Studies on Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament) 9783161546198, 9783161566851, 3161546199
The present volume gathers up studies by Peter J. Tomson, written over thirty-odd years, that deal with ancient Jewish l
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Cover
Titel
Table of Contents
Foreword
Abbreviations
I. Halakha and Jewish Self-Definition
The Term Halakha
Mishna Zavim 5:12 – Reflections on Dating Mishnaic Halakha
Halakhic Letters in Antiquity: Qumran, Paul, and the Babylonian Talmud
The Halakhic Systems in Josephus: Antiquities and Life, and Against Apion
Divorce Halakha in Ancient Judaism and Christianity
‘Devotional Purity’ and Other Ancient Jewish Purity Systems
The Names Israel and Jew in Ancient Judaism and in the New Testament
The Names Israel and Jew – A Reconsideration
II. The Teachings of Jesus and Evolving Jewish and Christian Tradition
‘To Bring Good News to the Poor’: The Core of Jesus’ Gospel
The Song of Songs in the Teachings of Jesus and the Development of the Exposition on the Song
Parables, Fiction, and Midrash: The Ten Maidens and the Bridegroom (Matt 25:1–13)
The Lord’s Prayer at the Faultline of Judaism and Christianity
Shifting Perspectives in Matthew: from ‘the House of Israel’ (10:6) to ‘All Gentiles’ (28:19)
An Alienated Jewish Tradition in John 7:22–23 Proposal for an ‘Epichronic’ Reading
III. Paul and His Place in Judaism
Paul’s Practical Instruction in 1 Thess 4:1–12 Read in a Hellenistic and a Jewish Perspective
‘The Doers of the Law will be justified’ (Rom 2:13). For an Adequate Perspective on Romans
What did Paul mean by ‘Those who know the Law’? (Rom 7:1)
Paul as a Recipient and Teacher of Tradition
Christ, Belial, and Women: 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 Compared with Ancient Judaism and with the Pauline Corpus
Paul’s Collection and ‘the Saints’ in Jerusalem (2 Cor 8–9). Literary and Historical Questions
IV. Historiography and the Import of Early Christian Sources
The Didache, Matthew, and Barnabas as Sources for Jewish and Christian History
Josephus, Luke-Acts, and Politics in Rome and Judaea by 100 CE
Sources on the Politics of Judaea in the Fifties CE
The Epistles of Paul as a Source for the Historical Pharisees
Gamaliel’s Counsel and the Apologetic Strategy of Luke-Acts
The Gospel of John and the ‘Parting of the Ways’
Bibliography
Index of Ancient Sources
Index of Names
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
Recommend Papers
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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber / Editor Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) · James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala) Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg) · Janet Spittler (Charlottesville, VA) J. Ross Wagner (Durham, NC)
418
Peter J. Tomson
Studies on Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries
Mohr Siebeck
Peter J. Tomson, born 1948; Professor emeritus of New Testament, Jewish Studies and Patristics at the Faculty of Protestant Theology, Brussels; General Editor of Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum; Guest Professor of Biblical Studies, University of Leuven.
ISBN 978-3-16-154619-8 / eISBN 978-3-16-156685-1 DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-156685-1 ISSN 0512-1604 / eISSN 2568-7476 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. www.mohrsiebeck.com This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by Martin Fischer in Tübingen using Times typeface, printed on nonaging paper by Gulde-Druck in Tübingen, and bound by Großbuchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.
Table of Contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XV
I. Halakha and Jewish Self-Definition The Term Halakha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Mishna Zavim 5:12 – Reflections on Dating Mishnaic Halakha . . . . . . . . . 7 Halakhic Letters in Antiquity: Qumran, Paul, and the Babylonian Talmud 21 The Halakhic Systems in Josephus: Antiquities and Life, and Against Apion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Divorce Halakha in Ancient Judaism and Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 ‘Devotional Purity’ and Other Ancient Jewish Purity Systems . . . . . . . . . . 107 The Names Israel and Jew in Ancient Judaism and in the New Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 The Names Israel and Jew – A Reconsideration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
II. The Teachings of Jesus and Evolving Jewish and Christian Tradition ‘To Bring Good News to the Poor’: The Core of Jesus’ Gospel . . . . . . . . . 223 The Song of Songs in the Teachings of Jesus and the Development of the Exposition on the Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Parables, Fiction, and Midrash: The Ten Maidens and the Bridegroom (Matt 25:1–13) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 The Lord’s Prayer at the Faultline of Judaism and Christianity . . . . . . . . . 261
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Shifting Perspectives in Matthew: from ‘the House of Israel’ (10:6) to ‘All Gentiles’ (28:19) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 An Alienated Jewish Tradition in John 7:22–23 Proposal for an ‘Epichronic’ Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
III. Paul and His Place in Judaism Paul’s Practical Instruction in 1 Thess 4:1–12 Read in a Hellenistic and a Jewish Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 ‘The Doers of the Law will be justified’ (Rom 2:13) For an Adequate Perspective on Romans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 What did Paul mean by ‘Those who know the Law’? (Rom 7:1) . . . . . . . . 383 Paul as a Recipient and Teacher of Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 Christ, Belial, and Women: 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 Compared with Ancient Judaism and with the Pauline Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 Paul’s Collection and ‘the Saints’ in Jerusalem (2 Cor 8–9) Literary and Historical Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
IV. Historiography and the Import of Early Christian Sources The Didache, Matthew, and Barnabas as Sources for Jewish and Christian History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501 Josephus, Luke-Acts, and Politics in Rome and Judaea by 100 CE . . . . . . 533 Sources on the Politics of Judaea in the Fifties CE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559 The Epistles of Paul as a Source for the Historical Pharisees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581 Gamaliel’s Counsel and the Apologetic Strategy of Luke-Acts . . . . . . . . . 603 The Gospel of John and the ‘Parting of the Ways’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 663 Index of Ancient Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 727 Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 787 Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 815
Foreword The present volume gathers up most of the more important studies I wrote on the history and literature of early Jews and Christians over the past 35 years. The idea came spontaneously when Markus Bockmuehl suggested on behalf of the WUNT editors to prepare such a volume. This was a pleasant surprise, an honour to set about doing so, and favourably timed just after my retirement. It was also self-evident to arrange the articles in four sections dealing, respectively, with halakha and Jewish self-identification, the Jesus tradition, Paul’s letters, and early Jewish and Christian history – areas on which I have spent most of my time in terms of research. It also seemed attractive then to see a historical process reflected, starting in early Judaism, leading from Jesus to Paul, and on to the process during which Jews and Christians eventually got separated. Indeed I considered such a main title as, ‘A Shared and Ruptured History’, but I dropped it again because it would be too heavy for such a collection and would not quite cover its contents either. The truth is that the history of Jews and Christians in the early centuries of the era has been very much on my mind for the last decade or so, and some studies published here were written in preparation of the project I am nowadays involved in, together with Joshua Schwartz: ‘Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries’. Obviously, one core issue in that history is the process by which Judaism spawned both rabbinic Judaism and apostolic Christianity over the course of the first century, only to see them formally separated by the end of the second. Looking back through the spectrum of one’s collected studies, however, does evoke an intellectual history. Mine gained speed at the University of Amsterdam, where from the late 1960s on I followed New Testament classes of Jan Sevenster and Joost Smit Sibinga, as well as at the Catholic Theological School in Amsterdam with Ben Hemelsoet’s Pauline seminar where we read Krister Stendahl and E. P. Sanders, as also, for many years, the seminars in Talmudics of Yehuda Aschkenasy who introduced us to the halakha involved in Jewish prayer. Once in every few years, Aschkenasy also invited Shmuel Safrai and David Flusser of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to teach concentrated summer courses in rabbinics, ancient Jewish history, and New Testament. They in fact became my most important teachers, and I made sure to join their seminars, along with other
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courses in ancient Jewish history and literature, when I was able to spend a year at the Hebrew University in 1978–1979. Following that, I also got involved in the publication project they headed, ‘Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum’ (CRINT). A full circle is closing to the extent that CRINT is also the series where the project ‘Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries’ is being published. Precisely so, I see it as a welcome turn of events that the studies here assembled appear elsewhere, in effect offering the opportunity to throw some methodological sidelight on the project. It also seems fitting that the volume appears in the Germany-based series that accommodates so much of the rejuvenated combination of Jewish and early Christian studies. When I alighted in academic publishing, three big scholarly debates were running. There was the debate about ‘the New Testament and anti-Judaism’ which in Germany and the Netherlands was especially intense during the 1970s,1 though it had been pioneered by James Parkes already before the Second World War and by Jules Isaac immediately after it.2 In the second place, there was the debate on ‘Judaism and Hellenism’. It was triggered by Martin Hengel’s eponymous study,3 but as such, it was the high point in a debate that had been going on since the late nineteenth century. It had been preceded, e. g., by Saul Lieberman’s important studies, and it was carried on by such prominent critics as Arnaldo Momigliano and Menahem Stern.4 These debates sharpened my awareness of a serious conflict between ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ (never mind conventional terminology) running through some New Testament writings and of the interplay of ‘Hellenism’ and ‘Judaism’ (!) that somehow conditioned the emergence of both Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. Over time, Momigliano became my lodestar in this matter, along with Stern and Flusser, allowing me also to value the great importance of Hengel’s work. The third debate was about ‘rabbinics and the New Testament’ or ‘rabbinics and historiography’; it was more opaque and much more difficult to manage. At the time, many established scholars felt intimidated by Jacob Neusner’s rabid polemics, while his books were flooding their libraries’ bookshelves by the dozen. Neusner’s almost personal fight was first of all with ‘Jerusalem’, i. e., the Hebrew University, where E. E. Urbach and Shmuel Safrai, among others, showed themselves not impressed by his voluminous output. It was almost im1 By way of example: Eckert–Levinson–Stöhr, Antijudaismus im Neuen Testament? (1967), with top notch German-language contributors including David Flusser. Very influential was Ruether, Faith and Fratricide (1974), translated as Nächstenliebe und Brudermord (1978). 2 Parkes, Conflict (1934); Isaac, Jésus et Israël (1948); cf Baum, The Jews and the Gospel (1961). 3 Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus (1969)/Judaism and Hellenism (1974). 4 Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (1941) and Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (1950); reviews by Stern and Momigliano of Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus.
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possible to stay aloof from the polemic, and CRINT was definitely bombarded into the ‘Jerusalem’ camp.5 So was I, by the looks of it, and fallout of the debate can be detected in some of the following studies. With the disappointing quality of some of Neusner’s work being exposed6 and the polemics since abating, the way was cleared to make progress again and to soberly evaluate positions on both sides of the trenches. So much for a chapter of typical primates’ behaviour in academia.7 Meanwhile, much of my time was being consumed by academic teaching and administration at the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Brussels, as also by extensive editing work for CRINT. This was when most of the following studies were written. Then, good advice of an old friend and a grant from a Belgian research fund led to a five-month study leave in 2010. It occasioned a new departure in my research. Perched on a hilltop (‘Tantura’) between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the ecumenical institute for advanced theological research Tantur offered both intellectual quiet and political challenge, facilitating the first formulations of the project Joshua Schwartz and I had started together. A seminar paper given at the Hebrew University, titled ‘Pliny the Younger, R. Eliezer, and some others in between: Romans, Jews, and Christians in the Early Second Century’, developed into an article which I was happy to publish together with Joshua Schwartz.8 Meanwhile, the basic idea kept growing, and it resulted in the one study expressly written for this volume, ‘The Gospel of John and the Parting of the Ways’. What was new now became a main stay of our project. The history of both Jews and Christians in the first two centuries, and more importantly, their complex interaction, can only be adequately assessed by continuously referring to the larger history that enveloped and impressed them both: the Roman empire evolving to its maximum strength during this very period. It is obvious to think of the three Jewish revolts against Rome and their aftermath that occurred in a timeframe of just 65 years, even if the precise impact such upheavals have on society is always difficult to quantify. Also, it may not be as strange as it seems to associate the execution of Jesus and a number of his followers at Roman hands with the destruction by the Romans of Jerusalem and its Temple 40 years later, 5 See Neusner’s shamelessly dismissive review of CRINT 2.3.1, The Literature of the Sages, First Part, in JBL 107 (1988) 565–567. 6 Cf Lieberman’s review of Neusner’s Yerushalmi translation, JOAS 104 (1984) 315–319 and Shaye Cohen’s review of his Are there Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels?, JOAS 116 (1996) 85–89. Neusner’s latter work was an attack on the work of his (and Cohen’s) erstwhile doktorvater Morton Smith, Tannaitic Parallels of the Gospels – Smith’s dissertation which was written, in Hebrew, at Hebrew University. 7 More in the Introduction to Schwartz–Tomson, Jews and Christians … The Interbellum, 2 f. 8 Schwartz–Tomson, ‘When Rabbi Eliezer was Arrested for Heresy’.
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not as theological symbols, but as formative moments in an overarching, continuous historical development. In fact the study on the ‘Parting of the Ways’ just mentioned is one of the places in the volume where this new principle is put most squarely into practice. In this perspective, it is also likely that the foundation of Aelia Capitolina on top of Jerusalem and the devastating revolt it provoked represents a decisive turning point that left Jews, Christians, and their mutual relations totally changed forever.9 A second-degree result of this new approach is that the grand debates mentioned above lose much of their obsessive power and gain in accuracy and, so to say, in optical resolution. Viewed in the chronological framework of Roman history, it seems natural to interpret early rabbinic texts historically with the help of early Christian documents, and vice versa. Thus one of the emphases of the project about ‘Jews and Christians …’ ended up providing the title of section four in the present volume: ‘Historiography and the Import of Early Christian Sources’. As a matter of fact, the section contains five studies that grew out of the project, including the brand-new one just mentioned. Finally, the debate on ‘Hellenization’, which mostly regards the last two centuries BCE, takes a different turn in the two centuries following, merging with the novel, more political process of ‘Romanization’. The articles have been updated to varying degrees. Most are reprinted with only minor additions in square brackets in the footnotes, documents to the state of my knowledge at the time. One of the early footnotes to each article states its pre-history, earlier publication, and permission to republish if applicable, and the original page numbers are indicated in square brackets. Translations of the Bible follow the New Revised Standard Version, with occasional adaptations to the context at hand. Unless otherwise indicated, translations of other works are my own. All of this also goes for the five papers originally written in French or German and which I have now translated into English. The paper on ‘Devotional Purity’ grew over the years but was never published before, and as I said the one on ‘The Parting of the Ways’ was created de novo, although not ex nihilo. Finally, the paper on the names ‘Israel’ and ‘Jew’ continued to develop in stages after its publication in 1986, along with the evolving discussion. In the end I decided, however, that it is more transparent to reprint it as first published, with supplementary documentation where fitting, and to relegate discussion and advancing insight to a ‘Reconsideration’. Thus the book came into being in its four sections. Section I is mainly about halakha. This is a major dimension of Jewish life both past and present. It is little 9 See preliminary considerations in the introduction to Schwartz–Tomson, Jews and Christians … The Interbellum, 12–15.
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known among Christian scholars, although it is essential also for understanding Jesus and Paul, and so I devoted my MA and PhD work to this subject.10 The study on ‘Mishna Zavim 5:12’ in fact re-uses source-critical and redaction-critical materials from my MA thesis, while responding to an invitation to join the ongoing discussion on the literary and historical qualities of rabbinic literature. The paper on ‘Halakhic Letters’ was written as a contribution to a conference on ancient Jewish letters to which I was invited on account of my analysis of the halakha in Paul’s letters; it also draws in the halakhic letter from Qumran (4QMMT) that at that moment was circulating in a ‘pirated’ edition, as well as the scattered evidence of the halakhic letters utilised by the ancient rabbis. A conference on Josephus in Paris inspired me to analyse ‘The Halakhic Systems in Josephus’, with the interesting conclusion that while Josephus’ Antiquities and Life signal loose fidelity to Pharisaic-rabbinic halakha, his Against Apion draws on a quite different, much more severe system. A conference on ‘The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature’ I was honoured to organize along with my colleagues of the University of Leuven included a section on halakha, of which my paper on ‘Divorce Halakha in Ancient Judaism and Christianity’ was a part. The paper on ‘Devotional Purity’ has been long in coming, as I said; it proposes to view the purity rules involved in Jewish prayer as a ‘system’ separate from levitical purity, converging as it seems with Hellenistic purity usages. The long study on ‘The Names Israel and Jew’ arose from the discussion on anti-Judaism in the New Testament and especially in the Gospel of John mentioned earlier. In retrospect, I found the result to be far from perfect, but I like the article for its wide scope and the amount of valuable information it contains. Therefore, as I said, I provided it with a ‘Reconsideration’ taking account of subsequent discussions and gave it a place of its own at the end of section I. The alternating use of ‘Israel(ite)’ and ‘Jew’ in Jewish and early Christian sources remains a fascinating and infinitely complex phenomenon, and it also appears to relate to the problem of the meanings of Ioudaios/Yehudi which the original article discussed inadequately. Finally, late in the day, I decided to preface section I with a fragment from a bibliographic survey of ‘Halakha in the New Testament’ which is not contained in this volume. The fragment offers clarification of the meaning and origins of the key word, ‘halakha’. Section II seriously purports to deal with traditions deriving from the historical Jesus. Indeed, yet another intuition that had dawned on me is that the methodological scepticism on this subject we have been brought up with would ease once we study these traditions in their likely Jewish surroundings. Rabbinic literature in itself being difficult to handle in this connection, the Qumran scrolls 10 MA thesis, Mitsvat netilat yadayim li-seuda: Het wassen van de handen voor de maaltijd; PhD dissertation, Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the Epistles of the Apostle to the Gentiles.
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have come in to create a whole new situation. David Flusser was one of the first to grasp the immense implications, which is why the first study in this section is dedicated to him. It connects the new Qumran evidence to the interaction with Deutero-Isaiah that is pre-eminently documented in the basic gospel tradition. The study on ‘The Song of Songs in the Teachings of Jesus’ is the fruit of years of thinking and teaching on the matter, among other places in our MA seminar in Brussels. It is thrilling to see apparent echoes from the teachings of Jesus finding their natural place in the history of Jewish literature. The paper on the ‘Parable of the Ten Maidens’ is a recent outgrowth of the same study, engaging among others with David Flusser and his work on parables. ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ represents another core element of the Jesus tradition, grown out of varied Jewish prayer usages but eventually made into a touchstone of Christian over against Jewish identity. In the evolving conflict with Judaism, early Christian tradition developed a tension vis-à-vis the Jesus tradition. This is poignantly visible in the Gospel of Matthew which also evinces a strong Jewish-Christian sediment. Due precisely to this contrast, the ‘Shifting Perspectives in Matthew’ seem to provide an unexpected glimpse of Jesus’ hesitant attitude towards foreigners. Even starker is the contrast felt in the Gospel of John, where the deadly conflicts over Jesus’ healings on Sabbath contradict the implications of a halakhic midrash also ascribed to him (John 7:22f), strongly resembling a midrash of Rabbi Eliezer. The contrast is uncovered via an experimental ‘epichronic reading’. Section III opens with a study explicitly exploring the section’s theme, ‘Paul and His Place in Judaism’. It analyses the halakha contained in the parenesis of 1 Thessalonians, continuing the quest of my book on Paul and the Jewish Law, and it ends on a description of the typically ‘Christian’ topos of filadelfia. In a rather more theological sense, the Jewish law is a major element in the lively discussion on ‘the new perspective on Paul’, to which ‘The Doers of the Law will be Justified’ was an invited contribution. It is about Rom 2, where indeed it is not halakha that draws the attention but the ‘synagogue language’ Paul adopts in his subtly balanced argument addressing the complicated relationship of Jewish and gentile Christians in the late 50s CE. There follows a ‘short study’ on the much-discussed ‘limping simile’ of the woman freed from the law of marriage once her husband dies (Rom 7:1–4). With ‘Those who know the Law’ Paul appears to mean those who know the ‘apostolic halakha’ on marriage and divorce he also cites in 1 Cor 7:39, but this time round using this law metaphorically. Another short study, published recently, summarises the evidence of ‘Paul as a Recipient and Teacher of Tradition’ – halakhic and mystic-apocalyptic Jesus traditions, in this case. Two larger papers were occasioned by a conference organized at the University of Leuven in 2009, titled ‘Jewish Perspectives on Paul: 2 Corinthians and Late Second Temple Judaism’. ‘Christ, Belial, and Women’ is about the fascinating coalescence of Christology, apocalyptic demonology, and a (relatively) women-friendly attitude in the would-be ‘Qumranic insert’ in 2 Cor
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6:14–7:1. The other paper was written together with Ze’ev Safrai, an authority on the socio-economic history of Judaism in the Roman period, and it grew out of an idea he once floated to write something on Paul’s collection for ‘the Saints’ in Jerusalem. The occasion induced me to take position on the much-debated literary and historical character of 2 Corinthians. The study opening section IV begins by stating that section’s theme: the significance of Christian documents for early Jewish and Christian history. Next to the Qumran texts, Philo, and Josephus, the early Christian writings are an important source, especially where the rabbinic texts leave us in the dark. This is often not realised in studying first and second century history, which I suspect is partly due to the debate about the historical value of rabbinic literature mentioned earlier. The paper was part of our historiographic project and was published in its first conference volume, on ‘How to write the history’ of Jews and Christians in the early centuries. The same goes for ‘Josephus, Luke-Acts, and Politics’. It was a contribution to our conference on the hotly debated questions relating to the ‘Yavne period’, which we ended up dubbing ‘The Interbellum 70–132 CE’, i. e., the transition period between multiform pre-70 Judaism and the quite different post-136 situation. Each in its own way, these papers find early Christian texts to confirm the appearance of a ‘rabbinic’ movement around 100 CE. In a way, another method or another ‘scholarly rhetoric’ is applied in this section than in earlier ones. Rather than using Jewish sources to elucidate Christian history, early Christian documents are used as a help to document developments in Jewish society and its external relations. This is also the gist of the study on ‘Sources on the Politics in Judaea in the 50s CE’. Responding to a paper Martin Goodman gave at the conference on ‘2 Corinthians and Late Second Temple Judaism’ mentioned above, it argues that information contained in Galatians and Romans makes it likely that the narrative of a steadily worsening situation in Josephus’ War describes an actual development, rather than just imitating Thucydides. Next, another full circle closes when one realises that Paul’s letters read in their Jewish background are our only written ‘Source for the Historical Pharisees’, rather than the works of Josephus with his somewhat doubtful Pharisaic credentials. The study on ‘Gamaliel’s Counsel’ does not follow the same method, but I wanted to include it for its links with ‘Josephus, Luke-Acts, and Politics’, and I put it here for lack of better place. By contrast, ‘The Gospel of John and the Parting of the Ways’ is fully in place at the end of this last section. Taking note that the ‘Benediction of the Heretics’ cannot be the means by which Christians were excommunicated by the Jews (cf John 9:22), the article tries a new angle. The Gospel of John, testifying to a painful conflict with Jewish leaders, is contemporaneous to the rabbis linked to a passage in Tosefta Hullin that inculcates social distance from followers of Jesus. In line with our project, the comparison is contextualised using two Roman reports involving Christians that date to the same period, i. e. early second century CE. On this proposition, the
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Johannine passages confirm the rabbinic reports as to the excommunication of the Christians, which furthermore seems to be an aspect of the ‘Romanisation’ of nascent rabbinic Judaism. One could wish to point out circularity in the fact that while in earlier studies I am trying to illuminate early Christian texts using Jewish sources, in these later ones I do the opposite. In my view, this is a question of orderly scholarly rhetoric. Depending on the argument, one can use Paul’s letters as sources that document Jewish phenomena in the first century CE. One can also use Jewish sources to elucidate Paul’s letters, Qumran sources to demonstrate the pre-history of certain elements, and rabbinic sources to highlight the early existence of others. In the framework of one argument, one should not do both. This book contains different types of argument and hence different ways of comparing earlier and later, or Jewish and Christian, sources. At the end of the day, our discipline involves working with a network of literary and archaeological sources which mutually illuminate each other. An important field yet to be laboured more intensely in this connection is the combined comparison of Qumranic, early Christian, and rabbinic sources. It remains to state my heartfelt gratitude to the colleagues who in various ways have significantly contributed to the genesis and quality of the following, in addition to those already mentioned. They are, in alphabetical order: Reimund Bieringer, Markus Bockmuehl, the late Willem Burgers, Matthijs den Dulk, Werner Eck, Jan Willem van Henten, William Horbury, Benjamin Isaac, Jan Joosten, Jan Lambrecht, Mireille Hadas-Lebel, Pieter van der Horst, Tamar Kadari, Menahem Kister, Emmanuel Nathan, Eric Ottenheijm, Didier Pollefeyt, Ishai Rosen-Zvi, Ze’ev Safrai, Joshua Schwartz, Joseph Verheyden, and Boaz Zissu. Last not least, I offer my sincere thanks to the Editors of the WUNT series and the publishers of Mohr Siebeck for accepting and producing the book. Lent 2018
Peter Tomson
Abbreviations Sources Abbreviations for biblical books and for Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha follow the usage of the Society for Biblical Literature, but without italics and full stops. For Josephus, it is (Jewish) War, (Jewish) Ant(iquities), Life, and Ag(ainst) Ap(ion). Qumran sigla follow conventional usage. The sigla m, t, y, b, followed by the siglum of the respective tractate, indicate, respectively, Mishna, Tosefta, Yerushalmi and Bavli. For Mishna and Tosefta, chapter and paragraph number are given, for the Yerushalmi, also page and column in parentheses (or, if the reference as a whole is in parentheses, page and column after a comma). The Bavli is referenced by folio and page, as usual. ARN a18 / b18 denotes chapter 18 from versions A or B of the Schechter edition. Transcriptions from the Hebrew are simple and devised to render modern Israeli pronunciation. Aleph, ayin, and he sofit are not rendered usually; quf and kaf, and sin and samekh, are not distinguished. 1QS 4QMMT Ah ARN Av AZ BB Ber Bekh BK BM CD CH Dem Ed EkhR Er EstR FrgTg GenR
Qumran cave 1, Serekh ha-yahad / Community Rule Qumran cave 4, ‘Miktsat maasei ha-Tora’ = Halakhic Letter Ahilut Avot de-R. Natan, ed Schechter Avot Avoda Zara Bava Batra Berakhot Bekhorot Bava Kamma Mava Metsia Damascus Document (Covenant of Damascus) Eusebius, Church History Demai Eduyot Ekha (Lamentations) Rabba Eruvin Esther Rabba Fragmentary Targum Genesis/Bereshit Rabba, ed Theodor–Albeck
XVI Git Hag Hor Hul Ker Ket Kid Kil Kipp LamR LevR MaasSh Mak MegTaan MekRS MekRY Men MidrGad Midr Tann Mik MK ms(s) ms א ms A ms B ms K ms S Naz Ned Nid NumR Pea Pes PesR PesRK RH RuthR San SER Shab Shek Shev Shevu ShirR SifDeut SifNum Sifra SifZDeut
Abbreviations
Gittin Hagiga Horayot Hullin Keritot Ketubbot Kiddushin Kilayim Kippurim (Tosefta) Lamentations/Eikha Rabba Leviticus/Wayyikra Rabba, ed Margulies Maaser Sheni Makkot Megillat Taanit (ed Lichtenstein or ed Noam) Mekhilta de-R. Shimon b. Yohai, ed Epstein–Melamed Mekhilta de-R. Yishmael, ed Horovitz–Rabin Menahot Midrash Gadol Midrash Tannaim, ed Hoffmann Mikvaot Moed Katan manuscript(s) New Testament, Sinai ms. Septuagint, Alexandrian ms. Septuagint/New Testament, Vatican ms. Mishna, Kaufmann manuscript, ed Beer Septuagint, Sinai ms. Nazir Nedarim Nidda Numbers/Bamidbar Rabba Pea Pesahim Pesikta Rabbati, ed Friedmann Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, ed Mandelbaum Rosh ha-shana Ruth Rabba Sanhedrin Seder Eliahu Rabba Shabbat Shekalim Sheviit Shevuot Shir ha-Shirim Rabba (Song Rabba) Sifrei Deuteronomy/Devarim, ed Finkelstein Sifrei Numbers/Bamidbar, ed Horovitz Sifra de-vei Rav, ed Weiss Sifrei Zuta on Deuteronomy, ed Kahana
Abbreviations
SifZNum Sot T12P Taan Tam TanB Tanh Tem TevY TgOnk TgPsYon TgSong TgYon Toh Uk Yad YalShim Yev Zav Zev
XVII
Sifrei Zuta on Numbers, ed Horovitz Sota Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs Taanit Tamid Tanhuma, ed Buber Tanhuma, traditional ed Temura Tevul Yom Targum Onkelos on the Tora Targum Pseudo-Yonatan Targum on Song of Songs Targum Yonatan on the Prophets Toharot Uktsin Yadayim Yalkut Shimoni Yevamot Zavim Zevahim
Journals, Series, Publishers, Data Bases AB AGAJU AJEC ANRW ARGU ATANT BAR BDAG BDR BIS BIU BIRP BJ BJS BZNW CAP CBQ CBR CCSL CHJ CII CPJ
Anchor Bible Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums (continued as AJEC) Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (continuation of AGAJU) Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, ed H. Temporini – W. Haase Arbeiten zur Religion und Geschichte des Urchristentums Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments Biblical Archaeology Review Danker, Greek-English Lexicon Blass–Debrunner–Rehkopf, Grammatik Biblical Interpretation Series Bar-Ilan University Bar-Ilan Responsa Project Bible de Jérusalem Brown Judaic Studies Beihefte zur ZNW Cowley, Aramaic Papyri Catholic Bible Quarterly Currents in Biblical Research Corpus Christianorum series latina Cambridge History of Judaism Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum Tcherikover–Fuchs, Corpus Papyrorum Judaicorum
XVIII CUP DJD 1 DJD 2 DSD EJ EKK ET EvTh FJCD FJTC FS GCS GLAJJ HNT HUP IES JANES JBL JCP JJS JRS JSJ JSP JSIJ JSJS JSNT JSS JTS KEK KJV LCL LSG LSJ MJS MM MPG MPL MS NedTT NHL NOTA NovT NPNF NRSV n.s. NTD NTS OTP
Abbreviations
Cambridge University Press Barthélemy–Milik, Discoveries Benoît–Milik–Devaux, Les grottes de Murabba‘ât Dead Sea Discoveries Encyclopedia Judaica, 16 vols plus suppl, Jerusalem, Keter 1972 Evangelisch-katholische Kommentare zum Neuen Testament English translation Evangelische Theologie Forschungen zum jüdisch-christlichen Dialog Mason, Flavius Josephus, Translation and Commentary Festschrift Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism Handbuch zum Neuen Testament Harvard University Press Israel Exploration Society Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society Journal of Biblical Literature Jewish and Christian Perspectives Journal of Jewish Studies Journal of Roman Studies Journal for the Study of Judaism Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Jewish Studies Internet Journal Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal of Semitic Studies Journal of Theological Studies Kritisch-exegetische Kommentar zum Neuen Testament King James Version Loeb Classical Library Louis Segond Bible Liddell–Scott–Jones, Lexicon Münsteraner Judaistische Studien Moulton–Milligan, Vocabulary J. P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series Graeca J. P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina Mohr Siebeck Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library Novum Testamentum et orbis antiquus Novum Testamentum Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers New Revised Standard Version new series Neues Testament Deutsch New Testament Studies Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
Abbreviations
OUP PIASH PW PWCJS RB RHPR RSV SAP SBLSP SC SCI SH SPB SJLA SJT STDJ Str-Bill StUNT TDNT ThWNT TOB TuU UCal UP Vdh&R WBC WBG WdF WJK ZNW ZPE ZTK
Oxford university Press Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Pauly-Wissowa Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies Revue biblique Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses Revised Standard Version Sheffield Academic Press Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers Sources chrétiennes, Paris, Cerf Scripta Classica Israelica Scripta Hierosolymitana Studia Post-Biblica Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity Scottish Journal of Theology Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah Strack–Billerbeck, Kommentar z NT Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments Theological Dictionary to the New Testament (ET of ThWNT) Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament Traduction œcuménique de la Bible Texte und Untersuchungen University of California University Press Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Word Biblical Commentaries Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Wege der Forschung Westminster John Knox Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche
XIX
I. Halakha and Jewish Self-Definition
The Term Halakha Since the rise of the Wissenschaft des Judentums in the early nineteenth century, scholars have been calling the phenomenon of Jewish law by the term ‘halakha’.1 The generic use of the word was new in the scholarly world, but it linked up with ancient rabbinic usage where someone could be called בקי בהלכה, ‘expert in halakha’.2 In this sense the word denotes the discipline or genre of legal study and legislation,3 as distinct from aggada or non-legal learning.4 Its recognition as a separate and independent field of learning was typically found in Pharisaicrabbinic circles, though not exclusively so. We find it documented in the Mishna and related texts that express the specific aim to formulate the various elements of religious law independently from Scripture. We see it also, however, in the singular set of ‘independent’ laws contained in the Damascus Document5 that reflects the same aim, although in a different form and outlook.6 Thus the genre ‘halakha’ existed by the second century BCE, even though the term itself surfaces first in rabbinic literature. While retaining the rabbinic distinction vis-à-vis aggada, modern scholars adopted the term halakha, extending its application also to include ‘halakha’ 1 This article reformulates an introductory section of my survey, ‘Halakha in the New Testament’ (2010). For the Wissenschaft des Judentums see e. g. Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge (1832; cf Vahrenhorst, Nicht schwören, 24f); Frankel, Darkhei ha-Mishna (1849). The study of halakha, however, was not a first concern of the pioneers of the Wissenschaft, see the critical judgment by Ginzberg, ‘Significance’, 78. 2 mEr 4:8. Sages are seen ( יושב ושואל בהלכהtYev 14:5) or ( יושבין ודנין בהלכהtNaz 5:1; tSan 7:10; tAhil 4:14). 3 Cf also the phrase tHag 3:9, משם הלכה יוצאת ורווחת בישראל, ‘from there (i. e. from the court of 70 in Jerusalem) halakha would issue among Israel’. 4 Cf בקי באגדה, ‘expert in aggada’, bBK 55a. 5 CD 15–16 and 9–14. Schiffman, ‘Damascus Document’, though hesitant whether to call these by ‘the talmudic term halakha’ (275), gives a trenchant description including the headings of the various subjects (280–283). Hempel, Laws, insists on distinguishing the laws of ‘community organisation’ from general ‘halakha’, and similarly Davies, ‘Halakhah at Qumran’ wishes to distinguish between the ‘halakha’ in CD and the ‘radical revision of legislation’ in 1QS. However, one can perfectly speak of ‘sectarian halakha,’ cf my review of Hempel, Laws in JSJ 34 (2003) 327–329. Cf also Baumgarten, ‘La loi religieuse’, 1012. 6 Ginzberg, Unknown Jewish Sect, sees it as a deviant Pharisaic sect whose halakha ‘is presented in a form which is different from any pattern known from Talmudic sources’ (404f). More outspokenly, Baumgarten, ‘La loi religieuse’ underlines differences of substance with Pharisaic-rabbinic law. Schiffman, ‘Damascus Document’, 283 emphasises variety within the scrolls.
4
I. Halakha and Jewish Self-Definition
found reflected in non-rabbinic sources. This usage is spreading since the last three decades, coinciding with a novel interest in halakha in circles of nonJewish scholars. Some have protested, especially since the word itself has not been found in Qumran texts or other pre-rabbinic sources.7 But scholars cannot be prevented from inventing or adapting terminology that usefully describes the objects of their study. We also speak of ‘apocalyptic’ writings, a term widely accepted after its invention in the early nineteenth century, even though it is not without difficulties.8 In comparison, the generic scholarly term ‘halakha’ is surely more felicitous. Apart from extending the application of the term, modern scholarly usage differs in another respect from the ancient one. Where we would designate a set of commandments involving one particular subject by an abstract singular, such as ‘the Sabbath halakha’, the ancient rabbis would rather use the more concrete plural: הלכות שבת, ‘the halakhot of Sabbath’.9 The plural form also appears in the standard phrase indicating the threesome areas of rabbinic study, מדרש הלכות ואגדות, ‘midrash, halakhot, and aggadot’.10 Correspondingly, there is the use of the concrete singular to indicate ‘the formulated law’, as in the Hebrew phrase, הלכה כדב' ר' אליעזר, ‘the law is as formulated by R. Eliezer’.11 In this construction, the definite singular has no visible article because it is assimilated with the ensuing he, as is also seen in a number of other rabbinic utterances.12 The word halakha itself does not seem to have its origin in Hebrew. The popular etymology from the Hebrew verb הלך, ‘to go’ − hence ‘that in which 7 Van Uchelen, ‘Halacha in het NT?’ (cf my response in NedTT 49, 1995, 190–193); idem, ‘Halakhah at Qumran?’ Meier, ‘Halaka … at Qumran?’, scrutinising the available Qumran evidence, at 151 n3 observes that though the word is not found, ‘the reality is present abundantly in the Qumran documents’, and therefore, disagreeing with Stephen Goranson, he uses the word to compare ‘the rules for behavior in Qumran and Jesus’ teaching’. Cf Meier, Marginal Jew 4: 40f. 8 Collins, Apocalypse, 1–20 understandably rejects the Anglicised noun ‘apocalyptic’ (cf German ‘Apokalyptik’) as erroneously suggesting the existence of a separate ‘apocalyptic’ trend of thought or ideology. There is less of a problem with the adjective ‘apocalyptic’. 9 mHag 1:8, along with other areas of law. Cf ‘Sabbathalacha’ in the German title of Doering, Schabbat. 10 mNed 4:3, and see Bacher, Terminologie 1: 42f. 11 mNid 1:3 (ms K). Epstein, Nosah, 687f expresses the intuition that such phrases are additions to the Mishna and proves such in one case. The phrase is ubiquitous in the Talmudim: 200× in the Yerushalmi; 463× in the Bavli (BIRP). 12 Cf the saying ( לעולם הלכה כבית הללtYev 1:13), or, ( הלכה כדברי בית הלל בכל מקוםtHag 3:11): ‘In every respect, the halakha is as formulated by the School of Hillel’; and הלכה למשה מסני, ‘The halakha as revealed to Moses at Sinai’ (on the hyperbolic meaning of which see Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 180–185). Cf also ( כך היתה הלכה בידם ושכחוהyPea 1, 16b; yShab 1, 3d; etc.); נעלמה ( הלכה מהןyShab 19, 17a); ( נעלמה הלכה ממנוyPes 6, 33a). Cf also the curious saying, ראה מעשה ( ונזכר הלכהyShab 19, 17a; bPes 66a; bSan 82a), which seems to have been corrected by the scribe in yPes 6 (33a): כיון שראה את המעשה נזכר את ההלכה. Cf similar phrases in Bacher, Terminologie 2: 53f. – I am indebted to Menahem Kister and Jan Joosten for sharing their linguistic expertise in this matter.
The Term Halakha
5
Israel walks’13 – seems secondary at best. Instead, various Aramaic and Akkadian backgrounds have been proposed.14 Thus Saul Lieberman has suggested that rabbinic הלכהderives from the Aramaic technical term הלך, in the emphatic mode הלכא, a masculine noun from Persian administrative usage ultimately deriving from Akkadian ilku/alku/alāku and meaning ‘service’, ‘tariff’, ‘tax’, or ‘rule’;15 it is thus used in Ezra 4:13, 20; 7:24.16 Although suggestive, this is not satisfying in view of the Aramaic equivalent הילכתאused in the same period. Like הלכהit is a feminine and is frequently found in the Talmud.17 More adequately, therefore, Tzvi Abusch has made the proposal to view both Aramaic הילכתאand Hebrew הלכהas loan words modelled on the Akkadian feminine noun alaktu, ‘course, sign, decree’.18 To the extent that this is acceptable, הלכהappears to be another survival from the Persian period preserved in rabbinic parlance, similar to a number of administrative terms of Aramaic, Persian, and/or Akkadian origin whose earliest mentions are mainly found in rabbinic literature.19 The avoidance of the word at Qumran could be due to the sect’s avoidance of termi-
13 Thus e. g. Jacobs–de Vries, ‘Halakhah’. Also mentioned by Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 121 along with a reference to Lieberman’s explanation (below n15). Similarly Meier, ‘Halaka … at Qumran?’, 150 n2 prefers a Hebrew origin in view of the frequent OT usage of … הלך בfollowed by phrases like תורה, חוק, מצוהetc. 14 Adducing the Aramaic root הלך, Bacher, Terminologie 1: 42 explains הלכהas ‘Gang, Schritt, Weg > Brauch, Sitte, Satzung’. For late Palestinian Aramaic, Sokoloff, Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, 165 adduces Christian Palestinian Aramaic הלכא, ‘walk, way’. 15 Lieberman, Hellenism, 83 n3 (cf Safrai, above n13), still followed by Tomson, ‘Halakhic Evidence’, 132 n7. 16 Koehler–Baumgartner, Lexicon, s. v. derive הלךfrom Akkadian ilku/alku/allūku/alāku, from which they think also derived old Persian harāka. Frye, Heritage, 113f, referring to the bankers’ house of Murashu, also mentions Persian harāka, a land tax. The Akkadian connection is denied by Driver, Documents, 70, but confirmed by Stolper in his cuneiform study on the Murashu archives, Management, 50: ‘Taxes are summarized by the term ilku, service’, and 60 n46: ‘Babylonian ilku is rendered by Aramaic hlk’ [’]הלכא. The rabbis knew this meaning, see EstR petihta 5, ( הלך זו אנגריאἀγγαρεῖα, i. e. forced labour); bNed 62b, ( הלך זו ארנונאannona, tax paid in kind) − both referring to Ezra 4:13; and cf GenR 64.9 (p711), footnote. 17 Esp in the Bavli and related texts and indicating, significantly, ‘the prevailing halakha’. Cf also yKil 4 (29c), מותר לזרוע: הלכתאand yKid 3 (64d), ;הלכתא כר' טרפוןbut cf GenR, Vilna ed 33.3, הלכתא דבבלאי, ‘Babylonians’ halakha’; TgOnk Gen 40:13, כהלכתא קדמיתא, ‘like the earlier custom’. Cf the amazing combination in bMK 12a, ? למאי הלכתא.הלכות מועד כהלכות כותים בהלכה לומר שהן עקורות. Abusch (following note) points out that the meaning ‘law’ is restricted to Jewish Aramaic. 18 Abusch, ‘Alaktu and Halakhah’, esp 35–42. Jan Joosten writes me that he thinks Abusch’s theory ‘speculative but possible’. 19 Cf the administrative functions from the Temple, אמרכלor המרכלand ( גזברmShek 5:2), Persian loan words denoting ‘administrator’ and ‘treasurer’; and ( חזןmTam 5:3), Aramaic – Persian (?), ‘overseer’. המרכלhas been found in an non-sectarian Aramaic Tobit fragment from Qumran (4Q196 fr 2:6–7), see Fitzmyer, ‘Preliminary Publication’. For Iranian backgrounds see Greenfield, ‘Iranian Loanwords’; Shaked, ‘Iranian Loanwords’.
6
I. Halakha and Jewish Self-Definition
nology of post-biblical vintage, preferring their own somewhat artificial ‘biblical Hebrew’.20 Following modern scholarly usage, we shall use the term ‘halakha’ to indicate the phenomenon of Jewish law as reflected in rabbinic documents and any other Jewish and Judaeo-Christian writings. The use of one single concept for such a range of documents, to be sure, is not meant to imply homogeneity. The idea of ‘the halakha’ as a homogeneous system of laws encompassing all areas of Jewish life is primarily of medieval vintage, exemplified in Maimonides’ monumental codification.21 To the extent, however, that Judaism in Antiquity was multiform, it is obvious that halakha in that period must be viewed as a variegated, unsystematic whole of laws and customs. Most concretely, the evidence of the Qumran scrolls in addition to the rabbinic texts gives us an idea of the possible range of variety. It follows that when studying ancient halakha, we must be prepared to accommodate any amount of differences within a larger whole, as well as any degree of development over the successive periods.
20 Observation made by Prof. David Flusser in a seminar, pointing out that they preferred ‘biblical’ הוןover ממון – μαμωνᾶ as used in the traditions of Jesus and of the rabbis, except in a few cases that slipped their mind. Jan Joosten kindly refers me to his ‘Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek’, where at p360 he observes that the Qumran writers continue the biblicising ‘pseudoclassicism’ that developed from the Persian period on. 21 Maimonides, Mishne Tora. Cf the survey articles (though still restricting themselves to rabbinic law) by Elon, ‘Codification of Law’, and Jacobs–de Vries, ‘Halakhah’.
Mishna Zavim 5:12 – Reflections on Dating Mishnaic Halakha An investigation into the historical and literary background of the text to be discussed here is of interest in several respects. It will lead us to a thrilling episode in Jewish history, which at the same time was a painful event in the history of the halakha. It is also of direct relevance to the literary history of the Mishna, the theme of the present publication. Finally, there are important implications for the study of the New Testament, although these will not be made explicit here.*
On Methods Being alert to these various connections is not of mere personal interest; in my view, it is essential to an adequate approach both of ancient texts and historical questions. Therefore it is encouraging, for example, that there is a growing interest in the Jewish backgrounds of the New Testament. Equally encouraging are the repeated warnings against the uncritical use of isolated rabbinic traditions as historical sources. The only question is, what is critical? Literary and historical criticism operates on methodical criticism of one’s own axioms and results. In this respect, I have serious questions regarding the self-declared champion of critical study: Jacob Neusner. The emphasis here, however, will not be on polemics, but on the study of the details in which alone these matters are decided.1 Thus our investigation into the dating of a mishnaic halakha implies some reflection on method. It is proposed here, much in line with basic historical criticism, that evaluation of the literary significance and historical background of a certain textual unit or literary phenomenon must always be based on com* [Invited paper for a workshop ‘Mishnah’ in 1988 at the University of Amsterdam with the stated aim to pay special attention to Neusner’s work. The paper was published as ‘Zavim 5:12 – Reflections on Dating Mishnaic Halakha’, in Kuyt–Van Uchelen, History and Form, 53–69 and is here reprinted with slight emendations. Implications for NT studies were elucidated in my MA thesis, Mitsvat netilat yadayim li-seuda.] 1 For polemics see Neusner, Reading and Believing. A choice of scholars are criticised for naively quoting rabbinic traditions as historical sources, instead of verifying their historical reliability. Nowhere, however, in Neusner’s own Law of Purities is such methodical historical criticism even attempted. Regarding ‘the details’ cf the declaration by Neusner, ibid. vol 21, xiii, with reference to his teacher Morton Smith.
8
I. Halakha and Jewish Self-Definition
parison with a range of other sources. This also regards historical theories about the development of the halakha and its literary formulation. Nothing is as detrimental as the [54] atomising and isolating of data from their literary and historical context. Methodical criticism is needed and is even essential, but it should not be allowed to turn into scepticism as to the possibilities of historical research. The very moment it turns into scepticism, criticism is no longer methodical. Often, ‘text-immanent’ or ‘synchronic’ methods of analysis are then proposed as the only means of stating something sensible about our ancient texts. These nonhistorical methods, however, can result in serious misjudgments if they are not related to and checked against the results of historical criticism.2 Rather, they may be seen as specialized instruments to be applied in view of specific questions, and the answers they yield can contribute greatly to the larger task of critical study. Methods should never be taken absolute. They are means towards a greater end: our understanding of ancient texts on their own terms and within their own contexts.
Zavim 5:12 – Introductory Let us now review our text: These render teruma (heave-offering) unfit: (1) he who eats food unclean in first remove; (2) and he who eats food unclean in second remove; (3) and he who drinks unclean liquids; (4) and he who immerses his head and the greater part of his body in drawn water; (5) and a clean person upon whose head and the greater part of his body there fell three logs (c. 1,5 L) of drawn water; (6) and a book (of Scripture); (7) and the hands; (8) and the tevul yom (one who immersed for purification but still must await sunset); (9) and foods and (10) vessels which have been rendered unclean by liquids. (mZav 5:12) [55]
Some words of explanation. The issue is the purity of teruma, heave-offering, i. e. that part of the harvest which must be given to the priests and consumed by 2 In my view, Schäfer, ‘Research into Rabbinic Literature’ reflects such scepticism, resulting in the view of rabbinic literature as an unorganized collection of manuscript fragments. Schäfer makes, however, an illegitimate generalization from the Heikhalot literature, a specific group of very fluid texts, comparable to the Derekh Erets literature or the synagogue prayers (on the latter see the exemplary literary-historical study by Heinemann, Prayer). The situation with the ‘main’ collections is quite different. There is no healthy reason to question the possibility of treating the Mishna as a coherent document represented in various textual traditions and reflecting developing historical circumstances (i. e. the history of the halakha). Schäfer’s words about Epstein and Lieberman as representing the ‘traditional-halakhic approach’ which in the end is ‘systematical-theological, not historical-literary’ (139f) are gratuitous and shallow to anyone who seriously studies their achievements. [See also the response by Chaim Milikowski, ‘Status Quaestionis’, and Schäfer’s reply, ‘Once again the Status Quaestionis’, as well as the survey of the whole discussion in Goodman–Alexander, Rabbinic Texts, 51–88.]
Mishna Zavim 5:12 – Reflections on Dating Mishnaic Halakha
9
them in ritual purity.3 Insofar as the biblical commandment of teruma appears to have been widely observed,4 and these rules about its purity have been existing before 70, they must have been of importance for large parts of the predominantly agrarian population.5 According to biblical law (Lev 22:3–7), sanctified food could be made impure by a source of impurity, such as a zav, i. e. someone suffering from a flux, or by something which has been in touch with such a source. In the first case, the food is unclean in first remove, and in the latter case, unclean in second remove. Teruma could be defiled by yet a third degree. That stage is what is called pasul, ‘unfit’: it is unclean but does not render unclean. This was not included in the biblical rules, but was derived from them as a logical precaution.6 Such defilement in third remove could originate from a ‘regular’ source of impurity mentioned in the Bible. The purpose of our text is to list ten additional special categories which ‘render teruma unfit’. Elsewhere, as we shall see, they are termed ‘words of the Scribes’, i. e. non-biblical laws.7 Two of these additional categories are of immediate historical interest: ‘a book’ and ‘the hands’. There is a well-known discussion, which must have taken place not long after 70, about ‘which books render the hands unclean’, i. e. were declared unclean because they were read in the community as sacred scriptures (mYad 3:3–5). This implies the principle itself to have been in existence for some time at that moment. And indeed, the principle is the subject of a discussion between the Sadducees and the Pharisees, which is preserved towards the end of the same tractate (mYad 4:6). This leads us immediately into the historical and literary questions about mZav 5:12. Two theoretical observations may clarify our approach. A distinction must be made between the successive stages of the development and formulation of a halakha, and of the halakha in general, in ancient Judaism. Only by exception, halakha was decided [56] and issued by legislation. The normal procedure was that halakha originates and grows within the community at large.8 A certain custom would originate within some group, from causes and occasions which are generally very hard to get by. Successively, it could grow accepted by the larger community. A case in point are the so-called kedushot, hymnic doxologies with a mystical colouring, which are a part of the community prayers. These kedushot must have originated in esoteric circles, but have 3 Num
18:9–11; Deut 18:4; Lev 22:1–16; mTer 4:3; 1:6; 2:1. Safrai, ‘Religion in Everyday Life’, 819 and n4. 5 On the degree of observance of the purity laws before 70 see the ground-breaking study by Alon, ‘The Bounds of the Levitical Laws of Cleanness’. 6 mSota 5:2 testifies (a) that the third remove for teruma was an ancient rule already for Yohanan ben Zakkai but (b) that only in the days of R. Akiva was it linked to Scripture. 7 The Bavli, bShab 14b, disputes this as regards the tevul yom on the grounds of Lev 22:7. See discussion by Epstein, Nosah, 592f, and cf Albeck, Mishna 6: 457. 8 See Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 163–168, in discussion with E. E. Urbach. Safrai also discerns a real influence of midrash on the creation of halakha, ibid 146–163. 4 See
10
I. Halakha and Jewish Self-Definition
gradually grown towards their wider acceptance in the Amoraic period.9 The third stage, which in the case of prayers was not reached since they were fixed and written only in the post-talmudic period, is the formulation of the custom into a halakha and its gathering up in to the Mishna or Talmud. A second theoretical viewpoint regards the formulation process of the Mishna itself. It seems most adequate to the literary texture of the Mishna to assume the existence of four redactional layers, corresponding to four generations, which each in succession formulate the mishnayot of a preceding generation.10 Thus the first layer, formulated at Yavne by R. Eliezer and R. Yoshua and their colleagues, reflects the mishnayot of the last generation of the Temple period. And the fourth and most prominent layer, which was formulated, along with the extant Mishna, by R. Yehuda ha-Nasi, contains a selection of the mishnayot of the pupils of R. Akiva: R. Yehuda, R. Meir, R. Yose and R. Shimon. This theory explains two prominent facts about the Mishna: the name of the redactor himself is hardly mentioned at all, and it contains tractates which describe the procedures in the Temple in the past tense with very few later additions (Middot, Tamid, Kinnim). The prominence and the distinct character of the fourth layer indicate the great influence of R. Akiva on the development of the Halakha and the formulation process of the Mishna.11 [57]
Zavim 5:12 and the ‘Eighteen Decrees’ After these preliminaries, we can unfold the historical and literary questions about mZav 5:12. When did the halakhot contained in it originate? When did they attain to formulation in a halakha or mishna? And when did this formulation receive its present context in the Mishna? The two Talmudim give a clear-cut answer to the first two questions, which of course had a decisive influence on commentators and historiographers. The ten categories of mZav 5:12 would have belonged to the so-called ‘18 decrees’ re Heinemann, Prayer, 145–147. The following summarizes the theory of Abraham Goldberg as set forth in his two chapters, ‘Mishna’ and ‘Tosefta’. 11 Axiomatically, Neusner declares source criticism impossible: ‘The redactor … radically revised (his materials), obliterating the evidence of sources, that is, major and prior, alreadyredacted collections of materials’ (Law of Purities 21: 17f). Strack–Stemberger, Einleitung, 133–136 [= Stemberger, Einleitung, 134–138] on the one hand embraces this hypercritical view of Neusner’s on previous redactions, but at the same time assumes that the material used by the redactor, i. e. single mishnayot, did originate in the successive stages, Yavne – Usha – final redaction. On second thought, however, this must imply traces of previous redactions to have been preserved. Proof is to be found in mishnayot beginning with connective phrases which are senseless in their present context. See Safrai, ‘Oral Tora’, 77, referring to mMak 2:8, and see Albeck, Mishna 4: 288 ad loc. mZav 5:3 is another example, see below. 9 10
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ferred to in an intriguing statement in mShab 1:4.12 Quite unusually, the content of that mishna is not halakha, or, as is found less frequently, midrash or aggada, but an intriguingly obscure historical reference:13 These are among the halakhot which they formulated in the upper room of Hanina ben Hizkia ben Garon. For they went up to visit him. They voted, and Beit Shammai outnumbered Beit Hillel. Eighteen things did they decree on that very day.
We are not told what these 18 things are.14 The immediate context lists halakhot which in part are disputed among the two Schools. They all formulate preservative boundaries for activities on Friday afternoon which might lead to violation of the Shabbat; the Shammaite stringency in this area is prominent. In addition, a similar measure pertaining to the purity rules is cited; it refers to zavim i. e. those who suffer from a flux. The mishna just quoted follows immediately. Taken most plainly, the text, thus edited, suggests (1) that ‘on that very day’ there was a discussion between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel over halakhot of Shabbat and purity; (2) that for a number of them, a vote was taken in which Beit Shammai overruled Beit Hillel; (3) that 18 ‘things’, otherwise obscure, were decreed or prohibited. The Tosefta, adding similar preservative rules, states that ‘that day was as painful for Israel as the day on which the Calf was made’ and that R. Yoshua, as opposed to R. Eliezer, considered the decrees as [58] ‘that which makes the measure run over’.15 Even more distressing are the reports in the Talmudim about ‘swords and spears’ wielded by the Shammaites and about a number of Hillelites having been killed. This seems to explain the reference to the golden calf episode, in which 3000 Israelites were killed (Exod 32:28).16 As stated, the Talmudim also explain what those 18 decrees are. In various combinations, they reckon the ten categories of mZav 5:12 among them.17 The Bavli adds that they were formulated by R. Yoshua.18 These references point to the end of the Second Temple period for a date. There is, however, a serious historical contradiction in this explanation. The Shammaite victory on ‘that very day’ concurs with R. Eliezer’s satisfaction about the decrees, since his 12 This is also assumed by Epstein, Prolegomena, 64. [Cf for this section and the following the treatment by Booth, Jesus and the Laws of Purity, 161–173.] 13 Following ms K. 14 That is, if we read שמנה עשר דברwith the important mss and not the traditional reading …ושמנה. And see Goldberg, Shabbat, 16; Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 3: 13f. 15 tShab 1:11–21. 16 The mishnaic expression בו ביוםin Mishna and Tosefta thus may allude to the biblical Hebrew ביום ההוא, Exod 32:28. The same phrase occurs mSot 5:2–5 and mYad 4:2–4, but there appears to refer to another event, see bBer 27b–28a and mZev 1:3 and Albeck ad loc. 17 yShab 1 (3c–d); bShab 13b–17a. The Bavli, 17a confuses chronology and places the event in Hillel’s day. 18 bShab 13b–14a, Raba bar bar Hana, referring to mToh 2:2.
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Shammaite inclination is proverbial in rabbinic tradition.19 He is reported to have welcomed the decrees as ‘that which was lacking to make the measure full and solid’.20 But R. Yoshua, a prominent Hillelite, opposed them, as we heard. In addition, we shall see below that he is connected with the ten categories of mZav 5:12 and supports them positively. Thus these halakhot can impossibly have been forced upon the Hillelites by the Shammaites.
The ‘Zealot Synod’ 66/67 CE and its Halakhic Decisions The historian Graetz has offered an explanation of the episode which, with some additions and corrections, is very illuminating.21 The re-[59]ports about weapons and casualties point in the direction of the war against Rome. As Graetz has shown, the Shammaites were closely related to the Zealots and were in the frontlines of the war. R. Eliezer himself displayed a marked anti-gentile attitude. Moreover, in spite of the Shammaite stringency as regards the Shabbat, he advocated carrying weapons on that holy day.22 This can only indicate a Zealot inclination. It is noteworthy that the reports about casualties among the Hillelites are confirmed by much later Palestinian Jewish traditions of a fast day reminiscent of that sad occasion.23 In this perspective, it is remarkable that both Talmudim count among the 18 decrees, apart from the ten categories of mZav 5:12, prohibitions on gentile products such as bread, wine and oil. While the former, as argued above, could impossibly have been enforced by the Shammaites, the latter fit in very well with the anti-gentile attitude of the Shammaites. Graetz recognized the core of the historical 18 decrees in these prohibitions, and decided that all of them are actually contained in a tradition cited in the name of R. Shimon ben Yohai in the Yerushalmi. This baraita lists 18 matters connected with gentiles and opens with the words, ‘on that very day ( )בו ביוםthey decreed on their bread, their wine …’ See Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 198–200 and 186 n312. yShab 1 (3c–d). Lieberman’s explanation, Tosefta ki-fshutah 3: 16 is a little blurred. 21 Graetz, Geschichte, 470–472 with 795ff, notes 24, 26, and 27. See also Lerner, ‘Die achtzehn Bestimmungen’; Zeitlin, ‘Les dix-huit mesures’. More recently, a full discussion is given by Goldberg, Shabbat, 15–22. He basically adopts Graetz’ explanation, as does also Rappaport, ‘Yahasei Yehudim velo-Yehudim’, 172. Cf also Urbach, The Sages, 594–596. [See especially Hengel, Zeloten, 201–208 = Zealots, 200–206; cf below n25.] 22 On gentiles, mHul 2:7; tSan 13:2 (ARN a36, 54a); on weapons on the Shabbat, mShab 6:4 (cf 6:2). See for further documentation Gilat, The Teachings of R. Eliezer, 300–305; Cohen, Ha-yahas el ha-nokhri, 250. 23 The bloody confrontation between Shammaites and Hillelites referred to can hardly be different from the above one. According to ‘Megillat Taanit Batra’ the day is 9 Adar (Lurie, Megillath Ta’anith, 201). The ‘Megillat ha-Tsomot’ found in the Cairo Geniza mentions a fast on 4 Adar on which ‘there occurred a confrontation between the disciples of Shammai and Hillel on which many were killed’; see Margulies, Hilkhot Erets Yisrael, 142 (T-S N. S. 235/10 1A). 19 20
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Along with other foodstuffs, ‘their language, their testimony, their gifts’ were included.24 Apart from these actual 18 anti-gentile decrees which were brutally enforced by the Shammaites, there may be truth in the talmudic reports that other halakhot were formulated, without such use of power, at the same occasion. Graetz clinched his argument by a brilliant identification of the protagonist. While the Mishna mentions the upper room of Hanina [60] (Hananya) ben Hizkia ben Garon, other sources refer to an Elazar ben Hanina/Hananya ben Hizkia ben Garon, who identifies as a Shammaite interested in the Temple ritual.25 Thus in Elazar’s upper room, or that of his father Hananya, the ‘zealot synod’ must have taken place.26 This connection opens up a most important link with Josephus. In his Jewish War 2:409f, he mentions the tumultuous decision taken by a majority of Temple functionaries, ‘to accept no gift or sacrifice (δῶρον ἢ θυσίαν) from a foreigner’, and consequently to discontinue the sacrifices offered on behalf of Rome and its Emperor. This, Josephus comments, was a direct casus belli. What interests us most is the name of the ardent Zealot who inspired the priests to take this decision: the Temple-commander Eleazar, son of the (former) high-priest Ananias. Thus it is practically certain that this is the same Elazar ben Hananya/Hanina.** The prohibition of non-Jewish ‘gifts or sacrifices’ fits in nicely with the decree on ‘their gifts’ mentioned in R. Shimon ben Yohai’s baraita. The date may have been autumn 66 or spring 67 CE. On ‘that very painful day’, the Shammaites apparently enforced, sword in hand, 18 anti-gentile halakhot which the Hillelite, R. Yoshua, deplored. As we shall see below, the ten purity rules of mZav 5:12, attributed by the Bavli to R. Yoshua, can impossibly have been among these decrees. It remains to ask why the Mishna, while mentioning the painful 18 decrees, is silent about their contents, as is the Tosefta. An answer may be inferred from mAZ 2:5, which records R. Yoshua’s remarkable reticence when asked about the real reason behind the prohibition of gentile cheese, actually one of the 18 decrees. As in that case, the reticence of mShab 1:4 about the 18 decrees may yShab 1 (3c). ‘Oil’ and ‘cheese’ are interchanged between some traditions. In MekRY yitro 7 (p229) he gives an opinion on the Shabbat elsewhere attributed to Shammai: MekRS p148; bBeitsa 16a; PesR 23 (115b). The end of the scholion to MegTaan (ed. Lichtenstein, HUCA 8–9 [1931–2] 351; cf bShab 13b) attributes the ‘writing’ (= updating and re-issuing) of Megillat Taanit to him, a clearly nationalist and Zealot activity. The Bavli (ibid.) also honours him for explaining away the contradictions between the book of Ezekiel and the Tora, which may have been connected with the Temple ritual; this interest in explaining the Temple ritual in Ezekiel is attested in SifDeut 294 (p313). [Hengel, Zeloten, 358 = Zealots, 359 with the rich footnote 235 remains sceptical about Graetz’s identification of the two Elazars because the lack of an assured identification of their grandfathers, Hizkia/Nidbai.] 26 Graetz, Geschichte, 807 calls it ironically σύνοδος λῃστρική, in analogy with the ‘robbers’ synod’ of Byzantine Ephesus, 449 CE. ** [He is apparently also mentioned by Tacitus, Hist 5.12.3: templum Eleazarus firmaverat; Stern, GLAJJ 2, no. 281, cf note ibid. p59.] 24 25
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be understood from inner grief and resentment against the painful occasion and its decisions.27 [61] Since our theme is the dating of mishnaic halakha, we may use the opportunity to consult Neusner’s History of the Mishnaic Law, etc. It contains very little of relevance to our problem. The Shabbat ‘History’ is altogether silent on it; the respective pages are very superficial.28 The Zavim volume merely refers to four pages in the Tohorot ‘History’.29 There, it is concluded without serious discussion that the reports in the Talmud linking mZav 5:12 with mShab 1:4 are historically untrustworthy. Next, however, it is posited without any attempt at a historical foundation that, as far as mZav 5:12 and other laws systematizing the remote degrees of impurity are concerned, ‘Yavne is the point of origin’.30 The descriptions given of this historical development are vague and oscillate.31 27 Cf ShirR 1.17. R. Yishmael asks R. Yoshua why the Sages prohibited gentile cheese. Significantly, this is brought in a context which involves the majority of R. Shimon ben Yohai’s 18 things. The commentaries, following the Talmudim, explain R. Yoshua’s reticence from the newness of the prohibition, which would exclude discussion about it. Rather, it may reflect his grief and dejectedness about that painful decision. The same inner resentment may explain the Mishna’s obscurity at mShab 1:4. The liberal personal attitude on these prohibitions of the redactor of the Mishna himself, and of his grandson R. Yehuda Nesia, is recorded in the Talmudim; see bAZ 35a–37a; yShab 1 (3c) (= yShev 8, 38a; yMaasSh 3, 54a; yAZ 2, 41d). Goldberg, Shabbat, 22 explains the Mishna’s reticence from the hypothesis that the prohibitions would no longer have been in use at Rabbi’s day. This explanation is insufficient. bAZ 35b, e. g., implies that the Sages did not support Rabbi’s wish to approve gentile bread. Moreover, there was no objection to include most prohibitions in mAZ 2:3–7. 28 Neusner, Law of Appointed Times 1: 26–30. Without discussion, the author assumes that mShab 1:5–10 is meant to contain the 18 decrees. The Talmudim are not referred to. (In this whole commentary on Shabbat, the Yerushalmi is never quoted!) The translations betray that the manuscript versions have not been consulted (Gurion instead of Garon, as in Mishna mss and Tosefta; Mishna translation has ‘And eighteen …’). The translation reveals misunderstanding: ‘R. Eliezer says: “On that day they overfilled the seah-measure”’ [to overflowing, inverting his stance]. Regarding 1:10 it is stated that, as opposed to 1:5–9, ‘reference to the Houses’ is lacking; but no mention is made of the interesting parallel MekRS p149 (see below n53) where the reference does appear. 29 Neusner, Law of Purities 18: 193; 12: 202–6; vol 11: 54. The 22 vols of the Law of Purities (published within 3 years, 1974–77!) show a similar superficiality. The books hardly contain discussion with other research literature and are poor in bibliography. They contain very few references to sources other than Mishna and Tosefta. Especially the Palestinian Talmud, an important source in view of the traditional ‘Babylonisation’ of mishnaic text and interpretation, is quoted remarkably little. On Neusner’s translation of the Palestinian Talmud (The Talmud of the Land of Israel etc., Chicago 1982ff) see Lieberman’s review, ‘A Tragedy or a Comedy?’ [For different readings of Neusner’s Law of Purities see Klawans, Purity and Sin, 93 and 196 n10; Noam, ‘Ritual Impurity’.] 30 Neusner, Law of Purities 12: 206. 31 Neusner, Law of Purities 18: 193 refers to ‘our larger theory that the matter of removes of uncleanness comes under intensive study in the time of Yavneh’. Ibid. 12: 203, where this ‘larger theory’ is expounded, concludes that the available evidence ‘makes it difficult to demonstrate that the notion [of removes of uncleanness, PJT] was subjected to deep analysis in pre-Yavnean times’. The next page seeks to support ‘the impression that the issue of removes of uncleanness … is first raised at Yavneh or shortly before 70’ (the ref. is to tShab 1:6–8,
Mishna Zavim 5:12 – Reflections on Dating Mishnaic Halakha
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There is also glaring contradic-[62]tion: ‘hands’ and ‘books’, two of the categories of mZav 5:12 here ascribed to Yavne at the earliest, are dated before 70 in the ‘History’ of Yadayim.32 Immediately afterwards, however, it is stated that no direct connection can be observed between this (pre‑)Yavne stage and the full development of the system of purity laws in Usha.33 Nevertheless, this is deemed sufficient for the foundation of an utterly speculative theory. It views the mishnaic system of purity laws as a completely theoretical semantic universe devoid of contact with daily life, which developed precisely out of that bereavement.34 To say the least, this theory soars high above the solid ground of [63] historical and literary analysis.35 We shall now steer our investigation into the backgrounds of mZav 5:12 in other directions. Elsewhere, the Mishna puts us on the right track.
R. Yoshua and the Purity of Hands Yadayim, that historically interesting tractate, has R. Yoshua discussing the impurity of hands with his colleagues. In the passage to be quoted presently, he wishes to enlarge the possibility of declaring hands impure, and in support of which explicitly mentions a protracted discussion between the Houses and between R. Eliezer and R. Yoshua!). p206 finally concludes that ‘Yavneh is the point of origin of the laws under discussion’. (Emphases mine, PJT.) 32 On the evidence of mYad 3:1–2, Neusner is ‘inclined to see’ the principle ‘that holy writings impart uncleanness to hands’ as ‘deriving from the period before 70’ (Law of Purities 19: 188). 33 Neusner, Law of Purities 19: 191–195. Clearly, the great historical interest of mYad chaps. 3–4 is not appreciated in this ‘History’. The same volume on Yadayim states regretfully (190): ‘The corpus of legal ideas in Yadayim is slight. The interesting issues are either attributed to Ushans or wholly unattributed … The Yavnean pericopae deal with the remove of uncleanness to be imputed to hands …’ (emphases mine, PJT). The latter issue apparently is deemed uninteresting. On the development regarding Yadayim see below. 34 Esp Law of Purities 21: 298–330. The inspiration to this arbitrary historical construction is drawn from extensive quotations of W. S. Green, no major authority in talmudic research, at the beginning and end of the book (1f, 305f). Except for Stemberger (p17f), a leading talmudic scholar, no authorities are cited in this volume but four theoretical linguists and anthropologists. 35 The system, involving a spiritual, non-material conception of purity comparable to Stoic physical theories, would have originated after 70 and fully developed in Usha. This distorts the evidence. An immaterial and rational conception of purity is presupposed by the ancient impurity decree on sacred books (below). Rational views of purity did exist in Temple times: cf Paul’s view Rom 14:14, 20 (Stoic overtones!). Yohanan ben Zakkai’s rational attitude may safely be assumed not to have originated after 70 (PesRK 4, p74; cf Neusner’s atomizing, off‑hand rejection, Gullibility, 81). Finally, R. Yoshua’s systematizations are clear enough and imply the existence of various sets of rules before him (below). Incidentally, gross contradiction is not shunned even at this high point of the ‘History’: ‘I do not believe we have a chapter in our entire order which illustrates more poignantly than the present one (mToh 3, PJT) the homely and everyday circumstances for which the rabbis made laws of uncleanness, etc.’ (Law of Purities 11: 71).
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his arguments appeals to no less than four of the ten categories of mZav 5:12. In addition, certain phrases used (italicized in our quotation) indicate a formal relationship as well. The numerals in parentheses indicate the category numbers as given in the quotation at the beginning of this paper: Foods (9) and vessels which have been rendered unclean by liquids (10) make the hands unclean in second remove – words of R. Yoshua. But the Sages say: Something defiled by a Father of impurity makes the hands unclean, but by an Offspring of impurity does not make the hands unclean. All that renders teruma unfit defiles the hands in second remove; thus one hand (6) defiles the other – words of R. Yoshua. But the Sages say: Second remove does not create second remove. He said to them: But are not holy scriptures (7) second remove, yet they do defile the hands? They said to him: We do not derive … words of the Scribes from words of the Scribes. (mYad 3:1–2)
It is evident that both the general opening formula of mZav 5:12 and the formulation of the last two categories (9) and (10) are reflected here. Without such a clear formal connection, categories (6) and (7) are also implied. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that ‘the Sages’ oppose [64] R. Yoshua’s more radical view of the impurity of hands on the basis of apparently well-established rules.36 The defilement of hands by holy scriptures is termed one of the accepted ‘words of the Scribes’; no further halakhot can be derived from them, however.37 This implies that the four categories were accepted by all and date back to Second Temple times. Such is confirmed by other sources. The clearest case is the purity of hands and their defilement by holy books. First, there is the report about the discussion between Sadducees and Pharisees on the defilement of hands by holy scriptures in the same tractate, mYad 4:6. This historically very interesting text shows that it involved a Pharisaic principle contested by the Sadducees, i. e. before 70.38 In this connection, it is significant that the sectarian, i. e. anti-Pharisaic, Dead Sea scrolls contain no trace of the conception of impurity of the hands as separate from the body. Second, there is the story in the Gospels about Pharisees warning Jesus that his disciples should wash their hands before eating bread. In combination with the above evidence, this indicates the existence of the Pharisaic principle of ‘hands’ as being unclean in second remove at least two generations 36 The phrases אב הטומאהand ילד) הטומאה: ולד (כ"י קseem ancient. Cf mToh 1:5, which is quoted by R. Shimon in tToh 1:1, ‘Why did they say …’, i. e., former generations. 37 Cf tTevY 1:10, R. Yose commenting on another argument of R. Yoshua ‘the early Fathers’!) in favour of enhancing purity laws on the basis of a category of mZav 5:12, the tevul yom. The more conservative partner in discussion there is R. Eliezer. 38 This is one of the few texts where the Pharisees are identified with the Sages; it also adds one point to the list of the points dissent with the Sadducees, which must otherwise be drawn from Josephus and the New Testament. Cf the helpful summary by Bowker, Jesus and the Pharisees, introduction. See also Lieberman, Hellenism, 104–110 on the interesting mention of ‘the books of Homer’.
Mishna Zavim 5:12 – Reflections on Dating Mishnaic Halakha
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before 70. The discussion with Jesus turns on the obligatory purity of hands for all meals; Jesus disputes this and thus identifies as non-Pharisaic.39 Third, there are a number of halakhot, explicitly attributed to Second Temple [65] times or seemingly ancient, which spell out the Pharisaic principle of the purity of hands.40 From a range of other passages it appears that R. Yoshua also knew and supported the six other categories of mZav 5:12.41 Some of these are closely related to halakhot attributed to Shammaites and Hillelites and also appear to date back to Second Temple times.42 Thus we may conclude not only that R. Yoshua knew all ten categories of mZav 5:12, but that they had been existing, at least in part, for some generations before him. This enhances the probability that, indeed, R. Yoshua formulated mZav 5:12; we shall investigate this in the next section. The later development of the purity of hands is illuminative for the development of Tannaic halakha, as well as for the growth of a mishnaic tractate. From the first part of mYad 3:1, which was not quoted here, it appears that R. Yoshua’s wish to expand the impurity of hands, blocked by his colleagues, was carried on by his pupil R. Akiva.43 Since both R. Yoshua and R. Akiva articulate the Mark 7:1–23; Matt 15:1–20. On the degree to which purity rules were observed in common life see Alon, ‘The Bounds of the Levitical Laws of Cleanness’. Jesus also questions the rule that impure food (first or second remove) renders him who eats it unclean: ‘That which enters the mouth does not render a man unclean.’ This sticks to biblical law, according to which man is made impure only by sources of impurity, not derivatives (see Albeck, Mishna 6: 9). The decree of impurity on one who eats impure food is another of the ‘words of the Scribes’ (mYad 3:2), assumed in mToh 2:2 (R. Eliezer and R. Yoshua) and formulated in mZav 5:12. Thus the Gospel narrative indicates that one or two generations before R. Yoshua, neither that Pharisaic halakha was accepted by all Jews. [I dealt with the development of the concept of ‘purity of hands’ and the commandment of washing hands in my MA thesis, Mitsvat netilat yadayim. Much the same ground is covered by Booth, Jesus and the Laws of Purity. On Jesus and purity see also Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah, and the monographic treatment in Meier, Marginal Jew 4: 342–477.] 40 (1) mHag 2:5, which seems to belong to an ancient pilgrims’ code contained in mHag 2:5–3:6 (see discussion by Epstein, Prolegomena, 46–52). (2) tDem 2:11, a remainder of ancient laws of admission to the Pharisaic havurot (cf yDem 2, 23a; bBekh 30b; Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 1: 215). (3) tYad 2:9a, an apparently ancient rule of thumb on the uncleanness of hands which has the same opening phrase ( )אלו פוסלין לידיםas mZav 5:12. (4) mYad 3:1 (את …)שנטמה, a related rule on the impurity of hands quoted by R. Yoshua’s conservative opponents; we quoted it already. (5) yShab 1 (3d) (yPes 1, 27d; yKet 8, 32c; cf bShab 14b), a baraita ascribing the decree of ‘purity of hands’ to Shammai and Hillel. 41 Nos. (1), (2), and (3): mToh 2:2 and tToh 2:1 (discussion with R. Eliezer); cf bHul 34a. No. (4): tMik 3:9 (R. Eliezer, implying R. Yoshua’s involvement). No. (5): indirect proof from mMik 2:2; tMik 3:9–11; mToh 4:11; tToh 5:9. No. (8): mTevY 3:4–5; tTevY 1:8, 2:14. 42 Detailed discussions on ‘drawn water’, involved in categories (4) and (5), are found between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, as well as R. Eliezer and R. Yoshua: mEd 1:3 (Hillel and Shammai; cf mMik 1:5, linking up with mishna 4, which is implied to be even older); mMik 4:1 (which R. Meir attributes to the Houses, and is associated with the decisions of ‘that painful day’, tShab 1:19); mMik 2:4, 7–10 (R. Eliezer and R. Yoshua, connected with 4:1). 43 mYad 3:1, expanding R. Yoshua’s kelal, mZav 5:1! On R. Akiva’s proverbial care for the purity of hands see bEr 21b. 39
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heritage of Beit Hillel, their great care for the purity of hands may be seen as typical of that school, while the initial opposition to it at Yavne may reflect the temporary Shammaite atmosphere there.44 It was only [66] among the generation of R. Akiva’s pupils at Usha, however, that this seems to have resulted in a general decree on the impurity of hands.45 And it was then that the first two chapters of tractate Yadayim, setting forth the purification of the hands in detail, were formulated.46
Zavim 5:12 – from R. Yoshua’s Mishna From the above evidence, it appeared not impossible that R. Yoshua not only knew the ten halakhot of mZav 5:12, but formulated them into a rule. In order to seek further corroboration, we must now investigate its context within the Mishna. Chapter 5 of Tractate Zavim has a distinct theme. While the preceding chapters deal with the main topic, i. e. impurity caused by a zav or one suffering from a flux, the fifth and last chapter formulates more general rules of defilement. In addition, it has a distinct character. In particular, the ‘rules of thumb’ (kelalim) are worthy of note. Two appear in mishna 1 and 2; and in the second part of mishna 2 and in mishnayot 6–8, specific halakhot are derived from them. Mishnayot 9–11 define cases of impurity, and in passing, mishna 10 gives another kelal. Our mishna 12, the last of the chapter, adds a summary of ten third remove impurities on the authority of the Scribes. Mishna 3 is connected with mishna 7 in that both contain a disputed halakha of R. Eliezer.47 Thus all these mishnayot are con-[67]nected, either by substance or by form (kelalim), or both. Mishnayot 4–5 contain attributions to the Ushan, R. Shimon. They deal with more refined cases of defilement and are readily distinguished from the remainder of the chapter. Remarkably, mishna 3 begins with a connective phrase unintelligible in the present context. This phenomenon is found in other mishnaic passages as well 44 On their Hillelite sympathy see tPes 1:5–8. R. Gamliel is mentioned by name, mYad 3:1 according to the mss. On his conservatism and relative Shammaite inclination see Safrai, ‘The Decision according to the School of Hillel’. Going by tTevY 1:8 and other passages, the Shammaite R. Eliezer may be supposed to have been R. Yoshua’s opponent also in this case. 45 mToh 7:8b, declaring hands unclean unless kept clean consciously. R. Yehuda, who opposes a similar principle in mishna 8a, represents the more conservative trend among R. Akiva’s pupils. His usual partner in discussion, R. Meir, elsewhere advocates a radical view on the purity of hands similar to that of R. Akiva, tToh 1:6, and was certainly one of the champions for the halakha mToh 7:8b. 46 Yadayim thus has a typical layered structure, with two cycles Usha – Yavne (– Temple): chapters 1 and 2 (Usha) give detailed halakhot for purifying hands. 3:1–2 preserves discussion (Yavne) about purity of hands. The rest of the tractate is about sacred scriptures: 3:3–5a (Usha); 3:5b–4:4 (Yavne, a very long section of derashot); 4:5 (Yavne?); 4:6–8 (pre-Yavne). 47 mss: R. Elazar. But editio princeps and tZav 5:2, R. Eliezer.
Mishna Zavim 5:12 – Reflections on Dating Mishnaic Halakha
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and is reminiscent of a previous stage of redaction.48 Since that mishna is connected with the coherent main part of the chapter, this raises the question whether not all of this material, mishna 4–5 excepted, reflects, in different form, an earlier layer of the Mishna. More specific information can be gathered from the names of the sages involved. Twice, in mishna 3 and 7, and once in the parallel Tosefta (tYad 5:2), R. Eliezer is mentioned, the regular partner in discussion of R. Yoshua. The Tosefta (5:11, connected with mishna 9) contains also a discussion explicitly attributed to both Sages. This implies that they are associated with the main part of the chapter. A final and decisive argument is that the first of the various kelalim is explicitly attributed to R. Yoshua, and that the second is linked up with it: ‘R. Yoshua formulated a rule of thumb … Yet another rule of thumb did they (or: did he)49 formulate …’ (mishna 1–2). Hence it was R. Yoshua who formulated the rule in mishna 1, and who added the one in mishna 2; his name of course was added by a later redactor or tradent. R. Eliezer is mentioned in mishna 3 and 7 and both Sages are behind mishna 9, all of which are part of the coherent section, mishnayot 1–3, 6–11. Our mishna 12, or the largest part of it, as we saw above, very likely had been in existence before these Sages. The cumulative evidence justifies the conclusion that the basic material of chapter five of Zavim, mishnayot 4–5 excepted, was formulated by R. Yoshua.50 Obviously, it included mZav 5:12. Along with other sections, the chapter testifies to that Sage’s formulation of mishnayot, the remains of which constitute the first layer of the extant Mishna.51 It is a chapter of general purity laws, appended to the collected mishnayot of zavim, to which R. Yoshua also contributed (cf mZav 4:1). Interestingly, the categories of impurity in mZav 5:7, 10f are partly identical with mKel 1:1–3, which without doubt was formulated at Usha. This indicates both R. Yoshua’s early systematizing activities in the area of purity laws, and the later development. R. Akiva’s influence may be sensed here, too.52 [68] The question remains whether R. Yoshua’s formulation of mZav 5:12 could not, after all, have been connected in some way with the ‘zealot synod’ at the beginning of the war against Rome. The unanimous tradition connecting the two phenomena, found in both Talmudim, is remarkable precisely in its obscurity. In addition, both the Mishna (mShab 1:3–4) and, more explicitly, the Tosefta (tShab 1:14–16) count a number of preservative measures regarding zavim among ‘the halakhot which they formulated’ on that painful day. As we saw above, ad loc. Thus editio princeps. 50 This conclusion was drawn by Epstein in terse language, Prolegomena, 64. 51 See Epstein’s discussion of R. Yoshua’s Mishna ibid. 59–65. 52 Epstein ibid. 127–137 sums up arguments for ascribing Kelim to R. Yose. A similar development appears to exist between mMik 2:4, 7–10 (R. Eliezer and R. Yoshua) and mToh 4:7–13, ספיקותi. e. cases of doubt clearly formulated at Usha (cf the direct reference mMik 2:3!). 48 Cf Albeck 49
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the Talmudim and, more obscurely, the Mishna refer to other halakhot than the reputed 18 decrees. Part of these are said to have been merely discussed while others were subjected to a vote. The preservative Shabbat halakhot, mentioned in the immediate context and clearly associated with the Shammaite-dominated event, may very well have been the object of the vote, at least in part.53 So may a number of purity rules.54 This cannot have been the case with the halakhot of mZav 5:12. The Hillelite, R. Yoshua, not only supported them but formulated them into a rule himself. At most, they could have been among the halakhot which were not disputed. They had been existing already for some time and most probably were agreed on by all. If so, the tradition in the Talmudim must be emended to state that the ten halakhot of mZav 5:12 were not among the 18 decrees, but among the halakhot they formulated ‘on that very day’ with full agreement. This would confirm that the formulation of halakha does not involve its creation. It gives standard form to accepted rules. Thus in all probability, mZav 5:12 was formulated into a rule by R. Yoshua. It is to be seen as a part of R. Yoshua’s formulation of mishnayot which belongs to the oldest layer of the extant Mishna. The halakhot it contains, at least the greater part of them, had been existing within Pharisaic tradition for one or two generations before [69] him. The formulation may have been done at the very end of the Second Temple period, in some connection with the tumultuous gathering hinted at in mShab 1:4.
53 Cf mShab 1:9 and tShab 1:21 with MekRS p149 (MidrGad Exod 20:10, p415, with note by S. Lieberman ibid. p799f). See Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 3: 17f; Goldberg, Shabbat, 20f. Elazar ben Hananya ben Hizkia ben Garon was a Shammaite re. Shabbat: compare MekRY Yitro 7 (p229) on MekRS p148; bBeitsa 16a; PesR 23 (115b). 54 tShab 1:15 mentions a preservative rule on zavim, advocated by Beit Shammai but opposed by Beit Hillel, in direct connection with the event. A Shammaite over-ruling is also recorded in tShab 1:18 (= mOh 16:1) and tShab 1:19 (= mMik 4:1).
Halakhic Letters in Antiquity: Qumran, Paul, and the Babylonian Talmud Sources and Hermeneutics Letters require readers, and this is no tautology. They are a written extension of human life, with all its perplexities of understanding and being understood.* On the one hand letters have something sober and factual. Especially when dated and exchanged between named persons, they are first-rate historical evidence, comparable in ‘hardness’ to coins and inscriptions, contracts and similar datable juridical texts. In this paper I focus on halakhic letters, i. e. letters with halakha for their content, with the following considerations: (1) halakha was (and in certain ways still is) a central determinant of Jewish communal and individual life and identity; (2) therefore, attitudes on halakha have a high social significance, especially for the relation to the Jewish community and tradition; (3) halakha also has a formal, legal aspect, and halakhic texts tend to have a marked documentary value and historical significance. Yet on the other hand it is an illusion, typical of late nineteenth century positivism, that even such ‘hard’ sources offer direct access to historical reality. Reading the sources, including coins, always implies interpretation or conceptualization in the reader’s mind. And to the extent that no one invents the meaning of letters all by his own, it also presupposes teaching and learning to read, hence schools and traditions of interpretation. Earlier in the nineteenth century, philologists called such ruminations hermeneutics: philosophical clarification of the process of interpretation.1 Nor was * [Paper read at a conference on ancient Greek and Jewish epistolography held in 1991 at Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, reprinted from the version published in 2000 in Pawlikowski – Perelmuter, Reinterpreting Revelation and Tradition, 201–230, with slight emendations and some added footnotes. A response by the late Prof. Barbara Bowe RSCJ is printed ibid. 231–237. On the subject see also Taatz, Frühjüdische Briefe (1991), and, exhaustively, Doering, Ancient Jewish Letters (2012). Safrai–Maeir, ‘An Epistle came from the West’ (2003) illuminates the background of the letters exchanged between Jewish Palestine and Babylonia, cf ibid. 506 on letters.] 1 The programme of classical philology in Boeckh, Encyclopaedie (1886) influenced both Jewish and Christian historical scholarship. Ibid. 55, ‘Das absolute Verstehen behandelt die Hermeneutik, das relative die Kritik’ (emphases retained). ‘Kritik’ implied textual and literary criticism, ‘Hermeneutik’ linguistic, stylistic and historical interpretation. Without being
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this kind of self-critical consciousness entirely new. Rabbinic tradition ascribes something similar to the sagacious Pharisaic teacher, Hillel (late first century BCE).2 When a candidate for proselytism objected to the Pharisaic [202] conception of an ‘oral Tora’ – i. e. a flexible, ever-innovating tradition of interpretation alongside the written Tora of old – Hillel told him to sit down and read. When the man was able to read out the letters of the ‘alpha-beth’ he wrote down before him, Hillel asked whence he knew them. The candid answer, ‘thus I accepted faithfully’, summarizes the philologist’s jeopardy. Humans humanly read human letters.3 For this reason some rate the humanities lower than the natural sciences. My intuition is that modern developments in theoretical and quantum physics no longer allow such objectivist illusionism. Philology is an aspect of that highest task of ‘science’ or Wissenschaft: ‘Know thyself.’ This is why I find some of the ongoing discussion on the historical value of rabbinic literature superficial. It is easy to denounce scholars who are impressed by the wealth of information stored in rabbinic literature and learning as ‘rabbino-centric’. The self-critical question whether such hyper-criticism comes closer to philological truth is rarely heard. Here, polemical interests are likely to cause poor observation and biased judgment, and author indexes to be more important than source study. At a more basic level, the same discussion is going on between what one could call a ‘philhellenic’ and a ‘philosemitic’ approach. When studying the concurrent beginnings of Christian historical criticism and of the ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’, one is struck by the total dichotomy between two scholarly movements based on the very same philological principles. Leaving the study of rabbinic Judaism to Jews, Christians in the Tübingen tradition preferred to explain Christian origins from what they termed ‘Hellenism’. A scholar bred in a different culture, such as a Hindu or Buddhist, could perceive at once what we are only beginning to see: the ways in which early Judaism and Christianity are approached in Western academic circles do not have a separate existence but are interdependent at a deeper level. Paradoxically this is precisely because they are viewed as two mutually exclusive systems. On this view, Paul’s theology of the law, perceived as being central to Christianity, must of necessity contradict the essence of Judaism. But this is an intellectual myth, and when trying to shape it into a historical [203] explanation scholars like to take recourse to the panacea of Hellenism. Thus they are blind to the fact that Hellenism was no massive monolith but rather an elegant varnish, and that preposterous we can now add that this needs adjustment in view of the interpreter’s ‘historical’ position. 2 ARN a 15 (p61); ARN b 29 (ibid.); bShab 31a. 3 Similarly, Boeckh, Encyclopaedie, 10 defined philology as ‘das Erkennen des vom menschlichen Geist Producirten, d. h. des Erkannten’ (emphases in original).
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early rabbinism was about as ‘Hellenistic’ as nascent Christianity, including Paul. It took the formidable independence of mind of an Albert Schweitzer to recognize Paul’s background in the then recently rediscovered Jewish apocalypses. This was extended to include the world of rabbinic ideas by William D. Davies and to the dualistic apocalyptics of Qumran by David Flusser. In no way does this exclude Hellenistic phenomena, such as epistolary conventions or popular ideas. If one takes into account the centrality of halakha in ancient Judaism, Philo is a most clear example of the coexistence of Hellenistic thought patterns and a Jewish social identity. This is not just to uphold the incredible elasticity of Paul’s mind. It is stating the varieties of Jewish experience in antiquity, and the inadequacy of any approach which excludes bodies of sources or operates with dichotomies between them. I suspect that Paul mentally had remained much more of a Pharisee than many of his readers (Christian or Jewish) want to accept, precisely in his apocalyptic mysticism. As I found, this quality in no way excluded a halakhic training – any more than in the case of the masters of halakhic literature. R. Yohanan ben Zakkai, R. Yoshua, and R. Akiva are all said to have been initiate mystics. As far as the Qumran scrolls are concerned, there is no way of reading them adequately except using the range of other sources at our disposition. For the sect’s historical identity, this includes Philo and Josephus; for its apocalypticism, the Pseudepigrapha; and for its halakha – rabbinic literature. Although not very known, this last element is important. It is becoming very clear that claims of ‘rabbino-centrism’ must be reviewed in face of the close relations between Qumran and Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition on the level of halakha. In sum, I advocate a theologically astute historical science. Following the aspirations of historical criticism as it developed from classical philology, this would involve studying ancient Judaism including its Christian outgrowth in all its expressions, utilizing all possible sources, and integrating continuous selfcriticism as to the reader’s own position vis-à-vis the religions [204] whose early sources he or she is studying and the traditions of interpretation these religions offer.
A Halakhic Letter from Qumran In 1984 Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell announced the publication of a halakhic letter from Qumran.4 While we are still waiting for this announcement to materialize, Yaakov Sussman and Larry Schiffman each recently published a study on the nature of the halakhic polemics that represent the main body of the 4 Qimron–Strugnell, ‘Halakhic Letter’. [Published in 1994: Qimron–Strugnell, Qumran Cave 4 V, DJD 10.]
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letter.5 The letter, whose beginning is lost, appears to address the ruling priests in Jerusalem. Remnants of six copies were found; apparently it was an important document. Also, it was no longer a letter proper with a one-time address and purpose, but had passed into the category of ‘published’ or ‘public letters’.6 The extant parts first elaborate on the calendar, Shabbat, and festivals, matters of utmost importance in Judaism and indicative of the sect’s separate position. Then some 20 halakhic questions are discussed, all having to do with Temple ritual and the required condition of priests. In the concluding part, the author calls these miktsat maasei ha-Tora, ‘some works of the Law’. This expression, which the editors chose for the letter’s name, in various forms had been known from other Qumran writings, and means actual Jewish commandments.7 It also reminds of the erga nomou about the fulfilment of which Paul has his famous polemics. ‘Some works of the Law’ must be an understatement, for the author appears to consider these commandments crucial. Both Schiffman and Sussman come to remarkable conclusions about the letter’s halakhic positions. They appear to be very similar to the rigid opinions which rabbinic sources ascribe to the Sadducees, in opposition to the much more flexible Pharisees. As is known, rabbinic tradition claims that Sadducee high priests were forced to follow the halakha of the Pharisees, who in this respect were supported by the populace. This claim, which is criticised by some as doubtful,8 hitherto found confirmation mainly in the bleak assertions of Josephus;9 now we must add the evidence of this Qumran letter. But the letter offers more. It also forces us to conclude that Qumranites or Essenes held halakhic opinions very similar to those of the Sadducee elite! How are [205] we to accomodate this with all we know of the very different world view, theology and social position of both movements?10 The important fact for us is that the letter uses the clear and distinct terminology of halakhic polemic, including concepts hitherto unknown and others similar to Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition. I cite some of the latter:11 5 Sussman, ‘History of the Halakha’; Schiffman, ‘Miqsat ma‘aseh ha-Tora’; idem, ‘The Temple Scroll’. 6 For a recent study on publication of letters in antiquity see Trobisch, Entstehung der Paulusbriefsammlung. 7 See Qimron–Strugnell, ‘Halakhic Letter’, n5; Sussman, ‘History of the Halakha’, n62. 8 E. g. Sanders, Jewish Law, passim, cf my review. 9 War 2:162–166; Ant 13:288, 297f; 18:12–17. 10 Schiffman, ‘Temple Scroll’ stresses the slightly separate position of 4QMMT and 11QTemp over against other sectarian documents. Sussman, ‘History of the Halakha’ considers the identity of Baitusin, ‘Boethusians’ (hitherto seen as a Sadducee sub-group) with ‘Essenes’, an explanation proposed in 1953 by Y. M. Grintz and ultimately descending from Azaria de Rossi in 1575 – see Sussman ibid. n141 and Baumgarten, ‘Halakhic Polemics’, 399 n32. For the broader evidence on the identity of the Sadducees see Stern, ‘Aspects of Jewish Society’, 600–612. [See now Regev, The Sadducees.] 11 Qimron-strugnell, ‘Halakhic Letter’, 403–6; Sussman ibid. 27.
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– The term העריבות השמשor ‘sundown’ required for completion of the purification procedure, in rabbinic parlance ;הערב שמשthe rabbinic correlate טבול יוםdesignates one who has immersed but till sunset is in an intermediate state of purity, a more subtle conception reportedly rejected by the Sadducees and, explicitly, by our letter; – The term מוצקות, closely related to rabbinic נצוקmeaning the stream of liquid being poured from one vessel into another, which according to Pharisaic reasoning preserved in the Mishna does not convey impurity (mYad 4:7), but both in the eyes of the Sadducees also cited there and according to our letter does transport impurity; – The words designating halakhic practice al gav or ‘in communion’ with other persons or movements, in rabbinic literature used for example of the ‘peaceful coexistence’ of Shammaites and Hillelites despite their halakhic differences (mYev 1:4).
The expression last mentioned is used in a most remarkable sentence stating that ‘we’ of the sect ‘separated’ ( )פרשנוfrom the majority of the people and refrain from observance ‘in communion with those (others)’.12 This is stating the sect’s separatism, in clear opposition to the Pharisaic pluralism as summarized in Hillel’s dictum, ‘Do not separate ( )תפרושfrom the community’ (mAv 2:4). This draws our attention to the polemical character of the letter, which is born out in dialectical terminology. Characteristic expressions are: ‘But on … we say (‘ ;’)ועל … אנחנו אומריםbut on … we think (‘ ;’)ועל … אנחנו חושביםbut they … (…‘ ;’)והמהand you know … (’)ואתם יודעים. These phrases, and especially the verb אמר, ‘say’, relate to rabbinic [206] dialectics. A parallel is found in Jesus’ polemical statements, ‘You have heard that it was said to the Elders … but I say to you …’ (Matt 5:21–48).13 To sum up, the Qumran letter confirms and enriches our information on the diverse halakhic positions of Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes; it testifies to the very early existence of developed halakhic terminology and dialectics; and it is the hardest possible evidence of halakhic correspondence somewhere in the second century BCE.
A Halakhic Letter to Non-Jews: 1 Corinthians The alternative approach on Paul inaugurated by Schweitzer includes the view that for Paul the law was not per se a negative entity.14 From here it is one further step to go on and ask whether his letters do not contain positive affirmations of Jewish law or in other words halakha, particularly in the parenetic or practically instructive sections. On this basis, I found 1 Corinthians to be an especially resourceful document. This concurs with previous observations on 1 Corinthians Qimron-Strugnell ibid. 402f; Sussman ibid. 38f. Cf also R. Shimon ben Yohai who cites four (non-halakhic) teachings in which he disagrees with his master: ‘R. Akiva interpreted …, but I say …, and I prefer my words over his’ (tSot 6:6–10). 14 On this section see my Paul; introduction ibid. for history of research. 12 13
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as being a letter of outspokenly practical, not to say ‘legalistic’ or even ‘Jewish’ character.15 While 1 Cor 1–4 and 15–16 treat of personal and pastoral themes, chs 5–14 extensively expound a series of practical questions. In part this is in response to written questions: ‘Now as to the things you wrote about …’ (7:1). Further captions announcing new issues appear: ‘Now as to the unmarried …’ (7:25); ‘Now as to the idol sacrifices …’ (8:1); ‘Now as to the gifts of grace …’ (12:1); ‘Now as to the collection for the saints …’ (16:1). In addition to written questions, Paul responds to oral reports, possibly originating from ‘those of Chloe’ (1:11) who might also have brought the letter from Ephesus. This concerns the issues of fornication (chs 5–6), traditions relating to worship (ch 11), and other themes. It appears that the written questions were preceded by other correspondence.16 In connection with the unchastity case (chap. 5–6) Paul refers to a previous letter of his: ‘I wrote to you in my letter …’ (5:9). Furthermore he calls the Corinthian Christians his ‘children’ (4:14) and ‘the seal of my apostleship’ (9:3). This allows us to see Paul as the apostolic founder of the Corinthian church (cf Acts 18:1–18). Thus this previous letter, the questions written from [207] Corinth, and 1 Corinthians itself, show us this ‘apostle of Jesus Christ’ (1:1) in his authoritative relationship with the church of his foundation. Its absoluteness is expressed in his staunch verdict on the perpetrator of unchastity (1 Cor 5:3–5). I stated that Paul’s directives are based on halakhic traditions. This needs qualification, since halakha denotes the law tradition which in its various branches exlusively applies to the Jewish people. Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition also knew the concept of universal commandments, which, while varying in number, from the late second century onwards were termed the ‘commandments of the children of Noah’.17 The hard core of these coincides with the three central commandments a Jew may never transgress even at the cost of his death: the prohibitions of idolatry, unchastity, and bloodshed. In various forms this tradition is as least as ancient as the book of Jubilees, and of course has a biblical foothold in the prohibition of bloodshed and blood consumption given to Noah and his progeny in Gen 9. Apart from rabbinic literature it is also reflected in a range of Greek-Jewish and Jewish-Christian writings touching on relations between Jews and non-Jews. The account in Acts 15 undoubtedly belongs in this category. Here, however, we run into a minefield of exegetical complications. But while proceeding with care, especially when defusing some of these rather outdated explosive devices, we need not lose our basic direction. True, Acts is not Paul Ibid. 69. Hurd, The Origin of I Corinthians remains indispensible. 17 See Flusser – Safrai, ‘Aposteldekret’; Tomson, Paul, 50, 99, 178–181. [The critical reading of the rabbinic ‘Noahide commandments’ by Hayes, What’s Divine does not touch on my argument.] 15 16
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and it portrays Paul in a light different from his own letters. For one thing, we must note the absence in Paul of any reference to the apostolic decree. This does not, however, of necessity imply that Paul was anti-nomian and anti-Jewish; we have noted the theological biases at work behind such views. Having in mind the idea of a minimum of commandments for all found in a variety of Hebrew, Greek-Jewish, and Jewish-Christian writings, and adding Acts to the lot, we are perfectly justified in asking once again whether Paul’s letters too do not contain positive reflections of Jewish law. If so, he would be reproducing some version of the universal code, without mentioning an apostolic decree. The reasons for this silence may vary, from the fantasy of the author of Acts to restrictions imposed on Paul by his conflict [208] with some Jewish brethren over the actual commandments applicable to gentile Christians. An important element which I cannot elaborate on here is the conclusion that all of Paul’s letters including Romans as if addressing gentile Christians only. This conclusion lines up with Paul’s self-description as ‘an apostle of the gentiles’ (Rom 11:13) and his report of the full support given to his ‘gospel to the uncircumcised’ by the Jerusalem apostles (Gal 2:1–10). I think we made our way through the mine-field alive and are free now to address the main question: where is halakha found in 1 Corinthians? Again I skip detailed analysis and jump to the conclusions, listing the halakhot I found in the successive sections of 1 Corinthians: 1. A halakha prohibiting cohabitation with one’s stepmother (1 Cor 5); 2. Several halakhot concerning marital sex, divorce and remarriage (1 Cor 7, incl. v10f, v39: Apostolic tradition, ‘the Lord’); 3. A halakha on sustenance of Apostles (1 Cor 9, ‘the Lord’); 4. A halakha defining when gentile Christians should abstain from pagan food because of idolatry (1 Cor 10); 5. Two halakhot about women during worship, prescribing their headcovering and public incompetence (1 Cor 11 and 14, apostolic tradition); 6. Some halakhot concerning table order implied in the Eucharist tradition (1 Cor 11, ‘the Lord’); 7. Halakhot concerning benedictions, their translation and acclamation, and the ‘representative of the community’ (1 Cor 14).
Extremely interesting conclusions for the history of the halakha, of Judaism in general, and of earliest Christianity should not detain us here – such as the evidence of halakha formulated in Greek; the strict halakha on divorce similar to that found in Qumran; and the halakhic tradition from the apostles and especially Jesus (‘the Lord’) as Paul’s supreme authority. I restrict myself to concluding that 1 Corinthians, a letter addressing gentile believers in Jesus as Messiah, answers questions of practical conduct and in [209] so doing relies on halakhic traditions; that it proves Paul’s persistent positive relationship to Jewish tradition; and that it is a halakhic letter to non-Jews of around 55 CE.
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Halakhic Letters Cited in Rabbinic Literature The main part of this paper confronts material of a quite different disposition. 4QMMT and 1 Corinthians each in their way represent entire, real letters. But the numerous reflections of letters contained in rabbinic literature not only are all very brief but also are part and parcel of the discourse of the rabbinic work at hand. In order to evaluate them correctly, we must adjust our perception to the peculiarities of this literature. First and foremost, a concentration on the correct formulation and teaching of halakha characterizes rabbinic literature as compared with early Christian writings and, to a lesser extent, also with Qumran. It is most explicit in the halakhic collections, Mishna, Tosefta, and the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. This evokes sophisticated educational and administrative frameworks: academies for teaching and formulating halakha and actual jurisdiction, both in Palestine and Babylonia; the existence of recognized legal authorities and procedures of ordination; and standardized administrative, juridical and academic procedures. Then, there is the characteristic brevity of formulation. Concentrating on the essential and the easily memorizeable, the talmudic redactor would tend to omit all epistolary embellishment. Also, the original questions and answers may have been re-worded and adapted to the talmudic discussion in which they are quoted. Talmudic dialectics have a certain conventionalism which opts for familiar and effective formulae. This includes epistolary formulae, the authenticity of which may then be hard to decide on. Yet one sometimes comes across unusual formulations which have the smell of the authentic. Furthermore, there is the tendency towards the legendary, especially in the Babylonian Talmud. It must be soberly distinguished from the possibility that indeed historical events are reflected, especially in the unexplainable or seemingly redundant. Finally, there is the difficult question whether a certain message was ‘sent’ by word of mouth, which was entirely imaginable in a culture of oral study, or in writing. [210] When deliberating on a legal case or studying the text of the Mishna, the Amoraim or later rabbinic teachers would take their cue from the ceremonious oral recitation by so-called tannaim, official memorizers who functioned as oral study-books. But in addition, we hear of notes and letters being consulted, and since these apparently embodied diverse traditions, they caused another complexity for textual critics. These phenomena are discussed by J. N. Epstein in his Mavo le-nosah ha-Mishna, an exhaustive introduction (Einleitung) to the textual criticism of the Mishna on the basis of penetrating redaction, tradition, and reception criticism.18 More central to our theme is the importance of halakhic letters in the rabbinic discussion, especially in the Babylonian academies, 18 Epstein,
Nosah, 673–726; specifically on letters 699f.
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and their influence which sometimes is visible in the literary structure of the end result, i. e. the sugya or talmudic pericope of the Babylonian Talmud. Let us now turn to the texts. The following is based on a partial survey which did not include all of the important – but more inaccessible** – material from the Palestinian Talmud. This is vital since we seem to be dealing with a divergence between Babylonia and Palestine. Therefore my conclusions are provisional. I develop my theory step by step while citing examples. 1. Judging from the extant sources, numerous letters were written from Palestine instructing Babylonian teachers about the correct formulation, interpretation, or decision of specific halakhot from the Mishna or some parallel compilation. Outstanding are the letters written by Rabin (early fourth century) and other so-called nehutei or those who travelled from Babylonia to Palestine in order to study the Palestinian law tradition and check it against the Babylonian. The way these letters are quoted unmistakably reflects the superior authority assigned to Palestinian teaching. Thus we find four traditions (one being cited twice) brought into the discussion in the Babylonian Talmud as follows: ‘But this is how Rabin sent by way of his letter …’.19 To these, seven traditions can be added in which it is merely said that Rabin ‘sent’, but with the name of his authority being added, one of these figuring in three separate contexts: ‘Now Rabin sent in the name of Rabbi so and so …’20 A [211] prominent name in these traditions, as also in many similar traditions ‘sent’ by others than Rabin, is that of R. Yohanan, the late third century leader of Palestinian Amoraim.21 At least one example deserves to be quoted; remarkably, it transmits prayer formulations which are still in use at the present day:22 Rav Hiya son of Rav Huna sent in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: Concerning the arm phylacteries one says, ‘Blessed be He who sanctified us by his conmmandments and commanded us to put on phylacteries’; concerning the head phylacteries one says, ‘Blessed be He who sanctified us by his commandments and commanded us concerning the commandment of phylacteries.’
** [Research for the paper was still done without the help of search machines like BIRP.] 19 bKet 49a = bBB 139a (here interestingly involving Rava’s opposition to the letter, ib 139b, on the basis of yet another tradition); bBM 114a; bBB 127a (see below); bNid 63a. 20 bMen 57b and bHul 49b in the name of R. Yohanan; bSan 51a and bHul 101b in the name of R. Yose be-R. Hanina; bYev 48b and bBB 144b in the name of R. Elai; bBB 135b = bBB 152a = bGit 9b in the name of R. Abbahu who quotes R. Elazar in the name of Rav. 21 See previous n.: R. Yose be-R. Hanina was a student-colleague of R. Yohanan, and R. Elai his most famous student. See also Rav Yitshak bar Yaakov bar Giori in the name of R. Yohanan (bEr 62a; bTaan 29b; bMK 18a; bKet 46a; bHul 101b); Rav Hanina in the name of R. Yohanan (bYev 58a; bMen 79b; bKer 27a); Rav Kahana in the name of R. Yohanan (bYev 46b); and seen next n. 22 bMen 36a; ibid. 42b.
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The inference I am making is that, as in the first five cases where ‘letters’ are mentioned explicitly, so also in the other instances in the Babylonian Talmud, the Aramaic verb shelah denotes ‘to send by letter’. I return to this later. 2. As we see, this phenomenon is evidenced most frequently in Babylonian contexts. In addition to the authority of Palestinian teaching, the geographical distance between Babylonia and Palestine must have been decisive. A couple of times, we find partners in lively legal discussions appealing to ‘a letter from the West’ – i. e. Palestine – confirming their position, without an actual quotation being given.23 However, the phenomenon existed also in Palestinian circles. In one passage of rather enigmatic contents, the Palestinian Talmud cites Rabbi Hizkia as saying in the midst of a halakhic discussion: ‘But I read a letter in which it was written …’24 3. A similar situation leads the Babylonian teachers to ask the fundamental question whether it is allowed to write down halakha at all. In fact this is the major passage discussing the principle of ‘oral’ as distinct from [212] ‘written Tora’, and it evolves on the permissibility of halakhic letters. It involves Rabin’s best known colleague-ambassador to Palestine, Rav Dimi, and has to do with rules for offerings (mTem 2:1).25 … But thus said Rav Yosef: exclude libation offerings from this mishna. – When Rav Dimi went [to Palestine] he found Rav Yirmeya sitting and teaching in the name of Rabbi Yoshua ben Levi (…) Said he: if I found now (someone who is going there),26 I would write a letter and send to Rav Yosef that libation offerings should not be excluded from this mishna. (…) But if he had a letter, would he be allowed to send it? Did not R. Ammi son of R. Hiya bar Abba say in the name of R. Yohanan: Those who write halakhot are like those who burn the Tora (…) Thus taught R. Yehuda bar Nahmani, the interpreter of Resh Lakish: (…) Things oral you may not recite from writing, and things written down you may not recite orally. (…) They said: But was this a new matter? It is different. For behold, R. Yohanan and Resh Lakish were once looking into a book of aggada on Shabbat, and they explained this as follows: ‘A time to act for the Lord, for they undid thy Tora’ (Ps 119:126) – said they: It is better that the Tora be uprooted (i. e. changed) than that the Tora be forgotten from Israel.
This discussion has a theoretical character, for it seems certain that the Mishna itself was committed to writing in R. Yohanan’s days.27 What he and his partner in discussion, Resh Lakish, must have meant is the prohibition, apparently still held in their day, to write targumim and berakhot, vernacular Tora translations and prayers. But halakhot were written on notes stored [213] in the academy’s bShab 115a citing R. Yohanan; the others anonymous: bBB 41b; bSan 29a; bShevu 48b. yNed 6 (39b). 25 bTem 14a–b; cf bGit 60a–b. See Epstein, Nosah, 696, 701. 26 Thus Rabbenu Gershom’s version; cf Rashi. 27 For these and the following remarks see Epstein, Nosah, 692–706. 23 24
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archives and in letters sent to colleagues.28 What remained, in parallel to the prayers and targumim in the synagogue, was the oral recitation during academy sessions – a ceremonious custom which endured into the Gaonic era. 4. Another story mentions letters apparently also of halakhic content which R. Yohanan wrote over the years from Palestine to Rav and Shmuel, founding heads of the two great academies in Babylonia. To the extent that this story, which adds irony to legend, reflects actual history, it shows us a question-answer exchange oriented towards Babylonia, around the middle of the third century:29 All the years of Rav’s life, Rabbi Yohanan was writing to him: ‘To the honour of our Master in Babylonia …’ When he deceased, he wrote to Shmuel: ‘To the honour of our Colleague in Babylonia …’ Said the latter: ‘Doesn’t he know I am his teacher?’ He wrote and sent him the calculation of intercalation for sixty years (…) He also wrote and sent him twelve camel-loads of kashrut questions (…).
5. A case in the Yerushalmi refers us to the Palestinian scene, yet another generation back. Rabbi Hiya the Elder passed a question, addressed to him while in Southern Palestine, on to Rabbi, i. e. Rabbi Yehuda the Prince who resided in Galilee in the early third century. The latter answered: ‘Go and write to them …’ An identical case involving Rabbi follows in the continuation.30 Another interesting story, also from the Palestinian Talmud and involving the same protagonists, allows a glance into the material circumstances of halakhic correspondence. It has to do with debts residing on inherited real estate which the heirs subsequently sold or mortgaged:31 [214] Rav wrote to Rabbi: they transgress (read ‘they act’, or: ‘a letter’) in respect of the opinion of R. Hiya the Elder. For R. Hiya wrote between the lines: If the orphans arose and sold it, one collects (the debt) from their livelihood but not from their nourishment. If they arose and gave it in pledge – as to this pledge I do not know what about it.
This report, however brief, has the touch of the authentic, exactly in its obscurity. The words, ‘I do not know what about it’, are everything but standard. The same case seems reflected in the Babylonian Talmud, but with a different disposition of opinions, a phenomenon met with more often and usually involving imprecision caused by the distance in place and time. The formulation is no less enigmatic:32 Rav appended to Rabbi between the threads (or, lines) (a question): If the brothers gave it in pledge, what about it? R. Hiya was sitting before him and asked: Did they sell or
See esp bHor 14b bottom. bHul 95b, see version in Iggeret de-Rav Sherira Gaon, ed Lewin 81; Epstein, Nosah, 699. 30 yNed 3 (50c). 31 yGit 5 (46d); for עברוןEpstein, Nosah, 699 proposes to read ;עבדוןand Kosovsky, Concordance, s. v. אגרת: אגרין. 32 bKet 69a. For the issue see mGit 5:2; mKet 6:6. 28 29
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mortgage it? (He answered:)33 What does this alter? Whether they mortgaged or sold it, one may levy from the livelihood but not from the nourishment.
Medieval explanations vary from the halakhic question having been ‘appended’ to a letter of payment, ‘stitched between’ a row of other written questions, to having been inserted between a batch of deeds.34 However that may be, and whether it was Rav or R. Hiya who ‘appended’ or ‘wrote between the lines’, it seems that halakhic questions came along with other written information. This informality, not to say ‘marginality’, seems significant. 6. Up till now, we have been reviewing written halakhic questions and answers exchanged between rabbi-colleagues, even if this was not stated explicitly. There are also traces of questions written by communities of simple Jews to what they considered to be halakhic authorities. The men of Kashkar sent to Levi: A curtain, what about it? Kashuta-cucumbers in the vineyard, what about it? A corpse on a festival day, what about it?35
Levi was of the generation of Rabbi and known for his knowledge of Tannaic traditions. The brevity of expression may be the narrator’s or redactor’s work. From the context, the following appears to be meant: Is drawing a curtain allowed on Shabbat? Do kashuta-cucumbers make a prohibited mix with vines? Is it allowed to care for the dead on festival days? This is how the report continues: When Levi died and his spirit went to rest, Shmuel said to Rav Menasya: If you know (what to say), send to them. He sent to them: A curtain – we checked on all aspects of the curtain, but found no aspect of permission (…) The kashuta-cucumber in the vineyard: a (forbidden) mixture (…) A corpse – he sent to them: the dead, let no one care for them (…)
I left out the later comments inserted after each answer, to the effect that more differentiated answers would have been appropriate, and which each time concludes with the words: ‘… but they were no sons of Tora’, i. e. not learned. 7. We have been reviewing rabbinic texts from the generation of Rabbi Yehuda the Prince onwards, i. e. from around 200 CE. There is earlier rabbinic evidence of halakhic correspondence, but it is few and far between. This paucity must be correctly assessed. First of all, the further one goes back, the less detailed the information about the contributors to Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition becomes. This makes it necessary to retroject later situations under the cautious guidance of external evidence. Letters on varying subjects were written in circles close to Pharisaic and early rabbinic Judaism, as is archeologically testified by the Bar Kokhba letters. Written deeds – a genre closely related to halakhic letters – are also well in evidence, both in the literary [216] and the archeological sources. Not in the Munich ms. and the Tosafot clearly knew the Yerushalmi parallel; R. Yeshaya de-Trani (תוספות )רי"דreads ביני חוזיfor ביני חטי. 35 bShab 139a. 33
34 Rashi
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The letters of the former Pharisee, Paul, are certainly a significant piece of evidence in this context. Finally, the Qumran letter shows the existence of a fully developed halakhic epistolary genre another two centuries earlier. This places the early rabbinic evidence in perspective.36 First there is mention of letters from the Great Court in Jerusalem in the tradition cited by R. Yehuda in the Mishna and the Tosefta regarding the capital trial and punishment of false prophets and the like: ‘They used to execute him at once, and to write and send to all places …’37 Next there are the rather extensive Hebrew and/or Aramaic letters reportedly sent by Shimon ben Gamliel and/or his son Gamliel the Second, together with Yohanan ben Zakkai, during the last days of the Second Temple, on the subjects of fourth year tithes and intercalation.38 The authority assumed by the writers is remarkable and reflects their official function. The Hebrew version is most specific here: From Shimon ben Gamliel and from Yohanan ben Zakkai, to our brethren in the South, the Upper and Lower, and to Shahlil and the seven districts of the South: Peace! Let it be known to you … (follows the halakhic message). And we did not begin to write you but our fathers had been writing to your fathers.
A story of one or two generations earlier still, well-attested in the sources,39 involves a halakhic question which could have been sent in writing: Once, Yohanan ben Bag-Bag sent to (etsel) R. Yehuda ben Bateira in Nisibis and said: I heard about you that you say, ‘An Israelite woman who is betrothed to a priest may eat of the heave offering.’ He sent to him: ‘I used to be sure about you that you are acquainted with the inner chambers of the Tora – but to develop a kal va-homer midrash is [217] beyond you? Now as in the case of a Canaanite woman slave …’
The personal names here appear in various generations, and the title ‘Rabbi’ given to Yehuda in all versions may or may not be original. But in view of our external evidence this report is not historically improbable by any means. The distance between Palestine and Nisibis seems sufficiently long to have necessitated a written note to be given to the messenger. In fact, a report on another letter written to this teacher from Jerusalem figures in the Babylonian Talmud: On the Tannaic evidence cf Pardee, Handbook, 183–211. mSan 10:4; tSan 11:7. The formula, כותבין ושולחין בכל המקומות, seems borrowed in bSan
36 37
88b.
38 Cf Pardee, Handbook, 184–196. These are either two sets of letters, one in Hebrew and another in Aramaic, or one set transmitted in both languages. MidrGad Deut 26:13 (p597f) – two Hebrew letters to Galilee and the South about tithes from Shimon ben Gamliel and Yohanan ben Zakkai. The addresses of these letters are very detailed; also, the narrative introduction which involves R. Yoshua is remarkably specific (see also the word חלה, Margulies, MidrGad Deut ibid. note to line 2). tSan 2:6; yMaasSh 5 (56c); ySan 1 (18d); bSan 11b – three Aramaic letters from Gamliel and Yohanan, two on the same tithing issues and the third one written to the diaspora about intercalation. 39 SifNum 117 (p137); tKet 5:1; yKet 5 (29d); bKid 11b.
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‘They sent to R. Yehuda ben Bateira: Peace to you, R. Yehuda ben Bateira, for you are in Nisibis but your net is spread in Jerusalem.’40 8. My impression is that the Pharisaic and early Tannaic teachers wrote on halakhic matters just as their later Amoraic colleagues, though less systematically and with fewer records in the rabbinic sources. We do have the references to legal documents sent through messengers; the few mentions refer to a legal practice which must have been standard and frequent. Second, the Rabban (Shimon ben) Gamliel letters are a clear example of another specific kind, transmitting authoritative instruction addressed to extensive regions; these can be called encyclical letters.41 Nor is their subject accidental: calendar affairs were decided on by the Palestinian Patriarchate till its abrogation by the Byzantine emperor, and we may assume that similar letters were sent all along, certainly to the diaspora.42 Third, we have the case of a practical question sent by a simple community to a distant authority. Fourth, there is the type of letters prominent in the later layers of the Babylonian Talmud: consultation of colleagues or former teachers on the clarification of the (Tannaic) halakha. This type is attested to for the generation of Rabbi Yehuda the Prince and ascribed already to Ben Bag-Bag. Its specifically Babylonian use must therefore be considered a development from a more general phenomenon. [218] This yields the following division: (a) legal documents sent through a messenger by the court or private persons; (b) encyclical letters, most specifically involving calendar decisions by the Patriarch or Great Court; (c) practical questions addressed by isolated communities to reputed authorities; (d) consultation of colleagues or former teachers on the clarification of the (Tannaic) halakha, recorded especially in the Babylonian Talmud.
9. A striking example of the function of letters in the later Babylonian talmudic discussion is found in bBB 127b–129a. The Mishna passage commented on, mBB 8:5, concerns the accordance of the right of primogeniture. After a first survey, two precendents are cited and a collaterally related case is discussed. Then follows this exchange: Rava taught: If two women (of one and the same husband) each bore a son in a (dark) hiding place, they write a declaration to each other (which is the firstborn). Then Rav Pappa said to him: But Ravin sent us (in his letter):43 I asked all my teachers about this problem but they had nothing to say to me; but thus they teach in the name of R. Yannai: If it was known, but they were interchanged afterwards, they write a declaration, but if it was not known, they may not write a declaration. bPes 3b. See Pardee, Handbook, 203f. Similarly Alexander, ‘Epistolary Literature’. 42 yEr 3 (21c) mentions a letter sent by the Amora R. Yose to Alexandria ‘on the cycle of the festivals’ ()כתבנו לכם סדרי מועדות. 43 Thus mss Munich and Hamburg, and Rabbenu Asher. 40 41
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Thereupon Rava made his interpreter (amora) rise, and he taught: What I had been teaching was based on a mistake; but thus they taught in the name of R. Yannai … The men of Akra de-Agma sent to Shmuel: May our Master teach us … [219]
Rava and his younger colleague Rav Pappa were leading Babylonian Sages in the first half of the fourth century. This report, wich appears to come straight from the academy, shows how the authority of the older Rava yields before a letter of Rabin containing a tradition of R. Yannai, a Palestinian Sage two generations earlier. Without any indication, there now follows the correspondence of the men from Akra de-Agma and Shmuel as a next element of discussion. After a discussion of further implications, a series of seven ‘sent’ halakhot is then cited which touch on various subjects and are commented on one by one. Each of these items begins as follows: ‘R. Abba sent to Rav Yosef bar Hama: [a halakha] …’ The combination of an identical address with varying contents gives the impression of a collection of halakhot which was kept by Rav Yosef bar Hama and his successors, possibly in the archives of the academy. R. Abba flourished during the late third century in Palestine, Rav Yosef in Babylonia. The series is rounded off by a formal conclusion: ‘Mar Zutra taught in the name of Shimi bar Ashi: The halakha is as set by R. Abba to Rav Yosef in each of these traditions.’ We see how all of this Babylonian sugya is structured by a written halakhic corrrespondence, among which the question of the community of Akra de-Agma stands out. Mar Zutra was the Babylonian exilarch at the beginning of the fifth century, when the basic text of the Babylonian Talmud approached its completion. Moreover his intervention indicates that R. Abba’s written halakhot were kept in an official archive at that time. These conclusions lead to the suspicion that written notes played a role more often when deciding on the correct halakha, and possibly also in the process of arresting the text of the Talmud and other rabbinic documents.44 10. I must now go into the hypothesis voiced earlier: in the Babylonian Talmud the Aramaic verb שלחoften conveys the meaning of ‘sending by letter’. First of all, this fully parallels Greek ἐπιστέλλειν and the noun which informed the theme of our epistolographic conference: ἐπιστολή. [220] Tannaic Hebrew שלחdoes not, as far as I see, by itself convey the meaning ‘send by letter’ (see, however, notes 47 and 48). But it has another primary meaning which is closely related on the practical level: ‘commission’, ‘send with a mandate’, or ‘send by a messenger’. The corresponding substantives are שליחות for the mission or mandate, and שליחor שלוחfor the messenger or legal agent. Greek parallels here are ἀποστέλλειν, ἀποστολή and ἀπόστολος; there is also 44 Written halakhot were used in Palestine before the Mishna was committed to writing, see bHor 13b on the archives of R. Meir and others, second half of the second century. See also bTem 14a–b; bGit 60a–b, on which see Epstein, Nosah, 696, 701.
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πέμπειν. A messenger would be entrusted with letters or credentials, especially if the commission has a legal aspect and the geographical and social distance is long. Thus Paul says he is going to ‘send’ representatives ‘with letters’ (1 Cor 16:3, δἰ ἐπιστολῶν … πέμψω), just as he himself is said to have received commissioning letters from the high priest earlier in his career (Acts 9:2). This concurs with the Tannaic expression כותבין ושולחין, ‘they write and send by messenger’. ‘Sending’ a message of halakhic content orally would be possible only if the messenger was something of a tanna, a specialist to whom rabbinic traditions were entrusted orally. The so-called nehutei ( )נחותיor travellers who brought traditions from the Palestian academies to Babylonia may have had this quality. But as we saw it was precisely they and their most famous representative, Rabin, who are said to have ‘sent’ written messages, in between their oral reportings. A written document must be involved in the case of missives from the court and similar messages of legal or official halakhic content; we saw some examples. This also appears from the fact that ( אגרתiggeret) means not just letter but ‘deed’ or ‘document’ in general, as expressed in such compounds as אגרת שבוקין or ‘deed of divorce’ issued by the husband (mGit 9:3) or אגרת בקורתor public announcement of the sale of goods circulated by the court.45 Whether שלחmeans sending in writing or orally can often be inferred only from the character of the message and the circumstances. My impression is that certainly the many Babylonian Amoraic references to traditions ‘sent’ from the West must concern written messages. That this was a standard procedure appears, in addition to the references I mentioned already, from some 30 occurrences of the expression that ‘they sent from there’, שלחו מתםor מהתם, i. e. from Palestine to Babylonia, sometimes with the specification: [221] ‘the halakha is according to …’ or ‘not according to …’.46 These were decisory letters referred to in passing without quoting them, and tacitly accepted as authoritative by the disputants. Among the circumstances which help deciding in favour of the meaning ‘send in writing’ is certainly the distance, as I observed several times already. So far the meaning ‘send by letter’ for שלחseems specific of Babylonian, not Palestinian usage.47 Instead, the Palestinian Talmud uses )משליח כתיב( שלח וכתב or simply כתב.48
45 yMeg
4 (75b), R. Yehuda bar Pazzi explains this Tannaic term as אכרזה, announcement. bHul 59b; ibid. 76b; bBB 135b. 47 bPes 3b, ‘they sent’ to R. Yehuda ben Bateira in Nisibis, is a Babylonian adaptation of a Palestinian tradition, cf above at n40. 48 yEr 3 (21c) – both forms, cf Ginzberg, Yerushalmi Fragments, 101; yMeg 3 (74a) – quotes from 8 or 9 non-halakhic letters, both forms; yNed 3 (50c), ;כתבyGit 5 (46d), כתב. yHag 1 (76c) could involve שלחas ‘send by letter’: after two messages exchanged via שלחthe third goes by ( שלח כתבbut see next n!). Significantly bHul 95b about R. Yohanan preserves Palestinian usage. 46 E. g.
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There remain certain margins of uncertainty. Both in the Babylonian and the Palestinian Talmud I found messages involving כתבwhere the parallel has אמר.49 Moreover the ceremonious rensponse which R. Ammi ‘sent to them’, שלח להו, is introduced with the frequent expression בעו מיניה, ‘they asked of him’. How many times do בעו מיניהand corresponding אמר להוconceal the exchange of letters? But these are positive margins: they open the theoretical possibility that many more halakhic letters were actually exchanged than those we hear of. 11. Finally I sort out the epistolary formulae I found in the rabbinic material. (a) An ordinary greeting is found in a rather dramatic episode involving a letter which is not halakhic in content:50 ! הונא חברין שלם:שלח ליה רב ענן לרב הונא, ‘Rav Anan sent to Rav Huna: Huna our friend, peace!’ This concurs with the greetings listed by Philip Alexander in his study on ancient Jewish letters.51 It clearly shows שלחas meaning ‘send by letter’. (b) I cited already the honorific address formulae R. Yohanan is reported to have used when addressing Rav: לקדם רבינו שבבבל, ‘To the honour of our master in Babylonia’; and the variant he used to write to Rav’s colleague, Shmuel: לקדם חבירינו שבבבל, ‘To the honour of our colleague in Babylonia’.52 Significantly, the deferential preposition קדםis used of God in the Targumim. (c) Several times, we find a question introduced with the formula: ילמדנו …רבינו, ‘Let our master teach us …’53 This deferential [222] address was standard to the extent that it caused a definite type of aggadic midrash to be called Yelammedeinu. It typically opens with a simple halakhic question introduced by this formula, which is then used as a peg for ramified aggadic expositions. (d) Questions are typically ended with the question marker ?מהו54 or ?מני55 ‘What about it?’ And, ?מה טיבה, ‘what is its nature?’56 Or, after an exposition of the case, the introduction of the actual question: …מהו ש, ‘What if …’57 This is also attested of questions addressed orally and reflects general usage. (e) R. Ammi’s reported response to a question addressed to him58 starts with the festive opening: מיני אמי בר נתן תורה תצא לכל ישראל, ‘From me, Ammi bar
49 Compare yHag 1 (76c) on yPes 3 (30b); bNid 47b, on the same page!; bBB 127a printed editions vs ms Hamburg. And cf bBB 139a and bShevu 46a, אמרin answer to שלחו/שלח. 50 bKet 69a. The contents quoted are standard, the same sentence appearing four lines up in another reported letter. This makes the greeting contained here stand out. 51 Alexander, ‘Epistolary Literature’. 52 bHul 95b. Doubtless, the difference reflects Shmuel’s non-ordained status. 53 bShevu 46a; bBB 127b; bBB 139a. 54 Typically the three questions bShab 139a. And yGit 5 (46d), R. Hiya writing: איני יודע …מהו. 55 bYev 104b, referring to a יבמה. 56 bShevu 48a. 57 bGit 44a; bBM 114a; bBB 165b 58 The formula בעו מיניהhere appears to imply a written question!
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Natan, Tora goes forth to all of Israel.’59 This certainly reflects the honour assumed by the leader of the Tiberian academy.60 (f) The Rabban Gamliel letters contain two versions of the authoritative instructional introduction involving the verb ידע, for instance ידוע יהא לכם, ‘Let it be known to you’ or מהודעין אנחנא לכון, ‘We make it known to you.’ Also, in the Babylonian Talmud we often find: הוו יודעים, ‘Be ye knowing.’61
Conclusion: Typical Settings of Ancient Halakhic Letters I start with a general observation: in all cases, written correspondence must be seen as a natural extension of communication in person. This is illuminated by the nehutei, the more or less official representatives who in their person were to form the link with Palestinian teaching, and whom we found to be among the better known letter-writers. Letters were an instrument of legal proof or an aidemémoire in the hands of a personal messenger. This holds for all ancient letters, including Paul’s (see 1 Cor 5).62 The increased evidence of consultative letters between colleagues on the Babylonian scene is intriguing and asks for an explanation. It seems that it must be sought in the vicissitudes of the formulation process of halakha and, paradoxically, of the authority of Palestinian teaching. During the Tannaic period, Pharisaic-rabbinic halakha was taking on definite form, but it was far from uniform. Divergent traditions existed side by side, such as that of Sham-[223]maites and Hillelites, without the need to decide (the story of the one-time decision according to the School of Hillel is mere legend).63 At this time, interpretation of previous halakha was a matter of discussion and dissent. But in the later Amoraic period, the Mishna had become the central halakhic document and its correct interpretation a first preoccupation. Meanwhile the Babylonian academies had risen to importance, which involved communication problems and certainly necessitated extensive use of letters. The enduring authority of Palestinian teaching accounted for a predominantly oneway direction of the questions and answers.
59 bGit 44a, ms Munich; cf versions quoted by Rashi, Rabbeinu Asher, and R. Yeshaya deTrani. 60 Of course it echoes Isa 2:3, but through the mediation of tHag 2:9 (and parallels, see Lieberman ad loc.), משם הלכה (תורה) יוצא[ה] ורווחת בישראל. And cf bNed 81a, הזהרו בבני עניים שמהן תצא תורה. 61 Quotations: MidrGad Deut 26:13 (p598) = MidrTann 176; bSan 11b (the Gamliel letters); bRH 20a (R. Yehuda Nesia instructing R. Ammi about R. Yohanan’s usual teaching); bBB 135b, 152a (introducing a decisive teaching of R. Elazar). 62 Similarly Pardee, Handbook, 2 defines a letter as ‘a written document effecting communication between two or more persons who cannot communicate orally’. 63 Safrai, ‘The Decision according to the School of Hillel in Yavneh’.
Halakhic Letters in Antiquity: Qumran, Paul, and the Babylonian Talmud
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Incidentally, this explanation throws light on the relationship between Palestine and the Greek diaspora in earlier days, which involved frequent communication also in the field of halakha; the use of letters and other written documents must have been equally indispensable. The difference is that no Alexandrian Talmud was preserved, nor indeed do we have indications that something similar was developing when Alexandrian Jewry was extinguished during the insurgence of 115–117 CE. Therefore the remarkable preservation of so many traces of halakhic letters within later Amoraic Babylonian tradition seems to be the result of the rise to dominion of Babylonian Jewry and its Talmud during the subsequent Gaonic period.64 It was during this period that the type of correspondence arose which nineteenth century scholars termed Responsa literature. Circumstances differed: the dominance of the Palestinian Patriarchate had been replaced by the Babylonian Gaonate, and the clarification of the Mishna had been summarized into a Babylonian Talmud. From all over the world, questions in all areas of life including halakha were sent to the Geonim in their splendid authority. Their numerous responses came to constitute a new stage in the history of Jewish literature. Two examples which mark the advent of a new era deserve mention: the description of synagogue prayers contained in Rav Amram’s responsum, and the history of talmudic tradition given in Rav Sherira’s letter.65 In one aspect there is a closer comparison with the legal responsa of early imperial Rome, which lent their name to the Gaonic responsa. One of emperor Augustus’ innovations was the investment of a class of authorized [224] lawyers with the jus respondendi: they were awarded an official, strategic function in deciding and formulating imperial law.66 While the aspect of central authority more resembles the Gaonic situation, the creation and accumulation of these so-called quaestiones, responsa, epistulae or digesta and their importance for the codification process reminds of the type of letters so often found in the Babylonian Talmud: inter-collegial consultation on the clarification of halakha. Decisive differences need not be ignored: in the Jewish situation there was nothing comparable to the Emperor’s power, and during the Talmudic period the formulation of halakha could emerge only from the interaction of divergent, inherited traditions alive within the community. Overviewing all the material, my final impression is that early letters of halakhic content such as 4QMMT, Yohanan ben Bag-Bag’s correspondence, 1 Corinthians, Acts 15 and Gamliel’s encyclical letters are diverse and inciden64 [Another major difference, though hard to assess as to its impact, is the development of rabbinic tradition which took place between the floruit of the Alexandrian and the Babylonian diasporas. Safrai–Maeir, ‘An Epistle came from the West’, also point to the sheer distance between Babylonia and Palestine.] 65 [See Preschel, ‘Amram ben Sheshna’; Havazelet, ‘Sherira ben Hanina Gaon’.] 66 See Kunkel, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, 103–108, 113f.
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tal in character and do not yield one category. Starting from the classification I proposed for the halakhic letters preserved in rabbinic literature, the following overall division could be made, here integrating the material from all sources: (a) Legal missives: documents sent via a messenger by the court or private persons (cf mSan 10:4; tSan 11:7; 1 Cor 16:3; Acts 9:2). (b) Encyclical letters: the (Shimon ben) Gamliel letters; the Apostolic letter (Acts 15). (c) Practical questions and answers: to the Jews of Kashkar (bShab 139a); to the Jews of Akra de-Agma (bBB 127b); to the non-Jewish Christians of Corinth (1 Cor). (d) Consultation of colleague-halakhists: especially most of the letters reflected in later Babylonian Amoraic text layers, but in evidence since the beginning of the era. (e) Adhortations on halakhic topics with polemical aim: 4QMMT (on calendar, Temple procedures, priests – against Pharisees); we could add Galatians here (against circumcision and ‘judaizing’ for gentile Christians).
The Halakhic Systems in Josephus: Antiquities and Life, and Against Apion Introductory Attentive readers of the Bible will know that the Pentateuch describes at once the genesis of the people of Israel and its foundational laws. Consequently, Greek νόμος is not an incorrect rendering of Hebrew תורה. Similarly, on another level, Josephus, when writing the ancient history of the Jews, included summaries of the laws contained in the ‘political constitution’ (πολιτεία or πολίτευμα) of the Jews1 – although one also feels here an echo of the particular situation of the Jews in the Roman empire towards the end of the first century CE. Jewish Antiquities contains two summaries of the laws, while a third one is found in Against Apio.2 In addition to differences in length and style between these two works, the halakhic content of the summaries differs. Why? Are we to suppose that Josephus, in spite of his ambition, was negligent in questions of halakha? Alternatively, when approaching Josephus’ oeuvre from a halakhic angle – not yet a common enterprise3 – we also could suppose that the divergence should be taken seriously. Could it reflect two distinct systems? The term ‘system’4 is used here not in the philosophical or rational but rather in the anthropological sense. By ‘halakhic system’ I mean the sum total of the behaviour that characterizes a particular Jewish group or the Jews in general and 1 Ant 1:5 announces the purpose of the work as περιέξειν ἅπασαν τὴν παρ΄ ἡμῖν ἀρχαιολογίαν καὶ διάταξιν τοῦ πολιτεύματος, and similarly in 4:198 presents the second summary of the laws as διάταξις ἡμῶν τῶν νόμων τῶν ἀνηκόντων εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν. That is why the story of Ptolemy II is so important: it is about translating into Greek τὸν ἡμέτερον νόμον καὶ τὴν κατ΄ αὐτὸν διάταξιν τῆς πολιτείας, Ant 1:10. Cf also the custom of referring to Moses as νομοθέτης of the Jews, Ant 1:6 and passim. The same terminology is used in Apion, cf Gerber, Bild, 345–347. 2 See the comparative exposition by Silvia Castelli, ‘Antiquities 3–4’, taking into account also Ant 4:67–75. 3 See the remarks by Hadas-Lebel, ‘Mariages mixtes’, 397. Many thanks to Mme. HadasLebel for accepting the paper for the Paris colloquium late in the day, and for subsequently correcting my French text with great care and expertise. Decisions taken and misjudgments made are entirely mine. [The paper, ‘Les systèmes de halakha du Contre Apion et des Anti quités’, was read at a colloquium about Antiquities in Paris, 2001, published in Siegert–Kalms, Internationales Josephus-Kolloquium, 189–220, and here published in English translation with minor modifications.] 4 The terminology is used in a similar sense, without explaining it, by Schiffman, ‘Temple
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that finds expression in an oral or written form accepted as normative. A crucial question is to what extent a given halakhic system corresponds to a social reality or, to the contrary, represents an idealized reality. In order to find an answer, we must combine two methods: (a) external comparison of the system with the historical data or in other words with the archaeological and literary sources; (b) internal analysis of the literary structure and the rhetorical strategy of the system. As to the external comparison, I believe we are justified in using the tripartition of first-century Judaism given several times by our author himself, provided it be criticized, modified, and amplified.5 It is far-fetched to suppose that Josephus adopted this tripartition gratuitously and identified as a Pharisee without knowing at all what he was talking about.6 Thus in addition to (1) the Sadducees, whom we know only from the writings of their adversaries and whose most prominent group seems to have been the dynasty of Boethus,7 we must reckon with (2) the Essenes and their spiritual centre at Qumran, without neglecting the halakhic variety expressed in their writings, and (3) with the Pharisees who were divided into the two schools of Shammai and Hillel, of which the latter became predominant after the war of 66–70 CE and impressed its stamp on subsequent rabbinic literature. Furthermore, there were (4) minor groups such as the early Christians.8 Finally, most ancient Jews probably never aligned themselves with any ‘movement’ but stuck more or less to their local and ancestral tradition. Significantly, however, both according to Josephus and to rabbinic literature, the Pharisees had the reputation of interacting the most with these popular traditions. We shall come back to this. As to the internal analysis, we have Christiane Gerber’s study into the rhetoric of apologetics of Against Apion, to which I shall come back later.9 I am not Scroll’. [For further reflection, especially about systems of purity laws, see ‘Devotional Purity’, in this volume.] 5 See the important study by Flusser, ‘Pharisäer’. The dating of the description of the three sects in Ant 13:171, κατὰ δὲ τὸν χρόνον τοῦτον, shows Josephus to be aware of speaking about a past situation; in fact, real life reports about Essenes and Sadducees are lacking after the war. Τhe present tense φιλοσοφεῖται in War 2:119, twenty years earlier, could suggest otherwise. 6 Esp Life 10–12. For the context of this identification in Josephus’ career see Cohen, Josephus, 144–153; for the political context in Rome see Barclay, Jews, 362f, 306–317 [and esp Barclay, Apion, xxxvi–xliv]; cf Tomson, ‘Gamaliel’s Counsel’, 586–592. Mason, ‘Was Josephus a Pharisee?’ views the passage too much in isolation, ignoring the halakhic aspect. See also below n60. 7 See the report in tMen 13:21; tZev 11:16. Cf Stern, ‘Aspects’, 604–606; Herr, ‘Boethusians’. [See now the important studies by Regev, ‘Were All the Priests the Same’; idem, The Sadducees and Their Halakhah; Regev–Nakman, ‘Josephus and the Halakhah’.] 8 Josephus must have known much more about them than he lets on, cf his terse information on James the brother of Jesus, Ant 20:200. 9 Gerber, Bild. One wonders whether her classification of recent work on Josephus as either ‘classic’ or ‘modern’ (5f, Per Bilde) is helpful. Thus she considers S. Schwartz, Josephus a ‘re-edition of the classic model’ because in its historical quest Apion is no useful source and hardly reflects Josephus’ own opinions (cf below n105) – although her own ‘synchronic’ or
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aware of a similar work on the Antiquities.10 Its apologetic intention is obvious, even while the author means to write a work of history following the criteria he announces in the prologue, as usual in Hellenistic custom.11 Let us now stake out our area of investigation. As announced, Josephus presents a selection of laws in Ag Ap 2:190–217. Antiquities contains two much longer ones inserted in the paraphrase of biblical history and describing the laws it presents: Ant 3:224–286 (sacrificial cult, purity, and festivals – paraphrasing Leviticus)12 and 4:199–301 (paraphrasing and re-arranging the ‘civil’ laws, especially from Deuteronomy).13 Prefacing the two summaries, the author announces that he will reserve his more detailed remarks for a special tract called περὶ ἐθῶν καὶ αἰτιῶν, ‘On customs and causes’,14 but which he seems not to have finished. It follows that in Antiquities he presents only a selection of laws. In addition to these summaries, there are numerous direct and indirect references to laws scattered across Josephus’ works. I shall content myself with making a comparison between a sample of the laws presented both in the summaries and in the narrative of Josephus, drawing on the analysis of other scholars.15 I ‘intertextual’ analysis shows that rhetorically, Apion is an apology without historiographic ambitions. For the same reason, she rejects the ‘outdated’ approach of Feldman who takes Apion as evidence of ancient Jewish proselytizing. A more balanced literary and historical analysis is offered in Vermes, ‘Summary’. See also below n60. [To date the reference both for literary and historical aspects is Barclay, Apion, with a substantial introduction and a commentary rich in Graeco-Roman material.] 10 Cf however Sterling, Historiography, viewing Antiquities in the perspective of ancient historiography and describing it as ‘apologetic historiography’. 11 Ant 1:1–4; cf Luke 1:1–4. 12 Cf the description in the introduction, Ant 3:224, ὀλίγων δὲ τινῶν ἐπιμνησθήσομαι τῶν ἐφ΄ ἁγνείαις καὶ λειτουργίαις κειμένων [sc. νόμων]. 13 In the introductory part, 4:196–198, Josephus says his contribution was to re-arrange the laws scattered across Moses’ account, νενεωτέρισται δ΄ ἡμῖν τὸ κατὰ γένος ἕκαστα τάξαι, and that these laws do not concern the political life of the Jews, διάταξις ἡμῶν τῶν νόμων ἀνηκόντων εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν. 14 Ant 3:223; 4:198 (cf the list in Doering, Schabbat, 479 n1). In 4:198, he defines these laws by their subject, i. e. private and civil life, οἱ κοινοί ἡμῖν καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους, although the distinction is not too clear. 15 Schröder, Die ‘väterlichen Gesetze’ does not concern us as this this study does not reflect real interest in the halakha. By contrast, Attridge, Interpretation, concludes with two dense pages interesting for our purposes, esp 179 n1, where a range of previous works on the halakha in Josephus are mentioned. He is not correct, as we shall see, in concluding that ‘much of the legal passages in the Antiquities is simply biblical quotation with no appreciable halakhic development’, but one can agree that ‘the most significant divergences from the biblical text serve clearly apologetic ends’. Weiss, ‘Sabbath’, taking his departure from the contradiction between the idealized severity as to the Sabbath in Ag Ap 1:212 and the descriptions in War and Antiquities, concludes (365) without serious analysis: ‘Josephus’ data do not allow us to judge his position in the internal halakhic debates.’ His account would be wholly subservient to the idealization of the Sabbath, as though Antiquities were of the same genre as Apion. [See also Goldenberg, Halakhah in Josephus, which the author kindly made accessible to me when this article was already published; cf also idem, ‘The Halakha in Josephus’. Without stressing the differences, Goldenberg concludes that the presentation of halakha in Apion is
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have profited most of the studies from the 1930s by Samuel Belkin who, building on the work of Ritter and Weyl from the preceding century, has tried to prove specifically that the peculiar summary in Against Apion is based on and Alexandrian source identical with or related to Philo’s Hypothetica.16
Inconstancy of Halakhic References The suspicion of negligence towards the halakha on Josephus’ part is not completely absurd. His references of halakhic relevance sometimes have a degree of imprecision that raises doubts as to his interest or his competence on the matter. As noted by Feldman in a study on Josephus’ interpretation of the Bible, he may unfold impressive ideas, but it would be a mistake to take these too literally.17 My intention is not to highlight the complicated relation between Josephus, who says he is a Pharisee, and the rabbinic halakha – although it is not possible to ignore it. Rather, I am concerned with certain contradictions in Josephus himself. Here are two examples. According to the summary of festal laws in Ant 3:249, the festival of Unleavened Bread lasts seven days, although in the exodus narrative in 2:317 it has been said that it lasts eight days. This could of course reflect the difference between the festival’s celebration in the diaspora and in the land of Israel, but in any case the author does not explain it. Next, Ant 4:245 gives as a rule for marriageable young men, μηδὲ ἡταιρημένης εἶναι γάμον, ‘there must be no marriage with a prostitute’, because the nuptial sacrifice of the latter would be financed by questionable and hence inacceptable means.18 But in Ant 3:276 it already has been stated, more correctly and in accord with biblical prescriptions, that this concerns ‘the double degree of sanctity of the priests’.19 clearly more apologetic than in Antiquities, while both works make use of written repositories of early Tannaic halakha. The extensive analysis by Nakman, The Halakha in the Writings of Josephus largely confirms the conclusions of the present paper as to War and Antiquities, while dealing with Apion in an appendix. Regev–Nakman, ‘Josephus and the Halakhah’, identifing 7 Pharisaic, 3 Sadducean, and 6 Qumranic or similar halakhot in Josephus (mainly Antiquities), conclude on a halakhic eclecticism in Josephus that may have been common in the later Second Temple period. Cf also the comparison between Josephus, the Temple Scroll and rabbinic law on the laws of exclusion from the ‘camp’ by Noam, ‘Josephus and Early Halakhah’.] 16 Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah; Belkin, ‘Alexandrian Source’ is identical with the first half of this study. 17 Feldman, ‘Use, Authority’, 507–518, dealing with ‘Josephus as an Interpreter of Biblical Law’. [Imprecision is also noted by Eck, Rom und Judäa, 39 in Josephus’ way of referring to the political and administrative structures of the Empire.] 18 Cf Ant 4:206; Deut 23:18. 19 τῶν δ΄ ἱερέων καὶ διπλασίονα τὴν ἁγνείαν ἐποίησε. See Lev 21:7. Ant 4:245 μὴ ζευγνύσθω συνοικοῦσαν ἄλλῳ μηδὲ λυπῶν τὸν πρότερον αὐτῆς ἄνδρα is not very clear, but the author seems to emphasize that the wife must be really free. The textual variant λιποῦσαν signalled by Reinach and seriously considered by Thackeray would represent another contradiction, since
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The least we can say is that Josephus is not very precise as to the niceties of the law, which in Pharisaic or rabbinic circles would be no compliment. Belkin found Josephus’ knowledge of the halakha and of Judaism in general to be ‘disappointing’. Philo, however, who is much more modest about his Jewish education, is also much more knowledgeable: ‘On the whole … Philo, the Alexandrian, knew more about Palestinian law than Josephus, the Judaean.’20 Feldman for his part finds this ‘a startling statement’,21 although Belkin is only paraphrasing Moore, who wrote in 1927: ‘Josephus, like most of the aristocratic priesthood to which he belonged, had little interest in religion for its own sake.’22 All of this gives us reason to be suspicious of Josephus’ pretense. Let us now address three topics in the Antiquities that ancient Jews found important and that correspondingly are well represented in all our sources. In every case, the way Josephus expresses himself allows us to situate his views in the Judaism of his day.
Calendar It has become ever more evident that calendar was a hotly debated issue at the turn of the eras. The matter has been a centre of attention since revealing studies by Annie Jaubert,23 who first cracked the code of the solar calendar that is constantly referred to in the Book of Jubilees, then showed that this same calendar already figures in the priestly sections of the Pentateuch,24 and on that basis finally could explain the hitherto unsolvable contradictions surrounding the date of the Last Supper in the synoptic Gospels and John. it would prohibit marrying a divorced woman, which Ant 3:276 correctly counts among the priestly commandments. 20 Belkin, Philo and the Oral Law, 22f, cf Belkin, ‘Alexandrian Source’, 7f. 21 Feldman, ‘Use, Authority’, 516. 22 Moore, Judaism 1: 210f. Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah, 21 (dealing with Josephus’ scarce information on the synagogue) does not share Moore’s suspicion that Josephus was badly informed on Jewish religious life. By contrast Momigliano, ‘Apologia’, 518f stresses ‘la irreligiosità fondamentale di Flavio’. 23 Jaubert, ‘Calendrier’; La date. [For extensive treatment of the calendar issue see now Stern, Calendar and Community. Focussing on the rise of the rabbinic lunar calendar, Stern stresses the plurality of calendrical systems in use during the Second Temple period, including at Qumran, yet he tends to downplay the significance of the 364-day solar calendar; cf J. M. Baumgarten’s review, AJS Review 27 (2003) 316–319, and Beckwith, Calendar, Chronology and Worship, 14f. In any case, Stern squarely confirms Josephus’ attachment to the lunar Jewish calendar. On the 364-day calendar at Qumran and elsewhere see Beckwith, Calendar, Chronology and Worship, 7–102; idem, Calendar, Chronology and Worship, 93–140; VanderKam, Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls.] 24 Baumgarten, Studies, 101–114 rejects this conclusion of Jaubert’s, but his arguments are not accepted by VanderKam, ‘2 Maccabees 6,7a’, 56.
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It seems certain that this same calendar was in use at Qumran, and therefore probably was used by the Essenes at large; after all, Jubilees is not typically Qumranic but seems to have had a larger audience.25 The famous ‘halakhic letter’ from Qumran dubbed 4QMMT begins with the remains of a list enumerating the Sabbaths and annual festivals according to this system.26 It is not built on the rhythm of the lunar months but of the Sabbaths, divided in four trimesters each counting three 30-day months plus one intercalatory day, which makes 91 days or 13 weeks per trimester and a total of 364 days for a year. Some intercalation system must have compensated the annual deficit of a day and a half as compared with the solar year. The net result is that the great festivals never fall on a Sabbath but always on the same weekdays, either a Wednesday (Passover, Sukkot), a Friday (Yom Kippur), or a Sunday (Shavuot). Indeed the Damascus Document enjoins, אל יעל איש למזבח בשבת כי אם עולת השבת, ‘No-one should offer anything upon the altar on the Sabbath, except the Sabbath offering.’27 The upshot is that the calendar issue is inseparable from that of the Sabbath. In fact, it is very likely that the system, apart from its mathematical and cosmological beauty (never mind the minor blemish of the necessary intercalation!), had for its aim to safeguard the sanctity of the Sabbath by preventing it from coinciding with the festivals and their concomitant ‘work’ attached to the sacrifices and rituals.28 By contrast, the Tannaim, as also apparently the Pharisees preceding them, calculated their calendar on the basis of the lunar cycle, making up for the gap with the solar year by the intercalation of a second month of Adar every two years, for which reason this is called the ‘luni-solar’ calendar. The calculation itself and the proclamation of the beginning of months and years were prerogatives of the nasi, the ‘patriarch’, on the testimony of at least two eye witnesses Cf the ever-important study by Albeck, Das Buch der Jubiläen und die Halacha. 4QMMT, beginning with the reconstructed phrase, … ]ושלמה השנה שלוש מאת וש[שים וארבעה ;יוםcf 4Q326 and 4Q327 (= 4Q394 1–2 i–v); see on the subject VanderKam, ‘The Calendar’. Essential things were already said by Talmon, ‘Calendar Reckoning’. Cf also Baumgarten, ‘Halakhic Polemics’, 395–397 on the important document 4Q513; VanderKam, ‘2 Maccabees 6,7a’ and ‘Calendrical Texts’. Total agreement in this respect between the Temple Scroll and Jubilees is concluded on by VanderKam, ‘The Temple Scroll’. [Similarly, Beckwith, Calendar, Chronology and Worship, 87–90. See, however, the critical observations on the composition of 4QMMT by Stern, Calendar and Community, 17, citing L. Schiffman. Following J. M. Baumgarten, Stern interestingly points out the various combinations of solar and lunar calendars at Qumran, doubtless adapting the ideal to reality.] 27 CD 11:17. See discussion in Schiffman, Halakhah, 128–131; Doering, Schabbat, 205– 210. [The ideological background to this halakha is illuminated by the explicit reference to ‘The book of the divisions of the periods according to their jubilees and their weeks’ in CD 16:3f – doubtless the book of Jubilees and its calendar.] 28 Baumgarten, Studies, 113f. [Stern, Calendar and Community, 7, 16 correctly notes the idealist, utopian nature of the 364-day calendar, but never mentions its significance for the sanctity of the Sabbath. Due weight is given to this aspect by Beckwith, Calendar, Chronology and Worship, 28–30, 34f.] 25 26
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of the new moon, just as in present-day Islam (cf Mishna Rosh ha-Shana 1–2). Interesting details are reported in this connection about Gamliel the Elder, Paul’s teacher, and his grandson Gamliel the Younger, the contemporary of Josephus.29 Typically, the Pharisaic sages authorised such witnesses to violate the Sabbath in order to announce the months of Nisan and Tishri, when the high festivals of Passover, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot are celebrated.30 In this perspective it is significant that three times in Antiquities, Josephus dates events in the lives of Moses and his sister Miriam according to the lunisolar calendar using the explicit term κατὰ σελήνην.31 It seems that here our author draws on a priestly chronicle that follows Pharisaic tradition. Altogether revealing for Josephus’ position on this score is the stipulation in Ant 3:248, In the month Xanticus, which with us is called Nisan and begins the year, on the fourteenth day by lunar reckoning (κατὰ σελήνην), the sun being then in Aries, (our lawgiver), seeing that in this month we were delivered from bondage to the Egyptians, ordained that we should year by year offer the same sacrifice which, as I have already said, we offered then on departure from Egypt – the sacrifice called πάσχα.
The spring month Nisan is the first month as regards festivals, as in the Mishna,32 and its days are counted by the moon. Similarly, a little earlier (3:239f) Josephus has already explained that Yom Kippur is celebrated in the same month as Rosh ha-Shana, δεκάτῃ δὲ τοῦ αὐτοῦ μηνὸς κατὰ σελήνην, ‘on the tenth of the same lunar month’ – ‘the seventh month which the Macedonians call Hyperberetaeus’, i. e. Tishri.* Josephus’ position clearly differs from the Qumranites, who reported that once ‘The Wicked Priest … during the rest of the day of Atonement … appeared to them, to consume them and make them fall on the day of fasting, the Sabbath of their rest’ (1QpHab 11:6–8). Apparently this royal high priest – obviously one of the 29 mRH 2:5 (on Gamliel see Acts 5:34; 22:3); mRH 2:8–9; see Herr, ‘The Calendar’, 845– 857. Cf also the official letters on intercalation reputedly sent by Rabban (Shimon ben) Gamliel from the Jerusalem Temple, tSan 2:6; ySan 1 (18d) = yMaasSh 5 (56c); bSan 11b; MidrTann p175f = MidrGad Deut 26:13 p597f. [On the calendrical procedures of the Tannaim see Stern, Calendar and Community, 157–164, and, criticizing Stern’s ‘minimalist’ approach, Beckwith, Calendar, Chronology, and Worship, 7–14.] 30 mRH 1:4–6. 31 Ant 2:318; 4:84; cf 4:78, νουμηνίᾳ κατὰ σελήνην. Josephus uses νουμηνία 16 times for indicating a date. [On νουμηνία and its meaning in Josephus see Stern, Calendar and Community, 21 and n94.] 32 mRH 1:1 ולרגלים. [Following the Bible and hence the Mekhilta: החדש הזה לכם ראש חדשים, Exod 12:2.] * [Stern, Calendar and Community, 34–38, cf 28, establishes that Josephus’ lunar reckoning prolongs the equalization of the Babylonian and Macedonian lunar calendars introduced under the Seleucids, at a time when the solar Julian calendar had become predominant also in the eastern Empire. In addition to being a Pharisaic feature, this could be part and parcel of his Hasmonaean family tradition, see next section.]
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Hasmonaeans – had clamped down on them from Jerusalem while following the luni-solar calendar of the Pharisees, probably precisely in order to impose the correct calendar on them. It is important to recall that Josephus was of noble priestly lineage and boasted Hasmonaean descendance through his mother (Life 1–6). On this crucial issue, he shows no halakhic negligence at all. As concerns Temple ritual, Josephus follows the Pharisaic calendar, as did the Hasmonaean kings.
Sabbath This is another issue of great importance in Second Temple Judaism. We are fortunate to possess the thorough monograph of Lutz Doering, Schabbat. Dealing comparatively and almost exhaustively with all of pre-rabbinic literature as concerns the laws and usages of the Sabbath, its publication was an event. Also, links between Josephus and the other ancient sources are always clearly indicated, making it a useful reference work. Nevertheless, it does not help us on two points. Firstly, it does not take sufficiently into consideration that the subject of the Sabbath is linked to that of the calendar, as we have seen.33 Secondly, it consistently calls into question any possible link between the Pharisees and rabbinic literature. We have certainly seen too many studies that harmonize the two in axiomatic fashion. What we would need is a systematic examination of all available sources to establish once and for all the precise relationship between the halakha of the Pharisees and that of the rabbis. On the other hand, if we cannot envisage a historical relationship between the two as long as its existence has not been ‘proved’, the relation between Josephus and the Pharisaic halakha cannot be considered either. In my view, Doering’s impressive work errs on the side of caution vis-à-vis the historical use of rabbinic literature. Having said that, we shall gratefully delve in the treasures of information it offers.
1. The Offering of the First Sheaf and the Date of Pentecost34 In Lev 23:11 it is stated that the first sheaf of the grain harvest must be offered to the priest who should ‘raise’ or ‘wave’ ( )והניףit ‘on the day after the Sabbath’ ()ממחרת השבת. Similarly, v16f stipulates that exactly seven weeks must be counted from this date, ממחרת השבת, until the day of Shavuot. Josephus, in paraphrasing these laws, makes it perfectly clear how he understands the ambiguous expression (Ant 3:250–252): 33 Doering, Schabbat, 505 n112 only mentions the five occurrences of the phrase κατὰ σελήνην. 34 Doering, Schabbat, 504f.
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On the second day of unleavened bread, that is to say the sixteenth, our people partake of the crops which they have reaped and which have not been touched till then, and esteeming it right first to do homage to God, to whom they owe the abundance of these gifts, they offer to Him the first-fruits of the barley in the following wise … When the seventh week following this sacrifice has elapsed – these are the forty-nine days of the ‘weeks’ – on the fiftieth day (τῇ πεντηκοστῇ), which the Hebrews call ἀσαρθά [cf עצרתא, atseret], the word denoting ‘fiftieth’…
Thus the waving of the first sheaf falls exactly on the sixteenth day of the month, even if it were a Sabbath, and the same goes for Shavuot forty-nine days later. Clearly, Josephus interprets the phrase ממחרת השבתas, ‘on the day after the festival’. This tallies with the halakha that according to the Mishna prevailed against the priestly dynasty of Boethusians:35 R. Yishmael says, One sheaf of three se’a was brought on the Sabbath … R. Hanina the Deputy of the priests says, on Sabbath it was harvested by a single person, with a single sickel … How did they do it? The agents of the court departed on the eve of the festival … On Sabbath they said to them: This Sabbath? – They answered: Yes! – This Sabbath? – They answered: Yes! – Shall I cut? – And they said: Cut! – Shall I cut? – And they said: Cut! – Three times for every part. And why so much ado? Because of the Boethusians who said, The harvesting of the sheaf is not done on the day after the festival ()אין קצירת העומר במוצאי יום טוב.36
According to the Boethusians, the offering of the sheaf should be done either the day after the Sabbath in the week of Unleavened Bread, or the one after it. In consequence, the festival of Shavuot would always fall on a Sunday, as another rabbinic clause puts it, ‘because the Boethusians will allow Atseret to fall only after the Sabbath’, לפי שאין ביתוסין מודין שתהא עצרת אלא אחר שבת.37 Their motive was doubtless to safeguard the Sabbath, and by consequence they had to interpret the phrase ממחרת השבתas, ‘the day after the Sabbath’ (during or after the festival). It is possible that they agreed with the Qumranites in this respect.38 mMen 10:1–3. Curiously, this tradition mentions Temple ceremonies in the past tense, as do tractates Middot and Tamid. In mMid 2:5 and 5:4, we seem to be concerned with the testimony of R. Eliezer ben Yaakov while Abba Shaul disputes a detail. See Epstein, Prolegomena, 27–36. 37 tRH 1:15; scholion MegTaan 8 Nisan (Lichtenstein p324). See Doering, Schabbat, 518– 520 for the two interpretations. The second (proposed by Y. Sussman and S. Leiman) comes down to an accord between Boethusians and Qumranites, see next note. The phrase עצרתis equivalent το Aramaic ἀσαρθὰ/ עצרתאin Ant 3:252. On a benevolent view, the clause σημαίνει δὲ τοῦτο πεντηκοστήν could be not ‘one of the author’s loose etymological statements’ (Thackeray ad loc.) but an explanation for the un-initiated. 38 The fragment 4Q513 refers to a polemic over הנף עמר, which suggests a specific Qumranic position on this point, see Baumgarten, ‘Halakhic Polemics’, 395f and Doering, Schabbat, 249f. I think Doering ibid. 521 is right in supposing that the Boethusians followed the 364 day calendar by tradition and that they adapted their interpretation of ממחרת השבתaccordingly. After all the halakhic letter 4QMMT appeals to the priestly administration of Jerusalem, which with35 36
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In contrast, the halakha of the rabbis, which claims to continue the interpretation of the Pharisees,39 lays down, as does Josephus, that the counting of the forty-nine days begins precisely on the day after the first day of the festival, even on a Sabbath. The same interpretation is found with explicit emphasis in Philo,40 as also in the Septuagint.41 It follows that Josephus takes the Pharisaic side of the debate. All too cautiously, Doering concludes that the cited passage of Josephus ‘leaves open the possibility’ that the waving of the sheaf and the festival of the 50th day fall on a Sabbath, without explicitly mentioning the possible conflict with the Sabbath. He does not sufficiently take into account that Josephus dates these festivals explicitly according to the luni-solar calendar.42
2. Other Festive Rites Coinciding with the Sabbath When in Ant 3:237 describing the daily sacrifice offered mornings and evenings, עולת תמידor θυσία ἐνδελεχισμοῦ,43 Josephus states that that on Sabbath, δύο σφάττουσι, ‘they slay two (on each occasion)’, apparently meaning the daily offering and the Sabbath supplement each time. Given that Josephus follows the luni-solar calendar, it is clear that he assumes that the tamid is also sacrificed on Sabbath. Doering, ignoring the importance of the calendar, is mistaken in qualifying Josephus’ phrasing as ‘remarkably imprecise’ (503). Similarly, in Ant 3:24544 Josephus does not see any problem with the Sabbath when explaining that during Sukkot the Jews celebrate eight days ‘bearing in their hands a bouquet (εἰρησιώνην) composed of myrtle and willow with a branch of palm, along with fruit of the persea’.45 Following the luni-solar out doubt included the Boethus family, to stick to the traditions shared in common. See for the other opinion Talmon, ‘Calendar Reckoning’; Herr, ‘The Calendar’, 858–860. 39 See MegTaan ibid. (above n37) 324f for the debate between ‘a Boethusian and Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai’. The latter is cited as spokesman of the Pharisees over against the Sadducees in mYad 4:6. 40 Spec leg 2:162, 176, ἑορτὴ δὲ ἐστιν ἐν ἑορτῇ ἡ μετὰ τὴν πρώτην εὐθὺς (!) ἡμέραν … ἀπὸ γὰρ ἐκείνης ἡμέρα πεντηκοστὴ καταριθμεῖται ἑπτὰ ἑβδομάσιν. 41 Lev 23:11, 16 LXX interprets both times with explicit stipulation, ממחרת השבת יניפו הכהן – τῇ ἐπαύριον τῆς πρῶτης ἀνοίσει αὐτὸ ὁ ἱερεύς, and: עד ממחרת השבת תספרו חמשים יום – ἕως τῆς ἐπαύριον τῆς ἐσχάτης ἑβδομάδος ἀριθμήσετε πεντήκοστα ἡμέρας. 42 In consequence, his correct observation on p505 that Josephus gives both an absolute and a relative date is a shot in the dark. 43 Exod 29:38–42 LXX. Josephus uses this technical terminology three times (Ant 11:77; War 1:32; 6:94), but, curiously, not in this ‘halakhic summary’. 44 Not mentioned by Doering, Schabbat. 45 Feldman, ‘Use, Authority’, 507 notes a contradiction with Ant 13:372, where the fruits with which the king is bombarded by the people during Sukkot is called κιτρίος, citron, as in the Talmud, bSuk 35a (but the discussion of the Tannaim there makes one think of a mixture of earlier traditions). Another version of the story is found in rabbinic tradition: a Boethusian
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calendar, he implies that the waving of the lulav is also done on Sabbath. Here, once again, the rabbis register the opposition of the former Boethusians to their own tradition on this point: ‘The lulav overrules the Sabbath at the beginning (of Sukkot), the willow branch at the end. Once the Boethusians put stones on them the day before Sabbath, but the people discovered them and took them away.’46 It is in this context that rabbinic litterature claims that the Pharisees controlled the Temple ritual, while the Sadducees willy-nilly followed the Pharisaic regime. For instance, a hoary Boethusian is quoted as passing the bitter-sweet comment to his foolhardy son, ‘Although we interpret it so, we do not act so, for we hearken to the words of the hakhamim.’47 Undoubtedly there is rabbinic exaggeration in the story, but significantly, Josephus for his part also declares about the Pharisees that ‘all prayers and sacred rites of worship are performed according to their exposition’, and that the Sadducees, ‘whenever they assume office, though they submit unwillingly and perforce, yet submit they do to the formulas of the Pharisees, since otherwise the masses would not tolerate them.’48
3. The Preservation of Human Life on Sabbath49 In the Qumran texts, the synoptic tradition, and rabbinic literature, the risk of a conflict between the Sabbath and the ‘preservation of life’ – פיקוח נפשin rabbinic parlance – is a well-known and oft-debated theme.50 Similarly, as shown by Doering,51 Philo was aware of the problem and expressed it dramatically. But Josephus is hardly interested. Apart from the famous story of the decision to no longer abstain from self-defence in case of an attack on Sabbath that he takes from Maccabees,52 he does not mention the problem in his summaries of the laws, but only in the framework of his grand theme, the Jewish war against the bombarded with ‘citrons’, אתרוגים, by the people, tSuk 3:16 (cf bSuk 48a: a Sadducean). Josephus seems to draw on a similar tradition in Ant 13:372. 46 tSuk 3:1; bSuk 43b; ySuk 4 (24b) = yShev 1 (33b). ‘The branch of the willow and the water libation’ are counted as הלכה למשה מסיני, ancient non-biblical halakha (see for the terminology Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 180–185), and it is likely that this would be a reason for the Boethusians to dispute them. 47 tKipp 1:8; yYoma 1 (39a); bYoma 19b – commenting on mYoma 1:5. In the parallel sources, Sadduceans and Boethusians are alternatingly mentioned, see Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah, ad loc. 48 Ant 18:15, 17. See on the passage Rajak, Josephus, 29f; Doering, Schabbat, 524. 49 Cf Doering ibid. 498–502. 50 For the term see Doering ibid. 204. In its extant form, the Gospel of John does not consider the Sabbath a valid commandment (see John 5 and 9), any more than the Mosaic law in general, except in 7:22–24, an isolated passage that can be considered a remnant from the tradition Jesus tradition; cf Doering ibid. 473–475. [See now ‘An Alienated Jewish Tradition’, in this volume.] 51 Doering ibid. 354–356. 52 Ant 12:277; 1 Macc 2:41f.
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Romans. This reinforces the doubts of Moore and Belkin as to his claims of being an interpreter of the law. Still in the context of combat, War 1:146 mentions in passing the principle of saving life in order to explain the behaviour of the Jews: ὑπὲρ μόνου γὰρ τοῦ σώματος ἀμύνονται τοῖς σαββάτοις, ‘for on the Sabbaths the Jews fight only for their bare life’. The besieged Jews were in a difficult position: the Romans led by Pompey continued to build their earthen ramp against the wall of Jerusalem, but shrewdly refrained from direct combat because they knew that in that case the Jews would defend themselves. In the parallel in Ant 14:63f, Josephus even gives a halakhic definition: ἄρχοντας μὲν γὰρ μάχης καὶ τύπτοντας ἀμύνασθαι δίδωσιν ὁ νόμος, ἄλλο δὲ τι δρῶντας τοὺς πολεμίους οὐκ ἐᾳ, ‘for the Law permits us to defend ourselves against those who begin a battle and strike us, but it does not allow us to fight against an enemy that does anything else.’ This shows the author to be familiar with Pharisaic halakha, as we shall still see, without giving his proper opinion. The same impression arises from an episode from Josephus’ short military career that he tells in two different places, betraying a rather restrictive attitude (War 2:634; Life 159–161).53 Garrisoned in Tarichaea on Sabbath eve, he faced a dilemma. A Roman cavalery unit approached when he had already sent off his troops to their lodgings. As scholars have justly observed, Josephus gives different explanations in the two passages, although they could complement each other. In War he writes that he had sent his soldiers ‘on a foraging excursion’ (ἐπὶ σίτου συλλογήν), while in Life he says this was out of the desire ‘that the Tarichaeans should be spared any annoyance from the presence of the military’ (ὑπὸ τοῦ στρατιωτικοῦ πλήθους ἐνοχλεῖσθαι). It seems he wanted to avoid that the Tarichaean Jews had to provision the soldiers on the Sabbath. On the other hand, in War 2:634 Josephus adds that ‘on the following day … he could take no action owing to the restrictions of the Sabbath’ (ἐπέχοντος σαββάτου). In Life 161, this is the added explanation: the Jewish law prohibits to ‘bear arms’ on Sabbath, ‘however urgent the apparent necessity’. This does not necessarily contradict the overriding principle of safeguarding human life. In light of the explanation in Ant 14:63f cited above it could seem that the situation was urgent, but that the Romans had not yet actually attacked. In fact this position is not far from the halakha in the Tosefta stating that ‘one goes out with arms … and violates the Sabbath’ ( )יוצאין בזיין … ומחללין את השבתonly in case the non-Jewish enemy approaches with aggressive intentions (tEr 3:5–7).54 On this issue, the Mishna records a disagreement between R. Eliezer who allows bearing arms on Sabbath ‘because they are his adornment’ and his colleagues 53 Doering, Schabbat, 501 calls this episode ‘revealing for the diachronic study of Josephus’ attitude on Sabbath and war’, but does not elaborate. 54 Similarly, the important study by Herr, ‘Problem’, 255f. Ibid. 355f Herr minimises the divergence of the position of R. Eliezer, emphasizing his disagreement with Epstein (see next note).
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who prohibit it because Isaiah has prophesied that in the future world ‘no swords are born’ (mShab 6:4; Isa 2:4). Elsewhere it has been shown that the attitude of R. Eliezer agrees with the school of Shammai which was also characterised by a more militant attitude towards the Romans, while his colleagues represent the more peace-loving school of Hillel.55 I doubt whether it is justified to reduce Josephus’ explanation to his more pronounced attitude in Life presenting himself as a devout Jew. Even if the explanation given in War is more insignificant, the behaviour to which it attests is the same: he did not want to prepare a military manoeuvre on the Sabbath. It seems that on this issue the author, a member of the Jerusalemite aristocracy, inclined towards the Hillelite interpretation, the more so if we remember his implacable criticism of the war party which at a given point he calls ‘the fourth philosophy’.56
Divorce The same can be said on account of a totally different subject, which was as fundamental as it was disputed in ancient Judaism: divorce. In his second summary of the law, while paraphrasing Deuteronomy, Josephus states: He who desires to be divorced from the wife who is living with him for whatsoever cause – and with mortals many such may arise – must certify in writing that he will have no further intercourse with her; for thus will the woman obtain the right to consort with another … (Ant 4:253)
The phrase ‘for whatsoever reason’, καθ’ ἁσδηποτοῦν αἰτίας, reflects an expert commentary on Deut 24:1–4. Remarkably, Philo gives a very similar formula in his commentary on the same passage: a woman can be repudiated καθ’ ἣν ἂν τύχῃ πρόφασιν, ‘for any cause whatever’.57 We know that on this issue a very restrictive opinion was apparently shared by the Qumranites and the disciples of Jesus, who in practice rejected any possibility of divorce.58 By contrast, rabbinic 55 Cf Tomson, Paul, 160–163, 173–177; add a reference to Epstein, Prolegomena, 278. For war on Sabbath and pertinent bibliography see Herr, ‘Problem’; Doering, Schabbat, 537–565; cf Schimanowski, ‘Bedeutung’, 102–111. 56 Ant 18:23; cf Tomson, ‘Gamaliel’s Counsel’, 588f [in this volume, 606; also ‘Sources on the Politics’, 578.] While conceding that Josephus ‘corrects’ his attitude to the Romans in hindsight, I think that Krieger, ‘Josephus – ein Anhänger’ exaggerates, and that Josephus has never been a partisan of the Shammaite leader, Elazar ben Hananya. Josephus’attitude during this episode is much stricter (!) than that of the Shammaites. 57 Spec leg 3:30. The same interpretation is reflected in Matt 19:3, κατὰ πᾶσαν αἰτίαν. See Tomson, Paul, 108–116 for the halakhic background and the disposition of opinions in the NT. For another interpretation see Bockmuehl, Jewish Law, 17–21. [More elaboration in this volume, ‘Divorce Halakha’.] 58 CD 4:19f; 11QTemp 57:17–19; Mark 10:2–12; Luke 16:18; 1 Cor 7:10s.
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opinion was divided on the interpretation of Deut 24:1–4, the school of Shammai acknowledging divorce in the case of sexual transgression and the school of Hillel maintaining that that divorce can be given on whatever reason.59 Once again, Josephus’ autobiography confirms his proximity to Hillelite tradition. In Life 426 he reveals that he has remarried having divorced his second wife, μὴ ἀρεσκόμενος αὐτῆς τοῖς ἤθεσιν, ‘being displeased at her behaviour’.
Provisional Conclusion: The Halakhic System of Antiquities and Life The preceding is no sufficient basis for a precise halakhic profile of Josephus. In addition to the provisory character of my investigations and the imprecision of the data we noted in our author, we have to admit that there are a mass of things about Josephus and his time that we will forever remain ignorant of. Furthermore, we need to do some more reflection on the phenomenon of halakhic systems. As for Josephus, we have come to the conclusion that he largely stuck to the halakhic system of the Pharisees.60 This is confirmed by many details, but Feldman has demonstrated that there are also numerous examples where he differs from rabbinic halakha.61 What are we to make of that? Feldman concludes on a ‘checkered picture’ and considers a number of possible explanations.62 For instance, it is not impossible that Josephus has used different sources, possibly including fluid oral traditions.63 We must also consider the possibility that halakhic data have been adapted to the rhetorical strategy of a given work. In this respect, we should envisage the diversity of ancient Judaism, both in a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. Diachronically, the transformation of Pharisaic tradition into rabbinic literature must have involved numerous mutations. Indeed, we must consistently reckon with a discrepancy between the Pharisaism Josephus can have known and the halakha of the time of the Mishna. mGit 9:10; SifDeut 269 (p288). Cf a similar assessment in Rajak, Josephus, 33–35, 224 and, emphasizing the halakhic aspect, Hengel–Deines, ‘E. P. Sanders’ “Common Judaism”’, 29–35. In this perspective, Gerber’s verdict in Bild, 58 that the view that Josephus was a Pharisee is ‘obsolete’, is at least premature. Baumbach, Pharisäerdarstellung moves on the political level. [But see below n118, and ‘LukeActs, Josephus’, in this volume.] 61 Feldman, ‘Use, Authority’, 507–510 (18 convergencies, including 4 in Apion; 18 differences including 5 in Apion). Cf Revel, ‘Anti-Traditional Laws’ (9 divergencies from the ‘tradition’, including 1 in Apion). Both studies do not distinguish betweem the halakha in the successive Palestinian documents (Mishna, Tosefta and Palestinian Talmud) and the rather different tradition of the Babylonian Talmud. 62 Feldman ibid. 510–518. 63 Feldman ibid.; for Apion cf Gerber, Bild, 100–118; for War and Antiquities, Attridge, ‘Josephus’, 193f, 211–216. See also Vermes, ‘Summary’, 301f, the long n50. 59 60
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So much has been demonstrated by Gedalyahu Alon in the case of Philo for a number of halakhic samples.64 Synchronically, we have to take into account not only the divergencies between Sadducees (or Boethusians), Essenes, and Pharisees, but also the fact that these movements, as far as we can know, show an amount of internal diversity. This also concerns the Essenes,65 but most of all the Pharisees. We know of a couple of hundred halakhot that were disputed between the ‘schools’ of Shammai and Hillel.66 In addition, indications are not lacking of individual traditions that cannot readily be identified with either school.67 A degree of diversity was even intentional, witness the rabbinic reports in praise of faithfulness to one’s own tradition and tolerance towards that of others.68 The Mishna preserves the following testimony about the disputations of Shammaites and Hillelites concerning the laws of marriage and purity, Although the ones prohibited and the others allowed, the ones disapproved and the others approved, the House of Shammai did not refrain from marrying women of the House of Hillel, nor the House of Hillel those of Shammai. In spite of all the laws of purity and impurity where the ones declared impure and the others impure, they did not refrain from preparing dishes in purity with one another. (mYev 1:4)
Moreover the famous ‘decision according to the school of Hillel’ did not materialize once and for all but rather represents a process over several generations.69 On a closer look, we might have to speak of an infinite number of ‘halakhic systems’, precisely within the Pharisaic movement. It is an error to represent the Pharisees as a monolithic group.70 All of this is extremely important for Josephus’ position in relation to the Pharisees of his day and their halakha. First of all, we have to envisage the halakhic domains that characterised the Pharisees externally, i. e., in relation to Sadducees, Boethusians, or Essenes. Internally, we must take into account the differences in the details, such as those between Shammaites and Hillelites. In this way we could speak of a Pharisaic ‘matrix system’ distinct from Essenes
64 Alon, ‘On Philo’s Halakha’, reviewing five halakhot, criticizing Heinemann, Bildung. Safrai, Wallfahrt, 286f adds one halakha while referring to Belkin, Philo, 61–63. Cf the critical résumé in Doering, Schabbat 315–324. 65 Cf Schiffman, ‘Temple Scroll’. 66 Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 185f. 67 E. g. R. Gamliel the Younger, mBer 2:5–7 (cf Safrai, ‘Decision’); R. Tarfon, mBer 1:3. 68 Cf Hillel à propos the tradition he had received, mEd 1:3. [Regev–Nakman, ‘Josephus and the Halakhah’ take the following mishna as further evidence of the halakhic eclecticism in the later Second Temple period.] 69 Safrai, ‘Decision’. 70 As does Sanders, Jewish Law; cf Tomson, ‘Review of E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law’; Hengel–Deines, ‘E. P. Sanders’ “Common Judaism”, 39–41. [Cf ‘Devotional Purity’, in this volume 110.]
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and Sadducees, and, at a lower level, of the Shammaite and Hillelite systems and their possible sub-systems. Precisely that is the situation we are facing. In view of the calendar, the Pharisees distinguished themselves clearly from the Essenes and from the Boethusians, who apparently must be associated with the Sadducees. In this respect, the system of Antiquities and of its autobiographical extension, Life, can unequivocally be located in the Pharisaic camp. However, the Pharisees disputed many questions to do with Sabbath and festivals, and we would have to range Josephus somewhere in these debates. We have seen that on the issue of military action on the Sabbath day, his system appears to be more Hillelite than Shammaite. The same goes for the equally much disputed question of divorce. The provisory conclusion – which would have to be tested on a larger and more systematic set of data – is that Josephus did not lie when qualifying himself as a Pharisee. The differences between the halakhic system of Antiquities and Life and that of the Mishna could in large part be explained by the divergencies between the various Pharisaic systems in Josephus’ time and by the subsequent evolution of rabbinic halakha towards greater uniformity.71
The Summary of the Laws in Against Apion As distinct from the halakhic system reflected in Antiquities and Life, that of Against Apion does not fit in the Pharisaic matrix at all. This raises the question what system is expressed here, where Josephus could have borrowed it, and why. Leaving an analysis of the structure of this work on one side for the moment, I want to review some remarkable laws found here, beginning with two legal principles that are lacking in Antiquities, although its summaries of laws are much greater in size and detail. a. General Applicability of the Death Penalty, Ag Ap 2:21572 ζημία γὰρ ἐπὶ τοῖς πλείστοις τῶν παραβαινόντων ὁ θάνατος, [ἂν μοιχεύσῃ τις, ἂν βιάσηται κόρην …] The penalty for most of the offences against the Law is death: [for adultery, for violating an unmarried woman …]
We will discuss the general principle stated here, coming back later to the particular case of rape of an unmarried woman. The severe principle is a clear exaggeration in view of the Bible. It is not only extraneous to Pharisaic tradition as we know it, but also absent from Antiquities. We could think of Jubilees, 71 For
the general tendency see Alon, The Jews 1: 21–29, 305–307. Alexandrian Halakah, 10, 13 mentions this principle but does not discuss it.
72 Belkin,
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where in a simplistic and radical way death penalty is prescribed for violation of the Sabbath. Similarly, scholars have pointed at Sadducean legislation, which is characterised by rabbinic tradition as being merciless in applying death sentences.73 A closer fit seems found in a fragment of Philo’s Hypothetica cited by Eusebius. Here, it is stated after a list of sexual transgressions: ‘… If you prostitute yourself or allow or purpose or intend any action which your age makes indecent the penalty is death (θάνατος ἡ ζημία).’74 Even the intention of such acts would be a mortal transgression, a clear exaggeration comparable to Apion. b. Inferiority of Women, Ag Ap 2:20175 γυνὴ χείρων, φησίν, ἀνδρὸς εἰς ἅπαντα. τοιγαροῦν ὑπακουέτω, μὴ πρὸς ὕβριν, ἀλλ΄ ἵν΄ ἄρχηται· θεὸς γὰρ ἀνδρὶ τὸ κράτος ἔδωκεν. The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man. Let her accordingly be submissive, not for her humiliation, but that she may be directed; for the authority has been given by God to the man.
Such a massively patriarchal principle is lacking in corresponding passages in Antiquities. In this respect, it is known that early Christians and rabbis have not done much better, stating that ‘women should be silent in the congregation’.76 Nevertheless, Josephus’ formulation of the principle is exceptional. But in this case as well, a similar sentence is found in Philo’s Hypothetica, ‘Wives must be in servitude to their husbands, a servitude not imposed by violent ill-treatment (πρὸς ὕβρεως μὲν οὐδε μιᾶς), but promoting obedience in all things.’77 On the other hand, the brief summary of laws in Apion contains specific details that are lacking in Antiquities. Let us cite two examples.78 c. Charity towards Animals, Ag Ap 2:21379 οὕτως δ΄ ἡμερότητα καὶ φιλανθρωπίαν ἡμᾶς ἐξεπαίδευσεν, ὡς μηδὲ τῶν ἀλόγων ζῷων ὀλιγωρεῖν … ἃ δ΄ ὥσπερ ἱκετεύοντα προσφεύγει ταῖς οἰκίαις ἀπεῖπεν ἀνελεῖν. οὐδὲ 73 Re. theft see Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah, 18 n35, referring to Büchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement, 389–392. For Sadducean jurisdiction see MegTaan 4 Tammuz (Lichtenstein p331) and cf mAv 1:2. 74 Hypoth, apud Eusebius, Praep ev 8.7.3. Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah, 10, 13 does not mention this passage. Ibid. 57–62 he discusses guilty intention à propos the commandment to honour one’s parents. [Barclay, Apion, n870 notes the ‘close parallel’ with Hypoth and also points out that the severe emphasis on death penalty ‘concurs with a traditional Roman sense of discipline and morality’.] 75 The principle is not discussed by Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah. 76 1 Cor 14:37; tMeg 3:11; bMeg 23a. See Tomson, Paul, 131–139. 77 Apud Eusebius, Praep ev 8.7.3. The parallel is not mentioned by Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah [but it is by Barclay, Apion, n805]. 78 Belkin ibid. 21–25 also mentions synagogal meetings (Ag Ap 2:175); Revel, ‘AntiTraditional Laws’, 295f, capital punishment for corruptible judges (Ag Ap 2:27). 79 Belkin ibid. 11–13. Cf on the passage and the use of the term φιλαθρωπία Berthelot,
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νεοττοῖς τοὺς γονέας αὐτῶν ἐπέτρεψε συνεξαιρεῖν, φείδεσθαι δὲ κἀν τῇ πολεμίᾳ τῶν ἐργαζομένων ζῴων καὶ μὴ φονεύειν. So thorough a lesson has he given us in gentleness and humanity that he does not overlook even the brute beasts … Creatures which take refuge in our houses like suppliants we are forbidden to kill. He would not suffer us to take the parent birds with the young, and bade us even in an enemy’s country to spare and not to kill the beasts employed in labour.
This is a remarkable extension of the commandment in Deut 22:6 to let the mother bird flee when one takes her eggs or her chicks. By contrast, the verse is totally absent from the exposé in Ant 4:199–301. This is the more astonishing since there, almost all verses of the pericope concerned (Deut 22:1–11) are cited and commented on, in particular v4 about pack animals which also seems reflected in the mention of beasts during war in Ag Ap 2:213.80 Φιλανθρωπία towards animals, as in the example given us by the parental care of the ‘brute beasts’, is a favourite theme of Greek-Jewish moral philosophy.81 The importance of the theme appears from the fact that it returns further on in this third section of Apion. According to our author, ‘maltreatment even of a brute beast is made a capital crime’.82 Obviously, this is an apologetic theme, and more particularly, a foremost expression of the ‘gentleness and humanity’ (ἡμερότητα καὶ φιλανθρωπίαν) that the Jewish law is said to inspire. Once again, there is a similarity with Philo’s Hypothetica here: ‘Do not render desolate the nesting home of birds, or make the appeals of animals of none effect when they seem to fly to you for help as they sometimes do (μὴ ζῷων ἱκεσίαν οἷα ἔσθ΄ ὅτε προσφευγόντων ἀναιρεῖν)’.83 The theme of charity towards animals was also important for the rabbis. They even raised it to the level of the most difficult commandment, honouring one’s parents, by underlining that both commandments promise the one who fulfils them ‘a long life in the land’.84 Moreover, the commandment about the bird is discussed in detail in an entire chapter of the Mishna, where it is said from the ‘Κοινωνία’, 105f. [Barclay, Apion, n860–866 offers thorough discussion including biblical and rabbinic law.] 80 Deut 22:1 (Ant 4:274); 22:2 (4:271); 22:4 (4:275); 22:5 (4:301); 22:7, 8, 11 (4:284–287). 81 4 Macc 14:14f; the ἄλογα ζωῖα (cf the phrase in Jude 10; 2 Pet 2:12) give us their example, καὶ γὰρ τῶν πετεινῶν τὰ μὲν ἥμερα κατὰ τὰς οἰκίας ὀροφοιτοῦντα προασπίζει τῶν νεοττῶν, ‘among birds, the ones that are tame protect their young by building on the housetops’. The motif of ‘shelter in our homes’ returns in Josephus and Philo. Doering, Schabbat, 342 refers to Heinemann, Bildung, 332, 116, who discerns a clear influence from Stoics and Cynics. On the other hand, one also thinks of Ps 83[84]:4f, στρουθίον εὗρεν ἑαυτῷ οἰκίαν καὶ τρυγὼν νοσσιὰν ἑαυτῇ, οὗ θήσει τὰ νοσσία αὐτῆς … μακάριοι οἱ κατοικοῦντες ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ σου … 82 Ag Ap 2:271, παρ΄ ἡμῖν δὲ θάνατος ὥρισται, κἂν ἄλογον τις οὕτω ζωῖον ἀδικῇ. See the combination of the two passages in Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah, 11. 83 Philo, Hypoth 8.7.9. Colson, LCL ad loc. and p540 frankly admits, ‘I do not understand what is meant …’ The meaning of κατοικίδιον is ambiguous: it may refer to the nest itself or to the house where it is built, which is why I translate ‘nesting home’. 84 SifDeut 336, end (p386); yPea 1, (15d), R. Ba bar Kahana, etc.
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start that ‘letting go (the mother bird or the chicks) is obligatory both in the Land and abroad …’85 In brief, it is an ideal theme for an apology of Judaism. d. Revealing Someone’s Secrets, Ag Ap 2:207–20886 κρύπτειν οὐδὲν ἐαῖ πρὸς φίλους· οὐ γὰρ εἶναι φιλίαν τὴν μὴ πάντα πιστεύουσαν. κἀν συμβῇ τις ἔχθρα, τἀπόρρητα λέγειν κεκώλυκε. It allows us to conceal nothing from our friends, for there is no friendship without absolute confidence; in the event of subsequent estrangement, it forbids the disclosure of secrets.
It has been observed that Josephus attributes this same rule to the Essenes, stating that they promise ‘to conceal nothing from the members of the sect (μήτε κρύψειν τι τοὺς αἱρετιστάς) and to report none of their secrets to others, even though tortured to death’ (War 2:141).87 At the same time, the vocabulary and contents of the second clause recall Philo, Hypothetica 8.7.8, μὴ φίλων ἀπόρρητα ἐν ἔχθρα φαίνειν, ‘The secrets of a friend must not be divulged in enmity.’ More generally, it may be observed that for the rabbis, ‘slander’ (לשון הרע, lit. evil language) was counted among the gravest moral sins: ‘These are the deeds whose interest is collected from humans in the present world, while the capital is saved up for them in the world to come: idolatry, incest, and bloodshed, but slander outweighs them all’ (tPea 1:2). Let us now examine some explicit differences between Apion and Antiquities. e. Marital Relations, Ag Ap 2:19988 τίνες δ΄ οἰ περὶ γάμων νόμοι; μῖξιν μόνην οἶδεν ὁ νόμος τὴν κατὰ φύσιν τὴν πρὸς γυναῖκα, καὶ ταύτην εἰ μέλλοι τέκνων ἔνεκα γίνεσθαι. What are our marriage laws? The Law recognizes no sexual connexions, except the natural union of man and wife, and that only for the procreation of children.
Not unlike modern days, the Jews of Antiquity evinced a range of tastes and opinions on this score. What is exceptional is the strict definition of procreation as the goal of marriage and as exclusive condition for sexual relations. Antiquities merely offers advice and suggestions on the matter. Thus it counsels young men to marry a virgin or at least a woman who is really free, that she be no prostitute, and that no children be born from the passion for a slave woman (Ant 4:244f). Similarly, parents should say to their rebellious son (we shall deal with him below) that the goal of the marital union is not pleasure but children (Ant 4:261). In his explanation of the Special Laws, Philo also shows a rather mHul 12:1f, שלוח הקן נוהג בארץ ובחוצה לארץ. Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah, 15–18. [Barclay, Apion, n835–836.] 87 Belkin ibid. 28; Vermes, ‘Summary’, 298 n29. 88 Belkin ibid. 37–53. [Barclay, Apion, n797 gives all the parallels but does not mention the stringency-lenience spectrum.] 85 86
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strict attitude, saying among other things that he who marries a sterile woman who has been divorced takes the side of God’s enemies.89 Belkin, in his not very clear comments on the passage, cites rabbinic opinions in parallel. The rabbis, however, do recognize sexual relations as one goal of marriage and define the pertinent mutual rights of the partners, and this concern is significantly shared by Paul.90 Thus it seems that Belkin and others are right in citing Josephus’ report on the Essenes in War as a more adequate parallel to the strict opinion in Apion. The ‘second branch’ of Essenes who accepted marriage nevertheless abstained from relations during pregnancy, ‘showing that their motive in marrying is not self-indulgence but the procreation of children’.91 It remains to explain why in Against Apion Josephus uses a rule similar to that of the Essenes. f. Abortion, Ag Ap 2:20292 … γυναιξὶν ἀπεῖπε μήτ΄ ἀμβλοῦν τὸ σπαρὲν μήτε διαφθείρειν, ἀλλὰ ἣν φανείη τεκνοκτόνος ἂν εἴη … … and forbids women either to cause abortion or to make away with the foetus; a woman convicted of this is regarded as an infanticide …
In other words, abortion is a capital crime. Antiquities seems to adopt a more nuanced language. In Ant 4:278 abortion caused by kicking is sanctioned by a fine, except if the woman dies; the same goes for rabbinic halakha. This is in line with the obvious sense of Exod 21:22f, ‘When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands … If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life.’93 The Septuagint takes a middle position, stating that if the foetus was not yet recognizable (τὸ παιδίον μὴ ἐξεικονισμένον), the compensation is financial, but if it is already recognizable, it is death penalty. Belkin exaggerates in suggesting here another parallel to Philo’s Hypothetica, where it is prohibited ‘to make abortive (ἀμβλοῦν) the generative power … of women by sterilizing drugs and other devices’.94
Spec leg 3:36. See Belkin ibid. 37f à propos halakhot derived from the concept of עונהin Exod 21:10; mKet 7:1; tKet 8:3. For Paul see 1 Cor 7:3–5; cf Tomson, Paul, 105–108. 91 War 2:160, ἐνδεικνύμενοι τὸ μὴ δι΄ ἡδονὴν ἀλλὰ τέκνων χρείαν γαμεῖν. Vermes, ‘Summary’, 296 minimises the differences on the matter. 92 Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah, 13–15. [Barclay, Apion, n812–814.] 93 Belkin ibid. 14 n19, MekRY mishpatim 8 (p276), à propos Exod 21:22. 94 Hypoth 8.7.8. Belkin ibid. 15 thinks abortion and sterilisation are part of a list of capital crimes, but the first commandment in the list is ‘not to do to others what one hates to suffer’ (8.7.6, ἃ τις παθεῖν ἐχθαίρει, μὴ ποιεῖν αὐτόν). 89 90
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g. The Rebellious Son, Ag Ap 2:20695 Γονέων τιμὴν μετὰ τὴν πρὸς θεὸν δευτέραν ἔταξεν καὶ τὸν οὐκ ἀμειβόμενον τὰς παρ΄ αὐτῶν χάριτας ἀλλ΄ εἰς ὁτιοῦν ἐλλείποντα λευσθησόμενον παραδίδοσι. Honour to the parents (the Law) ranks second only to honour to God, and if a son does not respond to the benefits received from them – for the slightest failure in his duty towards them – it hands him over to be stoned.
This sounds much more severe than Ant 4:260–264, where lapidation of the rebel son is concluded on only after a long moral remonstration about the parents, and only in the case of intentional refusal and upon a warning from the court. More radically, the rabbis of the Talmud have declared that a similar son ‘has never existed and will never be born’.96 Philo for his part speaks several times of this. In the Special Laws he makes an effort to explain why the just punishment of ‘one who strikes his father’ (πατροτυπτός) actually is lapidation. Hypothetica is more severe: ‘… So too with impiety (ἐάν ἀσεβῇς) not only of act but even of a casual word and not only against God … but also against a father or mother or benefactor of your own, the penalty is the same … the offender in words only must be stoned to death.’ This severity recalls Josephus’ Apion.97 h. Rape, Ag Ap 2:21598 [ζημία γὰρ ἐπὶ τοῖς πλείστοις τῶν παραβαινόντων ὁ θάνατος,] ἂν μοιχεύσῃ τις, ἂν βιάσηται κόρην … [The penalty for most offences against the Law is death:] for adultery, for violating an unmarried woman …
The principle of universal death penalty was discussed above; now let us take the case of rape of a virgin. The ruling is severe and simplistic as compared with Ant 4:251f, where Josephus, as do the rabbis, keeps to the casuistics of Deut 22:23–29 in combination with Exod 23:15f, ‘Should a man violate a damsel (ὁ κόρην … φθείρας) who is betrothed to another, if he … had obtained her assent … let him die along with her; … he that violateth a virgin who is not yet betrothed shall marry her himself, but if the father of the damsel be not minded to give her away to him, he shall pay fifty shekels …’99 Belkin ibid. 55–57. [Barclay, Apion, n831–832.] tSan 11:2, למה נכתב? אלא לומר דרוש וקבל שכר.בן סורר ומורה לא היה ולא נברא. 97 Spec leg 2:242–248; Hypoth 8.7.2; see Belkin ibid. 56. 98 Belkin ibid. 18–21. 99 Deut 23:28f stipulates that the man must pay the dowry and cannot divorce the girl, while following Exod 23:15 he must pay some sort of dowry, but if the father does not consent, he must pay a compensation of 50 shekels. Rabbinic midrash also combines the two verses in a flexible way, MekRY mishpatim 17 (p308). Belkin ibid. 19f minimises the differences between Apion and Antiquities while emphasizing the importance of the supposed Alexandrian source. 95 96
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i. Theft, Ag Ap 2:216100 ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ μέτρων ἤν τις κακουργήσῃ ἤ σταθμῶν … κἀν ὑφέληται τις ἀλλότριον … πάντων εἰσὶ κολάσεις οὐχ οἷαι παρ΄ ἑτέροις, ἀλλ΄ ἐπὶ τὸ μεῖζον. Even fraud in such matters as weights or measures, … or purloining another man’s property … all such crimes have punishments attached to them which are not on the same scale as with other nations, but more severe.
In this passage on sanctions, Josephus seems ready to exaggerate in order to give the impression that the Jewish law is more performant than others. Actually, biblical law, while disapproving of these actions, does not mention punishments or demands double compensation of the stolen object.101 Apion’s suggestion of capital punishment for theft is outrageous. By contrast, Antiquities keeps to biblical law in making the distinction, ‘For the stealing of a person the penalty shall be death; the purloiner (ὁ ὑφελόμενος) of gold or silver shall pay double the sum.’ The same distinction is made in rabbinic midrash.102
The Halakhic System of Against Apion It is clear that the summary of laws in Against Apion distinguishes itself by its severity in comparison with Antiquities and Life. In this connection, as we saw, scholars have pointed to the systems of the Essenes or the Sadducees known for their rigour. Apart from the fact that we know little about the Sadducees, these similarities only concern isolated details. Moreover it is unclear why Josephus would have used such traditions. Given the obvious convergences between Philo’s Hypothetica and Josephus’ Against Apion, Belkin has proposed that both works are based on ‘the Alexandrian halakha’. This is even less convincing, not because such a halakhic system would be unthinkable – the theory had been launched by Ritter and developed by Goodenough – but because the differences between the preserved fragment and Philo’s expositions in Special Laws are too obvious for such a simple solution.103 On the other hand we should note the similarities with the Sentences of Pseudo Belkin ibid. 15–18. Lev 19:11–13, 35f; Deut 25:13–16 (no punishments); Exod 21:37–22:3 (double compensation). Belkin ibid., while citing the last verse, goes on to speak about theft and robbery in Roman and Jewish law, the distinction between which is not very clear and complicates the matter. Thus once again he obfuscates the difference between Apion and Antiquities. 102 Ant 4:271; cf Exod 21:16; 21:37–22:3. MekRY bahodesh/yitro (p232f), – גונב גונב נפש ממון. 103 Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah cites numerous differences between the Special Laws and Hypothetica paralleling those between Apion and Antiquities, in order to underline the special character of the two apologies as compared with the expositions of the laws. This defeats his thesis of Hypothetica and Special Laws as expressions of an ‘Alexandrian halakha’ distinct 100 101
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Phocylides, a collection of sapiential proverbs in hexameters. The similarities are less evident than with Hypothetica, but what counts is that in this case we are dealing with another apologetic work.104 It follows that Josephus, when composing the summary of laws in Against Apion, probably made use of some special tradition that also finds expression in Pseudo-Phocylides and, clearer still, in Hypothetica. It must have been a tradition that Jews like Philo and Josephus could choose for an apology of their ancestral tradition. An Alexandrian provenance of this apologetic tradition is not excluded.105 This idea finds confirmation in the rhetorical analysis of Against Apion by Christiane Gerber to which we finally turn, and in which the law summary has an obvious function.106 The text divides itself into three parts, the first of which (Ag Ap 1:6–218) claims the superior antiquity of Judaism on the basis of Jewish and non-Jewish writings, and the second (1:219–2:144) combats the ‘libels of the Egyptians’107 such as Manetho, Chairemon, Lysimachus, Apollonius Molon, and the one whose name Josephus’ work has come to bear, Apion. The last mentioned was an Alexandrian rhetor who about one generation before Josephus possessed a certain influence in Rome,108 and who was known for his campaign against the civil rights of the Alexandrian Jews, a cause célèbre in the capital during which Philo had led the Jewish deputation.109 The ‘libels’ essentially claimed the criminal character of the Jews and the inferiority of their law and legislator. Then follows the third part (2:145–286) with a defence of the Jewish constitution that brings the book to its conclusion. It consists of an encomium of Moses and his idealized legislation, followed by our summary of the laws (2:145–219) and a comparison of Judaism with the pagan laws and religions (2:220–286). Thus we clearly see how the summary of the laws serves to underpin Josephus’ combat against the damaging influence of the ‘Egyptian’, anti-Jewish ideas from that of Josephus’ Antiquities, but on the contrary confirms the apologetic aspect of Hypothetica. Cf Gerber, Bild, 43f. 104 Gerber, Bild, 42–49 (literature), 111–116 (analysis). Cf also Barclay, Jews, 339f, 367. 105 Thus already Moore, Judaism 1: 210 n1; and, more basically, Gerber, ‘Apologie’, 257. Momigliano, ‘Intorno’, commenting on Th. Reinach’s thesis that ‘Josephus is tributary to the same source on which Philo has drawn’ (768), prefers Apion’s dependance of Philo’s Hypothetica, as proposed by P. Wendland. S. Schwartz, Josephus, 21–23 briefly describes Apion as a pamphlet paraphrasing various Alexandrian sources, cf above n9. 106 Cf the structural analysis in Gerber, Bild, 68–70. See also Barclay, Jews, 362f; Attridge, ‘Josephus’, 227–232; Cohen, ‘History’, 2f (stressing the incoherence of the work); and Vermes, ‘Summary’. [Cf the emphasis of Barclay, ‘Judaism’: ‘Josephus’ Contra Apionem is first and foremost a rhetorical production’ (231). And see Barclay’s analysis of the rhetorical structure in Apion, xvii–xxii.] 107 Ag Ap 1:223, τῶν δ΄ εἰς ἡμᾶς βλασφημιῶν ἤρξαντο μὲν Αἰγύπτιοι, cf 1:251. Cf similarly Barclay ibid. Momigliano, ‘Intorno’, 767–770 sees this as the treatise’s principal aim (cf Ag Ap 1:320–2:1f) and underlines its occasionnal and incoherent character. 108 Cf Gerber, Bild, 74f. 109 Ant 18:257–259.
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that apparently made themselves felt in Rome in the author’s day.110 Seen in this light it seems perfectly logical for the author to have drawn on one or more apologetic sources originating from Alexandrian Jewish circles, at the same time recalling the arguments of his adversaries111 and drawing a picture of the law that could beat them. The similarity of this picture with Philo’s Hypothetica raises the suspicion that the much greater severity of the laws in Against Apion than in Antiquities has its origins in such sources. In addition, we could hypothesize the influence of Roman justice, for example in the rigorous punishments for cases of robbery, for rebellion against paternal power, and for intended murder.112 So much seems hinted at by the phrase, ‘all such crimes have punishments attached to them which are not on the same scale as with other nations, but more severe’ (Ag Ap 2:216). But the apparent correspondence with Roman legislation does not at all explain the alleged capital punishment in cases of maltreatment of animals, a subject that by its emotional style and repetition (2:213f, 271) rather suggests a rhetorical origin. We are left with the impression that Josephus, for the purposes of his apology of Judaism in Rome around the turn of the first century CE, has used one or more sources of Alexandrian origin. It is difficult to go much further in explaining the severity of the laws in Apion. Are we to think of an ‘apologetic halakha’, a ‘theoretical halakhic system’ designed for external use? Or should we suppose that a similar severity was actually practised by certain Jews? It seems in fact that some link with Essenes or similar groups is not excluded. Another fragment of Philo cited by Eusebius, titled Ὑπερ Ἰουδαίων ἀπολογία, could have belonged to the same apologetic work that also contained the Hypothetica.113 This fragment presents the Essenes as paragons of the Hellenistic virtues of κοινωνία, ἀρετή, and φιλανθρωπία (cited in Praep evang 8.11.1f). In this otherwise lost apology of the Jews, Philo could have emphasized the severity of the Jewish laws and the exemplary character of the Essenes. Elsewhere, he also shares his admiration for 110 See Barclay, Jews, 362f, 306–317 for the likelihood of this link, especially in view of Tacitus’ anti-Judaism, cf n6 above and n112 below. 111 Momigliano, ‘Intorno’ gives and interesting analysis of the textual form of Manetho that Josephus might have used and concludes (783) on the mediation of Alexandrian Jewish apologetics. Momigliano prefers the simple possibility that Josephus has used Philo’s Hypothetica when composing Apion. 112 Thus Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah, 16f (brigandage; citing Goodenough), 56 (paternal power over the son; Cohn, Heinemann, Goodenough), 58 (intended murder; Mommsen). Barclay, ‘Judaism’ underlines the Roman emphasis of this ‘Judaism in Roman dress’; thanks to Katell Berthelot for drawing my attention to this article. Nevertheless, Barclay ibid. 233 thinks Josephus could have used traditional material in the summary of laws, Ag Ap 2:190–218. Berthelot’s own study, ‘Stereotypes’ underlines the urgency of ‘Egyptian matters’ in Josephus’ Rome even more. 113 Momigliano, ‘Intorno’, 770. See the title, Praep ev 8.10.18f, and cf ibid. 8.5.11 where Eusebius introduces the first fragment qualifying it as [Ὑποθετικά…, ὁ] ὑπὲρ Ἰουδαίων ὡς πρὸς κατηγόριους αὐτῶν [λόγος].
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the Essenes with his readers, while associating them with the Therapeuts who were established not far from Alexandria.114 Josephus for his part shares the idealization of the Essenes in his description of the ‘three sects’, especially in War, and without doubt with apologetic aims as well.115 However, it seems that he could not use that element in the full-fledged apologetic work under discussion, possibily because the sublime example of the Essenes would have suggested a discrepancy with ordinary Jews, which would have destroyed his argument.116 Could he nevertheless have used a halakhic tradition related to the Essenes or Therapeuts for his rhetorical battle against the ‘Egyptian libels’? Could we explain thus, for instance, the presence of more or less ‘Essene’ commandments such as concerning the revealing of secrets and the purpose of marriage? However that may be, in his refutation of the rhetoric of Apion, Josephus makes use of a halakhic system that is not his in Antiquites and Life, and with clear apologetic aims.[117] In a larger perspective, this brings out the ‘normal’ aspect of the halakhic system in these other works and confirms the relative fidelity of Josephus to the Pharisaic matrix system as we have defined this.[118]
Philo, Vit cont 1f; 21 (the Greeks being included!). War 2:119–161. The Essenes supposedly made a great impression on the Romans. In Ant 18:18–22, a similar idealisation of the Essenes is seen, but not so at their first appearance in Ant 13:298. 116 Thus Momigliano, ‘Intorno’, 770. 117 [The appendix in Barclay, Apion, 353–361, ‘The Sources of the Apologetic Encomium’, compares Apion, Hypothetica, and Ps-Phocylides, concluding on ‘a Judean tradition, in the Greek language, engaged in creative reflection, selection, and interpretation of its biblical and legal materials’ (357f). This need not exclude Alexandrian origins, cf Barclay ibid. xxiv. On balance, the above halakhic analysis confirms Barclay’s idea of Apion as a full-fledged rhetorical apology of Judaism in Roman terms.] 118 [Josephus’ eclecticism in halakhic matters, observed also by by Regev–Nakman (see above n15) as part of a general phenomenon in Late Second Temple Judaism, brings out the special emphasis of Apion. This relates to the argument of ‘Luke-Acts, Josephus’, in this volume.] 114 115
Divorce Halakha in Ancient Judaism and Christianity The Interest of the Topic A research survey on ‘Halakha in the New Testament’ which I published in 2010* ends with the interesting conclusion that halakhic study is more generally thought applicable to the Jesus tradition than to Paul’s letters. This seems to relate to the entrenched idea that, as distinct from Jesus, Paul considered the Jewish law obsolete and something to be liberated from. Such a generalised reading of Paul has proved inadequate, however, and instead I advanced the requirement to read him ‘halakhically specific’, i. e., clearly distinguishing whether Jews or non-Jews are addressed and what specific commandments are involved. With this in mind, it would be interesting to study a halakhic topic that appears both in Paul and in the Jesus tradition. If, however, halakhic study is more obvious with respect to the Jesus tradition, the problem there is that halakhic issues are entangled with the complicated development of the synoptic tradition and consequently also with the convoluted evolvement of the early Christian relationship with Judaism. The way to tackle this head-on would be to produce a reliable reconstruction of the development of the pertinent halakha in the framework of first century Jewish and Christian history. As long as that has not been done, however, an alternative method would be to seek oblique access via halakhic questions which could have passed relatively untouched by the polemics between Jews and Christians (as has been done, e. g., for purity laws by Thomas Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah). There is indeed such a domain that meets both requirements: divorce law. It is a fascinating topic, not because of its subject matter which today as in the past always involves injustice, pain, and suffering, not in the last place for the children involved. The subject is fascinating because of its historical and literary ramifications. Let me sum up. [290] (1) Divorce law did not become a conflict area between Jews and Christians.1 * [Tomson, ‘Halakhah in the New Testament’, published in Bieringer et al. (eds), The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, along with the present study, which is here reprinted with minor improvements. In particular, the sections on mGit 9:10 were modified after oral and written exchanges with Ishay Rosen-Zvi, whom I thank for his generous criticism.] 1 I see no support in the sources for the tentative suggestion by Sigal, Halakhah, 117 that anti-Christian polemic helped the Hillelite divorce halakha win out. [Cf Rosen-Zvi, below n89.]
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In this exceptional domain, even gentile Christians from the start took a much stricter stance than most Jews and in fact rejected divorce altogether. If a widely shared interpretation is correct, this is because Christianity in this instance is the inheritor of a more rigorous Jewish tradition which did not make it to the Judaism that survived. Interestingly, third-fourth century rabbis state that ‘God did not give gentiles divorce’. This could reflect the intelligence that gentile Christians rejected divorce, especially since the alternative option among nonJews is also mentioned that ‘the partners can divorce each other’.2 Obviously, neither for Jews nor for Christians was there a reason to start a dispute here. We can thus expect to be able to move more freely here than in other halakhic areas. (2) There is a telling overlap here between Paul and the Jesus tradition. It is very interesting to reflect on the apparent fact that Paul explicitly cites a teaching of Jesus, a teaching moreover which fits exceptionally well in early Judaism and is strongly attested by extraneous sources. Not only the relation between Jesus, the Pharisees, and the Qumranites or Essenes, but also that between Jesus and the ex-Pharisee Paul is illuminated when we compare all those sources. Thus the topic offers an exceptional view on Paul’s place both in early Judaism and in nascent Christianity. It also sheds new light on the earlier stages of the synoptic tradition. (3) As E. P. Sanders has formulated, the teaching on divorce is also ‘the most securely attested saying by Jesus’, since it is found quoted or reflected in Paul, in ‘Q’,3 in Mark, in Matthew, and in Luke.4 This comes down to saying that the divorce issue was of prime importance in early Christianity as well. A divergent opinion is attested in the so-called ‘exception clauses’ in Matthew (5:32; 19:9) which shall have due attention below. [291] (4) Although the true impact could only be realised after the publication of the Qumran scrolls, the matter of divorce law was among the first to draw attention to the importance of the Damascus Document, discovered in 1897, for the Jewish background of the New Testament. In what discoverer and first editor Solomon Schechter had dubbed ‘the Zadokite document’, Ludwig Blau in 1911 recognised a halakhic approach that proved the Jewish origin of Jesus’ teaching on divorce. 2 yKid 1:1 (58c), ‘Do they have (the possibility of) divorce? R. Yuda ben Pazi and R. Hanin in the name of R. Huna the Great from Sepphoris say: Either they do not have divorce or the partners can divorce each other ()או שאין להן גירושין או ששניהן מגרשין זה את זה. R. Yohanan from Sepphoris, R. Aha, and R. Shmuel bar Nahman say: “For hating send away, … the God of Israel” (Mal 2:16) − in Israel have I instituted divorce, but I did not among the nations.’ Cf GenR 18.5 (p166f). [Incidentally, this is one of the most informative and specific reports of JewishChristian relations in late Antiquity, testifying to their shared heritage and mutual understanding.] 3 Jesus’ pronouncement in Luke 16:18 and parallels is attributed to Q, see below. 4 Sanders–Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels, 328, as quoted by Collins, Divorce, 215. [Similarly Meier, Marginal Jew 4: 74.]
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(5) As Blau also made clear, the New Testament divorce passages have convincing ties with rabbinic sources as well. In particular the question the Pharisees asked of Jesus in Matthew and his answer including the ‘exception clause’ relate to the Pharisaic-rabbinic schools of Shammai and Hillel. For over a century now, scholars have understood that the New Testament discussion on divorce has its place in Judaism. Differently put: here the New Testament documents an important episode in the history of the halakha. (6) Indeed, it is important to underline that the laws on divorce and matrimony were a prominent matter of dispute among ancient Jews.5 In a passage we shall investigate more closely, the Qumran covenanters stated that the Jerusalem leadership was caught in the sins of ‘taking more than one wife during their lifetime’, which probably included remarrying after divorce, and of marrying one’s niece (CD 4:20f; 5:7f), while both items are legitimate options in Pharisaic-rabbinic law. On the other hand, the details of matrimonial law including the grounds for divorce are reported to be among the major disputed areas between the schools of Shammai and Hillel, even if they reportedly maintained good relations in spite of that (mYev 1:4). (7) Indeed on the topic of divorce, divergent views are visible already within the Old Testament, the ‘teaching of Moses’ being confronted with the opinion of a prophet (Deut 24:1–4; Mal 2:13–16, see below). Moreover the Mosaic passage presents exegetes with insurmountable difficulties, until we read it in the framework of ancient Near Eastern law. In turn, this allows us to understand later rabbinic divorce law. (8) Matthew’s ‘exception clauses’ speak volumes about that Gospel’s place in early Christian and Jewish history. While Paul, Mark, and Luke share the strictest opinion also attested at Qumran, Matthew seems to embrace the stricter option among Pharisees, that of the school of Shammai. This in effect comes down to a softening and a ‘rabbinising’ or ‘pharisaising’ of the Jesus tradition in a sensitive area. Added to [292] the head-on collision with the Pharisees also reflected in the Gospel, it heightens the impression of contradiction and inner struggle within the Matthaean church. (9) While these texts did not become a conflict area between Christians and Jews, they did among Christians and, since the Reformation, between Catholics and Protestants, as also among modern Catholics. For more than a century now, studies have been appearing on the history of interpretation of the New Testament divorce teaching. These efforts evidently reflect the interest the subject has, especially in Roman-Catholic circles.6 Apart from that, there has been a steady Cf the short note by Jackson, ‘Ehescheidung.’ Similarly Luz, Matthäus 1: 358. See esp Luz’s own exegetically perceptive and pastorally sensitive comments, ibid. 1: 357–369; 3: 100–112. Machinek, Gesetze oder Weisungen? reviews ethico-theological effective history, 286f, mentioning J. Ratzinger’s opinion that Jesus’ divorce prohibition is prophecy not law. 5 6
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flow of studies on the teaching itself and its exegesis. From the start, this has included study of the Jewish basis of the New Testament passages.7 Clearly, the New Testament teaching of divorce is an extremely interesting topic for the study of halakha in the New Testament. We shall proceed by reviewing (2) important previous research; (3) the underlying Old Testament texts; (4) pre-rabbinic Jewish texts; (5) rabbinic texts; and (6) the New Testament texts. Finally (7) we shall draw conclusions for the development of divorce halakha and of the Jesus tradition.
Previous Research Much research into the matter has been motivated by the desire to shed light on the problems that arise today in the tension between changing social norms and ecclesial moral authority. This is entirely justified and on occasion will have our attention, but our focus is on the development of divorce law as this is expressed in the New Testament. We start out with a selection of previous research literature.8 [293] One of the most important and comprehensive critical studies appeared in 1911. Ludwig Blau, Die jüdische Ehescheidung,9 offered a comprehensive and penetrating overview which recognised the importance of the then recently discovered ‘Zadokite Fragments’ (the Damascus Document) and of the Aramaic Jewish papyri from Egypt. Both biblical law (Deut 24:1–4) and rabbinic law following the dominant school of Hillel grant the husband unlimited power to divorce his wife. There was also a dissident movement, represented e. g. in the prophet Malachi and in the school of Shammai, and culminating in the clear-cut prohibition of divorce in the New Testament. One of Blau’s central conclusions is: ‘The absolute prohibition of divorce … is the product of an inner-Jewish movement which already before the public appearance of Jesus had won over certain parts of the populace. The main stay of this hypothesis is the newly discovered document of the Zadokite sect of priests.’10 The only criticism would be that Blau sketched the development of opinions of the schools of Shammai and Hillel somewhat schematically. Also in 1911, Anton Ott published his study of the Christian interpretation history of the New Testament divorce texts, Die Auslegung der neutestamentli 7 For Roman Catholic examples esp Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts’; Dupont, Mariage; Neirynck, ‘Echtscheidingsverbod’ and ‘Echtscheidingslogia’; Collins, Divorce; see below. 8 See also the Jewish Law Annual issue (1981) edited by Bernard Jackson and devoted to ‘The Wife’s Right to Divorce’, in particular the study by Evald Lövestam, ‘Divorce and Remarriage in the New Testament’. [Note also the exhaustive bibliography in Meier, Marginal Jew 4: 128–139.] 9 Part 2, Der jüdische Scheidebrief, appeared in 1912. 10 Blau, Ehescheidung, 3f, my translation; cf ibid. 59–66.
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chen Texte über die Ehescheidung. The motivation clearly is in the policy of the Roman Catholic Church, paying special attention to the Council of Trent where in 1563 the Protestant interpretation of the Matthaean exception clauses as allowing divorce upon adultery was declared anathema. As we shall see, this is the sore spot in much research from Roman Catholic quarters. The two parts of Ott’s study, devoted to the patristic period and to Middle Ages and Modernity, offer an interesting and helpful collection of documents. Ott himself endeavours to explain Matthew in accord with Trent.11 These two works alone would offer much to describe the entire development of divorce halakha in early Judaism and Christianity. But there are more noteworthy studies. Back in 1896, David Amram had published The Jewish Law of Divorce (reprinted 1968 and 1975). It is a good overview of the rabbinic material taking also into account Philo, Josephus, and the New Testament, and it has [294] justifiably served as a textbook on Jewish divorce law for many New Testament exegetes. Claude Montefiore’s commentary on The Synoptic Gospels (1927) must be mentioned here because of his remarkable evaluation of the New Testament teaching on divorce. Representative of early Reform Judaism, he was not afraid to criticise his own tradition: ‘In no other part was the opposition of Jesus to the Rabbinic law of profounder significance. The religious position of woman in the law of divorce forms the least attractive feature in the Rabbinical system. … The reform, or rather the renouncement, of the Orientalisms in the laws about women is one of the greatest necessities of orthodox Judaism.’12 Fritz Vogt, Das Ehegesetz Jesu (1936) is another item in the steady flow of Roman-Catholic studies on the matter. It focuses on Matthew’s exception clauses and follows the interpretation of Ott. Similar things can be said of the concise study by J. Bonsirven, Le Divorce dans le Nouveau Testament (1948). His confident conclusion, ‘Our dogma and our canon law are perfectly loyal to the teachings of Jesus and St. Paul,’13 is impeccable, except that it fails to do justice to Matthew. Discussion in Catholic circles was brought to a higher level by Jacques Dupont’s Mariage et divorce dans l’Évangile (1957). It takes in rabbinic and ancient Near Eastern law, the important text in Malachi we shall presently study, and the Damascus Document, and unflinchingly concludes that Matthew’s exception clauses allow divorce on adultery. Nonetheless Dupont remains loyal to
11 Ott, Auslegung, 295–299, translating μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείας as ‘auch nicht wegen Unzucht’, and παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας as ‘ausgenommen sogar Erwath dabar.’ See further below. 12 Montefiore, Synoptic Gospels, 1, 235. 13 Bonsirven, Divorce, 91: ‘Après les fluctuations du haut moyen âge, … notre dogme et notre droit sont exactement fidèles aux enseignements de Jésus et de S. Paul ….’
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Roman Catholic teaching and holds remarriage after such a divorce impossible.14 Without such genuflexion, Frans Neirynck, ‘Het evangelisch echtscheidingsverbod’ (1958), and ‘De echtscheidingslogia in de evangeliën’ (1996) critically interprets the important difference between Matthew and the other New Testament divorce passages in the framework of ancient Jewish law as evidenced by Qumran documents and rabbinic literature.15 [295] David Daube, New Testament and Rabbinic Literature (1956) must be mentioned for its classic, well-informed studies on ‘Divorce’ in the Gospels and in ancient Jewish sources including the Damascus Document, as well as on ‘Terms for Divorce’ in Paul and elsewhere. Ulrich Nembach, Das neutestamentliche Ehescheidungsrecht im Rahmen des jüdischen Rechts (1969) is exceptional in this context because it concerns a doctoral dissertation in law undertaking a systematic comparison of New Testament divorce law with ancient Jewish law: ‘In spite of the Hellenistic influence and the Roman administration, the crucial background of New Testament divorce teaching is in Jewish law.’ Whereas the author thinks that in ancient Jewish law the discussion was over when divorce is permitted and when obligatory, in the New Testament the point is, he thinks, when it is prohibited and when obligatory − i. e. in case of adultery.16 This analysis is clearly based on Matthew’s teaching, the only one that the author found to be juridically coherent and original, as distinct from Mark, Luke, and Jewish teaching. The problem is of course that – as Nembach realises – neither ancient Jewish nor early Christian teaching were ‘systematic’ and any attempt at full coherence runs the risk of losing of one or more aspects out of sight. For a study in positive law this may be irrelevant, but it is at odds with the principles of historical research. In 1976, Joseph Fitzmyer published an influential study on ‘The Matthean Divorce Texts and Some New Palestinian Evidence’. All relevant New Testament passages are reviewed, with the focus put on Matthew: ‘The major problem in the Gospel divorce texts is the Matthaean exceptive phrases.’ The analysis is supported by comparison with Greek Jewish sources and Qumran, especially the Damascus Document and the Temple Scroll. In contrast to many other studies, this one does not review rabbinic evidence, apparently because it is thought to come ‘from rabbinic literature of a considerably later period’.17 This notwithstanding the fact that we are concerned with an exceptionally well-documented instance allowing the rabbinic texts to be read in a historically and archaeologically rather secure framework. Addressing Roman-Catholic discussions, the article closes with the open question why ‘a Spirit-guided institutional church’ 14 Citing Hermas 29:6 (mand. 4), and following an apparent contradiction in Matthew; see below. 15 Especially following Daube (1958) and Neudecker (1996). 16 Nembach, Ehescheidungsrecht, 2, including the quotation. 17 Quotes Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts’, 87, 97 (with n89 referring to Bonsirven and Dupont).
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could not follow Matthew’s example [296] and make prudent adaptations in view of problems in present-day Christian married life.18 Philip Sigal, The Halakah of Jesus of Nazareth according to the Gospel of Matthew (1986) has an important section on divorce law. It starts with a general overview of the New Testament texts and of the basic passage in Deut 24. It then focuses on Matthew and the question what is meant by the important term of πορνεία. Also, it takes account of the eschatological orientation of Jesus’ teaching as distinct from the average ‘Pharisaic scribe’. In effect, the Matthaean Jesus agrees with the Pharisaic school of Shammai in allowing divorce in case of adultery, but he goes beyond that in prohibiting the ex-partners to remarry. This agrees with the analysis of Dupont, but it leaves the evidence of the other New Testament passages largely out of account. At that point, there follows an overview of ancient Jewish sources on divorce including the Egyptian papyri and the Damascus Document. In conclusion, Jesus is found to stand ‘between Qumran and the Mishna’ − correctly so, it may be stated.19 Also in 1986, Raymond Westbrook published his important study, ‘The Prohibition on Restoration of Marriage in Deuteronomy 24:1–4’. His solution of the riddle of why in this case the woman is deemed ‘impure’ for the first husband who divorced her but not for other men − reading this complicated passage in the light of ancient Near-Eastern law − seems convincing and decisive and is reviewed below. In 1989, Markus Bockmuehl published the brief study, ‘Matthew 5.32; 19.9 in the Light of Pre‑Rabbinic Halakhah’, seeking to avoid the supposed ‘easy shift in Matthew’s church’ from Jesus’ absolute prohibition of divorce to the less radical position of the school of Shammai allowing divorce in case of unchastity. Drawing attention to a passage in the Genesis Apocryphon, the author highlights sources which prohibit living with an adulterous spouse or even prescribe divorce. Matthew’s Gospel seems to support this tradition and to teach ‘that πορνεία makes husband and wife unfit for continued conjugal union’. Thus lining up with Sigal and Dupont, Bockmuehl, while focusing on Matthew, develops one possible line of interpretation of the crucial passage of Deut 24:1–3 also found in rabbinic tradition. [297] Another study from a Roman Catholic point of view was published by Raymond Collins in 1992: Divorce in the New Testament. Taking stock of the positions in the various New Testament texts, Collins soberly concludes that ‘virtually all the commentators’ agree that Matthew, as distinct from Jesus, gave a ‘Tannaic-like formulation’ that accords with the school of Shammai. Jesus’ own saying on divorce, prohibiting it in any case, is seen as ‘a prophetic utterance, 18 See also the bibliography on the divorce texts by Myre, ‘Dix ans d’exégèse’, mentioned by Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts’, 102 n1. 19 Sigal, Halakhah, 83–118, quotes 92, 93f, 116; cf also my research survey, ‘Halakhah in the New Testament’.
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rather than a community regulation’. ‘The fact that the tradition of Jesus’ saying on divorce exists in so many different versions … stands as evidence that the first generations of Christians experienced a need not only to pass along Jesus’ teaching on divorce but also to adapt it to ever new circumstances.’20 Mordechai Friedman, ‘Remarriage of One’s Divorcee’ (1993) is a large study on the particular case set forth in Deut 24:1–4 and its interpretation by Philo and the ancient rabbis. In Friedman’s reading, the passage reflects a compromise between two opposite conceptions of marriage: one which considers it terminable by all means, and another which holds it sacrosanct except in case of violation by adultery. The second conception can be read from Jer 3:8 (on which see below); it surfaced in Qumran and in early Christianity. Friedman’s interpretation turns on the phrase in Deut 24:4, אחרי אשר הטמאה, ‘since she had been defiled’, as the reason for which the divorced woman cannot return to her first husband. Friedman concludes this makes her in a sense an adulteress for him, an interpretation avowedly close to that of Philo (see below). The problem is that it does not explain why the divorcée can marry other men but not her first husband. Friedman also discusses the exegesis of the sages as well as several more specific cases subsumed under this law. Having written a doctorate on Tosefta tractate Gittin,21 Reinhard Neudecker published a thorough study on the early interpretation history of in Deut 24:1–4 as background to the New Testament teaching on divorce: ‘Das Ehescheidungsgesetz’ (1994). An important criterion is how the relation between the three protases and the apodosis in the passage is interpreted. The first part of the essay studies the interpretations of the Septuagint, Philo, and Josephus; the important second part, rabbinic halakha. Not unlike Bockmuehl, Neudecker draws attention to what he calls a forgotten halakhic tradition supported by the school [298] of Shammai, to the effect that an adulterous wife is forbidden and must be divorced. This tradition is seen as the background of Matthew’s divorce teaching. A question to be asked is to what extent we may suppose the Deuteronomy passage to lie at the basis of the discussion, rather than being one of the elements in a discussion driven by other reasons and causes. Gershon Brin, ‘Divorce at Qumran’ (1998) takes issue mainly with Fitzmyer’s opinion that at Qumran, divorce was rejected altogether. Taking his departure from Mal 2:16, he adduces the reading of the Qumran Minor Prophets scroll (‘If you hate her, send her away’; see below) to indicate ‘that divorce was recognised as a legitimate phenomenon in Qumran’. This involves the doubtful argument of stressing ‘the Qumranic nature of the Malachi scroll’ (237). We shall see, moreover, that ‘hate’ as a reason for divorce stood diametrically opposed to Malachi’s real view. However, a realistic approach on divorce does seem to be 20 Quotes
Collins, Divorce, 115, 222, 229. Ehescheidungsrecht.
21 Neudecker,
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intimated in the phrase וכן למגרשin CD 13:17, ‘and also to the one who divorces’, which is confirmed by newly published fragments. This begs the important question about homogeneity at Qumran and about the genesis of the Damascus Document. David Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible (2002) is a richly documented book aiming both at finding hopeful answers to modern questions about divorce and at reconstructing the development of New Testament teaching on the matter. The successive chapters deal with law in the ancient Near East, the Pentateuch, the Later Prophets, early Judaism and rabbinic literature, and the teachings of Jesus and Paul. Referring to Westbrook, the Deuteronomy passage is interpreted as distinguishing between ‘valid’ and ‘invalid’ grounds for divorce (see below), and a rejection of ‘invalid’ divorce is found in the Prophets, Qumran, and the New Testament. Instone-Brewer hypothesizes that the Hillelite school of Pharisees ‘invented’ a new interpretation of Deuteronomy allowing divorce ‘for any reason’.22 [299] An interesting and important new approach to the formulation and development of early rabbinic divorce law is found in Ishai Rosen-Zvi’s article, ‘“Even if One Found a More Beautiful Woman”: Analysis of Grounds for Divorce in Rabbinic Literature’ (2004). The study, to which we shall come back, posits that the disposition of opinions presented by way of discussing the interpretation of the Deuteronomy passage in mGit 9:10 embodies a revision of the original debate between the schools of Shammai and Hillel on whether divorce was fundamentally allowed or prohibited. The author supports his hypothesis by a newly discovered Tannaic midrash and, more particularly, by the New Testament data, thus in effect reading the New Testament texts as important evidence for the history of halakha. Dealing in part with the same material, Vered Noam, ‘Divorce in Qumran in Light of Early Halakhah’ (2005) compares Qumran passages about divorce and the sota (woman suspected of immorality) with rabbinic texts. The author identifies rabbinic rulings that are severe on divorce and remarriage as older halakhot tallying with the Shammaite opinion and also reflected in the Gospel of Matthew and certain Qumran texts. She explains these rulings not from ‘theological’ conceptions of marriage but from ‘basic halakhic principles’. No notice is taken of the total rejection of divorce in other parts of the New Testament, nor is the possibility of different halakhic traditions being reflected in the Qumran finds thought through; following Gershon Brin, the Qumran Minor Prophets scroll is thought to represent the views of ‘the sect’. As we shall see, the ‘hate’ divorce envisaged in that scroll agrees with the more common Jewish view and differs sharply from the Shammaite restriction to ‘indecent behaviour’ as grounds for divorce. 22 Cf
my review in TLZ 129 (2004) 773–775.
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[Probably the single most important subsequent publication is the chapter, ‘Jesus’ Teaching on Divorce’, in the fourth volume of John P. Meier’s monumental Marginal Jew (2009). After noting the multiple interest of the topic, the chapter reviews the teaching on divorce in the Pentateuch, Prophets and Wisdom books, the ‘intertestamental’ writings of Philo, Josephus, and Qumran, and, finally, ‘A Glance Forward to the Mishna’. It then deals with the Jesus saying attested in 1 Cor 7:10f, Matt 5:32 // Luke 16:18 (Q), and Mark 10:11f, as well as the dispute story in Mark 10:2–9. The ‘glance to the Mishna’ pays some attention to mGit 9:10, judged to be the first ‘clear documentation of a scholarly dispute’ on the terms of divorce in Palestinian Judaism, recorded in an early third century text whose use as a ‘background’ to the New Testament texts ‘may … be … anachronistic’. Meier concludes on the authenticity of the multiply attested prohibition of divorce. As to the dispute story, its similarities with CD 4–5 including a quote of Gen 1:17 is not discussed, nor is the relevance of the rabbinic material seriously considered, and it is considered a Markan creation (123). Similarly, the ‘exception clauses’ are thought to be a Matthaean creation responding to ‘some particular problem within Matthew’s church’ (104). While assuming that Jesus did teach ‘hălākâ’ (40), Meier has nevertheless approached it in this instance in partial isolation from its likely Jewish context.] We shall now turn to the source texts and unfold our interpretation as we are discussing these.
Old Testament Texts Tora The central passage Jewish and Christian authors keep referring to is in Deuteronomy. It is a complex piece of ancient case law difficult to penetrate because underlying principles are left implicit.23 By consequence, [300] it keeps giving rise to different interpretations.24 It appears that behind these, we must suppose important views on marriage and divorce to be at work in ancient Judaism, views that variously tend to exploit the different aspects of the complicated text. They may relate to external influences or to inner dynamics − possibilities we shall consider at the end of this study.
23 Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’, 351: this is not exceptional in ancient law and occurs also in Hammurabi’s code. 24 For grammatical analysis, history of interpretation and secondary literature see Berger, Gesetzesauslegung, 508–520. His summary, ibid. 510, ‘Dt 24,1–4 ist das Verbot, die eigene Frau, ist sie einmal geschieden und wiederverheiratet gewesen, nochmals zu heiraten … Absicht ist der Schutz der Frau …,’ is not adequate. [See also Meier, Marginal Jew 4: 77–80.]
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1When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favour in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her ()אם לא תמצא חן בעיניו כי מצא בה ערות דבר, and he writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs from his house, 2and if she then goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3and the latter husband dislikes her and writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house – or if the latter husband dies, who took her as his wife – 4then the former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been (declared) defiled ((אחרי אשר הטמאה, for that is an abomination. (Deut 24:1–4)
The case is made up of three stages. Stage 1: ‘because of some indecency’, the man divorces his wife by means of ‘a bill of divorce’ and she remarries; the meaning of ‘some indecency’ is vague since in Deut 23:15 the same term condemns the presence of excrement in the camp. Stage 2: the second husband ‘dislikes’ her and divorces her by means of ‘a bill of divorce’ – or alternatively, he dies. Stage 3: her prior husband cannot now remarry her, for the reason that ‘she has been defiled’ and remarrying her would be an ‘abomination’. This is hard to understand: why would a divorcée be more ‘defiled’ for her former husband than for another man? Even at stage 1, she could remarry, although she was divorced because of ‘some indecency!’ Why is she considered ‘defiled’ after the second divorce, but not after the first one?25 − Clearly, implicit conditions must be at work that cause the apparent contradiction. While the paradox, if not overlooked, has plagued exegetes and lawyers,26 a coherent solution has been proposed by the specialist of ancient Near Eastern law, Raymond Westbrook (1986). He observed [301] a difference between the two divorces: in stage 1, the stated reason is ‘some indecency’ in the woman, but in stage 2, the man’s ‘dislike’. In ancient Near Eastern law, terms like ‘dislike’ or ‘hate’ ()שנא27 denote what Westbrook calls a ‘subjective ground’ for divorce: he divorces her because he wants to, with no reason on her side. In such a case, the husband was obliged to pay her a compensation equalling at least the dowry. Rabbinic law formalised this in the ketuba, the money ‘described’ by the husband upon marrying his wife in case he divorces her or dies.28 Something of the sort must be implicitly presupposed after the second divorce or the death of the husband in stage 2. The divorce in stage 1, however, was occasioned by ‘some 25 The commentary of Ibn Ezra ad loc. merely repeats the contradiction: בעבור,טמאה היא לו שידעה איש אחר. 26 See Westbrook, ‘Prohibition’, 388–393; Friedman, ‘Remarriage’, 191f for earlier explanations. 27 Westbrook, ‘Prohibition’, 399–403, referring also to an Elephantine papyrus; cf Daube, New Testament, 366 and n3; Berger, Gesetzesauslegung, 511, citing also Jub 41:2. Blau, Ehescheidung, 16f maintains שנאהequals כי מצא בה ערות דבר, but ibid. 19 concedes that in case of a ‘hate’ divorce ‘verliert der Mann den Brautpreis.’ 28 tKet 12:1 implies the ketuba existed long before Shimon ben Shetah (c. 100 BCE), cf Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 6: 369f; Albeck, Mishna 3: 77–80 (introduction to Ketubbot), referring also to Tob 7:14.
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indecency’ in the wife, or in Westbrook’s terms, by ‘objective grounds’.29 In ancient Near Eastern and rabbinic legal terms, this would justify divorce without compensation.30 Accordingly, the first husband would have divorced her in stage 1 without paying her anything. If he would remarry her now in stage 3, he would profit from the money the termination of her second marriage entitled her to. But due to the declaration on which he has divorced her, she is ּט ָּמאָה ָ ֻה, ‘declared unclean’.31 He cannot now counteract his own prior declaration (constituting what legal specialists call an ‘estoppel’). That would be an ‘abomination’ on his side – not in a moral-sexual sense but in the sense of ‘hypocrisy’.32 In all its stages, the case is formulated in view of the man as legal subject. Both the two divorces, the ‘declaring unclean’, and the possible ‘abomination’ are his doing; the woman is a mere legal object. [302] To the extent that this interpretation is correct, it largely has an ‘archaeological’ value since it does not figure in ancient endeavours to understand the text.33 Rather, depending on the particular views on marriage and divorce, the fact has drawn the attention that ‘some indecency’ is mentioned as cause for the first divorce or that the woman after her second marriage is called ‘declared unclean’ – without noting, usually, that she is not after her first divorce! On the other hand, the underlying legal principle has usually been recognised: marriage is terminated and the woman is free to remarry either if her husband dies or if he sends her away with a divorce bill on the grounds of his own ‘dislike’ or of ‘some misbehaviour’ of the wife. Deuteronomy takes the principle for granted without any explanation. It seems Ludwig Blau was right when he wrote in 1911, building on the work of other orientalists: ‘Mosaic legislation has not created the institute of divorce, but found it ready made.’34 In last analysis, the Near Eastern context will be helpful in understanding the development of Jewish divorce law. 29 Intending to interpret Westbrook, Instone-Brewer, Divorce, introduces a different terminology that misses the point: ‘The first marriage ended when the man cited a valid ground for divorce … The second marriage ended without any valid grounds for divorce’ (7; cf 23, 56f; emphasis added). Instone-Brewer also ignores the fact that the ‘hate divorce’, though ‘subjectively’ motivated, is accepted as legal and valid in Mosaic law – as distinct, to be sure, from New Testament teaching. [Ishai Rosen-Zvi kindly referred me to Zakovitch, ‘The Woman’s Rights’, and Toeg, ‘Does Deuteronomy’, who consider the clause כי מצא בה ערות דברto be a later addition to the biblical text, mitigating the harshness of the Mosaic command, reminiscent of Malachi (see below). See Meier, Marginal Jew 4: 143 n16 for more references.] 30 mKet 7:6, see below at n82. 31 Friedman, ‘Remarriage’, 197 comes close to this insight when commenting on Philo. He also quotes important rabbinic halakhot implying that the husband’s declarations or vows made against the wife in order to divorce her can not be later revoked, yGit 4:7 (46a); tGit 3:5. 32 Westbrook, ‘Prohibition’, 404, referring to M. Weinfeld. 33 Similarly, Friedman, ‘Remarriage’, notes that most commentators and legislators have overlooked the primary meaning of the passage. 34 Blau, Ehescheidung, 1–16, quote 16: ‘Die mosaische Gesetzgebung hat das Institut der Scheidung nicht eingeführt, sondern vorgefunden.’ Cf Sigal, Halakhah, 102: …’The Torah did not initiate a divorce halakhah. It sought to curb Near Eastern custom’. However he interprets
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Prophets A passage in Malachi shows that around 525 BCE, there were those who were apprehensive in this domain.35 And this again you do: covering the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning … You ask, Why? Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless … For hating divorce ()כי שנא שלח, says the Lord the God of Israel, and covering one’s garment with violence. (Mal 2:13–16)
The problem is in the grammatically unclear phrase כי שנא שלחwhich was variously interpreted in antiquity.36 Modern translations read a participle referring to God plus an infinitive, which yields, ‘for I hate divorce’. As we shall see, this reading was also known among ancient [303] rabbis. The version of the Minor Prophets found at Qumran, however, reads כי אם שנתה שלח, ‘If you hate her, send her away,’37 and this reading is confirmed by the Septuagint, on which below. Without such textual support, Westbrook reads two third person finite verbs, translating: ‘For he has hated, divorced … and covered his garment in injustice,’38 and he concludes that Malachi disproves of ‘divorce for hate’.39 This makes sense both of the grammar and the context. The implication that early post-exilic Judaism harboured rather different views on divorce is supported by other scholars.40 To the extent that the Mosaic case law in Deut 24 reflected the norm, however, the question was bound to be what in the latter passage must be understood by ערות דבר, ‘some indecency’.41 Furthermore, there are a number of verses in the pre-exilic prophets which use the metaphor of Israel as an unfaithful wife who is divorced but allowed to return.42 Jer 3:8 teaches that unfaithfulness may provoke divorce: ‘For all the הוטמאהmorally, i. e. in the Shammaite sense. [And see n29 above for the view that the clause on ‘some indecency’ already is an adaptation to the ‘Malachian’ view.] 35 Sigal, Halakhah, in his overview of ‘Divorce in Post-Pentateuchal Sources’, 104–14, does not treat Malachi (but cf 89, 102), but he does scrutinise Ezra and Nehemiah, ibid. 105f. 36 See below at n71. [Cf also Meier, Marginal Jew 4: 81f.] 37 4Q76–81, Ulrich, DJD 15: 224, quoted by Brin, ‘Divorce at Qumran’, 234. Similarly TgYon Mal 2:16, ארי אם סנית לה פטרה, Brin ibid. 235. 38 Suspecting the New Testament teaching plays a role here but overlooking the rabbinic evidence, see below at n71. 39 Westbrook, 402f. Similarly Blau, Ehescheidung, 26, although he follows the ‘modern’ translation, ‘Denn ich hasse Scheidung.’ In his summary, 75, he supposes this was the majority opinion at the time, ‘dieselbe (Anschauung) hat wenigstens der Sittenlehrer Jesus Sirach’ (for this interpretation of Ben Sira see below n50); he associates the evidence of Philo and Josephus with the ‘opposition’ beginning with Hillel. 40 Cf Brin, ‘Divorce at Qumran’, 233: ‘Malachi, who was close in spirit to the Deuteronomistic source …, held a totally different approach to divorce …’ Brin connects this rather abruptly with Jesus’ attitude. 41 For a concise history of interpretation see Berger, Gesetzesauslegung, 515–518. 42 See below n77.
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adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce.’ Jer 3:1 could seem to imply the marriage cannot be restored since that would ‘pollute’ or ‘desecrate’ ( )חנףthe land: ‘If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man’s wife, will he return to her? Would not that land be greatly polluted? You have played the harlot with many lovers; and would you return to me? says the Lord.’ But again, a passage in Hosea gives the unfaithful wife a chance of return: ‘… That she put away her harlotry from her face … then she shall say, I will go and return to my first husband’ (Hos 2:4.7[9]). Post-exilic Isa 50:1f rejects the thought altogether: ‘Where is your mother’s bill of divorce, with which I put [304] her away? … Why, when I came, was there no man? … Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem?’ The legal implications of these passages are not clear and remain disputed in subsequent Jewish teaching.
Pre-Rabbinic Jewish Texts Egyptian Aramaic Papyri In Jewish contracts contained in papyri found in Egypt and dated around 450 BCE, divorce for ‘hate’ as used in Deuteronomy is an accepted condition, with financial compensations being stated but without mentioning a divorce bill, as in the following example:43 Tomorrow or the next day, should Miftahya rise up in the assembly and say: I hate ()שנאת Eshor my husband, the hate money ( )כסף שנאהis on her head. She shall place on the balance-scale44… but all she brought in with her, she can take … Tomorrow or the next day, should Eshor rise up in the assembly and say: I hate ()שנאת Miftahya my wife, her dowry shall be forfeited [to him]… and all she had brought with her, she can take …
Identical conditions appear in some other contracts, with the phrase דין שנאה being used to indicate ‘law of divorce’.45 Interestingly, the initiative to divorce lies both with husband and wife, apparently reflecting local law,46 for this is not 43 See Blau, Ehescheidung, 20f; for the text: CAP, no. 15 p45–50, l. 22–28; Porten–Yardeni, Textbook 2: B2.6, p30–33, l. 22–28. On the matter cf Sigal, Halakhah, 104f. 44 Cf remarks by Blau, Ehescheidung, 20 n1 on Cowley’s translation. 45 Porten–Yardeni, Textbook, nos. 3.3 (60–63); 6.4 (139f: דין שנאה, lines 2, 6). 46 Cf below n55 on Philo. Blau ibid. 21 n1 cites similar marriage conditions quoted in yKet 5 (30b): אין שנאת, אין שנא:אילין דכתבין. Bammel, ‘Markus 10.11f’, 175 refers to J. N. Epstein who in Jb. d. jüd.-lit. Gesellsch. 6 (1908–09) 368f [non vidi] cites two passages in yKet, probably this one and yKet 7 (31c), כמאן דשנאת ולית לה אלא פלגות פרן. Bammel considers divorce at the wife’s initiative a minor option in Jewish law that was repressed by the rabbis. For this matter, which also includes two Geniza ketubot, see Friedman, ‘Divorce’; idem, ‘Contracts’, 440, 457; Jackson, ‘Mishpat ivri’, 88–90.
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an option in average Jewish law.47 Nevertheless, the basis of marriage is patriarchal, as appears from the mention of the dowry in the second clause. The sum she must pay if [305] she initiates divorce may be equivalent to the dowry paid to her or to her family at the wedding.
Septuagint The phrase in Mal 2:16, כי שנא שלח, is translated in the Septuagint: ἀλλὰ ἐὰν μισήσας ἐξαποστείλῃς, or, literally, ‘but if hating her you send her away’ − as in the Minor Prophets Scroll. Thus the Alexandrian interpreters accepted the legal presuppositions of Deut 24:1–3. However, they also duly rendered Malachi’s disapproval of ‘hate divorce’: καὶ καλύψει ἀσέβεια ἐπὶ τὰ ἐνδύματά48 σου, ‘and he will cover with impiety (on) your clothes’. The key phrases from Deut 24 are translated as follows in the Septuagint. Stage 1: the first husband divorced her ‘because he found in her ἄσχημον πρᾶγμα, an indecent matter’; ערות דברis similarly translated in Deut 23:15, ἀσχημοσύνη πρᾶγματος. Then ‘having gone away, she becomes another man’s’: ἀπελθοῦσα γένηται ἀνδρὶ ἑτέρῳ. Stage 2:49 the second marriage ends by divorce, … ἢ ἀποθάνῃ ὁ ἄνηρ ὁ ἔσχατος, ‘or if the second husband dies’. Stage 3: she can not now return to the first husband μετὰ τὸ μιανθῆναι αὐτήν, ‘after her having been defiled’. The ‘indecent matter’ is rather vague, as is the ‘being defiled’, but nor is the Hebrew very clear. It is up to the interpreters.
Ben Sira Without a clear reference to the Deuteronomy passage but apparently presupposing the underlying practice, the advice is given here: Do not give water an outlet, nor an evil wife power:50 if she does not walk at your side, cut (her) off from your flesh ()מבשרך גזר, give (the bill) and send (her) away ()תן ושלח.51 (Sir 25:29f[25f]) [306] 47 Rabbinic halakha empowers the court to enforce divorce on the wife’s behalf in certain cases, cf mYev 9:3; mKet 7:9f; tYev 2:4; 7:5. 48 The reading ἐνθυμήματα of most mss must be a misreading or mishearing for ἐνδύματα, which appears to be the reading of the Washington ms (Freer collection, mid 3rd cent.), see Ziegler, Duodecim prophetae, 334. 49 Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’, 354 thinks that Deut 24:3b, ἢ ἀποθάνῃ, is a new beginning. 50 ממשלה: ms A παρρησίαν (freedom), ms B ἐξουσίαν (power). Blau, Ehescheidung, 29, not knowing the Hebrew Ben Sira yet, prefers παρρησίαν and reads a Shammaite position. He also cites 7:27[26] (involving μὴ ἐκβάλῃς for אל תתעבה, ‘do not loathe’) and 28:15 (taking ‘Verleumdung’ as incriminating ‘women of valour’). 51 The last part is not extant in the Greek.
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The expression ‘if she does not walk at your side’ is open to interpretation. It seems to include disobedience on the wife’s part, i. e. any way of displeasing the man.52
Philo More explicit, though not clearer, is Philo on Deut 24:1–4 in his commentary on the ‘special laws’: Now if, says he, a woman, having departed53 from her husband for whatever reason it may be (καθ ἣν ἂν τύχῃ πρόφασιν) and having been married to another, now becomes single again – the second husband still being alive or even having passed away – then she must not return to her previous husband, but become the companion of all others rather than this one’s, since she has trespassed the ancient ordinances, forgetting them and preferring novel love-potions over the old ones. But if any man is willing to proceed to a settlement with such a woman, he incurs a reputation of weakness and unmanliness … He has thoughtlessly associated himself with two of the greatest offences: adultery and pandering. The punishment to be meted out to him is death, along with the woman. (Spec leg 3:30–31)
First, Philo renders Deut 24:1, ἄσχημον πρᾶγμα, as ‘for whatever reason it may be’.54 This is not unlike Ben Sira’s vaguely Hillelite criterium, only stated more explicitly. Then, however, Philo interprets the Septuagint’s translation of the difficult Hebrew אחרי אשר הוטמאה, μετὰ τὸ μιανθῆναι αὐτήν, morally: the woman has ‘defiled’ herself through new love-potions, thus occasioning the first divorce. The emphasis on the woman’s initiative is striking; one is reminded of other evidence pointing to a legal empowerment of women particular to Egypt;55 however [307] that does not appear to be Philo’s opinion. The thrust of Philo’s whole explanation is to blame the divorce on the woman. The second part goes way beyond the case of Deut 24, stating that if anyone − not only the first hus52 Cf the comments ad loc. by Segal, Sefer Ben Sira. Blau interprets it in accordance with the Shammaite view, see n50 above, following his assumption that the Shammaite interpretation was ‘die ältere und allgemeinere’, cf ibid. 31–5. For Sigal, Halakhah, 107 the passage ‘appears to allow divorce for any reason, Hillelite-style’, correctly, it seems. 53 Cf Colson’s translation in the Loeb edition. See n55. 54 Cf Neudecker’s analysis, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’, 356–360. In n9 he pays attention to the grounds for the first divorce but does not link it with the Hillelite interpretation. 55 Heinemann, Bildung, 317 reports that the Greek papyri show a predilection for the verb ἀπαλλάττεσθαι meaning divorce at the wife’s initiative, which is also what Philo seems to suggest here, yet referring to Spec leg 3:82 Heinemann renders the phrase ἀνδρὸς ἀπαλλγεῖσα: ‘die … geschieden wurde’, supposing Philo retains the patriarchal structure of Jewish marriage and divorce. Similarly Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’, 356f, underlining that Philo paraphrases Deut 24:1–4 from the woman’s point of view, translates, ‘wenn eine Frau … getrennt [wurde].’ The additional evidence of the Elephantine papyrus (above) makes it likely the feminine initiative in marriage law was specifically Egyptian. Cf also Sigal, Halakhah, 110.
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band! − now accepts marriage with her, he associates himself with adultery punishable by death. However the term μοιχεία is irrelevant to the extent that both the first and the second marriage were legally terminated, which Philo concedes by stating that the woman must remarry with ‘others’ than the first husband.56 Thus the interpretation of the ‘indecent matter’ as ‘whatever reason’ for a cause of the first divorce stands in tension to the rest of the passage.57 It seems as though Philo duly cited from accepted tradition, but then went on to state his own, rather more restrictive interpretation.
Josephus Such complications are not found in Josephus. In his succinct commentaries on the Pentateuchal laws he renders Deut 24:1–4 as follows: He who wants to divorce from the wife he lives with, for whatsoever reason (καθ᾿ ἁσδηποτοῦν αἰτίας) – and such may arise manifold among humans – must certify in writing that they shall never again come together, for thus she would acquire the right to live with another man, which beforehand was not allowed; but if it turns bad with her also with the second one or if he dies, and the former one would wish to remarry her, it is said she is not permitted to come back to him. (Ant 4:253)
As compared with Philo, Josephus’ comments are concise and sober.58 He does not go into the reasons why the first marriage can not be [308] resumed. The only thing he expands upon are the reasons for divorce. Having said this may be ‘for whatsoever reason’, he feels the need to add that ‘such may arise manifold among humans’, as though underlining the ‘whatsoever’. Also, he explicitly mentions the same attitude in his autobiography.59 The liberal tradition on divorce that Philo cited but did not subscribe to was wholeheartedly embraced by Josephus. 56 Heinemann, Bildung, 317–320, notes the difference with the average rabbinic interpretation, but at 319 n3 rejects the suggestion by Blau, Ehescheidung, 41 of a ‘Sadducean law book’ (something like CD in Blau’s terminology) underlying Philo’s explanation. Maybe it was not a book but a particular tradition of reading; cf the saying of R. Meir in tSot 5:9, on which below. 57 Belkin, Philo, 229–231, notes the Shammaite slant of Philo’s extended exposition but, wishing to avoid contradiction, stretches the phrase καθ᾿ ἣν ἂν τύχῃ πρόφασιν to accord with the wider ‘deutero-Shammaite’ approach expressed in the baraita yGit 9 (50d; on which see below n74). Sigal, Halakhah, 108f notes the tension but follows Belkin. Friedman, ‘Remarriage’, 196 rejects Belkin’s interpretation of the second part because of the phrase καθ᾿ ἣν ἂν τύχῃ πρόφασιν, thus denying any tension between the two parts. 58 Cf the analysis by Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’, 360f. See also the notes in Nodet, Antiquités juives, IV–V, 79–79* (it is not correct, though, that Josephus ‘ne parle que de cohabitation’; rather, he presupposes the Deuteronomy case where the woman was divorced and remarried). 59 Life 426; cf Ant 16:198. Blau, Ehescheidung, 42–45 thinks Josephus explicitly refuted the Shammaite approach.
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Qumran A very strict attitude towards marriage and divorce seems to be advocated in the Qumran scrolls. … They are caught twice in fornication ()זנות: taking two wives in their60 lifetime (לקחת )שתי נשים בחייהם, though the principle of creation is male and female he created them (Gen 1:17) and those who went into the ark went two by two into the ark (Gen 7:9), and about the prince it is written: He shall not take many wives (Deut 17:17). (CD 4:20–5:1) And he must not take another wife in addition to her for she alone shall be with him all the days of her life, but if she dies, then shall he take another, from his father’s house, from his family. (11QTemple 57:17–19)
The two passages are evidently related, but have different dynamics. The second one could be read like a comment on the end and the beginning of the first one, since it elaborates on the last verse quoted there, Deut 17:17.61 Indeed the second text quotes the same verse earlier on (11QTemp 56:18). ‘Not multiplying wives to himself’ is explained as meaning that the king should not take another wife as long as his first one is alive; only when she dies can he marry another. This would exclude both marrying more than one wife at a time and remarrying after divorce. The same is implied in the scriptural quotes in the first passage: they came ‘two by two’ into the ark, and the first humans were created a couple, as the author seems to read: ‘one male and one female He created them.’ Since actual polygamy is alluded to only in its [309] third quote, the first passage reads as being primarily directed against divorce. The second passage merely elaborates on the king’s obligation to monogamy, but implicitly excludes divorce as well.62 Thus it seems that at Qumran, both polygamy and divorce were strongly condemned and there was a tendency to rule them out completely.63 However, there are also passages indicating that the reality of both was accepted.64 It seems 60 If we are to take the masculine suffix בחייהםseriously, it would mean that one can only marry once; cf Brin, ‘Divorce’, 231 n1. Noam, ‘Divorce’, 206f lists the different interpretations. [Kister, ‘Divorce, Reproof’, 203 cites Qimron to the effect that the suffix may also be a feminine plural.]. The Temple Scroll passage rules ‘if she dies he shall take another (wife)’, enabling remarriage of widowers. 61 Cf the comments by Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts’, 96. 62 Interestingly, Blau, Ehescheidung, 63f proposes to read Jub 3:3–7, which expands Gen 2:24, in light of the CD passage, esp the added phrases, ‘(God) took one bone from the midst of his bones for the woman … He brought her to him and he knew her and said to her: This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, this one will be called my wife …’ Cf the emphasis of Berger’s rendering, Gesetzesauslegung, 530. This highlights the significance of Gen 2:24 in Jesus’ argument, see below. 63 Thus Fitzmyer and many others. Vermes, Instone-Brewer, Noam and others think only polygamy was forbidden in CD; cf Kampen. [Cf Meier’s caution on the question, Marginal Jew 4: 87–93.] 64 E. g. CD 13:17, see already Baumgarten, ‘Restraints’, 14 and n6, referring to 11QT 54:4; 64:1ff and commenting on Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts.’ [Wassen, Women in the Damascus
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to mean that the Qumran covenanters, going beyond Malachi, also wished to bypass the legal presuppositions of Deut 24:1–4. Although we do not possess a text explicitly confirming this, the tendency is seen in the continuation of the CD passage we just quoted: the exposition of the twofold sin of fornication is interrupted in order to refute the legal case from David’s polygamy with the following argument: ‘David had not read in the sealed book of the law that was in the ark …’ (CD 5:2f).
Rabbinic Literature There are two difficulties here: the material is overwhelming, and it is difficult to penetrate. Just as in Deuteronomy, much is left unsaid and there is no systematic approach, not to speak of conflicting attitudes. We must content ourselves with reviewing some of the most important early rabbinic passages, starting from the Mishna, but also considering the possible earlier stages of Pharisaic divorce halakha.
Definitions First let us hear the definition of legal means: The woman is acquired ( )האשה ניקנתby three means and acquires herself (her freedom) by two means. She is acquired by money, by a document, and by intercourse – the school of Shammai say … and the school of Hillel [310] say … – and she acquires herself by a bill of divorce and by death of the husband. (mKid 1:1, ms K)
Patriarchy is unmistakable in this ancient language: the woman is ‘acquired’, as are slaves and cattle, in the continuation.65 The tradition, which comprises a dispute on details between the schools of Shammai and Hillel and hence is supported by both, summarises the two legal means by which marriage is terminated: a divorce bill and death of the husband. They are identical with those implied in Deut 24:1–4. In other words this mishna formulates the legal prinDocument, 114–118 holds that CD 4:20f prohibits polygyny not divorce, and, ibid. 159–164, that CD 13:15–18 // 4Q266 fr 9 iii:1–5 allows divorce (cf )למגרשunder supervision of the מבקר. Kister, ‘Divorce, Reproof’, 199–203 concludes that CD 13:17, 4Q266 fr 9 iii:1–5, and 11QTemp 54:4 presuppose the reality of divorce, and that the prohibition of polygamy in CD 4:19–5:1 (cf 11QTemp 57:17–19) ‘could be easily extended to a prohibition of divorce’, while the similarity to the saying of Jesus is ‘striking’.] 65 Cf Epstein, Prolegomena, 52f: the language of mKid 1 is ancient (‘biblical’, bKid 2b: האשה )נקנית, as compared with mKid 2 ()האיש מקדש. [See on the passage Zohar, Besod hayetsira shel sifrut Hazal, chapter 1. As Ishai Rosen-Zvi reminds me, Zohar ibid. 19 n21 challenges Epstein’s view because mKid 1:1 integrates mEd 4:7, which must be older, and it reads האשה מתקדשת.]
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ciples behind that passage, principles we saw accord with ancient Near Eastern law. As to the divorce bill, the Mishna lays down: The essence of the divorce bill ()גופו שך גט: Lo, you are permitted to every man (הרי את )מותרת לכל אדם. R. Yuda says: [Aramaic] Let this be for you a writ of separation, [and a bill of divorce, K1] a letter of sending away, that you may go and be married to any man you want ()לכל גבר די תצביין. (mGit 9:3, ms K)
Two formulae are given for the legally decisive clause. The Aramaic formula is preserved in common usage till the present day. ‘Permitted to any man you want’ defines the freedom of the woman to remarry and thus legally constitutes divorce. Any restriction on the freedom to remarry would undermine the concept of divorce. Exactly that is what R. Eliezer is advocating earlier on in the same Mishna chapter: He who divorces his wife saying to her, Lo, you are permitted to every man except NN (')הרי את מותרת לכל אדם אלא לאיש פל – R. Eliezer accepts this, but the Sages prohibit. (mGit 9:1, ms K)
R. Eliezer, who is said to belong to the school of Shammai and is known for his conservative opinions,66 may be presumed to represent the older halakha. This seems confirmed by a passage in Paul.67 The Sages reject Eliezer’s ruling as being contrary to the principle of divorce.68 [311]
The Schools Dispute We must now study the mishna which presents the difference on divorce between the two schools as a discussion on how to interpret Deut 24:1:69 The school of Shammai say: One is not to divorce his wife except when he found indecency in her ()מצא בה ערוה, as it is said: if he found in her an indecent … The school of Hillel say: Even if she spoilt his dish ()אפילו היקדיחה תבשילו, as it is said: if he found in her a … matter. R. Akiva says: Even if he found another more beautiful than her (אפילו מצא )אחרת נווה ממנה, as it is said: and if she does not find grace in his eyes (אם לא תמצא חן בעיניו, Deut 24:1), etc. (mGit 9:10, ms K)70
The school of Hillel accept any reason given and in effect allow the husband unlimited power to divorce his wife, as this is reflected in Deut 24. The interpre66 See
Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 186, 198–200. 1 Cor 7:39, see below. 68 Thus the discussion tGit 7:1–5; SifDeut 269 (p289), with the repeated conclusion, הא למדת שאין זה כריתות, ‘this teaches that it establishes no termination of marriage’. 69 Cf Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’, 362–379 for a very clear analysis of this passage and its relatives. 70 Cf also the pertinent Tannaic discussions in SifDeut 269 (p288); MidrGad Deut 23:15 (p523); 24:1 (p436f); bGit 90a. 67
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tation of R. Akiva at the end even seems to carry this position to the extreme; we shall have to come back to that. It is identical with the position adopted by Josephus and duly transmitted by Philo, in spite of the latter’s own more restrictive personal opinion. The school of Shammai are also restrictive and hold that the husband has no right to divorce his wife unless she trespassed in the sphere of ‘decency’. The restrictive position of the Shammaites reminds us of Mal 2:16, where as we saw divorce on the grounds of revulsion is deplored. Indeed, the passage kept drawing attention, though it was differently understood.71 The following passage exploits different possible vocalizations of the difficult expression in Mal 2:16: ( כי שנא שלחKi sane shelah, ‘for hating sending away’, Mal 2:16) – R. Yehuda says: When you hate her, send her away ()כי שונא שלח. R. Yohanan says: Hated is the one sending away ()כי שנוא שולח. But there is no contradiction: one speaks of the first marriage, the other of a second marriage. For R. Elazar says: He who divorces his first wife, the altar sheds tears over it, as it said: And this is the second thing you do: covering the altar of the Lord with tears … (Mal 2:13). (bGit 90b) [312]
R. Yehuda reads the difficult words as did the Septuagint and the Minor Prophets Scroll: ‘hating her he sends her away’. He isolates the words, however, and comes to a conclusion opposite to their context, upholding divorce. R. Yohanan does interpret the words from their context. He reads the phrase ‘hated is the one’ as a divine passive, thus rendering the same meaning as the modern translations: God hates divorce. In light of the absolute rejection of divorce in the Qumran scrolls we can not afford to take this hesitation vis-à-vis divorce lightly. It must represent a sentiment within the Pharisaic-rabbinic movement that was felt even in the third century and that found support in the Malachi verses. Clearly, rabbinic tradition remained divided over marriage and divorce. In this connection there is an interesting and important saying: ‘R. Meir used to say: Like the different tastes about food are the different tastes about wives …’ (tSot 5:9). Without questioning the patriarchal framework that obtains here, he goes on to use the metaphor of how to deal with a fly menacing one’s dish. There are those who just wait for their wife to make any mistake so they can divorce her; there are those who lock her up when going out so she can not make any mistakes; there are those who would not tolerate big mistakes but accept her small liberties, this is the common attitude; and there are those who relish even her big mistakes: ‘This is the godless character, who looks at his wife going out with uncovered hair, with bare arms … laughing with everyone. But it is a duty to divorce her ()מצוה לגרשה, as it is said: … Let her depart from him.’ The quote is from Deut 24:2, which R. Meir is here expounding hyperbolically, as he goes on: ‘The second husband, if he is righteous, expels her from under his authority; Cf Brin, ‘Divorce’, 235 n4, taking his point of departure from medieval commentators.
71
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if not, she will bury him in the end, as it is said: Or if the second husband die, for the man is bound to die because he took that woman into his house’.72 We are again reminded of Philo, who in his extended interpretation also speaks of a well-deserved death, only not for the second husband, but the first.73 The common point of departure is in the grounds for the first divorce: indecency. Both Philo and R. Meir actually read ‘lewdness’, [313] which looks like a Shammaite position.74 This is remarkable for Philo given his initial interpretation of Deut 24 as ‘whatever reason it may be’. It is also for R. Meir, who as R. Akiva’s main disciple is heir to the Hillelite tradition. As we said, rabbinic law is no more coherent than is biblical law. There is another motive at play here that is not explicitly brought to bear on the discussion of divorce but clearly has its influence. This is the idea found both in biblical and in rabbinic law that an adulterous wife is ‘impure’ and hence forbidden to cohabit with.75 If the biblical injunction that she is punishable by death (Deut 22:22) was not carried out in Pharisaic-rabbinic law,76 it would mean at least a pressure for her to be divorced. On the Hillelite approach, that was no problem to start with, but in the restrictive Shammaite approach it was. This is where the ‘impurity’ of the woman turns into the obligation to divorce her, hence R. Meir’s saying: ‘It is a duty to divorce her.’77
Cf bGit 90a. [See on the passage Rosen-Zvi, Mishnaic Sota Ritual, 38–45. In a personal communication Rosen-Zvi emphasizes that R. Meir and R. Yohanan do not advocate a different halakha but are censoring actual practice.] 73 R. Meir does not make Philo’s mistake and accepts the first and second divorce for legal facts, thus ruling out the charge of adultery. The Mishna does envisage restoration of the first marriage:( המחזיר גרושתוmYev 4:12, in more detail tYev 6:5); R. Akiva wants to disqualify the restored marriage as well as the wife and possible children, but the Sages disagree, imposing divorce but preserving the rights of wife and children. 74 yGit 9 (50d) actually interprets R. Meir’s tradition as a Shammaite position, see above n57. 75 Cf Num 5:13 and passim והיא נטמאה, cited mSot 5:1; mNed 11:12; yGit 9 (50d),'אמ' ר ; שילא… כבר היא אסורה לוSifDeut 269 (p288) נאסרה מן המותר, ‘she is forbidden for (her husband) who normally could cohabit with her.’ Cf Blau, Ehescheidung, 38f; Nembach, Ehescheidungsrecht, 18; Sigal, Halakhah, 97; Bockmuehl, ‘Matthew’, 18; Rosen-Zvi, ‘Even if One found’, 2 n5; and the sober reflections of Vahrenhorst, Schwören, 407f. 76 mSot 9:9, ורבן יוחנן בן זכאי הפסיקן,משרבו המנאפים פסקו המים המרים, ‘When adulterers became numerous, the bitter water trial ceased, and it was R. Yohanan ben Zakkai who made it cease’ [on which see Rosen-Zvi, Mishnaic Sota Ritual, 176–181]. Cf the ‘semi-apocryphal’ story in John 8:2–11 of a woman presumably caught in the act of adultery whose conviction is left pending. 77 Albeck, Mishna 3: 265f and 407 concludes from R. Meir’s saying that one must divorce a licentious wife, as against Blau, Ehescheidung, 25 who refers to Jer 3:1, 8; Isa 50:1 and Hos 2:4. Albeck ibid. 265 n3 objects that there is no proof from such prophetic visions, but Blau’s interpretation of them is supported by SifDeut 406 (p330), where Mal 2:16 is counterbalanced by Hos 11:9 and Isa 50:1, and PesR 44 (184a), ‘God deletes his own words in face of repentance’: Deut 24:1–4 is cancelled out by Jer 3:1 on the basis of Hos 14:2ff. Albeck overlooks that Blau ibid. 38f maintains that as against the opinion of the prophets, ‘im Talmud der Ehe72
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Yet in view of R. Meir’s Hillelite affiliation, contradiction seems to remain. It sounds as though he is arguing in order to convince someone else. Indeed it seems we are confronted here with rabbinic discussions in the second century aiming at bridging the gap between the Shammaite [314] and Hillelite approaches by means of broadening the Shammaite concept of ‘indecency’ as grounds for divorce.78 This theory is proposed by Yishai Rosen-Zvi, who in support cites a midrash from Sifrei Zuta Deuteronomy recently published by Menahem Kahana. Here, R. Akiva takes a position reminiscent of that of R. Meir in tSot 5:9 quoted above, but without appealing to Deut 24:79 If she ate at the market, quaffed at the market, fed her child at the market, went out with bare arms and uncovered hair at the market – in all these cases did R. Akiva say: let him divorce her. Said R. Yohanan ben Nuri to him: You will not leave Abraham our Father with even one woman whom you do not cause to be divorced. It is said: If he found in her a ‘word’ of indecency – if he found in her a ‘word’. Just as ‘indecency’ must be a clear matter ()דבר ברי, so a ‘word (of indecency)’ must be a clear matter.
Akiva represents the Hillelite position, but using ‘Shammaite’ terms: all these minor ‘indecencies’ are reasons to divorce the woman, while in the Hillelite view, they would be as good as any others.80 Yohanan ben Nuri objects they must be actual indecencies. He reflects the Shammaite position that does not acknowledge divorce except in the case of ‘actual indecency’ – but he does so in Hillelite terms, defining them as minor ‘indecencies’.
bruch widerspruchslos als zwingender Ehescheidungsgrund (gilt)’. Incidentally, it must be observed that ‘( מצוהa duty’ in R. Meir’s saying) when taken as a technical term denotes a rabbinic injunction as distinct from a Tora commandment, cf Alon, ‘Shevut, reshut, mitsva’, in idem, Studies 2: 111–119. The baraita in bGit 90b, מצוה מן התורה לגרשה, is clearly an elaboration of tSot 5:9, מצוה לגרשה, cf Rosen-Zvi, ‘Even if One found’, 7f. 78 The same is seen in the Tannaic tradition contained in MidrGad Deut 24:1 (p522), 'ר ישמעאל אומר… בהרהור ערוה וע״ז הכתוב מדבר… רבי אומר …משום בזיון. 79 SifZDeut 24:12, lines 10–13 (Kahana p346), quoted by Rosen-Zvi, ‘Even if One found’, 6f (cf ibid. 1, n1). Significantly, bGit 89b brings it in the name of R. Meir: גירגרה,אכלה בשוק תצא: בכולן ר"מ אומר, הניקה בשוק,בשוק. Noam, ‘Divorce’, 216 discusses the Bavli parallel and related passages, stressing that ( דבר בריin the Bavli, )דבר ברורmeans ‘on the word of witnesses’, in agreement with the Shammaite opinion; she also interestingly locates Shammaite views preserved in a number of Tannaic midrashim. 80 Cf yGit 9 (50d); ySot 1 (16b), where the qualification of the fourth woman in R. Meir’s saying in tSot 5:9 is dubbed a ‘Shammaite’ position: אין לי אלא היוצא[ת] משום: 'בית שמאי אומרי כי מצא: וזרועותיה חלוצות? תלמוד לומר,] צדדיה פרומין [מפורמין, ומניין היוצאה וראשה פרוע,]ערוה [בלבד בה ערות דבר, ‘The school of Shammai say: Thus far, it includes only the woman who must depart because of (sexual) indecency; whence also the one who goes out with uncovered hair, open clothing, or bare arms? Scripture teaches: If he find in her something indecent.’ This seems to be part of the 2nd cent. rephrasing and mitigating of the earlier schools debate.
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The formulation of mGit 9:10 The above theory helps us explain both the particular form of mGit 9:10 and the apparent contradiction in the above sayings of Meir and Akiva. In RosenZvi’s analysis, mGit 9:10 is the outcome of a process of re-interpretation and blurring of differences between the schools in [315] the second century.81 The extant mishna seems to be a revision of the earlier debate, in which where the two positions were more clearly opposed. In addition to the midrash from Sifrei Zuta Deuteronomy just quoted, RosenZvi adduces two pieces of evidence. First, mKet 7:6 uses quite similar terms in summing up which women are divorced without financial compensation, without an explicit link to the dispute on the grounds for divorce: ‘These women are divorced without their ketuba: she who … goes out with uncovered hair, or spins at the market, or speaks with everyone …’82 The list clearly reflects a Hillelite point of view, as it includes matters such as tithing that have nothing to do with decency. This makes it likely that a similar list was used by Akiva and Meir in the process of bending the Shammaite argument the Hillelite way. Rosen-Zvi’s other argument is the particular phrasing of the question of the Pharisees in Matt 19:3, ‘Is a man allowed to divorce his wife for any reason?’ which obviously suggests the Hillelite opinion, just as Jesus’ answer in Matthew to the effect that divorce is prohibited ‘except in case of unchastity’ reflects the Shammaite position. If indeed Matthew aimed at better adapting his Gospel to his Jewish surroundings (see below), the suggestion is very strong indeed that this was the way the debate was formulated in the latter part of the first century CE. This also gives some insight into R. Akiva’s rather shocking opinion in mGit 9:10. In the very same context, the Yerushalmi cites another tradition where Akiva overrules an ancient halakha to the effect that women during their period must use no kohl or rouge, explaining: ‘If thus you rule, she will tend to make herself ugly so he will start planning to divorce her.’83 Akiva wants to prevent her from looking repulsive during her period, seemingly because in his line of reasoning, ‘even’ another woman’s beauty can serve as a reason to divorce her. In other words, on the Hillelite premise of ‘divorce by all means possible’, he reduces the means that could make the possible real, thus protecting the woman and pre-empting Shammaites worries. The Yerushalmi correctly identifies the
81 Cf also Blau, Ehescheidung, 34 n2; and pertinent remarks by Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’, 366f. 82 ומדברת עם כל אדם, וטווה בשוק, …יוצאה וראשה פרוע:ואלו יוצאות שלא בכתובה, a mishna related to mNed 11:12, שלש נשים יוצאות ונוטלות כתובתן:בראשונה היו אומרים. 83 yGit 9 (50d end); cf bShab 64b. [Also Sifra metsora 9 (79c), cited in this connection by Kahana, Sifre Zuta Deuteronomy, 372; see below n86 and n89.]
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‘ancient halakha’ as the Shammaite one,84 in [316] which, as Blau explains,85 her repulsiveness would be no problem since she could be divorced only if she displayed ‘indecent’ behaviour – which her isolation prevented. Significantly, the Yerushalmi presents this tradition in connection with Akiva’s midrash in mGit 9:10, ‘if he finds another more beautiful’.86 Indeed, the two sayings can be read together, illuminating the Mishna: if the woman makes herself up also during her period, she is less likely to ‘find no grace in his eyes’ and he to ‘find another’, wishing to divorce. Seen in this light, Akiva’s midrash does two things. Provocatively playing on Deut 24 it defines the legal extent of the Hillelite position:87 divorce is possible on any grounds. At the same time, it exhorts the woman to keep making herself attractive during her period. In the ancient halakha, as still today in traditional African cultures, women live separately from the others during their period.88 Akiva seems to advocate diminishing their segregation, which can be seen in connection with his predilection for neighbourly love as the ‘great commandment’ and for the Song of Songs as the gateway to mystical love.89 Thus, we can imagine, mGit 9:10 developed. Basically, the Hillelites did not need any ‘grounds for divorce’. The Shammaites did and appealed to Deut 24:1, כי מצא בה ערות דבר. Accepting the appeal to this text, the Hillelites then stressed the words כי מצא בה… דברin the text: ‘a matter …’, i. e. ‘anything’. Thus the dis-
Cf the ancient apprehensions on this point in 1 En 8:2; cf 1 Pet 3:3. yGit 9 (50d) last sentence: ואתיא דזקנים כבית שמאי ודרבי עקיבה כבית הלל. Blau, Ehescheidung,
84 85
33f.
86 See esp Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’, 367 and n32: Akiva as the preacher of the love commandment. [Similar emphasis in Kahana, Sifre Zuta Deuteronomy, 373 n29, citing the works on R. Akiva by L. Finkelstein, J. Goldin, and S. Safrai.] 87 Rosen-Zvi, ‘Even if One found’, 5, ‘extreme and provocative’. 88 For the halakha see Alon, Jews, Judaism, 227f and n99f, referring to the ( בית הטומאותmNid 7:4) and to Josephus, Ant 3:261, women withdrawing during their period and returning after the seven days. In Akan circles in Ghana, the indication for a menstruating woman is ‘one who lives in the back yard’ (oral communication, Rev. Brandford Yeboah). 89 Love of neighbour: Sifra, kodashim 2,4 (Weiss 89b); yNed 9 (41c). Song of Songs: mYad 3:5; tSan 12:10. Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’, 367 emphasises that Akiva sees marriage as a love relationship. Rosen-Zvi, ‘Even if One found’, 11 n32 rejects Kahana’s interpretation to the same effect as an ‘anachronism.’ [I agree with Kahana (and Neudecker) that it is obvious to confront Akiva’s position in mGit 9:10 with that in Sifra metsora 9 (79c) = yGit 9 (50d). Rosen-Zvi is right, however, in calling Kahana’s suggestion (ibid. 373) that Akiva considered love a necessary condition for marriage anachronistic, although a similar reproach could be made against his own suggestion that Akiva made marriage into something ‘secular’ (RosenZvi ibid. 11 n32). As to Akiva’s motives for carrying the Hillelite position to the extreme, Rosen-Zvi ibid. 11 n32 considers a polemic with contemporaneous Christians. Anti-Christian polemics are a possibility in Akiva, cf below p251f on the Song of Songs, but divorce does not seem to be a very suitable ‘battlefield’ for it. Since Akiva’s position equals that of the Pharisees in Mark, including the citation of Deut 24:1, a polemic would make sense only in refuting the ‘Shammaite’ position of Matthew.]
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cussion went on for some time,90 until R. Akiva came up with another specimen of his brilliant midrash using the same key word: ‘Even if he found ( )מצאanother [317] prettier than her, for it is said: If she does not find grace ( )תמצא חןin his eyes.’91 This clinched the Hillelite law of absolute male power to divorce, while meeting the Shammaites’ objections half-way: the wife would make herself prettier than others! It remains to recall that the extant Mishna appears to be based on R. Meir’s collection of mishnayot, which in turn was built on R. Akiva’s.92
The New Testament Texts Paul Oldest among the New Testament documents are Paul’s letters, and they also contain the earliest Christian divorce texts. Two important texts are in the same chapter in 1 Corinthians; a third one, paralleling one of the former, in Romans. The context in 1 Corinthians is altogether fitting: it concerns an entire chapter of ‘casuistic’ instruction93 on abstention from marital relations, marriage, or remarriage, in order to devote oneself to the service of God. In this chapter, Paul is also remarkably explicit about his sources of authority.94 The married I command, not I but the Lord: the wife must not depart (μὴ χωρισθῆναι) from her husband – and if she has departed, let her either stay unmarried or be reconciled with her husband – and the man must not send (μὴ ἀφιέναι) his wife away. (1 Cor 7:10f)
Paul gives a ‘command’ but corrects himself and mentions the source: it is ‘the Lord’ who commands.95 While it cannot be decided here who the ‘Lord’ is, the phrase sounds authoritative and must be meant to do so. The command implies that the married woman, if she has ‘departed’, is not allowed to remarry but must either remain single or be reconciled with the husband. Also, the husband is not to ‘send away’ the wife. As David Daube has shown, ‘depart’ and ‘send away’ are terms for [318] divorce in Jewish law.96 We noted Jewish law generally does not allow the woman the possibility to initiate divorce, though it is mentioned in the Egyptian papyri; moreover the option of ‘departing’ from the husband was 90 Cf SifDeut 269 (p288) // bGit 90a; see Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’, 362–364 for a convenient exposition. 91 Cf Rosen-Zvi, ‘Even if One found’, 5; [Kahana, Sifre Zuta Deuteronomy, 372f]. 92 Goldberg, ‘Mishna’. This is supported both by tradition (Rav Sherira’s letter) and by literary analysis. 93 For this aspect see Congar, ‘Kasuistik’; see Tomson, ‘Halakha in the New Testament’, n120. The ‘casuistry’ implies practical teaching in conflicts between several moral options. 94 See for these aspects Richardson, ‘I Say’; Tomson, Paul, 259–264; idem, ‘Background’. 95 Cf the language in 1 Cor 7:25, ἐπιταγὴ κυρίου, and 1 Cor 14:37, κυρίου ἐντολή. 96 Daube, ‘Terms for Divorce’, in idem, Rabbinic Literature, 362–365.
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known in Hellenistic law as practised in the Roman period.97 In other words Paul is divulging the Lord’s divorce prohibition to gentile Christians (cf 12:2; 7:12–16), while supplementing it in view of the Hellenistic legal option of ‘departure’ by the wife. The second passage is in the same chapter and relates to this. However it reveals a further stage of legislation. The woman is bound (δέδεται) during all the time that her husband lives; but when the husband passes away, she is free to be married with whomever she wants, only in the Lord. But she is happier if she stays so, according to my opinion (γνώμη), and I, too, think I have the Spirit of God. (1 Cor 7:39f)
Of the two sentences, the second one reflects Paul’s own ‘opinion’: a ‘believing’ widow is better off when not remarrying. The first sentence differs and by form is a rule: it defines the woman’s rights in the third person. It is less strict than the personal opinion Paul gives, which is a recurring pattern in the chapter.98 The wife is bound in marriage as long as her husband lives, but when he dies she is free to remarry, ‘only in the Lord’, i. e., apparently, only with a believer. ‘The Lord’ is short for ‘the church of the Lord’. We are dealing with a church rule, which must be built on the divorce prohibition of ‘the Lord’ himself. To be more precise: it is a church rule with several interesting halakhic aspects. After the death of the husband it is said of the woman, more precisely: ἐλευθέρα ἐστὶν ᾧ θέλει γαμηθῆναι, μόνον ἐν κυρίῳ, ‘She is free to be married with whomever she wants, only in the Lord.’ These are halakhic formulations also found in rabbinic law. As we have seen, the ‘essence of the divorce bill’ is said to state alternatively: ‘You are permitted to any man’ or, ‘You may go and be married to any man you want’ (mGit 9:3). In mGit 9:1, however, R. Eliezer wishes to reserve the husband’s right to make a condition: ‘You are permitted to every man except NN.’ The [319] anonymous ‘sages’ reject this, but the condition on remarriage is analogous to Paul’s clause, ‘only in the Lord’, i. e. within the Church. In Paul’s and Eliezer’s time, such conditions were still conceivable, but they were rejected by the sages of the second century.99 We must be very clear, though, that Paul does not accept the legal conception underlying Deut 24 and Pharisaic-rabbinic halakha in these matters: divorce by writ. Paul here follows a specific, rather more stringent legal tradition. The rule of 1 Cor 7:39 is also quoted in Romans, but with a different aim. It serves as a metaphor in a ‘theological’ argument about the mystical union with 97 See above n46, and cf Rosen-Zvi, ‘Even if One found’, n34. On Hellenistic law see Wolff, ‘Hellenistic Private Law’, but see Daube’s critical reflections, ibid. 365–369. Cf also the interesting tradition yKid 1:1 (58c), above n2. 98 Similarly, 1 Cor 7:25 and 7:6. Interestingly, Baumgarten, ‘Restraints’, 15 and n7 notes a vaguely similar ‘two-tiered approach to halakhah’ in the Temple Scroll. 99 tGit 7:1–5; SifDeut 269 (p289); see Tomson, Paul, 121f, mentioning also the Bar Kokhba get with a formulation analogous to Paul’s.
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Christ in his death and resurrection, with ‘freedom from the law’ ensuing. Given the overwhelming attention exegetes have given to ‘law theology’, it does not surprise the actual law involved here has passed almost unnoticed. Or do you not know, brothers – for I am addressing people that know the law – that the law lords it over a person as long as one lives? For the married woman is bound by law as long as her husband lives; but when the husband dies, she is liberated from the law of the husband. Now as long as the husband lives, she is called an adulteress if she becomes another man’s; but if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she will not be an adulteress when she becomes another man’s. Therefore, my brothers, you also have died for the law through the body of the Christ, in order to become someone else’s, the one’s who arose from the dead – that we may bear fruit to God. (Rom 7:1–4)
Comparison shows Paul not only uses the rule as a metaphor but adapts it to this particular context. The readers are supposed to ‘know’ this ‘law’, in Rome no less than in Corinth.100 The entanglement of ‘law theology’ with actual law is intriguing here and raises important questions about their relative value. On the other hand the practical application of the law in 1 Cor 7:39 is entirely serious and reveals that the law theology in Rom 7 can not be taken to reflect the abolition of the law.101 An interesting aspect of the Romans passage are the allusions to Deut 24:1–4. We saw that in the Septuagint, marriage no. 1 having ended with divorce, the woman can remarry: ἀπελθοῦσα γένηται ἀνδρὶ ἑτέρῳ, [320] ‘having gone away, she becomes another man’s’, and that the alternative termination of marriage no. 2 is conditioned as follows: ἢ ἀποθάνη ὁ ἄνηρ ὁ ἔσχατος, ‘or if the second husband dies’. Exactly these phrases are echoed in Rom 7:3, ζῶντος τοῦ ἀνδρὸς μοιχαλὶς χρηματίσει ἐὰν γένηται ἀνδρὶ ἑτέρῳ· ἐὰν δὲ ἀποθάνῃ ὁ ἀνήρ, ἐλευθέρα ἐστὶν …, ‘as long as her husband is alive, she is called an adulteress if she becomes someone else’s, but if her husband dies she is free …’102 In other words, Paul explains the rule of 1 Cor 7:39 using phrases from the model case in Deut 24. He also glaringly omits once again the legal basis of Deut 24: termination of marriage by divorce. It is now clear that Paul’s teaching on divorce and remarriage is not only rooted in the tradition of the church and of ‘the Lord’, but that this teaching and tradition must both be understood in the framework of ancient halakha. We are strongly reminded of the phrases in the Damascus Document and the Temple
Romans as well formally addresses gentiles, 1:13; 11:13. more elaboration see Tomson, ‘What did Paul mean’ (in this volume). 102 Jer 3:1, which can also be heard here, καὶ ἀπέλθη ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ καὶ γένηται ἀνδρὶ ἑτέρῳ, seems to be only another reflection of Deut 24. 100
101 For
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Scroll to the effect that people are not to take ‘two wives during their lifetime’,103 and that only ‘after she dies can he take another (wife)’, a rule polygamous and ‘uninformed’ King David was ignorant of.
Luke Exegetes agree that the divorce pronouncement is preserved in purest form in the Lukan version, true to Luke’s respect for his sources; it can almost certainly be identified with the hypothetical source ‘Q’ which represents the Jesus tradition.104 In Mark and Matthew, by contrast, the rule is adapted to circumstances different from the probable context of origin. Thus the following saying is attributed to Jesus: Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery; also he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Πᾶς ὁ ἀπολύων τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ καὶ γαμῶν ἑτέραν μοιχεύει, καὶ ὁ ἀπολελυμένην ἀπὸ ἀνδρὸς γαμῶν μοιχεύει). (Luke 16:18)
The pronouncement has two phrases which corroborate each other and exclude any ambiguity. Divorce does not terminate the marriage bond, so remarriage or marrying a divorcée means adultery. This accords with what we heard from Qumran and resembles what we read in Paul. In fact, the corollary clauses seem to elaborate on the phrase from Deut [321] 24:2 which is also alluded to by Paul: ‘if she goes away and becomes another man’s …’ When the partner dies, however, the surviving partner is free to remarry. The passage in Luke occasions some important conclusions for Paul. The attribution of the saying to Jesus shows that Paul when ascribing his divorce prohibition in 1 Cor 7:10 to ‘the Lord’ means none other than Jesus.105 Furthermore, the development of the prohibition into a Church rule about remarriage of widows seen in 1 Cor 7:39 and Rom 7:2f makes it convincingly clear that Paul had received the divorce halakha of Jesus through apostolic tradition. It may as well have been in the primary form preserved in Luke, since that Gospel shares much in common with Paul and his letters.106
also Blau, Ehescheidung, 61f. Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts’, 82; idem, Luke, vol. 2, 1119. [Cf Meier, Marginal Jew 4:
103 Thus 104 See
102–108.] 105 Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts’, 81 thinks it was ‘the risen Kyrios.’ 106 Cf the textual accretion from 1 Cor 11:24f in Luke 22:19f, the sympathy of the Lukan author for Paul, and the detailed information about him in Acts, including the three first person plural passages. According to ancient traditions, it was ‘Paul’s gospel’ that Luke wrote down. [The repeated corollary, ‘divorce and remarry’ and ‘marry a divorced one’ must also be authentic. It reflects both Paul’s strictures in Rom 7 and 1 Cor 7 and, in the negative, the ‘essential formula’ effecting divorce and enabling remarriage in mGit 9:3.]
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Mark While the near-consensus is that Luke based most of his Gospel on Mark, the divorce saying must belong to the parts he borrowed from other sources. The form of the saying in Mark – at least in its extant form – clearly reflects subsequent elaboration. Moreover it is attached to a narrative not found in Luke. And Pharisees came asking him: Is it permitted for a man to divorce his wife; testing him. He answered and said to them: What did Moses prescribe you to do? They said: Moses commanded to write a divorce bill and to send her away. But Jesus said to them: It was in view of your hard-heartedness that he wrote that commandment. But from the principle of creation, male and female he made them (Gen 1:27); therefore a man shall leave his father and mother … and they shall be one flesh (Gen 2:24) – hence they are no longer two but one flesh. Now what God has made into a couple, man must not separate. And when in the house the disciples further interrogated him about it. He said to them: Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery with her; and if she divorces herself from her husband and is married to another, she commits adultery. (Mark 10:2–10)
Pharisees come ‘testing’ Jesus with the general question whether divorce is allowed. Depending on the evolution of the synoptic tradition, the [322] ‘testing’ could either be heard within the later framework of generalised Christian-Jewish polemics or in the earlier one of Jesus or his disciples actually disputing with Pharisees.107 It would not make an impressive difference, however, for in both cases the Christian viewpoint is more severe than the Pharisaic one. That is why the divorce issue is such an interesting case for studying halakha in the New Testament. The ‘testing’ obviously means no more than that the Pharisees in question want to know where to put Jesus on the map of Judaism in this important question. The implication that this might as well concern the historical Jesus (pace Bultmann cum suis) is confirmed by the ensuing debate on the fundamental passage, Deut 24. The Pharisees adduce the passage in order to prove that divorce is based on the Tora, but Jesus rejects it for another, higher principle in the Tora: lifelong monogamy as read in the two verses in Genesis.108 This, we are able to see now, accords with the preferred halakha in the Qumran scrolls. One of Jesus’ two proof texts even seems identical with one of the three cited by the Damascus Document: [ἀπὸ δὲ] ἀρχῆς κτίσεως ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτούς, ‘from the principle of creation, male and female he made them’, actually sounds as a ren107 Cf Berger, Gesetzesauslegung, 553–557: ‘antijüdische Polemik’ in Mark 10:1–12, paralleling 7:1–23. 108 The phrase καὶ προσκολληθήσεται πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ from Gen 2:24 is lacking in the primary mss אB and should be omitted, as in E. Nestle’s ed, pace Nestle-Aland, 27th ed. Gen 2:24 is read in various applications by the rabbis, see Tomson, Paul, 115f. For learned reflections on the ideal of monogamy and its background see Daube, New Testament, 71–83; see also the observations by Baumgarten, ‘Restraints’.
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dering of ויסוד הבריאה זכר ונקבה ברא אותם.109 Moreover the radical harking back to Genesis in view of the ‘hardness of heart’ of the ‘Mosaic’ law practice reminds of the Damascus Document’s reverting to the sealed Book of the Law in face of King David’s lax behavior. The Pharisees know where to put Jesus now: in matters of divorce, he stands with the Essenes or at least with the radical ones. This conclusion is corroborated by the above analysis of mGit 9:10 and its prehistory: the possibility of divorce was strongly debated in first century Judaism, and only in the second century rabbinic debates did a compromise of sorts emerge. Finally, the pronouncement on divorce which we already found in Luke and which is appended to the narrative has received an important adaptation here: the initiative of the woman to divorce in the second clause. As in 1 Cor 7:10f, this represents an adaptation to Roman-Hellenistic [323] law which must reflect the situation of the evangelist or his readers.110 We found the more original form of the saying in Luke, concluding also that added to the evidence in Paul, it reminds of Qumran halakha. The dispute narrative as preserved in Mark and compared with the Qumran documents confirms that impression.
Matthew Whereas earlier research tended to investigate the New Testament teaching on divorce starting from Matthew, it is fitting to take this Gospel on last of all, both for its evidence as to the development of the synoptic tradition and for its characteristic halakhic adaptations. In line with a feature typical of Matthew, the teaching is found twice: once in an elaboration of the Markan narrative-cumpronouncement, and a second time in summary form as an apparent insert into the ‘antitheses’ of the Sermon on the Mount.111 And Pharisees came to him, testing him, and said: Is it permitted for a man to divorce his wife for any reason? He said in answer: Did you not read that He Who created from the beginning − Male and female did He make them − also said: Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. So that they are no longer two but one flesh. Now what God has made into a couple, man must not separate. They said to him: Then why did Moses command to give a divorce bill and divorce her? He answered: For your hard-heartedness did Moses give you the command to divorce your
109 Similarly Blau, Ehescheidung, 59–65; Dupont, Mariage, 24–27; [also Kister, ‘Divorce, Reproof’, 199–203, though more cautiously]. 110 See above n97. 111 Also Blau, Ehescheidung, 45–72, though duly recognising the secondary nature of Matt’s version. Kooyman’s critically disposed study, De joodse kontekst van Mattheüs 5:31–32, approaches Matt 5:31f rather much in isolation from the development of the synoptic tradition (incl. Matt 19:3–9), from Qumran, from the history of the halakha, and from the rest of rabbinic literature.
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wives, but from the beginning, it was not so. And I say to you: Whoever divorces his wife for another reason than unchastity and marries another, commits adultery. (Matt 19:3–9) It was also said: Whoever divorces his wife, must give her a divorce bill. But I say to you: Everyone who divorces his wife other than for a matter of unchastity causes her to be involved in adultery, as also whoever marries a divorcée, commits adultery. (Matt 5:31f)
Comparison of Matthew and Mark reveals the particular character of both. To begin with, the dispute narrative is different. In Mark, the narrative is in two parts, the second one containing a modified form of the pronouncement known from Luke and being addressed to the [324] disciples. In Matthew, the pronouncement has been integrated into the dispute narrative with the Pharisees. Moreover in Mark, Jesus gives a scriptural argument to the effect that divorce is absolutely prohibited, which he then clinches with the pronouncement. In Matthew, the scriptural argument yields an absolute prohibition, but Jesus’ pronouncement contains a qualification: one who divorces μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ, ‘not for unchastity’, and remarries, commits adultery; hence in case of adultery, divorce is allowed. πορνεία, ‘unchastity’, is a general term covering sexual transgression112 equivalent to Hebrew זנות.113 An inner tension is revealed which shows Matthew’s text to be complex.114 Furthermore, the opening question which defines the course of the dispute is different. In Mark, the Pharisees ask whether divorce is allowed at all, but in Matthew, they ask for the precise grounds for divorce: ‘May a man divorce his wife for any reason?’ As Blau and many others have observed and was noted already in the above, the dispute narrative in Matt 19 has been re-formulated to coincide with the Pharisaic schools dispute.115 The question in Mark is whether Jesus accepts the agreement of all Pharisees that divorce is possible at all, and in his answer, he identifies with the Essenes, even using very similar scriptural arguments. But asking, as in Matthew, whether one can divorce ‘for any reason’ 112 Cf the generalised usage in the Apostolic Decree, Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25; and in Paul passim. 113 As used in CD 4:20. Cf Hos 4:11; 6:10 (LXX πορνεία). See Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts’, 97. 114 Similarly Blau, Ehescheidung, 51–55; cf Tomson, Paul, 113–115. Sigal, Halakhah, 93f interprets the corollary clause prohibiting one who divorced to remarry as an extra halakha taught by Jesus. [But see above n106.] 115 Amram, Jewish Law of Divorce, 35; Blau, Ehescheidung, 52f; Rosen-Zvi, ‘Even if One found’, 5f. Kirchschläger, Ehe, 72–75 and Collins, Divorce, 115 conclude this is now the view of ‘virtually all (Catholic) commentators’. But see next footnote. Cardellino thinks the exception clauses reflect Jesus’ original message of forgiveness, while Mark and Luke omitted them for gentiles who could not follow this casuistry. Instone Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage, 134 agrees Matthew added the phrases and that they agree with the Shammaite view (152–9), yet maintains ‘Matthew’s versions represents more aspects of the original debate’ (174). [Similarly, Loader, ‘Did Adultery Mandate Divorce’ assumes that the exception clauses are original and Matthew ‘simply spelled out what had always been assumed’. Again, Lehmann, ‘Gen 2 24 as the Basis for Divorce’ posits that ‘[t]he omission of the conditional clause in Mark and Luke must be called the scribal error, not the reverse.’]
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comes down to asking Jesus whether he sides with the Hillelites,116 while in his answer: ‘No, except in case of unchastity’, he confesses to the Shammaite view. The tension observed in Matt 19 returns in condensed form in Matt 5:31f. Incidentally, the passage formally contrasts with the five other ‘antitheses’ in vv5:21–48 and gives the impression of being a later [325] adaptation.117 It mentions a ‘bill of divorce’, which reveals that what is at stake is how to read Deut 24:1. Then another form of the synoptic divorce pronouncement follows. Hence these two verses read as a summary of the adapted narrative-cum-pronouncement in Matt 19. Again, discussion is about the grounds for divorce, not, as in Mark, whether divorce as implied in Deut 24 is allowed at all. The interpretation contained in the pronouncement first renders the Shammaite approach: divorce is possible, but only in case of unchastity. The phrase λόγος πορνείας, a glaring Hebraism, makes sense as an interpretive rendering of ערות דבר,118 thus once again alluding to Deut 24. Then, however, the corollary follows: ‘… and whoever marries a divorcée commits adultery’. The corollary is unqualified: no exception is made for an adulterous divorcée. This suggests an absolute prohibition of divorce, as in Luke, Paul, and Mark, and as distinct from Matt 19:9 where it is said, ‘he who divorces not for unchastity and remarries, commits adultery.’ Here, it sounds more radical: one may not remarry at all, apparently, even after adultery. We conclude that the Matthaean evangelist reformulated both the narrative and the pronouncement and adapted them to the Shammaite view. He even did so twice, also inserting, it seems, a summary of the narrative-cum-pronouncement from Matt 19 into the programmatic antitheses of Matt 5 and thus expressing the urgency the matter had for him. This urgency must reflect the needs of his church, which at that moment apparently sought integration in a Pharisaic or more precisely a Shammaite Pharisee framework. But for some reason he was not fully consistent. He appears to have left parts of the received, more radical formulations in place, allowing contradiction to develop. Did he do so on purpose, intending the adaptation to be superficial or partial only? Or was it because he was not a creative writer who could remake his own text at will, but an ‘evangelist’ obliged to handle his tradition with due respect, even at the risk of contradiction? The answer was for later [326] generations to find, in the ongoing exchange between sacred text, actual life, and learned interpretation.
Similarly Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts’, 98. Only here, the introductory formula ἠκούσατε ὅτι ἐρρέθη is abbreviated to ἐρρέθη δέ, cf Luz, Matthäus 1: 357. The reasons for Kampen, ‘Matthean Divorce Texts’, 162 to conclude from here on a closer link with vv27–30 are unclear to me. Kooyman, De joodse kontekst, 152 notes that the phrase normally introduces a quote (ibid. 142f), but in this case only an allusion. 118 Thus Dupont, Mariage, 87; Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’, 386; Neirynck, ‘Echtscheidingsverbod’, 32f, as against Ott, Vogt, Bonsirven; Lagrange, Romains, 105. 116 117
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Conclusions Paradoxes and Shifts in Jewish and Christian Divorce Law We have seen that Mosaic legislation had adopted the institution of divorce as it existed in ancient Near Eastern law, while there was also a trend resenting divorce, represented by the prophet Malachi early in the post-exilic period. Both trends remained active in the period under discussion, sometimes resulting in paradoxical constellations. Part of the explanation may be that we are confronted with shifting combinations of primeval dynamics: the perennial force of the sexual urge, the tireless effort to domesticate it, and the resilience of the patriarchal system. We must restrain ourselves in imagining another motive at work in antiquity whose absence for many moderns is unthinkable: the idea of legal equality between men and women. One of the paradoxes is in the configuration of opinions of Shammaites and Hillelites. In principle, it seems simple: the latter allowed divorce in its undiluted patriarchal, ancient near-eastern form, while the former considered it a last resort when marriage has broken down in adultery. The paradox is revealed when we realise that otherwise the Shammaites often appear to be the more conservative, literalist, and rigid, and the Hillelites, innovative, open-minded, and humane. In the area of divorce it somehow works out the opposite, if we consider the position of women. The school of Shammai limit male power and protect the woman, although as stated it is not at all likely that they were motivated by ideas of legal equality. In contrast, the more ‘enlightened’ school of Hillel leave men almost unlimited power to dispose of their women. Adding confusion to paradox, however, the Shammaite position also generated the view that an adulterous wife must be divorced and may not be re-married ‘because she has been made unclean’. At the other extreme, we have the absolute rejection of divorce apparently advocated at Qumran and most characteristically formulated by Jesus. It seems to reflect both an elevated conception of marriage as a mystical union created by God and a view of sexual relations as something to be feared and controlled because of their definitive and indelible effects. Its adoption by Paul represents a most remarkable halakhic shift. While still a Pharisee, if not as a Hillelite teaching [327] divorce to be allowed on ‘any grounds’, he would at least have thought it possible ‘in case of unchastity’, in the Shammaite sense. As to this topic, Paul’s conversion did not mean an abandonment of the Jewish law or of Pharisaic ‘strictness’, but on the contrary, the adoption of a much stricter halakha, and such, to be sure, on the authority of ‘the Lord’, i. e., Jesus. There were other areas of halakha where different effects may be presumed. If the Jesus tradition was liberal in the area of Sabbath and somewhat negligent on purity,119 we can imagine that these 119 Cf Back, Sabbath Commandment and Krygier, ‘Chabbat de Jésus’ on Sabbath; Booth, Jesus and the Laws of Purity and Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah on purity.
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elements had a similar influence on Paul’s halakhic orientation. In any case, there is no reason to isolate the topic of divorce from the whole of the Jesus tradition. In this area, it involved a former Pharisee to adopt a stricter halakha. The rise to world dominion of this halakha through the movement of Jesus’ followers is another series of paradoxes. On the whole, mainstream Christianity has hardly been more of an exception to universal patriarchy than has Judaism. But while the gentile Church effectively shed the Jewish law contained in Scripture and tradition, it clung just as self-confidently to the strict halakha of lifelong monogamy. In this, we could say, a notable element of the Essene branch of ancient Judaism has survived in Christianity.120 The Matthaean revision is a curious exception, the more so since in the postConstantinian Church it apparently did not gain real authority until the Reformation. Extraordinary circumstances must have called for a shift in the opposite direction than seen in Paul, i. e., toward abandoning Jesus’ anti-Pharisee divorce prohibition and adopting the Shammaite view. As we shall see in a moment, there is reason to think of the climate before the Roman war in the 50s and 60s of the first century. Half a century later, an important shift must have occurred in Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition. Whereas the extant mGit 9:10 discusses the correct interpretation of Deut 24:1 as to the grounds for divorce, the original schools dispute probably was between the ‘Mosaic’ and the ‘Malachian’ conceptions of marriage and divorce. After the rise to power of the Hillelites by the second century, both attitudes were brought together by re-defining them mutually in each other’s terms. [328] R. Akiva and R. Meir (first half of the second century), effectively stretched the Shammaite concept of ‘indecency’ to coincide with the Hillelite tradition of ‘any grounds’. It was clinched in Akiva’s midrash which declared even the ugliness of the wife to be a reason for divorce, while paradoxically also liberating her from the older, Shammaite halakha which imposed ugliness during her period. The net result of all these developments is paradoxical again. Rabbinic Judaism came to teach the Hillelite conception of divorce as a privilege of the husband. Gentile Christianity, on the other hand, propagated the Essene idea of lifelong monogamy. The peculiar teaching of Matthew did not go completely unobserved by the Church Fathers.121 The common solution was separatio a thoro et mensa, the ‘separation of bed and board’ that seems to result from Matt 5:31f and is explicitly documented since the Shepherd of Hermas.122 120 The clear formulations of Roman Catholic canon law (Codex iuris canonici, 199) could seem to reproduce Qumranic halakha: Matrimonium ratum et consummatum nulla humana potestate nullaque causa, praeterquam morte, dissolvi potest. 121 Ott, Auslegung, part 1. Cf the interpretation proposed by Tertullian, ‘Whoever divorces his wife in order to marry another, commits adultery’, refuted by Blau, Ehescheidung, 52f. 122 Herm 29:6 (mand. 4), the ‘angel of repentance’ answering the question what should be done with an adulterous wife: ᾿Απολυσάτω, φησίν, καὶ ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτῷ μενέτω· ἐὰν δὲ ἀπολύσας
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During the Reformation, when different exegetical viewpoints caught wind from strong forces of social change, the Shammaite revision in Matthew was re-discovered and used to review marriage law.123 In an equally extraordinary reaction, the council of Trent effectively declared the biblical exception clauses from Matthew out of bounds.124 Modern Catholic exegetes striving to interpret Matthew accordingly propose to read the clauses as a negative exception meaning divorce not to be allowed, ‘not even in the case of unchastity’.125 Others read it as the [329] obligation to divorce an adulterous wife,126 or only as the obligation to dissolve a previously contracted unruly marriage.127 The classical, mediating solution of ‘separation’ is chosen not only by Catholics but also by certain Protestants.128 Other Protestant, Catholic and even Evangelical exegetes favour using the Matthaean exception to enable divorce on pastoral grounds in certain circumstances.129
τὴν γυναῖκα ἑτέραν γαμήσῃ, καὶ αὐτὸς μοιχᾶται, ‘He must, he said, send her away, and the man must stay single, for he who sends away his wife and marries another, commits adultery.’ 123 Ott, Auslegung, part 2; Vogt, Ehegesetz, 30f; and esp Olsen, Logia, 20–27 who interestingly describes how Erasmus unearthed ‘deviant’ rulings and opinions among the Church Fathers, notably Origen. There was a more liberal Erasmus–Zwingli–Bucer line among the Reformers, over against a more restrictive Melanchthon–Beza–Calvin line, while Luther was somewhere in the middle. 124 Session 24, canon 7, Nov. 11, 1563 (quoted by Dupont, Mariage, 116): … Propter adulterium alterius coniugum matrimonii vinculum non posse dissolvi; cf the principle of canon law on divorce, above n120. 125 Ott, Auslegung, 295–9; Vogt, Ehegesetz, 66; Bonsirven, Divorce, 45; cf discussion by Baltensweiler, Ehe, 87–90. This leads to the canonical solution of separation, see below n128, and as in the (Roman!) Hermas, above n122. 126 Thus Nembach, Ehescheidungsrecht, 50–58, finding only Matthew coherent on the premise that the discussion was about grounds for divorce. Similarly Kleinschmidt, Ehefragen, 187–189, following Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’ and Witherington, ‘Exceptional Situation’. Derrett, ‘Teaching’, 374 thinks the Matthaean clauses mean divorce ‘to avoid adultery’. From an evangelical viewpoint, Keener, ‘Divorce and Remarriage’, 44, 105 allows divorce upon adultery. Cf also the discussion in the section on divorce in Vahrenhorst, Nicht schwören, 404–409. [Similarly Loader, ‘Did Adultery Mandate Divorce’ assumes the Matthaean exception clauses to indicate the obligation to divorce upon adultery.] 127 Baltensweiler, Ehe, 101 and Meier, Law and History, 146f: it concerns incestuous marriages of proselytes in Matthew’s Church. [More cautiously Meier, Marginal Jew 3: 104 states that the grounds for Matthaean exception clause are ‘disputed down to the present day’.] 128 Lagrange, Romains, 104f; Dupont, Mariage; Lancey, ‘Issue of Divorce’; Bockmuehl, ‘Matthew’. This accords with the official Roman-Catholic position in Codex iuris canonici, 201: ‘De separatione manente vinculo’; can. 1152, ius … solvendi coniugalem convictum. 129 Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts’; Collins, Divorce; Keener, Divorce and Remarriage; InstoneBrewer, Divorce and Remarriage, 268–299 (with a review of earlier interpretations and accepting even more ‘biblical’ grounds such as desertion and emotional or material neglect). For an overview of the history of interpretation and the present situation see Luz, Matthäus 1: 365–369.
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The Development of the Jesus Tradition Some important conclusions follow for two classical topics in New Testament scholarship: the relation between Paul and Jesus and the development of the synoptic tradition. It is illuminating to view these explicitly in the perspective of first century CE history. The shift Paul made from his presumed Pharisaic stance towards the exclusion of divorce and remarriage until the partner dies proves that the Jesus tradition had gained supreme authority for him. This confirms his own reports as also those in Acts about his fundamentally positive relationship with James and the main disciples of Jesus, Peter and John.130 It must have been through these contacts that Paul had come to participate in the Jesus tradition that is documented both in the divorce halakha we have studied and in his explicit references to traditions which he has ‘received’ and now ‘hands on’.131 When conflict [330] arose with certain Jewish-Christian circles in Jerusalem, this positive basis may be supposed to have persisted, as indeed Paul’s own report in Galatians intends to establish. Also, amidst his fierce resistance to the pressure on gentile believers to become proselytes, he reminds his readers that he who does accept circumcision, engages himself to keep ‘the whole law’.132 There is no trace here of the idea presumed by many exegetes that the law had gone obsolete for Paul, only that he squarely rejected forced proselytism of gentile Christians. In the research overview mentioned above,** the question was raised a couple of times what may have caused the growing tension between Jewish and gentile believers in Paul’s churches and especially the pressure exercised by what appear to be Jewish ‘false apostles’ on gentile Christians to accept the law of Moses. Taking into account that all of the generally recognised Pauline letters are from the 50s of the first century, it is obvious to relate this development to Josephus’ reports about the chaos and the social violence which arose in Palestine especially since Felix became procurator in 52 CE.133 Reports in rabbinic literature lead to the conclusion that in these years, the school of Shammai was predominant. Halakhic evidence is strong here since the Shammaites not only were stricter in Sabbath observance and more reserved towards non-Jews, but Gal 1:19; 2:7–9; Acts 15:13; 21:18.
130
1 Cor 11:23; 15:1–3; 1 Thes 4:1f. This confirms the interpretation of Gerhardsson, Memory, 288–306, including the interpretation ibid. 297f of ἱστορήσαι Κῆφαν in Gal 1:18 as ‘gaining halakhic information from Peter’, that was adopted also by Dunn, ‘The Relationship between Paul and Jerusalem’, 110–113, at 123 n24 mentioning Gerhardsson and at 126–128 carrying the discussion on with O. Hofius and N. Walter. [And see ‘Paul as a Recipient and Teacher of Tradition’, in this volume.] 131
132 See esp Gal 2:7–9, 11–14; 5:2f. ** [Tomson, ‘Halakhah in the New Testament’.] 133 War 2:223–407; Ant 20:97–215. [In another perspective, these connections are elaborated on in the section on historiography and the early Christian sources in this volume.]
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also − paradoxically − more than the Hillelites appreciated military manoeuvres on the Sabbath. Combined evidence leads to the conclusion that it was especially the Shammaites who supported the war against Rome and initiated it, or in other words, who represented the ‘zealot’ ideology.134 It seems likely that this growing anti-gentile mentality also influenced the primitive Church and induced the ‘false apostles’ to put pressure on gentile Christians to accept circumcision. Indeed this is confirmed by the reports in Acts on radical Pharisees and ‘zealots for the law’ who had joined the Jerusalem Church when Paul returned there about the same period.135 [331] Although it is difficult to think of any particular connection, it seems likely the shift Matthew must have made in the standpoint on divorce dates to the same episode. We may presume it was not a private decision of the evangelist but represented an evolution within his community. If so, it is likely that pressures in Jewish society at large were also at work behind this shift. It concerned a shift from the Essene-like rejection of divorce of the Jesus tradition to the clearly Shammaite position of divorce in case of adultery, a change which is most difficult to explain within the framework of early Christian tradition alone. We get the impression of an extremely divided Church − which again would fit the chaotic image of Jewish society in these years as described by Josephus. If correct, it would mean that in this confusing period, Matthew’s community moved closer to the very same anti-gentile, ‘zealot’ circles that caused such difficulties for Paul and his churches. That, however, can only be part of the Matthew story. Towards the end of the first century, a further development must have occurred. The Gospel also reflects a violent clash, even a break, with the Pharisees, which is reminiscent of the separation of Church and Synagogue effectuated by Gamaliel the Younger around 100. Thus we can imagine the last two stages of the Gospel’s development. Beginning with an elaboration on Mark, the evangelist(s) must have supplemented large amounts of material from other sources and edited them in a style which reminds us of Pharisaic tradition.136 This could have been the time when the ‘Shammaite’ adaptation of Jesus’ divorce halakha was made. Presumably this was in the 50’s or 60’s, when (primitive) Mark could have been available. After the war, tension with the Pharisees must have been rising till Gamaliel the Younger triggered the break. The final stage of Matthew would have then ensued, comprising the break with Pharisaic (now rabbinic) Judaism.137
See Goldberg, Shabbat, 15–22; Ben Shalom, School of Shammai. Acts 15:5, τινες τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς αἱρέσεως τῶν Φαρισαίων πεπιστευκότες who insist on circumcision of gentile Christians; 21:20 [Ἰουδαίοι πεπιστευκότες] … ζηλωταὶ τοῦ νόμου. 136 Most characteristically, the Sermon on the Mount, Matt 5–7. 137 For elaboration on this final phase see Tomson, ‘Wars’ [more adequately, ‘The Gospel of John’, in this volume.] 134 135
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Our halakhic analysis thus confirms the consensus of scholars on the synoptic problem: Matthew is based on Mark.138 It adds, however, social distinction as to the repeated shifts, starting from the typical milieu of Jesus, on to a Shammaite or at least Pharisaic milieu, and finally towards an extra-Pharisaic or gentile Christian milieu. It would in turn better [332] explain the strange contradictions in Matthew between inner-Jewish materials139 and materials reflective of the break.140 Halakhic analysis adds social specificity. It is amazing that none of this is found in Luke. That Gospel serenely seems to preserve the materials of the Jesus tradition in practically untouched form, as is generally accepted in synoptic and ‘Q’ studies. It is most clearly seen in the Lukan form of the divorce pronouncement. Finally, one must admit there is truth in the saying of Jesus that ‘Moses wrote the divorce commandment in view of your hardness of heart’ (Mark 10:5). Indeed we have seen Mosaic divorce law is based on the acceptance of prevailing ancient Near Eastern principles. Rather than in the ‘proofs’ Jesus and other Jews drew from Genesis, however, the stricter attitude that arose in Israel upholding the ideal of lifelong marriage is clearly expressed in Malachi. Even if realities of life and hardness of heart often are stronger, the still voice crying from the altar begs being heeded.
138 Cf Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts’, 99: comparison of Mark and Matt with Qumran material ‘merely serves to accord to the Two Source Theory its merited place as the most plausible solution to the Synoptic Problem.’ 139 Cf the sayings about the law (Matt 5:17–19; 23:23) and about gentiles (5:47; 6:7, 32; 10:6; 15:24; 18:17). 140 Matt 8:10–12; 21:43–45; 27:62–66; 28:15.
‘Devotional Purity’ and Other Ancient Jewish Purity Systems Archaeological finds and literary sources show that Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman periods had their prayer sites and synagogues near the sea, a river, or man-made water provisions, and ongoing finds show this to have been the case in the land of Israel as well. Yet the rabbinic collections record no law or custom to the effect that prayers must be said near water. How does this relate to the insight advanced by Gedalyahu Alon that purity was a foremost concern for ancient Jews? Here, E. P. Sanders has taken issue with Alon over his view that Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition controlled Jewish life in Antiquity. The Pharisees were a marginal group, Sanders objects, and Jewish life went its own way. The present paper questions whether that is a better way to view the Pharisees. Taking a fresh look at the Graeco-Jewish and rabbinic sources and considering how we could understand the various aspects, we shall consider the coexistence of different ‘systems’ of purity in ancient Judaism. It will become likely that apart from the levitical system, there was an independent system of ‘devotional purity’ whose effects are seen in the archaeological and literary sources both pertaining to the land of Israel and to the diaspora but that has found only a small place in rabbinic halakha. Among the rabbis, discussion persisted as to how to value ‘devotional purity’. Thus, along the line, we can see the rabbis and their predecessors, the Pharisees, at work. A brief survey of purity conceptions in early Christianity will show a different play-out of the same motifs.1
Diaspora Synagogues on the Waterfront In his lectures on Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece held in 1930, Eliezer Sukenik made the observation that ‘there is abundant evidence that Jews in Hellenistic countries built their synagogues by preference in the proximity of water.’ He referred to the synagogues excavated on the isles of Delos and 1 The article, not published earlier, grew out of the paper, ‘Spiritual Purity in Corinth and Diaspora Halakha’, read in the Seminar ‘Paul and Diaspora Jews’ during the SNTS general meeting in Strasbourg, 1996. I am indebted to the late Prof. Shmuel Safrai for his remarks made on an earlier version of the article, and to his son Prof. Ze’ev Safrai for commenting on a draft of its present version and referring me to further literature. See also below n58.
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Aegina and at Miletus on the shore of Asia Minor. He added that ‘there is no sufficient evidence for such a tradition in Palestine, though … the synagogue of Capernaum is situated … close to the sea of Galilee’. He also remarked that ‘official Judaism has preserved no trace of a precept to that effect’.2 These last two remarks must now be corrected, but the point on diaspora synagogues stands. If there was no sea at hand, there were rivers, and for lack of both one could build water installations. The synagogue at Dura was situated on the river Euphrates, the one at Priene in Ionia had an immersion pool, and the one at Stobi in Macedonia had a marble basin in the courtyard. The various strata of these synagogues date from around the first century BCE to the fifth century CE.3 Archaeological work done since Sukenik’s time has only enlarged this body of evidence.4 Sukenik also cited two important literary sources. In his list of civic privileges granted to Jewish communities, Josephus quotes the decree of the city of Halicarnassus, probably first century BCE: ‘… We have also decreed that those Jewish men and women who so wish may … build places of prayer near the sea, in accordance with their ancestral custom.’5 The italicized clause retains our attention, since Sukenik could not point out such a tradition. The other source he cited is in the Acts of the Apostles, where Paul and his companions while at Philippi went by the riverside out of town to look for a ‘prayer place’.6 The next question is, what did diaspora Jews in antiquity need water for in the vicinity of their synagogues? Incidentally, we must not confuse this with the ritual baths which formed an integral part of synagogue building compounds, a phenomenon that arose only in the Middle Ages.7 As to the motivation of the custom, literary sources help us out. The third book of Sibylline Oracles, dated 2 Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues, 49f; cf chart of Delos synagogue, 39. At p50 n1 he suggests an (erroneous) explanation from the rabbinic decree of impurity of gentile lands. Safrai, ‘The Synagogue’, 937f confirms Sukenik’s observation but sees ‘no matter of principle’. In a private letter, however, Prof. Safrai pointed out a trend in Antiquity both in the diaspora and in the land of Israel to build synagogues outside settled town areas, possibly because of the proximity of water. The question is discussed fundamentally in Adler, Archaeology of Purity, 74–92; see below. Cf also Adler, ‘Hellenistic Origins’. 3 Dura: Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues, 82; Priene: Kraabel, ‘Diaspora Synagogue’, 490; Stobi: Sukenik ibid. 79. 4 See Reich, ‘The Synagogue and Ritual Bath’; Runesson, ‘Water and Worship’; Hüttenmeister–Reeg, Die antiken Synagogen; Adler, Achaeology of Purity (below n47). Rutgers, The Hidden Heritage, 97–135, doubts the religious use of the frequent water installations (105), while resisting the idea of multiple ‘Judaisms’ (134f); cf discussion by Runesson, ‘Water and Worship’, 124. Wright, ‘Jewish Ritual Baths’ criticizes the ‘maximalist’ claim of Reich and others as to the number of actual mikvaot, without much support from the halakhic sources. 5 Josephus, Ant 14:258, … προσευχάς ποιεῖσθαι πρὸς τῇ θαλάττῃ κατὰ τὸ πάτριον ἔθος. The phrase προσευχάς ποιεῖσθαι has been argued to mean ‘make prayers’ but in light of the cumulative evidence one cannot exclude the meaning ‘build synagogues’. The mention of one Marcus Alexander points to the early Roman period. 6 Act 16:12f, προσευχή either meaning a fixed building or some other location to pray. 7 See Kotlar, ‘Mikveh’, 1543f. In medieval custom, the mikve only served for immersion of women after menstruation, of proselytes, and of utensils.
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to the second century BCE, contrasts pagan worship – unjustly on this point, as we shall see – with the piety of the Jews who ‘at dawn lift up holy arms toward heaven, from their beds, always sanctifying their flesh with water, and they honour the Immortal who always rules’.8 Furthermore, the letter of Aristeas, which narrates the translation of the Bible into Greek in Alexandria, says that before going to work, the translators, ‘following the custom of all Jews, washed their hands in the sea in order to pray to God’.9 In plain words: Jews in the diaspora, from one to two centuries BCE onwards, needed water to purify themselves before prayer, and according to Aristeas and the Halicarnassus decree this was in line with ancestral tradition.10
E. P. Sanders on Diaspora Purity and Pharisees This body of evidence was used by E. P. Sanders in his Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (1990) as the basis for his interesting theory about Jewish purity observance in the diaspora. As opposed to the view of many scholars, Sanders thinks this involved a set of purity rules different or at least independent from those observed in the land of Israel and figuring prominently in the teachings of the Pharisees.11 Arguing differences between Hellenistic and Palestinian Judaism has gone out of fashion. Unflinchingly, Sanders has drawn our attention to an important aspect of ancient Jewish law and custom, but we shall have to reflect on the correct relationship to Pharisaic-rabbinic halakha. On that point, Sanders takes issue with the watershed study by Gedalyahu Alon, ‘The Bounds of the Laws of Levitical Cleanness’ that appeared in Hebrew in the late 1930s and in English in 1977. Disagreeing with previous scholars, notably Adolf Büchler, Alon argued that in the Second Temple period purity 8 Sib Or 3:591–593: ἀλλὰ γάρ ἀείρουσι πρὸς οὐρανόν ὠλένας ἁγνάς, ὄρθριοι ἐξ εὐνῆς αἰεὶ χρόα ἁγνίζοντες, ὕδατι … ET J. J. Collins in OTP 1: 375; for the date see ibid. 354. Collins notes the variant χέρας ‘hands’ (for χρόα, ‘flesh’) in a quotation in some mss of Clement of Alexandria, Protr 6.70. In my judgment, this is an explanatory harmonization with ὠλένας. But Alon, ‘The Bounds’, 202 n34 (never mind the confusion, both in the Hebrew and the translation) prefers the variant, reading the passage as evidence of washing hands for prayer. 9 Aristeas 305, … ἀπονιψάμενοι τῇ θαλάσσῃ τὰς χείρας, ὡς ἄν εὔξωνται πρὸς τὸν θεόν (R. J. H. Shutt’s translation in OTP 2: 33, ‘washing their hands in the sea in the course of their prayers’, is tortuous, cf Sanders’ amazement quoting it, Jewish Law, 260; ὡς ἄν with final subjunctive is by all means possible). Cf Josephus’ re-telling, Ant 12:106, τῇ θαλάσσῃ τὰς χείρας ἀπονιπτάμενοι καὶ καθαίροντες, ‘… and (or?) purifying themselves’. The phrase about ‘the custom of all Jews’ is lacking here. 10 Such was the correct conclusion of Emil Schürer in his day, see Schrage, συναγωγή; Schürer, History 2: 440f. 11 Sanders, Jewish Law, 258–271, responding to the proposal of Dunn, ‘The Incident at Antioch’ that Gal 2:11–14 reflects stress on observance of Pharisaic purity laws in Antioch. The importance of the subject was noted by Poirier, ‘Why did de Pharisees Wash Their Hands?’, esp 222–224.
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observance extended beyond the strictly sacrificial and was a daily concern of many ordinary Jews.12 This assessment has since found both wide scholarly agreement and archaeological confirmation. What Sanders comes up against is the assumption Alon shared with ‘traditional talmudics’, i. e. that Pharisaicrabbinic halakha played a dominant role in shaping Jewish society and therefore is a valid source of historical information.13 This position had recently come under sharp criticism from Jacob Neusner. ‘Critical evaluation of Neusner’s work is not abundant’, Sanders writes in his preface, seeing himself obliged to devote much of his book to such an evaluation.14 For his part, Sanders takes what would later be called a ‘minimalist’ approach, picturing the Pharisees as a small, introvert movement that had little influence on ‘common Judaism’ at large, certainly in the diaspora. We must ask whether this picture does full justice to the sources.15 Rather than some sort of minor sect, the Pharisees were likely a rather broad, multiform movement which at least at one point knew two major opposing schools, those of Shammai and Hillel, but who professed as their purpose to remain in communication with one another and with the people at large. The differences of opinion prominent in rabbinic literature may be taken as vestiges of this multiformity. Consequently, we must imagine Pharisaic law as polymorphous, incoherent at times, and conversant with existing practice of large parts of ancient Jewry.16 Reflecting on similar arguments, Sanders’ next book, Judaism: Practice and Belief (1992) gives a more adequate description of Pharisaic teaching as reflected in rabbinic literature: ‘… The genre of early rabbinic legal material becomes clear. It does not consist of set rules that governed society. It consists of debates. … The Pharisees did not govern Jewish Palestine.’17 That said, Sanders’ exploration of diaspora purity is interesting. One salient element is his tentative explanation of purification in the diaspora, in particular hand washing for prayer, from non-Jewish influence. I think it is not unjustified,18 and we shall be interested to how we should relate this to Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition. As to influence from the Graeco-Roman world, it is not difficult to find sources mentioning purification and hand washing in preparation to worship, 12 Alon, ‘The Bounds’; on Büchler’s position ibid. 205–223. See Klawans (below n69, n71) on moral impurity. 13 On Alon’s position, see Jewish Law, 152–166, cf 270. 14 Sanders, Jewish Law, vii, 131–254, 309–332. Neusner responded unworthily, see his ‘Mr. Sanders’s Pharisees and Mine’, published in two journals and re-published in modified form in Neusner–Chilton, In Quest of the Historical Pharisees, 395–405 under the title, ‘The Debate with E. P. Saunders [sic] since 1970’. 15 So also Hengel and Deines in their review article, ‘E. P. Sanders’ “Common Judaism”’. See the criticism on their position by Rutgers, ‘Enkele kanttekeningen’. 16 As set forth in my review of Sanders’ Jewish Law. 17 Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 458–472, quote 471. 18 Hengel–Deines, ‘E. P. Sanders’ “Common Judaism”’, 49 doubt this. J. Baumgarten’s review of Sanders’ Jewish Law in JQR 83 (1993) 405–407 merely puts a question mark (406). On Safrai–Safrai, Brachot see below n105.
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from Homer onward to be sure. Just to cite these verses: ‘Telemachos separated himself and went to the sand beach, washing his hands in the grey salt waters, and prayed to Athena.’19 Nor is this link a novel discovery at all: it was of course noted by the broad-minded Church Father, Clement of Alexandria, explaining to his readers that the image of Mosaic baptism was also handed over to the Greek poets.20 Using archaeological and literary sources, R. Ginouvès shows in his magnificent study on baths in Graeco-Roman antiquity, Balaneutikè, that from the classic period on, Greek temples had large basins called περιρραντήριον or similar names near the entrance and the altar. From these, worshippers would wash their hands and asperse their bodies before partaking in the prayers and sacrifices. Full immersion was not thought to be necessary except in particular cases such as after childbirth.21 As to the correct relationship with Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition, the anecdote about another goddess as seen by an ancient rabbi points the way. The Mishna tells of a philosopher who in the non-Jewish town of Acre asked Rabban Gamliel the Younger (c. 100 CE) how as a pious Jew he could visit a bath house adorned with the statue of Aphrodite. The decisive part of the rabbi’s threefold answer was that the statue faced the place where people go naked and urinate, precluding devotion to the goddess of love, and that pagan objects which patently are not worshipped, are not prohibited to Jews. The rationalism and humour contained in this answer are striking.22 Moreover in a moment we shall see that nudity and urine could be impediments to worship in a Jewish context as well and that this has to do with purification for prayer. At this point it is important to note that the rabbinic sage assumed that thoughtful pagans felt alike. In good rabbinic manner, there is a threefold lesson here as well: the need of sanctity for prayer was widely felt in early Judaism, it was analogous to ancient pagan devotional practice, and it was shared by a prominent rabbi like Gamliel.23
Philo and Pharisees Sanders makes extensive use of Philo. One of the things the Alexandrian philosopher explains is that Jews are obliged to wash after sexual relations, independently of any connection with the Temple or even with prayers.24 In its abolute19 Od 2.261, … χεῖρας νιψάμενος πολιῆς ἁλός εὐχετˊ ̓Αθήνῃ (my translation). Also Od 12.336; Il 16.227–229; 24.302–306. Thanks to the UCal Regents for copyright access on the TLG CD ROM. 20 Clement, Strom 4.22.142, quoting Od 2.261. 21 Ginouvès, Balaneutikè, 299–318, mentioning all the sources here cited; cf Sanders, Jewish Law, 263f. 22 mAZ 3:4. For the underlying rational principle see Tomson, Paul, 154–163. 23 Cf tBer 2:20, ‘He who visits the bath house …’ 24 Philo, Spec leg 3:63; Sanders, Jewish Law, 267.
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ness, this commandment goes beyond the biblical injunction (cf Lev 15:16–18), and if we are to believe Philo, it applied in the diaspora. Other sources confirm this. Josephus mentions the custom in the form of a general prescription in his survey of Jewish law and custom in Against Apion.25 Furthermore, Trypho cites it in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue as one of the basic Jewish commandments, and in the same passage just referred to, Clement of Alexandria says that it is ‘a custom among the Jews, often to bathe after the marital bed’.26 There is no trace of it in the Mishna and the Tosefta, but in the two Talmudim, a Tannaic tradition attributes a decree to the same effect to Ezra, a manoeuver made more often to label customs of unknown antiquity.27 In addition, some moralistic stories are given to underline the importance of the custom.28 But the relation to the extant halakhic corpora remains unclear. We seem to be confronted with a particular, possibly ancient tradition that was observed both in the diaspora and in the land of Israel but is not readily found in the rabbinic halakha.29 Sanders’ main case is that Philo documents an Alexandrian-Jewish custom to purify from corpse impurity. His main evidence is at the end of Philo’s lengthy exposition of the commandment against murder, On the Special Laws 3:83–209. This is an allegorizing explanation of the impurity issuing even from ‘one who has met a natural death’, and it serves as a hortatory peroration emphasizing, as Sanders rightly observes, ‘the sanctity of life’.30 In a somewhat tortuous sentence, Philo explains that Moses considered those who touched such a corpse ‘… to be not immediately (μὴ εὐθύς) pure, until (μέχρις ἄν) they have been purified by aspersions and ablutions; indeed (μέντοι) he did not permit even the fully pure to enter the Temple within seven days, ordering them to be sanctified on the third and seventh day’ (205). Sanders takes the first part of this sentence to reflect a separate purification by means of ablution and bathing independent of the seven day rite required for entering the Temple. This would imply Jewish observance of levitical purity laws outside of the land of Israel and without the 25 Josephus, Ag Ap 2:203, καὶ μετὰ τὴν νόμιμον συνουσίαν ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς ἀπολούσασθαι. The absolute use of the imperative infinitive is remarkable and suggests, as more often in this section of Against Apio, the use of some written legal source. Moreover this had just been intimated: 2:198 διείρηκεν ὁ νόμος … ἀπὸ κοινωνίας τῆς πρὸς γυναίκα. The thesis of Belkin, Alexandrian Halakah is that Josephus here used Philo’s Hypothetica or one of his sources. See ‘The Halakhic Systems’, in this volume. 26 Justin, Dial 46:2 (also referred to by Sanders p269), τὸ βαπτίζεσθαι … ἐν συνουσίᾳ γενόμενον, ‘that one who has had intercourse must immerse himself’; Clement, Strom 4.22.142, ἔθος τοῦτο Ἰουδαίων, ὡς καὶ τὸ πολλάκις ἐπὶ κοίτῃ βαπτίζεσθαι, as is also done by Penelope, Od 17:48, 59. The custom appears to have been also in use among early Christians (see below). 27 bBK 82a; yMeg 4 (75d); yYom 8 (44d). The last mentioned passage knows of ‘places where they do not bathe’ (after intercourse). 28 yBer 3 (6c); bBer 22a. 29 See Alon, ‘The Bounds’, 193–195. He distinguishes the purification from semen impurity per se from the same in relation to Tora study, and notes that it remains unexplained. 30 Sanders, Jewish Law, 263–268, quote 266.
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Temple as reference point, and it would ignore the accepted biblical and ancient Jewish law. However, it seems that Sanders’ construal is erroneous. Rather, Philo seems to stress the biblically defined seven day period of waiting and purification (Num 19:11, 19). This appears from a closely parallel passage about corpse impurity, where he says that Moses ‘does not allow the person who was sprinkled only once, or who was washed, immediately to proceed to the Temple precincts, but commands him to wait seven days and be twice sprinkled, on the third and seventh day’.31 The reference made to the Temple, undoubtedly the one in Jerusalem, is unequivocal.32 If corpse impurity would be observed in the diaspora, that would contradict the concept of the ‘impurity of gentile lands’ recorded in rabbinic literature. Such of course is the thrust of Sanders’ argument, but the question is whether the premise is correct.33 A Tannaic tradition in the Talmuds claims that the Pharisaic sages Yosef ben Yoezer and Yose ben Yohanan who were active in the early second century BCE ‘decreed impurity on lands of the nations’ (גזרו טומאה על )ארץ העמים.34 The Mishna and Tosefta take the principle for granted and merely specify the implications for Jews who travel from abroad or who reside in border regions.35 It implies that anyone residing outside the land of Israel, i. e., presumably outside the three larger areas of Jewish settlement,36 was deemed to have incurred impurity. As a result, levitical purity could never be maintained outside the land of Israel, and pilgrims from abroad always would have to purify themselves before being able to participate in the Temple rituals that were the purpose of their journey. Since corpse impurity was inevitable in the long run, standard procedure would be to go through the seven day ritual after arrival in Jerusalem.37 A well-known case in point is in Acts 21:23–27.38 It would be striking indeed if 31 Spec leg 1:261, see Sanders ibid. Colson’s translation, as more often, is imprecise and overlooks the connection in both passages between μὴ εὐθύς – οὐδὲ ἐντὸς ἡμερῶν ἑπτά (3:205); οὐκ εὐθὺς – ἀλλὰ ἑπτὰ ἡμέρας … διατρίβειν (1:162). His note on εὐθύς at p603 (LCL Philo vol VII) is even more distracting. 32 The section on murder contains many other references to the Temple: Spec leg 3:88–91, no asylum for manslayer in the Temple; 3:120–126, asylum in cities cities of refuge till death of high priest; ib 171, a woman should stay inside except ‘as often as she needs to go to the Temple’. Undoubtedly the Temple in Jerusalem is meant in this extension of the primarily plainsense exposition of the Decalogue (Spec leg 1:1; Dec 1). 33 See Alon, ‘The Levitical Uncleannes’, esp 183–186. 34 yShab 1 (3d); yPes 1 (27d); yKet 8 (32c); cf bShab 14b. 35 mOh 2:3;17:5; 18:6f; tAh 17:6; 18:1–5; mMik 8:1; tMik 6:1. 36 Its boundaries are decribed in the tradition mShev 9:2; tShev 4:6–11; SifDeut 51 (p116– 118); yShev 6 (36c). 37 Sanders, Jewish Law, 270 accepts that Jews in the diaspora would be assumed to be impure all the time by corpse impurity and would have to get purified upon arrival in Jerusalem and admits this contradicts his theory about ‘a non-biblical domestic [i. e. diaspora] rite after corpse-impurity’. 38 The story apparently involved a vow of abstention (nazirut, see Albeck, Mishna 3: 137– 141 on the subject), and the seven day purification period was necessary because of imputed
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Philo, with his reverence for the Temple in Jerusalem, would adhere to a tradition contravening the principle.39 It would be interesting to know how the principle worked out in relation to the Jewish temple of Onias that functioned in Egyptian Leontopolis till 73 or 74 CE. But our information, for the most part derived from Josephus, is wanting on this point, and rabbinic tradition about sacrifices being brought there is not much clearer.40 Our theme is purity required for prayer. Here also, Sanders cites Philo in support, in a passage about the ablutions required of Israel before the Sinai revelation, an argument also used in rabbinic literature.41 A contemporaneous example is found in another passage where Philo says the Jews of Alexandria said prayers near the sea.42 As noted, Sanders construes this as the main example of diaspora purity observance contrary to Pharisaic law. But both literary and archaeological data indicate that the custom was also well-entrenched in the Land of Israel. The book of Judith tells that the pious heroine, while staying in the enemy camp, used to go to a spring to immerse herself before daybreak, say her prayers, and preserve her purity till dinner.43 This would mean that by the second century BCE, purity for prayer was thought to be normative among pious Palestinian Jews. Archaeological discoveries made since Sukenik confirm this. Water works, basins and ritual baths have been discovered in or near the synagogues at Gamla, Masada, and Herodium, which date from the early first century CE onwards.44 Also, the famous Theodotus inscription from Jerusalem which documents the existence of a synagogue in Jerusalem at the beginning of the common era at the latest, reads: ‘Theodotus son of Vettenus (…) built the synagogue (…) and the water works (…)’.45 It has also been reported that water corpse impurity. Cf Fitzmyer, Acts, 694; Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, 526. Pervo, Acts, 546 overlooks the link and hypothesizes literary creation. 39 Philo, Prov 2.64 offers a glimpse at his respect for the Temple in Jerusalem. 40 Josephus, War 7:420–432, the Temple was closed down at Vespasian’s order after the capture of Masada; Ant 13:62–72; mMen 13:10 (priests from the Onias temple are not fit to serve in Jerusalem); bMeg 10a. According to mHal 4:10, halla brought from Alexandria was rejected, but following 4:11, first fruits from Apamea near Syrian Antioch were accepted, cf discussion in mHal 4:8; mShev 6:1f; tHal 2:5f; tTer 2:12f. 41 Philo, Dec 45, alluding to Exod 19:10–15; Sanders, Jewish Law, 267, 269. Cf bBer 21b, below. 42 Flacc 120–123, they prayed in the open at the beach, seemingly because the synagogues which had been taken from them were also built nearby; cf discussion by Runesson, ‘Water and Worship’, 121–123. 43 Jdt 12:7–9: … καὶ ἐβαπτίζετο … ἐπὶ τῆς πηγῆς τοῦ ὕδατος, καὶ ὡς ἀνέβη, ἐδέετο τοῦ κυρίου θεοῦ Ισραηλ … καὶ εἰσπορευομένη καθαρὰ παρέμενεν ἐν τῇ σκηνῇ, μέχρι οὗ προσηνέγκατο τὴν τροπφὴν αὐτῆς πρὸς ἑσπέραν (on her food cf 12:19). The purity at meals seems to imply that ἐβαπτίζετο implies immersion, not ablution. With reservations, Sanders, Jewish Law, 260 adduces this as evidence on diaspora purity. 44 See Reich, ‘Synagogue and Ritual Bath’; Levine, Ancient Synagogues Revealed, 26 (G. Foerster: Herodium, Masada); 32, 35, 37 (S. Gutman, Z. Ma’oz: Gamla). 45 CII no. 1404: (1) Θ[Ε]ΟΔΟΤΟΣ ΟΥΕΤΤΕΝΟΥ … (3) …[Ω]ΚΟ/Δ[Ο]ΜΗΣΕ ΤΗΝ ΣΥΝ
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installations were unearthed on the spot where the inscription was found.46 Nor does the evidence cease to show up after the destruction of the Temple, when the possibility of maintaining levitical purity was reduced. A thorough study published in 2012, surveying the presence of mikvaot, stone vessels, and imported earthenware in the Land of Israel in the early centuries, establishes that indeed purity was a concern for large parts of the Jewish population from the late second century BCE till the mid-second century CE. Of special interest is that mikvaot were installed in the vicinity of synagogues during that period, but hardly afterwards.47 However, many Palestinian synagogues from the later Roman and Byzantine period do appear to have had water installations other than mikvaot, just like their diaspora counterparts.48 The same is reported for a Samaritan synagogue of that period.49 Thus it appears that purity for prayer was observed both by Jews in the diaspora and in Judaea, possibly from the second century BCE and certainly so from the first century CE onwards, and until well after the destruction of the Temple. Since there seems to be no difference here between the Land of Israel and the diaspora, there is no compelling reason either to suppose a fundamental antithesis to Pharisaic halakha. Rather we should be ready to find traces of the ‘ancestral tradition’ mentioned by the author of Aristeas and Josephus in rabbinic literature.50 Sukenik said he could not locate such a tradition. Nevertheless in a footnote he cites a remarkable Tannaic midrash: ‘Before the Land of Israel was sanctified, all lands were fit for the Word, but since the Land of Israel was sanctified, the Word did not come everywhere to the prophets, but only near water.’ The midrash continues by referring to Ezekiel 1:3, where the prophet receives ΑΓΩΓΗΝ … (6) … ΚΑΙ ΤΑ ΧΡΗ/Σ[Τ]ΗΡΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΥΔΑΤΩΝ … Hüttenmeister–Reeg, Die antiken Synagogen, 192–195. 46 See Reich, ‘Synagogue and Ritual Bath’, and cf Deines, Jüdische Steingefäße, 71f. 47 Adler, Archaeology of Purity. For mikvaot near synagogues see ibid. 74–81. 48 See Hüttenmeister – Reeg, Die antiken Synagogen, 278 (Korazim, 1st–2nd cent., possibly ritual bath); 312f (Meron, 2nd–3rd cent., plastered water installation); 388f (Tekoa, 3rd–5th cent., mikve); 108f (Ein Gedi, 3rd–6th cent., water recipient, stone basin); 425 (Susiya, 4th–6th cent., fountain in courtyard); 304 (Maon, 6th cent., possibly mikve); 515 (Yesod ha-Maala, undatable: water basin). Literary evidence: ibid. 66 (yMeg 3, 74a: Beth Shean, = גורנהreservoir from which hands and feet were to be washed); 441 (LevR 22.4; 511, ‘Maryam’s source’ across a synagogue in Tiberias). Reich, ‘Synagogue and Ritual Bath’ reports the pre-70 CE presence of mikvaot near synagogues and a sharp decline of such after 70, in line with a simultaneous decline of mikvaot in general, although other water installations remain to be found. The pre-70 synagogue mikvaot are all in ‘Zealot’ locations. One thinks of the position of R. Yehuda in mBer 3:4, see below at n101. Adler, ‘Decline of Jewish Purity Observance’ corrects Reich and concludes that the decline of mikvaot near synagogues occurred only after the Bar Kokhba war; cf Adler, Archaeology of Purity, 79f: the monumental synagogues built from the later third century onwards no longer had mikvaot. 49 Ibid. 593f, Abu’l Fath (539, 14th cent., possibly using earlier sources; 594, using Hebrew words not otherwise documented in Arabic sources): for a Samaritan synagogue on Garizim, Baba Rabba (4th cent.) built a mikve ‘for purification before prayers’. 50 In addition to the following, see the data adduced by Runesson, ‘Water and Worship’.
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the Word of God ‘on the river Euphrates’; to Dan 8:2, ‘on the stream of Ulai’; and to Dan 10:4, ‘on the great river, the Tigris’.51 It appears that rabbinic tradition here does reflect the ancient custom to say prayers and build synagogues near seas, rivers, or other water facilities. It is no explicit rule, but it indicates the possibility that more traces are to be found. If so, we must also recall what we have said about the open and multiform character of rabbinic tradition. Examples are not wanting of customs which must have been en vogue among the ancient rabbis and did not find expression in their central collections, but did so only in external sources or in much later rabbinic works. This is in the nature of things rabbinic. In addition to being stylized rabbinic discussions, the classic halakhic collections and certainly the Mishna are selections which at face value do not intend to cover all details of religious law and practice.52 A case in point is the naming of a boy at his circumcision, a practice found only in a late rabbinic collection, although externally it is already mentioned in the Gospel of Luke and thus may with some confidence be presumed to have existed also among Pharisees. Similarly, the Mishna opens abruptly with questions of detail about the saying of Shema, although the pertinent ritual has not even been set forth (mBer 1:1). Indeed the Babylonian Talmud comments that before going into such detail, the commandment itself ought to have been stated (bBer 2a).53 These two examples, among many possible others, show how rabbinic law formulates rules of behaviour referring to practical situations that are only partially articulated or even remain merely presupposed. Hence it may well be that the tradition we are looking for is represented only by details relating to circumstances that remain unexplained.
Paradoxical Purity Rules Since we are dealing with purity, it is well to prepare ourselves by rehearsing some basics of the purity laws. Levitical purity is an area fairly well outlined in the Tora,54 and it is defined by a ‘behavioural link’ with the sacrificial service in the Temple.55 Specific ‘sources of impurity’ are stipulated such as carcass, lep51 MekRS 12:1 (p7); MekRY bo, pisha 1 (p3). Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues, 50 n1; cf Safrai, ‘The Synagogue’, 938. 52 See Goldberg, ‘The Mishna’, reviewing the discussion between J. N. Epstein and Ch. Albeck on whether the Mishna is a codex or an instructive collection; cf Stemberger, Einleitung, 138–144. 53 Luke 1:59; 2:21, see Str-Bill 2: 107. The two examples were cited in class by Prof. Shmuel Safrai. For the first one cf Safrai, ‘Home and Family’, 767. 54 Mainly Lev 11–15; Num 19. See the exposés interspersed in Milgrom, Leviticus. 55 Summarized in Lev 15:31–33, ‘Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, so that they do not die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.’
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rosy, bodily excretions due to menstruation, childbirth, homorrhoea, gonorrhoea, or seminal emissions, and a human corpse and a person who touched it. These sources differ in gravity: corpses are the ‘heaviest’ category, semen is among the lightest. Where the biblical account often appears lacking in order and distinction, later tradition, and especially rabbinic literature, seeks systematization.56 Each category has its corresponding purification procedure, varying from the elaborate seven day ceremony for corpse impurity, via the plainer ‘seven day impurity’ of menstruation or flux, to the simple immersion and waiting till sunset for semen impurity. The impurity involved is of a special character. It is not dirtiness; one can be dirty and still pure in the levitical sense, and vice versa.57 There is, however, a remarkable cluster of halakhot about preparation for prayer in tractate Berakhot (‘Benedictions’) where things are different. They have to do with purity and immersion but they deviate from the levitical system.58 This is where we could look for vestiges of the tradition we are after. We shall read the relevant parts in the Mishna along with parts of the Tosefta, the ‘companion’ that supplements, comments on, and gives alternative versions to the Mishna.59 Going by the order of the Mishna we shall insert passages from the Tosefta which, as usual, has a slightly different order. Also, we shall refer to a division by thematic units numbered 1 through 5 and laid over the received division in mishnayot. We cast our net a little wider than the halakhot about immersion proper, focussing as we do on the larger subject of preparation for prayer. 1. A bridegroom is exempt from reciting the Shema on the first night. (…) It happened that Rabban Gamliel recited the Shema on the first night when he had married. His disciples asked him: Did you not teach us, our master, that “a bridegroom is exempt from reciting the Shema on the first night”? He said to them: I do not listen to you to cancel the Kingdom of Heaven from myself even for one hour! (mBer 2:5, cf 2:8). One whose dead (relative) lies (unburied) before him is exempt from reciting the Shema, from prayer, and from tefillin … (mBer 3:1) 2. One with semen impurity contemplates (the words of the Shema) in his heart but does not say the blessings before and after it, and over the meal he says the blessing after56 An early example of rabbinic systematization is found in mZav 5:11, a later one in mKel 1:1–4; see ‘Zavim 5:12’, in this volume. A more ancient, ‘Pharisaic’ example seems to be the enumeration in mHag 2–3, see Epstein, Prolegomena, 46–52. For a succinct overview see the editor’s article, ‘Purity and Impurity’, in EJ 13: 1405–1414. 57 Neusner, The Idea of Purity, 1. Strikingly similar, Kesef Mishne (Yosef Karo, 1488–1575) on Maimonides, Keriat Shema 4:8 writes, ‘The impurity of those (levitically) impure is not something one senses but is a mental thing.’ Neusner’s approach on ancient Jewish purity seems to feed in part on this medieval rationalism. 58 This conclusion, drawn early on in the genesis of this paper, was endorsed by commentary of Safrai–Safrai, Brachot, 131–145, stressing the exceptional character of the halakhot about semen impurity vis-à-vis the levitical system. Without speaking of a separate ‘system’, the authors recognize a desire for ‘spiritual purity’ beyond the levitical system and its distinct sources of impurity, reminiscent of purification rites in ancient pagan and Christian circles (144f). The seeming anomalies are also noted by Adler, Archaeology of Purity, 83–91. 59 See Goldberg, ‘Tosefta’, 289–292; Stemberger, Einleitung, 152–155.
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wards, but he does not say the blessing before. R. Yehuda says: he says the blessings before and after (Shema and meal). (mBer 3:4) One with semen impurity who has no water to immerse himself in – he recites the Shema but does it inaudibly, and he does not say the blessing before and after, thus R. Meir. But the Sages say: he recites the Shema, he does it audibly, and he says the blessings before and after. (tBer 2:13; cf mBer 2:3) One who is ill and has semen impurity, and has thrown nine kav water over himself (± 4.5 litres) – he recites (the Shema), but he cannot represent the community in fulfilling its duty, as long as he has not been in (a quantity of water of) 40 se’a (± 480 litres). R. Yehuda says: 40 se’a in any case. (tBer 2:12a) If one was standing in prayer (tefilla), and he remembers that he has semen impurity – he does not stop, but shortens (his prayer). (mBer 3:5a) 3. One who has descended to immerse himself (close to the hour for saying Shema) – if he is able to climb up and cover himself and recite (the Shema) before the first sun ray, he climbs up, covers himself, and recites; but if not, one covers himself in the water and recites. But one does not cover himself in dirty water or in flax-soaking water, unless he had poured (clean) water in it. And how far does one remove himself ()ירחיק from it, and from excrement? Four cubits. (mBer 3:5b) A minor who can eat as much as an olive – one separates oneself ( )פורשיןfrom his excrement and from his urine four cubits (for praying). (tBer 2:18) 4. One suffering from a flux who also has semen impurity, or a menstruant who loses semen (after cohabitation), or a woman who cohabits and then appears to be menstruating, (must) immerse themselves (before praying or saying Shema); but R. Yehuda declares them free. (mBer 3:6) Men and women who suffer from a flux and women during their period or after childbirth are allowed to read Tora and to recite mishna, midrash, halakhot and haggadot, but those with semen impurity are not allowed any of those. (tBer 2:12b) 5. R. Eliezer says: he who makes his prayer fixed, his prayer is no supplication. R. Yoshua says: he who is travelling in dangerous places, prays a short prayer. (mBer 4:4) One who prays must direct his heart ()שיכון את לבו. Abba Shaul says: a hint to this matter is (the verse), ‘Thou wilt direct (תכין, lit. strengthen) their heart, Thou wilt incline thine ear’ (Ps 10:17). (tBer 3:6; cf mBer 2:1) One does not stand up to pray except in a mood of respect. The early hasidim used to wait an hour before praying, in order to direct ( )כדי שיכונוtheir heart toward the Place (i. e. God). (mBer 5:1)
The kind of impurity involved in nos. 2–4 is not readily defined. In order to come to grips with it, we must distinguish between its causes and its effective area. As to the latter, the comments in the Babylonian Talmud, as more often, tend to put us on a wrong track. At the beginning of the sugya on mBer 3:4 (our no. 2), where R. Yehuda exempts the one with semen impurity from immersing and permits him to say the blessings, the anonymous Talmud asks: ‘But does R. Yehuda mean that one with semen impurity is actually fit for Tora?’60 In other 60 bBer 21b. In the continuation, R. Yoshua ben Levi is attributed with the opinion that Tora requires purity in view of the Sinai story (see below p129), and on the following page, he is quoted with the same opinion in order to answer his own critical question regarding the ‘morning bathers’, טובלי שחרין. This attribution is refuted by the Yerushalmi (yBer 3, 6c). There, the
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words, the effective area is specifically understood to be reading or studying the Tora. But Mishna and Tosefta mention a much broader range of liturgical acts including Shema, the blessings at meal,61 the Tefilla or daily prayer, and Tora. In rabbinic practice, these various liturgical acts contain a common factor: saying berakhot or benedictions, the basic component of all rabbinic prayers. Going by our texts, therefore, the effective area of this special impurity is reciting benedictions, or, simply said, prayer.62 Reading and studying Tora (tBer 2:13) is also seen as a liturgical act accompanied by benedictions, at least from the Persian period onwards.63 As to the causes of this peculiar impurity, let us take a closer look at no. 4. It seems an utter paradox when the Mishna lays down that people with a more lasting condition of levitical impurity such as gonorrhoeics or menstruants who in addition have semen impurity, must immerse themselves in order to say Shema or pray, even though that does not purify them from their more enduring impurity.64 Stated differently: although their levitical impurity endures, they have become ‘pure’ for saying the benedictions connected with Shema or prayer. The causes of this impurity apparently do not coincide with those of levitical impurity. Apart from semen, which also is a light cause of levitical impurity,65 no. 3 mentions nudity, filthy or smelling water, excrement, and urine, none of which cause levitical impurity. This is the seeming paradox: one cannot say benedictions in the vicinity of these causes or having semen impurity, although one can when in a graver state of levitical impurity.66 What are we dealing with? We started out from the archaeological and literary data informing us that Jews built their synagogues near water ‘in accordance )!( טובלי שחריתare criticized by R. Hanina, and R. Yoshua b. Levi has a more differentiated opinion, see below. The טובלי שחריתapparently are also mentioned by Justin, Dial 80:4 (βαπτισταί) and Hegesippus apud Eusebius, CH 4.22.7 (ἡμεροβαπτισταί); cf Lieberman, ‘Discipline’, 196f. 61 The reason that the blessing after the meal is also said by one with semen impurity is probably that in the view of the rabbis this is a biblical injunction (Deut 8:10; thus Albeck ad loc.). Also, according to an ancient halakha hand washing after meal and hence before this blessing was obligatory, in contradistinction to washing and blessing before the meal, tBer 5:14. 62 This most explicitly appears from the halakha which Alon, ‘The Bounds’, 191 n5 includes among the relevant sources, mTer 1:6, ‘Five categories do not offer teruma, but if they did, it counts as teruma: the mute, the drunk, the naked, the blind, and those with semen impurity.’ As Albeck ad loc. points out, tTer 3:1f gives the explanation: ‘Why did they say that the mute … those with semen impurity … the naked cannot offer teruma? Because they cannot say the blessing.’ The blind or drunk cannot fulfil the duty to take teruma from the best produce. 63 Neh 8:6, ויברך עזרא את ה׳, after the Tora-reading. 64 See Albeck, Mishna 1: 20. Gonorrhoeics ( )זביםand menstruants ( )נידותmust observe a seven-day purification period, see Lev 15:1–15, 19–30. 65 Lev 15:16–18. 66 In the Middle Ages, the interference between both purity systems led to the debate whether menstruating women are fit for attending synagogue prayers. See the interesting study by Jeffrey Woolf, ‘Medieval Models’.
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with Jewish tradition’, although we find no explicit formulation of that tradition. We also noted that this reputed Jewish tradition carries analogies to Graeco-Roman usages. We have now reviewed a number of halakhot whose aim precisely seems to be to procure purity for prayer. However it is a peculiar sort of purity. It requires separation from matters like filth, urine, excrement, and nudity, things which R. Gamliel’s anecdote implies would also prevent acts of pagan devotion. In addition, semen impurity, among the lightest levitical impurities, precludes saying prayers, although heavier levitical impurities do not, and it is remedied by simple immersion, although the heavier impurities are not. Thus it appears that in this context, semen impurity is viewed in the same category as filth or excrement, as distinct from the levitical purity system. Could we be dealing with a special type of purity, one whose effective area is prayer or saying benedictions, and which differs from the levitical purity system?
A Theory of Multiple Purity Systems Let us try to arrange these provisional findings in a theoretical framework. We could be quick to conclude that the rabbinic purity system contains tensions and contradictions, in other words, that it is not very ‘systematic’. But there are also indications that the rabbis – and preceding them, quite possibly, the Pharisees – did strive for consistency. The Mishna evinces many efforts at systematization, not in the last place in the biggest of its six ‘orders’, Toharot or ‘Purities’.67 Hence it seems more adequate to speak of different systems of purity that were not fully integrated or do not so appear in the rabbinic documents. We have seen that Pharisaic-rabbinic halakha was not omnipresent and omnipotent but on the contrary involved differences of opinion and intentionally allowed for diversity. The partial integration of various purity systems would correspond with these features and as such also reflect the multiform character of Second Temple Judaism. We even perceive some continuity with biblical law. As was intimated by Alon and set forth in great detail by Jacob Milgrom, the Pentateuch and especially the book of Leviticus integrates at least two traditions involving different conceptions of purity and purification.68 Work done in this area in recent decades confirms that it is indeed helpful to speak of multiple purity systems, both in ancient Judaism and within Pharisaicrabbinic tradition. Taking her departure from Milgrom’s clarifications, Hannah Harrington has shown that ‘the impurity systems of Qumran and the rabbis’ with their particular emphases can be viewed as different implementations of 67 See
above n56. ‘The Bounds’, 232f; Milgrom, Leviticus: the laws in the Priestly Code, Lev 11–16, and in the Holiness Code, Lev 18–20. 68 Alon,
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biblical law.69 Jonathan Klawans, bringing in a category already described by Adolf Büchler but ignored by Alon (and by Harrington), has drawn attention to the difference between ‘moral impurity’ and ‘ritual impurity’ in biblical law and Jewish tradition. ‘Ritual’ or ‘levitical’ impurity (cf Lev 11–16) is contageous and is removable, but the ‘moral impurity’ incurred by grave sins (cf Lev 18–20) is neither.70 Both enlarging and refining our view still further, Christine Hayes has added what she calls the category of ‘genealogical impurity’, i. e. the imputed impurity of non-Israelites that shows up in the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Persian period, but was later abandoned by the rabbis. Countering Alon’s theory on the ‘impurity of gentiles’, she shows this concept to be especially prominent in Jubilees and 4QMMT, documents close or central to the Qumran sect. Recalling the prominence in those surroundings of apocalyptic dualism – an element indigenous to Iranian thought – one senses a Persian background also to this principle of ‘genealogical purity’.71 In response, Vered Noam has highlighted biblical passages expressing an awareness of inherent gentile impurity with a notable influence in Tannaic halakha that were overlooked by Klawans and Hayes, potentially upsetting their efforts at systematization.72 Perhaps a way to understand this conundrum is by focussing on the widely different uses in ancient Jewish literature of the word טהור, ‘pure’, and its various sets of antonyms and correlates which each cover a different though related area.73 Thinking along this line, yet another purity system comes to mind, that of ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ meats. It is definitely different from levitical purity since the ‘impurity’ involved is not liable to contagion and purification, although the pertinent system, called kashrut or ‘dietary laws’, uses similar terminology and in the Bible literally borders on the levitical purity laws.74 The almost inevitable 69 Harrington, Purity Systems. In the present study, the phrase ‘purity system’ denotes a semantic domain and does not relate to one particular social group. 70 Klawans, Impurity and Sin. On p134, winding up chapter 5, Klawans speaks once of ‘the system of moral impurity’, adding, ‘and I do think we can call it that’. Safrai–Safrai, Brachot, 132f identify, next to the ‘technical’ purity system of rabbinic halakha, a more popular view in which a link is felt between impurity and sin, while referring to Douglas, Purity and Danger. 71 Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 82–91 on Jubilees and 4QMMT; ibid. 199–221 on Alon, ‘The Levitical Uncleanness of Gentiles’. At p280 n1, Hayes thinks ‘Ezra’s priestly and Persian credentials … not irrelevant’, pointing to class distinctions and group purity in Persian culture. Indeed a hint may be found in the politics of endogamy practised by the royal and noble dynasties families in the Achaeminid empire, see Briant, Histoire de l’empire perse, index s. v. ‘endogamie’, esp 347, 606f, 789. 72 Noam, ‘Another Look at the Rabbinic Conception of Gentiles’. 73 Klawans, Impurity and Sin, 26–31 points to the partly different terminology of moral impurity, involving תועבה, ‘abomination’ but also טמא, ‘impure’, and to the different way of getting ‘contaminated’ and ‘purified’, including the striking conception of the ‘purification from sin’ in Ezek 36. Cf also the different terminologies for washing noted by Lawrence, Washing in Water. 74 Lev 11 formulates ‘dietary laws’ in one breath with ‘levitical purity’, and the transition is made between 11:31a and 31b, as Rashi ad loc. observes.
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confusion between the two areas or systems is strikingly evident in the Church Fathers.75 Along the same line, yet another category suggests itself, that of the ‘unclean spirits’ known from the Gospels, whose antonym are not multiple ‘pure’ spirits but the one ‘holy spirit’ and who are not washed off but exorcized. This category, which is close to popular belief and is rare in Tannaic literature but more frequent in Amoraic midrash and the Babylonian Talmud,76 reminds us once again of Iranian motifs.77 What we begin to see is how a mindset typical of Israelite-Jewish tradition defines and evaluates humans and their behaviour – among other categories – by the predicate ‘pure’ ()טהור, thus applying and ‘perceiving’ this category in various areas of life.78 In this mindset, a category correlate with ‘pure’ is ‘holy’ ()קודש, and various antonyms are available: ‘impure’ ()טמא, ‘common’ ()חול, ‘unfit’ ()פסול, etc. Depending on the areas of life addressed, various ‘purity systems’ can be generated, each involving a particular interactive function of the person: levitical purity involves touch; dietary purity, ingestion; moral purity, behaviour; genealogical purity, mating. ‘Spiritual purity’ is more difficult to pin down; it would address something like ‘opening up to the Holy Spirit’. Touch, taste, action, coupling, and ‘spiritual opening’ are sensorial or at least pre-verbal domains, in which distinctions and decisions are made instantaneously and at ‘gut feeling’ level. Elaborate conceptual articulations of behaviour pertaining to the various domains or in other words ‘systems’ can only follow suit, and so they are not likely to be completely consistent nor fully distinguishable from other ‘systems’. Indeed in the framework of this study, we shall use the word ‘system’ lightly, referring to a semantic-behavioural domain rather than to a rationally ordered array. Nor should we envisage a static constellation of systems. Society changes over time, by both internal and external factors, as well as by their interaction. Internal developments may prepare the way for external influences; external 75 See
Tomson, ‘Jewish Food Laws’ and ‘Jewish Purity Laws’. Cf the rare dictum of R. Eliezer commenting on Deut 18:12, ‘For an abomination is whoever does these things’: ‘Just as he who clings to impurity, an impure spirit rests on him (מי רוח טומאה שורה עליו,)שמדבק בטומאה, so he who clings to the Shekhina, the Holy Spirit rests on him’, SifDeut 173 (p220). In another form, commenting on Deut 18:11, it is attributed to R. Akiva, MidrGad Deut 18:11 (p422, = MidrTann 18:11). 77 Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah, 300–339 (302 on Iranian influence) describes Jesus as an apocalyptic exorcist with a ‘dynamic understanding of purity’. Without speaking in terms of ‘systems’, Kazen emphasizes the importance Jesus attached to moral impurity as compared with his relative laxness towards ‘bodily’ (i. e., levitical) impurity. Cf Colpe, ‘Iranische Dämonologie’. 78 This discussion borders on the one about ‘realist’ vs. ‘nominalist’ perspectives on purity: see Noam, ‘Ritual Impurity’, involving also Jeffrey Rubenstein and Daniel Schwartz. In the semantic-behavioural approach here explored, both ‘realism’ and ‘nominalism’ can be accomodated. For another excursion into philosophy, there is also some analogy with Kant’s ‘critique of pure reason’ and its definition of categories of perception. 76
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events can trigger internal processes of change. Over time, out of all this, Jewish society creates its own inalienable mix. The metaphor of food applies. What makes a particular dish ‘Jewish’? Often just the absence of a certain ingredient in a recipe adopted from another culture, or in other words, the selection.79 Thus we may find traces of Egyptian, Persian, or Greek customs in Jewish purity systems, or again, we may witness the withering of certain Jewish customs and the outgrowth of others. The idea of ‘genealogical’ purity for all Israelites apparently developed in the Persian period but was abandoned again by rabbinic Judaism in the Roman period. Likewise, after the destruction of the Temple, levitical purity gradually fell into disuse for the most part,80 while the ages following saw a lively development in dietary laws and kashrut for Pesah. In such a theoretical framework, we can well imagine that ‘purity for prayer’ generated a system of its own. Alon’s innovative insight was that certain circles in ancient Judaism had extended levitical purity observance to include properly non-sacrificial situations such as daily meals or festivals celebrated at home, or even daily life as a whole. He assumed, following a Babylonian interpretation, that this simply included the requirement of purity for Tora study and prayer. The incorrectness of this assumption appears from the evidence Sanders assembled on purity in the diaspora, where the levitical system was inoperative. We have now found traces in Mishna and Tosefta of a different purity system with its own set of impurity sources that only in part overlaps with the levitical system and does not apply in the same situations. I propose to call this the system of ‘devotional purity’.81 We have seen the system at work in that paradoxical mishna, Ber 3:6. Simple immersion makes gonorrhoeics or menstruants who also have semen impurity fit to pray, although it does not remove their levitical impurity. Devotional purity is in place in spite of enduring levitical impurity. The distinctness of the two systems is also seen in another set of parallel passages from Tosefta and Mishna, which we shall call no. 6: 6.
The land of gentiles is impure, its mikvaot … are impure. Mikvaot of gentiles outside the land of Israel are fit for those with semen impurity, and they are unfit for all impure Israelites (tMik 6:1).
the example of Philo between Greek and Jewish culture: Tomson, Paul, 37–47. the laws of nidda, see Klawans, Impurity and Sin, 107f. For the decline of levitical purity see Adler, above at n47f. 81 Lawrence, Washing in Water, 56–64 discerns ‘washing in preparation for prayer’ among ‘new uses of washing in the Second Temple period’, but cannot determine the precise relationship between washing and prayer (see also 110 n69). Poirier, ‘Why did the Pharisees wash Their Hands?’ 222, following Sanders, highlights what he calls ‘the Diaspora model of prayer-piety’, but draws no conclusions as to the link with the levitical purity system. Runesson, ‘Water and Worship’ accepts Sanders’ thesis as his point of departure and provides additional support for it, but must leave the link between ‘worship and water’ to be further clarified. On Safrai–Safrai, Brachot, see above n57. 79 Cf
80 Excepting
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The land of Israel is pure, and its mikvaot are pure. Mikvaot of gentiles outside the land of Israel are fit for those with semen impurity, even if they have been filled with a bucket82 (mMik 8:1).
The two passages mirror and complement each other. The Tosefta, in a broad perspective, gives a negative rule with one exception: mikvaot in non-Jewish lands are impure ‘for all impure Israelites’ to get purified by, except for those with semen impurity. The Mishna adopts the same stance but turns it positive by narrowing down on those with semen impurity: mikvaot in non-Jewish lands are fit for them even if filled with water drawn in a bucket. According to ancient custom, levitical purity requires a mikve filled with rainwater or water from a natural well, not ‘drawn water’, at least not in majority.83 But a mikve filled with drawn water will do for devotional purity, and this applies in the diaspora. An illustration may be available in the late antique synagogue at Sardis in Western Asia Minor which was part of ‘a mammoth structure, a monument of Roman Imperial urbanism’ that also included Roman baths.84 And as we shall see later, preparation for prayer by ablution in hot baths, hence in public bath houses, was allowed by Babylonian rabbis.85 Further reflection on the causes of ‘devotional impurity’ is helpful. We saw that units nos. 2 to 4 mention the prohibitive effect on prayer of semen, nudity, filthy or smelling water, excrement, and urine. Nos. 1 and 5 mention still other, associated causes: the preoccupations of a bridegroom on the wedding night, of a mourner whose dead relative has not yet been buried, or of a traveller in a dangerous place. Common to all these causes is the effect of physical or psychological distraction. In order to say the benedictions of which the prayer consists, one’s mind needs concentration ()כוונה,86 liberating oneself from such distractions. It seems that this also concerns semen. The term ‘semen impurity’ we have been using is a bit misleading, insofar as it tends to refer to the levitical system where such distracting effects are irrelevant. Although it is never stated in the ancient sources, it seems that semen was a source of ‘devotional impurity’ precisely because it distracts the mind by the thought of sex or the smell of sex. This explanation is also intimated in medieval commentaries,87 and it is confirmed by our findings in no. 6 about gentile baths in the diaspora and mikvaot filled with 82 קילון, κήλων, bucket and swipe, is found also mMK 1:1; mMik 4:9, and not uncommon in Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli. 83 The discussion over proportion and measures runs since Shemaya and Avtalyon via Hillel and Shammai, see tEd 1:3. See also mTem 1:4; 5:6; mToh 4:7; mMik 1. See interesting observations on the characteristics of ‘drawn water’ made by Adler, ‘Hellenistic Origins’. 84 Kraabel, ‘Diaspora Synagogue’, 485. 85 bBer 22b, Rav Huna (see below). 86 tBer 3:6, ‘One who prays must direct his heart ()שיכון את לבו.’ 87 Rashi, bBer 22a s. v. מכאן אמרו, in contradistinction to other levitical impurities, semen impurity causes ‘lightheartedness and distractedness’. Rashi, bBer 26a s. v. שפלטה שכבת זרע, semen emitted by a woman after intercourse will begin to ‘smell on her body’. Cf also Kesef
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drawn water. These are not fit for purification from levitical impurity, but they are for this case, where any kind of washing will do. Other means of ‘purification’ in the system of devotional purity are less conspicuous. Most prominent is the one mentioned in no. 3: one ‘removes’ oneself four cubits from filthy water, excrement, and urine. Instead of the neutral רחק, ‘remove’, tBer 2:18 uses פרש, ‘separate’, a word clearly suggesting impurity and cleansing. The distance of ‘four cubits’ has become standard in the discussion on the matter in the Talmuds, with deliberations lingering whether one should remove oneself four cubits from ‘stench’ or from ‘the end of stench’. Other simple means such as spitting on the ordure are mentioned in the Yerushalmi.88 All this is not savoury or sensational, but it clearly differs from the levitical system and it has an obvious ‘gut feeling’ effect. There is yet another means of purification which we already have encountered, and which represents a separate area in terms of halakha: handwashing.89 As we have seen, it was standard Greek practice in preparation for prayer, and the letter of Aristeas ascribed the same to the Bible translators in Alexandria. Overlooking the evidence, it may indeed have been the custom of many ancient Jews. The relation to the levitical system is anomalous, as according to biblical law, pollution of the hand would entail pollution of the body.90 Again, a degree of foreign influence is likely, combined with such inner-Jewish motifs as the washing of hands and feet in the Temple (Exod 30:17–21). Interestingly, pre-70 CE archaeological remains seem to document the custom of washing hands and feet91 that is also mentioned in the New Testament.92 The Tannaic tradition citing the ancient decree of Yosef ben Yohanan and Yosi ben Yoezer on the impurity of foreign lands continues by saying, ‘Hillel and Shammai decreed on the impurity of hands.’93 This tradition is confirmed by the report in Mark 7:5 that the Pharisees considered washing hands for ordinary food a ‘tradition of the elders’. Likewise, in mYad 3:2 the sages disagree with R. Yoshua, late first century, and declare that the purity of hands is only ‘a rule of the scribes’. Jesus is mentioned as one of the Jews who opposed this trend to ‘extend purity’, and so is at least Mishne, above n56, on the non-sensorial nature of levitical impurity as distinct from ‘devotional impurity’. 88 yBer 3 (6d). In the same passage, פורשיןis used three times. 89 Alon, ‘The Bounds’, 201–203 and passim; Sanders, Jewish Law, 228–231, 262; Booth, Jesus and the Laws of Purity, chapters 4 and 5; Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah, 60–88; Tomson, Mitsvat netilat yadayim. 90 Safrai–Safrai, Brachot, 144f. According to mSot 5:2 (= Sifra, shemini 54b), R. Akiva ‘invented’ a scriptural basis for third-remove impurity which includes ‘hands’, thus fulfilling a desideratum of R. Yohanan ben Zakkai. 91 Safrai–Safrai, Eruvin, 49–55, also adducing late rabbinic manuscript versions in support. Cf Safrai, ‘Religion in Everyday Life’, 830 n2. 92 Luke 7:44; John 13:5; 1 Tim 5:10. 93 Above n34.
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one Pharisee.94 Hence in the first century CE there was dispute about the principle both within and outside the Pharisaic movement. The causes of impurity are not very definite; only sources of light impurity in terms of the levitical system are mentioned (mYad 1:1–3:2). The argument that ‘hands are fidgety’ and must always be cleansed before meals is ascribed to the generation of R. Meir, mid-second century CE, although his colleague R. Yehuda disagrees.95 This argument is not really different from what we may suppose motivated Greek ritual handwashing.96 In the Tosefta, handwashing appears as part of rabbinic table manners in connection with the blessings before and after meal.97 In short, ritual handwashing can be seen as another branch of the devotional purity system.
Rabbinic Disagreement over Devotional Purity Not all rabbis equally endorsed the principle of devotional purity. We just heard R. Yehuda, mid-second century, objecting to the principicle of always washing hands at meal. Similarly, in nos. 2 and 4 above he states that someone with semen impurity does not need immersion and is fit to say the blessings connected with Shema, the meal, or Tora. Nor was his the only voice of dissent. The two Talmuds cite R. Yehuda ben Bateira who urged a Tora-reader in the Nisibis synagogue to carry on and also recite the divine name in the scripture lesson or in the concluding benediction, for ‘words of Tora are not susceptible to impurity’ ()דברי תורה אין מקבלין טומאה.98 This was probably R. Yehuda ben Bateira who headed an academy at Nisibis in Northern Mesopotamia, also around the middle of the second century.99 A closer look at nos. 2 and 4 can teach us more. While R. Yehuda repeatedly disagrees, his usual partner in discussion, R. Meir, develops the principle of devotional purity, forbidding one with semen impurity to say the blessings before and after the Shema. R. Meir was the foremost disciple of R. Akiva. Of him, the 94 Mark 7:5–15 seems to imply that Jesus rejected the purity of hands and the contageous impurity of food; cf my study, ‘Zavim 5:12’ at n39, in this volume. mEd 5:7, ‘Eliezer ben Hanokh disputed (the principle of) purity of hands’. On ‘extending purity’ cf tShab 1:14, ‘R. Shimon ben Elazar said, Lo and behold how purity expanded!’ 95 mToh 7:8, שהידים עסקניות. Cf the same argument tNid 6:19. 96 Cf Ginouvès, Balaneutikè, 310, hands ‘sont les instruments de l’action, exposés à des souillures dans bien des circonstances de la vie quotidienne’. Albeck, Mishna 6: 604 points to parallel elliptic terminology omitting water in Hebrew and Greek, = נותנים \ נוטלין לידיםκατὰ χειρῶν δοῦναι/λαβεῖν, ‘wash hands’, citing LSJ s. v. χείρ, 6.h. 97 tBer 5:6, ;…סדר נטילת ידים כיצד… סדר מזיגת הכוס כיצד5:13, האחרונים חובה,מים ראשונים רשות. 98 yBer 3 (6c). It concerns Tora-reading in synagogue: מעשה באחד שעמד לקרות בתורה בנציבין, and the phrase כיון שהגיע להזכרה התחיל מגמגם בהcould refer to the berakha after the reading. In bBer 22b the description is secondary and the scene has been moved to the beit midrash: מעשה בתלמיד אחד שהיה מגמגם למעלה מרבי יהודה בן בתירא. 99 See Hyman, Toldoth, s. v.
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Babylonian Talmud reports the stringent opinion, ‘(One with semen impurity) should not enter the (house of) study at all.’100 The credibility of this singular Babylonian report is unclear. What other sources do make clear is that R. Akiva and his teacher R. Yoshua, the spokesman of the school of Hillel around 90 CE, propagated the increased development of purity laws, in particular the purity of hands, and so did R. Meir.101 Conversely, R. Yehuda is known to continue, via his father R. Elai, the tradition of R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. R. Eliezer was the outstanding representative of the school of Shammai in the generation after the destruction of the Temple, and R. Yehuda clearly reflects his tradition.102 Thus these discussions seem to preserve an echo of the divide between the two Pharisaic schools, the one of Shammai known as the more conservative and the one of Hillel which favoured innovation. Paradoxically, this included the extension of purity rules. Moreover the Hillelites also appear more open-minded towards foreigners,103 which is significant in view of the Graeco-Roman aspect of devotional purity. The likelihood that R. Yehuda played the more conservative part may explain a contradiction in his position in no. 2.104 While opposing the obligation of purity for prayer, he nevertheless states that someone who is ill and has semen impurity, must immerse in a bath of 40 se’a (480 l.) and cannot do with pouring on a quantity of 9 kav (4.5 l.), as is apparently maintained by R. Meir. The Bavli (bBer 22b) attributes the latter halakha to the surroundings of R. Meir’s teacher, R. Akiva. It appears to be a practical adaptation which R. Yehuda opposed in spite of his consistent leniency vis-à-vis immersion for semen impurity. A passage in the Damascus Document illuminates this: ‘Regarding the purification by water: a man must not wash in water that is filthy or that is less than a mar‘il’ (מרעיל, CD 10:11). Saul Lieberman has spotted this rare word also in rabbinic literature and concluded that it denotes a donkey hamper containing 40 se’a, i. e., the minimum volume of a mikve.105 This confirms the impression that R. Yehuda contradictorily sticks to ancient traditions, resenting the ‘novelty’ of devotional purity but also maintaining that purification is only valid in 40 se’a of water. bBer 22a, R. Yohanan ha-Sandlar in the name of R. Akiva. my paper, ‘Zavim 5:12’ (in this volume) at n43 and 45. 102 As stated in tZev 2:17; bMen 18a (private communication of Prof. S. Safrai). Cf Goldberg, ‘Mishna’, 237. And see mToh 7:8 and references indicated in previous note. 103 See, in this volume, ‘Christ, Beliar, and Women’, 428. 104 mBer 3:4; tBer 2:12a. Cf Alon’s solution, ‘The Bounds’, 195f n18, and see Safrai–Safrai, Brachot, 134, 144. 105 Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, 135 n151: tKel BM 7:8 ms Vienna, ( שבמרחלwith exchange of עand ;)חLevR 25.5 (p578) מרעליה, see note Margulies ad loc.: מרעל. The measure of 40 sea is calculated in tKel BM 5:1; Sifra metsora, perek 6 (77b). Cf also the emendations considered by Ginzberg, Jewish Sect, 51f. The hesitations about Lieberman’s explanation in Wright, ‘Jewish Ritual Baths’, 211f n69 do not convince. 100
101 See
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A similar disagreement shows up in Mishna Mikvaot. R. Meir maintains, ‘All seas are halakhically equivalent to a mikve, for it is said, “And the gathered waters he called seas” (Gen 1:10).’ By ‘sea’, R. Meir also meant a lake, for the Hebrew uses the word יםfor both. But R. Yehuda objects: ‘(Only) the big sea equals a mikve; the verse does not mean “many seas” but “many sorts of sea”.’106 Tractate Mikvaot contains disputations between the Schools all over,107 suggesting that the material had been discussed since the first century CE, and R. Meir’s ‘innovation’ comes late in the development of the tractate. We perceive a trend: like washing before prayer, bathing in the sea seems a relative novelty advocated by the latter-day Hillelite Meir but resisted by Yehuda. It seems to confirm Sanders’ suspicion that, through the subtle ways of social interaction, ‘pagan influence’ induced the Jews to use the sea as a mikve, probably more so in the diaspora.108 In this connection, it is significant that the documents typical of the Qumran sect do not appear to show traces of devotional purity. In his study on ancient Jewish purification rituals, Washing in Water, Jonathan Lawrence notes the emergence of new types of purification during the Second Temple period, including purification for prayer. The only relevant Qumran text he can produce, however, a version of the Aramaic Testament of Levi, is hardly ‘sectarian’.109 The stipulations about seminal discharge in the Temple Scroll relate to the Temple compound and add stringency to the biblical law.110 Furthermore, a passage in the Damascus Document reads, ‘All who enter the house of prostration should not enter impure in need of washing’ (טמא כבוס, CD 11:21). However, this is part of a string of Sabbath halakhot and more likely aims at purification for the Seventh Day.111 Nor is there a trace of the separate ‘purity of hands’ in the Qumran scrolls. While further investigation is necessary, it seems the Qumran Essenes, for all their fastidiousness about purity, had not adopted the idea of
106 mMik 5:4, " לא נאמר "ימים: שנאמר "ולמקוה המים קרא ימים" … הים הגדול כמקוה,כל הימים כמקוה אלא שיש בו מיני ימים הרבה. Albeck, Mishna, ad loc. refers to SifDeut 39 (p79), where the ‘many sorts of sea’ are explained from the ‘many tastes of fish’. 107 mMik 1:5; 4:1; 4:5; 5:6; 10:6. 108 Sanders, Jewish Law, 270; similarly 263 on handwashing. See Safrai–Safrai, Brachot, 139f, 144f, drawing in hand-washing and referring not only to Graeco-Roman and Christian purification rites, but also to a 2nd cent. BCE Edomite water installation revealed in Tell Maresha. 109 Lawrence, Washing in Water, 56–64 on new types; 109f, 118f on 4Q213a (Aramaic Levib) fr 1 col 1:6–13. The crucial passage is supplemented from the Athos manuscript of the Greek Test Levi 2:3. 110 11QTemp 45:7–11; Lawrence, Washing in Water, 94f. 111 Josephus, War 2:128f mentions daily immersion by the Essenes only before the meals, not for morning prayers. טמא כבוסmay be a technical indication for simple semen impurity (Lev 15:16), parallel to the rabbinic בעל קרי. This is also the guess of Ginzberg, Jewish Sect, 72. On p71 Ginzberg takes this halakha to be simply identical with the mishnaic rule that ‘the unclean are forbidden to enter synagogues’, with reference to mBer 3:5 and bBer 22.
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‘devotional purity’. It may well have been too ‘foreign’ and too new to their taste. The debate about devotional purity went on in Amoraic times. In both Talmuds, handwashing in preparation of saying berakhot has become accepted, but purification from seminal emissions raises questions. The Bavli, as we heard, begins the sugya (bBer 21b) with the opinion of the mid-third century Palestinian R. Yoshua ben Levi that hearing and teaching Tora does require purity, as appears from the Sinai revelation (Deut 4:9f, cf Exod 19:15). However his argument is invalidated, as is the paradoxical mishna mBer 3:6 that is then is quoted. Thereupon, the dictum of R. Yehuda ben Bateira is quoted, ‘Words of Tora are not susceptible to impurity’, along with the anecdote of the man reading Tora. We can now identify this as a more ‘conservative’ opinion, and we have already concluded that the Bavli uses it to limit the discussion to purity for Tora reading. Further support is supplied, however, in the testimony of Rav Nahman bar Yitshak that ‘the people behave accordingly’ and in Zeiri’s assertion that in the land of Israel ‘they abolished this immersion’ (or ‘this aspersion’ that replaced it). In a mediating position, Rav Huna adds that bath houses with hot water may also do, and Rav Nahman is said to have practised aspersion instead of immersion. It is then asked how ‘all these Amoraim and Tannaim’ can disagree with Ezra’s reputed decree of immersion for semen impurity,112 and the answer is that indeed the decree was gradually watered down, if that is the word. Finally, the paradoxical mishna Ber 3:6 is again briefly discussed and left unresolved (bBer 26a). In the Yerushalmi (yBer 3, 6c), the fundamental question why the immersion for semen impurity was actually instituted is given different answers to do with general moral behaviour, thus showing that no obvious single reason was perceived.113 This includes R. Yoshua ben Levi, who tried to rescue the usage from its neglect in the Galilee due to cold weather. Remarkably, the argument ascribed to him in the Bavli is here identified as typically Babylonian: ‘There (in Babylonia), they say that even hearing words of Tora is forbidden (for one with semen impurity).’ A number of case stories give the impression that the usage was still rather widely observed in the land of Israel, also by lower class people.114 But here as well, the ‘pronouncement story’ of R. Yehuda ben Bateira is quoted, with R. Yaakov bar Aha adding, ‘There, they behave … according to R. Yehuda ben Bateira as to those with semen impurity.’ Moreover it is reported that they bathe in warm water or only asperse themselves. The Yerushalmi also sees need to produce a new answer to the question why one removes oneself from excrement and urine of infants when praying (yBer 3, 6d). Finally, here as well, the paradox of mBer 3:6 is left unresolved (yBer 3, 7a). But as we said, bBK 82a–b. It is also mentioned in yYom 8 (44d); yTaan 1 (64c). 3, 6c, with the remarkable repeated formula, כל עצמן לא התקינו את הטבילה הזאת אלא
112
113 bBer
…ש.
Thus Safrai–Safrai, Brachot, 138f.
114
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handwashing had become an accepted custom. Both Talmuds bring it as having relative authority in connection with blessings at meal, in parallel to the Tosefta.115 A rule the Yerushalmi attributes to a third-century rabbi sums it up, quoting Ps 134:2, ‘R. Abba bar Yirmiya says, … Right after handwashing, (one must say) the berakha: “Lift up holy hands, and bless the Lord!”’116 It is instructive to read how Maimonides (± 1135–1204) ended the discussion about semen impurity in his systematic codification of rabbinic law, Mishne Tora:117 All those impure are obliged to say Shema and say the benedictions before and after, even in their impurity. … Ezra and his court decreed that only those with semen impurity cannot read in the Tora, making them an exception vis-à-vis the whole of those impure ( )והוציאוהו מכלל שאר הטמאיןas long as they have not immersed. But the decree did not get accepted among all Israel; the majority could not live by it, and it was cancelled. For all Israel already used to read Tora and say Shema even with semen impurity, because “words of Tora are not susceptible to impurity”.
With awsome clarity, Maimonides eliminated the anomaly of devotional purity created in the Mishna. He did incorporate handwashing and removal from filth ahead of saying berakhot, but only by occasion, not in a coherent discourse.118 A ‘devotional purity system’ distinct from levitical purity would not fit in his rationalistic paradigm. Over the centuries, the Mishne Tora acquired great authority. It is likely that its take on the irrational complexities of ancient Jewish law had an important influence on the modern study of rabbinic literature.119
Early Christian Practice A glance at purity usages in early Christianity is instructive. Grown within multiform Second Temple period Judaism, it quickly attracted a majority of gentile members. This makes us anticipate a different play-out of the trends and processes we have seen at work within ancient Judaism, as also a different pattern of interaction with pagan motifs. We shall approach Christianity from the perspective of its Jewish origins, using the various purity systems we have discerned as heuristic tools. Tuning in with popular Jewish belief, though less popular among New Testament scholars, a major theme in Jesus’ message most straightforwardly de-
tBer 5:6, 13 (above n94); yBer 8 (12a); bBer 52a–b; bHul 105a–107b. yBer 1 (2d), שאו ידיכם קדש וברכו את ה׳:תכף לנטילת ידים ברכה. Cf bBer 42a; 52b (with סעודה instead of )ברכה. 117 Maimonides, Hilkhot Keriat Shema 4:8. 118 Maimonides, Hilkhot Berakhot 6; Keriat Shema 3; Tefilla 4. 119 Cf the observations on Yosef Karo and Jacob Neusner, above n56. 115 116
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scribed in Mark is his cosmic battle with the ‘impure spirits’.120 From the start, it is these who recognize his true nature as ‘son of God’, before being exorcized by him. Likewise, the mission of the ‘apostles’ or emissaries in his name included their endowment with ‘power over the impure spirits’ (Mark 1:23f; 6:7, 30). Luke registers a singular comment by Jesus on the return of the ‘apostles’ and their report of the battle with the demons: ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning’ (Luke 10:18).121 In this connection we have suggested to speak of a ‘system’ of ‘spiritual impurity’ closely connected with an apocalyptic world view. Paul shared a similar way of thinking when writing about the battle with ‘the god of the present age’ (2 Cor 4:4) and the moral ‘impurity’ of those subservient to him (Rom 1:24; 2 Cor 12:24), but he never uses the language of ‘impure spirits’.122 For him, it is the ‘spirit’ against the ‘flesh’ (σάρξ), rather than against the ‘spirits’ (Gal 5:16–26; Rom 8:2–9). In Paul’s usage, there is less of a system of ‘spiritual purity’. The situation is different with baptism. As shown with clarity by Jonathan Klawans, what seems most characteristic about Christian baptism is its targeting moral impurity caused by sin rather than ‘ritual’ (levitical) impurity, and this goes for the three founding figures John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul.123 In view of the evidence that Jesus adopted John’s ‘baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins’ and made it part of his own message of God’s imminent kingdom, we can even go a step further. Jesus not only seems to have emphasized the impurity caused by grave sins, but also, to remedy it, to have practised baptism upon repentance and trust in God’s kingdom.124 Paul, in turn, must have adopted baptism from Apostolic tradition, and with it, the characteristic emphasis on moral purity.125 Although the language of ‘repentance’ and ‘kingdom of God’ is not proper to his own vocabulary, it does appear in association with ‘impurity’ and ‘washing’ in what seems to be traditional baptismal language.126 The element of repentance and reform remained alive and is also required in the Apostolic Tradi120 On this dimension of Jesus’ work see Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah, 332–338 (cf above n75). 121 Cf also Luke 11:20, on which see Kazen ibid. 326. Luke 10:18 is a ‘doublet’ vis-à-vis 9:10 which parallels Mark, and perforce derives from an unknown Gospel. 122 πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον is also used in Acts 5:16; 8:7 and Rev 18:2. 123 Klawans, Impurity and Sin, chapter 6. 124 On moral impurity see Mark 7:15, 20–23 (Klawans, Impurity and Sin, 148); on the message of John and Jesus, Mark 1:4, 14f. The report in John 3:22; 4:1f that Jesus and his disciples practised baptism seems credible. It also explains the seemingly sudden appearance of baptism in earliest Christian preaching as narrated in Acts 2:38. See Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah, 243–248. 125 Newton, Concept of Purity, 98–102 discusses table fellowship and food purity in Paul, but since the impurity involved is caused by the sin mentioned in 1 Cor 5:11, it concerns moral impurity (similarly Klawans, Impurity and Sin, 214 n112), cf Newton 102–109 on ‘sexual immorality’. The case for corpse uncleanness 109f is unconvincing. 126 1 Cor 6:9–11; 2 Cor 12:21. Cf Hahn, ‘Taufe und Rechtfertigung’, and see below at n139.
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tion, a church order from early third century Rome. Reminiscent of the Baptist’s instruction (Luke 3:10–14), candidates for baptism must give up ‘unholy’ occupations such as being a pimp, a gladiator, or an idol priest.127 As Klawans puts it, John, Jesus, and Paul did not ‘merge’ moral and levitical impurity, as did the Qumranites, but neither did they ‘compartmentalize’ them like the Tannaim.128 In our terminology, these founders of the ‘Christian movement’ would allow a degree of overlapping between the ‘systems’. Thus we can explain how from the start and for ages to come, basic principles of levitical purification applied to baptism, even though it targets moral impurity.129 John’s baptism was done in the river Jordan, as was that of Jesus (Mark 1:4f; John 3:22; 4:1f). The significance of this location is illuminated by the Didache, the oldest Christian ritual book dated around 100 CE, when it stipulates: About baptism. … Having said all that [i. e., instruction], baptize … in living water (ὕδωρ ζῶν), and if you do not have living water, baptize in other water; if you cannot do it in cold water, in warm, and if you do not have either, asperse water on the head three times, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (Did 7:1–3)
Clearly, the phrase ‘living water’ corresponds with Hebrew מים חיים, equivalent to the highest degree in the stratified valuation of purification water in rabbinic literature.130 But here again, similarities with Graeco-Roman purification rites are also evidenced, where ὕδωρ πηγαῖον, ποτάμιον or θαλάσσιον (spring, river, or sea water) was preferred.131 In Christian usage, the Latin name of the baptismal ‘font’, fons or ‘source’, is reminiscent of this shared Jewish and GraecoRoman preference. Baptismal fonts were even provided with a supply of ‘living water’. In due course, however, aspersion seems to have become the usual method here as well.132 What is important for us is that baptism seemingly without effort spread from the Jewish desert movement of John the Baptist to Paul’s worldwide network of ‘churches of gentiles’ (cf Rom 16:4). It may well be that this was possible precisely because baptism in the following of John and Jesus addresses moral, not levitical impurity. Because of its mixed Jewish-gentile membership, early Christianity was bound to evince a variety of opinions on levitical impurity, which after all centres on the real or imagined Jewish sanctuary. Here we must be ready to see a sequential alternation of motives at play. First, although Jesus did not reject (ed B. Botte, SC 11bis) 16. Impurity and Sin, 143, 149f, 156f; on the Tannaim chapters 4 and 5. 129 It may also explain the hyperbolic view of the church as a ‘temple’ in need of being kept ‘pure’, cf in that sense Newton, Concept of Purity, chapter 4, ‘Purity and membership of the Church’. 130 mMik 1, in reverse order, מים חייםbeing last and highest quality; cf bHul 105b–106a. See on the Didache passage Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache, 281–286; Klauser, ‘Taufet in lebendigem Wasser!’. 131 See Klauser ibid. 177 with n4. 132 Klauser ibid. 180–182. 127 Trad Apost 128 Klawans,
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levitical purity, certainly not in view of his high esteem for the Temple, it had a lesser urgency for him as compared with moral and spiritual impurity.133 Being a ‘conservative’ in matters of purity, he probably rejected the Pharisaic principles of the purity of hands and of food making a person impure.134 Second, Paul faced a different situation, since the levitical system as such did not apply to gentiles and by consequence was irrelevant for most of his followers.135 And third, the enmity between Christians and Jews that started to develop after 70 CE favoured the Christian idea of the abrogation of the ‘ceremonial’ law, with an emphasis on Jewish cult, purity, diet, and Sabbath; the Epistle of Barnabas (c. 130 CE) epitomises this. Incidentally, Jewish dietary rules were not thought in toto applicable for gentile Christians, but there was protracted discussion over a small number of them. A prohibition of food offered to idols, blood, and unslaughtered meat figures in the so-called Apostles’ Decree mentioned in Acts 15:21, but Paul does not seem to include the latter two in his rules for gentile Christians.136 The denigration of Jewish levitical and dietary purity laws became typical of the dominant gentile Church that emerged after the Bar Kokhba war. Nonetheless, moral purity remained a central value in gentile Christianity, as we have seen in baptism. So did devotional purity. We noted that the congruence of Jewish and pagan devotional purity was perceived already by Clement of Alexandria (early third century CE). In fact his observation served to illustrate a pronouncement about Christian usage, ‘So it is said that we ought to go washed to sacrifices and prayers, clean and bright, and that this external adornment and purification are practised for a sign.’ To be sure, Clement did not miss the opportunity to add a sneer about Jewish practice: ‘It was then well said, “Be pure, not by washing of water, but in the mind.”’137 This too is common practice among Church Fathers,138 and it makes their attachment to devotional purity rites all the more striking.
133 Klawans, Impurity and Sin, 144–150; Avemarie, ‘Jesus and Purity’; Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah. Similarly Safrai, ‘Yeshu vehatenua hehasidit’, identifying this attitude as being typical of ‘ancient hasidim’. For Jesus’ attitude to the Temple see my ‘Jesus and His Judaism’. There also seems to be a geographical difference: see Adler, Archaeology of Purity, 293–300 for a fascinating evaluation of the markedly lower spread of mikvaot in Galilee as compared with Judea proper and of its implications for Jesus and his followers. 134 Mark 7:1–15, see above n91. Booth, Jesus and the Laws of Purity thinks 7:15 about impurity ‘from without and from within’ was created by gentile Christians. Meier, Marginal Jew 4 judges that only the korban saying Mark 7:12–14 is authentic. 135 Rom 14:14, relativizing ‘purity’, may derive from the Jesus tradition but is also analogous to R. Yohanan ben Zakkai’s famous dictum, PesRK 4.7 (p74). 136 See sources and discussion in Tomson, Paul, chapters 4 and 5. 137 Clement, Strom 4.22.142, ET William Wilson, ANF 2. I could not trace the source of the last quotation. 138 Similarly, Safrai–Safrai, Brachot, 132 refer to a denigration of Jewish purification rites after sex in Didasc Apost 26, but I could not locate the passage.
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An explicit injunction to wash before prayer is given in the Apostolic Tradition: ‘Every believing man or woman, on waking up from sleep, must before touching any work wash their hands and pray to God.’ The rule, preserved in Sahidic, is also extant in Greek in the late fourth century Apostolic Constutions with the formula ‘wash and pray to God’.139 The need to purify oneself after intercourse is made explicit in view of midnight prayers: ‘… About midnight get up, wash hands with water and pray. And if your wife is present, pray together … But do not hesitate to pray, for he who is bound in marriage is not impure.’140 The express formulation of these rules presupposes their precedent use in actual practice, while the alternating of the phrases ‘wash’ and ‘wash hands’ interestingly reminds us of divergent Jewish practice. Similarly, the Fathers of the gentile Church, Origen and Chrysostom, make allusions to purification for prayer, especially after intercouse,141 while in the same breath denigrating Jewish ritual. However a similar polemical emphasis is not heard in the Clementine Homilies known for their Judaeo-Christian affiliation. In a homily on the ‘two ways’ purportedly inciting to baptism, the Apostle Peter is quoted as instructing the Sidonians not only to refrain from idol offerings, non-slaughtered meat, and blood, but also ‘to wash after the marital bed’.142 It is plausible that these practices were rooted in Apostolic teaching. Although explicit evidence is lacking, a hint may be seen in an injunction of Pauline vintage that is visibly inspired by the Psalm quoted earlier, ‘I want the men everywhere to pray “uplifting sanctified hands”, without wrath or disunity’ (1 Tim 2:8).143 Similarly, we already noted the language of purity and sanctity used by Paul, apparently reflecting traditional baptismal formulae: You were washed, you were sanctified, you were made righteous in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. … Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? … Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?144
Note the loosely associated terms ‘holy’, ‘sanctify’ and ‘sanctification’, ‘temple’, ‘wash’, and ‘Spirit’.145 The devotional perspective is obvious. It is succinctly 139 Trad Apost 41, S(ahidic); cf the doublet without ‘washing hands’ in the primary Latin version ib 35. With ‘washing’ but without ‘hands’ in Apost Const 8.32.18, πᾶς πιστὸς ἢ πιστὴ ἔωθεν ἀναστάντες ἐξ ὕπνου πρὸ τοῦ ἔργον ἐπιτελέσαι νιψάμενοι προσευχέσθωσαν (ed M. Metzger, SC 336). Cf further evidence in Runesson, ‘Water and Worship’, 117. 140 Trad Apost 41 (L). 141 Origen, Comm in Matth 11.8, ed R. Girod, SC 162; and more explictily Chrysostom, Hom in Matth 51, PLG 58: 516; both commenting on Matt 15:20. Cf my article, ‘Jewish Purity Laws’. 142 Hom 7.8.2, ἀπὸ κοίτης γυναικὸς λούεσθαι. Note the reference to the Apostolic Decree, Acts 15:20, 29. 143 ἐπαίροντες ὁσίους χεῖρας, seemingly reflecting another version of Ps 134:2. 144 1 Cor 6:11–20; cf 1:30; 3:16f. 145 Hahn, ‘Taufe und Rechtfertigung’. The hortatory use of δικαιοῦν suggests pre-Pauline tradition.
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expressed in the Pauline concept of the church as a temple in which the Spirit dwells. Also, the church is called the ‘body of Christ’, most visibly present during community prayers, Scripture reading and holy meals, all of which involved benedictions to be said (1 Cor 11–14). Hence it is likely that both Jewish and non-Jewish church members practised some kind of purification in preparation of these liturgical acts. This is all the more likely in 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 with its ‘Qumran-like’ cult vocabulary.146 Quite probably Paul, even if he could speak of a ‘worship in words’ (λογικὴ λατρεία, Rom 12:1), did not evoke an exclusively ‘spiritual’ or allegorical purity, any more than the Qumran covenanters with their ‘lawful offerings of the lips as a pleasing fragrance’ (1QS 9:3–6).147 More likely Paul as well presupposed some form of actual ablutions.
Retrospect and Discussion We started out from the body of archaeological evidence of synagogues built near water, which earlier scholars could not square with known Jewish purity laws. We have then turned to a small cluster of rabbinic laws to do with purity and prayer that evince a contradictory relation between methods of purification. We have also taken in the rite of handwashing that sits somewhat anomalously in rabbinic purity halakha. Considering the semantic plurality of Jewish purity systems, we have then hypothesized the existence of a system of ‘devotional purity’ operating independently of the levitical purity system and grown out of the universal desire for purity when approaching the holy. A measure of foreign influence is likely, interacting to be sure with inner-Jewish motifs and processes. Our hypothesis involves the further assumption that while the devotional purity system is evidenced in Jewish and non-Jewish literary sources and in archaeology both in the diaspora and in the land of Israel, it has left only a small footprint in rabbinic literature, except for the separate branch of ritual handwashing. There are no traces in the sectarian texts from Qumran, anyway a place less likely to be open to novel and foreign usages. Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition was more open, although we still find resistance in some mid-second century rabbis. It were apparently especially the heirs of the Hillelite tradition who in the second century pushed not only for the further development of levitical purity but also for the integration of devotional purity into the formulation of halakha. The outcome of the discussion is what we have: devotional purity taking a modest place in the whole of rabbinic purity laws. The distinction we have been making between devotional and levitical purity enables us to understand how the former could extensively be represented in 146 See 147 On
Purity.
on the passage ‘Christ, Belial, and Women’, in this volume. cultic language in Paul see Hogeterp, Paul and God’s Temple; Newton, Concept of
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the diaspora, where the latter was inoperative. Plausibly, the logic of devotional purity was more self-evident in the diaspora. All one needed to do before prayer was remove oneself from stench, filth, and other distracting stimuli and immerse or wash hands in any bath or watercourse. Things were more complicated in the land of Israel. Here, the overlapping with the system of levitical purity in the case of seminal emission and the divergence between the corresponding means of purification had contradictory effects. Influential voices resisted devotional purity. Apart from R. Yehuda ben Elai we have the dictum of R. Yehuda ben Bateira who was established at Nisibis in Mesopotamia but who was highly esteemed in the land of Israel.148 Seen in this light, the paradoxical formulation in mBer 3:6, apparently made by the latter-day Hillelite R. Meir, seems to reflect the conscious intention on his part to display the distinct operation of the two ‘systems’ side by side.149 Thus it became part of the Mishna, thus it continued to be discussed by the Palestinian and Babylonian Amoraim. Rabbinic literature is never simple. The Babylonian resistance to devotional purity of course contradicts our speculations about the greater logic of the system in the diaspora. Consequently, Babylonian Jews would have neither levitical nor devotional purity.150 It seems we must accept that in this case, a majority of Babylonian Jewry apparently stuck to the opinion of R. Yehuda ben Bateira and R. Yehuda ben Elai, although to our mind it would be less logical for them to do so. It would be interesting to know whether the surrounding Babylonian culture could be of any influence here. In any case we have found reason to assume the influence of Graeco-Roman purification rites on Jewish communities elsewhere. Its likelihood is seen, for instance, in Philo’s use of standard terminology for the purification basin in pagan temples, περιρραντήριον, in connection with Moses and the Aaronitic priests.151 But it would be simplistic to try and explain the whole phenomenon on that sole basis. We also find possible antecedents in ancient Israelite custom reflected in the Old Testament such as, indeed, the story of the revelation at Sinai, of David’s absence from Saul’s sacrificial feast (1 Sam 20:26), or, of course, of the priests’ washing of hands and feet without presumed impurity (Exod 30:17–21).152 The 148 Cf the letter written from Jerusalem (bPes 3b), in ‘Halakhic Correspondence’, at n40, in this volume. 149 This inference is the more likely in view of what Klawans calls the concious rabbinic ‘compartmentalization’ of levitical and moral purity (above n125). R. Meir seems similarly to compartmentalize levitical and devotional purity, even though they partially overlap. 150 Curiously, most of the halakhic details of handwashing are not found in Tractate Berakhot but in Hullin (above n112), part of the Babylonian Seder of Kodashim that theoretically treats of the sacrifices. Interestingly, bHul 105a mentions the removal of ‘dirt’ ( )זוהמאas the aim of handwashing at meal, indicative of devotional rather than levitical purity. 151 E. g. Philo, Mos 2:138; Decal 45; 158; Spec leg 1:258. See discussion by Sanders, Jewish Law, 263f, and esp Adler, ‘Hellenistic Origins’. 152 Safrai–Safrai, Brachot, 131.
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desire for ‘devotional purity’ is a universal phenomenon and was also found among ancient Israelites. Moreover, non-Jewish influence is the more probable where it can appeal to inner-Jewish motifs. Precisely so, Judaism created its own varied blends, as would any distinct community. Where Greek and Roman worshippers as described by Ginouvès would wash hands and asperse their bodies ahead of prayers, some Jews would immerse their whole bodies, others would asperse themselves, and yet others would content themselves with washing hands and feet or at least hands. In the long run, immersion for prayer would become marginal, and standard halakha would involve washing hands ahead of saying berakhot only. Our distinction between the different Jewish purity systems has also enabled us to understand their different play-out in early Christianity. ‘Spiritual purity’, battling with the impure spirits that oppose God’s kingdom, was typical especially of the Jesus tradition, although exorcism remained living practice in the Church.153 Levitical purity was not a top priority for Jesus,154 nor could it be for the Apostle to the gentiles, and from the later second century onwards, it became a point of derision vis-à-vis the Jews. By contrast, moral purity, attained by the cleansing from sin by repentance and baptism, was preached by John, Jesus, and Paul. This remained a basic feature of Christianity and allowed it to adopt universalist features. Devotional purity as expressed in washing before prayer, especially after marital intercourse, has become common practice from the early third century on and probably had been observed previously. In spite of the antiJudaism it developed, gentile Christianity preserved a living heritage of ancient Jewish purity observance – although a different one than rabbinic Judaism. For the sake of completeness let us also consider the heritage preserved by the rabbis. Their approach on purity has been well outlined by Klawans.155 ‘Compartmentalizing’ levitical purity in the formulae of the halakha and relegating moral purity to the domain of aggadic opinion, they effectively separated ‘purity’ from ‘sin’. A sinner is not necessarily impure, nor is impurity a sin. However grave sins such as idolatry, incest, and murder do cause the community, i. e. the sanctuary or the land, to be ‘impure’ and God’s presence to depart. The response to this calamity, as to any disaster that would come upon the community, would be to call community fasts and to repent, similar to the fasting on Yom Kippur or the ninth of Av and as described in Mishna Taanit.156 With the destruction of the Temple, levitical purity was no longer possible in the long run. Only the immersion of women after menstruation survived, probably because of the as153 Trad Apost 16 requires ‘cleansing’ of people possessed by demons before they can be baptized. 154 See references above n133, esp Adler’s findings. 155 Klawans, Impurity and Sin, chapters 4 and 5. 156 The remedial aspect is not discussed by Klawans.
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sociation with the biblically defined sin of cohabitation during menses.157 What also survived is the rabbinic version of devotional purity, represented in ritual handwashing before saying berakhot and reading Tora and, at least during the early centuries in the land of Israel, immersion after seminal emission. ‘Spiritual purity’ in terms of charms and exorcisms was not well regarded by the rabbis but was widely practised, as attested by incantation bowls and other evidence.158 Along our way, we have been offered a view on Pharisees and rabbis at work, discussing custom and halakha and deliberating what to make of new habits come from elsewhere. The description we have proposed of the Pharisees as being an open and multiform movement conversant with society at large fits the rabbis described in their own literature while handling the phenomenon of devotional purity. This provides important documentation regarding the relationship between Pharisees and rabbis.159 In both cases, differences of opinion are in the forefront. Although ‘Hillel and Shammai’160 are said as a ‘pair’ to have instituted the principle of ‘purity of hands’, their spiritual heirs kept disputing the subject until well into the second century CE. If we are to go by the subject of handwashing in the first century CE, the Pharisaic differences of opinion reflected more general disagreements within society. Thus we have glimpsed how Pharisaic-rabbinic halakha on devotional purity developed in an open process of negotiation with society at large. Sanders was right in positing that the Pharisees ‘did not run everything’, but he was wrong in suggesting that theirs was an insignificant movement isolated from Jewry at large. Mutatis mutandis, the same goes for the post-70 rabbis. Let us return to the ancient synagogues built ‘by rivers of water’, to quote the Psalm. Was the purity sought for before praying there any different from that required when approaching the sanctuary in Jerusalem? Was not devotion and worship the common aim of both levitical and devotional purity? It was. What creates the difference is the specific array of biblical and other prescriptions and usages in either case, those assimilated from gentile surroundings included, and the corresponding terminologies. These constitute different semantic domains, only partially overlapping as, fundamentally, in the application of the category ‘impure’ or, accidentally, in the designation of semen as a cause of impurity. Synagogue and Temple did not exclude one another. They were the centre of different domains that could interfere and overlap. We already quoted the decree of the city of Halicarnassus brought by Josephus. As to what the Jews did there, the Klawans, Impurity and Sin, 107f. For prohibitions cf the listing of ‘ways of the Amorite’ in tShab 6–7; for the practice Naveh–Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, 35–38 and cf the names of spirits and deities involved. 159 See on this topic, ‘Paul’s Epistles as a Source’, in the present volume. 160 The order differs from the order Shammai–Hillel normally used in the Mishna (including the ‘pairs’, mHag 2:2) and in ARN b23–24, but agrees with ARN a12–13 and mAv 1:12–15. 157 158
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decree states: ‘… That their sacred services to God and their customary festivals and religious gatherings shall be carried on.’ It is to that aim that they had been allowed to build their synagogue by the sea, indeed, ‘in accordance with their native custom’.161 Their non-Jewish co-citizens recognized this, and it needed not diminish their esteem for the Temple in Jerusalem. On the contrary, once they would go there on pilgrimage, a different set of purity rules would be activated, marking off the uniqueness of that Temple.
161
Josephus, Ant 1:257f, translation Ralph Marcus.
The Names Israel and Jew in Ancient Judaism and in the New Testament
(Isa 48:1) הנקראים בשם ישראל וממי יהודה יצאו for Yehuda Aschkenasy, my teacher
In the following survey an analysis is given of the alternative appellations ‘Israel’ and ‘Jew’ in ancient Jewish sources and in the New Testament. It will be shown that the two names have distinct social functions. A Jewish speaker will normally refer to ‘Jews’ in speech addressing or quoting non-Jews, but when communicating with fellow-Jews call them ‘Israel’. Such is the outcome of earlier studies, and the results will be elaborated on in our survey. At another level, such differentiation in self-designations may be seen as a special type of speech differentiation. Diversity of speech is a universal phenomenon. In every language, albeit to varying degrees, particular speech forms are used when addressing persons of either sex, of a specific age, or of other social distinction. Speech differs according to the relative social status of speaker and listener. More specifically: such speech differentiation signals social identity.1 Naturally, group names such as ethnic appellations are strong signifiers of social identity. Speaking in these terms, ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ signal different social identities: an ‘outside’ identity as a Jew in regard to the ancient world of nations, or alternatively, an ‘inside’ identity as one belonging to the ‘people of Israel’. The phenomenon of differentiation in ethnic appellations is by no means restricted to ancient Judaism. To revert to modern times, we also find it in Western societies. The closer one gets, the better one learns to differentiate between the Dutch and the Hollanders, the British and the English, North Americans and Canadians. An even closer parallel is found in the Gypsies. While their ‘outside’ appellations are Gypsy, Bohémien, Gitano, or Zigeuner, [121] they call themselves Rom, and their ‘inside’ language Romany.2 Along the same line, a fascinating study could be made of Jewish self-appellations in the modern period. It would Cf Hudson, Sociolinguistics, 120ff., ‘Speech as a signal of social identity’. inside name is Sinti. See Bogaart–van Eeuwijk–Rogier, Zigeuners. [The analogy with Dutchmen and Hollanders and with Brits and Englishmen is first found in Lowe, ‘Who were the ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ’, 103 n8.] 1
2 Another
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show that ‘Israel’ has remained an ‘inside’ appellation of Jews,3 even though the existence of ‘Israeli Arabs’ is indicative of the complexities of Jewish identity in recent history, not unlike ‘Palestinian Jews’ some decades ago. The present survey is confined to the Persian and Greco-Roman periods. It focuses on the names Israel and Jew as used by Jews themselves, not on the usage of others. It is well-known that in Christian usage the name Jew acquired a negative colouring, as opposed to Israel. In other words, the Church reserved for itself the ‘inside’ name of Israel, leaving the Jews their ‘outside’ name as a dishonour. This development in another way reveals the intriguing dynamic inherent in the two names, which did not fail to attract the attention of New Testament scholars. However, few studies have done justice to the fact that these two names, when appearing in the New Testament, have their natural background in ancient Jewish usage and can be fully understood only from that background.
Aim and method The aim of this study is to observe the use made of the names Israel and Jew in ancient Jewish texts and to compare this with their use in the New Testament. This has been the object of several previous studies. First to be mentioned is the article, ᾽Ισραήλ, ᾽Ιουδαῖος, from the Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (1938). Here, the thesis which forms our point of departure is established: ‘Israel’ in post-biblical Jewish literature is the grander, evocative selfappellation of the Jews, while ‘Jews’ is their name in the non-Jewish world.4 This thesis was forcefully reiterated by Renée Bloch in 1951, in a study of universal scope which extends to the modern period.5 Both studies analyse the use of the two names in Jewish literature and the New Testament, but do not evaluate their socio-religious significance in the specific documents in either context. A similar but more complicated theory was developed by Y. M. Grintz (1959– 60). In his view, ‘Israel’ was not just the inner-Jewish name, but the one used in Hebrew sources only, [122] while ‘Jew’ would be the appellation used in Aramaic, Greek and Latin sources.6 Numerous exceptions disprove the validity of this theory, but it rightly draws the attention to the use of Hebrew, the language typical of Jewish tradition, as another attribute of inner-Jewish speech. We shall see, however, that the two attributes can operate independently. 3 This
is the thrust of the article by Renée Bloch, ‘Israélite, Juif, Hébreu’. Kuhn, ‘᾽Ισραήλ, ᾽Ιουδαῖος’. The name ‘Hebrew’ is treated also, see below. The antiSemitism inherent in the Nazi sympathies of Kuhn and especially of the main editor, G. Kittel, is not reflected here (see Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors, 40–45). 5 Bloch, ‘Israélite, juif, hébreu’. Her treatment of rabbinic material depends on secondary sources; that of the NT, especially John, betrays a surprising theological bias. 6 Grintz, ‘Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language’; the same in more detail in Eshkolot 3 (1959) 125–144 (Heb). See also his article ‘Jew’ in EJ 10: 22f. 4
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In 1977 a dissertation on the subject was presented by Abraham Arazy. The work covers most of the relevant material, but unfortunately does so in a rather casual and unhistorical way. While correctly emphasizing the essential innerJewish significance of the name Israel, it does not help us understand in what circumstances ancient Jews did use the ‘outside’ name Jew to indicate themselves.7 The present contribution8 will study the various areas of ancient Jewish literature and of the New Testament. Because of the socio-religious dynamic of the names Israel and Jew, we shall study their use not just in ancient Jewish literature, but in the widest possible range of Jewish documents, each seen in its historical background. Thus we shall search every document or body of texts for the specific social identity implied by its use of the ‘inside’ name Israel and/or the ‘outside’ name Jew. Along the line, our review of the documents will yield an insight into the varieties of Jewish identity existing in the various historical phases and situations of the ancient world. A similar approach is followed for the texts brought together in the New Testament. A large stratum of it was created by Jews and to that extent it constitutes an important Jewish literary source which must be studied as other Jewish sources. However, Christianity evolved from a messianic Jewish sect into a new religion of non-Jews with a decisively ambivalent attitude to the Jews and their tradition. The question is to what extent this development is reflected already in the New Testament. When looking for answers to that question, it will appear that the social dynamic of the use of the names Israel and Jew is most instructive. Thus both names will not only allow an insight into Jewish identity, but also into the developing modes of early Christian self-definition. Our search will always be for the specific in view of its general context. This can be spelled out in a number of methodical rules: [123] – Any document or body of texts can be significant only when analysed by itself and in its entirety. – Every variation to the general usage of a particular document is significant. Social identity is always a matter of singularity. 7 Arazy, Appellations (I am grateful to the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana in Amsterdam for enabling access to this work). Unfortunately, the author shows no knowledge of the studies mentioned above. He pays no attention to inscriptions, papyri and manuscripts of rabbinic sources; ignores the specific character of literary documents (e. g. Esther, John, Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud); maintains naively unhistorical conceptions about the literature and is biased in his observations, e. g. on the use of the name Hebrew. 8 Preliminary version: ‘Over het anti-judaïsme’, In de waagschaal n.s. 11 (1982) 492–503, with emphasis on implications for the NT and Christian theology. I wish to thank Dr. W. J. Burgers for his perennial, constructive criticism, Mrs. V. de Rijk-Chan for language editing and Dr. P. W. van der Horst for helpful suggestions. [The article was published in Bijdragen 47 (1986) 12–40, 266–289. This reprint retains the 1986 text with small corrections in the main text and some content added in the footnotes, including some exchanges with Profs. David Flusser and Shmuel Safrai who wrote me a long letter after discussing the article together. The ‘Reconsideration’ discusses subsequent research and reflection.]
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– In order to evaluate the significance of such exceptions for the document involved, they should be analysed in a wider context. – There is a significant difference between speech of the writer or redactor to his readers and speech of his dramatis personae between themselves. – Prior significance is to be assigned to ‘real life’ evidence: inscriptions, coins, legal deeds and contracts, and direct self-designations in literary sources. – ‘Outside’ appellations of Jews found in inner-Jewish sources in Hebrew are highly significant. Within the limits set to this study, mainly texts provided with exhaustive indices are analysed, plus a number of smaller texts and collections without such. As a result, a very important document is lacking: the Palestinian Talmud. The publication of the relative volumes of the concordance is imminent, but not yet realized at the time of writing. However, if not all the evidence is covered, this need not be a methodical impediment. Jewish identity as expressed in the selfappellations varies from document to document. Additional sources may either confirm earlier results or add new varieties. We shall discuss our material under the following headings: (1) The names Jew and Israel; (2) Papyri, coins, inscriptions; (3) Hagiographa, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; (4) Qumran, Philo and Josephus; (5) Rabbinic literature; (6) The New Testament. Each section ends with conclusions which successively evaluate the cumulative results of our research.
The Names Jew and Israel While the rise of the name of Israel is documented in early biblical history, the name Jew is in effect one of the novel phenomena of the Second Temple period. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus is conscious of that novelty. With fine historical sense he uses the name only for the post-exilic period, and for the earlier period uses ‘Israelites’ and ‘Hebrews’.9 He also makes explicit mention of the change. After a speech by Nehemiah which addresses his fellow-Jews (ἄνδρες ᾽Ιουδαῖοι) and encourages them in the rebuilding of the Temple walls, whereupon ‘the Jews prepared to work’, Josephus feels the need for the following explanation: [124] With a few exceptions, see below.
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This name, by which they have been called from the time when they went up from Babylon, is derived from the tribe of Judah; as this tribe was the first to come to those parts, both the people themselves and the country have taken their name from it. (Ant 11:169–173)
In other words, the name came into being after the exile, and derives from the tribal, and later territorial, name Judah. Roughly, Josephus is right. The name Yehudi is found in the Hebrew Bible from the later monarchic period onward, remarkably coinciding with the appearance of its equivalents in Assyrian records. It then means ‘Judean’, subject of the King of Judah.10 It is an ethnic appellation with a prominent territorial-administrative component linked to the state of Judah. The Temple in Jerusalem formed its natural religious centre, as it was in other city states. Thus the name remained after the downfall of the kingdom, during the exile and in the various diasporas. So we read of a letter written by Jeremiah: ‘To the Judeans living in the land of Egypt’ (Jer 44:1).11 In the Persian period, the territory was turned into the province of ( יהודYehud, cf Ezra 5:8), its inhabitants being called ( יהודיםNeh 1:1–2) or, in the imperial Aramaic, יהודיא, Yehudayei; hence the phrase יהודיא די ביהוד ובירושלם, ‘the Judeans in Yehud and in Jerusalem’ (Ezra 5:1). These names also appear in the official documents preserved in the Elephantine papyri of the same period, among them the letter written to the Persian governor of Yehud by Yedoniah and his fellow Yehudayei about their temple at Elephantine.12 Indeed, from the Persian period onwards, the name Yehudi/Yehudai begins to appear in a wider range of biblical books and other documents.12a In the course of time, however, the territorial component of the name receded while the religious one became predominant. The terminus ad quem is the appearance of proselytes, i. e. persons of non-Judean provenance who convert to 10 The earliest mention: 2 Kgs 16:6. From the same period is the mention in Assyrian texts of Ha-za-qi-(i)-a-ú Ia-ú-da-ai, ‘Hezekiah the Judean’ (in Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 287 – not ‘Jew’ as there translated) and the kingdom of Ia-ú-di/Ia-ú-du/Ia-ú-da-a-a (Judah, ibid. 282, 287f, 291, 294). 11 It is significant that the Greek translators (LXX 51:1) found difficulty in translating this with the Ioudaios of their own day; mss א+ translate τοῖς κατοικοῦσιν ᾽Ιουδα. Cf also 43(50):9, ἀνδρῶν ᾽Ιουδα for יהודים. And even more interesting is Jer 34(41):9, the עבד עבריin possession of the יהודי: where the other mss have ἄνδρα ἐξ ᾽Ιουδα for the latter word, ms A has ἄνδρα ἐξ ᾽Ισραήλ! All this indicates that the Greek translators were conscious of the difference between the older, tribal/territorial yehudi and the predominantly religious ethnikon ᾽Ιουδαῖος of their own time; see below. 12 CAP no. 30, lines 1–2, 19 and 22 (cf also nos. 6, 8, 21, 22, 38 and 42); [Porten–Yardeni, Textbook, 68–71. Another letter addressed to the governor of Yehud is found in two copies, one of which mentions חרי יהודיא, ‘nobles of the Judaeans’, which the other calls חרי יהוד, ‘nobles of Yehud’ (CAP no. 31; Porten–Yardeni 72–75, l. 18)]. 12a יהודי/ יהודאיin the later monarchy: 2 Kgs (2×); Jer (10×). In the Persian period: Ezra (7); Neh (10), Zech (1), Esth (48!); and Dan (2). Interesting is יהודיתfor ‘Judean speech’, as opposed to ארמית: 2 Kgs 18:26, 28; = Isa 36:11, 13; = 2 Chr 32:18 [or as opposed to אשדודית, Neh 13:24, see below at p190 n15.]
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the religion of the ‘Judeans’. So we are told of many of ‘the people of the lands’ who ‘became Jews’ ( )מתיהדיםout of fear for the Jews led by Esther and Mordecai (Est 8:17).13 Obviously, these people, spread over the [125] Persian empire according to our story, had none but a religious connection with the province of Yehud. In the earlier Persian period, proselytising still seemed impossible, at least in the circles of Ezra and Nehemiah (see Ezra 3–10; Neh 13:23–27). A proselyte is found, however, in Judith, a book from the later Persian or early Hellenistic period.14 From this time on, Yehudi can no longer be translated ‘Judean’ but should be rendered ‘Jew’ – adherent to the religion, and a member of the ‘nation’, of the Jews, or in the standard Greek expression: ἔθνος τῶν ᾽Ιουδαίων.15 In the Hellenistic world this ‘nation’ – there is also the usage ‘people’, γένος, τῶν ᾽Ιουδαίων – had a predominant cultural-religious characteristic.16 In the diaspora, the Jews were organized around and therefore recognizable by their community centre (συναγωγή or προσευχή) and led by the ἄρχων or ἀρχισυνάγωγος. In Palestine, the local and national community functions were all linked to Jewish tradition.17 Furthermore, Jewish life was characterised by some extraordinary features that kept drawing the attention of gentile writers: the Sabbath, circumcision, the food laws and the avoidance of idolatry.
The LXX translation is even more explicit: περιετέμοντο καὶ ἰουδάϊζον. [Thus also the Vulgate and modern translations: they ‘became Jewish’. According to D. Flusser and S. Safrai, מתיהדיםmeans they ‘(temporarily) adopted Jewish customs’; similarly Cohen, Beginnings, 181: they ‘pretended to be Jews’. Note that the meaning of התיהדis non-territorial: these people did not ‘move to Judea’!] The gentile expression ‘to become a Jew’ is found literally in Bel et Draco v28: ἰουδαῖος γέγονεν ὁ βασιλεύς, and in GenR 11.5 (p94), אתעבדת יהודאי, both expressed by non-Jews. Note also Josephus, Ant 13:258, the Idumeans after their forced conversion ‘have continued to be Jews’; yet Antipater is called ‘Idumean’, ibid. 14:8; but again his son Herod became ‘king of the Jews’ 14:9, 15:409! And cf Plutarchus, Vit Ant 61.3; 71.1 (Stern, GLAJJ nos. 267, 268), ʽΗρώδης ὁ ᾽Ιουδαῖος. 14 Cf discussion by Nickelsburg, ‘Stories’, 50f. 15 Some examples from various sources: 1 Esdr 8:10 and Josephus, Ant 11:123, both reproducing the letter of Artaxerxes (on the parallel Ezra 7:13 see below); 1 Macc 8:23ff, the peace treaty between the Romans and the Jewish nation; Ant 13:1, Josephus himself stating that the nation of Jews regained its freedom under the Maccabees; Philo, Leg 373, Caligula’s enmity towards the whole nation of Jews; Acts 10:22, Cornelius honoured by the whole nation of Jews; CII no. 741 (Greek inscription, 3d cent. CE or after) ‘The Jewess Rufina … gives to the nation of Jews …’ [Postscript: There was no clean cut here, and the territorial-political connotation ‘Judean’ did persist in certain contexts. See the ‘Reconsideration’.] 16 Cf Philo, Virt 108, commenting on Deut 23:7 with an anachronism apparently aimed at his own time: an Egyptian who wishes ‘to pass over into the ᾽Ιουδαίων πολιτεία’. [The word ‘nation’ here has the pre-modern sense paralleling ethnos, as it was still used, e. g., in pre-revolution Holland: the ‘Hoogduitsche natie’ and the ‘Portugese natie’ of Jews, i. e., Ashkenazim and Sefardim; see Bolle, De opheffing van de autonomie.] 17 See Safrai, ‘Jewish Self-Government’; Applebaum, ‘Organization of the Jewish Communities’. 13
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Thus the ethnikon Jew in the Greco-Roman period is defined by a strong religious component, rather than language (cf Hellene, Aramean, Arab)18 or territory (cf Syrian, Babylonian, Roman).19 It should be noted that [126] a separation between ‘religion’ and ‘nation’, so natural to moderns, was non-existent and unthinkable in the ancient period, as in the Middle Ages. Precisely so, the ethnos of the Jews was characterized by their remarkable religion. All this must be kept in mind when we now turn to the name Israel. For Jews of all times, it was and still is their most congenial name, evoking the memories of the patriarch Jacob, of Moses and the exodus, of the Law-giving at Sinai, and of David King of Israel. As evidenced by the biblical prophets, it was kept and cherished as a name for the whole people, even after the division into the northern kingdom called ‘Israel’ and the southern kingdom of Judah. This makes us understand when Ezekiel, sent to the Judeans exiled in Babylonia, calls them ‘children of Israel’ (2:3) and ‘house of Israel’ (3:4).20 Some decades later, Second Isaiah urges his exiled (Judean) people to acclaim the Persian conqueror Cyrus as one who is called ‘for the sake of Jacob my servant and of Israel my chosen’ (45:4); ‘Hear, o house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, but went out from the waters of Judah …; hear me, Jacob, Israel my called one … Depart from Babel, flee the Chaldeans …’ (48:1, 12, 20). Clearly, the name of Israel by which the Judeans were now called,20a not only carries the memories of a glorious past, but also the promise of a near, redemptive future. 18 On ‘Judean’ as opposed to ‘Aramaic’ speech see n12 above. 2 Kgs 18:26 LXX translates ἰουδαϊστί vs. συριστί, but Josephus, Ant 10:8, again with historical sense, ἑβραϊστί vs. συριστί. The curious ארמאיsubstituted for יהודאיin some of the Elephantine papyri (CAP, cf nos. 13 and 15 on no. 6) seems to be an ethnikon of wider scope but possibly with a major linguistic component. See introduction in CAP, xvf., and Kraeling, Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri, 47f. 19 A territorial meaning is (inconsistently) stressed by Arazy, Appellations, 59, 103, 121, 126, 160, 172; vol. 2, 156–158. Contra: Kuhn, ‘᾽Ισραήλ, ᾽Ιουδαῖος’, 360 – ‘no trace’ of territorial meaning. Solin, ‘Iudaeus’, drawing mainly on epigraphic and non-Jewish sources, supports Kuhn while conceding that in rare instances Ioudaios seems to have a territorial meaning. Cf the following examples in which Ioudaios is plainly devoid of geographical significance: CPJ no. 153 (the Claudius rescript) ‘I order the Jews (at Alexandria)… not to bring in or invite Jews coming from Syria or Egypt’; CII no. 296, ‘A Jewess from Laodicea’; ibid. no. 680, ‘A Jew from Tiberias’; ibid. 1442 ‘The Jews at Nitriai’; ibid. 1443 ‘The Jews at Athribe’. Philo, Quod omn 75, ‘Palestinian Syria … in this country live a considerable part of the very populous nation of the Jews’. The expression ᾽Ιουδαῖος τὸ γενός (a Jew by race) is used of slaves at Delphi (CII nos. 709, 710); the actor Aliturus at Puteoli (Josephus, Life 16); Josephus’ third wife at Crete (ibid. 427). Cf also the ‘Babylonian Jews’ at Batanea (Bashan, i. e. Golan), ibid. 54, 57, who are later called ‘Babylonians’, ibid. 183. Epictetus (Stern, GLAJJ nos. 252–254) compares ‘Jews, Syrians, Egyptians and Romans’; however ‘Jew’ does one become by ‘baptism’ i. e. conversion. See also n11. 20 Cf also 8:1, 6, 7, [ !זקני יהודה = בית ישראל = בית יהודהAnd cf the ‘land of Israel’, אדמת ישראל, Ezek 11:17 and frequent; furthermore ארץ ישראל, Exod 27:17; 40:2; 47:18, found also elsewhere in biblical usage: 1Sam 13:19; 2Kgs 5:2, 4; 6:23; 1Chr 22:2; 2Chr 2:16; 30:25; 34:7.] 20a Cf Isa 48:1 LXX οἱ ἐξ ᾽Ιουδα ἐξελθόντες.
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Consequently, in the literature of the period we are dealing with two synonymous names which indicate the same people. ‘Israel’ remains the name used in inner-Jewish speech, i. e. speech conceived in the perspective of Jewish history which is created by the Bible: Israel, a people singled out by God for a historic mission in the world of nations. The location corresponding to this speech situation (its Sitz im Leben) is the House of Learning or the House of Prayer. Here we may hear, most obviously, prayers and liturgical texts, but also further developments of biblical genres such as apocalypses, testaments, and narratives; we also hear paraphrases and comments on the Bible, and last but not least, formulations of post-biblical law. But Jews did not only live in houses of prayer and learning, but frequented the bath house, government house, the city archives and its notaries, the market, and many other places of communication with non-Jews. Here, texts are read or written such as diplomatic documents and letters, legal deeds and contracts, epitaphs and other inscriptions situated in non-Jewish surroundings. We also find here apologetic works and historiography in the Hellenistic tradition. Especially in the diaspora, the language of such texts is likely to be not Hebrew but Aramaic or Greek. And, except where an inner-Jewish perspective is brought in as in prayers or comments on the Bible, the name used for a Jew is Yehudai or Ioudaios. [127] Naturally, the documents we are going to analyse cannot be divided flatly into inner-Jewish sources and sources in outside speech. In historiographies, an inner-Jewish perspective is brought in when the Bible is being commented on (as in the earlier part of Josephus’ Antiquities) or a prayer cited. Conversely, in comments on the Bible or legal discussions, stories and cases may be cited which contain communications with non-Jews, and in precisely these cases we shall find the name Jew, in Aramaic or Greek, but also in Hebrew: Yehudi. To be sure, many literary sources have been preserved only in translations. However, that does not appear to have affected their particular use of the names Israel and Jew. Fine examples are 1 Maccabees and Judith, books which even in the Greek read as thoroughly inner-Jewish texts.21 An example from rabbinic literature is found in the letters written by Rabban (Shimon ben) Gamliel and Yohanan ben Zakkai, which are transmitted in both a Hebrew and an Aramaic form. The third letter in the Aramaic version uses the ‘inside’ name for the Jews: ‘To our brethren in … all diasporas of Israel’ ()כל גלוותא דישראל.22 If this is from a Hebrew original, it proves that translation does not affect the ‘inside’ perspec21 Note Grintz’s reconstruction of the original Hebrew, given that ‘the Hebrew verses manifestly show through the Greek texture’, Grintz, Sefer Yehudith, 9. However, the Hebrew does not preclude the use of יהודים, see below. 22 tSan 2:6; ySan 1 (18d); bSan 11b. Only the other two letters are preserved in Hebrew: MidGad Deut 26:13 (597f); cf MidTann p176. The context here is the law of first fruits, and the third letter dealing with intercalation apparently was felt to be out of place. The attribution to R. Yoshua is very detailed and sounds reliable.
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tive. But if the letter was in Aramaic from the start, it shows that the ‘inside’ perspective can be expressed perfectly well in Aramaic. As stated earlier, both the name Israel and the Hebrew language are attributes of ‘inside speech’, but they can also operate independently. We only have to mention the book of Esther, which is in Hebrew but uses the outside appellation Yehudi.23 Another question is which languages were spoken and written by Jews in Palestine in this period. For a long time the situation was tri-lingual: Aramaic was the lingua franca spoken by Jews and non-Jews alike, and to a lesser extent Greek, while Hebrew was spoken by Jews only, mainly in Judea. When Hebrew started to decline as a spoken language, its ‘inside’ character was enhanced: it gradually became the language typical of Jewish tradition and prayer.24 To the extent that the dual usage of ‘Israel’ and ‘Jews’ is independent of the language spoken, however, we can leave the larger language issue aside. [128] We must now pay attention to an alternative ‘outside’ appellation: ‘Hebrew’. In the Bible, it is used of the Israelites in a non-Israelite perspective, and thus has a function comparable to the later ‘Jew’. More specifically, a position of social inferiority seems implied, since it is used mainly for slaves and unsettled migrants.25 In the post-exilic period, it developed into a more neutral ‘outside’ appellation, as in Jonah 1:9 and Judith (below). Thus it became accepted in Hellenistic Jewish writings like 2 and 4 Maccabees, and especially in the latter work it conveys a flavour of antiquity and heroism.26 In non-Jewish Greek and Latin sources, it begins to spread from the end of the first century CE.27 Its appearance in Jewish inscriptions is to be dated later still (below). In many cases, the name Hebrews indicates the ancient Israelites and the patriarchs,28 or seems to carry their memory when indicating contemporaneous Jews. In other cases, the name has a strong linguistic component. Hebraios may
23 This
refutes Grintz’s theory, see above. the language situation see the general survey by Rabin, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic’. See further Lieberman, Greek, with criticism and additional material by Alon, Studies 2: 248–277; Schürer, History 2: 20–28, 74–80; Rosen, ‘Sprachsituation’ (more hesitant on Hebrew); Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism 1: 58–64. See also below n103. 25 ‘Hebrew’ slaves in Egypt: Joseph, Gen 39–43; the Israelites, Exod 1–10. Unsettled migrants in Canaan: Abraham, Gen 14:13 (cf Gen 14:13 LXX and Philo, Migr 20, περάτης); the Israelites, 1 Sam chapters 4, 13, 14, 29. A ‘Hebrew slave’ owned by his fellow Israelite: Exod 21:2; Deut 15:12; Jer 34:9, 14. Jer 34:9 is interesting, see above n11. The association with the ancient Apiru/Habiru seems obvious, see Cassuto, Commentary to the Book of Exodus, 15, 265f. On ‘Hebrews’ in the Bible cf van Uchelen, Abraham de Hebreeër. 26 Thus Kuhn, ‘᾽Ισραήλ, ᾽Ιουδαῖος’, 369. See 2 Macc 7:31; 11:13; 15:37; 4 Macc 5:2, 4; 8:2; 9:6, 18. 27 Stern, GLAJJ 2: 160f with references. 28 Josephus, Ant 14:255 (decree of the people of Pergamum) ‘Abraham, who was the father of all Hebrews’; Claudius Charax (mid 2nd cent. CE), ‘Hebrews; thus are called Jews after Abramon’ (Stern, GLAJJ no. 335). See also n68a. 24 On
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mean ‘Hebrew-reader’ as distinct from Jews who read the Tora in Greek.29 In rabbinic literature, it has a linguistic sense only.30 As opposed to the name Jew, it did not acquire a negative colouring in Christian literature. As an ethnikon with a relatively late and apparently limited spread,31 it is the minor companion of the name Jew, certainly if we deduct all those cases where it clearly has a linguistic sense. We do not pursue this name systematically in our survey, but shall note it when the texts invite us to do so.
Conclusion In the Persian period, the name Yehudi/Yehudai had a predominantly territorial meaning, to be translated ‘Judean’. At the same time, the prophetic traditi-[129]on preserved the name Yisrael as the internal designation of the People of the Covenant. The appearance of proselytes indicates a change. Thus in the Greco-Roman period, Yehudi/Yehudai/Ioudaios/Iudaeus is a non-territorial, religious ethnikon, to be rendered not ‘Judean’ but ‘Jew’ [see n15 above]. This is the name used in texts communicating with non-Jews, while texts conceived within the perspective of biblical Covenant history continue to use the inner-Jewish name Israel. This alternative use of the two names, which signifies a distinct social identity, operates in all languages and translations.
Papyri, Coins, Inscriptions As early as 256 BCE, ᾽Ιουδαῖος appears in the correspondence of the Ptolemaic official Zenon. And up to the Byzantine era, it remains the sole appellation for the Jews in the Egyptian papyri. The territorial implication to be presumed in this period is not in evidence.32 Many of the papyri were written by non-Jews. 29 See especially Philo (below). Cf Acts 6:1. The one mention in Plutarch (Stern, GLAJJ no. 264) has a linguistic meaning. On the inscriptions in Rome see below. 30 Apart from the עבד עבריwho derives from Exod 21:2, and is found in mKid 1:2 and 6 other passages in the Mishna. In MekRY mishpatim 1 (p247) it is immediately explained as ישראל. The mention of an עבריתwoman in MekRY yitro/bahodesh 1 (p203) is an unexplained singular case. In none of the parallel versions is a trace of it found: SifDeut 305 (p325); ARN a 17 (p65); yKet 5 (30b–c); bKet 66b–67a; PesR nahamu (140a). 31 In the Egyptian papyri it does not appear until the Byzantine era (see next note), in the inscriptions not in Egypt but only in Rome, Corinth, Cilicia and Seleucis (below n44). Aristeas and Philo do not use it as a present-day ethnikon except with linguistic meaning, see below. One would conclude that Hebraios as a synonym to Ioudaios is absent in Egypt in our period. 32 Cf the Aramaic Elephantine papyri dealt with above. The earliest mentions of ᾽Ιουδαῖος: CII nos. 8 and 9. For the eclipse of the territorial component see nos. 46, 153, 417, 452. Only in two Byzantine documents (nos. 511, 512) does the name ‘Hebrew’ appear as a plain synonym for ‘Jew’.
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Others are official documents in Greek written by Jewish authors, and must be classified as Jewish texts in ‘outside speech’.33 In fact, it is only by the contents, not the wording of the texts that they can be identified as Jewish. Such is not the case with the Hasmonean coins. Starting from Alexander Jannaeus, the Jewish high-priests/kings not only struck coins with Greek legends but coins in Hebrew as well, using the ancient Hebrew script. Quite a number of the latter mention not only the monarch but, surprisingly, ‘the Assembly of the Jews [Judeans]’ ()חבר היהודים.34 Three coins published more recently even carry only the title חבר יהודים.34a Leaving aside the questions about the precise status of this ‘Assembly’, we are witness to the striking phenomenon of ‘outside speech’, in Hebrew, by Jewish officials. In order to understand its significance, we must adduce further evidence. In 1 Maccabees, not only the external diplomatic letters but also the internal documents of the Hasmonean officials use the appellation ᾽Ιουδαῖοι. The same book relates (13:42) that the people started to date their legal deeds by the years of ‘Simon, the high priest and … commander of the Jews’. This Simon was also officially acclaimed ‘ethnarch of the Jews’ (14:47). The ‘outside’ usage in official texts is all the more striking since the author of 1 Macca-[130]bees uses the name Israel in authorial statements (see below). Another relevant piece of evidence is the Aramaic Scroll of Fasting which officially records major Hasmonean events and among these ‘a good tiding for the Jews’ (see below). This combined evidence shows that the Hasmonean leadership saw itself from a non-Jewish perspective even in its internal communications. A quite different situation is found in the coins and written documents of the two great revolts against Rome, 66–70 and 132–135 CE. Here, coins are struck entitled shekel Yisrael ( )שקל ישראלor ‘Year One of the Redemption of Israel’ ()גאולת ישראל. Shimon bar Kosiba is called not ‘ethnarch of the Jews’ but ‘Prince of Israel’ ( ;)נשיא ישראלa letter carrying orders conveys a greeting of ‘Peace on all the house of Israel’.35 All this signals a conscious inner-Jewish identification, supported by the use of Hebrew and the archaic Hebrew script on the coins. See nos. 129, 134, 138, 432, 473. Meshorer, Jewish Coins, nos. 12, 13, 14, [15], 17, 18, 18a, 19, 20, 20a, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31; ranging from Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 BCE) down till Mattityah Antigonos (40–37 BCE). Cf the convenient appendix on Hebrew coins in Schürer, History 1: 602–606. [As to translation, the meaning ‘Judeans’ is often preferable in Hasmonaean chancellery usage, see ‘Reconsideration’.] 34a Jeselsohn, ‘Hever Yehudim – A New Jewish Coin’. The author concludes that the חבר יהודיםwas an institution independent of the Hasmonean monarchs, and that the 3 coins were struck during the Pharisaic rebellion against Alexander Jannaeus, 88–82 BCE. The latter connection is entirely hypothetical. On the independence of the hever cf Safrai, ‘Jewish SelfGovernment’, 389; Schürer, History 1: 211. 35 DJD 2: 156. For the coins see Schürer, History 1: 605f; for the letters Yadin, Bar Kokhba, 36. 33 34
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Three interesting exceptions are found. Two are connected with matrimonial law: a wedding contract and a divorce deed from Bar Kokhba surroundings, while in line with rabbinic law, carry the appellation יהודים/יהודאי. In the section on the Mishna below it will be shown that this was a common phenomenon in rabbinic law. The third exception is in a Greek letter of the Bar Kokhba commanders, ordering palm branches and citrons for the ‘citron-celebration of the Jews’ (κιτρειαβολην Ιουδαιων). In this case, however, the use of the ‘outside’ appellation is explained by the apparent involvement of non-Jews.36 With these three understandable exceptions involving interaction between Jews and non-Jews, the inner-Jewish identification of these documents is consistent with the massive popular revolts against Rome. An analysis of the factors causing the intriguing difference with the Hasmonean leadership transcends the limits of this survey.36a We now turn to the Jewish inscriptions. The majority are epitaphs, but there are also public inscriptions, deeds of manumission, and the like. One striking phenomenon is the absence of ethnic indications in predominantly Jewish locations, such as the large Jewish cemeteries at Beth Shearim, Jaffo, Jerusalem, and Tell el-Yehoudieh (Egypt).37 The need to identify a tomb as Jewish apparently was felt only in non-Jewish surroundings. The one exception at Beth Shearim calls for an explanation: ‘Here lies Sara, a pious Jewess’ (Ιουδεα οσια).38 A possible answer is that although there was no need for ethnic identification in this purely Jewish cemetery, the positive Jewish piety of the deceased was stressed. We may conjecture a proselyte;39 in that case a partially non-[131]Jewish perspective would be implied. This explanation is corroborated by epitaphs from the three large Jewish catacomb cemeteries in Rome. Here we find only five epitaphs carrying the name Jew; one is very much like the one at Beth Shearim: Marcia bona Iudea, and three more explicitly add the word προσηλυτος. The fifth mentions a ‘Jewess from Laodicea’; here the mention of the diaspora city may call for additional Jewish identification.40
36 Text in Lifshitz, ‘Papyrus grecs’, 243; translation Alexander, ‘Epistolary Literature’, 589. [However H. Cotton in Yadin, Documents, 354, P. Yadin 52:9–10, reads (with Yadin, p357) ις [π]αρεμβολην Ιουδ[αι]ων, ‘for the camp of the Jews’. The implications are all the clearer: the writer, Soumaios, ‘is not a Jew but a Nabataean, like his namesake in the Babatha archive, who signs his name in Greek’; he has to apologize for having to write εληνιστι instead of εβραεστι (sic; see Cotton’s discussion ibid. 361); and, evidently, he will use the external appellation, Ιουδαιος.] For the circumstances see Yadin, Bar Kokhba, 130–132; Rosen, ‘Sprachsituation’, 223–226. 36a It may be connected with the external Hellenization of the Hasmonean court, cf Stern, ‘The Period of the Second Temple’, 213f. [See ‘Reconsideration’.] 37 CII nos. 892–958, 993–1161, 1210–1387, 1451–1530. In total 494 inscriptions! 38 Schwabe–Lifshitz, Beth Shearim 2, no. 158. 39 Thus Avigad, Beth Shearim 3: p29; cf Schwabe–Lifshitz, Beth Shearim 2: p103. 40 CII no. 250, bona Iudea; no. 21 (see below n43); no. 68, Iudeus proselitus; no. 202, [… Ιου]δεα προσ[ηλυτος …]; no. 296, Ιουδεα απο Λαδικιας.
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A similar situation is found with synagogue inscriptions. In thoroughly Jewish contexts, such as prevailed in Palestine, no need was felt to identify the building as Jewish. What we do find are inscriptions wishing ‘Peace on all Israel’ and the like,41 standard liturgical phrases also found on many graves and in the Bar Kokhba letter mentioned above. On the other hand, synagogues in non-Jewish surroundings are likely to be entitled ‘Community of the Jews’ (συναγωγὴ τῶν ᾽Ιουδαίων), and their officials ἄρχων τῶν ᾽Ιουδαίων and similar titles. The earliest examples are again from third century BCE Egypt. A striking example from the third century CE is the bilingual votive inscription of the Doura Europos synagogue, which in Aramaic goes: ‘This house was built.., in the eldership of Samuel son of Yedaya, the Archon …’ However the Greek parallel reads: ‘Samuel son of Eiddeos, presbyter of the Jews, founded this.’42 It seems that here the Greek was felt to imply an ‘outside’ perspective, unlike the Aramaic. In other words, the great majority of ‘Jews’ mentioned in Jewish inscriptions are found outside the large Jewish centres in Palestine, Rome and Alexandria. It is in largely non-Jewish surroundings that Jews felt the need to be identified as ‘Jews’. Except for one enigmatic epitaph in Rome,43 the name Israel is not found as an ethnic identification. It only figures in the liturgical phrases we met already. In inner-Jewish circumstances, ethnic identification is superfluous. Very interesting is the late emergence and limited spread of the name ‘Hebrew’. We find it in only 14 inscriptions, as against 56 times, ‘Jew’. It appears nine times in Rome, once in Corinth and four times in Cilicia and Syria. The date is not earlier than second-third century CE.44 It is intriguing that five of these [132] are in the Monteverde catacomb, the only place in Rome where also Hebrew inscriptions are found.45 Again this suggests a relation between the name Hebrew and the knowledge of Hebrew writings or oral traditions. In any case, ‘Hebrew’ does not appear here as an outward identification, but as a positive inward qualification.46 Naveh, On Stone and Mosaic, nos. 1, 3, 38, 50, 68, 69, 70, 75. no. 829. See Kraeling, The Synagogue, 263, 277. Institutions and officials ‘of the Jews’ are found in CII nos. 533, 635b, 683, 683a, 684, 738, 741, 754, 775, 776, 972 (in Palestine, but with clear external intention). See esp nos. 1440–1443 (3d–2nd cent. BCE near Alexandria). 43 CII no. 21, Ειρηνη τρεζ/πτη (sic) προσηλυ | τος πατρος και | μητρος ειου | δεα ισδραεηλιτης (etc.). The double ‘Jewess, Israelite’, may be intended to reinforce the ‘proselyte’. In any case this clumsy emphasis remains enigmatic, cf Solin, ‘Iudaeus’, 648. [See also ‘Reconsideration’, p197 at n42.] 44 Rome: CII 1, nos. 291, 317, 354, 370, 379, 502, 505, 510, 535, (502 may also be from Rome; see Lifshitz on no. 535). Korinth: no. 718, ΣΥΝΑΓΩΓΗ ΕΒΡᾼΩΝ (dated 1st cent. BCE – 2nd cent. CE by Frey; but see Meritt, Corinth, Greek Inscriptions, 79 no. 111: ‘… [T]he style of lettering indicates that the inscription is considerably later than the time of St. Paul’); Cilicia and Seleucis: nos. 750, 754, 784, 793. 45 CII 1, nos. 291, 317, 354, 370, 379. See Lifshitz, ‘Prolegomenon’, 22, quoting Leon: at Monteverde, Rome’s most conservative Jews were interred. 46 At Monteverde only once ‘Jew’ is found, no. 296 (above n40). Note also the honorific titles given along with the appellation ‘Hebrew’ in nos. 291, 317, 505, 510, 535. Moreover, three 41 See 42 CII
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Conclusion In the Jewish Greek papyri from Egypt, only the name ᾽Ιουδαῖοι appears in our period. The ‘outside’ Jewish identity signalled by this usage is confirmed by the intent and the contents of the letters. Surprisingly, the Hasmonean coins carrying Hebrew legends signal an outside identity using the name יהודים. Literary sources enhance this, suggesting that the Hasmonean leaders portrayed themselves in a ‘Judean’ perspective. The opposite is true of the archaeological documents of the two massive revolts against Rome. Apart from three well-explainable exceptions, the prominence of ישראלin the documents of the two revolts against Rome conveys an inner-Jewish perspective. Jewish inscriptions, when found in large Jewish centres, hardly contain ethnic identifications, apart from the name Israel used in liturgical formulas. Only six out of the hundreds of epitaphs from these centres have the name Jew. In these cases, proselytes seem involved, introducing a non-Jewish context. In nonJewish surroundings, the name Jew is the regular identification.
Hagiographa, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha The above title indicates a wide range of texts, and here as elsewhere it is not possible to be exhaustive. In order to observe the appellative differentiation at work in these sources, we limit ourselves mainly to what may be seen as literary counterparts. Ezra and Nehemiah, while belonging to the Persian period, form one such pair. Ezra was designed as an inner-Jewish chronicle which prefers the name Israel and reserves the Aramaic Yehudayei for the sections containing official correspondence of the Persian court – i. e. precisely the ‘outside’ sections.47 On the other hand, Nehemiah 1–6 uses the Hebrew Yehudim (‘Judeans’, [133] in this period) suggesting a non-Jewish setting. And indeed, the author identifies himself as the official cup-bearer in conversation with the Persian king (1:11).48 Next are the sister works, Judith and Esther. Esther is the story of ‘Mordecai the Jew’, a courtier in the Persian capital, and his heroine adopted daughter Esmention a Palestinian (nos. 370, 502) or Syrian provenance (no. 291), suggesting a Semitic mother tongue. For Hebraios as ‘Hebrew-reader’ see below on Philo. 47 יהודיאin 4:12, 23; 5:1, 5; 6:7 (2×), 8, 14. ישראלthroughout, 28 times, even in Aramaic parts (chs. 5–6!). Note 7:13, עמא ישראלwhere 1 Esdr 8:10 and Josephus, Ant 11:123 have ἔθνος τῶν ᾽Ιουδαίων! 48 In chs 1–6, 9× יהודים, and twice ישראלin a prayer (1:6) and a similar phrase (2:10). The second half of the book is compiled from mixed sources using 16 ישראלtimes and יהודיםonce (13:23); the composite character of this part would necessitate an extensive evaluation. [See ‘Reconsideration’ from p190 n12 onwards.]
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ther who is elected the king’s consort for her dazzling beauty. The perspective of the story is entirely non-Jewish, which is emphasized by the striking absence of references to the God of Israel or any other element of Jewish tradition. And indeed, the appellation used throughout in this Hebrew work is Yehudim – no less than 48 times. This constitutes the extraordinary character of the story which glorifies the redemption of the Jews by a Jewish heroine in completely non-Jewish speech. A most striking expression of the estrangement created by this contrast is the well-known sentence that after the pompous introduction starts the action: ‘A Jewish man there was in Shushan the fortress …’ (2:5).49 This picture is only confirmed by the additions to the book in its Greek translation. A supplement of ‘Jewish substance’ was felt to be needed: divine intervention through Mordecai’s dream (11:2–12:6; 10:1–11:1), prayers by Mordecai and Esther (13:8–14:19); Esther’s faithfulness to Jewish law (14:15–17). Significantly, the additions always use the ‘inside’ name Israel, not only in prayers but once in the narrative as well: ‘And all Israel cried out’ (13:18).50 This is precisely the ‘inside speech’ used throughout the book of Judith. Here, the perspective as well as the location are Jewish: ‘The children of Israel living in Judea’ (4:1). This even includes the conversion of Achior the Ammonite, who is said to have ‘believed in God with all his heart, had the flesh of his foreskin circumcised and was added to the house of Israel’ (14:10).51 The three exceptions are precisely in those situations where Judith is called a ‘Hebrew’ by the foreigners, or by herself in conversation with them (10:12; 12:11; 14:18). In other words, here the inner-Jewish perspective is interrupted by communication with the non-Jewish world. We found the opposite in the Greek Esther: there the additions interrupt the non-Jewish perspective with inner-Jewish communication. The same inversed proportionality exists between 1 and 2 Maccabees. The former in effect is a Hasmonean court chronicle in biblical style and probably [133] was composed in Hebrew.52 In over 60 cases, the name Israel is used, many times in the Hebraizing phrase ‘sons of Israel’. It is to be noted that the land and the state are called γῆ ᾽Ιουδα or ᾽Ιουδαία (see the promiscuity in 1 Macc 7:22–24). The ethnikon ᾽Ιουδαῖος is found in the narrative only in 2:23 and 4:2 (cf 2:19), and a further 35 times in the context of diplomatic interaction. In the previous section we noted the striking fact that the Hasmonean leadership entertained an ‘outside’ view of itself, as expressed in these official communications. 49 The reference to the king of יהודהin 2:6 suggests a territorial component in the יהודיof 2:5. On the various homiletic explanations of this remarkable phrase see below n120. 50 In prayer, 13:9, 13; 14:5. In Mordecai’s pious epilogue, 10:9, 13. Cf also the contrast created by EstR 7.13: ‘It is taught: When Haman the lawless ordered to extinguish Israel (לאבד את ’…)ישראל 51 Cf the companion piece in outside speech Esth 8:17 (above). ‘Israel’ is found 28 times in all. 52 See discussion by Attridge, ‘Historiography’, 171f.
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The contrast created by such official ‘outside’ speech in this emphatically innerJewish chronicle is very remarkable. The reverse is found in 2 Maccabees. This work uses the ‘outside’ name ᾽Ιουδαῖοι throughout. A novelty here is the term ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός denoting the cultural and religious tradition (νόμος) of the nation of Jews. It implies an outside view of ‘Judaism’ as a separate entity in the Hellenistic world.53 Only in three prayers (1:25f; 10:38; 11:6) and one pious ‘aside’ (9:5) is the name of Israel used. Thus the overall frame of reference is non-Jewish, while the few exceptions emphasize continuity with the inner-Jewish, biblical perspective. It is no wonder that 2 Maccabees is designed as a hortatory work urging the Jews in the Egyptian diaspora to celebrate the feast of Hanukka.54 The Letter of Aristeas was written by an Egyptian Jew, but purports to be a letter of the Ptolemaic courtier Aristeas to his brother. It is conceived in a completely non-Jewish perspective. Aristeas tells how he visited ‘the high priest of the Jews’ in Jerusalem to ask him for men who could translate the laws of the Jews into Greek. At the end, when the translation is finished and read out, it is enthusiastically acclaimed by the Alexandrian Jews and ‘their leaders’, who ask for a copy themselves. This reflects the purpose of the work: to praise the quality of the Septuagint and its value both for Jews and non-Jews.54a The only name used for the Jews is consequently: ‘Jews’. [135] We close this section by briefly reviewing a number of works which all are framed in a biblical perspective and read as pious, inner-Jewish works. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is another example of the preservation of an inner-Jewish perspective through an extended history of translation and emendation, Christian redaction included. The name Israel is found 58 (60) times, 53 ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός, 2 Macc 2:21; 8:1; 14:38 [with its counterpart, ʽΕλληνισμός, explicit in 2 Macc 4:13]. Cf Amir, ‘The Term Ioudaismos’. Amir ibid. 39 posits that the Greek-Jewish ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός ‘has no equivalent in the usage of the Jews of Eretz Israel’. Yet we do have a parallel in EstR 7.11 (Warsaw ed): ‘Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah … did not change their God and their customs but clung to their Judaism ([ ’)והחזיקו ביהדותןas already noted by Kuhn, ‘᾽Ισραήλ, ᾽Ιουδαῖος’, 364]. This is a perfect parallel to the heroic faithfulness to ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός of 2 Maccabees, but admittedly a very late one. However this abstract concept has an Aramaic form (Dalman, Grammatik, 181 – the variant reading יהודתןin EstR of course would contradict this) which existed early on in Palestinian Judaism. This appears from mMeg 4:9 which rejects a targum to Lev 18:21 which read: ‘to make it pass to ( ’ארמיותאAramaism, i. e. paganism). This targum was apparently widespread, since in spite of the Mishna it is found in the extant Targumim, see Albeck ad loc. This Aramaic-Jewish ארמיותאis a full equivalent of the ʽΕλληνισμός of Hellenistic Jews (on which see Amir ibid. 38). It is also found bAZ 70a. The Munich ms there has the variant גיותא, ‘heathenhood’, which is also found bKet 11a. – All this opens the possibility that Palestinian Jews did indeed have an equivalent to Greek ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός: Aramaic יהדותא. [Cf Mason, ‘Jews, Judaeans’, 460 n9.] 54 See discussion by Attridge, ‘Historiography’, 176–183. [Note also ‘Hebrews’ in 2 Macc 7:31; 11:13; 15:37.] 54a Cf Nickelsburg, ‘Stories’, 75–80. [‘Hebrew’ is used in a linguistic sense in Arist 3 (‘laws written in Hebrew characters’), 30 and 38. Cf v121, 176, ‘Jewish characters’.]
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throughout the 12 Testaments. The name Jews is not found; in two passages Joseph is called a ‘Hebrew’ in Egypt, in line with the biblical account (TJos 12:2f; 13:1, 3). The Testaments are of a homiletic style well at home in some synagogue.55 The book of Ben Sira, deeply immersed in biblical wisdom style and with a clear liturgical sympathy, has only the name of Israel. So has the book of Tobit, that story of Jewish piety.56 The book of Jubilees is a retelling of biblical history from some extreme religious point of view.57 It has only ‘Israel’ except where it calls Joseph and Miriam in Egypt ‘Hebrews’ (39:10; 47:7). 4 Ezra, an apocalypse completely biblical-oriented, has ‘Israel’ only.
Conclusion The later biblical and apocryphal writings present us with a category not found in the archaeological texts: inner-Jewish literary works almost only using the name of Israel and never Jew. We mentioned Ben Sira, Tobit, Judith, Jubilees, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and 4 Ezra. These works also illustrate how inner-Jewish speech situation is preserved in a process of translation and redaction. Their Sitz im Leben is likely to have been the congregation gathered in the House of Learning (בית מדרש, Sir 51:47/23) or the House of Prayer. At the other end of the spectrum, we may place works where the exclusive use of ‘Jews’ signals an outside identity: Aristeas, and, very remarkably, the Hebrew book of Esther. It has sometimes been questioned whether such writings are to be termed Jewish or not. Now we understand why: although written by Jews and dealing with thoroughly Jewish concerns, the identifying frame of reference signalled by the ethnic designation is non-Jewish. Here, the purpose of this literary device apparently is to raise sympathy for the Jews and for Judaism in the outside world. Apart from these texts, there are works whose redactional framework is interrupted by fragments of the opposite category. In 2 Maccabees, the overall framework is non-Jewish, while in a few passages the much-praised identification with ‘Judaism’ is effectuated by citing liturgical formulas containing the name Israel. The same happens in the Greek Esther in its amplified form. In fact, [136] the Greek Esther, when compared with its Hebrew original, eloquently demonstrates the distinct socio-religious identity produced by the particular use of the names Israel and Jew. Examples of inner-Jewish texts with ‘external’ interruptions are found in Ezra and 1 Maccabees. 55 Cf discussion by Collins, ‘Testaments’. The Jewish parts of the Sibylline Oracles (as defined by Collins, ‘Sibylline Oracles’, 363–379) contain only ‘Hebrews’ (2:170–74; 3:69; 5:161, 249) and ‘Jews’ (4:127). This corresponds to the axiomatically non-Jewish framework of the Sibyllines. 56 Tob 11:18, ᾽Ιουδαίοις is not in mss A B. 57 Cf discussion by Nickelsburg, ‘The Bible Rewritten’, 97–104.
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Qumran, Philo and Josephus Next are a group of writings from very different surroundings. What unites them, in contradistinction to the preceding group, is that these surroundings are known. About the personal history of Philo and Josephus we are informed by their own works, and combined literary and archaeological evidence makes the Qumran Essenes a historically identifiable group.
Qumran Of the Qumran documents, we are only interested in texts typical of the sect’s teaching. The first fact to be established here is the absence of the names Jew and Hebrew. This was found to be the case also in some other works we reviewed, but as we said, here we know the socio-religious setting. Although they do not sever themselves completely from ‘all Israel’ (CD 15:5, 16:1; 1QSa 1:1), the sectarians consider none but themselves as the chosen for the eternal covenant (CD 4:22) and a ‘House of perfection and truth in Israel’ (8:9). We are here faced with the ‘Holy of holies of Israel’ (1QS 9:6), and it would be profane tautology to observe that this is inner-Jewish speech. Its Sitz im Leben is known exactly but would be inaccessible to most Jews of the period: it is the ‘Congregation of the Holy’ where no one impure is allowed (cf 1QS 6:13–23). As for non-Jews, these ‘Children of Light’ do not seem to be interested in communicating with them apart from the final apocalyptic battle (1QM 1:1).58
Philo Philo of Alexandria appears in his own writings as a defender of Jewish tradition on two fronts: in his philosophical commentaries on the Tora and related treatises, and in his political interventions and writings related to the ‘Jewish question’ in Alexandria. One could call these the ‘inward front’ and the ‘outward front’; and the references to Jews as found in his writings illustrate this dual interest. ᾽Ιουδαῖος is found most in precisely those two political works about the Jewish question, ‘To Flaccus’ and ‘Embassy to Gaius’, 79 times in all. In all the rest of his works, which comment on Scripture and discuss Jewish philosophy, ᾽Ιουδαῖος is found 26 times only. Here too, it means the Jews of his own day, as implied by the phrases ‘nation of the Jews’ (9 out of the 26 [137] references) and 58 The sect’s self-appellation ‘House of Judah’ expresses its consciousness as being the true remnant, as against ‘Ephraim and Manasse’, 1QpHab 8:1–3; 12:3–4; 4QpNah 3:4–5; CD 7:10. See Flusser, ‘Pharisäer, Sadduzäer’, 137–140. [See ‘Reconsideration’ at p189 at n8–9.]
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‘lawgiver of the Jews’ (6 times); this holds even for the cases where seemingly the ancient Israelites are involved.59 In short, ᾽Ιουδαῖος refers to an adherent of the nation of Jews as present in Alexandria. This nation is none other than the one also called ᾽Ισραήλ, as is clear from two parallel expository sentences: Abraham is ‘founder of the nation and the race … called Israel’; Abraham is ‘founder of the whole nation of the Jews’.60 To be more precise: it is the ‘Hebrews’ who call their nation so, and insofar as their ‘ancestral tongue’ is the original language of the Bible and of Jewish tradition,61 Philo recognizes ᾽Ισραήλ as the ‘inside’ name of his nation. However, Philo does not consider himself a ‘Hebrew’. He translates the names given to biblical figures and institutions by the ‘Hebrews’ into ‘our own language’, i. e. Greek.62 This explains the remarkable Jewish self-appellation found all over Philo’s works: ‘The Nation of Vision’, or ‘The Seeing’.63 It is Israel translated. It is evident that for Philo the name ‘Hebrew’ has a strong linguistic meaning. Indeed, the high priest in Jerusalem sends ‘Hebrews’ to king Ptolemy for the work of translating the Bible from their language into Greek.64 17 times, Philo mentions the names which ‘the Hebrews’ use for certain persons and rituals. In these cases, ʽΕβραῖος may perhaps not mean ‘Hebrew-speaker’ but certainly ‘Hebrew-reader’, i. e. reader of the Tora in Hebrew as distinguished from the Greek-readers in Alexandria. In about 30 other cases, Philo uses ʽΕβραῖος as an ethnic appellation but only for the ancient Hebrews, never for his own day. To sum up: ᾽Ισραήλ is the name of the Jews among the ʽΕβραῖοι. These are either the ancient Israelites, or Jews who read the Scriptures in Hebrew. The outside name Philo uses for his compatriots is ᾽Ιουδαῖος.65 But in his own, Greekspeaking, inner-Jewish setting, while engaged in the exposition of Scripture or of his Jewish philosophy, he sees himself as a member of ‘The nation of vision’, τὸ ὁρατικὸν γενός.66
59 Mos 1:34; 2:193, both referring to Jews in Egypt, which for the Alexandrian reader would have had direct relevance. 60 Her 279, ἐθνάρχης … καὶ γενάρχης … Ισραήλ; Mos 1:7, τοῦ σύμπαντος ᾽Ιουδαίων ἔθνους ἀρχηγέτης. 61 Πατρίος γλώττη (τῶν ʽΕβραίων), Dec 159; Spec leg 2:41, 86, 145. 62 Philo, Congr 40–44; Conf 129. 63 See the exposition by F. H. Colson in the Loeb ed, vol X, index s. v. Israel. In Leg 4 the Hebrew language is indicated as Χαλδαϊστί, cf Colson’s note to Abr 8. Philo does not use the word ʽΕβραϊστί. 64 Mos 2:31–32. Note: they translate from ‘Chaldean’; see previous note. 65 Cf the opening of king Agrippa’s letter to emperor Caligula, which Philo cites: ‘I, as you know, am by birth a Jew, and my native city is Jerusalem’ (Leg 278). 66 Whether the translation of ‘Israel’ into Greek implies a fundamental allegorization or not is still in debate, see Amir, Die hellenistische Gestalt’, 3–51, esp 21f; Borgen, ‘Philo of Alexandria’, 269–272.
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Josephus Josephus the historian, as noted above, uses ᾽Ιουδαῖοι only for the post-exilic [138] period. Writing for non-Jewish readers66a about his own day, this is the regular expression he uses in the Jewish War and in the Antiquities starting from book 11. For Antiquities books 1–9, he uses ᾽Ισραηλῖται and, to a lesser extent, ʽΕβραῖοι. Only in a few cases does he mention ᾽Ιουδαῖοι here, either in present-day references or in anachronisms which glaringly seem to contradict his declared principle.67 Thus ᾽Ιουδαῖοι is the regular name for post-biblical Jews, and he includes himself when speaking about the ‘extreme antiquity of our race, the Jews’ (Ag Ap 1:1) or ‘the war which we Jews waged against the Romans’ (Ant 1:4). Quite surprising, therefore, is his self-designation in the significant proem to the Jewish War: ‘I, Josephus, son of Matthias, a Hebrew by race’ (γένει ʽΕβραῖος).68 The phrase certainly is designed to carry a respected, ancient connotation.68a As mentioned, the name ‘Hebrew’ is virtually restricted to the early part of the Antiquities. Elsewhere, we find it only twice in a linguistic sense,69 and six times in the War in another sense. One of these was just quoted; three others refer to the ancient Hebrews,70 and another two relate to Josephus’ day: ‘the territory of the Hebrews’ (5:160), which may also have an ancient historic connotation, and ‘the race of the Hebrews’ which is being disparaged by the insurgents’ crimes (5:443). The latter phrase is clearly apologetic in intention, and in that sense may illuminate the self-appellation of the writer at the beginning of the work. Taking into account Josephus’ later straightforward identification with ‘us Jews’ as cited above, the apologetic use of Hebraios in two passages in the War, his earliest work, seems to be temporary only.71 Cf Ant 1:8; Life 430; Ag Ap 1:1; 2:296; War 1:6. Ant 1:4, 6, 146, 214; 8:163 refer to Josephus’ day. 1:95, 240 are quotes from others. 4:11; 6:26, 30, 40, 68, 96–98, 324; 7:72, 103; 8:25 and 9:245 are anachronisms, as observed also in the note of the Loeb editor to 6:26. These exceptions to his own stated principle emphasize the sense of antiquity conveyed by those appellations he consciously uses throughout in this section of his work, ‘Israelites’ and ‘Hebrews’. 68 War 1:3 [cf Agrippa’s letter to Caligula, above n65]. The Paris ms omits this phrase and so does Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.9.1, calling Josephus ‘a man most distinguished … among his countrymen the Jews’. Whether this denies Josephus the honorific name Hebrew is not clear. In Eusebius, CH 2.4.2 and Praep evang 8.8.34, Philo and Aristobulus are called ʽΕβραῖοι. 68a Cf Ant 1:146, ‘Heber, after whom the Jews were originally called Hebrews.’ See also n28. 69 Ant 18:228; Ag Ap 1:167. Ant 14:255 is a source quotation referring to the ancient Hebrews. 70 War 4:459; 5:38 1, 388. In 4:402, the Latin text has ‘Hebrews’ while the Greek has ‘Jews’. 71 Arazy, Appellations wishes to explain the rise of the name Hebrew since the end of the first cent. CE (cf above n27) from this text in Josephus and from the two cases in Paul’s letters (see below n158a). This is too simplistic. Late 1st cent. CE gentile writers would hardly be interested in the use of an apologetic name by a Jew; the influence of Christianity on the use of the name was nil at the rime. This deserves further study. 66a 67
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In other words, Josephus uses ᾽Ισραηλῖται and ʽΕβραῖοι for biblical history, apart from the few exceptions mentioned. For his own day he uses the normal external appellation found in Hellenistic historiography. Περὶ ᾽Ιουδαίων is the title of a number of histories, reported to have been circulating in the Hellenistic world and written by Jews and non-Jews.72 [139]
Conclusion The writings of the Qumran sect, of Philo, and of Josephus present us with three historically well-defined possibilities of Jewish identity. The sect’s point of view is emphatically inner-Jewish, which completely accords with its exclusive use of the name Israel. From this extreme vantage point, we gain added insight into the inner-Jewish character of biblical and para-biblical works such as Judith, Tobit, Jubilees, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Philo of Alexandria presents the interesting case of a Greek-speaking Jew who thinks inner-Jewish, thus again illustrating the priority of the distinct use of the names over language. For him like others, ‘Jew’ is the outside name of his people. He uses it mostly in his two political treatises, and further only in references to the situation of his people in Alexandria. In his own inner-Jewish setting, when expounding Jewish Scriptures and philosophy, he uses an inside appellation. Here, however, we are confronted with an unusual phenomenon: a translation of the name ‘Israel’. We mentioned some of the variations: ‘The seeing’, ‘The nation of vision’, ‘Seeing God’. The name represents Philo’s innermost Jewish consciousness, just like ישראלfor his ‘Hebrew’ brethren. But unlike them, his is a Jewish consciousness expressed in Greek. Josephus writes about his own people like a Hellenistic historian addressing non-Jews. Accordingly, he uses the ‘outside’ appellation. In this historiographic approach, the name Israel is historicized into a name reserved for the ancient Israelites, and the shift to the post-exilic name Jews is noted consciously. The self-designation as ‘a Hebrew by race’ in the apologetic proem to his Jewish War is remarkable. However, in his later works he includes himself in the term ‘Us, Jews’ as a matter of course. [part II, p266]
See Schürer, History 1: 41f.
72
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Rabbinic Literature Megillat Taanit The ‘Scroll of Fasting’ is one document difficult to classify. While rabbinic tradition pinpoints the time and place of its ‘composition’ to ‘zealot’ circles at the beginning of the Roman war, the Scroll itself records days of national joy and deliverance on which no fasting is allowed, and the majority of which belong to Maccabean times.73 In one paragraph of the Aramaic scroll, the official ‘outside’ speech known to us from the Maccabean leadership is found: ‘On the twenty-eighth (of the month Adar) the good tidings came to the Jews ([ )ליהודאיJudeans], no longer to suspend the Tora nor to mourn.’74 The event referred to must be the annulment of the anti-Jewish decrees issued in 167 BCE by the Syro-Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes, as appears from the scholion to the scroll which will be cited below. Its phrasing implies that the joyful event for the Jews is seen from without. If it does not directly reflect the official letter from the Syrian [267] court carrying the good tidings,75 it is the Maccabean chancellery that determines the speech situation. We observed the same in the Hasmonean Hebrew coins and the official documents recorded in 1 Maccabees. An additional point of interest is that the Scroll is in Aramaic, the official ‘outside’ language since Persian times.76 A ‘zealot’ nationalist leader of the Revolt against Rome would not utter such speech but rather use Hebrew and the name Israel, as on the coins of his fellowinsurgents. Taking all this into account, we could have classified and treated the Scroll in a previous section in connection with Maccabean sources. However, the Scroll is a document of relative authority in rabbinic tradition and is thus cited in the Talmud. Indeed, the ‘zealot’ leader to whom the Scroll is ascribed is also cited as a rabbinic authority of the time.77 Moreover, rabbinic tradition attached an expository scholion to the scroll which is in Hebrew. From this point of view, it belongs in rabbinic literature. 73 bShab 13b. See the editions of by Lichtenstein, ‘Fastenrolle’ and Lurie, Megillat Taanit. [The standard edition now is Noam, Megillat Ta´anit, although Lichtenstein’s historical assessments retain their value. The 1986 article spoke of the ‘Scroll of Fasts’, a name rather used for the early medieval מגלת התעניות, see Z. Safrai, ‘Appendix’.] 74 Lichtenstein, ‘Fastenrolle’, 350; [Noam, Megillat Ta´anit, 128]. 75 Lichtenstein, ‘Fastenrolle’, 279 and Lurie, Megillat Taanit, 198–200 refer to Lysias’ correspondence concerning the ‘community of the Jews’ cited in 2 Macc 11:16–22, 22–26 [see below n78]. On the dates and backgrounds of these letters see Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilisation and the Jews, 213–226, and cf Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 194 n219f. 76 On the languages in Palestine see above n24. 77 [Elazar ben Hanania ben Hizkia ben Garon, see end of scholion, Parma ms: Lichtenstein, ‘Fastenrolle’, 257f, 351; Noam, Megillat Ta´anit, 333–336;] Graetz, Geschichte 3: 795–797.
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The rabbinic scholion itself uses the appellation Israel for the Jews[, 43 times in all], except where a non-Jewish perspective is brought in. This conforms to the dual Jewish usage, as we have seen in the above and which will be shown to be the case elsewhere in rabbinic literature. The situation is immediately recognized in the scholion on the above quotation from the Scroll about the good tidings to the יהודאי: ‘This refers to the Greek78 kings who decreed persecution against Israel.’ Conversely, in two stories about Shimon the Righteous and foreign rulers among whom Alexander the Great, the latter receive the following information about Shimon and his people: ‘These are the Jews ( )יהודאיןwho have risen up against you’;79 respectively, ‘These are the Jews ( )יהודיםwho came to receive you.’80 Again, the exiled ‘remainder of the scribes’ when hiding in hostile surroundings place a horse in front of the house, according to R. Yehuda, ‘so whoever saw it would not look there for a Jew ()יהודי.’81 The scholion is inner-Jewish literature following rabbinic usage, but it is [268] attached to the Scroll of Fasting, an official document preserving ‘good news to the Judeans’ in outside language. The interesting thing is that apparently inside and outside speech could exist side by side and be transmitted intact in rabbinic literature, as also in other Jewish literature.
The Mishna: Marriage and Divorce Bills The Mishna by intention, structure and phrasing is thoroughly inner-Jewish. It summarizes the legal teachings of the Sages which were widely supported before the destruction of the Temple and in the following period gained unchallenged authority, even though they were not monolithic by any means.82 In the Amoraic period (third century and after) the Mishna became gradually accepted as the 78 Thus the correct version, see Lichtenstein’s apparatus, ‘Fastenrolle’, 350 [Oxford ms, מלכי ;יוןthus also Noam, Megillat Ta´anit, 312]; cf also the scholion to 3 Ellul, ibid. 337. Other versions [Parma ms and hybrid version] have ‘Roman king’, substituting the Hadrianic decrees of 135 CE in the stories following; thus also the Talmudic parallels, bRH 19a; bTaan 18a. 79 20 Kislev (Day of Gerizim) ibid. 340; cf bYom 69a. This expression is commonplace in Babylonian aggada, cf bRH 4a; bGitt 56a, 57a (2×). The narrative here combines the Alexander story with Maccabean history, cf Josephus, Ant 11:321–339; 13:254–256. 80 22 Shevat, Lichtenstein, ‘Fastenrolle’, 344. The issue is Caligula’s proposed emperor cult, one of the seven post-Maccabean events recorded in the Scroll. Cf Josephus, War 2:184–187, 192–203; Ant 18:261–309; Philo, Leg 207ff. 81 Lichtenstein, ‘Fastenrolle’, 348. The scholion, the final editing of which is post-Talmudic (Lichtenstein ibid. 258–260) contains large parts of an earlier date. R. Yehuda, mid 2nd cent. CE, has lived through the Hadrianic decrees. The remaining mention of ‘Jews’ in the scholion: p345, king Antiochus ‘came to destroy Jerusalem and persecute all Jews’ (cf Esth 3:6 for the expression). 82 See Safrai, ‘The Decision according to the School of Hillel’. [Comment: the sweeping ‘maximalism’ of the above vintage 1986 statement might have been too much even for Prof. Safrai himself.]
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authoritative compilation of Jewish law. To all this corresponds the fact that the name the Mishna uses for Jews is Yisrael, in over 170 instances.83 Some quotations follow, which incidentally also demonstrate how the noun Yisrael came to denote a single Jew, parallel to Goy in Mishnaic Hebrew. The examples are taken from an area which in the Greco-Roman period embodied the ‘inside-outside’ issue more than any other: the laws of idolatry and relations to gentiles. The idol of a gentile ( )נוכריis straightway forbidden, but that of an Israelite ( )ישראלis not forbidden (for deriving profit from it) until it has been worshipped. (mAZ 4:4) These produce of gentiles ( )גויםare forbidden (to be eaten) but it is not forbidden to have benefit from them: milk which a gentile ( )גויmilked when no Israelite ( )ישראלwatched him; their bread and their oil … (ibid. 2:6) An Israelite woman ( )בת ישראלmay not assist a gentile woman ( )נוכריתin childbirth [since she would be assisting to bring to birth a child for idolatry]84… but a gentile woman may suckle the child of an Israelite woman85 in this one’s domain. (ibid. 2:1)
We leave these laws for what they were in their time, noting only that they were bound to change along with successive historical developments.86 We are now [269] concerned with the terminology used – in particular the identification of Jews. The Mishna here as elsewhere is decidedly uniform in using ‘inside’ speech. It views the Jews from the inner-Jewish perspective created by the Bible, relations with gentiles included, and calls them Yisrael. More precisely put: the above references to non-Jews concern material relations as perceived in the inner-Jewish perspective, not verbal communications. Communications with non-Jews would require a common language which is likely to be non-Jewish. There are, however, two passages in the Mishna which do use the ‘outside’ appellation Yehudim. They are not immediately understood as communications with non-Jews and deserve our close attention. These are the relevant parts: These (women) are divorced without their ketuba (marriage contract defining their rights): if she transgresses the law of Moses and the Jews ()דת משה ויהודים.87 What (transgresses) the law of the Jews? If she goes out with her hair unbound, or spins in the street, or speaks with everyone. (mKet 7:6) Excluding ישראלas opposed to כהןand לוי. Explanatory addition from a baraita, see tAZ 3:3. 85 Some versions have here ישראלית, an ethnic noun found once in the Bible, see Lev 24:10–11. 86 Another baraita which crept into the Mishna adds: ‘Rabbi (Yehuda Nesia, grandson to Yehuda haNasi) and his court permitted their oil’ (ibid. 2:6). Bread and oil were among the gentile produce prohibited by the ‘18 Decrees’ enforced by a Shammaite majority at the beginning of the Roman war; the Shammaites were close to the Zealot movement, see Graetz, Geschichte der Juden 3: 795–797. For the decrees see mShab 1:4; tShab 1:15ff; yShab 1:7 (3c). bShab 17b confuses two different stories. Cf Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-fshuta 3: 13ff; Goldberg, Shabbat, 15–22. 87 Thus in two pre-eminent mss, K and De Rossi 138. Other versions and textus receptus: דת משה ויהודית, a very interesting variant which calls for further study. [See ‘Reconsideration’ at p196f at n41.] 83 84
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Beforetime they used to say: Three (women) are divorced with their ketuba: if she says ‘I am unclean to you’, or, ‘Heaven is between you and me’, or, ‘I am removed from all Jews’ ()נטולה אני מן היהודים. But afterwards they taught otherwise … (mNed 11:12)
Though taken from different contexts in the Mishna, these are related laws. They summarize the grounds for divorce occasioned by the wife, and classify them on two levels: one where she makes continuation of the marriage impossible by a vow, but without breaking the condition to behave according to the written Tora and Jewish custom; and the other, where she transgresses that boundary and loses her rights. Interestingly, both passages use the ‘outside’ name Yehudim, suggesting a viewpoint beyond the boundaries of the nation of the Jews. This is immediately understood for the impassionate vow ‘I am removed from all Jews’ (including her husband of course). It was certainly not highly appreciated by the Sages,88 but like other vow formulas they take it from real life where apparently it was used sometimes. The phrase דת משה ויהודיםis the ‘outside’ version of what later became the standard formula used in Jewish marriage and divorce documents: כדת משה וישראל.89 We are facing the intriguing fact that in rabbinic matrimonial formulae, both the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’ appellations are [270] used. It is another example of the appellative differentiation, but significantly this time in the innerJewish context of halakha, in connection with highly authoritative and sanctioned formulae. We shall have to search for the distinct social identifications signalled by this diversity. First of all, the parallel passage in the Tosefta surprisingly uses the ‘inside’ formula: If she goes out with her hair unbound … she is divorced without her ketuba, since she did not behave towards him כדת משה וישראל. (tKet 7:6)
Since this concerns the very same tradition material, it proves that two formulas existed side by side, one with Yisrael and the other with Yehudim. This is confirmed by another, identical case. Earlier in the same tractate the Tosefta quotes a case brought before Hillel the Elder who asked the ketubot of the Alexandrian Jews to be cited and they read: ‘When you come into my house you shall be my wife כדת משה וישראל.’ However the same case is cited in the Palestinian Talmud in the Aramaic ‘outside’ version: !כדת משה ויהודאי90
88 The continuation in the Mishna restricts its effects as far as possible. Cf also yNed 11 (42d bottom), derisively contrasting יהודיםwith ערביים. 89 Cf Gulak, Urkundenwesen, 42f, referring to Tob 7:12f, κατὰ τὸν νόμον Μωϋσέως (mss A, B; cf ms ;אa parallel to יהודים/ ישראלis lacking); and to matrimonial formulae in Herodotus 6.130 (νόμοισι τοῖσι ᾽Αθηναίων) and Isaios, De Pyrrho 70 (κατὰ [τοὺς] νόμους). [Cf also Josephus, Ant 15:259, Salome’s divorce was οὐ κατὰ τοὺς ᾽Ιουδαίων νόμους.] 90 tKet 4:9; yKet 4 (29a top); yYev 15 (14d).
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Nor is this surprising duality limited to the Tannaic period. It is also documented for the Gaonic period, which indicates that it was well-established practice. The Sefer ha-Shtarot by Rav Hai Gaon (early 11th cent. CE) gives as the standard formula כדת משה וישראלfor marriage and divorce bills.91 However some matrimonial deeds originating from Palestine and elsewhere and dating from the same period do have כדת משה ויהודאי.92 It is now time to turn to the archaeological evidence. Recent discoveries have provided us with two matrimonial deeds in Aramaic from the Tannaic period, both from Bar Kokhba surroundings and largely in line with Mishnaic halakha, which use the ‘outside’ appellation for Jews. One is the ketuba of Babata, a Jewish woman whose family resided in Nabatean country in southern Palestine and whose well-ordered archives were preserved in one of the caves near Ein Gedi.93 The date is damaged but can be reconstructed from other data to about 128 CE. The formula we are most interested in reads: כדי]ן מושה ויה[ו]דאי.94 We note that it has דיןnot דת, one of those variations that indicate that the text, like other authoritative halakhic [271] formulae, was not fully fixed at the time. Otherwise, the ketuba is reported to be in line with the halakha as found in the Mishna.95 The other document is a divorce deed, also from Bar Kokhba circles, and found in a cave further North on the Dead Sea coast. It does not contain the phrase ‘Law of Moses and the Jews/Israel’, which apparently was not standard in a divorce deed at the time.96 However, it has a surprising ‘outside’ variant of what the Mishna terms ‘the essential formula of the divorce bill’ ()גופו שלגט. The Hebrew form in the Mishna reads: ‘Lo, you are free (to be married) to any man’ ()לכל אדם. R. Yehuda gives the Aramaic variant which is known from later standard usage: ‘You may go and be married to any man you want’ (לכל גבר די תצבין, mGit 9:3). In the same context, the Mishna discusses possible additions and 91 Asaf, The Book of Shetarot of R. Hai Gaon, 13, 18. Ibid. 18 n13 Asaf refers to mYad 4:8, where Pharisees are blamed for ‘writing the Sovereign along with Moses on the divorce bill’. This gives us no clue as to יהודים/ ישראלin the formula. [Asaf’s point is the early mention of ‘Moses’ in the get. See further Kister, ‘Ke-dat Moshe we-Yisrael, 208.] 92 See Margulies, Hilkhot Erets Yisrael, 119–123. He also adduces examples in other mss. Cf also the formula in the Ketubat Yevamin in Rav Hai’s own Sefer ha-Shtarot (Asaf ibid. 42) and in other matrimonial deeds from various mss (ibid. 63, 64, 66): כהלכות (הלכת) גוברין יהודאין. [See also the material discussed by Friedman, Jewish Marriage 1: 165–167.] 93 See Yadin, Bar Kokhba, 233ff. 94 Preliminary report: Yadin, ‘Expedition D’. [Yadin, Documents, 126f, P. Yadin 10 = 5/6Ḥev 10, line 5.] The Aramaic ketuba in DJD 2, no. 20 preserves the words […]כדין מ. Another ketuba ibid. no. 21 is damaged at this formula. 95 Yadin, Bar Kokhba, 245. Yadin infers [As does Zeitlin, ‘The Names Hebrew, Jew and Israel’] that the formula ‘Moses and Israel’ was introduced after Bar Kokhba for political and religious reasons. This is simplistic. It does not explain the duality in the formulation of the two traditions we cited. Moreover, during the first Revolt the name Yisrael was also used with emphasis. [See ‘Reconsideration’ at p200–202.] 96 But see mYad 4:8 (above n91).
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restrictions to this essential formula. One of them is the restriction: ‘Lo, you are free (to be married) to any man except … a gentile’ (נוכרי, ibid. 9:2). Legally this addition is superfluous since Jewish law does not allow a Jewish woman to marry a non-Jew, but it does not invalidate the divorce bill, so the Mishna rules.97 We are now able to understand the significance of the essential formula of the Bar Kokhba divorce bill: ‘You may go and be married to any Jewish man you want’ ()לכל גבר יהודאי די תצבין.98 We see here exactly the kind of restriction discussed in the Mishna, only with the negative phrase ‘except a gentile’ replaced by the positive condition that the man be ‘Jewish’. We must now try to elucidate the historical circumstances of the interesting instances of ‘outside speech’ in Jewish matrimonial formulae. First of all, it can hardly be accidental that the only two passages containing the ‘outside’ appellation in the Mishna concern matrimonial law. Second, it is striking that rabbinic law allowed a dual usage in the essential formulas from Tannaic times up till the Gaonic period. Third, the Bar Kokhba divorce bill gives us a clue. It wishes to preclude the possibility that the divorced woman remarry a non-Jew, which apparently was not a mere theoretical possibility. It is not far-fetched to suppose she was a proselyte who, after her divorce, could easily desist from Jewish tradition. Fourth, the archives of Babata contained not only her own ketuba, but also the marriage contract of the grown-up daughter of her second husband, and this is a contract in Greek explicitly stating that it is drawn up ‘according to Hellenic law’!99 [272] It seems clear and understandable. Marriage and divorce belong to a realm which involves personal and legal relationships between people in very different situations, often speaking different languages and sometimes descending from different ethnic backgrounds, as in the case when proselytes are involved. It was also possible, apparently, as an alternative option, to marry not on the conditions of the ‘Law of the Jews’ but according to ‘the law of the Greeks’. Moreover, matrimonial documents were written in languages which reflect the combina-
97 See Albeck, Nashim, 300. [It concerns the more ancient halakha, still supported by the conservative R. Eliezer, see SifD 269 (p289). Similarly Josephus, Ant 15:259 explains that κατὰ τοὺς ᾽Ιουδαίων νόμους, even a divorced woman may not remarry at her own initiative (καθ᾽ αὑτήν), unless her former husband consents (ἐφιέντος, not ἀφιέντος as in some mss). Cf also Daube, New Testament, 371.] 98 DJD 2 no. 19, 1. 5–7, 17–19. It is a so-called ‘double deed’, for which phenomenon see Koffmahn, Doppelurkunden. There is also an earlier dating for the document, see A. M. Rabello in Jewish Law Annual 4 (1981) 95–97. Although in reverse order, this get in its essential formula contains everything given in R. Yehuda’s version, mGit 9:3. 99 See Yadin, Bar Kokhba, 246; Greek text not yet published. And cf the Greek parallels above n89. [See ‘Reconsideration’ at p197 n41.]
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tions possible within this multi-cultural society: Hebrew,100 Aramaic,101 and Greek.102 We even have literary evidence of matrimonial deeds in Greek script with Hebrew signatures and the reverse; this is corroborated by archaeological discoveries of other bi-lingual deeds.103 This explains the occurrence of the ‘inside-outside’ speech diversity precisely in the rabbinic matrimonial formulas as a reflection of the diversity in Jewish private life of that time. It also makes us understand why the Mishna, a consciously inner-Jewish text formulated in Hebrew, the language of Jewish tradition, does use the ‘outside’ appellation Yehudim in two instances.
The Tosefta and Tannaic Midrashim The Tosefta, companion work to the Mishna, has three halakhic passages in which Yehudim figure.104 tNed 7:8 is the parallel to mNed 11:12 discussed above, the vow ‘I am removed from all Jews’. tYev 14:7 relates of a group of people who had travelled to Antiochia and upon return testified before the Sages on behalf of a widow: ‘Only one of us died, N., a Jew.’ This testimony by gentiles was accepted.105 The third passage deserves to be quoted in full: R. Shimon ben Elazar says: Israelites ( )ישראלoutside the Land may be worshipping idols even in their own purity.106 How so? A gentile ( )גויwho made a wedding feast for his son and invited all the Jews ( )יהודיםin his town – even if they eat and drink of their own and have their own servants serve them, they are worshipping idols. Thus it is said: ‘He (the gentile) [273] will call you and you will eat of his sacrifice’ (Exod 34:15). (tAZ 4:6).107
100 In Judea, matrimonial deeds were written in Hebrew, as implied by mKet 4:12; see Albeck, Nashim, 80. Cf other Hebrew deeds reproduced in DJD 2, and mentioned by Yadin, Bar Kokhba, 176–180. [P. Yadin 44, 45, and 46, in Yadin, Documents, 39–70, three Hebrew deeds done in Beit-Tir and Ein Gedi and dated ‘year three of Shimon son of Kosiba, premier of Israel’.] 101 Cf Rabin, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic’, 1028. 102 See also DJD 2 nos. 115, 116. Cf mGit 9:8, ‘A divorce deed written in Greek’. 103 mGit 9:6, 8. Cf the bi-lingual deeds DJD 2 no. 29 (Hebrew with the scribe signing in Greek); Yadin, Bar Kokhba, 242f, 250f. The Babata archives also contain deeds in Nabatean, a language related to Aramaic with a proto-Arabic script. Babata’s multi-cultural situation may not be representative, but it is illustrative of the historical possibilities in Jewish Palestine. 104 In tYad 2:18 יהודיis a personal name which ibid. 2:17 is spelled יהודהand tKid 5:4 יהודא. 105 The passage explicitly comments on mYev 16:5 which disqualifies gentile testimony for such a case. The preceding case (tYev 14:7) relates of an Israelite ( )ישראלwho died, whereupon his fellow, a non-Jew ( )גויtestified before the Sages: ‘Alas for an Israelite’ ()ישראל אחד. The language is that of eulogies, and this is a singular example of inner-Jewish speech in the mouth of a non-Jew. It implies identification with the Jews; cf Acts 10:36, ᾽Ισραήλ in Peter’s speech to the centurion Cornelius, ‘a Godfearing man honoured by all the nation of the Jews’ (! v22). However the parallel to tYev 14:7 in bYev 122a has the גויsay: ‘Alas for a ’יהודי. 106 בטהרה, thus ms Vienna and ed. princ. Cf ARN (next note). 107 Cf parallels ARN a 26 (p82); bAZ 8a.
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The idea is that by being merely present at the feast, where without doubt libations and vows will be made, Jews compromise with idolatry. The beginning of the biblical verse quoted may express the mood of R. Shimon’s saying: ‘Therefore do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land’ (Exod 34:15). But even though this saying sounds a bit extreme,108 the speech duality in it is not, and it is very illuminating: for Jews as viewed in the context of their own halakhic tradition it uses the name Yisrael, but when describing how they communicate with non-Jews it calls them Yehudim. In other words: Yisrael implies an ‘inside’ identification with Jewish tradition, and Yehudim is an ‘outside’ identification in communication with non-Jews. That this particular usage of Yisrael is not extreme is demonstrated in the story of Luke 7:1–10 which we shall discuss below. The Tannaic Midrash collections have in all five aggadic passages mentioning Yehudim. All are ‘outside speech’ in the mouth of non-Jews. One eloquent example only: A non-Jewish merchant needed a large quantity of oil and was told to go to a man who appeared to be a farmer picking his own olives, so the merchant thought: ‘It seems the Jews played me a trick’ ()צחקו בי יהודים.109 [Numerous passages use the inside name Yisrael. One of these interestingly extends this name to include non-Jews, not only proselytes, but also God-fearers. Citing Isa 44:5, the midrash expounds: ‘“This one will call himself by Jacob’s name” – these are the full proselytes, … “and call himself by the name of Israel” – these are the God-fearers’ (– אלו יראי שמים )ובשם ישראל יכנה.109a]
Palestinian Amoraic Literature As stated in the introduction, a most important document, the Palestinian Talmud, is not treated here because of the absence at the time of writing of the corresponding volumes of the exhaustive concordance.109b Many passages could It is a minority opinion, see sources collected by Cohen, Ha-yahas el ha-nokhri, 298f. SifDeut 255 (p421). The expression became standard in Babylonian aggada, see below at n122. The remaining four passages are: SifNum 131 (p171); SifDeut 218 (p364); 244 (p401); 254 (p416). On the exceptional עבריתwoman in the Mekhilta see above n30. [109a MekRY mishpatim/nezikin 18 (p312), in a ‘eulogy of proselytes’, ;חביבין הגריםcf Gerim 4:5; NumR 8.2; YalShim Exod no. 349; YalShim Isa no. 459. In a more restrictive version, the ‘name of Israel’ as well is reserved for ‘true proselytes’: ARN a 36 (54a); SER 18 (p105): – אלו גירי אמת ובשם ישראל יכנה. I owe these references to D. Flusser, in a private communication.] [109b The sequel to my 1986 article, ‘Jews in the Gospel of John’, shows that the Yerushalmi as a rule uses the self-appellation ‘Israel’ but switches to ‘Jews’ when interaction with non-Jews is implied. This is the case in 23 passages, 20 of which concern simple interactions with nonJews. The three other passages interestingly juxtapose ‘Israel’ and ‘Jew’, marking a switch between inner-Jewish interaction and (implied) interaction with non-Jews and thus exemplifying the Jewish dual usage mechanism. Finally, two further passages display the irony effected 108 109
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be quoted, but their significance for our theme can only be evaluated if the document as a whole is covered exhaustively. It is the variants to the general usage which prove most significant, especially in the inner-Jewish texts of rabbinic tradition. There are however two Amoraic works, closely related to the Palestinian Talmud, which in the modern editions do have exhaustive indices: Genesis Rabba and Leviticus Rabba.110 In these two works, ‘Jews’ are found thirteen times in all, in various Hebrew and Aramaic forms.111 Nine mentions of Jews are quoted from non-Jewish [274] mouths or directly involve non-Jews.112 Another three are in exegetical passages involving the biblical names Yehuda (Gen 49:8) and Yehudia (1 Chr 4:18).113 One is of great interest here: ‘You are Yehuda, your brothers shall praise you’ (יודוך, Gen 49:8). (…) Said R. Shimon ben Yohai: It will happen that all your brothers will be called by your name. Thus, one does not say ‘I am a Reubeni’, ‘I am a Shimoni’, but ‘I am a Yehudi’ ()יהודי אנא.114
Significantly, where parallel versions have the more general phrase ‘All tribes will be called Yehudim’, or even ‘All Israel (!) will be called Yehudim’,115 R. Shimon ben Yohai (mid-second century CE) apparently is referring to daily reality. One identifies oneself – obviously in non-Jewish surroundings – by saying, ‘I am a Jew’. The remaining passage from our Palestinian Amoraic texts contains a similar self-identification in ‘outside’ speech. Rabbi (Yehuda ha-Nasi) and R. Yose ben Yehuda relate how a non-Jew ( )גויasked them under way: ‘What are you?’ and they responded ‘Jews’ ()יהודין. Even if this is an anecdotic narrative, it is evident that to the narrator, ‘Jew’ is the ‘outside’ self-identification.116 when the mechanism is used in inner-Jewish speech. Thus R. Pinhas ben Yair derides R. Yehuda the Prince’s wealth by pointing at his mules and asking: ‘Are Jews able to feed all these?’ (כל אילין יהודאיי זיינין, yDem 1, 22a = yTaan 3, 66c top). Again, a homily portrays the Israelites maliciously ridiculing Moses: ‘Look at those legs, look at those knees, look at that flesh – he eats off the Jews!’ (מן דיהודאי, yShek 5, 49a = yBik 3, 65c).] 110 Mandelbaum’s index to Pesikta deRav Kahana does not appear to be exhaustive. 111 For the various forms of יהודאיsee Dalman, Grammatik, 177. 112 GenR 10.7 (p82), ‘The Jews of Caesarea’; 11.4 (p92), ‘a Jew … a Jewish tailor’; 11.5 (p94), ‘Did you become a Jew?’ (cf above n13); 63.7 (p686), ‘Jews and Arameans’; 63.8 (p689), ‘Master of the Jews’; 93.7 (p1178), same; LevR 13.5 (p294), ‘For a Jew do you rise up?’ (cf above n79); 22.4 (p506; = GenR 10.7 p82); 37.2 (p858f) ‘The citrons of the Jews’. 113 GenR 96 (shitta hadasha p1218) and the parallel 98.6 (p1257); LevR 1,3 (p8), ‘Why is she called Yehudia? Because she puts Yehudim into the world.’ 114 GenR 98.6 (p1257). 115 GenR 96 (shitta hadasha p1218); TanB wayehi 12 (110a). Cf also TgPsYon and FrgTg Gen 49:8, where the midrashic pun on the name Yehuda as linked with the verb יודוךand the appellation יהודאין/ יהודאיis more explicit. 116 GenR 76.8 (p906). [Further examples of ‘I am a Jew’ – either in Aramaic, יהודאי אנא: LamR 1.51 s. v. maase be-Doeg (a Jew to an Arab); bBekh 8b (R. Yoshua to the Emperor) – or in Hebrew, יהודי אני: bSan 106a (a Jew to a non-Jewish woman); NumR balak 20.21 (a Jew to
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The Babylonian Talmud A survey of the words Yehudim/Yehudaei as used in the Babylonian Talmud once again demonstrates the need for a critical edition. At least eight of the 73 occurrences117 listed in Kosovsky’s concordance have crept into the text at a later date.118 When further isolating the hard core of our material, we must also deduct the thirteen cases where ‘Jews’ are in quotations from Tannaic [275] sources,119 as well as the fifteen in the biblical quotations contained in the extended midrash on Esther.120 Thus we are left with 39 passages. 32 of these conform to the usual line found above in rabbinic literature: they are uttered by non-Jews or in a non-Jewish context. In four cases, interestingly, ‘Jews’ are added in a narrative quoted from Tannaic tradition. In a version of the story of Shimon the Righteous and Alexander the Great, the latter is asked by his company, ‘A great king like thee prostrates before this Jew?!’ – a phrase which adds a characteristic touch of inner-Jewish irony.121 The same is felt in standard expressions such as ‘The Jews played me a trick’, in the mouth of a foreign king;122 or, ‘The Jews have risen against thee’, addressed to him by his servants.123 We also meet with characteristic phrases
another Jew in a narrative when the latter mistook him for a non-Jew, whereas the narrator informs us he ought to have recognised him as )ישראל.] 117 Tractate Shekalim contains Palestinian Gemara. 118 bPes 49b (2×), 94b, 113b; bYev 62b, 63a, 63b (all about celibacy and marriage) are not in present-day ‘traditional’ editions. Doubtlessly, they once resulted from censorship. bMeg 26b, ‘That synagogue of Roman Jews’ in a case related by Rava, is interesting. The יהודאיis superfluous since none but Jews would have synagogues in Rome, but was apparently felt as a necessary explanation later. It is lacking in the ed. princ. and the Munich ms. On the popular saying bHag 9b see n127. 119 bYev 122a (= tYev 14:7 in ‘outside’ formulation, see n105); bSan 64a (= SifNum 131, p171); bKet 72b (2×; = mKet 7:6); bYom 69a first mention (= MegTaan p340 quoted above); bYev 112b, bNed 82a (2×), and bNed. 89b (all = mNed 1:12); bAZ 8a (= tAZ 4:6 quoted above); bMen 85b (= SifDeut 253, p421 quoted above); bRH 19a and bTaan 18a (= MegTaan p350 quoted above). 120 bMeg 12b–19b. On fol. 13a we have the famous dictum of R. Yohanan: ‘Everyone who renounces idolatry is called יהודי.’ Unlike common misinterpretations this is only an aggadic statement referring to Dan 3:12 which takes its cue from the remarkable expression in Esth 2:3, איש יהודי מרדכי… איש ימיני. This expression which embodies the extraordinary character of the book of Esther (see above) gave rise to other aggadic interpretations as well, see Targum and Targum Sheni to Esther ad loc.; EstR 6.4. Cf also the aggadic explanations to Gen 49:8 and 1Chr 4:18, above nn113, 115. 121 bYom 69a (cf LevR 13.5, p294, above n112 and n79); PesRK Para, p75. The other three instances are bSan 106a (addition to SifNum 130, p170f); bMeg 9b (cf yMeg 1, 71d); bNed 49b (cf bBer 55a). 122 bMeg 9b (previous n); bTaan 21a; bGit 57a; bSan 109a; bMen 83b. For the expression cf SifDeut 255 (p421) quoted above. 123 See above n79.
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like, ‘Master of the Jews’124 and, ‘There is someone among the Jews …’125 All are put in the mouths of non-Jews or addressed to them, and this is well-known to us by now. There remain, however, seven occurrences of ‘Jew’ in quite unexpected contexts which must now be scrutinized. In connection with Isa 48:10 an apparently popular Aramaic saying is quoted: ‘This is as the people say:126 poverty becomes the Jews ( )ליהודאיlike a red strap does to a white horse’ (bHag 9b). If this version is correct,127 we have before us the exceptional case of the rabbinic Sages praising his people (while quoting Scripture!) in patently ‘outside’ language. Who are ‘the people’ in whose mouths this proverb is found? Would the Babylonian Arameans thus praise the Jews, and if so, with what intention? Or is it a Jewish saying in ‘outside speech’, with that typical self-irony? [276] Next, we come to a story in Aramaic relating to one of the laws from the Mishna we have quoted above: ‘Like that (gentile) woman who told her colleague, a Jewish midwife …’128 Significantly, we read here ‘Jewish’ ()יהודייתא, whereas the Mishna, the authoritative source of law for the Sages engaged in this discussion, is explicitly quoted along with other Tannaic traditions – and they all have ‘Israelite’ ()בת ישראל. Yet we could try to explain this as a narrative text, speaking of a Jewish-gentile situation in ‘outside speech’. That is, if we treat this as an isolated case – which will be hard if we take into account the following. Quite convincingly, we are facing a different situation in the remaining five cases. Here, ‘Jew’ appears not in narrative but normative texts which are largely phrased in standard halakhic Hebrew. We shall quote them in full: 1. ‘If one died, neither Jews nor Arameans ( )לא יהודאין ולא ארמאיןshould busy themselves on the first nor on the second day of the festival’ (bShab 139a). 2. ‘Thus it is taught: A hole (in the wall) between (the houses of) a Jew and an Aramean ()חור שבין יהודי לארמאי, one must check it as far as the arm reaches (in search of leavened foodstuff on the eve of Passover)’ (bPes 8b). 3. ‘Come and take heed: He who has an apartment on a common courtyard is not allowed (without consent of the neighbours) to hire … either a Jewish schoolteacher or an Aramaic one (…( ’)ולא סופר יהודי ולא סופר ארמאיbBB 21a). 4. ‘They objected: R. Nathan says, on a festival day of the gentiles when they lower taxes for those who participate in the festive ornamentation … – a Jew who is present there ( )יהודי שנמצא שםwhat should he do?…’ (bAZ 13a).
bShab 129a; bBB 58a; 58b (2×); bBekh 8b. Cf GenR 63.8 (p68), above n112. bBer 58a; bBM 86a; bBB 58a. 126 Cf this expression in bSot 22a; bSan 44a; 95b; 106a. 127 Rabbinovicz, Dikdukei Sofrim, ad loc. adduces five medieval works quoting the version לישראל. Whether these are scribal corrections or not (cf Maimonides’ correction below) I cannot judge. [See below at p196 n37.] 128 bAZ 26a; cf mAZ 2:1. 124 125
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5. ‘They objected: A Jewess ( )יהודיתmay assist a gentile woman in childbirth for a reward, but not for free’ (bAZ 26a). Nos. 1, 2 and 3 have the Aramaic combination ‘Jew-Aramean’, as can be inferred from the orthography ארמאיwith an aleph. This combination appears to be commonplace in Amoraic parlance.129 Even so, it differs from the standard Tannaic phrase – נוכרי \ גוי )ישראל, a difference which was noted by Maimonides, who in his code of Talmudic law corrected it when dealing with our quotation number 2.130 It is one example of Maimonides’ reformative rehabilitation of Mishnaic Hebrew. Nos. 4 and 5 are both wholly in Hebrew, but, in glaring contrast to the Mishna and other Tannaic sources (some of which were cited above), they [277] have יהודיand יהודיתwhere these sources have ישראלand בת ישראל.131 Moreover, and this is of great importance, nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5 are brought into the discussion with formulae introducing a Tannaic tradition. In other words, they are presented as authoritative statements of Tannaic Sages. Unless further textual variants allow other explanations,132 we cannot but conclude that apparently in later Babylonian usage a relation to non-Jews could be expressed which differed from everything we found in the Palestinian sources. It seems to suggest a greater proximity to non-Jewish surroundings than may have been possible in Palestine in the same period. However this is a question which cannot be tackled on the basis of just these few literary data.133
Conclusion The rabbinic documents we have analysed use the appellations in a way that is to be identified as thoroughly inner-Jewish. Throughout, the inner-Jewish name Yisrael is used, indicating either ancient Israel or the present community, and, typically, designating also the Israelite in the singular. The name Yehudi/Yehudai is met with very rarely. Apart from three exceptional cases, it occurs only in 129 Cf GenR 63.7 (p686); yShev 4 (35b top). This is an interesting parallel to Paul’s frequent ‘Jew and Greek’, which may be thought more typical for Hellenistic Jews. 130 Mishne Tora, Hilkhot Hamets u-Matsa 2:5, rejecting the rule of the Gemara; see Kesef Mishne ad loc. 131 For no. 4 cf tAZ 1:15–2:1; yAZ 1 (39c bottom). Z. Safrai, ‘Fairs in the Land of Israel’ notes no problem with this expression but notes that the phenomenon of tax reduction on festival days is not otherwise documented. 132 I was able to check the ed. princ., ms Munich, ms JTS of Avoda Zara and the edited Geniza fragments. 133 On Babylonian Jewry see Neusner, History of the Jews in Babylonia; Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sassanian Babylonia; Gafni, Hayeshiva ba-Bavel; Oppenheimer, Babylonia Judaica.
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communications with non-Jews quoted directly or in narrative form. In all, the Jewish dual self-designation of Israel and Jews is clearly at work here. The exceptions are interesting. One is the Hasmonean report in the Scroll of Fasting, a document of official character, which in rabbinic tradition enjoyed high authority as the sole written document apart from the Bible. The non-Jewish self-portrayal of the Hasmonean officials was noted earlier in connection with the Hasmonean coins and with 1 Maccabees. The second exception is in the alternating Yisrael/Yehudim in legal formulations connected with marriage and divorce. This alternating was found to exist in the Mishna and Tosefta and in Gaonic halakhic works, and was corroborated by archaeological data. Our explanation is that it is due to the plurality of ethniccultural and legal relations existing in Jewish private life in Palestine and the diaspora. Rabbinic law took this plurality in and also accepted the ‘outside’ appellation in the legal formulae. The third interesting exception is presented by the Babylonian Talmud. While we had to deduct a number of ‘Jews’ mentioned as later textual accretions [278] (interesting as these are by themselves), there remained seven passages in which the use of ‘Jew’ could not be explained as a communication with non-Jews. The name Jew, used here in inner-Jewish speech, seems to suggest an inter-ethnic situation different from that of Palestinian Jewry.
Summary of Results from Jewish Documents The use made of the names Israel and Jew turned out to be an effective indicator of the socio-religious identification of any document. When added to other historical and literary data, this allows us to divide ancient ‘Jewish’ literature into two main categories: inner-Jewish texts and Jewish texts framed in a non-Jewish perspective. As we have seen, this includes texts interspersed with fragments of the opposite category in varying proportions. A sound criterion is found in the position chosen by the author or redactor himself. If this is an inner-Jewish position, the non-Jewish communications contained in the work are part of the story and are not to be seen as direct communications with his reader. And vice versa: the non-Jewish perspective of another author or redactor is not changed by inner-Jewish speech uttered by some of the dramatis personae. Furthermore, both categories naturally contain a large variety of literary forms and contents. What unites them on either side, however, is their image of the Jews: either an inner-Jewish image developing the perspective of biblical Covenant history – or a non-Jewish image that adopts Persian, Hellenic or ‘Aramaic’ views of the Jews. At the same time, both perspectives represent the two poles around which Jewish identity revolved in the ancient period: Israel, the people of
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the Covenant – and Jews, inhabitants of the ancient world, along with Persians, Arameans, Greeks and Romans. As inner-Jewish texts, we may thus classify: a. Biblical and related narratives: Ezra, Judith, Tobit, Ben Sira, 1 Maccabees (with its curious ‘Judean’ interpolations), Jubilees, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 4 Ezra, etc.; b. Rabbinic literature; c. The writings of the Qumran sect; d. Philo’s Bible commentaries and philosophical writings; e. Coins and letters of the two revolts against Rome, synagogue inscriptions and epitaphs in large Jewish centres, etc. Arranging parallel sub-divisions, we classify as Jewish texts written in a nonJewish perspective: A. The Hebrew book of Esther, Nehemiah chapters 1–6, 2 Maccabees, Aristeas; B. The exceptions within rabbinic literature: the Scroll of Fasting, legal marriage and divorce deeds mentioning Yehudim, and the isolated passages in the Babylonian Talmud; C. [We may think here of works of separatists who departed from Judaism, such as Gnostics]; D. Philo’s political treatises, the histories of Josephus and other Jewish historians; [279] E. The Jewish papyri, the Hasmonean coins, inscriptions in non-Jewish surroundings, etc. Instead of drawing many possible further conclusions, we mention one interesting phenomenon. Philo, that prominent Alexandrian Jew, could write extensive inner-Jewish Bible commentaries, but also compose political treatises in a nonJewish perspective. In other words, he flexibly shifted from one to the other pole determining his identity as a Jew. On a micro-scale, a similar example is found in the saying of R. Shimon ben Elazar quoted above, which within one sentence switches from the inner-Jewish Yisrael to the outside identity of Yehudim. An analogous case is found in Luke 7, as we shall see below.
The New Testament In view of the Jewish beginnings of Christianity, we hypothesize that the Jewish speech duality operates in the New Testament as it does in Jewish sources. Thus, we expect ‘Israel’ to be the inner-Jewish self-designation and ‘Jews’ the self-appellation Jews use in outside communication. We shall put this hypothesis to the test while studying the use made of the two names in the various New
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Testament writings. We shall also observe what socio-religious identifications result from the use of both names.
The Synoptic Gospels The synoptic Gospels are not the earliest New Testament texts, but it is best to start with them. Of these, the first three in varying combinations share common traditions in which the teachings of Jesus and the story of his life are related. Although a break with Pharisaic-rabbinic Judaism seems implied (cf Matt 12 and 23; Mark 3 and 7) the basic material of the synoptic tradition can be assumed to have originated within Palestinian Judaism. After all, pre-destruction Jewish society allowed for much diversity, and the final break with the Jewish-Christian groups must be dated after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.134 This is confirmed by the relative rareness of the name ‘Jews’, a phenomenon we also observed in rabbinic literature and in many of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. We have five mentions in Matthew, six in Mark, and five in Luke, while the name ‘Israel’ is found twelve times in Matthew, two in Mark and twelve in Luke. In all but two of these cases, the non-Jewish perspective implied by the name ‘Jews’ functions within the framework of the narrative, either in direct communications of the dramatis personae with non-Jews or (two cases in Luke) in interactions of a non-verbal nature. The two exceptions [280] concern direct communications of the writer to his readers mentioning ‘Jews’, implying that we are here confronted with a non-Jewish redactional framework. On other grounds, too, the two passages appear to be of another nature than their context and in fact to belong to the latest redactional phase of the text. Thus in Matt 28:15 we hear of the rumour of the theft of Jesus’ body which is ‘spread among Jews to this day’. Likewise, Mark 7:3 explains the details of the purifications ‘of the Jews’ to his readers. These two exceptions set aside, we proceed to observe that in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus is called ‘King of the Jews’ by non-Jews only: the Magi (Matt 2:2), and Pilate and other Romans (Matt 27; Mark 15; Luke 23). On the other hand, Jesus is derisively called ‘King of Israel’ by the chief priests (Matt 27:42; Mark 15:32). These cases account for all the ‘Jews’ mentioned in Matthew and Mark (apart from the two exceptions above). In Luke, we find two other cases, one of which is clearly illustrative of the appellative duality in Jewish usage.135 In the story of the healing of the centurion’s slave in Luke 7:1–10, the Roman, acclaimed as a benefactor of the synagogue at Capernaum, sends ‘elders of the Cf the chapter ‘Jewish Christians: the Parting of the Ways’, in Alon, The Jews, 288–307. Bloch, ‘Israélite, Juif, Hébreu’, 22 (contra Gutbrod, ‘Ισραηλ, Ιουδαιος’, 378) maintains that Luke 7:1–10 conforms to the inner-Jewish rule [i. e. not Luke but the centurion in his story brings in a non-Jewish perspective]. 134 135
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Jews’ to Jesus.136 The latter, while as a pious Jew refraining from entering the non-Jew’s house, is amazed at his absolute faith and, turning around, confesses to his Jewish company: ‘Even in Israel137 have I not found such great faith!’ It is striking that the author of this gospel who also wrote Acts and possibly was a non-Jew,138 so faithfully preserved the speech duality typical for Jewish texts. We have here a parallel to the tradition of R. Shimon ben Elazar cited above from the Tosefta. The difference is that Jesus, while staying faithfully within the boundaries set by Jewish tradition, is all wonder over the gentile’s faith in the God of Israel; R. Shimon on the other hand does not know of such a possibility. – The remaining case in Luke 23:51 does not of necessity imply a direct communication with non-Jewish readers. ‘Arimathea, a town of the Jews’ can very well refer to the neighbouring non-Jewish population. For the rest, the appellation of the Jews is ‘Israel’: the ‘land of Israel’ (Matt 2:21f); the ‘house of Israel’ (Matt 10:6, 15:24); the ‘cities of Israel’ (Matt 10:23); the ‘twelve tribes of Israel’ (Matt 19:28; Luke 22:30); the ‘consolation of Israel’ (Luke 2:25); and the ‘redemption of Israel’ (Luke 24:21). We conclude that apart from the two redactional additions signalling a non-Jewish perspective,139 the inner-Jewish framework of the synoptic tradition was left untouched [281] during the subsequent process of redaction. We have observed this phenomenon also in the case of many Jewish writings. A conclusion more central to the present study is that in the synoptic gospels, the Jewish speech duality is largely found to operate as it does in Jewish writings, thus verifying our hypothesis.
The Gospel of John When compared with the synoptic Gospels, one feature immediately strikes the eye: the large number of ‘Jews’ mentioned in John – ᾽Ιουδαῖοι are found 71 times. This raises the question as to the cause of this disproportion. It is not the location of the story itself: apart from the Samaritan intermezzo (John 4) it moves within the boundaries of the Jewish land as do the other Gospels. A clue is found in the ten passages, spread all over the gospel, in which rituals ‘of the Jews’ are identified as such. Clearly, these are not communications between story characters but direct communications of the redactor with his readers. And the use of ‘outside speech’ signals that these are communications in a non-Jewish A standard expression in non-Jewish surroundings, see n42 above. Thus also the correct version Matt 8:10. It is a biblical expression, cf Deut 34:10. The same in Luke 2:34; 4:25, 27; Matt 9:33; ARN a 41 (p131), ‘If this is a rabbi, may there be few in Israel!’ 138 See Glover, ‘Luke the Antiochene and Acts’. Cf also Acts 10–11. 139 Other passages can be identified as anti-Jewish on literary grounds, see Flusser, ‘Two Anti-Jewish Montages’. 136 137
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context, as in the synoptic exceptions in Matt 28:15 and Mark 7:3.140 The number and spread of these editorial comments point to a thorough redaction in a nonJewish framework. By contrast, ‘Israel’ and ‘Israelite’ are found only five times, each of them in inner-Jewish communication within the story: John the Baptist to Jesus (1:31); Jesus to Nathanael (1:48); Jesus to Nicodemus (3:10); and, surprisingly, Nathanael (1:50) and the Jerusalemites (12:13) to Jesus: ‘The king of Israel!’ In contradistinction, Pilate and other Romans call Jesus ‘king of the Jews’ (18:33, 39; 19:3, 19, 21). This exactly corresponds to the Jewish dual usage we found in the synoptic gospels. It would imply that the non-Jewish editing of the gospel left the inner-Jewish speech structure of these passages untouched. We may be confronted here with parts of an older Jewish-Christian gospel.141 If this proves acceptable, we would be able to explain the paradox of the famous dialogue with the Samaritan woman. She calls Jesus ‘a Jew’ (4:9), and Jesus does not reject but emphatically welcomes this appellation: ‘We worship knowingly, for salvation comes from the Jews’ (4:22). These words sound almost incredible in the framework of the Gospel as a whole, and they have often been adduced in order to reject the claim that it is unfriendly to the Jews. Here it is proposed that the evidence is best accounted for if we see the Samaritan intermezzo, however contradictory that may seem, as another remnant of an older Jewish-Christian gospel which was left untouched during the non-Jewish editing. [282] We have been calling the perspective of our editor non-Jewish. Out of the 71 mentions of Jews, however, 35 portray ‘the Jews’ as the declared enemies of Jesus and his followers. Already this large proportion gives the name a generalized, negative charge. In the second place, it is evidently a blanket designation for what in the synoptic Gospels appear as specifically named opponents of Jesus: Pharisees, chief priests, scribes, presbyters, and Sadducees. Except for the first two groups, these functionaries do not even appear in John. Moreover, the specific groups that do appear, i. e. Pharisees and chief priests, in John not only appear combined – historically a very unlikely combination – but in the same context are subsumed under the single name ‘the Jews’.142 And instead of the chief priests who in the synoptic Gospels act against Jesus in the Passion 140 John 2:6; 2:13; 3:1; 4:9; 5:1; 6:4; 7:2; 11:55; 19:40; 19:42. Cf ‘the citron-celebration of the Jews’, above n36, and ‘the citrons of the Jews’, above n112. 141 A Jewish-Christian gospel underlying John is posited on other literary grounds by Fortna, The Gospel of Signs. [The analysis of White, Identity and Function concludes on a ‘patchwork gospel’ in which traditional passages containing the inner-Jewish use of ‘Israel’ (159–165) can be distinguished from editorial passages hostile to the Jews (‘the Jews’ passages); he does not count the story of the Samaritan woman among the latter (180–183).] 142 Compare 11:47 with 18:14, and 18:3 with 18:12. The combination ‘Pharisees and chief priests’ is otherwise found only in Matt 21:45 and 27:62, two passages of apparent secondary origin. On the social status of the ‘high priests’ see Stern, ‘Aspects of Jewish Society’, 600–612.
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story, in John it is ‘the Jews’ who have him condemned and executed (18:31, 38; 19:7, 12, 14). All this evidence shows that the redactor, unlike his possible fellow-gentile Luke, rewrote his text from a perspective of great enmity to ‘the Jews’. The most incredible expression is found in chapter 8, where Jesus calls ‘the Jews who had come to believe in him’ (8:31) not children of Abraham but children of the devil (8:44).143 From other evidence, such as the intentional transgression of Sabbath laws in John’s version,144 it appears that Jesus is the editor’s champion in his own community’s conflict with ‘the Jews’ and ‘their law’ (15:25; cf 8:17; 10:34). The conflict has a total and irreparable character; all ties with ‘the Jews’ and their ‘synagogue’ are severed.145 Many commentators have been trying to avoid such conclusions. The focus of attention, indeed the apparent motivation of much study into our theme, has been the question: who are the ᾽Ιουδαῖοι in the Gospel of John?146 [283] The intention has often been to show that not the real Jews were meant, but ‘Jews’ as a theological type, or as the theological leadership as opposed to the nation of the Jews themselves;147 or alternatively, the ‘Judeans’ as opposed to the Galilean Jews.148 However, these explanations come up against the evidence in the above: by יהודי/ יהודאי/᾽Ιουδαῖος/Iudaeus in the Greco-Roman period none other is ever meant but 143 This sounds like a farewell to a competing Jewish-Christian community: The diabolizing of opponents is not per se un-Jewish, cf CD 4:12–18; Asc. Isa. 1:9; 2Cor 6:15; Matt 12:24; Rev 2:9; 3:9 (below). Reim, ‘Joh. 8.44 – Gotteskinder/Teufelskinder’ is another example of atomising exegesis. 144 John 5:8–18; 9:16–14. The synoptic Sabbath stories do not imply a wilful violation of laws generally accepted in Jesus’ day. According to some sources, there was not even an unintentional violation; see Pines, ‘The Jewish Christians according to a New Source’, 299f. 145 Cf ἀποσυνάγωγος, found only in John, 9:22; 12:42; 16:2. 146 Grässer, ‘Antijüdische Polemik’; Pancaro, ‘Relationship of the Church to Israel’, with response by Painter, ‘The Church and Israel’; Meeks, ‘Am I a Jew?’; Lowe, ‘Who are the IOΥΔAIOI?’; Murray, ‘Jews, Hebrews and Christians’; von Wahlde, ‘The Johannine “Jews”’; Ashton, ‘Identity and Function of the Ιουδαιοι’. – An important flaw of these studies is in failing to compare the appellations in John with early Jewish literature at large and in treating the Gospel as though it originated in a linguistic vacuum. Schram, The Use of IOΥΔAIOΣ concludes that linguistic analysis largely confirms the results of two centuries of research; pp147–205 give extensive bibliography with discussion. 147 Thus Grässer, ‘Antijüdische Polemik’, in line with Bultmann’s theology of Entweltlichung; cf Brown, John 1: lxx–lxxiii. Thus also Pancaro, Meeks (after much scrupulous reasoning), Murray (with a theory of a ‘Hebrew’ Christianity as opposed to the ‘Jews’!), and von Wahlde (whose ‘Critical Survey’ is rich with bibliography) – all as in the previous note. Fundamentally the same solution is presented by Bloch, ‘Israélite, Juif, Hébreu’, 27–31. 148 Thus Lowe, ‘Who are the IOΥΔAIOI?’ The explanation was already proposed by Bornhauser, Johannesevangelium. ᾽Ιουδαῖοι would mean Judler (Judaisers), not Juden (141). On a closer look, however, these ‘Judler’ are none other than rabbis and Pharisees (23, 145) whose legalism is eloquently demonstrated in Mishna Eruvin (34)! Ashton, ‘Identity and Function’, responding to Lowe, oscillates between the latter’s solution and Bultmann, but concludes that ‘none of the previously suggested identifications has quite succeeded in hitting the mark’ (75). The author draws drawing reference material from Josephus only.
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the Jew, the adherent to ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός and member of the ἔθνος τῶν ᾽Ιουδαίων – or in inner-Jewish speech, ישראל, ᾽Ισραηλίτης. The explanation that the name solely in the Gospel of John means something else is based on hypothesis only. There is no external evidence for it, and the internal evidence of the gospel itself is equally against it.149 The conclusion admittedly is shocking but inescapable: the few inner-Jewish remnants notwithstanding, the Gospel’s identification is not with a Jewish-Christian, but with a non-Jewish Christian community.150
The Acts of the Apostles Acts extends its perspective ‘from Jerusalem till the ends of the earth’ (1:8). The ‘sect of the Nazoreans’ spread among the Jews in the whole [284] οἰκουμένη (24:5), but did also encompass non-Jews everywhere, many of them God-fearing sympathizers with Judaism.151 In this mixed ethnic perspective, it is perfectly natural for ‘Jews’ to be mentioned, 79 times. On the other hand, Israel (10 times) and Israelites (5 times) are inner-Jewish self-appellations. The writer, himself possibly a God-fearing non-Jew from Antioch, did preserve the inner-Jewish perspective in these cases.152 Once again, we are reminded of the extraordinary character of the Gospel of John if we compare it with Acts. Although both books contain over 70 mentions of ‘Jews’ [including many involving conflict with Christians], Acts, unlike John, gives that name nowhere a preconditioned negative charge.
The Letters of Paul Paul’s letters are the oldest written Christian sources. With certainty they date from before the Roman war (66–70 CE), during which Jewish society went 149 Cf ‘Jewish’ rites, above n140. In John 2:6 the ‘purifications of the Jews’ are located in Cana, Galilee; in 6:4 the ‘Pascha, festival of the Jews’ is celebrated in Galilee. Jesus, himself from Nazareth in Galilee (1:46, 7:41) is a Jew (4:9) and participates in the ‘feast of the Jews’ with his own (Galilean) brothers (7:2, 10). So does Philip ‘from Bethsaida in Galilee’ (12:21). Jesus’ opponents in Galilee are none other than ‘the Jews’ (6:41, 52). The one foothold of the ‘Judean’ explanation is 7:1, Jesus staying in Galilee and not going to ᾽Ιουδαία because the ᾽Ιουδαῖοι want to kill him. We have shown, however, that although the ᾽Ιουδαῖοι are found in Judaea, they are also found in Galilee. [However, Roman judaeus is predominantly territorialpolitical, see ‘Reconsideration’.] 150 Thus also Painter, ‘The Church and Israel’; Barrett, The Gospel of John and Judaism, 70f. 151 Σεβόμενοι (τὸν θεόν), found only in Acts 13–19, or φοβούμενοι τὸν θεόν found only in Acts 10 and 13. See the long note on sebomenoi/metuentes by Stern, ‘The Jews in Greek and Latin Literature’, 1158f. [And cf the very similar phrase in Josephus, Ant 14:110, πάντων τῶν κατὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην ᾽Ιουδαίων καὶ σεβομένων τὸν θεόν.] 152 In 10:36 we find an inverse exception: ‘Israel’ in Peter’s sermon to the house of the Roman centurion Cornelius. Cf above n105. On Luke the Antiochene see n138.
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through a profound crisis and relations with the Church deteriorated sharply. Indeed, for all his polemics, Paul in all of his letters may be said to maintain an open relation with Jews and Judaism at large. That is, when we isolate the one anti-Jewish passage in 1 Thess 2:14–16 which is hard to reconcile with the rest of his writings.153 The preserved letters of Paul mainly address non-Jews (1Cor 12:2; Rom 11:13) and this would call for Jewish ‘outside’ speech. And indeed, many ‘Jews’ are met with, 24 times in all; side by side with ‘Greeks’,154 with ‘gentiles’,155 or alone.156 Apart from the passage in 1 Thessalonians, ᾽Ιουδαῖος is a neutral ethnikon and does not have any negative meaning.157 In Rom 2:28–3:1, it is even used in a positive, hortatory sense: to be a ‘Jew’ means to be circumcised at heart and this can even apply to the uncircumcised!158 And even though ‘in Christ there is no distinction between Jew and Greek’ (Rom 10:12) the message of Paul comes ‘first to the Jew and then to the Greek’ (Rom 1:16; 2:9f). All this is ‘outside’ speech, serving the communication of Paul, the Jew, with his nonJewish readers. Paul also uses the appellation ‘Israel’ in the same letters, and the way it functions [285] is significant. We find a total of 19 cases. In three, Paul refers to biblical history: ‘children of Israel’, ‘Israel after the flesh’ (2Cor 3:7, 13; 1Cor 10:18). In the other cases however, not the biblical Israel but the present people of Israel is meant. Paul himself, as well as his ‘brothers after the flesh’, are ‘Israelites’ (Rom 9:4, 11:1; 2Cor 11:22) and ‘of the race of Israel’ (Phil 3:5).158a It is with them that he has his fearful dispute, which causes him so much suffering (2Cor 11:22–25) and unceasing heartbreak (Rom 9:2). In other words, Paul communicates his own inner-Jewish struggle to his non-Jewish readers. These former gentiles (1Cor 12:2) are no longer outsiders but are implicated in innerJewish issues. In this vein the letter to the Galatians, while strongly pleading the right of the non-Jewish Christians to stay in their non-Jewish state (cf 1Cor 7:17f), concludes with the prayer: ‘On those who hold to this rule, may peace and mercy come on them – and on the Israel of God’ (Gal 6:16). There are two 153 Cf Michel, ‘Fragen zu 1 Thess. 2,14–16’. For another view: Baarda, ‘Maar de toorn is over hen gekomen’. [See the ‘Reconsideration’ for a possible explanation.] 154 1Cor 1:22ff; 9:20; 10:32; 12:13; Col 3:11; Gal 3:28; and especially Rom 1:16; 2:9f; 10:12. The expression ᾽Ιουδαῖοι καὶ Ἕλληνες seems to be the Hellenistic Jewish equivalent of the Aramaic יהודאי וארמאיfound in Jewish Amoraic literature. Cf n129, 103 and 53. 155 1Cor 1:23; Rom 3:29; 9:24; Gal 2:15. 156 Rom 2:17, 28ff (see next footnote). 1 Thess 2:14 has been mentioned already. 157 I disagree with Bloch, ‘Israélite, Juif, Hébreu’, 25f, who evaluates Paul’s usage of ‘Jew’ as a negative theological type comparable to John. 158 This even induced later Christians, condemned by Augustine, to assume the name Iudaei! See Simon, Verus Israel, 386 (French ed); Parkes, Conflict, 203. On Paul’s hortatory use of ᾽Ιουδαῖος here cf the homiletic expositions on the name יהודיabove n120. 158a Paul’s self-designation ʽΕβραῖος in both cases (2Cor 11:22; Phil 3:5) is juxtaposed with ᾽Ισραηλίτης and may therefore mean ‘Hebrew-reader’. Cf above on Philo.
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communities Paul belongs to: the new Christian community and the people of Israel. And his non-Jewish readers are begged not to stand off but to respect this. Such is the explicit message of the famous chapters 9–11 of the letter to the Romans. The non-Jews are asked not to stand aloof or consider themselves better than the non-believing Jews. They themselves are but wild olive-branches grafted onto the trunk of Israel. They should see themselves from the innerJewish perspective: in the framework of God’s own cause with Israel. It is significant that in these three chapters alone the name ‘Israel’ is heard ten times, and only twice ‘Jews’, even though non-Jews are explicitly addressed (11:13). The Israelites, Paul’s brethren after the flesh, are and remain God’s elect (9:1–5; 11:1). There is a ‘mystery’ here which the apostle wishes to confide to his nonJewish spiritual progeny: Israel’s hardening of heart is only temporary, and in the fullness of time ‘all Israel will be saved’ (11:25f). Again, there are two communities of salvation to which Paul belongs: the body of Christ and the people of Israel. The enigma of their relation in history is solved with the help of Essene theological imagery.159
Ephesians, Titus, Revelation The letter to the Ephesians goes one step further and if it is Paul’s, it reflects a further consequence of his thought. Not only are the ‘former gentiles’ (2:11) begged not to stand aloof but to see themselves in the inner-Jewish perspective of God’s cause with Israel, they are themselves considered spiritual proselytes. They are no longer ‘estranged from the citizenship of Israel’ (πολιτείας τοῦ Ισραήλ, 2:12) but they have been brought near; they are spiritually [286] Israelites, fellow citizens (2:19) and fellow-heirs of God’s promises to Israel (3:6).160 This is what is contained in ‘the mystery of the Christ’ which has remained hidden from eternity (3:4, 9) but has now been revealed. Again, Essene theology provides the conceptual tools for Paul’s historical doctrine of the ongoing election of Israel combined with the new community of the Christ.161 The former gentiles, 159 [Cf above at n109a, on ‘Israel’ extended to include Godfearers in Tannaic midrashim.] In CD 16:1–4 we find the doctrine of a covenant with ‘all Israel’ and with the community itself; in this eschatological ‘meantime’, there is a temporary blindness on Israel till the appointed time. Cf also 2 Cor 4:4, ‘The god of this (passing) aeon’ has struck the unbelieving (Israel) with blindness. On the comparison between early Christian theology and Qumran see Flusser, ‘The Dead Sea Sect and Pre-Pauline Christianity’. 160 The use of the (ancient) ‘political’ image is striking. A proselyte became a member of the πολίτευμα τῶν ᾽Ιουδαίων, see above n16. In Phil 3:20 Paul uses the word πολίτευμα referring to the spititual citizenship in heavens; cf Gal 4:25. 161 As in Rom 11:25 μυστήριον is the equivalent of the Hebrew רזי אלknown from the Qumran scrolls; it is connected with the Essene doctrine of ‘times’, ( קציםcf Dimant, ‘Qumran Sectarian Literature’, 507f, 536). See on this whole complex Meuzelaar, Der Leib des Messias
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non-Jewish Christians, are drawn into the inner-Jewish perspective implied in the name ‘Israel’. They are spiritually Israelites. The consequence, borne out forcefully in Rom 9–11, is that they are therefore to respect the theological significance of the people of Israel, the nation of the Jews. ‘Do not pride yourselves, but fear’ (Rom 11:20).162 The Letter to Titus contains a condemnation of ‘Jewish myths (᾽Ιουδαϊκοῖς μύθοις) and commandments of men’, as opposed to the author’s view that ‘all is pure to the pure, but to the impure and untrue, all is unclean’ (1:14). This seems to be an anti-nomistic and anti-Jewish transformation of Paul’s rationalistic maxim: ‘Nothing is impure by itself, but it is impure to him who considers it impure’ (Rom 14:14). The message of this deutero-pauline passage is, unlike Paul’s own paradoxical reasoning, simple: do not identify with Judaism.163 We fittingly end with the Revelation of John. This pronounced Jewish-Christian apocalypse contains two very sharp denunciations of ‘those who call themselves Jews’ but in reality are ‘the synagogue of Satan’ (2:9, 3:9). This certainly is not friendly to the Jews of the rabbinic synagogue, but does not per se depreciate the name Jews. On the contrary, the author implies that none but his own community are to be viewed as true Jews.164
Conclusion We were able to observe that the Jewish speech duality operates in the synoptic Gospels as it does in Jewish sources. This verifies the hypothesis proposed at the beginning of this section. In the Gospel narrative, as a rule the name [287] Israel is used, thus indicating an inner-Jewish identification. In conformity with the speech duality, however, the name Jew is used in communications with nonJews within the narrative. In two isolated cases, this happens in a redactional communication to the reader, evidently implying a non-Jewish audience. Except for these redactional additions, the usage of the synoptic gospels is another example of the preservation of inner-Jewish speech in a process of redaction and translation. We may also say: the use of the names Israel and Jew shows that the synoptic Gospels preserve a very large Jewish-Christian stratum. (but without reference to Qumran). [On μυστήριον, see Bockmuehl, Mystery and Revelation; Brown, ‘Pre-Christian Semitic Concept’.] 162 [Similarly Davies, ‘Paul and the People of Israel’.] Later Christian theology turned Paul’s admittedly fragile doctrine upside down. While the apostle wishes to warn non-Jewish Christians not to ἰουδαΐζειν (Gal 2:14) but even less to condemn the circumcised brothers and their ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός (Rom 14:1–15:13), the gentile Church degraded Jewish Christians and eventually disinherited the whole people of Israel by calling itself ‘true Israel’. See Simon, Verus Israel, chapters 3 and 11. 163 See previous note. Cf Col 2:21f.; Mark 7:7, 19. 164 See n158, n143.
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This cannot be said of the Gospel of John. Its pervasive use of the ‘outside’ name Jew implies a thorough redaction in a non-Jewish setting. The few mentions of ‘Israel’ can be well explained as inner-Jewish communications preserved within this non-Jewish framework. This situation in itself does not falsify our hypothesis of the existence of the Jewish speech duality in the New Testament writings. But there is more. In half the cases, ‘the Jews’ in John are the ideological adversaries of Jesus and his disciples. This implies that the Gospel in its present form stems from a group which does draw on Jewish-Christian traditions, yet rejects all ties with Judaism and thus, as was self-understood in the ancient world, with the Jews as well. The use this Gospel makes of the names Jew and Israel in effect signals not only a non-Jewish, but a decidedly anti-Jewish identification. Here our hypothesis breaks down. In the prominent redactional stratum of the Fourth Gospel, there is no speech duality. ‘The Jews’ is not an outside name for what insiders call the people of Israel. They are the enemies of the community of elect; they are themselves ‘outside’. The result is complicated. As stated, we also recognize Jewish-Christian remnants preserved within the anti-Jewish redactional framework that do display the Jewish speech duality. This creates the strange, contradictory character of this Gospel, in which it can be stated both that salvation comes from the Jews (John 4:22) and that the Jewish believers are children of the Devil (8:44). The use of the names Israel and Jew in Acts is as could be expected; it signals a non-Jewish setting, with several inner-Jewish speech situations faithfully preserved. Since this work was possibly written by Luke, a God-fearing gentile from Antioch, it is an interesting confirmation of our hypothesis. The use Paul’s letters make of the name Jew signifies, as also could be expected, that he is communicating with non-Jews or with a mixed audience. Except for the one passage where the name Jew seems to imply an intrinsically negative sense (1 Thess 2:14), this does not contradict the Jewish speech duality. It is Paul’s use of the name Israel that is most interesting. It does designate the people of Israel, to which he himself belongs. He does use this inner-Jewish name, however, in communication with non-Jewish Christians. This [288] transcends the limits of the Jewish speech duality in another direction: in Paul’s approach, the name Israel evokes a dynamic of identification which encompasses gentile Christians. In other words, gentiles are invited to call the Jews by the cherished, inner-Jewish name of the Covenant People: Israel. We draw up the balance for our hypothesis that the Jewish speech duality operates in the New Testament as in Jewish texts. It was found to be verified in the synoptic Gospels (apart from the two isolated exceptions), in Acts, and in Revelation. These works, then, could be located somewhere within the two categories of Jewish texts: the main body of the synoptic Gospels and Revelation as inner-Jewish texts, and Acts as a text written in a non-Jewish perspective.
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Apart from the Letter to Titus with only one relevant passage, our hypothesis was falsified in the Gospel of John and in the letters of Paul. Here, there is no Jewish speech duality, and these works do not fall in either category of Jewish texts. Their attitude to the Jews, however, is very different. In spite of some Jewish-Christian remnants, the Gospel of John as a whole rejects all identification with the Jews. Paul, on the other hand, addresses non-Jewish Christians with inner-Jewish speech. John, so to say, spiritually de-judaizes Christianity. Paul, by contrast, spiritually proselytizes gentile Christians and draws them into the circle of those ‘called by the name of Israel’ (Isa 48:1).
Epilogue The inescapably anti-Jewish character of the Gospel of John creates a great problem for one existentially engaged in the Church, as is the present writer. Here, moral arguments break into our scholarly discussion. They touch on the use one makes of ancient texts and on the possibility of redressing attitudes hallowed by tradition. In this situation, Paul’s teaching may open a fruitful alternative. Paul’s approach has invited much misunderstanding, and this began early on, as the Letter to Titus testifies. The most prominent misunderstanding is that for Paul the name Israel would represent a spiritual reality only. The reverse is true. Israel for Paul is ‘Israel after the flesh’, real Israel, his own people. It is the gentile Christians who are Israel in a spiritual sense, like wild olive branches grafted onto the good olive trunk. Luke, the God-fearing Antiochene, is one example. This reminds us of the famous words of Pope Pius XI. In a time when it was popular to denounce the Jews as ‘Semites’ – another outside appellation used pejoratively – he declared that for Christians it is impossible to associate with anti-Semitism. Addressing Belgian pilgrims, he referred to ‘Abraham our [289] Father’ who is thus mentioned in an important prayer, and pronounced: ‘Spiritually speaking, we are Semites ourselves.’165
165 September 6, 1938. In La Docum. Cathol. 39 (1938) 1460, quoted in Augustinus cardinal Bea, De kerk en het joodse volk (Dutch trans. of La Chiesa e il Popolo Ebraico), HilversumAntwerpen, Brand 1967, 11f. The term anti-Semitism presupposes the modern separation of religion and state. Hence it is an anachronism to term the Gospel of John ‘anti-Semitic’. However it is undoubtedly anti-Jewish and anti-Judaistic.
The Names Israel and Jew – A Reconsideration Thirty years on, the debate on the use and meaning of Yehudi/Ioudaios and related appellations has seen important developments. Much energy has been put into the question of whether to translate ‘Jew’ or ‘Judean’, in particular by scholars working on Flavius Josephus and the Gospel of John. Attention has also been paid to what I have called the Jewish dual usage of ‘Jews’ and ‘Israel’ and to the perceived exceptions to that usage. Also, the important implications for New Testament study have been discussed, especially as concerns Ioudaios in John. My 1986 article aspired to embrace all of these aspects, but the turn taken by the discussion makes it expedient for me to address them one by one.1 In the end, several of these aspects will appear to interlock.
The Jewish Dual Usage and its Possible Origins Somehow it is obvious that in Jewish surroundings it makes little sense to identify someone as ‘Jewish’. Thus in a survey (1997) of the function of Ioudaios in the ancient inscriptions, Margaret Williams can confidently state: ‘Instances of Ioudaios in a wholly Jewish context are, unsurprisingly, rare,’ and again, ‘Rather more numerous, unsurprisingly, are the instances of Ioudaios in non-Jewish contexts.’2 Furthermore, it is no real surprise either that ‘Israel’ as an ethnonym is virtually absent in ancient non-Jewish surroundings,3 not considering Christian sources. There is a ‘double non-surprise’ here, and it constitutes the Jewish dual usage, with ‘Israel’ as the intra-Jewish name and ‘Jew’ as a tag normally used where non-Jews are involved. However, Williams correctly emphasizes that there are also surprising instances where ‘Jew’ is used in inner-Jewish speech situations. Responding to Williams and other critics, in this reconsideration I want to bring such ‘exceptions’ to the limelight, refining my theory. Obviously, linguistic and demographic conditions are involved. An innerJewish context is more likely to be found in ancient texts in Hebrew, the lan1 Occasioned by a debate on inter-ethnic relations held in Canada in 2001, Wilson, ‘Jews and Related Terms’ addresses most aspects of the 1986 article. 2 Williams, ‘Meaning and Function of Ioudaios’, 253f. 3 Thus already Kuhn, ‘᾽Ισραήλ, ᾽Ιουδαῖος’, 365, 373; also Goodblatt, ‘Varieties of Identity’, 18.
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guage typically used by Jews, rather than in Greek or Aramaic, and more so in those written in a Palestinian rather than a diasporan setting. Extrapolating this relation, scholars have theorized that ‘Jew’ will not be used in Hebrew texts4 or in diaspora locations.5 However, the book of Esther, which is in Hebrew, only mentions Yehudim, and conversely, the diaspora-based Babylonian Talmud massively prefers Yisrael.6 Also, the example of Ezra and Nehemiah shows (below) that both Yehudi and Yisrael can be used in Hebrew as well as in Aramaic texts. Therefore, the social insider-outsider distinction seems to have a wider validity, and the exceptions must have more fundamental causes. Another important parameter is the type of literature one is dealing with. The Jewish dual usage is most clearly displayed in rabbinic literature and in the synoptic Gospels. By contrast, in the works of Philo and Josephus, as I have come to realize, it is practically absent. All of these documents were produced by Jews (or largely so, in the case of the Gospels), so what may cause the difference? I propose to consider the possible correlation with the social embedding of the authors and their texts. The rabbinic works of Mishna, Talmud and Midrashim and the synoptic Gospels are ‘non-authored’, collective works of anecdotic texture; even their written editing process was done by anonymous redactors. As such they stood comparatively close to the mass of ancient common Jews, and they are more likely to express popular conventions. Philo and Josephus, by contrast, belonged to the educated, politically involved elite, and they wrote under their own name for an ‘international’ audience drawn from the same social register. Here, we may expect greater compliance with the conventions of the political and administrative elite. Rabbinic literature by origin and purpose consists of inner-Jewish texts. And ‘unsurprisingly’, the ethnonym Yisrael occurs overwhelmingly. The digitised Bar Ilan Responsa program yields ‘over 32,000 times, too many to count’, and ‘Jew’ clearly is the exception. If we exclude the Aggadic Midrashim which make up the largest part and already by themselves yield ‘too many to count’, the score is 10,646 occurrences of Yisrael and 133 of Yehudi – a crude batch from which biblical quotations and personal names still ought to be weeded out. Thus roughly, the occurrence of ‘Jew’ would be in the proportional order of 1.25 %. In the samples reviewed above, almost all of these appear in interactions with non-Jews. It is the interesting exceptions within this rare use of ‘Jew’ that I have concentrated 4 Proposed by Grintz, above p142 n6, and revived by Goodblatt, see below. On the significance of the Hebrew language in this connection see Goodblatt, Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism, chapter 3. 5 Thus on pragmatic grounds Kuhn, ‘᾽Ισραήλ, ᾽Ιουδαῖος’; also Lowe, ‘Who were the Ιουδαιοι’ and esp idem, ‘Ιουδαιοι of the Apocrypha’. 6 Both in their Hebrew and Aramaic parts, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel use ישראלpreponderantly and יהודי\יהודאיsparingly. Also, strikingly, the official letter tSan 2:5 attributes to R. Gamliel is in Aramaic yet uses ( ישראלabove p148 n22). On the letter see Doering, Ancient Jewish Letters, 351–364.
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on, ‘Jews’ in inner-Jewish surroundings, leaving alone the mass of evidence that confirms the double usage. Apart from personal names and biblical references, both Yehudi and Yisrael denote ‘Jews’ as individuals or as a collective.7 The name ‘Jew’ in itself does not convey an intrinsically negative meaning in this context, nor does ‘Israel’ necessarily carry an elevated or religious meaning, as in the halakha that ‘a pagan midwife may deliver an Israelite woman’ (mAZ 2:1). Rabbinic literature comes late in our period, but the prior existence of the dual usage is confirmed by earlier sources. The import of the Qumran documents is somewhat paradoxical in this respect. In texts that may be considered typical of the sect, Yisrael is ubiquitous, while Yehudi is not used.8 This is what one would expect from an axiomatically inner-Jewish group which practically considered itself the ‘true Israel’,9 but it is like a deafening argument from silence. In any case it does not contradict the possibility of the dual usage. An overwhelming use of Israel in an inner-Jewish context is also found in Judith, Tobit, and Ben Sira.10 In addition, as noted above (at n51), Judith has three times Hebraios in interactions with non-Jews, which is a functional parallel to the external use of Ioudaios. Moreover Tobit, according to one manuscript, has once Ioudaioi in a mixed ethnic setting.11 The preponderance of Israel with those few exceptions may be taken to confirm the existence of the dual usage in the second-first centuries BCE. The evidence of the synoptic Gospels brings us yet a century later. Jews within the narrative of the first three Gospels use the name Israel among themselves, while non-Jews use Ioudaioi. The few Ioudaioi in the narrator’s asides are readily understood to imply communication with non-Jews. The Gospel of John contains the same usage but as a whole is in a different situation, see below. Taken together, this evidence justifies the assumption of the continuous existence of the dual usage from the second century BCE onwards. A glance at its beginnings is possible if we take a closer look at those precious documents of the Persian period, Ezra and Nehemiah. with minimal documentation, Stern, Jewish Identity, 10f. The ‘Concordance of Proper Nouns’ in Tov, Texts from the Judaean Desert, 229–284 lists ישראלas the most frequent proper noun in the Qumran texts; it also cites three occurrences of יהודיin what appear to be non-sectarian texts: 4Q242 (Prayer of Nabonidus) frg 1:4; 4Q333 (Historical Text E) frg 2; 4Q550d ar (Proto-Esther) 1iv3 // 4Q550c 2–3. 9 Thus D. Flusser, private communication, referring to 1QS 8:13, ובהיות אלה [ליחד] בישראל, where the bracketed word in the Geniza text is supralinear and appears to be an explanatory addition, see critical note in Licht, Rule Scroll, 181 (and cf the version 4Q319 3:3, …]ובהיות ;)אלה בישראלthe scribe felt the need to explain that the yahad in fact ‘is verus Israel’. Similarly White, Identity and Function, 90, ‘The Qumran sect understood themselves to be the remnant of the true Israel …’ Goodblatt, Ancient Jewish Nationalism, 151 with n28 refers to CD 12:8 חבור ישראל, which in 4Q267 9iii3 reads חבר ישראל, an apparent intra-Jewish parallel to Hasmonaean חבר היהודים. 10 Judith 50× ᾽Ισραήλ; Tobit ms S 17×, mss B A 4×; Ben Sira 38×. 11 Tob 11:18, ms S: ‘rejoicing among all the Ioudaioi in Nineveh’, where mss B A have ‘brethren’. 7 Similarly, 8
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Ezra and Nehemiah, which are edited as a single book in Greek 1 Esdras, form a larger unit along with Chronicles, as appears from the identical declaration of Cyrus at 2 Chr 36 and Ezra 1. In 1 and 2 Chronicles, Yisrael is found throughout, Yehuda is used often, but Yehudim is not found.12 In Ezra and Nehemiah, however, ‘Judeans’ do appear in specific sections. In Ezra 4–6, Yehudaye is used both in the official Persian documents which involve the protagonist and in the narrative, all in Aramaic.13 In Nehemiah, Yehudim appear especially in chapters 1–6 which narrate the author’s actions as a Persian official, again both in official documents and in authorial narrative, and all in Hebrew.14 In the second part, Neh 7–13, there is one occurrence of Yehudim in a mixed ethnic context which also involves ‘Judean’ speech.15 Conversely, Yisrael also occurs throughout both works: 40 times in Ezra, 22 times in Nehemiah. It is the usual self-designation in the parts with few Yehudim (Ezra 1–3; 7–10; Neh 7–13), but it is also used within the Yehudim parts, both in prayer (Neh 1:6, Hebrew), in authorial narrative (Ezra 5:1, Aramaic; Neh 2:10, Hebrew), and even in official documents (Ezra 5:11, Aramaic). A remarkable mixture within the narrative is found in Ezra 6:14, in Aramaic: ‘The elders of the Yehudaye built and continued … they built and completed at the behest of the God of Yisrael and at the behest of Cyrus …’ Another remarkable instance is Neh 5:8, where Nehemiah uses Yehudim while addressing fellow-Judeans, in Hebrew: ‘I said to them: we have redeemed our brothers, the Yehudim who had been sold …’16 All in all, Ezra and Nehemiah give an ambiguous impression. As in the books of Chronicles, there is a clear preference for the inner-Jewish name Yisrael, with a single occurrence of Yehudim in a mixed ethnic setting in the second part of Nehemiah. Here, we seem to be facing an early form of the dual usage. However, there is also the prominent incidence of what seems to be the usage of the Persian empire and its officialdom, in particular in those parts of Ezra-Nehemiah where both protagonists are acting as Persian officials.17 According to this usage, Yehudaye/Yehudim were always designated as such, both by others and by themselves, and we see it at work both in Hebrew and in Aramaic. 12 ישראל301×, יהודה185×. In 1 Chr 9:1 (as in Neh 4:4), the singular יהודהmeans ‘Judeans’. בני יהודהis frequent, often in the tribal sense, cf 9:3 with 9:4, פרץ בן יהודה. 13 Documents, Ezra 4:12; 6:7 (2×), 8; author’s narrative, 4:23; 5:1, 5; 6:14. For recent studies into the background in the Persian empire and its scribal tradition see Leuchter, ‘Aramaic Transition’; Kiel, ‘Reinventing Mosaic Tora’. 14 Documents, Neh 3:33, 34; 6:6; author’s narrative 1:2; 2:16; 4:6; 5:1, 8, 17; 13:23. 15 Neh 13:23, יהודים השיבו נשים אשדודיות עמוניות מואביות, and half of their children spoke אשדודיתand no יהודית. 16 Cf 5:1. There is also the more traditional בני יהודהwithin the narrative: Ezra 3:9; Neh 11:4 (2×), 25; 13:16. 17 Ezra and Nehemiah as Persian officials: Ezra 7:12 and Neh 5:14, and see Briant, Histoire de l’empire perse, 600–605; Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian 1: 131–138; Berquist, Judaism in Persia’s Shadow, 109–116.
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More generally, the use of ethnic tags seems to have been normal or even prescribed practice in the Persian empire, reflecting its multi-ethnic reality and ideology, and notably in the military.18 Herodotus interestingly informs us that in Persia’s imperial army, military units were ‘deployed according to ethnic affiliation’.19 Indeed, the campaign of the Greek division commanded by Xenophon in Persian service around 400 BCE has been an ingredient of classical education since ages, and the papyri have since added to our knowledge Yedoniah and his fellow Judean soldiers, garrisoned at about the same time in Upper Egypt.20 There are no indications that Ezra and Nehemiah are fundamentally composite works, other than that they cite correspondence from the Persian registry; we may take them as coherent documents of the Persian period. Moreover as I have noted (above p145 n10), the appellation Yehudi was not an innovation of the Persian period but is evidenced since the Assyrian invasions. It is also found rather frequently, e. g., in the latter part of Jeremiah which pertains to the Babylonian period. Hence the ethnonym already was in existence but seems to have gained wider currency in the Persian period. In this perspective, its non-use in the books of Chronicles, axiomatically ‘inner-Judean’ works intent on a revision of Israelite history, is significant and seemingly intentional. Something similar occurs in the narrative of Ezra 1–3 and 7–10 and Neh 7–13: no ‘Judeans’ are found except in the multi-ethnic setting of Neh 13:23. In contrast, ‘Judeans’ are frequent in Ezra 4–6 and Neh 1–6, where Ezra and Nehemiah act as Persian officials. In consequence, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah seem to document both the early stages of the Jewish dual usage and the intervention of Persian bureaucratic usage. This also constitutes an example of the import of social embedding. Ezra and Nehemiah were members of the Judean elite exiled to Babylon and as such not much different from their fellow exiles. But when performing a mission in the Persian empire, it apparently was fitting for them to adapt to the bureaucratic use of the sole ethnonym ‘Judean’. This constellation allows us better to describe the phenomenon we are dealing with. Yehudi does still reflect an outsider perspective and is apparently avoided as such by the editors of Chronicles. It is not used either by the authors of Ezra-Nehemiah in large parts, except once in the mixed ethnic setting of Neh 13:23. It occurs more extensively, however, in the sections where the protagonists act as Persian officials. Here, the external appellation imposes itself also for inner-Jewish speech situations: Judeans communicate with each other in terms of the empire and designate each other as ‘Judean’. It may also be what we have before us in the book of Esther, a book featuring the multi For background see Briant ibid. 184–196. Herodotus, Hist 7.60, ἀριθμήσαντες δὲ κατὰ ἔθνεα διέτασσον. Briant ibid. 207–211. 20 Similarly, Josephus, Ant Ap 1:172–175 cites Choirilos on a Jewish contingent in Xerxes’ campaign against Greece. 18 19
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nation Persian empire. Strangely contrasting with other biblical books, the male protagonist is habitually designated as ‘Mordecai the Judean’.21 Even if Esther apparently was edited in the Hellenistic period, it has retained the colouring of the Persian period. This leads me to a more general observation. Many infrastructural and administrative elements of the Persian empire resurface under its Hellenistic successors. This is understandable insofar as the Persian and Greek spheres of influence interpenetrated in many ways, both before and after Alexander’s conquest. Instead of the ‘Hellenocentrism’ traditional in classical studies, we must keep an open mind vis-à-vis Persian-Greek interaction in the military, administrative, commercial, cultural, and religious domains.22 Not the least important were legal elements inherited from the Persian period such as the privileges of Jewish communities in Asia Minor.23
Reactions to the Dual Usage Theory Not all scholars are ready to hypothesize a dual usage, envisaging a simultaneous but socially distinct use by Jews of ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’. A brief article by Solomon Zeitlin (1952) declares with characteristic either-or reasoning that ‘Israel’ was used till the Exile, then was replaced by ‘Judaeans’, but after 70 CE returned again when the rabbis reinstated ‘Israel’.24 More systematically, Graham Harvey’s 1996 monograph makes strictly separate semantic analyses of the occurrences of ‘Jew’, ‘Hebrew’, and ‘Israel’ before finally concluding that the three names partially overlap. Explicitly, the idea that such an overlap could reflect a socially distinct application in Jewish usage is offhand rejected as a ‘weak’ and ‘inadequate’ theory. Seemingly unable to imagine how socially distinct speech would work, Harvey thinks the dual usage theory presupposes that the ancient authors had an interest in ‘accurate historical reporting’ of the words spoken. Instead, he proposes they must have had ‘clear reasons for using one name rather than another’ – presumably based on the lexical meaning.25 As a result, he is 21 Empire: cf Esth 9:30. Habitual designation: מרדכי היהודי, Esth 5:13; 6:10; 8:7; 9:29, 31; 10:3. 22 On interpenetration see Momigliano, Alien Wisdom; Burkert, Die Griechen und der Orient; Funck, Hellenismus, esp introduction, ibid. 1–11; Betylon, ‘Provincial Government of Persian Period Judea’ (commerce). On the Hellenocentrist view (paralleled by a Judeocentrist one), Briant, Histoire de l’empire perse, introduction. 23 Josephus, Ant 14:187 mentions τὰ ὑπὸ Περσῶν καὶ Μακεδόνων ἀναγεγραμμένα as the basis for the Jewish privileges acknowledged by the Roman authorities. Cf the classic account by Tarn–Griffiths, Hellenistic Civilisation, esp 128–133 on Syria, and Berquist, Judaism in Persia’s Shadow, esp the summary at p233. 24 Zeitlin, ‘The Names Hebrew, Jew and Israel’. 25 Harvey, True Israel, 6f, 267f, the objection being against my 1986 article and Dunn, ‘Judaism in the Land of Israel’. Kuhn is not mentioned, which is remarkable since he developed the
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unable to explain the remarkably distinct usage of ‘Israel’ and ‘Jews’ in Jewish texts, most poignantly so in the case of the marriage and divorce formulae quoted in the Mishna and Tosefta.26 The point was well noted by James Dunn in the course of a study on Paul’s Jewishness.27 In the first part of an exhaustive three part survey of research on the use and meaning of Ioudaios (2010–14), David Miller also covers the Jewish dual usage as developed by Kuhn and myself, or in Miller’s more general phrasing, ‘the relationship between Ioudaios and “Israel”’.28 Miller takes note of the fact that the ‘insider-outsider pattern … works in a number of texts’ and that in particular ‘the Tosefta and Tannaitic Midrashim as well as Palestinian Amoraic literature fit the pattern perfectly’. He also registers the few surprising exceptions found in the Talmudim. He objects, however, that the pattern does not work well in 1 Maccabees in view of the Hasmonaean court texts, nor in 2 Maccabees, the inscriptions as analysed by Williams, and last not least in Philo and Josephus. In the end, he agrees with the criticism advanced in Stephen Wilson’s basically positive assessment to the effect that in my study ‘there are too many exceptions’ to sustain the dual model consistently and sometimes ‘the argument is somewhat circular’.29 I shall deal with these objections in the following. For now, I note that Miller and I agree that it makes a difference whether one deals, say, with rabbinic literature or with Josephus. Finally, an article by Nathan Thiel (2014) targets ‘the problems of the insideroutsider classification’ head-on. Citing Maurice Casey and Graham Harvey to the effect that ‘any insider/outsider bifurcation is ideologically biased’ and ‘the Jewish sources will not support an insider-outsider paradigm’,30 Thiel more moddual usage theory in addition to the separate lexical treatment of ‘Israel’, ‘Jew’, and ‘Hebrew’ that he followed and that is the hallmark of the ThWNT. The setup of Harvey’s book discourages seeing simultaneity. Of the 273 pp, a mere 4.5 pp are devoted to ‘Jew in early rabbinic literature’ and 9.5 pp to ‘Israel’, and they are dealt with widely apart (99–103, 257–266) 26 mKet 7:6, mNed 11:12, see below. Harvey, True Israel, 101f, overtly ignoring the importance of Mishna mss K and De Rossi 138 and instead using Danby and Neusner because they agree with the Bavli, merely concludes that Mishna and Tosefta have ‘no difficulty with the use of “Jews”’. 27 Dunn, ‘Who did Paul think he was’, 187f with n56. Dunn had picked up the dual usage theory from Kuhn, see Dunn, Partings of the Ways, 145 with 308 n27. 28 Miller, ‘The Meaning of Ioudaios’ (quote p100); idem, ‘Ethnicity comes of Age’; idem, ‘Ethnicity, Religion’. 29 Miller, ‘The Meaning of Ioudaios’, 106; Wilson, ‘Jews and Related Terms’, 169 n9. 30 Thiel, ‘Israel and Jew’, 82 citing Harvey, True Israel, 5–8 (although the latter does not evoke ‘ideological bias’ in this connection) and Casey, ‘Anti-Semitic Prejudices’, 282–286. Casey, regrettably, rejects the dual usage theory without discussing its substance (but referring to Harvey, True Israel, 5–8), on the sole assumption that it is based on ‘prejudice’ because its first advocate, Kuhn, was a Nazi (cf above p142 n4; Goodblatt, ‘Varieties of Jewish Identity’, 13 n4). On the Nazi links of Kuhn and of Kittel, the ThWNT’s first editor, see Casey ibid. 283f; Bormann, ‘Auch unter politischen Gesichtspunkten’. See also the sober assessment by Goodblatt, ‘The Israelites who resided’, 86–89, and cf below at p219 at n131 on Gutbrod.
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estly suggests that ‘Kuhn’s categorization may be inadequate at some points’ and that ‘supplementing the Jewish dual usage’ is needed. The insufficiency of the dual usage model would appear from ‘intra-Jewish’ texts using the name ‘Jew’: the Heracleopolis archive, the preface to 2 Maccabees, and certain Hebrew documents; again, I shall deal with these below. Thiel also points to ‘Israelites’ as used by Josephus in Ant 1–11. On the basis of these data, he concludes on the one hand ‘that in ancient Jewish texts written for a Gentile audience “Israel” is rare but not unprecedented’, and on the other, that ‘in inner-Jewish speech situations, … both “Israel” and “Jews” are attested.’ As rehearsed above, however, Josephus’ use of ‘Israelites’ in Antiquities refers to the pre-exilic period and expresses a ‘biblical-historical’ interest. Thiel stipulates that for him the point of querying the dual usage is not to dispute the preference for ‘Israel’, e. g., in Qumran and rabbinic texts, ‘but whether this implies that “Jew” ought to be classified as an outsider’s name’. Indeed, he claims, ‘“Jew” is frequently insider nomenclature.’31 Thiel’s argument is not quite transparent. Apart from arguing that the dual model is inadequate because ‘Jew’ is also used among Jews, he proposes to ‘supplement’ it by emphasizing the time-honoured background and inclusivist import of ‘Israel’ as the reason for its much more frequent use in inner-Jewish speech. Precisely this, however, leaves unexplained why ‘Jew’, which has no such background and import, would also be ‘frequently inside nomenclature’. If ‘Israel’ is preferable, why do Jews call themselves ‘Jews’ at all? There are further publications reacting to the 1986 article or touching on its subject matter, but which do not address the Jewish dual usage. These are dealt with in the following.
Exceptions to the Jewish Dual Usage The rhetoric of my 1986 study involved presenting the the dual usage theory at the outset in the clearest possible terms. This clarity may, paradoxically, have obscured the methodological rules that followed, stating among other things, ‘“Outside” appellations of Jews found in inner-Jewish sources in Hebrew are highly significant.’ Taking the dual usage for granted, I now want to focus on these exceptions. More precisely, they are the cases where the dual usage does not operate and only the external name Yehudi/Ioudaios is used in inner-Jewish speech situations. The possible causes for this ‘single Ioudaios use’ vary, as we shall see, while sometimes it is impossible to make them out. 31 Thiel, ‘Israel and Jew’, 97–99. Thiel’s dissertation aims to demonstrate that the Gospel of John, with its frequent mention of ‘Jews’, does not ‘witness to a religious schism’ and ‘the obstacles to an intra-Jewish reading are not insuperable’. See ‘Blinded Eyes and Hardened Hearts: Intra-Jewish Critique in the Gospel of John (Dissertation, Marquette University)’, viewed 2 May 2017 at www.marquette.edu/grad/documents/Thiel.pdf.
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For the sake of the discussion, I could also turn the argument around and start from the premise that ancient Jews in many cases called themselves as everyone else did, i. e. ‘Jews’, except in particular texts of their own, some very voluminous, where they called themselves ‘Israel’, a name outsiders normally did not use. The advantage of looking at things that way would be that I would avoid the idea that the external way of viewing Jews is less appreciative. Also, the internal way of viewing them would appear to be special, but not intrinsically superior. I propose to leave the question of which way of viewing Jews was ‘normal’ and which one ‘anomalous’ undecided for now and to come back to it later. Thus prepared, let us now address those situations and texts in which ancient Jews called themselves ‘Jews’. a. Individual ‘Jews’ in Jewish Surroundings In her 1997 study already cited, Margaret Williams offers a meticulous reassessment of ‘The Meaning and Function of Ioudaios in Graeco-Roman Inscriptions’, correcting where necessary the previous findings of Ross Kraemer and myself. Kraemer, in an article of 1989 under a similar title, had scrutinised the 44 pertinent inscriptions for geographical and other meanings than just ‘Jew’,32 following up Thomas Kraabel’s insistence on the ‘extreme’ variety of ancient Judaism.33 She concluded that these mentions of Ioudaios concern proselytes or pagans attracted to Judaism, and found no evidence for a geographical connotation. This conclusion is refined by Williams to the effect that Ioudaios in the inscriptions – eliminating the two cases where it concerns a personal name – just means a person of whatever geographic origin who was born or converted to be a ‘Jew’. Williams then turns to my 1986 assessment of the six exceptional occurrences in Jewish surroundings, especially the two inscriptions from Jewish cemeteries in Beth Shearim and Rome which do not mention that it concerns a proselyte, Σαρα Ιουδεα οσια and Marcia bona Iudea.34 I had suggested these may have been proselytes after all, but Williams may be more correct in proposing that they were meant to be called ‘good Jews’, as we say this also today. To that extent indeed ‘Jew’ does not indicate an ‘outside identity’. Still there is the curious effect that these women are praised using the name that normally is not used for a Jew in a Jewish context. While Williams finds that I try to ‘explain away’ exceptions to the dual usage, she also notes my ‘bafflement’ at the double designation of infant proselyte Irene, both as Ειουδεα and as Ισδραηλιτης.35 Kraemer, ‘On the Meaning of the Term “Jew” in Greco-Roman Inscriptions’. Cf Kraabel, ‘Roman Diaspora’, 455: Ιουδαιος/Judaeus has various meanings, and in the Smyrna inscription CII no. 742, οι ποτε Ιουδαιοι means ‘the people formerly of Judaea’. Cf criticism by Cohen, Beginnings, 78. 34 Beth Shearim 2: no. 158; CII no. 250; above at p152 nn37–40. 35 Williams, ‘Meaning and Function’, 254, 257 n74. At issue is CII no. 21, see above p153 n43. 32 33
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There are more such isolated cases where Ioudaios is used in inner-Jewish speech situations. As Miller noted, I located seven such instances in the Babylonian Talmud. Five of these concern halakha, formulated Jewish law which by definition is inner-Jewish, but nevertheless use Yehudi or Yehudai, in part in clear deviation from the usage of the earlier (Tannaic) parallels on which they are based.36 For lack of a better explanation, I conjectured specific circumstances in later Babylonia. I could specify this by speculating that conditions in the Sassanian empire continued in this respect that of its Achaemenid and Arsacid predecessors and usage of the exernal ethnonym could sometimes impose itself, but at this point I am not in a position to substantiate this. The same concerns the narrative in which a ‘Jewish’ midwife is mentioned where the earlier, authoritative text of the Mishna uses ‘Israelite’ (n128). Finally, the ironical saying, ‘Poverty becomes the Jews’ (bHag 9b) is an interesting case, as it is also found in Leviticus Rabba in one version mentioning ‘Jews’ and in another, ‘Israel’.37 The variance shows at least that some editors or copiists found the phrase Yehudim unfitting, while others preferred it, savouring the ironic effect of the external ethnonym. In the same vein, two passages in the Palestinian Talmud seem to mention Yehudim in inner-Jewish speech with an intended ironic effect.38 The question is how to call these cases. Maybe we could see them as a deliberate avoidance of the dual usage with ironical intent, as one can hear in Jewish conversation today, obviously ironically: ‘What kind of a Jew is he?’ It would be the counterpart of the phrase ‘a good Jew’. Of a different calibre are the two occurrences of Yehudim in the Mishna, the earliest rabbinic document and a thoroughly inner-Jewish text.39 Harvey is unable to explain these, I suggested, because he cannot envisage a socially distinct Jewish usage. Thiel, possibly inspired by Harvey, refers to these same passages while claiming that although ‘analysis cannot be undertaken here’, the uses of ‘Jews’ in such passages ‘present similar obstacles to an insider/outsider split’.40 Notwithstanding, sound analysis has made it clear that both passages anticipate the possibility of border-crossings between Jews and gentiles in cases where such a split is very much at play. This is fascinatingly the case with the matrimonial formula, ‘according to the law of …’, that is ambiguous as to the mention of Jews or Israel. Comparison with similar formulae in Tobit as well as in Greek and Edomite documents makes it likely that it concerns an ‘internationally’ used, 36 Above
p173 at nn129–133. R 13.4 (p281), ‘As R. Aha says, a Jew needs (to eat) carob and he will repent; for poverty becomes the Jews like a red strap on the breast of a white horse.’ LevR 35.6 (p824), ‘R. Aha says, Israel needs (to eat) carob and they will repent; for poverty becomes the children of Jacob like a red strap on the head of a white horse.’ In the parallels, the second saying is brought in the name of R. Akiva, see Margulies ad loc. 38 Above p169 n109b. 39 mKet 7:6 and mNed 11:12, above p164f at nn87–95. 40 Thiel, ‘Israel and Jew’, 91 with n46. 37 Lev
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flexible formula designed to cover marriage terms according to the prevailing law system for partners from different ethnic-cultural backgrounds.41 In such border-crossing contexts, social identities tend to be ambiguous, and the oscillating Jewish self-identification is no surprise. By analogy, this situation may also throw some light on the ‘enigma’ of the inscription just cited (following Williams’ translation):42 while little Irene was a ‘proselyte through her (adoptive?) father and mother’, she herself is emphatically called both ‘a Jewess and an Israelite’. b. The Jewish Politeuma at Heracleopolis Nathan Thiel adduces a set of documents with Ioudaioi in inner-Jewish interaction that is worth considering. It concerns the archive of the Jewish politeuma at Heracleopolis in Egypt, c. 140 BCE, containing administrative correspondence of the politeuma and requests made to it.43 According to its editors, the documents follow the style and language of the Ptolemaic chancellery, even though it concerns Jews and elements of Jewish law have been integrated. The requests are addressed to the ‘archons’ or ‘politarchs’ of the politeuma and often mention the Jewish status of the persons involved. In three cases, the request involves non-Jews, from which the editors conclude that the judicial competence of the archons was not strictly limited to Jews.44 In another case (no. 8) ‘Theodotos, a Jew’ from a different region, requests ‘the archons of the politeuma of Jews at Heracleopolis’ to enforce his contract with Plousia, ‘a Jewess recorded in the 41 On the development of the formula see Flusser–Safrai, ‘In the Image’, 50–54, and Kister, ‘Ke-dat Moshe we-Yisrael’; cf Friedman, Jewish Marriage 1: 162–167. On the interplay of legal frameworks extant in P. Yadin 10 and related contracts see Oudshoorn, Roman and Local Law, esp 379–398. In addition to the permutations of וישראל/ויהודאי/כדת משה ויהודים/כדין, we have ( כדת משה ויהודיתattested in Bavli mss on mKet 7:56; it became standard in the ketuba), as also ( כתורת משה ויהודיםcf Tob 6:13; 7:12f) and כהלכות גוברין יהודאין. More revealing still is a Geniza version reading ( כנימוס יהודייןTS 16.123, Friedman, Jewish Marriage 2: 157, dated 1052 CE), which effortlessly translates into κατὰ νόμον ᾽Ιουδαῖων, cf the Greek legal formulae cited from Gulak (above p165 n89) and the 2nd cent. BCE Edomite marriage contract cited by Kister ibid. 203 which reads, ]…[ כנומוס בנת, ‘according to the nomos of the daughters of […]’. Cf also כנומוסand היך נומוס, ‘as is customary’, in P. Yadin 46: 6, 8, in Hebrew: Yadin, Documents, 66. Friedman, Jewish Marriage 1: 166 suggests the ‘Jews/Israel’ shift derives from ‘linguistic or dialectical preferences’, while Flusser–Safrai (private communication) think the ‘Babylonian version …ויהודיתis in fact the oldest, and it changed into …וישראלwhen the halakha was codified in Hebrew’ (i. e. following Grintz, above p142 n6). Kister plausibly suggests that the formula conflates the basically parallel expressions of the law ‘of Moses’ and ‘of the Jews’, but he does not address the shift ‘Jews/Israel’. In the same connection, Lapin, ‘The Law of Moses and the Jews’, 80–84 brings in the situation of political transition, while Cotton, ‘Change and Continuity’, 211 refers to a ‘well-integrated’ multiethnic society’ and concludes that the formula ἑλληνικὸς νόμος in P.Yadin 18:51 denotes ‘local custom’. 42 Williams, ‘Meaning and Function’, 258, no. 4. 43 Cowey–Maresch, Urkunden der Juden von Herakleopolis; Thiel, ‘Israel and Jew’, 86f. 44 Cowey–Maresch, Urkunden, 12, 25.
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contract as inhabitant of Gargara’ (Anatolia) and her son, ‘a Jew recorded as one of Persian provenance’. It seems likely that the litigants’ identification as Ioudaioi was needed not only in view of the various other ethnic labels they carry but also to warrant their admissibility to the jurisdiction of the politeuma. Thiel also quotes Sylvie Honigman’s analysis.45 For Honigman, who is interested in the status and nature of Jewish politeumata in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, the archive confirms the assumption that ‘all politeumata known to us in Ptolemaic Egypt have links with the army’. In a later publication, she concludes that the Heracleopolis Jews ‘followed official Ptolemaic practice in using ethnic labels’ which could include the use of ‘ad hoc labels’.46 In this light the title πολιτάρχης sometimes used for the leaders of the politeuma is interesting: the word seems to be of Macedonian origin and was probably imported to Egypt by the Ptolemies, which makes a military-administrative link likely.47 We are obliged to Thiel for drawing attention to this evidence. The question is to what extent we can extrapolate from it. The military infrastructure, the formal language of the Ptolemaic chancellery, the mixed ethnic stratum, and the legal title attached to the status of being a Jew all give the impression of a specific situation which made it normal to use the ethnonym ‘Jews’ even in inner-Jewish communications. There is a significant analogy here with the situation of Ezra and Nehemiah, where as I said Persian bureaucratic usage imposed itself when the protagonists were acting in function of the empire. Moreover, this is one of the points where we must be aware of the continuities between the Persian and Hellenistic periods. Jewish soldiers continued to serve in Upper Egypt, now under Ptolemaic instead of Persian command. It was only natural that the practice of standard ethnic tagging continued, possibly with added emphasis under the Ptolemies given the strong bureaucratic tradition of Egypt. In connection with the Heracleopolis archive, Thiel also refers to the letters prefacing 2 Maccabees whose headings identify both addressees and senders as ‘Jews’.48 It is not so surprising, however, that the letters are sent ‘to the Jews in Egypt’, distinguishing them from other Egyptians; something similar is found in Jer 44:1, a prophecy addressed ‘to the Yehudim living in the land of Egypt.’49 What is truly surprising is that the first letter is sent by ‘the Jews in Jerusalem and 45 Honigman,
‘Politeumata and Ethnicity’. ‘Jewish Communities of Hellenistic Egypt’, 127. See also Cohen, Beginnings, 99–103 on the Egyptian papyri and ethnic labels in military surroundings. 47 MM s. v. πολιτάρχης: the word was ‘essentially Macedonian’ but ‘would be brought into Egypt naturally by some early Ptolemy’; cf below p216 n123. On the organizational structure of the Jewish settlements in Egypt including links with the military see further Schürer, History 3.1: 38–46; cf ibid. 87–137; Applebaum, ‘Organization of the Jewish Communities’, esp 473–477; Stern, ‘Jewish Diaspora’, 122–133. 48 Thiel, ‘Israel and Jew’, 87f. Cf analysis by Attridge, ‘Historiography’, 176–183. 49 Above p145 at n11. But no Yehudim are mentioned in the prophet’s letter to Babylon quoted in Jer 29:1. 46 Honigman,
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those in the land of Judea’,50 thus, as Thiel correctly establishes, using the label Ioudaios in ‘intra-Jewish’ communication. We are facing another exceptional situation. As Elias Bickerman has shown, it is that of the Hasmonaean chancellery, to which we now turn. c. Hasmonaean Bureaucratic Usage Bickerman established on grounds of epistolary style and language that the second Hanukka letter prefacing 2 Maccabees (1:10b–2:18) is a fabrication, while on the same grounds the first one (1:1–10a) is authentic.51 Bickerman saw the letter, written by ‘the brethren, the Jews in Jerusalem and in the region of Judea’ to ‘the brethren, the Jews in Egypt’, as an early example of the genre of ‘encyclical letters’ on calender issues sent from Jerusalem.52 Linguistic peculiarities53 led him to conclude that it concerns official letters written in Jerusalem in Hebrew or Aramaic, as may have been Hasmonaean custom, if necessary with an accompanying Greek translation. Bickerman thought that 2 Macc 1:10a dates the letter to the (Seleucid) year 188, i. e. 124 BCE, and moreover that it quotes an earlier letter (1:7f) referring to the restoration of the cult in Jerusalem and written ‘during the reign of Demetrios in year 169’, i. e. 143 BCE. This was just months before Demetrios II granted the Judeans freedom in year 170, ushering in the new era of Simon Maccabee (2 Macc 13:41f).54 This construction is accepted widely, but Daniel Schwartz has pointed out some anomalies and proposes a simpler interpretation.55 While the year 124 BCE offers no particular occasion for a letter about Hanukka, the manuscript evidence for 2 Macc 1:10a makes the reading ‘148’ preferable, i. e. 164 BCE, the year of the Maccabean Temple rededication. Hence it is much more likely that it concerns one letter written in 143 BCE to recommend ‘the festival of Tabernacles of the month of Kislev of the year 148’ to the Jews in Egypt.56 In either case then, we are concerned with a Hasmonaean letter. Already Kuhn drew attention to the remarkable fact that the Hasmonaean chancellery in Jerusalem issued official documents on behalf of ‘the Jews’ and 50 οἱ ἐν ʽΙεροσολύμοις ᾽Ιουδαῖοι καὶ οἱ ἐν τῇ χῶρᾳ τῆς ᾽Ιουδαίας (2 Macc 1:1), and ἡμεῖς οἱ ᾽Ιουδαῖοι (1:7). 51 Bickerman, ‘Jewish Festal Letter’ (cited by Thiel, ‘Israel and Jew’, 88 n29, in the German, ZNW 32 (1933) 233–254). See also Momigliano, ‘Second Book of Maccabees’. 52 The reference is to the Aramaic encyclical letters of R. Gamliel, see above at p148 n22 and p188 n6. Bickerman ibid. 419 n30 cites these from Str-Bill 1:154. 53 Bickerman, ‘Jewish Festal Letter’, 421f mentions e. g. the twice repeated phrase καὶ νύν (2 Macc 1:6, 9), cf Aramaic וכען, and the praescriptio (2:1) that is ‘neither Greek nor purely semitic’. Cf Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, 132f, ‘paratactic Semitic (Hebrew or Aramaic) style’. 54 Bickerman ibid. 414–417. See above p151 at n34a. 55 Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, 519–529, ‘Appendix 1: On the Letters in Chapters 1–2’. 56 Ibid. 525, pointing out links with 2 Macc 10:1–8, betraying the hand of the editor of the book. See ibid. 143 on the early association of Hanukka with Tabernacles.
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their leaders.57 Citing also Hasmonaean coin legends, he presented 1 Maccabees as his crown witness, since there what he called this ‘diplomatic’ or ‘bureaucratic’ usage exists side by side with the regular inner-Jewish58 usage of the author’s own narrative, with ‘Jew’ used by non-Jews and ‘Israel’ by Jews among each other. Kuhn saw this ‘instructively’ summarised in the verse that was just mentioned and now deserves being quoted: ‘In year 170 the yoke of the gentiles was removed from Israel, and the people began to write in their documents and contracts: “In the first year of Simon the great high priest and commander and leader of the Jews”’ (1 Macc 13:41f). In his inner-Jewish narrative, the author uses Israêl as the name for his people, but when citing Hasmonaean documents, he mentions Ioudaioi. Kuhn could not explain why this is so, and my own article only offered a tentative explanation (above p152 n36a) from ‘the external Hellenization of Hasmonaean court’. In a series of publications, David Goodblatt has submitted the usage of the Hasmonaeans to sustained scrutiny, taking the dual usage theory as his point of departure.59 Hesitating about my own rather bland explanation, he first explained the Hasmonaean usage as ‘a Greek calque and a symptom of Hellenization’.60 He then added the subsidiary assumption of an ‘inner-Jewish development … perhaps influenced by Aramaic and Persian government usage’,61 later modifying this into ‘an internal Hebrew development, perhaps resulting from an Aramaic influence’, with the subsidiary assumption that for Jews, writing in Aramaic and Greek Hebrew would entail the use of ‘Jew’ but in Hebrew, ‘Israel’.62 Ultimately, Goodblatt admitted that in addition to the influence of Greek usage, what could well have caused the use of ‘Jews’ by the Hasmonaean bureaucracy is its ‘inertia’ in continuing the usage of the Persian chancellery, especially when writing in Aramaic, the same usage that we also find in the text of Megillat Taanit and of ancient ketubot.63 Goodblatt also adduces further materials. In their respective works entitled ‘On the Jews’, Artapanos and Eupolemos, Jewish authors of the Hellenistic era quoted by Eusebius, ‘substitute “Judeans” for “Israel” even when writing of the “biblical” era’, as distinct from Josephus, who writes ‘Israelites’ when referring to that period.64 Conversely, the ‘inner-Jewish’ version of the Hasmonaean coin legend חבר היהודיםis possibly found in a textual variant of CD 12:8, i. e. חבר 57 Kuhn,
‘᾽Ισραήλ, ᾽Ιουδαῖος’, 361f. ibid. 362f defines it as ‘Palestinian-Jewish usage’. 59 Referenced by Miller, ‘Meaning of Ioudaios’, 106–109; Thiel, ‘Israel and Jew’, 88–90. Goodblatt began calling it an ‘anomaly’ in 2009, see below. 60 Goodblatt, ‘From Judeans to Israel’ (1998), 35. 61 Goodblatt, Elements (2006), 156. 62 Goodblatt, ‘The Israelites’ (2009), 84, 82 (using the word ‘anomaly’, 75, 79, 82). 63 Goodblatt, ‘Varieties’ (2012), 22f. 64 Goodblatt, ‘Varieties’, 17f. On the Περὶ ᾽Ιουδαίων genre see Schürer, History 1:41f. 58 Kuhn
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ישראל – bringing out once again the anomaly of the Hasmonaean court usage.65 Another relevant element cited by Goodblatt is the Greek plural gentilic paralleling the ‘classic’ Semitic singular form as found in coins of the Hellenistic era from Tyre (ΤΥΡΙΩΝ for )לצר, Sidon (ΣΙΔΩΝΙΩΝ for )לצדנם, and Beirut (ΒΗΡΥΤΙΩΝ for )לבירת.66 This makes us understand ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ paralleling יהוד, although we also find the Hebrew and Aramaic plural, יהודיםand יהודיא, paralleling יהוד. Overlooking the material, I agree with the main part of Goodblatt’s final explanation: it was ‘inertia’ that caused the Hasmonaeans to stick to the Persian name of the province and to keep using the ethnonym Ioudaioi/Yehudim in official letters. I cannot agree with the linguistic factor Goodblatt brings in. Jewish texts can use Yisrael in Aramaic, just as in Hebrew they can use Yehudim. But the explanation from inertia is convincing, the more so in view of some parameters that have come up in the above: (1) Hellenization was a two-way exchange process that allowed many elements of the Persian period to live on; (2) there is a difference in compliance with bureaucratic conventions between the elite and their literary works, and the common people with the ‘non-authored’ sources closer to them; (3) a ‘professional conservatism’ of chancelleries spans our period: ‘Judah’ and ‘Judeans’ were around since the Assyrian empire, passed on to Persians, Ptolemies, Seleucids, and Hasmonaeans, finally to be adopted by the Romans (Iudaea, Iudaei); (4) the military substructure of the Jewish settlements in Egypt in Persian and Ptolemaic times, as testified by the Elephantine and Heracleopolis papyri, entailed the standard use of recognised ethnonyms. Within these parameters, it is altogether likely that when Simon Maccabee was granted ‘freedom’ by Demetrios II in 143 BCE, the chancellery in Jerusalem held on to the bureaucratic usage indicating their state as Yehuda/Ioudaia and its citizens as Yehudim/Ioudaioi. Indeed, so much is confirmed by the inscriptions in jar impression stamps and on coins.67 It differed from the dual usage presumably observed by the common people as appears from Judith and Tobit onwards, in the authorial narrative of 1 Maccabees, the Gospels, and rabbinic literature. 1 Macc 13:42 strikingly exposes the contrast, while the Hasmonaean letters heading 2 Maccabees show up the bureaucratic usage. The plural ethnonym in the Hasmonaean coin legend hever Yehudim was conform with Hellenistic style but was in itself not new, as seen in Ezra 5:1, ‘the Judeans in Yehud’. Finally, the above argument perspective also offers an explanation for the difference with the revolts against Rome. The Hasmonaean state was created top-down or at least it left the Jerusalem chancery in place. By contrast, the 65 Goodblatt, Elements, 151 with n28. Cf also Goodblatt, ‘Varieties’, 21, citing 4Q448, the (apparently un-sectarian) psalm of praise on King Yonatan, יונתן המלך וכל קהל עמך ישראל. 66 Goodblatt, Elements, 154f; ‘The Israelites’, 83f. 67 Jar stamps: Lipschits–Vanderhooft, Yehud Stamp Impressions; coins: Betylon, ‘Provincial Government of Persian Period Judea’.
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revolutionary leadership of 66 CE had an anti-elite impetus that grew in time, while the one of 132 CE had ramified roots in society.68 Thus viewed, the legend ‘Israel’ was not so much a ‘nationalist innovation’ of the insurgents as an emanation from inherited inner-Jewish usage. d. Philo and Josephus Starkly contrasting with rabbinic literature, Philo’s two political treatises use only Ioudaios. The same is true of Josephus’ Jewish War, Life, and Against Apion, as well as Antiquities for the post-exilic period (excepting biblical quotations). These works all address a wide, ‘international’ audience, and the exclusive use of Ioudaios agrees with the usage of Greek and Roman authors, or more precisely, with what Steve Mason in another part of the discussion (below p84) calls the Graeco-Roman ‘ethnographic tradition’. This does not surprise, as Josephus’ works emulate those of the great Greek historians (witness Thucydidean phraseology in War 1:1f). As I said, Josephus was a declared member of the educated elite in Jerusalem (explicitly so: Life 1–12), later in Rome, and he would want to conform to the conventions of his class (cf Ag Ap 1:4). Similar things can be assumed for Philo’s political treatises, dealing as they do with important matters discussed by the elite in Alexandria and Rome, obviously Philo’s class as well (Josephus, Ant 18:259). It is a little different with Philo’s philosophical-exegetical treatises which basically seem to presuppose a Jewish audience. Here we would expect an inner-Jewish speech situation, and indeed, ‘Israel’ appears regularly, not only in biblical citations or allegorical expositions but also with explicit reference to ‘the people of Israel’. However, as Miller points out, there are also such standard phrases as ‘lawgiver of the Ioudaioi’ and ‘nation of the Ioudaioi’,69 thwarting the rule of dual usage. The result is a mixed situation, which somehow may be typical of Alexandria or, more generally, of Egypt. If indeed the Jewish politeuma in Alexandria to which Philo belonged also had ‘links with the army’ on the organizational level as Honigman assumes,70 Ptolemaic bureaucratic convention, lingering on in the Roman period, may also have been applicable. In other words, the inner-Jewish self-identification as Ioudaios would here be felt to be 68 The archaeological survey by Zissu, ‘Interbellum Judea 70–132 CE’, concludes that ‘it was the rural Jewish population of Judea that provided the geographic, demographic, and economic basis for this revolt’ (of 132 CE). 69 Miller, ‘Meaning of Ioudaios’, 105. People of Israel: e. g. Philo, Post 54, 63, 92. Flacc and Leg have 71× Ιουδαιος plus once Ισραηλ in an explanatory note (Leg 4:2). All other treatises taken together: 79× Ισραηλ, 32× Ιουδαιος, including εθνος/γενος/νομοθετης/αρχιερευς των Ιουδαιων. 70 Above n46. Cf Ant 12:8, Ptolemy I ‘assigned many (Jews) to his garrisons (εἰς τὰ φρούρια) and made them equal in civic rights (ἰσοπολίτας) with the Macedonians at Alexandria’. The phrase ‘Macedonian’ has a military ring.
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fitting, or in paraphrase: while Israêl is the innermost name for our people and Greek is ‘our’ language, we call ourselves Ioudaioi.71 I shall further pursue this line of thought in the next section. Meanwhile, a closer look at the usage of Josephus’ Antiquities is useful. ‘Israel(ite)’ is used until Ant 11:312, a total of 196 times.72 More rarely, Ioudaios appears 27 times in books 1–10, often anachronistically, either by the author or by sources he has incorporated, but it begins to be used profusely from Ant 11:6 on.73 Clearly, book 11, beginning with Cyrus’ reign, marks the transition. Indeed, the tribal-territorial explanation of Ioudaios which Josephus gives as I noted (above at p145) occurs here. But why only at 11:173, rather than at the beginning of the book? The fact is, Josephus inserts it after a speech of Nehemiah who, having ‘summoned all the people to Jerusalem’, addresses them as ἄνδρες ᾽Ιουδαῖοι (Ant 11:169). This address is not only surprising for an innerJewish setting, it is also extremely rare in our ancient sources and apparently occurs in just one other passage that I shall shortly address. The parallel biblical verse (Neh 2:17) does not contain it either. In fact, Josephus paraphrases that verse together with the preceding one, where the protagonist informs us that the people did not know what his plans are, for ‘I had not yet told the Yehudim, the priests, the nobles, the seganim, and the rest who were doing the work’ (Neh 2:16). Indeed, after a brief preview of the plans, Josephus’ paraphrase similarly concludes, ‘And the ᾽Ιουδαῖοι prepared for the work.’ And at that very point, the explanation of ᾽Ιουδαῖοι follows. We recognize Persian bureaucratic usage involving also the administrative office of segen, in association with Nehemiah as an official carrying empowering letters from Xerxes, as Josephus does not fail to mention.74 It seems unlikely that ἄνδρες ᾽Ιουδαῖοι in Ant 11:169 reflects a lost version of the book of Nehemiah. More probably, we see Josephus’ pen at work, ‘authentically’ rewriting Nehemiah’s actions. It is remarkable that this paraphrase immediately precedes his explanation of Ioudaios. This seems to betray an awareness of the peculiar function of the word at that point in Nehemiah. If correct, this observation implies the possibility that Josephus was also aware of the particular usage of the Graeco-Roman ethnographic tradition, a possibility that will concern us later.
Our people: above n69. Our language: Philo, Conf 129. 196× ᾽Ισραηλίτης, plus 2× the personal name: ᾽Ισραῆλον (Ant 1:333) and ᾽Ισραήλου (4:180). 73 Anachronisms: above p160 n67. Ιουδαῖος from Ant 11 on: 669×, of which 91× in book 11 alone. For Josephus’ historical awareness about the names see also Ant 1:146, τοὺς ᾽Ιουδαίους Ἑβραίους ἀρχῆθεν ἐκάλουν. 74 Neh 2:9; Ant 11:168. 71 72
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e. Other Hellenistic Jewish Authors David Goodblatt, I noted, draws the attention to fragments of Artapanos and Eupolemos, two Hellenistic Jewish authors who speak of Ioudaioi even in referring to Moses and the exodus. The fragments of their otherwise lost works are preserved in Eusebius, and to a lesser extent in Clement of Alexandria. However all these fragments were taken from the proliferous Greek author Alexander Polyhistor, or possibly from another intermediary in the case of Clement.75 Hence we cannot be sure whether it concerns the usage of Artapanos and Eupolemos or of their first or secondary transmitter, for whom the use of Ioudaios would be natural. Such caution is not in order when dealing with the well-preserved Epistle of Aristeas. Its fictionalized narrative presents the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek as a recognition of the Jews in Alexandria. It is well-rooted in Egypt and mentions the Jewish politeuma of Alexandria in connection with the formal recognition of the translation (Arist 310). The author presents himself as entertaining close relations with king Ptolemy and with ‘Eleazar the high priest of the Ioudaioi’ (Arist 1) and hence belonging to the elite. He only speaks of Ioudaioi. A different situation is found in another text associated with Egypt with reasonable certainty, the ‘biblical romance’ of Joseph and his Egyptian lover Aseneth. As contrasted with Aristeas’ reasonably developed Greek, the work evinces a simple, Semiticizing Greek, while also integrating features of the popular Hellenistic novel.76 One would presume an author of more common background retelling a popular biblical story in vulgar Greek. And significantly, his narrative mentions no Ioudaioi, only once Hebraioi as contrasted with ‘Egyptians’, and furthermore seven times Israel in prayer contexts.77 The Ioudaioi in the Hasmonaean letters in 2 Macc 1:1–9 have been taken care of in the above, but not those in the main body of 2 Maccabees. Except for the mentions of Israêl in prayer contexts, the epitome of the five part work by Jason of Cyrene uses the external name Ioudaioi only; I noted this in my 1986 article without offering an explanation. The difficulty is that an epitomator of unknown provenance has created the present work. On the face of it, the situation resembles that of Philo’s philosophical-exegetical treatises, where innerJewish Israêl is used alongside with Ioudaioi. To the extent that the epitomator has preserved Jason’s style, that author’s standard use of the external ethnonym may be reflective of the situation of Cyrenaic Jewry, which had been under Ptolemaic influence.78 75 See introductions: on Artapanos by J. J. Collins in OTP 2: 889–896; on Eupolemos by F. Fallon, ibid. 861–864; on Alexander Polyhistor by J. Strugnell, ibid. 777–779. 76 See the extensive introduction of C. Burchard in OTP 2: 177–201. 77 Ἑβραῖοι, Jos et As 1:7; ᾽Ισραήλ, 7:5; 8:10; 22:3; 23:13; 25:5, 7; 28:13. 78 See Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, 16–37 for a thorough discussion of the composition history. Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 12–16 interprets it as a diasporan work.
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f. Conclusions The simplest way to explain the varied use of the names is still, in my view, by assuming that Yehudi/Ioudaios is the external identifyer, and Yisrael/Israêl the internal name of ancient Jews. Jews used these names in two ways. One is the dual usage that arose most likely in the late Persian or early Hellenistic era, with Yisrael used in inner-Jewish speech and Yehudi in interactions with others. The other way is adopting the outsiders’ perspective for various reasons and only using the external name Yehudi/Ioudaios. Having reviewed the situations that I know of where this happened, I shall now try to outline the various possible causes. (1) In the Jewish contexts constituted by inscriptions at Jewish locations and by rabbinic literature, there are only very few anomalous mentions of ‘Jews’. Some of these appear to involve such interactions or ‘border crossings’ anyway, some express praise or irony vis-à-vis ‘good Jews’ or ‘such Jews’, and some, in the Babylonian Talmud, appear to reflect conditions to me unknown that otherwise encouraged using the external ethnonym. These remain exceptional cases hard to accommodate in an overall explanation. (2) The documents of the Jewish politeuma at Herakleopolis only use Ioudaios to indicate ‘Jews’ in inner-Jewish correspondence. Analysis has revealed the military substructure of such politeumata, in which Ptolemaic bureaucratic convention involved standard use of the external ethnonym. (3) Official texts of the Hasmonaean kingdom such as diplomatic letters, coins, and contracts use Ioudaioi/Yehudim also in inner-Jewish communication. The Hasmonaean chancellery simply appears to have continued the Persian– Ptolemaic–Seleucid bureaucratic tradition using the external ethnonym. (4) While addressing the international educated elite, Philo’s political treatises and Josephus’ War, Life, and Against Apion use the external ethnonym, and this seems to involve compliance with the appropriate bureaucratic tradition. The same is true for Josephus’ Antiquities, except in covering the pre-exilic period, where he follows the Bible in using the ethnonyms Israêl and Hebraioi, with some anachronistic Ioudaioi. Furthermore, Philo’s philosophical-ethical treatises often use the name Israêl but also refer to ‘the ethnos’ or ‘the high priest of the Ioudaioi’. It is as though even when involved in inner-Jewish contemplations, Philo followed the standard convention of the Jewish politeuma in Alexandria using Ioudaioi. (5) Other Graeco-Jewish works vary in their use of the names. Aristeas, explicitly associated with leading circles of the Jewish politeuma of Alexandria, uses only Ioudaios, but the more popular Joseph and Aseneth, apparently also of Egyptian vintage, prefers Israêl with once Hebraioi. The mixed usage in 2 Maccabees reminds of Philo’s philosophical-exegetical treatises and may echo Ptolemaic bureaucratic usage.
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In summary, it seems that apart from the rare individual anomalies mentioned in no. 1, the use of the ethnonym Ioudaios suggested itself to Jewish authors via three spheres of influence that could at least partially overlap or coalesce: the ‘inertia’ of the Hasmonaean chancellery (no. 3), the normative usage of the Ptolemaic bureaucracy in Egypt, and possibly in Cyrene (nos. 2, 4, 5), and the Graeco-Roman ethnographic tradition (no. 4). The influence presumably was felt most strongly when writing official documents, writing in Ptolemaic Egyptian surroundings, or addressing the cultured elite. By contrast, the dual usage is found in sources whose creators seem to have been less susceptible to these influences and to have stood closer to the common people, such as Joseph and Aseneth, Judith and Tobit, the authorial narrative of 1 Maccabees, the Gospels, rabbinic literature, and last but not least, the inscriptions in Jewish locations. Thus my 1986 conclusion that the use of the names Israel and Jew is ‘an effective indicator of the socio-religious identification of any document’ (above p174) needs refinement. What must be added is the aspect of social embedding. The exclusive use of Yehudi/Ioudaios at the authorial level places a text in a non-Jewish or ‘supra-Jewish’ perspective, and it now seems likely that this had to do with particular political contexts and with the awareness of such contexts in authors of elite provenance. Conversely, the overriding use of Yisrael/Israêl in more popular-level works conveys an inner-Jewish perspective in line with biblical covenant history and reflects a distance vis-à-vis political context that presumably was typical of common Jews. The latter sentiment is captured in the poignant saying rabbinic tradition attributes to the first century BCE sage Shemaia: ‘Love work, hate lordship ()רבנות, and stay away from power (( ’)רשותmAv 1:10).79 Finally coming back to the question of what usage to call ‘normal’ and what ‘anomalous’, my results suggests that this would come down to choosing between texts closer to the mass of common Jews and texts closer to the elite. Obviously, that is not a choice for historians to make. We must accept that ancient Jews had different ways of speaking about themselves.
The Translation Problem: Jew or Judean? The 1986 article focussed on the dual Jewish usage and engaged only tangentially with the question of translating ancient Ioudaios/Yehudi into modern speech. The above has yielded insights that may be helpful in that area as well. First, however, I shall review relevant elements of the discussion (a full survey
79 See Albeck, Mishna 4: 355 and 494, referring to Sir 7:4–6; 9:13; 13:9–13. In mAv 2:3, the 3rd cent. R. Yehuda Nesia is said to have expressed a similar sentiment.
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is given by Miller, see below). This will include a glance at the subject of the next section, the implications for New Testament study. The ancient thesis that Ioudaioi must be translated as ‘Judeans’ was revived by Malcolm Lowe in two studies (1976, 1981) targeting the Gospel of John and some New Testament apocrypha. Lowe maintained that Ioudaios primarily had the geographical sense of ‘Judean’ until the Bar Kokhba War, when Judea in the narrower sense was emptied of Jews. Moreover translating the Johannine Ioudaioi as ‘Jews’ would continue to give support to antisemitism.80 In touching on the issue, my 1986 article was wrong in the conclusion (above p146 at n15) that since the emergence of conversion in the second century BCE, ‘Yehudi can no longer be translated “Judean” but should be rendered “Jew”’. The territorial component of Ioudaios receded but certainly did not disappear, depending on the documents one is dealing with. Going over much of the material addressed in the above, Shaye Cohen discussed the various meanings of Ioudaios and its implications (1999).81 He noted that the predominant ethnic-territorial meaning ‘Judean’ faded along with the emergence of conversion to Judaism, which he pinpointed to the late second century BCE, but he did not think it disappeared.82 Since then, anyone from anywhere could join the ethnos of the Ioudaioi, and consequently Ioudaios was redefined in two ways. In the political sense, the peoples conquered by the Hasmonaeans also became Ioudaioi; this political connotation faded with the demise of the Hasmonaean state. In the religious sense, the Ioudaioi came to be seen as an ‘ethno-religion’. The novel concept, introduced in 2 Maccabees, was Ioudaïsmos, ‘Judaeanness’ or ‘Jewishness’. Interacting with many elements of Cohen’s argument, Steve Mason (2007) laid out the reasons for his editorial decision to publish the newly translated and commented-on works of Josephus under the titles of The Judaean War and The Judaean Antiquities.83 Translating ancient Ioudaios as ‘Jew’, thus Mason, means applying the modern idea of adherence to the ‘religion’ of ‘Judaism’ to Antiquity. However, Ioudaïsmos, a word rarely used, indicates the ‘Maccabaean countermovement’ against Hellênismos. Mason’s frame of reference is the ethnographic tradition initiated by Herodotus that was very influential in the Graeco-Roman world and that indeed was also followed by Philo and Josephus.84 According to this tradition, the ‘Judeans’ as an ethnos were defined by their homeland Judaea just as were Arabs, Babylonians, or Egyptians. It is correct that anyone could 80 Lowe,
‘Who were the ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ?’, and ‘ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ of the Apocrypha’. Cohen, Beginnings, 69–197. 82 Cohen, Beginnings, 70, 91, 105, taking in also the evidence of Judith, dates the origins of conversion to the later second century BCE in view of 2 Macc 6:6; 9:17. 83 Mason, FJTC; idem, ‘Jews, Judaeans’, 457f. However, since some volume authors in the project prefer translating ‘Jew’ (thus vol 7b on Ant 15 by J. W. van Henten), Mason accepts divergence on the matter, see his (modified) preface ibid. xi. 84 Mason, ‘Jews, Judaeans’, 483f, 489–493. 81
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join this ethnos, but incorrect to conclude that thereby the geographic definition changed into a ‘religious’ one. Mason published his own description of the revolt under the title A History of the Jewish War because, as he explains at page 90, ‘that is the familiar translation’. From that point on, however, he will exclusively use ‘Judaean war’ in accordance with the ancient ethnographic paradigm.85 The importance of the Graeco-Roman ethnographic tradition is also emphasized by John Barclay, in the introduction to his commentary on Josephus’ Against Apion in the series edited by Mason. While the apologetical rhetoric of the work involves emphasising ‘religious’ vehicles of Jewish identity such as the Temple and the law, it also pointedly asserts the importance of kinship and of the attachment to the land. For this reason Barclay in his commentary, ‘whether speaking in Josephus’ voice or in my own’, will use ‘Judeans’, and he presents this as the ‘most skillful’ of the compositions Josephus wrote ‘on behalf of his fellow Judeans’.86 Major difficulties with Mason’s position were expressed by Daniel Schwartz (2007, 2014), another author on the Josephus project.87 Among other examples, Schwartz sets 1 and 2 Maccabees up for comparison, without addressing the Jew/Israel question.88 1 Maccabees, thus Schwartz, reads as a Judean history focussed on the Hasmonaean dynasty and interested in the Temple, while 2 Maccabees is a Jewish history with diaspora colouring and an interest in Jewish law and tradition. Schwartz finds a similar polarity in Josephus. His earlier work should be called ‘Judean War’ because its focus is on Judaea and the Roman military ambience is predominant. Indeed, Roman historians call their army in the region exercitus judaicus, and accordingly, Josephus refers to his earlier work as ἰουδαϊκὸς πόλεμος, ‘Judean War’.89 Antiquities, however, was written when Josephus was permanently settled in Rome, and it has a more ‘religious’ focus: more mention of providence and of God and an emphasis on the law. In other words, Josephus now wrote ‘Jewish Antiquities’.90 For Schwartz, Josephus’ case shows that ‘Jewish identity in antiquity was anything but unambiguous’, and exclusively translating Ioudaios as ‘Judean’ would mean to prefer ‘something relatively simple and clear rather than something complex and ambiguous’.91 A different objection against Mason’s argument was advanced by Anders Runesson, (2008). Runesson agrees with most of Mason’s ideas vis-à-vis anHistory of the Jewish War, 88–90 with n104. lxi. More in general, Barclay discusses the question in Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews, 9 n19 and 157f n2, stating that he will sometimes use ‘Jew’, other times ‘Judean’. 87 Schwartz, ‘Judaean or Jew’; idem, Judeans and Jews (see ibid. 48 about his contribution to the project). 88 Schwartz, Judeans and Jews, 11–20. 89 Schwartz, ‘Judaean or Jew’, 11f. See e. g. Josephus, Ant 1:203; Life 27. 90 Schwartz, Judaeans and Jews, 48–61. 91 Schwartz, ‘Judaean or Jew’, 9, 22. 85 Mason,
86 Barclay, Against Apion, lv–lxi, quotes ibid. xvii and
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cient Ioudaios. However, in his view it is incorrect to oppose its meaning to the modern ethnic-religious ‘Jew’. In fact, such an opposition is inspired by the late antique Christian idea of ‘Judaism’. Jews have never given up the link with their ‘homeland’, and Judaism has always retained a territorial component. ‘In sum then, based on Mason’s identification of central components of the identity connected to what in Greek was called hoi Ioudaioi, and noting that such components are still central to what is called the Jews in English, the terms “Jew”, “Jewish”, “Judaism” should be retained … to designate this ethnos in antiquity as well as today.’92 The third part of David Miller’s exhaustive study (2014) carefully reviews and weighs the various arguments given.93 His conclusion is that ‘ethnicity’ does appear to be the most adequate concept to describe ancient Ioudaioi and other related groups, but that to insist that they ‘were an ethnos like any other ancient ethnic group threatens to obscure what was distinct as well as conventional’ about their identity. Relegating the modern question of how to translate Ioudaios to an appendix, he observes that ‘the complexity of Jewish identity today resembles the complexity of what it meant to be a Ioudaios in the ancient world’. If we must choose, and choose we must, the best translation is ‘Jew’, because it ‘is associated, in modern parlance, with ethnicity, culture and religion, and the complexity of the modern term closely mirrors the complexity of the ancient term’.94 Finally, I want to refer to the internet forum where main participants in the discussion are led by Adele Reinhartz in seeking mutual clarification of their positions (2014).95 Reinhartz shares Lowe’s difficulties with the Johannine ‘Jews’, but she does not wish to ‘let the Gospel of John off the hook’ by translating ‘Judeans’ and thus eliminating the ‘Jews’. For a provisional solution she suggests to respect the ambiguities and leave Ioudaios untranslated. Overlooking the discussion, two axes of dispute draw the attention: clarity– unclarity and change–permanence. The challenge facing us is how to accommodate the phenomena that are clear and/or permanent alongside with those that are unclear and those that change. Let us start from the clarity and permanence of the ethnographic tradition that is also Mason’s starting point, insisting that there is no shift toward a ‘religious’ definition of Ioudaios – it just means ‘Judean’. Obviously, this claim must be accepted for those sources where it applies. Schwartz agrees that Josephus’ earlier work could be called Judean War, in conformity with the interpretation Runesson, ‘Inventing Christian Identity’, quote 69f. Miller, ‘Ethnicity, Religion, and the Meaning of Ioudaios’, discussing also the views of, e. g., P. F. Esler, A.-J. Levine, A. Runesson, and S. Schwartz. 94 Miller, ‘Ethnicity, Religion, and the Meaning of Ioudaios’, 255, 257f. 95 Law–Halton, ‘Jew and Judean’, with contributions by A. Reinhartz, S. Mason, D. Schwartz, A. Yoshiko Reed, J. Taylor, M. Lowe, J. Klawans, R. Sheridan, and J. Crossley. 92 93
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of the war and its theatre by Roman historians. That interpretation, we may presume, was informed by the ethnographic tradition initiated by Herodotus, whose project, after all, was ‘to inquire’ about the war between ‘Hellenes’ and ‘Barbarians’, i. e., Persians (Hist 1.1). Schwartz also agrees that 1 Maccabees reads as Judean historiography because it is centred on the Hasmonaean dynasty and the Jerusalem Temple. I would add that although 1 Maccabees is modelled on Hebrew court history rather than Greek historiography, the work goes along well with the ethnographic tradition, as it involves various conflicts between Persians, Hellenes, Jews, and Romans (cf 1 Macc 1:1–11).96 The aspect of change, however, is no less important. Clearchus is cited as a disciple of Aristotle who gave a territorial definition of Ioudaios: ‘They are called … Judeans, taking the name from the territory’.97 Centuries later, Cassius Dio (c. 200 CE) cites the territorial definition but adds that ‘it applies also to all the rest of mankind, although of alien race (ἀλλοεθνεῖς), who affect their customs. And this class exists even among the Romans …’98 Accordingly, scholars have emphasized the decline of the ethnic-territorial aspect and the rise of the ethnic-religious one. Lowe put it rather late, in connection with the loss of the Judean homeland after the Bar Kokhba War, 135/6 CE, while Cohen and I thought that it was related to the appearance of conversion somewhere during the second century BCE. I estimated that the geographical meaning was defunct by that time, but Cohen more correctly allowed it to linger on. Indeed, we see it at work in the historiography of the ‘Judean war’, and we recognize the link with the bureaucratic tradition. While in that context ‘Judean’ is a justifiable choice for translation, elsewhere it must most often be ‘Jew’. There is another piece of clear evidence.99 In the Jewish inscriptions across the ancient world as analysed by Williams, Ioudaios/Iudaeus never has a territorial meaning. Excepting its function as a personal name, the word always has the ethnic-religious meaning best translated ‘Jew’, while sometimes expressing an exceptional role within the Jewish community: a ‘good Jew’. It follows that this is how ancient common Jews understood the term, differing from the bureaucratic tradition. And excepting the two anomalous ‘good Jews’, this understanding in the inscriptions goes along with the Jewish dual usage. The following general picture emerges, and interestingly, at one level it displays the interference of the ‘dual/single usage’ and the ‘Jew/Judean’ questions. By the late second century BCE, Jews had developed a dual way to indicate themselves, Ioudaioi (or sometimes Hebraioi) when interacting with non-Jews, and Israêl in the inner-Jewish speech of Jewish law, prayer, narratives, etc. Both 96 It is well to take note of the observation of Momigliano, ‘Eastern Elements’, that Greek and Jewish historiography share important ‘Eastern’ (apparently Persian) elements in common. 97 Quoted by Josephus, Ag Ap 1:179 (GLAJJ no. 15). 98 Hist rom 37.16.6f (GLAJJ no. 406). 99 Also brought by Schwartz, ‘Judaean or Jew’, 12, as the first of 10 reasons to prefer ‘Jew’.
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phrases denote belonging to the ethnic-religious group, with the proviso that (according to most Jews)100 non-Jews could become part of it. We have enough reason now to call this the common Jewish usage. We have it in Judith and Tobit, in the authorial narrative of 1 Maccabees, in the Gospels, in Joseph and Aseneth, in the Jewish inscriptions and, massively, in rabbinic literature; we can also add Jubilees and the Testaments of the 12 Patriarchs (above at p157 n55 and 57). In rabbinic literature, Jews when asked by a non-Jew about their belonging are not infrequently quoted as answering, ‘I am a Yehudi’ – which given the absence of any territorial sense obviously means ‘Jew’.101 In addition, there was the bureaucratic usage hearking back at least to the Persian period, according to which Jewish officials and dignitaries understood themselves and their ethnos as being ‘Judeans’ in the territorial-ethnic-political sense. It paralleled the ethnographic tradition and may often have merged with it, assuming that educated officials read their classics, as quite likely was the case with the Hasmonaean clerks and with a distinguished Jerusalem priest such as Josephus. Clearly, the same usage predominated in the Roman bureaucracy, without doubt emulating Hellenistic convention, and as such it must have been alive at least as long as there were dealings between the Jews and the Roman Empire. Thus the meaning ‘Judean’ is linked to the exclusive use of Yehudi/ Ioudaios at the level of the bureaucratic-ethnographic convention. The question is how to assess the usage of Egyptian Jews conforming to Ptolemaic convention, as found in Aristeas and possibly also in Philo’s speculative treatises and maybe also 2 Maccabees. An ethnic-territorial meaning is of course brought in where official letters are quoted. Also, Ptolemaic convention undoubtedly continued Persian usage, especially in view of the affinities at the military level. Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether the Ioudaioi in Philo or 2 Maccabees necessarily have a territorial or political connotation. The possibility of conversion explicitly recognised by both authors and the concomitant flexibility of the ethnic-religious borders of ‘Judaism’ suggest otherwise, and the translation ‘Jew’ is preferable.102 This likelihood is reinforced by the equivalence between 100 mYad 4:4 may well be the tip of an iceberg of dispute about the admission of proselytes, with the Hillelite R. Yoshua (c. 100 CE) overruling the biblical injunction and allowing Yehuda the Ammonite ‘to come into the assembly’, as notably distinct from 4Q174 (see in this volume, ‘Christ, Belial’, at n77). Under the Persian empire this was no option, see above p146 at n14. 101 Examples above p170 n114, 116. I take it that the translation Goodblatt gives of the phrase, ‘I am a Judean’ (Goodblatt, ‘Varieties’, 26f), is inspired by his interest in ‘ancient Judean [!] nationalism’. The same article reiterates the view that the Hasmonaeans’ inner-Jewish use of ‘Judean’ is an anomaly. 102 Letters quoted: 2 Macc 1:1, 10; 11:16, 27, 34. Conversion: 2 Macc 9:17; Philo, Spec leg 1.51; QE 2.2. In Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, the question is not alive. Commenting on 2 Macc 1:1 (p135), Schwartz translates the phrase οἱ έν ῾Ιεροσολύμοις ᾿Ιουδαῖοι καὶ οἱ ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ τῆς ´Ιουδαίας as, ‘the Jews in Jerusalem and in the country of Judaea’. Yet he considers this ‘standard Hellenistic terminology’ implying that ‘Judaea is the teritory that surrounds Jerusalem and is defined by it’. Following his own principle, the translation ‘Judaeans’ would seem
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the people of Israêl and of the Ioudaioi that can be read from the parallel use in Philo’s philosophic-exegetical treatises103 and that is explicit in dual usage texts. Where by its origin Ioudaios/Yehudi suggests a more restricted meaning, Yisrael/Israel has the overarching connotation of embracing the ‘twelve tribes’ as from the biblical narrative, most evidently so in the books of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah. When anyone of whatever origin can access the community of Yisrael as a proselyte and thereby also becomes a Yehudi, the latter ethnonym drops its geographic constraints and acquires a non-territorial religious potential. Along our way, we are gaining deeper insight into the complexities of ancient Jewish identity. In addition to the dual Jewish usage, there was the bureaucratic or ethnographic usage. Depending on the literary and social context, we are dealing with three ethnonyms when translating ancient Jewish texts, ‘Israel’, ‘Jew’, and ‘Judean’, plus a fourth if we add ‘Hebrew’. What makes it muddy is that ‘Jew’ and ‘Judean’ have an identical referent in all relevant languages, and without a clarifying context we cannot simply tell ethnographic-bureaucratic Ioudaios from common ethnic-religious Ioudaios. This is particularly convincing if we compare 1 and 2 Maccabees.104 There are some indications that educated ancients were able to capture the difference and were aware of the ethnicterritorial meaning of Ioudaios in particular contexts; I come to that in the next section. In any case, always translating Ioudaios as ‘Judean’ cannot do justice to the complexity. Leaving Ioudaios untranslated is one imperfect way to live with it, always translating ‘Jew’ another. But when was Jewish life ever perfect?
Ioudaioi in the New Testament The Ioudaioi in John obviously keep presenting the greatest challenge in this area. Before reopening that discussion, however, it is helpful first to study closely two passages elsewhere in the New Testament.
Acts 2:14 In a study on various details in Acts, Daniel Schwartz has also drawn the attention to the difficulties involving Ioudaioi in Peter’s speech in Acts 2.105 more logical. 2 Maccabees is difficult to access as a result of its convoluted redaction process. Do we perceive ‘Hasmonaean Judaeans’ in the prefatory letters sent from Jerusalem alongside ‘Ptolemaic Judaeans’ in the interior basically authored Jason of Cyrene? 103 Above n236. 104 Taken as an example also by Schwartz, Judaeans and Jews, 11–20, reducing it to the polarity ‘Judaea – diaspora’. 105 Schwartz, ‘Residents and Exiles, Jerusalemites and Judaeans’.
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Acts 2:5 mentions ᾽Ιουδαῖοι ‘from every ethnos under heaven’ who are ‘living (κατοικοῦντες) in Jerusalem’ but also ‘living’ (2:9) in the many lands that are enumerated. Moreover, Peter’s speech addresses them in 2:14 as ἄνδρες ᾽Ιουδαῖοι, in strange contrast with ἄνδρες ᾽Ισραηλῖται further on in the same speech (2:22) and elsewhere in Acts in speech addressing Jews (3:12; 5:35; 13:16; 21:28). With an appeal to Aristotle’s definition of Ioudaios as well as to ‘modern Johannine scholarship’,106 Schwartz proposes that if we understand these Ioudaioi as ‘Judeans’, contradictions disappear: ‘Acts 2:5a refers to Judaeans (from various parts of Judaea) living in Jerusalem, and in 2:14 Peter addresses such Judaeans in particular, along with all Jerusalemites.’ In addition, Schwartz suggests that Acts 2:5b (and 9–11) should be seen as an insert into an earlier version of the chapter. That, however, is in my view a secondary remedy necessitated by insisting on the exceptional meaning ‘Judeans’ in 2:5a, or in other words solving one problem with another, for those Ioudaioi are said to be ‘from every ethnos under heaven’ (2:5b). The simpler solution is that there as elsewhere in Acts Ioudaioi means ‘Jews’, as evidently in 2:10f, ‘… Romans on visit, both Jews and proselytes’. Acts 2:14, however, is different. Ἄνδρες ᾽Ιουδαῖοι addresses Jews, as ἄνδρες ᾽Ισραηλῖται in 2:22 makes explicit, but it does so in striking contrast to the author’s careful use of that intra-Jewish appellation there and in other speeches to Jews in Acts as indicated by Schwartz. Hence Schwartz’s suggestion that a geographic meaning is specifically intended is likely: addressed are ‘Judean men and all who sojourn in Jerusalem’. We could add that ἄνδρες ᾽Ιουδαῖοι parallels the territorial ethnonyms ἄνδρες Γαλιλαῖοι, ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, and ἄνδρες ᾽Εφέσιοι in other speeches (Acts 1:11; 17:22; 19:35). Also, we are strongly reminded of what seems to be the only other occurrence of the phrase in our ancient sources, Josephus’ paraphrase of Nehemiah addressing ‘all the people summoned to Jerusalem’ as ἄνδρες ᾽Ιουδαῖοι (Ant 11:169).107 I have explained that paraphrase as an echo of Persian bureaucratic usage, a context which clearly is not present here. Nor is it evident why Roman bureaucratic usage would be apposite, or does the address ‘Judean men and all who sojourn in Jerusalem’ sound much like ethnographic terminology. A closer look at the context, however, suggests elements for an explanation. Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost is the momentous first public speech in Acts, and much attention has been given to the proportion and nature of ‘theology’ in tradition and redaction.108 More adequately, drawing in the role of speeches in ancient historiography, Marion Soards analyses Peter’s sermon in 106 Schwartz ibid. 125 with n41 referring to M. Lowe and A. T. Kraabel. For Aristotle see above n256. 107 Above at n72. Apart from biblical quotations, TLG yields only these two passages in the 1st through 4th centuries. 108 Fitzmyer, Acts, 247–263, with literature.
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the overall framework of Acts. In his analysis, ‘[t]he speech is clearly structured with its parts marked by Peter’s repeated addresses to the crowd (vv. 14, 22a, 29a)’, while the concluding part (v38f) is preceded by the spontaneous reaction of the audience (v37). Soards notes that the type of address in 2:14 and 22, a ‘compound address … coupling ἄνδρες … with a local or ethnic term’, occurs another seven times in Acts, and the subsequent address in 2:29, ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί, another twelve times, all of which clearly betrays the author’s pen.109 We might add that in Soards’ outline of the speech each part can be seen to conclude with a long Old Testament quotation. We must also note that Peter’s address is echoed by the interruption of the audience, ‘ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί, what shall we do’, introducing the final part of the speech (2:37). Thus the scene builds up from Peter’s opening ἄνδρες ᾽Ιουδαῖοι, continues in ἄνδρες ᾽Ισραηλῖται, then via the ‘fraternizing’ ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί and its echo by the crowd moves on to the subsequent interaction and baptism of 3,000 people, and ends in the first authorial summary of the infant church’s life (2:41f). Given this compelling structure, the anomalous opening address, ‘Judean men’, must carry a special intention. Indeed, couched in conciliatory rhetoric, Peter calls on the Jerusalemites and Judeans because they are witness to and involved in the process and execution of Jesus, as he reiterates at the end of the second and the third part of his speech, ‘Him you have killed by delivering him to lawless men … This Jesus whom you have crucified’ (2:23, 36). The proposed explanation of Ioudaioi in Acts 2:14 has an important implication. The author’s intention in this chapter is not to formulate a blanket accusation of ‘the Jews’, as is sometimes thought. It appears to be to expose the involvement specifically of the Jerusalemite and Judean Jews in the execution of Jesus. Indeed this enhanced targeting is repeated in similar wording in Paul’s homily in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch, another pivotal speech in Acts,110 ‘The residents (κατοικοῦντες) of Jerusalem and their leaders … even though they found no ground for execution … asked Pilate to have him killed’ (Acts 13:27f, cf 10:39). It seems we are facing another specimen of the subtlety of the auctor ad Theophilum and his complex attitude to Jews and Judaism.111 Meanwhile, the premise of my explanation is that, depending on context, an antique audience could distinguish between the meanings ‘Jew’ and ‘Judean’ of
109 Soards, The Speeches in Acts, quotes on p25, 31f (with outline), 35. The role of the Jews in Acts is not a theme in Soards’ analysis. 110 Soards ibid. 79–88. Note the opening address, ἄνδρες ᾽Ισραηλῖται καὶ οἱ φοβούμενοι τὸν θεόν and the repeated ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί, Acts 13:16, 23, 38. 111 For the discussion on Luke-Acts and the Jews and a comprehensive interpretation see Marguerat, ‘Juifs et chrétiens selon Luc-Actes’, slightly edited in English translation in idem, The First Christian Historian, 129–154. On the pupose of Luke-Acts cf my ‘Josephus, LukeActs, and Politics’.
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Ioudaios when used on the same page.112 This possibility seems confirmed by the peculiar use we have seen Josephus make of Ioudaios in paraphrasing Nehemiah and then inserting a tribal-territorial explanation of the word.
1 Thess 2:14–16 In this passage, Paul comes down vehemently on the Ioudaioi, ‘who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and persecuted us, who are displeasing to God and opposed to all people, hindering us from speaking to the gentiles so that they may be saved’. If we resist the urge to ‘let Paul off the hook’ and argue the passage’s inauthenticity, the question is how to interpret it. If Ioudaios has the general ethnic-religious meaning ‘Jew’ common by then, this indeed seems to be ‘the one anti-Jewish passage in Paul’ (above at p181). This is the option explored by John Barclay.113 Regarding the passage ‘almost certainly by Paul’, he focuses on the phrase, ‘opposed to all people’, because it ‘without doubt takes us straight to the heart of the Hellenistic complaint of Judean “misanthropy”.’ As against endeavours to distance the passage from this Hellenistic stereotype,114 Barclay points out how it is merged, along with the Jewish motif of the persecution of prophets, with the overriding Christian motif of the Jews’ resisting the gospel and killing Jesus, thus creating ‘a new logic for hostility to Judeans’. Barclay explicitly rejects the possibility that ‘only Judearesident Jews/Judeans are in view’, since there is nothing specifically ‘Judean’ to their rejection of the gospel and their alleged misanthropy. Indeed, Barclay aligns the passage in 1 Thessalonians with the generalised anti-Jewish polemics of Matthew and of John and formulates even more broadly: ‘[T]hese early Christian texts articulate a fundamental antithesis between “Jews/Judeans” and the interests of the Christian community, and thus a new logic for hostility to Jews.’ Two remarks are in place. First, Barclay’s emphasis on the generalised meaning of Ioudaios in the passage contrasts with his insistence on its more restricted meaning in Josephus’ Against Apion, even when introducing Josephus’ writings ‘on behalf of his fellow Judeans’ to the readers of his 2007 commentary. Second, Barclay does not provide a historical context that can explain why the passage in Paul’s letter, dated around 50 CE, would match the anti-Judaism of Matthew and John, works finalised half a century later in a period of increasingly generalised tension between Jews and Christians. Without such a context, the impression of anachronism is hard to avoid. 112 Miller, ‘The Meaning of Ioudaios’, 99 considers this possibility ‘for the sake of the argument’. 113 Barclay, ‘Hostility to Jews’, Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews, 170–177. 114 Involving Abraham Malherbe’s commentary and the study of Markus Bockmuehl to be discussed below.
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Another approach is chosen by Markus Bockmuehl, resulting in the suggestion that in this case Ioudaioi could have a territorial meaning, targeting Judean Jews specifically.115 Having first ‘cleared his desk of introductory matters’ and accepting the case for authenticity,116 Bockmuehl establishes that the passage at least implies that Paul and the Judean Christians had been suffering sustained persecution, and that this animosity has recently been stepped up to apocalyptic intensity. Accepting a dating of 1 Thessalonians to 50 CE, he then asks what evidence we have for a Judean persecution of Christians in the late 40s. The New Testament offers no help, but the sixth-century chronicler Malalas mentions a significant persecution ‘in the eighth year of Claudius’, i. e., 48/49. While this evidence is not strong in itself, it fits the conflict-ridden term of office of Cumanus (48–52 CE) known to us from Josephus. Here, Bockmuehl draws on the description by Schürer–Vermes, itself dependent on Josephus’ War, of the years 44–66 CE as gradually leading to chaos and revolt. This evaluation has recently been called into question by Martin Goodman, but evidence from the New Testament and Josephus’ Antiquities provides good grounds for accepting its basic validity.117 Under Cumanus, a dangerous mixture of undisciplined soldierly behaviour, zeal for the Jewish law, conflict between Jews and Samaritans, ill-management by Roman commanders, and underlying Jewish resistance led to massive bloodshed and to the forced intervention by the legate of Syria, Quadratus.118 Passing over it in silence in Jewish War, Josephus reveals in Jewish Antiquities that Cumanus’ predecessor, Tiberius Alexander (46–48 CE), crucified two sons of Judas the Galilean, the leader of the insurgence against the census by Quirinius in 6 CE, and in addition lets on that Judas was co-founder of the ‘Fourth Philosophy’ that included the participation of militant Pharisees and that resurfaced in the 60s CE to take a leading part in the revolt.119 Taken together, this evidence makes it plausible that in the chaotic situation under Cumanus, ‘zealous’ Jewish militants turned against Judean Christians in the way that Paul reports of his own early years and again of the early 50s (Gal 1:13f, 23; 4:29; 6:12). It is important to note Paul’s use of ζηλωτής and ζῆλος as well as ἰουδαΐζειν and ἰουδαϊσμός when referring to his militant youth (Gal 1:14; 2:14; Phil 3:6).120 It seems that Paul when writing the letter was caught between these Judaean events and recent developments in Thessalonika. We are rather well informed about the situation by a fortuitous overlapping with both 1 Corinthians and Acts 115 Bockmuehl,
‘1 Thessalonians 2:14–16’. Bockmuehl ibid. 57–71. 117 Goodman, ‘The Politics of the Fifties’ and my response (in this volume), ‘Sources on the Politics of Judaea in the Fifties CE’. 118 Josephus, War 2:223–245; Ant 20:103–136. 119 Ant 20:102; 18:4–10, 23–25. 120 For the political dimension of ἰουδαΐζειν and ἰουδαϊσμός see Cohen, Beginnings, 182– 184; Mason, ‘Jews, Judaeans’ (slightly stretching the argument). 116
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16–19.121 1 Thessalonians abounds with prayer language of apocalyptic urgency embedding passionate appeals to sustain the embattled relationship with the apostle and summaries of basic rules of life. It is likely that the letter was written shortly after Paul’s stand-off with the ‘politarchs’ of Thessalonika (1 Thess 2:17). These, as Acts 17:1–9 reports, had been set up against the apostle and his infant church by the leaders of the Jewish community using the accusation of violation of ‘the decrees of Caesar’. Since Thessalonika was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia and would have counted many involved in the Roman army and administration among its citizens, this accusation was potentially dangerous. The mention of ‘decrees’ is vague, but we know for certain that Claudius issued decrees about the Jews in Alexandria and in Rome. Either these two or unknown others may be intended.122 The rare phrase πολιτάρχης in Acts 17:6f is specifically adequate and shows that the author had precise information about the political situation in Roman Macedonia,123 an impression reinforced by the vicinity of the first ‘we-passage’ situated in the nearby κολωνία Philippi, where Paul had been before coming to Thessalonika (Acts 16:10–17; 1 Thess 2:2). It is probable that we must suppose the same for Paul, whose letters to the Galatians and the Romans reveal an author who was as politically astute as discreet. In view of all this, it is plausible that in 1 Thess 2:14 Paul adopted Roman administrative language while addressing the ‘persecution’ of the infant church by their Thessalonian co-citizens, comparing it with the same treatment meted out to the churches in Judaea by the Ioudaoi. Paul’s present acute trouble over his pristine church in Roman Thessalonika (ἀπορφανισθέντες, 2:17) reinforced his distress over what had recently happened in Judaea, and it is altogether imaginable that by Ioudaioi in this case he meant Iudaei, ‘Judeans’.124 The possibility for a Greek-writing author occasionally to co-opt the distinct political-territorial meaning is known to us from two passages written half a century later, Ant 11:169 and Acts 2:14. If John Barclay is right, it is even intentionally used by Josephus in Against Apion, stressing the Jews’ link to Judaea. Moreover the specific targeting of Paul’s accusation is very similar to Acts. Far from explaining the passage away as a slur of the pen made in a heated situation or even as an interpolation, we would need to accept that Paul, as Luke would do later, held specific Judaean Jews responsible for eliminating Jesus.
121 Going here, e. g., with Barclay, ‘Thessalonica and Corinth’. Cf also my ‘Paul’s Practical Instruction in 1Thess 4:1–12’, in this volume. 122 On Alexandria, CPJ no. 153, above p147 n19; on Rome, Acts 18:2; Suetonius, Claudius 25.4. 123 Fitzmyer, Acts, 595f; Pesch, Apostelgeschichte 2: 123f. Cf the use of the term in the Heracleopolis archive, above p198 n47. 124 Similarly Runesson, ‘Inventing Christian Identity’, 77 n32.
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The Gospel of John Having argued the likelihood of a geographic-political meaning of Ioudaios in two passages in Paul and Acts, it would be obvious to raise the same issue again in relation with John. Two passages often highlighted in this connection are John 7:1 and 11:7f, where Jesus and his disciples do not want to pass from Galilee or the Peraia to Judea because the Ioudaioi want to kill him. Indeed, the initiative to kill Jesus always seems to be assigned to Jerusalem and Judaea.125 Hence we cannot exclude the possibility that in these passages, the Johannine author(s) had a similar targeted accusation of Ioudaioi in mind as found in Acts 2:14 and 1 Thess 2:14. However, there is a major consensus that this meaning does not emerge from the gospel as a whole. The overriding message one gets of the Ioudaioi as they appear in the gospel is of their animosity vis-à-vis Jesus and his followers, and the possible geographic connotation in some passages, as also more neutral meanings in references to festivals ‘of the Ioudaioi’, are swallowed up in the generalized antithetical meaning. This is especially clear as soon as one is aware, using Louis Martyn’s phrase, of the ‘two level drama’ contained in John: the story of the evangelist and his community, traumatised by the animosity of the Ioudaioi, is grafted onto the story of Jesus’ persecution and death.126 Such is also the outcome of the Leuven conference volume, Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel published by Reimund Bieringer, Didier Pollefeyt, and Frederique Vandecasteele-Vanneuville (2000). Of 25 authors, only Urban von Wahlde seems to keep insisting on a geographical meaning of Ioudaioi similar to the proposal of Malcolm Lowe: ‘“those in Judea”, i. e. the religious authorities in Jerusalem’.127 Alan Culpepper, among others, disagrees and writes, ‘Even if ᾽Ιουδαῖοι once denoted Judeans or Jewish authorities, the Gospel of John generalized and stereotyped those who rejected Jesus by its use of this term.’ He also draws the important conclusion that ‘the gospel is the first document to draw a connection between “the Jews” who condemned Jesus and Jews known to the Christian community at a later time’.128 A similar assessment is given by Adele Reinhartz, explicitly bringing in the translation problem: ‘[T]he term ἰουδαῖος does not refer narrowly to a resident of Judaea but rather denotes a member of a national, religious, cultural and political group for whom the English word “Jew” is the best signifier.’ Simply translating ‘Judaean’ or ‘Jewish leader’ does not work in most cases, thus Reinhartz, ‘and should not be used to explain, or 125 ἀποκτεῖναι targeting Jesus in John 5:18; 7:13, 19f, 25; 8:37, 40; 11:53; 18:31; re. disciples in 12:10; 16:2. 126 Martyn, History and Theology, esp chapter 7. The same approach was embraced by Brown, Community, esp 17 with n18. It is gallantly but convincingly rejected by Hägerland, ‘John’s Gospel: A Two-Level Drama?’ 127 Bieringer et al., Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. 128 Alan Culpepper in Bieringer et al., ibid. 73f.; cf similarly James Charlesworth, ibid. 489.
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explain away, the gospel’s hostile remarks about ἰουδαῖοι’. Ultimately, Reinhartz fears that the effect of all those well-meant interpretations that come down to ‘dressing the Johannine Jews in quotation marks’ is ‘to whitewash this text and absolve it of responsibility for the anti-Jewish emotions and attitudes it conveys.’129 In the framework of this ‘Reconsideration’, finally, I must mention my own article in the volume, which as a sequel to the 1986 article draws in the Palestinian Talmud and some New Testament apocrypha (above p169 n109b). Ruth Sheridan, in an article (2013) considering the Leuven volume ‘the most extensive covering of the field to date’, endorses Reinhartz’s position.130 Applying Bakhtinian terminology, Sheridan emphasizes the ‘monologous’ voice of the gospel. ‘[T]he authorial voice of the Gospel presents itself as the most reliable of narrative voices because it is truly omniscient. (The) authorial perspective is utterly “merged” with the voice of Jesus in the text.’ Having considered various options for ‘dynamically equivalent’ and ‘formally correponding’ translations, Sheridan concludes that the gospel implies ‘no subset of Jews … in the term οἱ ᾽Ιουδαῖοι – the text reads not “some Jews” but the Jews’. By consequence, she thinks the word is best translated as ‘the Jews, dispensing with the quotation marks’, at this point joining David Miller (above n253). Reading John in view of its two (or more) redactional levels also allows us to view the generalized, negative use of Ioudaios together with the Jewish dual usage that must derive from the early, Jewish-Christian stages of the gospel and is patchily left in place. In these patches, ‘Jew’ is the name used in Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman and with Pilate, and ‘Israel’ in his interaction with other Jews (above p178 at n141). This is only true, however, as long as we read the patches as separate texts. Once they are read as part of the gospel as a whole, the ‘monologous’ authorial voice draws the neutral ‘Jews’ of the dual usage into the sphere of the hostile Jews, leaving the designation of Jesus as ‘Jew’ and ‘king of Israel’ behind as isolated atavisms. Walter Gutbrod has summed up the bare essentials in the 1938 ThWNT article. While half of the occurrences of ᾽Ιουδαῖοι signal social, geographical, and historical distance vis-à-vis the writer, the other half ‘reveals the alienation that history has brought about between the Christian community and Jewry’. Gutbrod, a former student and an assistant of Kittel, was killed as a Wehrmacht lieutenant at the Russian front in 1941.131 As with Kuhn’s companion article, his probable involvement with Nazi ideology has had, as far as I can see, no visible effect on his position. It this connection it is fitting to quote the bon mot of Sebastian Haffner, a German political writer who worked in Britain during the Second World War, in his perspicacious exposure of Hitler’s real crimes as contrasted Adele Reinhartz, ibid. 349, 356. Sheridan, ‘Issues in the Translation of οἱ ᾽Ιουδαῖοι’, quote 672 n4. 131 Gutbrod, ‘Ισραηλ, Ιουδαιος’, 381. On his death see Kittel’s ‘In memoriam’ prefacing ThWNT 4. 129 130
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with his failures and even his achievements: ‘Two by two remains four, even if Hitler would doubtlessly have agreed.’132 Without such ideological tangles, Raymond Brown, one of the greatest recent commentators on the Gospel, has written memorable words regarding the overall orientation of the Fourth Gospel:133 It would be incredible for a twentieth-century Christian to share or justify the Johannine contention that ‘the Jews’ are the children of the devil, an affirmation which is placed on the lips of Jesus; but I cannot see how it helps contemporary Jewish-Christian relationships to disguise the fact that such an attitude once existed.
132 Haffner, Anmerkungen zu Hitler, 98, on Hitler’s unappealing political thought: ‘[S]olange das Irrige in diesen Gedanken nicht klar vom mehr oder weniger Zutreffenden geschieden ist, (ist) das Richtige in Gefahr (…), tabuisiert zu werden, nur weil es auch Hitler gedacht hat. Aber zweimal zwei bleibt vier, obwohl auch Hitler zweifellos zugestimmt hätte.’ 133 Brown, Community, 41f.
II. The Teachings of Jesus and Evolving Jewish and Christian Tradition
‘To Bring Good News to the Poor’: The Core of Jesus’ Gospel
For David Flusser at 80
The interest of this paper* is to trace the historical origins of Jesus’ evangel, using this archaism to distinguish his own message from the Christian ‘gospel’ about him. This relates to the distinction, well-entrenched in Protestant theology, between the historical Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ.1 Rudolf Bultmann even pronounced that Jesus’ prophetic Jewish message, unlike the kerygma about him, does not belong within New Testament theology.2 One of our sub-plots will be to query this dichotomy. After a lexical survey, we shall investigate scriptural passages used in the reports of Jesus’ initial appearance, notably Isa 61. This leads to studying some Qumran texts and, thence, to an investigation of John the Baptist and his possible relation to the beginnings of Jesus’ career and message.
Introductory: εὐαγγέλιον, εὐαγγελίζεσθαι The compound εὐαγγέλιον already appears in Homer and there means ‘rewards for good news’.3 This usage recurs in classical and Hellenistic Greek, with the *[Paper read at the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense 1996, published as ‘The Core of Jesus’ Evangel: εὐαγγελίσασθαι πτωχοῖς (Isa 61)’ in Tuckett, The Scriptures in the Gospels, 647–658, and here reprinted with some additions in the footnotes and with the original dedication to David Flusser restored.] 1 G. E. Lessing in his Religion Christi (1780) already distinguished between the ‘Christian religion’ and the ‘religion of Christ’, see Flusser, ‘Jezus als vraag voor Joden en Christenen’. 2 See the opening sentence of his Theologie, 1: ‘Die Verkündigung Jesu gehört zu den Voraussetzungen der Theologie des NT und ist nicht ein Teil dieser selbst.’ [Bultmann’s Theologie was a constant reference for Flusser: his ‘Dead Sea Sect and Pre-Pauline Christianity’ is an extended critical dialogue. See also the added footnote 61 at the end of this paper.] 3 Homer, Od 14.152, 166. See LSJ s. v. and cf Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 1–48. Friedrich, ‘εὐαγγελίζομαι’ exaggerates the religious meaning as being connected with the Deutero-Isaianic messenger, the θεῖος ἄνθρωπος, and the emperor cult (see below n6). While acknowledging the University of California’s Regents’ permission, I found that the TLG CDROM yields 77 mentions of ευ[/η]αγγελι‑ till and including the 1st cent. CE. Largest concentra-
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gods being included as beneficiaries in the frequent plural expression, εὐαγγέλια θυεῖν, ‘to offer sacrifices for good tidings’.4 We also find the more general meaning, ‘good tidings’.5 The [648] cognate verb is primarily the middle εὐαγγελίζεσθαι, ‘to make oneself rewardable by bringing good news’, later also the active εὐαγγελίζειν. There is nothing intrinsically religious about these words, except that both good and bad news remind of human frailty and dependence on higher powers.6 In Philo and Josephus, the root plainly means ‘to inform, to bring (good) news’, in the philosophical, the religious, the military, and otherwise.7 The same situation prevails largely in the Septuagint.8 The potential interference with the Hebrew text yields no additional connotations. The translators were particular about using the word group εὐαγγελ‑ for the Hebrew root בשר,9 as is seen especially when related compounds are used close by.10 Since the equivalent noun בשורהcan also mean ‘messenger’s reward’,11 there is a close overlap. A marked difference, however, is felt in the ‘soteriological’ edge which these words acquire in prophetic and oracular discourse, as also in Roman imperial propaganda.12 Classically, we read: ‘Behold, on the mountains the feet of him who brings good tidings (εὐαγγελιζομένου) and who announces peace’ (Nah 2:1; cf Isa 52:7).13 This usage is characteristically found in Second and Third tions are 29 in the LXX, 23 in Plutarch, 16 in Josephus, 15 in Philo. The 134 instances in the NT eloquently express the Christian appropriation of the word. 4 E. g. Aristophanes, Equites 643, 647, 656; Xenophon, Hellenica 1.6.37; 4.3.14; Plutarch, Sertorius 11.8; 26.6. According to LSJ, in Attic the plural is always used. 5 This is also the meaning of the much less frequent feminine, εὐαγγελία, 2 Sam 18:22, 27; 2 Kgs 7:9; Josephus, Ant 18:229; and in Christian usage OrSib 1:382. Cf the synonym, ἀγγελία. 6 See below n12. 7 See n3 for statistics. Friedrich, ‘εὐαγγελίζομαι’ stresses pagan influence in Philo, Leg 99, and chides him and Josephus for their ‘non-Isaianic’, matter-of-fact use of the terms. 8 9 out of the 29 mentions being found in the story of Absalom’s death, 2 Sam 18:19–31, including the active verb (v19f) and the feminine εὐαγγελία (v20, 27). 9 Friedrich, ‘εὐαγγελίζομαι’, 710 mentions 3 exceptions: 1 Sam 4:17; Isa 41:27 ; 1 Chr 16:23. 10 Next to ἀναγγέλλω or ἀπαγγέλλω, for להגידin 2 Sam 1:20; 4:10; 18:22f; 2 Kgs 7:9; for לספרand להשמיעin Ps 95:5; Nah 2:1 (1:15). 11 2 Sam 4:10; 18:22, = בשורהLXX εὐαγγελία, messenger’s fee. 12 The Priene inscription (Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, 293 and pl. 69) calls Augustus’ ‘birth as a god’ the first of the ‘good tidings’ he brought to the world (ἦρξεν … τῶν εὐανγελίων, sic). This novel soteriological meaning (Koester, Early Christian Gospels, 3f) parallels GreekJewish and Christian usage but does not warrant a one-way causal explanation as given by Koester and by Friedrich, ‘εὐαγγελίζομαι’, 723. Friedrich does stress Deutero-Isaianic usage (706), but with theological over-valuation; he also refers to oracular usage and to εὐάγγελος as ‘proclaimer of oracles’ (709). Koester under-rates the relative independence of the linguistic shift in stressing the influence of imperial soteriology. Rather, the soteriological edge developed in prophetic and oracular usage seems to have been appropriated by imperial propaganda. 13 Cf the variant (or mixed quotation) of both related passages, closer to the Hebrew, in Rom 10:15; and the quote in 11QMelch 2:16; 18f (see below). Also PsSal 11:1; Joel 3:5 καὶ εὐαγγελιζόμενοι, reading ומבשריםfor ובשרידים. Friedrich, ‘εὐαγγελίζομαι’, 713 points to the significance of the nominalized participle.
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Isaiah, as in the passage which will occupy us most: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, therefore that He has anointed me; to bring good tidings to the poor (εὐαγγελίσασθαι πτωχοῖς) did he send me, to heal those worn at [649] heart, to herald release to the captives and vision to the blind’ (Isa 61:1).14 The frequency in the New Testament15 expresses an unprecedented interest which begs explanation. The verb is mostly used in Luke and Acts, Paul being a second best. The broader meaning is retained, such as when ‘good tidings are brought’ to Mary, to the shepherds, or to the people.16 The soteriological drive of prophetic usage is felt in the expression, ‘to bring the good tidings of the Kingdom of God’.17 The noun, not used in Luke, appears in Mark, specifically as ‘the good tidings of God’ or ‘of Jesus Christ’.18 In Matthew, the typical expression is ‘the good news of the Kingdom’.19 The noun is mostly used by Paul to denote the ‘good tidings about Jesus’ or in other words, ‘the gospel’. Typically, he speaks of ‘my gospel’,20 and of his ‘gospel of the foreskin’ as distinct from that ‘of the circumcision’.21 Yet he also preserves the broader sense when speaking of ‘the Gospel of God’.22 The appropriation by Pauline tradition is expressed in the neologism εὐαγγελιστής.23 These observations only bring out the Christian predilection for the word group. Our interest in the following will be to try and explain it.
The Core of Jesus’ Evangel In all canonical gospels, Jesus makes his first public appearance after his baptism by John, which in the synoptics is followed by the temptation in the desert. The evangelists are not quite at one about the moment of the calling of the first disciples, but they agree that this also occurred in the initial phase. They definitely part ways, however, when giving the first elaborate story of Jesus’ work, which we may see as exemplary of their various portrayals of Jesus. In Mark this is the sensational healing in the synagogue of Capernaum and elsewhere, while John opens by demonstrating Jesus’ mysterious authority in the changing of water into wine and the cleansing of the Temple (Mark 1:21–45; John 2:1–25). In Matthew and Luke, the first full episode is the teaching to the people, [650] but again in 14 τυφλοῖς
ἀνάβληψιν for לאסורים פקח קוח. Also Isa 40:9 (2×); 52:7 (2×); 60:6. n3. 16 Luke 1:19; 2:10; 3:18. 17 Luke 4:43; 8:1; 16:16. 18 Mark 1:14; 1:1. 19 In the stereotyped reports, Matt 4:23; 9:35; 24:14. 20 Rom 2:16; 16:25. 21 Gal 2:7. 22 Rom 1:1; 15:16; 2 Cor 11:7. 23 Acts 21:8; Eph 4:11; 2 Tim 4:5. But cf BDAG s. v. 15 See
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a different elaboration. Matthew programmatically opens with the beatitudes and the sermon on the mount (Matt 5–7), while Luke uses a singular tradition of the preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16–30). The difference is enhanced by the fact that both Mark and Matthew carry another story of Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth (Mark 6:1–6; Matt 13:53–58), while Luke uses the beatitudes and subsequent teaching material elsewhere (Luke 6:20–49). Precisely so, it strikes us that Jesus’ teaching in the first episode both in Matthew and in Luke opens in the key set by the programmatic verse of Isa 61:1 which was just quoted. In Luke, this is explicitly indicated. Jesus stands up, reads the passage from the Isaiah scroll, and sits down to start his remarkable sermon to the effect that ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ (Luke 4:21). Nor is this the only time the Isaiah verse is heard in Luke. Another very important passage for us is the question John the Baptist sends from prison: ‘Are you the one who is coming, or do we wait for someone else?’ Jesus’ answer is: ‘Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind regain vision, the cripple walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor receive good tidings’ (Luke 7:18–23). As we shall see in a moment, the first beatitude, which in Luke is in the preceding chapter, also contains an allusion to the Isaiah passage. Judging from Luke and his traditions, the beginning of Isa 61 is basic to Jesus’ preaching. As David Flusser has shown, the first three beatitudes in Matthew elaborate on the same passage in Isaiah.24 This is almost explicit in the second beatitude,25 ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted’ – compare the prophet’s task in Isa 61:2, ‘to comfort all those who mourn’. But also the promise of the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ to ‘the poor in spirit’ recalls Isaiah’s words. Indeed, it is possible to hear this first beatitude as an exposition of the prophet’s task לבשר ענוים, ‘to bring good news to the meek’. The Septuagint translates πτωχοῖς, ‘to the poor’, taking in the close similarity between the Hebrew ענו ‘meek’ and ‘ עניpoor’. The third beatitude may be seen as a sort of paraphrase of the same: ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.’ There is an echo here of the ending of the previous Isaiah chapter: ‘Your people are wholly righteous, in eternity will they inherit the [651] land’ (Isa 60:21).26 More overtly, the allusion is to Ps 37:11, ‘The meek (ענוים, οἱ πραεῖς) will inherit the land’. We see that while Isa 61 plays a central role in Jesus’ initial appearance in Matthew, other passages also come in. The same happens in Luke. The pas24 Flusser, ‘Blessed are the Poor in Spirit’. [See also the rich study by Jean-Marie Van Cangh, ‘Béatitudes de Qumrân et béatitudes évangéliques’.] 25 Flusser ibid. points out that the order of the 2nd and 3rd beatitudes is inversed in some mss and in the Catholic tradition inaugurated by Jerome, and that this inverse order is both more logical and closer to the parallel in 1QH (see below). It also follows the order in Isa 61 better. 26 Our chapter division only dates from the middle ages. Moreover, 60:21 and 61:3 are linked by the expression at the end of both sentences, מטע[ו]… להתפאר.
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sage Jesus reads from Isaiah contains an insertion from elsewhere: ‘To let go the afflicted in liberty’ (Luke 4:19; Isa 58:6). The phenomenon is particularly striking in Jesus’ answer to the Baptist’s question. Nestle-Aland’s edition notes allusions to Isa 29, 35, 42, 26 and, emphatically at the end, 61. If the beginning of Isa 61 is central, it is embroidered with passages from Isaiah and elsewhere. Many exegetes ascribe the phenomenon to the evangelist,27 but in view of his conservative composition procedures the influence of traditions is much more likely. We could envisage a tradition of associative reading and expounding in view of the messianic future. Since in the reports in Luke and Matthew the phenomenon is connected in different ways with the message of Jesus at his first public appearance, the question arises whether this message did by any chance arise from such a tradition.
Isaiah Readings in Qumran A positive answer becomes likely in view of the conglomerative use made of Isaiah verses in the Qumran scrolls. Foremost is the reference to Isa 40:3 in a passage about the foundation of the community in the desert under the direction of the Interpreter, ‘… In order to prepare the way, as it is written: “In the desert prepare the way of ****,28 straighten in the steppe a roadway for our God” – this is studying the Tora ()מדרש התורה.’29 We have here a formal30 reference to a single Isaiah verse. In other cases, we find a conglomeration of passages reminiscent of Luke and Matthew. This concerns the verse we have been focussing on, Isa 61:1. In typical first person speech, the author of a Hymn expresses his awareness of [652] having been called: ‘You have opened a spring in the mouth of your servant’, the mission being, among other things, ‘to bring good tidings to the meek, in your abundant mercy,31 [to …] from the spring […] to the beaten in spirit, and the downtrodden to everlasting joy’.32 As Flusser pointed out, the ענוים, the ‘meek’ from Isa 61 are here explained using Isa 66:2, ‘I shall look at the poor, at the beaten in spirit’, using the ambivalence of ענו/עני.33 This illuminates the expres27 Haenchen,
‘Historie und Verkündigung bei Markus und Lukas’, 296, 301. being indicated by four dots. I follow the edition and, with some alterations, the translation of García Martínez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated. 29 1QS 8:14, and in a more implicit version 9:19f. מדרש התורהseems to be connected with moral investigation by the community, see 8:17ff (below) and cf the same expression in the context of CD 20:6. 30 The quotation formula כאשר כתובreminds of rabbinic formulae. 31 Taking לרוב רחמיכהas an adjunct. 32 1QH 23[18]:14f. 33 See above. LXX have here ταπεινόν! 28 The Tetragram
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sion from the War Scroll, ענוי רוח, ‘the meek of the Spirit’:34 it is a conflation of both Isaiah passages, which undoubtedly was inspired also by the ‘ointment of the Spirit’ from Isa 61:1.35 The reading together of Isaiah passages with a messianic interest is fully explicit in the Melchizedek fragment, where verses from Isaiah and the Psalms function in a concatenated pesher on Tora passages about the jubilee year: ‘… How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings ( )מבשרand announces peace … (Isa 52:7). … The messenger is [the ano]inted of the spirit (’…)]מ]שיח הרו[ח36 It is hard not to think here of Jesus’ Nazareth proclamation. Another striking instance is what has been termed a `Messianic Apocalypse’ (4Q521): [For the heav]ens and the earth will listen to his Messiah … For the Lord ( )אדניwill observe the devout ( )חסידיםand He will call the righteous ( )צדיקיםby name, and his Spirit will hover ( )תרחףupon the meek ( …)ענויםHe who sets free those that are bound, who gives vision to the blind, who straightens out the twisted. … For He will heal the badly wounded and He will make the dead revive, to the meek He will bring good tidings …37
The allusions are to Deut 32:1 (heaven and earth will listen), Gen 1:2 (the Spirit ‘hovering’ over the waters), Ps 146:7f (Who gives vision to the blind, etc.), Isa 26:19 (He will make the dead revive), and of course Isa 61:1, the good tidings to the meek. The ‘Spirit hovering over the meek’, an expression reminiscent of baptism or immersion, is probably connected again with the ointment of the Spirit in Isa 61, and if so, represents a more elaborate version of the ‘poor of the Spirit’. As pointed [653] out by the first editors, the passage is a very close parallel to Jesus’ answer to the Baptist.38 In addition to the three identical expressions of the blind receiving vision, the dead being resurrected, and the meek receiving good tidings, we have in both cases the sequence of the revival of the dead and the good tidings to the meek at the end. It is clear that at Qumran, an associative, messianist reading tradition of prophetic passages was practised, which strongly resembles the reported initial preaching of Jesus. Since this tradition presents itself as studying the Tora ‘to prepare the way’ in the desert, in association with immersions and repentance, it is obvious to proceed to the next question. What are the possible connections with John the Baptist?
34 1QM
14:7. Flusser, ‘Blessed are the Poor in Spirit’. 36 11QMelch (11Q13) 2:15f, 18. 37 4Q521 frg 2 2:1–12, according to the text published by Wise–Tabori, ‘4Q521 On Resurrection’. For elaborate comments see Puech, ‘Une apocalypse messianique’; cf idem, La croyance des Esséniens en la vie future. 38 See previous note. [On 4Q521 and Isa 61 in connection with Q see Neirynck, ‘Q 6,20b–21; 7,22 and Isaiah 61’.] 35
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John the Baptist and Jesus As from Exodus, the desert is the acknowledged location of purification and revelation. Thus we find desert and Exodus motifs in Isaiah, most notably in that phrase applied both to the Qumran community and John the Baptist, ‘prepare the way in the desert’. While it is exaggerated to suppose John had been a member of the Qumran sect,39 it is clear that he must be situated not far from the physical and spiritual milieu of the desert community. The teacher of Josephus’ youth, Bannus,40 reminds us that there were other ‘baptist’ desert preachers. In these circles, repentant immersion and messianic exposition of Tora and prophets went hand in hand. The elaborate description used for John’ baptism in Mark and Luke is eloquent: ‘a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins’.41 It has been has pointed out that not only is this description confirmed by Josephus’ report on John,42 but that repentance was an essential condition for immersion and re-acceptance of sinners in [654] Qumran.43 Another important element is the purification by the Holy Spirit in Qumran.44 In the passages pertaining to repentant immersion, we even find a reference to the work of ‘the Spirit of truth and meekness’ in ‘those meek of soul’,45 which reminds us of the cluster of Isaianic phrases including the ‘ointment by the Spirit’ and the ‘good news for the meek’. The element of the Spirit was emphasized rather by Jesus, but probably had been part of John’s message.46 We must also take into account the Lukan report of the Baptist’s teaching to the masses who asked the standard question when it comes to eternal salvation: ‘what shall we do?’ (Luke 3:10–14).47 John’s answers are clearly meant as a bet39 Advocated in 1957 by W. H. Brownlee (in Stendahl, The Scrolls and the New Testament, 35) and reiterated by Eisenman, Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran. 40 Josephus, Life 11. If they had links with the desert, the ‘morning baptizers’ mentioned by rabbinic literature and the Church Fathers would have to be added: ( טובלי שחריתtYad 2:20 according to R. Shimshon me-Shantz on mYad 4:8; yBer 3, 6c) or, ‘aramaizing’, ( טובלי שחריןbBer 22a; tYad 2:20 textus rec.); βαπτισταί (Justin, Dial 80:4) or ἡμεροβαπτισταί (Hegesippus apud Eusebius, CH 4.22.7). Cf Lieberman, ‘Light on the Cave Scrolls’, 401f, 196f. On Jesus and baptist movements see Perrot, Jésus et l’histoire. 41 Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3; cf Acts 13:24; 19:4. 42 Josephus, Ant 18:117; 1QS 2:25–3:11; 4:20–22; 5:213f; 8:17f (see below). 43 Flusser, ‘The Dead Sea Sect and Pre-Pauline Christianity’; Meier, ‘John the Baptist in Josephus’. 44 Flusser, ‘Tevilat Yohanan ve-kat midbar Yehuda’. 45 1Qs 3:7f, ובענות נפשו,…וברוח יושר ענוה,… וברוח קדושה,…כיא ברוח עצת אמת. The repeated instrumental ב, in parallel to John’s baptist ideology, explains the alternating [ἐν] ὕδατι and [ἐν] πνεύματι ἁγίῳ in the mss, Mark 1:8 and parallels. 46 Cf John’s saying that ‘I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with Holy Spirit’, Mark 1:8. The Q version adds ‘Holy Spirit and fire’ (Luke 3:16; Matt 3:11). Fire, often an apocalyptic symbol of the Spirit, is manifest in John’s preaching as reported in the Q tradition (Luke 3:7–9; Matt 3:7–10). 47 Cf the same expression Acts 2:37; 22:10, and with explicit mention of salvation, Acts 16:30; Mark 10:17 and parallels.
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terment of life tied up with repentance and baptism,48 and hence are understood as part of his ‘preparing the way in the desert’. Indeed, in a redactional summary of John’s appearance, Luke says that the Baptist ‘by exhorting brought good tidings (παρακαλῶν εὐηγγελίζετο) to the people’ (Luke 3:18). Now it is significant that the Qumran passage about ‘preparing the way’ as ‘studying the Tora’ goes on to state that anyone who high-handedly transgresses a ‘commandment’, ‘cannot touch the food of the holy men … until his deeds have been cleared’, the implication again being that ritual purification is inoperative without repentance.49 It seems that John’s baptismal instruction is another form of this practical ‘studying the Tora’.50 Also, it bears similarity with Jesus’ teaching.51 [655] As observed earlier, the gospels concur in stating that Jesus began appearing in public after his sojourn with John the Baptist. In the ‘telescoped chronology’ of Mark,52 this first appearance even seems to be occasioned by John’s imprisonment (Mark 1:14f). However that may be, there are multiple indications of a close relationship between Jesus’ public appearance and the Baptist movement.53 Scattered over the four gospels, they seem to reflect a primitive stage of the gospel tradition. These are the most important ones: (1) Jesus submits to John’s ‘baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins’ (Mark 1:4–11), which signals acceptance of his authority as a prophetic Tora interpreter. Matthew and John seem to reflect later hesitation about this submission (Matt 3:14f; John 1:32). (2) In Matthew, Jesus makes his appearance with the same message as the Baptist: ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’ (Matt 3:2; 4:17). (3) A singular Johannine report says that Jesus also baptized (John 3:22–24; 4:1f). (4) We hear of habitual exchanges between Jesus, John and their mutual disciples (Mark 2:18; John 1:35–41). (5) Two of John’s disciples left their master to follow Jesus, one of whom being Andrew, the brother of Jesus’ foremost disciple (John 1:37, 40). (6) John’s disciples came to Jesus to report their master’s execution (Matt 14:12). (7) In Matthew, Jesus sends out his ‘apostles’ with the same message he took over from John (Matt 10:7; cf Luke 9:2; 10:9). (8) The disciples of both went out to preach, even in the diaspora (Acts 19:3). 48 Luke
3:12, ἦλθον … βαπτισθῆναι, ‘they came … to get baptized’. 8:17f. The willed transgression of מכול המצוה דבר, ‘from the commandment, anything’, is not irreparable, in contrast to willed transgression of דבר מתורת משה, which is punished by lasting excommunication, 1QS 8:20–9:2. Licht, Rule Scroll, 183f thinks המצוהrepresents the code of discipline of the community. 50 For the moral implication of this term see above n29. 51 Cf the story of Zacchaeus, Luke 19:8, and John’s instruction, ibid. 3:13f. 52 For Mark’s ‘telescoping’ see Black, ‘The Arrest and Trial of Jesus’. 53 Cf Perrot, Jésus et l’histoire. 49 1QS
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(9) In Matthew, Jesus sees the Baptist as his prophetic precursor (Matt 11:14; 17:13). (10) Finally, there is the accredited Q passage where Jesus summarises his messianic work both in continuity with and in contradistinction to John the Baptist (Matt 11:2–6; Luke 7:18–23). Precisely here do we find the conglomerate of Isaiah quotations cited above. This cumulated evidence suggests that Jesus’ sojourn with John was more than accidental. His message must have taken shape in the milieu of John’s baptismal preaching and ‘studying the Tora’ in the desert, and it even seems that he had been his disciple, until he made his own appearance. The desert is also a basic ingredient of his own life. Not only does he in the synoptic Gospels undergo the ‘temptation in the desert’ immediately after his baptism by John. Indications scattered over all Gospels tell us that he often retreated to ‘deserted places’ to pray, to teach or to baptize, thus continuing the activity of his former master.54 [656] On the whole, what evidence we have makes it most unlikely that these various desert preachers were a uniform lot. Indeed, if Jesus was John’s one time disciple, the Gospels are also clear about their difference.55 In contrast to John, Jesus is distinguished by his extensive work of healing (Matt 11:5; John 10:40f; 5:36). This relates to a deeper level. In some passages already referred to, Jesus sets his mission sharply off from John’s. He expresses an almost overt messianic consciousness precisely in contrast to John, the greatest of prophets who nevertheless is the smallest in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt 11:7–13; Luke 7:24–28; 16:16). In other images of speech, he distinguishes himself from John and the Pharisees as the messianic bridegroom, as the new wine and as the new cloth in contrast to the old (Mark 3:19–22 and parallels). More than anything else, John’s question sent from prison and the answer Jesus gives are eloquent. In Jesus’ appearance, the messianic Isaiah prophecies are being fulfilled.
The Evangel of Jesus and the Christian gospel Let us pull the threads together. In Luke and Matthew, the beginnings of Jesus’ appearance are marked by concatenated allusions to messianic verses in Isaiah. This strongly reminds of the Qumran scrolls, both in the choice of Isaiah passages and in the way of conglomerating them. We hear of a community ‘preparing the way in the desert’ by ‘studying the Tora’, of a teacher whose task it was ‘to bring good tidings to the meek’, of the elect being called `the meek of the Spirit’, and of a messianic figure in whom God realizes the Isaianic promises. Mark 1:12f, 35, 45; John 3:22–24; 10,40f; Luke 4:42; 5:16; 6:12; 9:18, 28f. the antagonism between their followers, Acts 18:24–19:7 and John 1:8, 20; 5:33–36; 10:41. 54
55 Cf
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This led us to the only documented formative period in Jesus’ life, his sojourn in the desert with John the Baptist. In addition to his submission to John’s call for repentant baptism, numerous indications point to a close interrelation between the work of John and Jesus. It is plausible to see Jesus as a one-time disciple of John who went his own way. This relationship comes to a head in Jesus’ answer to the imprisoned Baptist, a conglomerate of Isaiah phrases which strongly reminds of the Messianic Apocalypse from Qumran and like that document ends with the resurrection of the dead and the good tidings to the poor. It seems that this constellation conditioned the germinal core of Jesus’ evangel. Both his Lukan Nazareth sermon and the first three Matthean beatitudes circle around the beginning of Isaiah 61. It is here that we can perceive a subcutaneous affinity with the appeal which in Matthew [657] marks his appearance and which he not only took over from the Baptist but also commissioned to his apostles: ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near’. In Marks’ version, this involves the Isaianic ‘evangel’: ‘… Jesus came to Galilee preaching the evangel of God and saying, The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is near; repent and believe in the evangel’ (Mark 1:14f). The appeal expresses the awareness that the messianic promises of Isaiah now are being realized. It represents the core of Jesus’ evangel. Of course, this does not explain all of the figure of Jesus. The messianic Isaiah readings and the Baptist connection are only two aspects of the extraordinary and complex personality that emerges from the gospels. Another component is his affinity with the Pharisees as expressed in his humane use of parables,56 and his lenient conception of the Sabbath. Exactly how that affinity came about remains an enigma, like so much of the historical Jesus. The above also allows us to explain the predilection for the word group ευαγγελ‑ in the New Testament. It must have arisen from its prominence in the Isaiah texts cherished in the milieus of John the Baptist and of Jesus himself. Thus early Christianity appropriated the word in the soteriological meaning of prophetic and oracular usage. Another question, raised by Mark 1:14f, is whether Jesus himself would have used the noun εὐαγγέλιον or בשורה. The broad expression ‘evangel of God’ reminds of Isaianic usage. It is also used by Paul and hence belongs to basic apostolic tradition.57 But it is hard to prove that the phrase ‘believe in the evangel’ was not put in Jesus’ mouth by the Markan evangelist. At least in its accepted form, his opening phrase definitely reflects later Christian usage: ‘Beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ’ (Mark 1:1).58 Cf Flusser, Die rabbinischen Gleichnisse. Above n22f. [Cf Aramaic בשורתא/בשורה, see Sokoloff, Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, s. v.] 58 [The words υἱοῦ θεοῦ were correctly left out in Nestle25. However, even ᾽Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ is doubtful in view of the quotes in Irenaeus, Adv haer 3.11 and Epiphanius, Panarion 2.255 – going by the rule of thumb that Patristic citations are most valuable when they omit something. 56 57
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Just so, early Christian tradition used the word εὐαγγέλιον to indicate Jesus’ message and teachings. Such is clear not only from Mark, but also from the Didache. This work of Jewish-Christian provenance shows affinities not so much with the gospel of Matthew as with one of its sources. Thus an exhortation of the readers to pray ‘as the Lord commanded in his evangel’ is followed by Matthew’s wording of the Lord’s Prayer. Likewise, ‘As for apostles and prophets, act according to the command of the evangel’ – and in this case we have no secure gospel parallels.59 This may be taken to reflect the stage at which the teachings [658] of Jesus were transmitted orally.60 As far as the Didache and the New Testament are concerned, the evangel of Jesus is part and parcel of the gospel. The message of this extraordinary Jewish preacher ought to be at the very heart of New Testament theology.61
Given these emendations I would rather say the phrase reflects primitive Christian usage, with ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου denoting ‘the beginning of gospel preaching’, as in Phil 4:15, but here encompassing the Baptist’s preaching.] 59 Did 8:2, cf Matt 6:9ff; Did 11:3 (but cf Matt 10:8–15; Luke 9:3–6; 10:4–12; 1Cor 9:14). See also Did 9:5, no one unbaptized may partake in the Eucharist, ‘for concerning this the Lord has said, “Do not give the holy things to the dogs”’ (Matt 7:6); and Did 15:3, on mutual reprimanding, prayers and alms, ‘you have it in the evangel …, you have it in the evangel of our Lord’. 60 See most recently Gundry, ‘ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ, supporting Koester’s view (Ancient Christian Gospels, 24ff) that the ‘bookish’ meaning only arose after Marcion. 61 [Thus the clear emphasis of Jeremias, Neutestamentliche Theologie, § 12 (p110–123): ‘Die Frohbotschaft für die Armen’; this should have been mentioned in the above. Ibid. 110 Jeremias calls the phrase πτωχοὶ εὐαγγελίζονται from Matt 11:5/Luke 7:22 ‘das Herzstück der Verkündigung Jesu’. In this connection it is significant that David Flusser, as I recall once having heard, spoke of ‘mein Freund Joachim Jeremias’, although the outspoken attention Flusser gave to the Qumran texts and rabbinic literature represents a decisive difference between the ‘friends’.]
The Song of Songs in the Teachings of Jesus and the Development of the Exposition on the Song In recent decades, the Song of Songs has received renewed attention from scholars, not least due to the broadening of perspective introduced by feminist colleagues. Debate on perennial questions about eros and allegory has been revived, study of foreign influences on ancient Hebrew poetry reinvigorated, and discussion on the significance of the Song in the Jewish and Christian canon reopened. Important studies have been published on the exposition of the Song by the ancient Rabbis and by the Church Fathers, noting both the similarities and the rivalry between them. Also, the vestiges of the Song in the various parts of the New Testament have been explored. The present study* proposes to go a step further and study the allusions to the Song that can specifically be identified in the tradition of the teachings of Jesus. We shall study five examples in which the Song appears to figure significantly in sayings attributed to Jesus. We shall also consider the possible ramifications for the history of the exposition of the Song. For a proper assessment, the exercise [430] must be done in the broader perspective of the development of Jewish and Christian expositions of the Song.1
Origen, Akiva and the Christian Interest in the Song At the beginning of his first, introductory homily on the Song of Songs, Origen explains its extraordinary character as follows: As we have learned from Moses that some places are not merely holy, but ‘Holy of holies’, and that certain days are not Sabbaths simply, but are ‘Sabbaths of Sabbaths’, so now we * [Text as published in NTS 61 (2015) 429–447, with additions in footnotes. I wish to state my gratitude to the publishers of NTS for their permission to republish the article here.] 1 The following incorporates materials and insights assembled during the MA course, ‘The Song of Songs in Rabbis and Church Fathers’, in the Faculty of Protestant Theology of Brussels, 2005–2013, with thanks to our students and colleagues. I dedicate this publication in particular to my former colleague, Dorothea Erbele Küster, in recognition of her professionalism and creativity as a scholar and teacher. Furthermore, I wish to thank Tamar Kadari, Markus Bockmuehl and Joseph Verheyden, and the Editor of NTS, for their advice and constructive criticism. Any remaining misjudgements and errors are my own.
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are taught further by the pen of Solomon that there are songs which are not merely songs, but ‘Songs of songs’.2
Anyone acquainted with rabbinic literature cannot miss the similarity with the famous apostrophe of Rabbi Akiva stating the Song’s unique place in Scripture: R. Akiva said: No Israelite disputed that the Song of Songs renders the hands unclean (being Holy Scripture), for the whole world is not worth the day that the Song was given to Israel. For all the Scriptures are holy, but the Song of Songs is Holy of Holies!3 [431]
Just as the Holy of Holies (קודש קדשים, Sanctus sanctorum) outdoes the holy, so the ‘Song of Songs’ transcends all song, Origen and Akiva explain, implying a mystical dimension to the Song. Origen goes on to expand on the ascent of ‘Songs’ in the Bible which runs from the Song of Moses and Miriam in Exod 15 to the Song of Songs, reminding us of similar traditions in the rabbinic midrash and Targum.4 All of this suggests the use of closely similar traditions by both teachers or, rather, the adoption by Origen of rabbinic interpretative traditions concerning the Song.5 Origen’s work on the Song also comprises an early tractate, an elaborate commentary, and many scattered references. It gained a towering influence among the Church Fathers.6 Origen flourished in the second quarter of the third century, roughly a century after Akiva, when the attitude of the apostolic Church was already galvanised into anti-Judaism. Paul Blowers has shown how he could entertain friendly scholarly exchanges with Rabbis, while staunchly maintaining his Church’s supersessionist position over against the Jews. Citing Salo Baron, Blowers writes that the interpretation of the Song ‘had become a veritable battleground for Jewish and Christian claims to divine election’.7 This helps [432] us understand how in a similar situation both sides could use the same materials 2 Hom in Cant 1.1, MPG 13: 37, see Rousseau, Origène, 64–67; translation Lawson, Origen, 266. 3 mYad 3:5. Translations of rabbinic literature are my own. 4 Hom in Cant 1.1 (SC 37bis: 66–69, cf 29–37); more elaborately, Comm in Cant prologue 4.4–16 (SC 375: 148–159). For the extant Jewish tradition of an ascent of ten songs, see MekRY shira/beshallah 1 (116f); MekRS 15:1 (71f); Tanh beshallah 10 (86b); Midrash Zuta 1.1; TgSong, beginning. 5 More superficially, Hippolytus, In Cant 1.16 (Richard, ‘Une paraphrase grecque’) compares αἶσμα αἰσμάτων with φίλος φίλων and ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπων. [On the passage in Origen viewed in connection with a fragment from an unknown Tannaic midrash on the Song involving R. Akiva and with medieval Jewish and Christian polemics over its exposition see Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 13–17.] 6 On Origen see King, Origen on the Song of Songs; Pelletier, Lectures du Cantique, 227– 280; Riedel, Die Auslegung des Hohenliedes, 52–66. Cf also Clark, ‘Origen, the Jews, and the Song’, 278f. On Origen’s influence, see Elliott, The Song of Songs and Christology, 3–10; Brésard–Crouzel, Origène (SC 375) 54–68. 7 Blowers, ‘Origen, the Rabbis, and the Bible’, 111; Clark, ‘Origen, the Jews, and the Song’, 286–288. See also Kadari, ‘Rabbinic and Christian Models’; Kimelman, ‘R. Yohanan and Origen’. The discussion was opened by Urbach, ‘The Homiletical Interpretations’.
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and methods, but it does not answer the question how Origen could acquire such a keen interest in the Song in the first place. Here, we are facing a riddle. Between the New Testament and Origen, the only trace of Christian engagement with the Song is the commentary of Hippolytus of Rome, who flourished a generation before Origen.8 The preserved fragments interpret Christ as the bridegroom with the Church as his bride. A competitive attitude towards the Synagogue, involving the ‘law’ and the ‘gospel’ as two complementary ‘testaments’, suggests a Judaeo-Christian background.9 In addition, some of Hippolytus’ interpretations suggest greater affinity to the Jesus tradition.10 This makes the question more intriguing: whence this Christian eagerness to emulate the Jewish exposition of the Song? It seems unlikely that these Christian exegetes took their primary inspiration from the Jewish contemporaries they were combating. More likely, they have taken it from their own tradition. This is the intuition guiding the present study. We shall argue that the Song has a firm position in the New Testament, in particular in the tradition of Jesus’ teachings. The fact that this has hitherto received little attention may be due to the obscurity of the Song during previous generations, especially among the Protestant pioneers of modern exegesis.11 In the following, Jesus is viewed as an historical person whose words have been preserved in a limited way – we shall be using phrases like ‘Jesus as remembered’ and ‘the tradition of his teachings’ – and can to that extent be compared to the words of others. If in Christian theology a similar approach of Jesus is less common, it follows naturally when he is perceived in the context of Jewish [433] history and literature. This observation has important theoretical ramifications, which, however, must remain implicit for now.
Midrashim on the Song A survey of early Jewish interpretations of the Song is in place. Our earliest sources date from the first century BCE. Four Hebrew fragments found at Qumran show that in Essene circles, the Song was being copied at least from Eusebius, CH 6.22.1. 1: 344 (Slavonic fragment); cf the Greek paraphrase (Richard, ‘Une paraphrase grecque’) 2.2–3. Instead of ‘Law and Gospel’, Origen has ‘Law and Prophets’ (In Cant 3.1, SC 375: 208f). On Hippolytus, see Riedel, Die Auslegung des Hohenliedes, 47–52; Pelletier, Lectures du Cantique, 217–27. 10 The Slavonic fragment (GCS 1: 346) argues that ‘someone from the circumcision who believes in Christ is a flower (?) that can produce both old and new’ (cf below, example (b)); the Armenian fragment interprets the ‘fragrance’ of Song 1:12 as Mary’s ‘good deed’ (below, example (e)). 11 Catholic exegetes have been more attentive, e. g. Feuillet, ‘Le Cantique des cantiques et l’Apocalypse’; M. Cambe, ‘L’influence du Cantique des cantiques’. For more recent studies see below, nn29, 36, 54. 8
9 GCS
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the early Herodian period onwards. Two larger texts show curious lacunae that point to the simple omission of passages apparently deemed superfluous or embarrassing.12 Otherwise, we are ignorant as to how the Qumran sectarians interpreted the Song. A different attitude to the Hebrew text of the Song is displayed by the Greek translation preserved in the Septuagint, which scholars date to the same period. It is found to be ‘completely faithful to its Hebrew source’, representing each grammatical unit with an equivalent in Greek, and thus it reads as ‘a study aid to a text in another language’.13 This testifies to great respect for the received Hebrew text. It also suggests that the users of this translation had their way of handling the ‘difficult’ passages that some of their contemporaries preferred to skip – only we do not know how. We now jump to the latest source in our survey. Canticles Rabba or Shir haShirim Rabba – we shall call it Song Rabba – is a Palestinian midrash collection whose redaction scholars date to the sixth or seventh century CE. Redaction-critical analysis reveals it to be much more than the mere compilation of midrashim earlier scholars took it for.14 Arranging, adapting and supplementing a range of earlier materials, it offers a continuous midrash to the verses of the Song, with a carefully constructed opening and ending. The work proposes the readers to interpret the Song as an historical allegory of God’s delivery of the people of Israel from the slavery in Egypt and subsequent occupations, one of its emphases being on Tora and commandments. We do not find here the mystical reading of the Song as this would be implied by Akiva and Origen when calling the book [434] ‘Holy of holies’.15 The aggadic nature of the midrashim involved suggests a wide audience familiar with the Song. Going back in time again, we turn to one of the sources of Song Rabba, the Pesikta de-Rav Kahana dated to the fifth century. The extant work reflects no single final redaction. It is a compilation of condensed homilies intended for Sabbaths and festivals that normally take their clause from a verse in the Prophets or Writings and end on the first verse in the Tora portion to be read.16 The Song is clearly among the books from which such clauses are chosen, most conspicuously so in the middle section of the fifth unit pertaining to Exod 12:2, ‘This month is the beginning of months.’17 In this section, the successive homi12 Flint,
‘The Book of Canticles (Song of Songs) in the Dead Sea Scrolls’. ‘Song of Songs’. [For similar emphases see de Lange, ‘From Eros to Pneuma’, who thinks the Greek translation is older than the Qumran fragments.] 14 Kadari, On the Redaction of Midrash Shir Hashirim Rabbah. See also B. Rapp, Rabbinische Liebe. Thanks to both authors for making their work available. 15 Thus Kadari, ‘Rabbinic and Christian Models’. 16 Stemberger, Einleitung in Talmud und Midrasch, 287–291; Mandelbaum, Pesikta de Rav Kahana 2: x–xxi. 17 PesRK 5.6–9 (p87–98). Another example is 1.1–3, (p1–6). Here and in the following, translations of the Bible follow the NRSV with adaptations where necessary. 13 Treat,
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letic units start from Song 5:2 and continue at Song 2:8–14. The inverse order is curious and indicates that some time during the extended redactional process, both Song passages were found particularly significant. The later redactor of Song Rabba, when adapting this material, changed the order, moving the unit on Song 5:2 to its appropriate place in chapter 5. Let us quote the Song passages along with some of their expositions from the Pesikta: ‘I am asleep, but my heart is awake. The voice of my beloved, knocking: Open to me, my sister, my love’ (Song 5:2). ‘I am asleep, but my heart is awake’ – The congregation of Israel said …: Lord of the universe, I am asleep in view of the Temple, but my heart is awake in view of the synagogues and study houses, … I am asleep in view of the end time, but my heart is awake in view of the redemption … ‘The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains … My beloved speaks and says to me: Arise, my love … for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom …’ (Song 2:8–13). ‘The winter is past’ – said R. Azarya: this is the present empire of evil that deceives the people …; ‘the rain is over and gone’ – this is the enslavement … ‘The fig tree puts forth its figs’ – R. Hiya bar Abba said, shortly before the Days of the Messiah a great event will happen in which the godless will perish; ‘and the vines are in blossom’ – these are the remaining ones …18
Interestingly, the section closes on an apocalyptic passage beginning with the events during ‘the seven-year period in which the Son of David comes’. This [435] non-midrashic ‘rabbinic apocalypse’ appears also elsewhere,19 and is copied wholesale by the redactor of Song Rabba along with the section on 2:8–14. If we take Song Rabba as the end of a development and Pesikta de-Rav Ka hana as a prior stage, we can also distinguish still earlier stages. Chief spokesmen in the cited Pesikta section are fourth century sages such as R. Berekhya. Earlier sages are also cited, among them the noted Tannaim R. Eliezer and R. Yoshua (ca. 100 CE). In the edited framework of Song Rabba, Berekhya expresses the sense of continuity with earlier generations by citing Eliezer and Yoshua as ‘the two mountains of the world’, a set phrase for illustrious predecessors.20 Indeed, similar expositions of the Song are scattered over Tannaic literature. One of the earliest attributions is to the aforementioned R. Eliezer, who uses Song 2:8 to interpret the eating of Passover ‘with loins girded’ and ‘in haste’ in Exod 12:11,21 This is the haste of the Shekhina. Although there is no proof in Scripture, there is a hint: ‘The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.’ PesRK 5.6; 5.9 (p86, 96f). See bSan 97a and other sources indicated by Mandelbaum, Pesikta de Rav Kahana, 97. 20 כך דרשו שני הרי עולם, ShirR 7.3. Cf the expression in yNaz 6.1 (54d); yKid 3.9 (64b). 21 MekRY bo/pisha 7 (p22). Cf also the midrashim of R. Yashia, MekRY bo/pisha 7 (p25) and R. Shimon ben Elazar, SifNum 115 (p125). 18 19
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There are more popular verses among the Tannaim, though the harvest is not overwhelming and the instances found are briefly formulated. Throughout, it concerns an allegorical reading in the context of Passover and deliverance from exile and suffering. Seen in this light, the traditions about Akiva’s involvement with the Song seem to reflect a special emphasis. We already quoted his pronouncement on the Song as ‘Holy of holies’. In another attributed saying he maintains: ‘He who sings the Song of Songs with a trilling voice at a (marriage) feast and makes it into a popular song, has no part in the world to come.’22 Again, a mystic-allegorical reading is implied. This is remarkable in view of the simple historical allegory common in Tannaic midrash. Similarly, in a series of midrashim on Exod 12:41 along with Song 4:8, Akiva seems to propose a mystical interpretation, as distinct from his colleagues.23 [436] This calls to mind the rabbinic reports that attribute to leading Tannaim a mystic-apocalyptic tradition whose contents are not transmitted in the classic rabbinic writings, and which involves a chain of transmission with Akiva figuring as the greatest mystic of all.24 A similar discreetness seems to surround the mystical reading of the Song, again championed by Akiva. While the Tannaim agreed that the Song is Holy Scripture, different opinions persisted. Akiva pleaded for its sublime holiness in accordance with its mystical reading, but others still disputed its canonicity.25 The compromise found seems to be that the mystical reading remained reserved for the few initiate, while in public the Song was interpreted as an allegory of the Exodus story. This configuration is also embodied in Song Rabba and the Targum on the Song, which both address the community at large. Interestingly, Origen developed an analogous approach.26 His homilies interpret the Song as a narrative allegory targeting a large audience, while his commentary develops the triple sense of Scripture including the mystical one intended for the initiate. Moreover he reports that this practice was adopted from the Jews who included the Song among the reserved subjects, roughly analogous to a rule cited in the Mishna.27 These data also put Origen and Akiva on a par as to their special interest in the exposition of the Song.28 tSan 12:10. MekRY bo/pisha 14 (p51f), with God saying: ‘“With Me from the Lebanon, my bride” – it is as though I and you ascend the Lebanon.’ Cf other versions in SifNum 104 (p82f, R. Akiva); ibid. 161 (p222f, R. Natan); MekRY beshallah/vayehi (p115, R. Nehemia); MekRS 14:31 (p70, R. Nehemia). Rich information in Kahana, Sifre on Numbers1: 210f; 3: 586f. 24 tHag 2:1–7. For a description and implications for the New Testament, see Rowland – Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God. See also Urbach, ‘Homiletical Interpretations’, 249–252. 25 For the range of opinions, see mYad 3:5; tYad 2:14. 26 Cf Kadari, ‘Rabbinic and Christian Models’. 27 Origen, Comm in Cant, prologue 1.7 (SC 375: 84f); mHag 2:1 with tHag 2:1. The Mishna mentions ‘the Arayot’ (Lev 18 and 20) instead of the Song. yHag 2.1 (77a) reports a disagreement of Tannaim on this point. This requires further study. 28 Pace Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, 108. 22 23
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The Song in the Jesus Tradition Coming now to the New Testament material, we must make a number of methodological assumptions. Firstly, this concerns the history of the gospel tradition. The teachings of Jesus were supposedly preserved in an oral tradition, in which they can only with difficulty be distinguished from the words of those we may presume were his teachers and his disciples. A process of transmission and adaptation followed, until the extant Gospels were written down and edited in successive stages. The redactional process is basically analogous to that of rabbinic literature. A form‑ and redaction-critical approach is advised, distinguishing between tradition units and redactional frameworks. Insofar as we will [437] presumably be approaching the early stages of the gospel tradition, we should not be surprised if we come up against elements shared by the synoptic and Johannine traditions; nor can we rule out the alternate possibility that seemingly authentic tradition elements are preserved in only one Gospel. Secondly, we presume that in Jesus’ surroundings, they read the Hebrew Bible and discussed it in Hebrew or Aramaic. Also, their interpretations related to those of their Jewish contemporaries, i. e. we may expect the rudiments of midrash. However, as the Gospels were written in Greek, we operate on the linguistic interface with Hebrew and Aramaic, and this concerns biblical versions in the first place. Given the fluid state of the biblical text in antiquity, we must be open to allusions both to the known standard versions and to others. Thirdly, we must consider the possibility that the extended development of the gospel text and its readership involved transitions from surroundings where familiarity with the methods of midrash was a given, to those where this was not the case. The development of the community of Jesus’ disciples, first into a community of mixed Jewish and Gentile composition and subsequently into the Gentile church, strongly suggests as much. We should not be surprised if a patristic commentator, or even an evangelist, appears not to capture the point of a particular allusion to the Song embedded in the Jesus tradition. Finally, we must consider how to establish that an intentional allusion to the Song is actually out there, rather than a mere speculation in the reader’s mind.29 The point is that the New Testament never makes a formal quotation of the Song, only informal allusions. Also, prophetic passages with nuptial motifs may interfere with possible Song allusions. A sound criterion seems to be that we need at least two connected verbal elements, two words or their equivalents from a passage in the Song, to identify an intentional allusion.30 Thus, for example, in order 29 Cf the ‘tumult of reverberations’ announced by exegetes as noted by MacWhirter, The Bridegroom Messiah, 4–10. 30 MacWhirter, The Bridegroom Messiah, 10–20 adopts Richard Hays’ criteria (Echoes of Scripture). On p82 she registers ‘two exact verbal parallels’ between Song 1:12 and John 12:3 but does not make this a systematic criterion. Similarly, without making his method explicit,
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to identify an actual allusion to Song 5:2, a mere ‘door’ would not be sufficient, as doors are found everywhere; the ‘knocking’ would be needed in addition, and safer still, also the ‘beloved’ and his ‘voice’. If applied too rigidly, this standard would eliminate some of our own examples. However, we are zooming in on the tradition of Jesus’ teachings that underlies the extant Gospel texts and that is sometimes traceable in several versions. In cases [438] where the same tradition unit seems convincingly preserved in different Gospels, we may cautiously combine the evidence. Thus equipped, let us now address our five examples. (a) ‘The Lesson from the Fig Tree’ In the context of the so-called ‘synoptic apocalypse’, Jesus cites the ‘lesson of the fig tree’ which his hearers are presumed to know already. We turn to Mark since the primordial version of this Gospel plausibly served as model text both for Luke and Matthew. From the fig tree (συκή) learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that this is near, at the very gates. (Mark 13:28–9)
The question about this ‘lesson’ or parable (παραβολή) is: why the fig tree, why not any other tree that puts forth leaves in spring? Precisely that seems to have been at the back of Luke’s mind when editing his Gospel using Mark: ‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees …’ (Luke 21:29). Like many later readers, apparently, he has missed the allusion to the Song hidden in the parable: ‘Arise, my love … for the winter is past … the fig tree (συκή) puts forth its early figs …’ (Song 2:10–13). Our criterion applies, however, for we have two or three consecutive elements from a single passage, only in disguised, allusive form: not just a ‘fig tree’, but also the arrival of ‘summer’, equivalent to the passing of ‘winter’, and the ‘leaves’ being put forth which can be read as a remote equivalent of the ‘early figs’. If we suppose a Semitic background, the word ‘summer’ (θέρος) is interesting, since the Hebrew equivalent קיץis easily associated with קץ, ‘endtime’.31 The apocalyptic perspective in which the ‘lesson’ was probably transmitted makes this association more plausible. Indeed, the surrounding apocalyptic scenario which includes ‘wars’ and ‘famines’ (Mark 13:3–36) reminds us of the apocalyptic passage concluding the exposition on Song 2:8–14 in the Pesikta and Song Rabba where similar tribulations such as famines, wars and depravity are announced. And there it is: in its brevity, the synoptic fig tree parable in its apocaFeuillet, ‘Le Cantique des Cantiques’, 327 registers an allusion based on ‘la présence de quatre éléments communs’ between Rev 3:20 and Song 5:2 (see below). The criterion here proposed was developed in work on identifying Scriptural allusions in midrash. 31 Similarly Davies–Allison, Matthew 3: 465f, without reference to the Song.
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lyptic context reads like a primitive version of the extended Song midrash that appears in these works centuries later. We shall return to this conclusion after reviewing further evidence. (b) ‘From the Treasure, New and Old’ The next example concerns a saying found only in Matthew, although it concludes a chapter of Kingdom parables adapted from Mark 4 (cf Luke 8). [439] Such additions to the Markan model are always under suspicion of being a redactional creation, though they could derive from previous tradition.32 He said to them, therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old (καινὰ καὶ παλαιά). (Matt 13:52)
The order is unusual. Normally, would a master not bring ‘old and new’ from his cellar? The inverse order betrays an allusion to the Song in a slightly different Greek version: ‘New as well as old (νεὰ πρὸς παλαιά) I have stored up for you, O my beloved’ (Song 7:14).33 The two words in their peculiar order meet our criterion, but more reflection is useful. The ‘treasure’, θησαυρός, from which ‘new and old’ is brought, also seems to allude to the phrase ‘I stored up’ ()צפנתי in the Song verse. In terms of the saying in Matthew, this would suppose the corresponding verb θησαυρίζω in the Song. The Septuagint translation has ἐτήρησα, which is as good a translation for the Hebrew as ἐθησαύρισα. By consequence we seem to be dealing with an allusion to the Song via another Greek or Semitic translation. Comparison with the Targum, where גנזis used,34 makes an Aramaic version likely. Hebrew צפןand ‘( אוצרstore’ and ‘treasure’) do not make a word play, but Aramaic גנזand ‘( גנזאstore’ and ‘storage’) do. This makes it more likely that the saying stems from the Jesus tradition rather than from the evangelist. It remains to point out that the rabbinic midrash interprets ‘new and old’ variously as referring to recent and more ancient biblical persons and to new and old teachings.35 As we shall see in a moment, the ‘new’ is a conspicuous category in the teachings of Jesus.
Matthäus 2: 262f recognises the redactor’s pen while sensing a traditional kernel. in Davies–Allison, Matthew 2: 447, referring to bEr 29b; tYom 4:6; 2:14. 34 TgSong: קום קבל מלכותא די גנזית לך. 35 bEr 29b (cf Str-Bill 1: 677); LevR 2.11 (p52 – insert from SER); ShirR 7.14. Cf above n10 on Hippolytus. [Irenaeus, Haer 4.9.1 may be aware of the Song when, quoting Matt 13:52 in view of the ‘new’ and the ‘old’ covenant (de thesauro … nova et vetera … duo testamenta), he cites Ps 95/97, Cantate Domino canticum novum. Rousseau, Irénée (SC 100) 4: 478f is not and translates, ‘les choses anciennes et nouvelles (!) extraits du trésor’, restoring the Greek as τὰ ἐκ τοῦ θεσαυροῦ παλαιά τε καὶ καινά (!).] 32 Luz,
33 Noted
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(c) ‘While the Bridegroom is with Them’36 In another pericope in Mark, Jesus compares himself to a bridegroom: … People came and said to him, Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? Jesus said to them, The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? … The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then [440] they will fast, on that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak … And no one puts new wine into old wineskins … (Mark 2:18–22)
The term ‘wedding guests’, υἱοὶ τοῦ νυμφώνος, is a glaring Semiticism: cf בני החופה, a phrase common in rabbinic literature. There is more to it. A discussion in the Tosefta turns on a halakhic question analogous to the one seemingly underlying Jesus’ pronouncement:37 The best man and all other wedding guests ( )השושבינין וכל בני חופהare exempt from the daily prayer and from tefillin all seven days (of the wedding feast), but obliged to saying Shema; R. Shilo says, The bridegroom is exempt, but all wedding guests are obliged. (tBer 2:10)
The Jewish terminology of the bridegroom and his wedding guests and the underlying halakhic question give us a keen sense of the ambience of the Song in Mark. However, we do not have the two key terms required to identify an allusion. We only have the word ‘bridegroom’ and, strictly speaking, this does not figure in the Song (νυμφίος, )חתן. Here, we must broaden our scope and bring in a closely related passage from the Gospel of John. There too, it concerns a discussion with the disciples of John the Baptist, mentioned in the New Testament only in this connection,38 and it is about a ritual commandment: purity in this case, fasting in Mark. In both passages, a question is asked about Jesus’ position as compared with the Pharisees and the Baptist’s disciples. In the Gospel of John, it is the Baptist who answers:39 I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly (χαρᾷ χαίρει) at the bridegroom’s voice (τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ νυμφίου) … He must increase, but I must decrease. (John 3:28–30)
While these verses are almost certain to have been edited by successive evangelists, the middle part (3:29) contains the ‘bridegroom’s voice’ that makes for an allusion to Song 2:8 and/or 5:2.40 As in Mark, to be sure, it involves the ‘bride36 Blickenstaff, While the Bridegroom discusses bridegroom imagery in Matthew without touching on the midrash background and links with the Song. 37 Cf lavish material in Str-Bill 1: 500–517 (add tBer 2:10). 38 Also in the synoptic parallels to Mark 2, i. e. Matt 9:14 and Luke 5:33. 39 In line with the testifying role of the Baptist in John 1. On the complex links between John and Jesus, see Dodd, Historical Tradition, 282f, 331, and cf Brown, John 1: 155f. 40 Cambe, ‘L’influence du Cantique’, 13–15 thinks also of Song 8:13.
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groom’, not the ‘beloved’, ἀδελφιδός, the singular Septuagint rendering of דודי.41 We could think of interference from Jer 33:11, the ‘voice of the bridegroom’. In either case, we may be dealing with some alternative version of the Song, one [441] that is less particular about vocabulary than the Septuagint translator. A Hebrew or Aramaic version is more likely in view of the ‘cognate dative’, χαρᾷ χαίρει. In the same vein, the ‘friend of the bridegroom’ (φίλος τοῦ νυμφίου) must be a rendering of the שושבין, the ‘best man’. On these and other grounds, C. H. Dodd has established that this passage in John contains a traditional element that is closely related to the synoptic tradition.42 In other words, we are dealing with a unit of tradition that, variously preserved in John and Mark, alludes to the Song. The implication is that the image of Jesus as bridegroom in Mark 2 and John 3 derives from the basic gospel tradition and involves exposition of the Song. In this tradition, Jesus is seen as the ‘bridegroom’, and the Baptist, his former teacher, as his ‘best man’, who, along with the ‘wedding guests’, recognises his ‘voice’. In contrast, Jesus represents a ‘newness’ that occasions exemption from certain ritual commandments – temporarily, that is, for ‘then they will fast, on that day’.43 Discreetly implied is a mystical-allegorical reading of the Song in which Jesus is the ‘bridegroom’ who woos his ‘bride’, i. e. Israel or the community of the elect. The ambience of nuptial mysticism is illustrated by a rare apocalyptic story in the Palestinian Talmud that belongs to the esoteric tradition of the early rabbis we have mentioned. When Elazar ben Arakh ‘performed’ an interpretation of the merkava (Ezek 1) before his master Yohanan ben Zakkai, ‘fire descended from heaven and encircled them, and the servant angels were rejoicing before them as wedding guests before the bridegroom (’)כבני חופה שמיחין לפני חתן.44 (d) ‘At Midnight there was a Shout’ In our survey of rabbinic midrash we have observed that two Song passages drew special attention, 5:2 and 2:8–14. We have found an allusion to this second passage in the lesson of the fig tree. Now we turn to the parable of the ten maidens where the first passage plays a role. Again, the pericope is found only in Matthew, and the editor’s idiom is recognisable in the format of the context
41 Treat,
‘Song of Songs’, 660. Dodd, Historical Tradition, 282f, 386, for φίλος τοῦ νυμφίου referring to mSan 3:5, האוהב זה שושבינו. See Blickenstaff, While the Bridegroom, 126f for philology on בני חופהand שושבין. For the Semiticism χαρᾷ χαίρει, cf BDR § 198.6. [For more cultural and literary background on the ‘friend’ and the ‘voice’ of the bridegroom see Zimmermann, ‘Der Freund des Bräutigams’.] 43 Fasting was standard practice in early Christianity, see Matt 6:16–18; Did 8:1. 44 yHag 2:1 (77a); cf tHag 2:1. 42
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and the opening phrase. But again, this does not annul the possibility that he had received the parable from tradition.45 Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout (μέσης δὲ νυκτὸς κραυγή γέγονεν), Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to [442] meet him … Those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, Lord, lord, open to us. But he replied, Truly I tell you, I do not know you. Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. (Matt 25:1–13)
Some commentators have had difficulty in finding out how ‘ancient Palestinian marriage customs’ might explain the bizarre scenario of a bridegroom coming to pick up his bride at midnight,46 while others have recognised similarities with rabbinic parables.47 As more often, the solution is found in intertextual allusions. In a well-documented article, August Strobel has demonstrated the multiple links of the parable with the Exodus story and its liturgical setting, Passover.48 Several elements now fall in place. The redeemer’s arrival ‘at midnight’ is a key element from the Exodus story (Exod 11:4; 12:29), an item well known also to the Church Fathers,49 and the ‘great shout’ echoes the shout over Egypt’s firstborn who were found dead. Strobel also sees the ‘closed door’ in this light, recalling the ‘knocking’ on the door in Rev 3:20 (see below), but he cannot accommodate the falling asleep of the maidens. This difficulty disappears when in addition we recognise the link with the Song.** The reading of the Song in association with Exodus and Passover has become clear to us when reviewing the midrash. For an early example, we saw that R. Eliezer interpreted the eating of the Passover ‘with loins girded’ and ‘in haste’ as God’s haste to deliver Israel, which he saw reflected in Song 2:8. Significantly, these connections are also echoed in early Christian texts, revealing the tradition context of the parable of the maidens:
See discussion in Luz, Matthäus 3: 465–492; Davies–Allison, Matthew 3: 392f. Jeremias, Die Gleichnisse Jesu, 171–175; discussion in Luz, Matthäus 3: 468, 472; information on the cultural context in Blickenstaff, While the Bridegroom. [Cf also Zimmermann, ‘Hochzeitsritual’.] 47 Str-Bill 1: 969, 878 (bShab 153a, R. Eliezer; KohR 9.8, R. Yohanan ben Zakkai); Davies– Allison, Matthew 3: 392. But cf Luz, Matthäus 3: 472. 48 Strobel, ‘Zum Verständnis’. Luz, Matthäus 3: 471 n30 only finds here a ‘singular allegorical interpretation’ in view of Passover, based on ‘isolated motives’. 49 Strobel, ‘Zum Verständnis’, 203f (add: Origen, Scholia in Matt, MPG 17: 304). Also noted in Davies–Allison, Matthew 3: 398. ** [Cf Flusser, Gleichnisse, 177–192, on which see in this volume, ‘Parables, Fiction, and Midrash’, 256f.] 45
46 E. g.
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Have your loins girded and your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds awake when he comes … (Luke 12:35–6)50
The ‘girded loins’ are an Exodus motif, but the ‘knocking on the door’ and the ‘being awake’ lead us to the Song.51 We must hear Song 5:2 again: [443] I am asleep, but my heart is awake. Listen! My beloved is knocking: Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one; for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.
Several key words from the parable are found here: the maidens ‘sleep’ and ‘wake up’, the ‘door’ is asked to be ‘opened’, and the bridegroom arrives in the ‘night’. Upon consideration, the Song verse even seems to set the parable in motion. It governs the difference between the wise and the foolish: all maidens ‘are asleep’, but as to the wise, ‘their heart is awake’, which is signified by the oil supply they keep ready. Furthermore, the arrival of the beloved with his ‘locks wet with the drops of night’ seems pivotal in the intertextual link with the Exodus story: he is recognised as the redeemer who comes at midnight, and a shout goes up. We are obviously in the same ambience as the midrash we have quoted from the Pesikta: the congregation of Israel is asleep in view of the end time, i. e. the hour of arrival of the redeemer, but her heart (or at least that of the ‘wise’) is awake in view of the redemption. Once again, the allusion to the Song implied in Jesus’ parable appears to reflect an early version of the midrash that appears centuries later in rabbinic literature. (e) ‘In the Whole World … in Remembrance of Her’ The third example above involved a primitive tradition element that seemed variously preserved in Mark and John. This is even more clearly the case in our last example, the anointment story in Bethany.52 The two versions contain some near-identical clauses and have a parallel structure. Modern exegetes take different views, but Dodd seems to have the strongest case in arguing that it concerns
50 Cf
also Eph 6:14; 1 Pet 1:13; Did 16:1. While the Bridegroom, 105 notes the ‘door’ on which the bridegroom ‘knocks’ in Song 5:2 and Rev 3:20. 52 We shall ignore Matt 26:6–13, which mainly rehearses Mark 14:3–9, and Luke 7:36–50, which contains unique elements but does not seem to carry visible allusions to the Song. [However, one could well consider Luke 7:36–50 to be another independent variant of the same tradition showing further allusions to the Song: apart from μύρος, there is καταφιλῶ and φίλημα (Luke 7:38, 45; Song 1:2), and ἁγαπῶ, passim in the Song, is clearly a key word, Luke 7:42, 47!] 51 Blickenstaff,
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different versions of the same story from the basic gospel tradition.53 The allusions to the Song are more obvious here, but also more diffuse. … A woman came with an alabaster jar of costly perfume made of pure nard, and she broke open the jar and poured it on his head. But some … said … But Jesus said, Let her alone … she has done a good deed to me. For you always have the poor with you … but you will not always have me … She has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her. (Mark 14:3–9) Mary took a pound of expensive perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot said … Jesus said, Leave her alone. She [444] bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me. (John 12:3–8)
Both versions contain an exceptional string of four consecutive words: a ‘costly perfume made of pure nard’ (μύρου νάρδου πιστικῆς πολυτελοῦς/πολυτίμου). Both also have the clauses about the ‘poor’ and Jesus’ ‘burial’. There are also differences. In Mark a nameless woman anoints Jesus’ head while anonymous disciples protest; in John, Mary of Bethany anoints his feet and the protest is voiced by Judas Iscariot. Also in John, the mention of the ‘good deed’ and the concluding praise of the woman are lacking; instead, there is the more subdued phrase in the middle about the perfume that fills the house. The evangelist’s hand seems heavier in John, enhancing Jesus’ prominence in particular. Two words in the remarkable clause about the costly perfume are found in the Song, ‘perfume’ and ‘nard’. ‘Nard’ is very rare: in the Old Testament it is found only in the Song and in the New Testament, only in our two passages. Consequently, echoes of the Song have been heard since the Church Fathers, involving two verses in particular: Your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out; therefore the maidens love you. (Song 1:3) While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance (νάρδος μου ἔδωκεν ὀσμὴν αὐτοῦ). (Song 1:12) 53 Dodd, Historical Tradition, 162–173. Cf Fitzmyer, Luke, 684–648; Luz, Matthäus 4: 57 n2; Brown, John 1: 449–452. [There seems to be interaction between John and Mark both on the level of redaction and of tradition. Elements shared in common are (1) the phrase μύρου νάρδου πιστικῆς πολυτελοῦς/πολυτίμου (Mark 14:3 – John 12:3); (2) ἄφετε/ἄφες αὐτήν (Mark 14:6 – John 12:7); (3) ἐνταφιασμός (Mark 14:8 – John 12:7); (4) the entire sentence, in slightly differing order, πάντοτε γὰρ τοὺς πτωχοὺς ἔχετε μεθ΄ ἑαυτῶν … ἐμὲ δὲ οὐ πάντοτε ἔχετε (Mark 14:7 – John 12:8). Matthew, closely following Mark, has only no. 4 of these elements in verbal identity (Matt 26:11); see Aland, Synopsis, no. 306. Incidentally, this shows John to be commenting on Mark, not Matthew, possibly on the basis of independent tradition material such as the words, ἡ δὲ οἰκία ἐπληρώθη ἐκ τῆς ὀσμῆς τοῦ μύρου. The interaction on the redactional level (see esp John 12:1, πρὸ ἓξ ἡμερῶν τοῦ πάσχα, vs Mark 14:1, ἦν δὲ τὸ πάσχα καὶ τὰ ἄζυμα μετὰ δύο ἡμέρας) does not exclude but on the contrary may have been triggered by the shared tradition.]
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Among modern interpreters, Jocelyn MacWhirter, fulfilling our criterion,54 has identified two ‘verbal parallels’ in John 12 with Song 1:12, the ‘fragrance’ (ὀσμή) of Mary’s ‘nard’ (νάρδος) that filled the house. Origen, in his Christocentric, ‘Johannine’ reading, curiously insists that Mary’s ointment spread Christ’s fragrance; he seems to read Song 1:12 from 1:3.55 A link with Song 1:3 is made by Hippolytus, who states that when the Word no longer resided ‘in the bosom of the Father’ but was ‘emptied’ (ἐκκενωθείς) into the world, his ‘fragrance … filled everything’.56 The association is not only with John 12:3 (‘filled everything’) but also with 1:18 (‘bosom of the Father’). Elsewhere, speaking about ‘righteous deeds’, Hippolytus has a different take on the anointment story: ‘The virgin Mary anointed the Lord with the ointment of [445] nard, and her hands gave off a sweet odour, and the people saw these good deeds of their brethren [sic] and praised the Lord in heaven.’57 The latter allusion is to Matt 5:16, typical of Hippolytus’ Gospel harmonising.58 More importantly, his emphasis is that the ‘fragrance’ is Mary’s, thanks to her ‘good deed’. It is the emphasis made in Mark. In Mark we seem in fact to have an allusion to Song 1:3, ‘perfume poured out’. In the Hebrew this is שמן תורק, from the verb ריק, ‘to empty’. The Septuagint translator, true to character, rendered this literally and artificially, μύρον ἐκκενωθέν, ‘perfume emptied’ (the form cited by Hippolytus). A less particular translator would rather have used a compound of χέω, which is what we find in Mark: κατέχεεν. Thus it seems that in Mark the ‘name’ of the ‘perfume poured out’ aims at the woman,59 and this is expressed in Jesus’ concluding pronouncement. If so, the final clause of Song 1:3 becomes interesting, ‘therefore the maidens love you’, על כן עלמות אהבוך. In the unvocalised script used in Antiquity, עלמות can be read differently, a usual ploy in midrash. In our case: read not alamot, ‘maidens’, but olamot, ‘worlds’. Indeed this is one of the readings in the midrash and targum on the verse, yielding ‘the nations of the world’ or ‘the whole earth’.60 54 MacWhirter, The Bridegroom Messiah, 79–85 (following Cambe, ‘L’influence du Cantique’, 15–17), see above n30. Less cogently, Roberts Winsor, The King is Bound in his Tresses, 25f sees allusions to Song 1:3 and 1:12. 55 Comm in Cant 9 (SC 375: 436–443) = Scholia in Cant, MPG 17: 260. Cf ‘note complémentaire’ 12 of Brésard – Crouzel, Origène (SC 375), 765f. 56 Hippolytus, In Cant 2.5 (Richard, ‘Une paraphrase grecque’). 57 Armenian Fragment, GCS 1: 361. 58 Noted by MacWhirter, The Bridegroom Messiah, 2 n6. 59 The transferral of this feature of the king (Song 1:3) to the bride (1:12) can be seen as a ‘midrashic liberty’. Cf R. Eliezer’s much bolder transferral from Israel’s haste to God’s, above n21. 60 עלמותis read either as על מותor אומות העולם: MekRY beshallah shira 3 (p127, R. Akiva; see below n64); MekRS 15.2 (p79, same); SifDeut 343 (p399, anonymous). Cf ShirR 1.22 (R. Yohanan); LevR 3.7 (p73, from SER). TgSong 1.3: ושמך קדישא אשתמע בכל ארעא. [In our passage, both the vocalisation עולמות, ‘worlds’, and על מות, ‘for the sake of death’, may be si-
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The same reading seems to underlie the concluding praise in Mark, adding depth to an otherwise bleak saying.61 In paraphrase: ‘Her name is perfume poured out, the whole world will love her.’ As Hippolytus sensed, Jesus as remembered in Mark exalts the woman’s ‘good deed’ by way of alluding to the Song.
The Development of the Exposition of the Song Let us now look back and draw together the various lines of development we have noted. We have explored what appear to be successive stages running from Qumran and the Septuagint via Jesus and his contemporaries, before splitting into one branch that went via Akiva and on to the edited midrash of Song Rabba, and another through Hippolytus and Origen. Our impression was that Akiva’s and Origen’s involvement with the Song was somehow exceptional, stressing the mystical dimension in contrast to their colleagues. Seen in this light, Jesus as remembered in the sources also had an unusual interest in the Song. In particular, he is attributed with a mystical emphasis. [446] After the manner of scriptural saviour figures, he personally identifies with the ‘bridegroom’ who woos his ‘bride’, i. e. Israel or the community of elect. The implication is that this ‘wooing’ is done by proclaiming the Kingdom of God and appealing to ‘repent and believe this gospel’, as programmatically summarised in Mark 1:15. The identification with the bridegroom who comes to save his people also seems to imply the sense of ‘newness’ vis-à-vis John the Baptist, his ‘best man’. In company with friends and disciples, the mystical awareness even occasions a festive, temporary exemption from certain ritual commandments. To the extent that the attribution of this mystical reading to Jesus is historical, a transition to the so-called ‘nuptial Christology’ of his later followers is well imaginable. A convincing illustration is found in the letter John of Patmos wrote to the church of Laodicea, ca. 100 CE, purportedly in the name of the Risen Christ: ‘Listen! I am standing at the door (ἰδοὺ ἕστηκα ἐπὶ τὴν θύραν), knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me’ (Rev 3:20). The allusions to Song 5:2 (‘knocking’, ‘voice’, ‘door’) cannot be missed.62 multaneously alluded to, as this also happens in the rabbinic midrash and targum: ‘in all the world’, εἰς ὅλον τὸν κόσμον (Mark 14:9) – ‘for my burial’, εἰς τὸν ἐνταφιασμόν/εἰς τὴν ἡμέραν τοῦ ἐνταφιασμοῦ μου (Mark 14:8/John 12:7; see n53). This reveals us Jesus remembered as participating in a brilliant midrashic and homiletical tradition.] 61 Cf Luz, Matthäus 4: 62, struggling to find the sense of Matthew’s near-identical version. 62 Feuillet, ‘Le Cantique des Cantiques’, 324–334; Cambe, ‘L’influence du Cantique’, 5–9. [See also Jas 5:9, ἰδοὺ ὁ κριτὴς πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν ἕστηκεν, where, interestingly, the ‘judge’ is not Christologically interpreted. On the lavish use of bridal metaphors in Revelation see Zimmermann, ‘Nuptial Imagery’.]
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From here, we can hypothesize a straight development to Origen’s Christological reading of the Song. However, to judge from the ‘Markan’ interpretation of the anointment story by Hippolytus, emphasising the woman’s good deed, non-Christological readings were still around during the second century CE. His possible Judaeo-Christian affiliation points to a kind of overlap between the rabbinic and the early Christian interpretation. Thus the riddle begins to dissolve. We begin to suspect a continuous development from the Jesus tradition, via John of Patmos, on to Hippolytus and Origen. This helps understand the original Christian interest in the Song, as also Origen’s eagerness to borrow Jewish interpretive elements that suited this interest. As to the canonical status of the Song, it is remarkable that we find only discreet allusions in the New Testament, never a formal quotation. This is exceptional, given the formal citation of other ‘disputed’ Writings such as Proverbs (Jas 4:6) and Ecclesiastes (Rom 3:10), or even the ‘apocryphal’ Enoch (Jude 14–15). It seems to correspond to the ambiguous status of the Song that we found intimated in rabbinic literature.63 It also makes the interest in the Song taken by Jesus as remembered the more remarkable. While reviewing the midrash on the Song, we found two focuses of attention for the rabbis in interpreting the Exodus chapters on Passover. They are passages that appear in inverse order in the sequence of homilies in the Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, Song 5:2 before 2:8–14, while the subsequent editor of Song Rabba, reusing this material, restored the ‘correct’ order. Surprisingly, we have found the two focuses reflected also in rudimentary form in the Jesus tradition. The parables of the fig tree and of the ten maidens, alluding to Song 2:8–13 and 5:2, can be [447] seen as early expressions of the midrash tradition that appears in full development centuries later in the Pesikta and Song Rabba. As to contents, the perspective of redemption expressed in those two parables fully accords with the rabbinic midrash. The same cluster of passages and motifs is at play: Exodus, Passover and the Song, the bride and her beloved who arrives in the night, the winter that is past and the fig tree putting forth leaves or early figs, and the lusty sense of spring that carries it all. The ‘synoptic apocalypse’ that precedes the fig tree saying presages cataclysmic events towards the ‘end time’; so does the ‘rabbinic apocalypse’ that concludes the homilies on Song 2:8–14 in the Pesikta and Song Rabba. Evidently, we are dealing with the same tradition. The exposition of the Song ran in parallel among ancient Jews and Christians even while the rupture between them occurred. The polemics of Origen towards the mid third century relate to this process. A corresponding attitude is attributed to Akiva. In an extended exposition on Song verses he rebuffs the budding inter63 Cf
n21.
the semi-formal quotation formula of R. Eliezer, a ‘conservative’ early Tanna, above,
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est of the ‘nations of the world’ in Israel’s God, quoting them as asking, ‘What is your beloved more than another beloved?’ (cf Song 5:9), whereupon Israel say to them, ‘You have no part in Him, for, My beloved is mine and I am his’ (cf Song 2:16).64 Speaking of a battleground … Akiva must have died at the end of the Bar Kokhba war, ca. 135 CE, so his polemic roughly coincided with the novel phenomenon of Christian apologies presented before the emperor.65 Another text from this period is the Epistle of Barnabas, which fiercely combats the Jewish understanding of the commandments and claims, ‘the covenant is ours’.66 Scholars have debated which metaphor most adequately describes the relationship of the two communities in antiquity: mother and daughter, sibling sisters, or estranged brothers.67 It seems another image should be taken into consideration: rival lovers.***
64 MekRY beshallah shira 3 (p127), reading both עולמותand ( על מותsee above n60). Cf Urbach, ‘Homiletical Interpretations’, 250f. 65 Eusebius, CH 4.3: Quadratus and Aristides. 66 Barn 13:1. See Tomson, ‘The Didache, Matthew, and Barnabas’, 357–362 (in this volume, 509–513). 67 Cf Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 3–7. *** [What is new under the sun? A propos ‘rival lovers’, Christopher B. Kaiser drew my attention to Justin, Dial 134:3, where Jacob, serving Laban to marry first Leah then Rachel, is seen as a type of Christ ‘serving’ for two other sisters, ‘Now Leah is your people and synagogue, but Rachel is our Church, and for these, and for the servants in both, Christ even now serves’ (ANF 1). One ought to read this beautiful passage in the Greek: ἀλλὰ Λεία μὲν ὁ λαὸς ὑμῶν καὶ ἡ συναγωγή, ῾Ραχὴλ δὲ ἡ ἐκκλησία ἡμῶν, καὶ ὑπὲρ τούτω δουλεύει μέχρι νῦν ὁ Χριστὸς καί τῶν ἐν ἀμφοτέραις δούλων. Curiously, there is no visible trace here of the Song.]
Parables, Fiction, and Midrash: The Ten Maidens and the Bridegroom (Matt 25:1–13) Exegetes have often disputed methods of interpretation, asking whether ‘historical’ approaches are preferable or ‘literary’ ones such as narrative or rhetorical analysis. Parables, small exemplary stories typically embedded in a larger discourse, have occasioned a particular turn of the debate.1 Here, the question has been whether such stories are driven by questions taken from ‘real life’ or rather by literary fiction, allegorically trying to answer theological questions. In this debate, we should not be carried away by ideological arguments for one or the other position. Parables seem to be no exception among the subject matter of the humanities, where it is advised always to be open to the usefulness of both literary and historical approaches.2
Disproportionality and Schematization Parables are peculiar stories. They have an ambiguous relation to reality and may misrepresent certain aspects of actual life in order to place others in a correct perspective. Thus parables often evince bizarre proportions and schematic contrasts. Take the parable of the ‘unforgiving servant’ who violently demanded repayment of 100 silver denars by a lower servant, while he had himself been mercifully acquitted of a debt of 10,000 talents, equalling some 100,000,000 1 This paper was read in the parables seminar at the 2016 EABS conference held at KU Leuven. [It is printed, with slight modifications, as forthcoming in A. Merz – E. Ottenheijm – M. Poorthuis (eds), Parables in Changing Contexts: Interreligious and Cultural Approaches to the Study of Parables, Leiden, Brill.] 2 The ‘realistic’ intention of Jesus’ parables as contrasted with their subsequent ‘allegorization’ by the evangelists has been stressed in particular by Jülicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu (1888), see discussion by Jeremias, Die Gleichnisse Jesu, 14–18; Flusser, Die rabbinischen Gleichnisse, 119–137; Ernest van Eck, ‘Realism and Method: The Parables of Jesus’, paper read in the seminary mentioned in n1. Van Eck offers a nice example of socio-historical interpretation, as does Eric Ottenheijm in his paper read in the seminar, ‘Prepare Yourself! Spatial Rhetoric in Jewish and “Christian” Meal Parables’. Again Reuven Kiperwasser, in his paper in the seminar, ‘The King at the Feast: Obscure Stories and Their Hidden Meaning’, illuminates the literary and theological aspect of parables. [These papers are forthcoming in Merz–Ottenheijm–Poorthuis, previous n.]
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denars (Matt 18:23–35).3 Just for comparison: ancient sources estimate the total value in gold and silver captured by Alexander the Great from the enormous Persian empire at just some 18 times that amount.4 Such estimates are habitually exaggerated, but by any count, the servant in the parable owed his master an amount in the order of the yearly pay of an army. How must we understand this extravagance? William Davies and Dale Allison, assuming that Matt 18:23–35 contains an ‘authentic parable of Jesus’ that could not be too much out of touch with reality, postulate that the amount of 10,000 talents reflects ‘Matthew’s own editorial contribution’.5 Joachim Jeremias and Ulrich Luz, however, think that the ‘fabulous’ amount is an ‘embellishment’, a disproportionality that belongs to the original parable and serves to bring out the scandalous contrast between oneself being forgiven a huge debt and refusing to forgive someone else a tiny one.6 Pioneering the comparative study of synoptic and rabbinic materials, David Flusser has drawn the attention to other peculiar aspects of the parable, such as the macabre and the gruesome. Even granted the much higher tolerance of social violence in Antiquity, throwing a wedding guest in jail for being incorrectly dressed or hacking a servant to pieces because he is lazy is outrageous, just as is a disappointed wedding guest starting to murder other guests.7 Flusser interestingly continues to observe that parables share these ‘drastic features’ in common with European fairy tales, where gruesome punishment and fabulous reward are opposed in almost ‘abstract’ stylization.8 Casting his net even wider, he also draws attention to similarities with the fable and the exemplum or chreia of Hellenistic popular philosophy, where the aim is to teach practical wisdom through paradigmatic situations. Thus in Flusser’s view the early, ‘classic’ parable belongs to the domain of ‘popular ethics’ which features a didactic purpose, while the later, ‘mature’ parable would have a more exegetical and ‘theological’ aspect, or in other words be more ‘midrashic’ in character.9
3 Luz, Matthäus 3: 71 counts by the Attic talent equalling 60,000 denars. More adequately it seems, Jeremias, Gleichnisse, 208 n4 cites Josephus’ count, Ant 17:323 and 190, yielding 100,000 denar to the talent. 4 See de Callatay, ‘Les trésors achéménides’, but note reservations by Briant, Histoire de l’empire perse, 1065. Cf the realistic calculations of the debts written off by the unjust stewart on the basis of ancient papyri in van Eck, ‘Realism and Method’, at nn27–35. 5 Davies–Allison, Matthew, 3: 795f. 6 Jeremias, Gleichnisse, 26; Luz, Matthäus 3: 71f. 7 Matt 22:11–13; 24:50; Semakhot 8:10 (ed Higger p156), quoted by Flusser, Gleichnisse, 43 and 29 n8. 8 Flusser, Gleichnisse, 35f, 42–45, citing the folklorist Max Lüthi. 9 Flusser, Gleichnisse, 141–160, the important chapter ‘Ursprung und Vorgeschichte der jüdischen Gleichnisse’. [See further my assessment of Flusser’s work on parables, ‘David Flusser, Die rabbinischen Gleichnisse’.]
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Possible Backgrounds The parable of the ten maidens appears only in Matthew, featuring redactional idiom both scattered across the story and concentrated in the opening and concluding clauses, which links it to a redactional framework focussing on eschatology. However, this does not exclude the possibility that the editors took it from tradition, a possibility that will become more likely below.10 Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him! Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out. But the wise replied, No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves. And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, Lord, lord, open to us. But he replied, Truly I tell you, I do not know you. Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. (Matt 25:1–13)
Schematization is in place: five wise maidens pitted against five foolish ones. So is some kind of exaggeration: a bridegroom arriving at midnight, and bridesmaids with no torches being excluded from the wedding party. Also, the bride is strangely lacking.11 In the form-critical and redaction-critical following of Bultmann, it is an ‘impossible wedding’ and must be seen as allegorizing Gemeindebildung provoked by the Parusieverzögerung, or in plain English, a product of early Christian theology grappling with the delay of the Second Coming.12 Others, especially Jeremias in his strained efforts to reconstruct the actual circumstances of Jesus’ life, have adduced ancient Jewish and Middle Eastern wedding customs that might explain the nocturnal scenario.13 Luz, following Jeremias, 10 Discussion in Luz, Matthäus 3: 467–472; Davies–Allison, Matthew, 3: 392f. Jeremias, Gleichnisse, 48f thinks the final clause recalls Matt 24:42 (Mark 13:35) and is redactional, while Flusser, Gleichnisse, 178 disagrees. For Luz, the tension between the final clause, ‘Keep awake’, and the falling asleep of all girls indicates that the parable is traditional and no redactional creation. 11 The observation was made in the discussion during the seminar. It had of course also been made by the redaction critics, see Strobel, ‘Zum Verständnis’, 202 and n3. Luz does not mention it, but instead stresses the strangeness of the ‘closed door’: at weddings in an ancient oriental village, everyone would be welcomed. ‘Hier setzt die Verfremdung ein, die zu vielen Jesusgleichnissen gehört’ (Matthäus 3: 473). 12 Cf references in Luz, Matthäus 3: 471 n30. This approach is carried to perfection by Donfried, ‘The Allegory of the Ten Virgins’. 13 Jeremias, Gleichnisse, 171–175, ‘ursprünglich nicht eine Allegorie … sondern die Schilderung einer wirklichen Hochzeit … angesichts der bevorstehenden eschatologischen Krisis’. In addition to the materials in Strack-Billerbeck (see next n), Jeremias cites contemporary local Palestinian wedding customs that cumulate in the bridegroom coming to his father’s house
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went as far as trying out all kinds of torches at a garden party with his exegetical seminary, and the result confirmed the lexical possibility that λαμπάδες in our parable means ‘torches’ or lamps mounted on sticks, not simple oil lamps. We might smile at these efforts, but they are not to be dismissed. Greek and Roman custom included nocturnal wedding processions illuminated by torches, and the same is reported of medieval Islamic weddings.14 Flusser accepts the value of such evidence, even adding his own similar observations made on a journey to Delhi, but without closing his eyes to the peculiar literary features. In his view, it concerns ein vorbildlich gelungenes Gleichnis, a parable that certainly does not realistically depict a village wedding but felicitously combines didactic stylization with narrative drama in teaching its lesson: Be prepared for the wake-up call and do not miss the occasion, for the door will be locked! The door image is also found in Rev 3:20 and reminds Flusser, albeit distantly, of Song of Songs 5:2 where the girl says, ‘I slept but my heart was awake, listen, my beloved is knocking.’ In view of parallels with Luke 12:35–38, Flusser also emphasizes the motif of falling asleep and waking up again as being essential. Moreover in a footnote he concedes that a link with Passover is a ‘possibility that is not completely excluded’.15 In my assessment, Flusser had all the ingredients for a full understanding of the parable, but for some reason refrained from putting them together into a coherent picture. I suspect that his reservation was caused by doubts about the import of Scripture in what he called the ‘classic’ parable, stressing instead its affinity with the practical wisdom of popular Hellenistic philosophy.16 The question is whether these were conflicting influences. It is significant that among the oldest parabolic dicta in rabbinic literature are a pair of sayings about care for the body attributed to Hillel the Elder, both didactic stories that connect bibli-
during the night, obviously requiring lamps and torches. [For further interesting results in this line of research see Zimmermann, ‘Hochzeitsritual’.] 14 See Luz, Matthäus 3: 469–471, with n29 on the ‘Gartenfest’ of his ‘Arbeitsgruppe’, and citing Jeremias, ‘Λαμπαδες’ (cf Jeremias, Gleichnisse, 174). NRSV translates λάμπας in John 18:5; Rev 4:5; 8:10 as ‘torch’, but in Acts 20:8 and our parable as ‘lamp’. Both Jeremias and Luz (ibid. n25 and 28) refer to Str-Bill 1: 969 who cite ‘Raschi zu Kelim 2,8’. Meant must be RaSh (R. Shimshon from Sens) on bNid 8a, Vilna ed, who first explains לפידin mKel 2:8 as ‘torch’ (cf Jdg 7:16, 20), i. e. an earthenware pot that holds rags drenched in oil or resin and is mounted on a stick (similarly Maimonides on mKel 2:8, ibid.), and then cites the ‘custom in the land of Ismael’ to bring the bride in the night from her father’s house to that of the bridegroom, with similar torches going up front. 15 Flusser, Gleichnisse, 177–192 (Middle-Eastern weddings, 179f; Song 5:2, 180; Pesah, 192 n24). 16 Flusser ibid. 21–23, 26–28, stating that the exegetical slant developed only in the later rabbinic parable, starting with R. Akiva. However, in a long note (29 n2) Flusser cites a study by Haim Schwartzbaum who concludes that in the rabbinic fox fables, a closely related genre, this trend is already visible early in the 2nd century.
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cal verses with patently Hellenistic imaginary and involve Greek loanwords.17 Thus regarding the earliest Jewish parabolic sayings and probably also parables, midrashic motifs are not to be excluded, although they may certainly be less pronounced and formalized than in the later aggada. With that in mind, let us further investigate the background of our parable.
Links with Exodus and the Song of Songs It is best to start from the Lukan pericope that has a number of elements in common with the parable of the ten maidens: Have your loins girded and your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds awake when he comes … If he comes during the second night watch or the third and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. (Luke 12:35–38)
The ‘lit lamps’ (here λύχνοι), the ‘wedding banquet’, and the ‘door’ remind us of the parable of the ten maidens, but the ‘girded loins’ belong elsewhere. They are also found in Did 16:1, there combined, surprisingly, with burning lamps and the call to ‘keep awake’. We get the impression of dealing with a cluster of elements that variously appear in our earliest sources.18 Another element from Luke 12 that may belong here is the arrival ‘during the second or third night watch’. Depending on the Greek division of the night into three watches and the Roman one into four,19 this could indicate an hour somewhere ‘in the middle of the night’. In turn, this reminds us of the arrival of the bridegroom at midnight. August Strobel, while sharing the view that the parable issued from Gemeindebildung, has proposed to view these data together in the perspective of the Exodus story.20 This allows him to accomodate several elements, and in turn it shows us how these elements form an intertextual cluster. The redeemer’s arrival at midnight and the shout are key motifs in the Exodus story: ‘About midnight I 17 LevR 34.3 (p775–777), two stories which link Prov 11:17 (‘Those who are kind reward themselves’) with humankind’s creation ( בצלם אלהיםGen 9:6, ἐν εἰκόνι θεοῦ) comparable to the ( איקוניותεἰκόνια) of kings – respectively, with the motif of the soul which as a ‘guest’ in the body ‘is here today and tomorrow is gone’. As to the latter phrase, Margulies cites the better version found in Meiri, Hibbur hateshuva, 422: הדין נפשא עלובתא דאיכס אתיא וסמיכון אזלא, where איכסis a corruption from = איכתסἐχθές, ‘today’, and סמיכוןfrom [ סמירוןor = ]סימרוןσήμερον, ‘tomorrow’. Cf also the inferior version of the first story in ARN b30 (p66). Jeremias, Gleichnisse, 8 considers Jesus’ parables ‘etwas völlig Neues’ and dismisses Hillel’s ‘Bildworte’ as ‘scherzhafte[n] Vergleich’. More correctly, Flusser, Gleichnisse, 31, 55, 142f mentions the ‘Gleichnisspruch’ of Antigonos from Socho (mAv 1:3) as the oldest vestige of Jewish parables. 18 The girded loins appear also in Eph 6:14 and 1 Pet 1:13. 19 Fitzmyer, Luke, 988, ad loc. Cf bBer 3b, where the threefold division is preferred. 20 Strobel, ‘Zum Verständnis’. Luz, Matthäus 3: 471 n30 is not convinced, cf 475.
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will go out through Egypt … Then there will be a loud cry throughout the whole land of Egypt.’ So are the girded loins, an element not found in our parable: ‘This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded … you shall eat it hurriedly, it is the passover of the Lord’ (Exod 11:4, 6; 12:11, 29). Strobel shows that not only were these motifs part of the Jewish Passover liturgy and known as such to the Church Fathers, but were also embedded in midnightly early Christian Easter festivities, especially those of the Quartodecimans.21 As a preliminary conclusion, it seems that the parable of the ten maidens integrates allusions to the ‘shout’ heard ‘at midnight’ in Exodus. Strobel also sees the ‘closed door’ in this perspective, recalling the ‘knocking’ on the door in Rev 3:20, but he has no support for this in the Exodus story. Nor can he accommodate the falling asleep of the maidens. These difficulties disappear when, with Flusser, we are justified in recognizing echoes of the Song of Songs in the teachings of Jesus. The possibility of such is confirmed by the Qumran fragments and the Septuagint translation of the Song, which are both dated to the first century BCE. Further underpinnings can be found by studying the use made of the Song of Songs in the Jesus tradition and viewing this in the perspective of the developing Jewish exposition of the Song.22 Thus early on in the chronology of rabbinic attributions, we find R. Eliezer (late first century CE) reading the Song in connection with Exodus, in this instance involving the ‘girded loins’ and the ‘haste’ from Exod 12:11: ‘“You shall eat in haste” … This is the haste of the Shekhina. Although there is no proof in Scripture, there is a hint: “The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills” (Song 2:8).’23 Other early instances could be cited, as part of a development leading among other end-results to the Midrash Song Rabba and its extended allegory of God redeeming his ‘bride’, the people of Israel, from Egypt. The intimate link between Exodus and the Song is embedded in the Jewish custom to read the Song during the season of Passover, possibily since ancient times, as these texts seem to indicate.
21 Strobel ibid. 203f, quoting, e. g., Jerome, MPL 26: 184f, Traditio Iudaeorum est Christum media nocte venturum in similitudinem Aegyptii temporis quando Pascha celebratum est. Add: Origen, Scholia in Matt, MPG 17: 304, Μεσονύκτιον δὲ γίνεται ἡ φονή – ἐκείνῃ τῇ ὤρᾳ ᾗ ἐξῆλθον οἱ υἱοὶ ’Ισραὴλ ἐξ ᾿Αἰγύπτου ἐν ᾗ καὶ ὁ Χριστὸς ἀνέστη ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν. 22 Tomson, ‘Song of Songs’ (in this volume). In the parables seminar, Reuven Kiperwasser pointed out that R. Akiva’s warning that the Song of Songs should not be sung as a regular wedding song (tSan 12:10) shows that people did, which indicates a general familiarity with the Song. Incidentally, at the EABS conference (above n1) Torleif Elgvin read a paper announcing his book, The Literary Growth of Canticles During the Hasmonean Period, Leuven, Peeters (forthcoming), which based on the Qumran fragments concludes on the gradual growth of the Song. 23 MekRY bo/pisha 7 (p22), אבא חנן משום ר' אליעזר. Cf the midrashim of R. Yashia, ibid. 7 (p25) and R. Shimon ben Elazar, SifNum 115 (p125).
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In this development, the Song passage cited by R. Eliezer has occupied many other homilists, among which Jesus’ exemplum of the fig tree figures as one of the earliest instances: ‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near’ (Mark 13:28, cf Song 2:11–13). In another line of development, the relative importance of the Song in the Jesus tradition explains well the emergence of the marital imagery in subsequent Christology and Christian mysticism.24
The Peculiar Narrative Plot It may well be that the motif of the bridesmaids accompanying the bridegroom with torches in the night reflects wedding customs of first-century CE Galilee or Judea. It is a basic motif: insofar as it sounded familiar to the listeners, it must have aroused their sympathy for the bridesmaids, the protagonists, and their identification with them. This then represents the basic ‘material’ of the parable, but it hardly explains its narrative plot. The stereotyped behaviour of the characters, with all ten girls first falling asleep then waking up at the midnight cry announcing the bridegroom, and the five wise girls with their torches burning being admitted to the wedding party while the five foolish ones with no extra oil supply find the door shut – all this, we have learned, can be seen as schematic embellishment meant to bring the lesson across, even if meanwhile it is propelled by achieved narrative skill. In addition, we are now able to pin important plot elements to the cluster of Exodus and Song motifs we have pointed out. To that aim, we must hear Song 5:2 in full: I am asleep, but my heart is awake. Listen! My beloved is knocking: Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one; for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.
Several key words from the verse may be heard echoing in the parable: the maidens who have fallen ‘asleep’, the door that is to be ‘opened’, and the bridegroom who arrives in the ‘night’. Upon consideration, the verse even seems to govern the plot of the parable. Thus it makes us understand the difference between the wise and the foolish: all maidens have fallen asleep, but the ‘heart’ of the wise ‘is awake’, as is shown by the oil supply they are keeping ready. Finally, the arrival of the beloved having his ‘locks wet with the drops of night’ seems pivotal in reinforcing the intertextual link with the Exodus story: he is recognized as the redeemer who comes at midnight, and a shout goes up.
Further elaboration in Tomson, ‘Song of Songs’.
24
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Conclusion It has proved useful to study both the socio-historical context of the parable: wedding customs in the ancient Near East, and its likely intellectual context: the Jewish exposition of the Song of Songs in connection with Exodus. Moreover, we have paid attention to the formal characteristics of the parable in comparison with related literary phenomena. In this instance, we have found that in addition to didactic disproportionality and schematization, midrashic motifs may account for peculiar and bizarre formal elements in a parable. In result, Jesus as remembered in Matthew appears as an achieved storyteller who artfully weaves elements from an intertextual cluster of keywords drawing on Exodus and the Song into a peculiarly striking and moving parable. With apparent allusions to the perspective of Passover, it urges listeners always to be ready for the arrival of the ‘bridegroom’ announcing the Redemption, even if the worries of daily life are likely to blunt their wakefulness. Thus heard, the parable inspires a wondrous serenity that passes unnoticed as long as we go by the final clause; the discord with the redactional frame enhances the impression of authenticity. All girls fall asleep, but the wise can truly rest: their oil supply makes them confident that their torches will light up when time is ripe. Ultimately, the parable resembles that of the peasant who can quietly sleep till the grain has ripened: Do not worry if you must fall asleep, as long as your heart is awake!25
25 Mark 4:26–29. Cf the sustained repetition of the last clause in PesRK 5.6 (p87f), see Tomson, ‘Song of Songs’, 434 (above 239). Cf also Jesus’ counsel not to believe messianic rumours, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah! or Look! There he is!’ (Mark 13:21–23) and, strikingly similar, the advice of Yohanan ben Zakkai to continue confidently planting trees when rumour announces the arrival of the Messiah, ARN b31 (p67), on which see Bammel, ‘Das Wort vom Apfelbäumchen’ (at 142 n13 reading our parable on the basis of the contrasting final clause!).
The Lord’s Prayer at the Faultline of Judaism and Christianity By its wording and form, the prayer Jesus taught his disciples is a typically Jewish prayer well comparable to the category of ‘short prayers’ cited in rabbinic literature. However, both Jews and Christians today would readily define it as the central prayer typical of Christianity. This seeming contradiction is not coincidental. The following paper studies the versions of the Lord’s Prayer preserved in the Didache and the Gospels in their respective literary and historical contexts and in comparison with rabbinic traditions, all from a redaction-critical perspective. The analysis involves recent discussion of the development of organized early Jewish prayer. The conclusion is that from being one among many Jewish prayers, the Lord’s Prayer became a Christian boundary marker at the rupture that occurred between Jews and Christians during the Roman Empire under Trajan and Hadrian, and that the institution of the rabbinic daily prayer of Eighteen Benedictions played a crucial role in this development. A range of conclusions follow for the relationship of Jews and Christians.
Three Versions Since Antiquity, the Lord’s Prayer was known as preserved in two places: the well-known Matthaean version canonised in Christian liturgy, and the barely known shorter version in Luke. Its occurrence in the Didache was discovered in the nineteenth century and has been studied mainly by scholars; it has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of how this ancient Jewish prayer could evolve into a kernel of Christian liturgy.1 [166]
1 For the Didache and its Jewish background see esp Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache; del Verme, Didache and Judaism. See further Audet, La Didachè; Rordorf – Tuilier, La doctrine des douze Apôtres; Wengst, Didache, Barnabasbrief; Niederwimmer, Die Didache; Draper, The Didache in Modern Research. [See also Draper–Jefford, The Didache. The present article appeared in the last-mentioned volume, without the minor adaptations now made. For the Lord’s Prayer and its place in the early Church in general see Jeremias, ‘Das Vater-Unser’; Kvalbein, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’; Sandnes, ‘The First Prayer’; Wilk, Das Vaterunser in seinen antiken Kontexten.]
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The versions of the prayer in Matthew and Didache are almost identical and can practically be treated as one. They constitute the major point of resemblance between the closely related documents of Matthew and Didache.2 The context in both documents is also similar, but it contains characteristic differences. In particular, the Didache context features some details of singular historical significance. Luke, in double contrast, not only brings the prayer in a shorter and actually quite different version, but also in a distinctly different context. In fact, the importance of the Lukan version in its particular context is brought out best when compared both with Didache and Matthew. In short, for understanding the genesis of the prayer and its subsequent history, we must study both the three versions and their respective contexts in a historical perspective. This is best done by reviewing them in synopsis:3 [167] Luke 11:1–5
Matthew 6:1–18
Didache 8:1–2
He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. He said to them:
Beware of practising your piety before others (…) So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites (ὑποκριταί) do in the synagogues and in the streets (…) And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners (…) When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentilesa do (…) Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven (οὐρανοῖς), Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.b Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Let your fastings not coincide with that of the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth (weekday), but you should fast on the fourth day and Preparation Day.
When you pray, say: Father, Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
And do not pray as the hypocrites do, but pray as the Lord has commanded in his gospel.
Pray in this way: Our Father in heaven (οὐρανῷ), Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
2 For studies on Matthew and the Didache see Van de Sandt, Matthew and the Didache. Cf ibid. 131–141, Tomson, ‘The Halakhic Evidence of Didache 8’. For studies on Matthew, Didache and James see Van de Sandt–Zangenberg, Matthew, James and Didache. 3 The translation of the Lukan and Matthaean versions largely follows NRSV; the Didache version is my own translation assimilated to NRSV’s Matthew. From the extensive literature on the Gospels I shall mainly refer to the superb commentaries of Luz, Matthäus and Fitzmyer, Luke.
The Lord’s Prayer at the Faultline of Judaism and Christianity
Give us each day our daily bread.c And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, (ὁφειλήματα) as we also forgived our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.
And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.e
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Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debt (τὴν ὁφειλήν), as we also forgive (ἀφίεμεν) our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. [168] For yours is the power and the glory in the ages.
For if you forgive o thers their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you (…) So I say to you, Ask, and it And whenever you fast, do Three times daily pray in this way. will be given you … not look dismal, like the hypocrites (…) Notes: a ἐθνικοί (ὑποκριταί, B etc.). b ἐλθάτω, as in Luke (not mentioned in NA27). B, Koine text etc. and Did: ἐλθέτω. c ἐπιούσιον: an inimitable hapax, found in all versions and notoriously difficult to translate. d ἀφήκαμεν אB etc. (ἀφίεμεν: א1 Koine text, etc.; ἀφίομεν: D W etc.; cf Luke and Did). ἀφήκαμεν is an aorist not a perfect; it is forced to translate ‘have forgiven’. Cf reservations of Luz, Matthäus, 453; pace Fitzmyer, Luke, 897. e The personal ‘evil one’ is one option of the ambiguous Greek (and Semitic), which also allows an impersonal ‘evil’. And he said to them, Suppose one of you has a friend …
Comparing Texts Let us now study the text of the three versions in comparison, in a series of brief comments. – The versions of Didache and Matthew are identical except for three small grammatical differences (indicated in the footnotes to the texts). – The Lukan version is remarkably shorter: the sentences about ‘your will’ and ‘the evil one’ are lacking. It seems to be a more authentic version, even if the phrase ‘forgive us our sins’ could be a concession to Greek readers who would misunderstand ‘our debts’.4 – The address in Luke is a mere ‘Father’. Comparison with other Gospels shows this more personal address to be typical of Jesus, especially in the Aramaic form ἀββα which was also used in Pauline churches.5 [169] In rabbinic Cf Fitzmyer, Luke, 897. Matt 11:25 = Luke 10:21; Matt 26:39, 42; John 11:41; 17:1. See esp Mark 14:36, ἀββα ὁ πατήρ, and cf Rom 8:16; Gal 4:6. 4
5 E. g.
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literature, a similar form of address is associated with the ancient hasidim, holy men and miracle workers. Also, many prayers cited in a later rabbinic work which shows affinity to these hasidim feature the address אבי שבשמים, ‘My Father in heaven.’ This shows that the address ‘Father’ was rare but not unique in ancient Judaism.6 – The collective form ‘our Father in heaven’ in Matthew and Didache is equivalent to more normal rabbinic usage, אבינו שבשמים, with Matthaean ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς reflecting the Semitic plural ‘heavens’.7 – The question of the ‘original’ language of Jesus’ prayer, though not essential to this inquiry, is hard to decide. With very few Aramaic exceptions, all rabbinic prayers are in Hebrew. It seems certain that Jesus read Hebrew and likely that he spoke it. He could have taught the prayer in either language, for Aramaic ἀββα is also used in Mishnaic Hebrew.8 [170] – The two-membered doxology in Didache differs from the doxology that became habitual in Christian liturgy. A doxology is lacking in Luke and in the major manuscripts of Matthew;9 in the other manuscripts of Matthew it appears in widely divergent versions. This reflects a widely divergent execution of an ad libitum conclusion. – Patristic writings and New Testament manuscripts show that the version of Matthew and Didache quickly became dominant.10 Even Origen, one of the few Church Fathers to pay attention to the Lukan version,11 in his commentary on the prayer switches to the Matthaean version as soon as possible. – Origen interestingly comments that it concerns two different prayer versions which Jesus taught in specific circumstances: a personal version intended for the disciple who asked his question about Jesus’ prayer, as in Luke, and a community prayer taught by Jesus to his disciples gathered on top of the moun6 In mTaan 3:8 the hasid ‘Honi the Circledrawer’ in his prayer for rain says the people see him as ‘an intimate son before you’ ()כבן בית לפניך, and afterwards he is ironically called ‘a spoiled son before his father’. אבי שבשמיםis found in SER p51 plus another 18 mentions, against 7 of ( אבינו שבשמיםsearch BIRP). See esp Safrai, ‘Yeshu veha-tenua he-hasidit’, 417–420. J. Jeremias thought the phrase ‘Abba’ to be unique of Jesus, see his Neutestamentliche Theo logie, 67–73 [and more elaborately, ‘Abba’, in Abba, 15–67], and the reply by Barr, ‘Abbā Isn’t “Daddy”’. Cf Fitzmyer, Luke, 902f, and differently Luz, Matthäus, 442. See Tönges, Unser Vater im Himmel, 12–23, survey of scholarship; 257–262, remarks on NT usage. 7 Πατὴρ … ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς: 13× in Matt, 1× in Mark 11:25; ὁ πατὴρ … ὁ οὐράνιος, 7× in Matt; cf BDR § 141.4. אביהם שבשמים/אבינו, 3× in Mishna, 1× in Tosefta, 6× in Halakhic Midrashim. Cf Luz, Matthäus, 444. 8 Kutscher, Words and Their History, 1f; Barr, ‘Abba Isn’t Daddy’. Differently Luz, Matthäus, 437f; Fitzmyer, Luke, 900f with an Aramaic reconstruction of the Lukan version, cf Jeremias, Neutestamentliche Theologie, 191 [and ‘Das Vater-Unser’]. 9 Mss אB D etc. 10 Cf Stevenson, The Lord’s Prayer, 28: ‘Nothing is known of any liturgical use of the Lucan version in antiquity.’ 11 An other example (with more ‘Matthaean prejudice’ than Origen) is Cyril, Cat in Luc, MPG 72:685, 688, 692.
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tain, as in Matthew.12 Origen does not elaborate, however, on literary and historical features typifying the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. – A singular, isolated verse in Mark makes it likely that a primitive form of the Matthaean version or a part of it found early acceptance: ‘Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses’ (Mark 11:25). Significantly, the phrase ‘stand praying’ (στήκετε προσευχόμενοι) is elsewhere used only in Matthew, of the Pharisees (Matt 6:5, ἑστῶτες προσεύχεσθαι), and it also agrees with rabbinic usage.13 Likewise, the phrase ‘Father in heaven’ surprises, as otherwise it is special to Matthew and rabbinic literature.14 Furthermore, there is a striking similarity in content with the passage about forgiveness in Matt 6:12–15. These [171] three elements give the verse in Mark an authentic character and seem to betray knowledge of the Lord’s Prayer in a primitive form related to the one in Matthew and Didache.15 – Nothing in the two versions of the Lord’s Prayer defines it as a Christian text. This becomes abundantly clear from the contrast with the Trinitarian doxology found in one of the manuscripts.16 By form and vocabulary, the Lord’s Prayer is altogether Jewish.17
Comparing Contexts We shall now compare the three contexts, paying ample attention – pace Origen in his day – to literary specifics in a perspective of historical development, or in other words: in a redaction-critical approach. In doing so, the similarities between Matthew and Didache will strike us all the more, especially as contrasted with the very different situation in Luke. The Lukan context has two remarkable features: there is a narrative introduction, and in it, there is no polemics. The introduction narrates how Jesus himself had been praying, and when asked by one of his disciples, he taught him the prayer text. Jesus’ own prayer practice does appear in other Gospels, but it is especially conspicuous in Luke.18 Furthermore, the prayer Jesus teaches is not contrasted with that of others, on the contrary: the disciple asks Jesus to teach them to pray ‘as John taught his disciples’. This is typical of Luke, whose narrative displays a recurring dynamic of communication, confrontation, and renewed De orat 18. Cf Luz, Matthäus, 436 n15. E. g. mBer 5:1; cf Str-Bill 2: 28. Cf also the name Amida for the Jewish main prayer, below. Interestingly, Origen, De orat 31 finds the upright orans attitude most fitting for prayer. 14 See above n20. 15 Similarly Luz, Matthäus, 436 n11. 16 Ms 1253. 17 Extensive material in Str-Bill ad loc. Cf summary by Luz, Matthäus, 455–457. 18 Mark 1:35; 6:46; Matt 14:23; Luke 5:16; 6:12; 9:12, 28. 12 Origen, 13
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communication between Jesus and the Pharisees.19 In Acts, the other Lukan text, we find specific differences in the attitude of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees towards Jesus’ disciples. Luke’s specific characterization of both groups is confirmed by Josephus’ descriptions.20 Seen in that light, it is significant that Luke juxtaposes [172] the prayer of Jesus with that of John the Baptist: implicitly, it is also put on a par with the prayer of other Jewish teachers. Both in Didache and Matthew we find a demarcation over against the ‘hypocrites’, though this has a different place in both documents. In Didache, the phrase is used only in chapter 8, a remarkable chapter also in other respects. The Didache, an ancient text highly respected in the early Church, gives rules for Christian liturgy and community life, on the whole serenely and without polemics. Did 8, however, not only features this exceptional polemical demarcation but also differs by form and content. First, unlike Did 7:1 and 9:1 which each start a new subject, Did 8:1 does not begin with the transition fomula, περὶ δέ, ‘Now about …’ Second, Did 8:1 is about weekly fast days, which is a sidetrack in relation to 7:4 which mentions fasting before Baptism. Hence Did 8, with its double feature of fasting and praying unlike the ‘hypocrites’, seems to reflect a later stage of redaction. Two elements in Didache 8 merit further study in comparison with Jewish sources: the specific fast days and the prayer thrice daily. The restriction of communal and personal fast days to Mondays and Thursdays is the explicit object of rabbinic rulings.21 It follows that the Didache’s ‘hypocrites’ are rabbis, or their predecessors, Pharisees. While contesting the ruling of the ‘hypocrites’, the Didache’s own preference for Wednesdays and Fridays as fast days accords with the alternative calendar current in ancient Judaism which was first identified in the Book of Jubilees and is reflected also in a number of Qumran writings.22 Hence this should not be read as expressing an anti-Jewish motivation but rather an alternative Jewish tradition. The Didache’s type of Christianity seems rooted in a non-Pharisaic strand of ancient Judaism. [173] The custom of praying three times a day is already mentioned in the Old Testament and is self-understood in early rabbinic tradition, where the three times of prayer are taken to coincide with the times of the daily sacrifices in the Temple.23 Therefore this represents a point of departure shared by the Didache authors with the Pharisees and rabbis. The Didache’s protest concerns the particular prayer to be said thrice daily – not that of the ‘hypocrites’, but the Lord’s Prayer. Cf Tomson, If This be from Heaven, ch. 5. See Mason, ‘Chief Priests, Sadducees’; Tomson, ‘Gamaliel’s Counsel’ (in this volume). 21 mTaan 1:6; 2:9; 3:1; cf mMeg 1:3; 3:6; 4:1. Cf Epiphanius, Haer 1.211. The Didache appears to be the earliest written source for this piece of information. 22 Jub 6:23–38, see Jaubert, La date de la Cène; VanderKam, Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls. See now Saulnier, Calendrical Variations in Second Temple Judaism. 23 Dan 6:11; Ps 55:18; mBer 4:1 (analysed below); tBer 3:1–3. 19 20
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We observed that the expression ‘hypocrites’ found twice in Did 8 is not otherwise used in the Didache. By contrast, it is typical of Matthew, especially in the polemical phrase, ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites …’24 As compared with the other Gospels and the Didache, Matthew is dominated by polemics with the Pharisees.25 This is most remarkable in the two large characteristic sections seemingly interpolated in the basic order of Mark otherwise followed in Matthew: the Sermon on the Mount and the discourse against ‘Scribes and Pharisees’. Both discourses, located in the opening and closing parts of the Gospel’s main body (Matt 5–7 and 23), depict Jesus’ teaching in sharp distinction from the Pharisees. Two elements from the anti-Pharisaic polemics of these sections are relevant here. In the first place, this concerns the threefold demarcation over against religious practice of the ‘hypocrites’ in Matt 6:1–18. Almsgiving, praying and fasting should not be done in public but ‘in secret’ (ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ). It is plausible that this emphasis accords with the tradition of Jesus.26 Some literary analysis is apposite. The three items of almsgiving, praying and fasting are phrased in a uniform style with recurring expressions. In this framework, the section with the Lord’s Prayer stands off by style and content (Matt 6:7–15).27 Moreover its first two verses (6:7–8) are set off against ‘the Gentiles’, which is another contrast with the threefold framework and its polemics against the ‘hypocrites’.28 [174] It follows that an editor has inserted verses 7–15 at some stage of the Gospel’s history.29 While his aim seems to have been to oppose the religious practice of the Pharisees, he left the anti-Gentile orientation of 6:7 in place, with the neglect of coherence characteristic of Gospel redactors. Taken as a whole, the similarity in content and terminology of Matt 6:1–18 with Did 8 is striking. The other element of anti-Pharisaic polemics consists in the prohibition ascribed to Jesus not to have oneself called ‘rabbi’, as is done by the scribes and Pharisees, ‘for you have one teacher’. Nor should one be called ‘father’ or ‘instructor’, ‘for you have one Father, the heavenly one’ (ὁ οὐράνιος) and ‘one instructor, the Messiah’ (Matt 23:7–10). Again, the phrase ‘heavenly Father’ is typical of Matthew. Furthermore the mention of the ‘Messiah’ (χριστός) definitely signals a late redactional stage. The same appears from the selective use of ‘rabbi’ in Matthew as compared with other Gospels. In Mark and John, both 24 Matt 23:13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29. ὑποκριτής another 7× in Matt and furthermore in Mark 7:6 and Luke 6:42; 12:56; 13:15. 25 Cf Tomson, If This Be from Heaven, 267–276. 26 Luz, Matthäus, 420f. The phrase is used also in Rom 2:29 and there may well represent an adaptation of Jesus tradition to the specific rhetorical purpose of Romans. 27 Cf the similarities in content between Matt 6:14–15 and Mark 11:25. 28 ἐθνικοί, cf Matt 5:47 and 18:17. Cf the ‘correction’ ὑποκριταί in Matt 6:7 in ms B etc. 29 For the whole passage see Luz, Matthäus, 418–421, and Betz, ‘Jewish-Christian Cultic Didache’.
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Jesus and the Baptist are innocently called ‘rabbi’ or ‘rabbouni’.30 Luke avoids the Hebrew rabbi altogether and replaces it with the very Greek ἐπιστάτα, ‘Master’.31 But Matthew, characteristically, replaces ‘rabbi’ with ‘Lord’ when Peter is speaking (Matt 17:4, cf Mark 9:5) – incidentally, a title curiously uncriticised in Matt 23:7–10 – but leaves it in place twice when it concerns ‘Judas who betrayed him’ (Matt 26:25, 49). Hence ‘rabbi’ is used in Matthew, but only by Jesus’ enemies, Judas and the Pharisees. It follows that in the extant late redactional stage, the Gospel turns against the title of ‘rabbi’ used by the Pharisees since it is perceived as a new, extraneous phenomenon. Seen in a larger perspective, this corresponds with the consistent use in rabbinic literature of ‘rabbi’ as a formalised title for teachers working after the destruction of the Temple. It seems Matthew is confronted with the novel phenomenon of ‘rabbinic’ Judaism, and by implication, the same is true of Didache.32 [175] This will do for an analysis of the early Christian sources about the Lord’s Prayer. We shall now turn to the rabbinic sources about early Jewish prayer. This is a strange manoeuvre only as long as we presume that Jesus’ prayer was conceived and transmitted in a different world than that of other Jews. If we accept Jesus was a Jew, we must study his prayer as part of multiform ancient Jewish prayer.
The Development of Early Jewish Prayer The beginnings of organized Jewish prayer are difficult to assess. The main sources here are in rabbinic literature, a body of more or less loosely edited collections of disparate traditions originally transmitted orally and hard to date and evaluate historically. Recent decades have seen renewed discussion on the origins of ancient Jewish prayer. We are especially interested in the rabbinic main prayer designated ‘Eighteen Benedictions’ in view of its content (although in actual practice, derived from Babylonian Jewry, it has nineteen). In Hebrew it is also referred to as Tefilla, ‘the Prayer’, or Amida – ‘the Standing’, a name strikingly reminiscent of the singular verse in Mark 11:25 reviewed above. For a long time, the view of Ismar Elbogen, originally published in 1913, has been dominant.33 Elbogen concluded that although the Eighteen Benedictions was established in its actual form by Gamaliel the Younger by the end of the first 30 The Baptist: John 1:38; 3:26. Jesus: Mark 9:5; 11:21; 14:45; John 1:49; 3:2; 4:31; 6:25; 9:2; 11:8. ῥαββουνί: Mark 10:51; John 20:16. 31 Luke 5:5; 8:24 (twice); 9:33 (cf Mark 9:5); 9:49; 17:13. 32 The argument is more developed in Tomson, ‘Didache, Matthew’ (in this volume). 33 Elbogen, Gottesdienst, 27–41. Elbogen’s theory was further refined by Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud. See also Alon, The Jews 1: 266–272. [For a clear-headed survey of research on ancient Jewish prayer see Penner, Patterns of Daily Prayer, 2–28.]
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century CE, its origins were much more ancient.34 Gamaliel’s contribution must have consisted only in providing the ‘arrangement’ of the eighteen benedictions which each had their own longer or shorter prehistory. In one case, he found a direct motive in contemporaneous events: the birkat ha-minim or ‘Benediction about the Heretics’ by which he meant to separate Christians from Judaism.35 Both elements of Elbogen’s theory – the gradual growth of the Eighteen Benedictions and Gamaliel’s authorship of the ‘Benediction about the Heretics’ – have drawn criticism more recently. We deal with the former first. [176] In large part basing himself on non-rabbinic sources, Ezra Fleischer, in a long article published in 1989, set out to destroy the foundation of Elbogen’s theory. His point of departure was that nowhere in the pre-70 sources do we find evidence of a statutory daily prayer. The ‘synagogue’ was an ‘assembly’ for Scripture reading and teaching, not praying.36 Prayers were said on an individual basis, at any place but preferably in the Temple, as also seen in Jesus’ disciples (Acts 2:44; 3:1). Jesus was opposed to praying in public places (Matt 6:5f.) and liked to pray ‘in a deserted place’ or ‘on a mountain’.37 Only the Qumran scrolls mention fixed daily community prayers, and the reason why is revealing. The sectarians denied the validity of the Temple service in Jerusalem and formed a ‘human sanctuary’, replacing the sacrificial cult with their ‘spiritual’ worship service. The institution of obligatory daily prayer by Gamaliel the Younger was an analogous manoeuvre, necessitated by the destruction of the Temple and the loss of its daily service as the frame of reference for the liturgy. Fleischer’s thesis found basic support but was criticised for its schematic approach.38 Certainly the daily Temple service was the referential centre for Jewish prayers and its discontinuation occasioned many adaptations. In addition, however, the sources indicate that already before the destruction, many kinds of communal and personal prayers were said outside the Temple on Sabbaths, festivals, and fast days, as also basic forms of daily prayer. So much appears from discussions about pertinent details [177] between the schools of Shammai Elbogen ibid. 30. Ibid. 36. 36 Fleischer, ‘On the Beginnings of Obligatory Jewish Prayer’. 37 Cf Luz, Matthäus, 37, and see above n31. A desire for intimate devotion is felt in the ‘cleansing of the Temple’ with the argument that it must be ‘a house of prayer for all the nations’, Mark 11:17; Matt 21:13. 38 Reif, ‘The Development of Ancient Jewish Prayer’, cf idem, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer, 84, 90, 353f; Fuchs, ‘Teshuvot li-shenei mehapkhanim’; Langer, ‘Revisiting Early Rabbinic Liturgy’. See also Fleischer’s responses to Reif and Langer in Fleischer, Statutory Jewish Prayers, 49–54, 55–58. Kimelman, ‘Rabbinic Prayer in Late Antiquity’ basically describes the Amoraic period and takes no position on this issue. [Interestingly, Penner, Patterns of Daily Prayer identifies ‘patterns of daily prayer’ in pre-70 Judaism oriented not on the sacrifical service but on cosmological phenomena, though he does not address the question of how this relates to the development of Jewish prayer in general, nor to the link to sunrise and sunset of Shema and Tefilla.] 34 35
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and Hillel which by and large predate the destruction of the Temple. By consequence, Gamaliel’s intervention cannot have been a complete innovation.39 The evasive nature of the rabbinic sources makes it difficult to decide here and to determine exactly what happened. A safe conclusion seems that Gamaliel’s measure consisted in prescribing a personal and communal daily prayer consisting of (about) eighteen benedictions, and that basic elements of these may have been extant already.40 We shall study the discussion about the institution of the Eighteen Benedictions in a moment. First it is necessary to pay attention to the genre of ‘short prayers’ mentioned in the course of the dispute. Let us review two related passages, one from the Mishna, the central rabbinic collection of formulated laws, and the other from the Tosefta: R. Yoshua says: One who is underway at a dangerous place (at the hour of prayer), says a short prayer.41 (And) he says: Save, O Lord, your people42 Israel. At every passage of crossing let their needs be before you.43 Blessed are you, Lord, who hears prayers. (mBer 4:4)44 One who is underway at a dangerous place – with robbers – (at the hour of prayer), says a short prayer. What is a short prayer? R. Eliezer says: Your will be done in heaven above, and grant repose to those who fear [178] you, and do what is good in your eyes. Blessed He who hears prayers. (tBer 3:7)
The Tosefta is a companion text to the Mishna,45 and we have here a nice example of how it can quote, supplement, and comment on the Mishna. In this case, the Tosefta supplements an alternative example of a ‘short prayer’, more precisely, one delivered by R. Eliezer, the habitual partner in discussion of R. Yoshua. Both rabbis were contemporaries of Gamaliel the Younger, which would date the prayer texts they are attributed with to the latter half of the first century CE. Significantly, Eliezer’s ‘short prayer’ shows some striking similarities with the Lord’s prayer in its Matthaean form, especially the sentence, ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’46 By its form and size, Yoshua’s prayer text is 39 tRH 2:17 (tBer 3:12). See Safrai, ‘Gathering in the Synagogues’; Safrai–Safrai, Brachot, 164–176. 40 See also the important observations by Naomi Cohen, ‘The Nature of Shim’on Hapekuli’s Act’, and ‘Ma hideish Shmuel Hakatan be-virkat ha-minim?’ 41 The added phrase עשרה שמנה מעיןin ms K, otherwise the prime manuscript, does not appear in a number of other important mss and must be rejected as a harmonization with mBer 4:3. 42 שאריתis lacking in ms K and the Yerushalmi. 43 ms K, first hand: בכל פרשת הצבור העבר צורכיהם מלפניף. Safrai–Safrai, Brachot, agreeing with Hentschke, ‘Parashat ha-Ibbur’, accept this reading as authentic, פרשת הצבורbeing equivalent to פורשים מן הצבור, ‘those who part from the community’. This renders the meaning, ‘All those parting from the community, let their needs be hidden before you,’ thus representing a primitive form of the birkat ha-minim. 44 Translations from rabbinic literature here and in the following are mine. 45 Goldberg, ‘Tosefta’. 46 Interestingly, Eliezer is attributed with other opinions reminiscent of the teachings of Jesus: (1) Tora is more important than subsistence (MekRS p106; but MekRY p161, it is R. Elazar
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also comparable, and the same goes for other ‘short prayers’ quoted in related sources. Correctly, it seems, Jesus’ prayer has been recognized as belonging in the category of ‘short prayers’.47 This sheds a revealing light on the narrative introduction in Luke 12:1–5 where one of the disciples asks Jesus to teach them a prayer ‘as also John taught his disciples’. The passages from Mishna and Tosefta just reviewed and the Lukan narrative converge in informing us of the existence of short ‘model prayers’ taught by various Jewish teachers including Jesus. The phenomenon of ‘short prayers’ did not mean one would always be brief in praying. Variance in length and wording was always understood. It is told of R. Akiva, a younger contemporary of Eliezer and Yoshua, that his [179] prayer would be short when serving as prayer leader, but extremely long when saying his private prayer. By the same token, Luke tells us not only that Jesus taught his disciples a short prayer, but also that by himself he would pray through the night.48 Indirectly, this reveals that Luke does not want to tell us, as Origen thought,49 that Jesus taught his disciples the type of ‘spiritual prayers’ he said himself. He did not teach them a long, spirit-driven prayer, but a ‘short prayer’ of the type the Baptist and other teachers were known also to have taught, obviously in order to provide their disciples with an example on which to model and develop their own prayers. The Lord’s Prayer, much like other ‘short prayers’, was meant as a minimum, a ration for times when words are scarce.
The Institution of the Eighteen Benedictions We now turn to the institution of the Eighteen Benedictions by Gamaliel the Younger as reported in rabbinic literature. He appears here as Rabban Gamliel, ‘Gamliel our Master’, the strong leader of a regime of rabbis that is traditionally located in Yavne, a small town West of Jerusalem, one generation after the destruction of the Temple. He is attributed with a series of administrative decrees seemingly aimed at lending new structure and coherence to Jewish worship after the demise of the Temple ritual.50 In recent decades, the actual power of his refrom Modiin), cf Matt 6:25–34; Luke 21:22–32; (2) circumcision overrules Sabbath, tShab 15:16 and John 7:23; (3) obligations to parents overrule vows, mNed 9:1 and Mark 7:9–13 = Matt 15:3–6; (4) prayer must be personal supplication: see below. 47 Lachs, Rabbinic Commentary, 118f. Other short prayers: yBer 4:4 (8b); bBer 29b, with all traditions put together. 48 tBer 3:5; Luke 6:12. 49 Origen, De orat 2.4f. His wish to stress the difference with synagogue prayers is frustrated by the parallel with John the Baptist. 50 Standard summary in Alon, The Jews 1: 206–287.
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gime has become the object of serious doubt.51 Two elements deserving of more attention in the discussion than is usual are the rabbinic indications of the support Gamaliel [180] had from the Roman administration52 – which would indicate a relative power base for his regime – and, in this connection, the sympathy which the Rome-based Josephus shows for the ‘Pharisees’ in the later works around 100 CE, i. e., the time when Gamaliel is estimated to have risen to power.53 The present paper is tangentially connected with this discussion and in that respect emphasizes a third element: the import of the evidence contained in early Christian sources.54 The sources about the Lord’s Prayer are a case in point. Gamaliel’s initiative is preserved in the Mishna. This document is to be seen as a redacted selection from multiple strands of oral tradition, aiming at formulating rabbinic law concerning all domains of life. Its style is characteristically concise and often consists of a display of various selected opinions. In these, a succession of layers representing subsequent generations of teachers is often visible. The thickest layer is the one corresponding to the generation of Usha, c. 150 CE, Usha being the rabbinical centre during that period. From a redactionhistorical point of view, the question always is what intention the final editor of the Mishna – according to tradition R. Yehuda the Prince, c. 200 CE – may have had in arranging (or omitting) the various opinions.55 We cite the relevant part from the tractate Berakhot, ‘Benedictions’, up till the words of R. Yoshua about ‘short prayers’ we already reviewed: (The hour of) morning prayer is till midday; R. Yehuda says, Till the fourth hour. Afternoon prayer is till evening; R. Yehuda says … Evening prayer has no set time; R. Yehuda says … (…) [181] R. Nehonya ben Hakana used to say a short prayer when entering and leaving the House of Study. They asked him: What is the place (sense) of this prayer? He said to them (…) Rabban Gamliel says: Every day, a person is to say eighteen benedictions. R. Yoshua says: (Only) a summary of the eighteen. R. Akiva says: If the prayer is fluent in his mouth, he prays eighteen, if not, a summary of the eighteen. R. Eliezer says: He who makes his prayer fixed, it is no supplication.
51 The evolving work of Jacob Neusner led the way. It is interesting to compare the first ed. of his Life of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai with the revised edition of 1970. See also Schäfer, ‘Die sogenannte Synode von Jabne’; idem, Der Bar Kochba-Aufstand. More recent: Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society. For discussion see Tomson, ‘Transformations in Post-70 Judaism’. 52 Esp mEd 7:7, see Alon, The Jews 1: 119–131; Safrai, ‘Bikkureihem shel hakhamei Yavne be-Roma’. [See, however, the end of ‘Josephus, Luke-Acts’, in this volume.] 53 Cf Josephus, Life 428f. For this argument see Cohen, ‘The Significance of Yavneh’, 55. For the rise to power of Gamaliel see Alon and Safrai, previous footnote [with its addition]. 54 See Tomson, ‘Didache, Matthew’. The point was made in relation to the birkat ha-minim by William Horbury, see below n78. 55 For this analytical method see Goldberg, ‘Mishna’. For discussion of the material cf Stemberger, Einleitung, 113–152; see ibid. 47–54 on oral transmission.
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R. Yoshua says: One who is underway at a dangerous place (at the hour of prayer), says a short prayer … (mBer 4:1–4)
The introductory sentence gives diverging specifications of the hours of prayer; the repeated mention of R. Yehuda’s name ascribes this discussion to his generation, the one of Usha. The principle of three prayers a day itself is not disputed. Hence this represents the consensus of the preceding ‘Yavne’ generation of Gamaliel and colleagues. We saw that the principle is also shared by the Didache, presumably around the same time, c. 100. In the continuation, Gamaliel’s ruling with ensuing discussion is sandwiched between two passages on ‘short prayers’. A narrative introduction tells of the short prayer said by Nehonya, an older contemporary. Gamaliel’s clause seems to be formulated in reaction, lapidarily; it provokes three objections; and finally Yoshua’s short prayer follows. The intention of the final editor with this seemingly undecided discussion may be read from the disposition of opinions.56 Eliezer rejects the ruling on principle. He is against the whole idea of a form of prayer fixed for all: prayer needs to be personal (‘his prayer’), and it must be ‘supplication’ and include variation. Incidentally, this is another emphasis which brings him close to what is told of Jesus.57 His opinion, however, is preceded by the ones of Yoshua and Akiva. Yoshua objects to the rule prescribing eighteen benedictions three times daily for all: he wants to go no further than a ‘summary’, a short prayer inspired by the eighteen. Akiva, the younger contemporary and former disciple of Yoshua and Eliezer, intermediates and adds a concession: [182] when someone’s prayer is fluent, the eighteen are to be said, but if not, only a summary. The discussion ends with Yoshua’s opinion, already quoted, that in times of distress only a ‘short prayer’ is to be said. This is open to the assumption that in normal circumstances, the Eighteen Benedictions are the rule. Thus analysed, the course of the discussion subtly suggests a gradual softening of the initial protest against Gamaliel’s initiative. Yoshua’s fundamental objection is accomodated by Akiva, in his habitual role of mediator; the radical rejection by Eliezer stands isolated; and the resulting implicit understanding is that barring exceptional circumstances, the Eighteen Benedictions are the rule. This is confirmed by later discussions in the Talmud which take the Eighteen Benedictions for granted. In spite of initial resistance,58 Gamaliel’s initiative has won out. The Talmud summarises the process succinctly: ‘Shimon ha-Pekoli ar-
56 Fleischer, ‘Beginnings of Obligatory Jewish Prayer’, 426–428 simply supposes Yehuda the Prince reckoned with persisting resistance. 57 Cf Matt 6:6; Mark 11:22–24; Luke 18:1; cf above n59. The same opinion is ascribed to another earlier contemporary, Shimon ben Nataneel, mAv 2:13. 58 Cf the memory of the violent discussion between Yoshua and Gamaliel about the status of the daily evening prayer, bBer 27b–28a.
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ranged the Eighteen Benedictions in their proper place before Rabban Gamliel at Yavne.’59 If we now combine these results with our findings about the early Christian sources, a conclusion of great importance follows. Gamaliel’s institution of the Eighteen Benedictions seems to have met with considerable resistance, both in his own rabbinic circle and in the community of Didache and Matthew. This conclusion may be spelled out in seven steps. (1) Matthew’s polemics, on prayer among other things, is aimed at the ‘hypocrites’ or Pharisees who recently had begun calling themselves ‘rabbi’. (2) The Didache, closely related to Matthew, turns against the ‘hypocrites’ who have the second and fifth weekday for fast days instead of the fourth and sixth, and who pray another prayer than the Lord’s Prayer. (3) Fasting on the second and fifth, Monday and Thursday, is the rule in rabbinic tradition, while the preference for Wednesday and Friday is associated with an alternative Jewish calendar which the Didache-Matthew community seems to have supported. (4) The similarities of Matthew’s polemics against the Pharisaic ‘rabbis’ and the Didache’s resistance against Pharisaic-rabbinic fast days suggest that both texts also militate against the prayer text propagated by the Pharisees-rabbis. (5) The objection in Didache and Matthew to this rabbinic daily prayer parallels the initial protest registered in the Mishna against the [183] institution of the Eighteen Benedictions. As regards Gamaliel’s rule of eighteen, the three rabbis cited reject it altogether or propose a ‘short prayer’ as a ‘summary of the eighteen’ instead, while the editors of Didache and Matthew simply stick to Jesus’ short prayer in its Matthaean form. (6) The rule to pray thrice daily presupposed by Didache shows that a similar custom did exist in pre-70 Judaism. In addition, Mark 11:25 makes the pre-70 existence of some form of the Matthaean ‘ecclesial’ version of the Lord’s Prayer likely, and by implication also the pre-70 existence in whatever form of daily synagogal prayers supported by the Pharisees. (7) All of this underscores the historical plausibility of the rabbinic reports of Gamaliel’s institution of the Eighteen Benedictions as a daily prayer for all.
The Confrontation of Judaism and Christianity The above results on the matter of prayer have important implications for the communities involved. On a closer look, the three named rabbis and the authors of Didache and Matthew not only share their protest against the Eighteen Bene59 bBer 28b; Megilla 17b. For the sequel see below. [An earlier source confirming the development is tBer 6:24, ‘R. Meir says, … one … prays three times a day (a prayer) of eighteen berakhot.’]
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dictions in common; there is also a significant difference between them. Eliezer, Yoshua, and Akiva remained members of the rabbinic community.60 But the anti-Pharisaic, anti-rabbinic polemics of Matthew and Didache makes it abundantly clear that their churches were not a part of this community. Nevertheless, Matthew shows many similarities with rabbinic vocabulary and terminology; we have noted some examples in passing. The implication is that the close ties that had existed between the Didache-Matthew churches and the Pharisaic-rabbinic community were now broken. More precisely, the community we may see reflected in Matthew and Didache now feels cornered by the apparent imposition of the Eighteen Benedictions as a daily prayer and by the rule that fasting must be done on Mondays and Thursdays.61 The novel rabbinic movement led by Gamaliel the Younger, which Matthew and later Church Fathers keep indicating as ‘Pharisees’, seems to have had had the means to impose its rulings on the nascent Christian community and to encroach on their independence. Put [184] differently: Didache and Matthew register the impact of the rabbinic regime headed by Gamaliel. As we have stated, recent discussion has included severe doubts about the real power of this regime. Particular attention was given to the birkat ha-minim, the ‘Benediction about the Heretics’. This concerns the second criticised element of Elbogen’s theory which we must now discuss. We quote once again the relative talmudic tradition about the institution of the Eighteen Benediction, this time with the sequel: Shimon ha-Pekoli arranged the eighteen benedictions in their proper place before Rabban Gamliel at Yavne. Said Rabban Gamliel to the sages: Is there anyone who could put the benediction about the heretics in order? Shmuel the Smaller rose and put it in order …62
Elbogen took this tradition simply to mean that indeed Shmuel the Smaller added the benediction at Gamaliel’s behest. While minim can indicate any kind of heretics, the implication would be ‘that this prayer actually referred to Christians, and that it was one of the means to achieve full separation of both religions’. In support, Elbogen referred to Patristic reports about deprecations of Christians in synagogues and to rabbinic traditions showing how Jewish Christians would be damning themselves while pronouncing the birkat ha-minim.63 In recent decades, this part of Elbogen’s description has been rejected on the grounds that ex60 The
ban on R. Eliëzer is not connected to this, see bBM 59b. this item, we have no tradition of a novel rabbinic rule. Fast days were the subject of early rabbinic discussion, however, see Noam, Megillat Ta’anit. 62 bBer 29b; cf bMeg 17b; yBer 4:3 (8a). According to the Yerushalmi, Shmuel the Smaller’s birkat ha-minim complemented the number of benedictions to become 18; according to the Bavli, he made them 19. Cohen, ‘The Nature of Shim’on Hapekuli’s Act’, 551–553 suggestively proposes 18 was seen as a round figure, not an exact number. 63 Elbogen, Gottesdienst, 36–39. Cf the more explicit presentation in Alon, The Jews 1: 288–307. 61 Concerning
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plicit mentions of ‘Christians’ occur only in textual witnesses of rabbinic prayers from the fourth century onwards.64 Other studies, [185] however, have upheld Elbogen’s thesis specifically on the basis of the early Christian evidence.65 For our purposes, we merely need to establish that the birkat ha-minim plays no visible role in the conflict with the ‘Pharisees’ or rabbis reflected by Matthew and Didache. Nevertheless, those documents testify to a painful conflict. Apparently the Pharisees-rabbis already wielded sufficient power without such an adaptation of the Eighteen Benedictions. Rabbinic and Christian sources indicate that around the turn of the first century the incipient rabbinic movement took other measures ostracising ‘heretics’ including Christians. Rabbinic rules effectively excommunicating minim appear to have been adapted or put in place, and by this time their applicability to Christians must have become explicit.66 Of prime importance for dating this development is again the Christian source material, especially the repeated communication in John that ‘the Jews’ or ‘the Pharisees’ had ‘already decided’ (συνετέθειντο) to make Christians ἀποσυνάγωγοι (John 9:22; 12:42; cf 16:2), which must be translated ‘put out of the community’67. This source must be dated to around 110 CE.68 [186]
Historical and Theological Conclusions Let us sum up the above in some general conclusions, first on the level of history. The classic form of the ‘short prayer’ taught by Jesus is extant in Matthew and Didache. These documents were finalized when the ‘rabbinic’ regime of Gamaliel the Younger took shape, and they signal resistance to the rules it issued concerning prayer and fasting; initial resistance involving prayer was also registered in the Mishna. The influence of this regime which is here reflected proves its power, the doubts of modern scholars notwithstanding. The question of the sources of this power is beyond the purview of the present study; a connection with the political constellation in Judaea between the revolts is likely.69 64 Schäfer, ‘Die sogenannte Synode’; Stemberger, ‘Die sogenannte Synode’; Kimelman, ‘Birkat ha-minim’; Van der Horst, ‘Birkat ha-minim’. 65 See esp Horbury, ‘The Benediction of the Minim’ and ‘Introduction’, 3–14. [See below, ‘The Gospel of Johnn and the Parting of the Ways’, 650–652, for a more up-to-date discussion.] 66 The central rabbinic passage is tHul 2:19–24. See Schremer, Brothers Estranged; Schwartz–Tomson, ‘When Rabbi Eliezer was Arrested’. 67 For this meaning of ἀποσυνάγωγος see Cohen, ‘Were Pharisees and Rabbis the Leaders’, 275f; Tomson, ‘The Wars against Rome’, 14–18, although there incorrectly restricted to the birkat ha-minim. 68 On internal literary-historical grounds, this dating is made by Brown, Introduction, 376. 69 See above n65f. For preliminary surveys see Tomson, ‘De dynamiek van het christelijkjoods conflict’; ‘The Wars against Rome’; ‘Transformations in Post-70 Judaism’.
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Matthew and Didache do not contain echoes of a ‘Benediction about the Heretics’ being applied to Christians, nor do they even show signs of the excommunication of Christians evidenced in early rabbinic traditions and the Gospel of John. These developments must have occurred not long after the final redaction of Matthew and Didache. Without any polemics, Luke relates how Jesus taught his disciples a brief prayer, just as John the Baptist and other Jewish teachers did. We saw the potential authenticity of this report confirmed in rabbinic traditions about short prayers. Also, the short version of the Lord’s Prayer which Luke copied from an unknown source sounds more authentic and more typical of Jesus. The Matthaean text sounds more ‘rabbinic’ and seems to have been taking shape within the community, a process that may have begun before the redaction of Mark. It must have been the subsequent supremacy of Matthew that made the Lukan version fall into disuse, although we could also speculate that the ‘ecclesial’ features of the Matthaean version correspond with the Christian positioning in the emerging conflict with rabbinic Judaism. We should not miss the opportunity also to draw some theological conclusions. First, theologically, there is no fundamental difference between the two versions of the Lord’s Prayer. By content and wording, both texts are closely related to the various Jewish prayers from the period. Decisive differences are found only in the context. In both preserved versions, Jesus’ short prayer is a Jewish prayer. Second, in Matthew and Didache, this Jewish prayer is framed in a setting reflecting conflict with the Jewish leaders called Pharisees or [187] ‘rabbis’. Here, a theological dissonance is felt between the Jewish prayer text and the anti-rabbinic and ultimately anti-Jewish context in which it is mounted.70 By contast, Luke’s framing of the short prayer of Jesus makes his own voice heard among that of other Jewish teachers. There is no dissonance between the Jewish text of his prayer and its context in the Gospel of Luke. A third theological conclusion concerns present-day readers even more directly. In the framework of the New Testament canon, Christianity’s break with Judaism is not an inherent necessity but is contingent on particular circumstances. Theologically, the continuity of Judaism and Christianity depicted by Luke carries as much weight as the rupture reflected by Matthew. Judging by the way the prayer of Jesus is transmitted in the New Testament, the relationship of Jews and Christians remains an undecided issue. It is the extra-canonical text of the Didache that helps us realize this.
70 On Matthew’s eventual anti-Judaism see Tomson, ‘Matthäusevangelium’ [‘Shifting Perspectives’, in this volume]; idem, If This be from Heaven, ch. 6.
Shifting Perspectives in Matthew: from ‘the House of Israel’ (10:6) to ‘All Gentiles’ (28:19) Simply put, the Gospel of Matthew shows us two different faces: a Jewish face and an anti-Jewish one. This is bound up with the status of the law. On the one hand, the law must not be ‘abolished’ but ‘fulfilled’ up to the ‘smallest commandments’ (5:17–19) – and here, strikingly, terminology similar to rabbinic literature is used, as often in the Gospel. On the other hand, it is said that ‘the righteousness of scribes and Pharisees’ will not suffice, and that God will choose ‘a people that produces the fruit of the kingdom’ (5:20; 21:43). Between the two faces, there is a tension that pervades the Gospel as a whole. In spite of (or due to) this tension, Matthew quickly became the most important Gospel of the early gentile Church, except perhaps in some parts of Asia Minor. The implication is that in gentile Christian contexts, the problem of the law gained increased urgency. This development has to do with s similar tension at another level, one that plays a prominent role in the Matthaean drama and that we shall be dealing with here: the ambiguity in the attitude of the Jesus-movement to non-Jews. When in Matt 10:5f Jesus dispatches his messengers, a bluntly inner-Jewish tone is heard: ‘Do not use a way of gentiles, enter no town of Samaritans, but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ Similarly, according to 15:24, Jesus says he has been ‘sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’. Quite differently, however, the Risen Lord says at the end of the Gospel: ‘Go and make disciples of all gentiles …’ (28:19). Especially at a time in which students of early Judaism and of the New Testament have found encouraging ways of collaboration, such tensions can no longer be ignored.1 It will no longer do to harmonize them in the framework of the Gospel and thus practically to ignore or obfuscate them. It would be better to accept them to start with, and on that basis try and explain them, both in the 1 Cf Stanton, Gospel for a New People, 146: ‘Matthew’s vigorous anti-Jewish polemic is acutely embarrassing to most modern readers of this gospel.’ [The present article was published as ‘Das Matthäusevangelium im Wandel der Horizonte: vom „Hause Israels“ (10,6) zu „allen Völkern“ (28,19)’, in the Festschrift for Berndt Schaller, Judaistik und neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, edited by Lutz Doering, Hans-Günther Waubke, and Florian Wilk, to whom I am indebted for their careful linguistic and stylistic correction of the German version. The article is here given in English translation with some additions in the footnotes.]
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framework of academy and Church, in view of their contents and their historical background. [314] An important preliminary insight is that gospels are community texts, texts created and edited using traditions existing within a community, on behalf of this community, and by the community’s members, or in other words texts that are relevant not only in a theological, but also in a social context.2 On the basis of this insight, passages like those cited above have much to teach us about the social embedding of Matthew and about possible tensions and developments in this respect. Here, data in the field of halakha or Jewish law tradition are particularly relevant because they have clear social implications.3
Interpretations of Matthew First let us take a look at the history of interpretation. Two influential patristic examples deserve pride of place because their interpretation is coherent and instructive. Origen, the great Christian interpreter of Philo, consistently allegorises ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ from Matt 15:24,4 while at the same time moralising the universal mission dispatch in 28:19. In his Commentary on Matthew (11.17), he explains the ‘sheep’ as γένος ψυχῶν διορατικῶν ἀπολωλός, ‘race of thorough-seeing souls gone lost’. In the background, one senses Philo’s interpretation of the name of Israel as τὸ ὁρατικόν γένος, ‘the seeing race’,5 except that Origen, unlike Philo, practically excludes the Jews here. Precisely that is what he hints at elsewhere: the phrase ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel’ should not be ‘understood after the flesh’, as the ‘spiritually poor Ebionites do’. In other words, a Jewish-Christian understanding of the phrase is rejected.6 Elsewhere in his Commentary on Matthew (10.18), Origen [315] explains Matt 28:19 with reference to the saying that a prophet is without honour only in his own land (Matt 13:57), as follows: ‘Therefore the apostles have left Israel and did what the Saviour had commanded: “Make disciples of all gentiles”.’ Thus Jesus would have been sent only to ‘spiritual Israel’, and the disbelieving Jews have no part in the salvation promised in the gospel. Similar things, but in a historicising mode, are found in Origen’s posthumous follower, Eusebius. In his Church History (3.5.2), he links the mission dispatch 2 Cf Luz, Matthäus 1: 94; Stanton, Gospel for a New People, 45−53; Tomson, If this be from Heaven, 122−125. 3 Cf Tomson, ‘Halakhic Evidence’. Cf also Zetterholm and Bockmuehl, below n82. 4 Cf also Davies–Allison, Matthew 1: 551, referring to Origen, De princ 4.3.8 (cf ibid. 165 on allegorising of Matt 10:6 other than in Tertullian and Chrysostom). 5 Philo, Migr 18; Fug 140. 6 Origen, in Matth 11.17ff; in Ioan 20.5.39, οὐ κατά τὸ σωματικόν εἰρῆσθαι; De princ 4.3.8, οὐκ ἐλαμβάνομεν ταῦτα ὡς οἱ πτωχοί τῇ διανοίᾳ ᾽Εβιωναῖοι … ᾽Εβίων γὰρ ὁ πτωχὸς παρ᾽ ῾Εβραίοις ὀνομάζεται.
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to the ‘gentiles’ to the destruction of Jerusalem, which he presents as God’s punishment for the persecution of Jesus and his apostles.7 Radically historicised and underscored with citations from Matthew, the same appears in Eusebius’ Demonstration of the Gospel (9.11): Jesus came ‘to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’. These, however, did not accept his message, and therefore the Lord said to them: ‘The Kingdom shall be taken from you and given to a people that produces its fruits’ (Matt 21:43). Later, he said to his disciples, ‘Go, make all gentiles disciples of me’, and now it is ‘we, the gentiles’ who are fulfilling the prophetic assignment, while the Jews bear their God-given punishment. Eusebius’ selection of passages effectively highlights the anti-Jewish aspect that can be found in Matthew. An important detail: in both Church Fathers, ἔθνη does not have the Old Testament meaning of ‘peoples’, but means ‘non-Jews’, paralleling individualised גויים, goyim, of Mishnaic Hebrew. Meanwhile, both theologians display a strictly gentile Christian interpretation of Scripture, in which the observance of the Jewish law is excluded on principle.8 Jewish-Christian elements such as the saying of the sheep are allegorised or historicised into the past. Either way, Matthew is consistently read anti-Jewishly. Modern exegetes are more critical of Matthew and also have a better understanding of the perspective of the Old Testament and of Jewish tradition that plays such an important role in the Gospel. In another development, the nineteenth century [316] saw the rise of the idea of global mission, in which the mission to the Jews was included as a matter of course.9 Thus in his erudite commentary on Matthew (1927), Father M.-J. Lagrange follows tradition in taking Matt 10:5 and 28:19 as authentic words of Jesus, concluding from the second passage, ‘On comprend très bien que la restriction aux brebis d’Israël (Mt. x,5 s.) ait été levée en ce moment.’10 In line with Origen’s interpretation, the Resurrected One would have abolished the restriction to Israel, while continuing the mission to the Jews. Moreover, just as the Church Fathers well known to him, Lagrange understands Matthaean ἔθνη throughout as 7 This concerns one of Eusebius’ interesting pre-Nicaean citations of the shorter text of Matt 28:19, πορευθέντες οὖν μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου. Since Conybeare, ‘The Eusebian form’ (1901), exegetes have found this to be the more original version that Eusebius gave up after Nicea and that, the Emperor’s pressure helping, has disappeared from the preserved NT manuscripts. Lagrange, Matthieu, 544 suggests on the basis of the longer citations elsewhere in Eusebius that he has abbreviated our passage in order to emphasize the name of Christ. For Luz, Matthäus 4: 431 n15 the disposition of the manuscripts allows ‘methodically no possibility’ to consider the shorter version authentic. Conybeare’s explanation remains none the less interesting. 8 Cf how Eusebius, Dem evang 1–5 goes out of his way to explain why the Church has inherited the Scriptures yet does not keep the law. 9 For developments in the German Rhineland Church see Aring, Christliche Judenmission. 10 Lagrange, Matthieu, 544.
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‘gentils’, i. e. non-Jews. In sum, in a harmonizing perpective, Lagrange presupposes a development within the Matthaean narrative. By contrast, Georg Strecker (1962)11 presumes a sharp difference between the Jewish-Christian and the gentile-Christian strands, while concluding that the Jewish-Christian strand represents ‘an older stage of developing community life’, whereas the final redaction of the text reflects a gentile-Christian orientation. Passages such as Matt 8:5–13 and 21:33–22:14 would express the ‘supersession of the Jewish people in salvation history’. Here, Strecker critically highlights the anti-Jewish aspect in Matthew that Eusebius emphasised positively, as we saw. According to Strecker, the evangelist took the phrase about the mission ‘to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ from Jewish-Christian tradition and intentionally inserted it in 15:24 and 10:6 on the basis of his ‘historical theory’ (i. e., the idea of ‘Israel’s substitution’ presumed more often by Strecker). In one of his rare studies on Matthew (1975),12 David Flusser calls this Gospel extraordinary in character because on the one hand, it contains ‘genuine anti-Jewish passages’, while on the other, ‘ancient original material’ and even ‘some pericopae … in their more original Jewish setting’ are found. In particular, the story of the centurion from Capernaum (Luke 7:1–10; Matt 8:5–13) and the parable of the wicked husbandmen (Mark 12:1–12; Luke 20:9–18; Matt 21:22–46) reveal [317] how in these ‘montages’ the Matthaean redactor has edited his material in an anti-Jewish sense. In an appendix, Flusser illuminates the historical situation of the Matthaean community by comparison with 5 Ezra and Justin Martyr.13 In view of the ‘Jewish colouring’ of the traditional and redactional material and the presumed utilisation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the commentary of W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison (1988) assumes that the ‘author’ of Matthew was a Jew. Given the universal mission command in 28:19, the ‘condescending’ way of speaking about ἐθνικοί in 5:47 and elsewhere is thought to be ‘odd’. In view of the repeated πορεύεσθε, a link is perceived between 10:5 and 28:19, but no tension is registered. In 28:19, the universal mission command is thought to be given because ‘[t]he resurrection marks the end of the exclusive concentration on Israel’. The ‘universal mission’ also ‘includes Israel’.14 Harmony seems to be the leading interpretive concept.
Strecker, Weg der Gerechtigkeit, esp 15−35, ‘Der Redaktor − ein Judenchrist?’ Flusser, ‘Two Anti-Jewish Montages in Matthew’. 13 Flusser considers the Matthaean community to be a ‘gentile-Zionist sect’ that combined observation of the Jewish law with an anti-Jewish stance. He has later added his proximity to Strecker’s interpretation, see n11 in the original article and n23 in the appendix. Stanton, Gospel for a New People, 256−277 as well elaborately studies the relationship with 5 Ezra. 14 Davies–Allison, Matthew 1: 33, 58, 559; 2: 167; 3: 684. 11
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In A Gospel for a New People (1993), Graham Stanton expresses the view that the Matthaean churches had the break with Judaism behind them and saw themselves as a ‘new people’ which already had absorbed many gentiles. The sharp anti-Pharisaic and anti-Jewish polemics found throughout the Gospel serve to fence off this traumatised community and to protect it from persecution by the Jewish leadership. Matt 21:43 ‘is probably the clearest indication that the Matthean community saw itself as a separate and quite distinct entity over against Judaism’. The mission to Israel remains in force, however, because πάντα τὰ ἔθνη includes ‘individuals within Israel’.15 In two essays (1989, 1993), Ulrich Luz perceives an anti-Jewish stance reflective of a break with rabbinic Judaism.16 A period of close ties with the Pharisaic movement must have preceded. The mission ‘to the lost sheep [318] of the house of Israel’, which involved the disciples not to go ‘on a way of gentiles’ (10:5f), must have been replaced by the mission to ‘all non-Jews’ or ‘all peoples’ (28:19). However, this is not stated all over the Gospel, but only in individual passages, as Luz emphasizes once again in volume 4 of his commentary on Matthew.17 The re-edited introduction to the commentary (fifth ed 2002) calls Matthew a Jewish-Christian gospel that signals ‘clear distance to Pharisaic/proto-rabbinic Judaism’. A real rupture comes to light in the mission to the gentiles: ‘The mission command of the Resurrected One is directly opposed to the command of the earthy Jesus.’18 As to the position of the Matthaean community in Judaism, Luz agrees with Stanton that she already had seen the break with the Synagogue, but he differs from Strecker in concluding that the final redaction was not done by a gentile Christian reflecting on salvation history. In sum, Strecker, Flusser, Stanton, and Luz all interpret the internal tensions of the Gospel of Matthew in the perspective of historical development, while Lagrange and Davies–Allison harmonize them. Luz probably comes closest to Matthew’s reality in letting the overt contradictions and hidden aporiae of this embattled text stand without mediation, an approach we shall therefore adopt in the following. In addition, a discussion of first century Jewish history will help us better to understand the inner tensions of Matthew, especially the events to do with the parting of the ways around the turn of the century.
15 Stanton, Gospel for a New People, esp 146−168; quotations 151, 158. Wilk, Jesus und die Völker, 126−131 compares Matt 10:5−8 and 28:18 ff and concludes (129): in 28:19 ‘wird der in 10,5−8 erteilte Sendungsauftrag Jesu weder ausgeweitet noch aufgehoben, sondern ergänzt’. 16 Luz, ‘Das Matthäusevangelium und die Perspektive einer biblischen Theologie’; ‘Antijudaism in the Gospel of Matthew’. 17 For Luz, the meaning of ἔθνη, ‘gentiles’ or ‘nations’, is not unequivocal either, see Luz, Matthäus 4: 449−454. 18 Luz, Matthäus 1: 88, 91.
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Non-Jews in the Jesus Tradition First of all, we should envisage the attitude of Jesus himself, or rather, of the tradition ascribed to him. While in general this tradition – the hypothetical first layer of the gospel – is difficult to get hold of, the subject matter of this study makes it relatively easy to distinguish from subsequent tradition and redactional embedding. The result will also allow us to improve our understanding of the development of Matthew. A preliminary remark must be made about the considerable differences in the attitude towards non-Jews in early Judaism. To the extent that we may presume the Essenes to have been associated with the Qumran writings, they must have been extremely dismissive. Following Qumran halakha, all gentiles are idolaters, [319] and no commercial dealings are allowed with them.19 By contrast, the halakha of the contemporaneous Pharisees, as far as we can reconstruct it, was much more pragmatic.20 Of the reputed Pharisaic schools, this concerns in particular the one of Hillel, while the school of Shammai was more reserved vis-à-vis non-Jews.21 We must also specify what we understand by the ‘Jesus tradition’, and how we could access it. Most likely, the tradition of Jesus’ teachings, like that of other Jewish teachers, was created and transmitted orally.22 Rabbinic literature in particular allows us to monitor such a process, and two opposing features stand out: a preference for conciseness and uniformity, and a tendency, conscious or not, towards adaptation to new circumstances. Moreover, it is hardly possibly to speak of individual authors.23 The ‘author’ of a saying may well have adopted important elements from his teachers, or alternatively, it may be that the definite formulation was only coined by his disciples. Still, it can justifiably be called ‘his saying’. More often, however, it is better to speak of ‘the tradition of rabbi NN’. This is true for many first century teachers whose teachings are preserved in rabbinic literature. Once we accept this relative uncertainty, we can sometimes recognize personal characteristics in the stories thus preserved, such as those of
19 CD 12:6−11 (commerce with non-Jews); 4Q174 1 i 3−4 (non-Jews and proselytes in the Temple). 20 Cf rabbinic halakha on commerce, mAZ 1:5–8. According to Josephus, War 2:409, it was normal practice to accept sacrifices of non-Jews in the Temple. 21 Cf mHul 2:7, R. Eliezer (a known Shammaite) prohibits slaughter on behalf of a non-Jew, ‘because the default orientation of a non-Jew is towards idolatry’. For further references see below, nn45–51. 22 After all the polemics of recent decades it seems clear to me that the 1998 re-edition of Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript (with a preface by J. Neusner!) still awaits its full evaluation. [See ‘Paul as a Recipient’, in this volume, 399f.] 23 For this and other features see Safrai, ‘Oral Tora’.
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Hillel or Yohanan ben Zakkai,24 even if this does not yield a full and detailed personal portrait. In the case of Jesus’ teachings, the distance between ‘author’ and editor is shorter, and hence the likelihood of confusion with the words of another teacher is proportionally smaller. However, there is a rate of uncertainty here as well that makes it wiser in general to speak of ‘the tradition of Jesus’. Nevertheless, [320] on occasion a saying of this Jewish teacher has such an exceptional and original ring that the impression of authenticity suggests itself. Once again, this is the case with the theme under discussion. In particular, a number of synoptic stories relay information about Jesus’ attitude to gentiles that allows us to look critically at Matthew’s redactional work. Paradoxically, a story in Mark (7:24–30), a gospel probably composed for non-Jews,25 reveals a surprising reservation towards gentiles. When Jesus wandered to the region of Tyre, he ‘stayed in a house and did not want to meet anyone’ – a Jewish house it seems, a detail found only in Mark, not in the ‘JewishChristian’ Matthew (cf Matt 15:21). Yet ‘a Greek woman of Syro-Phoenician origin’ knows where to find him, and she asks him to heal her daughter from a demon. Jesus’ answer that ‘it is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs’ (7:27) is so unfriendly towards non-Jews that it hardly can derive from the gentile Church. But the woman’s answer, i. e. that the dogs will content themselves with the crumbs that fall under the table, convinces Jesus – to the surprise of later readers. Also contained in Mark is the story of a possessed man who wandered around in a field with swineherds (5:1–20). In these evidently non-Jewish surroundings, Jesus’ remarkble reservedness is revealed once again, although this is rarely noticed.26 When after the exorcism he boarded the ship, the healed man asked him if he could stay with him. ‘But Jesus refused and said to him, Go home to your people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you’ (5:19). It is exceptional for Jesus to refuse someone to follow him. The implied reason seems to be that he is a gentile. Quite the contrary, Jesus sends him ‘to his people’ in order to tell of his miraculous healing. The gentile mission is begun by a healed gentile.27 This fits Mark well of course, but again it is only natural. 24 Cf the example set by Flusser, ‘Hillel’s Self-Awareness and Jesus’. See also the various essays in Charlesworth–Johns, Hillel and Jesus. 25 According to Irenaeus apud Eusebius, CH 5.8.3f, Mark reduced to writing the sermons Peter had given in Rome and elsewhere. A non-Jewish audience is unequivocally implied, e. g., by the explanation of Jewish purity customs in Mark 7:3f and the non-Jewish formulation of the divorce prohibition, 10:12 (cf 1 Cor 7:10) [cf ‘Divorce Halakha’, in this volume, 92f, 96f]. 26 Cf characteristically Légasse, Marc, 329: ‘L’heure de la mission universelle n’a pas encore sonné’ (cf Lagrange on Matt 28:19, above at n10). 27 As do many others, Wilk, Jesus und die Völker, 66 sees the possessed man as a Jew and reads this as an order for the gentile mission contrasting with Mark’s overall aim of addressing diaspora Jews.
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The Lukan writings contain two stories involving a gentile centurion which can be seen as an instance [321] of Luke’s technique of doublets (Luke 7:1–10; Acts 10:1–11–18).28 This observation needs not prejudice the question of authenticity. The Lukan author ably arranges received traditions in a natural way in a coherent narrative while achieving a high degree of ‘verisimilitude’.29 At most, one can reproach him for his tendency to de-escalate conflicts, such as the one between Paul and Barnabas in Acts 15:39f. More positively, we can also observe his tendency to use ‘authentic’ speech pertaining to a specific period.30 The good relationship of the two centurions with their respective Jewish townsmen (Luke 7:3–5; Acts 10:2, 22) is not improbable, as is confirmed by archaeological findings relative to the co-existence of Jews and ‘God-fearers’ in synagogue surroundings.31 In addition, we must be attentive to the author’s interest in empasizing the ‘harmonious’ integration of non-Jews in the Jesus movement. This becomes fully clear in the second, ‘Pauline’ half of the Acts of the Apostles, but it is already announced in the stories of the centurions. Here, we also read of the hesitations before the borderline between Jews and non-Jews typical not only by Jesus but also by Peter, his foremost disciple. Jesus does not enter the house of the centurion and (unlike the Matthaean parallel) even does not speak with him, and similarly, Peter needs the thrice repeated, shocking dream to be pulled over the threshold. Surprisingly, the Capernaum centurion is said to understand and anticipate the hesitations of the Jewish teacher: ‘Lord, … I am not worth to have you come under my roof’ (Luke 7:6).32 At the background here and in Acts 10 seems to stands the halakhic principle of טומאת נוכרים, ‘impurity of gentiles’, in particular its [322] subcategory of מדור העמים, ‘the gentile home’. This impurity spreads by אהילות, ‘awning’ (literally, ‘tenting’), just like corpse impurity. Anything found under the ‘awn’ or ‘tent’ is deemed impure, and therefore a devout Jew should not enter a similar house, according to one interpretation. In that light, the curious expression used by Luke (Q), ‘under my roof’, is adequate, and so is the phrase ἱκανός, ‘fit’, used by the
On doublets cf Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts, 231–234. confirmation is found, e. g., in the agreements of the Lukan portrayal of the Jewish ‘sects’ with Josephus and rabbinic literature; see Mason, ‘Chief Priests, Sadducees’; Tomson, ‘Les systèmes de halakha’ [‘The Halakhic Systems’, in this volume]. 30 E. g. χριστὸς κυρίου, Luke 2:26; παῖς (θεοῦ), Acts 3:13, 26; 4;27; and the critical remarks about Χριστιανοί, Acts 11:26. See Hengel, Zur urchristlichen Geschichtsschreibung, 57; Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts, 229f. Plümacher, Lukas als hellenistischer Schriftsteller, 72−79 considers this a typically Hellenistic feature of ‘archaising’, while allowing for the possibility that Luke did incorporate older tradition elements. 31 A famous example is Aphrodisias, see Reynolds–Tannenbaum, Jews and Godfearers at Aphrodisias, with a list of ‘God-fearing’ synagogue members. 32 Similarly, also for the following, Fitzmyer, Luke, 652. 28
29 Important
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centurion of himself.33 Not all Jews agreed on this matter, however, and a shift in explanatory motifs can also be observed.34 In this area, as we have said, the more conservative school of Shammai seems to have been more reserved.35 Following these Lukan reports, Jesus shared a similar conservative attitude, just as did Peter, initially. This attitude goes against the grain of the author’s story to welcome the integration of non-Jews and therefore bespeaks authenticity. If we add this up to the two Markan stories, the profile of the Jesus tradition that emerges is relatively refractory to non-Jews. It seems, however, that it begins to falter during the early ‘acts of the apostles’, when individual non-Jews start to join the movement. Upon reflection, the message of Acts to the effect that Peter had to disobey his master’s tradition in order to fulfil his mission is the surest argument for the authenticity of that tradition. Jesus showed more reservation towards gentiles than Philip, the later Peter, and, of course, Paul. It is a reservedness so unlike early Christian ideas that it must derive from an established authority – most likely, Jesus himself. Taking now another look at the two Matthaean sayings about the mission to ‘the house of Israel’ and keeping the above conclusions in mind, we cannot exclude the possibility that these saying ultimately also derive from the early Jesus tradition. It even becomes likely when we consider the Old Testament and Jewish background of Jesus’ mission. Both in the address in Matt 10:6 and, in a private exchange, in 15:24, the disciples are told that Jesus and his disciples are sent (‘rather’, μᾶλλον, 10:6, or ‘only’, οὐκ … εἰ μή, 15:24) εἰς τὰ πρόβατα τὰ ἀπολωλότα οἴκου ᾽Ισραήλ, ‘to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’. The phrase πρόβατα ἀπολωλότα derives from [323] Jeremiah, where the people are thus designated because ‘their shepherds have led them astray’.36 Connected with this phrase is the Semiticising expression οἴκος ᾽Ισραήλ;37 another Semiticism is οὐκ … εἰ μή.38 Thus the saying in 33 Cf BDAG s. v. ἱκανός, ‘fit, appropriate, qualified …’ In the language of his Jewish friends, however, he is ἄξιος (Luke 7:4), although he himself disagrees: οὐδὲ ἐμαυτὸν ἠξίωσα (7:7). 34 mOh 18:7−10; tAh 18:7−11. Alon plausibly argued that the explanation from corpse impurity is secondary, because according to many Jews, the corpse of a non-Jew did not cause impurity; therefore the real cause must be presumed idolatry. See Alon, ‘The Levitical Uncleanness of Gentiles’, esp 183−186 and n75. Klawans’ criticism in his otherwise brilliant Impurity and Sin, 134f does not do justice to Alon [but see above, ‘Devotional Purity’, at n72, on Klawans, Hayes, and Noam]. 35 In mOh 18:8, they prescribe a more thorough inspection of a suspect house. 36 Jer 27:6 (50:6), πρόβατα ἀπολωλότα ἐγενήθη ὁ λαός μου, οἱ ποιμένες αὐτῶν ἐξῶσαν αὐτούς. Luke 15:6, τὸ πρόβατόν μου τὸ ἀπολωλός derives rather from Ps 119:176, ἐπλανήθην ὡς πρόβατον ἀπολωλός· ζήτησον τὸν δοῦλόν σου, ὅτι τὰς ἐντολάς σου οὐκ ἐπελαθόμην – but here as well, running astray for lack of good guidance is implied. 37 Lagrange, Matthieu, 197, ‘οἴκου sans article, comme un mot sémitique à l’état construit’; similarly BDR § 262.2. 38 BDR § 376.1: not just ‘in Anlehnung an das Aram[äische]’, but clearly also leaning towards the Hebrew: אין\לא… אלא. According to Segal, A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew, 237
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Matt 15:24 as a whole may well stem from written or oral tradition.39 The most likely source is the Jesus tradition; we do not need to go into the discussion to what extent Jesus’ teaching has built on received material and/or his disciples have supplemented it. The polemical background of the saying is important. It could well have to do with his ‘secret program’ that we learn about from other sayings. It consisted in the conflict with the Jerusalem Temple administrators that seems to represent a main object of his mission,40 possibly culminating in the prophetic act of ‘cleansing’ the Temple.41 The same seems to be echoed in a riddle saying preserved only in Luke: ‘It is not possible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem’ (13:33). In conclusion, according to the tradition ascribed to him, Jesus meant, picking up on motifs from the Old Testament and Jewish tradition, that his mission consisted only in calling ‘Israel led astray’ to repentance and salvation.42 The polemical orientation we have explored is corroborated by the negative role ascribed to gentiles in this connection: ‘The son of man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will … hand him over to the gentiles’ (Mark 10:33; cf Luke 18:32 and Matt 20:19). The Markan and Lukan analogies of the saying about the sheep make it unlikely that this had to do only with the nature of Jesus’ mission. More likely, it also related to his general reservedness vis-à-vis non-Jews. [324]
Jewish History in the First Century CE If we want to envisage the historical context of the Gospel of Matthew, we need a survey of first century CE Jewish history. In the framework of this paper, we must rely on the findings of expert historians. We shall concentrate on the second half of the century, in three successive ‘takes’. (1) Based mainly on Josephus, leading historical presentations of the first century inform us that the period of the procurators from 44 CE and especially from 52 CE on led to a climate of growing chaos and violence and finally to the (§ 505f), אלאis equivalent to biblical אם לא – hence exactly εἰ μή. Davies–Allison, Matthew 2: 550, following Jeremias, mention in addition ἀποστέλλω εἰς (+ those affected) as a Semitism. 39 Excluding biblical quotations, οἴκος ᾽Ισραήλ is used again only in Acts 2:36 (cf Acts 7:42; Hebr 8:8, 10) and there serves to create the impression of received tradition. 40 Reflected also in the son of David saying in Mark 12:35–37 (Luke 20:41–44), echoed in Acts 2:34–36. 41 See esp Mark 11:11−18, with unique, telling details. The prediction of the destruction of the Temple belongs here too, cf Evans, ‘Predictions of the Destruction of the Herodian Temple’. 42 Cf Lagrange, Matthieu, 197: ‘Le Messie était envoyé à Israël. Cette restriction est en harmonie avec xv,24, et très vraisemblable’ (i. e. no subsequent ‘re-Judaization’). To that extent Strecker, Weg der Gerechtigkeit, 107−109 is right in ascribing this ‘interpolation’ by the evangelist to ‘Jewish-Christian theology’.
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war with Rome in 66 CE.43 The refurbished English Schürer puts it his way: ‘Felix’s term of office manifestly constitutes the turning-point in the drama which started in AD 44 and reached its bloody climax in AD 70.’44 It is suggestive to think here of the rabbinic reports that speak of the pre-war period as one of ‘groundless hatred’.45 It is also likely that the prominence of the school of Shammai of which rabbinic literature informs us and which, as we shall see in a moment, probably was decisive for the outbreak of war, came to the fore in this period. It was apparently their ingrained reservation towards gentiles that induced them also to take the initiative when war was breaking out. A ‘zelotic’ attitude is found in their circles rather than in those of the Hillelites, just as after the war the Shammaites appear to have become a minority because they were decimated in battle.46 It appears that this climate of growing hatred of gentiles has influenced the Church and has notably caused the question of the law to be asked with greater urgency. The letters of Paul reflect a growing pressure on non-Jews [325] to have themselves circumcised and to accept the Jewish law.47 Possibly, this development can be read from Acts as well.48 (2) While our first ‘take’ was rather like a time exposure, the second one is a snapshot: the outbreak of war in 66 CE. Following the lucid reconstruction of Heinrich Graetz, the Temple commander Eleazar, son of Ananias the high priest, who took the initiative to the war according to Josephus,49 is identical with Elazar ben Hananya, the leading nationalist and representative of the school of Shammai in rabbinic literature.50 Also, about this time, the house of Elazar’s father Hananya must have been the venue of what Graetz ironically called the Cf Schürer, History 1: 455−470, with a general reference to Ant 22:1−16, 97−258; War 2:204−308 and Tacitus, Ann 15.44; Hist 5.9−10. For this period and further references (M. Stern, M. Hengel, E. M. Smallwood) see also Tomson, ‘Die Täter des Gesetzes’, 215−220 [‘Doers of the Law’, below 375–378]. In an afterword to the volume in which that essay appeared, Dunn, ‘The Dialogue Progresses’, 407 rejects this reconstruction with a reference to Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 35–43. Cf in particular the sicarii, ‘dagger men’, War 2:247–279. [For this whole issue see now ‘Sources on the Politics of the 50s’, below.] 44 Schürer, History 1: 460. 45 שנאת חנם, tMen 13:22 = yYom 1:1 (38c); cf bYom 9b; Kalla R 5.1. 46 Hengel, Die Zeloten; Ben Shalom, The School of Shammai. 47 Cf the remarkable difference between 1 and 2 Cor; further Gal, Phil, Col and Rom. 48 For further references see Tomson, ‘Die Täter des Gesetzes’, 215−220 (above n43). [For elaboration of these connections see, e. g., in ‘Paul’s Collection’, below 463–484.] 49 War 2:409f; Graetz, Geschichte 3.2: 470–472, with ‘Anmerkungen’ 24, 26, 27 (795ff). 50 In MekRY yitro bahodesh 7 (p229), he is attributed with the same behaviour on Sabbath as Shammai the Elder at MekRS 20:8 (p148); bBeitsa 16a; PesR 23 (115b). In addition, the Scholion on MegTaan claims he has ‘written’ the Scroll of Fasting, i. e. supplemented that list of Hasmonaean festive dates with contemporaneous, Roman period events, see Lichtenstein, ‘Die Fastenrolle’, 351; cf bShab 13b. See now the excellent acticle of Noam, ‘Megillat Taanit’ (although in my view too sceptical about Graetz’s reconstruction). [See also the edition and commentary by Noam, Megillat Ta’anit.] 43
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‘robbers’ synod’ (after the violent Synod of Ephesus, 449 CE), during which rabbinic texts say the Shammaites imposed a number of anti-gentile measures on the Hillelites by force of arms.51 This is one of the indications that a civil war was raging among the Jews of Palestine, and we also hear of bloody conflicts between Jews and non-Jews that broke out in the nearby diaspora, e. g. in Antioch.52 As we could recently see again in former Yugoslavia, dramatically and tragically, the outbreak of violence causes a fatal escalation of social tensions. Again it is only likely that this also affected the Church and that already existing tensions between ‘zealot’ and other Jewish-Christians, as well as those between Jewish and gentile Christians, grew strongly in force. (3) Our third picture is taken during the term of office of Rabban Gamliel the Younger, most likely the grandson of the Gamaliel from Acts. The pertinent rabbinic sources must critically be compared with external sources and archaeological data; here we follow in particular [326] the synthesis of Gedalyahu Alon, although it is certainly not beyond criticism.53 Gamliel’s term of office has probably begun only after Emperor Domitian’s death in 96 CE, hence around 100. Rabbinic literature portrays him as a dominant character who could come down harshly on dissenting colleagues. In addition, he seems to have gained recognition by the Romans, which must have further increased his power. In a way, he was the right man at the right moment, continuing with augmented force the policy of consolidation initiated by his predecessor, Yohanan ben Zakkai, and thus contributing to the formation of ‘rabbinic’ Judaism. Among the measures that can be attributed to Gamliel the Younger with reasonable probability are the Pesah Seder, i. e. the liturgy of the family Pesah meal, the prayer of Eighteen Benedictions prayed three times daily, and the canon of holy scriptures.54 Possibly linked to the Eighteen Benedictions is the ‘separation decree’, i. e. one or more measures aiming at the separation of Jewish and gentile Christians from the Jewish community; the insertion of the birkat ha-minim reportedly belonged to these measures.55 About the same period must have seen the introduction of the titel ‘rabbi’ for ordained Tora teachers. Sages working 51 See mShab 1:4; tShab 1:15f; yShab 1:7 (3c–d). See on this period Graetz, Geschichte, ibid. (n48); Hengel, Zeloten, 204–211; Goldberg, Shabbat, ad loc.; Tomson, Paul, 173–177. 52 Josephus, War 7:45−53. 53 Alon, The Jews 1: 107–124; on the date Safrai, In Times of Temple and Mishnah, 331f. The problem of the travels of the sages plays an important role here, see Alon ibid., Safrai ibid., 365–381. For a discussion of Alon’s ‘Zionist’ reconstruction see Tomson, ‘Transformations of Post-70 Judaism’. Cf also Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount, 256−315. Luz, Matthäus 1: 98 n261 is right that Davies gives a ‘condensed’ description of the Yavne period. [In my view, Luz underestimates the evidence for the emerging conflict of the Matthaean community with the Pharisees-rabbis around the turn of the century. On the Yavne period see in this volume, ‘Didache, Matthew’, and ‘Josephus, Luke-Acts’.] 54 Alon, The Jews 1: 253−287. 55 See Tomson, ‘Wars against Rome’, 14−18; [more adequately, ‘The Gospel of John’, below 650–655].
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before the destruction of the Temple do not carry such a title, but the later ones do,56 and this agrees well with the verse in Matt 23:8 which we shall yet come to.57 Along with the other measures, it marks the emergence of ‘rabbinic’ Judaism. In these years, and possibly already under Yohanan ben Zakkai, the oral (re‑)formulation process of ‘rabbinic’ tradition also seems to have begun, which more than a century later was to result in the finalisation of the Mishna, the central document of rabbinic Judaism. [327] Looking back at the century, we can see how out of the chaos of the war and post-war years, more or less clearly the contours of rabbinic Judaism emerged. It would be incorrect, however, to think in terms of uniformity; already the numerous differences of opinion in the Mishna bespeak variety. Nevertheless we are facing an incisive process of social sifting, in which the Church of Jews and gentiles became exposed to great pressures. In this crucible, the Gospel of Matthew must have evolved to its final form.
The Genesis of the Gospel of Matthew It is obvious to view the great tensions about the law and the attitude towards non-Jews felt in Matthew in relation to this eventful century. The impression suggests itself of a development in which a dramatic succession of very different situations led to quickly shifting, diverging viewpoints. Today, as distinct from the nineteenth century, the adequacy of such an evolutionary model of interpretation is no longer self-evident. However, when it helps us to view the various and partly contradictory data in our text in a convincing and illuminating framework, we should not ignore it. Moreover, the difference in the attitude to gentiles between the early Jesus tradition and the later Matthaean community itself suggests an evolutionary model. Somewhat schematically, we can imagine the development of the Gospel of Matthew in four successive layers correlating to consecutive stages in its social history. As we have said, halakhic data are socially relevant and potentially have enhanced historical value. In the end, a tentative determination of the geographical provenance seems possible. (a) A Jesuanic Layer. The reviewed passages from Mark and Luke-Acts show the early Jesus tradition to have been rather reserved towards non-Jews. It is not unlikely, then, that the sayings about the sheep found only in Matthew stem from this tradition. In view of the Old Testament background of the sayings, the reservation towards non-Jews correlates positively to the conviction that ‘the son
Davies–Allison, Matthew 1: 135. The one historical reference point is Matt 23:7−12, see below.
56 Similarly 57
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of man’ had been sent to bring ‘straying Israel’ back to the fold and to denounce its false leaders in Jerusalem. (b) A Jewish-Christian/Pharisaic Layer. A likely proximity to Pharisaic tradition appears in such Matthaean expressions as ‘the kingdom of Heaven’ (32 times in all), ‘the tithes of mint, dill, and cummin’ (Matt 23:23), ‘a scribe become a disciple of the kingdom of Heaven’ (13:52), or ‘a jot or tittle of the law’ (5:18), for [328] all of these show up a close similarity to rabbinic usage. It is hard to know whether such expressions derive from Matthaean redaction, or still from the Jesus tradition. Could it be that the Matthaean redactor has retained all these expressions as they came his way, whereas the Lukan editor could not use most of them for his Greek readers?58 We are able to decide only in cases where divergences appear. Some clarity is possible in the case of the Lord’s Prayer. The more concise version that Jesus taught his discipes according to the narrative introduction in Luke (12:1–4) does sound more authentic, given the characteristic, simple address, ‘Father’. The Matthaean version, however, not only carries features of a community prayer (‘our Father …’), but also has a Matthaean59 and ‘rabbinic’60 character. Nevertheless we cannot exclude that the Matthaean redactor has used a version of the prayer that, in addition to being rooted in the community, also stemmed from the Jesus tradition.61 In any case, he has rendered it along with the phrase that certainly stems from tradition and that – as we understand better now – could have been familiar to Jesus, i. e., that his followers should ‘not heap up empty phrases as the gentiles do’ (Matt 6:7).62 A clear difference between Jesus-tradition and Matthaean redaction can be observed in the divorce prohibition,63 which Matthew brings with characteristic repetition (Matt 5:32 and 19:9).64 It concerns a halakhic element of high social relevance; the so-called ‘exception clause’ accords closely with the [329] Shammaite halakha (mGit 9:10),65 as distinct both from the Hillelite and the Essene 58 Such was also the working hypothesis of David Flusser, but he did not sufficiently take account of the counter-hypothesis of a Matthaean redaction. – In the case of Matthew, I hypothesize several consecutive editors, while the Gospel of Luke probably had one single final editor. 59 Cf the nuanced position of Luz, Matthäus 1: 435f. 60 אבינו שבשמיםis rabbinic, cf mSot 9:15 (3×) and esp SER (11×). אביהם\ן שבשמיםis particularly frequent. 61 Cf Tomson, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ [in this volume]. 62 The phrase ἐθνικοί is also found in 5:47; 18:17. The link with the Jesus tradition appears from the contrast with the thrice repeated, evidently redactional μὴ ὡς οἱ ὑποκριταί in 6:2, 5, 16; and cf the identical usage in Did 8:1f. [See more detailed analysis in ‘Didache, Matthew’, in this volume, 516.] 63 Extensive discussion in ‘Divorce Halakha’ [in this volume]. Cf the important traditioncritical observations of Schaller, ‘Die Sprüche über Ehescheidung und Wiederheirat’. 64 Cf the lists of repetitions, esp doublets, in Davies–Allison, Matthew 1: 89−91; Luz, Matthäus 1: 29f. 65 Cf Neudecker, ‘Ehescheidungsgesetz’.
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ones.66 Strecker has seen correctly that the Matthaean redactor has inserted the Shammaite exception clause into the synoptic-Markan tradition.67 We can speak here of a remarkable ‘Shammaization’: the redactor apparently wanted to present Jesus’ divorce teaching not as Hellelite, nor (as distinct from Mark, Luke, and Paul) as ‘Essene’, but precisely as Shammaite. This is a remarkable fact, and one wonders what has caused it. (c) An Anti-Pharisaic Layer. The Jewish-Christian/Pharisaic stage seems to have been succeeded by an anti-Pharisaic one. This stands in manifest contrast with the affinity to Pharisaic tradition reviewed above. Three times in the section on almsgiving, prayer, and fasting in the Sermon on the Mount (6:1–18), and six times in the discourse against the ‘scribes and Pharisees’ (23:13–32), the use of the phrase ὑποκριταί, ‘hypocrites’, marks a sharp distinction vis-à-vis the Pharisees. Strikingly, all of this concerns teachings of Jesus on religious customs that by content have much in common with Pharisaic tradition.68 The parallels between Matt 6:1–18 and Did 8 enable a dating relative to rabbinic tradition, notably with respect to distinct halakhic elements,69 and these in turn recall the enactments of Rabban Gamliel around the turn of the century.70 A further social demarcation is reflected in the prohibition ascribed to Jesus of letting oneself be called ῥαββί, ostensibly as a formal title (Matt 23:8). It has been surmised in the above that this concerns another innovation from the time of Gamliel the Younger, possibly at his initiative.71 The likelihood of Matthaean redaction of 23:7–12 appears from the phrases [330] ὁ πατὴρ ὁ οὐράνιος and, amazingly, ὁ Χριστός (v9f). Hence it may be better to speak of an anti-rabbinic layer in Matthew.72 However, the Gospel shows no trace of the excommunication decree mentioned in John (9:22; 12:42; 18:3). (d) A Gentile-Christian, Anti-Jewish Layer. Finally, anti-Jewish motifs of seemingly gentile-Christian origin have precipitated in the Gospel of Matthew and must therefore be supposed also to have circulated in the Matthaean com66 Fitzmyer,
‘Matthean Divorce Texts’. Weg der Gerechtigkeit, 16f. 68 Matt 6:2, 5, 16 (cf Did 8:1, 2); Pharisees are meant. Pharisees are directly addressed as ‘hypocrites’ in 23:1, 13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29 (cf 15:7; 22:18). 69 See Tomson, ‘Halakhic Evidence’. [Further elaborated in ‘Didache, Matthew’, in this volume.] 70 Details in Tomson ibid. Flusser, ‘Paul’s Jewish-Christian Opponents’ sees this as a splitoff pagan-Christian group, unnecessarily, in my view; similarly, but less pointed, Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache, 295f. Fasting on Wednesday and Friday rather fits the solar calendar which was probably also observed by the Essenes; and sticking to the Lord’s Prayer may reflect resistance against the recently introduced Eighteen Benedictions, cf briefly Tomson, ‘If this be from Heaven’, 388. [And see in the present volume, ‘Didache, Matthew’.] 71 Cf Strecker, Weg der Gerechtigkeit, 33, who sees this, unhistorically, as a ‘cutting loose from Judaism’. See further Tomson, ‘Wars against Rome’, 12f and n63 [‘Didache, Matthew’, below]. 72 The formulation of Davies–Allison, Matthew 1: 137 is apt: ‘Matthew’s gospel fits perfectly into the Jamnian period of Jewish reconsolidation.’ 67 Strecker,
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munity. On principle, this must be distinguished from the openness towards gentiles that is also expressed a number of times (Matt 10:18; 24:14; possibly also 28:19). As Paul shows in his letters (Rom 9–11!), the mission to the gentiles does not necessarily entail anti-Judaism. Nevertheless, a number of Matthaean passages show exactly that. Firstly, the story of the centurion of Capernaum (Matt 8:5–13) has nothing of the surprising sympathy between the centurion and the Jews mentioned in Luke. By contrast, it contains the disruptive sentence that ‘the children of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness’, whereas others coming from East and West, apparently non-Jews, are admitted – all of which does little to make Jesus’ surprise at the centurion’s faith credible.73 Secondly, in the parable of the wicked tenants it is not, as in Mark 12:12 and Luke 20:19, the ‘scribes and chief priests’ who come to the fore, but the ‘chief priests and Pharisees’ (Matt 21:46), who are being told, ‘The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits’ (21:43).74 Thirdly, the story of the guard at the tomb, which is shot through with slander, evinces an anti-Jewish sentiment (Matt 27:62–66; 28:11–15), while it aims to expose an anti-Christian rumour ‘among Jews’ (παρὰ ᾽Ιουδαίους, 28:15).75 This even brings ‘the chief priests and Pharisees’ together, hardly historically, and even in the company of Pilate (27:62). Luz concludes from Matt 21:43 that the Matthaean redactor ‘indeed is a spiritual father of the Christian idea of supersession’, but that similar things are not evidenced in 28:15.76 I think the distinction is important. The story of the guard sounds a tone of strong estrangement at the very core of the resurrection narrative, [331] but it rather accords with raw popular sentiment. Further retouches belonging to this layer are few in number. They seem to have been added at random during a last stage of redaction, testifying to the way in which the Gospel was read at that time. The earlier layers were left in place, resulting in all kinds of contradiction. As to the date of the final text of Matthew, a terminus ad quem results from the indications of its reception by Ignatius, around 110 CE.77 There are no traces of a similar reception in the closely related Didache;78 therefore Matthew cannot 73 In comparison, the Lukan version is coherent: Jesus was more reserved towards the nonJews than the Jews of Capernaum! 74 Flusser, ‘Two Anti-Jewish Montages in Matthew’; Strecker, Weg der Gerechtigkeit, 99−101, 110−113; Luz, Matthäus 4: 216−229, referring back to Matt 8. Stanton, Gospel for a New People, 151 notes correctly that the rejection of the chief priest and Pharisees along with their people is often overlooked. 75 Luz, Matthäus 4: 389−391, 420−427. The link with the equally anti-Jewish Gospel of Peter (8–10) is important. 76 Luz, Matthäus 3: 228; 4: 425. 77 Esp Ignatius, Smyrna 1:1, βεβαπτισμένον … ἵνα πληρωθῇ πᾶσα δικαιoσύνη. Cf Matt 3:15, but also possible allusions to Rom 1:3 f; Luke 23:7 ff; also Ignatius, Polyc 2:2 with Matt 10:16; Ignatius, Eph 19:2 f with Matt 2:2. Cf Brown–Meier, Antioch and Rome, 24f. 78 Tomson, ‘Halakhic Evidence’; differently Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache, 295f.
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be dated earlier that that document.79 The terminus a quo for both texts is the shared protest against the prayer of the ‘hypocrites’ that must be associated with the period of Gamliel the Younger. The upshot is that the final redaction occurred around 100 CE, somewhat later than most scholars assume.80 We must, however, allow for enough time for the emergence of the story of the guard and the saga of Pilate connected with it (Matt 27:19, 24), which can be seen as the beginning of an extended development of popular apocryphal gospels.81
Synthesis The above implies that the development of the gentile-Christian, anti-Jewish layer of Matthew almost coincided with the emergence of its anti-rabbinic layer. It seems we must imagine a congregation in which a considerable group of Jewish-Christians was still involved in the conflict with the recently established ‘rabbinic’ leadership, while in another, gentile-Christian group, anti-Jewish stories began to circulate. Gentile Christians may already have entertained the idea that Israel was replaced by the (gentile) Church. Together, this would provide enough fuel for conflicts between both groups. [332] The emerging profile suits John P. Meier’s description of Syrian Antioch.82 The prominent Antiochene Church saw the earliest documented tensions between Jewish and gentile Christians (Gal 2:11−14; Acts 15:1−5), and this includes a ‘Christian-zealot’, anti-Pauline ‘party’. Upon the outbreak of war in 66 CE, violent conflicts between Jews and non-Jews flared up in the city.83 After the turn of the century, bishop Ignatius, the earliest credible witness for the Gospel of Matthew, represents the gentile-Christian side in the conflict with Jewish Christians, although he was aware of the Pauline ideal of the one Church of Jews and non-Jews.84 Further grounds for the Antiochene origin of Matthew have been adduced by earlier scholars.85 Finally, the language of the Roman soldiery 79 However, Luz, Matthäus 1: 103 thinks the Didache (esp chapter 8) ‘almost certainly’ was created in ‘a Matthaean congregation’ and ‘doubtlessly’ presupposes Matthaean redaction. 80 Given the gentile-Christian final redaction, Strecker, Weg der Gerechtigkeit, 15–85 decides for 95 CE. Cf Stanton, Gospel for a New People, 113–168 (mid-80s); Luz, Matthäus 1: 103f (‘not long after 80’); Davies–Allison, Matthew 1: 127f, 138 (70–100 or 80–95 CE). 81 Vgl. Luz, Matthäus 4: 268. On the story of the guard cf the Gospel of Peter, above n75. 82 Meier, ‘Antioch’. Cf Zetterholm, Formation of Christianity in Antioch. I would imagine the social embedding of Matthew (p215f) differently: the final version of Matthew was made in the ‘Ignatian’ camp, the Didache in what I hypothesized as the ‘Lukan’ camp, Tomson, ‘If this be from Heaven’, 247−254. Fundamental for the political and halakhic data in the earlier period is Bockmuehl, ‘James, Israel and Antioch’. 83 Above n52. 84 Ignatius, Magn 10:3; cf 8:1; 9:1; Phil 6:1. The Church of Jews and gentiles: Smyrna 1:2. 85 First proposed by B. H. Streeter, see Meier, ‘Antioch’, 22−27; Luz, Matthäus 1: 100–103 (practically deciding for Antioch); Davies–Allison, Matthew 1: 143−147.
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fits well to the provincial capital,86 as does, in the same atmosphere, the crude anti-Judaization of the story of the centurion of Capernaum. Thus the Gospel of Matthew appears to us as a ‘community text’ full of contradictions: the text of a community, probably in Antioch, that has lived through dramatic changes of social perspective in a brief period of time. Almost simultaneously, anti-Jewish slander of gentile-Christian origin and anti-rabbinic protests by Jewish-Christians are heard, and behind these, we can hear the more remote voices of ‘zealotic’ anti-Pauline Jewish-Christians, as well as – if we listen with utmost concentration – the distant echo of the Jesus tradition. The earliest tradition tells us that Jesus was aware that he and his message were sent to ‘Israel led astray’, which correlates with his reservedness towards non-Jews. He needed to be convinced by the Phoenician mother and the Roman centurion that the message of God’s kingdom also concerns gentiles. For his disciples, [333] this already became more natural, and as non-Jews started to join their movement, they found new arguments for this development. Among the most appealing was the (Stoicising) image, used by the tent-maker educated as a Pharisee, of the ‘one body’ of the Messiah who had died and was brought to new life, one body composed of Jewish and non-Jewish members (1 Cor 12:12f). However, history intervened. ‘Zealots for the law’ began to intimidate Jews who thought inclusively vis-à-vis gentiles. Judea and Galilee saw increasing chaos, ill-managed by weak Roman administrators. Bloody conflicts erupted, and eventually, war. Society broke apart, churches of Jews and of gentiles began to separate, the rabbis came forward and created order and law in their own circles, and finally, an assertive anti-Jewish Church of gentiles emerged. Thus the constellation arose of two mutually demarcated yet closely related religious communities, Judaism and Christianity, there to stay for centuries. But history has intervened again. The present-day gentile Church, while still recovering from the upheavals of a century of mass murder and neo-paganism, has cautiously begun to rid herself of inherited anti-Judaism and anti-rabbinism and to view the wisdom of the Pharisaic teachers in a new perspective. Her hope is ever more adequately to understand the message that originated from the Galilean teacher and that addresses both ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ and, in equally biblical language, ‘all the nations’.
86 κουστωδία (Matt 27:65f; 28:11) is an almost unique Latinism, see LSJ, s. v.; similarly, συμβούλιον λαμβάνειν in 28:12 is a pure Latinism, see BDR § 5.3b.
An Alienated Jewish Tradition in John 7:22–23 Proposal for an ‘Epichronic’ Reading The following study has a double focus. One is on a Jewish tradition unit about the Sabbath preserved in John 7:22f, and the other on the extant text of the Gospel and its message on this matter. This implies an approach from two angles. The interest in the Jewish tradition unit and in the evolution of the concept of the Sabbath requires a comparative or historical approach. The interest in the message of the Gospel, however, presupposes an appreciation of the extant final text. Or adopting a terminology that imposes itself: the focus on the Jewish tradition requires a ‘diachronic’ reading; the one on the Gospel, a ‘synchronic’ reading. From a methodological viewpoint, we cannot content ourselves with either one of the two approaches; we must somehow combine both ways of reading. We shall start with a synchronic reading and investigate the way the evangelist speaks of the Sabbath in our passage and elsewhere in his Gospel. Next, in a diachronic reading – or more precisely, in the ‘tradition-critical’ approach that is one of the tools of classic ‘historical criticism’ – we shall study the Jewish tradition unit in John 7:22f, which in fact is a halakhic midrash, i. e., a scriptural argument in the field of Jewish law typically found in rabbinic literature. In the third part we shall go for a synthesis, envisaging the subsequent stages the Gospel must have run through and the various meanings the halakhic midrash received at every stage. I propose to call this combined way of reading ‘epichronic’, that is to say, a reading that, at every point of the diachronic trajectory it runs through, integrates a synchronic look – or, going by the other dimension, a reading that, at every point of the synchronic reading it performs, integrates a diachronic analysis. Thus we would be wise neither to do an exclusively synchronic reading in the second case, nor a completely diachronic one in the first. In my experience, a diachronic approach is wanting without knowledge of the final text, while a synchronic reading improves itself by taking in diachronic ‘irruptions’ in the text.* * [The paper, ‘L’aliénation d’une tradition juive en Jean 7:22s.: essai de lecture “épichronique”’, was read at a colloquium on the Gospel of John organized in 2006 by Fabien Nobilio and Baudouin Decharneux at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and published in Decharneux – Nobilio, Figures de l’Étrangeté dans l’Évangile de Jean, 183–211. It appears here for the first time in English, with slight emendations. I want to thank So Sze Wing (Catherine), Rex Fortes,
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Synchronic Reading: Dispute about the Sabbath in John 5, 7, and 9 The Sabbath figures in four passages in John.1 Apart from the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection,2 where the Sabbath is merely a circumstantial element and which we therefore do not take into consideration, the Sabbath is centre stage in two healing stories in John 5 and 9, as also in a discussion with the Jews in chapter 7 that is linked with these stories. In John 5, Jesus heals a man who has been paralysed for 38 years. Thereupon Jesus gives him the command, unrelated to the healing, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk’ (5:8). It is unclear why he should say this. Then the narrator intervenes and informs us, ἦν δὲ σάββατον ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ, ‘Now that day was a Sabbath’ (5:9).3 Then he continues narrating, ‘The Jews said to the man who had been healed: It is Sabbath, it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.’ But the man says he acts upon the order of ‘the man who made me well’ – whom he does not know. Then, however, he meets Jesus in the Temple and goes to tell it to the Jews. These verses follow: 16 καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἐδίωκον οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι τὸν Ἰησοῦν, ὅτι ταῦτα ἐποίει ἐν σαββάτῳ. 17ὁ δὲ [Ἰησοῦς] ἀπεκρίνατο αὐτοῖς, Ὁ πατήρ μου ἕως ἄρτι ἐργάζεται κἀγὼ ἐργάζομαι· 18διὰ τοῦτο οὖν μᾶλλον ἐζήτουν αὐτὸν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι ἀποκτεῖναι, ὅτι οὐ μόνον ἔλυεν τὸ σάββατον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πατέρα ἴδιον ἔλεγεν τὸν θεὸν ἴσον ἑαυτὸν ποιῶν τῷ θεῷ. 16 Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath. 17But Jesus answered them, My Father is still working, and I also am working. 18 For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God. (John 5:16–18)
Much depends here on the way one translates the verb λύειν: to ‘break’ or, more radically, to ‘abolish’ the Sabbath. In John this crucial word is also used referring to Scripture and the Temple.4 Some commentators say that in principle both meanings are possible and that the context must decide.5 For the Jews, the and Maria Michael Felix, doctoral students at KU Leuven, for their stimulating questions and for the discussion on the English version of the paper.] 1 Note the attentive reading of the Johannine Sabbath passages in Doering, Schabbat, 468– 476. [Doering, ‘Sabbath Laws’, 246f offers an excellent brief discussion. For Asiedu-Peprah, Johannine Sabbath Conflicts, John 7:21–23 falls outside the scope of because the conflict is not over the Sabbath, ibid. 47 n18.] 2 John 19:31 (2×); 20:1, 19. 3 Translation here as elsewhere follows NRSV with adaptations to the situation at hand when necessary. 4 John 5:18, Sabbath: KJV ‘break’, and likewise the French translations (BJ, TOB, LSG), ‘violer’. Similarly in 7:23, the law. In 10:35, Scripture, NRSV has ‘annulled’, but RSV and KJV, ‘broken’. BJ translates ‘récuser’, TOB ‘violer’, and LSG ‘anéantir’. In John 2:19, the Temple, KJV, RSV, and NRSV have ‘destroy’ and the French translations ‘abolir’. See further next note. 5 Doering, Schabbat, 471f, citing Back (below n14), but opting for ‘violate’ in view of the parallel with 5:16, (ὁτὶ ταῦτα ἐποίεν // ὁτὶ ἔλυεν), as also in 7:23 (‘gebrochen’), without discus-
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difficult point is that Jesus has ordered the man to carry his mattress without a clear reason, thus expressing the apparent intention to ‘abolish’ the Sabbath. His answer bothers the Jews to the point of wanting to kill him. Now the theme of the Jews ‘wanting to kill’ Jesus makes the link with chapter 7.6 In 7:1 the evangelist repeats, with characteristic monotony, ‘Jesus … did not want (ἥθελεν)7 to go about in Judea, because the Jews were trying to kill him’ (ὅτι ἐζήτουν αὐτὸν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι ἀποκτεῖναι). Nonetheless Jesus takes the road to Jerusalem. After his arrival he asks, ‘Why do you want to kill me?’ and the crowd answers, ‘You have a demon! Who is trying to kill you?’ (7:19f). So far, there has been no mention of a violation of the Sabbath as a reason to kill him, so this conversation must refer back to chapter 5. Moreover the same language returns in the very polemical chapter 8.8 Thus we arrive at our passage. Let us hear it in full: οὐ Μωϋσῆς δέδωκεν ὑμῖν τὸν νόμον; καὶ οὐδεὶς ἐξ ὑμῶν ποιεῖ τὸν νόμον. τί με ζητεῖτε ἀποκτεῖναι; 20ἀπεκρίθη ὁ ὄχλος, Δαιμόνιον ἔχεις· τίς σε ζητεῖ ἀποκτεῖναι; 21 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Ἓν ἔργον ἐποίησα καὶ πάντες θαυμάζετε. 22διὰ τοῦτο Μωϋσῆς δέδωκεν ὑμῖν τὴν περιτομήν – οὐχ ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ Μωϋσέως ἐστὶν ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῶν πατέρων – καὶ ἐν σαββάτῳ περιτέμνετε ἄνθρωπον. 23εἰ περιτομὴν λαμβάνει ἄνθρωπος ἐν σαββάτῳ ἵνα μὴ λυθῇ ὁ νόμος Μωϋσέως, ἐμοὶ χολᾶτε ὅτι ὅλον ἄνθρωπον ὑγιῆ ἐποίησα ἐν σαββάτῳ; 19
Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me? 20The crowd answered, You have a demon! Who is trying to kill you? 21Jesus answered them, I performed one work, and all of you are astonished. 22Moses gave you circumcision (it is, of course, not from Moses, but from the patriarchs), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. 23If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath in order that the law of Moses may not be abolished,9 are you angry with me because I healed a man’s whole body on the Sabbath? (John 7:19–23) sion. But ταῦτα ἐποίεν seems to refer back to the command to carry the mat, see v11f, not to the healing (see also below at n38, on the citation of Mark 2:9). In John 5:18, 7:23, and 10:35, Bauer, Johannesevangelium, 82, 111 as also BDAG s. v. λύω (4) expressly indicate ‘abolish’: ‘In John, Jesus is accused not of breaking the Sabbath, but of doing away with it as an ordinance.’ In Matt 5:17–19 (κατα)λύω is used as antonym of πληρόω – ποιέω καὶ διδάσκω, i. e., to ‘annul’ as against to ‘do and teach’ the law. In Rom 3:31 Paul uses καταργέω – ἱστάνω, in clear parallel to later rabbinic usage, קיים – בטל, ‘annul’ vs. ‘confirm’ by one’s exegesis. This connotation is also likely in John, certainly where ‘the law’ or ‘Scripture’ is involved. In related usage Matt 16:19; 18:19, use the pair λύειν – δέειν, cf rabbinic התיר – אסר, and see StrBill 1: 241, 738 and BDAG s. v. δέω (4). 6 Cf Bauer, Johannesevangelium, 110. 7 BJ, ‘il n’avait pas pouvoir de circuler’, seems a little forced; for this connotation, that comes with a negation, see LSJ s. v. ἔθελω (2). 8 John 8:37, ‘ I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me (ἀλλὰ ζητεῖτέ με ἀποκτεῖναι), because there is no place in you for my word’; 8:40, ‘ but now you are trying to kill me (νῦν δὲ ζητεῖτέ με ἀποκτεῖναι), a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did.’ 9 See above n4f.
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The ‘one work’ Jesus has done must be the healing of the paralytic. Now something happens we have not seen in chapter 5: Jesus gives a positive argument for his healing on the Sabbath. Because God ‘works’, he also works. Circumcision is done even on Sabbath in order that the law be not ‘abolished’ – for that is apparently how we should translate it. In chapter 5, Jesus has given a negative argument: he does not have to observe the Sabbath. Moreover, chapter 5 contains an element that does not return here: the order to carry the mattress that enrages the Jews even more. The fact that this incident is not referred to here in our passage is amazing and will give reason to diachronic questioning. Then follows chapter 8, which we have already hinted at. It consists of long disputations with the Jews. Jesus is ‘greater than Abraham’ (cf 8:53), but the Jews want to kill him. Therefore they actually do not have Abraham as father, as they claim, but the devil.10 The fourth passage involving the Sabbath is about the healing of the man who had been ‘blind from birth’ (9:1). The problem here is neither a healing without urgency on Sabbath, nor some other prohibited act. The problem is that Jesus does not heal with a single word or a simple laying on of hands, as was his custom, but by preparing ‘mud’ by way of medicine – an altogether exceptional act in the Gospels. Strikingly, the evangelist explains once again to his readers: ‘Now it was Sabbath that day, on which Jesus had made the mud’ (ἦν δὲ σάββατον ἐν ᾗ ἡμέρᾳ τὸν πηλὸν ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς, 9:14). The formulation is practically identical with that in chapter 5, and in both cases the evangelist gives us this information only after the healing has been done, by way of narrator’s explanation. These are two of the asides that characterise this Gospel and represent the evangelist in his intimate omniscience about the story and its protagonists, including Jesus. There are more parallels between the two healing stories on Sabbath. Preceding the preparation of the mud, a little conversation between Jesus and his disciples takes place, translated literally: ‘We must work the works (ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα) of him who sent me while it is day’ (9:4). This recalls Jesus’ argument in John 5, ‘My Father is still working and am also working’ (… ἕως ἄρτι ἐργάζεται, κἀγὼ ἐργάζομαι, 5:17).11 Also, in the two stories an interrogation follows in which the healed man does not appear to know who or where Jesus is (9:11f; 5:13). The recurring ignorance serves to illuminate the hidden identity of Jesus. As distinct from John 5, 7, and 8, the theme of Jesus’ execution does not return in chapter 9, but it will resurface in the chapters following.12 What we do learn in John 8:31, 44, 58. Cf the observations à propos of ἐργάζεσθαι in Graeco-Jewish sources in Doering, Schabbat, 470f. 12 John 10:31, ‘The Jews took up stones again to stone him’; 11:8, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you’; 11:47, 53, ‘The chief priests and the Pharisees … planned to put him to death’. 10 11
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chapter 9 is that ‘the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue’ (9:22). Thus the traditional translation. However it is more correct to translate the phrase ἀποσυνάγωγος γένεσθαι as ‘being ousted from the community’, insofar as the phrase συναγωγή does not designate the post-medieval ‘synagogue’ – the community of believers or the building where they gather – but the ‘Jewish community’ in the larger sense it had in Antiquity.13 Indeed, those who believed in Jesus as Christ would be ‘excommunicated’. Clearly, chronology is not the greatest worry of the evangelist, or putting it more sympathetically: he is witness to a cosmic drama that transcends the limits of human reasoning. It is not just chronology that is concerned. Linear logic is also strained in the narrative. A synchronic reading should not ignore such observations. It should not miss the opportunity to get the help of a diachronic look at things in order better to fulfil its own task: taking the narrator’s intentions seriously. In John 5:18, the evangelist says Jesus ‘breaks’ or ‘abolishes’ the Sabbath because he and his followers have to ‘work’ on Sabbath like God himself. For the Jews, Jesus creates problems with the Sabbath and this is reason for them to kill him and persecute his followers. This is the cosmic drama. As is known, the drama is previewed in the prologue – another characteristic element of this Gospel – whose voice links up with that of the evangelist’s asides. In this grand hymn to the divine Logos that descends to the human world, we hear: The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. (John 1:9–11)
Diachronic Reading: The Halakhic Midrash in John 7:22f The Context in John We have heard that in John 7:23, Jesus says that ‘the law should not be abolished’ (λυθῇ). However in 5:18 the narrator states that the Jews were angry beacuse Jesus was ‘breaking’ or ‘abolishing’ (ἔλυεν) the Sabbath.14 This contrast creates an interesting point of departure for diachronic analysis. In the conflict that runs from one end of the Gospel to the other, the law is typically placed on the side of the Jews, who as we saw want to kill Jesus. Even in our very passage, Jesus says to them: ‘Moses gave you the law’ (7:19, cf 1:17). Elsewhere, he can remind them that ‘it is written in your law …’ (8:17; 10:34), just as he can warn 13 More elaboration in Tomson, ‘Wars against Rome’,16f. [Similarly Cohen, ‘Pharisees and Rabbis’, 275f. And see on the episode ‘The Gospel of John’, in this volume.] 14 For the contrast see Back, Sabbath Commandment, 154; Borgen, ‘Sabbath Controversy’, 212f; cf n4f above.
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his disciples, ‘it is written in their law …’ (15:25). And again, in the final part of the cosmic drama, ‘the Jews’ say to Pilate, ‘We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die’ (19:7). For a correct historical perspective it must be added that the the idea of death penalty for an infringement on the Sabbath was exceptional, even in Second Temple Judaism and even among the most severe of Jews, the Essenes.15 Now it is extremely important to note that the Gospel also contains passages that run counter to this general tendency, such as in John 1:45 where Philip says to Nathanael that he has found ‘him about whom Moses in the law … wrote’. In fact, the section about the calling of the disciples in John 1:35–51 contains none of the traces of the conflict with the Jews and, to the contrary, shows many Judaeo-Christian features.16 This suggests that what we could call the ‘antiJewish recasting of the Gospel’ was not exhaustive and has left isolated remnants of the earlier Judeao-Christian Gospel in place. We must try to see this in light of the evolution of early Christianity. What began as one among many Jewish ‘sects’,17 ended up as the non-Jewish or rather anti-Jewish religion of the Church Fathers, apart from the various Judaeo-Christian groups of which we know very little. Post-70 events must have strongly influenced this development, especially the ‘excommunication’ of Christians of which the Fourth Gospel is the most ancient testimony, often linked with the famous birkat ha-minim issued by Rabban Gamliel the Younger c. 100 CE.18 In this trajectory, John 1:35–51 must be considered an ancient Judaeo-Christian fragment preserved in the Gospel that in its final text as a whole reflects a generalised conflict with the Jewish community.19 In an analogous way, John 7:22f can be considered an ancient fragment. First and foremost, it presupposes that the Jewish law should be respected. Next, the analogy with circumcision recalls the a fortiori or a minori ( )קל וחומרarguments in the synoptic Gospels premised on the care for animals (Matt 12:11f; Luke 15 Exclusively found in Jubilees, beginning and end. Otherwise, the biblical punishment in Exod 31:15; 35:2; Num 15:35 is understood as כרת, ‘death by the hand of God’; cf Doering, Schabbat, 68f. The ‘decision’ of (Herodians and) Pharisees (!) in Mark 3:6 and Matt 12:14 is also historically improbable. 16 The section is similarly described by Dodd, Historical Tradition, 302–312; Brown, Community of the Beloved Disciple, 27, and other scholars cited by Brown ibid. n36: J. L. Martyn, R. T. Fortna, W. Nicol, and P. J. Achtemeier. For the remarkable use of the name ‘Israel’ in this context see Tomson, ‘“Jews” in the Gospel of John’, 318f [cf ‘The Names Israel and Jew’, in this volume, 178]. 17 Christians as αἵρεσις: Acts 24:5; 28:22. Sadducees: Acts 5:17; Josephus, Ant 13:293; 20:199. Pharisees: Acts 15:5; 26:5; Josephus, Ant 13:288; Life 191, 197. For the ‘three sects’ not including the Christians but the Essenes (who are not mentioned in the New Testament) see Ant 13:171; Life 10; cf War 2:119; Ant 18:11. 18 Tomson, ‘The Wars against Rome’, 8–18. For a discussion of historically important passages cf Jaffé, Le Judaïsme et l’avènement du christianisme. [For the whole issue see now in this volume, ‘The Gospel of John’.] 19 The general idea was launched by Martyn, History and Theology.
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13:15f; 14:5).20 In this exceptional case, this hypothesis is confirmed by an external source: a rabbinic midrash that argues the precedence of the preservation of human life over the Sabbath by analogy with circumcision, exactly as in John 7:22f.
A Rabbinic Midrash In studying this midrash, we shall see how in rabbinic literature, which we can consider as the reduction to writing of an oral tradition, one and the same tradition unit can appear in various parallel forms, while a primary or ‘original’ version cannot readily be pointed out. This kind of work is not unknown either to scholars involved in Gospel study, who as well have to deal with an oral, multiform tradition crystallized in multiple versions that contain identical units in different forms.21 In the case that concerns us here, we are nevertheless in a position to draw a cautious conclusion as to the most ancient occurrence of the circumcision midrash. Illustrating the point just made, our midrash is transmitted in two basic forms. One is part of a brief narrative in the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael. In it, three sages, whom tradition dates to the third generation of Tannaim and hence to the early second century CE, are under way, to wit R. Yishmael, R. Elazar ben Azarya, and R. Akiva. Two disciples are following, and the question is asked how one can ‘prove’ from Scripture that the preservation of human life overrides the Sabbath. To this narrative, the editors of the pericope or of the work have added three opinions from a later generation: those of R. Yose ha-Gelili, R. Shimon ben Menasya, and R. Natan, around the end of the second century CE. We shall do a bit of injustice to the text and cite in full only the words of R. Elazar, R. Shimon ben Menasya, and R. Natan: Once R. Yishmael, R. Elazar ben Azarya, and R. Akiva were under way, and Levi the Netmaker22 and R. Yishmael the son of R. Elazar ben Azaryah followed them, and the question was asked before them: On what grounds does the preservation of life override the Sabbath? ()מנין לפיקוח נפש שדוחה את השבת. R. Yishmael answered an said … R. Elazar ben Azarya answered and said: Just as circumcision, which affects only a single member of the human person, overrides the Sabbath – how much the more when it concerns his whole body! They said to him: If that is the line of your argument, it would have to be an obvious urgency in this situation, as in the other ( מה להלן בודאי אף כאן בודאי,)ממקום שבאת. Similarly Borgen, ‘Sabbath Controversy’, 213. Thus the correct intuition of Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, cf the foreword by Neusner, picking up on the critique of Bultmann and his colleagues. 22 See the Horovitz-Rabin edition, critical apparatus ad loc.: the textus receptus הסדר, ‘the tailor’, is dubious in face of the version הסרדof the Aruch and the Munich ms of the Bavli. 20 21
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R. Akiva said … R. Yose ha-Gelili said … R. Shimon ben Menasya said: Lo, it says: “You shall keep the Sabbath for it is holy to you” (Exod 31:14) – the Sabbath is given to you, not you to the Sabbath (כי קדש היא ואי אתם מסורין לשבת,לכם שבת מסורה – )לכם.23 R. Natan said: Lo, it says: “The Israelites shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations” (לדורותם, Exod 31:16) – that one Sabbath may be broken for (the life of) this person, in order that many will be kept in future.24
The opinion of R. Elazar ben Azarya, the one that interests us most, is placed between those of R. Yishmael, founding father of midrash among the Tannaim, and R. Akiva, his partner in discussion known as the great innovator both in midrash and in halakha. It is remarkable that R. Akiva’s opinion is preceded by an objection against the argument of R. Elazar. This gives reason to the suspicion that the objection ‘they’ made against his opinion is equally R. Akiva’s. While R. Elazar’s argument of the analogy between care for the sick and circumcision has a simple charm, it can be understood on different levels in view of various elements.25 Most simply understood,26 it concerns a bodily intervention in both cases: if the necessary ‘intervention’ on such a small member already overrides the great Sabbath, how much more such an intervention involving the entire body! On the level of biblical narrative, circumcision is done on the eighth day as from God’s commandment to Abraham onwards (Gen 17:12); it predates the commandment of the Sabbath by at least four generations (Exod 16, cf John 7:22). Then, however, the objection against R. Elazar is made. It is of extreme density and its terms are not at all clear. As concerns the preservation of life, it would have to be ‘an urgent case’, as in the case of circumcision. This could be understood as: circumcision must absolutely be done on the eighth day, even if a Sabbath, but for a sick person, one could probably wait another day. For the author of the objection, the analogy does not hold. He needs proof for the necessity to treat the sick one on Sabbath, though the mortal danger may also be purely theoretical.27 23 In the parallel in bYom 85b, the dictum is attributed to R. Yonatan ben Yosef, while R. Natan’s midrash that follows in the Mekhilta is attributed to R. Shimon ben Menasya (this last attribution also in TanB 8, 91a). 24 MekRY, ki tissa 1, (p340f). Another version of the story in bYom 85a–b, notably citing the opinion of R. Akiva in second position after R. Yishmael (cf below n37). The midrash of R. Elazar/Eliezer (see below n32) is cited separately in bShab 132a; Tanh yitro 8 (95a); TanB vayashev 8 (91a). 25 Cf the ruminations of Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 3: 261f, à propos the parallel in the Tosefta and related commentaries. 26 Similarly, the two Tanhumas (see n24). Based on the more explicit version of the Tosefta (see below), Doering, Schabbat, 473 takes it that both interventions, circumcision and care of the sick, concern ‘salvation’ – from mortal danger of the sick one and extirpation for the father of the child. This is possible but not compelling. 27 Certain commentaries take the objection in the opposite sense and advance the case of
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In the framework of this article it is of interest that the last two opinions cited in the Mekhilta are close to the mentality reported of Jesus. The midrash of R. Shimon ben Menasya resembles the proverb of Jesus in Mark 2:27 by form and content, ‘The Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath’.28 Moreover R. Natan’s argument according to which one breaks one Sabbath in order to allow many to be kept is very close to a sentence in John 7, as we shall see. The second main form of our midrash is found in the Tosefta. It is not in a narrative context, but rather in a didactical argument headed by an introduction and rounded off by general conclusions.29 In the series of opinions here presented, the second also uses the analogy with circumcision and, as in the Mekhilta, it is refuted and followed by R. Akiva’s opinion.30 But here the first opinion is that of R. Yose,31 a disciple of R. Akiva, mid-second century, and according to the main textual witnesses of the Tosefta, the argument by analogy with circumcision is not attributed to R. Elazar but to R. Eliezer.32 This hardly makes a difference for the presumed date: R. Elazar ben Azarya and R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus both belong to the second generation of Tannaim that preceded R. Akiva. R. Yose says, On what grounds does the preservation of life override the Sabbath (מנין ?)לפיקוח נפש שדוחה את השבתIt is said … R. Eliezer says, (The commandment of ) circumcision – one violates that of the Sabbath on its behalf. Why? Because one suffers the punishment of extirpation in case of its delay. It concerns an argument a minori: if the Sabbath is overruled for the sake of one of his members, how much more must the Sabbath be overruled for the sake of one’s entire body? They said to him: if that is your line of argument, it would have to be an obvious and not a doubtful urgency, in this situation as in the other ( מה להלן ודיי ולא ספק אף,ממקו' שבאת )כאן ודיי ולא ספק. R. Akiva says … R. Aha says in the name of R. Akiva … (tShab 15:16f) babies born at twilight preceding or following the Sabbath, making it uncertain whether the eighth day following is a Sabbath, or again, androgynic babies where it is uncertain if they are male and should be circumcised at all. Cf Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 3: 261f and see mShab 19:3; bShab 135a. 28 See above n23 for the attribution. The saying does not return in the parallels in Matt 12:8 and Luke 6:5, possibly because of the perceived contrast with the christological affirmation that follows. 29 tShab 1:11, והזריז הרי זה משובח,מפקחין על ספק נפש בשבת, ‘One protects human life (even) in doubtful cases on Sabbath, and the more careful the more laudable’; tShab 1:17, אין כל דבר עומד …בפני פקוח נפש חוץ מן, ‘Nothing can stand up before the preservation of human life, except … (the three cardinal sins); but at a time of persecution, one gives his life for the least of commandments’ (cf below). 30 There is confusion here. R. Akiva’s argument is very similar to the one of R. Yishmael that is given at the beginning in the Mekhilta. 31 Cf mNed 3:11, גדולה מילה שדוחה את השבת החמורה:רבי יוסי אומר, ‘R. Yose says: great is circumcision because it overrides the Sabbath although the latter is greater.’ 32 A frequent confusion. R. Eliezer: tShab 15:16 (ms Vienna; ms Erfurt; ed. princ.); Tanh yitro 8 (95a). R. Elazar ben Azarya: tShab 15:16 (ms London); MekRY ki tissa 1 (p340f); bShab 132a; bYom 85b; TanB vayeshev 8 (91a).
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In this version, the argument by analogy and its refutation are more explicit. The argument adds the ‘danger’ incurred in delaying the circumcision, i. e., the punishment of extirpation or ‘death by the hand of Heaven’. This suggests that both cases, circumcision and caring for the sick person, are about ‘salvation’ – either in face of extirpation, or of a lethal illness.33 Furthermore, the refutation presupposes the necessity of producing a more symmetrical analogy, one that juxtaposes two equally obligatory cases. Following R. Eliezer’s argument in this version, the danger of extirpation is inherent in case of delay of the circumcision, but the danger for the sick person is only hypothetical. The small addition – ‘extirpation in case of delay’ and ‘not a doubtful urgency’ – raise the debate to a higher, more theoretical level, where not just the ‘size’ of the commandments counts, but also their ‘weight’ as to the level of obligation and sanction. One suspects that this represents a more sophisticated reading of the midrash. The fact that, as in the Mekhilta, the refutation is followed by the argument of R. Akiva, reinforces the impression that it is indeed R. Akiva who takes up the midrash transmitted by earlier generations and refutes it according to his more advanced reasoning. This impression is confirmed by a more profound analysis. In the first place, we can observe a didactic progression in the successive arguments: first that of R. Yose, of a later generation but more comprehensive in scope, citing circumcision, the Temple cult, and the preservation of life as commandments overriding the Sabbath; then the older one of R. Eliezer that comprehends only the analogy with circumcision but that is judged insufficient; and finally the decisive argument of R. Akiva. It seems this progression is the work of R. Yose’s school, which would have reproduced the teaching of R. Akiva, his master, in any case.34 In the second place, our passage continues (tShab 15:17) with a fourth argument, also in the name of R. Akiva but cited by R. Aha, probably one of the last Tannaim,35 and which comprehends the general motivation that human life surpasses all commandments except at a time of persecution, when ‘a person gives his life for the lightest of commandments’. This recalls the well-known ambience of the martyrdom of R. Akiva during the persecution under Hadrian (bBer 61b). In the third place, the refutation of the analogy with circumcision fits the exceptional analytical power of R. Akiva. A similar case is found in the discussion about the grounds for divorce in mGit 9:10. As was demonstrated by Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Akiva has taken the arguments of his predecessors, reduced them to their halakhic essence, and reformulated the whole discussion in a more 33 See Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 3: 261, à propos lines 73–74: תיקון, based on Rashi, bShab 132a. Thus explains also Doering, Schabbat, 473, ‘In beiden Fällen …“Rettung”’. 34 For this type of tradition criticism, cf Goldberg, ‘The Mishna’. 35 See Hyman, Toldoth 1: 119.
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transparent and efficient manner.36 Similarly, in our case R. Akiva could have taken the traditional argument by analogy with circumcision, showing that it is incoherent because it juxtaposes a certain and a possible danger, and instead adducing a really coherent argument. At this stage, he could have also added the elements of ‘extirpation’ and of ‘a not doubtful situation’. In any case, the refutation formulates more clearly the unconditional obligation to preserve human life required by rabbinic tradition. In summary, the Tosefta passage gives the impression of having been thoroughly recast one or more generations after R. Akiva, on the basis of the latter’s teaching. By comparison, the Mekhilta passage gives a less made-over impression, leaving in place R. Yishmael’s argument at the beginning, and adding the later opinions simply at the end.37 The argument by analogy with circumcision is presented in second position in both passages. It is the most ancient one, as confirmed both by its attribution to the generation before R. Akiva, late first century, and, seemingly, by its refutation by R. Akiva himself. This conclusion pushes the date of the circumcision midrash back to the time when the Fourth Gospel was being edited, thus confirming the impression that John 7:22f contains an ancient Jewish tradition element. Differently put, we have identified an external source that illuminates the historical growth of the Gospel.
The Midrash in John In this diachronic perspective, one point remains to be clarified, to wit the mention in John 5:8 of Jesus’ order to the healed man to carry his mat on Sabbath, which apparently causes the fury of the Jews and their intention to kill him, but which curiously does not figure in the discussion on the on Sabbath in chapter 7. It follows that John 7:22f represents an ancient element preserved within the final text of the Gospel, which in turn occasions further reflection. Is a similar reference lacking in the ancient fragment because the incident in John 5 was inserted at a later stage? And is this also the case with the two asides by which the evangelist informs his readers that ‘it was Sabbath on that day’ only after the healing (John 5:9; 9:14)? Indeed this suspicion is reinforced by the fact that the phrasing of Jesus’ order – ἔγειρε ἆρον τὸν κράβατόν σου καὶ περιπάτει, ‘stand up, take your mat and walk’ – almost verbally corresponds with Mark 2:9. There, Rosen-Zvi, ‘Even if One Found’; [details in ‘Divorce Halakha’, above 86–92]. The Mekhilta version cited in bYom 85a–b seems more ancient. The order is: R. Yishmael − R. Akiva − R. Elazar ben Azarya, upon which follow the posterior arguments of R. Yose ben Yehuda, R. Yonatan ben Yosef and R. Shimon ben Menasya. Also, remarkably, the argument of R. Elazar ben Azarya is given without refutation. In comparison, the version of our Mekhilta de-R. Yishmael already seems influenced by the re-formulation that must have begun in the school of R. Akiva. 36 37
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Jesus heals a paralytic, whom his friends have lowered through the roof, and tells him, apparently in order to emphasize the fact of his recovery, ἔγειρε ἆρον τὸν κράβατόν σου καὶ ὕπαγε, ‘stand up, take your mat and go.’38 This is one of the three or four explicit citations from the synoptic Gospels in John. Another one is the mention of the ‘pound of costly perfume made of pure nard’ with which Mary anoints Jesus’ feet in Bethany in John 12:3 – a clear reference to Mark 14:3.39 And as in Mark, the date of the event in relation to Passover precedes. But where Mark 14:1 tells us that ‘Passover was two days later’, John 12:1 says that the event was ‘six days before Passover’. Whatever one thinks of the brilliant theory of Annie Jaubert on the matter, it seems clear that John is out to ‘correct’ Mark.40 In our passage, things are a little different. John apparently cites a command of Jesus from Mark in order to put the healing by Jesus in a different context. What strikes us now is that in the story in Mark, there is no mention of the Sabbath at all.41 Indeed it seems that the Johannine evangelist has added not only the command of Jesus, but the whole fatal incident of carrying the mat on Sabbath. It seems unlikely that he intentionally altered the healing story in John 5 in order to provoke a conflict between the followers of Jesus and the Jews. More probably, a similar conflict already presented itself and he was confident to be loyal to the Jesus tradition by retelling the story in this way. We are left with the conclusion that John pictures Jesus as a Messiah who abolishes the Sabbath.
Epichronic Reading: How a Jewish Tradition Unit became Alienated In this third part of our study, we wish to make a synthesis, or in other words, to read the Gospel ‘epichronically’, simultaneously addressing its textual integrity and its historical genesis. In order to do so, it is helpful to hypothesize three 38 See also Mark 2:12, καὶ ἠγέρθη καὶ εὐθύς ἄρας τὸν κράβατον (with the typically Markan καὶ εὐθύς), and John 5:9, καὶ εὐθέως ἐγένετο ὑγιὴς … καὶ ἦρεν τὸν κράβατον. Thanks to Fabien Nobilio for this observation, made orally. 39 Moreover in both Gospels the disciples/Judas object that the ointment costs ‘more than 300 denars’ (Mark 14:5; John 12:5 – a detail lacking in Matt and Luke). Cf the survey by Kümmel, Einleitung, 168f. [And see above, ‘The Song of Songs’, 247–250.] 40 Jaubert, La date de la Cène. Even if one does not accept all her conclusions, the contradiction between John and the Synoptics as to the dating of the last supper in relation to Passover must remain unsolvable as long as one ignores the underlying calendars; cf the lack of a conclusion in Brown, John, 555f. If so, it is obvious that John has the intention to correct Mark’s dating, or at least to make sure his readers understand the matter correctly. [See now Saulnier, Calendrical Variations.] 41 See Brown, John, 210f. He quotes Haenchen who posits that John 5:9b–13 is a secondary insertion but maintains that the information that it was Sabbath comes ‘almost as an afterthought’ yet is an essential motif in the story. Doering, Schabbat, 468 notes that Fortna, Schnackenburg, and Schnelle follow Haenchen.
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main stages in the development of the Fourth Gospel:42 (1) the Jesus-tradition, the remembered words and deeds of this extraordinary character among the Jews of his day; (2) the proto-Johannine Gospel that presumably belonged to a Jewish-Christian grouplet in pre-70 Judaism; (3) the extant Gospel in its fierce confrontation with the Jews around 100 CE. These are of course idealized stages that cannot do justice to a much more nuanced reality, but for our purposes it is not necessary to refine our grid of perception further. Our epichronic exercise requires that for each of the three stages, we try to describe the meaning the circumcision midrash in John 7:22f receives, before integrating the successive meanings into a ‘three-dimensional’ reading. The first stage is the most hypothetical because it concerns the oral tradition of Jesus and his disciples, about whose primitive outer form we are largely ignorant. Yet two features of Jesus’ teaching seem certain: his respect for the Tora of Moses and his humane conception of the Sabbath. Therefore the phrases in our passage, ‘a man receives circumcision on Sabbath in order that the law of Moses not be broken’, and, three verses earlier, ‘Moses has given you circumcision’ (7:19), could well derive from the Jesus tradition. The reasoning behind these phrases, as we saw, is analogous to the much later opinion of R. Natan:43 ‘Let one Sabbath be broken for (the life of) this person, in order that many will be kept in future.’ Furthermore, we have noted the surprising similarity between Jesus’ saying, ‘The Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath’, and the one of R. Shimon ben Menasya, ‘The Sabbath is given to you, not you to the Sabbath.’ If we could depend on John 7:23 only, we could speculate that Jesus himself knew and approved of the midrash by analogy with circumcision.44 The rhetoric of this study, however, dictates that we content ourselves with establishing that the rabbinic sources confirm the existence of this midrash towards the late first century CE. In a long-range perspective, ancient Judaism at large evinces a marked progression from a very restrictive to a relatively humane conception of the Sabbath.45 The opinions of R. Natan and R. Shimon ben Menasya must be situated towards the end of this trajectory. Jesus seems to have belonged to a minority movement in Judaism that expressed itself in like manner already in the first century. This attitude could also relate to his heightened messianic consciousness,46 but in any case it may be understood in light of this halakhic development. Jesus seems to have gone much further than many others in his day by performing non42 Cf the three stages postulated in Tomson, ‘“Jews” in the Gospel of John’, 325. [For the intermediate stage I subscribe to some sort of ‘Johannine proto-gospel’, see below n49. For a description of the development and criticism of the signs source/gospel theory see Van Belle, The Signs Source. See also below n48–49.] 43 Cf n23 above for the confusion in the attribution. 44 Cf the arguments a minori in the synoptics, above at n20. 45 See Herr, ‘The Problem of War on the Sabbath’. 46 See Krygier, ‘Le Chabbat de Jésus’.
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urgent healings on Sabbath. The amazement, indignation, or even condemnation by certain Pharisees could certainly be authentic, without the conflict exacerbating to the extent of mortal hatred – as indeed we find it in the relatively reliable narrative of Luke.47 The second stage of the Johannine trajectory is somewhat less hypothetical, i. e., the proto-Johannine Gospel. We must envisage some kind of written text in which we imagine that ‘the community of the beloved disciple’ had laid down its traditions about Jesus.48 According to a plausible hypothesis49, a similar ‘protoGospel’ has been preserved in the extant text, at least by fragments. The problem is that it is incorporated in the final redaction and that our understanding of its pre-redaction form largely depends on our interpretation of the final text. We are trapped in a ‘hermeneutical circle’, and it would be important to widen it, if not to break it open, with the support of external sources. At this point, our pericope with the midrash from circumcision, cautiously interpreted, comes to our aid. It is likely that during the later first century, tensions of the Johannine community with the ‘Pharisees’ exacerbated. At that point, the statements that Moses has given ‘you’ the law and the Sabbath could have gained a sharper meaning, though this should not necessarily have prevented proto-Johannine Christians to keep the Sabbath in their own way. The halakhic argument that ‘a man receives circumcision on Sabbath in order that the law of Moses not be broken’ could well have been appreciated in this context, as could the point that remains hidden in John 7, i. e., that if one performs circumcision on Sabbath, affecting a small member of the body, how much the more can one heal ‘a man in his entirety’ (John 7:23). It is, in a very literal sense, the argument a minori that we have heard in the simple sense from R. Elazar ben Azarya or R. Eliezer,50 and it is likely that the proto-Johannites used this same midrash in order to defend Jesus’ behaviour. For this messianic community, the salutary liberty of their master vis-à-vis the Sabbath was well rooted in their interpretation of the law of Moses. We could summarize the re-reading in this context as follows: Jesus has ‘broken’ (ἔλυεν) one Sabbath, in order that the healed man can keep many Sabbaths and ‘the law of Moses not be abolished’ (λυθῇ). This brings us to the third and last stage – the extant Gospel. As we have seen, the idea that ‘the Jews’ want to kill Jesus for his behaviour on the Sabbath runs throughout this text. The cosmic drama of which it speaks testifies to enormous shocks and changes. In the post-war period marked by chaos and social segrega47 An important difference is that Luke, much more plausibly, never claims that the Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus for these ‘violations’ of the Sabbath, cf Tomson, If This be from Heaven, 217–228. [See also the discussion by Doering, ‘Sabbath Laws in the New Testament Gospels’.] 48 See Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple and, for the redaction of the Gospel, the introduction to his commentary: Brown, John. 49 Cf R. Tomson Fortna, The Gospel of Signs, developing R. Bultmann’s thesis on the matter. 50 Above n26.
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tion, the Jews have decreed that those who believe in Jesus are placed outside the community. Mention is even made of persecution and mortal victims (John 9:22; 16:2f). The ‘fear of the Jews’ reigns (7:13; 9:22; 19:38; 20:19), the ‘hatred of the world’ intimidates (7:7; 15:18; 17:15). Indeed, throughout, the alienating effect is felt of this general term, ‘the Jews’.51 In his prologue, as we already heard, the evangelist sadly concludes, ‘The Word … the true light, which enlightens everyone … came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him’ (John 1:1–11). This gives an ambiguous and sinister meaning to the solemn statements towards the end of the prologue, that ‘the law indeed was given through Moses – grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ (1:17). We must conclude that this is the cherished text of a traumatized community.52 In such a context, the midrash on circumcision acquires a very different sense. In our synchronic reading, we have established the link with chapter 5. In that chapter, the Jews persecute Jesus because of his order to violate the Sabbath without any relating to the healing, which he justifies by saying, ‘My Father is still working, and I also am working.’ Upon which the evangelist intervenes and explains to his readers: the Jews sought all the more to kill Jesus because he abolished the Sabbath – this connotation imposes itself in the present context – by ‘making himself equal to God’ (5:17f). Now what is meant when Jesus says in chapter 7, ‘Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?’ (7:19). In the framework of the Gospel as a whole, this can be read as though the evangelist wants to say that the Jews are transgressing the law because they want to kill Jesus.53 But in the context of the pericope by itself, the crowd that address him do not want to kill him but on the contrary declare him mad because it is he who thinks so. In that sense, the phrase reads as an introduction to the midrash: ‘Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law … Moses gave you circumcision … and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath’ (7:19, 22). In other words, the Jews do not keep the law insofar as they overrule the Sabbath to perform circumcision – which was also given by Moses! Indeed during the previous stage, this will have meant that the Sabbath law is suspended in order to perform the law of circumcision. But in light of the escalated conflict with the Jews that colours the extant Gospel as a whole, the phrase rather seems to have taken the meaning that the law contradicts itself and no one can really observe it. As a result, the halakhic midrash probably cited in the proto-Gospel and found in rabbinic literature, to wit that one Sabbath must be broken to circumcise the baby in order many Sabbaths can be kept, loses its sense in the extant Gospel. It See Tomson, ‘“Jews” in the Gospel of John’. The idea is developed in the last chapter of Tomson, Presumed Guilty. [The concept of ‘trauma’ was introduced in this context by Martyn, History and Theology, e. g., p154f.] 53 Bauer, Johannesevangelium, 110. 51 52
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is alienated from its Jewish context, cut off from the vital link with the law given by God as a gift and an obligation. Thus we have come to read the text ‘epichronically’, simultaneously envisaging the meanings it has successively taken along its eventful trajectory. Using our simplified model, we have heard the Gospel speaking ‘in three voices’. In retrospect, we first hear the voice of the Johannine community – cornered, traumatised – telling us that ‘the Jews’ have persecuted Jesus and now try to kill his followers, among other reasons because he (and they?) ‘abolished’ the Sabbath. Then we hear, on and off, in fragments, the more ancient voice of the proto-Johannine community who defend Jesus’ liberal behaviour by means of a halakhic midrash known in their day: just as circumcision ‘overrides’ the Sabbath in order that a man keep the law of Moses, Jesus heals people on Sabbath to make them liberated children of Abraham. Finally, faintly, a third voice is heard: a distant echo of the characteristic teaching of the carpenter-sage from Nazareth who was enthralled with the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of Heavens to the point of needing to heal the sick he encountered on the spot, even on Sabbath. Before closing with an epilogue, we must draw some methodological conclusions. First, we can once again observe how Gospel study can profit from critical comparison with rabbinic literature. The external source that we were able to identify in its different versions in Mekhilta and Tosefta has helped us better to understand the evolution of the Fourth Gospel through its successive stages and in its relation to Judaism. Next, looking in the other direction, it is very important that we have found an external late first century parallel to a midrash of the Tannaim, confirming the antiquity of the simple form attributed to R. Elazar ben Azarya and bringing out the sophistication of midrashic method set in motion since R. Akiva. Finally, this result gives us the confidence to postulate that further combined study of Christian and Jewish sources, especially rabbinic ones, will enable a more integrated historical reconstruction of the first two centuries of relations between the two communities, or put differently, of the history shared by Jews and Christians in the first two centuries.54
Hermeneutical Epilogue: The Reader before the Fourth Gospel Epichronic reading presents the readers with alternative possibilities of interpretation: it is up to them which voices they will opt for. Sometimes, the different voices in the Fourth Gospel are in tune, sometimes they are dissonant. In terms of Tora observance, the voices of the Jesus tradition and the proto-gospel contradict the voice of the extant text and the community it represents; in terms of 54 For a sketch see Tomson, ‘The Wars against Rome’. The rediscovery of the position of the Judaeo-Christians hinted at in that study will be essential in this undertaking.
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the importance of Jesus, they are in unison. A comparable contradiction is found between the words Jesus addresses to the Samaritan woman: ‘Salvation is from the Jews’ (John 4:22), and that other phrase he throws at ‘the Jews who had come to believe in him’ (πεπιστευκότας Ἰουδαίους) but did not understand him, ‘You are from your father the devil’ (8:31, 44). The latter expression belongs apparently to the stage at which the conflict with ‘the Jews’ culminated and must derive from the final editors, while the former could reflect a more ancient stage in which it was still perfectly normal that Jesus was called and called himself a ‘Jew’ while in conversation with a non-Jewish woman.55 Another question is which voice will find resonance in the readers. This is where hermeneutics start. Much depends of the readers’ position towards Christianity and towards Judaism. In a Church that was rapidly moving towards an anti-Jewish position, the final voice of the Gospel – the voice of a Christian community conditioned by the conflict with the Jews – was to win out. This is what we see emerging in Antiquity, and more still in the Middle Ages.56 In an age of more openness, or at least of greater attentiveness vis-à-vis the Jews, the ‘Judaeo-Johannine’ voice and that of the Jesus tradition can come to the fore, while this need not mean that the voice of the traumatised Johannine church is overheard. Much depends also of the way in which readers perceive the Fourth Gospel in the context of ‘Scripture’. If, being a ‘good Christian’, they ignore the Old Testament, prefer John and Matthew over Mark and Luke, and read a fundamental rejection of the Jewish law in Paul’s letters, these readers will surely prefer the final voice of John. It also involves a choice to be made. The canonical Gospels taken together do not speak with a single voice either. Quite different things are heard in Luke, and in this case the evangelist himself tells us as much. Having composed his Gospel with much care (Luke 1:1–4), he narrates not only that Jesus was brought up in a Jewish milieu devoted to the law (Luke 1–2), but also that he and his disciples, and even the Apostle to the gentiles, have always observed the law (Acts 22–28). Readers who read John in light of such an appreciation of Luke-Acts will tend to give priority to the Jesus tradition and the voice of the ‘Judaeo-Johannine’ community and will endeavour to reinterpret the voice of the bitter conflict with the Jews in that perspective.57
55 Tomson, ‘“Jews” in the Gospel of John’ [and in this volume, ‘The Names Jew and Israel’, 178]. 56 Cf Tomson, ‘“Jews” in the Gospel of John’, 330–339 for a sketch of the attitudes towards Jews in the late medieval apocryphal gospels. In fact the superposition of religious, social, and economical prejudice against the Jews arises only in the Middle Ages and can be understood as a radicalisation of these attitudes in Antiquity. 57 See Tomson, If This be from Heaven, chapter 5; idem, Presumed Guilty, chapter 9.
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At the end of the day, the reader can and must choose. I am saying this not only in my quality of ‘independent scholar’,58 but also as an involved Christian. That is not a contradictory or chimeric position. It is that of a Protestant.
58 [The pun is lost in English: ‘non pas comme chercheur libre’ – alluding to the mission of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (above note *) to stand up for ‘recherche libre’ in a (post‑)Catholic country.]
III. Paul and His Place in Judaism
Paul’s Practical Instruction in 1 Thess 4:1–12 Read in a Hellenistic and a Jewish Perspective To speak of Paul in a Hellenistic and a Jewish perspective means of course to speak of Paul the Jew – a Jew ‘in Christ’ – within his Hellenistic surroundings.* This confronts us first of all with the riddle of human identity. Identity is always temporally and locally specific, relative to other groups and individuals. Humans may never be defined once and for all. Who is a Jew? A scary question once the ultimate answer is being pressed for; otherwise living with it is a chronic condition. Here Jews are like all others, only more so, perhaps. Also in Antiquity, cult, birth, and language all came in for Jewish identity, but none was decisive by itself.1 A seemingly ancient midrash summarises the riddle elegantly: Thus Adam was created unique ( …)יחידיto proclaim the greatness of the Holy One blessed be He. For a man may strike any amount of coins with the same effigy, and they are all alike; but the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One blessed be He, stamps every human with the effigy of the first Adam, and not one of them is like the other.2
Humanity is one and universal, yet the mystery of the Creator’s effigy is vibrant and unique in every human individual. This intuition is not without analogy to what Paul was after. [90]
Judaism in its Hellenistic Environment Nor is it at all self-evident what we mean by the impact of ‘Hellenism’ on Judaism. The great classicist Arnaldo Momigliano has drawn attention both to the * [Paper read at the 16th Ecumenical Pauline Colloquium held in the Abbey of St Paul in Rome in September 1999, here reprinted with slight modifications as published in Hooker, Not in the Word Alone (2003). As were the other papers, this one was discussed in discussion groups in Italian, French, English, and German; the remarks made were duly reported and some of them appear in the footnotes. I thank the Reverend Abbot, Luca Collino, and Prof. Morna Hooker for the invitation to speak at the colloquium.] 1 Cf Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean, 399–413 who stresses ethnicity as being ‘a combination of kinship and custom’ (402), which takes in the phenomenon of proselytism (408–410). ‘Custom’ might be heard as an equivalent of halakha (though of course not necessarily Pharisaic-rabbinic), see below. 2 mSan 4:5. The context is a tradition of court procedures in capital cases involving the high priest, which suggests a Second Temple situation. Cf Epstein, Prolegomena, 55f.
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‘limits’ of Hellenization as a politico-cultural phenomenon and to the vagueness of ‘Hellenism’ as a concept to be endowed with religious significance.3 Moreover he warned that supposed Hellenistic influences must relate to an adequate image of ancient Judaism.4 These caveats being heeded, the sober definition in John Barclay’s work on diaspora Jewry deserves to be quoted: ‘By “Hellenism” … we mean the common urban culture …, founded on the Greek language …, expressed in certain political and educational institutions, and largely maintained by the social élite.’5 When tracing the impact of this cultural phenomenon on Judaism, we can no longer generalize, we must always ask for specific relations and proportions. This general observation can be spelled out in a number of more detailed remarks. (a) Scholarship is accustomed to consistently underestimate the lasting influence of the Persian period which preceded and in many ways prepared the Hellenistic one,6 and this amounts to a certain Helleno-centrism.7 It was within the huge Persian empire that Second Temple Judaism, as it is often called, took on its basic shape – that of a particular ethnic-religious tradition with a universal validity, recognised by the authorities and centred on its foundational document. The Law in this new function was called דתin Irano-Aramaic, and in a way Hellenistic νόμος is merely its translation.8 [91] It was during the Persian period that Aramaic became a major Jewish language of expression next to or even prior to Hebrew, a function it retained long after Greek had lost it. Linguistic and other traces of the administrative infrastructure of the Persian empire are found scattered across ancient Judaism, however Hellenized it had become.9 Interference with Iranian culture and religion also comes to light in central elements of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, a subject of direct relevance to 1 Thessalonians.10 Momigliano, Alien Wisdom; idem, ‘J. G. Droysen’. Momigliano, review of M. Hengel, Judentum. For critical discussion see Grabbe, Judaism, 147–170; Tomson, Paul, 31–36 (bibliography p33 n9). 5 Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean, 88. Cf the sober observations by Koester, Einführung, 38f. 6 This is one of Momigliano’s constant emphases (see n3f). For overviews of the Persian period see Grabbe, Judaism, 27–145; Davies–Finkelstein, CHJ 1; and for a brilliant treatment, Briant, Histoire. 7 This judgement is passed by Grabbe, Judaism, 165 on older scholarship of Hellenism, and by Briant, Histoire, 9–14, 531–533 on the historiography of Persia. 8 Cf Grabbe, Judaism, 142–145, ‘a new entity – Judaism’. Ezra operates as סופר מהיר תורת = משהγραμματεὺς ταχὺς ἐν νόμῳ Μωϋσῆ, or in Aramaic = ספר דתא די אלה שמיאγραμματεὺς νόμου τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, a ‘Mosaic administrator’ whose decisions are supported by דתא = די אלהך ודתא די מלכאνόμος τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ νόμος τοῦ βασιλέως (7:6, 12, 26). On דתsee Koehler–Baumgartner, Lexicon, col. 1067b and Suppl., 200a. The word remained alive in the traditional matrimonial condition, ( דת משה וישראלcf mKet 7:6; tKet 7:6), and in modern Hebrew parlance means ‘religion’. [Cf above 164–168, 195f.] 9 See Frye, The Heritage of Persia, 112–128, and cf below n24. 10 For apocalypticism see Frye, ‘Qumran and Iran’, 1975; Shaked, ‘Qumran and Iran’ and 3 4
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(b) We must realise the importance for Jewish identity of the synagogue, that institution where Jews probably since the Persian period but at any rate, as the author of Acts has it (15:21), ‘since ancient generations, proclaim Moses by reading him out aloud every Sabbath’ – in whatever language, we may add. Weekly reading Moses’ law and lore implies identifying with them and implementing them in daily life, as this applied to Sabbath, festivals, and to such sensitive social areas as diet and marriage, not to mention the first commandment which – quite remarkably in antiquity – precludes both depicting the deity and engaging in ‘alien cults’.11 The periodical gathering around the sacred texts creates a universe of significance common to Jews of whatever observance, language or locality. (c) This leads us to the observation that in Judaism, halakha or practical law tradition12 has a strong social impact and hence constitutes a prominent component of social identity. The tradition of formulated laws – halakhot – is not just a literary and a legal phenomenon, but to a considerable degree structures the life of the individual [92] and the community, both to the internal and the external observer. That is why the historical study of halakha is an important instrument of Jewish historiography.13 This is not to deny pluriformity, on the contrary. During the Second Temple period, practical implementation entailed diversity, not only between the schools of Essenes, Sadducees, and Pharisees Josephus informs us about, but as well among the Pharisaic schools of Shammai and Hillel.14 The divide between these movements runs more than anywhere else along halakhic lines. While our information is scarce, it is hard to imagine how these various positions could remain without influence in the diaspora. We must learn to imagine how diaspora Jews structured their identity by means of their own particular law tradition. (d) Speaking of Moses being read, there is multiple evidence of the use of Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic in synagogues, both in Palestine and in the diaspora. Acts mentions a Jerusalem synagogue where Jews from major diaspora cities prayed, which by all appearances involved Greek.15 Hence the relevance of the Mishna rulings allowing ‘any language’ to be used for saying Shema and ‘Iranian Influence’; Winston, ‘Iranian Component’; Grabbe, Judaism, 100–102. I prefer to speak of ‘interference’ rather than of one-way ‘influence’ since Jewish apocalypticism also clearly draws on inner sources. Needless to say, the interference with Persian culture cannot by nature be different from that with ‘Hellenism’. 11 Cf Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean, 429–434. ‘Alien cult’ is the exact equivalent of rabbinic עבודה זרה. On the synagogue and ‘common ethic’ cf Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem, 137–174, esp 162f. 12 On the term see below n72. 13 The work of Gedalyahu Alon is of seminal importance. See e. g. Alon, Jews, Judaism. 14 For some elaboration, see Tomson, ‘Jewish Purity Laws’. 15 Acts 6:9. The conjecture Λιβυστίνων (Libyans i. e. Cyrenaeans) for Λιβερτίνων (libertinum), which Beza based on an Armenian ms, deserves serious consideration. Cf also Greek synagogue inscription mentioning Theodotos son of Vettenus from Jerusalem, Frey, CII no. 1404.
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prayers,16 and likewise for Tora reading if Hebrew is no option – but preferably Greek.17 In comment, the Palestinian Talmud quotes a tradition which commends Greek for synagogues using the verse, ‘God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem’ – Japheth being the ancestor of Jawan (Gen 10:2), i. e. Ionia or Greece.18 We also [93] hear of Greek translations made under rabbinic supervision around the turn of the first century, which is likely to refer to public Tora reading.19 There is no positive evidence for a Greek ‘targum tradition’, but one cannot deny a certain analogy between the various Greek Tora translations apparently circulating in ancient Jewish circles and the ramified tradition of Aramaic targum. (e) More generally, multi-linguism characterised the cultural situation of the Jews, as of many other peoples in antiquity.20 The discussion back in the 1940’s between Saul Lieberman and Gedalya Alon over the position of ‘Greek in Jewish Palestine’ boils down to the conclusion that Greek was used next to Aramaic and Hebrew in synagogues both in Palestine and Asia Minor.21 The question is what to make of the fact that most ancient Jewish epitaphs, even from Palestine, are in Greek. Pieter van der Horst joined the view that this indicates the absolute dominance of Greek also in Palestine, but more recently Maurice Casey warned us not to ‘draw dramatic conclusions’.22 It is difficult to estimate how many people could afford or even desired epitaphs or actually sarcophagi at all. Casey mSot 7:1. mMeg 1:8, speaking of biblical books (see Albeck, Mishna 3, ad loc.) in contrast to tefillin and mezuzot, while R. Shimon ben Gamliel (c. 150) singles out Greek. Cf tMeg 3:13, ‘a synagogue of non-Hebrew-speakers with only one who knows Hebrew …’; yMeg 4 (75a), ‘the non-Hebrew-speakers did not behave that way …’ 18 yMeg 1 (71a), the homilist Bar Kappara (early 3rd cent.). The midrash must in some form have been known in early 2nd cent. Asia Minor since Irenaeus (possibly drawing on the tradition of his youth in Smyrna: Eusebius, CH 5.20.5), applies it to ‘Greeks’ finding their place under the books of Moses in the church, Adv haer 3.5.3; 5.34.2. 19 yMeg 1 (71b), Aquila translating the Tora before R. Eliezer and R. Yoshua, who praise him quoting the verse ( יפיפית מבני אדםPs 45:3), which in view of the context again plays on יפת the ancestor of יוון. See Lieberman, Greek, 17f, but also Alon’s strictures in his review of Lieberman, Greek, 250f. 20 See Rabin, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic’, 1007–1012; Barr, ‘Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek’, 110–114. 21 Lieberman, Greek; Alon, review of Lieberman, Greek. Cf ySot 7 (21b), ‘R. Levi bar Hayta came to Caesaraea and heard them read the Shema ’אלוניסתיןi. e. = הליניסטיἑλληνιστί, see Jastrow, Dictionary, s. v. 22 Van der Horst, Ancient Jewish Epitaphs, 22–39; Casey, Aramaic Sources, 73–110, quote p75. Note also his important remarks on the phenomenon of interference in a multilingual situation, as between Greek and the Semitic background languages in the NT. On this issue see already Alon, review of Lieberman, Greek, 270, quoting Nöldeke’s ironical comments (and reproaching Lieberman for neglecting this kind of evidence; cf Lieberman, Greek, 30). Schwabe–Lifschits, Beth She’arim 2: xi (French part) and 103f (Hebrew part) point to the uneducated character of some of the 3rd–4th cent. Beth Shearim tomb inscriptions. They conclude that spoken Greek was not restricted to the cultured elite, but deny this allows conclusions about the involvement in Jewish culture and religion. In my estimation, it also indicates bi-linguism. 16 17
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seems correct in concluding that for many Jews, multilinguism was the more probable situation. I like to cite the fourth century Greek synagogue inscription from Apamea near Antioch, which is for everyone to see on display in Brussels, and which mentions one ΝΕΜΙΑ ΑΖΖΑΝΑ, the second word being Aramaic חזנא, hence ‘Nehemiah, [94] the hazzan’.23 This Aramaic administrative term at the time did not mean cantor but ‘overseer’ and is another witness of the lasting influence of the Persian period, even on the urban coast of fourth century Cilicia.24 (f) But even Jewish members of the Greek-speaking urban élite can be understood only on the basis of a multi-cultural situation. Our literally eloquent example is Philo.25 On the evidence of his own writings, he not only was a Hellenistic philosopher but he could be chosen as a representative of the Jewish community to the emperor. Moreover this fulfils his own advice that one must not only seek mystical illumination but also care for an honorable reputation within one’s community.26 Isaac Heinemann wrote an exemplary study about Philons griechische und jüdische Bildung, which as the title says tries to gauge Philo’s formation on either side by reading him in comparison with the pagan and Jewish sources in Greek and in Hebrew.27 According to Heinemann, it was not so much the Hellenistic material which determined Philo’s Jewish identity as the form, the Jewish eklogê which he made from the culture of his Greek fellow citizens.28 One may just recall the things he did not appreciate, such as their sexual behaviour.29 [95] (g) In his day, Philo was a respectable and sedate member of a well-established Jewish community. At other times, and in other situations, diaspora Jews could just like their Palestinian brothrers turn into zealous guardians of the ancestral traditions. This came dramatically to light when rebellion broke out 23 CII no. 806, and see Frey’s note ad loc. Cf the parallel in yMeg 4 (75b), בר עולא חזנא דכנישתא דבבלייא, ‘Bar Ulla, hazzan of a synagogue of Babylonians’, apparently in Palestine. חזן ) (הכנסתis common in the Mishna. 24 As are the אמרכלand גזברin mShek 5:2, both being (Persian) terms for Persian administrative functions, see Frye, The Heritage of Persia, 114; Stolper, Management and Politics, 43f (hamarakara), 130 (ganzabaru). See also n72 below. 25 It is unlikely that Philo really knew any Hebrew, see Borgen, ‘Philo of Alexandria’, 257; Amir, Hellenistische Gestalt, 68f. 26 The reference is to Abr 86–94 with the recurring expression ἀμφοῖν/ἀμφότερα, ‘both’ qualities. See Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean, 91, 158–180; Tomson, Paul, 36–44. 27 Heinemann, Bildung. While I am not capable to judge Heinemann’s readings in the classics, I see grounds for criticising his approach of rabbinic halakha since he does not reckon with historical development between Philo and the Mishna, his main source for comparison. For a more adequate approach on that side of Philo’s background see Alon, ‘On Philo’s Halakhah’. 28 Heinemann, Bildung, 572. 29 See his scathing comments, Vit cont 57–63, on the famous ‘Banquet’ as described by Xenophon and Plato. Cf Carras, ‘Jewish Ethics’, 312–314 on Philo, Josephus and other GreekJewish sources as compared with Paul.
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in Cyrenaica, Alexandria and elsewhere under Trajan.30 Hellenistic Jews could become ‘zealots’, where this word has not an exclusively political but primarily a religious meaning.31 Our best-known example is the young Pharisee from Tarsus, and we have it from his own mouth: when a young man ‘I was exceedingly zealous for my ancestral traditions’, and ‘with zeal I persecuted the church’.32 There has been much ado about the ‘Hellenists’ in the infant Jerusalem Church.33 This should not obscure the fact that the next time Acts mentions ‘Hellenists’, it concerns zealous diaspora Jews violently opposing their former Tarsean comrade in arms.34 It all adds up to the ability for us to imagine several simultaneous and partly overlapping linguistic and cultural contexts, in particular when confronting a man who aspires to be conversant with all:35 in Greek, Aramaic, and possibly Hebrew; with Hellenists, Jews, and ‘Christians’ – although for unknown reasons he does not use the latter word.
Thessalonika, Paul, and the Thessalonian Church Before embarking upon an analysis of our passage from Paul’s letter, it is useful to assemble any information we may gather about the actual situation of the writer and his adressees. In the period we are concerned with, Thessalonika was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia, a harbour city and commercial centre connected [96] to the east and the west by the Roman via Egnatiana.36 To the east lay Philippi, another centre and a Roman colonia (Acts 16:12).37 Apart from the official administrative structures, the Roman presence must have entailed the more informal patronage system, the social mechanism which made Roman politics tick and which involved asymmetric dependency, in the political, the financial, or both. The system and its terminology were essentially foreign to Greek society but in a main Roman city may be supposed to have been in place. According to Roman custom, the status of cliens was especially incumbent on emancipated slaves. For impoverished peasants, it must have been one of the See Smallwood, The Jews, 389ff; Grabbe, Judaism, 596–599. See Grabbe, Judaism, 499 on the term. 32 Gal 1:14; Phil 3:6, see Niebuhr, Heidenapostel, 26–43; Acts 7:58. 33 Acts 6:1. The ‘primitive Hellenistic church’ was construed by W. Bousset (Kyrios Christos, 1921) as the ‘Hellenising’ matrix of early Christology and as such wholesale adopted by Bultmann in his Theologie. For a more sober approach see Hengel, ‘Zwischen Jesus und Paulus’. 34 Acts 9:29, ῾Ελληνισταί. 35 1 Cor 9:19–23; 10:32–11:1. 36 Oberhummer, ‘Thessalonike’ (PW II/11), 143–148; Jewett, Thessalonian Correspondence, 113–132. [See rich data in vom Brocke, Thessaloniki; Nasrallah–Bakirtzis–Friesen, From Roman to Early Christian Thessalonike.] 37 See the recent study by Pilhofer, Philippi. 30 31
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ways to survive, as for the urban proletariat.38 For a collegium or ἐκκλησία to get anywhere in Thessalonika, they would need patronage higher up.39 So much for the destination of the letter. As to its writer, Paul informs us that on his way from Philippi (1 Thess 2:2) he had come to Thessalonika (3:4), had preached the gospel there (1:5; 2:8, 13), and had apparently founded a church (2:7, 11; cf 1:1). The community counted a notable number of non-Jews (1:9f), who meanwhile have had to face violent opposition from their fellow citizens (2:14; 1:6; 3:3). Paul had been forced to leave them and wants to return, but for unclear reasons could not (2:17f); he keeps hoping and praying to come back (3:11). He had gone to Athens, from where he had sent Timothy, who now is back with him and has brought news from Thessalonika (3:1, 6). In the second part of the letter which includes our passage, Paul reiterates instructions he has already passed on when in Thessalonika (4:1f), underlining and adding certain items to do with personal morality (4:3–8), financial relations within the church and with those outside (4:9–12; 5:12–15), and eschatology (4:13–5:11). The document closes with an appeal for spiritual fervour and an imprecation to read aloud this letter, which was sent by Paul together with Silvanus and Timothy (5:16–28; 1:1). [97] Construing the addressees from the letter is tricky, unless we have external information. This brings up the problem of Acts. For a century and a half the relationship between Paul and Acts has been fraught with theologically motivated discussion.40 The view that dominated for decades, Haenchen’s and Vielhauer’s, is that Acts is a theological construction both as a whole and in its component parts, especially in its ‘un-Pauline’ portrayal of Paul. Recently, partly in parallel to a reassessment of Paul’s own attitude towards the Law, Acts has begun to be appreciated as a selective narrative accomodating reasonably reliable historical traditions.41 Picking up on this more sober approach, a remarkable overlap can be observed between Acts 16–19 and no fewer than two of Paul’s letters, the first to Thessalonika and the first to Corinth.42 More in particular, Acts generally confirms Paul’s information about his journey through Macedonia and Achaia. He has 38 Touloumakos, ‘Gemeindepatronat’, 311 citing Plutarch, Fab Max 13:6f, and his expla nation of the term πάτρωνος: ‘τοῦτο δ᾽ ἐστι τοῖς ἀπελευθέροις προσφώνημα πρὸς τοὺς ἀπελευθερώσαντας’; Wallace-Hadrill, Patronage. I am indebted to John Karavidopoulos, another participant at the Colloquium (above n *), for having drawn my attention to these works. 39 See Kloppenborg, ‘ΦΛΑΔΕΛΦΙΑ’, 275f and nn40–42 with literature on collegia and patronage. 40 Cf Jewett, Thessalonian Correspondence, 114–117. The point was emphasized by the French discussion group. 41 Hengel, Geschichtsschreibung; Hengel-Schwemer, Paulus zwischen Damaskus und Antiochien; Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, as against Haenchen, Apostelgeschichte, and Vielhauer, ‘Paulinism in Acts’. Donfried, ‘1 Thessalonians, Acts’, takes his cue from Vielhauer and leans heavily on Bultmann’s Theologie des NT. 42 Cf Barclay, ‘Thessalonica and Corinth’.
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travelled Philippi, Thessalonika and Beroea, visiting the synagogues there43 and finding a sympathetic audience among some Jews and God-fearers. In Philippi, resistance was strongest among pagans, but in Thessalonika it was the Jews who reacted with ‘zealous’ violence, convincing the politarchs44 that Paul’s message carried political danger and stirring up also the much more favourable community in Beroea.45 Paul had to leave the city, probably in connection with the ransom the church had to pay to the politarchs,46 and travelled south. Waiting for Timothy and Silas who stayed on in Macedonia, he found occassion [98] for his famous tour of idol-filled Athens.47 At his urgent request they rejoined him in Corinth where he had ended up, and apparently it was from there that the three of them sent our letter.48 It is not unimportant that Timothy has a significant place in Acts. Immediately after the episode of the Apostles’ Decree, Paul has him circumcised to formalise his status as a Jew, which obviously means to show that the decree had not altered the status of Jewish believers vis-à-vis the Law.49 From these assembled data we gather that the addressees of the letter must have been vividly aware of the Jewish community in their city, and possibly not only in a negative sense. Its politically motivated rejection of the gospel succeeded in setting up the crowd and the politarchs against the church.50 This seems reflected in Paul’s vehement eruption against the Judean Jews, 1 Thess 43 On προσευχή in Acts 16:13 see Hengel, ‘Proseuche und Synagoge’, 175. White, The Apostle of God, xxii joins the sceptic view on Acts. The fact, however, that Paul says he has suffered synagogal reprobation no fewer than 5 times (2Cor 11:24) means he has been in constant contact with synagogues and has actually sought it. 44 The accuracy of this political term for 1st–2nd cent. Macedonia is proved by several inscriptions, see Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts, 120; PW II/11:147; Horsley, ‘Politarchs’, with list of 64 inscriptions, half of which from Thessalonika, and literature. The author knows what he is doing, for in Acts 16:20, 22 he calls the administrators of near-by Philippi στρατηγοί. [See on the issue also vom Brocke, Thessaloniki, 259–265.] 45 Acts 16:19; 17:5, 13. 46 Acts 17:9f, see BDR § 5.4, p7: λαβόντες τὸ ἱκανόν = cum satis accepissent; also BDAG s. v. ἱκανός. 47 The expressions κατείδωλον and παρωξύνετο in Acts 17:16 (cf the rendering of the passage in Jervell, Apostelgeschichte) recall the strong language in 1 Thess 1:9–10. 48 Acts 17:14f; 18:5; cf 2Cor 1:19. See Légasse, Thessaloniciens, 37, 178; Reinmuth, ‘Der erste Brief’, 107f. 1 Thess 3:1f seems to imply Timothy travelled to Athens with Paul, who then sent him back. But one could read those verses in accord with Acts, i. e. that they travelled till Beroea, whence Paul went ‘alone’ to Athens and Timothy back to Thessalonika. Silas’ movements are less evident. 49 Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, ad loc. Cf Reinmuth, ‘Der erste Brief’, 108f on Timothy’s importance in Paul’s letters. Timothy’s Jewish mother (Acts 16:1) seems to be mentioned by name in 2 Tim 1:5, a letter replete with details hard to explain as fiction. [See on the matter the very readable appendix D, ‘Was Timothy Jewish?’ in Cohen, Beginnings, 363–377 – although it is prejudiced on the (anachronistic) assumption of ‘Paul’s radical rejection of the Law’ (ibid. 364).] 50 See Reinmuth, ‘Der erste Brief’, ad loc.; Barclay, ‘Conflict in Thessalonica’, 514. [And see now Harrison, ‘Paul and the Imperial Gospel’ for an excellent illumination of the political background of 1 Thess.]
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2:14–16,51 a passage which relates to the remarkable apocalyptic charge of the letter as a whole. Paul apparently saw a strategic pawn in his design for the evangelisation of Greece mortally endangered. This also set the key for the practical instruction in the second part of the letter, in which ‘sanctification’, strong mutual support, and apocalyptic endurance dominate. It is likely that later developments, especially after 70, brought about permanent hostility between Jews and gentile Christians, in Macedonia as elsewhere. All of that however does not rule out the likelihood that at the time Paul was writing, for all the enmity of the local synagogue, the Thessalonian church had a basically positive attitude to the Jewish Scriptures. According to Acts (17:2, 4), here as elsewhere the core of the church consisted, apart from some Jews, of ‘God-fearers’ who, a bit [99] like Paul, had been attending synagogue ‘according to custom’. The possibility that this motif too is a Lukan construct has seriously deminished since the publication of the third century synagogue inscription from Aphrodisias in Asia Minor, which along with full members lists a number of ‘God-fearers’ and ‘proselytes’.52 Thus it is likely that among the Thessalonian church members there was some familiarity with the Law of Moses and its practical application in the case of non-Jews. This possiblity is confirmed by the fact that the letter contains a number of unexplained Jewish tradition elements, among them some notorious cruces interpretum, which presuppose familiarity on the part of the readers. A rudimentary knowledge of the Scriptures must have provided the mental bedding for Paul’s message of Jesus and his specific teachings.53
Hellenistic and Jewish Readings of 1 Thessalonians 1 Thessalonians54 has an obvious structure. Chapters 1–3 consist of praise and thanksgiving along with ‘reports’ of the vicissitudes in Thessalonika,55 while chapters 4–5 give instruction about practical life and about eschatology. Both parts have a similar interlacing texture and are also linked to each other. The two reports in the first part are framed by thanksgivings in 1:2–10, 2:12f and 51 See Bockmuehl, ‘1 Thess. 2:14–16’ for possible wider political contexts. See also below n58. [Further thought in ‘Reconsideration’, in this volume, 215–217.] 52 See Reynolds–Tannenbaum, Jews and God-Fearers. 53 Similarly Reinmuth, ‘Der erste Brief’, 106f. See esp 4:3–8 and 5:1–10. 1 Thess 1:9f, ἐπεστρέψατε πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἀπὸ τῶν εἰδώλων δουλεύειν θεῷ ζῶντι … καὶ ἀναμένειν τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ … does not necessarily imply a conversion to Christ ‘straight from paganism’ but allows for a ‘passage through Godfearership’, cf Légasse, Thessaloniciens, 102. 54 See overview of research by Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 3–75; bibliography in Weima–Porter, Annotated Bibliography (ibid. 180–196 on 1 Thess 4:1–12). 55 See analysis by Lambrecht, ‘Thanksgiving’; Breytenbach, ‘Danksagungsbericht’ (paper read at the 1999 Colloquium).
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3:11–13, with eschatological pointers in 1:10; 2:12; 2:19 and 3:13. Similarly, the practical instruction in 4:1–12 and 5:12–22 embraces the eschatological teachings in 4:13–5:11. In 5:23f the letter fittingly concludes on the theme of the readers’ ἁγιασμός in view of the Lord’s παρουσíα, terms also heard at the end of the first half and the beginning of the second, 3:13 and 4:3 (cf also 2:19; 1:10). Dualist eschatology in which ‘satan’ figures prominently56 runs throughout and underscores the [100] unity of the letter.57 Quite probably this has to do with the urgent circumstances of the letter, i. e. the persecution of the fledgling church in Thessalonika, and the harsh passage on the Judean Jews (2:14–16) must apparently be read in that light.58 With equal emphasis, the letter has been read both in a ‘Hellenistic’ and in a Jewish perspective. The thanksgiving style in 1 Thess 1–3 has been closely associated with Hellenistic epistolography by Paul Schubert. In his careful analysis, this does not exclude but includes interaction with Greek Jewish usages.59 Indeed, others have identified the almost creedal formula found in 1:9b–10 as pre-Pauline and probably stemming from Judeo-Christian surroundings.60 Furthermore, few would disagree that the apocalyptic imagery in the letter reflects Jewish and Judeo-Christian tradition.61 On the other hand, Abraham Malherbe and others have emphasised that the Apostle uses hortatory terminology known from popular Cynic tradition.62 The topoi of philophronesis and of ‘imitation’ are Similarly Barclay, ‘Conflict in Thessalonica’, 516–520. See 2:18 ὁ σατανᾶς, 3:5 ὁ πειράζων. 57 As does Lambrecht, ‘Thanksgiving’, 328, I ‘remain somewhat baffled at the ease’ of many conflation hypotheses. He agrees with Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 96–135, ‘A Propos the Integrity of 1 Thessalonians’. 58 If 1 Thess is Paul’s oldest preserved letter, it nevertheless was written around 50, only some years before 1 Cor and Rom. This restricts the leeway for theories of evolution in Paul’s thought on Judaism and the Law and makes it doubtful that the passage flatly contradicts the more balanced stance of later letters. Cf the prudent evaluation by Penna, ‘L’évolution de l’attitude de Paul’. 59 Schubert, Form and Function; cf Lambrecht, ‘Thanksgiving’, 321–323. Benediction formulae like εὐχαριστοῦμεν τῷ θεῷ πάντοτε … (1 Thess 1:2; Col 1:3; cf 1 Cor 1:4; 2 Thess 1:3) or εὐλογητὸς ὁ θεὸς … (2Cor 1:3; Eph 1:3; 1 Pet 1:3) reflect Jewish (‑Christian) liturgy, and Hebrew parallels are not hard to find. [More on this in Tomson, ‘Blessing in Disguise’.] 60 See esp Langevin, Jésus Seigneur, 43–106; cf Légasse, Thessaloniciens, 102. 61 Snyder, ‘Apocalyptic and Didactic Elements’, ethics rooted in apocalyptic thought; Koester, ‘1 Thessalonians’, 41, ‘traditional Jewish apocalyptic imagery’. Malherbe, Paul and the Popular Philosophers, 64 agrees with Koester as to contents. Wenham, Paul, Follower of Jesus, 305–316 traces elements of 1 Thess 4–5 to Judeo-Christian tradition. For imagery, see 1 Thess 5:8f, θῶραξ πίστεως and περικεφαλαία σωτηρίας (inspired by Isa 59:17), and 2:19, στέφανος καυχήσεως (cf 1 כליל כבודQS 4:7). Use of traditions is betrayed by incongruous grammar in 5:3 (λέγουσιν) and 4:14 (change of subject). 5:5 υἱοὶ φωτός is definitely traditional. 62 Malherbe, ‘Hellenistic Moralists’; idem, Paul and the Popular Philosophers, 49–66, ‘Exhortation in 1 Thessalonians’; idem, Paul and the Thessalonians, esp 95–107 on 1 Thess 4:9–12. See also Koester, ‘1 Thessalonians’, 34–40; Kloppenborg, ‘ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΙΑ’; White, The Apostle of God, 216–223. 56
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prominent,63 and our pericope, 4:1–12, seems rich in elements from Hellenistic paraenesis. Malherbe is prepared to view the whole of 1 [101] Thessalonians as a paraenetic letter,64 and while conceding that Paulus christianus modifies the Hellenistic topoi in order to further his aims as an Apostle of Christ, Malherbe reads him as Paulus hellenisticus.65 This ‘philosophical interpretation’ has been criticised by William Horbury, who pointed out that some of the same terms belong to early Jewish terminology about true and false prophecy.66 Others have suggested that the moral teachings of the letter, especially in our passage, contain material from a Jewish and/or Judeo-Christian background.67 Eckart Reinmuth showed that while Paul taught that ‘we are discharged from the law … in order to serve in the newness of the Spirit’ (Rom 7:6), nevertheless in his specific moral teachings in 1 Thess 4:3–8, ‘a continuity in substance to early Jewish Law paraenesis comes to light’. As do early Jewish sources ranging from Qumran to the Testaments of the Patriarchs, Paul presupposes a correlation between the gift of the Spirit and fulfilment of the Law.68 Raymond Collins even thinks Paul here used traditional halakhic material,69 and as he put it, ‘the Jewish character of the letter seems to be intensified’.70 I shall state my agreement later on, though not on the grounds of the presumed analogy between Paul’s repeated περιπατεῖν (4:1, 12) and rabbinic Hebrew הלכה.71 More probably the latter [102] term represents another 63 Koester, ‘1 Thessalonians’, 37; Malherbe, ‘Hellenistic Moralists’, 290–293, alternatively calling the topos περὶ φιλαδελφíας and περὶ φιλíας, ib 321–324. 64 Malherbe, ‘Hellenistic Moralists’, 280ff, noted by Collins, ‘The Function of Paraenesis’, 402f. 65 Malherbe, Paul and the Popular Philosophers, 8f . 66 In particular παράκλησις, πλάνη, ἀκαθαρσία, and δόλος in 1 Thess 2:3, and cf the following verse. Horbury, ‘I Thessalonians ii 3’. 67 Koester, ‘1 Thessalonians’, 42, a ‘catalogue (derived) from Hellenistic Judaism’; Roetzel, ‘Theodidaktoi and Handwork’, Hellenistic-Jewish piety, not Hellenistic philosophy; Tomson, Paul, 91f (halakhic elements); Holtz, ‘Contents of Paul’s Instructions’, 215 [63] sees ‘a basic Jewish catechism’. 68 Reinmuth, Geist und Gesetz, 11, 90–97. He does not adduce rabbinic sources because he perceives the difficulty to identify early traditions (11). The critical study of rabbinic literature, especially if combined with the Qumran texts and other earlier written sources, has opened up new possibilities here. 69 Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 304, 422; idem, ‘The Function of Parenesis’, 404, 406, followed by Carras, ‘Jewish Ethics’, 306f and in turn by Rosner, ‘Seven Questions’, 352. 70 Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 328. 71 According to Collins, Studies on the First Letter, Carras, ‘Jewish Ethics’, and Rosner, ‘Seven Questions’, הלכהwould be of Hebrew origin and derive from the verb הלך. This reflects a popular derivation first given by the medieval lexicon Arukh, see Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 121. But it is doubtful, not least in view of the syntactical use of the word (cf Tomson, ‘La Première Epître aux Corinthiens’, 459f). Rather, περιπατεῖν here, as exceptionally in Philo, Congr 87, seems to reflect biblical התהלךsaid of Enoch, Noah and Abraham, Gen 5:22; 6:9; 17:1 (though in LXX this is consistently translated εὐαριστεῖν). Otherwise, Philo has frequent ἐμπεριπατεῖν for the ‘indwelling’ of God, see esp. Mut. 265f., quoting Lev 26:12 (והתהלכתי בתוככם, [ἐμ]περιπατήσω ἐν ὑμῖν).
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Aramaic remnant from Persian administrative parlance, with the basic meaning ‘fixed obligation’.72 The debate could go on and on, and it sometimes seems as though ‘Hellenist’ and ‘Hebraist’ readers of Paul operate on mutually exclusive axioms.73 I quite agree with Troels Engberg-Pedersen’s plea to overcome the ‘almost endemic presupposition that there is a Hellenistic Paul to be played out against a Jewish Paul’. Instead, he proposes to see ‘Paul as a place of confluence of ideas, motifs, and practices of almost any provenance’.74 The case is analogous to that of Clement of Rome, whose ethnic background is unknown but whose cultural resources have alternatively been sought in Judaism, ‘pure’ Hellenism, JudeoChristianity – or in some convergence of these various strands, which of course is the part of wisdom.75 In the introduction to Paul in his Hellenistic context, [103] Engberg-Pedersen designates three areas where Paul’s interaction with the Hellenistic world is best recognised: (1) the social context of his letters; (2) their rhetorical style and structure; and (3) their use of the topoi of moral philosophy.76 In 1 Thess 4:1–12 we touch on the first and third areas, since we have to do with socio-ecomomic relations and moral teaching. Upon second thought, however, these are also two important foci in Jewish studies, especially in the historical approach of halakha. As I said, halakha is a strong component of social identity and in a way constitutes a social grid. Therefore our passage should be an especially fruitful field of comparative study. However the present paper Cf Lieberman, Hellenism, 83 n3. [For the issue see above, ‘The Term Halakha’.] White’s opinion (The Apostle of God, xxi n3) that Tomson, Paul makes Paul into ‘a closet rabbi’ (sic) and his churches ‘into synagogues’ by pointing out halakhic traditions in his teachings is regrettable. Who would contend that Paul’s use of terms also known from Stoicism means he was a full-fledged Stoic philosopher? 74 Engberg-Pedersen, Paul in His Hellenistic Context, xivf. The phrase which follows must be nuanced. If it is true that Paul was not ‘specifically Hellenistic’, it is incorrect that he was ‘neither specifically Jewish’ (original italics). Leaving Paul’s instructions to non-Jewish Christians aside for once, his own Jewish identity (Rom 9:3!) must have been a matter of specifics, since quite likely he stuck to some Judeo-Christian law interpretation. Along with others, his way of living Judaism may best be seen as a species within the genus Hellenism. 75 Sanders, L’hellénisme de St. Clément gives an erudite Hellenistic reading but operates on the foregone conclusion that Clement can never depend on Jewish sources. Jaubert, Clément de Rome (on this topic p34f) accepts Graeco-Roman analogies, adds Judeo-Christian and Jewish ones (notably from Qumran), and concludes on converging spheres of influence. The recent commentary by Lona, Der erste Clemensbrief, nicely highlights Graeco-Jewish culture in Clement, but tends to underestimate links with Hebrew sources. In his own witty way, Harnack, Einführung, I. Clemensbrief, 85f hit the goal long ago: Clement is ‘a three colour print’ consisting of Judaism, Hellenistic moralism, and Christology. Needless to say, Clement’s relation to Paul is entangled in this whole question. 76 Engberg-Pedersen, Paul in His Hellenistic Context, xiv–xix. [I would add that no. 2, ‘rhetorical style and structure’, is also an obvious area of Greek-Jewish interaction in Paul, cf the rhetorical analysis of in Betz, Galatians on the one hand and on the other, the hermeneutical dialectics shared in common between Paul, Qumran, and the rabbis; see below, ‘The Epistles of Paul as a Source’, 587–591.] 72 73
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can be no more than a preliminary proposal, for when it comes to comparison with Hellenistic material, I must largely rely on others. Finally, we must keep John Barclay’s definition of Hellenism in mind, especially the remark about the urban elite as being the carriers of Hellenistic culture. What is the social register of 1 Thessalonians? The opening formula in 1 Thess 4:9, περὶ δὲ τῆς φιλαδελφíας, is an interesting case in point. An enthusiastic ‘Hellenist’ reader might at first sight recognise the title of Plutarch’s treatise, Περὶ φιλαδελφíας. But it is more correct to view περὶ δέ as an epistolary formula which, just as in 5:1, introduces a new theme; this a common device in Greek instruction.77 Excited ‘Hebraists’, on the other hand, could point to the parallel Hebrew introductory formula found in the Qumran halakhic letter which one by one treats a number of halakhic subjects, ‘Now as to …’78 Furthermore, the same function is found in 1 Corinthians and in the Didache, which one by one treat a number of practical commandments reminiscent of Judeo-Christian milieus, here again involving Greek περὶ δέ.79 Conclusion: we are facing a Hellenistic phenomenon, but one which can also be seen at work within specific Jewish or Judeo-Christian contexts. If we take in 4:13, we see how Paul creatively combines περὶ [δέ] both with polite epistolary formulae, [104] ‘Now about … you do not need to be written to’ (4:9; 5:1),80 and with apocalyptic disclosure formulae, ‘I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, about …’ (4:13). And while the first instance concerns what Malherbe calls the Hellenistic theme of φιλαδελφíα, the second and third introduce apocalyptic themes81 evoking ‘a saying of the Lord’ and referring to his παρουσíα and to general resurrection (4:15; cf 5:2). If we want to catch more than a partial glimpse of Paul’s mind, we need to read him both in a Hellenistic and a Jewish perspective.
1 Thess 4:1–12, Structure and Purpose Let us now have a closer look at the structure of our pericope. The introductory formulae just mentioned reveal that 4:1–8 and 9–12 are the first two of what may 77 Cf Kloppenborg, ‘ΦIΛΑΔΕΛΦΙΑ’, 271. Mitchell, ‘Concerning PERI DE’ reviews pagan Greek evidence and points out that the formula derives from oral instruction. Kloppenborg ibid. 269 refers to the papyri letters analysed by J. L. White and to D. G. Bradley in JBL 72 (1953) 245. Cf also Collins, ‘The Function of Paraenesis’, 399; Sumney, Servants of Satan, 222f. 78 … ואף עך,…ועל, 4QMMT 13, 21, 24, 36, 44, 60, 63, 72 (composite text, extant occurrences only). 79 Tomson, ‘Paul’s Jewish Background’, 262f; for Judeo-Christian halakha in the Didache see Tomson, If This be from Heaven, ch. 8. 80 See Malherbe, ‘Hellenistic Moralists’, 293 for parallels in Cicero. 81 Cf disclosure formulae in Rom 1:13 (secret hindrances); 1 Cor 10:1 (spiritual insight); and the disclosure fomula with περὶ δέ in 1 Cor 12:1, περὶ δέ τῶν πνευματικῶν, ἀδελφοί, οὐ θέλω ὑμᾶς ἀγνοεῖν.
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be seen as five paraenetical sections which run to the end of the letter. These involve the following introductions: 4:1, ‘Finally now,82 brethren, we ask of you and exhort you’; 4:9, ‘Now about brotherly love you do not need being written to’; 4:13, ‘Now we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, about the deceased’; 5:1, ‘Now about the times and seasons, brethren, you do not need to be written to’; 5:12, ‘Now we ask of you, brethren, to recognise those toiling amongst you’.
We see, as Jan Lambrecht put it, that ‘Paul is anything but a slave of a schematic pattern; he freely varies words as well as constructions.’83 That is also why, as so often, the division of these pericopes can hardly be definite. Does 5:14, ‘Now we exhort you’, announce a subsection, or does it just reinforce the last section’s beginning [105] in 5:12? Similarly, in 4:2, ‘For you know which orders we have given you’ – do we have a creative repetition of the general introduction or the announcement of the first paraenetic section? In addition to the introductory phrases in 4:1 and 4:13, our pericope is demarcated by the verb used twice in 4:1, δεῖ ὑμᾶς περιπατεῖν … καθὼς καὶ περιπατεῖτε,84 and again in 4:12, ἵνα περιπατεῖτε εὐσχημόνως. Taken together, the pericope is prepared by the words on Paul’s own behaviour in 2:9–12, which besides περιπατεῖν involves παρακαλεῖν and ἐργάζεσθαι, key terms in our passage. While περιπατεῖν does not seem to be linguistically linked to the word הלכה, Collins is certainly correct in stating that its use ‘to denote ethico-religious conduct’ reflects biblical language and therefore evokes traditional morality.85 Belonging as it does to the commonly acknowledged code, the Septuagint expression functions as a signal to announce accepted rules of life. This is enhanced by the ‘tradition markers’ in 4:1f, καθὼς παρελάβετε παρ᾽ ἡμῶν … οἴδατε γὰρ τίνας παραγγελίας ἐδώκαμεν ὑμῖν. While similar transmission terminology is used in general Hellenistic contexts,86 it plays a central role in the apostolic and rabbinic traditions, and it is not out of place to refer to the parallel Hebrew terms מסרand קבל.87 A close parallel, written down only some 82 On λοιπὸν οὖν see Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 300; Reinmuth, Geist und Gesetz, 98; Légasse, Thessaloniciens, 204. 83 Lambrecht, ‘Thanksgiving’, 328. 84 The second phrase is a polite but awkward repetition and certainly authentic. See Malherbe, ‘Hellenistic Moralists’, 293 for parallels in Seneca and Ignatius. περιπατεῖν appears already in 2:12. 85 Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 304 and n29; similarly Reinmuth, ‘Der erste Brief’, 138. Reinmuth, Geist und Gesetz, 99 n16 adduces ancient Graeco-Jewish and Qumran sources where the verb and its cognates denote moral-religious ‘walk of life’. 86 See Alexander, ‘IPSE DIXIT’. 87 Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 328, 315, followed by Carras, ‘Jewish Ethics’, 306 and Rosner, ‘Seven Questions’, 352 (who only mention ;)קבלcf Holtz, Thessalonicher, 150–152. On the terminology see Gerhardsson 288–294; on this whole issue Tomson, Paul, 145–149. [See also in this volume, ‘Paul as a Recipient’, 399f.]
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years later,88 is found in 1Cor 11:2, καθὼς παρεδωκα ὑμῖν τὰς παραδόσεις κατέχετε, the issue at hand being the women’s head covering typical of the ‘churches of God’.89 In addition to tradition, these expressions signal apostolic authority, for the Apostle is a representative (ἀπόστολος, )שליח90 of Jesus, as Paul makes explicit: παρακαλοῦμεν ἐν [106] κυρίῳ ᾽Ιησοῦ … ἐδώκαμεν διὰ τοῦ κυρίου ᾽Ιησοῦ (4:1f). The question to what extent Paul’s letter contains actual teachings of Jesus need not detain us.91 There now follows a subdivision, 4:3–8, which is forcefully marked off by the word ἁγιασμός, notably in the opening phrase which Raymund Collins chose for a motto when studying the section: ‘For this is the will of God, your sanctification!’92 It is ‘a nomen actionis (which) designates the process of sanctification rather than the result of the process’,93 and the divine demand of sanctification is spelled out by a series of epexegetical infinitives:94 ‘That you abstain from immorality; that each one know how to acquire his own vessel in sanctification …; that one do not transgress and wrong his brother in (the) business.’ This stress on ἁγιασμός is linked to the apocalyptic emphasis on preparing oneself heard throughout the letter.95 Opinions differ, however, as to how many subjects are being referred to by the infinitives: one, two, or three different subjects?96 Among other things, this turns on the word ἁγιασμός. Some give it a specific sense, indicated by the term πορνεία at the start, and read one overall subject in the passage. I shall contend that is possible to take ἁγιασμός in a broader sense, so that it also could cover subjects such as marriage and business. In addition, there is the vicious circle implied in our main theme. Reading with a Hellenistically sensitized ear, one concentrates Cf 1 Cor 11:23; 15:3. See Barclay, ‘Thessalonica and Corinth’ for considerations of date. See Tomson, Paul, 131–142 for the possible Judeo-Christian background. 90 Cf 2:7, ὡς Χριστοῦ ἀπόστολοι. See Barrett, ‘Shaliah and Apostle’; Tomson, Paul, 147. In 1 Cor 7, Paul exceptionally makes his sources of authority explicit, see Tomson, ‘Paul’s Jewish Background’, 259–261. 91 On 1 Cor see listing in Tomson, Paul, 262. For other parts of 1 Thess the question has been posed by Wenham, Paul, Follower of Jesus, 305–316 (much traditional teaching); Tuckett, ‘Synoptic Tradition’ (only in 1 Thess 5:2, possibly); and Kim, ‘Jesus Tradition’ (reacting against Tuckett, ‘Synoptic Tradition’, rather like Wenham, Paul, Follower of Jesus). 92 1 Thess 4:3; also 4:4 and 4:7. Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 299. Ib 319: ‘Hagiasmos serves as a unifying leitmotif of the entire sentence.’ 93 Collins ibid. 309, yet stipulating that ‘holiness is consistently used with respect to God’ so that ‘your sanctification’ can hardly be meant as a ‘moral demand’. This reservation undermines the powerful unity between holiness and ethics in the passage. 94 Cf Dibelius, Thessalonicher, ad loc.; Reinmuth, Geist und Gesetz, 14. 95 1 Thess 1:10, ἀναμένειν τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν. 2:12, περιπατεῖν … ἀξίως τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ καλοῦντος ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ βασιλείαν. 3:13, ἐν ἁγιωσύνῃ … ἐν τῇ παρουσίᾳ … μετὰ πάντων τῶν ἁγίων. 5:23, ἁγιάσαι ὑμᾶς … ἀμέμπτως ἐν τῇ παρουσίᾳ. 96 Cf the reaction of the English speaking Group. See discussion by Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 307f, 318f, who on p335 opts for ‘a single topos, chastity’. Similarly, in a sympathetic article, Baumert, ‘Brautwerbung’ argues for the single theme of ‘Brautwerbung’. 88 89
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on the unitary flow of the passage and will [107] hear general, common moral exhortations.97 Conversely, reading with an ear trained to the specifics of Jewish morality, one discovers reflections of practical law teaching at every turn. What we need to do of course is to read with any ears or hearing aids available. The question ought to be decided by the specifics in the text before us. But that is where the next problem lies. Paul formulates his demands of sanctification in such vague and summary terms, that outsiders from the church fathers onwards are at a loss. This small section contains at least two cruces interpretum, τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι (4:4) and πλεονεκτεῖν ἐν τῷ πρᾶγματι (4:6).
The Crux of σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι As to the first one, exegetes have variously concentrated on σκεῦος and κτᾶσθαι. σκεῦος, ‘utensil’ or ‘vessel’, can mean literally any ‘thing’. This may be the reason for it being used in the first place, a vague metaphor being needed, but it certainly is the ‘apple of discord’ among exegetes. The relevant data have been advanced by Maurer in the TDNT. According to the general Greek sense which largely overlaps with biblical usage (σκεῦος parelleling )כליand which therefore makes a strong case, the metaphor denotes the human person as a ‘vessel’ or ‘instrument’ to other or higher aims. The materiality and fragility of the ‘vessel’ are obvious, as exemplified in Paul’s ὀστράκινα σκεύη, which recalls the prophetic parable of the potter.98 Hence the meaning ‘body’, but the problem then is what κτᾶσθαι may mean.99 A more specific interpretation follows the lead of σκεῦος/ כליas a phallic euphemism in Greek and possibly Hebrew usage: ‘vessel, thing, instrument’.100 This is not impossible, [108] since ληκύθιον, ‘oil flask’, is used in a similar way in Aristophanes (Frogs 1198ff).101 On either reading, the emphasis would be on control of the body and its sexual urge, which is what κτᾶσθαι then would mean.102 Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 307, who mentions Dibelius first. 2Cor 4:7; Jer 18; Isa 29:16; cf Rom 9:20. 99 Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 313. 100 Antistios and Aelius, cited by LSJ s. v. and by Maurer, ‘σκεῦος’, 359; ib 360: a phallic or at least a sexual innuendo must be read in 1 Sam 21:6[5]. The phallic meaning is proposed by Whitton, ‘Neglected Meaning’, and by Légasse, Thessaloniciens, 209–219. Elgvin, ‘To Master His Own Vessel’ unconvincingly argues the same from 4Q416 fr. 2 ii 21 ;כלי [ח]יקכהcf Konradt, ‘Εἰδέναι ἕκαστον’, 131f. [And see Kister, ‘A Qumranic Parallel’: read not כליbut בליor בלו.] Here too, the other meaning is much more likely, cf אשת חיקכהibid. fr. 2 iv 5, which is the biblical expression: אשת חיקךDeut 13:7, שכבת חיקךMic 7:5. Avotia, Possessing One’s Vessel, rejects the phallic meaning since it deprives κτᾶσθαι of sense; he understands the expression from 1 Cor 7:25ff, ‘spiritual’ marriage in view of the eschaton. 101 Penella, ‘ΚΩΙΔΑΡΙΟΝ’, 336f. I gratefully owe this reference to Dr. A. Dirkzwager of Hoeselt, Belgium. 102 Dibelius, Thessalonicher, ad loc., implying a perfect sense, or alternatively, ‘allmähliches Zunehmen der sittlichen Herrschaft über den Leib.’ 97 See 98
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Ever since the church fathers, another meaning has been defended, i. e. σκεῦος denoting ‘wife’ and κτᾶσθαι her acquisition.103 The fact that this meaning goes against the more general Greek usage pleads for its authenticity. In addition, Paul Billerbeck adduced a number of corroborating rabbinic parallels where כליindicates a ‘woman’ with a sexual implication.104 This went well noticed, but less attention was given to another element he cited, i. e. the verb קנהas a likely equivalent of κτᾶσθαι.105 It is found e. g. in the important halakha at the beginning of Mishna Kiddushin: ‘A woman is acquired ( )האישה נקניתby three means …’ Patriarchy is in place: according to biblical law the wife is the husband’s possession (cf Exod 20:14).106 It implies a durable state, hence the meaning ‘possess’ both for קנהand for κτᾶσθαι. Along with many others,107 I think this is the more likely interpretation: τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι ἐν ἁγιασμῷ probably means ‘to possess one’s wife in sanctification’. It fits best to the difficulties of [109] our passage. In addition, a verse from Ben Sira confirms the specific meaning of κτᾶσθαι in parallel with קנה: ὁ κτώμενος γυναῖκα ἐνάρχεται κτήσεως, ‘He who acquires a wife really acquires something’, which in the Hebrew goes: קנה אשה ראשית קנין, ‘Acquire a wife as the first of your acquisitions.’108 Finally, all of this fits in with two close New Testament parallels, one in Paul: ἕκαστος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα ἐχέτω (‘each man should have his own wife’, 1Cor 7:2), and the other in 1 Peter: συνοικεῖν Both readings already in Theodoret, who prefers the second, see Dibelius, Thessalonicher, ad loc., τινὲς … τὴν ὁμόζυγα …, ἐγὼ δὲ … τὸ ἑκαστοῦ σῶμα. The opinions are listed by Dibelius ibid., BDAG, and Maurer, ‘σκεῦος’. 104 Str-Bill 3:632f, referred by Maurer, ‘σκεῦος’ and also noted in BDAG. Dibelius, Thessalonicher, ad loc. first accepted this evidence but retracted in his 3rd edition because of the overwhelming general Greek usage. Str-Bill mentions bMeg 12b = EstR 1.11 (89b); Pes 94b; bBM 84b; KohR 11.2 (51b); yShab 10 (12c) [l. 64]; cf bSan 22b. 105 See now Konradt, ‘Εἰδέναι ἕκαστον’, 134 and n29, but without taking in the Hebrew Ben Sira and the verb קנה, in reaction to Maurer, ‘σκεῦος’ who advances בעלin the narrow sexual meaning of rabbinic usage. 106 The more remarkable is the discussion in bKid 2a, which confronts האשה נקניתwith האיש מקדשin mKid 1:1; 2:1, while deciding for the meaning for ‘ קיחהacquisition’ on the grounds of Abraham’s acquisition of the Mahpela cave: Gen 23:13, קח ממני, נתתי כסף השדהand 49:13, השדה אשר קנה אברהם. 107 Maurer, ‘σκεῦος’; Koester, ‘1 Thessalonians’, 43; Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 313; Reinmuth, ‘Der erste Brief’; Holtz, Thessalonicher, 157f; Lambrecht, ‘Call to Witness’, 353; now also Konradt, ‘Εἰδέναι ἕκαστον’. [See also Bassler, ‘Σκεῦος’ for an ‘exploratory’ (and not quite convincing) ‘modest proposal’ involving a third meaning: a ‘virgin partner’ in the sense of 1 Cor 7:36–38.] 108 Sir 36:24; Hebrew 36:25, ed Segal 229. Ibid. 234: קנהmust possibly be understood literally, i. e. acquire by means of a dowry. Ben Sira’s grandson read קנהas a participle, but an imperative is more likely. The phrase is modelled on Prov 4:8, ובכל קנינך,ראשית חכמה קנה חכמה קנה בינה – wisdom as a woman to be wooed ever anew; cf the free LXX rendering, περιχαράκωσον αὐτήν, καὶ ὑψώσει σε· τίμησον αὐτήν, ἵνα σε περιλάβῃ, which clearly stresses the durative aspect. Taking his cue from that verse, Clement Alex., Strom 1.5.28–32 identifies the ‘true spouse’ as Sarah, developing the well-known motif of Philo’s, e. g. Congr 79f; Leg all 3:244. 103
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… ὡς ἀσθενεστέρῳ σκεύει τῷ γυναικείῳ (‘… in your life together, paying honor to the woman as the weaker sex (vessel)’, 1 Pet 3:7).109 Both verbs used here parallel κτᾶσθαι: ἔχειν in the continuous sense of ‘possessing’, συνοικεῖν in the more sympathetic and explicative sense of literally ‘cohabiting’. The limited variation of the central concepts contained in these formulations reminds of an oral teaching tradition in Greek, plausibly with Hebrew or Aramaic versions underlying. Could the Thessalonian addressees have the faintest idea of a technical term exegetes never stop disagreeing about? The very difficulty suggests an answer. Paul emphasises the importance of traditions he had already handed down to his church and which therefore needed no explanation, as moreover he states explicitly: καθὼς παρελάβετε παρ᾽ ἡμῶν (‘as you learned from us’, 4:1f). According to Malherbe, precisely that is an important function of Hellenistic moralist rhetoric.110
The Call to Sanctification, 1 Thess 4:3–8 Thus we are ready to deepen our initial insight that in this section Paul rehearses traditional teachings. We noted already that their [110] traditional significance is underlined by the powerful biblical expressions περιπατεῖν and ἁγιασμός. This justifies the endeavour to look for vestiges of Jewish or Judeo-Christian halakha, practical law teaching. In doing so, we can imagine the larger Hellenistic context to remain in place, while allowing for the possibility that the situation is rich and complex.111 On the basis of comparison with ancient Jewish law, three specific commandments can be read in our passage, expressed in three sets of infinitives. (a) 4:3, ἀπέχεσθαι ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τῆς πορνείας, ‘that you refrain from immorality’. This sounds like a general ethical principle, but it figures as an actual commandment in traditional lists of basic instruction. Significantly, it appears in identical form in the Apostles’ Decree (Acts 15:20, 29); in the form φεύγετε τὴν πορνείαν in 1Cor 6:18 and the Testament of Reuben; and in other forms again elsewhere.112 πορνεία of course figures prominently not only in Paul’s 109 Even if 1 Pet were influenced by 1 Thess (Maurer, ‘σκεῦος’, 368), this would hardly explain the adoption of the unlikely metaphor σκεῦος for ‘wife’. We seem rather confronted with a common tradition, which possibility is enhanced by the parallel rabbinic usage. 110 Malherbe, Paul and the Thessalonians, 70f, joined by White, The Apostle of God, 217. 111 For an earlier summary endeavour see Tomson, Paul, 91f; cf ibid. 52f, 266–268 on Hellenistic motifs. 112 I owe the parallel with the Apostle’s decree to my student, Katelijne Depoortere. See further TReub 5:5; cf 6:1 and other sources in Tomson, Paul, 76 n88 as well as p98; Reinmuth, Geist und Gesetz, 22–41 referring to TJud 18:2 and other sources. Relevant is also 1 Clem 30:1, ποιήσωμεν τὰ τοῦ ἁγιασμοῦ πάντα, φεύγοντες … Cf also Rom 12:9 and further parallels, below n169.
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moral teaching but also the Apostles’ Decree (1Cor 5–7; Acts 15:21) as well as in ancient rabbinic and other Jewish traditions.113 (b) 4:4, εἰδέναι ἕκαστον … τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι ἐν ἁγιασμῳ καὶ τιμῇ, ‘that everyone know to possess one’s own wife in sanctification and honour’. Given the rather general terminology, this may also be heard as an item of basic moral instruction. The vague metaphor may have been chosen for modesty, the allusion being to things people know. If we allow for the various linguistic contexts to play, we can hear allusions to biblical, Pharisaic-Jewish, and Greek usage – for the common Greek meaning of σκεῦος is not excluded, as [111] 1 Pet 3:7 ἀσθενεστέρῳ σκεύει proves.114 The exact ‘legal’ issue at hand is unclear. It may be orderly marriage recognized by the community, as indicated by the terms ἁγιασμός καὶ τιμή; it may also be reasonable restraint in marital intercourse, as the continuation may imply, ‘… not in lustful passion like the gentiles who do not know God’, and as may be read from 1Cor 7:5.115 As in Rom 1:26f, this sharp distancing from gentile sexual behaviour reminds of Philo’s ‘Jewish-selective Hellenism’. (c) 4:6, τὸ μὴ ὑπερβαίνειν καὶ πλεονεκτεῖν ἐν τῷ πράγματι τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ, ‘that no one wrong or exploit a brother in the matter’. This is the other crux interpretum;116 we can deal with it more briefly. πράγμα can mean any ‘thing’ from ‘fact’ to ‘lawcase’, hence also simply ‘business’.117 Because of the repeated force of ἁγιασμός which follows in v7, many read the word as referring back to the previous issue and stress the definite article of πράγμα as being anaphoric, which comes down to taking ‘the matter’ for a sexual innuendo.118 ὑπερβαίνειν, ‘transgress against, wrong’, is an hapax in the New Testament, and
113 Cf Holtz, Thessalonicher, 156. While the general Hebrew equivalent is זנות, rabbinic usage tends to prefer the more exact גלוי עריות, cf Tomson, Paul, 97–103; Bockmuehl, ‘Noachide Commandments’. זנותis used in Qumran (CD 4:19) but derives from biblical usage (cf 1Kgs 3:16; Hos 4:11; 6:10; Ezek 16:3, though Ezekiel prefers )תזנות, and its LXX rendering is always πορνεία. 114 The concept of the body as a vessel for the soul or spirit, generally recognised as being Greek, is reflected in Hillel’s Aramaic saying which apparently involves two Graecisms: ‘This poor soul of mine which has arrived the day before ( = איכתס < איכסἐχθές) and today ( = סמירון < סמיכוןσήμερον) may depart – isn’t it the body’s guest?’ (LevR 34.2 in the version of Meiri as quoted in Margulies’ ed, p777 n3). 115 Cf Tomson, Paul, 105–108 for likely backgrounds. 116 Cf Beauvery, ‘πλεονεκτεῖν’, 78. 117 ‘Thing, matter’: Mt 18:19, περὶ παντὸς πράγματος; Rom 16:2, ἐν ᾧ ἂν πράγματι. ‘Fact’: Lk 1:1, τὰ πεπληροφορήμενα πράγματα. ‘Lawcase’: 1 Cor 6:1, τις πρᾶγμα ἔχων. 118 Rossano, ‘De conceptu πλεονεξία’, 261: ‘expressio vulgati sermonis’; Légasse, Thessaloniciens, 224; Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 318f stressing ‘the unity of the context’. However Beauvery, ‘πλεονεκτεῖν’, 82 maintains the article is generic and distributive; similarly Holtz, Thessalonicher, 162. Beauvery also rebuts ‘ad hominem’ (84) the objection that πρᾶγμα is never used in the singular with reference to commerce, pointing out that neither is this the case with the sexual meaning.
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as to πλεονεκτεῖν, many assume that here it has a sexual meaning.119 However Rossano and Beauvery concluded that nowhere in ancient pagan, Jewish or Christian literature is either word associated with sexual misbehaviour. Moreover Beauvery and Reinmuth pointed out that while ‘immorality and greed’ often go together both in ancient Jewish and in Pauline paraenesis, they clearly [112] are two separate items.120 In the Septuagint, πλεονεκτεῖν renders בצעa number of times, where the RSV translates ‘(to get) dishonest gain’.121 Hence while the sexual interpretation forces the meaning of the passage, the economic reading has better philological foundations. I translate: ‘Do not wrong or extort your brother in business.’ The rare terminology again suggests some particular but unknown tradition. This finds some confirmation in the fact that in the indicated sense, the phrase resembles the rabbinic prohibition of ‘ אונאהovercharging’, which Billerbeck adduces.122 A prohibition of usury is also attributed to Jesus (Luke 6:34f) and is connected with the biblical prohibition on interest by Philo.123 The little sub-section is now rounded off by the powerful concepts of ἁγιασμός and ἀκαθαρσία: ‘For God has not called us under impurity but through sanctification’ (4:7).124 This is the foothold for those pressing the single theme of sexual morality. However the two concepts have a wider meaning that can also include ‘dirty business’. This is a universal insight, as appears both in today’s uproar about ‘whitewashing’ black money and in ancient parallels in Cynic and Stoic moralism.125 Quite extremely, the Qumran covenanters considered the ‘possessions’ of the wicked literally ‘impure’.126 More generally, the ‘holiness code’ in Lev 17–25 is wide in moral scope, and the famous commandment to love one’s neighbour is embedded in a chapter prefaced by the call to be holy as God is holy (Lev 18:2, 19). In full analogy, Paul in a number of passages elsewhere uses the root αγι‑ to designate not sexual morality but the church with its proper calling over against ‘those outside’, in language that sometimes [113] recalls neophyte instruction.127 Once again this is confirmed by the statement that our Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 318. ‘De conceptu πλεονεξία’, (though hesitant on 1 Thess 4:3ff); Beauvery, ‘πλεονεκτεῖν’, 79; Reinmuth, Geist und Gesetz, 22–41; idem, ‘Der erste Brief’, 139f; Holtz, Thessalonicher, 161f. 121 Jdg 5:19; Ps 119:36; Jer 22:17. See also πλεονεκτεῖν πλεονεξίαν for בוצע בצע, Ezek 22:27; Hab 2:9. בצעhas also other equivalents, all to do with ‘deceit’. 122 Str-Bill 3: 633, אונאה, ‘Übervorteilung’: ‘wenn der vereinbarte Preis um ein Sechstel über den wirklichen Preis hinausging’, with references to mBM 4:3–9. 123 Virt 82, commenting on Ex 22:24(25), lending (δανείζειν) on interest (τόκος) 124 Paul varies prepositions from ἐπὶ ἀκαθαρσίᾳ to ἐν ἁγιασμῷ, which is difficult to translate. 125 Malherbe, Paul and the Popular Philosophers, 45, the pure Cynic philosopher is καθαρός; Collins, Studies on the First Letter, 316, with Stoic parallels. 126 1QS 5:20, ;וטמא בכל הונם3:2, 5 …והונו לוא יבואו בעצת יחד… טמא טמא יהיה. On Paul’s capability of apocalyptic dualism cf 1 Cor 5:5.13; 6:19; 10:21, and in this light 2Cor 6:14–7:1. 127 1 Cor 1:30 (cf baptism!); 3:17; 6:1f; 6:11 (baptism! as in 1:30); 6:19; 7:14; 2Cor 7:1. The common Pauline appellation of church members as ἅγιοι belongs here. This can of course apply to sexuality, as, strongly, in 1 Cor 6:19. 119 See
120 Rossano,
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section reiterates commandments already known to the members of this infant church (4:1–2). Moreover the phrase involving ‘sanctification and impurity’ is preceded by the warning: ‘The Lord is an avenger in all these things’ (ἔκδικος κύριος περὶ πάντων τούτων, 4:6).128 This not only recalls the Leviticus language but also indicates several topics. Also, we noted that the two concepts as used in this section link up with the note of apocalyptic preparation throughout the letter. Decisively, Paul has used ἀκαθαρσία already in 2:3 when asserting the ‘purity’ of his own approach as an Apostle, which in the continuation appears to refer to his financial relationship to the Thessalonians. He and his assistants did not come ‘with a pretext for greed’ (ἐν προφάσει πλεονεξίας, 2:5) but fulfilled their task as evangelists ‘while working, so that we might not burden any of you’ (ἐργαζόμενοι πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἐπιβαρῆσαί τινα ὑμῶν, 2:9). As in Corinth, they did not cash in on the ‘order of the Lord’ to live off the gospel, but maintained their financial independence (1Cor 9:14).129 When read in this light, 4:6–8 forms the bridge between the example of Paul’s own behaviour in 2:3–12 and his further recommandations to the Thessalonians in the economic sphere which follow in 4:9–12. In sum, the ‘call to sanctification’ in 1 Thess 4:3–8 comprises 3 items of practical instruction whose contents have little to do with general Hellenistic teaching. The close analogies to traditional Jewish teaching justify calling these Judeo-Christian commandments or halakhot, thought applicable to non-Jews by Paul. At the same time, the model of ‘pure intentions’ which Paul himself has set in 2:1–12 may well echo the terminology of popular moral teachers, either in a sympathetic or a more polemical sense. [114]
‘On Brotherly Love’ A clearly Hellenistic chord seems to be struck in 1 Thess 4:9. Plutarch’s Περὶ φιλαδελφíας was mentioned already; we shall come back to it later. Furthermore φιλíα and κοινωνíα have been shown to be prominent among neo-Pythagorean and Stoic virtues.130 And there are more terms which remind of general paraenesis: ‘mutual love’, ‘leading a quiet life’, ‘doing one’s own things’. It is obvious to understand Paul as being conversant with these Hellenistic motifs.131 128 See Holtz, Thessalonicher, 164. See ib 167–169 for a good summary of the gist of the passage. 129 Cf 1 Thess 2:7, δυνάμενοι ἐν βάρει εἶναι ὡς Χριστοῦ ἀπόστολοι, on 1 Cor 9:4f, μὴ οὐκ ἔχομεν ἐξουσίαν φαγεῖν καὶ πεῖν … (καὶ) ἀδελφὴν γυναῖκα περιάγειν ὡς καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ ἀπόστολοι. For the Jewish tradition material involved in this topic see Tomson, Paul, 125–131. 130 On Plutarch see below. κοινωνία is discussed by Engberg-Pedersen, Paul in His Hellenistic Context, 274–277 in relation to Philippians; κοινωνία and φιλία by Sanders, L’hellénisme de St. Clément, 96–98 in commenting on 1 Clem 49:1–50:5 as compared with 1 Cor 13. 131 Koester, ‘1 Thessalonians’; Malherbe, ‘Hellenistic Moralists’, 320–325; idem, Paul and the Thessalonians, 96–107; Kloppenborg, ‘ΦIΛΑΔΕΛΦΙΑ’.
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However this does not solve the more specific question how he appropriates those motifs in his letter to mid-first century Thessalonika. Cultured phrases may conceal prudent commendations, and indeed general concepts can be used to indicate specific customs. Significantly, the general-sounding term φιλαδελφíα is immediately specified as τὸ ἀγαπᾶν ἀλλήλους and as something to be practised εἰς πάντας τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς (4:9f). This the Thessalonians are doing already, only ‘they must abound more’ – Paul is rehearsing an important teaching, and it involves specific action. Then a new motif comes in, one not quite familiar in Hellenistic moralism: ἐργάζεσθαι ταῖς ἰδίαις χερσὶν (‘work with one’s own hands’, 4:11). Manual labour was generally thought distasteful in the GrecoRoman world,132 though its value was praised by some Stoics;133 we shall in a moment review its positive assessment by the rabbis. This gives the impression of a Judeo-Christian teaching. Next, this emphasis on self-earned sustenance is contrasted with οἱ ἔξω (‘those outside’), until it is finally stated: ἵνα … μηδενὸς χρείαν ἔχητε, which apparently means, ‘that you be dependent on nobody’ (4:12). Hence Paul is cautiously dealing with two related themes here:134 the community’s assistance to its own and other members, and the obligation for all to earn their own sustenance. This seems to imply that he uses φιλαδελφíα with the specific connotation of [115] hospitality and financial support.135 The church in the commercial centre Thessalonika may have disposed of resources from which to provide generously for any guests, and apparently this ‘philanthropy’ was known throughout the province. On the other hand, there seems to have been a tendency to rely on financial help ‘from outside’. It is obvious to think of the patronage structures mentioned above. The danger may not only have existed for individuals (cf οἱ ἀτάκτοι, 5:14) but also for the community as a whole to depend upon external patrones. This may have also included the resources from which they financed their hospitality. Who these patrons were we have no way of knowing, but any member of the local or imperial administrators and certainly any friction or competition between them would draw our suspicion. We must also think of the Acts information that the church paid a bail while smuggling Paul out of the city. In what additional client networks did they get involved? At any rate Paul urges for autarky, ‘that you work with your own hands’. The theme is more developed in 2Thess 3:6–13 and if it is also Paul’s, which I think not unlikely, he must have seen need to come out much more strongly against ‘idleness’.136 Bolkestein, Wohltätigkeit, 191–199 for classical Greek writers. Ethik des Neuen Testaments, 220f, referring to Seneca, De provid 2, but also pointing to the analogies in rabbinic literature, notably R. Tarfon’s saying (see below). 134 I follow Légasse, Thessaloniciens, 235–238, except in his judgment that ‘la pensée a donc dévié, comme il arrive souvent chez Paul’ (my emphasis). ‘Sliding sideways’ towards his goal is one of Paul’s rhetorical techniques. 135 Thus, as in the next sentences, Légasse ibid. 236. 136 Cf Barclay’s explorations, ‘Conflict in Thessalonica’, 525–529; on ἀτάκτος = ‘idle’ see G. Milligan in MM, xviii–xix. Whoever it was, the author succeeded in stitching together all 132 See
133 Schrage,
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Jewish and Christian Readings of Hellenistic Social Concepts The question must now be addressed whether such details do not bring us too far from the Hellenistic meaning of φιλαδελφíα.137 Does the concept bear the proposed specific reading? Are there analogies to such Jewish and Judeo-Christian colourings of Hellenistic concepts? Let us study some more sources, beginning with Plutarch. Plutarch’s Περὶ φιλαδελφíας exalts the rare phenomenon of brotherly love as a precious social virtue. In the case of one Lucullus [116] it meant he waived his right to take a public office before his younger brother, while – ‘barbarian’ examples also coming in for illustration – Darius’ son, Ariamenes, loyally resigned the throne of Persia to his younger brother Xerxes when the latter was preferred by the people. Likewise, sympathy for the obscurer and humbler ones allows one to perceive in them some potential for grace, power or beauty.138 The terminology is of interest. Apart from the title and introduction, φιλαδελφíα (or φιλαδελφός) is used another 8 times, and it always means sibling love, in line with standard Greek usage.139 Besides that, Plutarch mostly uses the common word φιλíα,140 ‘friendship’, and a couple of times φιλανθρωπíα (φιλάνθρωπoς). In fact, φιλανθρωπíα is the common moral term Plutarch uses hundreds of times elsewhere.141 This brings out the rare character of φιλαδελφíα, which is exactly what the beginning of the treatise states. Otherwise it is a friendly and sympathetic work which apparently was written for a special occasion in the life of the two brothers to whom it is offered, under the aegis of the Dioscuri to be sure, the divine paragons of fraternal love. Some propose to see it as a ripe fruit of old age and date it to the early second century;142 on any count it is post-Pauline. Plutarch’s Jewish contemporary and sometime fellow-Roman, Josephus, apparently had little use for the term φιλαδελφíα in his writings on Jews and Judaism, and he too always gives it the plain sense, as when referring to Joseph’s brothers.143 This includes a neutral or even negative meaning, as in the case of king Herod, whose fraternal love was only one among other motives behind his politics,144 or of Aaron’s being elected to the office of high-priest, which to be the important key words in 2 Thess 3:6–13, not only those found in 1 Thess (ἀτάκτως, ἄρτον φαγεῖν, ἐργάζεθαι, ἐπιβαρήσαι, ἡσυχία) but also ἐξουσία, central in the related passage 1 Cor 9:6–14. In all, the elaborate and explicit repetition (2 Thess 3:10!) is very much like Paul the community teacher. 137 Thus the English speaking group at the 1999 Colloquium. 138 Plutarch, Moralia 484D, 488D-f, 485A (Loeb ed 282f, 303–307). 139 Elsewhere in Plutarch 8×. Cf Kloppenborg, ‘ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΙΑ’, 271. 140 13× in the treatise. 141 485A (the opposite of μισάνθρωπος); 487B (φιλανθρωπότερος); 491C (pertaining to horses). Elswhere in Plutarch 289×, which brings out the narrow meaning of φιλαδελφία. 142 Dumortier–Defradas, Plutarque. 143 Ant 2:161. 144 War 1:175, 485.
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sure was not on the grounds of Moses’ ‘fraternal love’; here φιλαδελφíα equals nepotism!145 When exalting love towards humans [117] Josephus clearly opts for φιλανθρωπíα,146 as when stating, in the introduction to his Antiquities, that humankind should imitate the Creator’s ‘philanthropy’, or in the polemical treatise Against Apion when claiming that ‘the laws we possess are most effective in stimulating not only devotion (εὐσέβεια), but also mutual fellowship (κοινωνία), and universal humanity (φιλανθρωπíα), besides justice, hardihood, and contempt of death’.147 Hellenistic virtues are in place, and so may we understand φιλανθρωπíα, but the point is that Josephus associates it specifically with the laws of Moses. Thus the ‘philanthropy’ taught by Moses extends to animals as well (cf their prescribed Sabbath rest, Deut 5:14!), whereas the ‘philanthropy’ inculcated by the laws of the Spartans consists in their determination to beat any military opponents.148 The Essenes present a special example of ‘altruism’, and Josephus never misses the opportunity to point it out. Here he uses another term, calling them φιλάλληλοι καὶ τῶν ἄλλων πλέον, ‘more attached to each other than the other (sects)’, and he sees this especially in their community of goods, τὸ κοινωνικόν. He uses the same expression when once again stating that the Pharisees, unlike the Sadducees, are φιλάλληλοι τε καὶ τὴν εἰς τὸ κοινὸν ὁμόνοιαν ἀσκοῦντες, ‘affectionate to each other and caring for harmony with the community’.149 Again, general Greek terms are used to describe a particular type of Jewish group behaviour. Philo too portrays the Essenes as paragons of Hellenistic virtue (καλοκἀγαθία), summarised in the threesome ‘love of God, virtue, and humanity’ (τὸ φιλόθεον καὶ φιλάρετον καὶ φιλάνθρωπον). Like Josephus, he uses φιλαδελφíα/-φός rarely and only in the plain sense, such as, again, in the case of Joseph’s brothers.150 For exalting inter-human love he very frequently uses φιλανθρωπíα; thus also with the Essenes.151 However, their ‘philanthropy’ is expressed in a extraordinary custom, i. e. ‘sharing roof, life and table’ (τὸ ὁμωρόφιον ἢ ὁμοδίαιτον ἢ ὁμοτράπεζον), as well as in the exemplary care for their [118] sick and elderly.152 145 Ant 4:26; cf Philo, below (has Josephus read him?). Remaining case: 12:189 (an Egyptian-Jewish priest covering for his brother). 146 Including φιλάνθρωπος to a total of 60 occurrences. 147 Ant 1:24; Ag Ap 2:146. 148 Ag Ap 2:213, 230 149 War 2:119, 122, 166. 150 Philo, Jos 218. In Leg 87, 92 he applies it to Caligula, cf Kloppenborg, ‘ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΙΑ’, 283, who however fails to note the derision in the comparison with the Dioscuri; see below n171. 151 92 times φιλάνθρωπος/φιλανθρωπία, of which 17× in ‘On philanthropy’. He praises the Essenes (Hypoth, apud Eusebius, Praep ev 8.11.2) for their ζῆλον ἀρετῆς καὶ φιλανθρωπὶας ἵμερον. 152 Quod omn 75, 83, 86f. A specifically Essene reference of the κοινων‑ root is suggested by Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache, ch. 5 n140ff.
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Like Josephus, Philo uses a Hellenistic moral concept in describing a highly specific inner-Jewish group code, while giving the word a specific Jewish twist. Especially interesting is the treatise Περὶ φιλανθρωπíας which Philo wrote as part of his On virtue, two or three quarters of a century before Plutarch, incidentally. Philo both uses φιλανθρωπíα in a general Hellenistic way and appropriates it to the details of the Mosaic law. The first part of the treatise is a heroic narrative of the example of Moses. His philanthropy consists, rather surprisingly, first in his reservation to co-opt his ‘closest of friends’ Joshua or any of his ‘brothers’ or sons for a successor, and then in the loyal way in which he encouraged Joshua once appointed. Moses’ profound ‘φιλανθρωπíα καὶ πίστις towards his whole people’, his φιλανθρωπíα καὶ κοινωνία, set the standard of τὸ φιλάλληλον καὶ φιλοεθνὲς πάθος, ‘personal friendship and patriotism’, for all subsequent Jewish leaders.153 Hellenistic virtues? Yes, but Jewishly read: ‘For what is derived from the most worthy philosophy by its propagators, the Jews gain from their laws and customs: the knowledge of the highest and most ancient cause of all things, while rejecting the deceit about generated gods.’154 Faithfulness to the Creator and his ‘zealous’ first (or second) commandment are exalted as the apogee of ‘philanthropy’ towards Israel. Like Josephus, Philo rejects nepotism. Is that why he seems to shun the word φιλαδελφíα? In his eyes even φιλανθρωπíα is capable of narrow misinterpretation, for he takes care to state that Moses extends it to ‘incomers’ (ἐπηλύτες) and ‘sojourners’ (μετοίκοι), slaves, yes, to ‘compatriots and foreigners, friends and enemies, slaves and freemen, and humankind in general’, even to ‘the speechless beasts’ and ‘cultivated trees’. Philo means the specific commandments from the Pentateuch of course, highlighting e. g. the prohibition to sacrifice ‘an animal and its mother on the same day’ as a model for interhuman behaviour.155 Thus the second part of his treatise expounds ‘a selection of what (Moses) legislated on each of these categories, starting out from humankind’.156 The next fifteen paragraphs are devoted to the exposition of economic laws, first and foremost the [119] prohibition ‘on usury from a brother, calling “brother” not only one born from the same parents, but also whoever be a (fellow) citizen or compatriot’.157 Do we indeed hear a tacit disavowal of all too narrow φιλαδελφíα? Next come the obligations to give alms and loans, to pay day labourers the same day, the prohibition to take surety from a debtor’s house, and the obligation to leave the corner of the field, the ‘fallen sheaf’, and the ‘forgotten’ grapes and olives to the poor (cf Deut. 15 and 24). To Philo’s mind, all of this spells out φιλανθρωπíα,158 Virt 66, 69, 72. Virt 65. Cf Bolkestein, Wohltätigkeit, 426–428 on φιλανθρωπία in Philo. 155 Virt 102, 109, 121, 125, 131. 156 Virt 81. 157 Virt 82–94. Cf above n123. 158 Virt 88, Lev 19:13 and Deut 24:14f belong to τὰ εἰς φιλανθρωπίαν τεινόντα. 153 154
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thus teaching us that this Hellenistic concept may in the first place mean the detailed Mosaic view on humanity in business. A word count on the Septuagint confirms the particular nature of φιλαδελφíα as compared with φιλανθρωπíα.159 The relevant Greek key words are used only in the later parts, most of all in the Maccabean books. Once Jeremiah is called ‘a φιλαδελφός who prays much for our people’ (2Macc 15:14); the remaining five times φιλαδελφíα/-ός means plain sibling love.160 φιλανθρωπíα/-ός in the general meaning of ‘humanity’ appears fairly often in these books, and φιλία is frequent.161 In the New Testament, φιλανθρωπíα is used three times in a truly Hellenistic sense,162 while φιλíα appears only once, as ‘love of the world’ (Jas 4:4). It is φιλαδελφíα which is interesting. It opens the paraenesis in Heb 13:1, where it is immediately spelled out in hospitality (φιλοξενíα) and care for the emprisoned and the sick. In 1 Pet 1:22 φιλαδελφíα ἀνυπόκριτος is defined as ἐκ καθαρᾶς καρδίας ἀλλήλους ἀγαπήσατε, ‘genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart’. In 1 Pet 3:8 and 2Pet 1:7, the word figures in lists of cognate virtues. Similarly in the Apostolic Fathers, common φιλíα is found once, φιλανθρωπíα never, and φιλαδελφíα is used twice in the special sense of innerChristian love.163 Baur s. v. concludes that ‘in [120] our literature (φιλαδελφíα is used) only metaphorically of love towards the Christian brothers’.164 In sum, φιλαδελφíα which in general Hellenistic literature means actual sibling love is avoided by Philo and Josephus, while in early Christian texts it is frequent but exclusively means inner-Christian ‘charity’. The socially differentiated usage is interesting. Addressing the Hellenistic cultured elite, Philo and Josephus use φιλανθρωπíα for social virtue, whereas early Christians prefer φιλαδελφíα in writing to their own group. The comprehensive use in the Letter to the Hebrews does not suggest a Pauline origin of this special usage.165 It clearly relates to the Christian predilection for the word ἀδελφός indicating group members, a usage most probably derived from inner-Jewish religious parlance.166
159 Noted by Kloppenborg, ‘ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΙΑ’, 282, but interpreted differently. See von Soden, ‘ἀδελφός … φιλαδελφία’ and Luck, ‘φιλανθρωπία’. 160 4Macc 13:21, 23, 26; 14:1; 15:10 next to φιλομήτωρ. 161 φιλανθρωπία/-ός: 14× in 1 Esd, Esth, 2/3/4Macc, and Wis; φιλία: 41× in 1/2/4 Macc, Prov, Wis and Sir. 162 ‘Humane’ behaviour towards Paul and companions (Acts 27:3; 28:2); a hymn to ‘the epiphany of goodness and love of humanity (χρηστότης καὶ φιλανθρωπία) of God our Saviour’ (Tit 3:4). 163 Herm Mand 10:1 φιλίαι ἐθνικαί; 1 Clem 47:4; 48:1 rebellion against Corinthian elders violates φιλαδελφία. 164 BDGA s. v.; similarly von Soden, ‘ἀδελφός … φιλαδελφία’. 165 As Kloppenborg, ‘ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΙΑ’, 272 supposes. 166 Von Soden, ‘ἀδελφός … φιλαδελφία’, 145.
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Conclusion: the Christian topos of φιλαδελφíα It has become far from obvious to approach Paul on the assumption that φιλαδελφíα announces a common Hellenistic topos. If he were to exalt a Hellenistic social virtue, we would rather expect φιλανθρωπíα, as in Philo and Josephus. It seems we must accept that Paul made no exception to early Christian usage: φιλαδελφíα implies that Christians are to ‘love one another with brotherly affection’.167 Thus Paul’s exhortation in Rom 12:9 starts out with the general heading, ‘Let love be genuine’ (ἡ ἀγάπη ἀνυπόκριτος, cf 2 Cor 6:6; 1 Pet 1:22), and then expounds: ‘detest what is evil and stick to the good,168 in brotherly affection loving one another’ (τῇ φιλαδελφíᾳ εἰς ἀλλήλους φιλόστοργοι). The tautology is rather bland, but in no way suggests ‘sibling love’ in the literal sense. This is traditional (Judaeo‑)Christian paraenesis, and it is placed under the heading of ἀγάπη, in [121] any sense the favourite moral term in Jewish and Christian Greek literature.169 Likewise in 1 Thess 4:9 φιλαδελφíα is defined as ‘loving one another’, which indeed the Thessalonians ‘do to all the brothers in the whole of Macedonia’. On this matter, they are θεοδίδακτοι – a rare term which many ascribe to Paul’s invention.170 According to Kloppenborg, Paul meant the Thessalonians ought to follow the divine example of the Dioscuri known from popular preaching. This seems unlikely.171 More probably, Paul indeed meant that fraternal love was a well-known topic to the Thessalonian Christians, both by his own instruction and by the god-like example of others. Hospitality was of course a highly esteemed virtue among the Greeks, and Abraham’s example (Gen 18) is proverbial in all Jewish sources. An allusion to the Dioscuri is not to be excluded,172 but then 167 The precise formulation is White’s, see idem, The Apostle of God, 225–229 on φιλαδελφία. He follows Malherbe who thinks θεοδίδακτος was coined by Paul ‘to differentiate his conception of communal support from anthropocentric friendship’ (226 n46). [See below n170.] 168 For the ‘imperative participles’ ἀποστυγοῦντες and κολλώμενοι in Rom 12:9 see Daube, New Testament, 90–105, esp 102. 169 ἀποστυγοῦντες τὸ πονηρόν, κολλώμενοι τῷ ἀγαθῷ parallels TDan 6:10, ἀπόστητε ἀπὸ πάσης ἀδικίας καὶ κολλήθητε τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ, as also TGad 5:2, φεύξησθε τὸ μῖσος καὶ κολληθῆτε τῇ ἀγάπῃ τοῦ κυρίου, and TAs 3:1, τῇ ἀγαθότῃ μόνῃ κολλήθητε. The basis is in Ps 34:15, סור מרע ועשה טוב – LXX 33:15, ἔκκλινον ἀπὸ κακοῦ καὶ ποιήσον ἀγαθόν, which is quoted at length in 1 Pet 3:11 and is also popular in rabbinic parenesis, e. g. ARN b34 (25a); a12, (26a). The T12P never use φιλαδελφία or φιλανθρωπία, but only the stem αγαπ-. 170 Malherbe, Paul and the Popular Philosophers, 63; Kloppenborg, ‘ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΙΑ’, 281. [But Isa 54:13, διδακτοὶ θεοῦ, and PsSal 17:32, διδακτὸς ὑπὸ θεοῦ suggest more general GraecoJewish surroundings for the phrase. Cf the general caveat in Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, 59.] 171 Neither the plain sense of φιλαδελφία in general Hellenistic usage nor its specific meaning in early Christian parlance warrant his conclusion. Philo’s derisive reference to the demi-gods (above n150) makes their attractiveness for Paul’s instruction even less likely, as do Philo’s and Josephus’ mixed feelings about ‘brotherly love’ per se. 172 Kloppenborg, ‘ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΙΑ’, 282–288 brings evidence on the popularity of the Dioscuri as patron deities of ξενία, especially in Thessalonika (but see above n150, on Philo). And
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it probably had a polemical twist. Hence if we can agree that Paul’s exaltation of ‘fraternal love’ is a Hellenistic topos, we must be more specific and call it a Christian Hellenistic topos. It remains to highlight some of the details in which this moral concept would be spelled out, in analogy to φιλανθρωπíα in certain passages of Philo and Josephus. Paul advances two corollary commandments: hospitality or mutual support, and earning one’s own sustenance. As to financial support, Paul offers extensive information on the collection(s) he organized in Achaia and Macedonia ‘for the poor among the holy in Jerusalem’ (Rom 15:26), and this practice [122] seems to have been well-established in earliest Christianity.173 A salient item is found in Philippians, where Paul writes that when he left Macedonia, no church supported him except Philippi, ‘also while in Thessalonika, once, even twice’ (Phil 4:15f). While a tension with 1 Thess 2:9 seems obvious, the message there and in our passage is clearly that everyone ought ‘to work with his own hands’ (4:11) rather than depend on the common treasure. The possible circumstances in Thessalonika were sketched above. The phrase from 2 Thess 3:10 sums it up: ‘If someone will not work, he shall not eat’ (εἴ τις οὐ θέλει ἐργάζεσθαι μηδὲ ἐσθιέτω). There are two important analogies to the situation outlined here. The Didache lays down: ‘Any apostle that visits you must be received like the Lord, but he may stay no longer than one day … Anyone who visits you in the name of the Lord must be received … but he may stay no longer than two or three days with you … And if he wants to settle down among you and he knows a trade, let him work and eat’ (Did 11:4f; 12:1–3). The distinction between ‘regular’ guests and ‘apostles’ is understandable, given that ‘apostles’ were as per their ministry entitled to sustenance. This is known from Paul and from the gospels and is presupposed in 1 Thess 2:9.174 The formulaic conclusion, ἐργάζεσθω καὶ φαγέτω, closely resembles 2 Thess 3:10 and this can hardly be incidental; a common moral tradition seems implied. Presupposed is a common table, where every guest or community member who works is welcome. This recalls the ‘community of goods’, τὸ κοινωνικόν as Josephus calls it, of the primitive Jerusalem church, of the disciples of Jesus, and of the Qumran community.175 As to ‘brotherly love’, the Didache gives the following commandment: ‘Do not of course cf the Alexandrian ship that brought Paul to Italy and was called Διόσκουροι, Acts 28:11 [on which see the very readable study by Backhaus, ‘Paulus und die Dioskuren’, though he sees ‘keinen polemischen Zug’ here, ibid. 181]. 173 Acts 11:29; 12:25 (involving Paul and Barnabas); Gal 2:10; 1 Cor 16:1–3 (mentioning also Galatia); 2 Cor 8–9 (mentioning Macedonia and Achaia). [See in this volume, ‘Paul’s Collection’.] 174 Above n128. 175 For the probability of common meals among earliest Christians cf Gal 2:11; 1 Cor 11:20; Acts 20:7, and of course Acts 2:42–45; 4:32–5:11. This seems to continue Jesus’ own practice, since in John 13:29 Judas is said to be keeping the common money bag. Significantly, common
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turn away the needy, share everything with your brother (συγκοινωνήσεις πάντα τῷ ἀδελφῷ σου), and say not it is your own’.176 [123] The other analogy is in early rabbinic tradition.177 A range of teachers from the late first century R. Eliezer onwards line up in praise of manual labour: ‘Great is labour; for even the first Adam could not taste anything before he performed labour, as it is said: “And He put him in the garden Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen 2:16).’178 On the other hand, there is the important emphasis that Tora teaching is not for a living and that Sages ought to work for their sustenance: ‘Do not make them [the words of the Tora] into a crown to magnify yourself with, or into a shovel to dig with [and earn your living with].’179 The relative appraisal of manual labour in Stoicism was mentioned above; it concerns one of the many convergencies between both movements. This comes more vividly to mind when we realise that Rabbi Tarfon’s saying in praise of labour, ‘The day is short, work is plenteous …’, elaborates on the famous Hippocratean adage, ‘Handicraft is long, life short.’ All of this illuminates Paul’s repeated insistence that he did not use the dominical privilege to ‘live off the gospel’ but worked – as a tentmaker, presumably (1 Cor 9:14f; 1 Thess 2:9; Acts 18:3).180 On the other hand, rabbinic tradition obliges the community to care for the poor and dependent. The Mishna lays down, in apparent proximity to the Didache’s surroundings, ‘A poor man who goes from place to place, one does not give him less than a loaf worth a (di)pondium [= 2 asses]… He who has enough for two meals, may not take from the plate.’181 By the ‘plate’, תמחוי, the common table for the poor is meant. This expression has been linked to the Aphrodisias inscription mentioned earlier. It starts out with a word difficult to decipher but which was proposed to read ΠΑΤΕΛΛΑ, i. e. Latin patella, which would equal תמחוי, ‘plate of charity’.182 If correct, this implies that the institution did exist in certain diaspora [124] synagogues and hence may also have served as a model for the church in Thessalonika. meals and goods were central in Qumran. [See also the interesting comparison of the Thessalonian church meals with Graeco-Roman associations in Ascough, ‘Of Memories and Meals’.] 176 Did 4:8. On κοινωνία in the Didache and related sources see Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache, ch. 5. 177 Str-Bill is silent here. 178 ARN b21 (22b–23a), גדולה היא המלכה. R. Yose from Gelil (± 150), ‘for God punishes man by death only when he is idle’, ARN b21 (22b); ARN a11 (23a) = R. Yehuda ARN b21, 22b. Similarly MekRS Ex 20:9 (p149), R. Akiva and 3 colleagues with the phrase גדולה מלאכה. Introduction in ARN a11 = b21 (22b–23b) ]אהוב את המלאכה [ועסוק במלאכה. 179 mAv 4:5, with interesting comment on Hillel’s Aramaic saying from mAv 1:13. See Safrai, ‘Education and Study’, 964f. 180 R. Tarfon’s saying: mAv 2:15f; see Flusser, Gleichnisse, 141f, also for the connections with Mt 9:39 and parallels. [Hock, Social Context, 22f and n30 doubts the value of rabbinic data in view of Neusner’s ‘form-critical analysis’, ibid. 42–47 highlighting interesting parallels with Dio Chrysostom’s Euboicus.] 181 mPea 8:7. 182 Reynolds–Tannenbaum, Jews and God-Fearers, 5, 26–28.
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This is not to state that 1 Thess 4:9–12 is a piece of exclusively rabbinic halakha, any more than the Didache passages. It is to show the probability that, much like the characteristic concepts in 1 Thess 4:4–6, Paul’s appeal for φιλαδελφíα is rooted in Judaeo-Christian moral teaching, and this includes its institutional character. Ancient Judaism carried a system of social ethics which in various ways was shared by nascent Christianity and early rabbinism and which featured care for the needy and emphasis on manual labour.183 The question how this relates to general Hellenistic culture involves the problem of the social environment of the adressees of our letter, in reality or in the writer’s mind. Christian brotherhood emphatically integrated persons of lowly status (Gal 3:28; 1 Cor 1:26), which does not exactly recall urban elites. Similar things can be said of the rabbis’ social ideal. Only with those qualifications, the passage could be called a ‘Hellenistic topos’. Apart from stressing financial autarky, it means to foster mutual hospitality and financial support among Christians. Such was also the understanding of the author of the pseudo-Clementine Epistula ad virgines (probably third cent.): ‘Hospitality is good and pleasing to God, most of all towards fellow believers. For he says also to others: “Now as to fraternal love, you are yourselves Godtaught to love one another”.’184 In the hospitable surroundings of this Abbey, which recalls the Apostle and his brothers and sisters from among Jews and Greeks, and even faraway Scyths and Barbarians, it is fitting gratefully to end on this note in praise of the vita communis.
Bolkestein, Wohltätigkeit, 380–484 (even if he ignores the rabbinic ‘praise of labour’). καλή ἐστιν ἡ φιλοξενία καὶ τῷ θεῷ ἀρέσκουσα, μάλιστα πρὸς τοὺς οἰκείους τῆς πίστεως. φησὶ δὲ καὶ ἄλλοις· περὶ δὲ τῆς φιλαδελφίας αὐτοὶ ὑμεῖς θεοδίδακτοί ἐστε εἰς τὸ ἀγαπᾶν ἀλλήλους, Ep de virgin 1.2.8, ed Funk, Patres apostolici. 183 184
‘The Doers of the Law will be justified’ (Rom 2:13) For an Adequate Perspective on Romans The following article, written as a contribution to the discussion on the correct perspective on Paul, zooms in on the remarkable second chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.1 This will occasion a consideration of the special place of Romans among Paul’s letters as reflected in its extraordinary motto, ‘to the Jew first, but also to the Greek’ (1:16). Here, the apostles’ conference in Jerusalem (Gal 2:1–10) is of special importance, as also Paul’s ‘apostolic rule of thumb’ that seems related to it: ‘Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but obeying the commandments of God’ (1 Cor 7:19). Finally, we shall try to situate this remarkable piece of Pauline correspondence in the perspective of the growing crisis of the relationship between Jews and gentiles in the years 44–66 CE. In this way the essay aims to offer a more nuanced view on the message for readers of all times that is also available in Paul’s letter to the Roman church. [184]
Romans: An Inexhaustible Source of Inspiration It is not inevitably a time-worn cliché to state that the Reformation, in the sense of a reboot of Christian faith and life, began with Luther’s discoveries in the Bible and especially Romans. The same can also be stated as part of a more sophisticated analysis of the complex process of change that was also nourished by Luther’s involvement with Augustine, in reaction to dominant Aristotelianism, and by his moral indignation over the Roman Catholic practice of indulgences, as well as by the humanist ambition of a more authentic understanding of the Bible, and possibly also by the growing social impact of early capitalism.2 1 Paper given at the joint conference of my Faculty for Protestant Theology in Brussels and the Faculty for Evangelical Theology at Leuven-Heverlee, Belgium, in May 2003, orignally published as ‘“The doers of the law will be justified” (Rom 2:13) – the unusual case of Paul’s letter to Rome’, Analecta bruxellensia 9 (2004) 123–138. [It was further elaborated and published as ‘“Die Täter des Gesetzes werden gerechtfertigt werden” (Röm 2,13) – Zu einer adäquaten Perspektive für den Römerbrief’, in Lutherische und neue Paulusperspektive (2005), edited by Michael Bachmann, for whose invitation I express my sincere gratitude. That version is now re-published in English, with additions in footnotes and a Postscript offering further interpretation of Rom 2.] 2 For Luther see Oberman, Luther; Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel, esp ch. 5. [For an
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This possibility is not contradicted but reinforced by the observation that Luther’s revelatory readings of Romans made him an early modern emulator of Augustine, the great theologian during the waning of the Roman Empire, just as Karl Barth was to become a modern one amid the ruins of Europe after the First World War. It seems that in times of great upheaval, the singular document written by 60 EC by ‘Paul, servant of Jesus the Anointed, called as emissary’ and addressing ‘all God’s beloved in Rome’ (Rom 1:1, 7), is ever again able to offer inspiration for a new vision of God, humankind, and the world. That is the particle of truth in the well-known dictum of the Reformer Philipp Melanchthon that Romans is a religionis christianae compendium.3 Nor is this insight restricted to Protestant circles either: the liberating dynamic of Romans has also found its way to important commentaries by Roman Catholic scholars.4 To that extent Karl Barth was justified in writing, in the preface to his 1919 commentary on Romans felt by many to represent a new beginning in western theology: ‘Paul, as a child of his age, addressed his contemporaries. It is, however, far more important that, as a Prophet and Apostle of the Kingdom of God, he veritably speaks to all men of every age.’5 We do not have to address now [185] the subdued objections to historical criticism Barth added. I for one am becoming ever more convinced that the painful dilemma of western theology, ‘either theology or history’, is relativised if not defused as soon as we consistently bring into the equation the adequate Jewish background of ‘Jesus the Anointed’ and of his ‘called emissary’. It becomes ever more possible to imagine how Christology could spring up from its ‘Jewish roots’6 and did not need to break Hellenistic-Christian ground first.7 Things should not be very different ‘ecumenical’ account of the Reformation(s), see Eire, Reformations, registering the impact of economic, political, technological (typography!), and intellectual processes of change in the early modern world. For the political dimension of the Reformation in the Low Countries, see Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt.] 3 See the various quotations brought by Fitzmyer, Romans, 74. 4 Cf Lagrange, Romains (in spite of bitter remarks against ‘la religion prétendue réformée’, preface, IV); Schlier, Römerbrief; Fitzmyer, Romans (cf note on δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ, Rom 1:16, 258–263); Légasse, Romains. 5 Preface to 1st ed 1919, repeated in the 2nd ed and reprints; see Barth, Römerbrief, 1st ed, 3: ‘Paulus hat als Mensch zu seinen Zeitgenossen geredet. Aber viel wichtiger als diese Wahrheit ist die andere, dass er als Prophet und Apostel des Gottesreiches zu allen Menschen aller Zeiten redet.’ ET cited: E. C. Hoskyns (1933). Cf Busch, Karl Barths Lebenslauf, 111: ‘Es war die Entdeckung der Bibel, die ihn (Barth) in Atem hielt … Und zwar speziell vom Römerbrief des Paulus …’ 6 Cf Tomson, ‘Christologie aus jüdischem Wurzelgrund’, paper for a conference with F.W. Marquardt, 1998, with title proposed by conference leader H. Lehming. See also Tomson, ‘Jesus und die messianische Prophetenlektüre’. Similar intuitions have been developed by e. g. Larry Hurtado, see Hurtado, ‘Devotion to Jesus’, in dialogue with Casey, ‘Lord Jesus Christ’. 7 Classically formulated by Bultmann, Theologie, 123–135 (§ 12), 187–190 (§ 16), developing the antithesis of ‘Antioch’ and ‘Jerusalem’ propounded by Bousset, Kyrios Christos. The criticism of Schweitzer, Mystik, 27–34 is ever relevant. Cf also below n123. [The dilemma,
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with Paul’s teachings. In any case my contribution is based on the assumption that we can better understand the prophetic message for all times when we have a more adequate idea of what the Jewish apostle to the gentiles had to say to his own contemporaries. This may be how Romans releases its liberating message for all times. In essence, it is about liberation from the hybris of human self-redemption, and it is found in the proclamation of God’s merciful acceptance of all those who believe in ‘Jesus the Anointed’. Such was the message of Barth’s polemics against ‘cultural Protestantism’ in early twentieth century Wilhelminian Germany, of Luther’s campaign against medieval indulgence morality, and of Augustin’s struggle with the Manichaean doctrine of salvation.8 A similar battle of minds must have propelled Paul’s pen. But what exactly did his polemics in Romans aim at? That is the question at the base of the debate on the adequate ‘perspective on Paul’. [186]
The Aims of the ‘New Perspective’ It is often assumed that Paul polemicised against the impossible and therefore depressing requirements of the law, from which he was liberated by the revelation of grace in Christ. This is the traditional, ‘Lutheran’ or Protestant perspective that has been the focus of renewed debate in the past three decades. It implies that the liberating thrust of Paul’s gospel was directed against Judaism and the Jewish law. The debate was triggered by an attack from two sides.9 First was the publication of Krister Stendahl’s paper, ‘The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’ (1960/1977).10 It became a landmark, not in the last place by the fierce counterattack of Ernst Käsemann, who as representative of the ‘radical historical criticism’ of the Bultmann school felt obliged ‘to defend the Reformed heritage’.11 In my view, Stendahl was right in claiming that the traditional view entails a selective reading of Paul based on the interpretation of Augustine and Luther. On the one hand, thus Stendahl, Paul did ‘theology or history’, has been most poignantly formulated, building on D. F. Strauss, by Schweitzer, Geschichte, 254: ‘entweder rein geschichtlich oder rein übernatürlich’.] 8 For Augustin and Manicheism cf van Oort–Wermelinger–Wurst, Augustine and Manichaeism. 9 It is difficult to say something new here, cf bibliography in Bachmann, ‘Keil oder Mikroskop’. I would only like to emphasize that both Sanders and Stendahl were influenced by Schweitzer’s singular approach (above n7), cf Tomson, Paul, 9–19. [See also the wide-ranging survey by Aune, ‘Recent Readings of Paul’.] 10 Stendahl, ‘The Apostle Paul’. 11 Käsemann, ‘Rechtfertigung und Heilsgeschichte’, 125. He adds that though the justification doctrine is not a ‘Nebenkrater’ of Paul’s thought, as W. Wrede and Schweitzer had it, it is ‘eine antijudaistische Kampfeslehre’.
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not share the introspective ‘conscience’ typical of Augustine and the Augustinian monk Luther. Paul had a ‘robust conscience’ that allowed him openly to avow the wrongdoings of his past while confidently awaiting God’s righteous final judgment.12 On the other hand, his struggle in Romans was not with the law as such, but with the question of how Jews and non-Jews in the Jesus community should relate to it. This was a practical question, and moreover one that [187] no longer existed as such in the days of Augustine and Luther.13 Methodologically important is that Stendahl’s approach meets the main requirement of historical criticism as formulated by F. C. Baur: Romans must not be interpreted on the basis of Protestant doctrine, but of ‘a stable historical reference point’.14 This part of the discussion leads us to conclude that if we want to approach Paul, we must find out his stance on the practical relationship of Jews and non-Jews. The point merits some more elaboration. In the traditional Protestant perspective, the focus of Romans is not on the concrete but problematic relationship of Jews and non-Jews, but on the generalised theme of human inadequacy in face of God’s commandments. More precisely, the liberating message for all times of Romans was peeled out of its embedding in the specific situation of Jews and nonJews and transplanted to a context of general anthropological questions.15 The outcome was classically formulated by Bultmann (here Käsemann was right!) in his Theology of the New Testament: ‘Every assertion about God is simultaneously an assertion about man and vice versa. For this reason and in this sense Paul’s theology is, at the same time, anthropology.’ Bultmann even thought his interpretation of Pauline ‘anthropological concepts’ such as σῶμα, ψυχή, νοῦς and καρδία explains ‘the ontological structure of human existence, as Paul sees it’.16 The anthropological-ontological interpretation of Paul that Bultmann extracted from Romans while excluding the concrete relationship of Jews and non-Jews is a Protestant classic to the extent that it seems echoed in the presentation of many other interpreters of Paul.17 Characteristic is the inner tension between the 12 Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles, 90. Cf 1 Cor 4:4; 2 Cor 5:10f. Eckstein, Der Begriff Syneidesis bei Paulus shows that the ‘introspective conscience’ is a post-Luther phenomenon. 13 Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles, 1–5. 14 Baur, ‘Über Zweck und Veranlassung’, 202 (ed Scholder, 114): ‘Hiemit haben wir nun erst einen festen historischen Punkt …’ [The foothold Baur thought to have found (Acts 28) is untenable, however, see Tomson, ‘Romans 9–11 and Political Events’, 51f.] 15 Cf Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles, 2f: ‘The lost centrality of “Jews and Gentiles” is most clearly to be felt in a study of Romans. … In Romans, … Paul speaks about Jews.’ Romans was generalised to the extent that its ‘patterns of thought are lifted into the position of overarching and organizing principles for the Pauline material’. 16 Bultmann, Theology, 191, 227 (Theologie, 192, 227), emphasis as in the original German [gendered language as in Grobel’s 1950 translation – in English, there is no Mensch!]. 17 Thus the former Bultmann student Conzelmann, Grundriß der Theologie des NT, but also, by structure, Ridderbos, Paulus and even Dunn, Theology of the Apostle Paul. See n15 above for Stendahl’s altogether pertinent remarks.
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now generalised – and thus yet more unattainable – requirements of God’s law and his graceful justice. In the Calvinist variant, the tension has even become a painful paradox, as [188] the axiomatic condemnation of humans by the law remains, while at the same time they remain obliged to observe its practical commandments. It is also true that the Calvinist variant preserves a clear reminiscence of the basis that for Paul stood above all dispute: ‘The law is sacred, and the commandment is sacred, just, and good’ (Rom 7:12).18 The second attack on the traditional Protestant perspective was E. P. Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977). The first of its two parts develops the description of Palestinian Judaism with the phrase become classical, ‘covenantal nomism’. It means that as a Jew one does not observe the commandments in order to merit divine grace and thus to get into the covenant, but in order to respond to divine grace and stay in the covenant. The cliché of Judaism as a religion of ‘righteousness by deeds’ entertained in close collaboration by Christian scholars of Judaism and of the New Testament is completely off the mark. Picking up on a fundamental essay by George Foot Moore from 1921,19 Sanders made that very clear in his introductory chapter, probably the most decisive part of his book. However, the concept of ‘covenantal nomism’ is a simplification that has not escaped justified criticism. The most adequate assessment was given by Friedrich Avemarie in his study of the ‘aspect-driven’ (aspekthafte) nature of rabbinic soteriology, i. e., its formulaic variation as circumstances change.20 From this part of the discussion we retain that if we want to understand Paul correctly, we must view him in an adequate perspective on early Judaism.21 [189] The second part of Sanders’ book aims at explaining Paul’s thought. Briefly an curtly stated, it is based on the methodological error of trying to interpret Paul without any relation to Judaism at all, against the tenor of Sanders’ whole project. Thus he ended up formulating the tautological sentence, ‘This is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity’.22 It leaves us completely in the dark as to how such an early ‘Christianity’ might relate to Judaism. 18 Cf the approach of von der Osten-Sacken, Die Heiligkeit der Tora. See below n68. [For the Calvinist variety of Protestantism see my forthcoming article, ‘Protestantism and Judaism: The Law in the Heidelberg Catechism’.] 19 Moore, ‘Christian Writers on Judaism’. 20 Avemarie, Tora und Leben; idem, ‘Erwählung und Vergeltung’. Cf the approval (‘profound’) of Stuhlmacher, ‘Christus Jesus ist hier, der gestorben ist’, 352. Yet I think Stuhlmacher’s criticism of ‘“optional” Pharisaic soteriology’ (353, 358) betrays a ‘systematic’ misunderstanding of rabbinic soteriology: even if aspect-driven, it is not at all noncommittal. Paul’s criticism would not target the structural disposition of Pharisaic soteriology, which he shared and which already is diverse in itself, but its position on Jesus and his significance. I agree with the evaluation of Avemarie’s work by Dunn, ‘A Response to Peter Stuhlmacher’, 365–367. 21 Here, Sanders’ further work is very helpful, esp Judaism, Practice and Belief. 22 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 552. Cf Dunn, ‘The New Perspective on Paul’ (1990), 186: Sanders explains Paul without referring to his novel descriptive concept of Judaism, ‘covenantal nomism’.
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Five years later, James Dunn, acutely sensing a sea change going on, proclaimed ‘the new perspective on Paul’.23 Linking up with Sanders, Dunn wrote that the axiom of an antithesis between the depressing legalism of Judaism and the law-free gospel of Paul is seriously misleading. Clearer still is the formulation in Dunn’s Theology of the Apostle Paul (1998), whose table of contents, incidentally, reveals the predominance of Romans: the new perspective means in the first place that Paul’s thought is no longer24 understood as ‘a reaction and antithesis against Judaism’. As an undercurrent of the sea change, Dunn perceives in particular the impact of the Holocaust.25 Dunn also reflects the influence of Stendahl when trying to consider Paul’s stance on the relation of Jews and nonJews in the Church in comparison with a better understanding of Judaism. Dunn took his departure – most helpfully, as we shall see – from Gal 2:15f. Here Paul reprimands his fellow-apostle Peter because he had started to refrain from common meals with gentile Christians: ‘We, ourselves Jews by birth and not gentile sinners, we know that a person is justified not by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ!’ Paul’s intention was not that Peter and other [190] Jewish Christians give up their Judaism as such,26 but only that they omit the emphasis on the ‘works of the law’ in the sense of the ‘identity markers’ that separate Jews as those belonging to the covenant from non-Jews: circumcision, Sabbath, and dietary laws. Dunn thought this explanation is supported by the Hebrew equivalent of ‘works of the law’ found at Qumran, מעשי תורה. The criticism was justly advanced, however, that this Qumranic concept, like the related עושי תורה, ‘doers of the law’, refers to Tora commandments in general.27 More fundamentally, abolishing such central commandments as constitute Jewish identity would equal abolishing Judaism, which in Dunn’s understanding of the new perspective was precisely what Paul did not intend to do. Ultimately, this explanation, further developed in Dunn’s Theology, leaves in doubt whether 23 Dunn ibid. In the present context I can discuss only the fundamental studies of Stendahl, Sanders, and Dunn. For further literature see Bachmann, ‘Keil oder Mikroskop’. 24 See, however, Käsemann, above n11. 25 Dunn, Theology of the Apostle Paul, 335–340, quote 336. Dunn links the ‘new perspective’ on Judaism with the simultaneous détente in the debate about the Reformation. We could even be more specific and distinguish the following successive themes in the debate on Paul (cf Tomson, Paul, 1ff): (1) the practical value of the Jewish law, in Paul’s own time; (2) the theological value of the law, since the Reformation; (3) the historical value of the Jewish sources, since the 19th century. On the structure of Dunn’s book see above n17. 26 Thus apparently the meaning of the somewhat unclear passage in Dunn, ‘The New Perspective on Paul’, 196. 27 On מעשי תורהsee Bachmann, ‘Keil oder Mikroskop’; on both phrases, below nn60–65, 90. The Halakhic Letter 4QMMT, a ‘selection of works of law’ according to its epilogue, deals with halakhot on calendar, priests, and purity. Re. Bachmann’s observations on the ambivalence of ‘commandments’ or ‘deeds’ of Tora, it is interesting that the rabbinic verb לעשוק בתורהand the noun הלכותalways elicit the question whether ‘study’ or ‘doing’ is meant. [See also the concise discussion by Fitzmyer, Romans, 338, criticising Dunn’s interpretation.]
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Jewish Christians according to Paul should continue observing the Tora commandments.28 In another study on ‘works of the law’, however, Dunn emphasized that Paul did not attack the law as such, but ‘a particular and restrictive understanding of the law’.29 That is a helpful distinction, worth being explored by studying Romans in comparison with contemporaneous Jewish writings and actually existing conceptions of the law. This we shall undertake in the following, while studying the remarkable, ‘Jewish-looking’ second chapter of Romans. We shall gradually unfold the character, structure, and function of the chapter in the course of our study. [191]
Synagogue Language in Rom 2:4–11 A close reading of Romans 2 reveals that the first half of the chapter does not quite resemble Paul’s characteristic style but rather sounds like traditional Greek synagogue language.30 There is a frequent ‘heaping of synonyms and half-synonyms’, as we know this from Jewish prayer language,31 the florid style found also, for example, in the exordium of the Epistle to the Ephesians. Furthermore, there are similarities with the Wisdom of Solomon to the extent of inspiring the theory that Rom 2 paraphrases chapters 11–15 of this document.32 Indeed, those chapters emphasize Israel’s solidarity in sin with all of humanity, which is a main theme in Rom 1–2. As we shall see, there are several other Jewish writings that come in for comparison with this passage in Paul. Apparently, the apostle could on occasion adopt the language of a synagogue preacher – thus confirming his narrated portrait in Acts. These preliminary observations become more pronounced when we take in that the first half of Romans features the popular ‘diatribe’ style that addresses readers in the second person as imaginary partners in conversation.33 Thus for example: 28 Dunn, Theology of the Apostle Paul, 354–366, cf 364, ‘… To remove “works of the law” from the equation was to remove the blockage which prevented the gospel from reaching out beyond the boundaries of Israel marked by the law’; 366, ‘… The “works” which Paul consistently warns against were, in his view, Israel’s misunderstanding of what her covenant law required.’ Similarly Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 101–105 (103, ‘reduction of the law … circumcision, Sabbat observance, and dietary restrictions’), although insisting on the distinction between Jewish and gentile Christians a couple of times. 29 Dunn, ‘Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law’, 231. 30 Schmithals, Römerbrief, 86, referring to L. Mattern and O. Michel. On Sanders see below. 31 Cranfield, Romans, 144. 32 A. Nygren, see Cranfield ibid. 138, 141. 33 Bultmann, Der Stil der Paulinischen Predigt, with comments by Stowers, The Diatribe and Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 17–25; on the matter at hand ibid. 93–96, 110–112. [See also helpful survey in Thorsteinsson, Paul’s Interlocutor in Romans 2, ch. 3.]
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Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others. … Do you imagine that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? (Rom 2:1–3)
We can well imagine this popular style being used in a Greek-speaking synagogue. In view of the following, it is very interesting that we also find it in the Epistle of James.34 Not only language and style, also the idiom directs our attention to a Hellenistic synagogue as a possible Sitz im Leben. The following table analyses the idiom of the chapter, one by one comparing main concepts from Rom 2:4–11 [192] with similar Greek-Jewish, Jewish-Christian, and rabbinic texts.35
34 Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus, 56f; Mussner, Jakobusbrief, 29f; Burchard, Jakobusbrief, 9, 14. [For Paul’s Greek-Jewish education involving synagogue rhetoric see the monographic essay by Hengel, ‘Der vorchristliche Paulus’, 151–156.] 35 Garlington, Faith, Obedience and Perseverance, 56–58 gives some Jewish parallels. Cf Dunn, Theology of the Apostle Paul, 136, ‘…[E]xhortations similar to Rom. 2.13 can readily be documented from near contemporary Jewish sources’, referring in the footnote to Deut and 1 Macc; also, for Rom 2:6, Dunn, Romans 1–8, 85, 97.
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Rom 2:4–11 Compared with Jewish and Jewish-Christian Sources (4)
(5)
ἢ τοῦ πλούτου τῆς χρηστότητος αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς ἀνοχῆς καὶ τῆς μακροθυμίας καταφρονεῖς, ἀγνοῶν ὅτι τὸ χρηστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ εἰς μετάνοιάν σε ἄγει; – Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? κατὰ δὲ τὴν σκληρότητά σου καὶ ἀμετανόητον καρδίαν – But by your hard and impenitent heart θησαυρίζεις σεαυτῷ ὀργὴν – you are storing up wrath for yourself
ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ὀργῆς on the day of wrath, καὶ ἀποκαλύψεως δικαιοκρισίας τοῦ θεοῦ [193] when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. (6)
(7)
ὃς ἀποδώσει ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ, ‘For he will repay according to each one’s deeds’: τοῖς μὲν καθ’ ὑπομονὴν ἔργου ἀγαθοῦ to those who by patiently doing good
– cf PsSal 18:1, ἡ χρηστότης σου μετὰ δόματος πλουσίου, ‘Your goodness rich with gifts’; WisSal 15:1f, Σὺ δέ, ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν, χρηστὸς καὶ ἀληθής, μακρόθυμος … καὶ γὰρ ἐὰν ἁμάρτωμεν, ‘But you, o God, are goodly and faithful, longsuffering … even when we have sinned.’ (Cranfield, Romans, 144). – ἀμετανόητος, ‘unrepentant’, a rare, typically Jewish and Christian word, cf TGad 7:5, ἀμετανοήτῷ τηρεῖ εἰς αἰῶνα τὴν κόλασιν, ‘The punishment for the unrepentant He will save forever.’ – θησαυρίζεις σεαυτῷ, ‘you store up for yourself’ – cf Tob 4:8f, ‘Do not be afraid to give alms from your poverty, so you will be laying up a good treasure for yourself (θησαυρίζεις σεαυτῷ) against the day of necessity’; and Matt 6:19f, μὴ θησαυρίζετε ὑμῖν θησαυροὺς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.’ Similarly, in yPea 1:1 (15b) (cf tPea 4:18f), king Monobazos, a proselyte who gave away his fortune to the poor, says, אבותי גנזו בארץ ואני גנזתי בשמים, ‘My fathers have stored up on earth, I have stored up in heaven.’ The relation with the ‘earthly’ meaning in Jas 5:3 is clear from comparison with Matt 6:19f. – ἡμέρα ὀργῆς, ‘the day of wrath’, is from the OT of course, cf Zeph 1:14f. – δικαιοκρισίας τοῦ θεοῦ, ‘the righteous judgment of God’, is also rare and appears in TLevi 3:2 and 15:2. Also, Qumranic ( משפטי צדק1QH 1:23, 30; 1QS 4:4) has been surmised (Fitzmyer, Romans, 301; Wilckens, Römer, 125f). – ὃς ἀποδώσει, etc.: a set phrase in the OT, see below. – cf Jas 1:4, ἡ δὲ ὑπομονὴ ἔργον τέλειον ἐχέτω, ‘Let endurance have its full effect’.
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δόξαν καὶ τιμὴν καὶ ἀφθαρσίαν ζητοῦσιν, seek for glory and honor and immortality, ζωὴν αἰώνιον, (he will give) eternal life; (8)
– δόξαν καὶ τιμὴν, ‘glory and honour’ – a well-known couple, see Mal 14:21; LXX Job 40:10 (cf Fitzmyer, Romans, 302). – ζωὴν αἰώνιον, ‘eternal life’, is found in Daniel (12:2) as in PsSal 3:12 (see below, and cf 2 Macc 7:9; 4 Macc 15:3). – ὀργὴ καὶ θυμός, ‘wrath and anger’, is found, e. g., in Jer 7:20; 51:6; Ps 68:25; Isa 10:25; Nah 10:25.
τοῖς δὲ ἐξ ἐριθείας καὶ ἀπειθοῦσι τῇ ἀληθείᾳ πειθομένοις δὲ τῇ ἀδικίᾳ ὀργὴ καὶ θυμός – while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, (there will be) wrath and fury. (9) θλῖψις καὶ στενοχωρία – θλῖψις καὶ στενοχωρία, ‘suffering and There will be anguish and distress anguish’, is also biblical: Deut 28:53, 55, 57; Isa 8:22; 30:6 (Lagrange, Romains, 46); LXX Esth 1:1g. ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ψυχὴν ἀνθρώπου τοῦ κατερ- – ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ψυχὴν ἀνθρώπου, ‘upon every soul of humans’: a Semitism, see γαζομένου τὸ κακόν, Isa 13:7. for every human soul who does evil, Ἰουδαίου τε πρῶτον καὶ Ἕλληνος· the Jew first and also the Greek; (10) δόξα δὲ καὶ τιμὴ καὶ εἰρήνη παντὶ τῷ – δόξα δὲ καὶ τιμὴ – was mentioned in ἐργαζομένῳ τὸ ἀγαθόν, v7; a chiastic structure is seen in v7–10. but glory and honour and peace for everyone who does good, [194] Ἰουδαίῳ τε πρῶτον καὶ Ἕλληνι· the Jew first and also the Greek. (11) οὐ γάρ ἐστιν προσωπολημψία παρὰ τῷ – προσωπολημψία – exclusive to the NT (Eph 6:9; Col 3:25; Jas 2:1), but also a θεῷ. clear OT-Jewish background, cf 1 Esdr For God shows no partiality. 4:39, οὐκ ἔστιν παρ’ αὐτῇ λαμβάνειν πρόσωπα οὐδὲ διάφορα, ‘With her (truth) there is no partiality or discrimination.’
As hinted at, there is a chiastic pattern in these verses: merit – punishment/ punishment – merit. Also, an apocalyptic dualism is evoked reminiscent of the end of Daniel, as also of the less well-known end of the third Psalm of Solomon: The downfall of the sinner is forever and he will not be remembered when the righteous will be visited. Such is the sinners’ destiny forever. But those who fear the Lord will arise to eternal life, their lives are in the light of the Lord, they will never end. (PsSal 3:11f)36 Cf John 5:28f.
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It is also clear that Paul adapts this piece of ‘synagogue sermon’ by weaving vv9–11 into the overarching theme announced in the motto of the letter: the respective retribution of sinners and righteous ones concerns ‘the Jew first, and also the Greek’. We must also consider the position of the passage in its context, while keeping in mind the methodological assumption that Paul’s letters feature complex dynamics that often cannot be represented in two-dimensional structures. It is generally accepted that Rom 1:16f – ‘to the Jew first, and also to the Greek’ – represents a motto for the entire argument that follows. A first larger section runs at least till 3:20, although one could also read on through the exposition about ‘righteousness outside of the law’ after the example of Abraham.37 Within 1:16–3:20, several main parts can be distinguished. An important question that not [195] always finds a clear answer is: who are being addressed, Jews or nonJews?38 There are two reasons for distinguishing a first part as running on till 2:9–11: (1) in 2:9f, the double repetition of the motto creates an inclusion with its first mention in 1:16f; (2) in 2:12, the new key word νόμος appears and frequently returns till 3:20. In the first part thus delineated, two groups are accused that are only vaguely indicated. The first one (1:18–32) consists of those who transgress the prohibitions against idolatry and sexual misbehaviour that ‘can be read from creation’ (cf 1:20) – pagans, in other words;39 the second one (2:1–9) of those who believe that they can condemn the first ones (2:1!), but are themselves equally culpable, because – in patent ‘synagogue language’ (2:4–9) – it is all about ‘deeds’: here, Jews are meant. However, the repetition of the motto that then follows reminds readers that the letter not only is about Jews, ‘but also Greeks’, who are equally judged by their deeds, both negatively (2:9b) and positively: ‘Glory and honour and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek, for God shows no partiality’ (2:10f). Continued analysis through Rom 3:20 will show further remarks on non-Jews being inserted into discourse addressing Jews. 37 The connection made between Hab 2:4 (Rom 1:17) and Gen 15:6 (Rom 4:3) is obvious not just for Paul but also for the rabbis, cf the panegyric גדולה האמונה, MekRY beshallah/vayehi 6 (p114f); MekRS 15:1 (p70); and the link made in ExodR 23.6. The association is also obvious in Qumran, see below re. 1QpHab and 4QMMT. Seen in this light, Rom 1–4 gives the impression of elaborating a theme familiar to the author. 38 Cf the division proposed by Bell, No One seeks for God, 11f, 17–19: the first part of 1:16–3:20 runs till 2:16, because 2:1–16 addresses Jews and non-Jews, and only in 2:17 Jews are targeted separately. Others view 2:1–3:20 as a central part addressing Jews (Schlier, Römerbrief, 66; Cranfield, Romans, 136). Cf also Dunn, Romans 1–8, 78f. 39 Hardly incidental, these ‘conspicuous’ commandments coincide with the first two of the three main commandments that according to an apparently ancient tradition was incumbent on all humanity, see Flusser–Safrai, ‘Das Aposteldekret und die Noachitischen Gebote’; and, somewhat differently, Bockmuehl, ‘The Noachide Commandments’. The same two universal commandments underly 1 Cor 5–10.
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‘Retribution According to Deeds’ (Rom 2:6) It is worthwhile to study our piece of ‘synagogue language’ in more depth. The phrase, ὃς ἀποδώσει ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ, ‘For he will repay all according to their deeds’ (Rom 2:6), may seem most remarkable for Paul, but it is proverbial in the language of the Old Testament [196] and Jewish tradition.40 As indicated by the italic typeface in Nestle-Aland, it occurs twice in near-identical form in the Bible: Prov 24:12, ὃς ἀποδίδωσιν ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ, ‘Who will repay all according to their deeds’, and Ps 62:12(61:13), ὅτι σὺ ἀποδώσεις ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ, ‘For you repay to all according to their deeds.’ Moreover, the verbal compound, (ἀπο)δίδωμι … κατὰ τὰ ἔργα, occurs in five other Septuagint passages.41 Comparison with the Hebrew shows various underlying equivalents, and it is similar with the usage of these phrases elsewhere.42 Thus, in underpinning his argument, Paul evidently appeals to sound Old Testament and Jewish retribution doctrine. The idea as such that the Deity repays mortals according to their deeds is of course neither unique to the Old Testament nor to Jewish tradition. It is universal and is basic, for instance, to classic Greek drama. It receives a special colouring, however, when connected with the Tora of Moses and its commandments, considered incumbent on every adult Jew. Its presence in Hellenistic Jewish writings does not surprise,43 but it is equally at home in early Jewish literature including rabbinic writings, and moreover it is found in the Jesus tradition and elsewhere in the New Testament as also in patristic tradition, as we shall see. Let us review some examples from this wider context of Paul. An example of the same phrase, ἀποδίδωμι κατὰ τὰ ἔργα, is found44 in a judgment scene evoked by the early Jewish aristocrat, Ben Sira: ‘… Until he repays mortals according to their deeds, and the works of all according to their thoughts’ (Sir 35,22[24]).45 Even more important for us is an example from the Psalms of Solomon, a collection of hymns about the Jewish people and their holy city dating from the first century BCE, whose extant Greek without doubt is a translation from the Hebrew.46 The second psalm mentions pagans who with their sandals have trampled and almost destroyed the Temple floor. This is seen as a punishment of God, ‘because the children of [197] Jerusalem have made the Dunn, Romans 1–8, 85. 27:29 LXX (50:29); Ps 27:4; Lam 3:64; PsSal 2:16; 2:3. 42 The Hebrew equivalents are לשלםor להשיבand מעשהor פעל. Cf more remote parallels in Isa 3:11; Sir 16:12, 34 (see below); PsSal 17:8. 43 E. g. Philo of Alexandria, see Heinemann, Bildung, 349–383. 44 I gladly acknowledge the permission of the UCal Governors for using the TLG in this publication. 45 ἕως ἀνταποδῷ ἀνθρώπῳ κατὰ τὰς πράξεις αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰ ἔργα τῶν ἀνθρώπων κατὰ τὰ ἐνθυμήματα αὐτῶν. Hebrew: 35:22, וגמול אדם כמזמתו,עד ישיב לאנוש פעלו. 46 R. B. Wright in OTP 2: 639–650. 40 Cf
41 Jer
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holy things of the Lord impure, and have desecrated the gifts of God with unlawful deeds’ (PsSal 2:2f). The conclusion follows, ‘I will justify you, o Lord … for you repay sinners according to their deeds’ (ὅτι ἀπέδωκας τοῖς ἁμαρτολοῖς κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτῶν, PsSal 2:15f). Then, however, the foreign commander (Pompey?) instrumental in the punishment is called a ‘dragon’ acting in hybris, a usual motif that also appears in Revelation, for instance.47 Hence he cannot escape God’s just punishment either, the author says, referring now to the Roman occupier: ‘The grace of the Lord is upon those who fear him, … to separate between the just and the sinners, to repay sinners according to their deeds forever’ (ἀποδοῦναι ἁμαρτολοῖς κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτῶν, 2:33f). The universal scope of these verses, pronouncing one single divine judgment on Jews and Greeks disrespectful of the law alike, illuminates our passage in Paul. As we said, the idea of retribution according to deeds is frequent not only in the Old Testament, but also the New. Similar, even identical, phrases are found, always in connection with the imminent or future judgment of God. Thus according to Matt 16:27, ‘The son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.’48 Similarly, 2 Tim 4:14 says on account of the troublesome coppersmith Alexander, ‘The Lord will pay him back for his deeds’;49 Rev 2:23 warns the ‘Jezebel church’ of Thyatira, ‘I will give to each of you as your works deserve’;50 and Rev 22:12, ‘See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work.’51 Furthermore, 1 Pet 1:17 expresses the impartiality of the divine judge in similar language as Rom 2:11, ‘… Who judges all people impartially according to their deeds’.52 Finally, it becomes very clear that the idea of retribution belongs fully to Paul’s thought world, when he writes in 1 Cor 3:13 about Apollos and himself: [198] ‘The work of each builder will become visible, … and the fire will test what sort of work each has done.’53 Clearly, the little sentence in Rom 2:6 that God ‘will repay according to each one’s deeds’ encapsulates the idea of retribution as this is shared by both early Jews and Christians. This becomes more pronounced by the use made of another key word, κρίνειν, ‘to judge’.54 Cf Van Henten, ‘Antiochus IV as a Typhonic Figure in Daniel 7’. ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὴν πρᾶξιν [ *אet al. τὰ ἔργα] αὐτοῦ. It is only probable that various interpretive traditions circulated. It appears to be an instance of Matthaean redaction, cf the parallels, Mark 8:38; Luke 9:26. 49 ἀποδώσει αὐτῷ ὁ κύριος κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ. 50 δώσω ὑμῖν ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα ὑμῶν [ὑμῶν, – ]*א. 51 ἀποδοῦναι ἑκάστῳ ὡς τὸ ἔργον ἐστὶν αὐτοῦ. 52 τὸν ἀπροσωπολήμπτως κρίνοντα κατὰ τὸ ἑκάστου ἔργον. 53 ἑκάστου τὸ ἔργον φανερὸν γενήσεται … καὶ ἑκάστου τὸ ἔργον ὁποῖόν ἐστιν τὸ πῦρ [αὐτὸ] δοκιμάσει. 54 Cf esp Rom 14, e. g. v10, σὺ δὲ τί κρίνεις τὸν ἀδελφόν σου – referring (as in Rom 2:1) to the relation of Jews and non-Jews, see 15:8f, at the end of the pericope: περιτομή – ἔθνη. 47
48 ἀποδώσει
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Διὸ ἀναπολόγητος εἶ, ὦ ἄνθρωπε πᾶς ὁ κρίνων· ἐν ᾧ γὰρ κρίνεις τὸν ἕτερον, σεαυτὸν κατακρίνεις, τὰ γὰρ αὐτὰ πράσσεις ὁ κρίνων. Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. (Rom 2:1)
The same key word is found elsewhere in Romans, especially in chapter 14, and remarkably, there, too, in view of the relation between Jews and non-Jews. We shall come back to that. Meanwhile Rom 2:1 expresses a thought that is known in the form of a saying both in the synoptic and the rabbinic tradition, as already noted by Bultmann:55 Μὴ κρίνετε, ἵνα μὴ κριθῆτε· ἐν ᾧ γὰρ κρίματι κρίνετε κριθήσεσθε, καὶ ἐν ᾧ μέτρῳ μετρεῖτε μετρηθήσεται ὑμῖν. Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. (Matt 7:1f)56
The lapidary way in which the saying appears in the rabbinic law collections, Mishna and Tosefta, reveals that it functions proverbially there as well and thus may be much older than its present contexts. The latter part of the saying reads as follows: במידה שאדם מודד בה מודדין לו. With the measure someone uses, they will measure him.57 [199]
In all cases, the third person plural active verb (in the Hebrew) and the third person singular passive verb (in the Greek) denote the divine judgment, which, however, may be executed by human action. The same idea is found in another application, without the saying, in one of the characteristic passages on the law in the Epistle of James: So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy … (Jas 2:12f)
Evidently, it concerns a typically ‘Pharisaic’ idea that also is at home in Matthew and in James. Its use in Rom 2 is all the more significant.
Bultmann, Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, 112. NRSV has found a concise and elegant solution for the problem of translating the saying, cf the German Einheitsübersetzung: ‘Nach dem Maß, mit dem ihr meßt und zuteilt, wird euch zugeteilt werden.’ 57 mSot 1:7 (ms K); tSot 3:1. It is also found in the form ‘measure for measure’ (מדה כנגד מדה or )מדה במדה. See Str-Bill 1: 444–446, and further parallels and observations in Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 8: 636. 55 56
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Justification of the Doers of the Law (Rom 2:13) Let us repeat: Rom 1:16–3:20 is divided in two parts at 2:9–11, the first (1:16– 31) aiming at idolatrous gentiles, and the second (2:1–11) at Jews – while v9f again draws non-Jews in. The verse following next sounds the new key word νόμος, characteristic of the second part, 2:12–3:20.58 Nevertheless, at the same time the preceding discourse of one judgment of ‘Jews first but also Greeks’ is continued. In 2:12 it is stated in reverse order with the help of the new key word: those who have sinned ἀνόμως, ‘without law’, will be judged ἀνόμως; but those who did so ἐν νόμῳ, ‘having the law’, will indeed be judged διὰ νόμου, ‘by the law’. That seems to address Jews once again. As a matter of fact, so much is expressed by a Jewish-sounding sentence (2:13) to which we will turn in a moment. However, this is at once further explained by referring to non-Jews who ‘do instinctively what the law requires, … to which their own conscience also bears witness’ (2:14f). Again, it first seem to concern Jews, while non-Jews are not excluded. Thus in Rom 2:12 the new key word νόμος opens up a new section, while also continuing the preceding argument. In this way, a complex structure is created, in which Paul repeats with explicit reference to the ‘law’ what he just has explained ‘anonymously’, or should we say, ‘anomously’. In that context, the verse is heard that concerns us here: [200] οὐ γὰρ οἱ ἀκροαταὶ νόμου δίκαιοι παρὰ [τῷ] θεῷ, ἀλλ’ οἱ ποιηταὶ νόμου δικαιωθήσονται. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. (Rom 2:13)59
The sentence and its components sound formulaic, and we shall not greatly err by suspecting another bit of ‘synagogue language’. Already the anarthrous compound ποιηταὶ νόμου, ‘doers of the law’, draws the attention; we shall come to it. That a formula is involved is clear from the Hebrew equivalent עושי התורה found in the Qumran scrolls, as already mentioned. A conspicuous example appears in the Qumran Habakkuk pesher, which, commenting on the consecutive verses of the prophet, uses the phrase in question twice, once in connection with the very verse Paul uses when announcing the motto of Romans (Rom 1:17): Dunn, Romans 1–8, 94f. Unlike other modern translations, NRSV translates the simple phrasing of the apostle literally, cf once again the Einheitsübersetzung: ‘Nicht die sind vor Gott gerecht, die das Gesetz hören, sondern er wird die für gerecht erklären, die das Gesetz tun.’ [The crude Greek phrasing must be intentional and may echo the word play of a Hebrew or Aramaic saying, e. g. שומעי תורה versus שומרי תורה, and see below n62. F. Delitzsch translates – עושי תורה שומעי תורה, which is interesting in view of the Qumran finds, see next note. The translation into ‘modern Hebrew’ of the Bible Society of Israel obfuscates the word play.] 58 Similarly 59
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Though it might tarry, wait for it; it definitely has to come and will not delay (Hab 2:3b). Its interpretation ( )פשרוconcerns the men of truth, those who observe the law ()עושי התורה (…) [But the righteous one will live through his faithfulness, Hab 2:4b] – its interpretation concerns all observing the law in the house of Judah, whom God will free from the house of judgment on account of their toil and of their faithfulness ( )עמלם ואמנתםto the Teacher of Righteousness. (1QpHab 7:10f; 8:1–3)60
It is most interesting how the phrase, ‘the righteous one will live through his faith(fulness)’, is interpreted in view of ‘the doers of the law’. The mention of the Teacher of Righteousness in this context is hardly accidental, as we shall yet see. Another example, written in (or translated into) Greek and possibly not very close to Qumran, spiritually, is found in 1 Maccabees, in the address of Mattathias before he dies. The courageous leader of the revolt against the idolatrous cult imposed by the Greek-Syrian kings, certain now of the support of the lawabiding ‘Asideans’, says among other things: Now, my children, show zeal for the law, and give your lives for the covenant of our ancestors. … Was not Abraham found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness? (Αβρααμ οὐχὶ ἐν πειρασμῷ εὑρέθη πιστός, καὶ ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην;) … You shall rally around you all who observe the law (ποιητὰς τοῦ νόμου) …61 [201]
The zeal of the ‘doers of the law’ for the covenant with the patriarchs and the commandments will be reckoned to them as righteousness, as it was for Abraham in his trial-proof faithfulness. The last quotation is remarkable in that this time round, the phrase under study has the article, ποιητὰς τοῦ νόμου, as distinct from the form found in Paul that we may now label as semiticising;62 we already mentioned the Hebrew equivalent, and we shall come back to this. Surprisingly, the Church Fathers cite the verse from Paul mostly in the ‘graecised’ form it also has in 1 Maccabees.63 In Anti quity, the phrase ποιητής in our sense is not found outside Jewish and Christian sources, but ἀκροατής is, in the common meaning of ‘listener’ or ‘student’ (of 60 Cf also פתאי יהודה עושי התורה, 1QpHab 12:4f; את עושי התורה אשר בעצת היחד, 4QpPsa [4Q171] 2:15; 2:23. לעשות את התורהis (late) biblical usage, see Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus, 108 n5 (Sir 19:20, ποίησις νόμου // )עשות תורה. 61 1 Macc 2:50, 52, 67. The Asideans are mentioned in 2:42. [᾿Ασιδαῖοι doubtlessly renders Aramaic חסידיא.] 62 BDR § 2583, p208 (‘Hart ist Röm 2,13 οἱ ἀκροαταὶ νόμου’) and § 259 (where this compound actually belongs): ‘Nicht selten fehlt … unter hebr. Einfluß beim regierenden Nomen der Artikel.’ A reference to Rom 2:13 in twofold spelling (see next note) would be a worthwhile addition to the list in § 2592. 63 With the article: Chrysostom (8×), Evagrius (5×), Maximus Conf. (3×), Theodoret, Origen, and Epiphanius (each 2×), Eusebius and Basilius once each. Without the article: Origen, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Epiphanius each once (following TLG).
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philosophers).64 In a Greek-Jewish play on words then, ἀκροατής (τοῦ) νόμου would rather sound like ‘student of the law’, while ποιητής (τοῦ) νόμου would designate the actual ‘doer’. Here, an enlightening link emerges with the rabbinic and synoptic traditions, where it is stated variously that any ‘listening’ or ‘studying’ without actual ‘doing’ is fruitless and senseless.65 There is a significant link with the Epistle of James that we shall discuss in a moment. Meanwhile it is very significant that the phrase λογίζεσθαι εἰς δικαιοσύνην is used here with a view on law observance. The phrase as well has been found in Hebrew at Qumran, at the end of the so-called Halakhic Letter, and remarkably, again in connection with the ‘deeds’ or ‘works of the law’: And also we have written you some of the works of the Tora (… )מקצת מעשי התורה And it shall be reckoned to you as justice ( )ונחשבה לך לצדקהwhen you do what is upright and good before him …66 [202]
Two observations are in place. Firstly, it appears ever more clearly that Rom 2:13 uses existing terminology related to heroic law observance, which only underscores our question how Paul could have meant this. Secondly, pre-Christian sources both in Hebrew and Greek incontrovertibly document the midrashic utilization of the phrases ‘reckon as justice’ (Gen 15:6) and ‘live righteously by faith’ (Hab 2:4). Moreover the connection of both elements seems obvious in the Qumran texts, because on the one hand, obeying the specific injunctions in the Halakhic Letter is called ‘righteousness reckoned to’ (those who do so), and on the other, obeying the Teacher of Righteousness is called salutary ‘faith(fulness)’. Precisely these are two well-known corner stones of Paul’s ‘justification doctrine’. Here, however, they are not applied to ‘faith without works’ (as they are in Gal 2:16; 3:5, or Rom 3:20, 28; 4:6) but precisely to the observance of the law! It sounds like Paul upside down. Or is it the other way around? Indeed, David Flusser has suggested that Paul took the ideas of unfathomable human sin and undeserved divine grace typical of the Qumran Hymns (Hodayot) and turned them upside down by combining them with the very different Cynic-Stoic idea of the insufficiency of divine and human law. Flusser saw this as an ‘illegitimate connection’ in the sense Rudolf Otto used this phrase, targeting the supposedly
64 Similarly Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus, 108: ποιητὴς λόγου ‘for Greeks would mean a rhetor’, ποιητὴς νόμου, ‘a lawmaker’; Burchard, Jakobusbrief, 84f: ‘ποιητής heißt pagan “Schöpfer, Dichter”.’ 65 Cf Dibelius ibid. 109. See, e. g., Matt 7:21–23; Matt 7:24–27 // Luke 6:47–49; mAv 1:17 (Shimon ben Gamliel); 3:9 (R. Hanina ben Dosa); 3:17 (R. Elazar ben Azaria); 4:5 (R. Yishmael son of R. Levitas); 5:14 (anonymous); and further references in Str-Bill 3: 86f. Jas 1:22–25; 4:11 belongs here; see below. 66 4Q398 fr 14–17 col. II 2f,7 = 4QMMT C 25–31.
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un-Jewish character of Paul’s gospel of ‘faith alone without works of the law’.67 With all due respect to my late teacher, I cannot consider this an adequate explanation. It could very well be that Paul has taken up the existing topos of ‘righteousness by faith in doing the law’ and used it polemically. It is hardly likely, however, that in so doing he has ruled out any law observance. This would not only contradict a series of positive statements about the law and the commandments in Romans.68 More than anything, it is extremely unlikely in view of what Paul wrote in Rom 2. [203]
Romans 2 and the Epistle of James The remarkable character of Rom 2 comes more into profile when we compare it with the Epistle of James, a relationship often discussed.69 As to the date of James, apart from the lack of corroborative information (or more simply our lack of imaginative power), I see no reason why ‘the brother of the Lord’ could not have written the letter around 60 CE in Jerusalem,70 out of concern over the rumours encircling Paul.71 But we shall leave that aside. What is important for us is what ‘James’, as I shall call the author for convenience, wanted to tell his readers about the Jewish law.72 Our criterium in asking this question should not be the supposed distance or opposition to Paul, but the relation to early Jewish writings.73 We could even propose to speak of ‘a new perspective on James’! The view often advanced that James does not care about Jewish commandments such as Sabbath, circumcision, or dietary laws because he does not mention them,74 is a questionable argument from silence. It is also unlikely. One who opens the rabbinic treatise Avot (popularly called ‘Sayings of the Fathers’) 67 Flusser, ‘Die Christenheit nach dem Apostelkonzil’; more nuanced: idem, ‘Paul’s JewishChristian Opponents in the Didache’. More on Flusser in Tomson, ‘Glaubensgerechtigkeit und Gesetzeswerke’. 68 Rom 7:2, 7, 12, 14, 16, 21; 8:2; 9:4; cf above n18. 69 Most recently Konradt, ‘Der Jakobusbrief im frühchristlichen Kontext’, 172–190, with copious bibliography and rejecting simplifying theories of dependence. 70 See the considerations of Mussner, Der Brief des Jakobus, 19–21; Davids, The Epistle of James, 5–22; Bauckham, James, 11–21. [That James was Jesus’ brother is well documented: Gal 1:19; Josephus, Ant 20:200.] 71 The assumption of a targeted anti-Pauline polemic (Hengel, ‘Der Jakobusbrief als antipaulinische Polemik’; Avemarie, ‘Die Werke des Gesetzes im Spiegel des Jakobusbriefs’) is based on a different understanding of Paul than the one advocated here. Avemarie ibid. 307 underestimates the importance of the Pauline authorship of Rom 2, I think. Also, he seems to suppose that Paul did not stimulate differentiation but uniformity vis-à-vis the law in Jewish and gentile Christians, see below. Cf the view on Paul in Avemarie, Tora und Leben, 584–589. 72 See general presentation in Tomson, If This be from Heaven, 340–353. 73 The approach of Bauckham, James is promising in this respect as well. 74 See e. g. Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus, 21, 24 (non-ritualistic diaspora Judaism); Burchard, Jakobusbrief, 89 (with reservations).
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will find only very few and indirect allusions to such commandments.75 [204] The treatise consists, not unlike James, of loosely arranged sayings of ethical content. Nonetheless, many of the rabbis attributed with the sayings appear as active participants of halakhic discussions in the treatises Shabbat, Kodashin (sacrificial laws), or Toharot (purity laws).76 Conversely, James is clear on the significance he accords to the law. He calls it νόμον τέλειον τὸν τῆς ἐλευθερίας, ‘the perfect law, the law of liberty’, and νόμον βασιλικόν, ‘the royal law’ (Jas 1:25; 2:8, 12). Stoic overtones cannot be overheard, as, incidentally, we find these also in the rabbis. We only have to refer to the often cited midrash of R. Yoshua ben Levi to the effect that the stone tablets of Sinai were inscribed with ‘freedom’: חרות על הלוחות, ‘engraved on the tablets – do not read harut, engraved, but herut, freedom.’77 Moreover according to James, the law must be ‘observed’ and ‘done’ (2:10; 4:11), as this is spelled out in the frequently mentioned ἔργα. The term is fully rabbinic.78 One could cite the reputedly ancient ‘men of works’, אנשי מעשה,79 or the saying attributed to R. Shimon ben Gamliel, c. 60 CE, ‘Not study, but the work is most important.’80 Thus while the elegant attire of James is Greek, its body is unmistakably Jewish, and Jewish is its emphasis on the law. As set forth first by Franz Mussner, a Catholic exegete to be sure, it is an eminently Jewish-Christian document.81 It follows that a Jewish-Christian readership is likely. The address, ‘To the twelve tribes in the diaspora’, is unique in the New Testament to the extent that it cannot be simply taken to mean ‘all Christians’, which in the circumstances would include a majority of gentile Christians.82 An early Christian author certainly could address [205] Jewish Christians and gentile Christians separately. Paul did not do otherwise, judging by his preserved letters that stick at least 75 mAv 1:2 (עבודה, ‘cult’, likely in the Temple); 3:11 (‘holy things’, not to make impure); 5:6 (‘Sabbath’, created on Friday afternoon). 76 In the Mishna, circumcision and dietary laws are discussed only tangentially, presumably because the essentials are stated in the Bible and there has been little subsequent development. 77 mAv 6:2 (read with MidrGad Exod 32:16, Margulies p668), R. Yoshua ben Levi, mid-third c. CE; quoted also by Mussner, Der Brief des Jakobus, 108; also Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus, 111 n2, hesitatingly, but with clear indication of the Stoic background of the idea adopted by Philo and other Jewish authors, that: ‘das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben’ (Goethe). According to Tanh ki tissa 16 (122a), the core of the midrash ( )חרות מהו? חירותis discussed by R. Yehuda, R. Nehemia, and colleagues, mid-second c. CE, giving the impression of an existing tradition. 78 As distinct from ‘works of law’, below n90. 79 mSuk 5:4; mSot 9:16. 80 mAv 1:17, attributed to Shimon ben Gamliel (cf above n65), who is also mentioned by Josephus, War 4:159; Life 190, 309. 81 Cf Mussner, Der Brief des Jakobus, 11f, 46f, 104–109. 82 Thus Hengel, ‘Der Jakobusbrief als antipaulinische Polemik’, 512. Burchard, Jakobusbrief, 6, 50 concludes, ‘Der lexikalische Befund spricht für das jüdische Volk’, yet he claims, without explaining: ‘Jak meint damit aber nicht das jüdische Volk oder die Jesusanhänger in ihm, sondern die Christenheit.’ Differently Bauckham, James, 13–16.
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formally to his recognised ‘apostolate to the gentiles’ (Gal 2:7–9; Rom 11:13).83 Therefore we should take seriously the ‘lexical data’84 of the phrase ‘twelve tribes’ and, barring evidence to the contrary, assume that Jews, i. e., Jewish Christians, are meant. Most relevant to our study is the fact that this Jewish-Christian encyclical letter mentions a basic principle concerning the validity of the Jewish law that is also emphasised by Paul in Galatians, in a partly identical formula. Let us subsequently hear James and Paul: ὅστις γὰρ ὅλον τὸν νόμον τηρήσῃ, πταίσῃ δὲ ἐν ἑνί, γέγονεν πάντων ἔνοχος. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point, has become accountable for all of it. (Jas 2:10) μαρτύρομαι δὲ πάλιν παντὶ ἀνθρώπῳ περιτεμνομένῳ ὅτι ὀφειλέτης ἐστὶν ὅλον τὸν νόμον ποιῆσαι. Once again I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the entire law. (Gal 5:3)
Significantly, the hyperbolic phrase ὅλον τὸν νόμον (also in Matt 22:40) has an exact equivalent in rabbinic parlance, as in: ‘Thus we find that our father Abraham kept the whole law ( )כל התורה כולהbefore it was given …’85 Moreover one gets the impression that Paul is citing a traditional rule. Immediately preceding, he gives his own opinion: ‘Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. Once again I testify …’ (Gal 5:2). The fact that the repeated warning that follows is a command phrased in the third person clearly suggests that it concerns a rule.86 This impression is confirmed by two rabbinic rules that are analogous both by substance and form: A proselyte who takes upon himself all the commandments of the Tora ()כל דברי התורה, but is suspected (of transgression) of one, or even in respect of the whole law (כל התורה )כולה: he is like an apostate Israelite. A proselyte who takes upon himself all the commandments of the Tora ()כל דברי תורה, except one matter: one does not accept him.87
These rules on proselytes belong to a small collection of rules of admission that also covers, e. g., the Pharisaic havurot or ‘fraternities’ and, in spite of [206] further elaboration in the second century CE, must basically go back to the Second Temple period.88
is the exception! Cf Tomson, Paul, 58–61, and see below. Burchard, above n82. 85 mKid 4:14: מצינו שעשה אברהם אבינו את כל התורה כולה עד שלא נתנה. 86 An analogous case is found in 1 Cor 7:39f, where Paul first gives his own γνώμη before citing a third person rule formula, see Tomson, ‘What did Paul mean by “Those Who Know the Law”?’ [in this volume, 385f.] 87 tDem 2:4f. Cf Sifra kodashim 8 (91a). 88 See for this paragraph and the following Tomson, Paul, 88f. 83 Romans 84
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It is worth mentioning that James, as frequently,89 seems to be formulating freely and can hardly be caught giving an exact quotation. In this exceptional instance Paul, by contrast, seems to be citing an accepted rule with reasonable faithfulness. More important is the context in which he does so. The whole argument of Galatians is that gentile Christians should not have themselves circumcised and take the Mosaic law upon them, because as Christ-believing children of Abraham they are already ‘made righteous’. In Christ, they are ‘free’ to stay as they are. Should someone wish to become Jewish (Gal 5:2f), that is certainly possible, although in that case ‘Christ is of no benefit for him’, and moreover he must pledge faithfulness to ‘the whole law’. One would naturally expect such a Jewish-Christian principle in a Jewish-Christian treatise like James. In Paul, it surprises. Also, it is utilised positively as a building block in Paul’s argument, and this has important consequences. The implication is that according to Paul the Jewish law retains its validity for Jewish Christians, even though in itself it does not ‘make them righteous’. In light of the preceding, it is of great consequence that James uses the same rare terminology of ‘hearers’ and ‘doers of the law’ as Paul does in Rom 2, moreover in both cases using the aforementioned diatribe style: But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers (ποιηταὶ λόγου καὶ μὴ μόνον ἀκροαταί) who deceive themselves. For one who is a hearer of the word and not a doer, is like … But one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, is not a hearer who forgets but a doer of the work (οὐκ ἀκροατὴς ἐπιλησμονῆς ἀλλὰ ποιητὴς ἔργου) … (Jas 1:22–25) Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another, speaks evil against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge (οὐκ εἶ ποιητὴς νόμου ἀλλὰ κριτής). (Jas 4:11)
Remarkably, both James and Paul use the anarthrous semiticising form, ἀκροατὴς/ποιητὴς νόμου. Since the phrase ‘doers of the law’ appears already in Qumran and in 1 Maccabees, it is clear that both James and Paul must know it from tradition. The compound ‘doers of the law’ is evidenced in Hebrew and in Aramaic, both in rabbinic literature and in Qumran texts, as distinct from ‘works of the law’ which hitherto is extant only [207] in Hebrew texts from Qumran.90 Furthermore, in 1:22–25 James seems once again to be varying stylistically 89 Cf Burchard, Jakobusbrief, 17 and Hengel, ‘Der Jakobusbrief als antipaulinische Polemik’, 516f. 90 Rabbinic, according to BIRP: only MidrProv 22.20; Otsar Hamidrashim, Eisenstein p450, bahodesh: מעשה (של) תורה, which, however does not refer to the ‘doing’ of Tora but its ‘make’. ‘Doers of Tora’, at Qumran: above n60; rabbinic: 4× Hebrew עושי תורה, SER 1 (Friedmann p4); ibid. 7 (Friedmann p38); Otsar Hamidr, Eisenstein p214; Pitron Tora, Urbach p247 (מתן שכרן ;)של עושי תורהplus 2× Aramaic: TgOnk Gen 49:11, ;עבדי אוריתאTgIsa 42:21, עבדי אוריתיה. Bachmann, ‘Keil oder Mikroskop’, 84f refers to Basser, Studies in Exegesis, 123f, who reads TgIsa 42:21 as anti-Pauline polemic and therefore proposes the translation ‘works of the law’, which does not convince, however. (See on the matter also Avemarie, ‘Erwählung und Vergel-
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(‘hearers of the word, doers of the work’), whereas in 4:11, more casually, he simply uses traditional terminology. This makes it more likely that Paul does the same in Rom 2:13.91 We do not need to spend much time on the passage from James most intensively discussed, the one on Abraham. As many have observed,92 James’ teaching that Abraham’s ‘work’ of persisting faith was ‘reckoned to him as righteousness’ (Jas 2:21–23) is wholly in line with Jewish ideas. Our explorations about ‘doers’ and ‘works of the law’ in Qumran have only confirmed as much. It is hard to imagine that ‘James’ – whether writing around 60 or some time after 70 CE – had not picked up at least a ‘slogan Paulinism’93 and was conscious of its real or fictitious risks. If indeed the addressees were Jewish Christians, the author’s intention must have been to strengthen them in the idea that apart from ‘Pauline’ gentile Christianity, there always remained a legitimate Christianity ‘of the circumcision’, where one observes the ‘perfect law of liberty’ in good conscience. In that case, ‘James’ would not have been far removed at all from the Paul that is revealed to us in the second chapter of Romans. [208]
‘To the Jew first, and also to the Greek’: The Exceptional Case of Romans Our excursus into James has given greater urgency to the question how we can explain the chapter of ‘synagogue language’ existing side by side with the discourse of ‘justification by faith without works of the law’ elsewhere in Romans. In order to find answers, we must first carry on with our analysis of the pertinent section of the letter. We have found that the first part of Rom 2 targets Jews, while vv9f, 12, and 14 also involve non-Jews. In all, the complex apostrophe to the Jews goes on. From 2:17 on, ‘the Jew’ is explicitly addressed, and the question is asked (3:1) what is the use of circumcision, and, by force of the synecdoche, the use of a Jewish life as such. The significant answer is, ‘Much, in every way, for in the first tung’, 296–299 and above n71.) [Again, see the succinct discussion by Fitzmyer, Romans, 338f.] 91 ἔργα νόμου, ‘works of the law’: only in Rom 2–3 and Gal 2–3, in the singular and with the article only in Rom 2:15, otherwise anarthrous, Semiticising (cf above n62). While supposing that ‘James’ knew Romans, Avemarie, ‘Erwählung und Vergeltung’, 307 suggests that the author, ‘mit der Entscheidung für Röm 2,13 und gegen Röm 3,28’ has made the matter for himself ‘gedanklich einfacher, klarer, unkomplizierter’. Does Avemarie consider proposing an explanation of the complex (‘aspect-driven’?) thinking of Paul, cf above n71 and below n124? [Alas, this indirect request had not yet received a response when our esteemed colleague and friend, Friedrich Avemarie, died a week before his 52nd birthday on 13 October 2012.] 92 E. g. Konradt, ‘Der Jakobusbrief im frühchristlichen Kontext’, 177–187. 93 Cf Popkes, ‘Traditionen und Traditionsbrüche im Jakobusbrief’, 168.
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place they (the Jews) were entrusted with the oracles of God’ (3:2). Clearly, this anticipates the theme of the chosen people of Israel further on (cf Rom 9:1–5). Furthermore, Paul seems to be defending himself against ‘certain people’ (τινες) who allege his gospel implies negligence of the law (3:8), or in other words, this is an apology before a Jewish audience. Then, 3:9 asks, also involving non-Jews again: ‘What then? Are we (Jews) any better off?’ The answer: ‘No, not at all; for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin.’ This is illustrated with an intricate string of biblical citations culminating in the very ‘Pauline’ sentence that sums up the whole section:94 We know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For, no human being will be justified in his sight by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. (Rom 3:19f)
Thus we are facing the great tensions within our section and in Romans as whole. How can Paul in 2:6 and 13 say so ‘very Jewishly’ that God repays everyone according to his deeds and that not hearers but doers of the law are justified – while in 3:20 he states, supposedly ‘truly Pauline’, that no creature is made righteous by ‘works of the law’? To begin with, the stance of the Church Fathers is instructive. Although they perceive a certain tension vis-à-vis 3:20,95 they do [209] not have insuperable difficulties with 2:1396 and even less with 2:6.97 On the contrary, in the context of the future judgment, several fourth century orthodox Christian creeds contain the phrase, ἀποδοῦναι ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ, ‘to judge everyone according to his deeds’,98 just as we have seen it in the Old Testament, in the Gospels, and in Paul. For the Church Fathers, who are not known for a particular sympathy for Judaism, the ideas of ‘retribution according to deeds’ and of ‘justification of those who do the law’ apparently had nothing un-Pauline. 94 Dunn, Romans 1–8, 158: Rom 3:20 is ‘the coup de grâce, … the basic theological underpinning of the whole argument’. [I have analysed the string of citations in Rom 3:10–18 in Tomson, ‘There is no one who is righteous’.] 95 Schelkle, Paulus, Lehrer der Väter, 80f (cited by Bell, No One seeks for God, 275 n172). 96 A selection: Rom 2:13 is cited with affirmation by Origen, Expos in Prov (MPG 17: 168, 220); Eusebius, Comm in Ps (MPG 23: 1268); Gregory of Nyssa, Hom in Cant 6.428 (ed H. Langerbeck); Chrysostom, Hom in Rom 5.5 (MPG 60: 428); Didymus the Blind, Comm in Zach 8.9 (SC 2: 309). Even more significant is how Augustine rejects the thought that Jas 2:20 (faith and works!) contradicts Paul by referring to Rom 2:13, De divers quaest, ed A. Mutzenbecher (CCSL 44A), Turnhout 1975, 218–221. 97 Chrysostom, Hom in Rom (MPG 60: 425 – Schelkle, Paulus, Lehrer der Väter, 74 refers to MPG 60: 463) even explains Rom 2:7 with the help of Jas 2:24, οὐ χρὴ τῇ πίστει θαρρεῖν μόνον! However, at Rom 2:6 Augustine sees reason to stress that the ‘merit’ of our deeds is pure grace, see Schelkle ibid. 98 See Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 272 (Antioch, 341 CE), 289 (Sirmium, 359 CE), 293 (Constantinople, 360 CE). Interestingly, Stuhlmacher, ‘Christus Jesus ist hier, der gestorben ist’, 353f draws the attention to Rom 2:13 precisely in connection with the final judgment.
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Modern exegetes, by contrast, have great difficulties and come up with wildly varying explanations. R. H. Bell gives a list of 10 interpretations of Röm 2:1– 16,99 running from radical theories of interpolation, via ones suspecting a Jewish atavism, to more traditional explanations. Bell himself is in the last category and understands the discourse of ‘justification of the doers of the law’ as an intentional reductio ad absurdum within a terminologically coherent argument. The first category includes the analysis of E. P. Sanders already mentioned. He thinks that indeed Rom 2 is a ‘synagogue sermon’, but for him it creates an aporia, frankly stated: ‘What is said about the law in Romans 2 cannot be fitted into a category otherwise known from Paul’s letters, and for that reason it has been dealt with in an appendix.’100 James Dunn’s assessment is more cautious and emphasises the eschatological context. A more recent formulation reads: [210] ‘There is a tension here for the traditional Protestant understanding of justification by faith, still evident in commentators’ discomfort when treating Rom. 2.6–16.’101 Some 20 years ago, Klyne Snodgrass has pointed out the affinity with early Jewish soteriological ideas, without trying to integrate these in Paul’s thought.102 This was what Hendrikus Boers did endeavour in the framework of a semiotic comparison of Romans and Galatians, concluding that there is not necessarily a contradiction between ‘salvation by faith’ and ‘justification by works’.103 Alternatively, the coherence of Romans can be argued by emphasising the typical phrase ‘obedience of faith’ (ὑπακοὴ πίστεως, Rom 1:5; 16:26).104 The present study develops Stendahl’s view that Romans does not target the relation to Judaism and the Jewish law in general, but the concrete, practical relationship of Christ-believing Jews and non-Jews. Moreover I assume that while Romans is intentionally consistent, it is not necessarily terminologically so. Let us once again start from the beginning. Although Jews are addressed repeatedly, especially in our passage, Romans is formally written to gentile Christians, as are all of Paul’s letters (Rom 1:6, 13; 11:13). This appears to be in conformity with the apostles’ agreement Paul writes about in Gal 2:1–10: he
Bell, No One seeks for God, 132–136. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 123–135, quote 135. In reading real contradictions in Paul, he links up with Räisänen, Paul and the Law. For criticism on Räisänen see now Van Spanje, Inconsistency in Paul. 101 Cf Dunn, Romans 1–8. Quotation from Dunn, ‘A Response to Peter Stuhlmacher’, 365 (also cited by Avemarie, ‘Die Werke des Gesetzes im Spiegel des Jakobusbriefs’, 307). 102 Snodgrass, ‘Justification by Grace – to the Doers’. 103 Boers, The Justification of the Gentiles. 104 Davies, Faith and Obedience in Romans; Garlington, The ‘Obedience of Faith’; idem, Faith, Obedience and Perseverance. Conversely, ἀκοὴ πίστεως appears in opposition to ἔργα νόμου in Gal 3:2, 5. [In this connection, Minear, Obedience of Faith, 1–35 strongly emphasizes the importance of the practical issues in Romans.] 99
100 Sanders,
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was entrusted with the apostolate to the uncircumcised, just as Cephas or Peter105 with that to the circumcised (Gal 2:7–9). It is to be noted that in the same letter, Paul critically distances himself from certain Jewish-Christian missionaries and their ‘other gospel’ (Gal 1:6–9; 6:12), while in the immediate context he mentions his famous clash with undefined ‘people from James’ (2:12–14). This gives his report of the Jerusalem agreement an [211] authentic ring: it goes against the tenor of the letter as a whole.106 The agreement included mutual respect between Jewish and gentile Christians, facilitating the ongoing co-existence of Jewish and non-Jewish ways of life.107 Gal 2:12a shows us how this worked out before the conflict broke out. Cephas, Barnabas ‘and the other Jews’ in the Antiochene church sat at community meals with gentile Christians. Therefore they must have found practical solutions to practical problems as to what and how to serve at table. The agreement implied that Paul and his co-workers would not interfere in the way of life of Jewish Christians any more than Cephas and his people in that of gentile Christians. Precisely that is what happened, however, when ‘people from James’ convinced the Antiochene Jewish Christians to shun the table fellowship with the gentile Christians (Gal 2:11b–13). This was in violation of the agreement, and the vehemence of Paul’s reaction colours the whole letter to the Galatians, who were now also being pressured to ‘Judaize’, i. e. to adopt a Jewish way of life. That is why Paul tells the entire story of his relation with ‘Jerusalem’, including the apostles’ agreement. That is also why he cites three times, with characteristic variation, the ‘rule’ that for him summarises the agreement: in the community of Christ ‘neither circumcision is something nor uncircumcision, but the new creation’ (Gal 6:15f; cf 3:28; 5:6). In Rome, some years on, it was more or less the reverse situation. Now, it was the liberty of the Jewish Christians that was restricted by gentile Christians.108 So much appears from Rom 14f. Ostensibly, the ‘weak’ or ‘sensitive’109 ones, who did not eat meat and observed certain days, were not ‘accepted’ by the strong (14,1–5). As hinted at above, Paul here uses the key word κρίνειν, ‘judging, discerning’, in order to emphasise the connection between Jews and non-Jews: 105 Thus in Paul only in Gal 2:7f; in 2,9 and otherwise ‘Cephas’. It seems that in 2:7f, Paul adopts Jerusalem usage or quotes an accepted phrase containing that usage, cf considerations by Betz, Galatians, 96f. 106 The significance of Gal 2:1–10 for Paul’s fundamentally positive relationship to ‘Jerusalem’ was pointed out by Gaston, ‘Paul and Jerusalem’. Cf also Dunn, ‘The Relationship between Paul and Jerusalem’. 107 ἐθνικῶς ζῇς in Gal 2:14 could be meant ironically, hinting at relations with gentiles. 108 For debate on the reasons for Romans see Donfried, Romans Debate [and of course, Wedderburn, The Reasons for Romans]. Cf also the valuable study by von den Osten-Sacken, ‘Erwägungen zur Abfassungsgeschichte’. 109 ἀσθενῆς (Vulgate: infirmus). It is a loanword in rabbinic parlance, e. g. mBer 2:6 and mYom 3:4, ‘infirm’, ‘sensitive’. See, also referring to 1 Cor 8:7ff, Tomson, Paul, 194f.
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[212] ‘Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? … For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God’ (14:10).110 What is needed and hoped for is that (those of) ‘the circumcision’ and ‘the gentiles’ accept each other and praise their Creator at the shared table (15:7–12). Writing about this practical problem was surely one of Paul’s aims with Romans. Another aim was to request material assistance of the Roman church, which he had not yet visited (1:13), for his project to travel to Spain (15:24). While writing the letter he was under way to Jerusalem, and he was apprehensive about the resistance of the ‘unsubdued (ἀπειθούντες) in Judea’ (15:31; cf 1 Thess 2:14). Therefore, in the third place, he had one eye on Jerusalem. As we noted, there was in fact a rumour that he preached apostasy from Moses (3:8; cf Rev 21:21). All of this caused him to write this well-balanced letter full of rhetorical dialectics111 – that later on, justified in part, was to be read as a compendium. It is all about the position of the Jewish Christians. The precarious situation in which they find themselves urges the apostle to summon his entire rhetorical repertory, colouring the letter as a whole. While repeating that ‘all’, i. e. Jews and non-Jews, have sinned and are under God’s judgment (3:9, 23; 11:32), he also emphasizes that salvation is ‘for the Jew first, but also for the Greek’ (1:16; 2:9f).112 As we have said, the ‘gentiles’ should welcome those ‘of the circumcision’ in their midst, peculiar customs and all. The ‘apostle of the gentiles’ specifically addresses ‘you, gentiles’ (11:13), urging them to recognize that they are ‘grafted’ onto ‘the rich root of the olive-tree’, Israel (11:17). The great chapters about Israel’s election that persists in spite of all unbelief (Rom 9–11) are not, as formerly assumed,113 an ‘excursion’ within the handbook on faith, and even less a chapter of the general doctrine of [213] election,114 but, in Stendahl’s formulation, ‘the real center of gravity in Romans’ that was foreshadowed already in 3:1f.115 κριν-, 10× in Rom 2:1–16; 11× in 14:1–15:13; 17× elsewhere im Romans. a similar consideration of the multiple aims of Romans in Brown, Introduction, 563f. 112 Cf the nuanced observations of Cranfield, Romans, 90f. 113 Cf the discussion by Fitzmyer, Romans, 540. Cautiously following Stendahl and Munck (541), he considers Rom 9–11 ‘the climax of the doctrinal section’. However, Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles, 4, calls Rom 9–11 the ‘climax’ of the letter as a whole, a letter ‘about the Jews’ (see above n15), which includes ‘non-doctrinal’ chapters such as Rom 14f. and 16 (greetings!). According to Moo, Romans, 547 n1f, Augustine considered Rom 9–11 an excursion. Moo ibid. 548 associates Rom 9–11 with the core objective of the letter, which in his understanding was ‘preserving the gospel from a fatal mixture (!) with the Jewish torah’ and ‘confronting it with Jews and Jewish-Christians suspicious of him because of his outspoken stance’. 114 Thus still in Barth’s Römerbrief, but no longer in his Kurze Erklärung des Römerbriefs. [For Barth’s development in this matter, see my ‘Romans 9–11 and Political Events’, 61–65.] 115 Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles, 28, cf 4, 85. Thus also Dunn, Theology of the Apostle Paul, 501, stating this is ‘the dominant view’. [It is the genius of F. C. Baur to have perceived this more than a century earlier: Baur, ‘Über Zweck und Veranlassung des Römerbriefs’, 70 (ed Scholder 158).] 110
111 Cf
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The final chapter with its remarkable number of greeting addressed to Jewish brothers and sisters also belongs here.116 Thus Romans is unique among Paul’s letters. Not only does it address a church not of Paul’s own founding, but most remarkably, it advocates the right of the Jewish Christians to be welcomed in the church while retaining their Jewish laws and customs. We shall have to ask why this so. For now, we must observe that its position is in full agreement with Paul’s ‘rule’ (Gal 6:15f) that in Christ no distinction is valid and Jews must be able to live Jewishly, just as gentiles in their way. This is in fact Paul’s standard conception, as appears from 1 Corinthians. That letter shows no trace of problems about the law or the co-existence of Jews and gentiles. In a context about a totally different subject, Paul cites this same rule, considering it effectively his ‘apostolic rule of thumb’: This is my rule in all the churches: was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but obeying the commandments of God (is everything). (1 Cor 7:17–19)
It follows that although the argument in favour of the Jews in Romans is exceptional among Paul’s letters, it is fully in line with his policy and in that sense entirely ‘Pauline’. Another element from the context must be mentioned. As we have seen in the course of our analysis, the second section of Rom 1:16–3:20 addresses the Jews (2:1ff), although God-fearing gentiles are also drawn in, while 2:17 explicitly apostrophises ‘the Jew’. Then in 3:19, ‘those who are under the law’ are addressed, obviously Jews again. In that constellation, the sentence that immediately follows must be heard: ‘No human being (lit., flesh) will be justified in his sight by deeds of the law’ (3:20). This supposedly ‘typical Pauline phrase’ is in fact an allusion to Ps 143:2, as we find it also in a slightly different form in Gal 2:15f while addressing Jews, as observed by Dunn: ‘We, Jews by birth …’117 The variation in form [214] suggests that Paul possibly knew this reference by tradition. In actual fact, the Qumran hymns contain a number of similar allusions to Ps 143:2 that emphasize the sinfulness of mortals.118 In other words, the ‘typically Pauline phrase’ is in fact a traditional Jewish phrase. We are now able to conclude that the apparent exception presented by the subject matter of Romans illuminates not only Paul’s lasting concern about the Jewish Christians, but also the chapter of ‘synagogue language’ that this trained rhetor must have used intentionally. True to Paul, its effect is double: Jews and 116 The συγγενεῖς Andronikos und Junias, 16:7; Herodion, 16:11; Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater, 16:21; also, of course, Prisca und Aquila, 16:3. The συγγενεῖς are meaningfully mentioned in 9:3. 117 Dunn, ‘The New Perspective on Paul’ 189f. 118 1QH 4:29–31; 9:14f; 13:16f; 16:11. [See also Fitzmyer, Romans, 338f.]
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Jewish Christians (not always clearly to be distinguished) are first in line for judgment, but also for salvation (2:9f). And although the gospel of salvation concerns ‘the Jew first, but also the Greek’ (2:9f), non-Jews have temporarily taken the lead, as such, however, anticipating the future salvation of ‘all Israel’ (11:11f, 26). Again, it is in this context that we have to understand the ‘Jacobine’ phrase that ‘doers of the law will be justified’. As we saw, Paul draws in God-fearing gentiles (2:13f). That makes the phrase analogous to the rule from 1 Corinthians that we have quoted: ‘Circumcision is nothing and non-circumcision is nothing, but observing the commandments of God.’ E. P. Sanders has drawn attention to this extraordinary phrase of Paul, calling it ‘one of the most amazing sentences that he ever wrote’.119 In my estimation, the rule simply expresses that Jewish Christians should live as Jews and gentiles in their way as non-Jews, each according to their distinctive ‘commandments of God’. I have demonstrated elsewhere that the phrase shows clear affinities with the wisdom tradition, at once affirming pluralism and universalism.120 Echoes of Stoicism are obvious once again.121 The phrases ‘justification of the doers of the law’ and ‘justification by faith’ seem to represent two very different terminologies, and we must accept that Paul manages to use both in one single context. For one thing, this has important consequences for the phrases themselves. The language of ‘justification by faith without works of the law’ apparently does not exclude the other one about ‘justification of doers of the law’. It is not our business now to define the exact position of the doctrine of justification within Paul’s thinking as a whole (main or subsidiary crater!). Let it suffice to observe that [215] the phrase of ‘being justified by faith’, before Paul started using it, was also a Jewish concept found earlier at Qumran and subsequently also with considerable emphasis among the rabbis.122 Even more important is the fact that similar things are found in the Jesus tradition (Luke 18:10–14), and that ‘the faith that saves’ according to God’s merciful will is essential to the message of Jesus.123 It is not at all impossible that Paul has found the idea in the apostolic tradition and gave it a special application for the situation of believing Jews and non-Jews. Along our way, we have learned that according to Paul, faith in Jesus for Jews implies ‘doing the law’ and that, just as in James, ‘justification by faith in Jesus’ Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 103. Sir 32:23; Prov 19:16; Eccl 8:5, see Tomson, Paul, 270–273. 121 Cf Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism 1: 146–149. 122 Above n37. For the imagery of the ‘inner’ and ‘external’ aspects of Paul’s teaching on justification see Tomson, If This Be from Heaven, 184–193. 123 Cf the typical phrase, ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε, Mark 5:34 // Matt 9:22 // Luke 8:48; Mark 10:52 // Luke 18:42; Luke 17:19. On this matter, Jeremias, Neutestamentliche Theologie, 157–164 certainly is more correct than Bultmann, Theologie, 91–94, who states that the concept of ‘faith’ emerged only in the primitive Hellenistic church. 119 Sanders, 120 Cf
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applies to them as ‘doers of the law’.124 The utilisation of the proselytes’ rule in Gal 5:3 brings him as well in the vicinity of James, who in 2:10 seems to allude to a similar rule. We should no longer be surprised to find actual halakhic traditions in Paul’s teachings.125
Historical Perspective: The Growing Crisis, 44–66 CE Finally, in seeking an adequate perspective on Romans, we must try to understand its exceptional situation and the ‘synagogue language’ this seems to have required in a plausible historical context. Paul’s ‘normal’ position, we have said, was that both Jewish and gentile Christians should have the liberty to live together in church while each following their own custom. This requires us first of all to [216] explain why among the undisputed Pauline letters this position is extant only in 1 Corinthians and less clearly, paradoxically, in Romans, whereas Galatians, 2 Corinthians, Philippians and Colossians all polemicise with greater or lesser vehemence against ‘Judaizing’.126 Let us start from the fact that Gal 2 claims that Paul’s apostolic ‘rule of thumb’ was based on the Jerusalem agreement, and that the agreement was violated by Cephas, the Antiochene Jewish Christians, and ‘even Barnabas’, first at the initiative of the ‘people from James’, and subsequently ‘for fear of the circumcision faction’ at Antioch (Gal 2:12f). We get the impression of a movement issuing from Jerusalem and aiming at the gentile Christians’ transition to Judaism or at least their ‘Judaizing’ (Gal 2:14). Also, Paul would in response have forcefully maintained his position and even have publicly reproved Cephas with the discourse rendered in Gal 2:15–21, to the effect that as a Jew, he too ought to know ‘that humans are not justified by works of the law’, etc. These findings go along with the hypothesis that in uttering these words, Paul did not oppose Judaism as such. Before the arrival of the ‘people from James’, Cephas, Barnabas, and the other Jews all ate together with the non-Jews, apparently without putting their Jewish identity at risk. Indeed, if we read correctly, the situation would agree with Paul’s rule of thumb: Jews and non-Jews could manage to eat together while yet observing their own customs. We do not 124 Avemarie, ‘Die Werke des Gesetzes im Spiegel des Jakobusbriefs’, 308f values the canonicity both of Paul and James and, in view of the ‘next round’ of the New Perspective debate, leaves it an open question what might be ‘main’ and ‘subsidiary crater’ here, or in other words, what ‘focal points’ of Paul’s thought might be foregrounded. This is not dissimilar to what is proposed here. And see above n91. 125 As laid out in Tomson, Paul. 126 The polemics of 1 Thess are not against ‘zealot’ Jewish Christians, but against nonbelieving Jews and gentiles in Thessalonika who persecute the Christians ‘just like those in Judea’ (1 Thess 2:14; cf Acts 17:5–7). On the halakhic stratum of 1 Thess see Tomson, ‘Paul’s practical instruction’ [in this volume, 334–337.]
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need Dunn’s unsatisfactory explanation that Paul only objected to the Jewish Christians’ observation of Jewish ‘identity markers’ – which precisely would imply the suspension of Jewish identity. Rather, we should pursue Dunn’s other intuition, i. e., that Paul was combatting a particular, restrictive interpretation of the Jewish law. Such an interpretation was being propagated, we read, by people from the surroundings of James in Jerusalem. They were not yet around in Corinth, apparently, when Paul wrote his first letter to that city (c. 52 CE), but they were two years later, when he wrote the second one with its defence against certain Jewish missionaries (῾Εβραῖοι, ᾿Ισραηλῖται, 2 Cor 11:22f; cf Μωϋσῆς, 3:6f). It appears that such ψευδαπόστολοι (2 Cor 11:13; cf ψευδαδέλφοι, 2 Cor 11:26; Gal 3:4) had also visited Galatia and Colossae [217] when he wrote to those cities (Col 2:11f, περιτομή, σάββατα), and the doings of similar people must have been on his mind when writing his letter of thanksgiving to Philippi (Phil 3:2f, περιτομή). In Rome, around 58 CE, there was no such danger, apparently, but it could be that the problems hinted at in Rom 14f related to some sort of counter-reaction of gentile Christians. Similarly, the ἀπειθούντες of Rom 15:31, non-believing Jews apparently, could relate to these events. In this way, we could read the genuine Pauline letters in light of a development issuing from Judea that involved a radicalisation of views among Jewish Christians. A similar perspective is fully confirmed by the Acts of the Apostles. When Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch from their second missionary journey, ‘some people came from Judea’ insisting that gentile Christians had to be circumcised (Acts 15:1), an opinion that apparently had not earlier been expressed in this way. Then follows the apostles’ conference in Jerusalem in the Lukan version, the results of which Paul takes along on his third missionary journey. Then years later, when arriving in Jerusalem, the climate has hardened considerably. James informs him of ‘many thousands of Jews who had come to believe (πεπιστευκότες) and were all zealous for the law (ζηλωταὶ τοῦ νόμου)’, but who had been won over to the rumour that Paul taught diaspora Jews neglect of circumcision and other ‘identity markers’. At James’ proposal, Paul participates actively – and as a matter of course, in the view of the author – in the purification ritual of some Jews in the Temple, at which occasion he was attacked and arrested by ‘zealous’ men from Asia Minor (Acts 21:20–30). According to the accepted chronology, this would have happened around the late 50s. Neither Acts nor Paul’s letters provide a reason for this radicalisation. The development, however, fits effortlessly127 in Josephus’ account of the period of the Roman procurators that began after the death of Agrippa I in 44 CE. The Israeli scholar of ancient history, Menahem Stern, summarised it as fol127 Not counting irregularities such as concerning Theudas, Acts 5:36; Ant 20:97f, see Schürer, History 1: 456.
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lows: ‘Agrippa’s death (44) restored direct Roman rule to Judea. The twenty-two years from then until the outbreak of the Great Revolt may be summed up as a period that marked the decline of that rule and the progressive deterioration of the relations between the Roman authorities and the general Jewish population.’ In particular, the catastrophic term of office of Felix (52 – c. 60 CE) featured a strong increase of anti-gentile, ‘zealot’ radicalism: ‘During his administration the extremist freedom [218] fighters increased their activity and became a major, permanent element in the life of Judea.’128 The rise of the ‘zealot’ movement, moreover, can be well understood from inner-Jewish circumstances as testified by rabbinic traditions. Following the plausible reconstruction of Heinrich Graetz, the Temple captain Eleazar, son of the high priest Ananias, who took the initiative to the war against the Romans according to Josephus,129 was identical with Elazar ben Hananya, known in rabbinic literature as a leading nationalist and representative of the school of Shammai.130 In general, the school of Shammai featured a more reserved attitude towards non-Jews in comparison with the rival school of Hillel. The Shammaite R. Eliezer is attributed with the idea that all gentiles are idolaters and ‘gentiles have no share in the world to come’, whereas his Hillelite colleague, R. Yoshua, taught this only concerns ‘God-forgotten gentiles – hence there are righteous among the gentiles who have a share in the world to come’.131 Furthermore, there are rabbinic reports to the effect that Idumaean Shammaites distinguished themselves in military action against the non-Jews.132 In particular, the Shammaites would [219] have forced a set of 18 largely anti-gentile decrees on the Hillelites, by force of arms and apparently around the beginning of the war, to the regret of R. Yoshua, but to R. Eliezer’s satisfaction.133
128 War 2:223–407; Ant 20:97–215. See Stern, ‘The Period of the Second Temple’, 258. For more detail see Stern, ‘The Province of Judaea’, 359–372. Cf similar résumés by Hengel, Zeloten, 349–361; Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule, 257–284, esp 257, 274; Schürer, History 1: 455–470, esp 460, 462. See also the important essay by Bockmuehl, ‘1 Thessalonians 2:14–16 and the Church in Jerusalem’. [For fundamental discussion see Tomson, ‘Sources on the Politics of Judaea in the Fifties CE’, in this volume.] 129 War 2:409f. See Graetz, Geschichte 3.2: 470–472, and notes 24, 26, 27 (795ff). 130 In MekRY yitro 7 (p229), he is attributed with the same Sabbath habits as Shammai in MekRS (p148); bBeitsa 16a; PesR 23 (115b). He is also said to have ‘written’ the Scroll of Fasting, i. e. supplemented it with recent devents: Scholion on MegTaan, ed Lichtenstein, ‘Die Fastenrolle’, 351; cf bShab 13b. 131 mHul 2:7; tSan 13:2 // bSan 105a. On ‘Eliezer the Shammaite’, see Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 198–200 and 186 n312. 132 Goldberg, Shabbat, 15–22. See the relevant data gathered on one dense page already in Epstein, Prolegomena, 746, referring to Graetz and Josephus, War 2.20.3 = 2:566. 133 See Tomson, Paul, 173–176 with further literature. The link was seen also by Gaston, ‘Paul and Jerusalem’, 28. [See als the important sources cited by Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 22f.]
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Overlooking these data in combination with Josephus’ presentation, it follows that the period of the procurators in Roman Judaea, 44–66 CE, evinces an increasingly rapid rise of the school of Shammai and their ‘zealot’,134 anti-gentile ideology. This makes it very likely that the radicalisation among Jewish-Christian circles that Acts describes, without explaining it, resulted from the same development in Judea. The thousands of ζηλωταὶ τοῦ νόμου, whose influence the Jerusalem church leaders could barely withstand (Acts 21:20–30),135 must have been Shammaite-zealot inspired Jewish Christians, and likewise, the people who came ‘from James’ to Antioch (Gal 2:11) were emissaries of this movement. Possibly, the ‘incident at Antioch’ occurred around 50 CE, or in any case after the apostles’ council that is usually put at 48 CE. Both the Judaizing missionaries that occasioned the vehement letter to Galatia as such and the people who brought Paul to apologetic ‘boasting’ (2 Cor 11:21ff) could then have belonged to the movement that, certainly after 52 CE, expanded into the diaspora. This Jewish-Christian ‘zealotry’ constituted a violation of the consensus that existed until then and had been reaffirmed by the apostles’ council. As can be assumed in respect to the majority of Jews,136 Jewish-Christian circles must have known diverse attitudes towards non-Jews. For some decades, there seems to have been a climate of ideological latitude that also allowed more open-minded attitudes to gentile Christians (cf Acts 8; 10).137 This latitude provided the basis for Paul’s work and that of his colleagues insofar as they considered the vocation of the gentiles [220] to be based on the ongoing election of Israel. From 44 CE on, however, and more rapidly from 52 on, the restrictive, Shammaising interpretation of the law emphasising ‘Judaizing’ and circumcision encroached on the consensus (Gal 2:4, ‘false brethren sneaked in … slipped in’).138 This likely development was hypothesized by James Dunn and is now confirmed. It also explains – but in another sense than Dunn supposed – Paul’s strong opposition to the observation of Jewish ‘identity markers’ by gentile Christians that probably was propagated by this movement.
134 Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian 2: 501f usefully reminds us that Josephus starts using ‘Zealots’ as name for a political movement only in the last part of his Jewish War. 135 In this connection it is enticing to speculate about the historical setting of the Epistle of James; cf above n70. 136 Cf Alon, ‘The Levitical Uncleanness of Gentiles’. 137 On the Jesus tradition and the ideas Jesus could have had on the matter cf Tomson, If This Be from Heaven, 159–162. [See now ‘Shifting Perspectives in Matthew’, in this volume.] 138 It could well be that the παρεισάκτοι ψευδαδέλφοι who according to Gal 2:4 παρεισῆλθον κατασκοπῆσαι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἡμῶν, represented this Shammaization in its more incidental pre-52 CE mode. [Interestingly, Josephus, Ant 18:9 decries Judas’ violent ‘fourth philosophy’ as φιλοσοφία ἐπείσακτος, a ‘novel’ or and basically ‘un-Jewish’ philosophy, see Van der Horst, ‘Philosophia epeisaktos’. Paul’s phrases seem even stronger in stressing the surreptitious and alien aspects.]
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Romans, a Timebound Document ‘for All Times’ We have reason to suspect that the apprehension of gentile Christians in Rome vis-à-vis Jewish Christians, documented around 58 CE in the description in Rom 14f of their reservations against ‘welcoming’ Jewish Christians in their midst, somehow also reflected a reaction to the Christian-zealot movement.139 In any case, these reservations must have put Paul before a very complicated task. How could he rein in this alarming trend towards independent gentile Christian self-affirmation on the one hand, without creating the impression of supporting Jewish-Christian ‘zealotry’ on the other? The answer is written out before us in the extraordinarily balanced Epistle to the Romans and its reproaches to both Jews and gentiles – an answer uniquely embedded in its historic juncture and yet ever again capable of appealing to readers of all times. In face of the demand of Shammaising Jewish Christians and their gentile adepts that gentile Christians ‘Judaize’ and be circumcised (Gal 2:14), Paul, applying a notable Jewish and Jewish-Christian tradition, keeps maintaining that Jews are made righteous only through faith in Jesus (Rom 2:1–3:20),140 and therefore this is all the more true of gentiles, who [221] are not subject to the law to begin with (Rom 4). Conversely, gentile Christians should, even when confronted with Jewish-Christian ‘zealotry’, continue to recognise the priority of the Jews in God’s history and respect their special place in church and communal life, including their Jewish customs (Rom 9–11; 14f). For the righteousness of God that was ‘disclosed apart from the law through the faith of 141 Jesus the Christ’ (3:21f), regards all those who believe, ‘the Jew first, but also the Greek’. ‘For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all – O, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!’ (11:32f). ***
139 The unrest in the capital brought about by the banning decree of Claudius (Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule, 126, 210–216) could have played a role as well. In any case, after the Jewish War, an anti-Jewish sentiment reigned in certain Roman circles, see Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 301–319. 140 Although to later ears, Rom 2:21–23 sounds as a series of vague accusations, it could allude to crimes unknown to us by ‘zealotic’ Jews, just as 1:24–27 denounces known sexual practices in the Graeco-Roman world. 141 The genitive here and in Gal 2:16 is usually interpreted as an objective genitive. However, it can be heard in both ways and therefore this time round the subjective aspect must be emphasized.
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Postscript: Politics and Rhetoric in Rom 1–2 In retrospect, I am getting ever more convinced that reading Romans as a timeless theological treatise leads to unsolvable contradictions, due to the complex situation it addressed and the convoluted rhetoric this involved. The complexity is particularly impervious in Rom 2, as can be seen reflected in some further publications. Addressing the circumcision passage in Rom 2:25–29, John Barclay has suggested that Paul here ‘thoroughly redefines’ the meaning of circumcision, making it ‘an entirely superfluous phenomenon’. Quite to the contrary, however, the verses immediately following stress ‘literal circumcision’ (3:1–2), which Barclay tries to explain by supposing that it refers to the historical past.142 This, however, runs counter to Paul’s present-tense affirmation of circumcision (Gal 5:3, ὀφειλέτης ἐστίν) for those who really opt for it with all its consequences, as shown above. In his study on Rom 2, Runar Thorsteinsson correctly rejects the view that the chapter apostrophises the ‘typical’ and ‘self-righteous Jew’. Instead, he concludes that the chapter addresses a gentile ‘who wants to call himself a Jew’. This, however, cannot be squared with 2:17 and 3:1, and moreover it overlooks the significance of the ‘Jewish’ character of Rom 2:6–16.143 Thiessen, agreeing with Thorsteinsson that Rom 2 addresses a gentile, adds that Paul rejects the latter’s claim to be a Jew, not indeed because he redefines Judaism, but because a non-Jew cannot become a Jew.144 However, this both contradicts common Jewish practice of the time and, again, Paul’s rule in Gal 5:2f. Finally for P. Maertens, in Rom 2:12–16 Paul stresses the importance of the law for his ‘gospel’, both for Jews and gentiles, while he defends himself against the double attack from the ‘Judaizers’ accusing him of neglect of the law and pressing for circumcision of gentile believers.145 This goes a long way in capturing Paul’s complex reasoning, but it envisages Paul’s rhetoric timelessly as ‘la théologie paulinienne’ standing aloof from contemporary events. Baur’s historical-critical requirement has lost none of its relevance. We must read Romans as a time-bound document that is likely to refer, even if indirectly and for us unclearly, to a complex historical situation involving Rome and Judea around 58 CE. Baur required that we find a ‘stable historical reference point’ for interpreting Romans. Such a foothold, I propose, is indeed found in Paul’s apprehension vis-à-vis ‘the unsubdued in Judea’ and their possible damaging influence on the reception of the collection from Paul’s churches in Jerusalem 142 Barclay, ‘Paul and Philo on Circumcision’. By contrast, Barclay’s portrait of Philo seems fair and adequate, cf my Paul, 36–47. 143 Thorsteinsson, Paul’s Interlocutor in Romans 2, quotes 4f and 245. On Rom 2:6–16 see ibid. 194–196. 144 Thiessen, ‘Paul’s Argument against Gentile Circumcision’. 145 Maertens, ‘Une étude de Rm 2.12–16’.
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(Rom 15:30–32).146 Paul makes these references obliquely, as though supposing his Roman readers would be in the know. They may indeed have had their own channels of information (cf Acts 28:21). Supplemented by the evidence collected in the above, Paul’s apprehension seems to echo the alarmingly growing tension between Jews and non-Jews in Judea in the late 50s CE. In addition, Galatians and 2 Corinthians inform us that the climate of tension had meanwhile expanded to such places as Corinth and Galatia and was making Paul’s work increasingly difficult.147 In this light, it is interesting to draw attention to a number of further references in Romans that have a certain political relevance and distinctly target Jews and gentiles. Towards the end of the letter, there is the straightforward reminder of the punitive power of the Emperor in 13:1–7, which may well allude to the ban by Claudius and thus be a warning to Jewish Christians to behave lawfully,148 as well as the appeal to ‘welcome’ Jewish Christians in 14:1–15:13, which of course addresses gentile Christians. Both references concern circumstances in Rome and could be interrelated: amid the general parenetic of Rom 12–13, the pericope on the Emperor’s power stands out, while the next concrete issue that follows, 14:1–15:13, may well relate to problems caused by the gradual extinction of the decree, according to the interpretation here followed.149 Furthermore, the opening chapters of Romans specifically castigate various sorts of lawless behaviour. In 1:22–28, idolatry and sexual misbehaviour are targeted, which obviously must involve gentiles; and in 2:21–25, theft, adultery, and sacrilege, which, as the synagogue language that precedes suggests, are committed by Jews. These last references could include allusions to events in Judaea, especially the accusation of ‘robbing temples’. Destruction or desecration of pagan cult objects by Jews is reported as part of the Maccabaean campaigns and under Herod the Great, and similar acts may have occurred during the turbulent 50s CE.150 The reference to pagan cult as well has political relevance. In Antiquity, religion and especially sacrificial cult was generally ascribed a public or civic
146 More elaboration on Romans in its socio-political context in my article, ‘Romans 9–11 and Political Events’; on Baur’s own ‘fester historischer Punkt’ see above n14, and ‘Paul’s Collection’, in this volume. 147 See 2 Cor 3 and 11; Gal 6. 148 Fitzmyer, Romans, 662–665 mentions the relevance of Claudius’ decree for Rom 13:1–7, among other factors. On the decree see Stern, GLAJJ 2: 113–117; Botermann, Judenedikt, 51–102. 149 With many contributors to Donfried, Romans Debate, I prefer the interpretation of Wiefel, ‘The Jewish Community in Ancient Rome’; cf Fitzmyer, Romans, 33f. 150 1 Macc 2:45; 13:47, cf 14:7; 2 Macc 2:45; 5:68; Josephus, War 1:648–655; Ant 17:149– 164. See Duncan Derrett, ‘You abominate False Gods’. See also Tomson, ‘Romans 9–11 and Political Events’, 65–70.
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function, and encroachments on the cult of another social group had immediate political consequences.151 Taking in these elements, we gain a better view of the balancing act of Romans. Without further elaborating, I presuppose that the epistle has no single purpose and serves both as an elaborate letter of introduction, an associated request of support for the Spanish mission, and, perhaps most urgently, an extended effort to bring about reconciliation between gentile and Jewish Roman Christians.152 In view of this last purpose, Rom 9–11 plays a central argumentative role, next to the tactful practical appeal in 14:1–15:13. This is summed up in the motto and its remarkable order (1:16; 2:10f): ‘To the Jew first, and also to the Greek.’153 In the complex of Jewish-gentile tensions in the late 50s both in Judaea and in Rome, Paul strives to construe an overarching imaginary that facilitates a tactful appeal on the gentile Christians in Rome to ‘welcome’ their Jewish brothers and sisters. The opening part of the letter, which may be taken to run from 1:18 to 3:20 (or to 4:25), lays the foundations of this framework. It starts out in the universal mode, condemning ‘all ungodliness and wickedness’ by the standard that is known ‘since the creation of the world’. Then follow the general accusations against both gentiles and Jews, recapitulated in the sentence towards the end: ‘In the preceding we have charged (προῃτισάμεθα) both Jews and Greeks, that they are all under the power of sin …’ (3:9). The cataena of biblical verses follows (3:11–18), culminating in the formulaic phrase, ‘Out of works of the law, no flesh will be justified before him’ (3:20). We are faced with rhetoric devised to create an atmosphere fostering recognition and reconciliation between gentiles and Jews. Rhetoric also are the various accusations against gentiles and Jews. Idolatry and homosexuality were well-known practices in the Graeco-Roman world, but it was an enormous exaggeration to claim that this involved ‘all gentiles’. Similarly, Jews do steal and commit adultery, and some will even have desecrated pagan altars, but again it is a crude hyperbole to say that ‘all Jews’ were guilty of these acts. At the same time, nevertheless, the personalising diatribe style lends liveliness to these exaggerated accusations. It is as though gentiles and their sins are dramatised to fit Jewish clichés about them, and vice versa, Jewish unlawfulness is painted vividly following rumours popular among gentiles. And presumably, the shifting perspective of Paul’s rhetoric precisely serves to prepare the minds of his readers to view their Jewish or gentile ‘others’ as fellow-creatures who, with their respective sins and imperfections, are answerable to the same Creator.154 151 See Rives, ‘Animal Sacrifice’. Josephus cites a general prohibition against desecrating foreign gods, Ant 4:207, μηδὲ συλᾶν ἱερὰ ξενικά, cf Exod 22:27; see Feldman, Judean Antiquities, ad loc. 152 See references above n108 and Fitzmyer, Romans, 58–88. 153 Tomson, ‘Romans 9–11 and Political Events’. 154 Rom 14:1–12; cf 3:29f; 4:10–12; 15:7–13.
What did Paul mean by ‘Those who know the Law’? (Rom 7:1) In the framework of his grand argument on the law in Rom 6 and 7, Paul in Rom 7:1–4 uses a comparison that specifically appeals to ‘those who know the law’:* Ἢ ἀγνοεῖτε, ἀδελφοί – γινώσκουσιν γὰρ νόμον λαλῶ – ὅτι ὁ νόμος κυριεύει τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐφ’ ὅσον χρόνον ζῇ; 2 ἡ γὰρ ὕπανδρος γυνὴ τῷ ζῶντι ἀνδρὶ δέδεται νόμῳ· ἐὰν δὲ ἀποθάνῃ ὁ ἀνήρ, κατήργηται ἀπὸ τοῦ νόμου τοῦ ἀνδρός. 3ἄρα οὖν ζῶντος τοῦ ἀνδρὸς μοιχαλὶς χρηματίσει ἐὰν γένηται ἀνδρὶ ἑτέρῳ· ἐὰν δὲ ἀποθάνῃ ὁ ἀνήρ, ἐλευθέρα ἐστὶν ἀπὸ τοῦ νόμου, τοῦ μὴ εἶναι αὐτὴν μοιχαλίδα γενομένην ἀνδρὶ ἑτέρῳ. 4 ὥστε, ἀδελφοί μου, καὶ ὑμεῖς ἐθανατώθητε τῷ νόμῳ διὰ τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ, εἰς τὸ γενέσθαι ὑμᾶς ἑτέρῳ, τῷ ἐκ νεκρῶν ἐγερθέντι … Do you not know, brethren – for it is to those who know the law that I am speaking – that the law has authority over a person during one’s lifetime? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is free from the law of her husband. 3Thus, as long as her husband lives, she will be considered an adulteress if she becomes another man’s, but if her husband dies she is free from that law, so that she is not an adulteress if she becomes another man’s. 4Therefore, my brethren, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may become to another one’s: his who has been raised from the dead … 1
At first glance, the comparison limps. Unlike the believer, who in Christ has ‘died’ to the law, it is not the woman’s own death that frees her from the law, but her husband’s. For one thing, this rules out the various allegorical explanations of the comparison.1 As in the case of parables, we should not look for too many terms in [574] common. Cranfield soberly summarises the one point of * Paper read in Dutch at the 2002 Studiosorum Novi Testamenti Conventus at Zeist, the Netherlands, [published as a ‘short study’ in NTS 49 (2003) 573–581, and reprinted here with minor stylistic changes; thanks to the NTS publishers for their permission]. I am obliged to the NTS Editors whose questions helped enhance the argument. 1 Cranfield, Romans, 334f. Too ingeniously, Earnshaw, ‘Reconsidering’ proposes it concerns an ‘analogy’ involving the Christian’s ‘marriage’ first to Christ who died (the ‘first husband’, under the law) and then to the Risen one (the second one, liberating). [Correctly, however, Earnshaw ibid. 78 points out that the decisive analogy is between the law of Moses and the law of marriage. Conveniently, Schelkle, Paulus Lehrer der Väter, 224–227 shows that most Church Fathers understood Rom 7:1–3 as an allegory.]
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correspondence: ‘the occurrence of a death effects a decisive change in respect of relationship to the law’.2
A Paradox More importantly, the comparison contains a baffling paradox.3 In order to illuminate his argument that the law somehow is made ineffective through death, Paul adduces a practical case showing how the law remains in force during the lifetime of those involved. Moreover he introduces the example with the words, ἡ γὰρ ὕπανδρος γυνὴ …, which links up with the address to the readers, ἢ ἀγνοεῖτε, ἀδελφοί, γινώσκουσιν γὰρ νόμον λαλῶ … Clearly, he supposes his readers will not ‘ignore’ but to personally ‘know’ the example from the law.4 How can he refer the Roman Christians to a law that holds during their lifetime and at the same time say they have ‘died to the law’? The most penetrating analysis of this crux interpretum, in my opinion, is given by Fitzmyer, even though his explanation is not quite satisfactory in the end. Fitzmyer sums up: ‘One of the major problems in this chapter is, Of what law does Paul speak? Does nomos in 7:1a refer to he same law as in v1b and the subsequent verses?’5 He then lists explanations to the effect that different laws are spoken of. Some, like Bultmann and Käsemann, supposed the law the Roman believers ‘knew’ was law in general6 or Roman law – did not Paul write to Rome? – and the one they had ‘died’ to, the Jewish law.7 Conversely, others thought that the law the believers had died to is natural law8 or general law as from Adam9; in which case the example of the married woman must derive from Jewish law. 2 Cranfield, Romans, 335. Earnshaw, ‘Reconsidering’ is right to point to 7:4 εἰς τὸ γενέσθαι ὑμᾶς ἑτέρῳ as extending the example, but I think this is done rather loosely and should not be forced to fit into a coherent ‘analogy’. 3 Fitzmyer, Romans, 455 says Paul ‘interweaves two arguments’: one, ‘that law binds only the living’, and another, which ‘imperfectly’ illustrates the first, ‘that the wife is freed by the death of her husband’. To the extent that the example applies to the readers’ own lifetime, it seems better to call the argument paradoxical. 4 One could translate γινώσκουσιν νόμον generically: ‘those who know what law is’ (Fitzmyer, Romans, 454), but it would make no difference since in any case some interpretation of the Mosaic law is concerned. 5 Fitzmyer, Romans, 455. 6 Because the article is lacking; cf n4 above. Ridderbos, Romeinen can be added to Fitzmyer’s list. 7 Thus Lagrange, Romains, ad loc. and 180–188, excursus ‘L’abrogation de la Loi’: the ‘old’ Jewish Law has been abolished, but Paul’s example appeals to general law on which the Romans are known specialists. The interpretation breaks down on the point Lagrange mentions on p161: both Roman and Jewish law recognise divorce, but Paul does not. 8 Fitzmyer refers to Origen, Comm in Rom, MPG 14: 1032. 9 Because of ἑντολή and the reference to Gen 3:13 in Rom 7:11, 13; thus Didymus the Blind, etc.
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[575] Neither attempt to resolve the paradox is convincing. After all, the argument of Romans is all about the validity of the law.10 Moreover we do not get the impression, as e. g. in Rom 7:22–23 or 8:2, that Paul plays on various secondary associations of the word νόμος. Therefore according to most,11 including Fitzmyer himself,12 in both cases in 7:1 the Mosaic law must be involved. Nor is it likely that Paul is addressing Jewish Christians, for whom, by exception, the law would have retained a practical significance. On the contrary, several times in the letter Paul apostrophises gentile Christians (Rom 1:5, 13; 11:13). Fitzmyer sums up: ‘Paul can assume some knowledge of the Mosaic law among the [predominantly gentile] Christians of Rome …’13 But how can Jewish and gentile Christians in Rome have ‘died’ to the law, if at the same time they personally ‘know’ the ‘law’ about the married woman to be binding during their lifetime? In his ‘Comment’ on Paul’s argument in these verses, Fitzmyer affirms: ‘Because Christians have experienced death in and through Christ, the law has no more claim on them.’ But in his ‘Notes’ he writes, referring to the example of the married woman: ‘The law is still in effect, indeed, but it is the Christian who has died to it.’14 The paradox is in place.
The Link with 1 Cor 7:39 The explanation offered here turns on the remarkable fact that Paul quotes the same law also in 1 Cor 7:39–40,15 but in a way and in a context that reveal more of its character: Γυνὴ δέδεται ἐφ’ ὅσον χρόνον ζῇ ὁ ἀνὴρ αὐτῆς· ἐὰν δὲ κοιμηθῇ ὁ ἀνήρ, ἐλευθέρα ἐστὶν ᾧ θέλει γαμηθῆναι, μόνον ἐν κυρίῳ. μακαριωτέρα δέ ἐστιν ἐὰν οὕτως μείνῃ, κατὰ τὴν ἐμὴν γνώμην … [576]
10 Consequently, the (Stoic!) ‘law of nature’ in Rom 1 is only taken to confirm the import of the Mosaic law. 11 Also Cranfield, Romans, as Fitzmyer noted. Add to his list: Dunn, Romans 1–8; Schmithals, Römerbrief; Moo, Romans; Légasse, Romains. [With a view on the wider argument of Rom 7–8 see also Lohse, ‘῾Ο νόμος τοῦ πνεύματος’, and Ito, ‘Νόμος (τῶν) ἔργων’.] 12 Fitzmyer, Romans, 456, dragging his feet a little: ‘Hence it seems better to understand nomos at least from v1b on as referring to the Mosaic law, and the same seems to be intended in v 1a as well.’ 13 Fitzmyer, Romans, 457. Similarly Cranfield, Romans, 333: ‘Gentile Christians as well as Jewish could no doubt be assumed to have some knowledge of the OT law.’ 14 Fitzmyer, Romans, 455, 458. 15 Fitzmyer, Romans, 457 is among the few to note this, but draws no conclusions: ‘See 1 Cor 7:39.’ Similarly Michel, Römer, 166. Earnshaw, ‘Reconsidering’ deals with 1 Cor 7:39 extensively (the presentation of the two passages on p77 is very helpful), but he is only interested in linguistic relations and ignores Paul is applying a rule here. Légasse, Romains overlooks 1 Cor 7:39 (except as concerns the verb δεεῖν, p441 n19).
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A woman is bound during the lifetime of her husband; but if the husband dies, she is free to be married to whoever she wishes, but only in the Lord. But she is happier if she stays so, in my own opinion …
This concerns the last in a series of cases in which Paul instructs the Corinthians how to behave when married life could conflict with ‘the things of the Lord’. Paul’s ‘own opinion’ at the end contrasts with the sentence he has just cited. This reveals the sentence is an accepted rule, as is also seen from its prescriptive third person grammar. There is no formal reason not to call it a ‘law’. As in several of those other cases, Paul teaches both such an accepted law and his own (more restrictive!) personal opinion (cf [συγ]γνώμη also in 1 Cor 7:6 and 25). The corresponding words which we have printed in italics here and in the quotation of Rom 7:1–4 above, show that, given his habitual degree of variation, Paul is citing the same law in both cases. It is also clear that he does so with very different aims. In the context of his practical instruction, he intends it literally in 1 Cor 7:39. But in Rom 7:2–3, he uses it as a metaphor illuminating his general argument about the law. This becomes explicit in the conclusion, ‘… that you may become another’s, his who has been raised from the dead’ (Rom 7:4). Let us now look at some details which allow us to identify this law. The conditional clause ‘only in the Lord’ (apparently meaning ‘only within the Church’) reveals that it concerns a rule that obtains in the Church. In other words, Paul cites a law from Christian tradition he deems valid, even if his own opinion is more restrictive. Further identification is possible by paying attention to Rom 7:3. It is an explicative corollary which excludes divorce as a means of terminating the marriage bond by stating that as long as the husband lives, the woman cannot ‘become another man’s’. Now in the same context in 1 Corinthians, Paul gives another rule which is clearly related and contains a similar corollary. In view of its stated origin, this one even appears to represent the basis of the law cited in 1 Cor 7:39: ‘… I command – not I but the Lord: a woman should not leave her husband, and if she has left him, she must remain unmarried or be reconciled with her husband; and a man may not send away his wife’ (1 Cor 7:10f.). ‘Leaving’ her husband was the way in which a woman could dissolve her marriage under Hellenistic law.16 Paul did not recognise that option, for he applied to women under Hellenistic law what he also held to be valid for all men: divorce was excluded. Paul taught this commandment not on his own authority but on that of ‘the Lord’, and he applied it also to non-Jewish Christians. [577] In case any doubt remains as to who this ‘Lord’ is, the gospels refer us to the synoptic tradition where Jesus is quoted as teaching: ‘Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman 16 Tomson, Paul, 117, 108f; it is also presupposed in Mark 10:12, which shows this Gospel here (as in Mark 7:2f) addresses gentile Christians.
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divorced from her husband, commits adultery.’17 The double pronouncement carefully excludes divorce, as in Rom 7:2–3. As we shall see in the continuation, the exclusion of divorce was by no means generally accepted in ancient Judaism. We seem to be confronted with a feature typical of the Jesus tradition. Here, our investigation yields a first set of conclusions. Both in Rom 7:2–3 and in 1 Cor 7:39, a ‘law’ concerning marriage from pre-Pauline tradition is cited that must derive from Jesus and is applied also to gentile Christians. Paul apparently did not think it strange to designate a teaching associated with Jesus as law (Rom 7:1a), as indeed he could speak of the ‘commandments’ of Jesus.18 All this explains how he could suppose gentile Christians in Rome would ‘know the law’ of the married woman. We noted, however, that in Rom 7:2–3 he applied it metaphorically. Therefore we can now also conclude that to Paul’s mind the metaphorical use did not cancel out the literal meaning of this law. The implication would seem to be that Paul’s argument in Rom 6–7 did not aim at the abolishment of the Jewish law or parts of it. We would be left with the task of explaining what Paul’s argument was about.
Early Jewish and Christian Marriage Law Respecting the limits of a ‘short study’, we could reduce that task to a short summary and there stop our investigation. There is, however, one important aspect we have not yet pursued: the fact that according to most exegetes, the case of the married woman somehow relates to the Mosaic law. It will prove useful to try and put this law, which we saw derives from the Jesus tradition, on the map of first century Judaism. Three observations must be kept in mind. First, Paul can hardly be supposed to have thought in terms of the neat opposition between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Christian’ thought that later became standard. The construction of the ‘Jewish law’ as an entity alien to Christian theology is self-evidently an anachronism vis-à-vis Paul’s day. In the immediate continuation, Paul affirms: ‘the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good’ (Rom 7:12, cf 7), and correspondingly, he can appeal to ‘the law’ in support of his practical instruction.19 [578] 17 Luke 16:18, the purest formulation. On Mark 10:11f see previous note; on Matt 19:9 and on the related story Mark 10:1–10 and Matt 19:1–8 see Tomson, Paul, 112–116 and below n25. In an earlier study (see below n30), Fitzmyer accepts the attribution of the synoptic divorce prohibition to Jesus yet identifies the ‘Lord’ in 1 Cor 7:10 as ‘the risen Kyrios’. 18 1 Cor 7:25; 14:37, ἐντολὴ κυρίου, cf 7:10. Cf 9:21, Paul is ἔννομος Χριστοῦ, ‘law-obeying of Christ’, and Gal 6:2, Christians are to bear with one another and thus to fulfil τὸν νόμον τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Brotherly love as an ἐντολή of Jesus is also rooted in Johannine parlance: John 13:34; 15:12; 1 John passim. 19 1 Cor 9:8f; 14:21, 34; and see in this light Gal 5:14; Rom 13:8–10.
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Second, in these chapters Paul is not interested in certain details of the law to be kept or not to be kept. As we saw, he cites the example from the law metaphorically, by way of illuminating an argument on the law in a general sense. If the argument is not about its plain abolishment, it must be about something else. Third, on the practical level and not at all to the exclusion of the previous observations,20 in Paul’s day the Jewish law was extant in rather different communities of interpretation. Rabbinic literature informs us about the two Pharisaic schools of Shammai and Hillel, whose reputed disagreements on many details of marriage law are fully relevant here;21 and the consensus of rabbinic scholars is that the dispute matter of these schools can roughly be dated to the Second Temple period. Furthermore, we possess the sectarian writings from Qumran which are definitely pre-70 and may be assumed largely to coincide with the Essene interpretation. Somewhere between these known positions, the tradition of Jesus and his early followers is to be located. Now as to the ‘law’ about the married woman, Fitzmyer correctly notes that ‘as such (it) is not found in the OT’. He is wrong, however, when, misled by Strack-Billerbeck, he goes on to state that ‘it agrees with the principle enunciated in later rabbinic literature, e. g. in m. Qidd. 1:1’.22 Indeed, the law Paul quotes neither coincides with Old Testament legislation nor with rabbinic halakha. It appears we must look for a different interpretation of the Mosaic law. The subject we are dealing with is marriage and divorce. The pivotal scriptural passage here, which is quoted in discussions about divorce both in rabbinic literature and in the New Testament, is Deut 24:1–4.23 In describing a complex legal case, this passage mentions two ways in which a marriage is dissolved: ‘… If he writes her a bill of divorce … and if she goes and becomes another man’s, and the latter husband dislikes her and writes her a bill of divorce; or if the latter husband dies …’ Besides the husband’s death, the Mosaic law elaborately acknowledges divorce by writ as a legal termination of marriage. This is what the Mishna passage referred to by Fitzmyer renders in clear-cut language: ‘A woman … acquires herself (i. e. her freedom) by two means … She acquires herself by a divorce deed and by death of the husband’ (mKid 1:1). [579] Significantly, the Deuteronomy passage also seems to be echoed in Paul’s phrase, ‘if she becomes another man’s’ (Rom 7:3). Not only is this a glaring Semitism,24 it is verbally identical with Deut 24:2 LXX, (ὲὰν) ἀπελθοῦσα 20 The once habitual but facile opposition of law and apocalyptic theology has been ruled out by Qumran. 21 mYev 1:4; tYev 1:10–13. 22 Fitzmyer, Romans, 457, citing the quote of mKid 1:1 in Str-Bill 3: 234. Similarly Wilckens, Römer 2: 64, and again p66 n260, citing Str-Bill ibid. 377, where 1 Cor 7:39 (excluding divorce!) is suggested to coincide with mKid 1:1 and mGit 9:3 (stating conditions for divorce, see n27 below!). 23 Mark 10:4 and Matt 19:7; mGit 9:10 and, more explicitly, SifDeut 269 (Finkelstein 288). 24 BDR 153, noted by Cranfield, Romans, 33 n5; Fitzmyer, Romans, 458.
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γ ένηται ἀνδρὶ ἑτέρῳ. Paul, however, carefully excludes the possibility of divorce and subsequent remarriage and hence follows a different interpretation, one which denies the divorce option presupposed by Deuteronomy. We have identified this as a teaching of Jesus. Indeed in the synoptic pericope, it is set off against the opinion of the Pharisees who based themselves on Deut 24:1!25 On the other hand, the expression ‘she is free to be married to whoever she whishes’ (1 Cor 7:39) is strikingly reminiscent of legal elements from rabbinic law defining the dissolution of marriage. According to the first, anonymous opinion in the Mishna, the ‘essential phrase of a divorce bill’ reads, in Hebrew: ‘Behold, you are permitted to any man’, while Rabbi Yehuda renders an alternative tradition, which is in Aramaic and could well be older: ‘This is to you, from me, a bill of divorce, a letter of remission, that you may go and be married to any man you wish’ (mGit 9:3).26 The measure of verbal correspondence makes it likely that such elements already existed at Paul’s time, but that he or his tradition used them to define the sole legal means of terminating marriage they recognised: death of the partner. Finally, as I have shown elsewhere, the restrictive clause ‘but only in the Lord’ (1 Cor 7:39) compares with another, probably ancient rabbinic legal element.27 The conclusion that we are concerned with apostolic, Jewish-Christian law tradition is confirmed by the observation that the word μοιχαλίς (Rom 7:3) is uniquely Jewish and Christian.28 An overview of the ancient Jewish communities of interpretation puts this in historical perspective. While according to the Mishna, the two schools of Shammai and of Hillel differed on the interpretation of Deut 24:1 in defining the legal grounds for divorce,29 the Qumran documents exclude divorce [580] altogether.30 On this score, Jesus and the apostolic tradition apparently held a position close to that of the Qumran covenanters.31 The little phrase to the effect that ‘not I, but the Lord’ taught that marriage is lifelong (1 Cor 7:10) speaks 25 Mark 10:2–12. In view of the cumulative Qumran, NT and rabbinic evidence, the revision in Matt 19:1–9 reflects a softening of Jesus’ teaching towards the Shammaite position, accepting the divorce principle of Deut 24:1 though on the stricter reading: ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ (Matt 19:9; cf 5:32); see Tomson, Paul, 112–116. [For the whole issue, see ‘Divorce Halakha’, in this volume.] 26 Again misleadingly quoted by Str-Bill on 1 Cor 7:39, see above n22. R. Yehuda often represents a conservative strand in the lineage of R. Eliezer, see Epstein, Prolegomena, 106–125. 27 I.e., the tradition of divorce clauses of R. Eliezer, ‘the conservative’, mGit 9:3, which is rejected as being contradictory to the principle of legal divorce; see Tomson, Paul, 121f. 28 Fitzmyer, Romans, 458. 29 See rabbinic passages in n23. 30 CD 4:19–5:5; 11QTemp 57:17–19. See excellent discussion by Fitzmyer, ‘Matthean Divorce Texts’. My only critique would be that while actually viewing ‘the absolute prohibition of divorce as coming from Jesus himself’, Fitzmyer holds Paul in 1 Cor 7:10f ascribed it to ‘the risen Kyrios’ (99, 81). 31 There is even a verbally identical scriptural argument, which points to a tradition shared in common: marriage is indissoluble since ‘as from the principle of creation, “Male and female He created them”’, Mark 10:6; CD 4:21. The radical appeal to ‘Creation’ as against the permissiveness of Moses and David is also analogous.
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volumes about the place of Paul, the former Pharisee, in Judaism and vis-à-vis the Jesus tradition.
Conclusion In the course of his argument about the law in Rom 6–7, Paul, appealing to the ‘knowledge of the law’ of his readers, adduced an apostolic marriage law that had its origins in the teachings of Jesus. It reflects an interpretation of the Mosaic law much stricter than that of the Pharisees and closely resembling the one found in the Qumran scrolls. As is seen in 1Cor 7, Paul considered it binding also on gentile Christians, which is why he could assume it to be personally known to his gentile Christian readers in Rome. While quoting it as binding law in 1 Cor 7:39, Paul utilised it in Rom 7:2–3 as a metaphor illuminating his argument on the law.32 As we have noted, this shows the intention of the argument was not to abolish the Jewish law. What it did intend to do is of course hotly debated among exegetes; some brief indications must suffice here. Pursuing some of our findings thus far, we could venture that Paul’s argument as a whole is metaphorical in nature. So much seems obvious in the summary that links up the example with his argument: ‘You have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may become another one’s: his who has been raised from the dead’ (Rom 7:4).33 Given the prominence of ‘death’ and ‘resurrection’, its language could be further described as apocalyptical. Clearly also, its logic defies rational analysis: one can be bound lifelong by a law one has also ‘died’ to.34 Such [581] observations help us comprehend if not the content then at least the paradoxical form of Paul’s grand argument on the law. Its implications on the practical level must be read from the position Paul was in when writing, which was, as Krister Stendahl has reminded us once and for all, ‘among Jews and gentiles’.35 In order to do justice to ‘all’, I suggest, Paul affirmed a differentiated practical validity of the law for Jews and for gentiles. Even if ‘all’ are saved and justified not by ‘doing the law’ but by ‘being in 32 Here the observations of Earnshaw, ‘Reconsidering’, 80, 83 are useful. The vocabulary in Rom 7 – νόμος (not in 1 Cor 7), κατήργηται and ἀποθάνῃ (instead of κοιμηθῃ and ἐλευθέρα ἐστιν in 1 Cor 7) – displays ‘a calculated choice of words’ serving the argumentation of Rom 6–7. In line with my analysis, I would say Paul varied the wording of the law quoted in 1 Cor 7 for it to function as a metaphor in Rom 7. 33 Légasse, Romains, 436 observes the readers’ death is ‘purement métaphorique’; cf the other ‘metaphors’ he discerns in Paul’s argument on p391, 418, 427. 34 This is not the place to go into the painful questions Paul’s and Jesus’ divorce prohibition raises in modern Church life. Cf the sensitive observations on ‘theological implications’ by Fitzmyer, ‘Divorce Texts’, 99–102. 35 Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles.
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Christ’, Jews must observe ‘the whole law’ (cf Gal 5.3) while non-Jews must not. Hence Paul’s ever varied motto that ‘neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping God’s commandments’ (1 Cor 7:19).36
36 Cf Rom 4:10–12, and, read in this light, Gal 3:28; 5:6; 6:15; 1 Cor 12:13; Col 3:11. For a comprehensive presentation of Paul’s thought see Tomson, If this be from Heaven, chapter 4; for the phrase τήρησις ἐντολῶν θεοῦ, Tomson, Paul, 270–274.
Paul as a Recipient and Teacher of Tradition Learning and teaching always involve tradition. Such is the lesson of the paradigmatic anecdote rabbinic literature attributes to the legendary ‘pair’ of sages, Shammai and Hillel.1 Someone asked Shammai, ‘How many Toras do you have?’ He was dismissed angrily. Then he went to Hillel who invited him to sit down, wrote the first letters of the alphabeth, and asked him to read. ‘A, B, C …’, the man read, so Hillel asked how he knew. He said he had ‘accepted this on faith’. Then Hillel taught him: similarly, you must ‘accept on faith’ that the written Tora only comes with an oral Tora. Scripture presupposes teaching and tradition.2 This lesson is likely to be lost on those Protestants who stress ‘scripture’ or ‘revelation’ rather than the Catholic predilection for ‘tradition’. Possibly due to the dominance of Protestant exegesis in nineteenth and twentieth century scholarship, a similar inhibition is also seen in some Catholic exegetes. Therefore an invitation from the Tilburg School of Catholic Theology to write on ‘Teachers and disciples in biblical texts’ is a choice occasion for a scholar who is also a Protestant. In the given biblically-oriented perspective, it invites him to review some elements of Protestant thought, the more so since the appearance of the volume will likely coincide with the fifth centennial of the Reformation. Protestant doctrine made Paul the central biblical author, and Romans and Galatians, with their prominent ‘justification’ theme, his ‘most canonical’ letters.3 We shall have to ask questions about such preoccupations, [186] trying to read Paul’s letters afresh within their Jewish and Graeco-Roman surroundings and thus to uncover hitherto overlooked aspects and elements. We should not be surprised to meet a rather different Paul, one who taught and imparted traditions and who even seems to have held a ‘school’ on whose curriculum featured modified Jewish tradition elements in the fields of halakha and mysticism.
1 On the ‘pairs’ ( )זוגותcf mPea 2:6 and mAv 1:4–12, on which cf Bickerman, below n21. [The article appeared in B. J. Koet – A. L. H. M. van Wieringen (eds), Multiple Teachers in Biblical Texts, Leuven, Peeters 2017, 185–206, and is reprinted with minor additions.] 2 Paraphrasing ARN b29 (31a–b). Cf Stemberger, Einleitung, 41 on ‘Oral and Written Tradition’. 3 Cf Käsemann (ed), Das Neue Testament als Kanon, in particular the editor’s ‘Zusammenfassung’, ibid. 399–410, and the contibution by Hans Küng ibid. 175–204.
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Paul’s Letters as Didactic Communication Paul’s letters are precious documents in many respects. Those we may consider authentic supposedly are one-off letters, each reflecting a unique historical situation usually not otherwise documented. In that light Philipp Vielhauer – himself also a Protestant – observes in his remarkably perceptive Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur that Paul’s letters were meant and read as ‘a stand-in for oral delivery’ aimed at such situations, recording on paper the live voice of the apostle dictating his messages to his churches.4 Already this insight suggests that Paul would use traditional elements. Indeed, paying close attention to literary form, Vielhauer distinguishes four types of traditional elements in Paul’s letters.5 (1) The frequent formal quotations from ‘Scripture’, which obviously reflect the methods of Jewish exegesis. (2) ‘Pre-Pauline Christian texts’, sometimes introduced by ‘the technical tradition terminology of παραλαμβάνειν/παραδιδόναι’ (receive/hand on). (3) Parenetical passages involving familiar ethical and sapiential material from the Graeco-Roman and Graeco-Jewish worlds.6 (4) The typical Pauline ‘Einlagen’ or excursions, self-contained pieces of argument that sit rather loosely in their context and are often considered insertions. But, Vielhauer warns, interpolation theories are inadequate here for two reasons: similar digressions on favourite themes are frequent also in Cynic-Stoic popular teaching, and these ‘excursions’ by vocabulary, style, and content are not at all un-Pauline. Vielhauer refers to a study by Hans Conzelmann which is worth quoting: [187] Their make-up [i. e., of these excursive units] evinces a typical school-like character. Undoubtedly, this is expressive of Paul’s formal education as a Jewish theologian. It is the more likely since we can observe a corresponding relation of his with the Jewish wisdom tradition. We could even go one step further and suppose that in the background, we can make out a schooling system that Paul intentionally organized, a ‘school of Paul’…7
Thus Vielhauer, following Conzelmann’s lead, presents Paul as an apostle of Jesus who has also remained a teacher of wisdom and traditional knowledge, in line with his Jewish or Pharisaic training. They even intuit a Pauline ‘school’. Addressing the overall theme of the present volume, we can now conclude that practically speaking there is a single level of communication in Paul’s authentic letters.* There is only the implied teacher-disciple relation, i. e., the relationship between Paul and the church he addresses. Paul did not write for 4 Vielhauer, Geschichte, 56 (on 1 Thess 4:1), 59. [Mention must also be made of Oscar Cullmann, who as a Protestant sought to bridge the gap over ‘Scripture and Tradition’ vis-à-vis Roman Catholicism. See below notes 30 and 66.] 5 Vielhauer, Geschichte, 68–70. 6 Cf the useful survey in Vielhauer, Geschichte, 49–57. 7 Conzelmann, ‘Paulus und die Weisheit’, 233 (my translation, original emphasis). * [One of the foci of interest of the volume on Multiple Teachers (n1 above) is the dual
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external readers of the ‘corpus’ of his letters. This is different for the DeuteroPaulines, insofar as those were edited, rewritten or written by a collaborator of Paul’s, creating a ‘classical’ apostolic character.8 It is certainly different for the Gospels, where traditional material is presented in a redactional framework that at times considerably differs in outlook from the tradition units it integrates. By contrast, the authentic letters put us face to face with Paul himself. But then again, it is precisely the traditional elements embedded in the epistolary argument that have a more general, ‘didactic’ import.
Protestant Preoccupations We must be reminded, however, that we are not Paul’s first-hand addressees. Twenty-first century readers are largely outsiders to the world of Paul and his churches, certainly as regards the unique situations he was addressing. Consequently it is crucial to monitor the way we read and appropriate these documents. In particular, it has become almost unavoidable to read them in the framework of latter-day, Christian and especially Protestant theology. Thus the letter to the Romans with its extended arguments is the favourite quarrying ground for construing Paul’s supposed [188] ‘theology’. Already Melanchthon (1520) called Romans a doctrinae christianae compendium, albeit a rather limited one, but also Rudolf Bultmann (1948–53) and more recently James Dunn (1997) based their descriptions of Paul’s thought primarily on that letter.9 However, other Protestant exegetes, notably Ferdinand Christian Baur (1836) and Krister Stendahl (1976), have emphasized that Romans should not be read as a timeless theological treatise, but as another ad hoc letter addressed to the unique situation of the Roman church around 58 CE.10 A cherished Protestant idea also concerns the genesis of Paul’s message. Probably indirectly in reaction to the Catholic emphasis on authorized tradition, a typically Protestant emphasis can be heard in the concentration on Galatians, where Paul asserts about his ‘gospel’: ‘I did not receive it (παρέλαβον) from a human source, nor was I taught it (ἐδιδάχθην), but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ’ (Gal 1:12). As we have seen, the technical terminology of παραλαμβάνω signals formal teaching of tradition; similarly does διδάσκω. For such pillars of Protestant liberal theology as Baur and Harnack who took communication, i. e. both between the characters of the biblical text and between its (implied) authors and readers.] 8 See Vielhauer, Geschichte, 223–225 on style and vocabulary. 9 On Melanchthon: Fitzmyer, Romans, 74–80. See further Bultmann, Theologie, 187–353; Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle, 25: Romans is less bound to a particular church and offers ‘the most sustained and reflective statement of Paul’s own theology’. 10 On Baur and Stendahl see my essay, ‘Romans 9–11 and Political Events’.
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Galatians as the standard for interpreting Paul, it would follow that Paul’s gospel was not based on tradition. And given the polemic with Judaizers that typifies the letter, this would mean that his gospel specifically opposed Jewish tradition.11 In the school of Religionsgeschichte (Wilhelm Bousset), this was further developed into the antithesis between the primitive Palestinian church and the ‘Hellenistic church’ that was the cradle of Paul’s beliefs, and from there the idea gained a crucial significance in Rudolf Bultmann’s [189] Theologie des Neuen Testaments. In this approach, the few ‘cult traditions’ concerning Jesus cited by Paul (1 Cor 11:23–25; 15:3–8) must derive from the ‘early Hellenistic Church’, not from the ‘early Palestinian Church’, let alone from Jesus.12 We insist, however, on the principle Baur laid down himself: Galatians as well should be read in view of the specific situation it addresses. Attention should be given both to its rhetorical structure and to its historical context.13 In his commentary on Galatians, Hans-Dieter Betz gives an enlightening analysis of the rhetorical structure of the letter. He finds the ‘hermeneutical key’ to the letter in the autographed postscript that functions as peroratio.14 Here Paul writes: ‘It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised – only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ’ (Gal 6:12). This exposes Paul’s adversaries and their message that he has designated at the beginning as ‘another gospel’ (1:7). We are being informed that their campaign for circumcision of male gentile Galatians aimed to boost their own reputation and thus to avoid being ‘persecuted’. The much-debated question is who were these adversaries and what caused them in turn to be ‘persecuted’. Betz seems to understand them simply as ‘Jewish Christians’ who propagated the ‘gospel of the circumcision’ mentioned in Gal 2:7.15 It must be stressed, however, that Paul uses the latter expression to indicate Peter’s mission to the Jews, which in the apostles’ agreement (Gal 2:7–10) was juxtaposed to Paul’s own ‘gospel of the foreskin’ as being of equal value.16 It is more likely that certain Jewish [190] Christians had begun to violate the 11 Baur, ‘Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde’, esp 108–114, 136 (48–54, 76). For Harnack (as quoted by Rengstorf, art. διδάσκω, 150), the Old Testament was no basis for Paul’s moral teaching. Basically similar: Lindemann, ‘Die biblischen Toragebote und die paulinische Ethik’. 12 Compare the main structure of Bultmann’s Theologie with that of Bousset, Kyrios Christos. See already Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, 297 n4, and cf my ‘Rudolf Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments’. 13 Agreeing with Margaret Mitchell’s view (Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 6) that rhetorical analysis should be one of the tools of historical criticism. 14 Betz, Galatians, 313. More elaboration in my ‘Sources on the Politics of Judaea’, in this volume. 15 Betz, Galatians, 313f (on Gal 6:12), 49f (on 1:7). However, he does not present this interpretation in the commentary on 2:7–9, p95–101. On p315 he finds the persecution ‘an extremely difficult problem’. 16 Similarly Betz, Galatians, 98, 100.
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agreement, being influenced by a development among Jews in Judaea that made itself felt also in adjacent lands. Such a development appears to be reflected in successive stages in Galatians, most visibly in what Betz views as the expositio, i. e., Paul’s narrative of preceding events (1:13–2:21).17 The aggravation of the situation at the moment of writing in the mid-50s CE is expressed in the ‘other gospel’ that is indicated in 1:7 and 6:12 and that urges circumcision of male gentile Christians. This meant an outright violation of the apostolic agreement. As such, it was a radicalization from the position adopted some years earlier by Cephas/Peter and Barnabas during the conflict at Antioch (Gal 2:11–14). The development as a whole apparently involved a growing emphasis on circumcision and law observance, coupled with a revulsion against pagan cult and as such reminiscent of the Maccabaean revolt. Since Paul indicates that the conflict at Antioch was triggered by ‘men from James’ (Gal 2:12), it is likely that the current crisis in Galatia was also fanned by agitators from Judaea, who apparently were ready to ‘persecute’ those missionaries to Galatia if they did not actually ‘preach circumcision’.18 A similar interpretation based on a supposed development among Jews in Judaea and elsewhere also allows us better to explain the different emphases of Galatians and Romans. Galatians does not oppose Jewish Christians in general nor the ‘gospel of the circumcision’ headed by Peter. On the contrary, its argument is explicitly based on the earlier apostolic agreement that recognizes his mission to the gentiles and Peter’s to the Jews as being equal in value. What Galatians fights against tooth and nail is precisely the violation of this agreement by ‘those who preach circumcision’ (6:12f, cf 5:11), i. e., those who cross the line and impose the ‘gospel of the circumcision’ on gentile Christians. It is in this configuration that Paul claims he did not receive his gospel from tradition, contrasting his position as much as possible from that of the agitators in Jerusalem.19 The argument of Romans is very different.20 It also addresses gentile Christians, not in order to keep them away from circumcision and Jewish observance this time round, but urging them to re-accept Jewish Christians [191] in their midst. The likely historical setting is the relaxation of Claudius’ decree that had banned Jews or Jewish Christians from the city, while rumours about radicalizing Jews in Judaea may be heard in the background. Hence the extraordinarily cautious argument of Romans, moreover addressing a church Paul had never visited before. Romans carries the exceptional message that the gospel addresses ‘the Jew first and also the Greek’ (Rom 1:16f.; 2:10f), and chapters 9–11 about the place of the Jewish people in God’s history are not marginal but central to More in Tomson, ‘Sources on the Politics of Judaea’. Thus already Jewett, ‘The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation’. 19 Betz, Galatians, 62f concludes that the material pertaining to Gal 1:12 requires ‘new investigation’. Cf the valuable excursus ‘Conversion, Revelation, and Tradition’, ibid. 63–66. 20 For brevity’s sake I here refer to my article, ‘Romans 9–11 and Political Events’. 17 18
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its argument. It is not a dogmatic treatise about various topics, but a diplomatic letter that carefully and resourcefully addresses a complex situation involving various opposed interests.
Teachers, Disciples, and Tradition among Greeks and Jews The above diversion about Galatians and Romans was necessary to clear the ground for the reiterated assertion that indeed Paul was also a teacher of tradition, not in opposition to Judaism, but following a particular strand within it. For a correct understanding, we must also view the phenomenon of teaching by tradition in the perspective of the larger Graeco-Roman world. As Elias Bickerman has shown, the idea of a ‘chain of tradition’ as a guarantee of authenticity and authority did not originate with the rabbinic tractate Avot, but was found centuries earlier in Greek philosophical schools, and was also adopted in the discipline of Roman law. ‘Like the philosophy of the Greeks, the Torah of the Pharisees was transmitted from master to disciple, not from father to son.’ Moreover for the Greeks this concerned ‘not some kind of technical knowledge which can become obsolete, but rather a way of living, an ars vivendi, which the founder of the school had discovered’.21 Not unlike Bickerman, Loveday Alexander has studied the charactistics of the Hellenistic schools, in particular as represented by the pagan philosopher Galen (late second century CE). These schools were not ‘academic’ in the modern sense but had much to do with ‘faith’, and they compare well with what Galen called the ‘school of Moses’ and the ‘school of Christ’.22 Similarly, in his wide-ranging [192] ‘Prolegomena to the Study of Oral Tradition in the Hellenistic World’, David Aune makes particular mention of the oral tradition of the Pythagoraeans and other philosophical schools and of the chreia or ‘anecdote’ as a favourite form of Greek popular teaching.23 Orality in teaching, studying, and even transmitting tradition was typical especially of the ancient academies that produced the classic rabbinic documents, beginning with Mishna and Tosefta. Such is the conclusion of Jacob Nahum Epstein’s monumental standardwork on the textual history of the Mishna, Mavo le-nosah ha-Mishna (1948). Scrupulously taking stock of the data scattered across rabbinic literature, he adds that this did not exclude the use of written letters, notes, and aide-mémoires, even by the tannaim or ‘repeaters’, i. e. the specialists of memorization who retained the tradition and performed it orally in the regular rabbinic study sessions: ‘In conclusion, while it is obvious that the 21 Bickerman, ‘The Chain of the Pharisaic Tradition’, 542 and 535 (cited in the original French by Gerhardsson, Memory, 193 n1). 22 Alexander, ‘Paul and the Hellenistic Schools, 83. 23 Aune, ‘Prolegomena’, 345–348 and 251f.
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“tannaim” did write down and record their mishnayot and halakhot, these texts were not meant as study books, because they taught orally.’24 This conclusion is adopted by Günter Stemberger in his Einleitung in Talmud und Midrasch.25 Without elaborating on the use of written records by the rabbis as noted by Epstein, Shmuel Safrai has given an illuminating description of the processes of oral creation, composition, redaction, and transmission that are characteristic of classic rabbinic literature.26 Worthy of mention is also the pioneering study by Birger Gerhardsson (1961) of oral and written tradition in rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity.27 The first and larger part of the work meanders across the methods by which the rabbis preserved and transmitted their oral teachings, paying detailed attention to the terminology and techniques of oral tradition. On that basis, the second part studies the way in which the followers of Jesus recorded their master’s words, and this includes an important section on Paul. While Paul had distanced himself from his adherence [193] to the contents of Pharisaic tradition, he did transmit specific traditions of Jesus and the earliest church using a terminology similar to that of rabbinic literature, and he based his own instruction on those traditions. Gerhardsson roughly distinguishes three ‘sections’ of Pauline instruction: doctrinal (e. g. 1 Cor 15), ethical (1 Thess 4:1ff), and ‘ecclesiastical’ (1 Cor 11 and 14), and he also sees Paul ‘delivering decisions of halakic nature’ such as in 1 Cor 7.28 Gerhardsson was severely criticized, first of all by Jacob Neusner, for ‘anachronistically’ using rabbinic literature in studying the New Testament. A reemerging interest in oral tradition, however, caused the book to be reprinted in 1998 – this time round with a remarkably positive introduction by Neusner, who explained that ‘paradigmatic’ comparison as practised by Gerhardsson should not be confused with causal historical explanation.29 The point is worth considering. Rabbinic legend pretends that next to the written Tora, ‘oral Tora’ harks back to time immemorial. Impossible to prove of course, but likely in a general sense. As we have learned at the outset, a written text always presuppose oral interpretation and hence a schooling system. The similarities with the GraecoRoman ‘schools’ we have reviewed enhance the likelihood. Further confirmation would be found in terminological similarity. Such indeed is the case. As shown also by Gerhardsson, Paul uses terminology for handling tradition similar to that of the rabbinic ‘schools’.30 A case in point is the way he uses διδαNosah, 692–706, quote 702 (my translation). Einleitung, 47. 26 Safrai, ‘Oral Tora’, 60–77. 27 Gerhardsson, Memory, see above n12. 28 Gerhardsson ibid. 303–305, 311–314. 29 Neusner, ‘Foreword’, in Gerhardsson ibid. xxv–xlvi. Cf Aune, ‘Jesus Tradition’, 6–13. 30 Gerhardsson ibid. 288–302. [On ‘tradition markers’ see also below, ‘Paul’s Practical Instruction’, 330f. The use Paul makes of ‘rabbinic’ tradition terminology is also an important emphasis of Cullmann, ‘Paradosis et Kyrios’, 16–20 (= La Tradition, 15–18). He contrasts it 24 Epstein,
25 Stemberger,
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χή for traditional teaching, which is also the word used in the early Church from Didache and Barnabas onwards.31 Thus Paul can remind the Romans that they ‘have become obedient … to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted’ (εἰς ὃν παρεδόθητε τύπον διδαχῆς, Rom 6:17) and warn them to avoid offenses that oppose ‘the teaching that you have learned’ (τὴν διδαχὴν ἣν ὑμεῖς ἐμάθετε, Rom 16:17). Similarly, using the passive of the verb διδάσκω, he can encourage the Colossians to ‘continue to live your lives … just as you were taught’ (καθὼς ἐδιδάχθητε, Col 2:7), and the Thessalonians to ‘hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us (παραδόσεις ἃς ἐδιδάχθητε), [194] either by word of mouth or by our letter’ (2 Thess 2:15).32 Again, Paul makes sure to remind the Corinthians ‘of my ways in Christ Jesus, as I teach them (διδάσκω) everywhere in every church’, and he praises them when they ‘maintain the traditions (παραδόσεις) just as I handed them on to you’ (1 Cor 4:17, cf 7:17; 11:2). We conclude that Conzelmann’s and Vielhauer’s intuition of a ‘school of Paul’ – in the non-academic, ‘life-style’ sense of the Graeco-Roman world – finds confirmation. In similar vein, Acts consistently calls the early followers of Jesus μαθηταί, disciples (once μαθήτρια: Tabitha, Acts 9:36).33 Although this is not Paul’s own usage, it does continue the usage in the Gospels, where Jesus’ followers are called ‘disciples’ of a master who sticks to another tradition than ‘the tradition of the elders’ (Mark 7:5). And even though Paul did not hear Jesus’ teaching in person, he did ‘receive’ his tradition, as we shall presently see, and in that sense he certainly was his disciple. In the remainder of the article, we shall discuss two types of Jesus tradition cited by Paul: ethical teachings usually dealt with under the caption of parenesis that in view of their background in Judaism we shall call ‘halakhic traditions’, and teachings of Christological character which appear have developed from esoteric (in the plain sense of ‘secretive’) traditions about Jesus’ ‘true nature’ and which we shall call ‘mystical traditions’.34
antithetically with Jesus’ supposed total rejection of the Jewish ‘tradition of men’, achieving a synthesis in the idea of the apostolic tradition as embodying the ongoing teaching of the risen Christ.] 31 E. g. Did 1:3; 6:1; Barn 18:1. 32 For Aune, ‘Jesus Tradition’, 325, παραλαμβάνω and διδάσκω [διδάσκομαι?] are synonyms in Paul, therefore παραλαμβάνω is not a technical term for institutionally transmitting oral tradition. But Pauline παρέλαβον and ἐδιδάχθην are just as synonymous as rabbinic מקובל אני (I have received) and ( למוד אניI am instructed). 33 Cf Alexander, ‘Paul and the Hellenistic Schools’, 79. Cf also Riesner, ‘Paulus und die Jesus-Überlieferung’, 361: ‘… Paulus (fügt sich) in das Bild von einer bewussten … schulmässigen Weitergabe der Jesustradition ein …’ 34 Out to investigate the relation of Paul and Jesus, Häusser, Christusbekenntnis, 39 concentrates on ‘a decisive area of Pauline theology … Christology’, overlooking the importance of ethical or halakhic Jesus traditions.
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Halakhic Jesus Traditions An obvious and much-discussed aspect of Paul’s handling of tradition concerns his attitude to the Jesus tradition. The conditions in which nineteenth‑ and twentieth-century scholars began to find it hard to imagine that Paul had received traditions from Jesus have been sketched above. More or less in line with the dominant Baur-Bultmann paradigm, many modern exegetes take a sceptical attitude.35 Thus Frans Neirynck, having painstakingly surveyed previous research, stated in 1986, ‘[T]here is no trace … in the Pauline letters of a conscious use of a saying of Jesus’. [195] Ten years later, noting that some find him a ‘minimalist’, he kept insisting that ‘there are only two explicit references’, 1 Cor 7:10 and 9:14.36 Some years earlier, Dale Allison had come to a different conclusion, while referring to trends in nineteenth and early twentieth century theology, notably the Bultmann school: ‘[T]he theological situation has continued to discourage the search for the ways in which Paul is dependent upon the historical Jesus.’ In contrast, Allison finds multiple allusions to the Jesus tradition in Paul, though most of the time not by way of citation: With the exception of 1 Cor. 11.23–26 and 15.1–7, his letters contain only free renderings of or allusions to individual sayings. But in his correspondence Paul merely refers to the Jesus tradition; he never hands it down. … The epistles were simply not the place for its transmission.
Appreciative of Gerhardsson’s work, Allison infers: ‘It is likely that the Paul who in person nurtured infant churches on tradition would, if we could but behold him, appear more conservative than the Paul known by his letters.’37 We do not need to pursue the discussion further. More recently Harm Hollander, building among others on Neirynck, established: In summation, we may conclude that in the letters of Paul there are no more than three instances of an explicit reference to a saying of the Lord, namely, in 1 Cor. 11:23–25, 7:10–11, and 9:14. … It cannot be accidental that they all occur in 1 Corinthians, a letter that primarily deals with Christian ethics.38
While stipulating that this does not prove ‘with any certainty’ that Jesus actually said such things, Hollander concludes that it does confirm his own hypothesis that, ‘[T]he first oral and written early Christian traditions were sayings attribut35 For surveys of research on Jesus traditions in Paul see Häusser, Christusbekenntnis, 1–38; Riesner, ‘Paulus und die Jesus-Überlieferung’, 347–355. On Paul and oral tradition see Aune, ‘Jesus Tradition’, 7–20. 36 Neirynck, ‘Paul and the Sayings of Jesus’, 320; idem, ‘The Saying of Jesus in 1 Corinthians’, 141 and 176. On ‘minimalists’ and ‘maximalists’ see also Riesner, ‘Paulus und die Jesus-Überlieferung’, 352–355. 37 Allison, ‘The Pauline Epistles and the Synoptic Gospels’, 21–24. 38 Hollander, ‘The Words of Jesus’, quote 349.
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ed to Jesus which dealt with community rules, directions for Christians as to how to live in a new age.’ Although Hollander has little appreciation for Gerhardsson’s approach, he thus finds himself not far from the latter’s conclusion that Paul’s letters do contain ‘decisions of halakic nature’ attributed to Jesus.39 [196] These considerations bring us to a point easily overlooked in Protestant theology, namely that 1 Corinthians is important precisely because, rather than Paul’s ‘theology’, it contains primarily practical injunctions, including some deriving from the Jesus tradition. Let us revisit some of the halakhic Jesus traditions in this letter.40 Most important for our discussion is 1 Cor 7. The chapter deals in an orderly way with a number of questions written by the Corinthians (περὶ δὲ ὧν ἐγράψατε, 7:1).41 They all have to do with related subjects: sexual abstinence, divorce, celibacy, and widowhood, all for the sake of σχολάζειν τῇ προσευχῇ, ‘devoting oneself to prayer’ (7:5), or μεριμνᾶν τὰ τοῦ κυρίου, ‘caring about the things of the Lord’ (7:32–35). In all cases, Paul is explicit about his source of authority, always preferring the more ascetic option without prescribing it, and giving for a basic rule that marriage and sexual relations are good. Thus he addresses six different situations: (1) 1 Cor 7:1–7. ‘By way of concession, not a commandment’ (κατὰ συγγνώμην οὐ κατ’ ἐπιταγήν), Paul allows married partners to desist from intercourse, but only for a limited period and by mutual consent. (2) 7:8–9. ‘I say (λέγω δὲ) to the unmarried and widowed: it would be good if they remained as I also am, but if they cannot contain themselves, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn.’ (3) 7:10–11. ‘To the married I order, not I but the Lord (παραγγέλλω, οὐκ ἐγὼ ἀλλὰ ὁ κύριος): the wife is not to depart from the husband – and if she did depart, she must remain single or return to her husband – and the husband is not to dismiss his wife.’ (4) 7:12–16. ‘To the others I say, not the Lord’ (λέγω ἐγὼ οὐχ ὁ κύριος) – this appears to concern those bound to an unbelieving partner by an informal marriage, in which exceptional case Paul allows divorce if the unbelieving partner wishes so.42 [197] 7:17–24 is a digression which states Paul’s ‘rule for all churches’: it is better ‘to remain in the calling in which you were called’. (5) 7:25–38. ‘Now about the virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give my opinion’ (ἐπιταγὴν κυρίου οὐκ ἔχω, γνώμην δὲ δίδωμι) – which follows after an exhortation about devotion to the Lord: ‘He who marries his virgin does well, and who does not marry her does better.’ 39 Ibid. 344, on Gerhardsson ibid. 342f. In spite of the use of the term ‘community rules’, Hollander does not explore possible similarities with Qumran. 40 On the importance of 1 Corinthians see my Paul, 68–73; on the materials discussed in the following, ibid. 97–149, 187–220. 41 See Gerhardsson, Memory, 311; Richardson, ‘I Say, not the Lord’; Tomson, ‘Paul’s Jewish Background’, 259. 42 See my Paul, 117–119. Under the name of privilegium paulinum, the ruling became a loophole for dissolving marriages in Roman Catholic canon law: canon 1143.
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(6) 7:39–40. Widows apparently require further specification, and a general rule is followed by Paul’s own opinion: ‘A woman is bound as long as her husband lives; but if the husband decease, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, if only in the Lord; but she is happier if she stays so, in my opinion’ (κατὰ τὴν ἐμὴν γνώμην).
Here we see Paul teaching the Corinthians on the basis of tradition and occasionally adding his own apostolic ‘opinion’. The approach is casuistic, in each case distinguishing between ‘commandment’ (ἐπιταγή), ‘opinion’ or ‘judgment’ (γνώμη), or ‘concession’ (συγγνώμη).43 A ‘commandment of the Lord’ (ἐπιταγὴ κυρίου) has highest authority and for the Corinthians apparently was a known category – they had at least received Paul’s basic instruction on the matter at hand. In the case of the ‘virgins’, Paul does not have such a commandment, in that of the married, he does: ‘I order, not I but the Lord’. We obviously do not know what specific questions the Corinthians had written, but the question of the ‘virgins’ is likely to have been among them, possibly asking whether there was a commandment of Jesus on the matter.44 Paul did possess such a commandment concerning divorce, however, and as Neirynck and others have established, 1 Cor 7:10–11 is an obvious reflection of the divorce prohibition in the synoptic Jesus tradition.45 From various sources it appears that this prohibition represents a particular Jewish interpretation that differs from Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition and is rather similar to Qumran Essene opinion.46 However, Paul probably [198] adapts Jesus’ commandment to suit the situation of gentiles by mentioning the woman’s initiative, which is also done in Mark 10:12 and addresses the situation of Hellenistic common law marriage.47 Moreover the stipulation that a widow ‘is free to be married to whom she wishes if only in the Lord’ must be an accepted traditional law, for Paul gives his own more stringent opinion as an alternative. The expression μόνον ἐν κυρίῳ shows that it is an early Christian law, or in other words, an apostolic halakha. Paul quotes the same rule by way of a ‘law’ known to the Roman church in Rom 7:1–2.48 We conclude that in 1 Cor 7, Paul teaches his Corinthian church on the basis of the Jesus tradition, apostolic tradition, and his own apostolic authority.
See ThWNT/DBAG s. v. γνώμη and συγγνώμη. introduction, περὶ δὲ τῶν παρθένων, seems to announce a new, separate subject, as in 7:1, 8:1, 12:1, see Mitchell, ‘Concerning PERI DE’. Also, the diversion that precedes (7:17–24) and the long parenetic middle section (7:26–35, producing the A–B–A’ structure Paul often uses) seem to reflect the importance of this question. 45 Neirynck, ‘The Saying of Jesus’, 158–174; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 287–292. 46 See e. g. Fitzmyer ibid. 287–292, cf 328f.; Tomson, Paul, 97–124; idem, ‘Divorce Halakha’ [in this volume]. Fitzmyer studiously avoids bringing in rabbinic evidence (cf 289f, 329), depriving himself of important sources in assessing Jesus’ place in Judaism. 47 Tomson, Paul, 109 n76; idem, ‘Divorce Halakha’ at footnotes 46–47; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 289f. 48 Tomson, ‘What did Paul mean’ [in this volume]. 43
44 The
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Another Jesus tradition is cited in 1 Cor 9:14, in the context of three chapters devoted to the question of idol offerings, 1 Cor 8:1–11:1. The chapters have the triple structure mentioned before: (A) 8:1–13, introduction of the subject; (B) 9:1–10:22, digression exploring motives in a wider perspective; (A’) 10:23–11:1, definitive treatment of the subject. Our passage of interest is in the digression, where Paul presents his own person as an example, arguing that even though he has certain privileges as an apostle, he needs not necessarily make use of them, certainly if that would harm others. So, Paul argues, Christians who believe they may eat any meat, may refrain from doing so when ‘weaker’ brothers believe they should not. Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? … 2If I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you … 4Do we not have the right to our food and drink? 5Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? … 13Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple …? 14In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. 15But I have made no use of any of these rights … [199] 1
The mention of ‘the other apostles and Cephas’ is interesting, because they most of all may be supposed to heed the teachings of Jesus. Their right to be sustained by the church surely implies that they were seen as ‘those who proclaim the gospel’ who as per the ‘command’ of the Lord ‘should get their living by the gospel’. This inference from the context confirms the identification scholars have proposed with the rule preserved in the synoptic tradition that ‘the labourer is worthy of his wages’ or, presumably closer to the Jewish sources of the rule which relate to the rights of field labourers (cf Deut 25:24f), ‘the labourer is worthy of his food’. The wide-spread documentation of the rule and its links with the supposedly well-entrenched laws pertaining to field labourers suggests that the saying was adopted from general Jewish tradition, either by Jesus or by his disciples.49 In any case 1 Cor 9:14 is another instance where Paul teaches by means of tradition. The third instance in which Paul explicitly cites the Jesus tradition, 1 Cor 11:23–25, is a narrative embedded in a parenetic context. The narrative wording strikingly contrasts with the surrounding exhortative language: … What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. 23For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. 25In the same way also the cup, after supper … 26For as often as you eat this bread and drink … 27Whoever, therefore, eats … 49 Matt 10:10; Did 13:2 (ἄξιος τῆς τροφῆς αὐτοῦ); Luke 10:7; 1 Tim 5:18 (ἄξιος τοῦ μισθοῦ αὐτοῦ). Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 365f; Neirynck, ‘The Saying of Jesus’, 174–176. For discussion and documentation of the larger halakhic complex see Tomson, Paul, 125–131.
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The introductory formula, ‘I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you’, produces a formal tone that appears to be intentional and meant to contrast with the informal exhortative style of the whole passage. The narrative that follows and that is italicized here had been already ‘delivered’ to the Corinthians and therefore was known to them. No, Paul is not going to ‘commend’ them. Instead he will use the familiar tradition of the Lord to commend them. The narrative is cited with a didactic, parenetic purpose: once again Paul teaches by means of tradition. The most plausible explanation of the situation at hand, it seems, is that according to Paul’s information the Corinthian church meals proceeded in an unruly [200] way, and he presents the example set by Jesus as the way to begin and terminate a festive meal. The probable intention then is not, as it is often read nowadays, to remind the Corinthians of the institution of ‘the Lord’s Supper’ by citing the foundational words of Jesus, but to teach them how to demarcate the beginning and end of a meal by breaking the bread and lifting the cup. In that sense, it concerns another halakhic Jesus tradition. On this reading, the introductory formula does signal formal delivery of tradition:50 Paul uses it to mediate the authority of Jesus, thus underscoring his lesson to the Corinthians. Further implications are that in this exceptional instance Paul cites gospel tradition in a form similar to the one known to us from the canonical Gospels, and at that moment, supposedly years before written Gospels existed, Paul was familiar with parts of the oral gospel tradition. In all other cases, he only gave a brief paraphrase of the tradition. Allison’s explanation that ‘epistles were simply not the place for its transmission’ seems satisfactory. Paul may be citing verbally in this case precisely because the text supposedly was exceptionally well-known among the Corinthians and would generate more authority.
Mystical Jesus Traditions The other type of Jesus traditions in Paul we want to deal with may, in view of their origin, be called ‘mystical-apocalyptic’. Here we are on poorly laboured ground, due both to the rationalist reservations of modern scholars and to the inherent secrecy of ancient apostles and rabbis about this material. First to be mentioned is the pioneering work of Gershom Scholem, who since the midtwentieth century has almost singlehandedly claimed a recognized place for Jewish mysticism in modern scholarship. He showed that both in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages an esoteric tradition existed among Jews, including rabbis
50 Pace Aune (above n32). My position is similar to Riesner, ‘Paulus und die Jesus-Überlieferung’, 358–360.
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and early Christians, notably Paul in his famous disclosure in 2 Cor 12:2–4.51 Earlier still, coming from another direction, Albert Schweitzer had offered an interpretation of Paul’s ‘mysticism’ on the basis of comparison with the ancient Jewish apocalypses, which he understood as ‘eschatological’ [201] writings.52 Later in the twentieth century, Peter Schäfer produced important studies and scholarly editions of esoteric rabbinic works, while claiming against Scholem that rabbinic mysticism developed too late to be of any significance for the New Testament.53 A different understanding was advanced by Christopher Rowland. Not unlike Schweitzer basing himself on ancient apocalyptic texts, but including now writings from Qumran, he described early Jewish apocalypticism as ‘knowledge of the divine mysteries through revelation’, implying that this includes both eschatological secrets of the future and cosmological mysteries in heaven, or formulated differently, it includes both a temporal and a spatial axis.54 In other words, apocalypticism closely relates to mysticism. As such, Rowland claimed, the phenomenon was found both among early rabbis including Yohanan ben Zakkai and Akiva and among early Christians including Paul. Together with Christopher Morray-Jones, Rowland published The Mystery of God (2009), in which the authors take stock of the Jewish mystical materials including rabbinic ones that appear to be reflected in the New Testament.55 The early Jewish apocalypses give the suggestion that their creation and reading were associated with esoteric sessions and rituals, and some of the Qumran scrolls reinforce that impression. It is only in rabbinic literature, however, that we first get explicit reports about the initiation to and transmission of mystical traditions. The rabbis were very reticent about this and ruled that the respective subjects, notably the ‘creation story’ and the ‘chariot’ (Gen 1 and Ezek 1), were to be rehearsed only with one or two individuals of mature age and understanding (mHag 1:1). In this connection a story is told of Yohanan ben Zakkai who when travelling with his advanced disciple Elazar ben Arakh allowed the latter to ‘perform’ an exposition of ‘the chariot’. When he began to speak, the master descended from his donkey, wrapped his head in his cloak and sat down with him under a fig tree, ‘and fire descended from heaven and encircled them.’ In the continuation, a chain of tradition is given: Yoshua ‘performed before’ [202] Yohanan ben Zakkai, Akiva before Yoshua, Hananya ben Hakinai before Akiva.56 Significantly, most of these are leading figures of the early rabbinic 51 Scholem, Major Trends, for Antiquity ibid. chapter 2. On Paul see idem, ‘The Four Who entered Paradise’. 52 Schweitzer, Mystik. 53 Schäfer, ‘New Testament and Hekhalot Literature’. Cf Schäfer, Übersetzung der HekhalotLiteratur. 54 The latter formulation is that of Collins, ‘Towards the Morphology of a Genre’, 6f. 55 Rowland−Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God. 56 tHag 2:1; yHag 2:1 (77a); MekRS (p158f). In the story, Yohanan ben Zakkai cites the rule found in mHag 1:1, suggesting the rule existed by the mid-first century CE.
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movement and have a central place in the Mishna. The conclusion follows that the early rabbis not only formulated halakhic and midrashic traditions in their public sessions, but that at least part of them also cultivated apocalyptic-mystical traditions in private.57 Keeping in mind the close association of apocalypticism and mysticism, we can observe that the phenomenon plays a crucial role throughout the New Testament. This is particularly clear in the narrative of Mark. Jesus has an apocalyptic vision at his baptism: ‘He saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him, and a voice came from heaven: You are my son, the beloved …’ (1:11). The heavenly secret imparted to him is that he is the Son of God. Then he starts proclaiming the kingdom of God, teaching, and healing. When the disciples ask him to explain the parable of the seed, he answers: ‘To you has been given the secret (μυστήριον) of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables’ (4:11). The disciples are worthy to receive secret knowledge.58 Indeed, three of them are initiated to the heavenly secret of Jesus’ true nature: ‘(Jesus) was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white … From the cloud there came a voice, This is my Son, the Beloved …’ (9:2–7). Meanwhile, he has begun to teach them ‘that the son of man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders …’ Peter protests, but ‘he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan!’ (8:31–33). ‘Son of man’ is the phrase from the apocalypses of Daniel and Enoch that Jesus adopts to describe his career on earth. He keeps teaching about his suffering: ‘The son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many’ (10:45). When tried before the Sanhedrin, he says, ‘You will see the son of man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven’ (14:62, cf Ps 110:1 and Dan 7:13). Finally, mourning his death already the third day, women are addressed by angels who tell them, ‘You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified one? He has been resurrected, he is not here’ (Mark 16:6). In this apocalyptic perception of the world, as with the early rabbis, angels impart heavenly truths to humans. [203] Thus, as proposed by Jack Kingsbury in his enlightening Christology of Mark’s Gospel, Mark’s narrative consists in a gradual unfolding of the secret of Jesus’ true identity – not as Messiah, as posited by William Wrede – but as Son of God.59 In other words, following Mark, what we use to call ‘Christology’ is in fact a mystical subject that involves secret or confidential knowledge 57 Cf Scholem, Major Trends, chapter 2. It seems to me that Scholem’s occasional suggestion of tensions among the ancient rabbis between ‘halakhic’ and ‘mystical’ interpretations of Judaism is an anachronism. 58 For a similar reading of the passage see Kirkland, ‘The Earliest Understanding of Jesus’ Use of Parables’. 59 Kingsbury, The Christology of Mark’s Gospel, referring to Wrede, Messiasgeheimnis. One does not need to follow Kingsbury’s acceptance (p14) of the reading υἱοῦ θεοῦ in Mark 1:1 to admire the persuasiveness of his thesis.
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of Jesus’ true nature both before and after his death. His resurrection belongs in this domain and in this light is only a passage from this life to eternal life, where he sits ‘at the right hand of God’ (cf also Mark 12:36). These are the elements of what was to become the ‘creed’, the hymnic summary of main elements of Jesus’ ‘true existence’, among which his suffering and crucifixion ‘under Pontius Pilate’ remind the believers that he lived this hidden life among us on earth. An early form of such a summary of Jesus’ true existence do we find in the tradition Paul quotes in 1 Cor 15, which we shall discuss in a moment. We still need to stipulate that what was said above about ‘poorly laboured ground’ only concerns the mystic-apocalyptic aspect of the traditions involved, not their contents. These belong to what is widely considered to be the central theme of Christian theology: Christology. Its originally secretive character probably was less strange for the ancients than for modern eyes. Secrecy was a regular feature both of the Jewish sect of the Essenes and of the Graeco-Roman mystery cults, and the teachings of such prominent Christian theologians as Clement of Alexandria and Origen had a clear ‘esoteric’ component. Similarly, the early declarative creeds probably had their origin in the pre-baptismal catechetical setting, which implies confidentiality.60 Now let us review some mystical Jesus traditions in Paul. In his great chapter on resurrection, Paul repeats once again the tradition he had ‘received’ himself and had imparted to the Corinthians at an earlier stage: For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. [204] Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time … Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all … he appeared also to me … (1 Cor 15:3–8)
As in the case of 1 Cor 11:23–25, it is clear that Paul runs through gospel tradition, not, apparently, in a verbatim quote but in a series of summary statements that could serve well to instruct neophytes.61 Many parallels with the canonical Gospels can be identified. The repeated phrase, ‘in accordance with the scriptures’, strikingly recalls the emphases of Luke 24.62 60 Mystical traditions about Jesus are also found in John 1 and Rev 4, respectively recalling the ‘creation story’ (Gen 1) and ‘the chariot’ (Ezek 1). My thanks to Marius Heemstra for drawing my attention to John 1 and Gen 1 in relation to mHag 2:1, mentioning also Heb 1 (see Rowland–Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God, 72–90, 167–192). On the Essenes see Josephus, War 2:142; for mystery cults, Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, 7f. For Clement see Van den Hoek’s review of Itter, Esoteric Teaching in the “Stromateis”; for Origen, the introduction and selected readings in Greer, Origen. On the creeds see Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 49–52. 61 See Kelly ibid. 16f (‘manifestly drawn up for catechetical purposes’); Gerhardsson, Memory, 297f (‘a logos fixed by the college of Apostles’ – cf doubts by Aune, ‘Jesus Tradition’, 9f); Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 536–544 (discussion of traditional character). 62 See Häusser, Christusbekenntnis, 106–141 (124f on Luke 24).
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As we know from his letters and is confirmed by Acts, Paul himself had ecstatic ‘revelations’ at pivotal moments in his life. The most explicit account is in 2 Cor 12:1–5, which seems to speak of himself in the third person, still reflecting the reticence typical of mystics. Remarkably, it does not mention an encounter with Jesus, nor does the other example in the retrospective account in Gal 2:1.63 Gal 1:11–16, however, indirectly narrates Paul’s calling vision of Jesus, in which he ‘received’ his gospel ‘not from a human source … but through a revelation’ (Gal 1:12, δι’ ἀποκαλύψεως). We have argued that with this emphasis he distances himself from the agitators in Jerusalem, not necessarily from the apostles. On the contrary, Gal 2:1–10 claims basic unity with Peter. It seems Gerhardsson is right in stating that Paul here presents himself not as an ‘apocalyptic’ as opposed to Peter, but as ‘his apostolic equal’.64 In 1 Cor 15:3–8, however, Paul shows that he is also a recipient of apocalyptic-mystic tradition. As with the halakhic injunctions from the Jesus tradition, so also in the case of this resurrection narrative does he ‘hand on’ what he has himself directly or indirectly ‘received’ from the disciples of Jesus. Thus interestingly, Paul’s example shows how what we have been calling the ‘Jesus tradition’ has come to include both statements attributed to Jesus and narratives about him, in particular traditions about his death and resurrection that reveal his ‘true nature’. In other words, ‘Christology’ is an integral – if confidential – component of the early Jesus tradition, and it did not originate in [205] ‘Hellenistic Christianity’ but in the first churches in Jerusalem (Luke 24, Acts 1) and Galilee (Mark 16).
Epilogue We can speculate who was Paul’s source for the Jesus tradition. On the basis of our limited information, Cephas/Peter is the most likely guess. The prominence of Peter in 1 Cor 15:5 (ὤφθη Κηφᾷ) is suggestive,65 and the fortnight Paul spent in Jerusalem to ‘get to know Cephas’ or ‘to get information from Cephas’ (ἱστορῆσαι Κηφᾶν, Gal 1:18f) would have been an ideal opportunity early in his career.66 However, we are not told what they spoke about – which of course we 63 On Paul’s visions and their similarities with rabbinic esoteric experiences see Christopher Morray-Jones in Rowland−Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God, 341–419, who interestingly links Gal 2:1 with Acts 22:17–22. 64 Gerhardsson, Memory, 268f (emphasis in original), stressing the phrase σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα also found in 1 Cor 15:50 and Matt 16:17. 65 Häusser, Christusbekenntnis, 127–129. 66 Thus Gerhardsson, Memory, 297–299. The meaning of ἱστορῆσαι as ‘getting information’ is stressed by Dunn, ‘The Relationship between Paul and Jerusalem’, as against Hofius, ‘Gal. 1.18: ἱστορῆσαι Κηφᾶν’. [In view of Gal 1:18, Cullmann, ‘Paradosis et Kyrios’, 19 (LaTradition, 17) considers it ‘plus que probable’ that Paul ‘received’ from Peter. My final position is close to Cullmann’s, except for his view on Jesus (above n30). His concept of apostolic tradi-
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should expect if it concerned confidential tradition. At least we cannot exclude that Peter was one of Paul’s sources, but there is much we do not know and there might certainly have been others. In either case, in addition to being one of the great visionary theologians of Christianity, Paul was a recipient and teacher of traditions deriving from Jesus and his disciples. What is more, his letters provide proof positive of the early existence of the Jesus tradition in its halakhic and mystical aspects.
tion embraces the words and deeds of the earthly Jesus and the risen Christ, without stressing the mystical aspect.]
Christ, Belial, and Women: 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 Compared with Ancient Judaism and with the Pauline Corpus The six verses of 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 present us with a sudden outburst of dualistic language sharply contrasting the Church of Christ with ‘Beliar’, as light differs from darkness, and God’s temple from idolatry. It is not at all clear what occasions this eruptive digression, and the concentration of dualistic concepts is so high that scholars have hypothesized an interpolation of Qumranic vintage. However the passage also contains a striking element of a quite different nature: the mention of ‘daughters’ next to ‘sons’ as members of the spiritual temple. This is unlike what we know about Qumran and rather resembles more general Jewish ideas, notably rabbinic. It has hitherto not drawn much attention, and nor has its contrast with the ‘Qumranic’ element. A primary task of the present paper is to investigate the background of these features and to consider how they could figure together in this brief passage.* The interpolation hypothesis ties in with the range of composition theories that have been proposed of 2 Corinthians as a whole in view of its jumpy character. Scholars have hypothesized two, three, or more component parts thought to be discernible in the extant letter and to be taken from now lost letters of Paul. But even while assuming, e. g., five different letters to be represented in 2 Corinthians, scholars have often viewed 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 as an altogether extraneous element which does not actually bear on the composition history.1 Given the singular position of the passage both in its context and in the history of research, we shall for the most part approach it without referring to the extant letter and its genesis. After a first section about the passage and its characteristics, we shall study its prominent features – apocalyptic dualism and the inclusion of women – as these appear in a spectrum of ancient Jewish sources. * [The article is reprinted with minor modifications in the footnotes from Bieringer, Second Corinthians (CRINT 14), 79–131.] 1 Betz, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, 19–21 mentions Bultmann, Schmithals, and Bornkamm as scholars who, as he does himself, advocate a complex composition history but except 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 as a corpus alienum. See discussion of partition theories in Betz ibid. ch. 1; Bieringer, ‘Teilungshypothesen’ and ‘Der 2. Korintherbrief’; Thrall, Second Epistle, 3–49. For theories concerning 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 see Thrall, Second Epistle, 25–36; Bieringer, ‘2. Korinther 6,14–7,1’.
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Gathering up the results, we shall then be able to position the passage roughly [80] between Qumran and the rabbis.2 With that conclusion in mind we shall then study the occurrence of the two features elsewhere in Paul, which will result in a comparison of the passage with the Pauline corpus. This will be an interesting exercise, since all agree that it concerns, as Rudolf Bultmann put it, a piece of ‘typically Jewish parenesis’ which somehow made its way into the Pauline correspondence.3 In other words, the passage pointedly puts us once again before the question of Paul’s relationship with Jewish tradition. We shall find that if unusual, the passage and its ‘Jewish paraenesis’ are not at all intrinsically alien to Paul’s thought world. In a last section we shall therefore use the opportunity and consider what meaning it would acquire if we did read it in the context where it is extant.
The Passage and Its Characteristics Preceding and following the passage are two sets of three verses which are linked by vocabulary and by a conciliatory style. The beginning of the passage diverts with a sudden outburst from this context, but it ends on a pacifying tone which is not very different from it.4 We shall not now pay further attention to this context but study the passage as though it were a separate piece of text. 14Μὴ
γίνεσθε ἑτεροζυγοῦντες ἀπίστοις· τίς γὰρ μετοχὴ δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ ἀνομίᾳ, ἢ τίς κοινωνία φωτὶ πρὸς σκότος; 15τίς δὲ συμφώνησις Χριστοῦ πρὸς Βελιάρ, ἢ τίς μερὶς πιστῷ μετὰ ἀπίστου; 16τίς δὲ συγκατάθεσις ναῷ θεοῦ μετὰ εἰδώλων; ἡμεῖς γὰρ ναὸς θεοῦ ἐσμεν ζῶντος, καθὼς εἶπεν ὁ θεὸς ὅτι ἐνοικήσω ἐν αὐτοῖς καὶ ἐμπεριπατήσω καὶ ἔσομαι αὐτῶν θεός καὶ αὐτοὶ ἔσονταί μου λαός. 17διὸ ἐξέλθατε ἐκ μέσου αὐτῶν καὶ ἀφορίσθητε, λέγει κύριος, καὶ ἀκαθάρτου μὴ ἅπτεσθε· κἀγὼ εἰσδέξομαι ὑμᾶς 18καὶ ἔσομαι ὑμῖν εἰς πατέρα καὶ ὑμεῖς ἔσεσθέ μοι εἰς υἱοὺς καὶ θυγατέρας, λέγει κύριος παντοκράτωρ. 7:1ταύτας οὖν ἔχοντες τὰς ἐπαγγελίας, ἀγαπητοί, καθαρίσωμεν ἑαυτοὺς ἀπὸ παντὸς μολυσμοῦ σαρκὸς καὶ πνεύματος, ἐπιτελοῦντες ἁγιωσύνην ἐν φόβῳ θεοῦ. [81] 14Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? 16What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, I will inhabit them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I
Cf Tomson, Paul, 134f, embryonically. Bultmann, Korinther, 182, in shorthand: ‘Typisch jüdische Paränese. Möglich, dass Paulus selbst ein solches Stück zitierte; dann wohl Fragment aus dem verlorenen ersten Brief …’ 4 Shared vocabulary in the surrounding verses: καρδία, (στενο)χωρέω. See Lambrecht, ‘Fragment’, 535. The conciliatory ending of the passage (ἀγαπητοί) creates a transition to this context. 2 3
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will gather you in, 18and I will be a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. 7:1 Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.
The passage can be readily divided into three parts each using a different style.5 The first part, v14–16a, comprises a warning against ‘mismating with unbelievers’ which is underpinned by five parallel, starkly dualistic oppositions. The vocabulary is very refined and betrays distinct rhetorical training.6 Hapax legomena such as the verb ἑτεροζυγέω strike the eye, and in each of the five oppositions, a different word for ‘partnership’ is used: μετοχή, κοινωνία, συμφώνησις, μερίς, and συγκατάθεσις. The second part of the passage, v16b–18, is an artfully concatenated series of biblical quotations and allusions which are called ‘promises’ (ἐπαγγελίας, 7:1) and which envelop the reader in a community seen as God’s spiritual sanctuary. Similar concatenations are found more often in the Pauline correspondence and in ancient Jewish sources.7 One of the key verses is from the promise to David of a ‘son’ who will ‘build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever; I will be his Father, and he shall be my son’ (2 Sam 7:13–14). Finally the third part, 7:1, rounds up the passage with a second person plural call for purity and holiness. The verb ἑτεροζυγέω relates to the relatively rare adjective ἑτεροζύγος which means ‘yoked with another’, ‘yoked unevenly’, or ‘ill-balanced’.8 The Septuagint uses it once to translate the Hebrew כלאים, ‘of different kinds’: τὰ κτήνη σου οὐ [82] κατοχεύσεις ἑτεροζύγῳ, ‘You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind’ (Lev 19:19). This biblical law is paraphrased by Philo using the same word, while listing a choice of more or less allegorical meanings including ethnically mixed marriage, all under the heading of a call for ἁρμονία.9 That reminds us of συμφώνησις, ‘accord’ and its four synonyms in our passage, which together produce a similar allegorizing tendency. Because the meaning ‘unequal partnership’ is more obvious in our context, an allusion to the biblical phrase is likely. The passage warns against an ‘ill-balance’ which as yet seems to be only imminent.10 5 Similarly Furnish, II Corinthians, 371–375. Lambrecht, ‘Fragment’, 536–538 reads v14a as a separate introductory appeal. 6 Thus Windisch, 2. Korintherbrief, 213. 7 Cf Lambrecht, ‘Fragment’, 541–545, and see further below. For concatenations in Paul see also Windisch, 2. Korintherbrief, 216; Fitzmyer, Romans, 333f; Tomson, ‘Death’, and ‘There is No One’. See also the explorations by Lim, Holy Scripture, esp 140–176, ‘Paul and his OT quotations’. 8 Cf LSJ ad loc. In the last sense: Ps-Phoc 15, σταθμὸν μὴ κρούειν ἑτερόζυγον, on which see Van der Horst, Sentences, 121–123. 9 Spec leg 4:203–307. Cf valuable remarks by Windisch, 2. Korintherbrief, 212f; Plummer, Commentary, 206; Furnish, II Corinthians, 361. 10 Plummer ibid.: μὴ γίνεσθε, ‘do not become’ (mismated).
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The passage turns against ‘mismating with unbelievers’. It is not clear from the context who these are, nor for what reason they are so vehemently denounced. In 7:1, the language of ‘cleansing from impurity’ is used, but again it remains unclear what this might imply. Such allusive vagueness is not unusual in letters ancient or modern. The original addressees will know, but later readers will not. Small wonder, then, that widely different interpretations of our passage are found among patristic writers, even in the same author.11 They practically read it as being detached from the rest of the letter – it could as well be an interpolation! At another level, the plethora of meanings is understandable in view of the potential for allegorical interpretation of the expression ἑτεροζυγέω. We must now consider three features of the passage with a more general implication: its dualism, its mention of women, and its Christian authorship. The apocalyptic dualism is striking indeed. The opposition of ‘Belial’ to Christ immediately reminds one of the separatist writings from Qumran and related ancient Jewish texts. This has led Joseph Fitzmyer in 1961 to publish an influential article titled ‘Qumran and the Interpolated Paragraph 2 Cor 6:14–7:1’.12 In his [83] view the Qumran sectarian origins prove the passage to be an insert and hardly Pauline at all.13 However, we must also draw attention to the second feature, one that has gone almost unnoticed: the inclusion of women. ‘Daughters’ are mentioned next to ‘sons’ as children of the ‘Father’ and as members of ‘the living temple of God’. Hans-Dieter Betz is among the few to pay any attention to it, tersely stating in his 1973 article on the passage: ‘This addition accounts for a clear distinction from Qumran literature, with which the text otherwise has so much in common.’14 The observation is basically correct, and it will be difficult to locate the passage in the vicinity of Qumran. This does not exempt us, however, from trying to understand its stark dualism. 11 Clement of Alexandria, Strom 3.8.62.2–3 quotes the passage with reference to ἐγκρατεία, but ibid.5.9.57.5 in relation to pagan thought in general. Origen, Comm in Ioan 19.21.139 and De orat 25.3 reads a reference to belonging to Christ or to the world; but Comm in Ioan 32.24.302, 382, to Judas as a servant of Satan. In Mart Ign 4.6 the martyr quotes it in refusal of Trajan’s urge to participate in pagan ritual. Didymus the Blind, Fragm in 2 Cor. 32, reads it as a reference to marriage with an unbeliever; similarly, Didymus, In Gen 151, quoting in support 1 Cor 7:12. This interpretation is also hinted at in Origen, Fragm ex Comm in I Cor, 35, using ἑτεροζυγέομαι twice while referring to 1 Cor 7:12ff. [The link with marriage is supported by Sir 25:8 Heb, אשרי בעל אשה משכלת ואיננו חורש כשור וחמור יחדו, ‘Blessed is the husband of an intelligent woman, who does not plough with a team of ox and ass.’ Similarly, 4Q269 frg. 9:2.] 12 Fitzmyer, ‘Qumran’, referring to Kuhn, ‘Rouleaux de cuivre’, 203 n1 where it is thought ‘que Paul cite peut-être ici précisément un texte essénien’. 13 Fitzmyer, ‘Qumran’, 271, referring to Plummer, Commentary and the commentary of E.-B. Allo (1937). 14 Betz, ‘Fragment’, 98. He draws no conclusions from the observation. Lambrecht, ‘Fragment’, 543 n29 quotes Barrett’s commentary where the mention of women is called ‘significant’. Schüssler Fiorenza, Memory, 194–196, citing Betz, concludes against Qumran provenance.
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A third important aspect, underlined by Fitzmyer, is that whatever the background of the passage, it betrays a Christian author. It is ‘Christ’, not ‘the Angel of Light’ or ‘the Lord’ who is opposed to Belial. Fitzmyer concluded on a nonPauline passage ‘in which Qumrân ideas and expressions have been reworked in a Christian cast of thought’.15 Betz agreed and went a daunting step further. As he read it, the polemics against ‘impurity’ are reminiscent of Paul’s opponents in Galatians and hence the passage is of anti-Pauline, Judaeo-Christian vintage.16 A similar conclusion was drawn by Gnilka.17 Leaving the discussion where it stands, we can establish that all agree the passage was written by a Christian author steeped in Jewish traditions. It is well-advised, therefore, to study it in its most congenial cultural context, i. e., ancient Judaism.18 And when doing so, it is obvious to focus on the two prominent features we have singled out, the apocalyptic dualism and the inclusion [84] of women. We shall see that both features are socially significant: the stance taken on either one allows us roughly to position a given text in ancient Jewish society. Moreover these features function more or less in opposite ways in two obvious bodies of text for comparison, the Qumran scrolls and rabbinic literature. Where Qumran is rather tight on women and lavish on dualism, the rabbis, as we shall see, eschew dualism and are relatively inclusive vis-à-vis women. This preliminary insight occasions us to draw up a social-ideological spectrum, analysing the place either item has in an available set of documents ranging from Qumran to the rabbis. The Christian character of our passage is not necessarily such a socially significant feature. As long as any Christian text does not set itself off from Judaism, it can be approached as being of Jewish or Judaeo-Christian background or sympathetic to such. Put differently, in these cases it is often impossible to distinguish neatly between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Christian’ texts. We shall be able to observe that writings such as the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs or the Martyrdom of Isaiah – both extant in Christian elaborations – when seen in the spectrum of ancient Judaism do not distinguish themselves in a socially significant way qua Christian documents, while they do so on the issues of women or dualism. The same goes for the Jesus tradition, provided we isolate it from its anti-Jewish encasement as this is distinguishable in the Gospels of Matthew and 15 Fitzmyer,
‘Qumran’, 279. ‘Fragment’, esp 108, featuring phrases like, ‘Its Jewishness is so obvious that the name of Christ seems out of place’ for its authors; and Paul’s ‘“freedom” from the law’ meant ‘turning Christ into a “servant of sin”’. Nathan, ‘Truth and Prejudice’, 286 notes this involves a ‘pre-understanding’ of Paul which places justification theology at the centre. 17 Gnilka, ‘2 Cor 6:14–7:1’, esp 63: the passage stands in tension to ‘the Pauline concept of the relationship heathen/Christian’. [Brooke, Exegesis at Qumran, 211–217 also discusses these questions though not the one on the inclusion of women and without a conclusion on Pauline authorship; cf below n178.] 18 Cf review of recent research by Brooke, ‘2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1 Again’; the inclusion of women is not discussed (but cf his ‘Between Qumran and Corinth’). 16 Betz,
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John.19 The Two Ways Tractate contained in the Didache and Pseudo-Barnabas can be similarly used.20 Some remarks on chronology are in place. Between the rabbinic texts with their terminus a quo after 200 CE and the near-absolute pre-70 dating of the Qumran scrolls, we have a gap of a century and a half full of historical development. Yet it would be a learned mistake to treat both corpora as though they existed on different planets. The sources teach otherwise, even though we cannot establish all the details. The Qumran texts contain polemical passages targeting rulings and terminology that are identifiably proper to rabbinic literature.21 Conversely, certain polemics in rabbinic literature may be heard as opposing a dualism reminiscent of Essene thinking.22 This teaches us that with all the changes in form and formulation that we must allow for, we must also assume a measure of continuity between the teachings of the pre-70 Pharisees [86] and post-200 rabbinic literature. Moreover where available we shall use rabbinic traditions with named attributions to the earliest Tannaim, i. e., around 100 CE. To that extent we may be confident in viewing these sources along with the others from a distance, in one continuum, phenomenologically so to say, and see how our passage fits in.
Dualism and Separatism in Ancient Judaism Turning now to the item of apocalyptic dualism, we start out with the sources that feature it most characteristically, i. e., the Qumran texts, and end with rabbinic literature where it seems in clear retreat. In the next section we shall move in the opposite direction when dealing with the feature on which rabbinic literature is most outspoken: the inclusion of women. Or prolonging our methodological metaphor: when checking on the feature of dualism we shall swing along the spectrum from Qumran to the rabbis, and then back in the opposite direction when zooming in on the inclusion of women.
Qumran Since the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, the starkly dualistic message they contain is no longer the secret it apparently was meant to be, and indeed remained for ages. The authors considered themselves the community of the elect See Tomson, If This be from Heaven. As analysed by Huub van de Sandt and David Flusser, The Didache. 21 On the ‘expounders of slippery things’ and their ‘teaching (talmud!) of lies’ see below at n130. Similarly, the Halakhic Letter, 4QMMT, opposes halakhic rulings which scholars have identified as Pharisaic, see Qimron–Strugnell, ‘Halakhic Letter’. 22 See below at n62. 19 20
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and the vanguard of the coming victory of light over darkness, of God over Satan. We could call this a ‘cognitive dualism’,23 pointing out that it has interconnected cosmological and social dimensions.24 Not unlike a paranoiac mindset (except for its pathological basis), the chasm between the desert community and the rest of humankind is thought to parallel the clash between the forces of light and darkness. The two dimensions reinforce each other: knowledge of the cosmic struggle going on strengthens the community’s sense of electedness and of meaningful isolation, and vice versa. Its members constitute, as the sociologist of religion Peter L. Berger called it, a ‘cognitive minority’.25 Josephus informs us the Essenes had to take severe oaths to keep the ideas of the sect secret, and this is confirmed by the scrolls. Such conspired secrecy is a powerful means of fostering the awareness of belonging to an elected minority, also in modern times.26 It seems the close correlation between the cosmic and the social dimensions makes for the particular character of Qumran dualism. Strongly dualistic language is especially found in two of the first documents to have been published, the Rule Scroll and the War Scroll. Without prejudicing the question of their historical relationship, it is illuminating to quote the beginning of both texts together:27 For the Instructor (…) Book of the Rule of the Community: in order to seek God with all one’s heart and with all one’s soul (…) in order to love everything which He selects and to hate everything that He rejects (…) in order to be united in the counsel of God and walk in perfection in his sight (…) in order to love all the sons of light, each one according to his lot in God’s plan, and to hate all the sons of darkness, each one in accordance with his guilt in God’s wrath. (1QS 1:1–11)28 The term ‘cognitive dualism’ is otherwise used in an epistemological sense. Frey, ‘Different Patterns’, 280–285 lists 10 categories of ‘dualism’ and utilises these in identifying the distinct Qumran dualisms of sapiential and priestly origin. His category of ‘ethical dualism’ comes close but does not really envisage the social dimension. [See the very similar discussion of ‘sectarian’ features of the Qumran scrolls in Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis, 59–67.] 25 Berger, A Rumor of Angels, 7. 26 War 2:139–142; cf 1QS 5:7–13. Secrecy was also one of the manipulation techniques used to the extreme by Jim Jones in his Peoples’ Temple, ending in imposed collective suicide in Guatemala, November 1978. The analogy was pointed out by Prof. David Flusser during his NT seminar at HU, 1978–79. 27 Osten-Sacken, Gott und Belial, 28–72 stresses the terminological affinity of 1QM 1 and 1QS 3–4. He also proposes (here followed by Collins, ‘Mythology of Holy War’) an evolutionary relationship between 1QM and 1QS. Davies, ‘Dualism and Eschatology’ rejects this. Cf discussion by Frey, ‘Different Patterns’, 285–287. 28 Here as elsewhere we follow the edition and translation by García Martínez–Tigchelaar, Dead Sea Scrolls; Study Edition, with occasional modifications, in this case re. the rendering ‘to hate’ for לשנוא, as in 1:4, and ‘wrath’ for נקמה. The order to ‘hate the sons of darkness’ is confirmed by Josephus, who in War 2:139 mentions the oath μισήσειν ἀεὶ τοὺς ἀδίκους, ‘always to hate the unjust’. 23 24
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For the Instructor: The Rule of War. The first attack by the sons of light will be launched against the lot of the sons of darkness, against the army of Belial, against the band of Edom and of Moab and of the sons of Ammon and … Philistia, and against the bands of the Kittim of Ashur, who are being helped by the violators of the covenant. (…) And this is a time of salvation for the nation of God and a period of rule for all the men of his lot, and of everlasting destruction for all the lot of Belial. There will be great panic among the sons of Jafeth, Ashur shall [87] fall and there will be no help for him; the rule of the Kittim will come to an end, (…) and there will be no escape for any of the sons of darkness. (1QM 1:1–7)
In both texts, the human antagonists in the cosmic confrontation are designated as ‘sons of light’ and ‘sons of darkness’. The name ‘Belial’ personifying evil as used in the War Scroll is typical of this language; it appears a little further on in the Rule Scroll.29 His less frequent counterpart is ‘Michael’, the chief angel of light also known from the Book of Daniel.30 Furthermore it is evident from other texts including Daniel that the references to the ‘Sons of Jafeth’ and the ‘Kittim’ indicate real adversaries, i. e. the Greeks and Romans.31 ‘Ashur’ may well mean Graeco-Syrian allies of Rome; Edom, Moab and Ammon are familiar Old Testament clichés for rivalling peoples. Hence the dualistic language of the Rule Scroll is not meant to be heard in a theological vacuum either. For those in the know, it refers to very real, armed enemies. Thus viewed, parallels with Daniel and the Books of Maccabees are striking.32 This is apocalyptic dualism with palpable military connotations. More generally, the Qumran texts stand out by their negative attitude to foreigners as compared with other ancient Jewish texts. Further on, the War Scroll announces ‘destruction for all the wicked gentiles … the king of the Kittim and all the army of Belial’ at the hands of the ‘holy ones’ fighting with God on their side.33 On a different level another ‘sectarian’ text, the Halakhic Letter, sharply denounces offerings on behalf of gentiles.34 This may seem a trite idea, but we shall see that it in certain situations it can produce a strong political [88] and military potential. Furthermore, the Florilegium upholds the biblical ban 29 1QM passim; for 1QS see below n39. See Osten-Sacken, Gott und Belial, 73–78 on this name and its background. 30 1QM 17:6f; Dan 10:13, 21; 12:1. Osten-Sacken, Gott und Belial, 95–100. 31 E. g., 4QpNah (4Q169) 3+4 i:2–3, involving the Hellenistic kings Demetrios and Antiochos and ‘the leaders of the Kittim’; 4QpHab passim (‘rulers of the Kittim’); Dan 11:2–4 (‘the kingdom of Greece’, allusion to Alexander), 30 (‘ships of the Kittim’). See Dimant, ‘Sectarian Literature’, 508–512. 32 See the interesting observations by Osten-Sacken, Gott und Belial, 62–72. 33 1QM 15:2, ;כלה לכול גוי רשעה… נגד מלך הכתיים ונגד כל חיל בליעל1QM 16:1, ובקדושי עמו יעשה גבורה. See also 1QM 1:4–7, above. 34 4QMMT, 4Q394 frg 3–7 col. 1:5–12, ועל זבח הגוים […זובחים] אל ה[…] היא[ כ]מי שזנת אליו, ‘And concerning the sacrifice of the Gentiles: [… they sacrifice] to the […] it is like who whored with him.’ Related is the absolute prohibition on selling clean animals or birds to gentiles בעבור אשר לא יזבחום, ‘lest they sacrifice them’ – to idols, CD 12:8f. Rationally, the Mishna restricts this prohibition to specific objects such as pine cones or ‘a white rooster’, mAZ 1:5–7.
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on Ammonites and Moabites to enter the assembly more than literally (Deut 23:4): ‘… neither an Ammonite, nor a Moabite, or a bastard, or a foreigner or a proselyte, never, because his holy ones are there’.35 We shall come back to this text later. It must be noted, however, that is not clear whether the exclusion of proselytes concerned all sorts of meetings of the Essenes.36 Dualistic language recurs in the Rule Scroll and is carried to an extreme in what appears to be a coherent treatise on ‘the Two Spirits’ intended ‘for the instructor’ (1QS 3:13–4:26). It confronts us with an amazingly deterministic form of cosmic dualism: And in the hand of the Prince of Lights is dominion over all the sons of justice; they walk on paths of light. And in the hand of the Angel of Darkness is total dominion over the sons of deceit; they walk on paths of darkness. From the Angel of Darkness stems the corruption of all the sons of justice, and all their sins, their iniquities, their guilts and their offensive deeds are under his dominion in compliance with the mysteries of God, until his moment … and all the spirits of his lot cause the sons of light to fall. However, the God of Israel and the angel of his truth assist all the sons of light … (1QS 3:20–25)37
Lists follow of the virtues and the vices which make up life under either Spirit, as well as considerations about predestination and salvation history.38 As we shall see, lists of virtues and vices in a dual framework are not unique and appear also in other Jewish and early Christian writings. What singles out the Qumran texts is their radical conceptual framework and the fact that they went along with intentional social segregation. Phrases expressing segregation are found among other documents in the Rule Scroll itself. After the ‘Two Spirits Treatise’ and several sets of rules concerning access to the community, novitiate, punition, and the like, [89] considerations of more general nature return to the theme of the community’s mission that was struck at the beginning: And when these have become a community in Israel in compliance with these arrangements, they are to be segregated from within the dwelling of the men of sin (יבדלו מתוך )מושב אנשי העול, to walk to the desert in order to open there his path. As it is written: “In the desert, prepare the way of ****, straighten in the steppe a roadway for our God” (Isa 40:3) − this is the study of the law which he commanded through the hand of Moses … (1QS 8:13–15)
35 4Q174
[fr 1 col i.21.2] 1:3–6, see below. 14:3–6 first describes the ‘order of seating of all the camps’ ()סרך מושב כל המחנות: 1. priests, 2. Levites, 3. Israelites, 4. proselytes ( )הגרand then gives the same order for their registration. The parellel in 4Q267 frg. 9 v: 6–10 omits proselytes in the seating order, stopping with 3. Israelites, but adds them in the registration order. The Florilegium seems to depict a more solemn and eschatological assembly. 37 On shared motifs between this ‘Treatise’ and the quoted War Scroll passage see OstenSacken, Gott und Belial, 116–123. 38 Van de Sandt−Flusser, Didache, 147 identify a distinct pattern here. 36 CD
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The community, whose core group apparently was established in the Judaean desert, was to ‘segregate’ from the rest of mankind who did not follow their rules, or in other words from Jewish society at large. This correlates with the sombre view of the ‘dominion of Belial’ expressed in the opening part of the Rule.39 A clear command to separate from the majority of the people and their corrupted law observance as represented by the Temple administrators and spelled out in concrete items is found in the Damascus Covenant. In the course of a long admonition against the misguided leaders of the people, we read: But all those who have been brought into the covenant shall not enter the Temple (…). They should take care to act in accordance with the exact interpretation of the law for the age of wickedness: to keep apart from the sons of the pit ( ;)להבדל מבני השחתto abstain from wicked wealth which defiles ()הון הרשעה הטמא, (…) and from the wealth of the Temple and from stealing from the poor of the people (…); to separate unclean from clean and differentiate between the holy and the common (…), according to what was discovered by those who entered the new covenant in the land of Damascus. (CD 6:13–19)
We need not go into the precise relationship between the authors of this text and those of the Rule and War Scrolls. Suffice it to say that the separatist slant of all these documents is unlike anything else we find in ancient Jewish sources. Again this is interwoven with dualist language: ‘the age of wickedness’ and ‘Belial’ are never far away.40 The cosmically motivated social segregation [90] concerns the Jerusalem Temple, its dealings as to money and purity, and any participation in general society which entail the community’s contamination on the same issues. Private property is rejected, being called הון הרשעה, ‘wealth of wickedness’. Similarly, Josephus reports of the Essenes that they rejected property and observed community of goods.41 Segregation is also emphasized in the Halakhic Letter which sets forth a series of questions to do with Temple and purity. Towards the end the document, which seems to address leading priests in Jerusalem, states explicitly: And you know that we have segregated ourselves from the rest of the people (שפרשנו מרוב ]…[ )העםand from mingling in these affairs, and from associating with them in these things. (4QMMT, 4Q398 frg. 14–17 1:7–8)
It is not clear whether the ‘segregation’ concerns the last of the purity questions enumerated or all of them. What is clear is that in the eyes of the authors the matter at hand justified total ‘separation from the majority’ of Jewish society. On the whole, the document is remarkably concentrated around halakhic matters and features little theological language. It is one of the earliest specimens of ממשלת בליעל, 1QS 1:18, 23–24; 2:19. בליעלotherwise, 1QS 3:5. קץ, CD 6:10, 14; בליעל, CD 4:13,15; 8:2; 5:17, ‘the prince of lights and Belial’. 41 War 2:122, ‘Riches they despise, and their community of goods is truly admirable.’ 39
40 הרש[י]ע
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halakhic literature.42 Nevertheless, there are concluding theological considerations tellingly voicing opposition to ‘the counsel of Belial’ (עצת בליעל, 4QMMT 4Q398 frg 14–17 col. II:5). Summing up, the radical ‘cognitive dualism’ characteristic of these Qumran texts evokes a community aware of its being elected from the ‘mass of perdition’ in the perspective of a cosmic struggle, and demarcating itself from that ‘mass’ among other items by shunning contact in shared worship, food and drink, and commercial dealings.
Testaments of the 12 Patriarchs Many examples of dualistic language are found in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, a larger work pretending to render the moral adhortations of the twelve sons of Jacob set in a rather thin narrative of their successive deaths.43 [91] Typically, the name ‘Beliar’ is often used for the chief angel of darkness, especially in the Testament of Benjamin.44 Furthermore, there is an enumeration of the ‘two ways’ paralleling the ‘Two Spirits Treatise’ from the Rule Scroll: God has granted two ways to the sons of men, two mindsets, two lines of action, two models, and two goals. Accordingly, everything is in pairs, the one over against the other. The two ways are good and evil; concerning them are two dispositions within our breasts that choose between them. If the soul wants to follow the good way, all of its deeds are done in righteousness and every sin is immediately repented. Contemplating just deeds and rejecting wickedness, the soul overcomes evil and uproots sin. But if the mind is disposed toward evil, all of its deeds are wicked; driving out the good, it accepts the evil and is overmastered by Beliar, who, even when good is undertaken, presses the struggle so as to make the aim of his action into evil … (TAsher 1:3–9)45
The passage, which runs on for another five (modest) chapters, is clearly written with a fascination for diametrical opposition. The emphasis is on being not ‘two-faced’ (διπρόσωπος) but ‘single-minded’ (μονοπρόσωπος).46 This choice seems to presuppose a free moral decision. However, ‘if the mind is disposed toward evil’, it will be ‘overmastered by Beliar’ (κυριευθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Βελίαρ).47 42 Tomson,
‘Halakhah in the New Testament’, 147–153. Osten-Sacken 200–205; Gnilka, ‘2 Cor 6:14–7:1’; and the brief item on ‘Dualism’ in H. C. Kee’s introduction in OTP 1:779. See also Flusser, ‘New Sensitivity’, 485–487, developing the concept of ‘semi-Essene’ circles in which the Testaments were written. Much of the relevant material is reviewed by M. de Jonge, ‘Testaments’, in light of his theory that the Testaments are a Christian work with Jewish influences. 44 7 out of a total of 29 mentions. 45 Translation here and elsewhere as in OTP. 46 Elsewhere the word ἁπλότης is used, esp 12× in T. Iss plus in its title, Περὶ ἁπλότητος. On the matter see Flusser, ‘New Sensitivity’, 486. 47 Cf TAsher 6:4–5 for the final dominance of ‘the angels of the Lord and of Beliar’. 43 Cf
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Though similar, this obviously is not as radical as the deterministic dualism of the Qumran ‘Two Spirits Treatise’. The borderline between the ‘in group’ and the ‘out group’ seems not cosmically predetermined but human-made.48 A clear moral choice is also insisted upon in the following admonition which sums up the Testament of Levi and which by its vocabulary strongly reminds us of our passage in 2 Corinthians: Choose for yourselves light or darkness, the law of the Lord or the works of Beliar − ἑλέσθε οὖν ἑαυτοῖς ἢ τὸ σκότος ἢ τὸ φῶς, ἢ νόμον Κυρίου ἢ ἔργα Βελίαρ (TLevi 19:1).49 [92]
Finally, the idea of a cosmic war against evil is heard: And there shall arise for you from the tribe of Judah and (the tribe of) Levi the Lord’s Salvation. He will make war against Beliar; he will grant the vengeance of victory as our goal. (TDan 5:10)50
The theory has been advanced that we are faced here with a remnant of the archetypal Israelite tradition of ‘holy war’ and hence also a link with the Qumran War Scroll.51 Even if this could be true, the incidental character of the reference, added to the eclectic form in which the dualistic language appears throughout the Testaments, gives the impression rather of an echo of some ancient, broader tradition. One can imagine this to be related to the genesis of the Testaments in a second or first century BCE Graeco-Jewish milieu.52 A Hellenistic Jew conversant with traditions circulating among other languages in Hebrew and Aramaic could have composed the ‘Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs’, embellishing them with topics and motifs taken from a range of sources, including cosmic dualism.53
Martyrdom of Isaiah An interesting but complex piece of evidence is the Martyrdom and Assumption of Isaiah. In one of the earliest studies to take stock of the impact of the Qumran scrolls, David Flusser underlined the strong dualistic language of this narrative of the prophet’s martyrdom during the reign of the evil king Manasseh.54 48 See Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache, 149–152 for this aspect of the Treatise. [Differences between T12P and the Qumran sect are similarly emphasized by Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis, 138–144, taking inspiration from D. Flusser.] 49 Also quoted by Gnilka, ‘2 Cor 6:14–7:1’, 66. 50 One senses a Christian interpolation, but it is difficult to isolate. Maybe the phrasing is just pre-Christian. 51 Osten-Sacken, Gott und Belial, 204f, hypothesising that dualism in T12P is secondary and combined with other, on the whole later, elements. 52 Cf Kee, ‘Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs’, 775–780. 53 This is exemplified in TDan 5:5, ‘For I read in the book of Enoch the Righteous that your prince is Satan …’ The language of the particular copy of Enoch is of secondary importance. 54 Flusser, ‘Ascensio Isaiae’; cf Knibb, ‘Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah’, 151–153 on
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And Manasseh abandoned the service of the Lord of his father, and he served Satan, and his angels, and his powers. And he turned his father’s house … away [from] the words of wisdom and the service of [93] the Lord … so that they served Beliar; for the angel of iniquity who rules this world is Beliar … And sorcery and magic, augury and divination, fornication and adultery, and the persecution of the righteous increased though Manasseh … (Mart Isa 2:2–5)
Flusser also thought the ensuing story of the prophet’s flight from godless Jerusalem and his retreat into the desert was a coded reference to the Qumran community’s history: And when Isaiah the son of Amoz saw the great iniquity which was being committed in Jerusalem, and the service of Satan, and his wantonness, he withdrew from Jerusalem and dwelt in Bethlehem of Judah. And there also was great iniquity; and he withdrew from Bethlehem and dwelt on a mountain in a desert place. … And many of the faithful … withdrew and dwelt on the mountain. (Mart Isa 2:7–9)
Whether Flusser’s identification is correct or not,55 we have here the interesting example of a ‘rewritten Bible story’ remarkably fitted out with Qumran-like dualistic language − remarkable because many similar Bible retellings do not contain such language. For comparison, we might think of the books of Maccabees and of Daniel, which all tell the story of the Maccabaean war though only Daniel renders it in apocalyptic encoding.
Two Ways Tractate A similar comparison brings us another step ahead in distinguishing the various modes of ancient Jewish dualism. As was recently set forth extensively by Huub van de Sandt and David Flusser, the early Christian document called Didache or Apostles’ Teaching opens with a ‘Two Ways Tractate’ which is also found at the end of the so-called Epistle of Barnabas and which can be compared to the ‘Two Spirits Tractate’ of the Rule Scroll. These are the relevant passages of Didache and Pseudo-Barnabas: There are two ways, one of life and the other of death, and there is a great difference between the two ways. This is the way of life: first, you shall love God Who made you … But this is the way of death … (Did 1:1–2; 5:1) [94] There are two ways of teaching and authority, the one of light and the other of darkness, and the difference between the two ways is great. Upon the one, lightbearing angels are the document’s demonology and dualism. In n6, Flusser discusses the remarkable ‘angel of iniquity’ reminiscent of 2 Cor 6:14f and 2 Thess 2:3–12 and especially of the angelus iniquitatis from the Two Ways passage in the Doctrina Apostolorum. See also ἀνομία in Ps-Barn 18:2 quoted below. 55 Knibb ibid. remains hesitant, while registering that Van der Ploeg and Philonenko agree.
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ordained; upon the other, angels of Satan. One is the Lord from eternity and to eternity; the other the Ruler of the present time of iniquity. This is the way of light … The knowledge of walking on it given to us is the following: You shall love the One Who made you … But the way of blackness is crooked and full of curses … (Barn 18:1–19:1; 20:1)
The two passages undoubtedly represent different versions of the same work, though an exact relationship cannot be established. The difference is in the absence of dualistic language in the Didache, while it treats just as well of the dual nature of human life, whereas such dualistic terms as ‘lightbearing angels’, ‘angels of Satan’, and ‘the Ruler of the present time of iniquity’ (ὁ ἄρχων τοῦ νῦν ἀνομίας) in Pseudo-Barnabas remind us of the Qumran Two Spirits Treatise. Nevertheless, both texts present the way of life as a viable option and its prime commandment as ‘knowledge given to us’, while in the Rule Scroll, the interference of either the angel of darkness or of light determines human conduct. If we imagine the three texts on a comparative scale, Didache presents us with a non-dualistic ‘Two Ways’, Pseudo-Barnabas with a semi-dualistic one, and the Rule Scroll with a completely dualistic one.
Jesus Tradition Without any dualistic overtones, the two ways pattern is also reflected in the Jesus tradition. It figures prominently at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew: Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matt 7:13–14)
Clearly, it is the choice for either ‘way’ which leads to life or death, not the rule of angels. The saying can be seen as a development of the ‘Deuteronomistic pattern’ found in Deut 28 and related passages presenting one with a choice between ‘life and death’. Indeed, the Beatitudes opening the Sermon on the Mount are found in the Gospel of Luke in a double pattern of four beatitudes and four woes: ‘Blessed are you poor … But woe to you that are rich …’ (Luke 6:20–26), thus fully reflecting the un-dualistic Deuteronomistic choice. One [95] could even say that the Jesus tradition evinces a slight voluntarist emphasis, as expressed in the typical send-off saying, remarkable in itself: ‘Your faith has saved you, go in peace!’56 A dualistic-apocalyptic tone is nevertheless struck in such sayings of Jesus as the following: ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven;’ ‘Simon … Satan demanded to have you … but I have prayed for you …’ (Luke 10:18; 22:31). 56 Mark 5:34 (= Matt 9:22; Luke 8:48); Mark 10:52 (= Luke 18:42); Luke 7:50; 17:19. Translation as in NRSV Luke 18:42.
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Similarly we hear, ‘No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon’ (Matt 6:24; Luke 16:3). The dilemma between God and Mammon, however, seems to underline the importance of the choice to be made, not to illustrate a cosmic struggle.57 This interpretation is confirmed by the paradoxical parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1–9), a teaching which is often misunderstood because the example is set by a sinner. David Flusser has plausibly suggested that the ‘children of light’ who behave ‘unwisely’ as compared with the ‘children of this world’ are not to be seen as Christians but as Essenes who as we saw despised property.58 To be sure, Jesus speaks of ‘the Mammon of iniquity’ (μαμωνᾶ τῆς ἀδικίας) in a way very similar to Qumranic הון הרשעה, ‘wealth of wickedness’ (CD 6:15, see above). Un-dualistically, the parable’s lesson is precisely to use money to ‘make friends for yourselves’. Jesus teaches his followers not to ‘leave this world’ (cf 1 Cor 5:10), but to live in it, among ‘sinners and tax-collectors’, pointing them the way to salvation (Luke 5:30–32). There is even an anti-dualistic, possibly intentional anti-Essene accent in Jesus’ command to love one’s enemy, ‘… That you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust’ (Matt 5:45).59 Humanely, Jesus is attributed with a surprising openness towards ‘publicans and sinners’ or ‘whores’ and their hidden longing for salvation.60 [96]
Early Rabbinic Tradition In many matters, rabbinic tradition is not of one piece, although this is often not visible at the surface. A particularly important divide during the first generation of Tannaim (c. 70 CE) was the one between the two ‘Houses’ or schools of Shammai and of Hillel. The Shammaites appear to have been rather strong during the last generation before the first revolt, but as concerns the halakha, the extant texts of rabbinic literature, beginning with the Mishna, are predominantly Hillelite in outlook.61 The shift may well relate to the outcome of the war, but that should not detain us here. What is important now are the indications that 57 On the saying see Flusser−Safrai, ‘Slave’, comparing with 2 Cor 6:14–15 and R. Shimon ben Pazzi’s saying: ‘Man … is the slave of two masters: … of his Creator and … of his (evil) inclination’ (RuthR 3.14). That saying, which is not quoted in Str-Bill 1:433–435, deals with the halakhic problem of a slave having two owners, which undoubtedly belongs to the background of Jesus’ saying. 58 Flusser, ‘Jesus’ Opinion’. 59 Cf Flusser, ‘New Sensitivity’, 124f. 60 Mark 2:15; Luke 5:30; Matt 21:31, cf Luke 7:39; 19:2–10. 61 Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 194–200; Goldberg, ‘Mishna’, 213.
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the submerged divide between the two schools somehow also related to their world view. In two separate passages about prayer that explain each other and belong together, the Mishna rejects cosmic dualism with apparent unanimity:62 One who says (in his salutation): “May the Good One bless you” − this is the way of sectarianism (( ;)דרך המינותone who says in his benediction) “To a bird’s nest does Thy grace extend”, or, “On account of the good shall Thy name be mentioned”, or, “We thank Thee, we thank Thee” − he is silenced (by the congregation). (mMeg 4:9; cf mBer 5:3) One is obliged to bless (God) on account of bad news as one is on account of good news, for it is said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might” (Deut 6:5). (mBer 9:5)
The saying about the bird’s nest is opaque and explanations vary, but the other formulae in the first mishna are explicitly criticized for their ‘heretical’ slant: a blessing ‘on account of the good’ seems to exclude ‘the bad’ and its heavenly instigators, and repeating ‘We thank thee’ likewise may be heard as proclaiming a duality of heavenly powers. Indeed similar repetitive formulae are found in the Qumran scrolls.63 In other words the Mishna rejects such dualistic views as are taught at Qumran. [97] The second mishna positively prescribes blessing the Creator upon both good and bad news, bearing witness to the belief in the goodness of His creation. This part also figures in the Tosefta and is there attributed to R. Meir (c. 150 CE), a latter-day heir to the Hillelite tradition.64 This may point to a submerged intrarabbinic debate. Indeed the Babylonian Talmud brings a report to the effect that in the early days the Pharisees were divided on the question of the goodness of creation: For two and a half years did the schools of Shammai and of Hillel dispute, the former saying: It were better for man, had he not been created rather than created, and the latter: It is better for man that he has been created rather than not. They voted and decided … (bEr 13b)
A dimmer view of humanity and of creation – a feature often found in dualisticapocalyptic works65 – is ascribed to the school of Shammai. Conversely, impor62 Translations of rabbinic literature are mine. Cf on these passages Segal, Two Powers, 98–108, 53–56. 63 yMeg 4:9 (75c); bMeg 25a (שתי רשויות, ‘two powers’); yBer 5:3 (9c); bBer 33b. See Safrai–Safrai, Tractate Brachot, 207–209 and Tractate Ta’anit–Megila, 407–409, referring also to 1QHa 19:3, =( מודה מודהed Licht, Thanksgiving Scroll, 11:3, p161, and see Licht’s comments); 1QS 1:20; 2:10, 18 etc., אמן אמן, a biblical formula (e. g. Num 5:22; Ps 41:14). Curiously, the Johannine Jesus uses ἀμὴν ἀμήν 25 times, and only in the double form, while in the synoptic Gospels it is only single ἀμήν, 52×. 64 tBer 6:1, 7. 65 Cf Collins, Apocalypse, 11, 27: ‘The emphasis on the transcendent in the apocalypses suggests a loss of meaning and a sense of alienation in the present’; ‘The transcendent character of
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tant later representatives of the Hillelite trend of thought, spiritual ancestors of R. Meir, are accredited with a benevolent view of humankind and creation.66 It seems excluded that the rabbis held a vote on such a theological question.67 However in view of the predominance of the Hillelite tradition in extant rabbinic literature and of a measure of similarity of Shammaite tradition to Qumran thinking,68 the one-time existence of a rather more pessimist world view and of a greater consideration of the forces of evil in Shammaite [98] circles cannot be excluded. Significantly, the possibility of apocalyptic input into halakhic decisions is expressed by the Shammaite R. Eliezer in the legendary dispute over ‘the oven of Akhnai’, whereas his Hillelite partner in debate, R. Yoshua (c. 100 CE), rebuts by quoting with reference to the Tora: ‘She is not in heaven’ (cf Deut 30:12).69 Thus it seems likely that the Shammaite wing of Pharisaism somehow had a greater predisposition towards dualistic and apocalyptic thought patterns, but that in the Mishna and subsequent rabbinic literature the Hillelite wariness of dualism and apocalypticism prevails. In any case a similar difference obtains in regard of separatism. A decidedly non-dualistic and anti-separatist attitude is ascribed to Hillel the Elder, especially in his saying, ‘Do not separate from the community’ (אל תפרוש מן הצבור, mAv 2:4). The meaning of this brief pronouncement is not clear from its immediate context, but comparison with related passages shows that the likely intention is the counsel not to become like ‘those who separated themselves from the ways of the community’ ()מי שפרשו מדרכי צבור,70 i. e. people who isolate themselves from society for doctrinal or ritual reasons. For an example, Sadducees are mentioned. We can readily add the Qumran community who, as we saw, stated about themselves, שפרשנו מרוב העם, ‘we who separated ourselves from the majority of the people’ − meaning from their erroneous halakhot and law interpretations.71 The the eschatology points to the underlying problem of all the (Jewish) apocalypses―this world is out of joint, one must look beyond it for a solution.’ 66 Cf Hillel himself, considering care for the body an honour to his Creator, LevR 34.3 (p776); Rabban Gamliel the Elder, praising the Creator on seeing a handsome non-Jewish woman, yAZ 1:9 (40a; on the Temple Mount); yBer 9:1 (13c bottom); and R. Akiva, R. Meir’s teacher, in mAv 3:4, ‘Beloved is man …’ These sources are cited by Urbach and rehearsed by Safrai, see next n. 67 Thus Urbach, Sages, 252–254, followed here by Safrai, ‘Oral Tora’, 112f. Positive evidence to support this view is found in the saying of Gamaliel the Elder cited in Acts 5:38f, on which see Tomson, ‘Gamaliel’s Counsel’ (in this volume), esp 613–618. Both Urbach and Safrai sideline the possibility of a different view of the Shammaites (while Safrai’s exposition on the humane rabbinic view is entirely Hillelite in theological outlook). 68 Apart from cumulative evidence offered in the present paper cf Noam, ‘Traces of Sectarian Halakha’. 69 bBM 59b, with Elijah reporting that the Holy One blessed be He also accepted the decision made on earth. Cf mKel 5:10; tEd 2:1; bBer 19a. 70 Seder Olam 3, see remarks by Flusser, ‘4QMMT’, n5 on the text. I translated more literally than the quote in the English version of Flusser’s study. 71 The comparison of Hillel’s saying with 4QMMT is basic to Flusser, ‘4QMMT’.
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legacy of Hillel as incorporated in rabbinic literature is un-separatist and advocates faithfulness to the community in spite of doctrinal or ritual differences.72 An area where the difference in social orientation between the two schools was poignantly expressed is the relation to non-Jews. A number of rabbinic traditions consistently portray Shammaites as more reserved towards non-Jews than Hillelites. Not unlike the Damascus Covenant quoted above, R. Eliezer ‘the Shammaite’ is quoted as disqualifying offerings on behalf of non-Jews ‘because their essential intention is towards idolatry’. Conversely, his Hillelite colleague R. Yoshua upholds ‘there are righteous among the non-Jews [99] who have a share in the world to come’.73 It seems the difference in outlook inspired Shammaites to take the initiative in the revolt against the Romans. Josephus maintains that the war was finally triggered by the cessation of the daily sacrifice for the Emperor at the instigation of Eleazar son of Ananias the Temple governor, who could be identical with the Shammaite leader Elazar ben Hananya known from rabbinic literature.74 Here we see the militant potential of the prohibition on offerings for gentiles. More generally it seems that a tendency on the part of the Shammaites to insist on separateness has made them more ready to fight the Romans. They even seem to have turned against their reputedly peace-loving fellow Pharisees, the Hillelites. A thinly but insistently documented rabbinic tradition reports that at one occasion, most likely at the beginning of the revolt, the Shammaites forced sword in hand ‘18 decrees’ on the Hillelites, killing a number of them.75 The gist of the decrees probably was anti-gentile legislation. R. Eliezer is quoted as being satisfied with them while R. Yoshua deplores them.76 On this issue of the attitude to foreigners, the Shammaites once again were much closer to the Essenes than the Hillelites. Earlier we cited the Qumran Florilegium and its over-literal interpretation of the biblical ban of Ammonites and Moabites, shutting out not only foreigners but even proselytes. Quite to the contrary, the Mishna cites the Hillelite R. Yoshua as explicitly declaring the biblical ruling void in the case of Yehuda the Ammonite proselyte. Rabban Gamliel the Younger objected, here apparently representing the Shammaite view, but the sages ‘allowed him (Yehuda) to come into the assembly’.77 [100] 72 Thus explicitly mYev 1:4; tYev 1:10–13; yYev 1:6 (3b). The ending in Tosefta and Yerushalmi shows this to be Hillelite tradition. 73 mHul 2:7, R. Eliezer against offering for gentiles; tSan 13:2, R. Eliezer and the Hillelite R. Υoshua disputing on the salvation of gentiles. bShab 31a, Shammai’s attitude towards prospective proselytes is consistently pictured as negative. On R. Eliezer ‘the Shammaite’ see Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 198–200. 74 Josephus, War 2:409. The identification was first made by Graetz, Geschichte 3: 470–472, and notes 24, 26, 27 (p795ff). For further data see Goldberg, Shabbat, 15–22. 75 mShab 1:4, see Goldberg, Shabbat, 15–22; Hengel, Die Zeloten, 201–208. 76 tShab 1:16–17; cf Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 192f. 77 mYad 4:4, one of the rulings made ‘on the day when they made R. Elazar ben Azaria president’, temporarily sidelining Rabban Gamliel (mYad 3:5). Gamliel the Younger, though
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Women as Members of the Assembly in Ancient Judaism As to the participation of women in the assembly, we shall work our way across the spectrum in the opposite direction, starting with rabbinic tradition, passing through the early Christian texts and various ancient Jewish works, and concluding with the Qumran documents.
Rabbinic Literature In rabbinic literature the attendance of women in community worship is a given. Such has been established by Shmuel Safrai in an inquiry about the women’s gallery in antiquity.78 The Mishna obliges women to say prayers and encourages them to ‘read the Scroll’ (of Esther),79 and many narrative reports confirm that women did attend Tora readings. Classic rabbinic literature knows nothing of an elevated women’s gallery, and its absence in antiquity is confirmed by archaeology.80 However, women were not supposed to officiate in reading out aloud, as we shall see in a moment, and they were thought to be less instructed.81 The rabbis projected this state of affairs back onto the revelation narrative at Mt. Sinai. Thus while the people of Israel are preparing for the holy event, Moses is commanded to inform them with a remarkable opening phrase: ‘Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the sons of Israel’ (Exod. 19:3). An early rabbinic midrash expounds this as follows:82 “Thus shall you say to the House of Jacob” − these are the women; “And tell the sons of Israel” − these are the men. Another explanation: “Thus shall you say to the House of Israel” − speak in simple language, explain the central issues to the women; “And convey to the sons of Israel” − give them (i. e., the men) the details and explain these to them. [101]
a scion of Hillel, was notable for his Shammaite leanings, see Safrai, ‘The Decision’; idem, ‘Halakha’, 192 n337. 78 Safrai, ‘Was There a Women’s Gallery’. 79 Safrai ibid. 159. But see below on the reading of Scripture. 80 See the final pages of Safrai ibid. The same conclusion was proposed by Brooten, Women Leaders. Ch. Safrai, Women in the Temple points out that while Second Temple Jewish women did not have decisional power, they did participate in all Temple matters on a voluntary basis. 81 Ilan, Jewish Women, 179–184 gives a dense overview of actual involvement of women in religious life drawing mainly on rabbinic sources. The distinction she makes, however, between the position of women in ‘the system of religious commandments’ and in ‘the Jewish legal system’ (176) is not clear. The subject of women officiating is not broached. 82 MekRY yitro 2 (p205).
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The two ‘explanations’ are also found in various combinations and elaborations in later midrash collections83 and in the Targumim.84 Basic to them all is the presence of women at the assembly before Mt. Sinai, an element not mentioned in the Bible. The solemn event would have induced the rabbis to make sure their fundamental views about the Tora and the community were reflected.85 Indeed, they are able to compare worship in the synagogue to that in the Tabernacle under Moses.86 The solemnity seems already reflected in the Exodus passage in the exceptional poetic parallelism of ‘House of Jacob’ and ‘sons of Israel’.87 The more usual address of the people as found e. g. in Exod. 12:3 is, ‘Tell all the congregation of Israel.’ The Hebrew word for ‘community’, עדה, is translated in the Septuagint as συναγωγή.88 Thus in the interpretation of the rabbis, ‘all the congregation of Israel’ is constituted by the men and the women. Nevertheless the rabbis barred women from officiating during worship. A prohibition is not explicit in the Mishna nor the Palestinian Talmud, but it appears in two parallel rulings in the Tosefta and in a comment in the Babylonian Talmud. The Tosefta rules as to the ‘reading of the Scroll’ of Esther at Purim: All are obliged to reading the Scroll: priests, Levites, lay Israelites, proselytes, emancipated slaves … Women, slaves, and minors … are not obliged, and they cannot fulfil the obligation of the community. ( ;פטורין ואין מוציאין את הרבים ידי חובתןtMeg 2:7) [102]
The concluding phrase is crucial: women cannot ‘fulfil the obligation of the community’ in reading out loud and thus perform the commandment of ‘reading the Scroll’ on behalf of those who cannot read. The editors of the Mishna, who may be supposed to have been reviewing this or a similar ruling, apparently found the phrase ‘all are obliged’ ( )הכל חייביןambiguous and formulated: ‘All are fit ( )הכל כשריןto reading the Scroll, except the deaf, the mentally handicapped, and minors’ (mMeg 2:4). Consequently, the Mishna allows women to 83 ExodR 28.2 gives only the second explanation; MidrGad Exod 19:3 (p477) has both. MidrTan metsora 26a and MidrTanB metsora 18 (27a) link the priority of the women with their having no periods and not being impure while in the desert. This reads like a secondary explanation paralleling the one in the Mekhilta about ‘easy language’. 84 TgPsYon Exod 19:3: כדנא תימר לנשיא דבית יעקב ותתני לבית ישראל, ‘Thus shall you say to the women of the House of Jacob and teach the House of Israel’; cf FrgTg ibid. כדנן תימר לאינשי ביתיה דיעקב ותתני אולפן לכנישתהון דבני ישראל, ‘Thus shall you say to the people of the House of Jacob and teach instruction to the gathering of the sons of Israel.’ The purity aspect added in the Tanhumas is lacking here. 85 Thus the emphasis of Prof. Shmuel Safrai in a seminar on the passage while staying at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies in 1981. 86 E. g., tMeg 3:21, citing the arrangement of the congregation of Israel in Lev 8:4. 87 Parallelism involving ‘Jacob’ and ‘Israel’ (or the other way around) is elsewhere found in Isa 10:20; 46:3; 48:1; Jer 2:4; Mic 3:9; Ps 114:1. ‘House of Jacob’ is itself a prophetic expression and in the Tora is used only here (in Gen 46:27 it refers to the clan of Patriarch). 88 The Septuagint often uses συναγωγή even where the Hebrew has no עדהat all. The Targumim use Aramaic כנישתא, paralleled by Hebrew כנסת, hence the rabbinic idiom כנסת ישראל, ‘the community of Israel’.
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read the Scroll, but it does not oblige them and it can be understood to implicitly prohibit their officiating.89 In comment, the Palestinian Talmud records the ruling that one is obliged to read out the Scroll before women and minors.90 Thus women were supposed to participate in the Scroll-reading as private persons, but hardly to officiate. The same can be said about Tora reading, a much weightier matter since, in contrast to the book of Esther, the Tora and the commandment to read it out in public were thought to derive from Moses. The Tosefta again: All may go up (הכל עולין, i. e. on the bema) to complete the number of seven (Tora readers on the Sabbath), even women, even minors. One does not call up women to read out aloud for the community. ( ;אין מביאין את האשה לקרות לרביםtMeg 3:11)
Apparently the practice is meant that seven people in a row go up and read part of the Sabbath portion, while one ‘main reader’ reads it out aloud for the community, officiating in lieu of those who cannot read, similar to the prayer being said aloud by the ‘deputy of the community’ ()שליח צבור.91 Thus while women attended and actively participated in the Tora reading, they were not supposed to represent the community and to officiate. The Babylonian Talmud quotes a variant of the Tosefta ruling and, at last, comes clean with a motive: [103] Our masters taught: All may go up to complete the number of seven, even minors and even women. But, said the Sages, women should not read (out aloud) from the Tora, out of respect for the community. ( ;אשה לא תקרא בתורה מפני כבוד צבורbMeg 23a)
In ancient rabbinic society, a woman officiating in a public event was thought to embarrass the community. In this, the rabbis did not distinguish themselves from their surroundings. This state of affairs is not necessarily contradicted by the conclusion drawn by Paul Trebilco that Jewish communities in ancient Asia Minor counted a relatively remarkable proportion of ἀρχισυναγῶγοι and other types of women leaders.92 Women could direct communities without being able to officiate. We shall see that this inference is confirmed by the evidence in Paul’s letters.
89 Thus Albeck, Mishna 2: 366, commenting on mMeg 4:6 (about minors saying Shema as a responsory) by referring to mRH 3:8, אינו מוציא את הרבים ידי חובתן, כל שאינו מחויב בדבר:זה הכלל – ‘This is the general rule: Anyone who is not obliged to a commandment cannot perform it on behalf of the community.’ 90 yMeg 2:4 (23b), citing Bar Kappara and R. Yoshua ben Levi. 91 See Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 5:1176–1178; cf Tomson, Paul, 134 n214. I find it difficult to agree now with Lieberman’s solution that the phrase אין מביאין את האשה לקרות לרבים refers to the halakha following, not the one preceding. The parallel with tMeg 3:11 seems to indicate that it refers to the preceding. 92 See Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 104–126. But nor does it warrant his conclusion at 189: ‘The leadership of women in some communities was at odds with rabbinic teaching.’
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Jesus Tradition The Gospels are noteworthy for the many stories of women who had themselves or their child healed by Jesus.93 A striking example is the healing of the elder woman who Jesus said deserved to be freed from her ‘infirmity’ since she was ‘a daughter of Abraham’ (Luke 13:11–17).94 Women are especially in view in Luke. ‘Mary has chosen the good portion’ while listening in to Jesus teaching, rather than her senior sister Martha who did the catering (Luke 10:42; cf John 11). This links up with the women who supported Jesus and his disciples (Luke 8:2–3). Remarkable is the story of the ‘sinful woman’ who anointed Jesus’ feet, an act of contrition which Jesus put up as an example to his Pharisee host (Luke 7:36–50).95 In another brief story a woman from the crowd praises ‘the womb that bore Jesus and the breasts he sucked’, responding to which Jesus praises ‘those who hear the word of God and keep it’ − in clear reminiscence of [104] what has been told earlier of his mother Mary (Luke 11:27f; cf 1:38; 2:19, 51).96 The women testifying to the Resurrection, notably Mary Magdalene,97 have a special place in the broader gospel tradition.98 In the Gospel of John, where lengthy speeches constrain the number of stories, there are the famous narratives of the Samaritan woman being addressed by Jesus and of the sisters Martha and Mary already mentioned (John 4:1–42; 11:1–12:8). Yet Jesus’ address to his mother Mary at the Cana wedding does not reflect a high esteem of the authority of women in public: ‘Woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come’ (John 2:4).99 However the dominating presence of the evangelist’s pen must make us wary as to inferences beyond the scope of the fourth Gospel. All told and done the above suggests that women would be welcomed in the com-
Mark 1:29–31; 5:23–43; 7:25–30; Luke 7:11–17. R. Akiva pronouncing that poor people are entitled to equal damages as the rich, ‘for they are children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’, and applying this to a poor woman, mBK 5:6. Similarly, R. Yohanan ben Matya’s father, mBM 7:1. Cf Luke 19:9, Jesus on Zacchaeus (‘a son of Abraham’); as in 13:17, the emphasis of the phrase is on moral and bodily dignity rather than law and damages. 95 The parallel in Mark 14:3–9 // Matt 26:6–13 and John 12:1–8 contains notable differences: she is not anonymous but Mary sister of Martha again; there is no mention of ‘sins’; she anoints not his feet but his head (in John, also his feet); and it is done in the house of her sister at Bethany. See Fitzmyer, Luke and Brown, John, ad loc. 96 There is a tension with Luke 8:21f which is based on Mark 3:34f and seems to represent a different tradition. 97 GosPet 50 calls her μαθητρία τοῦ κυρίου. 98 Mark 16:1–8 (Mary ‘the Magdalene’, Mary ‘of James’, and Salome); Luke 24:1–12 (Mary the Magdalene, Mary of James, and Joanna); Matt 28:1–8 (Mary the Magdalene and ‘the other Mary’); John 20:1–13 (Mary the Magdalene). See on this feature Mohri, Maria Magdalena. 99 The vocative γύναι is found 5 times in John (2:4; 4:21; 19:26; 20:13; 20:15), as compared to once in Matthew and twice in Luke. It is unclear to me what this can mean. 93
94 Cf
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pany of Jesus. This conclusion concerns not just a set of early Christian sources. It reflects a particular Jewish milieu at the turn of the eras.100 The question is what the openness towards women among Jesus and his early followers would mean for the position of women in community events. The data are surprisingly scarce. The norm of strictly chaste behaviour towards women preserved in the synoptic tradition (Matt 5:28–30) may well have implied that women were required to be silently present i. e. not to officiate or teach. Indeed, a passage in Paul to which we shall come back seems to imply that this is what Jesus had ordained (1 Cor 14:33–37). Otherwise, Martha’s sister Mary was ‘sitting at the Master’s feet and listening to his teaching’ (Luke 10:39), but this remains a moot point, for so, presumably, were the male disciples. The apocryphal Gospel of Thomas offers illumination in retrospect. Its notorious last saying has Jesus declare Mary Magdelene in need of being ‘made male’ in order to become ‘a living spirit resembling you males’ and to ‘enter the Kingdom of Heaven’. ‘Female women’ were not thought to have such privileges.101 It [105] seems safe to say that according to the Jesus tradition as recorded in the Gospels, women were warmly welcomed at community events but were not expected to do more than modestly participate.
Philo In her study of Philo’s perception of women, Dorothy Sly makes the interesting observation that in commenting on the narrative of the relevation at Sinai, the Alexandrian exegete adds the women as being present: ‘The ten words or oracles … were delivered by the Father of All when the nation, men and women alike, were assembled together (ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν εἰς ἐκκλησίαν)’.102 This addition to the biblical text, however, is not maintained in Philo’s comments on what follows, and the inconsistency gives the impression of ‘superficiality’ and of ‘contradictory influences’ being at work.103 Such inconsistency is not exceptional in Philo. In commenting on the classic passage involving divorce in Deut 24:1–3, he begins by stating divorce can be obtained ‘for whatever reason it may be’, which accords both with the dominant 100 See
Safrai, ‘Jesus’, and ‘Hasidim’. 114, ET NHL, 130; cf Mohri, Maria Magdalena, 203–208. This sounds programmatic in comparison with saying 62, which in this respect is uncomplicated and rather resembles the canonical Gospels. The expression ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ (also GosThom 20; 54) is remarkable for otherwise found only in the canonical Gospel of Matthew and in rabbinic literature. 102 Dec 32. Sly, Philo’s Perception, 188 thinks of Exod 19:25, πρὸς τὸν λαόν. Our suspicion would rather go to Exod 19:3, but there is no foothold for either assumption. 103 Sly, Philo’s Perception, 188: ‘the superficiality of Philo’s elevating women to equal consideration with men …’ 101 GosThom
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position in rabbinic literature and with the plain meaning of the verse. In his subsequent comments, however, he suggests various sorts of improper behaviour on the part of the woman as necessary conditions for divorce − a decidedly different position in terms of ancient Jewish law.104 This gives the impression that he begins by paying tribute to a somehow more authoritative or popular tradition but subsequently reverts to interpretations more of his own liking. Hence it is not unlikely that in commenting on the Sinai revelation as well Philo duly cites the interpretation known by tradition to himself and to his audience, i. e., that ‘men and women alike’ were present at the sacred gathering, while according to his own opinion, copiously expounded, women ought to sit in their proper domain: the house.105 Nothwithstanding Philo’s claim halfway his treatise on the Therapeuts and Essenes, ‘I will not add anything of my own procuring’,106 it is only likely that his own opinion in matters of women and sex has coloured his description. The first of these Jewish sects, which he may well have known because they [106] were settled near Alexandria,107 comprised both men and women, who joined in common worship while keeping separate on either side of a screen and otherwise practising self-control ‘as it were the foundation of their soul’.108 As to the Essenes, Philo claims they avoided marriage because it is ‘the principal danger to the maintenance of the communal life’ and because they practised continence. For ‘no Essene takes a wife because a wife is a selfish creature, excessively jealous and an adept at beguiling the morals of her husband …’109 In his erudite and passionate classic about Philons griechische und jüdische Bildung, Isaac Heinemann devoted half a chapter to the solid patriarchalism and the restrictive sexual ethics of the Alexandrian, confining women to the inner home and sex to mere procreation, to the extent of imposing divorce on a childless marriage.110 Astounded at Philo’s low view of women and marriage, Heinemann, who later was to write important works on rabbinic thought, ascribed it to the ‘ascetic trend’ which influenced Jewish sectarianism and early Christianity.111
104 Spec leg 3:30–31, switching from a Hillelite to a more or less Shammaite conception of divorce. See Tomson, ‘Divorce Halakha’ [in this volume, 82f]. 105 Thus at length Spec leg 3:171–174; Sly, Philo’s Perception, 196f. 106 Philo, Vit cont 1. 107 Philo, Vit cont 22, describing the location near the Mareotic lake with apparent eyewitness knowledge. 108 Philo, Vit cont 34. 109 Philo, Hypoth 11.14. Heinemann, Bildung, 232 also suggests the tendentiousness of this description. 110 Heinemann, Bildung, 231–292; Philo, Spec leg 3:34–36. 111 Heinemann, Bildung, 249, 270–272. Cf Heinemann, Darkhei ha-aggada (1970).
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Testaments of the 12 Patriarchs The ‘testament’ ascribed to Reuben, archetypal fornicator, comes out very strongly against the influence of women: Women are evil (πονηραί εἰσιν αἱ γυναῖκες), my children, and by reason of their lacking authority (ἐξουσία) or power over man, they scheme treacherously how they might entice him to themselves by means of their looks … Accordingly, my children, flee from fornication (φεύγετε οὖν τῆν πορνείαν), and order your wives and daughters not to adorn their heads and their appearances … For it was thus that they charmed the Watchers (ἐγγρήγορες), who were before the Flood … So protect yourself against fornication, and if you want to remain pure in your mind, protect your senses from from any female (ἀπὸ πάσης θηλείας). And tell them not to consort (συνδυάζειν) with men, so that they [107] too might be pure in their minds. For even recurrent chance meetings … are for these women an incurable disease, but for us they are the plague of Beliar and an eternal disgrace. (TReub 5:1, 5; 6:1–3)112
Men are to protect themselves from seeing and hearing women, women should prevent themselves from being seen by men. Dualism is in place: to men, women are the inroad of Beliar and, by virtue of their cosmetics, the bridge-head of the fallen angels, the Watchers. But even when not wearing make-up, women are not to ‘consort’ with men. Although it is not made explicit, this would severely impede mixed gatherings. It is difficult to see how the spiritual progenitors of this text would endorse common worship by men and women. Apparently, the Testaments are not of one piece either. The Testament of Benjamin breathes a different spirit: The person with a mind that is pure with love does not look on a woman with an intention to fornicate. He has no pollution in his heart, because upon him is resting the spirit of God. For just as the sun is unpolluted, though it touches dung and slime, but dries up both and drives off the bad odor, so also the pure mind, though involved with the corruptions of earth, edifies instead and is not itself corrupted. (TBenj 8:3)
The comparison is not exactly flattering for women, and the authors make sure to steer free from the lures of the female. We also saw that Beliar, the figurehead of dualism, is a frequent visitor in this Testament. Nevertheless a somewhat more positive attitude to women prevails.
Essenes and Qumran Impressed by similarities between the recently discovered Rule Scroll and the testimony of ancient authors on the Essenes and their celibacy, early Qumran scholarship assumed women practically had no place at all in the Essene move ET Charlesworth in OTP 1, adapted.
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ment. More recent studies have modified this in view of the Damascus Covenant and other texts, though questions remain. Josephus’ well-known presentation of the ‘three sects’ of ancient Judaism undoubtedly is schematic, but it appears not to give a bad impression after all.113 His claim to have passed through each of the three ‘sects’ in his youth114 [108] is confirmed by many of his descriptions. The convergence between his description of the three year novitiate and the stratified admission procedure prescribed in the Rule Scroll is among the strongest indications that the scroll did belong to the movement Josephus calls ‘Essenes’.115 In his exalting portrayal of the Essenes, Josephus asserts they avoided any contact with women, but adds that a separate branch did allow marriage under strict conditions: Marriage they disdain … They do not, indeed, on principle, condemn wedlock and the propagation thereby of the race, but they wish to protect themselves against women’s wantonness, being persuaded that none of the sex keeps her plighted troth to one man. (…) There is yet another order (τάγμα) of Essenes, which, while at one with the rest in its mode of life, customs, and regulations, differs from them in its views on marriage. … They give their wives … a three year probation, and only marry them after they have by three periods of purification given proof of fecundity. (War 2:120–122, 160–161)
Further external evidence is given by Pliny the Elder and Philo of Alexandria, who both assert that the Essenes lived without women (sine ulla femina; γάμον παρῃτήσαντο).116 This confirms Josephus’ claim of an Essene celibate order but betrays ignorance or disinterest regarding the ‘other order’. For a location, Pliny places the Essenes on the Western shore of the Dead Sea with Engedi to the South (ab occidente litora … infra hos Engada), which does fit the Qmran site and seems to echo an inside source.117 Archaeological discoveries of the remains of women and children in the vicinity of Qumran confirm that [109] communities of mixed gender must have been around as well.118 Furthermore, both Philo and Josephus write that the Essenes lived in towns and villages across 113 For
the triad of ‘sects’ see Flusser, ‘Pharisäer, Sadduzäer und Essener’. πολλὰ πονηθεὶς τὰς τρεῖς διῆλθον, Life 11. 115 War 2:137–138; 1QS 6:13–23. See the analysis by Licht, Rule Scroll, 145–148. Other parallel data are the admission oath mentioned above at n26, and the disciplinary procedures, War 2:143–144; 1QS 6:24–7:27. These and seven further important features in common are enumerated by Schwartz, ‘Dead Sea Sect’. 116 Pliny, Nat hist 5.73 (Stern, GLAJJ 1: 470); Philo, Hypoth 11.14. 117 Cf Stern’s discussion of Pliny’s sources, GLAJJ 1: 466f, and of this passage, 480f. In addition, Pliny’s phrase, ita per saeculorum milia, incredibile dictu, gens aeterna est, curiously resembles CD 7:6, להחיותם אלף דור, with the incredibile dictu apparently reflecting doubts vis-à-vis his source. This was also observed by Baumgarten, ‘Qumran-Essene Restraints’. Cf also 4QpPs37 (4Q171) 3:1, שבי המדבר אשר יחיו אלף דור. In a general sense, the connection between the Essenes and the Dead Sea is confirmed by Dio Chrysostom (late first cent. CE) as referred to by Synesius of Cyrene, see Stern, GLAJJ 2: 539. See also Stern, ‘Teiur Erets-Yisrael’, 259f; D. Schwartz, ‘Dead Sea Sect’, 606f. 118 See data and discussion in Dimant, ‘Qumran Sectarian Literature’, 483–487. 114
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the country.119 It is reasonable to assume that these various testimonies reflect a measure of variation within the Essene movement. Communities excluding women could have been located at least at Qumran, while mixed settlements of Essenes existed both there and elsewhere across the Land of Israel.120 Josephus’ description of a two-tiered attitude to women and marriage is confirmed by a remarkable passage in the Damascus Covenant.121 This document was only known from two medieval manuscripts discovered in the Cairo Geniza in the late nineteenth century, until rich finds at Qumran proved its importance for the community or communities that were settled there before 74 CE. ) כל המתהלכים4( ) באלה בתמים קדש על פי כל יסורו ברית אל נאמנות להם5( הארץ ולקחו122) להחיותם אלף דור ואם מחנות ישבו כסרך6( ) נשים והולידו בנים והתהלכו על פי התורה7( For all those who walk (5) according to these matters in holy perfectness in accordance with all his teachings, God’s covenant is a guarantee for them (6) that they shall live a thousand generations. Blank And if they reside in camps in accordance with the rule of the land and take (7) women and beget children, they shall walk in accordance with the law. (CD 7:4–7; cf 19:1–4) [110]
The quote suggests that while it is considered the higher norm ‘to walk in holy perfectness’, it is also allowed to live in ‘camps’, marry, and get children.123 Indeed the aim of ‘holy perfection’ is presupposed in another central document for the one-time settlers at Qumran, the Rule Scroll, and it seems to imply celibacy. The same expression, borrowed from the Bible, is used in its opening passage which states the aim of the community: …להתהלך לפניו תמים, ‘… in order to walk in perfection in his sight’ (1QS 1:8).124 The separatist dualism of this passage was noted above, and a link with the intended segregation from women is likely. Nowhere does the Scroll even mention the female sex until the very 119 Pliny ibid; Philo, Hypoth 11.1; Josephus, War 2:124. See the sober discussion by Dimant, ‘Qumran Sectarian Literature’. 120 Likewise, Baumgarten, ‘Qumran-Essene Restraints’, with interesting remarks on the ‘two-tiered approach to halakhah’ and ‘bifurcation in the practice of celibacy among the Essenes’ (ibid. 15 and n7; 19 ) and on celibacy in Rev 14:4f (ibid. 23 n23, read amômoi, ἄμωμοι = )תמימים. This reminds us of Paul’s two-tiered approach in 1 Cor 7, cf Tomson, Paul, 123f. The theory of Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis (cf Bauckham, ‘Early Jerusalem Church’, 63–66) seems to exaggerate the divergence between ‘Qumran’ and the ‘Essene movement’ and is not supported by the complementary description of both ‘orders’ in CD and Josephus we have quoted. 121 See Baumgarten, ‘Qumran-Essene Restraints’, 18 on the difficulties scholars had with this passage. 122 In CD 7:6 García Martínez − Tigchelaar transcribe כסדךbut translate ‘rule’; in 19:2 they transcribe כסרך. 123 Similarly Baumgarten, ‘Qumran-Essene Restraints’ and his introduction in DJD 18:7–9. 124 The phrase reminds one of the commandment of circumcision given to Abraham, התהלך לפני והיה תמים, Gen 17:1.
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end, where a piece of thanksgiving psalm puts her in unattractive company indeed: ‘As what shall one born of woman be considered in your presence? Shaped from dust has he been, maggots’ food shall be his dwelling …’ (1QS 11:21). The miserable view of women ascribed to the Essenes by Philo (see above) is strikingly confirmed by the document dubbed ‘Wiles of the Wicked Woman’ found at Qumran (4Q184). Thus the above passage of the Damascus Covenant seems to reflect a movement which strived for celibate perfection yet allowed for lesser degrees of holiness where rules about women and relations with them were necessary and marriage and even divorce were a fact of life.125 After all, women are included in all ways and manners in biblical law, which for all Second Temple Jews was the ultimate reference, and rejecting any social intercourse with them involves a radical departure from it. Precisely that seems implied in two textual additions in a second Geniza copy of the passage we have just quoted: ‘And if they reside in camps in accordance with the rule of the land, as it was since ancient times, and take women in accordance with the custom of the law …’126 If these are no glosses of a medieval copiist, they are reflections of a discussion within the sect about the correctness of absolute male celibacy. [111] One Qumran manuscript mentions ‘fathers and mothers’, and another text ‘elderly men and women, young men and women, boys and girls’.127 Also, the Rule of the Congregation describes ‘the congregation of Israel ( )עדת ישראלin the final days’, ruling that ‘when they come, they shall assemble all those who come, including children and women, and read into [their] ea[rs] [a]ll the precepts of the covenant …’ (1QS28a/1QSa 1:1–5). It is not clear, however, whether the presence of women at this solemn occasion implies their presence at all community gatherings.128 The Rule Scroll regulates access to the sect by a four-tiered 125 E. g. unbinding the oath of women, CD 8:10–12; forbidden sexual intercourse in the Temple city, 12:1–2; the laws of sota, 4Q270 frg 4; marriage and divorce, CD 14:16–17. On principle, divorce seems rejected in CD 4:21–5:5; 11QTemp 57:17–19 along with polygamy. See Wassen, Women on all these questions. 126 CD 19:3, ואם מחנות ישבו כסרך הארץ אשר היה מקדם ולקחו נשים כמנהג התורה. This is the second Geniza manuscript of CD called ‘Text B’. 127 4Q270 frg 7 i:13–15 mentions ;האבות… האמות4Q502 frg 19:2–3, ]זקנים וזק[נות… בחורים ובתולות נערים ונער[ותand ibid.frg 14:6 even בנים …וב[נות. See Crawford, ‘Mothers’ and Wassen, Women, 184–197. Baumgarten, ‘Qumran-Essene Restraints’, 13, 17 thinks the latter text refers to ‘an already married couple of golden age’ vowing to ‘henceforth live in celibacy’ within the yahad. 128 Analysing CD and 1QSa, Schuller, ‘Women’, 117 tends towards a ‘compromise position’. Baumgarten, ‘Qumran-Essene Restraints’ distinguishes between 1QS which favours male celibacy and CD which allows for participation of women. Crawford, ‘Mothers’ explores the 4Q D mss for the place of women, especially involving the epithets אמות, זקנות, and אחיות. Wassen, Women offers an overview of scholarship (2–11) and gives more ample discussion, analysing the literary strata discernible in CD. She concludes (207–211) that CD reflects ‘one Essene community among many’ where ‘as full members, women were allowed entrance’ into the holiest meetings; celibacy ‘may have been a late development’.
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stratification of purity rules, whereby the ‘inner circle’ is accessible only to those (males) who passed all examinations. In this system, difficulties for women to pass are easy to imagine. Moreover the Qumran CD copies state that only virgins or chaste widows can be brought ‘to the holy c[ovenant]’.129 While allowing for inner debate and development, we conclude that the Essene movement was characterized by a strongly restrictive tendency towards women. It must have been hard for women to get accepted as member of an Essene assembly, and it seems they were definitely excluded from the assembly of the ‘perfect’.
2 Cor 6:14–7:1 Viewed in the Spectrum of Ancient Judaism Let us now try to accommodate our passage from 2 Corinthians in the social spectrum we have construed vis-à-vis the two issues of dualism and women. Starting with the second item, we have just seen that the rabbis added women on to the biblical picture, introducing them where they were not mentioned [112] in the Sinai narrative. By contrast, the Essene communities of the ‘perfect’ at Qumran and possibly elsewhere seem to have eliminated them from it, banning them from their holy congregations. This involves attitudes not only to women, but also to the Bible. In the rabbis, a greater tolerance towards women went along with a more liberal view of Scripture, whilst a more rigid approach of Scripture corresponded to a more restrictive attitude towards women in the Qumran community. We seem to have this explicit in the Nahum pesher which comes out sharply against the דורשי החלקות, ‘expositors of slippery things’, who ‘misdirect Ephraim’ with their תלמוד שקר, ‘fraudulent teaching’.130 The word used, תלמוד, is common in ancient Tannaic tradition,131 and the likely conclusion is that it concerns an outburst against the
129 4Q269 fr 9:4–7; 4Q470 fr 5:17–21; 4 Q271 fr 3:11–15 in Baumgarten’s emendation, DJD 18: 132, 154, 175. 130 Cf 4Q169 (4QpNah) frg 3–4 ii:2; iii:2, 6. See VanderKam, ‘Pharisees’. The collocation of the two terms makes this strong evidence. In view of the rabbinic terms דורשי רשומותand דורשי חמורותwhich indicate ancient specialists of allegorical midrash (see Bacher, Terminologie, s. v. דרשand )רשם, דורשי החלקותmust similarly be translated. Like תלמוד, the polemical use of דורשseems to target the Pharisees. Was ‘( חלקותslippery things’) meant as the ironical opposite of ‘( חמורותdifficult things’)? 131 mPea 1:1 mentioning תלמוד תורהamong the items that have ‘no measure’ seems to involve a tradition of Temple times, cf discussion of ראיוןby Safrai, Wallfahrt, 33–36; mKet 5:6 תלמוד תורהinvolves a Houses dispute suggesting antiquity; mAv 5:21 חמש עשרה לתלמודis attributed to Yehuda ben Teima who probably flourished shortly after 70 CE (he is mostly called ‘rabbi’, except here and yEr 1:10, 19d; bPes 70a, 71a: ‘Ben Teima’). The very frequent exegetical expression תלמוד לומרis ascribed to the exegetical school of Akiva (Kahana, ‘Halakhic Midrashim’, n108).
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Pharisees.132 Moreover the biblical lemma used for these polemics involves the ‘deadly charms’ of the ‘harlot’, the ‘bloody city’ whose ‘nakedness’ will be unveiled in retribution (Nah 3:4–5). The female ‘charms’ are equated with the ‘slippery expositions’ of the proto-rabbinic adversaries of the Qumran authors. While we do not know where to locate the Nahum pesher within the Essene movement, the parallelism between a rigid view of Scripture and a restrictive attitude to women is obvious and would probably have been upheld in the strictest Qumran groups. In between the two extremes, the less ‘perfect’ Essene communities − i. e. those envisaged by the Damascus Document and described by Josephus − allowed women to be present and probably also to participate to some degree in the holy assemblies. Yet more towards the centre of mainstream Judaism, there may have been a gradual overlap with communities congenial to the Testaments of the Patriarchs which as we have seen express wariness of women [113] being included in social gatherings. The Therapeuts who lived near Alexandria and are described by Philo (see above) could be placed at about this same spot in the spectrum. By contrast, in the Jewish milieus presupposed by the Gospels and Acts, as with the rabbis, women were most welcome in the community, although it is unlikely they could officiate. Viewed in this spectrum, the stance our passage takes on the participation of women seems closest to that of the rabbis. Developing some midrashic tradition on 2 Sam 7, the passage not only turns the Davidic adoptive ‘son of God’ into a plural, but into a plurality of ‘sons and daughters’. It thus introduces women into the biblical narrative and with it, into the central spiritual sanctuary. This not only outdoes the interpretive flexibility of the Qumranites, but also decidedly differs from their idea of the ‘perfect’ community. The inclusion of women parallels the attitude found in the Gospels and Acts, while the midrashic underpinning reminds us of the rabbis. There is reason to consider the insertion of the ‘daughters’ in 2 Cor 6:18 the result of a proto-rabbinic midrash, possibly inspired by Joel 3:1 (2:28), ‘Your sons and daughters shall prophesy.’133 It is less obvious with the dualism in the first part of our passage, vv14–16a. The mere mention of ‘Belial’ at once recalls the War Scroll, the Testaments of the Patriarchs, and the Martrydom of Isaiah. The sophisticated vocabulary, to be sure, reminds us rather of the author(s) of the Testaments, who as we saw could have been at home in a Hellenistic-Jewish milieu both cognizant of apocalyptic texts and traditions and featuring Greek erudition and rhetorical training. The 132 Cf CD 1:18, בעבור אשר דרשו בחלקות, which Baumgarten in DJD 18:7 interprets as a reference to ‘Pharisaic opponents’ of the Teacher. 133 For the remarkable υἱοὶ καὶ θυγατέρες in Barn 1:1 see Wengst, Didache, 196 n2, who refers to the quote of Joel 3:1 in Αct 2:17, προφητεύσουσιν οἱ υἱοὶ καὶ αἱ θυγατέρες ὑμῶν. The Joel verse is oft-quoted in rabbinic literature. Cf also 2 Clem 19:1; 20:2, ἀδελφοὶ καὶ ἀδελφφαί.
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phrases in v14f, ‘What fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial?’ even directly recall TLevi 19:1, ‘Choose for yourselves light or darkness, the law of the Lord or the works of Beliar.’ How does this relate to the early rabbis and their predecessors? We have noted that the Hillelite strand took an explicit anti-dualist and anti-separatist stance which also left its mark on extant rabbinic literature. The Shammaite school would probably have been more open to dualistic-apocalyptic and separatist modes of thinking. Indeed the cumulation of such evidence as the Shammaites’ greater reservation towards gentiles, their more sombre view of mankind, and their more literalist conception of Scripture,134 suggest that in fact the Shammaite ‘house’ of Pharisaism − whatever historical entity we must imagine by that description − was the one closer to the Essenes. The conclusion follows that the first, dualistic part of our passage is to be located in [114] the spectrum somewhere halfway between Qumran and the rabbis, with the specification that some early rabbis were closer to Qumran than others. In this light it is interesting to study the second part of the passage in view of its biblical quotations and allusions. Not a single quotation of a Greek version here is exactly as it is known to us. The quotes all seem to have been combined and moulded to fit the needs of the occasion − whichever this was. The following chart can be made of the most important verses alluded to according to the Septuagint, arranged following the verses in 2 Cor 6:16–18.135 2 Cor 6:16, ἐνοικήσω ἐν αὐτοῖς καὶ ἐμπεριπατήσω καὶ ἔσομαι αὐτῶν θεός καὶ αὐτοὶ ἔσονταí μου λαός. – Ezek 37:27, καὶ ἔσται ἡ κατασκήνωσις μου ἐν αὐτοῖς ( )והיה משכני עליהםκαὶ ἔσομαι αὐτοῖς θεός καὶ αὐτοί μου ἔσονται λαός. – Lev 26:11–12, καὶ θήσω τὴν διαθήκην μου ἐν ὑμῖν ( … )ונתתי משכני בתוככםκαὶ ἐμπεριπατήσω ἐν ὑμῖν καὶ ἔσομαι ὑμῶν θεός καὶ ὑμεῖς ἔσεσθέ μου λαός. The opening phrase in 2 Cor 6:16, ἐνοικήσω ἐν αὐτοῖς, is not found in LXX but resembles Lev 26:11; the second part of the verse resembles Ezek 37:27. In the Hebrew, the word משכני, ‘my habitation’, is used in both verses, and 2 Cor 6:16 really sounds like an amalgam, with the opening verb freely being adapted to the rest of the sentence. 2 Cor 6:17, διὸ ἐξέλθατε ἐκ μέσου αὐτῶν καὶ ἀφορίσθητε, λέγει κύριος, καὶ ἀκαθάρτου μὴ ἅπτεσθε· κἀγὼ εἰσδέξομαι ὑμᾶς. – Isa 52:11, (ἀποστήτε ἀποστήτε ἐξέλθατε ἐκεῖθεν καὶ) ἀκαθάρτου μὴ ἅπτεσθε, ἐξέλθατε ἐκ μέσου αὐτῆς, ἀφορίσθητε (οἱ φέροντες τὰ σκεύη κυρίου). – Ezek 20:34, καὶ ἐξάξω ὑμᾶς ἐκ τῶν λαῶν ( )מן העמיםκαὶ εἰσδέξομαι ὑμᾶς ἐκ τῶν χορῶν οὗ διεσκορπίσθητε. In the first part use has been made of Isa 52:11b–c, but in reverse order, adapted with αὐτῶν instead of αὐτῆς, and with λέγει κύριος added. The context of the Isaiah verse is redemption from captivity and exile. The same theme is carried by the phrase 134 Cf
Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 185–194. Cf Lambrecht, ‘Fragment’, 541–545.
135
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εἰσδέξομαι which with the object αὐτούς or ὑμᾶς is found 7 times in the Septuagint, three of which in Ezekiel. It always translates the verb קבץ, ‘gather in’, notably ‘from among the nations’, as in Ezek 20:34 quoted above and 11:17, καὶ εἰσδέξομαι αὐτοὺς ἐκ τῶν ἐθνῶν ()וקבצתי אתכם מן העמים. 2 Cor 6:18, καὶ ἔσομαι ὑμῖν εἰς πατέρα καὶ ὑμεῖς ἔσεσθέ μοι εἰς υἱοὺς καὶ θυγατέρας, λέγει κύριος παντοκράτωρ. – 2 Sam 7:14, ἐγὼ ἔσομαι αὐτῷ εἰς πατέρα καὶ αὐτὸς ἔσται μοι εἰς υἱόν. – Joel 3:1 (2:28), προφητεύσουσιν οἱ υἱοὶ ὑμῶν καὶ αἱ θυγατέρες ὑμῶν. [115] – Isa 43:6, ἄγε τοὺς υἱούς μου ἀπὸ γῆς πόρρωθεν καὶ τὰς θυγατέρας μου ἀπ᾽ ἄκρων τῆς γῆς. The main allusion is clearly to 2 Sam 7:14, with the third person singular changed into the second plural. Also, καὶ θυγατέρας is added, possibly at the inspiration of Joel 3:1. An echo of Isa 43:6 could also be at play. In that case it involves another allusion to return from exile. Finally, the phrase λέγει κύριος παντοκράτωρ is found no less than 76 times in the Septuagint, 65 of which in Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
The outcome is impressive. We are faced with an artful patchwork of dynamic quotations – we would say, ‘free renderings’ or ‘creative paraphrases’ – that must have been made by one fully versed in Greek Scripture. In addition, the combination of Lev 26:11 and Ezek 37:27 which is understandable via the Hebrew suggests familiarity with the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore, the use made of Nathan’s prophecy in 2 Sam 7:14 is very creative and will hardly have been made all in one go. More likely, it was developed over a number of occasions where related themes were on the agenda. These observations give reason to return to the Qumran Florilegium which was mentioned for its exclusion of foreigners and proselytes from the assembly. While clearly differing in social attitude, its form, exegetical technique, and, in part, its content are similar to 2 Cor 6:16–18. It concerns a textual fragment consisting of a compilation of passages from the Psalms and other biblical books including 2 Sam 7, interspersed with pesher type comments. Main themes are eschatology and the eschatological temple,136 most remarkably called ‘a human temple’.137 ‘… From the day on which I appointed judges over my people Israel’ (2 Sam 7:10) − this (refers to) the house which he will establish for him in the last days, as it is written (כאשר )כתובin the book of Moses: ‘The sanctuary of Yhwh138 which thy hands will establish, Yhwh shall [116] reign for ever and ever’ (Exod 15:17–18) − this (refers to) the house into which shall not enter [… for] ever either an Ammonite, or a Moabite, or a bastard, or 136 See Steudel, Midrasch, with thorough analysis also covering the scope of the document and its relation to 4Q177. See also Brooke, Exegesis, with review of literature, 211–217. 137 On this singular element see Flusser, ‘Two Notes’, and the literature indicated in García Martínez–Tigchelaar, Dead Sea Scrolls 1: 352f. 138 As in Samaritan and Geniza versions; the Massoretic version has אדני.
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a foreigner or a proselyte ()ובן נכר וגר, never, because his holy ones are there. ‘Yhwh shall reign for ever and ever’ − He will appear over it for ever … And He commanded to build for himself a temple of man ()מקדש אדם, to offer him in it, before him, the works of thanksgiving ()מעשי תודה. And as for what he said to David: ‘I shall obtain for them rest from all your enemies’ (2 Sam 7:11): (it refers to this) that he will obtain for them [rest] from a[ll] the sons of Belial … [And] yhwh [de]clares to you that ‘he will build you a house (…) I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me’ (2 Sam 7:12–14). This (refers to the) ‘branch of David’ ()צמח דויד, who will arise with the Interpreter of the law (… )דורש התורה (4Q174 frg 1 i,21,2: 2–7)
A general similarity with 2 Cor 6:16–18 in form and exegetical technique is found in the thematic concatenation of biblical verses with interspersed exposition. Striking similarities in content concern the exposition of 2 Sam 7:(10‑)14 as referring to a ‘human’ or spiritual temple (cf 2 Cor 6:16, ‘we are the temple of the living God’), in association with the ‘messianic’ interpretation of God as a ‘father’ to his ‘son’ as opposed to the reign of Belial. A formal difference obviously concerns the conciseness of the interruptive digression in 2 Corinthians, whereas the Florilegium seems to take all the time it needs to expound favourite verses. As to style, the 2 Corinthians passage betrays erudition and a refined vocabulary, while the Florilegium uses more simple and quasi-biblical language. Also, the interpretation of the ‘son’ as the Davidic Messiah is much closer to the direct biblical meaning than the ‘sons and daughters’ of 2 Cor 6:18. The theme of the inclusion of women itself is not touched on in the extant Florilegium. Thus the comparison with the Florilegium enhances the conclusions that have been emerging from our investigations. 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 is a specimen of expositional rhetoric composed by someone steeped in the Greek Scriptures and also knowledgeable of the Hebrew Bible. Although its dualistic language reminds one of Qumran, its literary sophistication is far beyond any known text produced in the Dead Sea scriptoria. The inclusion of women in its second part reminds us most of the attitude of the rabbis on this issue and of their way of dealing with Scripture. Furthermore the type of apocalyptic dualism expressed in the first part locates the passage in our understanding somewhere halfway between the Qumran scrolls and extant rabbinic literature. [117]
The Inclusion of Women and Apocalyptic Dualism in Paul’s Letters We now turn our investigation around in order to study the inclusion of women and apocalyptic dualism as these appear in Paul’s undoubted letters. While doing so we shall ignore 1 Cor 6:14–7:1, as though indeed it is an insert of unknown provenance into a (composite) letter of Paul’s. We have not forgotten, however, our acquired knowledge of the spectrum of ancient Judaism and we shall use it when applicable in studying Paul.
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Leaving the Deutero-Paulines aside,139 we are dealing with real, non-fictitious letters.140 Two characteristics must be stressed here: the widely different situations these letters presumably address, and the versatile yet dynamically coherent mode of thinking of their author.141 Thus on the one hand, we must read every letter on its own terms and in view of its particular rhetorical situation, but on the other, we may be confronted with recurrent terminology, concepts, and sayings also found in other letters. More particularly, we find stereotyped formulae that do not quite fit their context and sometimes seem to interrupt the flow of thought by way of digression. Such formulae are typical for their ‘viscosity’, for a blend of continuity and variation we may well imagine at home in a milieu of oral delivery and study. They often consist of a number of concatenated expressions, some of which are not relevant to the immediate context, while other elements are relevant and may show signs of adaptation to the context.142 One instructive example will indirectly bring us to the subject of the inclusion of women. 1 Cor 7:17–23 ‘ordains’ Jews and non-Jews, slaves and freemen to ‘remain in the state in which (they were) called’.143 The rhetorical aim of this passage is to offer a motivating digression in the midst of a chapter on the [118] subject of sexual abstinence, celibacy, divorce, and remarriage in order ‘to devote oneself to prayer’ or to ‘care for the affairs of the Lord’ (7:32, 34). In other words, the passage drags along the issues of men and women and of slavery that are not relevant to the context, in order to illustrate the overarching principle that is relevant: ‘Remain in the state in which you were called.’ We seem to be dealing with an existing string of concepts and phrases that is partially adapted to the present context. Indeed, recurring similarities with a series of passages elsewhere in this and other letters give reason to view 1 Cor 7:17–23 as a relatively elaborate form of one such stereotyped formula of Paul’s. In one of its occurrences, it features the inclusion of women. The ‘viscous formula’ concerned variously recurs in at least three different letters,144 each time juxtaposing ‘Jew and Greek’ or its equivalent ‘circumcision 139 Most scholars agree these include 1 Tim and Tit. I think there is sufficient reason to consider 2 Thes, Col and 2 Tim (at least in part) real letters of Paul’s; cf Grant, Historical Introduction; Barclay, ‘Conflict’. Much discussion remains on Eph. 140 Cf Vielhauer, Geschichte, 58–70. 141 Cf the categories of ‘contingency’ and ‘coherence’ developed by Beker, Paul to characterize Paul’s mode of thought. 142 On concatenations see above n7. In his NT seminar in Jerusalem in 1978–79, Prof. David Flusser used the metaphor of ‘Lokschen (lumps) floating in the soup’ to describe recurring tradition-driven motif clusters, in that instance the one involving ‘stones’ in 1 Pet 2:4–9. [In this connection, Vielhauer, Geschichte, 69f speaks of ‘Einlagen’, wary of facile interpolation theories; see ‘Paul as a Recipient’, in this volume.] 143 See Tomson, Paul, 270–274 for more discussion and for possible Jewish motifs at play. 144 It is possible to find echoes of Paul’s rule in Romans, e. g. 10:12, but clearly the rhetorical situation here was very different and required extraordinary phrases like ‘to the Jew first, and also to the Greek’ (Rom 1:17; 2:10).
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and foreskin’;145 less frequently, ‘slave and freeman’;146 and, one single time each, ‘barbarian and Scythian’ and ‘male and female’.147 In its varied extant form, it may well be of Paul’s own making,148 in the first place because, as we have said, he cites it in many places. In the second place, he explicitly calls it on two occasions his ‘canon’ and ‘that which I ordain in all churches’.149 It sums up Paul’s inclusive view of the Church as it embraces ‘Jews and Greeks’ in the first place. In fact, only that category appears in all variants of the formula, and always in first position. We are now interested on the version that includes women. These are the relevant phrases: [119] For … you … were baptized (and) have put on Christ: there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female (ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ); for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28)
This is the first of three appearances of the formula in Galatians. Each time, the pair Jew-Greek or circumcision-foreskin is mentioned, but only in this instance in Galatians do the pairs slave-freeman and male-female also appear. Given that Galatians reads as one extended argument against forced circumcision and ‘Judaizing’ for gentile Christians,150 it seems obvious that the pair Jew-Greek is closest to the central aim of the letter. This is borne out by the other two occurrences. In Gal 5:2–6, Paul reiterates that circumcision does not bring a gentile Christian closer to Christ. On the contrary, trying to get closer by getting circumcised removes one from him, ‘for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision has any power nor foreskin …’ Similarly in Gal 6:11–16 Paul sums up his letter in his own handwriting: those who want to force you to get circumcised have ‘political’ aims; he will not play the power game but feels strong in Christ’s cross, ‘for neither circumcision is anything nor foreskin …’ In a sense, the stereotyped formula ‘neither Jew nor Greek’ sums up the argument of Galatians. 145 ‘Circumcision and foreskin’ are mentioned 1 Cor 7:17–24; Gal 5:6; Gal 6:15; ‘Jew(s) and Greek(s)’ in 1 Cor 12:13; Gal 3:28; and ‘Greek and Jew’ in Col 3:11. 146 1 Cor 7:21–24; Gal 3:28. 147 Respectively, Col 3:11 and Gal 3:28. 148 Thus Martyn, Galatians, 473, cf 378: use being made of Stoic, proto-gnostic, and/or apocalyptic motifs. Similarly Vouga, Galater, 91. Meeks, ‘Androgyne’, 11–13 limits comparison to the three occurrences associated with baptism (Gal 3:28, Col 3:10f, and 1 Cor 12:13) and concludes on a quotation from traditional baptismal liturgy. Hogan, No Longer, 22–25 allows for both Meeks’ and Vouga’s interpretation. Betz, Galatians, 181–201 focuses on the larger unit Gal 3:26–29 and the supposed baptismal formula, not on v28 and the three ‘pairs’. The large spread in Paul, with three occurrences in Galatians alone, at least suggests Paul’s intimate affinity with the formula. Most recently Neutel, Cosmopolitan Ideal defends Pauline authorship. 149 Gal 6:16, in the autographed summation of the letter, following the formula: καὶ ὅσοι τῷ κανόνι τούτῳ στοιχήσουσιν …; 1 Cor 7:17, introducing the formula: καὶ οὕτως ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις πάσαις διατάσσομαι … 150 Cf the phrases ᾽Iουδαϊσμός, ᾽Iουδαϊκῶς ζῆν, and ἰουδαΐζειν in Gal 1:13f; 2:14, on which see Betz, Galatians, 112.
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The question then is why only in Gal 3:28 the pairs slave-freeman and malefemale are added. As in the case of 1 Cor 7:17–23, slavery is not a topic of the letter, nor is the inclusion of women. The simplest explanation is that Gal 3:28 as well renders a customary formula, coined at some other occasion, on behalf of the first pair, while the other two pairs are dragged along by custom. As to the provenance of the fuller formula, it is obvious to assume, among other things, the convergence with analogous formulae current in popular philosophical traditions; various Greek and Jewish analogies have been suggested.151 The upshot is that even if we ignore the origins of the formula in Paul’s thought, he uses it here by way of habit in what seems to be its fullest, three part form. It implies that for Paul, the inclusion of women in the assembly of Christ is a given that needs no explanation. This should not be misunderstood as though he aimed at legal equality in the modern, post-revolutionary human rights sense. Paul lived in a world where social order was thought immutable and revolution unimaginable. Indeed, for each of three three pairs in Gal 3:28, it is possible to point out social [120] differences Paul upholds elsewhere. Slaves ought to obey their masters in all (Col 3:22; cf Eph 6:5); Jews do have ‘advantages’ over non-Jews (Rom 3:1f; cf 9:2f); and women must submit to their husbands (1 Cor 11:3; Col 3:18). It follows that the set phrase ‘in Christ there is neither … nor …’ was not meant to erase social differences, but to include all in the assembly.152 In consequence, Paul’s teaching works out in a paradoxical way. The phrase ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ, using the neuter instead of gendered adjectives as in the other two categories, obviously must derive from the first creation story, ‘God created man in his own image, (…) male and female he created them’ (ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ − Gen 1:27, cf 5:1f). However, in 1 Cor 11:6, where a different situation seems adressed, Paul alludes to the very same verse in order to argue female submission, playing now on the word ‘image’ (εἰκών): ‘… She must cover herself; for a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.’ Moreover some verses on, Paul draws in the second creation narrative. This fits the argument much better, for it is the terrestrial story of desire and sin, power and submission. More liberally paraphrasing, Paul writes, ‘Man was not created for woman, but woman for man’ (1 Cor 11:9; cf Gen 2:18–22). In 1 Cor 11, Paul will read female submission; he must have seen
151 Colish, Stoic Tradition, 36–38; Martyn, above n148; cf Betz, Galatians, 194; Neutel, Cosmopolitical Ideal, 37–42. 152 But cf Betz, Galatians, 190–195: ‘Paul’s statements have … a revolutionary dimension’; they abolish distinctions not only between Jews and Greeks but, ‘strangest of the three statements’, also between males and females. Neutel, Cosmopolitan Ideal wisely steers away from modern egalitarian interpretations and develops the fruitful terminology of equality vs. inclusion.
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the need to do so in his letter to Corinth for reasons not easy for us to fathom.153 Indeed, the same passage emphasizes that a woman when praying ought ‘to have an authority (ἐξουσίαν) on her head, because of the angels’, following the custom of ‘the churches of God’ (ἐκκλησίαι τοῦ θεοῦ, 1 Cor 11:10, 16). However one turns it, the context indicates that this is about female headcovering during prayer, conforming to Jewish or Judaeo-Christian custom.154 We also note two elements that will have our attention in a moment: the apocalyptic background and the phrase ‘churches of God’. [121] Further on in 1 Corinthians Paul returns to the issue of women, thus creating an inclusion that envelops the section on worship and liturgy in 1 Cor 11–14: As in all the churches of the saints (ἐκκλησίαις τῶν ἁγίων), women should keep silence in the churches (αἱ γυναῖκες ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις σιγάτωσαν). For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate (ὑποτασσέσθωσαν), as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful (αἰσχρόν) for a woman to speak in church (ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ). (…) What I am writing to you is a command of the Lord (κυρίου ἐστὶν ἐντολή). (1 Cor 14:33–37)
We note again the use of the word ἐκκλησία, which here seems seems to mean ‘holy assembly’; we come to it in a moment. The number of authorities Paul appeals to is remarkable. The custom of ‘all the churches of saints’ that sets the example again seems to refer to the churches in Judaea or the Judaeo-Christian communities.155 At which point the Tora is thought to state women should be subordinate is difficult to guess; passages from Gen 1 and 2 would again be likely. The clincher of Paul’s argument clearly is the ‘command of the Lord’, a phrase that links up with three similar mentions in 1 Corinthians and refers to Jesus.156 Text-critical problems have strengthened scholars in their disbelief that Jesus could have said such a thing.157 The burden of proof is on their side and it comes up against the average ancient view of women and their incapacity to
153 Cf the considerations of Schrage, Korinther 2: 490–517. Oepke, ‘γυνή’, 786f offers sources affirming a prominent role of women in Greek religious ceremonies. 154 Thus with clarity Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 404–421; Conzelmann, Korinther, 217f. Brooke, ‘Between Qumran and Corinth’, 173 does me the honour to put me with Tertullian in an ‘influential subset’ who read the ‘angels’ negatively (Tomson, Paul, 135f), and instead proposes that 1 Cor 11:10 ἐξουσία and 4Q270 frg 7 i:14 רוקמהsignal ‘her authority’. Alas, to our shared regret no doubt, there is no explaining away the patriarchalism of our ancient sources. 155 Cf differently Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 527. Also he follows the traditional verse division, with a troublesome outcome: ‘For God is a God not of disorder but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.’ 156 1 Cor 7:10; 9:15; 11:23. See Tomson, Paul, 73–87, 262. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 536f (quoting Schrage, Korinther 3: 460) isolates 1 Cor 14:36–39 from the preceding and thinks ‘the Lord’ is the risen Christ. 157 Schrage, Korinther 3: 481–492 accumulates arguments for an interpolation, which after all is an easy way out for this difficult passage; cf Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 528–531. Ellis, ‘Silenced Wives’ rejects the interpolation solution.
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officiate in public, both in Jewish and Roman surroundings.158 Finally, the argument of ‘shame on the community’ is fully analogous to the opinion of the rabbis recorded in the Tosefta (tMeg 3:11, above). The recurrent key term in these passages is ἐκκλησία,159 the ‘holy assembly’ where women are most welcome provided they do not officiate and do wear [122] veils when praying ‘because of the angels’. Angels are involved, and this reveals the apocalyptic dimension community worship had for Paul. In this altogether ‘reasonable’ letter to Corinth, the readers are reminded that ‘(we) the saints … are to judge … angels’. As a former Pharisee, Paul – who also was a cosmopolite businessman! – was much closer to the apocalyptic mindset of the Qumran communities than many of us are likely to realize. His view may be different in degree, but not in quality from Qumran in reckoning with a correspondence between the worship of the ‘holy’ on earth and those in heaven.160 Similarly, as we noted above, in Qumran the handicapped or underaged are not to be brought into the assembly ‘since the holy angels are in its midst’ (CD 15:15–17). More insight in these connections is found when we turn again to the Qumran Florilegium, this time for comparison with Paul himself. We quote again the ban of improper persons from the ‘human temple’ it pronounces: ‘… Either an Ammonite, or a Moabite, or a bastard, or a foreigner or a proselyte, never, because his holy ones are there’ (4Q174 frg. 1, i,21,2: 3–4). Again, the presence of angels is the reason given. Now, however, we must study the underlying biblical prohibition that is being interpreted, Deut 23:3–4, and the Greek is also important: ‘No bastard … Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the Lord (בקהל ה׳, εἰς ἐκκλησίαν κυρίου).’ Here we have ἐκκλησία in the pregnant meaning used also by Paul. The fit is even closer with the revision of Deut 23 in 2 Esdras: ‘… In the book of Moses … it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God’ (ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ θεοῦ, בקהל האלהים, 2 Esdr 23:1 = Neh 13:1). The equivalent Hebrew phrase קהל אלis found in Qumran, once, significantly, in another interpretation of Deut 23 in the Rule of the Congrega-
Fiorenza, Memory, 231f basic Greek meaning is ‘assembly’, see Acts 19:32, 35, 39f: the ‘lawful assembly’ (ἔννομος ἐκκλησία) of Ephesus with its ‘secretary’ (γράμματευς). I largely agree with Trebilco, ‘Why Did the Early Christians’, and Self-Designations, chapter 5 (see below n163). See also the excursus by Thrall, Second Epistle, 89–93. The Graeco-Roman context stressed by Van Kooten, ‘᾽Εκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ’, is most relevant but should not be viewed in opposition to this. Doubtless for Paul the language of Bible and Jewish tradition was a primary context. 160 Similarly Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 418f. 1QSa 2:9 ;מלאכי קודש [בעד]תם1QS 11:8, קדושיםare members of the עדהnext to בני שמים. On ‘communion with the angels’ in the ‘Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice’ see also Newsom, ‘Introduction’, 9; and, more elaborately, Abusch, ‘Seven-fold Hymns’. 158 Schüssler 159 The
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tion.161 Mostly, Paul simply writes ἐκκλησία,162 but he also uses ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ in a specific way, notably when appealing to its custom as to the head covering of women and in the formal addresses of 1 and 2 Corinthians. In view of the biblical backgrounds, it must be the more solemn and ancient term.163 The comparison of Paul with the Florilegium also reveals differences. One huge difference concerns the latter text’s ban of foreigners and proselytes from the assembly. We did not follow this theme through when going over the spectrum of ancient Judaism because it does not figure in 2 Cor 6:14–7:1. On occasion we have noted pertinent features, however, such as the generally negative attitude to foreigners of the Essenes and the difference on this point between the Pharisaic schools of Shammai and Hillel. Another difference with Paul would undoubtedly be the attitude to women. The extant Florilegium is silent on this matter, but going by the joint external and internal evidence on the Essenes and Qumran, its authors must have had a pretty tight view.164 By contrast, for Paul, as we have seen, the admission of gentiles and women to the ‘assembly of God’ was a given, even if the importance of being Jewish remains undisputable (Rom 3:1) and women must be silent and wear veils, precisely ‘because of the angels’. This different assessment of the ‘angelic impediment’ – a difference in degree, admittedly – sums up Paul’s distance vis-à-vis his Qumran colleagues. His attitude on gentiles rather reminds us of the acceptance by the rabbis of the proposal of R. Yoshua the Hillelite in the case of Yehuda the Ammonite proselyte: התירוהו לבוא בקהל, ‘They allowed him to come into the assembly’– again, with a clear allusion to Deut 23.165 [124] 161 1QM 4:10 קהל אל, written on a banner (Bockmuehl, ‘1 Thessalonians 2:14–16’, 67 n45); 1Q28a (1QSa) 2:4–9, וכול איש מנוגע באחת מכול טמאות האדם אל יבוא בקהל אלה… כיא מלאכי קודש [בעד]תם, ‘No man defiled by any of the impurities of a man shall enter the assembly of God … for the holy angels are among their [congre]gation.’ See Donfried, ‘Assembly of the Thessalonians’, 157f; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 81f. García Martínez and Tigchelaar read אלהas a demonstrative plural, ‘the assembly of these’. Barthélemy, DJD 1: 117 and Lohse, Texte, 48–50 emend אלfor אלה. Barthélemy writes ibid.: ‘Un aramaïsme dans la forme du nom divin semble moins probable’, but Wassen, Women, 145 quotes J. Charlesworth to affirm just that. The allusion to Neh 13/Deut 23 decides the matter. The ruling itself is a primitive formulation banning persons impure in first and second degree from the assembly. Rabbinic halakha is much more lenient: mBer 3:4–6; tBer 2:12–14. 162 ᾽Εκκλησία without specification is used almost 50 times in Paul. Singular usages are ἐκκλησίαι τοῦ Χριστοῦ, Rom 16:16; ἐκκλησίαι τῶν ἐθνῶν, Rom 16:4. 163 It designates the churches in Judaea in 1 Cor 15:9, Gal 1:13, and possibly 1 Cor 11:16. Apart from the letter address in 1 Cor 1:2 and 2 Cor 1:1, it is found in 1 Cor 10:32; 11:22; 1 Thess 2:14; 2 Thess 1:4; cf Eph 3:10. Similarly Bauckham, ‘Jerusalem Church’, 83f; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 81. This does not necessarily contradict the suggestion of Trebilco, ‘Why Did the early Christians’, that it originated among the ‘Hellenists’. 164 The Florilegium’s fidelity to central Qumran ideology seems signalled by its faithfulness to the ‘Interpreter of the Law’, 4Q174 frg. 1, i,21,2:11. 165 mYad 4:4, cf above. קהלis no regular rabbinic Hebrew but biblical, cf Deut 23:4, לא יבא ;עמוני ומואבי בקהלsee the following paper in this volume at n139. See also the positions taken in mYev 8:3f and subsequent discussion in yYev 8:2–3 (9a–d) and bYev 76b–78b.
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Paul’s attitude on the participation of women is borne out in his actual practice. His letters mention three or four prominent women collaborators from Corinth and Rome: Chloe, whose people informed him of matters in Corinth (1 Cor 1:11); Phoebe, a ‘deaconess (διάκονος) of the church at Cenchreaeae’, the harbour town of Corinth (Rom 16:1); and Prisca from Rome who with her husband Aquila ran a church at their house while living in Corinth, and who is usually mentioned first before Aquila.166 Junia must be added, for indeed it seems it concerns a woman who is mentioned along with her husband as being ‘of note among the apostles’ (Rom 16:7).167 Information from Acts could be added.168 The practice of women not officiating yet fulfilling important community functions is fully analogous to average contemporary Judaism.169 In the above we have duly noted the apocalyptic dimension the women’s issue has for Paul. This makes for a smooth transition to that other issue we are discussing in this paper, apocalyptic dualism – this time round as it appears in Paul. Apocalyptic thinking was pervasive in ancient Judaism, and Paul is no exception. But significantly, dualism seems to pop up in his letters in connection with specific issues and situations. An instructive example is 1 Thessalonians. The first part of the letter, which could be Paul’s earliest, oscillates between infusing the readers with warmth and affection and apocalyptic depictions, of their own past paganism (1:9–10), of the fanaticism of the ‘Jews’ in Judaea (2:14–16), and of the final judgment (3:13).170 ‘Satan’ is actively present (2:18; cf 3:5). The vehement apostrophe against the ‘Jews’ can be seen in light of the events in Thessalonica which we are informed about by a particularly close overlap with Acts (17–19) and 1 Corinthians.171 It seems that the aggressive reaction of local Jews to Paul’s preaching set his entire campaign in the city at risk and reminded him of the zealotry which was rampant in Judaea at that moment.172 [125]
166 Rom 16:4; 1 Cor 16:19; 2 Tim 4:19. Luke calls her Priscilla, Acts 18:2, 18, 26; and see below. 167 See Fitzmyer, Romans, 737f. The overwhelming Patristic evidence justifies adopting this interpretation. 168 Cf Tabitha/Dorcas, the Jewish μαθητρία from Joppa, Acts 9:36–43; Lydia, the God-fearing business woman from Thyatira (16:14); Priscilla, the wife of her co-disciple Aquila (18:2). 169 See Brooten, Women Leaders; Kraemer, ‘New Inscription’; Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 104–126. 170 Lambrecht, ‘Thanksgiving’. 171 Cf Barclay, ‘Thessalonica and Corinth’. 172 See Bockmuehl, ‘1 Thessalonians 2:14–16’. It may be that in this exceptional case, ᾽Ιουδαῖοι has a more political meaning than elsewhere in Paul’s usage, conforming to Roman administrative usage, and must be rendered as ‘Judaeans’, cf Schwartz, ‘Residents and Exiles’, 125f; pace Tomson, ‘Names’. See overview of discussion in Miller, ‘Meaning of Ioudaios’, CBR 9 (2010) 98–126. [See now ‘Reconsideration’, in this volume, 215–217.]
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If, as seems difficult to disprove, 2 Thessalonians is an authentic letter,173 it is another instance of stark apocalyptic dualism in Paul. Especially in 2:1–12, the author speaks of ‘the mystery of lawlessness’ (μυστήριον τῆς ἀνομίας), by which ‘the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition … whose advent is by the activity of Satan’ (2:3, 9). The allusion seems to be to some public figure, possibly a Roman official of disputable character.174 On account of that reality, ‘Satan’, ‘lawlessness’, and similar terms evoke a dualistic universe and generate resistance towards external dangers. Again we find an apocalyptic-dualist Paul reacting to dramatic contemporary history. Strong apocalyptic and dualistic accents are found also in 2 Corinthians, which for the purpose at hand is considered separate from the ‘insert’ in 2 Cor 6:14–7:1. Satan’s presence is felt more than elsewhere: in 2 Cor 2:11, Satan is meddling in Paul’s relation with Corinth; in 11:14 he is the inspiration of the ‘false apostles’; and in 12:7, an ‘angel of Satan’ impersonates the ‘thorn’ in Paul’s flesh. Again, this can be seen in relation to the serious opposition Paul has come up against, as evidenced by the polemical sections of the extant letter; we shall pursue that line of thought in the next section. A different-though-related Paul appears in 1 Corinthians, a letter largely devoted to a series of practical questions raised either by the readers or by the author. In everything, the Apostle is concerned to build up the church he has founded and to guard it against dangers from without and, especially, within. The language of ‘holiness’ and ‘purification’ belongs here, but also ‘evil’, ‘Satan’, and ‘angels’; women during prayer must dress adequately ‘because of the angels’. The tone, however, is much more sober than in the Thessalonian letters and 2 Corinthians and nowhere conveys an agitated feeling. The message is not that of ‘separating’ from evil and impurity from without, but of ‘cleansing’ these from within the community. The image of the congregation as a spiritual temple serves to foster respect for those who laid its ‘foundations’175 and the will to cleanse its members from sexual immorality.176 Only one grave occasion triggers dualistic language: the case of the man living in an incestuous [126] relationship with his father’s wife is addressed: ‘You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh … Cleanse out (ἐκκαθάρατε) the old leaven … Do not associate with immoral men … “Drive out the evil person (τὸν πονηρόν) from among you”’ (1 Cor 5:5, 7, 9, 13; Deut 17:7). Barclay, ‘Conflict in Corinth’; Grant, Historical Introduction, ch. 13. See Dibelius, Thessalonicher, 43–51 for related apocalyptic materials. It is obvious to think here of the exemplary impact of Caligula’s plan, aborted by his death in 41 CE, to erect a statue of himself in the Temple in Jerusalem (Philo, Leg 184; Josephus, Ant 18:261). 175 1 Cor 3:9–17, alluding to the precious ‘foundations’ (10f) of the ‘temple’ in Isa 54:11–14, ‘for God’s temple is holy, and that temple are you’ (17). The idea of a ‘human temple’ based on Isa 54 is found both in Essene and rabbinic literature: 4Q164; bBer 64a. 176 1 Cor 6:19, ‘Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you’. 173 Cf 174
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In Romans, apocalyptic language is used mainly in the passages about the ‘new humanity’ in Christ (Rom 5; 8) and Israel’s future salvation (Rom 11). It is hardly dualistic.177 Yet it is the same Paul. Apocalypticism is part of his mindset, but so are reason and human experience. Dualistic language pops up in situations tense with antagonism or wrongdoing. Let us sum up our results. On the inclusion of women, Paul plainly resembles the rabbis. On the related subtheme of the admission of gentiles, he even resembles the Hillelite R. Yoshua. To the extent that apocalyptic dualism is involved in these issues (angels!), Paul is rather un-apocalyptic, as was R. Yoshua. As to dualism itself, we saw that it is not pervasive in Paul but pops up in tense situations. The information we have gathered about rabbinic literature does not warrant a comparison. However it could be that Paul’s mindset on this score was not very different from the average mid-first century Pharisee. Finally, our various comparative studies have an important cumulative result. We have elaborately studied 2 Cor 6:14–7:1, its apocalyptic dualism, and its inclusion of women, in comparison with a spectrum of ancient Jewish texts. Against the background of the Jewish spectrum, we then have also studied the two features, plus the subtheme of the inclusion of gentiles, as these appear in the authentic letters of Paul. Viewed against this background, the net result is that 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 with its particular emphases is not at all incompatible with Paul’s letters. On the contrary, it rather seems congenial with his way of thinking and his position in ancient Judaism. Notwithstanding the debate about the composition of 2 Corinthians as a whole, there is no argument from content to deny its Pauline authorship.178
2 Cor 6:14–7:1 Read as Part of 2 Corinthians Up till now we have studied 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 as a piece of text artfully composed by an unknown Judaeo-Christian of Graeco-Hebrew erudition that somehow [127] ended up in 2 Corinthians. If from here we proceed on the basis of the hypothesis that the rest of the letter is a composite pieced together from disparate places, any further speculation about the primary meaning of the passage would be senseless and we would want to end our study here. If on the contrary we suppose that 2 Corinthians including our passage is an integral letter, we are
Cf Rom 16:20, God will ‘crush Satan under your feet’. This concurs with the conclusion of Thrall, Second Epistle, 35f; and, more cautiously, also Brooke, ‘2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1 Again’. Martin, 2 Corinthians, 193, 195 goes a step further: ‘not a digression but a logical development’ of the argument from 2 Cor 5 on. And cf the sobre considerations of Hogeterp, Paul and God’s Temple, chapter 8. 177 178
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free to explore what the six verses might mean in the context of a dramatic and eventful document.179 This is the option we shall pursue a little further. Reading the six verses in 6:14–7:1 as integral part of 2 Corinthians implies assuming it is one of those interruptive, cluster-like digressions of Paul. We would have to accept the fact that we are not informed about the occasion by which the passage was triggered. There is no hint whatsoever as to what the actual problem of ‘mismating with unbelievers’ was about, nor its remedy: ‘cleansing from impurity’. Incidentally, the language of ‘cleansing from defilement of body and spirit’ and ‘perfect holiness’ is not alien to Paul either and has convincing parallels elsewhere.180 Furthermore, a link with the unspecified perpetrator of the ‘injustice’ and his victim featuring in the non-extant ‘previous letter’ (2 Cor 7:12) is imaginable but unwarranted.181 In general, we must resist the temptation to lump together poorly known entities for lack of more information. A solution popular among the Church Fathers was to take the warning against mismating literally − and crudely − as a prohibition on marriage with ‘unbelievers’.182 The frequent use of ἄπιστος in 1Cor 7:12–15 which is about marriage with a non-believing non-Jew may have occasioned the association. In that passage, interestingly enough, the marriage bond is sacrosanct for Paul at the Lord’s behest, so much so that even the partner’s unbelief does not invalidate it, except if he or she does not consent in one’s involvement with the church. In 2 Cor 6:14, by contrast, one is to avoid a partnership with ‘unbelievers’ without qualification. If it would concern marriage here as well, it is not clear what could account for the difference, certainly not if it concerned marriage with an ‘unbelieving’ Jew. Even apart from [128] the obvious allegorical meanings of ‘mismating’,183 this track does not take us any further. When reading the passage as part of the extant letter, the use of the word ἄπιστοι elsewhere draws our attention, i. e., in the polemical section in 2 Cor 3–5: ‘The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers’ (2 Cor 4:4). As in 6:14–7:1, the ‘unbelievers’ are seen here in a starkly apocalypticdualistic light. This ties in with the relative frequence of ‘Satan’ in this letter we have noted. ‘The god of this world’ (ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου) is understood to be the enemy of the Creator and resembles the ‘Angel of Darkness’ who in the 179 As proposed in Bieringer–Lambrecht, Studies, esp Lambrecht, ‘Fragment’ and Bieringer, ‘2. Korinther’; Hogeterp, see previous note. 180 1 Cor 5:7, ἐκκαθάρατε τὴν παλαιὰν ζυμὴν re. a grave sin to be ‘cleansed’ from within the church; 1 Thes 3:13, ἀμέμπτους ἐν ἁγιωσύνῃ as a general moral incentive. Obviously, it is allegorically intended as it involves gentiles to whom Jewish purity rules do not apply. For the larger context see Hogeterp, Paul and God’s Temple, chapters 6–8. [Newton, Concept of Purity, 110f concludes that 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 abounds with purity terminology very similar to what we read in the rest of his letters.] 181 See especially Bieringer, ‘Plädoyer’ on the nature and import of this question. 182 Cf above n11. 183 Above n9.
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Qumran Rule Scroll has ‘total dominion over the sons of deceit’ (1QS 3:21). In name, he is almost identical with the ἄρχων τοῦ καιροῦ τοῦ νῦν τῆς ἀνομίας, the ‘ruler of the present time of lawlessness’ found in Ps-Barnabas (18:2, see above). As there is no indication of dependence either way, these seem to be alternative renderings of some Hebrew or Aramaic phrase. The coincidence of these strongly apocalyptic motifs in both passages suggests a connection. Further details reveal an important facet of the identity of those ‘unbelievers’. They have their ‘mind hardened’ (ἐπωρώθη, 2Cor 3:14) and ‘the god of this world has blinded (ἐτύφλωσεν) their minds’ (4:4). As a result, ‘to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil (κάλυμμα) lies over their minds’ (3:15). In particular, Paul’s gospel remains ‘veiled’ (κεκαλυμμένον) to them (4:3). Clearly, these ‘unbelievers’ are Jews who do not accept Paul’s message about Jesus as Messiah: ‘in Christ is (the veil) done away with’ (καταργεῖται, 3:14).184 The situation seems comparable to the one in Romans, where unbelieving Jews are seen as being temporarily subject to a ‘hardening’ (πώρωσις, Rom 11:25, cf 11:7). The apocalyptic theme of the temporary ‘blindness’ of (a part of) Israel is also found in the Damascus Covenant (עורון ישראל, CD 16:2–3). In our case as well, it sounds the trumpet of a ‘cognitive minority’. Then must we assume – ever supposing we are dealing with an integral letter – that the ἄπιστοι who in 2 Cor 6:14 are denounced in apocalyptic terms and contrasted with the ‘temple of the living God’ are identical with those polemically and apocalyptically depicted ‘unbelieving Jews’ from 2 Cor 3–5? Here the history of interpretation, as carefully reviewed by Reimund Bieringer, reveals a curious contradiction. On the one hand, most interpreters do identify [129] the adversaries of 2 Cor 1–7 with those in 10–13, taking both to be Jews.185 On the other, the majority think the ‘unbelievers’ in 6:14 are pagans, which probably also relates to their view on the authenticity of the passage.186 There is no denying the complex relationship between these passages and their protagonists. The adversaries targeted in 2 Cor 10–13 are ῾Εβραῖοι and ᾽Ισραηλῖται (which in combination would mean Hebrew-speaking Jews), but they also called ψευδαπόστολοι, ‘false apostles’, and ἐργάται δόλιοι, ‘treacherous workers’, who promulgate ‘a different gospel’, εὐαγγέλιον ἕτερον (2 Cor 11:4, 13, 22). This calls to mind the polemics in Galatians against those who bring ‘a different gospel’ (ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον) insisting on circumcision of gentile Christians, and who remind the author of the ‘false brethren’ (ψευδαδέλφους) 184 Similarly F. C. Baur, as quoted by Sumney, Identifying, 141. Georgi, Opponents identifies the opponents in 2 Cor 3–5 and 10–13 as Hellenistic-Jewish Christian apologists, while downplaying their ‘nomism’. 185 See overview by Bieringer, ‘Gegner’, esp 185f. Blanton, Constructing, 179 is unconvincing in maintaining that the opponents in 2 Cor are Hellenistic-Jewish Christians with no ties to Jerusalem. 186 See Bieringer, ‘2 Korinther 6,14–7,1 im Kontext’, esp 563.
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he had to deal with years earlier in Jerusalem because they did not accept gentile Christians as ‘children of Abraham’ (Gal 1:6; 6:13; 2:4; cf 3:29). Thus the adversaries in 2 Cor 10–13 could as well be ‘believing’ Jews somehow associated with the Jerusalem apostles or at least with Palestinian circumstances. In contradistinction, we have found the adversaries in 2 Cor 3–5 to be ‘unbelieving’ Jews.187 Yet at the same time, we register the impression that the author somehow associates them with the adversaries in 10–13, in addition to their all being Jews. The impression is created among other things by the prominent, combined use of the key verbs συνίστασθαι and καυχᾶσθαι in both passages, in other words by the author’s need to justify himself and assert his position over against these various enemies.188 We need to look for an explanation that is able to accommodate both the difference between the ‘believing’ and ‘unbelieving’ Jews and their apparent association. Meanwhile, we note that hypothesizing the ‘unbelievers’ in 6:14 to be Jews fits better with the epistle taken as a whole. An argument against the adversaries in 2 Cor 6:14 being Jews could be found in the mention of ‘idols’ as opposed to ‘the temple of God’ in 6:16. However, this argument has limited validity. The ancient Israelites themselves as well often succumbed to the seduction of idols, as Paul tactfully reminds his readers in 1 Cor 10:7. Moreover, ‘idols’ can be taken metaphorically, as is already done in the New Testament. We discussed Jesus’ juxtaposition of ‘God and Mammon’, [130] and in Pauline surroundings as well, ‘idolatry’ is used as a metaphor for greed.189 Formally, the opposition between ‘temple of God’ and ‘idols’ comes last in the series of five, being intended as the most damaging and insulting blow against the adversaries. Also, the passage reads as a typically Pauline digression whose terms are not quite adequate to the context. Nowhere in 2 Corinthians is the role of women in the congregation at stake, and the addition of ‘daughters’ must stem from some other occasion; the attention given to the presence of women in the assembly in 1 Corinthians comes to mind. Another sign of an extraneous provenance is the phrase from the Prophets, εἰσδέξομαι in 2 Cor 6:16, which has to do with the return from exile. All of this discourages pressing the ‘idols’ too much. It rather seems to be a climactic element in a habitual sequence used in a polemical context.190 By contrast, a weighty argument in favour of identifying the ἄπιστοι in 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 as Jews follows from the very character of the passage. Both their fivefold dualist-apocalyptic denunciation as ‘lawless’ etc. over against the elect and 187 Cf 11:5; 12:11, ὑπερλίαν ἀπόστολοι, apparently paralleling Gal 2:9, στύλοι: the main Jerusalem apostles. 188 See esp 2 Cor 3:1; 5:12 and 10:8–18. 189 Matt 6:24; Luke 16:13 (cf 16:9, μαμωνᾶς τῆς ἀδικίας); Col 3:5. Cf vice lists in Gal 5:20; 1 Pet 4:3. 190 Long, Ancient Rhetoric, 168–172 adduces a ‘gross idolatrous sin’ without citing any evidence. However his argument that 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 is part of a counter-attack in the apologetic strategy of 2 Cor is enlightening.
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the subsequent assertion of the latter as ‘temple of the living God’ with a chain of scriptural ‘promises’ in support fit in the genre of inner-Jewish strife best known from the Qumran scrolls.191 Similar polemics would make no sense at all when directed against pagans. We are left with the following picture. The ‘unbelievers’ denounced in 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 appear to be Jewish adversaries who do not need to be identical with but are seen in the same apocalyptic light as those mentioned in 2 Cor 4:4 and who jeopardize the Corinthians’ adherence to Paul’s gospel. They are distinct from the ‘false apostles’ Paul engages with in 2 Cor 10–13, seeing himself forced to justify himself and his message. Yet he perceives a link between both types of adversaries, as though the menace presented by the ‘unbelieving’ Jews reinforces the pressure of the ‘believing’ ones. The passage bursts forth in dualistic language aiming to isolate the readers from these associated adversaries, and it ends by tuning in with the conciliatory tone of the immediate context. Thus it reads as a deperate last effort to win back ‘beloved ones’ that are sliding out of the author’s reach. The outcry ‘Do not become (μὴ γίνεσθε)192 mismated with the unbelieving’ is to prevent [131] an imminent alliance of Corinthian church members with (some of) the ‘unbelieving’ Jewish adversaries. This could involve anything from a marriage contract to a business enterprise or some administrative or political collaboration. In order for this reading of 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 in its extant context to make more historical sense, it would now need to be put in a wider perspective. This would require a more general study of 2 Corinthians and of the debate about the literary and historical questions attached. As it happens, Paul’s fundraising campaign dealt with in 2 Cor 8–9 is an important piece of evidence in the debate. The next paper in the volume is devoted to that subject and addresses some of those questions as well as suggesting some answers.
191 A more specialised ploy in this genre is the ‘scriptural sobriquet’ utilised in 4QpHab and 4QpNah − and in the Epistle of Jude. 192 Above n10.
Paul’s Collection and ‘the Saints’ in Jerusalem (2 Cor 8–9) Literary and Historical Questions (written in collaboration with Ze’ev Safrai) In 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, Paul elaborately discusses a fundraising campaign. More briefly, the subject also figures in Romans and 1 Corinthians, as well as, furtively, in Galatians. In modern scholarship these are considered the four ‘major’ Pauline letters. To that extent, the campaign was a central issue for the apostle. Furthermore, Paul designates it as ‘the collection for the saints’ or ‘the service to the saints’, a term not found elsewhere. It appears to denote a campaign which must be distinguished from the common phenomenon known as ‘charity’ or ‘almsgiving’ in ancient Judaism and Christianity, as also from other specific fundraising activities mentioned in the New Testament. The contributions from the churches in Greece and Asia Minor were earmarked for the church in Jerusalem. As did others, Paul considered her in a way to be the ‘mother of all churches’ and, in spite of later tensions, her leaders as ‘pillars’ (cf Gal 4:26; 2:9). In effect his campaign provided financial support for the foremost church and its leaders. This was an unknown phenomenon in ancient Judaism and it begs explanation. Given Paul’s cultural and religious background, it is obvious to compare it with Jewish procedures of financial support for leaders and teachers in Jerusalem or in the Land of Israel. Rich information is to be gleaned from rabbinic literature, which admittedly reflects a later period and different circumstances both in the Land of Israel and in Babylonia. However it evinces a development in Jewish society at large that ran roughly analogous to the dynamic of Paul’s campaign. Often by sheer contrast, the slow emergence of a paid leadership in ancient Judaism helps illuminate the singularity of Paul’s achievement. Paul is studied mostly with an exclusive interest for theology. Our focus, however, shall be on the way theology actually functioned in ancient society. The campaign was an undertaking with enormous ramifications both social and theological. It expressed a recognition of the hegemony of Jerusalem and of loyalty where apparently there were doubts about this. Indeed, ‘money talks’: the collection would grant Paul social and religious status and help [133] neutralizing criticism of him in Jerusalem.1 Salient analogies of money being used For a similar evaluation see Betz, Galatians, 103.
1
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to manage tensions between the diaspora and the Jerusalem centre can be found in rabbinic literature,2 as also in the present-day situation which is beyond our purview. More generally, our interest is in comparing Paul’s fundraising campaign with the larger development discernible in rabbinic literature, all in the framework of ancient society. Apart from the information found in Paul’s letters, there is no evidence as to the size or duration of the collection. In his last reasonably datable letter, the one to Rome which is usually put at c. 58 CE, Paul registers strong resistance from Judaea. We shall argue that this relates to the tense climate preceding the Jewish revolt against Rome of 66–70 CE. Obviously, the revolt itself made continuation impossible, even if Paul had still been alive, and it seems certain that no efforts were made to reinstate the campaign after the war. Paul’s collection for the Jerusalem church appears to have remained a unique phenomenon. The argument developed in 2 Cor 8–9 remained alive, however. In mid-fifth century Rome, Pope Leo the Great held a series of fundraising sermons in which he profusely drew on the exhortative language from Paul’s letter to Corinth in order to get his richer parishioners to donate for the poor of their own city. Although, once again, in our view Paul’s collection does not belong in the category of charity, we shall see that 2 Cor 8–9 does involve imagery related to that concept. The distant echo of 2 Corinthians heard in Leo’s sermons testifies to the rise of a full-grown system of charity for the poor in late ancient Christianity and of the bishop as its governor.3 The first half of our study [as originally published] describes the sources and cultural background of Paul’s campaign, discussing (1) the historical and literary evidence, (2) the origins of the term ‘saints’ used to indicate it, and (3) the use of this term in rabbinic literature, including (4) an interesting possible rabbinic echo of the Jerusalem ‘assembly of saints’. The second half focuses on the socioeconomic parameters of Paul’s campaign and of the much larger development reflected in rabbinic literature. It discusses (5) theoretical social models and (6) existing values that might have influenced Paul. Also, (7) the ideas about [134] financial compensation of spiritual leaders in the earliest Christian sources are analysed, and the same is done (8) for the extensive rabbinic evidence. Finally, our study draws (9) comparative conclusions about the development in the primitive Christian and early Jewish communities, the influence of Jewish tradition on Paul’s initiative, and the scope of his achievement.4 2 A philanthropist set the pace in the Jewish community in Rome in following a deviant Passover custom, but later comments say the Palestinian sages refrained from ostracizing him because he used to send them charity (tBeitsa 2:15; bBeitsa 23a; yPes 7:1, 34a). 3 Leo the Great, sermons 6–11, CCSL 138, ed A. Chavasse, Turnhout 1973, 26–46; trans J. P. Freeland – A. J. Conway, Washington, Catholic UP 1996, 34–48. See Salzman, ‘Leo in Rome’, esp 348–352. For the late ancient Christian charity system see Brown, Poverty, esp chapter 2 on the bishop as ‘governor of the poor’. 4 [The present article contains sections 1–4 of the article, ‘Paul’s “Collection for the Saints”
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Historical and Literary Evidence for the Collection 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 makes an elaborate appeal on the Corinthian Christians to resume or to carry on with the fundraising campaign which they had joined ‘a year ago’.5 The campaign is designated as the ‘service to the saints’ (διακονία εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους) and appears to be running also in Macedonia (8:1–4; 9:1–4). This makes it obvious to look for the connections with the ‘collection for the saints’ in Jerusalem mentioned in the earlier letter to Corinth, where the churches in Galatia also appear to be involved (1 Cor 16:1), as also with the ‘service to the saints’ rendered by Macedonia and Achaia which Paul touches on in Romans (Rom 15:25f). The collection has been the subject of a fair number of studies.6 Apart from its great social and historical interest, it also entails weighty literary questions relating to the composition and nature of the sources, in particular 2 Corinthians itself. These questions are not central to our inquiry, but we have no choice but to deal with them. As a central activity running through Paul’s major epistles, the collection is a premier piece of evidence in the scholarly discussion about his career and his correspondence. In this matter, history and literature are inextricably intertwined:7 our take on the genesis of Paul’s letters to Corinth will influence our reading of the history surrounding them, and vice [135] versa. The following discussion will be guided by the insight that in a similar situation, the import of external evidence is crucial. We shall start out with literary questions pertaining to 2 Cor 8–9 and develop our method while discussing the sources one by one. In his separately published commentary on the two chapters, Hans-Dieter Betz holds the view that they comprise (fragments of) two different letters. In particular the opening formula of chapter 9, περὶ μὲν γὰρ τῆς διακονίας, ‘Now concerning the charitable collection’, is viewed as introducing the subject with(2 Cor 8–9) and Financial Support of Leaders in Early Christianity and Judaism’, written together with Ze’ev Safrai and published in Bieringer, Second Corinthians (CRINT 14), along with the study that precedes in the present volume. The first two sections were primarily written by Peter Tomson, the others by Ze’ev Safrai, whom I kindly thank for his consent to reprint the article in this curtailed form.] 5 ἀπὸ πέρυσι, 2 Cor 8:10 and 9:2. 6 Holl, Kirchenbegriff (1921); Bowen, ‘Collection’ (1923); Goguel, ‘Collecte’ (1925); Buck, ‘Collection’ (1950); Munck, Paulus, 282–292 (1954); Georgi, Geschichte (1965); idem, Remembering (1992); Nickle, Collection (1966); Berger, ‘Almosen’ (1977); Hurtado, ‘Jerusalem Collection’ (1979); Betz, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 (1985); Melick, ‘Collection’ (1989); Verbrugge, Paul’s Style (1992); Adesina, Collection (1995); Beckheuer, Paulus (1997); Martyn, Galatians, 222–228 (‘comment’ – excursus); Wan, ‘Collection’, (2000); Joubert, Paul as Benefactor (2002); Kim, Paulinische Kollekte (2002); Wedderburn, ‘Collection’ (2002); Downs, ‘Collection’ (2006); idem, Offering (2008); Ogereau, ‘Jerusalem Collection’ (2012). Non reperimus: E. Lombard, in RTP 35 (1902) 113–139; 262–281. 7 Thus Mitchell, ‘Paul’s Letters to Corinth’, with the eloquent subtitle: ‘The Interpretive Intertwining of Literary and Historical Reconstruction’. More on this study below.
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out connection to the preceding.8 In response to this explanation, it has been pointed out that περὶ μὲν γάρ as used elsewhere in Greek literature announces that after an introductory section, the author is now coming to the crucial point.9 Pending a resolution to this debate, a more general consideration is that in questions of textual and literary criticism – as in medical surgery – a ‘conservative’ approach is advisable, especially where positive indications for an invasive intervention are lacking. Or, varying Ockham’s reputed maxim, epistulae non sunt multiplicandae praeter necessitatem.10 Hence, as long as this does not seem to be artificial and bending the evidence, we shall read the two chapters as one literary unit.11 Doing so will enable us among other things to perceive a conventional tripartite rhetorical pattern in the two chapters. The same question on a larger scale is whether 2 Cor 8–9 belongs with the other chapters of the extant text to constitute a single authentic letter of Paul. For over two centuries and a half, the sudden transitions characteristic of the document – notably the beginning and end of 2 Cor 8–9 – have given rise to [136] theories viewing it as a compound put together from two up to nine separate letters. Another important incentive has been found in the references made to nonextant previous letters from Paul (1 Cor 5:9; 2 Cor 2:3; 7:12). And as discussed in the previous paper [‘Christ, Belial, and Women’], the dualistic-apocalyptic outburst in 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 is perceived as a glaring interpolation. Conversely, there have always been those who think integrity the more plausible option.12 First of all, apart from our own difficulty in comprehending the extant text of 2 Corinthians, positive evidence for any such partition theory is lacking. Otherwise, a simple but weighty argument in favour of integrity is the frequency of 8 Betz, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, 90 (his translation) – as being distinct from περὶ δέ ‘which opens new sections’. Similarly Goguel, ‘Collecte’, 313, following Heinrici and others. Cf Mitchell, ‘Paul’s Letters’, 325, and the summary of her overall theory in ‘Korintherbriefe’. Mitchell, ‘Concerning PERI DE’, demonstrating that περὶ δέ as frequent in 1 Cor and elsewhere is ‘simply a topic marker’, leaves ‘the problematic formula περὶ μὲν γάρ out of this discussion’ (235 n28). 9 Stowers, ‘Peri men gar’. See also Lambrecht, ‘Paul’s Boasting’. 10 Cf the Wikipedia article ‘Occam’s Razor’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam’s_razor, viewed on July 27, 2009). Similarly Adesina, Collection, 14 rejects ‘unnecessary multiplication of hypotheses’. Wedderburn, ‘Collection’, 102 n17 quotes the observation made by EngbergPedersen, Paul and the Stoics, ch. 4, that partition theories are more popular among Germanspeaking than English-speaking scholars. To the extent that there is truth in that observation, the notable exceptions are also obvious. 11 While studying Paul’s collection as a single phenomenon, Georgi, Geschichte and Remembering and Beckheuer, Paulus also take 2 Cor 8 and 9 to be separate fragments from different letters. 12 For surveys see Betz, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, ch. 1; Bieringer, ‘Teilungshypothesen’ and ‘Der 2. Korintherbrief’; Thrall, Second Epistle, 3–49. For Bieringer’s own single document view see ‘Plädoyer’. Amador, ‘Revisiting 2 Corinthians’ and Long, Ancient Rhetoric argue for integrity on the basis of rhetorical analysis, and so does more recently Vegge, 2 Corinthians, amplifying his arguments with comparison of ancient epistolography and psychogagy (and see ibid. 7–34 for an the history of research). On M. Mitchell’s approach see below.
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characteristic key words in all parts of the extant letter.13 Again, our wager will be that the simpler, less ‘invasive’ hypothesis is advised and we shall assume one difficult to decipher but integral document. A first observation which is then to be made concerns the complete difference in tone and mood between the first extant letter to Corinth and the second one. 1 Corinthians quietly and tactfully deals with a series of important and sometimes grave issues without ever getting drawn into polemics. Apollos, whose brilliant attractiveness seems to engender division in the Corinthian church, is cautiously put in his proper place; a case of incest is tackled in strong terminology but without letting this spill over into the rest of the letter. The author deals with practical questions of food and pagan cult without ever losing the soliciting tone, and his response to the criticism of some on his behaviour is moderate (1 Cor 9:3). In all, it is a well-balanced and diplomatic document.14 It is usually dated to the mid-fifties CE.15 Most important for us, the collection is addressed in a straightforward and matter-of-fact style. [137] By contrast, in 2 Corinthians, read as a single whole, the polemics of the author and the need to justify himself are all over the place, and the letter could with some justification be called an ‘apology’.16 As compared with chapters 3–5 and 10–13, the outburst in 6:14–7:1 is certainly more abrupt, but it is not particularly remarkable by content (see previous paper in this volume). In the midst of these polemics, the subject of the collection, which has been known to the readers ‘for a year now’, is addressed with surprising rhetorical flourish and with great effort to regain the readers’ sympathy. Why would this be necessary, given the straightforward instruction in 1 Cor 16:1–4 written a year before? Many interpreters conclude that something has intervened, that rival missionaries have compromised Paul’s mission.17 This reading of the data has been called into question by Margaret Mitchell in the framework of a comprehensive approach on the Corinthian correspondence. She challenges ‘the pervading suggestion’ of Dieter Georgi and those following him that there was ‘a tremendous breach in the historical situation’ between the two letters, because there is no evidence for any external events having caused such. Instead, taking into account the intertwining of history and literature in this 13 See Bieringer, ‘Love as That Which Binds Everything Together?’, on the occurrence of the αγαπ‑ stem. In our view, a similar case can be made for the important stem συνιστα‑ (10 occurrences in 2 Cor out of a total of 14 in Paul plus Eph, including the NT hapax συστατικός, 2 Cor 3:1; cf Long, Ancient Rhetoric, 233); as also for καυχα‑ (29 in 2 Cor out of 58 total); παρακαλ‑ (24/54); διακον‑ (20/42); λυπε‑ (15/19); θλιβ‑ (12/28). Except for συνιστα-, these are all found also in 2 Cor 8–9 and, excepting λυπε‑ and θλιβ-, also in 2 Cor 10–13. 14 Cf, convincingly, Mitchell, Rhetoric of Reconciliation. 15 Cf the considerations of Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 37–48. 16 Long, Ancient Rhetoric, 112f, 230: ‘Paul’s great apology’. 17 [See the survey by Bieringer, ‘Zwischen Kontinuität und Diskontinuität’.] Re. ‘a year before’ see above n5.
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area, Mitchell proposes to reconstruct Paul’s Corinthian correspondence and the history of his collection solely on the basis of the evidence of 1 and 2 Corinthians, while assuming that 2 Corinthians comprises fragments of five different letters of Paul’s. The reconstructed sequence of six letters plus the responses from Corinth are to document not only the history of Paul’s mission and his collection, but also the nascent interpretation process of his letters.18 This is a most interesting approach indeed, but the concomitant historical reconstruction remains a moot point without supportive external evidence. In our view, there is indeed evidence to be found outside the Corinthian correspondence, and it suggests a different explanation. In the study on Paul’s opponents published by Dieter Georgi shortly before his other one about the collection,19 he reminds us that the idea of JudaeoChristian missionaries intervening in Paul’s churches in Corinth and Galatia was introduced by Ferdinand-Christian Baur of Tübingen in the early nineteenth century. Starting from the ‘factions’ mentioned in 1 Corinthians and the [138] clash between Paul and Peter in Gal 2:11–14, Baur construed the ‘false apostles’ from 2 Cor 11:13 as emissaries of law-observant ‘Petrine’ Christianity come to counteract Paul’s law-free mission. The subsequent articulation along the lines of Hegelian dialectics caused loss of interest in the ‘Tübingen approach’, but the supposed antithesis between Paul and Judaeo-Christianity has always remained with us. Baur’s interpretation was relaunched by Ernst Käsemann, who proposed to view Paul’s adversaries in 2 Cor 10–13 as emissaries from the judaizing Jerusalem church who boasted their familiarity with Jesus.20 In his own construal of Paul’s opponents, Georgi makes sure to avoid the Tübingen antithesis and views them rather as non-nomistic Hellenistic Jewish apologists.21 In a similar vein, the much-acclaimed ‘new perspective on Paul’ inaugurated by E. P. Sanders and James Dunn involves the consensus that Paul did not turn against Judaism or the Jewish law as such.22 The question then is, what did he turn against after all? It is here proposed that while it is a mistake to attribute Paul with an anti-nomian and anti-Jewish attitude, Baur and others have seen correctly that Paul came up against Judaeo-Christian opposition in Corinth and elsewhere. In our view, however, this must not be seen as a static property of Judaeo-Christianity, but 18 Mitchell, ‘Paul’s Letters’, referring to Georgi, Opponents. The idea of the ‘birth of Christian hermeneutics’ of and within Paul’s letters is brilliantly developed in Mitchell, Paul, the Corinthians. 19 Georgi, Gegner (1964) and Geschichte (1965), translated as Opponents (1986) and Remembering (1992). 20 Käsemann, ‘Legitimität’, esp 48–51; cf Georgi, Opponents, 7f; Bieringer, ‘Gegner’, 208f. The force of Käsemann’s arguments was recognized by Barrett, ‘Paul’s Opponents’. 21 Baur, ‘Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde’ (1830), and ‘Über Zweck und Veranlassung des Römerbriefs’ (1836). See Georgi, Opponents, 2. A main drawback of Georgi’s construal is the quasi timeless and purely doctrine-oriented approach. 22 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism; Dunn, ‘New Perspective’; idem, New Perspective.
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as something that evolved over time and in particular circumstances. We shall further unfold this historical perspective in the below. The remarkable rhetorical flourish of 2 Cor 8–9 we have mentioned has another implication. Since it deploys a persuasive strategy to convince the readers to join the project (anew), it cannot be read as a reliable source about the actual reasons behind it.23 These must rather be sought elsewhere.24 We have first of all 1 Cor 16, but Rom 15 and other passages in Paul as well as in Acts have been mentioned in this connection and we must check their usefulness. We review these sources one by one in the perspective just proposed and then summarize the implications on the historical and the literary level. [139]
First Corinthians 16:1–4 We begin with this passage because of its particular style as compared with the other two main passages. Romans 15 makes an oblique reference to the collection in a context expressing apprehension as to Paul’s enemies in Jerusalem. 2 Cor 8–9, differently again, aims at captivating the readers’ benevolence and motivating them to comply with a request made earlier. In contrast, the style of 1 Cor 16:1–4 has convincingly been described as a ‘commanding letter’ stating matters in a business-like and authoritative way.25 This stylistic characterization was not lost on ancient commentators either.26 In this matter-of-fact style, Paul instructs the Corinthians how to go by it: Now concerning the contribution for the saints (περὶ δὲ τῆς λογείας τῆς εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους): as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside, … so that contributions need not be made when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit using letters to carry your gift to Jerusalem; if it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me. (1 Cor 16:1–2)
Paul wants to avoid the mess they are likely to make if they do it their own way. He implies they already knew about the collection, which is confirmed by his reference to the way of bringing the money to Jerusalem (16:3f). He does not need to explain that it does concern a collection intended for Jerusalem and only fills in the details. As to the terminology Paul uses, we shall deal with the appellation ‘saints’ in the next section; now let us take λογεία. Ancient papyri have shown this is a Unlike Melick, ‘Collection’, 116 and Kim, Kollekte, 5f. Thus correctly Verbrugge, Paul’s Style. 25 Verbrugge ibid. Georgi, Remembering, 54: Paul fills in details of instructions given earlier. 26 Cf John of Damascus, In Corinthios, MPG 95: 701, commenting on 1 Cor 16:1, οὐκ εἶπε, «παρῄνεσα» καὶ «συνεβούλευσα», ἀλλὰ «διέταξα», ὅπερ αὐθεντικώτερον, ‘He did not say, “I advised” or “I recommended”, but “I directed”, which is definitely more authoritative.’ 23 24
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technical term for a ‘collection of taxes or voluntary contributions’.27 In other words, Paul is using administrative language to indicate a special campaign. It is therefore to be distinguished from the general religious duty known as ‘almsgiving’, ἐλεημοσύνη, which, often along with prayer and fasting, is common in the New Testament and subsequent Christian literature, and derives from Jewish usage.28 Patristic commentators found it necessary to explain the word, [140] suggesting that in their day it was no longer understood in that sense: ‘Λογία is his (Paul’s) phrase for collecting money.’29 An interesting terminological analogy is found in a ‘collection for the sages’ ( מגבית חכמיםor )מגבת חכמיםmentioned in Palestinian Amoraic traditions and involving a number of Tannaim who are in the vicinity of Antioch (!) collecting money destined for the Land of Israel. It is not clear whether this is for the poor or for Tora scholars; [it is discussed in section 8.5 of the original article]. A significant point concerns the beneficiary of Paul’s collection: the church of Jerusalem. It is mentioned not just in Romans, a letter where this feature has a special significance since it deals with the place of the Jews in the church,30 but also in this more prosaic ‘commanding letter’ in 1 Cor 16:3. Here, Paul is soberly considering how best to get the money to Jerusalem through the mediation of envoys. This may or may not relate to the list of travel companions mentioned in Acts 20:4, a question we shall discuss below. If it does relate, then another person might have been travelling with Paul: Stephanas, whom Paul in the continuation calls ‘the first-fruit of Achaia’ (baptized by Paul, 1 Cor 1:16), and who with his household has ‘devoted himself to the service of the saints’ (διακωνία τοῖς ἁγίοις, 1 Cor 16:15; cf 2 Cor 8:4; 9:1). In any case, this is another reference to the collection, and it shows how Paul set up a network of collaborators to organize it with him. It is most significant that in this matter-of-fact instruction – as distinct from 2 Cor 8–9 and Rom 15 – Paul does not say that the collection is meant for ‘the poor’. This does not confirm the theory that ‘the poor’ was another special appellation of the Jerusalem church.31 The collection is meant for the Jerusalem 27 This was first established by Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, 72f, see MM s. v. λογ(ε)ία. Often the Hellenistic spelling λογία is met with, as in the Church Fathers. See also LSJ s. v., mentioning mainly archaeological material; BDAG s. v. Cf Beckheuer, Paulus, 110–113. 28 E. g., Tob 12:8, ἀγαθὸν προσευχὴ μετὰ νηστείας καὶ ἐλεημοσύνης καὶ δικαιοσύνης; Sir 7:10, προσευχὴ … καὶ ἐλεημοσύνη; Matt 6:2–4, ἐλεημοσύνη along with prayer and fasting; Did 15:4, εὐχὰς καὶ ἐλεημοσύνας; Acts 10:4, αἱ προσευχαί σου καὶ αἱ ἐλεημοσύναι σου (cf 10:31) − oft quoted in the Church Fathers. Cf also Athanasius, De virgin 6 (νηστεία … προσευχὴ … ἐλεημοσύνη); ibid. 12. 29 Theodoret, In Cor, MPG 82:369, Λογίαν τὴν συλλογὴν τῶν χρημάτων καλεῖ, quoted by John of Damascus, In Cor, MPG 95:701. Apparently this meaning of λογεία/λογία eclipsed in late Antiquity, and it is not listed in Lampe, Lexicon. 30 Munck, Paulus, 292–302; Jervell, ‘Letter to Jerusalem’, though overstretching the point. 31 As maintained by Holl, ‘Kirchenbegriff’, 60; cf references and critical notes in Betz, Galatians, 102, and see below.
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church of ‘saints’; they will know what to use it for. Going by the reports in Acts which we shall review in a moment, it must have included supporting poor members. In 1 Cor 16, this seems to be a point unnecessary to make, and other aims may be included. It may well be that what is implicitly included here is what Paul elsewhere in 1 Corinthians describes as the apostles’ ex officio ‘right (ἐξουσία) to eat and drink’, even along with their wives (1 Cor 9:2–5, 14). Seeming confirmation of this reading is found in the ruling in the Didache that resident [141] prophets and teachers have a right to be sustained by the church (Did 13:1–7; [see original article, sections 7.2 and 7.3]).
Galatians 2:1–10 Of great consequence is the question how to evaluate Paul’s brief report of the meeting with the other apostles in Jerusalem in Galatians 2. Paul relates how the conference, which he says turned on the justification of his own ‘gospel to the uncircumcised’, ended with a handshake: ‘We should go to the gentiles and they to the circumcised; only they would have us remember the poor, which very thing I was eager to do’ (Gal 2:7–10). In an influential study from 1921 which stressed the social import of the ‘collection for the saints’, Karl Holl construed this account as evidence that the initiative came from the Jerusalem church asserting her position to the point of exacting submission by gentile Christians. Paul would have initially submitted to the request, but meanwhile have replaced the Jerusalem-centred concept of the Church by a more spiritual, universalist concept. While adopting the designation of the Jerusalem church as ‘the saints’, Paul ‘almost intentionally’ addressed his gentile readers as ‘saints’ as well: ‘Saints are not only to be found in Jerusalem nor in Judaea only, but also in Corinth and Rome.’32 In itself, this point is correct and we shall have to come back to it. However, as Johannes Munck showed in his seminal Paulus und die Heilsgeschichte of 1954, Holl’s reading of Galatians is based on the Tübingen antithesis of ‘Petrine against Pauline Christianity’.33 Indeed, Holl not only ignores the import of Romans, but also the layered account of Galatians. In consequence, the fundamental importance of the apostles’ agreement in Jerusalem remains underrated. 32 Holl, ‘Kirchenbegriff’, 64; cf Georgi, Remembering, 17; Beckheuer, Paulus, 15–18, 41f. Not unlike his mentor Harnack, Holl combined Lutheran partialism with anti-Judaism and antiCatholicism. Abolishing Jerusalem’s primacy, Paul would have effectively cleared the way for that of Rome: ‘Das römische Papsttum ist tatsächlich nichts anderes als die Wiederaufrichtung der Stellung des Jakobus’ (65). 33 Munck, Paulus, 61–78, 282f. Munck seems wrong in rejecting Holl’s assumption that ‘the saints’ was a name for the Jerusalem church, but correct in criticizing his thwarted reading of Galatians.
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The request to ‘remember the poor’ is embedded in a chronologically stratified account extending over the letter to the Galatians. We shall now analyse this in reverse direction, as though excavating a ‘tell’ stratum by stratum – although counting them from the surface down, unlike real archaeologists.34 [142] Stratum 1 (Gal 1:1–12; 6:11–18). This is the auctorial present rendered by the epistolary aorist, ὑμῖν ἔγραψα (6:11, see below): Paul ‘writing’ (dictating) his letter. He has been confronted with the news about ‘another gospel’ brought to the Galatian churches of gentiles, insisting that they must get circumcised and become Jewish proselytes in order to become full-blown Christians. In his extempore reaction to this anti-gentile gospel,35 Paul sees need to clarify his relationship with Jerusalem and the apostles residing there, ‘For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not man’s gospel; for I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ’ (1:11f). The expositional main part of the letter (3:1–6:10) can be counted with this stratum. Stratum 2 (2:11–21). The ‘other gospel’ did not come out of the blue for Paul, since recently there had been this conflict in the Antioch church with Peter and Barnabas over table fellowship between Jews and non-Jews. It had occurred after some people had come ‘from James’ in Jerusalem and insisted on separation from gentile ways and ‘judaizing’ (ἰουδαΐζειν, 2:14). As for Paul, he has stood his ground and stuck to his message, to ‘the truth of the gospel’: one is saved by loyalty to Jesus Messiah (ἐκ πίστεως Χριστοῦ), irrespective of whether one belongs to those observing the law or not. Stratum 3 (2:1–10). That is in fact the message which the apostles had approved of in a meeting in Jerusalem which preceded that confrontation: ‘James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the gentiles and they to the circumcised; only they would have us remember the poor, which very thing I was diligent in doing’ (μόνον τῶν πτωχῶν ἵνα μνημονεύωμεν, ὃ καὶ ἐσπούδασα αὐτὸ τοῦτο ποιῆσαι). Even the intervention of some ‘false brothers’ who just before this meeting had tried to ‘bring us into bondage’ by the requirement to circumcise Titus had not thwarted the agreement: Paul had not yielded ‘even for a moment’ but stood for ‘the truth of the gospel’. Stratum 4 (1:21–24). Preceding that Jerusalem meeting, Paul had been preaching and teaching for ‘fourteen years’ in the churches around Antioch, during which time the churches in Judaea ‘did not see his face’ (2:21; 2:1). This work had been based on the same message that was now approved of in Jerusalem (Acts 15:1 suggests this was after complaints had been raised by some of Paul’s parochians from Antioch). [143] Stratum 5 (1:18–20). Before departing on his work in Antioch, Paul had been in Jerusalem for two weeks, staying with Peter and otherwise only seeing James once; ‘in what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie’. Paul must make himself clear: even early in his career, he was no servant of the apostles.
34 Cf, less schematically, the excursus on ‘The Conflict at Antioch’ in Betz, Galatians, 103f. The metaphor of the ‘tell’ is also used by Martyn, Gospel of John, 90. 35 Cf the lacking of a proper exordium involving nice words to be said about the readers.
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Stratum 6 (1:13–17). Three years before that Jerusalem visit, his conversion had occurred – the moment when he abandoned his life as a zealot Pharisee on the basis of a visionary call to preach to the gentiles, having consulted about this no one at Jerusalem, only some people in Damascus.
In this sequence, Paul distances himself both from the anti-gentile mood rampant in the Jerusalem church at the time of writing (stratum 1) and from his own zealot Pharisee past at the beginning of his career (stratum 6). The relationship with the Jerusalem apostles has been compromised (stratum 2, cf stratum 5), which seems to mean that for many they had become associated with the antigentile mood. Paul’s own position, which he calls ‘the truth of the gospel’, is well-established in the middle of the sequence: it is the message he had taught at Antioch and that was recognised by the apostles at the Jerusalem conference (strata 4 and 3). That is also the setting in which the request to ‘remember the poor’ must be heard: it is based on the mutual recognition of the apostolates to the Jews and to the gentiles led by Peter and Paul, respectively. Within that framework, it implies the recognition by Paul of the primacy of the Jerusalem apostles, insofar as they had approved of his gospel to the non-Jews. Thus read, the sequence in the Galatians account supports the interpretation that the collection mentioned in 1 and 2 Corinthians and in Romans was linked to the apostles’ request, and that subsequent developments have compromised it.36 Since originally (strata 3 and 4) it implied mutual acknowledgment between Jews and gentiles in the church, this can be seen in relation to the motif of ‘equality’ Paul appeals to in 2 Corinthians (see below). Therefore in reaction to the apostles’ request ‘that we remember the poor’, Paul registers his wholehearted agreement: ‘which very thing I was diligent (ἐσπούδασα) in doing’ (Gal 2:10). The first person singular aorist ἐσπούδασα strikingly shifts in number, mood, and tense from the preceding plural present subjunctive μνημονεύωμεν, ‘we were to remember’. It has been found difficult to explain in the framework of the letter. This is inevitable if one takes the aorist simply to denote past events and does not adequately distinguish between the different chronological strata [144] of the letter.37 The Greek tenses basically do not relate to the chronological ‘time’ of an action or process, but to something we could describe as its state of completion or its actuality. While the present and imperfect tenses describe an event that is or was still going on, and the perfect and pluperfect one which is or was already accomplished, the aorist may be said to describe an action whose state of completion is or was temporally ‘undefined’ – literally, ἀόριστος – but 36 Thus e. g. Georgi, Remembering; Jewett, ‘Agitators’; Hurtado, ‘Jerusalem Collection’; Betz, Galatians, 101–103. 37 Thus Georgi, Remembering, 43–45 and Geschichte, 30–32, setting off Paul from Barnabas; Martyn, Galatians, 207 (‘simple past tense’); Wedderburn, ‘Collection’, 100 n12 (a virtual ‘pluperfect’); and Downs, ‘Collection’, 61. Verbrugge, Paul’s Style, 312 reads it as an inceptive aorist.
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whose ‘actuality’ is stressed, either in past, present, or even future.38 Using the first person aorist ἐσπούδασα Paul underlines that as far he is concerned – and notwithstanding the immediately ensuing clash with Peter and Barnabas – the Jerusalem agreement as ‘materialized’ in the collection for ‘the poor’ is firmly in place.39 In the matter-of-fact instruction in 1 Cor 16:1, the Galatians are mentioned as a model for the method of collecting the money. Therefore when Paul wrote his letter to them, they must have been familiar with the project. Possibly, however, their enthusiasm for it was diminished, along with their withering allegiance to Paul’s ‘gospel for gentiles’.40 At this point, the various strata of the letter interlock, and here lies the difficulty of the passage. In the midst of the account of stratum 3 (the Jerusalem meeting), there is this apparent allusion to stratum 1 (present polemics). Using the ‘undefined’ aorist tense, Paul is able to address both strata at once, assuring his Galatian readers that regardless of [145] what people make of the apostles’ request at this point, he will go on with it as he has always done. This is what is echoed in the switch from the first person plural to the singular, ‘We were to remember the poor … I am ever diligent in doing precisely that.’ This is what we later read in Romans: it is Paul’s project now, and he shall go on with it, never mind what they say or do in Galatia, Corinth, or even
[Stagg, ‘Abused Aorist’ stresses the ‘undefined’ character of the aorist and the incorrectness of viewing it as ‘punctiliar’.] Porter, Verbal Aspect, ch 4 resists temporal definitions of the aorist. In 1 Thess 2:16 Paul’s ἔφθασεν refers to a future but ‘very real’ situation, as was unforgettably explained by Prof. S. Agourides from Athens at the Pauline Colloquium on 1 Thess in Rome, Sept. 1999: when in Greece you finally get impatient and inform about your coffee, the waiter will unperturbedly declare, έφθασε, ‘it is here!’ [Cf roughly the same anecdote already in Dodd, Parables, 43 n1, but see Caragounis, The Development of Greek, 261–267, esp 267f: ‘ἔφθασα communicates certainty … and imminence …’ – ἔφθασα denoting the waiter, not the coffee.] This also well explains the ‘epistolary aorist’: ἔγραψα in 1 Cor 5:9 refers to a previous letter, but in 5:11, to the present one being written, as in Gal 6:11. Cf BDR § 334; and Mitchell, Paul, The Corinthians, 18f, 30f: the epistolary aorist is ‘temporally ambiguous’. Young, Greek, 124f points to Phlm 12 ἀνέπεμψα as also having a future sense. In all these cases, the reader is assured about the ‘actuality of the action’. The ‘punctual’ sense often read from the aorist indicative does apply in narratives such as found in the Gospels (contrasting with the imperfect) but it does not at all exhaust the aorist’s connotations. The evidence presented by Wallace, Grammar, 562f contradicts the explanation he has given earlier. [In private communication, Jan Joosten reminds me that prominent grammarians do not follow Stanley Porter in stating that the aorist indicative does not render a past event. Rather, the augment makes it a preterite, even as the aspect of ‘imminence and certainty’ is retained. Thus at the moment of writing, Paul is ‘absolutely diligent’ about the collection. A similar assessment is now given by Brookins, ‘A Tense Discussion’.] 39 Thus the drift of Betz, Galatians, 102f, though not explicitly addressing the aorist. Similarly Beckheuer, Paulus, 49. Porter, Verbal Aspect, 331 paraphrases ἐσπούδασα as ‘[I] desired to do [this] anyway’. I must fully agree here with Bruce, New Testament History, 270 and n21f. 40 Wedderburn, ‘Collection’, 103 and Hurtado, ‘Jerusalem Collection’, 49f conclude from the omission of Galatia in 2 Cor 8–9 and Rom 15 that the Galatians had ceased contributing. 38
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Jerusalem (Rom 15:25, 31).41 This is what he unflinchingly stands for, signing off in his own hand (ἔγραψα) and praying for peace both on those who stick to the original Jerusalem agreement and on ‘the Israel of God’ (Gal 6:11–16).42 The passage just preceding this autographed conclusion may even imply an allusive appeal to keep supporting the collection: ‘Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher … If you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit’ (Gal 6:6–8).43
Second Corinthians 8–9: A Closer Look The type of rhetoric of these two chapters has already been referred to: it is persuasive speech. It operates in a customary three-part schedule also found, e. g., in 1 Cor 5–6; 8–10; and 12–14: (A) a general introduction of the theme; (B) one or more illustrative or motivating digressions; and (A’) a matter-of-fact and detailed discussion of the theme. Thus 2 Cor 8:1–15 circles around the subject on a general level; 8:16–24 digresses about the inspiring excellence of Titus and the other two collaborators; and 9:1–15 finally comes round with a head-on renewal of the appeal on the Corinthians.44 One of the main persuasive themes is ‘poverty’. Setting the example, the Macedonians ‘in their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part’, just as the Corinthians are supposed to remember that ‘our Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich, yet for your sake became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’ (2 Cor 8:2, 9). Similarly, thus Paul’s appeal to the Corinthians, your contribution ‘will increase the harvest of your righteousness,45 you will be enriched in every way for great generosity, … for the [146] rendering of this service not only supplies the wants of the saints (ὑστερήματα τῶν ἁγίων) but also overflows in many thanksgivings to God’ (9:10–12). The highly tactful and effective rhetoric clearly is aimed at making the Corinthians overcome their hesitations and continue contributing. This prob41 Cf Beckheuer, Paulus, 270–275 (Zusammenfassung); Verbrugge, Paul’s Style, 311f; Downs, ‘Collection’, 60. Georgi, Remembering thinks Barnabas has also fallen out, hence the singular ἐσπούδασα. 42 Similarly Hurtado, ‘Jerusalem Collection’, 56f. 43 Hurtado ibid. Cf key words κοινωνέω, σπείρω, θερίζω also found in 2 Cor 8:4; 9:6, and the idea of reciprocity in Rom 15:27. 44 Cf Lambrecht, ‘Paul’s Boasting’. 45 Apart from the possible allusion to Hosea 10:12 (γενήματα δικαιοσύνης), γενήματα τῆς δικαιοσύνης is not necessarily un-Pauline, cf δικαιοσύνη and δικαιόω in 1 Cor 1:30; 4:4; 6:11; nor is 2 Cor 9:8, περισσεύετε εἰς πᾶν ἐργον ἀγαθόν. Paul’s concept of ‘justification’ has an eschatological dimension and involves judgment on one’s deeds, cf Rom 2:6, 13 and the strong textual variant (P46, D*, Irlat, Ambst) in Phil 3:12, (οὐχ ὅτι) … ἤδη δεδικαιῶμαι. The ‘harvest of righteousness’ in the present context is rather associated with the virtue of almsgiving, cf δικαιοσύνη in Tobit (above n28) and צדקהin rabbinic literature.
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ably tells us more about economic wealth and mental reservations in Corinth than about the economic situation in Jerusalem. After all, the Macedonians are praised as well for contributing in spite of ‘their extreme poverty’. Along with the evidence from the business-like passage in 1 Corinthians where the theme is lacking, this confirms our impression that it concerns one of the rhetorical ploys used by Paul. On another level, the theme of exchanging riches and poverty links up with social concepts stressing reciprocity in Graeco-Roman society as scholars have investigated these.46 In the 2 Corinthians passage it is expressed by the term ‘equality’ (ἰσότης) and illustrated with an appealing quote from the Exodus story about the bread that came as a gift from heaven: … That as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want, so that their abundance may supply your want, that there may be equality. As it is written, ‘He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack’ (2 Cor 8:14f, Exod 16:18).
We shall also find this theme in the Romans passage. In both cases, the reciprocity involved implies a recognition of the spiritual leadership of the Jerusalem church and its message, in return for which the gentile diaspora churches are now sending their material support. This is made explicit in Romans: ‘For if the gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings (τοῖς πνευματικοῖς), they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings’ (ἐν τοῖς σαρκικοῖς, Rom 15:27). A theme which figures more subtly in the third part is ‘blessing’, εὐλογία.47 It is also a biblical theme, although this is not made explicit and tacitly presupposes familiarity [147] with the biblical narrative in the readers. Whereas in general Greek, εὐλογία means ‘speaking well’, ‘eulogy’, ‘praises’, the Septuagint translators have chosen it to render the Hebrew ברכהwhich can mean both ‘praises’ and ‘wealth’ or ‘bounty’. A speaker at home both in general Greek and in biblical parlance can play at both fields of meaning. This is done by Philo in an exposition on the ‘blessing’ of Abraham, and, in a different way, by Paul in our passage:48 So I thought it necessary to urge the brethren to go on to you before me, and arrange in advance for this gift you have promised (τὴν προεπηγγελμένην εὐλογίαν), so that it may be ready not as an exaction but as a willing gift (ὡς εὐλογίαν). The point is this: he who 46 Georgi, Remembering, cf appendix on Philo 138–140; Verbrugge, Paul’s Style, 145–243; Joubert, Benefactor, 17–72; Wan, ‘Collection’, 210–215; Downs, Offering, 73–119. Ogereau, ‘Jerusalem Collection’ adds the socio-political import of Greek κοινωνία, 2 Cor 8:4; 9:13; Rom 15:25f; this must be supplemented by the parallel with the Essenes and the primitive church (Acts 2:42), to which he correctly reverts, below n77. 47 Following Windisch, Georgi, Remembering, 93f perceives a word play on λογεία also involving ‘biblical’ (Septuagintal) meanings. 48 Philo, Migr 70–73, on Gen 12:1–5; for elaboration see Tomson, ‘Blessing’.
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sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully (ὁ σπείρων ἐπ᾽ εὐλογίας ἐπ᾽ εὐλογίας καὶ θερίσει). (2 Cor 9:5f)
In the maxim at the end, Paul may be alluding to the section on Joseph in the ‘blessing’ of Jacob, which we translate here from the Septuagint version: … And my God has saved you and blessed you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the earth that carries all, for the sake of blessings of breasts and womb; the blessings of your father He has made mighty beyond the blessings (ἐπ᾽ εὐλογίαις) of the eternal mountains and beyond the bounties (ἐπ᾽ εὐλογίαις) of the everlasting hills. (LXX Gen 49:25f)
The link is not very strong, though, and it might as well be that an expository source unknown to us is being quoted or alluded to. In any case the ‘biblical’, material connotation of εὐλογία meshes nicely with the more spiritual general meaning, and both meanings strengthen each other. This is sublime biblical rhetoric, or in other words, homiletics: the different semantic fields play nicely together; the biblical and general worlds are creatively connected; and the point of ‘equality’ through the exchange of material for spiritual goods is elegantly achieved. Familiarity with ‘biblical language’ is required of the readers; their liberality in exchange for their receiving the spiritual riches come from Jerusalem is anticipated on; and everything is couched in elegant rhetoric. Why is [148] all this necessary? Why is the sober style used in 1 Cor 16:1–4 no longer sufficient? The obvious inference we have advanced is that since the writing of 1 Corinthians, things have dramatically changed in the church of Corinth. And if, as we are assuming, the two chapters can meaningfully be read along with the other parts of 2 Corinthians to form one integral letter, we are facing a document rife with tensions. Two potentially different trends can be distinguished: the pervasive need of the author to ‘recommend’ himself over against certain allegations,49 and his polemics against those brandishing the law of Moses or ‘Hebrew Christian’ prerogatives (2 Cor 1–7; 10–12). These opponents need not be identical. Paul’s authority could have been jeopardized by whatever internal development within the community, as appears from his discussion about ‘partisanship’ in 1 Corinthians (1 Cor 1:12). The need to defend his gospel against radical Judaeo-Christian tendencies, however, seems to reflect external influences. As to the latter aspect, a change had most probably occurred in Paul’s relation to Jerusalem, or rather, in the relation of Jerusalem’s Judaeo-Christians to Paul and his gospel. So much is clear from comparison with Galatians and 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians shows no trace of tension about the law and the commandments, no polemics, no elaborate scriptural arguments. Without ado, Paul can quote ‘the law’ as a source of authority when giving instructions.50 In contrast, See on this theme Hezser, ‘Paul’s “Fool’s Speech”’. for this oft-neglected aspect Tomson, Paul, 68–73. 1 Cor does seem to contain polemics regarding remuneration of apostles, see Safrai–Tomson, ‘Paul’s Collection for the Saints’, 49
50 See
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both Galatians and 2 Corinthians reflect the intervention of radical Judaeo-Christians who pressurize gentile Christians and insist on the law of Moses. This ties in with the lavish rhetoric about the collection in 2 Corinthians. If Paul would manage to revive the participation of Corinth, he would have a point against his judaizing opponents. More than anything, the ‘gift of the gentiles’ to the mother church would demonstrate the viability of his gospel. Paul may well have been mustering all his rhetorical skills in order to salvage not only his collection but his entire mission in Corinth. The practical organization is also mentioned. Titus is Paul’s agent in carrying out the task, along with two others, one of whom is ‘this brother (τὸν ἀδελφόν) famous among all the churches for his proclaiming the good news’ and who has been ‘appointed by the churches to travel with us while we are administering this generous undertaking’ (2 Cor 8:6, 18f, 23). It may well be Timothy, the co-author of the extant letter who is mentioned in almost all of Paul’s letters. According to Acts he was with Paul when he travelled to Jerusalem, possibly along with So(si)patros, and according to Romans this was [149] when they brought the money (Acts 20:4; Rom 16:21). Paul counts on the Corinthians to be prepared when these men arrive, for he has spread the news they already were a year ago (2 Cor 9:2–4; cf 1 Cor 16:2). If ‘Achaia’ in Rom 15:26 includes Corinth as it does in 2 Cor 9:2, Corinth indeed was prepared.
Romans 15:25–31 The collection is no direct theme in Romans. It is mentioned at the end, when Paul tells of the journey to Jerusalem he is making and thus offers an oblique view on the project toward its completion. It has been suggested that this nevertheless belongs among the main themes of this complex and opaque epistle, supposing there was a link between the Jews or Judaeo-Christians in Rome and the church in Jerusalem which Paul could use as leverage to help getting the collection accepted.51 The fact is that from beginning to end, Romans is replete with motifs to do with the relationship between Jews and non-Jews. Therefore one could also suppose Paul shares some details about the collection because it fits in the thematic of the letter and the readers could be interested. In other words, the collection fits well in the letter, even if we cannot be sure that this was one of its practical aims. However that may be, Paul writes to Rome that he is now underway to deliver ‘a modest contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem’ (κοινωνίαν 184–191. [Not in his volume. Possibly, an existing divergence between traditions on remuneration of apostles (ibid. 181–184) turned into a polemic due to the change of ‘political’ climate here described.] 51 Jervell, ‘Letter’, cf below n75.
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τινὰ … εἰς τοὺς πτωχοὺς τῶν ἁγίων τῶν ἐν ᾽Ιερουσαλήμ, Rom 15:25–27). As in 1 Cor 16:1, 15 and 2 Cor 9:1 (cf 8:4), Paul mentions ‘the saints’ as beneficiaries of the ‘service’, but this time he adds it concerns ‘the poor’ among them, and ‘the saints in Jerusalem’. Why is this? Paul betrays he has not yet been to Rome (Rom 1:13). Could it be he is not sure if they are familiar with his jargon? He does address the Roman church as κλητοὶς ἁγίοις, ‘those called to be saints’ (Rom 1:7, see next section). Did he feel the need to specify? As to the addition of ‘the poor’, it has been proposed to view this as a technical term for the Jerusalem church, paralleling ‘the saints’.52 The suggestion is tempting given the name of the later Judaeo-Christian group of Ebionites mentioned by the Church Fathers (᾽Εβιωναῖοι);53 also, there would be interesting links with the self-designation ( אביוניםpoor) found in the Qumran scrolls, as also with Jesus’ beatitude of ‘the poor (in spirit)’.54 However the [150] suggestion does not quite convince. For one thing, ‘the poor’ as a technical term would sit awkwardly next to its parallel, ‘the saints’.55 More importantly, as we saw, in the business-like 1 Corinthians passage Paul does not mention ‘the poor’ as recipients of the collection, nor does he refer to their actual poverty as a reason to contribute. The theme of ‘poverty’ and ‘riches’ does, however, have a prominent rhetorical function in 2 Corinthians. In Romans the theme of ‘poverty and riches’ is exploited allegorically, as in 2 Corinthians, but in a universal perspective that goes much beyond: Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem; … indeed they are in debt to them, for if the gentiles have come to share in their spiritual goods, they ought also to be of service to them in material goods. So, when I have completed this … I will set out by way of you to Spain … (Rom 15:27)
Thus Romans, pleading salvation ‘for the Jew first, but also for the Greek’ (1:16; 2:10), reveals relations between ‘gentiles’ and Jews to be an explicit motive behind the collection, confirming the impression we have gathered from Gal 2:10. The ‘spiritual goods’ of the Judaeo-Christians have ‘enriched’ the gentile Christians in Macedonia and Achaia, who are now ‘in debt’ to repay their Judaeo-Christian brethren from their ‘material goods’. As Johannes Munck has pointed out, a strategic purpose of the collection was to embody the unity of the Church of Christ consisting of Jews and gentiles and to express the link with
Above n31. Origen likes to make the reference derisively, e. g. De princ 4.3.8, ‘Ebionites, those poor in understanding’. See also Holl, ‘Kirchenbegriff’, 60 n2. 54 עדת האביונים, paraphrasing ענוים, is found next to עדת בחיר[י]וin 4QpPs37 (4Q171) 2:4, 10; 3:5, 10. Further references in Fitzmyer, Romans, 722, who thinks ‘the real needy among the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem’ are meant. 55 Verbrugge, Paul’s Style, 308. 52 53
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Jerusalem while the gospel spreads throughout the world.56 In Galatians and 2 Corinthians, Paul probably could not deploy this motivation, given the need there to strike the balance between his basically positive relationship with the Jerusalem church and its getting compromised by the intervention of radicalized Judaeo-Christians. A similar development does not seem to be at work in the church in Rome, to Paul’s knowledge. At least he feels at liberty to expand and urge the Romans to pray for him in view of the difficulties elsewhere: ‘… That I may be delivered from the unbelieving (ἀπειθούντων) in Judaea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints’ (εὐπρόσδεκτος τοῖς ἁγίοις, Rom 15:31). This reveals two objects of great worry. In the first place, there are these ‘unbelieving’ or ‘uncompromising’ in Judaea from whom Paul seeks ‘deliverance’ and who even seem to physically [151] endanger him. This reference is socially and politically much more explicit than what we read in Galatians and 2 Corinthians. It is obvious to think of the Acts account of radical Jews who have Paul arrested and actually threaten to murder him. Their accusations against Paul express an anti-gentile motivation: ‘Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching all men everywhere against the people and the law and this place; moreover he also brought Greeks into the Temple and he has defiled this holy place’ (Acts 21:28). Comparison between details in the narrative and Josephus’ account date these events to 57 or 58 CE.57 A similar militant activism is reflected in other sources. The Mishna mentions the impetuous actions of the ‘bloom of the priesthood’ ( )פרחי כהונהin association with that of ‘the zealots’ ( )קנאיןin guarding the sanctity of the Temple (mSan 9:6). Even if this is a later echo and no context is indicated, it seems to carry a memory of Temple times; the association with the ‘zealots’ carries a reference to Phineas, the ‘arch-zealot’. Josephus reports that some years after Paul’s arrest, in the cascade of events leading towards the revolt, a similar ‘zealot’ mentality was seen especially in the youthful Temple captain Eleazar son of Ananias, who ‘persuaded those who officiated in the Temple services to accept no gift or sacrifice from a foreigner’ (War 2:409). It seems likely that this mentality was associated with the Pharisaic faction of the Shammaites known from rabbinic literature for its more reserved attitude towards gentiles.58 Thus Paul’s worry about 56 Munck, Paulus, esp 285: unlike the Tübingen antithesis, Paul wished ‘die neuen Kirchen innerhalb der Heiden mit der Mission unter den Juden zusammenzuknüpfen’; Berger, ‘Almosen’; Jervell, ‘Letter’. Cf 2 Cor 8:13f, ἰσότης. 57 Acts 21:27, the sicarii and the Egyptian militant prophet correspond with Josephus, War 2:253–264, towards the end of Felix’s term of office. 58 Num 25:8 and 25:11, proverbially, בקנאו את קנאתי, ‘by acting out My zeal’ against the union of the Israelite with a Moabite woman. For this whole cluster of themes see Hengel, Zeloten, esp chapter 4, ‘Der Eifer’. See also Tomson, ‘Christ, Belial, and Women’ at n73–76 (in this volume).
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‘the unbelieving in Judaea’ seems to correspond to indications that in the later 50s of the first century CE, a religious-nationalist mood was on the rise among Jews who resented the presence of gentiles and gentile ways of life in the Jewish land.59 Paul’s other worry is about ‘the saints’, the church in Jerusalem: he is not certain they will accept the collection from his gentile churches. It seems there were strong forces opposing this, and as we suggested it is obvious to associate these with the growing opposition to Paul’s gentile mission reflected both in his letters and in Acts. Paul calls those people ‘pseudo-brethren’ or ‘pseudo-apostles’ (Gal 2:4; 2 Cor 11:13, 26). They no longer respected the compromise reached at the Jerusalem meeting and wanted to impose the whole Jewish [152] law on gentile Christians. It follows they were radicalized Judaeo-Christians. This corresponds to the mention in Acts of ‘thousands of believing Jews who are zealous for the law’ and who discredit Paul’s mission to the gentiles (Acts 21:20f).60 Thus it appears Paul’s two worries were linked. The growing climate of ‘zeal for the law’ and anti-gentile sentiment seems to have penetrated the churches in Jerusalem and Judaea. It is also probable that this sentiment had been exported to the diaspora churches, causing the rise of opposition to Paul’s mission and his collection in Galatia and in Corinth subsequent to 1 Corinthians. The existence of regular communications between Judaea and the diaspora is confirmed by Acts, where the leaders of the Jewish community in Rome refer to ‘letters from Judaea’ as something they could count on (Acts 28:21). Indeed, Paul refers to ‘people come from James’ in Jerusalem who stimulated separation between Jews and gentiles in the Antioch church (Gal 2:12). Although it refers to an earlier stage, i. e., before the actual crisis in Galatia, this furtive reference reveals a phenomenon that quite probably continued to exist. The polemics in Galatians and 2 Corinthians are not against the Jewish law nor against Judaeo-Christians as such, but against the growing number of Judaeo-Christians who would no longer stick with ‘the truth of the gospel’ as Paul calls it, or in other words the apostles’ Jerusalem agreement – whereas previously most of them did. We are uncertain about the details of Paul’s life after his arrival in Rome (Acts 28). It has now become very unlikely, however, that the zealot climate allowed continuation of the collection preceding the revolt, and it seems certain that no such effort was possible after it.
59 Similar observations about the political climate of the day are made by Nickle, Collection, 47f, 70–72; Wan, ‘Collection’, 202. Without such a link to contemporaneous Jewish history Georgi, Remembering, 23 does refer to ‘Judaizing zealots’. 60 This evidence runs counter to the explanation of Nanos, ‘Spies’ that in Gal 2:4 these concerned non-Christian ‘vigilante’ and similar Jews and hence coincided with the ‘unbelieving’ of Rom 15:31.
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Philippians One may wonder why Paul does not mention the collection in other letters, especially the one to Philippi.61 As we shall argue more elaborately below, Phil 4:10– 19 abounds with sacrificial imagery thanking the Philippians for the donations they had repeatedly made to his person. In combination with Phil 1:5 and 4:15, this makes it unthinkable that they did not participate in the collection: ‘…(I am) thankful for your partnership in the gospel (κοινωνία ὑμῶν εἰς τὸ εὐαγγέλιον); … no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving (ἐκοινώνησεν εἰς λόγον δόσεως καὶ λήμψεως) except you [153] only.’62 It follows the collection is being passed over in silence. We can think of several reasons. When writing this letter, Paul was in prison, and if this was in Rome, as is most likely, he would be unable to continue directing the campaign.63 An additional possibility is that things were fine in Philippi and there was no special reason to bring it up. In any case it seems certain that the Philippian church was among the Macedonian mainstays of the campaign (2 Cor 8:1; 9:4; Rom 15:26). This is interesting in view of the possibility that the author of Acts came from Philippi to join Paul on his last journey to Jerusalem (Acts 16:11f; 20:6, see next section).
The Acts of the Apostles Attention has been drawn to the fact that the author of Acts in spite of references to other gifts and offerings never makes the slightest mention of such a consequential phenomenon as Paul’s collection for Jerusalem.64 This is all the more remarkable since the link with Jerusalem and the union between Jewish and gentile Christians are central to his narrative; a collection for the Jerusalem church would fit in nicely. The author, whom we shall call Luke,65 left it for us to guess at his motives. Wedderburn, ‘Collection’, 102 – a ‘more difficult question’. Georgi, Remembering, 62–67 thinks Phil does refer to the collection (while un-Ockhamishly considering 4:10–23 another ‘fragmentary letter’). [Ogereau, ‘Paul’s κοινωνία with the Philippians’ convincingly emphasises the technical usage of these terms denoting financial participation; and see MM s. v. δόσις and λόγος.] 63 ‘Chains’, Phil 1:7, 13, 17; ‘the praetorium’, 1:13; ‘the imperial house’ 4:22, ‘Clement’, 4:3. Brown, Introduction opts for Ephesus c. 55 CE for a date. Grant, Historical Introduction excludes the Ephesus imprisonment theory for lack of solid evidence and considers Philippians to be one of the prison letters written from Rome. Similarly Wedderburn, ‘Collection’, 102 (n20: praetorium points to Rome). 64 Goguel, ‘Collecte’, 316–318; Downs, ‘Collection’, 52. Wedderburn, ‘Collection’, 103f assumes as much. 65 Following patristic tradition in identifying him with the companion Paul mentions in Col 4:14 (a non-Jew); Phlm 24; 2 Tim 4:11. There is no convincing evidence to the contrary. Cf Fitzmyer, Acts, 50f. 61 62
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We can think of various reasons. It could be embarrassment because the collection was discontinued after Paul’s arrest in Jerusalem, or because in the end the collection was rejected in Jerusalem, whereas Luke or his source for the collection was among the company that went along with Paul.66 Probably a more pressing reason is that at the time of writing, i. e. after the defeat of the Jewish revolt by the Romans, the ‘Jewish tax’ had been introduced, Vespasian’s self-serving conversion of the internal Jewish Temple tax into an [154] annual contribution to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome to be paid by all Jewish men, women and minors. It involved deciding who is Jewish and who is not and it thereby must have heavily encumbered relations between Jews and non-Jews, especially so in the churches.67 While at that time Paul’s collection certainly had been discontinued, it may also have become a sensitive topic to raise. A gentile Christian collection for the Jerusalem church could well have become completely unthinkable. Nevertheless, three passages in Acts have been thought to give information on Paul’s collection. The first one is Acts 11:27–30, where Paul, during the first phase of his missionary career, is staying at Antioch with Barnabas, when a group of prophets come from Jerusalem and announce a famine ‘in the entire world’. The Antiochenes decide to give ‘aid’ (διακονία) and charge Paul and Barnabas to deliver it ‘to the brethren in Judaea’. Scholars have linked this with the request to ‘remember the poor’ which the apostles made to Paul at the end of the meeting in Jerusalem described in Gal 2:1–10.68 This implies identifying the detailed Galatians narrative of the Jerusalem meeting not with the account in Acts 15 of a meeting of Paul and Barnabas with the apostles in Jerusalem on an almost identical agenda, but with the earlier visit of Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem briefly hinted at in Acts 11:30. It is an identification hard to maintain. First, important elements are lacking on both sides. Acts 11 does not mention such an important item as a meeting of Paul with the apostles, and Galatians does not refer to prophets or a famine. Second, and more importantly, we must pay attention to what both narratives do mention and to the way they do. This will suggest another reading. In the unfolding of the Acts narrative, the apostles’ meeting in chapter 15 plays a pivotal role, both literally and figuratively, in respect of the growing urgence of the question about gentiles in the Church and the commandments incumbent on them (11:2f; 15:5; 21:20f). Similarly, in the narrative Paul gives of his relations 66 Discontinued: Goguel, ‘Collecte’, 316f; rejected: Wedderburn, ‘Collection’, 104 n27. The rejection theory is contradicted by Acts 21:16–26 (continuing the ‘we-passage’) and 24:17f (on which see below); cf Fitzmyer, Romans, 726. 67 Josephus, War 7:218; Suetonius, Domit 12.2; Cassius Dio, Hist rom 66.7.2. See Stern, GLAJJ, nos. 320, 430; Smallwood, The Jews, 345, 371–376; Goodman, ‘Fiscus Iudaicus’; Heemstra, Fiscus Judaicus. 68 Wedderburn, ‘Collection’; Downs, ‘Collection’.
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with Jerusalem in Gal 1:15–2:21, not only can a parallel build-up be discerned, but the extensively covered apostles’ meeting in Jerusalem as well occurs in the middle. In both narratives, the question of the position of gentile Christians is central, and it is resolved with a similar agreement aiming at enabling lawobserving Jews and non-observant gentiles to co-exist in the churches. These parallels make it probable that the Jerusalem meeting in Gal 2:1–10 is identical with the one in Acts 15:6–29, rather than with the brief hint [155] in Acts 11:30 which contains no such meeting nor involves questions about gentile Christians. It follows that Acts 11:29 does not refer to Paul’s collection for the saints but to a separate relief campaign by the Antioch church in response to the intervention of prophets from Jerusalem.69 As to the Jerusalem conference, it seems we must accept that Luke was unwilling or unable to mention the request by the apostles to ‘remember the poor’ and the collection for the Jerusalem church initiated by Paul. The second relevant passage is the narrative of Paul’s last travel from Macedonia through Achaia and Asia Minor to Jerusalem in Acts 20–21. At an emotional meeting in Ephesus Paul holds what may be heard as a farewell discourse,70 saying, ‘The Holy Spirit testifies to me (…) that imprisonment and afflictions await me’ (Acts 20:22f). Indeed upon his arrival in Jerusalem, zealot elements get him arrested on the suspicion of sacrilege. It is plausible to associate this with what Rom 15:25–31 relates about Paul’s journey to Jerusalem with the collection moneys.71 If indeed Acts is about the same journey, this would explain an element in the narrative which otherwise is not well understood. Acts 20:4 gives a detailed list of persons from various cities, most of whom in pairs, who accompany Paul on this journey, without explaining why. As this is in the middle of a ‘we passage’ suggesting the narrator was present without mentioning himself, some scholars read the list as ‘a piece of traditional information’ without function in the narrative.72 That would not be like Luke. More likely, he is indeed referring to the journey also mentioned in Rom 15 but for his own reasons does not mention the collection. In that case, Paul was delivering his ‘collection for the saints’ with a heavy delegation from the churches of gentiles. If the author of the ‘we-passages’ (and likely of Acts) had remained in Philippi until joining Paul directly at Troas (Acts 16:11f; 20:6, ἡμεῖς δὲ ἐξεπλεύσαμεν), he would be a co-organizer of the collection as a representative from Philippi.73 Other co69 Eusebius CH 2.12.2 links this episode with the famine in Judaea and the relief organized by Queen Helena of Adiabene which is mentioned by Josephus, Ant 20:101. 70 Cf Marguerat, ‘Enigma’. 71 E. g. Munck, Paulus, 288; Georgi, Remembering, 122–127. 72 Koch, ‘Kollektenbericht’, esp 376–380; Wedderburn, ‘Collection’, 104 n25 and 26, also mentioning H. Conzelmann and G. Lüdemann. 73 Thus Munck, Paulus, 289; the possibility is further explored by Pilhofer, Philippi. The lavish gifts from Philippi hinted at in Paul’s letter to that city (see above at n61) would tie in with this possibility. Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, 498 and Wedderburn, ‘Collection’, 104–108 think it just concerns a travel company.
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organizers not mentioned here are possibly Stephanas (1 Cor 16:15) and, with certainty, Titus (2 Cor 8:6, 16, 23). Given Luke’s [156] modesty, his involvement could be an additional reason for him to be silent about the collection.74 The third relevant element in Acts is Paul’s defence before Felix following his arrest. In his apology he says he has done nothing punishable, explaining he had come up ‘to worship in Jerusalem … to bring to my nation alms and offerings (ἐλεημοσύνας ποιήσων εἰς τὸ ἔθνος μου … καὶ προσφοράς), during which they found me purified in the Temple, without any crowd or tumult’ (Acts 24:17f). It is clear that this must relate to what is reported in Acts 21:26 about Paul’s participating in a sanctification rite at James’ proposal. Indeed in 24:17 Paul says he made these financial contributions not to the Jerusalem church or their poor, but ‘to my people’, i. e., to the poor’s fund in the Temple.75 Luke here presents Paul as faithfully fulfilling his duties as a Jew, after James had recalled the rule that believing gentiles are only obliged to keep the prohibitions of ‘idol offerings, blood, strangled meat, and unchastity’ (21:25). The fact that we are told here that Paul has come to Jerusalem bringing money76 makes the silence about ‘the collection for the saints’ all the more striking. If for reasons of his own Luke prefers not to mention Paul’s collection, he does give a piece of information which becomes the more significant if combined with the evidence from Paul’s own letters. It concerns his well-known double-report on the community of goods in the pristine Jerusalem church. Thus we read in Acts: And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to common life (κοινωνία), to the breaking of bread, and the prayers. (…) And all who believed were together and had all things in common (εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινά); and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the Temple together and breaking bread in their homes … (Acts 2:42–46) Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common (ἅπαντα κοινά). (…) There was not [157] a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need. (Acts 4:32–35)
74 The author’s modesty is seen from the contrast between the ‘we-passages’ in Acts and his prologues (Luke 1:1–4; Acts 1:1f) which identify his protector but not himself – unlike Josephus, Ant 1:1; Life 1–6, 430. 75 Downs, ‘Collection’, 66. Cf Safrai–Tomson, ‘Paul’s Collection for the Saints’, 179–181 for evidence on charity procedures in the Temple. Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, 571 overstates his point by explaining that Luke thus indicates the collection in order to prove Paul’s law observance. Fitzmyer, Acts, 736 simply accepts it concerns Paul’s collection which ‘Luke has not emphasized … to the same extent as did Paul himself’. 76 Similarly Wedderburn, ‘Collection’, 104.
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In the continuation of the last passage, Barnabas is mentioned as one of those who sold part of his property and ‘laid the money at the apostles’ feet’ (4:36; cf 5:1–6). Significantly, Barnabas was also Paul’s companion who according to Gal 2:10 was to organize the collection together with Paul. Moreover we hear that the collected money functioned as a common treasure ‘to make distribution to those who had need’. More soberly said: those who did not work because they continuously attended the Temple, were in need of donations for living. The mention of ‘the apostles’ feet’ symbolizes spiritual authority being paid tribute to. It is likely that these reports preserve authentic tradition. Not only would this be in line with Luke’s particular method, but it is confirmed by the similarity with the Essenes and their community of goods as described by Josephus: ‘Their community of goods (κοινωνικόν) is tryly admirable; … new members on admission to the sect shall confiscate their property to the order’ (War 2:122). Although we have no information about the economical organization of the Jerusalem church in the subsequent decades, there is no reason to assume that the partial sharing of goods and the relying on gifts were abolished by Paul’s time. Some confirmation is found in the Didache which preserves elaborate instructions about the common treasure of a late first century church, usually located in Antioch (Did 11–13). The implication would be that the moneys which Paul collected from the gentile churches were destined for the communal treasure of the Jerusalem church, similar to the donations of Barnabas and others mentioned at the beginning of Acts.77 We have already referred to the likelihood that this also covered the ex officio right of the apostles to sustenance, as we have it for ‘prophets and teachers’ in the Didache passage just cited. We may venture one speculative step further. We noted that the implied author of Acts was among the delegation from diaspora churches companying Paul on his last journey to Jerusalem, and that he joined the company coming from Philippi, where he had ‘stayed some days’ (Acts 16:11f; 20:6). If indeed this journey is identical with the one Paul mentions in Rom 15:25f, Luke would likely have been among those contributing the money from the Philippians – those to whom Paul later writes to thank them for their lavish financial support, ostensibly during his emprisonment in [158] Rome.78 These connections would make the repeated detailed report on the communal church treasure in Jerusalem fully understandable.
Similarly Ogereau, ‘Jerusalem Collection’, 377 as against Hengel, Property, 35. Cf the probably authentic information that ‘Luke is only with me’, 2 Tim 4:11, and cf Col 4:14. Bruce, New Testament History, 354 cautiously accepts the possibility that Luke joined the company with money from Philippi, but ibid. 364 rejects the ‘particularly doubtful’ evidence of Philippians. 77 78
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Summary of Historical and Literary Evidence We possess references to the collection for the Jerusalem church in Paul’s four ‘major’ letters. Clearly, the campaign was central to his work and has correctly been understood as a key to his intentions and theology. It was a large-scale project, running for at least a couple of years in Galatia, Macedonia, and Achaia.79 It was a ‘collection for the saints’ from the ‘churches of gentiles’ (cf Rom 16:4) strategically planned and energetically carried out by Paul himself.80 1 Cor 16:1–4 appears to give the most matter-of-fact information on the campaign. Paul calls it by the technical term of λογεία, ‘collection’; it is to be carried out in Corinth (and probably elsewhere) as it is in Galatia; and it is intended for the church of Jerusalem, where it will be sent through an embassy or by a group of people led by Paul himself. Gal 2:10, embedded in the stratified rhetorical build-up of Galatians, adds to our information that the collection apparently was the outcome of an agreement between Paul and the other apostles, aimed at expressing the reciprocity between the Jewish and gentile parts of the Church and recognizing the spiritual leadership of the Jerusalem community. It is also clear, however, that subsequent developments have jeopardized the agreement and quite probably also the unanimity about the collection. 2 Cor 8–9 seems to confirm this impression. The Corinthian church, which may be assumed to have still collaborated wholeheartedly in the collection a year earlier, now needs to be persuaded to carry on or to resume. We also hear that the churches in Macedonia participate, setting the example. In Corinth, there is now strong resistance to the collection, while radicalized Judaeo-Christians are questioning Paul’s authority as an apostle. The political dimensions of the situation sensed in 2 Cor 8–9 can be gauged in Rom 15. Paul is carrying the contributions from Macedonia and Achaia to Jerusalem.81 The opposition to this gentile tribute seems to have [159] grown, first of all in Judaea. Judaeo-Christians seem to be influenced by the movement of ‘zealot’ Jews in Judaea, radicals who endanger Paul and his mission to the gentiles. Unflinchingly, he keeps presenting the collection as a material gift from the gentiles in return for the spiritual generosity of the Jerusalem church. Acts is eloquently silent on the collection, although Paul’s career, the relations between Jews and non-Jews, and the importance of Jerusalem are all central themes. Possible indirect allusions were found, which makes the silence all the more remarkable. Maybe the author wanted to dissimulate his own active involvement out of modesty. More importantly, he wrote after the revolt, when Cf Scott, Paul and the Nations for the geographical implications of Paul’s plan. Munck, Paul; Jervell, ‘Letter’; Berger, ‘Almosen’. 81 It is not clear what the omission of Galatia means, cf above n40. Achaia (hence probably also Corinth) has finally continued its participation. 79 80
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the Temple tax had been converted into a tax for the Roman Jupiter temple as a punishment, and it may just have been unwise to mention the collection. As we have said, the historical perspective in which we are presenting the sources is not new. It consists in a modification of Baur’s scenario by viewing the arrival of Judaeo-Christian emissaries from Judaea in Corinth and Galatia in an evolutionary perspective, and by explaining Paul’s defense not from his opposition to the Jewish law as such but to emerging zealot radicalism.82 After all, the Judaeo-Christian opposition he came up against had much older roots, as it somehow echoes the reputed hesitation of Jesus and, initially, of his disciple Peter vis-à-vis the inclusion of gentiles in their movement (Mark 7:27; Acts 10:28).83 However, if we are to believe Acts 10–11, Peter and the other apostles had subsequently become convinced that gentiles should be admitted. And when questions arose, both Acts and Paul himself testify that the apostles formalized their previous informal agreement to welcome gentile ‘believers’, much as many synagogues used to admit ‘Godfearing’ non-Jews in their midst (Acts 15; Gal 2:1–10). Later still, this more liberal attitude increasingly came under pressure, and this is the situation Paul is facing in Galatians, 2 Corinthians, and Romans. Our survey of the sources also has implications for the literary questions about 2 Corinthians. Heedful of Ockham’s razor, we have avoided the purely hypothetical multiplication of letters and given the ‘more difficult’ extant text a try. This has implied that the difference between the treatment of the collection in 1 and 2 Corinthians must be read as reflecting a sharp historical change. Such a reading is put into relief by the fierce polemics in 2 Cor 3–5 and 10–13, as distinct from the restrained language throughout 1 Corinthians. We have also stated, however, that the import of external evidence will be crucial. [160] We can now establish that such evidence has been found both in other letters of Paul’s and in Acts. Let us summarize it once again for clarity’s sake, also pointing at some further evidence. First, the sequence of events encased in Paul’s account in Galatians as we have analysed it involves a development from a situation where no questions were asked about the mission to the gentiles (Gal 1:21–24), via one where the Jerusalem agreement was needed to quell precisely such questions that had meanwhile arisen (2:1–10), on to one where men ‘from James’ called this very agreement into question (2:11–21), and finally to the situation at the time of writing, when Christian preachers urging gentile Christians to judaize were signalled in Galatia (1:1–12; 6:11–18). Second, an analogous development is described in Acts. Even if this work is evidently later than Paul’s letters and its author may be suspected to know these, 82 Jewett, ‘Agitators’ has proposed this developmental perspective in view of Galatians. For some elaboration with special reference to Romans see above, ‘Doers of the Law’, final section. 83 Cf on the implications of these passages above, ‘Shifting Perspectives’.
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some significant divergencies in the details make it reasonable to treat Acts as a source external to Paul. The initial, relatively peaceful unfolding of Paul’s apostolate to the gentiles is narrated in Acts 11:25–14:28 – significantly, in the wake of that of Peter’s (10:1–11:18). A next stage is announced by the critical questions about the gentile’s attitude to the law asked first in Antioch, then in Jerusalem; the apostolic agreement is meant to remedy this (15:1–16:5). A third stage, in which Jewish Christians ‘zealous for the law’ seriously doubt Paul’s reliability vis-à-vis the law, is signalled in Acts 21. True to the ‘zealot’ spirit, they manage to get Paul arrested on the suspicion of sacrilege by bringing gentiles into the Temple (21:28). Third, the last, radicalized stage reflected in Galatians and Acts seems also evidenced in Romans 15. We recall that the collection was intended by mutual agreement to be a tribute from the gentile diaspora churches to the Jewish church of Jerusalem. When finally travelling to Jerusalem with the money, however, Paul expresses apprehension about the ‘unbelieving in Judaea’ who endanger this mission, apparently using their leverage over certain Jerusalemite Christians. A fourth source, external to the New Testament, would be found in Josephus’ reports of the deteriorating situation in Judaea prior to the Jewish war against Rome (War 2:204–408). The value of this evidence, however, is called into question in the present volume by Martin Goodman and therefore in all fairness cannot be discussed here.84 A fifth source, also outside the New Testament, are the rabbinic traditions about the differences of the Shammaite and Hillelite factions of Pharisees, notably in regard of gentiles, which apparently culminated in armed [161] Shammaite violence against Hillelites.85 In isolation, these traditions are hard to pinpoint chronologically, but they can be of value in combination with the better datable sources we have been quoting. As such, they do illustrate the rampant agitation, especially vis-à-vis non-Jews, in Judaea since the late 50’s CE. We sum up. On the historical level, sources external to the Corinthian correspondence reflect a gradual shift during the 50’s CE from a more pluralist climate to one of agitated insistence on Jewishness and law observance. This confirms that the difference in tone between 1 and 2 Corinthians reflects a change in the external situation. At the same time, on the literary level, it confirms the wisdom of the wager to refrain from complicated composition theories and to read 2 Corinthians as an integral document. It also confirms that as to our theme proper, the collection, the elaborate plea 2 Cor 8–9 to resume participating
84 The intention is to do so in a separate study [see ‘Sources on the Politics of Judaea’, in this volume.] 85 See Tomson, ‘Christ, Belial, and Women’ [in this volume, 427f].
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reflects the impact in Corinth of the rising tide of judaizing zealotry in Judaea and in the Judaean churches.
‘Saints’ in Ancient Jewish and Christian Usage Having assessed the historical and literary parameters of the collection, let us now study the the term ‘saints’ used by Paul, and with it, arguably, an aspect of the cultural and spiritual background of his campaign. This terminology is used even in the most matter-of-fact reference in 1 Cor 16:1 and seems to be a set phrase. As we shall see, the word has cultic and apocalyptic associations and seems to have been especially cherished in traditions associated with the figures of Daniel and Enoch. Moreover Paul’s use of a collection ‘for the saints’ without specifying that it concerns those in Jerusalem suggests the appellation was once used especially for the Jerusalem church.86 The biblical adjective ( קדושkadosh) is translated in Septuagint Greek ἅγιος and in Aramaic ;קדישאwe shall use the translations ‘saintly’ or ‘holy’. As referring to humans, especially in the plural, the word typically appears in writings post-dating the rise of Christianity, foremost in the New Testament epistles. The usage is not drawn from the Greek-speaking world,87 since it was not common there until the Byzantine period, and there certainly was no social group given this title. If special qualities were attributed to a personage such as [162] Apollonius of Tyana, we never find the qualification ‘holy’. The word must derive from biblical tradition. In the Hebrew Bible, the term קדושrefers most often to the Sovereign of the world and to the Temple. In humans, it signifies association with the divine and/ or the cult, and it also has a moral and a ritual aspect.88 The root קדשoften relates to the priests, as in: ‘You shall anoint Aaron and his sons and sanctify them ( )וקדשת אתםto serve me.’89 In priestly usage, the community of Israel is called upon to be holy, always involving dissociation from unholy matters: והתקדשתם והייתם קדושים כי קדוש אני, ‘Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.’90 Thus the entire nation is once called holy: ‘And you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ ()גוי קדוש.91 In the singular, the leading priest which God will choose will be הקדוש, ‘the holy one’ (Num 16:7). Outside the sphere of the sanctuary, the prophet Elisha is once called איש אלהים קדוש, ‘a 86 Correctly so Holl, ‘Kirchenbegriff’, 59; Georgi, Remembering, 33f. See esp Bauckham, ‘Jerusalem Church’, 79–83 and the references there. 87 See Proksch, art. ἅγιος, 88 for the occurrence in Greek. 88 Cf Proksch ibid. 89. 89 Exod 30:30; cf 29:44. 90 Lev 11:44; cf 11:45; 19:2; 20:7, 26; 21:6; Exod 22:30. 91 Exod 19:6; cf Deut 7:6; 14:21; 28:9.
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holy man of God’ (2 Kgs 4:9). Twice, the term appears in the Psalms in the plural referring to humans: לקדושים אשר בארץ, ‘As for the saints in the land’ (Ps 16:3); יראו את ה’ קדשיו, ‘O fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no want’ (Ps 34:10). This usage is carried on in Psalms of Solomon 17:34, ‘There is no lawlessness in their midst in his days, they are all saints (ὅτι πάντες ἅγιοι) and their king is the Anointed of the Lord.’ A different meaning of the word appears in the prophet Zechariah in connection with the Day of the Lord: ‘Then the Lord your God will come, and all the holy ones with him’ (Zech 14:5, ;כל קדשים עמךLXX, πάντες οἱ ἅγιοι μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ). In this apocalyptic setting, the word seems to refer to angels. A specialised usage begins to show up in the book of Daniel. In the Aramaic apocalypse in chapter 7, the kingdom is given the chosen ones who are called ‘the saints of the Most High’ or ‘the people of the saints of the Most High’ ([]עם קדישי עליונין, Dan 7:18, 22, 27); the Septuagint translation is also important for us: ἅγιοι ὑψίστου. The ‘horn’, i. e. the evil king, ‘makes war with the saints ( )קדישיןand prevails over them’, but in the end, ‘the saints receive the kingdom’ (ומלכותא החסנו קדישין, τὸ βασίλειον κατέσχον οἱ ἅγιοι, 7:21f). This usage is carried on in the Hebrew part of the book, where the king of Greece ‘destroys mighty men and the people of the saints’ (עם קדושים, Dan 8:24). For our survey it is important to note that the apocalypse in Dan 7 also contains the motif of one ‘like a son of man’ (כבר אנש, ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου) who comes with the clouds of heaven and appears before the Ancient of Days and his myriads of angels (Dan 7:13). [163] The Danielic language is adopted in the Qumran documents, although often, the word קדושhere refers to angels.92 In the War Scroll, we read: לאל ישראל המלוכה ולקדושי עמו יעשה חיל, ‘For kingship belongs to the God of Israel and with the holy ones of his nation he will work wonders’, and again, ובקדושי עמו יעשה גבורה, ‘… and with the holy ones of his people he will perform a mighty deed’.93 Especially the Rule of the Community calls the community by such striking expressions as בית קודש לישראל וסוד קודש קודשים לאהרון,מטעת עולם, ‘an everlasting plantation, a holy house for Israel and the foundation of the holy of holies for Aaron’.94 The specialised usage of ‘the saints’ thus seems to develop in circles entertaining apocalyptic traditions like those of the book of Daniel. A further stage is evidenced in the so-called ‘Book of the Similitudes’ or ‘Parables’ which makes up the second of the five ‘books’ of the Ethiopic apocalypse of Enoch (1 En Bauckham, ‘Jerusalem Church’, 81, in dialogue with the Daniel commentary by J. J. Col-
92
lins.
1QM 6:6; 16:1; cf 4Q511 frg 2 i:6. 8:5–6 (cf Isa 60:21); cf 1QS 8:8–9; 9:6. Cf also 1QS 9:8, אנשי הקודש ההולכים בתמים, ‘the men of holiness who walk in perfection’. 93
94 1QS
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37–71).95 This also seems to be the stage where Jewish usage begins to spill over in what will subsequently be called ‘Christianity’. The importance of the Enochic traditions for early Christianity has drawn increased interest of scholars since the Aramaic Enoch fragments discovered at Qumran gave more substance to the dating of the various texts. Early Christian authors are notable for their liberal borrowings from these traditions, but since the late third century CE this liberality has all but disappeared in mainline Christian literature, in apparent coincidence with the growing awareness of an authoritative, i. e., ‘non-heretical’, ‘canon’ of Scriptures.96 For the early period, however, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that Christianity is unthinkable without the Enoch connection.97 Nor is Enoch completely absent from rabbinic literature, notably in the Hebrew Apocalypse of Enoch also known as Sefer Hekhalot or 3 Enoch.98 A feature of these traditions which is especially important for us are the border crossings between heaven and earth, between angels and humans. This is poignantly expressed in the motifs of Enoch’s heavenly journeys and angelic transfiguration (1 En 70; 2 En 22; 3 En 4), developments of the narrative fragment of Enoch’s translation found in Gen 5:22–24. The reader of the New Testament is reminded of course of Jesus’ [164] transfiguration and ascension; the angelic appearance of the glorified Christ in Revelation also comes to mind.99 Along with the somewhat later date of the pertinent Enoch passages, this raises the question of the direction of influence, i. e. from Jewish Enoch traditions to Christian ones, or the reverse.100 Possible answers are contingent on the doubtful possibility to separate ‘Jewish’ from ‘Christian’ elements at this stage, and anyway they are not decisive for our discussion. The fact is that in one of the older parts of 1 Enoch we read that the Lord of the universe ‘will arrive with ten million of the holy ones in order to execute judgment upon all’ (1 En 1:9). This recalls the quotation from Zechariah we have made above. It is also more or less the sentence we shall find quoted in the Epistle of Jude, and it is closely related to other references to the coming of ‘the Lord’ with his holy ones or angels basic to early Christian tradition. A related important motif shared by the Enoch traditions and earliest Christian literature is the ‘son of man’. In the Enoch literature, it appears solely in the Book of 95 Bauckham,
‘Jerusalem Church’, 81–83. VanderKam, ‘1 Enoch’; Adler, ‘Introduction’, 25–29. To be sure it were (non-Catholic) Christian churches who preserved much of the Enoch literature. 97 See Rowland–Morray-Jones, Mystery. [The Enochic background of the synoptic tradition has been emphasised by Gabriele Boccaccini, see, e. g., the various studies gathered in Stuckenbruck–Boccaccini, Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels.] 98 Cf the introduction in Alexander, ‘3 Enoch’. 99 Mark 9:2–8; Acts 1:9–11; Rev 1:12–20 (with clear Danielic/Enochic allusions). See Rowland–Morray-Jones, Mystery, esp chapters 3 and 4. 100 Milik, Books, 89–107 considers 1 En 37–71 a Christian composition. VanderKam, ‘Major Issues’, 358–362 criticizes this position. Cf also VanderKam, ‘1 Enoch’, 33. 96 See
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Similitudes, which scholars date to around the beginning of the Common Era. Remarkably, this is also where we find a number of references to ‘the holy ones’ meaning the elect or righteous on earth.101 Let us quote one remarkable passage, which incidentally shows no specifically Christian features:102 … For the Son of Man was concealed from the beginning, and the Most High One preserved him in the presence of his power; then he revealed him to the holy and the elect ones. The congregation of the holy ones shall be planted, and all the elect ones shall stand before him. (1 En 62:7–8)
As to Christian sources, an archaic use seems to be found in Did 4:2, as part of the originally Jewish Two Ways Tractate: ‘Seek every day the presence of the saints (τὸ πρόσωπον τῶν ἁγίων)103 that you may find rest in their [165] words’ – involving a glaring Hebraism, cf פני הקדושים, and thus probably reflecting a Palestinian provenance. Here, the word ‘saints’ has acquired the solemn intimacy of the daily gathering of the elect. A related usage, κολλᾶσθαι τοῖς ἁγίοις, ‘to adhere to the saints’ as a norm for pious behaviour, is evidenced in a quotation from an unknown source in 1 Clement and in a standardized phrase in the Pastor Hermae, which also points to ancient usage; moreover there is a perfect equivalent in Tannaic Hebrew.104 There is no indication that the appellation is exclusive to one locality; it rather seems to be a general designation. Therefore it is likely that the generalised use of ‘the saints’ for the local Christian communities is no innovation of Paul’s, as has been suggested,105 but derives from earliest Christian and possibly even pre-Christian, Enochic usage. Acts also has some archaicsounding occurrences of ‘saints’ which belong here; the archaism involved may well be intentional.106 In such passages, the phrase ‘the saints’ appears to designate the community in its sacred assembly. In Paul’s epistles, the address used in a number of cases, τοῖς ἁγίοις, ‘to the saints’,107 is remarkable, the more so in view of the frequent Pauline themes of 101 Bauckham,
‘Jerusalem Church’, 81f. ‘hidden Messiah’ is a theme known from rabbinic literature, and the ‘planting’ of the ‘people of the righteous’ is a reference to Isa 60:21 also known from Qumran, see esp 1QS 8:5, למטעת עולם בית קודש לישראל. 103 Ms H; cf Doctrina Apostolorum, require autem facies sanctorum (probably reflecting a pre-Christian version of the Two Ways: Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache, 61–63). Const Apost and Barn 19:10 (mss) read τὰ πρόσωπα τῶν ἁγίων. 104 1 Clem 46:2, γέγραπται γάρ· “κολλᾶσθαι τοῖς ἁγίοις, ὅτι οἱ κολλώμενοι αὐτοῖς ἁγιασθήσονται”. Herm 14:2; 74:1, οἱ τοῖς ἁγίοις μὴ κολλώμενοι. Cf SifDeut ekev 49 (p114f), הדבק בחכמים ובתלמידיהם, ‘Adhere to the sages and their disciples’. Taking inspiration from Deut 11:22, ולדבקה בו, ‘To adhere to Him’, the allusion is to mysticism. 105 Holl, ‘Kirchenbegriff’, see above at n32. 106 Using ‘authentic’ language for ancient history is typical of Luke. See Acts 9:13 (and 26:10!); 9:32 and 9:41, ‘the saints’ in Jerusalem, Lydda, and Joppa, respectively, in the last case in the interesting combination, οἱ ἅγιοι καὶ αἱ χήραι. Similarly Proksch, art. ἅγιος, 108 (‘In der Judenchristenheit enthalten’). 107 2 Cor 1:1; Eph 1:1; Phil 1:1; Col 1:2. 102 The
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‘boasting’ and ‘justification through faith’.108 Added to the sources we have just reviewed, this enhances the likelihood that Paul adopted the usage from primitive Christian tradition. The intimate aspect we have just pointed out is found in concluding salutation formulae such as the following interesting example: ‘All the saints (πάντες οἱ ἅγιοι) greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household’ (Phil 4:22).109 Paul also uses the verb ἁγιάζειν, ‘to sanctify’, among other connections referring to baptism.110 [166] Of special significance for our subject is the traditional usage of ‘love’ (ἀγάπη) and ‘service’ (διακονία) towards ‘the saints’ in a generalised sense.111 The phrase διακονία εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους, ‘service to the saints’ as referring to the collection for Jerusalem, links up with this. It makes the singular use, λογεία εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους, ‘collection for the saints’ (1 Cor 16:1) stand out as a technical phrase. The stronger is the impression that ‘the saints’ here is a set phrase indicating the Jerusalem church. A special usage in two of Paul’s letter headings deserves mention here: the address κλητοὶς ἁγίοις, ‘to those called as saints’ (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:2). Again, this seems to echo an archaic or at least solemn usage. A likely suggestion is that it relates to the Pentateuchal phrase, מקרא קדש, ‘holy assembly’,112 which the Septuagint translates as (ἡμέρα) κλητὴ ἁγία.113 Some confirmation of this link is found in the names of two war banners in the War Scroll: קהל אלand קרואי אל, ‘the called ones of God’ and ‘assembly of God’, which translated in Greek would be, ἐκκλησία θεοῦ and κλητοὶ θεοῦ.114 A veritable play on these words appears in 1 Cor 1:2, where the κλητοὶ ἅγιοι constitute the ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ and are being addressed along ‘with all those who call upon (ἐπικαλουμένοις) the name of the Lord’. The phrase ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ, which is not infrequent in Paul, as well must be ancient. Another remarkable phrase in Paul is ἐκκλησίαι τῶν ἁγίων, ‘the churches of the saints’ (1 Cor 14:33), whose custom is cited as authority for the obligation of women to remain silent during assemblies.115 108 Boasting (καυχάομαι): cf 1 Cor 1:29, 31; Rom 2:17, 23. The καυχα‑ root appears 29× in 2 Cor, as often as in all Paul’s other letters. The typical association of καυχα‑ and δικ‑ appears in Rom 3:26f; 4:2f; 1 Cor 1:28–30. 109 Cf also Rom 16:15; 2 Cor 13:12; Heb 13:24. 110 1 Cor 6:11, ἀλλὰ ἀπελούσασθε, ἀλλὰ ἡγιάσησθε, ἀλλὰ έδικαιώθητε, ‘but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified.’ These may well be traditional phrases. See also the letter address, 1 Cor 1:2, ἡγιασμένοις ἐν Χριστῳ ᾿Ιησοῦ, κλητοῖς ἁγίοις, and the very special usage referring to mixed marriage, 1 Cor 7:14, ἡγιάσται γὰρ ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ ἄπιστος ἐν τῇ γυναικὶ καὶ ἡγιάσται ἡ γυνή ἡ ἄπιστος ἐν τῷ ἀδελφῷ. 111 Rom 12:13; 1 Cor 16:15; Eph 1:15; 4:12; Col 1:4; 1 Tim 5:10; Phlm 5, 7; Heb 6:10. 112 Proksch, art. ἅγιος, 108. 113 Exod 12:16; Exod 23 (8×); Num 28:25; the phrase is left untranslated once in Exod and 5 times in Num. 114 1QM 4:10, cf ‘Christ, Belial, and Women’, [above 447–449]. The leaders are called אנשי השם קרואי המועד וכול ראשי אבות העדהin 1QM 2:7, which clearly varies Num 16:2, נשיאי עדה קראי ;מועד אנשי שםand similarly קרואי העדה, Num 1:16; 26:9. 115 For both expressions see ‘Christ, Belial, and Women’, ibid.
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In early Christianity as well, the ‘holy assembly’ and its prayers are viewed as directly relating to the angels, and this is where we begin to see the border crossings. We find this most expressively in the Revelation of John, a book preserving altogether remarkable Judaeo-Christian traditions: ‘And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints (προσευχαὶ τῶν ἁγίων πάντων) upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense [167] rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God.’116 A most remarkable and apparently archaic phrase is Rev 20:9, τὴν παρεμβολὴν τῶν ἁγίων καὶ τὴν πόλιν τὴν ἠγαπημένην, ‘the camp of the holy ones and the beloved city’ which the gentiles besieged. There must be a relation here − however distant − with the War Scroll, where holy warriors and angels are described fighting side by side.117 Similar angelic-human correspondences are also found elsewhere in early Christian literature, though more modestly. The tiny Epistle of Jude contains both ‘the faith once for all delivered to the saints’ and the explicit quote, ‘Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads (ἦλθεν κύριος ἐν ἁγίαις μυριάσιν αὐτοῦ), to execute judgment on all …’ (Jude 3, 14). In Paul, we must point out the angels he senses being present during community worship, necessitating women to wear veils ‘because of the angels’.118 Also, Paul knows of those who ‘speak in the tongues of men and of angels’ (1 Cor 13:1), and once, becoming ‘foolish’, he grants us an echo of his own angelic auditions − although the ‘angel of Satan’ is right at his side to prevent him from being arrogant (2 Cor 12:4, 7, 11). The apocalyptic aspect has an eschatological dimension. Here, ‘saints’ and ‘angels’ are sometimes interchangeable. The link with the Enoch tradition is clearest here, and next to ‘saints’, the ‘son of man’ appears. Thus in the letters to the upheaval-ridden Thessalonian church we read of ‘the parousia of our Lord Jesus with all his saints’ (μετὰ πάντων τῶν ἁγίων ἀυτοῦ) and of ‘that day … when he comes to be glorified in his saints’ (ἐν τοῖς ἁγίοις ἀυτοῦ, 1 Thess 3:13; 2 Thess 1:10). We know other variants of this phrase from the Didache and the synoptic tradition. We hear both, ‘The Lord will come with his holy ones’ (καὶ οἱ ἅγιοι μετ᾽ ἀυτοῦ, Did 16:7), and ‘the Son of man … when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels’ (μετὰ τῶν ἀγγέλων τῶν ἁγίων, Mark 8:38; cf Matt 16:27). We have already cited the phrase of the coming of ‘the Lord
116 Rev 8:3f; cf 5:8. This tradition could have influenced the verse in Tob 12:15 mss A B, with ‘holy angels’, ‘prayers of the holy’, and ‘the Holy One’; cf ms S where all this is lacking. 117 1QM 12:7, ;ועדה קדושיכם בתוכנו לעזר עולמים1QM 7:6, no minors, women, handicapped or unclean may go out to war with them, כיא מלאכי קודש עם צבאותם יחד, ‘for the holy angels are together with their armies’. 118 1 Cor 11:10. For this aspect of Paul’s ecclesiology see ‘Christ, Belial, and Women’ [above 446–449].
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with his holy myriads’ which the Epistle of Jude attributes to Enoch, ‘the seventh from Adam’ (Jude 14). The link with the Enoch tradition is explicit. Subsidiary influence on the early Christian use of the term ‘saints’ may have come from the Elijah − Elisha tradition. As we have seen, the Hebrew Bible calls Elijah once ‘a holy man of God’. The Elijah − Elisha motif is prominent in [168] the synoptic tradition,119 as is seen from a number of miracle stories120 and from the association of John the Baptist with Elijah.121 More central to our subject, Elijah appears to Jesus along with Moses during the transfiguration on top of the mountain (Mark 9:4 and parallels). The predilection for the Elijah figure rather belongs to the register of popular religion, as is also clear from the way it appears in rabbinic literature.122 However the connection with the word ‘holy’ is too rare to be of much significance for us. Summing up now, our survey teaches us that major importance must be given to the Enochic-Danielic motifs of ‘the saints’ in heaven and on earth and of the ‘son of man’. Among early Christian sources, the ‘son of man’ motif has virtually remained restricted to the synoptic Gospels and some Jesus sayings in John. The only other reference in the New Testament is in Stephen’s speech before his executioners, which has a clear Enochic-Danielic ring: ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened and the son of man standing at the right hand of God’ (Acts 7:56). Thus it seems a safe guess that the ‘Christian’ appropriation of the Enochic ‘son of man’ motif originated in the Jewish milieu where Jesus was educated.123 Along with the ‘son of God’ and ‘son of David’ motifs it is likely to have belonged to the central elements of the thought world of Jesus himself. The typical appellation of ‘the saints’ for the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples, especially in their solemn assemblies, seems to derive from these same surroundings. We have it nowhere attributed to Jesus, although we have a saying of his comparing resurrected humans with ‘angels’.124 The earliest appearance in our sources seems to be Did 4:2 which was cited above and which seems closely related to Palestinian Judaeo-Christian tradition.125 If this is acceptable, it would both explain the special meaning of the term designating the primitive Jerusalem church and its successive application to all communities of Christians. If we are to go by the book of Acts, the Jerusalem church was the first to come into existence after the terrible Passover events. While the Enoch motif of the ‘son 119 Elijah’s name appears 23 times. Also indirectly, in narrative such fragments as John 1:21, 25; Rom 11:22; Jas 5:17. 120 The bread multiplication, Mark 6:34–44; 8:1–9, cf 2 Kgs 4:42–44; the resuscitation of a boy at Nain, Luke 7:11–17, cf 1 Kgs 17:10–24; the ascension, Acts 1:8–9, cf 2 Kgs 2:11. 121 Mark 9:13, ‘Elijah has come’; Matt 11:14, John ‘is Elijah’. 122 Cf the baraita of Pinhas ben Yair, mSot 9:15, below at n135. 123 Bauckham, ‘Jerusalem Church’, 83 ascribes it to ‘the Jerusalem church’s own, original exegetical work’. For wider ramifications cf also Bauckham, Jude, chapter 7. 124 Mark 12:25, ὅταν … ἐκ νεκρῶν ἀναστῶσιν … εἰσὶν ὡς ἄγγελοι ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. 125 Above at n102.
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of man’ remained restricted to the Jesus tradition, that of ‘the saints’ passed into general Christian usage. Paul must have adopted this [169] terminology, both in its general meaning referring to the various assemblies of ‘saints’ and in its special use for the church where it all began – the one in Jerusalem that was led by Jesus’ brother, James, and his foremost disciples, Peter and John (Gal 1:18f; 2:9).
‘Holy Ones’ in Tannaic and Amoraic Literature For the sake of comparison in the framework of this paper, we extend our survey to include rabbinic literature. In this literature, the adjective קדושis a familiar element derived from biblical Hebrew, but its literary and semantic development is different. The plural קדושיםusually refers to all members of the Jewish people. Only rarely do the word and its cognates refer to priests, mostly in line with the biblical context that is the starting point of a midrash. For example, the expression איסור קדושה, ‘prohibitions on holiness’, refers to matrimonial prohibitions that apply only to priests.126 In this respect, there is a notable shift from Tannaic to Amoraic literature, i. e., in the early third century. As a rule, we do not find in Tannaic literature that the term ‘holy’ is used for special individuals who are above the common people. For example, in the wording of the confession of the High Priest on Yom Kippur it says, ‘Please God, I have transgressed and sinned before you, I and all my house and the sons of Aaron and your holy nation’ (mYom 4:2). The entire nation is called ‘holy’, not just the priests. Similarly, the child of a convert born after the father’s conversion is considered to have been born in ‘holiness’ as per its belonging to the Jewish people (mYev 11:1; mKet 4:3; tHor 2:10, e. g.). A special significance is given to the commandments: ‘And you will be holy men unto me’ (Exod 22:30) − R. Yishmael says, when you are holy, you are mine. Isi b. Yehuda says, when God introduces a mitsva to the Jews, He adds holiness to them. (MekRY mishpatim, kaspa 20, p320) From what it says, ‘Because you are a holy nation unto God’ (Deut 14:2). How? That is the holiness of mitsvot. Because every time the Holy One blessed be He gives the Jews another commandment he adds to their holiness. (MekRS 19:6, p139)
The message of these parallel sources is that observing commandments is a condition for holiness, and holiness applies to all those who observe the [170] commandments. This idea could (or should) be understood as polemic against the view that holiness is restricted to priests. It is repeated in many sources.127 Such is the situation in Tannaic literature, with two important exceptions: (1) a remarkable group called the ‘Holy Congregation in Jerusalem’, which we deal 126 mYev
2:4, cf Lev 21:6; 22:2. Such as MekRS 14:15; MekRY Beshalah shira 4; Sifra kedoshim 1.1.
127
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with separately in the next section; (2) the extraordinary appellation ‘our holy rabbi’ ( )רבינו הקדושused for R. Yehuda the Prince, who was the leader of the nation and of the sages of his generation, the editor of the Mishna, and a strong and admired leader.128 As we have said, there appears a shift in the Amoraic period. From the third century onwards, the term ‘holy’ became more widely used. It appears in inscriptions, as for example, ‘Rabbi Aninana and his saintly sons’ (רבי אנינאנה ובניו )הקדושים.129 It is also used to describe such individual sages as R. Meir, R. Nahum ‘a man of the Holy of Holies’, or Hanania son of the brother of R. Yoshua.130 There is even a midrash which says, ‘Anyone who separates himself from forbidden sexual relations is called holy. For the Shunamit tells the woman, “I knew that he is a holy man of God”’ (1 Kgs 4:9; yYev 2:4, 3d). If that is the case, even normal observant behaviour would be sufficient for being called ‘holy’. The shift between Tannaic and Amoraic thought may be only gradual. In Tannaic literature, only R. Yehuda the Prince received the title ‘Holy’.131 Also, a Tannaic midrash explains why a Nazirite is called holy, picking up on Num 6:8, ‘The way of separation and purity is called holy, and in addition, Scripture considers him a prophet’.132 The holy man is therefore a unique figure, and not only a Nazirite in a technical-formal sense. The Amoraic tradition may be understood to expand this definition, e. g., when saying in the name of R. Eliezer that ‘anyone who flagellates himself is called a holy man’; ‘anyone who observes the words of the sages is called holy’; or, ‘anyone who abstains from forbidden foods is called holy’.133 The idea that anyone who abstains from [171] forbidden sexual relations is called holy, which was mentioned already, is often repeated in the Amoraic midrash collections. It implies an inflation of the concept of holiness, turning it into a general qualification for anyone who behaves according to accepted religious norms. Angels play a lesser role in rabbinic literature than, for example, in the apocryphal literature or in the New Testament.134 Nevertheless, we also find a link being made between holiness among humans and the angels in rabbinic literature, as in the following tradition: 128 MekRY shira 2 (p125, )שאל אנטונינוס את רבינו הקדושand MekRY beshalah shira 6 (p137, idem), with many Amoraic parallels. 129 Avigad–Lifshitz, Beit Shearim 3: 72; cf another Greek inscription ibid. 74. 130 Such as ySan 10:5 (29c); yNed 6:8 (40a); ySan 1:2 (19a). In an inscription from Hurvat Sussia the donor is called, ‘his holiness rabbi Issi the Priest’: ;זכור לטובה קדושת מרי רבי איסי הכהן Naveh, On Stone, 115, no. 75. 131 Above n128. 132 SifZNum 6:8 (p242), quoting Amos 2:11, ‘And I raised up some of your sons for prophets, and some of your young men for Nazirites.’ 133 bTaan 11a; bYev 20a; MidrTann Deut 14:21 (p75). Midrash Tannaim was reconstructed mainly from post-Amoraic collections, and the Tannaic provenance of a particular midrash can never be taken for granted. 134 On angels in rabbinic literature cf Moore, Judaism 1: 401–413; Urbach, Sages, 135–183.
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Israel are called holy ( )קדושיםand the ministering angels are called holy. How do we know Israel are called holy? Because it says, ‘Israel is holy unto God’ (Jer 2:3). And how do we know it about the angels? Because it says, ‘The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones’ (Dan 4:14[17]). And you do not know which is holier than the other. But when it says, ‘Israel is holy unto God’ − (it implies) you are holier before Me than the ministering angels. (ARN b 44, p124)
The emphasis on the holiness of all Israel is characteristic of rabbinic tradition, as is the gentle irony in calling them even more holy than the ministering angels. In another tradition, R. Akiva is seen leading his multitudes of disciples כגבריאל בראש קדושים, ‘as Gabriel heading his holy ones’, and he is said to be דומה למלאכי השרת, ‘resembling the ministering angels’.135 Of special interest in this connection is the tradition of the ancient hasidim, the ‘pious individuals’ who are mentioned sporadically in rabbinic literature and are to be located in the fringes of the rabbinic movement. In their way of thinking, the concept of ‘holiness’ had a different place. We have mentioned the ‘holiness’ that according to rabbinic tradition is brought about by a special observance of commandments, in other words, taking on additional commandments. It is somewhat different in the philosophy of the hasidim. This is expressed, for example, in the chain saying attributed to R. Pinhas ben Yair: Expediency leads to cleanliness, cleanliness leads to purity, purity leads to separation, separation leads to holiness, holiness leads to modesty, modesty leads to fear of sin, fear of sin leads to piety ()חסידות, piety leads [172] to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit leads to the resurrection of the dead, and the resurrection of the dead comes by means of Elijah of blessed memory, Amen. (mSot 9:15)
Although preserved in the Mishna, this is a baraita, i. e., a tradition of Tannaim − or reputed to be so − recorded in Amoraic literature. It retains an echo from the hasidic tradition, emphasizing ‘piety’ and the fear of sin as supreme attributes and stating that piety leads to the Holy Spirit and to the revelation of Elijah. Furthermore, the baraita does not reflect the importance of Tora study which was of major importance for the rabbinic sages. It has been recognised that there are important links between Jesus and the ancient hasidic movement.136 Apart from a more liberal use of the term ‘holy’ in Amoraic literature we also occasionally find a striking opposition to it. This is what we read in the following two versions of a late midrash: R. Shimon b. Yohai said: The Holy One, blessed be He, does not attribute his name (‘holy’) to the righteous in their lifetime but after their death. As it says (Ps 16:3), ‘They belong to the holy ones in the land,’ etc. When are they holy? When they are buried in the land. Because as long as they are alive the Holy One, blessed be He, does not attribute his ARN a8 (ms Vat 44, ed Schechter, appendix B, fol 82a). the hasidim and the link with Jesus see S. Safrai, ‘Hassidic Teaching’; ‘Hassidim ve-anshei maase’; ‘Mishnat hassidim’; ‘The Pharisees’; ‘Jesus and the Hasidic Movement’. 135
136 For
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name to them. Why? Because He does not believe that they will not be misled by the evil inclination. (MidrTeh 16:2; Tanh toledot 7) ‘They belong to the holy ones in the land’ (Ps 16:3) − Rabbi be-R. Yitshak said, when are they holy? When they are in the ground, since as long as they are alive the Holy One, blessed be He does not attribute his name to them.137
Living people do not deserve the name ‘holy’, since they might disappoint the Creator; only after death can a person be awarded this title. This runs counter to the trend we have noted in the above. An explanation might be that the midrash voices opposition to a perceived exaggerated devotion for Christian saints in Jerusalem or for Christian desert monks in the Byzantine period. [173]
‘The Holy Congregation in Jerusalem’ A very interesting exception to the Tannaic reservation in ascribing ‘holiness’ to individuals is presented by a group of rabbinic sages which the sources call ‘the Holy Congregation of Jerusalem’ or ‘Holy Assembly’.138 It is the more interesting because it may seem to stand in a peculiar relationship to the pre-70 Jerusalem church. The community apparently consisted of a particular group of sages who convened in Jerusalem more than a generation after the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–135 CE. The evidence is mainly found in Amoraic literature. In the Bavli, the group bears the Aramaic name, קהלא קדישא דבירושלים, ‘the Holy Congregation in Jerusalem’.139 The group is also mentioned in midrash collections dependent on the Bavli such as Shemot Rabba and Kohelet Rabba, as well as, once, in passing, in the Yerushalmi, and in all these passages it has the Hebrew name, עדה קדושה, ‘Holy Assembly’.140 Most likely, we are faced with an ancient tradition informing us that a distinct group of disciples of R. Meir were active in Jerusalem in the latter half of the second century CE. Eusebius reports (Church History 4.6.3–4) that after the war Hadrian banned the Jews from the city and the region of Judaea surrounding it. Apparently, however, the ban relaxed some time
Yelamdenu, ed Mann, bereshit no. 131 (Mann, The Bible as Read and Preached). Safrai, ‘Holy Congregation’. Among other sources, this study relies on the inscription on the tomb of R. Shmuel found in Jaffa, which constitutes non-rabbinic evidence (see Safrai, ibid.). It should be noted that the tradition in KohR and yMSh 2:4 (53d) comments on a baraita which mentions the Holy Congregation but whose origin is lost. 139 bBer 9b; bRH 19b; bYom 69a; bBeitsa 14b; 27a; bTam 27b. While עדהand קהלare synonymous in biblical Hebrew, עדהpassed into rabbinic usage while קהלwas understood as biblical, see yYev 8:2 (9b) and cf Sokoloff, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, s. v. קהלה. See further ‘Christ, Belial, and Women’ (above) at n164. 140 yMSh 2:4 (53d); ShemR 21.8; KohR 9.1. 137 Midr 138 See
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after Hadrian’s death.141 The fact that the evidence is so widely scattered across Amoraic literature gives the impression that it reflects actual memories from the Tannaic period, and the various pieces of evidence taken together create a fairly coherent picture. It should be noted in passing that the term ‘holy congregation’ became watered down as well in the Amoraic sources, where it is transferred to all the people: ‘May the waters gather beneath the heavens for the Holy Congregation that in future will say before me, “This is my God and I will praise him”’ (ExodR 21.8 citing Exod 15:2). The ‘Holy Congregation’ here denotes the people of Israel standing before the Red Sea. Interestingly for us, the [174] expression ‘holy congregation’ is also found in some fourth to sixth century synagogue inscriptions in Sussia and Ein Gedi, and there refers to those who attend synagogue, or in other words the local community.142 Returning now to the ‘Holy Congregation of Jerusalem’, we must note both the striking similarities and the differences with the church of Jerusalem as this is reflected in Paul’s letters and Acts. Both groups were based in Jerusalem, consisted of exceptional people worthy of admiration, and enjoyed spiritual authority. Both were attributed with pious behaviour, prayed a great deal, and were qualified as ‘holy’. One important difference concerns the behaviour of the members of the Holy Congregation: Rabbi (Yehuda the Prince) said in the name of the Holy Congregation: you acquire skill in Tora. Why? As it is written, ‘Enjoy life with the woman you love’ (Kohelet 9:9 – ‘life’ being understood as work, and the ‘woman’, as the Tora). And why does he call them the Holy Congregation? Because they included R. Yose b. Meshullam and R. Shimon b. Menasya who would divide the day into three parts, one third for Tora, one third for prayer, and one third for work. And some say that they would labour at Tora in the winter and at physical work in the summer … (KohR 9.1)
The special mention of the fact that the named members of the Congregation R. Yose b. Meshullam and R. Shimon b. Menasya worked for a living may well mean that they emphatically refrained from living on donations and charity. Apparently they lived a pious, modest, and industrious life. By contrast, as we have seen in the reports at the beginning of Acts, the ‘church of saints’ in Jerusalem relied at least in part on donations. These were ‘laid at the feet of the apostles’ (Acts 2:35), suggesting special spiritual authority. Moreover we have found it likely that Paul’s fundraising campaign was intended as a similar donation to the treasure of the ‘mother church’ in Jerusalem from the gentile churches and on a larger and more consistent scale. 141 The actual effect of this law is unclear, since there is more evidence about a Jewish community existing in Jerusalem in the second and third centuries. 142 CII no. 980 (Kfar Hananya); Naveh, On Stone no. 26 (Hamat Tiberias); no. 69 (Jericho); no. 84 (Susia); no. 46 (Scythopolis).
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We venture the hypothesis that the pattern of similarity and contrast between the two groups is not coincidental, and more particularly, that it concerns a symbolic transformation. As we have seen, the evidence suggests that the concept of an ‘assembly of saints’ emerged in the primitive Christian milieu, drawing on such ideas as ‘a holy house for Israel’ and ‘the assembly of God’.143 The Holy Congregation founded in Jerusalem by R. Meir’s disciples [175] more than a century later can be seen as some sort of a polemical reaction in a time of increased rivalry between Jews and Christians. On the one hand, it would be positively inspired by the Christian concept, while on the other, it emphasized the critical point the sages wanted to make: to work for a living is better than relying on charity. When R. Meir’s disciples started to gather in Jerusalem, there also existed a Christian church in the city which according to the same report in Eusebius consisted entirely of non-Jews but which nevertheless must have been very aware of the memory of the pristine ‘church of saints’ as mentioned in Acts. This makes it possible that the term ‘holy congregation’ was coined to stress the differences between the two groups. The name apparently stuck and remained to be mentioned in the Jewish sources even when the rabbinic ‘holy community’ had ceased to exist, as had, long before, the Jerusalem ‘church of saints’. Admittedly there is a danger of over-interpreting here. While we cannot go into the ideological struggle between Christians or Judaeo-Christians and Jews at the time, it is true that this was a sensitive issue charged both in rabbinic and in Christian sources with overt and covert polemics. However, scholars have interpreted many rabbinic stories in a perspective of polemics, while these could also be read in a more general sense. Still it is worthy of note that one member of the ‘holy community’, R. Shimon ben Menasya, is reported to engage in polemics against minim who probably are to be identified as Christians: ‘It says, “Drink water from your source” (בורך, borkha; Prov 5:15) – drink the waters of your Creator (בוראך, bor’ekha), do not drink bad waters that attract you to the teachings of the minim’.144 A number of his sayings can be read as polemics against Christian boasting about martyrdom. In a midrashic sequence where loving God as in Deut 6:4 is linked with martyrdom and with the verse, ‘For Thy sake are we killed all the day’ (Ps 44:23[22]), he objects: ‘How can a person be killed every day? The Holy One blessed be He gives credit to the righteous as though they are killed every day’.145 Even though other sages stress the importance of martyrdom in the same sequence, R. Shimon ben Menasya denies this and maintains that the righteous are more important than martyrs. A reason for this remarkable counter-opinion could be his opposi See references above n93 and 114. SifDeut 48 (p110), and cf the water metaphor in Jesus’ teachings in John 4:14; 7:38. 145 SifDeut 32 (p55). The emphasis on Ps 44:23 in relation to suffering for God is extant in Rom 8:36. 143 144
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tion to the Christian emphasis on martyrdom, which is documented in many martyrs’ acts from that of Polycarp (c. 160 CE) onwards. Furthermore it is [176] striking that R. Shimon ben Menasya is attributed with a saying about the Sabbath remarkably close to a singular saying of Jesus in Mark.146 A similar rivalling use of identical traditions appears to be expressed in the name of the ‘holy congregation of Jerusalem’.
146 MekRY ki tisa p341, ‘R. Shimon ben Menasya says, behold it says, “You shall keep the Sabbath for it is holy unto you” (Exod 31:14) – unto you is the Sabbath given, and you are not given to the Sabbath.’ Mark 2:27, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.’
IV. Historiography and the Import of Early Christian Sources
The Didache, Matthew, and Barnabas as Sources for Jewish and Christian History The early second century CE has recently become a sensitive issue in Jewish and Christian history writing. It is the period in which confrontations between the two communities begin to appear in the sources, and one big question is how to interpret this. Do such confrontations point to a ‘parting of the ways’, or to an ongoing muddle of conflict and convergence? Another question concerns the sources. The most important Jewish sources for the period are the early rabbinic collections, but their historical usefulness has become hotly debated. Conversely, the value of a number of Christian sources dating from this very period tends to be overlooked. Finally, the importance of viewing this episode in the context of Roman history is never denied, but neither is it always sufficiently taken into account. The present paper* focuses on the issue of the historical value of three Christian documents of the period. The introductory part discusses the interpretive framework. Major nineteenth century scholars approached the sources in an overall perspective. Some of their influential twentieth century successors adopted a more fragmented approach, tending to read Jewish and Christian sources separately. It is here proposed to return to a comprehensive paradigm, but not without with the necessary qualifications. On that basis, we then approach the three documents. First, reviewing their close literary interrelations, we tentatively reconstruct their shared social embedding. Next, we examine the documents one by one, highlighting important literary and historical features. The relations with Jewish tradition and Jews, especially with those designated as ‘Pharisees’, will be consistently registered as these relate to the literary strata of our texts. Next, gathering up the evidence of our texts, we list items of commonality and of conflict vis-à-vis the Jews, especially such as are datable to the last redactional stages of our texts. Then, crucially, we shall confront this with the pertinent rabbinic evidence. The Pharisees opposed in our Christian texts will appear to be identical with the early Yavne rabbis. A final section considers our results in the perspective of Roman politics and policies. [349] * [Paper read at the conference, ‘Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: Historiographical Questions’, held in the Jewish Museum in Brussels in September 2011, published in Tomson–Schwartz, Jews and Christians … How to write Their History, and here reprinted with some additions in the footnotes.]
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How to Read Early Jewish and Christian History All can agree that during the great expansive period of early imperial Rome, Second Temple Judaism produced two energetic and mutually opposed religious communities: rabbinic Judaism and apostolic Christianity. Opinions differ over how to interpret this. Let us collect some impressions of how the debate evolved. Nineteenth century historiography of Judaism and Christianity, typically developed by Liberal Protestant and Reform Jewish scholars writing in German, was notable for the overall perspective in which the early histories of Jews and Christians were studied together along with Roman history. These scholars, however, also shared the idea that Christianity is inherently opposed to Judaism, an assumption that may have seemed obvious given the segregation between Christians and Jews in nineteenth century academia, in other words between the Wissenschaft des Judentums and Liberal Protestant scholarship.1 According to this consensus, the antithesis between ancient Judaism and Christianity was predetermined. Both Ferdinand Christian Baur, a pioneer of Christian historical criticism, and Heinrich Graetz, the prominent Jewish historiographer, located the principle of this antithesis in the supposedly anti-nomistic theology of Paul.2 Depending on their affiliation with either liberal Protestantism or Reform Judaism, these scholars would value the ‘essence of Christianity’, thus circumscribed, positively or negatively.3 Two decades after the turn of the century, in a world shattered by the First World War, these grand syntheses seemed outdated. Closer study was called for. For one thing, the antithesis concept of Christianity and Judaism, whatever its origins and justification, makes for bad Christian historiographies of Judaism. This was shown in 1921 by the American historian of religion, George Foot Moore, who in a seminal article exposed the anti-Jewish slant [350] of the influential descriptions of Judaism produced by Ferdinand Weber, Emil Schürer, and Wilhelm Bousset.4 A concurrent methodological onslaught on nineteenth century historiography was made by the practitioners of form criticism. Also in the early 1920’s, Rudolf Cf Dinur, ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’, esp 575f. Baur, ‘Christuspartei’, pitting ‘Petrine’ against ‘Pauline’ Christianity. Graetz, Geschichte 3.2: 74f clearly echoes this antithesis, mentioning 77 n2 ‘C. F. Bauer’ (sic). See ibid. 73 for the Roman perspective, with a rich footnote on the fiscus judaicus and circumcision. 3 Harnack, Wesen des Christentums, 10th lecture: ‘Paulus ist es gewesen, der die christliche Religion aus dem Judentum herausgeführt hat’ (like a new Exodus!), ‘der das Evangelium sicher als etwas Neues beurteilt hat, das die Gesetzesreligion aufhebt.’ In response, Leo Baeck wrote his Wesen des Judentums, emphasizing (295, 183) the ‘despotic’ i. e. forensic nature of the law as portrayed by Paul and instead stressing the need of humans to ‘purify themselves before their Father in heaven’, alluding to R. Akiva’s saying in mYom 8:9. 4 Moore, ‘Christian Writers on Judaism’, esp 238 on the chapter ‘Das Leben unter dem Gesetz’ in Schürer, Geschichte (rewritten in the ‘new Schürer’, ed Vermes et al., § 28: ‘Life and the Law’). Seven years after his article, Moore published his own description, Judaism. 1 2
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Bultmann and Martin Dibelius transformed the method developed in Old Testament scholarship into an analytical tool for Gospel research.5 The idea was to get hold of the earliest stages of the Jesus tradition by focussing on characteristic small literary units encased in the Gospels. Via a curious combination with dialectical theology, however, the upshot was a marked scepticism vis-à-vis the possibility of approaching ‘the historical Jesus’.6 This tied in with the debate that had been running under that title since the late eighteenth century but was presumed to have been brought to a halt by Albert Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historical Jesus (1913).7 As a result, the beginnings of Christianity became very fuzzy, certainly as regards its relationship to Judaism. In time, this approach would lose its impetus and be succeeded by a ‘second’ and a ‘third quest’, the last one emphasizing the Jewish character of Jesus’ historical background.8 Elsewhere, a new start was made in Jewish scholarship. In 1925, the Hebrew University was founded as an outgrowth of the Wissenschaft des Judentums within the Jewish yishuv in Palestine. Here, Gedalyahu Alon developed his approach on ancient Jewish history until his early death in 1950. Typical of his work is the combination of Jewish learning with erudition in Greek, Roman, and Christian literature and his keen awareness of the rupture with Christianity.9 He also gave much attention to Roman military history, possibly drawing [351] inspiration from his involvement in the Zionist defence force.10 An important example of his interest in Christian sources are two studies which, while showing awareness of the complex evolution of early Christianity as from its Jewish origins, exploit the evidence contained in the Didache and Barnabas for the development of halakha.11 His approach became standard in Israeli academia for many years, although his interest in the halakha contained in Didache and Barnabas was not visibly picked up.12 Dibelius, Formgeschichte; Bultmann, Geschichte. dialectical theology see several articles in Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen 1. Dibelius did not join him in that connection. 7 Schweitzer’s own intention was not at all to close the ‘quest’ but to ‘resolve’ it through comparative study with ‘Jewish eschatology’ (= apocalyptic literature); see the first and last chapters of his Geschichte/Quest. 8 See J. M. Robinson’s introduction in the 1968 reprint of Schweitzer, Quest. For two examples: Vermes, Jesus the Jew; Sanders, Jesus and Judaism. 9 Alon, The Jews, 1: 288–307, ‘Jewish Christians: The Parting of the Ways’. The translator, G. Levi, upgraded the sub-section in the Hebrew original (Alon, History of the Jews 1: 179–192) to be a separate chapter. 10 This aspect is emphasized in association with Alon’s ‘rabbinocentrism’ in the assessment by Seth Schwartz, ‘Historiography on the Jews’, 83–91. 11 Alon, ‘Ha-halakha be-torat 12 ha-Shelihim’, and ‘Ha-halakha be-Iggeret Bar Nava’. For the Christian beginnings see the Barnabas article, first page. The Didache article was published in an unreliable English translation: ‘The Halacha in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles’. 12 In an oral communication, the late Prof. Shmuel Safrai stated that the omission of the Didache and Barnabas articles from Alon’s translated studies (Jews, Judaism) was a mistake. 5
6 For
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The twentieth century saw further methodological turning points. In a scholarly world impacted by such divergent developments as post-Shoa theology and the Qumran discoveries, the conception of early Christianity’s predetermined antithesis to Judaism began to be widely called into question. Integrating expertise in early Christian and early Jewish literature including Qumran and rabbinic literature, David Flusser, Krister Stendahl, and Ed Sanders each offered new assessments of Christian beginnings and of its Jewish matrix, while Sanders in particular reassessed and re-appropriated Moore’s criticism of previous Christian scholarship of Judaism.13 Form criticism now found a new application, in Jewish studies this time round. Turning against positivist approaches on ancient Jewish history, Jacob Neusner started concentrating on textual study, adopting form-critical terminology and, in some parallel to the Bultmann school, espousing a radical scepticism as to what we can know of the historical rabbis. The parallel was intentional, as appears from the title of a 1966 article, ‘In Quest of the Historical Yohanan ben Zakkai’.14 It involved a volte-face in Neusner’s own approach, expressed in the ‘complete revision’ of his 1962 Life of Rabban Yohanan ben [352] Zakkai which he published in 1970.15 Neusner’s modified approach grew very influential in North American and European schools of early Jewish and Christian studies. The apparent application of critical New Testament methodology in rabbinic studies probably gave it an extra appeal. We are now approaching the present debate. Having reworked his ben Zakkai ‘biography’, where Alon was still much respected, Neusner and those influenced by him consistently began to criticize Alon and his school. Concurrently, and in marked contrast to his richly footnoted and more properly ‘historical’ earlier work, Neusner embarked on a torrent of ‘Histories’ of various parts of ‘Mishnaic law’ featuring much attention to literary structures and little or no references either to other ancient sources or to contemporaneous scholarly literature.16 In fact, these hardly were ‘histories’ at all. Also, there was something bizarre in that this approach adopted terminology from New Testament scholarship while denying possible links with early Christian sources. As a result, the rabbinic sources are read in isolation with hardly any documentation from Christian, Roman, or other Safrai’s close colleague, Prof. David Flusser, often quoted Alon’s Didache article but without his interest in the history of halakha. 13 Flusser, Jesus; idem, Judaism (collected articles); Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles; Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism. 14 Neusner, ‘In Quest’, regretting the ‘deplorable qualities’ of his 1962 dissertation (391), stressing the need for form-criticism of rabbinic literature (407), and criticizing (392 n5) Gerhardsson, Memory. For a critical state of the art in 1977 see Saldarini, ‘Form Criticism’. 15 See previous footnote and cf Tomson, ‘Transformations’, 102f. 16 Neusner, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities, 13 vols 1974–76; similarly: … of Holy Things, 4 vols 1978–79; … of Women, 5 vols 1980 (!); … of Appointed Times, 3 vols 1981–83; … of Damages, 5 vols 1983–85.
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rabbinic sources. At the same time, Neusner scathingly criticized New Testament scholars for ‘gullibly’ using rabbinic sources for historical comparison.17 Form criticism and other methods of literary analysis are certainly called for,18 but there is no reason to see them in isolation from comparative historical study, let alone in opposition to it. Rather, they should be seen as elements of its toolbox.19 It is also obvious that the mechanisms of oral transmission and extended written editing involved in the genesis of the Gospels and rabbinic literature have made for conformity, adaptation, and irretrievable loss of data. The point is that the isolated, unhistorical way of reading propagated by Neusner neatly tends to reinvigorate the dichotomy between New Testament and early Jewish studies that had been standard for ages. In result, it became [353] very difficult to imagine that rabbinic or Christian reports, e. g., of segregation measures against Christians, reflect any historical reality at all. Here, the debate ends in a draw between mutual accusations of historical scepticism and gullibility. It is therefore proposed to pull back and give the more comprehensive paradigm of nineteenth century scholarship another try, reading early Jewish and early Christian sources together in the framework of Roman history – with a series of necessary qualifications. (1) We shall not presuppose a pre-determined antithesis between Judaism and Christianity. Conflict and rupture did develop, but the beginnings of Christianity can only be understood from continuity with its Jewish matrix, and this logically includes the earliest documents, the epistles of Paul.20 (2) Nor shall we underestimate the seriousness of historical conflict reported by early rabbinic and Christian sources. Since we shall not try to explain them from inherent ideological characteristics, we must find convincing explanations on other grounds or else accept their inscrutability. (3) What is more, we shall exploit the insight that social conflict is a rich source of historical information. For an analogy, given the scarcity of sources for the actual relations between Pharisees and Essenes, the snippets of evidence of a conflict between the two groups are priceless.21 17 E. g. Neusner, Reading and Believing; idem, Are there really Tannaitic Parallels [against Morton Smith, see Shaye Cohen’s review in JOAS 116 (1996) 85–89]. All of this did not prevent Neusner from yet another public about-face, writing a ‘Foreword’ to the reprint of Gerhardsson, Memory (1998, cf above n14), now disavowing his ‘then-teacher’ Morton Smith ‘whom I extravagantly admired’ (xxvi). 18 Cf Hezser, ‘Classical Rabbinic Literature’; idem, ‘Form-Criticism’, referring first of all to Saldarini, ‘Form Criticism’. 19 For Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric, 6–9 rhetorical criticism is one of the tools of historical criticism. 20 Cf Fredriksen, ‘How Later Contexts Affect Pauline Content’. 21 Cf the raid by the ‘wicked priest’ on the community on their Day of Atonement, 1QpHab 11:4–9. According to Josephus, Ant 18:15 the Pharisaic calendar obtained in the Temple, never mind the Sadducee upper priests.
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(4) We shall take Christian and Jewish sources equally seriously, notwithstanding the fact that second century Christianity probably was a small minority as compared with the Jews. A Jewish history ignoring Christianity is as anomalous as Christian historiography oblivious of Judaism, however hallowed by tradition the latter may be.22 (5) We shall read Jewish and Christian sources as much as possible in relation to Roman ones. While Jewish historiography naturally has always involved close interaction with Roman history, this is much less the case with Christian history writing.23 [354] (6) We shall not be ‘gullible’ and we shall read historical references in such collective works as the Gospels and rabbinic writings ‘suspiciously’, always ready to recognize additions and alterations reflecting later editors’ points of view and situations. In other words, we shall adopt a redaction-critical approach.24 (7) We shall not take the continuity between Pharisees and rabbis for granted, as did nineteenth century scholars, nor deny it offhand, as done by not a few present-day colleagues, but consider it one possibility when approaching our sources. With these qualifications in mind, we shall now study three Christian texts from the late first – early second century in an imagined continuum contiguous with both Roman, Jewish, and Christian history. What helps imagining such a continuum is the fact that the three documents evince intense literary interconnections which in turn reflect close social relationships; that all three are Christian documents patently incorporating Jewish traditions; and that one of them convincingly reflects Roman military politics. Our special interest will be to learn what information their combined evidence yields as regards relations between Jews and Christians during the early second century Empire.
The Hypothetical Shared Milieu of Didache, Matthew, and Barnabas We begin by studying our texts in their social context. The various literary relationships between the three documents differ in character and intensity. They sometimes betray dependence on the same written sources, but more frequently they point to shared use of closely related sources and traditions many of which 22 Eusebius’ Church History classically ignores Jewish history except as a dark foil for Christianity. Conversely, Stern, GLAJJ – a monument of historical scholarship – contains no Christian sources and uses Eusebius only where he may be quoting a non-Christian source, see below n44. 23 Grant, Augustus to Constantine, re-issued with a preface by Margaret Mitchell, is a model of integrated Roman-Jewish-Christian history writing, unfortunately little known in Europe. 24 On the use of rabbinic literature for historiography see the studies in Goodman–Alexander, Rabbinic Texts. The redaction-critical method is effectively implied in Goodman, State and Society.
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probably were oral. In two cases, this concerns larger stretches of text having a vital function in the community, thus signifying close relations between the social environments of the documents. The first section of the Didache and the concluding part of Barnabas contain two variants of one large stretch of text. It is basically Jewish and was dubbed ‘The Two Ways’ because it enumerates the elements of ‘the way of life’ and ‘the way of death’ (Did 1–5), or respectively, ‘the way of light’ and ‘the way of [355] darkness’ (Barn 18–20). In the case of Barnabas, this seems to involve a written source25 – though evidently different from the one used in the Didache. The genre of ‘two ways’ was popular in ancient Judaism and Christianity and seems to have had its social function or Sitz im Leben as a sort of catechism in the admission process of neophytes. In addition to more distant variants contained within texts from Qumran and in the Synoptic Gospels, an independent, barely Christianized form has been identified in Latin translation.26 The wholesale incorporation of this traditional unit in Didache and Barnabas indicates that the groups in which they were composed must have belonged to a larger second century Christian milieu where ample use was made of Jewish traditions. That this milieu involved non-Jews is obvious from Barnabas, as we shall see, and is implied in the Didache.27 A second shared larger tradition unit concerns the Lord’s Prayer contained in almost identical form in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Didache. The minor differences28 could point to dependence on different written texts, but could also relate to the variance involved in the oral use of the prayer in the liturgy. Compared with the much shorter form of the Lord’s Prayer preserved in Luke 11:2–5, the versions in Matthew and Didache represent very close variants of a single tradition. In view of the central function of this prayer in Christian liturgy, the complete lack of Christian colouring makes its descent from the teachings of Jesus likely.29 The shared use of this central prayer in a practically identical version shows that Matthew and Didache belonged to one single or two closely related communities. A Jewish background is evident from the use of Jewish traditions, and membership of non-Jews is explicit.30 25 Barn 21:1, τὰ δικαιώματα τοῦ κυρίου ὅσα γέγραπται, see Wengst, Didache, Barnabasbrief, 193; [cf Prostmeier, Barnabasbrief, 563f]. 26 See esp Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache; for the catechism function, chapters 2 and 3. 27 Did 6:2–3; cf Matt 28:19. 28 See Tomson, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ [in this volume]. The doxology shows a great many variants in both versions and in any case is lacking in the primary NT mss. 29 See Luz, Matthäus 1: 438 for this conclusion, also listing the few scholars who think otherwise. The obvious claim to authenticity of the shorter version preserved in Luke 11:2–4 is counterbalanced by the unstable phrasing of Jewish prayers in general (see Luz, ibid., following J. Heinemann). For links with the history of Jewish and Christian prayer see below; also Tomson, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ [in this volume]. 30 See above n27.
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In short, Didache shares the Two Ways with Barnabas, and the Lord’s Prayer with Matthew. This justifies the hypothesis that our three texts belonged to a larger Christian milieu of mixed Jewish-gentile ethnicity which cherished Jewish sources but, as we shall see, was also drawn into conflict with the [356] Jews.31 Further observations could be added which enhance the measure of affinity between Matthew and Didache and, to a lesser extent, Barnabas.32 The recognition the three writings found in the late second century indicates their belonging to mainline early Christianity. The same can be said of other items in this category of sub-canonical Christian writings termed the ‘Apostolic Fathers’, e. g., the First Letter of Clement and the seven authentic letters of Ignatius. Those, however, lack the close literary interrelations involving Jewish traditions visible in our three texts. Consequently they are less cogently relevant for the history of Jews and Christians in the second century. One could further speculate about the shared milieu of the three documents. It must have been closely related to the mainline Church as defended, e. g., by Irenaeus in the later second century: calling itself ‘apostolic’ in contradistinction to Marcionites and Gnostics who rejected Jewish tradition elements, it stood nevertheless in clear opposition to Judaism.33 How it was configured in the early second century, however, is precisely the question, and this includes the ethnic composition as regards Jews and non-Jews and the attitude to Jewish law and custom. Our three documents will be found to reflect rather different dispositions in this respect. The possibility of social differentiation and rapid change must be kept in mind. Therefore we shall be wise to leave this undefined for the moment and operate with the provisional concept of a ‘hypothetical milieu’. We shall proceed by discussing each of our three documents in more detail. Heedful of our principle that social conflict is a valuable source of historical information, we shall take on our three documents in reverse order of their probable chronology and start with the most recent one. Barnabas engages in fierce polemics with the Jews running from beginning to end, and this will appear to involve the interference of Roman military politics. The Didache, possibly the oldest text, has only one polemical chapter and will be dealt with last. Signs of a development towards social tension and final rupture during the second century induce us to put Matthew in the middle between Didache and Barnabas. [357]
31 A similar hypothesis is basic to Van de Sandt, Matthew and the Didache, and Van de Sandt–Zangenberg, Matthew, James and Didache. Supplementing those works, the present study intends to emphasize the social and political implications. 32 On Didache and Matthew see below n101. Prigent, Barnabé, 124, 157, 162 points up a preference for Matt in Barnabas, in addition to the link with Didache. 33 Cf the description given in the last chapter of Bauer, Rechtgläubigkeit.
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Barnabas The so-called Epistle of Barnabas34 is neither an epistle nor written by the pious Levite Joseph Barnabas known from Acts and Paul.35 Pseudo-Barnabas, as it is also called, is a treatise36 apparently re-applying Jewish exegetical sources and traditions pertaining to Jewish ritual in order to demonstrate that this ritual has become devoid of meaning and is replaced by Christian worship. Gedalyahu Alon concluded that to this aim, the authors even utilized otherwise unknown halakhic exegetical compositions written in Greek.37 In a redaction-critical perspective, this conclusion, if correct, implies that these authors’ community had moved from a position of respect towards Jewish traditions to one rejecting such. There are two parts: the main exposition about Jewish worship (Barn 1–16) and the Two Ways as a catechetical appendix (17–21). The Temple and its sacrificial cult are centre stage,38 and this aspect offers crucial evidence for determining a date of redaction. Its relevance as relating to the Bar Kokhba revolt was evaluated in an important short study by Daniel Schwartz.39 In the early Church, Barnabas was highly respected and was semi-canonical. It was quoted almost as Scripture by Clement of Alexandria and Origen and it is contained in the prominent Sinai codex of the Greek Bible (c. 220 and 330 CE, respectively).40 [358] In order to position the document historically, it is necessary first to review some external sources. In his ‘Roman History’, the Eastern-based, late second century Roman administrator and senator Cassius Dio relates the following among the exploits of Emperor Hadrian (117–138 CE):41
Literature: Alon, ‘Ha-halakha be-Iggeret Bar Nava’; Prigent, Barnabé; Kraft, Barnabas and the Didache; Wengst, Tradition und Theologie; Wengst, Didache, Barnabasbrief; Horbury, ‘Jewish-Christian Relations’; Carleton Paget, Barnabas; Hvalvik, Struggle for Scripture; Prostmeier, Barnabasbrief. 35 Acts 4:36 and passim; 1 Cor 9:6; Gal 2. The oldest ascription to Barnabas stems from Clement of Alexandria, see Wengst, Didache, Barnabasbrief, 106; Carleton Paget, Barnabas, 3. 36 Phrases like, ‘It was mentioned in the above’ (Barn 6:18), allow readers to turn to an earlier page, see Prostmeier, Barnabasbrief, 88. Wengst, Didache, Barnabasbrief, 113: ‘Ein in Briefform gekleidetes Propagandaschreiben’. 37 Alon, ‘Ha-halakha be-Iggeret Bar Nava’. For an analysis of ‘tradition and redaction’ see Wengst, Tradition und Theologie, 5–70. Ibid. 9: the author’s stated aim is μέρος τι μεταδοῦναι ἀφ’ οὗ ἔλαβον, Barn 1:5. 38 The Temple is mentioned in 4:11; 6:15; 7:3; 16:1–10; sacrifices are said to have been ‘abrogated’ by God at the start of the main argument: κατήργησεν, 2:6. See Schwartz, ‘Barnabas’, 152f on this crucial verb. 39 Schwartz, ‘Barnabas’. 40 See Horbury, ‘Jewish-Christian Relations’, 128; Carleton Paget, Barnabas, 248–260; Prostmeier, Barnabasbrief, 34–63. 41 Hist rom 12.1–2, in Stern, GLAJJ 2: 391–393 (the LCL translation followed there has been adapted). Stern’s dense notes ibid. 391–405 on this crucial passage about the Bar Kokhba war as compared with Eusebius and other sources set the stage for all further discussion. 34
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When he founded a city at Jerusalem in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site42 of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter, this brought on a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration. For the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites planted there …
The raised eyebrow at the Jews’ intolerance places the cause of the ensuing war in Hadrian’s building project which aimed at turning Jerusalem into a full-blown Roman colony.43 A different order of events is implied by Eusebius, on the basis of partially unknown sources:44 As the rebellion of the Jews at this time grew much more serious, Rufus, governor of Judaea … proceeded against them without mercy … The leader of the Jews at this time was a man by the name of Barcochebas (Βαρχωχέβας), which signifies ‘a star’ … The war raged most fiercely in the eighteenth year of Hadrian, at the city of Bitthara, which was a very secure fortress situated not far from Jerusalem … (After the defeat) the whole nation was prohibited … from ever going up to the country about Jerusalem. … And thus, when the city had been emptied of the Jewish nation … it was colonized by a different race, and the Roman city which subsequently arose changed its name and was called Aelia, in honour of [359] the Emperor Aelius Hadrian. And as the church there was now composed of gentiles, the first one to assume the government of it after the bishops of the circumcision was Marcus.
The impression we get is that Roman Aelia was erected only after the defeat, when the city and its surroundings were ‘emptied of the Jewish nation’. The question is how to interpret this. Neither in this chapter nor in preceding ones does Eusebius give an explanation of the causes of the revolt other than the Jews’ ‘madness’. His concern here is with the chronology of bishops in Jerusalem and other metropoles, and the shift from bishops ‘of the circumcision’ to those ‘of the gentiles’ is foremost in his mind. This change-over, which from Eusebius’ late third century Christian viewpoint represents an advantageous shift in the ongoing power struggle with the Jews, is perceived as having been galvanized by Hadrian’s erection of gentile Aelia. From this perspective, Eusebius would 42 Some scholars take this phrase figuratively and suppose Hadrian’s temple arose elsewhere in the city, see literature cited by Tsafrir, ‘Numismatics and the Foundation of Aelia Capitolina’, 31f. However the parallel of ἐς τὸν τοῦ ναοῦ … τόπον ναὸν … ἕτερον ἀντεγείραντος with the preceding ἐς τὰ ῾Ιεροσόλυμα πόλιν … οἰκίσαντος makes a literal interpretation preferable. [However Eliav, ‘Hadrian’s Actions’, analysing the style and vocabulary of the clause, ascribes the phrase to Xiphilinus’ epitomizing of Dio Cassius; cf Eliav, God’s Mountain, 83–124. On Dio Cassius and Xiphilinus see Millar, Cassius Dio, esp 68f; Stern, GLAJJ 2: 393–400. Eliav’s analysis is accepted by Weikert, Von Jerusalem zu Aelia, 279–286: both literary and archaeological data make it more likely that the Jupiter temple was erected on the forum, in the North-West part of the city.] 43 See Stern, GLAJJ 2: 391–405. 44 CH 4.6.1–4, trans. P. Schaff, NPNF. See Stern, GLAJJ 3: 28 and Schürer, History 1: 37–39 on Ariston of Pella whom Eusebius cites and possible other sources.
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have little interest in the possibility that the revolt was provoked by Hadrian’s building project in the first place, even had he had such information. The logical conclusion that Dio’s version is preferable is confirmed by archaeology. In all likelihood, the ‘madness’ of the Bar Kokhba war was provoked by the project, undertaken by Hadrian after his second visit in 129/130 CE, to make Jerusalem into a Roman colony.45 We can square Eusebius’ report with this reading by supposing that only after the defeat of the Jews and the ban on Jerusalem did the project really gain speed.46 An additional factor possibly adding incentive to the revolt was what seems to be a prohibition of circumcision by Hadrian, though it may have been of a general nature and not specifically targeting the Jews.47 Otherwise, archaeological and literary data mutually confirm important details contained in the two reports. The name given the Jewish leader by Eusebius is confirmed by rabbinic literature, as well as, indirectly, by the letters recovered from the Judaean desert.48 Moreover Eusebius’ name for the final [360] stronghold, Bitthara, is confirmed both by rabbinic literature and by its archaeological identification with a steep, flattened hilltop called ‘Khirbet al-Yahud’ at presentday Battir, 8 kilometers South-West of Jerusalem.49 The continuation of Dio’s report mentions underground caves used by the insurgents, which is confirmed by excavations of the cave systems found mainly in the Judaean hills.50 Finally, the date Eusebius gives for the fall of Beitar, the eighteenth year of Hadrian’s reign i. e. 135 CE, is historically plausible, though there is evidence that the last pockets of resistance were stamped out only in 136.51 Also, the rabbinic tradition 45 See Isaac, ‘Roman Colonies’; idem, ‘Judaea in the Early Years’; cf Eshel, ‘Bar-Kokhba Revolt’, 107 n10. The reliability of Dio’s chronology is taken for granted by Goodman, ‘Trajan and the Origins’. See also Millar, next n. [For the archaeological data see Eshel–Zissu, ‘Coins from the El-Jai Cave’; Zissu–Eshel, ‘Religious Aspects of the Bar Kokhba Revolt’ (while concluding that Hadrian probably started building soon after 117 CE, ibid. 394). A wide-ranging survey is given by Weikert, Von Jerusalem zu Aelia, 263–271, with the conclusion (271) ‘dass die Gründung von Aelia Capitolina im Jahr 130 auf einem stabilen Fundament steht’.] 46 Thus also Stern, GLAJJ 2: 396. More Christian sources to that effect are mentioned by Prostmeier, Barnabasbrief, 117 n34. For a general historical assessment (though without evaluating Eusebius’ report) see Millar, Roman Near East, 105–107. 47 See Stern, GLAJJ 2: 619–621 (no. 551, the late 4th cent. Historia Augusta). See Schwartz, ‘Barnabas’, 152f and the articles by Isaac, Oppenheimer, and Abusch in Schäfer, Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered. [After thorough discussion, Weikert, Von Jerusalem zu Aelia, 286–302 concludes that a similar prohibition cannot be documented before the Bar Kokhba revolt.] 48 DJD 2, no. 24 frg. B (p124, a contract); no. 43 (p160, a letter), כוסבה/שמעון בן כוסבא. yTaan 4:6 (68d), R. Akiva citing Num 24:17, דרך כוכב מיעקב, ‘A star goes forth from Jacob’ when he saw בר כוזבא\כוזבה. Similarly in EkhR 2.4, where in addition R. Yohanan prefers to read דרך כוזב, ‘A liar goes forth’. Anonymous rabbis criticize Bar Kokhba’s cruel behaviour, a feature confirmed by Justin, 1 Apol 31.6 (quoted verbatim by Eusebius CH 4.8.4). See also bSan 93b. The arguments of Schäfer, ‘Bar Kokhba and the Rabbis’, 2–6 are not convincing. 49 See the report of the 1984 dig by Ussishkin, ‘Archaeological Soundings at Betar’. 50 See Kloner–Zissu, ‘Hiding Complexes’; Shahar, ‘The Underground Hideouts’. 51 See Eck, ‘Hadrian’; Eshel, ‘Dates Used’.
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that the war lasted three and a half years and hence had started in 132 has been confirmed by a document dating from the Babata archive found in the Judaean desert.52 With these historical data in mind, let us now review the relevant passage in Barnabas. It significantly comes in the finale of the first, main part of the document, just before the Two Ways section which functions as a sort of appendix:53 I will also speak to you about the Temple, since those wretched were misguided in hoping in the building rather than in their God who made them, as if the Temple were actually the house of God. For they consecrated him in the temple almost like the Gentiles do. But consider what the Lord says in order to invalidate it … You know that their hope was vain! Moreover, he says again, “See, those who have destroyed this temple will themselves build it.” This is happening!54 For because of this war, it was destroyed by their enemies. And now the servants of the enemies will themselves rebuild it. Again, it was revealed how the city, the Temple, and the people of Israel were about to be handed over … [361]
The starkly negative view of the Jewish Temple is in line with the message of the document as a whole. The Jews’ literal interpretation of the biblical commandments concerning circumcision, dietary laws, Sabbath, and Temple is thought to be inspired by an evil angel from the start. Jewish religion is obsolete – and the continuation of the passage expands on the Christian Church as the spiritual temple which has replaced it.55 What is more, the divine purpose was that not only the Temple, but the city and the Jewish people as a whole were to be ‘given up’ (παραδίδοσθαι). The author perceives his own community, the gentile Church, as being engaged in a power struggle with the Jews, and the rebuilding of the Temple proves theirs to be a victorious struggle. Supersession theology is up and running. The precise import of the passage depends on the nature of the new temple. The reference to its destruction as a result of a war fought by the Jews (διὰ τὸ πολεμεῖν αὐτούς) implies the Romans as the destroyers, and the scriptural ‘quote’56 is taken to mean that they are also going to rebuild. This would point to a Roman temple. But what does it mean that ‘they as their enemies’ servants’ (αὐτοὶ οἱ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὑπηρέται) are the ones to carry this out? Some have taken this to imply that a Jewish temple is to be rebuilt. This would require a pre52 Isaac, ‘Babata Archive’, 174f. See sources cited in n47. bSan 93b gives two and a half years. 53 Barn 16:1–4, trans. Ehrman, Apostolic Fathers. 54 The present γίνεται in ms B is striking; cf ms Corbeiensis et fiet. This reading is to be preferred over its omission in mss אand Hierosolymitanus, cf Prostmeier, Barnabasbrief, 503. [Schwartz, ‘Barnabas’: here, Ps-Barn is able to underpin his argument with ‘real historical events’.] 55 Similarly Horbury, ‘Jewish-Christian Relations’, while supposing the rebuilding of a Jewish temple is being opposed. 56 A free and complex citation of LXX Isa 49:17 seems involved, see Prostmeier, Barnabasbrief, 511; Wengst, Didache, Barnabasbrief, 185.
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Hadrianic date, because there is no basis for the idea that Hadrian gave the Jews permission to rebuild the Temple; on the contrary, it would run counter to all evidence on his building project. The same goes for Trajan, in view of the Jewish revolt in North-Africa in 115–117. The dating under Nerva which has correspondingly been proposed is not really convincing.57 Indeed it seems the lack of any polemics or further remarks about this temple suggests that it must have been a pagan one which had no interest whatsoever for the author.58 It follows that we are dealing with Hadrian’s Jupiter temple and that apparently Jews were forced to help building it59 – normal procedure which will only have exacerbated Jewish revulsion against the project. The author must have been writing after the start of Aelia’s construction, and he does not yet seem to be [362] aware of a new Jewish revolt. This leaves us with a date of writing between 129/130 and 132 CE.60 In this connection, Alon’s findings about Barnabas are highly relevant. Taking a sophisticated angle on relations between early Jews and Christians, Alon begins by distinguishing between halakhot that derive from the Jewish world of Jesus and his disciples and became an integral part of Christian literature and tradition, and those that were merely preserved in Christian literature while they were not practised. The authors’ unfamiliarity with Jewish tradition and their need to polemicize with it may complicate the matter further. Precisely so, the contrast between the document’s stated aim to prove the futility of the Jewish commandments and the fact that it preserves Jewish sources yields priceless information, including, most interestingly, the literary nature of these sources. Alon addresses three sets of halakhot concerning the rituals of the red heifer, the scapegoat, and the Sabbath. In each case, Pseudo-Barnabas elaborates halakhic details which are not to be practised but only serve as types and allegories of Christ, and which are not written in the Tora but are found in Tannaic i. e. early rabbinic tradition. Given the relatively early date of Barnabas, this allows Alon to establish the existence of such elements in an identical or earlier form some time before their appearance in extant rabbinic sources. These results allow us to draw a profile of the anonymous authors of Barnabas in their historical setting. They were gentile Christians who in their polemic against the Jews viewed Hadrian’s project as a providential turning point in their favour. Their struggle had a political, ethnic, and religious dimension. Not unlike Eusebius centuries later, in the passage we have quoted, they understood the construction of Aelia with its Jupiter temple as the fulfilment of Israel’s demise 57 Based on the Daniel quote in Barn 4:3–5 and Nerva’s more sympathetic attitude to the Jews. Thus, e. g., Horbury, ‘Jewish-Christian Relations’, 132f and Carleton Paget, Barnabas, 9–30. See Wengst ibid. 114f and, exhaustively, Prostmeier ibid. 111–119. 58 Prostmeier ibid. 513f; Wengst ibid. 114f. 59 Cf Prostmeier ibid. 512f; Smallwood, Jews under Roman Rule, 428–438. 60 See decidedly Prostmeier ibid. 119, revindicating Harnack’s position.
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announced by the prophets. Remarkably, they adduced no Christological motifs; the weight of their argument is in Old Testament exposition.61 In short, the ‘Epistle’ of Barnabas is a first, radical formulation of Christian supersessionism vis-à-vis Judaism. It documents the emergence of an exclusively gentile Christian community amidst the tensions generated by Rome’s policy in the mixed and confused relationships of Jews, Judaeo-Christians, and gentile Christians in the post-70 Middle East, only some years before the Bar Kokhba war. [363]
Matthew The Gospel of Matthew62 is correctly known for its pervasive conflict with the Pharisees. Incorrectly, this feature has often been taken to be typical of the New Testament as a whole. In comparison, the Gospel of Luke has a nuanced approach: Jesus repeatedly enjoys hospitality in the homes of Pharisees, even while making specific reproaches against them; his real adversaries are the priestly and lay elite in Jerusalem. This constellation largely agrees with the written source known to be shared by Matthew and Luke, i. e., the Gospel of Mark.63 Thus the anti-Pharisaic orientation of Matthew stands out. Given the informational import of social conflict, this makes Matthew a valuable source for Christian and Jewish history. We shall study a selection of passages containing useful information for early second century Christian-Jewish relations. As do other Gospels, Matthew has a complex literary character which necessitates methodological clarification. The scholarly consensus is that Matthew is an elaboration of Mark, and the same goes for Luke. In the case of Matthew, the most prominent modifications are the infancy narratives and the long discourses of Jesus which add new or re-arrange already existing material.64 In order to study the specific stances of the extant text, it is helpful to distinguish methodically between the redactional layer and the underlying layer of older material, i. e. the basic narrative of Mark. In addition, within this Markan material, but also in the typically Matthaean material, a further distinction is imaginable between the earliest Jesus tradition and the redaction this was embedded in by the earliest redactors, i. e. the editor(s) of Mark and of the basic Matthaean material. Sometimes such distinctions are more visible by comparison with Luke. We shall mention them, in line with the redaction-critical approach, in order to highlight the specific positions of the extant Matthaean text and its redactors. Wengst, Didache, Barnabasbrief, 132. Select bibliography: Luz, Matthäus; Davies–Allison, Commentary; Strecker, Weg der Gerechtigkeit; Stanton, Gospel. 63 Tomson, If This be from Heaven, chapters 5–8. On Mark 3:6 see below n87. 64 See e. g. the excellent introduction of Luz, Matthäus; also Brown, Introduction, chapter 8. 61 62
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In a broader perspective, it is important to note that Matthew also contains a wealth of Jewish tradition material, e. g., the typically Matthaean phrases reminiscent of rabbinic terminology, ‘the Kingdom of Heaven’, ‘our Father in heaven’, ‘small’ and ‘great commandments’, and ‘the iota and the dot’.65 The [364] Gospel seems to reflect a conflict with the Pharisees over a shared heritage, resulting – like Barnabas, but more complexly so – in the amalgam of Jewish and Judaeo-Christian teachings set in an anti-Pharisaic or anti-Jewish framework.66 Studying these Jewish and Judaeo-Christian elements is rewarding,67 but we must now focus on the polemical framework. Conflict with the Pharisees is expressed particularly in two of the discourses of Jesus inserted into the Markan narrative: the Sermon on the Mount at the beginning and the ‘discourse against the Pharisees’ towards the end of the Gospel (Matt 5–7; 23). Although a fair amount of the inserted material in both passages is also found in other Gospels, the typical phrases and overall structure identify these discourses as characteristically Matthaean.68 Most stridently, this concerns the polemical phrase resounding six times in Matt 23: ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,’69 each time followed by a specific accusation to which we shall come back. Similarly, in Matt 5–7 it is said that ‘your righteousness’ is to exceed that of ‘the scribes and Pharisees’ and you should not give alms, pray, or fast ‘as the hypocrites do’ (5:20; 6:2, 5, 16).70 The phrase ‘scribes and Pharisees’ is not found in other Gospels.71 For our purposes we shall deal with these antiPharisaic passages in three clusters of material (nos. 1–3 below). In addition, disputes with Pharisees in passages based on Mark are also found scattered in Matthew. We shall discuss three of these for comparison while focussing on the relevant Matthaean redactional aspects (nos. 4–6). Most disputed issues concern 65 Luz, Matthäus 1: 53. See Str-Bill 1: 172–184, 247–249, 901–905. Billerbeck seems not to have grasped the special meaning of ( אבינו שבשמיםibid. 392–396); see e. g. mYom 8:9; mSot 9:16; tBer 3:14; tHag 2:1. 66 The conflict with the Pharisees seems reflected in the most prominent redactional layer of the Gospel. On top of that, scattered passages testify to an all-out gentile-Jewish conflict, see Tomson, ‘Matthäusevangelium’ [‘Shifting Perspectives’, in this volume]; idem, If This be from Heaven, chapter 6. 67 See esp Davies–Allison, Commentary. 68 The passages discussed here are not covered by Cohen, ‘Were Pharisees and Rabbis’. Nor is attention being paid to the specificity of Matthew as compared with the other Gospels. 69 Matt 23:13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29. The seventh time, 23:14, concerns a verse lacking in mss א B and a series of other textual witnesses. It concerns a secondary insert, adding a reproach against the ‘scribes’ from Luke 20:47 onto those against the ‘scribes and Pharisees’ in our passage. 70 The combination Pharisees – hypocrites is also found in Matt 15:1, 7; 22:15, 18. 71 Cf Luz, Matthäus 3: 318f. Mark 2:16 has the singular γραμματεῖς τῶν Φαρισαίων. Luke has three times οἱ γραμματεῖς καὶ οἱ Φαρισαῖοι, but more descriptive, 5:21; 6:7; 11:53. γραμματεῖς is most frequent in Matthew, less so as the technical term denoting an administrative profession but rather as synonymous with the Pharisaic leaders (Luz, Matthäus 1: 299). For the common Greek meaning of γραμματεύς see Acts 19:35, the ‘secretary’ of Ephesus.
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halakha or Jewish law, a main subject [365] of Jewish studies that gradually begins to gain attention in publications on the New Testament.72
(1) Matt 6:1–18, On Charity, Prayer, Fasting This is a redactionally complex Matthaean pericope. It is characterized in part by a three-fold structure marked off by set phrases and relating to the religious duties of charity, prayer, and fasting. The reproach made is not that the Pharisees give alms, pray, and fast – this the disciples of Jesus must also do – but that they make a public show of it instead of doing it discreetly. This reproach, which in itself could reflect disputes actually held between Jesus and certain Pharisees,73 serves to reinforce the evangelist’s case against the Pharisees as a whole. Into the three-fold structure, first, two verses have been inserted which address other adversaries: ἐθνικοί, ‘gentiles’,74 whose vice is to ‘use many words’ (βατταλογέω) when praying (6:7f.).75 Then, the text of the Lord’s Prayer follows (6:9–12). It is not clear how this important section relates to the wordy prayer style of gentiles;76 we shall come back to it in relation with the Didache. In that connection, the introductory phrase will appear to be important: ‘But you must pray this way …’ (οὕτως δὲ προσεύχεσθε ὑμεῖς, Matt 6:9). The net effect of the pericope is determined by Matthew’s key targeting phrases: ‘Pharisees’ and ‘hypocrites’. Utilizing main elements from the Jesus tradition, the redactor builds his case against the Pharisees accusing them of making a public show of religion and of praying in the wrong way. It is not clear why the Lord’s Prayer would be a better way of praying. We will find a probable answer when studying the Didache.
Tomson, ‘Halakhah in the New Testament’. Flusser, Jesus, 56–80 points out ancient criticisms of Pharisees preserved in rabbinic literature. Luz, Matthäus 1: 420f leaves the possibility open that the threefold lesson derives from Jesus. [See on the pericope also the interesting observations of Betz, ‘Jewish-Christian Cultic Didache’.] 74 Used more often in Matthew, paralleling ‘tax collectors’, Matt 5:47; 18:17. In 3 John 7, BDG think it stands in opposition to Christians. Luz, Matthäus 1: 418–421 mentions the absence of the phraseology but does not note the contrast marked by the ἐθνικοί in Matt 6:7. 75 This reproach could equally be at home either in the Jesus tradition or in the Matthaean redaction: Tomson, ‘Matthäusevangelium’, esp 328 [‘Shifting Perspectives’, above 292]. 76 Hence the ‘correction’ replacing ἐθνικοί with ὑποκριταί, mss B, 1424, syc, mae, in agreement with Did 8, see below. It must be considered secondary because it adapts the inserted verses to the threefold occurrence of the word in 6:2, 5, 16 and because it shifts the target from the probable original orientation to the extant one in Matt. 72 73
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(2) Matthew 23:13–33, On Pharisaic Minutiae A second cluster of accusations against the Pharisees is found in the later part of the discourse in Matt 23. [366] Listed for reproach are: the casuistry of vows and oaths (23:16–22), tithes of garden herbs (23), and the distinct purity of the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of cups (25–26). These allegedly ‘Pharisaic’ items can be shown to be indigenous to rabbinic tradition.77 Again, it is not unlikely that at base this was a dispute between Jesus and Pharisees over a common heritage since interestingly, he is attributed with the phrase, ‘These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others,’ and these are ‘the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith’ (23:23). Comparison with the Lukan parallel makes it likely that this inner-Jewish or even inner-Pharisaic dispute was generalized into an anti-Pharisaic one by the Matthaean redactor. In Luke 11, the setting is a table dispute in a home of Pharisees whom Jesus reproaches for observing such minutiae as distinguishing the inside from the outside of cups, tithing garden herbs, and loving prestigious seating in synagogues, while forgetting the weightier matters of the law. The specific reproach he then makes to the ‘law teachers’ (νομικοί) is that they charge people with unbearable burdens they do not care to touch themselves and adorn the tombs of the prophets their own fathers have killed (Luke 11:40–48). In Matthew, these two accusations are heaped onto those addressed against the Pharisees, among other parts in the introductory section of Matt 23, which we shall now discuss.78
(3) Matthew 23:1–12, On Moses and the ‘Rabbis’ There are two points of interest here. First, there is the ‘chair of Moses’ (Μωϋσέως καθέδρα) on which ‘the scribes and Pharisees have seated themselves’. The Graeco-Aramaic phrase קתדרא דמשה, ‘chair of Moses’, is known both from excavated synagogues since the Byzantine period and from rabbinic literature; the reference in Matthew is its earliest attestation.79 Again, this implies common ground: one is to practise everything the Pharisees teach, ‘but not what they do’ (23:3). However, the accusation about ‘unbearable burdens’ follows, lumping things together in an anti-Pharisaic stance. An accusation unique to Matthew is 77 See material listed in Str-Bill 1: 931–936. For vows and oaths see mNed (see also Matt 15:3–6 and cf mHag 1:8, ;)התר נדרים פורחין באוירfor tithes of mint, yDem 2:1 (22c), of dill, mMaas 4:5, for cummin, mDem 2:1; mEd 5:3; mUk 3:6; for ‘inside and outside’ see the seemingly ancient halakha critically commented on by R. Yose, tHag 3:5; cf Neusner, ‘First Cleanse the Inside’. 78 Luke 11:46 = Matt 23:4; Luke 11:47f = Matt 23:29–31. [The assessment of Fitzmyer, Luke, 203 is that the absolute use of ὁ κύριος betrays the touch of the redactor.] 79 Luz, Matthäus 3: 299; Runesson–Binder–Olsson, Ancient Synagogue, 98f; Becker, Kathedra des Mose; Naveh, On Stone and Mosaic, 144.
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that in addition to being prestigiously seated and greeted (found also in Luke 11:46), the Pharisees want to be called ‘rabbi’. [367] Jesus’ followers are not to be called so, nor ‘father’ nor ‘master’, for they have only one ‘teacher’ (διδάσ καλος), ‘one heavenly Father’, and ‘one master, the Christ’ (23:9f). While the objection to being called ‘father’ is well imaginable in the Jesus tradition,80 the mention of ‘one master, the Christ’ unmistakably signals a late redactional layer.81 This is apparently where we must locate the rejection of ‘rabbi’ as a title. In the Gospel of Mark and even more so in John, rabbi and the more ornate rabboni are freely used as an address directed to Jesus and John the Baptist both by their disciples and by outsiders,82 showing it to be traditional. Luke, typically, avoids the Hebrew word when found in Mark and translates it with the very Greek ἐπιστάτα, ‘master’.83 We seem confronted with a late development. This is confirmed by Matthew’s avoidance of ‘rabbi’ when elaborating Mark84 – except when used by ‘Judas who betrayed Jesus’ (Matt 26:25! cf 27:3)!85 Matthew’s avoidance of ῥαββί is revealingly selective. This enhances its function as the cherished epithet of his declared adversaries, the Pharisees.86
(4) Matthew 12:1–14, On the Sabbath The two Matthaean dispute stories with Pharisees over grain plucking and healing on the Sabbath are based on [368] the narratives in Mark 2:23–3:6, which in another elaboration are also found in Luke 6:1–11. With arguments varying, the drift of the disputes is not dissimilar in the three Gospels, but the conclusion is Cf Mark 10:17f, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone’. In rabbinic literature אבאappears as an informal honorific title from early Tannaim onwards, cf Luz, Matthäus 3:307 n81, drawing on Str-Bill. tMen 13:18–21 ascribes traditions about the גדולי כהונה (cf ἀρχιερεῖς) to Abba Shaul, a contemporary of R. Akiva, and the still earlier Abba Shaul ben Botnit and Abba Yose ben Yohanan the Jerusalemite. The address πάπα for bishops as used early 3rd cent. by Origen (Scherer, Entretien d’Origène, 54, 102), makes Gemeindebildung in Matt 23:9 less probable – it flatly contradicts Jesus’ prohibition! 81 Luz, Matthäus 3: 298 citing Bultmann, Strecker, Michaels; ibid. 308 also noting the singular καθηγήτης. 82 Addressing the Baptist: his disciples (John 1:38, with translation διδάσκαλε; 3:26). Addressing Jesus: Peter (Mark 9:5; 11:21); Nathanael and other disciples (John 1:49; 4:31; 9:2; 11:8); Judas (Mark 14:45); Nicodemus and the Galilean multitude (John 3:2; 6:25). Jesus is called ῥαββουνί by Bartimaeus in Mark 10:51 and by Mary Magdalene in John 20:16 (again with translation διδάσκαλε). 83 Unique in the NT: Luke 5:5; 8:24 (repeated); 9:33 (for ῥαββί in Mark 9:5); 9:49; 17:13. See BDG, LSJ and esp MM ad vocem. Cf Fitzmyer, Luke, 566 on ἐπιστάτα and 107–127 on Luke’s style and vocabulary. 84 Replacing it with κύριε, ‘lord’, Matt 17:4, cf Mark 9:5. 85 Matt 26:25, 49, noted also by Strecker, Weg der Gerechtigkeit, 33. 86 Luz’ hypothesis (Matthäus 3: 307f.) that ‘rabbi’ was in use in Matthew’s Judaeo-Christian community can be maintained only with reference to a pre-final stage of redaction. 80
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dramatically different. While in Luke the Pharisees (and scribes) ‘discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus’, in Matthew and Mark they (plus the Herodians, in Mark) ‘took counsel against him, how to destroy him’. The question is to what extent this phrase is indigenous to Mark; clearly, it is very much so to Matthew.87 Matthew is also the only synoptic Gospel where Pharisees, along with high priests, are involved in the judicial campaign against Jesus in the Passion story.88 The Matthaean Sabbath disputes confirm this constellation.
(5) Matthew 15:1–20, On Purity The dispute narrative over hand washing and purity in Mark 7:1–23 has been much discussed, possibly because since the Church Fathers, the phrase about ‘cleaning all foodstuffs’ in Mark 7:19 has been read as an abolition of the Jewish dietary laws by Jesus.89 The parallel story in Matt 15:20 has not given rise to such interpretations. On the one hand, the Matthaean elaboration has made the story more to the point and consistent, leaving out the phrase about ‘cleaning all foodstuffs’, and on the other, it includes sharper criticism of the Pharisees (Matt 15:12–14).90 While the unanimous synoptic tradition testifies to disputes between Jesus and Pharisees about purity,91 we do not get the impression that this item played a central role in Matthew’s particular polemics against the Pharisees.
(6) Matthew 19:3–9, On Divorce The last Matthaean elaboration of a Markan passage we want to review is extraordinary in two respects. First, it is not framed in polemics against the Pharisees and second, to the contrary, it betrays rare knowledge of the differences between the Pharisaic schools of Shammai and Hillel, a feature otherwise found in rabbinic sources only. It concerns the ruling on divorce ascribed to Jesus which appears twice in [369] Matthew and distinctly differs not only from Mark,
87 Cf Flusser, Jesus, 63f. Matt 12:14 συμβούλιον ἔλαβον is a Latinism (BDR § 5.3b) typical of Matthew and also found 22:15; 27:1, 7; 28:12. While the manuscripts are divided at Mark 3:6 and 15:1, doubt arises about Mark 3:6 because it is most extreme in Mark in expressing Pharisaic hostility towards Jesus, while the gravity of his Sabbath violation is disputable. Cf Doering, ‘Sabbath Laws’, 226–230 on Mark 3:6. 88 Matt 21:45; 27:62, ‘high priests and Pharisees’. In addition to chapter 23, Matthew inserts the Pharisees into the Markan Jerusalem disputation stories in 22:15 and 22:34. 89 More elaboration in Tomson, ‘Jewish Purity Laws’. 90 Luz, Matthäus 2: 415–417. 91 Jesus rejects impurity transmitted via food: Tomson, ‘Zavim 5:12’ [in this volume: ‘Mishna Zavim’, 64].
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but also from Paul and Luke.92 The latter three raise the question whether divorce is possible at all and on the authority of Jesus respond negatively – which puts Jesus in the vicinity of the Essenes on this issue. Matthew, however, phrases the question as being, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?’, whereupon Jesus answers that indeed it is lawful but only in the case of unchastity (cf Matt 5:31–32). While the repetition expresses typically Matthaean emphasis,93 the formula presumed by the question, ‘divorce for any cause’, unmistakably reflects the opinion of the school of Hillel, while Jesus’ answer, allowing ‘divorce only in case of unchastity’, accords with that of Shammai. Redaction-critically, this signifies – in addition to the clear difference with Paul, Mark, and Luke – that at one point in the development of Matthew, the redactor identified with Jews close to the school of Shammai. The high point of the differences between the schools of Shammai and Hillel is conventionally dated to the last decades of the Temple.94
Summary We have discussed three exclusively Matthaean passages where a clear antiPharisaic stance is expressed: (1) in Matt 6:1–18, the redactor distances himself from Pharisaic almsgiving, prayer, and fasting; (2) in 23:13–33, objections about Pharisaic minutiae are generalized into an anti-Pharisaic stance; and (3) in 23:1– 12, the Pharisees’ usurpation of ‘the chair of Moses’ and preference for the title ‘rabbi’ are castigated. In two further passages, based on Mark, the Matthaean redactor set accents of his own. The dispute (4) about Sabbath, 12:1–14, ends in the Pharisees’ plan to kill Jesus, as is also seen in the Passion story, but (5) the one on purity, 15:1–20, does not conclude on a clear conflict with Pharisees. Finally (6) the dispute on divorce based on Mark, Matt 19:3–9, embodies a unique position within the New Testament, one that comes close to the Pharisaic school of Shammai. In short, while there are passages signalling a clear break with the Pharisees, there are others where some degree of continuity seems maintained. We would very much like to have a plausible dating for this Gospel, but in the case of such an anonymous, continuously edited text, this is famously difficult. We must try to sensibly handle an inevitable measure of circularity: evidence within the text can become significant only when combined with [370] external evidence, and vice versa.95 The redaction-critical perspective is more important than ever: we are dealing with a community text which by nature tends to incorporate adaptations in successive new situations. Toward the surface of the result For this material see Tomson, ‘Divorce Halakhah’, 323–332 [in this volume, 97–105]. For the phenomenon see Luz, Matthäus 1: 29f. 94 Cf Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 185–200. 95 Similarly, but in a more restricted sense Bultmann, Geschichte, 5. 92 93
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ing layered structure, an all-out conflict with the Pharisees is discernible, but can we be more precise about its date? For the sake of the argument, we need to leave the ‘rabbi’ title out of consideration here: it will be a central piece of evidence in our evaluation of the relationship to the ‘rabbis’ later on. However, the phrase of ‘one master, the Christ’ (23:10) does give an inner-Christian indication of a late development. Yet it is impossible to tag a date on it. All we can say is that where commentators propose a final date between 80 and 100 CE, our evidence tends to point towards the upper limit. Further useful information is found in scattered passages which seem to reflect an exclusively gentile Christian viewpoint. In Matt 21:43, Jesus tells the chief priests and Pharisees that ‘the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it.’96 Also, while in Matt 10:6 Jesus tells his disciples ‘not to go on a road to gentiles … but rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel’, in 28:19 he orders them to ‘go and make disciples of all gentiles’.97 The report that the slander about the theft of Jesus’ body ‘is spread among Jews to this day’ (28:15) even seems to signal a break or near-break with Jewish society as a whole.98 ‘De-Judaization’ of inner-Jewish texts and traditions was not uncommon in gentile Christianity and is extant, e. g., in the Christian recensions of the Apocalypse of Ezra.99 It is what we have massively before us in Barnabas. Again, it is impossible to decide when these passages in Matthew were phrased, but they certainly make for a very late date of redaction, i. e. around 100 CE. [371]
The Didache The close relationship we have noted between the Didache or ‘Teachings of the Apostles’100 and the Gospel of Matthew can be further specified, provided 96 See Flusser, ‘Two Anti-Jewish Montages’ (also on Matt 8:11f.). Luz, Matthäus 3: 228 speaks of a ‘supersession theory’ (Sukzessionstheorie). 97 On this issue see Tomson, ‘Matthausevangelium’ [‘Shifting Perspectives’, in this volume]. Some commentators soften the tension with 10:6 by translating ‘nations’ in 28:19, while in 10:6 the obvious meaning is ‘gentiles’. See Luz, Matthäus 4: 447–452. 98 But see the careful discussion in Luz, Matthäus 1: 423–426. 99 Cf 4 Ezra 1:24, 31 (‘You would not obey me, O Judah, I will turn to other nations … I have rejected your feast days, and new moons, and circumcisions of the flesh’); 2:7, 9 (‘Let them be scattered among the nations’; trans. OTP). Cf Flusser, ‘Matthew’s “Verus Israel”’, in idem, Judaism and the Origins, 561–574. On the complicated textual tradition see Bergren, ‘Christian Influence’. 100 Διδαχαὶ τῶν ἀποστόλων may be the original title, see Audet, Didachè, 91–103. Further literature: Alon, ‘Ha-halakha be-torat 12 ha-Shelihim’; Wengst, Didache, Barnabasbrief; Kraft, Barnabas and the Didache; Niederwimmer, Didache; Draper, The Didache in Modern Research; Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache; Del Verme, Didache and Judaism; Tomson, ‘Halakhic Evidence’; idem, If This be from Heaven, 380–391.
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we do not exclude other links with ancient tradition and literature. A number of elements relating to the Jesus tradition which are scattered over Didache and Matthew in similar but non-identical form testify to affinity on a pre-redactional level, probably reflecting oral transmission.101 Somewhere on the same preredactional level, we must locate the ancient halakhic elements often close to rabbinic literature, as first identified by Alon, i. e., rules regarding abortion, magic, slaves, prayer, grace after meals, fasting, immersion, and priestly gifts.102 At the moment the work was written down, apparently, the Jewish ‘Two Ways’ text was integrated, making for almost one third of the document. A further stage of development then is represented by the Lord’s Prayer which appears in Didache and Matthew in near-identical form. We have seen that in Matthew, it is situated in a complex redactional development. To a lesser extent this also is the case in the Didache. After the ‘Two Ways’ section in Did 1–6, chapters 7–15 deal with ritual and community matters, often introducing these with the marker περὶ δέ, ‘now concerning …’ This concerns in particular chapters 7 through 10: ‘Now concerning baptism’ (περὶ δὲ τοῦ βαπτίσματος, 7:1); ‘Now concerning eucharist’ (περὶ δέ τῆς εὐχαριστίας, 9:1).103 This sequence contains seemingly old material. It is interrupted, without the περὶ δέ formula, by chapter 8 about correct fasting and [372] praying, which is brought as a sort of comment on 7:4 where fasting is mentioned in connection with baptism.104 Significantly, this is also the only polemical chapter in the Didache. But let your fasts not be with the hypocrites; for they fast on the second (day) of the week and the fifth; but you must fast on the fourth and the Preparation (Friday). And do not pray as the hypocrites; but as the Lord commanded in his gospel, pray this way: Our Father who art in heaven … Three times a day pray that way. (Did 8:1f)
We are strongly reminded of the pericope against the ‘hypocrites’ in Matt 6 involving charity, prayer, and fasting. Not only is the text of the Lord’s Prayer almost identical to that in Matthew, its introductory formula is also similar: ‘Pray
101 The proverb about ‘the holy for the dogs’ is cited ‘without any context’ in Matt 7:6 (thus Luz, Matthäus 1: 497), whereas Did 9:5 (not mentioned by Luz) quotes it in view of participation in the Eucharist ‘as the Lord said’. The saying about the labourer and his food Matt 10:10 (contrast Luke 10:7; 1Tim 5:18!) has an independent development in Did 13:2; the saying against testing the Spirit in prophets, Did 11:7, has a Christological application in Matt 12:31. Esp the last example proves the independence of Did’s material from the extant Matt – as against Wengst, Didache, Barnabasbrief, 30, who here differs from Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels. The references to ‘the gospel’ in Did 11:3; 15:3, 4 do not compellingly relate to the extant Matthew (on Did 8:2 see below). 102 Alon, ‘Ha-halakha be-Torat 12 ha-Shelihim’. 103 Also 6:3; 9:3; 11:3. On the phrase see Mitchell, ‘Concerning PERI DE’. 104 Similar observations are made by Kraft, Barnabas and the Didache, 62.
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this way’ (οὕτως προσεύχεσθε). In this seemingly inserted chapter, the Didache is particularly close to the extant Matthew.105 That being the case, it seems likely that Did 8 and Matt 6:1–18 variously address a closely similar if not identical situation. The Didache and the Gospel of Matthew, two texts which we concluded draw on the same traditions and belonged to a larger community of both Jewish and non-Jewish Christians, both appear to be opposing the ‘hypocrites’, i. e., the Pharisees.106 This impression is confirmed by the halakhic details involved, as we shall see. It indicates that Matthew and the Didache were facing a very similar if not identical situation. The insistence upon fasting on the fourth and sixth days of the week, Wednesday and Friday, instead of on the second and fifth, may well reflect a particular Jewish tradition and needs not imply an anti-Jewish stance. Wednesday and Friday were, next to Sunday, reserved for festive days on the 364 day calendar outlined in the Book of Jubilees and observed among other places at Qumran;107 apparently the Didache community had some similar custom. [373] Epiphanius (late fourth century) knows, by contrast, that Monday and Thursday were the preferred fast days of the ‘Pharisees’,108 and we shall find the same in rabbinic literature. Hence it is imaginable that the Didache’s preference is traditional and could be associated with the Jesus tradition or its larger surroundings.109 Nor would this be the only quasi-Essene custom attributed to Jesus. Other examples are the rejection of divorce and the precedence of bread over wine at festive meals.110 In short, the Didache seems to stick to halakhot which derive from the Jesus tradition and which it presents in opposition to Pharisaic rules. In this instance, the Didache addresses a Jewish custom as this applies for Christians, or in other words, a Judaeo-Christian halakha. 105 As in Phil 4:15, εὐαγγέλιον in Did 8:2 (as in 11:3;15:3, 4) most likely refers to the Jesus tradition, see Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 16f. The upshot is that Did 8 and Matt 6 reached their extant text at about the same time. 106 The insertion of Matt 6:9–13, which in itself seems to oppose the Lord’s Prayer to wordy gentile prayers, into the threefold criticism of sanctimonious Pharisees in 6:1–18 (changing its target) resembles and chronologically corresponds to the addition of Did 8:1–2 onto the body of the Didache. Here, Did and Matt seem to have a parallel redaction history. 107 VanderKam, Calendars; Jaubert, La date de la Cène; cf Audet, Didachè, 369. 108 Epiphanius, Haer 1.211, Φαρισαίοι … νήστευον δὶς τοῦ σαββάτου, δευτέραν καὶ πέμπτην. Although ‘Pharisees’ remains the usual, anachronistic name among Christian writers, it could concern an older tradition. 109 It is not clear whether the question of why the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees fasted and those of Jesus did not, Mark 2:18–22, also relates to this issue. The passage does indicate, however, that Jesus followed a differing tradition as to fasting in general. 110 Flusser, ‘Last Supper’; Tomson, ‘Divorce Halakhah’ [in this volume], and Paul, 139–142. A more complicated example is Jesus’ preference for a non-Pharisaic Passover date as evidenced by the seeming contradiction between the synoptic and Johannine dating of the Last Supper, see Jaubert, La date de la Cène and cf Tomson, If This be from Heaven, 210–212. For a recent re-evaluation of Jaubert’s thesis see Saulnier, Calendrical Variations.
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As for prayer, late Old Testament sources already mention the custom of praying three times daily, and so do early rabbinic traditions, stressing simultaneity with the daily morning and evening sacrifices in the Temple.111 This ancient custom is also supported by the Didache. However, the Didache also stipulates that a different prayer than that of the ‘hypocrites’ is to be said, namely, the one taught in ‘the gospel’. When studying the closely related passage in Matthew we concluded that there, by ‘hypocrites’ are meant Pharisees, while there are also affinities with early rabbinic tradition. The close link with Matthew and the opposition to the Pharisaic fasting rule make it likely that in the case of prayer as well, the ‘hypocrites’ whose rules for prayer the Didache is formally opposing are also Pharisees. Comparison with the Lukan pericope about the Lord’s Prayer is instructive.112 Luke 11:1 relates: ‘(Jesus) was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples’ – whereupon Jesus teaches them the Lukan form of the Lord’s [374] Prayer, shorter than Matthew by two clauses and featuring the brief address, ‘Father’. The account is also distinctly different from Matthew. Not only is there a straightforward narrative setting – as compared with Matthew’s worked-over discourse setting – but Luke’s narrative lacks any polemical emphasis and quite to the contrary puts Jesus on a par with his former teacher, John the Baptist. We are made to understand that the prayer Jesus taught stands parallel to the one John had taught, and it is only likely that more similar Jewish prayers were circulating. Luke also tells us that Jesus was praying ‘somewhere’, i. e. outside, which is what we hear more often, especially in Luke.113 Scholars have linked this with other evidence to the effect that prayer in the early first century CE was said individually, anywhere, not especially in synagogues, and that its form and language were not fixed.114 The non-polemical narrative setting and the parallel of Jesus and John lend the Lukan version a measure of authenticity. The Didache’s author apparently was facing a situation where such variety was no longer possible. His community must have felt the need to resist the rules about daily prayer of the Pharisees. If indeed this concerns a chapter inserted into a sequence of earlier material, we are faced with a late development in the history of the community carrying this text. This raises the question of the Didache’s date. The fact that conflict with the Pharisees is limited to chapter 8 would suggest an earlier date than the extant Matthew, where this conflict is pervasive. The same would follow from the fact 111 Dan 6:11; Ps 55:18; mBer 4:1; tBer 3:1–3 (a rule not of ‘the Tora’ but of ‘the sages’). See Alon, ‘Ha-halakha be-Torat 12 ha-Shelihim’, 284–286; Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache, 293–296. 112 In more detail: Tomson, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. 113 Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16; 6:12; 9:18, 28; Matt 14:23; Acts 10:9 (Peter). 114 Fleischer, ‘On the Beginnings’ and Safrai, ‘Gathering in the Synagogues’.
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that while the Didache clearly also presupposes non-Jewish readers (cf Did 6:2–3), this does not turn into an exclusively gentile Christian position, unlike the scattered passages in Matthew we have pointed out.115 Also, the Didache nowhere seems to suppose the written Gospel of Matthew.116 The impression is that the Didache somehow reflects an earlier stage in the evolving conflict between this mixed Jewish-gentile Christian community and the Pharisees. However, the evidence that the Didache and Matthew were involved in the same conflict with the Pharisees limits the possibility for a dating of Didache earlier than circa 100 CE. Maybe it just was a less frequented and therefore less intensely updated document. [375]
Didache-Matthew-Barnabas and the Rabbis: Commonality and Conflict Let us now see what evidence our three texts combined offer as to their larger Christian milieu and its relationship to the Jews, and confront this with information from early rabbinic literature. An aspect touched on repeatedly in the preceding must be restated here: our three texts all evince many elements of Jewish tradition shared in common with rabbinic literature. We have noted laws and customs in the Didache, specialized terminology in Matthew, and exegetical traditions in Barnabas. Often, these are similar to but not identical with their rabbinic counterparts, thus documenting an earlier stage or a different strand of Jewish tradition than the one recorded in rabbinic literature. Such correlations in themselves are hard to locate historically. Taken together they do testify to a basic affinity in thought and practice between the hypothesized larger Christian milieu and the Jewish milieu reflected in rabbinic literature. Consequently, the conflict between both communities which we must insist on involved a dispute over a shared heritage. Evidence of extraordinary significance is the familiarity with the Pharisaic schools of Shammai and Hillel betrayed by Matthew when re-phrasing the dispute story on divorce. The position taken by the Matthaean redactor is the more remarkable since it deviates not only from that of Paul, but also from Matthew’s source, Mark, and from Luke. As we said, the so-called ‘schools disputes’ are otherwise documented only in rabbinic literature. The evidence suggests a link between the Pharisaic tradition contemporaneous with the Matthaean redactor and the rabbinic tradition recorded in the Mishna and related Tannaic literature. All three texts testify to conflict with Jews. In Barnabas, this is most absolute, with Jewish ritual being rejected in toto. The rupture is complete; Jews Did 6:2–3 see Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache, 238–270. See above n105.
115 On 116
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are only spoken of as ‘they’, like external adversaries. Didache and Matthew, however, are in the midst of conflict: there is no rupture with Judaism as such, but with a particular group of Jews. Yet the conflict does not appear to be everywhere equally pervasive. In one single, seemingly inserted chapter of the Didache, conflict is registered with the ‘hypocrites’ over matters of fasting and daily prayer. Matthew, however, polemicizes against the Pharisees throughout, having Jesus address ‘Pharisees and scribes, you hypocrites’ and disputing a range of Pharisaic observances. Both Didache and Matthew instead stress their own observances, which in the case of fasting and prayer appear to be closely interrelated. Let us now select those disputed items that are distinctly redactional and hence datable to about the time of redaction of our texts. The Pharisaic [376] minutiae mentioned in Matt 23:13–33 do not count, for we cannot decide what derives from the Jesus tradition and what is redactional. The same goes for the reworked Markan dispute stories about Sabbath and purity. The divorce pericope suggests a link with rabbinic tradition and does not represent a debate over but within Pharisaic tradition. This leaves us with three Pharisaic customs that around 100 CE are rejected by the editors of the Didache and Matthew: (a) the Pharisees’ rule of fasting on Mondays and Thursdays instead of the anonymous, apparently traditional rule of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays (Did 8); (b) the prayer the Pharisees want them to pray three times a day, instead of the prayer Jesus had taught (Did 8; Matt 6); (c) the Pharisees’ wish to be called rabbi (Matt 23). All three items concern customs with high social relevance: they aim at structuring the visible religious community and its leadership. This evidence must now be confronted with the early rabbinic sources. The theoretical possibility to do so is given with our adoption of a comprehensive paradigm reminiscent of our nineteenth century predecessors. In doing so, we shall stand by our qualifications, in particular the seventh one: we refrain both from taking continuity between the ‘Pharisees’ of the New Testament and other sources and the ‘rabbis’ in rabbinic literature for granted and from denying it offhand. We consider it one possibility among others. What rabbinic evidence is there concerning the three areas of conflict with the ‘Pharisees’?
Fasting The Didache authors reject the opinion of the ‘hypocrites’ that fasting must be done on Monday and Thursday. Here, a link with rabbinic data is obvious. Early Tannaic sources are explicit that ‘the second and the fifth weekdays are reserved
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for community fasts’.117 Otherwise, rabbinic literature records no conflict over the particular week days for fasting. Discussions over [377] the fast day calendar did exist, as is testified by rabbinic reports on the ‘Scroll of Fasting’ from the period of the first revolt against Rome.118 There are also rabbinic reports of debates over calendar matters between Pharisees and Boethusians or Sadducees, and this is confirmed by Qumran evidence on calendar disputes with Temple authorities.119 Insofar as the Didache community’s observance of Wednesday and Friday did relate to the Jubilee calendar, this must have been another cause for conflict with the Pharisees, and it may be accidental that rabbinic literature does not confirm this. What it does confirm is the matter-of-fact acceptance of Monday and Thursday as fast days. This proves the Didache’s ‘hypocrite’ adversaries to be observant of the tradition codified in rabbinic literature.
Prayer The Didache also records a conflict with the ‘hypocrites’ about the prayer to be prayed three times daily. Here, the Mishna contains an explicit, important dispute. Without introduction, Rabban Gamliel the Younger is cited as laying down that, ‘Every day, one should pray eighteen benedictions,’ and related texts stipulate this is thrice daily.120 His colleagues Yoshua, Akiva and Eliezer differ not about the hours but about the eighteen benedictions, stating that ‘a summary of the eighteen’ or ‘a short prayer’ is all one can prescribe, or at least ‘in case prayer is not fluent in his mouth’, or alternatively, that prayer should not be ‘fixed’ but consist of real ‘supplications’. This last argument is also shared by another rabbi mentioned elsewhere.121 It appears we are faced with a decree initiated by Gamliel about a mandatory prayer said three times daily and consisting 117 tTaan 2:4; the same is implied in mTaan 1:6; 2:9. These were also the days for law courts, markets, and religious gathering days: cf tTaan 2:4; mMeg 1:3; 3:6; 4:1. Comments by R. Eliezer, R. Yoshua, and R. Yose suggest an early Tannaic terminus ad quem. Cf Luke 18:12 mentioning ‘fasting twice a week’. See Alon, ‘Le-yishuva shel baraita ahat’, in idem, Studies 2:120–127; Alon, ‘Ha-halakha be-Torat 12 ha-Shelihim’, 291f; Schürer, History 2: 483f; Safrai, ‘Gathering in the Synagogues’, 10; Van de Sandt–Flusser, Didache, 291–293; Tomson, ‘Halakhic Evidence’. 118 Scroll of Fasting, see the edition by Noam, Megillat Taanit, and her article, ‘Megillat Taanit’. It is not clear though how this is related to the question of on which week days to fast. 119 Josephus, Ant 18:12–17, Sadducees must follow Pharisaic ritual rules. mMen 10:1–3, tMen 10:23, Boethusians and festival rites on Sabbath. Similarly re. Succoth: tSuk 3:1, 16, bSuk 43b, 48b. 1QpHab 11:4–7, the Wicked Priest observed another Day of Atonement than the sectarians. 120 mBer 4:3–4. mBer 4:1 defines the hours of the ‘morning’, ‘afternoon’, and ‘evening prayer’; tBer 2:1–2 explains these to be ‘set by the Sages’ in parallel to the hours of the daily sacrifices. 121 R. Shimon ben Nataneel, mAv 2:17; see Fleischer, ‘On the Beginnings’, 426.
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of eighteen benedictions. So much indeed is stated in a later tradition transmitted in the Talmud: ‘Our masters taught: Shimon ha-Pekoli arranged eighteen benedictions in correct order before Rabban Gamliel at Yavne.’122 According to rabbinic literature, Yavne was the location of the [378] rabbinic court and academy between the destruction of the Temple and the Bar Kokhba war which was set up by Yohanan ben Zakkai and later directed by Gamliel the Younger.123 Earlier research was based on the consensus that the ‘Eighteen Benedictions’ had slowly evolved during Second Temple times and were finally ‘arranged in correct order’ at Yavne.124 More recently, the interpretation has been advanced that no traces of an obligatory prayer are to be found before the destruction of the Temple; prayers were said individually and often in private. Statutory prayer must have been introduced only after the destruction, possibly in part in response to the cessation of the daily Temple service on behalf of the community, which offered the natural setting for personal prayer.125 In fact, one of the corollaries of the Eighteen Benedictions is its formal function as a prayer on behalf of the community.126 The simultaneous though diverse objections of Gamliel’s contemporaries suggest that they reacted to a novel decree that he had initiated.127 In particular, they seem to appeal to the existing custom that saying the short prayer taught by some sage is sufficient; Tannaic literature preserves a number of these ‘short prayers’.128 It is also clear that over the course of time the prayer of Eighteen Benedictions did gain general recognition. In the Talmud it is accepted as normal procedure. It is of great importance for us that by size, structure and wording the ‘short prayers’ just mentioned are very similar to the prayer taught by Jesus, especially the shorter version preserved in Luke.129 Moreover it is said that Jesus taught this short prayer in response to the question of his disciples, ‘Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples’ (Lk 11:1). In other words, Jesus’ prayer is seen as another prayer besides that of John the Baptist. Viewed from the [379] 122 bBer
lows.
28a; bMeg 17b. In the former passage, the tradition about the birkat ha-minim fol-
See Schwartz, Lod (Lydda); Rosenfeld, Lod and Its Sages. Elbogen, Gottesdienst, 27–41; Heinemann, Prayer; Alon, The Jews 1: 266–272. 125 Fleischer, ‘On the Beginnings’; Safrai, ‘Gathering in the Synagogues’; see further Tomson, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ [in this volume]. As Fleischer notes, the Apostles went praying in the Temple (Acts 2:46; 3:1). For a different analysis see Cohen, ‘Were Pharisees and Rabbis’. 126 This aspect is stressed by Rabban Gamliel in tRH 2:18, insisting on the formal representative function of the שליח צבור, lit. ‘agent of the community’, while his colleagues are opposed and stress individual prayer. This seems to belong to the discussion cited mBer 4:3–4. 127 See esp Fleischer, ‘On the Beginnings’, 426–428. Ibid. 437 he also suggests that R.Yehuda ha-Nasi’s remarkable decision (c. 200 CE) to list Gamliel’s opponents reflects ongoing opposition. 128 Cf the תפילה קצרהtaught by R. Yoshua, R. Eliezer and others in mBer 4:4; tBer 3:7. 129 Thus correctly Lachs, Rabbinic Commentary, 118f. See further Tomson, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ [in this volume]. 123 124
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perspective of the tradition preserved in Luke, therefore, the prayer the Didache authors wanted to stick to instead of the novel prayer decreed by Gamliel was not basically different from that of Eliezer or Yoshua. According to the assessment of Shmuel Safrai, Gamliel could have risen to power only after Domitian’s death in 96 CE and must have died before the revolt under Trajan, 115–117 CE.130 If Gamliel introduced his rule of Eighteen Benedictions near the beginning of his reign, which is not unlikely, this would roughly coincide with the dating around 100 CE we have advanced for Matthew and Didache. The far-reaching conclusion suggests itself that both the rabbis Yoshua, Eliezer, and Akiva and the editors of Didache – and of Matthew, quite likely – opposed the new rule. The Matthaean redactor’s familiarity with a specific Shammaite position and the many Matthaean phrases reminiscent of rabbinic usage make this conclusion the more compelling.
The Title ‘Rabbi’ Rabbinic literature offers indirect but clear evidence about its introduction. Consistently, a difference is made between sages who worked before the Destruction and those who worked after it. Even such prominent pre-70 sages as Shammai and Hillel are always mentioned without title, and practically all those after that date are referred to with the title.131 There is no report of the change-over. Explicit mention is found only in a letter of the tenth century Babylonian Jewish leader Sherira Gaon: ‘The designation “rabbi” came into use with those who were ordained at that time … The practice spread from the disciples of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai.’132 However it is not clear that Rav Sherira possessed a positive tradition and did not just draw the conclusion from the rabbinic data that we are also drawing: Yohanan ben Zakkai is reported to have prepared the ground for ‘rabbinic’ Judaism after the Destruction.133 Just so, [380] the shift Safrai, ‘Hitosheshut ha-yishuv’, 331f. The introduction of ‘rabbi’ as a formal title did not stop its use as a polite address, cf the case in mNed 9:5 (ms K) where the sage called ‘Rabbi Akiva’ is addressed by one of the litigants, just as we have it in the Gospels: ‘Rabbi, my father bequeathed me 800 dinar …’ It is unclear how this relates to the analysis by Cohen, ‘Epigraphical Rabbis’. How are we to assess the social significance of epigraphic conventions in proportion to the use of ‘rabbi’ in rabbinic literature, keeping in account also Jewish multilingualism and multiculturalism? 132 The Second Letter to Kairwan, in Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon, ed Lewin p125 (as translated by G. Levi in Alon, The Jews, 1: 226; cf brief discussion by Stemberger, Einleitung, 16). Ibid. p126 Sherira writes on ‘Abba’ as a name, not a title. For Alon, the issue at hand is ordination itself, not the title ‘rabbi’. [See the useful survey by Shanks, ‘The Title Rabbi’, taking issue with S. Zeitlin. For rabbi and rav as used, respectively, for Palestinian and Babylonian sages, see Breuer, ‘Rabbi is Greater than Rav’.] 133 See the sober article in EJ (2007) by Wald, ‘Johanan ben Zakkai’. 130 131
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reflected in the distinct usage of rabbinic literature coincides with the conflict documented in Matthew over the title ‘rabbi’ used by the Pharisees.134 In sum: around 100 CE, the extant Didache and Matthew document conflict with the Pharisees over three items which rabbinic literature allows us to associate with the rabbis of the early Yavne period. The identification is the more credible in view of Matthew’s acquaintance with a specific difference between the schools of Shammai and Hillel documented in rabbinic literature. All disputed items are specifically relevant for structuring community and leadership. Moreover the conflict over the issue of daily prayer bears the imprint of Rabban Gamliel’s leadership prevailing over prominent colleagues. In other words, the conflicts in Matthew and Didache bear the traces of the rabbinic ‘movement’ of Yavne.
The Roman Perspective It is important to place the above evidence in the framework of the Roman Empire. Here Barnabas, which does not record conflict over Pharisaic or rabbinic rules, shows the most useful but also the most extreme position. The document testifies to a power struggle in Roman Palestine, welcoming Hadrian’s building project in Jerusalem as confirmation of the demise of the Jews. While the project represented a new situation which likely sparked the revolt, the tensions which erupted at that point must have been building up during preceding decades. Reflecting these tensions, Barnabas documents the catalytic influence Roman policy had on social relations of Jews and Christians in this period. The theory advanced by Marco Rizzi is interesting in this connection. He argues that as from 124/125 CE, Hadrian developed a panhellenic imperial philosophy, enveloping diverse religious identities and cults in a universal paideia, thus also creating the occasion for new forms of Christian self-expression.135 This theory is able to explain both Hadrian’s plans with Jerusalem/Aelia including the Jupiter temple and his massive investment in quenching the revolt of the Jews against those plans. Seen in this light, Barnabas’ anti-Jewish polemics gain a remarkable theopolitical significance. [381] The Didache does not show any of this. In Matthew, however, there are some vestiges of the Roman presence. In addition to the Roman military figuring in 134 For helpful reflections on the transition from ‘Pharisees’ to ‘rabbis’ see Cohen, ‘The Significance of Yavneh’. And cf already Note 9 in Graetz, Geschichte 4: 501f. [On the position of Matthew vis-à-vis Judaism see the important observations by Meeks, ‘Breaking away’, 127–129.] 135 Rizzi, Hadrian, esp Rizzi’s introductory essay, ‘Hadrian and the Christians’, ibid. 7–20. The theory convincingly explains the birth of Christian apology (ibid. 141–144, Aristides), though the proposal to fit in Ignatius’ letters (ibid. 147–150) is not conducive.
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the passion narrative adopted from Mark, Matthew shows interest in the Roman prefect and his wife (Matt 27:19–25) and in the military guard placed at Jesus’ tomb (κουστωδία, 27:65–66; 28:11). Moreover the Matthaean reworking of the Capernaum centurio story betrays a clear anti-Jewish slant as compared with Luke (Matt 8:5–15; Luke 7:1–10).136 This must be seen in relation to the other traces of de-Judaization we have noted. It seems Matthew underwent a number of minor gentile Christian, anti-Jewish touch-ups in its very last redactional stage. But this is still a far cry from the massive anti-Judaism combined with the impact of Roman politics seen in Barnabas. We can imagine the extant Matthew somewhere half-way an ongoing process of estrangement from Judaism. Against this background, it is intriguing that not only four named Yavnean rabbis but also the redactors of the Didache (and possibly Matthew) appear to have objected to Rabban Gamliel’s decree of Eighteen Benedictions. At that point in time, apparently, members of the Didache-Matthew-Barnabas community were still in open communication with Jewish society, and Judaeo-Christians and sympathizing gentiles would still pray in common synagogues. On the other hand, Gamliel seems to have had the power to issue a decree affecting not only his own circle, but also a non‑ or semi-Pharisaic group like the Didache’s and Matthew’s. This could hardly be the case without Roman recognition. Indeed, Alon has adduced a singular rabbinic recollection which he interprets to that effect: ‘When Rabban Gamliel went to obtain authority from the hegemon in Syria …’137 The likelihood that this otherwise unexplained visit, probably to Antioch, had a political implication is enhanced by rabbinic reports that Gamliel’s household was ‘close to the government’ and made intensive use of Greek,138 as also that he had other dealings with Roman officials.139 Although we do not know exactly how, the impression [382] is that Gamliel, not unlike vassal rulers employed by the Roman administration, somehow derived his power from Rome and so was able to issue a decree that not only challenged important colleagues but also annoyed the Didache-Matthew community. Our three texts reflect the conflict in different degrees. While in Didache it is limited to one added chapter, Matthew echoes conflict with the Pharisees all over and even contains some traces of an exclusive gentile Christian position. 136 See Tomson, ‘Matthäusevangelium’ [‘Shifting Perspectives’, in this volume]. Cf also above n96. 137 mEd 7:7; bSan 11a; see Alon, Jews in Their Land 1: 121. This reference was brought in 1906 by Schechter– Bacher, ‘Gamaliel II’. 138 tSota 15:8, ‘During the Quietus War, they prohibited … studying Greek … They permitted it to the House of Rabban Gamliel because they were close to the government’ (מפני שהן ;)קרובין למלכותcf bSot 49b; bBK 83a. On ‘Quietus’ see Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Fshutah 8: 767. The same expression is used in tAZ 3:5. 139 SifDeut 451 (p408), אגניטוס הגמון. The story in SifDeut 444 (p401) also adduced by Alon, Jews in Their Land 1: 121 seems to relate to Shimon ben Gamliel, given the mss evidence and the mention of Usha. [See below 555–557 for a different evaluation of these sources.]
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Barnabas, however, confronts us with a total rupture with Judaism that already belongs to the past. This transition makes one think of a quantum leap. What has intervened between, say, 100 and 130 CE? It is difficult not to think of the redactional comment in the Gospel of John that the Jewish leaders had declared followers of Jesus to be ‘outside the community’.140 The earliest extant manuscript of this Gospel, Papyrus 52, is dated around 125 CE, which gives a terminus ad quem for the decree.141 This evidence tallies with rabbinic reports about the ostracizing of minim, ‘separatists’ or ‘heretics’, in situations attributed to this same period, early second century, with one central passage including Christians in that category.142 The Fourth Gospel’s traditional association with Ephesus does not nullify its obvious relations with Judaea, nor does Barnabas’ rather primitive allegory outweigh the author’s knowledge of Jerusalem events to prove an Alexandrian origin. Our three documents appear to share in the same development. Somehow the rabbinic body led by Gamliel the Younger seems to have declared Christians out of bounds. Again one would suspect connections with Roman policy, but this requires further investigation.
140 John 9:22, pluperfect συνετέθειντο, ‘the Jews already had decided’ that Christians are ἀποσυνάγωγοι; cf 12:42; 16:2. This does not relate to the birkat ha-minim but to excommunication laws, cf Cohen, ‘Pharisees and Rabbis’, 275f. To that extent Louis Martyn’s lucid essay, The Gospel of John in Christian History, must be rewritten. [See in this volume, ‘The Gospel of John’.] 141 See Brown, Introduction, 373–376 for the ‘History of the Johannine Community’ (along with the Gospel); Aland–Aland, Der Text, 94–97 for Papyrus 52 and the dating of the extant John. 142 See Schremer, Brothers Estranged, with tHul 2:19–24 as the central passage. For a different take on the same passage see Schwartz–Tomson, ‘When Rabbi Eliezer Was Arrested’ [and below, ‘The Gospel of John’].
Josephus, Luke-Acts, and Politics in Rome and Judaea by 100 CE In recent decades, the study of Antiquity has sometimes suffered from an unfortunate dichotomy between the ‘historical’ approach of our ancient literary sources, analysing them in order to extract historical evidence from them, and so-called ‘literary’ approaches which aim to read every text in its entirety in view of its own purposes.1 We need both: historical evidence and literary meaning, and it is counterproductive to play off one against the other. The final text read as an integral whole constitutes useful historical evidence, even in cases where the sources worked into the text cannot be identified and situated. In such cases nonetheless reliable information can be derived from textual particulars that relate to the situation of the final author or editor. This is the approach often called Redaktionsgeschichte or redaction criticism. In other cases, both the authors’ sources and the particulars of their own situation can be reasonably assessed, and we are able to monitor their way of handling the sources.2 In this paper I wish to study such author-related information as is given away by the work of two ancient historians whose mutual affinity has long been recognised and whose floruit can be presumed roughly to coincide with the early part of what we call the ‘Yavne period’. Comparing their aims and methods, Gregory Sterling has coined the phrase ‘apologetic historiography’, showing that this genre was typical of the Hellenistic age and the early Roman Empire and was shared by Babylonian, Egyptian, and Judaean authors alike.3 I propose [428] to view the ‘apologetic histories’ of Josephus and of the author of Luke-Acts – whom for convenience I shall call Luke – with a view on political circumstances 1 Cf Jonathan Klawans, reviewing Daniel Schwartz, Reading the First Century (below n5), ‘Is it really the case that we have to choose between literary approaches and “philologicalhistorical” source criticism?’ Cf also Todd Penner’s introductory essay in Dupertuis–Penner, Engaging Early Christian History. [The present paper was read at the conference, ‘Yavne Revisited: The Historical Rabbis and the Rabbis of History’, held at Bar-Ilan University in January 2015, published in Schwartz–Tomson, Jews and Christians … The Interbellum 70–132 CE, and here reprinted with some additions in the footnotes.] 2 Cf Cadbury, Luke-Acts, 4 studying both ‘what the author tells of the past and what he unconsciously reveals of the present’ (see below at n69). Cf also Laqueur, Der jüdische Historiker, preface. 3 Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition (1992). Cf questions asked about Sterling’s terminology by Rothschild, Luke-Acts, 51–53.
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in Rome and Judaea by 100 CE, paying special attention to the way prominent leaders are portrayed. We shall first deal with Josephus, then discuss two royal characters prominent in both authors, continue addressing Luke’s twin work, and conclude with the yield of the evidence of both authors combined.
Approaches on Josephus’ Portrayal of the Pharisees While it would be disrespectful to speak of a ‘Josephus industry’, the ancient historian undeniably has enjoyed an avalanche of scholarly interest since roughly the 1980s. Inevitably, this also entails a variety of views and disputes over method. Thus in addition to Sterling’s work (1992), we have monographs analysing and deconstructing Josephus by Harold Attridge (1976), Shaye Cohen (1979), Tessa Rajak (1983), Daniel Schwartz (1987), Seth Schwartz (1990), Steve Mason (1991), James McLaren (1998), Geoffrey Mader (2000), and William den Hollander (2014), to mention some of the more obvious ones in English. As to text and commentary, there is Steve Mason’s project, ten projected volumes: Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary (1999–). In French there is the project headed by Étienne Nodet (1990–); in German the one initiated by Folker Siegert (2001–).4 Louis Feldman’s lifelong work on Josephus includes several studies on his interpretations of the Bible (1998). Finally, Daniel Schwartz’s Reading the First Century (2013) must be mentioned for its discussion over method with Mason.5 As a result, no one will read Josephus unsuspiciously any longer; all agree on the apologetic slant of his oeuvre. Josephus’ apology is bi-focal and concerns the roles played in the revolt against Rome by the author himself and by the Jewish people, while addressing leading Roman circles.6 The two focuses [429] appear in combination throughout, although Sterling has drawn our attention to an interesting difference in genre. Responding to vilifying comments on his histories, Josephus explains in Against Apion that there are two approved ways of gathering information for an historian, ‘either through having been in close touch with the events, or by inquiry from those who knew them’ (Ag Ap 1:53). In the Jewish War Josephus speaks as eyewitness in Thucydidean style, also claiming in his opening statement that the revolt was ‘the greatest war of our times’. 4 Nodet, Flavius Josèphe, Les Antiquités juives; Siegert–Schreckenberg–Vogel, Flavius Josephus: Aus meinem Leben (Vita); [Siegert, Über die Ursprünglichkeit des Judentums (Contra Apionem)]. Cf the survey of ‘the general flurry in Josephan studies that characterized the 1990s’, in den Hollander, Josephus, 15f. 5 Cf the review by Jonathan Klawans (above n1). 6 A critical approach on Josephus is not at all new nor necessarily linked with literary deconstruction, cf the methodological caveat vis-à-vis Josephus as ‘principal source’ in Hengel, Zeloten, 6–17. Similarly, Eck, ‘Die römischen Repräsentanten’ contrasts Josephus’ positive portrayal of senatorial legates with the dismissive treatment of the equestrian prefects in Judaea.
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Antiquities, on the other hand, is more of an ἀρχαιολογία after the manner of Hellenistic historians, especially Dionysios of Halycarnassus, who opted for the ‘antiquarian’ method of Herodotus against Thucydides’ managerial approach.7 Insofar as Life with its apologetic eyewitness stance is written as an appendix to the Antiquities (Ant 20:266; Life 430), both focuses tend to coincide in it. A much-discussed difference between War and the subsequent Antiquities plus Life concerns the portrayal of the Pharisees. The topic is crucial for us, but it is ridden with dispute and polemic to the extent that it is often difficult to get down to the real questions. In an oft-reprinted semi-popular work on ‘the emergence of Pharisaic Judaism’, Jacob Neusner publicized a theory proposed by Morton Smith in 1957.8 According to Smith, first century Palestinian Judaism, which was as Hellenised as were other parts of the Roman Empire, teemed with minor sects and movements. The Pharisees were just one of these. The idea that they were the leading group already in Second Temple times is an anachronism propagated not only by rabbinic literature but also by the later works of Josephus. Whereas War favours the upper priests, Antiquities favours the Pharisees as the most popular class of Scriptural experts. How do we account for this shift? Smith explains: The more probable explanation is that in the meanwhile the Pharisees had become the leading candidates for Roman support in Palestine and were already negotiating for it. This same conclusion was reached from a consideration of the Rabbinic evidence by Gedalyahu Alon in his History … He concluded that the Roman recognition of the judicial authority of the Rabbinic organisation in Palestine came after the fall of Domitian …9 [430]
It is interesting that Smith came to a conclusion reached by Alon on other grounds. Alon saw the patriarchate of Gamaliel the Younger as a period of reconstruction in relative autonomy. He thought this had Roman approval, as confirmed in a number of rabbinic traditions, and it could have materialized only after Domitian’s assassination in 96 CE.10 Other rabbinic reports suggest that Gamaliel already had risen to power before that point in time. Alon’s explanation is that this resulted from internal development, while official recognition came 7 Sterling, Historiography, 284–290. For this reason, apparently, Sterling treated only Antiquities, not War and Life. For more on Josephus and Thucydides see Tomson, ‘Sources on the Politics’ (in this volume). 8 Neusner, From Politics to Piety, 1972 – 1979 – 2003, each edition with various reprints. The 1972 edition, 64f, extensively quotes Smith, ‘Palestinian Judaism in the First Century’. 9 Smith, ‘Palestinian Judaism’, 77. On Smith and Neusner see the important essay by Seth Schwartz, ‘Historiography’, 100–102. 10 Alon, The Jews 1: 119–131, citing mEd 7:7 and other traditions. Alon’s interpretation was not new, see Schechter–Bacher, ‘Gamaliel II’. It was rejected by E. E. Urbach in his review of the first, Hebrew edition of Alon’s work, as noted by the translator in Alon, The Jews, 71 and 97 and by Daniel Schwartz, ‘Josephus and Nicolaus on the Pharisees’, 167 n30 (below at n19).
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after 96 CE. As we shall see, the ‘official recognition’ part of Alon’s explanation is hard to maintain, while the ‘inner development’ part is likely.11 The Smith-Alon-Neusner theory inspired several important Josephus studies.12 Shaye Cohen’s Josephus in Galilee and Rome (1979) combines the theory with a critical development of the views of Richard Laqueur (1920), according to which the differences between War and Life reflect Josephus’ own post-70 career. Life, which responds to the negative portrayal of Josephus in Justus of Tiberias’ rival history, gives a more positive portrait of the Pharisees than War. Laqueur, not averse to speculation and anachronism, posited that Justus acted as spokesman of the ‘new Jewish orthodoxy’, rabbinic Judaism. In defence, Josephus saw himself forced to vaunt his Pharisaic affiliation.13 Josephus published Life after Agrippa’s death, which Laqueur dated to ‘the third year of Trajan’, i. e. 100 CE, on the basis of an excerpt of Justus by the ninth century bishop Photius.14 Cohen carefully analyses the structure of War, Antiquities, and Life, as well as the differences in content. More soberly than Laqueur and noting Josephus’ ‘inveterate sloppiness’15 in using sources that confound his purpose, Cohen [431] concludes on the ‘religious-Pharisaic viewpoint’ of Antiquities and Life. While in War, ‘Symeon son of Gamaliel’ appears as just another leader (War 4:159), Life showers him with praises in spite of his treacherous behaviour towards Josephus, explaning that Simon ‘at the time (τότε) was at variance with me’ (Life 191f). Cohen concludes that between War and Life, ‘Simon’s stock rose spectacularly’, and that the Pharisees ‘were now established and influential at Yavneh and Josephus wanted their friendship’.16 Josephus may even have posed as an ‘enthusiastic admirer’ of the younger Gamaliel now become ‘patriarch’. As to dates, Cohen joins the conclusions of the ‘new Schürer’ to the effect that the evidence is not convincing enough for a later dating of Agrippa’s decease and of the publication of Life.17 A different response to the Smith-Alon-Neusner theory was published in 1978 by David Goodblatt. Accepting the traditional idea that Gamaliel II rose to power Alon, The Jews 1: 121. It was also accepted by Attridge, ‘Josephus and His Works’, 226f. 13 Laqueur, Der jüdische Historiker, 266–274, cf Cohen, Josephus, 16–20 and 234 on Laqueur’s last chapter. Laqueur presumes that Justus’ friendship with Gamaliel’s rabbis went along with his negative view of Agrippa (Life 359!). This runs counter to the idealized image of ‘Agrippa’ in rabbinic tradition, see Schwartz, below n66. 14 Laqueur, Der jüdische Historiker, 2, referring to Photius, Bibliotheca 33. Since Life is an appendix to Antiquities (Ant 20:266f; Life 6, 359), it must have been published years later, or alternatively, have been re-published with the insertion of the polemical digression on Justus (Life 336–367). See further below at n39f. 15 Cohen, Josephus, 232. 16 Cf Cohen, Josephus, 145. 17 Cohen, Josephus, 170–180; Schürer, History 1: 54, 479–483 with notes 1, 8, 43, 47. Similarly, with much hesitation, Smallwood, The Jews, 572–574, Appendix F. 11
12
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as the first Jewish patriarch, he rejects one by one the concomitant explanations, i. e., Gamaliel’s Davidic lineage, his descent from Hillel, and his being successor to a hereditary patriarchate. The only possible explanation Goodblatt sees is that the Romans took the initiative to appoint Gamaliel as patriarch, in analogy to the client kings appointed previously in Judaea.18 Criticism was also heard. In a 1983 article, Daniel Schwartz objects to the tendency to explain Josephus’ varying descriptions of the Pharisees ‘solely on the basis of his own needs and politics’. Taking a source-critical approach, he rather points to Josephus’ dependence on Nicolaus of Damascus. Josephus’ later work is undoubtedly favourable toward the Pharisees, but also less cautious, allowing sources to be included that reveal ‘anti-Roman’ aspects of their politics. As to the idea of Roman recognition for Gamaliel the Younger, Schwartz says there is no sound evidence for it, but neither do we need it. Rabbinic literature, Josephus, and the New Testament all testify that Gamaliel’s family was prominent already among the pre-66 Pharisees, and ‘there is nothing extraordinary about its accession to the patriarchate.’19 In 1988, Steve Mason launched what he called ‘a direct challenge’ to the ‘increasingly popular theory’ of Smith and Neusner.20 In their view, the idea of Pharisaism as ‘normative’ Judaism is a ‘distortion’ caused by the insistence of [432] Antiquities on the public influence of the Pharisees. The cornerstone of their theory is the difference between Antiquities and War in describing the Pharisees’ relation with Alexander Jannaeus and Alexandra. However, the difference is rather in the more negative portrait of Alexandra-Salome, while ‘the Pharisees themselves have not improved one bit’. Nor are Josephus’ views dependent on his sources. In Ant 13:405f, ‘the author … agrees … with Alexander’s view of the Pharisees: they are unprincipled power-mongers’. An interesting premise of Mason’s argument is that ‘the rueful recognition of Pharisaic power is a consistent feature of all of Josephus’ writings’ and he can hardly have invented the idea. Viewed soberly, this is not dissimilar to Daniel Schwartz’s conclusions. Another elaborate development of Smith’s theory was presented in Seth Schwartz’ published dissertation, Josephus and Judaean Politics (1990). Like Cohen, Schwartz focuses on Josephus’ career before and after the revolt while analysing the contemporaneous political situation in Judaea: … By determining who constituted the Jewish part of Josephus’ social environment and analyzing the content of his Jewish political propaganda and polemics, we shall be able to recover a great deal of the history of Jewish politics in the thirty years after the destruction of Jerusalem … Though this undertaking requires a certain amount of speculation and Goodblatt, ‘The Origins of the Roman Recognition’; idem, Monarchic Principle, 176–231. Schwartz, ‘Josephus and Nicolaus on the Pharisees’. 20 Mason, ‘Josephus on the Pharisees Reconsidered’. Footnote 1 explains it concerns an adapted part of his dissertation, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees. 18
19
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inference, … it has several advantages over the nearly exclusive dependence on Rabbinic literature typical of modern reconstruction of post-70 Jewish history.21
In this way, a ‘firm chronological basis’ can be constructed that can be ‘fleshed out with information from Rabbinic literature’. For although the rabbinic stories essentially are ‘folk recollections’, they cannot be ignored, notably those portraying Yohanan ben Zakkai as being hostile to ‘an important aristocratic group’ and expressing sympathy for ‘King Agrippa’.22 Main chapters of the book analyse the role of the high priesthood and upper priesthood and of the Herodian dynasty in post-70 Judaean politics and in Josephus’ works. Finally, the Smith-Neusner theory is addressed. Do Josephus’ Antiquities and Life actually ‘promote the Pharisees’, and does this confirm the rabbinic stories of the origins of the rabbinic leadership?23 The author agrees with Shaye Cohen and Daniel Schwartz that Antiquities is ‘sloppy’ and [433] combines pro-Pharisaic reports with negative stories presumably taken from Nicolaus. Yet a coherent complex of themes is discernible. The ‘standard of piety has changed from Temple-centered … to law-centered’, and Jewish high priests, Herodian kings, and foreign rulers alike are judged by this standard, as divine retribution shows. ‘Accurate observance of the law’ is emphasized – the main feature of the Pharisees. Josephus seems to envisage a new leadership that ‘is somehow connected with, but not identical to, the Pharisees’. Here, Schwartz joins up with Shaye Cohen’s study, ‘The Significance of Yavneh’.24 As to the time frame, Schwartz cannot build on Photius. Recent publications of Agrippa II’s coinage, however, indicate that he also used an alternative era starting in 60/61 CE. Hence his death and the publication of Josephus’ Life must have followed after 96 CE, i. e. during the reign of Nerva or Trajan. Josephus’ latest work, Against Apion, carries clear indications dating it under Trajan.25 This leaves room for speculating that it was Agrippa, always a main player in Judaean politics, ‘who initiated the reconstitution of the Jerusalem council at Yavneh … The king had always appointed the head of the council (who had been the high priests) and did so now, choosing an aristocratic Pharisee loyal to him and Rome.’26 Criticism was not long in coming. Jacob Neusner’s review is as unpleasant to cite as it was influential at the time, by all appearances. The first part basically consists of a reference to the public scandal that meanwhile had come to envelop Morton Smith, Schwartz’s PhD director – who had also been Neusner’s own Doktorvater. In the second part, the enigmatic reproach is advanced that Schwartz, Josephus, 2, stating his debt to Jacob Neusner’s work in n2. Ibid. 2f. 23 Ibid. 170 n1. 24 Ibid. 205. 25 Ibid. 19–21. 26 Ibid. 207. 21 22
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Schwartz ignores Mason’s 1988 attack on the theory advanced by Neusner following Smith. Although ‘conscientious and well-written’, the work ‘seems somewhat of a party-document of the Smith school of historiography’.27 For his part, Steve Mason opened a review of Schwartz with the following sentence: ‘Probably the most significant division in contemporary scholarship on Josephus is between studies of the literary features of Josephus’s writings and those that search out the social-historical realities behind the texts’.28 Mason thinks Schwartz is of the second type, for he assumes that Josephus’ works ‘are largely propaganda for various post-war groups’, and moreover he [434] does not prove this. However, ‘Josephus did not write about post-war history. … The story ends in 66!’ Where Schwartz mercilessly castigates Josephus’ ‘inveterate sloppiness’, Mason finds consistency in the repeated assertion that the Pharisees are reputed for their law interpretation, while their behaviour teaches otherwise, as in the case of Simon ben Gamaliel. Josephus’ propaganda does not benefit any particular group but ‘Jews in general’. Meanwhile Mason’s Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees had appeared. It is a ‘composition-critical study’ that leaves no place for source criticism, as is concisely phrased in the conclusions: Josephus himself is responsible for all of the deliberate descriptions of the Pharisees that appear in his works. … (He) consistently represents the Pharisees as the dominant religious group among the Jews … (He) had no discernible reason to invent their popularity, since he regarded it as an unpleasant fact of life. … The focal point of his dislike of the Pharisees is their reputation for and profession of ἀκρίβεια in the laws. … Josephus was not, and never claimed to be, a Pharisee.29
Mason insists that Josephus’ assertion in Life that he had become a Pharisee ‘was merely a necessary function of his entry into public life. It was not a deliberate choice … or a conversion. … And it certainly cannot serve as the cornerstone of an alleged pro-Pharisaic apologetic.’30 This last conclusion is not watertight. If Josephus’ decision for Pharisaism at an early age was sheer opportunism, why did he still need to boast about it late in his career? There could have been external reasons to do so. Margaret Williams found Schwartz’s argument circular since independent evidence to support the central thesis – the linkage between Josephus’ later works and the rabbinic Gamaliel stories – is lacking. Rather than Schwartz’s political in Journal of Church and State 33 (1991) 624f. S. Mason, in Ioudaios 200.8 (1992) x, 257 (thanks to the author for making this publication available). 29 Mason, Flavius Josephus, 372–374. Baumbach, Pharisäerdarstellung accepts Mason’s conclusions, but disagrees that he was anti-Pharisaic. Similarly, Per Bilde in his review of Mason, Gnomon 67 (1995) 443–446. 30 Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees, 343–356; idem, ‘Was Josephus a Pharisee?’, stressing the ‘political’ meaning of πολιτεύομαι. 27 J. Neusner, 28
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inferences, Williams preferred common opportunism as an explanation for Josephus’ shifting of positions.31 This goes for the high priests and the Herodians, but it leaves the pro-Pharisaic emphasis in Life unexplained. On the level of content, the dimensions of Josephus’ opportunism about the Pharisees can be assessed by studying the halakhic evidence in his various [435] works.32 I have argued elsewhere that both Josephus’ scattered observations on actual life and his sustained explanations of the law in Ant 3:224–286 and 4:199–301 show that he followed a tradition analogous to Tannaic halakha. However, the apologetic exposé of the law contained in his pamphlet Against Apion follows a much more severe, idealized halakhic tradition, possibly of Alexandrian origin.33 This conclusion was confirmed in an elaborate study by David Nachman, who observes that a notable lack of interest and expertise in matters central to the Pharisees reveals that Josephus was not a member of their movement and had no intimate knowledge of their tradition.34 When a young man, Josephus chose to follow their halakhic tradition because that suited his career better. It must have been the same political opportunism that made him vaunt this choice at a mature age, for another couple of years later he could as easily propagate a very different tradition. In his later publications, Seth Schwartz has tacitly distanced himself from his early study. For him a ‘Yavne period’ no longer comes within view. The idea ‘that almost immediately after 70 the rabbis replaced the priests and their kind as the Jews’ religious authorities’ is a ‘maximalist view’ based solely on the biased evidence of rabbinic literature, while the archaeological data make it unlikely. The ‘minimalist view’ is preferable that only by late Antiquity do we find sufficient evidence allowing us to describe the transition to an established rabbinic leadership.35 Without reverting to ‘maximalist’ claims about Pharisaic-rabbinic power, however, much remains in favour of the program Schwartz formulated in his early work, i. e., setting up a historical framework based on post-70 CE evidence from Josephus which can be ‘fleshed out’ with material from rabbinic litera M. H. Williams in The Classical Review ns 42 (1992) 107f. S. Schwartz, Josephus, 170f n1 concedes this would be useful. The desideratum was reiterated by S. Miller in his review, AJS Review 18 (1993) 112–115. 33 Tomson, ‘Les systèmes de halakha’ [ET in this volume]; cf Goldenberg, Halakhah in Josephus. 34 Nachman [Nakman], The Halakha in the Writings of Josephus, while considering the halakha in Apion ‘of minor importance’ and relegating it to appendix B. [Regev–Nakman, ‘Josephus and the Halakhah’, conclude on a more general halakhic eclecticism also seen in Philo. See further the added footnotes 117 and 118 in ‘The Halakhic Systems in Josephus’, in this volume.] 35 Schwartz, The Ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhammad, presented in the preface as ‘an abbreviation, updating and re-orientation’ of his Imperialism and Jewish Society. Now, ‘especially the Jewish rebellions of the Hellenistic and Roman period’ are given more attention (ix). But as in Schwartz’s Imperialism and Jewish Society, Yavne remains beyond the horizon; cf Tomson, ‘Transformations’. 31 32
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ture.36 It is also correct that additional independent evidence is needed to eject the [436] argument from its circular orbit. I submit that a body of such evidence is available in the early Christian sources, and that it gives good reason to reopen the discussion.37 Elsewhere I have argued that the combined evidence of Matthew, Didache, and Barnabas shows that around 100 CE the Pharisees had gained enough influence to be a nuisance for Christians in matters of ritual.38 The present paper follows suit and investigates to what extent Luke-Acts, read as an integral whole and with a view on the author’s time, corroborates the theory that Josephus’ later works document the relative growth of Pharisaic influence by the end of the first century CE. Of interest though not decisive for our inquiry is the date of Agrippa II’s death as this is tied up with the publication dates of Josephus’ works. Let us rehearse the evidence. Josephus’ Life alludes to the king’s decease in the digression about Justus of Tiberias, telling us also that the work is an appendix to Antiquities (Life 336–367, 359, 430). Now Life is announced by the author while signing off Antiquities in Domitian’s thirteenth year, 93/94 CE (Ant 20:266f). Hence the time frame for Agrippa’s death falls between that year and the publication of Life or in other words, it coincides with the time it took Josephus to publish Life – or to republish it after having added the digression on Justus. An important detail is Josephus’ allegation that Justus of Tiberias had his history of the war ‘written twenty years ago’ but published it only now, after Agrippa’s death (Life 360). Keeping in mind that the war was over only after the capture of Masada in 74 CE, this would bring us at least to 95 CE. As to external evidence, there is, on the one hand, the testimony of Justus of Tiberias as excerpted by Photius, to the effect that the king died in year 3 of Trajan, i. e., 100 CE. On the other, there is numismatics. Reviewing three centuries of scholarship on the matter up to 1992, Daniel Schwartz has shown how scholars have hesitated ever anew to accept the impossibility of an early date for Agrippa’s death in view of coin finds showing ‘year 35’ in his 60/61 CE era. These indicate that 95/96 CE is the terminus post quem for the king’s decease, implying that Josephus’ Life was published or re-published years after Antiquities, and allowing Photius’ account, however fragile, to stand unassailed.39 A meticulous argument along similar lines [437] was presented by Nikos Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty. As against this, Alla 36 Cf similarly Tomson–Schwartz, ‘Introduction’, 4f, citing F. Millar. Wilker, Für Rom und Jerusalem, 449–470, in fact critically covers the ground broken by Schwartz, cf ibid. 17. Analysing Josephus for evidence of the author’s time is also the interest of den Hollander, Josephus, cf his methodology, ibid. 1–26. 37 Schwartz, Josephus does occasionally cite Acts and other New Testament sources, but these are no regular object of inquiry and do not figure in the source index. 38 Tomson, ‘The Didache, Matthew’ [above, in this volume]. 39 Schwartz, ‘Texts, Coins, Fashions, and Dates’. The 60/61 CE era is confirmed beyond doubt by the coins of Agrippa’s ‘year 24’ mentioning Domitian as ‘Germanicus’, a title the lat-
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Kushnir-Stein gave another reading of the numismatic data, suggesting the year 88/89 CE for Agrippa’s death. This plainly clashes with Josephus’ claim that Justus of Tiberius had his history of the war all written 20 years before Agrippa’s death. Thus while Agrippa II’s coin issues remain difficult to read, the only unequivocal piece of evidence is Justus’ statement apud Photius that the king died in 100 CE.40
Royal Characters: Agrippa and Bernice For a good appreciation of the significance of Luke-Acts in this connection, we must first study the prosopography of two of its main characters that are also prominent in Josephus. They appear in the later part of Acts, which seems closest to the author in time and social milieu and, significantly, it also comes closest to Paul. So much is expressed in the famous ‘we’ sections, where the implied author narrates Paul’s journeys in the first person plural.41 In this crucial part of the narrative, where moreover Paul gives his final apology, a key role is played by the Jewish king Agrippa II and his sister Bernice. We shall study the episode in detail below and now focus on its characters. [438] Agrippa and Bernice, also called Berenice,42 were members of the Herodian dynasty of Roman ‘client kings’.43 As such, they were famous personalities in ter carried only after 83/84 CE (ibid. 260). Cf also Schwartz’s findings on the relative accuracy of Photius’ excerpts (ibid. 268f). 40 Kokkinos, Herodian Dynasty, esp Appendix 10, ‘Date of Agrippa II’s Death’, 396–399; cf literature cited above n17. Kushnir-Stein, ‘The Coinage of Agrippa II’, states at the outset that Agrippa’s coins create rather than solve ‘both numismatic and historical problems’, then leaves the question in which era to locate Agrippa’s ‘year 35’ coins undecided (125, 128), and finally considers 88/89 CE possible (131 n32; cf also Kushnir-Stein, ‘Two Inscribed Lead Weights’). Jones, ‘Towards a Chronology of Josephus’, rejects Kokkinos’ argument with an appeal to Kushnir-Stein’s reading of the numismatics. Kokkinos replies to these criticisms in ‘Justus, Josephus, Agrippa’. Referring to these studies, Horbury, Jewish War, 129 n118 accepts Kokkinos’ argument. In private correspondence, Dr. Donald Ariel, head of the Coin Department of the Israel Antiquities Authority, showed himself inclined towards Kushnir-Stein’s interpretation (cf Ariel–Fontanille, Coins of Herod, 42, 93, 125). Mason, in his introduction to Life of Josephus, xiii–xix rejects Kokkinos’ conclusions, while in the interior of the work (147 n1483) conceding that ‘Kokkinos’ arguments … remain on the table’. Wilker, Für Rom und Jerusalem, 462f n43, and den Hollander, Josephus, 272–274 conclude that it remains a moot question. [Weikert, Von Jerusalem zu Aelia Capitolina, 144–146 decides for Kushnir-Stein’s dating.] 41 Acts 16:10–17; 20:5–15; 21:1–18; 27:1–28:16. Cf Fitzmyer, Acts, 98–103; Johnson– Harrington, Acts, 4. See also Cadbury’s intuitive explanation, Luke-Acts, 230. Rothschild, Luke-Acts, 264–267 explains the passages as ‘rhetoric of history’ aiming to enliven the readers’ fantasy. This does not exclude the author’s drawing from his own experience or from an itinerary source (ibid. 265). 42 Luke calls her Βερνίκη, likewise Josephus in War. In Ant and Life Josephus uses the more frequent form of the name, Βερενίκη. 43 For the following see Schürer, History 1: 471–483; Schwartz, Josephus, 110–169; Kokkinos, Dynasty, 317–341; Wilker, Für Rom und Jerusalem, 30–36, 36–45 (Josephus’ portrayal
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the Roman world. Along with Drusilla, their younger sister who was married to the Roman prefect, Felix,44 they were children of Agrippa I and great-grandchildren of Herod the Great, in addition to being of Hasmonean descent through their great-grandmother Mariamme, Herod’s murdered consort. Bernice was a real star. She appears, apart from Josephus and Luke, in at least five preserved Roman authors, satirists included. The hot item, mentioned neither by Josephus nor Luke, was her affair with Titus, the victorious young general who had captured Jerusalem.45 She was in Rome with Agrippa in 75 CE, probably at the occasion of the dedication of Vespasian’s Temple of Peace, where the sacred objects from the Jerusalem Temple were deposited. While Agrippa was awarded praetorian distinctions, Bernice remained in Titus’ palace as his consort, until he had to send her away ahead of his acclamation as Emperor in 79 CE.46 Her fame has survived: the scene last mentioned was the subject of two plays written at the royal court in seventeenth century France.47 [439] More important for us is Bernice’s unusual power at the political and administrative level. Being a woman in ancient society, her power had to be indirect and ‘invisible’, but as such it drew the attention. Quintilian, not known for his sympathy toward Jews, recounts that he once had to plead on behalf of the Jewish queen in a case in which she was her own judge.48 Bernice’s courage and persuasive power is also registered several times by Josephus in a more flattering perspective. In a dramatic scene during the confrontationist policy of Florus which Josephus suggests contributed to the outbreak of war, she intervened in person on behalf of the citizens of Jerusalem, while her brother was on tour in of the Herodians), 449–470 (on Bernice esp 450f n8); Hekster, ‘Trophy Kings’; Millar, ‘Emperors, Kings’; Braund, Rome and the Friendly King; Curran, ‘Philorhomaioi’; [Goodman, ‘Titus, Berenice and Arippa’]. See also Pervo, Acts, ad loc. In his excursus on Agrippa II and Bernice ibid. 615f Pervo perceives only literary embellishment, and ‘the burden of proof lies on the argument for historicity’; see n45 below. [See also the important evaluation by Weikert, Von Jerusalem zu Aelia Capitolina, 141–149.] 44 See the damaging report in Ant 20:142, likely deriving from rivalling circles such as the Chalcidian Herodians. The surmise of Schwartz, Josephus, 148 that she ‘ran off’ with Felix does not seem to tally with the language in Acts 24:24, ὁ Φῆλιξ σὺν Δρουσίλλη τῇ ἰδίᾳ γυναικὶ οὔσῃ Ἰουδαίᾳ. 45 Tacitus, Hist 2.1.1 (Stern, GLAJJ no. 275); Juvenal, Saturae 6.156 (GLAJJ no. 298); Suetonius, Titus 7 (GLAJJ no. 318); Cassius Dio 66.15 (GLAJJ no. 433). Juvenal’s insinuation of an incestuous relationship with Agrippa seems echoed in the remarkably negative passage in Ant 20:145. The significance of this wide coverage of Bernice in Roman sources is overlooked by Pervo, Dating Acts, 189 (though at 420 n208 duly noting the sources) who thinks Luke could have his information only from Josephus (cf below n103). 46 Kokkinos, Dynasty, 329, citing Cassius Dio 66.15.3; Suetonius, Titus 7.1; Josephus, War 7:158–162. See also Wilker, Für Rom und Jerusalem, 450f n8 (Bernice). Cf Hekster, ‘Trophy Kings’. On Agrippa’s ornamenta praetoria see Braund, Rome and the Friendly King, 29. 47 Jean Racine, Bérénice, 1671; Pierre Corneille, Tite et Bérénice, 1671. 48 Quintilian, Institut orat 4.1.19 (cf Stern, GLAJJ no. 231), presenting Bernice as an example of suarum rerum iudices (thanks to Werner Eck for clarifying this passage). Kokkinos, Dynasty, 329 thinks this was during her stay in Rome with Titus when she ‘behaved like an empress’.
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Egypt. Barefoot because of the ritual of a vow she happened to be performing in the holy city, she kept supplicating before Florus’ tribunal in spite of ill-respect and mortal danger.49 She did not succeed, nor did her brother, back now from Egypt, in a following, no less dramatic scene in which Agrippa beseeched the people of Jerusalem a last time to avoid war. While he spoke to the assembled crowd, Bernice stood in a commanding position (ἐν περιόπτῳ) on the roof of the Hasmonean palace, and when he ended on the ominous words that if they went to war, it would be without him, she burst into tears in unison with him.50 It is as though Agrippa was his sister’s spokesman. That she could have the upper hand over her brother is clear from the incident, sloppily told twice in Life, in which she convinced him not to execute Justus of Tiberias in spite of Vespasian’s orders to do so.51 In terms of politics, Agrippa was a minor client king. His kingdom was considerably smaller than his father’s and did not include Judaea proper and Samaria, but a number of scattered territories, including the three tetrarchies located in Galilee, Transjordan, and adjacent lands.52 Yet his influence was not negligible. Client kings or ‘friendly kings’ were an important though lesserknown component of the complex machinery of the Roman administration.53 Agrippa [440] grew up and was educated for many years at the court in Rome and received a thorough ‘classical’ education, as apparently did Bernice.54 This was usual for princes from client kingdoms, and it made them into well-integrated and dependable players in the Roman administrative system.55 During the half century of his rule, Agrippa entertained close relations with at least five successive Emperors. In honour of Nero, he changed the name of his Galilean residence Panias/Caesaraea Philippi into Neronias in 60/61 CE, coinciding with the beginning of his second numismatic era.56 In War, Josephus portrays him as the leading voice of the ‘peace party’ that tried to prevent war, and during the revolt, his loyalty to Rome was outstanding. In line with his role as ‘friendly king’, his troops served as auxiliaries,57 and Vespasian and Titus each stopped over at War 2:309–314. The present tense ἱκέτευε suggests several interventions. War 2:344–402. 51 Life 343, 355. Cf Kokkinos’ considerations, Dynasty, 330 n218. Agrippa’s portrayal in Schürer, History 1: 474f, has moral overtones and stresses his weakness rather than his sister’s strength. 52 See map in Kokkinos, Dynasty, 341. The territory changed over time. 53 Braund, Rome and the Friendly King; Millar, ‘Emperors, Kings’; Goodman, Roman World, 110–112; Hekster, ‘Trophy Kings’. 54 Josephus, Life 359: ἑλληνική παιδαεία, referring to ‘all his family’. Cf the inscription dedicated by ‘the council and people of Athens’ to ‘the great queen Julia Berenice’ (Schürer, History 1: 479 n41). 55 See Braund, Rome and the Friendly King, 9–21 (11 on Agrippa II). 56 Ant 20:211. Thus Kokkinos, Dynasty, 323, 398; Smallwood, The Jews, 572. 57 War 3:29; Tacitus, Hist 5.1.2 (Stern, GLAJJ no. 281). On the strategic role of client kingdoms see Braund, Rome and the Friendly King, 91–103. 49 50
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his palace in Caesaraea Philippi.58 Like his father Agrippa I, his epigraphy calls him a ‘friend of Caesar and of Rome’, φιλόκαισαρ and φιλορώμαιος, and he has fittingly been called ‘the Herodian ruler who in his iconographic language came closest to Rome’.59 Small wonder, then, that Josephus pays respectful attention to Agrippa and Bernice. They were the leading Jewish nobility, not only before the revolt but also after it, when he kept entertaining close relations with them as he was writing his histories. Life 365f claims that ‘King Agrippa wrote 62 letters that testify to the truth of the account’, citing two of them which ask for more volumes of ‘the book’ and promise supplementary historical information orally. Seth Schwartz concludes that Josephus’ War consistently portrays Agrippa in the way the Romans, the Jews, and the king himself preferred. In Antiquities the information is less consistent due to the careless use of divergent sources, but in the ostensibly candid account in Life, Josephus’ good relationship with Agrippa and Bernice is again on display as a key argument in his polemic with Justus.60 [441] One of Agrippa’s chief concerns was the Jewish Temple. Still a minor at court in Rome, he persuaded Claudius to grant the request sent by the priests from Jerusalem that the prefect Fadus render the high priestly vestments he had taken into custody. In his letter granting the request, Claudius praises the Jewish prince as ‘a man of greatest piety’.61 When in 48 CE Claudius granted him the royal honours of his predecessors, this included the custodianship over the Jerusalem Temple and the power to appoint high priests. Josephus informs us that Agrippa has used this right extensively, especially since the late 50s. Instead of the powerful and greedy Ananias who had been ten years in office, he appointed five successive high priests within three years.62 This was under Felix’s term of office, when Josephus tells that enmity and strife began to grow, both among the high priests themselves and between the high priests and the common priests and populace of Jerusalem. The confrontation between Pharisees and Sadducees was part of this process, as we shall see. This was also when the sicarii, ‘dagger men’ or terrorist assassins, started to operate. It is not likely that Agrippa’s quick pace in changing high priests was helpful in reducing chaos.63 War 3:443f, Vespasian; 7:23f, 37f. Reign and Religion, 207–221, quote 220; Schürer, History 1: 475. See Braund, Rome and the Friendly King, 44 and 111 on the thoroughly Roman tria nomina given to Agrippa (M. Julius) and Bernice (Julia); ibid 123–128 on the coinage rights of client kings. 60 Schwartz, Josephus, 131–158. 61 εὐσεβέστατον, Ant 20:9–16.On the Jewish piety of the Herodians, esp Agrippa’s and Bernice’s, see Wilker, Für Rom und Jerusalem, 49–67. 62 Ant 20:103 (Ananias, 49 CE), 20:179 (Ishmael son of Phiabi, cf mSot 9:15), 20:196 (Joseph Kabi son of Simon), 20:197 (Ananus son of Ananus), 20:203 (Jesus son of Damnaeus), 20:213 (Jesus son of Gamaliel, till 60/62 CE), 20:223 (Matthias son of Theophilus, till 66 CE). 63 Ant 20:179–188; cf War 2:254–260. Acts 21:38 has the officer interrogating Paul mention 4,000 sicarii led into the desert by an Egyptian (cf War 2:261!). This is one of the overlaps that 58
59 Lykke,
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Josephus brings the following story as an example. When Festus died in office and Nero appointed Albinus as his successor, Agrippa designated Ananus as high priest (60/62 CE).64 He was a brother-in-law of Caiaphas and son of the former high priest Ananus also known as Annas. Josephus calls the younger Ananus a man of intemperate character and a follower of the Sadducees, who are ‘cruel’ (ὠμοί) in judgment. Now while Albinus was still under way to Judaea, Ananus used the opportunity to convene the Sanhedrin and accuse ‘James, the brother of Jesus the so-called Messiah, along with some others’, of transgressing the law. He succeeded and had them stoned. In reaction, ‘those in the city considered most fair-minded and expert in the law’ – obviously the Pharisees, stock opponents of the Sadducees – protested before Agrippa [442] and Albinus, who had still not arrived. Albinus wrote a threatening letter to Ananus, and Agrippa removed him from office. The account, a rare instance where Josephus reveals something about the early Christians, has interesting overlaps with Acts and with rabbinic literature.65 Tannaic literature contains some flattering reports of the behaviour of ‘king Agrippa’ in and around the Temple. Confusion between the elder and younger Agrippa can never be excluded, but Seth Schwartz has made the likely guess that these reports carry memories of Agrippa II’s efforts to sympathise with the Pharisees and, indeed, return this sympathy. Some later rabbinic comments, especially in the Bavli, express a more critical view on Agrippa.66
Luke-Acts: Apology of Christianity before Jews and Romans Unlike Josephus, Luke wrote not an apology for himself, nor, properly speaking, for his protagonists, Jesus and Paul, but rather for what he calls the way ‘the Word of God was growing’ (ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ ηὖξανεν, Acts 6:7 and 12:24, cf 19:20).67 His style is traditional narrative nourished by ‘Moses and all the prophets’ (Luke 24:27), but he casts it in the mould of Hellenistic history, prefacing the inspired speculation about the link between Luke and Josephus. See the overview of Schwartz, Josephus, 61–67. 64 Kokkinos, Dynasty, 323 corrects the date commonly given, 62 CE, to 60 CE. 65 Ant 20:197–203, cf the flattering presentation of Ananus in War 4:160. On Annas’ riches see Ant 20:206f, cf tMen 13:21 (instead of בית אלחנן, bPes 57a reads )בית חנין. Annas and Caiaphas appear together in Luke 3:2; John 18:13, 24; Acts 4:6. The opposition between Sadducees and Pharisees is prominent also in Paul’s trial before the Sanhedrin, Acts 23:9. Sadducean cruelty in justice seems confirmed by the scholion to Megillat Taanit 4/10 Tammuz (see Noam, Megillat Ta’anit, 206–215 on the complex textual tradition and its interpretation), and cf the saying of the pharisaic-rabbinic sages in mAv 1:1, ‘Be moderate in judgment’. 66 mBik 3:4; tBik 2:10 (yBik 3:4, 65b; bYom 20b); mSot 7:8 (tSot 7:16; ySot 7:7, 21b); SifDeut 157 (p209). Cf tPes 4:15; bPes 74b; bPes 107b; bSot 41a–b. See Schwartz, Josephus, 160–169. 67 Cf the description proposed by Hubert Cancik as referenced by Rothschild, Luke-Acts, 54.
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work with a proper prolegomenon on method. The incorporation of ancient texts and traditions that is here announced and carried out in the work following fits the genre and purposes of ‘apologetic historiography’ as outlined by Sterling.68 Previous generations have witnessed fierce debates on the purpose and method of Luke-Acts; these have now abated. Possibly the most felicitous [443] account, written before those debates, is Henry Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts (1927). His was the first study to address ‘Luke-Acts’ as a whole, an approach universally accepted since. Equally important for us is that in doing so it integrates source‑ and redaction-critical insights. A masterpiece of clarity, erudition, and scholarly restraint, I shall be referring to it more often.69 Cadbury formulated the purpose of the twin work as follows: It may well be supposed that Luke intended especially to show the legitimacy of Christianity from both the Jewish and the Gentile standpoint. For the former we can quote not merely the fulfilments of Scripture, but the conformity of the protagonists’ conduct in both volumes to the Jewish law and practices. … Still more patent is Luke’s defense of Christianity from charges brought against it as breaking Roman law. … The final hearings of Paul are in close resemblance to those of Jesus. In both cases Herodian prince and Roman procurator agree in their verdict of “not guilty”. The language is much the same.70
Both Herod Antipas and Pilate who interrogated Jesus, and Agrippa II and Festus having heard Paul, are cited by Luke as pronouncing ‘not guilty’. The point is, Cadbury conjectures, that at the time of writing ‘hostile and erroneous information’ about Christianity was circulating, and Luke intended to correct this. This is the aim stated in the preface: ‘… that, most excellent Theophilus, you may get accurate information (ἵνα ἐπιγνῷς τὴν ἀσφάλειαν) concerning the things about which you have been instructed’ (Luke 1:3f). More particularly, this is also what Roman magistrates were in need of when confronted with rumour and accusations surrounding the arrest of Paul: γνῶναι τὸ ἀσφαλές, ‘to learn the facts’ (Acts 21:34; 22:30).71 And this is why, towards the conclusion of [444] 68 Sterling, Historiography, 386–389. See the slightly different take of Loveday Alexander, ‘The Preface to Acts and the Historians’, in idem, Acts, 21–42. Note also the refreshing corrective of reading Acts as the expression of an apocalyptic counter-culture in the Roman Empire by Rowe, World Upside Down; cf ibid. 79–89 on the roles played by Felix and Agrippa. 69 On Cadbury, his introduction of the concept of ‘Luke-Acts’, and the perspective of redaction criticism see Marguerat, Historian, 43–64; Anderson, ‘Foreword’; Rothschild, Luke-Acts, 37–40. On the discipline itself see Stein, ‘Was ist Redaktionsgeschichte?’; Evans, ‘Source, Form and Redaction Criticism’. For the debate on Luke-Acts see Keck–Martyn, Studies in Luke-Acts, esp ibid. 15–32, W. C. van Unnik, ‘Luke-Acts, A Storm-Center in Contemporary Scholarship’; Fitzmyer, Luke, 3–34; idem, Acts, 55–60. 70 Cadbury, Luke-Acts, 299–316 (‘The Object of Luke-Acts’), quotes at 306, 308, 310. See also Cadbury, ‘The Purpose Expressed in Luke’s Preface’. Cf the use made of this by Sterling, Historiography, 382–386. 71 Cadbury, Luke-Acts, 315; idem, ‘Purpose’, 433. On Luke’s preface as such see further Cadbury, Luke-Acts, 344–348; Fitzmyer, Luke, 8–11; Sterling, Historiography, 383–386; Alexander, Preface.
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the story, Festus proposed that Paul be heard also by Agrippa and Bernice. He needed facts to report to Nero, for ‘I do not have anything accurate (ἀσφαλές τι) to write to our Sovereign about him’ (Acts 25:26). In this perspective, it is important to point out a tension in Luke-Acts concerning the role ascribed to the Jews.72 On the one hand, the Gospel brings stories of clashes between Jesus and Jewish leaders and sharp criticism of the Pharisees, while Acts shows Jews and Jewish leaders acting almost constantly as accusers and prosecutors of the Apostles. On the other hand, both Luke and Acts contain passages with remarkable sympathy for the Pharisees, surprisingly displaying their openness toward Jesus and the Apostles. Correspondingly, there are studies which emphasize the ‘anti-Jewish’ aspect of Luke-Acts, while others (including earlier work of mine) highlight the ‘pro-Pharisaic’ aspect.73 Cadbury stresses the first aspect in Acts, speaking of ‘a plot of the Jews’ and of ‘Jewish instigation’ in Achaia and Asia Minor. In that light, the openness of the Jewish leaders in Rome toward Paul at the very end of Acts comes as a surprise.74 The contradictory references to Jews and Pharisees raise the point of the time and circumstances in which the author writes. What could these be? There is no hard external or internal evidence on these issues, and we have to tread cautiously. Cadbury, true to character, refrains from pronouncing himself at all in this context.75 An early dating is based by Irenaeus on a literal reading of Acts 28:14–16 together with 2 Tim 4:11, where ‘Luke alone’ is said to be with Paul in Rome during his detention, and by modern scholars on the non-mention of Paul’s death and similar items.76 Today most scholars prefer an intermediate dating during the 80s or 90s. A late dating (100–120) has also been proposed, one argument being the speculation that Luke had read Josephus. The evidence here assembled, including the Roman ambience of the twin work (see below), suggests a ‘late intermediate’ dating, i. e. during the 90s CE.77 [445] As to political circumstances, we must draw in for comparison the Gospels of Matthew and John, which are generally dated around that same time but thought to be connected with Antioch and Ephesus, respectively. These documents evince an anti-Pharisaic and anti-Jewish slant reflective of sharp conflicts Forcefully argued by Marguerat, Historian, 130–135. See Tomson, ‘Gamaliel’s Counsel’, 590 n23–24 for some literature [in this volume, 607; add D. Schwartz’s review of Brawley, The Jews in Luke-Acts, in JQR 80 (1990), 427–429]. That study of mine, as also ‘If this be from Heaven’, chapter 5, underrates the negative aspect. Cf also the ‘literary’ study on Jewish leaders in Acts by Mason, ‘Chief Priests’. 74 Cadbury, Luke-Acts, 312f. 75 ibid. 360. 76 See Fitzmyer, Acts, 51f. See also below n93. 77 Summing up the various arguments, Fitzmyer, Acts, 54 sees ‘no good reason to oppose’ the intermediate dating and Luke’s authorship, 80–85 CE; the Roman location is a moot point. Sterling, Historiography, 329f favours an intermediate date, putting Acts earlier than Revelation because of its different assessment of the Empire. Recently Pervo argued for a late date, see above n45 and below n103. 72 73
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with the Pharisees or with the Jews in general.78 In comparison, Luke-Acts is remarkably level-headed and rather exudes the intention to tone down existing conflicts with the Jews. This tendency is the more striking in view of the confrontations with Jews recorded especially by Acts. Two emphases in Luke-Acts draw the attention. First, there is the positive framing of the Pharisees already mentioned.79 In the Gospel, Pharisees invite Jesus in their home no less than three times, even though every time their conversations end in tension and disputations (Luke 7:36; 11:37; 14:1). Another time, Pharisees come and advise Jesus to get away because Herod Antipas wants to kill him (13:31). In this Gospel, disputations over Sabbath healings repeatedly lead to the Pharisees’ disarray, as distinct from Matthew and John, where they want to kill Jesus.80 Likewise in Acts, Pharisees repeatedly intervene on behalf of the Apostles in protest against the brutal repression by the Sadducee high priests (Acts 5:34–40; 23:9). Very conspicuous is the two-fold mention of Gamaliel the Elder, once as ‘a Pharisee in the council, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people’ who pleads the benefit of the doubt for the Apostles (5:34–39), and again as the teacher at whose feet Paul says he was ‘educated expertly’ (κατὰ ἀκρίβειαν, 22:3). Most amazing is Paul’s self-styling before the Sanhedrin as ‘a Pharisee son of Pharisees’ and, in his apology before Agrippa, as one who has ‘belonged to the most accurate (ἀκριβεστάτην) sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee’ (23:6; 26:5).81 In his own letters, Paul does concede that he has lived as a Pharisee, but he also affirms this is no longer the [446] case: he now follows the teachings of Jesus.82 Luke’s pro-Pharisaic emphasis seems to reveal a special interest. Second, there is an emphasis on open Jewish-gentile relations, although there is also an intimation of their failure.83 This runs from the mention in Simeon’s hymn of both ‘revelation to the gentiles’ and ‘glory to your people Israel’ (Luke 2:32) to Paul’s final apology before Agrippa that will yet occupy us, evoking ‘light proclaimed to our people and to the gentiles’ (Acts 26:23). A similar mirroring between Luke and Acts is found in the centurion at Capernaum who puts his hopes in Jesus while respecting his particular purity constraints (Luke 7:6) and Cornelius, the centurion of the Italian cohort in Caesaraea who is a God78 For anti-Judaism in Matthew see e. g. Stanton, A Gospel; Luz, ‘Matthäusevangelium’; for different assessments of John, Bieringer et al., Anti-Judaism. 79 Pace Marguerat, Historian, 142. 80 Luke 6:11 (see below); 14:6; cf 13:17; Matt 12:14; John 5:16. I think it probable that Mark 3:6, the most negative verse about the Pharisees in that Gospel, has been influenced by Matt 12:14, since Mark has been a Gospel of minor authority since Antiquity and, moreover, the Latinism συμβούλιον λαμβάνειν/διδόναι (consilium capere) is rather Matthaean (5×), see BDR § 5.418. [Cf above p519 n87.] 81 On the importance of ἀκρίβεια see Baumgarten, ‘Name of Pharisees’, 413f. Cf Mason, ‘Chief Priests’, 161f. 82 Phil 3:4–11; cf Gal 1:13–16. This is confirmed by halakhic analysis, see Tomson, Paul, 259–264 for dominical halakha in Paul’s letters, displaying his faithfulness to Jesus’ teachings. 83 On this point see esp Marguerat, Historian, 129–154.
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fearer keen on almsgiving and prayer (Acts 10f). In the Acts narrative, Jewishgentile relations become an issue in three consecutive stages. At first, non-Jews join the church at Antioch without any problem. Then, questions come from Judaea about the circumcision of non-Jewish believers, but the Apostles reach a compromise. Finally, crisis breaks out in Jerusalem: Jewish believers ‘zealous for the law’ no longer trust Paul’s loyalty to the law, and he ends up being arrested (Acts 11; 15; 21). Meanwhile Paul’s preaching repeatedly meets violent rejection by Jews. In reaction, he declares at Pisidian Antioch that he shall ‘turn to the gentiles’. And when in Rome, at the very end, he does not reach agreement with the Jewish leaders, he announces that ‘this salvation of God has been sent to the gentiles; they will listen’ (Acts 13:45–50; 28:25–28). The message Luke’s story generates is that the gospel could peacefully spread among Jews and non-Jews, if it were not for developments among Jews and Jewish believers from Judaea causing separation. We must now turn to the high point in the narrative: Paul’s appearance before Agrippa and Bernice mentioned earlier. It occurs when they are on visit in Caesaraea paying their respects to Festus who has just succeeded Felix as prefect (Acts 25:13–26:32). In reaction to Festus’ risky plan to send Paul back to Jerusalem for further trial, Paul had appealed to the Emperor, and the new prefect, who needed ‘accurate’ information to report to Nero, laid out the case before the king. Whereupon Agrippa said,84 ‘I would like to hear the man myself’. The next day Agrippa and Bernice ‘enter with great pomp’ and hear Paul in the presence of Festus and a range of dignitaries. Agrippa presides, and at his permission Paul embarks on an apology, the last and largest in the narrative. [447] Not without a touch of irony, the scene ends with Festus bluntly exclaiming that Paul’s learning drives him insane, whereupon Paul rejoins that the king will understand and Agrippa observes that if he would not pay attention, Paul would make him a ‘Christian’. The king withdraws with the prefect, his sister, and their courtiers. Upon their return, the verdict concludes the scene: ‘Agrippa said to Festus, This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to the Emperor.’85 Some details merit further attention. For one thing, the mere mention of Bernice is curious. In his discreet way, Luke does not add any personal details. Having read Josephus’ reports and the snippet of Quintilian on her account, one recalls her effective interventions in legal procedures. Can Luke have been ignorant of her reputation, can he have avoided implicitly alluding to it? Hardly. He writes for those in the know. Acts 25:22. Note the classicising ellipsis of the verb (BDR § 4806, p411). Cf Cadbury’s résumé, Luke-Acts, 310. See the evaluation of the episode by Millar, ‘Emperors, Kings’, 236. Pervo, Dating Acts, 186–198 thinks the presence of Bernice is a literary fiction Luke borrowed from Josephus; see above n45. [Legally speaking, Paul’s was an extra ordinem trial; see the valuable observations by Sherwin-White, Roman Society, 48–70, ‘Paul before Felix and Festus’.] 84 85
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In the second place, there is the elevated Greek. Cadbury has drawn attention to Luke’s ‘sensitiveness to style’, i. e., his ability to change styles ‘in accordance with the things described’, as prescribed by ancient stylebooks. Luke’s Gospel begins in the periodic style and the choice vocabulary of Greek literary prefaces, then moves on to the heavy ‘Septuagintal’ style of the infancy stories, and settles down in the simple Gospel narrative, subtly corrected. After a brief second preface, Acts sets out much the same style, with slight though notable advances such as the increased use of the particles μέν and τε. Cadbury notes: ‘As Acts progresses the style becomes prevailingly more secular and perhaps reaches its climax in the speech of Paul before Agrippa, where in grammar alone Professor Blass noted half a dozen quite classical idioms.’86 One such idiom is the optative mood, very much on the decline in Hellenistic Greek but used by Luke in choice situations, betraying his subtle pen, and mostly in Acts: Paul among the philosophers on the Athenian Areopagus; Festus deferentially addressing Agrippa and Bernice; and finally, Paul most elegantly beseeching the king to take his message to heart (εὐξαίμην ἄν, ‘I would pray’).87 Clearly, this decisive scene in Acts addresses not the average Christian congregation but educated circles in the Empire. One thinks of Agrippa’s court and its reputed [448] Hellenic culture. Should we look there for the otherwise totally unknown Theophilus to whom the work is dedicated?88 Another remarkable optative, in the Gospel this time, leads us back for a moment to a previous topic, the portrayal of the Pharisees. Having seen Jesus healing a man on Sabbath by just letting him stretch out his withered hand, the ‘scribes and Pharisees’ present ask themselves, out of their wits, τί ἂν ποιήσαιεν τῷ ᾽Ιησοῦ, ‘whatever they should do to Jesus’ (Luke 6:11). The question is real: they do not know what to do. The contrast with the other Gospels, where they ‘take counsel how to kill him’, could not be greater.89 We recognize Luke’s pen, subtly prefiguring the non liquet pronounced on the Apostles by the Pharisaic dignitary Gamaliel and, indeed, king Agrippa’s final verdict on Paul. A further significant detail in the crowning scene involving Agrippa and Bernice is Paul’s appeal to the king as one ‘especially familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews’ and who ‘believes in the prophets’ (Acts 26:2, 26f). Agrippa, custodian of the Temple and patron of his people before the Emperor, is presumed to be knowledgeable about Jewish law and belief. We recall 86 Cadbury, Luke-Acts, 224, cf 120. The reference is to the NT grammar of Blass and De brunner, now BDR. 87 Acts 17:18, 27; 25:16, 20; 26:29. See BDR § 384, optative proper, also in other NT authors; § 385–386, potential and oblique optative, used by Luke only; § 3593 (p290), § 385, 1, on εὐξαίμην ἄν, cf Fitzmyer, Acts, 765: this is the only such optative in the NT. 88 Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1. Cf Cadbury’s sobering considerations, Luke-Acts, 201–204. 89 BDR § 3852; cf above n80 (on the Latinism συμβούλιον ἔλαβον in Matt 12:14, cf consilium ceperunt, see BDR § 5.4). This particular Lukan emphasis was pointed out by the late Prof. David Flusser in his seminars; cf Flusser, Origins, xxv, n35.
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his (and his father’s) subsequent reputation among the rabbis. Belief is essential in Paul’s apology, especially the belief in resurrection he appeals to at the beginning and in the peroration, which sounds like a summary of Luke’s Gospel.90 We are at once reminded of Paul’s appeal to the belief in resurrection in his apology before the Sanhedrin, ‘knowing that some were Sadducees and others Pharisees’, whereupon a tumultuous exchange ensued because the Sadducees, the narrator informs us, reject this belief (Acts 23:6–9). The president of that assembly, Ananias, is already known to us from Josephus.91 He is nowhere explicitly identified with the Sadducees, but was undoubtedly associated with their party since he pursued the case against Paul they had supported in the Sanhedrin. Under his direction, Paul is accused before Felix (24:1), and this same case is presented anew before Festus by the ‘upper priests and elders’. In general, Luke presents the persecution against the Apostles as originating with ‘the high priest … and all who were with him, that is, the sect of the Sadducees’ (5:17; 4:5f). We are made to understand that Paul’s apology before Agrippa and Bernice is also a defence against the accusations of the Sadducees [449] masterminded by Ananias. Politically, this sustained appeal to the belief in resurrection is a ‘Pharisaic’ discourse. Finally, there is the enigmatically abrupt ending of Luke-Acts upon Paul’s arrival in Rome as an imperial prisoner. Various explanations have been given, often in relation to the presumed date of writing. Daniel Marguerat in particular has proposed to read it as an instance of the ‘rhetoric of silence’ that retroactively leads the reader’s attention to the subtle allusions to Paul’s death given earlier on in the story.92 This is interesting insofar as the tradition seems credible that Paul was executed under Nero, possibly in 64 CE, and thus had his share in this Emperor’s reputed criminalisation of the Christians.93 There are important implications for the intended reader. Agrippa was known to have been close to Nero and even renamed his Galilean residence ‘Neronias’ in 61 CE. Also, Agrippa and Bernice may be supposed to have learned of the sequel to the case they had heard in Caesaraea. Thus for a politically informed audience somewhere in the 90s CE, reading about the king’s acquittal of Paul would come as a surprise in retrospect. The time after Domitian’s murder, ending his paranoid policy against friend and foe, would seem to be a favourable occasion for presenting this information to the reader.94 90 Acts
26:8f and 26:22f, cf Luke 2:32; 24:26f, 44. 20:103, 131, 205–207; above n62. Cf Fitzmyer, Acts, 717. 92 Cadbury, Luke-Acts, 314, 323f; Marguerat, Historian, 147–154, 205–232. 93 Irenaeus, Haer 3.14.1 (cf Ignatius, Romans 4:3; 1 Clem 5); background in Tacitus, Ann 15.44.2–5. Eusebius, CH 2.25.5 quotes Tertullian’s report that Paul (being a Roman citizen) was beheaded under Nero, and according to his own chronology, ibid. 3.2, this was before Linus’ episcopate, 64 CE. Weighing the evidence, R. Brown, in Brown–Meier, Antioch and Rome, 123f accepts Paul’s martyrdom under Nero as a fact. 94 On Domitian see Goodman, The Roman World, 64–66; Alston, Roman History, 181–190; and below at n115. 91 Ant
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In summary, here is how Luke frames his account of ‘how the Word waxed’: (1) In a Roman ambience. The central story is said to begin with ‘a decree from Caesar Augustus’ carried out by ‘Quirinius, governor of Syria’, and it gets moving under Tiberius.95 Centurions exemplify righteous gentiles; some educated Roman dignitary is being addressed as patron of the work.96 Paul himself is a Roman citizen, he is loyal towards the Emperor and appeals to him in defence. The narrative ends in [450] Rome, with the Jewish leaders wanting to hear Paul and remaining undecided in their reaction.97 (2) With a view on Herodian interests. The Temple is centre stage from beginning to end in Luke and in the largest part of Acts, true to Herodian interests.98 Furthermore ‘the way’, as the message of Jesus is called, has its origins under Herod the Great.99 Herod Antipas, called a ‘fox’ by Jesus, ‘had been wanting to see him for a long time … He questioned him at some length, but Jesus gave no answer.’ Likewise, Agrippa II said about Paul, ‘I would like to hear the man myself’.100 The apologetic high point of Acts, crowning the twin work, is in Paul’s final address before Agrippa and Bernice and his acquittal by the king. (3) In favour of open Jewish-gentile relations. On the one hand, the spreading of the gospel among gentiles need not compromise the relationship to the Jews, as shown by the centurions in Capernaum and Caesaraea, by the Apostles’ accord on the commandments incumbent on gentiles, and by the many God-fearing or God-worshipping gentiles who joined the movement. On the other hand, a growing insistence by Judaean Jews on circumcision and the law creates tension and causes Paul to turn mainly to non-Jews. (4) In a ‘politically pro-Pharisaic’ orientation. Although many Jews reject the message of Jesus and Paul and successfully plot against them, Pharisees are seen to protect them from royal or high-priestly persecution. Addressing Agrippa, Paul calls the Pharisees ‘the most accurate sect of our religious tradition’. While confronting Sadducees and Pharisees, Paul calls himself ‘a Pharisee, son of Pharisees’ and a former disciple of the well-respected Pharisaic dignitary Gamaliel who pleaded for tolerance toward the Apostles.
95 Luke 2:1f (on Quirinius see Fitzmyer, Luke, 399–405; Schwartz, Reading the First Century, 110–115); Luke 3:1; Acts 28. For the setting of Luke-Acts cf Fitzmyer, Luke, 8–11 and idem, Acts, 55–60. An early second century Roman setting of Acts is argued by Moreland, ‘Jerusalem Destroyed’. 96 Luke 7; Acts 10; Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1; 25:8, 11. 97 Acts 22:26–29; 23:27; 28:17–25. 98 Luke 1–2; 24:53; Acts 1–5; 21:26–28. Another Herodian accent is hidden in the parable of the pounds, see Luke 19:12–27 with Millar, ‘Emperors, Kings’, 231 and Schürer, History 1: 330–335. 99 Acts 24:14; cf Act 18:25 and Luke 3:1, 4, ‘The way of the Lord’. 100 Luke 3:1; 13:31; 23:6–12. Acts 26:22
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The Evidence from Josephus and Luke-Acts Combined With these results, we are in a position to re-open the discussion on the evidence of Josephus for the rise of the Pharisees. Josephus’ War, published [451] in the early 80s CE, gives an apology for the Jews and for the person of the author while seeking sympathy from Agrippa, the leading priests, and leading Roman circles. In contrast, the apology for the Jews and for Josephus given in Antiquities-Life, published towards the turn of the century, no longer seeks the sympathy of the priests and ‘sloppily’ incorporates some harmful reports on Agrippa and his sisters, as also on the Pharisees. Nevertheless, Josephus brings his continuous good relations with the king as an argument in his polemics with Justus of Tiberias. Also, a sympathetic attitude to the Pharisees and their tradition stands out, not without a shade of political opportunism. We can now add Luke-Acts to the file. The twin work, finalised somewhere in the 90s CE, offers an apology for Christianity emphasizing both the tolerant attitude of the Pharisees towards Jesus and his Apostles and Agrippa’s and Bernice’s acquittal of Paul. At this point, and in addition to the evidence cited above, we may note the similarity between the words ascribed to Gamaliel and a well-known rabbinic dictum. In his plea for the Apostles, Gamaliel says, ‘If this assembly (βουλή) or undertaking is of humans, it will fail, but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them’ (Acts 5:38f). This statement is quite similar to the dictum that variously appears in rabbinic literature, ‘Every assembly for the sake of Heaven will continue to exist, but if it is not for the sake of Heaven, it will not continue to exist.’101 It could seem that Luke seeks to reinforce his bid for sympathy from the Pharisees with an allusion to their own tradition, although he probably had even less of an inner connection with it than Josephus. In the face of the cruelty of the Sadducean high priests against Jesus and his Apostles and of Nero against Paul and Peter, Luke pleads for mildness in justice as put into practice by Agrippa and Bernice and formulated by Gamaliel the Elder and other Pharisees.102 Theories explaining the similarities of Luke-Acts and Josephus from interdependence are under suspicion of capitalizing on our poverty in sources and hence of being arguments from silence.103 The two authors also have a rather [452] different apologetic focus: while Luke aims to present Christianity as a legitimate 101 mAv 4:11; 5:17, see below, ‘Gamaliel’s Counsel’, 617 for variant versions of the Avot saying and further references. 102 Again, Luke’s rhetoric accords with recorded memory, see above n65 on Sadducean cruelty in justice as opposed to the Pharisaic sages. 103 Krenkel, Josephus und Lucas (Luke depended on Josephus); Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, 185–225 (‘Luke knew something of Josephus’ work’ or knew sources ‘that closely approximated Josephus’ narrative’). Schreckenberg, ‘Flavius Josephus und die lukanischen Schriften’ soberly rejects dependence (thanks to Bart Koet for making this study as well as Krenkel’s available to me). Picking up on Mason’s tentative observations, Pervo, Dating
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‘sect’ in Judaism, Josephus, in his apology of the Jews, is curiously silent about it.104 What we do perceive is how they each use similar bits of information in what appear to be socially-politically comparable positions. An intriguing case in point is the story in Ant 20:200 we have cited, about Agrippa’s deposition of the high priest for staging the lynching of Jesus’ brother James. It is not mentioned by Luke, who either did not know it or thought it exceeds his time frame. As to Josephus, who otherwise is curiously silent on the Christians, it may be another story he let ‘slip through’. Just so he appears to have had access to sources of information that would have been of interest for Luke’s story and evince a similar political orientation: while the Sadducean high priests press for execution of the Apostles, the Pharisees plead for humane justice towards them.105 Thus it seems that for both Luke and Josephus, while writing their apologies aimed at prominent circles in Rome by the turn of the century, it was opportune to highlight Agrippa II’s sympathy shown to themselves or their characters as also to portray the Pharisees as guardians of a just application of the law. Luke’s extraordinary description of Paul’s appearance before Agrippa and Bernice with the appeal to Pharisaic tradition is particularly suggestive. Although Agrippa’s political influence in Rome had waned by this time, he may well have kept visiting the capital. In any case it is likely that authors such as Josephus and Luke would seek the support of the king and his family as literary patrons.106 In this light, the prominent mention both of Gamaliel the Elder in Luke’s Acts and of his son Simon in Josephus’ Life is striking and seems to reflect the prevalence of their family and, by implication, the ascendancy of the presumed head of family contemporaneous to both authors, Gamaliel the Younger. [453] This evidence, destilled from Josephus and now also from Luke-Acts, converges, as intimated by Morton Smith, with the rabbinic stories about the rise of Gamaliel the Younger. However, rather than referring, with Smith, to the ‘maximalist’ claim about Roman recognition of Gamaliel, we will cite Alon’s critical confrontation of rabbinic tradition with Josephus’ evidence, highlighting the political tensions within the Pharisaic-rabbinic movement and especially those between Yohanan ben Zakkai and Gamaliel. On this view, Yohanan could Acts has resolutely re-opened Krenkel’s case, consistently underestimating Luke’s ability to know other sources than Josephus, cf above n45. 104 Cf Christianity as a αἵρεσις in Acts 24:5, 14; 28:22. On Josephus’ silence about Christianity cf Kokkinos, Dynasty, 323 n194. 105 Acts 5:38; 23:9; Ant 20:201. 106 Life 362; Ag Ap 1:51, and see the literary evidence collected by den Hollander, Josephus, 263–279 (in light of Life, the ‘gossipy’ passages in Antiquities about Agrippa and his relatives are rather due to sloppy editing). Except for Justus apud Photius, the literary sources are silent on Agrippa II after 81 CE, and only indirect references are found in inscriptions across the lands of his kingdom (Kokkinos, Herodian Dynasty, 330; Wilker, Für Rom und Jerusalem, 449–470). But his coins testify that he and his court always remained φιλορώμαιοι (above at n59), and he may well have maintained a court in Rome (cf also Curran, ‘Philorhomaioi’).
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settle at Yavne as a Roman captive with a small circle of sages not long after the revolt and thus start his academy. By contrast, Gamaliel, son of one of the Jewish leaders during the revolt, could hardly have replaced Yohanan in public during the paranoiac last years of Domitian, when the fiscus judaicus was executed with severity and in Judea the family of Jesus were reputedly interrogated because of their presumed political ambitions.107 Another relevant motive that emerges from rabbinic literature, as elucidated by Seth Schwartz, is the sympathy visible in rabbinic circles for ‘king Agrippa’, i. e. not only the Elder but, significantly though implicitly, also the Younger.108 The influential circles in Rome whose sympathy was solicited by Josephus and Luke will hardly have included the highest echelons of power, the senatorial class and the imperial court.109 In any case, as argued by Werner Eck and Benjamin Isaac, the idea of official Roman recognition of Gamaliel’s patriarchate has no facts to support it and is alien to the trappings of the Empire.110 In addition, Rome’s strategy had definitely changed and client kingdoms were no longer sought for by that time.111 More likely, what brought Gamaliel to power were his family’s riches and the local popular [454] esteem it enjoyed, and his so-called ‘patriarchate’ would have had a regional rather than a ‘national’ character.112 With the decisive difference of the disappearance of the Temple, the priesthood, and the central sanhedrin, the ascendancy of Gamaliel’s family including its dynastic ambitions can be seen as a prolongation of pre-66 circumstances. It materialized independently of the regeneration of Tora study initiated by Yohanan ben Zakkai at Yavne, though it subsequently seems to have absorbed that 107 Alon, ‘Rabban Joḥanan B. Zakkai’s Removal to Jabneh’; idem, ‘The Patriarchate of Rabban Joḥanan ben Zakkai’, esp 334–342; cf idem, The Jews, 86–107. [Cf the considered assessment by Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 43–45.] Alon’s argument was further developed in several studies by Safrai, In Times of Temple and Mishnah, 319–340, 341–364 (=‘New Aspects regarding Rabban Yohanan’), 365–381. See, however, the doubts as to the ‘Yavne’ location expressed by Schwartz, ‘Lod of the Yavne Period’. 108 In addition see esp Wilker, Für Rom und Jerusalem, 464–470. 109 Lampe, Die stadtrömischen Christen, 295–298 (summary), registers an increasing incidence of Christian names, esp of former slaves, among the familia caesaris by the end of the second century, along with some incidences in senatorial circles, involving women especially. Flavia Domitilla, Domitian’s niece (Lampe ibid. 166–172) was an exception in her day. 110 Eck, ‘Position and Authority of the Provincial Legate’ and Isaac, ‘Judaea after 70: Delegation of Authority’, kindly supplemented in oral and emailed conversation. Pace Tomson, ‘The Wars against Rome’, 10 (going with Alon). On Josephus’ relations in Rome see Cotton–Eck, ‘Josephus’ Roman Audience’. [A similar assessment of Gamaliel’s rise to power is given by Weikert, Von Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, 112–117.] 111 Smallwood, The Jews, 354f; Millar, ‘Emperors, Kings and Subjects’, esp 235; idem, Roman Near East, 91f; Goodman, Roman World, 112; Kokkinos, Herodian Dynasty, 339f. 112 See for this emphasis Sivertsev, Private Households, 66–93 and Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 52–56, and cf Daniel Schwartz, above at n19. Cf also Appelbaum, Dynasty, chapter 1. A rival candidate for the leading position were the ‘Sons of Bathyra’, cf Alon, ‘The Patriarchate of Rabban Joḥanan ben Zakkai’, 328–334.
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initiative after Yohanan’s disappearance,113 tending to the formulation and the practice of the law and creating a ‘coalition’ of sages that excluded sectarianism while integrating differences of opinion.114 All told, and as also hinted at by the First Epistle of Clement,115 Nerva’s acclamation after Domitian’s violent death in 96 CE marked a favourable change of climate both for Jews and Christians.116 Now, we can imagine, Gamaliel could really begin to stretch his wings, while his family received a good press not only from Josephus but also from Luke.
113 See
the two studies by Alon mentioned in n105. Thus the gist of Cohen, ‘The Significance of Yavneh’. 115 1 Clem 1:1, according to a long-standing interpretation, see discussion on dating in Lona, Clemensbrief, 75–78. On Roman Christianity as seen through the prism of 1 Clement see Walters, ‘Romans, Jews, and Christians’; Lane, ‘Roman Christianity’; Caragounis, ‘From Obscurity to Prominence’. 116 Cassius Dio 68.1.2 and Eusebius, CH 3.20.8f, cited by Lampe, Die stadtrömischen Christen, 171; Smallwood, ‘Domitian’s Attitude towards the Jews and Judaism’, and cf n94 above. 114
Sources on the Politics of Judaea in the Fifties CE At a conference on ‘2 Corinthians and Late Second Temple Judaism’ held in 2009, Martin Goodman criticized the description of Judaean politics in the decade from 50 to 60 CE – when presumably 2 Corinthians was written – in the standard historical works.1 Basing themselves on Josephus, they describe the 50s as a time of increasing tension. Goodman cited Emil Schürer’s History of the Jewish People as one example, but other important works could be added such as those of Martin Hengel, Mary Smallwood, or Menahem Stern.2 For Goodman, Josephus’ description in [235] Jewish War is not supported by the events he cites; it is in fact based on his model, Thucydides. Even the more detailed account of Antiquities looks like a ‘prelude to destruction’ only in retrospect. Goodman finds this assessment confirmed in Tacitus who in his Histories also has little to say on the period, while his Annals mention a conflict between Galileans and Samaritans as the only event of political consequence. Otherwise we have no sources to check Josephus, although 2 Corinthians might come in as a suitable source. A similar assessment is given in Goodman’s Rome and Jerusalem.3 The ambition of the following study is to address Goodman’s argument on different levels. First, we shall make a comparison between the introductory parts of Thucydides’ History and that of his Jewish follower. We shall then study Josephus’ presentation of the decades preceding the revolt in Jewish War as compared with Antiquities. Next, we shall address some New Testament sources that do in fact illuminate the pre-war period in Judaea and that help us assess Josephus’ description. After that, we put the evidence from the various sources together, offering elements for a sketch of 50–60 CE Judaea including the politics of circumcision. A conclusion will round up this response to Martin Goodman.4 1 Goodman, ‘The Politics of the Fifties’. [The conference was held at KU Leuven and its papers were published in Bieringer et al., Second Corinthians (CRINT 14).] 2 Schürer, History 1: 455–470; Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule, 257–284; Hengel, Zeloten, 342–357 = Zealots, 343–355; Stern, ‘The Period of the Second Temple’, esp 258–260; Sartre, The Middle East under Rome, 113–117. 3 Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 412f. For 2 Cor see Goodman, ‘Politics of the Fifties’, 27. 4 [The article was published as ‘Sources on the Politics of Judaea in the Fifties CE: A Response to Martin Goodman’, JJS 68 (2017) 234–259, DOI 10.18647/3324/JJS-2017. With due acknowledgement to the publishers for their kind permission to republish, it is reprinted here with some additions in the footnotes.] I am indebted to the anonymous reviewers of JJS for
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Thucydides and Josephus’ Jewish War The point for Goodman is that Josephus, writing in post-war hindsight, ‘refers quite frequently to matters going from bad to worse’,5 although the incidents he cites do not support such an interpretation. In this, Goodman thinks, [236] Josephus merely follows the historical rhetoric of Thucydides’ introduction to the History of the Peloponnesian War: The teleological thrust of Josephus’ narrative in the Bellum of events in Judaea was cast very clearly in the mould of Thucydides’ history … Josephus’ first line … echoed directly Thucydides’ claims for his own subject. Josephus followed the same master in seeking to delineate those events in the years preceding the war which might help to explain its outbreak – but in place of the fifty years (pentêkontaetia) of Thucydides, Josephus substituted the sixty years since the beginning of direct Roman rule over the province. A problem for the historian, however, seems to have been a severe shortage of sources for that history.6
What is implied here? In his introduction, Thucydides inserts a description of the period between the defeat of the Persians by the allied forces of Athens and Sparta in 479 BCE and the outbreak of war between the same cities in 431, summing it up as ‘spanning about fifty years (ἐν ἔτεσι πεντήκοντα μάλιστα) between the retreat of Xerxes and the beginning of the present war’.7 During this episode, called by scholars pentêkonta-etia or ‘50-year period’, the power of Athens grew steadily through a series of incidents, until finally Sparta took this as a reason for war. Imitating Thucydides, Goodman means, Josephus presents the 60 years after Judaea became part of the Roman Empire in 6 CE as a period of increasing social tension that finally led to war in 66 CE, although he does not cite the facts to warrant that presentation. One can only agree that a critical take on Josephus’ rhetoric is essential, the more so where he follows existing conventions. The question is what this must imply for his credibility, and how we can assess this. Martin Hengel, while sharply criticizing Josephus’ Tendenz, did not find his reading of a ‘rising tide’ inadequate, and neither does Tessa Rajak.8 Goodman does, as noted. In a review of earlier scholarship, he attaches particular importance to James McLaren’s demonstration of ‘the extent to which all histories of Judea in the first century saving me from various errors and giving me the opportunity to improve my argument considerably. Thanks also to Profs. Jonathan Price and Joshua Schwartz for their helpful advice. Any remaining misjudgments and errors are mine. 5 Goodman, ‘Politics of the Fifties’, 28; Rome and Jerusalem, 413, 612 n17. The exact phrase is not found in War but in Ant (20:160, 214), where even less of a Thucydidean mould is visible. 6 Goodman, ‘Politics of the Fifties’, 27. 7 Thucydides, Hist 1.118.2, cf trans B. Jowett, Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War, Oxford, Clarendon 1881, Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/, accessed 2 July 2017. 8 Hengel, Zealots, 6–18; cf his dictum below at n20. Rajak, Josephus, 9, 155 on Thucydides as model, 65–103 on the revolt and its causes.
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C. E. are trapped into adopting Josephus’s historical perspective’.9 In McLaren’s analysis, Josephus’ narrative, our only source, [237] centres on the two axioms ‘that Judaea was a place of increasing turmoil and that the revolt was bound to take place’.10 Recently, a ‘higher scepticism’ has been voiced by Steve Mason. He welcomes the rejection of the rhetoric of ‘a society heading inexorably to its doom’ by historians like Goodman and McLaren, but finds we cannot blame this rhetoric on Josephus either. Rather than describing a steady deterioration of Roman-Jewish relations, Books 1 and 2 of Jewish War add up to a ‘chaos of interactions’ under an overlay of ‘tragic irony’ not unlike that of A. J. P. Taylor.11 If that would be all to it – if external sources other than Tacitus do not teach otherwise – we would have to accept this enlightened resignation. First let us investigate Josephus’ relation to Thucydides. The dependence of Jewish War on the ‘father of history’ has long been known; Goodman is among many to note that it is obvious from the first sentence on. Indeed Josephus’ prologue as a whole claims the Thucydidean method, announcing a history that is not based on hearsay (ἀκοή), and that excels not in rhetoric and flattery of the mighty but in ‘historical accuracy’ (τὸ ἀκριβές), and it ends by stating: ‘My work is written for lovers of truth and not to gratify my readers’, thus recalling Thucydides’ famous ambition to have composed his history ‘not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time’.12 [238] In light of that, an interesting exchange with Thucydides occurs when Josephus states in his prologue that ‘to narrate the ancient history’ (ἀρχαιολογεῖν) of the Jews would be both out of place and superfluous, since many already have undertaken this task (War 1:17). One hears an allusion to Thucydides, who not only describes the 50 year period leading up to the Peloponnesian war, but preceding that also gives a review of τὰ παλαιά, the ‘ancient history’ of the Greeks, at the very beginning of Book 1. It is a succinct survey which he says he culled from Homer and other poets and chroniclers – sources drifting into the legendary (τὸ μυθῶδες) that the common people will uncritically believe, but from which he has derived conclusions the intelligent reader will find to be 9 Goodman, ‘Current Scholarship on the First Revolt’, 16. References to McLaren also in Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 7–10, 412f, 612 n18; idem, ‘The Politics of the Fifties’, 27 n18. Nevertheless for Goodman, Ruling Class, 19 the likelihood that the castigation of stasis in Jewish War is ‘a reflection of … Thucydides’ is no impediment to treat this as a leading theme in identifying a main cause of the war: the power struggle of the ruling class. 10 McLaren, Turbulent Times, 18. While noting that ‘not one reconstruction … is based on … any other source’ (179), McLaren intends to build his own ‘life raft’ (225ff) on the very same source. New Testament sources do not come into account (16). 11 Mason, ‘Why did Judaeans go to War’, 129, 163–165. 12 Josephus, War 1:1f, 30; Thucydides, Hist 1.22. See Price, ‘Josephus’ First Sentence and the Preface to War’ (many thanks to the author for making this study available). Mader, Josephus and the Politics of Historiography shows how Josephus uses Thucydidean rhetoric to blame the extremists for the war.
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sound.13 This last clause has often been read as a depreciation of Thucydides’ predecessor Herodotus, who integrated quantities of ‘ethnographic’ material. That view, however, may be seen as based on an idealization of Thucydides’ method.14 More moderately, intertextual analysis has been found to show that ‘Thucydides offered a creative continuation … of his predecessor’.15 In point of fact, having finished his ‘ancient history’, Thucydides starts the pentêkontaetia at the point where Herodotus ended his Persian War. Similarly yet different, Josephus’ Jewish War picks up where ‘ancient’ history ends, as is explicit in the prologue (War 1:18): ‘I shall … begin my work at the point where the historians of these events and our prophets conclude’ – in other words, at the end of biblical history.16 Thus the Jewish [239] War will not contain an ‘ancient history’ paralleling Thucydides’ παλαιά. It will contain something else: ‘For the events preceding my lifetime I shall be content with a brief summary,’ surveying the immediate prehistory of the Judaean war. Its outline is given in the continuation of the prologue (War 1:19f): starting with Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabaean War, 167–164 BCE, it will relate how the Romans were drawn in from 65 BCE on, and finally describe the outbreak of the Jewish war with the defeat of the senatorial legate to the region, Cestius Gallus, in 66 CE. In the extant work, this covers the remainder of Book 1 and all of Book 2. The author himself enters into the narrative at the end of Book 2, when he is appointed commander of the Galilee. This period of actual preparation for war, where Josephus begins to be present as ‘Thucydidean’ eyewitness, creates an overlap between the summary and the main history (2:568–654). The war effectively begins in Book 3 with the appointment of Vespasian as the Roman commander. Thus it seems more adequate to see a formal parallel to Thucydides’ pentêkontaetia in the 233 years covered in War 1:31–2:654. To be sure, nowhere is a specific number of years given for this period, nor does it as a whole display a build-up or similar dynamic. Rather, it seems to be a formal demarcation of epochs. On another score, it is interesting that Josephus subsequently decided to compose his Antiquities, a veritable ‘Archaeology of the Jews’ in a much looser
13 Thucydides, Hist 1.20f. In 1.2–20 he explicitly treats τὰ παλαιά (1.3, τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα), and in 1.89–117, developments immediately preceding the war ἐν ἔτεσι πεντήκοντα μάλιστα (118.2). 14 See Momigliano, ‘Some Observations on Causes of War’; idem, ‘Persian Empire and Greek Freedom’. See also the critical analysis of the pentêkontaetia by Badian, ‘Thucydides and the Outbreak’, 223–236. 15 Rogkotis, ‘Thucydides and Herodotus’, 86; cf Rengakos, ‘Thucydides’ Narrative’. Cf Said, ‘Reading Thucydides’ Archaeology’, 61: ‘The model of Herodotus and Thucydides as polar opposites is a thing of the past.’ 16 An interesting implication is that in the tradition Josephus followed, 1 Maccabees was not considered ‘biblical history’.
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and talkative style which has been called ‘Herodotean’.17 The change in genre explains at least part of the differences between Jewish War and Antiquities. Indeed the distinction between both works will be essential in the analysis that follows.
The Years 6–66 CE in Jewish War and Antiquities If not by way of a formal parallel to Thucydides’ pentêkontaetia, how does Jewish War describe the period from 6 to 66 CE? Doubtless, Goodman and others are correct in stating that it features a rhetoric of growing tension [240] and impending catastrophe.18 Yet there is something insubstantial and contradictory about it, and Mason does have a good point in speaking of a ‘chaos of interactions’. In another respect Goodman, in addition to a lack of supportive evidence, also finds contradiction in Josephus’ description, as we shall yet see. The lack of clarity surrounds the main players, Jewish insurgents and Roman administrators, and it appears concentrated right at the beginning of the 60 year period. Jewish War 2:117 states briefly that in 6 CE, after the deposition of the Herodian king Archelaus, Judaea was brought under direct imperial control when Augustus appointed Coponius as the first prefect of equestrian rank.19 This is followed (2:118) by an equally succinct statement about Judas the Galilean, ‘a sophist who founded a sect of his own having nothing in common with the others’, and who propagated revolt, refusal of tax to the Emperor, and worship of God alone. These are highly explosive motifs in the perspective of the War, but amazingly, Josephus switches to a leisurely explanation about ‘the three sects’ of Jewish ‘philosophy’, leaving it for his readers to guess why all that is necessary if Judas’ sect was so maverick. After this extremely long digression (2:119–66), he resumes the narrative of events after Archelaus’ deposition, but this time round without a word about Coponius or Judas. Why mention such dangerous motifs in passing, then elaborately expatiate on the three sects, and then continue as though nothing particular has been said? Martin Hengel has warned us to read Josephus suspiciously, weighing both what he says ‘and what he omits in the light of his own interests’, and similarly Martin Goodman will use Josephus’ own evidence ‘to discover facts that … he 17 See Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition, 284–290, referring to Josephus’ own clarification in Ag Ap 1:53 and to the mediation of Herodotus’ method via Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Cf discussion by Mader, Josephus and the Politics of Historiography, 5–10. 18 See the summary of the build-up in McLaren, Turbulent Times, 78–107; and the different reading by Mason, ‘Why did Judaeans go to War?’, 174–190. 19 On administrative organization and nomenclature (including the confusion of praefectus and procurator) see Eck, Rom und Judaea, 24–51; on political and military implications in the early Empire, Millar, The Roman Near East, 43–69.
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knew well but at which he preferred only to hint’.20 More specifically, Ernst Badian has identified it as one of the tactics of Thucydidean rhetoric when the author mentions facts that contradict his interpretation only when he can either make them serve his aims or cannot omit them [241] because they are too wellknown.21 In point of fact, ‘Judas the Galilean’ did find mention even in the New Testament, as did the census and the sicarii (Luke 2:2; Acts 5:37; 21:38).22 Therefore it seems certain that Judas and his movement figured in Roman military reports,23 which must have necessitated Josephus to mention it somehow.24 In his commentary on Jewish War, Steve Mason observes that the digression on the three sects breathes an ‘exotic demographic atmosphere’, as also that War 2:117 – as distinct from Antiquities – strangely fails to mention Quirinius, the legate to Syria, which, Mason suggests, may reflect the intention to highlight the incompetence of the prefects ‘as a primary cause of rising tensions’.25 Precisely that suspicion has been pursued by Werner Eck, exposing Josephus’ Tendenz to picture the equestrian prefects as incompetent administrators, setting them off from the nobler senatorial legates – doubtless in the interests of the author’s position in Rome vis-à-vis the elite. Especially the suggestion that Florus acted behind the back of the legate, Cestius Gallus, and intentionally ‘fanned the flames of war’ (War 2:283, 293), violates the political realities of the Empire.26 Similarly, Daniel Schwartz discerns contradictory motives in Jewish War’s account of Albinus: he was not representative of Rome’s actual politics, but neither did the Emperor appoint better prefects. Likewise, the rebels who started the war and brought disaster on all Jews were not representative of Judaism but an outlaw movement beyond the pale of the three legitimate schools.27 In sum, Jewish War ‘explains’ the growth [242] of the conflict by blaming isolated groups and functionaries and obfuscating the involvement of the prime actors. The less restrained account of Antiquities reveals much of what Jewish War omits. Curiously, here as well, a digression on the sects is sandwiched between Zealots, viii, preface to the second edition. Goodman, Ruling Class, 20. Badian, ‘Thucydides and the Outbreak’, 128 and 159. 22 On these events, their background, and their dating by Luke see Schürer, History 1: 399–427; Millar, Roman Near East, 46f; Fitzmyer, Luke, 399–417. [Cf the argument for an early date by Di Segni, ‘Il censimento di Quirinio’ and its rebuttal by Dambrowa, ‘The Date of the Census of Quirinius’.] 23 Cf the matter-of-fact report on the crucifixion of Judas’ sons James and Simon by Tiberius Alexander, Ant 20:102; see below. Josephus reveals he had access to commentarii of the Roman military in Life 342, 358. 24 This likelihood is not considered in Goodman’s suggestion, Ruling Class, 95–6 that Josephus could have simply omitted the ‘philosophy’, had he so wished. See below. 25 Mason, Judean War 2, 96: the opening sentence recalls Caesar’s Gallic War; ibid. 135, ‘the concluding statement … consolidates the symmetry of the digression’; ibid. 79, Quirinius omitted. These observations seem to find little resonance in Mason’s historical syntheses. 26 Eck, ‘Die römischen Repräsentanten in Judäa’, 62f. 27 D. Schwartz, ‘Josephus on Albinus’, 298–300. 20 Hengel, 21
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two reports about the change into a province (Ant 18:1–3, 26–9), but it is a much shorter digression (18:4–25). It seems as though Josephus is intentionally correcting Jewish War at this point. Both reports now contain information on Coponius and on Judas, rather more amply than in War at that. And both now present Quirinius, the senatorial legate to Syria also appointed in 6 CE and Coponius’ superior, as the chief actor whose first main task was to liquidate Archelaus’ estate and organize the census in preparation of the imperial tax levy. Revealingly, we now hear that Judas’ movement grew out of the resentment against the census that was widely shared in spite of appeasement efforts by the high priest. Together with a Pharisee called Saddok, Judas founded what Josephus now calls an ‘innovative fourth philosophy’,28 one that, very different from what we hear in War, ‘agrees in all other respects with the opinions of the Pharisees’, except for its passion for liberty and for serving God alone. And the ‘seeds’ that Judas and Saddok sowed kept growing and only would need the disastrous policy of Florus (64–66 CE) to bear the fruit of open rebellion (cf Ant 18:9, 25). Indeed Ant 20:102 registers the crucifixion under Tiberius Alexander (46–48 CE) of James and Simon, two sons of Judas whom Josephus links with their father’s revolt against the census of Quirinius. Thus much more seems to have been going on in the wake of the 6 CE census than Josephus wanted to let on in his Jewish War. The direct connection between imperial policy and popular rebellion must have been the last thing he wanted to surprise his Flavian patrons with. Only towards the end, when the last pocket of resistance at Masada remains to be mopped up, does he reveal that the occupants of the fortress belonged to Judas’ movement that originated with Quirinius’ census and belonged to the core of the revolt (War 7:252–255). Such is the contradictory, misleading way in which Josephus [243] handles the rebels, presenting them on the one hand as the real instigators of the war,29 while on the other, sidelining them as insignificant impostors.30 The contradictoriness of Josephus’ descriptions is duly noted by Martin Goodman in his study on the role of the Judaean ruling class in the revolt, with the suspicion that Josephus is withholding important information about the movement: ‘At times he wants to state that this philosophy had a massive influence …, while at other times he strives to push it to the margins of Jewish beliefs.’ Goodman 28 On the phrase φιλοσοφία ἐπείσακτος and the political implications of Judas’ movement see van der Horst, ‘Philosophia epeisaktos’ [and see below n73a]. 29 See esp Attridge, ‘Josephus and His Works’, 196–200. [S. Schwartz, ‘Composition and Publication’ argues that War 7 reflects a revision under Nerva. If correct, this would explain Josephus’ greater frankness here.] 30 Thus also Mader, Josephus, esp 12 n40. Cf Parente, ‘Flavius Josephus’ Account of the Anti-Roman Riots’, 191–196. Mason, Judean War, 81 notes that Josephus elsewhere links Judas’ descendants together but does not in War 2:118, concluding that they actually were insignificant. Similarly, Brighton, The Sicarii in Josephus’s Judean War maintains on the sole basis of Jewish War that the phrase ‘sicarii’ is a mere rhetorical ploy of Josephus.
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sees two ways to explain this. Either ‘Josephus invented the Fourth Philosophy as a device to push to the margins what was in fact a much more widespread tendency among first-century Jews …’ Or, Goodman’s preferred option, Josephus did not invent the ‘philosophy’ but greatly exaggerated its significance, while actually it was ‘of marginal effect in the increasingly violent confrontations in Judaea’.31 The latter interpretation ties in with Goodman’s overall view that the revolt was not caused by an increasing deterioration of Jewish-Roman relations, but by a phenomenon Josephus tried to dissimulate at any price: the power struggle within his own class, the ruling elite in Judaea. We have noted that while this dissimulation strategy is evident in Jewish War, it is not in Antiquities. There, Josephus openly states the fourth philosophy’s proximity to the Pharisees, by now his professed affiliation, and he also reveals the philosophy’s rise in connection with the census. This suggests a third possible explanation, namely that indeed Josephus did not invent the fourth philosophy, nor that it was marginal, but that on the contrary it had such resonance that the apologetic aims of Jewish War required him to marginalize it as much as its notoriety among the Romans would allow,32 dissimulating the implication of his own class at the cost of [244] the ‘extremists’. The evidence of sources external to Josephus will help us assess the adequacy of that interpretation.
The Evidence of Galatians, Romans, and Acts We recall Goodman’s remark that lack of external sources makes it impossible to verify Josephus’ rhetoric, although 2 Corinthians could be such a possible source. That letter, as it happens, does not contain information on the situation in Judaea. Two other letters of Paul’s do, Galatians and Romans. In addition, the narrative of Acts, although certainly post-70 and rather contemporaneous with Josephus’ Antiquities, is a useful auxiliary source.33 Analysis of these documents involves much discussion of circumcision, a topic whose political implications will be addressed towards the end of this paper. Galatians is exceptional among Paul’s letters in that the exordium (Gal. 1:6– 12), which follows the salutation (1:1–5), skips the usual flattering phrases of thanksgiving and bursts forward with bitter reproach. Thus at the beginning and end of his letter, the apostle denounces those who preach ‘a different gospel’ insisting on circumcision of non-Jewish believers (1:6; 6:12). His own gospel 31 Goodman, Ruling Class, 93–97; basically the same interpretation in Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 414f. 32 See above n22–24 on the probability that the Romans were aware of the risk of the ‘philosophy’. 33 Hengel, Zealots, 22 considers the New Testament a modest ‘secondary source’. Similarly, without saying so much, Millar, Roman Near East, repeatedly draws on Acts and Luke.
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assumes non-Jews to believe in Jesus without keeping the Jewish law and getting circumcised. Circumcision is a possible option, but it involves the obligation ‘to keep the whole law’ and does not bring one closer to Christ (5:2–3), for ‘in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything’ (5:6; cf 3:28; 6:15). Paul affirms that this ‘gospel for the uncircumcised’ propagated by himself and Barnabas was recognized at a meeting in Jerusalem, along with the ‘gospel for the circumcised’ entrusted to Peter (2:7). According to the agreement of the apostles, both ‘gospels’ or ‘apostolates’ (cf 2:8) presupposed mutual respect and refraining from meddling in each other’s business. If we want to understand Paul, it is extremely important to note that he distinguished this apostolically acknowledged ‘gospel for the circumcised’ from the ‘different gospel’ that stressed circumcision of male non-Jewish believers.33a [245] But apparently there was confusion, and clarification of Paul’s position visà-vis the apostles was called for. This is what the first two chapters of the letter set out to do. In result, Gal. 1:13–2:21 contains rare first-hand information on Paul’s career as apostle travelling between Jerusalem and the diaspora. To be sure, the account spills over into the main argument of the letter (cf 2:15–21),34 and it must be read critically from that point of view. Just so, Paul’s account features a number of successive episodes that relate to events in Judaea. Judging from its place in the ensemble of Paul’s letters, Galatians was probably written in the mid-50s CE.35 Let us study its different parts taking our departure from Hans-Dieter Betz’s rhetorical analysis of the contents, adding tentative datings.36 Gal. 1:1–5 Epistolary prescript: salutation. 1:6–11 Exordium: rhetorical statement of the cause of the letter, ‘the present state of the Galatian churches’, and an attack on their change of position or ‘desertion’: the Galatians have given in to ‘a different gospel’ (ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον). 1:12–2:14 Narratio: ‘statement of facts’: the origin of Paul’s gospel, his career as an apostle, and his relationship with the Jerusalem church. It summarizes five episodes preceding the letter: 1:12–4. Paul’s ‘earlier life in Judaism’: ‘I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it; I advanced in Judaism beyond many contemporaries, being exceedingly zealous (περισσοτέρως ζηλωτής ὑπάρχων) for the traditions of my ancestors.’ 1:15–20. After his conversion (± 32 CE) by the ‘revelation of God’s Son’ and his calling ‘to proclaim Him among the gentiles’, he stays for three years in Arabia and Damascus. After that (± 35 CE), he stays two weeks in Jerusalem, 33a [Pace Betz, Galatians, 48f, who seems to assume that ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον of Gal 1:7 equals (εὐαγγέλιον) τῆς ἀκροβυστίας in 2:7.] 34 See summary of discussion in Betz, Galatians, 113f. 35 An earlier dating is also proposed, see summaries of discussion by Betz, Galatians, 9–12 (opting for 50–55 CE) and Brown, Introduction, 474–477 (mid-50s CE). 36 Betz, Galatians. Cf a similar overview in Safrai–Tomson, ‘Paul’s Collection’ (in this volume, 465–467).
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‘meeting with Cephas’ and only once seeing ‘James, the brother of the Lord’. [246] 1:21–24. Then for ‘fourteen years’, Paul preaches and teaches in the churches around Antioch, during which time the churches in Judaea ‘did not see his face’. This work is based on the message that is subsequently approved of in Jerusalem. 2:1–10. After that (± 49 CE), Paul goes to Jerusalem with Barnabas to discuss ‘the gospel that I proclaim among the gentiles’. Titus who came along is ‘not compelled to be circumcised’, in spite of the actions of ‘false brothers’ (ψευδαδέλφοι). The apostles including James and Cephas (= Peter) see that Paul ‘had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised’; they agree and shake hands. They also ask that Paul and Barnabas ‘remember the poor’ – probably a reference to Paul’s later fund-raising campaign (1 Cor. 16:1–4). 2:11–14. Some time later (say 51 CE), Cephas visits Antioch, where Paul and Barnabas are staying. Jews and gentiles are eating together in church, but when ‘certain people from James’ come along, Cephas and the other Jews and even Barnabas withdraw ‘for fear of those of the circumcision’. Paul publicly reproaches Cephas, asking sarcastically, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews (ἰουδαΐζειν)?’ The address that ensues is at once the propositio of the letter. 2:15–21 Propositio, summing up facts stated in the preceding and arguments to be discussed in what follows.37 Materially, it is a statement of the gospel Paul and Peter, ‘Jews by birth’, ought to believe in: ‘We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.’38 3:1–4:31 Probatio, proofs. ‘Arguments from Scripture’ against imposing the law on gentile Christians. 5:1–6:10 Exhortatio. Paraenesis structuring the Christian life of freedom. 6:11–18 Epistolary postscript, ‘See with what large letters I am writing you now myself.’ This is the authorial present rendered by the epistolary aorist ἔγραψα, Paul summing up the letter he has dictated in his postscript, ± 55 CE: ‘Those who want to compel you to be circumcised (are trying to escape) persecution for the cross of Christ.’ Betz: ‘Seen as a rhetorical figure, the peroratio … should be employed as the hermeneutical key to the intentions of the Apostle.’39 [247]
Now, if we read the successive episodes of Paul’s life mentioned in the narratio plus the authorial present of the letter in relation to events in Judaea, we can distinguish four consecutive stages: (1) In the early 30s CE, Paul’s career began as a young Jew being more ‘zealous’ for the ancestral traditions than many others and persecuting the followers Betz, Galatians, 114. Betz, Galatians, 115: Paul ‘sets forth a “self-definition” of Jewish Christians, beginning by considering them, including Paul himself, as Jews.’ Paul continues to consider himself a Jew, see Rom 3:1f. 39 Betz, Galatians, 313f. For the ancient convention of handwritten postscripts see ibid. 312. On the aorist see also Safrai–Tomson, ‘Paul’s Collection’ (in this volume, 467f). 37 38
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of Jesus. We are not informed about a particular ‘school’ he belonged to, but it is implied that at that time many less radical Jews were also around in Judaea. After his conversion to the Jesus movement, Paul worked for three years in Syria and, after a short visit in Jerusalem, another 14 years in Asia Minor. Nothing particular is reported about the message he preached. (2) In the late 40s CE Paul makes another visit to Jerusalem to discuss his gospel with the other apostles. Now, an issue about circumcision of gentile believers is stirred up by ‘false brothers’, but this is not forced on Paul’s non-Jewish companion Titus. The apostles agree that the ‘gospel for the circumcised’ ran by Cephas/Peter should co-exist side by side with the one ‘for the uncircumcised’ supervised by Paul and Barnabas. (3) Some years later however, say in the early 50s, Peter is on visit in the Antioch church where Paul and Barnabas are staying; Jews and gentiles are eating together. Then some people come ‘from James’, i. e. from Jerusalem, and all Jews including Cephas and Barnabas start avoiding table-fellowship with non-Jewish believers, evidently giving in to some more radical message. Paul publicly upbraids Cephas, the consequences of which are not registered. (4) Finally, in the authorial present of the letter in the mid-fifties CE, Paul is shocked that the Galatians have given in to ‘a different gospel’ insisting on circumcision of male gentile believers. Those who preach this message are themselves exposed to pressure and even to ‘persecution’. It is not clear where they come from, but the frequent mention of Jerusalem along with Peter and James makes that a likely provenance. In short, the rhetorical structure of Galatians seems to reflect a progressive development in Judaea and the Jerusalem church: from a mixed situation of greater and lesser ‘zeal for the law’ in the early 30s, via an exacerbation of the debate about circumcision in the late 40s, on to an urge for separation from non-Jews by the early 50s, until we finally reach the situation Paul is facing in Galatia during the mid-fifties, namely, that of Christian emissaries who [248] are pressurized to force circumcision on non-Jewish believers. The pressure most probably also originated from Jerusalem. The impression of increasing ‘zeal for the law’ in Jerusalem is reinforced by the end of Romans. Here, Paul writes that he is underway carrying the proceeds of his collection for ‘the poor among the saints in Jerusalem’, that is, a fundraising campaign for the treasury of the Jerusalem church. Paul beseeches the Christians in Rome to pray ‘that I may be rescued from the obstinate (ἀπειθούντων) in Judaea, and that my ministry to Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints’ (Rom. 15:30–1). Thus this letter, written probably around 58 CE, in one breath utters Paul’s acute apprehension that non-Christian radicals endanger his life and that his collection, a ‘ministry of the gentiles’, not be accepted by the leaders of the Jerusalem church. It appears that in Jerusalem, three years on, the trending
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zeal for the law and separation from gentiles that we have read from Galatians has aggravated still more. A similar development can be read from Acts. The relationship between Acts and Paul is classically disputed. One of the nagging questions is why the author of Acts never betrays knowledge of the Pauline letters; another concerns the contradictions between the descriptions of the apostles’ meeting in Acts 15 and Gal. 2. However, we need not enter in those discussions. On the contrary, they encourage us to treat Acts as a source independent from Paul’s letters, even if its Pauline colouring is obvious. The narrative of Acts has felicitously been described as dramatische Episodenstil: instead of a continuous history, it offers successive vignettes:40 (a) Paul’s activities as an apostle are described from the end of chapter 11 on. He stays in Antioch, teaching for a year along with Barnabas. The only detail added concerns prophets from Jerusalem who announce a famine and financial help raised by the Antiochene church, which is said to have happened ‘under Claudius’ (Acts 11:28, cf Ant 20:51–53). There is no impression of problems between Jews and non-Jews. [249] (b) This changes in chapter 15, in the precise formulation of the author: ‘Some people coming from Judaea wanted to teach the brethren, “If you do not get circumcised according to the rite of Moses, you cannot be saved”’ (Acts 15:1). Paul and Barnabas strongly disagree and go to Jerusalem to discuss the matter with the apostles. Again, the author carefully notes that during that discussion, ‘some from the sect of Pharisees who had come to believe stood up and said that (the gentiles) must be circumcised and taught to keep the law of Moses’ (15:5). The apostles led by Peter and James do not agree, and a compromise is formulated that appears to formalize the status quo: gentile believers must only abstain from foods consecrated to idols, unchastity, and blood (15:29). Clearly, this report of the apostles’ meeting differs from Paul’s version, but that proves our point: it is based on other sources. (c) The next stage occurs in Acts 21. It is years later when Paul again arrives in Jerusalem. James informs him about ‘the thousands of Jews who have come to believe and who are zealous for the law’ (21:20). At James’ suggestion, Paul partakes in a temple ritual but is arrested by fanatic Jews from Asia Minor accusing him of teaching neglect of the law and polluting the Temple by bringing in gentiles (21:28). Paul is imprisoned by the Romans and led first before Felix, then, two years later, before Festus who has succeeded Felix (24:27), which brings us to 60 CE. Significantly, the commander who first interrogates Paul asks him whether he is not ‘the Egyptian who some time ago led four thousand 40 Plümacher, Lukas als hellenistischer Schriftsteller. The technique relates to the ‘epitomizing’ as defined by Rothschild, Luke-Acts and the Rhetoric of History, 231–240, cf 280 (Acts 11:26 certainly qualifies for her definition), 285f. The narrative analysis by Garroway, ‘The Pharisee Heresy’ breathes a measure of historical scepticism.
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sicarii into the desert’ (21:38) – events reported in more detail by Josephus who dates them to the mid-50s under Felix (War 2:254–263). Thus the episodic history of Acts narrates three stages of development in Jerusalem and Antioch: from a situation of unproblematic relations between Jews and non-Jews in the churches during the 40s, via one of exacerbated discussions about the need for gentile Christians to keep the law, likely during the early 50s, to a polarized situation in the late 50s with thousands of Jewish believers who are zealous for the law and oppose Paul’s mission to the non-Jews. In other words, the Acts story roughly parallels Paul’s narratio in Galatians supplemented by the details in Romans. In combination, these sources testify to the rise of a movement in Judaea and Jerusalem stressing separation from gentiles and zeal for the law. The phenomenon had been around for some time already, as witnessed by Paul’s early career, but started to gain speed from the late 40s and came in full swing in the late 50s. [250]
The Combined Sources on Judaea in the 50s CE The New Testament sources reviewed above agree with scattered information in Josephus’ Jewish War about a development in Judaea that increasingly made for tension vis-à-vis non-Jews including Romans from the late 40s on, irrespective of any possible parallels with Thucydides’ history. This development certainly did not mean immediate war, but it does account for fuel that would accelerate the fire of war once it would break out by whatever cause. One can speculate why Tacitus does not mention it in his brief chapter summing up the pre-history of the revolt.41 In any case there is good reason to compare the above results with Josephus’ account in the Jewish War, adding also the information from Antiquities.42 Some telling details paralleled in Acts and Jewish War draw the attention. First of all there are the names of powerful characters: Felix the procurator; Drusilla, his Jewish wife; Bernice, her sister who became a star in Rome as Titus’ consort; and King Agrippa II, brother of the latter two women, who played an important role before and during the war. Then there is the mention in both sources of the sicarii and of the Egyptian prophet. Apparently the partially overlapping accounts of Acts and Jewish War use similar contemporary sources about an 41 Tacitus, Hist 5.9. Smallwood, The Jews, 172 views Tacitus’ little phrase, sub Tiberio quies (Hist 5.9.2), as an expression of Rome-centredness. Stern, GLAJJ 2: 51 takes it to mean only ‘that there were no open rebellions under Tiberius’. [Barnett, ‘Under Tiberius all was Quiet’ thinks that under Tiberius, things were relatively more quiet than after 44 CE. Lavan, ‘Writing Revolt in the Early Roman Empire’ stresses the propaganda purposes involved in writing about social unrest.] 42 I have presented the data of Paul, Acts, and Josephus in a three column synopsis in ‘Jewish-Christian Relations in Roman Judaea’.
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upsurge of unrest under Felix.43 Most important, the three accounts in Galatians, Acts, and Jewish War show a parallel dynamic: from a period of relative quiet under Fadus and Tiberius Alexander, via beginning trouble under Cumanus, to open violence and unrest under Felix. The information contained in the less controlled account of Antiquities adds detail. We already have seen that contrary to War, it unequivocally links the rise of the radical ‘fourth philosophy’ led by Judas the Galilean [251] to the discontent caused by the census in 6 CE, adding that the movement was to stay alive and would strongly contribute to the revolt.44 It also tells us of the crucifixion of ‘James and Simon, the sons of Judas the Galilean’ by Tiberius Alexander (46–48 CE).45 The energetic performance of this procurator46 should not detract us from the obvious, i. e. that he must have detected live insurgence potential in James and Simon. Indeed two of the later leaders of the revolt were Menahem, a third son of Judas, and Eleazar son of Yair, another relative.47 The evidence in Antiquities gives the impression of a resistance movement that went underground48 after a first showdown but kept breeding and re-surfacing until circumstances in the mid-60s occasioned its full deployment – an impression very different from the one we get from reading Jewish War only. Antiquities also records the episode of the prophet Theudas under Tiberius’ predecessor Fadus, 44–46 CE, which is passed over in silence in War but mentioned in Acts.49 According to Josephus’ information, a large number of people believed Theudas’ prophecy that he would split the river Jordan and make them pass across as did Joshua in the days of yore. But Fadus’ cavalry made short shrift of these scriptural phantasies. Thus when Jewish War maintains that Fadus and Tiberius Alexander ‘by abstaining from all interference with the customs of the country kept the nation at peace’ (2:220), this must not be taken to mean that ‘under Tiberius all was quiet’.50 Rather, these procurators wisely avoided interference with matters of Jewish cult and ritual while resolutely crushing any signs of revolt. 43 Compare Acts 24:1–27 and War 2:247–266; Acts 25:13–26:32 and War 2:220, 271. The theory of Krenkel, Josephus und Lucas that Luke read Josephus is overstated, see Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition, 365f and cf discussion by Schreckenberg, ‘Flavius Josephus und die lukanischen Schriften’. Many thanks to Prof. Bart Koet for making both works available to me. 44 Ant 18:4–10, 23–25. 45 Ant 20:101–103. 46 Cf his subsequent military record, War 2:493; 4:616; 5:45. 47 War 2:433, 447. Cf the pedigree of Judas’ dynasty in Hengel, Zealots, 332. 48 The expression is also used by Hengel ibid. 346. 49 Ant 20:97–99, cf Acts 5:36, Gamaliel’s speech. See Louis Feldman’s note in the LCL edition ad loc. and Fitzmyer, Acts, 333f, 339–351 on chronological problems in the Acts version. [Also Schürer, History 1: 399–427.] 50 Tacitus’ phrase, writing also from a Roman perspective, see above n41.
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Not all Roman commanders were so disposed. War merely narrates that the next procurator, Felix (52–60 CE), having rounded up large numbers of ‘brigands’, suddenly was faced with a new type of bandits, the sicarii, whose Roman designation (cf sica, dagger) may well have originated at that occasion.51 Antiquities revealingly adds that Felix outdid his predecessor Cumanus [252] by hiring the sicarii to murder the high priest Jonathan who stood in his way. This information is prefaced by the comment, already quoted, that under Felix, ‘matters were constantly going from bad to worse’, a comment justified by the information given. The murder was left unpunished and this, Josephus suggests, gave the sicarii impunity in continuing to sow terror.52 To be sure, both War and Antiquities report that Felix was not squeamish in acting against the ‘impostors and brigands’, crucifying large numbers of them. But apparently this did not quell the rising tide of violence. According to Antiquities, the sicarii had grown particularly numerous by the time Festus succeeded Felix in 60 CE.53 Moreover both Antiquities and War inform us that ‘deceivers and impostors’ of the type of Theudas kept appealing to the multitudes, ‘leading them to the desert’ with promises of miraculous redemption, only to be mercilessly decimated by Felix’s soldiers. One of them was the Egyptian ‘false prophet’ also mentioned in Acts. Josephus in War wants us to believe that these were ‘villains with purer hands but more impious intentions’, as distinct from the sicarii, but the Roman commander in Acts associates the Egyptian with an army of 4000 sicarii.54 However we must interpret that, it is clear that in those days, with the desert as a typical ambience, messianic fervour was easily associated with military insurgence. It is a connection Josephus unsuccessfully tried to hush up in Jewish War, as we have seen in relation to the ‘fourth philosophy’. For all his efforts to dissimulate its importance behind the colourful ethnographic screen of ‘three Jewish philosophies’, he had to concede that its core message was the religiously motivated refusal, not so remote from many Pharisees and Essenes, ‘to submit to mortal masters beside God’.55 Discussion about the significance of these resistance movements has circled particularly around their possible relevance for Jesus and his followers.56 [253] Hengel, Zealots, 88. 20:160–166; War 2:254–257. Contrast War 2:256 and Ant 20:165. 53 Ant 20:186. 54 War 2:258–263 (στῖφος ἔτερον πονηρῶν); Ant 20:167–172; Acts 21:38. Stern stresses the unlikeliness of this connection, see Stern–Price, ‘Zealots and Sicarii’, 469. What counts here is the rumour itself. 55 War 2:118, cf the parallel Ant 18:4–23 on Pharisaic connections. See the more cautious assessment by Goodman, Ruling Class, 89–93 and Rome and Jerusalem, 415f. 56 In addition to Hengel, Zealots, the following works may be mentioned: Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots; Bammel–Moule, Jesus and the Politics of His Day; Horsley, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence. [See the critical discussion by D. Schwartz, ‘On Christian Study of the Zealots’.] 51
52 Ant
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Questions debated concern the degree of organization of the ‘fourth philosophy’, the sicarii, and the Zealots, and the actual links between them. For our purposes, it will suffice to draw on the careful analysis by Menahem Stern and Jonathan Price, ‘Zealots and Sicarii’.57 (1) At least since Quirinius’ census, a movement was around that fiercely resented Roman rule over Judaea and was ready to sacrifice all for a life under God’s exclusive reign. Josephus variously indicates it as ‘fourth philosophy’ and sicarii, adding that its roots were in the Galilee and neighbouring Gaulanitis (Golan). New Testament evidence such as the question of ‘paying tax to Caesar’ shows that the issue was in the air in the 20s and 30s CE.58 It surfaced in the late 40s, gained much strength under Felix during the later 50s CE, and finally poured with great energy into the revolt. (2) Another phenomenon, though less of a ‘movement’, also grew in magnitude during those years: the widely varying messianic crowds surrounding prophets like Theudas and the nameless Egyptian.59 Less political and militaryminded, their thirst for redemption nevertheless related to that of the sicarii. As such, this was not a new phenomenon either. It seems certain that John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth with their followers were mistakenly condemned as similar messianic insurgents some decades earlier.60 (3) Political, belligerent, and allied with priestly and high-priestly circles in Jerusalem was, in Stern’s analysis, the movement that Josephus says called [254] itself ‘Zealots’ since the beginning of the Revolt and made the protection of the Temple against ‘gentile pollution’ its cause. The cessation of daily sacrifices on behalf of the Emperor in 66 CE, a major diplomatic insult and a cause of war according to Josephus, was their doing, initiated by the young Temple captain Eleazar, son of the high priest Ananias.61 Yet this movement, too, seems to have 57 See also Stern, ‘Sicarii and Zealots’, 404f; Hayward, ‘Appendix B’ in Schürer, History 2. Hengel, Zealots contains most of the relevant documentation but generalizes about the link between sicarii and Zealots; see Stern’s review in JRS 52 (1962) 258f and Smith, ‘Zealots and Sicarii’. Recent research is mentioned in Gibson, Peter between Jerusalem and Antioch, 195–213. [See also the research brought together in Stern, Studies in Jewish History, 277–343. Vandenberghe, ‘Villains called sicarii’, following Mason among others, considers sicarii a rhetorical creation of Josephus and denies a connection with the Fourth Philosophy.] 58 Mark 12:13–17; Matt 22:15–22; Luke 20:20–26. Luke distinguishes Jesus from the movement, cf the mention of the census at 2:1 and the accusation made before Pilate, 23:2 (upper priests, 22:66). The high priest Joazar son of Boethus made himself unpopular by his involvement in the census of 6 CE, Ant 18:3, 26. 59 Not treated in Stern–Price, ‘Zealots and Sicarii’. See Hengel, Zealots, chapter 5. 60 Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 35–39 lists John the Baptist (Ant 18:117–119) as one of the ‘major instances of conflict in the period 64 BCE–74 CE’. Cf the warning against pseudo-Messiahs and ‑prophets in Mark 13:21f and parallels, and the αἰτία or titulus fixed on Jesus’ cross, ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν ᾽Ιουδαίων, amidst two crucified λῃσταί, Mark 15:26, 48. 61 War 2:409, cessation of sacrifice; 4:161, ‘Zealots’ (cf already 2:651). See Stern–Price, ‘Zealots and Sicarii’, 471–474, 478. For the political implications see Rives, ‘Animal Sacrifice and Political Identity’.
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had certain antecedents at least in the 20s and 30s CE, as is seen from various data in the New Testament, notably relating to what Paul calls his own ‘zealot’ past and his subsequent ‘zealot’ adversaries,62 while an upsurge during the later 50s CE appears likely from our above review of New Testament sources. Thus while they had rather different backgrounds, these various groups and trends seem to have had three things in common:63 they loathed gentile dominance over the Jewish lands and over the Temple, they remained a minority during the early first century CE, and they grew markedly in strength since the 50s. Conversely, there always remained many Jews who rejected armed resistance against the Romans, including the Baptist and Jesus with most of their followers,64 although the numbers of these ‘peace lovers’ undoubtedly diminished in the decades before the revolt.
The Politics of Circumcision Finally, we must try to understand how this development relates to the increased emphasis on circumcision that surfaced during the mid-50s, judging from Paul and Acts. One problem is that this has often been addressed as a timeless theological or religious question, in isolation from social and political aspects.65 In Judaean politics of the Second Temple period, however, [255] circumcision played a small though significant role. This is archetypically seen in Maccabaean history.66 The decree of Antiochus Epiphanes that all his subjects should become one by adopting a ‘Greek’ way of life meant that Jews had to build pagan altars and leave their infant boys uncircumcised. The priest Mattathias and his sons refused and organized an army, ‘and they went around, tore down the altars, and circumcised all the uncircumcised boys that they found within the borders of Israel by force’ (ἐν ἰσχύι, 1 Macc. 1:44–8; 2:45–6). Re-telling the story in Antiquities, Josephus quotes Mattathias as crying out after pulling down the first altar: ‘Whoever is zealous for our country’s laws and the worship of God, let him 62 ‘Simon the Zealot’, Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13. Paul ‘exceedingly zealous’ vis-à-vis tradition, Gal 1:13f; Acts 22:3; endorsing the ‘zealot’ lynching of Stephen, Acts 7:58; persecuting Christians having ‘letters from the high priest’, Acts 9:1f. ‘Zealous’, Pharisaic Christians in the later 50s, Acts 15:5; 21:20. Assault against Paul on the accusation of neglect of the law and pollution of the Temple by bringing in non-Jews, Acts 21:28; 23:12–14. 63 Cf the discussion between the authors Price and Stern, in their ‘Zealots and Sicarii’, 478. 64 John’s counsel Luke 3:14 sounds un-rebellious. For Jesus see e. g. Matt 26:52; Matt 11:12 with Luke 16:16. 65 Betz, Galatians is an unfortunate case in point, see below n72. 66 Basic is Hengel, Zealots, esp 197–200. See also Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 168– 181; idem, ‘Identity and Authority in Ancient Judaism’; idem,‘Jewish Proselytizing in the First Century’; Cohen, Beginnings, chapter 4; D. Schwartz, ‘Yannai and Pella, Josephus and Circumcision’, 351–359; idem, ‘Ends meet: Qumran and Paul on Circumcision’.
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come with me!’ (Ant 12:271, 278). Thus in the state of emergency occasioned by the foreign decree, zeal for the law went along with violence against objects of idolatry and forced circumcision. Subsequently, Antiquities reports that the three motives were made operative also in other situations. The highpriest-kings Hyrcanus (134–104 BCE) and Aristobulus (104–103) subdued the Idumeans and Itureans, ‘permitting them to remain in their country so long as they had themselves circumcised and were willing to observe the laws of the Jews’. In the case of the Idumaeans, this is confirmed by the Greek historian Ptolemy.67 Forced law observance and circumcision had become corollaries of Judaean military power. From then on, we lack sources for over a century. Following that, Josephus (Ant 20:38–48) brings a story, probably dating to the 30s and 40s CE, about king Izates of Adiabene on the Persian Gulf who wanted to convert to Judaism.68 His mother Helena, who already had adopted Judaism, worried [256] that his circumcision would have dangerous repercussions, but she was reassured by the Jewish merchant Ananias who taught that the king could worship God even without being circumcised if he was really devoted to Judaism. Then another missionary, one Eleazar from Galilee said to be ‘extremely strict’ about the ancestral laws, came along and strongly voiced the opposite view, and the king had himself circumcised at once. The upshot is that toward the mid-first century CE, different opinions existed as to whether male gentiles who wanted to worship God should be circumcised. The royal family, who were praised by the rabbis for their piety, tended to support anti-Roman politics, and remarkably, two of their members fought in the Jewish revolt of 66 CE.69 The next bit of information is from Josephus’ autobiography, when he was commander in the Galilee at the beginning of the revolt. Two non-Jewish warlords from King Agrippa’s territory wanted to join his army, but the other Jews wanted to enrol them only on condition that they be circumcised. However, Josephus successfully objected ‘that everyone should worship God in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience and not under constraint’ (Life 113). Wondering why once again the Galilee seems host to the more extreme opinion, we may now think of the origins of the sicarii from that region. Our last example is from Josephus’ account of the civil war in Jerusalem during the first stages of the revolt. Having defeated the sicarii and killed Menahem, the men of Eleazar son of Ananias – ‘Zealots’ in Stern’s analysis – turn against 67 Ant 13:257f; 13:319. Ptolemy apud Ammonius (Stern, GLAJJ 1: 356), the Idumaeans were ‘subjugated by the Jews and forced to undergo circumcision’. Schürer, History 1: 207, 217. [See the nuanced account of these episodes by Cohen, Beginnings, 110–119.] 68 See on the story Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 169–171; on its historical background, Neusner, ‘The Conversion of Adiabene to Judaism’. Following S. Mason, den Hollander, Josephus, the Emperors, and the City of Rome, 246f reads the story ‘as fully Josephan’, discrediting its historicity. But Tannaic stories about ‘King Monbaz’ and ‘his mother Helleni’ (mYom 3:10; tPea 2:18) indicate an historical background, cf Ant 20:92–96. 69 Neusner, ‘Conversion of Adiabene’, 62f, 65f, and n9.
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the Roman garrison that had been left in the Herodian castle. The Romans, unable to hold out, offer surrender but are treacherously butchered. Only their commander, Metilius, manages to save his life by pledging to ‘adopt a Jewish life, including even circumcision’.70 The evidence is not overwhelming, but it does illuminate the information in Paul and Acts we have surveyed. In the Jewish freedom movements, disgust over foreign dominance went along with the desire for idolatry to disappear from the Jewish land and for resident gentiles to become Jewish and accept circumcision. This motivation stood in remote continuity with [257] the Maccabaean campaign, with this difference that the sicarii and Zealots accepted no foreign dominance at all, while other Jews to the contrary preferred a mediocre Emperor in distant Rome to a bad Jewish ruler in near-by Jerusalem.71 The drive for absolute Jewish independence rather resembles the militant ideology of the later Hasmonean kings Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. In this approach, circumcision was an instrument in the power struggle between Jews and gentiles. As is astonishingly seen in Josephus’ examples from the revolt period, accepting circumcision was a token of submission to Jewish power. On the level of Jewish identity politics and circumcision, the discussion of the apostles in Jerusalem bears analogies to the difference of opinion of Ananias and Eleazar in Adiabene.72 Certain ‘Pharisees who had come to believe’ according to Acts – in the wording of Galatians, ‘false brothers’ propagating a ‘different gospel’ – insisted that gentile believers must get circumcised, while the apostles disagreed and kept endorsing the ‘apostolate for the uncircumcised’ next to that ‘for the circumcised’. The more radical position must have been around for some decades at least, as is seen also from Paul’s own pre-conversion record. The Antioch incident shows its rising strength as from mid-century, issuing from Jerusalem and overtaking all Jews in the local church. Then in the mid50s, Paul is up in arms because the radicalized position is gaining ground even in the churches of Galatia.73 Read in this light, Galatians with its acute protest against compulsory circumcision is a primary document of the novel ‘politics of circumcision’.73a 70 War 2:454, μέχρι περιτομῆς ἰουδαΐσειν ὑποσχόμενον, also quoted by Hengel, Zealots, 198 (note that the German ‘Herodesburg’ has been misleadingly translated as ‘Herodium’, cf 367). 71 Sanders, Judaism, 37 identifies this stance in the negotiations with Pompey, Ant 14:41, while Hengel, Zealots, 86f stresses the novelty of the fourth philosophy’s rejection of all foreign dominance. 72 Cf comments by Betz, Galatians, 83–85 and 328, albeit with an anachronistic theological slant. 73 Inspired by Hengel, Jewett, ‘The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation’ drew similar conclusions, as does, more recently, Gibson, Peter between Jerusalem and Antioch. 73a [Interestingly, though overstating his case, Mason, ‘Jews, Judaism’ stresses the aspect of ᾿Ιουδαϊσμός as a militant counter-movement, cf Windsor, Paul and the Vocation of Israel, 89–94; cf Cohen, Beginnings, 182–184, more soberly noting political overtones. Furthermore,
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Conclusion Our focus has been on the ‘long decade’ preceding the first revolt, asking what we can know about the political situation in Judaea when Paul wrote his letters to Corinth and other places. In this query we agreed with Martin Goodman and many others that Josephus’ Jewish War is a misleading source [258] of information. Our findings have not confirmed the claim that its rhetoric of a gathering storm merely copies Thucydides’ pentêkontaetia. The New Testament sources we have studied document several stages of increasing pressure on gentile Christians to accept circumcision. Read as an expression of reinvigorated ‘politics of circumcision’ reminiscent of the Hasmonean period, these data confirm the scenario of increasing Jewish-gentile tensions. However, we have also found that the Jewish War conceals the impact of this development by captivating the reader’s attention with the interesting excursion on the ‘three sects’ and by blaming the war on the outlaw Jewish extremists and the incompetent lower Roman governors. The more candid information provided in Antiquities serves to correct this representation and to provide historical relief. Our findings lead us to suggest that the ‘fourth philosophy’, an anti-Roman freedom movement closely related to the Pharisees, was more important than appears from Martin Goodman’s study on the origins of the revolt. This might also concern the movement that later calls itself ‘Zealots’. Goodman does convincingly argue that the involvement of the Judaean elite in its power struggle was a major cause and that Josephus wished to conceal this in his Jewish War.74 It appears, however, that the involvement of the elite went much further than just instrumentalizing existing popular anti-Roman sentiments,75 and that Josephus’ class actually shared those sentiments to a considerable degree.76 In sum, during the fifties CE, Judaea was not on the brink of war with Rome. There was, however, a growing exasperation over the presence of non-Jews and an increasing readiness to act violently against it, apparently even in the diaspora. One place where this was keenly felt are Paul’s churches. His autographed letter postscript is striking, if we take in its political connotation: ‘It is there is a striking similarity between Paul’s description of the Judaising missionaries as παρ εισάκτοι ψευδαδέλφοι (Gal 2:4) and Josephus’ denunciation of the ‘fourth philosophy’ as φιλοσοφία ἐπείσακτος (above n28), in both cases ostracising a radical combination of political and religious motives as being ‘alien’.] 74 Goodman, Ruling Class, 19f. 75 As argued by Goodman, Ruling Class, 93–108; 198–227. 76 This would accommodate Goodman’s restrained sympathy for the thesis of Israel BenShalom concerning the anti-gentile stance of the Pharisaic school of Shammai, see Goodman, Ruling Class, 23 n39, 95 n19, 108 n33, and Ben-Shalom, School of Shammai. Millar, Roman Near East, 351–366 soberly weighs up the strength of popular anti-Roman resistance movements against the hard to define ‘ruling class’, while underlining the overall context of ‘a sharp contrast between Greek city … and Jewish community’ in 6–66 CE Judaea.
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those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised – only that they may not be persecuted for [259] the cross of Christ’ (Gal. 6:12). The implication is that Jewish Christians were pressurized by force of arms, from Jerusalem it seems, to impose circumcision on gentile believers.77 2 Corinthians suggests that this pressure was now also felt in Corinth: ‘false apostles’ (ψευδαπόστολοι) had brought a ‘different gospel’ (εὐαγγέλιον ἕτερον) boasting Jewishness.78
77 Betz, Galatians, 314–316 oscillates between taking Gal 6:12 as theological polemics and as a reflection of actual events. But see Rom 15:30f and Acts 21–23 on armed violence in Jerusalem in those days. 78 2 Cor 11:4, 13. Cf different readings of the situation by Goodman, ‘Politics of the Fifties’, 31–35, and Safrai-Tomson, ‘Paul’s Collection’, 158–161. The use in 1 Cor 7:18 of the rare technical term μὴ ἐπισπάσθω, ‘let him not draw back’ (the prepuce, tShab 15:9, ;משוךcf 1 Macc 1:15; Josephus, Ant 12:241) must refer to this same discussion, showing that it was already alive for Paul but not yet urgent while writing 1 Corinthians. [These connections were noted by Graetz, Geschichte 4.1: 72 n2, with the interesting corollary (no doubt having read F. C. Baur) that they show it to be ‘der Rat eines milden Pauliners’ and prove ‘daß diese Epistel nicht von Paulus ist’.]
The Epistles of Paul as a Source for the Historical Pharisees How much do we actually know about the Pharisees, about their thought, their teachings, their organization? The question is crucial, for the Pharisees play a central role in our two main sources about first century CE Judaism, i. e., Josephus and the New Testament.1 In fact, we have no sources which inform us directly about these things. What we do have, is rabbinic literature, widely assumed to be a vehicle of Pharisaic tradition. This is a vast and generous source, but it is fraught with problems for the historian. From a literary point of view, it is a library of collective works which after intense development was reduced to writing only from the third century CE onwards. Indeed, we know precious little about the relation between Pharisees and rabbis, as also about the modifications Pharisaic tradition must have gone through before becoming ‘rabbinic’ literature. As a result, this literature cannot be used as an independent source for the Pharisees. What we need are non-rabbinic sources contemporaneous to the Pharisees that will allow us to assess the ‘Pharisaic content’ of rabbinic literature. It shall here be argued, apposite examples at hand, that such sources are eminently found in the epistles of the former Pharisee Paul.2 1 For the discussion about the Pharisees see Sanders, Jewish Law, 274–283; Sanders, Judaism; Hengel – Deines, ‘E. P. Sanders’ “Common Judaism“’; Deines, Die Pharisäer; Meier, ‘The Quest for the Historical Pharisee’; Schaper, ‘The Pharisees’. See also following note. Many thanks to José Costa, reader of REJ, whose remarks have allowed me to refine my method. Any remaining errors are mine. [The paper was read in French at the 2014 conference of the European Association of Jewish Studies in Paris, and published as ‘Les Épîtres de Paul: une source pour le pharisaïsme historique’, REJ 176 (2017) 1–23. It was then read in English at the joint meeting of the Hebrew, Jewish & Early Christian Studies Seminar and the New Testament Seminar in the University of Cambridge in November 2015, at the invitation of Profs. William Horbury and Judith Lieu, and is here published with substantial additions vis-à-vis the French version; the footnote numbering had to be changed. Many thanks also to Dr. Matthijs den Dulk for reading and commenting on the present version.] 2 [Paul as a historical source for the Pharisees is cautiously considered by Meier, Marginal Jew 3: 300f, concluding: ‘If Paul is to be used at all, it must be as an indirect witness.’ Moreover ibid. 301–305, Meier expresses serious doubts as to Josephus’ value in this respect. Not unlike my argument, David Aune, ‘Recent Readings of Paul’, 219 n174, while doubting Josephus’ Pharisaic credentials, writes that ‘since Paul is … the only Pharisee from the pre-70 CE period whose writings have survived, his writings cannot be ignored as evidence for the history of early Judaism.’]
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Pharisees, Rabbis – and Paul The relation between Pharisees and Rabbis has been discussed by Shaye Cohen in the essay, ‘The Significance of Yavneh’, that he re-published after 26 years in 2010.3 Surveying the information about the Pharisees in Josephus and the New Testament that has been taken to correlate to rabbinic literature, he draws the conclusion that ‘in all likelihood, there was some close connection between the post-70 rabbis and the pre-70 Pharisees’. But exactly how? Here, we are groping in the dark. One of the major problems is that the oldest layer of rabbinic literature, the one attributed to the Tannaim, practically never calls a rabbi a ‘Pharisee’.4 Obviously, the name of ‘Pharisees’ was not welcomed among the rabbis, as distinct from Josephus and the New Testament. Only from the fourth century onward do the rabbis – as do the church fathers – begin to identify the Pharisees with the predecessors of the rabbis.5 The general, provisory explanation Cohen proposes is that the rise of rabbinism after the destruction of the Temple entailed the disappearance of ‘sectarianism’ and the desuetude of the name ‘Pharisees’. There is another side to this problem, which Cohen does not mention in this context. In Antiquity, the title ‘rabbi’ for what appear to be recognized teachers appears almost exclusively in rabbinic literature,6 and only with reference to masters active after 70 CE. No explanation is given. Only from Rav Sherira Gaon, tenth century CE, do we learn that the title was introduced in the days of Yohanan ben Zakkai and Gamaliel the Younger, by the end of the first century CE.7 This very late testimony, however, is strikingly confirmed by the editor of the Gospel of Matthew who probably wrote during the period concerned, late first century. In the framework of his sustained polemic against the ‘Pharisees’, and unlike the other evangelists, he has Jesus condemn the use of ‘rabbi’ for law teachers.8 One way or the other, the introduction of the title ‘rabbi’ and the passing into disuse of the name ‘Pharisee’ are part of the process of change Judaism went through after 70 CE. We still cannot explain this process very well, 3 Cohen, ‘Significance of Yavneh’, 53–60. See also Lapin, ‘The Origins of and Development of the Rabbinic Movement’, 207f. Neusner, Rabbinic Traditions does not confront this question, see vol 1, 1–10. Bowker, Jesus and the Pharisees offers a convenient collection of sources à propos this question. 4 Cohen, ‘Significance of Yavneh’, 54 n20. 5 Ibid. 51–53, 68–70. 6 Ῥαββὶ Ἀκίβα mentioned by Epiphanius, Panarion 1.459 is a rare exception. [The roughly 60 ‘rabbis’ mentioned in inscriptions do not allow Cohen to draw any certain conclusions as to the status of the title: Cohen, ‘Epigraphical Rabbis’.] 7 Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon, ed. Lewin, 125 (Heb). 8 Matt 23:8, see above, ‘The Didache, Matthew, and Barnabas’, 517f, 529f. [Hezser, Rabbinic Movement, 55–77 perceives no conflict with the Pharisees nor a change in usage, and thinks the later rabbis were deferentially addressed as ‘rabbi’ just like Jesus and John the Baptist were in their day.]
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but in the present framework we shall concentrate on the relationshp between Pharisees and rabbis. Fine-combing Josephus and the New Testament, Cohen has traced 11 persons who are known by name and in addition are identified as ‘Pharisees’.9 In my opinion, we must add Yohanan ben Zakkai to the list, because in the Mishna he acts as representative of the Pharisees over against the Sadducees, albeit, significantly, in an ironical way.10 If we leave aside those about whom we have no real supplementary information,11 we are left with five men: Gamaliel the Elder, his son Simon, Yohanan ban Zakkai, Josephus, and Paul. Josephus gives us additional information on Simon; Acts on his father.12 For its part, rabbinic literature presents Gamaliel, Simon, and Yohanan as pre-eminent leaders among the rabbis. Apart from some formal administrative letters extant only in rabbinic literature and reputedly written by Yohanan and Simon (or the latter’s son, Gamaliel the Younger),13 we do not have first-hand writings of these three. We do, however, possess writings of the remaining two reputed Pharisees, Josephus and Paul. Josephus tells us in his autobiography that while a young aristocrat he went through the novitiate of the three Jewish ‘sects’ of his day, finally deciding to live as a Pharisee.14 The likely suspicion has been raised that this is a mere political claim serving the apologetic aims of his works.15 Now on the one hand, an analysis of the halakha incorporated in these works shows that the tradition Josephus considered the most authoritative does correspond to Tannaic halakha, which suggests his proximity to Pharisaic tradition.16 On the other hand, it has also been found that in matters crucial to Pharisees, he seems to lack real interest and expertise.17 If we combine these results, the upshot is Cohen, ‘Significance of Yavneh’, 54 n20. mYad 4:6. Cohen, ‘Significance of Yavneh’, 54 finds Yohanan is not identified as Pharisee. [By contrast, D. Schwartz, ‘On Pharisees and Sadducees in the Mishnah’, finds him among the rabbis to whom the Mishna ascribes a Pharisaic position over against the Sadducees, adding that this observation has historical value precisely because composition-critically speaking, this represents no demonstrable interest of the Mishna. On this ‘disinterest’ of the Mishna (unlike the Bavli) see Kalmin, ‘Pharisees in Rabbinic Literature’, esp x–xii.] 11 The ‘Pharisee … Nicodemus, leader of the Jews’ in John 3:1 remains a two-dimensional literary character. 12 Josephus, War 4:159; Life 190, 309; Acts 5:34. 13 Two Hebrew letters from Shimon ben Gamliel and Yohanan ben Zakkai written in Jerusalem about intercalation, as testified by R. Yoshua: MidrTann 26.23 (p176). Alternative tradition: three Aramean letters from Gamaliel the Younger: tSan 2:6; ySan 1:2 (18d); yMaasSh 5:8 (56c); bSan 11b. See Doering, Ancient Jewish Letters, 351–364. 14 Josephus, Life 9–12. 15 Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees; less negatively: Baumbach, Die Pharisäervorstellung des Josephus. 16 Tomson, ‘Les systèmes de halakha du Contre Apion et des Antiquités’ (English in this volume). Goldenberg, Halakhah in Josephus postulates utilization by Josephus of a written halakhic source. I am indebted to Prof. Goldenberg for having a copy of his thesis sent to me. 17 Nachman, The Halakha in the Writings of Josephus, esp 323–333. 9 10
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that as an adult Josephus may well have followed more or less the tradition of the Pharisees out of expediency, but he probably was no member of their movement, nor did he have intimate knowledge of their tradition. Hence we are left with Paul. Although less so than Josephus, he is fairly well documented. In addition to the ‘orderly account’ of Acts, where he is the central character, we possess a number of letters written – or at least signed – by his own hand, and there are some patristic bits of tradition about the end of his life.18 Thus ironically, Paul, until recently considered the classic opponent of Pharisaism by both Jewish and Christian exegetes, could turn out to be our bestdocumented ‘Pharisee’. It is true that Paul himself only speaks of his Pharisaic past. Similarly, Acts portrays him as saying that he ‘has lived as a Pharisee’. On the other hand, the Acts Paul calls himself, years after his conversion, ‘a Pharisee son of Pharisees’ who was ‘brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law’, and the Roman procurator Festus sees fit to ridicule the ‘great learning’ Paul displays when proving his point from ‘the prophets and Moses’ before Agrippa and Berenice.19 The author of Acts undoubtedly had his reasons for arranging the facts in this way. However, as in the case of Josephus, this does not oblige us to consider his work a mere literary phenomenon and to suppose that he created his ‘facts’ (πράγματα, Luke 1:1) ex nihilo. It is more reasonable to posit their basic truth and to suppose that Paul had had a Pharisaic education that he did not throw down the drain at his conversion to the following of Jesus.20 We will go, however, by the primary source constituted by Paul’s epistles. Our aim is not to explain Paul in light of rabbinic literature, which is an important task in itself even though burdened with methodological problems.21 The argu18 Paul dictated his letters (Rom 16:22) and sometimes signed them in his own hand: 1 Cor 16:21; Gal 6:11; 2 Thess 3:17. We ignore letters of doubtful authenticity such as 1 Timothy and Titus. [For the ‘orderly account’ of Luke-Acts, see the prologue, Luke 1:3. Paul’s martyrdom in Rome under Nero: 1 Clem 5–6; Ignatius, Rom 4; Eusebius, CH 2.25.5–8. On 1 Clem 5 see Bockmuehl, Remembered Peter, 124–130; for a helpful overview see Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 422–437.] 19 Phil 3:5 (κατὰ νόμον Φαρισαῖος); Acts 26:5 (ἔζησα Φαρισαῖος); 23:6 (Φαρισαῖος ὑιὸς Φαρισαίων); 22:3 (παρὰ τοῦς πόδας Γαμαλιήλ); 26:22–24 (οἱ προφῆται … καὶ Μωϋσῆς, … τὰ πολλὰ γράμματα). [Fitzmyer, ‘Paul’s Jewish Background’, 18f, citing these same passages, points out ‘Qumranic’ elements that differ from the classic image of the Pharisees.] 20 On Acts see further Tomson, ‘Gamaliel’s Counsel’, and ‘Luke-Acts, Josephus’ (in this volume). [The classic on this aspect is Cadbury, Making of Luke-Acts. Note, however, that Sanders, Paul, 54 sees nothing in Paul’s letters ‘that points towards his knowledge of exclusively Pharisaic views or practices’.] 21 [Cf Tomson, Paul, and the review by Fitzmyer. While conceding the importance of halakha for Paul, Fitzmyer’s criticism is that the relevance of rabbinic literature for Paul ought first to be proved, e. g., by comparison with Qumran; cf Fitzmyer, The Dead Scrolls and Christian Origins, chapter 1, esp 9–11. However, although the comparison with Qumran is important, it is not the only criterion, cf below n44.]
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ment developed here operates in the opposite direction, asking whether we find terminology, concepts, or techniques in Paul that characteristically resemble corresponding elements in rabbinic literature, to the extent that we can identify those examples as early forms of such rabbinic elements. If so, they would confirm the claim both Paul and Acts make as to his Pharisaic education, as also, by implication, provide confirmation that indeed there was, as Cohen put it, ‘a close connection between the post-70 rabbis and the pre-70 Pharisees’.
How to compare Paul and the Rabbis We must first decide what elements from Paul’s letters are best suited for comparison with rabbinic literature. Here, it seems fitting for a moment to consider the way the relationship between Paul and the rabbis has been viewed in New Testament studies. An interesting development is seen, although it has not yet produced clear results. Reading Paul in relation with Judaism would seem to bring us closer to the ‘new perspective on Paul’ that has attracted many exegetes since the 1980s. Although the agenda of this trend has largely been to explain Paul with a view on Judaism, it is also relevant for the opposite exercise here proposed, i. e., using Paul to explain the development of early Judaism. In line with the ‘new perspective’ it is agreed that the Apostle did not combat Judaism as such, and that ancient Judaism was not an antithesis of the Pauline gospel, to wit a religion of self-justification ‘by works, not faith’.22 So much for negative demarcations. Less of a consensus exists as to how positively to define what Paul did combat and what was his real attitude towards Jewish tradition.23 For this reason, a number of exegetes are said to be pushing forward ‘beyond the new perspective’.24 Indeed in my opinion we must conclude that the leading voices of the ‘new perspective’ have not entirely liberated themselves from the classic paradigm in which Judaism and Christianity are viewed as two basically different entities that sooner or later were bound to separate. Put differently: these pioneers have enormously contributed to the undoing of the old paradigm, but they have not yet succeeded in replacing it with a more adequate one. Within the limits of this study, we must content ourselves with the intuition that the old paradigm has its foundations in the rupture between both communities that developed from the second century CE onwards.25 To the extent that this is correct, it would be Dunn, ‘The New Perspective on Paul’, referring to Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism. See Tomson, ‘Introductory Essay’, in Bieringer et al., Second Corinthians, 1–10. 24 Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul, 127–163: ‘Beyond the New Perspective’. 25 See the introduction in Tomson–Schwartz, Jews and Christians … How to write Their History; [also, the essay in this volume, ‘The Gospel of John and the Parting of the Ways’]. 22
23
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anachronistic to apply the old paradigm to Paul.26 At least when dealing with the first century, we must look for another paradigm, one that is less rigid and ‘absolutist’ and tolerates more fuzzy borders and shaded varieties of identity.27 Since it is impossible always to separate ‘Jewish’ from ‘Christian’ elements in this period, we should be open to the possibility of a multi-coloured fanning-out of movements and sub-groups, even within such ‘known’ movements as Essenes, Pharisees, and Christians. In a similar paradigm, ‘Paul’s Judaism’, i. e. the variety of Judaism Paul adhered to when following Jesus, would find its natural place. Recent studies on Qumran and on its relation to Paul seem to indicate that we are making progress toward such a paradigm.28 The old paradigm was put in place mainly by nineteenth century Protestant exegetes. For these scholars, the major point of comparison was the theological or soteriological question of ‘faith and law’ or ‘works’, on which Paul and the Jews were supposed to have diametrically opposed views.29 Here, the ‘new perspective’ has intervened and established that such an equation could neither do justice to Judaism nor to Paul. It has meanwhile been pointed out that the question of ‘faith and works’ is not answered in a monolithic way either by the rabbis or by Paul.30 We must look for more adequate points of comparison. Our two main sources on the Pharisees, Josephus and the New Testament, give as main characteristic their expertise in interpreting the law, which seems to include both the exposition of the ‘law of Moses’ or Scripture and the specification of the practical commandments. Acts portrays Gamaliel the Elder as ‘a Pharisee in the council, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people’, and Josephus depicts his son Simon as ‘a native of Jerusalem, of a very illustrious family, and of the sect of the Pharisees, who have a reputation of being unrivalled experts (ἀκριβείᾳ διαφέρειν) in their country’s laws’. Similarly, Josephus notes that the Pharisees ‘are considered the most accurate interpreters (μετ’ ἀκριβείας) of the laws’ and maintains that the townsfolk prefer their exposition of the commandments and ‘all prayers and sacred rites of divine worship’ are performed accordingly.31 Albert Baumgarten has drawn attention to the quality of ἀκριβεία, ‘expertise’ in the law and to its possible relationship with the verb פרשin the meaning of ‘to specify’. The very name of φαρισαῖοι, פרישיא, פרושים, could have its origin in their quality of being ‘interpreters’.32 In addition, our two main 26 For this type of anachronism, see Fredriksen, ‘How Later Contexts Affect Pauline Content’. 27 Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul, 233–240. 28 Cf Chazon–Halpern-Amaru–Clements, New Perspectives; Rey, The Dead Sea Scrolls. I interpret in this light Fitzmyer’s important study, ‘Paul’s Jewish Background’. 29 Cf Tomson, Paul, 5–19 and the introductory essay mentioned above n23. 30 [For the rabbis see Avemarie, Tora und Leben; for Paul, Tomson, ‘Täter’ (in this volume: ‘Doers of the Law’).] 31 Acts 5:34; Josephus, Life 191; War 2:162; Ant 18:15. 32 Baumgarten, ‘The Name of the Pharisees’. See also below n76.
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sources attribute the Pharisees with moderate views on the apocalyptic themes of divine providence, resurrection, and angels, points on which the Christians agreed and which were close to popular belief.33 In sum, the Pharisees were appreciated for their expertise in the interpretation of Scripture, the exposition of the laws, and the representation or interpretation of popular beliefs. Now these three subjects largely overlap with the three disciplines that since the age of the Tannaim are thought to sum up the tradition of teaching and learning of the rabbis: midrash, halakhot and haggadot, or in the jargon of modern Jewish studies: midrash, halakha and aggada.34 The three disciplines are also attributed to our third Pharisee known as leader of the rabbis, Yohanan ben Zakkai.35 Thus the three disciplines of rabbinic education seem to be adequate points of comparison that will enable us to estimate the ‘Pharisaic content’ of rabbinic literature. Putting this insight into practical use, we shall select two samples in each of the three disciplines, especially from the oldest layer of rabbinic literature, that of the Tannaim which includes Mishna, Tosefta, and the Halakhic Midrashim.36
Midrash (1) In our first sample, two passages in Paul interpret the same verse in rather different ways, in the second case using an artful technique also known among the rabbis. The first passage, Romans 4, is about salvation for those who believe following Abraham’s example: … The promise that he would inherit the world did … come to Abraham or to his descendants (ἢ τῷ σπέρματι αὐτοῦ, cf Gen 17:7) through the righteousness of faith. … Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become the father of many nations (Gen 17:5), according to what was said, So numerous shall your descendants be (Gen 15:5). (Rom 4:13–18)
The allusion to Gen 17:7, where God promises Abraham to establish his covenant ‘between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations’, is interesting. The verse was popular and is also cited, e. g., in the Magnificat in Luke 1:55. The implication is obviously that the ‘offspring’ – literally, the generic singular ‘seed’ – will be a multitude of believers. It is important to note that the idea of salvation by faith in the following of Abraham was also known
Acts 23:8; War 2:163. mNed 4:3; tBer 2:12. See Hirshman, ‘Aggadic Midrash’, 109–115. 35 See Bacher, Terminologie, 33–37 (35, Yohanan ben Zakkai); Wald, ‘Johanan ben Zakkai’. 36 [See Goldberg, ‘The Mishna’; Kahana, ‘Halakhic Midrashim’.] 33 34
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among the rabbis and is notably attributed to Shemaya and Avtalyon, reputed precursors of the rabbis during the first century BCE.37 The other passage is in Gal 3 and here, Gen 17:7 functions in a quite different way.38 Paul had probably written it some years earlier, in a tense situation caused by certain Jewish Christians who were pressing for circumcision of the non-Jewish Christians. He writes: Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, And to your offsprings (τοῖς σπέρμασιν), as of many; but it says, And to your offspring, that is, to one person, who is Christ. … For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Gal 3:16, 26f)
The contents of this passage must be understood in line with the preceding chapter, where Paul appeals to the Apostles’ agreement (Gal 2:1–10): all are saved by believing, without having to change their status as Jew or non-Jew. They are saved ‘in Christ’, which is symbolized in baptism. Thus baptism ‘in Christ’ is put in opposition to circumcision as this is ‘preached’ to the non-Jewish believers under pressure of some, probably from Jerusalem (Gal 6:12; cf 5:11). This does not mean Paul rejects circumcision as such, to the contrary: further on, he affirms that ‘every man who lets himself be circumcised … is obliged to obey the entire law’ (5:2f). What he does reject is change of status, in this case circumcision of non-Jewish believers, and to that aim he stresses the overarching significance of baptism ‘in Christ’.39 Now as to exegetical method, the phenomenon of the same verse being interpreted in different ways is very frequent among the rabbis and can be considered typical of their approach of Scripture: there is almost always דבר אחר, ‘another interpretation’.40 The impression we get is of a ‘rabbinic’ Paul, which confirms his Pharisaic affiliation. Some contemporary confirmation is found in the Qum37 A multitude of nations: Luke 1:54f; cf Acts 7:5. Salvation by faith: MekRY vayehi beshallah 3 (p99); MekRS p58. 38 Schweitzer, Mystik, 204–210, distinguishes Gal 3 from Rom 4 and stresses the singular in Gal 3:16. Betz, Galatians, 157 thinks Paul emphasizes the singular in Gal 3:16 ‘in order to exclude the traditional Jewish interpretation’ – though the latter is also popular in the NT. Betz refers to David Daube, who deals with Gal 3 in ‘The Interpretation of a Generic Singular’. In turn, Daube cites Str-Bill 3: 553, where ‘the importance of the grammatical number for halakhic exegesis’ is mentioned without further clarification. Daube does mention mSan 4:5, but makes no comparison with Rom 4. 39 [Paul rejects change of status in his rule ‘in all the churches’, 1 Cor 7:17f, and similarly what he calls his ‘canon’, Gal 6:15f. As to Gal 5:3, the testimony formula μαρτύρομαι is equivalent to the rabbinic formula מעיד/( העיד38× in the Mishna, esp tractate Eduyot), and the contents of the rule that follows (… ὅλον τὸν νόμον ποιῆσαι) closely resembles a set of rabbinic novitiate rules cited in tDem 2:2–7. Hence Paul seems to quote a ‘Pharisaic’ rule to the effect that circumcision implies taking on the whole law in order to become Jewish.] 40 See Hirshman, ‘Aggadic Midrash’, 118–120 on polysemy as an intentional method of the rabbis, and cf Stemberger, Einleitung, 236f.
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ranic apostrophe against the ‘masters of slippery interpretations’ ()דורשי החלקות and their ‘fraudulent teaching’ ()תלמוד שקרים. The vocabulary suggests that around the turn of the eras, the Pharisees were targeted for their reputation of propounding ‘slippery’ and scholastic (talmud, ‘study’) exegesis.41 More telling is Paul’s exegetical technique in Gal 3:16, οὐ λέγει … ἀλλά…, ‘it does not say … but …’ As such, the formula relates to the ramified phenomenon of quotation formulae found variously in the Dead Sea scrolls, early Christian writings, and rabbinic literature, and which involve the verbs ‘write’ (γράφω/)כתב, and ‘say’ (λέγω/)אמר.42 In a wider sense, it relates to the discursive terminology widely used by Graeco-Roman sages and scholars, such as Plutarch’s frequent γέγραπται and τί λέγει often used by Epictetus.43 However, if we get down to specific instances of exegetical terminology, it is often difficult to decide whether we are just facing some particular tradition, a real ‘sectarian’ usage, or the outcome of development over time.44 That having been said, it is significant that many equivalents to typically rabbinic discursive terminology can be found in Paul, especially in Romans.45 Precisely such terminology is used by Paul in Gal 3:16 when advancing a very peculiar interpretation of Gen 17:7. In Romans, we have seen, he stresses the plural implied in the word ‘seed’, in line with the common idea of Abraham as a father of ‘a multitude of nations’ (Gen 17:5). Here, however, he empha41 4QpNah 2:2, 8. [In the Cambridge seminar (n1 above) and subsequent email correspondence, Richard Bauckham observed that George Brooke in his Exegesis at Qumran concluded that at Qumran as well, biblical texts could be read ‘in different ways, both being regarded as valid’. See ibid. 354f, à propos 4QFlor: ‘While exegetical principles are used throughout, they do not of necessity require that one particular verse always be interpreted in the same way.’ Esp in view of the following, however, I would maintain that there is at least a difference in degree in Paul’s Pharisaic/proto-rabbinic sophistication vis-à-vis Qumran exegesis.] 42 [General treatment of rabbinic terminology: Bacher, Terminologie vol. 1, s. v. אמרand כתב. Metzger, ‘Formulas Introducing Quotations’ carefully compares the Mishna and the NT. Fitzmyer, ‘Old Testament Quotations’ and ‘Paul’s Jewish Background’ compares Qumran and NT (see n44 below).] 43 [Readily found in a TLG search. The τί λέγει found a number of times in Barnabas is rather coarse as compared with Paul.] 44 [Fitzmyer, ‘Paul’s Jewish Background’ stresses differences of Qumran and the NT vis-àvis rabbinic literature on the sole basis of Metzger’s comparison with the Mishna (Metzger, ‘Formulas Introducing Quotations’). Ibid. 30 Fitzmyer refers to כאשר אמרin CD 7:8, 14, 16; 11:20 for an equivalent to κατὰ τὸ εἰρημένον in Rom 4:18. However the equivalent כמו שנאמר found in SifZNum 12 (p276), SifDeut 306 (p328) and dozens of times in the Aggadic Midrashim is much closer. As to particular traditions, the Tannaic midrash ‘schools’ of R. Yishmael and R. Akiva each had their proper methods and terminologies, in addition to less groupspecific terminological varieties, see Kahana, ‘Halakhic Midrashim’, 17–28. This suggests multiple varieties across the gamut from Qumran to the rabbis.] 45 [Three examples: (1) ἀλλὰ τί λέγει [ἡ γραφή], Rom 10:8; 11:4; Gal 4:30 // cf מה הוא אומר, mKid 4:14. (2) ἐν ʾHλίᾳ τὶ λέγει ἡ γραφή, Rom 11:2 // cf במשה מה הוא אומר… בדוד מהו אומר, MekRY pisha 1 (p4); ביצחק מה הוא אומר, MekRY pisha 17 (p64); cf וכן הוא אומר בדוד, mAv 3:7 (noted by Metzger,’Formulas Introducing Quotations’, 304). (3) λέγω οὖν, Rom 11:1, 11 // עדיין אני אומר, Sifra passim.]
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sizes the grammatical singular of the ‘seed’ (σπέρματι) in order to produce an interpretation that strains the meaning of the verse in its context. Now the very same technique is employed in Mishna Sanhedrin when citing the protocol of remanding the witnesses of the prosecution in a capital case. Their testimony may cause to perish not just one person, but the multitude that could have issued from his loins: Thus we find concerning Cain who had killed his brother, that it is said: The bloods of your brother cry up to me (Gen 4:10). It says not, The blood of your brother ()דם אחיך, but the bloods of your brother ()דמי אחיך – his blood and the blood of his offspring. (mSan 4:5)
The grammatical plural is stressed where one would expect a singular, in order to artfully evoke the multitude of potential descendants of the accused. The case is opposite from Galatians, but the technique is the same, as is the exegetical terminology: ‘it does not say … but …’ (οὐ λέγει … ἀλλά…, )אינו אומר… אלא. The reference is not to God but to Scripture, here as many times elsewhere.46 In its urbane agility, the technique is beyond anything we know from Qumran. Without doubt, intelligence and application were needed in order to master it. Both in Galatians in Mishna Sanhedrin, we seem to be facing a characteristic specimen of Pharisaic exegetical technique.47 (2) Our second example in the discipline of midrash is taken from a passage in 2 Corinthians that contains such strongly dualistic language that leading exegetes have hypothesized the insertion of a fragment from Qumran. But as has been argued elsewhere, this hypothesis is neither necessary nor probable, especially in view of the second part of the passage.48 Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For … what fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Beliar? … Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean, then I will welcome you (cf Isa 52:11; Ezek 20:34), and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters (cf 2 Sam 7:14), says the Lord Almighty. (2 Cor 6:14–18)
The second part brims with quotations from and allusions to the Old Testament, betraying an author steeped in Scripture. Most important is the adapted citation 46 [Bacher, Terminologie 1:5f. אינו אומר… אלאis also found in mSot 5:2, twice in the Tosefta, dozens of times in the Halakhic Midrashim, and hundreds in the Aggadic Midrashim, always stressing a grammatical or syntactical detail in order to derive a special interpretation. Another example involving a play on grammatical number is SifZNum 27:11 (p318), where a man’s right to bequeath his wife is derived from Num 27:11 – beyond the simple meaning of the text – with the help of Num 36:8, ‘And every daughter inheriting an inheritance in the tribes – it does not say, in the tribe, but, in the tribes of our father (Israel), ’אינו אומר ממטה אלא ממטות אבינו. Cf mBB 8:3–4.] 47 Suggested also by Daube, see reference above n38. 48 [See Tomson, ‘Christ, Belial, and Women’ (in this volume), with bibliography and discussion of literary questions.]
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of 2 Sam 7:14, where God says to David through Samuel: ‘I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.’ In applying the verse to the community of elect, Paul not only changes the singular into a plural, but also adds the ‘daughters’ to the ‘sons’. Again, we have a very agile adaptation of the verse, reminiscent of rabbinic techniques. Decisively, the juxtaposition of women and men in the community is rather different from what one reads in texts from Qumran that may be considered ‘sectarian’ and, as has been set forth elsewhere, rather recalls the attitude of the ancient rabbis.49 As such, the technique of citing the biblical verse while adapting it and adding small interpretive phrases is not unique to rabbinic literature, but is also known from Qumran and pseudepigraphic writings.50 Rather than the technique, in this sample it is simply the contents – the emphatic juxtaposition of women and men – that refers us to the rabbis. At the same time, we should note that Paul uses strongly dualistic and apocalyptic language.
Halakha (3) Passing now to the discipline of halakha, our first example involves the significance of intention in behaviour and in laws of behaviour. On this issue, there was a marked difference between the two Pharisaic-rabbinic ‘schools’ of Shammai and Hillel: the latter attaches clearly more importance to intention than the former. Thus where the Tora rules that grain is only susceptible to impurity issuing from the corpse of an impure animal when it has been moistened with water (Lev 11:38), the school of Shammai hold that any sprinkling of water is sufficient, whereas the school of Hillel maintain that the sprinkling must be intentional. For the Hillelites, both the intention and the act itself had their separate significance, whereas the Shammaites tended to count by the act only.51 Intention has a particular significance in the domains of sacrificial cult and of non-sacrificial slaughter. The domains are related, for in the ancient world all slaughter was so to say done in the shadow of cult. One sacrificed to a named deity and for a definite aim. According to Tannaic halakha, a Jew who pilgrimaged to the Temple to have his sacrifice slaughtered by a priest, still had to dedicate it to its correct destination: peace offering, Pesah offering, etc. Never49 [See
Tomson, ibid.] for instance the Temple Scoll, the Book of Jubilees, Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, and the Targumim. 51 mMakh 1:3, עד שיתכוין ויתן, involving the phrase from Lev 11:38, כי יותן מים. See on this topic the study by Rosen-Zvi, ‘The Mishnaic Mental Revolution’; and for a different approach Hayes, ‘Legal Realism’; idem, What’s Divine about Divine Law, 195–222. Both scholars do not pay attention to the pertinent Schools dispute. See further Levinson, ‘From Narrative Practice to Cultural Poetics’, involving comparisons with Greek anthropology. [For a historical perspective of συνείδησις (1 Cor 8–10) in parallel to מחשבהsee Tomson, Paul, 208–216.] 50 See
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theless, the Mishna rules, with R. Yose, that even when the Jew in question did not have the correct destination in mind, the sacrifice will be kosher, ‘because only the intention ( )מחשבהof the slaughterer is what counts’.52 For this reason a Jewish slaughterer could slaughter also for a non-Jew, and sacrifices on behalf of the Roman Emperor were brought in the Temple in Jerusalem.53 However, all sages did not agree. The Mishna cites the main Shammaite spokesman, R. Eliezer, as condemning slaughter for a non-Jew, because ‘the unspecified intention of a non-Jew ( )סתם מחשבת נוכריis toward idolatry.’ R. Yose disagrees because, pursuing his earlier argument that now turns out to be the Hillelite stance, ‘only the slaughterer counts’.54 The intention of Jewish slaughterers and priests is presumed to be kosher, and that is what counts, whatever the Emperor or the Jewish pilgrim would have in mind. An analogous reasoning appears to lie at the base of Paul’s instruction to his non-Jewish correspondents in Corinth about the question of non-Jewish foodstuffs that could have been consecrated to the gods.55 The case is different: although it also involves slaughter and meat, the focus is on the eating and the concomitant intention. The difficulty of the passage is caused in part by the understanding by exegetes of the key term συνείδησις as ‘moral conscience’, a usual meaning elsewhere which does not apply here. What is involved is ‘conscience’ in the sense of intention vis-à-vis the cult of the gods, a matter whose seriousness for ancient Jews and Christians is very hard to imagine for moderns.56 52 mZev 4:6; tZev 5:13; cf mZev chapter 1. The technical phrase is to sacrifice לשם, ‘to the name’ of the appropriate destination. In this connection, Eyal Regev emphasizes the innovation of the rabbis as compared with the Temple Scroll, see Regev, ‘Flourishing before the Crisis’, 56. 53 Josephus, War 2:197; Ag Ap 2:77, twice daily. At the outbreak of the Great Revolt, Zealot priests terminated the practice, War 2:409. The phenomenon is recognized in rabbinic halakha: mZev 4:5 (cf tZev 5:6), ]קדשי גוי[ם, ‘sanctified objects (prepared on behalf) of non-Jews’. [See explanation by Schwartz, ‘On Sacrifice by Gentiles’.] 54 mHul 2:7, הכל הולך אחר השוחט. This mishna reinforces the evidence indicating that the Shammaites were closer to the 66 CE Zealots, see Goldberg, Shabbat, 15–22. For the Shammaite affiliation of R. Eliezer see tShek 3:16; tAr 4:5; cf tZev 2:17. [Sacrifices on behalf of gentiles seem to be outright rejected in 4QMMT (4Q394 fr 3–7 1:11f) as read by Knohl, ‘New Light on the Copper Scroll’, 236–242, thus taking a position similar to that of R. Eliezer, while the adressee priests followed the Hillelite opinion.] 55 On this complicated subject see subject Tomson, Paul, chapter 4 and 5; for the gentileChristian addressees of 1 Cor, ibid. 58–62. Löhr, ‘Speisenfrage und Tora’ disagrees and thinks that Paul rather refers to pagan custom. Similarly Koch, ‘Seid unanstössig für Juden und für Griechen’, 44f rejects offhand the possibility of halakhic reasoning in Paul. 56 [For συνείδησις in the moral sense cf Rom 2:15; 13:5; 2 Cor 1:12; 5:11. See BDAG s. v. and Tomson, Paul, 208–216. On the significance of cult in Antiquity see Rives, ‘Animal Sacrifice and Political Identity’; idem, Religion in the Roman Empire, 129f, 193–200. Cf also Peter Brown’s enlightening comparison (‘Concluding Remarks’, 601f) of the end of paganism with the ‘the end of smoking in public spaces in Europe and America’, a ‘sudden lacuna’ whose impact is almost incomprehensible in hindsight.]
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Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question because of conscience (διὰ τὴν συνείδησιν), for, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” (Ps 24:1). … If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience (διὰ τὴν συνείδησιν). But if someone says to you, This has been offered in sacrifice (ἱερόθυτον), then do not eat it, because of the one who informed you and because of his conscience (δἰ ἐκεῖνον … καὶ τὴν συνείδησιν) – I mean the other’s conscience, not your own. (1 Cοr 10:25–29)
Paul stipulates that if no explicit ‘conscience’ or intention towards the gods on the part of the ‘unbelievers’ is expressed, there is nothing to worry about; we note in passing that he does not use the name ‘Christian’ but speaks of ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers’. What counts is the intention of the one who is about to eat as a believer in the Creator and is presumably known as such. As a non-Jew, Jewish dietary laws do not apply for him,57 and his ‘believing’ intention does not change by the fortuitous state of mind of the butcher. Indeed, as Paul has taught his Corinthian church members, ‘We know that no idol in the world really exists, and that there is no God but one’ (1 Cor 8:4). Only in case an ‘unbeliever’ is explicit that the food or drink on the table is consecrated to the gods, one has to abstain because of his presence and of his idolatrous ‘conscience’.58 It is important to point out that less sophisticated attitudes existed in early Christianity. Both the Revelation of John and the book of Acts itself evince a simple and straightforward prohibition of food offered to idols for all Christians, and so was the attitude of the ancient Eastern Church. In comparison, Paul’s instruction to the Corinthians displays an enlightened rationality similar to the mentality later ascribed to the school of Hillel.59 (4) The second example in halakha concerns law about divorce, or more precisely, about the termination of marriage.60 In several passages, Paul stipulates that the marriage bond persists as long as both partners live. Only death terminates marriage; there is in fact no divorce. To the married I give this command – not I but the Lord – that the wife should not separate from her husband, but if she does separate, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband, and that the husband should not divorce his wife. (1 Cor 7:10f) 57 It must be noted that in Acts the apostles prohibit not just immorality but ‘sacrificial meat, blood and what is strangled’ (εἰδωλόθυτον καὶ αἵμα καὶ πνικτὸν καὶ πορνείαν, Acts 21:25, cf 15:20, 29) for gentile Christians and Paul is said to support this. On this point, the relation between Paul’s letters and Acts is strained. 58 [In 1 Cor 8:7–12 such persons and their ‘conscience’ are called ‘infirm’ (ἀσθενής, ἀσθενούσα).] A corresponding rabbinic idea is to avoid לחזק ידי עובדי כוכבים, ‘supporting the hands of idolaters’, cf mShev 4:3; mAZ 4:7. 59 [To the extent that this conclusion is correct, the ‘mental revolution’ described by RosenZvi (above n51) had a Pharisaic origin, as indeed one would suspect in view of the Schools disputes on the matter. On other early Christian attitudes than Paul’s see Rev 2:14, 20, 24; Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25; Did 6:3; and Tomson, Paul, 177–185.] 60 [For bibliography and discussion see Tomson, ‘Divorce Halakhah’ (in this volume).]
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A wife is bound as long as her husband lives. But if the husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, only in the Lord. But in my judgment she is more blessed if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God. (1 Cor 7:39f)
According to the first passage, the woman could take the initiative and separate from the husband. This is in line with Hellenistic law, which apparently was observed among gentile Christians in Corinth.61 Correcting himself, Paul hastens to say it is not he but the Lord who forbids them to do this. This is an obvious reference to Jesus’ opinion as reported in the synoptic Gospels62, and which comes close to that of the Qumran texts.63 In the second passage, Paul begins by citing what sounds like a rule observed in the primitive church: after the husband’s death, the woman can remarry, but only with a believer, and she had better stay alone. It is known that the status of ‘widow’ was highly esteemed in early Christianity, as it was in certain Jewish milieus.64 It is also interesting to note that elsewhere Paul uses this rule in a rather theological argument as an example of the ‘law’ that Christians are supposed to know well (Rom 7:2–4).65 But the agility with which he deploys this non-halakhic application reminds us of the flexible reasoning of the rabbis rather than of the rigid formulas of Qumran. This is confirmed by Tannaic literature. According to the classic discussion in the Mishna, the school of Shammai accepted divorce, but only in case of immorality, whereas the school of Hillel accepted it on any pretext because it gave the husband unlimited rights to divorce: The school of Shammai say: He cannot divorce his wife except in case he has found in her an shameful thing, as it is said, If he find in her a shameful thing (Deut 24:1). The school of Hillel say, (he can) even if she has spoiled his dish, as it is said, If he find in her a thing. (mGit 9:10)66
In short, as to divorce, the Apostle disagrees with the teaching reported of both the Hillelite and Shammaite rabbis and sticks to the more restrictive rule of his master – who himself opposed the Pharisees. As it happens, the disagreement with the Pharisees that Paul inherited from Jesus testifies, against the background Figuring also in Mark 10:12, as opposed to Luke and Matthew. 16:18; Mark 10:2–12; Matt 19:3–9. Matthew modifies Jesus’ absolute rejection in a prohibition concerning cases other than immorality (πορνεία), i. e., conform to the opinion of the school of Shammai. 63 Tomson, ‘Divorce Halakha’, 308f (84f in this volume). Similarly Puech, ‘Les œuvres de la loi’. Puech’s supposition that Paul would have called the divorce prohibition one of the ‘works of law’ is unlikely. Rather, Paul used the term polemically against radicalized Jewish Christians who pressed for Judaizing and circumcision of gentile Christians. 64 E. g. Jdt 8:4; Luke 2:36f; 1 Tim 5:3–16. 65 Thus the argument of Tomson, ‘What did Paul mean by “Those Who Know the Law”’ (in this volume). 66 Cf SifDeut 269 (p288); MidrGad Deut 23:15 (p523); 24:1 (p436f); bGit 90a. 61
62 Luke
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of rabbinic literature, to the continuity between the teaching of the Pharisees and the rabbis on this particular point.
Aggada (5) If it is correct to take the discipline of ‘aggada’ as referring in the first place to theological and mystical subjects, Paul’s teaching on the rock-source travelling in the desert serves as an excellent example. I do not want you to be unaware … that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. (1 Cor 10:1–4)
The Jewish background of this ‘Pauline aggada’ has been known long since.67 Attention must notably be given to two parallels in the Damascus Document and the Tosefta.68 And he raised from Aaron men of knowledge and from Israel wise men, and made them listen. And they dug the well, A well which the princes dug, which the nobles of the people delved with the staff (Num 21:18). The well is the law. And those who dug it are the converts of Israel, who left the land of Judah and lived in the land of Damascus … And the staff ( )מחוקקis the interpreter of the law (( … )דורש התורהCD 6:2–7) This well that accompanied Israel in the desert resembled a rock large as a big amphora, bubbling and flowing like a bottle, climbing with them up the mountain and going down to the valley … The princes of Israel came and encircled it with their batons, singing to her: Spring up, o well! Sing to it! Spring up, o well! Sing to it! (Num 21:17), and the water sprang up bubbling, and they all drew from it by means of their batons … as it is said: The well that the leaders sank, that the nobles dug … (tSuk 3:11)
The Tosefta passage is part of a long homily on the occasion of the ceremony of ‘water libation’ at the end of the feast of Sukkot, at the time when the Temple stood.69 During this popular festival, the accent was on the miraculous gift of water to the thirsty people, and the myth of the travelling rock-source only added to the joy. The Damascus Document does not mention the travelling source, but it does interpret the water allegorically as Tora. This interpretation is also known by the rabbis who attribute it to the legendary דורשי רשומות, ‘expositors of difficult verses’, and by Philo.70 It could be a very ancient tradition,
Schweitzer, Mystik, 252f; Meeks, ‘And Rose up to Play’. Enns, ‘The “Moveable Well” in 1 Cor 10:4’, 24 adds LAB (Ps-Philo) 10:7 and 11:15 (and 20:8). 69 tSuk 3:3; cf mSuk 4:9. 70 MekRY beshallah 1 (p156); Philo, Somn 2:271 (ἐπιστήμη); Ebr 113 (σοφία). 67 68
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given that a symbolic subtext is already heard below the biblical narrative of water and manna.71 Paul’s version can be seen as an intermediate stage in the development the tradition has gone through since its proto-Pharisaic beginnings. It recalls the ‘spiritual rock’ (πνευματικὴ πέτρα) in parallel to the spiritual ‘food’ and ‘drink’. The liberty of this extended allegorical reading makes us think once again of the Pharisaic-rabbinic approach. The Christological accent at the end appears as a light touch-up. (6) Our last example involves an apocalyptic aggada from 1 Cor 15, a chapter entirely consecrated to the resurrection. As Acts 23:8 informs us, this was a typically Pharisaic motif. Towards the end of the chapter, Paul writes: Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet … For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable … Then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: Death has been swallowed up in victory (cf Isa 25:8). Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? (cf Hos 13:14). The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. (1 Cor 15:51–56)
The passage begins with what specialist call a ‘disclosure formula’ announcing a ‘mystery’.72 The latter noun is a technical term that indicates we are in the apocalyptic genre, which is confirmed by the mention of the ‘twinkling of an eye’ and the ‘last trumpet’, typical vocabulary of the Jewish apocalyptic genre, including that of the rabbis.73 What interests us are the two compact phrases that follow. As indicated in our quotation, Paul uses parts from two verses, but it is unclear quite how he links them up and how the conclusion follows. Several authors have observed that his approach resembles that of the midrash and targum of the rabbis.74 As the rabbis do, Paul exploits the opacity of the verses concerned and the various readings it allows. Also, he combines several verses containing the same word, making them appear one single quotation. The sequence of the two parts in the Hebrew would be: אהי קטבך שאול,– אהי דבריך מות בלע המות לנצח. The NRSV translates this as, ‘He will swallow up death forever – O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction?’ Judging by the preserved ancient translations, these words have been understood in very different ways. As do several ancient translations, Paul takes בלעas a passive, ‘death has been swallowed up.’ Again along with ancient versions including Targum Yonatan, he 71 Cf the phrases ויורהו ה' עץ… שם שם לו חק ומשפט, Exod 15:24; הילך,דבר יום ביומו למען אנסנו בתורתי אם לא, Exod 16:4. 72 Cf Rom 11:25; 1 Thess 4:13. On μυστήριον see Fitzmyer, ‘Paul’s Jewish Background’, 27f. [More elaboration of these materials in Tomson, ‘Death, where is Thy Victory’.] 73 ‘In the twinkle of the eye’, ἐν ῥιπῇ ὀφθαλμοῦ: Test Abr 4:5 (the trumpet is not far away, see 12:10). It is equivalent to הרף עין, MekRY bo/pisha 14 (p52), a discussion between R. Yoshua and R. Eliezer (including the trumpet!). For the ‘final trumpet’, ἐσχάτη σάλπιγξ, cf also שופר גדול, Isa 27:13, see Matt 24:31, and frequent. 74 Gertner, ‘Midrashim in the New Testament’; Morissette, ‘Un midrache sur la Mort’.
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seems to have read דבריךas ‘your words’, as was possible in ancient non-vocalised Hebrew: not devorekha but devarekha. This allows us to decypher the brief comment that surprisingly associates the ‘sting of death’ with sin and the law. It seems Paul identified ‘your words’ with the law, a concept he associated in turn with a string of concepts including sin and death (cf Rom 6–7). In sum, the ‘mystery’ Paul announces causes him to make the complex quotation, which then triggers the condensed comment. All of this is hard to explain from the context and rather seems to issue from a mind trained in an extremely dynamic and flexible biblical interpretation. Once again, we are reminded of rabbinic expertise and training. The theme of resurrection clinches the argument in favour of the identification with Pharisaic thought.
Conclusion: Pharisees and Rabbis – Continuity and Transformation Let us now gather up the results of our samples. First of all, we must pay attention to an aspect that has remained implicit in the preceding. At every turn, Paul shows himself an adept of Jesus and his teaching. Our explorations of Paul’s Jewish erudition are not meant to obfuscate that fact, but rather to find out its proper place in the overall perspective we are pursuing. In short: loyalty to Jesus belonged to ‘Paul’s Judaism’ and did not on principle clash with his Pharisaic education. Thus when Gal 2 is adamant that for non-Jewish believers converting to Judaism is unnecessary because their faith in Christ is sufficient for salvation, this certainly does not reflect a Pharisaic interest. But the exegetical method Paul uses to prove his point closely resembles a Pharisaic-rabbinic ploy: stressing the grammatical number in the biblical text in order to stretch it beyond its literal sense. Also, the fact that elsewhere he takes the ‘seed’ of Abraham, along with the text, as indicating the ‘multitude’ of his offspring, does not prevent him here from explaining it in a quite different way – just like the rabbis. The example from 2 Cor 6 shows us a Paul who, like the rabbis, declares women to be full members of the assembly of believers – in this case, the community of Jesus – using a creative interpretation of the biblical verses. We have also noted that the passage is marked by strongly apocalyptic and dualistic language. As to halakha, 1 Cor 10 develops an enlightened argument about a gentile believer consuming foods possibly consecrated to the gods in the presence of non-believers. It reminds us of the approach of the school of Hillel vis-à-vis sacrificial or secular slaughter for a non-Jew. As in the Mishna, what counts halakhically is not the intention of the non-believer or the non-Jew, but of the one who actually sacrifices or eats. In contrast, the second halakhic example, 1 Cor 7, displays a markedly nonPharisaic position on divorce. While the school of Hillel allows divorce on any
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ground and the one of Shammai only in case of immorality, Paul does not allow it at all, on the authority of Jesus – who opposed the Pharisees. In matters of aggada, Paul is able to adopt wholesale the rather wide-spread tradition of the travelling rock-source, only slightly adapting it to the situation of the church of Jesus. The motif itself is not typical of Pharisees or rabbis, but the smoothness of its adaptation reminds us of the exegetical flexibility of the rabbis. Finally, Paul’s ‘revelation’ about the resurrection of the dead in 1 Cor 15 consists of a closely-knit concatenation of targumic expositions that once again betrays great exegetical versatility. Summing up, the midrashic technique, the halakhic reasoning, and the aggadic creativity Paul displays in these examples betray an expertise that is quite similar to that of the later rabbis and recalls the ἀκριβεία Josephus ascribes to the Pharisees. For one thing, this strikingly confirms Luke’s portrait of Paul as ‘a Pharisee son of Pharisees’ educated ‘at the feet of Gamaliel’. Indeed, Paul had become a ‘believing Pharisee’, although for him, unlike the men thus indicated in Acts 15:5 (φαρισαίοι πεπιστευκότες), this definitely had come to imply openness towards non-Jewish believers. On this score, once again, his attitude resembles that of the school of Hillel.75 On the issue of divorce, however, he differed distinctly both from the more liberal Hillelite and the more restrictive Shammaite halakha. Precisely so, this disagreement prolongs Jesus’ controversy with the Pharisees. Thus both in this contrasting example and in the examples evincing affinity with rabbinic teaching, Paul’s letters, rather more than the writings of Josephus, document continuity between the teaching of the Pharisees and rabbinic tradition. Our study is based on select examples, so the conclusions can be only provisory. Thus cautioned we gain the clear impression that Paul was well-trained as an expert in what we recognize as the disciplines of midrash, halakha, and aggada. This allows us to cautiously extrapolate and conclude that a Pharisaic system of education must have been up and running during the early first century CE. Also, it suggests the plausibility of Baumgarten’s theory that the very name of ‘Pharisees’ renders their quality of ‘interpreters’.76 More generally, the evidence of a Pharisaic educational system in the first century provided by Paul’s letters reminds us of the well-developed system of education documented in classic rabbinic literature and described in the handbooks.77 Recent study of the rabbinic ‘movement’ or ‘class’ has been critical of more traditional scholarly views as to its authority and the power of its patriarch, and has instead emphasized its informality and fuzziness as a movement.78 However, 75 Cf tSan 13:2f, where R. Yoshua appears as a representative of this school, as more often. [For the Hillelite connection, see Tomson, ‘Gamaliel’s Counsel’ (in this volume).] 76 A. Baumgarten, above n31. 77 Cf Stemberger, Einleitung, 18–24, ‘Das rabbinische Schulwesen’; Schürer, History 2: 322–336. 78 [See esp Hezser, Rabbinic Movement, criticizing (1–7, 14–16) the work of Heinrich
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both ‘critical’ and ‘traditional’ scholars agree that it considered Tora learning and legal exposition to be of central importance.79 This can notably be seen expressed in the Mishna, the prime rabbinic document whose redactional history (pre-200 CE) reflects the movement’s incipient wish for a coherent reference text, while its reception history (post-200 CE) shows how it gradually came to fulfil precisely that function.80 The Mishnaic tractate Avot may be seen as both reflecting this development and incorporating its ‘ideology’.81 We know very little of the organization of the Pharisees, but the overall impression is not at all one of a centralistic movement. Thus it may seem that both the emphasis on learning and a degree of organizational informality are features shared in common by the early rabbis and by the Pharisees as documented by Paul. It follows that the Pharisaic movement must have had a corresponding recruitment system. At least we are made to understand that the ‘young man named Saul’ who assisted at the stoning of Stephen was enrolled in a Pharisaic ‘academy’ in Jerusalem, apparently the one directed by Gamaliel the Elder during the first quarter of the first century (Acts 7:58; 22:3). Moreover it is likely that Pharisaic education was given both in Greek and in Hebrew or Aramaic. Once again, Paul’s letters suggest as much, evincing not only discursive terminology but also technical phrases in Greek that are perfectly equivalent to rabbinic Hebrew expressions.82 This seems the more convincing in view of recent re-affirmations of the affinities between the hermeneutics of the rabbis and of Hellenistic exegetes.83 The aspect of education and learning exposed by our study of Paul has not been a focus of attention in recent research into the Pharisees. Discussion has mostly been around their political and religious position and their influence on the populace.84 Some further data add relief to our discovery. We have noted the reproach of ‘fraudulent teaching’ and ‘slippery interpretations’ that Graetz, Gedalyahu Alon, and Shmuel Safrai in line with the sceptical approach of Schäfer, ‘Research into Rabbinic Literature’. Cf the more sober approaches of Levine, Rabbinic Class and Lapin, Rabbis as Romans.] 79 [Hezser, Rabbinic Movement, 93–137. See esp Safrai, ‘Education and Study of the Torah’; idem, ‘Oral Tora’.] 80 [Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, chapter 2. Unfortunately, Hezser’s critical questions in her review, TLZ 138 (2013) 428–430, do not reach the depth of Lapin’s literary and historical analysis.] 81 [Cf the description by Lerner, ‘The Tractate Avot’. Hezser, Rabbinic Movement, 134f notes the idealization of the ‘sage’ in Avot.] 82 In addition to συνείδησις ()מחשבה, see the following examples: τὸ ποτήριον τῆς εὐλογίας, cf ( כוס של ברכה1 Cor 10:16); ὁ ἀναπληρῶν τὸν τόπον τοῦ ἰδιώτου, cf ( שליח צבור1 Cor 14:16; see Tomson, Paul, 142–144); όλον τον νόμον, cf ( כל התורה כולהGal 5:3; cf tDem 2 and Jas 2:10). 83 See the studies collected in Niehoff, Homer and the Bible, and cf Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship (à propos Philo). 84 Cf Deines and Sanders, above n1. See, however, Regev, The Sadducees and Their Halakhah, 380–383, ‘The innovation of the Pharisees: Tora study as an institution among the common people’.
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the Qumranites seem to have made to the Pharisees.85 This suggests that in their eyes, talmud, study or teaching, was typical of the Pharisees. Furthermore, both Josephus and rabbinic literature preserve the recollection that many of the high priests, who seem to be largely associated with the Sadducees, were ‘illiterate’ and needed to be instructed by Pharisees as to the detail of Temple ritual and that in this respect, the people were on the side of the Pharisees.86 In short, education and erudition were the ‘trade mark’ of the Pharisees, witness Paul. We can now see how this quality could smoothly pass on to the rabbis. We must nevertheless underline that the continuity between Pharisees and rabbis was not at all linear and steady. On the contrary, we must insist on the transformation Pharisac tradition has undergone in becoming ‘rabbinism’. Both David Flusser and Joseph Fitzmyer have pointed out Pauline terminology and concepts of which equivalents are found in Qumran but are lacking in rabbinic literature, including ‘deeds of the law’, predestination, and certain quotation formulae of Scripture.87 Among possible explanations, we should consider the possibility that some of these elements were supported by a type of Pharisees that is not represented in rabbinic literature. An area most likely affected by historical change is apocalypticism. We have seen that in 2 Cor 6:14–18, Paul sees the position of women the way the rabbis do, while at the same time he uses extremely dualistic, apocalyptic language, nor is this an exceptional case.88 A similar combination is not found in rabbinic literature. There are stories of controversies on apocalyptic matters between the Tannaim, but they are more like a separate subject and much less frequent than in Paul. This suggests a change on the part of Pharisees-rabbis, and we are led to think of the near-disappearance of Jewish apocalypses during the second century CE.89 Another decisive change concerns the disappearance after 70 CE of the Jewish ‘sects’ of which Josephus still writes, a phenomenon which we saw Shaye Cohen has brought to our attention. We have added the eclipse of the name ‘Pharisees’ and the appearance of ‘rabbis’ in rabbinic literature, adding that we still do not fully understand these simultaneous changes. Others can be mentioned. It has been established that the halakha presented in the Mishna develops the tradition of the school of Hillel, while that of Shammai has become a minority position. This change-over is not easy to explain either, but in any case it reflects a tendency towards coherence.90 85 See
above at n40. See sources assembled in my review (JSJ 1991) of Sanders, Jewish Law, esp p281. And cf the expression כהן גדול עם הארץ, ‘an illiterate high priest’, mHor 3:8; tHor 2:10. 87 [Flusser, ‘The Dead Sea Sect and Pre-Pauline Christianity’; Fitzmyer, ‘Paul’s Jewish Background’; idem, ‘The Use of Explicit Old Testament Quotations’.] 88 [See Tomson, ‘Christ, Belial, and Women’ in this volume.] 89 [E. g. mSan 10:1, 3, 6; tSan 13:1–12.] 90 Goldberg, ‘The Mishna’, 213; Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 194–200. 86
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In a parallel development, Jewish and Christian sources inform us that during the same period, early second century CE, Christians were ‘put out of the community’ by the rabbis.91 This was a new phenomenon, as we may learn once again from Paul. When enumerating the punitive measures he has suffered from the authorities, including Jewish ones – ‘five times the forty lashes minus one, three times beaten with rods, once stoned’ – he omits excommunication.92 Apparently, it did not exist yet. Paul lived in another world.
91 Literally ἀποσυναγώγοι, John 9:22 (by the Jews); 12:42 (by the Pharisees); 16:2 (by ‘them’, spoken by Jesus); tHul 2:19–24. See Tomson, ‘Didache, Matthew’ (in this volume); Schwartz – Tomson, ‘When Rabbi Eliezer was Arrested’. [On the meaning of ἀποσυναγώγοι cf Cohen, ‘Were Pharisees and Rabbis the Leaders’, 275f. There is a tension here with the position Cohen takes in ‘The Significance of Yavneh’, 67 (‘little evidence for … anti-Christian activity’).] 92 2 Cor 11:16–26; cf mMak 3:10 with Deut 25:2f. While at Deut 25:3 LXX interprets like R. Yehuda, Paul’s interpretation resembles the anonymous opinion in the Mishna – Paul, the ex-Pharisee! [See below, 645f.]
Gamaliel’s Counsel and the Apologetic Strategy of Luke-Acts In a reader-theoretical study, W. J. Lyons recently concluded that Gamaliel’s counsel carries a teasing ‘irony of indeterminacy’.1 Thus when the illustrious Pharisee declares to the Sanhedrin that ‘if this initiative or this action2 is from humans, it will be dissolved, but if it is from God, you cannot dissolve it without rebelling against God’ (Acts 5:38f) – is this an ironically positive statement from the mouth of a Pharisee,3 or is it the opposite: an ironical confirmation of the Pharisaic rejection of the gospel? It all depends on one’s reading of Acts and Luke, and that is where exegetes hopelessly differ, reader-response analysts included. Lyons quotes David B. Gowler who views the Pharisees’ role in Acts as much more favourable than in Luke and consequently explains Gamaliel’s words as a positive statement used by the author to underpin the cause of the gospel. By contrast, John A. Darr considers the image of the Pharisees in Acts to be as bad as in the gospel and hence reads Gamaliel’s counsel as a verdict on the Pharisee’s own head.4 However when viewed in its proper contexts, there is more to be made of Gamaliel’s clause than ironical indeterminacy.5 Whatever else [586] one can say about Luke-Acts, its author explicitly announces his as a book about πράγματα, 1 Lyons, ‘Words of Gamaliel’. [The paper, read at the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense 1998, is reprinted here as published in BETL 90, ed J. Verheyden, with minor changes and some additions in footnotes. See also above p548 and note 73.] 2 βουλὴ ἠ ἔργον, see below nn42 and 76. 3 If not an ironically crypto-Christian stance! See Lyons, ‘Words of Gamaliel’, 39–43 for the ‘Christian career’ of Gamaliel. 4 Gowler, Host, Guest; Darr, Character Building. Both studies show that modern literary theory does not necessarily help avoiding the traditional pitfalls of confounding the various Jewish movements and leaders into one unknown hostile entity (cf Darr ibid. 118 on Gamaliel and Sanhedrin) and of reading Jesus’ critique of specific rules as a ‘blanket condemnation’ of the Pharisees (Gowler on Luke 11). See also nn5 and 24. 5 Lyons makes a justified rejection of ‘objectivity’ in exegesis into an unwarranted denial of any foundation to the reclaiming of the ‘real Paul’ by K. Stendahl and others, which consists in taking his relation to Judaism into account instead of viewing him exclusively within a gentileChristian framework, as did traditional Lutheran and Patristic exegesis. There is a risk here of relapsing into a sceptical permutation of ‘meanings’ in neglect of the Wirkungsgeschichte. The ‘real’ Paul will of course never be known, but some interpretations are more adequate to his cultural surroundings than others. For a more basic thing that tends to be overlooked here is the importance of evidence, especially evidence hitherto unknown or insufficiently studied such as
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‘things that happened’ (Luke 1:1).6 Hence he invites us to read the Gamaliel episode not only with an eye on its place in the account of Luke-Acts, but also on the socio-political situation the author could have been facing and on elements of contemporary thought he might have had in mind. I submit that if the author used the episode as a major support for his positive image of the Pharisees, he was doing so in the awareness of their position in the political constellation of his day, and that he drew on a tradition insiders would readily recognize as stemming from Gamaliel’s own spiritual heritage.
‘Apologetic Historiography’ and Pharisaism in Josephus and Luke-Acts Let us begin with the socio-political context. Some years ago, Gregory Sterling convincingly demonstrated the existence in the Hellenistic world of a widespread literary genre which he termed ‘apologetic historiography’.7 Ever since the days of Manetho’s Aegyptiaca and Berossus’ Babyloniaca (third cent. BCE), leading non-Greek intellectuals strove to explain the history, culture and religion of their ethnos in terms understandable to all Greek-speakers.8 The importance of this approach is that it explains both the use of historiography, a genre which became typical of the Hellenistic age,9 and its application to the outspoken interests of specific groups and peoples. Sterling focussed on two late first century examples which stand out among the extant sources and both are of prime importance to us: Josephus and Luke-Acts. [587] While the striking similarities of Josephus and Luke-Acts have been studied for more than a century,10 many of such common features can be understood from the apologetic character and situation they share. Both authors are writing within the ambit of late first century Rome, both in Hellenistic fashion preface their works with dedications to dignitaries who hopefully will advance their cause, and both are anxious to demonstrate the antiquity and nobility of their communities on the basis of the most venerable Law of Moses. Within this comthe Qumran writings or rabbinic literature. On the relative use of rhetorical analysis for historiography see Momigliano, ‘The Rhetoric of History’, and ‘Classical Studies and Biblical Studies’. 6 Similarly Mason, ‘Chief Priests, Sadducees’, 151, 158, pointing to the development the Lukan author intends to describe. 7 Sterling, Historiography. 8 Typically expressed by Josephus, Ant 1:5, ἅπασιν τοῖς ῞Ελλησιν … ἐκ τῶν ῾Εβραϊκῶν … γραμμάτων; 20:262, εἰς ῞Ελληνας. 9 But note the primordial affinities between Jewish and Greek historiography as from the Persian age noted by Momigliano, ‘Eastern Elements’. Moreover the ‘fathers of historiography’, Herodotus and Thucydides, well preceded the Hellenistic age proper, just as our two prime examples, Josephus and Luke-Acts, came a century late. 10 Cf Sterling, Historiography, 365–369, our passage being the major case in point (see below n65).
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mon framework, they pursue the aims of their own, but even here analogy does not stop. Where Josephus defends the Jewish people as the bearer of an ancient and respectable tradition, the Lukan author offers an apology of Christianity as a legitimate outgrowth of that very same tradition.11 In this constellation it must be more than coincidental that both authors also give prominence to a movement they portray as being the most dependable and popular representatives of Judaism: the Pharisees. We shall be very interested in their distinct reasons. If it is laudable by Christian standards, for historians it is unfortunate that the auctor ad Theophilum seems to have been less anxious about his personal merit than the one ad Epaphroditum and did not bequeath us with an autobiography. In Josephus, the apology of his people after the shameful defeat is intertwined with a rehabilitation of his own conduct. While the Jews have fought bravely, the war had been triggered by extremists and it is fortunate that damage was limited and many could escape unharmed, including the author. Thus the earlier Jewish War is patently as apologetic as the Antiquities, the Life, and Against Apion. But there is an interesting shift which recently has been examined anew by Steve Mason.12 In Josephus’ later works, the affirmation of the Jewish Law and of the Pharisees as being the leading and most popular sect is much more outspoken. The first episode of the Life even has the author concluding his adolescent tour d’horizon as an adherent of their way of life.13 The question is why. The scruples of old age? Never to be excluded, and who are we to judge? But political factors should not be [588] overlooked either. Josephus is writing in post-war Rome as a client of the imperial house of Flavians, for which reason he came to be called by their patronym, Flavius.14 Meanwhile, the Temple having been destroyed and the Sadducees and Essenes now disappearing from history, spiritual leadership of the Jewish people fell to the Pharisees.15 So much arises from an analysis of rabbinic literature, and there is more. Post-war Pharisaism itself was not what is used to be like. Of the two wings comprising the movement, the school of Shammai, apparently the stronger before the war, now was in a minority position. Thus from its post-war centre at Yavne (Jamnia), Pharisaism issued a number of authoritative decrees, at first under the guidance of the outstanding Hillelite, Yohanan ben Zakkai, later under the strong leadership of Gamaliel the Younger, whose rule eventually 11 Cf
ibid. 374–386. The word ἀσφάλεια (Luke 1:4) must be stressed in this connection. Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees. He concludes that Josephus, while conceding the scribal excellence and popularity of the Pharisees, inwardly remains an unsympathetic priestly aristocrat. This conclusion is very refreshing but may be somewhat overstated, see below n21. 13 Life 12. 14 Ant 20:268; Life 422–429. 15 Characteristically expressed in authority on calendar issues. For this and other items involved here see the syntheses by Alon, The Jews in Their Land 1: 86–131; Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule, 331–356; Safrai, ‘The Era of the Mishnah and Talmud’, 314–330. 12 Mason,
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gained official Roman recognition and who is said to be a descendant of Hillel and grandson of ‘our’ Gamaliel, i. e. the Elder.16 Among other innovations, the title of ‘rabbi’ was now monopolised for ordained law teachers, and henceforth we can speak of ‘rabbinic’ Judaism. In sum, the Pharisaic movement had turned into predominant Hillelite rabbinism. Hence Josephus’ latter-day Pharisaism suffers some interesting specification. Blaming the lost war on the ‘Zealots’17 and labelling himself as a Pharisee comes down to discrediting the Shammaites and supporting the new Hillelite majority. One could almost suspect that the foggy ‘fourth philosophy’ which he introduces in the Antiquities as being fully at one with the Pharisees except for their nationalistic passion – not exactly a compliment in his mouth – in fact alludes to the school of Shammai.18 [589] For this seems to tie in with rabbinic reports of a bloody confrontation in which the Shammaites imposed a number of anti-foreign decrees on the Hillelites by force of arms, while the protagonist on the occasion, Elazar ben Hananya (ben Hizkia ben Garon), is known from Josephus as one of the main instigators of the Roman war.19 As to Josephus himself, he interestingly conforms to Hillelite halakha on some prominent issues.20 But he never became a true supporter of the Hillelite dynasty and maintained an inner reserve. Next to old age scruples, Realpolitik must have been a cause of his re-orientation.21 16 The change-over resulted in only a gradual ‘hillelization’ of the halakha, in which the Shammaite (!) inclinations of Gamaliel II himself stand out, see Safrai, ‘Decision’; idem, ‘Halakha’, 185–200. 17 It may be wise to heed the scholars who remind us that Josephus uses the name ‘Zealots’ only for the years 68–70, and use quotation marks for a more general usage, cf Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian 2: 499f. 18 For cautious criticism of this idea see Goodman, Ruling Class, 93–96, 107f, 209f. The Fourth Philosophy, τετὰρτη τῶν φιλοσοφιῶν (Ant 18:23), in War 2:118 is still called the ἲδια αἵρεσις of Judas the Galilean, as distinct from the three ‘philosophies’. In contrast to Thackeray (ad War 2:118, LCL), Feldman (ad Ant. 18:23) doubts the ‘Zealot’ link. But Josephus is explicit that the movement (also lead by ‘Zadok the Pharisee’!) inspired the later Zealots (War 2:118; 2:433; 7:253; Ant 18:4–10). Moreover the solemn presentations of the three schools in War 2:119ff and Ant 18:12ff are both clearly occasioned by the mention of this ‘separate’ or ‘fourth’ movement, which proves its importance, even if Josephus tries to minimize it. 19 mShab 1:4; tShab 1:16; yShab 1 (3c–d); Josephus, War 2:409f; cf MekRY yitro 7 (p229), and MekRS 20:8 (p148). The identification was made already by Graetz, Geschichte 3.2: 470–472, 795ff. See also Goldberg, Shabbat, 15–22; Hengel, Zeloten (1976) 204–211; Tomson, Paul, 173–176. 20 Notably divorce and Sabbath: Ant 4:253 (divorce being allowed καθ᾽ ἁσδηποτοῦν αἰτίας, cf mGit 9:10); Life 426 (Josephus divorcing his wife because of her displeasing behaviour); ibid. 161 (Josephus taking the Sabbath to prohibit carrying weapons if there is no mortal danger, contrast his Shammaite contemporary, R. Eliezer, mShab 6:4). 21 Mason ibid. (n. 12) 357ff takes it that the pro-Pharisaic words Life 12 are counterbalanced by Shimon ben Gamliel’s vicious intrigue to remove Josephus from command in Galilee (Life 189–198). But Life 191 which prefaces that episode is even more flattering about Shimon than War 4:159, and the expression πρὸς ἐμέ τότε διαφόρως εἶχεν suggests that at the time of writing the disaccord was over. Since Shimon appears to have been killed during the war (see Alon
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The role of the Pharisees in Luke-Acts has been the subject of much debate.22 Following the innovative reading of Jakob Jervell, a growing [590] number of scholars begin to recognize the positive role the Pharisees play in these works.23 But many others can only perceive a negative or at most contradictory attitude.24 A failure common to many of the latter assessments is that in line with the traditional view they neglect social distinctions characteristic of Second Temple Judaism and typically confound the Pharisees as a whole with the priestly temple elite.25 For a reliable starting point in Luke-Acts, we must take those parts which most directly betray the author’s hand, i. e. the infancy26 and resurrection stories in the gospel and the history of Paul in Acts. In the infancy and resurrection stories, it is not so much the Pharisees as the law that is prominent. Jesus is brought up by pious parents who diligently behave ‘according to the Law of Moses’, and the risen Lord explains the Passover events on the basis of ‘the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms’.27 Likewise Paul when defending himself says he has and Smallwood, above n17), this gives the impression of referring to the post-war Hillelite majority in general. 22 See Rese, ‘The Jews in Luke-Acts’ [another paper read at the CBL 1998, see n1]. Some comments may be permitted (referring to the paper as read at Leuven). Quite important are two earlier conclusions Rese reiterates: the role of the Jews has to do with the purpose of Luke-Acts, and its meaning must be read from the author’s position. Opposing Jervell’s ‘quite conservative’ approach, Rese sticks to the standard, negative evaluation stated by Overbeck and Haenchen. The frequency difference of ᾽Ιουδαῖος between Luke and Acts he cites as an argument is not to be understood from a shift in genre or chronology, but from the social difference implied by the group appellation ‘Jew’: whereas the gospel (like Mark and Matt) stays within a Jewish speech domain, Acts increasingly moves into mixed or non-Jewish speech areas. This does not in itself prejudice the meaning of ‘Jew’, as is clear from the more positive value of ‘Pharisee’ many percieve in Acts. The peculiar character of John (in the dominant, final redaction) is that it locates Jesus and his followers within the alien surroundings of Jews. See Tomson, ‘The Names Israel and Jew’. Finally, I fail to understand how Rese can both lash out against and criticize exegetes of Luke-Acts for overlooking the Wirkungsgeschichte. 23 Jervell, Luke and the People of God, 41–74 and 133–152; cf idem, The Theology of the Acts of the Apostles; now also his commentary, Apostelgeschichte. See especially the comparison of Luke, Acts, and Josephus by Mason (above n6). See further Ziesler, ‘Luke and the Pharisees’, stressing the positive image of the Pharisees as compared with the other gospels; Brawley, Luke-Acts, who shows that Luke-Acts gives sustained and respectful attention to the Pharisees, while setting off Jesus and his followers positively from them. On the openendedness of Acts see below n53. 24 Sanders, The Jews in Luke-Acts, finds Luke-Acts anti-Jewish while taking the Pharisees to be the stock-in-trade opponents of Jesus. Similarly Kingsbury, ‘The Pharisees in Luke-Acts’; Carroll, ‘Luke’s Portrayal’; Merkel, ‘Israel im lukanischen Werk’. Tyson, Images of Judaism, viii, following L. Gaston, finds Luke-Acts ‘both pro-Jewish and anti-Jewish and both in profound ways’; in idem, ‘Jews and Judaism in Luke-Acts’ he tries to overcome this historical anomaly via Luke’s supposed aim of writing for Godfearers. 25 See nn4, 5, and 24. 26 Tyson, Images of Judaism, 42–55 recognizes the idealized Jewish piety of the surroundings of infant Jesus. 27 Luke 2:21–28; 24:27, 44.
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offended ‘neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the Temple, nor against Caesar’, and in conversation with the Jewish leaders [591] of Rome is only appealing to ‘the law of Moses and the prophets’.28 This signals a fundamental identification with the basics of Judaism, but it does not state that Jesus was a Pharisee, nor Paul in his actual status. The fact is that the gospel contains some bitter criticisms of the Pharisees. ‘The Pharisees and law teachers have rejected the plan of God for themselves’ by refusing John’s baptism, and the Pharisees are ‘lovers of money’. These could still be read as qualifications the author adopted from his sources.29 But in two passages that appear to be redactional summaries and have no synoptic parallel, ‘the scribes and Pharisees’ as a generalized category keep a watchful eye on Jesus and murmur because he eats with sinners.30 On the other hand, unlike all other gospels, the Lukan Jesus accepts invitations to a Pharisee home, even up to three times; the Pharisees do not plan to kill him for his behaviour on Sabbath, but remain in suspense not knowing what to do; indeed, Pharisees try to save his life by warning him for Herod Antipas.31 And as to Acts, Paul in another of his apologies calls himself ‘a Pharisee, son of Pharisees’; Pharisees wonder whether an angel had spoken to him; many other Pharisees join the church; and a prominent and popular Pharisee pleads to leave Jesus’ followers alone.32 Clearly, the Lukan author does not idealize the Pharisees and he is not afraid to criticize them. But neither does he come anywhere near the absolutized antiPharisaism we find in Matthew, or to the anti-Judaism of John;33 on the contrary, in Acts he is openly sympathetic. All that his gospel tells us is that Jesus was no Pharisee, and in doing so he seems to give a realistic rendering of conflicts that may have occurred between a non-conformist Galilean teacher and Pharisaic leaders. These stories remind us of rabbinic reports about tension between the Sages and pious [592] miracle workers termed ‘the hasidim of old’, as well as of ancient traditions preserving inner-Pharisaic criticism of bigotry and hypocrisy.34 28 Acts
28:17, 23. Luke 7:30; 16:14. 30 Luke 11:53f; 15:2. 31 The Pharisees’ invitations: Luke 7:36; 11:37; 14:1; their doubt as to Sabbath: 6:11 (the optative ποιήσαιεν betraying the hand of the author, contrast Mark 3:6; Matt 12:14; Jn 5:18! [cf above p551]); their warning: 13:31. On the latter passage see Denaux, ‘L’hypocrisie des Pharisiens’, and for another reading Rese, ‘Einige Überlegungen zu Lk 13,31–33’. 32 Acts 26:5; 22:9; 15:5; 5:34. 33 The immense significance of this difference tends to be overlooked by those who read Luke-Acts as being anti-Pharisaic (above n24). For Matthew and John see Tomson, If This be from Heaven, chaps. 6 and 7. 34 I.e., 7 types of Pharisees, only the last 2 of whom are viewed positively, mTaan 3:8; yBer 9 (13b). And cf the critique of ‘the plague of Pharisees’ מכת פרושים, mSot 3,4; its explanation ySot 3 (19a) ‘this is one who advises inheritors how to avoid paying alimentation to the widow’ is a full parallel to Jesus’ criticism in Mark 7:9–13. On the ancient hasidim see Safrai, ‘Teaching of Pietists’; idem, ‘Jesus and the Hassidic Movement’. 29
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In sum, while the gospel is clear about the differences between Jesus and the Pharisees and candid in its criticism of the latter, the Lukan author on the whole displays a remarkable sympathy for them. Thus we find both Josephus and the Lukan author taking pro-Pharisaic positions which do not quite seem to tally with the contents of their writings. On the other hand, such a stance must have drawn much attention in a late first century Roman context. Nobody would have forgotten the Jewish war, and the fiscus judaicus, the special tax imposed on the Jews, was in full swing. Therefore this choice of position can hardly have been accidental. If it was not the advancement of his own position or that of the Jewish people as such, what could the motives of the Lukan author have been? To answer that question we must take a closer look at the role the Pharisees and especially their leader, Gamaliel, play in the evolving conflict over the message of Jesus he describes.
Gamaliel’s Intervention in the Framework of Luke-Acts Gamaliel’s intervention on behalf of the Apostles has a strategic position in Acts, and thereby in the framework of the two part apologetic history. It forms the last act of the first scene of Luke-Acts which is located within the holy city, the theologico-geographical centre of the work. Moreover it is an almost idealized consummation of this first scene,35 in which glimpses of the growing newborn church alternate with incidents showing its strained relation with the authorities. The latter are not anonymous but a well-defined power group.36 In 4:1 it is ‘the priests, the Temple [593] commander37 and the Sadducees’ who come down on Peter and the other Apostles; in 4:5f this alliance is amplified to include ‘their leaders, elders and scribes who had gathered in Jerusalem, as well as Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander and whoever were of highpriestly birth’. However they are unable to arrest them ‘because of the people’ (4:21). Then after another glimpse of the prosperous infant church, the final act is initiated by ‘the high priest and all those with him, that is, the sect of the Sadducees’, alternatively called ‘the Temple commander and the chief priests’, who convene ‘the synhedrion and the gerousia of the Israelites’ (5:17, 24). Still, the commander and his officers refrain from using force ‘out of fear for the people, of being stoned’ (5:26). The session, and with it the first scene of Acts, ends with the Apostles being set free at the proposal of the Pharisee Gamaliel. 35 Using this term in its theatrical sense; cf different usage in Tannehill, Narrative Unity 2: 43. Not stressing the diaspora element in Acts 6–8, Tannehill places ‘the climax of the conflict in Jerusalem’ in that section (80f). This is not impossible, 6–8 having an ambiguous character, but precisely so I prefer to distinguish it from 1–5. Also, the election of the seven ‘Hellenist’ deacons signals a new departure. 36 As correctly noted by Brawley, Luke-Acts, chap. 7, ‘Sadducees, Priests, and Temple’. 37 στρατηγὸς τοῦ ἱεροῦ, i. e. סגן הכהנים, cf Schürer, History 2: 277f.
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A comparison with the trial of Jesus in Luke’s gospel brings out characteristic parallels.38 From the start of Jesus’ appearance in the Temple area, it is ‘the chief priests, the scribes and the prominent among the people’ who confront him but at first cannot take action because of the people, then with the help of Judas succeed in arresting him unseen, and in the end condemn him in their synhedrion and hand him over to Pilate.39 So far the author accords with Mark, which he must at least have had before him.40 By contrast, in Matthew the brief pericope castigating the wealth-loving scribes known from Mark and Luke is built into a whole chapter attacking ‘the scribes and Pharisees’, thus implicating the Pharisees in the conflict leading up to Jesus’ execution.41 Quite the opposite happens in Luke. Not only does our author add another pericope expressing popular support for Jesus (23:27–31), he also inserts the notice that Joseph from Arimathea, the council member who came to bury Jesus, ‘did not support their initiative and their action’ (23:51) – a phrase that clearly relates to our Acts passage.42 In short, the Pharisees [594] are eloquently absent from the judicial murder, nor do all lay councillors take part in it. Jesus is arrested and executed at the initiative of the same priestly elite who in Acts, precisely in the Gamaliel episode, are denoted as ‘the sect of Sadducees’. Back to Acts and to the second scene, that of Stephen and Philip which stands on the borderline between Jerusalem and the diaspora and also slips in the protagonist of the second half of the book. Stephen and Philip are among the seven deacons appointed on behalf of the ‘Hellenists’ or Greek-speakers.43 At this stage, it is not the Sadducee elite which troubles Jesus’ followers, but diaspora Jews44 who ‘stir up the people and the priests and the scribes’; the high priest’s role being limited to presiding the synhedrion. Stephen is mob-lynched after his violent sermon against the Temple authorities while support from certain Pharisees is implied, explicitly so in the case of the young law student from Cilicia, Saul.45 The ensuing persecution of the church occasions not only Philip’s preaching to non-Jews but also Saul’s conversion. Carrying written mandates On such parallels see Radl, Paulus und Jesus im lukanischen Doppelwerk. Luke 19:47f; 20:1, 19; 22:2, 4; 23:52; 23:66. 40 Taylor, The Passion Narrative of St. Luke presents interesting evidence to the effect that Luke follows an independent passion account. 41 Mark 12:41–44; Luke 20:45–21:4; Matt 23. 42 βουλὴ καὶ πράξις. Foakes-Jackson–Lake, The Beginnings of Christianity 4: 62 note the parallel with βουλὴ ἢ ἔργον in Acts 5:38. Cf below n76. 43 Acts 6:5f. See Hengel, ‘Zwischen Jesus und Paulus’. The diaspora connection is signalled by another of the seven, ‘Nicolaus, a proselyte from Antioch’. 44 Acts 6:9, 12. Beza’s conjecture Λιβυστίνων (Libyans) for Λιβερτίνων, based on an Armenian variant, deserves serious consideration in view of the adjacent Cyrenaeans, Alexandrians, Cilicians, and Asians. 45 Acts 7:58, 60. The procedure, described by the Mishna as ‘( קנאין פוגעין בוthe zealots may strike him’, mSan 9:6) and also supported by Philo, is disapproved of by the later rabbis. See Seland, Establishment Violence; Alon, ‘On Philo’s Halakha’, 112–124. 38 39
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from the high priest, he pursues the new sect down to Damascus until he is struck by light from heaven. We skip the conflicts with diaspora synagogues which now start growing hand in hand with the mission among non-Jews, and jump to the final part of Acts. Paul returns to Jerusalem and agrees to demonstrate his faithfulness to the law in order to pacify the ‘zealous’ church members. Again, diaspora Jews stir up the crowd, but the Roman commander allows him to address the people. Speaking in ‘the Hebrew language’ (which may have been Aramaic), he reveals his identity: ‘I am a Jew born at Cilician Tarsus, brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and trained in the details (ἀκρίβεια)46 of the ancestral law, [595] being zealous for God as you all are today’.47 Next day Paul is brought before ‘the chief priests and all the synhedrion’. When the high priest has him hit in the face, he rebuts with a stroke of Pharisaic akribeia which his adversary may well have missed (Acts 23:5). One also wonders whether the author grasped it, but in either case he shows that he disposed of actual Pharisaic traditions, since Paul’s pun is understandable only with the help of rabbinic literature. Paul says he did not know it was a high priest who had him hit since it is written: ‘You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people’ (Exod 22:27). What is meant? The answer seems to be found in an anonymous explanation to that verse known from a rabbinic collection some two centuries younger than Acts: ‘… A ruler of your people – as long as they observe the custom of your people’.48 The upshot is that Paul did not acknowledge the man as such because he did not behave as a leader of his people. As we shall see, the Pharisees attached great importance to popular custom. This makes us understand even better why Paul now, conscious49 of the division between Pharisees and Sadducees, provokes uproar by claiming he is being tried as a Pharisee for his belief in resurrection. This time the author comes to the readers’ help by pointing out Sadducean disbelief on this subject,50 and he concludes by noting that ‘some of the scribes of 46 This is another significant term also used by Josephus in this connection, see Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees, passim. It parallels rabbinic דקדוקי סופרים, ‘niceties of the scribes’, which figures in connection with Pharisaic and specifically havura particulars: tDem 2:5; Sifra, kedoshim 8 (91a); cf bBekh 30b; Tanh vayikra 2 (1b); TanB vayikra 3 (2a). Baumgarten, ‘The Name of the Pharisees’ explains the name ‘Pharisees’ from this connection: = פרושים ‘interpreters’. 47 Acts 21:15–22:3. The three part ‘education formula’ is a Hellenistic topos and signals the author’s emphasis, see Van Unnik, ‘Tarsus or Jerusalem’. 48 MekRY mishpatim 19 (p318), בזמן שהן עושין מנהג עמך, the plural הןsuggesting anti-Sadducean polemic. I owe this explanation to Profs. Shmuel Safrai and David Flusser, orally. The ignorance of Tora on the part of (Sadducean) high priests is proverbial in rabbinic literature, cf the expression כהן עם הארץ, bYev 114a etc, and in the Derekh Erets treatises; and cf the high priest’s instruction, mYom 1:6 and concomitant supervision by the (Pharisee) סגן הכהנים, see above n37. 49 γνούς of course not to be taken as an ingressive, as RSV has it. 50 Along with his custom to translate Semitic terms into Greek, this enhances the impression the Lukan author did not grasp Paul’s midrash on the high priest (and confirms the tradition that he was a non-Jew).
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the Pharisee party’ find nothing wrong in Paul and even allow for the possibility that he spoke on heavenly inspiration (Acts 22,30–23,9). Thus the author’s narrative strategy becomes clear. He locates the hard core of hostility to the message of Jesus at first in the Sadducee power group in Jerusalem, later also in a range of diaspora synagogues.51 [596] The people, as long as they are not mislead, are behind Jesus. Not all Pharisees are laudable, some of them even supporting the persecution of the church, notably young Saul. Yet the overall portrait of the Pharisees is not unsympathetic. They are divided over the message of Jesus, they take no part in his trial, and a number of them would grant Paul the benefit of the doubt. Hence the importance of the earlier moment in the story when Paul’s own teacher commends tolerance and restraint by means of a saying of profound wisdom:52 ‘A Pharisee in the synhedrion named Gamaliel, a law teacher respected by all the people, … said: … If this initiative or this action is from humans it will be dissolved, but if it is from God, you cannot dissolve it without rebelling against God’ (Acts 5:34, 38f). The well-respected and popular Pharisee does not in fact choose position: he leaves the discussion undetermined. This implies no irony, at least no sarcasm. A similar open-endedness may be discerned in Paul’s discussions with synagogue leaders, which despite generally negative reactions sometimes end on a positive note, and in Rome at the very end of Acts are left undecided.53 In short, we see how the author casts Gamaliel and other Pharisees in a role of permissive tolerance towards Christianity. Comparison with Josephus made us doubt the likelihood of a coincidence; our analysis of Luke-Acts now makes it almost certain the author acted on purpose. We like to speak of his rhetorical ‘constructions’. Yet in announcing a book about ‘things that happened’, he challenges us to take episodes like Gamaliel’s to be more than apologetic fiction.54 How does the episode relate to the actual Pharisees of his day and their tradition, as far as we know it? [597]
51 Similarly
Mason, ‘Chief Priests, Sadducees, Pharisees’. the positive image of Gamaliel cf Munck, Acts of the Apostles, ad loc.; Buttrick, Interpreter’s Bible 9: 86f. 53 See the example of Beroea, Acts 17:11, ἐδέξαντο τὸν λόγον μετὰ πάσης προθυμίας, cf Hengel, Zur urchristlichen Geschichtsschreibung, 58. On Rome, Acts 28:25, ἀσύμφονοι δὲ ὄντες πρὸς ἀλλήλων. The open-endedness of Acts vis-à-vis the Jews is argued by Koet, Five Studies, ch. 5; Tannehill, Narrative Unity 2: 352f.; Bovon, ‘Studies in Luke-Acts’; Marguerat, ‘Et quand nous sommes entrés dans Rome’; Van de Sandt, ‘Acts 28,28’; Aletti, Quand Luc raconte, 167–218. 54 Thus the opinion of Haenchen, Apostelgeschichte, 252 and Schneider, Apostelgeschichte, 388. 52 For
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The Pharisee Gamaliel and Hillelite Pluralism If we want to answer this question we must confront the Acts story with external sources informing us about the position and character of the Pharisees at the time of writing. First, by adding Pharisaic tolerance to popular admiration of Jesus and his message, the Lukan author somehow associates the Pharisees with the populace. This linkage is also found in various other sources. (1) In spite of his inner reserve, Josephus consistently notes massive popular support for the Pharisaic tradition, and since he left Palestine after the Roman war, this must refer primarily to the pre-war situation.55 He also notes that temple ritual is conducted according to Pharisaic tradition.56 (2) These statements find chronologically sound confirmation in the Qumran halakhic letter which militates against pressure being exerted on the Jerusalem priests to relinquish ancient priestly traditions shared with the author of the letter – the pressure apparently coming from Pharisaic side.57 (3) Now this combined information interestingly connects with isolated rabbinic reports to the effect that Sadducee high priests conformed to Pharisaic custom and had to do so in order to avoid popular outrage. We already heard that rabbinic tradition explicitly valued popular custom. There also is the story that the prominent Pharisee, Hillel the Elder, expressly went by the standard of popular usage.58 (4) Finally rabbinic literature as a whole, which one way or another represents a development from Pharisaic tradition, shows features typical of popular oral literature such as the abundant use of anecdotes and parables. As contrasted with writings like those of Philo and Josephus or those from Qumran, this again suggests that Pharisaic tradition had been in close touch with popular sentiment.59 When added up, the evidence indicates [598] that the strong postwar position of the Pharisees was based on the support among the populace they had been enjoying already before the war. To be sure, we should not think here in terms of unequivocal support for a coherent ‘party line’. By all indications, pre-70 Pharisaism was a multiform phenomenon comprising at least the rather
55 Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees, 372f. Cf also his conclusion at ‘Chief Priests, Sadducees’, 177. 56 Ant 18:12–17. 57 4QMMT, see Qimron–Strugnell, ‘Halakhic Letter’, and Qumran Cave 4 V (DJD 10); Sussman, ‘History of the Halakha’. 58 Sadducee (Boethusian) custom being overrruled: mSuk 4:9; tSuk 3:16; bSuk 48b (cf Josephus, Ant 13:372 on the pelting with etrogim); Pharisaic control over temple ritual: tPara 3:8; mPara 3:7f; tKipp 1:8; on popular custom above n48; Hillel opting for popular custom: tPes 4:14. 59 See Safrai, ‘Oral Tora’ on the oral and popular character of Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition. The use of parables, a wide-spread popular literary genre absent e. g. from Qumran, Philo and Josephus, is another important indicator.
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different schools of Shammai and Hillel, and popular support for them must at least have varied along similar lines. Second, the popular character of the Pharisees brings out the historical profile of Gamaliel. A Pharisee bearing that name and being sufficiently important to be mentioned twice in a succinctly written apologetic work about events in the early first century CE, moreover described as being well respected among all the people, can hardly be anyone but Rabban Gamliel the Elder, the Hillelite leader known from rabbinic literature.60 He was the father of Shimon ben Gamliel who officiated during the war according to Josephus, who despite personal antipathies also describes him as an eminent and popular Pharisee – to such an extent that one must resist the suspicion that both descriptions are somehow dependent.61 Third, this brings up the relevance of the Hillelite tradition. As stated, the aftermath of the war against Rome meant not so much the ascendancy of Pharisaism in general as of its specific Hillelite variety. At the time they were writing, Josephus and the Lukan author had to deal with Hillelite rabbinism. This does not necessarily imply a Hillelite power politics. On the contrary as we saw, if anyone, it were their adversaries the school of Shammai who had literally tried to enforce their will at the beginning of the war. Hillelite legend typically ascribes peacefulness and tolerance to its founding fathers, Hillel the Elder and Yohanan ben Zakkai. For in the fourth place rabbinic literature, precisely in its predominantly Hillelite make-up that originates from the post-70, Yavne period, incorporates a pluralist policy regarding the relation of truth and power. At the level of legend, there is the paradoxical summary of the relation of both traditions sub specie aeternitatis: ‘A heavenly voice came forth at Yavne: Both these and those are the words of the living God, but the halakha is according to the school of Hillel’.62 While taking [599] the Hillelite majority for granted, the saying shows respect for the Shammaite tradition. The same is explicit in a parallel saying which expresses the paradox at the level of practical halakha: ‘Forever, the halakha is according to the school of Hillel, but … (one must behave) either according to the school of Shammai including their leniencies and stringencies, or to the school of Hillel including their leniencies and stringencies’.63 This pluralist policy was also expressed in the formulation of the central rabbinic document, the Mishna. While its overall inclination is towards Hillelite halakha, usually 60 According to a baraita bShab 15a he was the son of Hillel’s otherwise unknown son Shimon, while mAv 1:16 has him directly succeed Hillel and Shammai. mPea 2:6 mentions him as a leader of the Temple High Court. See Hyman, Toldoth, s. v. 61 War 4:159; Life 190–216 (in the alternative Greek transcriptions Συμεών and Σίμων). For possible dependence of Luke-Acts on Josephus see nn11 and 65. 62 yBer 1 (3b); bEr 13b; etc. See Safrai, ‘Decision’. 63 tSuk 2:3 = tYev 1:13 = tEd 2:3, cf sources previous note; and see Lieberman, ad loc.
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the Shammaite tradition is given first, and the question why the minority view is preserved is answered by means of an appeal to respect and to the fundamental open-endedness of tradition.64 Let us integrate these data in our prior observations. The Lukan author, who at specific points is capable of severe criticism of the Pharisees, nevertheless draws a positive overall picture of them. An important facet of this picture is the moment when Gamaliel, said to be a popular Pharisee leader, convincingly advises the high-priestly circles to leave the movement of Jesus the benefit of the doubt. This advice now seems to accord with the Hilllite strand of Pharisaism of which Gamaliel must have been a prominent representative and which after the Roman war rose to power. This leads to the intriguing question whether Gamaliel’s words as presented by the Lukan author could specifically relate to Hillelite tradition.
Gamaliel’s Counsel As a preliminary, we must face serious doubts as to the authenticity of Gamaliel’s speech. The core of his advice is prefaced with two examples. The first concerns Theudas, a messianic pretender who is also mentioned by Josephus, but at a time ten to fifteen years later than the presumable date of the Apostles’ trial. The second is about Judas the Galilean, who Josephus says was active some twenty years before that date.65 This shows our author used inexact reports and composed [600] Gamaliel’s speech himself, in line with Hellenistic historiography.66 Hence all appearances are that he also put the saying into Gamaliel’s mouth, and that after all the whole speech is mere apologetical fiction.67 – Unless we find external evidence to the contrary, presumably from the direction of Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition. As a matter of fact, we have already seen an important instance where the author uses a tradition he intends to be taken for Pharisaic (whether he fully grasped it or not) and which appears to be preserved in a more explicit form in rabbinic literature. The fundamental question is what authorial certainty we can attain in the case of Pharisaic tradition, which in its formative stage was oral and hence fluid and 64 mEd
1:4–6; tEd 1:3–5. 20:97f, followed by a last reference to Judas the Galilean (20:102, because of the crucifixion of his sons). In spite of other similarities, including the same non-chronological order, Sterling, Historiography, 365f thinks this no sufficient proof for literary dependence. The opposite has been defended ever since Krenkel, Josephus und Lucas (1894); on Gamaliel’s intervention ibid. 162–174. I am indebted to Bart-Jan Koet for facilitating access to this work. Mason, ‘Chief Priests, Sadducees’, 177 also thinks Luke saw Josephus’ later works. 66 Plümacher, Lukas als hellenistischer Schriftsteller, 10f, 32–38; idem, ‘Lukas als griechischer Historiker’. 67 See above n54. 65 Ant
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amorphous.68 Brevity precludes a full discussion of rabbinic form criticism, but this much can be stated here. In the framework of an oral tradition, both the exact dating and the authorship of any particular saying tend to be hard to define. There always remains an insuperable margin of uncertainty. But once this ‘tolerance’ in the technical sense is accepted, what we often are able to determine is the saying’s belonging to a particular strand of tradition, such as the Hillelite or Shammaite variety, within the span of several generations.69 Precisely this seems to be the case with Gamaliel’s counsel. Let us address ourselves to the tractate Avot which was appended to the Mishna.70 It is a collection of wisdom sayings which in its extant form ‘proverbially’ summarizes oral tradition from time immemorial, through Hillel, Gamliel the Elder (‘ours’) and the Younger, all the way down to Yehuda ha-Nasi, the redactor of the Mishna, and even to his grandson, Yehuda Nesia.71 This is the lineage of the Hillelite dynasty, and the tractate patently is meant [601] to record Hillelite tradition. Yet precisely so, not only Hillelite opinions are preserved. Apart from Hillel, a number of Shammai’s sayings are recorded, just as the proverbs of R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, the prominent Yavnean Shammaite,72 precede those of his eventually more powerful Hillelite colleague, R. Yoshua ben Hananya.73 Indeed rabbinic literature, here apparently again displaying the pluralism typical of Hillelite tradition, values the discussion between both schools as an indispensable element. So much is to be gathered from a saying preserved in two variant forms in Avot and from the explanatory comments on them contained in Avot de-Rabbi Natan, a parallel collection extant in two recensions, the oldest of which is quoted here:74 68 See
Safrai, ‘Oral Tora’. This is exemplified in sayings attributed both to earlier and later teachers within the same tradition, such as Hillel and his spiritual heirs R. Yoshua and R. Akiva (see Tomson Paul, 246 n124), or Shammai and the Shammaite Elazar ben Hananya ben Hizkia ben Garon (MekRY yitro 7, p229; MekRS 20:8, p148). 70 For excellent introductions see Lerner, ‘Tractate Avot’, and ‘External Tractates’, 369–379. 71 mAv 1:16–2:4, a section not paralleled in ARN and apparently reflecting the final redactional stage. Cf a similar but much more loosely formulated fragment in ARNa 32 (35b–36a). [On ARN and its redactional history see the penetrating analyses of Kister, Studies, part 2. Kister (p142f) estimates that ARN as a composition is post-talmudic but contains ancient tradition units; version A is later and more worked-over than B but it preserves ancient traditions better. On the place of the sayings of the House of Hillel see ibid. 117–123.] 72 See Safrai, ‘Halakha’, 186, 198f. 73 mAv 1:12–15; 2:10–11; ARNb 29–30 (30a–32b). On Shammaite tradition in this context see Lerner, ‘Tractate Avot’, 265 and ‘External Tractates’, 372, who also notes (ibid. 376) that in contradistinction to mAv 1:12–15; 2:8 and to ARNa 12–15 (24b–31a), the order in ARNb 23–24 (24a–b) is the standard one in rabbinic literature, i. e., first Shammai, then Hillel. The same, it may be added, holds for the tradition to be quoted in a moment, where both Avot and ARNa have the order Hillel-Shammai, while the quoted version, ARNb, has Shammai-Hillel. Hence Avot and ARNa reflect a later further ‘Hillelization’ at the redactional level. 74 ARNb 46 (64b). [See text-critical remarks by Kister, Studies, 124.] The first saying is also found isolated in mAv 4:11 in name of R. Yohanan ‘the Alexandrian’ (± 150 CE), outstanding 69
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Every gathering ( )כנסיהfor the sake of Heaven will keep existing in the end, but every gathering (that is) not for the sake of Heaven will not keep existing in the end. What is a gathering for the sake of Heaven? You should say: That is the gathering of Israel before Mount Sinai. (…) Every dispute ( )מחלוקתfor the sake of Heaven will keep existing in the end, but every dispute (that is) not for the sake of Heaven will not keep existing in the end. What is a dispute for the sake of Heaven? You should say: That is the dispute of Shammai and Hillel. (…)
Some comments are in place. These sayings obviously embody a most tolerant view. Here, Hillelite tradition not just preserves traditions of its former competitors, but declares the discussion between them to be an ineluctable feature of truth in the face of Heaven. It is not power that decides over truth, as the Shammaites thought once at least, but true witness in the long run. This holds true even for the paradigmatic ‘gathering’ [602] of the chosen people, Israel before Sinai – an impressively open-minded and even vulnerable statement. Truth remains indeterminate, humanly speaking. Irony? Surely, but good-humoured. When viewed ‘from above’, precisely this modest open-endedness, the maximum humans can attain to, earns divine endorsement. No really serious human conviction may be discarded a priori. This is profound wisdom – this is paraphrasing Gamaliel’s counsel! Indeed, the material relationship with Acts 5:38f has long been recognized.75 Without exaggeration, we can even say that the rabbinic text offers an excellent elucidation of the illustrious Pharisee’s saying. There may be even more to it. While the two rabbinic sayings clearly intend to express the same human modesty over against ultimate truth, they differ in only one word, i. e., the term describing the human stance: כנסיה, ‘gathering’, or מחלוקת, ‘dispute’. This makes it the more obvious that these are variants of one basic tradition. One wonders which may be the more original. Or is that a wrong question, and should one look for a single term explaining both variants? Amazingly, such a term seems found in the Greek βουλή as used in Acts 5:38. I have been translating it in the above as ‘initiative’ because of the social aspect expressed in the corresponding verb καταλῦσαι.76 Precisely so, βουλή can be disciple of R. Akiva who was himself the heir to Hillelite tradition; the second anonymous mAv 5:17; both sayings again together with comments ARNa 40 (65a). While undoubtedly stemming from a single original source, the two sayings appear to derive from independent channels of transmission. Anonymous versions often tend to be the older, but that is all one can say. On the terminology see below at n76. 75 Str-Bill, ad loc. cites mAv 4:11 and 5:17. Wettstein, Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ, ad loc. mentions only the more general parallel with Euripides, Bacch 45.325.1255 and other passages involving the verb θεομαχεῖν. The link with mAv 4:11 is recognized by Schneider, Apostelgeschichte, 403 (judging the Euripides parallels to be of lesser importance) and Zmijewski, Apostelgeschichte, 271. 76 Ancient English versions have counsel or ‘councel’ (see Weigle, The New Testament Octapla), modern translations prefer ‘plan’ and the like.
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equivalent both to ‘gathering’ and to ‘dispute’, depending on whether the ‘initiative’ is taken to be centripetal or centrifugal. Hence it somehow covers both Hebrew terms. Food for speculation! Could the saying have once been formulated before a Greek-speaking Jewish audience, using the word βουλή, and subsequently have been translated into two different Hebrew versions? Remarkably, both Gamaliel’s saying and the two rabbinic proverbs have a somewhat odd, binary structure.77 This much seems certain. In the framework of his positive account of the Pharisees’ attitude to nascent Christianity, the Lukan author puts a saying of apparent Hillelite vintage in the mouth of Gamaliel, to the [603] effect that Jewish leaders must leave the ultimate truth about the new movement for Heaven to decide.
Conclusion Both the author of Luke-Acts and Flavius Josephus at his later works make a remarkable bid for Pharisaic sympathy, before a similar audience, and at roughly the same time, i. e. upper class Roman readers some 25 years after the Jewish war. In both cases, this must relate to the make-up of post-war Jewish society which involves the predominance of Hillelite rabbinism. Their motives differ. Josephus is a priestly aristocrat whose need of personal rehabilitation makes his pro-Pharisaic declarations sound a bit shallow. Much less than a personal career, the Lukan author defends a novel, dissenting interpretation of Jewish Scripture and history. Whilst his rhetorical strategy leads him to put Pharisees including Gamaliel the Elder in a positive light, his supportive citation of the latter does concord with rabbinic sources. More precisely, his apology of Christianity as a legitimate outgrowth of Judaism makes an intentional appeal to the Hillelite reputation of modesty vis-à-vis religious truth. This is an exceptional position among early Christian authors. It differs sharply from the other evangelists, notably Matthew and John, as also from early apologetes such as Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, or Irenaeus. If the Lukan author was a non-Jewish Godfearer, as tradition has it,78 his modest stance also implies criticism of the increasing Judeo-Christian resentment to fellowship with non77 The slightly uneasy apodosis which involves the typically Greek term θεομαχεῖν (above n75) may then be read as a (typically Lukan) redactional explanation. [The widely different variants of these rabbinic proverbs in Avot, ARNa, and ARNb illustrate the assumption of Kister, Studies, 142f that ‘it is possible that other versions of ARN have existed’ and that ‘other works similar to ARN have existed’. The Lukan author could have picked up any such version from a collection or tradition unknown to us.] 78 Eusebius, CH 3.4.6. Note the attention Luke-Acts pays to Godfearers, Luke 7; Acts 13–17. Also, the author at times betrays lack of expertise in matters of halakha and midrash (above at nn48, 50).
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Jewish Christians (Acts 15:1, 5; cf Gal 2:11–14). Thus his appeal to Hillelite pluralism is based on more than opportunism: he actually subscribes to it. What may move a late first century non-Jewish Christian to sympathize with Hillelite rabbinism, and not to be impressed by the synagogue ban it issued at about that time?79 Formally, the project of Luke-Acts seems closest to that of Paul, if it is true that the latter advocates a church consisting both of Jews living ‘in the circumcision’ and of non-Jews sticking to their ‘non-circumcised’ ways of life (1 Cor 7:18f). Does [604] the Lukan author actually intend to carry on the message of the apostle whom he portrays as a former Pharisee and student of Gamaliel, and that at a time when hardly anyone still believed in it? That interpretation was proposed, of all modern scholars, by Adolf Harnack.80 I think he was right.
79 Cf John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2. The ban did probably not have universal validity, see Flusser, ‘The Jewish-Christian Schism’, 637–643; and cf Alon, The Jews 1: 288–307. On the restrictive attitude of Gamaliel II in this context see Safrai, ‘Decision According to the School of Hillel’. 80 Harnack, ‘Die Stellung des Apostels Paulus’ (involving a very early dating of Luke-Acts). Harnack personally preferred Marcion, the ‘ultra-Paulinist’, see his Marcion: das Evangelium vom fremden Gott, 235.
The Gospel of John and the ‘Parting of the Ways’ The following essay, published here for the first time, takes its departure from the discussion about the Gospel of John and its significance for the so-called ‘parting of the ways’ of Jews and Christians around the turn of the first century CE. It will be emphasised that we must always try to understand theological developments as they are embedded in historical events. From there, the essay fans out to an investigation of the sources relevant to the ostracism of Christians in Jewish society and in the Roman Empire in the early second century CE. John will appear to be decisive in confirming the suggestion of a rabbinic expulsion decree that arises from an important rabbinic passage. The same passage will then figure prominently in a survey of the means of excommunication available to the early rabbis that follows. Finally, a summary of our results will lead to a consideration of the circumstances under which such a rabbinic decree could have materialised. In so doing, we shall address aspects of the theories of ‘postcolonial’ rhetoric and of the ‘Romanisation’ of Judaism.
Jews and Christians: History and Theology The Fourth Gospel – as John is often called because of our ignorance about its actual authors – has in recent decades had a prominent place in debates about the emergence of early Christianity from within its Jewish matrix. Lecturing for students on this decisive episode in 1990, James Dunn summarised his insights and published them under the epoch-making title, The Partings of the Ways. The plural eludes booksellers and librarians but is intentional. Dunn insists that the process that finally led to a definite separation involved a series of successive ‘partings’. Notably, the preaching of Jesus and of Paul created tensions about such central Jewish assets as the Temple, the Law, and the election of Israel. But the clash with ‘the Jews’ over Christology and monotheism as recorded in the Gospel of John was ‘a particularly crucial parting of the ways’. Searching for the date when the final separation could have materialised, Dunn then gives a survey of post-70 Jewish history with main events such as the rise of the Yavne rabbis, the institution of their separation laws and birkat ha-minim or the ‘benediction of the heretics’, and the Bar Kokhba war.1 Dunn, Partings, 238. As also noted by Shaye Cohen (‘The Ways that parted’, 307 n1), the
1
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As we shall see, these last items are pertinent, as is the idea of a succession of developments that somehow came to a crisis. The separate consideration of inner theological development and outer historical context, however, is confusing and methodologically questionable. How can we achieve a more adequate and integrated account? Asking the question in different terms, Paula Fredriksen responds: ‘The short answer is also the obvious one: we need to work contextually.’ Broadening the perspective to include the third century mêlée of conflicts and contacts between Jews and Christians, she concludes: ‘An awareness of separation, even a principled insistence upon separation, seems clearly attested in some early to mid-second century writers (…); equally clearly, we see strong indications of persistent, intimate interactions. (…) [O]n the ground, the ways were not separating.’2 Fredriksen’s essay appeared along with 16 other ones in another epoch-making book, The Ways That never parted (2003). When the book re-appeared as a paperback four years later, the editors, Adam Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, took stock of the discussion. Having echoed views similar to Fredriksen’s, they concluded: ‘No longer can scholars assume that there was a single historical moment after which the texts, beliefs, and practices of Jews became irrelevant to those of their Christian contemporaries – nor the converse. Too much is lost when we study the two in isolation from one another.’3 Neither should we overlook the indications that indeed in an important way ‘the ways did part’ during the first half of the second century CE, as Shaye Cohen made sure to demonstrate in a separate publication (2013/2018).4 The Ways That never parted deals with Jewish-Christian relations in the later Empire, not with the Gospel of John. This is where the 140 pages of J. Louis Martyn’s watershed essay come in, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (1969). Even John, this truly ‘spiritual Gospel’ with its soaring Christology, Martyn dryly observes, ‘has its quite earthy moments’. History and theology are inextricably mixed, and, although Martyn does not say so explicitly, this plays out precisely in the relation between Jews and Christians. A sublime theological statement like, ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’ (John 8:32), occurs ‘in the midst of the disquieting, sharp, even unpleasant exchange between Jesus and a group of Jews.’ And it is important not to suppress but fully to admit those sharp feelings of disquiet and displeasure, because they register the earthy, corporeal historicity of the Gospel. ‘Why should the Johannine Jesus, himself a Jew, engage in such an intensely hostile exchange with “the Jews”?’ Martyn invites the reader to sense, ‘even in the exalted cadences’ of the Gospel, heading ‘Parting of the Ways’ for the Jewish-Christian conflict derives from Parkes, Conflict, chapter 3. It was re-used by Gideon Levi, the editor-translator of Alon, The Jews 1: 288. 2 Fredriksen, ‘What Parting of the Ways’, 61. Cf her succinct criticism of Dunn’s approach, ibid. 35f n1. 3 Becker–Reed, ‘Preface’, xi. 4 Cohen, ‘The Ways that parted’.
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‘the voice of a Christian theologian who writes in response to contemporary events and issues which concern (…) all members of the Christian community in which he lives.’5 The point of departure for Martyn is the story of the man born blind in John 9, because on the one hand it obviously contains elements from early Christian tradition, while on the other, it particularly invites us – using accepted exegetical methodology – to distinguish such traditional elements from the redactional interventions by the evangelist. Thus Martyn develops his illuminating reading of the chapter as a ‘two-stage’ drama playing both in the streets of 30 CE Jerusalem and in the 100 CE locality of the Johannine community. Notably John 9:22 tells him that ‘some authoritative Jewish group’, poignantly called ‘the Jews’, has ‘at some time prior to John’s writing’ taken a decision aiming at ‘the formal separation of the disciples of Jesus from the synagogue’. Asking what historical context would explain this decision, Martyn as well finds answers in the reputed emergence of the Jamnia rabbis led by Rabban Gamliel and their decision to separate Christians from the synagogues by means of the ‘benediction of the heretics’, birkat ha-minim.6 Martyn’s two-level reading has found a wide following.7 First to be mentioned is The Community of the Beloved Disciple (1979) by Raymond Brown, his longtime colleague at Union Theological Seminary. Brown, one of the foremost scholars of the Fourth Gospel, based this insightful reconstruction of the history of the Johannine community on what he called Martyn’s ‘fruitful approach’.8 The birkat ha-minim part of the approach, however, has justly been criticised by prominent scholars of Judaism from the 1970s onwards, as we shall review in detail below. New Testament scholars followed suit. They even pronounced the birkat ha-minim guilty of being a ‘red herring’ on no less than two counts: first, ‘in Johannine research’, and second, ‘in Matthaean scholarship’.9 Furthermore, questions about the validity of the two-level reading for all parts of the Gospel were asked by Adele Reinhartz, notably referring to a ‘lack of external evidence for a formal expulsion’.10 A fundamental rejection of any two-level reading has been formulated by Jonathan Bernier and others, with the unlikely implication
History and Theology, 27–29, emphasis removed. ibid. chapters 1 and 2. 7 Cf the introduction to Culpepper–Anderson, John and Judaism by Tom Thatcher, ‘John and the Jews’, 14–19, and Alan Culpepper’s retrospective ‘Afterword’, 342–345. 8 Brown, Community, Brown 17, 22. Cf 171–174 on the two-level reading. My own ‘Wars against Rome’, 14–18 still follows Martyn. 9 Meeks, ‘Breaking away’, 123 (John); Stanton, Gospel for a New People, 142 (Matthew, as proposed by W. D. Davies). 10 Reinhartz, ‘The Johannine Community’; Hakola–Reinhartz, ‘John’s Pharisees’. See also Reinhartz, ‘Story and History’, for her evaluation of Martyn’s ‘thunderbolt’ study. 5 Martyn, 6 Martyn
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that the expulsion took place in Jesus’ days or shortly after.11 On the whole, however, the basic insight in the dovetailing of theology and history in the relation of Jews and Christians prevails in Johannine scholarship. Waine Meeks summed the situation up: ‘J. Louis Martyn’s ingenious “two-level reading” of John 9 and other conflict stories in this gospel has been widely accepted in its general outline if not in all its details’ – a notable ‘detail’ being the birkat ha-minim part.12 For one, John Kloppenborg has proposed an alternative contextualised two-level reading, taking his departure from the assumption that the reason for excommunication was not heresy but misbehaviour. Referring to the Fourth Gospel’s peculiar language and social orientation, and drawing on documents from Greek and Greco-Egyptian associations, he suggests that the problem was ‘clique formation’ by the Johannine Christians.13 This explanation does not quite convince, but with its illuminating insights (see below), Kloppenborg’s study invites further applications of the two-level approach. It is here proposed to do so while taking a different angle, to be spelled out in the following working principles.14 (1) As concluded by Becker and Yoshiko Reed, we need to envisage Jewish and Christian history simultaneously. For a historical understanding of the Fourth Gospel, it is indispensible to study Jewish sources including the rabbinic ones, and conversely, this Gospel, with its insistent testimony of the expulsion of Christians, constitutes vital evidence for Jewish history. For (2), we need to read the polemics in the texts we are dealing with not as ‘mere rhetoric’. Such rhetoric represents historical truth: that of a real conflict.15 Differently put, the ‘trauma’ of the Johannine community that the editors of its Gospel attest to constitutes a significant historical datum. Similarly, the rabbinic texts are strongly polemical on anything to do with Christianity, showing that for the rabbis, the new faith was a real nuisance.16 But how are we to judge between two sets of sources combatting each other? The answer has been given already: by working contextually, i. e., by viewing these sources together in a wider context. Indeed (3), the overarching and relatively well11 Bernier, Aposynagôgos and the Historical Jesus, calling Brown a ‘classic Martynian’ and Reinhartz a ‘neo-Martynian’. Cf Bernier, ‘Jesus, ἀποσυνάγωγος, and Modes of Religiosity’, and Craig Evans’ considered response, ‘Evidence of Conflict’. Rejections were also formulated by Hägerland, ‘John’s Gospel’ (2003); Klink, ‘Expulsion from the Synagogue’ (2008); Anderson, ‘Anti-Semitism and Religious Violence’ (2017). 12 Meeks, ‘Breaking away’, 117. See similar evaluations by Culpepper, ‘Anti-Judaism in the Fourth Gospel’, 68–70, and Thatcher, ‘John and the Jews’, 14–19. As Thatcher ibid. 16 reports, Brown dropped the link with the birkat ha-minim in his Introduction to the Gospel of John, 205 n56 and 213. 13 Kloppenborg, ‘Disaffiliation’. As a subsidiary ground Kloppenborg considers Sabbath violation. 14 Cf the introductions in Tomson–Schwartz, Jews and Christians … How to write Their History, and Schwartz–Tomson, Jews and Christians … The Interbellum. 15 See Jacobs, ‘The Lion and the Lamb’. 16 Jacobs ibid. 101, citing Simon, Verus Israel, 433.
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documented context for the intertwined history of Jews and Christians in the early centuries is the history of the Roman Empire. Jews and Christians did not have a level playing field for a free competition. The Empire enveloped them, pressured them with its ruthless power into alternating bouts of resistance and compliance, and in so doing profoundly shaped their character. In particular, we must study the impact of this influence on the relationship of the two communities in their rivalry and affinity.17 A matter of course and no novelty either (4): in doing all this, inherited borders between early Christian and Jewish studies must be resolutely ignored, as also those between New Testament and Patristic studies, and between these ‘biblically-oriented’ disciplines and Roman studies, although evidently no single scholar can master all the pertinent literature and we must depend on one another. Finally (5), the nature of the literary sources we are dealing with requires on the one hand that we pay attention to structure and context, necessitating us to read extensive stretches of text. On the other hand, we must keep an eye on the origin and history of our texts, if applicable being alert to differences between earlier and later parts and distinguishing between traditional and redactional elements. Thus equipped and oriented, our study shall proceed in three stages. In the first part, we shall review what evidence we have on the ostracism of Christians around the turn of the first century CE, the date commonly ascribed to the Fourth Gospel. As with many phenomena in Antiquity, documentation is extremely limited and fragmentary. In addition to John, we have Tosefta Hullin 2, a rabbinic passage whose importance in this connection was recognised by some scholars and which deals with sages of that same period. In accordance with our working principles, these two sources, rarely viewed together, must be read both in relation to each other and to Roman sources on Christians. Therefore, we shall also read the two earliest detailed passages on Christians from Roman authors, i. e., Tacitus and Pliny who, as it happens, were writing in this very period. We shall begin by these Roman authors, then take on the Tosefta, and finally read the Fourth Gospel in that ensemble. In the second part, we shall study what evidence we have specifically on the means of excommunication available in ancient Judaism. We shall successively review passages from Qumranic, early Christian, and rabbinic literature. Among the latter, the Tosefta passage just mentioned will reappear decisively. In the third and final part of our study, we shall pull the strings together and try to
17 For Rome’s military doctrine of invincibility see Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, and Roman Warfare; for the motivation behind it, Mattern, Rome and the Enemy. For the ‘Romanisation’ of rabbinic Judaism see Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society and Lapin, Rabbis as Romans. See also Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire, 193–196. The ambiguous position of Christianity in relation to Judaism and in the framework of the pre‑ and post-Constantinian Empire has been admirably described by Grant, Augustus to Constantine.
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elucidate why actually the Christians could have been excommunicated by the Jewish leaders of the period.
Evidence on Ostracism of Christians Tacitus, Annals 15.44: Christians Accused of the Fire of Rome Tacitus is ‘a giant of the ancient world’,18 and historians of the first century CE get nowhere without referring to him. Scholarly literature on the Roman senator turned historian abounds; recent collective volumes offer introductory readings into his literary legacy, his historical significance at the turn of the ages from Domitian’s tyranny to the ‘new era’ of Nerva and Trajan, and Tacitist scholarship including the towering work of Ronald Syme.19 Our first source is from Tacitus’ last work, the Annals, completed around 115 CE. The fragment we shall quote is fittingly introduced by this comment from Arnaldo Momigliano: ‘Tacitus’ real aim was to unmask the imperial rule, insofar as it was government by debasement, hypocrisy, and cruelty.’20 The fragment relates the fire that ravaged large parts of Rome for five days in the summer of 64 CE. Several contemporary authors endorsed the rumour that the Emperor personally ordered the city to be set on fire.21 Tacitus does not take sides (cf 15.38), but he does inform us that Nero put the blame on the Christians in order to quench the rumour on his account that kept running. In any case, Nero took advantage of the devastation to construct a splendid new palace for himself and to rebuild the city in impressive and novel ways (15.42f). The account then goes on:22 15.44.1. The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. (…) 2But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the Emperor, and the Tacitus, preface. Ash, Tacitus; the editor’s ‘Introduction’ reviews scholarship on Tacitus ‘pre‑ and post1958’, i. e. before and after the publication of Syme’s Tacitus with its integration of the historical and the literary approaches. Pagán, Companion to Tacitus, ‘Introduction’, emphasizes the ‘meta-historical’ import of Syme’s work (cf H. White), especially in his Roman Revolution. For the ‘new era’ see below at n39. 20 Momigliano, ‘Tacitus and the Tacitist Tradition’, 419. The original title of the essay was: ‘Tacitus and the Discovery of Imperial Tyranny’. 21 Notably Pliny the Elder and Suetonius, see Stern, GLAJJ 2:91f and notes in Wuillemier, Tacite, 165. Without referring to the fire, Josephus, Ant 20:154 vaunts impartiality vis-à-vis the sharp divide between the equally self-serving supporters and denunciators of Nero, but Feldman (LCL) ad loc. cites Momigliano’s observation (which I could not locate) that ‘we do not know the name of even one of those historians who looked favourably upon Nero’. 22 Translation used (with some adaptation): A. J. Church – W. J. Brodribb – S. Bryant, Complete Works of Tacitus, New York, Random, repr 1942, edited for Perseus, online 7 Nov. 2017 at www.perseus.tufts.edu. 18 Ash, 19
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propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations (flagitia),23 called Chrestians (Chrestianos) by the populace. 3Christus, from whom the name had its origin (auctor nominis eius), suffered the extreme penalty (supplicium) during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators,24 Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition (exitiabilis superstitio), thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the origin of this evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. 4Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude (multitudo ingens) was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind (odio humani generis). Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. 5Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment (sontes et novissima exempla meritos), there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.
Christianity had begun to spread in Rome ten or twenty years before the fire. So much appears from Suetonius’ terse comment that Claudius expelled the Jews from the city because of the disturbances they caused ‘at the instigation of Chrestus’ (impulsore Chresto), a measure also reported in Acts 18:2, but without a reason given.25 In Tacitus’ report on the fire, however, Christianity is mentioned without any relation to the Jews, apart from the fact that ‘the origin of this evil’ is Judaea.26 Interestingly, Tacitus remarks that the populace called them Chrestianos,27 revealing both their notoriety in Rome at the time and the form of their name by which they apparently were known.28 The ‘compassion’ 23 Jackson, Tacitus translates ‘vices’ and points out this is a standard accusation against ‘foreign cults’, cf Justin, 1 Apol 1:26.7. Wuillemier, Tacite notes that Tacitus similarly accused the Jews, Hist 5.5. Pliny hesitates about it vis-à-vis Christians, see below. 24 The title procurator used here by Tacitus became usual only after Claudius; Pilate’s correct title was praefectus (Stern, GLAJJ 2: 92f). See on the status of Judaea and its governors esp Eck, Rom und Judäa, 24–36; cf Sherwin-White, Roman Society, 7–12. 25 See Stern’s discussion of the date of the ban, GLAJJ 2: 113–117. 26 Barclay, ‘“Jews” and “Christians”’, establishes that Roman authors in the early second century CE saw Jews and Christians as totally separate categories. Cf M. Stern’s terse comments on the significance of Ann 15.44 (GLAJJ 2: 91): ‘This passage supplies the earliest evidence of the treatment of the Christians as a group to be differentiated by the Roman government from the main body of the Jewish nation, thus requiring measures that would not include the Jews who remained outside the sphere of Christianity.’ 27 See Stern’s text-critical remarks, GLAJJ 2: 92. Syme, Tacitus 2: 469 attributes Tacitus with ‘documentary precision’. 28 See Botermann, Judenedikt, 87–95 on the popular form, cf Freudenberger, Das Verhalten, 181 n46; Horrell, ‘The Label Χριστιανός’. See also Bickerman, ‘The Name of Christians’.
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with their gruesome suffering that Tacitus says arose among the people should not detract us from the fact that he deemed them fully punishable (sontes) as such – though not for the benefit of Nero’s reputation. Momigliano comments: ‘[Tacitus’] notoriously ambiguous account of the persecution of the Christians under Nero, though critical of the emperor, does not question his ultimate right to persecute.’29 The question is why. It is not just because Tacitus considered Christianity a superstitio, because that term was also applied to Judaism and other foreign cults,30 and similarly, the accusation of odium humani generis.31 More likely, it seems that he saw the Christiani as closely associated with the ‘originator of that name’, a Judaean condemned and executed as a criminal at the hands of a Roman magistrate. He may have actually believed the accusation of flagitia, ‘abominations’, strengthened in this by actual condemnations and executions of Christians under Nero.32 Finally, while Flavius Josephus, Tacitus’ Jewish co-citizen, could appeal to ancient privileges acknowledged by the Romans and granting the Jews legal protection, Christianity was a new cult without such protection.33
Pliny, Epistulae 10.96–97: How Romans are to adjudicate Christians Like Tacitus, Pliny the Younger was a member of the Roman elite and a friend of Trajan, who had been acclaimed Emperor in 98 CE. The letter Pliny wrote to Trajan about the Christians in 111 or 113 CE is justly famous as it is the oldest external documentation of the conflict of Christians with Roman authorities and of their customs and beliefs. This very fact may have caused its authenticity to be doubted by many scholars, but unconvincingly so, in view of its coherent chain of ancient attestations and the familiarity of its author with Roman legal procedure and terminology.34 It is preserved in Book Ten of the Epistulae, a 29 Momigliano,
‘Tacitus and the Tacitist Tradition’, 419. Wuillemier, Tacite, 171, citing Tacitus, Ann 13.32.2; Suetonius, Nero 16.2; Pliny Ep 96.8 (see below). Applied to Jews: Tacitus, Hist 5.8.2; Cicero, Flac 67; Quintilian, Inst 3.7.21; Ulpian, Dig 50.2.3.3. On superstitio see below n175. 31 Tacitus, Hist 5.5.1: Jews feel adversos omnes alios hostile odium, see Stern, GLAJJ 2: 93. 32 Sherwin-White, Letters, 781 (see below at n47); idem, Roman Society, 110–112 on Nero’s own limited involvement in capital trials in the city. For the whole issue see Botermann, Judenedikt, chapter 5, involving a critical reading of Tacitus in view of a development in Roman jurisdiction between 64 and 115 CE. 33 Privileges: Josephus, Ant 14:190–267. ‘Novelty’ in Roman eyes was one hurdle for foreign cults to surmount, see Sherwin-White, Roman Society, 79; idem, Letters, 775f. On Tacitus and Pliny in this connection see further Freudenberger, Das Verhalten, 180–189 and Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire, 196–199. 34 Zehnacker–Méthy, Pline 4: 126f. Sherwin-White, Letters, 691f: ‘It is hardly necessary to defend the genuine character of these two letters. … It would need a forger with a more accurate knowledge of Roman procedure and usage in the second century than Tertullian himself.’ 30
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batch of letters that Pliny wrote to the Emperor as his Legate in the province of Pontus and Bithynia, with many of Trajan’s usually brief answers also being provided. The ensemble makes the impression of being an authentic collection of correspondence between two members of the elite, offering a unique glance into the workings of the high Empire.35 10.96. C. PLINIVS TRAIANO IMPERATORI. 1It is my custom, sir, to bring before you everything about which I am in doubt. (…) I have never been present at trials of Christians (cognitionibus de Christianis); for that reason I do not know what what the charge usually is and to what extent it is usually punished. 2I have been in no little uncertainty about whether any distinction should be made between different ages or whether, however young they may be, they should be treated no differently from the more mature ones; whether pardon should be granted for repentance or whether it is of no help to the man who has been a Christian at all to have given it up; whether it is the name itself, if it is free from crimes, or the crimes connected with the name which are being punished (nomen ipsum, si flagitiis careat, an flagitia cohaerentia nomini puniantur)? Meanwhile, in the case of those who were prosecuted before me on the charge of being Christians, I followed this procedure. 3 I asked the people themselves whether they were Christians. Those who admitted that they were I asked a second and a third time, warning them of the punishment; those who persisted I ordered to be executed (duci iussi).36 For I was in no doubt that, whatever it might be that they were admitting to, their stubbornness (pertinaciam) and unyielding obstinacy certainly ought to be punished. 4There were others of a similar madness whom I have listed as due to be sent on to the city, because they were Roman citizens. Subsequently, through the very course of dealing with the matter, as usually happens, the charge spread widely and more forms of it turned up. 5An anonymous pamphlet containing the names of many persons was posted up. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, after they had called upon the gods when I dictated the formula, and after they had made offerings of incense and wine to your statue which I had ordered to be brought in along with the cult-images of the gods for this purpose, and had in addition cursed Christ, none of which acts, it is said, those who are truly Christians can be compelled to perform, I decided should be discharged (dimittendos putavi). 6Others, named by an informer, said that they were Christians and then denied it; they said that they had in fact been Christians but had given it up, some three years before, some more years earlier than that, and a few even twenty years ago. All these also both paid homage to your statue and to the cult-images of the gods and cursed Christ. 7 Moreover they maintained that this had been the sum of their guilt or error, that they had been in the habit of gathering together before dawn on a fixed day (stato die),37 and of singing antiphonally a hymn to Christ as if to a god, and of binding themselves by R. M. Grant was not the least among the sceptics. For the legal terminology of Pliny’s letter and Trajan’s rescript see esp Freudenberger, Das Verhalten. 35 Zehnacker–Méthy, Pline 4: vii–xxii; Sherwin-White, Letters, 525–555. Translation used: Williams, Pliny. See also the lucid translation and division of the letter in Freudenberger, Das Verhalten, 41–50. 36 A technical euphemism meaning ‘executed’: Sherwin-White, Letters, 698; Williams, Pliny, 140. 37 I.e. Sundays, cf Acts 20:7; Did 14:1.
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oath, not to some wickedness, but not to commit acts of theft or robbery or adultery, not to break faith, not to refuse to return money placed in their keeping when called upon to do so. When these ceremonies had been completed, they said it had been their custom to disperse and to meet again to take food, but food that was ordinary and harmless; they said that they had given up doing this even after my edict, in which, in accordance with your instructions, I had banned secret societies (hetaerias).38 8 So I believed it to be all the more necessary to ascertain what the truth was from two slave women, who were called deaconesses (ministrae), and under torture. I found nothing other than a depraved and extravagant superstition (superstitionem pravam et immodicam). 9Accordingly I postponed the hearing and hastened to consult you. (…) 10At any rate it is well established that temples which just now were almost abandoned have begun to be thronged, and customary rites which had long been suspended to be renewed, and the flesh of sacrificial victims, for which until recently very few buyers were to be found, to be sold far and wide. (…) 10.97. TRAIANVS PLINIO. 1You followed the procedure which you ought to have followed, my dear Secundus, in examining the cases of those who were being prosecuted before you as Christians. For no rule with a universal application, such as would have, as it were, a fixed form, can be laid down (neque enim universum aliquid, quod quasi certam formam habeat, constitui potest). 2They should not be sought out; if they are prosecuted and proved to be guilty, they should be punished, provided, however, that the man who denies that he is a Christian and makes this evident by his action, that is by offering prayers to our gods, shall obtain pardon for his repentance, however suspect he may be with regard to the past. However, pamphlets posted up without an author’s name ought to have no place in any criminal charge. For they both set the worst precedent and are not in keeping with the spirit of our age (nec nostri saeculi est).39
Pliny’s basic question was whether Christians were punishable for the mere association with the name of this group (nomen ipsum)40 in view of its presumed flagitia – crimes such as incest, infanticide, and cannibalism attributed in earlier days to superstitiones such as Druids, Magi, and Chaldaeans – or that it was for crimes actually committed.41 His interrogations, partly held under torture, revealed none of the latter but instead informed him of innocuous gatherings and 38 A prohibition of professional clubs issued by Pliny because of unrest; it was not the basis of his approach on Christians. Sherwin-White, Letters, 708, 779f. 39 As distinct from the years of mistrust under Domitian. Cf Syme, Tacitus 1: 217, quoting Trajan’s phrase: ‘With the growth of monarchy each ruler tended to annex the age and call it his own, from the day of his accession.’ 40 Cf 1 Pet 4:15f, εἰ (πασχέτω τις) ὡς Χριστιανός … δοξαζέτω … τὸν θεόν ἐν τῷ ονόματι τούτῳ (Sherwin-White, Letters, 697). See Horrell, ‘The Label Χριστιανός’ on that passage in connection with Pliny. 41 Zehnacker–Méthy, Pline 4; Williams, Pliny, ad loc; Freudenberger, Das Verhalten, 73; cf ibid. 86–91, excursion on ‘Roms Vorgehen gegen die Druiden’, in his opinion the fullest analogy to the prosecution of Christians. Similar flagitia are implied by Tacitus, see above at n32. On superstitio see below n175. The distinction between ‘actual crimes’ or ‘presumed crimes attached to the name of Christian’ may well be behind 1 Pet 4:14–16, see previous note. Reichert, ‘Durchdachte Konfusion’ and Thraede, ‘Noch einmal’ argue that Pliny’s letter aims to solicit imperial approval of his policy to forgive apostate Christians while punishing the obstinate.
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meals on ‘set days’, and inconspicuous, decent behaviour; significantly, there is no hint of any links with Judaism here either. Pliny decided not to prosecute Christians actively and to release42 those who recanted while paying deference to the gods and the Emperor, but to execute those who persisted upon trial.43 The practice, of which Trajan approved, had begun to counter the interest in the new cult and revived the traditional rites, and it quenched popular resentment against Christians. However, it remained unexplainable in the eyes of later Christian apologists.44 To their exasperation, Roman administrators considered being a Christianus somehow a criminal offence.45 Again we ask why. In his commentary on the Epistulae, A. N. Sherwin-White reviews the various theories before proposing his own cautious solution. There is no real evidence of an imperial decree, as has been often supposed, nor was it a matter of total arbitrariness. Given Tacitus’ low view of Christians, however, it seems likely that some of them actually had been condemned under Nero.46 Added to the imputed guilt of incendiarism, this must have been grist to the mill for those in the province who wanted to get rid of obnoxious neighbours or competitors. It is certain that local animosities and social frictions were at play, witness the Bithynian butchers and, half a century earlier, the Ephesian silversmiths (Acts 19:24). It was up to the discretion of the governors, however, to prosecute or not. Pliny, like most of them, did not, most of the time, though sometimes they did. Hence the erratic character of the early persecutions of Christians. Trajan’s answer seems to reflect this: ‘No universal rule with a more or less fixed form can be laid down.’47
42 Dimittendos putavi. Sherwin-White, Letters, 701 and Zehnacker–Méthy, Pline 4: 129 stipulate this did not imply acquittance. Similarly Freudenberger, Das Verhalten, 153f, ‘formlose Freilassung’, ‘aussergerichtlicher Gnadenakt’. 43 Sherwin-White, Letters, 699 and 784f argues that pertinacia or contumacia in face of the governor’s reiterated insistence to comply in itself constituted a reason for condemnation; Freudenberger, Das Verhalten, 99–107 disagrees (referring Sherwin-White’s article in JTS 3 (1952) 199–213, repr in idem, Letters, 772–787). 44 For both inferences, Zehnacker–Méthy, Pline 4: 128, 131 refer to Tertullian, Apol 1–5. 45 Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire, 196–199. Cf Bickerman, ‘Pliny, Trajan, Hadrian and the Christians’, 812f. Emphasising the formal criteria of the proceedings and going with Tertullian, Freudenberger, Das Verhalten, 77–86 concludes that for Pliny (and Trajan) the ground for conviction was in the fictive flagitia cohaerentia nomini (Christiani). 46 The execution of both Peter and Paul under Nero is reported by Eusebius, CH 3.1.1f, quoting Origen; cf Tertullian and further tradition cited, ibid 2.25. On the problems about Paul’s possible trial at Rome see Sherwin-White, Roman Society, 108–119, ‘Paul at Rome’. 47 Sherwin-White, Letters, 696f and 772–787; see also idem, Roman Society, 1–23 on the imperium of the provincial governor, esp 17–19 on Pliny, Ep 96. Cf Botermann, Judenedikt (above n32). Freudenberger, Das Verhalten, 204f stresses forma as a technical term denoting the details of the court procedure.
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Tosefta Hullin 2:18–24, Rabbinic Laws on minim and Stories on Christians The Tosefta is an important rabbinic document and as such part of a complex literature whose genesis in general we shall discuss further below. Most scholars think the work reached its extant form around the mid-third century CE, constituting a companion text to the central rabbinic document, the Mishna. Critical scholarship in this area is based on the pioneering, Hebrew-language volumes of J. N. Epstein (1948, 1957).48 Both Mishna and Tosefta are compilations of halakhic (legal) traditions attributed to named sages along five or six generations, roughly following the same order of subjects. The Tosefta is bigger and less concise, and it often reads as a commentary and supplement to the Mishna, not infrequently presenting older material. The passage we are interested in is about minim. This word is usually translated as ‘heretics’, but we shall discover other connotations. The passage consists of four different sections, most of which also appear separately and in other versions elsewhere in rabbinic works.49 Section B appears only here, and hence this is the only place where all sections appear together. What is more, we shall approach the passage as a coherent literary unit created during the editing process of the Tosefta.50 At this instance we shall focus on the stories contained in sections C and D, saving sections A and B with laws about minim for a later moment. We insert brief explanatory comments in parentheses. A 2:18One who slaughters in the name of the sun, the moon, the stars (…) this is meat of sacrifices to the dead. 19One does not slaughter (and shed the blood) into the sea, nor into a river (because it looks like idolatry). (…) On a ship, one slaughters into a bowl of water … (…) If one does not want to soil one’s house, one slaughters into a bowl or into a hole. On the market one is not to do so, for then he would follow the conventions of the minim; if he has done so, he is to be examined. 20Meat found in the hands of a non-Jew is permitted for gain; if in the hands of a min, it is prohibited for gain; if coming from a house of idolatry – this is meat of sacrifices to the dead. 48 Epstein, Nosah and Prolegomena. Important commentaries are by Albeck, Mishna, and Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah. See introductions by Stemberger, Einleitung, 113–166; Goldberg, ‘The Mishna’ and ‘The Tosefta’. Friedman, in the introduction to his Tosefta atiqta, building on Epstein and Lieberman, advances the convincing hypothesis that the Tosefta contains materials R. Yehuda ha-Nasi used in editing the Mishna, implying also that the Mishna was meant as an authoritative compendium. 49 A runs in parallel to mHul 2:7–9. Parallels of C are found in yAZ 2:2 (40d–41a) and bAZ 27b. Parallels of D in bAZ 16b; KohR 1.3; MidrGad Deut 23:19 (ed Fisch p528); YalShim Micah no. 551. 50 Cf the redaction-critical approach on Tannaic literature proposed by Zohar, Besod hayetsira shel sifrut Hazal. Closest to an integrated approach on the passage is Schremer, ‘Seclusion and Exclusion’; idem, ‘Beyond Naming’; idem, Brothers Estranged. For comments on sections C and D see Schwartz–Tomson, ‘When R. Eliezer was Arrested’; Cohen, ‘The Ways That Parted’, 324–329; Boyarin, Dying for God, 26–41; Murcia, Jésus dans le Talmud, 99–203; Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud, 41–62.
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B For they (the sages) have said: slaughter by a min is like idolatry, their bread is like bread of Samaritans, their wine is like (idolatrous) libation wine, their produce is like untithed produce, their books are like (forbidden) books of magic, their children are like mamzerim (bastards not admissible to the congregation). 21One does not sell to them, one does not buy from them, one does not deal with them,51 one does not teach their sons a craft, one does not get healed by them, neither a healing of one’s property (livestock) nor of one’s person. C 22It happened that R. Elazar ben Dama was bitten by a snake and Yaakov from Kfar Sama came to heal him in the name of Yeshu ben Pandera.52 But R. Yishmael did not allow him. They said to him: You are not allowed, ben Dama! He said to him: I shall bring you proof that he may heal me. But he did not manage to bring the proof before he died. 23Said R. Yishmael: Happy are you, ben Dama, for you have departed in peace and you did not breach the decree ( )גזירןof the sages. For whoever breaches the hedge ( )גדירןof the sages, calamity will befall him, as it is said: ‘He who breaches the hedge, a snake may bite him’ (Eccl 10:8). D 24It happened that R. Eliezer was arrested on account of minut ()על דברי מינות, and they brought him up to the bema to be tried. The hegemon asked him: Should an elder like you engage in those things? He said to him: a trustworthy Judge oversees me. The hegemon thought that he only meant him, although he meant only his Father in heaven, and he said to him: Now that I have gained your confidence – I also said to myself, would these grey hairs53 err in those matters!? Dimos (dimissus),54 you are released. But when he was released from the bema, he was distressed that he had been arrested on matters of minut. His disciples came to console him, but he refused to accept this. R. Akiva came and said to him: Rabbi, may I say something to you, that you will not be distressed? He said: Speak. He said to him: Perhaps did one of the minim tell you a teaching of minut that pleased you? He said to him: By Heaven, you reminded me! Once I was strolling on the street of Sepphoris when I met Yaakov from Kfar Sakhnin who told me a teaching of minut in the name of Yeshu ben Pandera, and it pleased me. And I was arrested on account of minut, for I transgressed the teachings of the Tora: ‘Keep your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house’ (Prov 5:8). For R. Eliezer used to teach: One should flee from what is ugly and from what appears to be ugly.
The stories C and D both involve a disciple named Yaakov, one said to be from Kfar Sakhnin ()כפר סכנין, a village in Galilee, and the other from Kfar Sama (כפר )סמא. In the Babylonian versions of section C, which are leading for many commentators, this is the same Yaakov from Kfar Sakhnin.55 However, both in the Tosefta and the Palestinian Talmud it is Kfar Sama, a location whose identity is 51 Thus Lieberman’s understanding, Tosefeth Rishonim 2: 227, on the basis of ancient versions; and cf mAZ 1:1; 2:3. Pace Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 72 and 186f n17, and Katz, ‘Issues in the Separation’, 52 (in n38 Katz says he follows J. Neusner’s translation). 52 Ed princ here and in section D: ;ישו בן פנדיראyAZ 2:2 (41a) ;ישו בן פנדראsee Lieberman, Tosefeth Rishonim 2: 227. Ms Erfurt (Zuckermandel) ישוע בן פנטירא \ פנטירי. 53 Defective spelling, שהסיבו הללו, read שהסיבות [שהשיבות] הללוwith Lieberman, Tosefeth Rishonim 2: 227; idem, ‘Roman Legal Institutions’, 20, cf Hasdei David on the ed princ. Pace Schäfer, Jesus, 43f and Freudenberger, ‘Die delatio nominis causa’, 14f. 54 Cf Pliny, Ep 96.5, dimittendos, above n42. 55 bAZ 27a and KohR 3.7. Here, not only is this Yaakov also from Kfar Sakhnin (Sakhnaya), but Elazar ben Dama has become R. Yishmael’s nephew – obviously harmonizations.
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uncertain.56 Hence more likely, it concerns a different Yaakov, anyway a common name in those days. What does seem certain is that in both cases, Jesus of Nazareth is involved. Such is the understanding in some parallel versions that give the more recognisable name Yeshu ha-Notsri.57 Also, the patronym Pandera or Pantera assigned to Jesus was known to the Church Fathers, who gave different explanations. Origen had read it in Celsus (mid-second century CE) with the slanderous implication that Jesus was fathered by a Roman soldier called Πανθήρα, while Origen himself thought it is a corruption of ‘son of the Virgin’ (παρθένος). Epiphanius, however, preserved the tradition that it was the Greek name of either Joseph’s or Mary’s father. This explanation is less spectacular but, just so, at least as likely; Panthera was a not uncommon name either.58 The story in section C is simple and straightforward. Elazar ben Dama wants to get healed from his snake bite by Yaakov, a disciple of Jesus, but Rabbi Yishmael does not allow him because this has been forbidden by the sages.59 By contrast, the narrative in D shows an interesting complexity. Worrying about the interrogation after his release, R. Eliezer is reminded of an earlier event, and a story unfolds within the story. The encounter with Yaakov from Kfar Sakhnin purports to bring the reader to the late first century, when – thus the narrative – sages could still have relations with Christians.60 Moreover, as Rudolf Freudenberger stresses, the story not only involves legal terminology reminiscent of Pliny’s letter, but a similar situation: R. Eliezer is tried not for actual crimes (cf 56 yAZ 2:2 (41a) and tHul 2:23. Ze’ev Safrai kindly informs me that the location of Kfar Sama is basically unknown, although there could be a link with the village near Acco in tGit 1:3 whose name is spelled variously סאסאי\ סיסאי\ סמיי\ סמי\ ססי, see Lieberman, Tosefta kifshutah 8: 783f. Cf Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 200 n4; Boyarin, Dying for God, 159 n59; Kimelman, ‘Birkat ha-Minim’, 232, 241; Murcia, Jésus dans la Talmud, 109f. 57 bAZ 17a according to ms Munich, ms Paris 1337, and ms JTS 44830; MidrGad Deut 23:19 (ed Fisch p528): ישו הנוצרי. See also n53 above. Kimelman, ‘Birkat ha-Minim’, 395 n46 holds this is a Babylonian tradition, but at 400 n91 seems to suggest that it concerns the plene form, נוצריinstead of נצרי. 58 See Strack, Jesus, die Häretiker und die Christen, 10f, citing Origen, Cels 1.28, 32f, 69; Eusebius, Eclogae proph 3.10 (Hos 5:14; 13:17) (= ed T. Gaisford, Oxford 1842, p111 l. 24); Epiphanius, Haer 78.7. Strack ibid. (cf 21 n1) cites the likely inference of Th. Zahn that had Epiphanius known Origen’s explanation, he could not so innocently have given his own unpolemical one; it would ‘more than likely’ derive from Hegesippus. Cf also Boyarin, Dying for God, 154f n27. Extensive treatment of both stories in a sceptical mindset is offered by Maier, Jesus von Nazareth, 130–316, concluding that Jesus of Nazareth is not involved. 59 The Talmuds ask the obvious question what purpose the Ecclesiastes quote serves, since ben Dama was already bitten by the snake while he had not yet breached the fence of the sages. The answer that it concerns his salvation in the world to come obscures the primary implication that R. Yishmael actually condemned ben Dama’s intention to get healed by Jesus’ disciple. 60 Cf Cohen, ‘The Ways That Parted’, 326f. Cohen’s verdict ibid. n27 about the ‘confusion of narrative truth with historical truth’ in Schwartz–Tomson, ‘When R. Eliezer was Arrested’ is somewhat meagre. The narrative portrayal of the meeting between Eliezer and Yaakov implies at least that third century rabbis found such encounters in the old days plausible. Within the narrative, the point is made in Akiva’s clause.
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flagitia), but for his alleged ‘nominal’ association with Christianity.61 The Tosefta does not transmit the content of Jesus’ teaching, but the later (Babylonian) versions do.62 It concerns a spicy midrash that tends to offend tastes ancient and modern, while it is reminiscent of a teaching the Synoptic tradition attributes to Jesus.63 Read in the extant context of the Tosefta, the point about both stories is that Christians are in the category of minim and relations with them in the sense of getting healed in Jesus’ name or involved with his teachings are proscribed as per ‘the decree of the sages’ or ‘the teachings of the Tora’.64
The Gospel of John: The ‘Pharisees’ or ‘Jews’ excommunicate Christians The Fourth Gospel is a complex text which reflects an extended development arguably involving both oral and written processes of transmission and editing. It contains striking inconsistencies and aporiae.65 In view of the evidence of the closely related Johannine letters many scholars assume the protracted input of a ‘Johannine school’.66 Similarities with passages in Mark suggest that the authors knew at least that earliest of Gospels and were responding to it.67 Also, certain features of the text seem to reflect developments of the ‘Johannine community’.68 A case in point is the unusually frequent use of the name Ioudaioi, even where this is redundant or contradictory, and unevenly distributed, thus 61 Freudenberger, ‘Die delatio nominis causa’, building on Lieberman, ‘Roman Legal Institutions’. 62 Bavli; KohR; MidrGad (seemingly combining the Bavli version mentioning ישו הנוצריwith the Tosefta version involving ;)ישו בן פנטיריYalShim; see n49 above. Cf Schwartz–Tomson, ‘When R. Eliezer was Arrested’, 12f, 17. 63 Cf comments by Kalmin, ‘Christians and Heretics’, 158 as contrasted with Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, 43. Klausner notes similarities with Mark 7:15–19 (Matt 15:11, 17), on which see Tomson, ‘Jewish Purity Laws’. The midrash seems to allude to a halakha involving אתנן זונה attributed to R. Eliezer in mPara 2:3 and tPara 2:2, while its core, aligning Deut 23:19 with Micah 1:7, is cited only in the name of Yeshu ha-Notsri/ben Pantiri. 64 Cf Schremer, Brothers Estranged, chapters 3 and 4. 65 Cf the double ending, 20:30f and 21:24f; the mention of Peter’s death, 21:19; the table discourse in 15–17 continuing after the appeal to depart, 14:31; the geographical jumps between John 4, 5 and 6; and the prologue (1:1–18) with the unique terminology of the λόγος (cf Brown, John 1: 19). Cf De Boer, next footnote. 66 Cf surveys in Brown, John 1: xxi–xl; idem, Introduction, 362–382; Vielhauer, Geschichte, 410–484 (481, ‘der johanneische Kreis’); Ashton, Understanding, 3–111; Fortna–Thatcher, Jesus in Johannine Tradition, 1–9. See De Boer, ‘The Original Prologue’ for an original take on the ‘prologue’ and a nutshell introduction to the Gospel. 67 Compare John 5:8 on Mark 2:9, John 12:3 on Mark 14:3, John 12:1 on Mark 14:1 (in this volume, p247f). Cf Bauckham, ‘John for Readers of Mark’. 68 See esp Brown, Community, and Martyn, ‘Glimpses into the History of the Johannine Community’, in idem, History and Theology, 145–167. Bauckham, ‘For Whom were the Gospels Written’ 19, 45 rejects the concept ‘Johannine community’.
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creating what has been called a ‘patchwork gospel’.69 Avoiding anachronism was not a concern of the authors or editors, who preferred eternal truths to punctuate the narrative.70 Numerous asides interrupt the story, which plausibly have come late in the composition history. Another feature are the double meanings which readers are expected to see through, unlike Jesus’ disciples and opponents.71 The ‘two-level dramatics’ is understandable in this light. We are interested in three fragments that are linked together by a unique terminology. Two of these are editorial asides and in their poignancy seem to reflect recent events witnessed by the editors. After each fragment we shall pause for comments. The first fragment is from the chapter on the blind man who was healed by Jesus by applying a paste of mud and saliva and then sending him to the pool of Siloam to wash. The bystanders do not know Jesus nor how he has healed the man. John 9:13–41. 13They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14 Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see. 16Some of the Pharisees said, This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath. But others said, How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs? And they were divided. 17So they said again to the blind man, What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened. He said, He is a prophet. 18 The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19and asked them, Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see? 20His parents answered, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself. 22His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed him (Jesus) to be the Messiah would be put out of the community. 23Therefore his parents said, He is of age; ask him. (…) 35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out (ἐξέβαλον αὐτόν), and when he found him, he said, Do you believe in the Son of Man? 36He answered, And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him. 37Jesus said to him, You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he. 38He said, Lord, I believe. And he paid him homage. 39Jesus said, I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind. 40Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, Surely we are not blind, are we? 41Jesus said to them, If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, We see, your sin remains.
The passage we are most interested in is v22f. It clearly stands out from the narrative as an editorial comment. We pick out the important points. 69 White, The Identity and Function of the Jews. Re. contradiction cf Brown, Community, 41; Vielhauer, Geschichte, 431f. See also in this volume, 178 n141. 70 See the ‘proleptic’ remarks John 1:15, with 1:30; 11:2 with 12:3. 71 See Brown, John 1: cxxxv–cxxxvi on misunderstanding, irony, and asides (no less than 59!).
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First, this is one of two healing stories in John (out of a total of three) in which the narrator comments, ‘Now it was Sabbath on the day …’ (John 5:9; 9:14).72 Both stories also mention Jesus’ need to ‘work’ (ἐργάζεσθαι) on that very day (5:17, 20; 9:4). Unlike the other story, however, in this one he prepares what in those days passed for a medication. This was forbidden by all Jewish standards and is reported in none of the other Gospels. Its attribution to Jesus is hardly authentic. For one thing, it contradicts Jesus’ own exegetical argument about the Sabbath preserved in the same Gospel at 7:22f.73 Clearly, this passage reflects some decisive development. Second, v39 alludes to Isa 6:9f, a verse about ‘looking without seeing’ that is formally quoted in our next fragment (John 12:40) and that the narrator links with the key word ‘believing’ (9:35f; 12:39, 42). An element that will return in the next fragment is the ‘sin’ of the Pharisees who falsely pretend to be ‘seeing’. Third, there is this shifting identity of the opponents. In 9:13, the ‘Pharisees’ ask the man how he was healed. When his answer brings disagreement, he says Jesus is a prophet. Now (9:18), ‘the Jews’ step in; they do not believe the man and ask his parents. These are afraid to answer, which occasions the editor’s explanation. Then at the end, Jesus and the healed man are again dealing with ‘the Pharisees’. We are nowhere made to understand that ‘the Jews’ are different authorities than ‘the Pharisees’. Rather, the suggestion is that ‘the Jews’ is a more poignant designation for ‘the Pharisees’ and that what ‘the Jews had decided’ is actually a decree of the Pharisees.74 This will be confirmed in the next fragment. Fourth, the editor informs us that the blind man’s parents were ‘afraid of the Jews’ (ἐφοβοῦντο τοὺς ᾿Ιουδαίους). These strongly laden words resonate a further three times in the set phrase that explains a particular behaviour of Jesus’ followers ‘out of fear of the Jews’ (διὰ τὸν φόβον τῶν ᾿Ιουδαίων, 7:13; 19:38: 20:19), each time in an editorial aside.75 Fifth, ‘the Jews had already agreed’ or ‘decided’ (ἤδη συνετέθειντο).76 The pluperfect, describing an action over and done with, expresses that a cut and dried decision was thought to be in place.77 With obvious anachronism, the deci72 Kloppenborg, ‘Disaffiliation’ reads this as though it were an ‘afterthought’ and considers it a secondary reason for the excommunication decree. 73 See ‘An Alienated Jewish Tradition in John 7:22f’, in this volume. 74 Above in this volume, 178f. Bernier, Aposynagôgos, 71 displays a synchronic one-level reading in thinking that ‘starting at v. 18, it is not just the Pharisees … but a broader coalition of individuals’. 75 Cf Brown, John 1: 380, ‘In the parenthetical vss. 22–23 we seem to have the final development of the apologetic use of this Johannine story. These verses may well represent the hand of an editor bringing the story up to date, for they are somewhat intrusive into the narrative.’ 76 See DBAG s. v. συντίθημι, nos. 2 and 3. 77 This aspect is more compelling than the parallel, in itself not unlikely, of συντίθημι with תקן, ‘decree’, cf Martyn, History and Theology, 57f. The verbal modifier ἤδη (ibid. 47) only enhances the pluperfect.
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sion is implied to have been taken some time ago, since it serves to explain why the parents are ‘afraid of the Jews’.78 Sixth, the decision makes followers of Jesus ἀποσυνάγωγοι, ‘put out of the community’. This is a most remarkable compound noun, found almost exclusively in writings that are dependent on John and refer to the Jewish excommunication of Christians. However, it is hard to imagine that the Johannine evangelists have coined such a phrase. Indeed, John Kloppenborg has unearthed some extremely interesting inner-Christian patristic occurrences that open the possibility of a Graeco-Jewish origin.79 In any case, in line with the meaning of συναγωγή as ‘community centre’, the word means ‘excommunicated’,80 rather than just ‘put out of the synagogue’, as is usually translated. It targets those who ‘confess Jesus to be the Messiah’ (αὐτὸν ὁμολογήσῃ χριστόν), or in terminology already used at that time in other texts, ‘Christians’.81 The above leads to the conclusion that according to the Fourth Gospel ‘the Pharisees’, also known as ‘the Jews’, reject Jesus’ authority as a prophet because he repeatedly violates the Sabbath. The performance of his miraculous healing on the Sabbath makes him a false prophet. His followers are to be excommunicated for that very reason, apparently regardless of whether they themselves observe the Sabbath or not.82 We are reminded of R. Yishmael’s adamant rejection of Elazar ben Dama’s wish to get healed by a follower of Jesus. The second fragment concludes the ‘Bethany cycle’ in John 11–12, which features Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. It is located just before Jesus’ passion and functions as a summary of his public ministry. John 12:37–43. 37Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they (the crowd) did not believe in him. 38This was to fulfill the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah: ‘Lord, who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’ (Isa 53:1). 39And so they could not believe, because Isaiah also said, 40‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, so that they might not look with their eyes, and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them’ (Isa 6:9f). 41Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke about him. 42Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, lest they be put out of the community; 43for they loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God.
78 Martyn ibid. 47 draws attention to 9:28 where the discipleship of ‘Moses’ and ‘Jesus’ are well-established rival positions. Cf the finale of the Prologue, 1:17. The implication is that violation of the Sabbath is incompatible with discipleship of Moses. 79 Kloppenborg, ‘Disaffiliation’, quoting MM no. 656: ‘This is … just the sort of word that would have to be coined for use in the Jewish community,’ and citing to Origen, Fragm in Cor 18 and Const Apost 2.43, 3.8, 4.8, all referring to excommunicated fellow-Christian sinners. 80 See DBAG s. v.; Cohen, ‘Were Pharisees and Rabbis the Leaders’, 275f. 81 Earliest mentions: 1 Pet 4:16; Acts 11:26; 26:28. See below n91. 82 Cf Kloppenborg, ‘Disaffiliation’, see above n13.
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Remarkably, ‘the Jews’ are absent as main actors. What is more, in the Bethany cycle ‘the Jews’ have a comparatively sympathetic role,83 thus contributing to the ‘patchwork’ character of the Gospel. Just so, the placement of these chapters is awkward, as it implies that the Lazarus story was the chief cause for Jesus’ execution. In view of these features, Brown has surmised that John 11–12 derives from a ‘collection of Johannine material’ from which the ‘redactor’ drew at a later stage in the editing process.84 The quotation of Isa 6:9f draws the attention. The verse has a central function in the synoptic tradition in connection with the profound dispute that encircles Jesus from the start.85 It is an extensive quote and is preceded by another one, and both are formally introduced: ‘This was to fulfill the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah’, and, ‘Isaiah also said’. As compared with the synoptic Gospels, such extensive and formalised scriptural quotations are rather rare in John.86 Along with further formal quotations in 11:13–15, this adds to the special character of the two chapters. Another remarkable element is the mention of the many ‘signs’ (σημεῖα) Jesus has done. This typically Johannine term could have been basic to an early version of (part of) the Gospel, since after the mention of an ‘initial’ and a ‘second’ sign (2:11; 4:54), the numbering breaks off. The term is associated with faith in Jesus and in that quality it occurs in the retrospective first conclusion of the Gospel (20:30). Our second fragment has a similar summarising function at the conclusion of the first main part of the Gospel.87 In view of these features, it is significant that the threat of excommunication comes from ‘the Pharisees’. The reference clearly is to the same situation as in 9:22: excommunication of those who ‘confessed’ (ὡμολόγουν) that they believed in him (ἐπίστευσαν εἰς αυτόν). In these chapters, for some reason – maybe the one suggested by Brown – we do not find the blanket indication ‘the Jews’, and Jesus’ adversaries are ‘the Pharisees’, sometimes along with the upper priests (John 11:47, 57). Yet someone, the final editor at the latest, made the reference to the decree also mentioned in 9:22. This confirms that it was in fact understood as a decree issued by the ‘Pharisees’, the opponents actually figuring at the beginning and the end of the previous fragment, while at another occasion
83 The exception is John 11:8, where the ‘Jews’ want to kill Jesus (or is it ‘Judeans’ in this case? See 11:7 and above, ‘Reconsideration’, at 218f). 84 Brown, John 1: xxxvii. 85 Mark 4:12; Matt 13:14f; Luke 8:10; Acts 28:26f. 86 Brown, John 1: lix. On the quotations in John 12:37–40 see Evans, ‘Quotation Formulas’, esp 81f. Cf review of discussion of formal scriptural quotations in Sheridan, Retelling Scripture, 12–37; ibid. 232f the peculiar character of John 12:37–42 and its scriptural quotations is noted. 87 Brown, John 1: cxxxviii–cxxxix. Cf Evans (preceding n).
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these were polemically identified as ‘the Jews’.88 The upshot is that ‘the Jews’ were inserted into the crucial passage, 9:18–23, during a final stage of editing. John 15:20–16:4. 20Remember the word that I said to you, Servants are not greater than their master.89 If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. 21But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. 22If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. (…) 24If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. 25It was to fulfill the word that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause. (…) 16:1I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. 2They will put you out of the community. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. 3And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. 4But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.
The third fragment is part of the long farewell discourse in John 14–17 that Jesus gives at the occasion of the last supper. The ‘abortive ending’ in 14:31 (‘Rise, let us be on our way’) shows that chapters 15–17 were added during the process of editing. The recurrent phrase in the perfect tense, ‘I have said these things to you so that …’ (ταῦτα λελάληκα ὑμῖν ἵνα, 15:11; 16:1, 4, 33) makes explicit that this is being added after all the other things narrated. As also expressed in the repeated phrase, ‘remember … that you may remember …’, it conveys a concluding retrospect seen from a future standpoint. There is no mention of ‘the Jews’ here either, which may be taken to reflect the intimate narrative setting at the meal or, alternatively, a later situation in which the editors already had the fiercest conflict behind them.90 Still, striking phrases like ‘the world hates you’ and ‘the word written in their law’ signal distance and fear vis-à-vis the Jews. The ‘seeing blindness’ which is the ‘sin’ of the Pharisees was mentioned already in 9:40f, triggered by the allusion to Isa 6:9f. The reference to those who ‘will put you out of the community’ has our main attention. It links up with the other two places where the phrase occurs, both of which are editorial comments. Put in Jesus’ mouth, it sounds even more anachro nistic than in 9:22. However, this only means that the editors are more overtly 88 Pace Meeks, ‘Breaking away’, 119 (Pharisees ‘a conventional group’), Kimelman, ‘Birkat ha-Minim’, 234 (‘derogatory reference to local leadership’), and Kloppenborg, ‘Disaffiliation’ (prominence of Pharisees figment of John’s ‘anti-language’). Rather, in the extant edited text, ‘the Jews’ are the default enemies, with the ‘Pharisees’ mentioned more erratically. See Culpepper, ‘Matthew and John’, 212, and cf p178f in this volume. Incidentally, as hinted at by Koester, ‘John as a Source for First-Century Judaism’, 61, the identification of the Pharisees as ‘the Jews’ is unlikely in an early first-century setting and rather seems to reflect the prominence of the Pharisees by the turn of the century. 89 A cross reference to John 13:16, ‘Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them’ – from to the synoptic tradition, Luke 6:40; Matt 10:24. 90 As in the Johannine letters, cf Brown, Community, 97.
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present. They have witnessed traumatising situations, and some of them may have been ‘killed’.91 The claim that their adversaries are doing this ‘on account of my name’ reminds us of the phrase in Pliny’s letter, but we are ignorant of the circumstances.92
Conclusion Tacitus, supplemented by Suetonius and Acts, attests that Christians had been on the radar of the Roman government since the 50s CE. Together with Pliny’s testimony and Trajan’s endorsement, the implication is that by 100 CE they were viewed as punishable in principle since the ‘name’ of their novel superstitio was linked to the Judaean ‘Christus’ who had been condemned and executed by Pilate. For Romans, this had nothing to do with the Jews, who in spite of the revolt against Rome of 66–70 CE and its aftermath retained the legal protection of their ancient privileges. The Tosefta for its part brings two stories of rabbis who interacted with disciples of Jesus ending in a condemnation of any such contacts. According to the editors, Jews should refrain from getting themselves healed or dealing with teachings in the name of Jesus. The intention clearly is that followers of Jesus, like their master, are minim. However, although the stories involve rabbis of the age of Trajan, Tacitus, and Pliny, they are not as such acceptable as historical evidence because of the uncertities of transmission in rabbinic literature. At this point the ‘two level drama’ of the Gospel of John provides decisive evidence. Its editors attest that ‘the Jews’, more precisely ‘the Pharisees’, have excommunicated the followers of Jesus because he heals with medicines prepared on the Sabbath and hence is a false prophet. The fact that this does not square with other information about Jesus’ conduct does not matter here. What matters is that the editors register that those who believe in Jesus are excommunicated. The date at which they do so, many scholars presume, is 100 to 110 CE. This means that the Johannine editors attribute the Pharisees with the position the Tosefta ascribes to rabbis belonging to the very period of those editors. In plain words: John confirms the information of the Tosefta to the effect that in the early second century, the Pharisees/rabbis excommunicated the Christians as minim.93 The question as to how this conclusion from John and the Tosefta relates to the contemporaneous information from Tacitus and Pliny will occupy us later. Cf reflections by Brown, John 2: 690–692 (Note). John 15:21, διὰ τὸ ὀνομά μου, cf 1 Pet 14:6, above n80. 93 Kimelman, ‘Birkat ha-Minim’, 234 finds it ‘hard to believe’ that ‘only one Christian document’ would attest to such an important decision (the argument being about the institution of the birkat ha-minim). The point is that, if I am correct, the evidence in John and the Tosefta converges. 91 92
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Means of Censure and Excommunication We must now address our second, more specific question: what means of excommunication were available to Jewish leaders around 100 CE? More precisely, by what means could the Pharisees or rabbis have put Christians ‘out of the community’? It is useful to begin by reviewing the answers given by some older works of reference. Heinrich Graetz’s position on the matter was printed without change throughout the four editions of his Geschichte der Juden (1853–1910).94 He concluded that although the formal decree of excommunication of the ‘Minäer’ by ‘das jamnesische Synhedrion’ is not extant, its existence appears from two measures. Firstly, the sages proscribed their meat, bread, and wine, as also their books and any services received from them, notably healing. For documentation Graetz referred to Tosefta Hullin, the passage we have briefly reviewed already and which deserves more of our attention below.95 Secondly, Graetz also assumed that the birkat ha-minim was added to the Eighteen Benedictions as a ‘thought detector’ (Gesinnungsprüfung) to unmask Jewish Christians, the actual targets of the decree. Graetz assumed that both measures were supervised by Gamliel the Younger. In curious contrast to Graetz’s first explanation, the subsidiary theory of the birkat ha-minim had a wide and lasting appeal. It reappeared in Travers Herford’s Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (1903)96 and Ismar Elbogen’s Der jüdische Gottesdienst (1913/1931),97 and from there spread further through influential works such as those of James Parkes, Kenneth Carroll, Marcel Simon, and William Davies.98 Something similar happened with Paul Billerbeck’s excursus, ‘Der Synagogenbann’ (1928).99 Its title, alluding to John 9:22, is misleading, and so is its structure, as without any explanation, it gives extensive material on yet another topic, the rabbinic ban (niddui and related terms), only to add in a ‘concluding remark’ that all that is irrelevant for John 16:2 (and 9:22; 12:42). For it was not by ‘synagogue ban’ that the Christians were excommunicated – thus Billerbeck’s negative conclusion – but by ‘expulsion (Ausstossung) from the synagogue’ Graetz, Geschichte 4.1, Leipzig 1910, 95–97 = Berlin 1853, 114–116. ibid. 95 n1: tHul 2; bAZ 17a, 27b; Justin, Dial 38; bHul 13a–b. 96 Herford, Christianity: the birkat ha-minim is one of the ‘detective formulae’ (387) marking ‘the official condemnation of the Minim by the Rabbis’ and ‘the official breach between the synagogue and the Minim’ (126, 128). 97 Elbogen, Der jüdische Gottesdienst, 36–39 (without mentioning Graetz): ‘Die Bitte um die Vernichtung der Minäer’ aimed ‘die Vorbeter auf die Probe zu stellen’, as ‘eines der Mittel zur völligen Scheidung der beiden Religionen’ (original emphases). 98 Parkes, Conflict, 78f (Herford); Carroll, ‘Fourth Gospel’ (Herford); Simon, Verus Israel, 235 (Elbogen); Davies, Setting, 275–277 (Elbogen). 99 Str-Bill 4.1: 293–333 (on Strack’s contribution to the work see preface to the volume). As usual, Billerbeck gives no bibliography and the link with Graetz is unclear. 94
95 Graetz
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through proscription of all personal and social relations, as formulated in Tosefta Hullin and elsewhere. Both Louis Martyn and Wolfgang Schrage (in the influential TDNT article) took due notice of Billerbeck’s negative conclusion, but overlooked the positive ‘afterword’. Instead, using a narrower understanding of συναγωγή, they came up with the explanation of John 9:22 by means of the birkat ha-minim.100 The theme of ‘community discipline’ is also briefly touched on in the new Schürer. Noting the rather severe disciplinary procedures practised in Qumran and early Christianity, John 9:22 and related passages are taken to reflect the existence of an orderly procedure exercised by mainstream Jewish sages. A rather unclear discussion follows on niddui and anathema. ‘Actual anathematization’ must underly the patristic claim that Jews cursed Christians in their prayers.101 Three doctoral dissertations written by Claus-Hunno Hunzinger (1954), James Mignard (1966), and Göran Forkman (1972) have tried to clarify disciplinary procedures operative in ancient Judaism and Christianity. Chronologically ordering the rabbinic texts adduced by Billerbeck and incorporating Qumranic and early Christian materials, they provide useful surveys of procedures in the Qumranic, early Christian, and rabbinic communities, while, like Billerbeck, paying main attention to the rabbinic niddui. As possible means for the rabbis to excommunicate Christians, they all perceive only the birkat ha-minim.102 Again, Billerbeck’s actual explanation of the means by which Christians were excommunicated, agreeing with Graetz’s first answer, has managed to outwit scholars. Without reference to the excommunication of Christians, Gideon Leibson published a series of studies linked with his doctorate at Hebrew University focussing on the character and function of the ban (niddui) in rabbinic circles (1975–1980). As we shall review later, a decisive advance in scholarship is Leibson’s systematic distinction both between Tannaic and Amoraic and between Palestinian and Babylonian traditions and terminologies.103
100 Str-Bill 4.1: 329–333. See Martyn, History and Theology, 51–66 (citing Carroll among others); Schrage, art. ἀποσυνάγωγος (citing Herford and Carroll, though also quoting tHul 2:21 without really noting its import). 101 Schürer, History 2: 431–433, 462f. 102 Hunzinger, Bannpraxis, 68–74 (herem is a later Babylonian equivalent of niddui; birkat ha-minim in an appendix, following Herford, K. G. Kuhn et al.); cf idem, art. ‘Bann’, and ‘Spuren pharisäischer Institutionen’. Mignard, Cultic Discipline, 106–131 (113f, Babylonian shammata equivalent to Palestinian niddui; 113 n1, expulsion by birkat ha-minim following Carroll, ‘Fourth Gospel’; 114 n1, knows only review of Hunzinger in ThLZ 80, 1955). Forkman, Limits, 89–98 (89f, havura laws; 91f, 105f, expulsion by birkat ha-minim following Davies; 92, knows both Mignard and Hunzinger). 103 Leibson, ‘The Ban and Those under It’, and ‘Determining Factors in Herem and Niddui’ (on the Tannaic and Amoraic periods); ‘The Use of “Gezerta”’ (on the Gaonic and Medieval periods). I did not succeed in getting hold of Leibson’s HU dissertation, גזירתא וחרם בתקופת ( הגאונים ובראשית ימי הביניים1980). My thanks to Ze’ev Safrai for referring me to Leibson’s work.
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Let us now undertake a fresh review of the various means for disciplining or excluding group members available in ancient Judaism and earliest Christianity and evaluate their use for explaining the Jewish excommunication of Christians documented in the Fourth Gospel.
Qumran As set forth in earlier publications,104 the community envisaged in the Qumran documents is equipped with elaborate mechanisms structuring the degree of participation of its members. Especially the work fittingly dubbed ‘Manual of Discipline’ describes an ‘ideal community’ whose members are admitted via a stratified procedure, are punished with temporary exclusion for a period corresponding to the earnest of the transgression, and are permanently expelled for major offences against the laws of the community. Examples of minor offences are speaking before one’s turn or falling asleep during a meeting, and of graver ones, uttering the name of God, undermining the authority of the community, or deliberately transgressing Tora commandments. These procedures operate through stratified participation in the sacred common food, drink, and possessions.105 The above regulations tally with certain details by which Josephus typifies the Essenes, suggesting a close relationship between the latter and the communities linked with Qumran. The implication is that the other ‘sects’ described by Josephus, Pharisees and Sadducees, had different procedures of admission and censure.106 Such is confirmed in the case of the Pharisees insofar as their tradition is incorporated in rabbinic literature. Indeed, that is a more likely place for us to look, given our conclusion that the excommunication of Christians was initiated by the Pharisees/rabbis.
Early Christian groups Early Christian communities developed their own procedures for censuring members,107 doubtlessly taking inspiration from appropriate Jewish and Graeco-
Mignard, Cultic Discipline, 61–94; Forkman, Limits, 39–86; Schürer, History 2: 432f. 1QS 6:8–7:27; 8:20–9:2. On these procedures see Licht, Rule Scroll, 143–166, 186–189. The lighter offenses are reminiscent of the Greek association rules cited by Kloppenborg, below n107. 106 On Qumran and Josephus’ Essenes see Licht, previous note. See further Flusser, ‘Pharisäer, Sadduzäer und Essener’; Sussman, ‘History of the Halakhah’. 107 Mignard, Cultic Discipline, chapters 5–6; Forkman, Limits, chapter 4. 104 105
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Roman conventions.108 The oldest evidence is provided in the denunciation of an incest case in Paul’s First Letter to Corinth. The apostle, ‘absent in body’ but ‘present in spirit’, strongly condemns the culprit and urges that the assembled community ‘hand this man over to Satan’, concluding with the classic phrase from Deuteronomy, ‘Drive the wicked one from among you’ (1 Cor 5:1–13).109 Both apocalyptic-theurgic and Graeco-Roman legal terminologies are involved in what could be meant either as a temporary or a definitive expulsion.110 The measures available in such procedures include μὴ συναναμίγνυσθαι, ‘not to associate’, and μὴ συνεσθίειν, ‘not to eat together’ (1 Cor 5:9, 11). Further early Christian evidence is found in Matt 18:15–17(18), a passage most likely of Jewish-Christian background known in New Testament scholarship as a ‘community rule’, alluding to its Qumran namesake.111 It involves a graded procedure, ascending from a reproof in private, via a reprimand in the presence of ‘one or two’ witnesses, to a formal session before the congregation, in the extreme case including expulsion of the unrepentant sinner. Significantly, appeal is also made to a Deuteronomic verse closely related to the one Paul cites in 1 Cor 5:13: ‘the word of two or three witnesses determines every case’.112 Moreover Paul himself quotes that verse in 2 Cor 13:1 when alluding to his projected ‘third’ visit to Corinth, using the same language as in 1 Cor 5 in announcing that although now ‘absent’, he will pass judgment, once ‘present’, on ‘those who sinned before’. The various similarities with 1 Cor 5 and Matt 18 confirm that a common Jewish-Christian tradition lies at the base of this early Christian material. There is also a stark difference. While Paul untiringly aims at including gentiles among Jesus’ followers, Matt 18:17 just as emphatically orders the expelled sinner to be considered ‘a gentile and a tax collector’.113 These materials will be useful in the following. Paul is also a direct witness to early Jewish disciplinary procedures, thus providing important evidence for our inquiry. On his mission as Jesus’ ‘apostle to the gentiles’ (Rom 11:13; Gal 1:16), he has encountered much resistance from Jewish communities across Asia Minor and Greece, as is also amply illustrated by Acts. In the Second Letter to Corinth, while ‘boasting’ about his own suf108 For disciplinary procedures in Greek and Graeco-Egyptian associations see Kloppenborg, ‘Disaffiliation’, and Ascough–Harland–Kloppenborg, Associations in the Greco-Roman World, index s. v. ‘regulations’. 109 The phrase is ἐξάρατε τὸν πονηρόν ἔξ ὑμῶν αὑτῶν, cf ובערת הרע מקרבך, Deut 17:6f; 19:19; 21:21; 22:21, 24; 24:7 (ובערת הרע מישראל, Deut 17:12; 22:22). In Deut 17:6f and 19:19(15) this is preceded by the phrase ‘two or three witnesses’, see below. 110 Legal: Bammel, ‘Rechtsfindung in Korinth’, cf Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 231f, 234; apocalyptic-theurgic: Smith, ‘Hand This Man over to Satan’, cf Fitzmyer ibid. 238, and see Hunzinger, Jüdische Bannpraxis, 11–15 on the ἀνάθεμα formula. 111 See Luz, Matthäus 3, ad loc. 112 Matt 18:16, cf Deut 17:16 and 19:15, above n109. 113 The phrase is Matthaean, cf 5:47; 6:7. 1 Cor 12:2, ὅτε ἔθνη ἦτε shows that 1 Cor addresses gentile Christians.
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ferings as compared with other apostles (2 Cor 11:24f), he enumerates the punishments he received from Jewish communities (ἀπὸ ᾽Ιουδαίων), notably ‘five times forty minus one lashes’ (πεντάκις τεσσεράκοντα παρὰ μίαν) and beatings (ἐρραβδίσθην).114 Significantly, however, he mentions no form of excommunication. On the contrary, he implicitly acknowledges the jurisdiction of the Jewish communities over himself as a Jew. Similarly, Acts portrays Paul as a Jew and even a ‘Pharisee’ who is subject to Jewish law and custom, not only in the diaspora but also in Jerusalem.115 The implications are far-reaching: 2 Corinthians, supported by Acts, shows that in the 50s CE, Jewish communities had no effective legal means to excommunicate insubordinate members – or at least they did not apply them to such a prominent follower of Jesus as Paul.
Rabbinic tradition Following the lead of the Fourth Gospel, rabbinic literature is the most likely place where to pursue our query. We must now broaden our earlier discussion about the Tosefta and discuss the genesis of rabbinic literature as a whole. A likely assumption is that it was produced by the movement of the ‘rabbis’ that manifested itself from the late first century CE onwards and developed the tradition of the Pharisees. A double transformation process must have taken place: one by which the ‘sect’ of the Pharisees116 morphed into the rabbinic movement typically tending towards what we could call a ‘debated uniformity’,117 and another by which this self-renovating movement re-shaped the multiform oral tradition of the Pharisees by modifying and re-arranging it in more or less distinct collections. These were successively reduced to writing, starting with the Mishna in the early third century CE. We must also keep in mind that the transformation of the Pharisaic movement into that of the rabbis coincided in time with, and must have been part of, the larger process of change Jewish society went through during the social upheavals brought about by the three Jewish revolts and their violent suppression by the Romans, spanning the years 66 and 136 CE.118 Thus we can understand that rabbinic literature preserves scattered memories of pre-70 groups with diverse halakhic profiles recognised by the sages as their predecessors. Such memories must have filtered through the dual transformation On the ‘forty minus one’ see Josephus, Ant 4:238; mMak 3:10. Martyn, History and Theology, 54, quoting Vielhauer and Goppelt. 116 αἵρεσις: Josephus, Ant 12:293; Life 10; Acts 15:5. 117 See on the questions involved Cohen, ‘Significance of Yavneh’; Safrai–Safrai, ‘Tarbut ha-mahloket’; and the essay, ‘The Epistles of Paul as a Source’, in this volume. 118 Cf the ‘longitudinal cross section’ of the assembled essays in Schwartz–Tomson, Jews and Christians … The Interbellum, 12–15. 114 115
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process of which the rabbinic movement and its literature were the outcome. Particular features make the groups in question stand out from the middle-ofthe-road Judaism that emanates from rabbinic literature, thus endowing those memories with a degree of authenticity. Our interest is in the rules that define group boundaries, often in terms of purity. We shall first review two such reports about ‘proto-rabbinic’ or Pharisaic groups. Following that, we shall study group boundary rules presented as being typical of the post-70 rabbinic movement as a whole. All along, we shall keep an open eye for a boundary-controlling system that could plausibly explain the rabbinic excommunication of Christians documented in the Tosefta and the Fourth Gospel.119 Havura rules. Tosefta tractate Demai contains a collection of rules defining participation in the havura or ‘association’. The likelihood that this phenomenon existed in the Second Temple period appears from the similarities in terminology and content it shares with the rules of the yahad (community) of the Qumran Community Rule, albeit in a less strict and severe manner.120 The havura rules are discussed as part of the tradition tended to by the rabbis and purportedly functioned among their pre-70 predecessors, the Pharisees. So much is also suggested by a dispute between the schools of Shammai and of Hillel as to the duration of the novitiate, reminiscent of the Community Rule.121 The impression is clearly that not all Jews would keep the rules. It depended on the voluntary decision of the ‘associate’, ( חברhaver) to distinguish himself from the am ha-arets, the ‘outsider’ who is assumed to neglect the rules of haverut, ‘associateship’:122 One who undertakes four things is accepted at once as haver: not to give heave offering, nor tithes, to an am ha-arets; not to prepare his pure food at an am ha-arets’s; and to eat his common food in purity. (…) An am ha-arets who undertakes the rules of haverut except for one thing is not accepted. (…) But all those who retracted from these things are never accepted again, thus R. Meir. But R. Yehuda says …123
The purpose of the havura seemingly was to facilitate keeping the laws of tithes and purity. Its boundary management was simple: promising to keep the rules meant being accepted as associate, abandoning them meant one was out. The dis119 Extensive treatment of the rabbinic sources is found in Maier, Jüdische Auseinandersetzung, unfortunately without constructive force. 120 See Lieberman, ‘Discipline’; Neusner, ‘Fellowship’; Alon, ‘Bounds of the Laws’, 205– 223. Cf also Shemesh, ‘Origins of the Laws of Separatism’. 121 I.e., one month or a year, tDem 2:12, cf 1QS 6:16–23 and above n104. See Neusner, ‘Fellowship’, 131–134 for a reconstruction of the procedure, and Lieberman, ‘Discipline’, 201f and idem, Tosefta ki-fshutah 1: 214–216 for the archaic terminology involved. 122 Thus also Alon, ‘Bounds of the Laws’, 211. The question we cannot answer is whether the decision to join made one into a ‘Pharisee’, confirming the meaning ‘separated one’ (\פרוש ;)פרישcf discussion by Baumgarten, ‘Name of the Pharisees’. 123 tDem 2:2, 5, 9; cf mDem 2:2f and yDem 2:2 (22d).
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cussion between R. Meir and R. Yehuda, both mid-second century CE, suggests that in their day, the havura rules drew new interest and were re-formulated. Interestingly, both this timing and the organizational principle of the havura rules are reminiscent of the contemporaneous voluntary ‘Iobacchoi’ association from Athens, as documented by John Kloppenborg and his colleagues.124 Its elaborate system of rules has been preserved as it was chiseled in marble, whereas system of havura rules presumably was transmitted orally before being written down. Unfortunately, however, the analogy does not help us explaining the expulsion of Christians, as the havura rules operated within the society of Jews, as did the Iobacchoi rules in that of the Athenians. Incidentally, it seems that the havura did not develop beyond that point in time, which must relate to the absence of the Temple as the ultimate source of levitical purity, one of its distinctive features.125 The schools of Shammai and of Hillel. Both Mishna and Tosefta Yevamot open with a discussion of intricate details of the law of yibbum, levirate marriage, ending in a disagreement between the schools of Shammai and of Hillel. This is followed by a comment referring also to the disagreements between the schools in matters of purity: Although the former prohibit and the latter allow, or the former disqualify and the latter qualify, the school of Shammai did not refrain from marrying women of the school of Hillel, nor the school of Hillel from that of Shammai. As to all the questions of purity and impurity where the former used to declare pure and the latter impure, they did not refrain from preparing their pure food one with another.126
The phrase ‘preparing their pure food’ reminds us of the precautions of the havura rules. Moreover the antiquity of the expression ‘… one with another’ (אלו )על גב אלוappears from its appearance in the same sense in the ‘Halakhic Letter’ from Qumran, 4QMMT.127 Hence we are dealing with another rabbinic recollection of Second Temple times. The differences between the two schools were considerable, not only in halakha but also in social and political outlook, and this came to a head in the chaotic situation preceding the first revolt.128 Nevertheless, we are told, the two schools preserved open relations. This claim evidently has 124 Ascough–Harland–Kloppenborg, Associations in the Greco-Roman World, 13–16, no. 7 (164/165 CE); cf Kloppenborg, ‘Disaffiliation’. And cf Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 90–97 on havura, hetairia, and haireseis. 125 The Yerushalmi sugya merely summarizes and comments on the Tosefta materials but contains no further development in the havura rules.. 126 mYev 1:4; cf the much longer version in tYev 1:10, where the quoted saying is attributed to R. Elazar. 127 4Q397 frgs 14–21 line 8, … ומלבוא ע[מהם ] לגב אלהSee Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 6: 8 and 5: 951 top on the phrase. 128 mShab 1:4, see Hengel, Die Zeloten, 201–208; Goldberg, Shabbat, 15–22; Tomson, Paul, 173–176; Stemberger, ‘Forbidden Gentile Food’ (assuming exegetical creativity rather than ‘historical fact’ behind the report).
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a legendary aspect, and it may well be that the required flexibility was provided in large measure by the Hillelites. In last analysis, the prime rabbinic document, the Mishna, is a selective Hillelite revision of the halakha.129 This second memory from Second Temple times shows us how the Pharisees and rabbis dealt with disagreements.130 Clearly, it does not solve our excommunication problem either. Niddui – the rabbinic ban. As we have seen, the rabbinic ban has drawn some attention of scholars, though not for the same reasons. Those looking for an explanation of the rabbinic expulsion of Christians had to conclude that the ban does not help as it is an inner-rabbinic measure.131 Precisely that is the focus of Gideon Leibson’s studies, querying the nature and function of the ban within rabbinic Judaism. We shall briefly review his findings. First and foremost, there is a distinct difference between Palestinian and Babylonian terminology. In the Land of Israel, the term normally used for the ban was niddui ()נידוי, while herem ( )חרםwas its equivalent but rarely used.132 Thus, ‘in the Tannaic period, (…) especially in the generation of Rabban Gamliel, the niddui served mainly as a means to establish the authority of the patriarchate over the sages and to procure the discipline needed to implement the view of the sages that in all matters of halakha, decisions must follow the majority.’133 Famously, the Shammaite R. Eliezer was banned for his refusal to comply with the majority opinion in a question of purity.134 This use of the niddui became extinct by the mid-second century,135 and around the turn of the century, R. Yehuda the Prince only exercised the nezifa ( )נזיפהor ‘rebuke’, a lighter temporary ban. In the Amoraic period that followed, the scope of the niddui extended beyond the milieu of the rabbis and became a means to discipline the community under their authority. In Babylonian usage, there is a threefold terminological distinction, nezifa being the lightest ban, niddui the medium one, and herem the gravest. In comparison, Babylonian herem corresponded to Palestinian niddui, while Babylonian niddui equalled Palestinian nezifa. However, the more frequent Babylonian
129 See
Goldberg, ‘Mishna’; Safrai, ‘Decision’. Safrai, ‘Decision’; C. Safrai – Z. Safrai, ‘Tarbut ha-mahloket’. 131 Billerbeck, Hunzinger, Mignard, and Forkman (above). 132 Similarly Hunzinger, ‘Bann’, 164; cf idem, ‘Bannpraxis’, 5–7. 133 Leibson, ‘Determining Factors’, 298 (my translation). Hunzinger, Bannpraxis, 38 draws a similar conclusion, but limits it to the pre-70 years. 134 yMK 3:1 (81c–d), with embellished story in bBM 59b. Leibson, ‘Determining Factors’, 303f. 135 Leibson refers to the decision made at Usha (c. 150 CE) to that effect, נמנו באושא לא לנדות זקן, yMK 3:1 (81d). Urbach, ‘Class Status’, 66 thinks this reflects the weakened position of Shimon ben Gamliel as compared with his father. 130 See
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term for the ban is shammata ( )שמתאor ‘curse’.136 The use of the ban to discipline the community was more widespread here and started earlier than in the Land of Israel. The rule to keep a distance of 4 cubits from a banned person is Babylonian and is evidenced since the fourth generation of Amoraim.137 A question not raised by Leibson is whether the niddui, so eagerly used by Gamliel the Younger, was his own invention or existed already. Evidence is scarce and tainted. The story of Honi, the first century BCE saint whose preposterous way of praying for rain caused a Pharisaic sage to consider imposing a niddui, has gone through many heads, including Josephus’, before ending up in the Mishna.138 However, the Qumranic139 and early Christian materials do document the existence of disciplinary bans in late Second Temple Judaism. Thus there is some plausibility to the mishnaic recollection that when exceptionally entering on the Temple Mount through the left gate, as did those ‘who had some mishap’, one could explain to fellow-worshippers: ‘I am banned’ ()אני מנודה.140 Hence it seems that Gamliel used an existing practice to shore up his authority as leader of the rabbis, just as he adapted many other rules and usages to fit the post-Destruction situation.141 This does not answer our question as to how the Christians were excommunicated, but it does shed light on the circumstances in which it happened. Birkat ha-minim. The twelfth of the Eighteen Benedictions, said to have been formulated or reformulated ‘before Rabban Gamliel at Yavne’,142 is about adversaries of the Jewish people and carries all the tensions of Jewish-Christian relations. Hence the discussion, already enlivened by Schechter’s publication of the ancient versions of the prayer from the Cairo Geniza in 1898, was further intensified when 70 years later Martyn published his theory of the institution of the birkat ha-minim as the cause of Johannine adversity towards the Jews. The early history is poorly documented; certainty begins only in late Antiquity with 136 Leibson, ‘The Ban and Those under It’, 185. The terminological analysis by Hunzinger, Bannpraxis, 5–7 comes close to this result but fails to distinguish systematically between Babylonian and Palestinian usage. Hunzinger’s treatment of ἀνάθεμα ibid. 8–15 is fully relevant here. 137 Leibson, ‘The Ban and Those under It’, 189. 138 mTaan 3:8; yTaan 3:12 (67a); bTaan 23a; bBer 19a. See also the sugya at yMK 3:1 (81c–d), the fullest collection of materials pertaining to the niddui. Josephus, Ant 14:22 tells the story without mentioning a ban. 139 Noted by Leibson, ‘Determining Factors’, 300 with reference to uttering the sacred Name. 140 mMid 2:2 – even though the mid-second century rabbis Meir and Yose discuss the appropriate answer. For a similar assessment see Hunzinger, ‘Spuren pharisäischer Institutionen’, 150f. 141 On Gamliel’s assertion of authority see Urbach, ‘Class Status’, 56–60; on his takkanot (= ‘emendations’) Alon, The Jews, 107–118. For the liturgical innovations of his time see most recently Levine, ‘The Historicity of Yavne Traditions’. 142 bBer 28b–29a (bMeg 17a), in narrative form; yBer 4:3 (8a), by way of reference to things known.
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the converging evidence of Epiphanius, Jerome, and the Geniza versions. Given the fluidity of liturgical formulae even when written down, however, scholarly opinion on the outer and inner history remains divided. As to the latter, the development of the text, decisive things have been said by Uri Ehrlich and Ruth Langer.143 It is likely that from the earliest stages on, minim (מינים, heretics) and notsrim (נוצרים, Christians) belonged to the text, while one can speculate whether Saadia Gaon’s concise version is not in fact older still because it contains neither category and could predate the (re)formulation of the benediction at Yavne.144 For the early history of the benediction, the unreliable nature of rabbinic literature makes us dependent on the early Christian evidence, and here too scholars are divided. In a learned and influential paper, Reuven Kimelman not only points out the variety of meanings of the terms minim and notsrim, but also presents the Johannine passages as isolated evidence, possibly even ‘concocted’ to shy Christians away from the synagogue.145 Without insisting on the Fourth Gospel, William Horbury underlines the urgency of Justin Martyr’s repeated claim (c. 160 CE) that Jews curse Christians at the end of their prayers and concludes that the birkat ha-minim must have been around since the earlier second century as part of a larger array of exclusion measures.146 Again, Pieter van der Horst, having reviewed previous studies, doubts the cogency of Justin’s evidence and suggests that only in the fourth century was the curse of Christians inserted into the Jewish daily prayer, not as a means to expel Christians, but in response to the anti-Jewish policy of the Christian Empire.147 Overlooking the evidence, it appears that Justin’s testimony does confirm that in his day, Jews cursed Christians in their prayers. The Fourth Gospel, however, does not come into the equation. In attesting to the excommunication, it mentions only the ‘confession’ of Jesus as its reason, not an unacceptable prayer formula.148 The traditional attribution of the Eighteen Benedictions to 143 Ehrlich–Langer, ‘The Earliest Texts’; Langer, Cursing the Christians? – with a table of Geniza versions, respectively, at pages 72f and 46f. 144 Ehrlich in Ehrlich–Langer, ‘The Earliest Texts’, 77f tends towards this possibility, but Langer, Cursing the Christians, 59 does not consider it. Langer’s book, which covers the development till modern times, is heavy with post-positivist methodology, although it is also said to rest on ‘the solid data’ of the Geniza (8, cf 40). 145 Kimelman, ‘Lack of Evidence’, 234f, dismissing also most of Justin’s evidence. 146 Horbury, ‘Benediction of the minim’, esp 100f, 109. 147 Van der Horst, ‘Birkat ha-minim’, 123f. In addition to Kimelman and Horbury, Van der Horst reviews studies by J. Maier, S. Katz, L. Schiffman, A. Overman and G. Stanton, adding in n4 that those by P. Schäfer and G. Stemberger have been left out only for reasons of space. Katz, ‘Issues in the Separation’, 63–76 and ‘Rabbinic Response’, 281–294 remains inconclusive. Teppler, Birkat haMinim provides extensive treatment of all relevant subjects along conventional lines. 148 Kimelman, ‘Lack of Evidence’, 235; Horbury, ‘Benediction of the minim’, 100; Meeks, ‘Breaking away’, 120; Van der Horst, ‘Birkat ha-minim’, 116.
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Gamliel the Younger’s initiative seems credible in view of his prosopography as emerges from the present paper. Moreover, the Mishna reports that his colleagues disagreed, while the Tosefta implies that the following generation accepted it as a fact. In addition, the editors of Didache and Matthew also seem to be opposing the Eighteen Benedictions.149 It seems clear, however, that neither they nor the editors of John knew yet of a prayer targeting followers of Jesus similar to the birkat ha-minim. Hence it must post-date the redaction of these Gospels. In rabbinic literature, its traces go back to the second, possibly the early second century.150 But, as Peter Schäfer concluded, refuting Elbogen, it ‘did not exclusively target Jewish-Christians or (later) Christians, and thus it was not a “means to achieve the full separation of both religions”’.151 More likely, the birkat ha-minim was an outgrowth of a larger policy of separation whose thrust lay elsewhere.152 Christians treated as minim. Thus we must revert to Billerbeck’s solution, which was also Graetz’s main explanation.153 Rather than another red herring, it has been the elephant in the room, hidden from view by the extraordinary attention drawn by the birkat ha-minim theory and by Billerbeck’s misleadingly elaborate attention given to the niddui. Also of influence may be a lack of interest in its halakhic content. Unaffected by that shortcoming, Adiel Schremer has brought it to the limelight in Brothers Estranged (2010), though without referring to the evidence of the Fourth Gospel.154 We must reread the Tosefta passage cited above (p632f) and focus now on the halakhot in sections A and B (tHul 2:18–21).
149 mBer 4:3f; tBer 6:24 (Meir, Akiva’s former disciple). See Tomson, ‘Didache, Matthew’ (in this volume). 150 tBer 3:25 (cf yBer 2:3, 5a; 4:5, 8a), כולל של מינים בשל פרושין, referring to the re-arrangement of the berakhot, see Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 1: 53f. Hentschke, ‘Parashat ha-ibbur’ reconstructs the second part of R. Yoshua’s short prayer in mBer 4:5 as the unique version of ms K, כל פרשת הציבור העבר צורכיהן מלפניך, which in his judgment reflects an early version of the birkat ha-minim. Cf Safrai–Safrai, Mishnat Eretz Israel, Tractate Brachot, 173–177 and Flusser, ‘Birkat ha-minim’. Pace Langer, Cursing the Christians, 19f and 261 n14–15. 151 Schäfer, ‘Die sogenannte Synode von Jabne’, 60 (see the quote of Elbogen, above n96); [similarly, Stemberger, ‘Birkat ha-minim’, re-formulating his position as compared with idem, ‘Die sogenannte “Synode von Jabne”’, 16–19]. 152 Thus Alon, The Jews 1: 288–307; Urbach, ‘Self-Isolation’, 288–293; Horbury, ‘Benediction of the minim’, 107. 153 Also mentioned by Horbury, ‘Birkat ha-minim’,107 n146, referring to Graetz, Gnostizismus und Judenthum, 21. Graetz cites Justin, Dial 38 and bAZ 17, which Horbury supplements with the parallel in tHul 2:20f. 154 Schremer, Brothers Estranged, chapter 3, ‘Laws of Minim’; see also idem, ‘Seclusion and Exclusion’ and ‘Beyond Naming’. While Katz, ‘Issues in the Separation’, 52f is doubtful, Katz, ‘Rabbinic Response’, 275f is more assertive about this ‘obscure rabbinic source’, though he still sees no evidence of ‘any sort of formal ban’.
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Section A has been included in our quotation so we can see how sections B through D are framed in context. Tractate Hullin being about the slaughter of hullin ( )חוליןor ‘non-sacrifical meat’, one of the issues is about the intention of the slaughterer as expressed by the way he sheds the blood. In Antiquity, slaughter was universally felt to have a religious impact, and the Jewish sages aimed at guiding this feeling in the correct channels, avoiding association with rites alien to Judaism. Thus section A starts by formulating that when slaughtering on a ship, shedding the blood overboard looks like sacrificing to the sea or river gods, and on the market shedding it into a bowl is like following ‘the conventions of the minim’ ()חוקי מינין. Then follows a halakha about slaughter by a min, distinguishing him from a non-Jew (2:20a), and this is followed by a series of halakhot on minim (B) plus the two stories we have studied (C–D). After that, discussion on the intention of slaughter resumes (2:25). Hence sections B–D are an excursus on minim appended to the halakha on slaughter by a min. This conclusion is confirmed by the parallel passage in the Mishna, where slaughter into a bowl ‘as do the minim’ is directly followed by further halakhot on the intention of slaughter (mHul 2:9–10). Significantly, the ‘peg’ for appending the excursus is identical with a mishna of R. Akiva elsewhere (mAZ 2:3), with the difference that the clause on the min is added. In effect, slaughter by a min is judged more severely than by a non-Jew.155 It is interesting that shedding the blood into a bowl is a ‘convention of minim’. The implication is that they used it for a ritual related to some alien cult.156 Elsewhere, minim are said to believe in ‘two powers’ or ‘many powers in heaven’, thus probably good deities versus evil ones, similar to what we read in the Qumran Community Rule.157 Also, R. Yishmael is quoted as saying that ‘books of minim sow enmity between Israel and their Father in heaven’, while his contemporary, R. Tarfon, adds that in contrast to pagans who deny God without knowing him, minim ‘know him and also deny him’. This suggests biblicallyinspired teachings like those of Gnostics or Marcionites.158 Again, reminiscent of an earlier period, those who deny the world to come are called minim, which must have included the Sadducees.159 In sum, as scholars have shown, minim is
Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 71–78. the parallel in mHul 2:7–9, cf Albeck, Mishna, ad loc.; Schremer, Brothers Estranged,
155 See 156 Cf
80.
157 1QS 3:13–4:26 (tractate of the Two Spirits); MekR yitro/bahodesh 5 (p220, מיניןin parallel to אומות העולם, cf ibid. p130 a. fr.); mSan 4:5 ()הרבה רשויות. On this matter see Segal, Two Powers in Heaven; Teppler, Birkat haMinim, 297–347. 158 tShab 13:5; SifNum neso 16 (p21); yShab 16:1 (15c); see Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 3: 206f. 159 mBer 9:5, cf Albeck, Mishna, ad loc. and see Acts 23:8; Josephus, War 2:164f; Ant 18:16.
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a catch-all for those who by their praxis or beliefs are considered utterly outside the society of Jews.160 Section B, the first part of the excursus, stipulates by what means minim are made outsiders. Characteristically, this does not involve definitions of heretical or sectarian ideas and practices, but halakhot articulating behavioural segregation.161 The introductory formula signals a rule laid down by earlier sages or, in the informal sense, an ‘earlier mishna’: ‘For they have said …’ ()מפני שאמרו.162 The first item, slaughter by a min, provides the verbal and material link with the preceding ‘peg’. It also defines (along with the third item, ‘their wine’) the position of minim as being equivalent to idolaters. The second item, ‘their bread’, is on a par with ‘bread of Samaritans’, a rather obscure category.163 The fifth item, ‘their books are like books of magic’, is more severe than a corresponding injunction about non-Jews.164 It links up with the sayings of R. Yishmael and R. Tarfon just quoted. These are from a Tosefta passage on books of minim that also contains sayings by yet another sage of this generation, that of R. Akiva and R. Yishmael, early second century CE.165 Added to the ‘peg’ passage (‘Meat found in the hands of a non-Jew …’) and the introduction (‘For they have said …’), the impression is that all of this was formulated by that same generation.166 Then towards the end, children of minim are declared mamzerim who can never marry Jews; all economic and social commerce with minim is prohibited; and one may not receive healing from minim, not even of one’s livestock. Once again, this last prohibition is more severe than an analogous halakha concerning gentiles.167 It also provides the ‘peg’ for the stories in sections C and D. Before winding up, it is useful to return to the early Christian evidence. The mechanism of segregation involved in the anti-minim rules is similar to that evinced by Paul, though much more severe. We have noted that in 1 Corinthians Paul orders μὴ συναναμίγνυσθαι, ‘not to associate’ with those who violate the 160 Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 78–86; Kimelman, ‘Lack of Evidence’, 228–232; cf Urbach, ‘Self-Isolation or Self-Affirmation’, 288–293. See the collection of texts in Strack, Jesus, die Häretiker und die Christen, 47–80. 161 Cf Graetz, Geschichte 4.1: 96, ‘Es wurde eine förmliche Scheidewand … gezogen’, followed by a summary of tHul 2:20b–21. 162 13× in Mishna, 4× Tosefta, with similar expressions there and elsewhere. See Epstein, Nosah, 726–742. 163 פת כותי, cf mShev 8:9, a halakha of R. Eliezer apparently disputed by R. Akiva and the sages. The comparable prohibition of פת גויםis called one of the ‘neglected halakhot’, yShab 1:3 (3c) and many parallels. On the whole, Samaritans are much closer than other non-Jews, see tAZ 3:1f. 164 tAZ 3:6, … ובלבד,לוקחין מן הגוי ספרים. 165 tShab 13:5. In addition to Yishmael and Tarfon, also Yose ha-Gelili. On the subject see Katz, ‘Issues in the Separation’, 53–63 and ‘Rabbinic Response’, 276–280; Teppler, Birkat haMinim, 250–277. 166 Similarly Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 77f also pointing at more ancient roots in Qumran and Jubilees. 167 tAZ 3:4, מתרפאין מהן ריפוי ממון אבל לא ריפוי נפשות.
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moral code, in addition to μηδὲ συνεσθίειν, ‘not even to eat together’ (1 Cor 5:9, 11; cf 2 Thess 3:14) – the implication being that ‘associating’ involves closer relations than ‘eating together’. We may certainly connect this with Paul’s more vehement, metaphor-laden injunction ‘not to be mismatched with unbelievers’ in 2 Cor 6:14–7:1.168 The passage in Matthew we have studied also illuminates the anti-minim rules. In terms of the Matthaean community, evidently of JewishChristian background, the unrepentant sinner is to be ‘like a gentile and a tax collector’ (ὥσπερ ὁ ἐθνικός καὶ ὁ τελώνης, Matt 18:17). These segregation-marking concepts are fully compatible with rabbinic phraseology, the ‘gentile’ in terms of the anti-minim laws, the ‘tax collector’ in those of the havura.169 The distinctiveness of the anti-minim rules is in the accumulation of segregation terms and the permanence of the exclusion. Being declared a min in the early second century meant total exclusion from Jewish society. The preceding occasions another glance at the birkat ha-minim. We have cited Schäfer’s conclusion that the berakha was not devised as an instrument of separation. We can see now that this was not necessary either. The array of separation measures put in place was more than sufficient, and the birkat ha-minim could rather be seen as its outgrowth. If it functioned as an instrument, this would be not so much to ward off minim as to keep the measures alive in the minds of the congregation. Thus having made full circle, we can summarise our analysis of the Tosefta passage. The mid-third century editors, while redacting a collection of basically second century halakhot on slaughter, have inserted (or retained the prior insertion of) an excursus on minim, appending it to a halakha on meat slaughtered by non-Jews and minim. Both that halakha (tHul 2:20a) and the two on ‘books’ and ‘healing’ of minim are similar to halakhot on non-Jews elsewhere, with the difference that our passage also addresses the more severe category of minim. In all of these cases, the early second century generation of Akiva and Yishmael is involved, while the impression is that the introduction to section B, ‘for they have said …’, implies they were rephrasing received material.170 The stories in sections C and D also involve these same rabbis. Hence both the connecting halakha and the entire excursus seem to derive from their generation. Since the excursus as a whole teaches that followers of Jesus are minim and should be treated as utterly alien to the Jewish community, this further confirms the convergence between the evidence in the Gospel of John and the Tosefta. Without stating as much, the excursus in tHul 2:20–24 appears to encapsulate the decision of the early second century rabbis to excommunicate Christians, both by formulating See ‘Christ, Belial, and Women’, in this volume, p413f. tHul 2:20, מיןsignifying a higher grade of exclusion from the society of Jews than ;גוי tDem 3:4, the older rule that being גבוי\גבייmeans permanent exclusion as haver being softened, cf 2:9. 170 Above n154 and 166. 168 169
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the more severe halakhot on relations with minim and by narratively including Christians in that category.
Discussion: Why were Christians excommunicated? In evaluating our findings, we must begin by rehearsing our conclusion that in Paul’s day, Jewish communities did not have, or at least did not use, the means to excommunicate such a vociferous Christian as Paul (2 Cor 11:24f). To this we may add that both Josephus and Acts inform us that the Pharisees, notably including Gamaliel the Elder, opposed the prosecution of Jesus’ apostles by the Sadducees and preferred to grant them the benefit of the doubt.171 If not all Pharisees showed such latitude, as Paul’s early career shows,172 at least an important number of them did. One generation after the 66–70 CE war, the situation has radically changed. The excursus in Tosefta Hullin, bearing the stamp of the early second century rabbis led by Gamaliel the Younger, enumerates the severe laws segregating minim from Jewish society and applies these to Christians by means of two stories involving some of those same rabbis. The credibility of this third century report is confirmed by the emphatic mention of an excommunication decree of the ‘Pharisees’ in the Gospel of John, usually dated 100–110 CE. Moreover such a decree fits Gamaliel’s profile. He not only issued measures adapting the liturgy to the post-Temple situation including the institution of the Eighteen Benedictions and, apparently somewhat later, the adaptation of the birkat ha-minim, but he also made lavish use of the niddui to bolster up his authority and that of the majority rule. What may have caused this radical turn-about? The story of R. Eliezer implies that a number of years before his arrest on the charge of minut, he had this interesting conversation with Yaakov from Kfar Sakhnin, a matter he regretted in retrospect. The suggestion is that in the meantime, the decree of the sages has intervened, inducing the hoary rabbi to retract from his former interest in teachings of Jesus and henceforth to consider them false prophecy and deceit. Once again we ask: what has inspired the rabbis to shift from the latitude of Gamaliel the Elder to his grandson’s severity? In confronting this thorny question, we need to recall our working principles. We decided to work contextually and view the intertwined history of Jews and Christians in the early centuries in the framework of the Empire. Thus we must view the passages from Tosefta Hullin and John together with those from Tacitus and Pliny. Overlooking the evidence, we are struck by the coincidence of the 171 Ant
20:197–203; Acts 5:17–40; 22:30–23:9. See in this volume, ‘Gamaliel’s Counsel’. Acts 8f; Gal 1:13, 23; 1 Cor 15:9; Phil 3:6 (as Pharisee!).
172
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presumed rabbinic decree with the Roman incrimination of Christians attested by our two Latin authors around 110 CE. We have also taken note of the expert assessment that although the logic behind that policy is inscrutable, it is plausible that the nomen of the superstitio founded by the crucified Judaean was irreparably tarnished by Nero’s action in 64 CE. In the study already mentioned, Adiel Schremer calls the rabbinic label of minim for Christians and other deviants ‘a Roman discourse’.173 Certain minim claimed that the Jewish defeat and the destruction of the Temple show that ‘there is no power in heaven’, and the rabbis constructed this as an attitude lacking in ‘social-national loyalty’. Schremer does not quite clarify what this implied in actual practice, nor does he relate to the Christian sources. However, he interestingly points to ‘the similarity between the rabbinic discourse of minut and the discourse of “becoming Jewish” used by contemporary Roman writers’, concluding: ‘It appears that the rabbinic discourse of minut is, in a sense, an internalization of the hegemonic Roman discourse and its application in a reverse direction.’174 This is a promising line of inquiry. The R. Eliezer story comes in once again for illumination. In the terminology of its editors, the rabbi is on trial on the suspicion of minut. Within the story, however, the Roman hegemon asks Eliezer why a sage like him should engage in ‘those things’, or in another version: ‘in those senseless things’.175 If for a moment we may compare the hegemon with Pliny, who after all was judging similar cases, it is obvious that the Latin equivalent of ‘those (senseless) things’ would be superstitio. It is worth noting that scholars have emphasised that superstitio, as opposed to religio, stood for ‘un-Roman’ religious behaviour, with an emphasis on magic. We are reminded of the rabbinic slur against Jesus as a false prophet and healer. In short: rabbinic minut corresponds with Roman superstitio.176 In the cited passage, Schremer is interacting with Andrew Jacobs’ contribution to The Ways That never parted, the work we discussed earlier.177 In line with ‘post-colonial’ theory, Jacobs proposes to read the mutual rhetoric of Jews and Christians in the context of the power language of the later Empire. Their positions were not symmetrical, to be sure, and this plays out in their relations. In Origen’s day, Jews still enjoyed a power and legitimacy that Christians did not Brothers Estranged, 65–68. ibid. 67f, referring here to Fredriksen, ‘What Parting of the Ways’ and Jacobs, ‘The Lion and the Lamb’ (see also below). 175 bAZ 16b and KohR 1.8, בדברים הבטלים הללו. 176 Similarly Justin, Dial 69:7 claims that the unbelieving Jews saw Jesus as μάγον … καὶ λαοπλάνον. On superstitio see Beard–North–Price, Religions of Rome, 214–227; Rives, Religions in the Roman Empire, 183–187, cf 193–200; Freudenberger, Das Verhalten, 189–199. Cf Janssen, ‘Superstitio’. Freudenberger, ‘Die delatio nominis causa’, 13 in effect identifies minut and superstitio. 177 Jacobs, ‘The Lion and the Lamb’. 173 Schremer, 174 Schremer
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yet have. Mirroring himself in that position, Origen portrays himself as a partner in dialogue with the Jews and thus shores up his own identity. A century and a half later, Jerome, admiring Origen but sharing now in the post-Constantinian power position of Christianity, no longer needs to mirror himself in the position of the Jews but on the contrary is able to construe them as useful instruments for his own linguistic studies. The phenomenon of subalterns adopting the rhetoric of dominant powers to their own advantage is universal. In the Dutch East Indies, i. e. pre-independence Indonesia, the nationalists saw their subordinate position vis-à-vis the Dutch colonisers radically reversed when in 1942 Japan conquered the archipelago. The nationalists had been cultivating a ‘Pacific’ alliance against European colonialism with the Japanese, who knew and entertained this liaison. Now, the words materialised that had been written by Sukarno, the nationalist leader who would become Indonesia’s first president: ‘Yes, Independent Indonesia [Indonesia merdeka] can only be achieved with Dai Nippon [“Japanese Empire”] (…) For the first time in all my life, I saw myself in the mirror of Asia.’178 John Barclay has usefully applied post-colonial theory to Josephus, bringing us back to the period we are dealing with. For Barclay, ‘Josephus is the perfect example of “the empire writes back”’, involving ‘a selective collaboration with and appropriation of idioms of the … conqueror’.179 While telling the story of the Jews in the post-70 situation, with Roman power unassailably re-established, Josephus reformulates the character of Judaism using Roman terms and in so doing makes his own contribution to the discussion of what it means to be ‘Roman’. Tellingly, Josephus labels Apion, the fully Hellenised Alexandrian champion of his adversaries, as an ‘Egyptian’, a category disdained by the Romans, thus adopting what Barclay terms the Roman ‘politics of contempt’ to his own advantage in defending the Jews under Roman rule.180 Likewise, we can imagine the early second century rabbis affirming their position while redefining Judaism on the terms imposed by the Empire. The Flavian propaganda of Roman power was ubiquitous, with the Jerusalem Temple in ruins and the humiliating fiscus judaicus and IVDAEA CAPTA coinage in full swing,181 although as noted Josephus could convincingly cite the ancient privileges warranting the legitimacy of Judaism. In that very period, Christians had become a suspect entity in Roman eyes, and on occasion, magistrates would 178 Friend, Indonesian Destinies, 27, quoting J. Ingleson, Road to Exile: The Indonesian Nationalist Movement, 1927–1934, Kuala Lumpur, Heinemann 1979, 218–222 (explanation in brackets and italics added, PJT). 179 Barclay, ‘The Empire writes back’, 305, citing Mary Louise Pratt on a South-American situation. 180 Barclay ibid. 307–312. 181 Cf Barclay ibid. 309f and see Goodman, ‘The Fiscus Iudaicus’; Heemstra, Fiscus Judaicus. On Flavian propaganda see Mason, A History of the Jewish War, 3–59; Weikert, Von Jerusalem zu Aelia Capitolina, 55–82.
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execute them as adherents of a despicable and criminal superstitio. In this constellation, we imagine, it seemed opportune for the rabbis led by Gamaliel the Younger to reverse the tolerant attitude attributed to his grandfather and to excommunicate Christians by including them in the category of minut, on the occasion reformulating the laws of exclusion in a more severe sense. Analogous to Josephus settling the bill with Apion, the rabbinic leaders distanced themselves from Christianity by labelling it as minut, equivalent to the specifically Roman category also applied to Judaism, superstitio.182 On this interpretation, the excommunication of Christians can be viewed as an aspect of the Romanisation of Judaism as decribed, e. g., by Haim Lapin.183 Evidently, this interpretation is beset with uncertainties. As we have stated, evidence is scarce, and many aspects must remain unknown. We have exactly two pertinent Roman reports of some detail and the evidence of the Fourth Gospel, plus a single rabbinic passage written down a century and a half later. Reading these sources together and supposing they relate to the same or similar realities means to assume that Roman magistrates thought pretty much the same across the Empire, that the experience of the Johannine community was not that exceptional, and that the traditions contained in the Tosefta do reflect events of the reputed period. As many uncertainties. Conversely, the convergence of pertinent evidence from one narrow period of time does provide a measure of certainty. We must also link up with the important discussion on the scope of influence of the early second century rabbis. The traditional scholarly conception of Gamliel the Younger as patriarch ruling with his rabbis over Jewish society is gradually being replaced by less ‘maximalist’ readings of the sources.184 Given the anecdotic character of rabbinic literature, external sources must decide. Elsewhere, it was argued that the combined late first century evidence of Josephus and Luke-Acts reflects a sympathetic image of Pharisees, suggestive of a confirmation of the rabbinic reports as to Rabban Gamliel’s rise to power as an internal Jewish leader.185 Nowhere in those sources, however, is there a direct sign of the expulsion of Christians.186 The same can be said of other contemporaneous documents associated with Rome such as 1 Clement and Hermas. This starkly contrasts with the two early Christian sources that most clearly reflect 182 Cf Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 67 (as quoted at n174 above), and 94, ‘Because they were so “similar to us”, there was needed an act of labeling for the sake of exclusion.’ 183 Cf Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 64–97, ‘The Formation of a Provincial Religious Movement’, with dense discussion of the ‘rabbinic neologism’ min at 96f. See also above n17. 184 Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society; Hezser, Structure of the Rabbinic Movement; Lapin, Rabbis as Romans; Miller, Sages and Commoners. 185 Tomson, ‘Josephus Luke-Acts’, in this volume, reviving and supplementing Seth Schwartz’s 1990 thesis. 186 The single reference in Luke 6:2, ἀφορίσωσιν ὑμᾶς … καὶ ἐκβάλωσιν τὸ ὄνομα ὑμῶν ὡς πόνηρον is often considered in this connection, cf Fitzmyer, Luke, 635. Maybe it should be seen as a veiled reference to events happening elsewhere than the author’s ambience.
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conflicts with the Pharisees/Jews, i. e., the Gospel of Matthew (though it does not yet know of the expulsion decree) and that of John. These documents are commonly associated with Antioch and Ephesus, respectively,187 suggesting that in the early second century CE the expulsion decree would operate in Asia Minor and Syria, hence plausibly also in Judaea, as indeed the Tosefta indicates. Pending further information, therefore, the decree seems to have been followed in a patchy way.188 The rhetoric of an all-powerful ‘Pharisaic’ (rabbinic) leadership in Matthew and John is well explained in a post-colonial perspective: the editors of these Gospels, in their post-70 situation of a powerless and fragile minority, construed the rabbis (cf Matt 23:8) as an oppressive power group. We have learned in the above that such rhetoric not only involves exaggeration, but also a measure of historical reality. While the logic of the rabbinic decree is even harder to document than that of the Roman policy towards Christians, one set of circumstantial evidence may be highlighted. According to a singular report in the Mishna, ‘Rabban Gamliel went to receive permission from the hegemon in Syria.’ The theory of formal Roman recognition of Gamliel’s patriarchate that Gedalyahu Alon and others based on this isolated passage must be laid to rest.189 Whatever the report means, however, it does imply open relations. The same is confirmed by a consistent trickle of reports on the excellent relations of Gamliel the Younger and his entourage with the Roman administration. Repeatedly, the Tosefta notes that by exception, members of his household were permitted certain privileged habits including studying Greek ‘because they were close to the government’.190 Furthermore, there are multiple reports that Gamliel and other sages visited Rome,191 as well as a string of anecdotes in which Hadrian asks Gamliel’s elder colleague Yoshua various theological questions.192 Taken together, this suggests a shared discourse between the Roman authorities and the early rabbinic leaders, while the asymmetry of power remained in place. One of the things apparently shared
187 On John see Hengel, Johanneische Frage; on Matthew Tomson, ‘Didache, Matthew’, in this volume. 188 Focussing on Ephesus, Frey, ‘Toward Reconfiguring Our Views on the “Parting of the Ways”’, also suggests that it concerns ‘a rather incoherent process’, ascribing to the Pauline churches an early and common sense ‘parting’ as contrasted with the traumatic ‘parting’ of the Johannine churches. 189 mEd 7:7; bSan 11a. See Urbach, ‘Class Status’, 56f. Cf Schwartz–Tomson, Jews and Christians … The Interbellum, the contributions by Werner Eck and Benjamin Isaac, and the editors’ Introduction. 190 tSot 15:8, זקוקין] למלכות:מפני שהן קרובין [כי"ע, cf bSot 49b and bBK 83a (see Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, 20; idem, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 104); tAZ 3:5; cf tMK 2:16 (Lieberman, Tosefta ki-fshutah 5: 1262f). 191 Safrai, ‘Bikureihem shel hakhamei Yisrael be-Roma’. 192 BerR 10.3 (p75); BerR 28.3 (p261) = LevR 18.1 (p394); BerR 78.1 (p916v); RuthR 3.2; LamR 3.8.
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in common was the discourse of superstitio and minut vis-à-vis the novel cult, epitomising the Romanisation of Judaism. The expulsion decree must have meant that Jews and Christians henceforth lived socially apart. However, as shown for the later Empire by the contributors to The Ways That never parted, it did not prevent them from sharing and disputing Scriptures, traditions, and concerns. Both aspects in their contrariety are explicit, e. g., in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus.193 In the ages to come, and distinctly so before and after the shift in position under Constantine, the relationship of Jews and Christians was to be one of striking ambiguity. Looking for a fitting metaphor, scholars have characterised the ongoing intertwinement of their histories as that of Rebecca’s rival children, as intimate strangers or brothers estranged, or indeed as rival lovers.194
193 Cf Justin, Dial 38:1, Trypho says the Jewish sages ordained μηδενὶ ἐξ ὑμῶν (τῶν Χριστιάνων) ὁμιλεῖν μηδὲ σοι (᾿Ιουστίνῳ) κοινωνήσαι τῶν λόγων (cf Horbury, ‘Benediction of the Minim’, 107) – yet the dialogue on shared and disputed traditions goes on. On Irenaeus see my ‘Jewish-Christian Relations in Roman Judaea’, n10. 194 Book titles by, successively, Alan Segal, Stephen Wilson, and Adiel Schremer; and cf above p252.
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Index of Ancient Sources Hebrew Bible and Septuagint Genesis 1 1:2 1:10 1:17 1:27 2 2:16 2:18–22 2:24 3:13 4:10 5:1f 5:22–24 5:22 6:9 7:9 9 9:6 10:2 12:1–5 14:13 14:13 LXX 15:5 15:6 17:1 17:5 17:7 17:12 18 23:13 39–43 46:27 49:8 49:13 49:25f LXX
97 406, 408n60, 447 228 128 76, 84 96, 446 98n115, 447 345 446 84n62, 96, 96n108 384n9 590 446 486 327n71 327n71 84 26 257n17 320 470n48 149n25 149n25 587 357n37, 363 327n71, 437n124 587, 589 587–589 304 343 333n106 149n25 430n87 170, 171n120 333n106 471
Exodus 1–10 11:4 11:6 12:2 12:3 12:11 12:16 12:29 12:41 15 15:2 15:17–18 15:24 16 16:4 16:18 19:3 19:6 19:10–15 19:15 19:25 20:14 21:2 21:10 21:16 21:22f 21:22 21:37–22:3 22:24 22:25 22:27 22:30 23 23:15f 23:15 27:17 28:25 29:38–42 LXX
149n25, 260, 488n113 149n25 246, 258 258 47n32, 238 430 239, 258 488n113 246, 258 240 236 495 442 596n71 304 596n71 470 429, 433n102 484n91 114n41 129 433n102 333 149n25, 150n30 60n90 62n102 60 60n93 62n101, 62n102 336n123 336n123 382n151, 611 484n90, 491 488n113 61 61n99 147n20 488n113 50n43
728
Index of Ancient Sources
29:44 30:17–21 30:30 31:14 31:15 31:16 32:8 32:28 34:15 35:2 40:2 47:18
484n89 125, 136 484n89 304, 497n146 302n15 304 11 11n16 168, 169 302n15 147n20 147n20
Leviticus 8:4 11–16 11–15 11 11:31a 11:31b 11:38 11:44 11:45 15:1–15 15:16–18 15:16 15:19–30 15:31–33 17–25 18–20 18 18:2 18:19 18:21 19:2 19:11–13 19:13 19:19 19:35f 20 20:7 20:26 21:6 21:7 22:1–16 22:2 22:3–7 22:7
43, 120, 120n68 430n86 120n68, 121 116n54 121n74 121n74 121n74 591, 591n51 484n90 484n90 119n64 112, 119n65 128n111 119n64 116n55 336 120n68, 121 240n27 336 336 156n53 484n90 62n101 341n158 413 62n101 240n27 484n90 484n90 484n90, 491n126 44n19 9n3 491n126 9 9n7
23:11 23:16f 23:16 LXX 24:10–11 26:11–12 26:11 26:12
48, 50n41 48 50n41 164n85 441 441, 442 327n71
Numbers 1:16 5:13 5:22 6:8 15:35 16:2 16:7 18:9–11 19 19:11 19:19 21:17 21:18 24:17 25:8 25:11 26:9 27:11 28:25 36:8
488n113 488n114 88n75 426n63 492 302n15 488n114 484 9n3 116n54 113 113 595 595 511n48 474n58 474n58 488n114 590n46 488n113 590n46
Deuteronomy 4:9f 5:14 6:4 6:5 7:6 8:10 11:22 13:7 14:2 14:21 15 15:12 17:6f 17:7 17:12 17:16 17:17
43, 354n35, 645 129 340 496 426 484n91 119n61 487n104 332n100 491 484n91 341 149n25 645n109 451 645n109 645n112 84
729
Hebrew Bible and Septuagint
18:4 18:11 18:12 19:15 19:19 21:21 22:1–11 22:1 22:2 22:4 22:5 22:6 22:7 22:8 22:11 22:21 22:22 22:23–29 22:24 23 23:3–4 23:4 23:7 23:15 23:18 23:19 23:28f 24 24:1–4 24:1–3 24:1 24:2 24:2 LXX 24:3b 24:4 24:7 24:14f 25:2f 25:3 LXX 25:13–16 25:24f 28 28:9
9n3 122n76 122n76 645n112 645n109 645n109 58 58n80 58n80 58, 58n80 58n80 58 58n80 58n80 58n80 645n109 88, 645n109 61 645n109 448, 449, 449n161 448 419, 449n165 146n16 77, 81 44n18 635n63 61n99 73, 79, 81, 82, 86, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 94n102, 96, 99, 341 53, 54, 69, 70, 73, 74, 76n24, 77, 82, 82n55, 83, 85, 88n77, 94, 388 73, 81, 433 82, 86, 91, 91n89, 99, 101, 389, 389n25, 594 87, 95 388 81n49 74 645n109 341n158 601n92 601n92 62n101 404 424 484n90
28:53 28:55 28:57 30:12 32:1 34:10
356 356 356 427 228 177n137
Judges 5:19 7:16 7:21
336n121 256n14 256n14
1 Samuel 4 4:17 13 13:19 14 20:26 21:6[5] 29
149n25 224n9 149n25 147n20 149n25 136 332n100 149n25
2 Samuel 1:20 4:10 7 7:10–14 7:10 7:11 7:12–14 7:13–14 7:14 18:20 18:22f 18:22 18:27 18:19–31
224n10 224n10, 224n11 440, 442 443 442 443 443 413 442, 443, 590, 591 224n8 224n10 224n5, 224n11 224n5, 224n8 224n7
1 Kings 3:16 4:9 17:10–24
335n113 492 490n120
2 Kings 2:11 4:9 4:42–44 5:2
145n12a 490n120 485 490n120 147n20
730
Index of Ancient Sources
5:4 6:23 7:9 16:6 18:26 18:26 LXX 18:28
147n20 147n20 224n5, 224n10 145n10 145n12a 147n18 145n12a
Isaiah
53, 226, 228, 229, 231, 232 38n60 53 358n42 637–640 356 430n87 356 596 227 228 596n73 227 332n98 356 227 145n12a 227, 419 225n14 224n9 227 442 169 147 430n87 141, 147, 185, 430n87 147n21a 172 147 147 512n56 88n77 80 224, 225n14, 228 441, 590 441 638 451n175
2:3 2:4 3:11 6:9f 8:22 10:20 10:25 25:8 26 26:19 27:13 29 29:16 30:6 35 36:11 40:3 40:9 41:27 42 43:6 44:5 45:4 46:3 48:1 48:1 LXX 48:10 48:12 48:20 49:17 LXX 50:1 50:1f 52:7 52:11 52:11b–c 53:1 54
54:11–14 54:13 58:6 59:17 60:6 60:21
61:1 61:2 61:3 66:2
451n175 343n170 227 326n61 225n14 226, 226n26, 485n94, 487n102 223, 223n*, 226–228, 226n25, 232 225–228 226 226n26 227
Jeremiah 2:3 2:4 3:1 3:8 7:20 18 22:17 27:6 LXX 27:29 LXX 29:1 33:11 34 (44):1 34:9 34:14 43 (50):9 44:1 50:6 50:29 51:1 LXX 51:6
145n12a, 190, 287 493 430n87 80, 88n77, 94n102 74, 79, 88n77 356 332n98 336n121 287n36 358n41 198n49 245 145n11 149n25 149n25 145n11 145, 198 287n36 358n41 145n11 356
Ezekiel 1 1:3 2:3 3:4 8:1 8:6 8:7 11:17 16:3 20:34 22:27
442 245, 406, 408n60 115 147 147 147n20 147n20 147n20 147n20, 442 335n113 441, 442, 590 336n121
61
731
Hebrew Bible and Septuagint
36 37:27
121n73 441, 442
Hosea 2:4 2:7 2:9 4:11 5:14 6:10 6:10 LXX 10:12 11:9 13:14 13:17 14:2 ff
80, 88n77 80 80 98n113, 335n113 634n58 335n113 98n113 469n45 88n77 596 634n58 88n77
Joel 3:1 (2:28) 3:5
440, 440n133, 442 224n13
Amos 2:11
492n132
Jonah 1:9
149
Micah 1:7 3:9 7:5
635n63 430n87 332n100
Nahum 2:1 2:1 (1:15) 3:4–5 10:25
224 224n10 440 356
Habakkuk 2:3b 2:4 2:4b 2:9
362 357n37, 363 362 336n121
Zephaniah 1:14f
355
Haggai
442
Zechariah 14:5
145n12a, 442, 486 485
Malachi 2:13–16 2:13 2:16 14:21 LXX
70, 71, 74, 78n29, 78n34, 79n35, 85, 105, 442 69, 79 87 68n2, 74, 81, 87, 88n77 356
Psalms 10:17 16:3 24:1 27:4 33:15 LXX 34:10 34:15 37:11 41:14 44:23[22] 44:23 45:3 55:18 62:12 (61:13) 68:25 83[84]:4f 95 95:5 97 110:1 114:1 119:36 119:126 119:176 134:2 143:2 146:7f
118 485, 493, 494 593 358n41 343n169 485 343n169 226 426n63 496 496n145 320n19 266n23, 524n111 358 356 58n81 243n35 224n10 243n35 407 430n87 336n121 30 287n36 130, 134n143 373 228
Job 40:10
356
Proverbs 1:17 2:64 4:8 5:8
251, 342n161 257n17 114n39 333n108 633
732
Index of Ancient Sources
5:15 19:16 24:12
496 374n120 358
Song of Songs
5:9 7:14 8:13
91, 91n89, 235–238, 236n5–7, 237n11, 238n12, 238n13, 240, 240n27, 242–248, 242n31, 243n35, 244n40, 245n41, 247n52, 249n54, 250, 250n62, 251, 252n67, 258–260, 258n22, 259n24, 260n25, 308n39 247n52 248, 249, 249n54, 249n59 237n10, 241n30, 248, 249, 249n54, 249n59 239, 241, 245, 251 239, 251 239, 244, 246, 258 242 259 252 240 239 239, 241n30, 242, 244, 245, 247, 247n51, 250, 251, 256, 256n15, 259 252 243 244n40
Lamentations 3:64
358n41
1:2 1:3 1:12 2:8–14 2:8–13 2:8 2:10–13 2:11–13 2:16 4:8 5 5:2
Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) 251 8:5 374n120 9:9 495 10:8 633 Esther Esther (LXX)
143n7, 145n12a, 149, 154, 155, 157, 175, 188, 192, 342n161, 429–431 155, 157
1:1g (LXX) 2:3 2:5 2:6 3:6 5:13 6:10 8:7 8:17 9:29 9:30 9:31 10:1–11:1 10:3 10:9 10:13 11:2–12:6 13:8–14:9 13:8 13:9 13:13 14:5 14:15–17
356 171n120 155, 155n49 155n49 163n81 192n21 192n21 192n21 146, 155n51 192n21 192n21 192n21 155 192n21 155n50 155n50 155 155 155 155n50 155n50 155n50 155
Daniel
145n12a, 188n6, 356, 418, 423, 485n92, 486n99 171n120 493 266n23, 524n111 359n47, 485 407, 485 485 485 485 485 116 485 116 418n30 418n30 418n31 418n30 356
3:12 4:14[17] 6:11 7 7:13 7:18 7:21f 7:22 7:27 8:2 8:24 10:4 10:13 10:21 11:2–4 12:1 12:2 Ezra
79n35, 121, 145n12a, 154, 157, 188–191, 188n6, 212
733
Hebrew Bible and Septuagint
1–3 1 3–10 3:9 4–6 4:12 4:13 4:20 4:23 5–6 5:1 5:5 5:8 5:11 6:7 6:8 6:14 7–10 7:6 7:12 7:13 7:24 7:26 Nehemiah 1–6 1:1–2 1:2 1:6 1:11 2:9 2:10 2:16 2:17 3:33 3:34 4:4 4:6 5:1 5:8 5:14 5:17 6:6 7–13
190, 191 190 146 190n16 190, 191 154n47, 190n13 5, 5n16 5 154n47, 190n13 154n47 145, 154n47, 190, 190n13, 201 154n47, 190n13 145 190 154n47, 190n13 154n47, 190n13 154n47, 190, 190n13 190, 191 318n8 190n17, 318n8 146n15, 154n47 5 318n8 79n35, 121, 145n12a, 154, 188–191, 188n6, 203, 212 154, 154n48, 175, 190, 191, 211 145 190n14 154n48, 190 154 203n74 154n47, 190 190n14, 203 203 190n14 190n14 190n12 190n14 190n14, 190n16 190, 190n14 190n17 190n14 190n14 190, 191
8:6 11:4 11:25 13 13:11 13:16 13:23–27 13:23 13:24
119n62 190n16 190n16 449n161 448 190n16 146 154n48, 190n14, 190n15, 191 145n12a
1 Esdras 4:39 8:10
342n161, 190 356 146n15, 154n47
2 Esdras 23:1
448
1 Chronicles 4:18 9:1 9:3 9:4 16:23 22:2
190, 211 170, 171n120 190n12 190n12 190n12 224n9 147n20
2 Chronicles 2:16 30:25 32:18 34:7 36
190, 211 147n20 147n20 145n12a 147n20 190
1 Maccabees
148, 151, 155, 157, 162, 174, 175, 193, 200, 201, 206, 208, 210–212, 342n161, 354n35, 362, 367, 562n16 210 579n78 575 155 155 51n52 362n61 575 381n150
1:1–11 1:15 1:44–48 2:19 2:23 2:41f 2:42 2:45–46 2:45
734
Index of Ancient Sources
2:50 2:52 2:67 4:2 7:22–24 8:23ff 13:41f 13:42 13:47 14:7 14:47
362n61 362n61 362n61 155 155 146n15 200 151, 201 381n150 381n150 151
2 Maccabees
149, 155–157, 156n53, 175, 193, 194, 198, 199n51, 199n53, 199n55, 201, 204, 204n78, 205, 207, 208, 211, 211n102, 212, 342n161 199 204 199n50, 211n102 199n53 199 199n50 199n53 211n102 199 199 156 199n53 156n53 381n150 156n53 381n150 207n82 45n24, 46n26 356 149n26, 156n54 156n53 156 207n82, 211n102 199n56 156 156 149n26, 156n54 162n75 211n102
1:1–10a 1:1–9 1:1 1:6 1:7f 1:7 1:9 1:10 1:10a 1:10b–2:18 1:25f 2:1 2:21 2:45 4:13 5:68 6:6 6:7a 7:9 7:31 8:1 9:5 9:17 10:1–8 10:38 11:6 11:13 11:16–22 11:16
11:22–26 11:27 11:34 13:41f 14:38 15:14 15:37
162n75 211n102 211n102 199 156n53 342 149n26, 156n54
3 Maccabees
342n161
4 Maccabees 5:2 5:4 8:2 9:6 9:18 13:21 13:23 13:26 14:1 14:14f 15:3 15:10
149, 342n161 149n26 149n26 149n26 149n26 149n26 342n160 342n160 342n160 342n160 58n81 356 342n160
Judith
114, 146, 148, 149, 154, 155, 157, 161, 175, 189, 189n10, 201, 206, 207n82, 211 155 594n64 155 114n43 155 114n43 155 155
4:1 8:4 10:12 12:7–9 12:11 12:19 14:10 14:18 Pseudepigrapha Aristeas 1 3 30 38 121 176
109, 115, 125, 156, 157, 175, 204, 205, 211 204 156n54a 156n54a 156n54a 156n54a 156n54a
735
Pseudepigrapha
305 310
109n9 204
Bel and the Dragon 28, 146n13 1 Enoch
251, 407, 486, 486n96, 486n97, 486n100 1:9 486 8:2 91n84 37–71 (Similitudes/Parables) 485–487, 486n100 62:7–8 487 70 486 2 Enoch 22
486
3 Enoch 4
486, 486n98 486
4 Ezra 1:24 1:31 2:7 2:9
157, 175, 521 521n99 521n99 521n99 521n99
5 Ezra
282, 282n13
Joseph and Aseneth 204–206, 211 1:7 204n77 7:5 204n77 8:10 204n77 22:3 204n77 23:13 204n77 25:5 204n77 25:7 204n77 28:13 204n77 Jubilees
3:3–7 6:23–38 39:10
26, 45, 46, 46n25–27, 56, 121, 121n71, 157, 161, 175, 211, 266, 302n15, 523, 591n50, 654n166 84n62 266n22 157
41:2 47:7
77n27 157
Liber antiquitatum biblicarum 591n50 10:7 595n68 11:15 595n68 20:8 595n68 Martyrdom (and Ascension) of Isaiah 415, 422, 422n54, 440 1:9 179n143 2:2–5 423 2:7–9 423 Psalms of Solomon 358 2:2f 359 2:3 358n41 2:15f 359 2:16 358n41 2:33f 359 3:11f 356 3:12 356 11:1 224n13 17:8 358n42 17:32 343n170 17:34 485 18:1 355 Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides 62, 63, 65n117, 413n8 Sibylline Oracles 157n55 1:382 224n5 2:170–174 157n55 3 108 3:69 157n55 3:591–593 109n8 4:127 157n55 5:161 157n55 5:249 157n55 Sirach (Ben Sira) 79n39, 81n50, 82, 82n52, 157, 175, 189, 189n10, 333n105, 342n161 7:4–6 206n79
736 7:10 7:27[26] 9:13 13:9–13 16:12 16:34 19:20 25:8 (Heb) 25:29f[25f] 28:15 32:23 35:22/24 36:24/25 51:47/23
Index of Ancient Sources
464n28 81n50 206n79 206n79 358n42 358n42 362n60 414n11 81 81n50 374n120 358, 358n45 333n108 157
Testament of Abraham 4:5 596n73 12:10 596n73 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs 156, 157, 161, 175, 211, 327, 415, 421, 421n43, 422, 422n48, 422n51, 422n52, 440 TAsher 1:3–9 421 3:1 343n169 6:4–5 421n47 TBenjamin 8:3 435 TDan 5:5 422n53 5:10 422 6:10 343n169 TGad 5:2 343n169 7:5 355 TIssaschar 421n46 TJoseph 12:2f 157 13:1 157 13:3 157 TJudah 18:2 334n112 TLevi 2:3 128n109 3:2 355 15:2 355 19:1 422, 441 TRuben 334, 435
5:1 5:5 6:1–3 6:1
435 334n112, 435 435 334n112
Tobit
157, 161, 175, 189, 189n10, 196, 201, 206, 211, 469n45 4:8f 355 6:13 197n41 7:12f 165n89, 197n41 7:14 77n28 11:18 157n56, 189n11 12:8 464n28 12:15 (mss A B) 489n116 Wisdom 11–15 15:1f
342n161 353 355
Qumran Community Rule 1QS
1QS 1:1–11 1QS 1:4 1QS 1:18 1QS 1:20 1QS 1:23–24 1QS 2:10 1QS 2:18 1QS 2:19 1QS 2:25–3:11 1QS 3–4 1QS 3:2 1QS 3:5 1QS 3:7f 1QS 3:13–4:26 1QS 3:20–25
3n5, 189n9, 417–420, 417n27, 418n29, 424, 435, 436, 436n115, 438, 438n128, 448, 485, 644n105, 645, 647, 653 417 417n28 420n39 426n63 420n39 426n63 426n63 420n39 229n42 417n27 336n126 336n126, 420n39 229n45 419, 422–424, 653n157 419
Qumran
1QS 3:21 1QS 4:4 1QS 4:7 1QS 4:20–22 1QS 5:7–13 1QS 5:20 1QS 5:213f 1QS 6:8–7:27 1QS 6:13–23 1QS 6:16–23 1QS 6:24–7:27 1QS 8:5–6 1QS 8:5 1QS 8:8–9 1QS 8:13–15 1QS 8:13 1QS 8:14 1QS 8:17ff 1QS 8:17f 1QS 8:20–9:2 1QS 9:3–6 1QS 9:6 1 QS 9:8 1QS 9:19 1QS 11:8 1QS 11:21
454 355 326n61 229n42 417n26 336n126 229n42 644n105 158, 436n115 647n121 436n117 485n94 487n102 485n94 419 189n9 227n29 227n29 229n42, 230n49 230n4, 644n105 135 158, 485n94 485n94 227n29 448n160 438
Damascus Document/Covenant 3, 3n5, 3n6, 46, 68, 70–73, 75, 84n62, 84n63, 94, 96, 97, 420, 428, 436–440, 437n120, 438n128 CD, Text B (Geniza) 438n126 CD 1:18 440n132 CD 4–5 76 CD 4:12–18 179n143 CD 4:13 420n40 CD 4:15 420n40 CD 4:19–5:5 389n30 CD 4:19–5:1 84n64 CD 4:19f 53n58 CD 4:19 335n113 CD 4:20–5:1 84 CD 4:20f 69, 84n64 CD 4:20 98n113 CD 4:21–5:5 438n125
CD 4:21 CD 4:22 CD 5:2f CD 5:7f CD 5:17 CD 6:2–7 CD 6:10 CD 6:13–19 CD 6:14 CD 6:15 CD 7:6 CD 7:8 CD 7:10 CD 7:14 CD 7:16 CD 8:2 CD 8:9 CD 8:10–12 CD 9–14 CD 10:11 CD 11:17 CD 11:20 CD 11:21 CD 12:1–2 CD 12:6–11 CD 12:8 CD 12:8f CD 13:15–18 CD 13:17 CD 14:3–6 CD 14:16–17 CD 15–16 CD 15:5 CD 15:15–17 CD 16:1–4 CD 16:1 CD 16:2–3 CD 16:3f CD 19:2 CD 19:3 CD 20:6 4Q D mss 4Q266 fr 9 iii:1–5 4Q267 9iii3 4Q267 frg. 9 v:6–10 4Q269 fr 9:4–7 4Q270 frg 4 4Q270 frg 7 i:13–15
737 389n31 158 85 69 420n40 595 420n40 420 420n40 425 436n117, 437n122 589n44 158n58 589n44 589n44 420n40 158 438n125 3n5 127 46n27 589n44 128 438n125 284n19 189n9, 200 418n34 84n64 75, 84n64 419n36 438n125 3n5 158 448 182n159 158 454 46n27 437n122 438n126 227n29 438n128 84n64 189n9 419n36 439n129 438n125 438n127
738 4Q270 frg 7 i:14 4 Q271 fr 3:11–15
Index of Ancient Sources
447n154 439n129
Florilegium 4Qflor/4Q174
211n100, 418, 419n36, 428, 442, 443, 448, 449, 449n164, 589n41 frg 1 col i.21.2, 1:3–6 419n35 frg 1 i,21, 2: 2–7 443 frg 1 i 3–4 284n19 frg 1 i,21, 2:3–4 448 frg 1 i,21, 2:11 449n164 Genesis Apocryphon
73
Habakuk Pesher 1QpHab 1QpHab 7:10f 1QpHab 8:1–3 1QpHab 11:4–9 1QpHab 11:4–7 1QpHab 11:6–8 1QpHab 12:3–4 1QpHab 12:4f 4QpHab
357n37, 361 362 158n58, 362 505n21 527n118 47 158n58 362n60 418n31, 456n191
Halakhic Letter 4QMMT, 4Q394–399 24n10, 28, 39, 40, 46, 46n26, 49n38, 121, 121n71, 352n27, 357n37, 363, 416n21, 418, 420, 427n70, 427n71, 613, 613n57, 648 4QMMT C 25–31 363n66 4QMMT 13 329n78 4QMMT 21 329n78 4QMMT 24 329n78 4QMMT 36 329n78 4QMMT 44 329n78 4QMMT 60 329n78 4QMMT 63 329n78 4QMMT 72 329n78 4Q394 1–2 (i–v) 46n26 4Q394 frg 3–7 1:5–12 418n34
4Q394 frg 3–7 1:11f 4Q397 frg 14–21 line 8 4Q398 frg 14–17 1:7–8 4Q398 fr 14–17 col II:2f 4Q398 frg 14–17 col II:5 4Q398 fr 14–17 col. II:7
592n54 648n127 420 363n66 421 363n66
Hodayot 1QH 1QH 4:29–31 1QH 9:14f 1QH 13:16f 1QH 16:11 1QH 23 1QH 23[18]:14f 1QH 30 1QHa 19:3
226n25, 363 373n118 373n118 373n118 373n118 355 227n32 355 426n63
Isaiah Pesher 4Q164
451n175
Nahum Pesher 4QpNah/4Q169 4QpNah 2:2 4QpNah 2:8 4QpNah 3:4–5 4Q169 frg 3–4 i:2–3 4Q169 frg 3–4 ii:2 4Q169 frg 3–4 iii:2 4Q169 frg 3–4 iii:6
439, 440, 456n191 589n41 589n41 158n58 418n31 439n130 439n130 439n130
Psalms Pesher, 4Q171/4QpPsa (4QpPs37) 2:4 473n54 2:10 473n54 2:15 362n60 2:33 362n60 3:1 436n117 3:5 473n54 3:10 473n54 Malachi Scroll
74
Melchizedek Scroll 11Q13/11QMelch 11QMelch 2:15f 11QMelch 2:16 11QMelch 2:18f 11QMelch 2:18
228 228n36 224n13 224n13 228n36
739
Philo
Messianic Apocalypse 4Q521 228, 228n37, 232 4Q521 frg 2 2:1–12 228n37 Minor Prophets Scroll 4Q76–81 74, 75, 79n37, 81, 87 Rule of the Congregation 1QS28a/1QSa 438n128 1:1 158 1:1–5 438 2:4–9 449n161 2:9 448n160 Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice 448n160 Temple Scroll 11QTemp 11QTemp 45:7–11 11QTemp 54:4 11QTemp 56:18 11QTemp 57:17–19 11QTemp 64:1ff
24n10, 46n26, 72, 93n98, 128, 591n50, 592n52 128n110 84n64 84 53n58, 84, 84n64, 389n30, 438n125 84n64
Various Manuscripts 4Q177 (Catena) 442n136 4Q184 (Wicked Woman) 438 4Q196 fr. 2:6–7 (Tobit) 5n19 4Q213a (Aramaic Levi) 128 4Q213a fr 1 col 1:6–13 128n109 4Q242 (Prayer of Nabonidus) frg 1:4 189n8 4Q319 (Otot) 3:3 189n9 4Q326 (Calendrical Doc) 46n26 4Q327 (Calendrical Doc) 46n26 4Q333 (Historical text E) frg 2 189n8
4Q416 fr. 2 ii 21 4Q416 fr. 2 iv 5 4Q448 4Q470 fr 5:17–21 4Q502 frg 14:6 4Q502 frg 19:2–3 4Q511 frg 2 i:6 4Q513 4Q550c 2–3 (Proto Esther) 4Q550d ar 1 iv3
332n100 332n100 201n65 439n129 438n127 438n127 485n93 46n26, 49n38
War Scroll, 1QM
227, 417, 417n27, 418, 420, 418n29, 419n37, 422, 440, 485, 488, 489 417n27 418 158 418n33 488n114 449n161, 488n114 485n93 489n117 489n117 227n34 418n33 418n33, 485n93 418n30
1QM 1 1QM 1:1–7 1QM 1:1 1QM 1:4–7 1QM 2:7 1QM 4:10 1QM 6:6 1QM 7:6 1QM 12:7 1QM 14:7 1QM 15:2 1QM 16:1 1QM 17:6f
189n8 189n8
Philo de Abrahamo (Abr) 8 159n63 de Confusione linguarum (Conf) 129 159n62, 203n71 de Congressu (Congr) 40–44 159n62 79f 333n108 87 327n71 de Decalogo (Dec) 1 113n32 32 433n102 45 114n41, 136n151
740 158 159
Index of Ancient Sources
136n151 159n61
de Ebrietate (Ebr) 113 595n70 in Flaccum (Flacc) 158, 202n69 120–123 114n42 de Fuga (Fug) 140
80n5
Hypothetica (Hyp) 44, 57, 57n74, 58, 60–64, 62n103, 63n105, 64n111, 65n117, 112n25, 340n151 8.7.2 61n97 8.7.6 60n94 8.7.8 59, 60n94 8.7.9 58n83 11.1 437n119 11.14 434n109, 436n116 de Josepho (Jos) 218 340n150 de Legatione ad Gaium (Leg) 158, 202n69 4 159n63 4:2 202n69 87 340n150 92 340n150 99 224n7 184 451n174 207ff 163n80 278 159n65 373 146n15 Legum allegoriae (Leg all) 3:244 333n108 de Migratione Abrahami (Migr) 18 280n5 20 149n25 70–73 470n48 86–94 321n26
de Mutatione (Mut) 265f 327n71 de Posteritate (Post) 54 202n69 63 202n69 92 202n69 Quaestiones in Exodum (QE) 2.2 211n102 Quis heres (Her) 279 159n60 Quod omnis 75 83 86f
147n19, 340n152 340n152 340n152
de Somniis (Somn) 2:271 595n70 de Specialibus legibus (Spec leg) 61, 62, 62n103 1:1 113n32 1:51 211n102 1:162 113n31 1:258 136n151 1:261 113n31 2:41 159n61 2:86 159n61 2:145 159n61 2:162 50n40 2:176 50n40 2:242–248 61n97 3:30–31 82, 434n104 3:30 53n57 3:34–36 434n110 3:36 60n89 3:63 111n24 3:82 82n55 3:83–209 112 3:88–91 113n32 3:120–126 113n32 3:171–174 434n105 3:205 113n31 4:203–307 413n9
741
Josephus
de Virtute (Virt) 65 66 69 72 81 82–94 82 88 102 108 109 121 125 131
341 341n154 341n153 341n153 341n153 341n156 341n157 336n123 341n154 341n155 146n16 341n155 341n155 341n155 341n155
de Vita contemplativa (Vit cont) 1 434n106 1f 65n114 21 65n114 22 434n107 34 434n108 57–63 321n29 de Vita Mosis (Mos) 1:7 159n60 1:34 159n59 2:31–32 159n64 2:138 136n151 2:193 159n59 Josephus Against Apion
1:1
41, 41n1, 41n3, 42, 42n6, 42n9, 43n15, 44, 54n61, 54n63, 56–58, 57n74, 57n77, 57n79, 59n86, 59n88, 60, 60n92, 61n95, 61n99, 62–65, 62n101, 62n103, 63n105, 63n106, 64n111, 65n117, 65n118, 112, 202, 205, 208, 208n86, 215, 217, 340, 534n4, 538, 540, 540n34, 583n16, 605 160, 160n66a
1:4 1:6–218 1:51 1:53 1:167 1:172–175 1:179 1:212 1:219–2:144 1:223 1:251 1:320–2:1f 2:27 2:77 2:145–286 2:145–219 2:146 2:175 2:190–218 2:190–217 2:198 2:199 2:201 2:202 2:203 2:206 2:207–208 2:213 2:213f 2:215 2:216 2:220–286 2:230 2:271 2:296
202 63 555n106 534, 563n17 160n69 191n20 210n97 43n15 63 63n107 63n107 63n107 57n78 592n53 63 63 340n147 57n78 64n112 43 112n25 59 57 60 112n25 61 59 57, 58, 340n148 64 56, 61 62, 64 63 340n148 58n82, 64 160n66a
Life
56, 65, 202, 205, 534n4, 535, 535n7, 536, 536n14, 538–541, 542n42, 544, 545, 554, 555, 555n106, 605 202 48, 479n74 536n14 583n14 42n6 302n17, 646n116 229n40, 436n114
1–12 1–6 6 9–12 10–12 10 11
742 12 16 27 113 159–161 161 189–198 190–216 190 191f 191 197 309 336–367 342 343 355 358 359 360 362 365f 422–429 426 428f 430
Index of Ancient Sources
605n13, 606n21 147n19 208n89 576 52 52 606n21 614n61 365n80, 583n12 536 302n17, 586n31, 606n21 302n17 365n80, 583n12 536n14, 541 564n23 544n51 544n51 564n23 536n13, 536n14, 541, 544n54 541 555n106 545 605n14 54, 83n59, 606n20 272n53 160n66a, 479n74, 535, 541
Jewish Antiquities 41, 41n2, 41n3, 43, 43n10, 43n15, 45, 47, 54n63, 56, 57, 59, 61n99, 62, 62n101, 62n103, 64, 65, 148, 193, 202, 203, 205, 207, 208, 216, 340, 382n151, 533, 535–538, 535n7, 541, 542n42, 545, 554, 555n106, 559, 562–564, 566, 571–573, 575, 578, 582, 583n16, 605, 606 1–11 194 1–10 203 1–9 160 1:1–4 43n11 1:1 479n74
1:4 1:5 1:6 1:8 1:10 1:24 1:95 1:146 1:203 1:214 1:240 1:257f 1:333 2:161 2:317 2:318 3:223 3:224–286 3:224 3:237 3:239 3:245 3:248 3:249 3:250–252 3:252 3:261 3:276 4:11 4:26 4:67–75 4:78 4:84 4:180 4:196–198 4:198 4:199–301 4:206 4:207 4:238 4:244f 4:245 4:251f 4:253 4:260–264 4:261 4:271
160, 160n67 41n1, 604n8 41n1, 160n67 160n66a 41n1 340n147 160n67 160n67, 160n68a, 203n73 208n89 160n67 160n67 139n161 203n72 339n143 44 47n31 43n14 43, 540 43n12 50 47 50 47 44 48 49n37 91n88 44, 44n19 160n67 340n145 41n2 47n31 47n31 203n72 43n13 41n1, 43n14 43, 58, 540 44n18 382n151 646n114 59 44, 44n19 61 53, 83, 606n20 61 59 58n80, 62n102
Josephus
4:274 4:275 4:278 4:284–287 4:301 6:26 6:30 6:40 6:68 6:96–98 6:324 7:72 7:103 8:25 8:163 9:245 10:8 11 11:6 11:77 11:123 11:146 11:168 11:169–173 11:169 11:173 11:312 11:321–339 12:8 12:106 12:189 12:241 12:271 12:277 12:278 12:293 13:1 13:62–72 13:171 13:254–256 13:257f 13:258 13:288 13:293 13:297 13:298 13:319 13:372
58n80 58n80 60 58n80 58n80 160n67 160n67 160n67 160n67 160n67 160n67 160n67 160n67 160n67 160n67 160n67 147n18 160, 203, 203n73 203 50n43 146n15, 154n47 202n238 203n74 145 203, 213, 217 203 203 163n79 202n70 109n9 340n145 579n78 576 51n52 576 646n116 146n15 114n40 42n5, 302n17 163n79 576n67 146n13 24n9, 302n17 302n17 24n9 65n115 576n67 50n45, 613n58
13:405f 14:8 14:9 14:22 14:41 14:63f 14:110 14:187 14:190–267 14:255 14:258 15 15:259 15:409 16:198 17:149–164 17:190 17:323 18:1–3 18:3 18:4–25 18:4–23 18:4–10 18:9 18:11 18:12–17 18:12f 18:15 18:16 18:17 18:18–22 18:23–25 18:23 18:25 18:26–29 18:26 18:117–119 18:117 18:228 18:229 18:257–259 18:259 18:261–309 18:261 20:9–16 20:38–48 20:51–53
743 537 146n13 146n13 650n138 577n71 52 180n151 192n23 628n33 149n28, 160n69 108n5 206n248 165n89, 167n97 146n13 83n59 381n150 254n3 254n3 565 574n58 565 573n55 216n118, 572n44, 606n18 378n138, 565 302n17 24n9, 527n119, 613n56 606n18 51n48, 505n21, 586n31 653n159 51n48 65n115 216n118, 572n44 53n56, 606n18 565 565 574n58 574n60 229n42 160n69 224n5 63n109 202 163n80 451n174 545n61 576 570
744 20:92–96 20:97–215 20:97–99 20:97f 20:101–103 20:101 20:102 20:103–136 20:103 20:131 20:142 20:145 20:154 20:160–166 20:160 20:165 20:167–172 20:179–188 20:179 20:186 20:196 20:197–203 20:197 20:199 20:200 20:201 20:203 20:205–207 20:206f 20:211 20:213 20:214 20:223 20:262 20:266 20:266f 20:268 22:1–16 22:97–258 Jewish War
Index of Ancient Sources
576n68 103n133, 377n128 572n49 376n127, 615n65 572n45 478n69 216n118, 564n23, 565, 615n65 216n118 545n62, 552n91 552n91 543n44 543n45 626n21 573n52 560n5 573n52 573n54 545n63 545n62 573n53 545n62 546n65, 656n171 545n62 302n17 42n8, 364n70, 555 555n105 545n62 552n91 546n65 544n56 545n62 560n5 545n62 604n8 535, 541 536n14 605n14 289n43 289n43 43n15, 54n63, 60, 65, 160, 161 (proem), 202, 205, 207–210, 216, 378n134, 379n139, 534–537, 535n7, 542n42, 545, 554, 559– 566, 560n5, 571–573,
1 1:1f 1:3 1:6 1:17 1:18 1:19f 1:30 1:31–2:654 1:32 1:146 1:175 1:485 1:648–655 2 2:20:3 2:117 2:118 2:119–166 2:119–161 2:119ff 2:119 2:120–122 2:122 2:124 2:128f 2:137–138 2:139–142 2:139 2:141 2:142 2:143–144 2:160–161 2:160 2:162–166 2:162 2:163 2:164f 2:166 2:184–187 2:192–203 2:197 2:204–408 2:204–308 2:220 2:223–407
578, 605 561, 562 202, 561n12 160n68 160n66a 561 561 562 561n12 562 50n43 52 339n144 339n144 381n150 561, 562 377n132 563, 564 563, 565n30, 573n55, 606n18 653 65n115 606n18 42n5, 302n17, 340n149 436 340n149, 420n41, 480 437n119 128n111 436n115 417n26 417n28 59 408n60 436n115 436 60n91 24n9 586n31 587n33 653n159 340n149 163n80 163n80 592n53 483 289n43 572, 572n43 103n133, 377n128
745
New Testament
2:223–245 2:247–279 2:247–266 2:253–264 2:254–263 2:254–260 2:254–257 2:256 2:258–263 2:261 2:271 2:283 2:293 2:309–314 2:344–402 2:409f 2:409 2:433 2:447 2:454 2:493 2:566 2:568–654 2:634 2:651 3 3:29 3:443f 4:159 4:160 4:161 4:402 4:459 4:616 5:45 5:160 5:381 5:388 5:443 6:94 7 7:23f 7:37f 7:45–53 7:158–162
216n118 289n43 572n43 474n57 571 545n63 573n52 573n52 573n54 545n63 572n43 564 564 544n49 544n50 13, 289n49, 377n129, 606n19 284n20, 428n74, 474, 574n61, 592n53 606n18, 572n47 572n47 577n70 572n46 377n132 562 52 574n61 562 544n57 545n58 365n80, 536, 583n12, 606n21, 614n61 546n65 574n61 160n70 160n70 572n46 572n46 160 160n70 160n70 160 50n43 565n29 545n58 545n58 290n52 543n46
7:218 7:252–255 7:253 7:420–432
477n67 565 606n18 114n40
New Testament Q 16:18 Matthew
2:2 2:21f 3:2 3:7–10 3:11
68, 68n3, 95, 105, 229n46, 231, 286 76 68, 69, 69n6, 71–76, 72n14, 88n75, 90, 91n89, 95, 97–99, 101–102, 104–105, 176, 215, 225–227, 227n27, 231–233, 242, 242n31, 243n32, 243n33, 244n36, 245, 246n45–49, 248n53, 250n61, 252n66, 254, 254n3, 254n5, 254n6, 255, 255n10–12, 256n14, 257n20, 260–268, 262n2, 262n3, 264n6–8, 264n11, 265n12, 265n15, 265n17, 267n26, 267n29, 268n32, 269n37, 272n54, 274–277, 279–296, 308n39, 313, 359n48, 360, 378n137, 389n30, 415, 432n99, 433n101, 482n83, 501–532, 541, 541n38, 548, 549, 549n78, 549n80, 582, 582n8, 601n91, 607n22, 608, 608n33, 610, 618, 623n9, 640n88, 645n111, 652, 652n149, 659, 660, 660n187 176, 294n77 177 230 229n46 229n46
746 3:14f 3:15 4:17 4:23 5–7 5 5:16 5:17–19 5:18 5:20 5:21–48 5:27–30 5:28–30 5:31–32 5:31f 5:32 5:45 5:47 6 6:1–18 6:2–4 6:2 6:5f 6:5 6:6 6:7–15 6:7–8 6:7f 6:7 6:9–13 6:9–12 6:9ff 6:9 6:12–15 6:14–15 6:15 6:16–18 6:16 6:19f 6:24 6:25–34 6:32
Index of Ancient Sources
230 294n77 230 225n19 104n135, 226, 267, 515 99 249 105n139, 279, 298n5 292 279, 515 25, 99 99n117 433 97n111, 520 98, 99, 101 68, 73, 76, 292, 389n25 425 105n139, 267n28, 282, 292n62, 516n74, 645n113 522, 523n105, 526 262–263, 267, 293, 516, 520, 523, 523n106 464n28 292n62, 293n68, 515, 516n76 269 265, 292n62, 293n68, 515, 516n76 273n57 267 267 516 105n139, 267, 267n28, 292, 516n74, 645n113 523n106 516 233n59 516 265 267n27 293n68 245n43 292n62, 515, 516n76 355 425, 455n189 270n46 105n139
7–15 7:1f 7:6 7:13–14 7:21–23 7:24–27 7:27 8 8:5–15 8:5–13 8:10–12 8:10 8:11f 9:14 9:22 9:33 9:35 9:39 10:5–8 10:5f 10:5 10:6 10:7 10:8–15 10:10 10:16 10:18 10:23 10:24 11:2–6 11:5 11:7–13 11:12 11:14 11:25 12 12:1–14 12:8 12:11f 12:12 12:14 12:24 12:31 13:14f
267 360 233n59, 522n101 424 363n65 363n65 285 294n74 531 282, 294 105n140 177n137 521n96 244n38 374n123, 424n56 177n137 225n19 345n180 283n15 279, 283 281, 282 105n139, 177, 279n1, 280n4, 282, 287, 521, 521n97 230 233n59 404n49, 522n101 294n77 294 177 640n89 231 233n** 231 575n64 231, 490n121 264n5 176 518, 520 305n28 302 294 302n15, 519n87, 549n80, 551n89, 608n31 179n143 522n101 639n85
New Testament
13:52 13:53–58 13:57 14:12 14:23 15:1–20 15:1 15:3–6 15:7 15:11 15:12–14 15:17 15:20 15:21 15:24 16:9f 16:17 16:19 16:27 17:4 17:13 18 18:15–18 18:15–17 18:16 18:17 18:19 18:23–35 19 19:1–9 19:1–8 19:3–9 19:3 19:7 19:9 19:28 20:19 21:13 21:22–46 21:31 21:33–22:14 21:43–45
243, 243n35, 292 226 280 230 265n18, 524n113 17n39, 519, 520 515n70 270n46, 517n77 293n68, 515n70 635n63 519 635n63 134n141, 519 285n25 105n139, 177, 279, 280, 282, 287, 288, 288n42 355 409n64 298n5 359, 489 268, 518n84 231 645 645 645 645n112 105n139, 267n28, 292n62, 516n74, 645, 655 298n5, 335n117 254 98, 99 389n25 387n17 97n111, 98, 519, 520, 594n62 53n57, 90 388n23 68, 73, 99 , 292, 387n17, 389n25 177 288 269n37 282 425n60 282 105n140
21:43 21:45 21:46 22:11–13 22:15–22 22:15 22:18 22:34 22:40 23 23:1–12 23:1 23:3 23:4 23:7–12 23:7–10 23:8 23:9 23:10 23:13–33 23:13–32 23:13 23:14 23:15 23:16–22 23:23 23:25–26 23:25 23:27 23:29–31 23:29 24:14 24:31 24:42 24:50 25:1–13 26:6–13 26:11 26:25 26:39
747 279, 281, 283, 294, 521 178n142, 519n88 294 254n7 574n58 515n70, 519n87, 519n88 293n68, 515n70 519n88 366 176, 267, 515, 517, 519n88, 526, 610n41 517, 520 293n68 517 517n78 291n57, 293 267, 268 291, 293, 582n8, 660 518n80 521 517, 520, 526 293 267n24, 293n68, 515n69 515n69 267n24, 293n68, 515n69 517 105n139, 267n24, 292, 293n68, 515n69, 517 517 267n24, 293n68, 515n69 267n24, 293n68, 515n69 517n78 267n24, 293n68, 515n69 225n19, 294 596n73 255n10 254n7 246, 255 247n52, 432n95 248n53 268, 518, 518n85 264n5
748 26:49 26:52 27 27:1 27:3 27:7 27:19–25 27:19 27:24 27:42 27:62–66 27:62 27:65–66 27:65f 28:1–8 28:11 28:12 28:15 28:18ff 28:19
Mark
1:1 1:4–11 1:4f 1:4 1:8 1:11 1:12f 1:14f 1:14 1:15 1:21–45
Index of Ancient Sources
268, 518n85 575n64 176 519n87 518 519n87 531 295 295 176 105n140, 294 178n142, 294, 519n88 531 296n86 432n98 296n86, 531 296n86, 519n87 105n140, 176, 178, 294, 521 283n15 279–283, 279n1, 281n7, 283n15, 285n26, 294, 507n27, 521, 521n97 68, 72, 76, 91n89, 95–99, 98n115, 104, 105, 105n138, 131, 176, 225, 226, 229, 230, 230n52, 232, 233, 242, 244, 245, 247, 248n53, 249, 250, 267, 268, 285, 285n26, 287, 291, 293, 308, 308n40, 313, 407, 407n59, 514, 515, 518–520, 525, 526, 531, 607n22, 610, 635, 635n67 225n18, 232, 407n59 230 132 131n124, 229n41 229n45, 229n46 407 231n54 131n124, 230, 232 225n18 250 225
1:23f 1:29–31 1:35 1:45 2 2:9 2:12 2:15 2:16 2:18–22 2:18 2:23–3:6 2:27 3 3:6 3:19–22 3:34f 4 4:11 4:12 4:26–29 5:1–20 5:19 5:23–43 5:34 6:1–6 6:7 6:30 6:34–44 6:46 7 7:1–23 7:1–15 7:2f 7:3f 7:3 7:5–15 7:5 7:6 7:7 7:9–13 7:12–14 7:15–19 7:15 7:19
131 432n93 231n54, 265n18, 524n113 231n54 244n38, 245 298n5, 307, 635n67 308n38 425n60 515n71 244, 523n109 230 518 305, 497n146 176 302n15, 514n63, 519n87, 549n80, 608n31 231 432n96 243 407 639n85 260n25 285 285 432n93 374n123, 424n56 226 131 131 490n120 265n18 176 17n39, 96n107, 519 133n134 386n16 285n25 176, 178 126n94 125, 400 267n24 183n163 270n46, 608n34 133n134 635n63 131n124, 133n134 183n163, 519
New Testament
7:20–23 7:24–30 7:25–30 7:27 8:1–9 8:31–33 8:38 9:2–8 9:2–7 9:4 9:5 9:13 10:1–12 10:1–10 10:2–12 10:2–10 10:2–9 10:4 10:5 10:6 10:11f 10:12 10:17f 10:17 10:33 10:45 10:51 10:52 11:11–18 11:17 11:21 11:22–24 11:25 12:1–12 12:13–17 12:25 12:35–37 12:36 12:41–44 13:3–36 13:21–23 13:21f 13:28–29 13:28 13:35
131n124 285 432n94 482 490n120 407 359n48, 489 486n99 407 490 268, 268n30, 268n31, 518n82–84 490n121 96n107 387n17 53n58, 389n25, 594n62 96 76 388n23 105 389n31 76, 80n46 , 387n17 285n25, 386n16, 403, 594n61 518n80 229n47 288 407 268n30, 518n82 374n123, 424n56 288n41 269n37 268n30, 518n82 273n57 264n7, 265, 267n27, 268, 274 282 574n58 490n124 288n40 408 610n41 242 260n25 574n60 242 259 255n10
749
14:1 14:3–9 14:3 14:5 14:6 14:7 14:8 14:9 14:36 14:45 14:62 15 15:1 15:26 15:32 15:48 16 16:1–8 16:6
248n53, 308, 635n67 247n52, 248, 432n95 248n53, 308, 635n67 308n39 248n53 248n53 248n53, 249n60 249n60 264n5 268n30, 518n82 407 176 519n87 574n60 176 574n60 409 432n98 407
Luke
68, 72, 95–99, 95n104, 95n106, 98n115, 105, 116, 131, 176, 177n138, 214n111, 225–227, 227n27, 229, 231, 232, 242, 248n53, 257n19, 261–266, 262n3, 263n4, 264n6, 264n8, 268, 272n52, 286n28–30, 286n32, 290n53, 291–294, 292n58, 308n39, 310, 310n47, 313, 324n44, 424, 432, 432n95, 432n99, 514, 515n71, 517n78, 518n83, 519, 520, 525, 533n2, 533n3, 542, 542n41, 546–553, 564n22, 566n33, 570n40, 584n18, 584n20, 603–619, 619n80, 659, 659n185, 659n186 313, 553n98 43n11, 313, 479n74 335n117, 584, 604 547
1–2 1:1–4 1:1 1:3f
750 1:3 1:4 1:19 1:38 1:54f 1:55 1:59 2:1f 2:1 2:2 2:10 2:19 2:21–28 2:21 2:25 2:26 2:32 2:34 2:36f 2:51 3:1 3:2 3:3 3:4 3:7–9 3:10–14 3:12 3:13f 3:14 3:16 3:18 4:16–30 4:19 4:21 4:25 4:27 4:42 4:43 5:5 5:16 5:21 5:30–32 5:30 5:33 6:1–11
Index of Ancient Sources
551n88, 553n96, 584n18 605n11 225n16 432 588n37 587 116n53 553n95 574n58 564 225n16 432 607n27 116n53 177 286n30 549, 552n90 177n137 594n64 432 553n95, 553n99, 553n100 546n65 229n41 553n99 229n46 132, 229 230n48 230n51 575n64 229n46 225n16, 230 226 227 226 177n137 177n137 231n54 225n17 268n31, 518n83 231n54, 265n18, 524n113 515n71 425 425n60 244n38 518
6:2 6:5 6:7 6:11 6:12 6:15 6:20–49 6:20–26 6:34 6:40 6:42 6:47–49 7 7:1–10 7:3–5 7:4 7:6 7:7 7:11–17 7:18–23 7:22 7:24–28 7:30 7:36–50 7:36 7:38 7:39 7:42 7:44 7:45 7:47 7:50 8 8:1 8:2–3 8:10 8:21f 8:24 8:48 9:2 9:3–6 9:10 9:12 9:18 9:26 9:28f
659n186 305n28 515n71 549n80, 551, 608n31 231n54, 265n18, 271n48, 524n113 575n62 226 424 336 640n89 267n24 363n65 175, 553n96, 618n78 169, 176, 176n135, 282, 286, 531 286 287n33 286, 549 287n33 432n93, 490n120 226, 231 233n** 231 608n29 247n52, 432 549, 608n31 247n52 425n60 247n52 125n92 247n52 247n52 424n56 243 225n17 432 639n85 432n96 268n31, 518n83 374n123, 424n56 230 233n59 131n121 265n18 231n54, 524n113 359n48 231n54
751
New Testament
9:28 9:33 9:49 10:4–12 10:7 10:9 10:18 10:21 10:39 10:42 11 11:1–5 11:1 11:2–5 11:2–4 11:20 11:27f 11:37 11:40–48 11:46 11:47f 11:53f 11:53 12 12:1–5 12:1–4 12:35–38 12:35–36 12:56 13:11–17 13:15f 13:15 13:17 13:31–33 13:31 13:33 14:1 14:5 14:6 15:2 15:6 16:1–9 16:3 16:9 16:13 16:14 16:16
265n18, 524n113 268n31, 518n83 268n31, 518n83 233n59 404n49, 522n101 230 131, 131n121, 424 264n5 433 432 517, 603n4 262–263 524, 528 507 507n29 131n121 432 549, 608n31 517 517n78, 518 517n78 608n30 515n71 257 271 292 256, 257 247 267n24 432 302–303 267n24 432n94, 549n80 608n31 549, 553n100, 608n31 288 549, 608n31 303 549n80 608n30 287n36 425 425 455n189 455n189 608n29 225n17, 231, 575n64
16:18 17:13 17:19 18:1 18:10–14 18:12 18:32 18:42 19:2–10 19:8 19:9 19:12–27 19:47f 20:1 20:9–18 20:19 20:20–26 20:41–44 20:45–21:4 20:47 21:22–32 21:29 22:2 22:4 22:19f 22:30 22:31 22:66 23 23:2 23:6–12 23:7 23:27–31 23:29f 23:51 23:52 23:66 24 24:1–12 24:21 24:26f 24:27 24:44 24:53 John
53n58, 68n3, 76, 95, 387n17, 594n62 268n31, 518n83 374n123, 424n56 273n57 374 527n117 288 374n123, 424n56 425n60 230n51 432n94 553n98 610n39 610n39 282 294, 610n39 574n58 288n40 610n41 515n69 270n46 242 610n39 610n39 95n106 177 424 574n58 176 574n58 553n100 294n77 610 518 177, 610 610n39 610n39 408, 409 432n98 177 552n90 546, 607n27 552n90, 607n27 553n98 45, 51n50, 104n37, 142n5, 143n7,
752
1 1:1–18 1:1–11 1:8 1:9–11 1:15 1:17 1:18 1:20 1:21 1:30 1:31 1:32 1:35–51 1:35–41 1:37 1:38 1:40 1:45 1:46 1:48 1:49 1:50 2:1–25 2:4 2:6 2:11 2:13 2:19 3 3:1
Index of Ancient Sources
169n109b, 177–180, 179n146, 179n148, 180n150, 181n157, 184, 185n165, 187, 189, 194n31, 207, 209, 212, 215, 218–220, 218n126, 218n127, 225, 244n39, 245, 247, 248n53, 268, 272n52, 276n65, 277, 290n55, 297–314, 416, 432, 432n95, 426n63, 466n34, 490, 518, 523n110, 532, 532n140, 532n141, 548, 549, 549n78, 585n25, 607n22, 608, 608n33, 618, 621–660 244n39 635n65 311 231n55 301 636n70 301, 311, 638n78 249 231n55 490n119 636n70 178 230 302 230 230 268n30, 518n82 230 302 180n149 178 268n30, 518n82 178 225 432, 432n99 178n140, 180n149 639 178n140 298n4 245 178n140, 583n11
3:2 3:10 3:22–24 3:22 3:26 3:28–30 3:29 4 4:1–42 4:1f 4:9 4:14 4:21 4:22 4:31 4:54 5 5:1 5:8–18 5:8 5:9 5:9b–13 5:13 5:16–18 5:16 5:17 5:18 5:20 5:28f 5:33–36 5:36 6 6:4 6:25 6:41 6:52 7 7:1 7:2 7:7 7:10 7:11f 7:13 7:19–23 7:19f
268n30, 518n82 178 230, 231n54 131n124, 132 268n30, 518n82 244 244 177, 635n65 432 131n124, 132, 230 178, 178n140, 180n149 496n144 432n99 178, 184, 313 268n30, 518n82 639 51n50, 298–300, 307, 308, 311, 635n65 178n140 179n144 298, 307, 635n67 298, 307, 308n38, 637 308n41 300 298 298n5, 549n80 300, 311, 637 218n125, 298n4, 298n5, 301, 608n31 637 356n36 231n55 231 635n65 178n140, 180n149 268n30, 518n82 180n149 180n149 298–300, 305, 307, 310, 311 180n149, 218, 299 178n140, 180n149 311 180n149 298n5 218n125, 311, 637 299 218n125, 299
New Testament
7:19 7:21–23 7:22–24 7:22f 7:22 7:23 7:25 7:38 7:41 8 8:2–11 8:17 8:31 8:32 8:37 8:40 8:44 8:53 8:58 9 9:1 9:2 9:4 9:11f 9:13–41 9:13 9:14–16 9:14 9:18–23 9:18 9:22f 9:22
9:28 9:35f 9:40f 10:31 10:34 10:35 10:40f 10:41 11–12
301, 309, 311 298n1 51n50 51n50, 297, 297n*, 302, 303, 307, 309, 637, 637n73 304, 311 270n46, 298n4, 298n5, 301, 309, 310 217n290 496n144 180n149 179, 299, 300 88n76 179, 301 179, 300n10, 313 622 218n125, 299n8 218n125, 299n8 179, 184, 300n10, 313 300 300n10 51n50, 298, 300, 301, 623, 624 300 268n30, 518n82 300, 637 298n5, 300 636 637 179n144 300, 307, 637 640 637, 637n74 636 179n145, 276, 293, 301, 311, 532n140, 601n91, 619n79, 623, 639, 640, 642, 643 638n78 637 640 300n12 179, 301 298n4, 298n5 231n54 231n55 638, 639
11 11:1–12:8 11:2 11:7f 11:7 11:8 11:13–15 11:41 11:47 11:53 11:55 11:57 12 12:1–8 12:1 12:3–8 12:3 12:5 12:7 12:8 12:10 12:13 12:21 12:37–43 12:37–42 12:37–40 12:39 12:40 12:42 13:5 13:16 13:29 13:34 14–17 14:31 15–17 15:11 15:12 15:18 15:20–16:4 15:21 15:25 16:1 16:2f
753 432 432 636n70 218 639n83 268n30, 300n12, 518n82, 639n83 639 264n5 178n142, 300n12, 639 218n125, 300n12 178n140 639 249 432n95 248n53, 308, 635n67 248 241n30, 248n53, 249, 308, 635n67, 636n70 308n39 248n53, 249n60 248n53 218n125 178 180n149 638 639n86 639n86 637 637 179n145, 276, 293, 532n140, 601n91, 619n79, 637, 642 125n92 640n89 344n175 387n18 640 635n65, 640 635n65, 640 640 387n18 311 640 641n92 179, 302 640 311
754 16:2 16:4 16:33 17:1 17:15 18:3 18:5 18:12 18:13 18:14 18:31 18:33 18:38 18:39 19:3 19:7 19:12 19:14 19:19 19:21 19:26 19:31 19:38 19:40 19:42 20:1–13 20:1 20:13 20:15 20:16 20:19 20:30f 20:30 21:19 21:24f Acts
Index of Ancient Sources
179n145, 218n125, 276, 532n140, 601n91, 619n79, 642 640 640 264n5 311 178n142, 293 256n14 178n142 546n65 178n142 179, 218n125 178 179 178 178 179, 302 179 179 178 178 432n99 298n2 311, 637 178n140 178n140 432n99 298n2 432n99 432n99 518n82 298n2, 311, 637 635n65 639 635n65 635n65 27, 95n106, 103, 104, 108, 113n38, 177, 180, 184, 212–214, 213n108, 214n109, 214n111, 217, 217n123, 218, 225, 266, 286, 286n28, 286n30, 287, 289–291, 290n53, 313, 319, 322–324, 323n41, 324n43, 324n44, 324n48, 338,
1–5 1 1:1f 1:1 1:8–9 1:8 1:9–11 1:11 1:13 2 2:5 2:5a 2:5b 2:9 2:10f 2:14 2:17 2:22 2:22a 2:23 2:29 2:29a 2:34–36 2:35 2:36 2:37 2:38f 2:38 2:41f 2:42–46 2:42–45 2:42 2:44 2:46
353, 376, 378, 400, 409, 440, 450, 463, 465, 475, 476, 476n65, 479n74, 479n75, 480, 481, 483, 487, 490, 495, 496, 509, 533n2, 533n3, 541n37, 542, 542n41, 542n43, 543n45, 546–557, 570–573, 570n40, 571n42, 572n49, 575, 577, 583–586, 584n18, 584n20, 593, 593n57, 603–619, 641, 645, 646, 656, 659, 659n185 553n98, 609n35 409 479n74 551n88, 553n96 490n120 180 486n99 213 575n62 212 213 213 213 213 213 212–214, 217, 218 440n133 213, 214 214 214 214 214 288n40 495 214, 288n39 214, 229n47 214 131n124 214 479 344n175 470n46 269 528n125
New Testament
3:1 3:12 3:13 3:26 4:1 4:5f 4:6 4:21 4:27 4:32–5:11 4:32–35 4:36 5:1–6 5:16 5:17–40 5:17 5:24 5:26 5:34–40 5:34–39 5:34 5:35 5:36 5:37 5:38f 5:38 6–8 6:1 6:5f 6:7 6:9 6:12 7:5 7:11 7:42 7:56 7:58 7:60 8f 8 8:7 9–11 9:1f 9:2 9:13
269, 528n125 213 286n30 286n30 609 552, 609 546n65 609 286n30 344n175 479 479, 509n35 480 131n122 656n171 302n17, 552, 609 609 609 549 549 47n29, 583n12, 586n31, 608n32, 612 213 376n127, 572n49 564 427n67, 554, 603, 612, 617 555n105, 610n42, 617 609n35 150n29, 322n33 610n43 546 319n15, 610n44 610n44 588n37 612n53 288n39 490 322n32, 575n62, 599, 610n45 610n45 656n172 378 131n122 213 575n62 36, 40 487n106
9:29 9:32 9:36–43 9:36 9:41 10f 10–11 10 10:1–11:18 10:2 10:4 10:9 10:22 10:28 10:31 10:36 10:39 11 11:2f 11:25–14:28 11:26 11:27–30 11:28 11:29 11:30 12:24 12:25 13–19 13–17 13 13:16 13:23 13:24 13:27f 13:38 13:45–50 15 15:1–16:5 15:1–5 15:1 15:5 15:6–29 15:13
755 322n34 487n106 450n168 400 487n106 550 177n138, 482 180n151, 286, 378, 553n96 483 286 464n28 524n113 146n15, 168n105, 286 482 464n28 168n105, 180n152 214 477, 550, 570 477 483 286n30, 570n40, 638n81 477 570 344n173, 478 477, 478 546 344n173 180n151 618n78 180n151 213, 214n110 214n110 229n41 214 214n110 550 26, 39, 40, 477, 482, 550, 570 483 295 376, 466, 570, 619 104n135, 302n17, 477, 570, 575n62, 598, 608n32, 619, 646n116 478 103n130
756 15:20 15:21 15:29 15:39f 16–19 16:1 16:10–17 16:11f 16:12 16:13 16:14 16:19 16:20 16:22 16:30 17–19 17:1–9 17:2 17:4 17:5–7 17:5 17:6f 17:9f 17:13 17:14f 17:16 17:18 17:22 17:27 18:1–18 18:2 18:3 18:5 18:18 18:24–19:7 18:25 18:26 19:3 19:4 19:20 19:24 19:32 19:35 19:39f 20–21
Index of Ancient Sources
98n112, 134n142, 334, 593n57, 593n59 133, 319, 335 98n112, 134n142, 334, 570, 593n57, 593n59 286 216–217, 323 324n49 217, 542n41 476, 478, 480 108n6, 322 324n43 450n168 324n45 324n44 324n44 229n47 450 217 325 325 375n126 324n45 217 324n46 324n45 324n48 324n47 551n87 213 551n87 26 217n122, 450n166, 450n168, 627 345 324n48 450n166 231n55 553n99 450n166 230 229n41 546 631 448n159 213, 448n159, 515n71 448n159 478
20:4 20:5–15 20:6 20:7 20:8 20:22f 21–23 21 21:1–18 21:8 21:15–22:3 21:16–26 21:18 21:20–30 21:20f 21:20 21:23–27 21:25 21:26–28 21:26 21:27 21:28 21:34 21:38 22–28 22:3 22:9 22:10 22:17–22 22:26–19 22:30–23:9 22:30 23:5 23:6–9 23:6 23:8 23:9 23:12–14 23:27 24:1–27 24:1 24:5 24:14 24:17f
464, 472, 478 542n41 476, 478, 480 344n175, 630n37 256n14 478 579n77 483, 550, 570 542n41 225n23 611n47 477n66 103n130 376, 378 475, 447 104n135, 570, 575n62 113 98n112, 479, 593n57, 593n59 553n98 479 474n57 213, 474, 483, 570, 575n62 547 211, 545n63, 564, 571, 573n54 313 47n29, 549, 575n62, 584n19, 599 608n32 229n47 409n63 553n97 612, 656n171 547 611 552 549, 584n19 587n33, 596, 653n159 546n65, 549, 555n105 575n62 553n97 572n43 552 180, 302n17, 555n104 553n99, 555n104 477n66, 479
New Testament
24:17 24:24 24:27 25:8 25:11 25:13–26:32 25:16 25:20 25:22 25:26 26:2 26:5 26:8f 26:10 26:22–24 26:22f 26:22 26:23 26:26f 26:28 26:29 27:1–28:16 27:3 28 28:2 28:11 28:14–16 28:17–25 28:17 28:21 28:22 28:23 28:25–28 28:25 28:26f 28:28 Romans
1–8
479 543n44 570 553n96 553n96 550, 572n43 551n87 551n87 550n84 548 551 302n17, 549, 584n19, 608n32 552n90 487n106 584n19 552n90 553n100 549 551 638n81 551n87 542n41 342n162 350n14, 475, 553n95 342n162 343n172 548 553n97 608n28 381, 475 302n17, 555n104 608n28 550 612n53 639n85 612n53 27, 99n118, 217, 267n26, 289n47, 326n58, 347–391, 393, 395, 395n9, 397, 398, 413n7, 450n167, 457, 465, 467, 468, 473n54, 477n66, 482, 482n82, 566, 569, 571, 589 354n35, 361n58,
1–4 1–2 1 1:1 1:3f 1:5 1:6 1:7 1:13 1:16–3:20 1:16–31 1:16f 1:16 1:17 1:18–32 1:18 1:20 1:22–28 1:24–27 1:24 1:26f 2–3 2
2:1–3:20 2:1–16 2:1–11 2:1–9 2:1–3 2:1ff 2:1 2:4–11 2:4–9 2:4 2:5 2:6–16 2:6 2:7–10 2:7 2:8
757 369n94, 370n101, 385n11 357n37 353 385n10 225n22, 348 294n77 370, 385 370 348, 473, 488 94n100, 370, 372, 385, 473 357, 357n38, 361, 373 361 357, 397 181, 181n154, 347, 348n4, 372, 382, 473 357n37, 361, 444n144 357 382 357 381 379n140 131 335 368n91 347, 347n1, 353, 353n33, 360, 364, 364n71, 367, 368, 370, 380, 380n143 357n38, 379 357n38, 370, 372n110 361 357 354 373 357, 359n54, 360 354, 355 357 355 355 370, 380, 380n143, 380n145 354n35, 355, 358, 359, 369, 369n97, 469n45 356 355, 356, 369n97 356
758 2:9–11 2:9f 2:9 2:9b 2:10f 2:10 2:11 2:12–3:20 2:12 2:13f 2:13
2:14f 2:14 2:15 2:16 2:17 2:21–25 2:21–23 2:23 2:25–29 2:28–3:1 2:28ff 2:29 3:1–2 3:1f 3:1 3:2 3:8 3:9 3:10–18 3:10 3:11–18 3:19f 3:19 3:20 3:21f 3:23 3:26f 3:28 3:29f 3:29 3:31
Index of Ancient Sources
357, 361 181, 181n154, 357, 361, 368, 372, 374 356 357 357, 382, 397 356, 444n144, 473 356, 359 361 357, 361, 368 374 347n1, 354n35, 361, 362n62, 363, 368, 368n91, 369, 369n96, 369n98, 469n45 361 368 368n91, 592n56 225n20, 357n38 181n156, 357n38, 368, 373, 488n108 381 379n140 488n108 380 181 181n156 267n26 380 372, 446, 568n38 368, 449 369 369, 372 369, 372, 382 369n94 251 382 369 373 357, 363, 369, 369n94, 373, 382 379 372 488n108 363, 368n91 382n154 181n155 298n5
4 4:2f 4:3 4:6 4:10–12 4:13–18 4:18 4:25 5 5:11 6–7 6 6:12f 6:17 7–8 7 7:1–4 7:1–3 7:1–2 7:1 7:1a 7:1b 7:2–4 7:2f 7:2–3 7:2 7:3 7:4 7:6 7:7 7:11 7:12 7:13 7:14 7:16 7:21 7:22–23 8 8:2–9 8:2 8:16 8:36 9–11
379, 588n38 488n108 357n37 363 382n154, 391n36 587 589n44 382 452 397 387, 390, 390n32, 597 383 397 400 385n11 94, 95n106, 383, 390n32 94, 383, 386 383n1 403 385 384, 385n12, 387 384, 385n12 594 95 386, 387, 390 364n68 94, 386, 388, 389 384n2, 386, 390 327 364n68, 387 384n9 351, 364n68, 387 384n9 364n68 364n68 364n68 385 452 131 364n68, 385 264n5 496n145 182, 183, 294, 350n14, 372, 372n113, 372n114, 379, 381n146, 381n150, 382, 382n153, 395n10, 397, 397n20
New Testament
9:1–5 9:2f 9:2 9:3 9:4 9:20 9:24 10:8 10:12 10:15 11 11:1 11:2 11:4 11:7 11:11f 11:11 11:13 11:17 11:20 11:22 11:25f 11:25 11:26 11:32f 11:32 12–13 12:1 12:9 12:13 13:1–7 13:5 13:8–10 14f 14 14:1–15:13 14:1–12 14:1–5 14:10 14:14 14:20 15 15:7–13 15:7–12 15:8f
182, 369 446 181 328n74, 373n116 181, 364n68 332n98 181n155 589n45 181, 181n154, 444n144 224n13 452 181, 182, 589n45 589n45 589n45 454 374 589n45 27, 94n100, 181, 182, 366, 370, 372, 385, 645 372 183 490n119 182 182n161, 454, 596n72 374 379 372 381 135 334n112, 343, 343n168 488n111 381, 381n148 592n56 387n19 371, 372n113, 376, 379 359n54, 360, 379 183n162, 372n110, 381, 382 382n154 371 372 15n35, 133n135, 183 15n35 463, 464, 468n40, 478, 481, 483 382n154 372 359n54
15:16 15:24 15:25–31 15:25–27 15:25f 15:25 15:26 15:27 15:30–32 15:30–31 15:30f 15:31 16 16:1 16:2 16:3 16:4 16:7 16:11 16:15 16:16 16:17 16:20 16:21 16:22 16:25 16:26 1 Corinthians
1–4 1:1 1:2 1:4
759 225n22 372 478 473 459, 470n46, 480 469 344, 472, 476 469n43, 470, 473 381 569 579n77 372, 376, 469, 474, 475n60 372n113 450 335n117 373n116 132, 449n162, 450n166, 481 373n116, 450 373n116 488n109 449n162 400 452n177 373n116, 472 584n18 225n20 370 25–28, 39, 40, 92, 216, 289n47, 326n58, 329, 331n91, 373–375, 401, 401n36, 402, 402n40, 403n45, 403n47, 404n49, 408n61, 447, 447n154–157, 448n160, 449–451, 449n161, 449n163, 455, 457, 460n8, 461, 461n15, 462, 465, 467, 470, 471, 471n50, 475, 482, 483, 559n3, 579n78, 592n55, 645, 645n113 26 26 449n163, 488, 488n110 326n59
760 1:11 1:12 1:13 1:16 1:22f 1:23 1:26 1:28–30 1:29 1:30 1:31 3:9–17 3:10f 3:13 3:16f 3:17 4:4 4:14 4:17 5–14 5–10 5–7 5–6 5 5:1–13 5:3–5 5:5 5:7 5:9 5:10 5:11 5:13 6:1f 6:1 6:9–11 6:11–20 6:11 6:16–18 6:18 6:19 7
Index of Ancient Sources
26, 450 471 329n81 464 181n154 181n155 346 488n108 488n108 134n144, 336n127, 469n45 488n108 451n175 451n175 359 134n144 336n127, 451n175 350n12, 469n45 26 400 26 357n39 335 26, 469 27, 38, 645 645 26 336n126, 451 451, 453n180 26, 451, 460, 468n38, 645, 654 425 131n125, 468n38, 645, 654 336n126, 451, 645 336n127 335n117 131n126 134n144 336n127, 469n45, 488n110 443 334 336n126, 336n127, 451n176 27, 95n106, 331n90, 390, 390n32, 399, 402, 403, 437n120, 597
7:1–7 7:1 7:2 7:3–5 7:5 7:6 7:8–9 7:10f 7:10–11 7:10 7:12–16 7:12–15 7:12ff 7:12 7:14 7:17–24 7:17–23 7:17–19 7:17f 7:17 7:18f 7:18 7:19 7:21–24 7:25–38 7:25f 7:25 7:26–35 7:32–35 7:32 7:34 7:36–38 7:39f 7:39–40 7:39
8–10 8:1–11:1 8:1–13 8:1 8:4 8:7–12
402 26, 402, 403n44 333 60n90 335, 402 93n98, 386 402 27, 53n58, 76, 92, 97, 386, 389n30, 593 401–403 95, 285n25, 387n17, 387n18, 390, 401, 447n156 93, 402 453 414n11 414n11 336n127, 488n110 402, 403n44, 445n145 444, 446 373 181, 588n39 400, 445n149 619 579n78 347 445n146 402 332n100 26, 92n95, 93n98, 386, 387n18 403n44 402 444 444 333n107 93, 366n86, 594 385, 403 27, 86n67, 93–95, 385n15, 386, 387, 388n22, 389, 389n26, 390 469, 591n51 404 404 26, 403n44 593 593n58
New Testament
8:7f 9 9:1–10:22 9:1 9:2–5 9:2 9:3 9:4f 9:4 9:5 9:6–14 9:6 9:8f 9:13 9:14 9:15 9:19–23 9:20 9:21 9:39f 10 10:1–4 10:1 10:4 10:7 10:16 10:18 10:21 10:23–11:1 10:24 10:25–29 10:32–11:1 10:32 11–14 11 11:2 11:3 11:6 11:9 11:10 11:16 11:20 11:22 11:23–26 11:23–25 11:23 11:24f
371n109 27 404 404 465 404 26, 461 337n129, 345 233n59, 404 404 338n136 509n35 387n19 404 337, 401, 404, 465 404, 447n156 322n35 181n154 387n18 366n86 27, 597 595 329n81 595n68 455 599n82 181 336n126 404 595n68 593 322n35 181n154, 449n163 135, 447 26, 27, 399, 446 331, 400 446 446 446 447, 447n154, 489n118 447, 449n163 344n175 449n163 401 396, 401, 404, 408 103n131, 331n88, 404, 447n156 95n106
11:24 11:25 11:26 11:27 12–14 12:1 12:2 12:12f 12:13 13 13:1 14 14:16 14:21 14:33–37 14:33 14:34 14:36–39 14:37 15–16 15 15:1–7 15:1–3 15:3–8 15:3 15:5 15:9 15:50 15:51–56 16 16:1–4 16:1–3 16:1–2 16:1 16:2 16:3f 16:3 16:15 16:19 16:21 2 Corinthians 1–7 1:1
761 404 404 404 404 469 26, 329n81, 403n44 93, 181, 645n113 296 181n154, 391n36, 445n145, 445n148 337n130 489 27, 399 599n82 387n19 433, 447 488 387n19 447n156 57n76, 92n95, 387n18 26 399, 408, 596, 598 401 103n131 396, 408, 409 331n88 409 449n163, 656n172 409n64 596 463, 465 461, 463, 471, 481, 568 344n173 463 26, 459, 463n26, 468, 473, 484, 488 472 463 36, 40, 464 464, 473, 479, 488n111 450n166 584n18 289n47, 375, 381, 411–497, 559, 566, 579, 645, 646 454, 471 449n163, 487n107
762 1:3 1:12 1:19 2:3 2:11 3–5 3 3:1 3:6f 3:7 3:13 3:14 3:15 4:3 4:4 4:7 5 5:10 5:11 5:12 6 6:6 6:14–7:1
6:14–18 6:14–16a 6:14f 6:14–15 6:14 6:14a 6:15 6:16–18 6:16 6:16b–18 6:17 6:18 7:1 7:12 8–9
Index of Ancient Sources
326n59 592n56 324n48 460 451 453–455, 454n184, 461, 482 381n147 455n188, 461n13 376 181 181 454 454 454 131, 182n159, 453, 454, 456 332n98 452n178 350n12 592n56 455n188 597 343 135, 336n126, 411, 411n1, 414, 415n17, 415n18, 421n43, 422n49, 439, 443, 449, 451–453, 452n178, 453n180, 454n186, 455, 455n190, 456, 460, 461, 655 590, 600 413, 440 422n54, 441 425n57 412, 453–455 413n5 179n143, 412 441, 442 412, 441, 443, 455 413 412, 441 413, 440, 442, 443 336n127, 413, 414 453, 460 344n173, 456, 458–460, 458n4, 460n8, 460n11,
8 8:1–15 8:1–4 8:1 8:2 8:4 8:6 8:9 8:10 8:13f 8:14f 8:16–24 8:16 8:18f 8:23 9 9:1–15 9:1–4 9:1 9:2–4 9:2 9:4 9:5f 9:6 9:8 9:10–12 9:13 10–13 10–12 10:8–18 11:4 11:5 11:7 11:13 11:14 11:16–26 11:21ff 11:22–25 11:22f 11:22 11:24f 11:24 11:26
460n12, 461n13, 463, 464, 468n40, 481, 483 411n1, 457, 459, 459n6 469 459 476 469 464, 469n43, 470n46, 473 472, 479 469 459n5 474n56 470 469 479 472 472, 479 411n1, 457, 459, 459n6 469 459 464, 473 472 459n5, 472 476 471 469n43 469n45 469 470n46 454–456, 454n184, 461, 461n13, 462, 482 471 455n188 454, 579n78 455n187 225n22 376, 454, 462, 475, 579n78 451 601n92 378 181 376 181, 181n158a, 454 646, 656 324n43 376, 475
New Testament
12:1–5 12:2–4 12:4 12:7 12:11 12:21 12:24 13:1 13:12
409 406 489 451, 489 455n187, 489 131n126 131 645 488n109
1:16 1:18–20 1:18f 1:18 1:19 1:21–24 1:23 2–3 2
Galatians
181, 217, 289n47, 328n76, 367, 370, 371n105, 375, 381, 393, 395–398, 396n14–16, 397n19, 415, 445, 445n148, 445n150, 446n151, 446n152, 454, 457, 457n1, 459n6, 464n31, 465, 465n33, 466, 466n34, 467n36, 467n37, 468n39, 472, 474, 475, 482, 482n82, 483, 566, 566n33a, 567, 567n34–36, 568n37–39, 569–572, 575n65, 577, 577n72, 579n77, 588n38, 590 466, 482 566, 567 566 567 371 455, 567 396, 396n15, 397, 566n33a 409 466 567 567 395, 397n19, 409 397, 567 467 549n82 216, 445n150, 575n62 449n163, 656n172 216, 322n32 478 567
2:1–10
1:1–12 1:1–5 1:6–12 1:6–11 1:6–9 1:6 1:7 1:11–16 1:11f 1:12–2:14 1:12–14 1:12 1:13–2:21 1:13–17 1:13–16 1:13f 1:13 1:14 1:15–2:21 1:15–20
2:1 2:4 2:7–10 2:7–9 2:7f 2:7 2:8 2:9 2:10 2:11–21 2:11–14 2:11 2:11b–13 2:12–14 2:12f 2:12 2:12a 2:14 2:15–21 2:15f 2:15 2:16 2:17 2:21 3 3:1–6:10 3:1–4:31 3:1
763 645 466 409, 491 103n131, 409n66 103n130, 364n70 466, 482, 568 216, 656n172 368n91 375, 465, 509n35, 570, 597 27, 347, 370, 371n106, 409, 466, 477, 478, 482, 568, 588 409, 409n63, 466 378, 378n138, 455, 475, 475n60, 577n73a 396, 465 103n130, 103n132, 366, 371, 396n15 371n105 225n21, 396, 566n33a, 567 567 371n105, 455n187, 457, 491 344n173, 467, 473, 480, 481 466, 482 103n132, 109n11, 295, 397, 462, 568, 619 344n175, 378 371 371 375 397, 475 371 183n162, 216, 371n107, 375, 379, 445n150, 466 375, 567, 568 352, 373 181n155 363, 379n141 380 466 588n38 466 568 380
764 3:2 3:4 3:5 3:16 3:26f 3:26–29 3:28 3:29 4:6 4:25 4:26 4:29 4:30 5:1–6:10 5:2–6 5:2–3 5:2f 5:2 5:3 5:6 5:11 5:14 5:16–26 5:20 6 6:2 6:6–8 6:11–18 6:11–16 6:11 6:12 6:15f 6:15 6:16 Ephesians 1:1 1:3 1:15 2:11 2:12
Index of Ancient Sources
370n104 376 370n104 588, 588n38, 589 588 445n148 181n154, 346, 371, 391n36, 445, 445n145– 148, 446, 567 455 264n6, 363 182n160 457 216 589n45 568 445 567 103n132, 367, 380, 588 366 366, 375, 380, 391, 588n39, 599n82 371, 391n36, 445n145, 567 588 387n19 131 455n189 381n147 387n16 469 466, 482, 568 445, 469 466, 468n38, 584n18 216, 371, 396, 396n15, 397, 567, 579, 579n77, 588 371, 373, 588n39 391n36, 445n145, 567 181, 445n149, 455
2:19 3:4 3:6 3:9 3:10 4:11 4:12 6:5 6:9 6:14
182 182 182 182 449n163 225n23 488n111 446 356 247n50, 257n18
Philippians 1:1 1:5 1:7 1:13 1:17 3:2f 3:4–11 3:5 3:6 3:12 3:20 4:3 4:10–23 4:10–19 4:15f 4:15 4:22
289n47, 375, 476n62 487n107 476 476n63 476n63 476n63 376 549n82 181, 181n158a, 584n19 216, 322n32, 656n172 469n45 182n160 476n63 476n62 476 344 232n58, 476, 523n105 476n63, 488
Colossians 1:2 1:3 1:4 2:7 2:11f 2:21f 3:5 3:10f 3:11
182, 353, 444n139, 461n13 487n107 326n59 488n111 182 182
3:18 3:22 3:25 4:14
289n47, 375, 444n139 487n107 326n59 488n111 400 376 183n163 455n189 445n148 181n154, 391n36, 445n145, 445n146 446 446 356 476n65, 480n78
1 Thessalonians 181, 216, 217, 317–346, 375n126, 450, 468n38
765
New Testament
1–3 1:1 1:2–10 1:2 1:5 1:6 1:9f 1:9–10 1:9b–10 1:10 2:1–12 2:2 2:3–12 2:3 2:5 2:7 2:8 2:9–12 2:9 2:12f 2:12 2:13 2:14–16
2:14 2:16 2:17f 2:17 2:18 2:19 3:1f 3:1 3:3 3:4 3:5 3:6 3:11–13 3:11 3:13 4–5 4:1–12 4:1ff
325, 326 323 325 326n59 323 323 323, 325n53 324n47, 450 326 326, 331n95 337 217, 323 337 327n66, 337 337 323, 331n90, 337n129 323 330 337, 344, 345 325 326, 330n84, 331n95 323 181, 181n153, 215, 216n115, 324–326, 325n51, 377n128, 449n161, 450, 450n172 181n156, 184, 217, 218, 233, 372, 375n126, 449n163 468n38 323 217 326n56, 450 326, 326n61 324n48 323 323 323 326n56, 450 323 326 323 326, 331n95, 450, 453n180, 489 325, 326n61 217n121, 325n54, 326–328 399
4:1f
4:9f 4:9 4:11 4:12 4:13–5:11 4:13 4:14 4:15 5:1–10 5:1 5:2 5:3 5:5 5:8f 5:12–22 5:12–15 5:12 5:14 5:16–28 5:23f 5:23
103n131, 323, 330, 331, 334 337 327, 330, 394n4 329 330 323, 325n53, 327, 331, 337 336n120 326, 331n92, 334 346 331n92, 332, 335 337 332, 335, 337 331n92, 335, 336 323, 326n62, 329, 337, 346 338 329, 330, 337, 343 338, 344 327, 330, 338 323, 326 329, 330, 596n72 326n61 329 325n53 329, 330 329, 331n91 326n61 326n61 326n61 326 323 330 330, 338 323 326 331n95
2 Thessalonians 1:3 1:4 1:10 2:1–12 2:3–12 2:3 2:9 2:15
444n139, 451 326n59 449n163 489 451 422n54 451 451 400
4:1–2 4:1 4:1–8 4:2 4:3–8 4:3ff 4:3 4:4–6 4:4 4:6–8 4:6 4:7 4:9–12
766
Index of Ancient Sources
3:6–13 3:10 3:14 3:17
338, 338n136 338n136, 344 654 584n18
1 Timothy 2:8 5:3–16 5:10 5:18
444n139, 584n18 134 594n64 125n92, 488n111 404n49, 522n101
2 Timothy 1:5 4:5 4:11 4:14 4:19
444n139 324n49 225n23 476n65, 480n78, 548 359 450n166
Titus 1:4 3:4
183, 185, 444n139, 584n18 183 342n162
Philemon 5 7 12 24
488n111 488n111 468n38 476n65
Hebrews 1 6:10 8:8 8:10 13:1 13:24
342 408n60 488n111 288n39 288n39 342 488n109
James
354, 354n34, 360, 362n60, 363–365, 363n64, 364n70, 364n71, 364n73, 364n74, 365n77, 365n81, 365n82, 367, 367n89, 368n91–93, 370n101, 374, 375n124, 378n135, 508n31 355 363n65, 367
1:4 1:22–25
1:25 2:1 2:8 2:10 2:12f 2:12 2:20 2:21–23 2:24 4:4 4:6 4:11 5:3 5:9 5:17
365 356 365 365, 366, 375, 599n82 360 365 369n96 368 369n97 342 251 363n65, 365, 367, 368 355 250n62 490n119
1 Peter 1:3 1:13 1:17 1:22 2:4–9 3:3 3:7 3:8 3:11 4:3 4:14–16 4:15f 4:16
334n109 326n59 247n50, 257n18 359 342, 343 444n142 91n84 334, 335 342 343n169 455n189 630n41 630n40 638n81, 641n92
2 Peter 1:7 2:12
342 58n81
1 John 1
387n18 408n60
3 John 7
516n74
Jude 3 10 14–15 14
456n191, 486, 489, 490, 490n123 489 58n81 251 489, 490
767
Apostolic and Patristic Writings
Revelation 1:12–20 2:9 2:14 2:20 2:23 2:24 3:9 3:20 4 4:5 5:8 8:3f 8:10 14:4f 18:2 20:9 21:21 22:12
183, 184, 237n11, 359, 486, 489, 548n77, 593 486n99 179n143, 183 593n59 593n59 359 593n59 179n143, 183 241n30, 246, 247n51, 250, 250n62, 256, 258 408n60 256n14 489n116 489n116 256n14 437n120 131n122 489 372 359
Apostolic and Patristic Writings Apostolic Constitutions 134, 487n103 2.43 638n79 3.8 638n79 4.8 638n79 8.32.18 134n139 Athanasius De virgin. 6 12
464n28 464n28
Augustine De diversis quaestionibus 369n96 Barnabas (Epistle of, Pseudo‑) 133, 252, 252n66, 400, 416, 423, 424, 501–532, 541, 582n8, 589n43 1–16 509 1:1 440n133 1:5 509n37 2:6 509n38
4:3–5 4:11 6:15 6:18 7:3 13:1 16:1–10 16:1–4 17–21 18–20 18:1–19:1 18:1 18:2 19:10 20:1 21:1
513n57 509n38 509n38 509n36 509n38 252n66 509n38 512n53 509 507 424 400n31 422n54, 454 487n103 424 507n25
Chrysostom Hom in Matthaeum 51 134n141 Hom in Romanos 369n97 5.5 369n96 1 Clement 1:1 5–6 5 30:1 46:2 47:4 48:1 49:1–50:5
487, 508, 557, 557n115, 659 557n115 584n18 552n93, 584n18 334n112 487n104 342n163 342n163 337n130
2 Clement 19:1 20:2
440n133 440n133
Clement of Alexandria Protrepticus 6.70 109n8 Stromata 1.5.28–32 333n108 3.8.62.2–3 414n11 4.22.142 111n20, 112n26, 133n137 5.9.57.5 414n11
768
Index of Ancient Sources
Clementine Homilies 134 7.8.2 134n142 Cyril of Alexandria Cataena in Lucam MPG 72: 685, 688, 692 264n11 Didache
1–6 1–5 1:1–2 1:3 4:2 4:8 5:1 6:1 6:2–3 6:3 7–15 7 7:1–3 7:1 7:4 8 8:1–2 8:1f 8:1 8:2 9:1 9:3
132, 132n130, 233, 252n66, 261–277, 290n53, 292n62, 293n69–71, 294, 294n78, 295n79, 295n82, 329, 329n79, 340n152, 345, 345n176, 346, 364n67, 400, 416, 416n20, 419n38, 422n48, 423, 424, 440n133, 480, 487n103, 501–532, 541, 541n38, 582n8, 601n91, 652n149, 660n187 522 507 423 400n31 487, 490 345n176 423 400n31 507n27, 525, 525n115 522n103, 593n59 522 522 132 266, 522 266, 522 262n2, 266, 267, 293, 295n79, 516n76, 522–524, 523n105, 526 262, 523n106 292n62, 522 245n43, 266, 293n68 233n59, 293n68, 522n101, 523n105 266, 522 522n103
9:5 10 11–13 11:3 11:4f 11:7 12:1–3 13:1–7 13:2 14:1 15:3 15:4 16:1 16:7
233n59, 522n101 522 480 233n59, 522n101, 522n103, 523n105 344 522n101 344 465 404n49, 522n101 630n37 233n59, 522n101, 523n105 464n28, 522n101, 523n105 247n50, 257 489
Didymus the Blind Comm in Zach 8.9 369n96 Fragm in 2 Cor. 32 414n11 In Gen 151 414n11 Doctrina Apostolorum 487n103 26 133n138 Epiphanius Haereses 1.211 78.7 Panarion 1.459 2.255 Eusebius Church History 2.4.2 2.12.2 2.25 2.25.5–8 2.25.5 3.1.1f 3.2 3.4.6 3.5.2
256n21, 523n108 634n58 582n6 232n58 506n22 160n68 478n69 631n46 584n18 552n93 631n46 552n93 618n78 280
769
Apostolic and Patristic Writings
3.9.1 160n68 3.20.8 557n116 4.3 252n65 4.6.1–4 510n44 4.6.3–4 494 4.8.4 511n48 4.22.7 118n60, 229n40 5.8.3f 285n25 5.20.5 320n18 6.22.1 237n8 Comm in Psalmos 369n96 Demonstratio evangelica 1–5 281n8 9.11 281 Eclogae proph 3.10 634n58 Praeparatio evangelica 8.5.11 64n113 8.7.3 57n74, 57n77 8.8.34 160n68 8.10.18f 64n113 8.11.1f 64 8.11.2 340n151 Gospel of Thomas 433 20 433n101 54 433n101 62 433n101 114 433n101 130 433n101 Gospel of Peter 295n81 8–10 294n75 50 432n97 Gregory of Nyssa Hom in Cant 6.428 369n96 Hermas Mand 10:1 14:2 29:6 (mand. 4) 74:1
101, 102n125, 487, 659 342n163 487n104 72n14, 101n122 487n104
Hippolitus, in Canticum Slavonic Fragment GCS 1: 344 237n9
GCS 1: 346 237n10 Armenian Fragment GCS 1: 361 249n57 Greek Paraphrase (ed Richard) 1.16 236n5 2.5 249n56 Ignatius Ephesians 19:2f 294n77 Magnesians 8:1 295n84 9:1 295n84 10:3 295n84 Philadelphians 6:1 295n84 Polycarp 2:2 294n77 Romans 4 584n18 4:3 552n93 Smyrnaeans 1:1 294n77 1:2 295n84 Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 3.5.3 320n18 3.11 232n58 3.14.1 552n93 4.9.1 243n35 5.34.2 320n18 John of Damascus In Corinthios 463n26, 464n29 Justin 1 Apology 1.26.7 31.6 Dialogue 38 38.1 46.2 80.4 134.3 Leo the Great Sermons 6–11
627n23 511n48 642n95, 652n153 661n193 112n26 118n60, 229n40 252n** 458n3
770
Index of Ancient Sources
Martyrdom of Ignatius 4.6 414n11
Tertullian Apol 1–5
Origen Cels 1.28 634n58 32f 634n58 69 634n58 Comm in Ioan 19.21.139 414n11 20.5.39 280n6 32.24.302 414n11 32.24.382 414n11 Comm in Matth 10.18 280 11.8 134n141 11.17ff 280n6 11.17 280 Comm in Rom 384n8 De orat 2.4f 271n49 18 265n12 25.3 414n11 31 265n13 De princ 4.3.8 280n4, 280n6, 473n53 Expos in Prov 369n96 Fragm ex Comm in I Cor. 18 638n79 35 414n11 Comm in Cant 9 249n55 Hom in Cant Prologue 1.7 240n27 Prologue 4.4–16 236n4 1.1 236n2, 236n4 3.1 237n9 Scholia in Cant 249n55 Scholia in Matt 246n49, 258n21
Traditio Apostolica 16 132n127, 137n153 35 134n139 41 134n139 41 (L) 134n140
Photius Bibliotheca 33
Rabbinic Texts Mishna
536n14
Pseudo-Clementine Epistula 346 ad virgin 1.2.8 346n184 Theodoret In Cor
464n29
631n44
mAvot
3, 7, 10, 11n16, 13, 14n29, 15, 18–20, 19n51, 25, 28, 29, 33, 35n44, 38, 39, 47, 49, 52, 54–56, 54n61, 58, 73, 76, 88n73, 88n77, 91, 92, 92n92, 109, 111–113, 113n38, 116, 116n52, 119, 119n64, 120, 123, 124, 124n87, 126n96, 127n102, 128n106, 130, 136, 138n160, 150n30, 152, 156n53, 163–168, 164n86, 165n88, 172–174, 173n130, 188, 193, 193n26, 196, 206n79, 240, 264n7, 270–272, 272n55, 276, 290n53, 291, 306n34, 319, 320n17, 321n23, 321n27, 345, 360, 365n76, 389, 398, 407, 425, 425n61, 427–430, 431n89, 492, 493, 525, 527, 556n107, 583, 583n10, 587, 587n36, 588n39, 589n42, 589n44, 591n51, 592, 597, 599, 600, 600n90, 601n92, 605n15, 614, 616, 632, 632n48, 646, 649–651, 649n129, 653n156, 653n159, 654n162, 660 364, 398
Rabbinic Texts
mAv mAv 1:1 mAv 1:2 mAv 1:3 mAv 1:4–12 mAv 1:10 mAv 1:12–15 mAv 1:13 mAv 1:16–2:4 mAv 1:16 mAv 1:17 mAv 2:3 mAv 2:4 mAv 2:8 mAv 2:10–11 mAv 2:13 mAv 2:15f mAv 2:17 mAv 3:4 mAv 3:7 mAv 3:9 mAv 3:11 mAv 3:17 mAv 4:1 mAv 4:5 mAv 4:11 mAv 5:6 mAv 5:14 mAv 5:17 mAv 5:21 mAv 6:2 mAZ 1:1 mAZ 1:5–8 mAZ 1:5–7 mAZ 2:1 mAZ 2:3–7 mAZ 2:3 mAZ 2:5 mAZ 2:6 mAZ 3:4 mAZ 4:4 mAZ 4:7 mBB 8:3–4 mBB 8:5 mBer 1:1 mBer 1:3 mBer 2:1
599 546n65 57n73, 365n75 257n17 393n1 206 138n160, 616n73 345n179 616n71 614n60 363n65, 365n80 206n79 25, 427 616n73 616n73 273n57 345n180 527n121 427n66 589n45 363n65 365n75 363n65 554n101 345n179, 363n65 616n74, 617n75 365n75 363n65 554n101, 616n74, 617n75 439n131 365n77 633n51 284n20 418n34 164, 172n128, 189 14n27 633n51, 653 13 164, 164n86 111n22 164 593n58 590n46 34 116 55n67 118
mBer 2:3 mBer 2:5–7 mBer 2:5 mBer 2:6 mBer 2:8 mBer 3:1 mBer 3:4–6 mBer 3:4 mBer 3:5 mBer 3:5a mBer 3:5b mBer 3:6 mBer 4:1–4 mBer 4:1
771
118 55n67 117 371n109 117 117 449n161 115n48, 118, 127n104 128n111 118 118 118, 123, 129, 136 273 266n23, 524n111, 527n120 mBer 4:3–4 527n120, 528n126 mBer 4:3f 652n149 mBer 4:3 270n41 mBer 4:4 118, 270, 528n128 mBer 4:5 (ms K) 652n150 mBer 5:1 118, 265n13 mBer 5:3 426 mBer 9:5 426, 653n159 mBik 3:4 546n66 mBK 5:6 432n94 mBM 4:3–9 336n122 mBM 7:1 432n94 mDem 2:1 517n77 mDem 2:2f 647n123 mEd 1:3 17n42, 55n68 mEd 1:4–6 615n64 mEd 4:7 85n65 mEd 5:3 517n77 mEd 5:7 126n94 mEd 7:7 272n52, 531n137, 535n10, 660n189 mEr 179n148 mEr 4:8 3n2 mGit 5:2 31n32 mGit 9:1 93 mGit 9:1 (ms K) 86 mGit 9:2 167 mGit 9:3 36, 93, 95n106, 166, 167n98, 388n22, 389, 389n27 mGit 9:3 (ms K) 86 mGit 9:6 168n103 mGit 9:8 168n102, 168n103
772 mGit 9:10
Index of Ancient Sources
54n59, 67n*, 75, 76, 90, 91, 91n89, 97, 101, 292, 306, 388n23, 594, 606n20 mGit 9:10 (ms K) 86 mHag 1:1 406, 406n56 mHag 1:8 4n9, 517n77 mHag 2:1 240n27, 408n60 mHag 2:2 138n160 mHag 2:3 117n56 mHag 2:5 17n40 mHag 2:5–3:6 17n40 mHal 4:8 114n40 mHal 4:10 114n40 mHal 4:11 114n40 mHor 3:8 600n86 mHul 2:7–9 632n49, 653n156 mHul 2:7 12n22, 284n21, 377n131, 428n73, 592n54 mHul 2:9–10 653 mHul 12:1f 59n85 mKel 1:1–4 117n56 mKel 1:1–3 19 mKel 2:8 256n14 mKel 5:10 427n69 mKet 4:3 491 mKet 4:12 168n100 mKet 5:6 439n131 mKet 6:6 31n32 mKet 7:1 60n90 mKet 7:6 78n30, 90, 164, 171n119, 193n26, 196n39, 318n8 mKet 7:9f 81n47 mKet 7:56 197n41 mKid 1 85n65 mKid 1:1 85n65, 333n106, 388, 388n22 mKid 1:1 (ms K) 85 mKid 1:2 150n30, 333n106 mKid 1:6 150n30 mKid 2 85n65 mKid 4:14 366n85, 589n45 mMaas 4:5 517n77 mMak 2:8 10n11 mMak 3:10 601n92, 646n114 mMakh 1:3 591n51
mMeg 1:3 266n21, 527n117 mMeg 1:8 320n17 mMeg 2:4 430 mMeg 3:6 266n21, 527n117 mMeg 4:1 266n21, 527n117 mMeg 4:6 431n89 mMeg 4:9 156n53, 426 mMen 10:1–3 49n35, 527n119 mMen 13:10 114n40 mMid 2:2 650n140 mMid 2:5 49n36 mMid 5:4 49n36 mMik 128 mMik 1 124n83, 132n130 mMik 1:5 17n42, 128n107 mMik 2:2 17n41 mMik 2:3 19n52 mMik 2:4 17n42, 19n52 mMik 2:7–10 17n42, 19n52 mMik 4:1 17n42, 20n54, 128n107 mMik 4:5 128n107 mMik 4:9 124n82 mMik 5:4 128n106 mMik 5:6 128n107 mMik 8:1 113n35, 124 mMik 10:6 128n107 mMK 1:1 124n82 mNed 517n77 mNed 1:12 171n119 mNed 3:11 305n31 mNed 4:3 4n10, 587n34 mNed 9:1 270n46 mNed 9:5 (ms K) 529n131 mNed 11:12 88n75, 90n82, 165, 168, 193n26, 196n39 mNid 1:3 (ms K) 4n11 mNid 7:4 91n88 mOh 2:3 113n35 mOh 16:1 20n54 mOh 17:5 113n35 mOh 18:6f 113n35 mOh 18:7–10 287n34 mOh 18:8 287n35 mPara 3:7f 613n58 mPara 2:3 635n63 mPea 1:1 439n131 mPea 2:6 393n1, 614n60 mPea 8:7 345n181
Rabbinic Texts
mRH 1:1 mRH 1:4–6 mRH 2:5 mRH 2:8–9 mRH 3:8 mSan 3:5 mSan 4:5
47n32 47n30 47n29 47n29 431n89 245n42 317n2, 588n38, 590, 653n157 mSan 9:6 474, 610n45 mSan 10:1 600n89 mSan 10:3 600n89 mSan 10:4 33n37, 40 mSan 10:6 600n89 mShab 1:3–4 19 mShab 1:4 11, 13, 14, 14n27, 20, 164n86, 290n51, 428n75, 606n19, 648n128 mShab 1:5–10 14n28 mShab 1:5–9 14n28 mShab 1:9 20n53 mShab 1:10 14n28 mShab 6:2 12n22 mShab 6:4 12n22, 53, 606n20 mShab 19:3 304n27 mShek 5:2 5n19, 321n24 mShev 4:3 593n58 mShev 6:1f 114n40 mShev 8:9 654n163 mShev 9:2 113n36 mSot 5:2 9n6 mSot 1:7 (ms K) 360n57 mSot 3:4 608n34 mSot 5:1 88n75 mSot 5:2–5 11n16 mSot 5:2 125n90, 590n46 mSot 7:1 320n16 mSot 7:8 546n66 mSot 9:9 88n76 mSot 9:15 292n60, 490n122, 493, 545n62 mSot 9:16 365n79, 515n65 mSuk 4:9 595n69, 613n58 mSuk 5:4 365n79 mTaan 137 mTaan 1:6 266n21, 527n117 mTaan 2:9 266n21, 527n117 mTaan 3:1 266n21
mTaan 3:8 mTam 5:3 mTem 1:4 mTem 2:1 mTem 5:6 mTer 1:6 mTer 2:1 mTer 4:3 mTevY 3:4–5 mToh 1:5 mToh 2:2 mToh 3 mToh 4:7–13 mToh 4:7 mToh 4:11 mToh 7:8 mToh 7:8b mUk 3:6 mYad mYad 1:1–3:2 mYad 3–4 mYad 3:1–2 mYad 3:1 mYad 3:2 mYad 3:3–5 mYad 3:5 mYad 4:2–4 mYad 4:4 mYad 4:6 mYad 4:7 mYad 4:8 mYev mYev 1:4 mYev 2:4 mYev 4:12 mYev 8:3f mYev 9:3 mYev 11:1 mYev 16:5 mYom 1:5 mYom 1:6 mYom 3:4
773 264n6, 608n34, 650n138 5n17 124n83 30 124n83 9n3, 119n62 9n3 9n3 17n41 16n36 11n18, 17n39, 17n41 15n35 19n52 124n83 17n41 126n95, 127n102 18n45 517n77 15, 15n33 126 15n33 15n32, 16 17, 17n40, 17n43, 18n44 17n39, 125 9 91n89, 236n3, 240n25, 428n77 11n16 211n100, 428n77, 449n165 9, 16, 50n39, 583n10 25 166n91, 166n96, 229n40 648 25, 55, 69, 388n21, 428n72, 648n126 491n126 88n73 449n165 81n47 491 168n105 51n47 611n48 371n109
774 mYom 3:10 mYom 4:2 mYom 8:9 mZav 4:1 mZav 5 mZav 5:1 mZav 5:3 mZav 5:7 mZav 5:10f mZav 5:11 mZav 5:12 mZev 1 mZev 1:3 mZev 4:5 mZev 4:6 Tosefta
tAh 17:6 tAh 18:1–5 tAh 18:7–11 tAhil 4:14 tAr 4:5 tAZ 1:15–2:1 tAZ 3:1f tAZ 3:3 tAZ 3:4 tAZ 3:5 tAZ 3:6 tAZ 4:6
Index of Ancient Sources
576n68 491 502n3, 515n65 19 18 17n43 10n11 19 19 117n56 7–20, 7n*, 16n37, 17n39, 17n40 592n52 11n16 592n53 592n52 11n16, 14n29, 28, 33, 51n47, 54n61, 112, 113, 117n59, 119, 123, 124, 124n82, 126, 130, 164n86, 165, 168, 174, 177, 193, 193n26, 244, 264n7, 270, 270n45, 271, 304n25–27, 305, 306n33, 312, 360, 360n57, 398, 426, 428n72, 430, 431n91, 587, 590n46, 632, 632n48, 633, 634n56, 635, 635n62, 641, 641n93, 646, 647, 647n121, 648n125, 648n127, 652, 652n150, 653n158, 654, 654n162, 655, 659, 660, 660n190 113n35 113n35 287n34 3n2 592n54 173n131 654n163 164n84 654n167 531n138, 660n190 654n164 168, 171n119
tBeitsa 2:15 tBer 2:1–2 tBer 2:10 tBer 2:12–14 tBer 2:12 tBer 2:12a tBer 2:12b tBer 2:13 tBer 2:18 tBer 2:20 tBer 3:1–3 tBer 3:5 tBer 3:6 tBer 3:7 tBer 3:12 tBer 3:14 tBer 3:25 tBer 5:6 tBer 5:13 tBer 5:14 tBer 6:1 tBer 6:7 tBer 6:24 tBik 2:10 tDem tDem 2 tDem 2:2–7 tDem 2:2 tDem 2:4f tDem 2:5 tDem 2:9 tDem 2:11 tDem 2:12 tDem 3:4 tEd 1:3–5 tEd 1:3 tEd 2:1 tEd 2:3 tEr 3:5–7 tGit tGit 1:3 tGit 3:5 tGit 7:1–5 tHag 2:1–7 tHag 2:1 tHag 2:9 tHag 3:5
458n3 527n120 244, 244n37 449n161 587n34 118, 127n104 118 118, 119 118, 125 111n23 266n23, 524n111 271n48 118, 124n86 270, 528n128 270n39 515n65 652n150 126n97, 130n115 126n97, 130n115 119n61 426n64 426n64 274n59, 652n149 546n66 647 599n83 588n39 647n123 366n87 611n46, 647n123 647n123, 655n169 17n40 647n121 655n169 615n64 124n83 427n69 614n63 52 74 634n56 78n31 86n68, 93n99 240n24 240n27, 245n44, 406n56, 515n65 38n60 517n77
Rabbinic Texts
tHag 3:9 tHag 3:11 tHal 2:5f tHor 2:10 tHul tHul 2 tHul 2:18–24 tHul 2:18–21 tHul 2:18 tHul 2:19–24
3n3 4n12 114n40 491, 600n86 642, 643, 656 625, 642n95 632 652 632 276n66, 532n142, 601n91 tHul 2:19 632 tHul 2:20–24 655 tHul 2:20f 652n153 tHul 2:20 632, 655n169 tHul 2:20a 653, 655 tHul 2:20b–21 654n161 tHul 2:21 633, 643n100 tHul 2:22 633 tHul 2:23 633, 634n56 tHul 2:24 633 tHul 2:25 653 tKel BM 5:1 127n105 tKel BM 7:8 (ms Vienna) 127n105 tKet 5:1 33n39 tKet 7:6 165, 318n8 tKet 8:3 60n90 tKet 4:9 165n90 tKet 12:1 77n28 tKid 5:4 168n104 tKipp 1:8 51n47, 613n58 tMeg 2:7 430 tMeg 3:11 57n76, 431, 431n91, 448 tMeg 3:13 320n17 tMeg 3:21 430n86 tMen 10:23 527n119 tMen 13:18–21 518n80 tMen 13:21 42n7, 546n65 tMen 13:22 289n45 tMik 3:9–11 17n41 tMik 3:9 17n41 tMik 6:1 113n35, 123 tMK 2:16 660n190 tNaz 5:1 3n2 tNed 7:8 168 tNid 6:19 126n95
tPara 3:8 tPara 2:2 tPea 1:2 tPea 2:18 tPea 4:18f tPes 1:5–8 tPes 4:14 tPes 4:15 tRH 1:15 tRH 2:17 tRH 2:18 tSan 2:5 tSan 2:6
775
613n58 635n63 59 576n68 355 18n44 613n58 546n66 49n37 270n39 528n126 188n6 33n38, 47n29, 148n22, 583n13 tSan 7:10 3n2 tSan 11:2 61n96 tSan 11:7 33n37, 40 tSan 12:10 91n89, 240n22, 258n22 tSan 13:1–12 600n89 tSan 13:2f 598n75 tSan 13:2 12n21, 377n131, 428n73 tShab 1:6–8 14n31 tShab 1:11–21 11n15 tShab 1:11 305n29 tShab 1:14–16 19 tShab 1:14 126n94 tShab 1:15ff 164n86 tShab 1:15f 290n51 tShab 1:15 20n54 tShab 1:16–17 428n76 tShab 1:16 606n19 tShab 1:17 305n29 tShab 1:18 20n54 tShab 1:19 17n42, 20n54 tShab 1:21 20n53 tShab 6–7 138n158 tShab 13:5 653n158, 654n165 tShab 15:9 579n78 tShab 15:16f 305 tShab 15:16 270n46 tShab 15:16 (ms Vienna; ms Erfurt) 305n32 tShab 15:16 (ms London) 305n32 tShab 15:17 306 tShek 3:16 592n54 tShev 4:6–11 113n36
776 tSot 3:1 tSot 5:9 tSot 6:6–10 tSot 7:16 tSot 15:8 tSot 15:8 tSuk 2:3 tSuk 3:1 tSuk 3:3 tSuk 3:11 tSuk 3:16 tTaan 2:4 tTer 2:12f tTer 3:1f tTevY 1:8 tTevY 1:10 tTevY 2:14 tToh 1:1 tToh 1:6 tToh 2:1 tToh 5:9 tYad 2:9a tYad 2:14 tYad 2:17 tYad 2:18 tYad 2:20 tYad 5:2 tYev tYev 1:10–13 tYev 1:10 tYev 1:13 tYev 2:4 tYev 6:5 tYev 7:5 tYev 14:5 tYev 14:7 tYom 2:14 tYom 4:6 tZav 5:2 tZav 5:11 tZev 2:17 tZev 5:6 tZev 5:13 tZev 11:16
Index of Ancient Sources
360n57 83n56, 87, 88n77, 89, 89n80 25n13 546n66 660n190 531n138 614n63 51n46, 527n119 595n69 595 50n45, 527n119, 613n58 527n117 114n40 119n62 17n41, 18n44 16n37 17n41 16n36 18n45 17n41 17n41 17n40 240n25 168n104 168n104 229n40 19 648 388n21, 428n72 648n126 4n12, 614n63 81n47 88n73 81n47 3n2 168, 168n105, 171n119 243n33 243n33 18n47 19 127n102, 592n54 592n53 592n52 42n7
Palestinian Talmud (Yerushalmi) 4n11, 14n29, 19, 20, 28–31, 32n34, 36, 37, 54n61, 90, 91, 112, 124n82, 125, 129, 130, 143n7, 144, 165, 169, 169n109b, 170, 196, 219, 245, 270n42, 320, 428n72, 430, 431, 494, 633, 648n125 yAZ 1 (39c) 173n131 yAZ 1:9 (40a) 427n66 yAZ 2:2 (40d–41a) 632n49 yAZ 2:2 (41a) 633n52, 634n56 yAZ 2 (41d) 14n27 yBer 1 (2d) 130n116 yBer 1 (3b) 614n62 yBer 2:3 (5a) 652n150 yBer 3 (6c) 112n26, 118n60, 126n98, 129, 229n40 yBer 3 (6d) 125n88, 129 yBer 3 (7a) 129 yBer 4:3 (8a) 275n62, 650n142 yBer 4:4 (8b) 271n47 yBer 4:5 (8a) 652n150 yBer 5:3 (9c) 426n63 yBer 8 (12a) 130n115 yBer 9 (13b) 608n34 yBer 9:1 (13c) 427n66 yBik 3:4 (65b) 546n66 yBik 3 (65c) 170n109b yDem 1 (22a) 170n109b yDem 2:1 (22c) 517n77 yDem 2:2 (22d) 647n123 yDem 2 (23a) 17n40 yEr 1:10 (19d) 439n131 yEr 3 (21c) 34n42, 36n48 yGit 4:7 (46a) 78n31 yGit 5 (46d) 31n31, 36n48, 37n53 yGit 9 (50d) 83n57, 88n74, 88n75, 89n80, 90n83, 91n85, 91n89 yHag 1 (76c) 36n48, 37n49
Rabbinic Texts
yHag 2:1 (77a) yKet 4 (29a) yKet 5 (29d) yKet 5 (30b–c) yKet 5 (30b) yKet 7 (31c) yKet 8 (32c) yKid 1:1 (58c) yKid 3 (64d) yKid 3:9 (64b) yKil 4 (29c) yMaasSh 3 (54a) yMaasSh 5 (56c) yMaasSh 5:8 (56c) yMeg 1 (71a) yMeg 1 (71b) yMeg 1 (71d) yMeg 2:4 (23b) yMeg 3 (74a) yMeg 4 (75a) yMeg 4 (75b) yMeg 4:9 (75c) yMeg 4 (75d) yMK 3:1 (81c–d) yMK 3:1 (81d) yMSh 2:4 (53d) yNaz 6:1 (54d) yNed 3 (50c) yNed 6 (39b) yNed 6:8 (40a) yNed 9 (41c) yNed 11 (42d) yPea 1:1 (15b) yPea 1 (15d) yPea 1 (16b) yPes 1 (27d) yPes 3 (30b) yPes 6 (33a) yPes 7:1 (34a) ySan 1 (18d) ySan 1:2 (18d) ySan 1:2 (19a) ySan 10:5 (29c) yShab 1 (3c–d) yShab 1 (3c)
240n27, 245n44, 406n56 165n90 33n39 150n30 80n46 80n46 17n40, 113n34 68n2, 93n97 5n17 239n20 5n17 14n27 33n38, 47n29 583n13 320n18 320n19 171n121 431n90 36n48, 115n48 320n17 36n45, 321n23 426n63 112n27 649n134, 650n138 649n135 494n138, 494n140 239n20 31n30, 36n48 30n24 492n130 91n89 165n88 355 58n84 4n12 17n40, 113n34 37n49 4n12 458n3 33n38, 47n29, 148n22 583n13 492n130 492n130 11n17, 12n20, 606n19 13n24
yShab 1:3 (3c) yShab 1 (3d) yShab 1:7 (3c–d) yShab 1:7 (3c) yShab 10 (12c) yShab 16:1 (15c) yShab 19 (17a) yShek 5 (49a) yShev 1 (33b) yShev 4 (35b) yShev 6 (36c) yShev 8 (38a) ySot 1 (16b) ySot 3 (19a) ySot 7:7 (21b) ySuk 4 (24b) yTaan 1 (64c) yTaan 3 (66c ) yTaan 3:12 (67a) yTaan 4:6 (68d) yYev 1:6 (3b) yYev 2:4 (3d) yYev 8:2–3 (9a–d) yYev 8:2 (9b) yYev 15 (14d) yYom 1:1 (38c) yYom 1 (39a) yYom 8 (44d)
777 654n163 4n12, 17n40, 113n34 290n51 164n86 333n104 653n158 4n12 169n109b 51n46 173n129 113n36 14n27 89n80 608n34 546n66 51n46 129n112 169n109b 650n138 511n48 428n72 492 449n165 494n139 165n90 289n45 51n47 112n27, 129n112
Babylonian Talmud (Bavli) 4n11, 5n17, 9n7, 11, 13, 13n25, 19, 20, 28, 30, 31, 33–35, 37–39, 89n79, 112, 116, 118, 122, 124n82, 127, 129, 143n7, 171, 175, 187, 193n26, 196, 197n41, 205, 430, 494, 546, 583n10, 635n62 bAZ 8a 168n107, 171n119 bAZ 13a 172 bAZ 16b 632n49, 657n175 bAZ 17 652n153 bAZ 17a 634n57, 642n95
778 bAZ 26a bAZ 27a bAZ 27b bAZ 35a–37a bAZ 35b bAZ 70a bBB 21a bBB 41b bBB 58a bBB 58b bBB 127a bBB 127b–129a bBB 127b bBB 135b bBB 139a bBB 139b bBB 144b bBB 152a bBB 165b bBeitsa 14b bBeitsa 16a bBeitsa 23a bBeitsa 27a bBekh 8b bBekh 30b bBer 2a bBer 3 bBer 3b bBer 6c bBer 9b bBer 19a bBer 21b bBer 22 bBer 22a bBer 22b bBer 26a bBer 27b–28a bBer 28a bBer 28b–29a bBer 28b bBer 29b bBer 33b
Index of Ancient Sources
172n128, 173 633n55 632n49, 642n95 14n27 14n27 156n53 172 30n23 172n124, 172n125 172n124 29n19, 37n49 34 37n53, 40 29n20, 36n46, 38n61 29n19, 37n49, 37n53 29n19 29n20 29n20, 38n61 37n57 494n139 13n25, 20n53, 289n50, 377n130 458n3 494n139 170n116, 172n124 17n40, 611n46 116 129n113 257n19 129n113 494n139 427n69, 650n138 114n41, 118n60, 129 128n111 112n28, 124n87, 127n100, 229n40 124n85, 126n98, 127 124n87, 129 11n16, 273n58 528n122 650n142 274n59 271n47, 275n62 426n63
bBer 42a bBer 52a–b bBer 52b bBer 55a bBer 58a bBer 61b bBer 64a bBK 55a bBK 82a–b bBK 82a bBK 83a bBM 59b bBM 84b bBM 86a bBM 114a bEr 13b bEr 21b bEr 29b bEr 62a bGit 9b bGit 44a bGit 57a bGit 60a–b bGit 89b bGit 90a bGit 90b bGit 56a bGit 57a bHag 9b bHor 14b bHul 13a–b bHul 34a bHul 49b bHul 59b bHul 76b bHul 95b bHul 101b bHul 105a–107b bHul 105a bHul 105b–106a bKer 27a bKet 11a bKet 46a bKet 49a bKet 66b–67a
130n116 130n115 130n116 171n121 172n125 306 451n175 3n4 129n112 112n27 531n138, 660n190 275n60, 427n69, 649n134 333n104 172n125 29n19, 37n57 426, 614n62 17n43 243n33, 243n35 29n21 29n20 37n57, 38n59 171n122 30n25, 35n44 89n79 86n70, 88n72, 92n90, 594n66 87, 88n77 163n79 163n79 171n118, 172, 196 31n28, 35n44 642n95 17n41 29n20 36n46 36n46 31n29, 36n48, 37n52 29n20, 29n21 130n115 136n150 132n130 29n21 156n53 29n21 29n19 150n30
Rabbinic Texts
bKet 69a bKet 72b bKid 2a bKid 2b bKid 11b bMeg 9b bMeg 10a bMeg 12b–19b bMeg 12b bMeg 17a bMeg 17b bMeg 23a bMeg 25a bMeg 26b bMen 18a bMen 36a bMen 42b bMen 57b bMen 79b bMen 83b bMen 85b bMK 12a bMK 18a bNed 49b bNed 62b bNed 81a bNed 82a bNed 89b bNid 8a bNid 47b bNid 63a bPes 3b bPes 8b bPes 49b bPes 57a bPes 66a bPes 70a bPes 71a bPes 74b bPes 94b bPes 107b bPes 113b bRH 4a bRH 19a bRH 19b bRH 20a
31n32, 37n50 171n119 333n106 85n65 33n39 171n121, 171n122 114n40 171n120 333n104 650n142 274n59, 275n62, 528n122 57n76, 431 426n63 171n118 127n102 29n22 29n22 29n20 29n21 171n122 171n119 5n17 29n21 171n121 5n16 38n60 171n119 171n119 256n14 37n49 29n19 34n40, 36n47, 136n148 172 171n118 546n65 4n12 439n131 439n131 546n66 171n118, 333n104 546n66 171n118 163n79 163n78, 171n119 494n139 38n61
bSan 11a bSan 11b bSan 22b bSan 29a bSan 44a bSan 51a bSan 64a bSan 82a bSan 88b bSan 93b bSan 95b bSan 97a bSan 105a bSan 106a bSan 109a bShab 13b–17a bShab 13b–14a bShab 13b bShab 14b bShab 15a bShab 17a bShab 17b bShab 31a bShab 64b bShab 115a bShab 129a bShab 132a bShab 135a bShab 139a bShab 153a bShevu 46a bShevu 48a bShevu 48b bSot 22a bSot 41a–b bSot 49b bSuk 35a bSuk 43b bSuk 48a bSuk 48b bTaan 11a
779 531n137, 660n189 33n38, 38n61, 47n29, 148n22, 583n13 333n104 30n23 172n126 29n20 171n119 4n12 33n37 511n48, 512n52 172n126 239n19 377n131 170n116, 171n121, 172n126 171n122 11n17 11n18 13n25, 162n73, 289n50, 377n130 9n7, 17n40, 113n34 614n60 11n17 164n86 22n2, 428n73 90n83 30n23 172n124 304n24, 305n32, 306n33 304n27 32n35, 37n54, 40, 172 246n47 37n49, 37n53 37n56 30n23 172n126 546n66 531n138, 660n190 50n45 51n46, 527n119 50n45 527n119, 613n58 492n133
780 bTaan 18a bTaan 21a bTaan 23a bTaan 29b bTam 27b bTem 14a–b bYev 20a bYev 46b bYev 48b bYev 58a bYev 62b bYev 63a bYev 63b bYev 76b–78b bYev 104b bYev 112b bYev 114a bYev 122a bYom 9b bYom 19b bYom 20b bYom 69a bYom 85 a–b bYom 85b
Index of Ancient Sources
163n78, 171n119 171n122 650n138 29n21 494n139 30n25, 35n44 492n133 29n21 29n20 29n21 171n118 171n118 171n118 449n165 37n55 171n119 611n48 168n105, 171n119 289n45 51n47 546n66 163n78, 171n119, 171n121, 494n139 304n24, 307n37 304n23, 305n32
Halakhic Midrashim 264n7, 589n44, 590n46 MekRS 12.1 (p7) MerRS (p58) MekRS 14.15 MekRS 14.31 (p70) MekRS 15.1 (p70) MekRS 15.1 (p71f) MekRS 15.2 (p79) MekRS (p106) MekRS 19.6 (p139) MekRS 20.8 (p148) MekRS (p148) MekRS Ex 20:9 (p149) MekRS (p149) MekRS (p158f)
116n51 588n37 491n127 240n23 357n37 236n4 249n60 270n46 491 289n50, 606n19, 616n69 13n25, 20n53, 377n130 345n178 14n28, 20n53 406n56
Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael 303, 305–307, 305n30, 307n37, 312 MekRY bahodesh/yitro (p232f) 62n102 MekRY beshallah 1 (p156) 595n70 MekRY beshallah shira 3 (p127) 249n60, 252n64 MekRY beshallah shira 4 491n127 MekRY beshallah shira 6 (p137) 492n128 MekRY beshallah/ vayehi 6 (p114f) 357n37 MekRY beshallah/ vayehi (p115) 240n23 MekRY bo/pisha 1 (p3) 116n51 MekRY bo/pisha 7 (p22) 239n21, 258n23 MekRY bo/pisha 7 (p25) 239n21, 258n23 MekRY bo/pisha 14 (p51f) 240n23 MekRY bo/pisha 14 (p52) 596n73 MekRY (p161) 270n46 MekRY mishpatim 1 (p247) 150n30 MekRY mishpatim 8 (p276) 60n93 MekRY mishpatim 8 (p276) 61n99 MekRY mishpatim 19 (p318) 611n48 MekRY mishpatim/ nezikin 18 (p312) 169n109a MekRY mishpatim kaspa 20 (p320) 491 MekRY pisha 1 (p4) 589n45 MekRY pisha 17 (p64) 589n45 MekRY shira/ beshallah 1 (116f) 236n4 MekRY shira 2 (p125) 492n128 MekRY ki tissa 1 (340f) 304n24, 305n32
781
Rabbinic Texts
MekRY ki tissa (341) 497n146 MekRY vayehi beshallah 3 (p99) 588n37 MekRY yitro 2 (p205) 429n82 MekRY yitro 7 (p229) 13n25, 20n53, 377n130, 606n19, 616n69 MekRY yitro/ bahodesh 1 (p203) 150n30 MekRY yitro/ bahodesh 5 (p220) 653n157 MekRY yitro/ bahodesh 7 (p229) 289n50 MidrTann Deut 14:21 (p75) 492n133 MidrTann (p175f) 47n29 MidrTann 18:11 122n76 MidrTann 26:23 (p176) 583n13 MidrTann 176 38n61, 148n22 MidrTann metsora 26a 430n83 SifNum 104 (p82f) 240n23 SifNum 115 (p125) 239n21, 258n23 SifNum 117 (p137) 33n39 SifNum 130 (p170f) 171n121 SifNum 131 (p171) 169n109, 171n119 SifNum 161 (p222f) 240n23 SifNum neso 16 (p21) 653n158 SifZNum 6.8 (p242) 492n132 SifZNum 12 (p276) 589n44 SifZNum 27:11 (p318) 590n46 SifDeut 32 (p55) 496n145 SifDeut 39 (p79) 128n106 SifDeut 48 (p110) 496n144 SifDeut ekev 49 (p114f) 487n104 SifDeut 51 (p116–118) 113n36 SifDeut 157 (p209) 546n66 SifDeut 173 (p220) 122n76 SifDeut 218 (p364) 169n109 SifDeut 244 (p401) 169n109 SifDeut 253 (p421) 171n119 SifDeut 254 (p416) 169n109, 171n122 SifDeut 255 (p421) 169n109
SifDeut 269 (p288) SifDeut 269 (p289) SifDeut 294 (p313) SifDeut 305 (p325) SifDeut 306 (p328) SifDeut 336 (end p386) SifDeut 343 (p399) SifDeut 406 (p330) SifDeut 444 (p401) SifDeut 451 (p408)
54n59, 86n70, 88n75, 92n90, 388n23, 594n66 86n68, 93n99, 167n97 13n25 150n30 589n44 58n84 249n60 88n77 531n139 531n139
Sifrei Zuta Deuteronomy 89, 90, 90n83, 91n86, 92n91 SifZDeut 24:1 (lines 10–13) 89n79 Sifra Sifra kedoshim 1.1 Sifra kodashim 2.4 (Weiss 89b) Sifra kodashim (kedoshim) 8 (91a) Sifra metsora, perek 6 (77b) Sifra metsora 9 (79c) Sifra, shemini 54b
589n45 491n127
Aggadic Midrashim
188, 588n40, 589n44, 590n46
91n89 366n87, 611n46 127n105 90n83, 91n89 125n90
Genesis (Bereshit) Rabba 170 BerR 10.3 (p75) 660n192 BerR 28.3 (p261) 660n192 BerR 78.1 (p916v) 660n192 GenR 10.7 (p82) 170n112 GenR 11.4 170n112 GenR 11.5 (p94) 146n13, 170n112 GenR 18.5 (p166f) 68n2 GenR (Vilna) 33.3 5n17 GenR 63.7 (p686) 170n112, 173n129 GenR 63.8 (p689) 170n112, 172n124 GenR 64.9 (p711) 5n16
782 GenR 76.8 (p906) GenR 93.7 (p1178) GenR 96 (p1218) GenR 98.6 (p1257)
Index of Ancient Sources
170n116 170n112 170n113, 170n115 170n113, 170n114
Exodus (Shemot) Rabba 494 ShemR 21.8 494n140 ExodR 21.8 495 ExodR 23.6 357n37 ExodR 28.2 430n83 Leviticus Rabba 170, 196 LevR 1.3 (p8) 170n113 LevR 2.11 (p52) 243n35 LevR 3.7 (p73) 249n60 LevR 13.4 (p281) 196n37 LevR 13.5 (p294) 170n112, 171n121 LevR 18.1 (p394) 660n192 LevR 22.4 (p506) 170n112 LevR 22.4 (p511) 115n48 LevR 25.5 (p578) 127n105 LevR 34.2 335n114 LevR 34.3 (p775–777) 257n17 LevR 34.3 (p776) 427n66 LevR 35.6 (p824) 196n37 LevR 37.2 (p858f) 170n112 NumR 8.2 NumR balak 20.21
169n109a 170n116
Song (Canticles/Shir) Rabba 238–240, 238n14, 242, 250, 251, 258 ShirR 1.17 14n27 ShirR 1.22 249n60 ShirR 7.3 239n20 ShirR 7.14 243n35 RuthR 3.2 RuthR 3.14
660n192 425n57
LamR 1.51 Lam(Ekh)R 2.4 LamR 3.8
170n116 511n48 660n192
Kohelet Rabba
494, 494n138, 635n62
KohR 1.3 KohR 1.8 KohR 3.7 KohR 9.1 KohR 9.8 KohR 11.2 (51b)
632n49 657n175 633n55 494n140, 495 246n47 333n104
EstR 156n53 EsthR 1.11 (89b) 333n104 EstR petishta 5 5n16 EstR 6.4 171n120 EstR 7.11 (Warsaw ed.) 156n53 EstR 7.13 155n50 Pesikta (de-Rav Kahana) 242, 247, 251 PesRK 239, 239n19 PesRK 1.1–3 (p1–6) 238n17 PesRK 4 (74) 15n35 PesRK 4.7 (p74) 133n135 PesRK Para (p75) 171n121 PesRK 5.6–9 (p87–98) 238n17 PesRK 5.6 (p86) 239n18 PesRK 5.6 (p87f) 260n25 PesRK 5.9 (p96f) 239n18 PesR 23 (115b)
13n25, 20n53, 289n50, 377n130 PesR nahamu (140a) 150n30 PesR 44 (184a) 88n77 Tanh vayikra 2 (1b) Tanh beshallah 10 (86b) Tanh Toledot 7 Tanh ki tissa 16 (122a) Tanh yitro 8 (95a)
611n46 236n4 494 365n77 304n24, 305n32
TanB vayikra 3 (2a) 611n46 TanB metsora 18 (27a) 430n83 TanB 8 (91a) 304n23 TanB vayashev 8 (91a) 304n24, 305n32 TanB wayehi 12 (110a) 170n115
783
Rabbinic Texts
MidrTeh 16.2 MidrProv 22.20
494 367n90
Other Rabbinic Works Megillat Taanit
13n25, 162, 162n73, 163, 163n80, 174, 175, 200, 289n50, 377n130, 527, 527n118 Scholion on MegTaan 289n50, 377n130 MegTaan 4/10 Tammuz 546n65 MegTaan 8 Nisan p324 (Lichtenstein) 49n37, 50n39 MegTaan 4 Tammuz, p331 57n73 MegTaan p340 171n119 MegTaan p350 171n119 MegTaan p351 13n25 Targumim FrgTg Gen 49:8 TgIsa 42:21 TgOnk Gen 40:13 TgOnk Gen 49:11 TgPsYon TgPsYon Exod 19:3 TgSong TgSong 1.3 Targum Yonatan TgYon Mal 2:16
170n115 367n90 5n17 367n90 170n115 430n84 236n4, 240, 243n34 249n60 596 79n37
Seder Eliahu Rabba SER p51 SER 18, p105
243n35, 292n60 264n6 169n109a
Gerim 4:5 Kalla R 5.1 Semakhot 8.10 Derekh Erets treatises
169n109a 289n45 254n7 611n48
Midrash Zuta 1.1
236n4
Pitron Tora (p247)
367n90
Seder Olam 3
427n70
Avot de-R. Natan 616n71 ARN a 618n77 ARN a 8 (ms Vat 44 app. B fol 82a) 493n135 ARN a 11 (23a) 345n178 ARN a 12–15 (24b–31a) 616n73 ARN a 12–13 138n160 ARB a 12 (26a) 343n169 ARN a 15 (p61) 22n2 ARN a 17 (p65) 150n30 ARN a 26 (p82) 168n107 ARN a 32 (35b–36a) 616n71 ARN a 36 (54a) 12n22, 169n109a ARN a 40 (65a) 616n74 ARN a 41 (p131) 177n137 ARN b 618n77 ARN b 21 (22b–23a) 345n178 ARN b 21 (22b–23b) 345n178 ARN b 21 (22b) 345n178 ARN b 23–24 (24a–b) 138n160, 616n73 ARN b 29–30 (30a–32b) 616n73 ARN b 29 (31a–b) 393n2 ARN b 29 (p61) 22n2 ARN b 30 (p66) 257n17 ARN b 31 (p67) 260n25 ARN b 34 (25a) 343n169 ARN b 44 (p124) 493 ARN b 46 (64b) 616n74 Midr Yelamdenu bereshit no. 131 Midrash Gadol MidrGad Exod 19:3 (p477) MidrGad Exod 20:10 (p415) MidrGad Exod 32:16 (p668) MidrGad Deut 18:11 (p422) MidrGad Deut 23:15 (p523) MidrGad Deut 23:19 (p528)
494n137 635n62 430n83 20n53 365n77 122n76 86n70, 594n66 632n49, 634n57
784
Index of Ancient Sources
MidrGad Deut 24:1 (p436f) 86n70, 594n66 MidrGad Deut 26:13 (p597f) 33n38, 47n29, 148n22 MidrGad Deut 26:13 (p598) 38n61
Greek and Latin Authors
Yalkut Shimoni 635n62 YalShim Exod no. 349 169n109a YalShim Isa no. 459 169n109a YalShim Micah no. 551 632n49
Berossus, Babyloniaca 604
Otsar Hamidrashim (p214) Otsar Hamidrashim (p450)
367n90 367n90
Rav Sherira’s Letter 582n7 Rav Sherira’s Second Letter 529n132 Maimonides Mishne Tora hil. Berakhot 6 hil. Hamets u-Matsa 2:5 hil. Keriat Shema 3 hil. Keriat Shema 4:8 hil. Tefilla 4 Mishna Comm Kel 2:8
6n21 130n118 172n127, 173n130 130n118 117n57, 130n117 130n118 256n14
Rabbinic Prayers and Liturgy Eighteen Benedictions 261, 268б 270–276, 290, 527–529, 531 Pesah Seder 290 Shema 116–119, 126, 130, 130n117, 130n118, 244, 269n38, 320n21, 431n89 Tefilla 118, 119, 130n118, 268, 269n38
Aristophanes Equites 643 647 656 Frogs 1198ff
224n4 224n4 224n4 332
Cassius Dio, Historia Romana 12.1–2 509n41 37.16.6f 210 66.7.2 477n67 66.15 543n45 66.15.3 543n46 68.1.2 557n116 Cicero, pro Flacco 67 628n30 Dio Chrysostom, Euboicus 345n180 Euripides, Bacch 45.325.1255 617n75 Herodotus, History 1.1 210 6.130 165n89 7.60 191n19 Homer Odyssea 2.261 12.336 14.152 14.166 17.48 17.59 Ilias 16.227–229 24.302–306
111n19, 111n20 111n19 223n3 223n3 112n26 112n26 111n19 111n19
Isaios, De Pyrrho 70 165n89
785
Greek and Latin Authors
Julius Caesar, Gallic War 564n25 Juvenal, Satires 6.156 543n45 Manetho, Aegyptiaca 604 Pliny the Elder Naturalis historia 5.73 436n116, 437n119 Pliny the Younger Epistulae 10 629 10.96–97 628 10.96 629–630 10.97 630 10.96 631n47 10.96.5 633n54 10.96.8 628n30 Plutarch Moralia 484D 339n138 488D–f 339n138 485A 339n138, 339n141 487B 339n141 491C 339n141 On Brotherly Love 329, 337, 339 Vita Antonii 61.3 146n13 71.1 146n13 Vita Fabii Maximi 13.6f 323n38 Vita Sertorii 11.8 224n4 26.6 224n4 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 3.7.21 628n30 4.1.19 543n48 Seneca De Provid 2
338n133
Suetonius, De vita Caesarum Claudius 25.4 217n122 Nero 16.2 628n30 Titus 7 543n45 7.1 543n46 Domitian 12.2 477n67 Tacitus Annals 13.32.2 15.38 15.42f 15.44 15.44.1 15.44.2–5 15.44.2 15.44.3 15.44.4 15.44.5 Histories 2.1.1 5.1.2 5.5 5.5.1 5.8.2 5.9–10 5.9 5.9.2 5.12.3
559, 626 628n30 626 626 289n43, 626, 627n26 626 552n93 626 627 627 627 559 543n45 544n57 627n23 628n31 628n30 289n43 571n41 571n41 13n**
Thucydides History 1.2–20 1.3 1.20f 1.22 1.89–117 1.118.2 118.2
559, 560 562n13 562n13 562n13 561n12 562n13 560n7 562n13
Ulpian, Digesta 50.2.3.3 628n30 Xenophon, Hellenica 1.6.37 224n4 4.3.14 224n4
Index of Names Ancient Names Aaron 136, 339, 484, 485, 491, 595 Abba, R. 35 Abba bar Yirmiya, R. 130 Abbahu, R. 29n20 Abba Shaul 49n36, 118, 518n80 Abba Shaul ben Botnit 518n80 Abba Yose ben Yohanan (the Jerusalemite) 518n80 Abraham 89, 149n25, 149n28, 159, 179, 185, 299n8, 300, 304, 312, 327n71, 333n106, 343, 357, 362, 366–368, 432, 432n94, 437n124, 455, 470, 587–589, 597 Absalom 224n8 Arsacid empire 196 Achaeminid empire 121n71, 196 Achior the Ammonite 155 Adam 317, 345, 384, 489, 490 Aelius 332n100 Agrippa I 159n65, 160n68, 376, 377, 543, 545, 546 Agrippa II 536, 536n13, 538, 541–556, 541n39, 542n40, 542n43, 543n45, 543n46, 544n51, 544n55, 545n59, 545n61, 547n68, 555n106, 571, 576, 584 Aha, R. 68n2, 196n37, 305, 306 Akiva, R. 9n6, 10, 17–19, 17n43, 18n45, 23, 25n13, 86–92, 88n73, 91n86, 91n89, 101, 122n76, 125n90, 126, 127, 127n100, 196n37, 235, 236, 236n5, 238, 240, 240n23, 249n60, 250–252, 256n16, 258n22, 271–273, 275, 303–307, 304n24, 305n30, 307n37, 312, 345n178, 406, 427n66, 432n94, 439n131, 493, 502n3, 511n48, 518n80, 527, 529, 529n131, 582n6,
589n44, 616n69, 616n74, 633, 634n60, 652n149, 653–655, 654n163 Albinus 546, 564, 564n27 Alexander coppersmith 359 Alexander the Great 163, 163n79, 171, 192, 254, 418n31, 540n35 Alexander Jannaeus 151, 151n34, 151n34a, 537 Alexander (upper priest) 609 Alexander Polyhistor 204, 204n75 Alexandra-Salome 537 Ammi son of R. Hiya bar Abba, R. 30, 37, 38n61 Ammi bar Natan, R. 37 Ammonius 576n67 Amram (ben Sheshna), Rav 39, 39n65 Anan, Rav 37 Ananias 545, 545n62, 552 Ananias (Jewish merchant) 576, 577 Ananus (Annas) 546, 546n65, 609 Ananus son of Ananus 545n62, 546, 546n65 Andrew 230 Andronikos 373n116 Aninana, R. 492 Antigonos from Socho 257n17 Antiochos 418n31 Antiochus IV Epiphanes 162, 162n81, 359n47, 562, 575 Antipater 146n13 Antistios 332n100 Aphrodite 111 Apion 63, 658, 659 Apollonius Molon 63 Apollonius of Tyana 484 Apollos 359, 461 Aquila 320n19, 373n116, 450, 450n168
788
Index of Names
Ariamenes 339 Archelaus 563, 565 Aristeas 150n31, 156, 204 Aristides 252n65, 530n135 Aristobulus 160n68, 576, 577 Ariston of Pella 510n44 Aristotle 210, 213, 213n106, 347 Artapanos 200, 204, 204n75 Artaxerxes 146n15 Athanasius 362n63 Avtalyon 124n83, 588 Augustine 181n158, 347–350, 349n8, 369n96, 369n97, 372n113 Augustus (Oktavian) 39, 224n12, 506n23, 553, 563, 625n17 Azarya, R. 239 Azariah 156n53 Baba Rabba 115n49 Ba bar Kahana, R. 58n84 Babata 166, 167, 168n103 Bar Kokhba/Kosiba, Shimon (see also Subject index) 32, 93n99, 511n48 Bar Kappara 431n90 Bannus 229 Barnabas 286, 344n173, 371, 375, 376, 397, 466, 467n37, 468, 469n41, 477, 479, 480, 509, 509n35, 567–570 Bar Kappara 320n18 Bartimaeus 518n82 Basilius 362n63 Bea, Cardinal 185n165 Benjamin 421 Ben Sira 333n108, 358 Berekhya, R. 239 Bernice (Berenice) 542–545, 542n42, 542n43, 543n45–48, 544n54, 545n59, 545n61, 548, 550–555, 550n85, 571, 584 Beza 102n123, 319n15, 610n44 Boethus (dynasty of) 24n10, 42, 42n7, 49, 49n37, 49n38, 50n39, 50n45, 51, 51n46, 51n47, 55, 56, 527, 527n119, 613n58 Caiaphas 546, 546n65, 609 Cain 590 Cassius Dio 210, 509, 510n42, 511, 511n45
Celsus 634 Cestius Gallus 562, 564 Chairemon 63 Choirilos 191n20 Chloe 26, 450 Cicero 329n80 Claudius 216, 217, 379n139, 381, 381n148, 397, 545, 570, 627, 627n24 Claudius Charax 149n28 Clearchus 210 Clement 476n63 Clement of Alexandria 111, 112, 133, 204, 408, 408n60, 509, 509n35 Clement of Rome 328, 328n75, 337n130 Cornelius 146n15, 168n105, 180n152, 549 Constantine 506n23, 625n17, 657, 661 Coponius 563, 565 Cumanus 216, 572, 573 Cyrus 147, 190, 190n17, 203, 378n134, 606n17 Daniel 407, 484, 490 Darius 339 David 95, 97, 136, 147, 239, 288n40, 389n31, 413, 440, 443, 490, 537, 591 Demetrios 198, 418n31 Demetrios II 199, 201 Didymus the Blind 384n9 Dimi, R. 30 Dio Chrysostom 436n117 Dionysios of Halycarnassus 535, 563n17 Dioscuri 339, 340n150, 343, 343n172 Domitian 290, 529, 535, 541, 541n39, 552, 552n94, 556, 556n109, 557, 557n116, 626, 630n39 Drusilla 543, 571 Elai, R. 29n20, 29n21, 127 Elazar, R. 18n47, 29n20, 38n61, 87, 270n46, 648n126 Elazar ben Arakh 245, 406 Elazar (Lazar) ben Azaria, R. 303–305, 304n24, 305n32, 307n37, 310, 312, 363n65, 428n77 Elazar ben Dama, R. 633, 633n55, 634, 634n59, 638
Ancient Names
Elazar ben Hanina/Hananya ben Hizkia ben Garon 13, 13n25, 20n53, 53n56, 162n77, 289, 377, 428, 606, 616n69 Eleazar (son of high-priest Ananias) 13, 13n25, 289, 377, 428, 474, 574, 576 Eleazar the high priest 204 Eleazar from Galilee 576, 577 Elijah 427n69, 490, 490n119, 490n121, 493 Eliezer (ben Hyrcanus), R. (see also Index of subjects, Shammaite) 4, 10–12, 12n22, 14n28, 14n31, 16n37, 17–19, 17n39, 17n41, 17n42, 18n44, 18n47, 19n52, 52, 52n54, 53, 86, 93, 118, 122n76, 127, 167n97, 239, 246, 246n47, 249n59, 251, 258, 259, 270, 270n46, 271–273, 275, 275n60, 276n66, 284n21, 304n24, 305, 305n32, 306, 310, 320n19, 345, 377, 377n131, 389n26, 389n27, 427, 428, 428n73, 492, 527, 527n117, 528n128, 529, 532n142, 592, 592n54, 596n73, 601n91, 606n20, 616, 632n50, 633, 634, 634n60, 635n62, 635n63, 649, 654n163, 656, 657 Eliezer ben Hanokh 126n94 Eliezer ben Yaakov, R. 49n36 Elisha 484, 490 Enoch 327n71, 484, 489, 490 Ephraim 439 Epictetus 147n19, 589 Epiphanius 362n63, 523, 634, 634n58, 650 Esther 146, 154, 155 Eupolemos 200, 204, 204n75 Euripides 617n75 Eusebius 57, 64, 64n113, 200, 204, 281, 281n7, 282, 362n63, 496, 506n22, 509n41, 510, 510n44, 511, 511n46, 513 Evagrius 362n63 Ezekiel 147 Ezra 112, 121n71, 129, 130, 146, 190n17, 191, 198 Fadus 545, 572 Felix 103, 289, 377, 474n57, 479, 543, 543n44, 545, 547n68, 550, 550n85, 552, 570–574
789
Festus 546–548, 550–552, 550n85, 570, 573, 584 Flavia Domitilla 556n109 Flavians 605 Florus 543, 544, 564, 565 Gaius (Caligula) 146n15, 159n65, 160n68, 163n80, 340n150, 451n174 Galen 398 Gamaliel (Gamliel) the Elder, R. 18n44, 38–40, 38n61, 42n6, 47, 47n29, 53n56, 148, 266n20, 290, 293, 426n66, 426n67, 548n73, 549, 551, 553–556, 554n101, 572n49, 583, 584, 584n20, 586, 598, 598n75, 599, 603, 603n1, 603n3, 603n4, 604, 606, 609–612, 612n52, 614–619, 615n65, 656, 656n171 Gamaliel (Gamliel) the Younger, R. 47, 57n67, 104, 111, 117, 120, 188n6, 199n52, 269–276, 272n53, 273n58, 290, 293, 295, 302, 428, 428n77, 527–532, 528n125, 528n127, 531n137, 531n138, 535–537, 535n10, 536n13, 539, 555–557, 556n110, 582, 583, 583n13, 605, 606n16, 616, 619n79, 623, 642, 649–651, 650n141, 656, 658–660 Gershom, Rabbenu 30n26 Hadrian 163n78, 163n81, 190n17, 261, 306, 378n134, 494, 495, 509–511, 510n42, 511n51, 513, 530, 530n135, 606n17, 631n45, 660 Hai Gaon, Rav 166, 166n92 Hananiah 156n53 Hananya 289 Hananya ben Hakinai 406 Hanin, R. 68n2 Hananya/Hanina ben Hizkia ben Garon 11, 13 Hanina, R. 29n21, 49, 118n60 Hanina ben Dosa, R. 363n65 Hanania (nephew of R. Yoshua) 492 Hasmoneans (dynasty, period) 47n*, 48, 151, 151n34a, 152, 152n36a, 154, 155, 162, 174, 175, 188n174, 193, 199–201, 204–208, 210, 211, 211n101, 211n102, 258n22, 289n50, 543, 544, 577
790
Index of Names
Hegesippus 118n60, 229n40, 634n58 Helena, queen of Adiabene 478n69, 576, 576n68 Herod the Great 146n13, 238, 288n41, 339, 381, 542n40, 543, 553 Herod Antipas 547, 549, 553, 608 Herodians, Herodian dynasty 302, 538, 540–542, 542n40, 542n43, 543n44, 545, 545n61, 547, 553, 555n106, 556n111, 563, 577 Herodion 373n116 Herodotus 191, 207, 210, 535, 562, 562n15, 563, 563n17, 604n9 Hillel the Elder (see also subject index) 4n12, 11–13, 11n17, 12n23, 17, 17n40, 17n42, 18, 18n44, 20, 20n54, 22, 25, 38, 38n63, 42, 53–56, 55n68, 67n1, 69, 70, 75, 79n39, 82, 82n52, 82n54, 85, 86, 88–92, 91n89, 99–101, 104, 110, 124n83, 125, 127, 128, 135, 136, 138, 138n160, 163n82, 165, 209n265, 256, 257n17, 270, 284, 285, 285n24, 289, 290, 292, 293, 319, 335n114, 345n179, 377, 388, 389, 393, 425–428, 427n66, 427n67, 427n71, 428n77, 449, 520, 529, 530, 537, 606, 613, 613n58, 614, 614n60, 616–619, 616n69, 616n71, 616n73 Hippocrates 345 Hippolytus of Rome 237, 237n9, 243n35, 249, 250, 251 Hiya bar Abba, R. 239 Hiya the Elder, R. 31, 32, 37n54 Hizkia, R. 13n25, 30 Homer 16n38, 111, 223, 561, 599n83 Huna, Rav 37, 124n85, 129 Huna the Great from Sepphoris, R. 68n2 Hyrcanus, king 576, 577 Ibn Ezra 77n25 Ignatius 294, 295, 330n84, 508, 530n135, 618 Irenaeus 285n25, 320n18, 508, 548, 618, 661, 661n193 Isaac 432n94 Isaiah 423, 638, 639 Izates, king of Adiabene 576 Isi b. Yehuda 491
Ishmael son of Phiabi 545n62 Issi the Priest, R. 492n130 Jacob 147, 169, 196n37, 252n67, 374, 421, 429, 430, 430n84, 430n86, 432n94, 471, 511n48 James (brother of Jesus) 42n8, 103, 262n2, 364, 371, 375, 376, 378, 397, 408, 465n32, 466, 475, 479, 482, 491, 546, 555, 568–570 James (son of Judas) 564n23, 565, 572 Japheth 320 Jason 373n116 Jason of Cyrene 204, 210n267 Jeremiah 145, 342 Jerome 226, 258n51, 650, 657 Jesus (Christ) (see also Yeshu) 4n7, 6n20, 11n12, 16, 17, 17n39, 25–27, 51n50, 53, 67–71, 68n3, 69n6, 71n13, 73–76, 79n40, 84n62, 84n64, 90, 94–101, 98n114, 98n115, 100n119, 103–105, 109, 122n77, 125, 125n89, 126n94, 127n103, 130–132, 131n120, 131n124, 133n133–135, 134, 135, 135n146, 137, 138, 176–179, 179n144, 180n149, 182, 184, 214, 215, 217–220, 218n125, 223–314, 317, 322n33, 325, 325n53, 326n60, 326n61, 331, 331n91, 344, 344n175, 348–350, 348n6, 351n20, 352, 358, 364n70, 369n98, 371, 373, 374, 378n137, 379, 383, 383n1, 385–387, 387n17, 387n18, 389–391, 389n25, 389n30, 390n34, 394–396, 398–405, 399n30, 400n33, 400n34, 401n36, 401n38, 403n45, 404n49, 405, 405n50, 407–412, 407n58, 408n60, 409n66, 414, 414n11, 415, 415n16, 424, 425, 425n57, 425n58, 426n63, 432, 432n94, 433, 433n100, 441, 445–447, 447n156, 452, 454, 455, 466, 469, 473, 474n58, 482, 483n85, 486, 488n114, 488n115, 489–491, 489n118, 493, 493n136, 494n139, 496n144, 497, 503, 503n8, 504n13, 507, 513–521, 516n73, 516n75, 518n80, 518n82, 519n87, 523, 523n109, 523n110, 524, 526, 528, 531, 532, 546–549, 549n82, 551, 553–556, 567–569, 573–575,
Ancient Names
573n56, 574n58, 574n60, 575n64, 579, 582, 582n3, 582n8, 584, 586, 588, 590, 590n48, 594, 594n62, 597, 598, 600n88, 601n91, 603n4, 607–610, 607n22–24, 607n26, 608n34, 610n43, 612, 613, 615, 621–624, 624n11, 627, 629, 630, 632n50, 633n53, 634–641, 634n56, 634n58, 634n59, 635n63, 635n66, 638n78, 639n83, 645, 646, 651, 652, 653n160, 655–657, 655n168, 657n176 Jesus son of Damnaeus 545n62 Jesus son of Gamaliel 545n62 Joanna 432n98 Joazar (son of Boethus) 574n58 John (disciple) 103, 466, 491 John of Patmos 250, 251 John (the Baptist) 131, 131n124, 132, 137, 178, 223, 225–232, 229n43, 229n46, 230n51, 232n58, 244, 244n39, 245, 250, 262, 266, 268, 268n30, 271, 271n49, 277, 490, 490n121, 518, 518n82, 523n109, 524, 528, 574, 574n60, 575, 575n64, 582n8 John Chrysostom 134, 280n4, 362n63 John (high priest) 609 Jonathan (high priest) 573 Joseph 149n25, 157, 339, 340, 471 Joseph (father of Jesus) 634 Joseph from Arimathea 610 Joseph Kabi son of Simon 545n62 Josephus 13, 16n38, 23, 24, 41–66, 71, 74, 76, 79n39, 83, 83n58, 83n59, 87, 103, 104, 108, 109n9, 112, 112n25, 114, 115, 144, 145, 146n15, 147n19, 158, 160, 160n67, 160n68, 160n71, 161, 175, 179n148, 187, 188, 194, 200, 202, 203, 203n73, 207, 208, 211, 213, 214n111, 215–217, 223n3, 224, 224n7, 229, 229n43, 254n3, 266, 272, 272n52, 286n29, 288, 289, 290n53, 319, 321n29, 339–344, 340n145, 343n171, 376–378, 378n134, 382n151, 417, 420, 428, 436, 437, 437n120, 440, 474, 533–546, 548, 550, 550n85, 552, 554–557, 554n103, 555n104, 555n106, 556n110,
791
559–566, 571–578, 571n42, 572n43, 574n57, 575n67, 576n68, 577n73a, 581–584, 581n2, 583n15–17, 584n20, 586, 598, 600, 604–606, 604n9, 605n12, 606n17, 606n18, 606n20, 606n21, 607n23, 609, 611n46, 612–615, 613n55, 613n59, 614n61, 615n65, 618, 628, 644, 644n106, 650, 656, 658, 659, 659n185 Joshua 341, 572 Judah 362, 422 Judas Iscariot 248, 268, 308n39, 344n175, 414n11, 518, 518n82, 610 Judas the Galilean 216, 378n138, 563–565, 564n23, 565n28, 565n30, 572, 572n47, 606n18, 615n65 Judith 155 Junia(s) 373n116, 450 Justin Martyr 112, 282, 618, 651, 651n145, 661 Justus of Tiberias 536, 536n13, 536n14, 541, 542, 542n40, 544, 545, 554, 555n106 Juvenal 543n45 Kahana, Rav 29n21 Laban 252n67 Lazarus 638 Leah 252n67 Leo the Great, Pope 458 Levi 422 Levi, R. 32 Levi bar Hayta, R. 320n21 Levi the Netmaker 303 Linus 552n93 Lucius 373n116 Lucullus 339 Luke 69, 95n106, 177, 179, 180n152, 184, 185, 217, 226, 230, 266, 271, 277, 286, 295n82, 313, 325, 376, 450n166, 476–480, 479n75, 480n78, 487n106, 517, 518, 524, 533–557, 554n102, 554n103, 564n22, 570n40, 572n43, 574n58, 598, 603–619 Lydia 450n168 Lysias 162n75 Lysimachus 63
792
Index of Names
Maccabees 146n15, 162, 163n79, 206, 229n39, 381, 577 Maimonides 6, 130, 173 Malachi 79n40, 100, 101 Malalas 216 Manasseh 422, 423 Manetho 63 Marcion 233n60, 619n80 Marcus Alexander 108n5 Marcus (bishop of Aelia) 510 Mariamne 543 Mark 69, 232, 251, 277, 285n25, 285n27, 287, 407 Martha (sister of Mary) 432, 433, 638 Mary (mother of Jesus) 225, 249, 432, 634 Mary of Bethany 237n10, 248, 249, 308, 432, 432n95, 433, 638 Mary of James 432n98 Mary Magdalene 432, 432n98, 433, 433n101, 518n82 Mar Zutra 35 Mattathias 362, 575 Matthias son of Theophilus 545n62 Mattityah Antigonos 151n34 Maximus Conf. 362n63 Meir, R. 10, 17n42, 18n45, 35n44, 83n56, 87–90, 88n72–74, 88n77, 89n79, 89n80, 92, 101, 118, 126–128, 136, 136n49, 274n59, 426, 427, 427n66, 492, 494, 496, 647, 650n140, 652n149 Meiri, R. Menahem 257n17, 335n114 Menahem (son of Judas) 572, 576 Menasya, Rav 32 Metilius 577 Mishael 156n53 Miriam 47, 157, 236 Mohammed (Muhammad) 540n35 Monbaz, Monobazos 355, 576n68 Mordecai 146, 154, 155, 155n50, 192 Moses 4n12, 41n1, 43n13, 47, 63, 69, 96, 97, 100, 101, 103, 105, 111–113, 136, 147, 164, 166, 166n91, 166n95, 169n109, 195n206, 197n41, 204, 235, 236, 299, 301, 302, 309–312, 318n8, 319, 320n18, 325, 340, 341, 358, 372, 376, 383n1, 389n31, 398, 419, 429–
431, 442, 448, 454, 471, 472, 490, 517, 517n79, 520, 546, 570, 584, 584n19, 586, 595, 604, 607, 638n78 Nahman bar Yitshak, Rav 129 Nahum, R. 492 Nathan 442 Nathan, R. 172, 616 Nathanael 178, 302, 518n82 Natan, R. 240n23, 303–305, 304n23, 309 Nehemia, R, 240n23, 365n77 Nehemiah 144, 146, 190n17, 191, 198, 203, 213, 215 Nehonya ben Hakana, R. 272, 273 Nero 544, 546, 548, 550, 552, 552n93, 554, 584n18, 626–628, 626n21, 628n32, 631, 631n46, 657 Nerva 513, 513n57, 538, 557, 565n29, 626 Nicodemus 178, 518n82, 583n13 Nicolaus (of Damascus) 535n10, 537, 537n19, 538 Nicolaus (a proselyte from Antioch) 610n43 Nidbai 13n25 Noah 26, 327n71 Origen 102n123, 134, 235–238, 236n2, 236n5–7, 237n9, 240, 249–251, 249n55, 264, 264n11, 265, 271, 280, 281, 362n63, 408, 408n60, 473n53, 509, 518n80, 631n46, 634, 634n58, 657 Paul (Saul) 22–27, 33, 36, 38, 47, 53n55–n57, 57n76, 60, 60n90, 67–69, 71, 71n13, 72, 75, 86, 92–95, 96n108, 97, 98n112, 98n114, 99–101, 103, 103n131, 104, 107n1, 108, 111n22, 123n79, 131–135, 137, 138n159, 153n44, 160n71, 173n129, 181–185, 193, 193n27, 208n86, 214–218, 223n2, 225, 232, 264, 284n22, 286, 287, 289, 289n48, 290n51, 293–296, 298n5, 313, 317–497, 502, 502n2, 502n3, 504n13, 505, 505n19–n20, 509, 520, 523n110, 525, 542, 545n63, 546–555, 566–571, 567n36, 568n38– n39, 571n42, 575, 575n62, 577–579,
Ancient Names
581, 581n1–n2, 583–589, 584n18–21, 585n22, 585n24, 586n26–30, 588n38, 588n39, 589n41–44, 591–601, 591n51, 592n55–n56, 593n57, 593n59, 594n63, 594n65, 599n82, 600n87, 601n92, 603n5, 606n19, 607, 608, 610–612, 616n69, 619, 619n80, 621, 631n46, 645, 646, 646n117, 648n128, 654, 656, 660n188 Peter (Cephas, Simon –) 103, 103n131, 134, 168n105, 180n152, 212–214, 268, 285n25, 286, 287, 352, 371, 371n105, 375, 396, 397, 404, 407–410, 409n66, 424, 462, 466–468, 482, 483, 491, 502n2, 518n82, 524n113, 554, 567–570, 574n57, 577n73, 584n18, 609, 631n46, 635n65 Philip 287, 302, 610 Philip ‘from Bethsaida’ 180n149 Philo 23, 45, 45n20, 50, 51, 53, 55, 55n64, 58n81, 59, 61, 63, 63n105, 64, 71, 74, 76, 78n31, 79n39, 80n46, 82, 82n55, 83, 83n56, 83n57, 87, 88, 88n73, 111–114, 114n39, 123n79, 136, 144, 150n29, 150n31, 153n46, 158, 159, 159n63, 159n65, 159n66, 160n68, 161, 175, 181n158a, 188, 193, 202, 204, 205, 207, 211, 212, 223n3, 224, 280, 321, 321n25, 321n27, 321n29, 327n71, 335, 336, 340n145, 341–344, 341n154, 343n171, 343n172, 358n43, 365n77, 380n142, 413, 433, 433n102, 433n103, 434, 434n105, 436, 438, 440, 470, 470n46, 540n34, 595, 599n83, 610n45, 613, 613n59 Phoebe 450 Phineas 474 Photius 536, 538, 541, 541n39, 542, 555n106 Pinhas ben Yair, R. 169n109, 490n122, 493 Pius XI, Pope 185 Plato 321n29 Pliny the Elder 436, 436n117, 626n21 Pliny the Younger 625, 627n23, 628–631, 628n33, 629n34–36, 630n38, 630n40, 630n41, 631n42, 631n44, 631n45, 634, 641, 656, 657
793
Plutarch 150n29, 223n3, 337n130, 339, 339n139, 339n141, 341, 589 Polycarp 497, 618 Pompey 52, 359, 577n71 Pontius Pilate 176, 178, 214, 219, 294, 295, 302, 408, 547, 574n58, 610, 627, 627n24, 641 Prisca/Priscilla 373n116, 450, 450n166, 450n168 Ptolemies 150, 156, 197, 198, 198n47, 201, 202, 204–206, 211, 211n102 Ptolemy I 202n70, 204 Ptolemy II 41n1 Ptolemy (historian) 576, 576n67 Pythagoras 337, 398 Quadratus 216, 252n65 Quintilian 543, 550 Quirinius 216, 553, 553n95, 564, 564n22, 564n25, 565, 574 Raba bar bar Hana 11n18 Rabbenu Asher 34n43, 38n59 Rabin 29, 30, 35, 36 Rachel 252n67 Rashi 30n26, 32n34, 38n59, 121n74, 124n87, 306n33 Rav 31, 32, 37 Rava 29n19, 34, 35, 171n118 Rav Hiya son of Rav Huna 29, 29n20 Rav Menasia 32 Rav Pappa 34, 35 Rebecca 661 Resh Lakish 30 Rufus 510 Saddok (a Pharisee) 565 Salome (Herodian princess) 165n89 Salome (disciple of Jesus) 432n98 Samuel 591 Samuel son of Yedaya, the Archon 153 Samuel son of Eiddeos 153 Sarah 333n108 Sassanid dynasty/empire 196 Saul 136 Seleucids (dynasty, era of) 47n*, 199, 201, 205 Seneca 330n84
794
Index of Names
Shemaya 124n83, 588 Shammai (see also subject index) 11–13, 12n23, 13n25, 17, 17n40, 17n42, 18, 18n44, 20, 20n53, 20n54, 25, 38, 42, 53–56, 53n56, 69, 70, 73–75, 78n34, 81n50, 82n52, 83n57, 83n59, 85–92, 88n74, 89n79, 89n80, 91n89, 98n115, 99–105, 104n134, 110, 124n83, 125, 127, 138, 138n160, 164n86, 270, 284, 284n21, 287, 289, 289n46, 289n50, 290, 292, 319, 377, 377n130, 377n131, 378, 388, 389, 393, 425–427, 427n67, 428n73, 449, 520, 529, 530, 614n60, 616, 616n69, 616n73, 617 Shem 320 Shemaia 205 Sherira (ben Hanina Gaon), Rav 39, 39n65, 92n92, 529, 529n132, 582, 582n7 Shilo, R. 244 Shimi bar Ashi 35 Shimon, R. 10, 16n36 Shimon ben Elazar 126n94, 168, 169, 175, 177, 239n21, 258n23 S(h)imon ben Gamaliel the Elder 33, 33n38, 34, 40, 47n29, 363n65, 365, 365n80, 536, 539, 555, 583, 583n13, 586, 606n21, 614 S(h)imon ben Gamaliel the Younger 320n17, 531n139, 649n135 Shimon ben Menasya, R. 303–305, 304n23, 307n37, 309, 495–497, 497n146 Shimon b. Nataneel, R. 273n57, 527n121 Shimon ben Shetah 77n28 Shimon ben Yohai, R. 12, 13, 14n27, 25n13, 170, 493 Shimon ben Pazzi, R. 425n57 Shimon ha-Pekoli 273, 275, 528 Shimon the Righteous 163, 171 Shimon son of Hillel 614n60 Shimshon from Sens, R. 256n14 Shimshon me-Shantz, R. 229n40 Shmuel, R. 31, 32, 35, 37, 37n52, 494n138 Shmuel bar Nahman, R. 68n2 Shmuel the Smaller 275, 275n62 Shunamit 492
Silas 324, 324n48 Silvanus 323 Simeon 549 Simon Maccabee 199–201 Simon, the high priest 151, 199 Simon (son of Judas) 564n23, 565, 572 Simon the Zealot 575n62 Solomon 236 Sosipater/So(si)patros 373n116, 472 Stephanas/Stephen 464, 479, 490, 575n62, 599, 610 Suetonius 626n21, 627, 641 Synesius of Cyrene 436n117 Tabitha/Dorcas 450n168 Tacitus 64n110, 559, 561, 571, 571n41, 572n50, 625–628, 626n18–22, 627n23, 627n24, 627n27, 628n29, 628n30, 628n32, 628n33, 630n39, 630n41, 631, 641, 656 Tarfon, R. 55n67, 338n133, 345, 345n180, 653, 654, 654n165 Tertullian 101, 280n4, 447n154, 552n93, 629n34, 631n45, 631n46 Theodoret 362n63 Theodotus son of Vettenus 114, 114n45, 319n15 Theophilus 547, 551 Theudas 572–574, 615 Thucydides 202, 534, 535, 535n7, 559– 564, 560n5, 560n8, 561n9, 561n12, 562n14, 562n115, 564n21, 571, 578, 604n9 Tiberius 553, 571n41, 627 Tiberius Alexander 216, 564n23, 565, 572 Timothy 323, 324, 324n48, 324n49, 472 Titus (Emperor) 466, 469, 472, 479, 542n43, 543, 543n48, 544, 571 Titus (Paul’s companion) 568, 569 Trajan 261, 322, 414n11, 511n45, 513, 529, 536, 538, 541, 626, 628–631, 629n34, 630n39, 631n45, 641 Trypho 112, 661n193 Vespasian 114n40, 477, 543, 544, 545n58, 562
Ancient Names
Xenophon 191, 321n29 Xerxes 191n20, 203, 339, 560 Xiphilinus 510n42 Yaakov from Kfar Sama 633, 634 Yaakov from Kfar Sakhnin/Sakhnaya 633, 633n55, 634, 634n60, 656 Yakov bar Aha, R. 129 Yannai, R. 34, 35 Yashia, R. 239n21, 258n23 Yedoniah 145, 191 Yehuda (biblical) 170 Yehuda (Yuda), R. 10, 18n45, 33, 86, 87, 115n48, 118, 126–128, 163, 163n81, 166, 167n98, 272, 273, 345n178, 365n77, 389, 389n26, 601n92, 647 Yehuda bar Nahmani, R. 30 Yehuda bar Pazzi 36n45 Yehuda ben Bateira 33, 34, 36n47, 126, 129, 136 Yehuda ben Elai 136 Yehuda ben Teima 439n131 Yehuda ha-Nasi, R. 10, 164n86, 170, 528n127, 616, 632n48 Yehuda Nesia, R. 14n27, 38n61, 164n86, 206n79, 616 Yehuda the Ammonite 211n100, 428, 449 Yehuda the Prince, R. 31, 32, 34, 169n109, 272, 273n56, 492, 495, 649 Yehudia 170 Yeshaya de-Trani, R. 32n34, 38n59 Yeshu (ben Pandera, ha-Notsri) 633, 634, 635n63 Yirmeya, Rav 30 Yishmael, R. 14n27, 49, 303, 304, 304n24, 305n30, 307, 307n37, 491, 589n44, 633, 633n55, 634, 634n59, 638, 653–655, 654n165 Yishmael son of R. Elazar b. Azaryah, R. 303 Yishmael son of R. Levitas, R. 363n65 Yitshak bar Yaakov bar Giori, R. 29n21 Rabbi be-R. Yitshak 494 Yohanan ben Bag-Bag 33, 34, 39 Yohanan ben Matya 432n94
795
Yohanan (ben Nappaha), R. 29, 29n20, 29n21, 30, 30n23, 31, 36n48, 37, 38n61, 87, 88n72, 88n76, 171n120, 249n60, 511n48 Yohanan b. Nuri, R. 89 Yohanan ben Zakkai, R. 9n6, 15n35, 23, 33, 33n38, 50n39, 125n90, 133n135, 148, 236n7, 245, 246n47, 260n25, 272n51, 285, 290, 291, 406, 406n56, 504, 528, 529, 529n133, 538, 555–557, 556n107, 556n112, 582, 583, 583n10, 583n13, 587, 587n35, 605, 614 Yohanan from Sepphoris, R. 68n2 Yohanan ha-Sandlar (‘the Alexandrian’), R. 127n100, 616n74 Yonatan ben Yosef, R. 304n23, 307n37 Yonatan, king 201n65 Yose, R. 10, 16n37, 19n52, 34n42, 305, 305n31, 306, 345n178, 517n77, 527n117, 592, 650n140 Yose b. Meshullam, R. 495 Yose ben Yehuda, R. 170, 307n37 Yose ha-Gelili 303, 304, 654n165 Yose(f) ben Yohanan 113, 125 Yose be-R. Hanina, R. 29n20, 29n21 Yosef bar Hama, Rav 35 Yosef, Rav 30 Yosef (Yosi) ben Yoezer 113, 125 Yoshua, R. 10–13, 14n27, 14n31, 15–20, 15n35, 16n37, 17n39–43, 18n44, 19n51, 19n52, 23, 33n38, 118, 125, 127, 148n22, 170n116, 211n100, 239, 270–273, 273n58, 275, 320n19, 377, 406, 427, 428, 428n73, 449, 452, 492, 527, 527n117, 528n128, 529, 583n13, 596n73, 598n75, 616n69, 652n150, 660 Yoshua ben Levi, R. 30, 118n60, 129, 365, 365n77, 431n90 Yoshua ben Hananya, R. 616 Yuda ben Pazi, R. 68n2 Zacchaeus 230n51, 432n94 Zadok the Pharisee 606n18 Zenon 150
796
Index of Names
Modern Names Abusch, R. 448n160 Abusch, T. 5, 5n17, 5n18 Achtemeier, P. J. 302n16 Adesina, A. A. 459n6, 460n10 Adler, W. 486n96 Adler, Y. 108n2, 108n4, 115n47–49, 117n58, 123n80, 124n83, 133n133, 136n151, 137n154 Agourides, S. 468n38 Aland, B. 532n141 Aland, K. 96n108, 227, 248n53, 358, 532n141 Albeck, C. 9n7, 10n11, 11n16, 17n39, 19n48, 46n25, 77n28, 88n77, 113n38, 116n52, 119n61, 119n62, 119n64, 126n96, 128n106, 156n53, 167n97, 168n100, 206n79, 320n17, 431n89, 632n48, 653n156, 653n159 Aletti, J. N. 612n53 Alexander, L. C. A. 398, 398n22, 400n33, 547n68, 547n71 Alexander, P. S. 8n2, 34n41, 37, 37n51, 152n36, 486n98, 506n24 Allison, D. C. 242n31, 243n33, 246n45, 246n47, 246n49, 254, 254n5, 255n10, 280n4, 282, 282n14, 283, 287n38, 291n56, 292n64, 293n72, 295n80, 295n85, 401, 401n37, 405, 514n62, 515n67 Allo, E.-B. 414n13 Alon, G. 9n5, 17n39, 55, 55n64, 56n71, 88n77, 91n88, 107, 109, 109n8, 110, 110n12, 110n13, 112n29, 113n33, 119n62, 120, 120n68, 121, 121n71, 123, 125n89, 127n104, 149n24, 176n134, 268n33, 271n50, 272n52, 272n53, 275n63, 290, 290n53, 290n54, 319n13, 320, 320n19, 320n22, 321n27, 378n136, 503, 503n9–12, 504, 509, 509n34, 509n37, 521n100, 522, 522n102, 524n111, 527n117, 528n124, 529n132, 531, 531n137, 531n139, 535, 535n10, 536, 536n11, 555, 556n107, 556n110, 556n112, 557n113, 598n78, 605n15, 606n21, 610n45, 619n79, 621n1,
647n120, 647n122, 650n141, 652n152, 660 Alston, R. 552n94 Amador, J. D. H. 460n12 Amir, Y. 156n53, 159n66, 321n25 Amram, D. W. 71, 98n115 Anderson, P. A. 547n69 Anderson, P. N. 623n7, 624n11 Appelbaum, A. 556n112 Applebaum, S. 146n17, 198n47 Arazy, A. 143, 143n7, 147n19, 160n71 Ariel, D. T. 542n40 Aring, P. G. 281n9 Asaf, S. 166n91, 166n92 Aschkenasy, Y. vii Ascough, R. S. 645n108, 648n124 Ash, R. 626n18, 626n19 Ashkenazi, Y. 141 Ashton, J. 179n146, 179n148, 635n66 Asiedu-Peprah, M. 298n1 Attridge, H. W. 43n15, 54n63, 63n106, 155n52, 156n54, 198n48, 534, 536n12, 565n29 Audet, J.-P. 261n1, 521n100, 523n107 Aune, D. E. 349n9, 398, 398n23, 399n29, 400n32, 401n35, 405n50, 408n61, 581n2 Avemarie, F. 133n133, 351, 351n20, 364n71, 367n90, 368n91, 370n101, 375n124, 586n30 Avigad, N. 152n39, 492n129 Avotia, S. K. 332n100 Azaria de Rossi 24n10 Baarda, T. 181n153 Bacher, W. 4n10, 4n12, 5n14, 439n130, 531n137, 535n10, 587n35, 589n42, 590n46 Bachmann, M. 347n1, 349n9, 352n23, 352n27, 367n90 Back, S.-O. 100n119, 298n5, 301n14 Backhaus, K. 343n172 Badian, E. 562n14, 564n21 Baeck, L. 502n3 Bakirtzis, C. 322n36 Baltensweiler, H. 102n125, 102n127
Modern Names
Bammel, E. 80n46, 260n25, 573n56, 645n110 Barclay, J. M. G. 42n6, 42n9, 57n74, 57n77, 57n79, 59n86, 59n88, 60n92, 61n95, 63n104, 63n106, 63n107, 64n110, 64n112, 65n117, 208, 208n86, 215, 215n113, 217, 217n121, 317n1, 318, 318n5, 319n11, 321n26, 323n42, 324n50, 326n56, 329, 331n88, 338n136, 379n139, 380, 380n142, 444n139, 450n171, 451n173, 627n26, 658, 658n179–181 Barnett, P. W. 571n41 Baron, S. 236 Barr, J. 264n6, 264n8, 320n20 Barrett, C. K. 180n150, 331n90, 414n14, 462n20 Barth, K. 348, 348n5, 349, 372n114 Barthélemy, D. 449n161 Basser, H. W. 367n90 Bassler, J. M. 333n107 Bauckham, R. A. 364n70, 364n73, 365n82, 437n120, 449n163, 484n86, 485n92, 486n95, 487n101, 490n123, 589n41, 635n67, 635n68 Bauer, W. 298n5, 299n6, 311n53, 508n33 Baum. G. viii n2 Baumbach, G. 54n60, 539n29, 583n15 Baumert, N. 331n96 Baumgarten, A. I. 549n81, 611n46 Baumgarten, J. M. 3n5, 3n6, 24n10, 45n23, 45n24, 46n26, 46n28, 49n38, 84n64, 93n98, 96n108, 110n18, 436n117, 437n120, 437n121, 437n123, 438n127, 439n129, 440n132, 586, 586n32, 598n76, 647n122 Baumgartner, W. 5n16, 318n8 Baur, F. C. 350, 350n14, 372n115, 380, 381n146, 395, 395n10, 396, 396n11, 401, 454n184, 462, 462n21, 482, 502, 502n2, 579n78 Bea (cardinal) 185n165 Beard, M. 657n176 Beauvery, R. 335n116, 335n118, 336, 336n120 Becker, A. H. 622, 622n3, 624 Becker, H. J. 517n79
797
Beckheuer, B. 459n6, 460n11, 464n27, 465n32, 468n39, 469n41 Beckwith, R. T. 45n23, 46n26, 46n28, 47n29 Beker, J. C. 444n141 Belkin, S. 44, 44n16, 45, 45n20, 45n22, 52, 55n64, 56n72, 57n73–75, 57n77–79, 58n82, 59n86–88, 60, 60n90, 60n92–94, 61n95, 61n97–99, 62, 62n100, 62n101, 62n103, 64n112, 83n57, 112n25 Bell, R. H. 357n38, 370, 370n99 Ben-Shalom, I. 104n134, 289n46, 578n76 Berger, K. 76n24, 77n27, 84n62, 96n107, 459n6, 474n56, 481n80 Berger, P. L. 417, 417n25 Bergren, T. A. 521n99 Bernier, J. 623, 624n11, 637n74 Berquist, J. L. 190n17, 192n23 Berthelot, K. 57n79 , 64n112 Betylon, J. W. 192n22, 201n67 Betz, H. D. 267n29, 328n76, 371n105, 396, 396n14–16, 397, 397n19, 411n1, 412, 414n14, 415, 415n16, 445n148, 445n150, 446n151, 446n152, 457n1, 459, 459n6, 460n8, 460n12, 464n31, 466n34, 467n36, 468n39, 516n73, 566n33a, 567, 567n34–36, 568, 568n37–39, 575n65, 577n72, 579n77, 588n38 Bickerman, E. J. 199, 199n51–54, 393n1, 398, 398n21, 628n28, 631n45 Bieringer, R. xiv, 67n*, 218, 218n127, 218n128, 411n*, 411n1, 453n179, 453n181, 454, 454n185, 454n186, 458n4, 460n12, 461n13, 461n17, 462n20, 549n78, 559n1, 585n23 Bilde, P. 539n29 Billerbeck, P. 116n53, 199n52, 243n35, 244n37, 246n47, 255n13, 256n14, 265n13, 265n17, 298n5, 333, 333n104, 336, 336n122, 345n177, 360n57, 388, 388n22, 389n26, 425n57, 515n65, 517n77, 518n80, 588n38, 617n75, 642, 642n99, 643, 643n100, 649n131, 652 Binder, D. D. 517n79 Black, M. 230n52
798
Index of Names
Blanton, T. R. 454n185 Blass, F. 551, 551n86 Blau, L. 68–70, 70n10, 77n27, 78, 78n34, 79n39, 80n43, 80n44, 80n46, 81n50, 82n52, 83n56, 83n59, 84n62, 88n75, 88n77, 90n81, 91, 91n85, 95n103, 97n109, 97n111, 98n114, 98n115 Blickenstaff, M. 244n36, 245n42, 246n46, 247n51 Bloch, R. 142, 142n3, 142n5, 176n135, 179n147, 181n157 Blowers, P. 236, 236n7 Boccaccini, G. 417n24, 422n48, 437n120, 486n97 Bockmuehl, M. N. A. vii, xiv, 53n57, 73, 74, 88n75, 102n128, 182n161, 215n114, 216, 216n115, 216n116, 235n1, 280n3, 295n82, 325n51, 335n113, 357n39, 377n128, 449n161, 450n172, 584n18 Boeckh, A. W. 21n1, 22n3 Boer de, M. C. 635n65, 635n66 Boers, H. 370, 370n103 Bogaart, N. 141n2 Bolkestein, H. 338n132, 341n154, 346n183 Bonsirven, J. 71, 71n13, 72n17, 99n118, 102n125 Booth, R. P. 11n12, 17n39, 100n119, 125n89, 133n134 Borgen, P. 159n66, 301n14, 303n20, 321n25 Bormann, L. 193n30 Bornhäuser, K. 179n148 Bornkamm, G. 411n1 Botermann, H. 381n148, 628n28, 628n32, 631n47 Botte, B. 132n127 Bousset, W. 322n33, 348n7, 396, 396n12, 502 Bovon, F. 612n53 Bowe, B. 21n* Bowen, C. R. 459n6 Bowker, J. W. 16n38, 582n3 Boyarin, D. 240n28, 632n50, 634n56, 634n58 Bradley, D. G. 329n77 Brandon, S. G. F. 573n56
Braund, D. 542n43, 543n46, 544n53, 544n55, 544n57, 545n59 Brawley, R. L. 548n73, 607n23, 609n36 Brésard, L. 236n6, 249n55 Breuer, Y. 529n132 Breytenbach, C. 325n55 Briant, P. 190n17, 191n18, 191n19, 192n22, 254n4, 318n6, 318n7 Brighton, M. A. 565n30 Brin, G., 74, 75, 79n37, 79n40, 84n60, 87n71 Brocke vom, C. 322n36, 324n44 Brodribb, W. 626n22 Brooke, G. J. 415n17, 415n18, 442n136, 447n154, 452n178, 589n41 Brookins, T. 468n38 Brooten, B. J. 429n80, 450n169 Brown, P. R. L. 458n3, 592n56 Brown, R. E. 179n147, 182n161, 218n126, 220, 220n133, 234n39, 248n53, 276n68, 294n77, 302n16, 308n40, 308n41, 310n48, 372n111, 432n95, 476n63, 514n64, 532n141, 552n93, 567n35, 584n18, 623, 623n8, 624n11, 624n12, 635n65, 635n66, 635n68, 636n69, 636n71, 637n75, 639, 639n84, 639n86, 639n87, 640n90, 641n91 Brownlee, W. H. 229n39 Bruce, F. F. 468n39, 480n78 Bryant, S. 626n22 Bucer, M. 102n123 Büchler, A. 57n73, 109, 110n12, 121 Buck, C. H. 459n6 Bultmann, R. 96, 179n147, 179n148, 223, 223n2, 255, 303n21, 310n49, 322n33, 323n41, 348n7, 349, 350, 350n16, 350n17, 353n33, 360, 360n55, 374n123, 384, 395, 395n9, 396, 396n12, 401, 411n1, 412, 412n3, 503, 503n5, 503n6, 504, 518n81, 520n95 Burchard, C. 204n76, 354n34, 363n64, 364n74, 365n82, 366n84, 367n89 Burgers, W. J. xiv, 143n8 Burkert, W. 192n22, 408n60 Busch, K. 348n5 Buttrick, G. A. 612n52
Modern Names
Cadbury, H. J. 286n28, 286n30, 324n44, 533n2, 542n41, 547, 547n69–71, 548, 548n74, 548n75, 550n85, 551, 551n86, 551n88, 552n92, 584n20 Callatay, F. de 254n4 Calvin, J. 102n123, 351, 351n18 Cambe, M. 237n11, 244n40, 249n54, 250n62 Cancik, H. 546n67 Caragounis, C. C. 468n38, 557n115 Cardellino, L. 98n115 Carleton Paget, J. 509n34, 509n35, 509n40, 513n57 Carras, G. P. 321n29, 327n69, 327n71, 330n87 Carroll, J. T. 607n24 Carroll, K. 642, 642n98, 643n100, 643n102 Casey, M. 193, 193n30, 320, 320n22, 348n6 Cassuto, U. 149n25 Castelli, S. 41n2 Charlesworth, J. H. 218n128, 285n24, 435n112, 449n161 Chavasse, A. 458n3 Chazon, E. G. 586n28 Chilton, B. D. 110n14 Church, A. J. 626n22 Clark, E. A. 236n6, 236n7 Clements, R. A. 586n28 Cohen, N. 270n40, 275n62 Cohen, S. J. D. ix n6, 42n6, 63n106, 146n13, 195n33, 198n46, 207, 207n81, 207n82, 210, 216n120, 272n53, 276n67, 301n13, 324n49, 505n17, 515n68, 528n125, 529n130, 530n134, 532n140, 534, 536–538, 536n13, 536n15–17, 557n114, 575n66, 576n67, 577n73a, 582, 582n3–6, 583, 583n9, 583n10, 585, 600, 601n91, 621n1, 622, 622n4, 632n50, 634n60, 638n80, 646n117 Cohen, Y. 12n22, 169n108 Colish, M. L. 446n151 Collino, L. 317n* Collins, J. J. 4n8, 109n8, 157n55, 204n75, 319n11, 406n54, 417n27, 426n65, 485n92
799
Collins, R. F. 68n4, 70n7, 73, 74n20, 98n115, 102n129, 325n54, 326n57, 327, 327n64, 327n69–71, 329n77, 330, 330n82, 330n85, 330n87, 331, 331n92, 331n93, 331n96, 332n97, 332n99, 333n107, 335n118, 336n119, 336n125 Colpe, C. 122n77 Colson, F. H. 58n83, 82n53, 113n31, 159n63 Congar, Y. 92n93 Conybeare, F. C. 281n7 Conzelmann, H. 350n17, 394, 394n7, 400, 447n154, 478n72 Corneille, P. 543n47 Costa, J. 581n1 Cotton, H. M. 152n36, 197n41, 556n110 Cowey, J. M. S. 197n43, 197n44 Cowley, A. 80n44 Cranfield, C. E. B. 353n31, 353n32, 355, 357n38, 372n112, 383, 383n1, 384n2, 385n11, 385n13, 388n24 Crawford, S. W. 438n127, 438n128 Crossley, J. 209n95 Crouzel, H. 236n6, 249n55 Cullmann, O. 394n4, 399n30, 409n66 Culpepper, R. A. 218, 218n128, 623n7, 624n12, 640n88 Curran, J. 542n43, 555n106 Dalman, G. 156n53, 170n111 Dambrowa, E. 564n22 Danby, H. 193n26 Darr, J. A. 603, 603n4 Daube, D. 72, 72n15, 77n27, 92, 92n96, 93n97, 96n108, 167n97, 343n168, 588n38, 590n47 David, H. 633n53 Davids, P. H. 364n70 Davies, G. N. 370n104 Davies, M. 68n4 Davies, P. R. 3n5, 417n27 Davies, W. D. 23, 183n162, 242n31, 243n33, 246n45, 246n47, 246n49, 254, 254n5, 255n10, 280n4, 282, 282n14, 283, 287n38, 290n53, 291n56, 292n64, 293n72, 295n80, 295n85, 318n6, 514n62, 515n67, 623n9, 642, 642n98, 643n102
800
Index of Names
Debrunner, A. 551n86 Decharneux, B. 297* Defradas, J. 339n142 Deines, R. 54n60, 55n70, 110n15, 110n18, 115n46, 581n1, 599n84 Deissmann, A. 224n12, 343n170, 464n27 Delitzsch, F. 361n59 Denaux, A. 608n31 Depoortere, K. 334n112 De Rossi, A. 164n87 Derrett, D. 381n150 Derrett, J. D. M. 102n126 Di Segni, L. 564n22 Dibelius, M. 331n94, 332n97, 332n102, 333n103, 333n104, 354n34, 362n60, 363n64, 363n65, 364n74, 365n77, 451n174, 503, 503n5, 503n6 Dimant, D. 182n161, 418n31, 436n118, 437n119 Dinur, B. 502n1 Dirkzwager, A. 332n101 Dodd, C. H. 244n39, 245, 245n42, 247, 248n53, 302n16, 468n38 Doering, L. 4n9, 21n*, 43n14, 46n27, 48, 48n33, 48n34, 49n37, 49n38, 50, 50n44, 51, 51n48–51, 52n53, 53n55, 55n64, 58n81, 188n6, 279n1, 298n1, 298n5, 300n11, 302n15, 304n26, 306n33, 308n41, 310n47, 519n87, 583n13 Donfried, K. P. 255n12, 323n41, 371n108, 381n149, 449n161 Douglas, M. 121n71 Downs, D. J. 459n6, 467n37, 469n41, 470n46, 476n64, 477n68, 479n75 Draper, J. A. 261n1, 521n100 Driver, G. R. 5n16 Droysen, J. G. 318n3 Dulk den, M. xiv, 581n1 Dumortier, J. 339n142 Dunn, J. D. G. 103n131, 109n111, 192n25, 193, 193n27, 289n43, 350n17, 351n20, 351n22, 352, 352n23, 352n25– 27, 353, 353n28, 353n29, 354n35, 357n38, 358n40, 361n58, 369n94, 370, 370n101, 371n106, 372n115, 373, 373n117, 376, 378, 385n11, 395, 395n9, 409n66, 462, 462n22, 585n22, 621, 621n1, 622n2
Dupertuis, R. R. 533n1 Dupont, J. 70n7, 71, 72n17, 73, 97n109, 99n118, 102n124, 102n128 Earnshaw, J. D. 383n1, 384n2 , 385n15, 390n32 Eck, W. xiv, 44n17, 511n51, 534n6, 543n48, 556, 556n110, 563n19, 564n26, 627n24, 660n189 Eck van, E. 253n2, 254n4 Eckert, W. P. viii n1 Eckstein, H.-J. 350n12 Eeuwijk van, P. 141n2 Ehrlich, U. 651, 651n142, 651n143 Ehrman, B. D. 512n53 Eire, C. M. N. 347n2 Eisenman, R. 229n39 Eisenstein 367n90 Elbogen, I. 268, 268n33, 269, 269n34, 269n35, 275, 275n63, 528n124, 642, 642n97, 642n98, 652, 652n151 Elgvin,T. 258n22, 332n100 Eliav, Y. Z. 510n42 Elliott, M. W. 236n6 Ellis, E. E. 447n157 Elon, M. 6n21 Engberg-Pedersen, T. 328, 328n74, 328n76, 337n130, 460n10 Enns, P. E. 595n68 Epstein, J. N. 4n11, 8n2, 9n7, 11n12, 17n40, 19n50–52, 28, 28n18, 30n25, 30n27, 31n29, 31n31, 35n44, 49n36, 52n54, 53n55, 80n46, 85n65, 116n52, 117n56, 317n2, 377n132, 389n26, 398, 399, 399n24, 632, 632n48, 654n162 Erasmus 102n123 Erets, D. 8n2 Eshel, H. 511n45, 511n51 Esler, P. F. 209n93 Evans, C. A. 288n41, 547n69, 624n11, 639n86, 639n87 Fallon, F. 204n75 Feldman, L. H. 42n9, 44, 44n17, 45, 45n21, 50n45, 54, 54n61–63, 382n151, 534, 572n49, 606n18, 626n21 Felix M. M. 297n* Feuillet, M. A. 237n11, 241n30, 250n62
Modern Names
Finkelstein, L. 91n86, 318n6, 388n23 Fisch. S. 632n49, 634n57 Fitzmyer, J. A. 5n19, 70n7, 72n17, 73n18, 74, 84n61, 84n63, 84n64, 95n104, 95n105, 98n113, 99n116, 102n129, 105n138, 113n38, 213n108, 217n123, 248n53, 257n19, 262n3, 263, 263n4, 264n6, 264n8, 286n32, 293n66, 348n3, 348n4, 352n27, 355, 356, 367n90, 372n113, 373n118, 381n148, 381n149, 382n152, 384, 384n3–6, 384n8, 385, 385n11–15, 387n17, 388, 388n22, 388n24, 389n28, 389n30, 390n34, 395n9, 403n45–47, 404n49, 408n61, 413n7, 414, 414n12, 414n13, 415, 415n15, 432n95, 447n154–157, 448n160, 449n161, 449n163, 450n167, 461n15, 473n54, 476n65, 477n66, 479n75, 517n78, 518n83, 542n41, 547n69, 547n71, 548n76, 548n77, 551n87, 552n91, 553n95, 564n22, 572n49, 584n19, 584n21, 586n28, 589n42, 589n44, 596n72, 600, 600n87, 645n110, 659n186 Fleischer, E. 269, 269n36, 269n38, 273n56, 524n114, 527n121, 528n125, 528n127 Flint, P. W. 238n12 Flusser, D. vii, xii, 6n20, 23, 26n17, 42n5, 132n130, 143n8, 146n13, 158n58, 169n109a, 177n139, 182n159, 189n9, 197n41, 223, 223n*, 223n1, 223n2, 226, 226n24, 226n25, 227, 228n35, 229n43, 229n44, 232n56, 233n61, 246n**, 253n2, 254, 254n7–9, 255n10, 256, 256n15, 256n16, 257n17, 258, 261n1, 282, 282n12, 282n13, 283, 285n24, 292n58, 293n70, 294n74, 294n78, 340n152, 345n176, 345n180, 357n39, 363, 364n67, 416n20, 417n26, 419n38, 421n43, 421n46, 422, 422n48, 422n54, 423, 425, 425n57–59, 427n70, 427n71, 436n113, 442n137, 444n142, 487n103, 503n12, 504, 504n13, 507n26, 516n73, 519n87, 521n96, 521n99, 521n100, 523n110, 524n111, 525n115, 527n117, 551n86, 600, 600n87, 611n48, 619n79, 644n106, 652n150
801
Foakes-Jackson, F. J. 610n42 Foerster, G. 114n44 Fontanille, J.-P. 542n40 Forkman, G. 643, 643n102, 644n104, 644n107 Fortes, R. 297n* Fortna, R. T. 178n141, 302n16, 308n41, 310n49, 635n66 Frankel, Z. 3n1 Fredriksen, P. 505n20, 586n26, 622, 622n2, 657n174 Freudenberger, R. 628n28, 628n33, 629n34, 629n35, 630n41, 631n42, 631n43, 631n45, 631n47, 633n53, 634, 635n61, 657n176 Frey, J.-B. 153n44, 319n15, 321n23, 417n24, 417n27, 660n188 Friedman, M. A. 74, 77n26, 78n31, 78n33, 80n46, 83n57, 166n92, 197n41, 367n90 Friedman, S. 632n48 Friedrich, G. 223n3, 224n7, 224n9, 224n12, 224n13 Friend, T. 658n178 Friesen, S. J. 322n36 Frye, R. N. 5n16, 318n9, 318n10, 321n24 Fuchs, M. Z. 269n38 Funck, B. 192n22 Funk, X. 346n184 Furnish, V. 413n5, 413n9 Gafni, I. 173n133 Gaisford, T. 634n58 Gaon, S. 651 García Martínez, F. 227n28, 417n28, 437n122, 442n137, 449n161 Garlington, D. B. 354n35, 370n104 Garroway, J. D. 570n40 Gaston, L. 371n106, 377n133, 607n24 Gelderen van, M. 347n2 Georgi, D. 454n184, 459n6, 460n11, 461, 462, 462n18–21, 463n25, 465n32, 467n36, 467n37, 469n41, 470n46, 470n47, 475n59, 476n62, 478n71, 484n86 Gerber, C. 41n1, 42, 42n9, 54n60, 54n63, 62n103, 63, 63n104–106, 63n108
802
Index of Names
Gerhardsson, B. 103n131, 284n22, 303n21, 330n87, 396n12, 398n21, 399, 399n27–30, 401, 402, 402n39, 402n41, 408n61, 409, 409n64, 504n14, 505n17 Gertner, M. 596n74 Gibson, J. J. 574n57, 577n73 Gilat, Y. D. 12n22 Ginouvès, R. 111, 111n21, 126n96, 137 Ginzberg, L. 3n1, 3n6, 36n48, 127n105, 128n111 Girod, R. 134n141 Glover, R. 177n138 Gnilka, J. 415, 415n17, 421n43, 422n49 Goethe 365n77 Goguel, M. 459n6, 460n8, 476n64, 477n66 Goldberg, A. 10n10, 11n14, 12n20, 12n21, 14n27, 20n53, 92n92, 104n134, 116n52, 117n59, 127n102, 164n86, 270n45, 272n55, 290n51, 306n34, 377n132, 425n61, 428n74, 428n75, 587n36, 592n54, 600n90, 606n19, 632n48, 648n128, 649n129 Goldenberg, D. 43n15, 540n33, 583n16 Goldin, J. 91n86 Goldsworthy, A. 625n17 Goodblatt, D. 173n133, 187n3, 188n4, 189n9, 193n30, 200, 200n59–64, 201, 201n65, 201n67, 204, 211n100, 536, 537, 537n18 Goodenough, E. R. 62, 64n112 Goodman, M. xiii, 8n2, 216, 216n117, 477n67, 483, 506n24, 511n45, 542n43, 544n53, 552n94, 556n111, 559–561, 559n1, 559n3, 559n4, 560n5, 560n6, 561n9, 563, 564n20, 564n24, 565, 566, 566n31, 573n55, 575n66, 576n68, 578, 578n74–76, 579n78, 606n18, 658n181 Goppelt, L. 646n115 Goranson, S. 4n7 Gowler, D. B. 603, 603n4 Grabbe, L. L. 190n17, 318n4, 318n6–8, 318n10, 322n30, 322n31, 378n134, 606n17 Graetz, H. 12, 12n21, 13, 13n25, 13n26, 162n77, 164n86, 289, 289n49, 289n50, 290n51, 377, 377n129, 377n132, 428n74, 502, 502n2, 530n134, 579n78,
598n78, 606n19, 642, 642n94, 642n95, 642n97, 642n99, 643, 652, 652n153, 654n161 Grant, R. M. 444n139, 451n173, 476n63, 506n23, 625n17, 629n34 Grässer, E. 179n146, 179n147 Green, W. S. 15n34 Greenfield, J. C. 5n19 Greer, R. A. 408n60 Griffiths, G. T. 192n23 Grintz, J. (Y.) M. 24n10, 142, 142n6, 148n21, 149n23, 188n4, 197n41 Gulak, A. 165n89, 197n41 Gundry, R. H. 233n60 Gutbrod, W. 176n135, 193n30, 219, 219n131 Gutman, S. 114n44 Hadas-Lebel, M. xiv, 41n3 Haenchen, E. 227n27, 308n41, 323n41, 607n22, 612n54 Haffner, S. 219, 220n132 Hägerland, T. 218n126, 624n11 Hahn, F. 131n126, 134n145 Hakola, R. 623n10 Halpern-Amaru, B. 586n28 Halton, C. 209n95 Harland, P. A. 645n108, 648n124 Harnack, A. 328n75, 395, 396n11, 465n32, 502n3, 513n60, 619, 619n80 Harrington, D. 542n41 Harrington, H. K. 120, 121, 121n69 Harrison, J. R. 324n50 Harvey, G. 192, 192n25, 193, 193n26, 193n30, 196 Häusser, D. 400n34, 401n35, 408n62, 409n65 Havazelet, M. 39n65 Hayes, C. E. 26n17, 121, 121n71, 287n34 Hays, R. B. 241n30 Hayward, C. T. R. 574n57 Heemstra, M. 408n60, 477n67, 658n181 Hegel, G. W. F. 462 Heinemann, I. 55n64, 58n81, 64n112, 82n55, 83n56, 321, 321n27, 321n28, 358n43, 434, 434n109–111 Heinemann, J. 8n2, 10n9, 268n33, 507n29, 528n124
Modern Names
Heinrici, C. F. G. 460n8 Hekster, O. 542n43, 543n46, 544n53 Hemelsoet, B. vii Hempel, C. 3n5 Hengel, M. viii, 12n21, 13n25, 54n60, 55n70, 110n15, 110n18, 149n24, 162n75, 286n30, 289n43, 289n46, 290n51, 318n4, 322n33, 323n41, 324n43, 354n34, 364n71, 365n82, 367n89, 374n121, 377n128, 428n75, 474n58, 480n77, 534n6, 559, 559n2, 560, 560n8, 563, 564n20, 566n33, 572n47, 572n48, 573n51, 573n56, 574n57, 574n59, 575n66, 577n70, 577n71, 577n73, 581n1, 606n19, 610n43, 612n53, 648n128, 660n187 Henten van, J. W. xiv, 207n83, 359n47 Hentschke, D. 270n43, 652n150 Herford, T. 642, 642n96, 642n98, 643n100, 643n102 Herr, M. D. 42n7, 47n29, 49n38, 52n54, 53n55, 309n45 Hezser, C. 471n49, 505n18, 582n8, 598n78, 599n79–81, 659n184 Higger, M. 254n7 Hirshman, M. 587n34, 588n40 Hock, R. F. 345n180 Hoek van den, A. 408n60 Hofius, O. 103n131, 409n66 Hogan, P. N. 445n148 Hogeterp, A. L. 135n147, 452n178, 453n179, 453n180 Holl, K. 459n6, 464n31, 465, 465n32, 465n33, 473n53, 484n86, 487n105 Hollander den, W. 534, 534n4, 541n36, 542n40, 555n106, 576n68 Hollander, H. 401, 401n38, 402, 402n39 Holtz, T. 327n67, 330n87, 333n107, 335n113, 335n118, 336n120, 337n128 Honigman, S. 198, 198n45, 198n46, 202 Hooker, M. D. 317n* Horbury, W. xiv, 272n54, 276n65, 327, 327n66, 509n34, 509n40, 512n55, 513n57, 542n40, 581n1, 651, 651n146– 148, 652n152, 652n153, 661n193 Horovitz, H. S. 303n22 Horrell, D. G. 628n28, 630n40 Horsley, G. R. 324n44
803
Horsley, R. A. 573n56 Horst van der, P. W. xiv, 143n8, 276n64, 320, 320n22, 378n138, 413n8, 565n28, 651, 651n147, 651n148 Hoskyns, E. C. 348n5 Hudson, R. A. 141n1 Hunzinger, C. H. 643n102, 645n110, 649n132, 649n133, 649n136, 650n140 Hurd, J. C. 26n16 Hurtado, L. W. 348n6, 459n6, 467n36, 468n40, 469n42, 469n43 Hüttenmeister, F. 108n4, 114n45, 115n48 Hvalvik, R.[H.] 509n34 Hyman, A. 126n99, 306n35, 614n60 Ilan, T. 429n81 Ingleson, J. 658n178 Instone-Brewer, D. 75, 78n29, 84n63, 98n115, 102n129 Isaac, B. xiv, 511n45, 511n47, 512n52, 556, 556n110, 660n189 Isaac, J. viii Itter, A. C. 408n60 Jackson, B. S. 69n5, 70n8, 80n46 Jackson, J. 627n23 Jacobs, A. 624n15, 624n16, 657, 657n174, 657n177 Jacobs, L. 5n13, 6n21 Jaffé, D. 302n18 Janssen, L. F. 657n176 Jastrow, M. 320n21 Jaubert, A. 45, 45n23, 45n24, 266n22, 308, 308n40, 328n75, 523n107, 523n110 Jefford, C. N. 261n1 Jeremias, J. 233n61, 246n46, 253n2, 254, 254n3, 254n6, 255, 255n10, 255n13, 256n14, 257n17, 261n1, 264n6, 264n8, 374n123 Jervell, J. 113n38, 323n41, 324n47, 324n49, 464n30, 472n51, 474n56, 478n73, 479n75, 481n80, 607, 607n22, 607n23 Jeselsohn, D. 151n34a Jewett, R. 322n36, 323n40, 397n18, 467n36, 482n82, 577n73 Johns, L. L. 285n24
804
Index of Names
Johnson, L. T. 542n41 Jones, C. P. 542n40 Jones, J. 417n26 Jonge de, M. 421n43 Joosten, J. xiv, 4n12, 5n18, 6n20, 468n38 Joubert, S. 459n6, 470n46 Jowett, B. 560n7 Jülicher, A. 253n2 Kadari, T. xiv, 235n1, 236n7, 238n14, 238n15, 240n26 Kahana, M. 89, 89n79, 90n83, 91n86, 91n89, 92n91, 240n23, 439n131, 587n36, 589n44 Kaiser, C. B. 252n** Kalmin, R. 583n10, 635n63 Kalms, J. U. 41n3 Kampen, J. 84n63, 99n117 Kant, E. 122n78 Karavidopoulos, J. 323n38 Karo, Y. 117n57, 130n119 Käsemann, E. 349, 349n11, 350, 352n24, 384, 393n3, 462, 462n20 Katz, S. T. 633n51, 651n147, 652n154, 654n165 Kazen, T. 17n39, 67, 100n119, 122n77, 125n89, 131n120, 131n121, 131n124, 133n133 Keck, L. E. 547n69 Kee, H. C. 421n43, 422n52 Keener, C. S. 102n126, 102n129 Kelly, J. N. D. 369n98, 408n60, 408n61 Kim, B.-M. 459n6, 463n23 Kim, S. 331n91 Kimelman, R. 236n7, 269n38, 276n64, 634n56, 634n57, 640n88, 641n93, 651, 651n145, 651n147, 651n148, 653n160 King, J. C. 236n6 Kingsbury, D. 607n24 Kingsbury, J. D. 407, 407n59 Kiperwasser, R. 253n2, 258n22 Kirchschläger, W. 98n115 Kirkland, J. R. 407n58 Kister, M. xiv, 4n12, 84n60, 84n64, 97n109, 166n91, 197n41, 332n100, 616n71, 616n74, 618n77 Kittel, G. 142n4, 193n30, 219, 219n131
Klauser, T. 132n130–132 Klausner, J. 635n63 Klawans, J. 14n29, 110n12, 121, 121n70, 121n73, 123n80, 131, 131n123–125, 132, 132n128, 133n133, 136n149, 137, 137n155, 137n156, 138n157, 209n95, 287n34, 533n1, 534n5 Kleinschmidt, F. 102n126 Klink, E. W. 624n11 Kloner, A. 511n50 Kloppenborg, J. S. 323n39, 326n62, 329n77, 337n131, 339n139, 340n150, 342n159, 342n165, 343, 343n170, 343n172, 624, 624n13, 637n72, 638, 638n79, 638n82, 640n88, 644n105, 645n108, 648, 648n124 Knibb, M. A. 422n54, 423n55 Knohl, I. 592n54 Koch, D.-A. 478n72, 592n55 Koehler, L. 5n16, 318n8 Koester (Köster), H. 223n3, 224n12, 233n60, 326n61, 326n62, 327n63, 327n67, 333n107, 337n131, 522n101, 523n105 Koester, C. R. 640n88 Koet, B. J. 393n1, 554n103, 572n43, 612n53, 615n65 Koffmahn, E. 167n98 Kokkinos, N. 541, 542n40, 542n43, 543n46, 543n48, 544n51, 544n52, 544n56, 546n64, 555n104, 555n106, 556n111 Konradt, M. 332n100, 333n105, 333n107, 364n69, 368n92 Kooten van, G. H. 448n159 Kooyman, A. C. 97n111, 99n117 Kosovsky, M. 31n31, 171 Kotlar, D. 108n7 Kraabel, A. T. 108n3, 124n84, 195, 195n33, 213n106 Kraeling, E. C. 147n18, 153n42 Kraemer, R. S. 195, 195n32, 450n169 Kraft, R. A. 509n34, 521n100, 522n104 Krenkel, M. 554n103, 572n43, 615n65 Krieger, K.-S. 53n56 Krygier, R. 100n119, 309n46 Kuhn, K. G. 142n4, 147n19, 149n26, 156n53, 187n3, 188n5, 192n25,
Modern Names
193, 193n27, 193n30, 194, 199, 200, 200n57, 200n58, 219, 414n12, 643n102 Kümmel, W. G. 308n39 Kunkel, W. 39n66 Kushnir-Stein, A. 541–542, 542n40 Küng, H. 393n3 Küster D. E. 235n1 Kutscher, E. Y. 264n8 Kuyt, A. 7n* Kvalbein, H. 261n1 Lachs, S. T. 271n47, 528n129 Lagrange, M.-J. 99n118, 102n128, 281–283, 281n7, 281n10, 283, 287n37, 288n42, 348n4, 356, 384n7 Lake, K. 610n42 Lambrecht, J. xiv, 325n55, 326n57, 330, 330n83, 333n107, 412n4, 413n5, 413n7, 414n14, 441n135, 450n170, 453n179, 460n9, 469n44 Lampe, P. 464n29, 556n109, 557n116 Lancey, J. C. 102n128 Lane, W. L. 557n115 Lange de, N. 238n13 Langer, R. 269n38, 651, 651n143, 651n144, 652n150 Langerbeck, H. 369n96 Langevin, P.-E. 326n60 Lapin, H. 197n41, 556n107, 556n112, 582n3, 598n78, 599n80, 625n17, 648n124, 659, 659n183, 659n184 Laqueur, R. 533n2, 536, 536n13, 536n14 Lavan, M. 571n41 Law, T. M. 209n95 Lawrence, J. D. 121n73, 123n81, 128, 128n109, 128n110 Lawson, R. P. 236n2 Légasse, S. 285n26, 324n48, 325n53, 326n60, 330n82, 332n100, 335n118, 338n134, 338n135, 348n4, 385n11, 385n15, 390n33 Lehmann, M. R. 98n115 Lehming, H. 348n6 Leibson, G. 643, 643n103, 649, 649n133–136, 650, 650n137, 650n139 Leiman, S. 49n37 Leon, H. J. 153n45
805
Lerner, M. B. 12n20, 599n81, 616n70, 616n73 Lessing, G. E. 223n1 Levi, G. 503n9, 529n132, 621n1 Levine, A-J. 209n93 Levine, L. I. 114n44, 598n78, 650n141 Levinson, J. 591n51 Levinson, N. P. viii n1 Lewin, B. M. 31n29, 529n132, 582n7 Licht, J. 189n9, 230n49, 426n63, 436n115, 644n105, 644n106 Lichtenstein, H. 13n25, 49n37, 57n73, 162n73–75, 162n77, 163n78, 163n80, 163n81, 289n50, 377n130 Lieberman [Liebermann], S. viii, ixn6, 5, 5n13, 5n15, 8n2, 11n14, 12n20, 14n29, 16n38, 17n40, 20n53, 38n60, 51n47, 77n28, 118n60, 127, 127n105, 149n24, 164n86, 229n40, 236n5, 304n25, 305n27, 306n33, 320, 320n19, 320n21, 320n22, 328n72, 360n57, 377n133, 431n91, 531n138, 614n63, 632n48, 633n51–53, 634n56, 635n61, 647n120, 647n121, 648n127, 652n150, 653n158, 660n190 Lieu, J. 581n1 Lifshitz, B. 152n36, 152n38, 152n39, 153n44, 153n45, 320n22, 492n129 Lim, T. H. 413n7 Lindemann, A. 396n11 Lipschits, O. 201n67 Loader, W. R. G. 98n115, 102n126 Löhr, H. 592n55 Lohse, E. 385n11, 449n161 Lombard, E. 459n6 Lona, H. E. 328n75, 557n115 Long, F. J. 455n190, 460n12, 461n13, 461n16 Lövestam, E. 70n8 Lowe, M. F. 141n2, 179n146, 179n148, 188n5, 207, 207n80, 209, 209n95, 210, 213n106, 218 Luck, U. 342n159 Lüdemann, G. 478n72 Lurie, B. Z. 12n23, 162n73, 162n75 Luther, M. 102n123, 347–350, 347n2, 603n7 Lüthi, M. 254n8
806
Index of Names
Luz, U. 69n6, 99n117, 102n129, 243n32, 246n45–48, 248n53, 250n61, 254, 254n3, 254n6, 255, 255n10–12, 256n14, 257n20, 262n3, 263, 264n6–8, 265n12, 265n15, 265n17, 267n26, 267n29, 269n37, 280n2, 281n7, 283, 283n16–18, 290n53, 292n59, 292n64, 294, 294n74–76, 295n79–81, 295n85, 507n29, 514n62, 514n64, 515n65, 515n71, 516n73, 516n74, 517n79, 518n80, 518n81, 518n86, 519n90, 520n93, 521n96–98, 522n101, 549n78, 645n111 Lykke, A. 545n59 Lyons, W. J. 603, 603n1, 603n3, 603n5 Machinek, M. 69n6 MacWhirter, J. 241n29, 241n30, 249, 249n54, 249n58 Mader, G. 534, 561n12, 563n17, 565n30 Maeir, A. M. 21n*, 39n64, 647n119 Maertens, P. 380, 380n145 Maier, J. 634n58, 651n147 Malherbe, A. J. 215n114, 326, 326n61, 326n62, 327n63–65, 329, 329n80, 330n84, 334, 334n110, 336n125, 337n131, 343n167, 343n170 Mandelbaum, B. 170n110, 238n16, 239n19 Mann, J. 494n137 Ma’oz, Z. 114n44 Maresch, K. 197n43, 197n44 Marguerat, D. 214n111, 478n70, 547n69, 548n72, 549n79, 549n83, 552, 552n92, 612n53 Margulies, M. 12n23, 33n38, 127n105, 166n92, 257n17, 335n114, 365n77, 196n37 Marquardt, F.-W. 348n6 Martin, R. P. 452n178 Martyn, J. L. 218, 218n126, 302n16, 302n19, 311n52, 445n148, 446n151, 459n6, 466n34, 467n37, 532n140, 547n69, 622–624, 623n5, 623n6, 623n8, 623n10, 624n11, 635n68, 637n77, 638n78, 643, 643n100, 646n115, 650
Mason, S. 42n6, 156n53, 202, 207–209, 207n83, 207n84, 208n85, 209n95, 216n120, 266n20, 534, 537, 537n20, 539, 539n28–30, 542n40, 548n73, 549n81, 554n103, 561, 561n11, 563, 563n18, 564, 564n25, 565n30, 574n57, 576n68, 577n73a, 583n15, 604n6, 605, 605n12, 606n21, 607n23, 611n46, 612n51, 613n55, 615n65, 658n181 Mattern, L. 353n30, 625n17 Maurer, C. 332n100, 333n103–105, 333n107, 334n109 McLaren, J. S. 534, 560, 561, 561n9, 561n10, 563n18 Meeks, W. A. 179n146, 179n147, 445n148, 530n134, 595n68, 623n9, 624, 624n12, 640n88, 651n148 Meier, J. P. 4n7, 5n13, 17n39, 68n4, 70n8, 76, 76n24, 78n29, 79n36, 84n63, 95n104, 102n127, 133n134, 229n43, 294n77, 295, 295n82, 295n85, 552n93, 581n1, 581n2 Melanchton, P. 102n123, 348, 395, 395n9 Melick, R. R. 459n6, 463n23 Meritt, B. J. 153n44 Merkel, H. 607n24 Merz, A. 253n1, 253n2 Meshorer, Y. 151n34 Méthy, N. 629n34, 629n35, 630n41, 631n42, 631n44 Metzger, B. M. 589n42, 589n44, 589n45 Metzger M. 134n139 Meuzelaar, J. J. 182n161 Michaels, J. R. 518n81 Michel, O. 181n153, 353n30, 385n15 Mignard, J. E. 643, 643n102, 644n104, 644n107 Milgrom, J. 116n54, 120, 120n68 Milik, J. T. 486n100 Milikowski, C. 8n2 Millar, F. 510n42, 511n45, 511n46, 541n36, 542n43, 544n53, 550n85, 553n98, 556n111, 563n19, 564n22, 566n33, 578n76 Miller, D. M. 193, 193n28, 193n29, 196, 200n59, 202, 202n69, 207, 209, 209n93, 209n94, 215n112, 219, 450n172
Modern Names
Miller, S. S. 540n33, 659n184 Milligan, G. 338n136 Minear, P. S. 370n104 Mitchell, M. M. 329n77, 396n13, 403n44, 459n7, 460n8, 460n12, 461, 461n14, 462, 462n18, 468n38, 505n19, 506n23, 522n103 Mohri, E. 432n98, 433n101 Momigliano, A. viii, 45n22, 63n105, 63n107, 64n111, 64n113, 65n116, 192n22, 199n51, 210n96, 317, 318n3, 318n4, 318n6, 562n14, 603n5, 604n9, 626, 626n20, 626n21, 628, 628n29 Mommsen, T. 64n112 Montefiore, C. J. G. 71, 71n12 Moo, D. J. 372n113, 385n11 Moore, G. F. 45, 45n22, 52, 63n105, 351, 351n19, 492n134, 502, 502n4, 504 Moreland, M. 553n95 Morissette, R. 596n74 Morray-Jones, C. R. A. 240n24, 406, 406n55, 408n60, 409n63, 486n97, 486n99 Moule, C. F. D. 573n56 Munck, J. 372n113, 459n6, 464n30, 465, 465n33, 473, 474n56, 478n71, 478n73, 481n80, 612n52 Murcia, T. 632n50, 634n56 Murray, R. 179n146, 179n147 Mussner, F. 354n34, 364n70, 365, 365n77, 365n81 Mutzenbecher, A. 369n96 Myre, A. 73n18 Nachman [Nakman], D. 42n7, 43n15, 55n68, 65n118, 540, 540n34, 583n17 Nanos, M. D. 475n60 Nasrallah, L. 322n36 Nathan, E. xiv, 415n16 Naveh, J. 138n158, 153n41, 492n130, 495n142, 517n79 Neirynck, F. 70n7, 72, 99n118, 401, 401n36, 403, 403n45, 404n49 Nembach, U. 72, 72n16, 88n75, 102n126 Nestle, E. 96n108, 227, 232n58, 358 Neudecker, E. 72n15, 74, 74n21, 76n23, 81n49, 82n54, 82n55, 83n58, 86n69,
807
90n81, 91n86, 91n89, 92n90, 99n118, 102n126, 292n65 Neusner, J. viii, ix n5–6, 7, 7n*, 7n1, 10n11, 14, 14n28–31, 15n32, 15n33, 15n35, 110, 110n14, 117n57, 130n119, 173n133, 193n26, 272n51, 284n22, 303n21, 345n180, 399, 399n29, 504, 504n14, 504n16, 505, 505n17, 517n77, 535–539, 535n8, 535n9, 538n21, 539n27, 576n68, 576n69, 582n3, 633n51, 647n120, 647n121 Neutel, K. B. 445n148, 446n151, 446n152 Newsom, C. A. 448n160 Newton, M. 131n125, 132n129, 135n147, 453n180 Nickelsburg, G. W. E. 146n14, 156n54a, 157n57 Nickle, K. F. 459n6, 475n59 Nicol, W. 302n16 Niebuhr, K. W. 322n32 Niederwimmer, K. 261n1, 521n100 Niehoff, M. R. 599n83 Noam, V. 14n29, 43n15, 75, 84n60, 84n63, 89n79, 121, 121n72, 122n78, 162n73, 162n74, 162n77, 163n78, 275n61, 287n34, 289n50, 427n68, 527n118, 546n65 Nobilio, F. 297n*, 308n38 Nodet, É. 83n58, 534, 534n4 Nöldeke, T. 320n22 North, J. 657n176 Nygren, A. 353n32 Oberhummer, E. 322n36 Oberman, H. A. 347n2 Oepke, W. 447n153 Ogereau, J. M. 459n6, 470n46, 476n62, 480n77 Olsen, V. N. 102n123 Olsson, B. 517n79 Oort van, J. A. 349n8 Oppenheimer, A. 173n133, 511n47 Osten-Sacken von der, P. 351n18, 371n108, 417n27, 418n29, 418n30, 418n32, 419n37, 421n43, 422n51
808
Index of Names
Ott, A. 70, 71, 71n11, 99n118, 101n121, 102n123, 102n125 Ottenheijm, E. xiv, 253n1, 253n2 Otto, R. 363 Oudshoorn, J. G. 197n41 Overbeck, F. 607n22 Overman, A. 651n147
Prostmeier, F. R. 507n25, 509n34, 509n36, 509n40, 511n46, 512n54, 512n56, 513n57–60 Puech, E. 228n37, 594n63
Pagán, V. E. 626n19 Painter, J. 179n146, 180n150 Pancaro, S. 179n146, 179n147 Pardee, D. 33n36, 33n38, 34n40, 38n62 Parente, F. 565n30 Parkes, J. viii, 181n158, 621n1, 642, 642n98 Pawlikowski, J. T. 21n* Pelletier, A.-M. 236n6, 237n9 Penella, R. J. 332n101 Penna, R. 326n58 Penner, J. 268n33, 269n38 Penner, T. 533n1 Perelmuter, H. G. 21n* Perrot, C. 229n40, 230n53 Pervo, R. I. 113n38, 542n43, 543n45, 548n77, 550n85, 554n103 Pesch, R. 217n123 Philonenko, M. 423n55 Pilhofer, P. 322n37, 478n73 Pines, S. 179n144 Ploeg, J. van der 423n55 Plümacher, E. 286n30, 570n40, 615n66 Plummer, A. 413n9, 413n10, 414n13 Poirier, J. C. 109n11, 123n81 Pollefeyt, D. xiv, 218 Poorthuis, M. J. H. M. 253n1, 253n2 Popkes, W. 368n93 Porten, B. 80n43, 80n45, 135n12 Porter, S. A. 325n54 Porter, S. E. 468n38, 468n39 Pratt, M. L. 658n179 Preschel, T. 39n65 Price, J. J. 559n4, 561n12, 573n54, 574, 574n59, 574n61, 575n63 Price, S. 657n176 Prigent, P. 508n32, 509n34 Pritchard, J. B. 145n10 Proksch, O. 484n87, 484n88, 487n106, 488n112
Rabbinovicz, R. N. N. 172n127 Rabello, A. M. 167n98 Rabin, C. 149n24, 168n101 Rabin, I. A. 303n22, 320n20 Racine, J. 543n47 Radl, W. 610n38 Räisänen, H. 370n100 Rajak, T. 51n48, 54n60, 534, 560, 560n8 Rapp, B. 238n14 Rappaport, U. 12n21 Ratzinger, J. 69n6 Reed, A. Y. 622, 622n3, 624 Reeg, G. 108n4, 114n45, 115n48 Regev, E. 24n10, 42n7, 43n15, 55n68, 65n118, 540n34, 592n52, 599n84 Reich, R. 108n4, 114n44, 115n46, 115n48 Reichert, A., 630n41 Reif, S. C. 269n38 Reim, G. 179n143 Reinach, T. 44n19, 63n105 Reinhartz, A. 209, 209n95, 218, 219, 219n129, 623, 623n10, 624n11 Reinmuth, E. 324n48–50, 325n53, 327, 327n68, 330n82, 330n85, 331n94, 333n107, 334n112, 336, 336n120 Rengakos, A. 562n15 Rengstorf, K. H. 396n11 Rese, M. 607n22, 608n31 Revel, B. 54n61, 57n78 Rey, J.-S. 586n28 Reynolds, J. 286n31, 325n52, 345n182 Richard, M. 236n5, 237n9, 249n56 Richardson, P. 92n94, 402n41 Ridderbos, H.[R.] 350n17, 384n6 Riedel, W. 236n6, 237n9 Riesner, R. 400n33, 401n35, 401n36, 405n50 Rijk-Chan de, V. 143n8 Ritter, B. 44, 62
Qimron, E. 23, 23n4, 24n7, 24n11, 25n12, 84n60, 416n21, 613n57
Modern Names
Rives, J. B. 382n151, 574n61, 592n56, 625n17, 628n33, 631n45, 657n176 Rizzi, M. 530, 530n135 Robinson, J. M. 503n8 Roetzel, C. J. 327n67 Rogier, J. 141n2 Rogkotis, Z. 562n15 Rordorf, W. 261n1 Rosen, H. B. 149n24, 152n36 Rosenfeld, B.-Z. 528n123 Rosen-Zvi, I. (Y.) xiv, 67n*, 67n1, 75, 78n29, 85n65, 88n72, 88n75–77, 89, 89n79, 90, 91n87, 91n89, 92n91, 93n97, 98n115, 306, 307n36, 591n51, 593n59 Rosner, B. S. 327n69, 327n71, 330n87 Rossano, P. 335n118, 336, 336n120 Rothschild, C. K. 533n3, 542n41, 546n67, 547n69, 570n40 Rousseau, A. 243n35 Rousseau, O. 236n2 Rowe, C. K. 547n68 Rowland, C. 240n24, 406, 406n55, 408n60, 409n63, 486n97, 486n99 Rubenstein, J. 122n78 Ruether, R. R. viii n1 Runesson, A. 108n4, 114n42, 115n50, 123n81, 134n139, 208, 209n92, 209n93, 217n124, 517n79 Rutgers, L. V. 108n4, 110n15 Safrai, C. 429n80, 646n117, 649n130 Safrai, S. vii, viii, 4n12, 5n13, 5n15, 9n4, 9n8, 10n11, 12n19, 18n44, 26n17, 38n63, 51n46, 55n64, 55n66, 55n67, 55n69, 86n66, 91n86, 107n1, 108n2, 110n18, 117n58, 121n70, 123n81, 125n90, 125n91, 127n102, 127n104, 128n108, 129n114, 133n133, 133n138, 136n152, 143n8, 146n13, 146n17, 151n34a, 163n82, 197n41, 264n6, 270n39, 270n43, 272n52, 272n53, 284n23, 290n53, 327n71, 345n179, 357n39, 377n131, 399, 399n26, 425n57, 425n61, 426n63, 427n66, 427n67, 428n73, 428n76, 428n77, 429, 429n78–80, 430n85, 433n100, 439n131, 441n134, 471n50, 479n75,
809
493n136, 494n138, 503n11, 520n94, 524n114, 527n117, 528n125, 529, 529n130, 556n107, 598n78, 599n79, 600n90, 605n15, 606n16, 608n34, 611n48, 613n59, 614n62, 616n68, 616n72, 619n79, 649n129, 649n130, 652n150, 660n191 Safrai, Z. xiii, xiv, 21n*, 39n64, 107n1, 110n18, 116n51, 116n53, 117n58, 121n70, 123n81, 125n90, 125n91, 127n104, 128n108, 129n114, 133n138, 136n152, 162n73, 173n131, 426n63, 457, 458n4, 567n36, 568n39, 579n78, 634n56, 643n103, 646n117, 649n130, 652n150 Said, S. 562n15 Saldarini, A. J. 504n14, 505n18 Salzman, M. R. 458n3 Sanders, E. P. vii, 24n8, 54n60, 55n70, 68, 68n4, 107, 109–114, 109n9, 109n11, 110n14–18, 111n21, 111n24, 112n26, 112n30, 113n31, 113n37, 114n41, 114n43, 123, 123n81, 125n89, 128, 128n108, 136n151, 138, 289n43, 349n9, 351, 351n21, 351n22, 352, 352n23, 353n28, 353n30, 370, 370n100, 374, 374n119, 462, 462n22, 504, 504n13, 574n60, 577n71, 581n1, 584n20, 585n22, 599n84, 600n86 Sanders, J. T. 607n24 Sanders, L. 328n75, 337n130 Sandnes, K. O. 261n1 Sandt van de, H. 132n130, 261n1, 262n2, 293n70, 294n78, 340n152, 345n176, 416n20, 419n38, 422n48, 423, 487n103, 507n26, 508n31, 521n100, 524n111, 525n115, 527n117, 612n53 Sartre, M. 559n2 Saulnier, S. 266n22, 308n40, 523n110 Schäfer, P. 8n2, 272n51, 276n64, 406, 406n53, 511n47, 511n48, 598n78, 632n50, 633n53, 651n147, 652, 652n151, 655 Schaller, B. 292n63 Schaper, J. 581n1 Schechter, S. 68, 493n135, 531n137, 535n10, 650 Schelkle, K. H. 369n95, 369n97, 383n1
810
Index of Names
Scherer, J. 518n80 Schiffman, L. H. 3n5, 3n6, 23, 24, 24n5, 24n10, 41n4, 46n26, 46n27, 55n65, 651n147 Schimanowski, G. 53n55 Schlier, H. 348n4, 357n38 Schmithals, W. 353n30, 385n11, 411n1 Schnackenburg, R. 308n41 Schneider, G. 612n54, 617n75 Schnelle, U. 308n41 Scholem, G. 405, 406, 406n51, 407n57 Schrage, W. 109n10, 338n133, 447n153, 447n156, 447n157, 643, 643n100 Schram, T. L. 179n146 Schreckenberg, H. 534n4, 554n103, 572n43 Schremer, A. 252n67, 276n66, 532n142, 632n50, 633n51, 634n56, 635n64, 652, 652n154, 653n155, 653n156, 653n160, 654n166, 657, 657n173, 657n174, 659n182, 661n194 Schröder, B. 43n15 Schubert, P. 326, 326n59 Schuller, E. 438n128 Schürer, E. 109n10, 149n24, 151n34, 151n34a, 151n35, 161n72, 198n47, 200n64, 216, 289, 289n43, 289n44, 376n127, 377n128, 502, 502n4, 510n44, 527n117, 536, 536n17, 542n43, 544n51, 544n54, 545n59, 553n98, 559, 559n2, 564n22, 572n49, 574n57, 576n67, 598n77, 609n37, 643, 643n101, 644n104 Schüssler Fiorenza, E. 414n14, 448n158 Schwabe, M. 152n38, 152n39, 320n22 Schwartz, D. R. 122n78, 199, 199n53, 199n55, 204n78, 208–210, 208n87–91, 209n95, 210n99, 212, 212n104, 212n105, 213, 213n106, 436n115, 436n117, 450n172, 509, 509n38, 509n39, 511n47, 512n54, 533n1, 534, 535n10, 537, 537n19, 538, 541, 541n39, 548n73, 553n95, 556n112, 564n27, 573n56, 575n66, 583n10, 592n53 Schwartz, J. vii, ix, xiv, 276n66, 501n*, 528n123, 532n142, 533n1, 541n36,
556n107, 559n4, 585n25, 601n91, 624n14, 632n50, 634n60, 635n62, 646n118, 660n189 Schwartz, S.[R.] 42n9, 63n105, 209n93, 272n51, 503n10, 534, 535n9, 536n13, 537–540, 538n21–26, 540n32, 540n35, 541n37, 542n43, 543n44, 545, 545n60, 545n63, 546, 546n66, 556, 565n29, 625n17, 659n184, 659n185 Schwartzbaum, H. 256n16 Schweitzer, A. 23, 25, 348n7, 349n9, 349n11, 406, 406n52, 503, 503n7, 503n8, 588n38, 595n68 Schwemer, A. M. 323n41 Scott, J. M. 481n79 Segal, A. F. 426n62, 653n157, 661n194 Segal, M. H. 287n38 Segal, M. Z. 82n52, 333n108 Seland, T. 610n45 Sevenster, J. vii Shahar, Y. 511n50 Shaked, S. 5n19, 138n158 Shemesh, A. 647n120 Sheridan, R. 209n95, 219, 219n130, 639n86 Sherwin-White, A. N. 550n85, 627n24, 628n32, 628n33, 629n34–36, 630n38, 630n40, 631, 631n42, 631n43, 631n46, 631n47 Shutt, R. J. H. 109n9 Sibinga, J. Smit vii Siegert, F. 41n3, 534, 534n4 Sigal, P. 67n1, 73, 73n19, 78n34, 79n35, 80n43, 82n52, 82n55, 83n57, 88n75, 98n114 Simon, M. 181n158, 183n162, 624n16, 642, 642n98 Sivertsev, A. 556n112 Sly, D. 433, 433n102, 433n103, 434n105 Smallwood, E. M. 289n43, 322n30, 377n128, 379n139, 477n67, 513n59, 536n17, 544n56, 556n111, 557n116, 559, 559n2, 571n41, 605n15, 606n21 Smith, D. R. 645n110 Smith, M. ix n6, 7n1, 505n17, 535–539, 535n8, 535n9, 555, 574n57 Snodgrass, K. R. 370, 370n102 Snyder, G. F. 326n61
Modern Names
Soards, M. L. 213, 214, 214n109, 214n110 Soden von, H. F. 342n159, 342n164, 342n166 Sokoloff, M. 5n14, 232n57, 494n139 Solin, H. 147n19, 153n43 Spanje van, T. E. 370n100 Stagg, F. 468n38 Stanton, G. N. 279n1, 280n2, 282n13, 283, 283n15, 294n74, 295n80, 514n62, 549n78, 623n9, 651n147 Stein, R. H. 547n69 Stemberger, G. 10n11, 15n34, 116n52, 117n59, 238n16, 272n55, 276n64, 393n2, 399, 399n25, 529n132, 588n40, 598n77, 632n48, 648n128, 651n147, 652n151 Stendahl, K. vii, 229n39, 349, 349n9, 349n10, 350, 350n12, 350n13, 350n15, 350n17, 352, 352n23, 370, 372, 372n113, 372n115, 390, 390n35, 395, 395n10, 504, 504n13, 603n5 Sterling, G. E. 43n10, 533, 533n3, 534, 535n7, 547, 547n68, 547n70, 547n71, 548n77, 563n17, 572n43, 604, 604n7, 604n10, 605n11, 615n65 Stern, M. viii, 24n10, 42n7, 152n36a, 178n142, 180n151, 189n7, 198n47, 289n43, 376, 377n128, 559, 559n2, 573n54, 574, 574n57, 574n59, 574n61, 575n63, 576 Stern, M. 13n**, 146n13, 147n19, 149n27, 149n28, 150n29, 381n148, 436n116, 436n117, 477n67, 506n22, 509n41, 510n42–44, 511n46, 511n47, 543n45, 543n48, 544n57, 571n41, 576n67, 626n21, 627n24–27 Stern, S. 45n23, 46n28, 47n29, 47n31, 47n* Steudel, A. 442n136 Stevenson, K. W. 264n10 Stöhr, M. viii n1 Stolper, M. W. 5n16, 321n24 Stowers, S. K. 353n33, 460n9 Strack, H. L. 10n11, 116n53, 199n52, 243n35, 244n37, 246n47, 255n13, 256n14, 265n13, 265n17, 298n5, 333n104, 336n122, 345n177, 360n57,
811
388, 388n22, 389n26, 425n57, 515n65, 517n77, 518n80, 588n38, 617n75, 634n58, 642n99, 643n100, 653n160 Strauss, D. F. 348n7 Strecker, G. 282, 282n11, 282n13, 283, 288n42, 293, 293n67, 293n71, 294n74, 295n80, 514n62, 518n81, 518n85 Streeter, B. H. 295n85 Strobel, A. F. 246, 246n48, 246n49, 255n11, 257, 257n20, 258, 258n21 Strugnell, J. 23, 23n4, 24n7, 24n11, 25n12, 204n75, 416n21, 613n57 Stuckenbruck, L. T. 486n97 Stuhlmacher, P. 351n20, 369n98, 370n101 Sukenik, E. L. 107, 108, 108n2, 108n3, 114, 115, 116n51 Sumney, J. L. 329n77, 454n184 Sussman, Y. 23, 24, 24n5, 24n7, 24n10, 24n11, 25n12, 49n37, 613n57, 644n106 Syme, R. 626, 626n19, 627n27, 630n39 Sze Wing, C. 297n* Taatz, I. 21n* Tabori, J. D. 228n37 Talmon, S. 46n26, 49n38 Tannehill, R. 609n35, 612n53 Tannenbaum, R. 286n31, 325n52, 345n182 Tarn, W. W. 192n23 Taylor, J. 209n95 Taylor, A. J. P. 561 Taylor, V. 610n40 Tcherikover, V. 162n75 Teppler, Y. 651n147, 653n157, 654n165 Thackeray, H. S. J. 44n19, 49n37, 606n18 Thatcher, T. 623n7, 624n12, 635n66 Thiel, N. 193, 193n30, 194, 194n31, 196–199, 196n40, 197n43, 198n48, 199n51, 200n59 Thiessen, M. 380, 380n144 Thorsteinsson, R. M. 353n33, 380, 380n143 Thraede, K. 630n41 Thrall, M. 411n1, 448n159, 452n178, 460n12 Tigchelaar, E. J. C. 417n28, 437n122, 442n137, 449n161
812
Index of Names
Toeg, A. 78n29 Tönges, E. 264n6 Touloumakos, J. 323n38 Tov, E. 189n8 Treat, J. C. 238n13, 245n41 Trebilco, P.[R.] 431, 431n92, 448n159, 449n163, 450n168 Trobisch, D. 24n6 Tsafrir, Y. 510n42 Tuckett, C.[M.] 223n*, 331n91 Tuilier, A. 261n1 Tyson, J. B. 607n24, 607n26 Uchelen van, N. A. 4n7, 7n*, 149n25 Ulrich, E. 79n37 Unnik van, W. C. 547n69, 611n47 Urbach, E. E. viii, 9n8, 12n21, 236n7, 240n24, 252n64, 367n90, 427n66, 427n67, 492n134, 535n10, 649n135, 650n141, 652n152, 653n160, 660n189 Ussishkin, D. 511n49 Vanderhooft, D. S. 201n67 Vahrenhorst, M. 3n1, 88n75, 102n126 Van Belle, G. 309n42 Van Cangh, J.-M. 226n24 Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, F. 218 Vandenberghe, M. J. 574n57 VanderKam, J. C. 45n23, 45n24, 46n26, 266n22, 439n130, 486n96, 486n100, 523n107 Vegge, I. 460n12 Verbrugge, V. L. 459n6, 463n24, 467n37, 469n41, 470n46, 473n55 Verheyden, J. xiv, 235n1, 603n1 Verme del, M. 261n1, 521n100 Vermes, G. 42n9, 54n63, 59n87, 60n91, 63n106, 84n63, 216, 502n4, 503n8 Vielhauer, P. 323n41, 394, 394n4–6, 395n8, 400, 444n140, 444n142, 635n66, 636n69, 646n115 Vogel, M. 534n4 Vogt, F. 71, 102n123, 102n125 Vouga, F. 445n148 Vries de, B. 5n13, 6n21 Wahlde von, U. C. 179n146, 179n147, 218
Wald, S. G. 529n133, 587n35 Wallace, D. B. 468n38 Wallace-Hadrill, A. 323n38 Walter, N. 103n131 Walters, J. C. 557n115 Wan, S.-K. 459n6, 470n46, 475n59 Wassen, C. 84n64, 438n125, 438n127, 438n128, 449n161 Waubke, H.-G. 279n1 Weber, F. 502 Wedderburn, A. J. M. 459n6, 460n10, 467n37, 468n40, 476n61, 476n63, 476n64, 477n66, 477n68, 478n72, 478n73, 479n76 Weigle, L. A. 617n76 Weikert, C. 510n42, 511n45, 511n47, 542n40, 542n43, 556n110, 658n181 Weima, J. A. D. 325n54 Weinfeld, M. 78n32 Weinreich, M. 142n4 Weiss, H. 43n15 Wendland, P. 63n105 Wengst, K. 261n1, 440n133, 507n25, 509n34–37, 512n56, 513n57, 513n58, 514n61, 521n100, 522n101 Wenham, D. 326n61, 331n91 Wermelinger, O. 349n8 Westbrook, R. 73, 75, 77–79, 77n26, 77n27, 78n29, 78n32, 79n39 Wettstein, J. J. 617n75 Weyl, H. 44 White, H. 626n19 White, J. L. 324n43, 326n62, 328n73, 329n77, 334n110, 343n167 White, M. C. 178n141, 189n9, 636n69 Whitton, J. 332n100 Wiefel, W. 381n149 Wieringen van, A. L. H. M. 393n1 Wilckens, U. 355, 388n22 Wilk, F. 261n1, 279n1, 283n15, 285n27 Wilker, J. 541n36, 542n40, 542n43, 543n46, 545n61, 555n106, 556n108 Williams, M. H. 187, 187n2, 193, 195, 195n35, 197, 197n42, 210, 539, 540, 540n31 Williams, W. 629n35, 629n36, 630n41 Wilson, S. 187n1, 193, 193n29, 661n194 Wilson, W. 133n137
Modern Names
Windisch, H. 413n6, 413n7, 413n9, 470n47 Windsor, L. J. 577n73a Winsor, R. 249n54 Winston, D. 318n10 Wise, M. O. 228n37 Witherington, B. 102n126 Wolff, H. J. 93n97 Woolf, J. 119n66 Wrede, W. 349n11, 407, 407n59 Wright, B. G. 108n4, 127n105 Wright, R. B. 358n46 Wuillemier, P. 626n21, 627n23, 628n30 Wurst, G. 349n8 Yadin, Y. 151n35, 152n36, 166n93–95, 167n99, 168n100, 168n103, 197n41 Yardeni, A. 80n43, 80n45, 135n12 Yeboah, B. 91n88 Yoshiko Reed, A. 209n95 Young, R. A. 468n38
813
Zahn, T. 634n58 Zakovitch, Y. 78n29 Zangenberg, J. 262n2, 508n31 Zehnacker, H. 629n34, 629n35, 630n41, 631n42, 631n44 Zeitlin, S. 12n21, 166n95, 192, 192n24, 529n132 Zetterholm, M. 280n3, 295n82, 585n24, 586n27 Ziegler, J. 81n48 Ziesler, J. A. 607n23 Zimmermann, R. 245n42, 246n46, 250n62, 255n13 Zissu, B. xiv, 202n68, 511n45, 511n50 Zmijewski, J. 617n75 Zohar, N. 85n65, 632n50 Zuckermandel, M. S. 633n52 Zunz, L. 3n1 Zwingli, U. 102n123
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names Abortion 60, 60n94, 522 Aggada 3, 3n4, 11, 30, 163n79, 169n109, 257, 434n111, 587, 595, 596, 598 Achaia 323, 344, 344n173, 459, 464, 472, 473, 478, 481, 481n81, 548 Adultery 56, 61, 71–74, 82, 83, 88n73, 88n76, 95, 96, 98–100, 98n115, 101n21, 101n22, 102n126, 104, 381, 382, 386, 387, 423, 630 Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem) 510, 510n42, 511n45, 511n47, 513, 530, 542n40, 542n43, 556n110, 658n181 Akkadian 5, 5n16 Alexandria 34n42, 39, 39n64, 41, 44, 44n16, 45n20, 45n22, 56n72, 57n73–75, 57n77, 58n82, 59n86, 60n92, 61n99, 62–65, 62n103, 63n105, 64n111, 64n112, 65n117, 81, 109, 112, 112n25, 114, 114n40, 125, 147n19, 153, 153n42, 156, 158, 159, 159n59, 159n66, 161, 165, 202, 202n70, 204, 205, 217, 217n122, 322, 434, 440, 532, 540, 610n44, 658 Allegorise, Allegorisation 112, 159n66, 253n2, 255, 280, 280n4, 281, 413 Allegory, Allegorical 135, 202, 235, 238, 240, 245, 246n48, 253, 255n12, 255n13, 258, 383, 383n1, 413, 414, 439n130, 453, 453n180, 473, 513532, 595, 596 Alms(giving) 233n59, 262, 267, 293, 341, 355, 457, 464, 469n45, 515, 516, 520, 550 Amida (see also Prayer) 265n13, 268 Amora (interpreter) 35 Amoraim, Amoraic period 10, 28, 29, 34, 36, 38–40, 129, 136, 163, 269n38, 464, 492, 643, 643n103, 649, 650 Amoraic midrash 122, 169, 170, 173,
181n154, 193, 491–495, 492n128, 492n133 Antioch (Syrian) 109n11, 114n40, 180, 184, 290, 294n77, 295, 295n82, 295n85, 296, 321, 348n7, 369n98, 375, 376, 378, 397, 464, 466, 466n34, 467, 475, 477, 478, 480, 483, 531, 548, 550, 552n93, 569–571, 574n57, 577n73, 660 Antiochene 177n138, 185, 295, 323n41, 371, 375, 477 Aphrodisias 286n31, 325, 345 Apocalyptic(ism) (see also Dualism) 4, 4n8, 23, 121, 122n77, 131n148, 157, 158, 183, 216, 217, 229n46, 239, 240, 242, 245, 318, 318n10, 325, 326, 326n61, 329, 331, 336n126, 337, 356, 388n20, 390, 405–409, 411, 414–416, 418, 423, 424, 426, 426n65, 427, 440, 441, 443, 445n148, 447, 448, 450–456, 451n147, 460, 484–486, 503n7, 547n68, 587, 591, 596, 597, 600, 645, 645n110 Apologetic 42, 43, 43n10, 43n15, 58, 62n103, 63–65, 64n111, 65n117, 148, 160, 160n71, 161, 208, 378, 455n190, 533–535, 539, 540, 547, 553, 554, 566583, 604, 605, 609, 612, 614, 615, 618, 637n75 Apostle(s) 26, 27, 103, 104, 131, 134, 137, 217, 230, 233, 281, 326, 327, 331, 331n90, 337, 344, 347–349, 348n5, 353, 364n67, 370–372, 376, 378, 395–397, 404, 405, 408n61, 409, 450, 451, 454–456, 455n187, 462, 465, 467, 471n50, 475, 477, 478, 481–483, 495, 528n125, 548–555, 566, 567, 569, 570, 577, 579, 588, 593n57, 609, 615, 638n79, 646, 656
816
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
Apostles’ decree 26n17, 27, 98n112, 133, 134n142, 324, 334, 334n112, 335, 357n39 Apostolic tradition 40, 95, 131–132, 132n127, 134, 134n139, 134n140, 137n153, 232, 236, 330, 373–375, 389, 390, 399n30, 403, 409n66, 422n54, 487n103, 508 Apostolate, (com)mission 26, 35, 131, 230, 232, 280, 287, 331, 344, 366, 371, 394, 465, 467, 480, 483, 567, 577, 645 Aposynagôgos (excommunicated) 624n11, 637n74 Arab/Arabic 115n49, 142, 147, 168n103, 170n116, 207 Aramaic 5, 5n14, 5n16, 5n17, 5n19, 6n20, 30, 33, 33n38, 35, 49n37, 86, 128, 128n109, 142, 145, 147n18, 148, 149, 149n24, 153, 154, 154n47, 156n53, 162, 165, 166, 166n94, 168, 168n101, 168n103, 170, 170n116, 172–174, 181n154, 188, 188n6, 190, 190n13, 199, 199n52, 199n53, 200, 201, 229n40, 232n57, 241, 243, 245, 263, 264, 264n8, 287n38, 318–321, 318n8, 320n20, 320n22, 328, 334, 335n114, 345n179, 361n59, 362n61, 367, 367n90, 389, 422, 430n88, 449n161, 454, 484–486, 494, 494n139, 517, 599, 611 ~ papyri (Elephantine) 70, 77n27, 80, 82n55, 145, 147n18, 150n32, 151, 154, 201 Aramean 147, 170n112, 172, 173, 175, 583n13 Archaeology, arch(a)eological 32, 42, 72, 78, 107, 108, 108n2, 110, 111, 114, 115n47, 115n48, 117n58, 119, 125, 133n133, 135, 154, 157, 158, 166, 168, 174, 202n68, 286, 290, 429, 436, 464n27, 510n42, 511, 511n45, 511n49, 540 Archives 5n16, 31, 35, 35n44, 148, 152n36, 166, 167, 168n103, 194, 197, 198, 217n123, 512, 512n52 Asia Minor 108, 124, 192, 279, 320, 320n18, 325, 376, 431, 457, 478, 548, 569, 570, 645, 660
Aside (narrator’s, in John) 189, 300, 301, 307, 636, 636n71 Assyrian 145, 145n10, 191, 201 Athens 319n11, 323, 324, 324n48, 544n54, 560, 640 Babylonia 21n*, 28–31, 35–37, 39n64, 129, 133, 145, 147, 147n19, 173n133, 191, 196, 198n49, 321n23, 457, 604 Babylonian ~ halakha/tradition 5n17, 14n29, 28–31, 33–40, 36n47, 54n61, 116, 118, 122–124, 127, 129, 136, 136n50, 143n7, 163n79, 169n109, 171, 173–175, 188, 196, 197n41, 205, 268, 426, 430, 431, 494n139, 529, 529n132, 633, 634n57, 635, 643, 643n102, 649, 650, 650n136 Baptism 111, 131–134, 131n24, 137, 147n19, 214, 228–230, 232, 266, 336n127, 407, 408, 445n148, 488, 522, 588, 608 Bar Kokhba, see Revolt under Hadrian Bath house, public (see also Mikve) 111, 111n23, 114, 124, 129, 136, 148 Beatitude(s) 226, 226n4, 226n25, 232, 424, 473 Beit midrash, see House of learning Benedictions, Eighteen (see Source Index, Rabbinic texts) Birkat ha-minim 269, 270n43, 272n54, 275, 275n62, 276, 276n64, 276n67, 290, 302, 528n122, 532n140, 621, 623, 624, 624n12, 634n56, 634n57, 640n88, 641n93, 642, 642n96, 643, 643n102, 650–652, 651n147, 651n148, 652n150, 652n151, 652n153, 655, 656 Boethus, Boethusians, see List of ancient names Byzantine period, emperor 13n26, 34, 115, 150, 150n31, 150n32, 484, 494, 517 Caesaraea (Maritima) 320n21 Caesaraea Philippi 544, 545, 549, 550, 552, 553 Calendar (lunar, solar) 24, 34, 40, 45–48, 45n23, 46n26–28, 47n29, 47n31, 47n*, 49n38, 50–51, 56, 266, 266n22, 274,
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
293n70, 308n40, 352n27, 505n21, 523, 523n107, 527, 605n15 intercalation 31, 33, 33n38, 46, 47n29, 148n22, 583n13 Canon (scriptural), Canonical 225, 235, 240, 251, 261, 277, 290, 375n124, 393, 445, 486, 508, 509, 588n39 Christology, Christological 236n6, 250, 250n62, 251, 259, 305n28, 322n33, 328n75, 348, 348n6, 400, 400n34, 407–409, 407n59, 514, 522n101, 596, 621, 622 Circumcision 40, 103, 104, 104n135, 116, 146, 155, 181, 183n162, 225, 237n10, 270n46, 289, 299, 300, 302–307, 304n26, 304n27, 305n31, 309–312, 324, 347, 352, 353n28, 364, 365n76, 366, 368, 372, 376, 378, 380, 380n142, 380n144, 396, 437n124, 502n2, 510–512, 521n99, 550, 553, 559, 566, 575–577, 575n66, 576n67, 578, 588n139 Gospel of the ~ 27, 366, 367, 371–374, 379, 380, 391, 396, 397, 445, 454, 465, 466, 567–570, 577, 579, 588, 594n63 Conflict, of Jews and Christians (‘parting of the ways’) 22, 67, 69, 103, 176n134, 179, 180, 181n58, 193n27, 194n31, 215, 216, 236, 252n67, 276n65, 276n66, 276n69, 277, 283, 290n53, 295, 302, 308, 311, 313, 501–502, 503n9, 509n40, 513n57, 525, 526, 530–532, 530n134, 532n140, 532n142, 571, 585, 585n25, 586, 601, 621–624, 622n2, 622n4, 624n12, 626, 632n50, 633n51, 634n56, 634n60, 635n64, 641, 648–652, 652n150, 652n154, 653n155, 653n156, 653n160, 654n166, 655–661, 657n173, 657n174, 659n182, 660n188, 619n79, 621ff Contract 21, 80, 80n46, 102, 144, 148, 152, 164, 167, 197, 197n41, 198, 200, 205, 456, 511n48 Corinth 26, 40, 94, 107n1, 153, 153n44, 324, 337, 376, 381, 450, 451n173, 462, 465, 470, 472, 481, 482, 484, 579, 594 Cynic (see also Stoic) 58n81, 326, 336, 336n125, 363, 394
817
Danielic (see also Enochic) 485, 486n99, 490 Dead Sea scrolls, see Qumran documents Death penalty 56, 57, 57n74, 60–62, 82, 83, 88, 302, 302n15, 306, 345n178 Decrees, Eighteen ~ 10–13, 14n28, 20, 164n86, 377, 428, 606 Diaspora 33n38, 34, 39, 39n64, 44, 107– 110, 107n1, 108n2, 108n3, 112–115, 113n37, 114n43, 115n81, 124, 124n84, 128, 135, 136, 145, 146, 148, 152, 156, 174, 188, 195n33, 198n47, 204n78, 208, 208n86, 212n104, 215n113, 230, 285n27, 290, 318, 319, 321, 322, 345, 364n74, 365, 376, 378, 379n139, 458, 470, 475, 480, 483, 567, 578, 609n35, 610–612, 610n43, 646 halakha in ~ 107n1, 109, 110, 112–115 Disputes, Schools ~ (of Shammai and Hillel) 11, 12n23, 20n54, 25, 42, 54, 55, 69, 75, 85–90, 89n80, 98, 101, 110, 211n100, 269–270, 377, 426, 427, 525, 530, 591n51, 593n59, 617, 647 Divorce (see also Marriage) passim ~ law/halakha 53n57, 67–102, 103, 104 ~ bill 77, 78, 80, 81, 85, 86, 93, 96–99, 163–168, 388, 389 hate ~ 74, 75, 77, 77n27, 78n29, 79–82, 87 grounds for ~ 69, 75, 78, 78n29, 82n54, 88–91, 98–102, 102n126, 102n129, 165, 306, 389 exception clause 68, 69, 71, 72, 76, 90, 98n115, 99, 102, 102n126, 102n127, 292, 293 Dualism, dualist(ic) 23, 121, 326, 326n61, 356, 411, 413–427, 417n23, 417n24, 417n27, 421n43, 422n51, 422n54, 435, 439–441, 443, 450–453, 455, 456, 460, 590, 591, 597, 600 Editing (process) 11, 24, 104, 163n81, 178, 178n141, 188, 190, 192, 207, 239, 241, 242, 244, 245, 250, 251, 254, 255, 267, 268, 272, 273, 280, 282, 285, 292, 292n58, 303, 307, 313, 395, 430, 492, 505, 506, 514, 520, 526, 529, 533, 582,
818
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
624, 632, 632n48, 635–637, 637n75, 639–641, 652, 655, 657, 660 Edomite (cf Idumaean) 128n108, 196, 197n41 Egyptian 47, 63, 64n112, 65, 73, 80, 82, 92, 114, 123, 146, 147n19, 150, 150n31, 156, 198, 198n46, 204–207, 211, 340n145, 474n57, 533, 545n63, 570, 571, 573, 574, 624, 645n108, 658 Eighteen Benedictions, see Source index, Rabbinic texts Ekklêsia 252n***, 323, 433, 445n149, 447–449, 448n159, 449n162, 488 Election (of Israel) 182, 231, 236, 245, 250, 372, 378, 416–417, 421, 455, 487, 621 Enoch(ic) tradition 486, 486n97, 486n99, 487, 490 Essenes (see also Qumran) 24, 24n10, 25, 42, 42n5, 46, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62, 64, 65, 65n115, 68, 97, 98, 128, 128n111, 158, 284, 292, 293, 293n70, 302, 302n17, 319, 340, 340n151, 340n152, 388, 403, 408, 408n60, 416, 417, 417n24, 419, 420, 421n43, 422n48, 425, 428, 434–436, 436n113, 436n117, 437–441, 437n120, 437n121, 437n123, 438n127, 438n128, 449, 451n175, 470n46, 480, 505, 520, 523, 573, 586, 605, 644, 644n106 Eucharist 27, 233n59, 522, 522n101 Evangelical 102, 102n126 Excommunicate (see also aposynagôgos) 276, 301, 626, 635, 638, 638n79, 639, 641–644, 650, 655 Excommunication 230n49, 277, 293, 302, 532n40, 601, 621, 624, 625, 637n72, 638, 639, 642–644, 646, 647, 649, 651, 656, 659 Fasting 47, 137, 162, 244, 245n43, 262, 266, 267, 274–276, 293, 293n70, 464, 464n28, 516, 520, 522–524, 523n109, 526, 527, 527n117 Fiscus judaicus, ‘Jewish tax’ 477, 477n67, 482, 502n2, 556, 609, 658, 658n181
Food (dietary) laws, kashrut 31, 121–123, 121n74, 133, 352, 353n28, 364, 365n76, 512, 519, 593 Form criticism, Form-critical 502, 504, 504n14, 505, 505n18, 547n69, 616 Fourth philosophy (Josephus) 53, 216, 378n138, 565, 566, 572–574, 574n57, 577n70, 577n73, 578, 606, 606n18 Friday (fast/festival day) 11, 46, 266, 274, 293n70, 365n75, 522, 523, 526, 527 Galilee 31, 33n38, 129, 133n133, 180n149, 218, 259, 296, 544, 562, 574, 576, 633 Galilean 179, 180n149, 544, 552, 559 Gentile 12–13, 68, 94n100, 108, 113, 121, 121n71, 121n72, 123–124, 146n13, 160n71, 164, 164n86, 167, 168, 172, 173, 177, 184, 194, 196, 200, 286, 287n34, 288, 289, 335, 347, 361, 377, 382, 418, 418n34, 428, 441, 475, 516, 521n97, 523n106, 547, 553, 575, 577, 592n54, 645, 654, 655 ~ Christians, ~ churches 27, 40, 68, 93, 101, 103–105, 132–134, 137, 181, 182, 183n162, 184, 185, 215, 241, 267, 279–286, 282n13, 285n27, 290, 291, 293, 293n70, 295, 295n80, 295n84, 296, 325, 325n53, 353n28, 364n71, 365, 367, 370–376, 378–382, 385, 385n13, 387, 390, 397, 445, 453n180, 455, 465–467, 470, 472–479, 481–483, 495, 510, 512–514, 521, 525, 531, 549, 550, 553, 568–571, 577–579, 593n57, 594, 594n63, 603n5, 645n113 God-fearer, God-fearing 169, 180, 184, 185, 286, 286n31, 324, 325, 325n52, 345n182, 373, 374, 450n168, 553 Golan 147n19, 574 Graeco-Roman (law/custom) 43, 111, 120, 123, 125–127, 128n108, 132, 136, 137, 142, 149, 167, 197n41, 202, 203, 206, 208, 256, 257, 322, 393, 399, 408, 447, 575, 644–645, 644n105 Graeco-Roman (world/period) 110, 207, 379n140, 382, 394, 398, 400, 448n159, 470, 484, 589, 645n108
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
Greece 107, 191n20, 320, 418n31, 457, 485, 645 Greek passim ~ language 27, 35, 41, 41n1, 82n55, 109, 111, 117, 127n105, 145n11, 146, 148–151, 148n21, 149n24, 153, 155–157, 159, 159n66, 161, 168n103, 190, 199, 203, 204, 209, 223–224, 238, 238n13, 241, 243, 252***, 257, 268, 318–322, 320n19–22, 329, 329n77, 332–335, 333n104, 339, 340, 342, 353, 358, 360, 362, 363n64, 440, 448n159, 467, 468n38, 470, 484, 488, 518, 531, 531n138, 551, 599, 611n50, 660, 660n190 ~ ethnos 65n114, 167, 173n129, 175, 181, 320n18, 343, 357, 418, 561 Greek-Jewish (Graeco-Jewish) ~ literature and culture 26, 27, 72, 107, 123n79, 128n109, 152, 156n53, 180n151, 200, 205, 210n96, 224n12, 300n11, 320, 321, 321n29, 328n76, 330n85, 343, 343n170, 354, 354n34, 363, 365, 394, 422, 442, 443, 452, 604n9 ~ philosophy 58, 335n114, 398, 446 Halakha (see also System) passim ~ formulated in Greek 27 ~ and community 9, 21, 328 ~ in the New Testament 27, 67, 69, 70, 73, 73n19, 92n93, 96, 103n**, 421n42, 549n82, 597 ancient ~ 6, 23, 90, 91, 119n61, 167n97, 517n77 history of ~ 3, 8n2, 9n8, 10, 24n7, 24n10, 27, 38, 69, 97n111, 503n12 Halakhic letter, see Index of sources Hands, purity of 8, 9, 15–18, 15n32, 15n33, 17n39, 17n40, 17n43, 18n45, 18n46, 125, 125n90, 126n94, 127, 128, 133, 134, 138, 236 washing of ~ 17n39, 109, 109n8, 109n9, 109n11, 111, 115n48, 123n81, 125, 126, 126n96, 134, 134n139, 136, 137 Hanukka 156, 199, 199n56 Hasmonaean, see Index of Ancient names
819
Hate, see divorce Hebrew (ethnonym) 142n4, 144, 149, 149n25, 149n28, 150, 150n32, 153–155, 153n46, 156n54, 157–162, 157n55, 160n67–71, 166n95, 179n146, 181n158a, 192, 192n24, 192n25, 212 ~ language 4n6, 5n13, 6n20, 11n16, 35, 41, 81, 82, 98, 115n49, 126n96, 128, 132, 142n4, 142n6, 144, 148, 148n21, 149, 149n24, 151, 153, 155, 156n54, 159, 159n63, 162, 164, 166, 168, 168n100, 168n101, 170, 182n161, 187–188, 188n4, 190, 197n41, 200, 201, 224, 224n13, 226, 237, 238, 241, 264, 268, 269n38, 287n38, 318–320, 320n20, 321n25, 327n71, 358, 360, 361n59, 367, 430, 430n88, 449n165, 454, 487, 491, 494n139, 596–597, 599, 611 ~ script (ancient) 151, 151n34, 168, 249 Hellene 147, 167, 174, 210, 530 Hellenism, Hellenistic (see also Greek) 5n15, 15n38, 22, 23, 43, 64, 72, 93, 93n97, 97, 107, 108n2, 109124n83, 136n151, 146, 148, 149, 149n24, 152n36a, 156, 156n53, 159n66, 161, 162n75, 173n129, 181n154, 192, 192n22, 192n23, 198, 198n46, 200, 201, 204, 205, 207, 211, 211n102, 215, 223, 254, 256, 257, 286n30, 317, 318, 318n7, 318n10, 321, 321n25, 322, 322n33, 325–331, 326n62, 327n63, 327n64, 327n67, 328n72, 328n74–76, 329n80, 330n84, 334, 334n111, 335, 337–344, 337n130, 337n131, 343n171, 346, 348, 354, 358, 374n121, 374n123, 386, 396, 398, 398n22, 400n33, 403, 409, 418n31, 422, 440, 449n163, 454n184, 454n185, 462, 464n27, 533, 535, 540n35, 546, 551, 570n40, 594, 599, 604, 604n9, 609n35, 610, 611n47, 615, 615n66, 658, 660n190 Helleno-centrism 192, 318 Herodian (see also Index of Ancient names) 238, 288n41, 302n15, 519, 538, 545, 547, 553, 559n98, 563, 577 Herodium 114, 577n70
820
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
High (Chief) priest 13, 24, 36, 47, 113n32, 151, 156, 159, 178, 178n142, 204, 205, 266n20, 286n29, 288, 294, 317n2, 491, 519, 538, 540, 545, 548n73, 549, 549n81, 552, 553, 555, 565, 574, 574n58, 575n62, 576, 600n86, 604n6, 609–611, 611n48, 611n50, 612n51, 613, 613n55, 615, 615n65, 639 Hillel, School of 11, 12, 12n23, 17, 17n42, 18, 20n54, 25, 42, 53–56, 69, 70, 75, 85, 89, 100, 101, 110, 127, 270, 319, 377, 388, 389, 425–428, 428n72, 428n73, 434n104, 441, 449, 452, 483, 519, 525, 591, 591n51, 592, 592n54, 593, 593n59, 594, 597, 598, 598n75, 600, 605, 606, 606n21, 614–617, 616n74, 619n79, 647–649 Historical criticism 7, 7n1, 8, 21n1, 22, 23, 297, 348–350, 396n13, 502, 505n19, 533n1 Historiography 43n10, 155n52, 156n54, 198n48, 318n7, 503n10, 533n3, 535n7, 547, 547n68, 547n70, 547n71, 548n77, 561n12, 563n17, 572n43, 603n5, 604, 604n7, 604n10, 615n65 Greek/Hellenistic ~ 43n10, 148, 161, 210, 210n96, 213, 533, 604, 604n9, 615 Jewish ~ 148, 210, 210n96, 319, 506, 506n24, 533, 604n9 modern ~ 502–503, 535n9, 539 House of learning/Beit midrash 126n98, 127, 148, 157, 272 Hypocrites (Pharisees) 266, 267, 274, 293, 293n68, 295, 515, 515n70, 516, 522–524, 526, 527, 608, 608n31 Idolatry 26, 27, 59, 137, 146, 164, 168, 169, 171n120, 284n21, 287n34, 357, 362, 381, 382, 411, 428, 455, 576, 577, 592, 632, 633 Idols, food offered to 26, 27, 133, 134, 404, 418n34, 479, 570, 593 Idum(a)ean (cf Edomite) 377, 576, 576n67 Infancy story 514, 551, 607, 607n26 Intercalation, see Calendar Ioudaios 145–150, 187–220
Ioudaïsmos (see also Judaize) 207 Jerusalem passim Jerusalem church 27, 103, 104, 322, 344, 348n7, 371n105, 377n106, 377n128, 378, 380, 409, 409n66, 437, 449n163, 454n185, 455, 455n187, 457, 458, 462, 464–467, 465n33, 470–481, 473n54, 483, 484, 484n86, 485n92, 486n95, 487n101, 488, 490, 490n123, 491, 494–496, 567, 569, 577, 610 Jerusalemite 53, 178, 212n105, 213, 214 Jesus (see also Index of Ancient names) authority of ~ 27, 92, 100, 103, 225, 230, 287, 331n90, 386, 402, 403, 405, 520, 598, 638 historical ~ 96, 223, 232, 401, 503, 624n11 ~ tradition 51n50, 67–70, 95, 100, 101, 103–105, 133n135, 137, 237, 241, 243, 251, 258, 259, 267n26, 284, 287, 288, 291, 292, 292n62, 296, 308, 309, 312, 313, 358, 374, 378n137, 387, 390, 399n29, 400, 400n32, 400n34, 401–405, 401n35, 408–410, 408n61, 415, 424, 432–433, 462, 491, 503, 514, 516, 518, 522, 523, 523n105, 526 Jewish-Christian ~ relations 26, 67, 68n2, 220, 261, 277, 312, 503, 506, 509n34, 509n40, 513, 514, 525, 530, 622, 634, 635, 650, 657, 661 ~ tradition, custom 6, 26, 27, 178, 178n141, 183–185, 219, 233, 237, 251, 280–283, 285, 288n42, 292, 293, 302, 346, 354, 355, 365–367, 378, 379, 415, 447, 452, 462, 471, 489, 490, 515, 523, 645, 655 ~ group, commmunity 103, 176, 179n143, 180, 282, 290, 295, 296, 302, 309, 312n54, 371, 378, 447, 462, 472–475, 481, 482, 496, 514, 518n86, 531, 652 Johannine community 310, 312, 313, 532n141, 623, 623n10, 624, 635, 635n68, 659, 660n188 Judaize, Judaizing (ioudaïzein) 40, 185, 288n42, 296, 371, 375, 378–380, 396,
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
445, 462, 466, 472, 475n59, 482, 484, 521, 531, 568, 594n63 Judaea (Roman province; see also Yehud) 44n17, 115, 195n33, 207, 208, 211n102, 212n104, 213, 216n117, 217, 218, 276, 296, 377, 377n128, 378, 380–382, 396n14, 397, 397n17, 447, 449n163, 450, 458, 465, 466, 474, 475, 477, 478, 481–484, 483n84, 494, 510, 511n45, 532, 534, 534n6, 537, 538, 544, 546, 550, 556, 556n110, 559, 559n4, 560, 561, 563, 566–571, 571n42, 574, 578, 578n76, 627, 627n24, 660, 661n193 Judah (patriarch, tribe, biblical region, kingdom) 145, 147, 158n58, 201, 362, 422, 423, 521, 595 Judea (region) 115, 133n133, 146n13, 149, 155, 168n100, 180n149, 192n22, 199, 201n67, 202n68, 207, 215, 218, 259, 299, 372, 375n126, 376–378, 380, 381, 560 Judean (geographical-political) 65n117, 145, 146n15, 207–211, 211n101, 214, 216–218, 324, 326, 420, 511, 512, 537, 538, 553, 559, 562, 575, 576, 578 Jupiter temple (Jerusalem) 477, 482, 510, 510n42, 513, 530 Ketuba 77, 77n28, 80n46, 90, 164–167, 166n92, 166n94, 197, 200 Kingdom of God 131, 225, 232, 250, 294, 348, 407, 521 ~ of Heaven 117, 226, 230–232, 243, 246, 255, 292, 312, 433, 433n101, 515 Land of Israel (Palestine) 30, 31, 33, 35, 39, 39n64, 44, 103, 107, 108n2, 109, 110, 114, 115, 124, 127n105, 129, 135, 136, 138, 146, 149, 153, 166, 168n103, 173, 173n131, 174, 192n25, 290, 319, 320, 437, 464, 530, 535, 649, 650, 660n190 halakha in ~ 28, 35n44, 503 tradition of ~ 108, 112 Law passim giving of ~ at Sinai 4n12, 147, 365, 429, 433, 434
821
~ in Paul 22, 25, 103, 313, 323, 324, 324n49, 326n58, 327, 347–391, 397, 403, 415n16, 462, 475, 502n3, 568, 570, 571, 594n63, 597 observance of ~ 313, 352, 353n28, 361–364, 367, 369, 370, 374, 375, 397, 420, 462, 478, 479n75, 483 ‘works’ of ~ 24, 352, 352n27, 353n28, 363, 364, 367–369, 367n90, 368n91, 374, 375, 382, 594n63, 600 Levitical, see Purity Lod 528n123, 556n107 Lord’s Prayer 233, 261, 261n1, 263, 264n10, 261–277, 292, 292n61, 293n70, 507, 508, 516, 522, 523n106, 524, 593 Love, of neighbour 91, 91n89, 336 Macedonia 108, 217, 322–325, 324n44, 343, 344, 344n173, 459, 473, 478, 481 Macedonian 47, 47n*, 198, 198n47, 202n70, 469, 470, 476 Market 89, 90, 148, 527n117, 593, 632, 653 Marriage (see also Divorce) 27, 44, 59, 60, 65, 72–76, 77n26, 78, 78n29, 78n31, 80, 80n46, 81, 82n55, 83–85, 84n60, 86, 87, 88n73, 91n89, 92–95, 98, 115, 100–103, 102n127, 105, 134, 164, 165, 166n92, 167, 171n118, 174, 175, 193, 197, 197n41, 240, 246, 319, 331, 332n100, 335, 382n1, 386–390, 389n31, 402, 403, 402n42, 413, 414n11, 434, 436–438, 444, 453, 488n110, 593, 648 ~ law 59, 82n55, 102, 387, 388, 390 Marital relations 27, 59–60, 92, 112, 134, 137, 335 Matrimonial formulae 69, 152, 165–168, 165n189, 166n92, 168n100, 196, 491 Matthaean church, community 69, 73, 76, 102n127, 104, 274, 275, 282, 282n13, 283, 290n53, 291, 293–294, 295n79, 518n86, 531, 655 Messiah 27, 182n161, 228, 239, 241n29, 241n30, 249n54, 249n58, 260n25,
822
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
267, 296, 301, 308, 407, 443, 454, 466, 487n102, 546, 574n60, 636, 638 Messianic 143, 227–229, 228n37, 231, 232, 260n25, 309, 310, 348n6, 407n59, 443, 573, 574, 615 Metaphor(ical) 79, 87, 93, 94, 123, 250n62, 252, 332, 334n109, 335, 342, 386–388, 390, 390n32, 390n33, 416, 444n142, 455, 466n34, 496n144, 655, 661 Midrash 4, 9n8, 11, 33, 37, 61n99, 62, 75, 89–92, 89n79, 101, 115, 118, 122, 126n98, 168, 169, 170n115, 171, 182n159, 188, 193, 236–241, 236n4, 236n5, 238n14, 239n21, 240n28, 241n30, 243, 244n36, 245–247, 246n49, 249n59, 249n60, 250, 251, 253–255, 257–260, 258n23, 264n7, 297, 301, 303–307, 304n23–25, 309–312, 317, 320n18, 363, 365, 365n77, 367n90, 377n133, 407, 429, 430, 439n130, 439n131, 440, 491–494, 492n133, 496, 587, 587n34, 587n36, 588n40, 589n44, 590, 590n46, 596, 596n74, 598, 611n50, 618n78, 635, 635n63, 642 Mikva, mikvaot (ritual bath; see also Bath house) 108, 108n4, 112, 115, 127, 115n47–48, 123, 124, 128, 133n133 Mishna (see Index of sources) redaction/writing of ~ 4n11, 7, 10, 14, 14n29, 17, 20, 28, 30, 35n44, 90, 92, 116n52, 120, 136, 163–164, 272, 291, 398, 504n16, 599, 600, 616, 632, 632n48 Monday (fast/festival day) 266, 274, 275, 523, 526, 527 Multiform (~ Judaism, Pharisaism) 6, 110, 116, 120, 130, 138, 268, 303, 613, 646 Mysticism, mystical 9, 23, 91, 93, 100, 236, 238, 240, 245, 250, 259, 321, 393, 400, 405–409, 407n57, 408n60, 487n104, 595 Nabataean 152n36, 166, 168n103 Near Eastern law, Ancient 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 86, 100
Nineteenth century (scholarship) 3, 4, 21, 39, 261, 281, 291, 352n25, 372n115, 393, 401, 437, 462, 501, 504, 526, 586 Nisibis 33, 34, 36n47, 126, 136 Noah (see Index of Ancient names) Noahide commandments 26n17 Onias, Temple of ~ 114, 114n40 Oral tradition 54, 153, 233, 241, 268, 272, 284, 288, 291, 303, 309, 334, 393n2, 398, 399, 400n32, 401, 401n35, 405, 444, 613, 616, 646 Orthodox Judaism 71, 536 Pagan, paganism 63, 109, 111, 117n58, 120, 128, 130, 133, 136, 189, 195, 224n7, 321, 324, 329n77, 336, 381, 382, 397, 414n11, 450, 460, 461, 513, 575, 592n55, 592n56, 653 Palestine, see Land of Israel Palestinian (excepting Pal. Talmud) 5n14, 12, 29–31, 34–36, 36n47, 38n48, 38, 39, 45, 54n61, 72, 76, 109, 114, 115, 136, 142, 153n46, 156n53, 169, 170, 173, 174, 176, 188, 193, 200n58, 232n57, 238, 246, 255n13, 351, 351n22, 396, 455, 458n2, 464, 487, 490, 529n132, 535, 535n8, 643, 643n102, 649, 650n136 Parables (genre) 232, 243, 246, 246n**, 251, 253–260, 253n1, 253n2, 254n9, 257n17, 383, 407, 407n58, 468n38, 613, 613n59 Paraenesis 327, 327n69, 329n77, 336, 337, 342, 343, 343n169, 400, 412, 568 Parting of the ways, see Conflict Passover, see Pesah Patriarch, patriarchate 34, 39, 46, 147, 149, 299, 362, 430n87, 535–537, 556, 556n107, 556n112, 598, 649, 659, 660 Patriarchy, patriarchal 57, 81, 82n55, 85, 87, 100, 101, 333, 434, 447n154 Paul (see Index of Ancient Names) ~ (ex‑)Pharisee 33, 68, 322, 389–390, 448, 452, 467, 549, 553, 567, 581, 581n2, 584–586, 596n72, 597, 598, 601n92, 608, 610–612, 619, 646, 656n172
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
churches/tradition of ~ (Pauline) 22, 27, 93, 94, 95n106, 101, 103, 131, 132, 135, 181n157, 182, 183, 185, 225, 263, 295, 323, 324n49, 326n58, 349, 350, 352, 359, 363, 364, 370, 374, 375, 375n124, 378, 380, 395, 396, 396n11, 399, 400n34, 401, 402, 406, 412, 415n17, 446, 446n152, 451, 454, 456, 458, 459, 462, 463, 468, 469, 469n45, 489n118, 578, 585, 593, 595–598, 660n188 anti-Pauline 295, 296, 364n71, 367n90, 415 Pentateuch (see also Tora) 41, 45, 75, 76, 83, 120, 341, 488 Pentecost, see Shavuot Persian empire/period 5, 6n20, 119, 121, 121n71, 123, 142, 145–147, 145n12a, 150, 154, 162, 189–192, 190n13, 190n17, 192n22, 198, 200, 201, 201n67, 203, 205, 210, 211, 211n100, 213, 254, 318, 318n6, 319, 321, 321n24, 328, 560, 562n14 Persian language/thought/culture 5, 5n16, 5n19, 121, 123, 174, 198, 201, 210n96, 318n10, 321n24, 604n9 Pesah 123, 256n15, 290, 591 Pharisees, Pharisaic passim Pharisaic tradition/halakha 3n6, 17n39, 20, 24, 38, 47, 48, 50, 52, 54–56, 93, 104, 109, 110, 115, 120 138, 284, 292, 293, 398n21, 399, 525, 526, 555, 581, 583, 611, 613, 615 Pharisaic-rabbinic (tradition) 3n6, 6n20, 7, 7n1, 22–24, 26, 32, 38, 69, 87, 88, 93, 101, 107, 109–111, 120, 135, 138, 176, 317n1, 403, 546n65, 555, 591, 597, 613n59, 615 Philippi (Macedonia) 108, 217, 322–324, 322n37, 324n44, 476, 478, 478n73, 480, 480n78, 544, 545 Pluralism (Hillelite) 25, 613–619 Politeia (citizenship/constitution) 41, 41n1, 43n13, 146n16, 182 Politeuma (body of citizens) 41, 41n1, 182n60, 197, 198, 198n45, 202, 204, 205 Polygamy 84, 84–63, 84–64, 85, 438–125
823
Poor, the ~ 223–233, 248, 341, 345, 420, 432n94, 458, 458n3, 464–469, 472–473, 477–479, 568, 569 Porneia (zenut, unchastity) 26, 71n11, 73, 84, 90, 98–100, 98n113, 102, 334, 335n113, 389n25, 435, 479, 520, 570, 593n57, 594n62 Prayer, see also Tefilla, Amida; Lord’s ~ Jewish ~ 30–31, 109, 149, 261, 264, 266, 268, 268n33, 269, 269n36, 269n38, 273n56, 277, 353, 507n29, 524, 643, 651 Synagogue ~ 8n2, 39, 119n66, 217n49, 274 Community ~ 9–10, 135, 264, 269, 270, 292 ‘Short’ ~ 118, 261–277, 527, 528, 652n150 Private ~ 269–271, 270n46, 528, 528n126 Christian ~ 261, 275, 489, 507, 507n29, 643, 651 Priest, High/Chief, see High Priest Prophets (later/minor ~) 75, 79, 81, 87 Proselyte, proselytism 22, 102, 103, 108n7, 145, 146, 150, 152, 153n43, 154, 167, 169, 169n109a, 182, 182n160, 195, 197, 211–213, 284n19, 317, 325, 355, 366, 375, 419, 419n36, 428, 428n73, 430, 442, 443, 448, 449, 466, 610n43 Protestant 69, 71, 102, 223, 237, 314, 348–351, 370, 393–395, 394n4, 402, 502, 586 Proto-rabbinic 73, 283, 440, 589n41, 647 Pseudepigrapha 23, 144, 154, 176 Ptolemaic, see Index of Ancient names Purity (see also Food laws) 11, 14n29, 15n35, 17n39, 25, 43, 55, 67, 100n119, 107, 108n2, 108n4, 109, 109n11, 110, 114, 114n43, 115n48, 117n56, 117n57, 118n60, 120–123, 121n69–71, 122n77, 122n78, 129, 130, 131n24, 131n125, 133n135, 135, 135n147, 137, 244, 285n25, 420, 453n180, 492, 493, 519, 647, 648 devotional ~ 41n4, 107, 114, 115, 120, 121, 123–130, 133, 135–138, 136n150
824
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
levitical/ritual ~ 9, 112, 113, 115–117, 117n57, 119–125, 121n74, 123n80, 123n81, 132, 133, 135–138, 136n149, 136n150, 648 moral ~ 121, 122, 131–133, 131n124, 136n49, 137 spiritual ~ 117n58, 122, 131, 133, 135, 137, 138 ~ laws 7n1, 9n5, 10n11, 14n29–31, 15, 15n32–34, 16n37, 17n39, 19, 41n4, 55, 67, 100n119, 112, 116, 121, 122n75, 125n89, 127, 133, 135 Q, see Synoptic tradition (and Index of sources) Qumran (see also Index of sources) ~ community 24, 27, 45n23, 46, 46n26, 49, 49n37, 49n38, 53, 69, 73, 74, 79n37, 79n40, 85, 100, 120, 121, 128, 132, 135, 158, 182n159, 189n9, 229, 229n39, 238, 328n76, 336, 344, 344n175, 412, 415, 415n17, 422n48, 423, 436n115, 436n117, 437, 437n119– 121, 437n123, 439, 441, 447n154, 448, 449, 523, 600, 600n87, 643, 644n106 ~ documents 23, 24, 43n15, 51, 68, 72, 74–76, 84, 87, 95, 96, 97n111, 105n138, 161, 175, 182n161, 189, 194, 223, 231, 233n61, 238n12, 238n13, 250, 258, 258n22, 266, 284, 327, 327n68, 361, 363, 367, 367n90, 373, 374, 388–390, 388n20, 389n25, 406, 414, 414n14, 416–419, 417n24, 421, 426, 436n118, 440, 442n137, 443, 456, 473, 485, 486, 487n102, 507, 527, 575n66, 584n21, 588–589, 589n41, 589n44, 591, 594, 603n5, 613, 613n59, 644, 650, 654n166 ~ halakha 3n5, 4n7, 93n98, 96, 97, 101n120, 284, 329, 352, 352n27, 420–421, 613, 648 Rabbi (title) 33, 268, 290–291, 293, 518, 520, 521, 529, 529n131, 529n132, 530, 582, 582n6, 582n8, 606 Rabbinic tradition/literature passim (see also Pharisaic-Rabbinic tradition)
~ halakha 23, 28, 38, 44, 48, 50, 54, 56, 60, 74, 81n47, 93, 107, 109, 110, 112, 120, 121n70, 138, 284n20, 321n27, 346, 388, 449n161, 592n53 ~ midrash 4, 61n99, 62, 188, 236, 243, 245, 249n60, 251, 303–307, 429 ~ movement 23, 87, 275, 276, 406– 407, 493, 530, 555, 582n3, 582n8, 598, 598n78, 599, 599n79, 599n81, 646, 647 Rabbinocentrism 22f, 503, 503n10 Rabbis 3, 4, 5n16, 14n27, 15n35, 32, 45, 51, 57–61, 68, 74, 79, 80n46, 96n108, 107, 116, 119n61, 121, 121, 124, 126, 135, 137, 138, 179n148, 192, 235, 236n7, 245, 251, 266, 270, 271, 274, 276, 277, 290n53, 296, 301n13, 338, 346, 365, 374, 399, 405–407, 412, 415, 416, 427, 429–431, 439–441, 443, 449, 452, 501, 504, 506, 511n48, 521, 526, 529n131, 530, 531, 533n1, 540, 556n12, 576, 581–583, 583n10, 585– 588, 591, 591n52, 594–601, 610n45, 621, 623, 624, 634n60, 641–644, 642n96, 647, 649, 650, 655–660 Rape 56, 61 Rebellious son 59, 61 Redaction criticism 28, 533, 547n69 Reform Judaism 71, 502 Reformation (see also Protestant) 69, 101, 102, 347, 347n2, 352n25, 393, 395 Resurrection 94, 228n37, 232, 282, 294, 298, 329, 390, 408, 409, 432, 493, 552, 587, 596, 597, 598, 607, 611 Revolt/War 152, 154, 276, 646 ~ under Nero (Great ~) 42, 101, 104, 151, 160, 162, 164n86, 166n95, 180, 208–210, 216, 289, 291, 295, 377, 378n134, 379n139, 425, 428, 458, 474, 475, 483, 534, 541–544, 556, 559–566, 561n9, 563n18, 571, 572, 574–576, 578, 592n53, 605, 606, 609, 613–615, 618, 641, 648 ~ under Trajan 321–322, 510, 513, 529 ~ under Hadrian/Bar Kokhba (see also Index of Ancient names) 115n48, 133, 151–153, 166, 167, 202n68, 207, 210, 252, 494, 509–512, 509n41, 511n45, 511n47, 514, 528, 530 621
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
Rhetoric, rhetorical 42, 42n9, 54, 63–65, 63n106, 65n117, 208, 214, 253, 253n2, 267n26, 309, 328n76, 334, 338n134, 354, 372, 380, 382, 396, 396n13, 413, 440, 443, 444, 455n190, 460, 460n13, 461, 461n16, 469–473, 481, 505n19, 542n41, 552, 554n102, 560, 561, 563, 564, 565n30, 566–569, 570n40, 574n57, 578, 603n5, 612, 618, 657, 658, 660 Ritual 46, 113, 116, 132, 134, 159, 177, 244, 245, 250, 406, 414n11, 427, 428, 484, 509, 513, 522, 525, 527n119, 541, 544, 572, 653 Temple ~ 13, 13n25, 24, 48, 49n36, 51, 112, 113, 116, 125, 225, 266, 269, 269n37, 271, 284n20, 288, 306, 365n75, 376, 420, 474, 509, 509n38, 524, 528, 570, 591, 600, 613, 613n58 Purification ~ 8, 9, 18, 25, 110–113, 115n49, 117, 117n58, 120, 121, 121n73, 125, 127–129, 128n108, 132–136, 133n138, 176, 229, 230, 376, 436, 451 Roman passim ~ citizen 552n93, 553, 629 ~ empire 41, 72, 124, 192n23, 208, 211, 213, 217, 224, 261, 272, 296, 322, 348, 376, 377, 509–511, 511n45, 530–533, 535, 543, 544, 547, 547n68, 560, 571n41, 592, 592n56, 621, 625, 625n17, 626, 628, 628n33, 631, 631n45, 641, 657n176, 658, 660 ~ law 62n101, 64, 97, 197n41, 384, 384n7, 398, 547, 628, 628n32, 633n53, 635n31, 645, 659 ~ period 93, 107, 108n5, 123, 142, 147, 150, 164, 179, 202, 289n50, 540n35 Roman Catholic 69, 70n7, 71–73, 98n115, 102, 102n128, 226n25, 237n11, 347, 348, 365, 393, 394n4, 395, 465n32 ~ canon law 71, 101n120, 102n124, 402n42 Rome, churches/Christians in ~ 372, 379, 381, 382, 384, 385, 387, 390, 395, 400, 403, 472–474, 557n115, 569, 627 Rosh ha-Shana (New Year) 47
825
Sabbath 43n15, 46–53, 46n28, 52n53, 53n55, 56, 57, 100, 100n119, 103, 104, 133, 146, 179, 179n144, 232, 235, 238, 269, 270n46, 289n50, 297–302, 298n1, 298n4, 298n5, 301n14, 303n20, 304, 304n27, 305, 305n31, 307–312, 308n41, 309n45, 310n47, 319, 340, 352, 364, 365n75, 377n130, 431, 448n160, 497, 497n146, 512, 513, 518–520, 519n87, 526, 527n119, 549, 551, 606n20, 608, 608n31, 624n13, 636–638, 638n78, 641 ~ halakha 4, 4n9, 128, 298n1, 310 preservation of life on ~ 51, 51n50, 52, 303–306, 305n29, 309, 606n20 Sadducean 43n15, 50n45, 51n47, 57, 57n73, 83n56, 505n21, 546n65, 549, 554, 554n102, 555, 611, 611n48, 612, 613, 613n58 Sadducees 9, 16, 16n38, 24, 24n10, 25, 42, 42n5, 42n7, 50n39, 51, 55, 56, 62, 178, 266, 266n20, 286n29, 302n17, 319, 340, 427, 527, 527n119, 545, 546, 546n65, 552, 553, 583, 583n10, 599n84, 600, 604n6, 605, 609–611, 609n36, 612n51, 613n55, 615n65, 644, 653, 656 Samaritan 115, 115n49, 177, 178, 178n141, 216, 219, 279, 313, 432, 442n138, 559, 633, 654, 654n163 Seleucid, see list of Ancient names Sepphoris (Tsipori) 68n2, 633 Septuagint (see also Index of sources) 50, 50n41, 60, 74, 79, 81, 82, 87, 94, 98n113, 145n11, 146n13, 156, 224, 224n11, 226, 227n33, 238, 243, 245, 249, 250, 258, 327n71, 330, 333n108, 335n113, 336, 342, 358, 413, 430, 430n88, 441, 442, 470, 470n47, 471, 484, 485, 488, 551, 601n92 Sermon on the Mount 97, 104n136, 226, 232, 267, 290n53, 293, 424, 515 Sexual relations 59, 60, 100, 111, 379n140, 402, 492 ~ (mis)behaviour 54, 57, 89n80, 98, 131n125, 321, 332, 333, 335, 336, 357, 381, 402, 434, 438n125, 444, 451
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Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
Shammai, School of (see also Index of Ancient names) 11–13, 17, 17n42, 20n54, 25, 42, 53–56, 69, 70, 73–75, 82n52, 83n57, 83n59, 85–91, 88n74, 89n79, 89n80, 91n89, 99–102, 104, 104n134, 105, 110, 127, 269, 284, 287, 289, 289n46, 290, 292, 293, 319, 377–379, 378n138, 388, 389, 389n25, 425–428, 428n77, 434n104, 441, 449, 474, 483, 519, 525, 578n76, 591, 591n51, 592n54, 593n59, 594, 594n62, 598, 600, 605, 606, 606n16, 614, 616, 616n73, 617, 647, 648 R. Eliezer Shammaite (see also Index of Ancient names) 11–12, 18n24, 86, 127, 284n21, 377n131, 427, 428, 428n73, 592n54, 606n20, 616, 649 Shavuot (Pentecost, Festival of Weeks) 46, 48, 49 Sicarii 289n43, 474n57, 545, 545n63, 564, 565n30, 571, 573, 573n54, 574, 574n57, 574n59, 574n61, 575n63, 576, 577 Slaughter 284n21, 591, 592, 597, 632, 633, 653–655 Social significance / distinction 21, 105, 141, 529n131, 607 socially significant / distinct 192, 196, 415 Stoic(ism) 15n35, 58n81, 296, 328n73, 336, 336n125, 337, 338, 345, 363, 365, 365n77, 374, 385n10, 394, 445n148, 446n151, 460n10 Sukkot (Tabernacles) 46, 47, 50, 50n45, 51, 199, 199n56, 595 Sunday (festival day) 46, 49, 523, 629n37 Supersession 236, 282, 294, 512, 514, 521n96 Synagogue(s) 8n2, 31, 39, 45n22, 104, 107, 108, 108n2–5, 114–116, 114n42, 114n44, 114n45, 115n46–49, 116n51, 119, 119n66, 124, 124n84, 126, 126n98, 128n111, 135, 138, 139, 153, 153n42, 157, 171n118, 176, 179, 183, 214, 225, 226, 237, 239, 252n***, 269, 270n39, 271n49, 274, 275, 283, 286, 286n31, 301, 319–321, 319n11,
319n15, 320n17, 321n23, 324, 324n43, 325, 328n73, 345, 353, 354, 354n34, 357, 358, 361, 368, 370, 373, 375, 381, 430, 482, 495, 517, 517n79, 524, 524n114, 527n117, 528n125, 531, 611, 612, 619, 623, 624n11, 638, 642, 642n96, 651 ~ language 353, 353n34, 354, 354n34, 357, 358, 361, 368, 373, 375, 381 Synoptic ~ Gospels 45, 68n4, 71, 71n12, 176–178, 183, 184, 188, 189, 231, 302, 308, 308n40, 309n44, 401n37, 426n63, 486n97, 490, 507, 519, 594, 639 ~ tradition 51, 67, 68, 96, 97, 97n111, 103, 176, 177, 241, 245, 293, 331n91, 360, 363, 386, 403, 404, 433, 486n97, 489, 490, 519, 523n10, 635, 639, 640n89 ~ problem 105, 105n138 Syria 147n18, 153, 192, 216, 531, 553, 564, 565, 569, 660 Syrian 147, 153n46, 162, 362, 418 System, halakhic ~ 6, 25, 41–65 purity ~ 15n35, 19, 41n4, 107–139 Tanna (memorizer) 28, 36, 251n63, 398–399 Tannaim (early rabbis), Tannaic 32, 33n36, 34–36, 36n45, 38, 43n15, 46, 47n29, 86n70, 89n78, 112, 113, 121, 122, 125, 129, 132, 166, 167, 171–173, 239, 240, 240n27, 303–306, 416, 425, 439, 464, 487, 491, 495, 513, 518n80, 525, 526, 528, 540, 546, 582, 583, 587, 591, 594, 600, 632n50, 643, 649 Tannaic halakha 17, 34, 43n15, 121, 540, 583, 591 Tannaic midrash 75, 89n79, 115, 168, 169, 182n159, 193, 236n5, 240, 312, 492n133, 589n44 Tefilla (see also Prayer) 118, 119, 130n4, 268, 269n38 Temple (Jerusalem) 10, 13, 47n29, 113–115, 113n32, 114n39, 139, 144, 145, 210, 288, 420 429n80, 479n75, 480, 509n38, 512, 527, 543, 545, 592, 614n60, 658
Index of Subjects and Significant Place Names
~ ritual, see Ritual Teruma (heave offering) 8, 9, 9n6, 16, 33, 119n62, 647 Theft 57n73, 62, 62n101, 176, 381, 521, 630 Therapeuts 65, 434, 440 Thessalonika 216, 217, 322–324, 322n36, 324n44, 338, 343n172, 344, 375n126, 450 Thursday (fastday) 266, 274, 275, 523, 526, 527 Tiberian 38 Tiberias 115n48, 147n19 Tora (see also Pentateuch) 6n21, 13n25, 24, 24n5, 30, 32, 33, 38, 76, 78n34, 88n77, 96, 112n29, 116, 118, 118n60, 119, 119n63, 123, 126, 126n98, 129, 130, 138, 150, 158, 159, 162, 165, 173n130, 190n13, 227–231, 238, 270n46, 309, 312, 320, 320n19, 345, 351n18, 351n20, 352, 352n27, 353, 358, 363, 364n71, 366, 367n90, 393, 398, 399, 427, 429–431, 430n87, 447, 493, 495, 524n111, 556, 586n30, 591, 592n55, 595, 599, 599n79, 599n84, 611n48, 633, 635, 644 oral or written ~ 10n11, 22, 30, 45n20, 284n23, 393, 399n26, 427n67, 599n79, 613n59, 616n68 Trent, Council of 71, 102 Tübingen school (see also Index of Modern names, Baur) 22, 462, 465, 474n56 Twentienth century (scholarship) 220, 349, 393, 401, 405, 406, 501, 502, 505, 506 Two Ways (tractate of) 134, 416, 421, 422n55, 423–424, 487, 487n103, 507–509, 512, 522 Unchastity, see Porneia Unleavened bread, see Pesah Usha 10n11, 15, 15n33, 15n35, 18, 18n46, 19, 19n52, 272, 273, 531n139, 649n135 War (see also Revolt) 12, 53, 58, 210, 242, 276n67, 290, 310, 417n27, 422,
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423, 485, 489n117, 531n138, 539, 556n10, 560–562, 560n7, 578, 625n17 ~ on Sabbath 52, 52n53, 53, 53n55, 104, 309n45, 606n20 World ~ (First, Second) 219, 348, 502 Wednesday (fast/festival day) 46, 266, 274, 293n70, 523, 526, 527 Wisdom (books, tradition) 76, 157, 296, 333n108, 353, 374, 394, 616 Wissenschaft des Judentums 3, 3n1, 22, 279n1, 502, 502n1, 503 Women, position of 33, 44n19, 53, 56, 57, 59–61, 71, 73–75, 78, 78n29, 82, 82n55, 83, 85, 88, 89n80, 90–95, 91n88, 97, 100, 113n32, 118, 124n87, 150n30, 167, 167n97, 333, 334, 383–388, 403, 431–434, 446, 447, 543, 594 Yavne 10, 10n11, 14, 14n31, 15, 15n33, 18, 18n46, 38n63, 271, 272n51, 272n53, 273–275, 501, 528, 530n34, 533n1, 536, 538, 540n35, 556, 557n114, 582, 582n3, 582n4, 583n9, 583n10, 601n91, 605, 621, 646n117, 650n141, 651 ~ period 14n31, 15, 290n53, 530, 533, 540, 556n107, 614 Yavnean 531, 616 Yehud (Persian province) 145, 145n11, 145n12, 146, 149, 150, 154, 165 Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) 46, 47, 137, 491, 505n21, 527n119 Zeal (for the Law) 104, 216, 296, 321, 322, 362, 376, 475, 483, 550, 567–571, 575, 576 Zealot, Zealots 12, 12n21, 13, 13n25, 104, 115n48, 162, 164n86, 290n51, 295, 296, 322, 375n126, 377–379, 377n128, 378n134, 379n140, 428n75, 474, 474n58, 475, 475n59, 478, 481–483, 534n6, 559n2, 560n8, 564n20, 566n33, 572n47, 573n51, 573n54, 573n56, 574, 574n57, 574n59, 574n61, 575n63, 575n66, 576–578, 577n70, 577n71, 592n53, 592n54, 606, 606n17–19, 610n45, 648n128