of work. It was, in fact, several years after I completed Paul and Palestinian Judaism that I realized that it was all beyond my abilities. I have felt like a fraud ever since, although I have worked hard to try to cover it up. (I have by 15. Emphasis is on the word generally. I had read Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1941; repr., 1961); Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1960). 16. Along with numerous others, I am deeply indebted to the senior administration of McMaster University. Though the sciences predominated in the university and accounted for its reputation in Canada, the administrators wanted strength in the humanities and social sciences, and this included sponsoring and paying for a large and excellent Department of Religion. Our work—and I admit, especially mine—was materially assisted in numerous ways. I remember with deep gratitude Mel Preston, Bill Hellmuth, Alvin Lee, Art Bourns, Saul Frankel, and Peter George. 17. The fellowship was from the Canada Council, later called the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

8

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

now reached the point of viewing it as salutary that when one learns a lot, one also learns how much is yet to be done.) Perhaps I could put the reflection thus: At a fairly early stage, I became aware of the fact that I sometimes applied the principle “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” and other times the principle “better safe than sorry,” but that I did not know in advance which one to follow. When young, of course, I mostly lived by the first maxim. In the fall of 1968, my beloved friend and teacher, Mordechai Kamrat, took me in as a student again. Kamrat was one of the two most remarkable people I have ever known; the other was David Daube, with whom I had had numerous discussions in Oxford in 1962 to 1963. Kamrat knew all languages: I once heard him converse in Danish, and once he and I watched a TV program from Cyprus: he translated, though he had never been in a Greek-speaking country.18 And he could teach anyone anything. Like many Israelis, he was chronically short of money. I paid him a weekly sum that seemed reasonable at the time; it was about the same as I later paid for my daughter’s piano lessons. Dr. Kamrat had started studying the Talmud at the age of four in Poland. Befriended by a Catholic priest, he was given access to a library and began to acquire languages other than Yiddish, Aramaic, Hebrew, Polish, and Russian, and knowledge other than Talmudic. He ended up with a PhD from the University of Krakow in pedagogical psychology, went to British-controlled Palestine (the only one in his family to escape the Holocaust), and figured out how to teach Hebrew to immigrants from anywhere.19 He taught me modern Hebrew and rabbinics in the same way: inductively, with drill. We started with the Mekhilta. I went to Moshe Schreiber Buchhandlung, dusted off my five-year old Hebrew, and asked advice about editions. I came back with most of the Tannaitic midrashim. Fortunately, I did not know that Lauterbach had translated the Mekhilta into English. When I later consulted the existing German translations of the midrashim, I am glad to say, I found the Hebrew clearer than the German. I don’t mean to say that I achieved fluency in rabbinic Hebrew. A long way from it. I read slowly and sometimes needed help. And now, thirty-five years later, my Hebrew is quite rusty, and I have to look up lots of words that I once knew. As I indicated above, I shared the common American 18. “All languages” is hyperbolic. As far as I discovered, he knew Latin and Greek, as well as all of the Slavic, Germanic, Romance, and Semitic languages that are spoken today. He once told me that he had dabbled in Chinese—which may have meant that he knew quite a lot. 19. Mordechai Kamrat, Inculcation of the Hebrew Language (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Karni, 1962).

9

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

weakness of starting to learn foreign languages after I became an adult. Moreover, I’m not gifted. Being around Kamrat was sufficient to make me very modest about my ability to learn languages. I was very fortunate that we started and ended with the Tannaitic midrashim, in which I had no translations available. I had Danby20 with me, but luckily we did not read the Mishnah, and so I had to figure the rabbis out in their own language—with, of course, Dr. Kamrat’s help. I fell in love. The first things I noticed about the rabbis were their humanity, tolerance, and good humor. I also noted, of course, their academic love of precision. They wanted to find out what animal the Passover victim should be, how it should be cooked,21 and so forth, and they were keen to establish the meaning of ben ha-‘arabayim.22 Besides the desire to understand the sacred text, which makes them very much like New Testament scholars, toleration of disagreement was their strongest and most consistent characteristic. The discussion of how long a man could be alone with a woman who was not his wife—which we eventually reached—struck me as a notable case of rather humorous whimsy. There was a kind of playful one-upmanship. Is “as long as it takes to swallow an egg” longer or shorter than “as long as it takes for a palm tree, bent by the wind, to snap upright”? 23 Besides making it through most of the major and minor Tannaitic midrashim,24 the other book that I read that year was J. N. Epstein’s Mevo’ot le-Sifrut ha-Tannaim.25 It was eye-opening. I toyed with efforts to translate it, but it is full of quotations, for many of which the editor did not give the source. This is all very well for those who have memorized the Talmud, but it was too much for me. What I learned, though, is 20. Herbert Danby, trans., The Mishnah: Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933). 21. Exodus 12 and Deuteronomy 16 do not entirely agree on the animal or how it was cooked, and so the rabbis had to sort these matters. See, e.g., Sifre Deuteronomy pisqa 129. 22. “Between the two evenings” perhaps originally (Exod 12:6; Num 9:3) meant “twilight.” That did not allow sufficient time, however, to slaughter tens of thousands of animals in the temple courts, clean up, and perform the regular evening sacrifices. Thus the “right” meaning of the term had to be discovered. According to Mekilta Pisha (Bo’) 5, it meant “after the sixth hour of the day,” i.e., after noon; see Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1933), 1:43. 23. Sifre Zuta to Num 15:3. See H. S. Horovitz, Sifre d’Be Rab, Fasciculus primus: Siphre ad Numeros adjecto Siphre zutta (Leipzig: Wahrmann Books, 1917; corrected ed.; repr., 1966), 233. See also t. Sotah 1.2. See Saul Lieberman, ed., The Tosefta, 3 vols. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1955–73), Sotah, 151. My memory is that Dr. Kamrat and I read hazārat deqel as “restoration of a palm tree [bent by the wind].” In light of lehaqqîf in Sifre Numbers pisqa 7 (Horovitz, Siphre d’Be Rab, 12), one might translate “as long as it takes to encompass [walk around] a palm tree.” 24. We read the Mekilta, Sifre on Numbers and Deuteronomy, most of Sifra, Sifre Zuta on Numbers, and parts of the Mekilta of R. Shime’on b. Yohai. 25. J. N. Epstein, Introduction to Tannaitic Literature, ed. E. Z. Melamed (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1959).

10

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

that it is possible to do critical historical work with the literature, and in particular to identify the setam, the anonymous voice in each tractate or even each chapter. I knew, of course, that I could never do it, but Epstein’s demonstration has caused me ever since to look suspiciously at critical work that does not begin with identification of the anonymous voice. At the end of the year, I reread George Foote Moore’s Judaism. I planned to compare his Judaism to that of Goodenough, and now that I had read some of Moore’s favorite sources, I thought it was time to reread his great work. I have mentioned that I was struck by the humanity and tolerance of the rabbis. I had, therefore, begun to form the view that what some of my favorite New Testament scholars, such as Rudolf Bultmann, had told me about Pharisaic or rabbinic Judaism26 was not true. Now, as I read Moore, I saw a polemic against another view between the lines. And I concluded that on more or less every point that he discussed, he was correct. The rabbis really believed in the grace of God and the efficacy of repentance. So Moore wrote; so the mere reading of rabbinic literature proved. I did not like Moore’s organization of the material, which basically followed the Christian creed: the idea of God, followed by man (which now would be called humanity), sin, atonement, and the hereafter (along with some other topics). I thought that it should be possible to organize the material in a way that was more natural to it. By now, my topic had begun to change. I had, of course, found several pious practices, but I was distracted from them by the growing feeling that many influential New Testament scholars had misrepresented the rabbis. I did not have Bousset27 or Jeremias28 with me, and I did not yet know about Moore’s own polemical article on Christian scholars who had written about Judaism,29 but the need to 26. It also took a long time for the difference between Pharisees and rabbis to emerge into full consciousness in Jewish and Christian scholarship. I am inclined to attribute general clarity on the distinction to Jacob Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1971–72). On the other hand, during 1968–69 I knew that I was studying the rabbis and not the Pharisees, and I conceived my project in terms of bodies of literature, not named groups. Epstein, Introduction to Tannaitic Literature, was doubtless influential, but I am unable to give the history of my own early views about the relationship between the pre-70 Pharisees and rabbinic literature. 27. Wilhelm Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im Späthellenistichen Zeitalter, 3rd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1926). 28. Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem zur Zeit Jesu (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962). The English translation, Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), appeared in 1969. 29. George Foot Moore, “Christian Writers on Judaism,” Harvard Theological Review 14 (1921): 197–254.

11

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

do something about mendacity was growing. I had been told that the rabbis were deeply concerned with the effort to save themselves by doing more good deeds than bad, and that they were therefore either anxious (because they were uncertain of how the count stood) or arrogant (because they were confident that they had done enough good deeds to save themselves). I realized that possibly such rabbis were lurking somewhere in the Mishnah and Tosefta—which I had not yet read—but I doubted it. They were certainly not to be found in the Tannaitic midrashim. (It eventually turned out that they cannot be found anywhere.) “You all know the rest, in the books you have read”: When I returned to McMaster, I was ready to write an argument about how to see rabbinic literature theologically, without recourse to the phony category “legalism.”30 That is, since I thought that rabbinic literature as a whole had been misrepresented, it would not suffice to publish on only a few of its details, such as pious practices. I felt compelled, rather, to offer a more holistic presentation, especially of rabbinism’s undergirding theology.31 Nevertheless, this new requirement did not remove my main conviction: I had to compare, just as Gene Kelly had to dance. But besides leaving behind the intention to study pious practices, I had moved a long way from Philo, and I felt the need to look at Palestinian literature earlier than the rabbis. So I spent some time studying the Dead Sea sect and comparing the Scrolls with the rabbis.32 Then I studied some of the Pseudepigrapha of Palestinian provenance. At some point along the way, “covenantal nomism” came to me. It seemed to me to grow organically out of the material: the literature is not about what Protestants call “legalism” (now sometimes called 30. For some years, I have been lecturing on the false construction “legalism,” pointing out that, in addition to other flaws, it requires a degree of individualism that cannot be found in ancient Jewish literature. It assumes that Jews thought that each individual had to achieve self-salvation, with no group benefits and no collective privileges. Legalism is an invention of polemical attack on Roman Catholicism and Judaism. I hope eventually to publish this and other related lectures. 31. Reading the works of Max Kadushin made a holistic study even more attractive and helped me think that it could be done. See, for example, Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, 2nd ed. (New York: Blaisdell, 1965). I was also encouraged to search rabbinic literature for basic assumptions and underlying theological principles by reading Abraham Joshua Heschel, Torah min ha-Shamayim baAspaqlaryah shel ha-Dorot, 2 vols. (London: Soncino, 1962–65). The work has now been translated into English: Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations, ed. and trans. Gordon Tucker with Leonard Levin (New York: Continuum, 2005). 32. In those ancient days, twelve principal scrolls comprised the collection. See Eduard Lohse, ed. and trans., Die Texte aus Qumran, 2nd ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971). I also found it possible to read through virtually the entirety of the secondary literature. Perhaps needless to say, this could not be done now, except by someone whose full-time occupation is Scrolls research.

12

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

“merit theology”), which is effort toward self-salvation, but it does deal with law. It is “nomistic” in its basic subject matter. But why did the rabbis and other Jews pursue these subjects at all? Was it not that God had given the law? And why should Jews obey it? To save themselves? Rabbinic literature lacks concern with individual salvation. So why did they pursue the details of law? Does not the effort presuppose the concept of election? And so on. I shall not repeat the argument of the book below. When it turned out that the Dead Sea sect, while differing in some ways from the rabbis, held approximately the same views of election and law, I knew that I needed a contrast. And so I turned to Paul, who was largely a stranger to me, but who was the man who previously had been compared with the rabbis by my teacher, W. D. Davies. Before reaching the point in the writing of what became Paul in Palestinian Judaism, my New Testament expertise was in the Synoptic Gospels, on which I had spent several years. I had taken (if I remember correctly) a total of two courses on the Greek text of parts of Paul’s letters, one taught by Victor Furnish at Perkins and one by Louis Martyn at Union. I had also read a list of books about Paul and had been examined on Paul as part of my doctoral work. When I began lecturing at McMaster University, I tried to present a Bultmannian Paul. I soon realized that this just did not work (the theory did not fit the text) and that I needed to do something else. By then I had learned the most important lesson of my life: you really know what you learn for yourself by studying original sources. I would never have come to my understanding of the rabbis by reading secondary literature. I could decide without firsthand study that Moore was better than Bousset, but that was by no means the same as internalizing the rabbis’ modes of argument and their spirit. Furthermore, I remembered that one of the most exciting afternoons of my life was when I had read the Pauline letters through at a single sitting. Putting these two things together, I simply started reading through Paul’s letters and making notes. Second Corinthians 12 made it perfectly clear that Paul was some sort of mystic. “Being crucified with Christ,” “dying with Christ,” and “being one person with Christ” were obviously very important concepts to him, though brushed aside by most Protestant research in favor of “justification by faith,” which was understood as judicial declaration of fictional (“imputed”) righteousness. After going through the letters a few times, I returned to Albert Schweitzer33 and then read some of the pre-Schweitzer German scholars, who wrote prior

13

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

to the re-Lutheranization of German scholarship. I was relieved to see that other people had found approximately the same Paul that I had “discovered.” These bodies of literature—rabbinic literature, Dead Sea Scrolls, selected Pseudepigrapha, and Paul’s letters—made up the sections of the book. I originally wrote the parts on Jewish literature without polemic, trying to imitate the tone achieved by Moore in his major work, which omitted the vigorous attacks of his articles. But, near the end of my work, during what was about the sixth revision of the section on the rabbis, I decided that Moore had been wrong. Bultmann cited Moore as if he only gave additional details about the rabbis to flesh out the portrait in Bousset’s book.34 I was not going to let that happen again, and so I decided to make it clear that some folks were wrong and that the rabbis had been misrepresented. Thus the polemics of the book when it finally appeared. The only important part not yet covered is the question of “getting in and staying in.” This came from studying the issue of what to compare with what, and the principal negative example was the work of my revered supervisor, W. D. Davies. W. D. started with basic biblical and Jewish conceptions—the exodus and the giving of the law—and went in search of parallels in Paul. He found a few and concluded that Paul was a rabbinic Jew who simply replaced an unknown Messiah with a specific candidate, Jesus. There was a new exodus and a new law, the law of Christ. It seemed to me that this gave to these two points an importance that, in fact, they do not have in Paul’s letters. I could not see “dying with Christ” as a new exodus, nor did I find a great concern in Paul to establish a new “law of Christ.” So I dubbed the effort Motivsgeschichte, the study of individual motifs, and went looking somewhere else. I failed to note, I am embarrassed to say, that W. D.’s exodus and law are my covenantal nomism. In rejecting the way in which W. D. had set up the comparison, I did not grasp how close we were on the Jewish side. His error (as I still think it to be) in the analysis of Paul, which led him to miss what was both novel and essential in Paul’s letters, blinded me to his correct perception of the two ingredients of Judaism that determine its basic characteristics. (I

33. Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, 2nd ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1953). 34. See E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 43–47.

14

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

am sure that the largest category of my brain consists of things that are buried in it but that I do not call to consciousness at the right time.) In any case, I decided to enlarge the categories and to discuss “getting in and staying in.” The weight of each topic is, of course, quite different in the various bodies of literature. Paul is obsessed with getting people into the new movement, and his discussions of correct behavior, once in, are rather thin and cursory.35 The rabbis were concerned with correct behavior by the in-group and seldom had occasion to mention “getting in”—but, of course, concern over the behavior of the in-group implies that it existed. In the Scrolls one finds both emphases. Despite the unequal weight, I had a topic that is important all around—even when, or perhaps all the more when, it is assumed rather than argued. In-group literature assumes the importance of being in the in-group.36 Paul’s break with Judaism, I thought, had to do with getting in; on behavior within the in-group he agreed closely with other Jews of his day. The difference is his requirement of faith in Christ. This, and only this, I proposed, led to a break between Pauline religion and his native Judaism. I had some regret that the topic had become theology—but only some, since the mendacity of much of New Testament scholarship had become so important to me. This book did at least meet my other two goals: a comparison that included Judaism. By the time I had finished the book, I realized that in many ways it was very close, both in method and substance, to the work of Samuel Sandmel.37 Sam agreed to read the typescript, and I visited him at his home in Cincinnati. For the entirety of two afternoons, we sat on his porch while he patiently commented on aspects of the work. He persuaded Ben Zion Wacholder to check my translations of previously untranslated rabbinic passages. I add these names to the list of those who donated large amounts of precious time to my work.38 35. Paul often displays great ingenuity in arguing for certain behavior, as in the chapters on idolatry in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10. But the result is not in the least novel: do not directly engage in the worship of idols. Often, however, he simply gives general admonitions, such as “be blameless” (1 Thess 5:3). His creativity appears in his discussions of “getting in” and in some of his arguments about behavior, not in the context of behavior. 36. The argument about “assumption” or “presupposition” in Jewish literature has proved hard for many readers to see: they seek proof texts. I have discussed this and related issues in “Covenantal Nomism Revisited,” appearing as chapter 3 of the present book. 37. Especially Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962): 1–13; Samuel Sandmel, “The Need of Comparative Study,” in Theological Soundings: Notre Dame Seminary Jubilee Studies 1923–1973, ed. I. Mihalik (New Orleans: Notre Dame Seminary), 30–35. 38. I also had fruitful discussions of the book with C. F. D. Moule and W. D. Davies. These trips, as well

15

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

I sent the book to the publisher in October 1975. Very negative readers’ reports in both England and the United States led to a delay. Thanks to the fact that John Bowden, managing editor of SCM Press, finally read the typescript himself, the book as I had submitted it was published in 1977. I shall now give a summary of the principal arguments, beginning with a negative point: (1) The book is not about the sources of Paul’s thought. I grant that many or most topics in Paul could be paralleled in Jewish literature, but I was not pursing an argument about where Paul got his ideas. Failure to note this point has misled several readers, some of whom have criticized me for using Jewish material later than Paul, while some have even imagined that in proposing that Paul had a different “pattern of religion” I meant that he had no connection with Judaism. (2) In most of Palestinian literature, the “pattern” of “getting in and staying in” is simple: one is in by virtue of the election (or covenant); one stays in by remaining loyal to the Jewish law. These two basic convictions gave rise to the term “covenantal nomism.”39 (3) In Paul, all are “out” of the people of God and may enter only by faith in Christ. (4) The two sets of terminology summarized by the phrases “being justified [righteoused] by faith” and “becoming one person with Christ” essentially mean the same thing: these are the terms that indicate entry into the people of God: one “dies” with Christ or is righteoused by faith and thus transfers into the in-group. (5) Once in, the member of the body of Christ should behave appropriately. In detail, this usually means the adoption of Jewish rules of ethics and other forms of behavior. (6) In both Judaism and Paul, people in the in-group are punished or rewarded depending on how well they as my salary and secretarial assistance, were supported by a Killam Senior Research Scholarship. The scholarship was continued for the year 1975–76, while I worked on Jesus and Judaism and began (with Ben Meyer and Al Baumgarten) the McMaster project on normative self-definition; see n. 41. 39. Covenantal nomism appears even in Philo (“Covenant as Soteriological Category”). In Paul and Palestinian Judaism, I described it by using such words and phrases as “common,” “basic,” “assumption,” “presupposition,” “underlying agreement,” “underlying pattern,” and “basic common ground” (e.g., 70, 71, 75, 82, 85, 424). I thought of it as a “lowest common denominator” of many types of Judaism, though I chose not to write that phrase. In rereading Goodenough in the spring of 2004, I discovered that he had written that Jews were loyal to “some common Jewish denominator,” which consisted of loyalty to the Jewish people and belief in the Bible. He also referred to this as “minimal Judaism.” He wrote that Philo “still believed with all his heart that Jews had a special revelation of God in the Torah, and a peculiar relationship with him.” See Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 12:6–9. These pages, which I had read in 1964 or 1965, contained no pencil marks indicating that I had regarded the terms or the proposal as important. I nevertheless wonder whether they lodged in my subconscious mind, to surface ten years later. I wish that I had remembered these pages, since I would have been delighted to have Goodenough’s support on both Philo and Judaism in general.

16

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

adhere to the standards. Punishment and reward, however, are not “salvation”; people are saved, rather, by being in the in-group, and punishment is construed as keeping them in (as in 1 Cor 11:27–32). (7) Paul does not accept the adequacy of the Jewish election for getting in; he begins the process of a theological rupture with Judaism by requiring faith in Christ. (8) Formally, Paul sometimes accepts “the whole law,” but it turns out that his gentile converts do not actually have to keep all parts of the Jewish law, and that sometimes even Jewish Christians should depart from Jewish practice (as in the case of Peter in Antioch). (9) Consequently, Paul’s “pattern” of religion is not the same as “covenantal nomism.” The efficacy of the election is rejected, and the law is accepted with qualifications. (10) Paul’s pattern is, however, like covenantal nomism in that admission depends on the grace of God, while behavior is the responsibility of the individual—who, of course, is supported in his or her efforts by God’s love and mercy. (11) Since one gets in by dying with Christ, and since Paul’s outlook is strongly eschatological, I dubbed his pattern “participationist eschatology,” though “eschatological participationism” might have been better.40 Jesus and Judaism When I told my wife that I don’t have much to say about Jesus and Judaism, she expressed her regret, since (she said) it is my best book. But, still, the explanation of what I was trying to accomplish is much briefer than the story of how I came to write Paul and Palestinian Judaism. The period during which I wrote Jesus and Judaism (1975–84) included the period of the McMaster project on Jewish and Christian normative self-definition, the title of which contributes to the title of the conference at which I first presented this essay.41 For various reasons, these were difficult years for me, and I want to record my thanks for the kindness of friends and colleagues: Al Baumgarten, 40. E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983, repr., 1985) was, as John Bowden complained to me, basically a long footnote to the Paul section of Paul and Palestinian Judaism. The earlier book had dealt with Paul in a less detailed way than New Testament scholars expect, and I wanted to give full exegetical detail of the most complicated topic: the law. I remain satisfied with the discussion of the various contexts in which Paul writes about the law. He answers diverse questions, and the answer to each question is consistent, but the various answers, when placed side by side, give a confusing picture. One cannot derive from them a systematic view of the law. To this discussion I appended a treatment of his view of the Jewish people, offering fairly detailed exegesis of Romans 9–11. 41. This project was supported by a very generous five-year “Programme Grant” from the SSHRC (1976–81). Our work was continued for another year with sponsorship from McMaster University.

17

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Phyllis DeRosa Koetting, Alan Mendelson, Ben Meyer, John Robertson, and Gérard Vallée. The most important person in my life, however, was my daughter, Laura, who grew from five to fourteen years old during that time. With regard to the book: I thought of calling it “how to write a book about Jesus without knowing much about what he actually said.” In the years since my doctoral dissertation, I had become even more distrustful of relying on a collection of “authentic” sayings to tell us what we want to know about Jesus, and the most important academic decision I made was to shift the discussion away from Jesus’ sayings. I had spent years on criteria of authenticity and had all sorts of lists, but I finally concluded that adding up a list of authentic sayings was never going to explain who he was or what happened. And so I went for what I regarded as better evidence: the skeleton outline of his career and especially his symbolic actions, namely, the calling of twelve disciples, the entry into Jerusalem, and the turning over of tables in the forecourt of the temple. There was also the highly significant fact that John the Baptist, who was an eschatological preacher, and early Christianity, which was a Jewish eschatological movement, frame Jesus’ career. During a brief but memorable conversation with Morton Smith at a meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in Toronto, we agreed that one has to focus on the facts. I was enormously cheered. I was already inclined to give a good deal of weight to Jesus as a healer, since I wanted to emphasize “deeds” to help offset the tendency of academics to present Jesus as only a teacher, and, of course, talking with Morton about miracles strengthened that inclination. 42 I wanted to base Jesus and Judaism on the most reliable or “bedrock” tradition, but when I later wrote The Historical Figure of Jesus for the “general reader,” I realized that criteria for authenticity strike most readers as being merely a convenience by which an author gets rid of unwanted material. Moreover, the importance of finding the right context grew in my mind, with the result that I eventually concluded that if one has the right context for Jesus, which sayings are quoted do not matter very much. Consequently, in Historical Figure I quoted many more sayings as coming from Jesus than I had used in Jesus and Judaism. This does not imply full belief that they are all authentic. 43 My principal concern in Jesus and Judaism was to establish what led to the results: first to Jesus’ death and then to the formation of a 42. Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). 43. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane Penguin, 1993).

18

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

group of his followers into a new sect. I doubted the authenticity of most of the passages depicting Jesus in conflict with the Pharisees, and in any case I found the disputes to be rather minor. So what drove history if not fatal Pharisaic animosity? I proposed that it was Jesus’ self-conception as the one who announced the reassembly of Israel and the coming of the kingdom of God, his dramatic acts (especially the entry in to Jerusalem and the temple scene), and the system in Judea, which made the high priest responsible for maintaining locally the pax Romana. Unhappily, I did not use the word system, and in a book written at about the same time, Ellis Rivkin explained “what killed Jesus” more clearly than I did.44 Still, I thought, I was helping to put to rest the view that dominated much scholarship: that Jesus was killed because he offended the Pharisees by favoring love, mercy, and grace. I submitted the manuscript to the publisher in the spring of 1984; the book appeared in early 1985.45 To put the main arguments of the book briefly: Jesus was a prophet of the restoration of Israel who began as a follower of an eschatological prophet (John the Baptist) and whose ministry resulted in an eschatological Jewish movement (early Christianity, especially as seen in Paul’s letters). He pointed to restoration in word and deed, proclaiming the kingdom as soon to arrive and indicating the restoration of Israel especially by calling the Twelve. He made dramatic symbolic gestures pointing to this hope. One of them, overthrowing tables in the temple court, led Caiaphas to the view that he might start a riot. The requirements of the Roman system resulted in his execution. His followers continued his movement, expecting him to return to reestablish Israel. This naturally led to their incorporation of the prophetic hope that in the last days gentiles would turn to worship the God of Israel.46 44. Ellis Rivkin, What Crucified Jesus? The Political Execution of a Charismatic (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984). Rivkin’s book appeared after I submitted the manuscript to the publisher. Unfortunately, in the summer and fall of 1984 I was engaged in moving to Oxford, and I did not read Rivkin’s book until after I had sent in the proofs. In retrospect, I see that I should have insisted on inserting a footnote even at that late date. 45. Jesus and Judaism was written with the aid of a Killam Senior Research Scholarship at the beginning of the project and a SSHRC Leave Fellowship near the end. Most of the book was written while I was Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge (1982). 46. I assumed that Seán Freyne had accurately and adequately explained what Galilee was like in Jesus’ day, and so I saw no need to say much about it. When later I moved to the United States (August 1990), I began slowly to learn that completely erroneous views were becoming popular here. Nevertheless, when I finished Historical Figure in 1992, I had not perceived the full influence of these views. I thought that they would gradually disappear. On Freyne’s work and my own later efforts, see n. 74.

19

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE In September 1984 I moved to Oxford and again, as when I first read the rabbis, fell in love—this time with the environment created by scholars in other aspects of the ancient world: Geza Vermes, soon the young Martin Goodman, Robin Lane Fox, Fergus Millar, and Simon Price. I wanted to be like them. Well, I could never be that clever or learned, but I could go back to nontheological religion and, specifically, to religious practice, which I had dropped after 1968–69. While writing Jesus and Judaism I had become fascinated with the riches of Josephus, whom I had neglected when writing Paul and Palestinian Judaism.47 When I had to explain the history of Jesus in light of the power structure of his day, of course, the only source outside the Gospels was the work of Josephus—not the Mishnah. In 1968–69, I had learned from Epstein that most Tannaitic literature comes from the period of R. Akiba and R. Ishmael and later—that is, the last three quarters of the second century. I never thought that rabbinic law governed Jewish Palestine in Jesus’ day. The very first bit of rabbinic literature I read (please remember) was Mishnah Sanhedrin, which obviously is not a manual of how law courts worked.48 I remember being told by friends at what is now the Albright School of Archaeological Research that they were scandalized because an Israeli scholar—whose name (alas!) I do not remember—had told them that Mishnah Sanhedrin does not represent the law in effect at Jesus’ time. This was no surprise to me. To understand the legal and governmental system, I turned to Josephus, and I found him to be most illuminating with regard to how things really worked politically and judicially. Furthermore, the Gospels and Acts support him. In the days of the prefects and the procurators, Judea was governed by the aristocratic priesthood. 47. Bill Farmer had urged me to read Josephus’s Jewish War while I was at Perkins (1959–62), and I had complied. What he saw in it, however, was (1) that lots of Jews were zealous for the law, which led to the view (2) that the Pharisees controlled Judaism and made people zealous, which was bad because (3) zeal for the law is the same as legalism, which is horrible. I eventually learned that items 2 and 3 were not true, but this experience made me miss most of the actual treasures in Josephus. Farmer’s views of Judaism were taken entirely from Joachim Jeremias. Approximately this same view of Josephus and Pharisaic control has now been argued by M. Hengel and R. Deines, “E. P. Sanders’ ‘Common Judaism,’ Jesus, and the Pharisees: Review Article of Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah and Judaism: Practice and Belief by E. P. Sanders,” Journal of Theological Studies 46 (1995): 1–70. This view is no better now than it was then. 48. This statement applies to the tractate taken as a whole, including especially the structural statements and the view that “sages” constituted the membership of courts. I assume that some of the material is pre-70 and may even be of Hasmonean origin.

20

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

So now, when I decided at long last to return to pious practices, I wanted to make more use of Josephus, while incorporating other literature (including early rabbinic literature) when possible. I tried to decide what Jews really did in a few dozen cases. I do not think that I have ever written down what my rules of thumb were, and so I shall summarize them. Assume five sources: the priestly writer, Josephus, the Mishnah (standing in for Tannaitic literature), Philo, and other (Dead Sea Scrolls, late biblical books, Pseudepigrapha, and Apocrypha). Agreement among the first three is decisive: Leviticus, Josephus, and the Mishnah. That is what people really did in the first century. Agreement between Leviticus and Philo alone is dubious: it probably shows only that Philo read the Bible. Even agreement between Leviticus and Josephus alone must be queried, especially so if Josephus’s wording is exclusively that of the Septuagint: sometimes he told his assistant just to write down a summary from the LXX (or so I imagine). Josephus plus the Mishnah against everybody else is highly probable. These rules of thumb do not cover everything. No combination works every time; sometimes a source in the “other” category, such as Nehemiah, weighs very heavily. In a few cases the Dead Sea Scrolls make a major contribution to the study of general practice, especially when a passage has a close parallel in rabbinic literature. Put briefly, the Dead Sea Scrolls + the Mishnah = a genuine pre–70 CE topic (but not necessarily a decision about what the majority practice was). Why not cut articles out of the Encyclopedia Judaica and paste them in a book organized by subject instead of alphabetically? The Encyclopedia Judaica is biased in favor of the rabbis. Too few of its authors had shaken off the old views that all rabbinic material is traditional and that the rabbis always governed Israel, which leads (for example) to the use of fourth- or fifth-century Babylonian material to determine what first-century Jews did in Palestine. Besides trying to improve on the Encyclopedia Judaica on several topics, I wanted to pursue the question of who ran what, which involved study of the role of the Pharisees’ role and the passages about a Sanhedrin. Moreover, I argued in favor of a common Judaism, consisting of a few beliefs and several practices which, with variations, were very widespread or even universal. Thus the contents of the book are mixed. The common denominator of these various studies is real life: how things actually worked and what most Jews actually did when they were observing the commandments.

21

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Apart from the primary literature itself, the strongest single influence on my views of the Pharisees’ role, the judicial system, how government worked, and how to define common Judaism was the work of Morton Smith. He had pointed out that Josephus’s narrative does not support some of his summaries, such as the statement that whenever the Sadducees were in office they had to submit to the views of the Pharisees, who controlled the populace.49 Smith had said that “normative Judaism” should be defined as whatever the Pentateuch, the ordinary priests, and the common people agreed on.50 He had also sponsored a “low” view of the authority of the Pharisees, a view that lives on in the work of his students and admirers.51 After I finished the chapter “Who Ran What?” I thought of sending a copy of the typescript to Morton, but I decided to wait and to give him a copy of the book, which I imagined I could deliver in person. That was a mistake that grieves me: he died, so he did not know that I was fully in support of him on these points. What is so wonderful about Morton’s views, of course, is that they reflect the primary sources so beautifully. I think that those who work their way through the material will come to the same conclusions—unless, of course, they are in the grip of presuppositions and prefer summaries to the study of cases as they appear in detailed narrative—the narratives of Josephus, the Gospels, and Acts. When I moved to Duke University in August 1990 and started reading the work of members of the Jesus Seminar, I realized that I should have added a section about government from the Roman point of view—how different parts of the empire were governed and were not governed—and about the placement of the legions. I tried to repair some of these omissions in the Festschrift for Professor Räisänen. 52 I wanted the main value of Judaism: Practice and Belief to be the studies of actual practice.53 In addition to these, the principal arguments are: (1) There were beliefs and practices common to worldwide Judaism, 49. On case studies versus summaries, see E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE, 2nd ed. (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1994), esp. 318, 393–94, 401–2, 481–90. 50. M. Smith, “The Dead Sea Sect in Relation to Ancient Judaism,” New Testament Studies 7 (1960–61): 356; also Morton Smith, “Palestinian Judaism in the First Century,” in Israel: Its Role in Civilization, ed. Moshe Davis (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1956), 73–74. 51. See Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 401 and 535n45. 52. E. P. Sanders, “Jesus’ Galilee,” in Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Heikki Räisänen, ed. Ismo Dunderburg et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 3–41. 53. In the course of working on Judaism: Practice and Belief, I wrote several studies, many of which would not fit. Some of these were collected and published in E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990). The main subjects are “The synoptic Jesus and the law”; “Did the Pharisees have oral law?”; “Did

22

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

not dictated by any party, that constitute “common Judaism.”54 (2) The Pharisees were, after the time of Salome Alexandra (76–67 BCE), a small but highly respected party within Judaism that had a varying amount of influence from time to time and issue to issue. (3) Real power, however, resided in the rulers: one of the Hasmoneans; one of the Herodians; the prefects or procurators of Judea (after 6 BCE); and, in Jerusalem during the period of “direct” Roman rule, the aristocrats, especially the aristocratic priesthood. The evidence indicates that the Pharisees did not dictate policy to any of these groups or individuals. 55 Conclusion It is not up to me to say what, if anything, I have achieved. I can say that I still find the main theses of these three books—all the theses listed above, plus a few not mentioned—correct. I can name lots of mistakes and have often thought of things that could have been done in a better way. But I still believe in covenantal nomism and that it (and many practices) were shared by most Jews; that Paul’s only fundamental objection to his native religion was that it did not include faith in Christ; and that it was Jesus’ symbolic actions in Jerusalem that alarmed Caiaphas into thinking that he might start a riot. And so (alas!) I am largely unrepentant. Somewhere along the way, Hellenistic mysticism dropped out—not the mysticism that figures in the study of Paul, but Hellenistic mysticism of the sort described by Goodenough: the quest to leave the material world and enter the noetic, real world. I had not realized how completely this sort of mysticism had disappeared from my view until the spring of 2002, when, for the first time in more than thirty years, I taught a course on Philo. The course was mostly on the historical treatises and the Special Laws,56 although we did note the passage the Pharisees eat ordinary food in purity?”; “Purity, food, and offerings in the Greek-speaking Diaspora”; and “Jacob Neusner and the philosophy of the Mishnah.” 54. John P. Meier, Companions and Competitors, vol. 3 of A Marginal Jew (New York: Doubleday, 2001), uses both the terms common and mainstream Judaism (pp. 7–8; also 329, 384). Mainstream excludes the Qumran sectarians because they did not worship in the Jerusalem temple. This is certainly a fair distinction, but I would note that even here there was common agreement on the temple considered abstractly, the disagreement focusing rather on architecture, calendar, and the high priesthood. 55. Work on Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah and Judaism: Practice and Belief was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the latter was completed while I was on leave from Duke University. The study of immersion pools (miqva’ot) in Israel was funded by a British Academy Research Grant. I am indebted to Hanan Eshel for instruction during visits to many archaeological sites. 56. Whereas once upon a time I felt totally inadequate to compare Philo’s legal opinions with those of

23

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

according to which Moses entered the darkness where God was,57 we made passing reference to the mystic meal in Joseph and Aseneth chapter 16, and we considered Goodenough on the scene from Dura Europas in which Israelites cross the sea.58 By Light, Light, which I reread, no longer grips and persuades as it once did, but I am nevertheless sorry that I never got back to Hellenistic mysticism and that I did so little in Greek-speaking Judaism. In this connection, I should return to the question of the sources of Paul’s thought. Troels Engberg-Pedersen recently indicated to me that he expected me to oppose the work that he and others have done on Paul and the Stoics.59 That is not at all my attitude. I compared and contrasted Paul to the Jewish literature that I had studied, with no intention to claim that he relates only to it, or that he derived all of his ideas from it. I am incompetent to treat Paul’s sources thoroughly, since I am incompetent to compare him to Greco-Roman material. If I had two decades ahead, with as much energy as I had in my thirties, forties, and fifties, I would love to take up this issue. My first instinct would be to review Goodneough’s project and to begin with Hellenized Judaism. Let me put it this way: Paul wrote that “we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:18). In 1 Cor 15:53 he wrote about imperishability and immortality. In such passages, it seems to me, we hear a very “Greek” voice, and, in fact, 2 Cor 4:18 sounds downright Platonic.60 Did Paul read Greek philosophical sources? Did he absorb such ideas from his culture? Had this terminology and way of thinking already been accepted in the Judaism in which he grew up? In the case of Philo, we may be fairly confident that he inherited a strongly Hellenized Judaism and added to it by direct study of Greek philosophical works, including at least some of Plato. I would be inclined to think that Paul did not have the sort of supplemental others, I now feel reasonably able to do this. On the other hand, I have no confidence in my ability to discuss mysticism in a comparative way, and I have always been incompetent to discuss Philo’s relationships with the Greek philosophical schools. 57. Philo, Mos. 1.158. 58. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 11, West Wall plate XIV; 10, chapter 16. On the importance of this scene for Goodenough’s overall view, see 12:188–89. 59. T. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000); T. Engberg-Pedersen, ed., Paul beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). 60. Alpha privatives, such as the two words in 1 Cor 15:53, or words that may be alpha privates (as in 2 Cor 4:18), always catch my eye. If Paul were Philo, would he have written the antitheses of 2 Cor 4:18 in such a way as to include aorata (a word that he uses in Rom 1:20; see later Col 1:15–16)?

24

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

education in Greek philosophy that Philo had, and so I would try my hand first at the third possibility: the idea of an unseen world that is eternal (= real) in contrast to the sensible world, which is transient (= not real), had already penetrated the Judaism that Paul inherited. I do not know this to be true, but that is what I would assume at the outset, which would lead me to the study of Greek-speaking Judaism, including both the literature and the symbols. Philo was not conscious of putting a Greek veneer on something like rabbinic Judaism; rather, true Judaism as he saw it was deeply impregnated with Hellenistic thought (following Goodenough).61 The same thing, though put less strongly, might be true of Paul. It seems to me that we need further study of this whole issue, of both the indirect influence of Greek thought on Paul via the synagogue and the direct influence coming from Paul’s own knowledge of his environment. I would not wish anything that I have written to be seen as opposing such efforts. On the contrary, I think that further study is required, and I wish that I could join in. I have never lost my confidence that Goodenough really discovered something—a deeply Hellenized Judaism. Nothing could please me more than to see this enormous topic pursued with renewed vigor. With regard to my own life and work, however, Goodenough was demoted, and his influence is probably imperceptible.62 In terms of the sort of scholarship that I have found most helpful, I have a list of major items: Albert Schweitzer on both Jesus and Paul,63 Morton Smith’s essays,64 Saul Lieberman’s Tosefta ki-Feshutah,65 Epstein’s Mevo’ot,66 Davies’s The Gospel and the Land,67 the dozens of essays by Daube,68 Robin Lane Fox’s books on Alexander and Pagans and 61. E.g., Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 12:9, 12. 62. Except in Sanders, “Covenant as a Soteriological Category” (see chapter 6 of the present book). 63. Schweitzer on Paul, see n. 33; on Jesus, see Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Case Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (New York: Macmillan, 1906; repr., 1961). 64. Morton Smith, Studies in the Cult of Yahweh, 2 vols., ed. Shaye J. D. Cohen, Religions in the GraecoRoman World 130 (Leiden: Brill, 1996). 65. Lieberman, ed., Tosefta, and Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-Feshutah, 13 vols. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1955–88). Whenever I faced a really difficult passage, I prayed that it would have a parallel somewhere in the first three orders of the Tosefta, since in that case Lieberman would have explained it. The most essential volumes for work on the rabbis were the superb concordances published by members of the Kasovsky family; see E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 564–65. 66. See n. 25. 67. W. D. Davies, The Gospel and the Land: Early Christianity and Jewish Territorial Doctrine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). 68. As did many, I cut my teeth on David Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (London: Athlone, 1956; repr., London: Arno, 1973). See also David Daube, New Testament Judaism, ed. Calum M. Carmichael (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

25

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Christians,69 Burkert’s Greek Religion and Homo Necans,70 Fergus Millar’s The Roman Near East,71 A. H. M. Jones’s Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces,72 and Lee Levine’s Jerusalem.73 I list these books, I suppose, partly to indicate my long-standing interest in works that deal with the nitty-gritty of religion (such as sacrifice) and those that allow us to set religion firmly in a historical and social setting. Most of these works have the additional advantage of having been published early enough to influence my interests and views during their formative period. 74 69. Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London: Allen Lane, 1973); and Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century A.D. to the Conversion of Constantine (London: Viking, 1986). 70. Walter Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), and Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 71. Fergus Millar, The Roman Near East 31 B.C.–A.D. 337 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 72. A. H. M. Jones, Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937; repr., 1998). 73. L. I. Levine, Jerusalem: Portrait of the City in the Second Temple Period (538 BCE–70 CE) (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002). 74. Here I wish to mention some of my main debts to people who gave papers at the conference at which this essay was first presented. I take them in chronological order: (1) During our long years at McMaster (1973–84), I learned many, many things from Al Baumgarten. I was able to make use of some of his articles in E. P. Sanders, “The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews: Commonalities, Overlaps and Differences,” in The Dead Sea Secrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. Timothy H. Lim; with Larry L. Hurtado et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 7–43, and reprinted in the present book as chapter 4. Unfortunately, Baumgarten’s masterful book on the sects, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation, Supplements to Journal for the Study of Judaism 55 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), was not available when I wrote Judaism: Practice and Belief. (2) While I was working on Jesus and Judaism, Seán Freyne, Galilee from Alexander the Great to Hadrian: 323 B.C.E. to 235 C.E. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980; repr., Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), allowed me not to spend time and pages on Galilee. Now that Galilee has become a contentious issue, my support for Freyne is indicated in “Jesus’ Galilee” (see n. 52) and in E. P. Sanders, “Jesus’ Relation to Sepphoris,” in Sepphoris in Galilee: Concurrents of Culture, ed. Rebecca Martin Nagy et al. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1996), 75–79. (3) While we were writing books on Paul and the law, Heikki Räisänen and I exchanged manuscripts; see H. Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 2nd ed., WUNT 29 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987). This benefited me enormously. (4) M. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish War against Rome, A.D. 66–70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), and M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, A.D. 132–212 (Towata, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983), were of appreciable use when I was writing Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah and Judaism: Practice and Belief. (5) My article on “Jesus’ Galilee” was greatly improved thanks to my association with Eric Meyers, partly because we jointly supervised the dissertation of Mark Chancey (The Myth of a Gentile Galilee, Society of New Testament Studies Monograph Series 118 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002]), partly by frequent contact with him, and partly by his publications, both articles and edited books. See “Jesus’ Galilee,” nn. 1, 3, 6, 10, 64, 83. (6) Peter Richardson, Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans, Personalities of the New Testament (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999) was very helpful while I was writing “Jesus’ Galilee.” I wish it had been available during the composition of Judaism: Practice and Belief. Perhaps I may add that, were I ever to write again on Jesus or Paul, the works of most of the other scholars whose essays who appeared where this essay was originally published—in Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders, ed. Fabian E. Udoh with Mark Chancey, Susannah Heschel, and Gregory Tatum, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008)—would be strongly represented.

26

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

When discussing my early interest in mysticism and astrology, I hinted but did not say that I was very attracted to the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule and, in fact, pre–World War I German New Testament scholarship in general—before the turn toward Luther, which has narrowed that scholarship, to its detriment. For a long time I thought that Deissmann had written the best book on Paul, and these days I rather miss the company of these now-ancient Germans. I should look at some of them again. I still think that many of the people now engaged in New Testament research know far too little about ancient history and far too little about ancient sources other than the Bible. I continue to hope for more and better comparative studies. They are not all that easy, but they are an awful lot of fun.

27

PART 1

Early Judaism and the Jewish Law

2

The Origin of the Phrase “Common Judaism”

The principal aim of this chapter is to explain the origin of the phrase “common Judaism,” which I employed in Judaism: Practice and Belief;1 consequently, most of what follows is autobiographical in nature, dealing chronologically with the stages of my own study of Judaism and focusing especially on how my thinking has been shaped by reaction to the work of others.2 In the penultimate section, however, I restate one of the several arguments that allow us to say that in the ancient world there was an entity best called “Judaism,” and I illustrate the sorts of practices and beliefs that were common or typical (though not uniform or normative). This section is especially indebted to discussion with Albert Baumgarten. The conclusion discusses some 1. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (1992; corrected ed., London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1994; repr. with a new preface, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016). This chapter is a revision of a paper given at a conference entitled “‘Common Judaism’ or a Plurality of ‘Judaisms’ in Late Antiquity: The State of the Debate,” held at the Institute for Advanced Studies, The Hebrew University, The Thirteenth School in Jewish Studies, May 13–16, 2003. I am very grateful to Isaiah Gafni for the invitation and to Martin Goodman and Albert Baumgarten for suggesting improvements. The revised essay was subsequently published in Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism, ed. Adele Reinhartz and Wayne O. McCready (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), chap. 2, under the title “Common Judaism Explored.” 2. There is a more comprehensive account in my “intellectual autobiography” in Redefining FirstCentury Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of Ed P. Sanders, ed. Fabian Udoh et al. (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), repr. as chap. 1 above.

31

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

of the issues that arise when one attempts to summarize a complicated religion. Steps toward “Common Judaism” 1. I am a New Testament scholar, and my understanding of nascent Christianity helped form my early views of Judaism. At least since 1934, historians of early Christianity have known that Christian “orthodoxy” emerged slowly and painfully from a situation of competing versions of the new religion.3 One sees ferocious controversies over the right shape of the movement in the letters of Paul, which are the earliest surviving Christian documents, and especially in Galatians and 2 Corinthians 10–13. Scholars have universally regarded the competing factions as subgroups within a larger movement, and this still seems to me to be the correct way to look at them. When I turned to the study of Judaism I saw it in the same way. Everybody knew about Josephus’s three (or four) parties or sects,4 and at the time (the early to mid-1960s) the world was still buzzing over the new discovery that proved the diversity of Judaism—the Dead Sea Scrolls. Christian scholars showed some desire to divide Jewish groups into competing theological camps, and consequently some of them saw different subgroups at Qumran. The party or parties responsible for the Hodayot (1QH) believed in grace, while those responsible for the Community Rule (1QS) believed in works, and so on.5 Such distinctions seemed to me to be only differences of emphasis that varied with the genre of the literature, and in any case everyone knew that dogma did not play the role in Judaism that it did in Christianity. So I, with most, simply saw variety within a single large entity, Judaism, very clearly exemplified. 2. When I decided to write a study comparing Judaism and Christianity in the first century, I knew that I faced a difficult conceptual problem. How can one compare two large, variegated entities with each other? I reduced the problem by deciding to concentrate on Paul’s letters on the Christian side, but this by no means eliminated the difficulty. Was there an entity called “Judaism”? 3. Walter Bauer, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum, 2nd ed., ed. Georg Strecker (1934; repr., Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1964); Eng. trans., Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, ed. Robert Kraft and Gerhard Krodel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). 4. Josephus, J. W. 2.119–66; Ant. 13.171–73; 18.12–25. 5. See the discussion in my Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 287–98, esp. 291.

32

THE ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE “COMMON JUDAISM”

As I just observed, I assumed that there was. Nevertheless, I was concerned that variety might have been so great that one could not find a significant way to compare Paul with ancient Judaism as a whole. After carrying this question around with me for a few years and considering diverse topics but finding them lacking, I saw a solution: enlarge the categories; think about the most elementary and basic of all questions about a religion, namely, how one enters and how one remains in good standing. So I decided to ask whether, in surviving bodies of literature, one can find substantial agreement about how people became Jewish and how they maintained their status (“getting in and staying in”).6 As far as I can now discover, I did not use the term “common denominator” in Paul and Palestinian Judaism (though it does appear elsewhere),7 but that is how I thought: granting a lot of variety, was there a basic and common understanding of becoming and remaining Jewish?8 The difficulty was to find generalizations that actually applied and that were neither trivial nor misleading. People need generalizations, and historians often use them. I objected to those that were in most frequent use in defining Judaism and Christianity by Christian scholars, who often drew a contrast between a religion of law, or of legalism, and a religion of love and grace. This seemed to me to be wrong on both sides: Judaism is based on love and grace, as well as on the law, and the letters of Paul do not lack “legalistic” passages, in which judgment is according to works (for example, Rom 2:12–16; 1 Cor 11:27–32; 2 Cor 5:10). A lot of smaller comparisons could be done that would not replace that large but erroneous comparison, legalism versus grace: one could, for example, compare Philo and Paul, or Philo and John, or various Jewish and 6. Ibid., 16–18. 7. “I continue to regard ‘covenantal nomism’ as the common denominator which underlay all sorts and varieties of Judaism” (Jesus and Judaism [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985], 336). 8. In Paul and Palestinian Judaism, note the following terms and phrases: “general understanding of religion and religious life” (69); “common pattern . . . which underlies” (70); “basic religious principles” (71); “what principles lie behind” (71); not a “system” (73f.); “underlying agreement” (85); “the same underlying pattern” (424); “basic common ground . . . in the various bodies of literature” (424). In rereading Erwin Goodenough’s Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 13 vols., Bollingen Series 37 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953–68) in the spring of 2004, I discovered that he had written that Jews were loyal to “some common Jewish denominator,” which consisted of loyalty to the Jewish people and belief in the Bible. He also referred to this as “minimal Judaism.” Philo “still believed with all his heart that Jews had a special revelation of God in the Torah, and a peculiar relationship with him” (12:6–9). These pages, which I had read in 1964 or 1965, contained no pencil marks indicating that I had regarded the terms or the proposal as important. I nevertheless wonder whether they lodged in my subconscious mind, to surface ten years later. I wish that I had remembered these pages, since I would have been delighted to have Goodenough’s support on both Philo and Judaism in general. (Part of this endnote is quoted from n. 39 in my “Intellectual Autobiography” [chap. 1 above].)

33

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Christian documents on individual points, such as the Sabbath or monotheism. Such comparisons would leave the main, misleading comparison untouched. So I needed some way to generalize that would be truer and better, but that would be roughly equally encompassing. As most readers of this essay know, I concluded that this could be done: that there was enough agreement among diverse bodies of Jewish literature on a very big question that one could speak of Judaism—more precisely, Palestinian Judaism—in a way that was fair, generally accurate, sufficiently encompassing, and nontrivial.9 The agreement depends on two figures: Abraham and Moses. God chose Abraham and his descendants, and later he gave them the law, obedience to which was required of the elect. The common understanding, then, was that Jews were Jews because God chose them and that they could remain in good standing by obeying the law. In Paul and Palestinian Judaism, I called this understanding “covenantal nomism.” Legal obedience was founded not on the (entirely hypothetical) principle that each individual must earn salvation by compiling merits, but rather on the (well-supported) principle that this is what God, who chose the people, specified as the way they should live. In this essay, I do not wish to defend this proposal except on one point: whether or not it is trivial.10 In the course of numerous criticisms, Jacob Neusner wrote that my “pattern of religion” would be recognized by anyone who is familiar with Jewish liturgy.11 Thus, if covenantal nomism is true as a description of the underlying or basic pattern of diverse forms of Judaism, it may be simply self-evident.12 9. The original intention was to write on Paul and Judaism; the restriction to literature stemming from Palestine was forced entirely by issues of space. I separately argued that Philo shared at least major aspects of covenantal nomism (“The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism,” in Jews, Greeks and Christians: Religious Cultures in Late Antiquity: Essays in Honor of William David Davies, ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly and Robin Scroggs, Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 21 [Leiden: Brill, 1976], 11–44, repr. as chap. 6 below). 10. I later published an essay called “Covenantal Nomism Revisited,” in which I defend some of the main arguments of Paul and Palestinian Judaism. The essay is reprinted as chap. 3 below. 11. Neusner’s review is reprinted in his Ancient Judaism: Debates and Disputes, BJS 64 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), 127–41, here 128. 12. A related criticism appears in the review by Martin McNamara in Journal for the Study of the New Testament 5 (1979): 67–73: “The ‘pattern of religion’ in fact may be so basic as to have little effect on the working of religion in practice” (72). This review is one of the best of the early reactions to Paul and Palestinian Judaism, since the author described my own efforts very fairly, without misstating or caricaturing them, and then presented fair and useful criticisms. If I understand the point of McNamara’s paragraph on the present point (71–72), it is not that “covenantal nomism” is so obvious as to be irrelevant, but that it may not succeed in defining how different varieties of Judaism functioned in practice. And that, of course, is true. “Covenantal nomism” was intended to

34

THE ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE “COMMON JUDAISM”

If one looks at the reactions to the book, however, it will readily be seen that in the context of New Testament scholarship it was not a trivial result. Paul and Palestinian Judaism resulted in a long pause in the Christian assertions that Judaism was a legalistic religion of worksrighteousness, though now some scholars wish to resurrect the old depiction of Jewish legalism under the rubric “merit theology.”13 So, in some circles at least, the issue still lives, and it is still important. 3. In his centennial lecture to the Society of Biblical Literature in 1978, Jonathan Z. Smith illustrated the difficulties of comparing religions by asking: “In what respects is it interesting to compare and contrast the walnut and the praline? Shall they be compared with respect to color, or texture, or taste?”14 A walnut tree has many characteristics. One cannot say that one of these characteristics is more essential to its walnutness than another. Similarly, Smith argued, an ancient Jew had many characteristics. It is misleading to try to find a Jewish essence. Though I had argued against the usefulness of “reduced essences” (such as “grace”) in defining religions,15 Smith regarded me as someone who sought the essence of Judaism. I supposed on reflection that I did believe in a basic understanding of being Jewish. Would I regard someone who rejected both covenant and law as Jewish if that person claimed to be Jewish? Such a person would fall outside my “common denominator” and thus outside Palestinian Judaism as I defined it. At the time, I did not have a clear view of how I would relate essence to identity or to identity markers, or how to relate these things to my “common denominator,” covenantal nomism. Covenantal nomism is what I found as the underlying theology in Jewish literature, and when Smith’s lecture led me to pose to myself the questions of how a theology relates to the essence of an entity and to the identity of describe how getting in and staying in were understood. No theology—whether covenantal nomism or the theology of Aquinas or of Luther—tells us how people actually practiced their religion. I have tried to come a little nearer to this in Practice and Belief: it is the best I can do toward describing how people lived their religion. There is a brief but good summary of criticisms in Petri Luomanen, Entering the Kingdom of Heaven: A Study on the Structure of Matthew’s View of Salvation, WUNT 2.101 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 41–42. 13. See, for example, D. A. Carson, “Summaries and Conclusions,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1, The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, ed. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid, WUNT 2.140 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 544–45. 14. Jonathan Z. Smith, “Fences and Neighbors: Some Contours of Early Judaism,” in William Scott Greed, ed., Approaches to Ancient Judaism, BJS 9 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980), 2:1–25, here 1. Smith attributed the suggested comparison to Francis Ponge. The essay also appears in Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982), 1–18. 15. For example, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 12, on the inadequacy of “one-line essences” or “reduced essences,” such as faith versus works or liberty versus law.

35

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

groups and individuals, I found myself puzzled. This would turn out to be a useful puzzlement. The question of essentialism still bothers me, because I do not want to be the distiller of an essence, but only a describer of a religion; for this reason, I shall return to the topic at the conclusion of this essay. We shall also see below that I would later find Jonathan Smith’s appeal to taxonomy to be extremely useful in understanding Judaism. 16 4. Paul and Palestinian Judaism was completed in 1975 and published in 1977. I shall very briefly mention the McMaster University project on normative self-definition in Judaism and Christianity (1976–81). The question was why, when, and how Jewish and Christian groups decided to try to achieve normative self-definition, which got us into issues of identity and identity markers. The three principal planners were Ben Meyer, Albert Baumgarten, and myself. At an early point, Gérard Vallée joined us, and when the project began we added Alan Mendelson and Benno Przybylski.17 The project sponsored various conferences. At the conference on Judaism, Larry Schiffman, who later wrote on Jewish identity,18 was one of the participants. In terms of the present topic, two of the most obvious assumptions of the project were (a) that there was an entity, “Judaism,” that consisted of diverse viewpoints and practices and (b) that at some point some people within this large Judaism wanted to create a greater degree of uniformity—normative self-definition.19 Speaking only for myself, I would say that my opening assumption of diversity within an overarching unity survived the research project intact. 5. This large assumption of diversity within unity—which, I believe, many people shared—was challenged by Jacob Neusner. Neusner’s views are difficult to discuss, partly because he has published so much, partly because he has sometimes published criticisms of his own earlier views. I am a very long way from having mastered the entire Neusner corpus, and here I shall focus on only a few items. In the early and 16. See below at n. 35. 17. We were assisted greatly by the presence of several scholars for one or two years each. The list above names participants for the entire five-year period. 18. Lawrence Schiffman, Who Was a Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish–Christian Schism (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1985). 19. “The research project takes as its starting point the observation that in the first century both Jews and Christians had numerous options before them, including that of retaining a great deal of diversity. By the early part of the third century, however, both Judaism and Christianity had decisively narrowed their options” (E. P. Sanders, Albert I. Baumgarten, and Alan Mendelson, eds., Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, vol. 2, Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period [London: SCM, 1981], ix).

36

THE ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE “COMMON JUDAISM”

mid-1980s he published books and essays that took an extreme stance on unity and diversity. There was little unity, and the diversity amounted to a substantial degree of isolation: there were various Judaisms, each having very little—or, as he sometimes said, “nothing”—to do with another. The Mishnah, he wrote, “exhaustively express[es] a complete system—the fit of the world view and way of life—fantasized by its framers.”20 Most Jews, represented by 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, thought historically and hoped for a coming redemption. But this view is “utterly unrelated” to the message of the Mishnah.21 The most amazing sentences that I remember reading from this period are these: Each of the diverse systems produced by Jews in ancient times constituted a world-view and way for life for a circumscribed social group. While these various Judaic systems drew upon a common Scripture and referred to some of the same themes, they sufficiently differed from one another to be regarded as essentially distinct social-religious constructions. 22

In his work during this period, Neusner tended to equate a literary document with a worldview and linked the two to an exclusive social group. When this is combined with the opinion that each document “exhaustively” presents a complete system—everything that its “framers” believed and thought important—we are led to suppose that there was a different Judaism for each document or virtually each document. This rhetoric was attractive to many people. The word Judaisms came into widespread use. I once had a couple of conversations with a specialist in the Dead Sea Scrolls in which he kept insisting that the Covenant of Damascus contains a “complete system,” which meant that he could study it in isolation from everything else and find in it an entire Judaism. I finally showed him a little list of things not in the Covenant of Damascus, but necessary to have in a whole system, but I don’t think that it made much of an impression. The equation (document = complete system or worldview = a distinct social entity) seemed to me to be wrong at every point, and I hardly knew how to begin criticism of such profound errors (as I took them to be). I 20. Jacob Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 24. 21. Ibid., 37. 22. Jacob Neusner, “Parsing the Rabbinic Canon with the History of an Idea: The Messiah,” in Formative Judaism: Religious, Historical and Literary Studies, Third Series, Torah, Pharisees, and Rabbis, BJS 46 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 173.

37

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

thought that my “common denominator” was truer to the evidence than Neusner’s “essentially distinct social-religious constructions,” but I did not at first see how to test his proposal and describe the results. Before leaving this point, I should add that in his book Messiah in Context Neusner stated that his ideas were actually more complex than the simple equation, document = worldview = distinct social group. He wrote that, in describing three “distinct types of holy men we know as priests, scribes, and messiahs,” as well as their “definitive activities” (“cult, school and government offices and (ordinarily) battlefield”), he was following a scientific principle. He had first to describe the three complete systems separately before bringing them together.23 After noting that all three were combined at Qumran, he added a potentially major qualification: “none of the symbolic systems at hand, with their associated modes of piety, faith, and religious imagination, ever existed as we treat them here: pure and unalloyed, ideal types awaiting description and interpretation.”24 If these qualifications had shaped the rest of the book, and if he had then revised Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah to agree with them, all would have been well. But he did not. A few pages later, he wrote that it was the destruction of the temple in 70 CE that “joined priest, sage, and messianist. . . . The three definitive components were then bonded.”25 One of the problems with this formula was that his earlier publications on the Mishnah—a composite document that was finished much later than 70 CE—had already excluded some of the major aspects of the worldview of the messianists, including especially history. Thus the claim in Messiah in Context (1983) that the three religious types “bonded” in the year 70 seems to have been an afterthought that had no effect on the four principal books and several essays that constitute Professor Neusner’s major publications on the existence of various Judaisms.26 While he may in fact have been working all along with a more complicated view than he expressed in these books in articles, I have knowledge only of what he published. Except for a few sentences, what he wrote on Judaism and Judaisms during this period had the effect 23. Jacob Neusner, Messiah in Context: Israel’s History and Destiny in Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 6. 24. Ibid., 7. 25. Ibid., 14. 26. In addition to the works cited in nn. 20, 22, and 23 above, see also Neusner, Midrash in Context: Exegesis in Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983); idem, Torah: From Scroll to Symbol in Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985).

38

THE ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE “COMMON JUDAISM”

of denying commonality to Jews and thus denying the existence of an entity that we could call “Judaism.” The publications that I have principally in mind, which appeared from 1981 to 1985, inspired me to write an essay on the philosophy of the Mishnah, which was fun but probably ineffective.27 At about this time, the thought occurred to me that these publications could best be answered by considering specific cases. If in (let us say) 60 CE a Jew from Italy, one from Egypt, one from Mesopotamia, and one from Jerusalem sat together for Passover, would each recognize what the other was doing? If they talked about the Jewish people and the law of Moses, would they find common ground? I thought that the answer would be yes, and that I could make a small contribution to the subject, making use of the literature with which I was acquainted. I further thought that the Greek and Roman authors who commented on Jews and Judaism, and who were so masterfully collected by Menahem Stern, would in general recognize that all these people belonged to one entity.28 Greeks and Romans seem to have lumped Jews together. Did not Jews do the same? I thought that they did.29 6. As I have explained elsewhere, in the middle to late 1980s I had long wanted to explore pious practices in Palestine and the Greekspeaking Diaspora.30 I had begun these studies before I wrote the essay on Neusner’s philosophy of the Mishnah. As I related the issues of pious practices with which I was concerned to Neusner’s theory of separate social groups, each with its own Judaism, I happily remembered the essays of one of the great heroes of my life, Morton Smith. In an article titled “Palestinian Judaism in the First Century,” which first appeared in 1956, he had written the following sentences: There is no doubt that the picture of Judaism derived from the Roman imperial inscriptions and from the remarks of classical authors agrees in its main outlines with the picture derived from Rabbinic literature. 27. E. P. Sanders, “Jacob Neusner and the Philosophy of the Mishnah,” in Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 309–31. 28. Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1976–84). 29. Against the concept of “Judaisms,” see, for example, J. M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE–117 CE) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 400. According to Giorgio Jossa’s recent book, Jews or Christians? The Followers of Jesus in Search of Their Own Identity, WUNT 202 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), the majority of scholars now tend to speak of “a plurality of different Judaisms” (23), though he takes the other side (see also 22–29). (My own view is that if one included Jewish scholars in the survey, the plural “Judaisms” would not be in the majority.) 30. “Intellectual Autobiography” (chap. 1 above).

39

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

The average Palestinian Jew of the first century was probably the ‘am ha-arets, any member of the class which made up the “people of the land,” a Biblical phrase probably used to mean hoi polloi. . . . The members of this majority were not without religion. If there was any such thing, then, as an “orthodox Judaism,” it must have been that which is now almost unknown to us, the religion of the average “people of the land.”31

In another article Smith had written, Down to the fall of the Temple, the normative Judaism of Palestine is that compromise of which the three principal elements are the Pentateuch, the Temple, and the ‘amme ha’arets, the ordinary Jews who were not members of any sect.32

These words seemed totally convincing to me, for the good and simple reason that they corresponded to the evidence. And so I did what I could to reconstruct the Judaism of the common people, paying some attention, of course, to the famous parties but trying to focus on the Pentateuch, the temple, and the ordinary people. I could not use the words orthodox or normative, since both imply control, and I thought that there was relatively little control over what ordinary people did and thought (apart from their activities in the temple). The only term I could think of for Smith’s Judaism was “common Judaism.” 7. And so I wrote Judaism: Practice and Belief (1992, corrected ed. 1994). It is based mostly on the Bible and Josephus, making liberal use of points gained from Philo’s Special Laws, rabbinic literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and some of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, with some supporting evidence from pagan authors and the New Testament. I assumed—and argued—that people did not necessarily do what rabbinic literature says that they ought to do, and the emphasis on the Bible and Josephus kept me (I hope) from following the rabbis slavishly. I do not know to what degree this should be judged a successful effort to describe the religion of the ordinary people. My consolation is that at least I tried to find the religion that Morton Smith said was “almost unknown to us.” Certainly I could have included more topics, and there must be a good number of errors, since the subjects are 31. Morton Smith, “Palestinian Judaism in the First Century,” in Israel: Its Role in Civilization, ed. Moshe Davis (New York: Israel Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary, 1956), 67–81, here 68, 73, 81; repr. in Essays in Greco-Roman and Related Talmudic Literature, ed. Henry A. Fischel (New York: KTAV, 1977), 183–97. 32. Morton Smith, “The Dead Sea Sect in Relation to Ancient Judaism,” New Testament Studies 7 (1960–61): 347–60, here 356.

40

THE ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE “COMMON JUDAISM”

so numerous and varied. The chief fault of which I am aware is that I did not do enough to fit Jewish practices into the wider world. If I were to redo the work today, I would include sections on the Jewish temple, sacrifices, and purifications in light of pagan practices, since a lot of points are common not just to Jews but to the ancient world in general. I am confident, however, that the major point—which I owe to Morton Smith—is correct and that one should seek common Judaism principally among the ordinary people. I should add here three brief comments about the relationship between “covenantal nomism” and “common Judaism”: (a) In Paul and Palestinian Judaism, “covenantal nomism” rests to an appreciable degree on an argument about the presuppositions that underlie ancient Jewish literature.33 “Common Judaism” results from a study that is similar to a topographical survey in archaeology. One can turn the pages of Jewish literature and find the topics. One can also, as Shaye Cohen has emphasized, turn the pages of Greek and Latin literature on Jews and find the very same topics.34 Therefore, common Judaism is easy to verify. (b) Covenantal nomism is a theology, whereas common Judaism emphasizes practices but includes beliefs. (c) Since the election and the law are among the common beliefs, common Judaism includes covenantal nomism. Though I still regard the argument about presuppositions in Paul and Palestinian Judaism as valid and convincing, it would have been easier to argue first in favor of common Judaism and then in favor of covenantal nomism—if only I had thought of it in 1968 or thereabouts. 8. I do not have a theoretical way of stating the relationship between unity and diversity, but I did make one effort after publication of Practice and Belief. This was inspired in part by Jonathan Smith’s lecture, to which I referred above, that included comments on the walnut tree. I decided to try to parallel social groups to groups in nature. I shall here quote a few paragraphs from an essay titled “The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews: Commonalities, Overlaps, Differences.”35 One of the virtues of these paragraphs is that they conclude—at last!—my efforts to respond to the writings of Jacob Neusner to which I referred above (except, of course, for the present essay): 33. See further my “Covenantal Nomism Revisited” (chap. 3 below). 34. A lecture given at a conference entitled “‘Common Judaism’ or a Plurality of ‘Judaisms’ in Late Antiquity: The State of the Debate,” held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, May 2003. 35. E. P. Sanders, “The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in their Historical Context, ed. Timothy H. Lim et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 7–43. The paper was written in 1998 and is reprinted as chapter 4 in the present book.

41

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

I imagine groups in human society as being in some ways like groups in nature.36 To simplify, life-forms are divided into two kingdoms, animal and vegetable; animals are chordata or not; chordata are vertebrate or not; vertebrate animals are subdivided into mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish; some mammals are primates, some primates are homidae, and so on. At each stage, there are both common and distinguishing characteristics of each group. In the ancient world . . . , we find Jews and non-Jews. Both were humans, and both were ancient, which means that they were all alike in numerous ways. Our ability to say that some ancient people but not others were Jews, however, indicates that there were some distinguishing characteristics. The question of common and distinctive characteristics . . . , which is frequently complicated in botany and biology, becomes even more complex when we consider human social groupings. There will sometimes be no one decisive feature that places people in one group or sub-group rather than another. We cannot say that all Jews were monotheists, that all Jews observed the Sabbath, that all Jews avoided pork, or that all male Jews were circumcised. In the ancient world, most people whom we can identify as Jews were monotheists; most observed the Sabbath in one way or other; most would not consume pork, shellfish or blood; and most Jewish males were circumcised. These were extremely frequent characteristics, but we could not insist on a single one of them as a completely definitive distinguishing mark. Who were Jews? In general, they were people who were born of a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism. Another general way of defining ancient Jews fixes on perception: Jews were people who regarded themselves as Jewish and who were so regarded by other people. The vast majority of Jews in the ancient world had these characteristics: (1) they believed in and worshipped the God of Israel; (2) they accepted the Hebrew Bible (often in translation) as revealing his will; (3) consequently they observed most aspects37 of the Mosaic law; (4) they identified themselves with the history and fate of the Jewish people. Jews sometimes formed sub-groups. Clubs and societies were a strongly marked feature of the ancient world. In fact, the voluntary formation of relatively small groups is a general human characteristic, and there 36. Jonathan Z. Smith has more than once used taxonomy (often called “systematics”) in discussing religion. See recently his “A Matter of Class: Taxonomies of Religion,” Harvard Theological Review 89 (1996): 387–403. 37. I wish that I had written “some aspects”; cf. “general conformity” in the last sentence of this paragraph.

42

THE ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE “COMMON JUDAISM”

may be an evolutionary explanation of this tendency.38 In any case, Jews shared it. Voluntary groups necessarily have a good number of the characteristics of the surrounding society: they cannot be entirely unique. Even when they are deliberately counter-cultural societies, they still share characteristics with the larger whole of which they are a part.39 American hippies were, and American militia are, strongly American. No matter how radical they intend to be, people cannot escape the circumstances that fashion them. It follows that in the Graeco-Roman period Jewish sub-groups were Jewish. They shared enough of the common Jewish identity markers . . . that a learned and perceptive student in the ancient world, had he or she found the writings of a Jewish sub-group, would have been able to recognize it as Jewish.

Thus, diversity and the creation of subgroups do not necessarily destroy unity. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the members of the “fourth philosophy,” the common people, and Hellenistic Jewish philosophers such as Philo all disagreed on lots of points. They all belonged, however, to Judaism. Where most of them agree is where we find “common Judaism.” Common Judaism: Some Examples I shall now briefly present a little of the evidence that points toward “common Judaism.” Most of the argument that appears in Practice and Belief depends on citing passages from diverse sources that agree on a certain observance (such as circumcision of males) or belief (such as God’s election of Israel). There is also overwhelming evidence, which is scattered through the pages of Practice and Belief, that Jews throughout the Roman Empire constituted a single social group. Outsiders could identify Jews as Jews, and Jews saw themselves as constituting a distinctive group—not several different groups. This means that Jews had identifiable characteristics. They were distinctive in part because of observances, in part because of belief. I wish to summarize some of the evidence that points toward a single (though diverse) group—not a lot of Judaisms, but a common Judaism. 38. Families, clans, and tribes are much more ancient than nations. The tendency to form groups and clubs may reflect the need to revert to relatively small groupings. Students of baboons and chimpanzees have noted that these primates can relate without enmity to a small number of other animals. 39. See Albert I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation, Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement 55 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 34, 55–58.

43

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

1. Both Julius Caesar and Augustus offered various advantages or concessions to Jews throughout the empire, and the cities of the empire hastened to confirm these rights. There are two substantial passages in Josephus that describe the conferral or confirmation of Jewish rights: Ant. 14.213–64 (relating to the time of Julius Caesar and the period after his death) and Ant. 16.160–73 (the period of Augustus, though some of Josephus’s material in this section is earlier).40 I shall single out four of the main rights: assembly, the Sabbath, the Jews’ ancestral food, and the contribution of money to the temple. From these we may infer that pagans identified Jews as people who needed to meet together (one assumes in synagogues), who wished not to work or appear in court on Saturdays, who preferred not to eat certain foods, and who desired to support the temple in Jerusalem.41 Jews saw themselves in the same way: they clamored for these rights. Provincial officials or city councils sometimes denied Jewish requests or overturned traditional rights, and so the Caesar of the day, or one of his agents, had to step in. For example: while Herod the Great and his courtier, Nicolaus of Damascus, were in Ionia, the local Jews complained to them that they were being prohibited from obeying their own laws, particularly those relating to the Sabbath and the contribution of money to Jerusalem. Herod and Nicolaus supported them. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (Augustus’s right-hand man), because of Herod’s goodwill and friendship, upheld the appeal and confirmed (or restored) the rights of Ionian Jews (Ant. 16.27–65). Herod’s intervention in Asia Minor provides extremely clear evidence of the common interests of Jews throughout the Roman Empire. These observances (Sabbath, kosher food, and so on) imply basic beliefs: the Jews follow their own God and believe that he requires them to live in a certain way. That is, their God is the one true God, and Jews have a special relationship with him. His will is found in the Bible. 2. The collection of money for Jerusalem deserves emphasis. It appears that most Jews in the Roman Empire, and in Mesopotamia as well, were loyal to the temple and supported it. Payment of the temple tax from both the western and the eastern Diaspora is well attested in Josephus and Philo.42 Payment is taken for granted in Matt 17:24. Cicero objected to the right of Jews to export money from their local provinces and supported the governors who confiscated the funds or 40. On Augustus’s support of Jewish rights, see also Philo, Embassy 156–57, 291, 311–16. 41. For a fuller analysis of the decrees in Josephus’s Antiquities, see my Practice and Belief, 212. 42. See my Practice and Belief, 52.

44

THE ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE “COMMON JUDAISM”

forbade their export.43 According to Josephus, the temple was occasionally plundered—which indicates that it contained a lot of wealth.44 Probably most of it came from Diaspora Jews, both in Mesopotamia and in the Roman Empire.45 Both gentiles and Jews saw support of the Jerusalem temple as an identifying mark of Jews. The strongest proof of the connection between the temple and Jewish identity is the fact that after the first revolt (66–73 CE) the temple tax was collected and sent to Rome for other purposes.46 The Jews were a distinct body of people in the Roman Empire, and all Jews in the empire were identified and taxed after the revolt in Palestine. The practice of collecting money and sending it to the temple in Jerusalem implies, again, beliefs: that the worship of the true God was conducted there and that the biblical requirement of the temple tax should be observed.47 3. One of the principal Jewish rights in the Diaspora was that they were not required to worship the city gods, despite gentile pressure.48 This again points to a belief: that the Jewish God was the only true God. Both Jews and gentiles recognized this as a defining characteristic of Jews. 4. Circumcision of sons is commanded in the Bible and is a main feature in the story of the Hasmonean revolt. Jews and Greeks agreed that Jewish males were circumcised.49 Circumcision is commanded in the Bible (Genesis 17), and Jews believed that they should obey. This correspondence between Jewish and Greco-Roman views of Jewish practices proves that there were common observances. A sociologist might stop with observable customs: Jews were people who followed some or all of the practices just listed (plus others that can be 43. Besides relating stories of theft of the temple tax en route to Jerusalem, Cicero writes this in favor of Flaccus: “When every year it was customary to send gold to Jerusalem on the order of the Jews from Italy and from all our provinces, Flaccus forbade by an edict its exportation from Asia” (Pro Flacco 28.67). 44. For stories of plunder, see Practice and Belief, 83f., 161–62. 45. According to Cicero, Pro Flacco 28.68, Flaccus’s decree to stop the exportation of gold from his province (Asia) to Jerusalem led to the confiscation of more than 220 pounds of gold. It would have taken the farmers and merchants of Jewish Palestine a long time to contribute that much money to the temple. 46. Josephus, J. W. 7.218; Cassius Dio, History of Rome 66.7. 47. In the Greco-Roman period, Jews paid one-half sheqel (two drachmas) annually. This combines the half-sheqel tax of Exod 30:13 (which was apparently a one-time-only tax) with the regular tax of Neh 10:32 (which specifies one-third sheqel). 48. See, for example, Josephus, Ant. 12.125–27. This dispute also involved Nicolaus as advocate for the Jews and Marcus V. Agrippa as judge. 49. There is a convenient collection of gentile sources in Molly Whittaker, Jews and Christians: GraecoRoman Views (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 80–85. The sources, with translation, can be found in Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism.

45

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

established in various ways: the list above is not exhaustive). But a lot of Jewish literature offers motives, and I think that we should go beyond a list of practices. Jewish observance of the law was based on the view that God ordained it. Moreover, Jews were monotheists: their God was the only true God. This belief, coupled with the view that they should follow God’s law, shows that they thought of themselves as having a special relationship with God. He had a covenant with them, and he had chosen them to obey him. Consequently, to this list of common observances,50 I would add three major beliefs: monotheism, election, and the divine origin of the law. Thus, I regard “covenantal nomism” (the election plus the law) as part of “common Judaism.”51 Conclusion: Basic Elements, Cores, and Essences If I were asked the classic question, whether or not Philo and R. Aqiba would have understood each other, I would say that they would. I assume that they would have disagreed about exegetical techniques and other items, but that if one could have visited the other at Passover, they would have agreed on what they were doing and why—on practice and belief. I would also respond affirmatively to my earlier question, whether or not at Passover Jews from Italy, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Jerusalem would have understood one another’s Passover observance. For the most part, all Jews understood “common Judaism,” as did a lot of gentiles. Was common Judaism “essential”? It appears to me that it was essential to Judaism as a whole and to most individual Jews. That does not mean that it was uniform in the life of every Jew, much less that it was in some way enforced—except by local public opinion: I do not think that in the period I have studied normative Judaism had emerged. Without common or shared identity, however, Judaism might have broken up into Neusner’s separate Judaisms, and many more Jews would have assimilated themselves to common Mediterranean life. 50. In Practice and Belief, 236–37, I listed five common practices. In the present summary, I have left out purification, since everyone in the ancient world purified themselves for sacred occasions. Thus periodic purification was common to Jews, but it was also common to everyone else. In the Diaspora, Jewish purification (especially handwashing and the use of basins for sprinkling, called perirrantēria) agreed with pagan practice. On Jewish purity laws and practices, see Practice and Belief, 214–30. On handwashing and perirrantēria in the Diaspora and in paganism, see my Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, 260–70. For further references to hand washing, see the index in ibid., s.v. “Purity laws: sub-topics.” 51. See, for example, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, chap. 13.

46

THE ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE “COMMON JUDAISM”

But could individual people be Jews while omitting, say, half or even three-fourths of the common, typical practices and belief? I would say yes, if they counted themselves Jewish and if other people saw them as Jewish. A person who gave up all of the typical practices, it would seem to me, would merge into the gentile world. Legally, a “son of Israel” might still be a Jew by birth; but socially, a total apostate would remove himself or herself from the collective entity, Judaism. Have I proposed an “essentialist” definition of Judaism? It is at least sometimes instructive to discuss terminology, and I think that this is one of the times, partly because some people use the word essence in discussing my work,52 but mostly because the use of brief descriptions and summaries in defining complicated movements deserves a few more lines. To recall an earlier observation: we all need brief depictions, and we shall all continue to employ them. They are useful in discussion of religions, political parties, systems of government—all sorts of things. If every time we wanted to say something about “democracy,” for example, we had to say that there are several democracies, and then give an account of the diverse legislative or parliamentary systems in the more or less democratic nations, we would have to refer to an encyclopedia every time we wanted to say anything about democracy as an “ism,” and it might be hard to see the elements that are common to the democracies. The question of whether it is useful to search for an “essence” depends, I suppose, on how one understands the word. I continue to think of an essence as either an inner quality or an abstract word or phrase of the sort that cannot be historically evaluated. Examples of qualities that are sometimes held to be the essence of a religion are love, faith, and grace. As examples of abstract phrases, I offer “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man” (which was common before the women’s movement) and Adolf von Harnack’s “eternal life in the midst of time” in his work Das Wesen des Christentums, which might be translated “the essence of Christianity” (see below).53 Essences like these are beyond historical research and so cannot aid historical understanding—however useful they may be homiletically. 52. One example in addition to the lecture by Jonathan Z. Smith cited above, “Matter of Class,” is Philip Alexander, “‘The Parting of the Ways’ from the Perspective of Rabbinic Judaism,” in Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways AD 70 to 135, ed. James D. G. Dunn (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 2. 53. “The Christian religion is something simple and sublime; it means one thing and one thing only: eternal life in the midst of time, by the strength and under the eyes of God” (Adolf von Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums [Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1929], 8).

47

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Take love, for example. We can to some degree study by historical means the way in which Jews and Christians treated both insiders and outsiders. Would a strong record of charitable acts prove that love is the essence of either religion? Not precisely, since there might be other explanations of charity (such as enlightened self-interest or the need to curry favor), and in any case we could not prove that charitable acts were performed by all people who claimed to be Jewish or Christian. If love were the one and only essence of a religion, a lot of people who claimed membership would be found not to behave in accordance with the essence. The essence, then, would turn out to be theoretical, and we would have a theoretical religion, not a historical one. This may become a little clearer if we return to von Harnack.54 There was a debate in Germany about the usefulness of the Apostles’ Creed in worship. Von Harnack was of the view that it was outmoded. But would anything replace it if it were dropped? It was in that context that von Harnack gave the lectures that became the book Das Wesen des Christentums, which was translated into English as What Is Christianity? Professor Hillerbrand suggested to me that the best translation of Wesen in this context is not “essence” but “core.” The bare core, “eternal life in time,” was supplemented in von Harnack’s lectures by appeal to some of the basic teachings of Jesus, which would combine with the core idea to produce a conception of Christianity that was more relevant than an ancient creed that listed dogmas. Von Harnack—arguably the greatest historian of Christianity—did not propose that “eternal life in the midst of time” could be proved to be the inner guiding principle in each version of Christianity throughout history. The aim, rather, was to find a theological statement that was appropriate to Christianity and that could be used to lead parishioners toward the right sort of Christianity, one that was simple, sensible, humane, and not burdened with antique metaphysical dogmas. Thus I regard von Harnack’s “core” as theological and homiletical, not historical. In terms of history, it might well be an item on a list of frequently held Christian beliefs. One might argue that it is central to true Christianity—a theological position—without seeing it as having shaped all or even most forms of Christianity historically. I shall give a final example of the difference between a “common characteristic” and an “essence.” I believe it to be true that, on average, 54. I am indebted to a conversation with Hans Hillerbrand, who explained the context of von Harnack’s Wesen des Christentums.

48

THE ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE “COMMON JUDAISM”

ancient Jews were loyal to the Jewish people and to the God of Israel, but I do not know whether or not they all loved God or one another. In modern speech, “love” is an inner quality, and it cannot be supported by historical evidence the way loyalty can be. We can prove widespread loyalty by the number of instances in which ancient Jews were willing to fight and die for their ancestral traditions and were also willing to suffer difficulty, discomfort, and discrimination as they struggled to maintain them. In my own view, I have been in quest of historically ascertainable characteristics of a religion, which I distinguish from an essence. One of the things that I like about “covenantal nomism” as a theological lowest common denominator is that it has a lot of content. It actually depends on the idea of loyalty. It is as theological as von Harnack’s “core” of Christianity, but it is much better suited to historical proof, because loyalty to the people of Israel and to the law can be supported by evidence. “Common Judaism,” of course, puts more meat on those bones and is more obviously descriptive. Thus I do not think that I know what the essence of Judaism was. I think that there were basic and common observances and beliefs that served to identify some people as Jews in the ancient world and that gave the group a firm identity. The theology that held these practices and beliefs together was the underlying faith that the God of Israel is the one true God of the world and that his will is found in the Hebrew Scripture (or in its Greek translation). This Scripture includes the history of God’s dealing with his people, including the election of Abraham, the exodus from Egypt, and the giving of the law to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Bible is the basis of common Judaism (though just which parts of it each group of people observed, and precisely how they observed those parts, varied).

49

3

Covenantal Nomism Revisited

I have made two large-scale proposals about what we call for convenience “first-century Judaism,” which actually covers more than a hundred years on either side of the year 1 CE.1 The more recent proposal is in a book called Judaism: Practice and Belief, which appeared in 1992, and I shall mention it first. I suggested that there was such a thing as common Judaism, which included most Jews in the ancient world. Whatever their differences, they shared several practices and beliefs. Common Judaism is defined by a “laundry list” of beliefs and practices running from monotheism through Sabbath observance to sacrifice in the temple in Jerusalem (while it still stood). 2 The other proposal appeared twenty-five years earlier, in 1977, in a book called Paul and Palestinian Judaism. There I suggested that all the main bodies of Palestinian Jewish literature (except 4 Ezra) between 1. Earlier versions of this paper were delivered at two regional meetings of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature: the Mid-Atlantic region in March 2004, and the Southwestern region in March 2007. I am grateful to several scholars who asked good questions and made interesting suggestions. Thanks also go to Craig Keener, with whom I corresponded extensively about the issues of covenantal nomism and works-righteousness. 2. For common Jewish practices, see Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), 236f.; for common beliefs, see chap. 13. Further: John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Companions and Competitors (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 3:7–8, 329, 384n158, 642; and most recently my “Common Judaism,” in Common Judaism Explored: Second Temple Judaism in Context, ed. Wayne McCready and Adele Reinhartz (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008).

51

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

approximately 200 BCE and 200 CE reflect a common understanding of how a religion works. I called this a “pattern of religion” and defined it as how “getting in and staying in” were understood.3 The basis of the pattern was the election of Israel, which was how people who were Jewish got “in”: they were born that way. Outsiders could convert and thus get “in,” and insiders could remove themselves by rejecting the God who chose them. But the foundation was the election. Next in importance was the giving of the law to the elect, who, by observing it, maintained their status in the covenant. From those two fundamental elements, perfectly illustrated by the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, other items fell into place. I shall quote a list of eight items that constitute what I called, from its main two component parts, “covenantal nomism.” The distinctiveness of 4 Ezra helps point out the degree to which the type of religion best called “covenantal nomism” is common to Judaism as it appears in the literature considered here. The “pattern” or “structure” of covenantal nomism is this: (1) God has chosen Israel and (2) given the law. The law implies both (3) God’s promise to maintain the election and (4) the requirement to obey. (5) God rewards obedience and punishes transgression. (6) The law provides for means of atonement, and atonement results in (7) maintenance or reestablishment of the covenantal relationship. (8) All those who are maintained in the covenant by obedience, atonement, and God’s mercy belong to the group which will be saved. An important interpretation of the first and last points is that election and ultimately salvation are considered to be by God’s mercy rather than human achievement (p. 42). These are my two large proposals. In the present paper, we are concerned with some of the difficulties of the earlier one, covenantal nomism, which I described as an underlying common theology.4 The argument was that many ancient Jews held basic assumptions that were not often mentioned as major principles, even though their presence both can and should be inferred. There were two main principles: confidence in the election and the accompanying requirement that Jews obey the law. Items 3 through 8 in the list above show how ancient Jews in general worked out the main implications 3. E.g., Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 17f., 543–52. 4. E.g., ibid., 69–73. Note the following terms and phrases: “general understanding of religion and religious life” (69); “common pattern . . . which underlies” (70); “basic religious principles” (71); “what principles lie behind” (71); not a “system” (73f.; “underlying agreement” (85); “the same underlying pattern” (424); “basic common ground . . . in the various bodies of literature” (424).

52

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

of items 1 and 2. All eight of the component parts are mentioned frequently enough in ancient Jewish literature for us to be confident that they were in some people’s minds. The problem is in showing that items 1 and 2 were fundamental, underlying principles. It would have been better if I had first come up with common Judaism and later suggested covenantal nomism. If I had first established, on the basis of mere observation, the widespread agreement to a laundry list of practices and beliefs—two of which are the election and the law—covenantal nomism would have appeared as a reasonable extension of an accepted analysis. Alas! My brain just did not work this way. I first thought of covenantal nomism and only later of common Judaism. There are several factors that explain the sequence; I shall emphasize one of them:5 I had become focused on “legalism,” which was the rubric under which I had first read about first-century Jews.6 By the late 1960s, years of reading Jewish literature had persuaded me that this category was entirely wrong, and I needed a large theological construction to counter legalism, which at the time most Christian scholars saw as the underlying theology of ancient Judaism. Pointing out that one aspect of legalism was not true would have done no good at all in the climate of New Testament scholarship as it was then. I was not interested merely in publishing a critique of legalism, but rather in replacing it with a superior view. Covenantal nomism, like legalism, is an academic generalization about a theology that was commonly accepted in ancient Judaism. We all need generalizations about cultures, historical epochs, religions, etc., and we use them all the time. The difficulty is to find 5. The other two are these: (1) I was rash in my youth and went after the more complicated issue first. I have now reached the happy stage of life at which I can blame my present errors on old age and approaching dementia, and my former shortcomings on the folly of youth. But I do think that youth had something to do with the procedure. (2) Second, and more importantly, I had become engrossed with the inner workings of rabbinic literature and especially the rabbinic mind. The works of Max Kadushin were very important in my life, and I thought a lot about interconnections between one aspect of rabbinic thought and others. (Titles include A Conceptual Approach to the Mekilta; Organic Thinking: A Study of Rabbinic Thought; The Rabbinic Mind.) This led me to look for an underlying and coherent outlook, not for a laundry list of apparently discrete items. 6. I understand legalism to mean “salvation by one’s own deeds, based on the enumeration of those deeds (whether good or bad).” Craig Keener has told me that some people that he has read may mean by legalism only that Jewish literature devotes an excessive amount of space to behavior or “works,” and that they do not all use the charge “legalism” solely to refer to salvation by works. In case this is true: I regard the degree of emphasis on behavior as largely a question of genre and the issue of the day. Discussions of the Ten Commandments focus on laws; discussions of the Psalms do not. Within the Pauline corpus, Galatians and Romans are heavily weighted toward issues of “admission and membership”: must gentile Christians accept the Jewish law in order to be in the people of God? First Corinthians, on the other hand, is more heavily weighted toward behavior.

53

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

generalizations that actually apply and that are neither trivial nor misleading. The negative argument of Paul and Palestinian Judaism and of this paper is that legalism does not apply to ancient Jewish literature at all: it explains nothing about it. Moreover, it is totally misleading: it misrepresents the material. I shall also point out below that ancient Judaism was not sufficiently individualistic to allow the view that Jews were a miscellaneous bunch of people, isolated from one another and from their own history, all of whom tried to save themselves by their own efforts, with no prior connection to God and with no group benefits. One of the difficulties of the discussion has been that Christianity, and thus the critiques of Judaism offered by Christian scholars, focuses on individual salvation, whereas Judaism has been more concerned with the protection and preservation of the group. That is why I changed the category “soteriology” to “getting in and staying in.” This allows a comparison and contrast, since both agree that being in a group that is approved by God is important—whether or not they equally emphasize individual salvation. Paul thought that people should be members of the body of Christ; Jews thought that Jews should be members of the people of Israel. The contrast between Paul and Judaism is how people “get in.” In both, “staying in” requires certain forms of behavior, though they partially disagree on what the behavior is; thus Paul did not regard circumcision and Sabbath observance as necessary, but he did insist on “the law,” defined as love of neighbor (e.g., Rom 13:9), for those who were in the body of Christ. Below, I shall take up a few of the criticisms that have been made of “covenantal nomism,” but I shall begin by contrasting covenantal nomism with legalism, the theological structure that it was intended to replace. I traced the accusation of legalism back only as far as Ferdinand Weber (1897),7 but it had been around much longer and was largely accepted in New Testament circles when I began my professional life. The view that Judaism was “legalistic” meant that all individual Jews thought that they had to save themselves by their own merits. Fundamental to this argument was the assertion that Jews were in such a desperate plight because they were conscious of having lost their status as elect. In Weber’s view, Jews generally thought that the golden calf incident canceled the election and left them on their own. 7. Ferdinand Weber, Jüdische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter Schriften (Leipzig, 1897); see Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 36–39.

54

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

This is a necessary and fundamental but imaginary assertion in Weber’s work. There is no reason to hold it, except the prior conviction that all Jews were legalistic. Weber was intelligent and learned enough to see that the polemical accusation of “legalism” in fact required the assertion that Jews thought that they had lost the covenant. It is easy to argue against Weber’s theory. If Jews were conscious of having lost what they once had, they would have mentioned it, lamented it, asked what happened and why. But they did not. Weber did, however, offer a thoughtful proposition, one that actually took account of ancient Judaism. The charge “legalism” is empty if the Jews believed in the covenant—this belief having approximately the same role as the Christian idea of prevenient grace:8 God initiates the relationship; in gratitude, humans conform their will to his. In Rudolf Bultmann’s terms, God’s gift precedes his demand. The Jewish form of this is that first God called Abraham and brought the people out of Egypt, and then they gladly accepted his law. Thus Weber perceived that either ancient Jews accepted the traditional biblical doctrine of election and therefore were not legalistic, or they held the view that the election had been canceled, with the result that they became extreme individualists, having no prior collective advantages, each seeking his or her own salvation by obeying more often than transgressing. It is a rational alternative, but Weber chose the wrong answer. Such a dramatic change as surrendering the idea of the election and the covenant should be acknowledged or objected to; lack of such discussion points to continuity with inherited confidence in the election. The Jewish view of the covenant is part of the even more fundamental assumption of a very large worldview, namely, that God created the world and that history is moving to a conclusion governed in general by the God of Israel, in which the Jewish people will be free or perhaps even dominant over surrounding people. There were several competing worldviews. The most obvious was polytheism, which Jews criticized vigorously. Apart from that, there are relatively few Jewish arguments against rival worldviews. For example, the major Jewish opinion, that history moves toward an end determined by God, was directly opposed by a position that educated Greek speakers—both gentile and Jewish—knew very well, namely, that history is cyclical and that all phases will be repeated. Jews only seldom argued against such 8. Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed., ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), s.v. “Prevenient Grace.”

55

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

basic Greco-Roman theories. Philo did engage the Stoic position that God and nature are identical, but he found it easy to dismiss. 9 Since little surviving Jewish literature contains extensive argument against other views (except polytheism), our sources devote relatively little space to arguments in favor of their own. Nevertheless, all historians should agree that there was a distinctive Jewish worldview: God created the world, he chose the Jewish people, and he will ultimately protect and save them. These assumptions all lay too deep to need much proof, even when learned Jews knew that non-Jews held opposite opinions. Criticisms My argument in Paul and Palestinian Judaism actually has been fairly successful, as scholarly arguments go in a field full of divisions and controversies. Now some groups are organizing criticisms, partly—it seems to me—in order to maintain the view of Jewish worksrighteousness, now called “merit theology.” I have previously done very little by way of reply to the criticisms that have been piling up for thirty years, and even now I shall reply to only three points. The first and third of these (covenantal nomism does not summarize a lot of the material in Jewish literature; the Jews really believed in worksrighteousness and were legalists in the Protestant sense) seem to have been the most frequent. The second criticism, to which I shall give the least space, is that covenantal nomism is true but is not very important. Some extremely knowledgeable scholars have made this proposal, and it requires discussion. 1. Covenantal Nomism Does Not Give an Account of Several of the Topics of Rabbinic Literature The answer is simple but will take a several pages because the criticism reveals an issue that needs to be addressed. First, I did not say and never thought that covenantal nomism is a summary of the contents of Jewish literature. It is a basic, fundamental, underlying conception, seldom described or explained. This argument has eluded many scholars, who, it seems to me, do not grasp its force because they want to count explicit references to covenantal nomism and do not 9. See, e.g., Migr. 179; Heir 97.

56

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

see presuppositions that are so fundamental that few people bother to argue that they are true, since there is no one to argue against. My “common Judaism” can be tested by a survey of topics, but covenantal nomism is fundamental because it is presupposed. All of us who do textual research become accustomed to the notion that important topics are those that are mentioned frequently. This is often true, and word studies are good and useful. Many of my happiest hours have been spent at a large table with several texts and concordances spread out while I looked up words and phrases. Today, of course, computer search engines frequently replace concordances— which makes it even easier to overlook the context. In any case, word studies have a hard time finding underlying ideas and basic presuppositions. This is particularly the case with the words for “covenant” in Hebrew and Greek—berît and diathēkē. In rabbinic literature, the word covenant occasionally meant the broad conception that included the election of Israel,10 but it frequently referred only to the covenant with Abraham and thus meant “circumcision”—a point of which I was well aware.11 Once one has found the covenantal idea, however, one can discover more appropriate terms to look up in the concordance, such as “confess the exodus from Egypt,” “accept the yoke of the kingdom of heaven,” “accept the kingdom of heaven,” and the like.12 Similarly in Philo, the unimportance of the word covenant led Isaak Heinemann to write that Philo “did not know the concept of the covenant at all.”13 As I pointed out decades ago, if he had studied the importance to Philo of being in the Jewish politeia—commonwealth, citizenship, or constitution—he would have found the covenant conception.14 10. E.g., Sifre Zuta and Sifre Be-Midbar on Num, 6:24–26; Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 105. 11. E.g., Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 84n21. 12. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 94, 236f. 13. Isaak Heinemann, Philons griechische und jüdische Bildung (1929–32; repr., Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1962), 482–83, 564. 14. “The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism,” in Jews, Greeks and Christians. Religious Cultures in Late Antiquity. Essays in Honor of William David Davies, ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly and Robin Scroggs, Studies in Judaism and Late Antiquity 21 (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 11–44, here 31f., reprinted as chap. 6 in the present book. I have now noted that Erwin Goodenough had already discussed the importance of the covenant idea in Philo. He wrote that Philo “still believed with all his heart that Jews had a special revelation of God in the Torah, and a peculiar relationship with him.” See Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period 12 (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1965), 6–9, where Goodenough also wrote that Jews were “loyal to some common Jewish denominator.” Moreover, “to the great majority of Jews the covenant has meant loyalty to . . . the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and of Sinai, and a sense that their very raison d’être arose from a unique relationship to that God.” I regret that I did not recall these pages when I wrote Paul and Palestinian Judaism, about a decade after I first studied Jewish Symbols.

57

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

But finding the best terms to look up, while helpful, only scratches the surface if one is searching for really large cultural assumptions. Recently lots of scholars have been influenced by the view of some literary critics that we cannot know anything about a document except the words on the page. But students of ancient Judaism and early Christianity usually want to be historians—as do I—not purist literary critics. Historians have to look for cultural assumptions. I would like to show (a) that there really are large worldviews whose importance cannot be established by counting words and (b) that they can be found. In everything that follows, the part of ancient Jewish literature on which I shall concentrate is rabbinic literature, because that is where other scholars find the alternative assumption: legalism. Underlying Principles I shall begin by giving some examples that show what a fundamental cultural assumption looks like. These examples come from various cultures: one of the examples is from ancient Egypt, one is from the early United States, and the rest are current in our own place and time. To save space and time, I shall do little more than mention the first two examples: (1) One assumption that is perfectly clear in modern American advertising is, “What is new is better.” Other cultures have had the opposite view. We seldom state “what is new is better,” but it is a key motif of modern US society. (2) Most people today believe in an unconscious mind, one that causes us to act and react in ways that are not deliberately intended. “Freudian slips” and “defense mechanisms” are part of modern discourse. These ideas were unknown in the eighteenth century. Today people assume them frequently but seldom explicitly attribute them to Sigmund Freud or his daughter Anna, and in fact they seldom state that belief in an active unconscious mind is standard in our culture. (3) The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States fail to state a lot of presuppositions. They rely on knowledge of common and usual practices and also on the Enlightenment philosophy that the founding fathers had studied in their youths. I shall list just a few items. (a) The founding fathers accepted the inequality of humans. The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal.”

58

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

Since until a few decades ago man and men were routinely used as generics (meaning humans or humanity), a modern purist reader of the text, unaware of the political assumptions of the eighteenth century, might infer that women, slaves, minors, and people with no property had equal rights with free adult males. Similarly, the preamble to the Constitution refers simply to “We the People of the United States,” who “ordain and establish this Constitution.” In neither case do we find an explicit statement of the presuppositions of the day: that only free adult males with property had full rights, including the right to vote. Some of the founding fathers knew that it was wrong to exclude slaves (for example), but they all agreed to do so. In this case, the presuppositions partially negate, rather than enhance, the specific words. Some of the main positive principles that are unstated but assumed in the Constitution and the first Ten Amendments (the “Bill of Rights”) are these: (b) Government is in accord with reason, which is the law of nature, and it does not depend on revelation. The Constitution famously lacks words such as God, Jesus Christ, and the Bible, although most of the founding fathers were Christian, while others were deists who believed in God, though not in Christian doctrine as such. A historian can readily discover that the role of religion in the government was a frequent topic in the eighteenth century, and debates about it were sometimes heated.15 The omission of the topic from the Constitution, as well as the limitation of the discussion of religion in the First Amendment, cannot be accidental: the “framers” of the Constitution omitted God, Christ, and the Bible intentionally, because they believed that government should be based on human reason. (c) Since “all” are equal, no one ought to harm another in his or her life, health, liberty, or possessions. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution supplies these rights but does not reveal the logic (because all are equal). For that, one must read what the “framers” of the Constitution studied when they were youths.16 15. See, for example, Jefferson’s autobiography in Thomas Jefferson, Writings (New York: Library of America, 1984), 40, on the effort by some to insert “Jesus Christ” into Virginia’s statute of religious freedom. Jefferson took the failure of the amendment to show that the legislators intended to protect “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.” 16. The philosophy that underlies the American constitution, and specifically points (b) and (c) in the present text, was clearly articulated by John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, §6: “The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one; And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions”: Locke, Two Treatises

59

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

(4) I shall now give an example from the ancient world of a common cultural assumption that is quite different from ours and also quite different from the assumptions to be found in the Bible. For this exercise, we turn to Egypt and in particular a book by Henri Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation. Frankfort asked if there is any unity behind the bewildering variety of Egyptian religious expressions. He thought that there was: all “were rooted in a single basic conviction, to wit that the universe is essentially static. The Egyptian held that he lived in a changeless world.” This was not “an articulate doctrine,” but it nevertheless decisively “determined the forms he [the Egyptian] gave to his state and his society, to his literature and his art.”17 Ancient Egyptians, of course, were conscious of various sorts of change: dynasties rose and fell; Egyptian armies were not always equally successful. But they assumed that these fluctuations were simply “rhythmic movement[s] contained within an unchanging whole” (13). Creation, which texts endlessly discuss, was an important topic precisely because creation is what really matters in a universe that never changes (50). The articulation, that it “never changes,” however, is implied rather than stated directly. Frankfort analyzes Egyptian dramatic productions, advice on morality and behavior, views of death, and much more to prove that the idea of changelessness underlies them. He points out more than once that this conception is seldom if ever spelled out explicitly, but he nevertheless argues that Egyptian life and thought were based on it. It seems to me that in the field of ancient religion Frankfort is the best example of a scholar who did what I tried to do, though I did it less ably than he. (5) For the final example of really powerful and controlling but unstated assumptions, I wish to take a topic that seems to me to of Government, ed. Peter Laslett, student ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 14th repr., 2003), 271. The Two Treatises were originally published in 1689 and became fundamental in education and political thought in the eighteenth century. The Minutes of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, March 4, 1825, states that “as to the general principles of liberty and the rights of man . . . , the doctrines of Locke . . . and of Sidney . . . may be considered as those generally approved by the fellow citizens of this, and the United States.” Locke, Sidney, and others had been read by the founding fathers when they were schoolboys. Jefferson himself considered Locke one of the three greatest men who had ever lived (along with Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton). See Thomas Jefferson, Writings, 479, 939–40; cf. 1176. 17. Henri Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2000), vii. The work was originally published by Columbia University Press in 1948.

60

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

provide the closest possible analogy to early rabbinic literature. It is modern biblical scholarship. I shall refer to New Testament scholarship, but everyone will understand the analogy. The similarity between rabbinic literature and biblical scholarship first occurred to me, unfortunately, seven years after I completed Paul and Palestinian Judaism and five years after it was published. In 1982 I attended the New Testament seminar in Cambridge that was chaired by Professor Morna Hooker. Geoffrey Styler took minutes, which he read at the beginning of each meeting. It was listening to the minutes that brought home to me the similarities between our activities and those of the ancient rabbis. The minutes recorded what took place, and thus they usually lacked an introduction to the problem of the day. We all knew why the day’s topic was an issue, and it was unnecessary for the secretary to tell us. Neither the seminar nor the minutes ever revealed a single thing about our motives. Why were so many learned people there, demonstrating that they spent their lives in a most minute investigation of a short text? We never discussed the topic because we knew the answer—or, more precisely, we knew the range of answers. Some may have held that the New Testament was literally the revealed word of God. Others might have said that Christianity is one of the most important movements in the history of the world and that any amount of effort is worthwhile if it reveals the meaning and significance of just a small bit of the text of the New Testament. I have never been in a graduate seminar in the New Testament where anyone present felt called upon to explain why she was devoting herself, body and soul, to its study. In a doctoral or a senior seminar, motives and importance are assumed, not discussed; broader issues are assumed, not discussed. One focuses on the precise topic of the day. Rabbinic literature reads very much like the minutes of a meeting of modern biblical scholars. I wrote this about the rabbis in Paul and Palestinian Judaism: [Religious principles] . . . are not discussed as such. Rabbinic discussions are often at the third remove from central questions of religious importance.18 Thus the tractate Mikwaoth, “immersion pools,” does not consider the religious value of immersion or the general reason for purity, much less such a large topic as why the law should be observed. It simply begins with the classification of the grades among pools of water. This 18. Cf. Jacob Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 235, 238; see further section 3 below. [Footnote in the original.]

61

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

does not mean that there were no religious principles behind the discussion; simply that they (a) were so well understood that they did not need to be specified and (b) did not fall into the realm of halakah. . . . This sort of literature, which deals with questions of detail rather than principle, . . . [permits] inferences as to what principles lie behind the discussions as a whole. (71)

I proposed that “the only reason for elaborating and defining [human] obligations under the covenant is that God’s faithfulness and justice in keeping his side are beyond question” (82), which I still regard as correct. It would seem to me folly to say that faculty members and doctoral students who sit in seminars discussing details of biblical exegesis have no principles or that the range of their principles cannot be inferred. It seems greater folly to assume that the rabbis studied the sacred text as thoroughly as they did but that we have no explanation of why they did so. The rabbis can go on for page after page without referring to election or Mount Sinai or atonement—just as New Testament scholars can go on for page after page without referring to the revelation of God in Christ. I would suggest that covenantal nomism functions in rabbinic literature according to the analogy with modern biblical scholarship: it explains the entirety, though of course the explanation is rarely explicit. Covenantal nomism explains why the rabbis spent so much time and energy combing through every line of the Bible and debating its significance. It gives a better explanation of Jewish assiduousness in study, I think, than the proposed underlying theology called “legalism,” or now “merit theology,” which is that they studied to find ways of earning brownie points or merit badges. The rabbis studied the Bible for the same reasons Christian scholars do, for love of it and because it was God’s great gift to them, not out of fear that they could not otherwise pile up enough merits. Covenantal Nomism as an Underlying Principle We must ask the following question: If it be granted that there are such things as cultural assumptions, and if it be granted that the rabbis had some, how can it be proved that “covenantal nomism” in particular was a common assumption, visible in most of the extant Jewish literature that comes from the period 200 BCE to 200 CE? One reviewer, who partially got my argument, stated that I could just as well have proved that the rabbis knew atomic theory, because they do not discuss 62

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

it. This is merely a statement in favor of capitulation to word counting and a refusal to probe deeply. There are lots of arguments that reveal the presence of covenantal nomism even when the words do not appear, of which I shall summarize three. I shall focus on one that is not emphasized in Paul and Palestinian Judaism and one that is entirely absent, while repeating only one of the major arguments in the book. (1) First, I wish to emphasize a point that I undervalued in Paul and Palestinian Judaism: covenantal nomism is clear in the biblical narrative and could hardly have been missed by close readers of the Bible, such as the rabbis. And they did not miss it: frequently they point out the precedence of God’s grace to requirements laid on humans.19 Covenantal nomism assumes the seminal importance of two figures, Abraham and Moses: God chose Abraham and his descendants and brought them out of Egypt, and gave Israel the law through Moses. The pattern of covenant and law, grace and requirement, is absolutely clear in the sequence of those great events. This obvious biblical base would have strengthened my claim if I had had the wisdom to appeal to it more forcefully. One has no reason to think that the rabbis read Einstein or Fermi, but one cannot doubt that they studied the Bible. (2) Next, I would remind the reader of one of my main arguments in Paul and Palestinian Judaism: the view that atonement is possible for all transgressions is ubiquitous. It comes up every time the topic of atonement comes up, for example in the Tannaitic Midrashim on biblical passages that refer to atoning sacrifices. There are also tractates in the Mishnah that deal with atonement. The very idea of atonement or restoration assumes a prior good status—being “in” in the language of Paul and Palestinian Judaism.20 Rabbinic literature offers different “systems” of atonement. In the Bible, one finds various transgressions, and here and there one finds sentences about atonement, forgiveness, and restoration; the rabbis matched up transgressions and atonements in various ways (157–80), so that a specific means of atonement would rectify a specific set of transgressions. What is common to all of these efforts is that atonement is guaranteed to all Israelites who are willing to receive it. In the rabbinic discussions, atonement for transgression includes the sin about which the Bible says there is no atonement—taking the name 19. See, for example, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 92–97. 20. See “Salvation by Membership in the Covenant and Atonement,” in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 147–82.

63

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

of the Lord in vain. The rabbis got around that exception with ease (159–60), which simply reveals their underlying assumption that God is ready and willing to forgive his straying children for anything. Though they strayed, they were still his children and could correct their paths. All of these discussions of atonement, to repeat, presuppose the prior state of grace, as Christians might call it, or the prior condition of being “in,” in the language of Paul and Palestinian Judaism. If there is atonement, there is also election and, of course, the law, which defines transgression and atonement. That is, if you have atonement you have covenantal nomism. (3) The third argument is an appeal to history: Jews remained loyal to the God of Israel and loyal to one another. The importance of group identity and cohesiveness is overwhelmingly obvious if one casts even a cursory glance at ancient Judaism. An enormous number of ancient Jews lived outside the Holy Land: either to the east (Mesopotamia) or to the west (Asia Minor, North Africa, and Europe). Some doubtless blended into the common culture, but to a remarkable degree they held together as a distinctive group, being even more unwilling than the Spartans (as Josephus remarked) to give up their native constitution, their laws, and their customs, while being willing to die on behalf of their God and his people.21 The people who died in the Maccabean revolt or in the two revolts against Rome were not engaged in the petty piling up of merits; they were being loyal to a way of life, to their fellow Jews, and to the one who chose Israel and decreed the nation’s distinctive cultural characteristics. Unhappily, I did not have the wit or wisdom to include this argument in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, although it does appear in Judaism: Practice and Belief. War is only the most extreme example of the loyalty of Jews to God and to one another. One may also examine pilgrimage to Jerusalem, payment of the temple tax, and other topics.22 Legalism does not explain loyalty to God and the group, but covenantal nomism—its alternative—does.

21. On the loyalty of Jews to their God and his laws, and the lack of similar loyalty among others, see Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.225–35, 271–80. His point was entirely correct: Jews continued to form a distinctive group, Spartans did not. 22. Judaism: Practice and Belief, 130, 144, 237f., 256f., 264f. I quote from 144: “We have seen throughout how intertwined were religion and patriotism: the God of Israel was God of the world, but he had chosen the nation of Israel. . . . Loyalty to the community was inseparable from loyalty to the deity who called it into being; group identity and devotion to God went together.”

64

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

2. In Some Jewish Literature, Covenantal Nomism Is True but Not Very Important This criticism appears in a paper by Daniel Falk on Jewish prayers and psalms that is printed in a work called Justification and Variegated Nomism.23 I regard this as a fine paper. Falk perceives the importance of analyzing presuppositions, and he carefully notes that the covenant is either explicitly mentioned or is presupposed in the material that he covers. This is what one should expect. Prayers and psalms, the subject as his paper, are addressed to God, and when one addresses God one tends to be conscious of his mercies and of human dependence on him.24 Nevertheless, Falk manages to criticize covenantal nomism. He notes that in some of the material, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Psalms of Solomon, the “covenant” that is so important is not the covenant with all Israel, but a covenant with a restricted group within Israel.25 He asks how suitable covenantal nomism is in the analysis of the Psalms of Solomon and replies that the answer is “somewhat equivocal.” He continues, If we have in mind a formulation that the psalmist(s) would recognize and agree with, there is little doubt in my mind that they would find Sanders’s “covenantal nomism” more congenial than the judgments of his critics. . . . But to designate [the psalmists’] restricted group-centered soteriology “covenantal nomism” is ultimately not very helpful. 26

Similarly, in commenting on the Hodayot in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Falk points out that the “distinctive quality of the practice of religion . . . is its sectarian context, above all that one is a member of the covenant only by individual transfer.”27 I entirely agree with his observations about the redefinition of the covenant in the Psalms of Solomon and the hymns from Qumran. I wish that Falk had noted that, discussing the Dead Sea Scrolls, I made the 23. Daniel Falk, “Prayers and Psalms,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1, The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, ed. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid, WUNT 2.140 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 7–57. 24. The question of the attitude of self-confidence or of reliance on God is partially a question of genre: halakhah presupposes human ability to solve specific issues; addresses to God (prayers and psalms) presuppose dependence on divine grace: Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 224, 266f., 292, 297, 376. 25. Cf. Mark Adam Elliott, The Surviviors of Israel: A Reconsideration of the Theology of Pre-Christian Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). 26. Falk, “Prayers and Psalms,” 51. 27. Ibid., 34.

65

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

same point: “the general pattern of religion which we found earlier in Rabbinic literature is also present in Qumran, although there are striking differences and special emphases.” With regard to the election, “the emphasis . . . reflects the sectarians’ acute self-consciousness of being chosen, not as a nation, but as individuals.”28 And I discussed the same issue—the small group versus all Jews—in dealing with the Psalms of Solomon.29 One of my concerns at the time, however, was to point out that the pattern or structure in Qumran was the same as in rabbinic literature, and that this structure is completely different from legalism. Falk supports that contention entirely, in which case I would incline to the view that my work was at least a little helpful, since Christian scholars were still writing about the legalism of the Dead Sea Sect. 3. Ancient Judaism Was “Variegated”: Covenantal Nomism Was Present, but There Were Competing Theologies, Especially “Merit Theology,” Belief in Salvation by Works The view is fairly widespread that there are sentences in rabbinic literature that do not correspond to my “pattern.” There are many scholars who still wish to find a completely different pattern in rabbinic literature and to do it in the old-fashioned way, by finding proof texts that they can fit into a scheme of their own devising. (Well, actually, it is a scheme of Luther’s devising, but that is another issue.) The other pattern is usually legalism (or merit theology), and the sentences usually have to do with reward and punishment. It is sometimes believed that sentences on reward and punishment imply rejection of the grace of God and reliance on human achievement. Although the situation may have improved a little in recent years, historically the principal way in which New Testament scholars have “used” rabbinic Hebrew has been this: find a sentence; declare it to be a dogma, firmly held by all rabbis; extrapolate the sentence into a full set of dogmatic propositions. In the process, the scholar in question would extrapolate by writing down what he or she would have thought had he or she regarded the sentence as a component part of a systematic theology. This makes it quite easy to find more than one “underlying” theology in rabbinic literature. 28. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 320. 29. Ibid., 408. My conclusion on the balance between the small group and the nation of Israel, however, was a little different from Falk’s.

66

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

Philip Alexander on Two Competing Soteriologies To consider this argument, that a theology of “merit” competes with “covenantal nomism,” I turn to another of the best papers in Justification and Variegated Nomism: “Torah and Salvation in Tannaitic Literature,” by Philip Alexander.30 This is an extremely useful article, in which Alexander compares the implied system of salvation in the Mishnah with that in Sifre Deuteronomy (Sifre Devarim, the Tannaitic, or early rabbinic, midrash or commentary on Deuteronomy). Alexander argues that in Sifre Deuteronomy one sees that the covenant is prominent—as one would expect, since it is a main feature of the biblical text on which the rabbis are commenting. In this work, many passages mention the covenant explicitly, while many others presuppose it. (Alexander, like Falk, perceived the importance of looking for presuppositions.) In the Mishnah, however, “the overwhelming impression . . . is of God making a precise reckoning of the deeds of humankind and meting out exactly calculated reward and punishment.”31 This allows Alexander to draw conclusions that are in harmony with the aim of the volume, Variegated Nomism, namely, that there is more than one “system” in Tannaitic literature. In his “concluding theses,” Alexander generalizes his view of the Mishnah to cover all of early rabbinic literature: “Tannaitic Judaism can be seen as fundamentally a religion of works-righteousness, and it is none the worse for that.” But (he continues) “the doctrine of the election of Israel” stands in “dialectical tension with the basic works-righteousness.”32 Thus the election of Israel, in Sifre Deuteronomy, is one view, while works-righteousness, in the Mishnah, which he thinks is dominant overall, is in tension with that view. Alexander proposes that one must study one document at a time, letting each document have its own view, before offering general conclusions.33 I shall itemize a few objections to Alexander’s conclusions. As in the case of Falk’s article, I disagree less with the analysis along the way than I do with the conclusions, though I shall also refer to some aspects of the Mishnah that Alexander either does not discuss or does not evaluate as I would. 30. Philip Alexander, “Torah and Salvation in Tannaitic Literature,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, 261–301. 31. Ibid., 284. 32. Ibid., 300. 33. Ibid., 298f.

67

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

(1) As everyone knows, the Mishnah consists largely of legal (halakhic) debates. The covenant requires no debate, and reliance on it is not a matter of law, and so the Mishnah does not devote a tractate to it. (There is also no tractate on monotheism.) But the notion that God gave Israel the land, before they brought the tithes and offerings, and that offerings are presented in response to that initial gift—“prior grace” in classical Christian terminology—crops up at the expected place in the Mishnah’s discussion of agricultural offerings (e.g., Ma‘aśer Šheni 5.14). Similarly, atonement is a major topic in the Mishnah, and atonement implies restoration to a prior good status, not the initial achievement of that status. Although Alexander has a discussion of repentance and atonement, his principal conclusion is that “Nothing could be further from Tannaitic thought than the notion of an inexorable justice operating blindly or mechanistically.” That is, he sees repentance and atonement as mitigating the harshness of a system of worksrighteousness. Since Israel “must choose to exercise those means,” however, repentance and atonement do not nullify the underlying works-righteousness.34 This is, basically, the old Christian assessment: repentance is merely one more good work. In the not-entirelyvanished Christian view, it goes in the scales on the plus side, while God’s judgment is entirely based on the balance of the scales: repentance itself is a meritorious achievement that helps the scales to tilt in favor of the individual being judged.35 The principal flaw here is moving from the Mishnah as a document to the assumption that it represents an entire worldview and thus that there were actual human beings who thought that the only thing that God cares about is the balance of deeds. This is the decision that leads to the assessment of repentance as merely a mitigating factor in a system in which God’s principal role is counting merits and demerits. Jewish life was not restricted in this way. Atonement was much more fundamental than the mere elimination of individual misdeeds: it restored people to an original relationship with God. Atonement is part of the covenant, the basic agreement between God and Israel: he will be their God and they will be his people; they shall flourish, and even when they fall upon hard times, God will secure the continuity of the nation. Israelites should obey the law; when they do not, they should 34. Ibid., 288. 35. On Christian scholars who have held that Jewish belief in repentance does not overthrow the charge of legalism, see Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 36 (Weber); 46f. (Bultmann); pp. 52f. (Thyen).

68

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

make atonement. And once a year, the Day of Atonement wipes out all transgressions; the rabbis would later say, the Day plus repentance.36 One ought not to start the discussion of atonement with the assumption of strict legalism: that is an academic decision, not one taken by ancient Jews. In real life, Jews observed the “set times”—the Sabbaths, the feasts, and the great fast (the Day of Atonement)—thinking of the mercies of God, not merely of their own obligations. It is a heartless treatment of them to decide to begin their religious lives with the legal opinions, rewards, and punishments that are now found in the Mishnah. There were no groups of Jews whose entire worldview consisted of legal debates. They all believed in the Bible, including, for example, the calendar of special days. At the festivals they did not think only of the rules of observance, but also of the appropriate biblical passages, such as the avowal in Deuteronomy 26. When the farmer brought the firstfruits to the temple at Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks), he was to speak (or at least refer to, one supposes) “the Avowal,” in which he states that he is bringing the firstfruits from the land that the Lord had given his ancestors. The Avowal continues by summarizing the election of Abraham, bondage in Egypt, the exodus, and the gift of the land.37 Real life was not the same as the life that we might infer if the legal debates in the Mishnah actually constituted an entire “Judaism” (see (3) below). Repentance and atonement play the same role in Judaism as in Christianity. In both religions repentance and atonement are total cures; in both, humans must seek forgiveness; and in both there is a divine guarantee of that forgiveness. In some forms of Christianity (those that reserve Baptism for believers), repentance rescues the lost person who suffers from original sin; but in other forms of Christianity and in most forms of Judaism, including especially rabbinic Judaism, atonement restores the individual to a prior good relationship with God, and the good relationship depends on acts of God (either the election of Abraham and the exodus or the death of Christ) that the

36. In Sifra Emor pereq 14, there is an interesting discussion of the various biblical requirements for the Day of Atonement. In this passage the rabbis conclude that the Day atones even if there is no solemn assembly, no scapegoat, etc.; in effect, it atones without the temple (which one would not know from reading Leviticus). They then debate whether or not repentance (unmentioned in the biblical passages on the topic) is required and conclude that it is. This is the general rabbinic opinion. 37. For a brief description of the feasts and the fast, see Judaism: Practice and Belief, 132–43.

69

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

penitent sinner could not have earned, since he or she was not alive at the time. A second, though lesser, complaint is that even Alexander’s very warm description of atonement (286–88) does not give an adequate account of its prominence in the Mishnah. Besides the fact that a tractate, Yoma, is dedicated to the Day of Atonement, there are numerous other references, which demonstrate that the rabbis assumed throughout that people could atone for transgressions, thus reestablishing their place in the people of God. 38 Besides noting the implication of divine grace that appears when the discussion is of offerings from the produce of the land, and emphasizing the large role of atonement in the Mishnah, I would like to call attention to one other passage that clearly indicates belief in God’s reliable, unearned grace: the end of tractate Sotah, in which a litany of troubles leads to the repeated question, “On whom can we rely?” The answer is, “on our Father in Heaven” (Sotah 9.15). This passage refers to the Great Revolt and is attributed to R. Eliezer the Great, a student of R. Yohanan ben Zakkai. Therefore it probably comes from shortly after the war, when trust in God might have been a little difficult, which would explain why R. Eliezer emphasized it. So, when it fits the subject under discussion (as in the passages on offerings, sacrifices, and atonement), and sometimes even when it does not (e.g., the end of Sotah, where the topic is the suspected adulteress), the rabbis of the Mishnah show confidence that God gave them the land, that he will forgive their transgressions, and that ultimately he will stand by them. (2) Like most Jewish scholars, who are not deeply immersed in the hard realities of Protestant polemics, Alexander and Falk do not realize the full weight of the charge of legalism: there is no relationship with God apart from what the individual can earn, and this makes Judaism a religion—in Billerbeck’s terminology—of Selbsterlösing, selfredemption, pulling one’s self up by one’s own bootstraps. It is telling that Alexander wrote that one could characterize the Mishnah as representing “a religion of works-righteousness” and added, “it is none the worse for that” (300). He does not grasp the seriousness of the charge: no relationship with God except what the individual achieves.39 38. The verb kîpper, “atone,” by a rough count, is found in over thirty mishnayot (paragraphs in the Mishnah), leaving Yoma out of account. I did not count the appearances of the noun kîppûrîm, which appears in numerous combinations. The frequent occurrence of yôm ha-kîppûrîm (the Day of Atonement) in diverse tractates results in a large number of appearances of the noun. 39. At the Southwestern regional meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy

70

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

In the view of the Protestant scholars who systematized the polemic against Judaism, one must begin the assessment of Judaism on the basis of the Christian assumption of the original lostness of humanity and the profound corruption of human nature—and then imagine that each individual Jew had to work his or her way out of an impossible situation, with no help from God.40 Jews, unlike many Christians, did not posit original depravity but assumed that they inherited a favorable relationship with God. Christians have simply denied that that is true, and then, ignoring the exodus and the covenant, proceed to a system of reward and punishment that is applied to people who inherited not a place in the covenant, but rather basic sinfulness and the accompanying damnation. As Bousset wrote, “Human nature is so corrupt that man must change himself completely if he wants to approach God” (40). Works-righteousness was the Jews’ only way out, but often that would fail. The state of the legalistic Jew was almost hopeless.41 But even without being conscious of the theological basis and the enormous weight of the Christian charge, “legalism,” I think that Alexander could readily have found more evidence of covenantal nomism than he did. If, for example, he had asked himself why the rabbis produced the Mishnah—why they studied the law and tried to obey it—he would probably have agreed with my answer, that they studied and strove because God had already chosen them as the people to whom he gave the law. Why else would they study it? Why did

of Religion, when I read Alexander’s statement that Judaism is “none the worse” for being legalistic, there was an audible gasp from the audience. It is almost the worst thing that some Protestants can imagine. 40. See the discussion of Bousset in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 215–17; the full reference is: Wilhelm Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, ed. H. Gressmann, Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 21 (1903; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1966), 374, 389. We may compare to Bousset’s view the fact that, to make Jewish legalism reasonable, Weber had to maintain that all Jews thought that they had lost the grace of God shown in the election (above, following n. 7). Weber’s requirement that one must begin with the assumption of Jewish exclusion from the love of God was possibly as deeply theological as Bousset’s view, depending on the Christian theology of original sin and depravity. 41. The Christian scholars who were inventing or systematizing this view of rabbinic Judaism were obsessed with “certainty of (individual) salvation” and seem to have been ignorant of the fact that this concern was not prominent in ancient Jewish thought. They imagined that individual Jews were frantically seeking to be saved but were finding no religious security and consequently had no hope. If, of course, an individual did seem confident of salvation, he was immediately attacked as arrogant, which was even worse than being filled with Heilsunsicherheit. On these topics, see Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 225–30. For an essay by a scholar who held such views, see K. H. Rengstorf, “Hope in Rabbinic Judaism,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Eng. trans., Ann Arbor, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 2:523–29, s.v. elpis.

71

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

they form a group to study this particular document, a group that was entirely Jewish? Tannaitic literature presupposes the prior existence of the group that is loyal to God and the Bible—and thus presupposes the election. Similarly, all Jewish literature and Jewish history presuppose the special relationship between the people of Israel and God, as well as the binding ties that gave the people a strong group identity. (3) I wish to focus a little more closely on the fact that Philip Alexander accepts a significant part of what I call the “Neusner fallacy,” namely, that each literary product includes a worldview and contains everything that its authors or editors thought to be important.42 That is not true of any book in any culture, as far as I know, and I do not think it should be applied to ancient Jewish documents. Alexander’s partial acceptance of the Neusnerian thesis that every document contains its own worldview allows him to argue that Sifre Deuteronomy is not legalistic, but that the Mishnah is, and that therefore there are competing worldviews that cannot readily be reconciled. The Neusner of the mid-1980s might hold this opinion, since he also argued that each document contained the worldview of a separate social group (see n. 42). This, however, is the part of the Neusnerian fallacy that Alexander does not accept: he knows that the rabbis who produced the Mishnah constituted basically the same group of humans as those who appear in Sifre Deuteronomy.43 I shall offer just a little detail about the overlap between the names in the Mishnah and those in Sifre Deuteronomy. Of the eighty-one names of rabbis in Sifre Deuteronomy, fifty-four are also in the Mishnah, which is two-thirds (66 percent).44 More 42. Alexander, “Torah and Salvation in Tannaitic Literature,” 298f. See Jacob Neusner, “Parsing the Rabbinic Canon with the History of an Idea: The Messiah,” in Formative Judaism: Religious, Historical and Literary Studies, third series, Torah, Pharisees, and Rabbis, Brown Judaic Studies 46 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 173–98; Messiah in Context: Israel’s History and Destiny in Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984); Midrash in Context: Exegesis in Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983); Torah: From Scroll to Symbol in Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985). I have discussed aspects of these works in “Common Judaism.” 43. Alexander, “Torah and Salvation in Tannaitic Literature,” 268: “the Mishnah and the Tannaitic Midrashim have emerged from the same literary and historical milieu and share a broadly similar worldview.” 44. These numbers are approximate. To make the estimate, I compared the lists of rabbis in English translations: The Mishnah, ed. and trans. Herbert Danby, corrected ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938, often reprinted), 799–800; Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, ed. and trans. Reuven Hammer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 551–53. The Mishnah is much longer than Sifre Deuteronomy, and the editors apparently made some effort to be comprehensive in citing scholarly opinions. There are eighty-one named rabbis in Sifre

72

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

important, the rabbis whose opinions are most often cited are the same. I list them in alphabetical order: R. Akiba, R. Eliezer (the Great), R. Ishmael (b. Elisha), R. Joshua (b. Hananiah), R. Judah (b. Ilai), R. Meir, and R. Simeon b. Yohai. Alexander grants that the two documents came from the same milieu, but he still insists that they have opposing soteriologies and argues that it is premature for us to harmonize them. This seems to me to be an error. The two documents belong to different genres, and genre makes a difference when it comes to the contents of a work. The Mishnah, to repeat, is a collection of legal opinions by subject matter, while Sifre Deuteronomy deals both with the laws of Deuteronomy and with the narrative. It is the narrative that contains the clear references to a covenant relation between God and Israel, and if one pulls the laws away from the prefaces to them, and from the narrative surrounding those prefaces and laws, one may have no occasion to mention the covenantal context. And that is what the Mishnah does: it pulls laws out of context for legal debate. This does not mean that the rabbis who are quoted in the Mishnah lived or thought of the laws without seeing them in context. On the contrary, the very same rabbis also commented on the election and the covenant as they appear in the narrative sections of the Pentateuch. I offer an analogy with the view that we should read the Mishnah in isolation and derive from it a complete soteriology: We would just as well look at a modern volume that collects the opinions of important judges who ruled on tax law, and then say that it presents a view of the United States or Britain (or wherever) that does not include patriotism, and that it is the opposite of views to be found in histories of the nation, where patriotism is perfectly clear. Of course a compilation of opinions on tax law does not include a chapter on patriotism, but this does not mean that the legal authorities who are cited were ignorant of patriotism or were opposed to it. Rather, commenting on the law reveals that the judges respected the institutions of the government that produced the law and thus that they were patriotic, even though they did not say so in ruling on taxes. Thus I see the authorities quoted in the Mishnah as being, on average, the same as the ones in Sifre Deuteronomy and as having the same views. (4) This leads to a final comment on Alexander’s article: In discussing Deuteronomy, 134 in the Mishnah (not counting the sages before the Tannaitic period), with the result that the percentage of overlap is much greater in Sifre Deuteronomy than in the Mishnah.

73

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Sifre Deuteronomy, he emphasizes the enduring quality of the covenant and the fact that “the covenant cannot finally fail” and that “it depends ultimately on God and not on Israel” (296–97). In the conclusion, he does not see how to reconcile this perception with “worksrighteousness” (300–301). But, once one notes that the Mishnah and much of the material in the Tannaitic Midrashim derive from the same circles, one should realize that the Midrashim have already done the work of putting confidence in the covenant and legal requirements together: obedience and disobedience, reward and punishment, are set within a covenantal context in the Midrashim, just as they are in the Bible; all of the Mishnaic rabbis had studied the Bible, and many of them contributed to the Midrashim.45 Reward and Punishment in Ancient Literature and in Protestant Polemics (1) I shall now discuss in more detail reward and punishment, a major theme in Jewish literature, as in the Bible. In Paul and Palestinian Judaism I emphasized reward for obedience and punishment for disobedience. The requirement of obedience is item number 4 on the list of the characteristics of covenantal nomism above, and reward and punishment constitute number 5; the index reveals several discussions of the topics.46 As every reader notes, there are a lot of such statements. Do they presuppose the existence of a different underlying theology? The rabbinic insistence on reward and punishment, above all, is the evidence upon which Alexander relies in stating that the Mishnah in particular and early rabbinic literature in general reveal a theology of works-righteousness,47 and it is these statements that have always been cited as proving that ancient Jews had to save themselves by works or merit. By quoting some sentences out of their larger context one can draw the picture of a tit-for-tat religion, in which God’s treatment of humans is entirely his response to their obedience or disobedience, which are the initial factors. By culling these sentences, 45. I wish that someone with younger eyes and greater energy than I would compare the names of rabbis in the Mishnah with those in the Mekhilta (on Exodus), Sifra (on Leviticus), and Sifre BeMidbar (on Numbers). 46. The index to “Punishment” in Paul and Palestinian Judaism requires 4.3 lines; that to “Reward and punishment” requires 9.5 lines. On “reward” see further John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Mentor, Message, and Miracles (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 2:388–89n178; John Calvin, quoted below at n. 54. 47. Alexander, “Torah and Salvation in Tannaitic Literature,” 284, 300.

74

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

one can pull obedience and disobedience out of the historical and literary context of the election and the exodus. I still think that I did justice to reward and punishment in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, but I shall replay just a bit of my argument. This time I shall start with Christian literature, focusing only on Paul and Matthew.48 Paul wrote this: All who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined [perhaps better, “chastised”] so that we may not be condemned along with the world. (1 Cor 11:29–32)

Here, Paul accepts the common Jewish view that people should behave correctly, that God takes account of their actions, that if they do not correct themselves he will punish them, and that the punishment atones. Paul thought all this without being a legalist. Where should we suppose he learned it? Paul further wrote that “all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Cor 5:10). The phrase “all of us” probably refers to all Christians, and here Paul plainly states that sins that survive mortality (presumably those not adequately punished before death) will be presented to Christ, who will treat them in accord with justice. If it is true that those in view in this passage are Christians, it is all the clearer that reward and punishment function within the system that leads to salvation: reward is not salvation, and punishment is not damnation. Punishment is the preface to salvation, as it also is in 1 Cor 5:3–5 and 11:29–32. This is the same as the Jewish view: reward is not salvation, punishment is not damnation.49 Reward and punishment, both in Paul and among non-Christian Jews, play out in a bigger context, that of 48. Cf. the section on judgment by works in Paul, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 515–18. 49. People often seem surprised when I point out that in ancient Judaism and early Christianity “punishment” does not mean “damnation” and “reward” does not mean “salvation.” This is perfectly clear in the literature. To take only a few examples: in rabbinic literature punishment atones (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 168–72, citing especially Adolph Büchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement [New York: KTAV, 1967]); in the Dead Sea Scrolls some punishments exclude from the community, but others are intracovenantal and maintain the transgressor within the community (284–87); in the Psalms of Solomon the pious are chastised but saved (390–97); in Paul those in Christ are punished for their transgressions but not destroyed (515–18).

75

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

the love of God who reaches out to people and who will save those whom he punishes. Punishment is part of their atonement, whether it is applied before or after death. Staying with reward and punishment in the New Testament, we come to Jesus according to Matthew, who is always threatening people that if they do not shape up they will be cast into the outer darkness or into a furnace of fire (Matt 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51 [gnashing etc., no darkness or fire]; 25:30; also Luke 13:28). Jesus is also reported to have cried “Woe!” upon two villages, Chorazin and Bethsaida, for not repenting and to have threatened a third village, Capernaum, with Hades (Matt 11:20–24; Luke 10:13–15). All of this sounds very much as if Jesus, Paul, and the authors of the Gospels expected correct behavior, took transgression seriously, held people responsible for it, and maintained that it must be punished or atoned for in some way. Yet New Testament scholars do not accuse Jesus, Paul, and the authors of the Gospels of legalism. The truth is that Jesus and his followers inherited their views of God’s justice along with their views of God’s grace from Judaism. For those who think that any expression of tit-for-tat-ism proves legalism, I can offer Matt 6:14: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” That is the clearest single expression I know of the view that forgiveness can be bought by a good deed. And the truth is that in its general tone, Matthew is far more judgmental and “legalistic” than any section of Jewish literature. But I do not accuse the author of Matthew of being a legalist—though he was too judgmental for my taste. But a legalist? No. Even when a form of works-righteousness seems to predominate, I remember that Matthew as a whole is set in the context of God’s gracious gift in Christ. I shall have no problem with people who say that ancient Jewish literature includes strict accounting for behavior and that God is depicted as treating behavior in accord with justice, if only they will say the same of early Christianity. On this point, the two are in fact the same, so let us admit it and let us stop accusing ancient Jews of legalism merely because they thought that God is just. The idea that God is just and rewards correct behavior while punishing bad behavior does not oppose the idea that he saves by grace, since punishment is efficacious and results in atonement. The opposite of saying that God punishes and rewards behavior

76

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

appropriately is that he is capricious and pays no heed to individuals’ actions when doling out reward and punishment. Neither Jews nor Christians thought that. (2) I wish now to address a few remarks to Protestant critics. I have always thought that covenantal nomism was more important for Christian scholars than for Jewish. Christians—specifically Protestants—came up with the charge of “legalism”; Christians, not Jews, regarded “works-righteousness” as horrible—as the discussion of Alexander above shows; covenantal nomism arose out of my concern over false charges leveled by Christians.50 Perhaps immodestly, I thought that covenantal nomism might be useful for Jewish scholars to consider as well, but the close context of Paul and Palestinian Judaism was New Testament scholarship. In the 1960s and 1970s liberal forms of Protestant Christianity were predominant among New Testament scholars. As the century went on, conservative and evangelical Protestant scholars began to become more numerous and now (or so it seems to me) they constitute a substantial majority. This has brought to the fore more concern with Protestant dogma, including even the arcane debates of the period after Martin Luther and John Calvin. We all must beware of the temptation to read later concerns into ancient material. When those concerns come from right-wing Protestants, they become more dogmatic. Older criticisms of Judaism were often based on humanism (ritual is externalistic and trivial; Judaism makes people either arrogant or anxious; etc.), but now criticisms are more likely to be based on Protestant dogma. As an example of this, I wish briefly to discuss the use of the word synergism in criticizing Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Etymologically, the word means “cooperation” or “working together.” According to the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, synergism was the term used of “the teaching of P. Melanchthon that in the act of conversion the human will can co-operate with the Holy Spirit and God’s grace.”51 Although, unfortunately, I did not keep notes, I have seen arguments to the effect that even on my reading ancient Judaism was synergistic, 50. On the origin of the charge of legalism in Protestant polemics, see George Foot Moore, “Christian Writers on Judaism,” Harvard Theological Review 14 (1921): 197–254, especially 228–34. “It is not catholic doctrine which is the explicit or implicit antithesis of Judaism, but Lutheranism of a peculiar modernized type” (230–31). See also Bernard Jackson, “Legalism,” Journal of Jewish Studies 30 (1979): 1–22. “The origins of our term thus lie in seventeenth century Protestant theological debate. It was not until the nineteenth century . . . that ‘legalism’ was used as a term of criticism of Judaism” (6). 51. Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, s. v. “Synergism.”

77

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

which is almost as bad as being legalistic: instead of entirely ignoring the grace of God (as in legalism), synergists held that grace did not stand entirely alone, because humans had to cooperate by acts of the will. In the criticisms as I recall them, the cooperation was not actually between grace and human will, but rather between grace and human deeds (which may be a distinction without a difference). Alternatively, since I argued that on grace and works Paul and Judaism agreed, my reading of Paul was synergistic.52 That is, I produced a quasi-legalistic Paul: “my” Paul, like “my” Jews, thought that salvation could be partly earned by human achievement. According to the best of my (amateurish) knowledge of the Reformation, my analysis of Paul (salvation is by grace and faith; deeds are required and are rewarded or punished; punishment of those in Christ leads to salvation) is quite compatible with the views of its two greatest figures, Luther and Calvin; whether it is compatible with the views of all of their followers or not, I am not competent to judge. Commenting on Gal 5:14, Luther wrote, “the Apostle therefore earnestly exhorteth the Christians to exercise themselves in good works, after that they have heard and received the pure doctrine of faith.”53 The title of chapter 18, book III, of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is, “Justification by Works not to be Inferred from the Promise of a Reward.” He continues: Phil 2:12 and John 6:27 show that “work is not opposed to grace.”54 I agree entirely with these quotations. I would point out the chronological aspect of Luther’s statement: good works are not injurious to those who have already put their faith in Christ. The Jewish equivalent is that the call of Abraham and the exodus from Egypt precede the giving of the law (see above). It seems to me that at some point Protestants became hypersensitive about the role of correct behavior (“works”) in the religious life and generated the fear that using “work” and “salvation” too close together implied reversion to Roman Catholicism or some other heresy. As Heikki Räisänen humorously remarked about such extreme 52. I am indebted to correspondence with Craig Keener for gaining at least a little clarity on what some may mean by the charge “synergism.” Although I have not kept notes of people who in years gone by used the word synergy in criticizing my work, I have recently seen it in Douglas Campbell, The Quest for Paul’s Gospel (London: T&T Clark International, 2005), 15: my reading of Paul is “fundamentally synergistic.” 53. Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, rev. and completed translation based on the Middleton ed. of the English version of 1575 (London: James Clarke, 1953; third impression, 1961), 487. 54. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Eng. trans. John Allen (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1935), 50–51.

78

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

sensitivity, “one gets the impression that zeal for the law is more damaging than transgression.”55 I would be pleased to know more about the history of elevated anxiety whenever human behavior is brought into close contact with salvation. Despite my limited knowledge of this history, it seems obvious to me that many New Testament scholars are more concerned with the precise relationship between human deeds and divine grace than people were in the first century, before their eyes and ears had been sharpened by the debates of the Reformation. I believe that the intense concerns that arose from post-Luther and post-Calvin debates on “works” are sometimes inadvertently retrojected into the first century. Many Protestant scholars assume the eternal truth of the formulations that derive from the debates of the Reformation, and this naturally inclines them towards retrojection: those people, long ago, should have accepted the views that I now accept, because these views have always been true. I offer a useful quotation from Hartwig Thyen, who argued that in Judaism repentance is a human achievement within a strictly legalistic setting: “Since we, obligated by our Reformation inheritance, know how even the slightest trace of the thought of merit and synergism corrupts the idea of grace at its root,” we need not wonder that in Judaism even repentance “is locked into the petty system of calculation,” and confession is regarded as “meritorious.” He concludes that the value of repentance in Judaism is subordinated to the “dogma of retribution” or “reward” (Vergeltungsdogma).56 The argument is that in reality (which only a few of us know) any thought at all of merit and cooperation (synergism) between human and God necessarily destroys the idea of grace. Since this is true, we know that it must have happened in Judaism, since ancient Jews sometimes thought about obedience and disobedience, reward and punishment. Theology, here as often (see n. 41), supplies historical information about the way Judaism must have been. In this theology, the quotations from Luther and Calvin above would prove that their ideas of good works and reward had destroyed the notion of grace. Possibly—all 55. Räisänen was referring to Rudolf Bultmann, but the remark has much wider application. See “Legalism and Salvation by the Law,” in Die Paulinische Literatur und Theologie, ed. Sigfried Pedersen (Aarhus: Forlaget Aros, 1980), 68. 56. Hartwig Thyen, Studien zur Sündenvergebung im Neuen Testament und seinen alttestamentlichen und jüdischen Voraussetzungen, Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des AT und NT 96 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 75. The full text of the passage in German is quoted in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 53; the English translation is in n. 71.

79

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

things are possible—the right wing of the Reformation is right: this post-Luther and post-Calvin theology is identical with God’s own opinion, and all the rest of us are condemned to hell for denying God’s grace. But as historians, we must pay attention to what those people, back then, thought. And the answer is that none of them—the rabbis, Paul, the authors of the Gospels, Luther, or Calvin—held the view that the slightest notion of good deeds, reward, and punishment attacks the idea of grace at its root. They all spoke quite freely about obedience, reward, and punishment. We should not accuse ancient people of being guilty of transgressing fine distinctions that were newly forged in the heat of the Protestant Reformation and have been accepted by relatively few people in the entire span of human history, including Christian history. After this digression into “synergism,” I wish to return to my main point in this section of the paper: the books of the New Testament, and in particular the letters of Paul, do present the views that works are necessary, that good works are rewarded, and that bad deeds are punished. If one wishes to use synergism in a denigrating sense for Paul, so be it. My own understanding of both Paul and non-Christian Jewish literature, however, is not that people save themselves by works, but rather that they are rewarded or punished for works within a large context in which God saves and punishment atones. Salvation of individuals (Christianity) and redemption of the people of Israel (Judaism) are both by the grace of God and cannot be earned by merit. Further Points on the “Two Soteriologies” Model (1) It will be useful briefly to discuss the phrase “works-righteousness,” which is sometimes used as a synonym for “legalism” or “merit theology.” The term comes from Paul’s passages about being “righteoused by faith, not by works of law.” I have already made the most important point: in Judaism acts of obedience, or “works,” function in the context of the covenant. The elect accept the law given by God and obey it.57 There is, however, a significant issue of terminology that many 57. On the difficulties of translating the verb dikaioun, “to justify” or “to righteous,” into English, see Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 470–72; Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983; London: SCM Press, 1985), 6n18 (p. 13f.); Paul, Past Masters series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 45–47. Unfortunately, in the reprint of this small book (in Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series, 2001, p. 54) the press botched the chart of terms and translations so badly that the discussion is incomprehensible.

80

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

readers of Paul and Palestinian Judaism have missed, and I shall try to clarify it here. The word or words for “righteousness” (or “justification”) and “being righteoused” (or “justified”) are not always used in the same way in Paul’s letters as they are in the other literature studied in Paul and Palestinian Judaism. In Judaism, a righteous person (one who is tsadîq) is a good Jew, a member of the covenant, who obeys the law and repents of transgression: thus a Jewish righteous person is righteous by the law. The righteous person does not earn but rather maintains his or her status within the covenant. The sentence in Paul’s letters that is often taken to be the polar opposite of the Jewish view is “no one is righteoused [or justified] by works of law” (e.g., Gal 2:16). In Galatians and Romans,58 the verb “to righteous” (“to justify”) or, more frequently, the passive “to be righteoused” (“to be justified”), usually does not refer to status maintenance, but rather to change of status. It means “be transformed,” “become a member of the body of Christ,” “die with Christ,” and the like. This is clear, for example, in Gal 3:6–29, where “being righteoused by faith” blends into becoming “one person in Christ Jesus” by faith. Philippians 3 follows a similar course. 59 Paul quite accurately said that one cannot become Christian by observing the Jewish law: that is the meaning of “no one is righteoused [justified] by works of law.” This is not an assault on either the Jewish view that Jews should observe the law or the universal view that people should obey God, but a plain statement that doing so does not make one a member of the body of Christ. To put this another way: there is a verbal contrast between the Jewish view, that a righteous person is righteous by the law, and Paul’s view, that no one can be righteoused by the law. But the contrast is only verbal, since the two phrases refer to different topics: the uprightness of people in the covenant who try to do God’s will, thus maintaining their status (the Jewish view), and the need of everyone to

58. In the two usages outside Galatians and Romans—1 Cor 4:4 and 6:11—the passive verb “to be justified” or “righteoused” means “to be held innocent” (4:4) or “to be cleansed” (6:11). These two passages may refer to an aspect of transformation, but in the immediate context they are not parallel to being “one person in Christ Jesus” and the like. Even in Romans, the passive form of dikaioun does not always mean “be transformed”: e.g., Rom 2:13. For the parallels between “to be justified [righteoused]” and “to die with Christ” (and similar phrases), see the next note. 59. On “be righteoused” as sometimes indicating change of status, see further Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 470–72, 493, 502–8, 544–46; Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 6–10 (with charts showing the parallels between “being righteoused by faith” and other transfer terms, such as participating in Christ’s death).

81

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

become a new person in Christ, a transformation to a new status that is not achieved by obedience to the Jewish law (Paul). Jewish righteousness by the law comes by observing it, and Paul approved of this activity, though he found it to be worth nothing in comparison to gaining Christ and thus acquiring a new “righteousness,” a righteousness that involves “becoming like him in his death” (Phil 3:6–10). That, he held, is the flaw of Judaism: not that Jews observe the law, but that they do not thereby share Christ’s death, which he regarded as essential.60 Paul’s statement against being “righteoused by the law” as a means of attaining Christ does not imply that he did not believe in correct behavior after people transferred to the body of Christ. On the contrary, he was a perfectionist. Nevertheless, only occasionally did he use the righteousness terminology for Christian behavior.61 He frequently employed other sets of terms, including especially the vocabulary of purity. To take just one example of Paul’s admonitions to correct behavior: “Just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity [akatharsia] . . . , so now present your members as slaves to righteousness [dikaiosynē] for sanctification [hagiosmos]” (Rom 6:19). Impurity and sanctification (or holiness) are important terms in the sacrificial cult, and here Paul applies them to ethical behavior. He clearly believed that the behavior of one’s body (“your members”) was important. In Rom 6:19 he combined the “righteousness” terminology with purity terminology. The combination was common in Judaism, but on the whole purity terminology is more prominent than righteousness terminology when Paul discusses correct behavior, which is unusual.62 Thus: Jewish literature speaks about people who are righteous by the law. Paul encouraged upright behavior in various ways. One of them 60. At the conclusion of my discussion of Paul’s critique of Judaism, I wrote that “this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity” (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 552). For reasons I have never comprehended, some people have imagined that this means, “Paul had no relationship with Judaism.” In context, the sentence as I wrote it is clear: the absence of Christ is Judaism’s fault in Paul’s view (not that Jews obeyed the law). Perhaps if I had said “the only fault that Paul can find is . . . ,” or something of that sort, no one could have misconstrued it. 61. I am not presenting a full study of the dik- (right- ) vocabulary in the Pauline letters. There are many instances in which Paul uses terms in a standard Jewish way, as will be seen by studying adikia, adikos, and dikaios, for example. What is peculiar to Paul is the way he uses the cognate verb. His relative disuse of dikaios to describe correct behavior is unusual in comparison with other Jewish authors. 62. See Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 450–52; Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 6, 14n20, 45, 63n138; most thoroughly, Michael Newton, The Concept of Purity at Qumran and in the Letters of Paul, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 53 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

82

COVENANTAL NOMISM REVISITED

was by urging Christians to avoid impurity (Rom 6:19), to live pure and blameless lives (cf. Phil 1:10), and to be “without blemish” (Phil 2:15, like a priest in Lev 21:17 or a sacrificial animal in Lev 22:19). The issue between “Paul” and “Judaism” was not whether or not people should behave correctly, fulfill “the law,” and do good deeds. Everyone agreed they should. The issue was whether or not people should be members of the body of Christ. Here they parted company. Paul and Judaism agreed that there was an “in-group,” but they disagreed entirely on the basic membership requirement. They all believed that those “in” should behave correctly (though they did not agree about some of the details of behavior.) Somewhat confusingly for later readers, Paul sometimes used the verb “to righteous” or “to be righteoused” for the transformation of the person who dies with Christ, and he pointed out that this does not come by obeying the law. (2) One final word on legalism: there has never been a historical community of people who believed that they could save themselves entirely by their own efforts. That requires a conception of isolated individuals: not a national group, but individuals with no collective benefits, no solidarity with any form of saving history, standing entirely on their own face-to-face with a judgmental and unforgiving God. Such communities are a fiction created by polemic. If there ever were such a community, it would not have included first-century Jews. One of the main things that we know about them is that they were steadfastly loyal to their God and to their people. They identified themselves with one another and with the God who gave them distinctive laws and customs. They all knew that the people to whom they were loyal were members of a group chosen by God. They did not see themselves as isolated individuals. My fondest hope is that judgmental Christians would look at Jewish literature the same way they look at their own, since it, too, is based on the idea of God’s gracious choice.

83

4

The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews

Commonalities, Overlaps, and Differences

Of the overlapping themes of the conference at which this paper was initially presented, I shall address primarily the question of agreements and disagreements between the sect and other Jews, but I shall comment on the other questions at the end, especially the relationship between the Essene party and the Dead Sea Scrolls. I imagine groups in human society as being in some ways like groups in nature.1 To simplify, life forms are divided into two kingdoms, animal and vegetable; animals are chordata or not; chordata are verterbrate or not; verterbrate animals are subdivided into mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish; some mammals are primates, some primates are homidae, and so on. At each stage, there are both common and distinguishing characteristics of each group. Some very basic factors are common to all life forms, though vegetables are in most ways different from animals. Skipping a few stages, we note that the females of all mammals nurse their young, but there are significant differences between primates and other mammals. After we reach species and subspecies, at the end of this systematic arrangement of 1. Jonathan Z. Smith has more than once used taxonomy (often called “systematics”) in discussion of religion. See “A Matter of Class: Taxonomies of Religion,” Harvard Theological Review 89 (1996): 387–403.

85

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

life forms, we find individual differences and similarities. All humans are like other humans in many important respects, but no two humans are precisely alike. There are some parallels between human societies and life forms. In the ancient world, for example, we find Jews and non-Jews. Both were humans, and both were ancient, which means that they were all alike in numerous ways. Our ability to say that some ancient people but not others were Jews, however, indicates that there were some distinguishing characteristics. Moreover, Jews might be divided into subgroups. The members of a subgroup of Jews must be like other Jews in identifiable ways, but there should also be some distinctive characteristics of the subgroup. That is to say, the members of each subgroup of Jews shared some characteristics with other mammals, other primates, other humans, other Jews, and other members of their subgroup. And, needless to say, all the members were individuals. The question of common and distinctive characteristics, however, which is frequently complicated in botany and biology, becomes even more complicated when we consider human social groupings. There will sometimes be no one decisive feature that places people in one group or subgroup rather than another. We cannot say that all Jews were monotheists, that all Jews observed the Sabbath, that all Jews avoided pork, or that all male Jews were circumcised. In the ancient world, most people whom we can identify as Jews were monotheists; most observed the Sabbath in one way or other; most would not consume pork, shellfish, or blood; and most Jewish males were circumcised. These were extremely frequent characteristics, but we could not insist on a single one of them as a completely definitive distinguishing mark. Who were Jews? In general, they were people who were born of a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism. Another general way of defining ancient Jews fixes on perception: Jews were people who regarded themselves as Jewish and who were so regarded by other people. I do not intend, however, to probe the topic of Lawrence Schiffman’s book Who Was a Jew?2 This requires considering marginal cases, such as apostates. As a practical matter, we can be much more specific about identity markers. The vast majority of Jews in the ancient world had these characteristics: (1) they believed in and worshiped the God of Israel; (2) they accepted the Hebrew Bible (often in translation) as 2. Lawrence Schiffman, Who Was a Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1985).

86

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

revealing his will; (3) consequently they observed most aspects of the Mosaic law; (4) they identified themselves with the history and fate of the Jewish people. If we ignore marginal cases (such as the apostate Tiberius Julius Alexander), these four points will serve to identify ancient Jews. I insist on saying “ancient” in order to eliminate some modern issues, such as atheism and agnosticism. In general, then, leaving aside a few difficulties and exceptions, I propose that most Jews believed in God and the Bible, thought of themselves as belonging to the people of Israel, and followed a way of life that was in general conformity with the Jewish law. Jews sometimes formed subgroups. Clubs and societies were a strongly marked feature of the ancient world. In fact, the voluntary formation of relatively small groups is a general human characteristic, and there may be an evolutionary explanation of this tendency.3 In any case, Jews shared it. Voluntary groups necessarily have a good number of the characteristics of the surrounding society: they cannot be entirely unique. Even when they are deliberately countercultural societies, they still share characteristics with the larger whole of which they are a part.4 American hippies were, and American militia are, strongly American. No matter how radical they intend to be, people cannot escape the circumstances that fashion them. It follows that in the Greco-Roman period Jewish subgroups were Jewish. They shared enough of the common Jewish identity markers (e.g., belief in the God of Israel, acceptance of the Mosaic law) that a perceptive student in the ancient world, had he or she found the writings of a Jewish subgroup, would have been able to recognize it as Jewish. And, in fact, today scholars have few problems deciding whether or not an ancient document was composed by a Jew. A subgroup may form because of one overriding issue, but if it endures, and if it is to function as a cohesive unit, it will broaden its interests. In the U. S. today, there are a good number of one-issue voters—that is, people who will vote in an election purely on the basis of one topic, such as abortion. Some people will always vote for a candidate who wishes to make abortion illegal, no matter what other views the candidate holds. There can be an alliance of such people, 3. Families, clans, and tribes are much more ancient than nations. The tendency to form groups and clubs may reflect the need to revert to relatively small groupings. Students of baboons and chimpanzees have noted that these primates can relate to a relatively small number of other animals. 4. See Albert I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 55 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 34, 55–58.

87

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

who may band together for the limited purpose of campaigning for their cause, but I do not think that there can be a continuing cohesive social group in which only one conviction is common to all members. Other issues will arise. Staying with our US example, we could suppose that some people who wish to outlaw abortion would also like to ban guns, while others would favor using guns (and bombs) in support of the antiabortionist cause. Antiabortionists might also divide on such questions as supporting the United Nations, extending the North American free-trade association to include South America, admitting eastern European countries to NATO, and destroying all nuclear weapons. A one-issue group is inherently unstable, since disagreements on other issues will subdivide or destroy it. If a subgroup endures, to repeat, its concerns will spread. Moreover, those concerns will to an appreciable degree reflect issues in the larger society. I believe that it is not possible for a subgroup to be so isolated that is has a whole range of concerns that are completely different from the topics at issue in the larger group. This also means that there will also be overlapping concerns among subgroups. I shall briefly make three more general points about subgroups. (1) I have just been proposing that the walls around a subgroup must be at least a little porous, which means that issues in the larger group will filter into the subgroup. On the other hand, however, the subgroup can take minority positions on those issues in order to reinforce its distinctiveness over against the larger society or over against other subgroups. (2) The longer the subgroup endures, and the more it attempts to isolate itself from the larger group, the more it has to imitate the scope of the activities, institutions, and offices of the larger group. I shall give a brief example. In England, the Methodist movement remained a subgroup within the Church of England longer than was the case in America. In the New World, Methodists soon expanded into areas where there was no Anglican church. Consequently, at an early point the Methodists in America became a full church, and thus they had to face issues ignored in the English Methodist movement, such as ordination and the sacraments. Eventually Methodism in both countries became a fully separate church, and it had to take on all or most of the roles exercised by its parent. The longer it endured, and the more separate it became, the more functions it had to assume. Its functions were still those of surrounding Christianity, but it had to establish its own particular

88

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

rules regarding ordination, Baptism, communion, expulsion, defrocking, and the like. (3) The longer a subgroup endures, and the bigger it becomes, the more diversity will emerge within it. In a small, relatively isolated subgroup, education and drill can produce considerable uniformity; but, still, human nature being what it is, diversity will emerge. The Dead Sea Sect I think that studying the material recovered from the caves around Qumran is just about the best activity that one can pursue who wishes to understand either ancient Judaism or subgroups. And, it follows, it is absolutely the best thing one can do if one wants to understand subgroups in ancient Judaism. This is true, however, only if the student of the Dead Sea Scrolls also knows enough about Jews in general and about one or more other subgroups to put information from the Scrolls in perspective. In the years immediately after the publication of some of the major Scrolls, when New Testament scholars found agreements between the Scrolls and the New Testament, they sometimes regarded these as proving the dependence of early Christianity on the Qumran community. These suggestions were sometimes based on ignorance of other Jewish literature. Views and practices that seemed to constitute striking agreements between the Scrolls and the New Testament often turn out to be common within Judaism. There are other explanations of why scholars have not infrequently misperceived the relationship between the Scrolls and the rest of Judaism, of which I shall name two: Some have thought of Judaism as consisting of the small parties named in Josephus, and thus have not thought of elements common to all or most Jews. Others have not considered the facts that on any given issue there can be only a few possible positions, and that on some legal issues there can be only two possible positions. These failings have sometimes led to mispositioning Qumran vis-à-vis the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the majority of Jews. We should expect there to be a good number of agreements between any two of the parties; such agreements do not necessarily prove a close connection between the groups as wholes. Enough agreements between two subgroups, of course, would lead us to speak of family resemblances.5 5. Since I shall not discuss the Sadducees below, I shall note here that Lawrence Schiffman has pointed out agreements between Sadducean positions according to rabbinic literature and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QMMT, 11QTemple, and CD). I have not studied this issue closely enough

89

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

It is not my purpose, however, to criticize the work of others, and especially not the efforts of scholars in the early days of research on the Scrolls. Often they had to make sense of the new finds in the absence of a broad perspective, based on sound knowledge of the rest of Judaism. It was commonly thought that rabbinic literature as a whole represented Pharisaism and that Pharisees controlled Jewish life and thought. Thus rabbinic literature equaled “Judaism,” except for a few odd groups, such as the Sadducees and a handful of apocalyptic conventicles. The main textbooks—Schürer, Bousset, and Moore—did not create this view, but they certainly fostered it.6 This general misperception of Judaism naturally skewed efforts to see the Qumran material in the right perspective. Similarities and Differences: General Features Now we should strive to give better accounts of the relationships between Qumran and other Jews. This paper is intended to be a small contribution to this effort. I shall begin by discussing the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish material in general terms and then turn to a few specific points. For the purposes of the first part of this discussion, I have constructed an alter ego. This alter ego has the view of human society and especially of subgroups that I have just presented, and it also has my knowledge (or lack of knowledge) of Judaism in the late Second Temple period, approximately 63 BCE to 66 CE. In two very important ways, however, the alter ego is quite different from me. It is highly intelligent and it is prescient. My More Intelligent and Prescient Alter-ego, or Professor MIPA for short, has just been told that a library has been found in a remote area near the Dead Sea, that it is from the Greco-Roman era, to justify having a clear opinion, but my opening assumption would be that there might be some family resemblances between Qumran and the Sadducees, especially since it is possible that both included Zadokite priests. This seems to be more likely than the obvious alternative, namely that there were Sadducees or Sadducean documents at Qumran. See Schiffman, “Misqat Ma‘aseh ha-Torah and the Temple Scroll,” Revue de Qumran 14 (1990): 435–57; “Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Case of Tevul Yom,” Dead Sea Discoveries 1 (1994): 285–99 and elsewhere. 6. W. Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (Berlin, 1903, frequently reprinted); G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927–30, frequently reprinted, once translated, and once revised and translated); Schürer, The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, 6 vols., Eng. trans. of the 2nd German ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1885–91); Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135), rev. and ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, et al., 3 vols. in 4 parts (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973–87).

90

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

and that it is the library of some Jewish group or other that seems to have lasted for more than one generation. Professor Mipa now makes the following predictions: 1. The library will reflect the general characteristics of ancient Jews; it will be seen (a) that the people believed in and worshiped the God of Israel; (b) that they accepted the Hebrew Bible as revealing his will; (c) that they observed most aspects of the Mosaic law; (d) that they identified themselves with the history and fate of the Jewish people. 2. The material from the Dead Sea will reveal both agreements and disagreements with what is known of other Jewish groups, especially major groups like the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes (as described by Josephus and Philo).7 It will contain both agreements and disagreements even if it turns out to be the library of a section of one of these three parties. If the library (for example) turns out to be Pharisaic, it nevertheless will not coincide precisely with what we learn about Pharisaism from Josephus and rabbinic literature, since any enduring social group will contain disagreements as well as agreements. After all, other information about the Pharisees does not reveal perfect uniformity. 3. Professor Mipa’s third (and last) prediction is that the library will include a range of material. This is a long and complicated prediction that will require a few pages. It is based on these views: (a) a socially cohesive group that endures cannot be only a oneissue group; (b) a subgroup will expand its interests to include many of the topics that are important in the larger group; (c) the closer a subgroup is to isolation, the more elements of the wider society it includes. Since Qumran was fairly isolated and endured for well over a century, it must have had its own version of a lot of the aspects of Judaism in general. In terms of genre, Prof. Mipa predicts, there will be legal material, historical treatises, exegetical treatments of the Bible, and devotional material (such as prayers). There may be liturgical material (besides prayers); that is, the group may have had views about what to do when sacrificing. There might also be wisdom collections.8 There will 7. See Baumgarten, Jewish Sects, 34, 55–58. 8. Since Qumran’s contribution to the study of wisdom is not yet very well known, I shall cite two

91

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

probably not be any book of prophecy (modeled on Isaiah or other prophetic books). Professor Mipa, having foreknowledge of the work of Rebecca Gray,9 knows that prophecy as an activity had not ceased, but that the role and office of publicly recognized prophets had ceased, and consequently that the production of prophetic books such as Isaiah was unlikely, though not impossible. He next predicts that there will probably be some speculative literature. Not all Jews were interested in eschatology, but if the Dead Sea group did have this interest, some of its members will have speculated about a new age. Or they could have produced noneschatological speculations about heavenly secrets, such as the chariot of Elijah or the wheels of Ezekiel. Of the legal material, there might be two forms: it could be like the Mishnah, arranged by topics, or like the halakhic midrashim, arranged as commentary on the legal books of the Bible. There might also be commentaries on nonlegal biblical books. There will probably not be any systematic treatises of theology, and especially not philosophical theology. Philo wrote such treatises, but apart from Philo it is hard to think of any examples—unless Paul’s letter to the Romans counts, and in his view it does not. The legal views (our prescient professorial sage continues) will cover many of the topics of biblical law (topics that were common to most Jews). If the group was in contact with gentiles, the members may have discussed idolatry. If not, probably not. The same applies to food laws. They will almost certainly have discussed the Sabbath and purity. On the legal topics, they will have some positions that are at least partly different from others. But the topics, as well as many of the specific issues (not necessarily the conclusions), will be those known from other Jewish material. The issues of the larger society will have filtered into the subgroup, and there will be overlaps with other subgroups, which will have dealt with the same issues. (In this paragraph, Professor Mipa applies predictions 1 and 2 above to legal issues.) Though the library will probably not have any systematic theological treatises, there will be theology in it, partly expressed and partly implied. We shall learn from the newly discovered literature something about God, and possibly about angels, the afterlife (or lack recent studies: Daniel J. Harrington, Wisdom Texts from Qumran (London: Routledge, 1996); John J. Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), chap. 7. 9. Rebecca Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine: The Evidence from Josephus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

92

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

thereof), providence, and freewill—that is, the topics mentioned by Josephus when he discusses the Jewish parties, plus a few others.10 We shall find the theology of the Bible in some form or other: grace, election, love of God, repentance,11 punishment, atonement, treatment of other human beings, and the like. There will not be one narrow but predominating theological conviction, such as those postulated by Protestant scholars when they discuss the ancient world. Here I must digress to explain Professor Mipa’s point. One of the faults of Protestant scholarship has been the retrojection of the issues of the Protestant Reformation into earlier history, and the allied assumption that ancient religious groups formed around a theological slogan that arose from the Reformation or that was prominent in Reformation polemics. Many Protestant New Testament scholars are fundamentalists at heart, and so these views are often supported by one-line quotations from the New Testament. According to the Gospel of John, the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (1:17). This tells you all you really need to know about ancient Judaism and Christianity, namely, that Jews believed in law, that Christians believed in grace, and that the two are opposed to each other. Other New Testament texts help support this erroneous and regrettable view. Thus Paul’s attack on other Christians in Galatians, we are often told, was really an attack on Jewish and specifically Pharisaic soteriology, which held the legalistic view that individual humans must save themselves by doing more good than evil deeds. Christianity is based on love, grace, and faith, and it excludes self-righteous works. When scholars (not necessarily Protestants, since the issues as stated by Protestant biblical scholars have been very influential) who dreamt that ancient religions really divided into these categories read the Dead Sea Scrolls, they responded as one would expect. One scholar, writing on the Thanksgiving Hymns (1QH), proposed that the view of Qumran was completely different from the Pharisaic idea of “justification by human works.”12 That is, this scholar found Reformation theology (justification by grace) in the Qumran Hymns and contrasted it with Pharisaism, which he supposed was organized around a slogan from Protestant polemics, justification by works. A different scholar, taking 10. J. W. 2.119–66; Ant. 18.11–25. 11. The noun repentance (teshûvah) is not a biblical word, but the idea is present in various ways, including the use of the verb shûv, “return.” 12. M. Delcor, Les Hymnes de Qumran (Hodayot) (Paris: Letouzey et Ani, 1962), 48.

93

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

into account more of the Qumran literature, wrote that we should “allow . . . for different ‘philosophies’ within Qumran itself,” the two philosophies being “a legalistic puritanism or perfectionism” and belief in the “doctrine of ‘grace’ or divine help.”13 In this scholar’s mind, “grace” and “works” are competing and incompatible theologies, and what was surprising about the Scrolls was that the competition between them went on within Qumran; legalism is found in 1QS (the Community Rule), grace in 1QH. Anyone, such as Professor Mipa, who had actually studied the Jewish material that was known prior to the discovery of the Scrolls, would have known that these are not two contradictory theologies, and that all forms of Judaism—and, for that matter, all forms of Christianity, including especially Pauline Christianity—combine the view that God saves by grace with the view that humans are accountable for their deeds. I return now to Professor Mipa’s general prediction: the newly discovered subgroup will not have had only one theological idea, and it will not have divided from other Jews because it accepted or renounced one of the slogans of the Protestant Reformation. Professor Mipa would make all of these and other guesses, too numerous to be listed here, because he had studied all the other Jewish material of the period and because he knew that an enduring group would have its own version of many of the topics, themes, literary genres, etc., that characterized the larger society. Moreover, since the Qumran subgroup was geographically remote, it could be assumed to duplicate Jewish society more than would have been the case had it been in close contact with the larger group. It might have its own priests, Levites, judges, etc. The genres and themes would have their specific characteristics, but they would be generally like those in the rest of Palestinian Judaism. The subgroup cannot have invented everything. In fact, it cannot have invented very much that was not available in the broader culture. Most people are about as inventive as the folk who imagined new beasts, such as a horse with a single horn or a creature half lion and half eagle. When we read the Scrolls, we find that Professor Mipa, whose views were entirely based on his knowledge of other Jewish material, was mostly right.14 This establishes that there was a lot in common between 13. Matthew Black, The Scrolls and Christian Origins (New York: Scribner, 1961), 124–26. 14. A few of his predictions are not supported by the finds: for example, there are no halakhic midrashim; historical treatises after the pattern of 1 and 2 Kings are absent, although CD does

94

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

the group at Qumran and the rest of Judaism in general, and even more in common between the Dead Sea sect and the rest of Palestinian Judaism. We also know, at least in general, that Qumran was in some or many ways distinctive. Now we bid adieu to Professor Mipa and take up a few issues in more detail. Five Cases Since the Qumran community was a subgroup, there were many features of belief and practice that set the members apart from other Jews, even though the topics were the same. I shall comment briefly on five points, three that are legal and practical, and two that are theological. 1. Temple, Priests, Sacrifices, and Festivals Virtually all Jews believed that God required sacrifices, that he had specified that they must be offered in the temple in Jerusalem, that he appointed hereditary priests, and that he designated certain days during certain seasons as times of festivals. The Qumran sectarians entirely agreed. They remained true, however, to the high priestly family mentioned in the Bible, the Zadokites, which was overthrown by the Hasmonean family as a consequence of the successful revolt against the Seleucids.15 Moreover, the sectarians thought that festivals should never fall on the Sabbath, and to accomplish this end they followed a calendar that was different from the one accepted by other Jews. The upshot was that the community at Qumran did not worship at the temple in Jerusalem. It is this complex of disagreements on common topics that made the sect exclusivist. Though they agreed in general on temple, priests, sacrifices, and festivals, they disagreed to such an extent that they did not have community of worship with have a kind of history of the sect and there are historical allusions in 1QpHab and elsewhere. I am leaving out of account retellings of biblical stories, such as are found in the Genesis apocryphon and parts of 4Q382 (DJD XIII 363–416). 15. The Zadokites are prominent in 1QS, 1QSa, 1QSb, 1QFl, and CD. They are missing, however, from fragments that parallel parts of 1QS (4QSb and 4QSd), which raises the question of whether or not at Qumran Zadokites always had the same position as they have in 1QS. Geza Vermes first called attention to these fragments (“Preliminary Remarks on Unpublished Fragments of the Community Rule from Qumran Cave 4,” Journal of Jewish Studies 42 [1991]: 250–55). Albert Baumgarten has suggested that originally the sect was egalitarian and that the emphasis on governance by Zadokites represents a stage when leaders wished partially to replace egalitarianism with hierarchy (“The Zadokite Priests at Qumran: A Reconsideration,” Dead Sea Discoveries 4 [1997]: 137–56).

95

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

other Jews. This is a fact of enormous importance for understanding the unique place of the Qumranians in Second Temple Judaism.16 They cut themselves off from the way in which Jews had always worshiped God and from one of the main sources of worldwide Jewish solidarity.17 2. The Sabbath The word Sabbath occurs in preexilic biblical material, but the exile added a lot to its observance. Nehemiah forbade buying and selling in Jerusalem on the Sabbath, even by gentiles. This seems to have been a previously unknown rule. As everyone knows, Sabbath law posed a problem during the wars against the Seleucid kingdom, since the idea had arisen that Jews should not fight on the Sabbath18—a view that never appears in the stories of warfare in the days of the judges and the preexilic kings. Josephus confirms the fact that warfare on the Sabbath was a problem and required a special rule: Jews could respond to direct but not to indirect attacks on the Sabbath. This emerges from the story of Pompey’s conquest of Jerusalem.19 Traveling and carrying were also restricted on the Sabbath.20 The Pharisees created the idea of ‘erûvîn, which permitted some families to carry pots and thus dine together on the Sabbath, and which simultaneously shows that most Jews would not carry dishes outside the house on the day of rest.21 The rabbis and others debated whether or not minor cures were permissible on the Sabbath,22 and the Pharisees and early rabbis also worried about how to prepare food if a festival day—which was a semi-Sabbath— immediately preceded the seventh day of the week.23 Thus we know 16. On this vital point, CD (Damascus Document) stands apart from the other Scrolls. If (as many scholars think) the Dead Sea Scrolls are Essene, CD comes from a group that was not monastic (note the reference to a member’s child in 11:11), that lived in towns and cities (and possibly near gentiles, 11:14f.), and that took offerings to the temple and sacrificed there (11:17–20). CD is considered more fully below. 17. See the fuller discussion in my Judaism: Practice and Belief (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), 53, 352, 362f. See further Baumgarten, Jewish Sects, 68f. 18. 1 Macc 2:29–41. 19. J. W. 1.145–47 (cf. Dio Cassius 37.16.2f.). See further J. W. 1.157–60; Ant. 13.252; 14.237. 20. The prohibition of carrying predates the exile, being first attributed to Jeremiah, who banned carrying pots outside one’s house on the Sabbath (Jer 17:21–24). Limitations on Sabbath travel are discussed below. 21. See m. Erub., especially 6.2, which reflects the Sadducees’ opposition to Pharisaic practice. 22. For rabbinic views on minor cures, see m. Šabb. 14.3f.; t. Šabb. 12.8–14. It is probable that these passages are from the second century, but the topic was earlier; see n. 24. 23. See m. Betzah (or Yom Tob) and t. Yom Tob. Much of the material in the early chapters of m. Betzah is attributed to the houses of Hillel and Shammai. The legal problem is this: on a “festival day” (days of “holy convocation,” Lev 23:7f, 21, 24, 27, 35f., 39, or “solemn assembly,” Exod 12:16), work was prohibited, except for preparation of food to be eaten that day (Exod 12:16). Since on a festival

96

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

that there was a lot of discussion of Sabbath law within Judaism during the Greco-Roman period.24 Consequently we are not surprised when we see a range of prohibitions in the Damascus Document. The following summary is provided by Geza Vermes: The sectary was not only to abstain from labour “on the sixth day from the moment when the sun’s orb is distant by its own fullness from the gate (wherein it sinks)” (CD 10:15–16), he was not even to speak about work. Nothing associated with money or gain was to interrupt his Sabbath of rest (CD 10:18–19). No member of the Covenant of God was to go out of his house on business on the Sabbath. . . . He could not cook. He could not pick and eat fruit and other edible things “lying in the fields.” He could not draw water and carry it away, but must drink where he found it (CD 10:22–23. He could not strike his beast or reprimand his servant (CD 11:6, 12). He could not carry a child, wear perfume or sweep up the dust in his house (CD 11:10–11). He could not assist his animals to give birth or help them if they fell into a pit; he could, however, pull a man out of water or fire with the help of a ladder or rope (CD 11:12–14, 16–17).25

It is instructive to note that the Damascus Document also prohibits any sacrifice on the Sabbath except the Sabbath offering (CD 11:17–18). That is, when a festival fell on the Sabbath, only the Sabbath offerings were to be sacrificed, not the festival offerings as well. We noted above that at Qumran a different calendar was observed, so that festivals and Sabbath would not overlap. CD’s prohibition of festival sacrifices on the Sabbath points in the same direction.26 day people could not prepare food for the next day, and since Sabbath food had to be prepared the previous day, it was hard to know what to do about Sabbath food when a festival day came on Friday. 24. Although m. Šabb. reveals that Sabbath rules were much discussed after the destruction of the temple, all the topics in the present paragraph can be dated before 70 CE. Prohibitions of buying, selling, and carrying pots are biblical; the prohibition of warfare is at least as early as the Hasmonean period; there is a limitation on travel in CD 10:21; m. ‘Erub. 6:2 relates a story about R. Simeon b. Gamaliel (who was active before and during the first revolt) and the Sadducees; discussion of minor cures on the Sabbath appears in CD 11:10 and in the Gospels; the problem of festival days that fell on Friday is debated by the houses (or schools) of Hillel and Shammai (e.g., m. Betzah 2:1). The houses are usually dated c. 90–110, the period in which R. Joshua and R. Eliezer the Great flourished, but they could not have invented very many of the topics they debated (because of the general limits of human inventiveness). The related problems of festival days that fell on the Sabbath is a fairly major point in the Scrolls, and the legal problem (see the previous note) of how to prepare food for the Sabbath if a festival day fell on Friday would have been an important issue prior to 70. 25. Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (London: Collins, 1977), 101. 26. CD does not presuppose the Qumranian calendar, but it shows the same desire not to allow festival sacrifices on the Sabbath. The Sabbath rules of CD 10 and 11 are supported by fragments from the

97

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

The Sabbath rules from CD allow us to illustrate some of the earlier remarks about overlapping topics among groups. CD prohibits festival sacrifices when the festival falls on the Sabbath, while rabbinic literature attributes to Hillel the decision to sacrifice the Passover lamb even when Passover fell on the Sabbath.27 CD prohibits pulling animals out of a pit on the Sabbath, while according to Luke 14:5 Jesus found general agreement with the view that even on the Sabbath an owner should rescue his animal if it fell into a pit. Thus topics that were current in Palestinian Judaism also appear in CD. The specific conclusions of CD are not the same as the conclusions of other Jews, and in general they are stricter, but the topics fit perfectly. I should point out again (as in n. 16) that the relationship between the Damascus Document and the Dead Sea sect is a somewhat vexed question. We cannot settle it comprehensively, but we shall return to it in the last section of this paper. 3. Purity Here there are three subtopics. The first is immersion. From at least the days of the later Hasmoneans, either some, many, or all Palestinian Jews immersed in order to rid themselves of the impurities mentioned in Leviticus 12 and 15, and also as part of the purification required in Numbers 19.28 The impurities in question are childbirth and various forms of contact: with semen, menstrual blood, other discharges from the genitals (e.g., those caused by miscarriage or gonorrhea), and with corpses. Though the purpose of the pools at Qumran has been debated, there is no doubt in my mind that some of them were for the purpose of religious purification.29 The pools are neither bathtubs, cisterns, Qumran caves. See DJD XVII: Qumrân Grotte 4, vol. XIII, ed. Joseph Baumgarten (1996), 160f. (4Q270 6, V), 180–82 (4Q271 5, I). 27. T. Pisha’ 4.12f. 28. On immersion pools (in rabbinic Hebrew, miqva’ot), see E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 31f.; 38; 105; 214–27; Judaism: Practice and Belief, 222–29 and plates. 29. In support of this view, we may note (1) that 1QS 5:13 mentions “entering the water” before partaking of “the Purity” (the Pure Meal); (2) that CD refers to pools of water large enough for immersion, which were used for purification (10:11–13); (3) that immersion is implied in 4Q512 11, X; 27, VIII; VII, 5; and 16, VIII (as restored by Joseph Baumgarten); and (4) that Josephus says that the Essenes bathed their bodies before meals (J. W. 2.129), which implies immersion. Several other references to water in the Scrolls might be only metaphorical (e.g., 1QS 3:4f.; 3:8f.). The problems of using Josephus on the Essenes when discussing the activities of the community at Qumran, like the problem of using CD, will be discussed below. On the fragments (3 above) see Joseph M. Baumgarten, “The Purification Rituals in DJD 7,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research, ed. Devorah Diman and Uriel Rappaport, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 10

98

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

nor swimming pools; therefore they are immersion pools.30 Some of them—like some miqva’ôt found elsewhere in Palestine—have ways of separating the people entering the pool from those leaving, which fits perfectly with the view that they were for purification. The Qumran pools are like other immersion pools in two important respects: a lot of the total space of the pool is taken up by steps; the pools are cut into bedrock, and so cannot be drained. There is a lot of variation among immersion pools, but the Qumranian pools share these fundamental characteristics with other pools of the period. As in the case of Sabbath law, there were common features and some differences. The second subject under the heading “purity” is purity and eating. This is a very large and complicated topic. I shall try to be brief, but I shall give it more space than the other topics receive. We first note that the Bible requires purity when eating holy food: (a) The priests in the temple ate some of the sacrifices while on duty, obviously in a state of purity (Num 18:8–10). (b) The priests could bring home some of the sacrificial meat, which they and their families ate in purity (Num 18:11). (c) Similarly, when the priests ate firstfruits and tithes, they and their families dined in purity (Num 18:12–20; 20:26).31 (d) All Jews observed purity rules when eating sacrificial food and second tithe (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 199–209, here 201f. The crucial phrase is “while standing”: after bathing, the one being purified prays “while standing,” which is best understood as meaning “before leaving the immersion pool.” “While standing” is clear in 4Q512 27, VIII, and Baumgarten proposes this restoration in 11, X. In VII, 5, the relevant phrase is “and prays there,” that is, in the water. (In Baumgarten, p. 202, the reference to 4Q502 is an error for 512.) 30. Some scholars are skeptical about the identification of stepped pools as immersion pools, partly because they have not compared the stepped pools with bathtubs and cisterns, and partly (I suspect) because they have not appreciated how much work was involved in digging a pit in bedrock. Bathtubs were small and stood above the ground, so that they could be emptied. Cisterns—which were essential to life—were dug in bedrock. They were large caverns, with a very small opening, from which people drew water by using a rope and bucket. People did not walk down into drinking water. Thus stepped pools were neither cisterns nor bathtubs, which leaves immersion as their purpose. The pools vary a good deal in size, but a typical pool was 12 ft. x 7 ft. at the surface, and about 7 ft. deep (about 3 m. x 2 m. x 2 m.). Steps usually went all the way across one end and all the way to the bottom, occupying perhaps 25 to 30 percent of the total space. Immersion pools are not infrequently found immediately next to a cistern, while in the houses of the aristocrats in upper Jerusalem they are sometimes part of a bathing complex that also contains a bathtub. Only a strong motive could account for digging such large pits in bedrock—a need almost as important as having water in the dry season. I have frequently dug holes 2 ft. x 2 ft. x 2 ft. in clay, using hardened steel (about 6 m3). Scholars who believe that the stepped pools in Palestine were bathtubs should sometime try digging an 8-cubic-foot hole in clay—which is child’s play compared to a 588-cubic-foot hole in bedrock (12 cubic meters), using ancient iron. On cisterns, bathtubs, and immersion pools, see further Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, 216f. 31. I use firstfruits here as a general term including the first produce, firstborn animals, etc. The tithe that priests and their families ate is called “a tithe of the tithe” in Num 18:26 and “heave-offering of title” by the rabbis. In theory, first tithe went to the Levites, who in turn tithed to the priests. On purity rules as applied to food eaten by priests and their families, see further Judaism: Practice and Belief, 107–12, 146–57, 221f.

99

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

(the Deuteronomic tithe, set aside by farmers to be eaten in purity in Jerusalem).32 This list makes it clear that in common Judaism purity when eating was usually connected with the temple. Tithes and firstfruits could be contributed apart from the temple, as the strong rabbinic interest in tithing, much of which can be dated to the second century, makes clear (see the tractates Demai and Ma‘aśerot). But ordinary people ate in purity only during the festivals, when they had some meat from the sacrifices as well as their own second tithe. Since the Qumranians did not worship at the temple, one might imagine that they never ate in purity. On the other hand, this was an extremist group, and so one might also imagine that they made up new purity rules, possibly including eating in purity when not in Jerusalem, and observed them. The latter is the case. The Community Rule several times refers to “the Purity,” which included food and possibly the dishes and vessels. Thus there was a pure meal. Most scholars take “the Purity” to be the average, everyday meal of the sect, and they also equate the daily meal with the meal described in 1QS 6:4f. I have argued elsewhere that these equations may not be correct.33 Here I mention just two points: (a) In the section on punishments in 1QS, exclusion from the Purity (which I shall hereafter call the Pure Meal) is distinguished from a reduction in the food allowance. (So also 4QSg. See Philip S. Alexander and Geza Vermes, Qumran Cave 4. Serekh Ha-Yahad and Two Related Texts [Oxford: Clarendon, 1998], 177–78.) A member of the community, for example, could be excluded from the Pure Meal for a year and also lose onefourth of his “bread,” that is, his basic daily sustenance (1QS 6:24f.). This might mean that there were two daily communal meals at Qumran: one the Pure Meal, eaten by full members in good standing, the other a common meal eaten by probationers and members who were being punished. But the simplest explanation is that the Pure Meal was a special meal, rather than the daily meal of members. (b) The meal described in 1QS 6:4f. appears to be a festival meal. The passage mentions the “firstfruits of bread” or the “new wine.” This seems to be a general description that covers two types of “firstfruits,” either new bread or new wine. While we cannot achieve absolute certainty, I am 32. E.g., Lev 15:31 (purity required for entering the temple); Num 9:10–12 (participants in the Passover festival could not have corpse impurity); Deut 26:14 (purity when handling second tithe); Josephus, Ag. Ap. 2.198 (purifications were prescribed “in view of the sacrifices”). On ordinary people, food, and purity, see further Judaism: Practice and Belief, 71f., 113, 133, 134, 157. 33. Judaism: Practice and Belief, 353–56.

100

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

inclined to identify the Pure Meal with the meal of 1QS 6:4f. (a festival meal) and to distinguish this from the ordinary daily meal. In this case, exclusion from the Pure Meal for a year would mean that the member who was being punished was excluded from a small number of special meals, while reduction of the food allowance would apply to all of his meals. Even if accepted, this proposal does not prove that the Qumranians did not eat their daily meals in some sort of purity. On the contrary, it appears that they did. A fragmentary text from Cave 4 discusses the case of a man who has a flux or discharge from his genitals (a zav) and who is therefore impure for seven days (Lev 15:1–15). The Bible requires such a man to wait for seven days after the flow stops, bathe, and wash his clothes (15:13). The Qumran text (4Q514) states that he may not eat until he has begun to be purified (line 4).34 It then repeats the point by saying that he may not eat while he is in his “first impurity” (line 7), which is to be understood as “the initial impurity of a person ‘who has not begun to cleanse himself.’”35 The text allows the man to eat “his bread” after he has begun purification by bathing and washing in water (lines 6, 9). The standard rule of purification was that it required washing and the setting of the sun (though Lev 15:13 does not mention the setting of the sun). It appears that the sectarian who had a genital discharge immersed on the first day (rather than waiting seven days) and was pure enough to eat his ordinary meal, called his “bread,” even before the sun set. The text makes it clear that the man would remain partially impure for seven days, but it does not indicate whether or not immersion was required before each meal. Joseph Baumgarten has pointed out the similarity of the Qumranian view in 4Q514 to the rabbinic view of the tevûl yôm, an impure person who had immersed but upon whom the sun had not yet set.36 Such a person was partially pure and therefore did not convey impurity to the same degree as did one who had not yet immersed (see, e.g., m. T. Yom 4:1). The rabbis, it should be noted, did not require people to be even half-pure to eat their ordinary food or conduct any other normal daily activities. Prior to the publication of this Scroll, we had known of the existence of a group stricter than the Pharisees or rabbis, the “morning immersers,” who criticized the Pharisees (perûshîm) because 34. For the text, see DJD VII: Qumrân Grotte 4, vol. III, ed. Maurice Baillet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 295–98. 35. Baumgarten, “Purification Rituals in DJD 7,” 205n10. 36. Ibid.

101

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

they pronounced the divine name in the morning without immersion (t. Yad. 2.20). We now have certain knowledge of a pre-70 Jewish group that exceeded the Pharisees’ concern with purity and food by a wide margin. Thus it appears that the Qumranians ate all of their meals in some degree of purity. I think it likely that partially pure sectarians could eat only their basic daily allotment of food (their “bread”), not the festival meal that is described in 1QS 6:4f. The community seems to have been highly conscious of degrees of rank, whether based on seniority or on knowledge and ability (e.g., 1QS 2:19–23). It agrees with this that its leaders would have allowed the partially pure person some privileges, especially his daily bread, but have reserved others, such as “the Purity,” or festival meals, for the entirely pure. Whatever the correct resolution of this question concerning the Pure Meal and the meal of 1QS 6:4f., we see that, like other Jews, the sectarians required purity before some meals. They may have been almost unique in requiring some degree of purity before all meals. Many scholars, however, have proposed that the Pharisees ate all their meals in purity, and they have more or less equated the Pharisees and the Qumranians in this respect. A frequently repeated version of this opinion is that the Pharisees treated their own tables like the altar and ate in the same state of purity as did the priests of the temple.37 I wish here to offer a digression on Pharisaic views about eating in purity. There are three reasons for including this discussion: it provides the opportunity to give concrete examples of what it would mean to eat food in purity; it allows clarification of an oftenmisunderstood topic; it will help us put the Qumranian group in perspective. There are two faults with the view just cited (that the Pharisees ate in purity in imitation of the priests of the temple). The first is that it would have been impossible for laypeople, and especially married laypeople, routinely to eat in full priestly purity. Since most purifications require washing and the setting of the sun (see Leviticus 15), and since contact with semen results in impurity, married people could eat in purity only if they had sexual intercourse early enough to immerse before sunset. If a farmer and his wife had sexual relations after sunset, they would be impure all the next day and therefore 37. E.g., Jacob Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 226. For brief discussions of representative scholars, see Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, 152–66.

102

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

should neither handle nor eat food. On a small farm, this would be difficult—to put it mildly. Moreover, when the wife was menstruating, or during the period after childbirth, she would be forbidden to prepare the food or eat with her husband. He would have to grind, mix, knead, and bake, as well as plow, sow, hoe, harvest, etc.—which is not humanly possible. Extended families would not solve the problem, since if several women lived in the same house, they would probably all menstruate at the same time. Actually, if Pharisees could not eat with menstruants, their domestic situation would be even more difficult than just described. As Talmudists have observed, eating in purity would require that a menstruant (or a woman after childbirth) be expelled from the house38 (that is, from a small house; a sufficiently large house could have separate quarters). Even if male Pharisees had been willing to expel menstruants from the house (and no evidence suggests that they were) it would still have been impossible for Pharisees and their families to solve all the purity problems of daily life: how to have sexual relations, how to find more hours in the day so that men could prepare the food, and where to build the housing that would hold one-fourth of the postpuberty, premenopausal wives of Pharisees at any given time. 39 The question of the possibility of perpetual purity can be clarified by considering the priests and their families. They did not eat all their meals in purity. Priests were on duty only two weeks out of every year, plus extra service during the festivals. As we have already noted, when serving in the temple priests ate some of the meat from the sacrifices. They could also take other categories of meat home from the temple, in which case they and their families had to eat it in purity. Further, they received some food from the offerings of tithes and firstfruits, which they and their families also ate in purity.40 These three categories supplied only part of their food; we have no idea how much, since we cannot quantify any of this free food. In any case, whenever they had sacred food to eat, they could eat it in purity without too much inconvenience. Priests were not farmers, and so they did not have to worry about some problems that would have 38. See I. M. Ta-Shma, “Niddah,” Encyclopedia Judaica 12, cols. 1141–48, quoted in Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, 155f. 39. In theory, Pharisees could have required members to immerse after sexual relations and then allowed them to handle and eat food when partially pure (see the discussion of the tebûl yôm, above). But no such rules can be attributed to the Pharisees or later to the rabbis. 40. On the categories of sacred food eaten by priests, see Judaism: Practice and Belief, 107–12, 146–57, 221f.

103

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

faced Pharisaic farmers. The priestly families could simply immerse before nightfall and then eat tithes, etc., after nightfall. They could have nonsacred food during the course of the day, and so would not have to fast even when they were to eat sacred food in the evening. Laypeople would have followed the same routine when eating sacrificial meat and second tithe during the festivals. Saying that the Pharisees always ate in purity “like the priests,” therefore, actually requires them to outdo the priests by a very large margin, since the priests by no means always ate in purity. Second, there is no evidence that the Pharisees wished to eat all their food in priestly purity. My study of the rabbinic passages on the Pharisees that Jacob Neusner used in his work on this topic revealed that he had misinterpreted them.41 Most of the rabbinic passages on handling food in purity refer either to food that is destined for the priesthood or to second tithe, which lay people ate in purity (as previously noted). The rabbinic passages on the Pharisees distinguish how tithe and second tithe were to be handled from how ordinary food was to be handled, thus making it clear that lay Pharisees ordinarily ate food that was not handled in purity. There is in fact no evidence that indicates that Pharisees wanted to eat in priestly purity, or that they wished to eat only food that would be sustainable for priests—to say nothing of the much higher state of purity that was required of priests and their food when they ate in the temple. We should especially note the complete absence of material discussing the topics that the Pharisees/rabbis would have had to discuss if they ate their ordinary meals in purity: what to do about sexual intercourse; where to sequester menstruants and nursing mothers; what to do about a chair on which a menstruant or nursing mother had sat, or the bed on which she lay; what to do with the farm when the Pharisaic family went to Jerusalem for a week to be purified after attending a funeral. Unlike the scholars who have proposed that the Pharisees lived like priests in the temple, the Pharisees themselves were well aware of gradations in the purity of food and the people who ate it: (a) At the high end there was food eaten by priests in the priests’ court of the temple. (b) Next came the priests’ portion of first tithe (see n. 31) and firstfruits, which were eaten in purity by priests and their families outside the temple. During the festivals, laypeople ate sacrificial food 41. Jacob Neusner, Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1971); A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities, 22 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1974–77). My analysis is in Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, 131–254; more briefly in Judaism: Practice and Belief, 431–40.

104

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

and second tithe in the same state of purity. (c) The Pharisees ate in a higher level of purity than ordinary people, but it was not equal to the priests, even outside the temple. (d) At the bottom end, most laypeople observed no purity laws in connection with their own food (except during the festivals). I shall expand on (c) briefly by giving two examples of Pharisaic practice (continuing to rely on passages chosen by Neusner).42 First, they tried to avoid inadvertently contracting corpse impurity. They did not follow the priestly rule, namely to contract corpse impurity only when a member of their close family died, but they did try to avoid some cases of corpse impurity. I regard this as a “minor gesture” toward a higher level of purity than that of the ordinary person. Second, since the Shammaites and Hillelites disagreed about proper procedure in handwashing before Sabbath and possibly festival meals,43 we may suppose that the Pharisees washed their hands before such meals. This should also be classed as a minor gesture. The Bible does not require anyone to wash hands before any meal, but by the first century this was a known practice within Judaism, possibly being more widespread in the Diaspora than in Palestine.44 The Pharisees seem to have washed hands only before Sabbath or festival meals. In any case, handwashing does not result in priestly purity, but is a token gesture toward purity. My study of the numerous Pharisaic passages on purity indicates that m. Hag. 2:7 (on purity of garments) applies to purity in general, including purity when eating. According to this passage, different groups maintained various degrees of purity. From low to high, the list reads: ordinary people, Pharisees, those who eat heave-offering (priests and their families outside the temple), those who eat holy things (priests inside the temple), those who occupy themselves with the sin-offering water (required for the removal of corpse impurity).45 In general, we may say that the Pharisees intended to attain a higher level of purity than the ordinary layperson. As noted 42. These examples come from Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, 131, 254. I have omitted the probability that Pharisees tried to minimize contracting midras impurity (for a brief account, see Judaism: Practice and Belief, 436f.). 43. They argued about when to mix the cup and when to wash the hands before meals on Sabbaths and other holy days (m. Ber. 8:2, 4; t. Ber. 5:25–28). Here I have in mind not meals that included meat from sacrifice, which required full purity, but meals on festival days when the family had no sacrificial meat to eat—for example, when the family was not able to go to Jerusalem for a festival. 44. See Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, 30, 39f., 228–31 (Pharisaic passages), 260–63 (Diaspora). 45. Hatta’t here refers to the mixture of water and the ashes of the red heifer, needed to purify the corpse-impurity; see Chanoch Albeck, Sishah Sidre Mishnah (The Six Orders of the Mishnah), 6 vols. (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Bialik Institute, 1958–59), 2:396. This usage is established by m. Para; see, e.g., 4:1; 10:1.

105

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

above, they did not require a person to immerse and therefore be half-pure before eating ordinary food. The Pharisaic minor gestures toward purity were not the equivalent of the Qumranian requirement of immersion, discussed above, which was that the impure sectarian should take the first step toward full purity as defined in the Bible before eating ordinary food. Nor did the Pharisaic gestures come close to making Pharisees as pure as priests in the temple. We now return to the question of purity and food at Qumran. I hope that the digression on the Pharisees illustrates what eating in purity would require and also makes it clear that there was a range of possibilities regarding food and purity. If the Qumranians were a male monastic group, several of the possible sources of impurity were eliminated: semen (except for nocturnal emissions), menstrual blood, other flows from female genitalia (e.g., miscarriage), and childbirth. This would leave them with the following sources of impurity: nocturnal emission (Lev 15:16f.); an abnormal emission from the penis (a zav, Lev 15:2–5); corpses (Numbers 19). It is quite possible that they added some sources of impurity, such as defecation.46 1QS, unfortunately, says little about sources of impurity and means of purification. We have seen that the Qumranians used immersion pools, but was this all? Ordinarily, two of the impurities just listed—abnormal emission from the penis and corpse-impurity—required the temple and priests. With regard to the former, Lev 15:14 requires the offering of two birds. With regard to the latter, Numbers 19 requires a priest and the ashes of a red heifer. Since the Qumranians could not have brought sacrifices and could not have accepted purification at the hands of a Jerusalem priest, what did they do? I have been unable to find any text that addresses the problem of sacrifices for purification. We know that the sectarians held the theological view that their community and its activities atoned for sin (e.g., 1QS 8:3f.), and we may suppose that this view eliminated the need for sacrifices of purification—especially since the few purification texts that we have contain references to atoning as well as cleansing.47 We saw above a fragmentary text (4Q514) that gives part of the ritual for purifying a zav, and we must assume that at the end of the text the man is considered pure even though he did not take the required two birds to the temple. Support for this comes from another fragmentary text 46. According to Josephus (J. W. 2.148f.), Essenes chose remote areas for defecation, and afterward they washed themselves “as if defiled.” On defecation, see further below. 47. Baumgarten, “Purification Rituals in DJD 7,” 199–201, 207f.

106

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

from the same cave, 4Q512.48 This is the ritual for the purification of a man who had contracted corpse impurity. Column 12 (fragments 1–6) does not contain any complete sentences, but we find the words “on the third day” (line 1, cf. Num 19:19), “holy ash” (line 3, referring to the ashes of the red heifer, Num 19:9f.), and “sprinkle” (line 7, as in Num 19:19). We do not know who sprinkles,49 but it is evident that the sect carried out a version of the ritual of the red heifer, its burning, and the use of its ashes. In this text, by the way, the themes of atonement and sanctification are marked (atonement, lines 3, 14; sanctification, line 10). We conclude from this that the Qumranians had their own means of removing all the biblical impurities, including those that ordinarily required the temple and its priests. They seem not to have had their own sacrifices of animals and birds, but they did have their own ashes of a red heifer, which they used in removing corpse-impurity. One assumes that one of their own priests killed and burnt the heifer. We have also learned that the sectarians required the impure to begin purification before they were allowed to eat their daily rations. This is a much more ambitious requirement than those followed by the Pharisees. I have dedicated so much space to food and purity because it is the legal topic that is least understood—for the very good reason that it is more complex than most other legal topics (such as Sabbath law). I shall summarize my view of food and purity at Qumran: 1QS 6:2–5 refers to a special periodic meal, not to every meal; we do not know what purity rules were followed when the sectarians ate “the Purity,” but I think it likely that they required full purity; the impure had to begin purification before they could eat their daily bread; their own rituals were adequate to remove impurities that ordinarily required the temple; the Qumranians, like the Pharisees, had their own distinctive policies with regard to the common subject of food and purity, and they were here as elsewhere much more radical. The third subtopic under purity is the purity of Jerusalem. In general, Jews thought that Jerusalem was holier and purer than other parts of Israel. According to the Temple Scroll (11QTemple), when the sectarians occupied Jerusalem, menstruants and several other classes of impure 48. For the text, see DJD VII: Qumrân Grotte 4, vol. III, 272; see also Baumgarten, “Purification Rituals in DJD 7.” 49. Similarly, in 11QTemple 49:18 “they sprinkle,” and in 50:14 “he sprinkles.” Num 19:18f. specifies only a “pure person” as the sprinkler.

107

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

people would be banned from the city and would have to live in camps outside the walls.50 Further, the male sectarians would have to go outside the city walls in order to defecate.51 On the Sabbath, they could not defecate at all, since their Sabbath rules would forbid them to walk far enough beyond the walls.52 This is clearly an extreme form of a common view: Jerusalem should be purer than other cities. This paragraph partly conceals some difficulties, which I shall consider in the final section of the paper. It will remain highly probable that the Qumranians wished to eliminate from Jerusalem more impurities than would have occurred to most Jews. 4. Providence and Freewill We shall now consider providence (which may be called determinism or predestination) and freewill, the first of our two theological topics. This is one of the major defining characteristics mentioned by Josephus in his summaries of the Jewish parties (probably relying on Nicolaus of Damascus; see n. 58 below). According to Josephus, the Essenes believed in providence (or predestination), the Sadducees believed in freewill, and the Pharisees believed in both.53 My own view is that probably they all believed in both, though there may have been differences of emphasis. We should also note that Paul believed in both and that he had been a Pharisee.54 Jews had not been through the debates of medieval Christianity, nor had they read Calvin, and so they did not know that providence and freewill are mutually exclusive. It is easy to believe in both because one applies them somewhat differently. This is brilliantly clear in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Typing out all the passages that emphasize divine control of events or human 50. 11QTemple 46:16–18: lepers, men with irregular discharge from their genitals, men who had nocturnal emissions; 48:14–17: people with the following conditions are to be expelled from all Jewish cities, not just Jerusalem: leprosy, plague, males with irregular genital discharge, menstruants, and women after childbirth. For discussion see Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 3 vols. plus supplementary plates, English ed. (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983), 1:304–7. 51. 11QTemple 46:13–16 (latrines had to be 3,000 cubits outside Jerusalem); cf. 1QM 7:6f. (latrines had to be 2,000 cubits outside the military camps during the war). See Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1:294–304. (A cubit was approximately half a yard or meter.) 52. Note the distances in the previous note (2,000 or 3,000 cubits) According to CD 10:21, a Sabbath’s day journey could be no more than 1,000 cubits. The rabbis allowed Sabbath journeys of 2,000 cubits. Josephus also comments that the Essenes did not defecate on the Sabbath (J. W. 2.147). As Albert Baumgarten notes, this could be because they could not carry their mattock on the Sabbath or dig with it after they reached a secluded space: Baumgarten, “The Temple Scroll, Toilet Practices, and the Essenes,” Jewish History 10 (1996): 9–20, here 16n14. 53. J. W. 2.163, 165; Ant. 18.13, 18. 54. Rom 9:1–18; 10:9–16.

108

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

choice or both requires somewhere between six and ten pages.55 I shall mention only one point: membership in the community. One of the names that the sectarians called themselves was “the chosen” or “elect” (e.g., 1QS 9:14; 1QpHab 5:4). In agreement with this, according to one passage, God himself, from the beginning, determined the “lot” of every individual. He created the righteous person (tsaddîq) and “established him from the womb for the time of goodwill, that he might be preserved in God’s covenant.” Similarly he created wicked people (reša‘îm) for the time of wrath and vowed them from the womb for the Day of Massacre (1QH 15:13–19). Other passages lay equal stress on human decision and will. Those who enter the covenant are called “volunteers” or, in Geza Vermes’s translation, “those who have freely devoted themselves” (1QS 1:7). Contrast this statement of entry to the earlier statement, that God decides on a person’s “lot”: Every man of Israel, who freely vows to join the Council of the Community, shall be examined by the Guardian at the head of the Congregation concerning his understanding and his deeds. If he is fitted to the discipline, he shall admit him into the Covenant that he may be converted to the truth and depart from all falsehood; and he shall instruct him in all the rules of the Community. And later, when he comes to stand before the Congregation, they shall all deliberate his case, and according to the decision of the Council of the Congregation, he shall either enter or depart. (1QS 6:13–16, Vermes)

The explanation of these two ways of discussing membership in the community is this: when one thinks of God, one naturally attributes to him foreknowledge and power. Imagine the opposite: could pious Jews think that God does not know what is happening or what will happen, and that he is not in charge of what he created? I think that to the monotheist in particular, belief in divine determinism is easy and simple, and that this is the thought that comes to mind when thinking of God or addressing him in prayer. But when a group of people gathers to discuss rules that will govern the group, they naturally think of human ability to make decisions and to take responsibility for their actions. Thus a person who betrays the group is treated as a traitor, not as a poor victim of God’s caprice. As we noted above, the same

55. For fuller discussion, see E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 257–70.

109

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

individual, such as Paul, can hold both views on the same day, since they apply to slightly different points. 5. Righteousness The second theological point is that the sectarians believed that people can be righteous only as the gift of God and that they are able to be righteous by their own effort.56 This is the supposed grace/works dichotomy beloved by Protestants. I again shall give only two passages: Righteousness, I know, is not of man, nor is perfection of way of the son of man: to the Most High God belong all righteous deeds. The way of man is not established except by the spirit which God created for him to make perfect a way for the children of men, that all His creatures might know the might of His power, and the abundance of his mercies towards all the sons of His grace. (1QH 4:29–33)

On the other hand, members do not enter the community unless they are perfect of way (1QS 8:10). If a member deliberately transgresses, which he is free to do, he is not readmitted until “all his deeds are purified and he walks in perfection of way” (8:18; cf. 10:21). Thus a member should be perfect of way, but he can transgress, in which case he can again become perfect of way if he has “the right stuff.” The explanation of this apparent dichotomy is basically the same as in the previous case: when the members compared themselves to God, they said that only he was righteous and that only he could give them perfection of way. When they thought of behavior within the group, comparing one person with another or with the standards of the group, they naturally thought that members could decide to live perfectly in accord with the precepts of the community or to transgress. For a brief parallel, we turn to Josephus rather than Paul (though Paul shared this view).57 In his view, Moses required prayers of thanksgiving twice each day. Josephus’s summary focuses on God’s grace: Let all acknowledge before God the bounties which He has bestowed on them through their deliverance from the land of Egypt: thanksgiving is a natural duty, and is rendered alike in gratitude for past mercies and to incline the giver to others yet to come. They shall inscribe also on their 56. Ibid., 305–12. 57. Note his admonitions to upright behavior, which presuppose human ability: e.g., 1 Thess 4:1; 5:21f.

110

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

doors the greatest of the benefits which they have received from God and each shall display them on his arms; and all that can show forth the power of God and His goodwill towards them, let them bear a record thereof written on the head and on the arm, so that men may see on every side the loving care with which God surrounds them. (Ant. 4.212f.)

The same author, of course, emphasized the importance of following the law and believed that God took account of deeds by rewarding obedience and punishing disobedience: people who conform to the will of God, and do not venture to transgress laws that have been excellently laid down, prosper in all things beyond belief, and for their reward are offered by God felicity; whereas, in proportion as they depart from the strict observance of these laws, things [otherwise] practicable become impracticable, and whatever imaginary good thing they strive to do ends in irretrievable disasters. (Ant. 1.14)

The sectarians emphasized (1) that humans were worthless bits of nothing and depended absolutely on God’s grace, and (2) that they were capable of becoming and remaining perfect. These statements are more radical than Josephus’s, but they are not fundamentally different. The world is still full of people who will fix on one of these themes, usually human effort in attaining perfection, and conclude that the sectarians in particular and Jews in general believed in the sort of meritorious achievement that is called legalistic self-righteousness. And they will maintain that holding this position excludes reliance on God’s goodness and mercy. Scholars who work in the area of Bible and related topics are often fixated on the kind of dogmatic consistency that seldom appears in real life: they think that people who believed in human effort and moral achievement must have renounced grace. Ancient Jewish groups, just like modern Jewish and Christian groups, had diverse religious thoughts and practices. To this day, when Jews or Christians pray to God, they thank him for calling them to follow him and for giving them the strength and ability to live as they should, and they recognize that in comparison to God humans are weak creatures who must rely on the strength and goodness of God. Yet when these same people falter, they do not blame God, they blame themselves. They seek to return to the path of righteousness, and they know that they must exert effort to do so. Humans are dependent on grace, and they are accountable for their deeds. This is a common and in fact a virtually universal view in both

111

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Judaism and Christianity, and it is puzzling that many Christian scholars who accept both aspects of religion in their own lives believe that in the ancient world these were mutually exclusive alternatives. They are simply different perspectives that arise in slightly different circumstances. One set of thoughts arises in prayer or meditation, the other in considering the practicalities and difficulties of daily life. The two can combine in one sentence, as in this passage from the Hymns: “No man can be just in your judgment or [innocent] in your trial, though one man be more just than another” (1QH 9:14f.). Conclusions on the Five Cases On all these topics—temple, festivals, and sacrifices; Sabbath; purity; determinism/free will; dependence on God/self-reliance—the Qumran Scrolls exaggerate and radicalize activities and views that were common in Judaism, many of which also appear in Pharisaism, rabbinic literature, Josephus, and the New Testament, as well as in Jewish literature that I have not cited, such as the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical works and the writings of Philo. What applies to these five points applies to numerous points. The Qumran community had much in common with other Jews of the same place and time. It was, however, a very radical group, and in numerous ways it was distinctive, so distinctive that it separated itself from other Palestinian Jews. Comments on Other Points The views that I have offered on commonalities and differences explain my views on other themes of the conference, and clever extrapolation from the main part of the paper would allow the reader to know how I see other topics. But it will be simplest if I write a brief account of the other questions that we were asked to consider. I hold most of the following views more lightly than the positions sketched above, but the main issue below is extremely important for students of Judaism in general and the Scrolls in particular. I refer to the question of whether or not we should construct a composite picture of the Essene party by collecting evidence drawn from the Scrolls, Josephus, and Philo. I shall put the main question generally: were the Qumranians Essenes? It does not bother me that the Dead Sea Scrolls do not precisely conform to what Josephus and Philo tell us about the Essenes.

112

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

Josephus and Philo were outsiders, and they probably had a source or sources written by other outsiders. In the case of Josephus, we may guess his source: the work of Nicolaus of Damascus.58 I do not regard the text that is now in J. W. 2.119–61 as a fantasy, nor even as very inaccurate. But if Josephus derived most of this passage from Nicolaus, we should expect it to reflect Nicolaus’s day (the lifetime of Herod) rather than Josephus’s. The Essenes, of course, did not change completely in the intervening decades, from late in Herod’s reign (let us say 10 BCE) to the fall of Jerusalem (70 CE), but there may have been some differences. Thus this description may not have been 100 percent accurate when it was written, and most especially it need not be regarded as perfectly describing all Essenes at all times and in all places. If, therefore, we allow for some variety within the Essene party (Josephus mentions single and married groups of Essenes), and also for some changes over time, we may reasonably consider the Qumran community to be a branch of the Essene party. I shall return to the question when we consider a specific issue, defecation, but for now I shall simply propose that the Scrolls conform to the literary descriptions of the Essenes closely enough that the simplest conclusion is that much of the library from Qumran represents the monastic (or celibate?) Essene order.59 58. It is striking that in his two summaries of the parties (in J. W. 2.119–216 and Ant. 18.11–25) Josephus does not tell us very much about the two parties he knew best, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. His knowledge of these parties, as they were during his lifetime, must have been close to perfect. Occasionally one catches a glimpse of the detail that he could have offered, as in his discussion of the Pharisee Simon son of Gamaliel in Life 190–98, where he also refers to three other Pharisees. But instead of putting into his summaries what he knew about these two parties, he offers sketches of their views on the philosophical problem of fate and the speculative issue of life after death. Both aspects of his summaries (what he does not tell and the peculiarity of what he does mention) incline me to view that he is here, as frequently, using a source, probably Nicolaus of Damascus, a gentile who had good general information about the parties, but who was probably not expert in Jewish law and who therefore might have had less than perfect knowledge. (Nicolaus had been Herod’s courtier and spokesman. He was a learned philosopher and historian, who wrote a massive work, only fragments of which survive, called The Universal History. Josephus mentions Nicolaus, but he gives us no idea of how much he depended on this source—following here the custom of ancient historians.) If the work of Nicolaus was Josephus’s source, this would also explain why the Essenes receive so much attention in J. W. 2: they were not very important in the war (Josephus’s subject), but they were quaint and curious, and therefore probably interesting to Nicolaus’s audience. Postulating Nicolaus as Josephus’s source for much of his descriptions of the parties, however, poses the further question of Nicolaus’s source for the long description of the Essenes that appears in J. W. 2. I assume that he had a source, which he may have reworked. And, of course, Josephus could have reworked it as well; he certainly added 2.152f., on the bravery of Essenes when captured by the Romans. As James McLaren has pointed out to me, Josephus also decided where to put the summary of the parties. The possibility that Nicolaus was the source of Josephus’s descriptions of the parties is, of course, too large an issue to be dealt with here, but I offer a few further comments below. 59. It is possible to distinguish “monastic” from “celibate.” According to Josephus, as just noted, some

113

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Next, are all the finds in Qumran equally representative of the monastic sect that lived there? From very early days it has been evident that the library included works that the sect read but had not composed. Copies of parts of 1 Enoch (for example) were found among the Scrolls, but no one thinks that the Qumran sect composed this work, which was well known and widely available outside Qumran. Some scholars would put 11QTemple in the same category; it was read at Qumran but was not an explicitly sectarian treatise. I agree with those who think that it was as sectarian as 1QS, 1QH, 1QM, and 1QpHab It is true that there are various features in 11QTemple that call this into question, but assuming an origin of this Scroll in Qumran still seems to me the most satisfactory position. One must remember that a religious movement can easily contain people who have divergent views on speculative questions, such as Jerusalem in the age to come. Very rarely does hard doctrine govern speculative topics, especially in a group that endures for several decades. We should not expect that all Qumranians had precisely the same views of the future age. 60 The Damascus Document presents a quite different problem. It contains a lot of rules that are not in the other Scrolls, and particularly not in the other Rules (the chief of which is 1QS). Although members of a religious society may harbor different expectations of the future, they cannot obey two competing laws simultaneously. Thus legal differences among the Scrolls must be investigated very carefully. But we should again recall that not all Essenes lived at the same time and in the same place. Some aspects of CD and 1QS are completely Essenes married, some did not (J. W. 2.120, 160f.); this implies celibacy (we need not consider concubines and prostitutes). The Qumran documents do not require members not to marry. On the other hand, 1QS is completely silent about women and children, and it legislates for men who live communally with one another. This has led many scholars to regard the sect of 1QS as the Essenes who did not marry: they were monastic (as in 1QS) and celibate (as in Josephus). As Morton Smith pointed out long ago, however, it is conceivable that the Qumranians had wives who lived in the area but not communally with the men (“The Dead Sea Sect in Relation to Ancient Judaism,” New Testament Studies 7 [1960–61]: 347–60; cf. Judaism: Practice and Belief, 529n6). We may now note that the Temple Scroll envisages wives as living at least most of the time outside the city (to keep Jerusalem free of the impurities caused by semen, menstruation, and childbirth). It is therefore possible that the Qumranians believed in a monastic life (communal, no contact with families on a daily basis) rather than a celibate life (no wives). The description in Josephus, to be sure, focuses on marriage itself (though it also contains hints of communal life, for example at mealtime, 2.129). It seems to me that we cannot entirely resolve these questions (monastic communal life, marriage, Josephus, and 1QS), but at least in principle a group could be monastic but not celibate. Josephus’s Essenes are celibate and there are only hints of a monastic life, while the 1QS sectarians are monastic and possibly celibate. 60. Unanimity on the future would be explicable if a specific future exception were the raison d’être of the community—but even so there would be a few variations over time, as well as some diversity of emphasis from one person to another.

114

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

incompatible, since the former legislates for married people who live in towns and take offerings to the temple, while the latter governs sectarians who live apart from the rest of society. But this difference partly coincides with Josephus’s report that some Essenes were celibate (apparently the majority) while some married. That is, legal incompatibility may correspond to the view that there were two groups of Essenes. Thus part of Josephus’s account can readily be harmonized with CD: there were some married Essenes who lived in towns. But then we immediately encounter another problem. According to Josephus all the Essenes, both celibate and married, lived in towns, not in a secluded monastery near the Dead Sea. Nowhere in his writings does he mention a habitation like Qumran. Yet even this problem may be resolved if Josephus’s summary of the parties was dependent on Nicolaus’s history. We noted above that a description of the Essenes written in the time of Nicolaus (Herod’s lifetime) might be at least a little different from one written during Josephus’s lifetime. Now we shall note what was probably the most important change between those two periods. Archaeology reveals that the settlement at Qumran was unoccupied during part of Herod’s reign. The dates of desertion and reoccupation are less certain. Some place it after Herod’s death (4 BCE) and some earlier.61 In any case, during at least part of Herod’s reign, and perhaps during most of it, Qumran was not occupied. This makes it at least plausible that when Nicolaus wrote the Qumranians lived in towns and cities. We know that Herod was friendly toward the Essenes (Ant. 15.371–79). Therefore it makes sense to think that the Qumranians were Essenes; that the monastic residential area at Qumran was destroyed at a time when they had a friend on the throne; that they therefore moved to Jerusalem (and other towns and cities); and that Nicolaus correctly described the Essenes—both unmarried and married—as living in towns. Josephus did not bother to revise his source. He neither added that some Essenes after Herod’s time lived near the Dead Sea, nor did he improve the inadequate summaries of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Another complication arises because the two principal futuristic documents, 1QM (the War Scroll) and 11QTemple, contain rules. If divergences between CD and 1QS lead to the conclusion that they did 61. The best brief evaluation of Qumran archaeology is by Magen Broshi, “The Archaeology of Qumran—a Reconsideration,” in Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research, 103–15; on chronology, see 105–11. Convenient summaries of the archaeological evidence are F. F. Bruce, “Qumran,” Encyclopedia Judaica 13, cols. 1429–35; John J. Collins, “Essenes,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 2:619–26.

115

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

not both regulate the same group of people at the same time, must the rules in 1QM and 11QTemple agree with each other and also with 1QS for us to consider them all as equally “sectarian”—that is, equally representative of the Qumran community? It seems to me not. This is, of course, a question of the degree of difference. Rules for the future would not be completely different from the rules for the present. But I think that it is quite possible for an author thinking of the future war and armed camps to have a few rules that are different from the rules for the present. They might be only improvements that he fondly hopes will be introduced in the better time, when the twelve tribes of Israel are reassembled and angels lead the army. Or, reading the biblical stories of war, he might conform some rules to them. I would even more strongly expect the author of 11QTemple to make some modifications. Why think that the present mean camp on the shores of the Dead Sea was governed in precisely the same way the Holy City would be when the sect possessed it and rebuilt it in grandeur? Besides, the author of 11QTemple was a kind of genius (in my estimation). Possibly he was one of the few who could actually think of something different, something that was not only bigger than what already existed. These considerations are not decisive, but I do regard them as heuristically useful. We should not refuse to think that some of the sectarians could envisage legal changes in the new and better age. I note that, in the United States, congresspeople often vote for revisions to the tax law that do not correspond to the longed-for simple and perfect tax code that they discuss when campaigning. The future does not have to be just a replay of the present. I shall now take one example of the problems that arise when various sources, all possibly Essene, mention the same legal topic but do not agree. Is it better to explain legal differences as being intraEssene or to posit different groups or subgroups? I have already indicated my own inclination to regard the Qumran documents as Essene and CD as coming from a subgroup of the Essene party, but I shall now consider a more complicated case. At nn. 51–52 above, in discussing defecation, I followed Yadin in combining information from 1QM, 11QTemple, CD, and Josephus, on the ground that they all seemed compatible (1QM, latrines 2,000 cubits away from the camp; 11QTemple, latrines 3,000 cubits outside Jerusalem; CD, a Sabbath journey could be no farther than 1,000 cubits; Josephus, the Essenes defecated in remote spots and did not “go to stool” on the Sabbath

116

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

[possibly because they would not carry or dig with their mattock on that day]). I cited all of this evidence in making the simple point that the Qumran sect wished to treat Jerusalem as especially pure, and I pointed out that it also indicated that the sectarians would not defecate on the Sabbath—apparently in the present as well as in the future Jerusalem. Albert Baumgarten has written an article on defecation in 11QTemple and Josephus’s description of the Essenes. He proposes that the differences prove that the documents came from separate groups.62 I did not design this discussion as an argument with my longtime friend and colleague, and I first wrote it without having his article in the forefront of my mind: I read it so long ago that I had forgotten the details. Although I have now restudied the article, I have decided to describe the problems as I see them, without arguing with Baumgarten, and at the end to add a note indicating why his extremely interesting article does not entirely persuade me. I hope to publish a fuller discussion of this matter in the not-too-distant future. 63 The combination of evidence above (at nn. 51–52) has several difficulties. (a) Since CD does not represent the community at Qumran, we do not know that the Qumranians accepted a Sabbath limit of 1,000 cubits. (b) Neither 1QS nor CD, which presumably prescribe behavior in the “present tense,” deals with defecation. (c) Josephus does not say that the Essenes had latrines (as in 1QM and 11QTemple), but rather that each individual dug a pit in a remote place. (d) The distances of 2,000 cubits in 1QM and of 3,000 cubits in 11QTemple are obviously not the same. What shall we make of all this? What I do not conclude is this: there were five different groups: (1) CD: its group could travel only 1,000 cubits on the Sabbath, but they could defecate wherever and whenever they liked (CD does not mention the act of defecation, though it may refer to feces in 10:11 and 11:364); (2) 1QS: the sectarians could travel any distance on the Sabbath and defecate wherever and whenever they liked (1QS mentions neither Sabbath limits nor defecation); (3) 1QM: the followers of this Scroll had latrines 2,000 meters outside their residential areas and could walk to them on the Sabbath (no Sabbath limit is specified); (4) 11QTemple: its champions 62. Baumgarten, “Temple Scroll, Toilet Practices.” This article does not contrast Josephus and Qumran in general, since he did not wish to assume that 11QTemple either is or is not a Qumranian document. The question is only whether or not 11QTemple and Josephus represent the same group. 63. I regret to report that as of April 2016 this is one of the numerous articles that I wanted to write but have not gotten around to. My energy did not match my ambition. 64. So ibid., n. 27.

117

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

had latrines 3,000 cubits outside their residential areas and could walk to them on the Sabbath (no Sabbath limit is specified); (5) Josephus: the Essenes could walk as far as they liked on the Sabbath but nevertheless did not move their bowels on that day (Josephus does not specify a Sabbath limit, nor does he explain the problem of defecation on the Sabbath; as Baumgarten pointed out [n. 52 above], carrying and digging would have been forbidden on the Sabbath). This is, of course, a caricature of what happens if one interprets evidence too atomistically. Jacob Neusner introduced into Jewish studies the ideas that each ancient Jewish document represents a different social group and that each document presents a complete system, with nothing omitted.65 The latter view means that silence indicates opposition or a lack of concern (e.g., a document that does not mention sacrifice shows that the separate social community that produced it opposed sacrifice). These views are the ones I caricature in the previous paragraph. Specialists on the Dead Sea Scrolls are not this extreme, and they do combine evidence from various Scrolls, rather than proposing that each document represents a different group. There are, nevertheless, even in this generally prudent and thoughtful field, recurrent tendencies to find diverse groups where, it seems to me, we should allow for internal and individual variation. I think that it is extremely important to grant that we must sometimes combine information from the Scrolls and that we should not suppose that the sect, throughout its history, had only one set of unchanging practices and opinions. Some of the Scrolls (e.g., 1QM) were revised. We should also allow for individuals to assert their own opinions. This does not mean that we should become uncritical synthesizers of all sorts of divergent evidence. No two scholars will agree precisely on what “critical” analysis means and what its results are. Some incline more toward harmonization, others more toward atomization. This is as it should be. We all draw lines in different ways. I am willing to put Ephesians in the Pauline camp, but I do not consider it when I am writing about Paul himself. To make my own position on this vexed and important issue clear, I shall review the sources above on the question of defecation. (1) CD’s Sabbath limit of 1,000 cubits may or may not have been in force at Qumran. The rabbis (as noted above) accepted a 65. E.g., Neusner, Judaism, 3, 236; Messiah in Context (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 3; “Parsing the Rabbinic Canon with the History of an Idea: The Messiah,” in Formative Judaism: Religious, Historical and Literary Studies, 3rd series, Torah, Pharisees and Rabbis, BJS 46 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 173. See on all of this Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, 312, 324–26.

118

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

limit of 2,000 cubits, and we should expect that the Qumranians were stricter. Thus it seems reasonable (not indisputable) to apply CD’s limit to Qumran.66 (2) The fact that CD and 1QS lack rules about when not to defecate and whether or not to wash or immerse after defecation proves nothing at all. Neither one is a complete system, and each omits more possible topics than it includes. We noted above that 1QS mentions a meal called “the Purity” but says very little about impurities and purification. This does not prove that the sectarians lacked precise and detailed views. We simply do not know. (3) The difference of latrines located 2,000 cubits away (1QM) and 3,000 cubits away (11QTemple) is not very serious. Yadin suggested that the subject is slightly different: military camps in 1QM and Jerusalem in 11QTemple. Various dates and authors would also account for the divergence. I can imagine people trying to outdo one another in strictness, and it is especially easy to understand the view that defecation should be removed farther from Jerusalem than from a military camp. (4) The fact that Josephus envisages individual Essenes as digging their small pits, rather than utilizing group latrines, is more noteworthy. Surely he himself knew what the Essenes who lived in Jerusalem did. But we do not know that this is what he is describing. He may be—and I think he was—using someone else’s report of what the Essenes in Palestine did at some other time (Herod’s). Scholars frequently forget what sort of historian Josephus was. Wherever possible, he had his assistants copy sources, and we not infrequently find an accurate description in one of his works and an inaccurate description elsewhere, while on other topics there are two diametrically opposed views.67 Moreover, we must also remember that 66. As noted above, many of CD’s rules would not apply in Qumran—e.g., those that discuss families and relations with gentiles. 67. This view of Josephus as historian is at a polar extreme from that of Steve Mason, who thinks that he fully meant everything in his work; if he used sources, he shaped them “to reflect his own agenda, interest, and style” (47); he exercised “control over his literary productions”: Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees, Studia post-biblica (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 48; see further 41–48, 113f., 372. I note that Mason asserts this view but does not demonstrate it by examining some of the most obvious self-contradictions in Josephus’s work. I offer a couple of examples that illustrate the fact that Josephus sometimes just copied his sources, not altering them so that they would agree with his own view: (1) his description of the temple is in some respects quite different in J. W. 5.184–227 and Ant. 15.410–20 (see Judaism: Practice and Belief, 59). I suspect that the description in J. W. 5 is based on Roman military notes (Judaism: Practice and Belief, 59f.), which explains its accuracy. Either he had a different and less reliable source in Antiquities or he simply did not bother to look up the earlier account. If the latter, he misremembered a place that he should have known well. (2) Josephus gives various lists of Herod’s buildings, sometimes (J. W. 1.401–28) citing Nicolaus; cf. the praise in Ant. 16.136–49), while elsewhere we read that some of Herod’s buildings were part and parcel of his corruption of Judaism; they are evidence of his “unlawful acts” (Ant. 15.266–76) (presumably from an otherwise unknown pietist critic; similarly Ant. 15.238;

119

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Josephus knew the Bible, including Deut 23:12f. (Hebrew 23:13f.): “You shall have a designated area outside the camp to which you shall go. With your utensils you shall have a trowel; when you relieve yourself outside, you shall dig a hole with it and then cover up your excrement.” Therefore if Josephus himself did compose the description of individual Essenes digging their own pits, he could have borrowed it from Deuteronomy. Or Nicolaus’s source borrowed it from Deuteronomy. Or, still more likely, in Nicolaus’s day the Qumranians had moved into Jerusalem and had changed their practice (as I suggested above). In short, we do not know the source of J. W. 2.148f. with complete certainty; we do not know precisely what the Qumranians did; we may be reasonably confident that at some time or other Essenes in Jerusalem dug individual pits some distance from the city; we do not know whether the practices of either the Qumranians or the Jerusalem Essenes changed over time. Change over time, and even back and forth, should not be ruled out. We could, for example, imagine the following sequence: a few hundred sectarians lived at Qumran for several decades, each using his own mattock; it became increasingly difficult for each sectarian each day to find a new spot for his pit; this led them to build a few latrines with deep pits; after some decades the latrines filled up; they again took up their mattocks. I intend this to be at least faintly amusing. My serious suggestion is to look at Nicolaus as the source of the summaries of the parties. We should also grant that our knowledge will remain imperfect. Still seriously: I do not wish to minimize the conflict between Josephus on the one hand and 1QM and 11QTemple on the other by arguing that the futurists dreamt up latrines even though past and present practice was to dig individual pits. I assume that the latrines of 1QM and 11QTemple were based on some use of latrines at the time of composition (or possibly in the recent past), and I also assume that at some time or other Essenes in the cities went outside the city boundaries and dug individual pits. There are real problems in sorting out the evidence, in which we should rejoice: if only we were equally overwhelmed with evidence on the Sadducees! I understand why many scholars today would solve some of the problems by positing three groups, one represented by 16.153–59). We have no idea what Josephus’s “own” view was. In describing and especially in evaluating the life of Herod, it is plain that he had at least two diametrically opposed sources, and that he had his secretaries copy them into his work. On Mason and the Pharisees, see the review by Rebecca Gray, Journal of Theological Studies 43 (1992): 217–20.

120

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

1QM, one by 11QTemple, and one by Josephus. Others would be happy to combine 1QM and 11QTemple and thus to posit two groups. But manifold groups with such similar practices are also a problem. If one says that Josephus describes the celibate Essenes (since his discussion of toilet behavior comes well before he mentions married Essenes) and that 1QM represents the monastic (and probably celibate) Qumranians, who were not Essenes, we have two very similar groups, both apparently substantial in numbers, but only one name for them. This strikes me as odd. If Josephus describes the groups perfectly accurately (which would mean that all Essenes had always lived in towns and had always dug individual pits), why did he not flesh out his account of the parties by adding some information on the community at Qumran? 68 Are our only options either to use the evidence atomistically (each document represents a different group) or to declare our total ignorance? It seems to me not. The evidence could come from different groups, instead of from different subgroups of the Essenes and/or from different chronological periods. No one should be too certain of the answer to this question. But in either case, we are not completely ignorant: it is highly likely that both the Essenes and the Qumranians (if they were not Essenes) had toilet practices that made them stand out from most Jews, and that these practices bore a family resemblance. This seems to me to be knowledge. It is only a small point, and it will not settle the question of how many groups there were, but I still think that family resemblances are important and that patient compilation and study of individual points pays off. I hope that this explains why I am comfortable with the very careful use of CD in discussing the Scrolls (I have a greater problem with combining CD and Qumran than with considering 11QTemple as 68. Three disagreements with Al Baumgarten’s “Temple Scroll, Toilet Practices” prevent me from being persuaded: (1) I do not share his view of Josephus’s perfect reliability in describing the parties (since he used a source that may have been less than perfect), and in particular I doubt that Josephus was a meticulous reporter of purity rules; this certainly lay within his capacity, but he repeatedly passed up the opportunity to discuss them. The account of the Essenes in J. W. 2 is the exception, not the rule. (2) I do not think that we know that there was once a group that “lived according to the Temple Scroll” (p. 13). The fact that it describes the Holy City in a new age must have resulted in some differences from present practice. (3) I do not agree with him that “to appeal (as a last resort) to the multiform nature of Essenism, is to empty the term Essene of all distinctive meaning” (13). If we know that it was multiform, we have some knowledge. And even according to Josephus it was multiform; consideration of Philo would expand the possible variations. Moreover, Josephus’s references to the Essenes cover a period of about 174 years (from the time of Aristobulus I, 104 BCE, to the conclusion of the revolt, 70 CE). I believe that in this period of time there must have been changes, probably some that were quite substantial. (The usual view of the Essenes places the date of the party appreciably earlier than 104 BCE, and the period of 170 years refers only to Josephus’s accounts.)

121

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Qumranian), why divergences among the Qumran Scrolls do not incline me to think of separate groups (e.g., one for most of the Scrolls and one for 11QTemple), why I am happy to call both CD and the other main Scrolls “Essene” (there were two Essene groups), and why Josephus’s description of the Essenes seems compatible with the Scrolls (the Qumranians had moved to Jerusalem during Herod’s reign, and Josephus’s source was probably written when Herod was king). There are definitely problems; but the other choices also give us problems, and they make it difficult to explain the numerous overlaps with regard to very radical or very striking practices. I trust that it is also clear that I think that dogmatism is not helpful. Our evidence is not perfect, it allows competing explanations to coexist, and it positively fosters academic work. We should all want to avoid the two extremes: uncritical combination of competing or divergent sources and the proposal that every difference proves the existence of another group. If we agree that the issue is actually how to strike the balance between the two extremes, we shall probably find that the problems are becoming less rather than more severe. Finally: if it is correct that the Qumran sectarians were Essenes, we can say something about the influence of the Qumran community in wider society (this was one of the questions of the conference). The isolated Qumran wing of the Essenes cannot have been very influential, but the broader Essene party could have had some influence from time to time. An examination of the places where Josephus mentions Essenes in his discussions of events (not his summary descriptions of the parties) will reveal that they were a good deal less influential than the Hasmoneans, Herodians, chief priests, Sadducees, and Pharisees, but that they still played a role in common activities—such as the revolt against Rome.69 The Qumran wing of the Essene party, on this view, remained isolated, but its members shared opinions with other Essenes, who were at least a little more socially active. 70 Because of the intervening pages (called “Comments on Other Points”) I wish to return to the main topic of the paper. The Qumran 69. The passages may readily be found in the concordance to Josephus or in the index to the Loeb edition. I have reviewed them, together with some of the evidence from Philo, in Judaism: Practice and Belief, 345–49. 70. Baumgarten makes the interesting suggestion (which he describes as speculative, since it is based on an analogy with English Puritans) that “ordinary Jews might have respected the devotion of sectarians, but also resented their exclusivist attitudes somewhat, regarding them with at least some disdain, and believed (1) that sectarian ideas were new-fangled inventions . . . and (2) that if traditional practice had been good enough for generations past there was no need to change it”: Jewish Sects, 62.

122

THE DEAD SEA SECT AND OTHER JEWS

community was an extremist sect. It dealt with and had opinions about the common issues of second- and first-century Palestinian Judaism: God, angels, the people of Israel, election, covenant, the Mosaic law, and so on. Its opinions about these topics sometimes overlapped with those of other Jews and were sometimes unique. The Scrolls give us a marvelous firsthand look at a Jewish sect. It is not, however, the model that we should use in considering other Jewish groups.71 In particular, it stands apart because it was separatist. The Pharisees did not, contrary to some opinions, exclude all other Jews from the commonwealth of Israel. Other groups, as far as we know, did not have the equivalent of Qumran’s mevaqqer (Guardian or Overseer, 1QS 6:12, 20). In other groups, the path to full membership was not as long, involved, and demanding.72 The other parties did not have to have their own sets of priests (who blessed the obedient) and Levites (who cursed backsliders). Most important, no other group, as far as we know, entirely refused to participate in worship at the temple—not even the subgroup represented by CD. The Qumran documents are brilliantly illuminating for the study of Jewish groups at a general level—what their topics were, how they came to distinctive positions, and so on. But in some ways Qumran can be quite misleading if it is taken as the model for understanding other groups, such as the Pharisees; the other groups were not separatist monastic communities, and we should assume that on every single point they were less extreme and less radical.

71. See Baumgarten’s discussion of the use of Qumran as the lead example in his study of sects: Jewish Sects, 31–33. 72. I do not regard the promises required of second-century CE haverîm (e.g., m. Demai 2:3) as representing the admission rite for pre-70 Pharisees, but even if they did, they would pale in comparison to 1QS 1:11–2:18; 5:7–11; 6:13–23.

123

5

Common Judaism and the Synagogue in the First Century

No invitation has ever caused me greater anxiety than the invitation to give the lecture on which this chapter is based. I follow studies of synagogues; I certainly do not lead, but here I found myself in the midst of experts. I shall endeavor to do what Steven Fine asked: offer a perspective on the Judaism in which synagogues developed and flourished. I deliberately do not say “in which synagogues originated,” since I share the universal ignorance of when and where that happened. Ideally, this paper should address both the first and second centuries of the Common Era, in order to cover the transition from synagogues in a world in which the temple still functioned to the world in which it had been destroyed. I shall in fact concentrate on the first century, though at the end I shall add a few words on synagogues and the Mishnah, a large subject that is dealt with in detail in other papers in the collection in which this was originally published. I I shall start with the western Diaspora, that is, Greek-speaking Judaism. We do not know when, or under what precise impulses, Jews began to

125

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

settle in the cities of Asia Minor, Greece, and points west. The Persian empire probably facilitated this settlement, as did the conquests of Alexander the Great. And, of course, in the Roman Empire there were many contacts between Palestine and the Greek-speaking world. The Jews were not the only people who migrated west. So did Persians, Syrians, and others. It was quite natural for the immigrant groups in Greek-speaking and Latin-speaking cities to band together. There was, moreover, a general tendency of people to join together in small groups. Clubs or societies were popular throughout the Greco-Roman world. These were associations for various purposes, usually including worship and social activities. That is, when they met, they usually sacrificed and feasted. For example, Phoenicians resident on one of the Greek islands met to maintain their native cults. Rulers sometimes looked with suspicion at assemblies of all sorts, because they could be used for seditious purposes, but the tendency of people of like mind and background to come together was hard to suppress. And so Jews too formed associations. Presumably they met for various purposes, first in private homes, then in houses converted to public use, then in specially designed and constructed buildings. Jews wanted their way of life protected by the government, and basic to it was the right of assembly. They had friends in high places. Palestinian Jews, led by the Hasmonean (“Maccabean”) high priest Hyrcanus II and the Idumean Antipater (father of Herod the Great), supported Julius Caesar in his war with Pompey. Caesar, who won, was duly grateful, and he conferred several privileges on Jews worldwide.1 The various cities in which there were Jewish populations hastened to confirm similar privileges. A main right was that of assembly. Caesar’s decree, as quoted by Josephus, claims that other religious societies were forbidden to assemble in the city of Rome, but that the Jews were allowed to do so (Ant. 14.215f.). This may be approximately correct. According to Suetonius, Caesar himself “dissolved all guilds, except those of ancient foundation” (Suetonius 42.3). Philo praised Augustus for permitting “Jews alone” to assemble in synagogues (Embassy 311); probably Augustus basically continued the privileges originally granted by Caesar. The question of foreign ethnic or religious assemblies in the city of Rome is a complicated one, but we may accept 1. The accuracy of Josephus’s citations of Roman decrees may be and has been disputed. I take them to be roughly correct, especially since there is sometimes independent confirmation of Jewish rights. See Miriam Pucci Ben Ze’ev, Jewish Rights in the Roman World, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 74 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 357–59.

126

COMMON JUDAISM AND THE SYNAGOGUE

the implication of our texts, that Caesar conferred special privileges on the Jews, one of which was the right of assembly, and that Augustus continued these freedoms. Josephus lists other decrees, those passed by the cities of the empire, who hastened to align themselves with Caesar. The rights most frequently mentioned in these decrees are these: 1. The right to assemble or to have a place of assembly: five times (Ant. 14.214–16, 227, 235, 257f., 260f.) 2. The right to keep the Sabbath: five times (14.226, 242, 245, 258, 263f.) 3. The right to have their “ancestral” food: three times (14.226, 245, 261) 4. The right to decide their own affairs: two times (14.235, 260) 5. The right to contribute money: two times (14.214, 227) There are, in addition, numerous general references to the right to follow their “customs” (ethē) or to keep their “holy rites” or “regulations” (ta hiera, nomima) (seven times: 14.213–16, 223, 227, 242, 245f., 258, 260, 263). There is, of course, a minimalist way of interpreting ancient evidence, according to which these decrees would prove only that in five cities did the Jews wish to assemble and keep the Sabbath. Numerous considerations, some of which I shall mention in just a moment, incline me to a maximalist interpretation: Jews generally wished to be able to assemble, to keep their ancestral customs, to worship in their own ways, to keep the Sabbath, to observe dietary restrictions, to decide their own internal affairs, and to collect money to spend on their own community activities or to send to Jerusalem, or both. I think that most ancient Jews regarded most of these points as essential to Jewishness. The rights to assemble, to observe the Sabbath, and so on, meant that a Jewish style of life could be maintained. Because we are here to discuss synagogues, I wish to add some most important evidence about assembly. Two first-century Jewish authors, and one probably first-century Jewish author, wrote that Moses required assembly on the Sabbath. Philo thought that Moses commanded the Jews to abstain from work on the Sabbath and to give the full day “to the one sole object of philosophy” (Creation 128). According to Josephus, Moses ordered that every week people “should

127

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

desert their other occupations and assemble to listen to the Law and to obtain a thorough and accurate knowledge of it” (Ag. Ap. 2.175). According to Pseudo-Philo, the requirement to assemble on the Sabbath “to praise the Lord” and “to glorify the Mighty One” is part of the Ten Commandments (L. A. B. 11.8). This easy assurance indicates that attendance at synagogues was very widespread. The simplest and in some ways the best evidence that supports the view that all the activities just mentioned were common to Jews in the western Diaspora is supplied by gentile authors. Such famous Romans as Ovid, Seneca, and Tacitus comment on Jewish observance of the Sabbath, and Tacitus notes also the sabbatical year. Seneca, criticizing the Jewish Sabbath, wrote that the gods do not need lamps to be lit on the Sabbath, since they do not need lights, while people should “find no pleasure in soot” (Seneca, 95.47). Jewish avoidance of pork was famous: according to a fairly late passage, Augustus himself remarked that he would rather have been Herod’s pig (hus) than his son (huios)—alluding to the fact that Herod had three sons executed but probably never ate pork. Juvenal described Jewish Palestine as “that country where kings celebrate festal sabbaths with bare feet, and where a long-established clemancy suffers pigs to attain old age” (Stern II 100). I assume that these kings were in fact the priests, who worked barefoot. Of course, during the Hasmonean period, the kings were priests. Instead of citing the numerous pieces of evidence offered to us by Menahem Stern that support the various aspects of Judaism that we noted in the decrees in Josephus, I shall cite only one more passage, this also from Juvenal, who lived from about 60 to 130 CE. Some who have had a father who reveres the Sabbath, worship nothing but the clouds, and the divinity of the heavens, and see no difference between eating swine’s flesh, from which their father abstained, and that of man; and in time they take to circumcision. Having been wont to flout the laws of Rome, they learn and practice and revere the Jewish law, and all that Moses handed down in his secret tome, forbidding to point out the way to any not worshipping the same rites, and conducting none but the circumcised to the desired fountain. For all which the father was to blame, who gave up every seventh day to idleness, keeping it apart from all the concerns of life. (Saturae 14.96–106)

Here we see ridicule of Jewish monotheism, Sabbath observance, circumcision, the Mosaic law in general (especially the study and observance of that law), and Jewish exclusivism or particularism.

128

COMMON JUDAISM AND THE SYNAGOGUE

Juvenal, along with many other pagan authors, was well aware that the same general points marked Jewish observance in Palestine and the western Diaspora. I shall cite no Palestinian evidence to show that Jews in Palestine generally observed the same laws that appear in the evidence from the Diaspora that I have just cited. The Palestinian evidence is abundant and conclusive, and time presses. I shall instead only reorganize and repeat the points: (1) Monotheism and refusal to worship statues; (2) circumcision of males; (3) observance of the Sabbath rest; (4) food laws; (5) assembly; (6) study and general observance of the law of Moses. The decrees also show concern to have limited self-government, to observe their own rites, and to collect money for Jewish purposes. II Before moving directly to assembly and thus to rites and synagogues, I wish to emphasize the worldwide unity of Judaism. We have already seen one piece of evidence: Caesar, in gratitude for assistance from Palestinian Jews, conferred privileges on all Jews throughout the Roman Empire. A few more words about this last point. According to the account in Josephus, Antipater (Herod’s father) persuaded the Jews of Egypt to cooperate with Caesar by showing them a letter from Hyrcanus II, the high priest, and by appealing to their “common nationality” (Ant. 14.127–32). This was effective, and the result redounded to the credit of all Jews, not just those in Palestine and Egypt. I add a few more points in chronological order: (1) Herod, king of Judea, helped the Jews of Ionia, in Asia Minor, gain redress for wrongs (Ant. 16.27–61). (2) Jews all over the world were alarmed by Caligula’s threat to have a statue put up in the temple in Jerusalem, and Philo threatened worldwide revolt (Embassy 159–215). (3) Agrippa II and Herod of Chalcis urged Claudius to act favorably on behalf of Alexandrian and other Jews (Ant. 19.279, 288). (4) Jews throughout the world paid the temple tax to Jerusalem, and after the Jewish revolt, Vespasian expanded this tax to include children and women, but had the money sent to Rome (J. W. 7.218).2 That the temple tax and other funds were actually sent from Diaspora Jews to Jerusalem is proved by the fact that sometimes Roman provicial officials confiscated the money.3 Vespasian’s action shows that, just as Caesar rewarded Jews 2. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), 265; cf. 47.

129

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

worldwide for the efforts of Palestinian Jews, Vespasian punished Jews throughout the empire for the revolt in Palestine. I think that all of this evidence shows that both Jews and gentiles regarded the Jews in the Diaspora as intimately linked to the Jews in Palestine. There was, in other words, something that we may call “common Judaism.” It was based on general acceptance of the Bible, especially the law of Moses, and on a common self-perception: the Jews knew themselves to be Jews and not gentiles, and to some degree or other they stood apart from other people. We have noted in particular monotheism, abhorrence of idols, circumcision, Sabbath, food laws, and a few other points. I should note that a Diaspora Jew about whom we know a great deal, Paul, supports this suggestion. His career as apostle of Jesus was marked by the question of how many aspects of Judaism his converts should or could accept. He thought that they should accept monotheism and Jewish sexual ethics. He debated the following topics: circumcision, Sabbath, food offered to idols, and the problem of Jews and gentiles eating together. This list agrees very closely with our other evidence of common Jewish concerns. III We now turn directly to synagogues. If all we knew were what we have already seen, we would have reason to think that Jews assembled, studied the law of Moses, and observed sacred rites. Study of Moses I take from Juvenal, quoted above. In a passage that I have not quoted, Juvenal also provides a term for the buildings in which Jews assembled (Stern II 99); in Latin proseucha, which is a loan word from the Greek proseuchē, meaning prayer; to make this a place, we need to add house or hall: a house of prayer or a prayer hall. A very large quantity of evidence, including the writings of Philo (an Alexandrian Jew who flourished early in the first century CE), inscriptions, the works of Josephus, the New Testament, and other pagan literature in addition to Juvenal shows that the Jews assembled in buildings called principally houses of prayer, but also known by other terms, such as schools, temples, sabbatheioi, and synagogues. The term sabbatheion comes from a decree that Josephus attributes to Augustus, who ordered the following: that the Jews’ sacred money (ta hiera, or, following the Latin variant, ta hiera chrēmata) should be inviolable and should be allowed 3. Ibid., 84.

130

COMMON JUDAISM AND THE SYNAGOGUE

to be sent to Jerusalem; further, that Jews should not be required to appear in court on the Sabbath, nor on the day of preparation for it after the ninth hour; that the property of anyone who stole their sacred books or their sacred money from a sabbatheion or from an ark (aarōnas) should be forfeited to Rome (Ant. 16.162–65). This seems to indicate that the buildings, usually called proseuchai, were used principally on the Sabbath. That is what we should expect. If Jews did not work on the Sabbath, if they assembled, and if they studied Moses, the obvious explanation is that they assembled and studied Moses on the Sabbath. The use of the word temple, Latin templa, is also quite interesting. This is from Tacitus, according to whom the Jews “set up no statues in their cities, still less in their temples” (Histories 5.4–12). Similarly, according to Agatharchides, as quoted by Josephus, on the Sabbath the Jews “pray with outstretched hands in the temples until evening.” This allowed Ptolemy, for example, to conquer Jerusalem (Ag. Ap. 1.209). It is possible in both cases that the authors thought that the Jews had temples in more than one city in Palestine and that they simply transferred to those supposed temples good information about the one temple, in Jerusalem. It is also possible, however, that their view of Jewish temples was partly informed by the practices of Diaspora Jews in their houses of prayer. In this case, we learn that they spent the Sabbath in the houses of prayer and that they prayed there. Whether Jews called their own buildings temples or not, we should take account of the fact that according to the decrees with which I started, those quoted in Antiquities 14, Jews in the Diaspora observed sacred rites, including sacrifice. In a decree addressed to Parium, Caesar rebuked the recipients for preventing the local Jews from observing their ancestral customs and the “sacred rites” (hieroi). He allowed them to “contribute money to common means and sacred rites,” as they could do in Rome, where most “sacrificial societies” (thiasoi) were prohibited (Ant. 14.212–16). Dolabella wrote to Ephesus, allowing Jews to “come together for sacred and holy rites in according with their law” and to “make offerings for their sacrifices” (thysias; 14.225–27). “Sacred rites” appear also in the decree of Laodicea (14.242); a decree sent to Miletus allowed the Jews to perform their “ancestral sacred rites” (14.245); the people of Hallicarnassus decreed that the Jews could perform sacred rites (14.258); and, most famously, the people of Sardis allowed them to gather and offer their ancestral prayers and sacrifices to God (14.261).

131

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

The word sacred in the passages is hiera, which ordinarily refers to the things that priests do and that take place in temples, namely, sacrifices. Does all of this mean that, besides studying Moses, the Jews in Asia Minor offered sacrifices at their places of assembly? There is a rather obvious alternative: pagans did not know precisely what Jews did when they gathered together, and they simply attributed to them the practices of gentile associations, which usually included worship—that is, sacrifice—and meals. In the ancient world, red meat was rare, and animals did double duty. People sacrificed them to the gods and then ate them. We can certainly say that in many synagogues (houses of prayer) Jews ate when they gathered, but they may not have sacrificed. I have for some time, however, harbored the suspicion that some Diaspora Jews sacrificed a Passover victim, as, I suspect, some Palestinian Jews did after the destruction of the temple. The rabbis, of course, were against the practice, but I have never thought that all Jews did everything the rabbis recommended. In this particular case, it is noteworthy that Rabban Gamaliel II allowed a kid to be roasted in such a way that it looked like a Passover sacrifice (Betzah 2.7). This indicates a good deal of pressure in favor of following Exodus 12 and observing Passover outside the temple (despite Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy 16). (I should add that I am using Passover in the ancient sense as referring not to the meal on the 15th of Nisan, which is the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, but to the sacrifice on the 14th.) It is also intrinsically likely that, in the Diaspora, houses of prayer began to take on some of the characteristics of the temple earlier than did synagogues in Palestine. Certainly, in his decree forbidding the theft of sacred books and sacred money, Augustus treated the Jewish houses of prayer like temples; in the ancient world, money in temples was supposed to be inviolate. Although I recognize that indications of sacred rites, sacred books and money, and sacrifices could be based on gentile misunderstanding or on Jewish willingness to use the language familiar to gentiles in describing their associations, I would not wish to say that we can be sure that in the synagogues of the Diaspora there were no sacred, that is, sacrificial activities. There may have been, and I have suggested the Passover sacrifice as the most likely possibility. There is another puzzle with regard to what Diaspora Jews did in their houses of prayer. It is noteworthy that we may infer the study of Moses from Juvenal, and that this is the activity that Diaspora Jews, such as Philo, explicitly say went on in synagogues on the Sabbath. We do not have much direct proof from Jewish sources that they prayed.

132

COMMON JUDAISM AND THE SYNAGOGUE

Pseudo-Philo mentions praise of the Lord and glorification of God, terms that imply prayer (L. A. B. 11.8). And then there is the most common name of the buildings: “houses of prayer.” There is also, of course, the passage from Agatharchides, that in their temples the Jews stretch out their hands in prayer until evening, which, we noted, might depend on information about what they did in synagogues (Ag. Ap. 1.209). But this is uncertain. Finally, I recall that the decree of Sardis states that the Jews may have a place where they may offer “their ancestral prayers and sacrifices to God” (14.261); but this too may be based on gentile misinformation. My own inclination is to assume that the principal word for synagogues, “houses of prayer,” indicates one of their functions. One might propose that when the name originated, Jews met to pray, and that they later gave up this activity in favor of all-day study, but that they nevertheless kept the name. All things are possible, but continued use as houses of prayer is to me more likely. For other possible activities (we have mentioned study, prayer, meals, and possibly sacrifices), I wish to turn to Paul. He gave instructions about prophesying and exhorting in Christian worship services, and he supposed that first one then another participant would speak (1 Cor 14:26–33). His assumption of active participation by many probably reflects synagogue practice as he knew it. In 1 Corinthians 14 Paul also refers to hymns and lessons. This inclines me to add singing to the list of possible synagogal activities. A very brief word on study, which we can know for certain was a, perhaps the, major activity in the houses of prayer. Several people have gathered the numerous literary references, and I have no wish to canvass them. I shall mention only a few passages in Philo, all emphasizing study and learning. What follows is a collage from Philo. Jews spent the Sabbath studying their “philosophy” (Creation 128). Sabbath study took place in specially designated buildings: they assembled “in the same place on these seventh days,” sitting together and hearing the laws read and expounded “so that none should be ignorant of them.” A priest or an elder read and commented on the law, and most people sat silent “except when it is the practice to add something to signify approval of what is read.” (I add parenthetically that this implies a more passive audience than some of the other evidence.) Back to Philo: The session continued until late afternoon (Hypothetica 7.12f.). These buildings could be called “schools”: “On each seventh day there stand wide open in every city thousands of schools [didaskaleia] of good sense.” Here Jews heard the law expounded under

133

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

two main heads: duty to God and duty to fellow humans (Spec. Laws 2.62f.)—the main categories of the Jewish law. The Essenes, Philo also wrote, were instructed in the law at all times, “but particularly on the seventh day.” Then “they abstain[ed] from all other work and proceed[ed] to sacred spots which they call synagogues” (Good Person 81). Houses of prayer, Philo noted, were even allowed in Rome, since the Romans did not require the Jews “to violate any of their native institutions.” Jews were accustomed to gather in these houses of prayer “particularly on the sacred sabbaths when they receive as a body a training in their ancestral philosophy” (Embassy 155f.). This concludes the summary of Philo. There was a lot more to Philo’s own religion than study of the law, though he had certainly done that. My guess is that for apologetic reasons he wanted to emphasize study when discussing what Jews did, so as to liken Judaism to a philosophy rather than to a Greco-Roman sacrificial society. Probably synagogue activities were broader. IV In the next few pages I would like to discuss three other topics: synagogues in Palestine, daily prayers, and the question of synagogue leadership. I cannot do this in the space remaining, and so I shall discuss Palestinian synagogues briefly and merely give a few lines of conclusion about daily prayers and the leadership of synagogues. First, synagogues in Palestine. It appears that there were synagogues for Diaspora Jews in Jerusalem. We know of one because of a famous inscription found in Jerusalem. It is in Greek and is attributed to a priest named Theodotos, head of a synagogue, as were his father and grandfather. The inscription states that the building was for the “reading of the law and for teaching the commandments,” but that it also provided lodging for strangers from abroad—that is, pilgrims from the Diaspora who spoke Greek. According to the Tosefta, there was also a synagogue of the Alexandrians in Jerusalem (t. Megillah 3.6). It makes sense that there were some such synagogues, since pilgrims from the Diaspora would wish to gather in at least partly familiar surroundings with other people who spoke Greek. It is at least conceivable that Diaspora pilgrims introduced synagogues into Jewish Palestine. The other, more likely, explanation is that Jews in remote areas, such as Gamla in the Golan Heights, needed synagogues since they could not worship at the temple very

134

COMMON JUDAISM AND THE SYNAGOGUE

often. In any case, by the first century synagogues seem to have been common in Palestine. I shall discuss two passages in Josephus and leave aside other evidence, including archaeology. The first passage is Josephus’s discussion of the origin of the revolt against Rome. The Jews in Caesarea, he wrote, “had a synagogue (synagogē) adjoining a plot of ground owned by a Greek.” A dispute arose concerning access to it. On a Sabbath, when the Jews assembled at the synagogue, they found that one of the Caesarean mischief-makers had placed beside the entrance a pot, turned bottom upwards, upon which he was sacrificing birds. This spectacle of what they considered an outrage upon their laws and a desecration of the spot enraged the Jews beyond endurance. (J. W. 2.285–92)

Josephus took it to be a matter of course that Jews assembled at a synagogue on the Sabbath. Moreover, the gentile troublemakers assumed that it was subject to “desecration” (memiasmenon), which may (I emphasize “may”) imply that it was otherwise holy and pure. The second passage concerns the house of prayer in Tiberius. In trying to decide what to do about the gathering revolt against Rome, the residents held a series of large meetings there; it was a very big building, holding at least six hundred people. One day, Josephus and others had agreed to meet in the house of prayer first thing in the morning (Life 290; cf. 280). “We were proceeding with the regulations (ta nomima) and engaged in prayer (pros euchas trapomenon), when Jesus rose and began to question me” (295). This was on Monday, not the Sabbath (279f., 290, 293). We are not to think that this proves that people routinely went to the synagogue at 7:00 each morning. Josephus and others met there by agreement. Nor should we suppose that “the regulations” (ta nomima) were those that governed all meetings in the building. Probably these were the regulations that governed mornings: recalling the commandments and praying “when you rise up”; in praying, Josephus was probably proceeding with his own morning routine. We do, however, learn that there was a large building called a house of prayer, that people gathered there for various purposes, including meetings of the town council, and that Josephus regarded it as a suitable place to pray. V This leads me to the next topic: daily prayers. I shall leave out the 135

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

evidence and give only the conclusion. Jews probably prayed twice a day at home. Prayer was almost certainly the most frequently used religious activity—what we now call worship—and the home was the most frequent place of prayer. Qumran seems to have set texts, and the community gathered together to pray, perhaps saying the same prayers at the same time. This was almost certainly the exception. Most Jews prayed at home and, as required in Deuteronomy 6, recalled the commandments, both morning and evening. I think that this was very widespread, but of course practice was not uniform. Sibylline Oracles 3.591–93 seems to show that some Diaspora Jews prayed before rising each morning: “at dawn they lift up holy arms towards heaven, from their beds.” This does not, to be sure, rule out evening prayers; it may be that there was no occasion to mention them. According to Let. Aris. 304–05, Jews customarily prayed each morning while washing their hands in the sea. Possibly regular evening prayers are implied by Let. Aris. 184–85: before dinner in Alexandria, which was arranged “in accordance with the customs practiced by all [the king’s] visitors from Judaea,” one of the Jewish priests was asked to offer a prayer. We cannot be sure whether this indicates a special occasion or a standard Jewish daily practice. There is a good deal of evidence for prayer twice a day. Two different religious practices encouraged prayer both early and late: the saying of the Shema (when you lie down and when you rise up) and the beginning and close of the temple service. The temple service began as soon as the sun was up, and it ended just before sunset. The last acts were the sacrifice of the evening whole-burnt offering, the saying of the Shema and blessings, and the burning of incense. Pesahim 5.1 puts the slaughter of the last lamb at the eighth-and-a-half hour of the day (about 3:30 p.m.) and its offering an hour later. Scriptures, prayers, and incense then followed. The book of Judith describes the heroine as going outside the tent to pray as soon as she rose. Each evening she bathed and prayed for deliverance (Judith 12:5–9). According to 9:1, on one occasion at least she prayed “at the very time when that evening’s incense was being offered” at the temple; therefore, in the late afternoon. The Qumran Community Rule prescribes prayer (“blessing God”) “at the times ordained by Him,” which include “the beginning of the dominion of light” and “its end when it retires to its appointed place” (1QS 9:26–10:1); that is, at sunrise and sunset. The Qumran text mentioned above (4Q503) refers to morning and evening prayer, and

136

COMMON JUDAISM AND THE SYNAGOGUE

the scanty remains imply that the latter comes when night is about to fall. The time of the evening prayer is probably determined by the conclusion of the temple service, as in Judith 9. Josephus thought that Moses himself required prayers of thanksgiving at rising up and going to bed (Ant. 4.212). Daily prayers are not required in the law; Josephus’s putting them in that category probably shows that they were a standard part of Jewish practice and were generally considered obligatory. Not only does he put the evening prayer at bedtime, he follows the statement on prayers with the requirement to post mezuzot and to wear tefillin. Thus in his view the second prayer was connected with saying the Shema. This paragraph in Josephus’s summary of the law, which makes morning and evening worship at home a commandment of Moses, supports the suggestion above that the nomima that Josephus followed in Tiberias were his own regular practices, usually carried out at home. In the Mishnah tractate Berakot there are somewhat diverse traditions about both the right posture and the correct times for prayers. The houses of Hillel and Shammai accepted that prayers accompanied the Shema and thus were said morning and evening, but they debated posture. According to the house of Shammai, the evening prayers should be said lying down, while the morning prayers were to be said while standing, and they cite as proof the phrases “when you lie down and when you rise up.” The house of Hillel was of the view that each person could decide in what posture to say the prayers, since Deut 6:7 says “and when you walk by the way.” “When you lie down and when you rise up,” they held, gives only the time for prayers, not the correct posture (Berakot 1.4). According to Berakot 1.4, three of the Eighteen Benedictions were said in connection with the morning Shema, four at the time of the evening Shema. Another passage in the Mishnah, however, prescribes saying the Eighteen Benedictions three times a day—morning, afternoon, and evening (Berakot 4.1). If this was an early practice, we can guess at the origin of the three-a-day rule. It may be that afternoon prayers were said at the time of the last part of the temple service (as in Judith), and evening prayers at bedtime, in connection with the evening Shema. Most of the early evidence—Judith, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, the debate between the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai—points towards prayer twice a day. It appears, however, that in the first century some people already followed the three-a-day rule. I think that the relevance of this fact for synagogue studies is

137

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

obvious. Jews did pray—as did other ancient people—and they also attended synagogues, but there was no necessary connection between the two. They could and did pray at home. I still think it likely, however, that the Sabbath study sessions included prayer. VI I would have liked to discuss one of the topics that most interests me, the question of who ran what? If I had, I would have proposed that we should consider the leadership role of priests outside the temple and in the synagogues; above we noted that, according to Philo, a priest or an elder led the Sabbath study. I would also have argued that synagogues were local affairs; that they belonged to the whole community; that there is no evidence that Pharisees controlled synagogues prior to the destruction of the temple; and that even in the second century the rabbis did not dominate the synagogues. These points have in fact all been made, many of them by Lee Levine.4 I can add one text: In Sifre Devarim, Rabbi (Judah the Prince) comments on Deut 16:8, “And on the seventh day (of Unleavened Bread), there shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord thy God.” Rabbi says: One might think that he must be closeted in the Bêt ha-Midrash [house of study] the entire day; therefore Scripture says elsewhere, “Unto you” (Num 29:35). One might think that he must eat and drink all day long; therefore the verse states, “A solemn assembly to the Lord thy God.” How so? One must devote a part of the day to the Bêt he-Midrash and a part to eating and drinking. (Sifre Devarim 135)

The rabbinic establishment, as Levine makes clear, and as this passage illustrates, was the Bêt ha-Midrash, not the synagogue, which was where all Israel gathered to learn the law of Moses.

4. See especially Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. (New Haven, CT: Yale Univeristy Press, 1999).

138

PART 2

Paul, Judaism, and Paulinism

6

The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism

One of the major themes of Professor Davies’s work has been the interpenetration of Hellenism and Judaism. His principal concern has been to deny that Palestinian Judaism can be viewed “as a watertight compartment closed against all Hellenistic influences,” since “there was a Graeco-Jewish ‘atmosphere’ even at Jerusalem itself.”1 His conclusion with regard to Hellenistic and Palestinian Judaism was that there is “no justification for making too rigid a separation between the Judaism of the Diaspora and that of Palestine.”2 He put the matter more bluntly in a later essay: “the traditional convenient dichotomy between Judaism and Hellenism [is] largely false.”3 In a still later essay summarizing the state of the question on Paul and Judaism, he argued against “the assumption [made in Albert Schweitzer’s day] that it is possible to make a clear distinction between what was Semitic or 1. W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, (2nd ed.; London, 1958), p. 8. 2. Ibid. 3. Davies, “Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Flesh and Spirit,” The Scrolls and the New Testament, ed. Krister Stendahl (London, 1958), p. 157; (also in Davies, Christian Origins and Judaism [Philadelphia, 1962], p. 145).

141

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Palestinian Judaism and Hellenistic or Diaspora Judaism in the first century.”4 Although there may be some New Testament scholars who still think in terms of “watertight compartments,” they are probably now in the minority. All accept or at least “pay lip-service” to Professor Davies’s protest. It is not that Davies was the first to observe Hellenistic influences in Palestinian Judaism or Jewish influences in Hellenism—in his comments on these points he always refers to the work of others5—or that he himself spent his research time in investigating and exploring the interpenetration. Rather he helped call the interpenetration to the attention of New Testament scholars and showed that ignoring it had led to an oversimplified view of New Testament backgrounds. Professor Davies’s voice has been one of the principal factors in making the current generation of New Testament scholars aware of the complexities of the question of the conceptual thought-worlds in which the New Testament literature was written. The intention of Paul and Rabbinic Judaism was to argue that some of the elements in Paul’s thought which had generally been labeled “Hellenistic” could in fact have come from Palestinian Judaism. The book was published at about the time that the Dead Sea Scrolls became known,6 and their discovery greatly intensified the scholarly search for Jewish parallels to the New Testament. In subsequent years it came to be argued that the two New Testament works generally regarded as most Hellenistic—John and Hebrews—could in fact be explained against the conceptual background provided by the Scrolls.7 Thus 4. Davies, “Paul and Judaism,” The Bible in Modern Scholarship, ed. J. P. Hyatt (Nashville, 1965), p. 178. 5. See Davies, Paul, ch. 1; The Bible, pp. 179–81 and nn. 6–12. The only work of his own to which he refers is the essay cited in n. 3 above. To the works cited by Davies one should add R. Meyer, Hellenistisches in der rabbinischen Anthropologie (Stuttgart, 1937); and M. Hengel’s major study, Judentum und Hellenismus (Tübingen, 1969). 6. The first edition was published in 1948. 7. On John, see, for example, O. Cullmann, “The Significance of the Qumran Texts for Research into the Beginnings of Christianity,” JBL LXXIV (1955), 221–24 (where Cullmann cites earlier articles by K. G. Kuhn and L. Mowry); and “L’opposition contre le temple de Jérusalem, motif commun de la théologic johannique et du monde ambiant,” NTS V (1958–59), 157–73. (Also see “A New Approach to the Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel,” ExpT LXXI [1959–60], 8–12, 39–43); R. E. Brown, “The Qumran Scrolls and the Johannine Gospel and Epistles,” The Scrolls and the New Testament, ed. K. Stendahl (New York, 1957), pp. 183–207; W. F. Albright, “Recent Discoveries in Palestine and the Gospel of St John,” The Background of the New Testament and its Eschatology, ed. Davies and D. Daube (Cambridge, 1954), p. 169 (“. . . it should be clear . . . that the books of the Essenes . . . provide the closest approach to the Gospels [particularly St. John] and the Pauline Epistles, so far as conceptual background and terminology are concerned . . .”); J. A. T. Robinson, Twelve New Testament Studies (London, 1962), pp. 26, 99 (there is a “fundamental, and not merely verbal, theological affinity”); and several of the articles anthologized by J. H. Charlesworth, John and Qumran (London, 1972). On Hebrews, see especially Y. Yadin, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Epistle

142

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

Davies’s pre-Scroll view that one should look first to Judaism as the background for the New Testament, even for parts traditionally thought to be Hellenistic, was published at a time when the discoveries by the Dead Sea inclined scholars to do just that. I should immediately confess that a great deal of this latter research—or at least of the conclusions drawn from it—is not persuasive to me. This is not the place to try to argue case by case what the most pertinent conceptual background for understanding the various New Testament books is.8 Some indication of the reason for not being persuaded, however, may be given. To take one case in which a careful scholar diligently sought and found parallels between a New Testament book and the Scrolls and concluded from them that the Scrolls constitute the conceptual background for the New Testament book, one may refer to the well-known study of Hebrews by Yigael Yadin. On the basis of certain similarities of motifs in Hebrews and the Scrolls, Yadin concluded that Hebrews was addressed not to Gentiles (as most New Testament scholars thought before the discovery of the Scrolls), but to Jewish Christians “descending from the DSS Sect.”9 Without quibbling over any of the similarities cited by Yadin (although some could be quibbled over), one may question the conclusion. Where in the Scrolls (or elsewhere in Palestinian Jewish literature) will one find the distinction between what is real (incorporeal, changeless) and the copy or shadow of the real (earthly, mutable)? This distinction is essential to the argument of Hebrews with regard to how Christ brings a real salvation (see chapters 8–10, especially 8:2, 5; 9:11f.; 23f.; 10:1). Here is an integral and essential part of the argument of Hebrews which has, as far as I see, no conceptual background in the Scrolls, but which has a clear conceptual background in Hellenism and in Hellenistic Judaism. In light of this, how will one assess the overall conceptual background of Hebrews?10 to the Hebrews,” Aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Scripta Hierosolymitana IV), ed. C. Rabin and Y. Yadin, (2nd ed.; Jerusalem, 1965), pp. 36–55: C. Spicq. “L’Épitre aux Hébreux, Apollos, Jean-Baptiste, les Hellénistes et Qumran,” RQ I (1958–59), 365–90. 8. It is also not the place to discuss the adequacy of the term “conceptual background.” For an argument against the term “background,” see Robinson’s discussion in J. M. Robinson and H. Koester, Trajectories through Early Christianity (Philadelphia, 1971), pp. 8–19. It must here suffice to say that, with regard to the questions addressed in the present essay, I do not see any developmental trends, although there are some differences of viewpoint. It still seems to me to make sense, for many questions, to discuss conceptual backgrounds. It should go without saying that one should not suppose a “background” to be static and never changing. 9. Yadin, Aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 55. 10. Spicq, RQ I, tries to account for the Hellenism of Hebrews and the “parallels” to the Sect by supposing that Hebrews was written by an Alexandrian (Apollos) to Essene Christians.

143

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

What seems to me to be lacking in many of the studies cited in note 7 above is the ability to hold in balance similarity in certain details and a difference in the essential nature of the religious goal which is being described. Similarity in details seems to overwhelm essential differences. It may be that there are similarities between what the Scrolls and Hebrews say about angels, but are the fundamental posing of the religious problematic and the solution offered the same?11 In this case I think not. Today we have little excuse for leaving out of account such questions, since they have been so clearly raised by E. R. Goodenough. In discussing Philo’s “Judaism’’ and “Hellenism,” he put the matter thus: . . . Philo thought that the Patriarchs were mystic saviours of the Jewish people by their having gone from matter to the immaterial, and so having opened up the way for which hellenistic religions and mystic philosophies were, it seemed to him, vainly looking. The kind of salvation offered, the descriptions of the character and achievements of the Patriarchs, these are quite foreign to any Judaism of which I have heard, and entirely at home in Greek thought. But the idea that the Jewish people was to be saved, and had special access to God, because of the personal merits of Abraham, Moses, and the others, was just as common a Jewish notion as the other was foreign to Judaism.12

Here Goodenough argues that within a major similarity (the value of the patriarchs for subsequent Jewish generations) there is an essential and fundamental difference between Philo and other forms of Judaism: the patriarchs are mystic saviours rather than the establishers of a covenant of mutual obligation between God and Israel. This is precisely the sort of question which must be addressed if we are to assess conceptual backgrounds accurately. To return to the beginning: there is no question that Professor Davies accurately criticized New Testament scholarship for being prone to put Judaism and Hellenism, and Palestinian Judaism and Hellenistic Judaism, into “watertight compartments.” Yet as Professor Davies also stated, Palestinian Judaism and Hellenistic Judaism were not simply identical.13 It is as possible to oversimplify the undoubted 11. Everyone notes the essential difference that John and Hebrews are Christian while the Scrolls are not, but that admission may only obscure the fact that the basic nature of the religious problem and the solution are also essentially different. 12. E. R. Goodenough, An Introduction to Philo Judaeus (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1962; 1st ed.; New Haven, 1940), p. 89. 13. See Davies, The Bible, p. 181 and n. 13.

144

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

fact of interpenetration and to overlook essential differences as it is to oversimplify the differences and ignore interpenetration. It seems to be time now to begin an assessment of how Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism were alike and different. In the present essay, we shall focus on this question, leaving aside the larger one of Hellenism and Judaism. Further, since this is an essay and not a library, it will be possible only to sketch one question as it appears in a few sources, in the hope that the sketch will be suggestive. Even within this limitation, it will be necessary to make some parts sketchier than others. Our procedure will be this: we shall pose the question of whether or not, in selected sources, the covenant is a soteriological category (i.e., does membership entail salvation and non-membership damnation?); secondly, we shall consider the nature of salvation which is in view. Palestinian Jewish Literature I have elsewhere argued at length a position which will be repeated here only very briefly in order to give some basis for a comparison with Hellenistic Jewish sources.14 In the entire body of Palestinian Jewish literature between Ben Sirah and the redaction of the Mishnah, with only the exception of IV Ezra, membership in the covenant is considered salvation. What is required to join the covenant varies (usually birth as a Jew or proselytism, but in Qumran voluntary joining as an adult), what is required to remain in the covenant varies, and how salvation is conceived varies; but the positive (if not exclusive) connection between covenant and salvation is constant, except for IV Ezra. It will be useful to put at least a little flesh on the bones of this summary description. Jubilees begins and ends with the promise of the redemption of Israel.15 Despite Israel’s transgression of the covenant, God has never forsaken them (1:5). Even though God scatters them among the Gentiles in punishment for idolatry (1:13), Israel will turn again. And God promises: “I will be their God and they shall be My people in truth and righteousness. And I will not forsake them nor fail them; for I am the Lord their God” (1:17f.).16 Further, God will cleanse Israel “so that 14. Sanders, Patterns of Religion in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, to appear in 1976 or 1977. 15. Despite recent hypotheses by M. Testuz (Les Idées religieuses du Livre des Jubilés [Geneva, 1960]) and G. L. Davenport (The Eschatology of the Book of Jubilees [Leiden, 1971]), for the present purposes I shall treat Jubilees as an entity. For details, see ch. 3 of Sanders, Patterns of Religion. 16. Quotations are from the translation by Charles in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. R. H. Charles (Oxford, 1913), II.

145

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

they shall not turn away from Me from that day unto eternity. And their souls will cleave to Me and to all My commandments. . . . And they all shall be called children of the living God” (1:24f.). The prophecy of Israel’s ultimate cleansing, which leads to God’s perpetual preservation of the people, is repeated in 50:5: And the jubilees shall pass by, until Israel is cleansed from all guilt of fornication, and uncleanness, and pollution, and sin, and error, and dwells with confidence in all the land, and there shall be no more a Satan or any evil one, and the land shall be clean from that time for evermore.

In the body of Jubilees, there are repeated references to certain sins which cause expulsion and “rooting out” from Israel. For these there is no atonement: one who transgresses the commandment to keep the Sabbath (2:27–33); one who eats meat with the blood in it (6:12); those who treat “their members like the Gentiles” (efface circumcision, 15:34); the man who gives his daughter or sister in marriage to a Gentile, as well as the woman (30:7,10); the man who has intercourse with his father’s wife (33:13); the one who does not keep the Passover when he is able to do so (49:8); and the one who devises evil against his brother (36:8–11). In all these cases it is clear that the transgression of certain commandments is considered to entail removal from the covenant, and consequently from the community of the saved. It is said of the one who devises evil not only that he will be “rooted out of the land” and his descendants destroyed, but that he will be written in the book of destruction rather than of life and that he will “depart into eternal execration” (36:8–11). No provision is made for the salvation of “righteous Gentiles,” and the work clearly implies that on the day of judgment no Gentiles will be saved. With regard to the nature of salvation, the main thrust is corporate redemption. It is the entire people of Israel which will be cleansed and established before God forever, with the sacrifices of the Temple providing daily atonement (50:5,11; cf. 6:14). The principal punishment for the most heinous transgressions is that the transgressor and his descendants are denied a place in Israel. Those who observe the commandments and remain in the covenant, however, are promised that “their names and their seed may be before the Lord our God continually” (6:12f.). In addition to the corporate salvation of Israel, which involves destroying their enemies, cleansing them perpetually, and establishing them and their descendants in the land (see also 2:27), the author does mention the personal immortality of the righteous, 146

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

although in a vague way. Thus when speaking of “those days,” when Israel will “drive out their adversaries,” the author says that . . . the righteous shall see and be thankful, And rejoice with joy for ever and ever, And shall see all their judgments and all their curses on their enemies. And their bones shall rest in the earth, And their spirits shall have much joy, And they shall know that it is the Lord who executes judgment, And shows mercy to hundreds and thousands and to all that love Him. (23:30f.)

II Baruch (the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch) is from beginning to end a defense of the validity and endurance of God’s covenant promises to Israel.17 The problem of the book is obviously the oppression of Israel by Rome, presumably following the war of 66–70, although there is nothing definitely to exclude the possibility that the book reflects the post-135 situation. In any event, the oppression and scattering of Israel, argues the author, is only temporary (1:4). It is deserved because of transgression (77:4), but suffering is also beneficial: it is for sanctification (13:10) and it removes the necessity of punishment after death (78:6). Those who suffer will later receive what was promised (84:6). The reward of the righteous is sure, as is the punishment of the wicked; they may be deferred, but God is faithful to save the suffering righteous and punish their oppressors (14:12–15:8; cf. 19:8; 21:12f.; 82:3; 83:5). In fact the destruction of Zion leads to the speedier vindication of Israel and the destruction of Rome (20:2), for Rome will be destroyed (12:1–4; 82:2f.). Those to be redeemed and protected in the last days are twice described as those present “in this land,” that is, Israel (29:2; 40:2). More regularly, however, those who are saved are those who have been loyal to God and the law: “If ye prepare your hearts, so as to sow in them the fruits of the law, it shall protect you in that time. . .” (32:1). Or again: For if ye endure and persevere in His fear, And do not forget His law, The times shall change over you for good, And you shall see the consolation of Zion. (44:7) 17. The best recent analysis of II Baruch is that of W. Harnisch, Verhängnis und Verheissung der Geschichte (Göttingen, 1969). Quotations in the present essay are again from Charles’s translation. Although different sources may lie behind the work, the whole seems to offer a fairly coherent point of view. Cf. Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic (3rd ed.; New York, 1964), pp. 156–59.

147

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

These are they who have acquired for themselves treasures of wisdom, And with them are found stores of understanding, And from mercy have they not withdrawn. And the truth of the law have they preserved. For to them shall be given the world to come. But the dwelling of the rest who are many shall be in the fire. (44:14f.) But if, indeed, we who exist know wherefore we have come, And submit ourselves to Him who brought us out of Egypt, We shall come again and remember those things which have passed, And shall rejoice regarding that which has been. (75:7)

In contradistinction to those who have been loyal and will be saved, the author sets not those who have committed a sin (for God judges with mercy, 84:11), but those “of Thy people who have withdrawn from Thy covenant, and cast from them the yoke of Thy law” (41:3). They have not loved God’s law (54:14). The contrast is between believing and despising (42:2) or believing and denying (59:2). The attitude toward the Gentiles is mixed. The general thrust of the work is to assure faithful Israelites that the Gentiles would be destroyed, as would be apostate Israelites. Thus the author admonishes his reader not to consider the present delights of the Gentiles but the future blessing of Israel (“us,” 83:6). The Gentiles, now so prosperous, will “be like a vapour” (82:3). They are further described as impious (62:7) and idolaters (67:2). Yet, in one passage, it appears that this judgment applies only to those who oppress Israel: “Every nation, which knows not Israel and has not trodden down the seed of Jacob, shall indeed be spared” (72:4). The nature of salvation will involve the resurrection of those who died “in hope of Him” (30:2). The resurrection will be bodily, and individuals will be recognizable, but the righteous will receive the splendor of angels, while the wicked will waste away in despair (chs. 49–51). In these two books one finds good examples of the range of opinion on our subject in Palestinian Jewish literature. In all cases (except IV Ezra) membership in the covenant provides salvation. Various groups exclude some born Jews from the covenant on various grounds. In Qumran all but those who were elect and who voluntarily joined the sect were excluded, as well as members who transgressed in certain ways.18 Gentiles are not in view, although the Damascus Document 18. On Qumran see my detailed treatment in ch. 2 of Patterns. For the exclusion of non-sectarian Jews

148

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

allows for proselytes.19 The nature of redemption will be in part the conquest of the sect in a war (1QM, 1QSa), although it appears that individual members could also anticipate “eternal life,” possibly by a resurrection.20 In rabbinic literature an Israelite in good standing was considered to have “a share in the world to come.”21 Membership in good standing implied the intention and effort to obey the law and repenting of and atoning for transgressions. Opinions differed on the Gentiles, some Rabbis holding that righteous Gentiles (those who avoided the most heinous sins or who practiced charity) would have a share in the world to come, while others denied that there were any righteous Gentiles.22 There was no uniform view of the character of salvation. Some Rabbis spoke of the redemption of Israel, apparently in the sense of Jubilees: physical domination and freedom from foreign rulership.23 The general view is that the Rabbis, following the Pharisees, must have believed in a physical resurrection, and Sanhedrin 10:1 (those who deny the resurrection from the dead have no share in the world to come) seems to confirm that view. The phrase “share in the world to come,” however, like the other common phrase “in the future to come,” is itself ambiguous.24 The only exception to the general connection between membership in the covenant and salvation, as we have said, is IV Ezra.25 Despite the from the covenant and from salvation, see, for example, 1QS 5:1–3, where the “men of falsehood” are doubtless non-sectarian Jews. On the unforgivable sins, see 1QS 7:1–17. 19. CD 14:4. On the destruction of the Gentiles, see, for example, 1QpHab 5:3–6; 1QSa 1:21; 1QM. 20. For eternal life, see 1QS 4:7f.; CD 3:20; cf. 1QM 13:5f. It is usually not clear precisely what is in mind. Malhias Delcor (Les Hymnes de Qumran [Paris, 1962], pp. 58–61) takes 1QH 6:29–39 to be decisive in favor of a hope for resurrection. 21. San. 10:1. I am well aware of the enduring (but erroneous) opinion in Christian scholarship that the covenant (“membership in good standing”) was not a soteriological category, or even of much significance, in rabbinic literature. See, for example, the recent denial of the significance of the covenant by D. Rössler, Gesetz und Geschichte (2nd ed.; Neukirchen, 1962), p. 28. According to Rössler the promises are not considered to be enduring; the only connection between subsequent generations and the patriarchs is the thesaurus meritorium; salvation must be earned by each individual de novo. For a discussion of this view, I must again refer to Patterns, ch. 1. I have sketched “rabbinic soteriology” in “Patterns of Religion in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: A Holistic Method of Comparison,” HTR LXVI (1973), 458–66. 22. See, for example, TSan. 13:2. 23. See Tanhuma Buber 5 (Vol. II, p. 111); pTaan. 63d (I.1); San. 97b–98a; J. Neusner, Eliezer Ben Hyrcanus (Leiden, 1973), II, 418; E. E. Urbach, Hazal—e.t. “The Sages, Their Concepts and Beliefs” (Jerusalem, 1969), pp. 603f. 24. “In the future to come” (le-‘atid la-bo’) may, as Jastrow notes (A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi and the Midrashic Literature, 2 vols. [London, 1903], II, 1128), refer either to the messianic age or, more vaguely, to the “hereafter.” L. Finkelstein has argued that the phrase le-‘olam ha-ba’ in San. 10:1 is deliberately ambiguous as to whether it refers to a post-resurrection world or the world to which the souls of the righteous ascend immediately after death, both views having some currency in the Pharisaic-Rabbinic period. See Mabo le-Massektot Abot ve-Abot d’Rabbi Natan (New York, 1950), pp. 213–21 (English summary, pp. xxxii–xxxvi).

149

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

literary relationship between IV Ezra and II Baruch,26 they are poles apart on this essential point. One may compare one of the appeals of the seer in II Baruch with the repeated appeals of the seer in IV Ezra. Thus “Baruch” supplicates God to Protect us in Thy compassions, And in Thy mercy help us. Behold the little ones that are subject unto Thee, And save all that draw nigh unto Thee: And destroy not the hope of our people, And cut not short the times of our aid. For this is the nation which Thou hast chosen, And these are the people, to whom Thou findest no equal. (II Apoc. Bar. 48:18–20)

God reminds the seer that he must punish transgression (48:27), but this is clearly applied not to all those who commit a single transgression, but rather to those who are corrupted, who have not remembered God’s goodness nor accepted his long-suffering (48:29), to those who practiced oppression and did not remember God’s law (48:38), and to those who intentionally and willfully transgressed (48:40). In “Baruch’s” own summary, he recognizes that God must requite those who have “not confessed Thee as their Creator” (48:46). The appeal to protect the nation, except for those who deny God, is granted. The author of IV Ezra is aware of the view that only the worst sins damn, such as not confessing God—because of its universal prevalence in Palestinian Jewish literature he could not have missed this view—but in the consternation following the destruction of the Temple he cannot bring himself to share it. In answer to the seer’s appeal to God’s purported special love for Israel (6:55–59), the author has the angel answer that, because of Adam’s sin, only individuals who are sufficiently righteous can be saved (7:11–16). The seer acknowledges that those who can keep the commandments will be saved (7:45), but who are they? Almost everyone created has sinned (7:48), and all humans are defiled with iniquity (7:68). The promises of God are void, since all have “done the works that bring death” (7:119). In view of this, the author has “Ezra” appeal for compassion in a moving supplication (7:132–40). 25. Quotations are from G. H. Box’s translation in Charles’s edition of the Pseudepigrapha. On IV Ezra see especially Harnisch, Verhängnis und Verheissung. The point on which I disagree with Harnisch is explained in ch. 3 of Patterns. 26. See Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic, p. 119.

150

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

If God were not to forgive the multitude of sins, very few would be left (7:140). But the angel answers that this is precisely the case: only a few will be saved (8:1–3), apparently those who do not need forgiveness. The appeal is repeated (“For if thou hast a desire to compassionate us who have no works of righteousness, then shalt thou be called ‘the gracious One,’” 8:32), but again denied: “For indeed I will not concern myself about the creation of those who have sinned, or their death, judgement, or perdition” (8:38). The angel drives home the point: “Therefore ask no more concerning the multitude of them that perish; for having received liberty they despised the Most High; scorned his Law, and forsook his ways” (8:55f.). Only a few, Ezra and those like him, will be saved (8:51–62): “There are more who perish than shall be saved, even as the flood is greater than a drop!” (9:16). Thus the author of IV Ezra is aware of the view that even transgressors within Israel would be cleansed by God’s mercy and redeemed and that thus the covenant promises would be made good, but he does not share it. Only strict (apparently perfect) obedience suffices (7:46, 89). Transgressors, rather than only opponents of the covenant and deniers within it, will be destroyed. The author of IV Ezra was not, however, typical of Palestinian Jewish piety. To the contrary, his marked pessimism with regard to the efficacy of the covenant promises to preserve and save the people of Israel is not shared in any of the other surviving literature. As we have seen, even the author of II Baruch, who may have been literarily dependent on IV Ezra, argued a quite different case. The general view was this: membership in the covenant saves, even without perfect obedience; the effort and intent to obey the law and atonement for transgressions preserve one in the covenant; certain transgressions, or transgressions willfully persisted in, could remove one from the covenant and from the covenant promises; some of those not in the covenant (the righteous Gentiles, the nations that did not oppress Israel) might, in the view of some, also be saved, although others systematically excluded all Gentiles; the nature of salvation was either (1) the redemption and establishment of Israel in the face of their foes or (2) individual salvation, whether conceived of in terms of the eternal life of the souls of the righteous or in terms of physical resurrection. Redemption of Israel and individual salvation could readily be combined.

151

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Hellenistic Jewish Literature When we turn to Hellenistic Jewish literature of approximately the same period, we see that membership in Israel is no less important for determining salvation. If anything, in Egyptian Jewish literature it is more rigorously insisted upon. The nature of salvation, however, may be conceived of quite differently. We may turn first to Joseph and Asenath, where the point is seen most clearly.27 The main points concerning the means of attaining salvation and the nature of it in Joseph and Asenath are quickly covered. Joseph is depicted as a “God-fearing” or pious man (theosebēs), which in this context means an observant Jew (8:5 and elsewhere).28 As such, he will not eat with Egyptians, which would be an abomination to him (7:1). Similarly, intermarriage with Gentiles is strictly forbidden (7:6). Those who are in the covenant (though the word is not used) have life: It is not proper for one who worships God (theosebēs), who blesses with his mouth the living God and eats the blessed bread of life and drinks the blessed cup of immortality and is anointed with the blessed ointment of incorruptibility, to kiss a foreign woman, who blesses with her mouth dead idols, etc. (8:5)

Holding this attitude toward Gentiles and faced with the biblical statement that Joseph married Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian priest (Gen 41:50), it is obvious that the Egyptian Jewish story must provide for Asenath’s conversion; that conversion is in fact the raison d’être of the story. Asenath converts by repenting, which involves destroying her idols, praying and fasting (9:2; chap. 10; 15:7f.). It is noteworthy that repentance, which usually in Jewish literature signifies the return of an Israelite after transgression, here indicates the conversion of Asenath; and Repentance is even personified as a divine mediatrix (15:7f.).29 Having put away idolatry and repented, Asenath has the same benefits as Joseph: her life is “revivified,” and she

27. I follow the text and, in general, the critical opinions of M. Philonenko, Joseph et Aséneth (Leiden, 1968). He dates the work at the beginning of the second century CE (p. 109). Charles Burchard (Untersuchungen zu Joseph und Aseneth [Tübingen, 1965], pp. 143–51) dates the work earlier, but I do not find his argument, based primarily on the absence of proselyte baptism in Joseph and Asenath, persuasive. 28. Hoi sebomenoi ton theon in Acts, on the other hand, are Gentiles who have not made a full conversion. See 17:4 and elsewhere. 29. See Philonenko, Joseph et Aséneth, pp. 56f.

152

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

can eat the bread of life, drink the cup of immortality, and be anointed with the ointment of incorruptibility (15:3; cf. 8:11). Philonenko has argued that the priest Potipher should be seen as a “sympathiser” with Judaism, one like the “God-fearers” of Acts; that is, one who is inclined to be theologically at one with Judaism but who has not converted.30 This is the only point in his splendid analysis of the book with which I must take issue. Undoubtedly the Egyptian priest respects Joseph and his God (see 4:8–10), but there is no explicit indication that he accepts the theology of Judaism, failing only to convert. There does not seem to be room in the story for “righteous Gentiles” who participate in the salvation which comes by being Jewish. To the contrary, eating with the priest’s family would be for Joseph an abomination. It is at least clear that Asenath, prior to her repentance, was considered to be damned (“dead”). Thus Joseph prays to God on her behalf that God will give life to Asenath, renew her spirit, revivify her life, let her eat the bread of life and drink the cup, and grant her entrance into God’s rest which is prepared for the elect (8:10f.). Outside of Judaism there is no salvation. The traditional terms for the nature of salvation—the redemption of Israel, the resurrection, a share in the world to come—are all missing. The man from heaven who visits Asenath at the conclusion of her fast does mention that her name has been written in the book of life and will not be erased (15:3), but this is not merely a promise for the future: the soteriology is realized. “From this day,” the man tells her, “you will be renewed, reformed and revivified, and you will eat the bread of life, drink the cup of immortality and be anointed with the ointment of incorruptibility” (15:4). As Philonenko puts it, “entrance into the Jewish community is an initiation into a mystery.”31 It is a remarkable curiosity that Asenath does not, within the confines of the story, eat the bread and drink the cup and be anointed. Rather, she eats a miraculously produced honeycomb full of honey.32 Of this honeycomb, the man from heaven says: Happy are you, Asenath, for the mysteries of God have been revealed to you, and happy are those who cleave to God in repentance, for they eat of this honeycomb. For the bees of the paradise of delight made this honey, and the angels of God eat of it, and everyone who eats of it will never die. (16:7f.) 30. Ibid., p. 51. 31. Ibid., p. 98. 32. On this, see ibid., pp. 95–98. Philonenko connects the honeycomb with the manna (see Exod 16:31).

153

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

It cannot be said with certainty whether the honey and the honeycomb have replaced the bread, wine and ointment, or whether the honeycomb is used only at the initiation of the mystic, with the other sacraments being reserved to a common meal.33 In any case, Asenath receives immortality by repentance and participating in the mystical meal.34 We should note that, while we have here a mystical Judaism, it may not be quite identical with the mystical Judaism described by Goodenough.35 There is no mention of sophia or logos as a light stream (although Joseph is conventionally described as a man powerful in wisdom and knowledge, 4:9) and no indication that the supreme aim is a vision of God or the truth. To be sure, coming from darkness into light is used to describe gaining life or salvation (8:10; 15:13),36 but the phrase again seems conventional and there is no reference to seeing as the goal of religion or the means of salvation. The “mystical’’ references regarding the bread, cup and ointment which symbolize or bestow immortality and incorruptibility are sacramental and do not 33. Philonenko (ibid., p. 98) favors the latter interpretation. This seems the more likely, since eating the honeycomb is linked to repentance (conversion). 34. I am unable to follow K. G. Kuhn (“The Lord’s Supper and the Communal Meal at Qumran,” The Scrolls and the New Testament, p. 75) in thinking that there is a connection between the meal in Qumran and that in Joseph and Asenath, mediated, in his view, via the Therapeutae (pp. 74–76). He curiously says that “exactly this connection is decisive for an understanding of the passages in Joseph and Aseneth” (p. 74). What the connection is we are not told, though a hypothesis as to how it was mediated is given. How the connection is significant for understanding is also not described. Kuhn correctly cites the decisive differences between the meals (pp. 76f.; the most important is that the meal in Joseph and Asenath is sacramental), but one never learns how decisive differences cohere with a connection which is essential for understanding. Cf. Burchard, Untersuchungen, pp. 107–12; 121–26. 35. See E. R. Goodenough, By Light, Light (Amsterdam, 1969; 1st ed.; New Haven, 1935), pp. 235–305, especially p. 277: “Wisdom has shown us not a mystic Judaism, but the mystic Judaism we are investigating, though in an earlier stage than that which Philo reveals.” It is curious that neither in By Light, Light nor in Jewish Symbols did Goodenough deal with Joseph and Asenath. It may be that he accepted the old view that the “mystic” parts of the book were Christian additions (see Philonenko, Joseph et Aséneth, pp. 99f.), a view which will not, however, stand examination. The recent attempt of T. Holtz (“Christliche Interpolationen in ‘Joseph und Aseneth,’” NTS XIV [1967–68], 482–97) to revive the theory of Christian interpolations is completely unconvincing. He argues, in effect, that since realized participation in salvation is “non-Jewish,” the passages which contain that conception must be the result or Christian re-writing. It is better to learn from the document what can be Jewish and what not than to define the matter in advance. On the completely Jewish character of the work, see Burchard, Untersuchungen, p. 99; Philonenko, Joseph et Aséneth, pp. 99–101 (the long forms do show Christian revisions, but not the earlier short form). As a Jewish document, Joseph and Asenath lends support to Goodenough’s view that there were actual rites in Hellenistic Judaism, not just allegorical interpretation of the traditional Jewish practices. 36. Joseph, who is depicted as a son of God (6:2,6), is full of light (6:3) and is compared to the sun (6:5); and when the man from heaven comes to Asenath she sees a great light in heaven (14:3), but salvation does not consist of seeing the light.

154

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

seem necessarily to imply that mystic philosophy of ascent toward and the vision and knowledge of the incorporeal which Goodenough has so well described. Although we cannot exclude the possibility that a philosophical mysticism lies behind Joseph and Asenath, it makes no direct appearance. It may be that we shall have to distinguish between a sacramental mysticism and a philosophic mysticism. The two could, of course, be combined, but Joseph and Asenath seems to show that they need not be. In the preceding paragraph we have presupposed that Goodenough correctly described a mystical Judaism which was, while intensely loyal to Judaism, essentially a Hellenistic mystical philosophy (Goodenough described it as “a Persian-Isiac-Platonic-Pythagorean mystery”),37 probably coupled with actual mystic rites. Without attempting to go into Goodenough’s entire hypothesis, as worked out in Jewish Symbols,38 and avoiding discussion even of points at which his analysis of Philo may be questioned, I should indicate that I think that he was basically correct in his analysis of Philo’s religious and philosophical thought.39 For this reason I shall deal with Philo relatively cursorily, considering the richness and abundance of the material, with the aim of focusing in brief on the questions of most relevance to the essay, and without trying to explain Philo’s philosophical mysticism in detail. It is first of all clear that Philo regarded membership in Israel as ‘saving.’ We shall later see that there are degrees of salvation or of spiritual attainment, but there never seems to be any doubt that Jews will experience some form of salvation or other. Thus in discussing divine utterances, Philo describes those “by which He incites all men to noble conduct, and particularly the nation of His worshippers, for whom He opens up the road which leads to happiness” (Mos. ii.189).40 The road to happiness here is doubtless the road to salvation, the road to the vision of the immaterial, which he elsewhere calls the “royal road,” describing all Israel as on it:

37. Goodenough, By Light, Light, p. 237. 38. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 13 vols. (New York, 1953–68). 39. The debate on whether or not Goodenough made Philo too Hellenistic and not Jewish enough (see L. H. Feldman, Scholarship on Philo and Josephus [1937–1962] [New York, n.d.], pp. 4–6) seems to me to be beside the point. Philo understood himself to be completely and accurately Jewish. The problem is to understand his religion concretely, so that one will know in what way he was Jewish. There is no question that he was Jewish. One might just as well debate whether or not scholars who find Persian influence in post-biblical Palestinian Judaism are making it too Mesopotamian. 40. Quotations are from the translation and edition of F. H. Colson and G. H. Whittaker, Philo, Loeb Classical Library, 10 vols., 2 supps., trans. R. Marcus (London, 1929–53).

155

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Thus those who are members of that race endowed with vision, which is called Israel, when they wish to journey along that royal road, find their way contested by Edom the earthly one—for such is the interpretation of his name—who, all alert and prepared at every point, threatens to bar them from the road. . . . (Deus 144)

Despite the resistance offered by Edom, fleshly pleasures, the whole nation of Israel has learned in the school of Moses enough wisdom to pass through that land, disdaining wealth, pride of noble birth, glory, physical health, “the keenness of the senses, the coveted gift of beauty,” strength and the like. Israel is on the path which leads to denial of what is transient in order to obtain the “vision of good incorruptible and genuine” (Deus 148–51). In the quotation from Quod Deus sit Immutabilis 144, we saw Philo’s standard exegesis of the name “Israel”: one who sees God.41 Since seeing God is the proper aim of religion, the name itself indicates that the nation of Israel obtains salvation. This includes individual Israelites who do not attain either to perfect obedience or, as we shall see, to clear vision. Appealing to the righteousness and virtue of the fathers, which bear “fruit that never decays for their descendants, fruit salutary and profitable in every way,” Philo remarks that the fruit is salutary (sōtērion) “even though these descendants themselves be sinners, so long as the sins be curable and not altogether unto death” (Spec. iv.181). As this passage indicates, however, there are incurable sins. Actually there is one: apostasy. In one remarkable passage Philo argues that those who choose darkness rather than light and who blind the ability of their intellects to see, by falling away from worshipping God, should be summarily executed without trial.42 Here it is noteworthy, although Philo does not himself give the allegory, that such apostates, by intentionally giving up the ability to see, have in fact given up the name “Israel.” Their intellects no longer “see,” and, in our terms, they are no longer in the covenant. While the nature of salvation (passing from concern with the material to the immaterial and achieving a vision of the incorporeal) is difficult to restrict to one nationality, appearing at first glance to be by definition a path to salvation which can be trod only by the individual seeker, without regard to ‘race, color, or creed,’ Philo in fact not only 41. For references, see H. A. Wolfson, Philo, rev. ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1962; 1st ed.; 1947), II. 51, 84. 42. Spec. i.54f. See Goodenough, The Jurisprudence of the Jewish Courts in Egypt (Amsterdam, 1968; 1st ed.; New Haven, 1929), pp. 33f.

156

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

insists that all Jews except apostates are on the royal road, but he seems to think that no Gentiles are. Even Goodenough may have been misled by Philo’s description of the goal of religion into thinking that any individual who could “see” could travel the “royal road” without becoming a member of the Jewish nation. Goodenough writes that in the Exposition Philo was expounding the details of Judaism for Gentile enquirers, but that he did not intend to invite them into “the Lesser Mystery.” In the Allegory, on the other hand, in which Philo described the true mystico-philosophical Judaism, Gentiles were invited to participate, without, however, becoming “literal Jews.” According to Goodenough, Philo never asks “his Gentiles to look for salvation in fulfilling the letter of Jewish Law.” “True understanding of the Torah by allegory had revealed to Philo the higher experience, and it was to this higher experience Philo would have conversion to Judaism lift the proselytes.”43 I think that the last sentence is quite correct, but it seems likely that Gentiles would also be expected to make a traditional conversion to Judaism and be prepared to fulfill the letter of the law before they could participate in the “higher experience.” The evidence for this is in part to be inferred from the fact that Philo would require even Jews who have the correct allegorical understanding of the Bible to fulfill the literal commandments.44 It seems dubious that he would require less of Gentiles. In the following passage Philo identifies life as coming to those who serve God: But we, the scholars and disciples of Moses, will not forgo our quest of the Existent, holding that the knowledge of Him is the consummation of happiness. It is also agelong life. The law tells us that all who “cleave to God live,” and herein it lays down a vital doctrine fraught with much wisdom. For in very truth the godless are dead in soul, but those who have taken service in the ranks of the God Who only is are alive, and that life can never die. (Spec. i.345)

The passage does not explicitly mention Gentiles, but it does say that those who do not serve God are dead, while those who serve him live. It would be very surprising if “taking service in the ranks” (tetagmenoi taxin) of God were not to include observance of the Mosaic code, 43. Goodenough, By Light, Light, p. 115; cf. p. 136. P. 115 seems to have escaped revision. In support of the questionable statement on Philo’s position on Gentiles, Goodenough cites Spec. i.299f., saying that he will explicate the passage more fully below, but he does not do so. Further, the passage is incorrectly cited as 229f. 44. Mig. 89–94; cited by Goodenough, By Light, Light, pp. 83f., 236.

157

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

especially in light of De Migratione Abrahami 89–94.45 It is thus likely that Gentiles who do not convert cannot travel the “royal road.” Some of Philo’s favorable comments about the few wise and virtuous men among the Gentiles and his appeal for kind treatment of those who give up idolatry, though without making a full conversion, might support the view that some Gentiles can attain salvation. The passages can be read as being simply praise of such Gentiles, although De Specialibus Legibus ii.44–48 (some who live “in Grecian or barbarian lands . . . traverse the upper air and gain full contemplation of the powers which dwell there”)46 may be an instance in which the logic of his view of the nature of the goal of religion overcomes his usual restriction of “those who see” to members of the commonwealth of Israel.47 The latter restriction, however, without doubt represents the dominant view in Philo, and I venture to think that it would be the position which he would have maintained if pressed. This will become clearer when we consider his statements about proselytes and the different degrees of religious attainment. Philo was eager for Gentiles to see the truth and convert. The theme of proselytism is especially dealt with in his treatise On the Virtues. Here Abraham is characterized as a proselyte who became “the most ancient member of the Jewish nation.” When he perceived that he should follow the One rather than the Many, he left his country, his nation and his home, knowing that if he did not he could never free himself of polytheism (Virt. 212–14). Abraham, says Philo, “is the standard of nobility for all proselytes,” who must also abandon their homes, laws and customs, and come to live “in a better land, in a commonwealth full of true life and vitality, with truth as its director and president” (Virt. 219). Tamar similarly converted (Virt. 221). But others, Philo maintains, who wish to keep their own patrimony, must be considered “enemies of the Jewish nation and of every person in every place” (Virt. 226). Earlier in the same treatise Philo had discussed the necessity of proselytes’ abandoning “their kinsfolk by blood, their country, their 45. Similarly, Wolfson, Philo, II, 358. 46. These, says Philo, are few. If there were more, “the cities would have been brimful of happiness.” It is not clear that he has Gentiles in mind here; he may be thinking of Jews scattered throughout the Diaspora. 47. Cf. Prob. 72–74, where he discusses Gentiles who achieve or have achieved excellence. The Magi, for example, “give and receive the revelations of divine excellency.” That is valuable, but are they among the saved? It is not clear. On these passages, see Wolfson, Philo, II, 373f. With regard to those who do not make a full conversion (ibid., pp. 369–73: “spiritual proselytes”), Philo says they are not to be oppressed (Quaest. in Ex. ii.2; so the biblical passage, Exod 22:21); it does not follow that they are saved.

158

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

customs and the temples and images of their gods” in order to undertake “the journey to a better home, from idle fables to the clear vision of truth and the worship of the one and truly existing God” (Virt. 102; cf. Spec. iv. 178). It seems clear here that Gentiles who do not proselytize cannot hope to come to the truth (they will remain trapped in delusion, as Abraham would had he not migrated), and that proselytizing includes taking on all the standard duties of the “commonwealth full of true life.” That is, outside the covenant (“commonwealth”), there is no salvation. We should note that Philo, having required the seeker of truth to leave his own home and family, is insistent that all the needs of the proselyte, whether of body or soul, be especially cared for (Virt. 103f.).48 As did the author of Joseph and Asenath, Philo terms the act of conversion “repentance” (Virt. 175–86). The principal element is rejection of idolatry: . . . when Moses convokes such people and would initiate them into his mysteries, he invites them with conciliatory and amicable offers of instruction, exhorting them to practise sincerity and reject vanity, to embrace truth and simplicity as vital necessaries and the sources of happiness, and to rise in rebellion against the mythical fables impressed on their yet tender souls from their earliest years by parents and nurses and tutors and the multitude of other familiars, who have caused them to go endlessly astray in their search for the knowledge of the best. (Virt. 178)

Positively, the proselytes who repent take on the virtues of temperance, kindness and the like, just as Jewish apostates become incontinent and unjust (Virt. 182). We see here a point which has been frequently noted: being a member of Israel, the nation that sees, is for Philo more than a matter of descent.49 Heinemann has described Philo as having “spiritualized” nationalism: one is truly Jewish who is a Jew by faith and conviction.50 There is much to be agreed with in Heinemann’s analysis of the “individualistic and universalistic coloring” of Philo’s religion.51 Thus he has correctly noted that the rationale for observing the laws of 48. Generally speaking, proselytes were considered by Philo as fully equal to native-born Jews, with the possible exception that proselytes may not have been considered worthy to receive prophecy directly from God. See Wolfson, Philo, II, 51f., 400f. 49. Virt. 188–91; Wolfson, Philo, II, pp. 356f., 400–402; I. Heinemann, Philons griechische und jüdische Bildung (Hildesheim, 1962; 1st ed.; 1929–32), p. 563. 50. Heinemann, Bildung, p. 563. 51. Ibid., pp. 562–71; the phrase is on p. 565.

159

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

the Torah is different in Philo from what it is in Rabbinic literature.52 His emphasis on individualism and universalism in Philo seems not entirely correct, however, and we should consider the question more closely. Heinemann takes as an example of Philo’s “universalistic transformation of piety” his treatment of some of the sacrificial laws, particularly the statement that “the Jewish nation is to the whole inhabited world what the priest is to the State” (Spec. ii.163).53 This is said in connection with the Feast of the Sheaf, in which the offering of the Sheaf is taken to be the first fruits of the land (of Israel) and of the whole earth (Spec. ii.162). In Philo’s further discussion, he mentions the common quest of Greeks and barbarians alike for the One God “whose nature is invisible and inscrutable not only by the eye, but by the mind” (Spec. ii.165), pointing out that all other nations went astray in their quest, while only “the Jewish nation” found him (Spec. ii.166). He concludes that he cannot understand why Jews are accused of “inhumanity” (apanthrōpia) when they use their prayers, festivals, and offerings “as a means of supplication for the human race in general and of making its homage to the truly existent God in the name of those who have evaded the service which it was their duty to give . . .” (Spec. ii.167). Those who are evading serving God are all the Greeks and barbarians, all the Gentiles. It is only the Jews who truly serve the true God, and they kindly offer supplications for the Gentiles. This doubtlessly benefits the whole world (there is no hint that the offerings are salvific), but the motive is apologetic—the Jews are not misanthropists—rather than universalistic. True religion has been by no means universalized; only the Jews are observing it. With regard to the significance of membership within Israel, Heinemann’s emphasis also seems to be wrong. The statement that faith and conviction rather than descent make one a true Jew is, of course, accurate. That this is so is readily seen in Philo’s praise of proselytizing, which we discussed just above. What it comes down to, however, is that Philo prefers proselytes to apostates. As he says in De Virtutibus 182, the former gain all the qualities that the latter lose. This is not precisely universalism or individualism. It is a question of being a faithful Jew: those who are faithful have all the benefits of the group, both in terms of salvation and in terms of virtue, while apostates do not. Very few in Philo’s day would have argued otherwise. The Rabbis, for example, later argued that Gentiles who accept the covenant and 52. Ibid., pp. 483, 565f., 571. 53. Ibid., pp. 125, 564.

160

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

observe the commandments are true Jews, while descendants of Abraham who have cast off the yoke are not.54 Heinemann’s terms “universalism” and “individualism” seem to imply that, for Philo, everything was based on individual merit and insight. This was not, however, the case. One can see how Heinemann has taken the logic of his position too far when he concludes that Philo “did not know the concept of the covenant at all.”55 He bases this statement on an investigation of the term diathēkē, the normal Greek word for “covenant.” Had he observed the importance for Philo of being a member of the right “commonwealth” (politeia, see Virt. 219)56 or the significance of being initiated into the “mystery” of Moses (Virt. 178),57 he would have had to come to a different conclusion. Becoming a member of the commonwealth of true life, or being initiated into the mysteries of Moses, is, in effect, to enter the Jewish covenant. Heinemann found Philo’s universalism and individualism striking in comparison with Palestinian (he called it “pure”)58 Judaism, but it seems even more striking to note that, despite the fact that Philo’s religious goal would seem to lead to universalism and individualism, Israel as such continues to constitute the group of the saved. What is the nature of the salvation which faithful Jews and sincere proselytes receive? We should first note that Philo has a version of the traditional eschatological hope of the redemption of Israel from foreign oppressors (Praem. 162–72). He first states that Jews who disobey will be punished, and then in quite a traditional vein indicates that such chastisement should be taken “as a warning rather than as intending [the transgressors’] perdition” (Praem. 162f.). If Jewish transgressors repent of going astray and acknowledge their sin, “then they will find favour with God the Saviour, the Merciful” (Praem. 163). “This conversion in a body to virtue will strike awe into their masters, who will set them free, ashamed to rule over men better than themselves” (Praem. 164). This is Philo’s version of the eschatological liberation. No arms are to be borne and the Gentiles will not be 54. See Sifra, Nedabah, par. 2:3 (to Lev 1:2). The difficulty is that the biblical text mentions sons of Israel. The rabbinic comment nevertheless manages to exclude apostates (who are sons) and include proselytes (who are not). 55. Heinemann, Bildung, pp. 482f., 564. 56. See further Wolfson, Philo, II, 397f. 57. For the present point it does not matter whether the mystery of Moses entailed rites (so Goodenough, By Light, Light, pp. 259–62) or shows only Philo’s accommodation of language to the terminology current in Hellenism (so Wolfson, Philo, I, 13, 43–51). In any case an initiation into Judaism is required. 58. Heinemann, Bildung, pp. 568–70.

161

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

destroyed by the hand of the righteous.59 Rather, virtue is its own reward, and repentance achieves temporal freedom. The liberated Jews return from exile to their home. They have three intercessors for reconciliation with God: God’s natural inclination to forgive rather than punish; the patriarchs, who plead on their descendants’ behalf; and their own conversion, which moves God to leniency (Praem. 166f.). The cities (of Palestine) will be rebuilt and inhabited, and prosperity greater than the legendary prosperity of former times will come to the land (Praem. 168). “Everything will suddenly be reversed.” The enemies who flourished temporarily will have their curses of the Jews returned upon themselves. Those who suffered by seeing their enemies’ good fortune will see that the pain “was devised as a medicine to save them from perdition” (Praem. 169f.). So then those of them [the Jews] who have not come to utter destruction . . . will make their way back with course reversed to the prosperity of the ancestral past. But these enemies who have mocked at their lamentations . . . will, when they begin to reap the rewards of their cruelty, find that their misconduct was directed not against the obscure and unmeritable but against men of high lineage retaining sparks of their noble birth. . . . (170f.)

Philo’s delicacy in asserting the traditional national hope is remarkable. It would have been dangerous indeed in Alexandria to predict a military victory to free Israel and establish its supremacy. The supremacy is native, however, and will finally be established when all Jews repent of their transgressions. Their liberation will be the natural result of their virtue. Their enemies will be punished neither by the Jews nor by God, but will rather simply receive their own curses of the Jews back on their own heads. Aside from this delicate expression of the matter, the description of the liberation and supremacy of Israel is characteristic of the national hope which we know from Palestinian literature. Despite the traditional character of this short section, it is wellknown that Philo’s heart did not lie in awaiting the day of national revival. It lay, rather, in teaching men to follow the “royal road” which led past sense perception to a vision of the incorporeal.60 Rather than 59. Praem. 91–97 is only slightly more warlike in tone. After God brings about the promised taming of the wild beasts, it is to be hoped that human warfare will not trouble the godly, for virtue will protect them. But if some fanatic “whose lust for war defies restraint” forces the godly to fight, the latter will easily win “a permanent and blood less victory” and “a sovereignty which none can contest.”

162

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

here attempting any fuller explanation of Philo’s soteriology, it will be most useful for our present purpose to indicate that there were gradations of human attainment. Not all could reach the vision of the incorporeal. Similarly, although he thought that “true Judaism” consisted in the quest for that vision,61 he regarded the lower forms of Judaism as valid and worthwhile to a limited degree. The clearest passage which indicates the different levels of mystical or religious attainment is in the treatise On the Confusion of Tongues: For it well befits those who have entered into comradeship with knowledge to desire to see the Existent if they may, but, if they cannot, to see at any rate his image, the most holy Word, and after the Word its most perfect work of all that our senses know, even this world. For by philosophy nothing else has ever been meant, than the earnest desire to see these things exactly as they are. (Conf. 97)

Here there are three levels of vision: the vision of Being itself (to on), the vision of his image, the logos; and the vision of its work or reflection, the sensory world. It may be that no one, in Philo’s view, except Moses, attained to the highest vision.62 It was a difficult but achievable goal to see the world as it really is,63 i.e., without mistaking the created for the creator.64 It would appear, however, that the main goal of Philonic religion was the vision of the logos, not God himself, but his incorporeal image.65 In the treatise On Flight and Finding, the different degrees of attainment are put in another way. In a complicated allegory, brilliantly unravelled by Goodenough,66 Philo interprets the flight of the fugitive unintentional homicide to the cities of refuge (Num 35) as the flight of “the man who aspires to be free from sin.”67 Goodenough explains: The six cities are the Logos and his descending Powers; that is the first city is the Logos itself, the second the Creative or Beneficent Power, the third 60. Similarly S. Sandmel, Philo’s Place in Judaism, augmented ed. (New York, 1971), p. xxiii. 61. Cf. Her. 81–85, where “we the disciples of Moses” are clearly those who understood such biblical passages as “He led him out outside” (Gen 15:5) to refer to God’s leading Abraham “outside of the prison-houses of the body, of the lairs where the senses lurk.” 62. See Goodenough, By Light, Light, pp. 205f. 63. See on Noah, Conf. 105. 64. Abr. 75, 78; cf. Op. mund. 7f. 65. See Conf. 96. Those who follow Moses see the “place,” that is, the logos, which is where God stands. Apparently they do not actually see God. 66. Goodenough, By Light, Light, pp. 249–55. 67. Ibid., p. 251.

163

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

the Royal or Ruling Power, the fourth is divine Mercy, the fifth and sixth together the legislation of God, for the fifth represents the body of specific commands in the Torah, the sixth the negative commands.68

In the allegory these cities are the different levels of attainment of the soul in flight. Thus commenting on the first two, Philo says: The man who is capable of running swiftly it [the commandment] bids stay not to draw breath but pass forward to the supreme Divine Word [the logos], Who is the fountain of Wisdom, in order that he may draw from the stream and, released from death, gain life eternal as his prize. One less swift-footed it directs to the power to which Moses gives the name “God,” since by it the Universe was established and ordered. It urges him to flee for refuge to the creative power, knowing that to one who has grasped the fact that the whole world was brought into being a vast good accrues, even the knowledge of its Maker, which straightway wins the thing created to love Him to whom it owes its being. (Fug. 97)

Between the first three cities (the logos, the creative power and the kingly power) and the next three (mercy, the positive commandments and the negative commandments), Philo makes a substantial division, indicating that the last three are “nearer the starting-point” (Fug. 98). Of those who obtain the fourth and fifth cities (realizing that God is mercy, repenting in hope of forgiveness, and obeying the positive commandments), Philo says that they “attain happiness” (eudaimonēsei). The one who can gain only the last city of refuge, the negative commandments, “even if he fail to obtain a share of God’s principal good gifts,” will nevertheless attain “a third and last refuge, the averting of ills” (Fug. 99). It is clear that the last three cities do not represent mystical attainment at all. As Goodenough expresses it, they represent Philo’s epitome of “normative Judaism” (using G. F. Moore’s term).69 Without pressing too much systematization on Philo, we can also see a general correlation between the last three cities of refuge in De Fuga and the attainment of seeing the sensible world as it really is in De Confusione: there is no mystical vision. We may further note that the second degree of attainment in De Confusione, seeing the logos, is the highest attainment in De Fuga, which supports the supposition that the vision of the incorporeal logos is the realistic mystical goal, not the vision 68. Ibid., pp. 250f. 69. Ibid., p. 253.

164

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

of Being itself.70 Finally, we may note that, despite Philo’s assertion elsewhere that all Israel is on the way to the vision of the incorporeal (Mos. ii.189), he realizes that some are not; some must be content with the last three cities of refuge or with seeing the world as it really is. 71 Now the question is, however, who is “saved.” Moses, who saw Being itself, was not only saved, but saviour, leader of and paradigm for the seekers.72 The other patriarchs, we know from other passages, are immortal.73 Further, anyone who sees the logos is “released from death” and gains eternal life. Those who attain to the next two Powers are also presumably “saved,” although the word does not appear, since many of those who cannot even cross the divide into the mystical vision themselves “gain happiness,” which I take to be a soteriological term. The Israelites who are passing through Edom are all said to be on the road to “happiness,” pros eudaimonian (Mos. ii.189).74 It is only about the last fugitive that there is any doubt. Avoiding evil is good, but it does not gain God’s best gifts. We should note that such a person has not even fulfilled the minimal requirements of traditional Judaism, which would require obedience of the positive laws and repentance of transgression, as well as obedience of the negative laws. Thus it appears that while salvation is pre-eminently the vision of what is incorporeal, leading to a union with God,75 those Jews are also “saved” who obey the commandments and repent of transgression. The tantalizing thing is that Philo does not designate just who has “immortal life” and who does not. I am inclined to think that all Jews loyal to the covenant, who did not sin unto death (Spec. iv.181), as well as all proselytes who came to worship the only true God (Virt. 102) would receive immortal life, if not here then hereafter. The only doubt is the Jew who can do no better than obey the negative commandments. He may have had to be content with some lesser reward. Even the phrase “if not here then hereafter” raises a problem, however; for Philo does not explicitly make the distinction. Those who 70. Seeing the logos is only one of Philo’s terms for the mystical goal. Cf. “the discovery of sophia,” Som. ii.270; Goodenough, By Light, Light, pp. 222, 240. See further B. Mack, Logos und Sophia (Göttingen, 1973); and his “Imitatio Mosis: Patterns of Cosmology and Soteriology in the Hellenistic Synagogue,” Studia Philonica, I (1972), 27–55, especially pp. 31f. and n. 50. 71. Cf. Sandmel, Philo’s Place in Judaism, p. xxiii: “Provision has been made for the less gifted.” 72. In addition to Goodenough’s chapter on “The Mystic Moses” in By Light, Light, see Mack, SP I, 27–55. 73. Praem. 166. I take the passage to indicate a conception of personal immortality; but this is not certain, and Philo is generally vague on the issue. See Sandmel, Philo’s Place in Judaism, n. 381a on pp. 185f., and the further literature cited there. 74. On eudaimonia, see Goodenough, By Light, Light, pp. 131, 141, 154, 234. 75. Post. 12.

165

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

saw the logos probably experienced realized “eternal life.” But what of those who could attain only to the fourth or fifth cities? Did they experience immortal life (which I take to be implied by “gain happiness”) here or only after death? Philo can sometimes speak of all those who worship God (faithful Jews and proselytes) as having life, in contrast to the godless, who have death (Spec. i.345). This statement, however, is probably intended proleptically, and his statements on immortality more regularly refer to the soul after it leaves the body.76 Although he does not directly address the question of when (or whether) immortality can be realized as distinct from being future, we may make the following inference: since one cannot “attain to being with God” while his “abode is in the body and the mortal race” (Leg. all. iii.42), it would seem that full salvation (being with God) cannot be attained until one leaves the body and receives the immortality which all faithful members of Israel are given by God. Those who have the vision of the logos, however, “leave the body” and escape death while yet they live. Thus we may infer that those who keep the traditional Jewish laws will attain “happiness” and that those who see the logos attain it now, while the wicked (non-converted Gentiles and apostate Jews) perish or suffer eternal punishment.77 Thus we have in Philo a soteriological ambiguity, almost a bifurcation. The principal conception of the religious goal, and thus the main soteriology, is the vision of the logos. One would antecedently expect such a religious goal to be universalistic/individualistic: whoever can see may see.78 It is individualistic to a degree: only some will see, but all of those who see will be Jews or proselytes (with the possible addition of a few wise Gentiles). On the other hand, the strength of the traditional Jewish perception of the saving value of God’s covenant with Israel led Philo to provide for the salvation of all Jews and proselytes, even those who could not see the incorporeal.79 Those who generally kept the laws and who repented, who did not 76. See the passages collected by Wolfson, Philo, I, 395–413, esp. p. 398. Philo also frequently refers to temporary flights of contemplation in which the mind leaves the body. See Goodenough, “Philo on Immortality,” HTR XXXIX (1946), 99ff. The reference in Fug. 97 to being released from death seems, however, to refer to a more permanent experience than temporary ecstasy—to realized salvation. 77. On the immortality of the “righteous” and the punishment of the “wicked,” see Wolfson, Philo, I, 395–413. He takes immortality to be individual (p. 396), which seems to me likely, although the view is clearer in Wolfson than in Philo. Cf. n. 73 above. 78. Compare Paul: whoever has faith in Jesus Christ, and only those who do, are saved (Rom 9:8, 22–24; 10:9–13). 79. Cf. Goodenough, An Introduction to Philo Judaeus, (New Haven, 1940), p. 90.

166

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

sin unto death, would be given immortality, just as would those who could “see.” It appears likely that those who could attain the vision and knowledge of the logos would have realized immortality, while others would be given immortality only after death, but this is a distinction upon which Philo does not dwell. It is suggested, however, by some of the passages considered above, especially De Specialibus Legibus i.345 (“Knowledge of Him is the consummation of happiness [eudaimonia]. It is also agelong life.”) and Fug. 97. Even if we had no other Egyptian Jewish literature from the Hellenistic period, we would know from Philo of the existence of groups with divergent views from his own. The “allegorists” appear to have denied the need to keep the literal law at all,80 while the “literalists” kept the law but denied the higher allegorical truth.81 As far as I know, there is no surviving literature which speaks for the allegorists. Much of the Hellenistic Jewish literature does not dwell on defining how the commandments are to be kept in the way that rabbinic literature does, but there does not seem to be any hint that the commandments could be ignored, aside from Philo’s attack on that position. The literalists, however, did leave literary remains, as Goodenough has pointed out. He lists the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo and III Maccabees, for example, as basically representing Moore’s “normative Judaism,” which he takes to be roughly equivalent to the Judaism of the literalists known to Philo.82 Other literature, such as the Wisdom of Solomon, Goodenough took as representing the Hellenistic Jewish mystery.83 It lies beyond the space allotted for this study to pursue our questions through further literature in any detail. We may briefly indicate that the second part of the Wisdom of Solomon clearly identifies the “wicked” with the Gentiles and apostates (idolaters)84 and the “righteous” with the faithful Israelites.85 If the first part of the Wisdom of Solomon is by a different hand, the “wicked” and “righteous” are not so clearly identified.86 In either case, the righteous receive immortality, 80. They are criticized in Mig. 89–93, and some of their allegorical interpretations are described and agreed with. 81. See Conf. 14; 190. 82. See Goodenough, By Light, Light, pp. 266, 276, 282f., 289. 83. See n. 35 above. 84. See Wis. 12:20–24; 14:22–31; 15:14f., 18; and often. 85. Wis. 15:1–6; 16:2, 6f., 20; 18:1, 7; and often. 86. See, for example, 4:16: 4:20–5:8. In 10:20, however, the righteous are clearly the Israelites and the ungodly their enemies.

167

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

presumably after death.87 In the Letter of Aristeas the Jews are described as chosen and set aside (139–51), and it is said that God preserves them (157). Thus membership in the covenant “saves.” On the other hand the Gentile king is described as practicing piety (eusebeia, 255; cf. 233). Whether that makes him a “righteous Gentile” who can share the promises of the chosen people cannot be determined, although I am inclined to consider it as praise to encourage generosity toward Judaism rather than as a statement which implies anything about soteriology. IV Maccabees focuses so closely on the martyrs and the tyrant (“Antiochus”) that it is difficult to generalize about Jews and Gentiles. It is certain that the martyrs gain immortality after death and will live with the patriarchs (13:17; 14:5; 17:5; 18:23), as it is that the wicked tyrant will “suffer torment by fire for ever” (9:9; cf. 10:15; 12:19; 18:5, 22). The latter statement is once generalized to include all the wicked: “for a great struggle and peril of the soul awaits in eternal torment those who transgress the ordinance of God” (13:15). Even here, however, the previous exhortation is that the martyrs should “not fear him who thinketh he kills” (13:14), so that the only definition of transgression is the murder of those loyal to God. One is inclined to guess that the author thought of all Jews as receiving immortality, but he speaks only of martyrs. These at least are sure of immortality (14:5). Conclusions Even on the basis of a study the intention of which is to be a suggestive sketch rather than an exhaustive analysis, it seems possible to come to some conclusions about Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism on the question of the covenant as saving and the nature of salvation offered. We may summarize the points numerically: 1. With the exception of IV Ezra, the covenant seems universally to be the principal soteriological category. That is, those who are in ‘are saved.’ There are, to be sure, differences in terminology. Philo may speak of the “commonwealth” or of the nation that sees, but the point is that membership within Israel is salvific. “Israel” is variously defined. Although I do not share the view that the Qumran covenanters actually called themselves “Israel” during their historical existence as a sect,88 they did substantially read out of the covenant those Jews who 87. Wis. 6:18; 15:3. 88. That they did do so is the opinion of many scholars; see, for example, H. Ringgren, The Faith of Qumran (Philadelphia, 1963), p. 163. The view has been correctly countered by J. Maier, see a

168

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

did not join the sect. On the basis of Sanhedrin 10:1 (those who deny the resurrection of the dead do not share in the world to come), it might be possible to argue that the Pharisees read the Sadducees out of “Israel,” since “all Israel has a share in the world to come” (San. 10:1). This is by no means certain, since the Pharisees did not withdraw from Jerusalem when the Sadducees controlled the Temple and appear to have considered sacrifices offered by Sadducees as efficacious, but it is a possibility in principle. Similarly the author of Jubilees would, in effect, deny the title ‘Israelite’ to one who gave his daughter in marriage to a Gentile (he and his descendants would be “rooted out”). And so it goes. Despite these variations in how ‘Israel’ was defined, the universal view seems to be that God would keep his covenant promises to Israel. This is true even when those to whom the covenant promises apply are reduced (as in Qumran) to being a sect. 2. Again with the exception of IV Ezra, keeping the law is always the condition for remaining in the covenant, never the means of earning God’s grace.89 The distinction between keeping the law as a condition of remaining a Jew in good standing and keeping it to earn salvation is an important one. The point has been repeatedly missed by Christian scholars, especially in dealing with rabbinic Judaism. As far as I see, however, the Rabbis and Philo, for example, held the same position on this point. Philo maintained that Jews would be saved, except those who sinned “incurably.” The only instance of such a sin which he gives, however, is apostasy. That is, Jews would be saved, including those with whom he disagreed, except those who renounced Judaism. In rabbinic literature, the main distinction is between “confessing’’ and “denying” the commandments. Those who confess the commandments confess the exodus from Egypt, while those who deny them deny the exodus from Egypt.90 There are other formulations, such as “accepting the yoke” and “casting off the yoke,” but the meaning is the same as the distinction between “confessing” and “denying.” In such a formulation, “confessing” implies the intention to obey, the earnest effort to obey, and repentance and atonement for disobedience. The result of “confessing” the commandments is remaining in the covenant summary of his dissertation in TLZ, LXXXV (1960), 705f. Such terms as “congregation of Israel” appear only when speaking of the end of days (1QSa 1:1, 20f.) or the final war (1QM, passim). 89. We cannot know how the allegorists viewed the usual Jewish requirement to keep the law. We might guess that they considered themselves to be keeping it in its true sense. How they viewed the relation between keeping the law and being in the covenant cannot, however, even be guessed at on the basis of Philo’s comment. 90. Sifra, Shemini, pereq 12:4 (to Lev 11:45).

169

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

between God and the lsraelites (“confessing the exodus”), not earning salvation. “Denying” the commandments, on the other hand, means constructively denying the God who gave the commandments and who brought Israel out of Egypt (“denying the exodus”). “Denying,” that is, implies apostasy. We can glimpse the same view in Joseph and Asenath. Being in the covenant (a theosebēs who eats the bread of immortality), Joseph observes certain commandments: he will not eat with or intermarry with idolaters. Observing such commandments does not earn salvation; it is only the consequence of being among the saved and shows Joseph’s fidelity to the God who saves and commands. In rabbinic literature, and probably also in Philo, there are no sins which cannot be forgiven the penitent. In Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls, on the other hand, there are some sins which are unforgivable. That is, they are so heinous as to be tantamount to apostasy. In any case, while obedience to the law is the condition for remaining in the covenant (though not the means of earning grace), obedience need not be perfect. One should intend to obey and should generally obey. Only apostasy, the willful intent to persist in disobedience, and, in some forms of Judaism, certain heinous sins exclude one from the covenant and consequently from salvation. The combination of these two points will show to what a degree “covenantal nomism” was the religion of Judaism. By “covenantal nomism” I intend to describe the view according to which salvation comes by membership in the covenant, while obedience to the commandments preserves one’s place in the covenant. The term is preferable to “legalism,” which would generally describe the sort of view seen in IV Ezra, in which salvation is strictly according to an individual’s works, without respect to his membership in the covenant. In covenantal nomism the focus is not on the individual’s quest for salvation. God’s salvific promises extend to the group as such. The individual’s responsibility is to remain a member of the group in good standing (although he will also have a personal relationship with God). It has, however, become apparent in our discussion of Philo that the “nomism” part of “covenantal nomism” was for him a lesser level of religious experience and activity and that there was an individual religious quest which people already in the covenant should undertake. These concerns in many ways distinguish Philo sharply from the Alexandrian literalists and from all the Palestinian Jewish groups which have left literary remains. On the other hand, it is also noteworthy that Philo did not renounce covenantal nomism; to the

170

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

contrary, he seems to have required at least obedience to the commandments of the covenant and to have considered all within the “commonwealth” to be saved, even though the true aim of religion should be the mystical vision. 3. There is no uniformity of view on the question of whether or not the covenant is the exclusive soteriological category. Many Rabbis were prepared to allow for the salvation of “righteous Gentiles,” and so, apparently, was the author of II Baruch. The possibility would seem to be excluded in Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In many other Palestinian Jewish documents (e.g., the Psalms of Solomon) the question does not clearly arise. What is remarkable is that there is no clear evidence at all from Hellenistic Judaism that the salvation of Gentiles who did not convert was seen as possible. It is explicitly excluded in Joseph and Asenath, while one must regard the existence of the view that some Gentiles would be saved as a bare possibility in Philo. It is dubious if the reference to the piety of the king in the Letter of Aristeas has soteriological significance. From the evidence before us, it would seem that, in this sense, Hellenistic Judaism was more consistently exclusivist than Palestinian Judaism. One can well understand why, in the Diaspora, membership within the covenant would be more stringently insisted upon than in Palestine.91 4. We now come to the most important point. While there are remnants of one of the typical Palestinian views of the nature of salvation—the redemption and establishment of the people of Israel—in Hellenistic Judaism, there do not seem to be any elements of one of the typical Hellenistic views of the nature of salvation—realized salvation through a mystic rite or vision—in Palestine. I do not here have in mind the distinction between immortality and resurrection. It seems to be roughly correct that belief in immortality is typical of Hellenistic Judaism, while belief in the resurrection is typical of Palestinian Judaism, although the belief in immortality was also known.92 As long, however, as immortality refers to the state of the individual after death, and as long as immortality is considered the end of the righteous but not of the wicked (that is, as long as immortality is not considered the property of the soul as such), there seems to me to be little significance in the distinction between immortality and resurrection. I do not deny the distinction, but it does not seem 91. This observation is supported not only by Jewish sources, but also indirectly by pagan objections to Jewish exclusivism. See Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, I, 34–38. 92. On the general distinction, see Wolfson, Philo, I, 396.

171

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

necessarily instructive for understanding the character of the religion in question. The martyrs of IV Maccabees could as well have expected resurrection as immortality after death. In either case it is the reward of the one who dies for his religion. The significant distinction is between realized “eternal life” and post mortem eternal life. It is not said that the one who eats the bread and drinks the cup and is anointed with the ointment in Joseph and Asenath will gain life, but rather that such a person has life. In Philo, one who sees the logos escapes death and has eternal life. This is a motif which is missing, as far as I see, in Palestinian Judaism. The members of the covenant at Qumran doubtless considered themselves to be members of the group which would be saved, and they may have experienced proleptically the certainty of salvation93 (providing that they did not transgress in certain ways), but this is not quite the same as the realization of the reality of eternal life in Joseph and Asenath and in Philo.94 Thus there does not appear to be equal interpenetration. The view of what we have called ‘traditional Judaism’ did penetrate Hellenistic Judaism—it is, after all, enshrined in the Bible—but at least one of the views of Hellenistic Judaism—realized “life” by mystical participation in a rite or by vision—does not seem to have penetrated Palestine.95 This broad description will doubtless profit from further analysis and description, 93. Salvation is guaranteed but is future: 1QH 6:7f.; one who is in the covenant is nevertheless still “in sin” (1QH 4:27–36; 1QS 11:12). 94. For the possibility that there existed a visionary and ecstatic mysticism within tannaitic Judaism, see G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1961), ch. 2. and especially Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York, 1965). Even if one grants Scholem’s hypothesis, it is not clear that the mysticism which he describes was, in its early form, salvific. Scholem’s thesis, as it touches tannaitic Judaism, was subjected to a searching critique by Urbach, “Ha-Masorot ‘al Torat ha-Sod be-Tequfat ha-Tanna’im” (“The Traditions about Merkabah Mysticism in the Tannaitic Period”), Studies in Mysticism and Religion (Festschrift Gershom Scholem), ed. Urbach and others (Jerusalem, 1967). 95. We may now attempt a terminological clarification. I intend the term “traditional Judaism” to include all those forms of Judaism in which (1) the covenant between God and Israel was considered to endure; (2) the members of the covenant were expected to keep its commandments (whether or not they also interpreted them allegorically); (3) salvation was thought of as essentially future, whether as a national revival, individual immortality, or resurrection. Moore’s “normative Judaism,” Wolfson’s “native Judaism” and Heinemann’s “pure Judaism” all basically refer to rabbinic Judaism. “Normative Judaism” is accurate for what Moore intended: a description of the Judaism which became normative. See G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1927–30), III, v–vi. The term is misleading only when it is taken to mean that rabbinic religion was normative for all Jews in the first century. Wolfson sometimes includes other Palestinian Jewish literature than rabbinic in his term “native Judaism” (see Philo, II, 329, 331), in which case “native” simply replaces “Palestinian.” Since Wolfson generally has in mind rabbinic literature, however, the term “native Judaism” as a contrast to Philo may be misleading, since it seems to imply that “native” = rabbinic Judaism is prior to Philo (cf. Sandmel, Philo’s Place in Judaism, p. 23). I see no justification at all for Heinemann’s term “pure Judaism” (Bildung, pp. 568, 570).

172

THE COVENANT AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL CATEGORY

but it seems important here to indicate that there is at least one point of non-interpenetration between Hellenistic Judaism and Palestinian Judaism. And this point would seem significant for understanding the conceptual background of such New Testament writers as Paul and the author(s) of the Johannine literature.

173

7

God Gave the Law to Condemn

Providence in Paul and Josephus

When it was revealed to Paul that Jesus was God’s appointed agent for the salvation of the whole world, and that he, Paul, was to take this message to Gentiles, his new vision of the will of God naturally had an impact on things that he had always thought, but it did not change his most basic assumptions about God. He had probably always thought that God created the world and determined its history, or at least main aspects of its history. This is the standard view in his Scripture, the Hebrew Bible. We may also assume that he had always thought that there were three main moments in the history of God and Israel: the election of Abraham and his descendants (Galatians 3, Romans 4, and Romans 9), the exodus from Egypt (1 Cor 10:1–4), and the gift of the law through Moses (Galatians 3 and Romans 7). He then added to this history of salvation the overriding conviction that God sent his Son to save the entire world, both Jews and non-Jews. The new conviction complicated his previous views of the election of Israel (Romans 9–11) and the Mosaic law (Romans 7), since the death of Christ showed that they had not been sufficient to achieve God’s plan (Gal 2:21; 3:21), but he did not reject or disavow any of these steps in God’s dealing with his people. In this essay, I wish to discuss one of the ways in which Paul’s

175

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

probable pre-revelation theology interacted with his newest conviction and led to some of his most striking statements about God. The statements that I have in mind are those that, at first glance, seem least likely for a nice Jewish boy to have made: that God gave the law with the purpose of condemning everyone, especially those to whom he gave it. This attributes to God such apparently unjust or even reprehensible behavior that many people think that Paul did not mean what he said. He repeats it several times: in Galatians 3 and (with variations) in Romans 3, 4, and 5. He retracts it in Rom 7:7–13, but reasserts it (or at least the basic idea) in Romans 11.1 Thus, for example, Gal 3:22, “Scripture imprisoned all things under sin”; Rom 11:32, “God imprisoned all people in disobedience.”2 Paul had a solution to this plight: God would save everyone through Christ. But here I wish to concentrate on the point that he gave the law in order to imprison people under sin. The first thing that comes to mind is that this is post factum rationalization. Paul thought that everyone was condemned (since they all needed to be saved), and that God had given the law, and he put the two together in a causal sequence: God gave the law in order to condemn. It is this way of looking at the world, from results back to causes, that I wish to explore.3 To do this I shall start at what may seem to be a surprising place: the Jewish view that one should be willing to die for the law. In this essay I shall limit the evidence for the Jewish view to some passages in Josephus, though the history of the period from the Hasmonean revolt to the first revolt against Rome shows that a lot of Jews were willing to fight and die for their way of life.4 The relevance of this theme will soon become apparent.

1. On Paul’s retraction in Rom 7:7–13, see my Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983; London: SCM, 1985), 73f., and n. 35 below. 2. “It was added because of transgressions” (Gal 3:19a) is ambiguous if read on its own; if read in light of 3:22, “Scripture locked up all things under sin,” the meaning of 3:19a is that the law was “added” to create, increase, or define transgression (cf. Rom 3:20; 4:15; 5:20). Gal 3:19b–20, God ordained the law through a mediator, may show that Paul was uncomfortable with assigning the intent to condemn directly to God, but this is nevertheless the effect of 3:19–22, which is confirmed by Rom 11:32 and to some degree by the passages just cited from Romans 3, 4, and 5. 3. For Paul’s “backward” thinking, from solution to plight, see my Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 442–47, 474f., 481f., 497, 499, 510, 555. 4. On dying for the law—or for one’s own view of the law—see, e.g., my Judaism: Practice and Belief (London: SCM; Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1992; corrected ed., 1994), 37–43, 284f., 300f.

176

GOD GAVE THE LAW TO CONDEMN

Dying for the Law According to Josephus In several places in his histories, Josephus discusses the willingness to die rather than yield to those who wish to coerce transgression (as in the case of Antiochus IV Epiphanes),5 or, more generally, the willingness to die while resisting a threat to Jewish society and the Jewish way of life. This is his summary in Against Apion: Each individual, relying on the witness of his own conscience and the lawgiver’s prophecy, confirmed by the sure testimony of God, is firmly persuaded that to those who observe the laws and, if they must needs die for them, willingly meet death, God has granted a renewed existence and in the revolution of the ages the gift of a better life. (Ag. Ap. 2.218)6

Josephus adds, “I should have hesitated to write thus, had not the facts made all aware that many of our countrymen have on many occasions ere now preferred to brave all manner of suffering rather than to utter a single word against the Law” (Ag. Ap. 2.219). Though several passages that refer to events near the time of Paul are relevant, I shall quote from only two, beginning with the story of a minor uprising near the time of Herod’s death (4 BCE) that was incited by two “teachers”: they are called sophistai in J. W. 1.648, 650; men who gave “interpretations of the laws” in 1.649; “exegetes of the ancestral laws” in Ant. 17.149; and sophistai again in 17.152. Their names were Matthias son of Margalus and Judas son of Sepphoraeus. According to Josephus, they were “strict (or “precise,” akriboun} with regard to the ancestral [laws]” and consequently “enjoyed the highest esteem of the whole nation” (J. W. 1.648). These characterizations lead to the suggestion that the teachers may have been Pharisees, though for our purposes we need not pursue this question.7 Near the end of Herod’s life, when it appeared that he was too ill to take effective action, these two teachers, Judas and Matthias, encouraged the young men who listened to their lectures to pull down the golden eagle that Herod had erected over the gate of the temple. 5. Ant. 12.253–57. 6. This and other translations from Josephus are taken from Josephus in the Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), of various dates, frequently reprinted. In a few cases I have slightly modified the translations. 7. That the Pharisees were expert in the law need not be proved. On the akrib- root and the Pharisees, see Albert I. Baumgarten, “The Name of the Pharisees,” Journal of Biblical Literature 102 (1983): 411–28. There is a brief summary in Judaism: Practice and Belief, 420f. On influence and public esteem, see Judaism: Practice and Belief, 388–404.

177

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

They miscalculated Herod’s state, however, and the offenders were arrested. The king convened a public assembly in the theatre at Jericho and asked the crowd what should be done. The people, apprehensive of wholesale prosecutions, besought him to confine the punishment to the instigators of the deed and to those who had been arrested in the perpetration of it, and to forgo his anger against the rest. The king grudgingly consented; those who had let themselves down from the roof together with the teachers he had burnt alive; the remainder of those arrested he handed over to his executioners. (J. W. 1.648–55, quotation from 655; cf. Ant. 17.149–67)

Part of the message that Josephus attributes to these teachers is this: It is a noble deed to die for the law of one’s country; for the souls of those who came to such an end attained immortality and an eternally abiding sense of felicity; it was only the ignoble, uninitiated in their philosophy, who clung in their ignorance to life and preferred death on a sick-bed to that of a hero. (J. W. 1.650)8

Our second example of dying for the law comes from Josephus’s story of a band of Sicarii led by Eleazar, which held out against the Roman army at Matsada. When they finally had to face the inevitability of Rome’s conquest of the fortress, Eleazar persuaded them to commit mass suicide. I give a few snippets from the speeches that Josephus attributes to him: We ought . . . to have read God’s purpose [gnōmē] and to have recognized that the Jewish race, once beloved of Him, had been doomed to perdition. (J. W. 7.327)

The next passages are introduced by Josephus’s statement that the oration concerned “the immortality of the soul” (7.340): life, not death, is man’s misfortune. For it is death which gives liberty to the soul and permits it to depart to its own pure abode, there to be free from all calamity. (7.343f.) It is by God’s will [gnōmē] and of necessity [kat’ anagkas] that we are to die. (7.358)

8. The parallel in the Antiquities promises not eternal felicity to those who die for the law, but rather “eternal fame and glory” (17.152).

178

GOD GAVE THE LAW TO CONDEMN

The intervention of some more powerful cause has afforded [the Romans] the semblance of victory. (7.360)

Finally, Eleazar exhorts his followers: “Unenslaved by the foe let us die, as free men with our children and wives let us quit this life together! This our laws enjoin, this our wives and children implore of us. The need [anagkē] for this is of God’s sending [or ‘is by God’s command’]” (7.386f.).9 There are a lot of other passages on willingness to die for the law or for God: Judas the Galilean (Ant. 18.23); those who prostrated themselves and bared their necks to Roman swords in trying to get Pilate to remove Roman standards from Jerusalem (Ant. 18.55–59); the Jews who tried to persuade the legate of Syria not to place in the temple a statue as ordered by Gaius (Caligula), and who offered to die rather than see the temple profaned (Ant. 18.261–72)—and so on. What we must bear in mind is that Josephus wrote all these speeches and descriptions of motive. Over precisely the inner springs of action the ancient historian had absolute control. He might, of course, slant his descriptions of events; but what he had to create were speeches, including especially those that reveal individuals’ motives and beliefs. Josephus did not hear Eleazar’s oration, and he may have had no good source for the teaching of the exegetes who instigated the assault on the golden eagle. He attributed to one and all the views that he thought they should have had. His own explicitly held theology (see below, on Jotapata) was not much different from what he attributes to others: better to obey God than any other master; better to die in defense of the law than transgress it. These are views that, with a few variations, he ascribes to Judas and Matthias, Judas the Galilean and his Pharisaic ally Saddok, the rebel leader Eleazar, and himself—though, as we shall see, Josephus did not die for the law. Thus Josephus attributed willingness to die for the law, or for the God of Israel, to various leaders, and finally to the populace in general. As Josephus himself pointed out, when one looks at the history of insurgency and revolt one cannot think that he overstated the issue very much. God’s Providence in Josephus To repeat an earlier observation: Jews inherited from the Bible the 9. On the variant reading of the last verb, see H. St. John Thackeray’s note in the Loeb edition.

179

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

view that God governs the universe and controls history.10 This is important, since in studying Josephus and Paul I do not wish to claim that either one is unusual in holding this view. On the contrary, belief in God’s providence is part of common Judaism. And, as we shall see below, ideas of fate and providence were well known and widely accepted in the ancient world in general, as they are today. With this clarification, we continue with Josephus. In Josephus’s view, whatever happened, God planned. His presentation of Jewish history presupposes God’s providence throughout,11 though at individual points people have free choice. The usual Greek words for fate or providence appear often: pronoia (“providence”), tychē (“chance” or “fortune”), and anagkē (“necessity”); each of these words appears well over one hundred times in his surviving works. Gnōmē, which has a wider range of usages (“purpose,” “opinion,” “knowledge,” “consent,” etc.), occurs even more often. Heimarmenē (“fate” or “destiny”) is less common, occurring about twenty-two times.12 In the quotations above, we saw both gnōmē and anagkē used to refer to God’s will or determination. Though Josephus sometimes distinguishes one word from another (as in J. W. 3.391, cited below), he can also equate some of them: discussing tychē (“fortune”), which “has a power greater than all prudent reflection,” he explains, “for which reason we are persuaded that human actions are dedicated by her [tychē] beforehand to the necessity (anagkē) of taking place inevitably, and we call her Fate (heimarmenē) on the ground that there is nothing that is not brought about by her” (Ant. 16.397). The idea that God or fate controls history, however, is even more pervasive than a word study would indicate, and it is especially prominent in Josephus’s treatment of the Great Revolt and its 10. See, for example, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 248–51, 261f., 373–76, 415, 418f., 456f. I think that the thumbnail descriptions of the three parties, according to which the Sadducees reject fate (heimarmenē) altogether (J. W. 2.162–64; Ant. 13.172f.; 18.12–22), are an oversimplification by Josephus’s source, Nicolaus of Damascus. Just as the Dead Sea sect combined providence and free will, the Sadducees probably attributed some sort of providential care to God. In the early stages of the Great Revolt, the Roman legate withdrew his troops from Jerusalem. It was then that the Sadducean high priest Ananus joined the rebels and led the government (J. W. 2.540, 562; Life 17–24). Perhaps he saw God’s hand at work in the withdrawal of Roman forces. 11. Two examples: at the time of Moses, the Israelites believed that “nothing happened without God’s providence” (pronoia), though divine favor toward Moses also played a part (Ant. 4.60); at the time of David God’s power and providence were clear because predicted events came to pass (Ant. 8.109). 12. Some of the principal words for “fate” in classical Greek literature—aisa, moros, morsimos, and potmos—occur seldom or never in Josephus’s writings. Asios (“auspicious”) appears once. The exception is moira, which appears often, but usually with the meaning “lot” in the sense of “part” or “portion,” rather than “destined lot.”

180

GOD GAVE THE LAW TO CONDEMN

aftermath (66–74 CE). As Tessa Rajak has explained, one of his main opinions was the divinely planned transference of power to the Roman side. God, or the Deity, or Fate, or Destiny, or Providence, or Chance had decided that the Romans should be victorious. . . . Vespasian was the chosen agent. . . . In the furtherance of this objective, specific Roman successes and Jewish disasters had been arranged, and the Jews rendered blind. 13

Josephus’s most succinct statement is, “fortune [tychē] has wholly passed to the Romans,” a statement that he attributes to himself, in a prayer to God, when the Romans had him and his party cornered near Jotapata. In this moment he recalled his dreams (through which God had tried to communicate with him), and he understood God’s will for him: to be a messenger who proclaimed that God intended Rome to crush the Jews and to reign supreme (J. W. 3.351–54).14 In the course of the story, he argues that it is noble to die in war for God, but wrong to commit suicide (3.365). His companions chose suicide. His own life was spared either because of tychē or God’s pronoia (3.391), which gave him the opportunity to explain God’s intention toward Rome and the Jewish state. His role as God’s intended emissary both explains and justifies his own survival. In addition to attributing the defeat of the Jews and the destruction of Jerusalem to God’s plan, however, Josephus could also view them as punishment for transgression (e.g., J. W. 7.332f.). Assassins had shed blood in the sanctuary, and God brought the Romans to purge the city and the temple with fire (J. W. 4.323; 6.110; Ant. 20.166; cf. J. W. 2.455); the people had broken the law—for example, by waging offensive war on the Sabbath (J. W. 2.517)—and they deserved punishment.15 There were also less serious transgressions that merited chastisement—less serious from our point of view—such as the decision of Agrippa II and his council to let the Levites wear linen robes, as did the priests, and to allow the singers to sing the hymns from memory, without holding the heavy scrolls. “All this was contrary to the ancestral laws, and such transgression was bound to make us liable to punishment” (Ant. 20.216–18). Because of such acts of free will, Jews deserved to be 13. Tessa Rajak, Josephus: the Historian and His Society (London: Duckworth, 1983), 99. 14. On Josephus’s conception of himself as a prophet, or at least as a person with some of the characteristics of a prophet, see Rebecca Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine: The Evidence from Josephus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), chap. 2. 15. Since the period of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Jews had allowed fighting on the Sabbath when they were under direct attack: 1 Macc 2.41; Ant. 12.276f.; 14.53; J. W. 1.146.

181

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

punished. In his providence, God ordained it. The rationales that justify punishment fall under the heading “theodicy”: they preserve the idea of God’s justness. In theory, the rebellious Jews could have perceived God’s intention prior to the fall of Jerusalem. After Vespasian departed for Rome, where he was declared emperor (princeps), God’s favor, at least within Jewish Palestine, fixed on Vespasian’s son, Titus. According to one story, Titus was reconnoitering, without his armor, when he was cut off from his scouting party by an ambush. The hail of arrows missed him, and he escaped unharmed. This showed, according to Josephus, that “the hazards of war and the perils of princes are under God’s care” (J. W. 5.54–66). Later he notes that “there is no escape from Fate (heimarmenē), for works of art and places [the temple] any more than for living beings” (J. W. 6.267). The rebels might have seen the escape of Titus as a portent or sign of God’s intention toward Rome. In fact, there were a lot of omens along with way (J. W. 6.288–309), but “the Jews” had either interpreted them “to please themselves,” or they had treated them “with contempt” (6.315). Josephus piously observes that God cares for people, “and by all kinds of premonitory signs shows his people the way of salvation, while they owe their destruction to folly and calamities of their own choosing” (J. W. 6.310–15). Josephus’s theologizing is very much after the fact. He knows the outcome: Vespasian, who started the campaign against the rebellious Jews, now governed the empire; his son Titus, who finished the conquest, succeeded him; Jerusalem was destroyed, while Rome flourished. Looking backwards, through the lens of those last great facts, Josephus saw the conclusion as planned by God, and he then construed events leading up to the destruction as also planned by God. In hindsight, he saw God as warning the Jews along the way that this would happen. They exercised free will, they refused to understand the oracles and portents correctly, they clung to their own path and ignored God’s, and so they correctly met their doom. God determined the outcome; they deserved it. This is a powerful theology, because it explains everything. Its weakness is seen when we note that it is subject to ridicule. It was easy for Josephus in retrospect to say that what actually happened was planned, since in retrospect God’s plan can readily be made to coincide perfectly with what actually happened. The hard part—the work of prophets and other interpreters of signs, dreams, and oracles—was figuring out in advance what God intended. But since the days of the

182

GOD GAVE THE LAW TO CONDEMN

great prophets, this generally did not happen.16 So God gave portents of the coming doom that could not be interpreted correctly, at least not until after Vespasian’s conquest of Jotapata and the revelation to Josephus. And by then it was too late; the Jews were set on continuing the fight against Rome, and they refused to heed the message of the one man who understood God’s plan—Josephus. We may raise our eyebrows at these explanations, after the fact, of God’s intention, his efforts to convey it, and human obstinacy. We may also respond with ridicule, scorn, or amusement to the statements that God’s oversight is seen in the control of the arrows aimed at Titus, and that God punished the people because Agrippa II gave the Levites some privileges. Both of these proposals seem to trivialize the idea of divine providence. Before we rush into ridicule, however, we should pause to consider providence more broadly. The general idea of God’s providence, though it may sometimes be trivialized, includes the idea that God wills what is good for the entire universe. This idea, in turn, is tied to the doctrine of creation. God created the universe, he cares for it, he governs it, and his will toward it is beneficent.17 Few will find this ridiculous; many have found and do find it comforting. Any theology that can see the entire created order in such a positive light is a noble one. The doctrine of creation, with which the general idea of God’s providence is allied, is one of Judaism‘s noblest gifts to humanity. Josephus may sometimes have trivialized it, but everything can be trivialized and demeaned. Love can become manipulation, and governments can make a travesty of democracy. Great principles have the power to survive and be rekindled, and so it is with Judaism’s great doctrine. Providence in Paul’s Letters Paul discussed the history of salvation in terms of predestination. God foreordained that gentiles would be saved by faith, apart from law (Gal 3:8). In former times he had chosen some people but rejected others, without regard to their individual merits (Rom 9:15–18, 22f.). Most fully: 16. On the significance of the view that “prophecy had ceased,” and the limited meaning of that phrase, see Gray, Prophetic Figures, chap. 1. 17. The Epicureans were wrong, because they refused to believe that “the universe is directed by a blessed and immortal Being to the end that the whole of it [ta sumpanta] may endure”: Ant. 10.278.

183

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose [or plan, prothesis]. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined [proōrisen] to be conformed to the image of his Son. . . . And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Rom 8:28–30)

Despite foreordination and predestining grace, people had free will. They needed actively “to call on the name of the Lord” and to “confess with the lips” in order to be saved (Rom 10:10–13). And, further, all were responsible for their own deeds and would be judged for them (e.g., Rom 2:13; 1 Cor 5:10). (We shall return to freewill below.) Looking back through the lens of the appearance of Christ to him, Paul saw everything as leading up to Christ, and the rest of history as being determined by God’s eternal plan to save the world through him. The revelation drove Paul to preach to the gentiles. Looking back, he saw the election of Abraham himself as pointing toward the inclusion of the gentiles: Scripture said in advance, “In you will all the Gentiles be blessed” (Gal 3:8; quoting Gen 18:18). Since God, in Paul’s new insight, had sent Christ to save the world, it was necessary to conclude that he had not previously provided for its salvation. Thus the lead-up to universal salvation was negative: Paul had to see the entire world as needing salvation. What preceded Christ served to put it in the condition of need—that is, condemnation. To apply this to the law of Moses: since God always intended to send Christ to save, he must have given the law for some other purpose, and here Paul attributed to him the intention with which we opened: the law was given to condemn, so that all could be saved by God’s mercy as manifested in Christ (Gal 3:22). Finally, however, God‘s beneficent purpose toward all would be accomplished. Paul did not know precisely how: it is a mystery, but somehow all Israel will be saved (Rom 11:25f.). And not only Israel: “For God has imprisoned all people in disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all” (Rom 11:32). Condemnation had included the entire created order (Scripture imprisoned ta panta, all things, under sin, Gal 3:22), but so would salvation: The whole creation “has been groaning in travail together until now” (Rom 8:22), and redemption lies ahead: “the creation [ktisis] was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:20f.). 184

GOD GAVE THE LAW TO CONDEMN

We would not want to say that Paul trivialized the doctrine of God’s providence. He focused salvation on faith in Christ, which nonChristians will find to be the wrong focus, or too narrow a focus, but the grandeur of the theology of creation and providence is fully present, and in Paul’s vision of the future its scope is universal. With regard to the future, it seems that Josephus himself thought that the destruction of Jerusalem was not final and that Israel would eventually arise again. He was not going to write this directly, given his circumstances: living in Rome, supported by a stipend from the ruling family. There are two clues. One is his discussion of Daniel. He noted that Daniel had predicted the profanation of the temple by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, as well as its restoration; and he pointed out that both came to pass. Daniel, he wrote, also predicted the coming of the Roman Empire. Here he broke off and commented generally on God’s providence, which governs human affairs (Ant. 10.276–81). I do not doubt that he felt constrained from saying that the Roman Empire too would come to an end and that Jerusalem would be restored. Earlier about Daniel he had written this: And Daniel also revealed to the king [Nebuchadnezzar] the meaning of the stone, but I have not thought it proper to relate this, since I am expected to write of what is past and done and not of what is to be; if, however, there is anyone who has so keen a desire for exact information that he will not stop short of inquiring more closely but wishes to learn about the hidden things that are to come, let him take the trouble to read the Book of Daniel, which he will find among the sacred writings. (Ant. 10.210)

Surely this is a broad hint of what Josephus thought would come: something that he could not write. The person who follows the explicit hint and reads Daniel will see that Israel will destroy all the opposing kingdoms and endure forever (Dan 2:44f.). Similarly, in J. W. Josephus attributed to himself a speech to the defenders of Jerusalem, arguing that God now intended Rome to rule: “God, who went the round of the nations, bringing to each in turn the rod of empire, now rested over Italy” (J. W. 5.367): now rested, would not rest there in the future. Any decent exegete would see the force of the word now.18 18. “The Lord shall trouble you this day” (Josh 7:25) was understood to mean “and therefore he will not trouble you in the world to come”: “this day” implies another day that will be different (m. Sanh. 6.2). Similarly, Paul remembered Gen 2:7 as saying “the first man, Adam, became a living being.” The word first implies that there will be a “second” or a “last” Adam, which is what he immediately concludes (1 Cor 15:45).

185

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Josephus’s theology of providence, in other words, allowed him to fit in the great calamity of 70 CE. The most awful things are thus attributed to God: planning the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, with massive loss of life, and slavery for the survivors, and calling on the Romans to do the dirty work. Our priest, Pharisee, and historian could, however, look beyond this to a more hopeful future, though he could not write about it except in hints. The God who went the round of the nations would sometime bring Rome down and restore Israel. Paul’s thought about the law was structurally the same. What he saw as its awful consequence, the condemnation of all, he attributed directly to God’s will; but he also attributed to him the intention ultimately to save people from the condition into which he had put them. That is to say, Paul, like Josephus, thought “backwards” (n. 3 above), from the outcome to its causes. History was then reread forward: at the time of Abraham God already intended to save all by faith in Christ; later he gave the law to condemn the entire world; finally he sent Christ. This way of thinking is one of the results of a firm belief in God’s control of history.19 Freewill We now return to the observation that freewill plays a part in both Josephus and Paul. Neither knew that freewill and fate are incompatible. Both thought that God controls everything and that people could choose to act one way or the other and were responsible for their actions. The same combination is visible in Qumran. The members of the community were both the chosen and the volunteers. God selected them for his lot; they had to dedicate themselves to it and scrupulously observe the commandments of the order, or else face punishment or expulsion.20 In ancient Greece one sees the same mixture.21 The gods control 19. To our minds, any history of salvation that consists of steps separated by several generations raises the question of what happens to people who lived before the culminating step. Did God expect Israelites before Moses to obey the law? Would he save people who lived prior to Christ? Such interesting questions as these lie beyond the scope of this paper, though they arise naturally and merit attention. 20. Paul and Palestinian Judiasm, 257–70. 21. In this discussion I am primarily indebted to Max Pohlenz, Die Stoa: Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Göttingen, 1959), plus passages on fate and free found in Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. Hans Friedrich August von Arnim (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1903; reprint: München, Leipzig: K. G. Sauri, 2004) 2:974–1007.

186

GOD GAVE THE LAW TO CONDEMN

everything, and people are responsible for their own deeds.22 Prior to the Stoics, according to Pohlenz, the Greeks saw no conflict between fate and freewill. I take two examples from his study: (1) In Aeschylus’s play Agamemnon, the chorus reflects on a complex web of blood guilt—a series of acts, each requiring retribution—and wonders what the outcome will be. The chorus puts the problem thus: “And were it not that one fate ordained of the gods doth restrain another fate from winning the advantage, my heart would outstrip my tongue and pour forth its boding.”23 That is, the gods control everything; the only uncertainty arises from their competing ordinances. Yet when the murders of Agamemnon and Cassandra are carried out, the villainess, Clytaemestra, claims to be innocent: her form was taken over by a long-dead man, and it was he who wreaked vengeance on Agamemnon (lines 1497–1504). Then the chorus says, “That thou art guiltless of this murder—who will bear thee witness? Nay, Nay!” (line 1505). On the one hand, one can believe that retribution runs its unalterable course and that the gods determine all, and on the other that the people who perform each deed must bear the responsibility for it. (2) The second example shows that prior to the Stoics not only dramatists but also philosophers could combine destiny and free will. The Athenian in Plato’s Laws (904 c–d) states that “all things that have part in soul change, for the cause of change lies within themselves, and as they change they move in accord with the ordinance and law of destiny.” Here the starting point of the soul’s direction is the individual’s to control; but once started, whether toward good or ill, destiny takes over. The Stoics arose to disturb the sleep of some by posing the problem of fate and freewill in a way that thinkers could not escape. The founder of the school, Zeno, was charged with so emphasizing destiny that he denied human responsibility. The orthodox Stoic answer was that a person was free to accept willingly his or her place in the causal nexus, or not. Rejection of destiny would not alter events, but only damage one’s inner virtue. Despite accusations from outside the school and the apparent logic of their position on fate and providence, which 22. “As the rational shaping and maintaining power, Pronoia is identical with Logos and Nature (physis). It is the Deity, seen from a particular point of view (von einer bestimmten Seite her gesehen). From another point of view, it appears as Fate (heimarmenē)”: Pohlenz, Die Stoa, 1:101. He continues by noting that the Greek feeling of freedom was too great to allow freewill to be surrendered. 23. On the web of blood guilt, see especially lines 1331–39 in Aeschylus, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library, trans. H. Weir Smyth, Agamemnon (London: Heinemann, 1926). The quotation on fate is from lines 1025–29.

187

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

seems to imply a loss of freewill, Stoics were in general “compatibilists,” combining fate with free human activity that is morally responsible.24 But left to their own devices, those Jews and Greeks who were innocent of Stoic philosophy, and who did not know that there was a problem, in general thought that the world runs as God (or the gods) wishes25 and that people act on their own and are responsible for their choices. I take this to be the normal state. One would suspect the influence of Stoicism if one were to see in a given author selfconsciousness about the difficulty of combining divine providence and freewill. Josephus was aware of Stoic philosophy and knew something of its content (Life 12; Ag. Ap. 2.168). In one passage he opposes his idea of providence to the Epicurean view, here perhaps consciously siding with the Stoics (Ant. 10.277). In saying that the Pharisees combined fate and freewill,26 he (or possibly his source, Nicolaus of Damascus) seems to show awareness that there was potentially a problem—a problem raised by the Stoics. Josephus does not, however, show any knowledge of how one might respond to the difficulty. He simply asserts both that God chose to back the Romans and to destroy Jerusalem, and that this came as the consequence of the Jews’ transgressions, which they could have avoided. Similarly, Paul wrote both that God gave the law with the purpose of creating transgression and condemnation, but also that this happened “because all people sinned” (Rom 5:12). He thought that Israel had rejected the Christian message because God had hardened them (2 Cor 3:14; Rom 11:7, 25), but also because they would not heed the gospel (Rom 10:16). God gave them a spirit of stupor and eyes that would not see (Rom 11:8, paraphrasing Deut 29:3 [English text, 29:4]; Isa 29:10), but he also held out his hands to a disobedient people, hoping for their return (10:21). Paul told the gentiles that they had come into the new people of God because of their faith, while many Jews were cut out for lack of faith; but the gentiles had to beware: they would be cut off if they did not “continue in his kindness.” The Jews would be grafted back in “if they do not persist in their unfaith” (Rom 11:19–23). These 24. According to Pohlenz (Die Stoa, 1:101–6), the Stoics retained belief in responsibility and guilt for wrong deeds, though the person could have chosen no other. The term compatabilists is from Julia Annas, “Stoicism,” Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1446. 25. I leave aside the complex issue of how the gods relate to impersonal fate in Greek literature. 26. See the passages on Jewish parties and heimarmenē above, n. 10.

188

GOD GAVE THE LAW TO CONDEMN

last passages presuppose freedom of choice; yet Paul also wrote, “it depends not upon people’s will or effort, but upon God’s mercy” (9:16). Paul shows some consciousness of the problems inherent in combining fate or providence and freewill. “You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’ But who are you . . . to answer back to God?” (Rom 9:19f.). Since both Paul and Josephus were at least a little conscious of the problem created by combining human free will and divine determination, should we conclude that they had read Stoic literature? We cannot exclude that as a possibility, but their slight concern with the question inclines me to think that both acquired their theology from the same source: the Bible and current Jewish thought, which may well have been affected by the debate stirred by early Stoicism. 27 Many New Testament scholars seem to have an innate desire to systematize, and this may lead some readers to think that Josephus or Paul had a simpler theology: people sinned, and only afterward did God decide that punishment was their fate. This would simplify the issue but would underestimate the degree to which people believed in God’s providence, or fate, or destiny. They did not want to put everything down to human choice and God’s reactions to it. It has long been a comfort to many people to believe that God watches over us and cares for us. Some consideration of modern people may be worthwhile. During most of his life, Benjamin Franklin was religiously a skeptic, close to agnosticism, but as he aged he moved from being a skeptical deist toward something closer to normal Christianity. Earlier he thought that to God “our particular little affairs are perhaps below notice.”28 Later, however, when he spoke at the Constitutional Convention (1787), he recalled that at the Continental Congress (1774–76) members had prayed for illumination, and he offered his present opinion: Our prayers were heard, sir, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed the frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favour. Have we 27. This suggestion assumes that knowledge of Stoic debates may have been so pervasive that consciousness of the problem of combining determination and free will was “in the air,” as, today, knowledge of Freud’s theory of an active unconscious mind is “in the air” and is accepted by people who have never read Freud. This seems plausible, but I cannot consider the suggestion to be more than tentative. 28. H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Doubleday 2000; pbk. repr., Anchor Books, 2002), 420. The quotation is from a letter to evangelist George Whitefield.

189

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

forgotten that powerful Friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need its assistance? . . . The longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? [The Bible says,] “except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this. 29

Belief in providence has persisted in the modern world, both when considering good outcomes (as in the case of Franklin) and when contemplating unpleasant results. Until recent years, insurance policies often mentioned “acts of God,” referring to natural disasters: people see God’s hand at work in devastation as well as in nation building. The destruction of Lisbon by an earthquake and tidal wave on All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1755, while the churches were thronged, was so horrible that some questioned the goodness and providence of God, but most people continued to hold God accountable for natural calamities. More recently, the horrific tsunami (2004) and the destructive hurricanes along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico (2005) have led to similar questions, without by any means eradicating the view that God directly intends and controls weather and earthquakes. My general impression of current opinion is that people are a little less ready to attribute to God the even more terrible acts of humans, such as the destruction of thirty-five million people or so during the Second World War and the mass slaughter of Jews, Gypsies, and other “undesirables” by the Nazis. Yet the Holocaust has led to theological questions, since it seems to challenge the doctrine of the election. Such colossal devastation, like the destruction of Jerusalem and the death or enslavement of thousands of Jews, seems disproportionate to any possible transgressions, if nothing is going on other than sin and punishment. And thus many people still cast their eyes to heaven and say, “We don’t know why you did it, but you must have your reasons.” If many modern people, though enlightened by scientific research into natural causes, and though well aware of human murderousness, cling to belief in divine destiny, we can hardly find it surprising that the ancients earnestly believed in it. Returning to the ancient world, we also see the depth of belief that God governs all in the numerous statements in the Bible, and in later Jewish and Christian tradition, to the effect that God hardens hearts,

29. Ibid., 677f.

190

GOD GAVE THE LAW TO CONDEMN

or blinds people, or deafens them (as in Rom 11:7–10), so that they will rush headlong to their fate, which he decreed.30 And many modern people, just like ancient ones, combine the idea of divine control with human free will and continue to hold individuals responsible for their deeds. This might even be the “default” state of the human brain, and it should not surprise us that Josephus and Paul took the positions that they did. Providence, Freewill, and Dying for the Law We now return to the issue of dying for the law. Josephus appears not to have been a very profound theologian, and he may not have been conscious of a connection between providence, freewill, and dying for the law. But there is one. Once one turns over the control of history to fate or God, one’s only real choice, as the Stoics saw, is either to consent cheerfully to one’s place in the sequence of cause and effect, or to be dragged along by fate, screaming and kicking. Josephus thought that, once God decided that Rome would now predominate, there was really nothing that individual Jews could do but go along with that situation—as he did—or refuse to go along and die. He blamed the Sicarii for a lot of the trouble that came upon the Jews, but the orations that he wrote for Eleazar at Matsada show that he also admired the people who chose the second path—death—and he apparently saw them as gaining thereby eternal felicity (as did the sophistai who challenged Herod). That is, since Jews loved the one true God, who holds not only history but also eternity in his hands, they could opt out of determined history: go against it and refuse to submit to Rome, since submission would mean obeying some master other than God. They would die, thus escaping the providence that required their subjugation, and they would thereby win. As Eleazar put it, in words carefully written for him by Josephus, “Unenslaved by the foe let us die, as free men with our children and wives let us quit this life together!” (J. W. 7.386). In the present circumstances, it is “life, not death that is human misfortune. For it is death which gives liberty to the soul and permits it to depart to its own pure abode” (7.343f.). 30. See Heikki Räisänen, The Idea of Divine Hardening: A Comparative Study of the Notion of Divine Hardening, Leading Astray and Inciting to Evil in the Bible and the Qur’ân, Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 25 (Helsinki, 1972). The book includes a chapter on postbiblical Judaism, but it does not cover post–New Testament Christianity.

191

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Perhaps Josephus did partially see the connection that I am pointing out, but even if so I doubt that he quite saw that what could be escaped only by death was the history that, in his theology, God controlled. God, in his providence, had created a situation from which death provided the only release. Those who embraced God’s will, as did Josephus, could live reasonably good and beneficial lives. Those who resisted it, but happened to survive, endured the painful results of God’s will—slavery, loss of loved ones, and so on—without the release afforded by immediate death, which brought eternal felicity. Now it need only be added that Paul, too, saw death as the escape from the enslavement decreed by God. Paul’s terminology (“imprison,” Gal 3:22; Rom 11:32) is even very similar to a sentence in Josephus.31 In Paul’s view, the enslaving power was the law, rather than the circumstances of history. God had given the law to condemn, and it worked. The only way out was death—metaphorical or spiritual death, dying with Christ to the old order. Being sometimes infelicitous with figures of speech, he offered this imperfect analogy: “The law is binding on a person only during life. Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning the husband.” In the application, it is the person who wants freedom who dies, not the person’s spouse: “Likewise . . . you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another” (Rom 7:1–4). Paul’s idea of mystical or participatory death, by sharing in Christ’s death, is a long way from anything that Josephus thought. But the problem and the solution are structurally the same. God has deliberately created a situation from which only death liberates. They also arrived at their views in the same way: by thinking backwards, by observing the present circumstances and attributing to God’s providence whatever led up to them. It has frequently appeared preferable to students of Paul to see his view of the law’s condemning function not as based on standard Jewish theology—God planned whatever happens—but rather as deriving from his own experience of living under the law, combined with close observation of others. It is easy for a modern person—post–John Locke, who explained that all knowledge is ultimately based on sense perception and therefore accumulates slowly, and post–Robert Boyle, 31. When Jerusalem fell, “the whole nation had been shut up by fate (heimarmenē) as in a prison (synekleisthē)” (J. W. 6.428). Paul uses the same verb, though the imprisoning power is either God or Scripture, rather than fate.

192

GOD GAVE THE LAW TO CONDEMN

who insisted on experiments to establish scientific information inductively, rather than deducing facts from assumed principles32—to think that Paul’s mind ran the same way: he looked at other people’s failures, he perceived his own (supposed) difficulty in obeying the law, he added up his observations, and so he inductively, even sociologically, concluded that because of repeated sins people end up condemned by the law.33 I am proposing a nonmodern, nonpsychologizing, ancient theological way of looking at things: from the outcome, we know what God intended. God sent Christ to save: therefore everyone needed salvation; therefore the law does not save; therefore God gave it for some other purpose; therefore he intended to lock all up under sin until Christ appeared. In the two cases that we have considered (God’s intention to destroy Jerusalem and his giving the law to condemn), we have seen that Josephus and Paul sometimes regard the dire consequences as due to human transgression (“because all sinned,” as Paul put it). Despite this, neither refers to repentance, atonement, and forgiveness as means of escape, but only to death. Scholars have often noticed the curious absence of repentance from Romans 5–7 (and elsewhere):34 only dying to the law suffices if one is to escape its condemning power. The Sicarii on Matsada consider only death, not mass repentance and contrition. Nor does Yôm Kippûr figure in either Paul or Josephus at the points in question—or, in the case of Paul, anywhere else. I think that the explanation is that in both cases the result of God’s determination was regarded as so definite and so catastrophic that the ordinary means of atonement just did not count. Death atones (e.g., 1 Cor 5:5; 11:30–32), and when God made his mind up either to destroy (Jerusalem, along 32. I offer an illustration of a fact deduced from the assumed principle that “nature abhors a void”: therefore the space between the bodies of the solar system must have been filled with a viscous substance of some sort. This view, championed by Descartes, was disproved by Isaac Newton’s mathematics, which showed that the motions of bodies within our solar system were completely accounted for by the laws of gravity, and that any substantial amount of matter in space would have resulted in different planetary movements. 33. E.g., J. Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 82, 242. 34. On the very minor role of repentance in Paul’s authentic letters (that is, omitting Colossians and Ephesians), two of the most perceptive scholars are George Foot Moore and John Knox. Moore asked how a Jew of Paul’s antecedents could by implication deny the central Jewish doctrine of repentance and forgiveness: Judaism in the First Three Centuries of the Common Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), 3:151. One of Knox’s points was that Paul dealt inadequately with sin as transgression, and thus he failed to offer a solution to guilt: Chapters in a Life of Paul (New York: Abingdon, 1950), 141–59. I attempted to respond to these problems, which too few have taken seriously, in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 498–502, and to a lesser extent in Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 28, 107–9, 129. The present paragraphs are in part a further attempt to explain and clarify Paul’s thought on an issue that Moore, with his usual insight, points out, though he finds Paul’s omission to be inexplicable.

193

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

with many Jews) or condemn (humanity), only death could provide an escape. One does not escape bondage—whether under Rome or under the law—by repenting, no matter how sincerely. If Paul actually derived his view of universal human condemnation from social observation of transgression, he should have come forward with repentance and other means of atonement—about which he could not conceivably have been ignorant. That he did not do so is a function of his dogmatic view: all people are condemned because that is the way God wants it; that this is the way God wants it stems from the dogma that the only redemption is provided by the death of Christ, which humans may share spiritually or metaphorically. If repentance and animal sacrifice—which the Bible prescribes as the cure for transgression—worked, Christ died in vain (Gal 2:21). But Christ did not die in vain, since he appeared to Paul. Thus Paul’s mind ran from his vision of Christ, to the necessity of salvation through Christ, to the absolute grip of condemnation apart from Christ. This is all theology, not social description of humanity. Everyone knew that to err is human: that is a commonplace (e.g., Eccles 7:20, referred to in Rom 3:10). If that were all there is to human sin, repentance would suffice. But the situation was much more grievous: God intended to condemn, and he sent Christ as the sovereign and sole means to escape the results. Josephus would have understood all this, had he shared Paul’s first conviction: Christ lives and is the means of salvation for all. One may propose that it would be better not to attribute present evil conditions to the will of God at all, or that doing so is the result of a deficient theology. That is, however, where ancient monotheism usually led. Before denouncing it, we would have to consider the alternatives. In the ancient world the main one was dualism: a bad god is in charge of this world.35 There are a lot of drawbacks to that position as well. It is probably better, as we study our ancient sources, to wrestle with the problems of monotheism, the doctrine of the creation, and the

35. I have intentionally omitted from discussion the times when Paul’s commitment to monotheism seems to waver, as in Rom 7:7–13 (sin hijacked the law and used the commandment to lead people to covet) and 2 Cor 4:4 (the “god of this eon” has deceived the unbelievers, rather than that God blinded them, as in Rom 11:7–10). I take these and other cases (which are fairly numerous) to be times when Paul took the easy way out: a touch of dualism can help explain results that a monotheist does not wish to attribute to God. In the main passages where he faces the tension between God’s previous acts (the election of Israel and the giving of the law), on the one hand, and his new dispensation (the sending of Christ), on the other (the rest of Romans 7 and 9–11), Paul is what I call a “brave monotheist,” attributing even adverse effects to God’s will.

194

GOD GAVE THE LAW TO CONDEMN

idea of God’s providence, than to cope with the alternative. Who longs for the good old days of Marcion?36 I think, in short, that at the very point where Paul seems to break so decisively with everything for which Judaism stands, when he states that God gave the law to condemn and enslave, and that one must die with Christ to escape, he was being very Jewish. He was facing the problem caused by monotheism and providence: the theology that whatever happens is the result of the will of the only God. Why Paul picked on the law, instead of the circumstances of history, is another question. If we pursued it, we would see that even this choice shows that he stayed within the framework of Jewish problems and solutions. Since he thought that the climactic revelation of God came in Jesus, he naturally had to ask about the status of the principal prior revelation, the giving of the law. His eye, that is, was fixed on Heilsgeschichte rather than on ordinary Geschichte, on the history of salvation rather than on political, military, social, and individual circumstances. But in charging God with the present evil state, and in looking to death as the way out, he was as good a Jew as he could be, once one grants that the recent revelation to him gave him a new lens, through which he viewed all else.

36. In modern times there have been substantial efforts to retain monotheism without accepting God’s tight control of history and nature. One thinks of deists and process theologians, for example. Having been brought up in the Methodist Church, I am grateful to divine providence for leading John Wesley to accept the teaching of Arminius!

195

8

Literary Dependence in Colossians

The question of the authenticity of Colossians remains an unsolved problem of NT research.1 Several scholars have rejected the idea of Pauline authorship, being principally influenced by the differences in style, theology, and vocabulary between Colossians and the indisputable Pauline letters. Others, such as Percy, who has given a detailed analysis of the problems, have held that such differences as exist are not sufficient to disprove the authenticity of the letter.2 H. J. Holtzmann’s view, that Colossians as we have it is a heavily edited form of an original letter, the editing having been done by the author of Ephesians, has not gone altogether unsupported, and even seems to be gaining ground. While no scholar has adopted Holtzmann’s precise analysis, some have agreed with his view in principle. 3 1. I am grateful to Professors John Knox and Louis Martyn for reading and commenting on this paper. The sections which deal with the bearing of this study on the hypothesis that Col 1:15–20 is a hymn have especially profited from discussions with Professor Martyn. Those who have so kindly advised me are not, of course, responsible for any errors either of fact or interpretation. 2. E. Percy, Die Probleme der Kolosser- und Epheserbriefe. Those who have denied the Pauline authorship include such men as Bultmann, Schlier, and Käsemann. Moffatt, Goguel, Dibelius, Percy, Moule, and Kümmel are among those who defend the authenticity of Colossians. For bibliographical references and more names on each side of the controversy, see Percy, 6; W. G. Kümmel (FeineBehm-Kümmel), Einleitung in das neue Testament13, 245ff. 3. Holtzmann’s view was set forth in 1872 in Kritik der Epheser- und Kolosserbriefe. Charles Masson has adopted this general position in his commentary on Colossians (Commentaire du Nouveau Testament, x, 1950). Holtzmann’s theory was accepted in principle, but not in its particulars, by C. R. Bowen, “The Original Form of Paul’s Letter to the Colossians,” JBL, 43 (1924), 177–206. John

197

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

The value of Holtzmann’s general position is that it offers an explanation of how Colossians can at once be more like Ephesians than it is like any other letter ascribed to Paul, and yet unlike Ephesians at many significant points. It stands, so to say, midway between the indisputable Pauline letters and Ephesians. If it were more like the Hauptbriefe, there would be no difficulty in ascribing it to Paul. If it were more like Ephesians, there would be little difficulty in ascribing it to the author of that epistle. As it is, opinion is divided. Its precise relationship to Paul’s undisputed letters and to Ephesians is undecided. It is the purpose of this paper to elucidate the relationship between Colossians and the other Pauline letters, leaving Ephesians out of consideration.4 We may recall that Goodspeed,5 followed by Mitton,6 explained the relation between Ephesians and Paul’s letters (including Colossians) as being one of literary dependence. Goodspeed was convinced on other grounds that Ephesians was not by Paul, but Mitton more explicitly employed the parallels between Ephesians and Paul’s letters to show that Ephesians was written by a later author. According to these scholars, this author had access to all of the letters of Paul which have become canonical. The evidence which follows seems to indicate that there is a similar relation between certain portions of Colossians and the seven indisputable Pauline letters—Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.7 If the evidence which follows is valid, it presents another, and, to my mind, very weighty point to be considered in assessing the authorship of Colossians.8 Knox should also be placed in this category, even though he has never stated explicitly just which passages he would ascribe to the later editor. See “Philemon and the Authenticity of Colossians,” JRel, 18 (1938), 146n2. P. N. Harrison (“Onesimus and Philemon,” ATR, 32 (1950), 272, 282) indicated his adherence to this view. In Paulines and Pastorals (65ff., esp. 74) he developed his view somewhat more fully. 4. This is justified on the assumption that Ephesians depends upon Colossians, and not vice versa. In 1951, C. L. Mitton could regard the relationship of Ephesians and Colossians fairly well decided in favor of the dependence of Ephesians upon Colossians; see The Epistle to the Ephesians, 71–72. Recently, however, this view has been challenged by J. Coutts, “The Relationship of Ephesians and Colossians,” New Testament Studies, 4 (1958/59), 201–7. Although this question is not to be considered in the present paper, the view that Ephesians depends upon Colossians seems the more likely. We might note that some of the evidence which Coutts adduces for his view is subject to another explanation. See pp. 211–12 below. 5. E. J. Goodspeed, The Meaning of Ephesians. 6. Op. cit. 7. Bowen (op. cit., 199) observed that the editor of Colossians gave force to his words by “quotation or reflection of many sayings (not always in the original sense!) in other messages of Paul now at his disposal, like Romans, Galatians, First Corinthians.” He did not, however, cite any examples. Most recently, Harrison has suggested evidence for the use of Paul’s letters in Colossians; see n. 13 below.

198

LITERARY DEPENDENCE IN COLOSSIANS

There can be no doubt that there are parallels between Colossians and the seven letters just named. The question is, what is the significance of such parallels. It will be seen that the extent and nature of the parallels are such as to be explained only if a later writer—not Paul—composed the sections of Colossians in question. The first task is to establish criteria to distinguish the type and extent of the parallels which would occur in a letter written by Paul himself from those in a letter written by a later writer with access to a collection of Paul’s letters. Behind the attempt to establish such criteria is the assumption that Paul did not carry about with him copies of his previous letters, or, if he did, that he did not have them memorized nor did he consult them when composing a new letter. If this assumption is false, it would be difficult to distinguish Paul’s work from that of a later imitator. It is probably not false, however, for there is no evidence for the literary dependence9 of any one of Paul’s seven undisputed letters upon another, much less upon several. In a study of this type, it will be helpful to be able to compare the nature and extent of the parallels between Colossians and the undisputed Pauline letters with the nature and extent of the parallels between one of the undisputed letters and the rest of them. Mitton made a similar comparison in his study of Ephesians, choosing Philippians for the comparison. This is also an apt choice for our study for several reasons. 1) If Colossians were written by Paul, it was presumably written not long before or after Philippians. 2) Philippians and Colossians are almost precisely the same length. 3) Philippians, like Colossians (leaving Ephesians out of consideration), has no obvious “mate” among the Pauline corpus with which it would be expected to show close affinities. Thus by examining the extent and nature of the parallels in Colossians and in Philippians, we should be able to determine the probabilities as to whether Colossians was written by Paul. For our purpose, we will use only phrases in which there is significant verbatim agreement for establishing parallels between two passages. Mitton, although somewhat more cautious on this point than Goodspeed, also introduced passages as parallel in which the thought 8. In what follows, I am glad to acknowledge my dependence upon the work of Goodspeed and Mitton, especially for methodology. The parallels to Philippians which Mitton gathered have also been enormously valuable. 9. The term “literary dependence” in this paper is understood to include quotation from memory, and should not necessarily call to mind the picture of a writer unrolling a scroll to a certain point and copying it.

199

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

was the same, but in which there was no verbatim agreement. Only verbatim agreement, however, can show possible literary dependence. Thus, for example, in seeking parallels for Philippians, Mitton printed 2 Cor 8:9 opposite Phil 2:7. There may well be an interesting parallelism of thought, but no two words are the same in these two verses. Furthermore, we will demand verbatim agreement of a significant extent—not just the use of the same single word in two passages, even though the thought is similar. Thus Mitton paralleled Phil 1:20 with Rom 8:19, although only one word is the same in the two passages. We shall generally place in parallel only passages in which three or more words are in agreement within a short space. Occasionally, a twoword phrase in verbatim agreement will be considered enough for a parallel, provided that the two words are sufficiently significant and unusual. This restriction gives us a smaller percentage of agreements than Mitton found, but the ones that remain are the more significant for that. Largely depending upon the passages adduced by Mitton as parallels, but using the criteria cited above, I have underlined in Philippians the words which are in verbatim agreement with the other Pauline letters. The result is 127 underlined words. There are 1,629 words in the Nestle text of Philippians, so the extent of verbatim agreement is 7.8 per cent. Many of the phrases underlined in Philippians as being in verbatim agreement, however, are underlined twice, indicating that the same phrase or group of words occurs more than once in Paul’s other letters. Since such phrases indicate, in all probability, “stock phrases,” that is, phrases frequently used by Paul, they cannot be taken as indicating literary dependence. Thus we subtract such phrases, which total 62 words. This leaves a balance of 65 underlined words, or 3.9 per cent of the total words in Philippians. We may take this to be approximately the amount of verbatim agreement that one might expect between any one of Paul’s letters and the rest. When we turn to Colossians, however, we find a far larger figure. The total amount of verbatim agreement is 236 words. Colossians has 1,577 words in the Nestle text, so 14.96 per cent of the words in it are in verbatim agreement with the seven letters. There are 68 words underlined two or more times. Subtracting these, we have a balance of 168 words, or 10.6 per cent of the total. This large percentage is especially striking since very few words after Col 3:15 evidence verbatim agreement. The verbatim agreement of certain portions of the first two chapters is very heavy indeed.

200

LITERARY DEPENDENCE IN COLOSSIANS

We should notice, however, that whereas we could look for parallels to passages in Colossians in seven letters, we could use only six letters for parallels to Philippians. Put in terms of pages in the Nestle text, there were about 106 pages available for parallels to Philippians, but 113 pages available for parallels to Colossians. The difference, seven pages, amounts to 6.2 per cent of the pages available to us for parallels to Colossians. Thus we should add 6.2 per cent to the verbatim agreements found in Philippians. This adjustment gives a total of 4.15 per cent of the words in Philippians. It will be convenient to show in a chart the relation between Philippians and Colossians in the amount of verbatim agreement with the undoubted Pauline letters. Philippians Colossians Total words

1,629

1,577

Verbatim agreement

127

236

Percentage

7.8

14.96

Words underlined twice

62

68

Balance

65

168

Percentage

3.9

10.6

Adjustment

4.15

10.6

Thus we see that the extent of verbatim agreement with Paul’s other letters is considerably more than double in Colossians what it is in Philippians. This probably indicates an amount that would not occur in a letter actually written by Paul. It may be of some interest briefly to indicate the percentage of verbatim agreement between Ephesians and the seven undisputed Pauline letters. (There is, of course, very heavy agreement between Ephesians and Colossians. This is left out of consideration here.) There are 2,418 words in the Nestle text of Ephesians. Of these, 271 are in agreement with the seven letters in question, but not with Colossians. Subtracting the words which could be stock phrases, we have a balance of 225, or 9.3 per cent of the words in Ephesians. It is noteworthy that there is a somewhat smaller percentage of agreement between Ephesians and the seven Paulines than between Colossians and the same seven letters. Let us now proceed to examine the nature of the verbatim

201

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

agreement to see if that in Colossians is different in kind from that in Philippians. To do this, we may formulate four questions. 1. Is there evidence of the conflation of two or more passages from various places in Paul’s letters into one passage in Colossians, or of serial quotation of two or more phrases from various places in Paul’s letters in one passage of Colossians? These related but distinct phenomena are widely recognized as marks of literary dependence. Conflation may be defined as combining two or more passages which are already to some extent parallel into one, by employing what is common to the passages being used as well as elements peculiar to each passage. This practice is well known in the synoptic gospels, the church fathers, and in textual criticism.10 We may take a short example from Theophilus of Antioch, iii, 14, which depends upon Matt 5:44 // Luke 6:27. Broken underlining indicates agreement with Matthew, unbroken with Luke:

We should not expect that Paul himself would conflate two passages from his own letters, but to do so might well suit the purpose of an imitator.11 The greater the evidence of conflation, the less likely it is that Paul did it.12 The same thing may be said about serial quotation, which is the quotation of short, perhaps unrelated, phrases in sequence. If two or more short phrases from various places in Paul’s letters fall in sequence in a short passage in Colossians, we should strongly suspect the work of an imitator.13 Paul was too original a writer to construct new sentences out of fragments of old ones. 2. Are non-Pauline characteristics intermixed with verbatim 10. On conflation in the “Syrian” or “koine” text of the NT as a mark of its lateness and dependence on other text types, see Westcott and Hort, The New Testament, II, 93–107. 11. Perhaps it is not needless to note that the term “imitator” is not derogatory. See further, p. 215. 12. On conflation in Ephesians, see Mitton, op. cit., 138–58. His lengthier argument that Paul himself would not have conflated passages from his former letters should be read by anyone unconvinced by our brief remarks. 13. P. N. Harrison (Pauline and Pastorals, 68, 70) argues that serial quotation in Colossians is evidence for non-Pauline authorship of portions of the epistle; cf. also his remarks on the same phenomenon in Ephesians, ibid., 38ff. The present paper was completed before the publication of Harrison’s book, but I have been able to make two or three small changes on the basis of his work. Although his evidence is not precisely the same as that presented here—several of the quotations he adduces are too short to meet our requirements, and he does not cover all the passages covered here—his work and this paper may be taken as mutually confirmatory. It is greatly to be regretted that his death prevented him from carrying his studies in this area further.

202

LITERARY DEPENDENCE IN COLOSSIANS

agreement? A Pauline imitator wishing to apply the great apostle’s teaching to a later situation might make small, but significant, alterations in the borrowed material to suit his own style and purpose. 3. Is the phrase quoted such as would be likely to be a stock phrase or a favorite expression, or is it such as to show literary dependence? 4. Are the words the same because the argument is the same, or are the same words applied to a different point? We should be surprised if many of the same words did not occur in any two passages in which Paul discusses his doctrine of righteousness, but if those same words occurred when the point is quite different, we should suspect the work of an imitator. It goes without saying that one or two “non-Pauline answers” (as we may call those answers which would tend to disprove Pauline authorship) will not be sufficient to disprove the authenticity of Colossians. These questions help us by showing how the work of an imitator would be likely to differ from Paul’s own work. The evidence which we derive from them is cumulative. If we consistently receive “non-Pauline answers,” the evidence for non-Pauline authorship becomes very strong. Before turning to Colossians, we shall examine some of the instances of verbatim agreement in Philippians to see how they stand up to these criteria. We shall first print all the passages in Philippians where there might be said to be conflation or serial quotation of two or more passages from the other letters. Words underlined twice are paralleled in more than one passage. Broken underlining indicates incomplete agreement.

203

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Each of these three passages could be explained as being the result of literary conflation by the author of Philippians. We should notice, however, that not one of them is very strong or clear as an example of conflation. All of them are limited in extent. The second depends upon a quotation from the LXX which Paul has repeated in two different passages. (The words, “every tongue shall confess,” are from Isa 45:23, although the verb in our present LXX text is different.) The third represents the kind of thing that Paul must have frequently said. The statement of his qualifications as a Jew is fuller in Philippians than elsewhere, but need not show literary dependence. In short, this amount and type of apparent conflation are what might be expected in a letter actually written by Paul. We may notice that our answers to questions two, three, and four would be on the side of Pauline authorship. There are no non-Pauline characteristics intermixed with the verbatim agreements. The phrases are such as could well be stock phrases for Paul. The same words occur because the point is the same. The other instances of verbatim agreement between Philippians and the other Pauline letters are even easier to explain on the hypothesis that Paul wrote Philippians than are the three above. We will not list them all, but we will give as further instances of stock phrases the following: “God is my witness” Phil 1:8; cf. Thess 2:10; 2:5; Rom 1:9 “Think the same thing” Phil 2:2; cf. 2 Cor 13:11; Rom 15:5 “With fear and trembling” Phil 2:12; cf. 1 Cor 2:3; 2 Cor 7:15 “Be imitators of me” Phil 3:17; cf. 1 Cor 11:1; 4:16

As examples of phrases in Philippians which are not classified as stock phrases because they are paralleled in only one other letter, we may give the following:

204

LITERARY DEPENDENCE IN COLOSSIANS

“To all the saints in Christ Jesus” Phil 1:1; cf. 1 Cor 1:2 “In my bonds” Phil 1:7; cf. Phlm 13 “We expect . . . the lord Jesus Christ” Phil 3:20; cf. 1 Cor 1:7 “My joy and crown” Phil 4:1; cf. 1 Thess 2:19

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it gives a fair idea of the type of verbatim agreement to be found between Philippians and the other Pauline letters. Not one of the instances of verbatim agreement in Philippians is of such a nature as to make us doubt that Paul himself was responsible for it. The matter is quite otherwise when we turn to Colossians, however. Not only is verbatim agreement more extensive; it is different in nature. We shall first of all give those passages which show signs of conflation or serial quotation. We take them in the order in which they fall in Colossians. The first four are also in the order of ascending probability.

Col 1:15–16 may be composed of bits from four different passages in Romans and Corinthians. The evidence for conflation in this passage, however, is the weakest of any that we offer. We shall first consider the arguments for literary dependence and then those against it. 1) Despite the difference in usage, the combination of “the unseen” and “creation” in the same context is striking, especially since ἀόρατος does not occur elsewhere in Paul. A portion of vs. 16 (ἐκτίσθη … τὰ ἀόρατα) might also be thought to be modeled on Rom 1:20. 2) There are nonPauline characteristics in the next two phrases. Here it seems that 205

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Paul’s words have been used, but altered in ways that he himself would not have done. Paul does not use the word γῆ often, only six times, four of which are in quotations from the LXX. He uses ἐπὶ γῆs only in 1 Cor 8:5, and the phrase ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς only once, in Rom 9:28, in the context of a quotation from the LXX.14 Colossians uses the word γῆ four times, always in the phrase ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. In three of these the phrase is τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς (which Paul never uses), and there is considerable evidence for the τά here in 1:16.15 Even if τά is not read, however, Paul probably would not have written ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, for he had an alternative expression: ἐπίγειος, which he used five times. Outside the undisputed Pauline letters, this word occurs only twice in the NT: once in John and once in James. Furthermore, the word ἐπίγειος is used in conjunction with ἐπουράνιος three times by Paul. So we see that it is unlikely that he would have given up these terms for the phrases ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς and ἐν τοῖς oὐρανοῖς,16 which are favored by the author of Colossians. The words “all things through him and unto him” might appear to be a stock phrase. We must notice two things, however. One is that these words appear in a different order in 1 Cor 8:6. The author of Colossians was led to use them because he had just quoted from 1 Cor 8:5. He actually used the words more in the order of Rom 11:36, however. That is, the appearance of these words in 1 Cor 8:6 directed his mind to Rom 11:36, where the words appear in a more convenient order. We must also notice that he has used them differently than did Paul. In 1 Cor 8:6 the phrase εἰς αὐτόν is applied to God, not Christ. In Rom 11:36 the whole phrase is applied to God. The author of Colossians, to suit his own point, has applied to Christ words which Paul applies to God. The use of Paul’s words to a different point is one of the marks of the work of an imitator. Against the case for literary dependence may be urged the following 14. The present LXX text of Isa 10:23 has ἐν τῇ οἰκουμένῃ ὅλῃ rather than Paul’s ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. The Hebrew is ‫ְּבֶק ֶרב ָּכל־ָהָא ֶרץ‬. It may be, then, that Paul’s ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς should be attributed to his own initiative, although it is by no means impossible that he was quoting a variant Greek tradition. 15. The phrase τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς occurs at Col 1:20; 3:2, 5. In Col 1:16, τά is read before ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς by A C K L 0142 D G. τά is read before ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς by A (C) K L 0142. Abbott (ICC on Ephesians and Colossians, ad loc.) notes that this difference of support would be explained if in both instances τά was original, but was accidentally omitted in one place. It was then omitted from the other for the sake of conformity. The view that τά is not original, but was added to conform with the other uses of these phrases in Colossians, would not explain why one τά is better supported than the other. The sounder view is that in both cases τά is original. 16. The phrase ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς appears three times in Colossians (1:5, 16, 20), but only once in Paul, at 2 Cor 5:1. τὰ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς occurs in Colossians at 1:20, and perhaps here at 1:16 (see n. 15). Paul never uses this phrase. Paul uses ἐπουράνιος and ἐπίγειος together at 1 Cor 15:40 (twice) and Phil 2:10.

206

LITERARY DEPENDENCE IN COLOSSIANS

points: 1) The phrase, “who is in the image of God,” is such that it could be considered a stock phrase, even though we have it in only one other place. Such a phrase was readily available to anyone who read the LXX; see Gen 1:27; 5:1. The precise agreement, however, between Col 1:15 and 2 Cor 4:4 remains striking. The phrase τὰ πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν, as we have seen, may also be considered a stock phrase. This becomes even more likely when the non-Christian use of these phrases is considered. We will not set forth here all the evidence, which is collected by Norden17 and Dibelius.18 We may, however, quote Marcus Aurelius, Meditations iv, 23: ἐκ σοῦ πάντα͵ ἐν σοὶ πάντα͵ εἰς σὲ πάντα, as evidence of the widespread Stoic use of such phrases. 2) We must also consider the probability that Col 1:15–20 is a hymn.19 If that be so, the appearance of the literary dependence of Colossians upon Romans and Corinthians is readily explained. The agreements, which consist mainly of phrases common in the contemporary religious speech, are to be explained by the influence of that speech on both Paul and the author of the hymn. The non-Pauline characteristics of Col 1:16 are also readily explained on the hymn hypothesis. Before carrying this further, we may turn to the next passage which may offer an example of conflation or serial quotation.

17. Eduard Norden, Agnostos Theos4, 240–50. 18. Martin Dibelius, An die Kolosser, Epheser, an Philemon, 12–14. 19. On 1:15–20 as a hymn, see Norden, op. cit., 250–54; Ernst Käsemann, “Eine urchristliche Taufliturgie,” Festschrift Rudolf Bultmann, 133–48, translated as “A Primitive Christian Baptismal Liturgy,” Essays on New Testament Themes, 149–68; J. M. Robinson, “A Formal Analysis of Colossians 1.15–20,” JBL, 76 (1957), 270–87. Robinson also cites further literature.

207

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

The first portion of Col 1:20 shows agreement with 2 Cor 5:18. There are several differences, however, which betray non-Pauline authorship. 1) Whereas Paul says “all things are from God, who reconciles us,” Colossians says that God reconciles all things. Paul never mentions reconciling τὰ πάντα; his thought is that τὰ πάντα must be subjected to Christ (cf. Phil 3:21; 1 Cor 15:27 f.). 2) The word ἀποκαταλλάσσω is apparently a creation of the author of Colossians. It is here making its first appearance in all of the Greek literature known to us.20 There seems to be no reason for Paul himself to have changed from his verb καταλλάσσω. On the other hand, however, it is a characteristic of the author of Colossians to add prefixes to Pauline words; cf. συνζωοποιέω, συνεγείρω, ἀνταναπληρόω.21 3) For Paul’s ἑαυτοῦ, Colossians has εἰς αὐτόν. The singular of ἑαυτοῦ as a reflexive is a favorite usage of Paul’s: he uses it thus twenty-one times. The only two uses of ἑαυτοῦ in Colossians, however, are in the plural, and both are in the Haustafel.22 It appears here that the author avoided the term in favor of his own. The change may, of course, indicate a substantive difference; the antecedent of αὐτόν in Col 1:20 is not altogether certain. 4) We may recall that Paul never uses either τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς or τὰ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς (see p. 206 above). Vs. 20, however, is usually regarded as the concluding portion of the hymn 1:15–20. In this case the words δι’ αὐτοῦ τὰ πάντα may once again be referred to common religious usage rather than to direct quotation of 2 Cor 5:18. On the basis of the evidence given above concerning ἀποκαταλλάσσω, however, one may see here the work of the editor or author of Colossians. To him also may be attributed the phrase “through the blood of his cross.”23 Despite the Pauline ring (cf. the insertion of “even death on a cross” in Phil 2:8), this is not a Pauline phrase. Paul uses ἐν with “blood” in Rom 3:25, 5:9 (cf. 1 Cor 11:25), but never διά (Eph 1:7 has διὰ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ). Also he speaks often enough of “blood” and of “cross,” but does not combine the two. Thus Col 1:20 can be explained as the last portion of a hymn which has been edited by a Christian writer other than Paul. This verse need not be thought to depend upon Paul’s letters, but the choice of wording may 20. See the lexica by Liddell and Scott and by Bauer, s. v. Also, Theodor Nägeli, Der Wortschatz des Apostels Paulus, 52. 21. Colossians uses these words for Paul’s ζωοποιέω, ἐγείρω, and ἀναπληρόω. The author of Colossians has developed the Pauline vocabulary in other ways as well. On the analogy of Paul’s use of ἐνδύω he has coined ἀπεκδύομαι and ἀπέκδυσις. Whereas Paul, in Gal 1:10, used ἀνθρώποις ἀρέσκειν, Colossians uses the extremely rare ἀνθρωπάρεσκος. 22. Col 3:13, 16. 23. Cf. Käsemann, op. cit., E. T., 152.

208

LITERARY DEPENDENCE IN COLOSSIANS

have been influenced by knowledge of those letters. In any case the appearance of καταλλάσσω, τὰ πάντα, and διά in both Col 1:20 and 2 Cor 5:18 is striking, especially in light of the difference in context. The evidence for literary dependence upon Paul’s letters of the three verses (1:15, 16, 20) which occur in what is generally regarded to be a hymn is not, then, too strong; but it is also not nonexistent. The agreements could be explained in three ways without denying the existence of a hymn in 1:15–20. (Of course those who are on other grounds unconvinced about the existence of a hymn here will have no difficulty in explaining the agreements.) 1) The agreements, as we have already mentioned, could be the result of the influence of the common religious language on both Paul and the author of the hymn. 2) They could be the result of editorial work by one acquainted with Paul’s letters. 3) The possibility must be considered that the hymn as a whole is Christian in its origin, rather than pre-Christian or non-Christian. It could have been composed by one familiar with Pauline speech.24 We will not try to assess the probabilities here. For the purpose of this paper it need only be said that we have thus far seen no clear evidence that Colossians depends upon the Pauline letters, but only a possibility which scholars will variously assess. Stronger evidence is now to be presented. If vs. 20 is the last portion of a hymn, the passage in vss. 21–22a is a comment on the hymn, presumably designed to show the significance for the readers of the reconciliation of τὰ πάντα: they too (καὶ ὑμᾶς) are reconciled. The passage does not evidence either conflation or serial quotation in itself, but seems clearly to depend literarily upon Rom 5:10. Even though these verses in Colossians have much material which is not found in Rom 5:10, the verse in Romans has undoubtedly provided the framework for them. It is striking that almost every word or phrase in this passage in Colossians which does not come from Rom 5:10 is not to be found in Paul at all. The author of Colossians, while basing his argument on a quotation from Paul, has incorporated his own words and phrases. This mixing of verbatim agreement with non-Pauline characteristics is one of the indications of a later hand. 24. In favor of either the second or third possibilities we may cite the following points: 1) The agreement between Col 1:15 and 2 Cor 4:4 and between Col 1:20 and 2 Cor 5:18 may be considered too striking to be explained by the influence of common religious language. 2) There are some agreements in usage between the hymn and the rest of Colossians, e. g., the phrases τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς and ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς and the word ἀποκαταλλάσσω. We may also note that Robinson’s reconstruction (op. cit.) requires a certain amount of editorial work to have been done on the hymn by the author of the epistle.

209

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

The non-Pauline words and phrases in Col 1:21–22a are as follows: ἀπαλλοτριόομαι, διάνοια, ἔργον used with πονηρόν, and σῶμα used with σάρξ. This accounts for every significant word and phrase in Col 1:21–22a which is not taken from Rom 5:10.

This passage very clearly shows evidence of literary conflation. The three passages from Paul’s letters have been put together on the wellknown principle of Stichwörter. The word “mystery,” which appears in the quotation from 1 Cor 2:7, called to mind Rom 16:25, where it also occurs. Similarly, the words, “to make known” and “gentile,” taken from Rom 16:26, called to mind Rom 9:23–24, where they also appear. This is the type of conflation hardly possible for Paul himself, since it presupposes a very precise knowledge, almost amounting to total memorization, of at least two of Paul’s letters. If it is true that Rom 16:25 was not originally a part of that letter, that is clearer evidence of the post-Pauline character of the passage in Colossians.25 We may also note that Col 1:26 uses the same words as 1 Cor 2:7, but makes something else of them. Whereas in Paul the thing hidden is wisdom, which is spoken in a mystery, in Colossians it is the mystery which is hidden. It is also worth noting that the word δέ, quoted from Rom 16:25, is making one of its rare appearances in Colossians. Although Paul used the word very frequently (six times in the letter to Philemon), it occurs

25. The other evidence of conflation in Col 1:26–27 makes it unlikely that Rom 16:25 is dependent upon Colossians. There is a remarkable similarity of thought, and it is not incredible that the editor or author of Colossians also edited Romans—if it is true that Rom 16:25–27 is a later addition.

210

LITERARY DEPENDENCE IN COLOSSIANS

only five times in Colossians.26 Its use here may be due only to its having been in the source used by the author of Colossians.

In this passage we have our clearest evidence of a secondary imitator conflating passages from the letters of the great apostle. The following points may be noted. I regard (5) and (6) as virtually conclusive. 1) The first portion of Col 2:12 conflates two passages from Romans and one from Galatians, all of which end with ἐκ νεκρῶν. Although the words “who raises him from the dead” may be considered a stock phrase (cf. also Rom 8:11), the way in which three passages are conflated in Col 2:12 definitely suggests literary dependence.27 2) The verb συνεγείρω is peculiar to Colossians and Ephesians in the NT, and is one of those verbs which our author has developed by adding a prefix to a Pauline word. 3) The same is true of συνζωοποιέω in Col 2:13. 4) In taking over Rom 6:11, the author of Colossians has avoided μέν . . . δέ, which is frequent in Paul, but which never occurs in Colossians.28 5) Coutts has 26. The uses of δέ, per page of the Nestle text, are as follows: Rom 4.3, 1 Cor 6:9, 2 Cor 3:4, Gal 5:2, Phil 3:3, Phlm 3:4, 1 Thess 2:1, Col 0:62. 27. Conflation, it may be remembered, requires a certain amount of agreement among the passages being used. ἐγείρω followed by ἐκ νεκρῶν is frequent in Paul. In Col 2:12, the writer has incorporated this phrase, which is common to several passages, as well as some of the peculiarities of each passage, into one sentence. This is an admirable piece of conflation. V. 13, on the other hand, shows serial quotation.

211

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

noted that the variation from “you” to “us” in Col 2:13 has no rationale. In explaining this variation as coming from Eph 2:1–6, he says that “it has the character of an inattentive reminiscence.”29 We agree with his observation on the character of the variation, but not with his hypothesis as to its source. The alteration from the second person to the first is to be explained by the conflation of different passages from Romans. “You being dead” comes from Rom 6:11, while “forgiving us” comes from Rom 8:32. 6) The verb χαρίζομαι in Rom 8:32 means “to bestow,” while in Colossians it means “to forgive.” Here we have the use of the same five-word phrase to make an altogether different point. The alteration is the more striking because of the theological conception involved. The idea that God forgives trespasses is foreign to Paul’s thought. He speaks of the forgiveness of God only once, in Rom 4:7. But there the idea (expressed by the verb ἀϕίημι) is in a quotation from the LXX, and is not taken up by Paul. The passage was quoted for a different reason, and it was probably only by accident that the idea of forgiveness appeared at all. In Colossians, however, the forgiveness of God is a central motif. The author defines redemption as forgiveness in 1:14, and also speaks of the forgiveness of God at 3:13, in addition to the present passage. In this passage he has used Paul’s words to make a point not compatible with Paul’s thought. This is very clear evidence of a later hand. Thus we see that there are at least two separate passages in Colossians which very clearly evidence conflation or serial quotation of three or more passages from Paul’s letters, in which the extent and type of verbatim agreement make it almost incredible that Paul himself did it.30 In each case we have had to answer some or all of our four questions in such a way as to deny Pauline authorship. In addition, a third passage, Col 1:21–22a, depends upon Rom 5:10 in a way which suggests the work of a later writer. In light of this, we may present a further passage in which the same type of conflation may have taken place. This passage is not used as proof of our point, but it is significant in light of what has gone before.

28. μέν. . . δέ occurs the following times: Rom 13, 1 Cor 15, 2 Cor 5, Gal 2, Phil 4. Colossians has μέν without δέ at 2:23. 29. Op. cit., 204. 30. Although the number of such passages is smaller in Colossians than in Ephesians, none of the examples of conflation in Ephesians is stronger than the two clearest ones in Colossians.

212

LITERARY DEPENDENCE IN COLOSSIANS

While I do not want to urge this too strongly, it appears that Col 3:5–10 has been built around Rom 13:12 ff. and Gal 5:19, with two- and threeword phrases from other Pauline letters inserted. Col 3:11 draws on Gal 3:28 and 1 Cor 15:28. We must recognize that the parenetic passages in early Christian literature may have been based on traditional material, so that any list of vices and admonitions would be more or less the same. We should, however, note certain points in favor of the hypothesis of literary dependence in this section. 1) With two exceptions, the order of words in Col 3:5–10 is the same as that in the passages from the other 213

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

letters. The exceptions are the placing of ἀποτίθημαι and ὅστις ἐστιν. This seems to point toward literary dependence. 2) We once again have the phrase τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς (Col 3:5). On the un-Pauline character of this phrase, see pp. 205–6 above. 3) Whereas Paul characteristically says “put on Christ,” Colossians has “put on the new man.” 4) The word ἐνδύομαι has apparently served as a Stichwort, by means of which the author of Colossians passed from the parenetic section (3:5–10) to the saying about Greek and Jew in 3:11. This verse serves to interrupt the parenesis, which begins again in 3:12 and continues on into the Haustafel. The use of ἐνδύομαι, taken from the parenetic section of Rom 13:12 ff., apparently called to mind the saying about Greek and Jew in Gal 3:28, which is preceded by the same verb. Having incorporated the substance of Gal 3:28, the author then returned to exhortation. 5) Although Col 3:11 is basically dependent on Gal 3:28, there is a significant change in the last clause. Whereas the verse in Galatians finishes with the typical Pauline doctrine of ἐν Χριστῷ, the passage in Colossians ends, also typically for that book, by asserting the supremacy of Christ. The author does this by dropping Gal 3:28 and quoting 1 Cor 15:28. In doing so, however, he affirms of Christ what Paul had said of God. The word πᾶς may have served as a Stichwort in the change of passages. If Paul had wanted to say basically the same thing that he had said in Gal 3:28, but with a different conclusion, we should not have expected him to alter the conclusion by quoting from another one of his letters, especially when the words which he quotes were originally otherwise used. This kind of change from one passage to another, with significant shifts in meaning, is pretty clear evidence of a later imitator. This completes the evidence for literary conflation and serial quotation in Colossians, but it by no means exhausts the verbatim agreements between Colossians and the Pauline epistles. It is not our purpose to give a complete list of the verbatim agreements, but only such as bear on the question of the Pauline authorship of the letter as it now stands. Some of the verbatim agreements are stock phrases, such as might have been employed either by Paul himself or by a later imitator. These neither prove nor disprove Pauline authorship, and are left out of consideration here. There is another group of passages, however, which has bearing on our problem. There are a few sentences and phrases in Colossians which, while showing no signs of conflation, are verbatim with sentences in Paul’s letters except for one or two changes. The changes are of two types, stylistic and theological. I take 214

LITERARY DEPENDENCE IN COLOSSIANS

them to show the author of Colossians adapting Paul’s own words to a later situation and to another style and theology. Some of these, to be sure, could be interpreted as Paul’s own way of meeting the challenge of a new heresy. It is significant, however, that the precise words from Paul’s letters are used (except for the necessary changes). Why would Paul, to refute a new heresy, simply have quoted himself? Would he have had no new arguments? Was he, within his lifetime, such an authority that the words and phrases of his former letters would have been known and considered as weapons to turn against opponents? I think not. The weight of the evidence now to be adduced is against Pauline authorship. These phrases show a later disciple of the apostle who wished to meet a new challenge as Paul would have done. His imitation of Paul is not that of a charlatan. He wished to say nothing other than what Paul himself would have said, and to that end he used Paul’s own words. The significant points about each phrase will be discussed in footnotes.31 32 33 34 35

31. The phrase τὰ ἄνω occurs in the NT only at John 8:23; Col 3:1, 2. We have previously noted that the phrase τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς is not used by Paul, although employed at least three times by our author. τὰ ἐπίγεια in Phil 3:19 is Paul’s usual expression; cf. 1 Cor 15:40; 2 Cor 5:1. 32. If κύριος refers to Christ, the change is significant; if to God, it is not. 33. Here as elsewhere in Colossians, Christ takes the place of God. 34. This perhaps depends upon 1 Cor 12:13: εἰς ἓν σῶμα ἐβαπτίσθημεν; cf. 1 Cor 10:17. 35. In Colossians, Christ is the head of every ruler and authority; in Corinthians, he destroys them (or renders them powerless). Cf. the similar change of attitude toward τὰ πάντα, which we noted above (p. 208). We should note that the passage in Corinthians is the only place in which Paul uses πᾶς with ἀρχή or ἀρχή with ἐξουσία. This makes literary dependence on the part of Colossians somewhat more likely.

215

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

When to the linguistic, stylistic, and theological arguments against the authenticity of Colossians is added this evidence for literary dependence upon Paul’s letters, the conclusion that Paul did not write Colossians as we now have it becomes unavoidable. We must be careful, however, not to reach conclusions that outstrip the evidence. The evidence for literary dependence stops at 3:11; after that only one phrase (3:15) is suspect of showing the kind of verbatim agreement that would appear only in a letter not written by Paul. Furthermore, between 2:13 and 3:4 there are only six words which may be said to be in verbatim agreement with Paul’s letters, but they are not such as would disprove Pauline authorship. In short, the phenomenon of verbatim agreement does not serve to disprove the authenticity of Colossians in its entirety. The evidence for literary dependence is clear only in relatively few verses of Colossians, but there it is indisputable. It is also striking that the clearest evidence for literary dependence is in the most pronounced theological passages. Apparently just where the later author (or editor) wished to make significant theological points, he felt compelled to draw directly on Paul’s letters. He made alterations, to be sure, but he intended the thought to be Paul’s. In this context it is significant to note that the stylistic and linguistic arguments against the authenticity of Colossians are almost exclusively limited to the first two chapters, that is, to those very chapters where the evidence for literary dependence is clearest. I doubt that this is sheer coincidence. In the light of this, it may become worthwhile to reconsider Holtzmann’s theory, in principle at least. At the beginning of the paper, it was pointed out that his theory has the merit of explaining the position of Colossians between Ephesians and the Pauline letters. We may now note that such a hypothesis also has the merit of accounting for the concentration of non-Pauline elements within the first two chapters of Colossians.36 We should further note that the argument for the authenticity of Colossians developed by John Knox,37 which is based on the fact that in the letter allusions are made to the situation reflected in Philemon, only requires Paul 36. C. R. Bowen, op. cit., made a similar point. He noted the discrepancies between the two halves of the letter and suggested that chs. 1 and 2, while containing some genuine Pauline fragments, have been heavily rewritten. Percy, op. cit., 36ff., has noted that the stylistic peculiarities of Colossians are restricted to the first two chapters. He argues that the style is dependent upon the subject matter, and so attributes the style of Col 1–2 to the concentration of theological discussion in those chapters. 37. Op. cit.

216

LITERARY DEPENDENCE IN COLOSSIANS

to have written the last portion of the letter. It is not the purpose of this paper to argue for such a hypothesis, but only to point out that it is at least compatible with the evidence in Colossians of literary dependence upon the canonical letters which were undoubtedly written by Paul.

217

9

Was Paul a Prooftexter?

The Case of Galatians 3

Among ancient Jews there were numerous types of arguments based on the Bible—far too many for me to try to list, even if I were competent to do so. For my limited purpose here, I wish to mention only two. Before turning to Paul, I shall give one or two examples of each of the two techniques from non-Christian Jewish literature. Rabbinic Examples One category is the use of what we may call “a big picture,” that is, a substantial aspect of the biblical narrative that is employed to make either a general point or a point about later times. For my one non-Christian example, I have chosen my favorite rabbinic parable, which replies to the question, “Why were the Ten Commandments not said at the beginning of the Torah?” The Ten Commandments first appear in Exodus 20. Why so late? The answer is that God is like a king who wanted to rule over a group of people. When this would-be king proposed himself as their ruler, they asked “Have you done anything good for us that you should rule over us?” So he built a city wall for them, provided a water supply, and fought their enemies. Then they accepted him as king.

219

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Similarly, God: He brought the Israelites out of Egypt, divided the sea for them, sent down the manna for them, provided a well for them, supplied them with quails, and fought the battle with Amalek. Then he offered them his commandments, which they gladly accepted.1 This wonderful parable, which puts God’s grace and his demand in the sequence that Protestants approve, uses a few words from the account in Exodus, but the essence of the matter is the order of events. I believe that a very large number of ancient Jews knew the narrative line of the Bible and could make use of it. Category 2 is what I am calling prooftexting. By this word I intend to refer to the practice of taking specific words out of their context in order to make new points. In their original context the words may or may not have lent themselves to the desired meaning. The Bible, however, could be considered as an enormous treasury of words that God gave with the intention that his worshipers make use of them. And use them they did. The interpreter might feel “inspired”; biblical interpretation, however, often did not imply inspiration, but rather scholarship.2 The abilities to quote important texts and to use them effectively in a current discussion were signs of authority, as Al Baumgarten has observed.3 As a student, Paul had been near the head of the class, as we now say (Gal 1:14), and so of course he had the ability to arrange sacred words to make an argument that was both timely and true. For two non-Pauline examples I turn again to the Tannaitic rabbis.4 The first passage is slightly unusual, because the commentator does not specifically quote the words that he needs. In Sifre Devarim, the Tannaitic or halakhic commentary on Deuteronomy, one of the paragraphs begins with a quotation of Deut 16:3, “In haste you came out of the land of Egypt” (pisqa 130). The commentator asks whether the word haste applies to both the Israelites and the Egyptians. The question is immediately answered: to prevent anyone from thinking that both Israelites and Egyptians were in haste, the Bible elsewhere says, “Not a dog shall growl at any of the Israelites” (Lev 11:7a). One may ask what the growling of a dog has to do with the question of 1. Mekhilta Bahodesh 5 (Lauterbach 2:229f.). I first used this parable in Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 86, where there is a full reference. 2. Jubilees, for example, appeals to revelation, while the rabbis opposed revelation as a source of biblical interpretation. 3. Albert I. Baumgarten, “Metaphors of Memory,” R. Reichman (Ed.), "Der Odem des Menschen ist eine Leuchte des Herrn,” Aharon Agus zum Gedenken, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2006, 77–90. 4. The Tannaim were the rabbis from Shimeon b. Johai to Judah ha-Nasi, c. 70–220 CE.

220

WAS PAUL A PROOFTEXTER?

haste, and the answer is, not much. The rabbi simply gave the words that identify the passage that he had in mind, not the words that his argument required. Other rabbis would know the rest of the passage, but I had to look it up. The unquoted words provide a proof that was acceptable in ancient Jewish argument: “so that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel” (Lev 11:7b). Because a distinction appears in Lev 11:7b, the word haste in Deut 16:3 refers to the Egyptians, not to the Israelites. In prooftexting, it was more common for a rabbi to quote the words that actually settled the argument. I shall give just one example. In discussing the Day of Atonement (yōm kippûr), the commentators in Sifra, the Tannaitic commentary on Leviticus, work their way diligently through the requirements of Lev 23:26–32 (Sifra Emor pereq 14). There should be a “holy convocation”; people should “afflict” themselves; they should present sacrifices (all in v. 27); they should do no work (v. 28). The explanation of these requirements is that “it is the Day of Atonement” (v. 28). The rabbis naturally asked what the result would be if the stated conditions were not met. What if there were no sacred assembly, what if the people did not afflict themselves, what if there were no burnt offerings and no scapegoat? The answer was that Scripture has decreed that “it is the Day of Atonement”—that is, it atones in any case. The only requirement turns out to be repentance, which is proved by the fact that Scripture says, “Ach!” (surely!). This otherwise superfluous word, which begins Lev 23:27, proves that repentance is a requirement, even though the requirements that are in the Bible cannot be met. Thus while staring straight at the context that makes several requirements for the Day of Atonement, the rabbis of Sifra maintain that the sentence may be broken up and that the clause “it is the Day of Atonement” overrides everything else, except for the provision of repentance, which must be derived from the apparently superfluous exclamation, “Ach,” by which God clearly intended to point to an additional item. Sifra is traditionally said to be from the school of R. Akiba, not that of R. Ishmael, and it may be that the precise techniques employed here would not have gained universal approval among rabbis of the second and third centuries. But the general project, that of bringing the Bible up to date, was what exegetes of all generations—at least ever since the time of the Chronicler—had been doing. Not every exegetical argument has the

221

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

purpose of updating the Bible, but this was an imperative task. If Judaism was to remain a functioning and persuasive religion, Jewish scholars had to see to it that the Bible was timely and referred to present conditions. The temple had in fact disappeared. There were no pilgrimage festivals. The conditions of the biblical period simply could not apply, and so merely the Day, coupled with repentance, provided atonement. The advantage of a religion of a book is that the book can be taken out of the hands of the aristocrats and the sacerdotal class and can be studied by lay experts (as Morton Smith pointed out).5 This feature of Judaism allowed the religion to flourish without the temple and without a professional priesthood. The disadvantage of a sacred book, however, is that conditions and customs keep changing, and it is difficult to revise a text after it comes to be generally regarded as sacred. Interpretation rushes to the rescue: the book can be updated by being interpreted. The rabbis simply had to get rid of the requirement of sacrifices, and if they were forced to chop the text up and to grasp hold of only parts of it, that is what they would do. Paul Paul sometimes engaged in his own form of updating the Bible. His techniques were, in general, Jewish, though I would not say that they were “rabbinic.” I have cited the rabbis in order to provide illustrative material, but I do not regard Paul himself as a student of rabbinic technique. Paul’s education is itself a large topic, which I cannot consider here. My examples were intended only to illustrate some of the sorts of things that ancient Jewish exegetes did. Paul, like others, could argue on the basis of the biblical narrative. He uses the narrative of the exodus, for example, in one of the arguments against idolatry, in 1 Corinthians 10, where curiously he seems to work his way backwards through Numbers, reversing the chronological sequence of some of the passages that he uses. But, nevertheless, he uses the narrative and selects a few passages from it. The narrative plays a major role. The outstanding case of arguing from a big narrative picture, of course, is the story of Abraham, which is crucial in Galatians 3 and 4 5. Morton Smith, “The Dead Sea Sect in Relation to Ancient Judaism,” New Testament Studies 7 (1960–61): 347–60.

222

WAS PAUL A PROOFTEXTER?

and in Romans 4. In Galatians Paul leaves out the embarrassing fact that Abraham was circumcised, neither referring to nor alluding to Genesis 17, but skipping from Genesis 15 to 18. He claims that the law (which in the context must include the law of circumcision) came 430 years after Abraham (Gal 3:17). In Romans, however, he rectifies the error and points out that Abraham himself was circumcised (Rom 4:10–12). The point in Romans is that Abraham was righteous by faith before he was circumcised, which means that he is the father of all who have faith, whether circumcised or not. Thus Paul, like the rabbis, and like zillions of other Jews, knew the biblical narrative and could utilize it in argumentation. Paul could also employ “prooftexting”: using words out of context. In the story of Abraham, the word sperma (“seed”) is used as a collective noun. God’s promises include both Abraham and his seed, referring to his numerous descendants (e.g., Gen 15:5, where the sperma are as numerous as the stars in the sky). Paul of course understood this perfectly well, as he reveals in Rom 4:13–18. Nevertheless, in Gal 3:16 he takes advantage of the fact that sperma is grammatically singular, which allows him to claim that it refers only to Christ. Others can become descendants of Abraham by becoming one person in Christ—not by being circumcised, which is the way sonship is achieved according to Genesis. Here Paul uses the word sperma in a way that is contrary to the meaning of the original context. Before continuing with Galatians 3 and the passages on righteousness by faith, which constitute the main point of this paper, I wish to point out a very clever and extremely Jewish mode of prooftexting in 1 Cor 15:44–49. Paul apparently remembered the Greek version of Gen 2:7, “the man became a living psychē,” as including the word first as well as the proper noun Adam: in his view Genesis stated that “the first man, Adam, became a living psychē.” Putting the word first into the text was probably a trick of his memory, which would have been influenced by the number of times he had heard the word first employed in connection with Adam. In other Jewish literature in Greek, Adam was frequently called the prōtoplastos, the “first formed.”6 It is conceivable that Paul inserted first, prōtos, on his own initiative. 6. I noted this briefly in “The Testament of Abraham, Recension A,” J. H. Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 1:888 n. e (on 11:9). There is a fuller discussion in the magnificent commentary by Dale C. Allison Jr., Testament of Abraham, Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), 250 (on 11:9). For a list of passages in Greek Pseudepigrapha, see Albert-Marie Dénis with Y. Janssens, Concordance grecque des Pseudépigraphes d’ancien testament (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1987), 204.

223

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Alternatively, it is possible that the text of the Bible that Paul had studied included the word first. In any case, he considered prōtos to be part of the text of Genesis, which we see from the way he used it. The term “first Adam,” by standard rules of biblical exegesis, implies a “second” or a “last” Adam. It is like the rabbinic argument that the story of Achan in Joshua 7 shows that atonement in the world to come can be proved by Scripture. Talk about an uphill argument! According to 7:25, Joshua told Achan that the Lord would “trouble” him “this day” (yôm ha-zeh). The phrase “this day” proves that there will be another day, on which the Lord will not trouble Achan, whose death, therefore, atones. The other day is the world to come, and Achan will live again, and will not be troubled, on that day.7 Thus for Paul, “the first man” proves that there will be a “second” man (1 Cor 15:47) or a “last” man (15:45). Since the first man was psychikos, the second man will have to be different: he will be pneumatikos (1 Cor 15:44–49). Simple exegesis requires the contrast. I have called this a form of “prooftexting,” since in our example a word is taken out of context to prove a point that is not in the original text. There is nothing about a “second Adam” in Genesis. Paul’s argument is rather that the existence of a “first Adam” implies the necessity of a “second Adam.” The addition of an entirely new person, however, is a very expansive use of a proof text, and I would consider such expansions to constitute a subcategory under the general heading “prooftexting.” We now turn to more typical cases of using words to prove new points, and this brings us back to Galatians 3. In the following, words that are within sideways carats (>) are quotations from the Bible; words that are underlined occur both in Paul’s source and in Paul’s own words, and words in bold type are Paul’s conclusions from his texts. Gal 3:6–7: Καθὼς ’Αβραὰμ «ἐπίστευσεν τῷ θεῷ, καὶ ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην.» γινώσκετε ἄρα ὅτι οἱ ἐκ πίίστεως τεως, οὗτοι υἱ υἱοί οί εἰ εἰσσιν ’Αβραά Αβραάμ μ (quoting Gen 15:6). θεός ός, Gal 3:8: προϊδοῦσα δὲ ἡ γραφὴ ὅτι ἐκ πίίστεως δικαι δικαιοῖ οῖ τὰ ἔθνη ὁ θε προευηγγελίσατο τῷ ’Αβραὰμ ὅτι «ἐνευλογηθήσονται ἐν σοὶ (’Αβραὰμ) πάντα τὰ ἔθνη.» ὥστε οἱ ἐκ πίίστεως εὐ εὐλλογοῦν ῦντται σὺν τῷ πιιστῷ ’Αβραά Αβραάμ μ (quoting Gen 18:18, with some use of 12:3). The first quotation (Gal 3:6) is in verbatim agreement with Gen 15:6 in the LXX as we have it. The second quotation (Gal 3:8) is verbatim 7. m. Sanh. 6.2.

224

WAS PAUL A PROOFTEXTER?

with Gen 18:18 in the LXX, except that in Paul’s memory the address was in the second person (σοὶ), while in the LXX of 18:18 as we have it, the passage is in the third person (αὐτῷ). It is probable that Paul’s σοὶ has crept in from the parallel in Gen 12:3. The quotation is mostly from 18:18, however, which Paul doubtless preferred to 12:3 because 18:18 has the words “the Gentiles” rather than “the tribes of the earth” in 12:3. I shall rearrange these three verses to show more clearly how Paul used his proof texts. I shall put first the biblical quotations and then Paul’s conclusions: ’Αβραὰμ «ἐπίστευσεν τῷ θεῷ, καὶ ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην. (Gen 15:6) ἐνευλογηθήσονται ἐν σοὶ (’Αβραὰμ) πάντα τὰ ἔθνη». (Gen 18:18; cf. 15:3)

The underlined words in these two passages become part of the new conclusions that Paul derived from Genesis. υἱοί οί εἰ εἰσσιν ιν’Αβραά Αβραάμ μ. ἐκ πίίστεως δικαι δικαιοῖ οῖ τὰ ἔθνη ὁ θε θεός ός. Οἱ Οἱ ἐκ πίίστεως τεως, οὗτοι υἱ ἐκ πίίστεως εὐ εὐλλογοῦν ῦντται σὺν τῷ πιιστῷ ’Αβραά Αβραάμ μ (Gal 3:7–9).

As is the case with sperma later in chapter 3, these related conclusions provide gentile Christians with access to the promises given to Abraham—without requiring circumcision. The words in the Bible can prove new points and do not require the reader to consider the context, which includes the circumcision of Abraham. The arguments from Abraham were essential to Paul’s mission, and they were vital to the history of Christianity, which despite its Jewish origin eventually became a largely gentile religion. In Paul’s view, at least in retrospect, Christ had been revealed to him for the explicit purpose of commissioning him to proclaim Christ among the gentiles (Gal 1:15f.; cf. Rom 11:13f.; 15:18f.). Paul had not followed the custom of circumcising converts. They were to remain as they were, being brought into the people of God in their uncircumcised, gentile state (as Paula Fredriksen has emphasized).8 But now other missionaries had intruded into Galatia and had pointed out that according to the sacred Scripture that they shared with Paul, God required circumcision. They doubtless appealed to the example of Abraham. I owe this point to my very first seminar with Lou Martyn.9 8. Paula Fredriksen, “Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at Galatians 1 and 2,” Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 41 (1991): 532–64, esp. 547f.

225

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

As a result of this argument by opposing teachers, which might prove fatal to Paul’s entire mission, it was absolutely necessary for him to show that God’s intention to include gentiles without requiring conversion to Judaism was in the Bible. He emphasizes the antiquity and the scriptural basis for his own activity, stating in Gal 3:8 that Scripture “foreknew” (προϊδοῦσα) that God would righteous gentiles and also “proclaimed it in advance” (προευηγγελίσατο). Since Paul thought “backwards,” from result to cause,10 he naturally saw the Scripture as pointing to and leading up to his own time. He was not twisting the Scriptures; he was proving a point in a way that was in general highly acceptable to ancient Jews. (Shortly I shall offer a caveat regarding the acceptability of Paul’s argument.) Paul’s argument was probably pitched at the level of the opposing missionaries. Although he addressed the letter to the gentile converts in Galatia, he argues as if he were one expert Jewish exegete debating with other experts. The gentile readers may have been a little bewildered, but they would have understood that he was quoting Scripture in defense of his gospel, thereby attempting to reassert his authority. It is noteworthy that in using Gen 15:6, Paul changes the pist- root from a verb in the quotation to a noun in his own formulation, and he changes the dikai- root from a noun to a verb. In English we prefer the noun faith to belief and the noun righteousness to justification. The reasons for the preference have to do with the connotations of belief and justification. A belief is frequently an opinion lightly held: our beliefs are below the level of knowledge. Justification can often mean “an adequate excuse.” So the nouns faith and righteousness are preferable when discussing Paul. But we have no verbs that are cognate with faith and righteousness. We lost the required verbs along the way, during the course of the creation of a new language that combined the French of the conquering Normans with the Anglo-Saxon or Old English of the conquered race. Consequently, Paul’s switches from verb to noun and from noun to verb are hard for translators. In modern English, it is simplest to write that “Abraham believed in God,” which proves that “people of faith are the sons of Abraham.” Unfortunately, the change from believed to faith hides the power of the proof text. Similarly, we incline to write that God reckoned Abraham’s 9. See now J. Louis Martyn, Galatians, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 18, where there are references to fuller discussions elsewhere in the commentary. 10. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 442–47.

226

WAS PAUL A PROOFTEXTER?

faith as righteousness, which proves that God justifies gentiles, again losing the essence of Paul’s argument. This confusion in modern English is why Kendrick Grobel, in translating Rudolf Bultmann, resurrected the Old English verb rightwisen, for which Grobel employed “to rightwise,” and why I decided to try to create two new English verbs, “to faith” and “to righteous.”11 If we can say, as people who have never studied English say all the time, that we “author” books and “loan” money, when we have perfectly good verbs, “to write” or “to compose” and “to lend,” I do not know why people resist “to faith” and “to righteous.” But humans are perverse. Now back to the proof texts of Galatians 3. When I was a callow youth, I once emphasized the word all in Paul’s quotation of Deut 27:26 and 28:58 in Gal 3:1012 (“everyone who does not observe . . . all the things written in the book of the law”). Some time after publishing that mistake, I realized that prooftexters tell us in their own words what their proof texts mean.13 How could it be otherwise? If the rabbi in Sifra did not mean the reader to realize that “the Day of Atonement atones on the sole condition of repentance,” what could he have wanted? That we would study the original passage in Leviticus and discover that sacrifices are also required? The whole point of prooftexting is to use words from a sacred text in order to prove a new point, and that point must be stated explicitly, using those words. The meaning must lie on the surface. I shall not discuss in detail the rest of the wonderful series of proof texts in Gal 3:6–14. I shall, instead, merely list what Paul thought they proved: 1. 2. 3. 4.

People who faith are the descendants of Abraham (3:7). God righteouses gentiles by faith (3:8). All who faith are blessed with Abraham (3:9). All those who live on the basis of the law are under a curse (3:10).

11. I struggled with the lack of a verb cognate with righteousness in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 470–72. In Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983; London: SCM, 1985), I decided to grasp the bull by the horns and to use “to righteous.” See Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 6, and n. 18 (13f.). One will find reference to Grobel in both of these discussions. 12. “On the Question of Fulfilling the Law in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism,” in Donum Gentilicium: New Testament Studies in Honour of David Daube, ed. E. Bammel, W. D. Davies, and C. K. Barrett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 103–26; see 105f. 13. For discussion and some bibliography on interpreting either what Paul said the quotation meant or interpreting the meaning of the prooftext on its own, see Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 21f., 54nn28, 30.

227

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

5. No one at all is righteoused before God by the law (3:11). 6. The law does not rest on faith (3:12). 7. By becoming a curse, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law (3:13). Paul’s general conclusion to the whole section, Gal 3:1–13, to which the details may be subordinated, is this: all this proves that the blessings of Abraham come to the gentiles in Jesus Christ, so that we may receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (Gal 3:14). I think that Paul’s use of exegesis in his arguments is always brilliant (in the good sense of that word) and frequently dazzling. In the case of Gal 3:6–14, however, I must point out that arguing against circumcision on the basis of the story of Abraham is very much an uphill struggle. If there were a learned opponent in Galatia, he would immediately counter by quoting Gen 17:9–14, which concludes with the threat that any uncircumcised male will be “cut off.” If Paul faced serious exegetical expertise, his cleverness in getting around Genesis 17 would show him to be too clever by half. Though Galatians is my favorite book, and Galatians 3 is my favorite chapter, Romans 4 is a better argument: Abraham is father of all those who have faith, both the circumcised and the uncircumcised. I have just one more point regarding Gal 3:6–14, which I have made before and wish to repeat. In this section, Paul quotes the only two passages in the Greek translation of Hebrew Scripture in which the words righteousness and faith appear together, and the sole passage in which curse and law appear together.14 A word meaning “curse” frequently occurs with commandments, but not with law, and law is the word Paul wanted, just as he wanted “the gentiles” in quoting Gen 18:18. If Paul had told his research assistants—let us say Titus and Timothy—that before he wrote his letter he needed them to read all of the scrolls of the Bible line by line and to find every instance in which these two combinations of words appear together, they would have been turning the scrolls until he was executed, and we would not have Galatians. Paul’s ability to do what he did in Galatians 3 was a function of his memory. I shall illustrate by referring to myself. I have never studied the characteristics of memorization as an academic subject, and my own history is the only source of comparison that I know. I do not mean to put myself in Paul’s league in any way. Now for the example: 14. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 21. So also Martyn, Galatians, 309f., nn. 78, 83.

228

WAS PAUL A PROOFTEXTER?

I was recently asked whether I knew the word guerdon. I’m old, and my brain is slow, and so it took several seconds before I was able to reply by quoting Browning, “ere the guerdon be gained, the reward of it all,” which shows that guerdon and reward are parallel terms. Reading the poem by Browning, which was written in contemplation of death, is probably the only time I have ever seen the word. My memory, unlike Paul’s, was not rigorously trained in childhood, but I think that the characteristics of memorization do not change much from person to person. Memory explains how he could find the texts he wanted in the time available for the composition of his letter to Galatia, which probably required haste. His mind was directed to the Abraham story, probably by his opponents’ arguments, and his memory did the rest, easily producing relevant passages in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Habakkuk, as well as Genesis. Memory similarly explains the constant conflation of similar texts in Paul’s quotations. Please forgive me for again paralleling this phenomenon by referring to myself. A few years ago I read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar for the first time in several decades. I was surprised to learn that my memory of Mark Antony’s address to the dead Caesar was in fact a conflation of two orations. I had forgotten most of the speech that begins, “O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?” But I had saved some of the lines at what my memory regarded as appropriate places in the address that begins, “O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth.” I feel quite confident that Paul thought of keywords as he ran through the text of the Abraham story in his mind, and other texts popped into his brain. His memory probably combined them for him. Thus “in you all the Gentiles are blessed” conflates Gen 18:18 and 12:3; “cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law to do them” is mostly from Deut 27:26 but includes aspects of Deut 28:58; etc. I have not counted precisely, but I believe that a majority of Paul’s quotations involves at least a little conflation. Conclusion Paul used proof texts as did many other ancient Jews, and they served to let him prove new points from old texts. Prooftexting is not a suitable form of study and exegesis for modern scholars, but we should not let our own dislike of the method interfere with our appreciation

229

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

for the ingenious and supple arguments on which important aspects of early Christianity depended. We often say or hear that Paul’s letters are difficult. His conclusions are almost always perfectly clear, and what is difficult is the argumentation that leads to them. He argued like an ancient Jew, and for scholars to figure out his arguments they need a little time and some perseverance. The arguments of the letters are of course difficult for laypeople—but that just puts them in the very same situation as the gentile converts in Galatia and Corinth, at least as I imagine them to be. I think that they had not studied the Scripture daily in childhood and youth. So those who find Paul difficult are in good company.

230

10

Did Paul Break with Judaism?

Did Paul break with Judaism? It will help us if we divide this large topic into smaller questions: (1) Did Paul himself ever withdraw from Judaism, in his own view or that of other Jews? (2) Did he wish Jews in general to stop being Jewish? (3) Did his theology, either implicitly or explicitly, imply the eventual separation of the Christian movement from Judaism? (4) Did his churches constitute a social reality that was distinct from Judaism? I propose not to discuss (1) and (2) in any detail, though they raise points of interest, to one of which we shall return later in the essay. I shall say only a few words about each of the first two questions. (1) Did Paul withdraw from Judaism, and did other Jews think he had done so? It appears to me that at worst Paul himself was a sometimes disobedient and renegade Jew. He was punished in Jewish synagogues, which means that he considered himself to be Jewish and that others treated him as a Jew (1 Cor 11:24). According to Acts, he worshiped in the temple, though he was accused of transgressing against its sanctity (Acts 21:2–9). So much for the first question; Paul was and remained a Jew, and other Jews did not consider him to be an apostate. (2) The second question is whether or not he wanted Jews generally to give up the law. We shall see that there were circumstances in which he thought that Jewish Christians should break parts of the Jewish law, but there is no suggestion in his letters that Jews generally should 231

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

renounce the election, the covenant, and the law. He praises these aspects of Judaism in Rom 9:1–5. According to Acts, again, some Jews accused Paul of persuading people “to worship God in ways contrary to the law” (18:13), but we must doubt that this was part of Paul’s mission. That is, I do not think that he attended synagogues and tried to get Jews to begin working on the Sabbath and eating pork. (3) But what of his theology? Did it imply a break with Judaism? We turn now to this question, which will be our principal topic. I think that we do not understand Paul’s theology overall, and especially not Galatians and Romans, if we fail to consider the missionary theory that underlay his work and the missionary context in which his thought developed. I begin with the theological setting of his career, and for this we turn to the end of Romans, which contains Paul’s only surviving statement of his missionary theology. This explanation of his life’s work appears near the end of his surviving correspondence, and conceivably it could be a late rationalization of his labor as apostle to the gentiles. It makes such good sense of his career, however, that it seems to me more likely to have been the theological framework for all of his efforts. His own description of his job is this: “To be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15:16). This statement of his missionary task, with its solemn, sacerdotal language, coupled with a catena of quotations from scripture in vv. 9–12, brings before us a rich theme in the Hebrew prophets and the Psalms, a theme especially well known from Isaiah, but prominent also in Micah and other prophets, and continuing in Jewish literature after the Bible and into the first century: God would one day defeat Israel’s enemies, reassemble the twelve tribes, and establish them in peace in the land. In that day the eyes of the gentiles would turn to the God of Israel, and they would come to his sanctuary with offerings and prayers. In the view of Paul and the other apostles, that time had arrived. The messiah, Jesus, was soon to return. Israel must be prepared (Peter’s job), and it was also time to preach the glad tidings to the gentiles. That was Paul’s task. In Romans we see him near the end of his career. He had completed preaching to the gentiles in an arc from Judea to Macedonia. The church had been started by others in Italy, and Paul would himself go on to Spain. Thus the whole circuit would be completed: his task was almost fulfilled. He had in hand the offering of

232

DID PAUL BREAK WITH JUDAISM?

the gentiles—both money and some converts—to take back to Mount Zion as part of his priestly ministry. I add parenthetically that the scheme was not working perfectly, and that Paul’s fertile mind had to revise it. Peter (Romans 11 implies) had not done well, and Paul considered Israel not to be ready. Now, he proposed, Jews would be goaded into jealousy by the success of his own mission (Rom 11:11–14, 25f.). That is, he reversed the sequence. It was now to be first gentiles and then Israel; but this revision shows how deeply Paul believed in the prophetic predictions. He did not jettison them, only revise them. It would be impossible to imagine a task that, in its general conception, was more Jewish then Paul’s. Why, then, do we ask about Paul’s role in the break with Judaism? It happened this way. The passages that depict the entry of gentiles into the people of God are poetic and prophetic, not halakhic. They do not reckon with concrete reality (unless Isaiah 56 is an exception). But when the Christians actually started admitting gentiles a very obvious problem arose. Would the gentiles have to convert to Judaism and become Jews, or could they be admitted to God’s new people simply as gentiles? This would have been a marvelous question for academics, and I dearly wish that some group of learned Jews, such as the Pharisees or rabbis, had discussed it and that their discussions survived. Alas! The theoretical work seems not to have been done, and there was probably no corpus of theological reflection and legal debate about the behavior of gentiles who turned to the God of Israel in the last days. The Jewish Christians had to decide; gentiles would either be circumcised or not; compromise was not possible. A gentile could not be half circumcised! Moreover, the missionaries of the new movement had to decide on the spot. When a gentile heard about Jesus and accepted him, a decision was necessary. These decisions, I propose, were ad hoc. Each missionary did what he thought best in the present circumstances. From Galatians and Acts it appears that for some years the Christian leaders did not think it necessary to sort the problem out and to develop a standard policy. (I owe this suggestion to Paula Fredriksen.) The individual missionaries seem to have been largely autonomous. We know the position that Paul took, at least as early as his work in Galatia, that is, in eastern and central Asia Minor. He did not require gentiles to be circumcised and to keep the Sabbath. Furthermore, we also know that in Antioch, a mixed church, gentiles did not observe some Jewish laws or customs regarding eating. For a while, such decisions as these

233

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

did not constitute a serious problem. Believers could simply wait for the Lord’s return. But years passed, and problems arose—as happened when Peter came to Antioch. The churches that consisted of gentiles or that included gentiles had to know how to live in various social situations that, it began to appear, might last for some time. The four most pressing topics were those that separated Jews from gentiles in the Diaspora: circumcision, Sabbath, food, and the ordinary religious activities of civic life. These are the four topics that figure in Paul’s letters. These issues could only become more urgent as time passed. For example, children were born to gentile Christians; should sons be circumcised? Clearly policies were needed. Should there be uniform standards for all members of the Christian movement? Should there be two main divisions? Or should local autonomy prevail? At some point some members of the Christian movement began to oppose Paul’s autonomous mission and insisted on the opposite view to Paul’s: gentiles who in the last days turned to worship the God of Israel must become Jewish. This would provide clear guidelines, and it would ensure that all Christians followed the same rules. Paul, of course, responded vigorously. He seems to have started with the view that circumcision and Jewishness were optional, but when his enemies wished to make them compulsory, he argued vehemently that gentiles must not be circumcised. Paul’s arguments against the requirement of circumcision for gentiles are fascinating, but I am going to pass over them. As long as he is merely arguing that gentiles do not have to be circumcised and observe the Sabbath, we do not see the basis for a theological break with Judaism. He is simply saying that there are Jewish believers in Christ and gentile believers in Christ, and they may live by different rules. If Paul had done nothing more than accept gentiles into the people of God without demanding of them obedience to the Mosaic law, we would not be justified in saying that in his thought and work a break with Judaism is perceptible. Peter and James could agree—at least in theory: Paul could have a separate mission with different rules. But in the debate with his opponents, who desired uniformity, Paul took a step that places him beyond the framework of this apparent solution. He proposed that righteous, law-abiding Jews themselves were not necessarily in the people of God. Even they could not be considered “descendants of Abraham” by virtue of being Jewish and obeying the law of Moses. They had to do something else, and if they did that something else, whether they obeyed the divine law or not did

234

DID PAUL BREAK WITH JUDAISM?

not matter. I have suggested that we can understand this development best if we assume that Paul’s opponents initiated the dispute. They insisted that all members of the Christian movement must live by the same rules, those of the Jewish law, and thus that Paul’s gentile converts had to become Jewish. But now Paul turned the principle of equality and uniformity against them and argued that Jews and gentiles were equally outside the people of God unless they had faith in Christ, and that if they had faith in Christ the law was optional for them all—optional for Jews as well as for gentiles. Paul even thought that, in select circumstances, Jews should disregard aspects of the law. In the course of this argument he struck at the two pillars of Judaism: the election and the law. His position was not precisely against the election and the law, but was rather that they did not matter. They were not essential to inclusion in the people of God. This is a denial of the foundations of Judaism. I shall now briefly mention some of the passages in Galatians where we see Paul’s most radical position. (1) According to Gal 3:15–18, the election of Abraham does not apply to Jews as such, but rather to those who have faith in Christ, whether Jewish or gentile. In particular, Genesis 17, which requires circumcision, is not valid. The requirement of circumcision is entirely replaced by the requirement of faith in Christ (3:29). (2) The law was not given to be fulfilled, but rather to condemn (Gal 3:22; cf. 4:1–10). (3) Jewish believers in Christ, when in close association with gentiles, should disregard some of the Jewish law, such as food and days; this is seen in the rebuke to Cephas, Gal 2:11–14. Thus not only should gentiles not be required to observe Jewish rules regarding eating, but also Jews should join the gentiles, and they should all eat together. This point calls to mind 1 Cor 9:21, where Paul wrote that, when he was with gentiles, he himself was not under the law. This means, I assume, that he disregarded sabbath and food laws when in the company of gentiles. Let me summarize the situation thus far: In Galatians, Paul first of all denies that gentiles must be required to be Jewish. Logically, this could have meant no more than that there would be two separate communities of believers in Christ. That is, Paul could have resisted equality and uniformity. But, goaded by his enemies, and mindful of the problem posed in Antioch, he pushed further: Jews and gentiles were on the same footing. The election and the law should not be allowed to separate Jew from gentile. They all equally must have faith

235

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

in Christ, and for both groups equally the covenants with Abraham and Moses were not essential. Abraham remained as a name, but descent from Abraham was determined not by circumcision, but by faith in Christ. This argument is altered somewhat in Romans. It is in some ways modified in favor of standard Jewish beliefs, but in other ways it is made more radical. I cannot, of course, give a full account of Romans, and so I shall again summarize only a few of the most relevant passages. First of all, I shall list those in which Paul is most concerned to recognize the traditional claims of Judaism: 1. He states that being Jewish is an advantage: Rom 3:1f. 2. He wishes to uphold the law: Rom 3:34. 3. He acknowledges circumcision as the biblical covenant with Abraham: Rom 4:11. 4. He states that the law is holy and good, and further now says that God gave it for life, rather than with the intention of condemning: Rom 7:10–20. 5. He acknowledges that the law has just requirements: Rom 8:4 (though the best translation and precise meaning are somewhat in doubt). 6. He rehearses the points of Jewish privilege in Rom 9:4f. These are very substantial modifications of the harsh language and the uncompromising spirit of Galatians. But has Paul really changed his mind? Would he now say that there are two communities of Christian believers, one law-observant and one Torah-free? Or would he now say that it was right for Peter to withdraw from eating with gentiles in Antioch? It appears to me not. We see the point most clearly if we note two reiterated slogans: there is no distinction between Jew and Greek (3:22; 10:12), and “both Jew and Greek” (1:16; 2:9f., 17, 28f.; 3:9, 29; 9:24; implied in the passage on the olive tree, 11:17–24). Paul’s main emphasis, of course, is positive: God does not discriminate against gentiles but includes them on the same conditions as he accepts Jews. But from the Jewish point of view, this is a very negative position. Jewish privilege, supposedly great, in fact does not count. If there is no distinction, Jews might as well be gentiles. The election and the law are not essential. Paul’s most radical way of putting this is to say that “all people, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (3:9). This theme is developed

236

DID PAUL BREAK WITH JUDAISM?

with remarkable theological power in Romans 6 and the early verses of chapter 7. All humans are enslaved by sin, the flesh, and the law until they escape by metaphorically, mystically, or sacramentally dying with Christ. Union with Christ, and union with Christ alone, gives life. Being Jewish is no help at all. Let me now explain this position in other terms. Paul is working with a conception of an in-group and an out-group. This division was of course standard in Judaism: Jews were in the people of God; all others, except a few righteous gentiles, were outside. The basis of inclusion was this: acceptance of the election of Abraham, represented by circumcision, and of God’s will, represented by the Mosaic law. No Jew, to my knowledge, held the view that New Testament scholars often attribute to Judaism: each individual, by compiling good works, had to earn God’s mercy. That was not a Jewish view at all—indeed, such a position is, I think, entirely nonexistent in the history of the world’s religions. It is a fictional view, created by the needs of Protestant polemics. Ancient Jews, like all other people, thought that they had been blessed with gifts they did not deserve, and they thought that they should humbly and gratefully accept these gifts, and obey the giver, God. Not only did Jews not hold the self-righteous view imagined by Christian polemicists, Paul did not criticize them on this ground. The “works of law” that he argues against are those that make a person Jewish, and he argues not that Jews should stop trying to save themselves by meritorious good works but rather that gentiles should not be forced to be Jewish. That is the meaning of the slogan “by faith, not by works of law.” The theology to which Judaism was committed, and against which Paul argued, was that the election counted a great deal. Basically, it meant that all Jews were in the people of God. There was, of course, a condition: that they accept this gift and strive to obey the law that God had given. Legal obedience was a necessary condition of remaining in the people of God, not the means of achieving admission. It seems to me that Paul fundamentally opposed this view: (1) Jews did not start off in the people of God. All humans, including Jews, were, apart from Christ, enslaved to sin. (2) The only means of admission was faith in Christ. (3) Within the body of Christ, good works were required as a condition of membership, but the parts of the law that separate Jews from gentiles were not required. Those parts were optional. The theology that I have summarized in these three statements, if accepted

237

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

by the Christian movement in general, would separate Christianity from Judaism. I have several times used the word optional to describe Paul’s position on the parts of the Jewish law that separate Jews from gentiles. I have in mind three passages: 1 Cor 7:19; Gal 5:6 (both dealing with circumcision); Rom 14:1–6 (food and days). This seems to me to be his fundamental position. The argument that his gentile converts must not be circumcised is a response to the view that they must be circumcised. That is, if he started by thinking that gentiles must not be circumcised, it is hard to see how he came to the position that circumcision was optional. If he started by thinking that it was optional, and encountered the view that it was necessary, we can understand his argument that it must not be forced on gentiles and must, moreover, be entirely rejected. If, in Galatia, one of his converts chose circumcision, Paul could only have regarded this act as a victory by his opponents and as capitulation to their view that circumcision was necessary. Thus in a polemical context “optional” became “not at all.” (4) I shall now very briefly discuss the fourth question: Did Paul’s churches constitute a social reality that was distinct from Judaism? The answer, of course, is yes. Paul’s churches had a new condition of entry (faith in Christ), a new ritual of entry (Baptism), a somewhat different code of behavior (“the whole law,” which, however, did not actually include all of it), and a new community of worship (neither the synagogue, the Jewish temple, nor pagan shrines). These new social institutions were neither Jewish nor Greek; religiously, the members were in the awkward position of being nothing that the world could readily categorize. They were cut off from substantial parts of civic life, and equally they were not part of the Jewish communities. Nevertheless, they survived. Had they not survived, Paul’s radical and scintillating theology would not have mattered. In the end, the Christian movement broke with Judaism because it became, on the ground, a socially distinct religion. Paul’s theology created the churches, but it was the churches that gave life to the theology. In the end, Christianity included Abraham and Moses in the history of salvation, but it followed Paul in thinking that only acceptance of Christ put people in the people of God. And, of course, it was historically very important that gentiles joined in appreciable numbers, and that as the years passed more and more of Christianity consisted of gentiles who did not accept key parts of the Jewish law. I have presented this topic in a somewhat dispassionate way, and I

238

DID PAUL BREAK WITH JUDAISM?

have concealed the deep emotions that the reader sees in Galatians, Romans 7, and Romans 9–11. The topics I have discussed were burning issues for Paul and his opponents. His opponents probably saw the matter this way: the God of Israel is the God of the world. That God chose Israel and gave commandments. He cares intensely whether or not people accept his election and his laws. We cannot have gentiles claiming to be in his people while flouting his will! How can you imagine that God does not care whether people obey him or not?! Read the Bible! You will see that he cares very much about circumcision, Sabbath, and food. Paul, of course, replied with equal fervor: God sent his son to die on the cross and save all people. Becoming one person with him, dying with him—that is what matters, and it is all that really matters. If God meant to require Jewishness, and if Christ is not entirely sufficent, his death was in vain! How can you think that anything else is truly essential?! And then, on Paul’s part, there was also anguish. He felt the seriousness of his denial of the necessity of the election and the law, and he wished that he could preserve them (Romans 7; 9). In Romans 11, as we have seen, he saves room for Israel to join the people of God out of jealousy. Most strikingly, he asserts that all Israel will be saved (11:25f.). This, he says, is a mystery, and it leads on to a greater mystery. God in fact condemned all people, in order that he could save them all (11:32). How will God do this? Paul throws up his hands and exclaims that God’s judgments are unsearchable (11:33). This shows, I think, how deeply torn he was personally between his native belief that being Jewish mattered very much and his new conviction that only faith in Christ availed. He could hold it all together only by saying that the issue must be left up to God. He is God, and he will manage to save his creation. Is this a retraction of the requirement of faith in Christ? Perhaps in a way it is. It throws the question of salvation into the future and into the hands of God, without actually saying how God will manage. But as long as the Christian ministries lasted, it seems, Paul thought that faith in Christ was the only necessary condition of inclusion in the people of God. This future hope for the salvation of everyone, which I wish to take quite seriously, nevertheless could not result in a change in his view about whether or not the law was mandatory in the Christian churches as long as history endured, nor did it have the effect of canceling his

239

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

view that faith in Christ alone was necessary. It does not compete on the same ground, and it remains a hope for the future and a statement of trust in God, who created the world, and will lose nothing that is his.

240

11

Did Paul’s Theology Develop?

The question, Did Paul’s theology develop? is often seen as part of the large and frequently debated question, Was Paul’s theology coherent, consistent, or systematic? If his theology developed, it was not a complete system at the outset, and also a few inconsistencies may have appeared in the course of time. Thus I wish to consider these three words (adding comments about one or two others) as an introduction to the present study of development. The three words are frequently taken to have the same meaning, but in fact they are distinct. The definitions of the words that I offer below are common and also those that I have always accepted. Others may define the words differently, though making them all synonymous is extremely confusing. My principal goal, however, is to clarify my own usage. Paul’s theology would be systematic if all parts of it could be fitted into a hierarchical outline that contained several main principles, each with subdivisions that follow from the main points. The word systematics is a synonym for taxonomy and refers to a scientific classification according to similarities and differences. In biology, for example, it is used for the classification of life forms. Every family of plants or animals includes a number of genera with some common characteristics. Each genus includes a number of species with some common characteristics, and so on. All life forms stand in a definable relationship to others, and each life form can be fitted into a 241

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

preexisting system of classification (though there are some complications). A systematic theology proceeds from first principles, often those that are outlined in a creed. In the Institutes of the Christian Religion, for example, John Calvin began with the knowledge of God and worked his way systematically through the main headings of Christianity, progressing from God to the fall of Adam to salvation through Christ, and so on. Paul did not write a systematic theology, since he wrote occasional letters relating to specific issues. Some people have tried to systematize Paul’s thoughts by arranging them in some sort of creedal order. These efforts seem to me to be unsuccessful. They are certainly diverse, and it is notable that one person’s systematization does not agree with that of another. Most Pauline scholars have difficulties with all of them. Thus, if Paul had a full system, we have not yet discovered it. (We shall return to systematic theology below, when discussing coherence.) Consistency is most simply achieved by repetition. If one says the same thing about topic X every time one says anything about it, one will be perfectly consistent. It is easily possible to be entirely consistent but unsystematic. Consistent statements about topic X do not have to stand in a hierarchical or logical relationship to consistent statements about topics Y or Z. Once a writer varies what he or she says about topic X, the reader may raise the question of consistency. And scholars do precisely that. We examine the consistency of one another’s works, and we point out inconsistencies with glee. This enterprise is often worthwhile. On the other hand, consistency in creative religious thinking is much less important than insight, as well as less important than consistency in scholarly argument. Academics tend to overvalue simple consistency in the works of a religious genius. Simple consistency (such as defining the right policy in Iraq over a period of years by saying “stay the course,” while the situation changed) is accurately called “the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”1 It is at best a minor virtue and more often a serious fault. Things change, and people need to be able to adapt themselves to new information and circumstances. I think that we should be tolerant of little inconsistencies and try to explain major inconsistencies if we find 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self Reliance,” in Century Readings for a Course in American Literature, 3rd ed., ed. Fred Lewis Pattee (New York: Century, 1926), 294–306, quotation from 297.

242

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

them. Perfect consistency is inhuman, if one takes into account the span of a few decades, and we should not expect it. My view is that Paul was on the whole consistent in his approach to similar questions. The only potential major inconsistency of which I know is a conflict that appears in two chapters of the same letter. In 1 Cor 11:5 he states that women should cover their heads when they pray or prophesy in church, while in 1 Cor 14:33f., he writes that women should not speak in church at all. If these two statements were written by Paul and refer to the same situation, they are badly inconsistent. No woman could obey both at the same time. (Inconsistency on a practical issue is much easier to identify than inconsistency on a theoretical one.) The question of women in church is such a striking case that many scholars look for a special explanation: one of the statements was inserted by someone else into Paul’s letter, or his mind actually shifted to a different case, for example, a specific woman whom he wished to squelch. I have no solution to this problem, which I note only to clarify what it means to be “inconsistent.” There are several topics about which Paul makes diverse statements. The Jewish law is the most famous of these, but variety also marks Paul’s descriptions of the human plight (e.g., transgression, bondage to Sin and the Flesh,2 slavery under the stoicheia tou kosmou).3 Although these different formulations allow the question of consistency to arise, I have never written that they are inconsistent. In Paul and Palestinian Judaism, I explained that the varying descriptions of the human plight sprang from Paul’s “thinking backwards,” meaning that he thought from solution to problem rather than the reverse.4 Thus they make sense as different statements of a consistent view: all people are in a situation that requires salvation through Christ. For Paul’s statements on the law, I employed the same suggestion (thinking backwards),5 though later I offered a second one: the questions to which each statement responds were different, a situation for which I used the phrase “different questions, different answers.”6 2. English translations commonly capitalize the word spirit when it refers to the power of God, and I have capitalized sin and flesh when, in my judgment, Paul uses them to refer to the power of evil. 3. On the human plight, see Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 474f. and 509n2. On the law, see immediately below. 4. Paul’s thought ran “backwards”: Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 442–47, 474f. (this explains diversity in describing the human plight), 481f., 497, 499, 510, 555; see also Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983; London: SCM, 1985), 68. I have returned to this topic in “God Gave the Law to Condemn: Providence in Paul and Josephus,” in The Impartial God, ed. Robert Foster and Calvin Roetzel (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007). 5. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 474–97.

243

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

In any case, I have not described Paul as committing frequent and gross inconsistencies, though I have often been accused of holding this position, I think because people often confuse “system” with “consistency.” I have maintained that Paul’s theology was not systematic. Coherence means “clinging together.” Probably all systematic arrangements are also “coherent,” but it is possible to have coherence without hierarchical or logical arrangement. This is what I think of Paul: coherent, unsystematic, not notably inconsistent. My own image of Paul’s thought is a circle containing two main principles: (1) The God of Israel is God of the whole world; he called the Jewish people, brought them out of bondage, and gave them the law; but all the creation is his. (2) In recent days, God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to save the whole world from the wrath to come, without regard to whether or not people are Jewish.7 Around the outside of this circle can be grouped diverse statements on such topics as the law and the human plight. Each statement, I think, relates to some part of Paul’s two main principles—all of them cohere with main aspects of his thought—but they do not relate systematically to each other. Is the tension between “particularity” (God is the God of Israel, and Jews are his chosen people) and “universality” (God is God of the entire created order and wills to save it without requiring people to be Jewish) a tension that is extreme enough to be called a contradiction? Well, the effort to hold the two principles together is certainly at the heart of Paul’s two most difficult theological problems: God’s intention in giving the law, whether to save or to condemn (Gal 3:22; Rom 7; 11:32); and the significance of the election (Romans 9–11). I have written about both of these issues, and I have no desire to re-present those views here.8 I wish only to note that these are serious clashes or, at a 6. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, part 1. This answer was hinted at in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 497. 7. Before someone else points out that this statement of Paul’s main principles is inconsistent with the lists in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 441f., and Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 5 (which themselves are not identical), I should say that I regard them merely as diverse formulations of the same overall position, with only a little development! 8. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 70–81 (Romans 7), 192–96 (the salvation of Israel). The tension that is created when one believes both that God is God of the whole world and that he chose Israel can be seen in non-Christian Jewish sources as well. In Paul’s thought, the solution to this tension is that God sent Christ to save the whole world without regard to the prior election of Israel. This, however, produces another tension between God’s purpose in sending Christ (to save everyone) and the thus far imperfect results (not everyone has accepted him). This tension is clear in Romans 11, where discussion moves from the olive tree (only those with faith will be saved) to the coming of the Redeemer (God will have mercy on all).

244

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

minimum, tensions in his thought, which are better understood once one sees that he carried two main principles in his head. Positive statements about the election of Israel (as in Rom 9:4–5; 11:28–29) relate to the first main principle (the God of the whole world chose Israel), while negative implications (as in the olive tree metaphor in Rom 11:17–24) relate to the principle that Christ came to save all who have faith in him, whether they are Jewish or not. The present point is that virtually all of Paul’s theological thoughts relate in some way or other to these two principles. Once one lists the implications that arise from these principles, however, one does not have an outline that can be arranged hierarchically, in a list graded in accordance with importance or in a list that puts the various thoughts in a logical sequence. What we have, rather, are insights. The insights that spring so freely from Paul’s head are not random thoughts but are coherent with main ideas.9 I wish now to give two examples that show the unsystematic nature of Paul’s coherent thought. First, I would not know where to put, in a systematic outline, the view that Sin, law, and Flesh go together as enslaving factors (Rom 6:20–7:6), or that Christians are now “dead” to them, having died with Christ (Rom 6:5–11; 7:6). Do these follow from the statement that the law is holy, righteous, and good (Rom 7:12)? Do they lead to it? I do not think that they are incoherent, since they relate to main principles. Moreover (as indicated above), these and other statements about the law are not inconsistent, since they answer different questions. How may we be saved by Christ? Answer: by faith, not by obeying the law. If I am not in Christ, but under some other system (whether paganism, astrology, or the Jewish law), what is my status? Answer: bondage. If I want a good guide to behavior, how can one describe it—apart from saying, “live by the Spirit”? Answer: read the commandments, especially “love your neighbor.” I see that all of the negative statements about the law relate to the view that salvation comes from Christ and all other lordships or domains are to be rejected. I also see that this principle is “in tension” or in conflict with the principle that the same God who sent Christ also gave the law—and created flesh! Thus I see principles, I see conclusions from them, and I see tension between them; but I do not see a system. Second example: A scholar who wishes to systematize Paul must find different headings in his or her outline for “righteousness by 9. E.g., Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 518: Paul “thought, . . . he thought on the basis of theological convictions, and consequently . . . he thought coherently.”

245

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

faith” and “being one person with Christ.” Perhaps “righteousness” is preliminary to membership in the body of Christ. Or maybe it is the result of life in Christ. I think that the more fruitful path is to see these statements as different formulations, from different semantic fields, which both point to the same reality.10 The two “cohere,” or stick together, with one of his main principles, but they are not discrete points on a systematic outline, where one follows from the other. Thus: I regard Paul as a coherent thinker, but not a systematic theologian. His letters are much more interesting, exciting, and in fact glorious than that.11 Although I wish not to footnote each of the scholars who has objected to my view that Paul was a coherent but not systematic thinker,12 or who has misrepresented it, I shall offer as an extreme example a recent book by Douglas Campbell, which in many ways I like very much, but which confuses various terms, including the three I listed above and also others, among them rationality. At various points in his book The Quest for Paul’s Gospel,13 Campbell describes his search: it is for an “intelligible Pauline Gospel” (9), or for “coherence, objectivity, and rationality,” as well as “intelligibility” (12). He opposes postmodernism, which is “self-referentially incoherent,” because he is a Christian and because he favors “rationality,” “order,” and “intelligibility” (13). At this point in the book, I was feeling downright hostile toward those postmoderns, whoever they are, who oppose reason, which I hold as sacred. Then I reached Campbell’s most sustained statement: “Others view [Paul] as an ad hoc thinker with no inner consistency or system at all (i.e. he is making it up as he goes along), or as someone who is simply confused and intellectually inadequate, at least at certain points.” Campbell classifies Heikki Räisänen and myself in this camp 10. “Righteousness by faith and participation in Christ ultimately amount to the same thing,” Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 506. Cf. 519: “The fact that Paul utilizes terms which we now identify as having different backgrounds does not do away with the claim that he thought coherently.” For the entire discussion, see 441, 487, 495, 501–8, 519–20. 11. The systematic theologies that I have read, which I find to be much less interesting and gripping than Paul’s letters, were written by John Calvin, Karl Barth (I have read only a few volumes of his Church Dogmatics), Emil Brunner, and Paul Tillich. Moving beyond theology, the systematician whom I most admire is John Locke, whose treatises on epistemology and philosophy of government unfold with a logical clarity that is marvelous to behold. 12. “I view Paul as a coherent thinker, despite the unsystematic nature of his thought and the variations in formulation” (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 433); “In taking the position that Paul was a coherent, but not systematic, thinker, we are taking the position most common among exegetes, and it needs little defence” (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 518, with n. 1, where other scholars are cited). Note also the search for the “center” of Paul’s theology, 434–42. 13. Douglas A. Campbell, The Quest for Paul’s Gospel: A Suggested Strategy (London: T&T Clark, 2005).

246

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

(with partial support from others), which he dubs “anti-theological,” although (he continues) we could just as well be called “anti-rational or anti-systematic.” In the footnote, he claims that we ignore Paul’s “overt attempted rationality” (29f., and n. 2). I find all of this to be terribly confused, since Campbell simply equates coherence, consistency, rationality, intelligibility, and system, though each of these words has a meaning of its own, and it is possible to be one or more of them but not another. It is simply bewildering that he describes my view of Paul as antirational and antitheological. This is entirely untrue as a characterization of my view of Paul, and it seems possible that he has read only right-wing caricatures of my work, not the books themselves. I think that Paul was a splendid creative theologian. He was a mystic (2 Cor 12:1–10), but the numerous arguments in his letters operate entirely in the realm of reasoned (rational) argument, and they are all intelligible—in fact, I think that I have explained them, which proves that I find them quite comprehensible! There are major discussions in Paul and Palestinian Judaism and Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People of Paul’s various arguments—each intelligible, each rational, though the forms of argumentation are diverse and many are unfamiliar today, since Paul often argued as would any great Jewish exegete of the ancient world. But that does not make them unintelligible, incoherent, or irrational. With regard to my having a view of Paul as antitheological: the main topic of my work on Paul is his theology—Christology, theology proper (his ideas about God), faith, dying with Christ, his conception of sin, and so on. On 139 Campbell claims that Räisänen and I present Paul’s discussions of the law as “confused.” I pointed out above that I noted the variations in Paul’s descriptions of the human plight but never called them “inconsistent.” In general, I have not accused Paul of major and gross inconsistencies, and I certainly have never regarded him as confused.14 His principal arguments on the law are, as noted above, 14. I am extremely grateful to Carol Shoun for finding inconsistent and inconsistency in Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, which I shall briefly review. In most cases these words refer to inconsistency (in the sense of “diversity”) of statement or formulation (35) or lack of harmony in argumentation (35): Paul’s arguments in favor of a given position were quite varied, without any noticeable change in the position itself—one of the main points of the book. Other statements on consistency are these: There is a (minor) inconsistency within Romans 5 (p. 36). In Romans 7, Paul’s argument that God gave the law for life is inconsistent with the argument that he gave it in order to condemn, for example in Galatians 3 (p. 79). Rom 1:18–2:29 does not give a consistent description of Jews and Gentiles (125). There are “diverse explanations of the function of the law,” but “those who argue in favor of mere inconsistency” are wrong (147). If I had anticipated the furor that

247

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

diverse, since they deal with diverse issues. They appear confused only when a systematician wishes to make them all the same or to put them all equally under one heading of a systematic outline. When, in 1975, I wrote, “I view Paul as a coherent thinker, despite the unsystematic nature of his thought and the variations in formulation,”15 I could not have imagined that the words unsystematic and variations would be taken to mean “wildly inconsistent and confused,” “wholly irrational,” or “incoherent.” I thought that all readers would know what systematic theology is and thus what unsystematic means. I presented Paul as having a definite “pattern of religion,” which he often expressed in theological terms and which can be summarized as “participationist eschatology.”16 I also maintained that his theology has a “center” (see n. 12). If I found him to be unintelligible, incoherent, irrational, and nontheological, I could never have proposed that he had a theology that could be described and summarized, or that it had a center. How can one summarize an incoherent jumble? Or find its center? As it turns out, Campbell’s own view of Paul’s theology is not all that different from mine: he prefers to expand my “participationist eschatology” into “PPME,” standing for “pneumatologically participatory martyrological eschatology” (42). The two additional words do point to main elements in the participatory scheme, though the title may be too complicated to catch on. In any case, if my summary term is usable, surely I did not argue or imply that it stands for thought that is incoherent, irrational, and unintelligible. One of my major explanatory devices, by which I tried to unravel a lot of the statements that others have found to be confusing, was that Paul’s thought ran backwards, from solution to problem (n. 4 above). Campbell accepts this sort of thinking, though without a footnote, would be kicked up by the publication of Heikki Räisänen’s fine book Paul and the Law (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983), published the same year as Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, I would have written some of those lines slightly differently. But it is a fact that Paul was not perfectly consistent: no one is, and perfection is an unreasonable expectation. I also regard it as a fact that most of his inconsistencies are minor or are on the surface: different formulations, different explanations, or different argumentation, all referring to a small set of consistently held principles. The major complication is the “tension” between two of his main principles (see n. 8 above). Carol Shoun’s labors have given me the opportunity to see that my wording has not been perfectly consistent but that my view of Paul has been consistently maintained. For the main argument of the book on this point—“diversity” within “coherence”—see 5–6, 144–48; on “consistency” see also 71–81. 15. N. 12 above. It is noteworthy that the heading of 518–20 is “Coherence, Relevance and Sources.” 16. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 433 (his theology was an expression of his religion); 549 (“participationist eschatology”).

248

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

calling it “a retrospective approach” that “‘works backwards,’ formulating its account of ‘the problem’ only after it has experienced ‘the solution’ in Christ.”17 Thus we agree about one of the major aspects of Paul’s thought, as well as about appropriate words to summarize it. It is not clear why my Paul is antirational and antitheological, while Campbell’s Paul is rational and theological. Development (Growth) The present essay is a “thought” piece, based not on the study of secondary literature but on analyzing the thinking of the man who wrote the letters with which I have lived for decades. The topic is usually called “development,” though “growth” is probably better, for reasons that will appear. Development (to stay with the usual term) in and of itself is not necessarily systematic or unsystematic, consistent or inconsistent, coherent or incoherent. The sorts of development that I now see in Paul constitute “organic growth,” the elaboration in later letters of ideas that are no more than incipient in early letters. They are thus coherent parts of Paul’s thought. I must begin by confessing that in my earliest book on Paul (completed thirty-two years ago, about the same period of time as that between Paul’s conversion and Romans) I wrote, “I do not see any signs of major theological ‘development’ in Paul’s thought, but there are certainly alterations in the way in which he expressed himself.”18 The twenty-eight-line footnote that follows that statement gives some information about efforts to find development. It concludes thus: My own view is that chronological change would be interesting and important if it could be definitely established. There are some changes which are obvious: thus the discussion of the law in Romans is more developed and more nuanced than the discussion in Galatians (a point which I owe to W. D. Davies). It does not necessarily follow that Paul changed what he thought, although he may have done so. It seems safest to take such changes as developments in presentation and argument. I do not know of any decisive evidence that Paul changed what he thought during the period of the surviving correspondence, although the possibility that he did so cannot be excluded; and the variations in argument in the letters will always provide grounds for speculations on this score. 19 17. Campbell, Quest for Paul’s Gospel, 142. 18. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 432. 19. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 432f.n9.

249

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Two things occur to me about the thought of the young man who wrote that statement and the footnote: (1) He was not entirely comfortable with ruling out development but did not see how to proceed with a study of it. (2) He defined development as requiring “change,” and change as meaning “retraction.” Another line in the footnote states that 2 Corinthians 5 and Phil 1:22–24 are not “a development away from the expectation of a future resurrection,” since that expectation is later repeated in Romans. That is, Paul did not retract his earliest view. I now would define development and change as not requiring retraction or deletion of what Paul had previously thought. If we are looking for change in that sense, we shall not find it; but Paul could develop his thought, in the sense of “growing it,” without renouncing previous views. In the early 1990s, I offered a graduate seminar that looked at the question of development, focusing on eschatology. Thereafter, in all my seminars on Paul, we read the letters in chronological order and traced variations. In about the middle of this process, Gregory Tatum presented a splendid dissertation on development in Paul’s thought, which has recently appeared in print; his work confirmed my suspicion that Paul’s thought grew and developed.20 In other words, I am an adaptive human, and I have had new experiences, including reading Paul’s letters through several dozen times since I wrote those lines and supervising enterprising and intelligent doctoral students. Paul tells us to imitate him, and I am doing my best: my thought has developed, and I now think that we can use the word development for Paul’s theology. In this sense, the answer to the question of development now seems completely obvious: of course Paul’s thought developed. How could it not? He was an intelligent and reactive human, who worked in an unprecedented environment. The latter days had arrived, and it was time for Jews to persuade gentiles to turn to the God of Israel in order to share in the blessings of the messianic age. During his travels on behalf of this new vocation, Paul met and conversed with a variety of other humans, and he faced a series of new challenges. Only a dullard would repeat time after time what he had previously thought or refuse to think back through some of his opinions as issues and objections arose during his ministry. Adaptation must have been his watchword. 20. Gregory Tatum, OP, New Chapters in the Life of Paul: The Relative Chronology of His Career, Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monographs Series 41 (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2007).

250

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

The most important consideration, however, is not the obvious but theoretical necessity for Paul’s thought to develop during his tumultuous ministry, but rather the simple fact that his letters show him to have been a man of great variety and adaptability. As problems shifted, and as his understanding of them advanced, he made adjustments. There is, of course, an alternative answer to the question, the one that I preferred in my callow youth. I shall repeat the question and vary the answer. Did Paul’s theological thinking develop? Many have answered, obviously not. I shall now outline one of the principal ways in which scholars reject the idea of development. In Philippians 3 Paul depicts his conversion as involving a rejection of righteousness by the law. Some hold that this passage proves that the slogan “righteousness is by faith, not by works of law” in fact goes back to the time of his conversion. Even when not uttered, this “doctrine” is believed to have determined everything that he wrote from 1 Thessalonians to the end of Romans. Turning to one of my favorite older commentators on Paul, I shall give an example of a similar argument that implicitly denies the possibility of development. I greatly admire all the work of J. B. Lightfoot and wish that there were more people like him. But on this topic—whether or not at the time of conversion Paul worked out the theology of Galatians and Romans—I believe that he erred. In discussing Paul’s trip to Arabia shortly after the revelation that changed his life (Gal 1:15–17), Lightfoot correctly points out that in ancient literature Arabia can mean either the Arabian peninsula (what we now call Saudi Arabia), the Sinai desert, or the area immediately south of Damascus (Coele Syria,21 including some of the cities of the Decapolis). We could add to Lightfoot’s evidence for the third use of Arabia the fact that Josephus sometimes used “Arabia” and “Coele Syria” interchangeably.22 At any rate, Lightfoot chose not the area close at hand but the Sinai desert as the “Arabia” to which Paul went, commenting: “Standing on the threshold of the new covenant, he was anxious to look upon the birthplace of the old: that . . . he might ponder over the transient glories of the ‘ministration of death,’ and apprehend 21. “Coele Syria” is now unfamiliar as a geographical term. It Latinizes koilē Syria, or “the hollow of Syria,” the northern extension of the Great Rift Valley, which begins in lower Africa and runs north approximately to Damascus. The Great Rift includes the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea, all below sea level. 22. Compare Josephus, J. W. 1.89–90, with J. W. 1.103; see also J. W. 1.124f.

251

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

its real purpose in relation to the more glorious covenant which was now to supplant it.”23 The passage that Lightfoot used to explain Paul’s theological reflection immediately after his call to be an apostle was not Philippians 3 but rather its mate (in subject matter), 2 Corinthians 3 (“ministration of death”). The argument is basically the same as the one I sketched above: shortly after his conversion Paul sat down and worked out the theology that appears thirty or so years later. This view clearly runs counter to the possibility of development. There are a couple of curiosities about Lightfoot’s choice of the Sinai desert. One is that he did not consider the amount of money that would be required to mount an expedition to Sinai: camels, donkeys, guards, guides, water, and food. Paul could simply have walked from Damascus to the “Arabia” east of the Jordan Valley. Lightfoot had a practical turn of mind, but I suppose that in writing on Galatians he was immersed in its theology. The second curious point is that Lightfoot did not consider the sequence of the letters. This is odd for a man who had written more than once on chronology and chronographers. I have by no means done justice to arguments that can be offered against development, but I think that the most important ones hinge on interpreting Paul’s conversion or call as he himself interpreted it in hindsight. Second Corinthians 3, to be sure, is not explicitly autobiographical, but it is not much of a stretch to connect it with Paul’s discussion of his conversion in Philippians 3. The danger of the procedure is simply that hindsight can be misleading. The lens of more recent experience often influences how we see the past. A second objection is that it is impossible to see how Paul is applying “justification by faith,” or his conception of the two “ministries,” to the issues of 1 Thessalonians or 1 Corinthians. We are offered a systematization of Paul’s thought that does not aid, and may hinder, exegesis. We of course cannot directly refute the accuracy of Paul’s own hindsight about the theological significance of his conversion. What we can do, however, is simply to ask whether we can arrange Paul’s letters in at least their approximate chronological order; and, if we can, to ask whether we find the sort of adaptation and variety that can reasonably be called development or growth. The entire discussion depends on topics that I cannot address in 23. J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (London: Macmillan, 1892), 88.

252

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

detail here: which letters in the Pauline corpus are “authentic” and in what sequence they were written. When, in my seminars, we read the letters in their probable chronological order, we adopted the following sequence: 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 10–13, 2 Corinthians 1–9, Galatians, Philippians, and Romans (leaving Philemon out of account, as not bearing on the main topics of Paul’s theology).24 Studying the letters in this sequence was eye-opening about how themes started and grew. I strongly recommend reading works—not just Paul’s letters—in their chronological order. 25 In his dissertation (and now his book), Gregory Tatum makes an interesting and even compelling case in favor of a somewhat more complicated chronological order: 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 10–13, Galatians, Philippians, 2 Corinthians 1–9, Romans. Putting Galatians and Philippians before 2 Corinthians 1–9, rather than after all of 2 Corinthians, makes little difference to the study of the topics that I shall discuss.26 Since explaining and utilizing the arrangement would occupy space, and this essay is already long, I shall stay with the simplified list that I first presented, putting Galatians and Philippians after all of 2 Corinthians. Other parts of the sequence are not very controversial: 1 Thessalonians first and Romans last. Galatians’s relationship to the Corinthian correspondence has always been the hard problem, and I refer the reader to Tatum’s book (see n. 20) for a full discussion. Now I shall turn to some cases where I see development in the sense of growth. Topics 1. Eschatology. We shall start with eschatology, which has often been discussed in connection with development. The passages on the resurrection of believers and the return of the Lord show Paul at his adaptive best, and there is certainly variety. Is it the kind of variety that may best be called “growth”? In 1 Thessalonians we learn that Paul had told his converts to turn to the God of Israel and to await his Son from heaven (1 Thess 1:9–10; 24. If one includes Colossians and Ephesians among the authentic Pauline letters, of course, the question of “development” changes markedly. 25. I regard my failure to think chronologically as the principal weakness in the Pauline section of Paul and Palestinian Judaism. I still view the emphasis on coherence (despite variety) and lack of system as correct, but it would have helped if I had seen that the variety is sometimes explicable as organic growth. 26. But see further n. 34 below.

253

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

4:13–18). The Thessalonians were doing that when, apparently, one or more of them died. This was troubling, since the survivors were afraid that the dead would miss out on the return of the Lord. When Paul heard from his converts, he simply revised his prediction by saying that “the dead in Christ will rise first,” before those who are still alive (4:15–17). That is an extremely simple addition to his original message and hardly qualifies as “development.” We assume that as a Pharisee he had always believed in the future resurrection, and it was natural to apply this view to his converts when the need arose. Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians from Athens (see 3:1). From Athens he went to Corinth, where he founded a church. He doubtless told the Corinthians what he had written to the Thessalonians. I paraphrase: The Lord will return while most of you are alive, but if some die they will rise first to greet him in the air. He left Corinth and traveled to Syria and Jerusalem, staying for an unknown period. Next he walked back to Ephesus.27 This entire trip took at least two years, but probably longer. While in Ephesus he heard from the Corinthians. They did not like the idea of the resurrection of dead bodies. They knew what happened to corpses, and the idea that decaying body parts would go whizzing through the air to greet the Lord was probably offensive. 28 Besides, they were presumably Greek in culture, and so they probably already believed in the immortality of the inner person, the psychē. Why not just say that at death the psychē will go to be with the Lord instead of down to Hades or to the Isles of the Blessed? Paul objected. He had seen the risen Lord, and the Lord had had a body. So, turning to the Greek translation of Genesis, he pointed out that Adam became a living psychē (Gen 2:7), which Paul took to mean a normal body (as translators correctly have it), not an immortal “soul” or “inner person,” which is the usual meaning of psychē. If the first Adam had a psychic (that is, normal) body, the second or last Adam must have a supernormal body, a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44–49).29 But then, Paul thought, in some ways the Corinthians were right in objecting to the resurrection of physical remains. And so he now insisted that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 27. Acts 18:18–19:1. 28. In 1 Corinthians 15, the focus is on whether or not a body is raised; Paul’s solution, a spiritual body that is not flesh and blood, is calculated to meet an objection to the resurrection of a fleshly body. 29. “Must have”: Paul remembered Gen 2:7 as calling Adam “the first man, Adam” (1 Cor 15:45). By the standard rules of Jewish exegesis, this implied that there would be a “second Adam” or a “last Adam,” who would have to be different from the first Adam. Since the first Adam’s body was a psychē, it was natural that the last Adam’s body was pneuma, thus “a spiritual body.”

254

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

Cor 15:50). When this sentence was read to his church, the members (I imagine) stood and cheered. Paul would not divide the human into parts (psychē, or soul, and body), and he felt that he had to defend the word body in describing the entity that would be raised, but he granted the Corinthians’ main point: it would not be a body of flesh and blood. Rather, everyone would be transformed: both the dead and the living would be changed in an instant (“in the twinkling of an eye,” 15:52), and all would ascend as transformed, spiritual bodies. In comparison with 1 Thessalonians, this is at least adaptation. To avoid the word development, we could say that Paul was simply thinking more specifically and concretely in response to a difficult question than he had thought when he wrote to the Thessalonians. It appears in any case that, when he founded the church at Corinth, he had not said that at the resurrection the body that would be raised would be spiritual, not flesh and blood. I think that probably this shift in the definition of body was new, but we cannot exclude the possibility that it was new only to the Corinthians, not to Paul. In 2 Corinthians—written after Paul had been to Corinth again—we find further variations. First, the transformation from flesh and blood to spiritual body will not come “in the twinkling of an eye” (which is what he wrote in 1 Corinthians) but rather is already under way: “all of us . . . are being transformed into the same image [that is, into Christ’s image] from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). Moreover, “our outer nature is wasting away, [while] our inner nature is being renewed day by day” (4:16). Not only does Paul put the transformation in the present tense rather than in the future tense, but he also takes a step toward distinguishing the inner person from the outer person. In 2 Cor 4:16, only the inner is being renewed. This is, of course, required by the tense of the verb: he could not say that in the present the outer person is becoming a spiritual body, not of flesh and blood. This division of the human into inner and outer, which he had refused to make in 1 Corinthians 15, is repeated in 2 Cor 5:1–5, where “we,” the inner, true selves, live in “tents,” temporary, outer coverings. Paul’s inner person groans, wanting to be out of the tent. And yet not so, since that would mean that the inner person has a disembodied existence. Rather, the tent will be swallowed by a heavenly dwelling: the mortal swallowed by the immortal. Here Paul returns to one of the themes of 1 Corinthians 15. (He had given the proof text for “swallowing” in 1 Cor 15:54.) In 2 Cor 5:4 apparently both the inner

255

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

person and the tent are swallowed by life. Nevertheless, in 2 Cor 5:2–4 Paul can distinguish the inner person from its clothing, which we would not have expected on the basis of 1 Corinthians 15. Thus there are bits of anthropological dualism, as well as “realized eschatology,” in 2 Corinthians 3–5. More famously, when in Philippians Paul is contemplating the possibility of his own death, he thinks that when he dies his true self will go to be with the Lord (1:23), presumably leaving his body behind until the general resurrection. This is clearly a case of anthropological dualism. Thus 2 Corinthians and Philippians contain substantial alterations of 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians. In 1974–75 these variations or alterations did not appear to me to be “development,” but rather merely varying formulations, because Paul did not retract the original view that in the very near future the Lord would return. In 2 Cor 4:14, in the midst of statements of realized eschatology, he still wrote that “the Lord will raise us . . . with Jesus.” Similarly, in Phil 3:20f. he repeated that “we are expecting a Savior” from heaven (as in 1 Thessalonians) and that he “will transform the body of our humiliation” so that it will be like “the body of his glory,” as in 1 Corinthians 15. Finally, the “swallowing” motif is the same in 2 Corinthians 5 as in 1 Corinthians 15. Thus, if develop means “retract,” then clearly Paul’s thought did not develop. His thought shifts in some verses of 2 Corinthians and in Philippians 1 but returns to a previous point in Philippians 3. I would now say that “development” can and often does occur without retraction: thought can grow. As the Lord delayed, it seemed increasingly unsatisfactory—not only to Paul’s converts, but finally to Paul himself—to think of the dead in Christ as lying in the grave, decaying, for month after month, year after year until the resurrection. When thinking of his own death, Paul himself wanted there to be an inner true self that could be with the Lord immediately after death. Though not apostles, we are all free, and so we can choose whether to call this development of variety in Paul development or growth of his thought. I am now inclined to do so. Circumstances cause his thought to enlarge and become more complicated. 2. Inner spiritual life. The delay of the Lord’s return, combined with the suffering of converts, led to a considerable development in Paul’s thought about the inner spiritual life of the person. First Thessalonians, which is his earliest surviving letter by three or four years or more, is tough-minded when it comes to suffering. The

256

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

Thessalonians in Christ were being persecuted. The persecution, to be sure, was probably closer to harassment than slaughter, but harassment can be difficult to endure. Paul is less sympathetic than one might wish. I paraphrase 1 Thessalonians: Christ suffered and I suffer. I told you in advance that those in Christ suffer, so why are you complaining? Suck it up! Hang in there and wait! It won’t last long. I have worried about you. Are you being blameless while waiting? If not, perfect yourselves, be blameless, shape up!30 He did, of course, offer some consolation: they loved one another (4:9), though he thought it worthwhile to urge them to try harder (4:10). And they had the Spirit (4:8), though he had to tell them not to quench it (5:19). Possession of the Spirit is one of the unvarying aspects of Paul’s view of the Christian life. The role of the Spirit is not, however, developed in 1 Thessalonians. Paul does not, for example, prove that his converts have the Spirit by reminding them of their spiritual gifts, nor does he contrast their present life, during which they possess the Spirit, with their former life “in the Flesh.” One closes the letter thinking that the great apostle provided somewhat cold comfort to people who were hurting and who may have been doubting. Of course he urged them to hang on and praised them for doing so adequately, but the principal message is to be blameless and steadfast until the Lord’s return and to endure suffering without wavering. Next letter: One of the most obvious aspects of 1 Corinthians is the long section on spiritual gifts, chapters 12–14. Were I to lapse into fantasy, I would suggest that while he traveled from Athens to Corinth (after writing 1 Thessalonians) Paul determined to emphasize the value of having spiritual gifts. The enjoyment of such gifts would help his converts-to-be to remain true during persecution if the Lord still delayed his appearance. Or maybe the Corinthians were just inclined to enthusiasm, no matter what Paul chose to emphasize. In any case, when he heard reports of their life a few years later, he felt that he had to rebuke them for speaking in tongues so much and so loudly, especially since sometimes more than one person spoke at once (1 Corinthians 12–14). After he sent the letter, he apparently continued to worry about his church in Corinth, and so he changed his travel plans and went there before revisiting Macedonia (2 Cor 1:15f.).31 The result was what we 30. For “perfection” or “blamelessness,” see 1 Thess 3:13 (“holiness,” “blameless”); 5:23 (“undamaged,” holoterēs, in spirit and “blameless” in body); 4:7 (not impure); cf. Paul’s own purity and blamelessness, 2:10.

257

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

now call “the unhappy visit.” The church was not obedient to Paul; some preferred other apostles, or perhaps only one other apostle (2 Corinthians 11). Paul left Corinth, hurt and angry. He wrote a harsh letter and sent Titus (2 Cor 7:5–8). The combination worked. Titus subsequently found him in Macedonia and told him that all was well. Paul wrote a letter expressing his pleasure and relief. It is in the letter of relief (2 Corinthians 1–7 or 1–9) that he puts in the present tense the beginnings of the transformation into the glorious body of Christ (3:18 and 4:16, which I quoted earlier). In this letter there is another clear shift into realized eschatology: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new” (5:17). The reason for this considerable change in Paul’s presentation of his view is, of course, unknown. I think of two possibilities: (1) The Corinthians felt scrunched by his rebuke over the handling of spiritual gifts; this encouraged him, after Titus had achieved a reconciliation, to go overboard in moving aspects of salvation into the present (or even the past); or (2) he was simply so happy that the Corinthians had returned to him that he got carried away by enthusiasm and moved the future new age and the coming transformation into the present. This way of stating the present life of the Christian—we already live in the new creation; the old has gone; transformation into the glory of Christ is under way—had a very short life: these formulations did not survive 2 Corinthians. In the last part of Romans 8 the “already” and the “not yet” are reestablished in their usual order. In the present, Christians have only the “first fruits of the Spirit” (as in 1 Thessalonians), while they wait for the final delivery from bondage to decay (Rom 8:18–25). The transformation—“glory” (8:18), “the redemption of our bodies” (8:23)—lies ahead (as in 1 Corinthians 15). Well, again, someone may say, Paul does not retract the view of 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians: Christians now have the Spirit; they must wait; they will be transformed in the future. These views are repeated in the last verses of Romans 8. All true. But although the language of present “transformation” and “new creation” does not appear after 2 Corinthians 3–5,32 things are not the same in Romans as in 1 Thessalonians. The present life in Romans has 31. In all of the discussions of the Corinthian correspondence, I am assuming arrangements of the material and travel that I cannot explain here. Among other things, I am one of the numerous scholars who reads 2 Corinthians 10–13 as the “harsh letter,” which was actually written before the letter of relief, 2 Corinthians 1–9 or 1–7. 32. The phrase “new creation” appears in Gal 6:15, but not in the sense that it is already present.

258

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

changed in a different way: Paul’s converts have died to Sin, etc. To see this, we need to press on to the third exploration, which is closely linked to this one. 3. Suffering, imitation, and sharing. “Imitation” is one of the largest and in some ways most consistent points in Paul’s letters.33 The language of imitating or being imitators, to be sure, is not frequent (1 Thess 1:6; 2:14; 1 Cor 4:16; 11:1; Phil 3:17 [synmimētai]), but the theme is widespread. Paul constantly uses the first person (I or we) with an implied exhortation to do things the way he does, and he does things the way Christ did. He wishes that with regard to sex his converts would be as he is: celibate (1 Cor 7:7). He wishes that the other apostles would be more like him and much less like themselves. They preach wisdom; he and God are against human wisdom (1 Corinthians 3). The implication is that the Corinthians should, like Paul, be against human wisdom. And so on, almost forever. While imitation covers a lot of points, the most explicit are suffering (both examples of the word imitators in 1 Thessalonians) and giving offense to no one (1 Cor 11:1). I wish to focus on suffering. In 1 Thessalonians, this is imitation plain and simple: as we saw above, Christ suffered, Paul suffers, and his converts suffer; their comfort is that they are in good company. In Paul’s letters, suffering is usually not punishment for sins (except when people have been bad! as in 1 Cor 11:29–32) but rather imitation of Christ. But being Christ-like is also eschatological: our mortal bodies will become like his glorious body (1 Cor 15:43, 49). When aspects of eschatology move into the present in 2 Corinthians, becoming like Christ moves into the present, and mere imitation becomes carrying his suffering and death in our own bodies. At first this seems to be true only of Paul, who always carries in his body “the death of Jesus.” In life, he is “always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in [his own] mortal flesh” (2 Cor 4:10f.). But this theme will expand (or grow) to include all Christians, as we shall see. When I submitted this essay to the editors of the volume in which it was originally published, Ross Wagner made a suggestion about the emphasis on suffering in 2 Corinthians 1–7 that I wish to incorporate: When Paul speaks of the suffering of Christ and Christian afflictions in 2 Cor 1:3–7, he offers as an example of affliction his own suffering 33. There are now several excellent treatments of imitation in Paul’s letters, including a Duke doctoral dissertation by Dustin Ellington: “‘Imitate Me’: Participation in Christ and Paul’s Vocational Model for the Church in 1–2 Corinthians,” 2004.

259

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

in Asia, presumably in Ephesus (1:8–11). He even compares his experience, Wagner notes, to “a resurrection from the dead.” “It seems to me,” Wagner continues, “that this illuminates (though it does not exhaust the meaning of) his later statement in 2 Cor 4 about being given over to death so that the life of Jesus may be manifest in his body.” Though Paul routinely suffered affliction, and saw it as part of the Christian life, this major trauma “could have been instrumental in leading him to a new way of thinking about suffering.” Wagner’s comments led me back to the thought to which I referred just above, that a lot of Paul’s theology is autobiographical, and suffering is a major theme that allows him to draw lines from his own life to Christ’s and to his converts. Wagner has put his finger on a vital point: Paul saw his sufferings in connection with those of Christ, and those of his converts in connection with the sufferings of both Christ and himself. And obviously—now that Wagner has made the observation—one should see a correlation between Paul’s own dramatic affliction in Asia and what he wrote to the Corinthians, probably no more than a few months later. Let us now connect suffering (cosuffering with Christ) with eschatology and realized eschatology (being transformed into Christ’s image). As I noted earlier, the language of present, ongoing transformation and new creation does not continue after 2 Corinthians. But in Galatians we find another way of stating a change that takes place in the past or present. Paul himself has been “crucified with Christ” in the past tense (Gal 2:19). Dying with Christ may be seen as building on the thought of suffering with him.34 The formulation of Galatians—sharing the death of Christ—has legs (as we now say): it will continue as he goes forward. In Romans, Paul extends it to Christians in general. In Romans 6, we find that all Christians have died with Christ (6:5). They should consider themselves “dead to Sin” (6:11). Only a few verses later, they are definitely “freed from Sin” (6:22). Paul and other Christians are no longer “living in the 34. If we were strictly following Tatum’s arrangement, we would say that “dying with Christ” in Galatians comes before “sharing his sufferings” in 2 Corinthians 1–7. After this essay was submitted, Tatum’s work appeared in print, which gave me the first opportunity in a few years to read it. Now that I have done so, I must say that his arrangement is superior. See New Chapters in the Life of Paul, 60–62, for the argument that Gal 2:19–20 preceded 2 Cor 5:14–15, which means that it also preceded the passages in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 to which I referred. Cf. Tatum, New Chapters in the Life of Paul, 87f., on the relationship between 2 Cor 4:10 and Philippians; 92 on the relationship between 2 Cor 4:10 and 2 Cor 13:4 and 1:5. For the purpose of this essay, the general point is that these passages are related and that they are a development of the theme of “imitating” Christ’s sufferings in 1 Thessalonians.

260

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

Flesh” (Rom 7:5). The possibility of condemnation for those in Christ has now disappeared; they are free from the law of Sin and death (8:1f.). Paul repeats that Christians, in the present, are not in the Flesh but in the Spirit (8:9). The verbal formulations are different, but these claims are every bit as dramatic as present transformation and new creation in 2 Corinthians. The concluding verses of Romans 8, as I pointed out above, return to the expected Pauline theme of the “already” and the “not yet.” After saying that Christians have died with Christ and now share his life, at least in part, Paul reverts to the thought of suffering in order to share his future glory (Rom 8:17f.), except that now suffering is with him, rather than in imitation of him. Christians have only the firstfruits of the Spirit, and their bodies have not yet been redeemed (8:23). Nevertheless, in a few giddy chapters in Romans Paul does something very similar to what he did in 2 Corinthians 3–5: he moves substantial aspects of salvation into the present. Christians share Christ’s death, and so they partially, at least, share his new life: in Rom 6:5 the resurrection is future, but in 6:11 Christians are already “dead to Sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Christ-likeness does not come all at once, at the resurrection (as in 1 Corinthians 15), but rather begins with Baptism (Rom 6:4). This is an advance on imitating the suffering of Christ in the present and awaiting new life in the future. There were probably several features of Paul’s interaction with his converts and opponents that were driving his thought. As far as I can now see, the most important was the need for spiritual enrichment in the present life while waiting, often in suffering, for the return of the Lord. The theme of merely imitating the suffering of Christ and Paul grew: it became sharing Christ’s suffering or participating in his death. In the later letters, some form of “new life” is a present reality. As Christians shared Christ’s death, so they also shared something of his life, even before the resurrection. I would list as the second driving force the probability that the Corinthians were pushing Paul toward more realization in the present of the promises of the future. (He probably wrote Romans from Corinth.) Pressures created by the passage of time and the delay of Christ’s return, plus interaction with his most inquiring converts, probably converged to yield the formulas of Romans 6 and 8: Christians have died with Christ; they live in the Spirit, not in the Flesh; they are freed from Sin and have new life in the present. These pressures were felt by Paul’s converts, who needed a view of their present spiritual

261

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

life that was richer than seeing it as a period of hanging on despite persecution. Paul himself felt these pressures, as his discussions of his own suffering in 2 Corinthians 1 and of his death in Philippians 1 show. Suffering was a constant issue; Paul needed to account for it theologically and to give it a positive value. It would not do to treat suffering for being Christian as punishment of transgression.35 In the early to mid-50s, in addition to the admonition to hang on despite suffering, Paul had on hand the theme of imitation and the idea that, in partial compensation during this life, Christians possessed the Spirit. By the early 60s he could say (to repeat) that all Christians shared the sufferings and death of Christ; that all Christians lived in the Spirit and not in the Flesh; that therefore they had died to sin and had new life in the present. This gives suffering a very positive role. It is not just imitation; it is cosuffering with Christ, representing dying with him. Here, it seems to me, are very powerful tools to help Christians endure until the Lord returns. These tools respond to the problems created by suffering and eschatology: there is more to the Christian life than suffering and waiting for a bliss that is constantly delayed. I think that if this theology had been available to Paul when he wrote 1 Thessalonians, he would have used it. I believe that it developed and grew from his concern for the spiritual life of Christians (including himself) as they suffered and waited while the Lord tarried. Conclusion There are four further brief points—or appendixes—regarding the development of Paul’s theology. One is a general rumination about Paul; the other three are specific comments on questions of development. First, a reminder about Paul himself, whom we have been discussing as a theologian: he was also a human and a missionary. Discussions of Paul’s theology often make him too bookish or academic. He spent years of his life on the road, carrying (presumably on pack animals) his tent, clothing, and tools—not many scrolls, if any. He carried the Bible safely tucked away in his head, where it belongs.36 As an apostle, 35. In Judaism, during the persecutions by Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Hadrian, when the people most loyal to God suffered most, the interpretation of suffering also had to develop. See briefly my Judaism: Practice and Belief, corrected ed. (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1994), 273f.; more fully, “R. Akiba’s View of Suffering,” Jewish Quarterly Review n.s. 63 (1973): 332–51. 36. I have discussed the degree to which Paul had memorized the Bible in “Paul between Judaism

262

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

he often supported himself by plying his trade. He was busy, traveling, working with his hands, winning people for Christ, shepherding or coping with his converts, responding to questions and problems. And he was very human; he knew not only fighting without but also fears within (2 Cor 7:5). Paul the completely confident academic and systematic theologian—sitting at his desk, studying the Bible, working out a system, perfect and consistent in all its parts, unchanging over a period of thirty years, no matter how many new experiences he and his churches had—is an almost inhuman character, either a thinking machine or the fourth person of the Trinity. The real Paul knew anger, joy, depression, triumph, and anguish; he reacted, he overreacted, he repented, he apologized, he flattered and cajoled, he rebuked and threatened, he argued this way and that way: he did everything he could think of in order to win some. Naturally his mind matured, his thinking grew. The second addendum is that the body of Christ discussion in 1 Corinthians 12 appears to be based not on the idea of being one person with Christ but rather simply on a metaphor or, better, an analogy. Each person has a role in the church, though a different one, on analogy with the feet, hands, and private parts of an ordinary body. Once Paul had the idea of the body of Christ, however, it was easy to use it to serve the mystical, or participationist, side of his thought. While I do not find participationism in 1 Corinthians 12–14, it does appear in 10:14–22, where participation in the cup and the loaf prohibits unions with demons. We also have a touch of participationist Christology—or Christ-mysticism, as Albert Schweitzer called it—in the passage on the use of prostitutes in 1 Cor 6:15–17 (“your bodies are members of Christ”).37 This is the earliest hint in the direction of the more strongly participationist language of Galatians, Philippians, and Romans. The third additional comment has to do with righteousness by faith and being in Christ. It has often been recognized that the so-called doctrine of righteousness by faith— it would better be called a and Hellenism,” in St. Paul among the Philosophers, ed. Linda Martin Alcoff and John D. Caputo (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). 37. “Christianity is a Christ-Mysticism, that is to say, a ‘belonging together’ with Christ as our Lord, grasped in thought and realised in experience”: Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (Eng. trans., London: Adam & Charles Black, 1921), 378 (often reprinted). I accepted the heart of Schweitzer’s view; but, since the term mysticism was widely misperceived, I substituted participationism and called Paul’s theology “participationist eschatology”: see Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 434n19, 440n49, 453–63, 549, and elsewhere. Participation has the advantage of being a Pauline word (koinōnia/koinōnos), as in 1 Cor 10:16, 18, 20; 2 Cor 1:7, where it is used in the sense of “belonging together” or “sharing.”

263

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

“formulation”—is polemical and was introduced when circumcision was at issue. I would add to this that the form of words seems to originate in Paul’s proof texts from Gen 15:6 and 18:18, which he apparently used in order to refute the argument of his opponents in Galatia, who probably appealed to Genesis 17. (Paul’s argument is, in effect, since Abraham was righteous by faith, as is proved by selected passages in Genesis, righteousness does not require circumcision, despite Genesis 17.) The limitation of the formulation is so clear and has such a precise origin—the debates about circumcision in Jerusalem (Titus) and Galatia—that in the 1970s it seemed easy to me to maintain that “being in Christ” is actually much closer to being the center of Paul’s soteriological thinking than is “righteousness by faith,” though, I argued, ultimately the two formulations point to the same reality.38 Then one can also note that the word faith—which is ubiquitous in the letters—often leads to formulations other than “righteousness” to indicate the new status: we are children of God through faith, one person with Christ through faith, and so on (Gal 3:26–29).39 These other formulations are clearly more important in Paul’s letters than the word righteousness. But now I should observe that being one person with Christ is also absent from 1 Thessalonians. Not only that, faith in 1 Thessalonians is mostly steadfastness, holding on despite suffering, as in 3:2f.: “we sent Timothy . . . to strengthen and encourage you for the sake of your faith, so that no one would be shaken by these persecutions.” Being one person with Christ as the result of faith is at least as remote from 1 Thessalonians as is being righteous by faith. In 1 Thessalonians, Christians—that is, “faithers” (hoi pisteuontes, pas ho pisteuōn, etc.)—believe in the God of Israel, renounce idols, believe in Christ, and trust that he will return to save them from wrath; in this faith they hold on and live blamelessly. Perhaps I may repeat: I am sure that they would have appreciated being told that by faith they became one person with Christ. But we do not get that full statement until the end of Galatians 3. Participation in the cup and loaf appears (as noted above) in 1 Cor 10:14–22, and participation in Christ is in 1 Cor 6:15–17, but we still do not find the formula “You are one person with Christ.” We should not retroject either “life in Christ Jesus” or “righteousness by faith” into 1 Thessalonians on the ground that Paul must have had a completely 38. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 506; see further above, n. 10. 39. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 504.

264

DID PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEVELOP?

worked-out theology, one that is now found in Galatians and Romans, when he wrote the letter. The fourth appended thought is that participation in Christ is required by the argument of Gal 3:15–29: Christ is the only heir of Abraham; only those who are in Christ can be coheirs. Although this is not the earliest sign of participationist thought, the argument may have helped push Paul further along that road, and it may partially account for the predominance of participationism in Romans 6–8. Thus I see growth and development all around. I think that the years of Paul’s last “missionary journey” were extraordinarily fruitful for the development of his theology. The delay of Christ’s return, the problem of suffering, the theme of imitation, the reality of koinōnia (1 Corinthians 10), the need for spiritual enrichment while waiting for the return of the Lord, the growing Christ-mysticism (one person in Christ)—a lot of things came together during this last period of Paul’s apostolic endeavors. One of the results is a degree of warmth and richness in describing the present Christian life that was not available to Paul when he wrote to encourage the Thessalonians to hang on. Imitation has become sharing. Having the Spirit, or having spiritual gifts, has grown into living in the Spirit, not in the Flesh, and this development may also have helped lead to the conception of being one person with Christ. As we saw, this theme begins in the first person: “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). But all Christians are or may be like Paul, who is like Christ. All may be sons of God, as Christ is Son of God (Gal 3:26; Rom 8:16). When circumstances, his own needs, and his converts pushed him to it, his active, creative, responsive brain spewed forth ideas and formulations, and his readers must be grateful to those doubtless often-puzzled souls of Corinth and Galatia who pressed him until he came up with the ideas and the words that guide Christian life to this very day.

265

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Summary 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians

Later Letters

Having the Spirit: having a few gifts

grows to include

living in the Spirit and not in the Flesh

Faith: being steadfast, confident

grows to include

dying with Christ; becoming one person with Christ40

Present Christian life: enduring suffering while being blameless

grows to include

being enriched by spiritual gifts; transformation beginning in the present

Imitation: suffering as he did

grows to include

sharing Christ’s suffering and death

Transformation: new life in the future

grows to include

new life in the present as well as in the future

Body of Christ: having various roles in the church

grows to include

being one person with Christ

40. In the later letters, putting one’s faith in Christ is parallel to “dying” with Christ and thus becoming “one person” with him (as in Gal 2:19; 3:25–29). In the terminology of Paul and Palestinian Judaism, this is “getting in” or “transferring” (e.g., 463–72. “Being one person with Christ,” earlier in the essay and in the last line of this summary, refers to the resultant status—“being in.”

266

12

Paul’s Jewishness

Two major facts about Paul are well known and not in dispute, thanks to the explicit autobiographical passages in his letters and the most obvious inferences to be drawn from reading those letters: he was a Jew who spoke and wrote in Greek.1 (Whether or not he knew other languages we do not know.) It is highly probable that he was “at home” in eastern Cilicia and Syria, which were the first areas of his missionary activities as an apostle of Jesus Christ (Gal 1:21). His activity in this area coheres with the statement in Acts that he was originally from Tarsus, in eastern Cilicia (Acts 22:3). There has long been a question of how deeply Paul was influenced by Hellenistic or Greco-Roman culture. Historically, New Testament scholarship offers a wide range of possibilities: everything from the man who hellenized Christianity2 to a Jewish rabbi whose vision in or near Damascus modified and expanded his thought, without changing his rabbinic characteristics.3 1. Parts of this chapter are a revision and expansion of some sections of an earlier essay: E. P. Sanders, “Paul between Judaism and Hellenism,” in St. Paul among the Philosophers, ed. John D. Caputo and Linda Martin Alcoff (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 74–90. 2. See, e.g., Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, trans. William Montgomery (London: A. & C. Black, 1956), 26–36. Schweitzer attributes this view especially to F. C. Baur and H. J. Holtzmann. See further Erwin R. Goodenough (with A. T. Kraabel), “Paul and the Hellenization of Christianity,” in Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, ed. Jacob Neusner (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 23–68. 3. W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (Mifflintown, PA:

267

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

I am incompetent to assess the depth of Paul’s Hellenism. Many other scholars have imbibed the spirit, tones, and nuances of GrecoRoman discourse much more deeply than I have, and I must leave to them the task of defining the scope and depth of Paul’s Hellenism. I am not opposed to their efforts: on the contrary, I urge them on.4 I suspect that the level of specialization that our fields have now reached makes it almost impossible for any one person to do full justice to Paul’s cultural setting, what we usually call his “background.” I am rather pleased that I have avoided the task of trying to define his background and the influences on him, pursuing, rather, comparison and contrast between his letters and other material that I have studied. What I shall try to do in this essay is to define some of the main aspects of Paul’s Jewishness, and I want to focus on the largest categories that are accessible to us. The essay falls into three main parts. I start with education, which we shall explore by considering quotations; this in turn requires us to investigate memorization. 1. Education, Quotations, Memorization A few months ago my brother-in-law told me that he had recently run across a word he did not know, guerdon, which appeared to him to mean “something earned,” and he asked whether I knew it. Because my brain is old and slow, it took perhaps several seconds, but I came up with a quotation, “ere the guerdon be gained, the reward of it all,” which confirmed the meaning “something that is earned.” I knew the source: “Prospice,” by Robert Browning. So I got the book, and we read through the poem. Later that day, I became curious about how much of the poem I could recite, now that my memory had been jogged. It turned out to be about half of the whole—some lines here, some there. I had never set myself the task of memorizing Browning’s poem on facing death: that is the prospect to which the title refers. About fifty years earlier, I had read through the collected works of Browning once, and I had read the poems a few times, perhaps thrice; part of

Siglar Press, 1998). This publication includes the original text of 1948 and additional material from 1955, 1980, and 1998. 4. See, for example, Stanley Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, & Gentiles (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1994); Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark; Louisville : Westminster John Knox, 2000); Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1995).

268

PAUL’S JEWISHNESS

“Prospice” had lodged in my memory, to be called forth at the mention of an unusual word. For the sake of contrast and comparison with Paul, I shall indulge myself in the sentimental recollection of my life as a memorizer of poetry. In my childhood in the vast and dusty plains of north-central Texas, besides attending school, I had only three activities: reading my mother’s college books, especially English literature; playing informal games of baseball; and playing informal games of American football. I had from 3:30 to 10:00 p.m., plus weekends and summers, to indulge my three pastimes. So I read and reread a lot of English literature. From about the age of seven to age fifteen I memorized my favorite bits—those that appealed to a boy who liked strong rhyme and rhythm, fast pace, action, blood and gore, and romantic sentimentality. Many modern Jews grew up in an academic environment that encouraged memorization. My life as memorizer was opposed to the educational philosophy of my time and place, which was that learning by rote was damaging because it (supposedly) ruined creativity: memorization was at best unnecessary; one should know only where to look things up. I personally resented this doctrine and imagined myself being forced to go through life with reference works strapped to my back, and so I carried on memorizing. From my untrained reading and repetition, I learned several things about memory. It can, on demand, supply lines containing specific words, such as guerdon, and thus permit word studies; it will therefore produce texts that are related to one another in content or vocabulary; it can recall lengthy texts with no more than minor variation from the original; it will sometimes conflate similar texts. In my adulthood, for example, I discovered that my boyhood memory had conflated Mark Antony’s two orations over the corpse of Caesar in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. The educational philosophy of Paul’s time was totally different from that of my day. In the ancient world, everyone knew that children memorize quite easily, and also that memorization in childhood and youth is much easier than carrying heavy scrolls around and rolling them backward and forward when in search of a favorite passage. Ancient education was based on reading aloud, repeating, and often memorizing, either deliberately or incidentally, from mere repetition. The elite young males of the Greco-Roman world memorized tons of Greek poetry, and the Romans also memorized a lot of Latin material.5 5. See Henri Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (Eng. trans., London: Sheed and Ward, 1956;

269

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

One of the purposes of education was to allow a man to come up with an apt quotation in the law court, the boulē, or the Senate. We do not know very much about Jewish education in Paul’s day, either in Palestine or in the Diaspora. We may assume that students learned to read, to repeat, and thus to memorize. More importantly, we can use inferences from later rabbinic sources to consider the quantity of material that students could memorize. Memorization of the Bible is almost self-evident to the reader of rabbinic literature, and it has been confirmed by experts who have studied the issue.6 It would be impossible to conduct the discussions of the Midrashim by turning scrolls. Thus we may be absolutely certain that memorization of the Bible is within the mental capacity of an intelligent person during childhood and youth. I suppose that an unusual adult, such as Rabbi Akiva, could do the same. We may construct a kind of syllogism: education inculcated and relied on memorization; memorization resulted in quotation; therefore quotation reveals education. Paul wrote that he exceeded most of his contemporaries in zeal for the traditions of his ancestors (Gal 1:14), which I take to mean that he was the smartest boy in the class and learned the most about the subjects that they studied. When we meet Paul in his letters, he was probably in his forties or fifties, and his brain may not have been quite as quick as when he was fifteen, but he still had the facility to recall and quote what he had learned. It seems to me that on the basis of his quotations we must assume that Paul memorized the Bible in Greek, or at least large portions of it. In the surviving letters he does not quote any other source, except for one adage: “Bad company ruins good morals,” in 1 Cor 15:33, which immediately follows a quotation from Isaiah. I think that if Paul had memorized the right bits of Greek philosophy he would have come up with a quotation in 2 Cor 4:18, where he wrote that what is seen is transient but what cannot be seen is eternal. Even the works of his older contemporary, Philo, would have helped out there. Similarly, it would have been easy for a scholar of Greek philosophy to use a quotation to support Phil 4:11, “I have learned to be autarkēs,” repr., 1981), e.g., 154, 166; Stanley F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome from the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny (London: Methuen, 1977), 39, 111, 144, 307. 6. Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs and Manners of Palestine in the I Century B.C.E.–IV Century C.E. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 5722/1962), 52.

270

PAUL’S JEWISHNESS

“self-sufficient.” The word was applied to Socrates, and it was used in various schools of Greek philosophy, including Platonism and Stoicism. Paul clearly was not entirely ignorant of Greek thought, but he seems not to have had at his fingertips apt quotations, which probably means that he had not memorized a lot of Greek literature during his life as a student—which presumably ended at about age fifteen or sixteen.7 Thus I have a simple proposal for basic aspect number 1 of Paul’s Jewish matrix: as a boy and youth he studied the Greek Bible, which meant that he memorized it either in whole or in part. If not exclusively Jewish, his education was at least heavily Jewish. Two aspects of Paul’s use of quotations in argumentation stand out when considered in the light of memorization. One is that he could do “word studies,” which would otherwise be very difficult. In Galatians 3 he quotes the only two passages in the Septuagint that combine the roots for faith and righteousness (Gen 1:6; Hab 2:4). He also quotes the only passage in the Septuagint that combines the words law and curse (Deut 27:26). This is easily explicable if he had memorized Genesis, Deuteronomy, and Habakkuk. If he actually had to find every single use of these word combinations by turning scrolls, he and his assistants would have been at it for weeks if not months. The only reasonable explanation is memory. He did not wish to say in general that disobeying commandments brings a curse, but rather he wanted to connect curse with the word nomos, “law,” and his memory produced the only instance in his scripture. I think that memory is also responsible for the fact that a lot of Paul’s quotations are conflated—like my quotation of Mark Antony’s orations over the corpse of Caesar. Staying just with Galatians 3, we note that Gal 3:8, “all the Gentiles will be blessed in you,” conflates Gen 7. Elite Roman males took the toga virilis between fourteen and sixteen and were ready to begin learning how to govern the empire by entering military service. A few went on to advanced studies. The future Augustus was studying in Apollonia (Dalmatia) when the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar called him back to Rome at age seventeen or eighteen. This system continued until fairly recent times. For example, John Adams (born 1735) finished school at fifteen and then spent four years at Harvard; John Lloyd Stephens (born in New Jersey in 1803) finished school at thirteen, graduated from Columbia College at seventeen, and finished law school at nineteen. See, e.g., J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome (London: Phoenix, 2002), 92–106, 233–35; Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, OUP, 1999, s.v. iuvenes; David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 34–35; Victor Wolfgang von Hagen, “Introduction,” in John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970). Stephens’s work was originally published in 1837. Conceivably Paul was a student beyond the age of sixteen, but his principal period of study and memorization of literature would have ended by then.

271

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

12:3 with 18:18, while Gal 3:10 borrows from Deut 27:26 and 28:58. Once the memory has a key word, it will produce passages containing that word, and conflation is much more likely to be the result of memory than of turning the pages of a scroll and deliberately taking one word from one passage and a few words from another. Perhaps that is not so difficult if one conflates passages that are only a few chapters apart. But elsewhere Paul conflates Isaiah and Jeremiah, for example, which is much harder if one thinks of him as studiously rolling scrolls. In Paul’s usages of the LXX that are not signaled as quotations by the phrase “as it is written,” and the like, there is also conflation, as we shall see immediately below. This is even more telling: his head was filled with the words of his scripture. Paul could write and argue without quoting his scripture explicitly, and he may well have routinely preached to gentiles without overtly referring to the Bible. In Philemon, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, and 2 Corinthians 10–13, there is not a single explicit quotation from Jewish Scripture: that is, no instance in which Paul wrote “as it is written,” or a similar phrase. Together, these four parts of Paul’s letters amount to about 20 percent of the entire seven-letter corpus. Nevertheless, in all these cases except Philemon, the language of the Greek Bible is clearly evident at several places. I shall take only three examples: one from 1 Thessalonians, one from Philippians, and one from 2 Corinthians 10–13. 1. 1 Thess 4:8, which states that God gives his Spirit to people, called “you,” is a combination of two verses from Ezekiel, 36:27 and 37:14. 2. The terms “blemish” and “crooked and perverse generation” in Phil 2:15 are taken from Deut 32:5.8 3. “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord” (2 Cor 10:17) is taken from 1 Kingdoms (1 Samuel) 2:109 or Jer 9:22–23.10 The first of these examples contains conflation. It is also worth noting that the quotations in Philippians and 2 Corinthians agree with the Greek translation of the Bible where it differs from the Hebrew version (see nn. 8–9).11 8. The Hebrew and English of Deut 32:5 do not include the word blemish, which appears in the Greek translation of Deuteronomy and in Paul’s quotation of it. 9. The verse that Paul partially quotes is in the Greek translation of the Bible but does not appear in Hebrew or English. 10. The verse numbers are 22–23 in the Greek and Hebrew, 23–24 in the English translation.

272

PAUL’S JEWISHNESS

Thus although Paul did not use formal quotations all of the time, he did not write very long without using at least a few phrases from his scripture. This fact argues very strongly in favor of substantial memorization. One of the things that we know about him with greatest certainty is that his brain was saturated with the words of his scripture. It appears to me that New Testament scholars often think of Paul as having a considerable library, containing the twenty-plus scrolls required to hold the Bible, as well as possessing a large study with several tables where the scrolls could be rolled out and compared. This is a view of Paul as the prototype of a modern professor. Reality was quite different. During many of his years he spent weeks or even months on the road. Did he have enough money to own the biblical scrolls? Did he have enough asses to carry a large library through the gates of Cilicia and across the Anatolian plateau? And when he was ready to set up a table for leatherwork, to produce tents, did he manage to rent a huge studio instead of a mere hole-in-the wall? His financial difficulties argue against such views and in favor of his carrying the Bible where it should be carried, in his brain. Prior to the conference at which this paper was read, my experience in verbally proposing to various colleagues that Paul had memorized the Bible had been that Christian scholars regard the idea as somewhere on a line running from “highly improbable” to “totally impossible,” while Jewish scholars assume that he had done so. To some degree, this response continued at the conference. One of the Jewish scholars present, for example, asked which of the extrabiblical traditions Paul had also memorized.12 Christian scholars proposed, among other things, that even if he did not travel with scrolls he consulted them in synagogues or even in public libraries in each city. Moreover, after his call to be an apostle, but before he began his 11. This issue is very complicated, since we know neither that the Greek Bible that Paul studied is the same as the Septuagint (LXX) as we now have it, nor that the Hebrew text of his day was the same as the Massoretic (Hebrew) Text that is in use today. I assume, however, that there is some continuity in both cases. Paul so often agrees with the Septuagint (as reconstructed by modern scholars) against the Massoretic Text that it is likely that his disagreements with the Massoretic Text result from the fact that the Greek text as he learned it in his childhood and youth was close to the Septuagint as we know it. There are, to be sure, counterexamples, in which Paul’s quotation is closer to the Massoretic Text than to the LXX (e.g., the quotation of Job 41:3 in Rom 11:35). 12. Unfortunately, I could not answer this highly appropriate question, though Paul himself refers to learning “traditions” (Gal 1:14). The problem is that the traditions that we can securely attribute to pre-Pauline Pharisaism have to do with legal issues that he does not mention, such as ’êrûvîn (“the fusion of Sabbath limits”), laying one’s hand on the head of a sacrificial victim on a Festival Day (yôm tôv, for which see m. Betzah), and the number of tithes paid in each seven-year cycle. I have discussed these legal topics briefly in Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), 425–26, 147–50, 429.

273

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

travels, he could have spent months in study, during which he composed biblical arguments that would serve him well in his apostolic career. To respond to such doubts, I shall itemize a few points: 1. To repeat, memorization of a text the size of the Hebrew Bible is well within the capacity of a human brain, especially a young person’s brain, and more especially the brain of the young person who was the smartest in his class. If rabbis could and still can do it, why should we doubt that Paul could and did? 2. We should accept that Paul learned the way his contemporaries did—by reading, repetition, and memorization. 3. We should accept that Paul used his learning the way his contemporaries did—by pulling apt quotations out of his memory at the right moment. If everyone knew that memorization in youth is easier than turning scrolls in adulthood, why should we insist that he did it the hard way? Or why have him, alone among ancient sages, return to his (supposed) library for study before answering a question or responding to an objection? 4. Our general conception of Paul’s life and career should be, I think, that Paul was busy and that he was in a rush to complete his mission before the Lord returned. With regard to busyness: as noted above, he was on the road for a high percentage of the time. During his establishment of his churches he often supported himself by working with his hands, so as not to burden his converts (1 Thess 2:9, “we worked night and day”; 1 Cor 4:12, “we grow weary from the work of our own hands”; 1 Cor 9:6, he and Barnabas had to work for a living).13 He also had to spend time converting gentiles. Then there was the “daily pressure” to take care of his churches (2 Cor 11:28). He had to pastor his converts while present, write letters to provide support and advice from afar, and make emergency trips to try to quell rebellions against his authority or to prop up the wavering. He did not have the leisure quietly to sit and study when issues arose. He relied on his memory to provide biblical arguments when he needed them. 5. Some of Paul’s biblical arguments could not have been prepared in 13. Paul thought that he had the right of support from his churches (1 Cor 9:4–11), and in Corinth he accepted gifts from other churches (2 Cor 11:8), but apparently neither the Thessalonians nor the Corinthians supported him during his founding visits to those cities. First Corinthians 9:6 seems to reflect a general resentment of having to support himself. Possibly the special status of himself and Barnabas indicates that other apostles took their need to work to show that they were inferior.

274

PAUL’S JEWISHNESS

advance. Galatians 3 is the simplest case, since during Paul’s days in Arabia he could not have foreseen the Galatian controversy. Gal 3:10–12 would be almost impossible to write without memorization of substantial parts of three books of the Bible. If his memory was good enough there, why not elsewhere? 6. On the other hand, reusing an argument that he had developed as a youth or as a persecutor is quite possible. My own favorite case in favor of prior preparation is 1 Cor 10:7–10, which is easily comprehensible as part of a synagogue sermon.14 The passage is both ingenious and complicated, and it would, I think, have merited praise from expert Jewish exegetes. An unintended consequence of this discussion of Paul’s quotations is that we need to consider the possibility of schools that emphasized learning the Hebrew Bible in Greek. One could speculate on the nature of such schools, but I shall not do so. The lack of quotations from the curriculum of the ordinary gymnasion, however, makes me doubt that Paul had attended such a school, though I suppose that he might have disciplined his brain not to quote the Greek classics.15 In any case, I think that we should consider the possibility of Diaspora schools that made the Bible the principal object of study. Someone—not I—might wish to suggest that Paul attended a Greek-speaking school in Jerusalem.16 I have two last points before leaving Paul’s quotations: First, we do not need to think that Paul memorized the Bible by beginning with the first words of Genesis and learning every single word straight through the entire biblical text. What Paul’s quotations reveal, rather, is what Albert Baumgarten has called “an art of investigation and retrieval.”17 He could find in his brain texts that corresponded, more or less well, to the words and ideas that he needed when he needed them. This comes, of course, from repeated reading. Whether he could have begun with the first book of Moses and recited the entire text through is 14. I propose below that Paul’s vice lists were derived from synagogue homilies, and elsewhere I suggested that Romans 2 is synagogal material. See Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983; London: SCM, 1985), 123–35. 15. For the usual curriculum, see Marrou, History of Education, 162–64. 16. For evidence of such schools beginning early in the second century and continuing into the fourth, see Saul Lieberman’s Greek in Jewish Palestine (New York: Philipp Feldheim, 1965). Lieberman does not deal with the first century, but his general statements seem to exclude the possibility of Greek-language schools that early (see 1, 16). 17. Albert I. Baumgarten, “Metaphors of Memory, R. Reichman, ed., “Der Odem des Menschen ist eine Leuchte des Herrn,” Aharon Agus zum Gedenken (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2006), 77–90, here 78.

275

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

another issue. All we know about his memory is that he could do what his quotations reveal that he could do: quote texts containing certain words when he needed them. Second, for all we know, Paul knew the Bible equally well in Hebrew. We can prove only that he usually quoted it in a form very close to the Septuagint as it has come down to us. But this does not disprove the theory that he studied in Jerusalem and knew the Bible in Hebrew. I once knew a young rabbinic student from North Africa who said that if he preached in Hebrew he quoted the Hebrew Bible, whereas if he preached in English he quoted the English translation—both from memory. I do not favor the view of Acts that Paul was educated in Jerusalem, but it does not appear to me to be impossible that part of his education was there and that he knew Hebrew. 2. Four Topics in Summary I wish now to describe a few of the larger aspects of Paul’s thought very briefly. I believe that none of these requires much elaboration or much proof of quintessential Jewishness, but I wish to put on the record the fact that the major categories of Paul’s thought are Jewish. 1. Paul’s theology in the strict sense of the word was a Jewish form of modified monotheism. Modified means that besides the true or high God room was found for other gods, lords, and spiritual powers (as in 1 Cor 8:5 and 2 Cor 4:4). As Paula Fredriksen has recently emphasized, lots of people, not only Jews, shared this sort of monotheism.18 What was Jewish about Paul’s version was the fact that the true God was the God of Israel. Within Jewish sources, Paul’s views of other spiritual beings are closest to the Dead Sea Scrolls and some of the apocalypses. He also joined his Jewish contemporaries in denouncing the worship of idols. 2. Paul’s view of time and history was Jewish. The most common Greek view was that history is cyclical.19 In Judaism, history begins with creation and moves toward a conclusion that is determined by God. That was Paul’s view precisely, as we shall see more fully in the 18. Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 42–43 and elsewhere. 19. See, e.g., J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 93. Note also that, according to Diogenes Laertius, God (= the world) “at stated periods of time absorbs into himself the whole reality and again creates it from himself” (in J. von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta [Leipzig, 1905–24], 2:526, quoted in Jason L. Saunders, Greek and Roman Philosophy after Aristotle [London: Collier-Macmillan, 1966], 90).

276

PAUL’S JEWISHNESS

next section of this essay. To give a little more definition here: Paul’s view of history was highly eschatological, focused on the imminent arrival of the climax of ordinary history. Lots of cultures had views of individual eschatology: rewards and punishments after death. Many forms of Judaism, however, following portions of the Bible, tended toward the view of a grand climax of this age, after which the elect would enjoy peace, prosperity, and security. Paul’s expectations are, again, closest to what one finds in some of the apocalypses. I wish to emphasize that basic to this worldview was that God determined the entire process from creation to ultimate redemption. 3. Paul’s view of his own career—he was apostle to the gentiles in the last days—was part and parcel of his eschatology. Though apostles to gentiles do not figure in the predictions of Hebrew prophets, who seem to have expected gentiles spontaneously to turn to the God of Israel, Paul’s mission was in the service of a Jewish vision of the world. 4. Paul’s ethics were Jewish. Everyone opposed murder, adultery, theft, robbery, and so on. The largest distinction between Judaism and the rest of the world was the attitude toward homosexual activity. Paul joined other Jews in being entirely against it (1 Cor 6:9; Rom 1:26–27). He discusses a few ethical topics in some detail, but a majority of his ethical opinions, including denunciation of homosexual activity, appear in lists of vices. The home of Paul’s vice lists seems to be the Diaspora synagogue: idolatry and sexual immorality always head the series. Paul’s catena of gentile vices in Romans 1 is especially close to the list in Wisdom of Solomon 14.20 Thus Paul’s education, youth, theology, worldview, career, and opinions about correct behavior were all distinctively and deeply Jewish. 3. The Distinction between Judaism and Church Despite the origin of the Christian movement as a Jewish sect, and Paul’s thorough Jewishness, we should not overlook the indications in his letters that he distinguished his own group from what he called “Judaism,” Ioudaïsmos. First, we note the passage where the word Judaism appears: Paul uses the noun twice, in Gal 1:13–14, and the verb “to Judaize,” once, in Gal 20. It is conceivable that Paul had read (without memorizing) the Wisdom of Solomon, but I think it more likely that the connection between idolatry and sexual immorality and the elaboration of resulting sins were common in Diaspora Judaism.

277

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

2:14. This is not a lot of evidence, but in Galatians Judaism appears to be an entity from his past, not the same as his own present in-group: in Gal 1:13–14 he speaks of “his earlier life in Judaism.” In the next verse, 1:15, the revelation of Christ to him interrupts this life in Judaism and leads to the result, a chapter later, that he no longer lives, but rather Christ lives in him (Gal 2:20). In this section of Galatians he also represents himself as accusing Peter of wanting the gentile Christians in Antioch to “Judaize” (Ioudaïzein), which Paul regards as the wrong thing for gentiles who believed in Christ to do. Second, I note that Paul had terms for his own group—not the word Christian or Christianity, but nevertheless a distinct terminology. Scholars frequently ignore or undervalue this evidence. In Gal 6:6, he uses the phrase “the Israel of God,” possibly meaning his own group. Even if the ambiguous wording of that passage does apply the word Israel to Paul’s group, the notion of a “true Israel” is otherwise not explicit.21 Paul calls his group, rather, “the church” or, better, “the congregation” (ekklēsia), a word that occurs alone and in a variety of phrases, such as “the congregation[s] of God” in 1 Thess 2:14 and elsewhere (1 Cor 10:32; 11:16). A second term that appears in 1 Thessalonians, which is Paul’s earliest surviving letter, is “those who believe,” hoi pisteuontes (1 Thess 1:7; 2:10, 13; also Rom 1:16.) He often designates his group by a phrase that includes the word Christ, such as those who are “called of Jesus Christ” (Rom 1:6), those who are “baptized in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:3), those in whom Christ is (Rom 8:10), “joint heirs with Christ” (Rom 8:17), “one body in Christ” (Rom 12:5), “the body of Christ” (1 Cor 12:27), those who are “sanctified in Christ” (1 Cor 1:2), “members of Christ” (1 Cor 6:15), those who are 21. After the full emergence of the idea that “those in Christ” constitute the “true Israel” and that Jews were falsely so called and were in fact “a synagogue of Satan” (Rev 2:9; 3:9), it became possible to find in Paul’s letters support for the church as “true Israel.” Apart from one of the possible interpretations of Gal 6:16, the strongest case is Gal 3:16–29: the promises were made to Abraham, but (only?) those who belong to Christ are descendants of Abraham. One might also construct the following argument: just as Paul’s converts are “Christ’s,” Christ is “God’s” (1 Cor 3:23). Paul’s converts are “sons of God” through their faith in Christ (Gal 3:26). “God” in both cases is the God of the whole world, who is the God of Israel. So Paul’s converts are the people of God, who were classically called “Israel.” Despite the logic of these connections between Paul’s group and the title “Israel,” I still would not say that we have evidence that Paul viewed his churches as the “true Israel.” The idea is only incipient and is not explicitly stated. The inferences that may be derived from such passages as Galatians 3 cannot overwhelm the numerous cases in which Paul distinguishes his group from Jews and Judaism. We should note Paul’s direct statements that his own people are “Israelites” and that they still have the “adoption” and the promises (Rom 9:2–5). An alternative later definition of the Christians was that they constituted a “third race.” The Pauline background of this conception is much clearer—though his goal was a unified new humanity.

278

PAUL’S JEWISHNESS

“Christ’s” (2 Cor 10:7; Gal 3:29), those who are “in Christ” (Gal 3:27, 28), and “the saints in Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:1). The “dead in Christ” have a special status when the Lord returns (1 Thess 4:16). It is easy to call these people Christians, and I see no reason to avoid the use of the term when discussing Paul’s converts: they are Christians, people “in Christ,” not Jews or Israelites. Third, in the surviving letters Paul occasionally uses tripartite terminology: “Give no offense to Jews, or to Greeks, or to the church of God” (1 Cor 10:32). In Rom 9:32 he distinguishes “us”—his group—from the Jews and the gentiles, who are the groups from which “we” were called. “Jews” and “the congregation of God” are distinct entities. Terminologically, then, Paul distinguished his in-group from both Jews and gentiles, from both Judaism and paganism. The terminology reflects the social fact that Paul inhabited a tripartite world: there were Jews, pagans, and those who belonged to Christ, some of whom had belonged to Judaism and some to paganism. Paul’s converts, as far as we know, were the latter: they were gentiles, former pagans or idolaters. He states this explicitly in the case of the Thessalonian and Galatian Christians (1 Thess 1:9; Gal 4:8), and the desire of his Corinthian converts to attend idolatrous festivals points toward a background of paganism (1 Corinthians 8; 10). In autobiographical statements he depicts himself as apostle to gentiles (ta ethnē) (Rom 11:13; 15:16, 18), and there is no indication of Jewish converts within his own churches. Acts depicts Paul as originally an apostle to Diaspora Jews who turned to gentiles only out of disappointment with his Jewish mission (e.g., Acts 13:46; 18:6). Paul’s own view, however, was quite different: Christ sent him to gentiles. 22 We find the same point when we consider his political settlement with the Jerusalem apostles. He and Peter divided up the world—Peter would go to the Jews, Paul to the gentiles (Gal 2:7–10). Some scholars have construed this as a geographical division, but the most natural interpretation of the language, which refers to the “circumcised” and the “uncircumcised,” is an ethnic division. According to this agreement, as well as his description of himself, Paul was not apostle to everyone from the Levant to Europe, but rather apostle to pagans. I do not mean that he would have refused opportunities to propose the gospel to Jews, but that was not his mission.23 There is no hint that Paul’s converts attended synagogues.24 They 22. This view appears once even in Acts: 22:21. 23. Ronald Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship (Philadelphia: Fortress

279

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

had their own meetings, aspects of which Paul describes in chapters 11 and 14 of 1 Corinthians. Had they also attended synagogue, issues would have arisen that required discussion in Paul’s letters. The church in Rome—which Paul did not found—helps make the point. Paul’s letter to Rome implies that the congregation included both Jews and gentiles, or at least his letter allows for that possibility: in 11:13 he writes, “Now I am speaking to you Gentiles.” In writing to a mixed or possibly mixed congregation, he found it useful or necessary to discuss observance of “the day,” presumably the Sabbath (14:5–6), and food laws (14:13–23). These issues of Jewish law and practice do not arise as problems in the letters addressed to the churches that he himself founded, except for Galatians.25 In Galatia, however, outsiders, other apostles of Christ, apparently neither members of his congregation nor local Jews, introduced the topic of circumcision and the rest of the law. It seems very likely that such topics would have arisen in (for example) Corinth, had the Corinthians been attending synagogues. They asked about pagan sacrifices, not about observance of the Sabbath. The social distinctiveness of his converts was obvious to Paul, sometimes painfully obvious. Since they were neither Jew nor pagan, they were isolated, without a recognizable social identity.26 This lack of identity could lead to harassment and persecution for not supporting the local cults. Even in the absence of persecution, his followers had to do without many of the pleasures of civic life that were afforded by the public religious celebrations, such as feasting on red meat. Thus we see that Paul’s vocabulary for his group accurately reflects the new social reality that resulted from his preaching the gospel of Christ—congregations of gentiles who renounced idolatry, who Press, 1980), gives a convincing discussion of how Paul approached pagans, which provides a useful alternative to the view of Acts, that he found God-fearers in Jewish synagogues. 24. This is the one point in Fredriksen’s depiction of early Christianity with which I disagree. She insists that early Christian groups formed in synagogues and constituted Hellenistic Jewish communities that, like synagogues, welcomed Gentiles. See Augustine and the Jews, xiii, 28; cf. 50. Curiously, she distinguishes the church in Rome as a gentile Christian community (8). 25. There is an attack on circumcisers in Phil 3:2, but no hint that this is a problem in Philippi. The likeliest explanation is that this is an echo of his dispute with the Galatians. See Gregory Tatum, New Chapters in the Life of Paul: The Relative Chronology of His Career, Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 41 (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association, 2006), 73–83. 26. E. P. Sanders, “Paul,” Encyclopedia Brittanica (Ultimate CD ROM, 2007): “Moreover, since Paul’s converts did not become Jewish, they were, in general opinion, nothing: neither Jew nor pagan. Religiously, they could identify only with one another, and frequently they must have wavered because of their isolation from the well-established and popular activities of both Jew and pagan. It was especially difficult for them to refrain from public festivities, since parades, feasts, theatrical performances, and athletic competitions were all connected to idolatry. This social isolation intensified their need to have rewarding spiritual experiences within the Christian communities.” See also Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews, 36–38.

280

PAUL’S JEWISHNESS

worshiped the God of Israel outside the synagogue, who counted as neither Jew nor pagan, and who accepted Jesus as their savior and Lord. I suppose that someone will think that this social and terminological distinction between Paul’s group and Judaism means that I have just claimed that Paul stopped being Jewish. His self-identity is another issue entirely. He was Jewish and regarded himself as the Jewish apostle to gentiles in the last days. He states his own identity explicitly in Rom 9:2–5. His “own people” are “Israelites,” to whom belong “the adoption . . . the covenants . . . and the promises.” On the other hand, we must note his strong conviction that he and other members of the body of Christ acquired a new identity. Paul was a Jew who had become one person with Christ. And, as he wrote, if anyone is in Christ, he is a “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17). Nevertheless, being one person with Christ, part of a new creation, did not make Paul himself a non-Jew. Jesus was a Jew (Rom 9:5), and we cannot think that at any point Paul would have rejected his ethnic identity. He was a Jew who was in Christ, and his converts were gentiles who were in Christ. 27 The present point, however, is not to define Paul’s own identity, but rather to point out the fact that he did not think of his in-group as “Judaism.” The only way he could have claimed or thought that his churches constituted part of “Judaism” would have been to make a clear distinction between false Israel and true Israel. He could have written that the new creation was the true Judaism, but as far as we know he did not do so. Unfortunately, we cannot consider “true Israel” here, beyond the brief discussion in note 21, where I proposed that the future notion of the church as “true Israel” was no more than incipient in Paul’s terminology. I doubt that such a definition of the churches ever rose to the level of consciousness. Thus he was Jewish as well as a new person in Christ, but his congregations did not constitute “Judaism,” which was a separate entity. While Paul recognized the social distinction that he and others were creating on the ground—a new spiritual identity, neither Jewish nor pagan—this division was neither what he wanted nor what he expected as the final outcome. His theology and his intention had quite a different focus. There should be one universal group, including Jew, Greek, and Barbarian, all of whom were in Christ. It was not acceptable to him 27. I leave aside here the question of whether or not there is any contradiction between Paul’s speaking of his “former life in Judaism” and being part of a “new creation,” on the one hand, and still belonging to the people of Israel, on the other. He states both, which I take at least to prove that in his own mind he did not stop being Jewish. Many Jews may have regarded him as a lapsed or renegade Jew.

281

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

for the gentile members of his movement to Judaize, thus reducing the number of groups by one. His opposition to Judaizing led to the strongest invective in his letters (Galatians and Philippians). His group should not Judaize; rather, everyone else should join his group. With regard to the designation of this future totally inclusive group, the most obvious choice is “new creation,” because of Gal 6:15, “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation.” We earlier saw that those who are “in Christ” are a “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17). In more traditional terms, 1 Cor 15:25 suggests the phrase “the kingdom of God.” Paul knew theologically what the outcome should be, but he also saw that the present plan for getting there was not working perfectly. The present plan, we recall, was that he (and apparently others) would convert gentiles to faith in Christ. Peter and presumably the other Jerusalem apostles would persuade Jews to put their faith in Jesus as well. Then everyone would be part of the people of God in the last days, united by faith in Christ. By his own estimation, Paul was nearing the end of his labors. Churches in Syria had preceded his call to be an apostle. Someone else had reached Rome before him. He himself had covered the territory from Syria to Macedonia and Greece, bumping up against Illyricum when he was in Macedonia. He did not want to preach where anyone had preceded him: building on someone else’s foundation was not his style (Rom 15:20; cf. 1 Cor 3:5–15). Since he had no further room in “these regions,” he wrote from Corinth, he planned to deliver a collection of money to Jerusalem, visit the church at Rome briefly, and then go on to Spain (15:25–29). The collection, conceived as the prophetically predicted tribute of the gentiles to the Israelites, clearly marked a time near the end. He seems not to have thought of North Africa; thus several months or a few years in Spain, and his own work would be done. Following a triumph in a debate with the Corinthians, Paul expressed an overly optimistic view of his own apostolic success: “Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him” (2 Cor 2:14). He was almost equally optimistic in Romans 15: “In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to boast of my work for God” (15:17). His success was that he had “completed” the gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum (15:19). In Paul’s estimation, Peter had done much less well. Paul does not

282

PAUL’S JEWISHNESS

say this explicitly, but it is evident from the innovation of Romans 11. The common expectation of the end-time regathering of the people of Israel and the turn of gentiles toward God had followed the obvious sequence: first Israel, then the gentiles. This is in fact a theme of the first two chapters of Romans: “the Jew first and also the Greek”: 1:16; 2:9, 10.28 So Peter should have prepared the Jews while Paul was carrying out his successful mission to the gentiles. But the Jews were not ready. This led Paul to develop an ingenious plan: his gentiles would enter the new creation first. This would make the Jews jealous, and they would rush in, which would mean that Paul could indirectly save “some” Jews as well as gentiles: Rom 11:13–14. He repeats the scheme in verses 25–26: the “full number of Gentiles” will come in and thus, in that manner, “all Israel will be saved.” To make sure that the reader grasps his brilliant discovery, he repeats it a third time. The Jews have been disobedient, “in order that, by the mercy shown to you [gentiles], they too [Jews] may now receive mercy” (11:30–31). The term “in order that”—hina in Greek—points toward the divine intention: God made the Jews disobedient for a time, in order to allow the gentiles to have access first, which would then bring the Jews in. Paul has recently discovered God’s own true plan for saving everyone, which is a revision of what he and others had previously thought. Now he sees that his own gentile mission will cause the Jews to come in, so that all will receive mercy. But Paul did not leave the implication that this is the divine plan hanging on a single hina. He wrote one more verse with a hina: “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience in order that he may be merciful to all” (Rom 11:32). Well, we may think, Paul’s success as an apostle and his theory of Jewish jealousy is rather a thin thread from which to hang the hope of eternal salvation for all. I am very pleased that Paul seems to have realized this. He immediately offers a brief panegyric on the wisdom of God: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” Then he quotes, “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” (11:33–34). From Rom 11:13 through 11:32, Paul three times offers a rational way in which God can save the world—a sequence in which his own mission plays the crucial role. But in the end, he has to trust that God himself will in any case figure out a way. God’s mind can do it, even if Paul’s 28. This theme is balanced by repeated assertions of the equality of Jew and Gentile: Rom 2:9–11; 3:9, 22; 10:12.

283

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

fertile and inventive brain cannot figure it all out. Finally, he leaves universal salvation to God. This section of the essay started with the social distinctions between Jew, pagan, and Christian as seen in Paul’s letters and has ended up with Paul’s theological/eschatological solution to the social partition of humans, namely, all will be one people. The apostles should do their best to bring everyone into the body of Christ while normal history runs on, though the time is very short. But at the end of time, when the redeemer comes from Mount Zion, God will accomplish the goal—the salvation of the world—in a way that we cannot comprehend. Since this discussion of universal salvation will have raised questions, I should here add a further comment: yes, I have read all of the exclusivist passages in Paul’s letters about the destruction of the unbelievers. I have written about universalism and exclusivism in Paul more than once. Here, unfortunately, I cannot give Paul’s exclusivist side. In any case, Paul’s last recorded hope and vision were universal. 29 We return to the end of Romans 11 and the salvation of humanity: I cannot imagine a plan that is more entirely Jewish. In the background is the Jewish doctrine that God created the world and declared it good: that is the principle that is obvious in Paul’s first burst of universalism, 1 Cor 15:22: “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” That passage immediately moves on to the subjection to God of “all things,” ta panta, at the end (1 Cor 15:27–28). Just as, according to Rom 11:32, God locked up all people in disobedience in order to save them all, so in Romans 8 God subjected the entire creation to futility in order to set it “free from its bondage to decay” when he brings ordinary history to its end (Rom 8:20–21). That God has a beneficent long-term plan for a happy end to normal history is a deeply Jewish thought, though the beneficiaries varied in different bodies of literature—from all Israel to a select group of sectarians.30 That the plan includes sin and suffering along the way 29. In Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, index s.v. “universalism,” I favored the exclusivist side as Paul’s dominant view. In Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, 2001, 2009), chap. 11, I swung toward emphasizing the universalist side. Most recently, see my emphasis on universalism in “Paul between Judaism and Hellenism,” in St. Paul among the Philosophers, ed. Linda Martin Alcoff and John D. Caputo (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 84–88. 30. The issue is often complicated. See, e.g., E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 257–70, 360–62, 369–71, 378, 408–9. For criticisms that do not take adequate account of these discussions, see Mark Adam Elliott, The Surviviors of Israel: A Reconsideration of the Theology of Pre-Christian Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000); Daniel Falk, “Prayers and Psalms,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1, The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, ed. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid, WUNT 2.140 (Tübingen:

284

PAUL’S JEWISHNESS

is equally Jewish. Similarly, according to Josephus, God planned the transfer of power to Rome, and he planned the destruction of the temple, which had to be purged because of bloodshed and sin. But, Josephus suggested, if you read the passage in Daniel about the stone, you will know that the redemption of Israel is God’s ultimate goal: Josephus, at least, hints at this outcome in Antiquities 10.210.31 Divine control of the ultimate outcome, an outcome that includes redemption, life, and freedom on the other side of punishment, suffering, and death, is part and parcel of the Jewish idea of divine providence, pronoia. To summarize: Paul lived and worked in the Greek-speaking world. Whatever his knowledge of that environment, his education and upbringing were Jewish; the main categories of his thought were Jewish; his mission was set in the framework of Jewish eschatology; the final outcome for which he longed was a universal form of Jewish hope. Temporarily, he thought, he was creating a third group, distinguishable from both Judaism and paganism, as part of the new creation that would fully arrive when the God of Israel, who was the only true God, brought ordinary history to its conclusion.

Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 7–57. Most recently, see E. P. Sanders, “Covenantal Nomism Revisited,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 16 (2009): 23–55, here 36–38. 31. See E. P. Sanders, “God Gave the Law to Condemn: Providence in Paul and Josephus,” in The Impartial God: Essays in Biblical Studies in Honor of Jouette M. Bassler, ed. Calvin J. Roetzel and Robert L. Foster (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007), 78–97; on Josephus see 82–87. This essay is reprinted in the present book as chap. 7.

285

13

Jewish Association with Gentiles and Galatians 2:11–14

Introduction This essay has two Sitze im Leben. My own work recently has been on Jewish practice in the period 63 BCE to 66 CE. For this volume in honor of my teacher and friend, whose commentary on Galatians is much awaited, I wanted to offer something on Galatians. Desire and preparation intersect in Antioch, where Peter, at the behest of James, led a Jewish withdrawal from common meals with Gentiles (Gal 2:11–14). We need to know what it meant to “Gentilize” and to “Judaize” (Gal 2:14). Fortunately, in 1983 James Dunn published an article on “the incident at Antioch”1 which has three advantages from the point of view of a would-be essayist: It points out that the specific issue that was at stake has been too little discussed; and it clearly lays out the exegetical options; it gets the Jewish evidence quite wrong. This judgment requires two immediate qualifications, both of which soften it. One is that some of Dunn’s views about Jewish food and eating laws are quite widely held by various scholars. The second is 1. James D. G. Dunn, “The Incident at Antioch (Gal 2:11–18),” JSNT 18 (1983) 3–57.

287

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

that Jewish food laws can easily be misconstrued even more seriously than they are by Dunn. This will shortly become apparent. With regard to what the issue at Antioch was, I do not disagree with him at a very general level: It fell between two extremes. He quite correctly notes that it is necessary to consider James’s point of view, and he offers three possibilities of what was wrong with eating together as James saw it. (1) The common meals at Antioch transgressed the biblical food laws and permitted either pork or meat from animals that had been improperly slaughtered, so that the blood remained, or they included meat offered to idols. (2) The Christians observed the biblical dietary laws and also “even some of the halakhic elaborations concerning tithes and ritual purity,” but James wanted more: full proselytization, including circumcision. (3) The meals did not transgress Jewish law so blatantly as in (1), but the Jewish customs were not so strictly observed as in (2); they fell short of strict Jewish practice with regard to “ritual purity and tithing” (pp. 29–32). Dunn proposes that (3) is the most likely, and in very general terms one may agree. What was wrong with common eating lay between the two possible extremes. It is most unlikely that Paul and other Jewish Christians sat down to eat undrained and unsalted pork from pigs sacrificed before a pagan deity, and it is not likely that James was the one who would “compel” Gentiles to be circumcised (Gal 2:3; 6:12). An intermediate issue is needed. Because of numerous passages on the problems posed for Jews by Gentile food (some of which will be cited below), I had always thought that the problem must have been the food itself. Dunn has persuaded me to look elsewhere. The question is what requirements would fall into an intermediate area. Dunn proposes “tithes and ritual purity,” tying these to a supposed Pharisaic program that dominated Palestine and exerted pressure on the Diaspora (p. 15). I regard this as an unsuccessful effort; he gets both tithes and purity badly wrong. More recently Philip Esler has addressed the question of Jews, Gentiles, and food. He thinks that Dunn was in error to think that Jews even sometimes ate when Gentiles were present and that Stephen Wilson also was mistaken when he doubted that complete separation was always practiced by Jews. 2 Between them, Dunn and Esler offer four possibilities of what the problem might have been:

2. Philip F. Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). The reference is to Stephen Wilson, Luke and the Law (Cambridge: University Press, 1983) 70.

288

JEWISH ASSOCIATION WITH GENTILES

1. The food had not been tithed. 2. The food or the Gentiles were impure by a strict (Pharisaic) standard. 3. The food was abominable in Jewish eyes: either “meat offered to idols,” meat with blood in it, or meat from forbidden creatures (such as swine, shellfish, vultures, tigers, weasels, and mosquitos: Leviticus 11; Deuteronomy 14). 4. Jews would not eat with Gentiles. Of these, we dismiss 3, at least as just stated. What restrictions on food itself Jews in the Diaspora accepted is an interesting question, and I discuss it elsewhere (see below). Enough will be said in this essay to show that there may have been a problem with the food, even though biblical law was not being transgressed. With regard to the issue at Antioch, however, I now agree with Dunn that the problem was not a major biblical law. (The laws that affect food are the forbidden creatures of Leviticus 11; blood and fat; meat or wine that had been offered to an idol.) Paul shows himself squeamish over meat offered to idols (1 Corinthians 8, 10), and we may safely suppose that he, Barnabas, and other Jews would have been put off by being offered donkey or hare. With reluctance, I must omit 1 and all but a small part of 2 from the present essay. The question of what offerings Diaspora Jews sent to Jerusalem, and whether anyone thought the food they ate should have had temple dues taken from it, requires more than the number of pages allowed for the present purpose. It could have been squeezed in, but the result is entirely negative: No one anywhere ever thought that Antiochene Jews should not eat until they had sent some of the food to the temple. Over and above the temple tax, Diaspora Jews did send voluntary gifts—never called “tithes,” but rather aparchai or anathēmata—but they were precisely that: voluntary. Pharisaic purity laws have nothing to do with Diaspora Jews, and Diaspora purity laws have nothing to do with the Pharisees. Again, these studies are interesting in their own right, but they lead to negative conclusions for the question at Antioch. Many Diaspora Jews (to take a very quick example) washed their hands while praying, and Philo seems to have sprinkled himself after being in the room with a corpse and after sexual intercourse. He nevertheless associated with Gentiles, and these rules are not Pharisaic. Diaspora purity laws do not unlock the door. All these topics—offerings from the Diaspora, food and purity laws

289

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

in the Diaspora, and Pharisaic purity laws—I treat elsewhere.3 Here I shall turn to the surviving point, the one that seems most likely to have been at issue among Peter, Paul, and James: the general question of association between Jews and Gentiles. First, however, I shall offer a short and partial excursus on the topic of Pharisaic/rabbinic views of the impurity of Gentiles. This is not an account of Pharisaic purity laws, but it is intended to respond to a very specific question: Did Pharisees think that Gentiles were impure in such a way as to prohibit association with them? The Impurity of Gentiles Dunn cited some rabbinic passages and an essay by Alon in order to argue that Pharisees thought that Gentiles were impure, and that the Pharisees would have campaigned in the Diaspora to convince other Jews not to associate with Gentiles. There are two things wrong with the argument. First, most of the passages cited are post-135. Dunn writes: “In several Rabbinic sayings the uncleanness of the Gentile is axiomatic” (p. 18). This is perfectly true, but the passages that most clearly express abhorrence of Gentile-impurity come after the two revolts. (One cited by Dunn, Eliyahu Rabba, is from the eighteenth century, and it should be considered in another context.) Some nasty things get said about Gentiles after 135, and Dunn accepts all these and retrojects them to the 40s and 50s. Dunn rejects evidence from the same period that proves that Rabbis did not expect tithes from the Diaspora. One should reverse his assumptions. It is unlikely that the post-70 Rabbis, who wanted the priesthood still to be supported, would have declined tithes from the Diaspora if pre-70 Pharisees had sought them. Here one should retroject: Second-century passages help prove that pre-70 Pharisees did not look to the Diaspora for tithes. One should not retroject to the pre-70 period, however, the full expression of antipathy to Gentiles that comes after the second revolt. Second, to no small extent Dunn relied on an essay by Gedalyahu Alon on the impurity of Gentiles. This is one of a series of three essays that seem, to people who do not understand the subject matter, to prove things they do not prove. The three essays argue these 3. See Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (London: SCM/Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990). The relevant essays are these: “Did the Pharisees Eat Ordinary Food in Purity?” and “Food, Purity and Offerings in the Greek-Speaking Diaspora.”

290

JEWISH ASSOCIATION WITH GENTILES

conclusions: that the idea that Gentile theaters were off limits is early; that the view that Gentiles were impure as such can be found in early sources; and that the opinion that laypeople should observe priestly purity laws is early.4 To a person who is himself a rabbinic sage—as Alon was—it matters not only whether something was officially “decreed,” and by whom, but also whether the official view has early roots. Alon’s essays are not social history, but arguments that a given halakah has some basis in the formative period of Rabbinic Judaism—that is, the period before 70. He most carefully distinguished this question from that of what people actually did. About this he was honest: Not all Pharisees—much less Jews, generally—agreed that theaters must be avoided; that Gentiles qua Gentiles were impure; that laypeople should eat ordinary food in purity.5 Alon was happy when he found in an early source an indication of the coming full halakah, and then he would write: “It shows that the halakah was in existence” (and the like; see, e.g., p. 166)—not, “It shows what people did.” The Christian scholar will understand this if I offer an analogy. Many New Testament, and some patristic, scholars look for the origins of christology, and when they have found the seed from which the fourth- and fifth-century formulations would grow, they retire from the field, happy that the later doctrine has some basis in the formative period. This does not prove that first-century Christians in general believed that two essences coexisted in Christ, without confusion, distinction, or mixture. Nor does it lead anyone to deny that the New Testament contains statements of “low” christology. The question is only: Is the subsequent dogma a development of an authentically primitive element? Searching for primitive evidence was Alon’s intention, but sometimes he was not quite critical enough of himself. If he found that a passage in Josephus implies that Gentiles were impure, he would say that this was proof that the halakah of Gentile-impurity existed (pp.

4. Gedalyahu Alon, “On the Halakhot of the Early Sages”; “The Levitical Uncleanness of Gentiles”; “The Bounds of the Laws of Levitical Cleanness,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Classical World (trans. Israel Abrahams; Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1977) from Studies in Jewish History I (Jerusalem, 1967 [Heb.]). The third essay is discussed extensively in “Did the Pharisees Eat Ordinary Food in Purity?” and the other two in “Food, Purity and Offerings” (n. 3 above). Enough is said in the present essay, however, to show the direction of my fuller discussions. 5. With regard to the impurity of Gentiles, see the repeated statements that many did not agree with or follow what he calls “the halakah”: Alon, “Levitical Uncleanness of Gentiles,” 147–49, 165, 168, 189.

291

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

165–66), which is not the case. I shall explain the legal issue, which is rather a fine one. With regard to Gentile-impurity, Alon posed a simple legal question: Were Gentiles subject to the same impurities as Israelites, or did they have their own special brand? This is a sub-topic of a larger question: How much of the biblical law should apply to Gentiles?6 A lot of fairly early rabbinic passages say that Gentiles did not contract the biblical impurities, of which semen-impurity, menstrual-impurity, and corpseimpurity are the most common. If they were not impure on these grounds, were they pure? No, Alon showed, they were impure under a separate rubric: the impurity of being Gentile. Then there was the question of how serious this impurity was. As serious as touching a rodent? As serious as menstruation? As serious as touching a corpse? The Rabbis disagreed.7 Alon proved to his own satisfaction that some people before 70 thought that Gentiles were immune from biblical impurities, but impure because they were Gentiles. Others, however, thought they were impure under the biblical headings (pp. 164–65). To illustrate the issue, I shall quote one dispute between the Houses of Hillel and Shammai: The School of Shammai say: If a man became a proselyte on the day before Passover he may immerse himself and consume his Passover-offering in the evening. And the School of Hillel say: He that separates himself from his uncircumcision is as one that separates himself from a grave (Pesahim 8.8).

Alon read the view of the House of Hillel as being what the Mishnah “ordains” (p. 151). Leaving this assumption aside, I shall explain the debate. The Shammaites thought that before conversion the Gentile was not subject to the biblical impurities. Thus a Gentile could convert and immediately eat Passover. The Passover meal may not be eaten by those with corpse-impurity, who must wait for the second Passover (Num 9:6–11); the removal of corpse-impurity requires a week (Numbers 19). In specifying the next day (“in the evening”), the Shammaites ruled, in effect, that the Gentile had been immune from the impurity—which most Jews had most of the time, and which the 6. On the question of Gentiles who work on the sabbath on behalf of Jews, some sages took the line that they should be prevented from doing so, while others held the opposite view. See Shabbath 1.8. 7. See Alon, “Levitical Uncleanness of Gentiles,” 179.

292

JEWISH ASSOCIATION WITH GENTILES

Gentile would have had if he had been subject to it. The Hillelites seem to have agreed that the Gentile had been immune from corpseimpurity, but maintained that nevertheless he had an impurity that lasted a week—Gentile-impurity. Like a Jew who had been to a funeral, the Gentile would have to wait until second Passover. None of this means that Pharisees would not associate with Gentiles because they were impure. All Jews, including Pharisees, were impure more or less all the time.8 Impurity was removed to enter the temple, to eat Passover, and to eat second tithe. Otherwise it was the rule. Semen-impurity, for example, lasts until one washes and the sun sets (Lev 15:16–18). Thus having intercourse after sunset means that one is impure at least until the next sunset—that is, all day. Yet, the Pharisees associated with themselves, day in and day out. The very nice legal issue of the category of Gentile-impurity does not bear on the question of association. The character of Pharisaic/rabbinic debates, as well as views on Gentiles and impurity, may be illuminated by one other Houses dispute: The School of Shammai say: An (ordinary) Israelite may not be numbered [in the same company] with a priest for [the consumption of] a firstling. And the School of Hillel permit it even to a gentile (Bekhoroth 5.2).

This does not prove that priests ate with Gentiles, although they may well have done so, especially among the aristocracy. Rabbinic passages of this type do not constitute sociological evidence. The Pharisees and later the Rabbis often took arguments to their logical limit, and that is the case here. The argument is an academic and exegetical one, and to follow it one will best look at the text of Numbers 18.9 The House of Shammai take the position that, since purity is required for eating first-fruits of produce (Num 18:13), the same rule should govern firstlings (of animals). The Hillelites note that the paragraph on firstlings (Num 18:17–19) does not include the requirement of purity. On the contrary, firstlings may be eaten by the priests and their sons and daughters. The Hillelites (t. Bekh. 3.16) urged that this meant that menstruants could eat firstlings (daughters are included, purity is not 8. Louis Finkelstein (The Pharisees: The Sociological Background of Their Faith [2 vols.; 3rd ed.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1962] 1:26–28) argued that only Jerusalemites made an effort to be pure and that other Jews were always impure (except, of course, when they wished to make a pilgrimage to the temple). 9. As is usual in the Mishnah and Tosefta, the biblical passages are not referred to.

293

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

explicitly mentioned), and they extended their argument to its logical conclusion: Gentiles, too, could eat firstlings. While the debate is academic, we nevertheless see that one group of Pharisees was prepared to entertain in theory the idea that Gentiles could sit down at table with priests. Priests and their families were required by biblical law to eat sanctified food in purity (besides Numbers 18, see Lev 22:3). If the Hillelites wanted to drop this commandment wherever sharp exegesis allowed, we must suppose that they would not have extended priestly purity to laypeople (which is what scholars commonly say the Pharisees did). There is certainly no reason to suppose that either Hillelites or Shammaites thought that laypeople should refuse to associate with Gentiles. We may accept the fact that first-century Jews in general thought that Gentiles were impure. Foreigners were allowed to enter only the Court of the Gentiles, not to go further into the temple. This is not a biblical view. According to Num 15:14–16, Gentiles could bring sacrifices in the same way as Israelites. The view that they had to be kept outside—along with impure Israelites—developed well before the New Testament period. It is attributed to the time of Antiochus III in a letter quoted by Josephus (Ant. 12.145–146), and it was accepted by Herod, who had priests trained as masons so that they could build the inner courts (Ant. 15.390). Thus the Zadokite priesthood, before the days of the Hasmoneans, had thought that Gentiles were impure, and so did Herod’s advisers, presumably the priesthood, surely not the Pharisees.10 We do not know the legal reasoning. They could have thought that Gentiles were impure because they were Gentiles, or that they were impure with the biblical impurities and had to be assumed not to have followed the biblical requirements for removing them. In either case they were impure. All the impurity meant, however, was that they could not enter further into the temple. Jews on their way in could brush up against them, just as Jews on their way in might brush up against a Jew who had semen-impurity.11 This does not mean that 10. On Herod and the Pharisees, see Ant. 14.172 (conflict with Samaias, a Pharisee according to Ant. 15.3); 17.41–46 (they are implicated in a plot against him). 11. Since “brushing up against” is a fact of life, and Jews did not walk through Gentile streets without touching people, nor did the pious walk through the streets of Jerusalem while completely avoiding contact with others, we must doubt that passages that seem to say that there was complete physical separation should be taken literally. Two passages deserve special note: According to Acts 10:28, it is unlawful for a Jew to associate closely with or come near (proserchesthai) a Gentile; according to War 2.150 Essenes bathed after touching someone of a different degree of impurity, “as after physical contact with a foreigner.” Some take this to mean that Jews in general bathed after touching Gentiles. In the Diaspora some may have washed hands

294

JEWISH ASSOCIATION WITH GENTILES

association was forbidden. We now turn to more pertinent evidence: Did Diaspora Jews hesitate to associate with Gentiles? There Was Association with Gentiles Dunn, we have seen, took Alon to have proved that because of impurity Jews hesitated to associate with Gentiles, but he did not rule out fraternization entirely. He was attacked by Esler for granting too much in thinking that an undiligent Jew might possibly sit at the same table as a Gentile.12 Since Dunn had taken the view that “the dominant tendency within Judaism” was to avoid social intercourse with Gentiles as much as possible,13 Esler’s criticism shows that he took an extreme stand: They avoided it altogether. Dunn, proposed Esler, was wrong to think that “table-fellowship occurred between Jews and Gentiles in the first century CE.”14 I transfer my tender attentions to Esler. While Dunn had very reasonably realized that passages about not eating Gentiles’ food have to do with food rather than people,15 Esler cited the same passages as proving that Jews would not eat with Gentiles. This is complete misrepresentation. Daniel 1:3–17; 2 Macc 7:1–2; Jdt 10:5; 12:17–19; Add to Esth 14:17 (LXX 4:17x); and Tobit 1:11 all have to do with the food itself, though Esler claims that these passages support his view that Jews would not eat with Gentiles. On the contrary, they show that the problem was the food, in particular Gentile meat and wine. Similarly in 3 Macc 3:4, 7, not cited by Esler, the problem is again the food (trophē). All these passages have at least the implied paraenetic purpose of advising Jews what to do when in Gentile lands or at Gentile tables: Avoid the meat and wine, and preferably bring your own food. Of Esler’s passages, the only one that might be read as supporting his view is the Add to Esth 14:17 (RSV). It contains two long prayers, one by Mordechai and one by Esther. Near the end of her prayer, Esther reminds God that she had not eaten at Haman’s table, nor graced the royal drinking party (symposion) with her presence, nor drunk the wine of libations.16 “Did not eat at” does not when returning from public places (so Mark 7:4), and there is good evidence that they washed hands while praying, especially before the synagogue service or during it (see the essay referred to in n. 3 above). But that they bathed every time they touched a Gentile is simply not possible, and it is even more impossible that Jews in general would not come near Gentiles. This will become clear as we proceed. On Acts 10:28 see n. 20 below. 12. See Esler, Community and Gospel, 77, 83. 13. Dunn, “Antioch,” 17–18. 14. Esler, Community and Gospel, 83. 15. Dunn, “Antioch,” 18.

295

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

mean “did not sit at,” and the point seems rather to be that, when at Haman’s table, Esther did not eat, while she did not attend the drinking parties at all. The point of all these exemplary stories of how to eat with Gentiles is that Jews should sit and eat their own food or only vegetables. There are two passages in Jewish literature that fix on the Gentiles rather than their food: Jub 22:16, “eat not with [Gentiles]”; Joseph and Aseneth 7:1, “Joseph never ate with the Egyptians.” It is a curiosity of Joseph and Aseneth that the food itself is not mentioned, except indirectly: Joseph did not want to kiss Aseneth because her lips had uttered what they had uttered and had touched what they had touched (8:5). When he dined in her father’s house, he sat at a separate table (7:1), but we are not told what he ate. Presumably his servants provided for him; possibly he ate vegetables and drank water. What do these two passages prove? Neither Jubilees nor Joseph and Aseneth can be regarded as representative of many Jews. Jubilees is closely associated with the sectarian literature from Qumran, and it is extremist in every way. There is no more reason to think that Jews in general accepted its admonitions about Gentiles than to suppose that they accepted its solar calendar. Joseph and Aseneth represents an attempt to argue, against the evidence of Gen 41:45, that Joseph had not married a pagan. Aseneth’s father is praised as being a good man (1:3) precisely in order to drive home the message: Keep your distance from Gentiles, even morally upright ones. The author wishes to convince the readers not to eat with Gentiles and (the main goal of the work) not to marry them without insisting on full conversion. This is not sociological evidence that Jews did not eat with Gentiles or marry them; on the contrary, the author was trying to check a practice he considered threatening. Thus far we have learned that some Jews who wrote wished Jews not to eat with Gentiles, but from Jewish sources there is no direct evidence that this was generally accepted. There is, on the other hand, good evidence that Jews would eat with Gentiles in the right circumstances. Here Esler’s argument is either confused or deceptive. He cites some of the following passages and claims that they prove his case, since the Jews in question ate and drank their own food and wine. He obscures or forgets that he was

16. See Esther 4:17x in Rahlf’s enumeration of the Addition. Esler states that the book of Esther is apocryphal (81), but the term applies only to the Additions.

296

JEWISH ASSOCIATION WITH GENTILES

attempting to prove that Jews refused “to dine with Gentiles.”17 In either case the evidence is misinterpreted. The Letter of Aristeas depicts the Jewish translators of the Bible as dining with the king of Egypt each day for seven days (Arist. 181–294). Esler takes the strange view that this passage only appears to contradict his argument but does not do so, since the Jews ate Jewish food. Here as elsewhere he confuses the issue of the people with that of the food. Even more curiously he asks “whether food or wine were passed between the king and the Jews,” and concludes that “he ate his and they ate theirs” (p. 82). The passage says quite clearly that he ate theirs. They could share since they were all served Jewish food (Arist. 181; Esler’s reading started with 182). Though Esler’s principal interest was the Diaspora, as is ours, he was aware of two Mishnaic passages on table-fellowship, taken from Dunn: Berakoth 7.1 and Abodah Zarah 5.5. The former, Esler properly notes, contemplates eating with a Samaritan, not with a Gentile. (There are other such passages, including a House of Shammai/House of Hillel debate, Berakoth 8.8.) The second deals with the problem of wine if one is eating at the same table as a Gentile. The Israelite is to take care not to drink the Gentile’s wine, and the passage shows a concern lest the Gentile pollute the Israelite’s wine when the latter goes aside. As Esler says, this is “table-fellowship in a very limited sense, if at all” (p. 84). Certainly the topic of the passage is not fellowship; it envisages a situation in which the Jew and the Gentile are not friends. On the other hand, there is no objection to sitting side-by-side. Mishnaic discussions will not settle the question of common practice in Diaspora Judaism. All the Jewish evidence thus far considered presents the legal situation perfectly clearly: There was no barrier to social intercourse with Gentiles, as long as one did not eat their meat or drink their wine. As an aside, I shall explain why wine ranks along with meat (the objections to which are well known). Greeks (and others) poured out a small libation whenever they drank wine.18 Jews thought that all Gentile wine had been the source of a libation at some time or other. Since the custom was public and well-known, Gentile wine doubtless conveyed associations of idolatry, just as did Gentile meat. Thus the Mishnah simply forbids Gentile wine (Abodah Zarah 2.3); it does not give a list of questions that, if answered satisfactorily, would make it suitable for Jewish consumption. This left a deep imprint, and 17. Esler, Community and Gospel, 80, italics added. 18. See Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985) 70–73.

297

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

many Jews today still avoid Gentile wine, even though libations were not continued in Christianity. As a further aside, I should point out that some Jews objected to Gentile food other than meat and wine. When Judith set out to ingratiate herself with Holofernes, she took her own wine, oil, parched grain, fruit, and bread (Judith 10.5). Avoidance of Gentile oil is attested elsewhere.19 We shall do better to consider reality rather than legal theory. In real life many Jews mingled quite freely with Gentiles. Travel is the most obvious occasion, but not the only one.20 In some Diaspora cities, such as Sardis, there was no Jewish quarter, and so Jews and Gentiles lived side-by-side.21 Human sociability would lead to social intercourse of some kind or other. This was also the case in the cities and some of the towns of second-century Galilee, which have been studied by Martin Goodman. He observes that the normal sorts of social relations are evidenced by second-century rabbinic literature. This extends even to use by Jews of the public baths.22 Paul, whose views of behavior in all respects reflect his upbringing, put it precisely: to avoid the sexually immoral and the idolatrous (in the common Jewish view, the Gentiles), one would need to go out of the world (1 Cor 5:10). Jews did not become hermits to escape contact with Gentiles. Philo advocated living strictly according to the law, and he observed some purity laws that are not in the Bible. Yet, he associated with Gentiles. As Alan Mendelson has shown, he and other upper-class Jews in Alexandria aspired to participation in Greek educational and social institutions, and Philo himself had witnessed athletic contests in the gymnasium.23 The last is probably also true of the author of the Testament of Abraham (see T. Abraham recension A 10.2). Alon argued that it was “the halakah” that Jews would not go to 19. See Josephus, J. W. 2.590–592 // Life 74–75 (with some differences); Ant. 12.120. 20. F. F. Bruce, commenting on Acts 10:28, explains that Jews could not eat any Gentile food at all. “It was thus a very difficult thing for Jews to travel in foreign lands” (The Acts of the Apostles [2nd ed.; London: Tyndale, 1952] ad loc.). A majority of all the Jews in the world actually lived in foreign lands, and a lot of them traveled. Philo and other pious Jews went on an embassy to Rome. Paul went hither and thither persecuting Christians. Lots of Diaspora Jews made pilgrimage to the temple. 21. See A. Thomas Kraabel, “Social Systems of Six Diaspora Synagogues,” in Ancient Synagogues: The State of Research (ed. Joseph Gutmann; Chico: Scholars Press, 1981) 79–91; here p. 85. 22. Martin Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, A.D. 132–212 (Towtowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983) 44–45, 61, 83–84. 23. Alan Mendelson, Secular Education in Philo of Alexandria (Monographs of the Hebrew Union College, 7; Cincinnati; HUC, 1982) 25–33. This is a gentle but effective rebuttal of the view of H. A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2 vols.; rev. ed.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1962) 1:78–82.

298

JEWISH ASSOCIATION WITH GENTILES

the theater. He cited in favor of this view a story in Josephus (Alon, p. 143), according to which Herod proved to pious critics that there was nothing idolatrous about attending the theater, despite the trophies on display—and proved it while he and one of the critics were in the theater in Jerusalem (Ant. 15.267–279). There is a similar story about Agrippa I (Ant. 19.332–334). They hardly prove what Alon claimed. One may also note that, though some doubtless protested when Herod built a theater in Jerusalem, people went to it. There are stories about public show-trials and other large gatherings in the amphitheater in Jericho, attended by thousands of pious Jews.24 Even in Palestine Gentile institutions were not entirely avoided. Jewish participation in the main socializing aspects of Gentile city life—theaters, gymnasia, and civil government—is attested by epigraphy. Tessa Rajak has recently surveyed this material. It is, of course, sporadic, and some of it is later than the first century. There is evidence of a first-century Jewish member of a city council in Cyrene, of Jewish attendance at the theater of Miletus in the second or third century, and of Jewish ephebes in Cyrene in the first century—to name only some of the major items. These activities included at least passive contact with idolatry, and they show willingness to overlook formal, civic idolatry in order to participate in the broader civilization. 25 Thus Dunn’s concession, which was attacked by Esler, is to be confirmed: In real life there was “a broad range of social intercourse,’’ which depended on the strictness of the Jew in question (p. 23). This was true not only privately but also publicly. Even strict Jews (such as Philo) managed to square their Jewishness with participation in some of the major aspects of Graeco-Roman culture: the public baths, the gymnasia, the amphitheaters and the theaters. I cannot agree with Dunn that the issues Jews thought about in mingling with Gentiles were tithing and ritual purity, or that the matter depended on the influence of a particular Rabbi (pp. 23–24), but the variety he proposed is correct. At the strict end, we noted Joseph and Aseneth (worried about neither ritual purity nor tithes, and not written by a Rabbi, but opposed to eating with Gentiles), while at the lenient end we have the evidence cited above, as well as the general considerations which show that intermingling of various kinds was necessary. 24. Ant. 17.160f. (“theater” is a variant); War 1.666. 25. See Tessa Rajak, “Jews and Christians as Groups in a Pagan World,” “To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity (eds. Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs; Chico: Scholars Press, 1985), 247–62.

299

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

The Practice and Theology of Separatism At the same time there is evidence of considerable Jewish separatism. In many Diaspora cities there was a Jewish quarter. Several pagan authors regarded the Jews as antisocial, and a few used the term misanthropes. Some singled out eating as an example of their exclusivism.26 These passages are often discussed under the heading “antisemitism,” which I take to be the wrong category. Beyond doubt, whatever the motive, they reflect some sort of social reality. To put the matter cautiously, Jews were in general less willing to mix than were the other peoples of the empire. How things look to the outsider is of considerable interest and can be decisive on some points. Pagan comments, for example, may be taken as proving that Jews generally observed the sabbath. Yet, they do not show what was done on the day. Some Gentiles took the sabbath to have been a fast day, which was mistaken.27 Similarly, pagan comments on Jewish exclusivism prove some kind of separatism, but they will not reveal how it was understood on the Jewish side. We have already seen enough evidence to answer this question in part: The principal impediment to social intercourse was general Jewish refusal to eat pagan meat and drink pagan wine. A harder line is seen in Jubilees and Joseph and Aseneth, but otherwise the bar to relations with Gentiles was the food and drink itself. Dunn (p. 14) correctly notes that Jewish food laws permitted them to entertain Gentiles, but not to accept Gentile hospitality (unless the Gentiles could provide Jewish food and wine). The net result of this one-sided possibility would be very little entertaining of the one by the other. Social intercourse among equals involves reciprocity. More important is the evidence that points to Jewish pride in separatism. Christian scholars habitually discuss the question under the implied heading “What was wrong with Judaism that Christianity corrected?” Exclusivism is considered to be bad, and the finding that Jews were to some degree separatist fills many with righteous pride. We shall all agree that exclusivism is bad when practiced by the dominant group. Things look different if one thinks of minority groups that are trying to maintain their own identity. I have never felt that 26. Pertinent passages are given by Esler, Community and Gospel, 78–80. 27. See the passages collected by Molly Whittaker, Jews and Christians: Graeco-Roman Views (Cambridge Commentaries on Writings of the Jewish & Christian World 200 BC to AD 200, 6; Cambridge: University Press, 1984), 70.

300

JEWISH ASSOCIATION WITH GENTILES

the strict Amish are iniquitous, and I do not think that, in assessing Jewish separatism in the Diaspora, we are dealing with a moral issue. (The moral issue would be the treatment of Gentiles in Palestine during periods of Jewish ascendency. How well were the biblical laws to love the resident alien [Lev 19:33–34] observed?) On the present topic, willingness to participate in the larger surrounding culture, Christians would subsequently follow the same range of behavior as did Jews. They would hesitate to marry pagans, Jews, and even Christians who belonged to the wrong party; they would not participate in aspects of public life that included the trappings of idolatry, and so forth. 28 Exclusivism is built into the basic covenantal conception of Judaism, and as such Jews took pride in it. They did not themselves take this to be “misanthropy,” hatred of humanity. The author of the Letter of Aristeas was pleased with the king who (in the romantic narrative) commissioned the translation of the Bible. He is shown throughout as a gracious, kind and wise king. This is not misanthropy or even misbasileuity. The author favored cordial and warm relations between Jews and Gentiles. On the other hand, he despised idolatry, following the standard ranking: Graeco-Roman was less bad than Egyptian (Arist. 134–38). To prevent idolatry, he wrote, Moses, following divine revelation, surrounded us with unbreakable palisades and iron walls to prevent our mixing with any of the other peoples in any matter, being thus kept pure in body and soul, preserved from false beliefs, and worshiping the only God omnipotent over all creation (Arist. 139–40).

Gentile questions about meats, drink, and unclean creatures (128), he thought, were off the mark. The Jews were not concerned with these things in and of themselves, but only “with the sovereignty of God” (140–41). Monotheism is what led to separatism. It was to prevent corruption of worship that Moses “hedged us in on all sides with strict observances [purifications, hagneiai] connected with meat and drink and touch and hearing and sight, after the manner of the law” (142). The food laws are symbolic: “the cloven hoof, that is the separation of the claws of the hoof, is a sign of setting apart each of our actions for good” (150), and so on. The Jews are forbidden to harm anyone “in thought or in deed” (168). Their responsibility is to live among 28. See recently Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 191, 285–86, 342, 358.

301

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

others as “wise and prudent companions” who help them to “rise above ignorance and achieve progress in life” (130). Here separatism is accepted, in no contradiction to the story of banqueting with the king. The latter had shown respect for God’s law, including the restrictions on food, and so dining with him was compatible with Jewish separatism. Separatism did not, in the view of thoughtful Jews, entail misanthropy. On the contrary, Jews, by standing apart and worshiping the one true God, might be a light to the Gentiles (help them to “rise above ignorance”). Full assimilation would mean acceptance of idolatry; some degree of separation might be of benefit to others. According to Philo, Balaam, in refusing to curse Israel, predicted that they will “dwell alone, not reckoned among other nations.” This does not mean physical separation, but rather that “in virtue of the distinction of their peculiar customs they do not mix with others to depart from the ways of their fathers” (Moses 1.278). Philo, too, opposed misanthropy: The law “stands pre-eminent in enjoining fellowship and humanity” (Special Laws 1.324). This summarizes the “second table,” the laws governing relations with other humans, and it is balanced by commanding the love of God (Special Laws 1.299). Similar is Special Laws 2.63, where the law is taught in synagogues on the sabbath under two main heads: “one of duty to God as shown by piety and holiness, one of duty to humans as shown by humanity (philanthrōpia) and justice (dikaiosynē).” In a splendid passage Josephus combines these points: separateness and philanthrōpia: The consideration given by our legislator to the equitable treatment of aliens (allophyloi) also merits attention. It will be seen that he took the best of all possible measures at once to secure our own customs from corruption, and to throw them open ungrudgingly to any who elect to share them. To all who desire to come and live under the same laws with us, he gives a gracious welcome, holding that it is not family ties alone which constitute relationship, but agreement in the principles of conduct. On the other hand, it was not his pleasure that casual visitors should be admitted to the intimacies of our daily life. The duty of sharing with others was inculcated by our legislator in other matters. We must furnish fire, water, food to all who ask for them, point out the road, not leave a corpse unburied, show consideration even to declared enemies. He does not allow us to burn up their country or to cut down their fruit trees, and forbids even the spoiling of fallen combatants; he has taken measures to prevent outrage to prisoners of war, especially women (Apion 2.209–12).

302

JEWISH ASSOCIATION WITH GENTILES

Thackeray (the LCL ad loc.) noted that Juvenal had said that Jews would not point out the road (Sat. 14.103–4). Josephus here, and presumably throughout, wished to argue that Jewish separatism should not be taken as some Gentiles took it—as evidence of misanthropy. Special interest attaches to the statement that “casual visitors” are not to be “admitted to the intimacies of our daily life” (anamignysthai tēi synētheiai). Thackeray notes that the French commentator Reinach proposed that the reference was to Passover (Exod 12:43). There is no reason to make this limitation, for synētheia is a general term for what is habitual as well as for what is intimate. Thus Thackeray’s translation, “the intimacies of daily life,” is correct. In the same vein Josephus wrote that Moses regulated “with what persons [a Jew] should associate” (peri tōn koinōnēsontōn tēs diaitēs, “associate with regard to living,” Apion 2.174). According to Josephus, Antiochus Sidetes was urged by some to extirpate the Jews “because of the separateness of their way of life” (Ant. 13.245, tēs diaitēs amixia). In a learned note Marcus observed (LCL 7, pp. 350–51) that Diodorus had charged Jews with both separateness and regarding others as enemies. Josephus, in effect, affirms the former and denies the latter: Jews were to some extent separate, but they did not harbor enmity toward others. We cannot, of course, know how many Jews felt enmity toward Gentiles, just as we cannot know how many assimilated to some degree or other. There are enough stories of conflict in mixed cities to indicate that there was sometimes hostility on both sides (see J. W. 2.561). The same evidence shows that on the whole Jews did in fact remain separate and distinctive. This was especially true of marriage. Endogamy is not precisely a biblical law. Exodus 34:11 forbids marriage with women of certain Gentile nations because of the fear of idolatry, and Deut 7:3 forbids marrying the sons or daughters of the seven conquered nations (see the complaint of Ezra 9:1–2). According to Deut 23:3, “no Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the Lord.” Yet, Ruth, ancestress of David, was a Moabitess, and clever exegesis could have voided the biblical passages. The prohibited nations no longer exist; existing nations are not prohibited. But many favored a total ban on intermarriage. The author of Joseph and Aseneth, we saw, wished to require full conversion before intermarriage. Jubilees had taken a completely hard line against intermarriage (Jub 30:7, 14–17), and this

303

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

is also true of Pseudo-Philo (Biblical Antiquities 9.5 and elsewhere) and Tobit (4:12). Addition to Esther 14:15 (LXX 4:17u) indicates that Jewish women should avoid intercourse with the uncircumcised. Most striking, Josephus wrote that it was “not in accord with the [Jewish] laws” to take a Gentile wife (Ant. 18.345). In Josephus’s view Solomon had transgressed the law of Moses when he took Gentile wives (Ant. 8.191). Philo too attributed to Moses the prohibition of marriage with a person of another nationality (Spec. Laws 3.29). Even less pious Jews—if sufficiently prominent—observed the prohibition: When Drusilla, daughter of Agrippa I, married a Gentile king, he accepted circumcision (Ant. 20.139). If, however, we ask about common practice, we shall arrive at a more nuanced view. The fierce denunciations of Pseudo-Philo and Jubilees virtually prove that some Jews intermarried, and Joseph and Aseneth is a much gentler attempt to persuade Jews to require full conversion of Gentiles before marriage. While these efforts prove some intermarriage, we may nevertheless accept that most Jews would have been very reluctant to marry an active worshipper of idols, someone who might bring home meat or wine that was tainted with idolatry, or even pour out a libation at home before drinking. If it is true that most Jews would hesitate to marry a practicing worshiper of idols, we must also assume that social intercourse was restrained. One would not want the young people to get to know Gentile youths and maidens too well. Yet, when they met sympathetic Gentiles—I mean, sympathetic to Judaism—we may be confident that Jews in general made them feel welcome.29 This point is made in Apion 2.209–10, quoted just above, and elsewhere. According to J. W. 7.45 in Syria “multitudes of Greeks” were attracted to the “religious ceremonies” (thrēskeiai), and they were incorporated into Judaism “in some measure.” Apion 2.123, 280–82 claim that many Gentiles imitated some Jewish laws, and the sabbath is specified. Philo makes the same claim. Although Athenians reject Spartan customs, and Spartans reject those of Athens, the Jewish law attracts “the attention of all, of barbarians, of Greeks, of dwellers on the mainland and islands, of nations of the east and the west, of Europe and Asia, of the whole inhabited world from end to end.” The sabbath illustrates the point (Moses 2:17–21). We may suppose that these claims are exaggerated, but we should 29. So Dunn, “Antioch,” 19.

304

JEWISH ASSOCIATION WITH GENTILES

also grant that, from the Jewish point of view, interest in their worship, and limited participation, were welcome. That there were such people is proved by pagan comments.30 We should not suppose that Jews refused to mix at all with Gentiles who were interested and sympathetic. The existence of the category “God-fearers” shows that there was association.31 Separatism: Conclusion I have tried and failed to draw the balance in one judicious sentence. Jews in general did not like idolatry. They avoided it and the things that went with it—including wine and marriage with practicing pagans. They also, in general, kept the major biblical dietary laws, and this restricted social relations even further, since it inhibited mutual entertainment. Yet, many rubbed shoulders with Gentiles because of their work. More significantly, many Jews admired Gentile institutions, education, and culture, and they sought to participate. Jews also prized their own culture, and they wanted others to appreciate it. To attract Gentiles, to make them sympathetic to the Jewish way of life, Jews had to be open to them. Most knew that the only real problems with associating with Gentiles were idolatry and the biblical food laws (especially not to eat pork, blood, and fat). Different people balanced mingling and separatism in different ways, and doubtless in most communities and families there were customs that removed the burden of anxious decision-making from the shoulders of individuals.

30. Dunn, “Antioch,” 22. 31. I take it that the existence of sympathizers is proved from the literary sources (e.g. Acts 10:2; Josephus, War 7.45). The reservations of A. T. Kraabel, however, are not without merit (see “Synagoga Caeca: Systematic Distortion in Gentile Interpretations of Evidence for Judaism in the Early Christian Period,” in Neusner and Frerichs, “To See Ourselves as Others See Us,” 219–46). The significance of the list of theosebeis in the synagogue inscription at Aphrodisias is hard to assess. When one notes that a large number of these were members of the city council, one must doubt that they had entirely forsaken pagan rites but had not become fully Jewish. This would have meant that, religiously, they were nothing. I think it unlikely that several city councillors would have been in such a position. We must reckon with the possibility that they only respected Judaism and contributed money to the synagogue, without converting to monotheism. For the purpose of this essay, the existence of sympathizers is all that is required. Jews would have associated with them even though they were not “spiritual” converts. On the inscription, see J. Reynolds and R. Tannenbaum, Jews and Godfearers at Aphrodisias (Cambridge Philological Society Supp. 12; Cambridge, 1987). They define God-fearers as accepting whatever parts of Judaism they like without giving up paganism (88). The definition is apt.

305

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Antioch I shall very briefly try to apply the results of this study to the controversy in Antioch. I shall include points that have been only hinted at in this essay and that are argued in full elsewhere (n. 3). We start with three items that probably were not at issue, and then press on to some that may have been. 1. It is not reasonable to think that laws of tithing and offerings were the problem. 2. The ritual purity of participants at common meals was also not the difficulty. Everyone there, it should be assumed, had corpseimpurity. If the meal was held before nightfall, most of the married couples had semen-impurity; on average one-fourth of the women had menstrual-impurity; and other women would have had childbirth-impurity. There is no indication that these impurities restricted dining companions—even among the Pharisees. 3. There is no reason to suppose that in Antioch Jews were under pressure from Pharisees to raise purity standards. The evidence is that Pharisees did not try to impose their special rules on others. 4. That is not to say that there could not have been any influence from Pharisees in the debate. It is quite possible that James was close to the Pharisees. Numerous scholars think that those who were “strict about the laws,” who protested when he was executed by the Sadducean high priest Ananus, were Pharisees (Ant. 20.199–203).32 When he found Peter’s behavior to be too lax, he may have been worried about how it looked to “the strict.” 5. Being “strict” included reluctance to associate too much with Gentiles, since close association might lead to contact with idolatry or transgression of one of the biblical food laws. “Too much association” is not a law, but a worry about the results of fraternization. How much was too much would be judged differently by different people and groups, and it would also vary with the circumstances. 6. If specific rules about “table-fellowship” were at issue, the problem was probably the food itself. (a) Some foods are explicitly forbidden by the Bible, and Gentile wine is implicitly forbidden in 32. See S. Safrai in The Jewish People in the First Century II (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976) 400; M. Stern in ibid., 370; A. I. Baumgarten, “The Name of the Pharisees,” JBL 102 (1983) 411–28.

306

JEWISH ASSOCIATION WITH GENTILES

Daniel. (b) Some people had a general reluctance to eat any Gentile food. 7. If the worry was the meat, it was probably not the direct fear of idolatry, since Paul himself would have been more than reluctant to eat meat that had been offered to an idol. A more probable concern about meat would be that the mode of slaughtering left blood in it. My guess is that number 5 is the most likely. James worried that too much fraternization with Gentiles would have bad results, and that Peter’s mission would be discredited if he were known to engage in it himself. As second choice, I suggest 6b—a general dislike on James’s part of eating Gentile food, which led him to think that Peter was not being cautious enough. I doubt that biblical law was actually being transgressed. It is possible that Paul was literally willing to live like a Gentile in order to win Gentiles (1 Cor 9:21), but we must wonder whether that was true of Barnabas and the other Jewish Christians in Antioch. I am now inclined to doubt it. It is more likely that the concern was general—too close to Gentiles too much of the time—while in another sense it was particular and individual—James worried about Peter’s reputation, since he might be thought to be flirting with idolatry or food that the Bible calls “abomination.” It was not the case that Antiochene Jews in general were persuaded by Pharisees not to eat with Gentiles, and probably not that James sent a message to the Jewish members of the church there, proscribing this behavior in general. He apparently sent a message to Peter—You should not eat with Gentiles—and the other Jewish members followed him. This particular message is best explained by a theory of general concern on the part of James. He feared that it might be said of Peter that he fraternized too much, and was thus generally suspect, not that he had violated some individual rule. If number 5 (or 6b) is correct, it would mean that Paul’s statement that Peter had been “living like a Gentile” (Gal 2:14) was exaggerated. He probably had not been doing anything as drastic as eating pork, shellfish, or hare. Exaggeration on this point fits perfectly since the charge that Peter was “forcing Gentiles to live like Jews” in the same verse goes beyond the story as Paul tells it. He very often used extreme or hyperbolic language to polarize a situation,33 to make it black and 33. See Carol Schlueter, Polemical Hyperbole, unpublished PhD dissertation, McMaster University.

307

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

white, and this seems to me to be the best explanation of the term “live like a Gentile” in Gal 2:14.

308

PART 3

Inner and Outer in the Study of Religion

The Edward Cadbury Lectures 1999‒2000

14

“By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them”

Inner Governs Outer

In this and the following essays1 I wish to explore the question of how ancient Jews and Christians—and one other significant ancient person—regarded the relationship between the inner person and the outer person: that is, how what is in the heart, mind, or spirit relates to external behavior. In the final two essays (chapters 20 and 21), we shall shift inner to mean the insiders of each group and outer to mean outsiders. I am a historian, not a psychologist and not a psychiatrist. Thus these essays will be largely descriptive of what some ancient people thought, though my eye is also on the question of how modern people evaluate other religions. The topic of evaluation will become prominent especially in the third, fourth, and fifth essays (chapters 16, 17, and 18)—for those who wish to plan ahead. And, while looking ahead, perhaps I should say that polemic and apology will also pick up 1. This and the following seven chapters were first delivered as the Edward Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham in March 2000. I wish to thank Tim Peat and the contingent from Woodbrook for their very appreciable contribution to the lectures; my old and dear friend Professor Michael Goulder, who enlivened the question sessions and provided good companionship, and his wife Clare; friends who took me under their wings, Mark Goodacre, David Parker, and Ulrich Volp; heads of department Hugh McLeod, Denys Turner, and Markus Vinzent; and Sue Bowen, who was both charming and efficient in seeing that everything got done. Last, but by no means least, my thanks to the Cadbury Trust, which supported these lectures as well as other projects.

311

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

as the essays progress. This essay will be so purely descriptive that you may not be able to bear it. At any rate, since I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist, I shall call the “inside” the heart, mind, soul, or spirit, depending on the source that I am describing. I myself suppose that in every case the “inner” is always the brain: that is, that what we feel or believe is a function of the brain, not of the heart or spirit. But we are all accustomed to speaking as if the heart has feelings. I, for one, have been known to say, “I love you with all my heart,” and I have never said, “You stimulate the emotive bits of my brain very much.” Similarly, we tell people to keep their spirits up, but in common parlance we do not wish people success in maintaining their serotonin level. And so I trust that retention of ancient vocabulary and modes of thought will cause no confusion. The titles of the first three essays come from the Gospel of Matthew. The first is from Matt 7:16–20, which is very familiar, but which I shall quote by way of reminder: You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.

This seems to be a favorite theme of Matthew, since he repeats it in 12:33: “Either make the tree good and its fruit bad; or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit.” Moreover, we find the same figure in the preaching of John the Baptist in Matt 3:8, 10: “Bear fruit worthy of repentance. . . . Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” I have quoted Matthew in all three cases, but the first and third of these passages are also in Luke; thus those who, quite mistakenly, believe in Q would say that Matthew has simply picked up a theme of Q and repeated it a third time. Those who are more enlightened will say that Luke copied two of Matthew’s passages but chose not to include the third. The point of the figure of trees and fruit is seen perfectly clearly in the saying attributed to John the Baptist: those who bear bad fruit will be destroyed: the saying implies that those who bear bad fruit are bad people. The two sayings attributed to Jesus take a further large step: those who bear good fruit are good people. This is a large step because there is another obvious explanation of good behavior: it could 312

“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM”

be hypocritical, and we shall examine this possibility in the following chapter. But here let me observe that it is easier to maintain that bad deeds come from bad people than it is to think that all good deeds spring from good people. I know of no cases, outside law enforcement, when agents go undercover, of good people who hypocritically pretend to be bad. But, as I said, we shall address hypocrisy in the next essay. Just now we examine the assumption, widely held, that good deeds reflect the hearts or minds of good people. We shall then move from “good deeds” to fruit in a larger sense, meaning “a good outcome.” In John the Baptist’s saying, just quoted, trees that bear bad fruit are obviously bad trees, and the outcome is bad: they are cut down and burned. I wish to start with the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament). It is risky for an amateur student to delve into the numerous and diverse books in the Hebrew Bible. And, in fact, I have all kinds of cautionary remarks about my use of the Hebrew Bible in these essays, only two of which I shall mention: The themes of these eight essays are too large to permit a thorough analysis of the entire Bible, and so I shall often use both Testaments, but especially the Hebrew Bible, anecdotally. I cannot place each view or theme that I cite into its context and show how it relates to other themes. The second caution is even more extreme. I shall say little about dates, and consequently I shall not have much to say about development. I would love to be able to describe development, but two considerations hinder me: first, I do not think that I can date all of the material accurately; second, I am not sure how much development there actually is on our topics. If I believed that the really ancient Hebrew material reflected corporate personality, and that individualism arose only later, I might sketch a kind of development of the themes “inner and outer.” This, however, is a most complicated topic, and I cannot present a theory of collective versus individual that will serve to organize the material on inner and outer. I shall try to observe a sort of chronological presentation, but please do not expect too much in this department. We begin with a few examples of the view that if the heart is right, behavior will also be correct. Before sacrificing 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep, Solomon prayed, “[May] the Lord our God be with us, as he was with our ancestors; may he not leave us or abandon us, but incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances” (1 Kgs 8:57f.). The assumption seems to be that

313

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

deeds follow the direction of the heart. If the heart is inclined in the right direction, the person will keep God’s commandments. According to Psalm 24, the people who attend the temple have “clean hands and pure hearts,” and they “do not lift up their souls to what is false” or “swear deceitfully” (Ps 24:4). According to Deuteronomy, people whose hearts turn away from the Lord show it with their actions: they then begin to worship idols (Deut 29:18). According to Psalm 5, the enemies of the righteous man have “no truth in their mouths; their hearts are destruction; their throats are open graves; they flatter with their tongues” (Ps 5.9f.). In all these cases, and a multitude of others that I have not cited, the direction of the heart determines external deeds. People who are true to God in their hearts do not lie, cheat, steal, and murder; people whose hearts are not true to God act wickedly in ways that are identifiable and publicly known. The corollary of the view that those who incline their hearts to God also keep his commandments is that keeping his commandments leads to a good outcome. This corollary—that good people are blessed—is dependent on the view that God is just. If you incline your heart to God you will keep his commandments; and, since he is just, he will bless you. It was sometimes hard to work this out within an individual’s lifetime, which posed a problem, since ancient Hebrew religion, and also early Judaism down to about the middle of the second century BCE, did not have much of a doctrine of the afterlife. The weak and shadowy existence in Sheol is irrelevant to our present purpose, as are Ezek 37:1–14 and Isa 26:19—if they in fact refer to individual resurrection. The first clear reference to a differentiated resurrection, with reward and punishment, comes in the book of Daniel, which was completed approximately 165 BCE. “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan 12:2). One of the great advantages of this sort of belief in an afterlife is that it is possible to believe that perfect justice will be done then if not during life. But back in the good old days, when the Hebrew view of the afterlife was rather like that of classical Greece—a shadowy and not very cheerful existence in Hades (in Greek) or Sheol (in Hebrew)—people expected that God would bless good people in this life. This is especially a theme of Deuteronomy and of the Deuteronomistic history. Thus, in Deuteronomy 5, Moses tells the people that God had said to him, “I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you; they are right in all that they

314

“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM”

have spoken. Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear me and keep all my commandments always, so that it might go well with them and with their children forever!” (5:28f.; NRSV has “mind”). A heart inclined in the right direction leads to obedience, which leads to a happy consequence: such people and their offspring do well! Next example: chapter 28 of Deuteronomy contains the blessings and the curses of the covenant. Those who obey the Lord will be blessed in the city, in the field, in childbirth, in their herds and flocks, in war, and so on. Those who disobey the Lord will be cursed in all their endeavors. This view lends itself to reasoning in reverse. If a good heart leads to good deeds, which then lead to good results in life, it follows that someone whose life turns out well was a good person. Suffering, on the other hand, is divine punishment for sins. If you sit at your window and inspect your neighbors, you will discover that their relative success or failure is easier to see than their hearts and actions. Well, you see some of their actions: they wash or do not wash their cars, they take care of their lawns or not, and so on. And you can see, at least to some degree or other, how they are doing materially. But you do not see whether or not they support charitable causes, whether or not one member of the family is committing adultery at the office, etc. We can behold the outcome: success, good health, prosperity, and plentiful offspring, on the one hand, and failure, suffering, poverty, and wicked children, on the other. From the results, then, one reasons back to the cause: from happiness and prosperity back to good deeds and a good heart; from unhappiness and misery back to bad deeds and a bad heart. There are obvious difficulties with the Deuteronomistic view, but before turning to them let me say a few words in favor of it. It often works. I was born and reared in a small town, where everyone knows everything about everybody, more or less. I believe that nine of the top ten men, financially, were extremely good men. And, as far as I know, the tenth was not bad, though he was a bit of a bully. One of the reasons these men belonged to the top ten financially was that they were fair and honest in business, attended church, and supported charitable causes. It has long been fashionable to ridicule the optimistic and simplistic view of Deuteronomy—and it is simplistic. But a view that works nine-and-a-half times out of ten is not bad. The view of Deuteronomy had a fairly distinguished afterlife, which I shall exemplify first of all from two of my favorite books, 1 and 2

315

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Chronicles. In the view of the Chronicler, good kings sought the Lord with all their hearts and minds, and they demonstrated this by their deeds. I shall quote or summarize a few passages. David speaks: “Now set your mind and heart to seek the Lord your God. Go and build the sanctuary of the Lord God” (1 Chron 22:19): that is, seek God with mind and heart and do something good. Hezekiah “did what was good and right and faithful before the Lord his God. And every work that he undertook in the service of the house of God, and in accordance with the law and the commandments, to seek his God, he did with all his heart and he prospered” (2 Chron 31:20f.). Here the Chronicler reiterates Deuteronomy’s emphasis on a good outcome. Doing the right thing included, of course, not only building God’s house, but also destroying places of idolatry. Thus Jehoshaphat “destroyed the Asherot” and “set [his] heart to seek God” (2 Chron 19:3). And when Josiah “began to seek the God of . . . David,” he also “began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, and the carved and cast images” (2 Chron 34:3). Asa destroyed foreign altars and commanded Judah to seek the Lord and to keep the law. He himelf noted the good outcome, “we have sought the Lord our God; we have sought him, and he has given us peace on every side” (2 Chron 14:3–7). Still during the reign of Asa, the people “entered into a covenant to seek the Lord . . . with all their heart and with all their soul. Whoever would not seek the Lord . . . should be put to death, whether young or old, man or woman.” “They took an oath to the Lord with a loud voice, and with shouting, and with trumpets, and with horns. All Judah rejoiced over the oath; for they had sworn with all their heart and had sought him with their whole desire, and he was found by them, and the Lord gave them rest all around” (2 Chron 15:12–15). Seeking God includes sacrificing and praying to him. When Jeroboam prevented the Levites from serving as priests of the Lord, they and some others in the northern kingdom “set their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel” and came “to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the Lord, the God of their ancestors” (2 Chron 11:16). In 2 Chron 20:3–12 the decision to seek the Lord (v. 3) leads to Jehoshaphat’s public prayer (vv. 6–12). Seeking the Lord could even override religious impurity. Thus Hezekiah prayed, “The good Lord pardon all who set their hearts to seek God . . . even though not in accordance with the sanctuary’s rules of purity.” After this prayer, “The Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people,” who could then observe the Festival of (Passover and) Unleavened Bread (2 Chron 30:19–21).

316

“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM”

We should also note that in Chronicles the contrary behavior leads to the opposite result, “If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you abandon him, he will abandon you” (2 Chron 15:2). Similarly, in 1 Chron 28:9 David speaks to his heir: “And you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve him with single mind and willing heart, for the Lord searches every mind, and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will abandon you forever” (1 Chron 28:9).2 Thus inner seeking leads to destruction of idols, making a covenant with God, observing his law,3 building his temple, and worshiping only him by sacrificing. People who seek God in this sense have peace. But those who live without the law abandon him and are abandoned (15:2f.). As I indicated, I like Chronicles, and I like this view of the world, which creates in me the feeling of nostalgia. I like this view of the world in the same way, and probably for the same reason, that I like childhood. Good thoughts and good behavior combine in a world of moral certainty. This is simple, and it is childhood, but I do not regard it as foolish or wrong. It is, rather, optimistic. And we should recall that the child Pippa, who sang as she passed by the houses of those who would do her ill, managed, without knowing it, to convert them (“Pippa Passes,” a Drama by Robert Browning). Probably if more of us could recapture the vision of the Chronicler the world would be a better place. Sure, we would be disillusioned sometimes. But no system is perfect. We must, however, face the difficulties of the system, and we turn to the book of Job. Here was a man who seemed happy and successful, and who therefore appeared to be a good man. And, in fact, he was. But he became a test case: if he, though good, could be made to suffer, would he lose faith in the whole system, which was based on the idea of divine justice? Satan asked God, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face” (1:9–11). I trust that the general story is familiar to you, and I do not plan to rehearse the contents of this profound book, which shows awareness of the fact that the theology of Deuteronomy and Chronicles does not 2. For this use of heart, see also 2 Chron 22:9. 3. The commandments can also be the object of seeking (1 Chron 28:8).

317

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

always work. At the end of the book as we now have it, there is a theophany, an appearance of God himself, speaking out of a whirlwind. He overwhelms Job by showing how little he knows: Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! (38.4f.)

And so Job, awed and dumbfounded, capitulates: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. . . . I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (42:3–6). And, at the end, Job’s fortunes are restored. I am not sure of what Job repented: of his cries for justice? But God got what he wanted: capitulation and acceptance that he knows best and that humans are not to question him. The book of Job, then, does not entirely break with Deuteronomy. In the end, Job is blessed as a good man should be. But we do see the main problem: sometimes the good suffer. The author of Job was not a solitary voice. The author of Psalm 73 observes that the wicked were prosperous: “They have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek” (v. 4). The righteous psalmist, on the other hand, thought that he had kept his heart pure and his hands innocent in vain, since all day long he was plagued, and he was punished every morning (vv. 13f.). But in this case he too was satisfied at the end. He went into the sanctuary, and he saw that God caused the wicked to be ruined in a moment: “They are like a dream when one awakes” (vv. 17–20). The psalmist’s faith was restored, and he returned to confidence that God would “put an end” to those who were false to him (v. 27). I think that the basic problem of Deuteronomy, Job, Psalm 73, and other passages is intrinsic to monotheism, when monotheism includes the idea that God controls what happens. No philosophy or religion has ever found a perfectly satisfactory answer to the problem of suffering and evil, and no system has ever achieved a way of maintaining with perfect success that justice is done in this world. A monotheistic religion that also posits that the one God controls history must inevitably have a hard time explaining suffering and evil, unless it can maintain that they are always deserved. If a monotheist who believes that God controls history and the destiny of individuals and nations ever doubts the logic that I laid out above—a good heart produces good deeds, which produce a happy outcome, so that one can reason 318

“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM”

backwards from good results to good deeds to a good heart—once one doubts that this always works, he or she has introduced a problem that is very hard to get rid of, as we shall see more fully later. I hasten to add that polytheism, dualism, and monism have their own problems. I wish now to make a small digression by mentioning the theme of “hardness of heart.” At various times in the Hebrew Bible we read that God hardened the heart of someone or some group whom he subsequently punished. The most famous case is that of the Pharaoh of Egypt at the time of the exodus. For example, after the plague of boils that God brought on the Egyptians and their animals, Moses and Aaron returned to Pharaoh to ask for their people’s freedom, “but the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he would not listen to them” (Exod 9:12). God then proceeded with the next plague. That God hardens the hearts of the wicked is a natural thing for an author to think if he believes that God controls history: whatever happens is what God wills. Yet on the other hand, in the account of Pharaoh we also read that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, as in 8:15. The ancient Hebrews, thank God!, were not philosophers, and so they did not have a perfectly consistent account of freewill and predestination. We find both, side by side. What is clearest in the story is that Pharaoh’s persistent refusal to let the Israelites go corresponded to what was in his heart—however it got there. His deeds were hard because his heart was hard. Before leaving the Hebrew Bible, I wish to point out one other development that springs from the view that you know people by the fruit that they produce: the development of publicly visible pious acts. The Hebrew Bible has lots of symbolic acts. People tore their clothing as a sign of affliction and mourning, and so tearing clothing could symbolize repentance. Joel refers to this in his famous command, “Rend your hearts and not your garments and turn unto the Lord your God” (2:13), which coincidentally reveals that people did rend their garments to demonstrate repentance. I am mentioning symbolic acts here simply as a signal of a subject that will arise in the following chapters, and now I am going to drop the topic. I have not, of course, done justice to the Hebrew Bible, but I shall now press on. I wish to illustrate only two points from postbiblical Jewish literature. One is the continuing assumption that the heart directs deeds and that the outcome corresponds, and the other is the continuation of the view that suffering and death are signs of sin. I shall illustrate the line that runs from a bad heart to a bad outcome, by way of bad deeds, by quoting several juicy lines from 1QS, the

319

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Community Rule of Qumran.4 The person who joins the covenant of the priests of Zadok without utter purity of conviction will be cursed: Cursed be the man who enters this Covenant while walking among the idols of his heart, who sets up before himself his stumbling-block of sin so that he may backslide! Hearing the words of this Covenant, he blesses himself in his heart and says, “Peace be with me, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart” [Deut 29.18]. . . . God’s wrath and His zeal for His precepts shall consume him in everlasting destruction. All the curses of the Covenant shall cling to him and God will set him apart for evil. He shall be cut off from the midst of all the sons of light, and because he has turned aside from God on account of his idols and his stumbling-block of sin, his lot shall be among those who are cursed forever. (1QS 2.11–17)

A good member, obviously, takes an oath to “return with all his heart and soul to every commandment of the Law of Moses in accordance with all that has been revealed of it to the sons of Zadok, the Keepers of the Covenant and Seekers [dorshim] of his will” (1QS 5.8f.). We shall now look at the issue of the right outcome, turning first to another representative of the Deuteronomic view, the Palestinian sage Joshua ben Sira, who wrote in approximately 200 BCE. He wrote in Hebrew, and some of his work in Hebrew has survived. His entire book of wisdom, however, comes to us in Greek. It was translated by his grandson in Egypt, about 132 BCE. Ben Sira lived prior to the time when the idea of resurrection had become firmly entrenched in Judaism. He, like earlier authors, thought that good hearts led to good deeds and then to good outcomes; and he had to make this work within this life. As great as is [God’s] mercy, so great is also his reproof; he judges a person according to his or her deeds. The sinner will not escape with his plunder, and the patience of the godly will not be frustrated. Everyone who does righteousness [or, perhaps, “acts charitably” or “gives alms”] has his reward; everyone will receive in accordance with her deeds. (16.11–14; translation revised according to the Hebrew text)

Well, we ask, as usual, what if this does not happen? What if the wicked prosper and the good suffer? This is Ben Sira’s answer: In the day of prosperity, adversity is forgotten, and in the day of adversity, prosperity is not remembered. It is easy in the sight of the Lord to reward 4. Translation by Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, Penguin, 1962. Frequently reprinted. All further citations of 1QS are from this translation.

320

“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM”

a man on the day of death according to his conduct. The misery of an hour makes one forget luxury, and at the close of life a person’s deeds will be revealed. Call no one happy before his or her death; for it is by his end that a person is known. (11.21–28)

So: the system works. God fulfills his commitment to justice on the deathbed, if need be. Our last example, before looking at the New Testament, is from rabbinic literature. I wish to illustrate how the rabbis of the second century CE coped with our problem after belief in the resurrection had triumphed—as it had. The rabbis were of the view that God is just; that therefore he punishes sin; and that this punishment atones for transgression if the person is basically in the right camp. The rabbis of the second century CE did not invent the idea that suffering atones for transgression; we find it stated clearly some two hundred years earlier, in a work called the Wisdom of Solomon: God chastises those whom he loves in order to save them. I have skipped over the Wisdom of Solomon, as well as much other literature, and here I mention it only to describe the degree of the rabbis’ inventiveness. Their achievement in this regard was to work out the idea of atonement by suffering in connection with the world to come. Here is a passage in which the greatest rabbi of the early second century discusses Ps 36:6:5 “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.” R. Akiba interpreted the verse as follows: He deals strictly with both the wicked and the righteous, even to the great deep. He deals strictly with the righteous, calling them to account for the few wrongs which they commit in this world, in order to lavish bliss upon and give them a good reward in the world to come; He grants ease to the wicked and rewards them for the few good deeds which they have performed in this world in order to punish them in the future world.

R. Akiba’s view was that God is just, and he administers justice by 5. This passage is quoted from Genesis Rabbah 33:1, which is paralleled in Leviticus Rabbah 27:1. Prior to the interpretation of R. Akiba, which is given in the text, we find that of R. Ishmael. He took the first phrase, “your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,” to refer to God’s treatment of those who accepted the Torah that was revealed on the mighty mountain (Mount Sinai): to such people God shows mercy that reaches as high as those mountains. By this time, the word tsedaqah in Hebrew, literally translated as “righteousness,” is usually understood to mean “charity” or “grace” (cf. Matt 6:1). Thus “your righteousness is like the mighty mountains” means that God shows mercy to those who accept the covenant of Mount Sinai. The next phrase, “your judgments are like the great deep,” means that God deals strictly with the wicked, even to the great deep.

321

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

dispensing suffering and bliss. The righteous suffer in this world and are rewarded in the next; the wicked prosper in this world but suffer in the world to come. This became more or less standard as the second century wore on, especially after the Hadrianic persecution of the Jews. The emperor Hadrian forbade circumcision, and this, doubtless combined with other causes, led to the second great revolt of the Jews against Rome, approximately 135–137. After the revolt was put down, R. Akiba and other leaders were tortured and executed. The most righteous suffered most! This would be very difficult for Deuteronomy, the author of Psalm 73, and Ben Sira. But now rabbinic theology could cope: the righteous were being punished in this world for their few sins but would enjoy the world to come. The world to come allows God’s justice to work, while taking account of the fact that even people who have pure hearts nevertheless commit a few transgressions: they are punished for them in this world. The rabbis held, in effect, that there is no double jeopardy: once you suffer for a sin, you will not also be damned for it. Paul believed the same thing. Though this comes as a shock to many Protestants, especially Lutherans, Paul believed that God is just and that he would punish transgression, though he would save the transgressor—provided, of course, that the person had become part of the body of Christ. Paul connected the heart, deeds, and outcome. Hard hearts lead to transgression, which leads to punishment. If the heart is basically bad, the deeds are also bad, and God will respond appropriately. By your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. (Rom 2:5–10)

Ah, you may say, that is in Romans 2, where Paul is at his most aberrant. Quite true. There are a couple of ways in which Romans 2 is Paul’s oddest chapter, but this particular view he maintains in numerous passages. Think, for example, of 1 Corinthians 3–4. Here he compares himself

322

“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM”

to one Apollos, another traveling minister of Christ, who has recently been in Paul’s church in Corinth. I planted, wrote Paul, and Apollos watered. The great apostle then changed metaphors: I laid a foundation and someone else is building on it. Then he cautioned: the building will be tested with fire on the day of judgment. If Mr. Somone Else—that is, Apollos—builds with gold, silver, or precious stones, his edifice will survive the fire, and the builder will receive a reward. But if that rascal Apollos builds—as I suspect!—with wood, hay, or stubble, the work will be burned up, and the builder will suffer loss; he will be saved, but only as through fire. So Paul. Here he states, in short, that a builder who uses bad material will suffer at the judgment, though, since he was building on the right foundation, he will be saved. In a few verses, Paul returns to his subject. What about himself? Is his work actually beyond reproach? He thinks so, but he leaves it to God. With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive commendation from God. (1 Cor 4:3–5)

Here Paul has the same aberration as in Romans 2: God is just; he punishes and rewards appropriately. We recall Ben Sira’s saying “Call no one happy before death,” since on the day of death accounts are squared. Paul wrote, “do not pronounce judgment” before the day of judgment, when the Lord discloses all things and apportions reward and punishment. With regard to the day of judgment, Paul wrote in 2 Cor 5:10 that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.” In 1 Corinthians 3, dealing with Apollos, as in 2 Cor 5:10 and implicitly in Romans 2, Paul looks to the coming judgment day as the time for punishment. He could, however, also place it in this life, as did the rabbis. One of his converts had moved in with his father’s wife, almost certainly the man’s stepmother, not natural mother, after the father had died. The man seems to have done this in the name of the Lord: that is the best construal of 1 Cor 5:3–4. The man probably believed Paul when he said that he was a new creation and concluded

323

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

that old legal relationships were no longer binding. Then he probably reflected on the admonition to love his neighbor and found someone to love very close to home. Paul, despite his radical theology, was actually very conservative with regard to social behavior, and he was outraged. He ordered that the man be expelled from church and turned over to Satan “for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit would be saved in the day of the Lord.” No double jeopardy. Premature death, which Paul expected as punishment for this heinous transgression, was adequate. The man, as a member of the body of Christ, would then be saved. This essay’s final passage comes from 1 Corinthians 11. Paul has heard bad things about the way in which the Corinthians observed Jesus’ last supper. They kept it as a full meal, which was doubtless what Paul had taught them. But the prosperous ate and drank what they brought, even becoming drunk, while the poor went hungry. The rich showed contempt for the church and humiliated the poor. In Greek, contempt is a sin of the mind (kataphroneite), and this inner attitude led to bad behavior. It naturally had a bad result. For all who eat and drink without discerning—that is, without mentally recognizing (diakrinōn)—the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastised, so that we may not be condemned along with the world. (11:29–32)

As with the case of the man living with his stepmother, and as with the rabbis, suffering and death are punishment for transgression; but punishment atones for the person who is basically in the right group: there is no double jeopardy, and the punished sinner will be saved. Our theme in this chapter has been to follow the simple assumption that the inclination of the mind or heart leads to actions and that these actions have consequences. In Hebrew and Jewish thought, and thus also in the New Testament, the consequences are determined by God, who is just. With some twists and turns, we have followed this view from Deuteronomy and Chronicles through Job and the Psalms, through Egyptian Judaism, through Ben Sira, rabbinic literature, and Paul. Belief in the world to come, accepted by almost all Jews from approximately the middle of the second century BCE on, gave this view a great new lease on life. It gave God’s justice a new dimension in which to operate. It also allowed the rabbis, Paul, and other Jews of the same

324

“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM”

general period to cope with the fact, noticed by the author of Job, that sometimes people who are basically on the right path suffer. Their suffering is punishment for transgression—as Deuteronomy held—but it is not the last chapter of their lives. They will live in happiness in the world to come. And so the logic of reasoning backwards, from suffering to sin to a bad heart, was broken. Suffering still proved transgression, but it did not prove that the sufferer was fundamentally wicked, that is, in the wrong camp. The final result would be determined by God, but only at the time of the great judgment or in the world to come. Have I just proposed that Paul believed in salvation by works, just as much as the rabbis? Well, yes: he believed in it as much as they, that is to say, not at all. I do not know of any Jews who thought that life in the world to come was earned by meritorious works. This view is attributed to the rabbis and other Jews only by inserting the question “What must I do to be saved?” before each of their comments about how best to follow the law. This, however, is a topic that we shall pursue later. Now we need only note that of course Jews thought that they had to obey God. So did Jesus and so did Paul—both being, in this respect, perfect examples of the standard Jewish view. But obedience did not earn salvation; it just avoided punishment. Transgression was punished, but punishment, once administered, was enough. God chastises those whom he loves, so that he can then save them. The sins of those who were basically in the right group—for the rabbis, the people of Israel; for Paul, the members of the body of Christ—were punished, but they did not forfeit the promises that God bestowed on those whom he called. To quote Paul, the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. If those whose hearts are basically right nevertheless commit sins, God disciplines and saves them.

325

15

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing

Hypocrisy and Sincerity

We are considering the question of how what is inside a person—usually called the heart, mind, soul, or spirit—and the outside—actions and outcome—relate to each other in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. The first topic was the natural assumption that a good heart produces good deeds, which lead to a good outcome. We now begin two chapters on how things can go wrong. In the next chapter, we consider triviality and externalism as supposed destroyers of proper religion, and here we shall discuss hypocrisy. That is, we shall look at the observation or accusation that some people are good on the outside but evil within. This chapter takes its title from Matt 7:15: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”1 In Matthew, the next verse after the warning about wolves in sheep’s clothing is the passage we considered in the previous chapter, “you will know them by their fruit.” That is to say, the sheep’s clothing is only skin deep. If you keep your eye on how people act, you will be able to distinguish sheep from wolves. Here Matthew seems to have in mind quite a shallow form of hypocrisy or

1. Sheep and wolves are construed differently in Matt 10:16 // Luke 10:3 (I send you out as sheep among wolves) and Acts 20:29 (savage wolves will come among you, not sparing the flock).

327

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

pretense. We shall have to take account of the fact that some people are better at pretending than others. There are a lot of other verses in Matthew about hypocrisy: the scribes and Pharisees, according to Matthew 23, “do all their deeds to be seen by others.” They put on a show of piety in public in order to have honor from humans (23:5–7). Similarly, the hypocrites in Matthew 6 pray in public in order to be seen by others, and they fast in ways that are outwardly obvious (6:5f.; 6:16). The scribes and Pharisees are like whitewashed tombs, fair on the outside and foul within; they cleanse the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are greedy (23:25–27). Before launching fully into the this chapter’s topic, I should comment on my selection of material. We shall not consider equal parts of the Hebrew Bible, postbiblical Jewish literature, and early Christian literature in each essay. Sometimes I shall focus on one body of material, sometimes on another. This is an advantage that a lecturer has over a thesis writer: the lecturer gets to pick and choose among the vast quantity of potential material. I hope that you will rejoice with me over the fact that I am not writing a thesis and that I do not have to give a complete catalogue of all possible passages. Here we shall mostly stay with the Hebrew Bible, which has a wealth of material on our topic. I shall begin with the question of pretense: people who count seeming ahead of being and are therefore concerned with outward appearance. And I wish, for the only time in these essays, to take account of material that is neither Jewish nor Christian. Our first example comes from Plato. The question of pretense is the subject of part of one of Plato’s best-known and most important dialogues, the Republic. Several speakers challenge Socrates to prove that justice is better than injustice for the individual person. Three of the participants propose evidence in favor of the opposite opinion, namely that injustice can be masked by appearance and that a person who is unrighteous has much to gain and little to lose. I shall describe only the perceptive argument of Adimantos. I should emphasize that Plato depicts Adimantos as arguing the case in favor of injustice in order to force Socrates into a decisive refutation, not because he himself prefers injustice to justice. He makes basically three arguments: (1) Fathers, though they want their sons to grow up to be honest and honorable men, “regularly recommend virtue on the ground of its value as a means to worldly success and enjoyment.”2 They “urge the necessity of being righteous (dikaios), not by praising

328

WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

righteousness (dikaiosynē) itself, but the good repute with humanity that accrues from it” (Repub. 2.363A).3 Thus the standard paternal advice to obtain a good reputation may be construed as the advice to pretend to an uprightness that one does not have. (2) Adimantos’s second point is that both laymen and poets teach that moderation (sōphrosynē) and righteousness “are fair and honourable . . . , but unpleasant and laborious, while intemperance (akolasia) and unrighteousness (adikia) are pleasant and easy” (364A). In Hesiod and Homer, the gods “assign to many good men misfortunes and an evil life, but to their opposites a contrary lot” (364B). That is, you can get away with only seeming to be good. The wicked often do well. (3) Finally, Adimantos points to the teaching of religion, as represented by priests and by the same poets (Hesiod and Homer). Begging priests and soothsayers go to rich men’s doors and make them believe that they by means of sacrifices and incantations have accumulated a treasure of power from the gods that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals any misdeed of a man or his ancestors, and that if a man wishes to harm an enemy, at slight cost he will be enabled to injure just and unjust alike, since they—the begging priests—are masters of spells and enchantments that constrain the gods to serve their end. (2.364B–C)

Homer also indicates that men can justify injustice to the gods and go unpunished: “Even the gods themselves listen to entreaty. Their hearts are turned by the entreaties of men with sacrifice and humble prayers and libation and burnt offering, whenever anyone transgresses and does amiss.”4 Adimantos concludes: I have nothing to gain but trouble and manifest loss from being righteous, unless I also get a name for being so; whereas, if I am dishonest and provide myself with a reputation for honesty, they promise me a marvelous career. Very well, then; since “outward seeming,” as wise men inform me, “overpowers the truth” and decides the question of happiness, I had better go in for appearances wholeheartedly. . . . If the gods do 2. A. E. Taylor, Plato. The Man and his Work, (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), 271. 3. Unless otherwise attributed, this and subsequent translations from the Republic are from Plato: The Republic, with an English translation by Paul Shorey (LCL, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, 1956, 2 vol., first printed 1930). 4. Translation by Francis MacDonald Cornford, The Republic of Plato (New York & London: OUP, 1941, 1945), 49–50.

329

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

exist and care for mankind, all we know or have ever heard about them comes from current tradition and from the poets who recount their family history, and these same authorities also assure us that they can be won over and turned from their purpose “by sacrifice and humble prayers” and votive offerings. . . . We had better do wrong and use part of the proceeds to offer sacrifice. By being righteous we may escape the punishment of heaven, but we shall be renouncing the profits of unrighteousness; whereas by doing wrong we shall make our profit and escape punishment into the bargain, by means of those entreaties which win over the gods when we transgress. (365B–66A)

Adimantos’s points are, of course, very well made. This is, after all, a Socratic dialogue, and the master must face a real challenge. The author’s art is seen best when the reader feels one of the arguments strike home. When I read the description of advice that parents give their children, I must confess to you that I recalled with some embarrassment my own discussions with my daughter when she was young. Children are very subject to the pressure of their friends’ opinions, and so it is tempting to encourage honest behavior by appealing to their concern with public appearance. I fear that I may have advised my daughter as Adimantos states that ancient Athenian fathers advised their sons. “You don’t want people to think that you behave like that.” In the world that I know, there are still strong elements of shame culture, though it has been partially displaced by guilt culture. That is, we sometimes feel guilty for what we do, even though no one knows about it, but we are also often governed by the desire to avoid public shame, which may lead us to cover up wrong action and preserve appearances. Many of us feel that what is wrong is getting caught. In advancing these arguments, what Adimantos wants is for Socrates to prove that righteousness is worth having for its own sake, even if it brings no reward. “You must not be content merely to prove that righteousness is superior to unrighteousness, but explain how one is good, the other evil, in virtue of the intrinsic effect each has on its possessor, whether gods or men see it or not” (367E, Cornford). And, I am happy to tell you, Socrates finds the proof a little difficult. To produce it, he must enlarge the category. He proposes to begin by analyzing what righteousness means in a state and then to see how it might be proved that it is of intrinsic worth to the individual (368E–69A). With this, we leave Plato, having learned from him the temptation of pretending to be upright and using apparent

330

WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

righteousness as a cover for injustice and self-interest, as well as the difficulty of proving that honesty is the best policy for the individual all the time. We now turn to the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament). To recall once more the previous chapter’s topic: a good heart leads to good actions, which in turn produce a happy and prosperous life. The authors of the Hebrew Bible also, of course, knew that some people were hypocrites and that they adopted public postures calculated to deceive. Many people lie with their lips and at least some of their actions in order to appear upright and pious, though in secret they act quite differently, and their hearts are not with the Lord. These passages sometimes indicate that God can see the heart and that he therefore knows when someone’s exterior does not reflect the true person. God’s ability to see what is inside a person figures, for example, in the choice of David to be king. When Samuel was having the sons of Jesse pass in review before him, in order to choose the one who would be king, “The Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature . . . , for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart’” (1 Sam 16:7). According to Isaiah, some think that they can hide an evil plan too deep for the Lord to see, or that they can commit evil in the dark and no one will know (Isa 29:15). The sage in Proverbs observes, “Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord, how much more human hearts!” (Prov 15:11), and the author of Ecclesiastes proposes that “God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Eccles 12:14). The human tongue is not a reliable guide to people’s hearts or deeds. Psalm 50 refers to people who say but do not do: they “recite [God’s] statutes and take [his] covenant on [their] lips,” but they are wicked in their actions: they cast God’s words behind them, make friends with thieves, and keep company with adulterers (50:16f.). A psalmist elsewhere refers to a friend with whom he kept company, walking together with him in the house of God (55:12–14). Nevertheless, this good companion had “speech smoother than butter, but with a heart set on war; [his] words were softer than oil, but in fact were drawn swords” (55:20f.). Referring to the exodus generation, the author of Psalm 78 writes that “they flattered [God] with their mouths” and “lied to him with their tongues. Their heart was not steadfast toward him; they were not true to his covenant” (78:36f.). When we move to the prophets, of course, we find a great deal

331

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

of concern with those whose actions are insincere. According to Jeremiah, Judah saw the idolatry of the northern kingdom and the destruction that followed. Nevertheless, Judah also committed idolatry and did not learn fear from seeing what happened to the northern kingdom. The Lord therefore accused Judah: he “did not return to me with his whole heart, but only in pretense (sheqer)” (Jer 3:10; cf. 42:20f.). God says to Ezekiel, “They come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words, but they will not obey them. For flattery is on their lips, but their heart is set on their gain” (Ezek 33:31). According to Micah, the rulers (of Zion) give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the Lord and say, “Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us” (Mic 3:11). And Zechariah wrote that the people were not devoted to the Lord in either their fasts or their feasts (Zech 7:5f.). A special topic in the prophets, and in subsequent Jewish literature, is the dishonest person who sins and hopes to atone by sacrifice, or the deceitful person who, though evil in his heart, performs the rituals of his religion with external correctness. They noticed the same tendency among their people, to abuse worship, that, according to Adimantos, sometimes happened in Greece. But the Hebrews thought that this effort to evade punishment would not work. One cannot buy God’s forgiveness or mercy with sacrifices.5 The uselessness of sacrifice by the unrighteous is, as everyone 5.

I think it fair to say that in the Hebrew Bible the possibility raised by Adimantos in Plato’s Republic does not arise: the Israelite and Jewish authors did not imagine that a man could live a full life during which he was unjust and gained wealth by wickedness while being so successfully deceitful that he had an excellent reputation and was esteemed by all. The God of Israel, unlike the gods of Homer, to whom Adimantos refers, could not be fooled or bought by sacrifice. The northern kingdom was warned, but it did not change, and so it fell. The same happened in the southern kingdom. Moreover, this general divine rule applies to individuals. They too cannot fool God. As we saw yesterday, justice will be done, if only on the day of death: call no one happy before death. Or, as Paul put it after the expectation of an afterlife became generally accepted, do not judge a person’s guilt or innocence before the day of judgment. God may have punishment in store. I suppose that there are three explanations of this difference between Plato and the authors of the Hebrew Bible. One, of course, is that Plato lived in a much more sophisticated society than did Isaiah and Jeremiah. The second explanation is that in the Platonic Dialogues Socrates analyzed humanity more deeply than did the Hebrew prophets. They were concerned with studying the will of God, and analysis of humanity was secondary. Unlike Plato, the prophets did not have to prove on entirely human grounds that justice is better than injustice, since God said so, and that settled the question. In a world dominated by belief in a moral God, philosophical analysis of humanity took a backseat to proclamations of God’s will. Third, the sort of completely successful deception imagined by Adimantos could not be imagined by a Hebrew prophet, since they believed that God saw the heart of every person and that he communicated with his prophets. Pretense could not fool God, and so it also could not fool the prophets (at least as they

332

WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

knows, a major prophetic topic, from Amos onward. I am somewhat torn between not wanting to belabor the familiar and wishing to allow the prophets to express fully their hatred of this particular form of hypocrisy: pretending to worship God while transgressing his laws and oppressing the weakest of his people. I shall compromise by quoting only four preexilic passages, in what I perceive to be chronological order, and commenting on them, and then a few postexilic passages. This will give us the opportunity to consider changes in focus from the preexilic to the postexilic period. This is Amos’s address to the northern kingdom: I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the shelem offerings of your fatted animals I will not look upon. . . . But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. (Amos 5:21–24)

Hosea, addressing the same audience, employed the language of the heart. The more [Israel’s] fruit increased, the more altars he built. . . . Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will break down their altars. (Hos 10:1f–2) They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the Lord, And their sacrifices shall not please him. (9:4) For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. (6:6) saw it). Those who thought that they were getting away with living sinful lives in fact would be punished. In the Republic, Adimantos thinks that the gods get in on the act only when a person enters the next world. The unrighteous can prepare for this by offering sacrifices in advance. The Hebrew prophets had a simple way of dismissing this use of sacrifice: it will not work. God does not want sacrifices from dishonest people. Not only does he not want them, he hates and despises them.

333

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Then there comes the impassioned rebuke of the first Isaiah—that is, Isaiah of Jerusalem—to the people of Judah (the southern kingdom): What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling convocation— I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doing from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. (Isa 1:11–17)

And, finally, Jeremiah, who accused Judah of following the northern kingdom into adultery, and saying that Judah did not return to the Lord with his whole heart, but only in pretense (Jer 3:9f.), represented God as asking, Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal . . . , and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den

334

WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the Lord. (Jer 7:8–11)

These criticisms of the northern and southern kingdoms are collective. The people in general—or at least their leaders—sacrifice and hold festivals while being committed to injustice; they claim to worship the Lord while committing idolatry. They are hypocrites, whose hearts are false, and whose injust and impure actions are obvious. God looks upon the heart, and thus no one can hide hypocrisy from others. Moreover, God sometimes reveals what is what to his prophets, and when they speak hypocrisy is revealed to other people. But most of the time the prophets whom we have considered thus far are discussing really obvious hypocrisy: people who are two-faced, who say and do contradictory things. They pretend to worship the Lord while committing idolatry and oppressing the poor. The prophetic language, of course, which in these early prophets is mostly directed toward national groups, will soon be applied to the individual. At this point in our discussion, I should pause and offer a few remarks on the question of the group and the individual in Israelite and Jewish religion. The topic rose to prominence in scholarly study of the Hebrew Bible thanks to a lecture given in 1935 by H. Wheeler Robinson, which was published in 1936.6 He based his view of “The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality” in part on his reading of sociological and anthropological studies of primitive societies, in part on a discussion of Egyptian art and religion by Walther Wolf, and in part on earlier work by two Old Testament scholars, W. Robertson Smith (1894) and Johannes Pedersen (1926). Robinson also referred to George Foot Moore’s account of later Judaism (1927–30). There has been considerable discussion and criticism of the idea of “corporate personality,” but I have neither the competence nor the desire to try to referee the debate. Wheeler Robinson emphasized that he did not intend to say that individuals were not in mind at all when the ancient Israelites discussed the group, and the question is how to strike the balance. Since my discussion of inside and outside makes a few assumptions about the growth of individualism, I shall express what they are as clearly as I can. There are two main points. 1. I believe it to be true that in the literature there is in fact a shift in emphasis from the group toward the individual, and that this shift, 6. The essay in now available in H. Wheeler Robinson, Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel, with introductions by John Reumann and Gene Tucker (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980).

335

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

though it begins in Jeremiah, becomes most pronounced after the exile. I also think that Moore and others are right in saying that there was a tendency to interiorize and individualize religion as Judaism developed. I cannot myself evaluate hypotheses about primitive groups, but I tend to doubt that “corporate personality” actually explains much of the Hebrew Bible. Thus I see a shift in the literature from group to individual, but I am dubious about corporate personality. There are ready explanations of the changing emphasis in the literature that do not depend on this theory. The first explanation is that after the exile Judea was not a state in the way the monarchies had been. The little temple-state of the Persian period, huddled in the Judean hills, did not have to cope with, for example, kings with international ambitions. There was, of course, still a state religion, but there was little government policy for prophets to criticize. The Persians made all the major decisions. By the time when there was again a real state, the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, 135–103 BCE, four hundred years had passed and religion had evolved. If we had the Pharisaic denunciations of Jannaeus, we would certainly see again criticism of state policy, but for four hundred years there had been little occasion for such criticism, and attention had shifted to individual piety. That is, I take a lot of the collective emphasis of the preexilic prophets to be in fact protests against the behavior of leaders.7 The second explanation is that in the Hellenistic period, when a full-fledged belief in life after death became prevalent, there was an obvious motive for individuals to think of themselves. Naturally attention was focused on the future of the group when only the group had a future. But when individuals had individual futures after this life, religion necessarily paid more attention to the individual. So, to reiterate point 1: in the literature the 7. Cf. Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, vol. 2, E.t. SCM, 1994, 509–10. In the postexilic period, “it was customary to use individual psalms in liturgies of the community or groups from the community. . . . Such a . . . transference was made possible by the fact not only that both the post-exilic community of Judah and even more the Diaspora communities were sociologically much closer to the small family group and in religious terms much closer to the individual’s experiential horizon, but also that it stemmed from the oppressive theological problem that history as the horizon of the experience of divine action, which had provided the central basis for official Yahweh religion since its beginnings, was almost completely ruled out in the post-exilic situation. With the best will in the world, no historical intervention of Yahweh could be recognized in the historical constellation in which the weal and woe of the small province of Judah and even more the scattered Diaspora communities were dependent on the political decisions of the remote Persian imperial government in Susa. So it is all too understandable that in the post-exilic main cult, as already in the exile, there was increased recourse to the piety of the small groups, which offered a treasury of living experiences of God even in a time which was poor in salvation.”

336

WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

emphasis does change from the group to the individual, and I suspect that the literature reflects reality, though of course not perfectly. 2. The development was only a change in emphasis. I accept the view of Rainer Albertz that there was always family and thus individual piety in Israel.8 This seems to be true as far back as we can see. I would especially like to emphasize that later, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the group remained important. One of the reasons Christian scholars misunderstand postbiblical Judaism, and especially rabbinic Judaism, is that they constantly assume that the rabbis were wrestling with the question, What must I—the individual—do to be saved? when in fact that is seldom the topic. Jews on average did not have the obsession with individual salvation that has so often marked Christianity. One of the reasons for this is that Judaism provides a lot of security for its members; the other is that the individual never became as dominant as in Christianity. The group remained important and remains so today. Instead of supposing that the rabbis were worried about how an individual might be saved, we should imagine them as dealing with the question of how best to remain a member of the covenant in good standing. This concludes the digression on the individual and the group. After the watershed of the exile, the criticism of sacrifices offered by the iniquitous continues for at least one more round. According to one of the oracles in the section of Isaiah often called Third Isaiah, probably written about the time of the rebuilding of the temple (515 BCE), the Lord loves justice and hates robbery accompanied with a burnt offering (Isa 61:8).9 According to another, Whoever slaughters an ox is like one who kills a human being; Whoever sacrifices a lamb, like one who breaks a dog’s neck. . . . These have chosen their own ways, and in their abominations they take delight. . . . [W]hen I called, no one answered, when I spoke, they did not listen; but they did what was evil in my sight, and chose what did not please me. (Isa 66:3f.) 8. Further, Albertz states that the covenant with the patriarchs endured in personal piety when there was no state (404f.); the piety of the poor was necessarily interiorized (522); wisdom theology is a kind of personal piety (439). 9. This is the Masoretic Text. “Burnt offering” is ‘ôlah. The LXX has adikia, implying Heb. ‘avlah (same consonants).

337

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

On average, however, the postexilic prophets had other problems. Haggai and Zechariah were interested in reassuring the returned exiles that their punishment was over, and that if they would rebuild the temple the Lord would again dwell in Jerusalem, bless their endeavors, and protect them from foreign invasion. Far from worrying about the cult, they were distressed by its absence. Malachi was concerned with misuse of the cult in a different sense: it was not that people performed it with externally right actions, while being unrighteous in heart and in social conduct, but rather that they did not offer externally correct sacrifices! To save money, they presented to God blemished and inferior animals. Nor did they want to pay the tithes that supported the Levites and the priests. They should observe the external rules of their religion better. We see the continuation of our theme, rather, in wisdom literature and the Psalms. Sacrifice that is brought by the wicked is not, to be sure, a major topic in these books, but it does occur. “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is his delight” (Prov 15:8; cf. 21:3, 27). An adulteress explains to the man with whom she hopes to share afternoon delight, “I had to offer sacrifices, and today I have paid my vows”; having fulfilled these obligations of piety, she is ready to engage in sin (Prov 7:10–20, quoting v. 14 here).10 The only passage that I wish to treat in detail, however, is Psalm 51, where we find an individualized version of the old worry about the cult.11 The psalmist, it seems, has been engaged in introspective examination: “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone have I sinned.” Worse, the psalmist was “born guilty” (Ps 51:3–5). According to Albertz, this is typical of postexilic piety: “the confession of sins and the forgiveness of sins, which only played a subordinate role in earlier personal piety, now also became the regular presupposition for the saving intervention of the personal God on behalf of those commended to his protection.”12 And so, having confessed his guilt, the psalmist prays that God will teach him wisdom in his secret heart, purge him with hyssop, and wash him so that he will be whiter than snow. He prays for a pure (tahôr) heart and a new spirit. God, he states, does not delight 10. Albertz puts Prov 15:8 and 1–9 in the postexilic period: 500 and 638n50. He places similar passages in Prov 21:3 and Eccles 4:17 (ET 5:1), however, in the preexilic period (208). He does not discuss Prov 21:27. 11. Albertz treats Psalm 51 under the rubric “The post-exilic convergence of personal piety and official religion” (508–11; see especially 642nn19, 21, 22). 12. Albertz, 511.

338

WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

in sacrifice, and a whole burnt offering would not be pleasing to him. God wants a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Yet the psalmist concludes by praying for the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. Then, he states, God will delight in righteous animal offerings. Probably the sequence of petitions in the psalm is important: first, the individual repents and God purifies the whole person; second, the psalmist praises the Lord; third, God rebuilds Jerusalem; and then, fourth, Israel can bring righteous, correct sacrifices. The shift from I repent to the implied they who bring righteous sacrifices reveals the transfer of individual piety to the public cult. One assumes that the I of the early verses is paradigmatic and exemplary. If this psalm was used in public worship, doubtless the worshipers were meant to identify with the statements that are in the first-person singular. In any case, here we see the requirement of personal purity and uprightness connected with right sacrifices brought to God, and we may infer the negative argument, which echoes the theme of the preexilic prophets: the wicked do not bring right sacrifices. I believe that this is an appropriate place to remark that the criticisms of cultic worship are usually not criticisms of purifications and sacrifices as such, but rather of abuses: people who sacrifice while treating their neighbors unjustly, people who sacrifice without being pure of heart.13 We have been dealing principally with hypocrisy and sacrifice, but of course, deceit of all kinds is recognized and criticized in the Bible. Above we noted that the tongue is a common instrument of deceit (Pss 78:36f.; 50:16f.). In fact, all the organs of speech are named: there is a “tongue of pretense” (Prov 6:17; 12:19; Ps 109.2), a “tongue of deceit” (Ps 52:4[6]; 50:1914), and a tongue that flatters (Ps 5:9[10], partly quoted in Rom 3:13; there are “lips of pretense” (Ps 31:18 [19] and “lips of deceit” (Ps 17:1); there are mouths of deceit (Ps 109:2), mouths filled with deceit (Ps 10:7; some of this is quoted in Rom 3:14), mouths that speak in pretense (Ps 63:11[12]), and mouths that have no truth (Ps 5:9[10]; cf. Rom 3:13). The product of the mouth, tongue, and lips may be dishonest: there were words of deceit (Ps 35:20), words of pretense 13. Some passages seem to read as objections to sacrifice as such; thus, for example, Ps 40:6 (“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire”); Ps 50:9–13. In other Psalms sacrifices (especially sacrifices of thanksgiving, tôdah) are clearly desirable: Ps 4:5; 54:6; 107:22; 116:16–19. For present purposes, we do not need to sort out attitudes toward sacrifices as such, but only those that count as hypocritical. In general, however, sacrifices are accepted as a part of right religion in the Hebrew Bible, postbiblical Judaism, and the New Testament (e.g., Matt 5:23f.; Rom 9:4, where “worship” or “service” [latreia] refers to the temple service). 14. “The tongue frames deceit.”

339

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

(Exod 5:9; Isa 32:7), and words that flatter (Prov 2:16; 7:5). People speak deceit (Ps 34:14). More comprehensively, they teach their tongues to speak pretense (Jer 9:5[4]); their tongue speaks deceit through their mouths (Jer 9:8[7]); they “speak lies [sheqer], with tongues of deceit [remiyah] in their mouths” (Mic 6:12); “there is no truth in their mouths . . . their throats are open graves, they flatter with their tongues” (Ps 5:9[10], partly quoted in Rom 3:13.) Worse, you can’t trust anyone: prophets prophesy falsely (“in pretense”; Jer 5:31; cf. 23:26; 27:14f.). While most passages do not state that the origin of lies, pretense, and deceit is in the heart, some do, and I think that we could assume this to be the general though often unstated view. According to Proverbs, “deceit is in the heart of those who plan evil” (Prov 12:20), and 1 Kings mentions a “spirit of pretense” (1 Kgs 22:22f.). Jeremiah makes the source clear: “I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies [sheqer] in my name, saying, “I have dreamed, I have dreamed!” . . . How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back—those who prophesy lies [sheqer] and who prophesy the deceit [tarmit] of their own heart?” (Jer 23:25f.). It seems to me to be reasonable to apply generally the view that is stated in Mark 7:21f.: “It is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Thus far we have seen that the heart may be false. In the prophets, the Psalms, and wisdom literature, from which most of our examples have come, the result of a false heart is insincere sacrifice, social injustice, and dishonest speech. Mark 7, where all evil is attributed to the heart, seems to be a logical extension of the prophetic themes. The cure is obvious: people need new hearts, as we have already seen in considering Psalm 51 (“create in me a pure heart, O God”). The most famous passage, however, is in Jeremiah. Contemplating the destruction of the northern kingdom—Ephraim or Israel—and fearing that the fate of Judah, the southern kingdom, would be the same, Jeremiah nevertheless predicted redemption. God would not surrender his people. He would bring back the scattered ten tribes “from the farthest parts of the earth” (Jer 31:8). The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break

340

WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. (Jer 31:27f.)

How will God do this? Before stating the solution, Jeremiah has to clear some ground. The sins of the people, as Jeremiah saw the matter, were both collective and individual, and punishment fell on the group and the individual. But subsequent generations suffered along with the sinners. This is not altogether fair. And so, Jeremiah said, the Lord predicted a time when people would not say, “the parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Rather, in the future people will “die only for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes will be set on edge” (31:29f.). Having individualized punishment, at least in the future, the Lord offered a comprehensive solution to the problem: “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” It will fare better than the old covenant, which they broke. This one, God says, “I will write on their hearts”; “I will ‘put my law within them’” (Jer 31:31–33). After the verses that emphasize individual responsibility, the next verses, on the new covenant, constituted by the law written on the heart, obviously emphasize the individual as well. The problem resides in the hearts of the Israelites, and so that is where the law of God must be implanted. The interiorization of the law in postbiblical Judaism will occupy us especially in chapter 17. Just now I wish to move to a different point about hypocrisy: the usefulness of this accusation in polemic. First, a brief summary: we have seen that many ancient people—such as Plato and the Hebrew prophets and sages—were aware of a possible distinction between one’s heart and one’s deeds. At their best, people would align the two and bring them into harmony. People should think and intend what is right; and they should do what is right. Yet not everyone achieved this harmony. In particular, philosophical and religious thinkers pointed out that behavior might be deceitful. Sacrifices may hide an iniquitous heart and might be thought to cover or compensate for dishonest deeds. If we think back to Amos, we shall recall that the hypocrisy that he attacked was publicly visible. On the one hand people declared their loyalty to the Lord; on the other hand they sold “the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals” (Amos 2:6). Some even swore by “Ashimah of Samaria” (8:14). The “false heart” in Hosea 10:2 led to the multiplication of idolatrous sites, there for all to see. In principle, one could empirically verify the accusations of Amos and

341

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Hosea. Hypocrisy in these prophets reminds us of our original passage, Matt 7:15–16: Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing; you will know them by their fruits. Their deception is no deeper than a sheep’s hide. If, instead of wolves they were trees, you would readily sort them out! But the postexilic period, with its greater interiorization and individualization of religion, raised the possibility of hypocrisy that was closer to the kind described by Adimantos in the Republic: correct externals, accompanied by hidden treachery that might never be clearly visible in public. We recall the good companion in Psalm 55, who had “speech smoother than butter, but with a heart set on war; [his] words were softer than oil, but in fact were drawn swords” (55:20f.). In the course of history, Israelite and Jewish thinkers applied the distinction between the heart and outward appearance more and more to individuals and secret actions. Once one thinks of an evil heart that does not produce publicly visible evil deeds, this distinction between external and internal provides a marvelous opportunity for polemic and criticism. It is extremely easy to say that someone is insincere, and it is almost impossible for the accused to offer a satisfactory defense, since, once one distinguishes heart from action, there is no external proof of purity of heart. It is difficult to prove good motives or sincere sacrifice. All most of us need is an occasion to think ill of someone else’s sincerity. We are so suspicious that very pious external behavior is sometimes taken to be proof of insincerity. If you can see someone being religious, he or she is not really religious. Since wolves can hide in sheep’s clothing (Matt 7:15), you may be sure that anyone who tries too hard to look like a sheep is really a wolf! I must confess that I share this sort of suspicion about extravagant displays of public piety. I systematically harbor doubts about the sincerity of TV evangelists, and not infrequently I suspect that my fellow New Testament scholars have hidden agendas. I do not mean to say that my suspicions are necessarily correct. I am just pointing out that once we recognize the possibility of insincerity being very thoroughly masked by publicly religious behavior and smooth words, we start suspecting that these external indicators are hypocritical and are designed to hide less-than-pure motives. It is sort of like the suspicion that a wife sometimes forms about her husband’s fidelity if her husband suddenly starts bringing home flowers and candy. “What have you been up to? Do you have something to hide?” I shall take as an example a passage to which I shall return later.

342

WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who was an older contemporary of Jesus and Paul, noted that polytheists, like Jews, symbolized purification by washing and sprinkling. Pagans purified themselves with water; but, he wrote, “they neither wish nor practise to wash off from their souls the passions by which life is defiled. They are zealous to go to the temples white-robed, attired in spotless raiment, but with a spotted heart they pass into the inmost sanctuary and are not ashamed.” Similarly, pagans would not sacrifice a blemished animal, but their own souls were full of wounds and sicknesses (On the Cherubim 95f.). In Philo’s view, pagans did not use their religion, as Jews did, to make themselves better people within. That is, I think, quite enough about what lies ahead. Before we develop the theme of suspicions that may not be fair, and their use in polemic, however, we have to examine a different accusation: that people perform trivial acts of piety instead of being truly religious. This charge—which may, of course, sometimes be true—will occupy us in chapter 16.

343

16

Tithing Mint, Dill, and Cumin

Triviality and Rituals

Thus far the chapters in this part have taken their titles from lines in the Gospel of Matthew. In chapter 14 we considered what I regard as the most natural assumption about the relationship between inside and outside: good hearts produce good lives, which have good outcomes. In the previous chapter, under the heading “wolves in sheep’s clothing” we considered hypocrisy, focusing especially on the Hebrew Bible. Here we turn to Matthew 23, which is Matthew’s very substantial criticism of the “scribes and Pharisees,” and this will lead us to investigate a few topics in the biblical literature of the Second Temple period and in postbiblical Judaism. We shall pay attention to the headline topic, tithing mint, dill, and cumin, from Matt 23:23. Matt 23:25–26, on cleaning the outside of cups and plates, will give us the opportunity to consider purity, which we shall do here, though I shall save cups and plates for the next chapter. We shall also take up some of Matthew’s other charges of hypocrisy or empty show: giving alms in public (6:2–4), praying in public (6:5–6), and the general charge that Pharisees “do all their deeds to be seen by others” (23:5). My intention is to explain how these topics arose and then some of their details. That is, I shall rub your noses a little bit—I hope not more than you can bear—in some of the external and visible aspects of ancient religious

345

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

observance. The accusations—that the externals are hypocritical and are ostentatious—are clear and need little elaboration. Most of the next chapter will be devoted to possible defences against these accusations. We start with tithing, which is one of the ways in which people supported the temple, the Levites, and the priests, and for this we need a little historical background. In the period of the first temple—that is, before the exile—there was an official state religion. This remained the case after the division into the northern and southern kingdoms. By saying that there was a state religion, I do not mean to say that there was no personal religion, only that the official cultic sites were there by royal appointment and were subject to royal supervision. In the north, Jeroboam made two calves of gold (putting one in Bethel and one in Dan), appointed priests, and thereby founded a national religion (1 Kgs 12:27–33), which continued to be controlled by later kings, such as Ahab, who introduced a temple to Baal (1 Kgs 16:32). I have the impression that the temple cults of both Israel and Judah were purer state religions than were the temple cults of Mesopotamia and Egypt, where at least some of the time some of the temples gained a degree of independence, thanks to the fact that they had their own land and had revenues that were independent of royal whim. It is remarkable that this was sometimes true even in Egypt, where the Pharaoh was on the one hand a god himself and on the other hand was the main priest of the gods. He combined royal and priestly power in his person, and there was no separation of religion from politics. Nevertheless, the great temple complexes, especially the temple of Amun at Karnak, with vast landholdings and thousands of employees, sometimes constituted a state within the state. Economically, we might call the temples of Egypt semi-independent. It appears that in Israel, on the other hand, the king collected taxes and directly supported the temple or temples. I assume that he also supported the priesthood, at least partially. In Egypt, many priests were part-time priests who had other employment and who served only occasionally—in one case, one month out of every four. While on duty they ate and lived at the temple’s expense, but otherwise they worked to support themselves and their families. That may have been the case in Israel during the monarchy. In any case, during the monarchical period there seems to have been no separate set of taxes for the support of the temple.1 1. Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, vol. 1, ET (London: SCM, 1994), 216, 357n138.

346

TITHING MINT, DILL , AND CUMIN

It is possible that Deuteronomy intended to reduce the state tax that, among other things, supported the temple. This may be the point of the legislation regarding tithes in Deut 14:22–29, according to which the tithe was food to be eaten by farmers in Jerusalem, though in the third year (I assume years three and six of each seven-year cycle) it supported the Levites, resident aliens, orphans, and widows. That is, the Deuteronomic tithe principally encouraged pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which brought money to the merchants there and sacrificial food for the priests. Deuteronomy does not say how the temple should be supported, but I assume that the king would still bear the burden. That is, the expenditure of the Deuteronomic tithe in Jerusalem would not support the temple, the priests, and the Levites. Among other things, it provided no cash to take care of maintenance of the temple building and its fabric. During the exile, another reform movement, that of Ezekiel, proposed that when a new state was founded, the king (“prince”) and the people alike should make a very small contribution in kind to the ordinary running of the temple (e.g., a sixth of an ephah from each homer of wheat, which is one-sixtieth).2 The king, however, should pay for all the offerings needed at the festivals, the new moons, and the Sabbath (Ezek 45:13–16). Thus even the reformers did not entirely change the fact that the cult of Judah required royal support. It is perhaps worth noting that after the exile Chronicles depicts the earlier kings, joined by “officials,” as paying for the festivals (Hezekiah in 2 Chron 30:24; Josiah in 2 Chron 35:7–9), which probably reflects the fact that the temple expenses had in fact been paid by the kings before the exile. Probably the Chronicler thought that this should continue to be the case after the exile. What actually happened after the exile, of course, no one—certainly not the reformers of Ezekiel—had foreseen: there was a new Judaean ministate, but it had no prince. Zerubbabel, of the house of David, returned to Jerusalem from Babylon and helped lead in the rebuilding of the temple, but then he disappears from our sources. Zechariah had foreseen a di-archy: the branch of the house of David would “sit and rule on his throne,” and beside him there would be a priest, “with peaceful understanding between the two of them” (Zech 6:12f.). But it did not happen. There was, instead, a Persian-appointed governor and the high priest. The involvement of the governors seems to have 2. Ezek 45:11: an ephah is one-tenth of a homer.

347

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

receded after Nehemiah, and Judah became a temple state, with a theocracy—government by priests, with some assistance from leading laymen. How was the second temple supported? Leviticus, Numbers, and Nehemiah made several provisions: a very small temple tax paid by all adult males, some of the sacrificial meat, the firstborn male of every female, token amounts of other firsts, such as the firstfruits of produce,3 and, of interest to us now, a tithe, which means a payment of 10 percent; 10 percent of what becomes a question. The idea of a tithe was not new. In 1 Sam 8:15–17 Samuel, trying to discourage the idea of having a king, predicted that a king would take, among other things, one-tenth of the grain, of the vineyards, and of the flocks, and I assume that this was a prophecy written after the event. So in origin the tithe was one of the king’s sources of revenue, out of which he had supported the temple. After the exile, then, the creators of the new state went back to this idea. This step was doubtless facilitated by the fact that they had just come from Babylon, home of the tithe paid to support the temples. I shall quote from M. A. Dandamayev’s summary of Babylonian tithes in the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE—that is, the time of the return from exile: The major source of temple revenue [in Mesopotamia] consisted of various kinds of taxes, the most important being the tithe. . . . Tithes corresponded to approximately one-tenth of the taxpayers’ income. Apparently all the inhabitants of the country paid tithes from their incomes, each to the temple close to where he held land or some other source of income. Farmers, herders, gardeners, and bakers, as well as various officials, were liable to the tithe. Artisans were also obliged to pay a tithe from the products of their manufacture. The remaining inhabitants paid tithes from their gardens and fields, from the increase of their stock, from sheep, wool, from rented plots of land, and from other sources of income.4

In contrast to this Babylonian tithe on all income, the biblical tithe after the exile fell only on farmers and applied only to what grew. This was a dramatic reduction compared to Babylonia. There are basically 3. On firstfruits, see Sanders, Judaism: Practice & Belief, 152–55. 4. M. A. Dandamayev, “State and Temple in Babylonia in the First Millennium B.C.,” in State and Temple Economy in the Ancient Near East (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1979), 2:589–96, here 593. For details, see M. A. Dandamajew, “Der Tempelzehnte in Babylonien während des 6.-4. Jh. v. u. Z.,” Beiträge zur alten Geschichte und deren Nachleben. Festschrift für Franz Altheim 1 (Berlin, 1969); Erkki Salonen, Über den Zehnten im alten Mesopotamien. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Besteuerung, Studia Orientalia Edidit Societas Orientalis Fennica (Helsinki: Societas orientalis Fennica, 1972).

348

TITHING MINT, DILL , AND CUMIN

two forms of the postexilic legislation. The more expensive is found in Lev 27:30–33. “All tithes from the land, whether the seed from the ground or the fruit from the tree, are the Lord’s; they are holy to the Lord.” Moreover, “all tithes of herd and flock, every tenth one that passes under the shepherd’s staff, shall be holy to the Lord.” This is version number 1: 10 percent of everything that grows from the ground, plus 10 percent of domestic sheep, goats, and bovines, is holy to the Lord, which is simplest to interpret as meaning that the priests get these tithes. The second version is in Neh 13:10–14. Nehemiah reports that the problem was that the Levites and singers had left the service of the Lord and had gone to work in their fields. And so he urged the Judeans to bring in the tithes: they “brought the tithe of the grain, wine, and oil into the storehouses” (v. 12). What grows from the soil is here limited to the principal crops—grain, grapes, and olives—but the grapes and olives are first to be pressed for wine and oil. There is no reference to 10 percent of the animals. In Nehemiah the destiny of the food is clearly specified: the tithe goes to the minor clergy, the Levites. Nehemiah’s version is supported by Numbers 18, which has a comprehensive list of the revenues of the priests and Levites. In discussing the tithe (18:21–32), Numbers assigns to the Levites “the produce of the threshing floor” and “the produce of the wine press” (v. 30, cf. v. 27). This is cheaper yet, since oil is not mentioned. We also note that the Levites were to pay a tenth of the foodstuff that they received from this tax to the priests. We do not know how or when these conflicts were resolved, but the tithe of cattle is a horrendous tax. It is hard to construe Leviticus in any way other than requiring 10 percent of all of one’s cattle, not just 10 percent of the increase, with the result that it would become a tax on capital. I think that it was never paid. Jubilees, a notoriously hardline work, refers to the tithe of cattle, but gives no details (Jub. 32:15). The Mishnah converts the tithe of cattle into second tithe, offered and eaten by the family to whom the animal belonged. Josephus does not mention it at all. Thus I dismiss it, except as an effort to extort capital from the farmers—an effort that failed, I hope sooner rather than later. Other legislation required them to give the firstborn male of each female to the temple, and that seems to have been a rule that was observed. What about the stuff that grows from the soil? Leviticus required tithe from everything that grows; Nehemiah mentioned grain, wine, and oil; and Numbers mentioned only grain and wine. Leviticus seems

349

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

to imply that the tithe should go to the priests, while Nehemiah and Numbers assign the tithe to the Levites. In this case the rabbis of the Mishnah accepted Nehemiah and Numbers with regard to the destination of the tithe: it went to the Levites; but they adopted the most expensive version of the tithe of vegetable produce, that of Leviticus: everything that is used as food and that grows from the ground and that is kept watch over (Ma‘aśerot 1.1). The last provision excludes things that grow wild. Josephus wrote only that the farmers pay a tenth “of the annual produce of the ground” (Ant. 4.68), which seems to support Leviticus and the Mishnah. Josephus also states that the Levites received the tithe and paid one-tenth to the priests (as in Numbers). Do you yet know why the Pharisees may have discussed tithing mint, dill, and cumin? There is room for disagreement about what, of everything that grows from the ground, is food. Cattle fodder, for example, was never considered, but there were some genuinely dubious cases. There are a few rabbinic passages that indicate that the status of mint, dill, and cumin was in fact discussed.5 One of these passages directly discusses whether or not black cumin should be tithed. The seeds of black cumin (Latin nigella sativa; Hebrew qetsah; Greek melanthion) could be used in very small quantities as a spice. And so the question was, are flavorings food? According to the house of Hillel, black cumin should be tithed, while the house of Shammai disagreed (Uktzin 3.6). That is, some Pharisees regarded black cumin as food, and others did not. It was not, of course, only the Pharisees who had views on such topics; on the contrary, everyone had views, or at least accepted the views of some body of experts, such as the priests or the Pharisees. All farmers had to know what to tithe, and the Pharisees’ opinions sometimes governed people’s behavior. Does this prove that the party of Hillel, which believed in tithing black cumin, therefore neglected the weightier matters of the law, “justice and mercy and faith,” as Matt 23:23 alleges? We save this question for chapter 17, when we try to imagine how the accused might have answered. Just now the point is only to explain how the subject of mint, dill, and cumin arose. To summarize: first, in the absence of a king to pay for the cult, tithes were assessed; next, different biblical 5. Peah 3.2: some dill must be left in the corner of the field (therefore counts as food; time of R. Akiba); Ma‘aśerot 4.5: dill must be tithed (R. Eliezer, partial disagreement by “the Sages”); Uktzin 3.4: when is dill subject to heave-offering (which implies that it was tithed); Uktzin 1.2: the roots of mint are susceptible to impurity (and therefore count as food; apparently time of R. Judah b. Ilai).

350

TITHING MINT, DILL , AND CUMIN

passages imply different views of what should be tithed; next, it was decided that all foodstuff that grows from the ground and that was tended should be tithed. Then one must determine what counts as food. I have not given a full account of the foodstuff and money that went to the temple, nor do I intend to do so. If you wish to know, you could read Josephus, Ant. 4.69–71, which gives a completely accurate list, though one has to do a bit more work to find out how Deuteronomy was conflated with Numbers. I wish to mention, as briefly as possible, two other points about tithes. One is that they are especially emphasized in the Mishnah tractate Demai, where the question is, what should one do if one receives food that may not have been tithed? The principal answer, to which there are a good number of exceptions, is that one should tithe produce if one is in doubt that it had been previously tithed. The heart of this tractate comes from the middle of the second century. The major rabbis who discuss the topic are Judah b. Ilai, Meir, Jose b. Halafta, Simeon b. Yohai, and other mid-second-century worthies. Rabban Gamaliel II (d. c. 110)6 is spoken of nostalgically: he used to give his laborers doubtfully tithed food to eat. That is, most of the tractate seems to come from the period after the failure of the second revolt against Rome. After 135, the rabbis were afraid that the Jewish people would lose the entire sacerdotal class, and they very badly wanted its members to continue to receive support. Much of the food that supported the priesthood—firstfruits and sacrifices—had disappeared when the temple was destroyed. But the tithe was not tied to the temple and could still be collected. As the years went on, however, people tended more and more to neglect it. So the rabbis campaigned to keep the food coming to preserve the Levites and priests and their special place in society. In reading the tractate and associated materials, however, we also learn that these rabbis, who wanted people to tithe, and who would themselves pay a tithe from food that they bought if they suspected that it had not been tithed at source, did not regard the Levitical portion of the tithe—nine-tenths of the whole—as sacred food, and they thought that withholding it or eating it was not a sin.7 Only the priestly one-tenth of the tithe—that is, one one6. Encyclopedia Judaica 7, col. 298: he probably did not live to see the revolt at the time of Trajan, c. 116. 7. See further Pesahim 2.5: the obligation to eat unleavened bread is fulfilled if the matsah is made from demai. produce, or even the portion of first tithe that was intended for the Levites.

351

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

hundredth of the crop—really had to be paid, though the scrupulous would rather pay the Levites twice than risk not paying them at all. The modern scholarly opinion that the Pharisees were fanatical about tithes, and that the people did not want to support the priests, derives largely from the concern of rabbis in the second century to preserve the priests and Levites as a class long after the temple had been destroyed. One last economic point. The food that went to the temple personnel did not fall into a deep pit; it went to support people. These people in turn bought things from other people, and the temple, rather than being a fiscal black hole, was a major factor in the circulation of goods, cash, and services. If we look beyond the tithe of produce, which supported the Levites and priests, to the total income of the temple, we realize that it was quite beneficial financially to the Judeans. The temple tax, which came in from all over the world, was spent on animals, vessels, curtains, stonework, incense, and the like, and this supported still more people. It was once perhaps more reasonable than it is now to see the temple as consuming, not circulating, goods. Once we all thought that money is paid for tangible things that are produced: food, machinery, and the like. Now we know that economies function perfectly well by circulating money from one service provider to another. Academics and health-care people, for example, are in the service industry, and now one of the fasting-growing of all industries—information exchange—is also a service industry, though it does make use of some hardware. The temple was a service industry, and it was a healthy and beneficial part of the entire economy. The historical study of religion, which tries to take into account historical developments, politics, social conditions, and economics, has quite different results from those produced by theological evaluation. Many Christian scholars have looked at tithes and other contributions to the temple and have thought not only “triviality” but also “worksrighteousness.” It has been imagined that tithes were one of the numerous forms of good works, by which people tried to save themselves. I believe that anyone who will study the history of the institutions of Judaism will see that this was not an issue at all. I wish now to move to the second main section of this essay, which is a discussion of purity. I wish to start, however, not with the biblical purity laws found in Leviticus and Numbers, but with a symbolic action that eventually became a characteristic activity of Jews—handwashing. Let us start with Psalm 24: “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?

352

TITHING MINT, DILL , AND CUMIN

And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully” (Ps 24:3f.). Here the psalmist combines worship in the temple with purity of heart, a soul (nepheš) that is set on the good [not lifted up in vain], correctness of action (not swearing falsely) and “clean hands.” In this psalm, the publicly visible act is going up to the temple mount to worship. The term “clean hands” is probably metaphorical: those who have clean hands are innocent (naqi). It does appear to me possible, however, that Psalm 26 refers to handwashing as a symbolic act. I am here distinguishing a metaphor, which is merely verbal, from a symbolic act, which is performed. “My hands are clean of this man’s blood” means “I am innocent”; this is a metaphor, and that is how I construe Ps 24:4. Psalm 26:6, however, reads thus: “I wash my hands in innocence, and go around your altar, O Lord, singing aloud a song of thanksgiving, and telling all your wondrous deeds.” This is a little early for the introduction of handwashing as a prescribed act, but it is possible that the psalmist actually washed his hands before going to the temple. In any case, it is only a matter of time until clean hands are symbolic rather than metaphorical. We now shift to the large Jewish community in Egypt just before and in the early days of the Christian era. The first example comes from the Letter of Aristeas. This book purports to be a description of the desire of Ptolemy II of Egypt—a descendant of one of the generals of Alexander the Great—to have in his library a copy of all the books in the world. This included, of course, the Hebrew Bible, which Ptolemy wanted translated into Greek so that everyone could read it. Ptolemy II reigned from 285 to 247 BCE, and the work claims to be a contemporary record. Scholars—a difficult bunch of people—naturally doubt that we have here a contemporary and truthful account, though it certainly is the case that the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in Egypt, probably over a long period of time beginning in the third century. Most people date the Letter of Aristeas around 170–100 BCE, a century or more after the time of Ptolemy II. This is a lovely book, and it tells a wonderful story. Ptolemy sent to Jerusalem for experts. When they arrived, the translators, the king, and some of his courtiers held a series of banquets, at which Jewish food was served (181), and during which subjects concerning kingship and proper action were discussed—very good Hellenistic topics. Finally the translators set to work and produced a perfect translation in seventy-two days, which gives us the name Septuagint for the Greek translation of Jewish

353

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Scripture. Now for the point: each day the Jewish translators washed their hands in the sea while praying to God. When asked why, “they explained that it was evidence that they had done no evil, for all activity takes place by means of the hands” (306). This is the earliest known certain reference to handwashing as a common Jewish rite, and we note that it takes place not in connection with eating but in connection with prayer. The symbol shows only that the translators had done no evil, not that their hearts were pure. But, since they washed while praying, the symbolic action was connected with the direction of the heart: they directed their hearts to God in prayer and washed their hands as a symbol of upright action. This may have been a common custom among Jews in the Greek-speaking world, since at the time of Julius Caesar (who died in 44 BCE), the city of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor gave the local Jews the right to “build places of prayer near the sea, in accordance with their native custom” (Ant. 14.258). Similarly, according to Acts 16:13 Paul and his companion once went to a river near Philippi, in Macedonia, expecting to find a synagogue there. Moreover, a lot of synagogues in the Greek-speaking world were in fact built near water. Proximity to water facilitated washing hands, and perhaps splashing water on their bodies to show that they were pure inside as well as out. This, at least, may be why there was an emphasis on building synagogues in the Greek-speaking Diaspora near water. Handwashing could have arisen solely in response to such passages as Pss 24:4; 26:6,8 but there is a second likely source: Greek practice. The Greeks washed their hands before praying and before sacrificing. 9 I wish to continue with symbolic acts in the Diaspora, but first perhaps I should finish handwashing. As far as the evidence allows us to see, handwashing in the Diaspora was based on such passages as Ps 24:4 and on pagan practice. Handwashing developed somewhat later in Palestine, and apparently for separate reasons. For this, we turn to rabbinic literature. Any large topic in rabbinic literature is complicated, since the nature of the literature is to collect debates and comments, and a large topic attracted lots of debates and comments. 8. For other possible passages, see Deut 21:6–7, where the elders of the city nearest to the body of a man who was found slain wash their hands; handwashing and innocence are also connected in Ps 73:13. Guilt of various kinds is sometimes thought of as clinging to the hands (Ezek 23:37; Job 16:17; 31:7). The development of handwashing as a rite was doubtless facilitated by such passages, and possibly they help explain its origin. 9. E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 262f.

354

TITHING MINT, DILL , AND CUMIN

I wish just to fix on what seems to be the earliest material. According to m. Šabb. 1.4, on a memorable day the sages gathered in the upper room of Hananiah b. Hezekiah b. Gorion, and the house of Shammai outnumbered the house of Hillel. They passed eighteen decrees on that day. In the Babylonian Talmud the rabbis brought forward traditions about what the eighteen decrees had been. One of the suggestions was that hands render heave-offering unfit (Šabb. 13b). Heave-offering (tĕrûmah) in rabbinic vocabulary refers to food that was eaten by priests and their families outside the temple, including for example the priests’ portion of the Levitical tithe. Later in the discussion a rabbi challenges the implication that the disciples of Shammai and Hillel first decreed impurity of hands for heave-offering, and he cited a tradition according to which Hillel and Shammai themselves, not just their houses, decreed impurity for hands (Šabb. 14b). A second tradition also implies that it was the houses of Hillel and Shammai that discussed handwashing in connection with handling the priests’ food. According to m. Tohorot 10.4, the houses of Hillel and Shammai debated purity of hands in connection with grapes and wine. The house of Shammai held that a person must put grapes into the winepress with pure hands, while the Hillelites maintained that a man could put grapes into the winepress with impure hands, but that his hands had to be pure when he separated heave-offering from the rest of the vat of wine. Thus we have two passages in which the houses of Hillel and Shammai agreed that hands should be pure at some point in the production or handling of the priests’ food (m. Šabb. 1.4 and m. Tohorot 10.4), and one passage that would push this basic decision back as early as Hillel and Shammai themselves (Šabb. 14b). I believe that there is no evidence anywhere in rabbinic literature that puts handwashing for any purpose at all prior to the time of Hillel and Shammai—that is, approximately 10 BCE to 10 CE. Handwashing for the purpose of handling the priests’ food is not a symbolic gesture. It is, rather, a typically Pharisaic halfway house. It might be argued that, since the priests and their families had to eat heave-offering in purity, it should be produced and conveyed to them in purity. But farmers could hardly be pure during the entire period of harvesting crops and pressing olives into oil and grapes into wine. And so, it appears, the Pharisees came up with a view of partial purity: the hands at least could be washed before handling the priests’ food. I shall return to the distinction between a symbolic gesture and partial purity at the end of the lecture.

355

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

I now turn to another Egyptian Jew, who lived later than the author of the Letter of Aristeas, Philo of Alexandria. Philo was rich, wise, and learned; his collected works now fill twelve volumes of the Loeb Classical Library. He was a senior citizen about the year 40, and so we may think of him as a younger contemporary of Hillel and Shammai and an older contemporary of Jesus and Paul. Philo practiced a lot of purifications, which for the most part were not the same as those required by the Bible and, later, by the rabbis. For example, he held that after sexual relations the man and the woman could not touch anything until they sprinkled themselves from a basin standing on a tripod. This rule is not in Leviticus 15, nor is it in rabbinic literature. It appears to be an invention of Egyptian Judaism. Well, actually it was not an invention. It seems to have been borrowed from pagan rites. It will be worth having before us a passage of which I quoted a few lines in chapter 15, concerning pagan festivals. During these times, according to Philo, wickedness like a rushing torrent spreads over every place and invades and violates the most sacred temples, it straightway overturns all that is venerable in them, and as a result come sacrifices unholy, offerings unmeet, vows unfulfilled, their rites and mysteries a mockery, their piety but a bastard growth, their holiness debased, their purity impure, their truth falsehood, their worship a sacrilege. They cleanse their bodies with lustrations and purifications, but they neither wish nor practise to wash off from their souls the passions by which life is defiled. They are zealous to go to the temples white-robed, attired in spotless raiment, but with a spotted heart they pass into the inmost sanctuary and are not ashamed. And if an animal be found to be blemished or imperfect, it is driven out of the area [that had been] sprinkled from basins and is not suffered to approach the altar, though it is through no will of its own that it has any of these bodily defects. But they themselves—their souls are a mass of wounds from the hideous maladies with which the irresistible power of vice has smitten them, or rather they are mutilated, docked of their noblest parts, prudence, courage to endure, justice, piety and all the other virtues of which human nature is capable. And though it is with free deliberate judgement that they have imbibed the mischief, yet they dare to handle the holy thing, and think that the eye of God sees nothing but the outer world through the co-operation of the sun. (On the Cherubim 94–96)

This wonderful passage from Philo does a lot for us. I shall enumerate some points: (1) We see, for example, that the pagans whom Philo had the chance to observe—principally Macedonians and Greeks, 356

TITHING MINT, DILL , AND CUMIN

possibly some Romans, possibly some Egyptians—had rules very much like those of the Jerusalem temple. People had to purify themselves to enter the temple, and sacrificial animals had to be without blemish. (2) We discover the source of Philo’s sprinkling basins, which he and his wife used to purify themselves after sexual relations, and which he and other Alexandrian Jews used after funerals and on other occasions: large versions of these basins, that are called perrirantēria, stood at the corners of the agora, and they were the source of lustral water that sanctified outdoor precincts. In the passage just quoted, blemished animals are driven beyond the area sprinkled by water from perrirantēria, and that is the same word that Philo used for the basin in his own room. Perrirantēria also stood at the entrances to temples, and people could sprinkle themselves on the way in. That is, if Philo represents Jews in Egypt, then we may conclude that they had adopted pagan purifications. (3) Of course we must note Philo’s accusation that pagans are hypocritical, cleansing the outside but not the inside. Philo assumes, on the other hand, that he and other Jews washed the outside in order to symbolize and achieve purity of the soul, which they did in all sincerity. I have treated the purifications in the Diaspora as symbolic acts, because they are not biblical requirements. Possibly this is wrong in the case of Philo, who may not have realized that his own lustrations had been invented by Alexandrian Jews. But in any case the handwashing in the Letter of Aristeas is clearly depicted as symbolic. Now, however, let us look at the biblical requirements. In recent years New Testament scholars in particular have been writing a lot about Jewish purity laws, but their discussions frequently show that they do not know what the laws were. So I wish briefly to recount them. The general rule was that impurity cannot be taken into the presence of God. This was absolutely standard in the ancient world. Before entering the sanctuary to undress, bathe, clothe, perfume, and feed the god, as well as to apply cosmetics, the Egyptian priest had to purify himself by bathing in sacred water (ordinarily a small lake in the temple complex) and cleanse his body with natron.10 The lector priest, who read the rites as the officiating priest was performing them, and the band of musicians who accompanied them, had to be pure as well. 10. “A mixture of sodium carbonate and bicarbonate of soda, which occurred in natural deposits in Egypt and was also used for mummification and laundry purposes” (Rosalie David, Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], 110. Pages 109f. are useful on priestly practices).

357

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

In the ancient world, views of purifications and the sources of impurity were very widespread and often similar. For example, According to Herodotus (1:198) it was customary in Babylon to bathe in water after cohabitation and it was forbidden to touch any utensil prior to this. According to an ancient Babylonian text a man touching a menstruant woman was [impure] for six days. . . . Among the Hittites a corpse was considered impure and there is evidence of a detailed ritual for the purification of a mother after giving birth.11

And so the Judeans, fresh out of Babylon, wanted to prevent impurity from entering the temple, and this accounts for several chapters in Leviticus and one chapter in Numbers. The rationale of the purity laws has, of course, been the subject of great debate. Doubtless my mind is too simple to do justice to this complex matter, but I shall offer a way of looking at the Jewish purity laws. The common impurities (that is, excluding the skin disease called “leprosy”) that require the longest and most complicated purifications are childbirth and contact with the dead. Stage one impurity for a woman after childbirth, during which she was as impure as during her menstrual period, lasted seven days if the child was male, fourteen days if the child was female. A lesser degree of impurity, stage two, lasted thirtythree days for a son, sixty-six days for a daughter. During all of this time she could not enter the temple or touch any holy thing, such as food intended for the priests (Lev 12:1–5). For her purification she required either a lamb as a burnt offering plus a bird as a “sin offering” (or “purification offering”), or two birds, one a burnt offering (entirely consumed by the flames of the altar) and one a purification offering (eaten by the priest). Only then, after forty or eighty days and sacrifices, was she entirely pure. Contact with the dead required seven days of purification, during which the impure person was sprinkled twice with a mixture of water and the ashes of a red heifer. On the last day the impure person washed his or her clothes and bathed (Numbers 19). Apparently some time in the second century BCE bathing came to mean “immersing.” The concern with regard to corpse impurity was also to prevent the defiling of the sanctuary of the Lord (19:20). 11. “Purity and Impurity,” Encyclopedia Judaica 13, cols. 1405–14, quotation from 1407. Attributed to Encyclopedia Hebraica and the editors of Encyclopedia Judaica. See further Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 763–75 (“The Impurity of Genital Discharges: A Comparative Survey”).

358

TITHING MINT, DILL , AND CUMIN

The most serious, in the sense of longest lasting, impurities, then, were connected with birth and death. The other common impurities all had to do with the genitals: an unnatural emission of blood from a woman’s genitals (caused, for example, by miscarriage), an unnatural emission of fluid from a man’s penis (caused, for example, by gonorrhea), a nocturnal emission by a man, a woman’s menstrual blood, and semen, which made both partners temporarily impure. The chapter that details these impurities, Leviticus 15, concludes: “thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their impurity, so that they do not die in their impurity by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst” (15:31), which many readers take to mean that people who have these impurities could not enter the temple.12 All of the impurities in Leviticus 15 are removed by washing and the setting of the sun (though this is not explicitly said of the menstruant). Purification of unnatural emissions also required the sacrifice of two birds (the zav, Lev 15:14; the zavah, Lev 15:29f.). It lies ready to hand to conclude that birth, death, and flows from the organs of human generation should be kept away from the temple of the unchanging God. I do not call the purifications of Leviticus 12 and 15 and Numbers 19, which I have just summarized, “symbolic acts.” They do not symbolize purity of heart, soul, or action. On the contrary, the people who have these impurities are not accused of doing anything wrong, and they do not need to demonstrate their uprightness or purity of heart. People who had, for example, semen impurity, or women who had recently given birth, had no reason to think that anything was wrong with them at all. They had, in fact, been fulfilling the first commandment in the Bible, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28). The impurities of human generation and its end, which is death, were real, and the purificatory rites really got rid of them, and that was the end of the matter. They would, of course, recur, but no blame was attached. I have gone through these chapters in Leviticus and Numbers so that you will know what several of the biblical purity laws were, and also because I wish to make a point: there is no indication that they ever led to the charge of hypocrisy. Indeed, if they are understood, they cannot lead to the charge of hypocrisy, since they are not intended to symbolize anything that is within. Modern scholars—not the New 12. The alternative meaning is this: if these purities are not removed in a timely fashion, they will defile the temple even though no impure person enters the temple. See Baruch Levine, JPS Torah Commentary on Leviticus, (Philadelphia: JPS, 1989), on Lev 15:31.

359

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Testament itself—criticize the Jews for these rules, which they regard as trivial and pointless. But this is only an accusation that the Jews had an ancient religion, and we would do well not to criticize ancient people for being ancient. The New Testament singles out for criticism the washing of cups and plates (Matt 23:25) and, at least by implication, the washing of hands as well as cups, pots, and kettles (Mark 7:4–8). Mark 7:7 explicitly criticizes handwashing as a human precept—it is not biblical. This is entirely accurate. Let me now conclude what may seem like an odd essay. I wanted to take you through some of the details of two areas of Jewish religious practice that seem to be criticized in the New Testament: tithes and purity. I wanted to present the big picture in both cases so that we would understand why the topics arose at all and also because modern people seem to regard all purity rules as especially trivial and externalistic in the bad sense of the word. I wanted to help to recapture the ancient outlook. In the area of purity I wished also to make a distinction between the removal of what was perceived to be actual impurity and symbolic gestures symbolizing purity of heart. In fact, however, the New Testament does not criticize tithing as such or purification as such. On the contrary, Jesus is depicted as accepting a purity law that we did not discuss, the cleansing of leprosy. Matthew 23 criticizes the scribes and Pharisees for giving too much attention to trivial aspects of tithing and thereby ignoring important matters, and for washing the outside of cups, etc., when they should wash what is inside. Mark 7 criticizes Jews for handwashing because it is a human tradition. In the following chapter we shall look at these topics, but also at similar charges that might be made against Christians and then proceed to ask how practitioners might have defended themselves.

360

17

Defenses against Charges of Hypocrisy and Triviality

Most of this chapter will consist of defenses against charges of hypocrisy and triviality, but I wish to begin by tying up some loose ends from the previous chapter. I mentioned but did not explain Matt 23:25–26, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.” Matthew’s wording, “inside they are full of greed,” apparently referring to the dishes, seems to indicate that the Pharisees are here being accused of obtaining the contents of their cups and plates dishonestly: they wash the outside, but the food and drink come to them by immoral means. Luke reads, “inside you are full of greed and wickedness,” indicating that he takes the cup and dish metaphorically: the Pharisees wash themselves outside but are unclean within. In the spirit of the previous chapter, I wish to comment very briefly on the purification of dishes. The topic begins in the Hebrew Bible. “The cooking pots in the house of the Lord shall be as holy as the bowls in front of the altar; and every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sacred to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice

361

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

may come and use them to boil the flesh of the sacrifice” (Zech 14:21). Zechariah’s prophecy about all the cooking pots in Jerusalem, of course, is a prophecy about “that day” in the future; it is not a law that cookware must be purified every day. We get a little closer to a law about pure vessels in the so-called Third Isaiah, where the prophet mentions bringing the grain offering in a pure vessel to the house of the Lord (Isa 66:21). There are also clear biblical laws on vessels or utensils: if any part of the corpse of a swarming thing, such as a rodent, falls into a vessel of earthenware, its contents are impure and the vessel must be broken (Lev 11:33); if a man who has an unnatural discharge from his male member touches a vessel of earthenware, it must be broken, but if he touches a vessel of wood it need only be washed (Lev 15:12); if an open vessel is in the same room with a corpse it becomes impure (Num 19:15). Rabbinic views about vessels were, of course, more developed and more detailed than these biblical laws. I shall make a long story short: the rabbis were of the view that vessels might become impure in such a way that they need not be broken but could be purified with water. The usual means of making them impure would be by touch, which would obviously affect the outside more often than the inside. Purification with water meant, for the rabbis and also for first-century Jews, at least in Palestine, complete immersion in an immersion pool (a miqveh) (e.g., Miqva’ot 6.2; t. Miqva’ot 5.2–3.). This would remove whatever impurity was present—whether inside or outside. The charge in Matthew, of course, is not that the Pharisees fail to wash the inside of cups etc., but that they fill them dishonestly. Their concern with purification does not make them honest, but it does seem to make the charge that they are dishonest easier. Would they be more honest if they did not immerse their vessels? A few final items from Matthew 6. The criticisms in this chapter are spoken against “the hypocrites,” rather than against “scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” but this may be only a distinction without a difference. In any case, the hypocrites in Matthew 6 give alms ostentatiously, either actually or metaphorically sounding a trumpet to call attention to their piety. Jesus’ followers should give alms in secret (6:2–4). Some hypocrites pray in public: either in the synagogues or on the street corners. Jesus’ followers should pray in secret (6:5f.). Hypocrites also look bad when fasting, which calls attention to their act of piety. Jesus’ followers, when they fast, should instead wash their faces and anoint their hair, so as to fast only in secret (6:16–18). In all

362

DEFENSES AGAINST CHARGES OF HYPOCRISY

three cases, Matthew’s Jesus states that “your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” If the trumpet that is sounded to call attention to almsgiving is a literal trumpet, I cannot explain it. If it is a metaphorical trumpet, we do not know precisely what it means. That is, the author of the saying is criticizing outward show in dispensing charity, but we do not know how ostentatious the behavior was. I think that I do, however, understand praying on a street corner. There were basically two influences on the time of individual prayer. One was the obvious connection of prayer with recalling the commandments as required in Deut 6:4–9, the passage that we know as the Shema. These verses specify recalling the commandments “when you lie down and when you rise up” (6:7), and thus many Jews prayed and recalled the commandments when they awoke and when they went to bed—both times, obviously, in private. The other possible influence on the time of prayer was the temple service. The priests prayed twice each day, once fairly early in the morning and again in the afternoon, as part of the closing exercises. And so some Jews prayed at the time the priests prayed in the temple. As far as I know, these two influences did not lead people to pray four times a day. Most, it appears, prayed privately twice a day, when going to bed and when rising up. Some also prayed at the time of the afternoon sacrifice, for a total of three times a day. Those who followed this custom might have wished to pray precisely when the priests prayed in the temple, and so they would pray wherever they were, even on street corners. Later, of course, Muslims adopted the practice of praying five times a day at set times, and thus sometimes in public. It may be a testimony to my own spiritual insensitivity that, when I see a Muslim at prayer, I never think that he is being hypocritical. Now fasting: Only one fast is required in the Hebrew Bible: the fast on the Day of Atonement, which is explicitly said to require not only abstention from food but also self-affliction (Lev 16:29, 31; 23:27, 32; Num 29:7), which includes not washing, not arranging the hair, and so on. Non-statutory fasts, such as those mentioned by Zechariah, might involve only abstention from food (Zech 7:3, 5; 8:19).1 The passage in Matthew obviously applies to some case or cases other than the Day of Atonement, since self-affliction was not actually a choice on that day. 1. When the rains did not come in their season, the Mishnah describes a progression from prayer to fasting to fasting coupled with various forms of self-affliction, including not washing, anointing themselves, wearing sandals, or having sexual relations: Ta’anit 1.1–7.

363

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Matthew’s Jesus might refer, for example, only to a fast undertaken in consequence of a vow. At any rate, in any fast that was optional, Jesus’ followers should conceal the fact that they were fasting. We find in this section of Matthew, I think, the beginning of distinctive rules made by the Christian movement. One suspects that at least one of the rules would be self-defeating. I refer to the commandment to give alms in secret. Since beggars were found in public places, it might be more ostentatious to take one of them away to a private corner in order to give alms than to follow the usual custom by giving money on the street. And, of course, the promise of reward in return for each secret good deed (Matt 6:4, 6, 18) might encourage works-righteousness: the effort to earn God’s favor. We see further rules about some of the matters discussed in both this and the previous chapter in the Didache, a Christian work written a few years after Matthew. There we read a rule that someone who accepts alms without truly being in need will go to prison, and the author advises the potential alms-giver to hold on to his money until he has time to examine the case (Did. 1.5f.). Converts to Christianity should fast for one or two days before baptism (7.4), and Christians in general should fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, which is said to be quite unlike the practice of the hypocrites, who fast on Mondays and Thursdays (8.1). Christians should repeat the Lord’s prayer three times a day (8.2f.), presumably in private. The rules of the Didache include not only alms, prayer, and fasting, but also firstfruits: Christians should give to prophets the first produce from the winepress and the threshing floor, and also the firsts of the oxen and sheep. Moreover, the offering of firstfruits should continue after the season of harvest: whenever one makes bread or opens a jar of wine or oil, the first of it should be given to the prophets. Prophets should also receive money, clothes, and some percentage of all possessions (Did. 13). Any religion that has rules will find that some people distort or manipulate them for personal gain of some sort, and one kind of gain is a reputation for piety. Thus any public action is a possible occasion for ostentation and pride. This is especially true, I think, of symbolic actions, such as washing the hands to symbolize purity of heart. I offer it as a rule that any and all symbolic gestures are subject to the charge of hypocrisy. Pride, in fact, is such an insidious beast that one can even become proud of being so secretive about one’s good and pious deeds. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin related that when he

364

DEFENSES AGAINST CHARGES OF HYPOCRISY

was young he had made a list of virtues, the last being humility. He worked very hard at achieving each in turn, but when he reached the end of the list he found that he could not become humble, because he could not help being proud of his spiritual achievements. If even inner virtues can become a point of pride, then we shall all have to admit that it is extremely easy to convert an external action into a source of internal pride. In fact, the only thing easier than becoming proud is accusing someone else of a lack of true piety and reverence within. The more religion is seen as being inward, the easier it is to charge that someone is not right within. It is a very difficult charge to refute. What can one say? “Examine my actions, you will see that they are all honest”? “Accept the view that if the fruit is good the tree is also good”? The skeptic can simply say, “This is a case of a wolf wearing a sheep’s clothing. I know that you are evil within.” I shall quote from my summary of this point in chapter 16: “We are so suspicious that very pious external behavior is sometimes taken to be proof of insincerity. If you can see someone being religious, he or she is not really religious. Since wolves can hide in sheep’s clothing (Matt 7:15), you may be sure that anyone who tries too hard to look like a sheep is really a wolf!” We have a good illustration of how easy such an accusation is in the long passage from Philo that I quoted in chapter 16, in which he wrote that that a pagan who purified himself, put on a spotless white garment, and sacrificed an unblemished animal actually had a soul that was marred by horrible wounds and blemishes. This must have been the case sometimes, but surely not always. I believe that many pagans were sincere and used the rites of their religions as Philo used his own purifications. Philo, for example, made a great deal of the superiority of being sprinkled with the mixture of ashes and water that removed corpse impurity over pagan lustrations, which used water alone: ashes and water represent the substances of which humans are made, and being sprinkled with them reminds the worshipers who they are, whence they come, and to whom they owe their existence. Before they can sacrifice, people’s bodies must be “made clean and bright, and before their bodies their souls” (Spec. Laws 1.263–69). According to another passage in which Philo interprets the same ritual, Moses held that “no one is worthy of offering sacrifices who has not first come to know himself and comprehended human nothingness, inferring from the elements of which he is composed that he is worth nothing” (On Dreams 1.209–12). The seven-day wait, while one was

365

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

being sprinkled with the ashy mixture, induced thoughtfulness and self-examination.2 So Philo. I would be very surprised to learn that no pagans reflected on the meaning of their rituals as Philo reflected on the rituals of the Hebrew Bible. For a second example of how easy the charge of hypocrisy is, we may turn to Paul’s letter to the Galatians. When Peter visited the church in Antioch, which was composed of both Jews and gentiles, at first they all ate together. (I assume that these meals commemorated Jesus’ Last Supper.) But, after messengers came from James, Peter withdrew from eating with the gentiles and would eat only with Jewish Christians. All the other Jewish members of the church—even Barnabas—joined Peter and separated themselves from the gentile Christians. Paul wrote that in doing this Peter “stood condemned,” and that he was acting hypocritically (Gal 2:11–14). That is the way Paul saw it—at least after troublemakers had come to Galatia to try to get Paul’s converts there to accept circumcision and the rest of the Jewish law. Paul’s attack on Peter is a wonderful piece of polemic. He accuses Peter of bad motives, of acting insincerely. But let us try to imagine that Peter had good motives. What if the messengers from James said this: “Peter, we are worried that if you associate too much with gentiles, the Jews, whom it is your task to call to faith in Christ, might think that you have become contaminated with gentile idolatry. And so you would lose credibility among the people whom you are trying to save.” Peter, we may imagine, withdrew from the gentiles in order to preserve his credibility with Jews. Now, of course, I do not know what Peter’s motive actually was. But that is just the point. Should we always assume the worst, or is it better to assume good intentions? The brilliance of the accusation of bad motives is seen clearly in the criticism leveled by modern Christians against ancient Jews. If we find that ancient Jews sometimes broke the law, we can accuse them of transgression. If we find that they scrupulously kept the law, we accuse them of being motivated by hope of reward and fear of punishment. Or we can say that they did good only out of vanity and the love of praise. They cannot win. As one humorist said about Rudolf Bultmann: in Bultmann’s view, the only thing worse than breaking the Jewish law was keeping it. If ancient Jews broke the law, they felt guilty and were anxious about their fate; if they kept it, they were proud and arrogant

2. Partially reproduced from Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), 252.

366

DEFENSES AGAINST CHARGES OF HYPOCRISY

before God. In both cases we imagine what is within other people and then accuse them of it. While the charge of hypocrisy is easy to make and difficult to refute, I shall mention some considerations that a person might bring forward who feels falsely accused. I shall focus on defenses that Jews might make, but these responses would be suitable, at least in their general nature, for Catholics if accused by Protestants, high-church Protestants if accused by low-church Protestants, etc. Some of these defenses would also be suitable for the pagans who felt falsely accused by Philo. 1. Defense number one, I imagine, would be this: You accuse me of observing the commandments of God, many of which require performance in public. What would you have me do in order to refrain from displaying my loyalty to God? Disobey the commandments? You should remember, first, that the only reason your new movement exists is because Judaism exists, which means that it has survived all vicissitudes. It survived because our faith in God was strong, and most of us refused to assimilate. Before the exile we struggled against the religion of the Canaanites; in Babylon we rejected the religion that was all around us; we fought a series of wars rather than merge into Hellenistic culture. We did this by clinging to the commandments of God, the only true God in the universe, the God whom your master called “Father.” Many of the commandments require external observance. You cite against us the giving of alms in charity. Let us look at charity a little more closely. Most of us are farmers. God through Moses commanded those of us who are farmers to dispense charity in three ways: first, by not returning to collect a sheaf that we forgot (Deut 24:19), but rather to leave it for the poor. And many of us make sure that we forget a sheaf. Second, by not reaping our fields to the edge; we leave a border unreaped all around each field so that the poor, the aliens, the widows, and the orphans can reap them (Lev 19:9; 23:22). Moreover, we do not strip all the grapes off our vines (Lev 19:10), nor all the olives from the olive trees (Deut 24:20), nor do we pick up what falls to the ground (Lev 19:10; 23:22). We leave all this for the poor and needy. This is all publicly obvious. Thank goodness! Otherwise the greedy would not give to the poor, but as it is they are ashamed not to be charitable. Would you actually prefer us to rely on spontaneous feelings of generosity whenever we see someone who is in need? Do you really wish us not to leave food in the fields? I shall now drop the first-person defense and comment on Judaism in the third person. Since in Judaism religion extended into every area

367

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

of life, much of it was subject to public observation. The first-person defense above cited charity as an example, but the most basic religious act of all—sacrificing in the temple—was also subject to observation. And, we note, Matthew did not object to this. According to Matt 5:23, a person who is about to sacrifice, but who remembers that his brother has something against him, should leave his gift to God on the altar and go to be reconciled with his brother before completing the sacrifice. Such an act is publicly visible. 2. The second defense against the charge of hypocrisy and ostentation is to say that the rituals, signs, and symbols of the religion go along with right intention and high ethical standards, and that these are all inseparable. To illustrate this answer, I shall briefly step out of my role as ancient historian and take up a modern version of the question. Many people see humanism as a secular creed that accepts many of the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition while leaving aside the basis of that tradition, belief in God. And so the question is, will this work? Can it be maintained? Are attempts to save other species of life and to defend the air and water more solidly grounded if people believe that God created the world and all life and declared them good? I ask this as a question, not to give an answer. But that is approximately what an ancient person, especially an ancient Jew, would say about ritual, sacrifice, and ethics. As the prophets and subsequent Jewish teachers knew perfectly well, people can sacrifice with bad intentions. Either they are not entirely committed to the God of Israel as the one God, or they seek personal atonement without rectifying their lives. Is there a reply to this accusation? Let us admit that it must sometimes have been accurate and ask, instead, how ancient Jews at their best saw the relationship between sacrifice and ethical behavior. They would say, as I have already indicated, that they go together, and they might cite Leviticus 19 as evidence. I must confess to you that one of my favorite books is Leviticus. I like it because I like ancient piety of all sorts. To remind myself of the genius of ancient Judaism, I especially try to read Leviticus 19 frequently. This chapter I take to be the priestly author’s version of the Ten Commandments. As do the lists of commandments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, Leviticus 19 combines commandments that govern relations between humans and God with commandments that govern human relations with one another. In the two lists of the Ten Commandments, the law is divided into two tables: first come the commandments governing relations with God (for example, the prohibition of the worship of idols), next

368

DEFENSES AGAINST CHARGES OF HYPOCRISY

the commandments governing relations among humans (murder, adultery, theft, and so forth). Leviticus 19 alternates. First comes the general commandment to be holy, second the commandment to honor mother and father, third the Sabbath, fourth idolatry. Then come two detailed commandments. The first of these (fifth in the whole list) governs an aspect of the shared sacrifice. [The šelem sacrifice, once called the “peace offering,” now the communion sacrifice, etc.] This sacrifice must be eaten the day it is sacrificed or the next day and not be left over until the third day. The sixth commandment in Leviticus 19 concerns leaving food in the field for the poor, which we have already discussed. Later in the chapter we read that judges must not consider wealth; a few verses later Jewish farmers are forbidden to sow a field with two kinds of grain (19:15, 19). To most of us this mixture is somewhat odd. Christian commentators sometimes accuse the Jews of not being able to distinguish what is worthwhile (rules requiring charity) from what is secondary (rules governing sacrificial meat and sowing seed). The ancient historian evaluates the matter a little differently. When Judaism attributed laws of charity and honesty to God, it elevated them. All the world thought that the gods had a lot of cultic rules. Ancient religion was, basically, the way societies organized the slaughter of quadrupeds and the distribution of red meat, and all societies had rules about the rituals that accompanied slaughter, butchery, and distribution. And so Judaism included this as well. But the Jews were also different: they thought that their God cared as much about treatment of aliens and the poor as about correct behavior in the temple. This was either rare or unique in the ancient world. Since in Judaism, God cares about everything, divine law extends to social behavior and individual behavior. God—not just the state—commands justice and charity. This mixture of different kinds of rules is not limited to the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition. One could read 1 Corinthians to see the point. Paul intersperses rules about sexual morality and other ethical concerns with instructions about covering women’s hair, speaking in tongues, what red meat to eat or to avoid, and so on. The Sermon on the Mount exemplifies the same characteristic. We have already noted the commandment in Matt 5:23 to set matters right with other people before sacrificing. Matthew 6 in particular is strongly reminiscent of Leviticus 19 and is perfectly Jewish. We find rules that we have already discussed, giving alms (give them in secret), prayer (pray in private

369

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

and in simple terms), and fasting (put oil on your head and wash your face) (6:1–18). Here ritual alternates with ethics and worship. Similarly, Matt 5:17–20 reflects the Jewish view of the weight of various commandments: Until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota, not one stroke of the pen, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:18f.)

This is strongly reminiscent of a rabbinic passage attributed to Simeon ben Azzai: “Run to fulfill the lightest duty even as the weightiest, and flee from transgression; for one duty draws another duty in its train, and one transgression draws another transgression in its train” (’Abot 4.2). I shall paraphrase: “Once you start disobeying, where will it end? We do not intend to stress trivia over love, justice, and mercy; but we are certainly not going to disobey God in the small matters that we can control.” God gave all the commandments. Therefore the least one must be done, just as all the rest must be done. Consider the opposite: If we say that we know better, and that we can pick and choose the important commandments, could it be that we shall choose those that suit us? 3. The third line of defense against the accusation of externalistic hypocrisy is almost, not quite, too obvious to mention. One might coach oneself to be sincere. Moreover, one might attend synagogue or church or meeting in order to enhance self-examination. Ancient Jews, who were highly conscious of the danger of hypocrisy, strongly favored coaching against it in order to purify their intentions. We see this, for example, in Ben Sira, who lectured his readers endlessly on the subject. As did the prophets, he cautioned against relying on sacrifice to compensate for evil behavior: “Do not say, ‘He will consider the multitude of my gifts and when I make an offering to the Most High God he will accept it’” (7.8f.). “If one sacrifices from what has been wrongfully obtained, the offering is an offering of iniquity [‘ôlat ‘abel].” The Most High is not pleased with the offerings of the wicked; and iniquity is not atoned for by a multitude of offerings” (34.18–20; Hebrew, 34.19f.). “If a man fasts for his sins, and goes again and does the same things, who will listen to his prayer?” (34.26; Hebrew, 34.27f.). As did the prophets, Ben Sira accepted the sacrificial system; he 370

DEFENSES AGAINST CHARGES OF HYPOCRISY

simply warned individuals against imagining that they could sin and sacrifice and sin and sacrifice again and get away with intentional transgression. His loving description of the temple service in chapter 50 indicates his views of the value of sacrifices. He urged his readers to love and fear the Lord and honor the priest, bringing “the firstfruits, the guilt offering, the gift of the shoulders, the sacrifice of sanctification and the firstfruits of the holy things” (7.30f.).3 That is, Ben Sira did not wish to eliminate external forms; rather, he encouraged people to use them in the right way. The authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls went a step further. In their membership ceremony, they pronounced curses on those who were not 100 percent sincere: Cursed be the man who enters this Covenant while walking among the idols of his heart, who sets up before himself his stumbling-block of sin so that he may backslide! Hearing the words of this Covenant, he blesses himself in his heart and says, “Peace be with me, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart” [Deut 29:18f., whereas his spirit, parched (for lack of truth) and watered (with lies), shall be destroyed without pardon. (1QS 2.11–15)

But it was the rabbis who were the masters of the topic of intention.4 This is an enormous, almost omnipresent theme in rabbinic literature. There are several different ways in which the category of intention is used. I shall mention only two of them, but first I wish to explain that emphasis on right intention is standard in religious law. One finds it in both Islam and Roman Catholicism, as well as in Judaism. I believe that Protestants, who criticize both Catholics and Jews for rituals performed hypocritically, usually do not know what the people whom they criticize actually believe. The outside observer, of course, sees only the visible act and cannot see intention. The outsider thus tends to deny that intention exists and often does not know that the religion in question teaches that the ritual is invalid if the intention is not right. Now back to the rabbis. (a) One of the ways in which intention figures in rabbinic discussions is this: “Directing the heart” or “the mind” to God is required when performing any religious act. The Bible, the rabbis noted, calls the sacrifice of quadrupeds, birds, or even grain “a fire offering, an odor of sweet savor.” They commented, “This is to 3. “Guilt offering,” in Greek plēmmeleias, but ’ašam does not appear in the Hebrew. 4. Some of this is lifted directly from Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977).

371

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

teach that it is all one whether one offers much or little, if only the person making the offering directs his mind towards Heaven” (Menahot 13.11).5 The rabbis applied the same principle to study of the Torah: the scholar who studies much is not superior to his fellow, the common man, provided that the latter, when he studies, “directs his heart to Heaven” (Berakot 17a). According to R. Meir, in praying the Shema (the passage that begins, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one”), the value of the words depends on the intention (Megillah 20a). In this usage, intention means “acting with sincere religious devotion.” (b) A second usage of the phrase “to direct the heart” occurs in discussing whether or not one can accidentally fulfill a commandment. In the Tannaitic period, these discussions concern commandments of saying and hearing. Thus with regard to the commandment to say the Shema, the Mishnah rules: “If a man was reading [the biblical passage in Deuteronomy 6], if he directed his heart he has fulfilled his obligation [to say the Shema]; otherwise he has not fulfilled his obligation.” The point is that a person might accidentally say or hear something that he was supposed to say or hear, but it counts only if he intends for it to do so and pays attention to it. In saying the Shema, both meanings of “directing the heart” apply: the devout Jew should direct his mind to the passage that he was repeating and also direct his heart to God. I am sure that when rabbis had the chance to teach in the synagogue, one of their themes was directing the heart to God when performing external religious actions. It is, of course, possible to rely on intention too much. The common saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions refers to intentions that are genuine. This is not a case of a good appearance that masks bad intentions. It is the reverse: good intentions are not carried out, because of laziness, inefficiency, or lack of determination. I do not wish to dwell on this theme, partly because it does not figure very large in ancient religious literature (as far as I am aware), and partly for personal reasons. It is one of my numerous faults: I have a lot of good intentions on which I fail to act. Some rabbis had a more generous view of this failing. If a man who says that he will give alms turns out to have no money, it is accounted to him as if he gave.6 A theological interpretation of this extreme emphasis on the value of good intention is that God “refines” a 5. Lev 1:9, 17; 2:9. 6. Sifre Deuteronomy 117; cf. Mekhilta 12 , Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Philadelphia: JPS, 1933), vol. 1, 96.

372

DEFENSES AGAINST CHARGES OF HYPOCRISY

good intention so that it produces a good deed.7 Would that it were so. Rabbis were sometimes unreasonably optimistic. But it is completely in error to accuse them of ignoring what is within. Their failing may have been in the other direction: too much emphasis on intention and on study (which we shall consider in the next chapter). I should now like to insert a digression that is relevant to the problem of saying but not doing, thinking but not doing, and feeling but not doing. The increased emphasis on interiority led to what some of us might consider to be overemphasis. Philo argued against the allegorizers with regard to circumcision. He agreed with the allegorizers that circumcision is the symbol of the excision of pleasure and passions, but he cautioned them not to be excessively zealous in pursuing the interiorization of the laws of Judaism, but rather to maintain the letter of the law and all the traditional practices, including circumcision (Migr. 89–93).8 We note that Paul argued against circumcising gentiles, and in two of his arguments he gave an allegorizing or spiritualizing interpretation: “A person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and not literal” (Rom 2:28f.). “Beware of those who mutilate the flesh! For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship God in spirit and have no confidence in the flesh” (Phil 3:2f.). At least partially related is a passage that we discussed in chapter 14, in which Paul wrote that those who do not discern the body of Christ during celebrations of the Lord’s Supper sometimes suffer and die (1 Cor 11:27–32). Philo and many other Jews would regard these views as excessive emphasis on what lies within. Paul would agree, at least some of the time. The man in Corinth who believed that he was a new creation in Christ and that he should love his neighbor, and who then began intimate relations with his stepmother, should, in Paul’s view, be expelled from the church so that Satan could destroy his body—though his soul would be saved (1 Cor 5:1–5). In this case, the man’s interior state was not the only thing that counted. Paul was concerned about what he was actually doing and did not count intention and feelings. According to the Gospels, Jesus sometimes took each position. The statement that lusting after a 7. T. Pe’ah 1.4. 8. Philo, Migr. 89–93. It is probable but not certain that the allegorizers had actually abandoned circumcision (and Sabbath and festivals). Conceivably Philo feared that their theorizing tended in this direction: “It is true that receiving circumcision does indeed portray the excision of pleasure and all passions. . . : but let us not on this account repeal the law laid down for circumcising” (92).

373

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

person in one’s heart is the same as committing adultery (Matt 5:27f.) is one of the most extreme cases I know of judging what is within, even when it has no external consequences. To this we could add Matt 5:22, which equates anger with killing. In one of Jesus’ parables about two sons, however, he emphasized that the brother who actually got up and went to the field was the one who did the will of his father (Matt 21:28–32). The promises of the other brother did not substitute for actual performance. I cite these passages from the New Testament in order to illustrate the degree to which true religion was believed to be within, but also to point to some extreme cases that are more or less parallel to the rabbinic statement that intention sometimes counts, even if the intended deed is not actually performed. 4. The fourth line of defense is, in my view, very powerful: it is that ritual actions, such as purification and sacrifice, may promote spirituality. All kinds of external acts may influence our hearts or souls. I first noticed this when I reflected on a song at the beginning of The King and I (I have in mind the musical version of this story, which was made into the second of the three versions that have appeared as motion pictures; the film starred Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr). Anna sings, “Whenever I feel afraid, I hold myself erect, And whistle a happy tune so no one can suspect I’m afraid.” Later in the song she observes, “When I fool the people I fear I fool myself as well.” Precisely: acting as if we are brave may make us feel brave. Turning to ancient religion, I shall begin with a text from the Dead Sea Scrolls. 4Q512, called “A Purification Ritual,” describes the purification of a man who has become impure because of an abnormal genital emission, as provided in Lev 15:2–15. Apparently while the man was standing in the immersion pool, he was to say the following prayer: “Blessed are you, O God of Israel, who has delivered me from all my transgressions, cleansed me from filthy shame and atoned for me that I might enter. . . .” The text breaks off, we do not know what the man could then enter, but probably we should understand that it was full fellowship in the community, including the right to eat the Pure Meal.9 This text is important for two reasons. One is that otherwise we have very little information about what people said or thought when they were engaged in purification. Now, at last, we have the text of a prayer of thanksgiving that is connected to ritual immersion 9. In this text, 4Q512 column 7, we are not sure that the impurity is that of the zav (as it is later in 4Q512), nor on which of the seven required days this text is set. If this is not the final purification at the end of seven days, he would probably be given access only to the ordinary meal (lehem).

374

DEFENSES AGAINST CHARGES OF HYPOCRISY

in water for purification. This might indicate that statements often went with rituals. If so, this would have been a way of encouraging people to see the deeper significance of ritual acts. Second, not only does the man being purified thank God for purification, he thanks him for deliverance from transgressions and for atonement. Thus we may conclude that in the first century ritual purifications had spiritual value. Removal of impurity and transgression is “a gift of divine grace and includes restoration of spiritual and social integrity.” 10 From Philo we learn that Jews considered the inner meaning of sacrifice. It provided the occasion for repentance and confession of sin. This agrees, of course, with the interiorization of religion to which I have often referred. Blood does not atone automatically. Those who bring sacrifices, according to Philo, should “ask for pardon and forgiveness for their sins” (Spec. Laws 1.67). Philo elaborates on the inner stance of the offerer. The sinner is “convicted inwardly by his conscience,” “reproaches himself,” goes to the one whom he has injured, and “makes a plain confession of the wrong he has committed.” He accompanies his confession with repayment plus an added fifth (that is, he repays 120 percent of what was taken). Redress of the wrong has to precede the sacrifice (as in Ben Sira and Matt 5:23–24). Then, to complete atonement, the offender goes to the temple and offers a ram. The man offers a ram but, according to Philo, the true advocate for forgiveness is conviction in the soul of the worshiper (Spec. Laws 1.235–37). The sacrifice represents the sanctification of “the mind of the worshiper” (Spec. Laws 1.203). Those who participate are thus “changing their way for the better (1.227). In short, Moses “holds the sacrifice to consist not in the victims but in the offerer’s intention and his zeal” (1.290). These acts—some internal, some external—result in forgiveness (Spec. Laws 1.235; Lev 6:7). God so values repentance that he gave to it “the same honor as to innocence from sin” (1.187). 11 I have now cited a few passages that indicate that what we regard as the most trivial and external rite in Judaism—purification—had moral and spiritual significance to Jews. And we have also seen that Philo presents an internalized view of sacrifice: it requires and is the occasion of full and complete repentance. One may object that Philo and the Dead Sea Scrolls do not speak for the generality of Jews, and 10. Joseph M. Baumgarten, “The Purification Rituals in DJD 7,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls. Forty Years of Research, ed. Devorah Dimant and Uriel Rappaport, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 199–209, here 201f. 11. This paragraph is derived from Judaism: Practice and Belief, 192, 252f. On sacrifice, cf. Philo, Questions on Exodus 1.2: “he who was about to offer the sacrifice should first prepare his soul and body.”

375

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

of course in many ways this is true. No one else, as far as I know, equaled Philo’s ability in philosophy and allegory. And the Dead Sea Scrolls come from a super-pietist sect, a sort of hothouse of religion, where exotic trees might grow. Against the objection that the Dead Sea Scrolls and Philo are not representative, however, I would make two points. (1) The rapid pace of interiorization and individualization in Judaism makes the spread of this sort of interpretation of purity and sacrificial rituals likely. Since the period of the Major Prophets, beginning especially with Jeremiah, the law and consciousness of sin had been interiorized, and individuals sought personal satisfaction in religion. (2) I doubt that the same idea would occur to both Philo and the Dead Sea sect if it had no home in common Judaism. The simplest explanation of their spiritualizing interpretations of purification and sacrifice is that such interpretations had become widespread in Judaism. Thus Jews who feel falsely accused of hypocrisy and externalism can reply (1) that they believe in God, who chose to give them commandments, some of which require publicly visible actions; (2) that internal and external commandments go together, since God cares about all of life, and that they should not presume to be able to distinguish valuable from worthless commandments; (3) that they coach themselves often on the need for right intention; (4) that external practice encourages internal reflection and may even produce the right feelings: anyone who treats a neighbor well feels better toward the other person. You can, by the way, test this last point at home. At night, turn off all the lights. Sit in a chair, hug yourself with your arms, and begin to shiver. You will probably begin to feel afraid. That is the way many of the commandments and related customs work. I suppose that there were some Jews who in the morning obeyed Deuteronomy 6 and recalled the commandments, summarized by “love God with all your heart,” and felt nothing, and who in the evening repeated the process and still felt nothing; but most people are not that hardhearted. Most of us, if we followed Deuteronomy 6 and recited Deut 6:4–9 twice each day, would probably be more conscious of God and his love throughout the day and night. I am a Protestant and an American, and thus I belong to two groups that have enormous confidence in spontaneity. I have realized, as I age, that having some external forms is beneficial. I was once obsessed with scholarship, and so no one ever had to tell me to work at research. Now

376

DEFENSES AGAINST CHARGES OF HYPOCRISY

I find that I must force myself to sit at my desk and work. I also find that when I force myself to do this, I begin to enjoy it, though at the beginning of the day I was not at all enthusiastic about studying. Judaism is a great religion in part because it is so livable. People can do it, and ordinarily they are better for it. Many of us need habits that set the mood, while depending on the mood to strike is very unreliable. I think that it is quite wrong to believe that people who cultivate these habits are interested only in external show. In short, when we deal with members of another religion, I think that we should weaken our tendency to assume that they are hypocrites and that hypocrisy is proved by external acts of piety. We might instead assume that their acts of piety make them more pious within. The critic may continue to believe that the person who manifests his piety in righteous deeds is actually masking a bad heart, and some people who listen to the critic will believe it. But that does not make it true. Hypocrisy is a real problem, as is the simple desire to look better than we are. We see these failings around us and in ourselves. But these are human failings, and they are not peculiar to some particular religious system or culture. One last word about the value of external forms: Individual expressions of highest and noblest piety become collectivized and thus spread to other individuals through corporate worship. This can be true of the “I” of the Psalms and the “we” of the prayer of confession in the eucharistic liturgy. For the rabbis see Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 220f. (citing Kadushin). In the next chapter we shall turn our enquiry into the inner and outer by asking about the relationship between faith and works or, to put it a slightly different way, human action and divine action.

377

18

Faith and Works in Ancient Judaism

In previous chapters in this part we considered, first, the view that a good heart produces good deeds, which in turn result in a happy outcome to life. We then turned to the dark side, which, as we know, is very powerful, and contemplated hypocrisy and trivial externalities as perversions of true religion. Then we considered how people who might feel falsely accused of hypocrisy and triviality might defend themselves. Now we take up faith and works in ancient Judaism. I wish to begin by attacking the title of the present chapter. I chose it because faith seems to go with the word inside, and works goes with outside, so that I thought that it fitted the theme. But it is not a good title. “Faith and works” seems to assume that the dichotomy between the two that appears in Galatians and Romans is a valid way of characterizing religions, as if they have all faced a choice between faith and works and have had to decide between them. And, in fact, many New Testament scholars have thought this. The Pauline and Reformation slogan “justification by faith not by works” is often supposed to be a good historical tool that allows us to analyze various religions. Each one was based either on faith in God or on faith in human achievement. This of course is not true; in fact, it is not true of Christianity either, though I must save Christianity for the following chapter. For the present, let me merely say that faith and works did not present themselves to ancient Jews as alternatives. Would it be better if 379

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

one posed the alternative as being between confidence in human effort or in divine action? This formulation also offers a false alternative. We shall not be able to find ancient Jews deciding between the two. At the exodus, who parted the sea? Who walked across? Judaism presupposes divine action and human effort. So, what are we going to do now? In the first part of this essay I shall consider the question of “doing” in rabbinic Judaism. This is a fairly interesting topic, even though it does not lead to a contrast with faith in God. In the second part of the essay we shall look directly at the frequent Christian charge that Jews were legalists. Thus the title of the chapter should be “‘Doing’ in Rabbinic Judaism and the Charge That Ancient Jews Were Legalistic.” That Israelite religion and one of its successors, Judaism, have required obedience to the law of Moses does not require any further proof than has already appeared in the previous four chapters, and it was especially a theme of chapter 17. Thus the mere fact that rabbinic Jews thought that all Jews should obey the commandments is not instructive, but when we examine the theme of “doing” we find that it was often discussed in relationship to “study.” The rabbis were scholars, and they worried about the amount of time that they spent in learning. Were they doing what God expected of them?1 Thus R. Hanina b. Dosa said that if someone’s fear of sin comes ahead of his wisdom, the wisdom endures, but if wisdom comes ahead of fear of sin, wisdom does not endure. He then made a second comparison: if one’s deeds exceed his wisdom, his wisdom endures, but if wisdom exceeds deeds, wisdom does not endure (’Abot 3.8[9]). Thus wisdom is demoted, being placed below fear of sin and below “doing.” I take “fear of sin” to refer especially to observance of the negative commandments and “doing” to refer especially to fulfillment of the positive commandments.2 (A negative commandment is “you must not kill”; a positive commandment is “you should honor your father and your mother.”) “Wisdom,” in this saying, is perhaps not precisely the same as “learning,” but it probably includes it. In general, the rabbis favored balancing study and doing: one of the compromise proposals was that one should study in order to do.3 1. For the subject, see Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 217–23. 2. On ma‘aseh, “doing,” as meaning observing the positive commandments, especially deeds of lovingkindness, see Adolph Büchler, Types of Jewish-Palestinian Piety from 70 B. C. E. to 70 C. E. (New York: The Ancient Pious Men, 1968), 84–86; Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 219. 3. Sifre Deuteuronomy 41 (to 11.13); Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 218.

380

FAITH AND WORKS IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

By discussing the value of studying versus doing, were the rabbis inadvertently disclosing the fact that they had no faith in God? Of course not. What were they studying? The word of God. What were they doing? The commandments of God. Why were they doing these things? Because they thought that God wanted them to do so. Why should they care what he wanted? Because they believed in him, feared him, and loved him. I have argued this case more than once, and rather than argue it again I have decided to narrate to you a partial biography of one rabbi. His name was Josiah; his father’s name is not known, and so we must call him merely “Josiah.” He is not one of the most famous rabbis, but I have managed to learn about his life and how he came to say something memorable about “doing.” Below are two passages on doing, one by Shime’on, possibly Shime’on ben Gamaliel, possibly Shime’on the son of Hillel, and one by R. Josiah, the hero of our story. ’Abot 1.17: Shime’on his son4 said: “All my days I grew up among Scholars. And I did not find anything better than silence. Study is not the main thing, but doing. And everyone who multiplies words causes error [or sin].” Mekilta Pisha (Bo’) 9: And you shall observe the [festival of] Mazot [unleavened bread], Exod 12:17. R. Josiah said, “Do not read it this way, but rather, ‘And you shall observe mitzvot [commandments].’ Just as one should not be slow when making mazzah, lest it leaven, so one should not be slow to fulfill a mitsvah. If a mitsvah comes your way, perform it immediately.” Now for the story: Once upon a time (c. 100–120) a young and clever Jewish man living in Babylon, named Josiah, heard of two great teachers in Palestine, R. Ishmael and R. Akiba. For reasons that we shall not pursue, he especially liked what he heard about R. Ishmael. And so, taking his wife, Rebecca, and small son, Jacob, he immigrated. He bought a small farm and settled down to work it, while studying with Ishmael in the bêt ha-midraš (the house of scriptural study). The scholars were at this time studying Passover, and shortly after Josiah joined them they attacked the problems that arise if Passover falls on the Sabbath. The Bible explicitly demands that the daily whole burnt offerings be presented to God on the Sabbath, and in fact that they be 4. Possibly Shimeon b. Gamaliel, since the previous saying is attributed to Gamaliel. Herford, however, took “Shimeon his son” to refer back to Hillel, since Shimeon b. Gamaliel should be referred to as Rabban: R. Travers Herford, Pirke Aboth. The Ethics of the Talmud: Sayings of the Fathers (1945; repr., Schocken, 1962), 36f.

381

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

doubled, but it says nothing about what to do when festivals fall on the Sabbath, when work is forbidden. Passover was especially important in this regard, since Passover requires Jewish males who are not priests to sacrifice the Passover animal. Now, sacrificing is work. The Bible explicitly commands the priests to carry out the daily sacrifice called the tamid on the Sabbath, and so their sacrifices were exempt from the prohibition of work, but it says not a word about laymen sacrificing the Passover animal when Passover comes on the Sabbath. So, what should be done? Today we know that this had been a dispute that had been important in the separation of the Qumran community from the common Judaism of the Jerusalem temple. The calendar of the Qumran community was so arranged that the festival days never fell on the Sabbath. Ishmael and his students knew in general that there had been a great dispute, and they also knew that the common custom had been to sacrifice the Passover lambs and kids even when Passover fell on the Sabbath. One of the students said that his father had told him that his grandfather had claimed that in his lifetime he had broken the Sabbath only to sacrifice the Passover victim. So the conclusion was not in dispute. But like the mathematicians who have pursued Fermat’s last theorem, they did not wish to know only the conclusion, they wanted to prove that it was correct. And the rabbis, of course, turned to the Bible to prove that Passover overrides the Sabbath. This was the first serious academic problem that the young Josiah encountered when he joined the scintillating and sophisticated R. Ishmael, and he became obsessed with it. He would often wake up at 4:00 a.m., sometimes earlier, and sit at the table, running through the words of Scripture again and again, seeking a proof of the theorem that Passover overrides the Sabbath. He wanted an analogy, some positive point of contact between Passover and a topic where it is clear that the Sabbath rules do not apply. Then he could apply the other case to Passover. His wife, as she prepared the daily bread, tried not to interrupt, except sometimes she would fondly tousle the young scholar’s hair. Josiah barely noticed. One early morning he had a look almost of rapture, as he sat repeating a solution, turning it this way and that to see if it had a flaw. In Num 9:2, it says that the Passover victim should be sacrificed “at its appointed time” (bĕmô’adô). And in Num 28:2 it states that the daily whole burnt offering, the tamid, should be sacrificed “at its appointed time” (bĕmô’adô). Num 28.9 explicitly says that the daily whole burnt offering should be offered on the Sabbath.

382

FAITH AND WORKS IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

The phrase “at its appointed time,” which appears in both passages (Num 9:2 and 28:2), allowed him to link Passover and daily whole burnt offering. Just as the daily whole burnt offering, which is to be offered “at its appointed time,” overrides the Sabbath, so also does Passover, which is to be offered “at its appointed time.” He could find no flaw. He had done it! Not realizing the joy that transported her husband, his wife finally decided that she had been patient long enough. And so she said, “Do you know, my beloved husband, that it has been two weeks since I purified myself, and you have not yet touched me? And what about our son? How long has it been since you sat with Jacob and reviewed his studies?” Josiah stared at her, not quite comprehending, snatched a piece of bread fresh out of the oven, and went into the fields, still exulting. And that afternoon he had the chance to submit his solution in the bêt ha-midraš. He was very nervous, especially when his fellow Bablylonian émigré, Jonathan, pushed him, but his wits did not fail him, and his interpretation prevailed. Like Professor Higgins, Josiah did it. You can read this successful interpretation of “in its appointed time” in the Mekhilta of R. Ishmael on Exod 12:6 (Pisha [Bo’] 5). Josiah rushed home, told his wife of this, his first academic success, and spent what was left of the day glowing as he thought of future fame and success as a scholar of Torah. His wife was pleased and hugged him, and they opened a jug of wine. Even Jacob seemed to understand that his father had done something that was both good and notable. The next morning, however, Josiah woke with a hangover that was caused less by the wine than by the scholar’s form of postpartum depression. His mouth tasted like ashes, and he felt flat and empty. He stared at the ceiling for a while, thinking, and when he rose he went to his wife, who was already in the kitchen, at work on the bread, and took her by the hand. “I am sorry that I have been so distant,” he said. “Tonight let’s send Jacob to bed early and go to our room, where we can perform the act that fulfills the commandment ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ And tomorrow evening I shall sit with Jacob and review his study. I have learned something very important. As Shime’on the son of Hillel said, “Midrash [that is, biblical study] is not the main thing, doing is.” Next time I go to the house of study, I shall tell them what I have learned. I can put it this way, ‘One should not be slow to fulfill a mitsvah (a commandment). But if a mitsvah comes your way, perform it immediately.’ I shall take this maxim as the guide of my life. I shall never again neglect you because of study. Now that I think of it, I

383

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

like that maxim. I even know where to put it. We should reach Exod 12.17 this evening, and I can make a little pun on the commandment to observe mazzah. I shall just change mazzah to mitsvot! Dear God, an hour ago I thought that my brain was empty. Now it’s working again. And, speaking of such matters as fulfilling commandments, my dear Rebecca, you are ravishing in your apron. Do you think we have time, before Jacob awakes, to perform a mitsvah that I have been neglecting? I don’t want to put it off!” His wife, I am happy to say, smiled and nodded. I would like to tell you that thereafter Josiah always remembered to fulfill his obligations despite his academic learning and his occasional obsessions with it. Alas! He remembered this only sporadically, and his wife and children, who admired and loved him very much, had to learn to live with a scholar whose mind was often somewhere else. And, when the editors of the school of Ishmael collected the most important interpretations of Exodus, they recorded Josiah’s arguments thirty times, usually showing him as carrying the day, often against his friend and customary opponent, Jonathan. And he was equally successful when the school turned to Numbers; we find his name some forty times in the midrash on Numbers from the school of Ishmael. When Rebecca died, giving birth to their sixth child, she knew that she had been loved by her husband and their children, though often, in the twenty years they were together, she could not tell that her husband knew that she was in the same house, and Jacob, she noted with fond sadness, was, if anything, worse than his father. I hope that this somewhat maudlin but true-to-life account explains the rabbis on “doing.” “Doing” for them was not an alternative to faith in God or love of God; they were not tempted to do trivial good works in order to earn merit. Their temptation was to spend their lives in study, thereby neglecting the things that they ought to do; and so they urged themselves to get out of the study and do. As Shime’on said, not study, but doing, is the essence of the matter. In chapter 17, I suggested that one might think that the rabbis had emphasized intention too much, and now we put this in a slightly broader context. They also ran the risk of studying too much, and, of course, they reminded themselves and one another that they needed actually to fulfill their normal obligations, which were also divine obligations, since divine will covered all of life. In the previous chapter we asked why religious leaders would discuss and care about tithing mint, dill, and cumin. We have

384

FAITH AND WORKS IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

considered this in part. The genius of Judaism is that divine law governs all of life, both the trivial and the important, and I proposed that this is not bad. Life is one detail after another, and I am glad to have some guidance on details and not to have to figure out each thing I should do on the basis of grand generalities, even such a grand generality as “Love God and love one another.” But to further our study of the inner and the outer, I wish to address directly the longstanding Christian charge that Jews are legalistic and that Judaism is a religion of legalism. The question is this: Did ancient Jews think that they could observe so many commandments, especially a lot that are easy to fulfill, that they would force God to save them, even if they ignored more substantive commands. That is, was Judaism what Protestants call “legalistic”?5 In one interfaith discussion that I attended, a Christian said that Judaism is legalistic, and one of the Jewish representatives agreed, pointing out that the law plays an important role in Judaism. This revealed ignorance about the seriousness of the accusation. Legalism is almost the worst thing of which a Protestant can accuse anyone. I wish to explain what legalism means in Christian attacks on Judaism—and on one another. The list that follows is composite. It contains all of the elements of legalism as I have inferred them from decades of reading Christian scholars who criticize ancient Judaism—and by implication modern Judaism. 1. In legalism, a person stands alone before God, with the obligation of doing enough good deeds to earn God’s favor. There is no prior grace, there are no group benefits. Each individual starts out with a clean slate, but with 100 percent of the responsibility of salvation. 2. Salvation is attained by doing more good deeds than bad deeds. People must be obedient at least 51 percent of the time. 3. Legalists believe that God is basically an accountant, a judge who is inflexibly controlled by human performance and who spends his time keeping score. He has, however, a power possessed by few accountants: he reigns supreme at a final judgment of humanity, and he sends people with 51 percent good deeds to eternal bliss, people with 49 percent good deeds to eternal damnation. 4. Legalists have then a natural inclination to pile up a lot of easy 5. “On legalism, see especially Bernard S. Jackson, “Legalism,” JJS 30 (1979): 1–22.

385

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

5. 6.

7.

8.

good deeds. This leads to the pursuit of trivial acts of piety, such as tithing mint, dill, and cumin. Trivial acts of piety lead to hypocrisy: showing off minor external actions while ignoring the most important religious principles. Psychologically, the legalist is either anxious because he or she does not know whether or not enough good deeds have been compiled, or arrogant because he or she has done so many trivial good deeds that God will be forced to save her or him. There is no happy confidence in God because of his love and mercy, since the legalist’s God lacks these qualities. The only psychological possibilities are anxiety and arrogance. The legalist believes in repentance in a very deficient way. Each act of repentance offsets one bad deed: that is, repentance is only one more meritorious work. There is no such thing as thoroughgoing repentance. Within legalism, only one factor offers relief from strict judgment in accord with the number of good and bad deeds: a treasury of merits based on works of supererogation. Saintly legalists have more good deeds than they need, and God will apply some of these to offset the deficiencies of others. In particular, these supererogatory deeds may tip the scale in favor of people who have precisely 50 percent good and 50 percent evil deeds.

Well, this is pretty dreadful, isn’t it? When Christians say that Judaism is a legalistic religion, they are saying that, from the point of view of the subject—the religious person—being a legalist is absolutely terrible (it leads to anxiety or arrogance), and moreover that legalism induces bad behavior (triviality and hypocrisy). Let me begin with some important points that I shall mention very briefly and then drop. The accusation of legalism was hurled by Protestants against Roman Catholicism, as you may have noted from my use of the terms “treasury of merits” and “works of supererogation.” Protestants in earlier centuries tended to see Jews and Catholics as plagued by the same or similar faults, and a lot of the invective against Jews for being legalistic is adopted from attacks on Catholics—which have now largely disappeared. The second brief, preliminary point is that the home of Christian attacks on Judaism for being legalistic is New Testament scholarship. New Testament scholarship, in turn, has been dominated by

386

FAITH AND WORKS IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

Protestants, and the consequence is that now some Roman Catholic scholars repeat the charge of Jewish legalism. We now turn to more substantial questions: Why have New Testament scholars charged Jews with being legalistic? What evidence do they produce? What is wrong with the accusation? First, why launch this attack? I’m sure that I do not know all the reasons, but a partial explanation is this: in the nineteenth century, Christian confidence in the creeds began to fail. Christians, for example, are supposed to belief that Jesus is 100 percent divine and 100 percent human, and that the two natures in him were neither mixed nor confused nor separated. They could have carried on attacking Jews for not believing this, but these creedal formulations became less significant within liberal Protestantism, and humanism came more and more to the fore. Christians who lost confidence in the creeds were still Christians, and they believed that their religion was superior to all others. But now they needed to prove it on humanistic, not theological or dogmatic, grounds. In particular, Christians, and especially New Testament scholars, needed to prove that Christianity was superior to Judaism. Otherwise, what would be its raison d’être: why would it exist at all? Surely Jesus and Paul saw something basically and intrinsically wrong in Judaism, or there would be no new religion. What was wrong? The error of Judaism must be not only theological, it must also be humanistic. In the age of liberal humanism, in which humanity is the measure of all things, Judaism must be proved to produce bad human beings. The charge of legalism fitted this need perfectly. I must confess to you that I do not know the entire history of the accusation. This is principally a question for a historian of German Christianity. In one of my early books, I traced the charge of legalism back to a systematic statement of it by Ferdinand Weber in the second half of the nineteenth century and stopped, contented. I had found the formulation that influenced twentieth-century New Testament scholars. Anyone who wishes to know the full history of legalism in Christian scholarship will have to ask someone else. The humanistic criticism of religion was not entirely invented in nineteenth-century Germany: it is much older. We shall see below that one of the main aspects of legalism—and, in fact, a necessary element of the legalism of which Judaism was accused—was invented in the nineteenth century, but accusations of hypocrisy, externalism, and

387

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

triviality have been known for a long time, and we have seen lots of examples. Now for the next question: what evidence did New Testament scholars cite as proving that Judaism was legalistic? In part they relied on New Testament passages, in part on passages from rabbinic literature. In the New Testament they had, for example, Matthew 23 and Matthew 6. I quote a few verses from each by way of reminder: Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. . . . They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues, and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men.” (Matt 23:1–7) Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. (Matt 23:23) When you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. . . . And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. (Matt 6:2–5)

Here we find many of the ingredients of legalism: emphasis on trivial, external actions, together with the accusations that the Jewish leaders in question act in these ways from bad motives (to be seen by other people), that their lives do not square with what they profess (they are hypocrites), and that they ignore the important religious and humanistic values of justice, mercy, and faith. The passages, however, lend themselves to the suggestion that only some people within Judaism, not all Jews, nor Judaism itself, are here being criticized. New Testament scholars, of course, generalized these faults so that they became typical of Judaism. In the hands of the critics of Judaism, legalism became a system that makes people act in these deplorable ways. From rabbinic sources, New Testament scholars could quote 388

FAITH AND WORKS IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

numerous sentences that they construed as proving that Judaism was and is a basically legalistic religion. I cite only one: R. Akiba said, “the world is judged by grace, yet all is according to the excess of works [that be good or evil]” (’Abot 3.16). All one has to do is emphasize the second part—that judgment is according to the preponderance of works—and leave out the bit about judgment by grace, in order to prove legalism. I shall not try your patience by going through each of the eight points one by one. Most of them have already been considered in one way or another. I wish to offer three observations about legalism—and thereby, I hope, to put to rout forever the accusation that Judaism is legalistic. 1. The first is a reminder that religious polemic frequently focuses on motives and frequently charges that external actions and internal spirit do not coincide. It can do so because motives and internality are invisible. Philo, as we have seen, accused pagans of purifying their bodies and not their hearts or souls. He charged that they never really repented. There were in fact pagan saints, people whose hearts were unblemished, and who used the symbolic rituals of pagan religion to purify themselves entirely, both within and without. Philo says not, but this is mere cheap polemic. I am even surer that most of the Jews who gave alms or who prayed where they could be seen, on the whole, had the highest and purest motives. Vanity is, to be sure, a humanistic and religious failing, and it afflicts a lot of people. But one can be vain about secret donations, and one need not be vain about public donations. Occasionally the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature (the two major academic societies in the study of religion in the United States) publish a list of people, including New Testament scholars, who have made donations to the cause of biblical study. One might suspect that some scholar or other whose name appears on the list is showing off the size of his royalty checks, but on the whole we should think that the donors really believe in the cause of the academic study of religion. And so we should think of ancient Jews. Many of the charges of legalism against ancient Jews depend on cheap polemics against supposed failings within. We might also recall Paul’s ferocious attacks on other Christian leaders and apostles, including Peter, which we discussed in chapter 17. In Galatians he claims that Peter acted hypocritically when he first ate with gentiles and then withdrew to eat only with Jews. When we discussed this, I suggested that perhaps Peter had the highest motives

389

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

and that he came to fear that his mission to Jews might be compromised if he associated too closely with former idolaters. Paul said of himself that he was all things to all people in order to win some, that with Jews he lived as under the law, with gentiles as not under the law (1 Cor 9:19–23). This is not hypocrisy, and Paul should not have accused Peter of acting hypocritically. Let us grant that ancient religious leaders, whether Jewish or gentile, whether Christian or not, whether Pauline or not, on the whole acted from good motives. The charge that Jews did not do so is a worthless and a base accusation. Jews were highly conscious of the need of right intention. 2. Second, I wish to comment on the frequent contrast between grace and works and the claim that Christianity is a religion of grace and Judaism is a religion of works. In our list of eight points, the denial of grace in Judaism is found in point number 1 and the emphasis on deeds in most items on the list. The truth is that Jews, just like Christians, believed both that God, who was gracious, would save them by his mercy and that he required upright behavior and forbade evil deeds. This view can be proved by literally hundreds of pages of Jewish literature—which, in order to earn your favor, I refrain from quoting. But consider this: to this day, when Jews or Christians pray to God, they thank him for calling them to follow him and for giving them the strength and ability to live as they should, and they recognize that in comparison to God humans are weak creatures who must rely on the strength and goodness of God. Yet when these same people falter, they do not blame God, they blame themselves. They seek to return to the path of righteousness, and they know that they must exert effort to do so. That is to say: humans are dependent on grace, and they are accountable for their deeds. This is a common and as far as I know the universal view in both Judaism and Christianity, and it is puzzling that many Christian scholars who accept both aspects of religion in their own lives believe that in the ancient world these were mutually exclusive alternatives. Reliance on grace and responsibility to perform suitable works are two sides of the same coin. They are simply different perspectives that arise in slightly different circumstances. One set of thoughts arises in prayer or meditation, the other in considering the practicalities and difficulties of daily life. The two can combine in one sentence, as in this passage from the Qumran Hymns: “No one can be righteous in your judgment or [innocent] in your trial, though one person may be more righteous than another” (1QH 9:14f.). 3. My third observation about the charge of legalism is fundamental:

390

FAITH AND WORKS IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

almost no one in the ancient world was a legalist. Legalism, in the full Protestant meaning of the word, did not exist. The reason is that the first element in legalism is a modern invention. I shall quote it again: “In legalism, a person stands alone before God, with the obligation of doing enough good deeds to earn God’s favor. There is no prior grace, there are no group benefits. Each individual starts out with a clean slate, but with 100 percent of the responsibility of salvation.” I think that the only person who might actually hold such an extreme form of individualism would be a Protestant existentialist. That is, conceivably Rudolf Bultmann might have been a legalist, though I am sure that he was not. But no ancient person, and certainly no ancient or modern Jew, thought this individualistically. What Jew denied prior grace? Which one thought that everyone was a mere individual standing alone, charged to earn God’s favor? No one. First-century Judaism had become more individualistic than the earlier Israelite faith, but Jews believed in the covenant, and thus in what Christians would eventually call “prevenient grace,” that is, grace prior to human action. Many Jews do not like to be described in these terms, which they regard as Christian. But the terms suit Judaism perfectly well, and the idea of prior grace is intrinsic to Judaism. Abraham was chosen before he was given commandments. The people of Israel were brought out of Egypt before God gave the law at Mount Sinai. They did not earn the exodus by meritorious behavior. The rabbis were well aware of this view. I quote from Mekhilta Bahodesh 5: Why were the Ten Commandments not said at the beginning of the Torah? They give a parable. To what may this be compared? To the following: A king who entered a province said to the people: May I be your king? But the people said to him: Have you done anything good for us that you should rule over us? What did he do then? He built the city wall for them, he brought in the water supply for them, and he fought their battles. Then he said to them: May I be your king? They said to him: Yes, yes. Likewise, God. He brought the Israelites out of Egypt, divided the sea for them, sent down the manna for them, brought up the well for them, brought the quails for them. He fought for them the battle with Amalek. Then he said to them: I am to be your king. And they said to him: Yes, yes.

And then, of course, God gave the ten commandments and the rest of the Mosaic law. The requirement of obedience in Judaism is and has always been second, after the call and redemption of the people. To make Judaism legalistic, Christians simply chopped off the

391

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

covenantal framework and made redemption second to obedience. But, to repeat, that is a complete misconstrual of Judaism. I wish to demonstrate this by returning to the question of reward and punishment according to deeds, which we discussed in chapter 14. There are lots of rabbinic statements to the effect that God punishes transgression and rewards obedience.6 The point of this in rabbinic literature is that God is just and fair rather than capricious. Would you have him do the reverse, reward iniquity and punish good behavior? Of course not. In Jewish literature reward and punishment fall within a framework that is not legalistic. People do not stand entirely on their own to start with. This can be seen very clearly if we look at the New Testament. Christians frequently read or hear read the following passage: “For if you forgive people their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive people their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt 6:14). This could be taken to mean that Christians have to earn forgiveness by first forgiving. But, of course, Christians think that God acted in Jesus’ death to provide forgiveness. The sentence should not be lifted out of that context. That is, in reading the New Testament, Christian scholars take context into account. In condemning Judaism as legalistic, they exclude context and focus on a few sentences. In Judaism as in Christianity, reward and punishment fall within the context of God’s love. As one ancient Jew, Josephus, put it, in connection with the external action of praying twice a day—a commandment that he attributed to Moses: Twice each day . . . let all acknowledge before God the bounties which he has bestowed on them through their deliverance from the land of Egypt: thanksgiving is a natural duty, and is rendered alike in gratitude for past mercies and to incline the giver to others yet to come. They shall inscribe also on their doors the greatest of benefits which they have received from God and each shall display them on his arms; and all that can show forth the power of God and his goodwill towards them, let them bear a record thereof written on the head and on the arm, so that men may see on every side the loving care with which God surrounds them. (Ant. 4.212f.)

Outsiders might think that posting mezuzot and wearing tefillin are the petty, external actions of hypocrites who wanted only to show off. 6. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 117–25.

392

FAITH AND WORKS IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

The insider Josephus, though not a great theologian, knew that thereby Jews displayed the power of God and his loving care for his people. What have I proved? Not that there were no hypocritical Jews in the first century, nor that none were vain and ostentatious. I have proposed that accusations on these points are standard in religious polemic, and that they are especially used by outsiders who cannot see or know what lies within. And, moreover, I proposed that in dealing with ancient people who were religious leaders we should assume good motives, despite the attacks of contemporaries (such as Paul against Peter, or Matthew’s Jesus against the Pharisees). But the Christian charge against Judaism has been that Judaism as such is legalistic and that it forces its members into legalism. Here we can be more decisive. Hypocrisy existed in the ancient world, impure motives existed in the ancient world, religious deceit existed—but legalism, as an ism, did not. Legalism requires a kind of individualism that ancient Jews simply did not have. Historically, this charge is not true, and eliminating it from the arsenal of New Testament scholars who think that, in order to make Christianity look good, they must besmirch Judaism, would do the world a lot of good. If New Testament scholars were to drop this charge, and say explicitly that they drop it, perhaps clergypeople, who believe that it has been scientifically proved, would give it up as well; and maybe the laity would come to a fairer assessment of Judaism. This, it seems to me, is a reasonable and achievable goal, and I hope that these small investigations into the relationship between inside and outside in ancient religion may help at least a little. Let me say one last word on context. In these lectures I have more than once noted that Christian commentators on Judaism in effect insert the question, “What must I do to be saved?” when they discuss Jewish, and especially rabbinic, comments about the importance of observing the law. But that is not a question that is large in Jewish literature in general, and it is minute in rabbinic literature. But one can turn hundreds of pages of ancient Jewish literature, including especially rabbinic literature, without finding this question. Jews knew what they had to do to be saved. They had to rely on God, who called Abraham and made promises to him. Of course the promises were based on the assumption that he and his descendants would be more or less obedient. But no Jew thought that he or she started with a blank slate and that he or she must fill it with good deeds in order to be saved. Jews started as members of the covenant, which was established

393

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

by God’s grace, and they held that God was faithful never to break the covenant. Obedience was the natural response to the God who called Abraham and who brought Israel out of bondage.

394

19

Faith and Works in Early Christianity

When Professor McLeod extended the department’s invitation to deliver the lectures that turned into this part of the book, I asked whether I should revisit some of the main topics of my books or try to do something new. He immediately said that I should address a new topic. And so I have tried to do this, but of course I cannot do it perfectly. I have written about everything that I know, except some fairly esoteric information about the social and economic aspects of various temple systems in the ancient world, and I thought that you would rather be beaten than to read about this. Thus the present subject, the inside and the outside, has had some overlaps with my publications, though this is true more in main concerns than in details. But this chapter poses a real challenge to my effort to say something that is not simply repetitious, since the title “Faith and Works in Early Christianity” immediately makes one think of Paul, and I have written three books about Paul, with substantial portions of each being dedicated to the phrase “righteousness by faith, not by works of law.” How shall I deal with this dilemma? I have decided not to discuss Paul in detail, but rather just to mention some main points. This is, in fact, advisable from the practical point of view as well. Fully to comprehend Paul on this topic would require us to sit for a couple of hours a day, with our texts before us, for about two terms. Thus even if I wanted to do it, I could not actually deal with the multiple questions 395

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

that surround Paul’s supposed “doctrine” of righteousness by faith, not by works.” So I shall treat Paul briefly and spend most of the lecture looking at other early Christian literature. I must first explain faith, believe, righteousness, and justification. 1. “Righteousness by faith, not by works” is a theme in three of Paul’s surviving seven letters: Galatians, Philippians, and Romans. Faith, however, is a very common word in Paul’s letters, and in the vast majority of cases it is not put in opposition to “works” or “works of law.” Faith sometimes indicates the content of the Christian message: 1 Thess 4:14: “For since we believe (have faith) that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” Consequently the people whom we now call “Christians” Paul called “those who believe” (1 Cor 1:21–23). He called nonChristians “unbelievers” (1 Cor 14:22–24). When Paul calls Apollos and himself “ministers through whom you believed” (1 Cor 3:5), he uses believe to mean “convert.” In Paul’s most famous chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, faith is a virtue, along with hope and love, but it ranks below love (1 Cor 13:13). This triad of virtues also appears in 1 Thess 1:3; 5:8. Thus Paul uses the noun faith and the verb believe very frequently quite apart from the phrase “justification by faith.” Moreover, Christians receive things by faith other than justification: the Spirit comes by faith (Gal 3:1–5); Christians are children of Abraham by faith (3:7); they receive God’s promise by faith (3:22). It is, however, the phrase “righteousness by faith” or “justification by faith” that has drawn the most attention—at least since Luther. These noun phrases (righteousness, justification, and faith), however, are not Paul’s typical usage. If we look at Galatians, chronologically the earliest letter in which the formula appears, we see that the word rightor just- usually appears as a verb. It is not an abstract concept; it is something that God does to someone. Thus Paul depicts himself as saying to Peter, “we believed in Christ Jesus, in order that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of law” (Gal 2:16). The passive verb “be justified” presumably implies that God is the actor, and we see this formulation in 3:8: “God justifies the Gentiles by faith.” This sentence in Gal 3:8 Paul proves by citing two passages from Genesis. Paul was an ancient Jew, and his exegetical techniques reveal this very clearly. They would not be approved by the biblical scholars at any major university. They are, however, comprehensible if you know something about fundamentalism. Paul saw his Scripture, the Christian Old Testament, as among other things a vast reservoir of

396

FAITH AND WORKS IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

words that he could lift out and combine in order to make points. He would, I suppose, defend this practice by saying that once he turned to the Lord, he understood how to interpret the Scripture (cf. 2 Cor 3:16), though the impartial observer might note that he, like other ancient interpreters, was very adept at getting a text to say the right thing. Now for the proof texts that prove that “God justifies gentiles by faith.” These are in the table below. The argument is very difficult to see in a normal English translation, because the switch from the verb believe to the noun faith, and from the noun righteousness to the verb justify, confuses the eye. I have, therefore, in the table, prepared two different translations, one using belief instead of faith, and justification instead of righteousness, the other my own preference, which requires the invention of two new verbs, “to faith” and “to righteous.” Galatians 3:6–9 NRSV Just as Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” [Gen 15:6], so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the Gentiles will be blessed in you” [Gen 18:18]. For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

Using Belief and Justification Just as Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as justification” [Gen 15:6], so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by belief, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the Gentiles will be blessed in you” [Gen 18:18]. For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

The Best Translation Just as Abraham “faithed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” [Gen 15:6] so, you see, those who faith are the descendants of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would righteous the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you” [Gen 18:18]. For this reason, those who faith are blessed with Abraham, who had faith.

Put another way, Paul uses his two proof texts to establish two of his own statements. The fact that Abraham is common to both passages in Genesis allows Paul to combine the two sentences (according to standard rules of interpretation): Abraham “faithed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” + “All the Gentiles will be blessed in [Abraham]” = “God righteouses Gentiles by faith” and “those who faith are blessed.”

397

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

In the next verse (3:10), Paul takes up the word blessing by contrasting it to curse. This confirms the way in which he is using his proof texts: they are actually guiding the argument. These proof texts became relevant for a very simple reason: Paul’s opponents were trying to persuade his converts in Galatia to be circumcised and accept the rest of the law. I assume that the sequence of events was this: (1) Paul had persuaded some gentiles in Galatia to accept Jesus as Son of God and savior of the world. This included, obviously, accepting a lot of Judaism, and first and foremost the Jewish God. Paul also, however, often quoted from Jewish Scripture—that is, the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek. And so his converts regarded the Bible as being their Scripture as well. (2) Paul probably used figures and events from the Bible in the course of his teaching. It is quite possible that he told the gentiles that they would benefit from the promises that God made to Abraham. In shorthand, they became the heirs of Abraham. (3) Paul did not, however, require his converts to become Jews: that is, they did not have to accept some of the commandments that separated Jew from gentile in the Diaspora: circumcision, Sabbath, and food laws. (4) As the decades rolled along and the Lord did not return, some important members of the Christian movement thought that these gentiles who were only sort of Jewish constituted an anomaly. Some of these opponents of Paul went so far as to go to some of Paul’s churches in order to persuade them to accept the entire Bible, not just the bit that Paul had selected. (5) They introduced Abraham and the passage from Genesis 17 that shows that God required Abraham to be circumcised. Then they urged the Galatians to conform to the precedent set by Abraham and be circumcised. (6) Paul, then, needed to use Abraham to refute his opponents’ argument, and the result we have just seen. He declined to discuss Genesis 17 but pieced together an argument from words in Genesis 15 and 18 in order to prove from the Bible that righteousness is connected with faith, not with those parts of the law that make one Jewish. I wish to explain now a little more fully the categories of law that Paul did and did not think his gentiles should accept. There were two principal parts of Jewish law that Paul did wish to impose on his gentile converts, and both of these distinguished Jews from gentiles: the prohibition of idolatry and the acceptance of Jewish sexual ethics. Both of these items became issues in Corinth. In 1 Cor 10 there is a very substantial discussion of idolatry. There are several references

398

FAITH AND WORKS IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

to sexual ethics, for example: sex prior to marriage (1 Cor 7); the use of prostitutes (1 Cor 6:13–20); and homosexual relationships (1 Cor 6:9–11). These two categories of law (idolatry and sexual ethics) are mentioned in the vice list in Gal 5:19–21, along with many other transgressions, but there is no substantial discussion, and they do not figure in the discussion of righteousness by faith. Idolatry and sexual morality are legal topics that distinguish Jew from Greek, and on these two topics he wished his gentiles to be like Jews. But since he accepts Jewish law on these points, there was no debate with his opponents. The other laws that distinguished Jew from gentile were circumcision, food, and Sabbath. All three of these items are mentioned in the sections of Galatians that deal with righteousness by faith. The principal topic is circumcision, but eating rules and Sabbath also are at issue, as is clear in Gal 2:11–14 and 4:10. It is the debate over circumcision that introduces the language of “righteousness by faith, not by works of law,” since circumcision is connected with Abraham, whom God commanded to be circumcised, and from the Abraham story Paul derived the sentence “God righteouses [justifies] Gentiles by faith” [belief]. Paul then puts this sentence into opposition with his opponents’ view, that the law of circumcision is required: “a person is righteoused by faith, not by works of law.” The “works of law” in question are those that make people Jewish—not good works in general. In effect, Paul is arguing that his converts do not need to be Jewish in order to inherit the biblical promises, while his opponents argue that they do: they should convert not only to Christ but also to the law of the God who sent him. The opponents had a very strong argument: Paul told his converts about the holy Scripture, and his opponents used the Abraham story against him. Moreover, Abraham really had been circumcised! How could Paul argue that one did not need to be circumcised? His argument is clever and terminological. From the words we do not know precisely what he means. We understand the words faith and law well enough, and we now understand that the “law” in question consisted of some of the main distinguishing marks of the Jewish people. But can we say any more about the meaning of faith as bringing righteousness? Since righteousness is obviously not obedience to the law as such, what is it? To find out, we need to follow the argument of Galatians further. After the section we have looked at, Paul has another argument based

399

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

on Abraham (the promise was made to Abraham before the commandment of circumcision; thus the promise is independent of circumcision), a digression on the reason for which God gave the law, and then a restatement of the state of the Christian as Paul sees it. It is to this restatement, in Gal 3:23–29, that I wish to draw your attention. Paul first says that the law imprisoned people until Christ came, “so that we might be righteoused by faith” (or justified by belief), 3:25. But then he begins to leave behind the language of his proof texts from Genesis: “in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” Then comes: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew of Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for you are are all one in Christ Jesus.” Now, let us look at the table below: Means

Result

3:24: faith (belief)

righteoused (justified)

3:26: faith (belief)

children of God

3:27–28: baptized into Christ

clothed with Christ, no longer Jew or Greek, all one person in Christ

You can do approximately the same thing if you go through Romans 3–6. Paul has a revised version of the argument from Abraham, complete with the language of righteousness or justification by faith or belief, which is followed by a discussion of dying with Christ, being baptized into Christ, and being “alive to God in Christ Jesus” (chapter 6). Philippians 3 yields similar results: Paul wishes to gain Christ and be found in him, having righteousness by faith (3:9). This is followed by Paul’s statement of his desire to become like Christ by sharing his sufferings. It does not take a rocket scientist to discern that Paul had a lot of ways of phrasing the good state of the Christian, only one of which was that the Christian is “righteoused by faith.” Faith also gives one the Spirit, makes one a child of God, and, most important, involves being baptized into Christ, thereby sharing his death and thus sharing his life. The “righteousness by faith not works” terminology appears only in connection with the arguments about circumcision in Galatians and Romans, which are echoed slightly in Philippians 3. Once he gets away from the topic of circumcision, he departs also from the Abraham story and thus from the proof texts that provide the words “righteoused by 400

FAITH AND WORKS IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

faith.” His own language, then, which follows after his terminological debates based on the Abraham story, is that of union with Christ, being part of his body, etc. This language appears in most of the major contexts of Paul’s letters.1 The language of “righteousness by faith not by law” can be and has been understood as meaning that Paul was entirely against the law, all parts of it, and that in this phrase he was contrasting Christianity to Judaism. “Works” in Judaism will concern us in chapter 20. Here I shall only say that “righteousness by faith not by law” is not Paul’s contrast with Judaism, but rather with the position of his opponents and their arguments regarding gentiles. Paul is not debating Judaism as such. For that debate, one has to look at 2 Corinthians 3 and especially Romans 9–11. Apart from the phrase “righteousness by faith not by works of law,” what did Paul think of “works”? He was strongly in favor of them. He has a policy of recommending that people try harder and harder. As he wrote to the Thessalonians, who, he was sure, were showing love to one another, “do so more and more” (1 Thess 4:10). He wanted them to “seek to do good to one another and to all” (5:15), and he urged them to be “sound and blameless” until the coming of the Lord (5:23). Paul sometimes characterized the good deeds that Christians should do as “the fruit of the Spirit,” as he does in Gal 5:22–26: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Because their bodies are temples of the Spirit, Christians should not have sexual relations with prostitutes (1 Cor 6:16–19). Similarly, Christians are “led by the Spirit,” and it is through the Spirit that they “put to death the deeds of the body” and thus will live (Rom 8:13f.). How do they get the Spirit that results in avoiding evil activity and doing good? By faith in Christ, as in Gal 3:5, or by union with Christ, as in 1 Cor 6:17 (“anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him”). Let me now summarize my suggestions about how to understand Paul on faith and works—the inside and the outside. “We are justified by faith in Christ and not by works of law” means: gentile Christians can inherit God’s promises to Abraham and the people of Israel without becoming Jewish. “Works of law” are some of the parts of the Jewish law that separate gentile from Jew, especially circumcision. When Paul gets beyond the argument based on the words of the Abraham story 1. Neither set of language occurs in 1 Thessalonians. Thus there is also a history of the development of the language of being in Christ, etc.

401

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

and into his own vocabulary, faith leads to “being one person in Christ Jesus” by dying with him in Baptism, so as to share his life. This is the most important set of language for understanding both Paul’s ethics (especially since union with Christ means union with the Spirit as well) and his soteriology (how to escape the power of sin and live to God, so as ultimately to be saved by God). The person who is part of the body of Christ avoids evil and does good. Since faith is one of the words used for becoming part of the body of Christ and for receiving the Spirit, and since these two ideas (being in the body of Christ and living by the Spirit) are central to Paul’s discussions of behavior, faith and works in the general meaning of the word works (avoidance of wickedness, doing good) are not in opposition to each other. The opposition is between faith in Christ and forcing gentiles to become Jews: Faith in Christ in Paul’s view should exclude the requirement that gentiles become Jews. But works in the more general sense—avoiding evil and doing good—are connected with faith in Paul’s thought: faith leads to good works. I wish now briefly to look at the question of faith and works in three early Christian sources after Paul and then to conclude with Martin Luther. First and foremost, of course, comes the epistle attributed to James. In 2:14–26 the author reveals that he has understood “works of law” in Paul’s attack on the circumcision party to mean “works” of all kinds. He proposes that “a person is justified [or righteoused] by works and not only by faith” (2:24), and he proves this by citing Abraham: he was “justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar” (2:21). This proves that “faith was active along with [Abraham’s] works, and faith was brought to completion by the works” (2:22). Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, which the Lord stopped, was based on his faith in God—that is, he trusted that he should do what God said—and the deed was a cultic act. He ended by sacrificing a ram rather than his son (Gen 22:1–19). James also points out that opposing faith to works might lead someone to say to a person who is in need of basic clothing and daily food, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill” without doing anything about it. Thus the author of James understood faith to mean trust and confidence in God, which Paul would have agreed with, and works to mean both ethical and cultic acts done in obedience to God’s will. Paul would have said, “That’s not what I meant when I opposed faith and ‘works’; ‘work’ in that context was circumcision; for ‘works’ in the sense of good deeds, please see my discussion of the deeds of the Spirit.”

402

FAITH AND WORKS IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

We turn now to the Didache, in which there are only three references to the pist- root: Didache 10.2 is a thanksgiving prayer to God for “the knowledge and faith and immortality which thou didst make known to us through Jesus the child.” Didache 16.2: “The whole time of your faith shall not profit you unless you are found perfect at the last time.” Didache 16.5 refers to “those who endure in their faith,” referring to persecution. That is, in the Didache faith is either a gift along with knowledge and immortality, or it requires to be demonstrated by the good work of enduring persecution, and it must lead to perfection of way in order to be valid. The Didache, which is full of works, knows of no opposition between faith and works. This is seen equally forcefully in 1 Clement, said to have been written by Clement of Rome in the 90s of the first century. Unlike James, Clement of Rome did not read Paul as separating faith from good deeds. There are oodles of pist- words in 1 Clement, but faith or believing is never opposed to good deeds. I shall give a few examples of various categories of statements about faith (examples could be multiplied). When Clement revisits the Abraham story and cites the passage that “Abraham faithed or believed God” (Gen 15:6), he especially emphasizes that Abraham “was found faithful in his obedience to the words of God”—which recalls James (1 Clem. 16.6, 16.1). And he notes that Abraham received the blessing of a son in old age not only because of his faith, but also because of a good deed, hospitality (10.6f.; cf. Rahab, same two virtues, 12.1). When “the eye of faith grows dim,” people no longer walk “in the ordinances of his commandments” (1 Clem. 3.4); i.e., faith leads to observance of commandments. The following passage also reflects the view that faith leads to obedience: Receive our counsel, and there shall be nothing for you to regret, for as God lives and as the Lord Jesus Christ lives and the Holy Spirit, the faith and hope of the elect, he who with lowliness of mind and eager gentleness has without backsliding performed the decrees and commandments given by God shall be enrolled and chosen in the number of those who are saved through Jesus Christ. (1 Clem. 58.2)2

When Clement wrote, “I will establish their bishops in righteousness, and their ministers [deacons] in faith” (42.5), he did not mean that

2. In another passage indicating that faith leads to obedience he refers to “the deeds which we have wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith, by which Almighty God has justified all men from the beginning of the world” (32.4).

403

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

bishops had no faith or that ministers were not righteous. This is only a rhetorical division. As did Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, Clement uses faith in lists of virtues: “How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of God! Life in immortality, splendor in righteousness, truth in boldness, faith in confidence, continence in holiness” (1 Clem. 35.1). Clement wrote, he said, mostly about “the things which befit our worship, and are most helpful for a virtuous life to those who wish to guide their steps in piety and righteousness.” He continues: For we have touched on every aspect of faith and repentance and true love and self-control and sobriety and patience, and reminded you that you are bound to please almighty God with holiness in righteousness and truth and long-suffering, and to live in concord, bearing no malice, in love and peace with eager gentleness, even as our fathers, whose example we quoted, were well-pleasing in their humility towards God, the Father and Creator, and towards all men. And we had the more pleasure in reminding you of this, because we knew quite well that we were writing to people who were faithful and distinguished and had studied the oracles of the teaching of God. (1 Clem. 6.2)

Finally, Clement knew the view that faith is proved by endurance despite persecution, to illustrate which he cited Paul’s own life (1 Clem. 5.5–7; cf. 6.2). Clement knew at least some of Paul’s letters, and he refers to the Corinthian correspondence. If he also knew Galatians and Romans, he did not read them as leading to an opposition between faith and works. Substantively, then, he agreed with both Paul and James: faith leads to works and is proved by them. I wish to close by saying a few words about Luther and Lutheran exegesis. New Testament scholars influenced by Luther have often thought that “works of law” in Paul refer to all good deeds, and they claim that Paul’s main aim in life was to oppose human achievement. The word Leistung, “achievement,” is one of the most frequent words in Ernst Käsemann’s commentary on Romans. Luther himself understood Paul slightly better. Luther found in Galatians (as also in Romans and Ephesians, especially Eph 2:8f.) the “doctrine” of justification by faith, without works of law, and other views that, in his mind, accompanied this doctrine. According to Luther’s preface to his commentary on Galatians, prior to Paul almost everyone “went his own way, hoping

404

FAITH AND WORKS IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

to placate a god or goddess . . . , by his own works; that is, hoping without the aid of Christ and by his own works to redeem himself from evils and sins.”3 There are, according to Luther, various kinds of righteousness: political or civil, ceremonial, legal (following the Ten Commandments), and the righteousness of faith. This last is “mere passive righteousness,” bestowed by God “by mere imputation” (21–23). Humans are unable to attain legal righteousness. This is why the righteousness of faith must be “imputed”—that is, attributed to us by God, though legally we are unrighteous. “Although I am a sinner by the law, as touching the righteousness of the law, yet I despair not, yet I die not, because Christ liveth, who is both my righteousness and my everlasting and heavenly life. In that righteousness and life I have no sin. . . . I am indeed a sinner as touching this present life and the righteousness thereof” (26). The enemies of Paul, Luther proposed, “mingled the law with the Gospel,” and so of necessity perverted the gospel. “For either Christ must remain, and the law perish, or the law must remain, and Christ perish; for Christ and the law can by no means agree and reign together in the conscience” (67). This sentence, however, gives too negative an impression of Luther’s view of the Jewish law and good works: We grant that we must teach also good works and charity, but it must be done in time and place, that is to say, when the question is concerning works, and toucheth not this article of justification. But here the question is, by what means we are justified and attain eternal life. To this we answer with Paul, that by faith only in Christ we are pronounced righteous, and not by the works of the law or charity: not because we reject good works, as our adversaries accuse us. . . . Wherefore since we are now in the matter of justification, we reject and condemn all good works: for this place will admit no disputation of good works. In this matter therefore we do generally cut off all laws and all the works of the law. (141f., emphasis added)

Some of this agrees with Paul’s views, especially the point that in discussing justification (or righteousness) and the law in Paul, we must distinguish between one subject and another. Paul wrote different things about the law and works, depending on what the question was. On the other hand, there is no hint of “mere imputation” in Paul’s thought; he 3. Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, rev. and completed trans. based on the “Middleton” text, ed. Philip S. Watson (London: James Clarke & Co., 1953), 16. The original text was published in 1535; the translation basically is from 1575. This explains the archaic English, which seems to me suitable.

405

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

believed that those who died with Christ were really changed and no longer lived in sin. One of Luther’s slogans was simul justus et peccator, “at the same time justified and a sinner.” That was not Paul’s view. The most seriously defective aspect of Luther’s view of Paul, however, was the opinion that prior to Paul all individuals were engaged in the effort to save themselves by good works (see “by his own works,” above). People in the ancient world did not believe that all individuals faced God alone and had to think up ways to save themselves. They did not have the problem that Luther attributed to them. But Luther was right on one important point: Paul was not at all against good works. On the contrary, he recommended them often, and he was a champion of effort. To remind you of Paul’s view of faith and works: by faith Christians receive the Spirit, which leads them in the right paths, and they therefore avoid evil and do good. As a second example, I take a Pauline passage that we discussed in chapter 14 above: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body” (2 Cor 5:10). Taken alone, this sentence seems to say that Christians must earn salvation by doing more good deeds than bad. But reading the rest of Paul’s letters will show that that is not his full meaning. He thought that the route to salvation was faith in Christ, not the compilation of good deeds. To summarize: Paul always favored good deeds, which he did not call “works of law.” He opposed forcing his gentile converts to accept the particular “works” of the Mosaic law that, if accepted, would have made his converts Jewish. He thought that as gentiles they could be one person with Christ.

406

20

Insider and Outsider in Ancient Judaism

In this chapter we substantially change topics, from what is internal or external to the individual human to a group’s conception of people who are outside the group. The topic of insiders and outsiders has a lot to do with tolerance, exclusivism, bigotry, and the like. These attitudes of course are inside human beings. It is difficult to generalize about Jewish attitudes towards gentiles in the first century. In a very small but highly influential book, Jesus’ Promise to the Nations, Joachim Jeremias offered a partial history of Jewish views of gentiles.1 First, there was a “universalistic tendency, in agreement with Old Testament prophecy,” that some or possibly many gentiles might be included in the “future glory of Israel” (p. 41). For several reasons this attitude did not last. “In addition to [Jewish] hatred of idolatry, their attitude was largely determined by the oppression which they had undergone at the hands of foreign nations, and by their fear of the increasing prevalence of mixed marriages” (p. 40). Jews viewed gentiles as “rejected by God, . . . as worthless in his eyes as chaff and refuse; . . . steeped in vice; given over to every form of uncleanness, violence, and wickedness” (p. 40). Consequently, in Jesus’ day the “dominant popular expectation” was that there would be a

1. Joachim Jeremias, Jesus’ Promise to the Nations, ET S. H. Hooke (London: SCM, 1958).

407

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

day of divine vengeance, especially on Rome, followed by the final destruction of the gentiles (p. 41). Jeremias pointed out that the post-70 period is outside the scope of his study, which concludes with Jesus (p. 62). He nevertheless added for good measure that in Rabbinic literature “universalistic conceptions are of rare occurrence; the exclusively nationalistic conception of the Messianic age which envisaged the destruction of the Gentiles had completely prevailed after the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70” (pp. 61–62). The point of the book (which is not our concern here) is this: Jesus thought that the present generation of Jews would be destroyed and that the gentiles would take their place (quoting Matt 8:11–12 and other passages). What can we say about the generalizations that describe a historical change from the late prophetic period to the time of Jesus? First of all, it must be granted that scholars and teachers need to be able to generalize about their fields. For example: “it was a period of religious eclecticism.” But then one needs to add accurate specifications. For fuller comprehension, one should supply instances that do and others that do not fall within each generalization. The more detail that can be added, the better. With more study, some generalizations can be overthrown, though they had held the field for decades. One part of the specific information offered by Jeremias was erroneous. It is not true that the opinion that at the judgment all gentiles would be destroyed completely dominated the post-70 rabbinic view. Though the Tannaitic literature shows a mixture of opinions, the view that there were righteous gentiles (presumably those who followed the “Noachian” laws) who would be saved is more frequent.2 On this point Jeremias was misled by the material collected by Paul Billerbeck, and especially by Billerbeck’s summaries.3 But there are larger problems than getting the Rabbis wrong. There are two main 2. See Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 206–11. 3. H. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1926), vol. 1, 360–61. These summaries are very misleading. For example, the passages that “prove” that “universalism” was “early” include passages from Midrash Psalms and other late Midrashim. When individual Rabbis are named, they are late (e.g., R. Johanan, who, according to Billerbeck, died in the year 279). The other information on early universalism and later unremitting hostility to gentiles is equally dubious. Billerbeck repeats his generalization about early universalism and late exclusivism, 4:883, again disregarding the dates of the texts cited and what they say. Jeremias cites 4:883 as proving his point, and adds a few more pages, none of which do.

408

INSIDER AND OUTSIDER IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

errors. First, during the period in question (from the late prophets to Jesus) there were numerous external events that made opinions swing first this way then that. Secondly, within Judaism there were always a lot of different opinions about everything. During this period parties arose and steadfastly disagreed with one another—guaranteeing that there could not be just one point of view. To give one quick example: the strife between the Hasmonean brothers, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, both of whom claimed the throne, was so disruptive and destructive that some people sighed with relief when the Roman general Pompey conquered Judea (63 BCE). The complexity of the period is so great that I think it impossible to use two or three generalizations to establish Jewish attitudes towards gentiles. We might be able to break the question down by author (e.g., Philo) and group (e.g., the early post-70 rabbis.) To show the complexity of the period, however, I wish to examine some specific historical occasions to see what we can learn. We start with the return from exile and the book of Ezra. According to Ezra 10, Ezra decreed that the exiles—that is, the returned exiles—should assemble in Jerusalem, and that if they did not appear within three days their property would be forfeited, and they would be excluded from the congregation of Israel. This was, of course, the result of the decision of the leading returned exiles that the “people of the land” were not really Jews and that only they, the exiles, were. Some returned exiles might wish to drop out, and they selected themselves. Those men who had married foreign wives but who wished to be included in the congregation of Israel had to send their wives and children away. One thinks of the phrase “ethnic cleansing.” From the same period, Nehemiah dusts off Deut 23:3: “No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.” Nehemiah 13:1–3 indicates that when the returned exiles read this passage they excluded from Israel all those of foreign descent—except, I would think, any members of David’s family, since David was descended from Ruth, who was a Moabite. The force of this exclusion is partly the same as the exclusion implied in Ezra 10: the leaders of the Jews who returned to Palestine from the exile regarded most of the people who lived in the land as not being truly Jewish. The effect of this view is quite straightforward, and it is seen in a decree that Josephus’s source attributes to Antiochus III: “It is unlawful

409

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

for any foreigner to enter the enclosure of the temple which is forbidden to the Jews, except to those of them who are accustomed to enter after purifying themselves in accordance with the law of the country” (Ant. 12.145). The decree further forbids anyone to bring into the city living or dead animals, except those that are suitable for sacrifice. That is, the Jews, beginning at least with Nehemiah, wanted their temple, and thus their community, to be exclusively Jewish. For the first time, the temple existed in an environment of mixed races (at least as the returned exiles saw the matter), rather than in a predominantly Israelite culture in which there were relatively few resident aliens. Non-Jews, like almost all ancient people, regarded temples as fun and beneficial (festivals, red meat, etc.), and they also thought “the more the merrier.” So nearby gentiles (or people considered gentiles by the returned exiles and their descendants) wanted to participate in the rites of the Jerusalem temple. The decree of Antiochus III shows that this situation had continued for a few centuries (the exiled Jews began returning to Judea c. 539 BCE; the reign of Antiochus III began c. 222 BCE). What biblical law restricts access to the temple to practicing monotheists of Jewish descent? It is hard to find one. The natural assumption would be that people who lived nearby could worship in the temple in Jerusalem. According to Num 15:14–16, “An alien who lives with you, or who takes up permanent residence among you, and wishes to offer an offering by fire . . . shall do as you do.” Despite this view, the returned exiles felt the need to establish a strong Judean identity in difficult circumstances, and they latched onto Deuteronomy 23, which excluded Ammonites and Moabites, and applied it to all foreigners. The period of Ezra and Nehemiah did not establish a continuous practice of completely excluding non-Jews from enjoying the temple. When in new circumstances Jerusalem was visited by merchants, traders, and tourists, Herod solved the problem by adding a temple court that was accessible to gentiles. Although there would be other crises, Jewish self-definition never went through another difficulty that was equal to the one that faced the returned exiles, and so the rule of Ezra that excluded from the temple some people who regarded themselves as belonging to Israel did not last forever.

410

INSIDER AND OUTSIDER IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

Another great crisis, however, arose during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (c. 216–164 BCE), when some Jews Hellenized so strongly (e.g., by disguising circumcision) that the pious decided that they had dropped out. The Hellenized Jews who did not flee or lie very, very low were probably killed during the early stages of the Hasmonean revolt (1 Macc 2:44). This “exclusion” of born Jews was, in the view of the pious, a matter of community survival, as at the time of Ezra. Other extreme crises, such as the two revolts against Rome, also heightened the question of who the true Jews were, but the slight evidence indicates that there were no systematic efforts to redefine Judaism, so as to exclude born Jews, as there were at the time of Ezra and during the Hasmonean revolt. From the time of Nehemiah on, however, the ruling Jews either eliminated gentile participation in the worship of the God of Israel or reduced it to the periphery, as in Herod’s temple. Yet apart from denying or restricting gentile worship in the temple, Jews were either willing or eager to be on good terms with gentiles. They certainly did not avoid all association with them. We shall wish to bear in mind a sentence in Acts, in which Peter told the gentile Cornelius, his relatives, and friends that “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile” (Acts 10:28).4 This is a greatly exaggerated view of Jewish behavior towards gentiles. I shall give a few examples of association and limits on association in chronological order: 1. Aristobulus I, the heir of John Hyrcanus, who reigned approximately a year, from 104 to 103 BCE, defeated the Itureans and took over part of their territory. He expelled those who would not be circumcised and agree to live according to the Jewish law (Ant. 13.318). He wanted a pure Jewish state. 2. Alexander Jannaeus (r. 103–76 BCE) used gentile mercenaries from Pisidia and Cilicia in Asia Minor (Ant. 13.374). His Jewish opponents sought help from Demetrius Akairos, one of the

4. This is one of two passages cited by Philip Esler in his second attempt to prove that “there was a strong body of Jewish opinion at this time [50–60 CE] that [it] was prohibited under the law” for Jews and gentiles to share table fellowship “in the full sense of sitting around a table with them and sharing the same food, wine and vessels”: Philip Esler, The First Christians in Their Social Worlds: Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1994), 66–68, quoting Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts: The Social and Political Motivations of Lucan Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 84.

411

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

contenders for the throne of Syria (Ant. 13.376f.).5 These wars obviously mixed Jews with gentile soldiers. During the reign of Salome Alexandra (76–67 BCE), one of her sons, Aristobulus II, with his allies, called “the powerful,” threatened to seek refuge from the Pharisees by allying themselves with Aretas the Arab and other foreign enemies of the Jewish state (Ant. 13.410–15)—which would mingle Jews with Arabs. After the death of Salome Alexandra, her two sons, Hyrcanus II, Salome’s designated heir, and Aristobulus II, the abler of the two, fought for control of the Jewish state. At one point Hyrcanus II, who was the high priest as well as (in theory) the king, fled to Aretas the Arab and stayed with him in Petra. Aretas, with Hyrcanus II, marched against Aristobulus II (Ant. 14.14–21). At a later stage in the conflict, both men sent gifts and envoys to Pompey the Great, a Roman general who was then in Syria. Independent Jewish envoys urged that both the Hasmoneans were acting as mere kings, whereas it was the custom of the country to be ruled by priests; they wanted Pompey to get rid of them both. At the time Pompey decided to back Hyrcanus, but he ended up conquering Jerusalem, imposing tribute on Judea (Ant. 14.74), freeing the gentile territories that previous Hasmonean rulers had conquered, and partially reorganizing the government before withdrawing (Ant. 14.34–76).6 The gentile cities that Pompey liberated from Jewish rule celebrated, and some of them struck coins that treated the date of their liberation as the beginning of a new era. Herod the Great, who was an observant Jew—he had a miqveh in each of his palaces—associated freely with gentiles. He and Mark Antony were friends, but after the battle of Actium, when it became clear that Octavian was going to win, Herod allied himself with Octavian, welcomed him to Jewish Palestine, supplied his army for the march to Egypt, and accompanied Octavian on the trip (Ant. 15.187–201). Josephus son of Matthias, often known as Flavius Josephus, since for the second half of his life he was sponsored by the Flavian family (Vespasian and Titus), was an aristocratic priest, related

5. Schürer I, pp. 134, 223f., calls him Demtrius II Eucaerus (Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B. C. –A.D. 135), Rev. and ed. Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar. 4 vols. (Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1973). 6. Later Alexander, one of Aristobulus’s sons, “overran” Judea, and Gabinius, governor of Syria, defeated him and organized the government again (Ant. 14.82–91).

412

INSIDER AND OUTSIDER IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

on his mother’s side to the Hasmoneans (Life 1–6). When he was twenty-six years old, in about the year 61 CE, he was sent on a mission to Rome. The Roman procurator, Felix, had sent two priests to Rome to answer an unspecified charge. These priests were friends of Josephus, and obviously they were also aristocrats, or they would not have been worth sending to Rome. Josephus was sent to Rome to see if he could obtain the release of his friends. He was especially eager to go, since they were living on figs and nuts, which he describes as being in accord with “piety towards God” (Life 13f.). When he reached Rome, he formed a friendship with a Jewish actor who was a favorite of Nero. The actor introduced Josephus to Nero’s wife, Poppaea, who agreed to secure the release of the priests. She sent Josephus on his way with presents (Life 16). These seven cases all concern aristocrats and only incidentally ordinary people. No one wrote the history of the common people, except when they rioted, took to the streets to protest against a ruler, fought in wars, and the like. One of the seven cases deals with Herod, the Jewish king from 37 to 4 BCE, who was not a priest. The others deal with priests, including especially the Hasmonean high priests. What do we learn? 1. First, we see that the Jews, as well as others, wanted a fairly homogenous state. The Hasmoneans wanted to turn some of the territory that they conquered Jewish, and they conducted forced conversions. In the case of other conquered territory, however, they were content with booty, tribute, and political domination. The conquered territories that did not become Jewish—namely, the gentile cities on the periphery of the Jewish territory—also wanted to be more or less homogenous city-states. Homogeneity was cultural rather than racial or ethnic. The Jews wanted a Jewish state, preferably governed by priests; the gentiles wanted a pagan state, governed on the Greek model. 2. Association with gentiles was generally accepted. Hyrcanus II, who was the high priest—though at the time he may have been temporarily relieved of his duties—lived for a while with an Arab king, Aretas. All of the Jews in our stories—including the envoys of the people, who went to Pompey to protest against both Aristobulus II and Hyrcanus II—were obviously entirely comfortable being in the presence of gentiles. Moreover, they had to travel through gentile territory to reach

413

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Pompey’s headquarters in Syria. Travel, which necessarily involved contact with gentiles, clearly was not a problem for Jews. Thus the young Josephus went to Rome, traveling mostly by ship. There was not an ancient equivalent of El Al, and so he traveled in close proximity to gentiles. The Jews, that is, deliberately sought out some gentiles in order to gain their support, and numerous circumstances (such as travel) led them to be in the company of gentiles even when that was not their specific aim. 3. Food was a special issue. If it is true that the priests whom Josephus went to rescue were living on figs and nuts, they were refusing to eat any cooked food. Ordinarily even the most restrictive Jewish diet permitted cooked vegetables. I do not understand the restriction to figs and nuts, but conceivably it was a form of protest against their treatment. Josephus does not say about himself that he refused to eat anything other than fruit and nuts while on his mission, and the fact that he mentions it with regard to his friends may indicate that this sort of restriction was rare. We may well wonder what Hyrcanus II ate while he was living at the court of Aretas in Petra. He would not have wanted to offend the Arab king, whose help he sought. It would not have been reasonable for him to import his own food from Palestine: it would have spoiled. He could have lived on vegetables, or Aretas could have had animals slaughtered in such a way as to remove all the blood—and in fact this was a common form of slaughter—or he could have eaten what Aretas ate. We do not know what in fact Hyrcanus did, but certainly the third possibility must be entertained. I discuss food, drink, and eating with gentiles extensively in Chapter 8 of this volume. I conclude there that most of the passages that deal with these issues “have at least the implied paraenetic purpose of advising Jews what to do when in Gentile lands or at Gentile tables: Avoid the meat and wine, and preferably bring your own food.” If we think of the time of Jesus and Paul, we shall recognize that it was not possible for Jews, either in Judea or in the Greek-speaking Diaspora, to avoid association with gentiles. Intermarriage was most strongly prohibited. Next came gentile food and drink. This means that most Jews did maintain a fair degree of separation from the common culture. Most withstood the pressure or the temptation to assimilate, which is why Judaism survived as an intact culture and religion. But they lived in a world full of foreigners, they had to get along with them

414

INSIDER AND OUTSIDER IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

to a considerable degree, and they could not have come near the view stated in Acts 10:28. Although all of our evidence indicates that Jews and gentiles had to intermingle in various ways, and that they often had to cooperate, we do not know what Jews felt in their hearts for these gentiles. Jeremias wanted a history of internal attitudes, but it is not available. Internal attitudes presumably fluctuated from person to person and from one circumstance to another. Generalizations about how Jews felt about gentiles over a range of several hundred years are, in my judgment, worthless. In the next chapter we shall take up the question of how Christians viewed outsiders.

415

21

Insider and Outsider in Early Christianity

This essay on outsiders in early Christian thought deals with exclusiveness and inclusiveness. In the previous chapter we found that Jews separated themselves from the world of paganism in several ways. I shall summarize briefly: the vast majority of Jews in the ancient world avoided gentile meat and wine, and on the whole they did not marry gentiles. In most circumstances, and especially in the Diaspora, they favored friendly or at least peaceable relations with gentiles, and they had a theological explanation of their partial separateness. God had called them to be a people apart; by being true to that calling, they could be a light to the gentiles. Many of their customs and beliefs—monotheism, food laws, circumcision, Sabbaths—succeeded in making them at least partially separate, and these laws served to keep Jews away from idolatry. If they accepted too many gentile customs, Judaism would disappear, and the world would lose its only monotheistic faith. Christianity originated as a sect or movement within Judaism, which would lead us to expect that it would be more separatist than its parent, at least in its early years. A subgroup, such as Christianity was, is almost necessarily more restrictive with regard to membership than is the larger group. On the other hand, Christianity soon developed a universalistic message: Jesus came to save the entire world. I wish to spend this essay looking at some of the evidence for self-enclosure and 417

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

avoidance of outsiders, and also for evidence of universalism. It was my original intention to give examples of inclusiveness and separateness in Christian sources from the Gospels into the fourth century to illustrate how many Christians accepted for themselves the Jewish perspective on life in the pagan world. Christians sometimes called themselves “a peculiar people” or “a people set apart,” quoting the very same passages from the Hebrew Bible as Jews had quoted (such as Deut 14:2). Of the large quantity of the material from the second to the fourth centuries, I shall give only the example with which I had planned to end: Nonna, the mother of one of the Cappadocian fathers (Gregory of Nazianzus, 329–89), according to her son, “never once grasped the hand or kissed the lips of any heathen woman.”1 This extreme exclusivism was something that Christians should be proud of. Rather than fill this essay with illustrations of the point, I have decided simply to declare it, and to limit the body of this essay to the big three of the Christian movement: Jesus, John (that is, the author of the Fourth Gospel), and Paul. I shall begin with the Jesus as he is portrayed in Matthew. Few tasks in the humanities are more complicated and uncertain than sorting out the historical figure of Jesus behind the varying accounts in the Gospels. I do not plan to torture you with discussions of authenticity, and I shall merely choose evidence that supports what seems to me to be the generally correct view. According to Matt 15:21–28, a gentile woman begged Jesus to exorcise her daughter, who was tormented by a demon. Jesus told her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” She persisted in her request, and then he rebuked her more strongly: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She then asked for the crumbs that fell from the table, and finally Jesus relented and healed her daughter. Matthew also has Jesus tell his disciples that they should go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (10:6). This emphasis on the “lost” members of Israel is, I think, true to the historical Jesus. This would not have meant, of course, that he was against other Jews, but rather that he wanted to include all of Israel, including the least worthy, in the coming kingdom of God. In the parable of the prodigal son, one young man takes his inheritance early and spends it, ending up 1. Peter Brown, The Body and Society, 285–86, citing Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 18.10.

418

INSIDER AND OUTSIDER IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

impoverished. But he repents and returns to his father, who gives a feast to celebrate the return of the prodigal. The older son, who stayed with his father throughout, is resentful of the father’s generosity. The parable certainly does not praise the older son, but on the other hand it also does not say that he would be cast into the outer darkness. Thus I take it to be the case that Jesus did emphasize the lost but did not reject the others. Did Jesus expect the salvation of gentiles? There is not any clear and persuasive evidence in favor of an affirmative answer to the question. We note the saying in Matt 8:11–12, “many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness.” In its present form, this passage predicts that gentiles will replace Jews in the kingdom. I am inclined to assign this statement to a period after the lifetime of Jesus, when there were many more gentiles in the Christian movement than there were Jews. Thus Matt 8:11–12 is difficult to use as firm evidence. In Matthew, the dominant theory is that Jesus and his disciples restricted their mission to Jews during Jesus’ lifetime. This changed when the resurrected Lord appeared to his followers on a mountain in Galilee, where he ordered them to “make disciples of all nations,” that is, of the gentiles (28:19). Matthew’s principal view, that Jesus focused on Israel while his followers later spawned a mission to gentiles, seems to me to be historically right: Jesus restricted himself to Jews; after the resurrection experiences, his followers began a mission to gentiles. Though this takes our New Testament authors out of chronological order, I wish to turn next to the Gospel of John, which I shall treat very briefly. The Gospel of the love of God is a very strongly exclusivist work. It opens with opposition between the darkness and the light: “the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him” (1:11). Throughout John, “The world” is bad; it is the darkness. And chief among the representatives of “the world” are “the Jews,” who are Jesus’ steady opposition. But I do not want to dwell today on the depressing topic of the Jews in the Gospel of John. Let us just note the opposition between Jesus and “the world”: “If the world hates you,” says Jesus to the disciples, “be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own.

419

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you” (15:18f.). In chapter 17, Jesus says in prayer to God, “They [that is, the disciples] do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world” (17:16). Occasionally this animosity between Jesus and his followers, on the one hand, and the world, on the other, is relieved by the hope that the world might come to believe, as in 17:21. But the dominant thrust of John is toward the separation of the followers of Jesus from the world and the antipathy between Christianity and the world. John is, thus, a sectarian document. If one looked for a parallel in Jewish literature, one would be drawn to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which represent a tiny minority of Jews, and not to the works of mainline Jewish authors and groups. The sectarianism of the Gospel of John, of course, is not surprising: early Christianity was in fact a small sect. Now we turn to Paul, who is the chief topic today, as he was in chapter 19. We start with chapters 8 and 10 of 1 Corinthians. The Corinthian gentile converts wish to be able to attend the festivals of pagan deities and thus to enjoy red meat, as well as to watch the processions through the streets, games, drama, and all the other fun aspects of paganism. But the issue that they actually took up with Paul was “meat offered to idols.” Paul, of course, was appalled. We might guess that his reaction was visceral: it must have made him feel ill to think of his converts reverting to idolatry. But they had good theological arguments. “Paul,” they said, in my reconstruction of the debate, “it was you who told us that these idols are nothing—mere pieces of wood, stone, and metal—and that in fact there are no other gods. So what harm does it do for us to eat their food? We are eating food offered to nothing!” Paul’s response was complicated, and I shall simplify it. Basically he divides the issue into three parts, depending on specific circumstances. With regard to actually worshiping at an idol’s temple he is adamant: while it is true that there are no other gods, there are demons, and food offered to idols is offered to demons. Then he pronounces his ban: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” The logic is his doctrine of being one person with Christ: if one shares the bread and the cup of the Christian ritual meal (the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper), one shares in the blood and body of Christ. And that union

420

INSIDER AND OUTSIDER IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

excludes all other unions. One may not unite part of Christ’s body with a demon. The second context is food bought in the marketplace, for which Paul has a simple answer: “Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience, since ‘the earth and its fullness are the Lord’s’” (10:25f., quoting Psalm 24). Finally, what if one is invited to the house of a pagan? Here Paul has a liberal answer by Jewish standards, but I am sure that other Jews shared this view. Paul’s rule is this: “If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, ‘This has been offered in sacrifice,’ then do not eat it” (10:27f.). Paul immediately seems to retract this clear rule, and that is the complication that I shall leave out. The main thing to see is how Paul dealt with the problem of partial separation from society because of idolatry. He wished completely to ban worship in pagan temples, but on social and economic relationships between Christian converts and pagans he was more flexible. The second aspect of Paul’s letters that is relevant to the insideroutsider question consists of those passages where he makes a very clear and forceful distinction between those within and those without. We all have bipolar minds, but Paul is a standout in this regard—as in so many others. He viewed the Christian movement generally, and especially his own section of it, as a persecuted, isolated little group, while everyone outside was condemned—or so it usually seems. The earliest surviving Christian document is 1 Thessalonians, and in it Paul reflects on the fact that the Thessalonian converts are suffering. “You,” he wrote them, “became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judaea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews” (2:14). So in Jerusalem the Jews were persecuting Jewish Christians, and in the pagan world gentiles were persecuting gentile Christians. The fact of persecution certainly must have intensified the tendency toward exclusivism in the Christian movement. The most remarkable passage about persecution, however, comes in 2 Corinthians 11, where Paul is combating “false apostles” who have come to Corinth and are weakening his influence. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are the Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman—I am a better one: with far greater labors, far

421

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. (2 Cor 11:22–27)

Of course we may allow for some rhetorical exaggeration in this list of woes. After Paul claims “countless” floggings, he promptly counts them. What I wish you especially to note, however, are the groups of people who are a danger to him: “my own people” (that is, Jews), gentiles, and “false brothers” (that is, non-Pauline Christians). Here the great apostle sets himself and his little group off from everybody else. When he was feeling less stressed and hounded, he still made a sharp division between his group and the rest of the world. Other people were enslaved to sin and the flesh, whereas Christians lived by the Spirit. The flesh-Spirit dichotomy appears especially in Gal 5:16–26 and Romans 6:1 through 8:17. For example, “if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (8:13). The context makes it clear that only those in Christ live according to the Spirit. Paul often implies or directly predicts the future destruction of the outsiders, as in Philippians 3, “Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we expect a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (3:17–20). In a fragment of a letter now found in 2 Cor 6:14–7:1, probably written before our 1 Corinthians, Paul forbids his converts to be “mismatched with unbelievers.” He asks a series of rhetorical questions: “what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Belial? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” The answer is, of course, none! To support this view, that righteous Christians should stay apart from unbelievers, he quotes a catena of passages from Jewish Scripture about the virtue of separateness, such

422

INSIDER AND OUTSIDER IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

as “Therefore come out from them and be separate from them” (Isa 52:11, quoted in 2 Cor 6:17). The point of this separateness, of course, was to avoid idolatry and the sins that went with it, which to Jews, including Paul, meant especially sexual immorality. This is almost precisely what we saw in discussing Jewish exclusivism in the Letter of Aristeas in the previous chapter. Later Paul modified the requirement of separation. He realized, on reflection, that his converts could not entirely avoid contact with wicked people. He clarifies this topic in 1 Corinthians 5, just after he has ordered that the man living with his stepmother should be expelled from the church: I wrote you in my [previous] letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons—not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral, or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. (1 Cor 5:9–11)

In this revision Paul allowed his converts to have normal relationships with the great mass of people who were immoral or idolaters or both, but he wanted them to sever all relationships with Christians who were guilty of such sins. This slightly odd behavioral rule, which allowed more contact with nonbelievers than with lapsed believers, was, I assume, dictated by the practical consideration that Paul himself named: the small Christian groups had to live in and around nonbelievers, and they had to do business with them. We shall now look at the third aspect of outsiders in Paul’s letters. In some circumstances Paul wanted his converts to stay away from them as much as possible, so that they would not be contaminated by immorality and idolatry, but from another point of view he hoped to influence outsiders and maybe even make them insiders. Paul was highly conscious of propriety and the way things looked to others. He advised his converts to work with their hands, so that they would “behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one” (1 Thess 4:12). Begging on the street did not look good to others. Similarly, one of his several problems with the desire of the Corinthians to speak in tongues had to do with outsiders: “if you say a blessing with the spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say the ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving, since the outsider does not know

423

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

what you are saying?” (1 Cor 14:16). “If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your mind?” (v. 23). Thus sinful outsiders are to be avoided, but interested outsiders are to be encouraged, and Christians should behave in a way that is becoming and attractive—a perfect example of the Jewish view. We have just been examining some of Paul’s stark contrasts: “we” against “them”; light against dark; good against evil; sin and the flesh against the Spirit of God; and so on. Yet he was also capable of wonderful flights of universalism, which is the final topic for this chapter and for this part of the book. I have decided to go out on a high note. In Romans 5 Paul compares Adam and Christ: “Just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification [righteousness] and life for all.” Did he really mean all? Did he mean that the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end he described in vibrant colors in Phil 3:17–19, would be saved through Christ instead of being destroyed? Is salvation through Christ really as universal as human sinfulness? It is possible to take the neat antithetical phrase of Rom 5:18 as mere rhetoric; it sounds fine to balance Adam and universal sin with Christ and universal salvation, but possibly it is just a fine-sounding statement. I would myself take it that way were it not for the end of Romans 11. In Romans 9–11 the problem has been the Jewish people, and Paul begins by grieving over them, apparently on the assumption that most of them will be lost. But as he works his way along, this becomes less and less satisfactory. He of course has human sympathy for his kin, but he also has a deeply theological problem. Would God’s promises fail? Did he call Abraham, save the Israelites from Egypt, give the law through Moses, bring the people into the promised land—for nothing? Would they be lost because of not believing in Jesus after all that work and all those promises? Surely not! And so Paul figured out how he and God together could save them. God’s plan, Paul had long thought, following the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, was that first God would restore the people of Israel, and then the gentiles would come in. But as Paul wrote Romans, it became clear to him that the scheme was in fact to be reversed: first he—Paul—would lead his gentiles and their offering in triumph to Jerusalem, and then the Jews would become jealous and themselves

424

INSIDER AND OUTSIDER IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

turn to faith in Christ. He repeats this scheme three times, probably because he had just thought of it. “Have they [the Jews] stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumbling salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous” (11:11). That’s number one. A few verses later: “Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry in order to make my own people jealous, and thus I shall save some of them” (11:13f.). And finally, “I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And thus all Israel will be saved” (11:25–26a). “And thus” means “as a result of my gentile mission.” Paul continues, “for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”; this repeats the promise of the salvation of the Jews. When New Testament scholars began to take this seriously, as they did a few decades ago because of an article written by Krister Stendahl,2 at first full attention was focused only on the argument to the point that my summary has thus far reached, 11:26a, ending “and thus all Israel will be saved,” which is supported by verse 29, “God will not revoke the gifts and the call of Israel.” And so the question became whether or not Paul provided a second chance or an alternative path for the Jews. But in fact the argument has one more stage. Paul continues, “Just as you [gentiles] were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they [Jews] have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all [people] in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (11:28–32). Paul has reached a point that he scarcely understands, and he could only burst into praise: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (11:22). Just when we thought we had a nice, tidy, hard-hitting sectarian Paul, calling his little group the people who would be saved and cheerfully condemning everyone else to destruction, he rises above the sectarian stereotype and proclaims salvation to all. What is going on? To answer this, we note that when he states that “all Israel will be saved,” he quotes Isaiah: “Out of Zion will come the Deliverer; he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.” “And this is my 2. Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” HTR 56, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Harvard Divinity School, 1963), 199–215.

425

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

covenant with them, when I take away their sins” (11:26f.). Paul read these passages eschatologically: they refer to the return of Jesus. As long as Paul was thinking of his own day-by-day mission, his successes, his failures, the people who shrugged him off, the people who hounded and attacked him, he naturally thought that those who turned him down—and their ilk—would be condemned. Paul the hardnosed exclusivist is Paul the apostolic warrior, fighting hard every day to try to win a few more people for Christ. But the Paul who occasionally paused in what seems to have been a largely frantic life, and who thought about the mystery and the power of God, was Paul the universalist. How could God lose? He created the world; he created all people. Who was going to snatch them away from him? Somehow what ought to happen would happen: God would win everyone. The redeemer would come from Zion and banish ungodliness. He would forgive and heal his own people, and he would save gentiles into the bargain. And finally, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, God would be all in all (v. 28). *** The chapters in this part of the book have aimed neither at establishing a thesis about any part of ancient religion, nor at proving anything about modern religion. I have not sought, for example, to show how Christianity is superior to Judaism, or how Judaism is superior to Christianity. I have not tried to prove that Paul really agreed with Luther, or with Thomas Aquinas, or with Calvin, and thus that one of the religions of today is closer to the Bible than another. I have not aimed at discovering one of the holy grails of New Testament scholarship, such as the truth about the historical Jesus. I have tried to explore how religious humans evaluate other people, especially other religious people. Being religious is a human activity, and it is, therefore, human actions, intentions, beliefs, virtues, and failings that I have tried to explore. Human nature is pretty evenly distributed, and both virtues and failings can be found in any human endeavor, including religion. There might be a general moral of the story these studies tell: be slow to judge. Only God can have full knowledge of an individual’s sincerity or hypocrisy; only he can truly judge when exclusivism is

426

INSIDER AND OUTSIDER IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

snobbery or bigotry and when it is necessary to protect what is valuable; only he can know how well someone’s inner person corresponds with his or her outward deeds.

427

22

Christianity, Judaism, and Humanism

Three hundred and forty-seven years ago, in the year 1660, the good people of Boston hanged Mary Dyer.1 What crime had she committed? She was a Quaker—more precisely a member of the Society of Friends—and she wanted to be in Boston in order to minister to imprisoned Quakers and to bear witness against what she regarded as an iniquitous law, which prohibited the practice of her religion. The Massachusetts Bay Colony had decided that Quakers should be banished on pain of death. Sometimes, instead, they were put in stocks or flogged, both publicly, and then held in prison. Mary Dyer was banished from Massachusetts in 1657 but kept coming back. The authorities arrested her, tried her, and sentenced her to death. She was granted a reprieve just before climbing the ladder to her doom. She was again banished, she again returned, and so she was sentenced to death a second time. This time the execution was carried out. She was hanged for supporting the Society of Friends. What terrible things had they done? They persisted in being Quakers—loving, kindly 1. This paper (Ch. 22, “Christianity, Judaism, and Humanism”) is a much revised version of previous lectures: Swan Lecture in Religion, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Oct 9, 2003; ‘Jesus, Jefferson and Humanism,’ Edward L. Mark Lecture, Harvard-Epworth Church, Cambridge, MA, Oct 30, 2003; “Christianity, Judaism and Humanism,” Baylor University and the Jewish Federation of Waco (Texas), March 1, 2007. I wish to express my thanks to Mikael Parsons, Carey Newman, and Jeffrey Peterson. On Mary Dyer, see Horatio Rogers, Mary Dyer of Rhode Island: The Quaker Martyr that was hanged on Boston Common, June 1, 1660 (Providence, RI: Preston and Rounds, 1896).

429

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

pacifists—and would not submit to the requirements of the ruling religion in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was Puritan. We usually say that the colonies were founded for freedom of religion, but most of the colonials wanted freedom for their own religion and not freedom for other people’s religions. Only in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island was there a lot of freedom. Within one hundred years of the execution of Mary Dyer, that is, by 1760, Americans in all of the colonies granted people freedom of religion. Quakers could live and practice their religion even in Massachusetts, and no one was killed because of their religious beliefs. And, of course, the principles of individual freedom were soon to be written into the founding documents of the new nation. The first amendment to the Constitution guaranteed freedom from the imposition of any particular religion by the government. All people had individual human rights, and one of the rights was freedom of religion. These are, by the way, human rights, not merely the rights of citizens of the United States. This was an enormous change, accomplished in fewer than one hundred years. Before 1660, religious persecution had been the European norm for centuries. In the name of Christ, Christians executed or made war on other Christians whose beliefs were slightly different; they persecuted Jews; they made war on Muslims. But by the middle of the eighteenth century, Europeans had largely stopped direct persecution, and in the American colonies it had stopped entirely or almost entirely. What had happened in the one hundred years after the execution of Mary Dyer in 1660 that changed European and American habits and laws so completely? It was not that the people of Europe and the British colonies in North America had suddenly become more Christian, nor that they had just discovered Leviticus 19, which ought to have been important in both Judaism and Christianity—love your neighbor as yourself. No, such sentences had been in the Bible a long time without creating religious or cultural tolerance. What had happened was the most successful, far-reaching intellectual revolution in human history. It transformed the world and the conditions of life. It made Europe, the United States, and other fortunate nations what they are today. We call it, in a word, the Enlightenment. Among other advances, the Enlightenment made humanism customary in the Western world. Here, I wish to discuss some aspects of the Enlightenment, especially humanism, but also the

430

CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM, AND HUMANISM

theory of government, as they relate to Judaism and Christianity. In this space I can’t actually canvass Jewish or Christian history, and so I shall focus a little bit on Jesus, who counts as belonging to both: he was born and reared as a good Jew, and his teachings are almost all paralleled elsewhere in Jewish literature. Then, of course, a new religion was based on following him and worshiping him. So he is the Jewish/Christian figure par excellence, and he was also a kind of humanist. In the eighteenth century, many people wished to accept the Enlightenment and the humanism that it incorporated while also being true to the teaching of Jesus. We shall see that in some ways the Enlightenment and humanism were antithetical to the Bible and Christianity, but the vast majority of Enlightenment thinkers wanted to combine humanism and biblical religion. How did it work? I start by a summary of two major and competing ways of viewing the world. One I shall call “top down,” the other “bottom up.” The topdown approach assumes that there is a natural and necessary chain of command: a series of orders that run from God to the rulers to the people. Government is put in place by God; the leaders of government can give what laws they like to people, whose choice is to obey or be punished. In the world of top down, rebellion against religion or state is rebellion against God: thus people who do not obey merit punishment. The entire Bible is very strongly top down. This is not to say that in the history of Israel and subsequent Judaism, the governments were cruelly dictatorial. On the contrary, there were a good number of benevolent rulers. But authority ran in one direction: from God to the king or later to the high priest and his council. Moses himself had given the books of the law to the priesthood (Deut 31:9), and it was their business to enforce them—top down. I’ll skip the next several hundred years and point out that the topdown system prevailed during the Middle Ages, with the doctrine of the divine right of kings. The theory of divinely ordained top-down rule ran into the seventeenth century. It began its decline in the English-speaking world in 1689, when James II of Britain was deposed and replaced by William of Orange, from the Netherlands. William was more open than James II had been to a bottom-up view of the world. This governmental theory holds that humans have rights by virtue of being human—not just those rights permitted by a benevolent king. The people, moreover, get to choose their rulers. The rulers govern only with the consent of the governed. This view is now

431

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

called democracy, from the Greek for “rule by the people,” and this governmental theory is in direct conflict with the top-down view. Where do these two competing views originate? Our culture is in all ways an amalgam of different cultures. Generalizing very broadly, we get ethics and theology from the Jews, and art, drama, science, mathematics, and democracy from the Greeks (with some help from the Romans). I shall now explain top down and bottom up slightly more fully, beginning with top down. Most governments from the beginning of time have been top-down governments, but when we consider our immediate ancestors and especially our inherited beliefs, we naturally begin with the Jewish ancestors of modern Western culture: the authors of the Hebrew Bible and postbiblical Jews, including Jesus and Paul. The view of the ancient Israelites and the Jews, including Jesus, was top down, and the victory of Christianity in the West guaranteed the success of a top-down approach. The view is that God appoints rulers and gives laws. Not only does he make the laws, he determines the course of history. Humans may try this or that, but in the end God calls all the shots. God, of course, in most of the Hebrew Bible, and in Judaism, and in the message of the Jews whom Christians follow—especially Jesus and Paul—was usually a kind and generous dictator. No body of law more emphasizes charity and love of one’s fellow than the Jewish law, and these principles were adopted by Jesus and Paul and thus in theory made their way into Christian thought. To understand the top-down view of the world, I think that the best single chapter to read is Leviticus 19. I shall select a few verses: Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: . . . You shall each revere your mother and father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths. . . . Do not turn to idols or make cast images for yourself. . . . When you offer a sacrifice of well-being to the Lord, . . . it shall be eaten on the same day you offer it, or on the next day. . . . When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien. . . . You shall not cheat in measuring length, weight, or quantity. You shall have honest balances, honest weights. . . . You shall love your neighbor as yourself. . . . You shall love the alien as yourself. (Lev 19:2–6, 9–10, 35–36, 18, 32)

432

CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM, AND HUMANISM

This is entirely typical of ancient Jewish law. God’s commands cover all topics: whom to worship, whom not to worship, how to sacrifice, treatment of parents, how to eat the sacrifices (all ancient religion included animal sacrifice), what holy days to observe, how to behave toward other people, how to conduct business, how to provide charity for the needy, and whom to love—both fellow Jews and aliens. The role of the people in this system was to obey as best they could. This topdown law, you will notice, is the soul of kindness, generosity, mercy, and charity. The notion—widespread among Christians—that Israelite and Jewish law emphasized wrath and vengeance depends on ignorance, the failure to read the entire Bible. Jesus inherited the top-down view. God—on whose behalf he spoke—tells people how to live and how to behave. Jesus repeated several of the key commandments from the Hebrew Bible—including especially love God and love your neighbor—and he added some perceptive and individual insights, often achieving a penetrating turn of phrase, such as do not resist the evildoer, but rather turn the other cheek (Matt 5:39). This is loosely based on Prov 20:22. I suppose that Jesus’ most famous ethical teaching was “to do to others as you would have them do unto you” (Matt 7:12). This principle was well known and advocated by other Jewish teachers, such as Hillel, Philo, and the author of the book of Tobit.2 Top-down rules, therefore, are not necessarily mean and vicious. They can be full of love and compassion, and in the case of Judaism and the teaching of Jesus they are. Historically, many people have been happy under a benevolent dictator. The problem is that power corrupts, and dictators begin to misuse it, and the heir of a good dictator is usually less benevolent. But, despite frequent abuse of power, top-down views include a form of humanism. What is humanism? For the purpose of this essay, I mean only the view that human values and needs are paramount over the requirements of worship and sacrifice. The old saying exemplifying humanism is that man is the measure of all things. Now you might wish to say, humans are the measures of all things. Or, as Jesus put it, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice,” which meant in his idiom, mercy more than sacrifice. In saying this (Matt 9:13; 12:7), Jesus quoted a Hebrew prophet, Hosea (6:6), and alluded again to Proverbs, which states, “To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord 2. Hillel in b. Šabb. 31a; Philo, Hypothetica 7.6; Tobit 4:15.

433

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

than sacrifice” (21:3). Thus the humanistic teaching of Jesus is based on the Hebrew Bible. The most extreme statement of this sort of humanism—putting human values above even divine worship—is found in Matthew 25. The setting of the chapter is the time of judgment. The Son of Man has come to earth and all nations are before him. He puts the sheep on one side and the goats on the other. He says, “Come, you that are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you . . . ; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food?” . . . And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”

The chapter does not depict the Son of Man as saying, You must keep the Last Supper and do it in such and such a way; you must transfer Sabbath rules to Sunday and keep them; or any of the other sorts of points that belonged to ancient religion. The Son of Man simply says, “Help other people and you are the children of my Father.” This is the extreme example of the humanism that can be achieved in the topdown view of the world. Inasmuch as you have done it for a fellow human being, you have done it for the Son of Man. In the Gospels, of course, Jesus gives no rules as to how government should be established and how the values that he taught should be enforced in society. Historians correctly explain that he thought that the kingdom of God would soon arrive, and so he did not legislate for future centuries. But the future centuries arrived, and to decide how government should work, Christians would turn to Paul and above all to one fateful chapter, Romans 13. “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment” (Rom 13:1–2). These words would help determine what Christians did when they gained political power. They supported the medieval doctrine of the divine right of kings—which, as I said above, continued in a weakened form in Great Britain into the seventeenth century, and which lasted a little longer in France. One other passage that was a crucial part of the top-down view of

434

CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM, AND HUMANISM

the coming centuries was Matt 16:18–19: “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” This power to bind and loose is given to the church collectively in Matt 18:18. So, from Romans 13 and Matthew 16 and 18, Christians, when they gained power in the Roman Empire, constructed a twofold system of authority: divinely ordained secular rulers—kings—ran the world; the Christian church, headed by the pope, had imprecisely defined but obviously great power. To summarize top down, which we inherited from the Bible, including Jesus and Paul: God makes all the laws and gives the authority to enforce them to one or a few individuals. Jesus himself, as far as we know, did not describe government, but Christianity naturally followed the top-down view that Jesus held: God rules. But he must rule through representatives, and interpreters must explain the divine will, and so power had to be put into the hands of some human beings. Ordinary people then were dependent on the kindness and generosity of those ruling human beings to see to it that Jesus’ extreme view of human values prevailed. They almost universally failed to do so. Christian leaders turned out to be as prone to the corrupting influence of power as anyone else. And Christian kings and governments proved ready to kill people over religious belief and practice—despite Jesus’ humanistic ethics. And so, in 1660, Mary Dyer followed tens of thousands of others in going to her death because of her religious beliefs. It’s what you get when you turn over to humans a top-down law that includes required religious belief and practice. The people who executed her were devout Christians. But they thought that they were the inspired interpreters who knew what sort of religion God wanted; and they had the power as well as the responsibility of enforcing that religion on everyone within their domain. I would emphasize their feeling of responsibility to enforce their religion. The leaders of Massachusetts did not want to execute Mary Dyer; they tried to avoid it, but they thought that they should enforce the requirement of correct religious belief, and her opinions were wrong. It was, of course, a question of interpretation. God himself, we may now suspect, did not actually favor Puritanism over the beliefs of the Society of Friends. Christianity in a top-down system, I am sorry to say, has never led

435

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

to tolerance of religious dissent, nor—despite Jesus’ own teaching—did it lead to the development of humane ethics. It turned, instead, into dogma, and Christian leaders were not very concerned with the welfare of ordinary people, but rather with whether or not they had the right opinions. If so, they would go to heaven, and God would see to their welfare there. It is harder to judge how the principles of loving the neighbor and loving the alien worked out in Judaism, because from 66 BCE to 1947 CE, about 2,013 years, the Jews were a minority, living either in the Roman Empire or in domains governed by Christians or Muslims. Under Christians they were often an oppressed minority. I regret that I am unable to discuss Judaism as it flourished in the Jewish communities of Christian Europe. So let me just say that in contemporary Britain and the United States, Jews are leaders in charitable activities. Jews on average have done better than Christians on average when it comes to helping other people. They follow their top-down law when it comes to the commandments to be charitable to others. So, to conclude this section: after Christianity became the principal religion in the Roman Empire, beginning in the fourth century CE, the inherited top-down view did not result in the enforcement of the humanistic ethics that we find in the Hebrew Bible, Jesus, and Paul. Now, a few words about the opposite principle: bottom up. The source was ancient Greece and in particular ancient Athens. The Athenians, as you know, invented democracy. It worked like this: the demos—the people—held elections and chose some people to sit on the Council. There were hundreds of members of the Council, the number varying somewhat, usually between four hundred and six hundred. The Council debated issues and decided on laws. Naturally there had to be executives who carried these laws out, and so the Council appointed various officers, such as judges and generals. The Greeks were extremely religious. They worshiped lots of gods and goddesses, held numerous festivals, and sacrificed zillions of animals. Greek religious law, unlike Jewish religious law, covered only religion in the strict or narrow sense: temples, purifications, festivals, sacrifices, and holy days. It was up to the Council to determine all other laws, such as the requirement of honest weights and measures—laws that in Judaism were given directly by God, as we saw in looking at Leviticus 19. In debates in the Council the Athenians might invoke the name of some god or other, but they had to argue their points on the basis of reason and logic. I call this bottom-up government because

436

CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM, AND HUMANISM

power resided in the people, the demos, and was decided by councilors elected by the people. Greek religion did not include ethical rules. There were, of course, individual and civic rules and laws, as well as accepted community rules of behavior. At the higher level, ethical concerns became the province of philosophers, who argued on the basis of reason, not revelation. Thus in Athens, government and ethics were both bottom up: Neither was based on divine law; both were subject to debate governed by reason that was based on education. Rome, which had adopted many aspects of Greek thought, finally conquered Greece. Rome, of course, established a vast empire. The stresses and strains of managing the empire turned Rome more and more from a republic into a dictatorship. The emperor rose in importance; the senate declined. Though Greek philosophy had been widely accepted by the Roman aristocracy, it could not stop the momentum in Rome toward top-down totalitarian dictatorship. This is symbolized by the life of Seneca, a Roman Stoic, who tried to teach and curb Nero, but who finally committed suicide on the order of his student. So much for philosophical ethics. When democracy yielded to a top-down dictatorship, democratic, humanistic ethics were often ignored by the people in power. Power corrupts. Centuries passed. The Western empire collapsed and was conquered by the Barbarians, who eventually accepted Christianity but not Greek democracy or philosophy. In the East, the empire, centered in Constantinople, carried on bravely for centuries, and Greek learning and philosophy stayed alive. But finally, in 1453, Constantinople fell to the Turks, and the last traces of the Roman Empire and Greek philosophy seemed to be lost forever. But not quite. Aspects of Greek philosophy (especially as mediated by the Latin author Cicero), including the principles of reason and democracy, began reaching Western Europe, thanks largely to the Muslims. For the sake of space, I have to omit this interesting story. But the result of Muslim influence was that European scholars rediscovered Aristotle and others. The fall of Constantinople resulted in the flight of some Greekspeaking scholars, with their texts, to Italy, and this helped fuel the Italian renaissance—the rebirth of secular, philosophical learning based largely on Greek and Latin texts. And soon you have people influenced by the bottom-up view of Athens, who start a movement called humanism, which was based on the principle that human values

437

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

should be put above top-down rules about holding the correct religious opinions. I hope that I am covering enough centuries on the way to Thomas Jefferson, a semi-Christian humanist. We are almost there. Hang on. Martin Luther’s Reformation is not entirely unrelated to the Italian Renaissance. Luther championed the right of individual Christians to read the Bible for themselves and to throw off the control of the pope. Luther struck at one of the pillars of the top-down view of the medieval world, the one based on Jesus’ gift of authority to Peter. This was an important and necessary step in overthrowing the old top-down order of the world. What really did it, however, was the broad transmission of Greek and Latin learning throughout the schools and universities of Europe. Soon schoolboys, in addition to Latin, were learning Greek. Not too many years later, scholars in the Netherlands and Germany were discussing “natural law,” an excellent Greek concept. It was needed for the growing international trade with non-Christian countries. Could there be law not given by the Christian God, not commanded by Christian European kings, but that belongs to the very nature of humanity itself, a law that will establish common ground in the far corners of the trade routes? For the first time since the ancient Greeks and Romans, leading scholars asked, Can there be bottom-up law, based not on divine decrees nor on royal proclamations but on humanity itself? Two of the leading figures in this discussion were Hugo Grotius of the Netherlands (1583–1645) and Samuel Baron von Pufendorf of Germany (1632–94). And then came one of the most momentous events in the history of Western civilization. If there was such a thing as natural law, law that applied whether or not God or a Christian government had decreed it, then there also had to be natural rights—rights that all humans had, whether or not God or a government had benevolently bestowed them. The shift of the discussion from natural law to natural rights was made persuasively by John Locke, who, more than any other single person, created Enlightenment philosophy. In the late 1600s John Locke and some other thinking Englishmen had been in exile in the Netherlands, hiding from James II. After William of Orange was called to London from the Netherlands to replace James II, Locke and other English exiles went back to England on the same boat that carried Mary to join William. And in the same year, 1689, Locke, freed from censorship, published A Letter Concerning

438

CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM, AND HUMANISM

Toleration, which championed freedom of religion. Mary Dyer had been dead for just twenty-nine years. The next year, 1690, Locke published Two Treatises on Government, which changed the Western world forever—or at least I hope forever; sometimes lately I haven’t been sure. The British parliament enacted a Bill of Rights in 1689 and also the Act of Toleration, giving many—not all—rights to Christians who dissented from the doctrines of the Church of England—people such as Quakers. If only Mary Dyer had lived to see the day! Quakers were to be tolerated! The year 1689 is frequently and correctly taken as the beginning of the Enlightenment—the view that civilization should be based on human reason, enlightened by education, not on someone’s interpretation of revelation. There ought to be a national holiday celebrating the years 1689–90. They set us free. Just a little more about Locke: For Locke, all (people) were by nature “free, equal and independent,” and were entitled to freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of worship. Moreover, citizens were to be free from restraint and violence from others, including their own governments: Locke claimed that the state exists for the good of [humanity], and not the reverse. [To reduce the corruption of power,] Locke proposed a system of “checks and balances,” including the separation of the elected legislative body from the executive power. Moreover, if the government fails to fulfill its obligations to the citizenry, the people have the right to rebel against it.3

Locke was a very pious man and also a highly expert commentator on the Bible, and he knew perfectly well what Paul had written: “those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.” But here, as in all matters, he followed reason and concluded that governments that take away the natural rights of humans may be overthrown. The founding fathers of the United States read both Paul and Locke, and here as in all other matters relating to government, they followed reason and Locke. They held that rebellion against a state that deprived humans of their natural rights was justified and was supported by natural law. 3. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (section 222. See Peter Laslett, ed., John Locke (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 212–14.

439

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

“No man by nature is bound unto any particular church or sect . . . ,” Locke wrote. Instead, the church member belongs to a “free and voluntary society, with its own laws . . . , but which laws pertain only to itself. The church has nothing to do with civil government, and has no inherent power to oppress or destroy churches of differing creeds, or to impose or forbid a particular [form of worship].” 4 It would take a long time for all the principles enunciated by Locke in the late 1600s to be worked out. In Locke’s world, as in ancient Athens, only free adult males with property could vote. The abolition of slavery and the right of women and poor males to vote lay in the distant future. The struggle to allow women to vote took longer than the struggle to liberate slaves. Without offering any of the gruesome details of women’s efforts to attain the right to vote, I shall just note that it was not until 1920 that all US women received the right to vote (Nineteenth Amendment); full rights for women in Britain were achieved in 1928. Finland, in 1906, and Norway, in 1913, had led the way on the rights of women. The problem with allowing people to vote was that leaders feared rule by an ignorant, uneducated, unfit mob. The poor, were, of course, ignorant, since education was private, and women were regarded as unfit for a role in public life. So democracy progressed slowly, and it had to await the development of universal education and an improved view of the capacities of women. Thus slowly, slowly, slowly—over a period of 240 years—the topdown old order was completely overthrown. Bottom-up democracy won in the West, not least in the new United States, which was founded by men who had been educated in the closely reasoned arguments of Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers. If Jefferson had not written the Declaration of Independence, someone else would have. The writing would have been less graceful, but the content would have been very similar. For example, Alexander Hamilton used the phrase “pursuit of happiness” eighteen months before Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.5 All educated Europeans, including the American colonials, had read the same sorts of things during the entirety of the eighteenth century. “Consent of the governed,” “rights of man,” “liberty,” and “happiness” as a reasonable goal of all humans, and many other phrases, had become common after Locke. Locke did not originate them all, but he gave clear and 4. “Note” to Laslett, The Second Treatise and Toleration, iii–iv. 5. Willard Sterne Randall, Alexander Hamilton (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 85.

440

CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM, AND HUMANISM

persuasive voice to them all, and they percolated through the educational systems of the English-speaking world. And they spread throughout Europe and the colonies. The philosophy of the Enlightenment determined the future of both Europe and North America. Universities and governments are all based on it. Everything must be judged by human reason. Human values are supreme. There may be no appeal in Parliament, Congress, or university lecture hall to someone’s interpretation of some revelation—except for illustrative purposes. In public life, religious dogma should be ignored in favor of human welfare. As you see, there is a conflict between two of our ancestral traditions, the Enlightenment and the Bible. The Bible is top down in its entire orientation. The Enlightenment—including government, education, science, and law—is bottom up. These principles are opposed to each other. The Enlightenment thinkers themselves did not clearly see the conflict between their way of thinking and the Bible. Most of them regarded themselves as Christians. One group, deists, deserves special mention. Deists—such as Voltaire and Jefferson—believed in God. They thought that he had created the universe just so, endowed it with laws, and turned it over to humans. God had given humans reason, by which they could discern the laws of the cosmos and of nature. But, deists thought, God had not subsequently intervened in the creation. This means, of course, that Jesus was not God incarnate, and thus deists were usually not considered Christians. Some of them, like Jefferson, regarded themselves as Christians. In his old age, Jefferson compiled a sort of New Testament, which he did by selecting the “true” parts of the Gospels and putting them together in a book. It was published after his death. The selections that he chose as true included especially Jesus’ ethical teaching and excluded supernatural events, such as the virgin birth and miracles. In his public life Jefferson was often attacked for being against religion and against Christianity. He refused to reply, not wishing to debate religion in public, since religion is of no concern to the state—a principle that now seems to have been abandoned, to our great loss. But Jefferson resented the attacks, and in correspondence with a friend, commenting on his views of religion, he wrote that his studies of the Bible produced results that were very different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those

441

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other. 6

The link that Jefferson and many others found between Christianity and Enlightenment deism was ethics—specifically, humanistic ethics. Jefferson disliked most of the churches of his day, because they insisted on complex dogmas, which he regarded as later accretions. If one goes back to what Jesus himself actually said, Jefferson held, one finds a supreme ethicist, who in fact embraced humanism: Jesus’ teaching reveals the same elevation of human values that we find in Athenian democracy and Greek philosophy. In the view of John Adams, human equality was not a new teaching of the Enlightenment, since equality was at the heart of Christianity.7 Therefore, Jefferson, Adams, and many others held, Enlightenment philosophy and true religion are one and the same—if you just pay attention to the right parts of the Bible. Secular philosophy, most of the Hebrew Bible, and Jesus all put human values uppermost. There is no conflict. The rejection of aspects of Christian dogma, however, did not mean that these men wanted to give up Christianity. No, they just wanted to reduce or eliminate the role of dogma. It was dogma that made Christianity inhumane. Burn John Hus! Hang all the heretics! It doesn’t matter how much people suffer in this world, if only they have the right opinions! Enlightenment thinkers regarded these aspects of religion as corruptions. In some ways the most important decision about religion in the new world of the Enlightenment, clearly exemplified in the United States, was Locke’s view that religion is private. Privatization of religion, more than any other single view, makes it possible for us all to live together in one country. You may believe that God appears to you each night and tells you what to do, or you may believe that he commands you or your group not to work or make a fire on the Sabbath, which you may fondly believe to be Sunday—you may do this as long as you do not either try to force it on me or use your revelations and your interpretations to harm others. We could never have had our nation if 6. Jefferson, letter to Doctor Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803. 7. David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 453.

442

CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM, AND HUMANISM

we did not accept this view: religion is private, and it can be binding only on a group of individuals who choose to accept it. When I was a little boy, one of my playmates confessed to me that he knew that I was going to go to hell, since he attended the Church of Christ, whose teachings made it clear to him that all Methodists would go to hell. I quaked a bit but merely asked whether we could still be friends. Sure, he said. All was well. Thank God for John Locke and Thomas Jefferson! Dilly Young and I could play in the same playground. We did not have to persecute each other. To reduce the grip of dogma, while still being Christians, lots of scholarly types did what Jefferson did: they went in search of the historical Jesus. The thought was that if we can get back to his original thoughts we shall be in touch with a living, vital voice that will energize our ethical endeavors as it frees us from the shackles of ecclesiastical dogma. Some of the Enlightenment principles have not worked out; the fervor of the Enlightenment has faded, and weaknesses have appeared, but parts live on: democracy, freedom, and the hope that we will be better people if we can find the real Jesus, whose teachings were shaped by the Hebrew Bible and agreed with those of other principal Jewish teachers, such as Hillel and Philo. I have thus far explained something about (a) the biblical top-down approach—God tells us what to do; (b) a teensy-weensy bit about the Enlightenment’s bottom-up approach—we must figure out what to do; (c) the conflict between these two approaches; and (d) the way in which our predecessors tried to hold them together, so that they could have both Locke and Jesus and parts of the rest of the Bible: the ethics, including especially human values, are the same. Now for one last, more pessimistic point. Some people today have discovered the conflict between top down and bottom up, which used to be a secret, and which was denied by Jefferson and Adams, and these people want us to revert to top down. It is humanism and the Enlightenment that separate us—the modern West—both from our own medieval past and from many other cultures. But some people wish to overthrow the Enlightenment and return to an earlier day, in which God tells a few people what is true, they come up with interpretations of these revelations, and they impose their views on others. We call these people, generically, fundamentalists. Christian fundamentalism was invented in the 1890s in the Midwestern part of the United States. It was formed specifically to oppose the scientific

443

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

progress of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and represents a desire to get back to an earlier day. Its view is that the Bible is all literally true; many hold that the Bible, as interpreted by fundamentalists, should govern public life. There are also Jewish fundamentalists, who think that God really gave Jews the entire holy land and that the Palestinians should be expelled or killed. And there are Muslim fundamentalists, who think that Islamic law should govern at least the Islamic countries—pushing them back into the eleventh century—and that the enemies of the movement should be brought to their knees. I do not plan to write now another chapter, this one on fundamentalism. I just want to note that it is growing and that it deliberately opposes the bottom-up view of the Enlightenment. In all forms of fundamentalism, revelation should be supreme, not reason; opposition to someone’s interpretation of revelation should be suppressed. Luckily, most Christian fundamentalists are American, and so in some corner of their souls they have inherited belief in freedom of religion. But if you ever wish to know what a world run by competing groups of top-down fundamentalists would be like, just study the Middle Ages for a while, or, better, the sixteenth century. Some right-wing Christians today are beginning to say that the present conflict is between Christianity and Islam. But if there is a worldwide cultural conflict, it is between the bottom-up view and all forms of top-down views. I am a mere historian. I am not a theologian, politician, or evangelist. I have tried to impart information about our civilization and the way in which two of our inherited cultures have been combined and how they potentially conflict. But of course I do have a view, and I shall say explicitly what it is. I like the great compromise achieved in the West between the top-down approach and the bottom-up approach. This great compromise allows individuals to draw the balance in slightly different ways, as long as public life remains undamaged. The great compromise introduces some inconsistencies here and there, and at some points Christians, Jews, and Muslims will ask whether they should obey God or man. But as long as the greatest principle of all—religion is private—is maintained, public conflicts can usually be avoided. I realize that compromise is often derided as revealing a lack of principle. But if one of your main principles is respect for and

444

CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM, AND HUMANISM

toleration of others—love of your neighbor—compromise is a necessary virtue. With regard to our common life, I prefer compromise to the alternatives. Pure rationalism, unfettered by religious convictions, is simpler. Fundamentalism, unfettered by concern for freedom and the human brain, is simpler. But history has given to us the challenge to make our system work, which combines many of the best features of the two greatest cultural ancestors of the Western world—the Greeks and the Jews.

445

Index of Names

Aaron (biblical figure), 317 Abraham (biblical figure), 34, 55; circumcision of, 220–21, 223, 226, 235, 396, 397; covenant with, 57, 63, 233–34, 391–92, 396; descendants of, 160–61, 175, 221, 232, 276n21, 396; election of, 49, 69, 175, 184, 233, 235, 389; faith and righteousness of, 224–25, 262, 395, 398–401; as proselyte, 158 Adam (biblical figure), 185n18, 221–22, 252, 282, 422 Adams, John, 440, 441 Adimantos, 326–28, 330, 330–31n5, 340 Agrippa I, 297 Agrippa II, 129, 181, 183 Akiba, Rabbi, 20, 46, 73, 219, 319–20, 379, 387 Albertz, Rainer, 335, 336 Alexander, Philip, 67–74, 77 Alon, Gedalyahu, 288–90, 293, 296–97 Antiochus III, 407–8 Antiochus Sidetes, 301 Antipater the Idumaean, 126, 129 Aqiba, Rabbi. See Akiba, Rabbi Aretas, 410, 411, 412 Aristobulus I, 409 Aristobulus II, 410

Asenath (biblical figure), 152–55 Augustus, 44, 126, 128 Balaam, 300 Barnabas (biblical figure), 287, 305, 364 Baumgarten, Albert, 26n74, 31, 36, 117–18, 218, 273 Baumgarten, Joseph, 101 Ben Sira, 318–21, 368–69 Billerbeck, Paul, 70, 406 Bousset, Wilhelm, 71 Browning, Robert, 227, 266, 315 Bultmann, Rudolf, 4, 6, 11, 14, 55, 225, 364, 389 Burkert, Walter, 26 Calvin, John, 77–78, 80 Campbell, Douglas, 244–45, 246–47 Chambers, Dudley, 2 Cicero, 44, 435 Claudius, 129 Clement of Rome, 401–2 Cohen, Shaye, 41 Combs, Eugene, 6 Dandamayev, M. A., 346 Daniel (biblical figure), 185, 283, 297–98 David (biblical figure), 314–15, 329, 345, 407

447

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Davies, W. D., 4, 5, 6, 13, 14, 25, 141–45, 247 Dodd, C. H., 5 Drusilla, 302 Dunn, James, 285–88, 293 Dyer, Mary, 427–28, 433–34 Eleazar, 178–79, 191 Eliezer the Great, Rabbi, 70, 73 Engsberg-Pedersen, Troels, 24 Epstein, J. N., 10–11, 25 Esler, Philip, 286, 293–95, 297, 409n4 Falk, Daniel, 65–66 Farmer, William R., 3–4 Fine, Steven, 125 Fox, Robin Lane, 20, 25–26 Frankfort, Henri, 60 Franklin, Benjamin, 189–90, 362–63 Freud, Anna, 58 Freud, Sigmund, 58 Gamaliel II, Rabban, 132 Goodenough, E. R., 5, 6–7, 8, 11, 24–25, 57n14, 144, 154–55, 157, 163–64, 167, 198 Goodman, Martin, 20 Gray, Rebecca, 92 Grobel, Kendrick, 225 Hamilton, Alexander, 438 Hanina ben Dosa, Rabbi, 378 Harnack, Adolf von, 47–49 Heinemann, Isaak, 57, 159–61 Herod of Chalcis, 129 Herod the Great, 44, 129, 177, 292, 410 Hezekiah (biblical figure), 314 Holtzmann, J., 197–98, 216 Hyrcanus II, 126, 129, 410 Isaac (biblical figure), 400–401 Isaiah of Jerusalem, 332 Ishmael, Rabbi, 20, 73, 379

448

Jacob (biblical figure), 381–82 James (apostle), 232, 285–86, 304–5, 364, 400 James II, 429–30, 436 Jannaeus, Alexander, 334, 409–10 Jefferson, Thomas, 436, 438, 439–40, 441 Jeremias, Joachim, 405–6, 413 Jesus: on acts in secret, 360–61; on bearing fruit, 310–11; as Christ, 230, 276–79, 394, 398; and forgiveness, 390; grace and truth through, 93; historical, 20, 416–17; humanism of, 431–32; and Judaism, 17–19, 385, 429–43; as messiah, 230, 254; as prophet, 406–7; on purity law, 358; redemption through, 226; revelation through, 195; on reward and punishment, 76; on Sabbath rules, 97; on salvation, 323; salvation through, 175, 242, 259, 396, 401, 415, 417, 420; teachings of, 48; and the world, 417–18 Job (biblical figure), 315–16 John (apostle), 7 Jones, A. H. M., 26 Joseph (biblical figure), 152–55, 170 Josephus, Flavius, 20–22, 40, 92–93, 410–11; on Caesar’s decree, 126–27; on dying for the law, 177–79, 191–93; on Essenes, 112–22; on freewill, 108, 186–91; on gentile impurity, 289–90, 301–2; on God’s grace, 110–11; on humanity, 300; on Jewish rights, 44; on Jewish separatism, 300–301; on Moses, 127–28, 137, 301; on parties, 32, 89, 115; on prayer, 137–38; on providence, 108, 179–83, 185–86; on redemption of Israel, 283; release of priests by, 411; on reward and punishment,

INDEX OF NAMES

390–91; on Sabbath, 96, 116–17, 130–31; on salvation, 194; on synagogues, 130, 135; on temple, 407–8; on temple tax, 44–45; on tithing, 347–48, 349; on unity of Judaism, 129 Joshua, Rabbi, 73, 379 Josiah (biblical figure), 314, 379–82 Judah, Rabbi, 73 Julius Caesar, 44, 126–27, 129, 227, 269, 352 Juvenal, 128–29, 130, 132, 301 Kamrat, Mordechai, 9–10 Knox, John, 4, 216 Koetting, Phyllis DeRosa, 17–18 Levine, Lee, 26, 138 Lightfoot, J. B., 249–50 Locke, John, 436–38 Luther, Martin, 66, 77–78, 80, 400, 402–4, 436 Marcus Aurelius, 207 Marcus Vipanius Agrippa, 44 Mark Antony, 227, 267, 269, 410 Martyn, Louis, 4, 223 Mason, Steve, 119n67 Matthew (apostle), 75, 76, 310, 325–26, 343 McLeod, Hugh, 393 Meir, Rabbi, 73, 370 Melanchthon, Philipp, 77 Mendelson, Alan, 17–18, 36, 296 Meyer, Ben, 17–18, 36 Millar, Fergus, 20, 26 Mitton, C. Leslie, 198–200 Moore, George Foot, 7, 11, 14, 333 Moses (biblical figure), 23–24, 34, 49, 236, 317; on heart, 312–13; on idolatry, 159, 299; law of, 39, 49, 63, 93, 130–32, 138, 175, 184, 232, 301–2, 318, 378, 422, 429; mysteries of, 161; on prayers of thanksgiving, 110–11, 137, 390;

on ritual, 363; on Sabbath, 127–28, 131; on sacrifice, 365, 373; as saved/savior, 165; study of, 130–31, 156–57 Neusner, Jacob, 34, 36–38, 39, 41–42, 46, 72, 118 Nicolaus of Damascus, 44, 113–15 Ovid, 128 Patterson, David, 4–5 Paul (apostle): authorship of Colossians, 197–216; on condemnation, 175–76, 193–95; congregation of, 276–77; on death, 192–95; educational philosophy, 267–69; on exclusivism, 418–24; on faith, 38–400, 377, 393–95; on food and sacrifice, 418–19; on freewill, 108, 186–91; Jewishness, 265–83, 364, 371, 387–88; and Judaism, 4–17, 32–34, 78, 83, 229–38, 385; on justification, 394–95, 398, 403–4; on law, 54, 81, 175–76, 192–93, 396–97, 403–4, 432–33; as prooftexter, 218, 220–28; on providence, 183–86; quotations, use of, 269–74; on reward and punishment, 75–76, 80, 320–22; on salvation, 194, 323, 422–24; sources of, 24; on synagogues near water, 352; theology consistency, 239–47; theology development, 247–64, 279–80; on works-righteousness, 80–83, 323, 398–400 Pedersen, Johannes, 333 Percy, E., 197 Peter (apostle), 231, 232, 276, 277, 280–81, 285, 304–5, 364, 387–88, 409, 436 Philo of Alexandria, 7, 21, 23–25, 43, 92, 130, 441; and Akiba, 46; on

449

COMPARING JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Augustus, 126; on Balaam, 300; on circumcision, 371; on cities of refuge, 163–65; on conversion, 158–60; on covenant, 57, 161, 170–71; on Essenes, 112–13; on God and nature, 56; on immortality, 165–67, 172; on Moses, 127, 302; on Patriarchs, 144; on purification, 287, 296, 341, 354–56, 363–64, 387; on Sabbath, 133–34, 138; on sacrifice, 373–74; on salvation, 155–57, 168–69, 171 Philonenko, Marc, 153 Plato, 24, 187, 326–28, 330–31n5, 339, 340 Potipher, 153 Price, Simon, 20 Przybylski, Benno, 36 Ptolemy II, 351 Räisäanen, Heikki, 22, 78–79, 244–45 Rajak, Tessa, 181, 297 Robertson, John, 17–18 Robinson, H. Wheeler, 333 Ruth (biblical figure), 301, 407 Sanders, E. P.: childhood and education, 2–3; dissertation, 5–6; Jesus and Judaism studies, 17–19; Judaism studies, 20–23; life work, 23–27; Paul and Judaism studies, 4–17 Sanders, Laura, 17–18 Sandmel, Samuel, 7, 15

450

Schiffman, Lawrence, 36, 86 Schweitzer, Albert, 13, 261 Schweitzer, Saul, 25 Seneca, 128 Shakespeare, William, 227, 267 Simeon ben Azzai, 368 Simeon ben Yohai, Rabbi, 73 Smith, Jonathan Z., 35–36 Smith, Morton, 18, 22, 25, 39–41 Smith, W. Robertson, 333 Socrates, 269, 326–27, 330n5 Solomon (biblical figure), 302, 311, 315 Stendahl, Krister, 423 Stern, Menahem, 39, 128 Tacitus, 128 Tatum, Gregory, 248, 251, 258n34 Thyen, Hartwig, 79 Titus, 182 Vallée, Gérard, 17–18, 36 Vermes, Geza, 20, 97, 109 Vespasian, 129–30, 182 Voltaire, 439 Wacholder, Ben Zion, 15 Weber, Ferdinand, 54–55, 385 William of Orange, 429–30, 436–37 Wilson, Stephen, 286 Wolf, Walther, 333 Yigael, Yadin, 4, 143 Yohanan ben Zakkai, R., 70 Zeno, 187 Zerubbabel, 345

Few scholars have so shaped the contemporary debate on the relation of early Christianity to early Judaism as E. P. Sanders, and no one has produced a clearer or more distinctive vision of that relationship as it was expressed in the figures of Jesus of Nazareth and Paul the apostle. Gathered for the first time within one cover, Sanders presents formative essays that show the structure of his approach and the insights that it produces into Paul’s relationship to Judaism and the Jewish law. Sanders addresses matters of definition (“common Judaism,” “covenantal nomism”), diversity (the Judaism of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Diaspora), and key exegetical and historical questions relative to Jesus, Paul, and Christian origins in relationship to early Judaism.

sanders

Insights into complex relationships

These essays show a leading scholar at his most erudite as he carries forward and elaborates many of the insights that have become touchstones in New Testament interpretation.

E. P. Sanders was professor of religion successively at McMaster, Oxford, and Duke

Universities and is a fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has written numerous landmark books, including, from Fortress Press, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (1990; Fortress edition 2016); Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (1992; Fortress edition 2016); Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought (2015); Jesus and Judaism (1985); and the national award winning Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (1977).

Religion / New Testament

comparing

Preface Part I: Early Judaism and the Jewish Law Part II: Paul, Judaism, and Paulinism Part III: Inner and Outer in the Study of Religion Index

Judaism & Christianity

Contents

comparing

Judaism & Christianity Common Judaism, Paul, and the Inner and the Outer in Ancient Religion

e. p. sanders