harvard theological review 2009-3

TRH

HarvardTheologicalReview

ISSN 0017-8160

102:3JULY 2009

The Harvard Theological Review is partially funded by the foundation established under the will of Mildred Everett, daughter of Charles Carroll Everett, Bussey Professor of Theology in Harvard University (1869–1900) and Dean of the Faculty of Divinity (1878–1900). The scope of the Review embraces history and philosophy of religious thought in all traditions and periods—including the areas of Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Christianity, Jewish studies, theology, ethics, archaeology, and comparative religious studies. It seeks to publish compelling original research that contributes to the development of scholarly understanding and interpretation.

Harvard Theological Review102:3

ISSUED QUARTERLY BY THE FACULTY OF DIVINITY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITYHTR

EDITOR

François Bovon

EDITORIAL BOARD

David D. Hall, Jon D. Levenson, Kevin Madigan, and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

ASSOCIATE ED ITORS

Members of the Faculty of Divinity

MANAGING ED ITOR

Margaret Studier

EDITORIAL ASS ISTAN TS

Cavan Concannon, Brian Doak, Aryay Bennett Finkelstein, Jonathan Kaplan, Piotr Malsyz, John Robichaux, Bryan L. Wagoner

PRODUCT ION STAF F

Anne Browder, Eve Feinstein, Rebecca Hancock, Christine Thomas

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HTR 102:3 (2009) 279–96

From Resurrection to Immortality: Theological and Political Implications in Modern Jewish Thought*

Leora BatnitzkyPrinceton University

Hans Jonas began his 1961 Ingersoll Lecture by acknowledging the “undeniable fact” “that the modern temper is uncongenial to the idea of immortality.”1 Jonas nonetheless concluded his lecture by affirming that “although the hereafter is not ours . . . we can have immortality . . . when in our brief span we serve our threatened mortal affairs and help the suffering immortal God.”2 While he may not have realized it, Jonas’s words capture what I shall argue is the dominant view of immortality in modern Jewish thought. Underlying this view is an effort to refute materialist conceptions of human existence without committing to any particularly theological or traditionally metaphysical notion of immortality.

Like Jonas, I am deliberately using the term immortality in a very general sense to refer to the idea that the meaning of human life transcends human finitude or mortality. This loose conception of immortality suggests that there is some dimension of an individual’s life that endures after death, whether in the form of a soul or the remnants of the individual’s deeds. Thinkers as philosophically and ideologically diverse as Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), the father of German-Jewish thought and a theorist of modern liberalism; Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888), the intellectual father of modern Orthodoxy; Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), the neo-

* I am very grateful to Dean William Graham to have been given the honor of delivering the 2008 Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality at Harvard University as well as to Professor Jon D. Levenson for this invitation and even more so for all that I have learned and continue to learn from his work. I would also like to thank Carol Bakhos, Lawrie Balfour, Martha Himmelfarb, Robert Lebeau, Elias Sacks, and Samuel Moyn for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

1 Hans Jonas, “Immortality and the Modern Temper,” HTR 55 (1962) 1.2 Ibid., 20.

280 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

Kantian, liberal German-Jewish philosopher; Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929), the existentialist Jewish philosopher; and Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), the French phenomenologist often associated with postmodernism all affirm a minimal but assured position that the material world—whether defined by the laws of nature or by the facts of historical context—does not and cannot fully capture the meaning of our humanity.

My interest is less in the details of various modern Jewish thinkers’ claims about immortality—though I will get into some of these details—than in the purposethat claims about or gestures toward immortality serve in modern Jewish thought. Insight into modern Jewish views of immortality comes not only from what modern Jewish thinkers say about immortality but also from what they do not say. As Jon Levenson has recently reminded us, in premodern (biblical, rabbinic, and medieval) Jewish thought, the idea of immortality went hand in hand with a belief in resurrection.3 In contrast, modern Jewish thinkers reject, downplay, or make no mention of resurrection while nonetheless affirming a conception of immortality. The question I would like to explore is, why do modern Jewish thinkers retain a notion of immortality but not of resurrection?

The answer is not, in my judgment, that resurrection is more philosophically embarrassing than immortality. This may have been a consideration for eighteenth-century rationalists and late nineteenth-century neo-Kantians (although, as I will argue, the matter is far more complex in the cases of both Moses Mendelssohn and Hermann Cohen). In the context of modern philosophical schools such as existentialism and phenomenology, however, immortality would seem to be as problematic as resurrection. Yet modern Jewish support for immortality and rejection of resurrection is less surprising when considered in the context of the theological-political framework of modern Judaism, in which, like political modernity more broadly, religion is (at least in theory) divorced from politics. As modern Europeans debated whether to grant Jews rights of citizenship in the modern nation state, Jewish thinkers of a variety of ideological stripes were continually at pains to emphasize that the Jewish community did not and would not constitute a state within a state.4 The Jewish religion, they argued, did not demand any sort of political loyalty that would be in tension with the loyalty required by the state. In making this argument, these diverse Jewish thinkers all equated politics with the modern nation state alone and all contended that Judaism was not political.5

3 Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). See also Kevin Madigan and Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

4 On this particular phrase and its historical implications, see Jacob Katz, “A State within a State: The History of an Anti-Semitic Slogan,” in Emancipation and Assimilation: Studies in Modern Jewish History (Chicago: Gregg International Publishers, 1972) 47–76.

5 For more on the equation of politics with the modern nation state and hence with a particularly modern conception of sovereignty in modern Jewish thought, see Leora Batnitzky, “Beyond

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I would like to suggest that because resurrection is associated with collective identity in classical Jewish thought, many modern Jewish thinkers had trouble acknowledging the concept. The idea of immortality, in contrast, offers the possibility of affirming the enduring value and significance of the Jewish tradition while simultaneously confirming that there is no tension between being Jewish and being a citizen of the modern nation-state. The problem of resurrection is thus less a philosophical problem than a political one. We will see that Benedict de Spinoza’s (1632–1677) criticism of Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) on this topic, and Moses Mendelssohn’s subsequent attempt to argue for Jewish emancipation in the context of Spinoza’s critique of Maimonides, proved the turning points after which the terms of modern Jewish considerations of immortality were set. The downplaying of resurrection combined with the retention of immortality constitutes a movement away from traditional Judaism, with its dual theological and political dimensions, toward a Judaism that is what we today call a “religion.” In even more contemporary terms, this trend in Jewish thought marks a transition from “religion” to “spirituality.” As I will suggest in the conclusion of this paper, the downplaying of resurrection combined with the retention of immortality in modern Jewish thought raises questions not just about modern Judaism but also about the place and limits of religion in modern political orders.

***Two basic points made by Jon Levenson in Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel are essential for our discussion. First, as Levenson’s title indicates, the notion of resurrection goes hand in hand with the restoration of Israel. To be sure, the history of Jewish thought, rabbinic and otherwise, does not present one systematic view of immortality or resurrection. However, it is helpful to recognize that from a classical rabbinic point of view resurrection is not individual but communal. An expansive dimension of resurrection is central to the Christian understanding of the concept as well. As Oscar Cullman stated in his 1955 Ingersoll Lecture, “The Christian hope relates not just to my individual fate, but to the entire creation.”6 Second, as Levenson succinctly concludes, “To the rabbis, resurrection without the restoration of Israel, including its renewed adherence to Torah, was incomprehensible. And without the expectation of resurrection, the restoration of Israel would be something less than what the rabbis thought the Torah had always intended it to be—the ultimate victory of the God of life.”7 Put another way, the theological and political dimensions of resurrection cannot be separated. From the perspective of classical

Sovereignty? Modern Jewish Political Theory,” in Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy (ed. David Novak and Martin Kavka; New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2010).

6 Oscar Cullmann, “Immortality of the Soul and Resurrection of the Dead: The Witness of the New Testament,” in Immortality and Resurrection: Four Essays (ed. Krister Stendahl; New York: Macmillan, 1965) 28.

7 Levenson, Resurrection, 229.


Jewish thought, theology without politics—the miracle of resurrection without the restoration of the particular people who newly commit to the observance of God’s law—is as problematic as politics without theology, or the restoration of Israel without the ultimate miracle of the God of life.

At stake in appreciating the interconnection between resurrection and the restoration of Israel in classical Jewish thought is the very question of Jewish election. The intimate interplay between resurrection and Israel’s restoration suggests that resurrection—the ultimate redemption of history—cannot be detached from the particular fate of the people of Israel. To be sure, the eschatological redemption marked by resurrection is universal. But the path toward universality cannot be detached from Israel’s particular destiny. In rabbinic Judaism, the status of resurrection and the relation between Jewish particularity and universality come together in a well-known discussion in the final chapter of tractate Sanhedrin in the Babylonian Talmud:

All of Israel has a share in the world to come, as it is written: And your people, all of them righteous, shall possess the land for all time; they are the shoot that I planted, My handiwork in which I glory (Isa 60:21). And these are those who do not have a share in the world to come: He who says the resur-rection of the dead is not in the Torah, he who says that the Torah is not from Heaven, and the skeptic [who denies God’s providence] (m. Sanh. 10:1).

Clearly, from a rabbinic point of view, belief in resurrection of the dead is essential. All of Israel has a place in the world to come, but those who deny resurrection remove themselves from the community of Israel, thereby denying themselves a place among the newly born people.

But do others, that is, non-Jews, have a place in the world to come? Does not the God of life who restores the people of Israel restore all righteous people to life? The rabbis debated this question and offered a number of opinions, including Rabbi Joshua’s, which suggested that those righteous Gentiles who followed the seven laws given to Noah after the flood also have a share in the world to come.8

Maimonides’ interpretation of Rabbi Joshua’s opinion would be decisive for modern Jewish understandings of immortality and resurrection. Let us turn firstto Maimonides’ view of resurrection and then to modern Jewish interpretations of Maimonides’ view.

Maimonides is well known not only for what he said about resurrection but also for what he did not say. In particular, Maimonides does not mention resurrection in his magnum opus, The Guide of the Perplexed, though he does affirm the immortality of the soul. This omission was not lost on Maimonides’ critics and he was vehemently attacked for his apparent denial of the resurrection of the body.9

8 T. Sanh. 13:2.9 For an overview of this subject, see Daniel Jeremy Silver, Maimonidean Criticism and the

Maimonidean Controversy 1180–1240 (Leiden: Brill, 1965).

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Toward the end of his life, Maimonides responded to his critics with his Treatise on Resurrection, in which he explicitly embraced the doctrine of resurrection:

We vehemently deny and we cleanse ourselves before the Almighty God of the (accusation attributed to us) . . . that the soul will never return to the body and that it is impossible for that to occur. For such a denial (of the resurrec-tion of the dead) leads to the denial of miracles and the denial of miracles is equivalent to denying the existence of God and the abandonment of our faith. For we consider the resurrection of the dead to be a cardinal principle of the Torah.10

There is much to say, and indeed much has been said, about the relation between Maimonides’ Treatise and his other works as well as about what his views really were.11 However, for our purposes, what matters is that Maimonides emphasizes the intimate and irreducible connection between theology and politics implied by the belief in resurrection. In the above quotation from the Treatise it might appear that resurrection is a purely theological matter, as denial of resurrection “leads to the denial of miracles,” which is “equivalent to denying the existence of God and the abandonment of our faith.” In the context of Maimonides’ broader argument in the Guide, however, the denial of miracles—and what is resurrection but the greatest of miracles?—“destroys the Torah of our teacher Moses in its principle . . . and reduces to inanity all the hopes and threats that the Law of Moses has held out.”12

Why does the rejection of miracles destroy the Torah? For Maimonides, the possibility of miracles implies the possibility of God’s creation of the world. Creation, in turn, implies divine providence, for if God created the world, then the world is the way it is for a reason (whatever that reason may be). If there is no possibility of providence, there is no possibility of revelation and no possibility of the Law.13 For these reasons, denial of the hope for resurrection “destroys the Torah

10 Moses Maimonides, Treatise on Resurrection (trans. Fred Rosner; New York: Jason Aaronson, 1982) 35.

11 On the broader topic of how to read Maimonides and the significance of his claims about resurrection, see Leo Strauss, “The Literary Character of The Guide of the Perplexed,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952) esp. 74. For another view, see Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides: Studies in Methodology, Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) esp. ch. 4. See also Kenneth Seeskin, Maimonides on the Origin and Nature of the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005) esp. chs. 6 and 7.

12 Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed (ed. and trans. Shlomo Pines; intro. Leo Strauss; 2 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) 2:25. I have altered the translation slightly by translating Torat Moshe Rabbeinu as “the Torah of our teacher Moses” rather than “the Law of our teacher Moses,” as I believe this conveys the broader sense of Maimonides’ claim. See Moreh nevukhim le-Rabenu Mosheh ben Maimon (trans. Mikhael Shvarts; Tel Aviv: Universitat Tel-Aviv, 2002) 2:25 as well as Dalalat al-hairin (ed. Solomon Munk; 3 vols; Jerusalem: Yunovits, 1929) 2:25 where Maimonides uses the term sharia as opposed to fiqh, the former corresponding to Torah, the latter to a narrower conception of law (halakhah).

13 This is the argument of ch. 25 of book 2 of the Guide.


in its principle . . . and reduces to inanity all the hopes and threats that the Law of Moses has held out.” The destruction of the Torah in principle as well as all the hopes and threats that the Law has held out is thus not of merely theological import but of political significance as well. As Maimonides makes clear throughout his work, the Torah is fundamentally political in nature, and while politics is not the ultimate end of the Torah, the political order is a necessary (though not sufficient)condition for any higher spiritual aspirations of the human being. As Maimonides puts it in the Guide: “The Torah of Moses our teacher as a whole aims at two things: the welfare of the soul and the welfare of the body. As for the welfare of the soul, it consists in the multitude’s acquiring correct opinions. . . . As for the welfare of the body, it comes about by the improvement of their ways of living with one another. . . . This cannot be achieved in any way by one isolated individual. For an individual can only attain all this through a political association, it being already known that man is political by nature.”14 However one interprets Maimonides’ claims about resurrection in relation to his larger corpus, it is clear that he follows the rabbinic tradition in positing an intimate connection between the theological hope for the miracle of resurrection and the political form this hope would take in restoring the people of Israel.

***It is precisely the splitting of theology from politics that marks much of modern Jewish thought and particularly the claims of those Jewish thinkers who emphasize some conception of immortality while attempting to ignore resurrection. As with so many issues in modern Jewish thought, the famous Jewish heretic Benedict de Spinoza set the parameters for modern Jewish arguments about immortality. In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza denies the possibility of miracles, claiming that belief in miracles is in fact a denial of God because the notion of a miracle implies that God’s laws are not necessary.15 Nevertheless, in the EthicsSpinoza seems to affirm some notion of immortality: “The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body but something of it remains which is eternal.”16

14 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 3:27.15 Benedict de Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (trans. Samuel Shirley; Leiden: Brill,

1989) 125–26. See especially Spinoza’s claim that that any suggestion of a supernatural order would “necessarily be opposed to the order which God maintains eternally in nature through her universal laws” (130). Spinoza does not mention resurrection explicitly in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,but in a letter to Henry Oldenburg he states that any notion of resurrection must be understood spiritually because “Christians interpret spiritually all those doctrines which the Jews accepted literally” (7 February, 1676, translated and included in The Ethics and Selected Letters [trans. Samuel Shirley; Indianapolis: Hacket, 1982] 255).

16 Spinoza, Ethics and Selected Letters, 215.

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The meaning of Spinoza’s claim about immortality remains as vexing for his interpreters as resurrection is for Maimonides’ interpreters.17

What concerns us here, however, is less the philosophical intricacies of Spinoza’s position (obviously a subject far beyond the scope of this paper) than the political contention about Judaism that he makes in the Tractatus in connection with his declaration about immortality in the Ethics. Spinoza writes:

If a man is absolutely ignorant of the Scriptures, and none the less has right opinions and a true plan of life, he is absolutely blessed and truly possesses in himself the spirit of Christ.

The Jews are of a contrary way of thinking, for they hold that true opinions and a true plan of life are of no service in attaining blessedness, if their possessors have arrived at them by the light of reason only, and not like the documents prophetically revealed to Moses. Maimonides ventures openly to make this assertion.18

Spinoza refers here to Maimonides’ commentary, in his Law of Kings, on the aforementioned talmudic discussion about who has a portion in the world to come. Maimonides writes:

A heathen who accepts the seven commandments [given to Noah] and ob-serves them scrupulously is a “righteous gentile” (me-hasidei ‘umot ha-’olam)and will have a portion in the world-to-come, provided that he accepts them and performs them because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Law and made known through Moses, our teacher, that the observance thereof had been enjoined upon the descendants of Noah even before the Law was given. But if his observance thereof is based upon a reasoned conclusion he is not deemed a resident alien (ger toshav), or one of the pious gentiles (me-hasidei ‘umot ha-’olam) . . .19

According to Maimonides, in order to earn a place in the world to come, a non-Jew must not only accept and observe the seven commandments given to Noah but must do so “because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Law and made them known through Moses, our teacher.” On the one hand, acceptance of the source of the law is theological—the righteous gentile acknowledges that the law comes from God and not from his own reason. On the other hand, such acceptance is also political, for the law was given to Moses who gave it to the Jewish people. From Spinoza’s perspective, Maimonides’ view undermines the true meaning of the divine law, which Spinoza defines as “universal or common to all men. . . . [because] it does not depend on the truth of any historical narrative whatsoever.”20

17 For a recent discussion of this issue, see Steven Nadler, Spinoza’s Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

18 Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 79–80.19 Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah (trans. Eliyahu Touger; 22 vols; New York: Moznaim,

1987) 8:11, translation modified.20 Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 61.


For Maimonides, in contrast, there is no tension between the particular historical narrative of the divine law and its universal implications. In fact, the latter two require the former.

Needless to say, there are profound theological and philosophical differences between Maimonides and Spinoza. But on the questions of immortality and resurrection, that is, on the issue of who does and does not have a place in the world to come, their difference is perhaps most fundamentally political. As noted above, for Maimonides, “The Law as a whole aims at two things: the welfare of the soul and the welfare of the body.” The political order aims at the welfare of the body, but for Maimonides the welfare of the body is not an end in itself. Rather, politics is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the ultimate goal of human life, which is contemplation of the divine (or the welfare of the soul). Spinoza follows Maimonides in viewing the goal of human life as contemplation of the divine, but Spinoza sees politics as an end in itself. For Spinoza, the aim of the state is “peace and security of life” (pax vitaeque securitas).21 Religion, or theology, for Spinoza, is a means toward promoting political harmony. Maimonides’ view that the righteous gentile not only exhibits certain behavior but also possesses certain beliefs is inherently problematic because it depends upon the truth of a particular historical narrative. For Spinoza, such a preference for one historical narrative undermines the goal of harmony on the basis of which all theological beliefs should be judged. This perspective came to define the political, philosophical, and theological framework in which modern Jewish thinkers found themselves. The questions of immortality and resurrection thus became as much modern politicalquestions as they were metaphysical ones.

***Without appreciating the political background of modern Jewish thought, especially in the German-Jewish context, it would be easy to conclude that modern Jewish conceptions of immortality simply mirrored the philosophical fashions of the day. In his 1783 Jerusalem, Moses Mendelssohn argued that Judaism in no way contradicted enlightened reason but rather complemented it.22 In his 1767 Phädon,Mendelssohn also offered a sustained Enlightenment argument for the immortality of the soul, making no mention of resurrection.23 However, Mendelssohn’s claims about both Judaism and enlightened reason as well as about immortality are as political as they are metaphysical. Mendelssohn’s conception of Judaism and his view of immortality conform as much to an idea of a universal enlightened reason

21 Benedict de Spinoza, Political Treatise (trans. Samuel Shirley; 2d ed.; Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000) ch. 5, par. 2.

22 Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem; or, On Religious Power and Judaism (trans. Allan Arkush; Hanover: University of New England Press, 1983).

23 Moses Mendelssohn, Phädon; or, The Death of Socrates (translated from the German; London: J. Cooper, 1789).

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as they do to the very modern notion that theological beliefs are to be judged on the basis of their ability to contribute to a harmonious political order.

As is well known, Mendelssohn published his Jerusalem as a response to the public challenge of a Swiss theologian, John Caspar Lavater, either to refute Christianity or to convert to Christianity. This was a twofold challenge because Mendelssohn had to defend the rationality of Judaism and hence Judaism’s compatibility with the German Enlightenment without offending his Christian interlocutors. Mendelssohn responded with an eloquent plea for the separation of Church and State. The title of Mendelssohn’s response, Jerusalem; or, On Religious Power in Judaism, captures the thrust of his argument. Mendelssohn argues that by definition the state concerns power and coercion while religion, properly understood, does not. This means that Judaism, or “Jerusalem,” is not concerned with power and therefore does not conflict with the possibility of the integration of Jews into the modern nation-state.

Mendelssohn created the very category of Jewish religion by separating Judaism from politics and the individual Jew from the corporate Jewish community. As he put it, the purpose of the Jewish community “is collective edification, participation in the effusion of the heart, through which we acknowledge our gratitude for God’s benefactions . . .”24 As a political corollary to this philosophical point, Mendelssohn vehemently opposed the idea that the Jewish community should retain its autonomy in matters of civil law, stressing that Jews should receive civil rights as individuals and not as a corporate entity.25 Mendelssohn especially rejected the Jewish community’s claim, still maintained in his day, to the right to excommunicate. As he put it, Judaism “as religion, knows of no punishment, no other penalty than the one the remorseful sinner voluntarily imposes on himself. It knows of no coercion, uses only the staff [called] gentleness, and affects only mind and heart.”26

For both theological and political reasons, Mendelssohn was deeply uncomfortable with Maimonides’ conceptions of immortality and resurrection. Spinoza’s philosophy was of course familiar to the German Enlightenment, as was Pierre Bayle’s claim, derived from Spinoza’s criticism of Maimonides, that Judaism was a fundamentally immoral religion.27 In Mendelssohn’s own day, Voltaire had

24 Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften. Jubiläumsausgabe (24 vols; Berlin: F. Frommann, 1929–1984) 8:21.

25 For recent work on this topic, see Allan Arkush, Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment(Albany: State University Press of New York, 1994); David Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); and Jonathan Hess, Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

26 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 130.27 On Bayle’s view of Judaism, see Miriam Yardeni, “La vision des juifs et du judaïsme dans

l’œuvre de Pierre Bayle,” in Les Juifs dans l’histoire de France (ed. Miriam Yardeni; Leiden: Brill, 1980) 86–95.


extended this claim in asserting that the Jewish religion was in fact unsurpassed in its moral depravity.28

Mendelssohn did not publicly disagree with Maimonides. In fact, he never mentioned resurrection in any of his work published in German, including in his Phädon, whose expressed purpose is a defense of immortality. However, in his private correspondence, not intended for publication, Mendelssohn expressed his profound discomfort with the political and theological implications of Maimonides’ views: “These things are more difficult for me than flinty rock. Should all the dwellers on earth, from East to the West, other than ourselves descend into the pit of perdition and be an object of condemnation to all human beings if they do not believe in the Torah which was given as an inheritance only to the congregation of Jacob?”29 Clearly, Mendelssohn recognized that his conception of immortality did not conform to rabbinic doctrine, Maimonidean or otherwise, which, as we have seen, concerns the fate of the people of Israel. The fact that Mendelssohn refused, despite repeated requests, to have his Phädon translated into Hebrew seems only to confirm this conclusion.30

Perhaps with Spinoza’s criticism of Maimonides in mind, Mendelssohn stresses in Phädon that immortality in no way concerns any national or particular group identity: “I am of the opinion also that in the very wise plan of creation, similar beings are to meet a similar destiny and consequently that the same fate awaits the whole human race.”31 In the Phädon’s final argument for immortality, Mendelssohn provides a direct political analog to his philosophical description of the egalitarian nature of immortality. Without immortality, Mendelssohn avers, it would be impossible to reconcile the state’s right “to demand the sacrifice of the life of any citizen for the welfare of the whole” with the individual’s competing right to the supreme good of life. Mendelssohn’s political argument for immortality amounts to a reductio ad absurdum: the soul is necessarily immortal, Mendelssohn argues, because if it were not, we would be left in an absurd situation, “a general war of moral beings where everyone has right on his side.”32

Setting aside the question of the merits of this argument, the important point for us is that Mendelssohn wants to be very clear in affirming the right of the state to demand the sacrifice of the life of the citizen as well as the citizen’s individual right

28 On Voltaire, Bayle, and Spinoza, see most recently Harvey Mitchell, Voltaire’s Jews and Modern Jewish Identity: Rethinking the Enlightenment (New York: Routledge, 2008). See also Arkush’s very helpful explication of this issue and its relation to Mendelssohn in Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment, 145–51.

29 Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe, 16 (Letter 154, dated October 26, 1773).

30 On this subject, see Noah Rosenblum’s excellent study, “Theological Impediments to a Hebrew Version of Mendelssohn’s Phaedon,” in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 56 (1990) 51–81.

31 Mendelssohn, Phädon, 171.32 Ibid., 187. I thank Elias Sacks for pointing this argument out to me.

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to life. In the context in which he wrote, and especially in regard to questions about the relations between the Jewish community, the state, and the individual Jew, these rights were certainly not taken for granted. Indeed, one of the main objections to Jewish emancipation was that Jews constituted a state within a state and therefore could not be trusted to serve in the military. This was a position that Mendelssohn spent much of his intellectual life attempting to refute. We have seen that while he strongly rejects Spinoza’s description of the Jewish view of immortality, Mendelssohn nonetheless adheres to Spinoza’s framework in his conception of the relation between theology and politics. The theological notion of immortality is inherently egalitarian, Mendelssohn asserts, and thus does not undermine but rather supports an egalitarian body politic, just as Judaism, as a religion without dogma, does not undermine but rather supports enlightened reason.

***When the liberal society that Mendelssohn had hoped for was, at least to

some extent, finally actualized, modern Jewish thinkers continued to defend an idea of immortality similar to his. Strikingly, a number of rather diverse modern Jewish thinkers did occasionally mention resurrection, but only as a metaphor for immortality. For instance, Samson Raphael Hirsch, the nineteenth-century spiritual founding father of what is today called Orthodox Judaism, shares with Mendelssohn the tendency to avoid the subject of resurrection while retaining immortality. Hirsch did not remove the ubiquitous references to resurrection from the liturgy as his Reform counterparts did.33 But with remarkable consistency, Hirsch shifts discussion away from resurrection toward immortality and while doing so he interprets references to the community of Israel as references to individual Jews as well as to individual people in general.

That “all of Israel has a place in the world to come,” Hirsch writes, “denotes a two-fold future; one in the world to come, and one in this world. . . . Whatever good we achieve in loyal obedience to God here below becomes a spiritual accomplishment which will accompany us into the world to come and into the presence of our Father in Heaven.”34 In its universalist and theologically vague

33 See Neil Gillman’s discussion of Abraham Geiger’s translations of liturgical references to resurrection which aimed to affirm immortality and reject resurrection in The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 1997) 198–99. See also Jakob J. Petuchowski, “ ‘Immortality–Yes; Resurrection—No!’ Nineteenth-Century Judaism Struggles with a Traditional Belief,” PAAJR 50 (1983) 133–47. Jon Levenson discusses these publications and offers an overview of the broad affirmation of immortality and rejection of resurrection in modern Jewish thought in ch. 1 of Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, entitled “The Modern Jewish Preference for Immortality” (1–22).

34 Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Siddur (ed. and trans. The Samson Raphael Hirsch Publications Society; Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1987) 414. The same commentary can be found in English in Samson Raphael Hirsch, Chapters of the Fathers: Commentary to Pirkei Avot (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1967).


character, Hirsch’s conception of immortality is quite similar to Mendelssohn’s. In what is perhaps his most succinct statement on the subject, Hirsch asserts that “immortality and eternity belong to the essence of man as man, given to everyone as he enters this life, to enable him to walk in freedom in the land of transience, to lead him to return to eternity.”35

Perhaps more significant than this theological affinity between Hirsch and Mendelssohn is their political affinity, which may offer us deeper insight into modern Jewish conceptions of immortality. Although he wrote a century after Mendelssohn and as a critic of the liberal Judaism Mendelssohn had fathered, the following words of Hirsch’s could just have easily been Mendelssohn’s:

It is certainly possible for us to attach ourselves to the State, wherever we may find ourselves, without harm to the spirit of Judaism. . . . It is precisely the purely spiritual nature of Israel’s nationhood that makes it possible for Jews everywhere to tie themselves fully to the various states in which they live.36

Note Hirsch’s repeated use of the term “spiritual” to describe both immortality and the political status of the Jewish people. (Again, Hirsch describes immortality as a “spiritual accomplishment” and Israel’s nationhood as “purely spiritual.”) The common ground between Mendelssohn and Hirsch is their shared assumption of the necessity of a boundary between Judaism, now defined as a religion, and politics, now defined only in terms of the egalitarian and individualistic commitments of the modern nation state.37 Resurrection crosses this boundary and is for this reason troublesome for each of these thinkers.

In the early twentieth century, the great neo-Kantian Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen similarly reduced resurrection to immortality. Like Mendelssohn, Cohen was deeply disturbed by Spinoza’s portrayal of Maimonides.38 Unlike Mendelssohn, however, Cohen sought to correct not Maimonides but Spinoza, claiming that Spinoza had maliciously misread Maimonides (a view that most scholars reject).39

Cohen offers a rereading of Maimonides:

35 Samson Raphael Hirsch, Commentary to Bamidbar 19:22, as cited and translated in Joseph Elias, The World of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch: The Nineteen Letters Newly Translated and with a Comprehensive Commentary (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1995) 152.

36 Ibid., 224, translation modified.37 For more on the striking convergence between Hirsch and Mendelssohn, see Leora Batnitzky,

“From Politics to Law: Modern Jewish Thought and the Invention of Jewish Law,” forthcoming in Dine Israel, 2009.

38 On the philosophical implications of Cohen’s and Mendelssohn’s shared discomfort with Maimonides’ statement, see Steven Schwartzschild, “Do Noahides have to Believe in Revelation? (A Passage in Dispute between Maimonides, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, and Hermann Cohen) A Contribution to a Jewish View of Natural Law,” in The Pursuit of the Ideal: Jewish Writings of Steven Schwarzschild(ed. Menachem Kellner; Albany: State University Press of New York, 1990) 29–60.

39 See especially Hermann Cohen, “Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum,” in Jüdische Schriften (ed. Bruno Strauss; 3 vols.; Berlin: Schwetschke & Sohn, 1924) 3:348.

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“All Israel has a share in the world to come.” For this share no special dem-onstration of positive piety is necessary. The whole of Israel stands here for the concept of man in general, for the whole of Israel includes messianic mankind.40

For Cohen, “messianic mankind” implies not an eschatological endpoint but the worldly pursuit of what he calls “ethical socialism,” in which “material and economic conditions should never become a hindrance to the realization of the moral and spiritual culture of all men without any distinction.”41 While resurrection would seem to be an instance of God’s miraculous suspension of the laws of creaturely existence, Cohen maintains that the concept of “resurrection became a lever for the formulation of [the concept of] immortality. . . . the history of the people and the history of the messianic people of mankind endure forever.” Again, for Cohen, the messianic people “stands . . . for the concept of man in general.”42 According to Cohen, immortality means that the human being’s moral task endures forever and the concept of resurrection is but an historical vestige of this eternal truth.

***We may wonder why Cohen mentions resurrection at all. Would it not have been easier simply to ignore resurrection, as Mendelssohn did? Here again we see philosophy, theology, and politics meeting. Mendelssohn wrote at a time when the Jewish community was still defined as a political entity. For this reason, Mendelssohn was highly sensitive to any theological notion that had political implications. As we briefly discussed, in order to argue for the full inclusion of Jews in modern political life, Mendelssohn invented the idea that Judaism is a religion. By Cohen’s time, approximately a century and a half later, this idea had been fully internalized by Jewish thinkers. (Note the title of Cohen’s book, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism; the book was intended as a complement and corrective to Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone.) Resurrection, like all Jewish theological concepts, had been divorced from politics. Resurrection could now serve as an indistinct placeholder for immortality which, we have briefly seen in Cohen’s case, already served as a placeholder for the eternal truth of morality.

The affirmation of immortality on the one hand and the separation of theology and politics on the other is perhaps most revealing in the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig begins his magnum opus, The Star of Redemption:“From death, from the fear of death, there commences all knowledge of the All. To cast off the fear of the earthly, to take from death its poisonous sting, in this

40 Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (trans. Simon Kaplan; New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972) 336.

41 Ibid., 311.42 Ibid., 359.


philosophy deceives itself.”43 Rejecting the old philosophy for what he calls the “new thinking,” Rosenzweig would seem to base his thought on the fundamental and inescapable fact of human mortality. Yet the Star goes on to declare that “man’s eternity is implanted in the soil of creation.”44 Understandably, from the first published reviews of the Star to this very day, the central task for students of Rosenzweig has been, in one way or another, to resolve the tension between existence and eternity in his thought.45

While the Star refers repeatedly to eternity and at times to immortality, resurrection is mentioned only three times and then only in passing. Two of these references occur in the context of Rosenzweig’s discussion of Christianity. The third is seemingly generic and especially obscure:

Everything worldly has . . . its history: law and the state, art and science, all that is visible. The wake-up call of God’s revelation to man sounds, its echo reverberates into . . . the world, and only then does a segment of temporality die the death of the resurrection of eternity. Speech, however, is human, not worldly; therefore it neither dies nor, admittedly, is it resurrected. In eternity there is silence. God himself, however, plants the sapling of his own eternity neither into the beginning of time nor into the middle, but utterly beyond time into eternity.46

Space does not permit a full discussion of this admittedly complex quotation, but for our purposes we need but note one point. Rosenzweig associates resurrection with death, time, worldliness, history, state, science, and “all that is visible,” while he links eternity with transcendence, speech, and silence. Later in the Star he

43 Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption (trans. William W. Hallo; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985) 3.

44 Ibid., 259.45 Rosenzweig’s contemporaries tended to resolve this tension by emphasizing either existence or

eternity over the other. For a reading of Rosenzweig that emphasizes his conception of existence, see Julius Guttmann’s Philosophies of Judaism (trans. David W. Silverman; New York: Holt, 1964). For a neo-idealist reading of Rosenzweig see Else-Rahel Freund, Franz Rosenzweig’s Philosophy of Existence(trans. Stephen L. Weinstein and Robert Israel; Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979). In recent years, scholarship has tended to continue to move along this either/or line. For an emphasis on Rosenzweig’s conception of existence, see Peter Eli Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) and on the neo-idealist side see Benjamin Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

46 Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption, 260–61, translation modified and emphasis added. The German reads, “So hat alles Weltiche in aller Zeit seine Geschichte: Recht und Staat, Kunst und Wissenschaft, alles was sichtbar ist; und erst im Augenblick, wo in ein solches Es der Welt das Echo des Weckrufs zur Offenbarung Gottes an den Menschen hineinhallt, stirbt ein Stück Zeitlichkeit den Auferstehungstod der Ewigkeit. Die Sprache aber, weil sie menschlich ist, nicht weltlich, stirbt nicht und ersteht freilich auch nicht auf. In der Ewigkeit ist Schweigen. Gott selber aber pflanzt den Setzling seiner eigenen Ewigkeit weder in den Anfang noch in die Mitte der Zeit, sondern schlechthin jenseits der Zeit in die Ewigkeit.” Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976) 290.

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characterizes Judaism as eternal and the Jewish people’s communal life as silence.47

In contrast, he depicts Christianity and Christians as intrinsically temporal and tied to history, the state, and art.48 These portrayals imply that the Jewish people are already beyond resurrection because they are eternal. It is Christians and not Jews who await resurrection. Rosenzweig’s association of eternity and resurrection with Judaism and Christianity respectively is part and parcel of his inversion of Christian supersessionism. For Rosenzweig, it is not that Judaism needs to catch up to Christian revelation, as Christians had held for centuries. Rather, as Rosenzweig puts it, “to the church we can only say: we have already arrived at the destination, you are still en route.”49

Rosenzweig’s refusal to associate resurrection with Judaism is remarkable since, more than any other German-Jewish thinker, he tried to move beyond the framework erected by Mendelssohn. But while Rosenzweig emphatically rejected the idea that Judaism is a religion, he nevertheless insisted far more than his predecessors had that Judaism was completely separate from politics. As Rosenzweig put it to his friend Eugen Rosenstock: “Is not part of the price that the Synagogue must pay for the blessing . . . of being already in the Father’s presence, that she must wear the bandages of unconsciousness over her eyes)?”50 In part three of the Star, he argues at length that the bandages of unconsciousness blind the Jew and Judaism particularly to politics. Rosenzweig, then, like Hirsch and Cohen, can only view Judaism through the lens of an absolute separation between theology and politics. Judaism, for Rosenzweig, has no political dimension but only a theological one. Resurrection is thus irrelevant to Judaism.51

47 These are among the themes of part 3, book 1 of Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption, “The Fire or the Eternal Way.” See esp. 298–99 and 315–16.

48 These are among the themes of part 3, book 1 of Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption, “The Rays or the Eternal Way.” See esp. 337, 352–53 and 377–78.

49 Letter to Rudolf Ehrenberg, 4 November, 1913 in Franz Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher(2 vols.; The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979) 1:142

50 Judaism Despite Christianity: The Letters on Christianity and Judaism between Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (ed. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy; Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1969) 114.

51 A consideration of Emmanuel Levinas’ views of immortality and resurrection is beyond the scope of this paper. Here I will suggest only that resurrection for Levinas is the disruption of the continuity of time, not because God revives the dead but rather because another person disrupts one’s experience of time. It is in this encounter with the Other, Levinas maintains, that a trace of immortality (what he calls the “immemorial”) reveals itself. In this way, Levinas’s view of the relation between immortality and resurrection bears a significant structural similarity to Cohen’s and Rosenzweig’s in which resurrection is a limited gesture toward immortality. See in particular Levinas’s remarks about resurrection in Totality and Infinity (trans. Alphonso Lingis; Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969) 284: “Resurrection constitutes the principal event of time. There is therefore no continuity in being. . . . In continuation the instant meets its death, and resuscitates; death and resurrection constitute time. But such a formal structure presupposes the relation of the I with the Other . . .”


***That the problem of resurrection for modern Jewish thinkers is a political one is confirmed by the fact that cultural Zionists are perhaps the only modern Jewish thinkers for whom resurrection is supremely important. The central figure of cultural Zionism, Ahad Ha’am (1856–1927) explicitly rejected the modern idea that Judaism is a religion. He did so because he believed that Jews had attempted to eliminate their communal identity—what I have been calling the political dimension of Judaism—for the false promise of the modern liberal state. Writing in Eastern Europe, where Jews had not yet received the rights of citizenship, Ahad Ha’am made this point most clearly in a well-known and aptly titled essay, “Slavery in Freedom”:

Do I envy these fellow Jews of mine their emancipation? . . . No! A thousand times No. . . . I have at least not sold my soul for emancipation. . . . I at least know “why I remain a Jew”—or, rather, I can find no meaning in such a ques-tion, any more than if I were asked why I remain my father’s son.52

Ahad Ha’am strove to acknowledge both the political and theological dimensions of Judaism, but he sought to subordinate theology to a new kind of national identity: Zionism. Reformulating the twin theological and political dimensions of Judaism, he famously maintained that “one can say without any exaggeration that more than the Jewish people has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept [the Jewish people].”53

Perhaps the most basic concept that Ahad Ha’am attempted to transform was the very idea of resurrection. He explicitly suggested that political redemption for the Jews, i.e., Zionism, was an “appendage” (tiflah) to thiyat ha-metim (resurrection of the dead). Cultural Zionism, he maintained, would lead to the “resurrection of the hearts” (thiyat ha-levavot) of the Jewish people.54 Martin Buber (1878–1965), a great admirer of Ahad Ha’am’s cultural Zionism, also described the reawakening of Jewish peoplehood in terms of resurrection: “The word resurrection comes to mind: a reawakening that is a miracle.” Buber’s use of the term resurrection is particularly telling because he goes on to state that “history knows no miracles. It does, however, know streams of national life that seem to cease, but actually continue underground. . . . The Jewish people can look forward to a resurrection from half a life to a full one.”55 The cultural Zionist reformulation of resurrection raises the question of whether the modern era demands that Jews make an “either/or” choice between religion and politics. As such, the relationship between the rejection of resurrection in modern Jewish avowals of immortality and the revival of the

52 Ahad Ha’am, Selected Essays by Ahad Ha’am (trans. Leon Simon; Philadelphia: JPS, 1912)193.

53 Ahad Ha’am, Al Parashat Derakhim (4 vols.; Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1946) 3:30.54 Ahad Ha’am, Al Parashat Derakhim (4 vols.; Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1930) 1:6.55 Martin Buber, “Renaissance und Bewegung,” in Der Jude und sein Judentum. Gesammelte

Aufsätze und Reden (Gerlingen: Lambert Schneider, 1993) 101–2.

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concept of resurrection by cultural Zionists points to the most basic questions of modern Jewish thought as well as of political modernity.

***In this paper, I have tried to show that a commitment to immortality is central to modern Jewish thought and that modern Jewish thinkers affirm immortality while rejecting or downplaying resurrection. I have suggested that this movement from resurrection to immortality in modern Jewish thought ought to be understood within the theological-political framework of modernity, in which Judaism is considered a religion separate from politics. By way of conclusion, I would like to refer brieflyto an interesting column of May 2008 entitled “The Neural Buddhists” by NewYork Times columnist David Brooks, which, I suggest, bears upon the meaning of modern Jewish affirmations of immortality and disavowals of resurrection. Brooks notes that despite the loud voices of a new group of assertive atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, “momentum [amongst scientists] has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer.” Brooks argues that this means that debates between atheists and believers “about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it . . . is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God [or immortality], it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.” The real challenge to religious believers will “come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits.”56

I began this paper with reference to Hans Jonas’s 1961 Ingersoll Lecture. Again, Jonas concluded his lecture by affirming that “although the hereafter is not ours . . . we can have immortality . . . when in our brief span we serve our threatened mortal affairs . . .” Jonas surely would have been happy to see that, as Brooks puts it, some “scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. . . . The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.” But Jonas himself recognized that his very limited conception of immortality was a break not only with the Bible but also with the history of Jewish (and Christian) thought. Jonas believed there was no other option than to acknowledge this break and then to create new myths for ourselves with the full knowledge that these could only be myths.57 My interest has been in exploring the related political dimension of this move, which concerns nothing less than the status of modern liberalism. Our consideration of modern Jewish views of immortality

56 David Brooks, “The Neural Buddhists,” The New York Times, 13 May, 2008.57 See especially Hans Jonas, “The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice,” in Mortality

and Morality: A Search for Good after Auschwitz (ed. Lawrence Vogel; Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996) 131–43.


raises the question of whether liberalism demands that all “particular religions” must become “just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human” truths. As all students of modern religion surely know, this remains the basic question of all modern religious thought, Jewish or otherwise. Modern Jewish reflections on immortality and resurrection do not provide an answer to this question, but they surely do provide yet another reason to continue thinking about it.

HTR 102:3 (2009) 297–326

Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Old Testament*

Paul E. CapetzUnited Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities

In the nineteenth century the unrestricted application of the historical-critical method posed an unprecedented challenge to inherited Christian notions about the Bible. While this challenge was eventually to be felt most acutely in the study of the New Testament (NT) once the distinction between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith” had firmly established itself, traditional viewpoints on the Old Testament (OT) were actually the first to be called into question. As a consequence of historical investigation, it became increasingly difficult for theologians to claim that the gospel is already taught in the OT. Regarding this matter, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) made a bold proposal. He argued against the canonical standing of the OT on the grounds that it expresses Jewish, not Christian, religion. For him this conclusion was the unavoidable result of the advancing critical scholarship that was undermining the christological exegesis used to defend the church’s claim to the OT

against the synagogue’s counter-claim to its sole rightful possession. Opposing such “christianizing” readings, Schleiermacher broke ranks from Christian theologians and championed the side of the Jews in this historic debate. His only predecessors in this regard were Marcion and the Socinians, although his proposal for relegating the OT to noncanonical status was later endorsed by Adolf von Harnack.

Surprisingly, there has been very little scholarship devoted to Schleiermacher’s stance toward the OT.1 In a recent monograph, Klaus Beckmann notes this deficiency and seeks to reignite theological discussion on the Christian relation to the OT in

* I wish to express my gratitude to Douglas Ottati, Ted Vial, Richard Crouter, Dawn DeVries, and Vicky Gaylord for their helpful criticisms of earlier drafts of this essay.

1 Hans-Joachim Kraus insists: “For the basic understanding of the Old Testament in the nineteenth century, Schleiermacher’s statements were of no small importance” (Kraus, Die Geschichte der historisch-kritischen Erforschung des Alten Testaments von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart [2d ed.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1969] 170).


light of historical research by exploring in detail Schleiermacher’s argument.2 Since Beckmann believes that Schleiermacher’s position is inadequate, he investigates five other German Protestant theologians from the nineteenth century who also sought to come to grips with historical study of the OT to ascertain whether their conclusions are more adequate. While I agree that Schleiermacher’s view is inadequate, I disagree with the reasons Beckmann gives for this judgment. Beckmann is convinced that the problems with Schleiermacher’s position can be traced to his abandonment of the supposedly “biblical” model of Heilsgeschichte (prophecy and fulfillment) that was revived by the real hero of Beckmann’s tale, J. C. K. von Hofmann. While Hofmann acknowledged the relative right of historical methods to display the meaning of the OT on its own terms, he insisted that in the final analysis the OT must be interpreted through the lens of the NT’s kerygma. As Beckmann indicates, Hofmann’s position anticipates that of Karl Barth, who proposed to rescue the OT from a purely hist-orical exegesis by reasserting a distinctly theological hermeneutic that regards the OT as a witness to Jesus Christ.3 Clearly, Beckmann is engaged in an externalcriticism: the only way to avoid Schleiermacher’s conclusion is to work from a different set of premises. But the odd thing about Beckmann’s recommendation of Hofmann’s (and Barth’s) proposal is that it is an instance of precisely the sort of christianizing interpretation Schleiermacher opposed. Beckmann has thus not addressed Schleiermacher’s argument but simply bypassed it.

Beckmann does not consider the possibility that Schleiermacher’s argument might be subject to criticism and, hence, modification along the very methodological lines that Schleiermacher recognized as in keeping with his commitment to a thoroughgoing historical-critical exegesis of the Bible and its revisionary implications for theology. In this respect Beckmann is typical of many theologians who grant a limited role to historical methods while invoking theological categories derived from the NT so as to make the OT serviceable for the purposes of Christian faith. But the enduring question Schleiermacher’s argument poses is whether there are compelling reasons to retain the OT in the church’s Bible without resorting to christological readings that deprive Judaism of its claim to it. Two important values are at stake here: the OT as a part of the Christian canon, on the one hand, and the intellectual integrity of OT exegesis and Christian theology, on the other. Unless his challenge can be met directly, the Christian claim to the OT cannot be justified theologically apart from a christological exegesis imposed on it from without.

2 Klaus Beckmann, Die fremde Wurzel. Altes Testament und Judentum in der evangelischen Theologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002) 31, 33.

3 Karl Barth exclaimed: “A religio-historical understanding of the Old Testament in abstraction from the revelation of the risen Christ is simply an abandonment of the New Testament and of the sphere of the church in favor of that of the synagogue, and therefore in favor of an Old Testament . . . understood apart from its true object and content” (Barth, The Doctrine of the Word of God [vol. 1.2 of Church Dogmatics; trans. G. T. Thomson and Harold Knight; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956] 489).

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As an exercise in historical theology this essay undertakes three distinct yet interrelated tasks: first, to analyze Schleiermacher’s proposal in its own historical context; second, to offer a criticism of it drawing upon contemporary biblical scholarship; third, to propose an alternative theological construal of Christian faith and of the OT’s importance for it. In contrast to Beckmann, however, my argument with Schleiermacher is an internal criticism that does not adopt a standpoint extrinsic to his point of departure. Precisely because his theological method requires any interpretation of Christian faith “to be subject to a process of continuous checking against the whole history of Christianity, as presented by contemporary historical research,”4 his own position on the OT is subject to critique insofar as it assumes a view of Judaism and of early Christianity’s relation to it no longer substantiated by historical research. Since, moreover, some of his material doctrinal conclusions are not required by his dogmatic method, other conclusions can be defended as more appropriate without abandoning his model of theology for another.

■ Schleiermacher’s Argument about the Old TestamentEndorsing Semler’s call for a “free investigation of the canon” unfettered by doctrinal constraints, Schleiermacher rejected the notion that “the sacred books require a hermeneutical and critical treatment departing from the generally valid rules” of interpretation.5 For him, this freedom was an inviolable bequest from the Reformers whose aim was to let the Bible speak for itself apart from the yoke of ecclesiastical tradition. “It is thoroughly Protestant,” he contended, “to allow everyone the free application of the exegetical art as based on philology.”6 He realized that this would occasion revision, and in some cases rejection, of certain cherished Protestant beliefs about the biblical canon, though he predicted that historical scholarship would prove to be more problematic for the OT than for the NT.7 Although the documentary hypothesis had yet to receive its classic formulation from Wellhausen, there was already by Schleiermacher’s time a well-established tradition of doubting Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Furthermore, critical scholarship was questioning the view that the prophets had predicted the coming of

4 Stephen Sykes, The Identity of Christianity: Theologians and the Essence of Christianity from Schleiermacher to Barth (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 99.

5 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhang dargestellt (ed. Martin Redeker; critical ed. based on the 2d German ed.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1960) § 130.2 (henceforth abbreviated as Gl. and cited by section and paragraph); ET, The Christian Faith (ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart; English translation of the 2d German ed. of 1830–31; Edinburgh: T&T Clark; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976). Translations of Schleiermacher’s texts are mine unless otherwise indicated.

6 Gl. § 27.3. 7 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Schleiermachers Sendschreiben über seine Glaubenslehre an Lücke

(ed. Hermann Mulert; Giessen: Töpelmann, 1908) 41–43; ET, On the Glaubenslehre: Two Letters to Dr. Lücke (trans. James Duke and Francis Fiorenza; American Academy of Religion Texts and Translations Series; Chico, Ca.: Scholars Press, 1981) 65–67 (henceforth, page references to the English translation will be placed in parentheses).


Christ and was beginning to look upon the prophetic oracles as messages addressed to the particular historical circumstances of their own times.8

Schleiermacher was convinced that the Christian effort to prove Jesus’ messianic status on the basis of OT prophecy was a mistake and that the NT’s appeal to it was strictly an intra-Jewish affair of the first century. He conceded that while a Jew of that time might well have become persuaded that the prophecies referred to Jesus, such an opinion necessarily presupposed faith in the inspiration of the Jewish scriptures that a Gentile convert could not have been expected to possess. Indeed, such proof had not really been decisive even for Jewish believers whose conversion was brought about by the powerful impression the personality of Jesus made upon them, not by arguments about prophecy. Hence, far from being troubled by the negative results of historical scholarship, Schleiermacher sought to put them to good theological use. The lesson to be learned is that faith in Jesus can stand on its own apart from appeals to the OT.9

Schleiermacher believed the time had come for the church to acknowledge that the OT is a “superfluous authority” for dogmatics. He justified this departure from Christian tradition by arguing that a doctrine taught only in the OT but not in the NT could hardly be said to possess a genuinely Christian character; by contrast, a doctrine taught only in the NT would not be questionable because nothing about it was to be found in the OT.10 While there are few doctrines which at one time or another have not been justified by appealing to the OT, he was of the opinion that such appeals had done damage to the intellectual integrity of exegesis by foisting an alien meaning upon the text.11 Moreover, they had unnecessarily muddied the later development of Christian doctrine: “we have to thank the dogmatic attachment to the Old Testament for much that is bad in our theology; and if Marcion had been correctly understood and not denounced as a heretic, our doctrine of God would have remained much purer.”12 Hence, both subdisciplines of theology, exegesis and dogmatics, have a stake in the question of the OT.13

Yet Schleiermacher did not actually call for the excision of the OT from the Bible. He recognized that the OT is the indispensable source for understanding the history of the Jewish people from which Jesus and his first disciples descended. For that reason alone, a thorough acquaintance with the OT is essential for grasping the many literary references and linguistic idioms of the NT writings, and Schleiermacher fully

8 Gl. § 14, postscript.9 Sendschreiben, 42 (On the Glaubenslehre, 66). 10 Gl. § 27.3.11 Gl. § 132.2.12 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Aus Schleiermacher’s Leben in Briefen (ed. Ludwig Jonas and

Wilhelm Dilthey; 4 vols.; Berlin: Reimer, 1860–1863) 4:394.13 In Schleiermacher’s model of theology, biblical exegesis is the first part of historical theology.

See Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums zum Behuf einleitender Vorlesungen (ed. Heinrich Scholz; critical ed.; Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1961) § 85; ET, Brief Outline on the Study of Theology(trans. Terrence N. Tice; Atlanta: John Knox, 1977).

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expected ministerial candidates to know Hebrew and Aramaic as well as Greek.14

His point, rather, is theological. He distinguished the historical fact of Christianity’s origin in the Jewish milieu from the normative question of appealing to the OT in support of Christian doctrine. Since only the NT writings were produced under the influence of Jesus’ ministry, they are the first in the series of presentations of Christian faith which alone can serve as the norm for all subsequent presentations of it.15 Hence, however important its historical value for understanding the context of the NT, the OT should not be taken as canonical: “To include the Jewish codex within the canon means to view Christianity as a continuation of Judaism and is at odds with the idea of the canon.”16

For Schleiermacher, early Christianity was a completely new religion and stood in the same relation, religiously speaking, to Judaism as to paganism, notwithstanding its historical ties to the former.17 Whereas conversion to Christianity required that Gentiles abandon their idolatrous worship, it required that Jews relinquish the Mosaic legislation. Accordingly, the step from Judaism to Christianity was as much a transition to another religion as the step from paganism to Christianity. Schleiermacher anticipated the objection that there was a far greater leap “from the side of paganism, insofar as it first had to become monotheistic in order to become Christian.”18 He countered this objection by pointing out that the Gentiles had long been inclined toward monotheism through the influence of their own philosophers who for centuries had criticized Greco-Roman polytheism. Furthermore, Judaism at this time “was no longer based exclusively on Moses and the prophets” as a result of the many foreign influences it had incorporated since the Babylonian exile.19 Seen in this light, the sharp dichotomy between Judaism and Hellenism breaks down and it is evident that the church was a new formation in the religious sphere: “if Christianity is related in the same way to Judaism as to paganism, then it can no more be a continuation of Judaism than a continuation of paganism.”20

In opposition to the rationalism of the Enlightenment with its “natural religion,” Schleiermacher set out to rehabilitate “positive” (i.e., historically given) religion, each instance of which is a unique entity with its own distinct identity or “essence.” In order to identify the essence of any positive religion, it is necessary to specify four features: 1) its stage of religious development, 2) the type of religion it repres-ents, 3) its central idea, and 4) its originating event. 21 Each positive religion has

14 Kurze Darstellung, § 141.15 Gl. § 132; see also Gl. § 129. 16 Kurze Darstellung, 47, n. 2 (Brief Outline, 53, n. 2). 17 Gl. § 12. 18 Gl. § 12.2.19 Gl. § 12.1.20 Gl. § 12.2. 21 According to Schleiermacher, the definition of a religion’s essence is designated a “critical

inquiry” because the constant element in a historical phenomenon cannot be “ascertained in a merely empirical manner.” He called this task “philosophical theology” (Kurze Darstellung, § 32; see also


an “outward unity,” reflecting a definite origin in history, and an “inward unity,” which is a peculiar modification of the elements it shares with other faiths at the same stage and of the same type. Christianity’s essence can thus be formulated as follows:

Christianity is a monotheistic mode of faith, belonging to the teleological type of piety, and essentially distinguishes itself from other such modes of faith in that everything in it is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth.22

Once the essence is ascertained, the relations of Christianity to other religions can be set forth with precision. Unlike premodern theologians Schleiermacher did not assume that monotheism was the earliest form of religion, although he did consider it to stand at the apex of human religious development. Judaism, too, is monotheistic and belongs to the “teleological” (or moral) type. Greco-Roman polytheism, however, not only reflects a lower stage of development but also belongs to the “aesthetic” type wherein the sense of moral obligation is not constitutive of the religious consciousness. Still, the contrast between Judaism and paganism with respect to stage and type of religion did not lead Schleiermacher to conclude that Christianity is related to Judaism in more than a merely external historical manner. He detected in Judaism an affinity with a less developed stage of religion (“fetishism”) since its monotheism is corrupted by nationalism, whereas Christian monotheism is free of this defect.23 And while the teleological character of Judaism is expressed in the form of obedience to law, in Christianity it assumes the form of exhortations indicating how moral action springs forth from the consciousness of redemption. So even in those respects which the two religions share, there are profound differences between them.24 Since everything in Christianity is related to the redemptive efficacy of Jesus, “Christian piety, as it emerged right from the start, is not to be understood by means of the Jewish piety of that or of an earlier

Gl. § 21). Ernst Troeltsch correctly understood that the attempt to define the essence was a response to the dissolution of dogma’s authority in the light of historical consciousness (Troeltsch,“What Does ‘Essence of Christianity’ Mean?,” in Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion[ed. Robert Morgan and Michael Pye; Atlanta: John Knox, 1977] 158, 177). Sykes comments: “Schleiermacher stumbles on a theological tool, namely that of the critical definition of the essence of Christianity, which meets the future exigencies of the impact of the biblical-critical movement on doctrinal theology” (The Identity of Christianity, 99).

22 Gl. § 11.23 Schleiermacher wrote, “Christianity is the purest formation of monotheism to have emerged

in history” (Gl. § 8.4). See Erhard Lucas, “Die Zuordnung von Judentum und Christentum von Schleiermacher bis Lagarde,” EvTh 23 (1963) 590–607, esp. 590–93; also Ernst Katzer, “Schleiermacher und die alttestamentlich-jüdische Religion,” Neues Sächsisches Kirchenblatt 26(1919) 721–28, 737–44.

24 Schleiermacher characterized “the two chief concepts of the Jewish religion” as “the divine election of the nation and divine retribution” (Gl. § 103.3).

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time: thus in no way can Christianity be viewed as a reshaping or a renewal of Judaism.”25

Since the OT reflects Jewish religion, confusion as to the essential nature of Christianity necessarily arises from the traditional practice of placing both testaments on equal footing as two parts of one canon of scripture. The OT cannot be for Christians what it is for Jews, namely, an indivisible whole.26 The OT contains elements that are foreign to the church so that “whatever is most definitely Jewish has least value” for Christians and even those passages in it that appear compatible with Christian piety are only “of a more general nature and not distinctively Christian.”27 Aside from the fact that the OT can be claimed as a Christian book only when exegetical violence is done to the plain historical meaning of its literal-grammatical sense, placing the OT on the same level as the NT diminishes the central significance of Jesus in an Ebionite (Jewish-Christian) manner. Moreover, those Christians who are especially fond of the OT evince a legalistic mentality not in keeping with the Christian conception of the moral life.28

Although his assessment of the OT is negative in its import for the church, it is necessary to recognize its double-sided character. The clear implication of Schleiermacher’s argument is that Christians should acknowledge the integrity of Judaism as a distinct religion which is to be understood on its own terms quite apart from any relation to Christianity. As Joseph Pickle points out, “Schleiermacher’s appreciative assessment of Judaism recognizes the uniqueness of Judaism and rejects attempts to treat it or the Old Testament as a preparatio evangelii.”29 Hence, Schleiermacher conceded that the OT really belongs to the synagogue, and not to the church, after all. The most important theologian of the nineteenth century thus

25 Gl. § 12.2. 26 The force of this observation is qualified when Schleiermacher insists upon the need for a

critical investigation into the NT canon: “The Protestant Church necessarily claims to be continually occupied in determining the New Testament canon more exactly. The New Testament canon has obtained its present form through the decision of the Church,” though “[t]his is not a decision to which we attribute an authority exalted above all inquiry.” “It must be permissible, then . . . to have the canon in two forms: that which has been handed down historically and that which has been separated out critically” (Brief Outline, § 110, 114).

27 Gl. § 12.3. Schleiermacher sometimes preached on OT texts. For analysis of these sermons, see Joachim Hoppe, “Altes Testament und alttestamentliche Predigt bei Schleiermacher,” Monatschrift für Pastoraltheologie 54 (1965) 213–20, and Wolfgang Trillhaas, “Schleiermachers Predigten über alttestamentliche Texte,” in Schleiermacher und die wissenschaftliche Kultur des Christentums(ed. Günther Meckenstock; Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1991) 279–89.

28 Gl. § 132.2. Schleiermacher said that “law is not originally a Christian term” (Gl. § 66.2). In his understanding of Christian ethics the imperative mood is replaced by a descriptive account of how Christians act in accordance with their religious consciousness. Though his statement implies that Judaism is “legalistic,” the primary target of his criticism is the extremely conservative use of the OT by some Christians such as his Berlin colleague Hengstenberg who appealed to the OT

to defend the institution of monarchy and to oppose the modern liberal state. See Beckmann, Die fremde Wurzel, 239–70.

29 Joseph W. Pickle, “Schleiermacher on Judaism,” JR 60 (1980) 115.


departed from the classical Christian tradition by upholding the Jewish character of the OT. But precisely because the OT is Jewish, it cannot also be Christian.

■ Critique of Schleiermacher’s Portrayal of Judaism and Early ChristianitySchleiermacher’s methodological insistence upon the distinctiveness of each posi-tive religion cleared the way for the possibility of an impartial historical treatment of Judaism in its own right. Nevertheless, his interpretation of Judaism betrays certain prejudices that reflect his own Christian starting point. Consequently, his reconstruction of the history of religion invites criticism to the extent that it fails to meet the requirements of a genuinely historical interpretation. Since his proposal regarding the OT is so closely tied to his view of the church’s relation to Judaism, of chief concern here is his argument that Christianity is not to be understood as a continuation or development of Judaism.

The characterization of the OT as “Jewish” is subject to some important qualifications not made by Schleiermacher himself. He apparently assumed that Judaism was the religion of Israel even before the exile.30 Yet modern study has shown that Judaism first began to take shape during the exilic crisis of Israel’s earlier national religion and so is not identical with pre-exilic religion. This insight has ramifications for Schleiermacher’s critique of Jewish monotheism as bearing an affinity with a lesser form of religion (“fetishism”) on account of its ties to a particular nation. By comparison with Judaism, pre-exilic Israelite religion was not a thoroughgoing monotheism but, rather, a “henotheism” since Israel’s national deity was not yet conceived consistently in radical terms as the creator and sovereign of the entire world. Accordingly, a genuine monotheism developed in consort with the emergence of Judaism, not in spite of it! While vestiges of the pre-monotheistic Israelite religion are embedded in older strata of the OT, these traditions were subject to reinterpretation from the monotheistic perspective of the Jewish redactors of the OT. Hence, Schleiermacher’s criticism of Jewish monotheism as less than pure results, in part, from his lack of adequate knowledge of the actual historical relations between pre-exilic Israelite religion and post-exilic Jewish religion, including the theological struggle of monotheism with henotheism that is reflected in the literature of the OT. But this is not the entire explanation for his view. Curiously, Schleiermacher’s critique of Judaism as particularistic shows the unwitting influence upon him of the Enlightenment’s preference for a universal rational religion. The irony here is that he thereby betrayed his own groundbreaking recognition of the irreducibly particular nature of actual religion which he articulated

30 It appears as though Schleiermacher viewed Moses as the founder of Judaism: “By ‘Judaism’ is understood primarily the Mosaic institutions, but also, as preparation for these, every earlier usage which abetted the segregation of the people” (Gl. § 12.1–2). He also characterized the religion of the pre-Mosaic period as “Abrahamitic Judaism,” which is obviously anachronistic.

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in his polemic against “natural religion” as an artificial intellectual construct.31

Judaism is constituted by the twin poles of universality (reflecting its monotheism) and particularity (rooted in its special vocation to bring all peoples to monotheism). But particularity is not the same as “particularism,” just as universality is not identical with “universalism.” Christianity is just as particular as and no less prone to particularism than Judaism.32

Schleiermacher’s portrait does not, moreover, sufficiently differentiate the post-exilic Judaism that put its indelible stamp upon the final form of the OT from the Judaism of the rabbis after the destruction of the second temple. Judaism, as classically defined, is a post-Christian development that cannot be simply identifiedwith the Jewish religion evident in the later formative period of the OT. Prior to the rabbinic period, there was no such thing as a monolithic or “orthodox” Judaism commanding the allegiance of all Jews. In fact, there were varieties of Judaism, each of which claimed to embody the authentic continuation of Israel’s religious heritage. The crucial point is that the Bible (Tanakh/OT) does not belong to rabbinic Judaism in any simple sense. Indeed, the results of historical criticism have been no less troubling for traditional Jewish beliefs about the Bible.33 While the OT is certainly Jewish, it is not to be equated with classical Judaism as though the latter were the inevitable outcome of the former.34

31 Pickle points out that the emancipated Jews whom Schleiermacher knew held to these same views of Judaism on account of their commitment to the Enlightenment’s ideal of a purely rational religion: “The uncompromising critic of natural religion sees, and tries to appreciate, Judaism in the guise formulated by passionate devotees of natural religion” (Pickle, “Schleiermacher on Judaism,” 137). Pickle concludes that Schleiermacher’s view of Judaism was not really negative so much as it was ambivalent.

32 Schleiermacher’s comparison of Jewish and Christian monotheisms results from an unfair juxtaposition of an actual Judaism and an idealized Christianity. Christianity has been particularistic (as distinct from historically particular) in its own way on account of the belief that “outside of the church there is no salvation.” Finally, doubt must surely be cast on Schleiermacher’s claim that monotheism has found its purest expression in Christianity when it is recalled that Jews and Muslims alike have traditionally looked upon trinitarianism as a relapse into polytheism. That he was sensitive to this criticism is evident from his plea for reconsideration of the Sabellian way of interpreting the trinitarian doctrine. See Gl. § 170–72.

33 Tikva Frymer-Kensky writes: “The Bible is the source of halakic [legal] authority, but it does not function on its own and is not an independent source of authority in traditional Judaism. . . .[T]he Christian church was explicitly ‘supersessionist.’ It showed honor to and interest in the Hebrew Bible and claimed it as its own heritage, but it considered the New Testament as its foundational Scripture. . . . Judaism was almost equally supersessionist, but it did not make its supersessionism apparent. It behaved ritually as if the Torah was the central facet of Judaism, but it dictated the way that the Torah should be read” (Frymer-Kensky, “The Emergence of Jewish Biblical Theologies,” in Jews, Christians, and the Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures [ed. Alice Ogden Bellis and Joel S. Kaminsky; Atlanta: SBL, 2000] 111).

34 Matthias Wolfes makes this pointed observation: “The equation of the Old Testament and Jewish religion carried out by Schleiermacher has, however, a fatal consequence for the theological evaluation of Judaism. For it denies to Judaism a capacity for renewal and development beyond the historical religious development attested in the biblical writings” (Matthias Wolfes, Öffentlichkeit


Since the religion we now call “Christianity” began its existence as one variety of Judaism, it is anachronistic to describe it as a new religion in its original phase, as Schleiermacher did; indeed, it is difficult to identify at what stage in its history we can speak of it as a different religion from Judaism. Yet if this is the case, must we not grant that the NT, too, is in a real sense a document of Jewish religion? In his critique of Schleiermacher, Barth correctly understood that, humanly speaking, the entire Bible is

a product of the Israelitish, or to put it more clearly, the Jewish spirit. This is true. . .of the whole Bible, even of the whole of the New Testament Bible. . . . If we want it otherwise, we will have to strike out not only the Old but all the New Testament as well. . . . The Bible is a Jewish book, the Jewish book.35

Although the NT is full of polemics against non-Christian Jews as well as against other Christians (Jewish and non-Jewish), it breathes throughout the spirit of Jewish piety.36

The historical picture is further complicated by the insight that all of these varieties of Judaism, including Christianity, were profoundly influenced by Hellenism. Wayne Meeks argues that “ ‘Judaism’ was in some senses a Hellenistic religion. . . . Like the other varieties of Judaism, the earliest Christian groups were simultaneously Jewish and Hellenistic.”37 Yet Schleiermacher did not view Christianity as either Jewish or Hellenistic, and certainly not as simultaneously Jewish and Hellenistic, since for him it was a completely new formation equidistant from both Judaism and Hellenism. Although he perceived the influence on Judaism of what would later be called “syncretism,” his mode of conceiving each religion as a distinct entity implies a view of the religions as having only external or accidental relations to one another. Even if we should wish to allow for a more dynamic model of their mutual relations, Schleiermacher’s thesis that Christianity stood in the same relation of religious discontinuity to Judaism as to paganism is hardly persuasive. It is not clear, moreover, what we are to make of this rather surprising assessment given his classification of paganism as a polytheistic religion of the aesthetic (i.e., non-moral) type. On his own terms, this means that paganism not only represented a lower stage of religious development than Judaism but also

und Bürgergesellschaft. Friedrich Schleiermachers politische Wirksamkeit [New York and Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004] 2:374).

35 Barth, Church Dogmatics, 1.2, 510. See also Julie Galambush, The Reluctant Parting: How the New Testament’s Jewish Writers Created a Christian Book (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005).

36 Since incipient Christianity was not homogenous, Wayne A. Meeks insists that we formulate better questions: “The questions that have to be asked are more particular: Which parts of the Jewish tradition were being assumed and reinterpreted by this or that group of early Christians? Which institutions were continued, which discarded?” (Meeks, “Judaism, Hellenism, and the Birth of Christianity,” in Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide [ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen; Louisville: John Knox, 2001] 26).

37 Meeks, “Judaism, Hellenism, and the Birth of Christianity,” 24–26.

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differed in kind from it. Indeed, he invoked Greco-Roman paganism as his chief illustration of an aesthetic religion:

What [in the history of religion] is most apparent to us, as being sharply opposed in this respect to Christianity, is not coordinate with it, but belongs to a lower level, namely, Greek polytheism. In this religion the teleological direction retreats completely; neither in their religious symbols nor in their mysteries is there any discernable trace of the idea of a totality of moral ends and of a relation of all human situations to this. . . . Christianity, even apart from the fact that it occupies a higher level, is in the sharpest way opposed to this type.38

It is pertinent to recall Schleiermacher’s view that the “inward unity” of any positive religion is to be understood as a “peculiar modification” of that which is shared with religions of the same type and at the same stage of development.39 Yet what else can this mean other than that early Christianity was a peculiar modificationof Jewish religion?40 In his lectures on hermeneutics where he attempted to sort out the differing relations of dependence upon Hebrew and Greek evident in the NT, Schleiermacher concluded:

It is undeniable that the influence of Hebrew in the really religious terms is particularly great. For in what was originally Hellenic—particularly to the extent that it was known to the N.T. writers—the religious aspect which was to be newly developed (not only) found no point of contact, but even what was similar was rejected via its connection to polytheism.41

Here there appears to be an inconsistency in Schleiermacher’s argument. From the perspective of hindsight, we know that what began as a Jewish sect developed into a distinct religious community whose self-definition had to be hammered out in polemics against rabbinic Judaism as well as against paganism. But from this fact of history it does not follow that the material substance of Christian religion is as discontinuous with Judaism as with the Hellenistic religions from which the church drew the majority of its converts. Schleiermacher was right to point out the philosophical developments on Greek soil that had prepared for the reception by non-Jews of a monotheistic and ethical religion. Yet his comparison of pagan converts to Jewish converts is misleading since the latter did not understand themselves as rejecting the legacy of Israel for a new religion but, rather, as embracing its fulfillment. This was clearly true of the apostle Paul.42

38 Gl. § 9.2, emphasis added. 39 Ibid. 40 For an early critique of Schleiermacher’s thought along these lines, see J. C. F. Steudel, “Über

Schleiermacher’s und Marheineke’s Ansicht über das Alte Testament,” in idem, Vorlesungen über die Theologie des Alten Testaments (ed. G. F. Oehler; Berlin: Reimer, 1840) 540–42. Studel represented the supernaturalist orthodox theology.

41 Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Essays (ed. Andrew Bowie; Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 42.

42 Krister Stendahl cautions against speaking of “conversion” with respect to the apostle Paul


The conclusion is unavoidable that the historical foundation of Schleiermacher’s argument about the OT is inadequate inasmuch as it presupposes an undifferentiated view of pre-rabbinic Judaism as well as an interpretation of early Christianity as only accidentally related to the religious heritage of Judaism. For this reason, Pickle has rendered the following ironic verdict: “The advocate of historical-critical understanding accepts a view of Judaism that is utterly ahistorical.”43

While Schleiermacher cannot be held responsible for not having had the benefitof recent biblical scholarship at his disposal, it is nonetheless the case that his commitment to the historical-critical method invites these criticisms of his own historical reconstruction. In this connection, we are brought back to the idea that Christianity, like every other positive religion, has a distinguishing “essence” that identifies it as a unique entity in the religious realm. This idea was much debated in the nineteenth century. In the wake of the widespread acknowledgment of the demise of the orthodox doctrine of scripture, it answered the need for a conceptual tool to bridge the empirical study of history and the normative task of theology. On the other hand, the notion of a distinguishing “essence” presented its own problems. The ambiguity inherent in this notion is whether the essence of a religion is an abstraction from history intended merely to characterize a set of related phenomena or whether it is also meant to serve a critical purpose in relation to them.44 In practice, it appears to do double duty in this regard, although this is not objectionable provided that the proper conceptual distinctions are made between these two functions.45

Schleiermacher reasoned that the essence of Christianity can be determined in a scholarly manner only by comparing Christianity to the other positive religions. In this he was surely correct. Two questions must be asked, however. The firstis whether such a concept is not too static to do justice to the dynamic character of a movement in history. Given that religious traditions undergo real change

since it implies that he joined another religion. Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976) 7–23.

43 Pickle, “Schleiermacher on Judaism,” 137. Pickle goes on to say: “One can only wish that Schleiermacher’s theological dispositions had been matched with an equally comprehensive awareness of Jewish piety, tradition, and insight. . . . Since theology is never a closed book, however, it falls to his admirers to improve—in his own spirit—upon his view of Judaism.”

44 The ambiguity involved in the idea of an “essence” is that it is not merely descriptive in intent but prescriptive as well. Its purpose, according to Troeltsch, is not only to indicate what distinguishes Christianity from other religions but also “to make possible an evaluation of what is essential [within Christianity], on the basis of which the inessential can be ignored and that which is contrary to the essence can be condemned” (Troeltsch, “What Does ‘Essence of Christianity’ Mean?” 144). The central problem in its deployment, as Troeltsch indicated, lies in “this unavoidable transition from an abstracted concept to an ideal concept” (158). Troeltsch thus called for a more careful distinction between “the properly historical” and “the philosophically historical, normative element.”

45 A helpful analogy may be found in thinking about the reasons why the United States was founded, such as democracy, freedom of religion, human rights, etc. This descriptive-historical judgment obviously entails normative implications for judging America as a nation in relation to these ideals.

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and development over time, does not the assumption of an essence hamper our appreciation of their dynamic character? This objection is valid whenever an abstract conception of a phenomenon is mistaken for the concrete phenomenon itself. But this confusion is not inevitable. Indeed, we cannot even speak of movements in history (say, the Renaissance or the Reformation) apart from the application of abstract concepts to the interpretation of the historian’s empirical data. And all historians who are more than mere chroniclers necessarily hazard some general characterizations of broad movements in history and culture. This commonplace has to be stressed in response to those scholars who reject the very notion of an essence on the grounds that such an idea is foreign to temporal phenomena. No doubt, a large part of the problem stems from the connotations the word “essence” has acquired in our postmodern intellectual situation where “essentialisms” of one kind or another are rightly suspected of falsifying the complexity of reality. Yet it is erroneous to think that Schleiermacher intended to reify an abstraction. Although it may be desirable to come up with new terminology to designate such a conceptual operation, this does not obviate the need to specify wherein the enduring identity of a religious tradition consists if we wish to avoid a complete nominalism in historical interpretation.46

This recognition of the legitimacy, even indispensability, of inquiring into the essence leads to our second question, namely, whether the quest to define what makes Christianity distinctive must depend upon a comparison with the other religions that implies their inferiority. As I see it, there is no reason, for instance, why the identity of Christianity has to be purchased at the cost of a sharp contrast or opposition between it and Judaism given their inextricably close historical relations and substantial material overlaps. While Schleiermacher’s concept of an essence can be defended in principle, his use of it in fact is vulnerable to this criticism.47

Hence, an updated attempt to implement this task must renounce any apologetic motive when attempting to define the essence of Christianity in relation to Judaism. But in itself there is nothing wrong with his formal definition of Christianity’s essence: like Judaism, it is an ethical monotheism; but unlike Judaism, its central figure is Jesus and its central idea is redemption from sin.48

46 The German word Wesen can be translated either as “essence” or “nature.” For my own constructive purposes in the next section, I employ the term “nature” to distinguish the material content of Schleiermacher’s understanding of Christian faith from his formal statement of its “essence.”

47 John B. Cobb, Jr. criticizes the tradition of Schleiermacher: “[T]he question of the distinctive essence of Christianity was subordinated to that of its superiority to other religions in such a way that the former question was inadequately treated” (Cobb, The Structure of Christian Existence[New York: Seabury, 1967] 14).

48 For an example of this sort of inquiry on the part of a liberal Jewish thinker, see Leo Baeck, The Essence of Judaism (trans. Victor Grubenwieser and Leonard Pearl; New York: Schocken, 1976).


■ The Jewish Jesus and the Nature of Christian FaithSchleiermacher posed the question: “Was Christianity something new or not?” In light of the foregoing discussion, the question should not be formulated so starkly as “new or not,” since on historical grounds alone we have to say that Christianity was relatively new even if not absolutely so. Yet Schleiermacher disagreed. To his mind, Christianity represents an absolutely new beginning in the religious realm which cannot be explained by what preceded it historically. Here, however, we are dealing with more than a strictly historical judgment on his part since a particular theological construal of Christian faith co-determines his argument. He said as much in his lectures on hermeneutics: “The question cannot be decided in an immediately hermeneutic manner and therefore shows itself as a matter of conviction.”49 To be sure, in the final analysis how we think about Christianity’s relation to Judaism (and, hence, to the OT) is a theological question, the answer to which is indicative of a theologian’s entire construal of the nature of Christian faith. While one cannot move directly from history to theology in positivistic fashion, there is nonetheless a critical interrelation between the two, especially for a theologian who affirmswithout qualification the results of historical-critical study. Yet in moving from the empirical questions of the historian of religion to the normative questions of the theologian, a shift is being made from a standpoint “external” to Christianity to one that is “internal” to it.50 Whereas the essence must be determined through comparative study, theology (in the sense of dogmatics or systematic theology) requires that the theologian stand within the church, sharing its distinctive religious experience, and seeking to give as accurate a description of it as possible.51

Though Schleiermacher is most often remembered for his famous redefinitionof religion as “the feeling of absolute dependence,” of greater importance perhaps was his proposal of a historicized model of dogmatics (Glaubenslehre) designed to transcend the dichotomy beyond supernaturalism and rationalism occasioned by the Enlightenment’s challenge to the Reformation heritage. The components of this model are the following: first of all, faith is not an assent to doctrinal propositions, but a matter of the heart or, to use his terminology, the religious affections. Indeed, one may share Schleiermacher’s affective view of faith without endorsing his theory of religion in every detail. Second, doctrines are understood as intellectual attempts to explicate the understanding of human existence in the world before God implicit in the Christian religious affections.52 Third, historical study teaches

49 Hermeneutics and Criticism, 43, 41. 50 Gl. § 11.5, 28.2. 51 Faith in Christ, according to Schleiermacher, is “a purely factual certainty, but a certainty

of a fact which is entirely inward” (Gl. § 14.1). Elsewhere he states: “This exposition is based entirely on the inner experience of the believer; its only purpose is to describe and elucidate that experience” (Gl. § 100.3).

52 Schleiermacher exposited each doctrine in a threefold manner as a statement about the self, the world, and God (Gl. § 30).

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that the church’s doctrines have changed over the course of time. Fourth, the task of dogmatics is to discern the logical or systematic connection between the various doctrinal loci as representing in their totality the historically particular experience of redemption through Christ that constitutes the church as a distinctive religious community.53 Fifth, since dogmatics concerns the state of Christian doctrine in the present moment, it must be open to further doctrinal revision for the sake of the best contemporary understanding of the Christian religious affections wherein faith consists. Formal agreement with Schleiermacher’s model and method of dogmatics does not, however, entail endorsing all of his material conclusions. This distinction between the formal and material elements in Schleiermacher’s dogmatics is crucial if there is to be an internal criticism of his positions that does not—as in the case of an external criticism such as Beckmann’s—presuppose a completely different conception of the theological enterprise.54 In my judgment, there are three interrelated doctrines to be interrogated for the sake of proposing a revision of Schleiermacher’s construal of the nature of Christian faith. These are: christology, soteriology, and the multiple meanings of revelation.

We cannot fail to notice what many scholars have labeled as Schleiermacher’s “christocentrism.” Of course, all Christian theology is christocentric in some sense inasmuch as the person of Jesus is the central revelation of God that constitutes the church as a distinct religious community. But Schleiermacher’s theology is christocentric in a much stronger sense on account of his conviction that redemption from sin is mediated through Jesus alone. Schleiermacher affirmed that Jesus, by virtue of his incomparable relation to God, quite simply is the new element that cannot be explained by any historical antecedents. He conceived of Jesus as a person whose consciousness of God was unbroken by sin; indeed, the religious ideal for human existence became an actual fact in this one individual.55 Here we meet the sole miracle in Schleiermacher’s theology.56 For him, denial of this claim would spell the end of Christian faith.57 Still, he was certain that his view of Jesus was a necessary inference about who he really must have been given his actual redemptive influence upon the present religious experience of Christian believers. In spite of his assurance in this regard, however, there are grave problems with such an idea. For one thing, it is exceedingly difficult to imagine what it would mean to say of a real human being that he or she was entirely without sin.58 It is easy to suspect a

53 “Dogmatic propositions arise only from logically ordered reflection upon the immediate utterances of the religious self-consciousness” (Gl. § 16, postscript).

54 Richard R. Niebuhr makes exactly the same point. See Richard Niebuhr, Schleiermacher on Christ and Religion: A New Introduction (New York: Scribner, 1964) 16–17.

55 Gl. § 93. Schleiermacher added that this perfect God-consciousness was “a veritable existence of God in him” (Gl. § 94). He thereby wished to indicate his continuity with the Alexandrian tradition.

56 Gl. § 93.1–3.57 Gl. § 93.2. 58 Leander E. Keck adds that there is no need to “presuppose ‘sinless perfection’ (to speak with


“docetic” strain at work here, notwithstanding Schleiermacher’s explicit rejection of this ancient heresy.59 Moreover, the admittedly imperfect consciousness of God on the part of Christians does not require a perfect consciousness of God as its sufficient source, but merely a more powerful and vivid one.60 Also, this conception has negative implications for the question of Jesus’ relation to Judaism. In Susannah Heschel’s analysis, Schleiermacher

lifted Jesus from the realm of the human to a superhuman, if not supernatural, pedestal, by virtue of his extraordinary inner life. . . . As a result, Jesus’ life as a Jew became fundamentally irrelevant to the crux of his exceptional role.61

Schleiermacher feared that if Jesus had not perfectly embodied the religious ideal, then he was “only a more or less original and revolutionary reformer of the Jewish law.”62

It is pertinent to recall Schleiermacher’s calm predication that historical-critical scholarship would be more damaging for the traditional Christian assessment of the OT than for that of the NT. Yet in no wise has the historical basis of Schleiermacher’s theology been more badly shaken than by the subsequent course of research into the gospels as sources for our knowledge of who Jesus was. Schleiermacher was confident that John’s gospel provides us with a reliable report of Jesus’ teaching from which we can form a picture of his inner life.63 Accordingly, the message proclaimed by Jesus was about his own unique relation to God. This assumption that the christological teaching of John’s gospel accurately depicts what Jesus taught about himself in turn accounts for the antithetical relationship between Jesus and Judaism in Schleiermacher’s interpretation.64 But this view founders on

Schleiermacher) in the event of Jesus” (Keck, A Future for the Historical Jesus: The Place of Jesus in Preaching and Theology [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981] 217).

59 For Schleiermacher the two opposing christological heresies are the Ebionite (or “Nazarean”) and the docetic; the former denies that Jesus is absolutely superior to all other persons by virtue of his God-consciousness and the latter denies that there is an essential likeness between him and all other persons (Gl. § 22.2). Docetism originally referred to the denial that Jesus had a real body and later to the denial that he had a rational human soul. Schleiermacher, of course, did not deny either of these; but his assertion of Jesus’ absolutely perfect God-consciousness makes him categorically unlike everyone else.

60 Schleiermacher acknowledged this point as a possible criticism of his doctrine but rejected it (Gl. § 93.1).

61 Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) 145.

62 Gl. § 93.2. 63 Schleiermacher defended the historical veracity of John’s gospel in a note added to the third

edition of the Speeches in 1821. Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers(trans. John Oman; New York: Harper and Row, 1958; repr., Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994) 262–63. In another place, Schleiermacher speculated on John’s relation to Jesus: “In John’s Gospel the interest is historical: was the author a contemporary witness?” (Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism, 212).

64 Horst Dietrich Preuss writes: “The opposition of Moses and Christ Schleiermacher takes from the Gospel of John which is also in other respects for him the most highly prized [of the

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the later insight of critical study that the synoptic gospels, not John, contain the most authentic reminiscences of Jesus’ teachings. In his survey of the nineteenth century’s quest for the historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer concluded:

Schleiermacher is not in search of the historical Jesus, but of the Jesus Christ of his own system of theology; that is to say, of the historic figure which seems to him appropriate to the self-consciousness of the redeemer as he presents it. . . . What is chiefly fatal to a sound historical view is his one-sided preference for the Fourth Gospel. It is, according to him, only in this Gospel that the consciousness of Jesus is truly reflected.65

If Schleiermacher had been constrained to base his view of Jesus’ preaching on the evidence of the synoptic evangelists instead of relying on John, he would have been forced to confront head-on what became the major problem of NT scholarship in the nineteenth century: the relation between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.

The only figure to the left of Schleiermacher analyzed in Beckmann’s study is David Friedrich Strauss.66 It was in the work of Strauss that this distinction became crucial for the scholarly study of the NT. Strauss, too, faulted Schleiermacher for teaching “not an historical, but an ideal Christ.”67 In sharp contrast to Schleiermacher, Strauss clearly saw that in his religion Jesus was a Jew and that the church’s christology as reflected, for example, in John’s gospel attests to what Christians later taught about Jesus after his death.68 Yet Strauss understood that even in its christological faith the church was still primarily a Jewish phenomenon. The NT’s witness to Jesus as the messiah was born of a lively continuation of religious motifs found in the OT.69 Hence, for Strauss, the OT and its interpretation in second-temple Judaism were the formative influences upon the presentation of Jesus in

gospels], and perhaps this even played a role in determining his attitude to ‘the Jews’” (Preuss, “Vom Verlust des Alten Testaments und seinen Folgen dargestellt anhand der Theologie und Predigt F. D. Schleiermachers,” in Lebendiger Umgang mit Schrift und Bekenntnis [ed. Joachim Track; Stuttgart: Calwer, 1980] 144).

65 Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (trans. W. Montgomery; New York: Macmillan, 1968) 62, 66.

66 Beckmann, Die fremde Wurzel, 197–239.67 David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (ed. with an introduction by

Peter C. Hodgson; trans. George Eliot; Lives of Jesus series; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972) 773.68 Beckmann, Die fremde Wurzel, 206.69 Ibid. Beckmann is troubled by the application of “myth” to the exegesis of the Bible as well

as by the Hegelian interpretation of it given by Strauss, yet he correctly formulates the import of this hermeneutic for Strauss: “In his ‘mythical’ criticism of the gospels Strauss expressed in radical fashion the literary unity of the Old and New Testaments. In his view, the evangelical narratives arose from the living Jewish tradition. Since the New Testament writers intended to prove the messianic character of Jesus, the Jewish Bible was seen [by Strauss] as the decisive formative influence upon the evangelical texts. The Jewish-Old Testament myth about the messiah determined for Strauss not only the ‘how’ but already the ‘that’ of the narratives about Jesus as the Christ” (Ibid., 208). If Beckmann had been willing to follow Strauss down this path, he could have claimed that Strauss, not Hofmann, provided the best alternative to Schleiermacher’s position. One need not endorse


the gospels. Two consequences follow from this distinction between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. First, Jesus did not teach the gospel that Christians later taught about him, as Schleiermacher mistakenly assumed.70 Second, the actual content of Jesus’ message can only be understood in relation to his Jewish context. This means that Jesus was a Jew, not a Christian.71

These considerations would require Schleiermacher to rethink the historical basis of his christological doctrine. More importantly, they would most certainly entail revision of his historical reconstruction of Jesus’ teaching in the direction of what he pejoratively called “Ebionitism,” i.e., a view that qualifies the absolute uniqueness of Jesus by stressing his continuity rather than discontinuity with Judaism. Schleiermacher well understood what this would mean for his theological position:

If Christ was so constrained by the limitations of what was given at the time of his appearance, then even he and not least his entire work have to be capable of explanation from what was historically given to him; hence, Christianity as a whole could be understood to have emerged from Judaism at the particular stage of its development that it had attained at that time, the stage at which a person like Jesus could have come forth from its womb.72

This alternative view which was rejected by Schleiermacher is, however, completely in keeping with the results of contemporary scholarship on Jesus. Hence, if we are in earnest about the historical Jesus, as Schleiermacher was in principle, we have to surrender unhistorical claims that insulate Jesus’ religiosity from his Jewish milieu.73

We may properly seek to delineate Jesus’ distinctiveness in relation to his milieu, but this is not to deny that the religion he taught was a form of Judaism. Though Schleiermacher insisted upon the Jewish character of the OT, he did not view the OT as a document of equal religious value to the NT.74 This assessment reflects his conviction that Christianity is not only a different religion from Judaism but also superior to it. He further assumed that this view was consonant with what Jesus taught. This claim is now undermined by the insight that Jesus was wholly rooted in the Jewish tradition.

Strauss clearly saw that it is no longer possible to assume an identity between the church’s proclamation about Jesus and the proclamation of Jesus. But if the church’s

the Hegelianism of Strauss as a condition for recognizing the importance of myth as a category of biblical interpretation.

70 Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (trans. Kendrick Grobel; 2 vols.; New York: Scribner, 1951, 1955) 1:3.

71 Hans Dieter Betz, “Wellhausen’s Dictum ‘Jesus was not a Christian, but a Jew’ in Light of Present Scholarship,” StTh 45 (1991) 83–110.

72 Gl. § 93.2.73 Schleiermacher was the first to offer a course of lectures on the life of Jesus in 1819, thereby

helping to launch the nineteenth century’s quest for the historical Jesus. The Life of Jesus (ed. Jack C. Verheyden; trans. S. MacLean Gilmour; Lives of Jesus series; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975).

74 Beckmann, Die Fremde Wurzel, 133 n. 530.

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kerygma represents a development beyond what the historical Jesus taught, the question arises as to how we are to understand the material relation between them.75

Although the christological faith of the church is not based directly on the teachings of Jesus, it nonetheless first arose in response to his distinctive embodiment of Jewish faith.76 His central message concerned the coming of God’s sovereign reign (“the kingdom of God”) and he called upon his fellow Jews to be prepared to receive it. As such, his preaching was about God, not about himself.77 Without rejecting the Torah in principle, he differentiated between greater and lesser commandments in it. He continued aspects of the prophetic tradition in his concern for the poor and the oppressed. He pointed to evidence of God’s providential care in the ordering of nature as had Israel’s wisdom teachers before him. In all these respects, Jesus’ teaching and ministry were firmly rooted in the OT/Jewish tradition. H. Richard Niebuhr spoke of the faith that came to expression in Jesus’ words and deeds as a paradigmatic illustration of Israel’s “radical” or thoroughgoing monotheism. The historic significance of early Christianity, as Niebuhr noted, is that it made this faith available to non-Jews without requiring of them conversion to Judaism.78

This crucial step obviously required a critical sifting of the Jewish scriptures for the purpose of discerning what was still valid for the new community under altered circumstances. But this development did not negate the material connection between Jesus’ faith in God and the faith of Israel to which he was heir. Rudolf Bultmann emphasized that no matter how critical Jesus may have been in relation to the other Jewish teachers of his day, the content of his preaching was

nothing else than true Old Testament-Jewish faith in God radicalized in the direction of the great prophets’ preaching. . . . [T]he concepts of God, world, and man, of Law and grace, of repentance and forgiveness in the teaching of Jesus are not new in comparison with those of the Old Testament and Juda-ism, however radically they may be understood. And his critical interpretation

75 When I employ the phrase “historical Jesus,” I simply mean the earliest layers of the synoptic tradition that have the greatest claim to reflect the authentic words of Jesus, though these can never be completely reconstructed with absolute assurance. Such historical judgments are always matters of probability. Schubert M. Ogden helpfully points out that the earliest, non-christological stratum of the synoptic tradition has a kerygmatic intent inasmuch as it seeks to confront the hearer/reader with the same decision for God called for by Jesus’ words (The Point of Christology [San Francisco: Harper, 1982]112–15).

76 This way of posing the question of the material continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith was the signal contribution of the post-Bultmannian “New Quest” initiated by Ernst Käsemann. See Ernst Käsemann, “The Problem of the Historical Jesus,” Essays on New Testament Themes (trans. W. J. Montague; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982) 15–47.

77 Adolf von Harnack correctly understood that Jesus “desired no other belief in his person and no other attachment to it than is contained in the keeping of his commandments” (What is Christianity? [trans. Thomas Bailey Saunders; Fortress Texts in Modern Theology; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986] 125).

78 H. Richard Niebuhr, Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (New York: Harper, 1970) 39–40.


of the Law, in spite of its radicality, likewise stands within the scribal discus-sion about it.79

Even the love-command that has been so important in Christian ethics is derived from Jesus’ summary of the Torah. Correctly understood, then, the faith of Christians is not opposed to the Jewish faith of Jesus; rather, it is trust in and loyalty to God through Jesus.80 “Christian faith is not belief in a miracle,” not even the miracle of Jesus’ sinless perfection, but “the confidence that Jesus’ witness [to God] is a true one.”81 Hence, Christian faith cannot be construed as standing in a completely antithetical relationship to Judaism without pitting itself against Jesus’ own faith as a devout Jew.

Claude Welch is correct in characterizing Schleiermacher’s position as representing only a “halfway” solution to the modern problem of christology. Unlike the classical problem of trying to affirm Jesus’ humanity given the prior assumption of his self-evident divinity, the modern problem was to ask in what sense Jesus could be divine given his genuine humanity.82 But it is possible to go further than Welch does by arguing that even this new formulation of the christological problem is flawed insofar as it asks “about the being of Jesus in himself, as distinct from asking about the meaning of Jesus for us.”83 Instead of asking about Jesus’ own relation to God (about which we could know next to nothing in any case), we should be asking another question: what does Jesus mean for those persons who have experienced redemption as a result of their encounter with him? Christological reflection thus properly begins, not with a question about the being of Jesus in relation to either divinity or humanity, but with the given fact of his salvific impact upon those who call themselves “Christians.” The question “What does Jesus actually do for Christians?” is, as Brian Gerrish rightly notes, “the crucial one to ask in any Christian community, if the christological project is to be duly launched.”84 It is this aspect of Schleiermacher’s approach—namely, his insistence that christology arises from reflection upon Jesus’ redemptive influence— that remains worthy of development

79 Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 1:34–35. Bultmann says that this continuity between Jesus and his Jewish heritage explains why “modern liberal Judaism can very well esteem Jesus as teacher.”

80 Troeltsch wrote: “In the absence of historical-critical thinking, Jesus was naturally identified with God in order that he might be the immediate object of faith; with critical thinking, the God of Jesus becomes the object of faith, and Jesus is transformed into the historical mediator and revealer” (“The Dogmatics of the History-of Religions School,” in Religion in History [trans. James Luther Adams and Walter F. Bense; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991] 98).

81 Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer: The Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966) 274.

82 Claude Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century (2 vols.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972–1985) 1:83–84.

83 Ogden, The Point of Christology, 16.84 B. A. Gerrish, Saving and Secular Faith: An Invitation to Systematic Theology (Minneapolis:

Fortress, 1999) 98. Gerrish likens this logic of christological reflection to that found in Athanasius and Luther.

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since, if pursued consistently, it would allow us to state the meaning of Jesus for contemporary Christian experience while leaving behind untenable claims about the historical Jesus and his supposedly sinless relation to God.

If we ask how Jesus is efficacious in a redemptive manner today, we have to address the role of preaching in the church. Although Schleiermacher affirmed that the faith of Christians in every age is none other than that experienced by Jesus’ original disciples, he did acknowledge a difference in the medium through which this faith has been evoked and sustained:

To us is given, instead of [Jesus’] personal efficacy, only that of his com-munity insofar as even the picture (Bild) of him found in the Bible likewise only came into being and persists because of it.85

After Jesus’ death, it is the NT’s portrait of him that serves as the occasion for an experience of redemption. This biblical picture of Christ thus takes the place that Jesus once had in relation to those who came into personal contact with him. In this respect, the church’s proclamation can be understood as a continuation of Jesus’ ministry. Such a focus on the NT’s depiction of Jesus and its actualization in the church’s preaching does not require assertions about Jesus that exempt him from the contingencies of his own historical circumstance as well as from our common humanity.

This modification of Schleiermacher’s proposed avenue to christological reflection need not entail the problematic conclusion that redemption from sin can be achieved only through an encounter with Jesus, an assumption he shared with the classical tradition that he in other ways sought to revise. Not only is redemption for Schleiermacher the central idea in the Christian religion, but Jesus is its only mediator.86 He spoke of “the conviction, which we assume every Christian to possess, of the exclusive superiority of Christianity” without, however, giving a satisfactory explanation as to why we should be convinced of this.87 A paradox in Schleiermacher’s thought is precisely how this “absolutist” conception of christology and soteriology is to be related to his celebration of diversity in religion.88

Whereas the premodern tradition had seen in religious diversity a symptom of sin, Schleiermacher viewed it as reflecting the varying historical circumstances in which religions originate and develop. It appears, however, as though he wanted to have it both ways: while an appreciation of diversity is ingredient in a genuinely historical understanding of religion, all Christians are nonetheless agreed that redemption can come only through Jesus. But this latter assertion reflects an absolutizing of what is historically relative and thus is contrary to a truly historical viewpoint. We must

85 Gl. § 88.2.86 Gl. § 11.3.87 Gl. § 7.3.88 Wesley J. Wildman defines the “Absolutist Principle” as “the proposition that Jesus Christ is

absolutely, universally, uniquely, unsurpassably significant for revelation and soteriology” (“Basic Christological Distinctions,” TD 64 [2007] 299).


find some distinction that will allow us to extricate ourselves from this contradiction while still acknowledging the legitimate motive that misled Schleiermacher to fall victim to it. A descriptive account of the Christian religious experience rightly emphasizes what Schleiermacher understood, namely, that Christians are those who are certain that their own experience of redemption is constituted by a relation to Jesus. The Christian religious affections thus have a necessary connection to the figure of Jesus as mediated by the church’s gospel. Yet it does not follow that a redemptive experience of God must always be constituted by a relation to Jesus. Such a claim exceeds the bounds of Schleiermacher’s method of dogmatics, which cannot render judgments about non-Christian religious experience.

Wesley Wildman, tracing what he calls “the Absolutist Principle” back to the church’s earliest stages of christological reflection, explains the basic confusion here:

The origins of the Absolutist Principle are understandable, as Christians sought to account for their powerful experiences of salvation in Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, there were never any compelling reasons for absolutizing the interpretation of those transforming experiences. The significance of Jesus Christ could be adequately and accurately expressed without the aid of the Absolutist Principle.89

This brand of christocentrism and its corollary that salvation is a human possibility solely in connection with Jesus are, in Wildman’s view, the major doctrinal factors that have also created the problem of the church’s relation to Judaism. The church’s traditional polemic against the synagogue is a consequence of universalizing its historically particular religious experience so that those who stand in other streams of religious history are viewed as simply bereft of anything like the redemptive benefits that accrue to Christians as a result of their relation to Jesus. In place of absolutism, Wildman proposes a “modest” christological conception that does not make such exaggerated claims.

Modest christologies have tremendous advantages over their absolutist coun-terparts because they are not required to adopt the view that cosmic history and religious insight reach their culmination in the figure of Jesus and in his reception as the Christ.90

Niebuhr, who was conscious of his formal continuity with Schleiermacher’s method, made virtually the same point: “A critical historical theology cannot . . . prescribe what form religious life must take in all places and all times beyond the limits of its own historical system.”91 By declaring that apart from Jesus the consciousness of God is tainted and impure, Schleiermacher violated the strictures of his own

89 Wildman, “Basic Christological Distinctions,” 302.90 Ibid., 303. 91 H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation (New York: Macmillan, 1941) 13. Niebuhr’s

work is an example of how a theologian employing a “confessional” theological method quite similar to that of Schleiermacher can nonetheless put different material content into it.

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theological method, which only allows for a descriptive account of the Christianreligious experience.92

Schleiermacher did not derive all knowledge of God exclusively from Christ in Barthian fashion. The revelation in Christ has a “point of contact” (Anknüpfungspunkt) in the innate awareness of God given with human self-consciousness simply as such.93 Moreover, in Schleiermacher’s usage, “revelation” is not a theological principle that stands in an oppositional relation to the mode of understanding to be derived from the historical interpretation of religion, as is the case with Barth (and presumably also Beckmann). Revelation, for Schleiermacher, refers either to the original revelation of God to human self-consciousness or to the historical revelation in Christ that is the basis of the church’s proclamation. Still, it may be asked whether there is not also a third sense in which we can and should speak of revelation in reference to that religious development wherein the original revelation, which in itself may be quite inchoate, did in fact become a clear monotheistic consciousness of God. Paul Tillich, a theologian who was quite explicit about his indebtedness to Schleiermacher, made precisely this point when he differentiated between three senses of revelation as “universal,” “preparatory,” and “final.”94 Since the meanings of “universal” and “final” are sufficiently similar to the two senses of revelation found in Schleiermacher’s thought, we ought to inquire into what Tillich meant by a “preparatory” revelation. Speaking as a Christian for whom Jesus as the Christ is the final revelatory event in history, Tillich nevertheless attributed an unparalleled significance to the history of Israel:

The revelation through the prophets is the direct concrete preparation of the final revelation, and it cannot be separated from it. The universal revelation as such is not the immediate preparation for the final revelation; only the universal revelation criticized and transformed by the prophetism of the Old Testament is such preparation.95

Tillich thus claimed that “the Old Testament is an inseparable part of the revelation of Jesus as the Christ.”96 What is apparent in Tillich, though missing from Schleiermacher, is a deep appreciation of the religious significance of Israel’s history as having provided the indispensable presupposition of the church’s faith in Jesus.97

92 Gl. § 94.2. 93 Schleiermacher called this “an original revelation of God to the human being” (Gl. § 4.4).94 Hans W. Frei called Tillich “Schleiermacher redivivus.” Frei, Types of Modern Theology (ed.

George Hunsinger and William C. Placher; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) 3, 68.95 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (3 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951, 1957,

1963) 1:142.96 Tillich, Systematic Theology, 1:133.97 Tillich responded to the charge that Judaism is inherently nationalistic: “The Old Testament

certainly is full of Jewish nationalism, but it appears over and over as that against which the Old Testament fights” (Systematic Theology, 1:142). Such a nuanced approach is absent from Schleiermacher’s portrayal.


Schleiermacher was right to locate what is new about Christianity in the religious significance Jesus has for Christians. But to say that Jesus is of central importance to Christians is not to say that everything important in Christianity began with him. Nonetheless, there is one respect in which Schleiermacher credited the history of Israel, namely, when he said that a universal redeemer could only have come from a monotheistic people.98 He also acknowledged that the Christian notion of redemption, presupposing as it does the reality of freedom and consequently of guilt on account of sin, is intelligible solely on the basis of the teleological type of religion which first emerged in Israel. Are these not admissions that, apart from the prior religious development in Israel, the church could never have arisen in the first place? On his own terms, would it not be possible for Schleiermacher to grant the truth in what Tillich said since he well understood that ethical monotheism is an ingredient in the Christian religious experience?99

Cumulatively, these various considerations more than suffice to justify the conclusion that Schleiermacher’s formal method of theology allows for a revision of his material positions in the doctrinal loci of christology, soteriology, and the multiple meanings of revelation. While Schleiermacher was correct to identify the essence of Christian faith as monotheistic and ethical and focused on the figure of Jesus for the purpose of redemption from sin, he was wrong to draw such a sharp antithesis between Israel’s faith and that of the church. Indeed, there is every reason to affirm a strong material connection between the Jewish message of Jesus and the church’s proclamation of his ongoing significance. Christians need not deny the indispensable role played by the Israelite-Jewish tradition in establishing precisely those presuppositions without which neither Jesus nor the church would have been possible and on the sole basis of which their fundamental import is intelligible. Of course, to say that these alternatives to Schleiermacher’s own views are allowed by his method is not to imply that he personally would have agreed with them. The point is simply that another theologian, working from the same model for theological inquiry initially proposed by Schleiermacher, can arrive at a different construal of the nature of Christian faith that likewise claims to be a faithful rendering of the religious affections evoked and sustained by the church’s preaching. It is not necessary to demonstrate more than this in order to make a convincing case that Schleiermacher’s material interpretation of doctrine can be criticized according to the methodological criteria he set forth as adequate to the unprecedented responsibilities of modern theology. All the same, this alternative proposal has the advantage that it coheres with the best historical scholarship in a way no longer true of Schleiermacher’s theology.100

98 Gl. § 12.1.99 In a handwritten marginal comment, Schleiermacher did attribute the emergence of monotheism

to “revelation” (Gl. § 2:502, 504, notes to § 10 and 15 from the first German edition of 1821–1822).

100 Not only could Schleiermacher’s method have allowed him to paint a more positive portrait of Judaism, but Jewish theologians could easily avail themselves, mutatis mutandis, of his formal

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■ Historical Criticism and the Canon of ScriptureThe question of the OT’s right to a place in the Christian Bible did not first arise with historical criticism. Quite early in the church’s history, the OT became problematic because it was also the Bible of the synagogue (Tanakh). Since Marcion believed that Jesus taught an altogether new religion antithetical to Judaism, he was completely consistent in arguing that the church should dispense with the Jewish Bible in favor of a canon of distinctively Christian writings. Yet he was alone in his categorical rejection of all spiritualizing modes of exegesis. When the proto-orthodox church repudiated Marcion’s proposal by retaining the OT as the first part of its canon, it simultaneously rejected his insistence upon the literal sense of the text.101 The church thereby secured its christological exegesis of the OT, which backed up its claim that Israel’s scriptures belong to the Christians, not to the Jews. For this reason, the anti-Marcionite church never refuted Marcion on his own terms, but rather implicitly accepted his formulation of the crucial issue: if the OT is not Christian, it cannot be canonical.

Although Schleiermacher shared Marcion’s view of the absolute novelty of Christianity in relation to Judaism, he did not defend it on the mythological grounds that Jews and Christians worship two distinct deities. On the basis of historical scholarship, he recognized the real differences between the OT and the NT that had been smoothed over by premodern forms of exegesis; as a result, he was right in criticizing previous theologians for trying to make the OT say something about Jesus that it does not say. His argument underscored the legitimate rationale for historical criticism, namely, that it alone makes possible an understanding of the biblical texts free from the distortions of anachronism.102 Indeed, it is to his credit that he frankly acknowledged the Jewish character of the OT and pleaded for an end to the church’s historic polemic against the synagogue over its rightful possession. He

model of theology.101 Jaroslav Pelikan notes: “The Old Testament achieved and maintained its status as Christian

Scripture with the aid of spiritual exegesis. There was no early Christian who simultaneously acknowledged the doctrinal authority of the Old Testament and interpreted it literally” (The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition 100–600 [vol. 1 of The Christian Tradition; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971] 81).

102 Today, historical-critical readings of scripture have to be defended against attacks from both ends of the theological spectrum. From the right, Christopher R. Seitz, seeking to rehabilitate a traditional view of biblical authority, denies that historical-critical study has any constitutive significance for theology (Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness[Waco: Baylor University Press, 2004] 97). John J. Collins provides a cogent rejoinder to this type of conservative argument (“Biblical Theology and the History of Israelite Religion,” Encounters with Biblical Theology [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005] 33). On the left, Dale B. Martin, working from a “postmodern” position, argues against “the notion that Christians should insist on the necessityof historical criticism” (Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation[Louisville: John Knox, 2006] 9). For a critique of this type of argument, see Collins, “Historical Criticism and Its Postmodern Critics,” The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) 9–25.


was, moreover, prescient in his prediction that critical scholarship would occasion difficult problems for the church’s inherited theology.

For the sake of arriving at a different conclusion than Schleiermacher’s about the OT’s place in the Christian canon, must we abandon the strictly historical perspective in favor of a special theological or “sacred” hermeneutic that treats the Bible as a unique case to which the general rules of interpretation do not apply? Should these turn out to be in fact our only options, then modern Protestant theology has certainly been brought to an impasse by historical criticism. But there is another option beyond this impasse that has not been sufficiently considered. Beckmann’s inadequacy is that he never thinks of arguing against Schleiermacher’s thesis on the basis of the latter’s own hermeneutical presuppositions. This failing mirrors that of nascent orthodoxy, which was unable to reply to Marcion except by evading his direct challenge. Like Hofmann and Barth, Beckmann tips his hat to the legitimacy of historical-critical readings of the Bible in principle but only to shift the grounds of discussion by appealing to dogmatic categories of interpretation derived from the NT in order to argue for the canonical status of the OT. The irony here is that Beckmann has tacitly accepted Schleiermacher’s neo-Marcionite formulation of the basic issue: either the OT is not strictly speaking a Christian book, in which case the church should hand it back to the synagogue, or the true meaning of the OT consists in its prophetic witness to Jesus as Israel’s messiah, in which case the Jews’ claim to it is invalidated by their lack of faith in its christological referent. After his otherwise admirable recounting of the story of historical-critical research into the OT, Beckmann concludes with this pronouncement: “For the sake of the faith affirmed in the New Testament, Christian theologians must insist against the Jewish ‘no’ that Jesus of Nazareth is the messiah promised in the Old Testament.”103

But it can be asked of Beckmann why Christian theologians must continue to press this claim. Not only has historical research into the OT undermined the traditional “proofs” of Jesus’ messianic status, but even the very idea of a “messiah” appears to be a mythological or symbolic one, as Strauss clearly understood.104 Moreover, the early Christians, by ascribing this title to Jesus, radically redefined its content in light of his non-messianic fate. Drawing a very different conclusion from historical study, Rabbi Michael Hilton calls upon Jews and Christians to revise their theological traditions on the basis of a “more accurate understanding . . . of the relationship between the two faiths”:

We cannot afford the two faiths an equal and distinct right to exist while we continue to regard Judaism as the unchanged word of the Bible from which

103 Beckmann, Die fremde Wurzel, 349.104 Many modern Jews also acknowledge the mythological or symbolic character of the messianic

idea. See the Prayer Book of Conservative Judaism, Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book (New York: The Rabbinical Assembly of America and the United Synagogue of America, 1973) ix.

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Christianity deviated, or Christianity the true fulfillment of the prophets which the Jews rejected.105

Hilton’s proposal thus points the way beyond that untenable impasse of either an OT historically interpreted as a document of Jewish religion and, hence, antithetical to Christianity (Marcion, Schleiermacher, Harnack) or an OT spiritually interpreted as a witness to Christian faith and, hence, denied to Judaism (Hofmann, Barth, Beckmann).

The modern impasse in Protestant theology with respect to the OT results from the dual legacy of the Reformation. The Reformers insisted that the Bible be allowed to speak in its own voice and that the Bible should be the sole norm of Christian doctrine. Their rejection of the allegorical method and correlative insistence upon a literal exegesis undergirded their use of the Bible as the critical principle for testing the medieval tradition. Prior to modernity, these two commitments could be affirmed simultaneously because it was axiomatic that the Bible as a whole provided an unambiguous foundation for doctrine. But in the modern period, these two aspects of the Reformation heritage came into conflict. Historical scholarship not only separated OT and NT into distinct fields of study but also identified within each testament diverse theological traditions that could not easily be harmonized. Perceiving the problem, Schleiermacher fought against an uncritical use of the Bible as a proof text for doctrine. For him, this entailed three departures from the inherited approach to the scriptures: first, the “true” or normative NT canon has to be critically distinguished from its received historical form; second, the NT should not be used to support Protestant doctrine against Catholicism; and, third, the OT

cannot be invoked to defend Christianity against Judaism. The first two points are relatively non-controversial in theology today. Still, his handling of the OT continues to be denounced. Yet the usual alternative to it, illustrated by Beckmann, is even more problematic. Schubert Ogden locates the problem here in the assumption that the OT is to be judged by the same critical norm as is the NT.

The usual view on this point in recent Protestant theology is, in effect, this: just as the New Testament is to be used by theology only under the control of the New Testament message, so the Old Testament’s authority for theological reflection and argument is subject to that of the New. But . . . this familiar view of the use of the Old Testament is now scarcely less untenable than the views of the Reformers and of the orthodox dogmaticians of which it is a revision. . . . That the New Testament is to be used in theology only under the authority of the Jesus-kerygma poses no particular difficulty, since the New Testament’s writings . . . expressly have to do with the subject-term of this kerygma, that is, with Jesus. . . . However, we now recognize that it is historically false as well as theologically misleading to claim that the Old Testament writings, too, are expressly about Jesus. . . .

105 Michael Hilton, The Christian Effect on Jewish Life (London: SCM, 1994) 2.


[R]ecognizing that the Old Testament does not bear witness to Christ pro-phetically in the sense in which the early church understood it to do and, therefore, at the crucial point is not like the New, forces the question whether the Old Testament may be properly used as a theological authority at all.106

Here Ogden formulates the theological question of the OT in the only way it can be taken seriously on the basis of Schleiermacher’s premises. This question can be rephrased by asking whether Schleiermacher’s perfectly sound argument against an illicit use of the OT in Christian theology precludes altogether the possibility of an admissible use therein.

Since Schleiermacher acknowledged the necessity of a theological criticism (Sachkritik) of the NT scriptures, there is no reason in principle not to insist upon a similar approach to the OT. Only in this case the theological criterion should not be the kerygma as in the NT, but rather the indispensable monotheistic-ethical presuppositions on the sole basis of which the NT’s christological and soteriological affirmations are intelligible and apart from which they are easily distorted in a dualistic and polytheistic manner. Accordingly, the OT’s enduring import for the church is to insure that its faith is never interpreted in such a manner that explicitly contradicts or even implicitly denies these presuppositions which are contained in all authentic proclamation of the gospel.107 That the ethical monotheism to which the OT bears definitive witness has as a matter of fact actually functioned in this sense as a necessary—though not sufficient—norm by which to test the adequacy of the various interpretations of the gospel found in the NT and the post-biblical tradition is ample warrant for deeming the OT to be of indispensable religious and theological value to Christian faith.108 This rationale for attributing a definite sort of canonical status to the OT—different from that of the NT but no less important—does not sidestep the challenge of historical criticism to traditional theology. It also validates the legitimate motive at work in the ancient church’s retention of the OT

without endorsing the inadequate argumentation on which it based this decision.109

106 Schubert M. Ogden, “The Authority of Scripture for Theology,” On Theology (San Francisco: Harper, 1986) 65–66.

107 Schleiermacher said of the less distinctively Christian doctrines elaborated in the first part of his dogmatics that they are “both presupposed by and contained in every Christian religious affection” (Gl. § 32).

108 Rolf P. Knierim asks “whether the understanding of Christ as expressed in diverse theological interpretations triggered by the New Testament is at times so controversial among Christians, today as throughout history, that they reflect a polytheistic more than a monotheistic Christology or Christianity” (The Task of Old Testament Theology: Method and Cases [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995] 7, n. 5).

109 Neither Marcion and nor the Gnostics were monotheists. Hence, the decision to retain the OTwas simultaneously a reassertion of monotheism as the indispensable presupposition of Christian faith. For an example of how the OT’s witness to monotheism functioned as a constraint upon the development of trinitarian doctrine, see Gregory of Nyssa, “Concerning We Should Think of Saying that There are Not Three Gods to Ablabius,” The Trinitarian Controversy (trans. William G. Rusch; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980) 151.

PAUL E. CAPETZ 325

Not the least advantage of this alternative systematic proposal for formulating both the question and its answer is that it is not constrained to secure its positive valuation of the OT by diminishing the import of historical criticism, thus pitting a special theological hermeneutic against a so-called “general” hermeneutic.110 Moreover, it does not entail a denial of the synagogue’s equally valid claim to possession of Israel’s scripture.111

Ernst Troeltsch, who pursued the theological implications of a consistently historical approach to religion more fully than anyone either before or after him, noted that “the strictly historical interpretation of Christianity has made tremendous strides and has furnished a historical-critical picture very different from that which lay before . . . Schleiermacher.”112 Regarding the OT, he affirmed: “To acknowledge Christianity . . . is also to recognize the religion of Israel as its prior stage and presupposition, for without it, Christianity is incomprehensible.”113 Nonetheless, he gave this positive assessment of Schleiermacher’s new departure for modern theology: “His program simply needs to be carried out consistently. Hardly any change is necessary.”114 While Schleiermacher’s execution of his self-appointed task is justifiably subject to criticism, we must look upon his program for theology as “an unfulfilled possibility and not as an accomplishment forever witnessing to the errors following from his methodological starting point.”115

Perhaps the true service of historical theology consists not only in providing new angles of vision that illuminate the ambiguities of our religious past, but also in reminding us of unfinished business that has to be on any agenda for future constructive work.

110 James Barr identifies the usual false dichotomy at work here: “It is sometimes said that the historical relation between the Old and New Testaments is not in question, but that the problem lies in stating a theological relation. The theological relation, however, cannot be the formation of connections other than the historical; it must rather be the seeing of theological values in the historical connections” (Old and New in Interpretation: A Study of the Two Testaments [London: SCM, 1966] 31).

111 Ogden submits that “the key” to answering the question of the OT lies in “the insight that the writings of the Old Testament contain the most fundamental presuppositions . . . of the Jesus-kerygma. . . . But if this is correct, there is no doubt that the Old Testament, in its way, is also a theological authority, nor does using it as such pose any particular difficulty” (Ogden, “The Authority of Scripture for Theology,” 66–67).

112 “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School,” 93. 113 Ernst Troeltsch, The Christian Faith (trans. Garrett E. Paul; Fortress Texts in Modern Theology;

Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991) 85. Though Troeltschs’s dogmatics follows Schleiermacher’s model, it includes a discussion of “The Religious Significance of the History of Israel” (85–86).

114 “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School,” 108, n. 5. 115 Van A. Harvey, “A Word in Defense of Schleiermacher’s Theological Method,” JR 42 (1962)

153.

HTR 102:3 (2009) 327–52

From the Double Movement to the Double Danger: Kierkegaard and Rebounding Violence*

Matthew C. BaggerBrown University

In the introduction to Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience,Maurice Bloch makes some forthright admissions about the methodological and theoretical pitfalls threatening a project of the scope he undertakes in this slim, provocative volume. He acknowledges, for instance, the temptation, when arguing for what he describes as a “quasi-universal” religious structure, to present “a tendentious selection of examples, and make this structure appear to be present everywhere.”

1 In the face of this danger, independent readers, who “choose to

continue the exercise by trying to see whether what is proposed here stands up to the test of the other cases they know” become the most important critical constraint.

2

In what follows I test Bloch’s theory of rebounding violence against the thought of Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish theologian.

This article does not simply apply Bloch’s theory to a new case, however. Bloch is an anthropologist and builds his argument using ethnographic examples. Because anthropologists are trained in fieldwork—interview techniques, participant observation, etc.—they tend not to apply their theories about human beliefs and behaviors to texts. Despite widespread commitment to “the model of the text”

* Mark Cladis, Wendell Dietrich, Danielle Novetsky Friedman, Matt Redovan, and anonymous referees commented helpfully on a draft of this essay.

1 Maurice Bloch, Prey into Hunter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 2.2 Independent readers can also, Bloch writes, correct for “the problem of skewed presentation”

of examples. Independent readers have repeatedly criticized Bloch’s skewed presentation of his Japanese example. See, for instance, David N. Gellner, “Religion, Politics, and Ritual: Remarks on Geertz and Bloch,” Social Anthropology 7 (1999) 135–53, and Nicholas Van Sant, “A Tendentious Presentation of Details: Reviewing the Japanese Case in Maurice Bloch’s Prey into Hunter,” Ziggurat: The Brown Journal of Religion 1 (2006) 17–26.


in anthropological practice, anthropologists generally focus on ritual, kinship, and politics, not texts. Scholars of religion, on the other hand, have applied anthropological theory and other kinds of social scientific theory to the study of texts. It is not uncommon or surprising to see New Testament scholars, for example, using social scientific theory to elucidate Paul’s letters. Students of modern Western texts, however, generally limit themselves to the hermeneutic task of understanding the text, and eschew explanatory theories, anthropological or otherwise. There is no principled reason for this reluctance: Modern Western texts, like all linguistic products, human behavior, cultural artifacts, and social practices, both require interpretation and invite social-scientific explanation.3 Perhaps modern Western texts are too close to home, so to speak. As a result the theories are deprived of a field of application and assessment, and textual scholars are deprived of the deeper insight into the texts the theories might afford.

I offer what follows as one example of how anthropological theory might enrich the study of modern Western texts, and vice versa. On the one hand, Bloch’s theory helps the Kierkegaard scholar make sense of some puzzling changes in Kierkegaard’s views and brings some neglected aspects of Kierkegaard’s thought into relief. On the other hand, the specifics of Kierkegaard’s thought indicate that Bloch misconstrues the object of his theory. Discovering in Kierkegaard’s authorship the dynamic that Bloch describes not only restores to Kierkegaard’s sociopolitical concerns their proper significance, but also reveals that the phrase ‘rebounding consumption’ better captures the dynamic than does ‘rebounding violence’ and that the theory is better ranged alongside theories of the body and society than conceived as a theory of religion and violence. The singularity of Kierkegaard’s project and the self-consciousness with which he composed his works, which are neither ritual nor myth nor a kinship system, restores to anthropological theory, moreover, an often-neglected emphasis on individual agency.

3 Texts require interpretation for which the author’s meaning and intentions are normative, but the author’s beliefs and intention are susceptible to explanations that depart from his or her understanding. The same rules apply to texts that compose the various stages in the history of the reception of another text (e.g., sermons or biblical commentaries). The interpretation of (e.g.) rituals and social formations is, of course, a more complex matter because of the question of who “authors” a ritual or social formation. In this article I argue that applying social theory to a modern Western thinker reminds us to credit the agency or authorship of the individuals or groups who produce rituals and social formations. Our explanations need not depart drastically from the understandings of those responsible for rituals or social formations. On interpretation of texts, see Quentin Skinner’s articles in Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics (ed. James Tully; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989). On the divergent imperatives of interpretation and explanation, see Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985) 190–227.

MATTHEW C. BAGGER 329

■ Bloch’s Theory of Rebounding ViolenceIn Prey into Hunter, Maurice Bloch identifies what he describes as a “quasi-universal” minimal religious structure common to many religious phenomena. Bloch finds this structure in rituals of various sorts—sacrifice, initiation, marriage, spirit mediumship—but also sees it in myth, kinship systems, and millenarian cults. The startling quasi-universality of this minimal structure derives, he argues, from 1) a very basic understanding of the biological processes of life, an understanding present in all cultures, and 2) “problems intrinsic to the human condition.”

4 Armed

with shared understandings and faced with the same problems, many cultures produce the same minimal religious structure, but they elaborate the structure in different ways, and employ different symbols and metaphors to articulate it. Bloch labels this minimal structure “rebounding violence.”

All humans, Bloch claims, have at some level a conception of life in which birth is the beginning of, or a milestone in, a process of growth culminating in reproduction, followed by a decline leading to death. This “transformative dialectic” is seen as involving all living things, “if only because one species provides food for another.”

5

Bloch speculates that this basic conception of biological life is partly innate and partly the product of our interactions with other species. Given this conception, however, a problem arises concerning human social existence. How can permanent, life-transcending politico-social structures be created out of these transient and discrete constituents? How, in other words, can humans establish an authority for social and political institutions that transcends “the fluidity of human life?”

6 The

phenomenon of rebounding violence gives an answer to this problem. Rebounding violence begins with an inversion or transformation of the basic

conception of life’s biological processes. Religion posits a life superior to ordinary mundane life, which pertains to a superior, transcendental element in persons. Unlike ordinary biological life, moreover, where birth and growth lead to flourishing, in relation to this extraordinary life, weakening and death lead to flourishing. The religious conception reverses the biological process, leading to a state beyond process. This reversal is represented in rituals as a violent conquest of an individual’s vitality whereby the individual, now fully transcendental, becomes part of something beyond process. The Orokaiva of Papua, New Guinea, for example, conceive of people as part vital pig and part transcendental spirit. In their initiation ritual, elders representing the ancestral spirits symbolically hunt and kill the initiates in a pig hunt. The weakening and death of the pig aspect of the initiates transforms the initiates into transcendental spirits. This first violence, which is largely symbolic, signifies one’s surrender to the transcendental. A prominent feature of this stage of rebounding violence is that one colludes in the vanquishing of one’s vitality by the transcendental. (In the Orokaiva case it is the village adults who cooperate with

4 Bloch, Prey into Hunter, 23.5 Ibid., 4.6 Ibid., 79.


the invading spirits.) One submits to conquest by the transcendental and thereby transcends biological life, with this conquest linking one to a unified entity beyond process that is the basis for social and political institutions. One abandons one’s vitality in favor of permanent order. But this move to the transcendental has no social and political significance unless the transcendental can be rejoined to the world of process.

In the second, “rebounding,” violence the transcendental rejoins the world of process by conquering and consuming life, but at this stage the conquered vitality must be distinct from one’s original or native vitality. It must be externalvitality, to ensure that the revitalization does not negate the first violence. If the transcendental recovered the native vitality, it might look like vitality reconquering the transcendent. The rebounding violence is not a simple return to native vitality. Rather, the returning person “is a changed person, a permanently transcendental person who can therefore dominate the here and now of which he previously was a part.”

7 Rebounding violence is figured primarily through the consumption of animals

“as food, often literally through the mouth,”8 but also through the consumption of

plants, the taking of women in marriage, or, in some circumstances, the subjugation of other peoples. This recovery of vitality must be violent to demonstrate the subordination of vitality to permanent order. The Orokaiva initiates, who formerly were hunted as pigs, dressed now as spirits return to the village from the initiation hut as hunters of pigs. Their first act upon reentering the village is to engage in an actual pig hunt.

The idiom of rebounding violence makes it possible to see humans as integrated with the transcendent basis for permanent institutions, but yet vital.

In ritual representations, native vitality is replaced by a conquered, external, consumed vitality. It is through this substitution that an image is created in which humans can leave this life and join the transcendental, yet still not be alienated from the here and now. They become part of permanent institutions, and as superior beings they can reincorporate the present life through the idiom of conquest or consumption.

9

Rebounding violence provides a scenario where humans can appear simultaneously beyond process yet endowed with life. It responds to the puzzle concerning the authority and permanency of politico-social structures.

Bloch argues further that rebounding violence includes “an experiential dichotemisation of the subjects into an over-vital side and a transcendental side.”

10

Where the idiom of rebounding violence is invoked, people come to experience themselves as composed of these two opposed elements in tension with one another.

7 Ibid., 5.8 Ibid., 6.9 Ibid., 5.10 Ibid.


Corresponding to the external public drama in ritual, an internal experiential dynamic follows the same logic.

[T]he person is represented as symbolically dual, with one side chaotic but vital and the other superior and transcendental. Then, the two parts are set in motion one against the other so that the one is, often literally, disappearing into the mouth of the other, thereby producing an image of a permanent order which nonetheless contains vitality. The consuming element was originally defined by opposition to the vital as the moral, superior aspect of the person. This is what remains beyond the processes inherent in any individual. It re-mains unchanged but it swallows up vitality. Thus the moral entity remains both a particular living unit and also an impersonal part of a transcendent or-der. In this way the central puzzle of the creation of the apparently permanent out of the transformative is phenomenologically achieved.

11

The congruence of the internal dynamic with the external drama lends emotional force to rebounding violence, which culminates in political significance.

To summarize, rebounding violence includes two stages of violence. In the first stage (dramatically enacted in ritual, and/or experienced within the self), something transcendental drives out native vitality. In the second stage, the transcendental recovers and masters (an external) vitality. This two stage structure grounds human political and social institutions in a world beyond process. In other words, rebounding violence works to reproduce and legitimate social and political structures in the face of the transiency of the individuals in a society.

Bloch argues, however, that depending upon a “people’s evaluation of their politico-economic circumstances,” the logic of rebounding violence can lead to very different social and political outcomes than simply the reproduction of social and political structures.

12 When a people is strong relative to their neighbors, the

rebounding violence of the second stage can extend beyond the ritual itself and lead to military aggression against outsiders. At certain points in Orokaiva history, for instance, the returning initiates’ pig hunt served as a prelude to military campaigns against neighboring peoples. In these cases rebounding violence doesn’t merely legitimate social and political institutions; it legitimates expansionism. In other circumstances, the idiom of rebounding violence in the hands of a ruling class can lead to aggression against its subjects. The rulers consume their subjects. In these cases rebounding violence legitimates social hierarchy. Finally, those who have lost any hope for the social and political institutions in which they live, can seek to delegitimize them altogether by interrupting the dynamic of rebounding violence.

In discussing these last cases Bloch attempts to elucidate the nature of millenarian movements. Using early Christianity and the 1863 rebellion of the Merina on Madagascar as his examples, he argues that millenarian movements employ the

11 Ibid., 21.12 Ibid., 98.


logic of rebounding violence to subversive ends. Millenarianism arises in the context of a group perceiving what it takes to be the “political and religious failure of [its] own leaders.”

13 More specifically, it appears where a group is “disillusioned

with their politico-religious leadership, which they [feel has] abandoned them and their transcendental righteousness,” and when the group has “given up hope of a mundane solution to their ills.”

14 In such circumstances the group (often in defiance

of established authorities) initiates the first violence and submits to conquest by the transcendental. Having become transcendental, they cease activities related to reproduction and biological process (e.g., sex, agriculture). Most importantly, a millenarian movement will refuse to carry out the rebounding violence. By giving the transcendental purchase in the mundane world, the rebounding violence serves to legitimate social and political institutions. When a group feels that existing institutions have forsaken the transcendental and they see no mundane hope of reforming the institutions, they will refrain from enacting the rebounding violence. They flee to the transcendental without the intention of returning, but thereby also undermine the legitimacy of existing social and political institutions. They seek to sever the bonds between transcendental authority and the existing religious and political structures. Eschewing all forms of reproduction, the millenarian movement interrupts the reproduction of religious and political institutions as well. The refusal to complete the cycle of rebounding violence is implicitly an attack on the established order.

■ Kierkegaard and the Double MovementSøren Kierkegaard’s authorship has been periodized in a variety of ways: primarily ethical vs. primarily Christian writings; the first pseudonymous authorship, culminating in Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Johannes Climacus vs. the second pseudonymous authorship in the voice of Anti-Climacus, etc. I believe the writings can be chronologically divided most profitably in terms of Kierkegaard’s changing relationship to Christendom. In Kierkegaard’s usage Christendom designates those regions (principally, in Kierkegaard’s mind, nineteenth-century Denmark) where Christianity has been integrated into the prevailing social arrangements, political establishment, and culture. In Christendom one is Christian by birth and citizenship. In his retrospective The Point of View for My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard explains that his “whole authorship pertains” to the problem of Christianity and Christendom.

15 Throughout his corpus Kierkegaard criticizes

Christendom because he believes it discourages the development of the highest possibilities of both individual selfhood and Christian commitment. Christendom makes faith too easy, makes becoming a Christian a matter of course. It portrays a

13 Ibid., 91.14 Ibid., 94.15 Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View for My Work as an Author (trans. Howard and Edna

Hong; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998) 23.


mere semblance of true Christian faith as full Christian commitment and thereby obscures the passionate individuality of a truly Christian life lived at the extremity of existence. True Christianity presupposes the utmost subjective development. It demands passionate exertions that isolate one as “the single individual.” Training in Christianity produces free, passionate individuals. Kierkegaard argues, moreover, that genuine politics requires that free and passionate individuals come into association. The scaling down of true Christianity in Christendom, therefore, militates against true Christian faith, the development of free and passionate individuals, and the possibility of genuine politics.

Despite the overall continuity in this critique of Christendom, Kierkegaard’s attitude toward Christendom hardened over time. In the earlier part of his career, Kierkegaard saw his task essentially as one of renewal. He wanted to write as a “corrective to the present age” and in his journals repeatedly characterizes his project as an “attempt again to introduce Christianity into Christendom.” The first pseudonymous authorship belongs entirely to this period. In the second, later stage of his career, Kierkegaard gave up on renewal. He declared Christendom an abomination, issued an ultimatum to the Primate of Denmark, then sought utterly to destroy Christendom. The pseudonymous author Anti-Climacus represents the transition to this latter period, which culminates in Kierkegaard’s notorious “attacks upon Christendom.” To examine this change of attitude in light of Bloch’s theory of rebounding violence reveals the connection between this change and other changes in Kierkegaard’s conception of the religious life.

Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling represents an appropriate terminus a quo for this discussion for two reasons.16 First, published in 1843, Fear and Trembling is one of Kierkegaard’s earliest works, and his earliest to focus on religious existence. Second, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, Johannes di Silentio, reflects on Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, and regards this episode as the paradigm of religious faith. In Genesis, God demands that Abraham bind and sacrifice Isaac. Abraham consents, but at the last minute God provides a ram as a substitute offering. In recognition of Abraham’s obedience, God promises Abraham that he will “make your descendants as many as the stars of heaven and the grains of the sea shore. Your descendants shall gain possession of the gates of their enemies” (Gen 22:18). Bloch adduces this very episode as an example of rebounding violence. Bloch points out that Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac amounts to Abraham’s submission to the transcendental which conquers Abraham’s “vitality at its most intense and forward-looking.”

17 A second, rebounding stage of

violence occurs with the substitution and sacrifice of the ram. The outcome of the story, moreover, is the promise of an enduring patrilineage and military conquest. Abraham’s vitality is vanquished by the transcendental, but the transcendentalized

16 Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (trans. Alastair Hannay; London: Penguin Books, 1985).

17 Bloch, Prey into Hunter, 27.


Abraham conquers external vitality, leading to a permanent sociopolitical institution and the legitimation of violence against other groups.

Fear and Trembling is undoubtedly one of Kierkegaard’s most beautiful and memorable works, but in some respects is also one of his least successful because it invites serious misinterpretations. Kierkegaard’s moving reflections on Abraham, and the contrast Kierkegaard draws between Abraham’s obedience to God’s horrificcommand on the one hand, and a Kantian ethical religion on the other, can lend the impression either that Kierkegaard implicitly justifies moral enormities in the name of faith, or that Kierkegaard intends to supplant Kantian ethics with a divine command ethic. It is true that Kierkegaard takes aim at Kant’s account of the relationship between ethics and religion, but Kierkegaard never sanctions unethical behavior, nor does he ever repudiate a roughly Kantian account of the ethical.

In Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason Kant argues that a human is most fully a person when he or she subordinates his or her sensuous inclinations to the moral law, a law which is dictated by pure reason and which is therefore universal and eternal. To exercise one’s freedom to make respect for this universal, eternal law a sufficient incentive to determine one’s will is to fulfill the human predisposition to “personality.” Kant also claims that ethics is the highest unconditioned end, which conditions one’s relationship to God. The idea of God arises ineluctably out of the ethical life, but ethics as the highest unconditioned end serves as a check on superstition and enthusiasm in religion. In particular, ethics requires the repudiation of any religious ideas that compromise the imperative that one reform oneself by one’s own exertions.

Like the romantics, Kierkegaard sees something perverse in the Kantian claim that the highest exercise of freedom and the most developed form of personhood consist in acting from impersonal, universal norms. In Fear and Trembling and elsewhere Kierkegaard sketches a form of freedom not subject to any law and a form of selfhood higher than Kantian personality. That higher form of selfhood, faith, is a passionate individuality that cannot take comfort in the universal. Faith, moreover, inverts the Kantian account: One’s relationship to God is the highest unconditioned end, which conditions ethics. An unconditional submission to God is the precondition for ethics. Viewing Fear and Trembling in light of Kierkegaard’s other works in the first pseudonymous authorship, especially Concluding Unscientific Postscript, provides guidance for grasping just what this inversion entails.

The major works of Kierkegaard’s first pseudonymous authorship all emphasize the qualitative difference that the existential choice of ethical commitment makes in the life of an individual. Humans begin in a state of immediacy, a life immersed in and dedicated to finite, relative ends. Perversely, the immediate person is absolutely related to relative ends and relatively related to the absolute. He or she will only act in conformity with what the absolute ethical requirement demands to the


extent that so doing accords with his or her interests and inclinations. In this way the life of immediacy subjects one to one’s own transitory impulses and sensuous inclinations.

18 In acceding unconditionally to the absolute ethical demand, which

devolves upon all alike, one takes an active stance with regard to oneself and one takes responsibility for oneself. It is only by mediating one’s relationship to the finite with the universal (and in so doing, relativizing the finite to the absolute) that one achieves selfhood persisting through time. One only becomes an individual self by dedicating oneself to the universal.

Most of Kierkegaard’s works from this period, moreover, raise the possibility of a form of selfhood even more developed than that of participation in the universal. In faith one becomes an individual self whose selfhood does not simply participate in the universal, and who stands in a renewed immediacy to the finite. Fear and Trembling distinguishes between ethical life and faith. Concluding UnscientificPostscript elaborates the distinctions; its pseudonymous author, Johannes Climacus, interposes what he calls “religiousness A” between ethical life and “religiousness B” or faith. Despite this variation in the distinctions between ethical life and higher, religious forms of selfhood, the ethical and religious are essentially related for Kierkegaard. The religious forms of selfhood presuppose the ethical choice to be oneself and arise out of ethical striving. Climacus insists that despite the distinctions between immediacy, ethical life, and religious existence, there is nevertheless one either/or, one choice.

19

In ethical life one relates to God through the self’s ethical resolution. In Kantian fashion the idea of God arises in picturing ethical obligation to oneself. As Climacus puts it, “In fables and fairy tales there is a lamp called the wonderful lamp; when it is rubbed, the spirit appears. Jest! But Freedom, that is the wonderful lamp. When a person rubs it with ethical passion, God comes into existence for him.”

20 The self’s

ethical striving promotes a religious consciousness, but ethical life nevertheless reflects primarily on oneself and one’s activity. It is characterized by active struggle and self-assertion. Ethics requires that one strive to reverse the perverse priorities of immediacy. One must relate oneself absolutely to the absolute ethical requirement and relate relatively to the relative. Ethical life demands that one resign one’s finitehopes and loves so that one is capable of renouncing them should they conflictwith the absolute ethical requirement. In other words, ethical life requires that one

18 Kierkegaard takes for granted the opposition that Kant champions between eternal, absolute duty and finite, temporal inclinations. The task facing an existing being, Kierkegaard maintains, is to enact the eternal absolute in one’s temporal existence. Hegel, of course, sublates the duty/inclination dualism. Kierkegaard believes that Hegelian ethics fails to take the ethical challenge of existing seriously enough. Kant’s ethical thought both informs Kierkegaard’s account of the ethical, and lays the foundation for the religious, which, Kierkegaard claims, supercedes it.

19 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (trans. Howard and Edna Hong; 2 vols.; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press) 1:294.

20 Ibid., 1:138.


“die to immediacy.” This resignation involves painful suffering, but one can take consolation in the universal transparency of the absolute ethical requirement.

Religious existence, for Kierkegaard, as distinguished from ethical existence, consists in an intensification of ethical pathos. The more ethical one becomes, the less one believes oneself to have fulfilled the absolute ethical requirement. The most ethical individual is not the individual cavalierly satisfied with himself, but rather is the individual with the most misgivings about his motivations and disposition.

21

Developed ethical existence begets consciousness of ethical failure. The more ethical one becomes, the more one perceives one’s inability to fulfill the ethical requirement. One comes to recognize one’s alienation from the ethical. One comes to recognize one’s need for a personal God-relationship if one is to have any hope of transforming oneself. Climacus articulates this standpoint by asserting that “an eternal happiness is specifically rooted in the subjective individual’s diminishing self-esteem acquired through the utmost exertion.”

22 In passionate ethical striving

one learns of one’s ethical impotence and abases oneself before God. One’s impotence with respect to the absolute ethical requirement leads one to acknowledge properly the absoluteness of God and one’s nothingness by comparison. The religious individual seeks to express existentially that “he is capable of doing nothing himself but is nothing before God.” Climacus characterizes the “essential form” of religious life, therefore, as “self-annhihilation.”

23

The suffering present in ethical life is redoubled and becomes definitive of religious life. The pain of dying to immediacy is compounded by the chastening of one’s confident self-sufficiency. Whereas the ethical standpoint glorifies self-assertion, the religious individual can only relate to self-transformation negatively. For the religious individual self-transformation becomes at best “a feigning of self-transformation,” because one is unable to transform oneself.

24 For this reason

religious life is suffering in both senses of the term: One endures the painful process of coming to recognize the failure of an active relation to oneself, of coming to recognize that one must passively suffer God’s activity.

Ethical life introduces an initial dialectical qualification to existence. It replaces an immediate existence with a dialectical existence because one’s relationship to one’s immediate impulses and inclinations is mediated by the universal law. As Climacus describes it, religious life represents yet another stage in the dialectic of subjective inward deepening. It dawns as ethical striving dialectically turns into its opposite. If ethical life reflects on oneself and one’s own activity before God, religious life, which emerges from the intensification of ethical pathos, reflects on God and one’s passivity before God’s activity. One’s relation to oneself is mediated

21 See C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript: The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1983) 43.

22 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 55.23 Ibid., 461.24 Ibid., 433.


by one’s God-relationship. If in ethical life one relates to God through the self’s ethical resolution, in religious life one relates to the self’s ethical resolution through one’s God-relationship.

Climacus employs various metaphors to describe the annihilated individual. The religious person is “consumed,” held “captive,” and made “ill” by the absolute conception of God.

25 As a finite being, however, he must not only relate absolutely

to the absolute, but must also relate relatively to the relative. The annihilated individual—consumed, captivated by the absolute conception of God—can only with pain join that conception together with the thought of engaging in some relative endeavor. The combination of this absolute conception of God “with an incidental finitude such as going out to the amusement park” is “the very basis and meaning of [religious] suffering.”

26 Although this religious suffering never ceases (unless

one reverts to a lower form of existence), the annihilated individual draws comfort from his God-relationship and learns to relate to the relative on the basis of this relationship. The annihilated individual comes existentially to realize the converse corollary to the annihilating recognition that one is capable of nothing without God: With God everything is possible. Climacus labels the simultaneous absolute relation to the absolute and relative relation to the relative a “double movement.”

27

The double movement rightly relates one to the finite. Having resigned the finite,one’s relation to the finite is now predicated on God, that with God everything is possible. Having made the double movement one enjoys a “new immediacy.” This is not a simple immediacy, but a relationship to the relative made possible by the absolute God-relationship.

To all external appearances the new immediacy is indiscernible from an initial immediacy. For this reason Climacus describes the advanced forms of religious existence as a hidden inwardness. Climacus insists that the individual who has made the double movement is indistinguishable from “all other human beings.”

28

Despite this categorical claim, Climacus does contrast hidden inwardness to medieval monasticism, which he argues failed to achieve an absolute relation to the absolute because it tried to express this relation outwardly. Outwardly recognizable expressions of the absolute relation indicate, first, that one is not annihilated.

29 They

indicate that one believes one is capable of something. With respect to physical mortifications, for instance, Climacus argues that “the self-tormentor by no means expresses that he is capable of nothing before God, because he indeed considers self-torment to be indeed something.”

30 Second, outwardly recognizable expressions

25 Ibid., 483–85.26 Ibid., 486, 483.27 Ibid., 409.28 Ibid., 500.29 Climacus takes issue with the unqualified hidden inwardness that Silentio describes and claims

that the religious person cannot completely succeed in hiding his or her inwardness, but nevertheless will not express the absolute relation directly, using the humorous as an incognito (Ibid., 500–1).

30 Ibid., 463.


of the absolute relation indicate that one is not in fact absolutely related to the absolute. One has not fully resigned the finite. To find a time and place in one’s life for the absolute relation—even something so consuming as entering a monastery—relativizes the relation to one’s other ends and in relation to other possible ends. By contrast, the individual absolutely related to the absolute “is a stranger in the world of finitude, but he does not define his difference from worldliness by foreign dress (this is a contradiction, since with that he defines himself in a worldly way).”

31

The attempt to express the absolute relation through the relative differences of finitude reveals that the relation is not, in fact, absolute. Both in evincing that one is not annihilated, and in revealing that one’s relation to the absolute is not in fact absolute, attempts to express the absolute relation outwardly indicate that one has not pursued ethical life to its limits.

Despite cutting one’s roots in the finite, the achieved absolute relation does not alienate one from the finite. One’s God-relationship instead enables one to participate fully in the life of finitude (because with God everything is possible). Climacus makes an analogy: “An adult may very well join in children’s play with total interest, may be the one who really makes the game lively, but he still does not play as a child. The person who understands it as his task to practice the absolute distinction relates himself to the finite in the same way.”

32 Like the adult who “joins

in children’s play with total interest,” the individual absolutely related to God lives harmoniously in finitude and savors his finite hopes and joys. The religious basis for this immediacy, however, is hidden. To lack hidden inwardness and betray an incongruity with finitude, conversely, reveals that one hasn’t come to realize that one is capable of nothing before God, and so hasn’t come to realize that with God everything is possible. Additionally, it reveals that despite one’s efforts, one is not absolutely related to the absolute.

These relationships between ethical life and religious life that Kierkegaard describes in the later works of his first pseudonymous authorship clarify his project in Fear and Trembling. Kierkegaard uses the Abraham story to highlight the contrast between Kantian ethical religion on the one hand, and religious existence grounded in an absolute relation to God on the other. To make the contrast stark, Kierkegaard allows that Abraham has in general fulfilled the infinite ethical requirement and portrays God’s command to sacrifice Isaac as conflicting with this ethical requirement. God commands a “righteous” man to murder his son.

33 This

depiction vividly renders Kierkegaard’s point: For the faithful, individual ethics is conditional upon one’s relationship to God. Abraham’s ethical duty to his son is (in Kierkegaard’s famous phrase) teleologically suspended in relation to a higher duty to God. God inflicts a spiritual trial on Abraham. For Abraham the ethical requirement is a temptation, a temptation to neglect his God-relationship.

31 Ibid., 410.32 Ibid., 413. 33 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 124.


Kierkegaard’s description of faith as “the teleological suspension of the ethical,” should not be interpreted, however, to mean that faith requires behavior that ethics would censure, or even that duties to God can collide with ethical duty. The Abraham story is profoundly misleading in this respect. Kierkegaard does not use the story to suggest that by analogy with Abraham’s situation, God makes demands at odds with what ethics requires. Kierkegaard insists that “any analogy with Abraham will only surface after the individual has become capable of accomplishing the universal.”

34 But, as Kierkegaard makes clear throughout

his corpus, “accomplishing the universal” is precisely what the faithful individual comes to realize is conditional on a God-relationship. The teleological suspension of the ethical is intended to convey that the faithful individual has come to realize that a proper God-relationship is the very condition for an ethical life (i.e., the condition of its very possibility). Faith suspends the Kantian ethical imperative to reform oneself by one’s own exertions.

In Concluding Unscientific Postscript Johannes Climacus explains that without an unconditional, absolute relationship to the absolute (God), one is suspended from the ethical. One is in sin and incapable of actualizing the ethical. One is suspended from the ethical (which nevertheless devolves upon one “with the claim of the infinite”) in the sense that one is “heterogeneous” with the ethical. This terrible “exemption” from the ethical can only be overcome through a proper God-relationship.

35 Climacus pinpoints the crucial disanalogy that distinguishes

Abraham’s case. “In temptation . . . Abraham was not heterogeneous with the ethical. He was well able to fulfill it but was prevented from it by something higher, which by absolutely accentuating itself transformed the voice of duty into a temptation.”

36

For other suspended persons the voice of duty is not the source of temptation, but the source of dreadful anxiety.

In Fear and Trembling Silentio argues similarly that sin raises the individual higher than the ethical standpoint “because it is a contradiction on the part of the universal to want to impose itself on someone who lacks the condition sine qua non [the necessary condition].”

37 One becomes an exception to the universal. If

sin-consciousness discloses one’s ethical impotence (and in that sense “suspends” the ethical), faith teleologically suspends the ethical in the sense that from a higher standpoint it revokes the ethical standpoint’s insistence on self-sufficiency. The spiritual trial is the temptation to recoil from religious suffering and slip back into the universal and the belief in one’s self-sufficiency with respect to the ethical requirement. In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard does not intend to undermine ethical striving, nor does he intend to supplant Kantian metaethics with divine command metaethics. Rather, for Kierkegaard ethical striving is the precondition for

34 Ibid., 124.35 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 266–67.36 Ibid., 267.37 Fear and Trembling, 124.


a proper God-relationship, and in turn a proper God-relationship is the precondition for ethical transformation.

Kierkegaard also exploits the Abraham story to introduce an invidious contrast between the existential stance of ethical religion and the existential stance of faith. He describes the former in the person of the knight of infinite resignation. Ethical religion requires resignation. In dedicating oneself to the universal and eternal, one makes the move to infinity and must be ready to renounce the object of one’s immediate, finite hopes and loves when the eternal requires it. In his ethical striving the knight of infinite resignation makes the move to the infinite on his own strength and rests in himself. His “gliding, bold” gait reflects his confidence in his ethical self-sufficiency and his self-possession. Hence, his bearing is “readily recognizable.”

38

Having resigned finitude, furthermore, the knight of infinite resignation moves in finitude awkwardly. He is alienated from finitude. The knight of infinite resignation has not annihilated himself, has not realized he is capable of nothing, and so he does not realize that with God everything possible. He does not make the double movement, does not enjoy a new immediacy, and is not hidden.

Kierkegaard labels the faithful individual the knight of faith. The knight of faith has annihilated himself, realizes he is capable of nothing, and recognizes that with God everything is possible. With this recognition the knight of faith makes the double movement, enjoys a new immediacy, and is hidden. Kierkegaard presents Abraham as the exemplar of faith. In consenting to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham resigned himself with respect to Isaac. He resigned his finite hopes and loves. Abraham, however, recognized that with God everything is possible and absurdly had faith that he would receive Isaac back. Because of this absurd faith, moreover, when he did receive Isaac back, Abraham displayed no discomfort or awkwardness. He took up with Isaac as if nothing had happened. Having made the move of resignation, having renounced the finite, Abraham nevertheless remained completely at ease in the finite. Abraham made the double movement and to the external observer his behavior is indistinguishable from someone who has not even made the movement to the ethical (in this peculiar case a madman or a murderer). If the ethical life alienates one from finitude, higher forms of religious existence maintain the ethical emphasis—though the Abraham story unfortunately obscures this aspect of religious existence—while restoring one to an immediate, harmonious relationship with finitude, but a relationship properly grounded in God.

In addition to Abraham, Silentio describes one other knight of faith. This second knight of faith, a contemporary Dane, confounds any interpretation of Fear and Trembling that suggests that faith requires a collision with accepted ethical standards. Silentio’s description also nicely highlights the lineaments of Kierkegaard’s views in this period about religious existence. For these reasons I will quote liberally from the passage:

38 Ibid., 67.


He is solid through and through. His stance? Vigorous, it belongs altogether to finitude, no smartly turned-out townsman taking a stroll out to Fresberg on a Sunday afternoon treads the ground with surer foot; he belongs altogether to the world, no petit bourgeois belongs to it more. One detects nothing of the strangeness and superiority that mark the knight of the infinite. This man takes pleasure, takes part, in everything, and whenever one catches him oc-cupied with something his engagement has the persistence of the worldly person whose soul is wrapped up in such things. He minds his affairs. To see him at them you would think he was some pen-pusher who had lost his soul to Italian book-keeping, so attentive to detail is he. He takes a holiday on Sundays. . . . He goes to church. . . . [H]is hearty, lusty psalm-singing proves that he has a good set of lungs. In the afternoon he takes a walk in the woods. He delights in everything he sees, in the thronging humanity, the new omnibuses, the Sound—to run across him on Strandveien you would think he was a shopkeeper having his fling, such is his way of taking pleasure. . . . Towards evening he goes home, his step tireless as a postman’s. On the way it occurs to him that his wife will surely have some special little warm dish for his return, for example roast head of lamb with vegetables. If he were to meet a kindred spirit, he would continue as far as Osterport so as to converse with him about this dish with a passion befitting a restaurateur. . . . [T]o see him eat it would be a sight for superior people to envy and for plain folk to be inspired by, for his appetite is greater than Esau’s. . . . On the road he passes a building-site and meets another man. They talk together for a mo-ment, he has a building raised in a jiffy, having all that’s needed for that. The stranger leaves him thinking: “That must have been a capitalist,” while my admirable knight thinks: “Yes, if it came to that I could surely manage it.” He takes his ease at an open window and looks down on the square where he lives, at everything that goes on—a rat slipping under a board over the gutter, the children at play—with the composure befitting a sixteen-year-old girl. . . . He smokes a pipe in the evening: to see him you would swear it was the cheesemonger opposite vegetating in the dusk. Carefree as a devil-may-care-good-for-nothing, he hasn’t a worry in the world, and yet he purchases every moment that he lives, “redeeming the seasonable time” at the dearest price. . . . He drains in infinite resignation the deep sorrow of existence, he knows the bliss of infinity, he has felt the pain of renouncing everything, whatever is most precious in the world, and yet to him finitude tastes just as good as to one who has never known anything higher, for his remaining in the finitebore no trace of a stunted, anxious training, and still he has this sense of be-ing secure to take pleasure in it, as though it were the most certain thing of all. . . . He resigned everything infinitely, and then took everything back. . . . He is continually making the movement of infinity, but he makes it with such accuracy and poise that he is continually getting finitude out of it, and not for a second would one suspect anything else.

39

This extraordinary passage illustrates in lyrical prose and homey detail that the religious individual is completely at ease in finitude. While the ethical life leaves

39 Ibid., 68–70.


one at odds with finitude, religious life involves a double movement that brings a new immediacy. On the basis of his God-relationship, the faithful individual lives in harmony with finitude. His “opposition to existence expresses itself every instant as the most beautiful and safest harmony.”

40 Kierkegaard emphasizes the

“pleasure” of this new immediacy (despite the inward suffering definitive of the religious life) and portrays the knight of faith as a consumer of finitude, enjoying its “taste.” His existence is indistinguishable from the individual who never left the first immediacy. He resembles the “wordly person,” the person “who has never known anything higher” than finitude. His hidden inwardness prevents, furthermore, any sort of dramatic external conflict with the established social, ecclesiastical and political order. This knight of faith participates in the life of his church and could be a capitalist, “if it came to that.”

■ Kierkegaard and the Double DangerIn the second period of his authorship, Kierkegaard paints a very different picture of developed religious existence. Anti-Climacus, the pseudonymous author of Practice in Christianity (1848) disparages the idea of hidden inwardness. He charges that this ideal of indistinguishability between immediacy and Christian faith encourages self-deception about having made the double movement when in fact one has made neither movement. He insists that Christianity requires both renunciation of the finite and persecution or martyrdom for one’s commitment. Anti-Climacus replaces the pleasure of the new immediacy with the suffering of martyrdom. “There stands Christianity with its requirements for self-denial: Deny yourself—and then suffer because you deny yourself.”

41 Whereas for Climacus and Silentio religious suffering

is an entirely inward matter arising out of one’s relationship to oneself and to God, Anti-Climacus supplements this purely inward suffering with suffering that stems from one’s outward relationship to the established order. These two sources of suffering constitute a “double danger” afflicting the Christian.

Hidden inwardness eliminates the possibility of the dramatic conflict with the established order. It safeguards one against the danger of persecution. “The next danger, which appears through denying oneself and renouncing the things of this world in earnest, according to Christianity’s requirement, people have also wanted to abolish by wanting to shift the Christian life into hidden inwardness, so that concealed there, it would not be discernible in life.”

42 Christian commitment

cannot remain hidden because “truly to be a Christian is to mean, in the world, to human eyes, to be the abased one. . . . [I]t is to mean suffering every possible evil, every mockery and insult, and finally to be punished as a criminal!”

43 The

40 Ibid., 78. 41 Søren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity (trans. Howard and Edna Hong; Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1991) 213.42 Ibid., 253.43 Ibid., 106.


whole of a human life on earth, Anti-Climacus claims, amounts to a “test” of one’s commitment to the absolute. The willingness to sacrifice one’s whole life expresses one’s dedication to the absolute. Anti-Climacus’s view of the Christian’s bearing in finitude more resembles the “stunted anxious training” that Silentio contrasts to the new immediacy than it does the bearing of the knight of faith.

Anti-Climacus only relents from this uncompromisingly dour picture of Christianity in a section entitled “The Moral” which appears at the end of the first part of Practice in Christianity. Here he acknowledges a less demanding, but nevertheless legitimate, relationship to Christianity. If the individual will but concede the pertinence of the Christian ideal and honestly admit to God his failure with respect to that ideal, he can worthily accept God’s grace. Having humbled himself before God, the individual can enjoy the delights of finitude.

“And what does all this mean?” It means that each individual in quiet inward-ness before God is to humble himself under what it means in the strictest sense to be a Christian, is to confess honestly before God where he is so that he still might worthily accept the grace that is offered to every imperfect person—that is, to everyone. And then nothing further; then, as for the rest, let him do his work and rejoice in it, love his wife and rejoice in her, joyfully bring up his children, love his fellow beings, rejoice in life.

44

Anti-Climacus tempers his severe account of Christian commitment by allowing for an accommodation achieved through a humble confession of inadequacy. Although the emphases of Practice in Christianity are very different from those of Fear and Trembling, in this passage one finds a distinct echo of the new immediacy. The individual must abandon prideful self-sufficiency, humbly submit to God, and passively defer to God’s action (grace). Then, and only then, can the individual rightly enjoy the fruits of finitude. A preface preceding each of the three sections of Practice in Christianity, signed by Kierkegaard, concurs on the importance of the ideal Christian requirement, confession, and grace.

In his autobiographical On My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard asserts that he intended Practice in Christianity “as an attempt to find, ideally, a basis for an established order.”

45 In this context the “established order” means Christendom

for Kierkegaard. In a later essay composed to coincide with the publication of Practice in Christianity’s second edition (1855), Kierkegaard elaborates on his original intentions.

My earlier thought was: if the established order can be defended, this is the only way to do it: by poetically (therefore by a pseudonym) passing judgment on it, by then drawing on grace in the second power, Christianity would be-come not only finding forgiveness for the past by grace, but by grace a kind of indulgence from the actual imitation of Christ and the actual strenuousness of being Christian. In this way truth still manages to come into the established

44 Ibid., 67.45 Point of View, 18.


order; it defends itself by judging itself. . . . In my opinion this was the only way Christianly to defend the established order.

46

By honestly facing up to its hypocrisy and self-deception concerning Christianity, the established order could acquire legitimacy through God’s grace. In the same way that an individual can humbly confess his or her inadequacy with respect to the ideal Christian requirement, Kierkegaard hoped Bishop Mynster, Primate of Denmark, would make the admission on behalf of Christendom. Ultimately, Mynster disappointed Kierkegaard.

If there was power in him [“the old bishop”], he would have to do one of two things: either decisively declare himself for the book, venture to go along with it, let it be the defense that wards off what the book poetically contains, the charge against the whole official Christianity that it is an optical illusion “not worth a pickled herring,” or as decisively as possible throw himself against it, stamp it as a blasphemous and profane attempt, and declare the official Christianity to be the true Christianity. He did neither of the two, he did nothing; he only wounded himself on the book; and to me it became clear that he was powerless.

47

In Kierkegaard’s eyes Mynster proved incapable of either making the humble admission and legitimating the established order through God’s grace, or challenging Kierkegaard’s conception of the ideal Christian requirement. By 1854 Kierkegaard began publicly derogating the now deceased bishop’s character as weak and worldly.

When Kierkegaard published the second edition of Practice in Christianityin 1855, he decided to revoke the more lenient version of Christianity. Likewise, he foreclosed the possibility of legitimacy for the established order. Although he republished Practice in Christianity in the same form as the first edition, he announced that if he were at that time publishing it for the first time, he would publish it under his own name and without the mitigating “The Moral” and prefaces. “Now, however, I have completely made up my mind on two things: both that the established order is Christianly indefensible, that every day it lasts it is Christianly a crime; and that in this way one does not have the right to draw on grace.” Having removed the prefaces and “The Moral,” “Practice in Christianity is, Christianly, an attack upon the established order.”

48 Reconceiving Practice in Christianity, he

enlisted it in what by now had become an unrestrained war with Christendom. At this late moment in Kierkegaard’s life, he urged a boycott of the established church and worked for its dissolution. By removing the prefaces and “The Moral,” moreover,

46 Søren Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings (ed. and trans. Howard and Edna Hong; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998) 69.

47 Ibid., 69–70.48 Ibid., 70.


all traces of the new immediacy disappear from Kierkegaard’s conception of Christianity.

49 Christianity becomes unremitting heterogeneity with finitude.

■ Kierkegaard, Rebounding Violence, and Theories of the Body and SocietyBloch’s theory clarifies the relationship between Kierkegaard’s attacks on the established order and the eclipse of the new immediacy in his later work. While it is no doubt true that the change in Kierkegaard’s attitude with respect to Christendom would naturally lead one to expect that he would come to believe that the religious individual could not live harmoniously in the established order, Bloch’s theory creates a frame that marshals the details of Kierkegaard’s views in an illuminating way.

Throughout his authorship Kierkegaard questioned the legitimacy of the established order. The discounting of Christianity in Christendom threatened, to his mind, the very basis for the established order. In the first period of his authorship, Kierkegaard attempted renewal of the established order. As late as 1850, he writes retrospectively in On My Work as an Author that,

With regard to an ‘established order,’ I have consistently. . .always done the very opposite of attacking. I have never been or been along with the “oppo-sition” that wants to do away with “government” but have always provided what is called a corrective, which for God’s sake wishes that there might be governing by those who are officially appointed and called, that fearing God they might stand firm, willing only one thing—the good.

50

This passage continues with his claim I cited previously that Practice in Christianityis “an attempt to find, ideally, a basis for an established order.” The established order requires a legitimating “corrective,” Kierkegaard explains, because it has forsaken “the unconditional” in favor of “secular sagacity.” In a passage deleted from the final draft, Kierkegaard elaborates:

What it means to govern, to rule, to be a teacher in obedience to God, in fear and trembling before the responsibility of eternity, is more or less forgotten, and instead governing is done more or less in the fear of people and with secular sagacity. . . . It is more or less forgotten that all governing, especially in the ecclesiastical sphere, is from God, that to govern is to be obedient to God, and not a matter of summarily identifying with being a public official,and perhaps, as such immediately tyrannizing if one sees one’s chance, or, if the wind turns, haggling and bargaining and pretending to be sagacious—this is more or less forgotten, and therefore we more and more miss out on what is

49 In a late unpublished draft of an article for The Moment, Kierkegaard again takes going to the amusement park as his example, but now begins with the assumption that God wills that humans not go to the amusement park, reversing Climacus’s primary example of the new immediacy (The Moment and Late Writings, 348).

50 Point of View, 18.


still the greatest blessing for us human beings: a God-fearing government that by fearing God is sufficiently strong and powerful not to fear people.

51

To govern without relating oneself to that which stands unconditionally firm is like sailing without ballast or sewing without fastening the end of one’s thread. Kierkegaard’s “corrective” consists in the reminder that each and every individual “must personally relate himself to the unconditional,” or, in other words, the reintroduction of Christianity into Christendom.

52

In his own terms, Kierkegaard sought in this first period to reintroduce Christianity into Christendom. In Bloch’s terms, he sought to relegitimate existing social and political institutions through the idiom of rebounding violence. If the mechanism of rebounding violence serves to legitimate the sociopolitical order, the failure of Christendom to require even the first violence imperils the legitimacy of the established order. The glib, ersatz Christianity of Christendom obviates submission to the transcendental, thereby thwarting rebounding violence before it even begins. The established order loses its grounding in something that transcends “the haggling and bargaining and pretending to be sagacious” of transient mortals. Kierkegaard’s works in this earlier period aim to renovate the foundation of rebounding violence that grounds the established order.

Kierkegaard conceived of persons as, in Bloch’s language, “dichotemised” between a superior transcendental “moral” element and a “chaotic” mundane, temporal element. A self, Kierkegaard explains, consists of the eternal and the finite in tension with one another. He terms human existence a “prodigious contradiction.”

53

A self must synthesize these opposed elements by enacting eternal ethical values in temporal existence. It must bring order to transitory impulses and inclinations by subordinating them to the eternal law. Throughout his corpus Kierkegaard figuresthe process of forging a self in terms appropriate to the first stage of rebounding violence. Bloch points out that rebounding violence begins with an inversion of the basic conception of life’s biological processes: Weakening and death leads to successful existence. This successful existence, moreover, consists in joining something permanent, something life-transcending. In the first stage of rebounding violence one willingly surrenders one’s vitality to conquest by the transcendental. Exemplifying the pattern, Kierkegaard describes successful existence as requiring a voluntary death. To achieve genuine selfhood one must die to immediacy and resign oneself to the finite. Ultimately, this project requires “self-annihilation.” Kierkegaard describes the annihilated self in terms that suggest conquest by the transcendental. He employs the language of spirit possession: The absolute “consumes” the individual; it holds the individual “captive;” it makes the individual “ill.” The consequence of annihilation, moreover, is the achievement of a kind of life-transcending permanence: eternal life.

51 Ibid., 268–69.52 Ibid., 20.53 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 82.


Bloch argues, of course, that a second stage of rebounding violence is necessary if the first violence is to have any significance for legitimating sociopolitical life. The transcendentalized must appropriate new vitality. Bloch generally emphasizes the language, symbolism, and actuality of violent conquest, but, as he makes clear, the consumption of animals and the taking of women in marriage can also figurethe second, rebounding movement. In fact, the symbolism of incorporation, “often literally through the mouth,” is most essential to convey the appropriation of new vitality.

54 The transcendentalized person feeds on vitality, but, crucially, does not

revert to his or her erstwhile chaotic condition. He or she masters the temporal. This description applies remarkably well to Silentio’s description of the contemporary knight of faith. The knight of faith has annihilated himself and has been “consumed” by the absolute. With respect to existence in finitude, however, this knight of faith is, in Bloch’s words, “a changed person, a permanently transcendental person who can therefore dominate the here and now.”

55 The knight of faith enacts a form of

rebounding violence, or, more precisely perhaps (because unlike Abraham he is not especially violent), he enacts a rebounding consumption. He consumes finitudeand savors its “taste.” He takes “pleasure” in existence and with hearty appetite relishes his roast head of lamb. His stance is “vigorous” and his existence in finitude displays no awkwardness. Elsewhere (and in his own life) Kierkegaard associates marriage with faith.

56

The new immediacy that Kierkegaard describes in this period serves as an instance of rebounding violence. In the first violence the absolute conquers an individual. In the new immediacy the conquered individual dominates finitude.This double movement serves as Kierkegaard’s call for a sociopolitical order grounded in eternal authority, which transcends temporal relativities. In this firstperiod of his authorship, Kierkegaard exploits the idiom of rebounding violence in his campaign to relegitimize the established order.

Because Christendom doesn’t require true submission to God, Kierkegaard emphasizes the extraordinary demands Christianity makes on the individual. As his frustration with the established order intensifies, suffering comes to figuremore and more prominently in his discussions of Christianity. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, he insists that suffering is definitive of religious existence. His emphasis on suffering and the extraordinary demands of Christianity become even more extreme in the first edition of Practice in Christianity. Conversely, only a faint echo of the new immediacy appears in the first edition of Practice in Christianity, as Kierkegaard relegates it to a few marginal mentions. Over time the emphasis in Kierkegaard’s writings on the first violence grows at the expense of the rebounding violence.

54 Bloch, Prey into Hunter, 6.55 Ibid., 5.56 Kierkegaard famously writes in his journal that if he had truly had faith he could have married

his beloved Regina.


Kierkegaard’s journals reveal that the tumultuous events of 1848 mark a decisive turning point in his attitude toward Christendom. The comportment of the authorities throughout Europe during these upheavals and the ridicule Kierkegaard personally endured for his authorship convinced Kierkegaard he could no longer work to renew the established order.

Then I was horrified to see what was understood by a Christian state (this I saw especially in 1848); I saw how the ones who were supposed to rule, both in Church and state, hid themselves like cowards while barbarism boldly and brazenly raged; and I experienced how a truly unselfish and God-fear-ing endeavor (and my endeavor as an author was that) is rewarded in the Christian state.

57. . . But if what one sees all over Europe is Christendom, a

Christian state, then I propose to start here in Denmark to list the price for being a Christian in such a way that the whole concept—state Church, official appointments, livelihood—bursts open.

58

If 1848 represents the turning point in Kierkegaard’s thought, the transition took years to complete. Despite this resolution to explode the ecclesiastical established order, Kierkegaard continued (in the equivocal guise of a defense of the established order) to solicit Bishop Mynster’s humble confession of the established church’s failure to live up to the requirements of ideality. Only after Mynster’s death in 1854did Kierkegaard begin his unrestrained attacks upon Christendom.

In the first period of Kierkegaard’s authorship, the new immediacy represents a form of rebounding violence that invests the established order with transcendent authority. As Kierkegaard came to want to withhold transcendent authority from an established order he now viewed as unredeemable, as he came to want to des-troy rather than relegitimize the established order, the new immediacy drops out of Kierkegaard’s thought altogether. In this later period Kierkegaard’s thought structurally resembles millenarianism as Bloch analyzes it. Like a millenarian, Kierkegaard became disillusioned with the political and religious leadership, which he felt abandoned the transcendental righteousness in the service of which he wrote. In Kierkegaard’s eyes, not only did the political leaders in 1848 fear people and not God, Bishop Mynster continually failed to ground the church in the unconditional. As Kierkegaard saw it, Mynster’s accommodating cultural Christianity “distilled Christianity out of the country.”

59 Despite personal affection

for him and respect for him as his father’s pastor, Kierkegaard viewed the bishop’s official conduct as craven and pandering. Mynster, he concluded, was “a false

57 In all likelihood this allusion refers to the Corsair affair in 1846, in which Kierkegaard provoked a Danish periodical to satirize him repeatedly. Kierkegaard himself recognized how this episode contributed to the eclipse of the new immediacy in his later thought. “If I had not taken this action [against the Corsair], I would have escaped completely the double-danger connected with the essentially Christian, I would have gone on thinking of the difficulties involved with Christianity as being purely interior to the self” (The Moment and Late Writings, xv–xvi).

58 The Moment and Late Writings, 402.59 Ibid., 396.


bill of exchange,” whose “proclamation of Christianity and Church leadership . . . were high treason against Christianity.”

60 At this point when Kierkegaard had

come to see Christendom as Christianly a crime, he refuses to sanction even the most attenuated echo of the new immediacy, and the final vestiges of rebounding violence disappear from Kierkegaard’s thought. Christianity becomes essentially otherworldly; it becomes flight to the transcendental with no intended reimmersion in the rhythms of the world.

The eclipse of the new immediacy in Kierkegaard’s later thought represents a constituent part of his attack on the established order. At the end of his life, Kierkegaard, in Bruce Kirmmse’s words:

called for nothing less than the total dismantling of the traditional aris-tocratic-conservative synthesis known as “Christendom” or “Christian culture,” which was the time-honored and comfortable marriage of the horizontal element of traditional society and the “vertical” element of religious transcendence, a synthesis in which religion had served as the guarantor of social stability, “moral values,” and personal signifi-cance.

61

In this last period Kierkegaard exploited the idiom of rebounding violence to divest the “horizontal element” of its “vertical” guarantor. According to the logic of rebounding violence, for the transcendentalized to refuse vitality and the domination of finitude represents a protest against social and political institutions, a subversive denial of their legitimacy. By eliminating the new immediacy and portraying true Christianity as heterogeneity with finitude, Kierkegaard works to subvert the established order. He seeks to sever the perceived bonds between transcendental authority and the existing social and political structures. Applying Bloch’s thesis to Kierkegaard’s corpus highlights how the eclipse of the new immediacy in Kierkegaard’s later writings—the double danger coming to replace the double movement, so to speak—is not incidental, but integral to the evolution of Kierkegaard’s sociopolitical polemic.

Kirmmse’s Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark has done much to dispel the received image of Kierkegaard as an apolitical thinker. By contrast Richard Rorty’s repeated offhand juxtaposition of Kierkegaard, whom he views as an apostle of private inwardness and self-perfection, with thinkers like Mill or Rawls, who advance public projects, perpetuates the image.62 While Kierkegaard did, of course, promote inwardness and self-perfection, he consistently viewed these pursuits as foundational for public affairs. The theory of rebounding violence helps to reveal the extent to which and the mechanisms by which Kierkegaard’s call for personal

60 Ibid., 8, 14.61 Bruce Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University

Press, 1990) 3.62 See for example, Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1989) xiv.


edification underwrote a public project. By identifying some of the less obvious relationships between religious and political authority, relationships present in theology as well as in ritual, Bloch’s theory demonstrates its usefulness in the study of modern texts, like those of Kierkegaard.

If the application of Bloch’s theory to Kierkegaard’s corpus highlights significant but easily overlooked themes in Kierkegaard’s thought, it also, conversely, challenges Bloch’s rendering of his own theory. Bloch positions his theory as an alternative to those of Girard and Burkert, both of whom develop theories of religion and violence. Bloch’s choice of the appellation “rebounding violence” is not adventitious. He believes that violence is intrinsic to the process he has identified, especially to the second, rebounding moment. The reason he provides to explain why violence is necessary to the rebounding moment is not, however, something on which he elaborates, nor is it, on the face of it, terribly convincing. He argues only that the rebounding moment “needs to be violent, otherwise the subordination of vitality would not be demonstrated.”

63 On the strength of this

dubious claim, Bloch believes that violence against external vitality is inherent to the process, and therefore that the potential for military aggression is implicit in the ritual symbolism, and that only a people’s perception of their tactical weakness vis-à-vis their neighbors prevents the development of the symbolism in a way that legitimates militarism. Because Bloch believes the potential for militarism is intrinsic to the process by which humans legitimize their social and political orders, he ends Prey into Hunter on a distinctively troubled, albeit hopeful, note. Bloch hopes we can critique ourselves and devise an alternative solution to the human politico-social predicament, a solution that does not intrinsically offer “a toe-hold to the legitimation of domination and violence.”

64 We must forestall the despairing

conclusion that violence is inescapable. Despite Bloch’s characterization of his theory as a theory of religion and violence,

it’s not clear from Bloch’s own presentation that violence, rather than consumption, is the crucial notion at work. Bloch uses the idioms of violence, conquest, and consumption alternatively throughout Prey into Hunter. By applying Bloch’s theory to Kierkegaard’s thought, it becomes clear that the theory is best conceived, Bloch’s protestations notwithstanding, as a theory of rebounding consumption, not primarily or in the first instance as a theory of rebounding violence. Kierkegaard’s bourgeois knight of faith is a consumer of finitude, but is not in any obvious or direct way violent. Attending to the bourgeois knight of faith removes the ambiguity in Bloch’s account and attests that the theory’s central motif is the consumption of vitality, not violence. Bloch’s emphasis on the universal awareness of the biological “transformative dialectic” affirms that the operative concepts are vitality and

63 Bloch, Prey into Hunter, 6.64 Ibid., 105.


consumption. Human cognizance of the pattern of growth and death, he claims, is predicated on the knowledge that “one species provides food for another.”

65

The biological connection, furthermore, between consumption and vitality makes consumption a more plausible source of quasi-universal meanings than violence, which lies in the eye of the beholder and which carries different meanings in different cultures. Insofar as killing is the frequent or usual concommitant of the consumption of vitality (i.e., the hunting or slaughter of animals), violence can become a secondary association of the process, but consumption is primary. Consumption need not necessarily be violent, and even when it involves killing, it need not signify violence. Even sacrifice, which might seem inherently concerned with violence, bears out this observation. That sacrifice entails the killing and dismembering of an animal prior to its consumption does not necessarily mean either that sacrifice signifies violence for those participating in it, or that it is best theorized employing violence as a second order explanatory concept.

66 Whether

rebounding consumption evokes militarism and violence as secondary associations in a given context will depend on how militaristic the culture is, whether in that culture there are inferential links between vitality and violence or aggression, and so on. To recognize that consumption, and not violence, is the key to Bloch’s theory, alleviates the melancholy shrouding the text because it disrupts the purported intrinsic relationship between politico-social legitimation and the potential for militarism. Rebounding consumption does not intrinsically offer a toe-hold to the legitimation of domination and violence.

To see Bloch’s theory exemplified in Kierkegaard’s bourgeois consumer invites a comparison of Bloch’s theory with Thorstein Veblen’s famous theory of the leisure class.67 Veblen works within the same constellation of concepts as Bloch. Not unlike Bloch, who puts ritual and conquest in a causal relationship, Veblen explains “devout observances” in terms of what he calls a predatory habit of mind. Veblen’s claim, moreover, that success in “exploit” serves as a sign of prepotence bears a casual resemblance to Bloch’s ideas about conquest and vitality. Most evocatively, Veblen ultimately traces bourgeois consumption to the “predatory habit of life.” These similarities are admittedly superficial (and so do not necessitate extensive exposition of Veblen’s ideas), but invoking Veblen’s theory in this context is useful if only because of the significant difference in the conceptions of consumption at work in the two theories. The divergence from Veblen’s idea of consumption accents the conception of consumption operative in Bloch’s theory and suggests a frame of reference that relates the theory to a rich vein of anthropological theory. Veblen’s is an economic notion of consumption far removed from its root metaphor of incorporation. By contrast, the emphasis on consumption as vivification in Bloch’s theory cleaves closely to the root idea of the incorporation of food. The

65 Ibid., 4.66 Stanley Stowers has argued this point forcefully in personal conversations with me.67 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Penguin Classics, 1994).


ingestion of comestibles keeps the body alive. The more literal conception of consumption reveals that Bloch’s theory is best classed with those other theories that posit a relationship between the physical body and the social body, and that purport to show how body work does politico-social work. Bloch’s theory may prove instructive about violence in some cultural circumstances, but its more fundamental contribution lies in its exploration of the ways that an ideology of the body can legitimize institutional arrangements.

Studies of this latter sort, however, often bear the legacy of functionalism and have a tendency to overlook the extent to which individuals or factions within a social group strategically deploy an ideology of the body. These studies sometimes portray the production of such an ideology as a faceless social process operating entirely behind the backs of the individual agents involved. To apply a theory like the theory of rebounding consumption to the texts of a specific modern figurefrom a literate culture can help correct these distortions. In Kierkegaard’s case the theorist is observing neither a public ritual, nor a large-scale politico-social protest movement. Additionally, the theorist has access to a wealth of literary source material, including Kierkegaard’s own journals and testimonies from his contemporaries, both of which evidence his alienation from the environing politico-social institutions and the idiosyncratic quality of his protest. With this material it is impossible to overlook the particularity of Kierkegaard’s attitudes. These sources, moreover, amply display the self-consciousness with which Kierkegaard deploys an ideology of rebounding consumption in the service of a politico-social polemic. The fact that nearly ubiquitous religious conceptions (i.e., belief in some species of anthropomorphized being superintending human affairs), in conjunction with virtually unavoidable beliefs about human life, produce a “quasi-universal” ideological pattern should not blinker us to the self-conscious deployment of the ideology by individuals and groups. It is fitting that Kierkegaard, the indefatigable proponent of “the single individual,” should safeguard the importance of individual agency in social theory. Kierkegaard’s exploitation of the logic of rebounding consumption should remind us that the first recourse in explaining ideology should be the agendas, beliefs, and strategies of individuals.

HTR 102:3 (2009) 353–88

Aquila’s Bible Translation in Late Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Perspectives*

Jenny R. LabendzJewish Theological Seminary, New York

In the early or mid-second century C.E., a Jewish proselyte named Aquila1 translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek.2 The translation survives today only in fragments, but both Jewish and Christian sources from Late Antiquity offer perspectives on and information about Aquila as well as citations of his translation. To fully understand the role his legacy played in Jewish and Christian communities requires careful analysis of each of the sources. I believe that prior scholarship, especially regarding ancient perspectives on Aquila and his translation, as well as the popularity of his translation in various communities, has drawn conclusions based on overall impressions of texts that may appear quite differently when examined closely and in context. My goal in the following pages is to develop a more nuanced understanding of the history of Aquila’s Bible translation in Late Antiquity.

■ The Rabbinic SourcesThe only ancient Jewish sources that mention Aquila or use his translation are rabbinic, dating from the early-third to fifth centuries, though of course, these sources do not represent the full extent of Late Antique Jews and Judaism in

* I am grateful as always to Dr. Richard Kalmin for his invaluable guidance on this paper. I also wish to thank Drs. Burt Visotzky and Robert A. Kraft, whose comments on my drafts were extremely helpful, as well as Dr. Eleanor Dickey, Kevin P. Edgecomb, Justin Dumbrowsky, and Adam Parker for their help particularly with the patristics and with Greek. Any mistakes are of course my own.

1 Greek: ; Hebrew: . The English usage “Aquila” corresponds to the Latin.2 For bibliography on this subject, see Giuseppe Veltri, Libraries, Translations, and “Canonic”

Texts: The Septuagint, Aquila and Ben Sira in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2006) 164 n. 42.


Palestine or elsewhere. I shall show that the rabbinic literature gives quite a different picture than the one that emerges from the early Christian writers’ portrayals of the reception of Aquila’s translation among the Jews. Since these two groups of texts have often been indiscriminately grouped together when discussing Aquila, it is worth reevaluating what each has to say on its own terms.

Before proceeding to the texts, a note on Aquila and Onkelos is in order. Owing in large part to A. E. Silverstone’s 1931 study, Aquila and Onkelos,3 scholars have long accepted the notion that Aquila is identical to Onkelos, a character mentioned numerous times in the Tosefta and to whom the Aramaic Bible translation is attributed in the Babylonian Talmud. However, there is no basis for this claim. As early as 1937, Leon Leibrich published a review of Silverstone’s book that pointed to flaws in his logic, textual analysis, and assumptions, as well as to blatant inaccuracies in the work.4 Based on Leibrich’s review and other points that space does not permit me to delineate here, it is clear to me that Onkelos bears no relation to Aquila.

In addition to excluding from my discussion traditions about Onkelos, I have also chosen to focus only on classical rabbinic texts, that is, those produced before the sixth century.5 This includes the Palestinian Talmud (henceforth, the Yerushalmi, redacted between the late-fourth and early-fifth centuries) and the classical midrashim: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Eichah Rabbah(redacted circa the fifth century in Palestine).6 There is no mention of Aquila in the Babylonian Talmud (redacted during the sixth century).7 I exclude the later Palestinian texts because I am interested specifically in the centuries closest to the time of Aquila’s life and in the first stages—not the later development—of his appearance in rabbinic literature. While rabbinic texts both before and after the sixth century contain sources that originate in the early rabbinic period, from the sixth century onwards rabbinic editors begin to rework their sources more thoroughly and more heavy-handedly than they had previously. Since the nature of the sources

3 Alec Eli Silverstone, Aquila and Onkelos (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1931). But as Leon Leibrich points out in his review of Aquila and Onkelos (JQR 27 [1937] 287–91), Silverstone was not by any means the first to discuss the relationship between Aquila and Onkelos.

4 See previous note. Moreover, already in the sixteenth century, the Italian scholar Azariah de Rossi set out to clear up this confusion and prove that the two were not the same. Sefer me’or eynayim (ed. David Cassel; Vilna: 1866) 383–93 (Imre vinah, ch. 45); English translation in The Light of the Eyes: Azariah de’ Rossi (ed. Joanna Weinberg; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001) 571–85.

5 This excludes a number of traditions about Aquila, most notably a lengthy story in Tanḥuma Mishpatim 5 (Buber edition, Mishpatim 3). For a discussion of this text, see Veltri, Libraries, Translations, and ‘Canonic’ Texts, 170–72. See ibid., ch. 3, for other later rabbinic sources, as well as Hermann L. Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) for the dating and summary of scholarship about each book.

6 See Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 164–89, 276–90.7 See ibid., 194–97.

JENNY R. LABENDZ 355

shifts in this way, I shall attempt to answer the questions at hand by sticking closely to the earlier corpora of rabbinic literature.

We can divide the rabbinic texts about Aquila into two groups: narratives about Aquila’s activities, and reports of his translations of specific biblical words or phrases. These texts can answer two questions: 1) to what extent Aquila’s translation was “popular” among the rabbis; and 2) what role Aquila himself is portrayed as having played within rabbinic society. The answers that will emerge from the rabbinic texts are: 1) Aquila’s translation was popular insofar as he provided some helpful explanations of difficult biblical words or phrases; and 2) his role within rabbinic society is portrayed as having been ambiguous.

On the other hand, the rabbinic sources will not show that Aquila’s translation came from rabbinic circles, or that the rabbis used it in general as a Bible version they appreciated and adopted as their own, or that Aquila’s translation had any ideological significance for the rabbis. While a number of early Christian writers refer to Aquila’s translation as the favorite of the Jews, the rabbinic sources suggest that the situation was much more nuanced. Moreover, although a number of Christian writers related to Aquila’s translation on ideological grounds, Aquila’s ideology was not at stake for the rabbis.

■ The Narrative Texts: Portrayals of Aquila’s Place in Rabbinic Society

Genesis Rabbah8 70:5

Aquila the proselyte approached R. Eliezer. He (Aquila) said to him: Is this the entirety of a proselyte’s gain: “[God] loves the proselyte,9 providing him bread and raiment” (Deut 10:18)? He (R. Eliezer) said: Is a matter about which the patriarch (Jacob) begged unimportant in your eyes? “And [if God] will give me bread to eat [and clothing to wear]” (Gen 28:20). And this one (i.e., the proselyte) comes and [God] hands it to him with a reed (i.e., simply pronouncing it the reward of the proselyte in Deut 10:18)! He approached R. Joshua, who began comforting him with words: “Bread” refers to the Torah, as it is said, “Go and eat of my bread” (Prov 9:5); “clothing” refers to talit.10 When a person obtains Torah, he obtains it for

8 The amoraic midrash on Genesis. See Midrash Bereshit Rabba (ed. J. Theodor and Chanoch Albeck; 3 vols.; Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965; repr., Jerusalem: Shalem, 1996) for introduction and critical edition. I cite the text according to MS Vat. Ebr. 30.

9 In the Bible the word means “stranger, sojourner” (See Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament [Oxford: Clarendon, 1951] 158s.v. ). However, in rabbinic parlance it almost always means “proselyte,” and that is the sense in which Aquila uses it here.

10 Marcus Jastrow defines talit as follows: “Tallith, the cloak of honor, the scholar’s or officer’s distinction.” A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic


his children;11 and further, that person’s daughters may marry priests, and their children’s children sacrifice burnt offerings upon the altar.12

In this story, Aquila approaches two sages with a complaint about the rewards of conversion to Judaism. R. Eliezer responds harshly while R. Joshua responds reassuringly. For our purposes, two points are worth considering, both relating to the portrayal of Aquila’s place within rabbinic society.

First, the text portrays Aquila as having had sufficient access to the sages—or at least to these sages—as to engage two prominent figures in conversation. However, we should not overstate this; it does not necessarily portray him as a disciple of these two sages, and even if it did, we should not assume this reflects an historical reality. Classical rabbinic texts portray many types of people as asking questions of rabbis, and we cannot assume a master-disciple relationship in every instance. Below we will discuss a text depicting the emperor Hadrian asking Aquila a question about Judaism, and we certainly would not therefore conclude that Hadrian was Aquila’s disciple.13

The second noteworthy point is that this story depicts Aquila expressing a measure of insecurity. He is disturbed that the only reward the Bible mentions for a proselyte is financial, and he is unimpressed. While the sages defend the status of proselytes, the story portrays Aquila as expressing concern about the implied worth (or lack thereof) of his status as a convert. Both sages hold that the rewards of conversion to Judaism are indeed great, but the text uses Aquila as a foil for the opposite position. The author’s choice of Aquila for this role may reflect a perception

Literature (New York: Judaica Press, 1971; repr., New York: Judaica Press, 1996) 537 s.v. .See also the comment of Chanoch Albeck, Bereshit Rabba 2:802, who notes the tannaitic midrash Sifre Devarim 343, which says: (Scholars are recognized by their utterances, and by their [manner of] walking, [and] by their wrapping themselves [in a tallit] in the market) (Hebrew text from M. Kahana, Qeta’e midrashe halakhah min ha-genizah[Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005] 320).

11 Thus MS Vat. Ebr. 30, the best manuscript for Genesis Rabbah. A marginal note there and the main text of several other manuscripts reads “he obtains the mitzvot (commandments).” See Theodor and Albeck, Midrash bereshit rabba, 802.

12 " : . '?( : ) "

' " " ? :!

) " " " " : ', . " " ,( :

.All translations not otherwise marked are my own.13 Similarly, in many rabbinic texts the Roman emperor Antoninus is portrayed asking questions

of Rabbi Judah the Prince, among the most prominent sages of his day, and there are even several texts suggesting that Antoninus converted to Judaism. But we would certainly not conclude therefore that Antoninus was a disciple of the Jewish sages, much less a sage himself. See Ofrah Meir, “Ha-terumah ha-historit shel aggadot azal le-’or aggadot Rabbi ve-Antoninus,” Ma anayyim 7 (1994) 8–25, and Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Conversion of Antoninus,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture (ed. Peter Schäfer; 3 vols.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998) 1:141–71.


that his place within the rabbinic fold was unclear, whether on the basis of being a convert or on some other unstated basis.

Thus this text, on the one hand, portrays Aquila as asking questions of the sages and expressing a yearning to be a valued member of Jewish society on the basis of rabbinic values. Indeed, he converses with prominent sages. On the other hand, we cannot say with confidence that the rabbis considered Aquila to have been a sage or disciple. In the following text, we find a similar ambiguity.

Yerushalmi Hagigah 2:1, 77a14

R. Yudah bar Pazi [said] in the name of R. Yosse son of R. Yudah: Hadrian asked Aquila the proselyte: Is it true that you (plural)15 say that the world is sustained by wind? He said to him: Yes. He (Hadrian) said to him: Based on what do you say this? He (Aquila) said to him: Bring me camels. He brought him camels. He (Aquila) loaded the camels with burdens, stood them up and made them kneel, took them and strangled them. He (Aquila) said to him (Hadrian): Here you go; stand them up. He (Hadrian) said to him: After you strangled them?!He said to him: I have taken nothing from them; is it not (merely) wind that I took from them?16

The first thing to note17 is that there are numerous similar stories in rabbinic literature, involving prominent Greeks, Romans, and Persians (including emperors) conversing or interacting with rabbis.18 Hadrian himself appears in the classical

14 Tanhuma Bereshit 5 provides a later parallel which is clearly reworked and fleshed out (and translated into Hebrew).

15 Hadrian does not specify the particular group to which he perceives Aquila belonging. While theoretically there are a variety of options (e.g., Jewish or Christian Bible readers, thinkers from the Roman East, philosophers, etc.), given the context, it is most likely that the author intended Jews, and possibly rabbis.

16 ?

.?

.. . . . .

!??

17 As Veltri also does (Libraries, Translations, and “Canonic” Texts, 173).18 For a discussion of this phenomenon in general and numerous examples, see Moshe David

Herr, “The Historical Significance of the Dialogues between Jewish Sages and Roman Dignitaries,” in Studies in Aggadah and Folk-Literature (ed. Joseph Heinemann and Dov Noy; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1971) 123–50.


midrashim asking R. Joshua b. Hananiah—the same R. Joshua with whom Aquila is associated—similar questions to the one posed to Aquila.19 Therefore, there is little about Aquila specifically, or the rabbinic perception of Aquila, that we can derive from this story.

What we can conclude is that Aquila is portrayed as an insider among the Jews; if there is an “us” and “them” relationship between Jews and Romans, the text portrays Aquila squarely on the Jewish side (“Is it true that you (plural) say. . .”). But again, we should not overstate the matter; not only do important sages like R. Joshua converse with non-Jews, but sometimes a person who specificallylacks prominence is chosen to speak with an emperor.20 Therefore, as above, we see that while Aquila is remembered as a Jew, there is no indication that he is a prominent figure or a learned disciple of any sort. This remains a possibility, of course, but there is no evidence for that conclusion from the narratives involving Aquila that we have seen.

Yerushalmi Megillah 1:8, 71a–b

The next narrative text is the one most commonly cited in the scholarly literature about Aquila, as it refers explicitly to his translation of the Bible.

It is taught (in the Mishnah): Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: Scripture was only permitted to be written in Greek (or Hebrew). They investigated and found that the Torah is able to be sufficientlytranslated only into Greek.A barbarian (or watchman) “took out” for them the Latin from the Greek.21

(Said) R. Yirmiyah (early-fourth century) in the name of R. Hiyya bar Ba (late-third century): Aquila the proselyte translated the Torah22 before R.

19 Gen. Rab. 10:3, 78:1, Lev. Rab. 18:1, Lam. Rab. (Buber) 3.20 See the story of Gaviha ben Pasisa approaching Alexander the Great: Megilat Ta’anit, 25

Sivan (Vered Noam, Megilat Ta’anit: Ha-nusa im, pesharam, toldotehem [Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2003] 198–99), b. Sanh. 91a, and Gen. Rab. 61:7.

21 On this translation see Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (New York: Feldheim, 1965;repr., New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1994) 17. “Took out” implies that he rendered it. As for “the Latin,” Lieberman takes this to be the definitive translation of , which usually means “Aramaic,” based on a parallel text in the later Midrash Esther. While emending the Yerushalmi based on a later parallel should be done only with great caution, in this case the context indicates Latin ( ) and Aramaic makes little sense. Lieberman takes this to refer to the Vetus Latina.Even if Lieberman’s reading is potentially questionable, I follow it here since it makes sense, and since the meaning of this line has no bearing on my arguments below.

22 Strictly speaking this could mean either Scripture in its entirety, or the Pentateuch. We should not rule out the latter possibility merely because the Talmud cites Aquila’s translations from the Prophets and Writings as well as the Pentateuch, since this tradition only describes what he translated before these two sages, not necessarily the entirety of his translation.


Eliezer and R. Joshua, and they praised him, saying to him “You are fairer23

than the children of men” (Ps 45:3).24

Scholars have drawn various conclusions from this text about Aquila’s relationship to these two sages, about his translation’s general acceptance or popularity within the Jewish community at large, and about these two sages’ perspectives on his translation. I believe, however, that close attention to the particular wording of this passage in the context of similar usages throughout rabbinic literature can offer a more nuanced understanding of this text and its implications. First, however, in response to previous scholarship, I will point out what the text does not say:

1) The text does not indicate that Aquila composed his translation under the auspices of any sage.25

2) The text does not indicate any wider rabbinic approbation of Aquila’s translation than that of R. Eliezer and R. Joshua.26

23 This is a pun on the word (you are fairer), since the rabbis identify the biblical Japeth ( ) as Greece (see Gen 10:2). The comment also resonates with traditions such as y. Meg. 1:9, 71b (and parallels): (“May God dwell in the tents of Japeth” [Gen 9:27]—[meaning] that they shall speak the language of Japeth in the tent of Shem [=Jews]).

24 ..

.

. ,25 The opposite is often either claimed in passing or explicitly stated as a conclusion based on this

passage of Yerushalmi, even by formidable scholars, but I respectfully disagree with this position, as I will explain below. For previous scholarship on this particular issue, see: Francis Crawford Burkitt, “Aquila,” in JE 2:34; Louis Ginzberg, “Aquila,” in JE 2:36; Dominique Barthélemy, Les devanciers d’Aquila. Première publication intégrale du texte des fragments du Dodécaprophéton trouvés dans le désert de Juda, précedée d’une étude sur les traductions et recensions grecques de la Bible réalisées au premier siècle de notre ère sous l’influence du rabbinat palestinien (Leiden: Brill, 1963); Louis Isaac Rabinowitz, “Onkelos and Aquila,” in Encyclopedia Judaica (ed. Cecil Roth; 16 vols.; Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1972) 12:1406. Nicholas de Lange, Origen and the Jews: Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations in Third Century Palestine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 51, states, “it was a ‘rabbinic’ translation, produced, so tradition has it, at the instance of the Rabbis and approved of by them.” Lester Grabbe, “Aquila’s Translation and Rabbinic Exegesis,” JJS 33 (1982) 528, notes based on this text that Aquila “supposedly [used] their aid in doing his translation.” Philip S. Alexander, “How Did the Rabbis Learn Hebrew?” in Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben-Yehuda (ed. William Horbury; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999) 84, says, “There are no serious grounds for questioning the Rabbinic tradition that Aquila was prepared under Rabbinic auspices in Palestine in the early second century C.E., possibly in the school of Aqiva.” Arie van der Kooij, “The Origin and Purpose of Bible Translations in Ancient Judaism: Some Comments,” ARG 1 (1999) 210, commenting on our passage writes, “This implies that the translation was made on the authority of these two scholars.” I will show that despite these scholars’ other important contributions to our understanding of Aquila and his translation, there is good reason to reject the idea that the translation was produced specifically under the auspices of the sages.

26 Various scholars have summarized our passage or concluded from it a general Jewish appreciation of Aquila’s translation. Whether or not that was the reality, it is not expressed in this


3) The text does not indicate that any written text was physically presented to the sages,27 much less adopted as a synagogal Targum.

4) The text does not indicate at what stage in Aquila’s life this interaction occurred.

I turn now to what this text does indicate, beginning with R. Hiyya bar Ba’s opening word: . Our understanding of this verb colors the entire picture of this interaction.28 First of all, it refers to speech: Aquila verbally translated Scripture before these two sages.29 This verb is never used in rabbinic literature to denote studying (whether Scripture in general or Targum); almost everywhere else it is used in the Yerushalmi it is followed by a quotation.30 Thus, stands in only for words like (said)31 or (expounded),32 and not (sat) or (studied).33

While there are instances of this verb denoting the synagogal practice of Targum (the interlinear recitation of an Aramaic translation during the weekly public reading of the Torah),34 it is also clear that translations of individual words or verses sometimes served a midrashic, scholarly function entirely separate from

text. The significance of this point will become clear below, as I contrast the implications of the rabbinic texts with those of the relevant early Christian texts.

27 Cf. van der Kooij, “Origin and Purpose of Bible Translations,” 210. 28 For the etymology of and its usage in rabbinic literature, see Shemuel Safrai, “The

Targum as Part of Rabbinic Literature,” in The Literature of the Sages: Second Part (ed. Shemuel Safrai et al.; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006) 244. See also Chaim Rabin, “Cultural Aspects of Bible Translation,” in Armenian and Biblical Studies (ed. Michael E. Stone; Jerusalem: St. James, 1976) 44. For lexical translations see Sefer arukh ha-shalem (ed. Alexander Kohut; 8 vols.; Vienna: Hotza’at Menorah, 1926) 8:274, s.v. ; Wilhelm Bacher, Erkhe midrash (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Karmi’el, 1969) 2:320–21, s.v. ; Jacob Lewy, Wörterbuch über die Talmudim und Midraschim (4 vols.; Berlin: Benjamin Harz, 1924) 4:668, s.v. ; Jastrow, Dictionary, 1695–96; Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002)591, s.v. .

29 In order to communicate that he presented a written work, or that he studied and created a written work, the text would require words like or or and some verb to represent the handing over of a physical object. For example, when the Mishnah describes the composition of the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 27, it states:

(And then they brought the stones and built the altar and plastered it with plaster, and they wrote on it all the words of the Torah in seventy languages) (m. Sotah 7:5). Similarly, regarding the book of Esther, the Yerushalmi states:

(What did Mordechai and Esther do? They wrote a letter and sent it to our sages) (y. Meg. 1:5, 70d). Another example is the frequent reference in m. Git. to the writing and giving of bills of divorce: . . . ([If] he said . . . to three people: “Write a bill of divorce and give it to my wife”) (m. Git. 6:7).

30 See, e.g., y. Bik. 3:3, 65d, and y. Sanh. 2:6, 70c.31 See, e.g., Gen. Rab. 61:5, where we find the phrase (we translate, saying).32 In fact, where Gen. Rab. 80:1 (not in connection with Aquila) employs the verb , its

parallel in the later collection Midrash ha-Gadol (Gen 34:1) reads .33 The Babylonian Talmud’s use of or has the added valence of “explain,” but this

is a uniquely Babylonian usage.34 For example y. Sanh. 2:6, 20c, where a certain sage is said to utter a translation specifically in

the synagogue of Tiberias. For the most recent scholarship on the practice of Targum in synagogues,


their liturgical functions.35 I do not believe there is sufficient evidence to deduce in which sphere these translations originated—that of liturgy or scholarship—but there is ample evidence that they were used in both.

Biblical translations may have been useful in rabbinic scholarly circles in a variety of ways. A frequently cited Tannaitic midrash states: “Scripture leads to targum, targum leads to mishnah (the legal teachings), mishnah leads to talmud(argumentation).”36 There are plenty of examples of either the entirety of a midrashic comment consisting of no more than a translation, or of a translation being embedded within a midrashic discussion, among other types of midrashic techniques. That is to say, not only could a translation as an extended composition be useful for Jews (whether in the academy or the synagogue), but the translations of individual words and phrases embedded within it—atomistically, separate from the composition as a whole—could be useful pieces of midrash.37 Rabbinic citations of Aquila’s

see the literature cited in Steven D. Fraade, “Locating Targum in the Textual Polysystem of Rabbinic Pedagogy,” BIOSCS 39 (2006) 69–91.

35 A number of recent studies have focused on additional non-liturgical aspects of Aramaic Targum. Fraade, “Locating Targum,” seeks mainly to draw attention to the midrashic (as opposed to liturgical) function of interlinear synagogal translations, but see pp. 79–84 where he deals specifically with the interpretive, explanatory, or instructive nature of Targum, and see the literature he cites there as having overlooked this important aspect of Targum. See also Veltri’s comments, Libraries, Translations, and ‘Canonic’ Texts, 159–60, as well as the rest of his chapter three. Another useful study (with extensive bibliography) is Steven Fine, “ ‘Their Faces Shine with the Brightness of the Firmament’: Study Houses and Synagogues in the Targumim to the Pentateuch,” in Biblical Translation in Context (ed. Frederick W. Knobloch; Bethesda, Md.: University Press of Maryland, 2002) 63–92, esp. 63–67, though Fine adopts a perspective on Targum as “rewritten Bible,” which is in stark contrast to Fraade’s portrayal. Van der Kooij, “Origin and Purpose of Bible Translations,” 207, 213, and passim, argues for “a scholarly milieu as the primary setting where the Bible translations, either in Greek or in Aramaic, were produced.” While I do not believe the evidence indicates the setting of the translations’ origins, van der Kooij does succeed, like Fraade and Fine, in highlighting ways in which Targum functioned as midrash. Other important studies in this area are: Avigdor Shinan, “The Aggadah of the Palestinian Targums of the Pentateuch and Rabbinic Aggadah: Some Methodological Considerations,” in The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context (ed. Derek R. G. Beattie and Martin J. McNamara; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994) 203–17; Rimon Kasher, “The Aramic Targumim and their Sitz im Leben,” in Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies: Panel Sessions, Bible Studies and Ancient Near East (ed. Moshe Goshen-Gottstein and David Assaf; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988) 74–85; Anthony York, “The Targum in the Synagogue and School,” JSJ 10 (1979) 74–86.

36 Sifre Deuteronomy 161. Saul Lieberman has written, “But the first rudiment of the interpretation of a text is the , the literal and exact equivalent of the Hebrew , which means both translation and interpretation. . . . The elementary task of the interpreter of the Bible was to explain the realia and to render the rare and difficult terms in a simpler Hebrew, or, sometimes, in Aramaic. The Tanaaitic Midrashim swarm with such translations. . . . These translations are sometimes quite instructive.” Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1950; repr., New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1994) 48–49. Immediately following these statements Lieberman provides several examples, including rabbinic citations of Aquila’s translations.

37 In our text about Aquila’s recitation of his own translation, he is portrayed translating the entire Torah: . Nevertheless, no use of the extended translation is mentioned.


translations (below) will serve as clear examples of this sort of atomistic translation functioning as midrash.

A further indication that Aquila’s recitation of his translation fit into the normal routine of rabbinic activity is the phrasing of the sages’ response. In the Yerushalmi, there are numerous instances of one sage offering a praiseworthy interpretation (legal38 or otherwise39) or behaving in a proper way (such as reciting one or the other of a disputed formula for a certain blessing),40 and a teacher responding just as R. Eliezer and R. Joshua do here—by praising the person (using the same verb as is used here: - - ),41 and often expressing that praise with a biblical verse appropriate to the situation.42 Thus, Aquila’s recitation of his biblical translation was received by the sages to whom he presented it just as any clever, proper, or insightful point offered by a sage or student might similarly be received.

In contrast to the previous two narratives concerning Aquila, here he occupies an unambiguous position within the normal rabbinic social structure. Thus the perspective on Aquila expressed in this text is somewhat different from that of the other two. It seems that the sages related to Aquila as a person slightly differently from how they related to him as a Bible translator. In the two stories about Aquila that have nothing to do with his identity as a translator, his role is ambiguous. But when discussing Aquila as a Bible translator, there is no ambiguity about his value and his welcome place within the rabbinic fold. This phenomenon may be explained by noting that since the sages used Aquila’s translation for their midrashim (see the citations below), they needed to portray the translation’s entrance into their purview in terms of a familiar rabbinic context.

In addition, several other Palestinian rabbinic passages feature a scholar translating a biblical phrase before ( ) a teacher, as in our case.43 It should be noted in this context that speaking, expounding, or asking a question before a

38 E.g., y. Ma’as. Sh. 1:3, 53a; y. Yoma 3:5, 40c; y. Yeb. 15:4, 15a; y. Nid. 3:4, 40d. In y. Ned.9:10, 41c, R. Ishmael is eulogized as having praised sages when they would offer (an explanation or reason for a legal ruling).

39 E.g., the explicit statement in y. Sotah 5:2, 20a (see also y. B. Bat. 10:10, 17d) that in a certain case, R. Joshua’s praise of R. Akiva was only for his midrash (his exegesis), even though the legal ruling does not accord with that midrash.

40 E.g., y. Ber. 6:1, 10a; 7:5, 11d.41 I have not found this expression used quite this way in Tannaitic sources, which is notable

since in our passage the two sages who praise Aquila are Tannaim. It is possible therefore that R. Hiyya bar Ba is not quoting a baraita (Tannaitic source), but rather is formulating the content of an older tradition in the parlance of his own day. It is even possible that the only authentic element of the tradition is the notion that R. Eliezer and R. Joshua heard Aquila’s translation. However, I do not see fit to dismiss R. Hiyya bar Ba’s tradition without further evidence simply because his locution is amoraic. If the reader would in fact dismiss it for this reason, I submit that the tradition is still useful simply as an indication of how a slightly later rabbi (R. Hiyya bar Ba) viewed Aquila’s entrance into rabbinic circles. On this term, see Saul Lieberman, Keles kilusin, in Me

(ed. David Rosenthal; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991) 433–39.42 E.g., y. Kil. 8:1, 31b and parallels.43 E.g., y. Sukkah 5:3, 55b; 5:5, 55c (=y. Shek. 5:1, 48c); Gen. Rab. 70:16.


given sage does not indicate that this sage is one’s primary teacher, though we can assume the perception of some relationship (whatever its precise nature) between Aquila and R. Eliezer and R. Joshua since they appear together in more than one text. In another place in the Yerushalmi, Aquila is recorded as having translated a particular verse before R. Akiva.44 No source indicates that Aquila was either the principal student of these sages, or that they were his principal teachers. The rabbis portray him in contact with them, but this may simply be because they were three of the most prominent sages of their day. Jerome mentions two centuries later that Aquila was a student of R. Akiva,45 but again this tradition may have developed since R. Akiva was such a prominent sage. Alternatively, this may reflect Jerome’sperception that he was a full-fledged disciple of the sages, but as we have seen, this is not expressed unequivocally in rabbinic texts.

The description of Aquila translating before certain sages shows that he is perceived to have afforded them respect and shared his knowledge with them, but this may be true even of one who is not himself a sage. Thus, from this text, like the above two narratives, while Aquila is most certainly depicted in a rabbinic context, there is no clear depiction of him as a sage or as a disciple. He is present in rabbinic circles, but overstated conclusions should be avoided.

I turn now to the question of the acceptance of, or enthusiasm for, Aquila’s translation among sages other than the two who are mentioned in our passage. The rabbinic authors and editors were quite able to express general consensus among sages (at least of a certain time and place) with the term (sages), whose collective positions are often opposed in rabbinic texts to minority positions, and with expressions such as (the sages assented to him). Here, we have no such expression of general agreement; only these two rabbis are mentioned. Moreover, in numerous cases of individual sages “praising” ( ) a person for their insight or behavior, that insight or behavior accords specifically with one—of at least two—extant possible traditions.46 In our case, I would not suggest that R. Eliezer and R. Joshua necessarily reflect a minority opinion in appreciating the

44 Most scholars have assumed Akiva to have been his teacher according to y. Qid. 1:1, 59a, which says that Aquila translated a certain verse “before R. Akiva.”

45 Jerome, Comm. Isa. 8:11: “Akibas quem magistrem Aquilae proselyti autumant.” For bibliography on R. Akiva as Aquila’s supposed teacher, see Grabbe, “Aquila’s Translation and Rabbinic Exegesis,” 527, and Ginzberg, “Die Haggada bei den Kirchenvätern VI. Der Kommentar des Hieronymus zu Jesaja,” in Jewish Studies in Memory of George A. Kohut (ed. S. W. Baron and A. Marx; New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1935) 291, where already seventy years ago he doubts, based on both Jerome and the Talmud, that R. Akiva was Aquila’s teacher. See also Grabbe, “Aquila’s Translation and Rabbinic Exegesis,” 528 n. 9.

46 For example, in y. Ber. 6:1, 10a, after recording a disagreement between R. Nahman and the other sages ( ) as to the specific formula of the blessing over bread, the Talmud records that R. Jeremiah uttered the blessing in accordance with R. Nahman’s formula, whereupon R. Zeira, before whom he did so, praised him ( ) for this—using the same verb as did R. Joshua and R. Eliezer for Aquila. In that case neither R. Nahman’s behavior nor R. Zeira’s praise reflected the general consensus of the sages.


translation, but it is clear that it does not imply anything beyond the opinion of these two sages.47

Furthermore, we cannot draw any conclusions about the point in Aquila’s life or career at which his translation before the sages occurred. The verb , as I noted, does not mean to compose a translation; Aquila recited something already composed (since we assume he did not compose it on the spot).48 Therefore, it is plausible, for instance, that he composed the translation ten or twenty years prior and enjoyed considerable popularity (or the opposite) in synagogues in, say, Asia Minor, and only then approached the rabbis. It is equally possible that he first offered his translation to the rabbis, and only then branched out to other communities of Jews or to the synagogues. The point is simply that some questions regarding the origin of Aquila’s translation are not answerable based on the rabbinic evidence, and this evidence should not be used for historical reconstruction of Aquila’s career.

To summarize my conclusions about this group of texts, in each story Aquila is depicted as a Jew somewhat integrated into rabbinic society, but only in his role as Bible translator is he depicted as fully within the fold. Still, in none of these texts do we find a clear depiction of Aquila as a sage or disciple of the sages; indeed we need not assume that everyone who interacted with Palestinian rabbis was himself a rabbi.49 Aquila is present in rabbinic circles, but his role is ambiguous.

■ Citations of Aquila in Rabbinic LiteratureGiuseppe Veltri50 has already provided translations and explanations (particularly valuable due to his analysis of the Rabbis’ transliterated Greek) of each of the citations of Aquila in rabbinic literature, so I shall not reproduce all the texts here. What I shall add to Veltri’s analysis is specific attention to the context of the citations, and a closer analysis of what the citations (in form and content) can tell us about the role Aquila’s translation played within Palestinian rabbinic circles of Late Antiquity.

47 In fact, Azariah de Rossi suggested the possibility that at least one sage specifically opposed Aquila’s translation, namely R. Judah, who said (t. Meg. 3:41): “Anyone who translates a verse literally ( )—he is a liar.” De Rossi writes, after noting Christian criticism of Aquila’s literalism (see below): “In my opinion, this is one of the meanings of their [the Sages’] statement . . . ‘Anyone who translates . . .’” (Me’or Einayim, ch. 45). In addition, while there is evidence that R. Eliezer and R. Joshua were proficient in Greek, it is also the case that many other rabbis were not, and therefore might have no opinion or interest whatsoever in Aquila’s translation. See Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, 15–28.

48 This is corroborated by the fact that elsewhere in rabbinic literature, sages who live well after Aquila’s lifetime cite him with the same active verb: (Aquila the proselyte translated).

49 On Palestinian rabbinic contact with non-rabbis, see Richard Kalmin, The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity (New York: Routledge, 1999) 27–50, and Lee I. Levine, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1985) 192–95.

50 Libraries, Translations, and “Canonic” Texts, 176–85.


Aquila is cited51 eleven times52 in the Yerushalmi and the Palestinian amoraic midrashic collections (Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Lamentations Rabbah).53 Veltri provides translations for the following verses and words (given here in Hebrew with English translation from the Koren edition of The Holy Scriptures):54

Gen 17:1 (Genesis Rabbah 46:3) Almighty (Shaddai–name/description of God)

Lev 19:20 (Yerushalmi Qiddushin1:1, 59a)

a bondmaid designated

Lev 23:40 (Yerushalmi Sukkah 3:5,53d; Leviticus Rabbah 30:8)

hadar (type of tree)

Isa 3:20 (Yerushalmi Shabbat 6:4, 8b)*

and the perfume boxes

Ezek 16:10 (Eichah Rabbah 1:1)** embroidered cloth

Ezek 23:43 (Leviticus Rabbah 33:6) to her that was worn out

Ps 48:15 (Yerushalmi Megillah 2:4,73b; Mashqin 3:7, 83b; Leviticus Rabbah 11:9)***

to the death

Prov 18:21 (Leviticus Rabbah 33:1) death and life

Prov 25:11 (Genesis Rabbah 93:3) in ornaments

Dan 5:5 (Yerushalmi Yoma 3:8, 41a) lamp stand

Dan 8:13 (Genesis Rabbah 21:1) to that certain one who spoke

* And see Louis Ginzberg, Seride ha-Yerushalmi min ha-genizah asher be-Mitsrayim (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1909) 80.

** Veltri, Libraries, Translations, and “Canonic” Texts, 179–80, cites the parallel in Song of Songs Rabbah.

*** Veltri does not note the parallel in Leviticus Rabbah, which happens to provide a better transcription of the Greek.

51 Only two of the citations of Aquila are transmitted by rabbinic tradents, namely R. Yohanan (third century) and R. Tanhuma (late-fourth century).

52 Not including parallels. That is, some of these citations appear more than once within the same or contemporaneous rabbinic compilations.

53 Lamentations Rabbah exists in two recensions; see Paul Mandel, “Between Byzantium and Islam: The Transmission of a Jewish Book in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods,” in Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion (ed. Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000) 74–106. In the Buber edition, the text reads (correctly), “Aquila translated,” exactly as all the other attributions to Aquila read, whereas in the standard edition, the text reads (erroneously), “Onkelos translated,” which is surely a mistake (and the only extant example of its kind).

54 Jerusalem: Koren, 1997. English text revised and edited by Harold Fisch.


Two of the translations (Lev 19:20 and Dan 8:13) are recorded, however, only in Hebrew,55 and several are followed by Hebrew56 or Aramaic57 explanations of the Greek. A few of the rabbinic citations58 contradict the Greek witnesses to Aquila (others have no parallel in the extant fragments). These points can help us evaluate the source or sources from which the rabbis drew in citing Aquila.

If the rabbis had written copies of Aquila’s translation to consult, one would expect that their citations would come closer to those of our extant texts,59 and that the original Greek would not be omitted, even if it had to be re-translated. This observation, in conjunction with the more important fact that the word introducing all of the citations— —specifically denotes oral translation, should lead us to rule out the rabbis possessing a written text of the translation.

Did the rabbis then possess an orally transmitted version of Aquila’s translation? Or did they simply retain atomistic translations of difficult texts? I am inclined towards the latter view since, apart from the narrative discussed above, the rabbis never refer to the composition as a whole. But at present there is simply not enough evidence in this case to ascertain what the rabbis preserved, beyond what they actually report. The narrative tradition cited above reflects an awareness that Aquila did not merely provide ad hoc translations, but it is the only source for such an awareness. Indeed, that tradition may have been embellished to make a point about the value of Greek translations in general, since the topic under discussion there is the translation of the entire Torah.

As I noted in passing, citations of Aquila’s translation are always introduced with the phrase (Aquila translated). In contrast, many other translations of words are recorded anonymously in rabbinic literature, often simply into Aramaic. Why do Aquila’s translations of a select few words merit rabbinic repetition in Greek and citation of his name? This question is particularly apparent upon reading Yerushalmi Shabbat 6:4, 8b. This passage provides word-by-word translations, mainly into Aramaic (although three times the translations are into Hebrew, and sometimes the translations are accompanied by a helpful related verse), first of Numbers 31:5 and then of Isaiah 3:18–23. In the midst of this word-by-word translation, we come across Aquila’s translation of the phrase in Isaiah 3:20, introduced as always with (Aquila translated). The passage as a whole begins with an attribution to a sage, though it is not clear whether the intention is Rav Yehudah (the Babylonian sage, third century) or R. Yohanan (the

55 See Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, 19–20, for explanations of these two cases.56 Isa 3:20, Lev 23:40, Ps 48:15, Prov 18:21.57 Ezek 23:43.58 Gen 17:1 (one of the two words of the translation indeed corresponds to Greek Aquila),

Lev 23:24, Isa 3:20, and Ezek 23:43, about which Veltri, Libraries, Translations and “Canonic” Texts, 180, notes: “The Hexaplarian fragment . . . reads quite differently in lexical terms, though semantically very similar.”

59 Unless there were different recensions of the translation.


Palestinian sage, third century),60 and only for this one phrase (out of twenty-six words and phrases translated) is the origin of the translation, here Aquila, cited.61

Was this the only phrase in these verses for which they knew Aquila’s translation, or was it the only phrase for which they were interested in it, and if so why?

These are only some of the many questions suggested by such a passage, but unfortunately answers are scarce. In any case, it is more fruitful to inquire into how the rabbis made use of whatever they did know, and into how they portray the figure of Aquila. From this example we learn that while Aquila’s translations are uniquely stamped with the label , they otherwise fall right into place as standard points of interest for the rabbis. One of the things rabbinic texts do isprovide translations of difficult biblical words, phrases, and verses.

The fact that each and every one of the attributed citations of Aquila begins (Aquila translated) can help us understand the role the rabbis perceived

him to have played in their world. Aquila is always introduced this way even when the citation appears beside a rabbi’s Aramaic translation introduced merely by “Rabbi so-and-so said.”62 The introduction, “so-and-so translated” to a translation-interpretation is used in rabbinic literature many times, but Aquila is unique in that his translations are never introduced by a different verb ( , , etc.), and in that these translations are his only contribution to rabbinic literature. Aquila only translates.

This fact is difficult to interpret. It is possible either that this reflects a second-class status afforded him, or that it reflects a special respect shown to him as a professional; it is possible either that the rabbis knew that he was a professional biblical translator, or that all they knew was that he never happened to say anything besides translations or explanations of individual verses or words. This observation, when considered in conjunction with the narrative texts, suggests that while he is perceived as being integrated into rabbinic society in some way, his primary value lies in his distinct capacity as a Bible translator.

Thus despite not being himself a sage, the traditions recorded in Aquila’s name are unambiguously valuable midrashic comments, recorded as on par with other rabbinic exegeses of the Bible. I shall now emphasize this point with a few examples which also generally illuminate the rabbinic usage of Aquila’s translations.

In y. Qid. 1:1, 59a, Aquila’s translation of Leviticus 19:20 is incorporated by R. Yohanan into a halakhic discussion about the “designated maidservant” and the annulment of her marriage. R. Samuel son of R. Isaac asks a question, and the

60 See Ginzberg, Seride ha-Yerushalmi, 80. The geniza fragment reads: ' , while MS Leiden reads: . Both R. Yohanan and R. Yehudah are mentioned in the previous line, and R. Yehudah is mentioned after the translations, so either name could be an inadvertant addition. Due to chronology, it is impossible for R. Yohanan to be quoting R. Yehudah. R. Yohanan would make more sense if it is he who cites Aquila, but that citation may also be an interpolation.

61 Though the word is explained with two options, each introduced as “there are those who say.”

62 Veltri also points this out but differs in his explanation.


Talmud then includes two alternative possibilities, each based on a statement of R. Yohanan. The Talmud then buttresses the second possibility with a further statement of R. Yohanan, namely his citation of Aquila’s translation—in Hebrew63—of Lev 19:20. This is followed immediately by yet another statement, again in the name of R. Yohanan: (Similarly R. Lazar son of R. Shimon explained it before the Sages), followed by the exact same translation and explanation as R. Yohanan had cited in the name of Aquila.64

Thus, the exact same statement is introduced first as “Aquila translated,” and then “R. Lazar son of R. Shimon explained.” But it is Aquila’s translation that is cited first and solves the halakhic question posed by R. Samuel at the beginning of the pericope; the sage’s explanation buttresses Aquila’s translation, not the other way around. Thus, while R. Yohanan appears aware that Aquila’s role was as translator, the editor of this talmudic pericope understood these translations as exegeses with legal force like the statement of any sage.

The Talmud uses Aquila’s translation uniquely in Yerushalmi Yoma 3:8, 41a.Here the question under discussion is how to interpret a Hebrew word used in the Mishnah: Helene, the mother of Munbaz of the royal family of Adiabene who converted to Judaism in the first century C.E., is reported by the Mishnah to have donated a golden (nivreshet) to the temple. The Talmud first mentions the Aramaic translations of two unnamed sages, grouping them together with the introduction (Two amoraim. One said . . . and the other said . . .). Next the Talmud cites Aquila’s translation of Daniel 5:5— (nivrashta)—which is taken to be the Aramaic of the Mishnah’s (nivreshet). Presumably, (nivrashta) was a difficult or uncommon enough Aramaic word that the two amoraimcited did not bother to mention it, since it would clarify nothing (or alternatively it simply did not occur to them). However, Aquila’s translation of this biblical Aramaic word could illuminate its cognate Hebrew word in the Mishnah.

63 Perhaps it is presented in Hebrew because of the legal context, since only the legal valence of the verse is of interest, regardless of its lexical rendering or the precise definition of the verse. Lieberman suggests that it is Hebrew due to R. Akiva’s lack of proficiency in Greek (Greek in Jewish Palestine, 20).

64 The text reads as follows:

?.

' ' "' ' .

' ' '.

.It is possible that R. Hiyya, who introduces this last statement of R. Yohanan, intends to contradict

the previously cited version of R. Yohanan’s statement, pointing out that it was not Aquila whom R. Yohanan cited, but actually R. Lazar. However, it is more likely that if this were the case the Talmud or R. Hiyya himself would point out the contradiction more explicitly. Rather, I see R. Hiyya’s statement as an attempt to buttress the halakhic point made via Aquila’s translation.


Here we see that Aquila’s Bible translation is utilized as a dictionary of sorts that can help explain the Mishnah. Aquila’s role is ambiguous. He himself does not explain the Mishnah; he does not even address the particular word in the Mishnah under discussion. But his translation can shed light on the interpretation of the Mishnah, which is one of the central projects of the Talmud. Aquila’s role can perhaps best be described here as a resource for the rabbis (although how comprehensive a resource, again, is not clear). Thus, Aquila himself stands outside this discussion of the Mishnah, having never commented on the Mishnah directly, but his translation of Daniel fits smoothly into the discussion. Once again, Aquila himself is not fully integrated into the social picture that the pericope reflects, but his translations are fully absorbed into the rabbinic discussion.

Most of the other references to Aquila’s translation function as midrashic explanations of the Bible, as in Yerushalmi Shabbat (discussed above); and were we to find “Rabbi so-and-so said,” instead of “Aquila translated,” we would find nothing out of the ordinary in these passages. However, in one case, Leviticus Rabbah 11:9and its two parallels in the Yerushalmi, we observe something more.

In this example, if one were to remove Aquila’s actual translation, leaving only the explanation that follows it, we would still have a perfectly coherent midrash. The biblical word in question is (‘almut). Amidst several anonymous translations, each based on a proposed connection to a different Hebrew stem ( , , ), we read, , 65 (Aquila translated: [immortality], a world in which there is no death). Aquila’s rendering indicates that he interpreted (or used a text that interpreted) (’almut) as two words:

(above death) or (against death).66 But we did not need to know the Greek word for immortality in order to arrive at such an interpretation; Aquila’s translation adds nothing.67 Why did the text not provide just another anonymous interpretation of this enigmatic word as (a world in which there is no death)?

We are familiar with the rabbinic preference for citing one’s sources,68 and can see on any page of a given rabbinic text their interest in precise attribution when it

65 For the slight manuscript variants, see Midrash Vayyiqra Rabbah (ed. Mordecai Margulies; Jerusalem: Ararat, 1953; repr., New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993) 242.

66 See also Veltri’s brief discussion in Libraries, Translations and “Canonic” Texts, 183. The construction is difficult to render in English, since usually means “do not,” but is a noun.

67 A contrast may be helpful. As noted above there are a few examples of a Hebrew or Aramaic explanation being appended to Aquila’s translation (see above nn. 56 and 57). A simple example is y. Sukkah 3:5, 53d (and its parallel), where Aquila translates the biblical , referring to a certain type of tree as , obviously a transliteration of the Greek meaning “water.” The Talmud then anonymously explains (in Hebrew): “a tree that grows near [literally: on] water.” The explanation is necessary for anyone who does not understand Greek, though the midrash depends on the phonetic similarity of and .

68 See the baraita in b. Meg. 15a and parallels (also in m. Avot 6:6, which is a later addition to that tractate), and Sifre Numbers 157; Sifre de-ve Rav (ed. Hayyim Saul Horovitz; Leipzig, 1917;


comes to each generation’s rabbinic (or proto-rabbinic) forebears. But why should Aquila fall into the category of a source that one must cite? Why would the sages not simply take what they learn from Aquila’s translation and convert it into their own midrashim, leaving Aquila’s translation, which is merely the linguistic trigger, unmentioned? This example shows that the rabbis considered Aquila more important than mere background information. He was a bona fide source of knowledge and deserved to be cited as such.

■ Conclusions Based on the Rabbinic TextsWe have seen that the rabbis depict Aquila’s identity ambiguously. On the one hand, both the narrative accounts and the citations of his translation indicate that in some respects he was perceived as an insider in rabbinic culture and valued in his lifetime by at least two or three sages with whom he interacted. Furthermore, rabbinic scholarship appears to have used his translations for generations. On the other hand, we have also seen indications (again, in both sets of sources) that he is set apart from the sages, marked as a translator and only a translator.

In addition, we have seen the sort of interest that the rabbis, both as individuals (albeit represented only by a few) and as editors and compilers of the various Palestinian rabbinic corpora, took in Aquila’s translation. However, there is not enough evidence to determine whether the rabbis knew his translation as a complete work, or whether they knew only atomistic translations of select words or verses. But what they cite—and the fact that they cite it—reflects an appreciation of the explanatory and interpretive value of these translations.

In summary, we have seen that it is far too simplistic to view the rabbis as having unequivocally embraced Aquila, to assume he was one of their own, or to suppose that the translation came from or was influenced by rabbinic circles. Aquila had his place, but his role was limited, and the texts do not portray his integration into rabbinic society as having been seamless. His translation was useful to the rabbis, but only insofar as it helped with difficult words. We must keep in mind this limited view from the Jewish sources when we see how the patristic authors portray the Jews’ acceptance of Aquila.

■ The Patristic Sources on Aquila’s Popularity among JewsThe patristic sources that portray the Jews’ acceptance of Aquila are potentially useful since they mention aspects of Aquila’s place within Jewish society on which the rabbinic sources shed only limited light. The rabbinic sources we have seen reflect only a slice of Palestinian Jewish society, whereas the patristic sources derive from a wider range of places and communities. However, these texts need to be approached carefully and critically. A number of sources that on the surface would

repr., Jerusalem: Shalem, 1992) 213.


seem to communicate a great deal about Jewish interest in Aquila’s translation on closer consideration are less clear or less reliable than we might have assumed.

One problem in navigating the patristic sources (specifically on the topic of Aquila’s translation among the Jews, but also on the topic of Aquila’s translation in general, as discussed below) is that they mention the translation as though it were a single volume, bound and portable like a modern book. This was simply not the case. Not only was the material reality different from books of today, but the very idea of the Bible as a circumscribed body of literature was not yet fully formed for Christians. The material nature of the Bible and the concept of biblical literature perforce influenced the way early Christians in particular thought about and used the Bible and, by extension, translations of the Bible.69 Robert A. Kraft has recently stated:

We do an injustice to the Jewish and Christian heritage if we import our con-cept of “Bible,” with its fixed and exclusive canon, back into the period when the respected literatures known as “scriptures” were transmitted piecemeal, on scrolls or mini-codices, and held together, if so desired, through lists or physical collections or conceptual abstractions which often were more open ended (or less closely defined) than became possible and actual with the development of the mega-codex in the 4th century C.E.70

Along similar lines, copies of one and the same “book” varied from manuscript to manuscript. Therefore, especially given that only fragments of Aquila’s translation survive, it is not clear to what extent the various references to it, as to versions of the Septuagint, reflect a stable text.71 Furthermore, it is not clear to what extent Christian authors were aware of this problem.72

69 See Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006); Eugene Ulrich, “The Notion and Definition of Canon,” and James A. Sanders, “The Issue of Closure in the Canonical Process,” both in The Canon Debate (ed. Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2004) 21–35 and 252–63; Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardian of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995).

70 “The Birth (Gestations) of the Canon: From Scriptures to ‘THE Scripture’ in Early Judaism and Early Christianity” (lecture, University of Toronto, 12 April 2007; http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/temp/toronto2/jpgs/toronto2-2007.html).

71 See the sample of 48 double readings from various witnesses given by Frederick Field, Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt. Sive veterum interpretum Graecorum in totum Vetus Testamentum fragmenta (Oxonii: e typographeo Clarendoniano, 1875) xxv-xxvii; English version: Frederick Field’s Prolegomena to Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt. Sive veterum interpretum Graecorum in totum Vetus Testamentum fragmenta (trans. Gérard J. Norton; Paris: J. Gabalda, 2005) 54–56.

72 Kraft states, “The process of transmission in such an unregulatable world of individual small units created problems that usually must have gone unnoticed, except by very textually aware scholars such as Origen. The production of Origen’s famous ‘hexapla’ was in part fueled by such issues.” “The Birth (Gestations) of the Canon.”


There is at present no scholarly consensus on how to resolve these problems, nor of terminology that avoids all confusion. I raise these issues for two reasons. First, knowing the limitations of understanding the evidence of the patristic sources allows us to focus more closely on questions that we can answer. Second, I present these questions as potential directions for further scholarship. For now, I will adopt simple terminologies such as “Bible” and “Septuagint,” although this should not be understood as reflecting the actual material state of these books in antiquity.

There are a few sources commonly cited in the literature as Christian evidence of the popularity of Aquila’s translation among Jews. The one remark that I believe can be made generally is that for a few early Church Fathers representing a variety of locales, Aquila’s translation is associated in some way with the Jews. For all that my readings below may be minimalist, the point must be made that even when Aquila figured into Christian writings in purely Christian contexts (i.e., contexts in which neither Judaism nor particular Jews are mentioned), Aquila is known—and moreover mentioned—as an important figure, or text, to Jews as well. Yet it is hard to know exactly what to make of each piece of evidence, and I now turn to the task of uncovering some of their subtleties.

Origen (185–254 C.E.)

In Origen’s letter to Africanus (c. 240 C.E.)73 he says the following about Aquila, in the context of a reading of Aquila that accords with the Hebrew against the Septuagint:

For so Aquila, a slave to the Hebrew language,74 gives it, who has obtained the credit among the Jews of having translated ( ) the Scriptures with no ordinary care, and whose version is most commonly used by those who do not know Hebrew, as the one which has been most successful.75

This testimony is of considerable importance, even as some scholars have taken its implications too far. Origen indicates three things. First, that Jews in the third century respect Aquila for his efforts. Second, that Aquila’s translation is used by those who would otherwise have used the original, but did not know Hebrew. Third, that Aquila’s translation is regarded by those people as comparatively more successful than the other extant Greek translations.

73 Henry Barclay Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914) 60.

74 This is not a criticism; see below at n. 107.75

PG 11:52. Translation based on Ante-Nicene Fathers (ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson; 10 vols.; New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1885; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994) 4:386 (henceforth ANF), with some changes. For “slave to the Hebrew language,” they provide, “following the Hebrew reading,” but this is not the literal translation.


However, it is not clear which Jews respect Aquila. If Origen is referring to the rabbis, then the evidence of rabbinic literature confirms this, as we have seen. But if he is referring rather, or in addition, to a wider Greek-speaking Jewish community, then we lack corroborating evidence of this claim.

As for the second point, Origen is certainly not referring to the rabbinic Jewish community when he references those who do not use the Hebrew text because they do not know Hebrew. Where Swete concluded from this line that Aquila’s translation was “used by all Jews who did not understand Hebrew,”76 Veltri comments, “Origen is without doubt speaking not only about Jews ignorant of Hebrew, but also (perhaps especially?) of Christian writers like himself who use Aquila as a dictionary of the Hebrew language.”77 My only disagreement with Veltri is the phrase “without doubt.” It is possible that Origen means only Jews, in keeping with the start of his description.78 On the other hand, it is also possible that he is now talking about non-Jews; after all, throughout this letter he mentions Jews as those who use the Hebrew text of the Bible, even if the Bible is the extent of their Hebrew knowledge. And of course, as Veltri assumes, it is also possible that he means to include both categories. If Origen is referring at least in part to Jews, this broadens Aquila’s place in Jewish society from the learned, Hebrew-speaking rabbinic community to the broader, Greek-speaking Jewish community. But again, it is impossible to know to whom he is referring.

Furthermore, we do not know in what contexts Aquila’s translation was “used.” Veltri assumes an academic context (as a dictionary), while other scholars have cited this passage as evidence of synagogue use. In fact, Origen’s comment is firmevidence of neither. If he means synagogue use, once again, this broadens the scope of Jewish interest in Aquila from what we knew from the rabbinic texts.

My point is simply that Origen’s testimony is vague, so many of our conclusions must be tentative. What we can conclude with certainty is that according to Origen, Aquila’s translation was in circulation and use (“commonly,” to use Origen’s word) in mid-third-century Palestine, and that Aquila’s translation was known and respected among some Jews.

Augustine (354–430 C.E.)

Augustine makes the following comment in The City of God 15.23 amidst a discussion of the nature of angels:

In the Septuagint too they are called both angels of God and sons of God. This reading, to be sure, is not attested in all the manuscripts, for some have

76 Swete, Introduction, 33.77 Veltri, Libraries, Translations, and “Canonic” Texts, 165–66.78 For recent scholarship on the question of the knowledge and use of Hebrew among Jews

in third-century Palestine, see Seth Schwartz, “Hebrew and Imperialism in Jewish Palestine,” in Ancient Judaism in Its Hellenistic Context (ed. Carol Bakhos; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 81–83 and the literature cited there.


only “sons of God.” Aquila, on the other hand, whom the Jews prefer to the other translators, says in his version neither angels of God nor sons of God but sons of gods. But either expression is right.79

This comment possibly constitutes early-fifth-century testimony of a Jewish preference for Aquila. However, scholars disagree about whether Augustine had actual contact with Jews,80 so his testimony cannot necessarily be relied upon to reflect a contemporary reality. The above passage may simply reflect a tradition that Augustine had heard from predecessors like Africanus, and even if it does reflect a contemporary perspective, the question remains as to what extent Jews used translations in the first place. His wording is comparative, stating only the Jews’ relative appreciation of Aquila.

But in noting this comparative phrasing, we may attempt to resolve another question. Augustine’s wording (whether based on his own observations or based on the testimony of his predecessors) indicates that at least some Jews knew of other translations, and chose (or chose to stick with) Aquila’s. It is tempting to conclude the same from Origen’s comment that Aquila has been the most successful “of all the others”—again, stated comparatively. But it is worth hesitating since, as has already been shown, it is not clear that Origen was speaking about Jews in that part of the sentence, and since we do not have any evidence of this from the rabbis.

Justinian (482/3–565 C.E.)

Although I did not venture into sixth-century rabbinic sources, since as I noted at the outset the nature of rabbinic texts shifts dramatically at that time, I will include in this study a Christian Roman legal passage dated to 553 C.E., NovellaJustiniani 146,81 since it is often cited in literature about Aquila, in my opinion inappropriately. This law published by Justinian deals with the question of what version of Scripture the Jews may use in synagogue or “in general, any place where there are Hebrews.”82 Justinian writes that he is responding to a Jewish petition to resolve a dispute among Jews about admitting Greek as an acceptable language in which to read Scripture. We do not know who submitted this petition, which side

79 “Et septuaginta quidem interpretes et angelos Dei dixerunt istos et filios Dei. Quod quidem non omnes codices habent, nam quidam nisi filios Dei non habent. Aquila autem, quem interpretem Iudaei ceteris anteponunt, non angelos Dei nec filios Dei sed filios deorum interpretatus est. Utrumque autem verum est.” Text and translation from Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans (ed. and trans. Philip Levine; LCL 414; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966) 4:555–57.

80 The most recent scholarship on this topic (to my knowledge) is Franklin T. Harkins, “Nuancing Augustine’s Hermeneutical Jew: Allegory and Actual Jews in the Bishop’s Sermons,” JSJ 36 (2005) 41–64. For prior scholarship see ibid., 43 nn. 1 and 2, and the literature cited throughout the article.

81 Greek with English translation and commentary in Amnon Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987) 402–11. See also Albert I. Baumgarten, “Justinian and the Jews,” in Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein Memorial Volume (ed. Leo Landman; New York: Ktav, 1980) 37–44.

82 Linder, Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation, 408.


of the argument they were on, and how many others they represented.83 In fact, Leonard Rutgers has recently argued that the petition was a fabrication by Justinian, and that the emperor himself brought up the issue in an effort to eliminate Hebrew from synagogues, for reasons having nothing to do with internal Jewish affairs.84 It is also important to note that the question, if it really existed and from whomever it comes, does not mention any translation specifically.

Justinian answers that Jews may indeed read in Greek and any other language that they speak, since this will allow them to see the (Christian) truth of Scripture unencumbered by errant (Jewish) interpretations. He then specifies that if they read in Greek, they should read from the Septuagint due to its accuracy and to its miraculous origins. But he permits Aquila’s translation as well, as follows:

But in order that we shall not appear to prohibit them all the other transla-tions, we give permission to use also Aquila’s translation,85 although he was a gentile86 and in some readings differs not a little from the Septuagint.87

It is surprising that someone who wants to rid Jewish readings of Scripture of anti- or non-Christian interpretations would permit Aquila to be used, given that some Christian writers (see below) believed Aquila to have corrupted key theological points in the Bible.88 Further, as Rutgers points out, since Justinian emphasizes the importance of allegorical rather than literal understandings of the Bible, it is surprising that Justinian permits Aquila; Aquila’s translation is known to have been literalistic.89

We might speculate that Justinian chooses Aquila precisely because, despite Aquila’s literalism, he was viewed as something of an interpreter; and if Justinian permits that version, the Jews might be quicker to replace their postbiblical interpretations with Aquila’s biblical translation (in which case Justinian comes out on top by far).90 But in any event, we have no idea whether Jews actually

83 For a brief discussion of this question, see Nicolas de Lange, “Can We Speak of Jewish Orthodoxy in Byzantium?” in Byzantine Orthodoxies (ed. Andrew Louth and Augustine Casidy; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006) 170–72.

84 Leonard Rutgers, “Justinian’s Novella 146: Between Jews and Christians,” in Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire (ed. Richard Kalmin and Seth Schwartz; Leuven: Peeters, 2003) 385–407.

85 Literally, “that of Aquila.”86 In this context “gentile” clearly means non-Christian.87

Novella Justiniani 146).88 See Veltri, Libraries, Translations, and “Canonic” Texts, 167, for his suggestion.89 Rutgers, “Justinian’s Novella 146,” 394–95.90 Rutgers suggests that the reason Justinian permits Aquila is as follows: “In Justinian’s view,

any translation of the Bible, including that of Aquila, was better than the original text in Hebrew. In fact, one could even go so far as to argue that Justinian’s willingness to permit even Aquila’s translation serves as yet another piece of evidence in support of the interpretation I have already put forward. In Novella 146 Justinian was only outwardly concerned with promoting the allegorical


responded by reading Aquila. (Perhaps Justinian assumed they would, given that earlier Church Fathers kept mentioning Aquila as a favorite of the Jews. But we saw already that those texts are vague, and do not necessarily represent the entirety of the Jewish world.) Therefore, this text should not be considered evidence of Jewish use of or interest in Aquila’s translation.91 Indeed, it is barely evidence of a clear perspective on the part of Justinian.

When dealing with Christian sources that purport to tell us about Jewish behaviors or perspectives, we have two realities to contend with: the historical reality we are trying to reconstruct, and the perceived reality we are trying to decipher. Regarding the former, we have evidence that suggests that there were Jews, Christians, and likely other non-Jews, who wanted access to the Hebrew Bible but were faced with a language barrier of one sort or another, and Aquila’s translation was useful to them. Regarding the perceived reality, we have also seen some evidence that Christian writers—Origen in third-century Palestine and Augustine in fifth-century North Africa—associated Aquila’s translation with Jews, possibly Jews not associated with the rabbis. I refer to this as the perceived reality mainly because it is always possible that early on Aquila was associated with the Jews and that this association was repeated uncritically. Whatever the case, understanding that this is how Christians perceived reality may affect our understanding of the fact that some of them still appreciated and utilized Aquila’s translation for their own purposes, while others disparaged it as heretical.

Moving on from the complications of navigating a perceived reality and an historical reality, we are on firmer ground when dealing with patristic sources that express the Church Fathers’ own perspectives on Aquila and his translation. It is to these sources that I now turn.

■ The Church Fathers’ Perspectives on Aquila and His TranslationA number of Christian writers were concerned with the interpretive nature of Aquila’s translation. These writers reflect what might be considered the inverse of the rabbinic interest in its interpretive value. We have seen that for the rabbis, mundane translations function as midrash. Not all midrashim need be ideological;

interpretation of Scripture. What Novella 146 really aimed at accomplishing was the total elimination of one thing only: the Hebrew language” (“Justinian’s Novella 146,” 395). My claim dovetails that of Rutgers, in that I believe Justinian’s permission to use Aquila was a cover for his attempt to eliminate something else, be it the Hebrew language or the Jewish interpretations of Scripture; since Aquila was a Jewish translator, as Justinian points out, he assumes the Jews who hesitated to abandon the Hebrew would be more likely to adopt this version of the Greek.

91 See for example the revised edition of Emil Schürer’s History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (rev. and ed. Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar; Edinburgh: Clark, 1973) 497: “Justinian . . . also permits Aquila’s translation (which was therefore evidently preferred by at least some of the Jews).” The cautious “some of the Jews” is commendable, but it should be pointed out that while this is possible, it is by no means indicated that Justinian either knew or cared about what was preferred. He specifically states that his intention in permitting Aquila’s version is so as not to appear too forbidding.


rendering the Hebrew text into another language—be it Aramaic or Greek—is midrashic activity enough. So when we say the rabbis are interested in Aquila’s translation’s interpretive value, that is to say that they cast their net wide in terms of what counts as “interpretive.” It was apparently Aquila’s Greek translations that entered their purview, so it was Aquila’s that they cited.

But for the Church Fathers, by whose time and in whose circles the Septuagint92

was already in common use,93 Aquila’s translation meant something else. A trans-lation in and of itself was by no means a novelty. They therefore turned their attention to the exegetical contents of the translation in a way that is foreign to the rabbinic texts. Thus, while for the rabbis Aquila is primarily a translator who is useful to the rabbinic exegetical project, for Irenaeus, for example, Aquila is an exegete who expresses his heretical ideas about the meaning of the Bible by means of a translation.

Irenaeus (120–202 C.E.)

Irenaeus provides the first patristic reference to Aquila’s translation, and so the publication of Irenaeus’s Adversus haereses some time between 177 and 192 C.E.is often cited as a terminus ante quem for Aquila’s translation.94 Irenaeus mentions Aquila in the context of his disapproval of Aquila’s and Theodotion’s translation of in Isaiah 7:14 as (young girl) rather than the Septuagint’s

(virgin). His choice of words is telling:

God, then, was made man, and the Lord did Himself save us, giving us the token of the Virgin. But not as some allege, among those now presuming to expound ( ; interpretari) the Scripture, [thus:] “Behold, a young woman shall conceive, and bring forth a son,” as Theodotion the Ephesian

92 The nature of the Greek text in the early Christian centuries is not a simple matter, but is not our concern here. See Eugene Ulrich, “Origen’s Old Testament Text: The Transmission History of the Septuagint to the Third Century, C.E.,” in Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy(ed. Charles Kannengiesser and William L. Petersen; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988) 3–20.

93 Natalio Fernández Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible (trans. Wilfred G. E. Watson; Leiden: Brill, 200) 338. For an account of the specific comments of Church Fathers from Justin Martyr to Epiphanius on the authority of the Septuagint, see Mogens Müller, The First Bible of the Church (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) 68–78.

94 See Field, Frederick Field’s Prolegomena, 41. If we trust even approximately the historical accuracy of the rabbinic texts, this terminus ante quem is unnecessary, but it is nevertheless useful to know how early the translation reached Christian circles, though we should be cautious. Alison Salvesen points out: “since [Irenaeus] only cites their rendering of Isaiah 7.14, we cannot be sure that these revisions were circulating among Christians in their entirety, rather than as individual readings pertinent to Christian theological concerns.” “A Convergence of the Ways? The Judaizing of Christian Scriptures by Origen and Jerome,” in The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003) 246.


has interpreted ( ; interpretatus), and Aquila of Pontus, both Jew-ish proselytes.95

Whereas the rabbinic word for Aquila’s translation is , Irenaeus refers to Aquila’s activities with words that also connote expounding and interpreting.96

Unlike the rabbinic authors, Irenaeus did not use a word that refers strictly to translation, such as or , which in some measure reflects the different role Aquila plays for the rabbis and for certain Church Fathers.97 For the rabbis he is marked as different from those who interpret because all he does is translate. For Irenaeus he is included among the interpreters because he is a translator.98

95 “Deus igitur homo factus est, et ipse Dominus salvabit nos, ipse dans Virginis signum. Non ergo vera est quorumdam interpretatio, qui it audent interpretari Scripturam: Ecce adolescentula in ventre habebit, et pariet filium; quemadmodum Theodotion Ephesius est interpretatus, et Aqula Ponticus, utrique Judaei proselyti.”

Adversus haereses 3.21.1; Greek from Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.8.10. PG 7:946. Translation from ANF 1:451.

96 See previous note. The word is commonly used in the texts I have examined to indicate translations, so too much should not be read into that particular usage, though it is noteworthy that etymologically it bears the sense of interpretation. Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1843) 690, provide for the various forms a number of meanings: “interpretation, explanation . . . translation . . . interpreter, esp. of foreign tongues . . . expound . . .put into words, express.” G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961) 549, gives “translate” as a second or third definition of some of its forms, including the form used here ( ), while other forms are restricted to the realm of interpretation ( ). Lampe gives “translate” as the first and “interpret” as the second meaning of , citing its use regarding Theodotion and Aquila, while he gives “interpreter” as the translation of (Patristic Greek Lexicon, 838). While the Hebrew and Aramaic in its Babylonian usage has the sense of explanation, far more commonly in the Bavli, and always in Palestinian texts, it means simply “translate,” and in fact we saw a few instances where it is used specifically as opposed to (explained) and (said). Sokoloff, Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, 591, gives only “translate,” not “interpret.” Jastrow, Dictionary,1695–96, gives for the various entries related to both “interpret” and “translate,” as well as other definitions, but his definitions include Babylonian valences. In Sokoloff’s A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002) 1231–32, he includes “interpret” and related definitions in his entries for forms of . The Greek words here for translation, it seems to me, have a stronger valence of interpretation. See also Müller’s disccussion, First Bible of the Church, 107–9.

97 It is possible that Ireneaus was using these words in their classical sense, which does not distinguish words for translation and interpretation. The fact that he does not go out of his way to use a word that means strictly “translate” does not mean that he intended his word to be understood otherwise. (I am grateful to Prof. Eleanor Dickey for her assistance on this matter; any mistakes are my own.) Therefore I do not mean to overstate this point. I merely note that the rabbis did use a word that means strictly to translate, and that Ireneaus’s choice of words, whether or not it in and of itself indicates much, does agree with a difference in attitude attested in other ways, as I will show below.

98 Justin Martyr, though not referring to Aquila, also criticizes Jews for altering the Greek text of various biblical passages on theological grounds. For a discussion and sources, see Robert A.


Irenaeus also sees Aquila’s translation as an offensive act in and of itself. In the same section, after discussing the divinely inspired nature of the Septuagint, and its importance as the text he believes the apostles used, Irenaeus writes of the new translators:

Truly these men are proved to be impudent and presumptuous, who would now show a desire to make different translations.99

In this context he points out also that the new translators indeed failed to thoroughly communicate the interpretations they intended, since they did not correct, as it were, other similar verses. He says the translators “did not understand” enough to effectively change the biblical text, try as they did.

Thus, Irenaeus critiques Aquila and Theodotion for their wrong beliefs (regarding the virgin), their presumptuousness, and their lack of understanding. The first two concerns are utterly foreign to the rabbis. Aquila is everywhere described as a Jew, and the closest he comes to wrong beliefs is his expression of dissatisfaction with the rewards of conversion. As well, translation is a perfectly accepted rabbinic endeavor.

As to a lack of understanding, the fact that Irenaeus is examining the entirety of Aquila’s biblical translation makes all the difference. Irenaeus finds Aquila inconsistent and short-sighted. But he does not mention philological problems or linguistic errors (though we will see that later Christian writers do). The rabbis nowhere indicate awareness of the whole work, nor do they ever juxtapose two translations of his.

Regarding all three problems with Aquila that Irenaeus raises, we see not so much a disagreement between the rabbis and the Church Fathers as a different set of questions and different criteria for evaluating the worth of Aquila’s work. It is not merely a matter of Jewish “acceptance” of Aquila and Christian “rejection.” Each of their reactions was more nuanced, as well as based on their specificcontexts and interests. Each Christian writer, in turn, needs to be read on his own terms. Irenaeus’s work is concerned with doctrine, whereas Origen, for instance, is concerned with text criticism of the Hebrew Bible.

Origen (ca. 185–254 C.E.)

In considering the various Church Fathers’ responses to Aquila, in many cases it is important to understand their perspectives on the Septuagint, of which they might see Aquila’s translation as a revision. Origen viewed the Septuagint from a critical perspective. While like the other Church Fathers he seems to have accepted the

Kraft, “Christian Transmission of Jewish Greek Scriptures,” in Paganisme, judaïsme, christianism. Influences et affrontements dans le monde antique. Mélanges offerts à Marcel Simon (ed. A. Benoit et al.; Paris: de Boccard, 1978) 208–9.

99 “Vere impudorati et audaces ostenduntur, qui nune volunt aliter interpretationes facere.” PG 7:949. Translation from ANF 1:452.


inspired nature of the original Septuagint,100 he did not consider the copies extant in his own day to reflect that original reliably. He therefore sought to reestablish the correct text and meaning of the Septuagint101 by comparing it with the Hebrew text in his day, and with other Greek translations that better accorded with the Hebrew than the Septuagint did.102 Given this goal and his consequent composition of the Hexapla, he is distinguished from Irenaeus (and Epiphanius, discussed below) in that he uses Aquila’s translation not as an interpretation, but as a textual witness.

There are only a few statements about Aquila and Aquila’s translation in the portion of Origen’s writings that are extant today, and our main evidence of Origen’s perspective on Aquila is that he includes that translation in the Hexapla. Besides this, Origen cites Aquila’s translations as support for certain biblical readings or understandings,103 and he uses peculiarities in Aquila’s translation as a guide (at least in part) to the proper rendering or meaning of Scripture.104

100 But see Norman R. M. de Lange, “The Letter to Africanus: Origen’s Recantation?” StPatr 15 (1985) 247: “[Origen] did not dare, like Jerome, to assert publicly the primacy of the Hebrew over the Septuagint, but he believed in it.”

101 See Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei 11.14, on Matt 15:14. Origen also speaks of an apologetic aim in his undertaking (Letter to Africanus 2.2), but that is not our concern here. See Norman R. M. de Lange, Origen and the Jews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 50, and idem, “Letter to Africanus,” 242–47.

102 Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodition’s translations. Sidney Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968) 102–3, writes of Origin’s Hexapla: “His ultimate object was the discovery of the ‘true’ text of the LXX, and to this end he brings to his aid other Greek versions known to him which might be of help in elucidating the Hebrew.” Jellicoe goes on to quote Samuel R. Driver: “He assumed that the original Septuagint was that which agreed most closely with the Hebrew text as he knew it: he was guided partly by this, partly by the other Versions (Aq. Theod. Symm.), which were based substantially upon it” (italics his). Cf., however, de Lange, Origen and the Jews, 50–51, who states: “It is not true to say that Origen fully recognised the primacy of the Hebrew over the Greek versions” (see also Swete, Introduction, 68), and goes on to assert that Origen’s interest in the Hebrew and his relationship to the Septuagint are somewhat more complex than often appreciated. See Swete, Introduction, 58–60, as well as Sebastian P. Brock, “Origen’s Aims as a Textual Critic of the Old Testament,” StPatr 10 (1970) 215–18; John Wright, “Origen in the Scholar’s Den: A Rationale for the Hexapla,” in Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy(ed. Charles Kannengiesser and William L. Petersen; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988) 48–62; and Joachim Schaper, “The Origin and Purpose of the Fifth Column of the Hexapla,” in Origen’s Hexapla and Fragments (ed. Alison Salvesen; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998) 3–15. Most recently, see the discussion of Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, 117–28. It is not my intention to assume any specific answer to the complex question of Origen’s motivations in producing the Hexapla; I merely rely on this aspect of the project that is particularly relevant to our discussion, and that numerous scholars have asserted and defended.

103 After delineating his understanding of the word “law”: (And this is in effect what I found in Aquila’s

interpretation.) Philocalia 9.2 (trans. George Lewis; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1911) 49. 104 Philocalia 14.1: < >

(“The orderly and systematic arrangement of the passage, the names coming first and then the predicates,


One description Origen gives of Aquila, which is sometimes misconstrued, appears in his letter to Africanus (see above for the fuller context):

(“slave of the Hebrew language”). Out of context this might seem like a condemnation; in context he is using Aquila’s translation as a support, and goes on to describe the esteem shown to Aquila by Jews and those who do not know Hebrew (see above). Therefore, I believe this description is a positive evaluation of Aquila’s accuracy.105

Epiphanius (c. 310–403 C.E.)

In Epiphanius’s treatise On Weights and Measures, written in 392,106 he provides an elaborate biography of Aquila which, it is commonly noted, cannot be trusted as historical.107 For our purposes, his final comments on Aquila are worth noting since we are interested in early Christian perspectives on Aquila’s translation, and because Epiphanius’s followers may have taken his comments quite seriously.108

After telling of Aquila’s pagan origins, his conversion to Christianity, and then his conversion to Judaism, Epiphanius describes the translation as follows:

He was moved not by the right motive, but (by the desire) so to distort certain of the words occurring in the translation of the seventy-two that he might pro-claim the things testified to about Christ in the divine Scriptures to be fulfilled in some other way, on account of a certain shame that he felt (to proffer) a senseless excuse for himself. . . . But we must say, beloved, the words of it are incorrect and perversely translated.109

Epiphanius does not give examples of these charges against Aquila, as other writers do, and comments not merely on the product, but on the motivation of the translation.

roused our suspicions that the matter was so understood by the servants of God, and all the more because Aquila, who strove to interpret most literally, has only distinguished the name from the predicate;” Lewis, 60).

105 This follows Swete’s reading, Introduction, 33. For a general discussion of Origen’s complex attitude towards literalism, see Charles J. Scalise, “Origen and the Sensus Litteralis,” in Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy (ed. Charles Kannengiesser and William L. Petersen; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988) 117–29.

106 See Epiphanius’ Treatise on Weights and Measures: The Syriac Version (ed. James Elmer Dean; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935) 2. Only the Syriac survives in full. Dean’s translation notes slight differences between the extant Greek fragements, none of which are significant for our purposes, so I provide only the English translation.

107 See Veltri, Libraries, Translations, and “Canonic” Texts, 166, and Marcos, Septuagint in Context, 111.

108 As Dean notes (Epiphanius’ Treatise, 1), “Among the Greek Fathers of the Christian church Epiphanius holds an important place. This is not because of his literary ability or his constructive achievements, but rather because of his great and far-reaching influence, in the main reactionary.”

109 Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures 15–16; translation from Dean, Epiphanius’ Treatise,31–32.


After he writes about Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion individually, Epiphanius refers to all three together:

Now you become the judge, O great lover of the good, of such a matter as this, whether the truth is more likely to be found with these three—I mean Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion—who, moreover, were not together, but were remote from one another in both time and place; and there were not many, but only three, and yet they were unable to agree with one another.110

Then after describing the miraculous origin of the Septuagint and the divine inspiration of the translators, he says of the Septuagint translators:

Though they did not know what each one by himself was translating, they agreed absolutely with one another, and the translations were identical. And where they cast out words, they translated in agreement with one another. So it is clear to those who through love of the truth seek to investigate that they were not merely translators but also, in part, prophets.111

These passages show that, like Irenaeus,112 Epiphanius took issue with the very fact of new translations, emphasizing that the Septuagint should not merely be considered a translation, but an inspired, prophetic Bible. The proliferation of different versions is therefore senseless.

As noted with regard to Irenaeus, this critique derives from one of the most basic and central differences between (at least a certain) Jewish perspective and the perspective of certain Christians. For rabbinic Judaism, the only thing sacrosanct is the Hebrew Bible. Translations, as we have seen in the rabbinic texts, were essentially commentaries, and when it came to scriptural exegesis, the rabbinic world did not seek to promote orthodoxy.113 For Epiphanius, this was not a question of divergent commentary; it was a divergent text of the Bible itself, this time uninspired.114

110 Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures 17; Dean, Epiphanius’ Treatise, 33–34.111 Dean, Epiphanius’ Treatise, 33–34.112 However, Irenaeus raises issues that Epiphanius does not. Note in particular that Epiphanius

says nothing about the New Testament being based on the Septuagint, but only that the Septuagint is an inspired text.

113 There has been much scholarship on this topic. See Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh,” HUCA 55 (1984) 27–53; Lawrence H. Schiffman, Who Was a Jew: Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, Ltd., 1985) 41–49; Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997) 240–54; Daniel Boyarin, “The Diadoche of the Rabbis; Or, Judah the Patriarch at Yavneh,” in Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire (ed. Richard Kalmin and Seth Schwartz; Leuven: Peeters, 2003) 285–318; de Lange, “Can We Speak of Jewish Orthodoxy?” 168–72; Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque des IIe-IIIe siècles(2 vols; Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985). This is not to say that the rabbis, or other types of Jewish communities for that matter, were limitlessly pluralistic; far from it. But they did not seek uniformity of scriptural interpretation to anywhere near the degree that the Church Fathers did.

114 See Müller’s discussion, First Bible of the Church, 113–23, and Harry M. Orlinsky, “The Septuagint as Holy Writ and the Philosophy of the Translators,” HUCA 46 (1975) 89–114.


In the eyes of the rabbis, Aquila composed a translation of Scripture; in the eyes of some Christians, he corrupted Scripture. But they were starting from vastly different assumptions about what Scripture was.115 For this reason, it seems appropriate to view this aspect of Christian and Jewish reception of Aquila—that is, the issues raised by Epiphanius—as a matter of disagreement not about Aquila’s translation or the translator himself, but about the very nature of Scripture and what is required in order to translate it. Epiphanius will not countenance anything but the prophetically revealed text of the Septuagint.

Jerome (ca. 347–420 C.E.)

In contrast to Irenaeus’s and Epiphanius’s concerns about heresy and affronts to the Septuagint, when Jerome writes about Aquila he does so as a linguist and a translator. In his Epistle to Pammachus, written in 395, he writes on the best method of translating:

Yet the Septuagint has rightly kept its place in the churches, either because it is the first of all the versions in time, made before the coming of Christ, or else because it has been used by the apostles (only however in places where it does not disagree with the Hebrews). On the other hand we do right to reject Aquila, the proselyte and controversial translator (contentiosus interpres), who has striven to translate (transferre) not words only but their etymologies as well. Who could accept as renderings (frumento) of “corn and wine and oil” such words as ,116 or, as we might say, “pouring,” and “fruit gathering,” and “shining”? or, because Hebrew has in addition to the article other prefixes as well, he must with an unhappy pedantry translate (interpretur et . . . dicat) syllable by syllable and letter by letter thus: ,117 a construction which neither Greek nor Latin admits.118

The question about which we should be careful not to speculate excessively is what Jerome meant by “controversial translator.” Was Aquila controversial among the Christians? Among the Jews? Or was it a point of contention between Jews

115 See Marcos, Septuagint in Context, 346, and Rabin, “Cultural Aspects of Bible Translation,” 43, though they perhaps overstate the matter in apparently extending this to all Christian and all Jewish communities. I, on the other hand, see this phenonemon as just one of the dynamics at play.

116 , , .117 Gen 1:1, .118 “Et tamen jure Septuaginta editio obtinuit in ecclesiis, vel quia prima est, et ante Christi

facta adventum, vel quia ab apostolis (in quibis tamen ab Hebraico non discrepat) usurpata. Aquila autem proselytus et contentiosus interpres, qui non solum verba, sed etymologias quoque verborum transferre conatus est, jure projicitur a nobis. Quis enim pro frumento et vino et oleo possit vel legere vel intelligere , quod nos possumus dicere “fusionem,” “pomationemque” que et “splendentiam.” Aut, quia Hebraei non solum habent , sed et

, ille et syllabas interpretatur et litteras dicitque , quod Graeca et Latina lingua omnino non recipit. Epistle 57, PL 22:577–78. Translation

from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (ed. and trans. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace; New York: Christian Literature, 1893; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994) 6:118 (henceforth, NPNF).


and Christians? I do not believe it is possible to know what Jerome perceived. I therefore turn to what we can understand from this passage.

Jerome favors the Septuagint translation, at least for use in church, for two reasons, also found in Irenaeus’s writings: it was the first, and it was used by the apostles. But Jerome’s problem with Aquila is not a traditionalist one;119 that is, the problem is not that Aquila attempted to supercede the Septuagint,120 as we saw with Epiphanius, or that his translation was heretical or inaccurate, as we saw with Irenaeus. Jerome views Aquila as simply a bad translator who strove to accomplish more than is possible for a decent Greek text. Whereas Irenaeus refers to Aquila’s work as interpretation, Jerome also uses other words besides interpres to describe Aquila’s work: dicat, transferre, and below, editionem.

This problem of the awkwardness of Aquila’s translation would not have been relevant in any of the extant rabbinic usages of Aquila, since the rabbis, as we have seen, only cite words or phrases, never whole verses or even clauses. If anything, Aquila’s attention to detail would have found favor with them, since they sought precise translations of difficult words (though it remains speculative whether or not the rabbis were specifically drawn to that aspect of Aquila’s translations).

Once again we see that a Church Father has a problem with Aquila because he is looking at the translation from a particular point of view. The Christian community reads the Bible as a whole in Latin and/or Greek, and Jerome is therefore concerned with the running text and with Greek (or as the case may be, Latin) style. Jerome in particular, himself a translator, was sensitive to the issues involved in producing a new version, as well as to the idiosyncrasies of different translators’ styles. The rabbis, on the other hand, use the Hebrew Bible, and are only interested in atomistic Greek translations (and presumably running Aramaic translations for synagogal use, though that is not our concern).

As Hillel Newman has pointed out, Jerome’s distaste for Aquila’s running text did not stop him from utilizing that same translation when it suited him.121 In fact, in Jerome’s Epistle 32 to Marcella—written in 384, eleven years before the above letter—he writes that he is in the process of comparing Aquila’s version to the Hebrew (having already completed his comparison of the prophets, which one assumes includes Isa 7:14, which so bothered Irenaeus):

119 On traditionalism with regard to the Septuagint’s authority, see Müller, First Bible of the Church, 87–94.

120 On the complex topic of Jerome’s relationship to the Septuagint and to biblical translators in general—Jewish and Christian—see Sarah Kamin, “The Theological Significance of the Hebraica Veritas in Jerome’s Thought,” in Shaarei Talmon: Studies in Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East Presented to Shemaryahu Talmon (ed. Michael Fishbane and Emanuel Tov; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 243–53, and Adam Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the Questiones Hebraicae in Genesim (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 41–72.

121 Hillel Newman, Heyronimus ve-ha-Yehudim (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1997) 75. For citations and discussions of Jerome’s citations of Aquila, as well as his citations of Symmachus and Theodotion, and how they figure into his own exegesis and his Latin translation, see Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible.


Let me tell you, then, that for some time past I have been comparing Aquila’s version of the Old Testament with the scrolls of the Hebrew, to see if from hatred to Christ the synagogue has changed the text; and—to speak frankly to a friend—I have found several variations which confirm our faith.122

When it comes to the content of the translation, Jerome, at least at this stage, approves (or at least does not disapprove) of Aquila’s translation.123 Its Jewish origin renders it suspect, but ultimately its inherent worth overrides the suspicion.124

Sarah Kamin125 has argued that Jerome was more tolerant of the Jewish revisions of the Septuagint than of the original Septuagint, based on his assessment of their respective translation techniques. Jerome writes that the Septuagint translators did not understand what the Hebrew Bible meant when it referred to the future coming of Jesus, so they translated vaguely or doubtfully.126 The Jewish revisions, on the other hand, translated the Hebrew exactly, even though they did not understand (or they rejected) its true Christian meaning.127 So Aquila’s literalism had a positive element even for Jerome. Thus we see that even within the works of a given writer, Aquila’s reception requires a nuanced answer, and it is not simply a matter of acceptance or rejection, popularity or unpopularity.

Jerome’s testimony also sheds light on the perspective of his readers. In the prologue to his translation of Isaiah, he defends himself against those who would criticize his translation’s departure from the Septuagint. He writes regarding Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion:

Therefore, knowing and being wise, I place my hand in the fire, and never-theless I pray this for the scornful readers: that just as the Greeks after the Seventy translators read Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion, either for study of their doctrines or so that they better understand the Seventy through their collation, that these are deemed worthy to have at least one translator af-ter the earlier ones. Reading first and afterward despising, they are seen not to condemn by judgment, but rather by the ignorant presumption of hatred.128

122 “Jam pridem cum voluminibis Hebraeorum editionem Aquilae confero, ne quid forsitan propter odium Christi Synagoga mutaverit: et ut amicae menti fatear, quae ad nostram fidem pertineant roborandam, plura reperio.” PL 22:446. Translation from NPNF 6:46.

123 See Swete, Introduction, 34, and the texts he cites there.124 On Jerome and the Jews in general, see Newman, Jerome and the Jews, and the extensive

bibliography he cites.125 Kamin, “Theological Significance,” 252.126 See ibid., 247, citing Jerome’s preface to his translation of Genesis.127 See ibid., 252 and n. 31 there, citing Jerome’s Apologia contra Rufinum. See also Kamesar,

Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible, 69 and n. 112 there.128 Sciens ergo et prudens in flammam mitto manum: et nihilominus hoc a fastidiosis lectoribus

precor, ut quomodo Graeci post Septuaginta translatores, Aquilam et Symmachum et Theodotionem legunt, vel ob studium doctrinae suae, vel ut Septuaginta magis ex collatione eorum intelligant: sic et isti saltem unum post priores habere dignentur interpretem. Legant prius, et postea despiiant: ne videantur, non ex judicio, sed ex odii praesumptione ignorata damnare. PL 28:826–27. Kevin P. Edgecomb’s translation: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/jerome_preface_isaiah.htm.


Jerome here encourages people to accept his Latin translation, just as they accepted that there were translations in Greek after the Septuagint. This is quite significant; Jerome does not merely reflect his own perception of the post-Septuagint translations, but he expects his readers to agree that there is nothing preposterous about putting forth a new translation of the Bible.129 This perspective stands in stark opposition to that of Irenaeus (before Origen’s Hexapla) and Epiphanius (even after the Hexapla).

As we have seen, each of the above authors and texts bears unique nuances and perspectives. They also represent different places and time periods. Irenaeus lived in the second century, before Origen’s Hexapla, and was writing in Lyon; Origen lived in the third century in Alexandria and then Palestine; Epiphanius lived in the fourth century in Cyprus; and Jerome lived around the same time but in Rome and then in Palestine. Aquila’s place in these authors’ personal study, literary work, and teaching, like his place in their Christian communities and among their Jewish neighbors, was anything but uniform. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that Aquila’s translation managed to work its way into the purview and interest of some of the most significant figures in early Christianity.

■ ConclusionAquila’s legacy in the scholarship, polemic, and memory of Late Antique Jewish and Christian tradition is particularly intriguing in that it figures in both traditions over the course of centuries. It is equally remarkable that both traditions seem aware of that fact, at least to some degree. Even Irenaeus and Jerome, who do not mention contemporary Jews in connection with Aquila, mention that he was a Jewish proselyte, as does Justinian later on. Origen and Augustine say explicitly that Aquila’s translation occupied a prominent place in Jewish communities.

From the rabbinic sources it is harder to be sure what the rabbis knew of Christian interest in Aquila’s translation. But it is plausible that part of the reason Aquila is not portrayed by the rabbis as a standard rabbinic figure is that he and/or his translation also functioned outside of the rabbinic sphere. Yet despite the rabbinic perception of Aquila’s identity as less than fully rabbinic, and the Christian awareness of his Jewish connections, his translation was utilized by Jews for purely Jewish reasons, and by Christians for purely Christian reasons.

Appreciating this phenomenon requires a clear understanding of the answers to the following questions: How did the rabbis perceive or remember the historical Aquila, and how did they use his translation? How did the Christians respond to his work, and how did they perceive the Jews’ interests in his translation? I have attempted to answer these questions through a detailed analysis of the sources, keeping a close eye on what may reasonably be inferred and what is mere

129 For an in-depth discussion of Jerome’s arguments of this sort, see Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible, 58–72.


speculation, since often in the past the scarcity of evidence has led scholars to overstate matters.

To reiterate my conclusions: Rabbinic narratives about and citations of Aquila show that he was perceived as a figure who was in some sense integrated into the rabbinic community, but who was not himself a sage and was not fully comfortable with his place in rabbinic society, expressing insecurity about his own status. He is also portrayed as having functioned outside the rabbinic sphere (albeit as a Jew, in his conversation with Hadrian), and all of his translation traditions are introduced with a special formula that distinguishes him from the rabbis. Yet his translations themselves are unambiguously incorporated into rabbinic midrashic and legal discussions. The Palestinian rabbis thus manage to express the limits of their identification with Aquila the proselyte translator, while culling his translation for all the insight it offered.

Christian writers have a greater diversity of opinions about Aquila’s work. Being heresiologists, Irenaeus condemns the translation as heretical and presumptuous and Epiphanius echoes that condemnation in even stronger terms. However, in stark contrast to them, Origen considers Aquila’s translation a valuable text witness for the original Hebrew Bible and a useful tool in correcting the Septuagint translation. Jerome, with the critical eye of a translator who, like Origen, highly values the original Hebrew text of the Bible, expresses mixed feelings about Aquila’s translation; Aquila’s running text reflects poor translation technique in Jerome’s eyes, but individual translations were useful to him, as they were for the rabbis. Moreover, the fact that the translation as a whole was not seen as preposterous helped Jerome claim validity for his own translation.

All of these views about Aquila—Jewish and Christian—varied according to the perspectives with which the ancient authors approached the translator and his translation: whether they saw him as Aquila the Greek-speaker, Aquila the Hebrew-speaker, Aquila the Jew, or Aquila the Roman, and whether they saw translation as interpretation, as philological tool, or as Bible version. Therefore, examining the different responses to Aquila and his translation is illuminating both in what it tells us specifically about Aquila’s legacy in Late Antiquity, as well as in the light it sheds on the various issues—whether issues of language, doctrine, exegesis, or others—that were important to different segments of the Jewish and Christian communities of this time period.

Furthermore, the very diversity of perspectives on, concerns about, and uses of Aquila’s translation among Jews and Christians is instructive in and of itself. Despite the similarities between Jews and Christians at this stage—as they lived in the same geographical areas, were minorities within the Roman Empire, were readers of the Bible, and were Greek-speakers—Jewish and Christian perspectives on Aquila were not at all monolithic. A Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible by a Jewish proselyte might have served as a bridge between these communities, but instead, it became a source of controversy that illuminates not their unity but their


divergence. Further still, we have seen that different opinions of Aquila’s translation do not reflect a binary division between Jews and Christians.

Even more significant than the diversity of opinions about Aquila’s translation among various writers is the diversity of their reasons for addressing the translation in the first place. For Irenaeus it is a matter of heresy; for Jerome a matter of language; for the rabbis a matter of commentary. The rabbinic sources are more unified on this topic than the Christian sources, but even the rabbinic sources reflectthe different angles from which the rabbis viewed Aquila—as a translator, as a non-rabbi, as a proselyte. Other Jewish sources are silent. The sources presented here occupy a miniscule amount of space in the literature of one slice of the Jewish world—the Palestinian rabbinic community. We need not speculate about the specific opinions of silent voices in the Jewish world, rabbinic or otherwise, but it seems more than likely that the broader Jewish community included a diverse array of perspectives on Aquila’s translation, just as did the broader Christian community. Indeed, we glimpse this possibility in the various comments Christian writers make about the Jews’ interest in Aquila’s translation.

The case of Aquila’s Bible translation serves then as a demonstration of the complexity of these two Late Antique communities. As such, this case may serve as a corrective to scholarly searches for the Christian or the Jewish view of any given matter of interest. It also demonstrates the necessity of seeking not only the final opinions expressed by ancient writers, but also their underlying assumptions and their motivations for taking up a given question in the first place.

HTR 102:3 (2009) 389–92

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work: Brothers and Sisters in Faith. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2009. 127 pp. $14.95 pb.

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Benjamin, Mara H. Rosenzweig’s Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Mo-dernity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 209 pp. $80.00 hb.

Berg, Herbert. Elijah Muhammad and Islam. New York: New York University Press, 2009. 208 pp. $39.00 hb.

Bernardini, Paolo. Un solo battesimo una sola chiesa. Il concilio di Cartagine del settembre 256. Testi e ricerche di scienze religiose, nuova serie 43. Bolo-gna: Il Mulino, 2009. 524 pp. €34,00 pb.

Blum, Edward J., and Jason R. Young, eds. The Souls of W. E. B. DuBois: New Essays and Reflections. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2009. $45.00 hb.

Butler, Trent. Judges. World Biblical Commentary 8. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009. 538 pp. $49.99 hb.

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Clarke, Peter and Tony Claydon, eds. The Church, the Afterlife, and the Fate of the Soul: Papers Read at the 2007 Summer Meeting and the 2008 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesastical History Society. Studies in Church History 45. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2009. 429 pp. $90.00 hb.

Clutterbuck, Richard. Handing on Christ: Rediscovering the Gift of Christian Doctrine. London: Epworth, 2009. 211 pp. n.p. pb.

Coffey, John, and Paul C. H. Lim, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Puritan-ism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 385 pp. $29.99 pb.

Cragg, Kenneth. A Christian-Muslim Inter-Text Now: From Anathemata to Theme. London: Melisende, 2007. 248 pp. £15.00 pb.


Cragg, Kenneth. The Iron in the Soul: Joseph and the Undoing of Violence. Lon-don: Melisende, 2009. 243 pp. £15.00 pb.

Cragg, Kenneth. Mosque Sermons: A Listener for the Preacher. London: Melisende, 2008. 264 pp. £15.00 pb.

Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit, Lenn E. Goodman, and James Allen Grady, eds. Mai-monides and His Heritage. SUNY Series in Jewish Philosophy. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2009. 241 pp. $75.00 hb.

Engel, Katherine Carté. Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America. Phila-delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. 304 pp. $39.95 hb.

Espin, Orlando O., ed. Building Bridges, Doing Justice: Constructing a Latino/a Ecumenical Theology. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2009. 204 pp. $28.00 pb.

Firth, David G. and Jamie A., eds. Grant. Words and the Word: Explorations in Biblical Interpretation and Literary Theory. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2008. 317 pp. $32.00 pb.

Flint, Thomas P. and Michael C. Rea, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophi-cal Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 609 pp. $150.00 hb.

Gallagher, Robert L. and Paul Hertig, eds. Landmark Essays in Mission and World Christianity. American Society of Missiology Series 43. 272 pp. $35.00 pb.

Gourgues, Michel. Les deux lettres à Timothée. La lettre à Tite. Commentairebiblique: Nouveau Testament 14. Paris: Les éditions du cerf, 2009. 432 pp. 42€ pb.

Gross, Rita M. A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religious Exploration. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2009. 340 pp. $24.95 pb.

Gunton, Colin E. Revelation and Reason: Prolegomena to Systematic Theology.Edited by P. H. Brazier. New York: T&T Clark, 2008. 226 pp. $34.95 pb.

Haus, Jeffrey. Challenges of Equality: Judaism, State, and Education in Nine-teenth-Century France. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009. 240 pp. $49.95 hb.

Herlinger, Chris and Paul Jeffrey. Where Mercy Fails: Darfur’s Struggle to Sur-vive. New York: Church Publishing, 2009. 160 pp. $25.00 pb.

Jackson, Michael. The Palm at the End of the Mind: Relatedness, Religiosity, and the Real. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009. 238 pp. $22.95 pb.

Johnston, Derek. A Brief History of Theology: From the New Testament to Femi-nist Theology. New York: Continuum, 2008. 290 pp. $16.95 pb.

Klein, Ralph W. 1 Samuel. World Biblical Commentary 10. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008. 307 pp. $49.99 hb.

Koch, Herbert. Der geopferte Jesus und die christliche Gewalt. Düsseldorf: Patmos, 2009. 238 pp. €16,90 pb.

Lee, Michael E. Bearing the Weight of Salvation: The Soteriology of Ignacio El-lacuría. New York: Crossroad, 2009. 256 pp. $34.95 pb.

BOOKS RECEIVED 391

Lee, Shayne and Phillip Luke Sinitiere. Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace. New York: New York University Press, 2009. 199 pp. $20.00 pb.

Manning, Russell Re, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 322 pp. $29.99 pb.

Martyn, John R. C., ed. and trans. Saint Leander, Archbishop of Seville: A Book on the Teaching of Nuns and a Homily in Praise of the Church. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2008. 192 pp. $65.00 hb.

Merton, Thomas. The Rule of Saint Benedict: Initiation into the Monastic Tradi-tion 4. Monastic Wisdom Series 19. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2009. 291 pp. n.p. pb.

Michels, Tony. A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York. Cam-bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009. 335 pp. $19.95 pb.

Miller, Patricia Cox. The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. 288 pp. $49.95 hb.

Moran, Gabriel. Believing in a Revealing God: The Basis of the Christian Life. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2009. 194 pp. $29.95 pb.

Mosshammer, Alden A. The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 474 pp. $130.00 hb.

Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. Keys to First Corinthians: Revisiting the Major Is-sues. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 307 pp. $99.00 hb.

Nairn, Thomas A., ed. The Consistent Ethic of Life: Assessing Its Reception and Relevance. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2008. 208 pp. $25.00 pb.

Noble, Thomas F. X. Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. 488 pp. $65.00 hb.

Patton, Kimberley C. Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity.New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 490 pp. $74.00 hb.

Perry, Michael J. Constitutional Rights, Moral Controversy, and the Supreme Court. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 254 pp. $75.00 hb.

Preston, Christopher J. Saving Creation: Nature and Faith in the Life of Holmes Rolston III. San Antonio, Tx.: Trinity University Press, 2009. 243 pp. $25.95 hb.

Puig i Tàrrech, Armand, ed. La Violència en la Bíblia. Scripta Biblica 9. Tarra-gona, Catalonia: Associació Bíblica de Catalunya, 2009. 295 pp. n.p. pb.

Sizgorich, Thomas. Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 384 pp. $55.00 hb.

Smith, John Howard. The Perfect Rule of the Christian Religion: A History of Sandemanianism in the Eighteenth Century. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2009. 236 pp. $70.00 hb.

Tylus, Jane. Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literacy, Literature, and the Signs of Others. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 344 pp. $45.00 hb.


Udoh, Fabian E., ed., with Susannah Heschel, Mark Chancey, and Gregory Tatum. Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008. 448 pp. $60.00 hb.

Van der Toorn, Karel. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009. 401 pp. $18.95 pb.

Van Engen, John. Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Mod-erna and the World of the Later Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 416 pp. $59.95 hb.

Waldenfels, Hans. Jesus Christ and the Religions: An Essay in Theology of Reli-gions. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009. 145 pp. $20.00 pb.

Walsh, Sylvia. Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly in an Existential Mode. Chris-tian Theology in Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 232 pp. $35.00 pb.

Wills, Richard Wayne, Sr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Image of God. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2009. 242 pp. $55.00 hb.

Zahniser, A. H. Mathias. The Mission and Death of Jesus in Islam and Christi-anity. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2008. 268 pp. $35.00 pb.

Ziebertz, Hans-Georg and Ulrich Riegel, eds. Europe: Secular or Post-Secular?International Practical Theory 9. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008. 212 pp. €19.90

Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious. New York: Shocken, 2009. 441 pp. $27.95 hb.

The Cambridge History of Jewish PhilosophyFrom Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century

The fi rst volume in this comprehensive work is an explo-

ration of the history of Jewish philosophy from its begin-

nings in antiquity to the early modern period, with a par-

ticular emphasis on medieval Jewish thought. Unlike most

histories, encyclopedias, guides, or companions of Jewish

philosophy, this volume is organized by philosophical topic

rather than by chronology or individual fi gures. There are

sections on logic and language; natural philosophy; epis-

temology, philosophy of mind, and psychology; metaphys-

ics and philosophical theology; and practical philosophy.

There are also chapters on the intellectual background of

Jewish philosophy, including Islamic and Greek thought

and the Jewish philosophical textual traditions. With es-

says by leading scholars in the fi eld, this volume provides

the reader with a wonderful overview of the richness and

sophistication of Jewish philosophy in its golden age.

EDITED BY STEVEN NADLER AND T.M. RUDAVSKY

Hardback / $180.00

920 pages

ISBN: 978-0-521-84323-2

The esteemed Cambridge Histories series is now available online for libraries.

Visit www.cambridge.org/online/histories to learn more!

Harvard Theological Review102:3 JULY 2009

ARTICLES

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From Resurrection to Immortality: Theological and Political Implications in Modern Jewish ThoughtLeora Batnitzky

Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Old TestamentPaul E. Capetz

From the Double Movement to the Double Danger: Kierkegaard and Rebounding ViolenceMatthew C. Bagger

Aquila’s Bible Translation in Late Antiquity: Jewish and Chritian PerspectivesJenny R. Labendz

Books Received

Cambridge Journals OnlineFor further informaion about this journal pleasego to the journal website at:http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jid_htr

harvard theological review 2009-3

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