A Holy People
Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series Editorial Board
Marcel J.H.M. Poorthuis, Joshua Schwartz, Freek van der Steen Advisory Board
Yvonne Friedman – Judith Frishman ‒ David Golinken Martin D. Goodman – Pieter W. van der Horst Anton W.J. Houtepen – Gerard A.M. Rouwhorst Ze’ev Safrai – Lawrence H. Schiffman Günter Stemberger
VOLUME 12
A Holy People Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Religious Communal Identity
edited by
Marcel Poorthuis & Joshua Schwartz
BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006
This book is printed on acid-free paper. The Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies Faculty of Jewish Studies Bar-Ilan University, Israel www.biu.ac.il/js/rennert/jcp Catholic Theological University of Utrecht The Netherlands www.ktu.nl Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A holy people : Jewish and Christian perspectives on religious communal identity / edited by Marcel Poorthuis & Joshua Schwartz. p. cm. — ( Jewish and Christian perspectives series, ISSN 1388-2074 ; v. 12) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-15052-8 (alk. paper) 1. Holiness—Judaism—History. 2. Holiness—Christianity—History of doctrines. 3. People of God. 4. Jews—Identity. 5. Church—Holiness. 6. Identity (Psychology)— Religious aspects—Judaism. 7. Identity (Psychology)—Religious aspects—Christianity. 8. Group identity. I. Poorthuis, Marcel, 1955– II. Schwartz, Joshua. III. Title. IV. Series. BM645.H58H65 2006 231.7’6—dc22 2006042537
ISSN 1388-2074 ISBN 90 04 15052 8 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS List of Contributors .................................................................... Editorial Statement ....................................................................
ix xi
Introduction ................................................................................
xiii
BIBLICAL PERIOD
Pancratius Beentjes ‘Holy People’: The Biblical Evidence .................................. Avraham Faust Trade, Ideology, and Boundary Maintenance in Iron Age Israelite Society ......................................................................
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POST-BIBLICAL PERIOD
Joshua Schwartz A Holy People in the Winepress: Treading the Grapes and Holiness ............................................................................ 39 Lawrence Schiffman Holiness and Sanctity in the Dead Sea Scrolls .................. 53 Gerard Rouwhorst Table Community in Early Christianity .............................. 69 Huub van de Sandt Was the Didache Community a Group Within Judaism? An Assessment on the Basis of Its Eucharistic Prayers ...... 85 Jackie Feldman ‘A City that Makes All Israel Friends’: Normative Communitas and the Struggle for Religious Legitimacy in Pilgrimages to the Second Temple ...................................... 109 Moshe Benovitz Your Neighbor is Like Yourself: A Broad Generalization with Regard to the Torah .................................................... 127
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contents MEDIEVAL PERIOD
Bat-Sheva Albert Recording the Sainthood of the Missionaries in the Carolingian Era: Typology and its Limits .......................... Daniela Müller The Cathar Community in the South of France and Its Religious Self-Definition as God’s Holy People .................. Yvonne Friedman Community Responsibility toward Its Members: The Case of Ransom of Captives ................................................ Jeffrey Woolf ‘Qehillah Qedosha’: Sacred Community in Medieval Ashkenazic Law and Culture ................................................ Yair Paz Holy Inhabitants of a Holy City: How Safed Became One of the Four Holy Cities of Eretz Israel in the 16th Century ..........................................................................
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199
217
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MODERN PERIOD
Erik Borgman The Ambivalent Role of the ‘People of God’ in Twentieth Century Catholic Theology: The Examples of Yves Congar and Edward Schillebeeckx .............................. Simon Schoon ‘Holy People’: Some Protestant Views ................................ Judith Frishman Who We Say We Are: Jewish Self-Definition in Two Modern Dutch Liberal Prayer Books .................................. Herwi Rikhof The Holiness of the Church ................................................ Yael Guter Pilgrims ‘Communitas’ in the Holy Land: The Case of Mormon Pilgrimage ................................................................ Victor Kal The Holy People among the Philosophers—a Grim Tale ..........................................................................................
263 279
307 321
337
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Alexander Even-Chen On the Holiness of the People of Israel in the Thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel .................................................. 361 Index of Names and Subjects .................................................. 379 Index of Sources ........................................................................ 386
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Website of the JCP Series www.biu.ac.il/js/rennert/jcp E-mail addresses of the contributors to this volume: Bat-Sheva Albert
[email protected] Panc Beentjes
[email protected] Moshe Benovitz
[email protected] Erik Borgman
[email protected] Alexander Even-Chen
[email protected] Avi Faust
[email protected] Jacky Feldman
[email protected] Yvonne Friedman
yf
[email protected] Judith Frishman
[email protected] Yael Guter
[email protected] Victor Kal
[email protected] Daniela Müller
[email protected] Yair Paz
[email protected] Marcel Poorthuis
[email protected] Herwi Rikhof
[email protected] Gerard Rouwhorst
[email protected] Huub van de Sandt
[email protected] Lawrence Schiffman
schiff
[email protected] Simon Schoon
[email protected] Joshua Schwartz
[email protected] Jeffrey Woolf
[email protected] EDITORIAL STATEMENT Judaism and Christianity share much of a heritage. There has been a good deal of interest of late in this phenomenon, examining both this common heritage, as well as the elements unique to each religion. There has, however, been no systematic attempt to present findings relative to both Jewish and Christian tradition to a broad audience of scholars. It is the purpose of the proposed series to do just that. Jewish and Christian Perspectives will publish studies that are relevant to both Christianity and Judaism. The series will include monographs and congress volumes relating to the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, the Second Temple period, the Judaeo-Christian polemic (from Ancient until Modern Times), rabbinic literature relevant to Christianity, as well as Patristics, Medieval Studies and the Modern Period. Special interest will be paid to the interaction between the religions throughout the ages. Historical, exegetical, philosophical, and theological studies are welcomed as well as studies focusing on sociological and anthropological issues common to both religions, including archaeology. Detailed information can be obtained at: www.biu.ac.il/js/rennert/jcp
INTRODUCTION A HOLY PEOPLE JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES ON RELIGIOUS COMMUNAL IDENTITY
The interdisciplinary enterprise of Jewish and Christian perspectives aims at an interplay between historical studies and actual reflections, based on the conviction that historical studies offer food for thought regarding contemporary issues. In keeping with this, the editors of this volume are particularly pleased to include a large section relating to the modern period. Indeed, the very issue of studying a holy people, a holy community and other religious self-definitions in Jewish and Christian tradition, call for such. The obvious question of many in the modern world as to whether this attribute of the ‘holiness’ of the religious community allows for acknowledgement of authentic religion outside his or her religious community, deserves an honest answer and well-documented study. Moreover, modern man or woman cannot help but think that the claim of holiness easily intertwines with claims of power, whether by rivalling groups within the religious community, by groups divided along gender lines, or on the level of territorial claims. The contributions spanning the modern period deal with different religious perspectives. Yael Guter goes outside the Jewish and Christian tradition to study the Mormon perspective on religious community, exemplified in pilgrimage to ‘Zion’, a concept grounded in Jewish-Christian thought. Pilgrimage is a window of opportunity to experience communitas, a deep existential experience of the merging of natures and consciousnesses. The pilgrimage activities—hymn singing, testimony meetings, bus activities, all within the open, informal spirit of the group—are not the ‘miraculous’ expressions of the communitas that must inevitably occur on pilgrimage. These activities can ‘work’ to make the voyage ‘the significant lifetime experience’ that it is for many, because the sense of communality is rooted in Mormon ideology. Although they hail from various localities, Mormon pilgrims share a common
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religious ideology which overcomes differences of geography and location. The experience of the pilgrimage appears to be a vital factor in establishing a religious community, whereas the commercial aspect of visiting tourist attractions tends to break down that community. The generally Jewish perspective of the tour guides conflicts with the Mormon spirituality of the land, but this does not lead to dissent. However, the Christian-Mormon interest in the Holy Land does not tie in with the actual Christian presence or Christian churches there and hence leads to a certain ‘antiquating’ of the Christian presence in Israel or relating to them in a museum-like manner. Philosopher Victor Kal demonstrates how it was the ethnic aspect of Judaism that bothered Western philosophy in particular. Philosophers rejected the notion of election and of nation, which is implied in the designation of ‘holy people’, and associated themselves with antiSemitic notions in support of their opinions. The German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig has been a distinct thinker to give Judaism its due without minimizing the ethnic element. Judith Frishman analyzes the new version of the Dutch LiberalJewish Prayerbook in order to assess the self-definition of this particular group of believers, which includes some of those on the periphery such as women who have not been able to become pregnant or who have given birth to a stillborn baby, adoptive parents, Jewish men married to non-Jews, and ‘do-it-yourselfers’ or creative liturgists who follow instructions for composing their zeved habat ceremony. It also includes converts, the handicapped, retired and ill. However, one does not find there those who menstruate, experience menopause or are gay. The work still envisions God in the abstract and in the masculine, referring to ‘Him’ as being Eternal and denying ‘Him’ vengeance. Those who pray from this siddur identify simultaneously with both Holland and Israel, singing with equal conviction (or equal indifference) both the Hatikvah and the Wilhelmus, the Dutch national anthem. The prayerbook also reflects the fact that those who use it and/or their (grand)children have experienced war. Shifting to the Catholic perspective, the study of Herwi Rikhof refers to the impressive moment when Pope John Paul II stood before the Western Wall as a starting point for his reflection on the holiness of the Church. What does it mean for a holy Church to ask for forgiveness? Remaining for a moment in the study of the Catholic realm, the famous progressive Dutch theologian Edward Schillebeeckx reflected
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on the notion of People of God, coming to the conclusion that ethnic affiliation cannot be conclusive. But Erik Borgman wonders in what way this approach differs from the centuries old Christian supersessionist theology that robbed the Jewish people of the dignity of being God’s people. Some Protestant theologians seem to be more willing to grant the Jewish people the right of being the ‘first born’ as a chosen people. Simon Schoon analyses the writings of many of these theologians and confronts them with the question as to what meaning the creedal formula of the Church being one, holy, catholic and apostolic still can have in the light of this new awareness. Alexander Even-Chen quotes theologian-philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel to the effect that no particular religion has a monopoly on holiness. The dignity of man created in God’s image is the authentic source of holiness. This truly liberating Jewish perspective, while being open to many questions does seem to root holiness firmly in a humane perspective. Many similar motifs to those mentioned above are found in the studies dealing with the earlier periods. Regarding the Biblical period, exegete Panc Beentjes, in his thorough analysis of the Biblical concept of ‘holy people’, argues that the adjective ‘holy’ as part of the collocation ‘holy people’ reflects the Exilic and post-Exilic periods. The term does not refer to the people’s ethical standards, nor to its morality or piety, but to its special and privileged status, which is completely owing to God’s initiative. Since the Exilic/post-Exilic notion of ‘holy people’ has been transferred exclusively to narratives enacted at Mount Sinai and in the wilderness beyond the Jordan, the concept is given a primeval status. The Books of Wisdom more or less adopted the notion ‘holy people’ as it was used in the Hebrew Bible, namely referring to Israel as opposed to Egypt. The term holy people occurs only once in the New Testament, in the First Letter of Peter. There the collocation ‘holy people’ is applied to the oppressed Christian communities in Asia Minor, without excluding Jews, however, and calls on all of them to join the community of those who have faith in Jesus Christ. Avi Faust delves into the material culture of the Land of Israel to discover that there is a correlation between the absence of imported pottery and purity rules. The avoidance of imported pottery should be viewed as part of Israel’s boundary maintenance during the Iron
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Age, playing a role in the maintaining a separate (holy) identity, even when the expression itself had not yet been coined. The metaphor of the winepress in Jewish and Christian sources, indicating God’s judgment, appears to be a very apt theme for studying the concept of ‘holy people’, for it serves many different purposes. Jewish texts consign Gentiles to the divine winepress, Christian texts do the same, but sometimes put Jews in the press instead of Gentiles, as Joshua Schwartz demonstrates. Sometimes all of humanity end up in the winepress. The consequences of this metaphor regarding issues of tolerance and of exclusiveness are quite intriguing. Lawrence Schiffman discusses holiness and sanctity in the Dead Sea Scrolls and demonstrates how in the Qumran community, the group ideal of holiness and holiness as a geographical category (temple, city, land) exist side by side to create mutual tensions. Two contributions on the Didache, an important document of the early Christianity, complement one another. Gerard Rouwhorst discusses table community in Early Christianity and shows how table customs could serve as boundary markers between the holy Christian community and the surrounding population. Huub van de Sandt relates to the origins of the Didache and wonders whether the Didache Community could be seen as a group within Judaism? Its so-called ‘Eucharistic Prayers’ that belong to the oldest Christian prayers might shed light upon this important matter. Remaining in the period of the Second Temple, Jacky Feldman demonstrates how ritual barriers, which confirmed the superior position of the priests of the Jerusalem Temple as sole mediators of the divine, were swept away or rendered more flexible by the flow of festival pilgrims, who sought to appear as equals to the priests ‘before the Lord’. Moshe Benovitz deals with the only too familiar injunction ‘to love your neighbor as yourself ’. He demonstrates how the Rabbis develop this concept into two fundamentally different views on the non-Jew. Although both views include Gentiles in the laws of the Torah, one view aims at integration with the non-Jews becoming ‘like’ Israelites themselves. The other view argues that the Torah was written, ab initio, for all mankind and hence addressed the nonJews from the outset. In three contributions spanning the Medieval period, the Cathar and the Jewish experience comes to the fore. Daniela Müller studies the way the Cathars used to designate themselves, in distinction to the
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designations ‘Cathar’ and ‘Albigense’ used by their opponents. The strongly antagonistic attitude of the Cathars to the Hebrew Bible and its God did not lead them to strong anti-Jewish sentiments directed to existing Jewish communities. Their self-designation did not intend to rob Judaism of its title, as the Church did with the title of ‘Verus Israel’ (the true Israel), but was more directed to ‘goodness’ as opposed to mere justice. They were convinced that the real holy, apostolic church could be found only among themselves, not in the Catholic church. Yvonne Friedman notes a remarkable difference between Jewish and Christian communities regarding their responsibility towards members. Using as an example the issue of the ransom of captives in medieval Christianity and Judaism, Friedman shows that Jewish communities placed much more stress upon the importance of freeing co-religionists than Christian communities did. Jeffrey Woolf traces the development of the Jewish self-designation ‘Qehillah Qedosha’ (Sacred Community), in medieval Europe, and especially in Ashkenazic law and culture. Whether there is an interrupted chain between this medieval concept and the much earlier Talmudic self-understanding of Judaism remains a bone of contention: influence of the Medieval church with its triumphant claim of holiness and truth upon the forming of a similar concept within Judaism should be considered as well. The landscape of Safed, a city famous for its mystical aura, was bathed in sanctity from the 16th century onwards, as we learn from Yair Paz. The mountains and valleys were transformed into a sacred decor in order to form a holy community for the ‘mystical’ inhabitants of the city. Possibly the famous Sabbat hymn Lekha Dodi can be connected to precisely this holy landscape. Bat-Sheva Albert examines the subject of the sainthood of missionaries as it was seen by a number of hagiographers. Although it might appear that these saintly missionaries share many characteristics, a closer look at the sources reveals that their claims to sainthood were often based on individuality and not only on a topos. These historical vicissitudes make clear that interpretations and reinterpretations of the concept of ‘a holy people’ cannot be understood apart from their historical context. Holiness as a means to rob the other of his or her religious identity is no less an historical possibility than holiness understood as respect for the other, the stranger, the marginal member of society. The idea of God as the ultimate
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source of holiness serves in the philosophy of Heschel as a warning against all man-made claims of holiness that must unavoidably lead to power and exclusion, if not worse. As our modern period displays an encounter of cultures and religions on an unprecedented scale, the debate over holiness in all its ramifications becomes one of the vital issues for today. Hopefully this volume is a modest contribution to that debate. Marcel Poorthuis Joshua Schwartz
BIBLICAL PERIOD
‘HOLY PEOPLE’: THE BIBLICAL EVIDENCE Pancratius C. Beentjes Catholic Theological University of Utrecht, The Netherlands Dealing with the notion of ‘holy people’, one is struck in the first place by the few occurrences of this expression in the Hebrew Bible, since the collocation ‘holy people’ as such is found only six times. And secondly, in respect to the distribution of this collocation over the Hebrew Bible, one should take note that the expression ‘holy people’ is merely restricted to the Pentateuch. Outside the Hebrew Bible, the collocation ‘holy people’ is found another two times in Biblical literature: one time in the so-called ‘deuterocanonical literature’ (Wisd 17:2) and one time in the New Testament (1 Pet 2:9). With a fivefold occurrence of am kadosh (‘holy people’), the Book of Deuteronomy is to be considered the key witness for an investigation into both the historical and theological impact of this notion. The analysis of these passages (Deut 7:6; 14:2, 21; 26:19; 28:9) to some extent seems to be complicated by Ex 19:5–6, which is the only remaining passage in which the notion ‘holy people’ is also found, be it in a different wording ( goy kadosh). An investigation into collocations such as am hakkodesh (‘people of the sanctuary’; Isa 62:12), am kodshekha (‘people of your sanctuary/ holiness’; Isa 63:18), am k edoshim (‘people of saints’; Dan 8:24), am kodesh (‘people of holiness’; Dan. 12:7), and k ehal k edoshim (‘assembled holy ones’; Ps 89:6) is beyond the scope of this contribution. We should now like to have a look at the Biblical evidence relating to the expression ‘holy people’. Since on a previous occasion, Baruch Schwartz has so splendidly treated the concept of Holiness, it is not my task to repeat here in my own words what he did so well in his lucid exposition. The Notion ‘Holy People’ in the Book of Deuteronomy A close reading of Deut 7:6 and its context reveals several important aspects which can more precisely define the implications of
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‘holy’. Firstly, the qualification ‘holy people’ is modified by an apposition: ‘to the Lord, your God’. ‘Holy’ turns out to be a quality, which is there because of God. ‘Holy’ and ‘holiness’ have nothing to do here with ethical standards (contra Rücker); the notion ‘holy’ does not refer to ‘intrinsic morality or piety’ (Schwartz, 49). Secondly, as the sequel to this highly theological statement has been formulated asyndetically, the second half of Deut 7:6 can therefore be considered to offer the explanation of the first half: ‘the Lord, your God, has chosen you to be for Him the people of his own possession . . .’ (Rendtorff, 27–28). ‘Holy people’ (am kadosh) parallel ‘people of His own possession’ (am s egulla). Both 1 Chr 29:3 and Qoh 2:8 are solid proof that the word s egulla is a special term to denote a king’s private property set-aside for special occasions or reasons. The word s egulla is found in the Hebrew Bible six more times: Ex 19:6; Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Mal 3:17; Ps 135:4. Contrary to other nations, Israel is the Lord’s private nation/possession. This concept is reinforced by the use of the verb bahar (‘to choose’) that functions as a bridge between both notions (am kadosh and am s egulla). It can hardly be coincidence that the verb bahar together with s egulla is also found in Deut 7:6; 14:2; Mal 3:17; Ps 135:4. Thanks to God’s initiative (bahar) Israel receives a special status. In order to be God’s private property, Israel was separated by God from the other nations. ‘Israel’s holiness is the very fact of its election, . . . an expression of privileged status’ (Schwartz, 58–59). I do not agree with W. von Soden who states ‘that outside Israel the concept of a “people” is totally absent from the ancient Near East’ (Lipi…ski, 173).1 The two aspects that are so constitutive for Deut 7:6—God’s initiative and Israel’s special status—are characteristic of the entire passage (Deut 7:1–6). The gift of the land and the expulsion of seven numerous and powerful nations is merely God’s work (Deut 7:1–2a). Any contact with these nations by Israel is strictly forbidden, because they will draw it away from the Lord to serve other gods (Deut 7:2b–4) (Kugel, 21–24). Israel’s special status is characterized by a
1 The original German text to which von Soden refers reads: ‘Zum Sprachgebrauch im Alten Orient selbst muß schon hier bemerkt werden, daß nur Israel einen eindeutigen Volksbegriff ausgebildet hat, der durch seine Geschichte bestimmt ist’ (von Soden, 13).
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multitude of antitheses: ‘numerous’ (7:1b)/‘not numerous’ (7:7a); ‘powerful’ (7:1b)/‘small’ (7:7b). Other important strings are: ‘powerful nations’ (7:1b)/‘the smallest of all nations’ (7:7b); ‘God’s strong hand’/‘Pharao’s hand’ (7:8). In order to prevent God, who in his anger will destroy those who serve other gods, Israel is ordered to destroy all cultic objects of those nations (Deut 7:5). The main theme of Deut 7:1–6—not to mingle with any native people and its cultic practices—is explicitly brought to the fore in Deuteronomy 14. The phrase ‘for a holy people are you to the Lord, your God’ not only is an important theological statement, it also is a dominant element relating to the structure of this chapter, since it is a statement that is found both at the opening and at the end of this chapter (Deut 14:2, 21). In the opening line, which precedes the sentence relating to ‘holy people’, we find a particular statement: Deut 14:1
(1) banim
(2) attem
(3) l ejhwh
(4) eloheykhem
Children are you to the Lord, your God (Deut 14:1).
The component parts of this formula have been grouped in a similar way as the subsequent ‘holy people’-sentences in 14:2 and 21: Deut 14:2, 21
(1) am kadosh
(2) attà
(3) l ejhwh
(4) eloheykha
You are a people holy to the LORD, your God (Rendtorff, 28–29).
Since a formula identical to Deut 14:1 is found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, it is not far-fetched, therefore, to infer that this phrase has deliberately been created to put it on a parallel with the subsequent am kadosh-formulae. It may be noted in passing that Deut 14:1 has been translated and interpreted in quite different ways. Whereas the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Syriac have an indicative mood (‘Children are you . . .’), the Vulgate has taken it as an imperative: ‘filii estote Domini Dei vestri’ (‘Be children of the LORD, your God’). In Targum Pseudo-Yonathan (Yerushalmi I) the purport of the Hebrew text has changed into a metaphor: ‘You are like beloved children before the Lord, your God’. The next am kadosh-formula is found in Deut 26:19. It is part of the final exhortation (Deut 26:16–19), which not only concludes the law section (Deut 12–26), but also functions as the conclusion of the extensive second speech by Moses (Deut 5:1–26:19). The pericope opens with an exhortation ‘to observe the statutes and laws with all
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heart and soul’ (Deut 26:16), a phrase that reminds of both Deut 12:1 and Deut 5:1, and undoubtedly creates a twofold inclusion. The subsequent verses (Deut 26:17–19) are fascinating in many respects, both in content and structure (Rendtorff, 29–31). The first thing that draws the reader’s attention is the extraordinary verbal form of amar (hiph.) in v. 17a and v. 18a, which is used only here in the Hebrew Bible. Though quite a few scholars support the rendering ‘to proclaim’ (HAL, 64), both for logical and theological reasons it would be more advisable to join Vriezen’s point of view and to render this causative form as: ‘to confirm explicitly what someone says’ (Vriezen, 208). So here the translation would be ‘You have agreed this day to the declaration of the Lord that . . .’, and in v. 18 ‘the Lord has agreed this day to your declaration that . . .’ The translation is somewhat awkward, however, and apart from following the normal significance of the Hiphil it has in its favour only the point that the phrases in vv. 18f. ‘as he has promised you’ and ‘as he has spoken’ are perhaps more suitable in a declaration of Israel rather than in one of Yahweh. Whatever translation is adopted, each declaration refers to the obligations undertaken by both parties to the covenant, and the reference is to a solemn legal act whereby the covenant is agreed (Mayes, 339).
In view of our theme, however, it is not the extraordinary verbal forms of amar (Hiph.) to which attention must be primarily paid. First of all, we need to look at the main structure of the pericope and the content of its constitutive elements. As far as the latter category is concerned, two times the formula ka"asher dibber (‘as he has spoken’) is found. In v. 18, it is preceded by the sentence lihyot lo l eam s egulla (‘to be for him a nation of special possession’), in v. 19 it refers to the phrase w elihjot ekha am kadosh ljhwh eloheykha (‘so that you will be a holy nation to the Lord, your God’). Both statements have appeared earlier in the Book of Deuteronomy (7:6; 14:2, 21) and the formula ka"asher dibber has the function to remind the reader of that. The same formula, however, has still another function: it granted a divine status to what has been said (Labuschagne, 1985, 116–117). Along with the two ‘old’ statements (lihyot lo l eam s egulla and w elihjot ekha am kadosh ljhwh eloheykha), which are attended by the formula ka"asher dibber, the pericope presents two ‘new’ statements: lihyot l ekha lelohim (‘to be your God’; v. 17) and ul etitt ekha elyon al kol haggoyim (‘to appoint you high above all nations’; v. 19). The distribution of these four statements follows a certain pattern: new – old – new – old.
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In the formulae described so far (Deut 7:6; 14:2, 21), all the time it is Israel that was the centre of interest. In Deut 26:17, however, God himself is included in something that appears to be a treaty context, but factually is not. For both v. 17 and vv. 18–19 embodies God’s endeavours towards Israel. Israel’s response and achievement to this can only be to obey his statutes and laws (vv. 17b, 18b). That Israel’s special position is completely due to God’s initiative is accentuated in a fine way by the opening of v. 19: ‘He will set you high above all nations that he has made, in praise and in fame and in honour’. Though the phrase ‘in praise and in fame and in honour’ (v. 19) bears a remarkable resemblance to Jer 13:11 and 33:9, one should however give particular notice to the grammar of Deut 26:19, since the basic grammatical construction here is natan NN l e (‘to appoint someone to something’) just as is the case in Zeph 3:20. As a consequence, the phrase ‘in praise and in fame and in honour’ in Deut 26:19 refers to Israel, as is also demonstrated by the second half of this verse. In Jer 13:11 and 33:9 the phrase has a direct bearing on God. The last occurrence of the expression ‘holy people’ in the Book of Deuteronomy is found in Deut 28:9. In the present context there is a direct link to Deut 26:16–19, mainly because the marked characteristic natan elyon al goyim (‘to set high above the nations’) is also found in Deut 26:19 and nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Deut 28:9 belongs to a section (Deut 28:1–14)—in fact being one immense apodosis dependent upon v. 1—which is a catalogue of blessings that Israel will receive if its people faithfully obey the Lord by diligently observing all his commandments. The expression ‘holy people’ in Deut 28:9 is part of an uncommon formula with the verb qum (hiph.): ‘The Lord will establish you as his holy people . . .’. The same combination is only found in Deut 29:12 [13], ‘that He may establish you this day as his people’, and is followed by a number of important theological statements: (1) ‘He will be your God’, (2) ‘as he promised you’, (3) ‘and as he swore to your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’. With this passage in mind, one can understand why the Septuagint in Deut 28:9 added some words (to›w patrãsin sou—‘to your forefathers’), since almost everywhere in the Book of Deuteronomy God swears to the patriarchs. Far most of the occurrences refer to the gift of the land (Deut 1:8, 35; 6:10, 23; 7:12; 8:1; 9:5; 10:11; 11:9, 21; 19:8; 26:3, 15; 28:11; 30:20; 31:21, 23; 34:4). The most plausible inference would be to consider the phrase ‘as He
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swore to you’ (Deut 28:9) as referring to the important ‘treaty-like’ passage of Deut 26:16–19 (Lohfink, 1969, 533–534; 1990, 233–234). In Deut 28:10, the notion ‘holy people’ of v. 9 takes on a new aspect, since it is defined by the expression ‘to be called by the name of . . .’, which emphasizes someone’s ownership (2 Sam 12:28; Isa 63:19). If Israel keep the commandments of the Lord and conform to His ways, then Israel will be favoured as His very own. The nations will become aware of God’s special relationship with His people, and they shall go in fear of Israel. The Notion ‘Holy People’ in Exodus 19:6 It is beyond doubt that in an overview of Biblical texts dealing with the notion ‘holy people’ special attention must be paid to Ex 19:6, firstly, because a different wording ( goy kadosh) has been used here and, secondly, since this notion is preceded by the collocation mamlekhet kohanim, ‘kingdom of priests’ or ‘priestly kingdom’ (Fohrer). It is unfeasible even to try to reproduce the immense literature on this specific topic. For that, the reader is referred to the detailed study of Jo Bailey Wells, published some years ago, although we do not necessarily agree with her approach and all of her conclusions. It may be wondered, e.g., why she feels so confident that all ‘holy people’ texts in the Book of Deuteronomy ‘take their lead from the material in Exodus 19’, without even to provide the reader with some pieces of evidence (Bailey Wells, 52–53). As compared to the ‘holy people’ passages in the Book of Deuteronomy, the first thing that strikes the eye in Ex 19:6 is that the pericope is presented in direct speech. As opposed to the setting of the texts in Deuteronomy, which all have been framed in a retrospective view and are said by Moses, in Ex 19:3–6 it is God Himself who commissions Moses to address the divine words to Israel. The passage opens and closes by similar instructions to Moses, the final words of which are identical, thus forming an inclusion: Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the children of Israel (v. 3b); These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel (v. 6b).
Within this frame, an emphatic moment has been created three times: attem (‘you’, v. 4), w eatta (‘and now’, v. 5), w eattem (‘and/but
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you’, v. 6). Each of these introduces an important phase of the relationship between God and Israel: 1. God has beaten Egypt, carried Israel on eagles’ wings and brought it to Him, to Mount Sinai (v. 4); 2. Israel has experienced God’s care and is now invited to enter into a more special relationship (Rendtorff, 31–33). This, however, calls for obedience, namely to listen to God and observe His covenant (v. 5ab); 3. If Israel complies with these demands, it will be given a special status, which has been embodied in the famous words w eattem tihyu li mamlekhet kohanim w egoy kadosh (‘you will be My priestly kingdom and holy nation’; v. 6a). In the Septuagint version of Ex 23:22, the lines of Ex 19:5–6 are almost literally repeated. In my view, one of the main problems dealing with the interpretation of Ex 19:6a arises when this famous phrase is disconnected from the preceding statement of v. 5c. If v. 5c (‘The whole earth is mine’) would be read in close connection with v. 6a, an important theological pattern can be discerned. For in that case it is emphasized that Israel’s existence is not in splendid isolation, but is explicitly related to the other nations and the whole earth (Mosis). From God’s perspective, a special place among the nations is planned for Israel: ‘you will be My priestly kingdom and My holy people’. There has been, and still is, much discussion as to why the word goy is used here. In my view, there are three options, which could be valid at the same time. First, both on the literary and on the theological level, no nation yet exists, as the covenant is still to come and will be established on Mount Sinai and not before Ex 24:3–8. Second, on the semantic level, goy and mamlekhet is a common word pair—1 Sam 8:20; 1 Kgs 18:10; 2 Chr 32:15; Pss 46:7; 105:13; Isa 13:4; 60:12; Jer 1:10; 18:7; Ez 37:22; Dan 8:22; Zeph 3:8—(Cody, 3) and this usage seems to be confirmed indirectly by the occurrence of ha'ammim in v. 5b (Hulst; Clements; Lipi…ski). Third, the notion goy might be chosen to link this passage explicitly to God’s promises to Abraham (Gen 12:2–4; 18:18; 22:18), in which goy is unmistakeably the most important catchword.
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pancratius beentjes ‘Holy People’: Some Historical Remarks
1. Following the fall of Samaria in 723 bce, both refugees from the North and religious circles in Judah began to reflect more and more on their identity as a people and on their position and relationship to God. 2. During the period in which Deuteronomy came into existence, vassal treaties were frequently used. This is especially true regarding Esarhaddon, who during his reign (681–669 bce) made many treaties with his vassals (Wiseman; Borger). 3. The notion of election most probably dates from the time when lack of identity and humiliation were experienced most intensively, i.e. shortly before and during the Babylonian exile (Braulik, 64). The way in which the verb bahar + b e is used supports this view, since all the passages in which God is the agent of bahar (‘to choose’) and Israel is the object are found only in Deuteronomistic and Deutero-Isaian texts: Deut 4:37; 7:6, 7; 10:15; 14:2; 1 Kgs 3:8; Jer 33:24; Isa 14:1; 41:8, 9; 43:10; 44:1, 2; 49:7; Ez 20:5; Pss 33:12; 78:68 (Weinfeld, 327; Labuschagne 1987, 119). In the Hebrew Bible, the verb bahar is used 146 times. Of this total, God is the agent 98 times (= 67%) of which 29 occurrences are found in the Book of Deuteronomy and 18 occurrences in 1–2 Chronicles (Wildberger, 277). This is solid proof enough that the theme of divine election was in the centre of attention those days. 4. Having the crucial notion ‘holy people’ at Mount Sinai (Ex 19:3–8), before the covenant is established, results in giving this concept a primeval status, which is also emphasized by phrasing these words as direct divine speech. ‘Holy People’ in the Book of Wisdom In deuterocanonical literature, the collocation ‘holy people’ is found only once, to wit in the Book of Wisdom (17:1–2): Great and inexplicable are your judgments; therefore did untrained minds go astray. For though lawless men thought to lord it over a holy people, themselves shackled by darkness and captives of the long night, they lay locked under their roofs, fugitives from eternal providence (Winston, 302).
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These lines are found at the opening of the fifth diptych or antithesis (17:1–18:4) in which the darkness that surrounds the Egyptians is set in contrast to the fiery pillar, which leads Israel through the wilderness (Mazzinghi; Cheon, 68–76; McGlynn, 200–206; SchwenkBressler, 228–252). The darkness is not only the physical darkness of Ex 10:21–23 to which the author alludes, but is also a metaphor of a state of mind (épa¤deutoi, v. 1) and of a situation of lawlessness (ênomoi, v. 2). ‘Lawless men’ are opposed to ‘a holy people’ (¶ynow ëgion, v. 2), a collocation that in the Greek Bible is only found in Ex 19:6. Though ¶ynow ëgion in Wisd 17:2 is without an article, the rendering in quite a few Bible translations (e.g. Traduction Œcuménique de la Bible, Bible de Jérusalem, Einheitsübersetzung, Revised English Bible), however, is as if there were a definite article in the Greek. There is a difference of perspective whether one renders ‘a holy people’ or ‘the holy people’. The latter rendering is only valid from the perspective of Israel itself. It may, therefore, be wondered why the author of the Book of Wisdom did not use the definite article here. So doing, he at least left scope for another, more broader, approach. The mainly pagan audience, among whom he lived in Egypt, most probably could or would not recognize that Israel was the holy nation, but should have understand that Israel is a holy people (Hübner, 204 n.147). As opposed to those who in an extensive exposition (Wisd 17:2–21) are described as victims of all kinds of darkness and fear for which they had themselves to blame, Israel in 18:1–4 is brought to the fore as ‘your holy ones’ (˜sioi sou, v. 1), as ‘your sons’ (v. 4), ‘through whom the imperishable light of the Law was to be given to the world’ (REB). Winston offers an impressive list of both Jewish-Hellenistic and Rabbinic texts in which Israel’s obligation to spread Torah’s teachings to the gentile nations is put forward (Winston, 311–312). ‘Holy People’ in 1 Peter As compared to the other passages in which the notion ‘holy people’ is found, it is without saying that this concept received a totally new, or at least additional, meaning in the First Letter of Peter (Baily Wells, 208–240). First of all, let us have a look at the text. 4
So come to him, the living stone which was rejected by men but chosen by God and of great worth to him. 5 You also, as living stones,
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pancratius beentjes must be build up into a spiritual temple, and form a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For you will find in Scripture: I am laying in Zion a chosen cornerstone of great worth. Whoever has faith in it will not be put to shame. 7 So for you who have faith it has great worth; but for those who have no faith ‘the stone which the builders rejected has become the corner-stone’, 8 and also ‘a stone to trip over, a rock to stumble against’. They trip because they refuse to believe the word; this is the fate appointed for them. 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a dedicated nation, a people claimed by God for his own, to proclaim the glorious deeds of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. 10 Once you were not a people at all; but now you are God’s people. Once you were outside his mercy; but now you are outside no longer. (1 Pet 2:4–10, REB).
Although the notion ‘priesthood’ (flerãteuma) is found twice in this passage (2:5, 9), it is certainly not the main focus of this paraenetic passage. It is neither my intention, nor my task to discuss here the question of the priesthood of all believers as opposed to the priesthood of every believer, since this is absolutely not what the author of 1 Peter is aiming at.2 The constitutive elements of the pericope are: l¤yow (‘stone’)— §klektÒw (‘elected’, ‘chosen’)—¶ntimow (‘of great worth’)—épodokimãzv— (‘to reject as unworthy’). Referring to Christ, who is metaphorically presented as ‘a living stone’ rejected by men, but elected by God, the audience in Asia Minor is urged to be ‘living stones’ themselves with which a spiritual house can be built up (2:4–5). This exhortation is underlined by several scriptural quotations, which in 2:6–8 deal with the imagery of the stone that is elected/rejected (Isa 28:16; Ps 118:22; Isa 8:14) and in 2:9–10 with vocabulary that relates to nation and people (Isa 43:20b–21; Ex 19:6; Hos 1:6, 9; 2:1, 3, 25). The quotation from Isa 28:16 in 1 Pet 2:6 has also the notion pisteÊv (‘to believe’), which offers the opportunity to introduce the opposition between pisteÊv (‘to believe’) and êpist°v (‘to disbelieve’) in 1 Pet 2:7. In 1 Pet 2:9, the author has created a magnificent, but rather complicated piece of intertextuality. With the help of three qualifications
2 For an overview of the ‘Nachgeschichte’ of 1 Pet 2:5–9, Brox, 108–110. Regarding ecclesiological consequences of 1 Pet 2:5–9, see § 2.4 of the contribution by S. Schoon in this volume.
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(‘holy people’, ‘royal priesthood’, ‘dedicated nation’) he explicitly harks back to Ex 19:6. At the same time, however, he drastically transforms the meaning of that text. It is not any longer the people at Mount Sinai that he has in mind here, but those who put their belief in Jesus Christ. Moreover, the author of 1 Pet 2:9 has intertwined the qualifications of Ex 19:6, referring them to the Christian communities of Asia Minor, with a firm allusion to Isa 43:20b–21 according to the Septuagint: g°now mou tÚ §klektÒn, laÒn mou, ˜n periepoihsãmhn tåw éretãw mou dihge›syai (‘My chosen race, My people that I acquired to proclaim My praises’). When we put the Greek text of 1 Pet 2:9 alongside, the intertextual relationship is at hand: g°now §klektÒn, bas¤leion ·erateuma, ¶ynow ëgion, laÚw §iw peripo¤hsin, ˜pvw tåw éretåw §jagge¤lhte—‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a dedicated nation, a people claimed by God for His own, to proclaim the glorious deeds of Him’. The argument that bas¤leion must be interpreted as a noun, and not as an adjective, since the other combinations have the adjectives behind the nouns, in my view is not valid, because the author of 1 Peter is merely quoting here the Greek text of Ex 19:6 (Brox, 103–104; Bailey Wells, 225 n. 67). The second half of 1 Pet 2:9, in which the author emphasizes that God ‘has called the community out of darkness into his marvellous light’, in my view could be considered an allusion to Wisd 18:4, the more as the contrast between darkness and light is the main theme of the fifth antithesis (Wisd 17:1–18:4). There is no reason whatsoever to assume that the people of Israel is excluded here. The abundant use of Old Testament quotations in 1 Peter is solid proof enough to take the position that the author—at least implicitly—also invites Jews to have faith in Jesus Christ. Conclusions The notion ‘holy people’, which in the Hebrew Bible is only found in Exodus and Deuteronomy, is a concept originating from the exilic and/or early post-exilic period when Israel’s identity and continuance were jeopardized. Describing themselves as ‘holy people’, Israel gave expression to its believe to be God’s private nation and possession. The adjective ‘holy’ as part of the collocation ‘holy people’ does not refer to the people’s ethical standards, neither to its morality
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or piety, but to its special and privileged status, which is completely owing to God’s initiative. As the exilic/post-exilic notion ‘holy people’ has exclusively been transferred to narratives that are enacted at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19) and in the wilderness beyond the Jordan (Deuteronomy), the concept is given a primeval status, which was augmented by the authority of Moses. The Book of Wisdom more or less adopted the notion ‘holy people’ as being used in the Hebrew Bible, namely referring to Israel as opposed to Egypt. In the First Letter of Peter, however, the collocation ‘holy people’ is applied to the oppressed Christian communities in Asia Minor, without excluding Jews, however, to join the community of those who have faith in Jesus Christ. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bailey Wells, J., God’s Holy People: A Theme in Biblical Theology ( JSOTSS 305), Sheffield 2000. Borger, R., ‘Assyrische Staatsverträge’, in: O. Kaiser (ed.), Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments, vol. I, Gütersloh 1983, 158–176. Braulik, G., Deuteronomium 1–16,17 (Neue Echter Bibel, Lieferung 15), Würzburg 1986. Brox, N., Der erste Petrusbrief (EKK XXI), Neukirchen 1979. Cheon, S., The Exodus Story in the Wisdom of Solomon: A Study in Biblical Interpretation ( JSPSS 23), Sheffield 1997. Clements, R.E., ywOg gôy, TDOT II, Grand Rapids MI 1988 (revised edition), 426–433. Cody, A., ‘When is the Chosen People Called a goy?’, VT 14 (1964) 1–6. Fohrer, G., ‘«Priesterliches Königtum», Ex. 19,6’, TZ 19 (1963) 359–362. Hübner, H., Die Weisheit Salomos (ATD Apokryphen, Band 4), Göttingen 1999. Hulst, A.R., μ['/ywOg 'am/gòj Volk, THAT II, München 1976, 290–325. Kraus, H.-J., ‘Das Heilige Volk: Zur alttestamentlichen Bezeichnung 'am qàdò“, in: Freude am Evangelium (Fs A. de Quervain), München 1966, 50–61 [= idem, Biblisch-theologische Aufsätze, Neukirchen 1972, 37–49]. Kugel, J., ‘The Holiness of Israel and the Land in Second Temple Times’, in: M.V. Fox a.o. (eds), Texts, Temples and Traditions: A Tribute to Menachem Haran, Winona Lake IN 1996, 21–32. Labuschagne, C.J., ‘Divine Speech in Deuteronomy’, in: N. Lohfink (ed.), Das Deuteronomium: Entstehung, Gestalt und Botschaft (BETL 68), Louvain 1985, 111–126. ———, Deuteronomium IB (POT), Nijkerk 1987. Lipi…ski, E., μ[' 'am, TDOT XI, Grand Rapids MI 2001, 163–177. Lohfink, N., ‘Dt 26,17–19 und die “Bundesformel”, ZKTh 91 (1969) 517–553 [= id., Studien zum Deuteronomium und der deuteronomistischen Literatur I (SBAB 8), Stuttgart 1990, 211–261]. Mayes, A.D.H., Deuteronomy (NCB), Grand Rapids—London 1981 (repr. 1991). Mazzinghi, L., Notte di paura e di luce: Esegesi di Sap 17,1–18,4 (AnBib 134), Rome 1995. McGlynn, M., Divine Judgement and Divine Benevolence in the Book of Wisdom (WUNT, 2. Reihe 139), Tübingen 2001.
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Mosis, R., ‘Ex 19,5b–6a: Syntaktische Aufbau und lexikalische Semantik’, BZ 22 (1978) 1–25. Rendtroff, R., Die „Bundesformel“. Eine exegetisch-theologische Untersuchung (SBS 160), Stuttgart 1995. Rücker, H., ‘Das “Heilige Volk” als Moralprinzip im Deuteronomium’, in: Dienst als Vermittlung (Fs Priesterseminar Erfurt), Leipzig 1977, 39–47. Schwartz, B.J., ‘Israel’s Holiness: The Torah Traditions’, in: M.J.H.M. Poorthuis & J. Schwartz (eds), Purity and Holiness: The Heritage of Leviticus ( Jewish and Christian Perspectives, vol. II), Leiden 2000, 47–59. Schwenk-Bressler, U., Sapientia Salomonis als ein Beispiel frühjüdischer Textauslegung (BEATAJ 32), Frankfurt a.M. 1993. Soden, W. von, Einführung in die Altorientalistik, Darmstadt 1985. Vriezen, Th.C., ‘Das Hiphil von amar in Deut 26,17.18’, JEOL 17 (1964) 207–210. Weinfeld, M., Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, Oxford 1972. Wildberger, H., rjb/bhr ‘erwählen’, THAT I, 275–300. Winston, D., The Wisdom of Solomon (AB 43), New York 31982. Wiseman, D.J., ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon’, Iraq 20 (1958) 1–99 [= id., The Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon, London 1958].
TRADE, IDEOLOGY, AND BOUNDARY MAINTENANCE IN IRON AGE ISRAELITE SOCIETY Avraham Faust Bar-Ilan University, Israel Ideology and boundary maintenance are complex issues, whose sustainment involves various mechanisms that influence the acceptance and use, and even avoidance and rejection, of various traits. It appears that in ancient Israel boundaries were also kept by the use and avoidance of various types of pottery (e.g., Faust in press and references). In the present paper I would like to discuss briefly one of the possible mechanisms through which the Israelites kept themselves separate—the avoidance of imported pottery. In light of the theme of the present volume, it should be noted that one of the major uses of the word ‘holy’ in Biblical Hebrew, is in the sense of separate (e.g., Schwartz 2000, 47), and it is therefore a relevant concept for the study of boundary maintenance.1 The present paper aims, therefore, to examine the distribution of imported wares in Iron Age Israel, in order to learn about Israelite world-views in general, and boundary maintenance in particular. Background Iron Age pottery has received a great deal of scholarly discussion (e.g., Amiran 1969; Bikai 1978; Hunt 1983; 1987; Wood 1990; Zimhoni 1997, and references), and various types of imported wares have been studied in great detail as to their typology, chronology, and
1 A fuller treatment of Israelite ethnicity will be conducted in Faust in press a; for theoretical aspects of ethnicity and boundary maintenance see Barth 1969; Emberling 1997; McGuire 1982; Faust 2000, with additional bibliography. It should be emphasized that unlike most studies of distribution, the present paper does not discuss why and how certain types of artifacts, styles or ideas were transmitted or diffused, but rather concentrates on objects which were ‘rejected’. Such an enterprise is complicated, as it necessitates an explanation as to why something is not found in the archaeological record, while at the same time demonstrating that it should have been present.
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role in the economy (e.g., Katz 1979; Mazar 1985; Anderson 1990; Waldbaum 1994). Their distribution was also given considerable attention in order to learn about trade relations. The actual quantities of the finds, however, were not usually discussed. Even a small amount was sufficient to mark the site on the ‘distribution maps’, and sites with no such pottery were simply not marked. The social significance of pottery was not usually given much thought (but see Dever 1997a, 229–230; Faust 2002). Trade and Ceramics during Iron Age II (10th–6th Centuries
BCE)
Iron Age II is usually regarded as a period of intensive trade in the Mediterranean and the Levant (e.g., Sherratt and Sherratt 1993, 363; Niemeyer 1993; Elat 1979). There seems to be a consensus that the kingdoms of Israel and Judah participated in this flourishing international trade, especially due to their proximity to, and perhaps also close relations with, the Phoenicians. Archaeological discoveries in many sites in Israel and Judah have indeed discovered various indications for trade, and some of this evidence will be discussed below. The most obvious archaeological manifestation of this trade is ceramics. Imported pottery, of various ‘foreign’ origins, is found in many sites throughout the Mediterranean and the Levant (for the importance of ceramics as indicator of trade, see various papers in Zerner, Zerner and Winder 1993), and imported wares of various types, including Bichrome, Black on Red, Akhziv Wares, etc., have been uncovered throughout the Land of Israel (e.g., Barkay 1992, 325, 338; Mazar 1990, 514; Katz 1979; see now also Schreiber 2003). The distribution of various types of ceramics, especially those associated with the Phoenicians, along with other kinds of artifacts, usually serve as an indication of this widespread commercial activity (e.g., Katz 1979; Sherratt and Sherratt 1993). However, as will be shown below, while imported pottery is abundant in many parts of the Levant, including the Land of Israel, it is extremely rare, or even absent, in most sites in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah (Dever 1997b, 465).2 There is, therefore, a peculiar reality in many sites in which there are various indications for 2
It should be noted that in most cases the data that was published is not quantified
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trade, but its most obvious and mundane manifestation seems to be missing. Several examples help explain the complex reality described above: Jerusalem: An analysis of the large selection of Fish bones found in the City of David and in the Ophel indicate an intensive and well organized trade with the Mediterranean and the southern Coastal Plain (Lernau and Lernau 1992: 136). The analysis of shells uncovered in the City of David provided similar conclusions, as the were brought from the Mediterranean sea, the Red Sea and the River Nile, and Mienis (Mienis 1992, 129) concluded that they indicate ‘intensive trade between these areas and the inhabitants of the city’. An examination of a small collection of wood remains found in the Ophel reveals that about 8% were imported from a relatively long distance (Lipschitz 1989, 142–143). Several inscriptions might indicate trade with South Arabia (Shiloh 1987), or perhaps even with Greece (Sass 1990). Auld and Steiner conclude (1990, 63–64) that ‘Luxury goods were imported into Judah’, and that trade played an important role in the city’s economy (Notably, some of the evidence to which they refer is quite meager, see also Franken and Steiner 1990, 123–125). Pottery, however, indicates otherwise. Eshel (1995, 62), in summarizing his analysis of Jerusalem’s pottery forms (based on hundreds of vessels found in caves II and III on the eastern slopes of the City of David), concluded that the pottery shows some ‘contacts’ with Samaria and the Galilee, but ‘low rate of contacts’ with Phoenicia, south Jordan and Philistia. Franken and Steiner also mention (1990, 125) ‘the absence of any other finds, especially of luxury objects and imported pieces . . .’ in these caves. The same situation seems to have existed in cave I (ibid., 128), and actually in the entire extramural quarter analyzed by them (ibid., 5). Kathleen Kenyon had a similar or even quantifiable (Bikai 1978; Hunt 1985; 1987; Singer-Avitz 1999, are the most noted exceptions), therefore making it impossible to establish detailed statistics about the percentages of the various types of pottery. Imported pottery is recorded much more often than local pottery, even if the amount is insignificant. Since detailed statistics are not provided, it is difficult to rely on one’s own impression from the publications (see also Waldbaum 1994, 62, note 4, for a similar problem). In most cases, therefore, we had to rely on the impressions of the excavators and the data supplied by them. Fortunately, however, the data concerning the absence of imported pottery, which stands at the base of the present paper is, in most cases, unambiguous, therefore placing this research on firmer ground.
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impression regarding the poverty of finds (Kenyon 1974: 132, 135). A similar picture is revealed by the other excavations in Jerusalem, i.e., the City of David and the Jewish quarter excavations. In summarizing the finds in the Jewish Quarter, De Groot et al. (2003, 15) wrote ‘Imported vessels are extremely rare’, and they add ‘(T)he phenomenon of a dearth of imports to Jerusalem in Iron Age II is well known from other excavations in the city’ (see also De Groot and Ariel 2000, 97). And the very few imported pieces found in other excavations, for example by Barkay in Ketef Hinom (Barkay 1989, 36–37), do not alter this reality.3 Therefore, while ceramic evidence for trade is meager, other kinds of data indicate the contrary. Of special importance in this regard are the fish bones as they indicate daily and mundane trade with the Mediterranean. The second example is Beer-Sheba: Liphshitz and Biger have analyzed wood remains from this site. They counted 22 fragments of cedars which were found in Iron Age Beer-Sheba (1991, 171). A similar reality existed in nearby sites (mainly in the 7th century bce). They, therefore, concluded that: ‘The high occurrence of cedar in the Negev—10% of the wood assemblage—indicates the wealth and widespread commercial activities of a regime which was able to use such an expensive import in the building of monumental constructions’ (1991, 172). It is also important to stress that Singer-Avitz (1999) concluded that Beer-Sheba took an important part in the South Arabian Trade, and maintained that it was ‘a gateway community’ along this route (note that viewing Beer-Sheba in this role might be a bit exaggerated; cf. the situation in Kuntilat 'Ajrud; Gunneweg, Perlman and Meshel 1985). This, following various finds, and in spite of the petrographical analysis which will be discussed later. 3 I am aware of the fact that in some cases I refer to vessel-form (e.g., in quoting Eshel’s study of Jerusalem’s pottery), while in other cases I am discussing the origin of the pottery (e.g., Beer-Sheba, below). This is a result of the lack of data. In most cases, I referred only to stylistic differences, as these data are more readily available, and it is perhaps even more significant (as it was easily observable even in antiquity). As Eshel has indicated for Jerusalem, and as Singer-Avitz found regarding Lachish and Beit Mirsim (1999, 12) the pottery was usually composed of forms which were different from vessels found at contemporary coastal sites. However, as the data from Beer-Sheba indicates, even when there is more similarity in forms (which is a rare phenomenon), the vessels were manufactured locally and were not imported.
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Again, pottery indicates otherwise. In summarizing her analysis of several unique kraters which were found in Beer-Sheba stratum II G. Bachi showed that while a few Cypro-Phoenicians vessels were found at Beer-Sheba, other types of imported pottery, typical of Coastal sites, were absent (1973, 42). Bachi’s impression is substantiated by a scientific analysis of the pottery. Singer-Avitz has recently published the results of her thorough examination of about half of Beer-Sheba’s pottery—some 900 vessels (Singer-Avitz 1999). Though a relatively large percentage of the pottery studied by her was composed of Coastal and Edomite forms, a petrographical analysis (by Y. Goren) revealed that the vessels, with the exception of three Egyptian wares, were manufactured in Judah, and were not imported (ibid.). Again, the most mundane indication for trade is almost completely missing from the repertoire, while other elements, including imported cedars, are found. A similar reality is seen in most sites in ancient Israel and Judah (due to space considerations, I did not provide references for most of the sites mentioned below. For a fuller discussion with references see Faust in press a). The mound of Beth Shemesh was excavated almost entirely in the course of three expeditions. Still, very few imported vessels were reported by Mackenzie and by Grant, and though the recent excavations have not yet been published, the excavators informed me that only a handful of Iron II imported sherds were found, inspite of the fact that thousands of sherds from this period were uncovered. The same reality is revealed in most other sites, e.g., Gibeon, Moza, Hebron, Kh. Marjameh, Kh. Jemein, Beit Aryeh, Kh. Jarish and more (including Kh. Malta, Kh. Rosh-Zayit and Tel Mador to be discussed below). In many of these sites not a single imported shard was discovered. In several cases the excavators have even expressed their surprise of this situation (e.g., Mazar 1995, 114). In summary, while obviously not as a result of the lack of trade, only extremely small quantities of imported pottery, and sometimes none at all, have been found in most sites in the kingdom of Judah, as well as in most highland sites of the kingdom of Israel.4
4
Though detailed statistics are not available, it is possible that imported pottery
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Notably, this reality stands in sharp contrast to sites in the Coastal Plain and the northern valleys, where imported pottery is much more abundant. Almost every excavated coastal site apparently yielded such pottery, from Rukeish in the south, through Ashkelon, Mesad Hashavyahu, Azor, Tel Mikhmoret, Tel Mevorakh, Dor, Shiqmona, Tell Abu Hawwam, Tell Keison, Acco, and Akhziv to Tyre in the north. Though most publications do not provide any quantitative data or statistics, it seems as if such pottery is not rare in the sites mentioned above (Notably, a few sites in the southern Sharon Coastal Plain also exhibit a different pattern, and they deserve a more detailed study, both spatially and diachronically). In addition, imported pottery is not infrequent in some more inland sites, such as Tell esSafi. Imported pottery seems to be frequent also in most sites, urban and rural alike, in the Northern Valleys, whose population was composed to a large extent by non-Israelites (e.g., Finkelstein 1999, 44, 48; Faust 2000; Faust in press b: 256–283), i.e., Tell 'Amar, Yokneam, Tel Qiri, Tel Qasis, Megiddo, Hazor, Nir David Beth-Shean, Tel Rehov, and Tel el-Hama.5 Imported pottery was found also in some sites across the Jordan, such as Tell es-Say"idia, Tell Abu-Kharaz and Pelah, though probably in much smaller quantities (therefore, questioning the relevancy of this data). Imported pottery, though in small quantities, was also found in the Negev ‘fortresses’ and the 'Aravah.
was found in larger quantities (relatively to the highlands) in the city Samaria, and perhaps also in some large urban centers of the northern highlands. At the moment, the evidence seems to be ambiguous. The existence of some imports should not come as a surprise, as a different behavior, especially among the elite, is to be expected (see, in this regard, the various texts relating to the relationship between the kingdoms of Israel and Tyre). In light of the excavations of the many highland sites in the Kingdom of Israel (both in the region of Samaria and in the Galilee), the city of Samaria, if indeed it presents imports, seems to represent an exception, and not the rule, in this kingdom. 5 Schreiber had recently analyzed the Cypro-Phoenician pottery found in the Levant. She claimed that Black on Red juglets, for example, were found in ‘relatively small quantities throughout the region west of the Jordan’ (2003:28). Still, when she discusses the finds, one can clearly see that hardly any pottery was found in the highlands (see the discussion on pp. 85–169, 186–212).
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Trade and the Distribution of Imported Pottery in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah The most reasonable explanation for the difference between the finds in the highlands and the coastal area and the valleys is of course economic, that is, trade related. Imported pottery is more likely to be found near trade routes, and the important routes crossed the Coastal Plains and the valleys. While there is no doubt that economy would explain part of the pattern (‘fall off analysis’, see e.g., Renfrew and Bahn 1996, 354; see also Hodder 1979b), it cannot be the sole explanation. After all, as shown above, Beer-Sheba and Jerusalem exhibit many finds which indicate that these sites did participate in large scale trade. The contradictory evidence in Beer-Sheba and Jerusalem, where there is evidence for trade, perhaps even on a large scale, but not manifested in ceramics, precludes the lack of commerce as an explanation for the lack (or rarity) of imported pottery in Judah and Israel. This is especially true for Beer-Sheba, as it was located on a route which many scholars consider to be one of the most important trade routes—that of the Arabian trade (e.g., Singer Avitz 1999; Finkelstein 1996, 103 ff.; Holladay 1995, 383 ff.). Moreover, there is no geographic logic in attributing the distribution only to trade: – A fine example of the phenomenon can be see at Kh. Malta in the lower Galilee. The site is an Iron II village. In spite of its proximity to the area where abundant quantities of imported pottery were found, only a single Iron II imported sherd was found in the site itself (Covello-Paran, personal communication), therefore making the distribution map a bit awkward, if examined only from an economic perspective. This is true especially in light of large quantities of imported sherds found in the eastern site of Tell el-Hama for example. – The Iron II village in Kh. Rosh Zayit, located immediately above the Coastal Plain, also exhibits only a minor amount of CyproPhoenician pottery, Akhziv wares, etc., in sharp contrast to the finds at an earlier fort excavated at the site, and to most other sites in the Coastal Plain’s (Gal 1992b, 13; 1998, 10; see also Gal and Alexandre 2000).6 6
Note that the statistics published from this site are problematic, as they refer
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– No imported sherds were reported also from the soundings at Tel Mador in the lower Galilee (Gal 1992a, 36–43). It is important to emphasize that the rural nature of at least two of the three sites mentioned cannot explain this reality, as rural sites in the northern valleys which are located much farther away from the Phoenician coast yielded larger quantities of imported pottery (e.g., Tel Qasis, Tel Qiri and Nir David mentioned above). The Inadequacies of the Economic Explanation In light of the data presented above, there seem to be several factors that prove that the economic explanation is insufficient, and indicate that the distribution is ‘non-random’ (Hodder 1979b, 7, 14): 1) The contradictory evidence in Beer-Sheba and Jerusalem, where various non-ceramic evidence indicates intensive trade, hints that it is not a lack of trade which prevented imported pottery from reaching these sites. 2) The lack of imported pottery in settlements which are adjacent to sites or areas where such pottery is abundant, a pattern seen especially in the Galilee (Beth Shemesh might also serve as an example). Such sharp falloffs cannot be explained simply as being a result of ‘distance-decay falloff ’ or similar explanations (Hodder 1979a, 452; see more below). It is important to re-emphasize that even if imported pottery is expected to be represented in higher percentages in the valleys due to the trade routes which crossed this region, its absence in some sites and almost complete absence in other sites in the Lower Galilee, so close to the Phoenician coast, must be of significance. 3) The fact that the absence of imported pottery correlates with the distribution of other traits (which seems to be relevant to the discussion of ethnicity; see Faust 2000; in press a, for a discussion of some of these characteristics) seems to indicate that this trait, too, is important. This seems to represent a reality where, if to use Hodder’s words, ‘regional plateaus of similar frequencies of some traits in assemblages may be found with sharp falloffs at the edges . . .
to the rims that had been found from most vessels, but include any body shred of imported pottery. In any event, the finds indicate a huge decline in the percentages of imported pottery when one compares the fort and village.
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that cannot be explained by normal distance-decay falloff or by environmental, functional adaptation’ (Hodder 1979a, 452; see also Hodder 1979b, 12). In any event, as distance and location cannot account for this distribution, it seem as if the solution to the discrepancy between the various types of evidence belongs, at least partially, to the sociocultural realm (see also Hodder 1979b). Value and Attitudes toward Imported Pottery According to Orser (1996) there are three kinds of value: exchange value—the market value of a commodity; esteem value—an additional, sometimes emotional, value which could be added to artifacts; and use value—what one values the utilitarian usage of the artifact. Any artifact, or commodity, can therefore be seen in a number of ways. It can be seen as having high value, whether exchange value or esteem value, and therefore desired; or it can be seen as a mundane object, and therefore used whenever necessary. However, as Wood (1990, 88) claimed, all vessels should be ‘culturally accepted’, and there is, therefore, another possible attitude toward objects: artifacts might not be accepted culturally, and therefore avoided. While it is quite obvious that the pottery vessels discussed here were manufactured either as containers or as commodities in their own right (e.g., Anderson 1990, 50; Sherratt and Sherratt 1993, 370; see also Sherratt and Sherratt 1991, 362–363), I would like to suggest that the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Beer-Sheba, as well as many other sites in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, viewed these pottery vessels in a different way than their contemporaries in Tyre, Tell Abu Hawwam, Megiddo and even Tell el-Hama. Both Jerusalem and Beer-Sheba participated in inter-regional and even international trade, but this fact is not manifested in the pottery, since imported pottery was viewed negatively in these regions, and was not ‘culturally accepted’. Such a reality should not come as a surprise since the fact that stylistic similarities and differences are not merely a result of interaction is well established, following studies such as Plog (e.g., 1980) and Hodder (e.g., 1979a; 1982; see also Bunimovitz and Faust 2001). After all, ‘style may be actively used to mark out boundaries of different social groups when there is intense interaction between them’ (Shanks and Tilley 1987, 87).
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avraham faust Imported Pottery in Salem—An example from the ‘New World’
Before returning to the Israelite society, I would like to bring one example (out of several) from the ‘New World’, in order to exemplify that the negative attitudes toward foreign pottery is not a unique phenomenon to Israel’s Iron Age, and that it can have a great impact on distribution. Brian Thomas examined the reality in two late 18th century sites in North Carolina: Salem, which was a Moravian site (a Germanspeaking religious group, who settled in the several American colonies in the mid 18th century, see Thomas 1994, 16–17, and references), and Richmond, which was the central city in the region. According to Thomas (1994, 25), the results of the ceramic analysis exhibit clear differences between Richmond and Salem. Fifty-eight percent of the pottery found in Richmond was made of ‘British style’, while only 21% of the pottery recovered at Salem was of British style. This might have been expected, or at least not be considered surprising, when one remembers that Richmond was the local center. The disturbing fact is that Salem was the center of pottery importation. Moreover, when there were difficulties with imports, Salem produced local imitations for the entire region (Thomas 1994, 26). Thomas (ibid.) explained this awkward distribution by the different messages the population of Salem attempted to send to the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’ world (ibid.). On the one hand, they wanted the outsiders to view them as part of the region. Their importation, and even production, of ‘foreign’ artifacts, and even symbols, accomplished this. In reality, however, they did not want to be part of this ‘outer world’, and wanted their members to be as excluded as possible. They, therefore did not use this ceramic, although they imported/produced it, as it symbolized a world they didn’t want to be part of. Thomas (ibid., 26), after discussing the fact that the Moravians wanted to appear as if they were part of the larger region, summarized the contrasting messages: ‘However, despite the projection of this message outside of its borders, the small percentage of imported ceramics recovered . . . suggested that the Moravian community did not participate in the British world’. The example from Salem is of importance not only because it might help in understanding the reasons for the discussed phenomenon, but also because it puts the examples from Iron Age Israel in some perspective. The dichotomy between the sites with imports
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(usually the lowlands) and these with no imports, though not quantifiable, is far greater than the differences presented in Salem. From this perspective the Iron Age pattern is indeed very significant. Other Lines of Supportive Evidence There are, moreover, contextual data that makes our suggestion appropriate for Iron Age Israel. Below we will attempt to explain the reasons for this cultural attitude. Before we deal with that, however, we should like to mention two additional lines of supportive evidence: 1) First of all, lack, or rarity, of imported pottery is not the only unique characteristic of local ceramic repertoire. More important, perhaps, is the lack of decoration on the pottery of this period (Faust in press a). This phenomenon was observed by many scholars, including Aharoni (1978, 158), Franken and Steiner (1990, 90), Barkay (1992, 354) and others, but the full significance of it was, I believe, overlooked. The lack of decoration in Israel and Judah is a unique phenomenon in the Iron Age Levant. Much of the local ceramics of Cyprus, Phoenicia, Philistia, Ammon, Edom, etc., was decorated (see, e.g., summary in Barkay 1992; Mazar 1985, and many others), and Israel and Judah stand as a clear exception. This cannot be explained by functional or economic reasons, and must be a result of cultural attitudes toward decoration. Interestingly, a similar phenomenon was observed elsewhere, for example by Deetz in AngloAmerica, and was indeed explained as a cultural phenomenon (1996, 81–82). This accords well with a negative view toward other kinds of pottery, imported one in this case. 2) The second line of support lies in the perceptions of trade in Israelite society: though the Bible is a problematic source, its language is most revealing. The most common term in biblical Hebrew for one who engages in trade is ‘a Canaanite’ (for example in Hosea 12:8: ‘A Canaanite, in whose hands are false balances, he loves to oppress’; see also Isaiah 23:8; Job 40:30; Proverbs 31:24; Zephania 1:11; some of which are traditionally dated to the Iron Age II; see also Elat 1977, 203; 1979, 529; Liver 1962, 204). Canaanites were obviously not viewed positively in the Iron Age society which produced much of the Bible. Whether most traders were Canaanites or not, the term indicates that the trading profession, too, was viewed negatively (see more below). And in King and Stager’s (2001, 190)
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words: ‘(A)t least in their propaganda the Israelites were condescending toward traders and commerce’. To sum up, imported pottery is found in extremely small quantities in most parts of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. While this might be a result of a lack of trade, other lines of evidence indicate the existence of intensive trade. It seems that at least part of the explanation of this phenomenon lies within the socio-cultural realm. This is supported by the lack of decoration on local pottery which can be explained only as a result of a cultural ‘avoidance’, and by the negative views toward traders in the Bible in general and in the society’s spoken language in particular. Possible Explanations for Negative Attitudes Toward Imported Pottery But why did such an attitude develop? Though a full analysis of ancient Israel’s worldviews is beyond the scope of the present paper, I would like to mention several options:7 1) A manipulation of the local elite:8 Following Appadurai, this could be a result of ‘the antagonism between “foreign” goods and local sumptuary . . . structure’ which ‘is probably the fundamental reason for the often remarked tendency of primitive societies to restrict trade . . .’ (Appadurai 1986, 33). Though Appadurai discusses a different reality, a manipulation of the elite could be the cause of an ideology which left trade under the elite’s monopoly. Smith-Kipp and Schortman (1989, 379), after stressing the importance of trade in State Formation Processes, also observed that ‘Chiefdoms or early states would have been tempted to protect if not monopolize trade whenever possible . . .’ (see also Sherratt and Sherratt 1991, 359). Indeed, the above mentioned pattern in which pottery was not imported while cedars were, seems to indicate that during the period discussed here, trade in Israel and Judah was a state controlled endeavor (see below).9 It is likely, however, that even if the elite’s
7 Theoretically, avoidance could also be seen as a form of resistance (e.g., Joyce, Bustamante and Levine 2001). Since, however, the avoidance of imported pottery seems to have encompassed all segments of the Israelite society, (internal) resistance cannot be the explanation for the phenomenon. 8 The term ‘manipulation’ usually carries a negative connotation. It should therefore be stressed that ideology should not be always viewed in these terms. 9 There are various lines of evidence that makes this interpretation plausible (e.g.,
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manipulation is involved in the development of the discussed ethos, it couldn’t have been its initiator. In order for such a ‘manipulation’ to be accepted it had to align itself with existing ideas or approaches. 2) Ethnocentrism (e.g., Jary and Jary 1995, 207). A negative view of foreigners and, therefore, foreign goods, could also, theoretically, explain the phenomenon. 3) It is also possible that that the absence of imported pottery, as well as decoration, resulted from an ideology of egalitarianism and simplicity. Such an ideology was proposed in the past for ancient Israel on various grounds (e.g., Gordis 1971; Gottwald 1979; Speiser 1971; Cross 1988; Dever 2003; see also Faust 2004; in press a, and there additional references), and though it has been greatly criticized (e.g., Lemche 1985), it seems to correspond with other elements in this society’s material culture (e.g., the lack of decoration). A discussion of the possible roots of such ideology are beyond the scope of the present paper (see Faust 1999b, 195–197, 204–205; 2000; 2004; in press a), but it seems to be part of Israel’s ethnogenesis (as part of a self definition when facing other groups). 4) Another possible explanation also relates to a world view, though from a different perspective: The anthropologist Mary Douglas, who studied some aspects of the Israelite society on the basis of texts, presented in ‘deciphering a meal’ (Douglas 1972) the following diagram: Under the covenant human
Israelites
others
non human
their livestock
others
(following Douglas 1972, 75, fig. 6: Analogy between humans and non-humans)
This table relates to human and non-human, but the latter refers only to animals. If Douglas’s classification is correct, then it is inevitable that such a system was operating in all realms of life. For example, if we divide the ‘Non Human’ category into animals and artifacts, we would have the following table:10
Sherratt and Sherratt 1991, 359), especially in light of pottery’s low price in the ancient world (e.g., Vickers and Gill 1994; Sherratt and Sherratt 1991, 363; Faust 1999a, 181; in press b), which makes it a suitable vehicle for such messages. 10 It should be stressed that I am referring only to the ideas Douglas developed
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Under the covenant human
Israelites
others
(livestock)
their livestock
others
artifacts
their wares
others
(modified from Douglas 1972, 75, fig. 6)
Douglas’s classification could, therefore, account for the phenomenon discussed here, as it necessitated a dichotomy between local artifacts and ‘other’ artifacts. Moreover, there is some indication in the Bible that artifacts were indeed classified in a similar manner, e.g., in Numbers 31:20–24, where booty taken from non-Israelites was supposed to be purified (see also Licht 1995, 115; and also Ben-Shamai 1958, 392).11 Pottery, however, cannot be purified, and perhaps this is the cause for its avoidance (Leviticus 6:21; 11:33; 15:12).12 The
during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Though she still uses some of these concepts (e.g., the concept of the covenant; see e.g., Douglas 2000), she changed her ideas significantly over the years (see the discussion in Fardon 1999, 185–205). This is not the place to discuss her new ideas and interpretations, but I should like to stress that in my opinion the ideas expressed in her earlier works, like the one discussed here, seem to fit the archaeological record (and hence, I believe, the reality of the period). 11 Many scholars interpret the purification of the booty to be a result of the fact that they were in contact with corpses (e.g., Licht 1995, 115), and not necessarily with non-Israelites (for a short survey of biblical attitudes toward non-Israelite’s impurity, see Klawans 1995, 288 ff.). The dating of the paragraph is problematic. It is attributed to ‘P’, probably even to a later phase (e.g., Gray 1906, 419; Licht 1995, 116). The dating of P, however, is not clear. Traditional view dates it to the Persian Period (Wenham 1979, 9–11; see also Eissfeldt 1965, 207–208). Recently, however, there seems to be a growing consensus to date it to the Exilic Period, while maintaining that some or much of the data is earlier in origin (e.g., Clines 1993, 580). While this seems sufficient to allow us to relate to these data in this context, I would like to mention the fact that it seems that a growing number of scholars tend to date P to the late Iron Age, see e.g., Wenham 1979, 13; Schwartz 1999, 32–33; Friedman 1987; Weinfeld 1979; Hurvitz 1974; Milgrom 1991, 12–13, and many others. Leviticus, quoted in the next sentence, is also attributed to P. In addition, as we are dealing here with some of Douglas’s ideas, it is interesting to refer also to Douglas 1975, 315–316, where she claimed that an earlier date for P suits her thesis. 12 For the dating of the texts, see above. Interestingly, by the end of the Second Temple Period similar ideas/interpretations (among other things) led to the avoidance of imported pottery in general, and for intensive use of stone vessels by people who cared about purity (i.e., priests) (see, e.g., Ariel and Strikovsky 1990). The problem with the idea presented here, which attributes similar ideas to the Iron Age, lies in the fact that the later sources do not indicate historical precedents; if they could, they would have probably preferred to cling to any such sign of continuity.
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reasons for the development of such a classification system are beyond the scope of the present paper (see also Douglas 1975, 306 ff.), but I believe, as Douglas claimed, that it was part of the Israelite’s extensive boundary maintenance (e.g., 1972, 77), the roots of which should be sought in Israel’s ethnogenesis. While it is possible that one of the above is responsible for the discussed pattern, it is more plausible that in reality a combination of some, or all, was the case: e.g., the ideology against contact with foreigners\foreign goods was a result of a manipulation of the elite which aimed at maintaining a monopoly over trade, and that due to other factors, rooted earlier in the Iron I, this ideology suited the broader Israelites’ world-views. It should be stressed, however, that the avoidance of imported pottery served the Israelites in their boundary maintenance (i.e., being separate, holy in the biblical sense), whether directly (e.g., options 2, 3, 4, above) or indirectly (option 1). In the latter case, even if the main message was internal, the outcome, at least as a by-product, would have been meaningful for signifying ethnic boundaries (e.g., David et al. 1988). This is much more so, as it is likely that we are discussing a phenomenon that resulted from several social processes, some of which were directly connected with boundary maintenance (and option 1, above, cannot be viewed as the sole responsible for the pattern). An evaluation of the weight of the various explanations suggested above, or their possible combinations, relies upon a detailed discussion of Israel’s social development during the Iron Age, its world views and ideology (see also, in this regard, Pedersen 1926, 307), and especially its ethnogenesis. This, as well as the inter-relations between internal and external messages, are well beyond the limits of the present paper, and is part of a larger study that will be published elsewhere (Faust in press a). While the current discussion is only partial, the importance of imported pottery for Israel’s boundary maintenance, however, is clear. Ideology, Economy and Commerce It appears that only a socio-cultural explanation can account for the above discussed pattern, and it must supplement any economic related explanation. A negative view toward imported pottery, shared by many members of the society discussed here, correlates well with the
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prevalent view of trade in ancient Israel, where ‘domestic commerce per se’ (Mazar 1990, 510) is seen as unimportant (see also Elat 1979, 546). It did not, of course, prevent massive trade probably organized by the state, as was already observed by some scholars (e.g., Elat 1979, 545–546; see also McNutt 1999, 158, in addition to the archaeological evidence discussed above), and in contrast to the reality in most contemporary centers (Sherratt and Sherratt 1993, 362; see also Sherratt and Sherratt 1991, 376). The avoidance of imported pottery should be viewed as part of Israel’s boundary maintenance during the Iron Age, and it played a role in the maintaining a separate (holy) identity. Conclusion Like all groups, the Israelites used and avoided various elements of material culture in maintaining boundaries with their neighbors. While the level of boundary maintenance changed through time and space, it appears that the avoidance of imported pottery was one of the mechanisms through which the Israelites kept themselves separate and distinct from other groups. LITERATURE Aharoni, Y., The Archaeology of the Land of Israel, Jerusalem 1978 (Hebrew). Anderson, W.P., ‘The Beginning of Phoenician Pottery: Vessel Shape, Style, and Ceramic Technology in the Early Phases of the Phoenician Iron Age’, BASOR 279 (1990), 35–54. Appadurai, A., ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value’, in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. A. Appadurai, Cambridge 1986, 3–63. Ariel, D.T. and Strikovsky, ‘Appendix (of ‘Part One: Imported Stamps Amphora Handles)’, in City of David Excavations III (Qedem 30), ed. D.T. Ariel, Jerusalem, 25–28. Auld, G. and M. Steiner, Jerusalem I, From the Bronze Age to the Maccabees, Cambridge 1996. Bachi, G., ‘Several Kraters from Stratum II’, in Beer-Seba I, ed. Y. Aharoni, TelAviv 1973, 38–41. Barkay, G., ‘The Priestly Benediction on the Ketef Hinnom Plaques’, Cathedra 52 (1989), 37–76 (Hebrew). ———, ‘The Iron Age II–III’, in The Archaeology of Ancient Israel, ed. A. Ben-Tor, New-Haven 1992, 302–373. Barth, F., ‘Introduction’, in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, Boston 1969, 9–38. Ben-Shamai, M.H., ‘Impurity and Purity’, Encyclopedia Biblica 3, Jerusalem 1958, 391–394 (Hebrew).
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Bikai, P.M., The Pottery of Tyre. Warminster 1978. Bunimovitz, S. and A. Faust, ‘Chronological Separation, Geographical Segregation or Ethnic Demarcation? Ethnography and the Iron Age Low Chronology’, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 322 (2001), 1–10. Clines, D.J.A., ‘Pentateuch’, in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, eds. B.M. Metzger and M.D. Coogan, Oxford 1993, 579–582. Cross, F.M., ‘Reuben, First-Born of Jacob’, Zeitschrift fur die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 100 (Supplement) (1988), 46–65. David, N., J. Sterner and K. Gavua, ‘Why Pots are Decorated, Current Anthropology 29 (1988), 365–389. Deetz, J., In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life, New-York 1996. Groot, A. de, and D.T. Ariel, Ceramic Report, in Excavations in the City of David 1978–1985, Volume V (Qedem 40), Jerusalem 2000, 91–154. Groot, A. de, H. Geva and I. Yezerski, 2003, ‘Iron Age Pottery’, in Jewish Quarter Excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem, Volume II, ed. H. Geva, Jerusalem, 1–49. Dever, W.G., ‘Archaeology and the ‘Age of Solomon’: A Case Study in Archaeology and Historiography’, in L.K. Handy (ed.), The Age of Solomon, Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium, Leiden 1997a, 217–251. ———, ‘Ceramics, Syro-Palestinian Ceramics of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages’, in E. Meyers (ed.), Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, NewYork, 459–465. ———, Who Were the Israelites, and Were Did They Come From?, Grand Rapids 2003. Douglas, M., Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Harmondsworth 1966. ———, ‘Deciphering a Meal’, Daedalus 101 (1972), pp. 61–81. ———, Implicit Meanings, London 1975. ———, Impurity of Land Animals, in Purity and Holiness, The Heritage of Leviticus, eds. M.J.H.M. Poorthuis and J. Schwartz, Leiden 2000, 33–45. Eissfeldt, O., The Old Testament, An Introduction, Oxford 1965. Elat, M., ‘The Monarchy and the Development of Trade in Ancient Israel’, in State and Temple Economy in the Ancient Near East, ed. E. Lipinski, Leuven 1979, 527–546. Emberling, G., ‘Ethnicity in Complex Societies, Archaeological Perspectives’, Journal of Archaeological Research 5/4 (1997), 295–344. Eshel, I., ‘Two Pottery Groups from Kenyon’s Excavations on the Eastern Slope of Ancient Jerusalem’, in Excavations by K.M. Kenyon in Jerusalem 1961–1967, Volume IV, eds. I. Eshel and K. Prag, London 1995, 1–158. Fardon, R., Mary Douglas: An Intellectual Biography, London 1999. Faust, A., ‘Socioeconomic Stratification in an Israelite City: Hazor VI as a Test Case’, Levant XXXI (1999a), 179–191. ———, The Social Structure of the Israelite Society in the 8th–7th Centuries BCE according to the Archaeological Evidence, Ph.D. Dissertation, Bar-Ilan University 1999b (Hebrew with an English abstract). ———, ‘Ethnic Complexity in Northern Israel during the Iron Age II’, PEQ 132/1 (2000), 2–27. ———, ‘Burnished Pottery and Gender Hierarchy in Iron Age Israelite Society’, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 15.1 (2002), 53–73. ———, ‘Mortuary Practices, Society and Ideology’: The Lack of Iron Age I Burials in the Highlands in Context. Israel Exploration Journal 54 (2004): 174–190. ———, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance, London (in press a). ———, The Israelite Society in the Period of the Monarchy: An Archaeological Perspective, Jerusalem (in press b) (Hebrew). Finkelstein, I., Living on the Fringe, Sheffield 1996.
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———, ‘State Formation in Israel and Judah, A Contrast in Context, A Contrast in Trajectory’, Near Eastern Archaeology 62/1 (1999), 35–52. Franken, H.J., and M.L. Steiner, Excavations in Jerusalem 1961–1967, Volume II, London 1990. Friedman, R.E., Who Wrote the Bible, New-York 1987. Gal, Z., Lower Galilee during the Iron Age. Winona Lake 1992a. ———, Phoenicians and Israelites in Hurvat Rosh Zayit, The 18th Archaeological Congress in Israel, Tel Aviv 1992b, 12–13 (Hebrew). ———, ‘Phoenicians and Israelites in the “Land of Cabul”’, Cathedra 88 (1998), 7–14 (Hebrew with an English abstract). ———, and Alexandre, Y. Horbat Rosh Zayit, Jerusalem 2000. Gordis, R., ‘Primitive Democracy in Ancient Israel’, in: Poets, Prophets and Sages, Essays in Biblical Interpretation, Bloomington-London (1971), 45–60. Gottwald, N.K., The Tribes of Yahweh, New-York 1979. Gray, G.B., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Numbers, New-York 1906. Gunneweg, J., I. Perlman and Z. Meshel, ‘The Origin of the Pottery of Kuntillet 'Ajrud’, IEJ 35/4 (1985), 270–283. Hodder, I., ‘Economic and Social Stress and Material Culture Patterning’, American Antiquity 44 (1979a), 446–455. ———, ‘Pottery Distribution: Service and Tribal Areas’, in Pottery and the Archaeologist (Institute of Archaeology, Occasional Publication, no. 4), ed. M. Millet, London 1979b, 7–23. ———, Symbols in Action, Cambridge 1982. Holladay, J.S., ‘The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah: Political and Economic Centralization in the Iron IIa–IIb (ca. 1000–750 BCE)’, in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T.E. Levy, London 1995, 368–398. Hunt, M., The Iron Age Pottery of the Yoqneam Regional Project, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley (UMI) 1985. ———, ‘The Pottery’, in Tell Qiri, a Village in the Jezreel Valley (Qedem 24), eds. Ben-Tor, A. and Portugali, Y. Jerusalem 1987, 139–223. Hurvitz, A., ‘The Evidence of Language in Dating the Priestly Code’, RB 81 (1974), 24–56. Jary, D. and J. Jary, Collins Dictionary of Sociology, Glasgow 1995. Joyce, A.A., L.A. Bustamante and M.N. Levine, ‘Commoner Power: A Case Study From the Classic Period Collapse on the Oaxaca Coast’, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 8, 343–385. Katz, H., Iron Age ‘Black on Red’ Pottery from the Eastern Basin of the Mediterranean, M.A. dissertation, University of Haifa 1979 (Hebrew). King, P.J. and L.E. Stager, Life in Biblical Israel. Louisville 2001. Klawans, J., ‘Notions of Gentile Impurity in Ancient Judaism’, The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies 20/2 (1995), 285–312. Lemche, N.P., Early Israel, Leiden 1985. Lernau, H., and O. Lernau, ‘Fish Remains’, in Excavations at the City of David 1978–1985, Volume III (Qedem 33), ed. A. De Groot and D.T. Ariel, Jerusalem 1992, 131–148. Licht, J., A Commentary on the Book of Numbers (XXII–XXXVI), Jerusalem 1995 (Hebrew). Liphshitz, N. and G. Biger, ‘Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani ) in Israel during Antiquity’, IEJ 41 (1991), 167–175. Liphshitz, N., and Y. Waisel, ‘Analysis of the Botanical Material of the 1969–1970 Seasons and the Climatic History of the Beer-Sheba Region’, in Beer-Seba I, ed. Aharoni, Y., Tel-Aviv University, Institute of Archaeology 1973, 97–105. Liver, J., Canaan, Canaanite, Encyclpaedia Biblica 4, Jerusalem 1962, 196–204 (Hebrew). Mazar, A., Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 B.C.E., New-York 1990. Mazar, E., ‘Edomite Pottery at the End of the Iron Age’, IEJ 35 (1985), 253–269.
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McGuire, R.H., ‘The Study of Ethnicity in Historical Archaeology, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1 (1982), 159–178. McNutt, P.M., Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel, Louisville 1999. Mienis, H.K., ‘Molluscs,’ in Excavations at the City of David 1978–1985, Volume III (Qedem 33), ed. A. De Groot and D.T. Ariel. Jerusalem 1992, 122–130. Milgrom, J., Leviticus 1–16 (The Anchor Bible), New-York 1991. Niemeyer, H.G., ‘Trade Before the Flag? On the Principles of Phoenician Expansion in the Mediterranean’, in Biblical Archaeology Today 1990, Jerusalem 1993, 335–344. Orser, C.E., Beneath the Material Surface of Things: Commodities, Artifacts, and Slave Plantations, in Contemporary Archaeology in Theory, eds. R.W. Preucel and I. Hodder, Oxford 1996, 189–201. Pedersen, J., Israel, Its Life and Culture I–II, London and Copenhagen 1926. Plog, S., Stylistic Variation in Prehistoric Ceramics, Cambridge 1980. Renfrew, C., and P. Bahn, Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice, London 1996. Schreiber, N., The Cypro-Phoenician Pottery of the Iron Age, Leiden 2003. Schwartz, B.J., The Holiness Legislation, Studies in the Priestly Code, Jerusalem 1999 (Hebrew). ———, ‘Israel’s Holiness: The Torah Tradition’, in Purity and Holiness, the Heritage of Leviticus, Leiden 2000, 47–59. Shanks, M., and C. Tilley, Social Theory and Archaeology, Cambridge 1987. Sherratt, A., and S. Sherratt, ‘From Luxuries to Commodities: The Nature of Mediterranean Bronze Age Trading Systems’, in Bronze Age Trade in the Mediterranean, ed. N.H. Gale. Jonsered 1991, 351–386. Sherratt, S., and A. Sherratt, ‘The Growth of the Mediterranean Economy in the Early First Millennium BC’, World Archaeology 24/3 (1993), 361–378. Shiloh, Y., ‘South Arabian Inscriptions from the City of David, Jerusalem’, PEQ 119 (1987), 9–18. Singer-Avitz, L., ‘Beer-Sheba—A Gateway Community in Southern Arabian LongDistance Trade in the Eight Century B.C.E.’, Tel-Aviv 26 (1999), 3–74. Smith-Kipp, R., and E.M. Schortman, ‘The Political Impact of Trade in Chiefdoms,’ American Anthropologist 91 (1989), 370–385. Speiser, E.A., ‘The Manner of the Kings’, in B. Mazar (ed.), The World History of the Jewish People, Vol. 3 ( Judges), Jerusalem 1979, 280–287. Thomas, B.W., ‘Inclusion and Exclusion in the Moravian Settlement in North Carolina, 1770–1790’, Historical Archaeology 28(3) (1994), pp. 15–29. Vickers, M., and D. Gill, Artful Crafts, Ancient Greek Silverware and Pottery, Oxford 1994. Waldbaum, J.C., ‘Early Greek Contacts with the Southern Levant ca. 1000–600 B.C.: The Eastern Perspective’, BASOR 293 (1994), 53–66. Wenahm, G.J., The Book of Leviticus (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament), London 1979. Wood, B.G., The Sociology of Pottery in Ancient Palestine ( Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 103), Sheffield 1990. Zerner, C., P. Zerner, and J. Winder (eds.), Wace and Blegen, Pottery as Evidence for Trade in the Aegean Bronze Age 1939 –1989, Amsterdam: American Schools of Classical Studies at Athens 1993.
POST-BIBLICAL PERIOD
A HOLY PEOPLE IN THE WINEPRESS: TREADING THE GRAPES AND HOLINESS Joshua Schwartz Bar-Ilan University, Israel Introduction The purpose of our study is to discuss winepress and treading motifs within the framework of holiness traditions in ancient Judaism and Christianity. The study is not based on new material, but rather on a re-evaluation of material studied within a different framework, i.e. the Judaeo-Christian polemic (Schwartz, 1993). While the present updated study will not ignore issues of polemics, its purpose is rather to trace the development of winepress and treading traditions within the greater theological realms of holiness and purity and to describe the place of these traditions within both Judaism and Christianity and the relationship between them. Much will be based upon who is in the winepress and who is treading, i.e. upon the relationship between treader and treadee. In the winepress we shall find, for instance, the Gentiles, Jews or Christians, who sometimes may be defined as ‘holy people’, especially within the winepress. Among those who tread will be God, the Messiah, Angels and Israel. Especially important will be the purpose of the treading, which, as we shall see, often falls within the realm of purification.1 It is also important to point out what we shall not do. Thus, we shall deal with grape, vine and vineyard traditions only in reference to the treading of grapes in the winepress. We make no attempt to deal with all vine and grape traditions in ancient Judaism and Christianity (see in general: Akpunonu 2004). Also, there are a number
1
While the topic of this study and the theme of the book in general is ‘holiness’ and not ‘purification’, and while there are marked differences between the two, which indeed has even been a topic of a previous study of one of our conferences (Poorthuis and Schwartz, 2000), for our purposes at present there is no need to differentiate between the two. For an overview see Poorthuis and Schwartz 2000, pp. 3–26.
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of references to the winepress which are tangential to vine and grape traditions and not of interest to us in our present study. This is the case, for instance, in the Old Testament Canticle of the Vine (Aknuponu 2004, 19–43) and the New Testament Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen (Aknuponu 2004, 87–124). The Biblical Winepress Although we shall not deal with the imagery of the biblical period winepress for its own sake, we shall briefly point out some of the biblical motifs (cf. Dommershausen 1990, VI, 60–61 = ‘Manufacture’) which will be used later on in the Jewish and Christian writings of the Roman and Byzantine period. One of the major winepress motifs in biblical literature is that of abundance, sustenance and blessing, whether in the present or in the future (e.g. Deut 15:14; 16:13; Joel 2:24). However, the treading, or various acts connected with it such as the shouts of jubilation, could also be interpreted as punishment or retribution (e.g. Jer 25:30; Lam 1:15) We shall cite two biblical traditions important for our discussion later on. The first is Joel 4:13: Swing the sickle, for the crop is ripe; come and tread, for the winepress is full, the vats are overflowing! For great is their wickedness.
The juice of the grapes is the blood of the nations being punished for their wicked deeds. The clearest image, though, of punishment is found in Isa 63:1–6 which describes the vengeance wreaked upon Edom, the symbol of Israel’s enemies: Who is coming from Edom, in crimsoned garments from Bozrah— who is this majestic in attire pressing forward in His great might? It is I, who contend victoriously, powerful to give triumph (v. 1). Why is your clothing so red, your garments like one who treads grapes (lit: in a press)? (v. 2). I trod out a vintage alone; of the peoples, no man was with Me. I trod them down in My anger, trampled them in My rage; their life-blood bespattered, My garments and all My clothing was stained (v. 3). For I had planned a day of vengeance, and my year of redemption arrived (v. 4). Then I looked, but there was none to help; I stared, but there was none to aid-so My own arm wrought the triumph, and My own rage was My aid (v. 5). I trampled peoples in My anger, I made them drunk with My rage, And I hurled their glory to the ground (v. 6).
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The imagery is not just the gory treading of grapes, but also the wild spray of the juice staining the clothes of God the treader. The image is one of blood and gore everywhere, with God seeming to revel in his crimson fury. God also treads alone. Revelation The earliest post-biblical (i.e. Hebrew bible) usage of the winepress motif is found in the book of Revelation. As was the case in the two biblical traditions cited above, both of these traditions are punishment traditions. The first one that we cite (Rev 14:14–20) is apparently dependent on Joel 4:13 (Aune 1998A, 781–849), while the second tradition (Rev 19:11–15) refers to Isa 63:1–6 (Aune 1998B, 1040–1069): Then as I looked there appeared a white cloud, and on the cloud sat one like a son of man . . . and in his hand a sharp sickle. Another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud—stretch out your sickle and reap . . . then another angel came out of the temple with a sharp sickle. Then from the altar came yet another . . . and he shouted to the one with the sharp sickle— stretch out your sickle and gather in earth’s grape harvest, for its clusters are ripe. So the angel put his sickle to the earth and gathered in its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. The winepress was trodden outside the city and for a thousand and six furlongs around blood flowed from the press to the height of the horses’ bridles (Rev 14:14–20). Then I saw heaven wide open and there before me was a white horse; and its rider’s name was Faithful and True . . . his eyes flamed like fire . . . and he was robed in a garment spattered with blood . . . and the armies of heaven followed him . . . from his mouth there went a sharp sword with which to smite the nations; for it is he who shall rule them with an iron rod and tread the winepress of the wrath and retribution of God the sovereign Lord (Rev 19:11–15).
It is fairly commonly accepted that those in the winepress in Rev 14 are not the same as those in the winepress of Rev 19 (Bornkamm, 1967, IV, 254–257). Although there is some discussion as to who is suffering in the winepress in Rev 14, there are many scholars who interpret the grape harvest as Israel and thus it follows that the Jews are being trampled. Some even add that the city mentioned by John is Jerusalem and that the description pertains to Palestine, perhaps
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even as a result of the War of Destruction (Aune 1998A, 781–849, esp., 847).2 Those being trampled in the winepress in Rev 19 are not the Jews, but the Gentiles. Revelation has both Israel and the Nations in the winepress. It is possible that the original adaptation of the biblical winepress motifs was Christian and not Jewish. Revelation seeks to encourage the Christians of the late first century ce to endure the persecutions of both Jews and Gentiles by placing them in the winepress. In this case, the winepress is clearly connected to punishment and vengeance. There is nothing holy or pure about it. In fact the Jews and Gentiles are trodden upon because they are not holy! There is, however, no subsequent purification. It is also not surprising that when the Jews began to be persecuted by the Christians, they too, as we shall see, shall make use of the winepress for vengeance and punishment against their ‘unholy’ enemies without any desire to purify them. Fathers of the Church We should like to next proceed to the winepress traditions in the Church Fathers. Both the Rabbis and the Church Fathers based many of their homilies on the same biblical lections. The strange thing is that although they did make use of the winepress verses discussed above, both groups preferred to expand upon verses in three chapters in Psalms which at first glance have little, if anything, to do with the winepress. Before discussing these verses and motifs, though, here too we should like to point out what we shall not do. Thus, we shall not deal with the ‘suffering Christ motif ’ which depicts a suffering Christ being crushed under the cross of a mystical winepress. This motif became popular in medieval art, but has little bearing on either Jews or Christians in the Roman and Byzantine periods (Leclercq, 1940, 14/2, 1731–1734). This having been stated, we can now return to the traditions that are of interest to us. Thus, the pseudo-winepress verses are:
2 The ultimate meaning of the grains and grape harvest metaphors reflects the final eschatological judgment carried out by God’s angelic emissaries and God’s climactic victory in the final eschatological battle. This, however, does not invalidate the tradition being grounded in the historical reality of late first century CE Palestine.
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1. ‘For the leader’ (lamenaseah); upon the Gittith (hagitit). A Psalm of David’ (Ps 8:1). 2. ‘For the leader’ (lamenaseah); upon the Gittith (hagitit). A Psalm of Asaph’ (Ps 81:1). 3. ‘For the leader’ (lamenaseah); upon the Gittith (hagitit). A Psalm of the sons of Korah (Ps 84:1). In Jewish tradition, as we shall see, the phrase Gittith is problematical and we will return to this problem when dealing with rabbinic traditions. In Christian tradition the matter was simple. The LXX translates the phrase in these verses as: huper ton lenon, i.e. ‘for the winepresses’, based on the Hebrew gat. While this was clearly not the plain meaning of the text (Gunkel, 1998, 350), it did provide the Church Fathers with new winepress verses within new and different frameworks. The longest winepress exposition is found in the writings of Jerome in his homily on Ps 80 (81) (Hieron., Tractatus de Psalmo LXXX,1 [CCSL, 78, 76–78]). ‘For the winepresses’, based on the reading of LXX, is rendered by Jerome as pro torcularibus. Lamenaseah, rendered by LXX as eis to telos, is translated as in finem, in Latin, meaning ‘to (or unto) the end’, allowing for an eschatological interpretation. Jerome begins by stating that in order for there to be winepresses there must be a vineyard and a harvest of grapes. Israel was the original vine and could have enjoyed the wine, but was not capable of understanding the Christological meaning of all of this. The vineyard and grape symbolism, though, is beyond the purview of our discussion (Cf. Akpunonu 2004, 176–198). Jerome then explains the winepress (Gittith) found in the chapters of Psalms. Chapters 8 and 80 are considered symbols of the resurrection. Chapter 83 is seen as a symbol of the Trinity and all three winepresses together belong to the mystery of the Trinity. This is true also of the three ‘choirmasters’— David, Asaph and the sons of Core (Korah), with the first also symbolizing the victory of the believers, the second the gathering together with the Lord (from the Hebrew root 'sp) and the third pertaining to Calvary. While these traditions remove the winepress from the realm of punishment to that of holiness, the holiness is rooted in the Divinity and not in ‘people’. This type of motif is found a number of additional times in Jerome.3 3
In Hieron., Commen. in Ps. VIII, 1 (CCSL 72, 191), the three winepresses refer
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Jerome also relates to Isa 63:1–6 (Comm. in Isaiam LXIII, 1–3 (PL 24, 610–612; CCSL 73A, 720–722). The God of the winepress of Isaiah becomes Christ and He treads alone. The bloody garments are stained with the blood of Christ.4 Bozrah is interpreted as strong fortifications in relation either to Jerusalem or to hell. The winepress is interpreted both as a symbol of punishment, the plain meaning of Isaiah 63 or as a symbol of good, based on Psalms. This interpretation is clearly Christological. Another Christological interpretation is found in the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428 ce), who does not usually depart from the plain meaning of the biblical text. Theodore identifies the winepress itself with Christ (Devreesse, 1939, 42–43; cf. Green, 1986, 182). It is easy to see that these Christological interpretations are far removed from those of Revelation. They are also very limited in their holiness content: the treader or the treadee is holy and this is because the reference is usually to Christ. There is another strain of tradition more prominently connected to holiness and purification. This tradition might be called the ‘good grapes-bad grapes’ winepress tradition. Thus, if good grapes are brought into the press, then the treading has a positive effect. The grapes ‘suffer’, but ultimately they turn into good wine, having been ‘purified’, as it were. If the grapes are of poor quality, then wine will be the same. The treading or the suffering is to no avail; the pain does not redeem. These traditions are usually interpreted symbolically and appear in two forms: personal and communal. Regarding the first, for instance, Apollinarius of Laodicea (c. 310–390), in his comments on Ps. 8, sees the winepress as the place of judgement of one’s harvest (Muehlenberg, 1975, I, 3). Similar views on Ps. 8 are found in Didymus the Blind (313–398) (Muehlenberg, 1975, I,145–146). The second view is especially represented by Eusebius who sees the winepresses as referring to the Church in general and in particular to the Church of his time (Comm. in Psalmos VIII, 8; PG 23:125–127).5 Eusebius also presented the ‘personal’ to the mystery of the Church and Trinity. In Hieron., in Ezech, XLV (PL 25, 452) the winepresses are the sacraments of the Church. 4 This, of course, is somewhat problematic, if it is Christ (God) doing the treading. This problem led other Church fathers to interpret the garments as stained with the blood of the enemies of Christ. Cf. (Pseudo-)Athanasius, Questiones in Scripturam Sanctam LXXVII PG 28, 744). 5 For additional depictions of the winepress-Church motif see, for instance,
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view, but departed from the ‘good grapes-bad grapes’ motif in that he allowed for repentance. Thus the winepress in this instance represented punishment of sins and going through the winepress represented an act of repentance which ultimately purified (Comm. in Isaiam VIII, 2; PG 24:501). Rabbis and the Winepress The majority of rabbinic material appears in Midrash Psalms on the Gittith which was also interpreted by the rabbis as gat or winepress, although probably this was independent of the translation in LXX.6 As we shall see, the Jewish motifs are of two types: ‘independent’, for the most part based on the ‘plain’ meaning of the text, and polemical, which, in our view at least, are often a response to some of the Christian motifs and traditions described above.7 Most of the independent traditions are not based on Psalms. Many, though, contain holiness motifs. Thus, for example, we find in Lam Rabbah, Petihta 32 (34, ed. Buber):
Augustine, Enarr in Ps. VIII (CCSL 38, 491) and the Venerable Bede on Ps. 8 who saw the winepress as both the Church and the members of the Church who are purified in the winepress (Neale and Littledale, 1879/1187 [1976], I, 141–142). 6 Classical Jewish medieval commentators offered a number of explanations which were accepted in varying degrees in modern exegesis and scholarship. Gittith, for instance, has been explained as a musical instrument which came from the Philistine city of Gath, or according to others, David might have been in Gath when he composed these Psalms. Other commentators connected to Gittith to Obed Edom the Gittite, in whose house David kept the ark before bringing it to Jerusalem. At best, some saw it as a type of sung, ostensibly sung while treading grapes at the gat. None of this has any relevance for our study. Cf., however, the view of the 19th century German Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch who saw the gittith as representing the act of treading grapes. The winepress represents an image of Divine punishment and pain. The actual treading, though is meant to purify, to separate good from evil (Saharov 1956, 328). These motifs are, of course, quite similar to those cited in the Church Fathers. It is doubtful that Hirsch was aware of them. 7 It is difficult, if not impossible, to prove direct influence, whether of Christian traditions on Jewish ones or vice versa. Midrash Psalms clearly contains material of an anti-Christian nature and some of it is apparently a response to Christian traditions and motifs. See for instance Loewe 1957, 500 who sees the rabbinic exegesis of Ps. 1 as a possible response to Christian views and Stern, 1981, 272–273 who considers the rabbis on Ps. 79 as a response to Christian accusations against the Jews in the third and fourth centuries CE that with the destruction of the Temple, God abandoned them.
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joshua schwartz I have made My house into My winepress.
Or in BT Sanhedrin 96b: The Temple went up (= to reach safety in the heavens) and they (= the angels) trod upon it from the heavens (= lowering it back to earth) as it is written ‘The Lord has trodden’ (Lam 1:15).
In both cases the treading should be seen as punishment for behavior of the people that was not holy, that was not that of a holy people. This can also take place on an individual level. Thus, for example, the sages understood the verse in Job 24:11 ‘They tread the winepresses, but suffer thirst’ as referring to the owner of a winepress who was punished because of evil deeds. Sin and you will suffer thirst in your own vineyard (Gen Rab 31:2, 278 ed. Theodor-Albeck). Sometimes the winepress or its component parts takes on holiness, such as the tradition in T Sukkah 3:15 in relation to the Parable of the Vineyard of Is 5: R. Jose says—a pit was dug into the depths, as it was written. . . . ‘My well-beloved had a vineyard. . . .’ ‘And he dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vine and built a tower in the midst of it and also hewed out a vat therein . . .’ ‘And built a tower in the midst of it’—this is the Temple. ‘Hewed out a vat therein’— this is the altar. ‘And also hewed out a vat therein’—this is the pit.
Here the winepress takes on holiness similar to motifs found in the Church Fathers, although in this case, it would appear that the Jewish motif was earlier than the Christian one. There is very little in the way of ‘good grapes—bad grapes’ in the writings of the rabbis. The closest they came is their explanation of Joel 4:14, ‘vats of overflow for their wickedness is great’. The overflowing vats represent sin and sinners. Trust in God and avoid Gehenna; do the opposite and wallow in the juices of the winepress (Mid Ps. 62:2, 307, ed. Buber). In this case the winepress represents sin and anti-holiness as it were. It is also interesting to note that biblical motif of abundance is interpreted here in a negative manner.8 As mentioned above, the majority of the rabbinic winepress mate8 An abundance motif may be found in the frieze at the ancient synagogue at Chorazin which depicts two men in a winepress treading grapes with both feet, with a bunch of grapes between them. See Hachlili 1988, 340, 344. There is no reason to see the treaders as satyrs or sileni and it is doubtful that one should look for esoteric symbolism in the depiction.
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rial is polemical and is based on the relevant selections from Psalms that we have discussed above. It is also our opinion that there is sometimes almost a direct polemic, relating fairly specifically to the earlier Christian traditions that we have already discussed. Christian tradition often saw the winepress as holy in the Christological sense. How did the rabbis react to this? In Mid Ps. 8, 1 (73, ed. Buber, translation, I, 119, ed. Braude) we find the following: ‘For him who triumphs, at treading the winepress’ (Gittith). The phrase ‘treading the winepress’ is to be read in light of what Scripture says elsewhere: ‘Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come and tread ye; for the winepress is full, the vats overflow ( Joel 4:13)’. To whom will God say ‘Put ye I the sickle . . . tread ye, for the winepress is full’? R. Pinehas taught in the name of R. Hilkiah: God will say this to the angels. But the rabbis maintained that God will say it to the children of Israel. Songs are not sung at the season of harvest, nor at the season of grape-gathering, nor at the season of olive-picking, but only at the season of treading the winepress, as it is said, ‘For him who triumphs; at treading the winepress.’ A Psalm of David.
The midrash starts by citing Joel 4:13, interpreting it as a punishment verse against the Nations. The question is only who will be treading, the angels or the children of Israel. The punishment of the Nations will be accompanied by joyous singing and celebration. While the Nations may be punished here in the winepress, there does not seem to be anything inherently Christian in this tradition. This aspect becomes clearer in the continuation of the tradition: By ‘harvest’ is meant the fall of Babylon, as it is said . . . by ‘grapegathering’ is meant the fall of Greece . . . by ‘olive picking’ is meant the fall of Media . . . by ‘treading the winepress’ is meant the fall of Edom, as it is written ‘I have trodden the winepress alone’ (Is 63,3) (ibid.).
This continuation of the midrash introduces the ‘Four Empires’, a motif that is early and certainly pre-Christian. The empires also vary from time to time. Eventually, though, Edom was turned into Rome which was turned into Christianity (Schwartz 1987, 279, n. 73). By introducing the verse from Isaiah, God becomes the treader. The tradition in toto has angels, Israel and God treading the Nations, while God deals with the ‘Empires’ and at the end makes short shrift of ‘Edom’ or Christendom. After a number of digressions the homily returns to Joel 4:13, bringing the winepress as a symbol of redemption and triumph:
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joshua schwartz ‘Come tread ye; for the winepress is full’ ( Joel 4:13). All the Prophets saw the winepress (as the symbol of redemption). So the prophet Joel saw it, for he said, ‘Put ye in the sickle . . . the winepress is full’. So Isaiah saw it. . . . So Asaph saw it, for he said, ‘For Him who triumphs; at treading the Gittith (Ps 81:1). And so David saw it, for he said, ‘For Him who triumphs; at treading the Gittith. A Psalm of David (ibid.)
David, by seeing and telling of the winepress foretold the ultimate victory of the Jews over Edom or Christianity in messianic times. The use of David, certainly fitting for Psalms, is especially ironic in this polemical tradition. There is even a greater irony involved. The winepress as ‘punishment of the Nations’ traditions returns us to the earliest winepress traditions in Revelations. Midrash Psalms concludes its discussion of Psalm 8 by returning to the first verse of the chapter and by reiterating the punishment of the nations: Another comment on ‘For Him who triumphs, at the treading of the Gittith’ (Ps 8:1). The verse returns to the punishment of Gog and Magog and of the four kingdoms upon whom God will tread as in a winepress, as it is written, ‘Wherefore is Thine apparel red, and Thy garments like his that treadeth in the wine vat? (Is 63:2) (Mid Ps 8, 8, 79 ed. Buber, translation, I, 128–129, ed. Braude).
This tradition concludes by stressing that the ultimate recognition of God is dependent upon His punishing the Nations in the winepress: And when will He be known as the Lord God? When the Holy One, blessed be He, is seen in the winepress. When God says, ‘Come tread ye; for the winepress is full’ ( Joel 4:13). His triumph will be acknowledged, as it is said, ‘For Him who triumphs; at treading the winepress’ (ibid.).
We had seen above in the ‘independent’ traditions that both the Temple and the altar could become the winepress. The final winepress tradition in Midrash Psalms that we shall cite leaves the Temple and altar as they are but states that if the Nations harm them, then they shall be punished by God or trampled by God in the winepress: ‘How beloved are Thy Tabernacles (= Temple), O Lord of hosts’ (Ps 84:2). How much in them is so beloved of Thee that for their sake Thou, O Lord, will tread in this winepress! Any one who stretches out his hand against the Holy Tabernacle, him the Holy One, blessed be He, will put into the winepress. As scripture says, ‘A voice of noise
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from the city, a voice from the Temple, the voice of the Lord that rendereth recompense to His enemies’ (Is 66:6). ‘A voice of noise’ because of what our enemies did in His city (= Jerusalem); ‘a voice from the Temple’ because of what they did in the Temple . . . (Mid Ps 84, 1, 370, ed. Buber; translation, II, 64, ed. Braude).
This Temple motif is clearly anti-Christian and in keeping with Jewish attempts to fight, ideologically, at least, the Christian ‘take-over’ of Jerusalem during the Byzantine period (Schwartz 1986; 1987, 1990, 1993). The Winepress of the Targum The rabbinic traditions above describe a number of different treaders in the winepress, but the dominant figure is God. While the messianic era may be hinted at, as in the traditions of the ‘Four Empires’, and in the reference to David, we have not yet seen the Messiah in the winepress. This happens, though, in a number of targumic traditions on Gen 49:11. This is not surprising since various aspects of Gen 49:10–12, in reference to Judah were given a messianic interpretation and in particular Gen 49:10, ‘ad ki yavo shilo’. yavo shilo is totally obscure, but early traditions from Qumran, the Targums and the rabbis see shilo as a messianic title (Sarna 1989, 337). On Gen 49:11 (‘He washes his garment in wine, His robe in blood of grapes’), we find the following tradition in Aramaic Neofiti I: How beautiful is King Messiah who is to rise from among those of the house of Judah. He girds his loins and goes forth to battle against those who hate him; and he kills kings with rulers, and makes the mountains red from the blood of their slain and makes the valleys white from the fat of their warriors. His garments are rolled in blood; he is like a presser of grapes. . . . The mountains will become red from his vines and the vats from wine (Macho 1968, I, 635).
This tradition is representative, more or less, of the other Palestinian targumim, describing essentially how the Messiah will make short shrift of the Nations with much blood and gore.9 This type of tradition is 9 See the detailed list in Schwartz 1993, 311, n. 48 and the literature cited ad loc. It is not relevant, at the moment, whether this tradition is dependent on Isa 63, 1–6 or not. While the earliest targumim may date to the Roman period, there is no doubt that they underwent revision, editing and sometimes much more during the Late Roman, Byzantine and sometimes medieval periods.
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especially reminiscent of Revelation, particularly since it is possible that it was Christ who was doing the treading there. Might not the Messiah treading tradition be a response to Christ in the winepress? Ultimately, as we remember, the results are the same, the Nations are trampled. In Revelation this might have also included Jews. In the later targum, it was certainly meant to include Christians. The Aramaic targum on Isaiah also provides a number of interesting additions to the Biblical text: He is about to bring a stroke upon Edom, strong avenger upon Bozrah. . . . Just as He swore to them by his Memra. . . . Why will mountain be red from the blood of those killed, and plains gush forth like vine in the press? Behold, as grapes trodden in the press, so shall slaughter increase among the armies of the peoples and there will be no strength for them before Me. I will kill them in My anger and trample them in my wrath. I will break the strength of their strong ones before me, and I will annihilate all their wise ones. (Tg. Isa 63:1–3; Chilton 1987, 120–121).
Might not the ‘wise ones’, for instance, refer to the Church Fathers and their winepress traditions? Summary A ‘Holy People’ might indeed find itself in the winepress and purification through the process of treading might even elevate its level of holiness. However, sometimes the holiness might be transferred from those in the winepress to those doing the treading. We have described above one brief episode in the relationship between holiness, punishment and vengeance within both Jewish and Christian frameworks. Both Jewish and Christian texts judge the enemies of the ‘Holy People’ by treading them in the winepress and even the ‘Holy People’ might also undergo this as a form of purification. The treader might be the ‘Holy People’ or the Messiah. In JewishChristian polemics, the metaphor of the winepress serves mainly to condemn the ‘other’ to the winepress. LITERATURE Akpunonu, P.D., The Vine, Israel and the Church (New York, Washington, D.C./ Baltimore: Peter Lang; Studies in Biblical History 51, 2004). Aune, D.E., Word Biblical Commentary: Revelation 6–16, Nashville 1998(A).
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———, Word Biblical Commentary: Revelation 17–22, Nashville 1998(B). Bornkamm, G., ‘lenos, hupolenion’ in: Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids 1967, 254–257. Chilton, B.D., The Aramaic Bible, Vol 11: The Isaiah Targum, Edinburgh 1987. Devreesse, R., Le Commentaire de Theodore sur les Psaumes (I–LXXX), Citta Del Vaticano 1939, 42–43. Dommershausen, W., ‘Yayin’ in: Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Grand Rapids 1990, 60–61. Green, R.A., ‘The Christian Bible and Its Interpretation’, in: J.L. Kugel and R.A. Green, Early Bible Interpretation, Philadelphia, 1986. Gunkel, H., Introduction to Psalms: The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel, Macon 1998. Hachlili, R., Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel, Leiden 1988. Leclercq, H., ‘pressoir’ in: Dictionnaire d’Archeologie Chretienne et de Liturgie, Paris 1940, 1731–1734. Loewe, R., ‘The Jewish Midrashim and Patristic and Scholastic Exegesis of the Bible’, Studia Patristica, Texte und Untersuchungen, 63.1, 1957, 492–514. Macho, A.D., Neophyti: Targum Palestinense MS de la Bibliotheca Vaticana, Madrid, Barcelona 1968. Muehlenberg, E., Psalmenkommentare aus der Katenenueberlieferung, Berlin 1975. Neale, J.M., Littledale, R.F., A Commentary on the Psalms: from Primitive and Medieval Writers: And from the various Office-Books and Hymns of the Roman, Mozarabic, Ambrosian, Gallican, Greek, Coptic, Armenian and Syrian Rites, London 1879/1887; New York 1976. Poorthuis, M.J.H.M. and Schwartz, Joshua, Purity and Holiness: The Heritage of Leviticus, Leiden-Boston-Köln, 2000. Saharov, Y., Sefer Ozar Tehilot Yisrael, Tel-Aviv 1956. Sarna, N.M., The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis tyçarb, Philadelphia, New York, Jerusalem 1989. Schwartz, J., Jewish Settlement in Judaea after the Bar-Kochba War until the Arab Conquest, Jerusalem 1986 (Hebrew). ———, ‘The Encaenia of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Temple of Solomon and the Jews’, Theologische Zeitschrift 43 (1987) 265–281. ———, ‘Gallus, Julian and Anti-Christian Polemic in Pesikta Rabbati’, Theologische Zeitschrift, 46 (1990) 1–19. ———, ‘Treading the Grapes of Wrath: The Wine Press in Ancient Jewish and Christian Tradition’, Theologische Zeitschrift, 49 (1993) 215–228; 311–324. Stern, D., ‘Rhetoric and Midrash: The Case of the Mashal’, Prooftexts, 1 (1981) 261–291.
HOLINESS AND SANCTITY IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Lawrence H. Schiffman New York University, USA The topic under discussion in this paper is at the same time simple and extremely complex. On the simple side, holiness and sanctity can be found mentioned numerous times in the Dead Sea Scrolls and can easily be located by looking for the root çdq.1 However, such an approach to the problem would simply yield a collection of passages, easily categorized by subject in the scheme of Rudolph Otto.2 Actually, an attempt to write this study based on a search for usage of the Hebrew root çdq would lead us into a trap. Holiness and sanctity are complex concepts, the definitions of which are much wider than the semantic fields bounded by the Hebrew word çdq.3 In addition, such an approach would not yield anything unique about the scrolls or the Dead Sea sectarians, and would not produce a study that could be helpful in contrasting Qumran materials with those of the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic literature, or early Christianity. For all these reasons, the ‘concordance produces encyclopedia article’ method will not be followed here. Instead, in the study that follows, we seek to portray the role of holiness and sanctity at Qumran based on a wide appreciation of the literature and its religious aspects. Our approach emphasizes the unique role of holiness and sanctity in Qumran texts—especially in the sectarian corpus.
1 See W. Kornfeld and H. Ringgren, ‘çdq’, TDOT 12.521–45. See especial the section on Qumran by Ringgren, 544–5 and the bibliography in 545 n. 100. 2 The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational (trans. John W. Harvey; 2d ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1950). 3 Cf. E. Berkovitz, Man and God, Studies in Biblical Theology (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1969) 141–223 for a wide ranging study of holiness in biblical thought.
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A long passage in Col. 8 of the Rule of the Community (1QS) will be our starting point. The passage begins by setting out the nature of a community council (8:1–4) of twelve representatives, presumably one for each tribe, and three priests, presumably for the clans of Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. The text continues that when this council is formed, the community as a whole (dhyh tx[) will be: Founded on truth, as an eternal plantation, a holy house for Israel, and the foundation of the holy of holies for Israel, . . . the most holy dwelling for Aaron, with all their knowledge of the covenant of justice (1QS 8:5–9 = 4Q259 ii 13–17).4
The text then tells us that after the council is organized for two years: They will be separated as a sanctuary in the midst of the council of the men of the community (1QS 8:11 = 4Q258 vi 5).5
Further, once this wider community is established, anyone who purposely violates a commandment ‘may not touch the pure food of the men of holiness (1QS 8:17 = 4Q258 vi 9)’. In 8:20 (= 4Q258 vi 11), a long section termed the sectarian penal code then starts off with, ‘these are the regulations by which the men of perfect holiness shall conduct themselves.’6 These passages afford us a detailed sense of what holiness and sanctity meant to Qumran sectaries, in addition to what they had inherited from the traditions of the Hebrew Bible. The sect itself is seen as a holy house—this means that for all intents and purposes, the sect replaces the actual physical holy house, the Jerusalem temple, which the sectarians have shunned because in their view it is in violation of the Torah’s laws.7 Further, for the Aaronide priests who constituted the founders and earliest leaders of the sect, the group (or perhaps its council) constituted the true holy of holies. In 4 P.S. Alexander and G. Vermes, Qumran Cave 4. XIX: Serekh ha-Ya˙ad and Two Related Texts (DJD 26; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) 139–44; cf. 4Q258 vi 1–3 (DJD 26:105–9) and 4Q265 (Miscellaneous Rules) in J.M. Baumgarten, et al., eds., Qumran Cave 4.XXV: Halakhic Texts (DJD 35; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) 69–72. 5 DJD 26:105–9. 6 Cf. L.H. Schiffman, Sectarian Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Courts, Testimony and the Penal Code (BJS 33; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983) 155–59. 7 G. Forkman, The Limits of the Religious Community (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1972).
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fact, it is only the sect that makes possible atonement (lines 6–7; not quoted above). It is in this substitute temple that the priests will offer the sacrifices. Before proceeding, we can already observe that the sectarians have transferred the sanctity of the temple, usually understood as spatial and as typifying holiness of place, to their group. Just as priests ministered in the temple, so they led the sect. Just as the sacrifices were supposed to bring atonement for the people and their land (line 6), so the life of the sect performed the same functions. Another extremely important aspect of the life of the sect and its holiness is its separation from the rest of Israel, described in 1QS 8:12–13 (= 4Q258 vi 6–78 = 4Q259 ii 3–4):9 When these have become a community in Israel, . . . they are to separate (wldby) from the midst of the assembly of the men of iniquity to go to the desert. . . .
This second aspect of sectarian holiness picks up on the root meaning of çdq—to separate, here translated with ldb. However, whereas in the Bible and rabbinic literature separation is from that which is impure or evil, here it is from the people of iniquity. However, this concept is closely linked with that of the sect as temple. Spatial sanctity of the temple is transferred to the group. What is inside is holy, as led by priests and others, but what is outside is not holy, and therefore to be separated from. The boundaries of a physical temple with its temenos and courtyards are here imitated in the life of the group. Its boundaries are understood to be those of the temple. The pure food of the sect (line 17) was equivalent to the sacrifices, and the sectarians were called holy men. Those who followed the way of the sect were termed ‘men of perfect holiness’ and the sect is a ‘council of holiness’ (lines 20–21). Holiness and Purity The Qumran sect also saw holiness as closely linked with ritual purity. From this point of view, like the members of the ˙avurah discussed in rabbinic literature, the sectarians sought to observe the laws of temple purity in their regular daily lives. For the sectarians, 8 9
See especially DJD 26:107 on the variant readings of the manuscripts. DJD 26:144–48.
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the system of ritual purity was intimately connected with membership in the sect,10 which as we have seen, was tantamount to entry into the holy temple itself. Effectively, purity functioned in the life of the sect in a way very similar to its role in the temple—as a sign of greater sanctity and closeness to the divine. However, in addition, purity statutes served as a means of demarcation of levels of sanctity and, hence, sectarian status. This of course was its function as a boundary marker in the temple—here transformed to the life of the sect. The Rule of the Community describes the process of admission to the sect (1QS 6:13–23).11 The first step towards entry into the sect was examination by the paqid be-rosh ha-rabbim, the ‘official at the head of the community’. If this official approved the candidate, the novice took his oath of admission and was then taught the sectarian regulations. Only then did the moshav ha-rabbim, the sectarian assembly, render a decision regarding him, presumably based upon his performance to date. If he passed this examination, he attained a partial status. The novice was not permitted to touch the pure food of the community for one year until he was examined by the moshav ha-rabbim once again. If he passed, he was elevated to a higher status whereby his property was temporarily admitted into communal use, but he still was not permitted to touch the liquid food of the community for another year. After the third examination by the moshav ha-rabbim, he could be admitted as a full member of the sect with all privileges including entry into the sectarian assembly. All these stages serve to link the instruction in sectarian teachings with the initiation into the sect through the medium of ritual purity. As the novice gained in knowledge of the sect’s interpretations of biblical law and passed examinations, he was gradually admitted into greater confidence amongst the members, and he gradually rose in ritual purity until he was able to partake of all the pure food and drink of the sect. J. Licht explains that the process of initiation accords well with tannaitic halakhah in which liquids are more prone to contract and pass on impurity than solids.12 Thus, the touching of liquids is the 10
Schiffman, Sectarian Law, 161–5. Partially paralleled in = 4Q256 xi 11–13 (DJD 26:55–57); 4Q261 3 1 (DJD 26:177–78). 12 J. Licht, Megillat ha-Serakhim mi-Megillot Midbar Yehudah ( Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1965) 294–303. 11
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last stage to which the novice was admitted.13 Also, this theory explains why a member of the Qumran sect who sinned was removed from the pure food as a punishment. Since ritual purity was, to the sectarians, a symbol of inner, spiritual purity, he who transgressed slid back down the ranks through which he had risen. He is once again forbidden from the food of the sectarians until he repents and regains his pure religious state. Effectively, what has been created here by means of purity is a set of boundaries of increasing sanctity. Entering the sect is like entering the temenos, and proceeding through the levels of initiation is like entering further into the courts of the temple and then into the temple itself and the holy of holies. These purity rules and their connection with the initiation rites were what made the Qumran sect truly a Holy House. Holiness of Heaven on Earth If holiness had been transferred ‘spatially’ from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to the sect and its life, which we may call a horizontal transference, we may also speak of a vertical transference, or better union, in which the holiness of the sect is the result of an angelic presence.14 This concept is central to the War Scroll and its portrayal of the eschatological war to be conducted both in heaven and on earth. The Rule of the Congregation (1QSa 2:3–11) specifies that eschatological purity requires the absence of those with specific deformities, the impure, and the aged since the angels are regarded as being present in the assembly.15 1QM 7:6 gives the very same reason for the requirement that those impure from a seminal emission not participate in the eschatological battle: ‘For holy angels are together with their armies.’16 B.M. Bokser suggested that this is actually a
13 Cf. C. Rabin, Qumran Studies (Scripta Judaica 2. London: Oxford University Press, 1957); S. Lieberman, ‘The Discipline in the So-Called Dead Sea Manual of Discipline’, JBL 71 (1951): 199–206; repr. in idem, Texts and Studies (New York: Ktav, 1974) 200–7. 14 For a somewhat different perspective on the priestly aspects of this notion, see R. Elior, Miqdash u-Merkavah, Kohanim u-Mela"khim, Hekhal ve-Hekhalot ba-Mistiqah haYehudit ha-Qedumah ( Jerusalem: Magness Press, 2002) 174–202. 15 Cf. L.H. Schiffman, The Eschatological Community of the Dead Sea Scrolls (SBLMS 38; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1989) 37–52. 16 Y. Yadin, The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness [hereafter War Scroll ] (trans. B. and C. Rabin; Oxford: Oxford University Press,
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reworking of Deut. 23:15 that explains the requirement of ritual purity in the military camp as resulting from the presence of the Lord. Bokser maintains that the divine presence is represented here by the angels.17 A parallel to this very concept occurs in 1QM 12:7–8 where it is stated that the angels are fighting among the members of the sect: ‘A host of angels is mustered with us.’18 It was a cardinal belief of the sect that just as the world below is divided into the domain of the two spirits,19 those of good and evil, so was the world of the angels. Just as the Teacher of Righteousness and the Wicked Priest represented the forces of good and evil to the sect in the present age,20 so the Prince of Light (the angel Michael) and his enemy, Belial, represented the very same forces on high.21 These forces would be arrayed against each other in the end of days, just as they are in the present, pre-messianic age. The great eschatological battle would be fought, therefore, simultaneously both in heaven and on earth. In the actual battle angels and men would fight side by side. After the long series of engagements described in the War Scroll, the forces of good would be victorious. For this reason, the sect believed that in the end of days the angels would be present in the military camp described in the War Scroll. At the very same time, the eschatological council would also involve both the earthly and heavenly Sons of Light.22 This angelic presence effectively merged the realms of heaven and earth for the sectarians. Living in the present in expectation of the mes1962) 290–91. Cf. 4Q491 1, 2+3 line 10 (M. Baillet, Qumrân Grotte 4.III (4Q482–4Q520) (DJD 7; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) 13–18. On angels in the War Scroll, see Yadin, War Scroll, 229–42. 17 B. Bokser, ‘Approaching Sacred Space’, HTR 78 (1985): 279–99. 18 Yadin, War Scroll, 316–17; cf. 4Q491 1, 2 + 3 line. 19 1QS 3:13–4:26. Cf. L.H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (Philadelphia and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1994) 149–50; J. Duhaime, ‘Dualism’, EDSS 1.215–20. 20 Schiffman, Reclaiming, 117–21, 231–35. 21 Yadin, War Scroll, 232–36. 22 In addition to those with deformities, the impure, and the aged, 1QM 7:3–4 states that women and children are also to be excluded from the military camp. It is most likely that the very same regulation was in force regarding the eschatological council. Although women and children would be part of the sect, as is evident from 1QSa 1:6–11, their presence among the angels in the council of the community would not be allowed, nor were they permitted in the military camp during the battle at the end of days.
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sianic era meant living as though divine representatives were among them. The eschatological dream meant that somehow heaven and earth would meet, and that heavenly sanctity would now be manifest on earth below. Holiness and the Eschaton A principle of the Qumran sect was its view that holiness would be perfected only in the end of days. In fact, the perfection of the end of days involved both the ultimate victory over and elimination of the forces of evil, and also the perfect observance of Jewish law as interpreted by the sectarians. It was believed that when the messianic war began, the sect would be mustered to fight the battles against the evildoers and those who do not know the correct interpretation of the Torah which the sect expounds. As the sect finally overcame its enemies and was victorious, the righteous of Israel who turn to God and adopt the sectarian way of life would also be included in the sect. Together with the original sectarians, they would constitute the eschatological community. This new community would gather together for the messianic banquet under the leadership of the Zadokite priestly messiah and the messiah of Israel.23 The messianic era was understood to constitute the ultimate utopia, a world in which perfection in purity and worship would surpass all of history. The sect of the future age—now really the only Jewish way—would fulfill all the aspirations of ‘the men of perfect holiness’ (1QS 8:10). The end of days was to usher in unparalleled holiness and sanctity as the angels dwelled among the eschatological community. The sect tried to actuate in the present, pre-messianic age the perfect holiness that they expected in the coming age.24 For this reason, many of the prescriptions of the War Scroll and the Rule of the Congregation describing the eschatological congregation also parallel regulations found in other texts intended to legislate for the present age. In order to actualize its dreams for the future age, the sect referred to itself as the Sons of Zadok and held this group of priests 23 Cf. L.H. Schiffman, ‘Messianic Figures and Ideas in the Qumran Scrolls’, in The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity (First Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins; ed. J.H. Charlesworth; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1992) 116–29. 24 Schiffman, Eschatological Community, 68–71.
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in special esteem.25 They expected these priests to constitute their leadership in the end of days. Likewise, the Levitical age limits in the Dead Sea Scrolls applied to the present officials of the sect, the officers of the military units who would participate in the eschatological battle, and the leadership structure of the messianic community.26 Disqualifications from the eschatological assembly, as described in the Rule of the Congregation (1QSa), also followed Levitical legislation regarding those priests who were unfit for temple service. These were impure, sufferers of physical deformities or old age (1QSa 2:3–11; cf. 1:19–22). After all, the sect saw itself as constituting a sanctuary through its dedication to a life of holiness and purity. At the brink of the dawn of the eschaton, during which they were living, the sect had to maintain the highest standard of purity. They pre-enacted the future messianic banquets in their communal meals by eating with a quorum of ten males, requiring ritual purity of the participants, and by performing the blessing of wine and bread presided over by the priest who then apportioned the food according to the status of the congregants (1QS 6:2–5).27 The messianic era is portrayed as a second redemption, the Exodus from Egypt being the prototype. To this end, the sect used biblical terminology to describe the messianic era. The Dead Sea Scrolls speak of the encampments of Israel’s wandering in the desert,28 the restoration of the ancient monarchy, high priesthood, and tribal organization. The first redemption from Egypt represented the ultimate closeness to God and His direct intervention in history. At this stage, Israel was the most receptive to God’s revelation and the most obedient to His law. The sectarians expected the renewal of this perfect condition in the soon-to-dawn eschaton. In addition, the world would attain a level of purity, sanctity, and observance of the law even more perfect than that experienced in the first redemption. The sectarians strove to live in perfect holiness so that they would live
25 L.H. Schiffman, The Halakhah at Qumran (SJLA 16. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975) 70–75; Elior, Miqdash u-Merkavah, 202–11. 26 Schiffman, Sectarian Law, 32–35. 27 Cf. 1QSa 2:11–22 for the eschatological banquet; Schiffman, Eschatological Community, 53–67. 28 Cf. S. Talmon, ‘The “Desert Motif ” in the Bible and in Qumran Literature’, in Biblical Motifs: Origins and Transformations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966) 216–54; repr. in idem, Literary Studies in the Hebrew Bible: Form and Content: Collected Studies (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993) 55–63.
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to experience the eschatological battles and tribulations of the dawning of the messianic era and the promised glory of the end of days. Sacred Space: The Land of Israel in the Temple Scroll The Temple Scroll presents an ideal vision of Israel as it should build its temple, worship its God, maintain ritual purity to the utmost degree, be governed by its king, and observe the laws of the Torah.29 This ideal plan, according to the explicit statement of the scroll (11QT 29:2–10), was intended for the present age, not for the eschatological future. It was the intention of the author/redactor to put forward his scroll as an alternative to the ‘constitution’ of Israel, religious and political, which was in place in the Hasmonean period. He called for a new temple building and for new settlement patterns as well. This polemic had a unique style. In the area of temple building, settlement patterns, and his approach to the Land of Israel, the author took a distinctly utopian view. Throughout, the author is informed by a notion of concentric spheres of holiness,30 as well as by distinct concern for the sanctity of the entire Land as sacred space. The Temple City For the Temple Scroll, the central point of the Land of Israel and the source of its sanctity was the temple and the surrounding complex.31 This new temple, of very different proportions from that which 29 Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll (3 vols.; Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society and the Shrine of the Book, 1983). 30 W.O. McCready, ‘Temple and Temple Scroll: A Sectarian Alternative’, Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division A: The Bible and its World ( Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1990) 203. 31 See Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.177–276; L.H. Schiffman, ‘Architecture and Law: The Temple and its Courtyards in the Temple Scroll’, From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Intellect in Quest of Understanding: Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox (eds J. Neusner, E.S. Frerichs, and N.M. Sarna; 4 vols.; BJS 159; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1989) 1:267–84; J. Maier, ‘The Architectural History of the Temple in Jerusalem in the Light of the Temple Scroll’, Temple Scroll Studies (ed. G.J. Brooke; JSPSup 7; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989) 23–62; J. Maier, ‘The Temple Scroll and Tendencies in the Cultic Architecture of the Second Commonwealth’, Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University Conference in Memory of Yigael Yadin ( JSOTSup 8 and JSOT/ASOR Monographs 2; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990) 53–82; J. Maier, The
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existed in first or second temple times, would be characterized by the enclosure of the temple building itself by three concentric courtyards.32 The Inner Court (11QT 36:3–7) was to measure some 280 cubits square, with four gates representing the four groups of the tribe of Levi: The Aaronide priests on the east, the Levites of Kohath on the south, Gershon on the west, and Merari on the north. This arrangement corresponds exactly to that of the desert camp as described in Num. 3:14–39. The Middle Court (38:12–15) was to be concentric with the Inner Court, 100 meters further out. The entirety was to be 480 cubits square, with three gates on each side. The gates (39:11–13) were to be distributed among the twelve tribes of Israel, each having its own gate.33 The Outer Court (40:5–11) was also concentric, with sides measuring some 1600 cubits. This wall would also have twelve gates (40:13–41:11) which are distributed such that they correspond exactly to those of the Middle Court.34 The chambers in the outer wall which face inward (41:17–42:6) were to be apportioned (44:3–45:2) to the various tribes as well as to the priestly and Levitical groups we mentioned above. Aaron is assigned two groups of chambers as a member of the tribe of Levi as well as one of the Levitical priests, and as a firstborn entitled to a double portion.
Temple Scroll: An Introduction, Translation & Commentary ( JSOTSup 34; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985); H. Stegemann, in ‘The Institutions of Israel in the Temple Scroll’, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research (eds. D. Dimant and U. Rappaport; Leiden: E.J. Brill; Jerusalem: Magnes and Yad Ben-Zvi, 1992) 146–85. 32 Cf. J. Maier, ‘Die Hofanlagen im Tempel-Entwurf des Ezechiel im Lichte der “Tempelrolle” von Qumran’, in Prophecy: Essays Presented to Georg Fohrer on his SixtyFifth Birthday (ed. J.A. Emerton; BZAW 150; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980) 55–67. 33 The apportionment of gates to the twelve tribes is found in regard to the city of Jerusalem in Ezek. 48:31–34 and Rev. 21:12–14. Fragments of virtually the same text are found in 4Q365a, published under the title ‘4QTemple?’ by S. White, in H. Attridge, et al., Qumran Cave 4.VIII, Parabiblical Texts Part by I (DJD 13; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) 323–33. These are probably from the same manuscript as 4Q365 (Reworked Pentateuch). The relation of this manuscript to the Temple Scroll was already noted by J. Starcky, ‘Jerusalem et les manuscrits de la Mer Morte’, MdB 1 (1977): 38–40. On the relation of these texts to the Temple Scroll, see White, DJD 13:319–20. 34 We are unconvinced by M. Barker, ‘The Temple Measurements and the Solar Calendar’, Temple Scroll Studies (ed. G.J. Brooke; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989) 63–66 who sees the gates of the Outer Court as symbolizing the calendar and serving as a device for its calculation.
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This unique temple plan represents the layout of the Tabernacle and camp of Israel in the desert combined. The architect of this temple plan sought to place the camp of Israel within the expanded temenos. Hence, he called for a temple structure that made access to the tribes and even symbolic dwelling places for them a basic principle of design. Each tribe was assumed to enter the temenos through its prescribed gate and to proceed initially to its chambers. From there all members of the tribe or Levitical clan could circulate in the Outer Court. Those not disqualified by some impurity from entry into the Middle Court35 could then proceed into that court, again through their respective gates. Only priests and Levites could proceed through their gates to the Inner Court wherein the temple and its furnishings were located. This entire plan has behind it the assumption that the temple is the center of sanctity which can be reached by entering further and further into the concentric spheres of holiness of the temenos. The scroll makes clear repeatedly that it is the indwelling of the divine presence in the temple which imparts to it this level of sanctity.36 The addition of the third court was intended to provide further protection for the sanctity of God’s precincts. God is to dwell in the temple, among the children of Israel forever, according to many passages throughout the Temple Scroll.37 Installations outside the Temple City Beyond the temenos just described were a few installations designed to insure the sanctity of the holy place. Among them was the place for the latrines ( yad ), to be located northwest of ‘the city’, i.e. the temple city, at a distance of three thousand cubits (46:13–16),38 probably derived from Num. 35:4–5. 35 See L.H. Schiffman, ‘Exclusion from the Sanctuary and the City of the Sanctuary in the Temple Scroll’, HAR 9 (1985): 303–6. 36 L.H. Schiffman, ‘The Theology of the Temple Scroll’, JQR 85 (Qumran Studies, 1994): 118–21. 37 This theme appears in the conclusion of the festival calendar of the scroll (29:3–4, 7–8), the purity laws (45:12, 13–14, 46:11–12, 47:10–11), the commands for the construction of the temple (46:4 [partly restored]), the laws of forbidden food (51:7–8), the prohibition of non-sacral slaughter (52:19–20, 53:1 [restored]), the ban on the skins of such animals in the temple city (47:18), the laws of oaths and vows (53:9–10), and the authority of priests, Levites and judges (56:5). 38 See Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.294–304 and his earlier article, ‘The Gate of the
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Further, the scroll requires (46:16–47:1) that outside the temple city, specific locations be assigned to the east for three groups that are impure: those with the skin disease ”ara'at, gonorrheacs, and those who had a seminal emission. Actually, the intention of the scroll is to locate the entire residence area outside of the temple city, and to expand the temenos to include the entirety of what was Jerusalem in the author’s time.39 In this view, there would be no residents of the temple city, but those who came to the temple for their sevenday purification rites would stay in these areas during the rituals and then enter the temple to offer their sacrifices when their rites were completed and they had attained a state of purity. Clearly, the exclusion of these various groups was intended to guarantee the holiness of the temple precincts. Beyond the temple city dwelled the tribes, each of whose territory was located directly opposite its respective gate. Indeed, it was through these gates that the tribal territory was to be tied to the sanctity of the central shrine and the divine presence which dwelled there. Each tribe was apportioned territory such that it would have direct access to the temple from which holiness emanated to the entire land. The Cities of Israel From the discovery of the Zadokite Fragments in the late nineteenth century on, and again after the publication of the Temple Scroll, there has been discussion about the meaning of the term 'ir ha-miqdash, literally, ‘city of the sanctuary’.40 While some have taken this phrase as a reference to the city of Jerusalem as a whole, including Essenes and the Temple Scroll’, Jerusalem Revealed: Archaeology in the Holy City 1968–1974 (ed. Y. Yadin; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1975) 90–91. Cf. L.H. Schiffman, Halakhah at Qumran, 93–4. where 2000 (in relation to the 11QT) must be corrected to 3000. 39 Schiffman, ‘Exclusion’, 317; M. Broshi, ‘The Gigantic Dimensions of the Visionary Temple in the Temple Scroll’, BAR 13 (Nov./Dec. 1987): 36–7. McCready, ‘Temple and Temple Scroll’, 203 suggests that this was essentially a protest against the nature of second temple period Jerusalem as a commercial and governmental center. 40 Cf. L.H. Schiffman, ‘Ir Ha-Miqdash and its Meaning in the Temple Scroll and Other Qumran Texts’, in Sanctity of Time and Space in Tradition and Modernity (eds. A. Houtman, M.J.H.M. Poorthuis, and J. Schwartz; Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series 1; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 95–109.
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the residential areas,41 we take it as referring only to the temple precincts.42 Accordingly, the restrictions on entry into the temple city of those with various disqualifications and impurities refer essentially to the temenos, the temple precincts.43 It was the intention of the author of the scroll to expand the size of this temenos to cover almost the entirety of what was Jerusalem in his day. Opposite the temple city were ‘their cities’ (47:8) or ‘your cities’ (47:14, 17) in which, if more than three days journey from the temple, non-sacral slaughter was permitted. These cities are to be distinguished from God’s city, referred to as ‘my city’ or the temple city. Yet even these cities had to observe certain purity regulations. Areas were also set aside for those with impurities outside these cities: for those with various skin diseases (cf. 49:4), gonorrheacs, menstruants or parturients. These locations were to be designated for each city (48:14–17). Likewise, burial in the cities was forbidden (48:11), and cemeteries were to be set aside, one for each four cities (48:11–13), equidistantly from all of them. The cities of Israel were apportioned by tribes. That is, each tribal area was expected to have cities in which the people (presumably of that tribe) dwell. Not a single passage in the scroll describes anyone as living anywhere but in these cities. Within the cities the residents were all expected to live in stone houses. This is clear from the detailed discussion of the purification of the house in which a dead body had rested (49:5–50:16). The parts of the house and the equipment found in it are also listed in connection with the impurity of the dead. What was the purpose of this complex geographic master plan? The Temple Scroll called for a total reconstruction of the temple and redistribution of the land around it, so as to grant to all the tribes of Israel direct access to the presence of God and an outflow of holiness to the entire land. Only in this way, the author believed, would the future of Israel upon its land be guaranteed. Holiness and sanctity were the keys to living in the land. The scroll’s plan, as we have examined it here, bears little relationship to the teachings of the Qumran sect as they are known 41
Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.277–85. B.A. Levine, ‘The Temple Scroll: Aspects of its Historical Provenance and Literary Character’, BASOR 232 (1978): 14–15; Schiffman, ‘Exclusion’, 301–20. 43 See the complete list in Schiffman, ‘Exclusion’, 314–15. 42
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from the sectarian texts.44 Further, there is no attempt in the architecture of the Qumran structures to follow any ideal blueprint. In this respect, this material supports our general conclusion that some of the sources of the Temple Scroll are pre-Qumranian and that the author/redactor, regardless of his own affiliation, does not reflect the ideas of the Qumran sect in his scroll. Neither did our author follow the vision of Ezekiel closely. Yet he and the prophet shared the desire to see the Jewish people, all twelve tribes, restored to their ancient glory in the sacred land of Israel. One component of this vision was to see the temple and its service conducted at an even greater level of sanctity than that required by the Torah. Conclusions The Qumran corpus as a whole seems to present two basic schemes of holiness and sanctity. According to the sectarian view, the locus of holiness and, therefore, the mode of access to it is the sect itself, a group of people devoted to representing in their individual lives the commitment to higher levels of purity and, accordingly, to the quest for higher levels of sanctity. This group aspired to the perfection of its holiness and to the fulfillment of its present-day quest in the soon-to-dawn eschaton. Only then would perfect holiness be achieved—not in the temple sancta, but in the life of the group and its victorious members. The Temple Scroll, however, deriving from sources close to the Sadducean priesthood, hews more closely to the spatial aspect of holiness as known from the concepts of holy land, holy city, and holy temple in the Hebrew Bible. As a result, it maps out holiness and sanctity in geographical terms, rather than in human or group terms. Both conceptual frameworks of sanctity do exist in the Hebrew Scriptures, and all Jews would have espoused them. What is significant here is the emphasis which clearly differs in the Temple Scroll and sectarian organizational texts. This same distinction exists regarding the relationship of sanctity to the human being. Cultic, spatial sanctity maps out an area that a person enters to access an already-existing, prepared, perhaps wait44
Stegemann, ‘Institutions of Israel’, 162–66.
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ing, presence of God. Purity is required of those who seek to enter, as they must qualify to enter the sanctified realm. Individual or group sanctity required that the individual or the aggregate group of individuals create in themselves a holiness and sanctity that is not externally defined. It comes about only through striving for spiritual and religious growth. Hence, purity—better purification—is a step toward that greater closeness to God. Together, the members of the group seek to raise themselves to approach a deity whom they effectively must bring down into their own daily, mundane lives. For them, the group and its religious life replace the temple and its temenos. These two approaches existed in Qumran texts as in Judaism as a whole. God and His presence might occupy a holy place, but the ultimate shrine was the heart and soul of each individual who committed him or herself to seeking God’s presence, both in this era and in the end of days.
TABLE COMMUNITY IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY Gerard Rouwhorst Catholic Theological University of Utrecht, The Netherlands Introduction Meals and meal customs are important indicators of the identity of groups and communities. From social and cultural anthropologists we may learn that every meal—especially when taken together by more than one person—encodes significant messages about social and hierarchical patterns prevailing in the group (Douglas 1972/1999). The message is especially about social boundaries. While eating together people are wittingly or unwittingly drawing a boundary between those who are participating in the meal and those who are not, whether the latter have been excluded deliberately or because simply they have not been invited or do not belong to the group of people used to eating together Moreover, the behavior of those participating may entail messages about the social and hierarchical relations existing between those partaking of the meal themselves. To decipher those messages, it is necessary to raise questions which at first sight appear trivial. Who has been invited? Who has not been invited? Who has explicitly been excluded? Who is presiding at the meal? Furthermore, the choice of the menu is more than a matter of taste only. The selection of food and drinks and the order in which they are taken, are to a considerable extent governed by rules which carry cultural and often religious meanings. So one should ask questions as to which sorts of food and drink are preferred or even considered as sacred and which ones are scorned or even proscribed. Although these observations hold also true for the ritual meals known from the various Christian traditions and in particular for the meal which in most of the churches constitutes the center of liturgical life and is designated by terms such as ‘Eucharist’, ‘Lord’s Supper’ and ‘Mass’, these rituals meals have been rarely studied from this perspective. A remarkable exception is MacGowan (2002). Publications dealing with this issue predominantly focus on the ritual
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forms of these meals and their genesis and the development of these meals. In particular, numerous attempts have been made to reconstruct the oldest form of the Christian Eucharist or, even more specifically, of the Eucharistic prayers.1 Moreover, a great deal of attention has been paid to the question of the pre-Christian roots. Starting from the (valid) assumption that the early Christian Eucharist was not created by Jesus or his followers as an entirely new ritual—out of nothing, as it were—, a great variety of theories have been developed. All of them try to identify the precursor, Jewish or Hellenistic, of the Eucharist or related ritual meals (See for a valuable overview of the various theories for instance H.-J. Klauck 1982:8–28). There is no reason to question the validity of this traditional approach. Provided this method is applied correctly, it may lead to valuable results. In fact, it has done so during the last few decades. Thanks to numerous books and articles dealing with the genesis of the early Christian meals, we have gained a much better insight into the character of those meals, in particular that of the Eucharist, and its pre-Christian, especially its Jewish, background. Nonetheless, the traditional focus on origins and genesis undeniably has its limitations. Important aspects of early Christian meals, including what is commonly called the Eucharist, are left out of the picture. This pertains in particular to the social dimensions of these ritual meals and their role as identity markers, demarcating the internal and external boundaries of early Christian communities. Therefore, it will be important to complement and expand the traditional approach focusing on the form of the ritual meals and their genesis by a social anthropological one which centers on their social dimensions or, if one will, their social ‘functions’. In this article I will explore the possibilities that such an alternative approach may offer to the study of early Christian rituals, especially ritual meals.2
1 See for an overview of the various theories for instance P. Bradshaw 1999: 118–143. 2 It should be remarked that this approach has equally been probed—and in general successfully—by MacGowan in his book Ascetic Eucharists (2002). His focus, however, is exclusively on the selection of foods as a code or metaphor revealing of early Christian’s attitude to Greco-Roman society, especially its ‘cuisine of sacrifice’. In this article, I will rather deal with some other—equally—social aspects of early Christian meals, the stress on inner coherence of the communities and the rules for admittance marking the external boundaries.
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1. Shifting Boundaries in Early Christianity While studying early Christian ritual meals from the perspective just suggested, two major questions should be dealt with. First, the emergence of early Christianity involved a sweeping blurring and shift of boundaries. Most Christian communities must have consisted of a mixture of Christians who were of Jewish origin and Gentile Christians. To develop a sense of belonging to the same community, it was necessary for them to remove barriers existing between Jews and non-Jews. At the same time, early Christianity maintained a basically negative attitude to its non-Jewish environment insofar as it was mixed with pagan religion. While opening up to the non-Jewish environment in certain respects, it was, on the other hand, an exclusive minority which felt itself to be surrounded by an idolatrous and potentially hostile larger society. This ambivalent attitude towards the pagan environment is strikingly reflected in the meal practices of the first generations of Christians. To make table-fellowship between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians easier, a number of Jewish rules and prohibitions, especially Jewish dietary laws, were abolished, but once this had been done, one difficulty with whom Jews were already confronted remained or became even more acute. As a matter of fact, pagan meals were not neutral from a religious point of view. They were mostly interwoven with religious beliefs and practices. Meat, for instance, might have been passed through a temple and have been sacrificed to a deity (MacGowan 2002:60–67). By admitting large numbers of Gentiles to their communities while, at the same time abolishing most of the traditional Jewish rules surrounding meals and the use of food, the risk that those communities somehow became involved in pagan religiosity grew considerably. It may be added that the awareness of being small and exclusive communities which must have been strong amongst the early Christian churches, must have left its mark on their communal meals. The first question which, therefore, arises is what effect the complicated and strained relations between early Christian communities, on the one hand, and the Jewish and pagan environment, on the other hand, had on early Christian meal practices. Second, once early Christianity had emerged, it underwent in the fourth century far-reaching social developments which resulted in a completely altered situation from a sociological and ecclesiological
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point of view. Starting as a small and marginal minority group inside Judaism, it grew, in the third and fourth centuries ce, into a public religion and obtained a dominant and powerful position in the Roman Empire. This implied a dramatic shift of boundaries and had far-reaching effects on the mechanisms of social inclusion and exclusion. The question, then, arises as to how and to what extent this development affected Christian meal customs and rituals? Before dealing with these two issues in greater detail, I will first call attention to some remarkable developments that can be observed in the research of the last few decades on early Christian ritual meals. Though most publications concerned are based on the traditional paradigm and deal with the origins and genesis of ritual forms as such without paying much attention to community boundaries, some of the major results are highly relevant for a more social anthropological approach as well. 2. A Diversity of Ritual Meals For a good deal of time, the majority of scholarly publications on early Christian meals were characterized by an almost exclusive focus on one specific type, namely the celebration of the Eucharist.3 As a rule, its origin was directly traced back to the Last Supper as described in the Synoptic Gospels and Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians and its ritual pattern was believed to have been very close, if not entirely to conform to the parameters of that meal. One consequence of this approach was that, from an early period onward, a clear-cut distinction was assumed to have existed between those Eucharistic celebrations and other early Christian rituals meals such as, for instance, those referred to in the Didache (chs. 9 and 10) and in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles that were frequently called ‘agapemeals’. The latter celebrations were usually considered as ‘common’ meals and held to be less ‘sacred’ than the former and, therefore, received much less scholarly attention. During the last decades, however, it has become increasingly clear that drawing a sharp distinction between a Eucharistic supposedly 3 The most prominent and very influential representatives of the traditional approach as sketched here were Dix 1945; Jungmann 1952:9–43; Ligier 1966; Idem, 1973. Cf., for an overview, Bradshaw 1999:118–143.
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following the pattern of the Last Supper and ‘other’ ritual meals is highly problematic. To begin, it emerges from a careful analysis of the sources available that, for quite a long time, a type of Eucharist that more or less conformed to the Last Supper did not exist: it came into being only gradually during the second and perhaps even the third and fourth centuries (Rouwhorst 1993). Moreover, the ritual meals encountered in sources such as the Didache (chapters 9 and 10; cf. Van de Sandt/Flusser 2002:296–329; Rouwhorst 1993:93–96: Rouwhorst 2005) and the Apocryphal Acts of Thomas and John (cf. Rouwhorst 1990; Messner 2000; Roldanus 1995; Winkler 1996), as well as the Pseudo-Clementine writings (Hom. 14:1; cf. Lietzmann 1926:239–240; MacGowan 1999:177–181), make no less a sacred impression than the ‘real Eucharists’ that modern scholars believe to have been celebrated from a very early period onwards, but actually are only attested by later sources dating of the third or even the fourth century. All this has far-reaching implications for the study of early Christian ritual meals. It implies questioning all sorts of attempts made by scholars to reconstruct a single original and primitive ‘shape’ of the Eucharist. Even more sophisticated theories which try to reduce the variety of meal traditions to a dual instead of a unitary origin (see Lietzmann Messe und Herrenmahl ) should be regarded with caution. Based on the present state of research, we should refrain from classifying the early Christian meal practices, Eucharistic or otherwise, into well-defined types or traditions and rather think in terms of an open-ended diversity of ritual meals. More in particular, we should be very cautious about creating a hierarchy of meal traditions in early Christianity, especially about distinguishing between meals that were considered sacred or based on the Last Supper as described in the New Testament and those that were ‘ordinary’ and had no relationship with the Last Supper. 3. The Earliest Phase: Ritual Meals for the Baptized To get the best idea of the role which both internal and external boundaries played in early Christian meals, we should begin with two early sources which permit us to glimpse the situation in the first centuries in two early Christian communities: I Corinthians 10:14–22 and 11:17–34 dealing with the ‘Lord’s Supper’ and chapters
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9 and 10 of the Didache that contain a number of prayer texts related to a ritual meal called which is called a ‘Eucharist’. There are at least two reasons for selecting these sources. To begin with, they contain ample information about the issue under consideration. Secondly, what makes these texts particularly interesting is that they echo the situation in two very different communities. Whereas the local church of Corinth predominantly, if not exclusively, consisted of Gentile Christians, everything points to the fact that the role played by Christians of Jewish origin was rather strong in the milieu in which the Didache originated. This undoubtedly had an effect on the meal practices of both communities as well as on the views and solutions advocated by Paul and the redactor(s) of Didache respectively, with regard to these meals. A comparison between these two sources on this specific point may, therefore, be very instructive and elucidating. 3.1
Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians
Our comment on I Corinthians will be brief and we shall limit ourselves to some pertinent observations that have already been made by Wayne Meeks in his well-known book The First Urban Christians (1983:157–162). Meeks points to the fact that the passages dealing with the Lord’s Supper betray a specific view on Christian community or rather what it should ideally be. On the one hand, for Paul, a Christian community should be characterized by a strong internal coherence and group solidarity or—to use a term of the anthropologist Victor Turner (Turner 1989, esp. 131–165)—a sense of communitas which, ideally speaking, transcended all societal oppositions and divisions of role, status and gender. This sense of communitas which had first been experienced in baptism, had its foundation in unity with Christ. Paul, then, uses the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper to enhance the internal coherence and equality of the Christian group which was threatened by internal divisions as appears in particular from the fact that during the selfsame Lord’s Supper wealthy members of the community had more food and drink to consume than poorer members (1 Cor. 11:21–22). Paul’s concern with the equality and internal unity during the Lord’s Supper becomes particularly clear from the emphasis he lays on the use of one loaf and the drinking from one cup as signs of communal unity (1 Cor. 10:16–17).
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At the same time, Meeks points out that the corollary of the unity in the body of Christ is an exclusion from all other religious connections and, therefore, the existence of strong external boundaries. Everything related to the pagan cult and its sacrifices should be avoided. ‘You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of the demons; you cannot share the table of the Lord and the table of the demons’ (1 Cor. 10:21). By the latter, Paul refers to the eating of meat that had been sacrificed to a pagan deity, which means for Paul a demon. Admittedly, he explicitly sets out that the prohibition against eating meat polluted by a sacrificial cult applies only when this is done wittingly and deliberately, i.e. when the attention of a Christian is called to the fact that he is invited to eat food which has been offered to a pagan deity. Eating sacrificial food unknowingly is considered harmless and ignorance with regard to this question is even encouraged by Paul. Christians, for instance, do not need to find out whether meat sold on the market has passed through a temple or not. Nonetheless, it should be emphasized that for Paul, participating in the Lord’s Supper is fundamentally at odds with being involved in pagan cults. 3.2
The Eucharist of the Didache, Chs. 9 and 10
The meal practices attested to by the Didache probably differed in many respects from that of the community in Corinth. It is, for instance, very probable that the ritual pattern of the Eucharist of the Didache was closer to Jewish traditions than the Lord’s Supper to which Paul refers (Van de Sandt/Flusser 2002:310–318). Further, it may be remarked that the Didache—or, at least, its redactor— takes a position with regard to the rules of the kashrut, the dietary laws, which is different from that of Paul and actually more ambivalent. Paul does not mention these rules at all and, as a matter of fact, there can be no doubt that to him these rules had lost their relevance and that he is strongly opposed to imposing them on Gentile Christians. By contrast, the author/redactor of Didache 6:2–3 recommends to bear the entire yoke of the Lord ‘if one can’. It is not necessary to observe these rules, at least not for Gentile Christians, but if one does, one will be more perfect. This principle, then, is more specifically applied to the rules concerning the kashrut; ‘As for food, bear what you can’ (see for this passage van de Sandt/Flusser 2002:238–270).
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In spite of these differences, we encounter in the Didache the same combination of community coherence and exclusiveness. The coherence of the community is especially emphasized in the prayers of thanksgiving that precede and follow the meal and culminate in two prayers of supplication for the church. God is twice asked to gather the church into the Kingdom from the ends of the world (9:4 and 10:4). In the first of these passages, the unity of the church is compared with the single bread that is broken at the beginning of the meal and has been gathered from the grain scattered upon the mountains. For the rest, it may be added that the ritual begins with the drinking from the cup and the breaking and the distribution of the bread—and in that sequence—which Paul considers as symbols par excellence of the unity of the community (1 Cor. 10:16–17; cf. for the similarity with Didache 9 and 10: Mazza 1992). The emphasis on the exclusiveness of the community and the tendency to mark its (external) boundaries is at least as strong and outspoken as it is in Paul’s letter. It becomes particularly manifest in two passages. First, in spite of a different approach to the rules of the kashrut, the redactor of the Didache has in common with Paul that he warns severely against food that has been offered to pagan deities. ‘But be very much on your guard against food offered to idols, for it is related to worship of dead gods’. It may be remarked that the author or redactor of the passage does not say anything about the situation in which Christians were eating this forbidden unwittingly. This may be due to coincidence, but one cannot exclude the possibility that the author of the passage considered such a transgression to be less harmless than Paul. Next, the exclusive character of the Didache’s Eucharist itself becomes particularly evident in ch. 9:5, a passage that modern openminded students who are confronted with it for the first time, may experience as ‘shocking’. There, we read that nobody is allowed to eat and drink of the Eucharist—that is, bread and wine over which a blessing/thanksgiving has been spoken—except those who have been baptized in the name of the Lord. This warning is further underscored by a saying of Christ which has a parallel in Matthew 7:6 and states that ‘what is holy should not be given to the dogs’. What makes this passage remarkable is not only that is places such a strong emphasis on the exclusiveness of the community and its
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boundaries marked by the ritual of baptism, but equally that it introduces in this context the concept of ‘holiness’. Huub van de Sandt has recently examined this passage (Van de Sandt 2002. On the impurity of dogs: J. Schwartz 2004) and points to the fact that many parallels to this saying are to be found in rabbinic sources. The common concern in all these passages is that sacrificial food, once it has been dedicated to God, should no longer be used freely, and that special care should be taken to avoid it being defiled. One of the most horrible ways to disrespect its purity and holiness would be to feed it to the dogs which were considered unclean animals, scavenging and eating things that disgusted human beings. The Didache, so Van de Sandt argues, transfers this idea which has its roots in the Temple cult, to the ritual meal of the Christians. The sacrificial food is identified with the bread and wine over which a thanksgiving has been spoken. Feeding it to the dogs has become a metaphor for admitting non-baptized people, that is pagans, to the meal of the pure community. I believe this to be a very illuminating explanation of the passages of the Didache. Traces of a transference of cultic ideas related to the Temple are also found in the prayer of thanksgiving which is said after the meal. In the first stanza of this prayer, God is thanked for making his holy Name dwell in the hearts of those who partake of the meal. The precise interpretation of this passage may be open to discussion. However, there can be no doubt, that the theme of the dwelling of the Name results in associations with the Temple. This conclusion is corroborated by the final part of the prayer (10:5) in which the community of Christians, the church, is qualified as ‘sanctified’. Thus, the author, or redactor, of the Didache views the ritual meal of the Eucharist as an exclusive meal of a holy and pure community. The bread and wine consumed are associated with the sacrifice of the Temple and the community itself is viewed as a new Temple in which the name of the Lord dwells. To be admitted to this meal, one has to be purified by baptism. In contrast, Christians should take care not to use food that has been defiled by pagan cult in a pagan temple. It may be observed that the whole idea bears a striking similarity to that of Paul. The principal difference is that Paul does not employ, or at least does not exploit, the concept of holiness related to the cult in the Temple in contrast with the impurity of pagan temples.
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Having stated this, the question arises as to how representative were the ritual meals described by or alluded to by Paul and the Didache regarding the way early Christians in general held their communal meals and, more in particular, celebrated the Eucharist. I readily admit that it is very dangerous to extrapolate from the rare early Christian sources that have been preserved, to early Christianity in general. Nevertheless, I believe that at least the elements Paul and the Didache have in common represent traditions that were widespread in early Christianity. There are several reasons to assume that this was the case. Firstly, there are no indications pointing to the existence of meal practices that were founded on basically different principles, for instance of ritual meals that were open to non-baptized people or were more strictly following the pattern of the Last Supper as described in the synoptic Gospels or in 1 Corinthians 11. Secondly, and this seems to me the most important point, the community of Corinth and the one underlying the Didache were different from each other in many important respects. The elements they have in common cannot be accounted for as being characteristic of a certain region—Corinth and Syria, and Palestine were far removed from each other—or be explained by the predominance of a certain type of Christianity (Gentile Christian, Jewish Christian and so on). It may be added that the picture one gets from early Christian meal practices from Paul and the Didache fits remarkably well with what we know based on other data about the character of early Christian communities: small, rather egalitarian and, at the same time, lacking a well defined differentiation of roles and functions and fostering a rather ambivalent attitude towards its (pagan) environment. The attitude of most Christians was characterized by a mixture of openness and hostility. Therefore, old barriers were removed to be replaced very soon by new ones. If food restrictions were eased or even entirely abolished, a new clear-cut boundary between those who belonged to the community and those who did not, had to be drawn. Purification by baptism soon began fulfilling this role. 4. Ritual Meals and the Expansion of Christianity How then did this type of early Christian ritual meal develop in the next few centuries when the small and exclusive Christian groups as
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attested by Paul and the Didache were growing into larger and consequently more structured communities? To what extent and how were Christian ritual meals being adapted to the increasing number of baptized Christians and to the growing openness to Greco-Roman society? And what effect did the public character of Christianity have on the Christian ritual meals from the fourth century onwards? To answer these questions in detail would require the study of the complete dossier of early Christian meal traditions. Obviously, this is not possible within the limits of this article. Therefore, I will confine myself to drawing attention to some of the most striking developments. Before that, however, I want to emphasize that it would be a mistake to think that the type of ritual meal as described fell into disuse everywhere at a rather early period. In fact, in some local churches, traces of this practice are to be found for quite a long time. A telling example is provided by the Pseudo-Clementine homilies (Ed. Rehm/ Strecker 1992. English translation: Roberts/Donaldson 1951/ 1974:223–346. French translation with introduction and footnotes: Schneider/Cirillo 1999) and Recognitions (Ed. Rehm 1969. English translation: Roberts/Donaldson 1951/1974:75–211) which are commonly dated to the fourth century, apparently based on an older common source of the third century and are connected with a JewishChristian milieu of Syria (Strecker 1981; Pouderon 2001; Reed 2003). In one of the passages common to both the Homilies and the Recognitions, Peter says that Christians ‘cannot take their food from the same table as the Gentiles, because they live impurely’. However, he continues, ‘when we have baptized them with a thrice blessed invocation, then we dwell with them. For not even if it were our father, or mother, or wife, or child, or brother, or any other having a claim by nature on our affection, can we venture to take meals with them; for our religion compels us to make a distinction’ (Hom: 13,4; Rec: 7,29; cf. Hom: 1,22 and Rec: 1,19; also MacGowan 1999:178). It is interesting that this is the same Peter who in the canonical Acts of the Apostles, ch. 10, is prompted by a dream to eat impure food which makes it possible for him to eat together with the pagan Cornelius. It seems as if the passage from the Pseudo-Clementine homily wants to place a restriction on the freedom and openness to the Gentiles which the chapter in Acts might imply: yes, eating with pagans and even transgressing the Jewish dietary laws is allowed, but the pagans should first be baptized.
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Though this type of communal meal did not suddenly disappear from the scene everywhere in the second and third centuries, it nonetheless became soon rather exceptional. The principal reason was that, in this period, a complex process of differentiation occurred with regard to the character of the communal meals, as well as with regard to those partaking in it. Gradually, a distinction was made between different types of meals and equally between varying degrees of commitment to the communities. In the long run, the whole process resulted in rules for the admittance to the Christian community which were better adapted to the rapidly changing position of Christianity in a predominantly pagan society. I will mention here the main developments which played a role in this process. The first development of importance was that a differentiation must have taken place with regard to the sacredness of the communal meals. This development was for a large part due to the gradual emergence of a type of sacred meal that was modeled on the pattern of the Last Supper and in which the consumption of food and drink became limited to bread and wine (sometimes bread and water). Unavoidably, this highly ritualized type of meal, the precursor of the classical ‘Eucharist’ (Mass, Lord’s Supper), became considered as more sacred than other meals with a religious character (often somewhat vaguely designated as ‘agape-celebrations’)4 and even more clearly from ordinary meals. One of the consequences of this development was that it offered the possibility to find a solution for a very delicate and practical problem of who could take part in the Christian communal meal. It became possible to exclude certain categories of people from one type of meal, namely the highly ritualized Eucharist, and to allow them to participate in other meals that were not considered sacred. A further differentiation was made possible by the fact that the type of Eucharist which came into existence in the second and third
4 For that matter, it should be remarked that very few early Christian sources exist which give evidence of distinguishing between ‘real’ Eucharists and agapecelebrations. At the very least, the appeal which is sometimes made to Tertullian (Apologeticum, 39) is very questionable (cf. Klinghardt 1996:514–516). Undeniably, some passages of the so-called Apostolic Tradition describing a ritual meal that is held in the evening suggest that this is not the Eucharist proper (esp. 29 C), but it is very well possible that they are later additions to the text (only preserved in the Ethiopic version). Cf. for the Apostolic Tradition the commentary by Bradshaw, Johnson and Philips (2002).
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centuries consisted of two parts, namely the reading of Scripture followed by a homily and prayers and, next, the Eucharistic part constituted by the Eucharistic prayer and the sharing of bread and wine.5 This structure made it possible to admit some people only to the first part of the Eucharist and to exclude them from the second one. Apart from a differentiation between different types of communal meals and between different parts of the Eucharist, it is important to note that the distinction between baptized and non-baptized people was made less sharp by attributing a specific position to an intermediate category who were half-way to Christianity, namely the catechumens. An interesting example of this form of differentiation is to be found in a number of passages of the so-called Apostolic Tradition (See for the complicated and much debated questions concerning the date and origin of this source: Bradshaw/Johnson/Philips 2002:1–17). Reference is made there to an archaic type of communal meal which apparently does not have the form of a more classical Eucharist (see esp. chs. 26 and 27. Translations of the Ethiopian, Sahidic and Arabic versions: Botte 1989:66–69; Bradshaw/Johnson/ Philips 2002:142–145; Stewart-Sykes 2001:137–143). Catechumens are admitted to these meals (contrary to non-baptized pagans). Yet, a number of measures are taken that are obviously aimed at segregating them from baptized Christians. Thus, they receive exorcized bread instead of the bread eaten by the baptized Christians and they are not allowed to sit with the faithful. Once the bipartite structure of the Eucharist had become introduced, it became common practice to admit the catechumens to the first part, the liturgy of the Word only and to send them away before the beginnings of the ‘mysteries’ of the Eucharist.6 This complex process of differentiation seems to have tmore or less been completed at the beginning of the fourth century before Christianity was initially tolerated and, soon after, supported by the Emperor Constantine and his successors. At that time, almost everywhere Eucharists were celebrated which consisted of two parts, a
5 The oldest example of this liturgical pattern is provided by Justin (Apology I, 65–67; cf. Salzmann 1994:235–257). It is also clearly attested by Cyprian (cf. Saxer 1969:218–263). 6 It is very well possible that this practice goes back to the third century. Thus, V. Saxer has argued on the basis of some passages of the writings of Cyprian, that it existed in African in that century (cf. Saxer 1969:227–230). Whatsoever, in the fourth century it became current in most, if not all orthodox Christian churches.
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liturgy of the Word and a Eucharistic part, and only baptized Christians were admitted to the second part whereas the others, especially, the catechumens, were sent away after the first part. In the course of the fourth century, however, this widely accepted solution turned out not to be entirely satisfactory. In fact, to receive Holy Communion, the Body and Blood of Christ, in the second part of the Eucharist, one did not need to be just baptized but was equally expected to conform to high ethical and religious standards. Church Fathers, and John Chrysostom in particular, admonished the faithful to abide by these standards and warned against receiving communion in an unworthy manner.7 In some cases, their admonitions will have been successful and Christians will have bettered their life or even have entered public penance. Yet, it also emerges from the sources that their warnings had an opposite effect: certain baptized Christians began leaving church before the communion which, in turn, provoked strong condemnations by the leaders of the church.8 The effect of this complex process of differentiation, in the fourth and fifth centuries for instance, was that every time the Eucharist was celebrated in one of the larger cities, it became obvious from this ritual that according to the official view of the church, mankind consisted of four categories of people: 1) those who did not enter a church but with whom it was at least permitted to eat; 2) those who had not yet been baptized but were preparing for initiation into the church; 3) those who had already been initiated, but were not entirely living up to the requirements they were supposed to meet (i.e. did either public penance or left before communion) and 4) those who stayed till the end of the Eucharist and received communion.
7 See in particular John Chrysostom, Hom. in Nativitatem (PG 49, 360–362); Hom. in Epiphaniam (PG 49, 369–372); Hom. de Juda Proditore (PG 49, 380–382; Hom. e Coemeterio et Cruce (PG 49, 397–398); Hom. 50 in Matthaeum (PG 58, 507–508); Hom. 82 in Matthaeum (PG 58, 743–746). See also Theodore of Mopsuestia: Hom 16, 31–44 (ed. Tonneau/Devreesse 1949: 582–605) and Augustine, Epistula 54 ad Januarium 2–4 (PL 33, 200–202). 8 Cf. John Chrysostom, Hom. in epistulam ad Ephesios. 3, 4 (PG 62, 28–29); Hom. in I Timotheum 5, 3 (PG 62, 529) and Hom. in epistulam ad Hebraeos 17,4 (PG 63, 131). See also Ambrose, De sacramentis 5, 25 (ed. B. Botte, Des sacraments. Des mystères, Sources chrétiennes 25 bis, Paris 1961, 132–133).
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Concluding Remark The developments I have tried to sketch cause a good deal of discussion especially among Christians. What conclusions, for instance, can be drawn concerning topical liturgical and theological issues, such as the communal character of the Eucharist, the theological importance of the institution narratives or the criteria for admission to receiving communion? These issues, however, cannot be solved on the basis of historical data alone. Discussing them would require a more interdisciplinary investigation. The main point I have attempted to make in this paper is that a more anthropologically-oriented approach may make an important contribution to the study of early Christian communal meals. Furthermore, it is illuminating to discover that the classical fourth century arrangement with which Christians are familiar by now, is not so self-evident and obvious as it might seem to them. It was the result of centuries of internal negotiations as to how to draw the internal and external boundaries of their community. It was the corollary of the decision to open up to the wider world while at the same timing fostering the own identity of the community. LITERATURE Botte, B., La Tradition apostolique de saint Hippolyte, LQF 39, Münster 19895. ———, Des sacraments. Des mystères, SC 25 bis, Paris 1961. Bradshaw, P., The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, London 20022. ———, Johnson, M. and Philips, J., The Apostolic Tradition, Minneapolis 2002. Dix, G., The Shape of the Liturgy, London 1945 (many reimpressions). Douglas, M., ‘Deciphering a meal’, Daedalus, Winter 1972, 68–81 (= Douglas, M., Implicit Meanings. Selected Essays in Anthropology, London/New York 19992, 231–251). Jungmann, J., Missarum Sollemnia. Eine genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe, Wien 19523, vol. I, 9–43. Klauck, H.-J., Herrenmahl und hellenistischer Kult. Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum ersten Korintherbrief, Münster 19822. Klinghardt, M., Gemeinschaftsmahl und Mahlgemeinschaft, Tübingen 1996, 514–516. Lietzmann, H., Messe und Herrenmahl, Berlin 1926, 239–240 (English translation by D. Reeve: Mass and Lord’s Supper, Leiden 1979). Ligier, L., ‘De la Cène de Jésus à l’anaphore de l’Eglise’, La Maison-Dieu 87 (1966), 7–49. ———, ‘The Origins of the Eucharistic Prayer: From the Last Supper to the Eucharist’, Studia Liturgica 9 (1973), 161–185. MacGowan, A., Ascetic Eucharists. Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals, Oxford 1999. Mazza, E., ‘L’eucaristia di «1 Cor 10, 16–17» in rapporto a «Didachè 9–10»’. in: Idem, L’anaphora eucaristica. Studi sulle origini, Roma 1992, 77–109.
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Meeks, W., The First Urban Christians. The Social World of the Apostle Paul, New Haven/London 1983. Messner, R., ‘Zur Eucharistie in den Thomasakten. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte der eucharistischen Epiklese’, in: Crossroads of Cultures. Studies in Liturgy and Patristics in Honor of Gabriele Winkler, OCA 260, Roma 2000, 493–513. Pouderon, B., ‘Aux origines du Roman clémentin. Prototype païen, refonte judéohellénistique, remaniement chrétien’ in: Mimouni, S. and Jones, S., (ed.), Le judéo-christianisme dans tous ses états. Actes du colloque de Jérusalem 6–10 juillet 1998, Paris 2001, 231–256. Reed, A.Y., ‘“Jewish Christianity” after the “Parting of the Ways”. Approaches to Historiography and Self-Definition in the Pseudo-Clementines’, in: Becker, A.H. and Reed, A.Y., The Ways that Never Parted, Tübingen 2003, 189–232. Rehm, B., Die Pseudoklementinen II. Rekognitionen, GCS 42/2, Berlin 19923. Rehm, B., Strecker, G., Die Pseudoklementinen I. Homilien, GCS 42/1, Berlin 19692. Roberts, A. and Donaldson, J., in: The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. III, Grand Rapids 1951 (reprint 1974). Roldanus, J., ‘Die Eucharistie in den Johannesakten’, in: Bremmer J. (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of John, Kampen 1995, 72–96. Rouwhorst, G., ‘La célébration de l’Eucharistie dans l’Eglise primitive’, Questions liturgiques 74 (1993), 89–112. ———, ‘La celebration de l’eucharistie selon les Actes de Thomas’, in: Caspers, C.,/Schneiders, M., Omnes circumadstantes. Contributions towards a history of the role of the people in the liturgy Presented to Herman Wegman, Kampen 1990, 51–77. ———, ‘Didache 9–10: A Litmus Test for the Research on Early Christian Liturgy’, in: Sandt, H. van de (ed.), Matthew and the Didache. Two Documents from the Same Jewish-Christian Milieu?, Assen/Minneapolis 2005, 143–156. Salzmann, J., Lehren und Ermahnen. Zur Geschichte des christlichen Wortgottesdienstes in de ersten drei Jahrhunderten, Tübingen 1994. Sandt, H. van de, Flusser, D., The Didache. Its Jewish Sources and its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity, = Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testament III, 5, Assen/Minneapolis 2002, 296–329. Sandt, H. van de, ‘Do not Give what is Holy to the Dog’ (Did. 9:5D and Matth. 7;6A): The eucharistic food of the Didache in its Jewish purity setting’, VigChr 56 (2002), 223–246. Saxer, V., Vie liturgique et quotidienne à Carthage vers le milieu du III e siècle, Città del Vaticano 1969. Schneider. A.,/Cirillo, L., Les Reconnaissances du pseudo-Clément, Turnhout 1999. Schwartz. J., ‘Dogs in Jewish Society in the Second Temple Period and in the Time of the Mishnah and Talmud’, Journal of Jewish Studies 55 (2004), 246–277. Stewart-Sykes, A., On the Apostolic Tradition, New York 2001, 137–143. Strecker, G., Das Judenchristentum in den Pseudoklementinen, Berlin 19812. Tonneau, R. and Devreesse, R., Les homélies catéchétiques de Théodore de Mopsueste, Studi e Testi 145, Città del Vaticano 1949. Turner, V., The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure, New York 19896. Winkler, G., ‘Weitere Beobachtungen zur frühen Epiklese (den Doxologien und dem Sanctus). Ueber die Bedeutung der Apokryphen für die Erforschung der Entwicklung der Riten’, Oriens Christianus 80 (1996), 177–200.
WAS THE DIDACHE COMMUNITY A GROUP WITHIN JUDAISM? AN ASSESSMENT ON THE BASIS OF ITS EUCHARISTIC PRAYERS Huub van de Sandt Tilburg Faculty of Theology, The Netherlands Chapters 7–10 of the Didache which deal with worship and rules concerning baptism (Did 7), the Lord’s Prayer (Did 8), and the eucharistic meal (Did 9–10) present close parallels to Jewish liturgy in the Second Temple Period. These similarities may well indicate that the community whose traditions at least partially emerge in the Didache is likely to have been composed initially of Judeo-Christians. Its ritual instructions appear to have been profoundly affected by the pattern of Jewish daily worship. On the other hand, it is primarily these directives in 8:1–2 which reveal social tensions. Christians are required to deviate from the Ípokrita¤ (‘hypocrites’) by different days of fasting and divergent customs of prayer: Let your fasts not [coincide] with [those of ] the hypocrites. They fast on Monday and Thursday; you, though, should fast on Wednesday and Friday. And do not pray as the hypocrites [do]; pray instead this way, as the Lord directed in his gospel: ‘Our Father in heaven, . . . (8:1–2a)
Introduction Who were these ‘hypocrites?’ In my opinion, the mention of Ípokrita¤ in this passage is a general reference to (pious) Jews. The derogatory and contemptuous attack in Did 8 apparently manifests the necessity for the Didache community to distinguish itself from Jewish practice (Van de Sandt-Flusser 2002, 291–96). The polemics against the Ípokrita¤ are a serious departure from the proximity of the rules of the Didache to its Jewish roots. It reflects a stage in a process of segregating the community from its Jewish environment. In an important study, Jonathan A. Draper,1 however, claims that 1
Draper 1996, 223–243. See also Tomson, 2003, 9–10 and n. 40. These views
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the term Ípokrita¤ refers to a particular category of Jews, i.e., the Pharisees, since there is no reference that pious Jews ‘in general’ kept the Monday and Thursday as a fast and prayed three times a day. Furthermore, Jewish society was at this stage multifaceted, encompassing many diverse circles, all of them claiming to be Israel. In his opinion, there was no monolithic, uniform, orthodox Judaism at the end of the first century, but rather a pluralistic Judaism. The wording ‘hypocrites’ reminds us of the accusation of hypocrisy against Pharisees in the gospel of Matthew. In Draper’s opinion, the close relationship between the Did 8 and Matthew 6:1–18 indicates that the first document, or materials akin to it, might have been the design underlying Matthew’s choice. He considers the references to the ‘hypocrites’ as a ‘feature of inner-Jewish debate’ (Draper 1996, 233 and Draper 2003, 119), ‘a general and conventional religious accusation of ungodly conduct levelled at a rival community within Jewish society’ (Draper 1996, 242). According to this view, the community of the Didache is a competing group within the larger fabric of Judaism in its day. But did Judaism in the post-war years, in the post-70 reality, exhibit a degree of pluralism which permitted Jewish Christians to exist as one group among many? How far along was the rabbinic process of unification by the time that the gospel of Matthew and the Didache were written? At the end of the first and the beginning of the second century ce, Judaism was in a formative stage and perhaps it had already parted company with the group(s) behind these writings. Moreover, at this time the Birkat Ha-Minim, the benediction against the heretics, appears to have been inserted into the liturgy. Jewish Christians are likely to have been a major target of this synagogue denouncement (Tomson 2003, 14–18; Gafni 1987, 17–18). Is it not possible, then, that at this stage the community of the gospel of Matthew and the Didache shared a consciousness of their views being suppressed by emergent and coalescing Judaism in general? In the following pages, I will try to show that, as far as the Didache is concerned,2 the label ‘hypocrites’ in the polemic section of Did 8
are elaborated upon in Draper, ‘Do the Didache and Matthew Reflect an “Irrevocable Parting of the Ways” with Judaism?’ and P.J. Tomson, ‘The halakhic evidence of Didache 8 and Matthew 6 and the Didache community’s relationship to Judaism.’ 2 It is not implied here, of course, that there was an overall schism between ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’ at the end of the first century. Christianity’s separation
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is not likely to have been directed against one particular Jewish group. It is not within the context of debates between Jewish parties or factions of first-century Judaism, within an intra muros struggle, that the conflict finds its setting.3 By styling its opponents as ‘hypocrites’, however, the Didache community attempted to define the new Christian group as distinct from Judaism. This term, not being intended for ‘Pharisees’ in particular with reference to playacting— there is no charge of ‘hypocrisy,’ suggesting a contrast between inner attitudes and outward behaviour—refers to Jews in general as opponents. In Matthew, the Pharisees are attacked because they fasted for the sake of a pious external show only. They are not inwardly what is displayed outwardly. No such directive to secrecy, however, appears in Did 8:1. The text does not show any urge to prove the accusation of hypocrisy, which may be a further indication that the Didache community, or at least the redactor of Did 8:1–3, was in a irreversible process of moving away from its Jewish roots. It is especially the chapters in Did 9–10, belonging to the very same section with ritual instructions about worship, that may shed light on the verbal attack in Did 8:1–2. They offer the eucharistic prayers which probably reflect the practices and beliefs that were commonly accepted within the community. What will be shown is that the Didache community in the final document no longer recognized itself as part of the Jewish community. Drawing attention to the passages in Did 9:4 and 10:5, our interest will centre upon demonstrating that the formulation of these particular prayers reflect a non-Jewish, rather than a particular Jewish position and perspective.4 The petitions in Did 9:4 and 10:5 run parallel: from Judaism and its turning to the gentiles took place in several stages, whose chronology was determined by the particular circumstances of each Christian community. It was not a straight line development with the same changes taking place everywhere at the same time. 3 In this context, the comment of Aaron Milavec on the ‘hypocrites’ in Did 8:1–2 is of importance. He explains that ‘nothing in the Gospels or the Mishnah includes any hint that the Pharisees distinguished themselves by fasting, whereas the rest of the Jewish population failed to fast or fasted on different days.’ Mondays and Thursdays were the favoured fasting days. These were also market days, and because the villagers used to gather in town on these days, they offered a good opportunity for Scripture reading and tribunal sessions. Since fasts were connected with the public assemblies, Milavec concludes that ‘when a public fast was in effect, therefore, it was evident that the Jews who assembled fasted in solidarity, irrespective of whether they were Pharisees or not.’ (Milavec 2003, 302–303). 4 The following pages are a revised version of Van de Sandt 2003, 69–88.
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4. Just as this fragment lay scattered upon the mountains and became a single [fragment] when it had been gathered, so may your church be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. For glory and power are yours, through Jesus Christ, forever
5. Be mindful, Lord, of your church, to preserve it from all evil [or, from every evil being] and to perfect it in your love. And, once it is sanctified, gather it from the four winds, into the kingdom which you have prepared for it. For power and glory are yours forever
1. The Jewish Character of the Prayer Both the prayer before the ritual meal (Did 9) and the one concluding the meal (Did 10) have parallels in the Jewish rites. Did 9:2–3 is close to the Jewish table blessing (see MBer 6:1), while the supplication in 9:4 resembles the tenth benediction of the Tefilla (= Shemoneh Esreh or Amidah).5 Most scholars nowadays agree that the text in Did 10 evolved from the Jewish Grace after meals (or the Birkat Ha-Mazon), that is, the prayer that concludes the Jewish ritual meal.6 Thus, while the blessings in Did 9 originate from different Jewish sources, those in Did 10 have come from one coherent Jewish liturgical source. Assuming that we get closer to the Jewish setting of Christian prayers as these reflect a single source, one may argue that the text in Did 10 represents the earlier prayer and that Did 9 in its literary form depends on Did 10.7 5 The tenth benediction of the Palestinian recension of the Tefilla reads: ‘lift up the banner for the gathering of our exiles; praised are you, O Lord, who gathers the dispersed of your people Israel’ (For a comparison in parallel columns of the prayers in Did 9–10 and their Jewish sources, see Riggs 1984, 92–93; Middleton 1935, 261–64) and the Babylonian recension of the same supplication is as follows: ‘lift up the banner to gather all our exiles from the four ends of the earth into our land; praised are you, O Lord, who gathers the dispersed of your people Israel’ (See Strack-Billerbeck 4/1, 212; Clerici 1965, 90). See also the Mussaf prayer for Rosh Hashana and the benediction before the Shema: ‘Bring us to peace from the four ends of the earth and lead us straight into our land.’ 6 See the references in Van de Sandt-Flusser 2002, 312, n. 122 and Garrow 2004, 17–19. 7 Riggs 1984, 93. Another argumentation to show that Didache 10 is more primitive than Didache 9 is found in Crossan 1991, 361–64. See also Van de SandtFlusser 2002, 313.
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Certain structural patterns, key concepts, and thematic elements of the eucharistic prayer in Did 10 are similar to the Birkat HaMazon. The first to have closely examined these prayers was Louis Finkelstein (1928–29, 215–17), who presented the two texts in parallel columns. Finkelstein’s reconstruction is based on manuscripts from the ninth and tenth centuries, however, and his version consequently remains a hypothetical restoration. Furthermore, there is widespread recognition that the precise wording of the Grace was not yet established in the first century.8 On the other hand, the antiquity of the general structure and themes of the Birkat Ha-Mazon as reconstructed by Finkelstein is corroborated by the book of Jubilees (2nd century bce) which gives an account of Abraham who, after a ‘good thank offering’ (22:5), pronounces his Grace after meals (22:6–9). Moreover, Finkelstein’s reconstruction roughly corresponds to the outline of the three berakhot echoed in the Mishna (MBer. 6:8). His text, therefore, reflects ancient traditions and some form of the later Birkat Ha-Mazon must have been in regular use at the end of the Second Temple period (Van de Sandt-Flusser 2002, 316–18). However, if Did 10 indeed evolved from the Birkat Ha-Mazon, it is clear that the initial form of the Hebrew Grace after meals underwent a significant development. While the Birkat Ha-Mazon is divided into three strophes, its structure has been adapted to a bipartite use in Did 10.9 The blessing-thanksgiving-supplication pattern of the Birkat Ha-Mazon becomes a prayer of thanksgiving and supplication. The reorganization of the Grace in the Didache reflects the displacement of the entire first pericope (a berakha or blessing addressed to God) in the Birkat Ha-Mazon in favour of the second (a hodaya or thanksgiving). The hodaya, which was found in the Grace at the second place, is located at the beginning in the present structure and the berakha, which was initially the first strophe, has now become part of the hodaya. This transposition is not as fantastic as it seems. The Greek verb eucharistein (‘to be thankful,’ ‘to return thanks’) may already have been the common designation of ‘to bless at table’ in Hellenistic Judaism (cf. Rom 14:6; 1 Cor 10:30; 1 Tim 4:3–4; and Philo, De Specialibus Legibus 2,175), where this alternate form of Grace probably began with the word eucharistein (Laporte 1972, 82–84; 8
See Heinemann 1977, 37–64; Bradshaw 2002, 139–140; Draper 2000, 139. Cf. Middleton 1935, 263; Th. J. Talley 1976, 125–29 and, also for the following, Van de Sandt-Flusser, 2002, 313–25. 9
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Drews 1904, 77). The thanksgiving in the first pericope of the prayer in the Didache has its parallel in the hodaya, the thanksgivings in the second pericope of the Jewish Grace. Another point of difference between the Hebrew Grace and Did 10 concerns the ongoing spiritualization of the prayer in the Didache. One may note, for example, the substitution of spiritual food and spiritual drink (10:3) for their physical counterparts and the replacement of the thanks for the ‘land’ for the gratitude that the Lord has his ‘holy Name . . . made dwell in our hearts’ (10:2). This process of modifying the Grace after meals by spiritualizing the prayers may be assigned to circles in Hellenistic Judaism as well.10 All this results, as will be shown below, in the conclusion that Did 10 is not a reworking of the Hebrew but of the Greek version of the Birkat HaMazon.11 Instead of taking for granted that the prayer has only one layer of tradition, we have to consider its several stages of development. Structure and expressions in the eucharistic prayers of the Didache betray a strong Hellenistic influence. We shall, therefore, assume that the prayer in the Didache is a Christianization of the Hebrew prayer after meals used in Greek Judaism. 2. The Problem: The Concept of Dispersion behind the Prayers We have seen that, since the prayer in Did 10 was composed from a single source, it may be the more primitive form of the two prayers in Did 9–10. Accordingly, the focus here will be placed primarily on the petition in 10:5. The petition for the gathering of the church ‘from the four winds’ and its being brought home into the ‘kingdom’ reflects the Jewish desire that the people of Israel be gathered and united. According to a reconstruction of Finkelstein, the earliest version of the the third benediction of the Jewish Grace after meals, also called the supplication for Jerusalem, may have read as follows: Have mercy, O Lord, our God, on Israel, your people, and on Jerusalem, your city, and on Zion, the resting-place of your glory, and on your 10 Wehr 1987, 346–47; Sandelin, 1986, 212–18; Dibelius 1956, passim; Clerici 1965, 37. See also Rordorf-Tuilier 1998, 179, n. 4. 11 See Alon 1996, 185, n. 67; Kollmann 1990, 80–89; Wengst 1984, 48–49; 53, n. 177; 57, n. 192; Lietzmann 1979, 233–34; Ledogar 1968, 127–28; Köster 1957, 193.
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altar and on your temple. Blessed are you, O Lord, who buildest Jerusalem (Finkelstein 1928–29, 233).
The Greek version of the Birkat ha-Mazon is not known but it is conceivable that the elements in the third strophe (‘Jerusalem, your city’, ‘Zion,’ ‘your altar’, and ‘your temple’) may have resulted in a prayer for the return to the Land of Israel. In any case, the Christian supplication in Did 10:5 recalls the situation of Israel’s dispersion. The longing for the triumphant reunion of the church is bound up with the biblical expectation of salvation for the people of Israel.12 In later Judaism, these ideas continue to flourish13 and the future hope of a restored Jerusalem is sustained by prayers.14 Originally, the ‘dispersion’ was related to the Babylonian captivity (LXX: diasporã), a singular event in Jewish history. It is a technical term denoting the dispersion of Israelites among the Gentiles beyond the borders of the Land of Israel as a result of war and forced dislocation. However, during the Hellenistic age, when the Babylonian captivity had ceased for a long time, the Jewish colonies abroad survived and continued to grow. It is this reality, also frequently expressed in terms like paroik¤a (meaning ‘sojourn’) or (dia) skorpismÒw (referring to the scattering of Israel), which is envisaged when the eschatological gathering is mentioned (Arowele 1977, 27–54). In our examination of the eucharistic prayers, we focus on two clusters of questions: 1. In Did 10:5 (and 9:4), the traditional Jewish earthly orientation expressed in the third strophe of the Birkat Ha-Mazon (a compassionate treatment of Israel, the people according to the flesh, of Jerusalem, Zion, and the temple) is conceived in terms of ethical, spiritual, supra-terrestrial, and everlasting goods: the spiritual building of the ‘church’, its deliverance from all evil, its perfection
12 See Deut 30:1–5a; Isa 11:12; 27:13; 43:5–7; 49:22; 56:8; Jer 23:8; 31:8.10; 39:37 (LXX); Ezek 11:17; 20:34; 28:25; 34:11–16; 37:21; 39:27; Mic 2:12–13; 4:12; Pss 106:47; 147:2; Neh 1:8–9; Zech 2:10 (LXX); 8:7–8; 10:6vv; 1 Chr 16:35; 2 Macc 2:7.18; Tob 13:5; Sir 36:11; 51:12 (f ). 13 2 Macc 1:27; 2:18; 1 En. 57:1; 90:34; Pss. Sol. 8:28; 11:2–6; 17:26.28.31.34– 36.43–44; 2 Bar. 77–78; 4 Ezra 13:39; T. Asher 7; Philo, De praemiis et poenis 117; De exsecrationibus 165; BT Meg. 29a; BT Pes 117a; etc.; cf. Volz 1934, 344–50. 14 Ps 147:2; Sir 36 (33):1–16; 51:12a–q (Hebr.); 2 Macc 1:24–29; Ps. Sol. 8:27–28; 17:30–31; and the 10th benediction of the Tefilla (see above, n. 13); cf. Clerici 1965, 65–102; Niederwimmer 1993, 188 and n. 54.
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in love, and its ultimate integration into an immaterial reign of God. The earthly, worldly expectation and confidence is replaced by a spiritualized and eschatological hope. The Christian longing for a gathering does not include the Jewish hope for a restoration of Israel and Jerusalem. Is this an attempt to define the Christian community of the Didache as distinct from Judaism? Does the Didache prayer reflect a separation from the tie that Jews have with the Land and Jerusalem? Does it substitute the gathering of the church for the gathering of Israel according to the flesh? 2. The Didache prayer recalls the condition of dispersion and the scattering of Israel among the nations of the world. At the same time, however, it is a prayer for the church (§kklhs¤a), and its gathering into the kingdom. What kind of concept of diaspora underlies this prayer? The term diaspora was used by Jews to indicate that part of Judaism living outside of Palestine, but what would such a term mean to Christians? Does it say that Christians as such, whether Jewish or Gentile, live in dispersion? Where is this gathering supposed to take place? How to grasp the ultimate significance of the petition in Did 10:5 and 9:4? Below, we will take the following steps. Because the eucharistic prayer clearly recalls a Hellenistic Jewish milieu, our initial concern will be with the concepts of dispersion and gathering in the Hellenistic Jewish writings of Philo of Alexandria, the pre-eminent representative of Hellenistic Judaism. It will be shown that Philo employs the notions ‘diaspora’ and equivalent terms (‘sojourn’, ‘scattering’) in a metaphorical way. At variance with their Hebrew Palestinian content, these words do not have a material but a spiritual sense. The same is true for some New Testament writings. This evidence enables us to better understand the motif of return of the dispersed in the Didache prayer (see section 3 below). It does not solve the issue, however, of the disregard of the concrete city of Jerusalem, Zion, and the temple in the Didache prayer. On the contrary, one might go so far as to wonder if the figurative understanding of the term ‘diaspora’ does not reflect deviating roles of the physical land of Judaea and the concrete city of Jerusalem in contemporary Judaism. Was the purpose of a metaphorical concept of dispersion not to undermine the hope for a future return to the earthly fatherland? And might such a view not have emerged before the Christianization of the Birkat
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Ha-Mazon, i.e., as early as in the Hellenistic stage? It will become clear, however, that the supplication in the Didache—without mentioning the physical land of Judaea and the tangible city of Jerusalem— reflects a Christian rather than a Jewish longing (see section 4 below). This evidence will finally bring us to the conclusion that the texts of Did 10:5 and 9:4 reflect a Christian community which increasingly distances itself from Judaism. 3. Dispersion in a Hellenistic-Jewish and Early-Christian Setting It was established that the eucharistic prayers of the Didache have their origin in the Jewish Grace (the Birkat Ha-Mazon) recited by Jews in a Hellenistic milieu. Therefore, one may assume an Hellenistic Jewish provenance for the supplication in Did 10:5. Since the Greek version of the prayer goes back to a Hellenistic Jewish model of the Hebrew supplication for Jerusalem (the Birkat Ha-Yerushalayim),15 the quest for parallels or similarities in Hellenistic Judaism brings us to Philo. 3.1
Philo
Although the sources do not provide much information about Philo himself, his writings show him to have been deeply influenced by the Socratic-Platonic view of the dualistic body-soul relationship. He was probably born between 20 and 10 bce and belonged to one of the most influential families of Alexandrian Jewry. He had a wide education and was acquainted with many Greek philosophers and writers. At the same time, he was a religious Jew who practised Jewish laws and customs. Because his writings are based on the Law of Moses, Philo regarded himself not primarily as an original thinker but as an exegete of Scripture. In his view, Greek philosophy was the intellectual framework of reference within which the books of Moses should be explained (Borgen 1997, 1–45; Schürer 1987, 871–80).
15 The fourth benediction of the Birkat Ha-Mazon is not reflected in either Jub 22:6–9 (see above, n. 11) or in Did 10. It already existed in the Second Temple period, but did not become obligatory until after the Bar Kokhba War. See Alon 1996, 187 and Finkelstein 1928–29, 221–222.
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Philo conceived the reunion out of the dispersion which is prayed for in Did 10:5 as a metaphorical concept, as bridging the distance from the heavenly home. With reference to Lev 25:23 (‘for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me’), he explains ‘to God they’ (all creatures) ‘are aliens and sojourners (paro¤kvn). For each of us has come into this world as into a foreign city, in which before our birth we had no part, and in this city he does but sojourn (paroike›), until he has exhausted his appointed span of life’ (De cherubim 120; cf. Colson-Whitaker 2, 1968, 78–79).
In his writings, the idea is found that the life of man is a sojourn and that his original homeland is heaven. He uses terms like pãroikow, paroik¤a, and paroike›n. In its technical use, the term paroike›n means ‘to dwell as a resident alien or stranger’ in a place where one is not native or a citizen and does not have civil or native rights.16 In Philo’s texts, pãroikow serves to express the fact that the righteous man is a stranger, a non-citizen, on earth. These qualifications are often used in the LXX, primarily denoting a sojourn in a geographical location. In Philo, however, they show a basic transformation of meaning. The Greek terms no longer refer to any particular geographical location; they now have bearing on the whole of the physical world as it is. There is a clear dualism between this world and the next. Philo portrays the soul as ‘imprisoned in that dwelling place of endless calamities—the body’ (De confusione linguarum 176–177; cf. Colson-Whitaker 4, 1968, 106–07). The body is the animal side of man. It is the source of all evil and ‘the grave of the soul, in which it is buried as if in a grave.’17 These statements are entrenched in Philo’s overall view of man’s fight against the pãyh and the world with his treasures. Life is a pilgrimage in which the mind of man attempts to get away from the body, which he calls ‘the foul prison-house.’18 The wise man, who lives in wisdom and virtue, regards his earthly material existence as a temporary domicile. He is a ‘sojourner’:
16
Schmidt, ‘pãroikow, paroik¤a, paroik°v’, 851–53. For additional information, see Elliott 1982, 24–37. 17 Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin 4, 75; cf. Marcus 1961, 353. See also Williamson 1989, 212–14. 18 De migratione Abrahami 9; cf. Colson-Whitaker, 4, 1968, 136–37. See, also for the following, Williamson 1989, 483–91.
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This is why all whom Moses calls wise (sofo¤) are represented as sojourners. Their souls are never colonists leaving heaven for a new home. Their way is to visit earthly nature as men who travel abroad to see and learn. So when they have stayed awhile in their bodies, and beheld through them all that sense and mortality has to show, they make their way back to the place from which they set out at the first. To them the heavenly region, where their citizenship lies, is their native land (patr¤da); the earthly region in which they became sojourners (§n ⁄ par–khsan) is a foreign country (j°nhn).19
Hellenistic dualism is thus often presented by Philo in the form of a belief that heaven is the true home of the soul. He refers to the soul’s heavenly pre-existence again and again. On the other hand, man cannot return without difficulty and strain to his celestial origin. Those who achieved perfect virtue are restricted to a privileged few biblical personages like Moses, Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac. In the paragraph following the passage quoted above, Philo makes use of the Greek Bible to substantiate this idea (De confusione linguarum 79–82). Reference is made to Gen 23:4, Gen 47:9, and Gen 26:2–3.20 Those whom Moses calls wise are represented as sojourners since ‘their souls are never colonists leaving heaven for a new home.’ 3.2
Early Christian Literature
It is difficult to determine to what extent Philo’s spiritual views and philosophical ideas can be taken as representing his Hellenistic fellow-Jews. However, additional sources, especially the Epistle to the Hebrews and 1 Peter, show a similar strand of Judaism, at least as far as the concept of dispersion is concerned. Since the Christian community regarded itself as one with a transitory character (Phil 3:20–21; Heb 13:14), it was natural that it tended to take exclusive possession of the language of Israel as the sojourning people of God. Addresses to churches in the ‘dispersion’ are found in 1 Petr 1:1 (cf. 2:11) and similar terms appear in the
19 De confusione linguarum 77–78; cf. Colson-Whitaker 4, 50–53; See also De somniis 1, 181; Quis rerum divinarum heres sit 267; De gigantibus 61; De agricultura 65 etc. 20 In Gen 23:4, Abraham says ‘I am a stranger and sojourner with you;’ in Gen 47:9, Jacob reports ‘The days of the years of my life, the days which I sojourn, have been few and evil, they have not reached to the days of my fathers which they sojourned;’ in Gen 26:2–3, Isaac is told in an oracle ‘Go not down to Egypt, but dwell in the land which I say to you. And sojourn in this land.’
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introduction to 1 Clement, the Epistle of Polycarp, and the Martyrdom of Polycarp. A fine example of this idea is found in the Letter to Diognetus, from which a few verses are quoted here: Yet while living in Greek and barbarian cities, according as each obtained his lot, and following the local customs, both in clothing and food and in the rest of life, they (the Christians) show forth the wonderful and confessedly strange character of the constitution of their own citizenship. They dwell in their own fatherlands, but as if sojourners in them (pãroikoi); they share all things as citizens, and suffer all things as strangers (j°noi). Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign country. . . . They pass their time upon the earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven (5:4–5.9; Lake 1970, 358–61).
Just as Philo depicts the Jews as sojourning in foreign countries, so the terminology is used here to depict metaphorically the Christians’ state as one of ‘strangers and pilgrims’ upon the earth. Christian believers are journeying to their true home in heaven as they make their way through the present transitory life. This is also the conviction of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews. In Heb 11:13–16, the patriarchs are said to have confessed that they were ‘strangers (j°noi) and sojourners (parep¤dhmo¤) on the earth.’ The terms ‘stranger’ and ‘sojourner’ denote the stranger who stays for a short time in a place, the transient alien without rights of citizenship (see Elliott 1982, 21–58). The author of Hebrews at the same time establishes, however, that these patriarchs, while living in Canaan, their country of adoption, did not attempt to return to their country of origin. Although they had the opportunity to go back, they did not do so. A literal explanation of their confession to be ‘strangers and sojourners on the earth’ was, therefore, not appropriate. To him, it is clear that these two terms are symbolically used, that is, that ‘they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one.’ Heaven is the homeland of God’s people (cf. Heb 12:22–24). The alien typology which 1 Peter employs puts him in the same Hellenistic Jewish traditional stream which we have seen to be strongly represented in Philo and Hebrews. In 1 Peter, the recipients of the letter are addressed as ‘chosen sojourners of the dispersion in Pontus . . .’ (§klekto›w parepidÆmoiw diasporçw PÒntou . . . ktl.; 1 Pet 1:1). Terms like diasporã and paroik¤a or pãroikow are appropriated as easily as the use of parep¤dhmow. The writer of 1 Peter implores his Christian addressees as ‘aliens and sojourners (paro¤kouw ka‹ parepidÆmouw) to
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abstain from the passions of the flesh’ (2:11), that is, to maintain their status as spiritual pilgrims to their heavenly home (Brox 1979, 57). The believers are exiles from heaven, their true home. They are urged to behave in such way as to attain the goal to which they have been called. This is also the drift of 1:17, where their being ‘resident aliens’ dwelling permanently in a foreign locale is emphasized with the same term, paroik¤a (sojourning in a foreign land), so as to indicate an ethical behaviour that does not damage their Christian status. Since these terms appear in contexts which do not consider any geographical particulars (except for 1:1), there is no need to find a Jewish address behind the use of diasporã and related terms.21 Peter is addressing all Christians—Jewish and Gentile—as chosen exiles in dispersion.22 Their true homeland is not to be found anywhere on earth but in heaven. The above observations partially answer the questions in cluster 2. Did 10:5 and 9:4 assume the church to be dispersed but mention neither the location of the kingdom nor the spot where the church was to be gathered. Like Philo, the Christians of the Didache community probably understood the gathering of the church from the ends of the earth in a metaphorical sense. Christians were said to live in diaspora because they dwelled on earth and God would bring them together into his kingdom. On the other hand, the outlook in the Didache is significantly different from the position of Philo. According to Philo, the soul belongs to another world and is imprisoned in the body whereas the prayer of the Didache does not seem to know a cosmological dualism or any heavenly pre-existence of the soul. In Did 10:5, the praying congregation opens its heart to God so that He might purge it, perfect it, and make it holy. The ethical phrases lend a special meaning to the community vis-a-vis the world. The belief had practical implications in everyday life. Conversion to Christianity appears to have significantly altered the Didache believers’ social interaction 21
The ‘dispersion’ community of 1 Peter probably has a mainly gentile background (1 Pet 4:3; cf. 1:14.18). 22 This seems apparent from Peter’s parallel in 2:10 to Rom 9:25: ‘Once you were no people but now you are God’s people.’ In Jas 1:1, the address afl d≈deka fula‹ §n tª diasporò is found. At variance with 1 Pet 1:1, this expression might quite realistically refer to Christians, whether Jews or gentiles, who do in fact live in dispersion, without an ‘accompanying spiritual sense;’ cf. Schmidt, ‘diasporã’, 103, n. 14.
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with non-Christians. Did 9:4 goes a step further as it expresses the gathering of the diaspora of the church through the metaphor of the bread. The church is compared here to a ‘piece of bread that was scattered’ and then gathered together. The very act of eating one bread (sunaxy¢n §g°neto ßn) at the Eucharist is regarded as anticipating the future eschatological gathering, the day on which God will collect (oÏtv sunaxyÆtv) his church in his reign. The church’s self-understanding has become part of liturgical practice. One might expect that the concrete historical belief in a return to Jerusalem would have become less urgent and pressing in this metaphorical way of speaking. This assumption brings us back to our initial questions with respect to Jerusalem (cluster 1). Because the Didache community conceived of the diaspora in figurative terminology, the prayers in Did 10:5 and 9:4 need not necessarily reflect a deliberate dejudaization innovated by Christians. They may witness to an archaic tendency which was already firmly rooted in Hellenistic Judaism. If this was the case, however, the abandonment of the hope that the people of God would return to Jerusalem may have occurred before the Christianization of the Birkat Ha-Mazon. Entirely different views of the earthly Jerusalem would have become apparent between the Palestinian and Hellenistic Jews at an early stage. Since the Greek version of the Birkat Ha-Mazon has been lost to us, we are not in a position to establish whether terms like ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Zion’, and ‘temple’ were already lacking in the third berakha of the Hellenistic synagogue. Perhaps it is possible to apply some other tests to the question at issue. First, it is worthwhile to investigate if the spiritualization emerging in Philo goes hand in hand with an increasing alienation from the earthly Jerusalem in his writings. Second, it is particularly instructive to find out what the status of Jerusalem was to Hellenistic Jews in the first century ce. 4. Jerusalem as a Test Case At first sight, Philo appears to be interested in the spiritual conquest of virtue and in universalizing Jewish laws rather than identifying himself with and paying attention to the politics of his Palestinian homeland. It is wrong, however, to suppose that Philo’s approach to Judaism is philosophical and spiritual only and that national escha-
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tology is completely lacking in his thought. He and other diaspora Jews were interested in Judaea and Jerusalem. The situation among the early Christians was quite different. We will see that, at variance with the Jewry of Alexandria and Philo, some early Christian writings toned down the importance of the earthly and physical city of Jerusalem in favour of the celestial one. 4.1
The Significance of Jerusalem in Diaspora Jewry
Philo clearly showed an interest in practical nationalism once he was chosen to head the delegation, sent by the Jewish community of Alexandria, to the emperor Gaius Caligula in 39–40 ce. He was also eager to advance the participation of the Jews in Hellenistic cultural institutions and to help them attain full citizen rights in Alexandria. Furthermore, in his view, the survival of the Jewish people in the homeland was fundamental to Jewish identity. Although he thought of the temple of Jerusalem primarily as allegorical, he believed it to be a prominent symbol of Judaism as well (Leonhardt 2001, 253–54; Collins 1983, 111–117). He writes about the pilgrimages to Jerusalem, undertaken by Jews from the Diaspora, and portrays how Jews from all over the world congregated and enjoyed fellowship in Jerusalem: Countless multitudes from countless cities come, some over land, others over sea, from east and west and north and south at every feast. They take the temple for their port as a general haven and safe refuge from the bustle and great turmoil of life. . . .23
Philo may have made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and have worshipped in the temple, although his familiarity with contemporary Palestinian Judaism is debated.24 Philo’s practical nationalism reflects the general outlook of diaspora Judaism as a whole that always remained in touch with Palestine. Of course, the view that sacrifice is of no avail if a man acts unjustly towards his neighbour may have been more widespread in the Diaspora than in Jewish Palestine (Schwartz 1996, 117–24). The influence of the environment may have prevented some Jews in the Greek environment from observing all specifically Jewish laws
23 De specialibus legibus 1, 69; cf. Colson 7, 1968, 138–39. See Leonhardt 2001, 218–220, Borgen 1997, 20–21 and Runia 2000, 376–77. 24 Collins 1983, 116, and n. 50; Schürer 1987, 818; P. Borgen 1984, 257–59.
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and customs so as to pave the way for tolerance from their Hellenistic surroundings. Nevertheless, the eyes of all pious Jews—in the land and in the diaspora—were directed to Jerusalem. Those abroad sent gifts to the temple in order to contribute to the sacrificial cult. If they were able, they went on pilgrimage on the three great feasts (Gruen 2002, 243–47; Safrai 1974, 191–201). Jerusalem was the city of salvation in the eschatological age where God would take up his residence again and inaugurate his royal rule. The hope that the Diaspora would return to the lofty city was kept alive. For all Jews, in Palestine and in the Dispersion, Jerusalem is the ‘holy city’ (flerÒpoliw)25 or the ‘mother-city’ (mhtrÒpoliw).26 Mount Zion is called the ‘midst of the navel of the earth’ ( Jub 8:19; cf. also Josephus, Bellum judaicum 3, 52). In apocalyptic apocrypha, ZionJerusalem is called the mother of all Israelites (4 Ezra 10:7, 38–44; cf. also 2 Bar. 3:1–3) who has brought up her children (Bar. 4:8–10).27 The Jews, though scattered throughout the ancient world, maintained the bond with the motherland and the holy city. The dispersion was seen as a painful experience, the bitter destiny of the people of God (Feldmeier 1992, 63–69). They had to live with the hard fate of the diaspora and envisaged the restoration to be reserved for the messianic age. Diaspora is a substantiation of eschatological hope for the future return to the earthly fatherland. Philo also seemed to expect that some day God would gather the exiles from the ends of the earth into the homeland. His De praemiis et poenis 165–72 presents an elaborate portrayal of the eschatological fulfilment of the hope of the Jews. It starts thus: When they have gained this unexpected liberty, those who but now were scattered (sporãdew) in Greece and the outside world over islands and continents will arise and post from every side with one impulse to the one appointed place, guided in their pilgrimage by a vision
25 See Philo, Legatio ad Gaium 281; cf. also Legat. 225. 288. 299. 346. See also Gruen 2002, 239. 26 See Philo, In Flaccum 46 and compare also his Legatio ad Gaium 203. 278. 281. 294. 305. 334. Further see Leonhardt 2001, 293–94; Gruen 2002, 242–43; Niehoff 2001, 33–44; Van der Horst 2003, 142. 27 In the New Testament, Jesus addresses Jerusalem as a mother when he states ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children (tå t°kna sou) together . . .’ (Matt 23:37; cf. Luke 13:34). Weeping over her, Jesus predicts ‘For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies . . . will dash you to the ground, you and your children (tå t°kna sou) within you . . .’ (Luke 19:43–44).
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divine and superhuman unseen by others but manifest to them as they pass from exile to their home. (165; cf. Colson 1968, 416–419)
The passage continues by emphasizing that the nation would be gathered as a people, peace would be established, and Israel’s enemies would be destroyed (Borgen 1997, 276–80; Van Unnik 1993, 133–34). This hope would never be abandoned but would continue to be cherished. 4.2
The Significance of Jerusalem in Some early Christian Writings
The earliest indication that Christians regarded themselves as aliens and pilgrims on earth is found in the letters of Paul. Paul believes that Christians belong to the Jerusalem above, or the heavenly community (Gal 4:26; Phil 3:20). They are not at home on earth but pertain to that heavenly domain where the glorified Lord dwells (cf. 2 Cor 5:1–5, 6–9; 1 Thess 1:10; 4:17). In the polemical passage of Gal 4:25–26, Paul is clearly attacking his opponents who claim that the present Jerusalem is their mother, probably suggesting that their views emphasizing the observance of the Law were supported by Jerusalem. Paul counters this position by appealing to a higher instance in contradistinction from the earthly Jerusalem: Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
Paul uses the phrase of the Heavenly Jerusalem in his argumentation without any explanation, as if his readers are familiar with it. One may thus assume that the image of the ‘Jerusalem above’ was widely accepted by the early Christians. It takes up the expectation in Jewish apocalyptic tradition of the pre-existent city which is built by God in heaven with glory and magnificence and comes down to the earth in the end.28 In rabbinic literature, the designation ‘the Jerusalem above’ or ‘the Jerusalem of the age to come’ as distinct from ‘the Jerusalem of this age’ is found.29 In these examples, the latter is an image of the original in heaven. Out of love for the city on earth, God has erected the city in heaven and he swears not to
28 Cf. 4 Ezra 7:26; 10:27, 54; 13:36; 1 En 90:28–29; Rev 21. See also Lee 2001, 72. 129–39. 29 Cf. Strack-Billerbeck 3, 573; 795–96; 4,883–85; 919–31.
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enter the celestial one until that below is restored (Dalman 1930, 106; Bietenhard 1951, 123–25). Apparently, then, the celestial city shares the hardships of the earthly Jerusalem’s fate. For Paul, however, the earthly Jerusalem stands in sharp contrast to the celestial one. The heavenly Jerusalem is pre-existent and remains in heaven. By setting the two in opposition, he demonstrates that salvation is not to be transferred to an indeterminate future but has come already. Those who are to dwell in it must move upward (Betz 1984, 246). If the Christians have their real commonwealth in heaven, it follows that they are aliens on earth. 1 Peter and the Epistle to the Hebrews also reveal that the present city of Jerusalem, to which the Christians should have no desire to return, has been replaced as the centre of hope. The first letter of Peter does not show any indication of a positive concern for Judaism nor any interest in Israel. The letter to the Hebrews makes it clear that the new and better covenant provides access to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. In 13:13–14, Christians are exhorted to ‘go out to him’ (= Jesus), ‘outside the camp’ since the blood of Jesus was poured on an altar ‘outside the gate.’ Like Abraham, who went out to ‘a place which he was to receive as an inheritance’ (11:8), they too had to go out to witness the impermanence of this world in search of a city which had foundations (11:10). Because Jesus died outside the earthly city of Jerusalem, Christians had to leave the city which was not ‘a continuing city’ (13:14). They had to experience an insulted and unsettled life on their journey to the eternal city of the heavenly Jerusalem (Grässer 1997, 386–87 and n. 28). By remaining with Jesus outside the camp of Judaism, Christians show that the present city, to which they should have no desire to return, has been replaced as the centre of hope. Conclusion The Christian longing for a gathering of the dispersed church into the kingdom in the eucharistic prayers of Did 9–10 does not include the Jewish hope for a restoration of Israel and Jerusalem. A similar separation—and in some cases even estrangement—from the historic Jewish setting is found in several other early Christian writings. In the Didache prayer, the alien status of the Christian in the world probably arises from the demands of faith irrespective of any
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particular historical event or situation. The longing to be gathered from the four winds into the kingdom is a description of the actual situation of the church, which is set apart from the world by its Christian heterogeneous character. The terminology also indicates the Christian character of the supplication. In Jewish texts, even in the LXX, no instances are found where the dispersed people of God are designated §kklhs¤a (‘church’). The idea of the assembling of the believers ‘from the four winds’ (Did 10:5) or ‘from the ends of the earth’ (9:4) is reflected in the gospels as well. In Matthew, it is said that when the Son of Man comes, ‘he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other’ (24:31; cf. Mark 13:27). The ‘loud trumpet call’ in Matthew may imply the sign for the raising of the deceased righteous to meet the Lord (Clerici 1965, 80). In John 11:52, the son of man not only gathers the members of the Jewish nation but also the gentile believers, the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one (cf. also John 10:15–16). Furthermore, while the texts in Matthew and Mark seem to presuppose a gathering place on earth, it is important to note that, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus is supposed to have said ‘and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself ’ (12:32; see also 1 Thess 4:15–17 and 2 Thess 2:1). Did 10:5 contains a congenial tradition as it links the gathering of the church to the end time, when the church will enter God’s kingdom. The Didache probably originated in a Jewish community which made Jesus the core of its understanding. The community had close affinities with Jewish antecedents and still felt a high regard for Israel. The texts of Did 10:5 and 9:4, however, reflect an alienation from Israel. These verses represent a discontinuity in the people-of-God concept, since the gathering of the church into God’s kingdom no longer has any connection with the gathering of Israel. The prayer for the political restoration of Israel in the third benediction of the Birkat Ha-Mazon has turned into a prayer for the gathering of the church. Palestine and Jerusalem are no longer linked to the Christian eschatological hope. The liturgy of the Didache thus shows indications of a community which has ceased to consider itself a variety of Judaism. The ecclesial existence takes on the character of dispersion not because its communities are scattered in the world, but as a result of the
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fact that the believers must behave as if they are transient aliens sojourning on earth in the hope of an inheritance. The inheritance, a word belonging to the ‘land’ terms in the Hebrew Bible, is spiritualized to a high degree without mention of the concrete land, Zion, or Jerusalem. The kingdom is made supraterrestrial, stripped of all earthly limitations and qualifications. The verbal attack in the polemic section of Did 8 is thus likely to be directed against Jews in general as it was formulated in a community which was moving away from close contact with Judaism. One final question still needs consideration. What may have caused the congregation to move away from its roots? The Didache obviously was composed for the initiation of gentiles into their community. This already becomes clear in the supplementary long title of the Didache (“Doctrine of the Lord [brought] to the Nations by the Twelve Apostles”) and in the rules concerning baptism. Similarly, the Two Ways doctrine of Chaps. 1–6 apparently is intended as a prescriptive code principally for gentiles who had grown up in households in which pagan gods and pagan standards of morality abounded. In Syria (the region where the Didache most likely was composed), and particularly in Antioch, a mixture of different peoples, religions, and traditions was found. The Didache community probably consisted of an increasing number of Christian gentiles who had grown up in non-Jewish households, a number of members who were Jewish in their own self-conception and halakhic practice, and various shades of other believers-in-Jesus in the middle. The Didache attempts to overcome the tension between Jews and gentiles by adapting familiar Jewish liturgical traditions to forms of worship that were maintained by the majority in its community. It effects a synthesis of earlier Jewish with current Christian traditions and customs. Since the gathering of the church into God’s kingdom no longer has any connection with the gathering of Israel in the Didache liturgy, it is not far-fetched to suppose that the conversion of gentiles may have affected the community in the last stage of the development of the Didache, even to the extent of becoming a separate movement. By the time the document was composed, so many gentiles had already been baptized and adopted that the community became sociologically a gentile Christian group.
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LITERATURE Alon, G. ‘The Halacha in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles’, in: Draper, The Didache in Modern Research (AGJU 37), Leiden-New York-Köln 1996, 165–94. Arowele, A.P.J., Diaspora-concept in the New Testament; Studies on the idea of Christian Sojourn, Pilgrimage and Dispersion according to the New Testament (Inaugural-Dissertation), Würzburg 1977. Betz, H.D., Galatians; A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia (Hermeneia), Philadelphia 21984. Bietenhard, H., Die himmlische Welt im Urchristentum und Spätjudentum (WUNT 2), Tübingen 1951. Borgen, P., Philo of Alexandria; An Exegete for his Time (NovTSup 86), Leiden-New York-Köln 1997. ———, ‘Philo of Alexandria’, in: M.E. Stone (ed.), Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period; Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran Sectarian Writings, Philo, Josephus (CRINT 2/2), Assen-Philadelphia 1984, 233–82. Bradshaw, P.F., The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship; Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy, Oxford 22002. Brox, N., Der erste Petrusbrief (EKKNT 21), Zürich und Neukirchen-Vluyn 1979. Clerici, L., Einsammlung der Zerstreuten. Liturgiegeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Vor- und Nachgeschichte der Fürbitte für die Kirche in Didache 9,4 und 10,5 (Liturgiegeschichtliche Quellen und Forschungen 44), Münster (Westf ) 1965. Collins, J.J., Between Athens and Jerusalem; Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora, New York 1983. Colson, F.H., and G.H. Whitaker, Philo; With an English Translation 2 (LCL 227), London-Cambridge MA 1968 (1st print 1929). ———, Philo; With an English Translation 4 (LCL 261), London-Cambridge MA 1968 (1st print 1932). Colson, F.H., Philo; With an English Translation 7 (LCL 320), London-Cambridge MA 1968 (1st print 1937). ———, Philo; With an English Translation 8 (LCL 341), London-Cambridge MA 1968 (1st print 1939). Crossan, J.D., The Historical Jesus; The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, Edinburgh 1991. Dalman, G., Die Worte Jesu; Mit Berücksichtigung des nachkanonischen jüdischen Schrifttums und der aramäischen Sprache 1, Leipzig 21930. Dibelius, M., ‘Die Mahl-Gebete der Didache’, ZNW 37 (1938) 32–41; repr in: H. Kraft and G. Bornkamm (eds), Botschaft und Geschichte; Gesammelte Aufsätze von Martin Dibelius. 2: Zum Urchristentum und zur hellenistischen Religionsgeschichte, Tübingen 1956, 117–27. Draper, J.A., ‘Christian Self-Definition against the “Hypocrites” in Didache VIII’, in: Id., (ed.), The Didache in Modern Research (AGJU 37), Leiden-New York-Köln 1996, 223–243. ———, ‘A continuing Enigma: the ‘Yoke of the Lord’ in Didache 6.2–3 and early Jewish-Christian Relations’, in: Tomson and Lambers-Petry, The Image of the Judaeo-Christians, 106–123. ———, ‘Ritual Process and Ritual Symbol in Didache 7–10’, VC 54 (2000) 121–58. ———, ‘Do the Didache and Matthew Reflect an “Irrevocable Parting of the Ways” with Judaism?’, in: H. van de Sandt (ed.), Matthew and the Didache; Two Documents from the same Jewish-Christian Milieu? (forthcoming). Drews, P., ‘Untersuchungen zur Didache’, ZNW 5 (1904) 53–79. Elliott, J.H., A Home for the Homeless; A Sociological Exegesis of 1 Peter, Its Situation and Strategy, London 1982 (1st ed. 1981).
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Feldmeier, R., Die Christen als Fremde; Die Metapher der Fremde in der antiken Welt, im Urchristentum und im 1. Petrusbrief (WUNT 64), Tübingen 1992. Finkelstein, L., ‘The Birkat Ha-Mazon’, in: id., Pharisaism in the Making; Selected Essays, New York 1972, 333–384; published previously in JQR n.s. 19 (1928–29) 211–62. Gafni, I.M., ‘The Historical Background’, in: S. Safrai (ed.), The Literature of the Sages 1 (CRINT 2/3). Assen-Maastricht-Philadelphia 1987. Garrow, A.J.P., The Gospel of Matthew’s Dependence on the Didache ( JSNTSup 254), London-New York, 2004. Grässer, E., An die Hebräer, 3 Teilband: Hebr 10,19–13,25 (EKKNT 17/3), Zürich und Neukirchen-Vluyn 1997. Gruen, E.S., Diaspora; Jews amidst Greeks and Romans, Cambridge MA-London 2002. Heinemann, J., Prayer in the Talmud. Forms and Patterns (SJ 9), Berlin-New York 1977. Horst, P.W. van der, Philo’s Flaccus; The First Pogrom (Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 2), Leiden-Boston 2003. Köster, H., Synoptische Überlieferung bei den apostolischen Vätern (TU 65), Berlin 1957. Kollmann, B., Ursprung und Gestalten der frühchristlichen Mahlfeier (GTA 43), Göttingen 1990. Laporte, J., La Doctrine eucharistique chez Philon d’Alexandrie (ThH 16), Paris 1972. Lake, K., The Apostolic Fathers; in Two Volumes 2 (LCL 25), London-Cambridge MA 1970 (1st print 1913). Ledogar, R.J., Acknowledgment; Praise-verbs in the Early Greek Anaphora. Rome 1968. Lee, P., The New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation; A Study of Revelation 21–22 in the Light of its Background in Jewish Tradition (WUNT 2/129), Tübingen 2001. Leonhardt, J., Jewish Worship in Philo of Alexandria (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 84), Tübingen 2001. Lietzmann, H., Messe und Herrenmahl; Eine Studie zur Geschichte der Liturgie (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 8), Berlin 1926; ET: Mass and Lord’s Supper; A Study in the History of the Liturgy, with Introduction and Further Inquiry by R.D. Richardson. Leiden 1979. Marcus, R., Philo. Supplement 1; Questions and Answers on Genesis (LCL 380), LondonCambridge MA 1961 (1st print 1953). Middleton, R.D., ‘The Eucharistic Prayers of the Didache’, JTS 36 [1935] 259–67. Milavec, A., The Didache; Faith, Hope, & Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50–70 C.E., New York 2003. Niederwimmer, K., Die Didache (KAV 1), Göttingen 21993 (1989). Niehoff, M.R., Philo on Jewish Identity and Culture, Tübingen 2001. Riggs, J.W., ‘From Gracious Table to Sacramental Elements; The Tradition-History of Didache 9 and 10’, SecCent 4 [1984] 83–101. Rordorf, W., and A. Tuilier, La Doctrine des douze Apôtres (Didachè) (SC 248 bis), Paris 2 1998. Runia, D.T., ‘The Idea and the Reality of the City in the Thought of Philo of Alexandria’, Journal of the History of Ideas 61 (2000) 361–79. Safrai, S., ‘Relations between the Diaspora and the Land of Israel’, in: S. Safrai and M. Stern (eds.), The Jewish People 1 (CRINT 1/1), edited in co-operation with D. Flusser and W.C. van Unnik, Assen-Philadelphia 1974. Sandelin, K.G., Wisdom as Nourisher; A Study of an Old Testament Theme, its Development within Early Judaism and its Impact on Early Christianity (Acta Academia Aboensis, ser. A: Humaniora 64,3), Åbo 1986. Sandt, H. van de, and D. Flusser, The Didache; Its Jewish Sources and its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity (CRINT 3/5), Assen-Minneapolis, 2002. Sandt, H. van de, ‘The Gathering of the Church in the Kingdom; The Self-understanding of the Didache Community in the Eucharistic Prayers’, in: SBLSP 42, Atlanta 2003, 69–88.
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Schmidt, K.L., and M.A. Schmidt, ‘pãroikow, paroik¤a, paroik°v’ in: TWNT 5, 841–53. Schmidt, K.L., ‘diasporã’ in: TWNT 2, 101–104. Schürer, E., The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135) 1–3/2, rev. by G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Goodman. Edinburgh 1973–1987. Schwartz, D.R., ‘Temple or City: What did Hellenistic Jews See in Jerusalem?’, in: M. Poorthuis and Ch. Safrai (eds), The Centrality of Jerusalem; Historical Perspectives, Kampen 1996, 114–27. Strack, H.L., and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch 1–4/2, München 1922–1928. Talley, Th. J., ‘From Berakah to Eucharistia; A Reopening Question’, Worship 50 (1976) 115–37. Tomson, P.J., and D. Lambers-Petry (eds), The Image of the Judaeo-Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature (WUNT 158), Tübingen 2003. Tomson, P.J., ‘The wars against Rome, the rise of Rabbinic Judaism and of Apostolic Gentile Christianity, and the Judaeo-Christians; elements for a synthesis’, in: Tomson and Lambers-Petry, The Image of the Judaeo-Christians, 1–31. ———, ‘The halakhic evidence of Didache 8 and Matthew 6 and the Didache community’s relationship to Judaism,’ in: H. van de Sandt (ed.), Matthew and the Didache; Two Documents from the same Jewish-Christian Milieu? (forthcoming). Unnik, W.C. van, Das Selbstverständnis der Jüdischen Diaspora in der hellenistisch-römischen Zeit, bearbeitet von P.W. van der Horst (AGJU 17), Leiden-New York-Köln 1993. Volz, P., Die Eschatologie der jüdischen Gemeinde im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, Tübingen 1934. Wehr, L., Arznei der Unsterblichkeit; Die Eucharistie bei Ignatius von Antiochien und im Johannesevangelium (NTAbh NF 18), Münster 1987. Wengst, K., Didache (Apostellehre); Barnabasbrief; Zweiter Klemensbrief; Schrift an Diognet (Schriften des Urchristentums 2), Darmstadt 1984. Whitaker, G.H., Philo; With an English Translation 2 (LCL 227), London-Cambridge MA 1968 (1st print 1929), 78–79. Williamson, R., Jews in the Hellenistic World: Philo (Cambridge Commentaries on Writings of the Jewish and Christian World 200 BC to BCE 200; 1/2), Cambridge 1989.
‘A CITY THAT MAKES ALL ISRAEL FRIENDS’: NORMATIVE COMMUNITAS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LEGITIMACY IN PILGRIMAGES TO THE SECOND TEMPLE Jackie Feldman Ben Gurion University, Israel The biblical injunction states: ‘Three times yearly shall all your male issue be seen before the face of the Lord God at the place He shall choose’ (Deut 16:16; Exod 22:17). Pilgrimage to the Second Temple was one of the most widespread religiously motivated movements of people in antiquity.1 In this article, I examine several aspects of pilgrimage to the Second Temple within a theoretical frame drawn from the contemporary anthropological study of pilgrimage. In doing so, I hope to open the way to further dialogue between the study of pilgrimage to the Second Temple and research on other pilgrimages. 1. Introduction The Second Temple served as the center of Jewish religious authority and worship, of values and social practices. In the writings of Flavius Josephus (Antiquities III:179–183; V:458–459), the Temple was portrayed as a microcosm of the universe. The ritual activities of the Temple priests were seen as insuring the fertility of the land, divine forgiveness of sins, the very existence of heaven and earth (TSot 15:2). In the Temple, the new moon was announced, Torah scrolls checked and corrected, the lineages of priests throughout the world verified, and religious knowledge transmitted. The Temple and its pilgrims were the major source of Jerusalem’s income, and the force shaping the social makeup of the surrounding countryside. 1 For a detailed historical account of Second Temple pilgrimage, see Shmuel Safrai, Pilgrimage to the Second Temple (Hebr.), Jerusalem 1985 {1965}; Moshe David Herr, ‘Jerusalem, the Temple and its Worship in the Second Temple Period’, (Hebr.), Jerusalem from the Second Temple Period to Modernity, Jerusalem 1981, 487–498.
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Especially for the Jewish religious leadership and the residents of Jerusalem and Judea, the Temple was ‘the point of convergence of the lines of structure, both cosmic and social’.2 By the late Second Temple Period, in the First Century ce, however, the Jewish population had spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. While the Temple remained a cosmic center for Diaspora Jews, it was geographically and economically peripheral to most Jews’ daily lives. For Philo of Alexandria, for example, pilgrimage to the Temple was not a regular calendrical event. Undoubtedly based on his own experience in Jerusalem (De Prov. II:64),3 he writes that the pilgrim ‘leaves his homeland and his family and friends to sojourn in a strange country . . . Yet uncounted multitudes arrive, some by sea and some by land, from East and West and North and South on each holiday. The Temple serves them as a safe haven from the chaos and confusion of life. There they seek repose . . . ties of friendship are created between those who did not know each other before, and the sacrifices and libations are occasions of emotional exchange which provide the strongest certainty that all are of one mind’ (Philo, De Spec Leg I, 68). 2. Structure and Antistructure in the Pilgrimage Experience The two aspects illustrated above—the cosmic centrality of the Second Temple and its distance from the daily lives of a large number of its pilgrims—correspond to the differing conceptualizations of the sacred center as expressed in the work of Mircea Eliade and Victor Turner. Eliade understands each sacred center as a ‘center of the world’: ‘the place where all essential modes of being came together; where communication among them is possible . . . where the most direct contact with the sacred is observed’.4 Many references in Scripture and in Second Temple writings attribute cosmological significance 2
Jacob Neusner, The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism, Leiden, 1983, p. 29. See Yehoshua Amir, ‘Pilgrimage according to Philo’ (Hebr.), Chapters in the History of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period, Jerusalem 1981, 154–165; cp. van de Sandt in this volume, p. 99. 4 Mircea Eliade and Lawrence F. Sullivan, ‘Center of the World’, Encyclopedia of Religion, New York, 1987, Vol. 3, p. 166. Cf. Mircea Eliade, ‘Symbolism of the Centre’’, Images and Symbols, Kansas City, 1981, pp. 27–56. 3
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to the Temple and Jerusalem.5 Indeed, Eliade refers to the Temple in Jerusalem as a prototype for the cosmic centrality of sacred places.6 Such cosmic centers have a strong ordering power; they create webs of meaning that both reflect and shape the experience of those attracted to them.7 They provide models for everyday conduct, while conferring legitimacy to the religious authorities associated with them. Victor Turner, on the other hand, emphasized the geographical and social peripheriality of pilgrimage centers. Adapting theories on rites of passage developed by Van Gennep, Victor Turner conceptualized the pilgrim as one who leaves his home to journey, often facing hardships and dangers, to a sacred periphery, a center out there, which transiently becomes the center for the individual. Turner maintained that pilgrimage is not primarily a reflection of social structure prevailing in everyday profane life, but most often its reversal, antistructure. At the center out there, the pilgrim experiences communitas, ‘the being no longer side by side, but with one another of a multitude of persons’, ‘a moment in and out of time . . . which reveals, however fleetingly, some recognition (in symbol if not always in language) of a generalized social bond’. Often, external signs, such as uniform clothing, fasting or common meals will represent and reinforce the leveling down of status that is the mark of communitas. The pilgrim returns home transformed, with a new status.8 As radical communitas has the potential of dissolving borders, thus threatening social structures, religious authorities will often attempt to limit spontaneous outbreaks of communitas, by directing them into normative forms. These forms, however, are informed by the ‘free spirit’ of communitas, and are not simply replications of social structure. Turner designated 5 Raphael Patai (Man and Temple, London 1947) provides a detailed, if uncritical, survey of the sources attaching cosmic meaning to the Temple, its vessels and rites. See also Jackie Feldman, ‘Le second Temple comme institution économique, sociale et politique’, in Shmuel Trigano, ed., La Société Juive A Travers L’histoire, Tome II, Paris 1992, 156–158. 6 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, New York 1959, 20–65. Much of Eliade’s material is drawn from A.J. Wensinck, The Ideas of the Western Semites concerning the Navel of the Earth, Amsterdam, 1916. 7 Clifford Geertz, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in The Interpretation of Cultures, New York 1973, 87–125. 8 Victor Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, The Ritual Process, Chicago 1969, 96. idem., ‘The Center out There: The Pilgrim’s Goal’, History of Religions 12 (1973), 191–230. Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, Oxford 1978, 34–35.
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this condition by the name normative communitas, which he saw as an attenuation or degeneration of the original, spontaneous impulse that created the ‘miraculous’ sense of existential oneness. Turner’s claim that communitas and antistructure are universal characteristics of pilgrimages has been criticized on empirical grounds, notably by Michael Sallnow. Sallnow9 demonstrated that pilgrimages could be marked by animosities and strong boundary-marking procedures between ethnic and geographical sub-groups of pilgrims. He suggested examining pilgrimage, not as a reversal of structure, but as a realm of competing discourses, where different groups of participants may possess different understandings of the same pilgrimage.10 Erik Cohen suggested that Turner’s search for universals in the pilgrimage experience, based on data from popular Catholic Marian shrines, led him to disregard other pilgrimage sites in which the principal religious and political centers are fused.11 Such pilgrimage centers may not be ‘out there’, but rather ‘centers of the world’ (Eliade), that reflect and intensify social and religious structures and values diffused throughout the broader society. Where the religious and the political domains coincide, Cohen suggests, we may expect greater control over pilgrim behavior on the part of central religious authorities, more formalized and decorous demeanor and fewer expressions of ludic or anti-structural behavior.12 I suggest that these perspectives can provide new insights into certain Second Temple pilgrimage phenomena. I will begin with a short survey of the historical sources and background for Second Temple pilgrimage, and describe the extensive influence of the late Second Temple on the economy and society of Jerusalem and its surroundings. This will demonstrate how the centrality of the Temple was manifested in the social realm. I will then illustrate how festival pilgrimage expressed strong leveling forces that breached everyday barriers. The interplay of the various hierarchical and leveling forces results. de facto, in what Turner calls normative communitas. This normative communitas is, however, not a deterioration of some idealized 9 Michael J. Sallnow, ‘Communitas Reconsidered: The Sociology of Andean Pilgrimage’, Man, Vol. 16 (1981), 164–182. 10 ‘Introduction’, in John Eade and Michael Sallnow, eds, Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage, London and New York 1999 {1991}, 1–6. 11 Eric Cohen, ‘Pilgrimage Centers: Concentric and Excentric’, Annals of Tourism Research 19(1), (1992), 47. 12 Cohen, Pilgrimage Centers, 33–37.
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primeval state of equality, but a dynamic process, a function of competing discourses (see Sallnow, above, note 9), fostered by bearers of competing theological views and financial and political interests. In the examples I chose, I will show how popular communitas was encouraged by the Pharisees, often against the (predominantly Sadducee) priesthood, that sought to limit it. 3. Sources and Historical Background of Second Temple Pilgrimage I have chosen to focus on the last century of the Second Temple (30 bce–70 ce). From this period, we have the writings of Josephus, and occasional references in the New Testament, the apocrypha and pseudopigrapha, Philo of Alexandria and the literature of Qumran. Archaeological excavations, especially those of the Southern Wall and the Jewish Quarter, have enriched our knowledge of the economic and social conditions of Jerusalem and its pilgrims. These sources, admittedly, do not provide a totally representative picture. Some may reflect the partisan views or political purposes of their authors, and they provide almost no experiential accounts of pilgrims coming from afar. From a slightly later period, we possess the traditions on pilgrimage, the Temple and purity laws, which were preserved in Tannaitic literature. While these sources were compiled after the destruction of the Temple and may reflect nostalgia for an experience past and gone, I hold that, where they are not obviously tinged by mythical perspectives, the Tannaitic descriptions of Second Temple pilgrimage do reflect realities of the period,13 especially as seen by the Rabbis’ predecessors, the Pharisees. Indeed, the independent descriptions of the Temple in the New Testament and in Josephus, as well as archaeological discoveries, largely corroborate the picture.14 This wide variety of sources enables us to construct a fairly accurate portrait of the pilgrimage to the Temple. 13 For a discussion of the trustworthiness of rabbinic sources on the Temple, see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The History of Sukkot in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods, Atlanta 1995, 103–106, and bibliography ad loc. 14 For example, the proliferation of stone vessels in Jerusalem, as well as the Mikvaot found near the Temple Mount confirm details of Tannaitic halalkha. See Yitzchak Magen, ‘Jerusalem as a Center of the Stone Vessel Industry during the Second Temple Period’, in Hillel Geva, ed., Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, Jerusalem 1994, 244–256; idem., ‘Ancient Israel’s Stone Age: Purity in Second Temple Times’, Biblical Archaeological Review 24, 5, (1995), 46–52. Roni Reich, ‘Mishna Sheqalim 8:2
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While in the early Second Temple Period, the number of pilgrims to the Temple was small, in the Hasmonean Period (mid 2nd Century bce–mid 1st Century bce), larger areas came under domination of Jewish priest-kings, and conquered peoples were forcibly converted to Judaism. Moreover, Judaism became a major missionary religion throughout the Roman Empire. Starting 20 bce, Herod rebuilt the Temple to accommodate throngs of pilgrims, increase the financial and political importance of Jerusalem, and, consequently, his own legitimacy, fortune and fame.15 The pax romana and the improvement in road service, safety and transport, facilitated long-distance travel to the Temple on the part of Jews from afar. Unlike their surrounding cultures, diaspora Jews could sacrifice in one place only— the Temple in Jerusalem.16 In the Roman world, the insistence on pilgrimage to a single shrine was unique to Jerusalem.17 Many Diaspora Jews who rarely visited the Temple, considered it a central symbol as well as a source of authority and pride.18
and Archaeological Findings’ (Hebr.), Chapters in the History of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period, Jerusalem 1981, 225–256. idem, ‘The Synagogue and the Mikveh in the Land of Israel in the Periods of the Second Temple, the Mishna and the Talmud’ (Hebr.), Ancient Synagogues: A Research Anthology, Jerusalem 1988, 205–212. 15 Some scholars suggest that encouragement of mass pilgrimage was an innovation of Herod’s. The encouragement of pilgrimage was certainly in tune with Herod’s larger financial schemes. See Emilio Gabbe, ‘The Financial Matters of King Herod’ (Hebr.), in A. Kasher, A. Rappaport and G. Fuchs (eds), Greece and Rome in the Land of Israel, Jerusalem 1989, 174–181. See also Martin Goodman, ‘The Pilgrimage Economy of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period’, in Lee Levine (ed.), Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, New York 1999, 71–72. 16 I ignore here the Temple of Onias at Leontopolos, which was, at best, a marginal local phenomenon, as well as the temple at Elephantine (Yev) in Upper Egypt, which served as a center of sacrificial worship for the local Jewish military colony during the 6th and 5th Centuries BCE. 17 R. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire, New Haven, 1981, pp. 25–29. See also Goodman, Pilgrimage Economy, 70–75. 18 Contra Flaccum 45–46. On the symbolic importance of Jerusalem for Hellenistic Jews, see Arieh Kasher, ‘Jerusalem as a Metropolis in the National Consciousness of Philo’ (Hebr.), Cathedra 11 (1979), 45–46; I.L. Seeligmann, ‘Jerusalem in Hellenistic Thought’ (Hebr.), Judea and Jerusalem, Jerusalem 1957, 192–208; R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, ‘Metropolis for All the Lands’, (Hebr.), Jerusalem in its Generations, Jerusalem 1969, 172–178; Daniel Schwartz, ‘Temple of City: What Did Hellenistic Jews See in Jerusalem’, M. Poorthuis and Ch. Safrai, The Centrality of Jerusalem; Historical Perspectives, Kampen 1996, 114–127.
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4. The Influence of the Second Temple on Its Surroundings In Jerusalem, as in many pilgrimage centers, the holiness of the sanctuary was extended to the surroundings, and the temple city became a holy city. In addition, the presence of the sanctuary profoundly influenced the economy and social makeup of the surrounding area.19 Although scholars’ estimates of their numbers vary,20 they clearly outnumbered the permanent residents of Jerusalem. The multitudes of pilgrims required water, food, sacrificial animals, pottery for cooking, fuel, lodging, proper sanitation, special clothing and much more. The activities of the Temple and its pilgrims supported a wide range of occupations in Jerusalem, and purity and holiness regulations made their mark on the city. The relatively long stay of pilgrims in the city, and the diverse wares that many pilgrims brought with them, made Jerusalem, a city with little natural strategic importance, into an international marketplace. Magen Broshi21 estimates the annual income of the Temple in Herod’s day at ten percent of Herod’s income from his entire kingdom. Much of this income found its way into the hands of several High Priestly families, who lived in Jerusalem in great luxury.22 The catchment basin23 of Jerusalem pilgrimage was exceedingly large, as many Jews, as well as Gentile God-fearers ( phoboumenoi ) or potential converts from across the Roman Empire and beyond made their way to the Temple.24 Many settled or sojourned for an extended period of time in the city, as is attested to by the names and birthplaces on funerary inscriptions unearthed in excavations. Pilgrimage thus became a means of diffusing religious knowledge and orthodoxy 19 Pierre Deffontaines, ‘Géographie des pèlerinages’, Geographie et Religions, Paris 1948, 295–338. David Sopher, Geography of Religions, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1967; B.Z. Kedar, and R.J.Z. Werblowsky, Sacred Space: Shrine, City, Land, New York, 1998. Moshe Weinfeld, ‘Jerusalem as a Political and Spiritual Capital’, in Joan Goodrich Westenholz, ed., Capital Cities: Urban Planning and Spiritual Dimensions, Jerusalem, 1998, 15–40. 20 Safrai, Pilgrimage, 71–74. Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, Philadelphia 1969 (1967), 90ff. See also Lee Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence, Seattle, 1998, 35 and note 4 ad loc. 21 Magen Broshi, ‘The Economy of the Land of Israel and its Population in the Herodian Period’ (Hebr.), Idan 5 (1985), 16–17. 22 Nachman Avigad, The Upper City of Jerusalem (Hebr.), Jerusalem 1980, 80–92. 23 On catchment basins of pilgrimage, see Deffontaines, Géographie; Mary Nolan and Sidney Nolan, Christian Pilgrimage in Modern Western Europe, Chapel Hill 1989. 24 See the exhaustive list of references in Safrai, Pilgrimage, 42–71.
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from the spiritual center to the periphery.25 Hence, Temple pilgrimage became an arena where Jewish groups and leaders competed for spiritual authority in the wider Jewish world. 5. Structure and Flow in Second Temple Pilgrimage Throughout the year, Temple priests could inscribe the ordering principles of their social structure on the space of the Temple26 and on its sacrificial ritual. Furthermore, everyday economic relations were ordered by a hierarchical oligarchic society, in which (at least in Jerusalem) the priesthood enjoyed a privileged position. Pilgrimage festivals, on the other hand, were often the occasion for breach in the mundane order. I will illustrate this breach in three domains: 1. the economic obligations of Temple pilgrims, 2. popular participation in the Temple cult on festivals, and 3. purity regulations involving commensuality and bodily contact in and around the Temple. In the first case, the status differences marking rich and poor are attenuated and the contractual obligations of purely economic exchange are, in part, replaced by the less alienating ties of social exchange. In the latter two cases, the rigid lines of priestly structuring of the cosmos, as symbolized in the Temple and its cult, are blurred or obliterated by the irruption of communitas, and the undifferentiated flow of the mass pilgrim experience. In this state, there is a loss of self-consciousness that frequently leads people to ignore the markers between the permitted and the prohibited. In the latter two cases, I will also demonstrate how the fostering of normative communitas through pilgrimage legislation could serve a particular leadership group (in this case, the Pharisees) in their struggle for authority and legitimacy. 25 This phenomenon has been extensively documented in the case of Islamic pilgrimages from West Africa. See William R. Roff, ‘Pilgrimage and the History of Religions: Theoretical Approaches to the Hajj’, in Richard C. Martin, ed., Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, Tucson 1985, 78–86; 220–222. C. Bawa Yamba, Permanent Pilgrims: The Role of Pilgrimage in the Lives of West African Muslims in Sudan, Washington 1995. 26 Jonathan Z. Smith (To Take Place: Towards Theory in Ritual, Chicago 1987, 63–73) has argued that the hierarchy of purity restrictions governing access to the inner precincts of the Temple should be understood, not as the religious man’s perception of the absolute nature of sacred space (qua Eliade), but rather as the projection of categories of social status differentiations on undifferentiated space by particular groups of men.
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a. Communitas and the Regulation of the Economic Obligations of Pilgrims As it attracted people from a wide socio-economic spectrum, Temple could serve as a venue for the conspicuous display of wealth by rich pilgrims and the exclusion of poorer pilgrims from the festivities. Economic differences were, however, minimized through a series of regulations that are clear expressions of normative communitas. Any farmer living within a day’s walk of Jerusalem was required to bring first-fruits of their vines (neta r"vai ) in kind, rather than redeem them for monies to be spent in the city, so that he ‘distribute them to his neighbors, relatives and acquaintances and adorn the market with them’ (TMa’aser Sheni 5:14). The abundance of fruit actually brought prices down on festivals, in spite of the heightened demand: ‘if it was expensive there, once (the pilgrims) entered, it was cheap’ (Abot deRabbi Natan, Version B, Section 39). Firstborn animals were also to be brought to the city in kind, ‘so that much livestock be available for pilgrim (needs)’ (PT Sheq 3:1. Ber 58a). Sacrifices were to be eaten within thirty-six hours. Consequently, there was an abundance of meat in the Temple courts and throughout the city, often more than could be consumed by the donors; this insured that the poor would have their bellies filled and would be invited to sup together with pilgrim groups (Philo, De Spec Leg II, 210–211). Pilgrims were required to lodge in Jerusalem throughout the festival. Homeowners were prohibited from taking rental monies from pilgrims (TMa"aser Sheni 1:3; Abot deRabbi Natan, Version A, Section 35). The reason provided by the Tosefta for this decree is telling: ‘One does not rent out houses in Jerusalem . . . because they belong to the tribes’ (TMa"aser Sheni 1:12) (alternatively: ‘because they are not theirs’ (Megilla 26a)). The holiness of the city—that is, its belonging to the entire covenant people (or, alternatively, its consecration to God)—weakens the force of Jerusalemites’ individual property rights. The ultimate Master of the house, God, demands that guests of His house take precedence. This weakening of property rights may be a legal formulation of the conception of Jerusalem as teruma or as intertribal and thus, exterritorial, as outlined in the visionary sacred geography of Ezekiel, Chapters 45 and 48.27 27 See the discussion of the exterritoriality of Jerusalem in Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel. II Teilband, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1969, 1219–1235, and Smith, To Take Place, 47–73.
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The result of such legislation is described by the Midrash as one of the ten ‘miracles’ of Jerusalem: ‘no one ever said to his friend, there is too little space for me to lodge in Jerusalem’ (Abot deRabbi Natan, Version A, Section 35). On four years of each seven-year cycle, agriculturalists living in Israel were required to set aside a ‘second tithe’ that could be used in Jerusalem for expenditures on food, drink and oil for anointing the body. In most cases, these monies were spent on pilgrimage festivals. The laws of second tithes specify: ‘Second tithe may not be sold, nor given as pledge, nor exchanged, nor used for reckoning weights . . . One may not say to his neighbor in Jerusalem, “Here is wine and give me oil (in exchange)”, or “here is oil, give me wine (in exchange)”. But one may say, “here is wine for you, for I have no oil”, “Here is oil for you, for I have no wine” . . . But they give each other free gifts’ (MMa"aser Sheni 1:1). The Tosefta adds: ‘Consequently, they exchange and yet do not exchange, and do each other favors’ (TMa"aser Sheni 1:1–2). The Jerusalem Talmud comments on the law: ‘since he cannot legally enforce the transaction, it is not an exchange’ (PT Ma"aser Sheni (1), 52c). The distinction between permitted and prohibited exchanges of produce of this pilgrimage fund is an excellent example of the distinction between social and purely economic exchange as elaborated by Bronislaw Malinowski (on the kula ring), Marcel Mauss (on the gift) and Peter Blau.28 As Blau explained, ‘social exchange . . . involves unspecified obligations, the fulfillment of which depends on trust because it cannot be enforced in the absence of a binding contract . . .29 Only social exchange tends to engender feelings of personal obligation, gratitude and trust; purely economic exchange does not . . .30 The taboo on explicit bargaining in the case of gifts is designed to protect their significance as tokens of friendship, that is, as signs of altruistic attraction, from being obliterated by the inherent value of the objects themselves’.31 In their regulation of the use of pilgrim funds, the halakhic authorities sought to replace the rigid 28 Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, New York 1981 {1922}, 95–96. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, London, 1954. Peter Blau, ‘Social Exchange’ in Exchange and Power in Social Life, New York 1964, 88–114. 29 Blau, Social Exchange, 112–113. 30 Blau, Social Exchange, 98. 31 Blau, Social Exchange, 112.
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structure of the laws of the marketplace, and the consequent alienation of the produce from the person of the producer, with the free grace of gift-giving that is a mark of communitas.32 Thus, the Mishna states: ‘One should not say to his friend: “take these fruits up to Jerusalem for me to distribute”. Rather, he should say, “let us take them up so that we may eat and drink of them in Jerusalem”. But they give each other free gifts’ (MMa"aser Sheni 3:1). The Jerusalem Talmud’s commentary cites a popular saying that referred to second tithe as ‘manna’: ‘just as manna is given in gift, so too, second tithe is given in gift’ (PT Ma"aser Sheni 52c). These laws encourage and exalt the spirit of communitas. b. Priestly Cosmology and Popular Participation in the Cult on Pilgrimage As William Scott Green formulated it, ‘from the priestly perspective, reality was reflected in, and holiness could only be achieved through, the ritual complex of the Temple cult’.33 The priestly class envisioned the cosmos was that of a well-regulated series of concentric circles surrounding the center of the world, the Holy of Holies. The space of the Temple precincts was governed by a strict hierarchy of sacrality of function and successively more severely restricted access. As one approached the center, the Holy of Holies, purity, lineage and bodily perfection requirements became more stringent, whereas the range of activities performed in each area became more sacred and more restricted (MKelim 1:6–9).34 The Holy of Holies could be entered only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, and only by the High Priest performing the service. Certain trespasses—Gentiles entering beyond the sorag barrier35 into the Court of Women, impure priests serving in the Sanctuary (MSanh 9:6; TKelim, Baba Kamma 1:6; Antiquities XII, 145; XV:417–418)—were punishable by death. The priestly cosmology was also reflected in cultic performance. In the First and early Second Temple, the offering of sacrificial animals, the sprinkling of blood and the offering of incense, performed 32
Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, New York 1982, 49. William Scott Green, quoted in Jacob Neusner, A History of The Mishnaic Law of Purities, Part Twenty-One, Leiden, 1977, 1. 34 Eliade, Sacred and Profane, 20–65. 35 On the warning inscription, see Elias Bickermann, ‘The Warning Inscription on Herod’s Temple’, Jewish Quarterly Review 37 (1946–7), pp. 387–405. Peretz Segal, ‘The Penalty of the Warning Inscription from the Temple of Jerusalem’, Israel Exploration Journal 39 (1989), 79–84. 33
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by the priests inside the hekhal, which was off-limits to laymen, comprised almost the entirety of worship. In the Second Temple, however, music and prayer became an important part of the ritual,36 and much of the focus moved outside to the courtyard and the altar of sacrifice, where the people could see what was going on. Even so, non-priests were generally permitted only as far as the altar, where they handed their sacrificial animals over to the priests for the laying on of hands, slaughtering and offering. Popular participation, and the breach of these priestly regulations was most evident on the three pilgrimage festivals, Passover, the first-fruits procession (for many, on Shavuot) and Sukkot. On the eve of the Passover, thousands of lambs were slaughtered in the Temple courtyards by their donors, and priests circulated among the crowds with vessels to collect the blood to be sprinkled on the altar. In Philo’s words, ‘the entire congregation, young and old, slaughtered the Paschal lamb; for, on that day all were, so to speak, raised to the dignity of the priesthood’37 (De Spec Leg II, 145). The Feast of Shavuot was, for many pilgrims, the occasion of a massive popular procession: ‘All the villages in the ma"amad congregate in the town of the ma"amad, but do not enter the houses . . . Those close by bring figs and grapes, while those far away bring dried figs and raisins. The ox goes before them, his horns gilded and an olive wreath on his head . . . The flute plays before them until they reach the Temple Mount. When they reach the Temple Mount, even King Agrippa takes the basket on his own shoulder and enters until he reaches the Courtyard. When they reach the courtyard, the Levites open in song.’ (MBikkurim 3:2–5). The festive procession took place mainly outside the Temple area; the priests are notable by their absence, while the equality of worshippers is demonstrated by the report that even King Agrippa took the basket of first fruits on his own shoulder. This procession, which Philo calls the Basket Festival, bears many similarities with the pagan
36 Israel Knohl describes these developments as one manifestation of the struggle between priests holding a highly abstract view of God, who was to be served in silence (P), and a second, more popularizing group (H), that introduced song and popular practices, see Israel Knohl, The Temple of Silence, (Hebr.), Jerusalem 1993, 120–155; 159–184. 37 Although, according to the halakha, non-priests were allowed to slaughter sacrificial animals, in practice the task was performed by priests, except for the Passover lamb (cf. Safrai, Pilgrimage, 181).
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first-fruits processions to Eleusis:38 slow marching, mass pilgrimage in groups representing villages and towns, accompaniment by song and musical instruments (especially flutes), festive reception at the gates by inhabitants of the Temple city, accompaniment of the firstfruits with animal sacrifices, and even the heading of the procession by a garlanded ox with gilded horns. On the feast of Sukkot, the highlights of the celebration were the beating of the willow (M. Sukka 4:5 sqq.) and the night-long Feast of the Water-Drawing (simhat bet hasho"eva) (MSuk 5:1 sqq.; TSuk 4:1–9), celebrations without First Temple precedent, similar in form to contemporary pagan festivals.39 During the beating of the willow, the people circumambulated the altar, striking it with their willowbranches, and entering a part of the courtyard normally off-limits to non-priests, in spite of Sadducee priests’ objections40 (TSuk 3:1). The Mishna quoted a popular saying: ‘whoever has not seen the Feast of the Water Drawing has never seen joy in his life’ (MSuk 5:1). Rabbis juggled torches and performed acrobatics (MSuk 5:4; TSuk 4:4), as the Levites played their musical instruments and the congregation sang songs. Temple authorities were obliged to separate the men from the women in the Temple courtyards, ‘lest it lead to light-headedness’ (MSuk 5:4; TSuk 4:7; Suk 51b).The feast ended with the pouring of the water on the altar, an act pregnant with cosmic symbolism and sympathetic fertility magic.41 The late Second Temple Period was marked by conflict between Pharisees and Saducees over questions of popular participation in the cult.42 Thus, when the Sadducee High Priest made light of the 38 The comparison with Eleusis is taken from Bruria Biton-Ashkelony, Pilgrimage in Ancient Israel and Greece (Hebr.), unpublished M.A. thesis, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 1984. 39 J.L. Rubinstein, The History of Sukkot in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods, Atlanta 1995, pp. 145–148. 40 The sections on the Sukkot celebrations in the Temple are based on my Master’s thesis, Jackie Feldman, The Pull of the Center and the Experience of Communitas in Second Temple Pilgrimage (Hebr.), unpublished M.A. thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1988. Several of the themes in my thesis were expanded by Israel Knohl, ‘The Conflict among the Sects in the Second Temple Period and the Priestly Schools of the Pentateuch’ (Hebr.), Tarbiz 60 (1991), 139–146. 41 On the cosmic significance of the festival, see Raphael Patai, Man and Temple, 24–53. On simhat beit hasho"eva in general, see Rubinstein, Sukkot, 122–131; 163–179. Also Jeffrey L. Rubinstein, ‘The Sukkot Wine-Libation’, in Robert Chazan, William W. Hallo and Lawrence Schiffman eds., Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine, Winona Lake, Illinois 1999, 575–591. 42 These conflicts may date back to the struggle of different schools of priests,
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popular custom by dribbling the water on his feet instead of pouring it one the altar, the infuriated crowd stoned him with their etrogim. The incident is cited by rabbinic sources as a case where the people supported the Pharisee views against the Sadducee ones (MSuk 4:9; TSuk 3:16). The people’s objections undoubtedly stemmed from the magical rain-making significance attributed to the proper performance of the ritual. By promoting popular customs such as the water-libation during the mass pilgrimages, Pharisees could position themselves as champions of the people and assert their religious authority, which was supported neither by the privilege of Aaronic descent, nor by Scriptural sanction. We know that, by the end of the Second Temple Period, Pharisees succeeded in imposing their laws in many areas (Antiquities XVIII:15), including the priestly ritual in the inner sanctum on the Day of Atonement (MYoma 5:2; TYom Hakippurim 1:8–9). Another example concerns the display of the sacred vessels. On each of the festivals, the seven-branched candelabrum and the table with the shew-bread, normally kept inside the hekhal, (where they could only be seen by priests) were displayed to the public,43 to the dismay of the more conservative priests (MHag 3:8; THag 3:35; Yoma 54a). The candelabrum itself was called by Sadducee priests ‘the light of the moon’ (THag 3:35), and the sight of these vessels was a high point of many pilgrims’ quest.44
the Priestly Cult (P) and the Holiness School (H), in the late First Temple Period. See Israel Knohl, Conflict, 145–146. See also Jeffrey L. Rubinstein, ‘The Sadducees and the Water Libation’, Jewish Quarterly Review 64(4), 1994, 417–444, who provides two alternative explanations of the Pharisee-Sadducee conflict over these Sukkot Temple customs. 43 On the question of the display of the table to pilgrims and the depiction of the table on Bar Kochba coins, see Asher Grossberg and Dan Barag, ‘On D. Barag’s ‘The Table of the Shew-bread and the Façade of the Temple on Coins from the Bar Kochba Rebellion’’ (Hebr.), Qadmoniyot 20 (1987), 22–25; Qadmoniyot 21 (1988), 57–67. 44 In an early apocryphal Gospel, Papyrus Oxyrynychus V 840, the High Priest accuses Jesus and his disciples of visiting the Temple in order to gaze at the sacred vessels, even though they were not properly purified. See the sources on the link of the Biblical command of pilgrimage and revelation in Knohl, Temple of Silence, 139–140, n. 6–9. Knohl suggests that some sources understood that ‘the vision of the sacred vessels was a kind of vision of God’.
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c. Temple Purity Restrictions and Communitas Purity regulations and purification rites were the basis for much of the differential access to sacred space and the restrictions on performance of rituals. ‘Pollution’, writes Mary Douglas, ‘is a type of danger which is not likely to occur except where the lines of structure, cosmic and social are clearly defined’.45 Although the hierarchy of access in the Temple did not determine social stratification in everyday life, it did promote a vision of the universe in which the Priests were at the center and reinforced the status of the priests as sole mediators of the holy. On pilgrimage festivals, purity regulations were modified to attenuate this differential status. All, or almost all pilgrims underwent a seven-day purification period upon their arrival in Jerusalem. Philo writes, ‘But it is prohibited to enter the Sanctuary even for those entirely pure before seven days’ (De Spec Leg III, 205). All pilgrims entering the Temple Mount were required to remove their clothes, immerse themselves in a ritual bath and, leaving their sandals, staffs and money-purse outside, enter the Temple in white garments. In many pilgrimage festivals, such as the hajj to Mecca, the stripping off of daily clothing, purification rites and the donning of uniform pilgrims’ garb46 make pilgrims of different social classes more or less indistinguishable from one another. Here, the barefoot festival pilgrims donned clothing resembling that usually worn by the priests. All those entering the Court of Israel, adjacent to the altar of sacrifice, were required to immerse themselves, even the High Priest (MYoma 3:3; TYoma 1:15; MNeg 14:8; TNeg 8:9). As Safrai commented, ‘the Tannaitic Halakha thus made Israelites equal to Priests and saw their entry into the sanctuary as a kind of priestly worship’.47 While many of the purity restrictions applied primarily in the Temple context, some were extended to everyday life. The haverim, a Pharisee elite, adopted Temple customs in everyday life. They ate their daily meals in closed circles of other haverim, in conditions of
45
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, New York, 1989 (1966), 113. See also her chapters on pollution in idem, pp. 29–40; 94–114; ‘Pollution’, in idem, Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology, London 1975, 47–59. 46 James Preston, ‘Purification’, Encyclopedia of Religion, New York 1987, Vol. 12, 93; Turner, Ritual Process. 47 Safrai, Pilgrimage, 141.
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purity similar to those obtaining among Temple priests eating consecrated foods and avoided contact with amei ha"aretz (MDemai 2:2–3; TDemai 2:2–3), ‘the simple people of the rural and urban masses . . . who were more cavalier or selective in their observance of the commandments’.48 On the pilgrimage festivals, however, the Pharisees suspended the purity restrictions of the haverim: ‘‘Jerusalem built up, a city knit (hubra) together, (to which tribes would make pilgrimage)’—a city that makes all Israel haverim . . . the rabbis made the impurity of the am ha"aretz equivalent to purity’ (BBes 11b; BNid 34a). The elevation of all amei ha"aretz to the status of haverim (= members of the elite group), is what enables all pilgrims, haverim and amei ha"aretz alike to become haverim (= friends). The suspension of these purity restrictions, however, applied only on pilgrimage festivals. The resulting festival spirit is conveyed through the Midrash: ‘And the (nations of the world) find all of Israel in Jerusalem, all eating the same meal, all drinking the same drink, all praying to the same God . . . and they say, “there can be nothing better than to attach oneself to this people”.’ (SifreiDeut 354 (Horowitz ed., p. 416)). 6. Pilgrimage and Religious Legitimation Pilgrimage offered an opportunity for the Temple priesthood to display their status as religious mediators, but they usually remained distant figures, isolated by lineage, purity restrictions (cf. MSanh 2:1), separate entrances to the sanctuary and an aristocratic self-conception as a tribe set apart. As the author of a contemporary pseudopigraphal book writes, ‘they with hand and mind will touch impure things . . . yet they will say, ‘Do not touch me, lest you pollute me in the position I occupy’.’ (As. Mos. 7, 9–10). Furthermore, the High Priestly families’ amassed riches, their alliances with wealthy lay families, their exemption from both State and Temple taxes (MSheq 1:3–4), their abuses of power (TMen, 13:21), their fraternal violence (Antiquities V:180–181; X:213),49 occasionally leading to murders within the Temple precincts (MYoma 2:2; TYom Hakippurim 1:12), and their
48 Aaron Oppenheimer, The Am Ha"aretz, Leiden 1977. The quotes here are translated from the Hebrew version. 49 See Daniel Schwartz, Priesthood, Temple, Sacrifices: Opposition and Spiritualization in the Late Second Temple Period, unpublished dissertation, Jerusalem 1981, 9–43.
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often pro-Roman sympathies, all engendered resentment on the part of many people, especially those in Jerusalem who came in more frequent contact with them. This resentment burst forth during the Great Revolt in the year 70 ce. (Wars II:427; IV:414; VII:412ff.). Unlike the High Priests, the Pharisees employed the arena of pilgrimage to present their world-view and to gain the affection and respect of the people. They mingled among the masses on pilgrimage festivals, sharing their meals, teaching the Law and encouraging the people to participate more actively in Temple rites, moving the focus from the Holy of Holies to the more visible and accessible altar and courtyards. They even juggled torches and performed acrobatics on the Feast of the Water-Drawing (TSukkah 4:2). Undoubtedly, the contacts made on pilgrimage would aid them as they went out to the provinces and the Diaspora to preach their message in synagogues. The Pharisees also promoted Torah study and observance of ethical and ritual laws in daily life as pillars of Judaism, alongside the sacrificial cult (MAbot 1:2).50 Towards the close of the Second Temple Period, they also began to practice certain secondary Temple rites in synagogues throughout the Jewish world: lighting an eternal flame, blowing the ram’s horn, holding processions in the synagogue with the etrog and lulav, reading the Torah in public, and more.51 These practices extended Temple sanctity to areas outside the holy city and paved the way for the acceptance of the Pharisee’s spiritual descendants, the Rabbis, as authoritative vehicles of holiness. 7. Conclusions The examples I have provided illustrate how ritual barriers which confirmed the Temple priests’ superior position as sole mediators of the divine, were swept away or rendered more flexible by the flow of festival pilgrims, who sought to appear as equals ‘before the Lord’. The dynamic and sometimes, conflicted, interaction of hierarchical
50
By avoiding mention of any priest in its account of the line of transmission of the Law from Sinai, the Tractate Abot writes the Priesthood out of the history of revelation. See E.E. Urbach, ‘Halakha and Prophecy’ (Hebr.), Tarbiz 18 (1947), 1–29. 51 Shmuel Safrai, ‘The Temple and the Syagogue’ (Hebr.), In the Days of the Temple and the Mishna: Studies in Jewish History, Jerusalem 1984, Vol. 1, 133–153.
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priestly regulation, with popular leveling forces encouraged by a popularizing class of intellectual Pharisees, resulted, de facto, in a state of normative communitas. But because of the position of the Second Temple as center of the world, communitas itself could be employed by non-Priestly groups as a tool in their struggle for Temple-based legitimacy.
YOUR NEIGHBOR IS LIKE YOURSELF: A BROAD GENERALIZATION WITH REGARD TO THE TORAH Moshe Benovitz Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Israel Jewish children receiving religious instruction are taught from a very early age that the sage Rabbi Akiva considered the biblical injunction to ‘love your neighbor as yourself ’ (Leviticus 19:18) to be kelal gadol batorah, usually translated ‘the most important principle in the Torah’.1 This has been compared to Jesus’ statement in the synoptic gospels that this commandment and the commandment to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might’ (Deuteronomy 6:4) are the most important in the Torah (Matthew 22:35–40, Mark 12:28–34; cf. Luke 10:25–28).2 The meaning of both ‘love your neighbor as yourself ’ and Rabbi Akiva’s statement regarding the verse have been taken for granted: it is assumed that the importance of the verse is akin to the centrality of the ‘golden rule’ in many world religions, including Judaism and Christianity.3 Few have questioned the unusual syntax of the biblical verse, which is usually treated as an ellipsis for ‘love your neighbor as [you love] yourself ’, and no one seems to have noticed the anomalous usage in Rabbi Akiva’s statement of the rather common word kelal (here translated ‘principle’, but see below), and the common phrase kelal gadol be-. This article will reappraise the meaning of both the biblical injunction to love your neighbor kamokha, ‘as yourself ’, and the meaning of Rabbi Akiva’s statement with regard to this injunction, according it the status of a kelal gadol batorah.
1 Sifra Qedoshim chapter 4, section 12 (see citations below, section 2); Genesis Rabbah 24, section 7; Yerushalmi Nedarim 9:3, 41c. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 2 See, for example, Strack-Billerbeck 1922:908. 3 Compare the statement attributed to Hillel the Elder in Bavli Shabbat 31a: ‘That which is hateful to you, do not unto others—this is the whole Torah on one leg, and the rest is commentary. Go study!’
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Leviticus 19:17–18 reads as follows: (17) Hate not your brother (ah) in your heart. Make sure to rebuke your kinsman ( 'amit), And you will not be held accountable for his sin. (18) Neither avenge nor begrudge your kinfolk (bene 'amekha). Love your neighbor (rea') as yourself (kamokha). I am the Lord.
These verses are usually taken as a unit. The words ah (brother), 'amit (kinsman), bene 'am (kinfolk), and rea' (neighbor) are understood as synonyms, and the sense of the passage is seen as follows: Do not hate your fellow Israelite in your heart. If you do hate your fellow Israelite for good reason, presumably because he slighted you in some way, make sure he knows about it: otherwise you incur guilt for his sin. On the other hand, beyond informing him of the injury, do not bear a grudge or wreak vengeance upon him. You must love him kamokha (‘as yourself ’) despite your natural feelings of vindictiveness, for I, the Lord, command this.4 What is the meaning of the term kamokha, ‘as yourself ’? It is usually taken as an ellipsis for ‘love your neighbor as [you love] yourself ’. Jacob Milgrom, however, cites four other explanations:5 1. Kamokha is an adjective modifying re'akha, ‘your neighbor’ the equivalent of re'akha asher hu kamokha. The commandment would thus mean, ‘love your neighbor [who is] like yourself ’, which would mean either your fellow Israelite,6 or your fellow man.7 2. It is an adverb modifying ve"ahavta, ‘love’. Milgrom translates the resultant phrase as ‘Love [the good] for your fellow as you [love the good for] yourself ’, but, as we have seen, the more common explanation is ‘love your neighbor as [you love] yourself ’.8 3. It is a brachylogy of ‘for he is yourself ’: Love your neighbor, for he is you.9 4. It has a reflexive sense: ‘Love your neighbor as [he loves] you’.10 According to this view, the ‘golden rule’ is actually a paraphrase of this verse. 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
See Levine 1989:129, Hartley 1992:318, Milgrom 2000:1650–1651. Milgrom 2000:1655. Ehrlich 1909:65. Muraoka 1978:291–297. See Jubilees 30:24. Ullendorf 1966:276–278. Kugel 1997:456.
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None of these interpretations is warranted by the Hebrew. All require extensive supplement to the simple Hebrew text ve"ahavta lere'akha kamokha. The usages suggested in 1 and 3 are unattested elsewhere; the usage in 4 is not only unwarranted by the Hebrew, but it actually contradicts the message of the first half of the verse, which is not to bear a grudge, indicating that the Israelite is expected to love his neighbor even more than he is loved by his neighbor. ahav le- in the sense of ‘loving (the good) for’ someone is unattested; it is clear that the object of the preposition le- is the one to be loved, and the le- construction serves as a direct object would in English, or with some similar nuance.11 But even the usual explanation, ‘love your neighbor as you love yourself ’, is difficult syntactically; one would expect kenafshekha as in I Samuel 18:1,3,12 rather than kamokha, which must be taken as a short form of kemo lenafshekaha. The ‘neighbor’ of this verse is usually taken as a fellow Israelite,13 if only because a few verses later the very same law is applied to the stranger (Leviticus 19:33–34): (33) When a stranger resides with you (ittekha) in your land (be"artsekhem), wrong him (tonu) not. (34) The stranger who resides with you (ittekhem) shall be to you (lakhem) as one of your citizens (ke"ezrah mikkem); You shall love him (lo) as yourself (kamokha), for you were (heyitem) strangers in the land of Egypt.
‘Love him as yourself ’ (verse 34) is usually taken as an extension of the law of love for the neighbor in Leviticus 19:18 to the stranger ( ger), which would imply that original ‘neighbor’ of Leviticus 19:18 is a fellow Israelite. The meanings associated with the word kamokha in verse 18 would thus presumably be applied to the term in verse 34 as well: Either love the stranger who is as yourself (as is stipulated in verse 33); or love (the good) for the stranger as you love (the good) for yourself; or love the stranger for he is yourself [!]; or love the stranger as he loves you, or as you would have him love you. However, this attempt to see verse 34 as an extension of verse 18, applying the same problematic interpretation to the word kamokha in both verses, overlooks the simple fact that if we were to ignore the ‘original’ usage in verse 18, the meaning of verse 34 would be
11 Malamat 1990:111–116 argues on the basis of I Kings 5:15 and II Chronicles 19:2 that ahav le- means to act lovingly towards another. See also Milgrom 2000:1653. 12 As argued by Ehrlich 1909:65. 13 See Hartley 1992:318; Milgrom 2000:1654–1655.
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clear: love the stranger as you love yourselves, your fellow Israelites. Note the constant shift from singular to plural in referring to the Israelites to whom the law is addressed: (33) When a stranger resides with you (singular) in your (plural) land, wrong (plural) him not. (34) The stranger who resides with you (plural) shall be to you (plural) as one of your (plural) citizens; You (singular) shall love him as yourself (singular), for you (plural) were strangers in the land of Egypt.
While the ger is consistently referred to in the singular, the Israelites are addressed inconsistently in both singular and plural. This is not an unusual phenomenon in the laws of the Pentateuch, and the intent is clearly to indicate that the individual and the collective are equally responsible for making sure the law is carried out. In this context, it is clear that ve"ahavta lo kamokha is interchangeable with ve"ahavtem lo kamokhem. Now ve"ahavtem lo kamokhem would clearly mean that the stranger is to be treated as one of you; love him as you love yourselves, i.e. as you love one another, and this is no doubt the meaning of ve"ahavta lo kamokha as well. The Israelite individual and the Israelite collective are bidden to love the stranger as they love themselves, as they love one another. Since the meaning here is simple, and requires neither supplement to the Hebrew text nor recourse to unusual notions such as ‘your neighbor is you’, or self-love, or the blurring of individual identity, it stands to reason that we should attempt to understand verse 18 in light of verse 34, rather than applying difficult readings of verse 18 to the straightforward verse 34. The reason that this reading has not been suggested hitherto is that it would require that rea' in verse 18 be taken as referring to non-Israelites: ‘Love your (gentile) neighbors as you love yourselves’, with the singular taken as interchangeable with the plural, as in verse 34. Most traditional and contemporary interpreters rejected this notion, for two reasons: 1) As stated above, if verse 34 extends this injunction to non-Israelite strangers, it stands to reason that the original verse refers to Israelite fellows or neighbors. 2) The parallel stich in verse 18a has bene amekha, ‘your kinsmen’ and it stands to reason that rea' is synonymous with this term.14
14
See Milgrom 2000:1654 and commentators cited there.
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Nonetheless, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus clearly defines the rea' of this verse, not the ger of verse 34, as the neighbor who shows mercy, whether Jew or non-Jew (Luke 10:36–37). Moreover, as David Zvi Hoffman has pointed out, rea' is used in Exodus 11:2–3 to refer to non-Israelite neighbors exclusively: ‘Tell the people to borrow, each man from his neighbor and each woman from hers, objects of silver and gold. The Lord disposed the Egyptians favorably toward the people . . .’.15 Hoffman argues that this must be the sense in our passage as well, because rea' is the only term in our passage that does not denote a blood kinsman; ah, 'amit, and ben 'am are all terms of kinship, and if the Israelites are all considered kin, then their neighbor, who is not a relative, is by definition non-Israelite. Indeed, it might be noted that the terms in Leviticus 19:17–18 present a concentric progression of distance from the Israelite addressed: brother, blood relative, fellow national/kinsman in the broader sense, neighbor. In this context it stands to reason that the ‘neighbor’ is not a blood relative, even a distant one: he is a non-Israelite. Hoffman admits that elsewhere in the Bible rea' may refer to a fellow Israelite, and although he does not cite any examples, that is clearly true of Exodus 2:13, where two Hebrews are fighting and one is asked by Moses, ‘Why do you strike your rea' ?’. The same is true of Exodus 22:24–25, ‘If you lend money to My people . . . if you take your neighbor’s (re'ekha) garment as a pledge’, and Deuteronomy 13:7, 19:14, and 23:25–26, where the context also indicates a fellow Israelite. However, rea' is used three times in Leviticus 19, and strikingly, there are indications that each of these refers to someone on the periphery of Israelite society. Leviticus 19:11–13 reads as follows: (11) Steal not, dissemble not, nor lie—a man to his kinsman (ish be'amito). (12) Swear not falsely in my name, profaning the name of your God; I am the Lord. (13) Oppress not your neighbor (re'akha), nor commit robbery. Withhold not the wage of a laborer (sakhir) overnight until morning.
What is the difference between the economic crimes of stealing, dissembling and lying, mentioned in verse 11 with regard to the 'amit, ‘kinsman’, and the crimes of oppression and robbery mentioned in 15
Hoffman 1906:44, n. 2.
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verse 13 with reference to the rea', ‘neighbor’? Stealing, or burglary, is a crime committed against an economic equal or superior, as are dissembling (denying possession of the property of another, as a lender or bailor), and lying. These refer to the types of financial misrepresentation between equals that can engender court cases and false oath, as is stipulated in verse 12. By contrast, verse 13 links together oppression, robbery and denial of wages, and in the first two cases the victim is described as a rea'. These are crimes of force or crimes which involve taking unfair advantage of a superior position. Unlike the 'amit, the kinsman who is the victim of deceit and sues in court, the rea' here is economically disadvantaged, and he is linked to the laborer whose wages are withheld at the whim of the employer. It would seem that this is no coincidence. The ‘neighbor’ (rea' ) here, as in verse 18, is contrasted with the ‘kinsman’ ('amit ), and refers specifically to the non-Israelite neighbor on the periphery of Israelite society, who can easily be the victim of economic oppression and forced robbery, and who would feel he has no recourse in the Israelite legal system. Similar is the third usage of rea' in this chapter of the Bible, in verse 16, usually translated ‘Go not talebearing (lo telekh rakhil ) among/ against your kin (be'ammekha); stand not idly by the blood of your neighbor (re'ekha). I am the Lord.’ When rakhil is translated talebearing, the link between the stiches of the verse is unclear. It is likewise unclear whether the ‘kin’ are the victims of slander or the crowd in which the slander is perpetrated. However, Ezekiel 22:9a, ‘There were those who went rakhil among you (bakh), intent on shedding blood’, sheds light on the meaning of rakhil in Leviticus 19:16, the role of the ‘kin’ in the verse, and the connection between the two stiches. It is clear from Ezekiel that the phrase holekh rakhil refers to a plot with dire consequences, and not mere slander or talebearing.16 The bakh of Ezekiel, parallel to the be'ammekha of Leviticus, clearly indicates that the kinsfolk are plotting to shed blood. The rea' of the second stich in Leviticus is not parallel to the ammekha in the first stich; rather he is their victim. The verse in Leviticus should thus be translated: ‘Go not plotting with your kin; ignore not the bloodshed of your neighbor. I am the Lord’. The Israelite is bidden not to take part in a violent plot of his kinsmen, presumably against
16
Compare NJPS translation ‘deal basely’; see Milgrom 2000:1644.
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someone who is outside the circle of kin. Should he find himself party to or aware of such a plot, he must take action to save the victimized rea'. Thus rea' in this verse, too, is one who is outside the circle of Israelite kinship.17 The neighbor of Leviticus 19 is thus neither exclusively Israelite, nor ‘the one who has mercy’ regardless of ethnic origin, as proposed in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Rather, the rea' is exclusively non-Israelite, as is the stranger of Leviticus 19:34. In both cases kamokha means ‘as you love yourselves’, your fellow Israelites. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself ’ is not merely meant in contrast to the vengeance and grudge of the first half of Leviticus 19:18; rather, it is designed to extend the prohibitions of verses 17–18 to neighbors who are not kin. The passage should thus be understood as follows: Hate not your brother (ah) in your heart. Make sure to rebuke your kinsman ( 'amit), And you will not be held accountable for his sin. Neither avenge nor begrudge your kinfolk (bene 'amekha). And love [also] your neighbor (rea') as one of you (kamokha). I am the Lord.
However, if this is the sense, we must ask what the difference is between the rea' of verse 18 and the ger, or ‘stranger’ of verse 34, since it would hardly make sense if the meanings were identical. It has long been recognized that the biblical ger is not the proselyte of rabbinic halakhah; he is rather a non-Israelite who dwells in the land of Israel and assimilates or integrates naturally into Israelite society.18
17 Perhaps this understanding of a specialized use of rea' in the sense of a nonIsraelite on the periphery of Israelite society can serve to explain the anomaly of the tenth commandment, the prohibition against coveting the house, wife, slave, animal or other property of a rea' (Exodus 20:14, Deuteronomy 5:18). Scholars and moralists have long been puzzled by the liability engendered by mere intention (see Jackson 1971). Moreover, if intention to commit adultery or steal is prohibited by the tenth commandment, what need have we for the further strictures against actual adultery and theft in the seventh and eighth commandments, respectively? And would it not at least make more sense if the prohibition against coveting were to precede the prohibitions against acting on that desire? Perhaps the tenth commandment is meant to extend the strictures of the seventh and eighth commandments (and perhaps the sixth and ninth commandments, as well) to the rea', the non-Israelite neighbor. When it comes to this disadvantaged periphery of Israelite society, extra vigilance is required because the crime is so easy to commit; hence the liability for mere intention. 18 See Milgrom 2000:1499–1501.
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How then does the rea' of Leviticus 19:18 (and 19:13 and 19:16) differ from the ger, who it seems is first introduced in verses 32–34, where the Israelites are explicitly bidden to treat him as one of their own? Alongside the ger, the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–27) knows of another type of resident alien, the toshav vesakhir,19 literally ‘resident and laborer’. We have already seen that the rea' is mentioned alongside the sakhir, ‘laborer’, in Leviticus 19:13, and both seem to refer to members of an economically dependent underclass that can easily be exploited. Likewise, the toshav, ‘resident’, is mentioned alongside the sakhir in Exodus 12:45, Leviticus 22:10, 25:6, and 25:40, and E.Z. Melammed has suggested that toshav vesakhir is a hendiadys,20 meaning a resident laborer, a migrant worker, as opposed to the ger (sometimes referred to by the hendiadys ger vetoshav),21 the economically independent resident alien. On the one hand, the toshav vesakhir is closer to the Israelite than the ger in that he is a member of his household and an economic dependent, sharing the Israelite’s food; on the other hand, he is socially further removed from the Israelite than the ger in that he is a member of an economic underclass, a dependent of the Israelite, while the ger is a resident alien of sufficient means to assimilate into Israelite society. This leads to a number of anomalies: the toshav vesakhir may not eat of the Paschal sacrifice (Exodus 12:45), but the ger may do so, if he is circumcised (Exodus 12:48). On the other hand, the toshav vesakhir may eat the sabbatical produce (Leviticus 25:6), but this is not stipulated with regard to the ger. Only the ger is repeatedly accorded the same legal status as the Israelite (Exodus 12:49; Leviticus 19:33 cited above; Leviticus 24:22; Numbers 15:16,29); nothing is said of the equality of the toshav vesakhir. On the basis of Leviticus 19:13, I would like to suggest that the rea' of Leviticus 19 is the toshav vesakhir. He is not a slave, and he is not to be taken advantage of economically, even though he presumably will not or cannot sue his malefactor in court. One may not plot against him nor stand idly by while he is plotted against. The rules mandating constructive criticism and prohibiting bearing
19 20 21
See Milgrom 2000:1861–1862. Melammed 1945:175–176. A hendiadys is two words serving as one. Genesis 23:4; Leviticus 25:23,35,45,47; Psalm 39:13.
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a grudge or taking vengeance against a fellow Israelite must be applied equally in one’s relations with a gentile hired man who lives with you: as your neighbor, he is to be loved like an Israelite brother. This requirement eventually comes full circle, when the Israelite is bidden to treat his Israelite slave with the love and dignity that is accorded a sakhir vetoshav (Leviticus 25:39–40). The requirement to love a gentile laborer (rea', toshav vesakhir) would not in and of itself necessarily include the economically independent ger or ger vetoshav, the stranger or resident alien. Without verses 33–34, we might have assumed that a rea' is included in the law of love because he lives in close quarters with the Israelite, shares his food, and is a member of his household. The ger, by contrast, can stand on his own two feet, and if not, perhaps we might have thought that he should ‘go back where he came from’. It is the full religious and legal equality accorded the ger in Leviticus 19:33 and elsewhere which leads to his specific inclusion in the law of love in Leviticus 19:34. He is to be considered like an Israelite in every sense of the word, and therefore loved as an Israelite. In sum, it is our suggestion that the Israelites are bidden to love both the rea' of Leviticus 19:18 and the ger of Leviticus 19:34 as they would a fellow Israelite, and this is the meaning of the adverb kamokha. Love for a fellow Israelite is nowhere commanded explicitly. It is either self-understood, or it is considered the sum of the various laws in Leviticus 19 and elsewhere mandating the ethical treatment of the ah, 'amit, and ben 'am. Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai Sifra Qedoshim chapter 4, section 12, glosses Leviticus 19:18 as follows: .˚wmk ˚[rl tbhaw .hrwtb lwdg llk hz :rmwa abyq[ ybr .hzm lwdg llk hz (a:h twçarb) μda twdlwt rps hz :rmwa yaz[ ˆb
This is usually understood as follows: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself ’—Rabbi Akiva says: this is the greatest [or: a great] principle/rule in the Torah [zeh kelal gadol batorah]. Ben Azzai says: ‘This is the book of the generations of man[; when God created man, he made him in the likeness of God]’ is a greater principle/rule than that [zeh kelal gadol mizzeh].
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Rabbi Akiva’s statement is seen as a variation on an exegetical theme current in the first centuries of the common era, identifying the Torah’s ius summam.22 Ben Azzai is normally seen to have found a more important principle than ‘love your neighbor as yourself ’, namely: ‘he made him in the likeness of God’. There are two common interpretations of Ben Azzai: 1. Those who interpret Leviticus 19:18 as referring to love for a fellow Israelite often explain that according to Ben Azzai, not only is the Israelite neighbor to be loved as yourself, but all mankind, having been created in the image of God, is worthy of love.23 2. Genesis Rabbah explains Ben Azzai’s position as follows: ‘lest you say, since I am demeaned, let my friend be demeaned. Rabbi Tanhuma says: if you do so, know whom you are demeaning: “in the likeness of God he made him”’.24 As Hoffman has pointed out,25 this would imply that Genesis 5:1 and Leviticus 19:18 mandate loving gentiles as well as Jews, the only difference being that Leviticus 19:18 limits this love to ‘as yourself ’, while Genesis 5:1 implies that even if you are demeaned you must not demean your neighbor, since he or she was created in the image of God.26 However, there are a number of difficulties with both of these understandings of Ben Azzai: 1. The fact that man is created in the image of God is not really an independent kelal (rule or principle) greater than Leviticus 19:18, according to either reading of Ben Azzai. Both readings assume that Ben Azzai agrees with Rabbi Akiva that love is the greatest commandment in the Torah; the question is only who is to be loved or to what extent. This would hardly be phrased as zeh kelal gadol mizzeh, ‘this is an greater principle than that ’. The verse cited by Ben Azzai modifies or extends the verse cited by Rabbi Akiva, but it does not stand independently.
22
See citations in Strack-Billerbeck 1922:249–250, 902–905. See Finkelstein 1936:211, 343, n. 51, and references cited there. 24 This is clearly meant as a gloss on Ben Azzai, despite the fact that it follows Rabbi Akiva’s statement in Genesis Rabbah. See Theodor-Albeck 1965:237; Neudecker 1992:513–514 and references in note 61 there. For another interpretation, see Neudecker 1992:514, n. 62 and references there. 25 Hoffman 1906:44, n. 2. 26 But see Neudecker 1992:512, who suggests that neither Rabbi Akiva nor Ben Azzai had gentiles in mind, despite Ben Azzai’s choice of verse. 23
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2. If pressed, we would have to say that Ben Azzai is not disagreeing with Rabbi Akiva at all, but rather with the verse in Leviticus! Ben Azzai is either saying that you should love not only your Israelite ‘neighbor’ but all mankind, or that you should love your neighbor not ‘as yourself ’ but more than yourself (if you do not love yourself ). In either case, he is not disputing Rabbi Akiva’s choice of kelal, but rather the formulation of the law of love in Leviticus 19:18. 3. The dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai is cited in three rabbinic sources: Sifra Qedoshim chapter 4, section 12; Genesis Rabbah 24, section 7; and Yerushalmi Nedarim 9:3, 41c. In all of these sources Ben Azzai’s kelal is quoted as ‘this is the book of the generations of man’ (Genesis 5:1a), not as ‘he made him in the likeness of God’ (Genesis 5:1c). Now this in and of itself is not unusual; often in rabbinic literature the first few words of a verse are quoted even if the important part of the citation is the end of the verse. However, it is strange that this is the case in each and every citation of Ben Azzai in rabbinic literature, especially when the issue at stake is what is the greatest kelal in the Torah; one would have expected the kelal itself to have been quoted. 4. If Ben Azzai indeed meant to say that the principle of imago dei is the greatest kelal in the Torah, why does he not cite the locus classicus for this conception, Genesis 1:27: ‘And God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him . . .’? Why quote the more obscure Genesis 5:1, which mentions imago dei only in passing? The Meaning of Kelal and Kelal Gadol Batorah The difficulties with this passage in the Sifra are not limited to Ben Azzai. Both Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai use the Hebrew word kelal, which in this context is taken to mean ‘rule’ in the sense of commandment, or biblical verse, or principle of life, akin to the question posed to Jesus with regard to the most important commandment in the Torah. However, the word kelal in Rabbinic Hebrew does not mean rule or principle in any sense that could apply to the verse ‘Love your neighbor as yourself ’ or ‘in the likeness of God he made him’. Kelal is used in two senses in rabbinic Hebrew.
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1. In halakhic midrash of the school of Rabbi Ishmael, kelal is a biblical verse or a segment of a biblical verse that is phrased in general terms, as opposed to a perat, which is a specific item or a list of specific items that follows or precedes a kelal. Examples are cited in the famous baraita of the thirteen principles of exegesis, attributed to Rabbi Ishmael: A kelal followed by a perat (Leviticus 1:2): ‘of livestock’—kelal; ‘from the herd or from the flock’—perat. The kelal is to be limited to the items in the perat. A perat followed by a kelal (Exodus 22:9)—‘When a man gives to another an ass, an ox, a sheep’—perat; ‘or any animal to guard’—kelal. The kelal includes items in addition to those of the perat. A kelal followed by a perat followed by a kelal (Deuteronomy 14:26)— ‘And spend the money on anything you want’—kelal; ‘cattle, sheep, wine or other intoxicant’—perat; ‘or anything you may desire’—repeated kelal. The kelal adds only those things similar to the perat. . . .
This meaning could theoretically be applied to Leviticus 19:17–18: the clauses ‘Hate not your brother in your heart’, ‘Make sure to rebuke your kinsman, and you will not be held accountable for his sin’, and ‘Neither avenge nor begrudge your kinfolk’ can be seen as a perat, specific instances of the general law of love which follows: ‘love your neighbor as yourself ’, which would indeed be a kelal. However, a number of problems arise when we attempt to apply this meaning of kelal to our passage: 1) it makes little sense to call this kelal a ‘great’ one, or ‘the greatest’ in the Torah. Other kelalim are equally, if not more, inclusive.27 2) While Rabbi Akiva’s kelal could perhaps be understood in this sense, because the general law of love follows immediately after more specific laws regarding rebuke, vengeance, and bearing a grudge, Ben Azzai’s verse is not a kelal in this specialized sense: it is not juxtaposed to a perat. 3) Rabbi Akiva is the founder of the school of exegesis that rivals that of Rabbi Ishmael; as is stated explicitly in Tosefta Shevuot 1:7, Rabbi Akiva and his school do not use the terminology of kelal and perat, although they do have similar concepts, termed ribbui and mi'ut.28 If this were in fact a kelal/perat-type exegesis attributed to Rabbi Akiva, it would 27 Contrast Mekhilta Vayassa' parashah 1 (ed. Horowitz, p. 157): ‘“You shall hearken” (Exodus 15:26)—this is a kelal in which the entire Torah is included.’ This statement is very similar to Rabbi Akiva’s, yet here kelal is clearly used in the School of Rabbi Ishmael sense, and the generality is indeed inclusive of all commandments. 28 See Chernick 1984.
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be sui generis. 4) Nearly29 the entire Sifra, including Qedoshim chapter 4, section 12, is a midrash of the school of Rabbi Akiva, in which this usage of the term kelal is unattested. 2. The word kelal is used in another sense in tannaitic literature, and this usage is attributed to Rabbi Akiva more than any other sage. A kelal is a general rabbinic (as opposed to biblical) statement in the indicative mode, which either begins with the word kol, ‘anything’, or can be rephrased as a statement beginning with the word kol. The following example, taken like our passage from the Sifra midrash to Leviticus, illustrates both Rabbi Akiva’s ribbui and mi'ut exegesis (as opposed to kelal and perat) and Rabbi Akiva’s usage of the word kelal (Sifra Tsav parashah 1, sections 7–9): . . . How do we know that even if a burnt offering remained overnight off of the altar, or became impure, or left the Temple precinct, or was slaughtered with the intention of performing aspects of the ritual at the wrong time or place, or whose blood was collected or sprinkled by unfit priests, or whose blood that should have been place above was place below or whose blood that should have been placed below was place above, or whose blood that should have been placed indoors was placed outdoors or whose blood that should have been placed outdoors was placed indoors . . . [how do we know that even these improperly performed offerings, once offered up, may not be taken down?] For Scripture teaches: ‘This is the law (torah) of the burnt offering’ (Leviticus 6:2)—there is one law applicable to all burnt offerings that are offered up: once offered up [even if there is some problem with the ritual] they may not be taken down. One might argue then also that if the animal played an active or passive role in intercourse with a human being, or was set aside for use or used in idolatrous worship, or was given as the wages of prostitution or the price of a dog, or was an illicit mixed breed, or a torn animal, or one born by Caesarian section, it too should not be taken down if offered up? Scripture teaches ‘This is the burnt offering’— these are the excluded items [mi'utim]. And why did you see fit to include [lerabbot] the first list and exclude [lehotsi ] the second list? After using inclusive language he used exclusive language: I include those whose disqualification was while sanctified, and I exclude those whose disqualification was not while sanctified [but beforehand]. All of which leads one to the kelal that was stated by Rabbi Akiva: Anything [kol ] whose disqualification takes place once it is sanctified is accepted by the sacred, but if its disqualification takes place when
29
See Stemberger 1996:261–262.
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moshe benovitz it is not [yet] sanctified, it is not accepted by the sacred, except for maimed fowl of an acceptable species.
Rabbi Akiva’s school thus refers to the inclusive statement ‘this is the law of the burnt offering’, juxtaposed to the exclusive statement ‘This is the burnt offering’, as a ribbui rather than a kelal, and presumably if Rabbi Akiva were to consider ‘Love your neighbor as yourself ’ that type of statement, he would have called it a ribbui rather than a kelal. Moreover, he would have delineated exactly what the general language comes to include. However, Rabbi Akiva did not do so, but rather he referred to ‘Love your neighbor as yourself ’ as a kelal. This passage illustrates the usual way in which Rabbi Akiva uses the word kelal: it is a statement formulated by Rabbi Akiva himself: ‘Anything [kol] whose disqualification takes place once it is sanctified is accepted by the sacred’, a general statement including the following items: a burnt offering that remained overnight off of the altar, or became impure, or left the Temple precinct, or was slaughtered with the intention of performing aspects of the ritual at the wrong time or place, or whose blood was collected or sprinkled by unfit priests, or whose blood that should have been place above was place below or whose blood that should have been placed below was place above, or whose blood that should have been placed indoors was placed outdoors or whose blood that should have been placed outdoors was placed indoors. Mishnah Shabbat 19:1 cites another kelal of Rabbi Akiva: Rabbi Akiva stated the following kelal: Any [kol ] labor [necessary for circumcision] that can be done on the eve of the Sabbath does not set aside the Sabbath, and any labor that cannot be done on the eve of the Sabbath sets aside the Sabbath.
This usage of the word kelal often associated with Rabbi Akiva. Moreover, it is often found in the phrase kelal gadol be-, the very phrase used by Rabbi Akiva in his gloss on Leviticus 19:18. Compare the following: An important generalization was stated with regard to Sabbatical produce [kelal gadol amru bishvi'it]: Anything [kol ] that is used as food for humans or animals, or as a dye, and does not regenerate, is considered Sabbatical produce in the land [of Israel] . . . (Mishnah Shevi'it 7:1) An important generalization was stated with regard to the Sabbath [kelal gadol amru beshabbat]: Anyone [kol ] who forgets the concept of Sabbath and performs many types of labor on many Sabbaths is only liable for one sin offering . . . (Mishnah Shabbat 7:1)
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This is an important generalization with regard to adjudication [zeh kelal gadol bedin]: The one who would exact payment [hamotsi ] from his fellow bears the burden of proof (Bavli Bava Qama 46a)
Note that in the last example the kelal does not begin with the word kol; the text reads hamotsi mehavero rather than kol hamotsi mehavero. However, it is a generalization regarding anyone who sues his fellow, and in Yerushalmi Bava Metsia' 7:1, 11b, the same phrase is attested with kol. Note also that in these passages kelal gadol be- does not mean ‘a great generalization in [a corpus]’ or ‘the greatest generalization in [a corpus]’. The sense is ‘a great (or ‘important’ or ‘broad’) generalization with regard to [an area of Jewish law]’. A New Interpretation of Zeh Kelal Gadol Batorah Although kelal in this second sense is often used by Rabbi Akiva, and it is often used in the phrase kelal gadol be-, it would seem at first glance that three factors make the application of this meaning of kelal to our text implausible or impossible: 1. A kelal, or a kelal gadol, in the sense of generalization with regard to a field of halakhah, is always a statement formulated by the Rabbis themselves summing up various halakhot. A biblical verse can never be a kelal in this sense. 2. A kelal in this sense must be a sentence in the indicative mood, that is or can be formulated beginning with the word kol. Ve"ahavta lere'akha kamokha, ‘love your neighbor as yourself ’, is a sentence in the imperative mood, and as such it cannot be reformulated as a general statement beginning with kol. It is not a generalization at all, but a command. 3. Rabbi Akiva’s kelal gadol here is batorah, which in the expression as used elsewhere must mean ‘with regard to the Torah’. But why is love of one’s neighbor a generality regarding the Torah? If anything, it is a commandment regarding people or human relations. However, all of these considerations are neutralized if we assume that the lemma of the statement in the Sifra, ve"ahavta lere'akha kamokha, is more extensive than necessary. If we were to read Rabbi Akiva’s statement as a gloss on the words re'akha kamokha alone, the usual meaning of kelal and kelal gadol be-, as used especially by Rabbi Akiva, can be retained:
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moshe benovitz .hrwtb lwdg llk hz :rmwa abyq[ ybr—˚wmk ˚[r[l tbhaw] .hzm lwdg llk hz ,μda twdlwt rps hz :rmwa yaz[ ˆb ‘. . . your neighbor [is] like yourself ’ (Leviticus 19:18)—Rabbi Akiva says: This is a broad generalization with regard to the Torah. Ben Azzai says: ‘This is the book of the generations of man’ (Genesis 5:1) is an even broader generalization than that.
This reading does not require textual emendation; the lemma quoted in the Sifra is the full biblical phrase, as is usual, but Rabbi Akiva’s kelal refers only to the last two elements of that phrase. That is why it is termed a kelal (in the second sense) even though it is a biblical verse; this kelal is a segment of a biblical verse that is taken out of context, and rerendered ‘your neighbor is like yourself ’, rather than ‘[love] your neighbor like yourself ’. It therefore qualifies as a rabbinictype halakhic generalization. In its new form, without ve"ahavta le-, it is a statement in the indicative mood that can easily be rephrased as kol re'akha kamokha, ‘any neighbor of yours is like you’. Moreover, it is not the greatest or most important generalization in the Torah, but a broad or important generalization with regard to the Torah, akin to the broad or important generalizations regarding sabbatical produce, the Sabbath, and adjudication cited above. It means that with regard to the entire Torah, your neighbor—any and all of your neighbors—is like you. Any law, including those explicitly limited to fellow Israelites, is to be applied equally to the rea', in accordance with this principle. Who is the rea' in Rabbi Akiva’s dictum? Hardly the migrant worker as opposed to the economically independent ger; neither of these concepts had halakhic significance in Rabbinic times. The rabbis interpreted most verses referring to the ger, including Leviticus 19:34, ve"ahavta lo kamokha, as referring to the proselyte who has undergone full conversion to Judaism. No rabbinic exegesis was thought necessary to accord him the status of a Jew, since verses such as Leviticus 19:33 and others equating the stranger with the citizen were already thought to do this. However, as is well known, many texts roughly contemporary with Rabbi Akiva attest to the existence of an entire class of para-Jews who were not gerim in this sense, called ‘fearers of heaven’ in Rabbinic literature,30 or ‘God fearers’ in Acts.31 From Acts it is clear that the God fearers attended synagogue services. Josephus describes the phenomenon in greater detail: 30 31
Mekhilta Neziqin parashah 18. Acts 13:16,26; 17:4,17.
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The masses have long since shown a keen desire to adopt our religious observances; and there is not one city, Greek or barbarian, nor a single nation, to which our custom of abstaining from work on the seventh day has not spread, and where our fasts and the lighting of lamps and many of our prohibitions in the matter of food are not observed. (Against Apion II, 282, tr. Thackeray 1926:404–407) Moreover, the [ Jews of Antioch] were constantly attracting to their religious ceremonies multitudes of Greeks, and these they had in some measure incorporated into themselves [moiran hauton pepoiento]. (War VII, 45, tr. Thackeray 1979:518–519)
What is the status of these gentiles who participate in Jewish ritual without formally converting to Judaism? What does Josephus mean when he says the Jews ‘had in some measure incorporated’ these gentiles ‘into themselves’? Surely in the first centuries of the common era, the Rabbis would feel the need to justify and quantify the extent to which these gentile ‘neighbors’ are considered part of the Jewish community. The language moiran hauton pepoiento, literally ‘had made a share in themselves’, is reminiscent of the biblical word kamokha. It would seem that Rabbi Akiva’s exegesis was meant to provide the scriptural basis for incorporating gentile ‘God fearers’ into the Jewish community. If so, it is indeed a broad generalization regarding the entire Torah, for it extends the status of fellow Israelite not only to the ger (who in Rabbi Akiva’s time was the formal proselyte), as is stated many times explicitly, but also to informal ‘neighbors’ of the Jewish community, who join in Jewish ritual on an ad hoc basis. This kelal effectively extends the protections of Torah legislation, as well as the right to worship together with the Jewish community, to non-Jewish God fearers who align themselves with the Jewish community. The halakhic significance of this is not limited to the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself (and the adjacent prohibition against exacting vengeance or bearing a grudge against him), nor is it limited to legislation concerning ethical behavior, such as the law protecting fellow Israelites from usury, seizure of clothing as collateral, or the like. The very right to worship with Jews in the manner described by Josephus and Acts is not self-understood in later halakhah, as is evident from the following statements attributed to third century Palestinian sages in BT Sanhedrin 58b–59a: ‘Said Resh Laqish: a gentile who observes the Sabbath is liable for the death penalty . . . Said Rabbi Yohanan: a gentile who studies the Torah is liable for the death penalty . . .’. A blanket ruling ‘your neighbor is like yourself ’, if the intention is to include the Godfearing
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neighbor in synagogue worship, ritual, Torah study and communal norms of ethical behavior, would indeed be a broad generalization with regard to the entire Torah. It in this context that Ben Azzai’s rejoinder is to be understood. According to Ben Azzai, an even broader generalization with regard to the Torah is to be found in the words zeh sefer toledot adam (Genesis 5:1). These words literally mean ‘this is the book of the progeny of Adam’, and clearly refer according to the plain meaning of Scripture to Genesis chapter 5, a genealogy of the descendents of Adam until Noah. However, in Ben Azzai’s exegesis, zeh sefer is to be taken as a reference to the entire Torah: ‘This is a book for [all] the progeny of Adam’. The Torah, according to Ben Azzai belongs not only to Jews, and not only to Jews and their Godfearing gentile ‘neighbors’ who join them in synagogue worship and Jewish ritual. All mankind is ultimately to be included in the rubric of the Torah. This statement, too, can be rephrased in the indicative mood using the word kol: zeh sefer kol toledot adam. Is there any practical difference between Rabbi Akiva’s generalization and the more inclusive generalization of Ben Azzai? Not with regard to synagogue worship and ritual, for indeed, any gentile who seeks to worship in the synagogue would become a rea' by Rabbi Akiva’s definition. Perhaps one could argue that Ben Azzai would extend halakhic norms technically governing relations with fellow Jews to all gentiles, whether thy join in fellowship with Jews or not, though this would seem to contradict biblical injunctions such as the law of slavery in Leviticus 25:44 and the law of remission of debt in Deuteronomy 15:3. The main difference between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai, however, would seem to be one of attitude: both include gentiles in the laws of the Torah, but for Rabbi Akiva their inclusion is based upon their becoming ‘like’ Israelites themselves, while according to Ben Azzai the Torah was written, ab initio, for all mankind.32
32 The notion that the Torah was meant for all mankind is attributed by Hirshman 1999 (see also Hirshman 2000) specifically to Rabbi Ishmael’s school of exegesis, to which neither Rabbi Akiva nor Ben Azzai belonged; according to Hirshman, the school of Rabbi Akiva advocated a more exclusivist approach. While Hirshman provides ample evidence that the school of Rabbi Ishmael indeed advocated a Torah for all the people of the world, his evidence that the school of Rabbi Akiva was exclusivist is far more ambiguous; it depends primarily upon the concept of the seven Noahide laws, which in his view were developed by the school of Rabbi
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LITERATURE Chernick 1984: ,μydwmltbw μyçrdmb fw[ymw ywbyrw llkw frpw llk twdymh rqjl ,qybr'x 'm .d’mçt byba lt Ehrlich 1909: Ehrlich, Randglossen zur hebraeischen Bibel, volume 2, Leipzig 1909. Finkelstein, L., Akiba: Scholar, Saint and Martyr, New York 1936. Hammer, R. (translation), Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, New Haven and London 1986.
Akiva as a kind of second-class Torah for gentiles. Our interpretation of Rabbi Akiva’s kelal gadol batorah would seem to indicate that Rabbi Akiva himself had no objection to gentile participation in Jewish religious rites as God fearers, a notion that goes way beyond the seven Noahide laws. The seven Noahide laws are binding on gentiles, but that does not exclude those who wish to take upon themselves more from becoming God fearers and being welcomed kamokha. The only clear-cut evidence that Hirshman cites to the effect that Rabbi Akiva denied gentiles a share in the Torah is Sifre Deuteronomy 345, a midrash of the school of Rabbi Akiva to Deuteronomy 33:4 (tr. Hammer 1986:357–358): ‘[An inheritance of the congregation of Jacob]: Read not an inheritance (morasha) but ‘a betrothed’ (me"orasah), showing that the Torah is betrothed to Israel and has therefore the status of a married woman in relation to the nations of the world, as it is said, Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk upon hot coals, and his feet not be scorched? So he that goeth in to his neighbor’s wife; whosoever toucheth her shall not go unpunished (Prov. 6:27–29)’. However, even this midrash does not necessarily exclude the rea', the individual ‘neighbor’ who aligns himself with the Jewish community. The reference may be to the gentile nations as a whole, in their idolatrous state, who seek to embrace the Torah without giving up their idolatrous beliefs, or it may be a polemic against Christianity. This midrash in Sifre Deuteronomy, asserting as it does that the Torah is betrothed to Israel and as such forbidden to ‘the nations of the world’, does seem to exclude Ben Azzai’s position in our interpretation, which is that the Torah was meant for all mankind. This difference of nuance in the universalistic notions of the school of Rabbi Akiva is, however, explicit in our reading of the Sifra passage itself, in which Ben Azzai rejects Rabbi Akiva’s acceptance of the gentile rea' in favor of an ab initio conception of Torah that includes gentiles. Note also the continuation of the Sifre Deuteronomy, which explicitly rules out the reading denying gentiles a share in the Torah: ‘Another interpretation: Read not ‘a betrothed’ (me"orasah) but an inheritance (morashah). This shows that the Torah is the inheritance of Israel . . . a disciple of the wise who has turned away from the words of Torah in order to attend to other matters, will not be embarrassed to return to them, should he so desire, even after a hundred years, because he can say, “I am returning to my inheritance”’. It would seem that these are not merely two complementary exegeses of the word morashah as it appears in Deuteronomy 33:4; they are mutually exclusive: either the ‘nations’ are denied a share in the Torah, or all are welcome, but Jews are destined to return to the Torah without shame even after drifting away. Both of these views are presented in the Akiban Midrash Sifre Deuteronomy. They may correspond to the two broad generalizations with regard to the Torah, that of Rabbi Akiva and that of Ben Azzai; in any case, both are far removed from the later rabbinic notions cited above, threatening a gentile who observes the Sabbath or studies Torah with the death penalty. These notions, considered by Hirshman a development of the exclusivist position of the school of Rabbi Akiva, would seem to be a later amoraic innovation, unknown to either tannaitic school.
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Hartley, J.E., Leviticus (Word Bible Commentary), Waco Texas 1992. Hirshman 1999: wsjyw μyabth twrpsb ylsrbynwa μrz :μlw[ yab lkl hrwt ,ˆmçryh 'm .1999 byba lt ,μym[h tmkjl ——— 2000: ‘Rabbinic Universalism in the Second and Third Centuries’, Harvard Theological Review 93 (2000), pp. 101–115. Hoffman, D.Z., Das Buch Leviticus, vol. 2, Berlin 1906. Jackson, B.S., ‘Liability for Mere Intention in Early Jewish Law’, Hebrew Union College Annual 42 (1971), pp. 197–225. Kugel, J.L., The Bible as it Was, Cambridge Mass. 1997. Levine, B.A., Leviticus ( Jewish Publication Society Commentary), Philadelphia 1989. Malamat, A., ‘“You Shall Love Your Neighbor as Yourself ”: A Case of Misinterpretation?’, in Die hebraeische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte (Festschrift R. Rendtorff ), ed. E. Blum et al., Neukirchen 1990, pp. 111–116. Melammed 1945: 173–189 m'[ ,(h’çt) zf ≈ybrt ,’arqmb dja μhç μybç‘ ,dmlm x’[ .[142–159 m[ ,d’mçt ,μylçwry ,wyçrpmbw wymwgrtb ,arqmb μyrqjm ,dmlm x’[ =] Milgrom, J., Leviticus 17–22 (Anchor Bible), New York 2000. Muraoka, T., ‘A Syntactic Problem in Lev. XIX 18b’, Journal of Semitic Studies 23 (1978), pp. 291–297. Neudecker, R., ‘“And You Shall Love Your Neighbor as Yourself—I am the Lord” (Lev 19,18) in Jewish Interpretation’, Biblica 73 (1992), pp. 496–517. Stemberger, G., Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, second edition, Edinburgh 1996. Strack, H.L. & P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, volume 1, Das Evangelium nach Matthaeus, Munich 1922. Thackeray, H.St.J. (translation), Josephus (Loeb Classical Library), volume I, The Life, Against Apion, New York 1926. ———, Josephus (Loeb Classical Library), volume III, The Jewish War, Cambridge Mass. 1979. Theodor-Albeck 1965: çwrypw . . . μwayzrm çyfyrbb dy btk yp l[ hbr tyçarb çrdm .h’kçt μylçwry ,qbla ˚wnjw rwdwayt hdwhy tam hdwhy tjbm Ullendorf, E., ‘Thought Categories in the Hebrew Bible’, in Studies in Rationalism, Judaism and Universalism in Memory of L. Roth, ed. R. Lowe, New York 1966, pp. 273–288.
MEDIEVAL PERIOD
RECORDING THE SAINTHOOD OF THE MISSIONARIES IN THE CAROLINGIAN ERA: TYPOLOGY AND ITS LIMITS Bat-Sheva Albert Bar-Ilan University, Israel In view of the importance of the evangelization in Frisia and Saxony, and with less success in Scandinavia from the early eighth until the second part of the ninth century, does the missionaries’ sainthood represent a distinct type of sainthood? Actually these Anglo-Saxon missionaries, Willibrord, Boniface and their Frisian and Frankish followers and successors Liudger, Gregory of Utrecht and Anskar of Hamburg-Bremen, imitated the Roman and Irish missionaries who had dedicated themselves to spread the ‘Good Word’ among the German pagans. In what sense then did the sainthood of those Carolingian missionaries–meaning thereby that they were helped or even sent on their mission by the Pippinid and Carolingian rulers—differ from that of their predecessors? Moreover, do their Vitae present some characteristics of sainthood shared by these men? All of them fought a daily battle with the often violent opposition of the pagans, with the recurrent failure of their endeavours, the remoteness of their new abodes and their loneliness after leaving their homeland and families, both natural and monastic. The biographies of Willibrord (658–739), Boniface (c. 675–754) and Anskar (801–865) are famous. Despite the often topological character of these Lives,1 their strong personalities are clearly profiled. I will try to define the topos of the saintly missionary as it was described in their Lives. Whether these topological portraits do actually respond to a more realistic assessment of their personalities and
1
For the importance of hagiographical models, see: M. Goodich 1982:7–8: ‘(. . .) the continued use of stereotypes does not necessarily reduce the reliability of contemporary hagiography’; also ibid., 5, n. 11 and 7, n. 19. Recently, for the hagiography and its historical context, see: Everett 2000:55, n. 6. However, the question whether the Vitae relate ‘true’ historical facts is not immediately relevant to their description of the sainthood of their protagonists.
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actions as they emerge from other sources, including their own writings or even letters, as is the case for Boniface, does not concern us here. However it remains necessary to refer to their own hagiographical works, like Anskar’s Life of Willehad of Bremen (Anskar: 379–390) which may reveal the author’s concept of sainthood. As said, our missionaries shared many traits. All of them were active in the territories extending from the Rhine to the Elbe, namely Frisia, Thuringia and Saxony, along with some minor efforts of evangelization in Scandinavia: the northern mission was almost a natural outcome of the Christianization of Saxony and a continuation of the initiative of Willibrord unsuccessful mission to Denmark (around 700: Alcuin: 47). In the wake of Willibrord, the Frisian Liudger (c. 744–809) wanted to evangelize the Normani, but Charlemagne, who was waging war in Saxony and thereby angering the Danes, did not allow it (Altfrid: II, 7, 414; Musset 1967:268). Furthermore, three of the saints, Willibrord, Boniface and Willehad were Anglo-Saxons, sharing a common background and schooling based on an identical monastic and missionary ideology. Finally, not only were they acquainted with each other, as was the case with Willibrord and Boniface, Boniface and Gregory of Utrecht, and Gregory and Liudger, and last but not least Anskar and Rimbert, they also continued the work of their predecessor. So Boniface intended to follow in Willibrord’s footsteps in Frisia, and later on, Liudger did so successfully and was appointed bishop of Münster. Anskar, a Frank born in 801, could not have known the Northumbrian Willehad who had died in 789, but he succeeded him to the bishopric of Bremen and wrote his Vita. Rimbert, Anskar’s successor to the see of Hamburg-Bremen was his pupil and biographer. Finally, all of them were professed monks (Liudger, who apparently did not make his profession, lived as a monk). The common background, missionary ideals, goals and methods facilitate the drawing of a profile of this missionary sainthood. Yet precisely because these saints appear so similar in many ways, the discrepancies between their Lives and their personalities as they were perceived by the authors who recorded them, may permit an insight which transcends the topos. We will note that the ideal of missionary sainthood did not significantly change in the century that elapsed between Willibrord and Anskar, primarily because the foundations of these ideals and the sources that inspired them were very ancient indeed.
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The Irish ideology of peregrinatio which had been formulated by Patrick himself,2 was to have a profound impact on the those missionaries and rested on Biblical precedents and injunctions: God’s order to Abraham to leave his fatherland and family (Gen. 12:1)3 and Christ’s mission to the Apostles (Mt. 28:19). Once the ideal of teaching the Barbarians who dwelt beyond the borders of the vanished Roman Latin-speaking Empire had been adopted by Gregory the Great, the mission to the North came to be seen not only by the Irish, but by the entire Western Church, as the realization of the legacy of both Abraham and Christ. So long as there were pagans in the North, the missionary ideal remained largely unaltered and so did the hagiographical topos of the saintly missionary; this, notwithstanding the fact that the circumstances under which the missionaries laboured after Charlemagne’s death in 814 and even more so after the partition of Louis the Pious’ empire in 843 had undergone many a great change. The historian’s task of shifting the evidence from the hagiographical topoi is not an easy one. The adjective truthful is quite meaningless when referring to this evidence for it bore a totally different meaning for our hagiographers. Conformity to the topos represented the higher, spiritual or allegorical truth; as to the actual facts of the missionaries’ Lives, these represented only the lower, carnal truth. In this sense, the principles which governed the writing of hagiography resembled those of allegorical Biblical exegesis to which Old Testament heroes were only a figure of the New Testament’s higher spiritual truths. In this sense what ‘really’ had happened to the saint was relatively irrelevant to the message these Vitae proposed to convey to their mainly monastic readers.4 Each and every saint undoubtedly 2 For Patrick’s Confessio, see text in: R. Fletcher 1997, rep. 1999:85. Fletcher contends that as far as our evidence goes, Patrick was the first person in Christian history to take the scriptural injunctions literally, to grasp that the preaching to all nations meant teaching even Barbarians who lived beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire: ibid., 86. 3 See e.g. the Biblical inspiration for Alcuin’s description of Willibrord as ‘senex et plenus’ like Abraham (Gen. 27:29): I Deug-Su 1983:53–55. 4 Talbot makes this important point: ‘hagiographers were concerned not so much with the sifting of evidence as with the tastes of their readers and the production of ‘elegant’ literary compositions. For the most part, such writings are meant to edify rather than instruct (. . .) the sympathetic eye will discern the honest attempts of the authors (. . .) to record historical facts and to base their accounts on the testimony of eye-witnesses’: Talbot 1954:XV.
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represented the ideal Christian, and his life was to show the way to salvation. Since fundamental Christian truths could never change, the means to achieve them were adapted to the historical circumstances: as Boniface’s tragic killing by Frisian pagan bandits was understood by his contemporaries, martyrdom could now again be attained by the hands of the cruel Frisians (or Germans or Danes) after a lapse of almost five hundred years since Constantine’s recognition of Christianity had ended Roman persecution. Yet the poetic element, the creation of reality, was never absent (Fischer 1954:36). It could not be: we would be gravely mistaken in considering medieval readers as totally gullible; the belief in miracles inherent to the medieval mind does not necessarily signify that people blindly believed everything they were told. The testimony of eye-witnesses weighed heavily in confirming miracles and is often reported by the authors of the Vitae and their appendixes, the saints’ Miracula. The majority of the Carolingian missionaries Lives were written at a date close to their death; that their accomplishments and persons were still remembered and prompted the authors to write a more ‘realistic’ account of their heroes’ deeds and personalities. Some of the writers, like Willibald, Liudger and Rimbert, had known the saints whose lives they wrote. Others used reliable sources, like Alcuin who relied on Bede’s Ecclesiastical History for his Life of Willibrord. This reliance notwithstanding, Alcuin, who was Willibrord’s kinsman (Alcuin: 40–41), may well have had access to other, perhaps oral, sources. Others again may have used local traditions, as Anskar probably did for his Life of Willehad of Bremen. Along the inevitable topoi, these Vitae thus describe individuals, although the virtues and activities which define their sainthood were often shared by several of them. Rimbert’s biography of Anskar may be the outstanding representative of the best Carolingian hagiography could offer (at least to the modern reader) but Anskar’s personality was extraordinary, and even more so was Rimbert’s literary talent in portraying him; thus this work, being less topological than the others we will examine here, may be the exception to the rule that dictated an almost total fidelity to ancient models of hagiographical writing. Despite Rimbert’s ‘originality’, he still obeyed the fundamental schema of the genre and retained the traditional criteria for missionary sainthood. Interestingly, Anskar was the only missionary who disclosed his qualifications for saintliness: the saints are to be praised for their virtues and the accounts of their lives should be preached to the
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faithful (Anskar: 379). Anskar does not specify what these ‘good merits’ are, as he apparently supposed that his monastic audience knew them. He further refers to the major role played by Divine Grace in the making of the saint (Ibid.). Whether this is an allusion to the debate on Predestination initiated by Gottschalk of Orbais (Ganz 1981:353–373) does not need to detain us. Interesting for the concept of saintliness is Anskar’s—the ‘visionary’ missionary’s statement that sainthood can be achieved by merits and good deeds. Our other hagiographers simply relate the saints’ life from the cradle to the tomb, each stage of their life irrefutably proving their sainthood. Irish influence on the formation of a specific ‘missionary sainthood’ of the Anglo-Saxon and Frankish missionaries was paramount. The Irish Heritage This crucial imprint of Irish missionary ideals and example on the missionaries of the Carolingian period is well attested by the sources and the impact of Irish missionary ideology was stamped on those who studied in Ireland. We are told that Willibrord stayed in Ireland for a long period to study monastic life and preaching, Alcuin5 making it clear that he went to Ireland to acquire the necessary skills.6 Modern research agrees that Willibrord stayed at the Irish monastery of Rath Melsighi.7 One will note that the manuscript of Willibrord’s famous Echternach calendar was built in several layers and its oldest 5 For Alcuin’s view of peregrinatio as an ideal in his sermon in honour of the feast of Willibrord: Alcuin: 32, 64: ‘Videte fratres karissimi, quanta gloria est Deum sequi: Iste pro amore Christi patriam contempsit, peregrinationem elegit (. . .)’ 6 Alcuin: 4, 43: Willibrord wanted to emulate Ecgbert and Wicbert, Anglo-Saxon missionaries to Frisia: according to Bede, Ecgbert had been prevented to achieve his goal because of shipwreck and Wictbert remained in Frisia for two years: ‘Horum beatus adolescens emulari cupiens religionem cum coniventia sui abbatis et fratrum in Hiberniam veloci cursu contendit praedicatorum patrum se familiaritate coniugens (. . .)’. On the Irish ideology of peregrinatio and missionary activity, see: Ryan 1936, rep. 1992:262, and notes there; Angenendt 1972:84 around 730, Pirmin, although not an Irishman, is described in the diplomas of Reichenau as a ‘pilgrim’. Also Angenendt 1982b:54–55; Albert 1999:56. 7 Ferrari 1994:10, cites Daíhbi Ó Cróinín,’ Willibrord and the earliest Echternach manuscripts’, Peritia 3, 1984, 17–42, who contended that the Echternach manuscripts came from the Irish monastery of Rath Melsigi (location unknown), and that some scribes from Echternach had learned their trade in Ireland. On the topic of Willibrord’s spiritual portrait and on the relative influence of Ripon and Ireland on Willibrord’s formation as a missionary, see: Honée 2000:17–20 and bibliography there.
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fragment consists of leaves which were probably written at Rath Melsighi. Moreover, the typically Irish designation monachi peregrini is used in the charters of Willibrord’s monastic foundations of Echternach and Suesteren. Honée sees the foundation of Echternach as Willibrord’s endeavour to establish a new Rath Melsighi, a place where ascetics could retire as ‘exiles’, to pray and study. Willibrord’s authority as abbot of a monastery along the Irish model was at least as powerful as his authority as bishop or archbishop (Honée 2000:27–30). Michael Richter rightly observed that the young church on the Continent, reformed by Anglo-Saxon missionaries in the first half of the eighth century, owed its close relations with Rome originally less to English and more to Irish inspiration. Willibrord who had received spiritual guidance and the impulse to evangelize Frisia at Rath Melsighi (Richter 1989:25–30) was an important link in this chain. In Boniface’s Life, the Irish inspiration is more subdued. Willibald wrote this Life shortly after Boniface’s death (754) at the request of Lull archbishop of Mainz who was Boniface’s successor and staunchest disciple and of Megingozus, bishop of Würzburg (Willibald: 33). He describes Boniface’s qualms about leaving his homeland and family, preferring ‘the places of peregrinatio’ to the lands of paternal heritance (Willibald: 338). Reporting Boniface’s designation of the faithful Lull as his successor, Willibald explains that Lull was so rewarded because he had been Boniface’s companion in peregrinatio (Willibald: 338). With Anskar, we are chronologically farther removed from Irish direct influence. At Corbie, Anskar had not studied under Irish or Anglo-Saxon masters, neither had Rimbert. Yet the Irish inspiration is manifest. When Rimbert states that Anskar aspired to be a missionary because of his ‘love of peregrinatio for the salvation of souls’ (Rimbert: 6, 693) he echoes Irish ideals which had been adopted by the missionary monastery of Corbie and which Anskar and Rimbert himself had absorbed there. Haas has noted the influence of the Vita Colombani on Rimbert’s work.8 However when Rimbert addresses 8 Haas 1985:8; 10–11. Theudefrid, the first abbot of Corbie (founded between 657 and 661), was brought from Luxeuil (founded by Columbanus in 590) with a great flock of monks at queen Bathildis’ request. The influence of Luxeuil on Corbie may be traced in the dedication, the liturgy, the rule and the library of Corbie; Ganz 1990:15. The earliest datable Corbie manuscripts were copied in a distinct form of insular minuscule which is only found in volumes connected with Corbie; the abbey held insular manuscripts from Northumbria, South West England and Ireland. Insular copies of Bede’s works were available by 800. Close to the coast
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Anskar’s questionable ‘martyrdom’ (he had died a natural death from sickness and old age), the Irish inspiration is clear since the Irish recognized several kinds of martyrdom, of which only ‘red martyrdom’ entailed a violent death.9 Fortunately, Anskar himself defines Willehad of Bremen’s missionary vocation as a peregrinatio (Anskar: 2, 380). This single reference to the Irish term clearly indicates that by 860, when Anskar wrote the Life of Willehad and the Irish and Anglo-Saxon missionaries had by now largely been replaced by Franks, the mission to the North had in the mind of the Frankish missionary become thoroughly identified with the originally Irish peregrinatio, a life of exile and wanderings like Abraham’s and of material and affective deprivation. The Stages of Saintly Life: the Topos and the Individual Biographies follow their protagonist from birth to death, and hagiographies cannot be an exception to this natural rule.10 Clearly the hagiographers’ aim was to present a perfect experience of sainthood that encompasses all the stages of their hero’s life. Sainthood was apparent from childhood and in many cases even predated the saint’s miraculous birth. This theme was clearly inspired by numerous Biblical examples, like the births of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Benjamin and Samuel, and above all that of Jesus himself. Yet the Old Testament allows only glimpses into Samuel’s childhood, but keeps silent about Moses after his rescue by the Pharaoh’s daughter. We guess that after Rachel’s death at his birth, baby Benjamin was raised by Leah or by a wet-nurse; yet the Biblical narrative displays no interest in him before his reunion with Joseph in Egypt. The same is true for Jesus’ childhood after the family’s flight to Egypt. A thorough discussion of our missionaries’ childhood will be held elsewhere. and to roads and rivers, Corbie was an important stopping point for travellers to and from the British Isles: ibid., 40–41. Ganz does not list a manuscript of the Vita Columbani at Corbie but, as so many manuscripts were lost, Rimbert was most certainly influenced by it, whether he had read it at Corbie or elsewhere. 9 Rimbert 42,724; on the problem of Anskar’s ‘martyrdom’, infra; on the different kinds of martyrdom according to the Irish, see: Ryan 1931, rep. 1992:197–198. 10 Let it be said that this paper will not deal with the missionaries’ death; with the notable exception of Boniface’s martyrdom, the description of their death is almost totally topological.
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Nevertheless, an exception should be made for Anskar as the first visions he experienced had a great impact on his career. Still a child, he experienced the first one, who changed him into a saintly novice. Charlemagne’s death in 814, and we guess, the monastic mourning that followed (abbot Adalhard of Corbie was Charlemagne’s cousin) came as a shock to young Anskar. His second dramatic vision was to have a decisive impact on his life. Surprisingly, it has not been dealt with in the major works of Dinzelbacher and Carozzi on medieval visionary literature.11 Anskar felt that his soul is leaving his body and experienced a forceful vision on the night of Pentecost (Rimbert: 3, 691). His soul enters a new body and Peter and John the Baptist, whom he recognizes by their faces and clothes, accompany him into the Other World. Anskar’s soul contemplates a great light and the Apostles lead him on his journey to purgatory, where terrified, he suffers three days which seem to him to last thousand years. Then the Apostles come to fetch him. In the East, he sees the Elders of the Apocalypse (Rev. 4:4) singing and a great light although there is no sun nor moon, no heaven nor earth. He adores this light where God dwells with the saints, and the divine voice tells him to leave in order to become a martyr (Rimbert: 3, 691), and to return afterwards. Anskar is very sad, and on his way back the Apostles keep silent, but look at him ‘with a mother’s affection when looking at her only son’ (Rimbert: 3, 692), a sentence ripe with the adolescent Anskar’s feelings as a motherless child. Dutton is most impressed by the visual force of the dream, which he reads like a walk through Charlemagne’s palace in Aachen. In the Palatine Chapel, along the rim below the curve of the dome, there was a mosaic depicting the twenty-four Elders of the Apocalypse. The iconographic scheme of the cupola’s mosaics is a nineteenth century reworking; but in a seventeenth century drawing, the Elders of the original Carolingian mosaic were depicted in the act of raising from their chairs to offer the Crown to the enthroned Christ (Dutton, 1994:53). Charlemagne occupied a special place of symbolic power in the chapel at Aachen, representing the king’s powerful place on the borderline between the divine order and the human. Rimbert reports
11 Dinzelbacher 1981; Carozzi 1994; Schmitt 1999:284–287. Carozzi and Schmitt do not mention Anskar.
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that Anskar had once seen the emperor, but we do not know whether he had been to Aachen. Still Dutton makes the important point that the monks of the ninth century were so politicized that the king, no matter how distant in fact, seemed close at hand, and a solid reference point to the imagination. The vision itself has been discussed by Lammers (Lammers 1965:541–558) who has compared it to other early medieval visions which took place before Anskar’s vision of paradise, such as those of Salvius, bishop of Albi (Gregory of Tours: I, I, 323–327) and of Drythelm (Bede: IV, 12, 260–264) in which there where motives of the intense light of paradise, ‘flooding all this place’ and of the meadow in which roam ‘innumerable companies of men clad in white robes’ (Bede: III, 19, vol. I, 415–418). The purpose of Drythelm’s dream of a ‘Grand Tour’ of Hell and Heaven is to warn him to do penance; after this dreadful journey, he returns to his monastery of Melrose, where he leads a harsh ascetic life, fasting, often bathing in the cold river Tweed. Carozzi has shown that all those visions, including that of the Irish Fursey and that of Barontius12 are related to penance: the traveler returning from the Other World bears a message for the living, enjoining them to reform. This is not the clear-cut case with Anskar, since it remains doubtful that he read those visions.13 Incidentally, some parallel images with previous visionary literature can be detected. Salvius hears a voice telling him to return to the world ‘For our churches have need of him’ (Gregory of Tours: VII, 1, 325); a few years later he is forced to leave his cell so that he may be elected to the bishopric and then consecrated against his will. As to Barontius, St Peter meets him in front of the fourth door, which opens to the indescribable reality of an unbearable bright light (Carozzi 1994:161). Lammers argues that the importance of the light in Anskar’s vision was influenced by Dionysius Aeropagita’s metaphysics of Light and Darkness, but
12 Carozzi 1994:99–138; for the text: Visio Sancti Fursei, ibid., 678–692 is the best introduction to these moralistic tales; for Barontius, ibid., 161 seq.; also, Chen 1996:477–497. See also: Gatto 1979; Aubrun 1980:109–130, esp. 116. 13 Ganz 1990:38–40 lists a seventh century manuscript of an abridged version (books I–VI) of Gregory of Tours’ Historia Francorum (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 17665): description, 124. As the vision of Salvius is told in Book VII, Anskar could not read it in this manuscript. However, Ganz has not found a manuscript of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica in the library of Corbie, although many other of his works were to be found there: ibid., 137–140. All of this of course does not definitively preclude the presence of these works in the library of Corbie.
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chronology does not support this contention.14 Although many features of Anskar’s vision are found in earlier apparitions (known or unknown to him) his vision is special since it induced him to adopt a course that could lead him to the martyrdom (Rimbert: 3, 692) that he now saw as the aim of his existence. Truly, the penitential aspect of the Otherworldly vision is still conspicuous in Anskar’s Vita, since his Pentecost vision ends with the apparition of Christ who remits all his sins (Rimbert: 4, 692–693). At this stage, Anskar did not yet know that he would be in a position to achieve martyrdom by undertaking a mission to the North. Admittedly, it may have crossed his mind since Boniface had died a martyr. According to Rimbert, Anskar thought that his good works would help him to attain martyrdom (Rimbert: 3, 692). This calls for two observations: first, it highlights another frequent feature of Anskar’s life: as opposed to the other missionaries, he did not take the initiative to become one. Ebbo of Rheims, Wala of Corbie and Louis the Pious decided to send him on a mission to the Danes and he submitted. Second, Rimbert well knew that the visionary Anskar differed greatly from the other missionaries; amazingly, not only did he not try to hide the disconcerting sides of Anskar’s personality from an audience stepped in topological portraits, but to the contrary, by a stroke of talent, he highlighted them throughout the Vita. This is the first instance where Rimbert, aware that his audience, the monks of Corbie and Corvey, knew that Anskar had not died as a ‘red’ martyr, found it imperative to add that Anskar suffered the ‘mortificatio crucis’; Rimbert will repeatedly try to present this ‘mortificatio crucis’ as a martyrdom equivalent to a violent death (Rimbert: 3, 692). Keeping in mind Boniface’s ‘red’ martyrdom, he continues to illustrate this 14
Abbot Hilduin of St Denis had brought a translation of Dionysius Aeropagita to Corvey to which he was banned in 830–832. Pope Paul sent ‘books’ by Dionysius Aeropagita to Pepin between 758 and 763. These were probably intended for the monastery of St Denis, were they may have been translated: Riché 1989:93. According to Riché, Corbie probably had a school of translation, where the Aratus Latinus may have been translated (ibid.); but see Ganz 1990:60, who states that the manuscript of Corbie was recopied from a Late Antique codex from the court of Louis the Pious, and thus was not translated at Corbie. The Greek manuscript that the emperor Michael the Stammerer gave to Louis the Pious in 827, and which Hilduin abbot of St Denis ordered to be translated into Latin, may have been brought to Corvey according to Lammers in 830–832 when Hilduin was in banishment there; but we remember that Anskar’s vision took place at Corbie, close to Charlemagne’s death in 814. Incidentally, by the time Hilduin arrived at Corvey, Anskar had left the monastery for his mission.
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interpretation of martyrdom by reporting the martyrdom of Anskar’s young pupil Fulbert who died after having been hit by a friend. As a reward for the patience with which he bore his injury and for his intercession on behalf of his attacker, Fulbert’s soul was received among those of the martyrs (Rimbert: 5, 693). Rimbert intended to convince his monastic audience that the revered status of ‘white’ martyr can be won by the esteemed Christian qualities of patience and forgiveness: although Fulbert did not shed blood for his Faith, he was rewarded as if he actually had. Looking into Rimbert’s motives for presenting Fulbert, and Anskar as martyrs, we guess that ecclesiastical politics played some part in it. Rimbert probably understood that in the aftermath of Boniface’s death, the highest standards of missionary holiness had been raised to that of the martyrs who were second only to the Apostles in the hierarchy of sainthood.15 When describing the activities of the missionary saints, their biographies discuss their schooling, especially the Biblical studies that prepared them for preaching God’s Word. This was a essential intellectual bagage typical of the revival of Biblical studies during the Carolingian Renaissance. Whereas Willibrord had studied in England and in Ireland, Boniface acquired his learning in England where Bede was raising the exegesis of the Bible to a level unknown since Jerome. The Anglo-Saxon missionaries thus taught Biblical learning as a sine qua non requirement for their pupils and assistants who further instructed their own disciples. While variations occur, the process of evangelization was essentially similar for all missionaries. Leaving aside the political preparations for the success of the mission that enlisted the assistance of the Carolingian rulers and the fear inspired by their victorious armies, the missionaries started by trying to convert the pagan king by preaching. They then proceeded to eradicate idolatry, sometimes by violent and spectacular means. The next stage saw the establishment of the hierarchical and liturgical structures of the new religion. Willibrord’s Frisian mission set the example to be imitated by the other missionaries. Having completed his studies in Ireland and inspired by a dream which recalled his mother’s dream before his birth, Willibrord embarked on his mission at the symbolic age of thirty three. Whether this was his real age is a matter for speculation.
15
For Rimbert’s ecclesiastical motives for extolling Anskar’s martyrdom, see infra.
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Willibrord’s symbolic age may already have appeared in the traditional story of his Life as it was told at Echternach. Neither can we dismiss the possibility that this was Alcuin’s addition, suggesting a comparison of Willibrord with Christ. Evidently this easily recognizable symbolism, be it of Willibrord’s, his monastery at Echternach or Alcuin’s making, would not have been lost on the monastic reader who was well acquainted with Boniface’s martyrdom (d. 754) by the time Alcuin wrote Willibrord’s Vita in 782–789 or in 793 (Wattenbach: 35; Wallace-Hadrill 1983:145). Thus the twin themes of the missionary, who, inspired by a dream adopts the destiny of the Imitation of Christ, are already present in Alcuin’s work and will be carried to literary perfection by Rimbert. Willibrord left for Frisia with his eleven companions, and these ‘Twelve Apostles’ arrived at Utrecht.16 Negotiations may have taken place or some agreements may have been reached between Willibrord and the victorious Austrasian majordomus Pippin II who had recently triumphed over Neustria (687) and had conquered a part of Frisia before the missionary arrived in Francia, not surprisingly in 690. Trusting the support of Pippin II (Levison 1943, rep. 1998:56–57), Willibrord started his missionary work in Nearer Frisia with the evangelization of the Frisian (although in 690 Christianity had already made some progress in Toxandria),17 even managing to preach before large crowds (Alcuin: 6, 44–45). Alcuin’s account follows that of Bede, Willibrord’s contemporary, who supplied only a vague account of the missionary’s work: he preached ‘far and wide’, recalled many from their errors, founded many churches and a number of monasteries and appointed bishops chosen among his companions (Bede: V, 11). Alcuin added many details to Bede’s account. He mentions three methods of conversion used by Willibrord: persuasion by preaching, desecration of pagan shrines and miracles. Surprisingly, Alcuin remains silent about Willibrord ecclesiastical foundations, a shortcoming that Wattenbach had already noted in his introduction to the Vita (Wattenbach: 36). Although not original, Willibrord’s mis16 Alcuin: 5, 44. We note that Bede states that Willibrord left with twelve companions: Bede: V, 10, 240. Alcuin probably disapproved of this number, since including Willibrord himself, there were thirteen missionaries, thus alluding to Judas Iscariot. 17 Van Berkum 1982:75: around 700 there were Christian communities around some villas in Toxandria. For these places, ibid., 76–77. See also Reischmann 1989, and Levison 1943, rep. 1998:51–65.
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sionary program was imitated by his successors. This is conspicuous for his desecration of the forbidden island Fositeland (Heligoland) where he baptized three men in the sacred pagan fountain and ordered to slay some sacred animals.18 Enraged, king Radbod ordered the sortes to be drawn, and one of Willibrord’s companions was executed, the first (and last) martyr of the Frisian mission. Willibrord learned from the precedents established by Constantine, Clovis and other barbarian kings, that the shortest way to conversion was to convert the king. Unfortunately, he failed to convince king Radbod. This is the only report of the content of a missionary’s sermon, and to a king to boot. We gather that Alcuin used the tried literary device of the redaction of a speech the author imagines should have been made on the occasion; yet given the circumstances, the sermon has a quite authentic ring to it. Fearless, Willibrord warned the king that should he obstinately refuse to be saved, ‘the Devil you obey would deliver your soul to the eternal flames’ (Alcuin: 11, 48–49). The king admired his courage and steadfastness, and probably dreading Willibrord’s Carolingian protector, sent him back unharmed ‘and with honor’ to Pippin. Willibrord may have been aware of the Frisian king’s precarious position, but he was to resume the mission to Frisia only under Charles Martel (719–741). Alcuin writes sparingly about the conversions’ proceeding. As he saw it and as best suited his monastic audience, the miracles accomplished by Willibrord played the most important role in the success of the evangelization (Alcuin: 14–23, 50–56). The story of his miracles may have been transmitted by oral traditions at Echternach or in a previous (now lost) Vita that established Willibrord’s reputation as a saint. By allocating a third of his work (ten chapters out of thirty-one) to Willibrord’s miracles, Alcuin adopted the topos that sainthood is proven by miracles; missionary sainthood must conform to this tradition. As had been the case with Colombanus,19 Willibrord’s miracles became a major method for furthering conversion.
18 Alcuin: 10, 47–48. Desecration of a pagan shrine could be culled from the Life of Martin of Tours: Martin had razed a temple at Levroux and on another occasion had demolished a temple and was preparing to fell a sacred tree. Dared by the crowd, he stood where the tree would fall, made the sign of the Cross and the tree plunged in another direction: Fletcher 1997, rep. 1999:44–45. 19 For the influence of Jonas of Bobbio’s Vita S. Columbani on Alcuin, see: DeugSu 1983:41.
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Boniface clearly conceived of a missionary program much more extensive than Willibrord’s had been. His reform of the Frankish church was his greatest achievement, and he saw himself as much as an exile and pilgrim, a peregrinus in a hostile world among the Frankish bishops as he did among the pagans or semi-pagans:20 the reform of a sinful Church was not easier than the conversion of pagans. Remarkably, his opinion was adopted in his cult. Shortly after Boniface’s death, his reform of the Frankish church was seen as equivalent to the Christianization of Saxony.21 Although Boniface started a new era in the expansion of Christianity and in the development of the Frankish church, his hagiographer Willibald presented his mission as the continuation of the great ecumenical councils of Nicaea (325), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), thereby enhancing the saint’s status. Like these councils, his mission had a universal purpose. Both pope Gregory III and Boniface feared the impending end of the world and were resolved to save as many souls as possible (Willibald: 29, 346–347; Löwe 1967:217–261). Regrettably, Willibald did not provide many insights into Boniface’s methods of conversion. He simply informed us that ‘he educated the Frisians in Christianity’ (Willibald: 7, 18, 342). Intending to stress the importance of Boniface’s relations with the papacy, Willibald adds that the pope instructed him during his visits to Rome, but these clichés22 do not supply meaningful information. Liudger’s Life of Gregory of Utrecht, Boniface’s disciple and assistant, allows a further glimpse into the early stage of their work in Thuringia.23 Liudger reports that the poverty in Thuringia was staggering; while trying to achieve conversions, Boniface and Liudger had to sustain themselves and their companions by working with their hands iuxta exemplum apostolicum. Liudger insists that they fol20 Boniface, Epistola 63, to Daniel of Winchester: the unreformed Frankish bishops are mentionned in the same breath as the pagans: ‘in talibus et cum paganis’: Reuter 1980:79–80. 21 In the Martyrologium of Fulda (ca. 900) now in Leiden, (Universiteits bibliotheek Ms Scal and also in Cod. Vat. Reg. lat. 441) Boniface is described as a vir apostolicus who was sent by Gregory III ‘ad illuminationem totius Germaniae’ and ‘Francorum gentem, Thuringorum et Saxonum Populos’: Kehl 1993:103, n. 92. 22 Willibald: 7, 20, 343: ‘Quique repente elevavit eum a terra, et cartam in qua integra et incorrupta fidei patuit veritas, huic Dei famulo reddidit (. . .) et salutari eum admonitionis doctrina instruxit ut hanc sine intermissione intemeratam fidei munitionem conservaret, et aliis instanter suarum pro possibilitate virium praedicaret’. 23 Liudger: 69. There are of course Boniface’s letters, but they are of no concern for the topic of his sainthood as seen by his contemporaries.
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lowed the example of the Early Church, and were ‘of one heart and of one soul (Acts 4:32)’ (Liudger: 69). The hard manual labour the missionaries had performed in Thuringia was bound to leave a profound impression on monastic readers: both Boniface and Gregory were aristocrats; at most, eighth century monks did some manual work in the monastic enclosure or in the scriptorium; monks tilling the land for cutting out a bare living was now unheard of. Liudger adds that this self-sacrifice, the endurance and his campaign of preaching spread Boniface’s fame over all of East Francia (Liudger: 69). To follow the Apostles’ example was a main feature of the missionary’s calling, and hardship was inevitable. Yet such dire monastic poverty was exceptional, and whoever was prepared to endure it s must have been a saint (Liudger: 69). This characterization of Boniface as a pauper Christi and a pauper evangelicus is exceptional in the hagiographic literature dealing with the Carolingian missionaries. Liudger who highly praised Gregory for renouncing the amenities of his pampered childhood for the hardships he endured with Boniface (Liudger: 69), is the first Carolingian hagiographer to consider the missionaries’ poverty as a kind of Imitatio Christi. Liudger however, does not see these trials as constituting their claim to martyrdom: this was to be Rimbert’s contribution to the concept of missionary sainthood.24 Willibald gives a fairly detailed account of Boniface’s conversion of Thuringia, Saxony and of his reform of the Bavarian church. The process was slow, notwithstanding the daring and symbolic act of Boniface, who, maybe imitating the felling of a sacred tree by Martin of Tours, felled the sacred oak at Geismar, and even built a church with its wood (Willibald: 8, 22, 344). Thereafter Boniface started a campaign of preaching: owing to his reputation as a preacher, learned men flocked from England to Hesse and Thuringia where they preached in the countryside. However Willibald’s report on these preachers omits one exceptional feature recorded in the twelfth century Life of Boniface by Othlonus of St Emmeram, namely that Boniface sent to England for learned women as well of men. One of them, Chunitrud, was a preacher in her own right (Othlonus: 23–24, n. 20, 345). Willibald keeps silent on Boniface’s unusual reliance on nuns for the advancement of Christian
24
See infra: 31 seq.
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education in Germany.25 This dependence may have seemed awkward to Willibald. Having no clear topological or historical precedent, it was more difficult to win acceptance by a monastic audience, which rejected any kind of relationship with women. Moreover, Willibald himself may have disapproved of Boniface’s ties with his female relations and other Anglo-Saxon nuns, (even with the saintly Leoba of Tauberbischofsheim) who assisted him in his missionary tasks. Willibald possibly thought it best to conceal this feminine assistance, which might have stained the famous martyr’s reputation. Boniface built churches and monasteries, reformed the Frankish and Bavarian churches and established four bishoprics (Willibald: 9, 28, 346) and was a dedicated archbishop. Yet he clearly saw preaching and conversion as his foremost task:26 he returned to Frisia in 754 to preach and to build churches. Willibald added a personal note to Boniface’s final mission: it was God’s will that he should return to Frisia in order to ‘flee earthly temptations and the troubles of this world’ (Willibald: 11, 33, 349), meaning thereby his archbishopric of Mainz. Tired and ailing, Boniface was wary of the opposition of some Frankish bishops and showed a deep concern for the future of his missionary followers. Thus Willibald pointed out that the conversion of the pagans was the essence of Boniface’s divinely inspired vocation. Although Gregory of Utrecht was Boniface’s faithful disciple, Liudger emphasized Gregory’s saintly qualities which differed greatly from those of his mentor. Boniface, ‘The Greatest Englishman’, had not made life easy, neither for himself nor for others. Liudger was aware of the different dispositions of Boniface and Gregory; this observation induced him to stress the qualities which characterized Gregory’s sainthood, portraying him as an amiable, humble and patient man, ‘vir iste tam amabilis humilisque et patiens’ (Liudger: 12, 77) a description that does not fit Boniface severity. Following conventions, Liudger praises his master’s erudition as well as his teaching and preaching, but he further insists that Gregory’s 25
On this: Talbot 1953:XII. In Thuringia and Hesse: Willibald: 8, 22, 344: the English missionaries: ‘vicos verbum Dei praedicabant’: ibid., 345. In Bavaria (a. 739): ibid., 9, 28, 346: ‘(. . .) praedicans et evangelizans verbum Dei; veraeque fidei ac religionis sacramenta renovavit, et destructores ecclesiarum populique perversores abigebat’. When he returns to Frisia in 754: ibid.: 11, 35, 349: ‘Per omnem igitur Fresiam pergens, verbum Domini, paganico repulso ritu et erraneo gentilitatis more destructo, instanter praedicabat, ecclesiasque numine confracto delubrorum ingenti studio fabricavit’. For Boniface’s dedication to praedicatio, and his being a fabricator: Leonardi 1991:513–514. 26
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educational and evangelizing enterprises were carried out with great benevolence and love (Liudger: 11, 75–76). Gregory was a dedicated and a beloved teacher who established a fatherly relationship with his pupils. He always pardoned his enemies and Liudger extols the modesty of his food and clothing,27 especially his abstinence from drink (Liudger: 12, 76). No less remarkable was his generous charity; having compared Boniface and Gregory to the Apostles, he adds that Gregory also endeavoured to emulate the generosity of the Old Testament Patriarchs (Liudger: 13, 77, 78). Gregory’s missionary work is described almost entirely in association with Boniface. This linkage is explained by Liudger’s educational purpose. Alcuin had attached a sermon for the feast of Willibrord to the latter’s Vita. But Liudger integrates the moralistic address to his monastic audience in the Vita itself;28 he set down his personal remembrances of the teacher and man Gregory and was less interested in his missionary work, probably because he well knew that although Gregory had been Boniface’s dedicated assistant, he did not make an outstanding contribution of his own. As Liudger saw it, Gregory strove to set an example of Biblical forgiveness, love and charity to Christian educators. This meekness, indirectly compared to Boniface’s sternness, joined to his imitation of Christ, the Apostles and the Patriarchs were to be Gregory’s titles to sainthood. Gregory’s humility is best illustrated by sending off his pupil Liudger (who praised his teacher’s Biblical learning) to York in order to study under Alcuin. Liudger stayed in York for three and a half years. He wanted to remain longer, but a murder committed by a Frisian merchant impelled all Frisians to leave the city (Altfrid: 11, 407) for fear of reprisals. Altfrid, Liudger’s biographer, lays great emphasis on his 27
The model for this abstinence is probably to be found in Sulpitius Severus’ Life of St Martin of Tours: ‘But in fact he (St Martin) did not indulge in food or sleep, except in so far as the necessities of nature required’: Sulpitius Severus: 17. 28 Gregory pardoned the bandits who had killed his brothers: Liudger: 9, 74: ‘Ite in pace et cavete, ut non ulterius tale malum perpetretis, ne deterius vobis aliquid contingat. Et iussit eos in pace deduci, admonens paterna caritate, ut a ceteris propinquis suis caute se custodirent undique et provide. Quis nos modici et infirmi ad haec valemus, dum de perfecta talia cognoscimus? (. . .). Forsitan obtinebunt nobis veniam lacrimae apud pium iudicem Deum, qui in meritis fiduciam habere non possumus’. About Gregory’s almsgiving: ibid., 13, 78: ‘Eia, milites Christi, audite et intelligite et assumite exempla patris huius et rectissima et praeclara, ut nobis etiam adhuc in corpore viventibus et intuentibus ac diligentibus ea inde crescat gratia Dei, largiens vulnerum nostrorum remedia unde illi creverunt tantarum virtutum ornamenta’.
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desire of learning, a quality he exhibited from his early childhood. Like Willibrord, Boniface and his teacher Gregory of Utrecht before him, his Biblical learning was sound, and, adds Altfrid, he proved his learning in his Life of Gregory of Utrecht and in a work on Boniface (Altfrid: II, 6, 413). In 782, the Saxon rebel Widukind burned the churches in Frisia29 and restored paganism. Necessitate compulsus, Liudger decided to leave for Rome and for Monte Cassino where he studied the Rule of St Benedict because he intended to build a monastery on his heritage (Altfrid: 15, 409). After his consecration to the priesthood, he taught three months a year at the monastery of Utrecht, probably Christian doctrine and the Rule (Altfrid: 15, 409). In Frisia, Charlemagne, who had heard of his reputation, appointed him doctor in gente Frisonum, a strange title indeed which may be seen as a tribute to his learning and to his Frisian origin. In order to rally the Christian Frisians in these times of rebellion, Charlemagne may have wanted to praise them for having produced such a learned man. Following Charlemagne’s advice, Liudger, settled on the island of Heligoland, where he destroyed the shrines and baptized the converts with water of the holy fountain, exactly as Willibrord had done. By imitating Willibrord, Liudger was to be the first missionary who deliberately chose another ‘modern’ missionary as his model. Born in 744, Liudger could not have known Willibrord who had died in 739. However the close relations between his family and Willibrord who had not completed the conversion of Frisia may explain Liudger’s desire to do so.30 We would expect Liudger to have chosen Boniface, whom he greatly admired, as his model since the latter’s prestige as a martyr ranked higher than either that of Willibrord or of Gregory of Utrecht, Liudger’s teacher who had directed the Frisian mission (754–775) after Boniface’s death. In addition to his family’s ties with Willibrord, it seems to me that Liudger’s, as the first Frisian missionary, understood that the methods of conversion devised by Willibrord, the first successful missionary to Frisia,31 were
29
ARF, a. 782:42. The Royal Frankish Annals and the Revised Annals do not mention Widukind’s burning of churches in Frisia during the 782 rebellion in Saxony, but it is likely that he made incursions in Frisia and that parties of pagan Frisians joined him. 30 For evangelization as a family related affair, see: von Padberg 1995:86 seq. 31 Willibrord had been preceded in Frisia by the Anglo-Saxon missionary Wictbert
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better adapted to the Frisian setting. Last but not least, with due respect to Boniface’s martyrdom, it is likely that Liudger did not intend to be a martyr. After the conversion of the Saxons, Charlemagne established him as a priest in West Saxony. He built a monastery at Münster and had a conventional career, eradicating ‘the thorns of idolatry’, preaching, building churches and ordaining priests (Altfrid: 20, 411). Liudger’s sainthood can be considered as a ‘model’ missionary sainthood: he faithfully followed the by now well trodden path of a thorough preparation for the mission by engaging in Biblical studies and by zealously preaching, baptizing, teaching and laying the foundations of further conversion by building churches and monasteries and ordaining priests. Paradoxically, notwithstanding Liudger’s mostly conventional life, Altfrid wrote a work which holds some lively passages, like those describing the birth of Liudger’s mother and the child Liudger, occurrences which may have been embellished and told by members of the family. Literary talent may have run in the family, as Liudger’s Life of Gregory of Utrecht is not totally topological. Not so with Anskar’s Life of Willehad. As opposed to Liudger and Altfrid, Anskar had never met his hero so that his recourse to hagiographical topoi was inevitable. Willehad’s missionary activities greatly resemble those of Boniface, although no direct acquaintance is mentioned. So we learn that Willehad preached at Dokkum where Boniface was ‘in the past crowned with martyrdom’ (Anskar: 2, 380). This may reflect Anskar’s own obsession with martyrdom rather than Willehad’s, of which we know but little. Yet Anskar further alludes to Boniface’s martyrdom when he reports that when Willehad’s disciples destroyed the pagan sanctuaries in Drente, the pagans tried to kill him. By miracle, the sword cut into the reliquary Willehad was wearing, and as opposed to Boniface who died while defending himself with a book, (probably a collection of patristic texts (WallaceHadrill 1976:158–159), Willibald escaped unharmed (Anskar: 3, 380; for Boniface, cf. Willibald: 37, 351, n. 35). Anskar’s portrait of Willehad is totally conventional. We learn that he preached that baptism brings remittance of sins, that to pray for help to stones and statues deaf and dumb is insane (Anskar: 3, 380). This theme appears in most missionary preaching, including that of Anskar who utterly failed, and after two years, returned to exile in Ireland: Bede: V, 9, vol. II, 238–240.
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himself. Willehad’s exemplary Christian life, both in speech and acts is an often repeated hagiographical topos. This is not to say that, as reported by Anskar, Willehad’s life had only been some ideal representation of a missionary’s career. It so happened that after fleeing Frisia because of Widukind’s rebellion (ARF, a. 782: 42–44). Willehad, like Willibrord, Boniface and Liudger, went on pilgrimage to Rome where he prayed for the success of the mission in Saxony, and was encouraged by pope Hadrian (Anskar: 7, 382). Willehad’s pilgrimage repeats previous missionaries’ visits to Rome. On the other hand, when assessing his life after his return, a more likely explanation suggests that Willehad undertook the pilgrimage as a self-inflicted penance because he thought that the Saxon rebellion and the help the Frisians lent to it were a divine punishment for his own sins. His next step reinforces this hypothesis: on his return from Rome he entered the monastery of Echternach where he lived for two years as a hermit, an inclausus. This peculiar form of monastic life is exceptional among the missionaries. Anskar does not state the reason nor the significance of Willehad’s enclosure, yet Willehad’s Anglo-Saxon background may explain this longing for the hermit’s separation from the world.32 His retreat at Echternach may have been inspired by Wictbert, who had lived as a hermit in Ireland for many years. From there he went to Frisia where he preached to the Frisian, but to his great distress, to no avail. He then returned to Ireland to live in silence, and Egbert sent another missionary legation headed by Willibrord (Bede: VI, 9, vol. II, 238–240). As a missionary to Frisia, Willehad would have been informed about Wictbert unsuccessful mission, and may have attributed his own partial failure to his sins which could be atoned for by a self-imposed penitential enclosure. After two years at Echternach, where he studied, prayed, copied manuscripts and as the topos dictates, set an example for the monastic community, Willehad asked Charlemagne, who had quelled the Saxon rebellion in 785, for permission to resume his missionary work. He was very active in Wigmodia, where he preached strenue, restored 32 For the honour in which the British Church held the hermits: Bede: II, 2, vol. I, 206–210, who relates that the council of British bishops and ‘learned men’ asked the advice of a wise hermit whether they should abandon their own traditions as Augustine of Canterbury demanded; ibid., V, 27, 28, 29, vol. II, 173–180: Cuthbert of Lindisfarne had been an hermit; he was made a bishop, but he reverted to his hermitage and died a hermit on Farne Island where he held his last meeting with the hermit Herebert (a. 687).
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destroyed churches and appointed responsible priests (Anskar: 8, 83). With the (temporary) pacification of Saxony in 787, he was consecrated as bishop in Mainz, and his career culminated with the building of his cathedral at Bremen, inaugurated in 789. Anskar’s description of Willehad’s virtues adds nothing noteworthy to the topos of monastic and missionary sainthood. He admires Willehad’s abstinence of meat and drink, his mostly vegetarian diet; he further praises Willehad’s contrition when celebrating the daily masses as well as his singing the Psalter almost everyday, and sometimes even twice or three times a day. Finally, Anskar recapitulates the achievements of his missionary career: he praises Willehad’s confirmation of Christians who had previously been baptized as well as his preaching to ‘erring hearts’. Contrasting with Willehad’s conventional Vita, replete with almost every topos of the genre, Rimbert’s Life of Anskar presents a complex personality and moreover adds some original qualifications for sainthood, the major one being Anskar’s visions. Truly, Willibrord had also experienced a visionary dream before embarking upon his mission (Alcuin: 5, 43–44). But Anskar’s case is different for two reasons. First, because he had visions at all the turning points of his existence so that they modeled his life and his missionary career. Second, he made a detailed report of these visions to his pupil Rimbert. At first glance, Anskar’s second qualification for sainthood, his life-long aspiration to martyrdom, seems less novel than his visionary experiences; however this longing for martyrdom is exceptional among Carolingian saints, including the missionary saints. Ian Wood sees Rimbert’s work as a tale of expansion, collapse and renewed expansion which has at his center the justification of the creation of a unified diocese of Hamburg-Bremen (Wood 1987:8). Clearly, ecclesiastical politics played an important part in Rimbert’s motives, but this does not diminish the originality of his description of Anskar’s sainthood. It seems to me that Rimbert intended to establish Anskar as a martyr who could compete with Boniface, the revered martyr of the missionary enterprise beyond the Rhine. Recognition of Anskar’s martyrdom could confer great prestige both to Corvey and to the see of Hamburg. Corvey and the bishoprics of Hamburg and Bremen were later foundations than Fulda; the see of Bremen was established in 789, Corvey was founded in 822 and Anskar was consecrated as bishop of Hamburg only in 832, whereas Boniface and Sturmi had founded Fulda in 744. As to the archbishopric of Mainz,
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the reputation of its antiquity and impact on the mission to Germany were impeccable. Boniface had held the see until his tragic death in 754, and Willehad, who had been consecrated as the first bishop of Bremen by the archbishop of Mainz, could not claim equality with this ancient see. Boniface’s and his successor Sturmi’s missionary work had been continued by Rabanus Maurus, first as abbot of Fulda and later as archbishop of Mainz (847–856). His death could have presented the see of Hamburg, soon to become the see of Hamburg-Bremen, with the opportunity to enhance its status in northern Germany. Moreover, as bishop of Hamburg, Anskar, may have been a suffragan of the see of Mainz. Seen from this perspective, Rimbert’s portrait of the visionary Anskar’s divinely inspired mission and ‘martyrdom’ could serve a propagandist purpose. Throughout the Vita, the intertwined themes of a divinely inspired mission and of the longing for martyrdom are repeated and stressed. Rimbert remains silent about Anskar’s studies at Corbie. Although Anskar’s Life of Willehad does not display literary talent, he must have been a scholar for he became a master both at Corbie and at Corvey; a good education was the prerequisite for becoming a missionary. In Anskar’s case, his second vision not his learning, prepared him for the mission and for martyrdom. The readers of the Vita Anskarii knew that Anskar’s longing for ‘red’ martyrdom had not be granted. Still, he was the only missionary of his time who, according to his hagiographer, actually wanted to be a martyr; although Boniface’s violent death was recognized as martyrdom, his biographer Willibald does not hint that Boniface had actually wished for such an end. As to the linkage between visions and sainthood, it had been thoroughly discussed by Augustine and Gregory the Great. According to Augustine, the dream is a kind of vision. It is only rarely that we may glimpse the intellectual stripped of the products of imagination. We may receive an inkling of the divine for a properly employed vision allows us to perceive a higher truth,33 so that the visionary is close to sainthood. However a more likely source of inspiration, either of Anskar or Rimbert, were the widely read Dialogues and Moralia in Job of Gregory the Great, of which Corbie owned several manuscripts.34 Gregory the Great divided the dreams into six categories 33 34
Augustine: XII, 53–54; Kruger 1992:43; 184, n. 25. Ganz 1990:40: Corbie held several manuscripts of Gregory’s Moralia in Job.
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according to their origin; the two last categories are of a positive character, because these dreams originated by revelation or by a profound thought and revelation combined.35 Gregory affirmed that the saints can distinguish true revelations from the voices and images of illusions through an inner sensitivity and can always receive communications from the Good Spirit.36 Not only did Rimbert consider Anskar’s visions to be one of his two major claims to sainthood; he was the first Carolingian hagiographer who adapted the recent sainthood of the missionary ‘martyr’ Anskar to the unofficial hierarchy of sainthood which placed the martyrs right after the Apostles, thus ‘upgrading’ his hero’s sainthood. Rimbert also presents Anskar’s selection for the mission as resulting from his desire for martyrdom. After the flight of the Danish king Harald Klak to the court of Louis the Pious37 and his baptism in June 826, the emperor decided to send a mission to Denmark. This was the initiative of two prominent ‘political’ ecclesiastics and the emperor’s favourite advisers, archbishop Ebbo of Rheims38 and Wala, Charlemagne’ cousin, who had recently been elected ( January 826) to the abbacy of both Corbie and Corvey. Although Rimbert states that both counselors recommended Anskar for this dangerous mission, it was abbot Wala, who actually selected him (Rimbert: 7, 694). Ebbo, who had lived on the Danish border, and Wala of Corvey were well aware of the perils menacing Anskar. Therefore Wala seems to have been reluctant to send one of his monks to the ferocious Danes, and wanted to make sure that Anskar had accepted the mission out of his own free will and not only to obey his abbot’s orders (Rimbert: 7, 694). Clearly
35 Kruger, 1992:45: Gregory the Great, Dialogi, IV, 50, 2: ‘(. . .) est quia sex modis tangunt animam imagines somniorum (. . .) aliquando autem cogitatione simul et revelatione generantur’. 36 Kruger, 199:51–52: Dialogi, IV, 50–6. 37 On this, see Theganus: 33, 234; Astronomus: 324. On the background of Anskar’s mission and Louis the Pious’ motives for organizing the mission: Musset 1967: 269–270. 38 Ebbo of Rheims was the son of Louis the Pious’ wet-nurse, and had been reared with the emperor: see McKeon 1974:437–447; on Ebbo’s earlier involvement with the mission to the North, see ARF, a. 823:136: ‘(. . .) Ebo Remorum archiepiscopus, qui consilio imperatoris et auctoritate Romani pontificia praedicandi gratia ad terminos Danorum accesserat et aetate praeterita multos ex eis ad fidem venientes baptizaverat (. . .)’. For Wala, see Paschasius Radbertus Epitaphium Arsenii, PL 120; for Wala’s election as abbot of Corbie and of Corvey and his further career, see Ganz: 1990:29. I have not been able to find L. Weinrich, Wala, Graf, Mönch und Rebell, Lübeck-Hamburg 1963.
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Wala was annoyed by Anskar’s unusual situation; all previous missionaries had first taken the initiative of their mission and had requested the assistance of the Carolingians only afterwards. For the first time in the history of the mission to the North, it was the other way around. When asked, Anskar, reassured Wala that he was going to Denmark voluntarily (Rimbert: 7, 694). Whether Rimbert wanted to show Anskar’s humility is a possibility to consider. Anyway, the monastic community’s reaction to Anskar’s nomination was mixed: many admired him for his resolve to leave his monastic familia, but many others ‘mocked him’ and even ‘hated him’ for it, trying in vain to convince him to reverse his decision (Rimbert: 7, 694). Could it be that by 826, the missionary vocation had lost its attraction to the monks of Corbie? Anskar had returned to Corbie from Corvey in 825, and Rimbert does not specify the reasons of his return. Why would some monks of Corbie scoff at a brother who had already shown some predilection for missionary work? Corvey had been founded by monks of Corbie in 815–816 as a missionary monastery; the beginnings were difficult, and only after abbot Adalhard was pardoned by Louis the Pious and returned from exile in October 821, was Corvey to flourish. The monks were moved to a new location, the villa of Höxter, a site that lay in a fertile bend of a populated river valley. Two charters granted by Louis the Pious in 823 secured the endowment, and more important still, transferred property in Saxony from Corbie to Corvey (Ganz 1990:28) Some monks of Corbie may have resented this loss, and been angry at Anskar, who had left the mother-house for Corvey, had then returned to Corbie, and was now accepting the mission to the Danes ordered by the emperor who had deprived them of their property. A simpler reason for the monks’ derisive attitude may have been their jealousy of Anskar’s selection by their abbot Wala, the mighty Ebbo of Rheims, and last but not least, by Louis himself. As to Rimbert, he intended to stress Anskar’s loneliness and psychological suffering even before the severe trials he was to face in Scandinavia.39 Anskar’s solitude was only alleviated by Autbertus, a monk of Corbie, who volunteered to accompany him. Wala wondered about Autbertus’ decision since ‘it seemed then abominable and unjust that one should 39 Could it be that Rimbert indirectly hints at the mocking at Jesus on the Cross? ‘Et stabat populus spectans et deridebant eum principes cum ei dicentes: Alios salvos fecit, se salvum faciat, si hic est Christus Dei electus’ (Luc. 23:35).
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be forced to live with pagans’ (Rimbert: 7, 695). The emperor provided the missionaries with tents and other necessities, but the beginning was hard. King Harald, ‘rudis et neophitus’, did not know how ‘servants of God are to be treated’ nor did the converted Danes bother with them. This disrespect may have surprised the missionaries, but they nevertheless met with some success during their two years stay in Denmark, redeeming some boys from slavery, and educating them and others sent by Harald, twelve in total, in their school.40 Rimbert’s account of the missionaries’ Danish activities is conventional, stating that they converted many Danes by their example and teaching (Rimbert: 7, 695). When Anskar was invited to the emperor’s palace in order to be sent to the Swedes who had sent an embassy to ask for missionaries, he experienced a preparatory vision as for this new mission: a great light shone, and the voice he had heard in the Pentecost vision reassured him that his sins were forgiven; his questions about the course to be taken were answered by a paraphrase of Christ’s enjoinder to the Apostles to announce the Word of God to the Nations (Matt. 28:16; Marc. 16:15): the visionary experience once again reinforced his missionary calling. By permission of the Swedish king Björn, Anskar and his fellow missionary Witmar preached at Birka, the famous emporium on the small island in lake Mälaren. Rimbert dwells only on Anskar’s great success in converting Herigarius (Hergeir), the kings’ advisor who built a church on his property; nonetheless, at least a significant number of Anskar’s flock consisted of the Swedes’ many Christian captives.41 Anskar’s mission to Sweden was the first to be associated with the international trade between the Carolingian empire and Scandinavia. 40
Here Anskar followed Willebrord who had redeemed thirty boys in Frisia and baptized them: Alcuin: 9, 47. 41 For the economic importance of Birka in this period, see Hodges 1989:85–86. At its height, Birka is believed to have held between seven hundred to thousand people. Hodges does not specify if this number includes the foreign merchants and the Christian captive slaves. He states that by the end of the eighth century, when most of the Frisian coastline had been brought within the Christian orbit, and the Baltic wealth must have been a vital element in the economic goal of the Carolingian empire it was perhaps no coincidence that Carolingian missionaries went with merchants to the great emporia at Haithabu, Ribe and Birka: on their way to Sweden, Anskar, Witmar, his fellow missionary, and the merchants were attacked by pirates; the merchants defended themselves but were defeated and robbed: Rimbert: 10, 697. Obviously the merchants were the missionaries’ guides and protectors on their way to Sweden.
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The conversion of Frisia and Saxony helped the Carolingian rulers to secure their borders and then to conquer these territories and integrate them in their Christian realm. By the time of Anskar’s mission to Denmark and Sweden, when the Franks had already suffered repeated Viking incursions (ARF, a. 820:122) and after 829, when Louis the Pious’ renewed division of the empire between his sons brought on civil war, any attempt to conquer Scandinavia was excluded. Peaceful relations,42 even alliances, some security for trade were now the best to be expected. In 832, when Anskar returned to rapport to the emperor, Louis the Pious remembered his mission to Denmark and decided to have him consecrated as archbishop of Hamburg in order to facilitate his missionary activities (Rimbert: 12, 698): once more the initiative was not his; compared with Boniface, and even with Gregory of Utrecht and Liudger, Anskar cuts a more passive figure. He was consecrated by Drogo of Metz, the emperor’s half-brother, and Ebbo of Reims who had been quite successful in evangelizing the Danes and had been granted Münsterdorff (Holstein) to this end (Rimbert: 13, 699) attended the event. The decision to create the new archbishopric was thus taken by the emperor, probably on the advice of his trusted Drogo and Ebbo. Apparently, Ebbo was too busy with the intrigues at the court to stay away in some forsaken place beyond the Elbe, and therefore must have been instrumental in recommending Anskar, who by now had acquired sufficient experience in Scandinavia, to replace him. The period from 830 to 835 was a time of troubles (Nithard: 1, 3, 390). The emperor had failed to divide his empire between his quarrelsome sons to theirs and to his second wife Judith’s satisfaction; he was humiliated and deposed by Lothar, his eldest son, and a great many ecclesiastics headed by Ebbo of Rheims.43 Musset rightly pointed out that Anskar’s personality was the greatest asset for this mission: he was not compromised by Ebbo’s cabals and did not succumb to
42 E.g. ARF, a. 813:102; a. 825:142; Theganus: 14, 224; Astronomus: 27, 298–299; 36, 316. Alliances: ARF, a. 817:110, 114; a. 822:130; a. 823:136. Although the sources invariably present the peace agreements between the Franks and Danes as Danish initiatives, one suspects that this is only the Frankish version of these negotiations. 43 For the role of Ebbo of Rheims at the deposition of Louis the Pious at Soissons, see Theganus: 44, 240–242; also Musset 1967:269. One should note that between 835 and 840 Anskar was the only head of the northern mission since Ebbo had been deposed in 835 for his role in Louis the Pious’ deposition in 833, and was restored to the see of Rheims in 840.
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the obstacles of precedence and jurisdiction which preoccupied the prelates of his times (Musset 1967:270). Ebbo’s interest in the Northern mission did not diminish after Anskar’s consecration. It was he who secured the emperor’s nomination of his own relative Gauzbertus as bishop in Sweden. As for Anskar’s mission to Denmark, he imitated the example of previous missionaries. Rimbert recounts that he achieved many conversions, bought young Danish and Slav slaves and raised them in the Faith, both with himself and in his cell at Torhout (Rimbert: 16, 700). When Hamburg was attacked by Danish pirates in 845 and Anskar’s church and monastery burnt down along with the Bible donated by the emperor and other ecclesiastical treasures, he bore this misfortune with Job’s fortitude. After 857, Anskar resumed a new mission to the Danes. This time he was very prudent, having realized that only royal assent and protection could assure success. Anskar also knew, that contrary to Willibrord and Boniface, he could not count on any assistance to be extended by the Carolingians. He thus diplomatically suggested to king Håric to grant permission to build a church served by a resident priest for those who desired baptism. Rimbert extols Anskar’s diplomatic and prudent approach to the Danish king: he ‘began to suggest that he (the king) would concede this benevolence to the Lord Christ’ (Rimbert: 24, 709).44 Follows a description of this church’s attendants, former Christians who had been baptized in Hamburg or Dorestad and Christian merchants from Dorestad. We note that many converted in order to be cured (Rimbert: 24, 709), expecting the miraculous intervention of the Christian God, an incentive for conversion we have not encountered so far. Another interesting feature of these conversions is that many catechumens postponed baptism until imminent death ‘in order to enter the gates of eternal life in a state of immaculate purity, absque aliqua retardatione’. Although deferred baptism was quite common until the fourth and even the fifth century, we find no mention of this ancient practice in the other missionaries’ Vitae. Could Anskar have suggested it to the catechumens so that they may not be branded as Christians by their hostile pagan neighbours, thus adjusting his methods to the unstable milieu of a still pagan Denmark where no Carolingian military or diplomatic intervention 44 Rimbert: 24, 709: ‘(. . .) etiam sanctissimus pater noster suggerere coepit ut Christo domino hanc concederet etiam benevolentiam, quod ei gratissimum foret ut in regno suo ecclesiam fieri permitteret ’.
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could be expected: in 861, king Louis the German was crushing the revolt of Ratislav of Moravia aided by Louis’ son Carloman; in 864 another rebellion forced the king to settle the problem of his son’s insurrection by deciding the partition of his kingdom between his three sons after his death.45 Paradoxically, Anskar’s limited success in Denmark may have encouraged him to renew his missionary efforts in Sweden. For the first time, Anskar took the initiative of a missionary endeavour. The Franks seemed to have lost their interest in Sweden; Louis the German’s only intervention in this enterprise was the ratification of the agreement between Anskar and Gauzbertus, who had been expelled from his Swedish bishopric and had no intention to return. Gauzbertus, who rightly doubted the successful outcome of the Swedish mission, agreed nonetheless to send his nephew with Anskar (Rimbert: 25, 710). Gauzbertus’ warnings about the dangers in stock for the missionaries impressed Anskar, who once more was prepared to face these perils by another vision. This time Adalhard of Corbie appeared to him as a prophet, an apparition which Anskar found puzzling and was only ready to recognize as prophetic if Adalhard would tell him his own thoughts (Rimbert: 25, 710). Anskar saw Adalhard sitting in a bright-lighted house. The abbot started to prophesize in Isaiah’s words, designating Anskar for the mission by replacing the pronoun me of the Biblical text by te, thus changing Isaiah’s address to the people of far and reporting God’s words which called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name (Is. 49:1–3) as being intended for you, Anskar, and promising to protect him.46 Anskar was elated by this prophecy, and understood it as referring to his own mission and eventually to his martyrdom. He understood the ‘islands’ of the prophecy to be Sweden, a country which according to him consisted of many islands, and he further interpreted verse 6 of Isaiah 49 ‘that 45 Annales Fuldenses, a. 861–865:60–68; for Louis the German’s problems with the Slavs, see also Mc Kitterick 1983:176–177. 46 Rimbert: 25, 711: ‘Audite insulae et attendite populi de longe, Dominus ab utero vocavit te, de ventris matris tuae recordatus est nominis tui. Et posuit os tuum quasi gladium acutum in umbra manus suae protexit te et posuit te sicut sagittam electam: in faretra abscondit te, et dixit tibi: Servus meus es tu, quia in te gloriabor (Isaiah 49:1–3)’. Vulg.: ‘Audite, insulae, et attendite, populi de longe: Dominus ab utero vocavit me, de ventre matris meae recordatus est nominis mei et posuit os meum quasi gladium acutum, in umbra manus suae protexit me et posuit me sicut sagittam electam, in pharetra sua abscondit me et dixit mihi: Servus meus es tu, Israël quia in te gloriabor’.
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thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth’ 47 as meaning the north of Sweden (Abrams 1998: 109–128). In the same line of thought, the glory which originally will befall the people of Israel (Is. 49:3), but which Adalhard promised to Anskar, must be a reference to the martyrdom he eagerly awaits (Rimbert: 26,712). Visions, Biblical inspiration and the expectation of martyrdom are here presented as the motives for Anskar’s missionary calling. Remarkably, the direct source of Anskar’s third vision is the Old Testament and is not inspired by other Vitae or earlier medieval visits to the Other World; thus Anskar’s status is elevated to an almost—prophetic one. As foreseen by Gauzbertus, this mission to Sweden would indeed prove to be dangerous. Actually, the Swedish king Håric, afraid to allow the return of the missionaries, argued that they were expelled by a popular sedition and that he must consult the popular assembly. Anskar accepted this new trial with prayers and fasts (Rimbert: 26, 712). The decision to readmit the missionaries to Sweden was taken by consulting the sortes and brought before the popular assembly. This distressful waiting for permission to preach in Sweden, the preparation for the journey and the fasts will, as Rimbert puts it, result in ‘the greatest anxiety of the mind’ (Rimbert: 29, 713), a state of distress acting as a catalyst for Anskar’s last vision. Incontestably, Anskar’s awareness of his martyrdom was evolving into his identification with the Passion of Christ. In this vision he saw himself as interposing between Jesus and his tormentors, Jews and soldiers alike, and he himself absorbs the blows intended for Christ. It was only after his return from Sweden that Anskar grasped the full meaning of the vision. According to him, it alluded to all the mockeries and blasphemies against God he himself had endured for Christ who had suffered in Sweden in his servant (Rimbert: 29, 713): thus Anskar’s status was elevated from the prophetic to the nearly divine. He himself elucidates the significance of the visionary message, explaining that he was powerless to defend the divine head of Christ because the saints’ suffering for Christ are a part of God’s majesty. Moved by pity for his saints, Christ temporarily takes their suffering on himself; but when the time will come for his ‘severe judgment’, God will avenge his saints (Rimbert: 29, 713).
47 ‘Eris in salutem usque ad extremum terrae’: Vulg.: Is. 49:6: ‘(. . .) ecce dedit te in lucem gentium, ut sis salus mea usque ad extremum terrae’.
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Anskar may have tried to find solace in the comparison between his arduous mission and the Passion of Christ. However this convoluted parallelism, and the ultimate divine retribution that will be visited on the saints’ tormentors is a further illustration of his selfimage as a martyr. This was obviously what Rimbert had in mind and wanted to convey to his readers. As opposed to Anskar whose life had been in jeopardy in Sweden, and for whom eventual martyrdom was a quite realistic assessment of the fate in store for him, Rimbert and his readers knew that he had died in his bed. Thus, as he was to state plainly in his conclusion, Rimbert tried to show that Anskar’s fears and sufferings, his trials as archbishop and the ascetic practices (note Rimbert’s use of cruciatio to describe them) he inflicted on himself for the love of Christ should earn him the martyr’s crown (Rimbert: 40, 722). Anskar’s fears were justified. After King Höric and many Swedish aristocrats were killed by pirates, his son Höric junior was persuaded to destroy the churches, for the reception of the Christian God was blamed for the evils which befell the Swedes. Anskar was gravely affected by these events; he had actually bought the acceptance of the old Swedish aristocracy. Fortunately, his prayers helped to alter the new king’s behaviour; he reinstated his father’s chief adviser Burghard who was favorably disposed toward the Christians. By now, Rimbert wants to conclude his work with a lengthy description of Anskar’s acclaimed qualities which justify his place among the martyrs. Rimbert’s work is longer than the other Vitae we have seen so far, and his panegyric of Anskar is unusually extensive (Rimbert: 35–42, 719–724). Another characteristic of this panegyric is Rimbert’s painstaking effort to definitively convince his monastic readers of Anskar’s holiness and martyrdom. Anskar’s final portrait is replete with hagiographical conventions; however his rich personality and Rimbert’s literary talent succeeded in presenting an image which is not entirely topological. Again, Rimbert outlines the importance of Anskar’s visions which are so characteristic of his missionary calling and achievements. Moreover, Anskar distinguished himself not only as a visionary, but also by his extraordinary dedication to charity, helping the deprived, the poor and above all by redeeming the captives. Charitable works were expected from every Christian, the more so from a missionary archbishop whose duties called for the instruction of converts and the attraction of pagans by setting an example of mildness and comfort extended to all. Before Rimbert, Liudger had praised Gregory of
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Utrecht’s forgiveness and charity. Yet with the exception of Gregory’s forgiveness towards his half-brothers’ killers and his fatherly attitude towards his pupils,48 Liudger does not supply further information. Not satisfied with’ topological’ charity, Anskar’s Vita presents a wider picture of the saint’s charitable activities. For the poor, Anskar levied the tithe on all the revenues and animals of his diocese, and established an hostel at Bremen which he financed by the allocation of the tithe levied on some of the villae owned by the archbishopric.49 Rimbert illustrates Anskar’s deep feelings by reporting his tears while witnessing the reunion of a mother with her son whom Anskar had redeemed from the pirates’ captivity. Besides Anskar’s generosity and compassion, Rimbert insists, as was customary, on the saints’ ascetic practices, declaring his intention to do so after having written about ‘his care for the salvation of others’ (Rimbert: 35, 715). Anskar’s way to personal salvation was paved with the austerities typical of the imitation of saints in general and more particularly of St Martin.50 Anskar wore a hair- shirt day and night; he loved the solitude of a cell he had ordered to be build for his retreat,51 and like all saints, experienced temptation and prayed to be delivered from it. His prayers were answered, and a vision which showed him the vile origin of humanity freed him from temptation (Rimbert: 35, 718). Anskar’s resistance to all carnal desires, gluttony, drunkenness or pleasure of the flesh, a theme repeated by monastic biography since Athanasius’ Life of St Anthony, only in one of the missionaries Lives, that of Willehad. Rimbert represents Anskar’s temptations as being so violent that divine intervention by means of a vision was necessary to deliver him.52 Anskar tried to compensate for his sin by
48
Altfrid: 11, 407, n. 148. Rimbert: 61; Lesne: 479, 485. 50 Rimbert: 35, 717: ‘sed et omnium vitam sanctorum imitari studuit, specialius tamen beati Martini’. Also Ganz 1990:157, for a manuscript of the Martinellus (BN 13759, written at Tours) at Corbie. For the popularity of the Martinellus, a collection of texts about St Martin, during the Carolingian period, see McKitterick 1993:143. For the popularity of the cult of St Martin under the Carolingians, see Albert 1999:148–152. 51 Rimbert 35:717: ‘Ad quid opus et cellam aptam sibi constructam habebat, quam apellabat quietum locum et amicum moerer’”. For the theme of the monastic cell as an ideal abode, see Alcuin’s poem O Mea cella, in Godman 1985:124–126. 52 Rimbert 35:718: ‘Si igitur ulterius inquit (sc. Deus) ab ulla tentatus fueris coenodoxia peste, istud in mentem reducens memorere unde progenitus sis, et cum Dei gratia liberaberis’. 49
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his learning and by his writings dealing with the condemnation of sin and the fear of hell (Rimbert: 35, 718). Before the description of Anskar’s exemplary death, Rimbert ends his portrait of the missionary saint with his written message to posterity: the fear of sin and its rightful punishment. Notwithstanding the inspiration and sometimes outright copying of hagiographical models, like Sulpitius Severus’ Life of St Martin or the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, the portrait of the eighth and ninth century missionary saint presents a fresh contribution to hagiographical literature. Many of them were Anglo-Saxons or pupils and disciples of Anglo-Saxons and shared the same cultural and missionary traditions so that their personalities and activities showed many similarities which, helped by ancient hagiographical tradition, inevitably produced a stereotypical image. Nonetheless, notwithstanding the hagiographical idealization, individuality did surface: Boniface and Gregory of Utrecht were very different personalities; Rimbert produced an original work perhaps unwillingly daring to take hagiography a step further towards biography. Missionary sainthood was first and foremost a sainthood of action and self-sacrifice that entailed leaving the Christian West for the dreaded pagan world beyond the Rhine. Although Gregory the Great’s mission to England had been directed to the pagan Angles, Christianity was then still alive in Wales, and the Irish mission had established a foothold in the North of England. Irish missionaries had accomplished great deeds of conversion in Barbarian kingdoms, But these were still integrated in the orbit of Roman-Christian culture: when Colombanus founded the monastery of Bobbio in 612, even the terrible Lombards were partly Christianized, if only Arians, and ruled over a Roman Catholic majority. With the mission to Frisia, Saxony and Scandinavia, everything changed. Northern Europe was largely unknown territory; like Ireland, it had never been part of Mediterranean civilization. In the North, as opposed to Ireland which was converted from a crumbling Roman Britain battling with Anglo-Saxons invaders, Christianity was feared as the religion of the conquering Franks, and the missionaries were seen as their representatives. If they could not be killed for fear of Frankish reprisals, their Christian message was not at all welcome. The missionaries’ work, confronted by such opposition and dangers, called not only for diplomatic gifts and fiery preaching, but for courage and endurance: armed with the Scriptures, the missionary was a real
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Miles Christi.53 He could, like Anskar, also be a visionary and a mystic, but he had to be ready for eventual martyrdom. Enriched by the stories of earlier missionaries, Rimbert was perhaps justified in seeing Anskar’s difficult life as a kind of martyrdom. The missionaries’ courage, action and steadfastness, a victorious battle of God’s Soldiers against the unbelievers, was a sainthood that found a ready cult in Frankish society. Conclusion Carolingian hagiography is often considered to be thoroughly topological. This article examines the subject of the missionaries’ sainthood as it was seen by the hagiographers, namely the Lives of Willibrord, Gregory of Utrecht, Liudger, Willehad of Bremen and Anskar of Hamburg. Although they shared many characteristics, we note that this was often the result of a shared intellectual background and personal acquaintance and ties. Yet a closer look reveals that their claims to sainthood were often based on individuality and not only on a topos. LITERATURE Abrams, L., ‘History and Archeology. The Conversion of Scandinavia’ in: Conversion and Christianity in the Northern World, ed. B. Crawford, St Andrews 1998. Albert, B., Le pèlerinage à l’époque carolingienne, Louvain-La Neuve-Bruxelles-Leuven 1999. Alcuin, Vita sancti Willibrordi, IX, Monumenta Alcuiniana praeparata a P. Jaffé, ed. W. Wattenbach et E. Dümmler, Berlin 1873, rep. Aalen 1964. Altfrid, Vita Sancti Liudgerii, MGHS II, ed. G.H. Pertz, Hanover 1829, Kraus rep. 1963. Angenendt, A., Monachi Peregrini. Studien zur Pirmin und der monastischen Vorstellungen des frühen Mittelalters, Munich 1972. ———, ‘Die irische Peregrinatio und ihre Auswirkung auf dem Kontinent vor der Jahre 800’ in: Die Iren und Europa im frühren Mittelalter, I, Munich 1982. Annales Fuldenses, Quellen zur Karolingischen Reichsgeschichte, III, ed. R. Rau, Reutlingen 1960. Annales Regni Francorum, Quellen zur Karolingischen Reichsgeschichte I, ed. R. Rau. Anskar, Vita Willehadi episcopi Bremensi, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores II, ed. G.H. Pertz, Hannover 1829, rep. Stuttgart-New York 1963.
53
Rimbert calls Anskar a miles invictus Christi: 29, 713.
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Astronomus, Vita Hludovici Imperatoris, Quellen zur Karolingischen Reichsgeschichte, II, ed. R. Rau, Berlin, n.d. Aubrun, A., ‘Caractère et portée religieuse et sociale des “Visiones” en Occident, du Ve au Xe siècle’, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, 23(2), 1980. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, CSEL 28. Barlow, F., ‘The English Background’ in: T. Reuter ed., The Greatest Englishman: Essays on St Boniface and the Church of Crediton, Exeter 1980. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, V, 12, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, in: Bede, Opera Historica, ed. J.E. King, Cambridge, Massachusetts-London, first pub. 1930, rep. 1990. Berkum, A. Van, ‘Willibrord de reizende geloofsverkondiger’ in: Willibrord Apostel der Niederlande, Gründer der Abtei Echternach. Gedenkgabe zum 1250 Todestag des angelsächzischen Missionars, herausgegeben von G. Kiesel und J. Schroeder, Luxembourg 1982. Bosl, K., ‘Il santo nobile’, in: Hagiografia altomedievale, ed. S. Boesch Gajano, Bologna 1976. Carozzi, C., Le voyage de l’âme dans l’Au-Delà d’après la littérature latine (V e–XIII siècle), Collection de l’Ecole Française de Rome, Paris 1994. Chen, Y., ‘The structure and aims of the Visio Barontii’, Journal of Theological Studies, N.S, 47, pt. 2, October 1996. Curtius, E.R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, Bern 1948, English translation W.R. Trask, New York and Evanston 1953. Dinzelbacher, P., Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, Stuttgart 1981. Dutton, P.E., The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire, Lincoln (Nebraska) and London 1994. Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, Quellen zur Karolingischen Reichsgeschichte, I, ed. R. Rau, Berlin n.d. Everett, N., ‘The Hagiography of Lombard Italy’, Hagiographia, VII, 2000. Ferrari, M.C., Sancti Willibrordi venerantes memoriam. Echternacher Schreiber und Schriftsteller von der Angelsachsen bis Johann Bertels. Ein Überblick, Luxembourg 1994. Fischer, C.M., ‘Die Bedeutung eines Heiligen. Hagiographische Betrachtungen’ in: Sankt Bonifatius. Gedenkgabe zum zwölfhundersten Todestag, Fulda 1954. Fletcher, R., The Barbarian Conversion. From Paganism to Christianity, Berkeley-Los Angeles 1997, rep. 1999. Ganz, D., Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance, Beihefte der Francia, Band 20, Sigmaringen 1990. ———, ‘The Debate on Predestination’ in: Charles the Bald, Court and Kingdom, ed. J. Nelson, M. Gibson, Oxford 1981. Gatto, G., ‘Le voyage au paradisa christianisation des traditions folkloriques au moyen-âge’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 34, 1979. Godman, P., Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, London 1985. Goodich, M., Vita Perfecta: The Ideal of Sainthood in the thirteenth Century, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, Band 25, Stuttgart 1982. Grégoire le Grand, Dialogues, t. III, l. IV, XVIII, Sources Chrétiennes, texte critique et notes, A. de Vogüé, trad., P. Antin, Paris 1980. Gregory of Tours, Libri Historiarum X, ed. B. Krusch et W. Levison, MGH, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, I, I, Hannover 1851, rep. 1965. Haas, W., ‘Foris apostolus intus monachus. Ansgar als Mönch und Apostel des Nordens’, The Journal of Medieval History 11, 1985. Helvetius, A.M., ‘Les modèles de sainteté dans les monastères de l’espace belge du VIIIe au Xe siècle’, Le Monachisme à Byzance et en Occident du VIII e au X e siècle, in: Revue Bénédictine, CIII, 1993. Hodges, R., Dark Age Economics. The origins of towns and trade AD 600–1000, 2nd ed., 1989.
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Honée, E., ‘Willibrord in recent Historiography’ in: Missions and Missionaries, ed. P.N. Holtrop and H. McLeod, Studies in Church History, Subsidia 13, Bury St Edmunds 2000. I Deug-Su, L’opera agiografica di Alcuino, Spoleto 1983. Kehl, P. Kult und Nachleben des heiligen Bonifatius im Mittelalter (754–1200), Quellen und Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Abtei und der Diözese Fulda, Fulda 1993. Kruger, F., Dreaming in the Middle Ages, Cambridge 1992. Lammers, W., ‘Ansgar. Visionäre Erlebnisformen und Missionsauftrag’, Vestigia Mediaevalia. Ausgewählte Aufzätse zur mittelalterlichen Historiographie, Landes und Kirchengeschichte, Frankfurter Historische Abhandlungen, ed. L. Galland und alii, Bd. 19, Wiesbaden 1979. (First published as Speculum Historiale-Geschichte im Spiegel von Geschichtschreibung und Geschichtesbedeutung, herausgegeben von C. Bauer, l. Boehm und M. Müller, Freiburg-Munich 1965. Lebecq, S., ‘La famille et les apprentissages de Liudger d’après les premiers chapitres de la Vita Liudgeri d’Altfrid’, in: Haut Moyen Age, Culture, Education et Société. Etudes offertes à Pierre Riché. Coordination-Michel Sot, Paris-Nanterre 1990. Leonardi, C., ‘Modelli agiografici nel Secolo VIII. Da Beda a Uqeburga’ in: Les fonctions des saints dans le monde occidental (III e–XIII e siècle), Ecole Française de Rome, Rome 1991. Liudger, Vita Gregorii abbatis Traiectensi, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGHS XV, 1, Hannover 1887, rep. Stuttgart-New York 1963. Löwe, H., ‘Willibrord und Bonifatius. Ihre Bedeutung für die Missionsgeschichte ihre Zeit’ in: La conversione al cristianesimo nell’ Europa dell’ alto Medioevo, Settimane di Studio del centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo XIV, Spoleto 1967. Levison, W., ‘The Frisian Mission’ in: England and the Continent in the Eighth century. The Ford lectures delivered in the University of Oxford in the Hilary term, 1943, chap. III, Oxford 1946, rep. 1998. McKitterick, R., The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians 751–987, London and New York 1983. McKeon, P.R., ‘Archbishop Ebbo of Rheims’, Church History 43, 1974. McKitterick, R., ‘Script and book production’, in: G. Brown and R. McKitterick eds., Carolingian Culture, Emulation and Innovation, Cambridge 1993. MGH, Legum Sectio II, Capitularia Regum Francorum, II, Hannover 1897, Kraus reprint New York 1960. Musset, L., ‘La pénétration chrétienne dans l’Europe du Nord’ in: La conversione al cristianesimo nell’Europa dell’alto Medioevo, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto medioevo, XIV, 14–19 aprile 1966, Spoleto 1967. Nithard, Historiarum Libri III, Quellen fur Karolingischen Reichsgeschichte I. Othlonus of St Emmeram, Vita Sancti Bonifacii, MGHS II, I. Padberg, L., von, Mission und Christianisierung. Formen und Folgen bei Angelsachsen und Franken im 7 und 8 Jarhundert, Stuttgart 1995. Poulin, J.C., L’idéal de sainteté dans l’Aquitaine Carolingienne d’après les sources hagiographiques (750–950), Québec 1975. Reischmann, H.J., Willibrord-Apostel der Friesen, Seine Vita nach Alkuin und Thiofrid, Sigmaringendorf 1989. Reuter, T., ‘Saint Boniface and Europe’ in: The greatest Englishman: Essays on St Boniface and the Church at Crediton, Exeter 1980. Riché, P., Ecoles et enseignement dans le Haut Moyen Age. Fin du V e siècle-milieu du XI e siècle, Paris 1989. Richter, M., ‘The young Willibrord’ in: Willibrord. Apostel der Niedelanden, Gründer der abtei Echternach. Gedenkgabe zum 1250 Todestag des angelsächsischen Missionärs, ed. G. Kiesel und J. Schröder, Luxembourg 1989. Rimbert, Vita Sancti Anskarii, MGHS II. Ryan, J., Irish Monasticism. Origins and Development, first ed. Dublin 1931, rep. Dublin 1992.
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Schmitt, J.C., ‘The Liminality and Centrality of Dream in the Medieval West’ in: Dream Cultures. Exploration in the Comparative History of Dreaming, ed. G.G. Stroumsa, New York-Oxford 1999. Staab, F., ‘Die Angelsachsen Bonifatius (744/48–754) und Lul (754–786)’ in: Handbuch der Mainzer Kirchengeschichte 1, Christliche Antike und Mittelalter, V. I, ed. T. Jürgensmeier, Würzburg 2000. Sulpitius Severus, Life of St Martin, ed. A. Roberts, A select library of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. XI, rep. 1991. Talbot, C.H., The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany, London and New York 1953. Theganus, Vita Hludovici Imperatoris, Quellen zur Karolingischen Reichsgeschichte, II, ed. R. Rau, Berlin, n.d. Wallace-Hadrill, J.M., The Frankish Church, Oxford 1983. Ward, B., Miracles and the Medieval Mind. Theory, Record and Event 1000–1215, Philadelphia 1982. Wattenbach, W., Alcuini Vita Sancti Willibrordi (Introduction), Monumenta Alcuiniana. Weiler, A.G., Willibrords missie. Christendom en cultuur in de zevende en achtste eeuw, Hilversum 1989. Willibald, Vita Sancti Bonifacii, Incipit, MGHS II. Wood, I., ‘Christians and pagans in ninth century Scandinavia’ in The Christianization of Scandinavia ed. B. Sawyer, P. Sawyer, Alingsos 1987.
THE CATHAR COMMUNITY IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE AND ITS RELIGIOUS SELF-DEFINITION AS GOD’S HOLY PEOPLE Daniela Müller Catholic Theological University of Utrecht, The Netherlands The present volume is dedicated to the question of which conceptions of the topos “people of God” are to be found in Judaism and Christianity. In what follows, we shall be concerned with the particular outlook of the Cathars, a Christian movement that was condemned as heretical by the medieval church. Yet, here too, the context will not only be the “Christian” one in the strict sense of the word, but Judaism will also be clearly brought into view. For many readers, this may seem surprising, yet the reason for it is evident: In the south of France, specifically in the area known as Languedoc, the Jewish presence can be traced back to late antiquity.1 Thus, in 506 ce, the Council of Agde, forbade all contact between Jews and Christians. Later, in 820 ce, a letter by Agobard of Lyon informs us that Jews were to be found, not only in his cathedral city of Lyon, but in the entire territory of Languedoc.2 Only in the 12th century did the Jewish community rise to cultural and financial heights, so that the region became one of the most important Jewish centres in medieval Western Europe.3 Narbonne (with approximately 300 Jews), Saint Gilles du Gard, Béziers, Montpellier, Lunel, Vauvert—they all testify to the presence of great Jewish thinkers. Narbonne in particular became famous as a rabbinical study centre, and even in Carcassonne, there were about 150 Jewish households in 1304. In Lunel, there was the renowned Talmudic school led by Rabbi Abraham. Jewish
1 Cf. G. Nahon, Inscriptions hébraiques et juives de France médiéval, Paris 1986, v.a. 348–358. 2 See St. Vrevin, L’Eglise de Lyon et les Juifs à l’époque carolingienne sous les épiscopats d’Agobard et Amolon, maitrise d’histoire, dir. M. Rubellin, université de Lyon2, 1997. 3 Cf. on what follows the informative survey by J. Shatzmiller, ‘Les Juifs du Languedoc avant 1306’, in: Le Pays Cathare. Les religions médiévales et leurs expressions méridionales, Paris 2000, 173–182.
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refugees from Andalusia translated from Arabic both the writings of Jewish authors (who were writing in Arabic) and works by Greek philosophers, of which the original versions had long been lost. The ideas of Muslim scholars also found their way into the JudaeoChristian West in this way. In Lunel, several generations of a single family, the Tibbonides, were responsible for this important achievement in cultural transfer. Could there, then, have been no contact between Jews and the Cathar movement, which was operating during the same period and in the same geographical space? Would not these two communities, both of which were equally frowned upon by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, have had contact with one another? For a long time already, Jewish researchers have assumed a possible mutual influence between the proponents of the Jewish mystical teachings of the Kabbala on the one hand, and the Cathars on the other. Gershom Scholem4 and Shulimath Shahar5 in particular have repeatedly sought to discover parallels. Juxtaposed to these attempts are, however, also reports of a consistently hostile attitude of the Jewish scholars towards the Cathars. Thus Meir ben Simon of Narbonne regarded the legal stipulation according to which the son of a heretic lost his entire inheritance—even if the son himself was orthodox—as right and just.6 However, Meir ben Simon also exhibited a disapproving attitude towards the Kabbalists, so that a link might still have existed between the Kabbala and Catharism. Nevertheless, in what follows, we shall not be concerned with the question of mutual influence between the Jews and the Cathars—a question with respect to which researchers have thus far tended to take their point of departure with the Jews—but rather with the question of the extent to which the Cathars dealt with the Jews at all in their teachings, and how they, the Cathars, saw the Jews. Embedded in this question is the particular context of how the Cathars viewed their own faith-community, and how they saw themselves in distinction from others.
4
Cf. esp. his introductory work Ursprung und Anfänge der Kabbala, Berlin 1962. Thus e.g. ‘Ecrits cathares et commentaire d’Abraham Abulafia sur le “Livre de la Création”: Images et idées communes’, in: Cahiers de Fanjeaux 12, 1977, 345–362. 6 Cf. on this Shatzmiller, Languedoc 181. 5
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Although the history of the Cathars7 in the south of France is generally known, I shall highlight some relevant facts.8 In the middle of the 12th century, the south of France became the centre of a movement, the members of which called themselves “good Christians” and “good Christian women”. Their opponents labelled them the attribute “Cathars”9 and “Albigenses”.10 The movement was divided into two classes: the really good Christians (men and women), called ‘perfecti’ by their opponents, and the ‘believers’, the so-called ‘croyants’. The former had received the ‘consolamentum’, the baptism by the Holy Spirit, and had to observe strict rules of fasting and asceticism, and conform to the highest moral standards. The latter were, apart from certain ritual habits, above all responsible for feeding and providing accommodation for the baptized. Althought, at first, especially due to the political and social environment, a very favorable climate existed in Southern France for the development of the movement, so that it quickly spread among the nobility and in the municipal milieu, it soon met with fierce opposition and persecution. The Catholic Church considered the ‘good Christian men and women’ as particularly dangerous, the
7 Jean-Louis Biget proved in a thorough study that the South French Cathars were never named, and never called themselves Cathars. The political undertone of the term “Albigenses”, which was attributed to them, should not be underestimated, cf. J.-L. Biget, “Les Albigeois”, Remarques sur une dénomination, in: Inventer l’Hérésie? Discours polémique et pouvoirs avant l’inquisition (Collection Du Centre d’Etudes Medievales de Nice, vol. 2), sous la direction de Monique Zerner, Nice 1998, 219–257. Here, he declares quite clearly: “Les heretiques méridionaux n’ont jamais pris, ni recu, au cours du Moyen Age, le nom de cathares”, pg. 219, note 2. Thus the terms Catharism and Cathars are really anachronistic. However, since the late 1950s, especially through the general reception of Arno Borst’s book Die Katharer (Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 12), Stuttgart 1953, they have become conventional in scholarship, and have not, thus far, been questioned, except in France. In full awareness of the purely conventional character of the term, I shall use both “Cathars” and “Cathar women”, as this will contribute to an even better understanding. 8 Among the growing number of publications on the Cathars or Albigenses over the last 20 years, the following examples may be mentioned: J. Duvernoy, Le Catharisme, vol. 1: L’Histoire des Cathares, Toulouse 1976, vol. 2: La Religion des Cathares, Toulouse 1979; G. Rottenwöhrer, Der Katharismus, 4 Bde., Bad Honnef 1982–1993 or M. Lambert, The Cathars, Oxford 1998. 9 Cf. Eckbert von Schönau, Sermones XIII contra Catharos, PL 195, col. 11–102. 10 Cf. Chronicles of the Prior of the Abbey St. Pierre de Vigeois, Geoffrey du Breuil, ed. Bouquet, Recueil des historiens de la France, t. XII 1871, p. 448 E, Biget, op. cit. p. 244.
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embodiment of the ‘heretica pravitas’, and the very incarnation of evil. Various forces joined in attacking them. The ideological dispute, which soon arose, was fuelled and intensified by the Cistercian order, and several political opponents took advantage of the opportunity offered by the rise of Catharism to take a stance against the wealthy Midi. Between 1209 and 1229, the Albigensian crusade took place, in the course of which numerous male and female heretics who were unwilling to recant, died at the stake. In the ’30s of the 13th century, the papal inquisition acted successfully against heresy by means of new trial methods. By the end of the 13th century, when Catharism seemed to have nearly disappeared in the south of France, the mission of the notorious Autier led to the re-emergence of a prosperous church in the Lower Pyrenees. Yet, through the shrewd actions of the episcopal inquisitor Jacques Fournier, later pope Benedict XII, this last revival ended with the death of the last South French bonhomme, Guillaume Belibaste, on the stake.11 These facts seem very clear and unequivocal. Yet, as far as our knowledge about Cathar beliefs is concerned, one methodological consideration needs to be made stated clearly from the outset: It is generally known that sources are only selectively available to historians. In the case of heretics, they mostly issue from their opponents. Apart from the corpus of Inquisition records, we have to depend on polemical theological pamphlets, letters and instructions by papal legates, and church chronicles. All these kinds of sources should be suspected a priori of being quite prejudiced, and they often tell us more about the construction of the phenomenon of heresy by its opponents than about the insider-perspective of the heretics themselves. The vague concept of heresy could undoubtedly be employed for various purposes, e.g. to silence uncompromising reformers in the same way as happens with political opponents.12 By using a careful and proper his11 For further details about his life and death see e.g. M. Roquebert, Les Cathares. De la chute de Montségur aux derniers bûchers. 1244–1329, 1998, Deuxième partie, nr. 19, 472–499. The French poet Henri Gougaud wrote a very impressive novel about him: H. Gougaud, Bélibaste, german transl. Die Verwandlungen des Bélibaste. Die Lebensgeschichte des letzten Katharers, Bad Münstereifel 1988. 12 Nevertheless the findings of some recent research on Catharism seem somewhat exaggerated, see the booklet “Inventer l’Hérésie”, cit. fn. 1. Concerning the “old” question of whether there was a reality behind the stated facts, or whether it was merely a social construction, I believe that the truth can only be explored by means of skillful individual research, and not by means of generalisations.
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torical method, however, we shall be able to draw valuable information from these sources, and acquire knowledge about real incidents, even if the general precautions required for the evaluation of historical documents have to be observed with special rigor when dealing with the Inquisition. Furthermore, we can obtain quite a precise idea of the Cathar doctrine as it was communicated among ‘ordinary people’ or normal believers, but we cannot exclude the possibility that a specific teaching existed that was intended exclusively for the small group of “good Christians”, and that remains unknown to us.
It should thus be evident just how difficult it is to reconstruct the self-definition of the Cathars from the available sources, tendentious as the latter mostly are. In approaching this question, three different themes will be dealt with: 1) What did the Cathars say about themselves? 2) What was their ecclesiology? 3) What did they believe about the destiny of theirs adversaries? The focus of the present study is, then, on the question of how the Cathars saw their adversaries, rather than how those adversaries saw the Cathars.13 The Cathars The Cathars regarded themselves as God’s favored community. They believed that the human soul was in fact the soul of one of the fallen angels, imprisoned in the human body, which is a creation of the devil. In the course of the consolamentum, the man or woman received the angel’s spirit, which was seen as part of God’s spirit. This is why those who were believed to have received this baptism were regarded and venerated as bearers of God’s spirit. It was thanks to this spirit that they could no longer sin, and that they could do only good.14 13 On Jewish views see the brilliant article by J. Shatzmiller, ‘L’Hérésie des Albigeois vue par les Juifs au XIIIe siècle’, in: Heresis, No. 35, 59–81, dealing with Jewish opinions, or D. Berger, ‘Christian Heresy and Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Harvard Theological Review 68 (1975) 298–303. 14 For further details see D. Müller, Frauen vor der Inquisition. Lebensform, Glaubenszeugnis und Aburteilung der Deutschen und Französischen Katharerinnen (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte, Abt. Abendländische
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The fallen angels, a notion taken from biblical writings like Apocalypse 12,7, were identified with the people of Israel.15 This was necessary because the dualistic Cathars generally interpreted the God of the First Testament as the God of the Evil,16 and therefore saw all matter as equally evil. Since man was made not only by God, but also—as far as his body is concerned—by the devil, no actually existing people could ever be good or holy in the eyes of the Cathars.17 Yet, since Christ himself had used the term “Israel” to designate his holy community, a new interpretation was necessary, and this could be only a spiritual one would suffice: The term “Israel” denoted the angels, and hence, since they regarded themselves as fallen angels, the Cathars themselves. The Cathars saw themselves as God’s holy people, imprisoned by the devil, yet no longer under his power, thanks to the consolamentum. The Cathars claimed that they were following God’s way, and had the correct (Christian) belief. They loved Christ, and followed in the footsteps of the apostles, leading a holy, strict and ascetic life.18 They prayed to God for the people, and passed on the spirit of which they were the bearers. They did not sin, and endured many pains for the sake of their belief. People could only be redeemed through the Cathars. They were the only possible way to redemption, because they alone had the right Christian knowledge and the right Christian belief, which derived directly from Christ. Once the angels had fallen, their liberation could only be realized once humans as bearers of the angels’ souls converted to Catharism, and received the consolamentum. By contrast, the number of those who were members of the people of God by birth was necessarily very limited.
Religionsgeschichte Bd. 166) Mainz 1996, Zweites Kapitel: Elemente katharischer Glaubenslehre, especially 192–217, which cites several sources. 15 See Moneta von Cremona, Adversus Catharos et Valdenses libri quinque, ed. Th. A. Ricchini, Rom 1743, Liber de duobus principiis, ed. Chr. Thouzellier (Sources Chrétiennes 198), Paris 1973, especially 252–254. 16 This is supported by many references; see e.g. Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay, Histoire Albigeoise, ed. P. Guébin/H. Maisonneuve (Eglise et Etat au Moyen Age) Paris 1951, 5. 17 For more aspects of their anthropology see Müller, 131–145. 18 See the exposition by Pierre Autier, ed. in: J. Duvernoy (publisher), Le registre d’Inquisition de Iacobus Fornerii, évêque de Pamiers (1318–1325). 3 volumes (Bibliothèque Méridionale 41, ser. 2), Toulouse 1965, here III, 123ff.
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All Cathars would be redeemed when they died. The real martyrs were those who were burnt alive, thereby imitating the suffering of Christ.19 The inquisitorial sources of the late 13th century contain statements that designate the Cathars with very specific words such as “Holy Spirit”, “the beautiful people”, “doctors”, or “God’s sheep”. This brief characterization of the Cathars shows that they had an extraordinarily clear self-definition, and a strong self-consciousness: The Cathars were convinced that they—and only they—were the bearers of God’s spirit, and were therefore already redeemed. They firmly believed that redemption was only possible through the mediation of their church, which was the sole legitimate church that had received from Christ the instruction to return the fallen angels to heaven. Ecclesiology 20 The self-perception of the Cathars, as sketched above, was of course closely connected with their ideas about their church. Christ himself was seen as the instructor of the Cathar church, the true “catholic” church, which possessed the only means to obtain redemption: the consolamentum. Around 1274, the Cathar believer Pierre Garcias proclaimed that pope Sylvester I (314–335) was the Antichrist.21 The Catholic Church was said to have originated during his reign, and to have initiated the corruption of the church. The Cathars were the only ones to have continued in the right manner, as desired by God. This idea— that both churches, the Catholic and the Cathar, shared the same origin, and that the Catholic church is in fact a corruption of this true apostolic church—is also to be found in one of the earliest testimonies to Catharism in Western Europe: The German monk Everwinus of Steinfeld wrote in his letter “laetabor ego” of around 1143 that the Cathars in the Rhineland believed that pseudo-prophets
19
See the tract De haeresi catharorum in Lombardia, ed. A. Dondaine, La hiérarchie catare en Italie, I, in: Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 19, 1949, 280–312. 20 For further details see D. Müller, Albigenser—die wahre Kirche? Eine Untersuchung zum Kirchenverständnis der „ecclesia Dei“, Würzburg 1986. 21 Pierre Garcias, in: C. Douais (ed.), Documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’Inquisition dans le Languedoc, 2 vols, Paris 1900, here vol. 2, 84, 97.
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corrupted the Catholics in the time of the martyrs, and that, since that time, the Cathars had been forced underground.22 The Cathar church was thus seen as very ancient, and the only true Church, and its members as the legitimate successors to the apostles. The last “good Christian” in the south of France, Guillelmus Belibaste, went even further at this point. According to him, the corruption of the true church had not begun in the time of pope Sylvester, but already shortly after the death of St. Peter. so that the Cathar church was truly the only apostolic church ever to have existed.23 In fact, already somewhat earlier, Joachim of Fiore had reported that the Cathars considered themselves the real Catholics, and defenders of the true doctrine.24 Be that as it may, by accusing the Catholic church of having corrupted the true doctrine, Guillelmus invoked the same argument that was used by Catholics against the Cathars. During the last phase of Catharism in the south of France, Guillelmus Belibaste became convinced that a special sort of mission was required.25 As a church, they now had the task of redeeming not only themselves, but as many people as possible. All Cathars, both “good Christians” and “believers”, who contributed to the growth of the Cathar church, were believed to be holy. No doubt, this conviction can be explained, given the situation of the Cathar church in the fourteenth century, when survival was becoming more and more difficult for the community. In this situation, the simple believer came to be more highly esteemed than before. The fewer the number of “good Christians” became, the more important did the task of the believers become. This demonstrates to what extent the Cathar doctrine adapted to the reality of the situation of that time. It was also Guillelmus who spoke, expressis verbis, about his church as the community of the saints. All Cathars were saints by their nature, which was an angelic nature. Only the Cathar people would be redeemed, while the rest of humankind would be condemned.26
22
Everwin von Steinfeld, Epistola ad S. Bernardum, ed. PL 182, 678. Deposition of Arnaldus Cicredi, in Fournier (note 14), vol. 2, 50. 24 Joachim of Fiore, Expositio in Apocalypsim, ed. Rindoni/Pasini, Venice 1527, Ndr. Frankfurt 1964, 3. 25 Ed. In Fournier (note 14), vol. 3, 480ff. 26 Ibid., 3, 221. 23
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Adversaries The idea that everyone but the Cathars were condemned, makes clear how the Cathars situated themselves in relation to non-Cathars. According to them, mankind was divided into two categories of people, the Cathars, who would be redeemed, and the non-Cathars, who were condemned. Taken this as a broad background, we can now examine more closely the attitude of the Cathars towards two groups that are of special interest for present purposes: members of the Catholic Church, and Jews. The Catholic Church As has already been explained, the Cathar attitude towards the Catholic Church was characterized by extreme hostility and fierce competitiveness. According to the Cathars, the Catholic Church was profoundly corrupt. It had abandoned the way of Christ and, worse still, was hypocritical because it pretended to possess the power of redemption, when in fact it was quite powerless to provide any sort of liberation from evil. Nobody could be redeemed by the Catholic faith.27 Designations like “whore”, ”bawd” and “Synagogue”28 appeared very often when the Catholic Church was mentioned or alluded to. Catholic clerics were called wolves and dogs, because they persecuted the Cathars.29 According to the Cathars, the Catholic priests knew very well what the way of God is, but did not pass on their knowledge to the people. They prevented them from finding the true way, and failed to inform them about the real content of God’s gospel. Thus the Catholic Church taught people to make the sign of the cross and, therefore, to believe in three gods.30
27 So Pierre Autier, in Fournier (note 14), vol. 3, 123f. on the chronicler Perre de-Vaux-de-Cernay (note 12), 50. 28 Ibid. 29 See Pierre Gracias, ed. Collection Doat 25, 3r; 39r; 46v. 30 Ibid.
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The attitude adopted by the Cathars towards the Jews is much more complex. The Cathar faith as such entailed a very negative and hostile view of Judaism. This was the logical consequence of their explicit dualism, which was based on the idea that all material things belong to the sphere of evil, and that God had created spiritual things only. Starting from this presupposition, only two approaches to the First Testament were possible. One had either to reject the entire book as a product of evil, or to reinterpret it in a spiritual way. Rejecting the whole book was no real option because the Second Testament contained many references to the First, which was indispensable for demonstrating that the Cathars constituted the only holy people. In general, this led to a selective reading of the Bible. Whereas the Cathars regarded themselves as the people of Israel described in the First Testament, they took the anti-Jewish passages of the Second Testament to refer to the Catholic Church: Thus, the Synagogue that denied Christ was interpreted as being the Catholic Church, and the Pharisees were the Catholic priests.31 But how did the Cathars view the actually existing Jewish community? According to the Tractatus (13 c.), the Jews did not follow the words of Christ, and the Pharisees cleaned neither the inner spirit nor the outer body.32 Here the problems begin. Most authors take these positions to betray an “antisemitische Tendenz”33 among the Cathars. However, as we examine these positions more carefully, the question arises whether such notions should not also be understood in a spiritual sense. In fact, we may perhaps conclude that all people, whether Jewish or not, were actually seen as Jewish in a specific sense, namely, that they were members of the Catholic Church. The word ‘Jew’ did not necessarily refer to a member of the Jewish people as we understand it today, but, in a metaphoric sense, to anybody who was unwilling to accept the redemption realised by Christ as being available exclusively in the Cathar Church.
31
Thus the bonhomme Andreas Tavernier, in Fournier (note 14), vol. 1, 473. Un Traité cathare inédit du début du XIII e siècle d’après le Liber contra manicheos de Durand de Huesca (Bibliothèque de l’Université de Louvain) 1961, 166. 33 Thus Gerard Rottenwöhrer (note 2), vol. 4, 306. 32
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In all probability, Guillelmus Belibasta was the only Cathar in the south of France to have spoken unambiguously in a very negative and hostile way about actually existing Jews. According him, they were guilty of the death of Christ who in fact only appeared to be dead to them, but was not so in reality. They were Satan’s people in body and soul, and the Pharisees were most responsible, among the various Jewish groups, for Christ’s suffering and death. Therefore, Belibasta was convinced that redemption is not possible for the Jews, and that they would not get the opportunity to receive the consolamentum—because they lacked the angelic spirit inside of them.34 Is it a mere coincidence, we may ask, that Guillelmus spent a long time in exile in Catalonia, where he might have come into contact with very definite anti-Judac notions? I shall not pursue this question here, but it at least deserves to be raised. It should be kept in mind, moreover, that, by the time of his preaching, the edict dispelling Jews issued by King Philippe IV had already been executed, with no less than 1306 Jews having been driven from the kingdom. Before he could get his hands on their wealth by disbanding the temple orders, he had thereby already set an example beforehand for supplementing his notoriously empty state coffers. The Jews, who worked in the finance industry, were the perfect target for this purpose. Thus Bélibaste would no longer have encountered any Jews in France itself. By contrast, the remarks of Pierre Autier,35 who can be regarded as the founder of the last Cathar church in the south of France, point in a different direction. He provides evidence of a very conciliatory way of thinking about the destiny of non-Cathars: He stated ex pressis verbis that some Jews, Catholics and Muslims could be saved.36 Perhaps it was precisely the relentless driving away of the Jews from France that motivated Autier to judge them more mildly, and to count them among the persecuted, seeing as they were the victims
34
E.g. In Fournier (note 14) 3, 480. For further details about his life and personality see J. Duvernoy, Pierre Autier, in: Cahiers d’Etudes Cathares 47, 1970, 9–49; more generally about the last Cathars J.-M. Vidal, Doctrine et morale des derniers ministres albigeois, in: Revue des questions historiques, t. XLI, 1909, 357–409 and t. LXII, 5–48. Quite recent: H.-Chr. Stoodt, Katharismus im Untergrund: Die Reorganisation durch Petrus Auterii 1300– 1310, Tübingen 1996. 36 Pierre Autier, in Fournier (note 14), 3, 124. 35
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of both powers, church and kingdom. For the Cathars, persecution and martyrdom always bestowed much legitimacy in proving true faith, and almost immediately counted as an indication of being truly saved. Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear what exactly he understood by this: Did he believe that these people would get the opportunity to receive the consolamentum and, therefore, could be regarded as future Cathars, or did he really have in view a distinct way of redemption for them, just as Joachim of Fiore did with regard to Jews and Muslims?37 Pierre Autier received his Cathar education in Italy, and it does not seem impossible that he might have heard there of the ideas of this Calabian abbot. Apart from that possibility, there may also have been other contacts between Cathars and Jews. Thus it is known that, during the beginning of the Cathar mission in Italy, one of the leaders was named Johannes Judaeus.38 Until now, no one has yet tried to get more information about this presumably Jewish Cathar, of even signalled the existence of a Jewish Cathar as something require an explanation. It could certainly have been the case that the chronicler Anselm of Alexandria reported this name with the intention of casting the movement in an unfavourable light. It should be observed, in this regard, that he also claimed that a gravedigger had been the original leader of the group. Could it be that he wanted to show, in this way, that both men belonged to social groups that were held most in contempt in the Middle Ages? After all, what better way could there be to disqualify the whole movement? All three these groups—Cathars, Jews and gravediggers—easily fell victim to largescale persecution as “others” during the late Middel Ages, which is why Robert Moore speaks of a “persecuting society”.39 Or is it all simply based on a copying error? Some uncertainty remains as to what the Cathars taught concerning the Jews, but on the whole, the anti-Semitism often attrib-
37 See on this idea the excellent study by R.E. Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham. Medieval Millenarians and the Jews, Pennsylvania 2001. 38 According to Ansel of Alexandria, Tractatus de haereticis, ed. A. Dondaine, La Hiérarchie Cathare en Italie, II, in: Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 20, Rom 1950, 308–324 here 308f. 39 R. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society. Power and Deviance in Western Europe 950 –1250, Oxford, 1987 and The First European Revolution. C. 970 –1215, Oxford 2000.
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uted to them is based on a faulty interpretation of their distinctive allegorical exegesis of the Bible. True, they used the term “Jews” in a very negative and virtually diabolical sense. It remains open to discussion, however, whether they took the word “Jews” to refer to a spiritual entity, or to actually existing people. In conclusion, it should be pointed out that the Cathars regarded themselves as the true, holy and apostolic community, founded directly by Christ, and thus the only community in the world that could to lead people to salvation. The division of the world into two categories of people, Cathars and non-Cathars, was a logical consequence of that conviction. This is what made the difference. This was the only thing that mattered. The result of their specific way of interpreting the Bible was that, for them, the Catholics played the same role that the Jews played for Catholics at the time. They were the shadow, the corrupted brother. They could get access to true knowledge, yet obstinately refused to do so, it was thought. Let me conclude with a general warning by Gerard Rottenwöhrer regarding the interpretation of Cathar theology: It (Cathar theology) was not so much a closed, conceptual, logical and well thought-out construct, and much less a unitary one, but rather an attempt, on the basis of more or less implicit presuppositions, and on biblical grounds, to think salvation-historically.40
Thus, above all, the Cathars were not discussants advancing arguments in a properly systematic and pointed way; rather, they tried to put “salvation history” first. Anti-Semitism as a concrete historical phenomenon was thus not real option for them.
40
G. Rottenwöhrer (note 2) IV/2, 369.
COMMUNITY RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD ITS MEMBERS: THE CASE OF RANSOM OF CAPTIVES Yvonne Friedman Bar-Ilan University, Israel As a rule the legal sources treating the notion of community concentrate on the community’s right to impose duties on its individual members (Grossman 1975:175–199). These duties encompass such areas as taxation, the right to ask the individual to relinquish his property and wishes, and even to suffer death for the community’s sake. The willingness of the individual to contribute to communal needs has its rewards, conferring recognition on the individual as a group member. As the medieval community was usually defined as a holy entity, via their contribution to their community, individuals attained membership in a holy people. Using redemption of captives as an example, I would like to address the question of the individualcommunity relationship in Christianity and Judaism from the opposite standpoint, namely, the community’s duties toward its members. Although the medieval denominations shared the concept of religious community, their communal structures and their perceptions of the community’s duty to its members differed. One communal responsibility is caring for the life and welfare of its members, both soldiers and civilians, through redemption of captives. This could be accomplished by exchanging captives, usually at the state level, or by paying ransom, either individually or as a communal deed. The thirteenth-century Spanish legal code, Las siete partidas, defines this responsibility as follows: Men ought naturally to feel sorrow for members of their own religion when, as captives, they fall into the power of the enemy, for the reason that they are deprived of liberty, which is the most precious thing which men can enjoy in this world. . . . First, we shall describe what a captive is, and how captives should be liberated; and afterwards who those are who are bound to set them free. (Las siete partidas, 2:29:3)
Although community is here equated with religious denomination, the law goes on to assign responsibility for ransom to the king or to the lord who sent the soldier into battle. This compassionate
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‘Salladin takes captives’, showing a burning city and soldiers taking civilians captive, MS Thompson 12, fol. 161r (The British Library)
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attitude toward captives was not, however, typical of eleventh-totwelfth-century medieval western Christian society. It represents the culmination of a process whereby the ransom of captives changed from a private problem to a communal and institutional task. Similar to the Siete partidas, medieval Jewish society understood the context of the individual-community relationship as the religious community. Indeed, in writing about themselves or to other Jewish communities, the term çdwq tlyhq (q"q), ‘holy community’, almost always precedes the name of the particular town. Relationships between Jews of different geographical areas were encompassed by the dictum: ‘All Israel are responsible for each other’. The Jewish Kahal assumed the responsibilities of kin, religious community, political entity, and even of military unit. In the contemporary Christian society these functions were differentiated, with each entity possessing its own civic or military role. Thus, crusaders fighting the Muslims in the East or in Spain saw themselves as a Christian community engaging their Muslim foes in a holy war. At the same time, a particular individual might be affiliated with a specific church, militia, kingdom, or city and have special ties and responsibilities to each of these defined entities alongside expectations that said entity would assume responsibility for his safety. The shift in Christian society from a particularistic, modular outlook to a more global, ecumenical one can be traced during the High Middle Ages. As mirrored by the issues of captivity and ransom, comparison of these changes to the mores of the Jewish and Muslim societies encountered in East and West is instructive. Jewish tradition viewed the ransom of their fellow Jews who fell captive as a central communal duty. Although not a biblical commandment, post-biblical Jewish traditions marked ransom of captives as a meritorious deed of charity, charity par excellence, or as ‘a great precept’ in rabbinic parlance (BT Baba Batra 8b). This led to the formulation of detailed regulations defining its implementation and to a praxis of ransom of individuals by Jewish communities worldwide. The Church tradition deeming ransom of captives an important act of charity was, in Carolyn Osiek’s opinion, based on its Jewish heritage (Osiek 1981:365–386). Christianity, as opposed to Judaism, developed a theology of ransom in which the importance of the ransomer outweighed that of the captive (Friedman 2000:161–2; 2002: 56–60). For Christianity, redemption was not primarily an act of communal concern but rather a means of identification with the
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King, Jesus: ‘I was in prison and you came to me’ (Matt. 25:36). This virtuous act is equated with feeding the hungry, giving shelter and clothing to the needy, and visiting the sick, all components of the traditional biblical concept of charity (Matt. 25:36, 39, 43). Thus, the object of charitable deeds was in a sense not the needy recipient, but rather the benefactor who perfected his religious life by imitating Jesus, part of an individual effort to attain holiness. In early medieval Christian society this theological concept was realized in the praxis of ransom by saintly bishops in both West and East. At that time, the state—the Roman Empire or the Frankish kingdom—neither exchanged prisoners of war nor took responsibility for its members. In early Roman law prisoners of war had the status of slaves, forfeiting their civil rights together with their freedom. No longer regarded as a member of the civic body, the political community bore no responsibility for a prisoner of war. Although he could be ransomed by his family or coreligionists, the empire did not enter into prisoner exchanges (Rotman 2002:100–160). In the fourth century, however, the bishop Ambrosius of Milano mandated that church vessels could be sold or melted down to ransom captives, a principle later incorporated into canon law and promulgated in the fifteenth canon of the Fourth Council of Constantinople 869/70. Vasa sacra, nisi pro redemptione captivorum non sunt alienanda. Apostolicos et paternos canones renovans hec sancta et universalis sinodus diffinivit, neminem prorsus episcopum vendere vel utcumque alienare cimilia et vasa sacrata, excepta causa olim ab antiquis canonibus ordinata, videlicet pro redemptione captivorum. . . . Melius fuerat, ut vasa viventium servares quam metallorum. (Corpus iuris canonici I, Secunda pars, C. XII, q. II, c. 13–16, 690–91, 710; Mansi 1960: vol. 16, col. 168)
Although also incorporated into Late Roman–Christian civil law, the expectation was that the ‘Christians living nearby’—not the generals—should assume responsibility for the problem of ransom (Theodosian Code and Novels 1952:5.6.2, 107–108, in: Brundage 2002, 871–872). The Talmudic parallel permits funds or materials earmarked for synagogue construction to be diverted from that goal only for the purpose of ransoming captives (BT BB 3b; cf. Maimonides, 1979, 8:11). Whereas there is much evidence for Jewish communities raising funds to free captives, early Western Christianity seems to have left such saintly behavior in the hands of bishops. William Klingshirn maintains that in sixth-century Gaul the ransom of captives was not only or even primarily an act of Christian charity (Klingshirn 1985:
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183–203). It was also a power- and influence-aggrandizing tool in the hands of the bishop overseeing the act of redemption. Caesarius of Arles used ransoming of captives to extend his ecclesiastical authority in Gaul, thus combining charity and power (ibid.). In the East, after his conquest of Sura in 540, the Persian king Chosroe approached a neighboring bishop to ransom the captives, not the emperor Justinian or his general (Procopius: BP: II, 5). It should also be noted that the heavy ecclesiastical involvement in ransoming captives, coupled with the perception of this act as a saintly attribute, perhaps indicates that responsibility for ransoming captives did not rest with the lay community, notwithstanding the provisions of the Justinian Code. In the tenth and eleventh centuries miracle stories in which a saint intervened and released prisoners abounded, perhaps indicating that supernatural forces were needed to free captives (Sigal 1985:268; Dunbabin 2002:132–136). Although comparison of early medieval religious tenets in Judaism and Christianity exhibits striking similarities, the praxis of ransom shows marked differences. When the Vikings captured Emma, the wife of the viscount of Limoges in 1010, church vessels were sold to pay her ransom (Adhemar of Chabannes, 3:44:164), but we hear of no communal effort on her behalf. Her captivity was seen as her family’s private problem; it could, however, receive assistance from the church. Considered a pious act, as a rule ransom of captives was not the responsibility of the lay leader toward his warriors in pre-crusader Western Europe. Recently, Matthew Strickland claimed that in the mid-eleventh century one can discern a difference between French as opposed to English and Viking behavior toward prisoners of war. In his view, if in 1066 the English warriors at Stamford Bridge gave no quarter to their defeated enemies, by 1119, at the Norman-French battle of Brémule there were few casualties and many captives taken (Strickland 2001:93–121). Strickland traces this difference back to earlier periods, but fails to show a widespread, organized, communal effort to ransom captives even among his more chivalrous French. He does, however, mention the cases of ecclesiastical and secular figures ransomed from the Vikings. In 914 the Welsh bishop Cyfeliog of Archenfield was redeemed by Edward the Elder, King of Wessex. In 939 the Norse leader Olaf Gothfrithsson seized Wulfrun, the mother of the Mercian nobleman Wulfric Spott for ransom (ibid., 99). In 858 Abbot Louis of St Denis and his brother Gauzlin were ransomed for an enormous sum levied from
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the churches of Neustria. However, when the Carolingian knight Datus had to choose between his warhorse and the release of his captive mother he preferred to keep the horse (Ermoldus Nigellus 1932:22–24). According to Strickland, ‘the Norman Conquest, however, was to mark the importation into England of a differing military ethos, which placed an increasing stress on ransom and the sparing of knightly captives’ (Strickland 2001:95). For his part, Jean Flori dates the European appearance of chivalry as an ideological notion to the mid-twelfth century (Flori 1986), as opposed to Strickland who predates the inception of its spread a century earlier. In her book about imprisonment in Europe from 1100–1300, Jean Dunbabin accepts Strickland’s dating of the phenomenon. Significantly, however, almost all the illustrative examples provided by her date only from the twelfth century onwards, raising doubts regarding the precise determination of the inception of chivalric mores in Europe (Dunbabin 2002:63, 87). She rightfully sees, however, the year 1300 as a watershed: ‘It is true that by 1300 the rules had become clearer, and the refusal to grant ransom to captive soldiers was seen as a breach of the code of conduct proper to a gentleman, even as an act of injustice’ (ibid.: 10). The twelfth-century testimony of Rabbi Joseph Kimhi (1105–70), an anti-Christian polemicist from Narbonne, presents a different picture. He contrasted Christian indifference to ransom to Jewish concern for their coreligionists: This is so with all the Jews in the world who act toward their brethren with compassion. If they see their brother a captive, they ransom him; [if ] naked, they clothe him, and do not allow him to go about begging. They send him provisions in secret. . . . No one can deny that all these good traits which I mentioned are found among the Jews and [that] their opposites [are found] among Christians. (Talmage 1972:33)
Although written in a polemical context, these remarks provide external evidence that ransom was not the regular praxis in Christian society. The Jewish polemicist saw ransom of captives as a sphere of communal responsibility not addressed by contemporary Christian society. The special Jewish sensitivity to the plight of their captives stemmed from the practical fact that they were always a minority in the Middle Ages and therefore more exposed to loss of freedom. But it also derived from a deep-rooted Jewish feeling that the whole people were in captivity, that is exile, and a double captivity was
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unbearable. Geula-redemption was understood both as a legal, biblical concept of restoring a person to the bosom of his family and as the meta-historical sphere of divine redemption of the people of Israel by God (Blidstein 1992:20–21). The prayers for redemption expressed the hope that if Jews ransom their captives, God would redeem them from captivity (Friedman 2000:162). When compared to eastern mores, the Western Christian society’s absence of communal ransom becomes even more pronounced. From the mid-eighth century the Byzantine Empire regularly exchanged captives with its Muslim foes. The exchange of captives became a comparatively frequent event—thirty-seven such exchanges are recorded for the two-hundred-year period between 769 and 969—and was an integral part of negotiations conducted by the belligerents (KoliaDermitzaki 2000:583–620; Friedman 2002:33–54). In Islam, the fate of the captives was clearly the responsibility of the Muslim Ummah, here represented by the caliph or local commander. In the tenth century we find a functioning framework of set prices and official mediators to handle the captive exchanges. Ransom of captives in Islam was both a duty of the political leader and a religious tenet of charity relevant to the individual believer (Koran 47:4–5, 9:60). The encounter between Western Christianity and the Mediterranean world during the crusades led to a gradual change in crusader mores. In my opinion, the First Crusaders flatly refused to take any responsibility for their captives and neither expected nor gave quarter (Friedman 2002:13–32). Although quite willing to free prisoners of war by force, paying ransom was not seen as a viable solution to their plight. Captivity was viewed as the captive’s private quandary and even a king could not expect his vassals to ransom him. Only gradually did the crusaders learn the advantages of the Muslim mores, with the economic incentive playing an influential role in their acceptance of responsibility for captives. Albeit, second- and third-generation Franks in the East learned to conduct negotiations on behalf of their captives, yet at that time there were still no public funds, whether lay or ecclesiastical, set aside to solve what must have been a widespread problem in a fighting society. Prominent Frankish nobles often faced long years of captivity in Muslim dungeons. The infamous Reynald of Châtillon, the lord of Antioch, spent nearly sixteen years in captivity. William of Tyre reports that his friends paid a large ransom, but if so no urgency seems to have ruled their actions (Huygens 1981:21:11; Hamilton 2000:112).
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For the Latin Kingdom, the Battle of Hattin (1187) was the watershed in the development of communal responsibility for its captured members. Despite steady movement toward Eastern norms, probably stemming from contacts between the warring societies, prior to 1187 captives were not a main consideration in crusader politics. The Battle of Hattin made the Frankish king, Guy de Lusignan, captive, along with the greater part of the nobility. Their overwhelming numbers made these captives a pressing problem for the crusaders who attempted to save the Latin Kingdom. As the individual captives clearly could not handle the situation on their own, some organized solution was needed. Initially, the Franks lacked sufficient Muslim captives to exchange for their brothers-in-arms and therefore the negotiations and ransom had to be organized on a non-individual basis. Post-battle letters to Europe, requesting help, mention prominent captives and their need for assistance. The pope reacted almost immediately, sending diplomatic letters to the Muslim rulers and attempting to rally European forces to help Outremer in its plight. Letters addressed to the Sultan, especially the later letters of Innocent III, featured demands to release Christian captives (Gilchrist 1993:65–83; Register 16.37). In a letter to the Egyptian sultan, Innocent III requested the return of the Holy Land and the release of Christian captives, which would result in a cessation of hostilities between Muslims and Christians (PL 216: col. 832A; Potthast 1957: no. 4719). A further stage was reached with the foundation of the Trinitarian Order to ransom captives in 1198, placing ransom in the forefront of Christian charity. The order filled a pre-existing need, one never so urgently needed as after Hattin (Cipollone 1999:75–87). Granted moral and economic backing by Pope Innocent III, the founding of this military-religious ransoming order represents not only the emergence of institutional solutions to the problem of captivity but also the international scope on which this problem was now addressed. For Jews, the option of obtaining freedom either by force or by treaty was nonexistent during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the absence of a sovereign or military body, they lacked both the possibility to exchange captives by treaty, the usual Muslim-Byzantine practice in the East, and to free prisoners by force as the crusaders first attempted. Except for escape, which was risky and frowned upon as foolhardy (M. Gittin 4:6; BT Gittin 45a), the only and usual way
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out of captivity for Jews was ransom. This perhaps explains Jewish preoccupation with regulations governing ransom and the reception of the freed captives, as well as their profound communal involvement in ransoming captives. Jewish communities in Egypt not only ransomed their captives individually but also in concert with other communities when the captives in question were not locals. Intensive fund-raising by Jewish communities features prominently in letters found in the Cairo Geniza. A list of the funds raised by some ten small communities in Egypt appears in a Geniza document (MS. T-S 8J17; Mann 1922:2:289). Goitein characterized this philanthropy as follows: ‘Next to its ecumenical aspect, the most significant trait of Jewish charity as revealed by the Geniza is its popular character, the participation of the whole community’ (Goitein 1971:2:96–97). This organized, communal charity came into existence in the Jewish Levant much earlier than in crusader society. Although the crusaders actually engaged in battle and thus might have been expected to be more sensitive to the captive problem, they seem to have preferred the alternatives, flight and fight, before parting with money for ransom (Friedman 1996:177–189). For its part, Jewish law strongly opposed flight. The Talmud forbids escape as even successful flight had the potential to make conditions harsher either for the captives left behind, or for future captives. A sense of responsibility toward other captives, present and future, counterbalanced the opportunity for escape (M. Gittin 4:6; BT Gittin 45a). Even if a prisoner escaped, he was not automatically seen as a hero, but as someone who may have jeopardized others’ chances. Foolhardy heroism was frowned upon. An eleventh-century fund-raising letter written by two Alexandrian Jewish communities tells the story of the pirate Yevki b. Abu Razin who brought Byzantine Jews to be ransomed by their Egyptian coreligionists. Yevki was in a hurry, because he was on his way to another raid to acquire yet more captives. Another contemporary letter, written by two Alexandrian Jewish congregations, tells of five Jewish young men from wlybrfsa who fell captive to a cruel master. The community’s members abandoned their occupations in order to raise funds to ransom them. The proud writer maintains that Jewish ransom efforts were exceptional: All the gentiles wonder and say: ‘Happy are the people who are in such a state. Happy are the people whose God is the Lord’ (Ps. 144:15).
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yvonne friedman They left their business and worked day and night to save these captives from the hand of the cruel.1 (Cambridge, MS. T-S 13 J34, in Mann 1922:344–345; cf. Goitein 1971, 2:548–549 [v, C, 4, n. 60]
The writer clearly saw the practice of ransom as defining the Jewish people’s holiness—as a ‘people whose God is the Lord’—further claiming that this definition was recognized by the gentile outsiders. The Jewish communities perceived their responsibility for their coreligionists as global, encompassing Jews outside their city or homeland. The willingness of the Egyptian communities to ransom their Byzantine brethren made Yevki’s trade lucrative and perhaps even stimulated his activities. On the other hand, this awareness of the Jewish community’s willingness to ransom fellow Jews may have saved the lives of ordinary captives, who under different circumstances might have been perceived as worthless and therefore killed. By way of contrast, in Frankish society nobles stood a better chance of being ransomed than commoners, because the greater likelihood of their price being met was common knowledge. It may be no coincidence that although we have no documentation for Muslim survivors after the crusader massacre in Jerusalem in 1099, a famous Geniza letter details fund-raising efforts to ransom the Jewish captives taken (MS. T-S 10 J 5, f. 6; T-S 20.113; Goitein 1980:240–249; 1971:137). It mentions the number and prices for captives and testifies to intensive efforts to save lives and help the captives reach a safe haven. Over the last decades many Geniza fragments attesting to the same trend of global, intercommunal activities to ransom Jewish captives have been published (cf. Ben-Sasson, 29–31). I would like to add by way of example one unpublished fragment belonging to this genre, which illustrates the concern exercised by Egyptian Jewish communities for their brethren in the Holy Land (MS. T-S NS 176.2–3).2 These fragments are listed among the rabbinic MSS of Cambridge (Brody 1988: no. 1256). Scheiber identified the handwriting as that of Joseph b. Jacob Hababli Rosh Haseder, a contemporary of
1 Goitein identifies the writer as Yeshua b. Joseph Hacohen of Alexandria, who wrote four other letters dealing with the ransoming of captives. 2 My thanks to Joseph Yahalom, Abraham David, Robert Brody, and Mordecai Akiva Friedman who checked my reading of the document. Any mistakes are, of course, entirely my responsibility.
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Maimonides’ son; thus the letter dates to the late twelfth or early thirteenth century (Scheiber 1981:141–160; Allony 1962/63:536; M.A. Friedman, personal communication, October 2003). If Joseph Rosh Haseder was the author and not just the copyist of the letter, this adds another more communal aspect to this well-known scholar’s activities (Ginat 1990:23–28, 62–68). T-S NS 176.2–3 = IMHM 4672 Torn Hebrew fragment [?μy]çnh
l[ ˆwbry[b jqln ykw wdyb μynkçwmm wydly ynçw wtça hz [t]tyma [ydwhl wdyb bwtkl hz [ rça awh d[l yjy hlwgh çar [my]ywbç hmk hlaw μyywbç ˆwy[d]p [?w]lç]k ta wxma wdy ta wqzj [?w]rkzw twkz wdml wrçwy wxylh rg] t[jpç]m rq[l wa bçwt rgl (48–47 ,h"k arqyw) [wl h]yht hlwag rkmn yrja [ya] kzw wtwdpl ywa[r] a wxbq 3wna [. . .] [?ç]wd
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176.3 {yrmgl
f[mk h[wrqw hrwrb al hrwç} (15 ,a"[ ,μylht)[twrps yt[dy al] yk ˚t[wçt μwyh lk ˚tqdx [l]a [wmçl μyja μkm μl[n alw [w]nd[b wmk ˆjnb ˆ[n wb ˆjthw llph [ç]dwqh ry[b μybçwyh lkl μyrmwa μybçwy twyhl wnyhla μklyjnh [wyl]gr μwdhw wz[ tnykç μwqm wçdqm [?w]yrytshl ?wtmçn l[ wydjy llptnw [hn][y ylwa h[r t[ t[h yk h[r μwyb larçy tyb μkyjam wpa ˆwrj byçyw [y]bxh ≈ra ybçwy lk (?bbwj) bhwa lah yk lkh w wmç ˆ[ml wnyhla ç[yw μyyjl μa [tw]ç[l bçwjh lwpyw la whnnwgy ˚lmh [y]hyw zwblw llwçlw twçpn dbalw μd k llçl twyhlw wçar ta tjqlw [μ]mwrmw μhynyçl πrf wnntn alç yhy wnyja μkyla wlya μyrwf rb bq[y 'r 'm wmçw {m'w'} μaçwn wb qwqj btkm wydybw çdqh 3
Perhaps the end of the quotation wnjna μyja μyçna.
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μhytw[bçm [. . . . .] d[l wyjy hlwgh ˆwag sptn rçab wmwqmb wh{a}rq rça [ˆy]d[w wl rça lk jqlnw çw[p.]nw hkwhw wynpl
20
[d][b
T-S NS 176.2 1
in his hand and was taken as surety for the women . . . His wife and two children are pledged This to write on his behalf and proclaim the truth . . . The Exilarch, may he live forever, he was the one who d[id] . . . 5 Ransom of captives, and there are some captives Help him, give him aid Attest to his honesty and probity and remember ‘And gives himself over to the resident alien among you, or to an offshot of an alien’s family, he shall have the right of redemption’ [Lev. 25:47–48] 10 He is worthy and ought to be ransomed We collect . . .
176.3 [Illegible line] ‘My mouth tells of your beneficence, of Your deliverance all day long, though I know not [how to tell it]’ [Ps. 71:15]. And nothing escapes you, brethren, to hear . . . Answer the prayer and the supplication as if we asked for ourselves . . . 5 Say to all those who live in the Holy City God has allotted to you to dwell near his sanctuary, the place of the divine presence and His footstool and pray together for his soul[?] . . . to be concealed[?] . . . on a day of calamity, for times are calamitous . . . perhaps he will [answer?] 10 so that the Lord’s wrath may turn away from your brethren, the people of Israel [Num. 25:4] All. Because God loves the inhabitants of the land of Israel if [ judged] for life, our God will do this for His name’s sake and The king, may God protect him [. . .], may the one who thought to do evil be thwarted Blood and to lose souls and to take booty and plunder 15 And to take his head and become booty [Blessed is the Lord], who did not let us be ripped apart by their teeth [Ps. 124:6] and exalted[?] [We address] these lines to you, our brethren, let them . . . Carry. . . . And his name is our honored master R. Jacob, the son of the holy . . . and in his hand a letter in which is mandated by 1
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20 the Gaon of the Exile and [. . .], may they live forever . . . from their oaths What happened to him at the place where he was captured . . . and was beaten, and shamed (?), and all he had was taken, and still . . .
Even in its present fragmentary state it is readily apparent that the letter treats fund-raising for ransoming captives. The letter concerns a captive from Eretz Hazvi—the Land of Israel and the Holy City— whose wife and children were probably given as surety for his ransom. This needy Jew, one Jacob, had a letter of recommendation from the Exilarch testifying to his honesty. This was considered sufficient to receive financial aid from the Egyptian community (Gil 1995:32–65). By way of strengthening the appeal for help the writer cites biblical verses such as Lev. 25:47–48 that originally dealt with the manumission of slaves, here used as an admonition to contribute to ransom of captives. The letter stresses Egyptian responsibility toward captives from Eretz-Yisrael; note the many references to Jerusalem: wçdqm (the Temple), wz[ tnwkç μwqm (the place of the Divine presence), and wylgr μwdh (the Divine footstool). In his monumental code, Mishne Torah, Maimonides ruled that ransom of captives takes precedence over feeding and clothing the poor. “Indeed there is no religious duty more meritorious than the ransoming of captives, for not only is the captive included in the generality of the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked, but his very life is in jeopardy” (Maimonides 1979:82). Following the fall of Bilbeis to the crusaders in 1168, Maimonides dispatched a letter to the Egyptian Jewish communities, calling upon them to raise funds to ransom the Jews taken captive (T-S 16.9; Goitein 1988:5:54). The writer of the letter from the Geniza took this ruling for granted, viewing it as the duty of the community both to help provide funds for ransom and the sums necessary to feed and clothe the refugees. By way of contrast with the Geniza letters, there is the famous eleventh-century responsum by R. Joseph Bonfils. The query dealt with the refusal of the Jews of Sens to participate in a Troyes-sponsored regional campaign to ransom Jews from Rheims: ‘They maintained that they were not bound by the bans and the decrees of Troyes, since they were not residents of their town and had no share in their troubles. But they did send them charity according to their generosity. . . .’ Asked about the validity of this refusal, Bonfils replied:
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yvonne friedman The decree of the community of Troyes is not binding on the Jews of Sens, since a community has no authority to ban or excommunicate a person living in another town, and certainly not the community of another town. Similarly the people of one town cannot levy any taxes on the inhabitants of another town. . . . Although this [ransom] is a great precept, it is voluntary. Each community is completely independent. (Agus 1965:174–175; 1969:228–229; Grossman 1981:6–8, 13)
Although the Troyes community was prepared to come to their assistance, ultimately the captives themselves paid the greater part of the ransom. What distinguished the Jews of Sens was their willingness to assist as individuals, but not as a community. Bonfils ruled, in sharp contrast to eastern usage, that ransom was not a reason to levy an intercommunal tax. Town autonomy took precedence over the ‘great precept’ of ransom. The contrast between this western example of Jewish ransom and eastern Jewish praxis is striking. We have already noted how, in Egypt, no effort was spared to ransom captives, both before and during the crusades. No comparable documentation for western Jewish communities exists prior to the thirteenth century. This may well be due to the absence of military conflict in eleventh-to-twelfth-century Western Europe in which Jews could be taken captive, either as participants or as civilians. Western European responsa deal mainly with Jews needing ransoming from jail (usually because of unpaid debts or taxes). Incidentally, Dunbabin’s important book on captivity in Western Europe for the same period mainly treats imprisonment for civil and economic reasons (Dunbabin 2002). During the anti-Jewish persecutions connected with the crusades Jews were usually killed or forced to convert but seldom imprisoned. It may be that Western Jewry saw incarceration to extort taxes as a purely economic problem to be solved on an individual basis, namely, via voluntary charity. David Assaf, who dealt extensively with the question of the difference between eastern and western Jews in this period, attributed the divergence to the different systems of communal organization and self-rule (Assaf 1985). But it also may not be too far-fetched to ascribe the disparity between organized Jewish fund-raising in the East and the personal responsibility for a prisoner in the West to a wider cultural difference. The same contrast emerges from comparison of Byzantine-Muslim usage in the East and Frankish behavior in Europe and the Latin East during the crusades. The gradual change in crusader attitudes
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toward the late twelfth century can evidently be attributed to acculturation in the East. Spain, yet another meeting place between Islam and Western Christianity, serves as an additional point of reference. Even before the foundation of the redemptive orders under royal aegis, the municipal communities on the frontier had a well-organized mechanism for payment of ransom (Brodman 1985:318–330). The difference between the organized infrastructure of ransom in Spain (Brodman 1986; Powers 1970:91–111) and the first crusader generations in the Holy Land is noteworthy. Although contemporary, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem seems to have been rather slow to accept the Mediterranean pattern. Only with the foundation of the Trinitarian Order, and even then only gradually, did Frankish society change. The disparity between Spain, with its organized municipal ransom, and the Levant, which lacked such institutions, perhaps suggests that environmental factors influenced the difference in East-West Jewish conventions, that these were not simply an independent development. The communal notion perceiving king, city, and the religious community as responsible for the fate of the individual, expressed in the thirteenth-century Spanish Siete partidas, was not typical of Western society a century earlier. The exposure of a Christian world organized in discrete entities to Muslim Mediterranean society, in Spain and in the Holy Land, was instrumental in the breeding of mores and institutions reflecting a sense of communal responsibility. Medieval Islam was characterized by the same all-encompassing notion of community noted earlier for medieval Jewish self-identity. The boundaries of communal responsibility as a way of defining the community’s holiness differed in different cultural environments. The Mediterranean society reflected in the Geniza documents saw this responsibility as intercommunal. ‘All Israel are responsible for each other’ meant that a community living in Egypt was responsible for individuals from the Land of Israel or Byzantium. Charity was not restricted to home; it might begin but did not end there. In contrast, Western society, both Christian and Jewish, seems to have been more parochial and less willing to extend assistance to coreligionists outside their community. Certainly, the question of why Eastern Jewish communities had a ‘well-oiled’ mechanism of ransom, whereas the Western Jewish communities failed to override the halakhic objections to ransom in order to obtain the release of such a figure as Meir of Rothenburg from prison, warrants further investigation.
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Adhemar of Chabannes, Ademari Cabannensis Chronicon, P. Bourgain et al. (eds), CCCM 129, Turnhout 1999. Corpus iuris canonici. Decretum magistri Gratiani, I, Secunda pars, C. XII, q. II, c. 13–16, E. Friedberg (ed.), Leipzig, 1879. Ermoldus Nigellus, In honorem Hludowici Christianissimi Caesaris Augusti Ermoldi Nigelli exulis elegiacum carmen. In Ermold le Noir, poème sur Louis le Pieux et épîtres au roi Pépin, ed. E. Faral, Paris 1932. Huygens, R.B.C. (ed.), Guillaume de Tyr, Chronique, CCCM 63, 63a, Turnhout 1981. Las siete partidas del Rey Don Alfonso el sabio, 3 vols., Madrid 1807. Translated and annotated by S.P. Scott, Chicago 1931. Mansi, J.D., Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. 16, Graz, repr. 1960. Maimonides, Code: Book of Agriculture, Treatise II: ‘Gifts to the Poor’, 8:10, Translated by I. Klein, New Haven and London 1979. Potthast, A., Regesta pontificum Romanorum, 1198–1304, Reprint, Berlin 1957, no. 4719. PL: Patrologiae Latinae cursus completus, series Latina, J.P. Migne (ed.), 1844–1891. Procopius, De bello Persico, in: Procopius Works. Greek with English translation by H.B. Dewing, Cambridge, Mass. 1953–1961. Talmage, F. (ed.), The Book of the Covenant of Joseph Kimhi, Toronto 1972. Theodosian Code and Novels, and the Sirmonidian Constitutions, translated by C. Pharr, New York 1952. Studies Agus, I.A., Urban Civilization in Pre-Crusade Europe, New York 1965. ———, The Heroic Age of Franco-German Jewry, Leiden 1969. Allony, N., ‘Two Autograph Book-Lists of R. Josef Rosh-haseder’, Kiryat Sefer 38 (1962/63) 536. Assaf, D., ‘Medieval Jewish Communities and the Ransom of Jewish Captives: The Egyptian and Ashkenazic Communities of the Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries’, M.A. thesis, Hebrew University 1985 (Hebrew). Ben-Sasson, M., ‘Varieties of Inter-communal Relations in the Geonic Period’, in: D. Frank (ed.), The Jews of Medieval Islam: Community, Society, and Identity, Leiden 1995, 17–32. Blidstein, Y., ‘The Redemption of Captives in Hakakhic Tradition: Problems and Policy’, in S.I. Troen and B. Pinkus (eds.), Organizing Rescue: National Jewish Solidarity in the Modern Period, London 1992, 20–30. Brodman, J.W., ‘Municipal Ransoming Law on the Medieval Spanish Frontier’, Speculum 60 (1985). ———, Ransoming Captives in Crusader Spain: The Order of Merced on the Christian-Islamic Frontier, Philadelphia 1986. Brody, R., A Hand-List of Rabbinic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, I, Cambridge 1998. Brundage, J., ‘Review of Yvonne Friedman, Encounter between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Leiden: Brill, 2002’, The International History Review 24, 4 (Dec. 2002) 871–872. Cipollone, G., ‘Les Trinitaires; fondation du XIIe siècle pour les captifs et pour les pauvres’ in: J. Dufour and H. Platelle (eds), Fondations et oeuvres charitables au Moyen Age, Paris 1999, 75–78.
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Dunbabin, J., Captivity and Imprisonment in Medieval Europe 1000–1300, Houndmills 2002. Flori, J., L’essor de la Chevalerie, XI e–XII e siècle, Geneva 1986. Friedman, Y., Encounter between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Leiden 2002. ———, ‘The “Great Precept” of Ransom: The Jewish Perspective’, in: G. Cipollone (ed.), La Liberazione dei ‘captivi’ tra Christianità e Islam, Città del Vaticano 2000, 161–172. ———, ‘The Ransom of Captives in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’, in: M. Balard (ed.), Autour de la Première Croisade, Paris 1996, 177–189. Gil, M., ‘The Exilarchate’, in: D. Frank (ed.), The Jews of Medieval Islam: Community, Society, and Identity, Leiden 1995, 32–65. Gilchrist, J., ‘The Lord’s War as the Proving Ground of Faith: Pope Innocent III and the Propagation of Violence (1198–1216)’, in: M. Shatzmiller (ed.), Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth Century Syria, Leiden 1993, 65–83. Ginat, L., ‘R. Joseph Rosh Haseder and His Commentaries to the Mishna (from the Geniza)’, M.A. thesis, Tel-Aviv University 1990 (Hebrew). Goitein, S.D., A Mediterranean Society, 5 vols., Berkeley 1967–1993. ———, Palestinian Jewry in Early Islamic and Crusader Times, Jerusalem 1980 (Hebrew). Grossman, A., The Early Sages of Ashkenaz: Their Lives, Leadership and Works (900–1096), Jerusalem 1981 (Hebrew). ———, ‘The Attitude of the Early Scholars of Ashkenaz towards the Authority of the “Kahal”’, Annual of the Institute for Research in Jewish Law 2 (1975) 175–199 (Hebrew). Hamilton, B., The Leper King and his Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, Cambridge 2000. Klingshirn, W., ‘Charity and Power: Caesarius of Arles and the Ransoming of Captives in Sub-Roman Gaul’, Journal of Roman Studies 75 (1985) 183–203. Kolia-Dermitzaki, A., ‘Some Remarks on the Fate of Prisoners of War in Byzantium (9th–10th Centuries)’, in: G. Cipollone (ed.), La Liberazione dei ‘captivi’ tra Christianità e Islam, Città del Vaticano 2000, 583–620. Mann, J., The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs, Oxford 1922. Osiek, C., ‘The Ransom of Captives: Evolution of a Tradition’, Harvard Theological Review 74 (1981), 365–386. Powers, J.F., ‘The Origins and Development of Municipal Military Service in the Leonese and and Castilian Reconquest, 800–1250’, Traditio 26 (1970) 91–111. Rotman, Y., ‘Les captifs civils, les prisonniers de guerre et le paradoxe du mariage chrétien, Les esclaves et l’esclavage entre VIe et XIe siecle. Le cas de Byzance,’ Ph.D. diss., Paris X Nanterre, 2002. Scheiber, A., ‘Materialen zur Wirksamkeit des Joseph B. Jakob Habavli als Schrifsteller und Copist- auf der Kaufmannn-Genisa, Acta orientali 23 (1970) 115–130. ———, ‘Contributions to Medieval Jewish Booklore’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 35 (1981) 141–160. Sigal, P.A., L’Homme et le miracle dans la France Médiévale (XI e–XII e siècle), Paris 1985. Strickland, M.J., ‘Killing or Clemency? Ransom, Chivalry and Changing Attitudes to Defeated Opponents in Britain and Northern France, 7–12th Centuries’, in: H.H. Kortüm (ed.), Krieg im Mittelalter, Berlin 2001, 93–121.
‘QEHILLAH QEDOSHA’: SACRED COMMUNITY IN MEDIEVAL ASHKENAZIC LAW AND CULTURE Jeffrey R. Woolf Bar-Ilan University, Israel I The autonomous Jewish Community, or Qehillah stood at the center of Jewish existence in Medieval Franco-Germany (Ashkenaz: c. 900– 1300).1 It embodied the unique, complex and precarious position of the Jew within medieval society. As a non-believer, the Jew lacked a natural place within the feudal order (Goldin 1997, 13–30).2 His legal status was regularized by means of extra-legal charters and privilegia.3 The Augustinian teaching that Jews may be sustained within Christendom in order to testify to the truth of the gospels provided a theological justification for Jews to live according to the faith of their fathers (Civitas Dei, Book XVIII ch. 46).4 Autonomy provided the Jews with much more than self-government. It enabled them to carve out psychological and sacred space for themselves, within a larger, usually hostile, population with whom 1 While medieval Jewish communities shared a common legal and religious heritage, they bore distinctive characteristics that require separate treatment. See S. Baron, The Jewish Community, 1–3, Philadelphia 1942 and A. Grossman and Y. Kaplan (eds.), Qahal Yisrael: Ha-Shilton ha-Atzmi ha-Yehudi le-Dorotav, Vol. 2: Yeme ha-Beynayim ve-ha-et ha-Hadasha ha-Muqdemet, Jerusalem 2004. 2 Recent scholarship has called into question the existence of feudalism as a clearly identifiable entity. See E.A.R. Brown, ‘The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe,’ American Historical Review, 79 (1974), 1063–88 and F. Cheyette, ‘Review: Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted,’ Speculum, 71 (1996), 998–1006. It remains true, however, that Jews did not ‘fit in’ with the various categories of legal status by which a person’s standing was determined. 3 Most historians see this development as the formal equivalent of the corporate status of the medieval commune. See S. Simonsohn, ‘Ha-Qehillah Ha-Yehudit be-Italia ve-ha-Qorporatziyah Ha-Notzrit,’ Dat ve-Hevra be-Toldot Yisrael u"ve-Toldot ha-Amim, Jerusalem 1965, 81–102 and, per contra, K. Stow, ‘Ha-Qehillah ha-Yehudit lo Hayta Qorporatziya,’ Kehuna u-Melukha: Yahase Dat u-Medina be-Yisrael u-va-Amim, ed. I. Gafni and G. Motzkin, Jerusalem 1987, 141–148. 4 See J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christendom, Los Angeles 1999.
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they often lived in close proximity. This space provided them with a defensive buffer, a refuge in the face of the ongoing deterioration of Jewish legal and economic status over the course of the High and Late Middle Ages (Stow, 1992), a process abetted by increasingly virulent forms of anti-Judaism.5 The qehillah helped to weaken the assimilatory dynamic that normally obtains between majority and minority groups.6 More importantly, it also facilitated the development of a rich inner life by which they could define themselves in terms of their religious and historical past, alongside their expectations of future vindication.7 Scholarly study of the qehillah dates back to the earliest days of the Wissenschaft des Judenthums. However, the focus of these investigations has been overwhelmingly institutional in character (Stow (2), 1992, 54–76). Among the topics that have been addressed are issues such as the legal status of the community, the origins of the traditions of communal self-government, majority rule, the nature of the ruling class, the rabbinate, social and philanthropic groups, intercommunal relations, majority rule, and super-communal organization (Grossman 1975, Soloveitchik, 1990; Kanarfogel 1992 and Kaplan 1995–1997). Missing, however, from these discussions is serious consideration of the meaning that Franco-German Jews attributed to and derived from the structure and function of their communities (Rosman, 2002). What kind of world was constructed around the qehillah? What were the ideological and emotional elements that were embodied by the medieval Ashkenazic community? To what degree were they a function of developments within Jewish tradition and to what extent were they a response to or a result of interaction with the formidable, eloquent and militant Christian society within which they lived as a miniscule (and often miserable) minority? Until we
5 See J. Cohen, ‘Scholarship and Intolerance in the Medieval Academy,’ American Historical Review, 91 (1986), 592–612. 6 Regarding apostasy in early and late Ashkenaz, see J. Cohen, ‘The mentality of the medieval Jewish apostate; Peter Alfonsi, Hermann of Cologne, and Pablo Christiani,’ Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World, T. Endelman (ed.), New York 1987, 20–47; E. Fram, ‘Perception and Reception of Repentant Apostates in Medieval Ashkenaz and Pre-Modern Poland,’ AJS Review, 21,2 (1996) 299–339 and the studies by W. Jordan and A. Haverkamp in Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, M. Signer and J. Van Engen (eds.), Notre Dame 2001. 7 The late Jacob Katz identified the far terminus of the Jewish Middle Ages with the dissolution of the qehillah. See J. Katz, ‘Meqomam shel Yeme ha-Beynayim be-Toldot Yisrael,’ Mehqarim be-Madda"e ha-Yahadut, M. Bar-Asher (ed.), Jerusalem 1986, 209–225.
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undertake to ascertain the answers to these, and other related, questions we will remain with half a picture, for forms can only survive so long as their content is deemed relevant. This paper will highlight one salient motif of Ashkenazic communal life, according to which the qehillah was perceived as a ‘Sacred Community.’ It will be our contention that this perception grew out of indigenous Jewish traditions that the founders of Ashkenazic Jewry brought with them. On its own, the idea that Jewish communities were holy, instilled their lives with a strong sense of value and mission. In addition, as a result of the Jewish encounter with medieval Christianity, the sanctity of the community, and its members, acquired added, perhaps unexpected, dimensions of meaning. II In medieval Franco-Germany, the Jewish community was consistently described as being a ‘Qehillah Qedosha’ or ‘Qahal Qadosh’ (‘Holy’ or ‘Sacred Community’; Sefer Kol Bo, Sec. 101). Every Sabbath, before returning the Torah Scroll to the Ark, a prayer that was uniquely Ashkenazic, was offered for the welfare, ‘of this holy community’ (qehalla qadisha haden; Mahzor Vitry 2004, 286). The Crusade chronicles consistently refer to the victims as being part of ‘the sacred communities’ (ha-qehillot ha-qedoshot).8 Liturgical poems ( piyyutim) that often expressed the same idea.9 Scholarly gatherings in eleventh century Mainz, as well, were composed of ‘holy ones’ (qedoshim) and their academies were deemed to be sacred ( yeshiva qedosha; Or Zaru"a, I, Hil. Rosh Hashanah no. 275 and Grossman 1989, 119–121). What did these words signify for the Jews of the Rhineland and Northern France? Do they teach us anything about the way that they defined themselves? Scholars, indeed, have long assumed that by styling their communities as holy, Ashkenazic Jews expressed a special sense of self and an extremely positive self-image (Soloveitchik 2004, 78–100). Nevertheless, the specific content of that self-image remains unclear. In light of the vast, and largely untapped, literature 8 See S. Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades, Madison 1977, passim. 9 The image of the sacred community appears frequently in the poetry on the eighth century Palestinian payyetan, R. Eliezer Qalir, which form the backbone of the traditional Ashkenazic liturgy.
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that medieval Ashkenaz has bequeathed to us, attempting such a characterization requires a healthy dose of scholarly caution. Nevertheless, a modest beginning is possible by searching for contemporary definitions of the words ‘qahal ’ and ‘qadosh.’ There are two key sources available for this purpose. The first is the Sefer ha-Arukh of R. Nathan b. Yehiel of Rome (1035–1106), the only Talmudic lexicon to reach us from medieval Ashkenaz (TaShema 1999, 217–222). The second is provided by the Biblical commentaries of R. Solomon Yitzhaqi (Rashi; 1040–1105), which serve both as a lexicon and as a mirror of the basic values of contemporary Ashkenazic culture. The Arukh defines the word qahal by referring to the ‘Sacred Congregation of Jerusalem’ (Qehalla Qadisha de-Yerushalayim; Arukh Completum, 71). This ‘Sacred Congregation’ was a pietist fraternity that resided in Jerusalem at the turn of the third century ce. Also known as the ‘Holy Congregation’ (ha-Eda ha-Qedosha), it was composed of disciples of the second century scholar, R. Meir (Safrai 1996, 171–181). Its members were distinguished by a special emphasis on the singular importance of prayer (Safrai 1996, 177–178),10 eating in a state of ritual purity (PT Shabbat 3a), and an a priori commitment to strictness and to supererogatory behavior in the observance of ritual law (BT Betza 14a and Safrai 1996, 173). According to the Midrash, this ‘holy congregation’ divided its time into three parts, for study, for prayer and for work (Qohelet Rabbah, 9, 9). R. Nathan cites all of these passages together in his definition of the word qahal. The clear implication is that the Qehalla Qadisha de-Yerushalayim expressed the ideal of the Ashkenazic Jewish community. Rashi’s commentaries do not contribute much to the definition of the word qahal, per se. Exegetically tied to the texts that he was explicating, Rashi defined qahal in exclusively numerical terms. Depending on the specific context, the word might refer to a group of ten (Num. 10, 7 s.v. u-ve-haqhil and Deut. 23, 3 s.v. lo), a large gathering (Gen. 48, 4 s.v. u-netatikha), a tribe (Ex. 12, 6 s.v. qahal ), or the entire Jewish people. When it comes to a working definition of the word qadosh, however, both R. Nathan and Rashi have much to say. The Arukh states, at the outset, that sanctity is ultimately derived from God, who is 10 Ta Shma (2003, 8) suggests that Palestinian rabbinic tradition, generally, ranked prayer higher than study.
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‘holy in all manner of holiness’ (Arukh, 68–70). An individual, by implication, becomes holy as a reflection of his relationship with God. Rashi develops this line of thought, and adds a series of insights into the implications of sanctity for the Jew (Rashi ad Ex. 25, 8 s.v. ve-asu and 31, 15 s.v. qadesh).11 The Jew is made holy by virtue of the covenant between him and God, and that state of holiness is ineffable (Rashi ad Num. 5, 18 s.v. ha-mearerim; Deut. 32, 2–3; and Jer. 2, 3 s.v. qodesh). Holiness requires that one separate oneself from non-kosher food, from sexual immorality (arayot) and from sin, generally (Rashi ad Ex. 22, 29 s.v. qodesh and Lev. 19, 2 s.v. qedoshim).12 By extension, sanctity goes hand in hand with purity (Rashi ad I Sam. 21, 6 s.v. va-yehyu).13 If we correlate these definitions with representative expressions of Ashkenazic Jewish self-perception, it emerges that the two are almost exactly coextensive. Franco-German Jews took a great deal of pride in the punctiliousness of their observance of Jewish Law. They related with awe to the piety of their ‘holy ancestors’ (avotenu ha-qedoshim) whose every behavior (minhag) was treated as binding law, even when that practice conflicted, prima facie, with Talmudic norms. They maintained a pronounced tendency toward legal stricture in religious observance, especially in such sensitive areas as ritual slaughter, dietary laws and family purity.14 By way of extension, the sources reflect a common
11 Rashi also asserts that the Temple (or the Tabernacle) is, by definition holy, by virtue of its being the place where the Divine Presence in-dwells. The same is true of everything connected thereto. 12 As a result of its common roots in rabbinic thought, the definition of qedusha as the restraint of appetite appears in Sephardic writings as well. Thus, Maimonides combines his discussion of the dietary laws and the regulation of sexual conduct in Sefer Qedusha, the ‘Book of Holiness.’ The difference between the traditions is one of nuance and emphasis. 13 The close, perhaps causal, connection between purity and sanctity is expressed in the famous Baraita de-Rabbi Pinhas b. Yair (cf. PT Shabbat 1, 3 [3b]; PT Sheqalim 3, 3 [47c], BT Avoda Zara 20b and parallels). The passage is widely quoted in medieval Ashkenazic literature and possessed special resonance there. 14 A representative example of this sentiment is found in the statement of R. Isaac b. Judah (fl. c. 1060) that ‘it is a religious duty to be strict’ (mitzva le-hahmir) and to prohibit food concerning which there is some doubt as to its permissibility. Teshubot Hakhme Zarefat ve-Lothair, ed. J. Mueller, Vienna 1881, no. 71 and Ma"aseh ha-Ge"onim, ed. J. Freimann, Berlin 1917, 4. See also the case of R. Eliezer b. Isaac who demanded extraordinary care (mitzvah min ha-muvhar) in the observance of the building of a sukkah cited in Mahzor Vitry, 413. (Interestingly, in this case R. Isaac
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tendency toward the cultivation of supererogatory pietism ( perishut) and, not infrequently, self-abnegation and asceticism (Kanarfogel, 2000, 37–42). Finally, there is significant evidence that ritual purity and impurity constituted significant elements in Ashkenazic daily life (Zimmer, 1996, 135–140). The twelfth century compilation, Mahzor Vitry, reports that there were Jews who tried to maintain the Talmudic regimen of eating in a state of ritual purity during the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Mahzor Vitry, (Horowitz), 373). There were even some who attempted to maintain that regimen all year long (Sefer Hassidim, no. 1074).15 Over all, the picture that emerges jibes with the image of a ‘holy community,’ expressed by R. Nathan of Rome and Rashi. In that connection, the description of the Qehalla Qadisha deYerushalayim, which originated in Midrash Qohelet Rabbah but was preserved by the Arukh, merits closer attention.16 As already noted, the members of this fraternity divided their time into three parts for Torah study, for prayer and for work. The life patterns that characterized the Jews of the Rhineland (and of Northern France) also reflect this division. From the early tenth century onward, capitals of Ashkenazic Jewry, Mainz and Worms, were renowned centers of Jewish scholarship and economic activity. These communities were distinguished by the fact that its lay and scholarly leadership overlapped significantly (Grossman, 1989, 9–13).17 Work took pride of place alongside Torah study and prayer among Rhenish Jews. Indeed, R. Jacob b. Samson’s twelfth century commentary to Avot (2,2) emphasizes that securing a livelihood is of equal significance to the study of Torah (Mahzor Vitry 1923, 494), if only to ensure that
b. Judah adopted the more lenient approach.) Another example may be found in the trend to avoid Talmudic allowances regarding the ritual fitness of animals (bediqot terefa) were put aside, in the name of piety. Cf. Rashi, BT Hullin 52a s.v. be-trei. 15 See my forthcoming article, ‘Issur “Pat AkuM” Beyn Keseh le-Asor: LeHithavuto u-le-Mashma"uto shel Minhag,’ Sefer Ha-Yovel le-Yitzhaq Zimmer, ed. G. Bacon and A. Gaimani, Ramat Gan. 16 Professor Chaim Milikowsky informs me that the full text of Qohelet Rabbah, to which the Arukh refers as Hagaddat Qohelet, was not available in Western Europe in the Central Middle Ages. This observation helps to explain the fact that the Midrash is cited second hand in a gloss to Rashi’s commentary to Beitza 27a, where it is attributed to the eighth-century Babylonian authority, R. Yehudai Gaon. Diqduqe Sofrim ad loc. (68 n. 80) and Otzar HaGeonim ad Berakhot 9b s.v. he"id. 17 A professional rabbinate did not develop in this region until the middle of the fourteenth century.
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one pursues an honest living.18 The parallel between classical Ashkenaz community and the Qehalla Qadisha de-Yerushalayim, however, is most noticeable in the relationship between prayer and Torah study. Rabbinic Judaism always tried to maintain a delicate balance between spirituality and law, between charisma and norm, and between prayer and study (Twersky 1974, 69–70). Medieval FrancoGerman Judaism is often perceived to have emphasized the latter over the former. This characterization, however, is more appropriate from the twelfth century onward, as the Tosafist School of Talmudic analysis spread its hegemony over the region. The heirs of R. Jacob Tam (c. 1100–1171) advanced the thesis that an intensive, perhaps exclusive, emphasis upon the study of the Talmud represented the highest form of spiritual activity and attainment.19 It was then that intellection, knowledge of the Law and its analysis per se, claimed a status as a religious ideal that it had not previously possessed (Woolf 1997, 176–177). Jewish life in pre-Crusade (and to a significant degree post-Crusade) Ashkenaz was directed toward the cultivation of an intense God awareness. While ‘Fear of God’ (Yir"at HaShem) and ‘Love of God’ (Ahavat HaShem) created the basic polarity of their spiritual lives, it was the former that predominated. The awe-filled, pietist formulations contained in such works as Sefer Raban of R. Eliezer b. Nathan, Sefer Yere"im of R. Eleazar of Metz, and the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol of R. Moses of Coucy bear witness to the persistence of this spiritual modality (Urbach 1985, 173–184, 154–164, 465–479 and Kanarfogel, passim).20 This point is of some import for the history of Ashkenazic spirituality in general, and for the appreciation of medieval German Pietism (Hassidut Ashkenaz: c. 1150–c. 1250), in particular. Recent studies have established that, to a significant degree, German Pietism continued the mode of Jewish religiosity that predominated in preCrusade Franco-Germany (Soloveitchik 1976, 331–336 and Ta Shma 1977). That modality apparently continued to exist throughout 18 The later manuscripts of the commentary (post-1300), as reflected in the printed text, adopt an even more radical stance and suggest the superiority of labor to Torah study. It is unclear exactly how these additions should be dated. 19 Tosafot ad BT Qiddushin 30a s.v. la and BT Avoda Zara 19b s.v. le-olam and, per contra, Maimonides, Hilkhot Talmud Torah, 1, 11. 20 An indirect proof of this reality is provided by the protest in Jacob b. Samson’s commentary to Avot 1, 3.
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Northern France and Germany (in various degrees of co-existence with the model presented by the Tosafists), independent of the efforts of the German pietists. Man’s task in life was defined as the ‘worship of the Creator’ (cf. Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, Asin 1–3; Ta Shma, 1997; Soloveitchik, 1976 and 2002). Not unexpectedly, then, prayer (especially communal worship) reigned supreme over all other religious pursuits. Torah study, itself, was defined in broader terms than the elucidation of Talmudic texts and the rendering of legal decisions. The Ashkenazic library was large and varied, as was the curriculum of its scholars. It included Bible, Talmud, and many different collections of Midrash. Alongside of these, there were mystical tracts of the Hekhalot variety, apocalyptic works, Shabbetai Donnolo’s semi-philosophical essay Hakemoni, and others (Ta-Shema 1985, 298–300). These works, whose major thrust was more in the direction of spiritual growth than legal expertise, were valued, studied and found particular expression in contemporary liturgy. Overall, the emphasis in Torah study was placed upon enhancing the relationship between God and Man. This role of Torah study as a facilitator of prayer is expressed in the liturgical poem, Aqdamut by R. Meir b. Isaac of Worms (d. 1096), which is recited prior to the Torah reading for the festival of Shavuoth: ‘He wanted and wished and desired that they toil at the hard work (viz. of Torah study)/In order that He might accept their prayers, and that their petitions be effective.’ Standing at the center of Ashkenazic religious life, prayer, despite the existence of a highly developed angelology, was an unmediated encounter between man and God (Ta Shma, 2003, 4–15). Its centrality led to careful attention being paid to the explication and interpretation of the liturgy, in order to ensure maximum involvement and comprehension by the worshipper.21 Careful attention was paid to the order of the liturgy and the postures of prayer.22 Serving as precentor (Hazzan) in the synagogue was one of the highest of honors, given only to those whose piety and scholarship was beyond question (Blidstein, 1999). Much time and care was given to the
21 See Rashi’s commentary on the liturgy, which is preserved in Sefer ha-Pardes, ed. E.Y. Ehrenreich, Bene Beraq 1980, 298–326. 22 See Y. Zimmer, ‘Tiqqune ha-Guf be-She"at ha-Tefillah,’ Olam ke-Minhago Noheg, 72–113]; and idem, ‘Tenuhot u-Tenu"ot ha-Guf be-She"at Qeri"at Shema,’ Assufot, 8 (1994), 343–368.
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composition, and explication, of liturgical poetry ( piyyut), whose authors were held in high regard (Ta Shma 2003, 34–35) by virtue of the way in which their compositions enhanced and expanded the prayer experience. Liturgical creativity was considered to be so essential an undertaking that it was assumed, as a matter of course, that Talmudic scholars must themselves compose piyyutim.23 More to the present point, when Franco-German Jews engaged in communal prayer, they did so in expression of all of the values that characterized a ‘sacred community.’ In the words of the early eleventh century, liturgical poet R. Simon b. Isaac of Mainz (Grossman 1983, 217 and 1986, 86–102): The remnant of the holy nation that gathers here, Full of mitzvot as a pomegranate, their business dealings are honest. The do and they compel, with the fear of God, to be faithful And they are afraid not to fulfill every mitzvah that comes their way. They are called the ‘children of the Living God,’ and were chosen As His portion. They come to the House of Prayer to lay forth their petition.24
The correspondence between the characteristics of the ‘Sacred Community of Jerusalem’ and those of the qehillot qedoshot of FrancoGermany, confirms that by citing the former as the root definition of the word ‘qahal,’ the author of the Arukh was not only providing lexical information, he was both expressing and reinforcing the ideals of his contemporaries. The wider community, of which R. Nathan or Rashi were a part, found that these inherited values were confirmed by explicit attestation in their sacred writings. Their invocation shows that they perceived themselves to be actively continuing those attestations. From that perspective, the literary and geographical origins of the traditions that he preserved, and their process of transmission, is of secondary interest.25 What is important is that they thought so, and that was sufficient.
23 See E. Fleischer, Shirat ha-Qodesh ha-Ivrit be-Yeme ha-Beynayim, Jerusalem 1975. The intensive involvement of Ashkenazic scholars in the composition and elucidation of piyyutim is a leitmotif of Avraham Grossman’s studies of early German and French scholars. 24 Translation is mine-JRW. 25 Obviously, determining the process of transmission and the degree to which Palestinian traditions formed the substratum of Ashkenazic culture, is a pressing desideratum (to the degree that it is possible). It is, however, of secondary import for reconstructing the mind-set of mediieval Ashkenazi Jews.
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Another dimension of the concept of ‘qahal qadosh’ relates to the character of the community as a whole. A convenient point of departure for elucidating this added dimension is a well-known responsum that was addressed to the Jewish community of Troyes, in the county of Blois/Champagne, around the middle of the eleventh century, by R. Judah b. Meir ha-Kohen and R. Eliezer b. Yitzhak of Mainz, the leading rabbinic authorities of the Rhineland (Grossman, 1975; idem, 1989, 175–210 and 211–232; and Soloveitchik 1991, 87–106). The question put to these scholars of Mainz concerned the right of a majority of the householders to impose its will upon a minority. Their unqualifiedly affirmative reply represents the earliest clear statement of the principle of majority rule in medieval Europe, fully a century before that rule began to significantly penetrate European Law as a result of the renewed interest in Roman law in the twelfth century.26 Scholars have studied this text almost exclusively as it relates to the history of Jewish self-government in medieval Ashkenaz. Here, however, the focus will be upon the question itself. Normally, since responsa are legal documents, there is a natural tendency on the part of copyists to edit out from the text any details that do not bear directly upon the strictly legal dimensions of the text. This specific responsum, however, has preserved much of its original detail, in all of its richness. Hence, it provides a precious record of contemporary self-expression and self-perception, in ‘real time.’ Reuben came to the synagogue and cried out: ‘Oh Holy Congregation’ (ay qahal qadosh), there is a non-Jewess who lives in the house of Simon. Last night she came into my house, and she cursed me and demeaned me. Furthermore, you all know very well that she habitually does this type of thing to all of you. Then the entire congregation responded, saying: It is as you say. This non-Jewess has consistently done evil to us. One said: ‘She hit me with a staff.’ Another said: ‘She called my wife a whore!’ Yet a third exclaimed: ‘She called me a cuckold.’ ‘Therefore,’ Reuben replied, ‘since this is the case, since she consistently acts this way, I request that she be barred from deriving benefit from any Jew 26 S. Kuttner, ‘The Revival of Jurisprudence,’ Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R. Benson and G. Constable, Toronto 1982, 299–323; H. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, Cambridge 1983; Ch. Radding, The Origins of Medieval Jurisprudence: Pavia and Bologna 850–1150, New Haven 1988; and J. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, London and New York 1995.
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for a half year’s time, perhaps she will learn her lesson. And if you so decree, I will formulate the decree.’ Whereupon, he formulated the Decree, according to the words of the Qahal. [Emphases added-JRW]
The first thing to notice is that, despite the fact of the extremely small number of Jews in Troyes,27 they nevertheless saw themselves as constituting a ‘qahal qadosh’ (Soloveitchik 1991, 16–27).28 This ‘qahal qadosh,’ moreover, was fully competent to undertake legislative activity; to issue and to enforce its decrees, all of which technically lie within the purview of properly constituted courts of law. Indeed, it was a central element of medieval Ashkenazic legal theory that the powers of the community derived from and were an expression of those of a rabbinical court (bet din).29 There is, however, something anomalous in the invocation of such exalted, sacred status and authority by such a small group of people. Yet, precisely this disparity runs through all the Ashkenazic responsa that address the question of communal authority. Miniscule groups of Jews have ‘heads of communities’ (rashe qahal ) and ‘the great ones of the community’ ( gedole ha-qahal ). They acquit themselves, and project authority, as if they constituted little European Sanhedrins. And, while there is need for caution before extrapolating from terminology to demographic conclusions, the use such high-sounding terminology conveys much about the self-image of the people who used it. It may be offered that this is not at all surprising. Jews who settled in France and Germany desired, naturally, to run their affairs in accordance with the laws of the Torah. In order to do so, they based their form of self-government upon rabbinic literature and tradition. Perforce, they resorted to images, terms and concepts that might not fit the new reality in which they found themselves.30 At
27 Cf. S. Schwarzfuchs, ‘La communauté juive de Troyes au XIe siècle,’ Rashi: 1040 –1990: Hommage à Ephraïm E. Urbach, ed. G. Sed-Rajna, Paris 1993, 525–534. 28 All Jewish collectives (at least those with a minimum of ten adult males) were referred to as ‘communities.’ Cf. Teshubot Rabbenu Gershom Me"or ha-Golah (Eidelberg), nos. 60, 67 and 70 and Teshubot Rashi (Elfenbein), nos. 70, 207, 210, 231 etc. 29 This was a major factor in the acceptance of majority rule in communal affairs. Rabbinic tradition had long before established that legal decisions were to be based upon a majority vote of the judges. It was natural to extend the same rule to the community. 30 The challenge that inhered in the translation of Talmudic concepts to a European reality was substantial. In the absence of full rabbinic ordination (semikha), large swaths of Jewish law that were critical for the orderly conduct of communal and religious life, were theoretically inapplicable. J. Katz, ‘Rabbinical Authority
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the same time, the idea of community qua court represents a legal lectio difficilior. Rabbinic tradition offered an alternative legal paradigm for communal authority. According to this model, the community was a corporate or covenantal entity (e.g. BT Baba Bathra 8a and 12a). Nevertheless, while they were well aware of this alternative, Ashkenazic rabbis were obstinate, consistent and persistent in never veering from the idea of community as court. Their loyalty to this, ostensibly less logical position, has led many historians to the conclusion that this perception must have been rooted in a received tradition. Such a conclusion makes sense in light of the reverence for tradition and custom that characterized this community. The language employed in the question from Troyes clearly expresses the community/court equation. ‘Oh Holy Congregation,’ Reuben had exclaimed as he cried for a remedy from the others. The group then drew together for the solemn purpose of proposing a ban, which was a quintessentially rabbinic or juridical prerogative (Libson 1975 and 2001/4). The deliberations end with the comment: ‘Whereupon, he formulated the decree, according to the words of the Qahal ’ (Libson, 1975, 80–81 and Sefer Kol Bo no. 139). The group, as a collective, radiates a tangible sense of quasi-sacred, in this case judicial, charisma. Further consideration of the text yields another significant nuance. Reuben promulgated the edict of excommunication on behalf of the entire community. The manner in which he acted is highly reminiscent of the manner in which communal prayers were conducted. This nexus is reinforced by the fact that ceremonies of excommunication were normally held in the synagogue. The presence of a prayer quorum (minyan) was required. The Torah Scroll was taken out of the Holy Ark and held by the one charged with pronouncing ban and the curses that accompanied it (Goldin 1997, 67–74). On some occasions, the shofar was also sounded.31 The Talmud had stressed the superiority of public, as opposed to private, prayer (e.g. BT Berakhot 6a). Contemporary Halakhic discussions show that public prayer was deemed to be of a qualitatively
and Authorization in the Middle Ages,’ Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, I, ed. I. Twersky, Cambridge 1979, 41–56. 31 R. Yehiel of Paris, apparently, excommunicated Nicholas Donin to the sound of the shofar. See Viqquah Rabbenu Yehiel mi-Paris, ed. R. Margaliot, Jerusalem 1928, 27. Cf. BT Mo"ed Qatan 16a, BT Sanhedrin 107b, and BT Hullin 105b.
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different order.32 It was an expression of the community as an integrated whole, wherein the precentor offered the central prayers on behalf of the entire community. As Yitzhaq Baer (Baer 1950, 11–12) noted over a half century ago, this was but one expression of the fact that medieval Ashkenazim saw themselves as belonging to communities that formed metaphysically organic wholes, which were integral parts of the larger entity known as the Jewish People.33 Rashi explicitly connects the semi-mystical concept of Knesset Yisrael with the identity of particular communities (Rashi ad BT Baba Bathra 8a s.v. Knesset). This sense of seamless unity was also embedded in the act of excommunication. In this instance, however, rather than melding all of its constituents together, the community here spewed forth a sinner from its midst.34 The decree of herem formally excluded an individual from the Jewish people, as represented by the qahal.35 In the words of the more common formulae, ‘his bread shall be the bread of gentiles, his wine shall be an idolatrous libation, and his books shall be as the books of sorcerers’ (Resp. Manharam [Prague] no. 1022). More to the present point, ‘he shall be separated from the entire congregation exile of Israel.’36
32 This conclusion is derived from discussions of the function of the repetition of the central prayer (Amidah) by the precentor (Hazarat ha-Shatz). It was often maintained that the precentor was seen to be offering one prayer on behalf of the whole. BT Rosh Hashanah 33b; Tosafot ad BT Rosh Hashanah 34b s.v. kakh motzi; and Rosh, Rosh Hashanah 4, 14. 33 Somehow, this was not deemed to contradict the functional autonomy of individual communities. See the responsum of R. Joseph Bonfils (Tuv Elem) cited in Resp. Maharam b. Barukh (Lemberg), no. 423 and Soloveitchik (1991, 72–74). 34 The act of excommunication excluded the individual from the community as an organic entity. This is inherent in the idea that the excommunicant is ‘separated from the entire congregation of the exile’ (Ez. 10, 8). See BT Mo"ed Qatan 16a and Sefer ha-Oreh [2], Part 2: Din Abaryan s.v. abaryan she-avar that explicitly rules that the excommunicant is non-existant as far as inclusion in a minyan was concerned. In light of the demographic situation that obtained in Ashkenaz throughout the Middle Ages, this could easily become a double-edged sword. 35 This is despite the fact that ‘one who is excommunicated in his city is not, thereby, excommunicated in another city.’ See BT Mo"ed Qatan 16a and Resp. Ba"ale ha-Tosafot no. 1. Regarding the situation in the contemporary Church, see E. Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages, Berkeley 1986. 36 There was any number of variations to this particular imprecation. See Sefer ha-Oreh (2), sec. 130; Sefer Kol Bo, sec. 130 s.v. abaryan; and Resp. Rosh. Klal 12 no. 5.
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How did the form and content of the qehillah qedosha fit into its medieval context? Was the self-image of the Ashkenazic community a medieval development, essentially a response to Western Christianity? Or, can one discern the existence of a line that led from the memory of the ‘Holy Community of Jerusalem’ to the ‘Holy Communities of Mainz, Speyer, Worms, Metz, Köln or Troyes’?37 One of the leading scholars to deal with this specific issue, Kenneth Stow, maintains that the idea of ‘qahal qadosh’ was a Jewish response to the ubiquitous idea that the Christian community, in whole and in part, was incorporated in the ‘corpus christi ’ or ‘corpus mysticum’ (Rubin 1991, 38–39 and Stow 1998, 151–171).38 He avers that Rhenish and French Jews were fully aware of the Christian view both of themselves and of their faith (Yuval, 2000). They were painfully familiar with the claims of Christian supersession, and its obverse, the argument that God had rejected the Jews and their interpretation of the Law. Christian writers and preachers consistently characterized the Jewish Community as a foreign growth on the body politic of Christendom. They excoriated it as a malignant ‘corpus separatum’ that festered within the larger ‘corpus mysticum ecclesiae’.39 Stow asserts that, in response, the Jews turned the Christian argument on its head. Seeking to maintain their unique collective identity, they were fully prepared to agree that they constituted a ‘corpus separatum,’ the authentic ‘chosen people.’ Rather than being the accursed of God, however, it was actually their communities that were blessed. Rather than constituting a malignancy, they maintained that it was the Jewish community was eternally and inherently ‘qadosh.’ As Rashi declares, ‘that which is holy cannot be accursed’ (ad Num. 5, 18 s.v. ha-me"arerim). If Stow is correct, the literary and legal expressions that have been examined here were enlisted to counter those
37 See B. Lifshitz, ‘“Aggadah” u-Meqoma be-Toldot Torah she-be-al Peh,’ Shenaton haMishpat ha-Ivri, 22 (2001–2003), 297–308. 38 This perception found expression in contemporary descriptions of the Eucharist, and its relation to the Church in toto. Peter Comestor, cited by Stow (ibid.), wrote: ‘Christ’s body is indeed the universal church, that is, the head and the members are Christ and the believers’ (corpus enim Christi universa est ecclesia, scilicet caput cum membris, id est Christus et fideles). 39 See also M. Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews, New Haven 1999 and Marc Epstein’s review in AJS Review, 26 (2002), 322–333.
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advanced by the Church.40 In particular, he maintains that central legal institutions of Jewish self-government, such as the herem, were, to a significant degree, Jewish adaptations of Christian parallels, in this instance, of the feudal bannum (Stow 1998, 159).41 Stow is certainly correct that Ashkenazic Jews were acutely aware of leading motifs of Christian life and thought, and that their confrontation with Christianity had a profound effect upon them and upon their religion and culture.42 As David Berger has noted, there is no longer any reason to sustain ‘the antiquated assumption that the culture of Ashkenazic Jews and that of their Christian neighbors were sealed off one from another’ (Berger 1997, 28 n. 39). Nevertheless, caution must be exercised before reaching conclusions as far-reaching as those that Professor Stow proposes. First, even if one were to concede that a given idea developed in response to a contemporary challenge, that does not mean that contemporaries necessarily understood it as such.43 Hence, even if the Christian concept of ‘corpus mysticum’ did pose a serious challenge for Jews, their response was, by definition, determined by, delineated by and experienced through the prism of Jewish literary archetypes and collective memory and understood that way. No medieval Jew would have thought to create religious categories out of whole cloth, for internal consumption, even if they were aimed at countering a Christian claim.44 This point is important if we are to develop a more nuanced appreciation of the Jewish-Christian dynamic in medieval Europe. 40 One might add that implicit in the idea of the parallel between the Eucharist and the undivided body of Ecclesia, is the idea that there can be individuation and absolute unity simultaneously. A similar issue arises in the embodiment of Knesset Yisrael in each community, and their legal and personal individuality. 41 In a private communication, Professor Stow explained that while he acknowledges the Talmudic origins of the herem, nevertheless, ‘Jews (i.e. in the case of the medieval herem) are taking something perhaps from the outside and applying it internally, to say, here is an area in which people agree, consent, to cooperate, [or] to forbid.’ (My thanks to Professor Stow for his clarifying remarks). 42 It matters little whether this awareness reflected ‘elite’ or ‘popular’ Christian religious culture. See Berger, ‘Al Tadmitam ve-Goralam shel ha-Goyyim be-Sifrut ha-Pulmos ha-Ashkenazit,’ Yehudim Mul ha-Tzelav: Gezerot 1096 ba-Historiya u-vaHistoriografiya, ed. Y.T. Assis et al., Jerusalem 2000, 74–91. 43 I. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe, New Haven 1996, 110 and Y. Ta Shma’s reviews in Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 87 (1996) 233–239 and Tarbiz 68 (1999), 587–598. 44 Consciously anti-Christian assertions were normally delineated as being in ‘reply to the heretics’ (teshuvat ha-minim).
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Simply outlining and claiming the existence and form of outside influence upon the Jewish minority is insufficient. There are other questions that must also be asked. What inner conditions led to the penetration of certain ideas and not others? How were ‘outside’ ideas judaized? By what mechanisms was that process accomplished? Were there Jews who were aware of the new additions to their culture? It is in the response to such as these questions that will allow historians to take the true measure of the elasticity and integrity of Jewish or any other tradition (Goldin 1997, 7–11).45 As it happens, however, in the present instance there is no need to attribute the idea and ideals of the ‘qahal qadosh’ to outside influence or stimulation. Long before the concept of ‘corpus mysticum’ became commonplace in the Latin West, the concept of ‘sacred community’ was part of the religious and intellectual tradition that the ancestors of Ashkenazic Jewry brought with them to Northern Europe from Southern Italy.46 Contemporary works such as ‘The Scroll of Ahima"az’ (Megillat Ahima"az)47 are replete with the veneration of ‘holy ancestors’ (avotenu ha-qedoshim).48 The fact that the Arukh straddled the Italian and the Franco-German orbits underscores the continguity between the two insofar as the religious ideals inherent to the ‘qahal qadosh’ are concerned. More importantly, the equation of ‘court’ and ‘community’ is already present in the responsa of the late tenth century legist, R. Meshullam b. Qalonymos of Lucca (Grossman 1989, 39–78 and Soloveitchik 1991, 32). One of the hallmarks of Ashkenazic tradition was the unprecedented legal status and authority with which it invested its received
45 This approach should be the point of departure for the long overdue study of l’histoire des mentalités in medieval Jewish history, generally, and in the history of Halakha, in particular. See I. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood, New Haven 2003, 1–18. 46 Some scholars have maintained that this tradition is ultimately derived from Talmudic and Post-Talmudic Palestinian tradition. The extent and nature of the relationship between Palestinian and proto-Ashkenazic tradition is a matter of significant debate, which lies far beyond the limits of this discussion. For the purposes of the present discussion, it is sufficient to underscore the sense of hoary antiquity that Franco-German Jews, and their Italian forebears, attributed to their received traditions. 47 While it was completed in 1054, it is generally assumed to constitute a faithful representation of ninth and tenth century Calabrian Jewish culture. See R. Bonfil, ‘Cultura Ebraica e cultura Cristiana in Italia meridionale,’ Tra due mondi: cultura Ebraica e cultura Cristiana nel Medioevo, Napoli 1996, 3–64. 48 The same families (e.g. the Qalonymids) that figure in Megillat Ahima"az provided the founders of the key communities in the Rhineland.
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customs (minhag), even when those customs ran directly counter to explicit rulings of the Babylonian Talmud (Ta-Shema 1992, 13–108). Indeed, until the end of the eleventh century, almost no one questioned these deviations from the leading source of Jewish legal truth. Moreover, the stated reason for such astounding behavior was simply the fact that ‘our custom is not so.’ The mere existence of an established practice was sufficient grounds for its acceptance, owing to the self-evident piety of their ancestors and of their progeny. The sources express this idea through assertions of the piety of the community and its progenitors. We, thus, find statements such as ‘the remnant of Israel can do no wrong’ (She"erit Yisrael lo ya"asu avla)49 or ‘thus acted our holy ancestors.’50 Thus, it was the sanctity of the community and the traditions of its forbears that validated religious custom (Woolf, 1997–1998, passim). Custom was the embodiment of the community’s sense of personal piety and religious charisma. The legal authority attributed to tradition, based upon what Professor Haym Soloveitchik has described as their ‘positive self-image,’ was its result (Soloveitchik 1988, 206–207). It also drives home the point that the perception of the community as a ‘qahal qadosh’ was an integrated part of the religious heritage of Franco-Germany long before it encountered the Catholic Church. At the same time, there can be little doubt that the encounter with the Christian communitas left its mark upon the way Jews understood the nature of their qahal (Berman 1983, 295–320). Just as the status of minhag was, certainly, reinforced by the custom-bound nature of Law and society in Europe in the Central and early High Middle Ages, so too, it amplified and intensified the sense of stark otherness that they felt vis-à-vis Christendom. Thus, the entrenched and consistently asserted sanctity of the Jewish community became an added defense mechanism in the face of ongoing Christian supersessionist claims.
49
Zeph. 3, 13. See Kol Bo no. 142; Or Zaru"a 748; and Resp. RoSh, no. 108:3. Cf. Siddur Rashi, no. 219; Sefer Rabiah, sec. 551 s.v. asher and sec. 888 s.v. erev; and Or Zaru"a sec. 399 s.v. persa. 50
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Arukh Completum, ed. A. Kohut, Jerusalem 1969. Baer, Y, ‘Ha-Yesodot ve-ha-Hathalot shel Irgun ha-Qehillah ha-Yehudit be-Yeme Ha-Beynayim,’ Zion, 15 (1950), 1–41. Berger, D. ‘From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions: Some New Approaches to Medieval Antisemitism,’ Touro College, 1997. Berman, H.J. Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, Cambridge 1972. Blidstein, Y. ‘Shaliach Tzibbur: Tivo, Tafqido, Toldotav,’ Me-Qumran ad Qahir, ed. Y. Tabory, Jerusalem 1999, 39–74. Goldin, S, Ha-Yihud ve-ha-Yahad: Hiddat Hisardutan shel ha-Qevutzot ha-Yehudi"ot be-Yeme ha-Beynayim, Tel-Aviv 1997. Grossman, A., Hakhme Ashkenaz ha-Rishonim, 2Jerusalem 1989. ———, ‘Yahasam shel Hakhme Ashkenaz el Shilton ha-Qahal,’ Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri, 2 (1975), 175–199. ———, ‘Reshiyotav ve-Yesodotav shel Minhag Ikuv ha-Tefillah,’ Milet 1 (1983), 217 n. 61. Kanarfogel, E., Peering Through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical and Pietist Dimensions in the Tosafist Period, Detroit 2000. Mahzor Vitry, ed. S. Horowitz, Nürenberg 1923. ———, I, ed. A. Goldstein, Jerusalem 2004. Libson, G. ‘“Ha-Gezerta” be-Tequfat ha-Ge’onim u-ve-Reshit Yeme ha-Beynayim,’ Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri, 2 (1975), 79–154. ———, ‘Herem Stam be-Tequfat ha-Ge"onim u-ve-Reshit Yeme ha-Beynayim,’ ibid. 22 (2001– 2004), 107–232. Rosman, M., ‘A Prolegomenon to the Study of Jewish Cultural History,’ Jewish Studies Internet Journal, 1 (2002), 109–127. Rubin, M., Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture, Cambridge 1991. Safrai, S. ‘Qehilla Qadisha de-be-Yerushalayim,’ BiYeme ha-Bayit u-BiYeme haMishna: Mehqarim be-Toldot Yisrael, I, Jerusalem 1996. ———, ‘Ha-Yehudim be-Yerushalayim be-Tequfa ha-Romit,’ Sefer Yerushalayim: HaTequfa ha-Romit ve-ha-Byzantit, ed. S. Safrai and Y. Zafrir, Jerusalem 1999, 27–28. Soloveitchik, H., ‘‘Three Themes in Sefer Hassidim,’ AJS Review, 1 (1976), 311–358. ———, ShuT ke-Maqor Histori, Jerusalem 1991. ———, ‘Religious Law and Change: The Ashkenazic Example,’ AJS Review (1988), 205–221. ———, ‘Piety, Pietism and German Pietism; “Sefer Hasidim I” and the Influence of “Hasidei Ashkenaz,” JQR 92 (2002), 455–493. ———, ‘Halakhah, Hermeneutics, and Martyrdom in Medieval Ashkenaz,’ Jewish Quarterly Review, 94 (2004), 77–108. Stow, K., An Alienated Minority, Cambridge 1992. ———, ‘Sanctity and the Construction of Space: The Roman Ghetto as Sacred Space,’ Jewish Assimilation, Acculturation and Accommodation, ed. M. Mor, Lanham 1992, 54–76. ———, ‘The Consciousness of Closure: The Roman Ghetto and Its Ghet,’ Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. D. Ruderman, New York 1992, 386–400. ———, ‘Holy Body, Holy Society: Conflicting Medieval Structural Conceptions,’ Sacred Space: Shrine, City, Land, ed. B. Kedar and R.J.Z. Werblowsky, Jerusalem and London 1998, 151–171. Ta Shma, Y. ‘Mitzvat Talmud Torah ke-Ba"aya Hevratit-Datit be-“Sefer Hassidim”: Le-Viqqoret Shitat ha-Tosafot be-Ashkenaz ba-Me"ah ha-13,’ Sefer Bar-Ilan, 14/15 (1977), 98–113.
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———, ‘Sifriyatam shel Hakhme Ashkenaz bene ha-Me"ah ha-11 ha-12,’ Qiryat Sefer, 60 (1985), 298–309. ———, Minhag Ashkenaz ha-Qadmon: Heqer ve-Iyyun, Jerusalem 1992. ———, Sifrut ha-Parshanut la-Talmud, Jerusalem 1999. ———, HaTefillah ha-Ashkenazit ha-Qedumah: Peraqim be-Ofya u-ve-Toldoteha, Jerusalem: Magnes 2003. Twersky, I., ‘Religion and Law,’ Religion in a Religious Age, ed. S.D. Goitein, Cambridge 1974, 69–82. Urbach, E., Ba"ale Ha-Tosafot, 5Jerusalem 1985. Woolf, J., ‘Maimonides Revised: The Case of the “Sefer Mitswot Gadol,’ Harvard Theological Review, 90 (1997), 175–205. ———, ‘The Authority of Custom (Minhag) in the Responsa of R. Joseph Colon, Dine Yisrael, XIX (1997–1998), 143–173. Yuval, Y., Shne Goyyim be-Vitnekh, Tel-Aviv 2000. Zimmer, Y., ‘Yeme ha-Tahara shel Yoledet,’ Olam ke-Minhago Noheg: Peraqim be-Toldot haMinhagim, Toldotehem ve-Gilgulehem, Jerusalem 1996.
HOLY INHABITANTS OF A HOLY CITY: HOW SAFED BECAME ONE OF THE FOUR HOLY CITIES OF ERETZ ISRAEL IN THE 16TH CENTURY1 Yair Paz Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Israel Introduction In 1492, in the wake of the Expulsion from Spain, Jews began migrating eastwards towards the Ottoman Empire. In 1516 the Ottomans conquered Eretz Israel and after that the stream of Jews coming to settle there and particularly in Safed increased. In fact the period of flourishing in the city from 1525 to 1575 is known as ‘the golden age of Safed.’ The Jewish population of the city, which at its height—according to cautious estimates—was about 5,000 (out of a total population of 10,000), made it the second largest aggregation of Jews in the world (after Salonika). Other estimates give it more than twice that number. (Schechter 1908; David 1993, 108–110; Shur 2000, 49; Avizur 1983, 353–360). For comparison, in Jerusalem, which was the second largest Jewish community in Eretz Israel, there were only 1,000–2,000 Jews and that number remained unchanged in those years, as did the populations of other Jewish centers in Eretz Israel. Beside the impressive demographic growth, it is important to note the characteristics of the immigrants: one of the outstanding features of this population is that it included several hundred sages who reached Safed in those years, most of them involved in mysticism. Among them were the figures that became the leaders of the Kabbalists of Safed, R. Isaac Luria (Ari), R. Haim Vital, R. Joseph Karo, R. Moses Cordovero, R. Solomon Alkabez, R. David Ibn Zimra and other influential Kabbalists. That ‘holy inhabitants’ made Safed ‘the city of Kabbalists’, the main popularity and importance of which in the Jewish world derived from spiritual fermentation that took place there at that time. 1 I wish to thank my colleagues at Schechter institute, Dr. Doron Bar and Prof. Renée Levine Melammed who read the article and commented on it.
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The purpose of this article is to discuss the intriguing question as how a small and remote mountain town, almost unmentioned in ancient sources (except for two marginal mentions) became in a short time such an important Jewish center and even received the title of being one of the four ‘holy cities’ of Eretz Israel. Was the strong attraction to Safed the result of historical-economic conditions alone that brought about the ‘sanctification’ of the town, or were there more spiritual reasons or unknown traditions in the background of the exceptional attraction of that ‘holy inhabitants’ to the town and these caused the dramatic change in its status?2 This question will be considered from a relatively new inter-disciplinary point of view combining the methodologies of historical-geographical research and the study of the history of mysticism in the 16th century, which is called cultural-historical geography (Baker & Biger 1992; Ben-Arzi 1996, 18–45). Discussion of Historical-Geographical Conditions Most of the researchers involved in the historical background and geographical-economic conditions of 16th century Safed follow in the footsteps of the studies by Ben-Zvi (Ben-Zvi 1976) and Avizur (Avizur 1963; For the historical background see Rozanes 1933, 168–208). Specialists in the history of Kabbalah in Eretz Israel also generally rely on Avizur with regards to the centrality of Safed at that time (e.g. Zak 2002, 51–52 and the references there). Avizur, on the basis of industrial infrastructure in the Safed area at that time, concludes that there were 18,000 Jews living there out of a total population of 25,000 (Avizur 1983, 358). He cites four primary factors that brought about this dramatic prosperity: The stable security situation of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century; the low cost of living; (relative) proximity to the port of Sidon; the attractive economic base of the Safed area (in particular the springs as a basis for the wool industry). He concludes: ‘The waters of Safed
2
The expression ‘four holy cities’ is particularly noticeable in Izhak Ben-Zvi’s studies, but is common in the terminology of the history of Ottoman Eretz Israel and differs from the more routine expression ‘holy community’ which was attached to every Jewish community, such as Jaffa, Gaza or Shechem. The question of the unique growth of Safed is sharpened in the light of the rapid decline of this glorious period in the history of the city, in the last quarter of the century.
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were, therefore, a valuable resource, which as a result, became the greatest industrial center in Eretz Israel, and perhaps the largest and most technically developed in Eastern Turkey’ (Avizur 1963, 46). At the same time a comparative examination of the two geographical advantages cited will demonstrate that they are very relative and partial, and they cannot explain the motivation for concentrating the process specifically in this area. Avizur himself admits that Safed was a ‘wondrous’ meeting point between natural resources that arrived from a distance of thousands of kilometers; wool brought from Western Europe or the Balkans because the local wool did not suit the demands of this industry and dyeing materials from the Orient. The manufacture and processing did indeed take place in the city and the (relatively few) springs in its vicinity, however, the emigrants from Spain could have easily found other sites that were much more accessible to the sea and had far better water supplies. That was the case, for example, in Salonika, which was much closer to the source of raw materials and also more accessible. And in fact an expansive wool industry developed in Salonika, in which a significant part of the local Jews took part. Safed, on the other hand, was a remote mountain town, and a full year elapsed from the shearing of the sheep until the wool arrived there in a circuitous route. The wool had to be transferred a number of times, by land and by sea, which quadrupled its price, an enormous increase in the economic terms of the 16th century. This, together with various customs levied on the wool or on the textiles, could have cast a doubt on the ability of Safed to compete with other centers. Only a unique qualification, that included exceptional additional value would have justified taking such an economic risk. In fact Avizur does point out that the dyed woolen cloth industry was considered a high-ranking economic branch in the 15th–17th centuries and that it was a popular occupation among Jews, but the greedy tax policies of local rulers and a variety of custom levies brought about its decline in the 17th century. Thus it seems that the wool industry in Safed did not develop due to natural advantages, but despite problematic geographical conditions. Therefore it would seem that the central factor that brought about the enhanced development of this branch in Safed was the human factor. The exiles from Spain came to Safed carrying the skills of their ancestors in Castile and Aragon—human capital and knowledge in the treatment of wool. This together with their little independent
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capital and the donations that they invested in the industrial infrastructure enabled them to develop a competitive economic branch, despite difficult opening conditions. Avizur himself points out ‘the longing of exiles and former conversos who had returned to the open practice of Judaism to settle in Eretz Israel, and the many needy people who started to look for a way to get into this profession (perhaps hoping for better conditions than they had found in Salonika) led to the development of the textile industry in Safed’ (Avizur 1963, 45). Avizur himself points out ‘the longing of exiles and former conversos who had returned to the open practice of Judaism to settle in Eretz Israel, and the many needy people who started to look for a way to get into this profession (perhaps hoping for better conditions than they had found in Salonika) led to the development of the textile industry in Safed’ (Avizur 1963, 45). Nevertheless it turns out that the economic prosperity was short lived; tough international competition as well as crises that hit the Jews of Safed at the end of the century brought about the rapid decline of the town’s economic base. The crisis in Safed preceded the world crisis (in the wool trade) by about half a century, and in fact its causes were local. We can conclude that the ‘wonder’ cited by Avizur was not derived from geographical factors but from initiatives and the human ability of Spanish exiles to make links between markets for natural resources at the ends of the earth, develop sophisticated industry on the basis of a shaky foundation and finally to find markets for this expensive product far away from Safed, presumably with the help of ramified connections with their communities of origin. After all this is said, the question still remains what attracted so many Jews, among them a disproportionate number of Kabbalists, during a short and defined period of time, to migrate to this remote mountain town in Eretz Israel? There is an hypothesis that the preponderance of tombs of the sages of the Mishnah, and in particular that of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai (Rashbi), to whom the Book of the Zohar was attributed, were the source of attraction. However this assumption cannot stand on its own. The fact is that we have no information about an attempt to settle in Meron itself (where the tomb of Rashbi itself is located), or even of an aspiration that was nipped in the bud because of contemporary conditions, while at the same time there were Jews dwelling
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in a number of villages in the Galilee (such as Alma, Ein Zeitim, Kfar Kana and Pekiin). Some researchers have suggested that what attracted scholars and Kabbalists to Safed was the exemption they received from payment of the Qaraje, a general tax on the community, as opposed to the poll tax which was imposed on individual non-Muslims (Benayahu 1964, 106). However an analysis of the case shows that this exemption was given to many communities, including Jerusalem, and therefore its influence was not critical. The community of Jerusalem did not expand at the same time. The Changes in the Mystical Status of the Galilee It is interesting to note that the remarkable growth of Safed already attracted the attention of sermonizers at the time. At least one contemporary source tries to provide a theological-geographical explanation: Why did the town of Safed deserve to be settled with the help of God by the splendor of the Holy People more than the other cities of Eretz Israel? Regarding the settlement of the town of Safed, may it be built speedily and in our days, because it is the first town that was confiscated after the death of Joshua and it was call Hahorma, (i.e. confiscation), and they did not spare any soul and removed every impure object from the town, totally and for ever until the Messiah comes by command of God, may He be praised, and we did not find that they did this in any other city after the death of Joshua, throughout the period of the Judges . . . Therefore the Holy One Blessed Be He rewarded it as the place most settled before the other towns of Eretz Israel, may they be built speedily in our days, and the name of Safed (zadi, pe, taf ) is a hint that Zion will be built speedily in our days, the initials of zion peer tiferet [‘Zion the splendor of splendors’], which is pronounced by the Ashkenazim the zion bamishpat tipadeh [‘Zion will be redeemed through justice] (Yehiel 1576, Ch. 1; Glorious, 1972).
This explanation merges two midrashic sources that are cited here in order to link Safed with the concept of Redemption; one is an interpretation of the verse ‘until Shiloh comes’ (Genesis 49:11) according to which the year shin, lamed, he ([5]335 = 1575) should be the date of the Redemption; the other suggests the role of Safed as the place where the Sanhedrin would renew its operations before the coming of the Messiah (see below). It may be that the explanation for this extraordinary attraction on the part of the leading
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Kabbalists and their students specifically for the area of Safed and the Upper Galilee is to be found in their unique spiritual understanding of this region and the connection they made between symbolic ideas and the concrete vistas of the Galilee. Scholars studying this period have already pointed out that at the same time we are witness to a multiplicity of phenomena, events and processes related (or interpreted as being related) to an increase in Messianic tension and expectation of the Redemption. This subject has been investigated from a number of points of view, primarily by means of questions about the time factors leading to Messianic expectations (Scholem 1967, 244–286). However a notable fact is that a significant part of these events and phenomena are related to the important Jewish center developing in Safed and in the Galilee at that time, and we will present here five examples: 1. The prophecy of the child: Around the time of the conquest of Eretz Israel by the Ottoman Sultan Salim I (1516) a rumor spread that a Galilean child prophesied about the conquest of the land, the end of time and the appearance of the Messiah, but his prophecy was difficult to interpret (Eisenstein 1915, 396–398). The Kabbalist Rabbi Abraham Halevy tried to interpret the prophecy of the child, Nahman b. R. Pinhas of Kfar Baram, near Safed, on the basis of historical events in the period. In his opinion the Messiah would appear in 1530 or 1531 ‘in the gate that turns towards Rome, and it is a city in the land of the Galilee, called Rome, near Sephoris.’ He emphasized that the Messiah would appear in the Upper Galilee (Scholem, Qiryat Sefer; Vilnai, Ariel, s.v. Rome). 2. David Hareuveni and Solomon Molcho: These two fore-runners and preachers visited Safed and Jerusalem in the course of 1523–1525 predicting that in the year 1540 the Redemption would take place. Their visit aroused many echoes and expectations. The burning of Solomon Molcho on the stake only increased these expectations and some people connected this event to appearance of the Messiah son of Joseph (Aeshcoly-Idel 1993; Idel discusses, in his introduction to the second, expanded edition of Aeshcoli’s book, Reuveni’s messianic pretensions and the expectation of the Messiah son of Joseph between 1535 and 1540). For example R. Joseph Karo arrived at Safed in the wake of a prophecy by his ‘Maggid ’ [the voice of the Mishnah that spoke to him] that he would have
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spiritual achievements there, culminating in death as a martyr ‘like Solomon Molcho’ (Werblowsky 1958). 3. In the early 1560s a wealthy Jewish woman named Donna Gracia received a license from the Turkish sultan to build the city of Tiberias. Donna Gracia was very close to the Kabbalistic circles, supporting them financially, and they influenced her views and initiatives. Her son-in-law Don Joseph Nasi was entrusted with carrying out the project, and rumors spread rapidly in many Jewish communities and were linked immediately to expectations of a mystical process that was expected to commence in Tiberias (Tamar 1958, 61–88, esp. 63). Indeed these rumors of a Jewish ‘prince or king’ [nasi ] named Joseph who was bringing the redemption of the Jews close stirred feelings of worry among the Muslims (Ben-Zvi 1976, 196–202, esp. 198). Joseph Nasi completed construction of the walls of Tiberias circa 1564. 4. The Story of Joseph della Reina: In the Galilean version of this famous story it involves Joseph who went from Safed to Meron, to the tomb of Rashbi, where angels of the Lord appeared to him and opened an opening to bring about the Redemption, but he failed in his struggle against the evil spirit and the Redemption was lost (Dan 1962). According to Dan the background for the creation of this Galilean version is related to the atmosphere of Messianic expectation that was pre-dominant in the area of Safed in Kabbalistic circles at that time. 5. Rabbi Isaac Luria and his disciples: The year 1575, as mentioned above, had also been predicted to be the year of Redemption (Tamar 1958). Rabbi Isaac Luria (Ari) arrived in Safed in 1570 and his charismatic personality made a great impression, however his sudden death of the plague after only two years, led to frustration and disappointment on the one hand, but also a secret mystery on the other. Some tried to explain his untimely death as a necessary stage in the process of redemption and even to see him as the Messiah son of Joseph. His foremost disciple, R. Haim Vital wrote: “On the word ‘and the seat of David your servant’ [= the hiding of David (Hebrew)] warned our teacher . . . that the future Messiah son of Joseph would die and we did not understand his words, and God knows secrets and in the end proved the beginning—that my pious master, may his memory be a blessing, died for the sins of the generation” (Vital, 1782,
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Amidah, Ch. 19:43a; Tamar 1964, 170). Tamar stresses that Ari and his disciples not only expected the coming of the Messiah son of Joseph, but also took active measures to bring it about. Below we will discuss further the connection between the Messiah son of Joseph and the Galilee. What all of these sources have in common is connecting the concept of ‘the beginnings of Redemption’ with a specific territory and a given time period. However, it seems that the most notable and active use of this combination was that made by the charismatic rabbi of Safed, R. Jacob Berav. In those years a harsh controversy took place between the rabbis of Safed and Jerusalem over restoration of ordination in general and the role of Safed in particular in that restoration (Katz 1986, 213–236). The study of that controversy has revolved primarily around the competition between these two leading communities of Eretz Israel in the sixteenth century, Safed and Jerusalem. However, it seems that the background behind and motive for R. Jacob Berav’s efforts to renew ordination in Safed specifically were related to the opinion that Safed and the Galilee had a central role in this stage of ‘the footsteps of the Messiah’ or ‘the beginning of Redemption’, and in this context it was even suggested that R. Jacob Berav intended to declare himself ‘Nasi’. His proposal to renew ordination was based on a homily in the Babylonian Talmud (Sabbath 139a; Sanhedrin 98a): ‘And I will restore your judges as of old’ and then ‘Zion will be redeemed in justice’, i.e. renewal of ordination and the resumption of the Sanhedrin as conditions for Redemption (as suggested in the first source that we quoted). Nevertheless, the question still remains: why Safed? More explicit remarks on the immanent link between renewal of ordination in general and the importance of doing so in the Galilee itself were made by one of R. Jacob Berav’s disciples, R. Moses de Castro. In a letter from Jerusalem he hints at the view of his teacher regarding the Redemption: ‘He will fulfill in our day the words of the prophet, saying shake off the dust, arise and sit up, beloved land, heritage of the deer, for our brethren who dwell in the Galilee have sent to us saying we have the law of the redemption, the three lands of the Galilee, and Tiberias among them, and there the Sanhedrin ceased to exist and it will first return to there in the future’ (Dimitrovsky 1966, 112–132). In other words, the residents of Safed declared a tradition according to which the Sanhedrin would return ‘there’ first:
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‘there’ by way of hermeneutics meaning Tiberias and all of the Galilee. What is the source of this tradition regarding the place of Redemption? The ‘Revival’ of Ancient Homilies Clearly the hints in this letter refer us to a Baraitha in the tractate Rosh Hashanah (31b) which traces the peregrinations of the Sanhedrin from one place to another, until it reached its final residence in Tiberias: “And Tiberias was the lowest of them all as it says ‘and lower than the land and the dust’ (Is. 29)”, regarding which R. Yohanan (an Amora of Eretz Israel, 3rd century) says: “And from there they will be redeemed in the future, as it says ‘shake off the dust, arise and sit up’”, (Is. 52) i.e. from the lowest point (also topographically) the renewed growth will rise. This homily is based on a sporadic citation of the verse ‘. . . arise, sit up Jerusalem’, but the homilist seeks to connect deep humiliation (and the humiliation of dust) signified by Tiberias and the shaking off of the same dust at the time of the Redemption. Analysis of De Castro’s letter makes it clear that he is quoting from an additional tradition, preserved in Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishna (12th century). Maimonides, dealing with the resumption of the Sanhedrin before the coming of the Messiah, writes: ‘And it is a tradition that it will return first to Tiberias, and from there move to the Temple (Hilkhot Sanhedrin 14:12). The term tradition (qabalah) as used by Maimonides is of course not identical with its use in Safed, although it does refer to traditions that have no formal source, but do have great importance for him. The members of the community of Cori in Italy cited Maimonides’ remarks about Tiberias with reference to the enterprise of Yosef Nasi (Tamar 1958, 63; Ben-Zvi 1976, 199). These exceptional, but dormant, traditions gained new momentum with the appearance of the Book of the Zohar on the Jewish scene and its arrival in the Galilee with exiles from Spain. In fact, the Zohar, which mentions many geographical locations in the Galilee, cites the Land of the Galilee explicitly as the location of the appearance of the Messiah (without pointing out a particular locale): ‘In sixty-six the king Messiah will reveal himself in the Land of the Galilee’ (Zohar I [Gen.] 119a and II [Ex.] 7b). Elsewhere the Zohar suggest why at the time of the revival of the dead a great army will gather specifically in the Galilee: ‘and they
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will gather in the Holy Land and armies will go up all of them to the land of the Galilee because there the Messiah will reveal himself because it is the portion of Joseph’ (Zohar II, 20a). Even though it is difficult to identify geographical references in the Zohar (cf. Liebes 2002, 31–44), the Zohar clearly stresses the importance of the Galilee in the framework of a stage in the appearance of the Messiah son of Joseph, bringing us back again to the words of R. Moses de Castro quoted above. R. David b. Zimra (Radbaz), one of the most influential rabbis of Eretz Israel in the 16th century (Safed, Jerusalem and Cairo), writes in his commentary on the aforementioned quote from Maimonides that the Messiah ‘will appear in the Galilee and then disappear once again’, which is closed to Vital’s remarks mentioned above. And as we have seen that is how R. Haim Vital perceived the death of R. Isaac Luria in the Galilee a short time after he arrived there. Other early sources also make a more specific geographical distinction, speaking of ‘the Upper Galilee’: ‘A star rises from Jacob . . . it smashes the brow of Moab’ (Num. 24:17)—R. Huna said in the name R. Levi: ‘it teaches that Israel will be gathered in the Upper Galilee, and the Messiah son of Joseph will look out [ yizpeh—perhaps a word-play on Zefat] upon them from the Galilee and they will go up from there and all of Israel his people to Jerusalem’ (Pesiqta Zutrata, Balaq, 58; cf. Jellinek 1938, 141 and Eisenstein 1915, 386). With a few differences this midrash also appears in an additional anonymous source: ‘At that time a man from the descendents of Joseph will arise and be called the Messiah of the Lord and many people will gather around him in the Upper Galilee and he will be their king . . . and then the Messiah son of Joseph will go up together with the people gathered following him from the Galilee to Jerusalem’ (Talmi 1955, 179; Idel 1998, 382 n. 8). In conclusion a number of Talmudic, midrashic and medieval sources (e.g. the Zohar) discussing the beginnings of Redemption indicate that its first stages will take place in the Galilee, and more specifically cite two locations; the first—Tiberias and the second the Upper Galilee. Similarly these sources stress (as they were interpreted) the necessity of resuming the Sanhedrin specifically in the Galilee and even the office of Nasi there as well, and also that the Galilean redemption will have a preparatory stage under the leadership of the Messiah son of Joseph.
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The sense of ‘the footsteps of the Redemption’ in the 16th century, together with the increasing centrality of Kabbalistic literature at this time, motivated many Kabbalistic sages to move to Eretz Israel out of Kabbalistic ideology, and following that ideology—to settle in the area of the Galilee. In this way it is possible to explain the first stage in the migration of Kabbalists (and other penitents seeking ‘correction’ for their souls) to the Upper Galilee and to its central town—Safed. Redemption in the Upper Galilee: Concretization of an Idea The Kabbalistic sages who settled in the Galilee were joined, as mentioned above, by former conversos who sought to repent and atone for their sins, as part of their preparation for the Redemption. It is possible that the attraction of many of them to the wool industry was not derived only from the necessity of creative ways to solve problems of making a living in a new environment, but was anchored immanently in a Kabbalistic outlook. As mentioned, one of the unique characteristics of the Kabbalistic teaching is that of identifying abstract, symbolic ideas with the concrete world, whether the world of action and creation or the private and even intimate world of family life. This view led, in contradistinction to other trends in Judaism, to the idealization of concrete action and daily work. Many Kabbalists took part in the wool industry and other occupations, even though they could have made a living from donations and that also influenced their large following. It seems that this phenomenon encouraged the rapid development of the wool industry (and attempts to develop silkworm cultivation and the planting of mulberry orchards). However the Kabbalists were not satisfied with ‘arriving’ in the Upper Galilee, but as mentioned, as part of their unique perception and practical method, they started to take active measures (or partially active ones) in order to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah and for them the Upper Galilee had its own value, more than just a place to live. Liebes put it this way: ‘The Kabbalists were attracted to Rashbi and his colleagues, both to adhere to their souls that hovered over their tombs and to follow in their paths, and by that I mean literally the paths where they walked, the paths of the Galilean hills . . . the stage on which their heroes walked, i.e.
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Eretz Israel, has significant meaning and is not only a ‘framework’ and a literary conceit’ (Liebes 2000, 32–35). Thus in the course of the fifty years of the Golden Age the concrete familiarity of the Kabbalists with the trails of the Upper Galilee and its landscape was intensified. This exposure sharpened their tendency to offer a symbolic interpretation to a visible panorama (alike Bar-Gal 1983). Below we will provide a few examples of the concretization of the link between the Galilee and the Redemption. 1. Attraction to Rashbi and his colleagues, as mentioned above, which grew stronger with the dissemination of the Zohar and the rise in its importance as a source of Messianic prophecy, together with the tradition that its author was Rashbi—led to the new fame of another remote location, the village of Meron. Following a single reference in the Jerusalem Talmud the tomb of Rashbi was identified there (until that time pilgrims had visited Meron as the site of the tomb of Hillel and Shammai). From this time on the tomb of Rashbi becomes one of the popular pilgrimage sites (although not the central one and clearly not an exclusive one) for the Kabbalists of Safed and a number of redemptive practices developed around it (Vilnai 1986, 121; Benayahu 1962; Vilnai, Ariel, s.v. Meron, Rashbi). 2. At the same time there developed among the Kabbalists a general phenomenon of ‘touring’ in order to locate and identify additional tombs of Tannaim and Amoraim (the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud). One of the most important books that describes this phenomenon is Haim Vital’s Sefer Hagilgulim, about which Ben-Zvi said that it reveals ‘a remarkable knowledge of the topography of the Upper Galilee’ (Ben-Zvi 1976, 189). These expeditions throughout the Galilee strengthened their familiarity with the region and their attempts to identify places and various objects in the landscape with names mentioned in the Book of the Zohar and in earlier sources. 3. An additional phenomenon, evidently found only among the Kabbalists of Safed, was that of going out to nature for study and for carrying out mystical ceremonies, which they called ‘gerushin’ (lit. expulsions; cf. Zack 1995, 34–54; 299–317). The first two who mentioned this practice were the brothers-in-law Cordovero and Alkabetz, although the most famous group that performed gerushin were the Ari and his disciples.
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4. The customs of Ari and his disciples (‘the lion’s whelps’): Despite the short time that Ari lived in Safed he left his impact with a number of special practices and one of the most famous of them (attributed to him, even though it actually preceded him) was going out into a field in order to receive the ‘Queen’, i.e. the Sabbath. The Sabbath symbolized the connection between the real world and the Upper Sephirot and functioned as a focus and a propitious time for the beginning of Redemption (Halamish 2000, 332–355). This was realized and demonstrated by going out to the Galilean countryside and by performing a ceremony in which attention was given to every detail (see below). 5. Evidently the Kabbalists were proud of their location in the Upper Galilee and of its eschatological context and emphasized it. For example the famous Kabbalist R. Shelomo Alkabez concluded one of his books saying: ‘. . . and this book was completed here in Safed, which is in the Upper Galilee, may it be rebuilt speedily in our days, on the third day of the month of Kislev, in the year [5]313 [= 1553] and may he reveal himself to us Amen and Amen’, and he does not make do with the ordinary idiom ‘the Holy Land’ or ‘the Holy Community’ (Pachter 1987, n. 36). Likewise R. Elijah de Vidash takes pride ‘and we have already seen here in the Safed in the Upper Galilee sages . . . who were familiar with the science of physiognomy’ (Vidash, [1575] 1926, 2,6,70c; Halamish 2000, 339). Similarly a few generations late the printer of Hemdat Yamim took pride in how the book was published: ‘when I went up the mountain, the holy mountain of the Upper Galilee . . . and behold a man stood opposite me carrying this book from the house of Rav’ (preface by the printer R. Jacob Algazi, Izmir 1731). The Hymn Lecha Dodi as an Expression of the Connection between Mysticism and Landscape One of the most famous literary works composed in this period in the Upper Gaililee is the hymn Lecha Dodi (‘Come by Beloved’) by the Kabbalist R. Solomon Alkabez. Continuing the line of reasoning above, we shall try to analyze some of the topographical expressions incorporated in the stanzas of the hymn, and to give them a new interpretation in this context.
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Alkabez (b. Salonika 1500–d. Safed 1576) immigrated to Eretz Israel and settled in Safed in the year 1536, one of the years identified as a year of Redemption (Tamar 1958, 62; Pachter 1987; Zack 1977). Just before his immigration he even gave a sermon in his community, in which he explained the ideological motive behind his move—messianic expectations (Pachter 1987, 253). As other Kabbalists in Safed he used to tour the hills of the Galilee, and this fact left an impression on his literary work. Zinberg, an expert on Hebrew literature, relates, in the name of one of Alkabez’s disciples, that Alkabez ‘used to go out for walks in barren fields, in which he would isolate himself in holiness. On the eve of every Holy Sabbath all the members of the group would gather together, confess their sins and before the sunset go out to the fields to receive the Sabbath Queen . . . and in this ecstatic atmosphere, on one his walks, he composed the immortal hymn, ‘Lecha Dodi ’ (Zinberg III: 56; cited in Cohen 1970, 337, identified the student as Cordovero, mentioned above). Despite this somewhat romanticized description, it is possible to identify a number of topographical influences in the hymn, as we shall see below. This is highly likely since Alkabez composed the hymn around the year 1548, i.e. after twelve years of walking the paths of the Upper Galilee (Cohen 1982, 349). The hymn is full of hints and ideas of the Redemption and may be analyzed in a number of linguistic and ideological ways (Cohen 1982; Kimelman 2003 and bibliography there; Bazak 1989). Despite the tendency to regard the hymn as mystical, there is still a level of ‘plain sense of the text’ that cannot be ignored, and it contains unique expressions that need to be understood against the background of the Biblical and Talmudic context from which they are drawn. This follows the assumption that the world of the sages of Safed (like that of all sermonizers) was suffused with semantic associations from the Bible and the Midrash, to which they added deeper exegetical interpretations. As is well known, most of the stanzas of the hymn involve the Redemption, but two of them differ somewhat in character. The third stanza in translation: ‘Shrine of the King, royal city, arise! Come forth from thy ruins. Long enough have you dwelt in the vale of tears! He will show you abundant mercy. Come my beloved to greet the bride, let us receive the Sabbath.’ The fourth stanza: ‘Shake off your dust, arise! Put on your glorious garment, my people, and pray: Be near to my soul, and redeem it through the son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite. Come my beloved to greet the bride, let us receive
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the Sabbath.’ (Birnbaum 1977, 245). Both include ‘topographical’ expressions that suggest a transition from a lower status to a higher one. The third stanza says ‘Long enough have you dwelt in the vale of tears!’ and the fourth uses the expression ‘shake off your dust, arise.’ It is noteworthy that the author of Hemdat Hayamim sensed that these expressions were out of place in a hymn devoted to crowning (or as other scholars claimed, do not express accurately that author’s Sabbatean view), and consequently he offered a ‘revised’ interpretation that replaced the ‘negative’ expressions in both stanzas (Cohen 1982, 352; Fogel 2001, esp. 381). In our opinion the ‘lowly’ expressions are not coincidental, but are anchored in his world view of the stages in the redemptive process, both in terms of the concrete landscape and the Biblical and Midrashic sources from which the expressions were drawn. Let us turn first to the expression ‘shake off your dust’ which Alkabez uses in other places as well. As we have pointed out, this expression has Biblical, Midrashic and Kabbalistic levels of meaning. On the Biblical level it concerns the redemption of Jerusalem, e.g. ‘Shake off the dust, rise and sit up, Jerusalem’, but Alkabez quotes only part of the verse, omitting the name of Jerusalem. He did this clearly intentionally since he did the same to three other truncated verses that are incorporated into the hymn: ‘awake, awake, arise, Jerusalem;’ awake, awake, don your strength, Zion;’ ‘don your glorious garments, Jerusalem’ (Isa. 51:9–52:2). In fact the entire chapter in Isaiah is a panegyric to the Redemption of Zion and Jerusalem, but Alkabez explicitly and intentionally omits all reference to Jerusalem. A similar truncated allusion may be found in the expression ‘He will show you abundant mercy ( yahmol 'alayikh)’ which is clearly based on Jer. 15:5: ‘Who will have mercy on you ( yahmol 'alayikh), O Jerusalem’. Was there a political reason for this omission? There does not seem to be any external reason for the omission of the name of Jerusalem or Zion or a textual reason (meter or rhyme) either. It does seem that Alkabez was playing a double game here; He uses expressions that are clearly identified with Zion and Jerusalem, but by omitting the name of Jerusalem, he allows the listeners to think that he is leading him in another direction. One may not ignore the fact that just two years after Alkabez arrived in Safed a severe controversy broke out between the leading rabbi of Safed, R. Jacob Berav and R. Levi b. Haviv of Jerusalem over the resumption of rabbinical ordination. This controversy continued for many
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years. Alkabez wrote the hymn against a background of this controversy, in which competition over hegemony was involved as well as an ideological dispute over the site of the beginning of the Redemption, as we have pointed out. It is likely that Alkabez, a Safed Kabbalist, who believed in the major role of the Upper Galilee in the ‘Beginnings of the Redemption’ and evidently an adherent of R. Jacob Berav, would refrain from writing a panegyric to Jerusalem, especially while this bitter polemic persisted. On the other hand it would have ‘politically incorrect’ to ignore Jerusalem entirely. Perhaps that is why he chose an expression that had already undergone a geographical metamorphosis and truncation in the Talmud. In fact the source of the truncated expression that Alkabez chose leads us back to the passage in tractate Rosh Hashana (see above) that describes how the Divine Presence shakes off its dust and the depths of its disgrace in Tiberias (and its going up to the high hills of the Galilee?) as the first stage of the redemptive process. By doing so he receives ‘approval’ to use the expression ambiguously; it hints at Jerusalem, but brings us directly to the redemption of Tiberias! In this way Alkabez can sing a song of redemption of the Galilee without stating explicitly the name of Zion or of the Galilee. To complete the topographical picture we should point out that the third stanza, which mentions ‘The Valley of Tears’ also has a geographical meaning. This expression, in Hebrew 'emeq habakha first appears in Psalms, and the reader of modern Hebrew immediately recognizes it as a negative expression. That is because it is used regularly to express negative descriptions in modern Hebrew literature (references to Europe at the time of the Shoah, the name given to a valley in the North of Israel where a tough battle took place in the Yom Kippur War et al.). These literary sources follow in the footsteps of Midrashim of the sages, as we shall see below, however on a Biblical level the meaning of the word bakha (bet, khaf, aleph) is a tree or bush (cf. e.g. II Sam. 5:24—‘tree tops’) and indeed the context in Psalms also leads us to a valley covered with bushes, in which springs are discovered: ‘as they pass through the valley of bushes, they find water from a spring’ (Ps. 84:7–8). In the Talmudic period they were unfamiliar with a bush called bakha, but interpreted this unusual word according to its homonym (bet, khaf, he) as weeping, and the ‘spring’ as a source of water made from tears (B.T. 'Eruvin 19a; Shemot Rabbah 7:4—‘Weeping and crying like a spring’).
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In an entirely different context the Zohar describes Rashbi sitting with his son and a disciple in the Galilean hills and they see ‘a tube of fire coming down into the waters of the Sea of Galilee’ and the entire area trembles. Seeing this remarkable sight, Rashbi said ‘surely this is the time when the Holy One Blessed Be He remembers his children and sheds two tears into the great sea.’ The meeting of the fire and tears (apparently in the Sea of Galilee) causes the tremor (Zohar II [Exodus] 9a). Evidently Alkabez combined in his poem the magnificent landscape that he saw before him (surely out of identification with the point of view of Rashbi in the Zohar) with the three early sources we mentioned; the expression 'emeq habakha as the vale of tears; Tiberias as the point where Israel reached its lowest state on the one hand, but its redemption will begin on the other (‘shake off your dust’); and Sea of Galilee as the sea of God’s tears, which causes a tremor in the entire area when the arrival of the hour of redemption is remembered. This associative and complex integration of ancient sources could only take place in the unique combination created by three factors: one—the dramatic landscape of the high Galilean hills on the one hand and the lowly Sea of Galilee on the other ('emeq habakha in both of its meanings); the second—the time factor, the fervent expectation that in this landscape and at that time the process of redemption was about to begin; the third—Alkabez’s romantic and unusual personality and the landscape-oriented interpretation he gave to ancient sources. It is interesting to note that Alkabez’s use of the rare expression 'Emeq ha-bakha is not sui generis. At the same time a physician and historian from Avignon named Joseph ben Joshua Hacohen wrote a book about the tribulations of the Jews from their Exile until after the Expulsion from Spain and called it 'Emeq Habakha. Written between 1513–1563, it was first disseminated within a small circle (first published in 1575), and I have found no evidence that Alkabez knew it and adopted the expression from it. In this context we cannot ignore an additional interesting historical connection. If the assumption that Alkabez composed the hymn about twelve years after his immigration to Eretz Israel is correct, then it was just at the time when the wall was under construction around the ruins of the citadel of Safed, a wall that was meant to protect the Jews of the town in times of emergency (regarding two such events in the late 1540s cf. Ben-Zvi 1976; Cohen 1982, 349).
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Thus it is possible that the expression ‘and the city shall be rebuilt on its mound’ in the sixth stanza does not refer to Jerusalem at all (may be alike Jer. 30:18), but hints at the restoration of Safed, the purpose of which was to provide refuge or in Alkabez’s language: ‘The afflicted of my people will be sheltered within you.’ The Encounter with the Landscape while Receiving the Sabbath Evidently for Alkabez and his group (and later on for Ari and R. Haim Vital) the verbal connection between landscape and ritual did not suffice. They created a highly evocative ceremonial act, linked in a unique and intentional way to the landscape of the Upper Galilee. By this we refer to the custom of going out of the town every Sabbath eve, to nature, in order to receive (or to greet) the ‘Sabbath Queen’. Much has been written about the origins and meaning of this custom and the symbolism of Queen/Bride/Divine Presence/Redemption (Cohen, Halamish 2000; Kimelman 2003). A number of elements in the ceremony, cited by those who have described it, emphasize this trend: 1. Stressing the position in which one should stand when performing the ceremony: ‘When you go out to the field, choose a place that is higher and there should be open space behind you and on your right and left, at least four cubits should be clean before you as your eyes can see’ (this and other instructions are from the prayer book of the Ari—Cohen 337). In other words, seek an open space and especially where you can look in front of you. 2. The unusual emphasis on standing in ‘a high place’ (in some versions ‘on a high mountain’) was meant to obtain a view of the surrounding area (as opposed to the accepted custom of praying from a low point, particularly in the practice of Oriental Jewish communities). One may presume that the purpose of the vantage point was actually to see 'Emeq habakha, i.e. the Valley of Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, and in the opposite direction the high Mt. Meron. This may be done easily if you go out to one of the hills outside Safed, and it certainly could be done from the hill of the citadel, which was the place at which it had long been the custom to carry out the Tashlikh ceremony on the New Year (Rosh Hashanah) in Safed, with a view to the Sea of Galilee below.
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3. The direction of prayer in this ceremony is not towards Jerusalem, as was the usual practice, but towards the west ‘and face the west and close your eyes’. This change raises two questions: first of all the apparent abandonment of Jerusalem and secondly the choice of looking towards the west. Some connected it to the presence of the tomb of Rashbi in the west. However, this is difficult to accept since it negates the approach that one does not pray towards the dead, nor is there any source for it, to the best of my knowledge. On the other hand, if we continue the line of reasoning above, according to which Alkabez sought to hint at replacing Jerusalem with the Galilee, then this act of facing west also says that ‘Jerusalem’ is no more than a point of cosmic contact between man and the upper worlds, and even the physical Jerusalem was only a stage in a more abstract direction, expressed even in the Temple by facing west (Stepansky 2002). Thus, at the sublime moment of contact with the Divine Presence at the entrance of the Sabbath, Alkabez is saying that there is something beyond the geographical location of the Temple in Jerusalem (For a parallel idea from modern times, cf. Paz 1997). 4. White garments: It is stressed that the Kabbalists wore ‘four white garments’. In fact this does not entail a topographical element, but does create an association with the priests performing ritual in the Temple. 5. Scholars have pointed out that the custom to go out in a procession to the field took place almost exclusively in Safed (except for one testimony by the author of Hemdat Yamim to the effect that it was practiced in his time in Jerusalem as well). Indeed there was a controversy among sages of the time regarding whether going out of town was an act of ‘the pious or the eccentric’ as Cordovero put it, ‘since the Sabbath does not come through the field but from above’ and the context of the controversy may have been intellectual or educational (Cohen 1982, 336–342; Halamish 2000, 336–339). Nevertheless the hypothesis that explains the fact that this practice did not spread to other communities for considerations of safety is unlikely since in Safed itself the situation was not always ideal and conversely we do not know of serious attempts to imitate the ceremony in other lands. Evidently without the natural ‘backdrop’ of Safed and the Galilee and without the mystical-topographical link the ceremony of receiving the Divine Presence in the field loses its point. If we may assume
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that the hymn Lecha Dodi was part of the ceremony of going out to the field, we may conclude that without the immanent connection between the hymn and the landscape, going out to the field becomes meaningless. Thus, finally it seems that the hymn Lecha Dodi and the practices that developed in Safed for receiving the Sabbath express the second stage in the sanctification of Safed. Unlike kabbalistic writings composed outside Eretz Israel, here a clear connection with the landscape finds its expression, not only because these individuals were living in this area with its dramatic landscape, but from an ideology that here, in this picturesque landscape the beginnings of Redemption will take place, and, moreover, the awaited Redemption is already suggested by the concrete landscape. These were prima facie optimal environmental conditions for significant kabbalistic literary creativity and they merged well with the concretization of the landscape and turned it into a symbol, one of the principles of the Kabbalah. In the course of the spiritual metamorphosis conducted by the Kabbalists an emphasis was put on the centrality of the Upper Galilee, even at the expense of the centrality of Jerusalem, both as a temporary stage (the beginnings of Redemption) and as an idea (turning towards the west). The ability to take the congregation to ‘a high place’ out of town, from which they could see the valley of the Sea of Galilee in one direction and Mt. Meron, with the tomb of the author of the Book of the Zohar in another, was a rare geographical-historical coincidence. Since then a rich tradition of Kabbalistic customs developed (going out to the field of holy apples to receive the Divine Presence; ceremonies at Meron on the anniversary of Rashbi’s death etc.) which comprise an entire series of acts shrouded in mystery the purpose of which was to bring about the coming of the Messiah and his appearance in the Upper Galilee. Conclusion The arrival of many Kabbalists in Eretz Israel at the beginning of the 16th century and their settling specifically in Safed was not an accident and did not result from its economic attraction. Transforming Safed into a ‘city of the holy’ was first and foremost connected with
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the role of the Upper Galilee in mystical and kabbalistic literature, particularly that of the Zohar, and this process took place in two primary stages. The first stage was connected with the general phenomenon of increased expectations for Redemption in kabbalistic circles at the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th, in the wake of the Expulsion from Spain, which drew many immigrants to Eretz Israel, particularly among the activists among the Kabbalists. Nevertheless many expressions in mystical literature led to the conclusion that the first stage of the Redemption, the appearance of the ‘Messiah son of Joseph’ would take place specifically in the Upper Galilee (and not, for example, in the Jerusalem area). This alone made the Galilee a magnet for groups of eschatologically oriented mystics, who translated these ideas into operative steps to reach the Galilee. It seems that the most notable example of that and perhaps the end of the first stage was the immigration of R. Solomon Alkabez to Safed in 1536, a year of keen messianic expectation. From this point on two parallel processes took place, and both are intrinsically connected to the character and the views of the immigrants; one is related to the creative effort to develop new and sophisticated sources of income, which would take good advantage of the human capital and knowledge that the Kabbalists and their followers brought with them from Spain and Italy. This was done in order to provide a livelihood for them and their congregations, both as an immediate need and as part of a general ideology to develop a full life in Eretz Israel. The second process was fundamentally spiritual and began as a natural result of the encounter with the concrete landscape of the Galilee, and the beginning of an intimate romance with that landscape. In this stage the tradition of spiritual expeditions into nature and the groups that walked all over the Galilee, a phenomenon that was evidently unique to this time and place, and became a fundamental element in the teachings of Ari and his disciples. This stage led to the literature of gerushin of Cordovero on the one hand and the composition of the hymn Lecha Dodi and other similar ones on the other. This was evidently the stage at which Safed and the Upper Galilee became the concrete backdrop and played a role in the process of the beginning of Redemption bringing about a dramatic increase in the religious and mystical importance of the area. This found its expression in the desire to renew the Sanhedrin, specifically in this
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area; in the development of new local practices related to nature and the landscape, such as going out to receive the Sabbath Queen and the Redemption, and in the kabbalistic literary creativity that was sustained on this landscape. From all of this it is clear that behind the sanctification of Safed and the messianic ideas associated with it were two causes: the mystical tradition that goes back to the Talmud, but is primarily found in the Zoharic literature, and the concrete landscape of the Galilee, including the deep valley of Tiberias on one side and the high mountains of Safed on the other. Together they created a powerful catalyst that transformed a forgotten and remote town into one of the most important spiritual and economic centers in the Jewish world of the time. The aspiration to create an exemplary religious society (Schechter 1908) i.e. ‘a holy people’ or a ‘holy community’ worthy of receiving the Messiah (including the renewal of ancient institutions such as the Sanhedrin or the Nasi) will be better understood only in the context of the tradition of the ancient sanctity of the place. This sanctity was expected to be revived with the coming of the Messiah. The case of Safed fits prima facie the models of Eliade and Turner regarding the sanctification of places outside existing centers and on mountain tops (Eliade 1961; Turner 1987). However what is unique about this case is the integration of ‘seductive’ topographical features together with ‘revival’, development and enrichment of ancient, dormant traditions of a people seeking to renew its connection with its former land temporarily in an alternative location. The crisis and the rapid decline which this process witnessed at the time (the death of Ari and the economic collapse) were interpreted as a planned and foreseen process, related to the stages of the Redemption, and the temporary appearance of the Messiah son of Joseph in the Galilee. In this context it is important to emphasize that in the next generations no similar phenomenon of spiritual ferment and creativity occurred in any other community in Eretz Israel or the area. However, centuries of decline have not diminished the sanctity that Safed attained in that generation and which left it shrouded in mystery, awaiting its role as the harbinger of the Redemption of Israel.
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LITERATURE Aeshcoly, A. and M. Idel, Sippur David Ha-Reuveni, 2nd expanded edition, Jerusalem 1993. Alkabez, S. Shoresh Yishai, Siget 1891, 90. Avizur, S., Safed, a Center for the Manufacture of Woolen Textile in the Sixteenth Century (in Hebrew), Sefunot 6 (1963), 43–99. ———, ‘The Wool Textile Industry in Safed and Its Demise’ (in Hebrew), in: A. Shmueli et al. (eds), Arzot Hagalil I, Haifa 1983, 353–360. Baker, A.R.H. & G. Biger (eds), Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective, Cambridge 1992. Bar-Gal, Y., ‘The Subjective Meaning of Landscape for the Human Being’, in: Safed (in Hebrew), in A. Shmueli et al. (eds), Arzot Hagalil I, Haifa 1983, 361–368. Bazak, J., Studies in ‘Lecha Dodi’ (in Hebrew), Sinai 102 (1988), 184–196. ———, ‘Lecha Dodi’—New Studies (in Hebrew), Sinai 103 (1989), 230–234. Ben-Arzi, Y., “Migermania laeretz haqodesh, hityashvut hatemplerim baeretz Israel, Jerusalem 1996, 18–45. Benayahu, M., ‘The Agreement of Safed to Exempt Scholars from Taxes and the Attempt by R. Judah Abirlin to Cancel It’ (in Hebrew), in: I. Ben-Zvi and M. Benayahu (eds), Sefer Zfat, Vol. II, Jerusalem 1964, 106. ———, ‘The Practices of the Kabbalists of Safed in Meron’ (in Hebrew), Sefunot 6 (1962), 9–40. Ben-Zvi, I., Eretz Israel veyishuva bimei hashilton ha"othmani, Jerusalem 1976, 169–202. Bernstein, S., Shomrei hahomot, Tel Aviv 1938, 88–91. Birnbaum, P., Daily Prayer Book, New York 1977, 245–248. Cohen, J.I., ‘The Order of Receiving the Sabbath and the Hymn Lecha Dodi’ in: Sefer Adam-Noah (Noah A. Baron Memorial Volume), Jerusalem 1970, 321–357. ———, Meqorot veqorot, Jerusalem 1982, 74–106. Dan, J., ‘The Story of Rabbi Joseph della Reina’ (in Hebrew) in: I. Ben-Zvi and M. Benayahu (eds), Sefer Zfat, Vol. I, Jerusalem 1962, 313–326. David, A., 'Aliyah vehityashvut baeretz Israel bameah ha-16, Jerusalem 1993, 108–110. Dimtrovsky, H.Z., ‘Two New Documents on the Ordination Controversy in Safed’ (in Hebrew), Sefunot 10 (1966), 112–192. Eisenstein, S. Ozar Hamidrashim, New York 1915, 396–398. Eliade, M., Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, Kansas 1961. Fogel, M., ‘The Sabbatianism of the Book Hemdat Hayamim—A New Look’ in Hebrew), in: R. Elior et al. (eds), Hahalom veshivro—hatenu’ah hashabetait vesheluhoteha, Jerusalem 2001, II, 365–422. Halamish, M., Haqabbalah batefila bahalakha uvaminhag, Ramat Gan 2000. Idel, M., Messianic Mystics, New Haven and London 1998. Kimelman, R., Lecha dodi veqabbalat Shabbat—hamashmaut hamistit, Jerusalem 2003. Liebes, J., ‘The Connection of the Zohar to Eretz Israel’ (in Hebrew), in: Z. Harvey et al. (eds), Zion veziyonut beqerev yehudei sefarad vehamizrah, Jerusalem 2002, 31–44. Pachter, M., ‘The Aliyah of R. Solomon Alkabez to Eretz Israel’ (in Hebrew), Shalem 5 (1987), 251–263. Paz, Y., “The Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus as a ‘Temple’” (in Hebrew), in: U. Head and S. Katz (eds), Toledot hauniversita ha"ivrit biyerushalayim, Jerusalem 1997, 281–308. Pesiqta Zutrata, Balak, 58 (cited in A. Jellinek, Bet hamidrash, II, Jerusalem 1938, 141). Pri 'Ez Haim, Cracow 1782, Ha"amidah, ch. 19, 53a. Rozanes, S. Divrei yemei Yisrael batograma, II, Tel Aviv 1933 (facsimile edition 1997).
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Schechter, S., ‘Safed in the Sixteen Century, a City of Legists and Mystics’, Studies in Judaism, Philadelphia 1908, 202–306. Scholem, G., Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, New York 1967. ———, ‘Avraham Halevy’ (in Hebrew), Qiryat Sefer II (1925/1926), 101–141; 269–273. ———, Mehqarei shabtaut, Tel Aviv 1991, 587. Shur, N., Toledot Zfat, Jerusalem 2000, 49. Stepansky, J., ‘Turning towards the West when Receiving the Sabbath according to the Kabbalists of Safed’ (in Hebrew), Uri Zion 8 (2002), 125–135. Talmi, A., Sefer Hagalil, Tel Aviv 1955. Tamar, D., ‘Expectations in Italy for 1575 as a Year of Redemption’ (in Hebrew), Sefunot II (1958), 61–85. ———, ‘R. Isaac Luria and R. Haim Vital as the Messiah Son of Joseph’ (in Hebrew), Sefer Zfat II, Jerusalem 1964, 170. Turner, V., ‘The Center Out There: Pilgrim’s Goal’ History of Religion, 12 (1987) 191–230. Vidash, E., Reshit Hokhma, Munkatcsh (= Mukachevo) 1926, 2:6 70c (cited in Halamish, above, 339). Vilnai, Z., ‘Meron’, ‘Rashbi’ ‘Roma’ (2), Ariel Encyclopedia (in Hebrew). Werblowsky, R.J.Z., ‘On the Figure of R. Joseph Karo’s Maggid’ (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 26 (1958), 310–321. Yehiel of Arptshikh, Pirqei Avot, Cracow 1576, 2:1 (quoted in: Tequfat hazohar shel Zfat, 1972). Zack, B., Basha"ar Haqabbalah shel Cordovero, Beer Sheva 1995, 34–54; 299–317. ———, ‘The Mystical Doctrine of R. Solomon Halevy Alkabez’ (in Hebrew), Dissertation, Brandeis University 1977. Zinberg, I., Toledot hasifrut hayehudit, III, Merhavia 1960, 56.
MODERN PERIOD
THE AMBIVALENT ROLE OF THE ‘PEOPLE OF GOD’ IN TWENTIETH CENTURY CATHOLIC THEOLOGY: THE EXAMPLES OF YVES CONGAR AND EDWARD SCHILLEBEECKX Erik Borgman Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Introduction Being first and foremost a systematic theologian, I began to specialize somewhat in the history of Catholic theology after World War II through the writing of the intellectual biography of Edward Schillebeeckx, who is also my principle theological mentor (Borgman 1999; Borgman 2002). One of the things I noticed as soon as I started to study Schillebeeckx’s theological development was the relatively small role of World War II, and the virtual absence of the Shoah. Initially, I tended to explain this in relation to the contingencies of Schillebeeckx’ biography. He was born and raised culturally and intellectually in Flanders. There, the view on the German occupation became very politicized directly after the war and the Shoah never weighed on public consciousness a much as it did in the Netherlands. At the same time, I universalized the problem and considered the lack of attention to the quasi-annihilation of the Jewish people as part of the mainstream of Catholic theology. After a while, however, I realized I was making it too easy for Schillebeeckx, too easy for the theological tradition in which he stands and thus—being myself part of that tradition as well—too easy for myself. There is no denial that there is a problem in the whole of Catholic theology and its relation to the Jewish people and its history, but there is even more of a problem in the tradition of modern and modernizing Catholic theology of which Marie-Dominique Chenu and Yves Congar were the major voices in France and which Edward Schillebeeckx represented in the Dutch language. There were, of course, other positions on this issue such as that of the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, for instance, who wrote:
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Of course, this ‘anti-Semitism is anti-Judaism is anti-Christianism’ is not without its own problems. Maritain was married to Raissa, a Jewish woman who had become a Catholic, and he has been called a ‘Rassenschändler’ for that, a disgracer of his race. This, on the one hand, showed to him the spiritual continuity between Judaism and Catholic Christianity on a day-to-day basis, and on the other hand, made him very sensitive to anti-Semitism. It is not surprising that he enthusiastically welcomed the statement by Pope Pius XI on 6 September 1938 that ‘spiritually we’—Catholics, Christians—‘are Semites’ (Maritain 1990:116–117). But it is too simple to reduce Maritain’s position to his biography and to suggest that he was saved from the then current Catholic blind spot for its spiritual affinity with Judaism by his marriage to Raissa. It was an important element of Maritain’s view on Catholicism that it is a separate culture with its own values and mores. Standing more or less apart from modernity, Catholicism had to penetrate the modern world from the outside (cf. mainly Maritain 1936). This made it relatively easy for him to relate Catholicism and Judaism as separate cultures with their own values and habits and to see Catholics as spiritual Semites. In the tradition of Chenu, Congar and Schillebeeckx however, the Christian faith was seen as related to and influenced by the culture in which it took shape. Where Maritain started with the distinction between Christianity and Modernity and tried to connect them, Chenu wrote in 1936 about ‘dimensions nouvelles de la chrétienté’, new dimensions of a Christendom, which were taking shape within and amidst modern culture and in close solidarity with its questions and dilemmas (Chenu 1964). Chenu, and in his wake Congar and Schillebeeckx, started with the fact that Catholics were part of modern culture. With all the progress this meant—and still means—for Catholic theology, it makes a positive relationship with the Jewish tradition in its clear ‘Otherness’ less evident for them than it was for Maritain (cf. Congar 1953). At least, that is what I will try explain in this paper, at the end also suggesting how to perhaps overcome this problem.
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The Church: People of God In the very first issue of Concilium, the international theological journal that was meant to keep alive the spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) within the Catholic Church, Yves Congar wrote an article on ‘The Church: The People of God’ (Congar 1965). In it he traces how the idea of the Church as a ‘People of God’ has taken its place in Catholic theology from the late nineteen thirties onward, until it became canonized in the dogmatic constitution on the Church issued by the Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium (cf. Dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium 1964: no. 9–17). Trying to make clear why ‘People of God’ is an important image of the Church, Congar mentions as the first reason the fact that the concept of the Church as a ‘People of God’ expresses the continuity between the Church and Israel. By Israel, however, he not so much means the Jewish people of his time, but Israel as is appears in the Old—or First—Testament as a People chosen by God as his very own. This indicates that ‘People of God’ has for Congar mainly an ecclesiological meaning. As a category, it stresses the function of the Church to incorporate human beings into the history of salvation, to which the Bible as a whole witnesses. By calling the Church ‘People of God’ in line with the Old Testament notion of Israel as a People of God, the claim is that the Church is not so much a divine institution to deliver grace by means of the sacraments to fundamentally sinful human beings—the neo-scholastic image of the Church—but a social body called by God to witness to God’s holy Name and directed to the promised future in which God will be all in all. In other words, to understand the Church, Congar thinks it important to understand the Jewish element in its theological legacy, but he seems not especially interested in a connection with the legator, the actual Jewish community in past and present. Congar remarks in his article that it is necessary for Christians to try to understand the relationship between the mystery of Israel and the mystery of the Church within the history of salvation, but in order to understand the Church as a People of God, he apparently does not find it necessary to deeply delve into this question. Congar did discuss this relationship in 1955 in a lecture on ‘The Religious Sense of the Restoration of a Jewish Nation and State at the Holy Land’ in which he stated quite clearly that Israel is essentially part of God’s plan (Congar 1964:530). But I will come back to this remarkable text later.
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Why, for Congar, is the relationship between Israel and the Church not of primary importance in understanding the idea of the Church as a ‘People of God’? I think it is important to be aware of a connotation of the expression ‘People of God’ for Congar, which has little to do with the Biblical background of the idea. Congar associates the word ‘people’ spontaneously with the population of a country or a region in its concrete life living a concrete culture. Presenting this aspect of the idea of the Church as ‘People of God’, Congar seems to almost get swept away by enthusiasm, which was fairly rare for this usually rather dry and reserved theologian. To quote him: . . . the idea of the People of God . . . communicates an understanding of the Church that is both concrete and dynamic. It can be shown how, in the midst of all the peoples of the world, God assembles a People that is his—a People of God. Not only in the midst of these peoples in an anthropological and almost political sense of the word . . ., but this People is to be found in the midst of every population unit— my village, my city, my apartment building, the train on which I am travelling, the hospital in which I am sick (Congar 1965:27).
Here we have in a nutshell the vision that is, I think, the real core of his understanding of the concept ‘People of God’. It originates from Congar’s teacher Marie-Dominique Chenu, who sees the Church as—what he would call—truly incarnated, that is totally and without reserve part of the situation in which ‘the people’ are living and struggling for their lives to make sense. It was this idea of the Church as a People close to the people that was behind the movement of the prêtres ouvriers in the nineteen forties and early fifties, of which Chenu was one of the ideological godfathers and to which Congar and Schillebeeckx were also ideologically connected. This movement of the Worker Priests sought to make the Church once again part of the real life of the people. Thus, the Church should give up all a priori claims to sublimity, and its mission now was to discover anew and in solidarity with the actuality of peoples lives what could be a plausible message of salvation—secular and divine salvation—in today’s world. It is in the midst of this world that, according to Congar, the struggle takes place about what is really Holy. He writes: In any given group of people, each of the different human gods recruits a people to serve him: Mercury, the god of commerce; Mars, the god of war and force; Venus, the goddess of love, etc. The true God and Jesus Christ, his beloved Son whom he sent into the world, also wished
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to recruit a People to serve them, a holy People bound by the law of a love that is all humility and service. This People is recruited from employers and employees, from men and women, from Greeks and barbarians, but in it, above and beyond all this, is Christ (cf. Gal. 3, 18). This People has its law, the love of God and the love of neighbour. Is has its assemblies, its hierarchy, its insignia, its customs. This People is called to give witness to Christ and to his charity (Congar 1965:27).
In the last three sentences of the quotation we meet with a concern which is fairly typical of Congar. The Church is first of all one people, a laos in Greek, and therefore everyone in Church is first of all a laicos, a lay person. The hierarchical distinctions within this People are important to Congar, but secondary in the sense that they depend on and only make sense because of the common membership of the People of God (cf. esp. Congar 1953). People of God and Volkstum—The Case of Karl Adam Fundamental to Congar’s idea of the Church as a ‘People of God’ gathered from ‘every tribe and tongue and people and nation’ (cf. Rev. 5:9), is a thought which he explicitly states, albeit in parentheses, in the Concilium-article. ‘Faith and charity’ are, he says, the two virtues together constituting the fundamental law of the Church as a ‘People of God’, although ‘transcending all differences, destroy no valuable natural bond; on the contrary, . . . purify and confirm all authentic values’. Anybody slightly familiar with Catholic theology will recognize here a paraphrase of the famous adage of Thomas Aquinas that Grace does not destroy Nature, but perfects it. From the late nineteenth century onward, modernizing Catholic theologians used this idea to criticize dominant neo-scholasticism that tended to present Catholicism as an encompassing system of thought and action that strongly opposed modernity. These reformist theologians stressed that Catholic faith should make sense to real people living their lives in the concrete world and culture of modernity. God is the God of creation as much as the God of revelation and salvation, and God cannot contradict himself. Therefore, there is no place or situation in which God’s presence is not found, or is not noticeable in any way. Catholicism should relate to the culture of which Catholics are part. As can be seen in the biography of Edward Schillebeeckx, this is
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a very ambivalent starting point for any theology from a historical point of view. From the very beginning of his career, Schillebeeckx shared fully what we might call the open interpretation of Aquinas’s word on nature and grace, and thus of Catholic theology. In his view, this theology should be in constant dialogue with and reflect on contemporary culture. This interpretation of Aquinas was already part of Schillebeeckx’s theological upbringing in the Flemish branch of the Belgian Province of the Dominican order in the late nineteen-thirties and the early nineteen-forties. It was strengthened and became more focussed in 1945 while Schillebeeckx studied in Paris with Chenu, who not only published widely on contemporary religious and theological issues, but was also recognized as a well-established scholar of mediaeval theology. The significant thing here, however, is that in terms of his biography (cf. Borgman 2002:54–61), Schillebeeckx more or less discovered the possibility of engaging in theology in a manner open to contemporary culture by reading the German Catholic theologian Karl Adam (1876–1966). As a student, Schillebeeckx was very much interested in philosophical discussions, but once he started his theological training proper, he was unable to relate to the rather formal neo-scholastic theology of his days. His mentor and tutor, the philosopher Dominic De Petter (1905–1971) advised him to read Karl Adam’s work and this indeed did help him to envision a theology that worked within and was closely connected to living human culture. Adam worked in the tradition of the romantic organicism of the so-called katholische Tübinger Schule, the Catholic School of Tübingen, and in the tradition of the German Lebensphilosophie, the Philosophy of Life. He tried—and succeeded to a large extent according to his contemporaries; even Karl Barth speaks highly of his ‘warm, modern rhetoric’ (Barth 1937)—to present the Catholic faith as a living reality of living people, rooted in a concrete culture and in a national or local spirit. Apparently without realizing the dangers of a project explicitly intending to incarnate Catholicism in German culture in a time of strong and exclusive German nationalism, Schillebeeckx saw in Adam’s work what he himself wanted to do: to show that there is no contradiction between Christianity and a complete human life, and that therefore it is possible to engage in theology by reflecting on life as it is really lived by concrete people as members of a particular nation and belonging to a particular culture. However, the dangers in using words like Volksgeist—national spirit—and Heimat—native country or
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home country—in National Socialist Germany, as Adam did, were not virtual. To his shock, in 1942 Schillebeeckx was confronted with the text of a speech Karl Adam had delivered in 1939, entitled Die geistige Lage des deutschen Katholizismus (The Spiritual State of German Catholicism). In it, Adam argued the necessity of showing the German aspect of Catholic teaching, discipline and culture. He explicitly endorsed the virtues propagated by National Socialism: ‘lively initiative and courage, tough perseverance and the force to create, community spirit and the willingness to make an effort, in general to cultivate a strict, determined manliness’ (quoted in Kreidler 1983). Schillebeeckx was shocked when he read this in the early forties: the much-admired theologian endorsing values in the name of which his home country was occupied. But he did not know the worst of it. In 1933 Adam had written in an article on Deutsches Volkstum und katholisches Christentum (German Nationhood—literally ‘Peoplehood’— and Catholic Christianity), that in a situation of—as he perceived it—growing social tension, partisanship and class hatred, Germany needed someone who had ‘access to the hidden powers, the secret sources of the life of the people and is thus able to awaken it’, someone in whom ‘the essence of the people, its fear and hope, its anger and pride, its superior inclination and its heroism have become flesh and blood.’ Such a person, Adam wrote in 1933 esteemed Theologische Quartalschrift, has arrived in the person of Adolf Hitler, whom he called ‘the liberator of the German genius who removed the blindfold of our eyes and let us see and love again, through all political, economical, social and confessional veils, what is essential: the unity given in our blood, our German self, the homo Germanicus’ (Adam 1933:41–42). Forgetting History Schillebeeckx did not read these words at the time, or the speech published in Deutsches Volksblatt 23 and 24 January 1934, in which Adam pleaded for a ‘positive and clear yes to the deepest and authentic’ intentions of the National Socialist movement, and to what he called its ‘moral powers which we can only indicate as Christian energies’ (Kreidler 1983:133). However, his reaction to the discovery of Adam’s National-Socialist affiliation is peculiar. He certainly did react: being still a student, he wrote a two hundred page paper
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on Adam’s theology meant for his fellow Dominican students. Right from the outset of the paper, he made clear his intention to take into account the ‘heat of the struggle of war’, and admitted to still holding Adam in high regard ‘as one of our greatest theologians.’ But most astonishingly, Schillebeeckx did not talk about Adam’s lack of historical, moral or political judgement and concentrated solely on theological methodology. According to Schillebeeckx, the key problem was that Adam did not have the correct understanding of the relationship between Nature and supernatural Grace as formulated by Thomas Aquinas’ adage. In Schillebeeckx’s view, for Aquinas, supernatural Grace was not something added to Nature from the outside, but rather a new synthesis in which the true nature of the universe and especially the true human existence were revealed. To Schillebeeckx, discovering the theological meaning of, for instance, the concept ‘People of God’ does not mean to take the concept of ‘People’ in one’s own culture and relate it to God. That is what he saw Adam doing, and what he saw as Adam’s mistake. However, in the Thomistic vision of Schillebeeckx, to enter it into the realm of Sacra Doctrina, e.g. theology, everything had to be seen ‘under the aspect of God’ as revealed in salvation history to which Scripture serves as witness. This is in line with what we saw Congar doing above: thinking about the Church as a ‘People of God’ amidst contemporary culture by trying to take into consideration everything the Bible has to say about ‘People of God’. The question here is, however, whether this, in fact, is not a violation of the adage that Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it. This implies that faith and theology speak about and encompass the reality people live in and live by. In the tradition of Chenu, Congar and Schillebeeckx, salvation history is not some theological scheme in the Bible, but a movement real human beings are part of in and through their history, i.e., in and through the concrete place they have in the very real history of the world. In other words, ultimately, we are Gods’ people because God is present and active in our seemingly profane history. This is what faith and theology see if they look at reality under the aspect of God; this is what makes it possible to be called out—the Greek word ‘ecclesia’, Church—of the seemingly ordinary but sinful order of things, and to come together as a ‘People of God’ following Gods plan. Precisely from this perspective, however, it does seem inappropriate for a Christian theologian to approach the category ‘People
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of God’ as if it is just another concept in the Church’s religious heritage. In history—in which God is first of all present to us, according to Chenu, Congar and Schillebeeckx—it is clear that from the very start of the Christian Church as a movement separated from Judaism, ‘People of God’ has been a polemical concept. The Church understood itself as the ‘People of God’ in opposition to the Jewish People. And what started out as Christian polemics against a then rival religious movement, ended in the Shoah. Many Catholic theologians hoped to find in the idea of the Church as ‘People of God’ some common ground with the Jewish People, shocked as they were by what after 1945 was slowly getting through to them about the disaster of Auschwitz. This is in one degree or another also true for Congar and Schillebeeckx. But in their theological hermeneutics of the concept ‘People of God’, Christian antiJudaism and anti-Semitism have no role to play, nor has the restoration of the relationship with the actual Jewish People. This makes sense, given the fact that they were mainly interested in the ecclesiological possibilities of the concept of a ‘People of God’. At the same time this is odd, given the stress they both put on the theological importance of factual history in their work. Among the consequences of this is the marginality in the relationship between the Church and Israel, in Congar’s and Schillebeeckx’s ecclesiologies. Theological Rehabilitation of History The story does not end here. Both Schillebeeckx and Congar wrote on the correct Christian attitude of the Church to the modern State of Israel, re-established after the Shoah. Thus, they were more or less compelled to reflect on the relationship between two bodies that understand themselves in a sense as ‘People of God’. They both did so only once, which confirms the marginality of the subject in their theological projects. But the remarkable thing is that both articles open up new ways of dealing with the issue, ways that have some promise in them to break through the persistent paradox in the Catholic approach to its Jewish inheritance. I already mentioned Congar’s article, first published in 1958, but based on a stenographic report of a speech he gave on the July 14, 1955—a date not without symbolic meaning, in France (Congar 1964). Schillebeeckx wrote what was entitled ‘A Brief Theological
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Reflection on the Conflict in the Middle East’ in 1976, in an anthology publication sponsored by the Dutch branch of the international Catholic Peace Movement Pax Christi that focussed on a document issued by Pax Christi International, advocating democratic political structures guaranteeing the rights of both Jews and Palestinians (Schillebeeckx 1976). Of course, in the twenty-one years separating the conception of these texts, much changed. In 1955 the State of Israel was still young and the vast majority of the people in Western Europe were sympathetic to it. In 1976, public opinion had developed a much clearer eye for the predicaments of the Palestinian people. Congar could reflect simply on the religious sense of the restoration of a Jewish state in the Holy Land, Schillebeeckx saw himself confronted with two claims that seemed mutually exclusive. On the one hand, it is said that the Catholic Church should first solemnly recognize the right of the Jewish People to have a country, and to have this country. On the other hand, it is claimed that the Church should start with solemnly recognizing the right of the Palestinian People to return to their homeland and to have full citizenship in the State of Israel. It is impossible to discuss these claims here, but the different climate makes a difference for theology. And, of course, the theological situation in the strict sense changed thoroughly as well between 1955 and 1976. Nevertheless, the two articles have much in common. Schillebeeckx and Congar are both convinced that in spite of a dominant line of thinking within Christian and Catholic tradition, theologically speaking, ‘Christians are in the wrong to state that through Jesus Christ every special relationship between God and a people . . . is outdated’, as Schillebeeckx states plainly at the beginning of his article (Schillebeeckx 1976:77). Congar shows to some length how, contrary to popular misunderstanding, according to the New Testament the Church does not replace the Jews as ‘People of God’ and that God’s promises to be faithful to Israel as Chosen People are still considered valid, especially in the letters of Paul (Congar 1964:539–543).1 However, both Congar and Schillebeeckx point out that this recognition does not automatically lead to a clear view on the modern 1 In Congar’s case, speaking in 1955, this is much more remarkable than in Schillebeeckx’s case, writing in 1976, because only in 1965 this view was formally promulgated by the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation to nonChristian Religions Nostra aetate, no. 4.
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State of Israel. Schillebeeckx explicitly states that the Christian contribution to the discussion on Israel is to ‘de-theologize’ it and not to re-enforce the theological claims that are of such high political relevance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He strongly advises against any attempt to see the restoration of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel as part of a divine plan. Instead, Christians and their Churches should, according to Schillebeeckx, stand up for the often-violated rights of all the parties involved and inventively help to find solutions that are satisfactory to all within the demands of justice (Schillebeeckx 1976:84). Schillebeeckx recognizes the necessity for a Christian mea culpa because of the attitude against Jews in past and present. However, he seems unaware of the fact that the history of Christian anti-Jewish violence makes the whole claim to a special contribution here highly problematic. Moreover, Schillebeeckx here presents the Christian tradition as voicing a pure humanitarian and impartial vision on the problem. The Jewish view is seen as particular and the Christian view is presented as universal: a persistent rhetorical figure in the Christian positioning over against Judaism and the Jewish people. I mainly want to stress here, however, how radically the warning to avoid theologizing history contradicts Schillebeeckx’s own deepest intentions. Right at the beginning of his 1976 article, Schillebeeckx points out, in a very condensed argument, how the idea of a particular history having a universal meaning is central to both the Jewish and the Christian traditions. From the Jewish point of view— at least in Schillebeeckx’ reconstruction of it—God is the God of cosmos and history by being the Redeemer of Israel, his Chosen People. From a Christian point of view, God is the God of cosmos and history by being the faithful Father of Jesus Christ and of the people he gathered through the preaching of the Gospel of his life, death and resurrection. Schillebeeckx indicates how both these claims to universal meaning qualify the immediacy of the connection between people, land and salvation. If theologically speaking, God’s redemptive activity for Gods chosen people is by promising and giving it the land and if this is God’s way of being a God of salvation for the whole world and for all the peoples, and if God’s saving activity for Jesus by not leaving him among the dead and gathering for him a new people leading a new live, is God’s way of being a God of salvation for the whole world and for all peoples, that makes both the Jewish and the Christian traditions internally critical to every
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attempt to make themselves absolute. According to a salvation-historical approach of the idea of ‘People of God’, the claim to be a ‘People of God’ is only credible if accompanied by signs that one’s acts are serving the good not just of the own inner group, but the common good. This suggests an alternative way of re-theologizing history: not by sanctifying group interests or political programs and not by putting some scheme of salvation history on the grand total of historical developments and claiming to be part of that program, but by trying to trace the theological significance of what is actually happening and how people deal with it. It is clear that in this theological perspective, the Christian tradition stands first of all strongly accused. The claim of the Christian Church to gather a new people of God has in fact had disastrous consequences—especially for the Jewish people, but not only for them. Thus it contradicts its very pretension to be the major instrument of God’s redeeming activity to the world, that it is to be truly the People of God. In his novel The City of God, the American author E.L. Doctorow has presented an intriguing image of the relations between Christians and Jews in the story of a crucifix that is stolen from an Episcopalian church in New York and planted on the roof of a small synagogue (Doctorow 2000). The novel suggests that to discover what Christian tradition is about means listening to the stories about the fate of the Jewish people through history, and especially during the years of the Shoah. By doing that, maybe the Christian Church can regain some features of the true ‘People of God’. This brings us back, more or less, to Congar’s reflections on the Church as ‘People of God’ in the first issue of Concilium. The most important thing for Congar is that the concept ‘People of God’ makes it clear that the Church is a Lumen Gentium, a light to the people, as the dogmatic constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council proclaims in its very title. Congar stresses that for a full ecclesiology, the idea of a ‘People of God’ is to be complemented by the idea of a Mystical Body of Christ, to show that in the end the Church is not built up from below but lives from God’s gift of the presence of Jesus as the Holy and Anointed One coming from above. However, I would suggest that it is more in accordance with Congar’s own intentions to state that by really being, and over and over again becoming ‘People of God’ as a working sign of Gods universal redemptive presence in history, the Church shows itself to
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be the Body of Christ. Becoming anew the ‘People of God’ requires, among other things, to realize how deep Auschwitz has wounded the Church in its calling to be Lumen Gentium, and to acknowledge that the only thing the Church can do is to be alert to the signs in which at least some meaning is restored to the history in which Auschwitz could happen. One of these signs is for sure the miraculous resurrection of the Jewish people in the foundation of the State of Israel, as Emile Fackenheim pointed out (Fackenheim 1982). At the same time, this implies the obligation to bemoan, to remember and to try to diminish the tremendous amount of new suffering this has caused, among Palestinians as well as among Jews. Tiemo Rainer Peters, a student of Johann Baptist Metz—one of the few major Catholic theologians to have pleaded consequently for theology to understand that its situation is nach Auschwitz, after Auschwitz2—has stated that we should not give Auschwitz a christological meaning or a theological aura. Instead we, Christians, should develop a Christology that is able to safeguard its Abgründlichkeit, the abysmal nature of Auschwitz (Metz 1998:5). Something like this is also true for Ecclesiology, the theological understanding of the Church. It should not try to bridge the abyss that Auschwitz means in the history of Christianity except in the only way in which it maybe can be bridged: by making it clear that it is a bottomless abyss in any authentic understanding of the Church as People of God. Restoring the People of God At the end of his article in 1955 on the religious meaning of the restoration of the Jewish State, Congar makes a very remarkable proposal. As he suggests, the restoration of a representative part of the Jewish People in Palestine, although a purely historical drama, has an ultimate religious sense that in the final analysis can only be interpreted in relation to the Easter of Christ (Congar 1964:546). Thus Congar seems to present the partial resurrection of the Jewish People as part of the still ongoing resurrection and glorification of Jesus Christ by God and the human redemption this implies. In his view, the Jewish people after the Shoah belong to the ‘People of God’ 2 At least since—Metz himself has admitted: ‘rather late, to late?’—the late nineteen seventies; cf. Metz & Kogon 1979; Peters 1998.
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that is trying to live the good life of redemption as part of a history that is fundamentally broken and damaged. There is only the promise that we are God’s people, not to be definitively abandoned as Jesus Christ in his suffering and death was not definitively abandoned. Any theological reflection from a Christian point of view on the ‘People of God’ should start and finish with the awareness of the Christian tradition standing fundamentally accused by the Shoah. The Church can only be saved by the new initiative of the redeeming God revealed in the Exodus and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, bridging the abyss that is humanly unbridgeable. However, Congar is again very ambiguous here. He quotes in the same passage Matthew 23:38–39, in which Jesus says to Jerusalem, symbolizing the centre of the Jewish people: ‘Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ For Congar, the restoration of a representative part of the Jewish People in Palestine means that Judaism will be confronted with the questions of whether to rebuild the temple and to re-install the priesthood, but first and foremost with the question of the Messiah and his relationship with this restoration traditionally closely linked to his coming (Congar 1964:544–546). Congar suggests that the Jews may discover that the answer to these questions is to be found in the name Jesus Christ (Congar 1964:547). Thus, he says in fact that only by becoming part of the Church can the Jewish people be called the ‘People of God’. The verse just before that which Congar quoted from the Gospel of Matthew even suggests this to be a chance for the Jews to repair their mistakes from the past: ‘O Jerusalem’, Jesus is reported saying, ‘killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not!’ (Mt. 23:37). The gesture by Pope John Paul II in 2000 of going to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem asking forgiveness for the sins of the Church to the Jewish people, seems to indicate an awareness of the Christians being the ones refusing to be gathered under the wings of the One redeeming the world. This indeed may be a start for the church to becoming restored as ‘People of God’.
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LITERATURE Adam, K., ‘Deutsches Volkstum und katholisches Christentum’, Theologische Quartalschrift 114 (1933) 40–63. Barth, K., Kichliche Dogmatik, I/2, Zürich 1937. Borgman, E., Edward Schillebeeckx: een theoloog in zijn geschiedenis. Part I: Een katholieke cultuurtheologie (1914–1965), Baarn 1999. ———, Edward Schillebeeckx: a Theologian in his History. Part I: A Catholic Theology of Culture (1914–1965), London etc., Continuum 2002. Chenu, M.-D., ‘Dimensions nouvelles de la chrétienté’, in: id., Parole de Dieu. Part II: L’évangile dans le temps, Paris 1964, 87–108. Congar, Y., The Catholic Church and Race Question, Paris 1953. ———, Jalons pour une theologie du laïcat, Paris 1953 (= 1953a). ———, ‘Le sens religieux de la restauration d’une nation et d’une état juifs en terre sainte’, in id., Chrétiens en dialogue: Contributions catholiques à l’Œcumenisme, Paris 1964, 529–547. ———, ‘The Church: People of God’, Concilium 1 (1965) no. 1, 7–19. Declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions Nostra aetate (28 Oct. 1965), no. 4. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (21 Nov. 1964). Doctorow, E.L., City of God: A Novel, New York: Random House 2000. Fackenheim, E., To Mend the World: Foundations of Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought, Bloomington/Indianapolis 1982. Kreidler, H., ‘Karl Adam und der Nationalsozialismus’, Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte 2 (1983) 129–140. Maritain, J., Humanisme intégral, Paris 1936. ———, Mystère d’Israël et autre essays, Paris 1990 (1965). Metz, J.B. & E. Kogon (ed.), Gott nach Auschwitz: Dimensionen des Massenmords am jüdische Volkes, Freiburg i.B. 1979. ———, ‘Thesen zu einer Christologie nach Auschwitz’, in: Christologie nach Auschwitz: Stellunganahmen im Anschluß an Thesen von Tiemo Rainer Peters, Münster etc., 1998, 2–5. Peters, T.R., Johann Baptist Metz: Theologie des vermißten Gottes, Mainz 1998, 125–137. Royal, R. (ed.), Jacques Maritain and the Jews, Mishawaka 1994. Schillebeeckx, E., ‘Korte theologische bezinning op het konflikt in het MiddenOosten’, in: W.J.B. Bartels e.a. (ed.), Het beloofde land: Rol van de religies in het Midden-Oostenkonflikt, Bilthoven 1976, 77–84.
‘HOLY PEOPLE’: SOME PROTESTANT VIEWS Simon Schoon Kampen Theological University, The Netherlands 1. Introduction 1.1
The ‘True Holy People’
‘Israel’, ‘People of God’ and ‘Holy People’: these are titles the church has thought right to assume for itself, at an early point in its history. In the place of Israel, the Church viewed itself as elected, called and sanctified by God. So Christian theologians conducted a fierce polemical debate with Jewish scholars on the questions, ‘Who is the true people?’ and ‘Whose is the inheritance?’ In other words: who could claim the title of honour ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Exod 19:5)? Quite often the struggle was not decided by words but by brute force. The Church claimed the exclusive right to the title ‘Holy People’. It held that the original Israel had forfeited this right, on account of its unbelief in the promised and now revealed Saviour Jesus Christ. The Christian aversion toward the Jewish People has its strongest expression in the long-upheld substitution theory: as the new People of God, the Church has taken over, definitively, the place of the old Israel as the ‘Holy People’. The Reformers in the 16th century left the substitution theology unchanged. The ‘Holy People’ was re-defined as the church of the Reformation. They emphasized the holiness of those church members who by faith alone were destined to share in the holiness of Jesus Christ. The Church of the Reformation projected itself retrospectively onto the Old Testament, as far back as the Garden of Eden.1 The history of the People of Israel in the Old Testament era was annexed ecclesiologically. 1 See for example in Calvinist tradition Question and Answer 54 of the Catechism of Heidelberg: ‘What do you believe concerning the “Holy Catholic Church”? That the Son of God, out of the whole human race, from the beginning to the end of the world, gathers, defends, and preserves for Himself, by his Spirit and Word, in the unity of the true faith, a Church chosen to everlasting life; and that I am, and forever shall remain, a living member thereof.’
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In the centuries-long struggle where the ‘pure church’ was to be found, much attention had been given to the four notae ecclesiae, the ‘notes’ of the ‘true church’: its unity, its holiness, its catholicity and its apostolicity.2 The Reformation reduced the four notae of the Church to only two. These were the pure preaching of the Word and the proper administration of the two sacraments, Baptism and Holy Supper, while some parts of Calvinism added a third nota, namely the right application of Church discipline. Little if any thought was given to the connection of the Church to God’s ancient people Israel, let alone that this connection could be seen as a nota ecclesiae. There was not a single theological acknowledgement of the continuing history of the living Jewish People after the coming of Christ. Only in modern times has this debate on the ‘true people’ reached the level of a real dialogue, though not yet in all parts of the world, and not in every part of pluralist Protestant Christianity. In the context of the Jewish-Christian dialogue it has been proposed more than once that churches of every background and denomination should be ready to drop their self-definition of ‘the Church as God’s (Holy) People’, so as to create a new climate in the JewishChristian relationship. Considering the enormous diversity of churches and opinions in Christianity, this is probably unattainable and unrealistic in practice. During the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the Roman Catholic Church re-discovered the Church as ‘the People of God on the way’ and favored this title as a proper correction of the existing sacramental and clerical vision of the Church (Koffeman 1986, 21–26, 102–112, 287–297, 310–315). Also in the theology of the World Council of Churches, founded in 1948, to which the majority of Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Churches belong, the identification of the Church with ‘God’s People’ has become a popular way of speaking (Brockway 1988). One must wonder, though, whether a renewal of the relationship between Christians and Jews demands such a radical step as giving up the title ‘Holy People’. Jewish partners in dialogue do not ask for such ‘sacrifices’ and make no such demands on the self-definition of Christians, provided this poses no implicit threat to their own self-understanding and existence. From this viewpoint, the theological challenge for Christians is not so much whether to renounce the term ‘People of God’ for
2
See Rickhof on these notae in this volume (p. 321).
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the Church, as to use this term in such a manner that no antiJewish statements will result from it. 1.2
Outline
This contribution is developed as follows. After this Introduction (1) we will first look into the controversial issue whether and how the New Testament—as a continuation of the Old Testament—allows Christians to speak of the Church as ‘God’s People’ and as ‘Holy People’ (2). Next, several Protestant—mainly Calvinist or Reformed— thinkers from the past and the present, will be called as witnesses (3 and 4). In the past Protestants maintained—as many still do— that the Church is the ‘only true People of God’ and that the Church has replaced the People of Israel as the ‘Holy People’ for good. In more recent decades, since the impact of the Shoah, other terminology has come into use about Jews and Judaism in Church and theology (5). This change of emphasis will be illustrated with a selection of quotations from many official church documents which address the subject (6). The new development has triggered a crisis, because it challenges what Christians have always taken for granted, namely the claim of the church to be ‘the only true and holy People of God’. Finally, some conclusions will be drawn for Protestant theology (7). 2. Old and New Testament Throughout history, the Church has declared itself to be the only ‘Holy People of God’. It took until the second half of the 20th century, after the Shoah, before the Church would honour the Jewish People with the biblical title ‘People of God’. Such a long anti-Jewish history leads to the inevitable question: Is the replacement theology of the Church a direct consequence of texts in the New Testament itself and therefore, in the Protestant view, an essential part of the Christian creed? Precisely because Protestant Christians, through their Sola Scriptura principle, frequently call upon Bible texts, this question must be dealt with first. After mentioning briefly some basic texts from the Old Testament,3 we will investigate some central New Testament texts, in the most probable chronological order. 3
Cf. the article of P. Beentjes in this volume for a more elaborate treatment.
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Old Testament
It is evident that the title ‘God’s People’ is derived from the Book of Israel which the Church calls the ‘Old Testament’. It is disputed what should be called die Mitte (‘the central theme’) of the Old Testament, but many look for it in the formulas ‘God and his People Israel’ and ‘the People Israel and its God’ (Rendtorff 2001). The socalled ‘covenant formula’ reads: ‘I will be your God and you will be my people’ (cf. Exod 6:2–8; Lev 26:12; Jer 31:33b). The basis of the covenant is God’s election of Israel as his people (cf. Deut 7:6; 14:2), but Israel can never by its election boast of being better or greater than all other nations (Deut 7:7). According to the Song of Deborah, Israel is ‘the People of JHWH’ ( Judg 5:11, 13). The fierce criticism of the prophets towards their people never meant that the covenant of God with his people would be definitely broken, but was a passionate and existential appeal to walk in ways that are appropriate for the People of God (Schmidt 1998, 211–222). According to Isa 19:25, the promise to be God’s people does not belong exclusively to Israel, because in the future the blessing of God will include many nations, even the enemies of Israel: ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage.’ 2.2
The Apostle Paul
Paul, the writer of the oldest New Testament texts, nowhere calls the Church ‘the People of God’. He refers to the Church only as láos (‘people’, ‘nation’) in quotations from the Septuagint. Only indirectly, in Rom 9:25–26 by way of a quote from Hos 1:10 and 2:22, is the community of Jews and Gentiles described as ‘the People of God’. But the rhetorical question about the People Israel, which opens Rom 11: ‘I ask then, has God rejected his people?’, is emphatically and explicitly answered by the apostle himself: ‘By no means. . . . God has not rejected his people, whom he foreknew’. Because Israel remains God’s People, Paul can emphasize: ‘. . . as regards the election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers’ (Rom 11:28). On the one hand, Paul did not use the expression ‘People of God’ as an self-evident title for the Church. On the other hand, he could metaphorically attribute the honorary titles of the People Israel in the Old Testament to the Church, when he speaks of the Christian community as ‘Chosen’, ‘Beloved’ and ‘Holy’. Although he does write about ‘Israel after the flesh’ in 1 Cor 10:18 (kata sarka), he avoids
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the obvious parallel and calls the Church nowhere ‘Israel after the Spirit’ (kata pneuma). Paul speaks of the relationship of the new community of the Church to Israel as the Ancient People of God in terms of a ‘mystery’ (mystèrion), which in his apocalyptic vision will swiftly be revealed, actually at the moment that ‘all Israel will be saved’ (Rom 11:26) (Beker 1980). 2.3
The Letter to The Ephesians
It was a remarkable development that in the course of the first century the new Jesus community came to consist largely of Gentiles. The New Testament does not conceal the tensions that existed between ‘Judaeo-Christians’ and Gentile Christians. Paul warned the latter, in the church of Rome, not to feel superior and to remember the fact that they had come from ‘outside’: ‘It is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you’ (Rom 11:18). The disciple of Paul who probably wrote the letter to the Ephesians (meant as a letter to several Christian communities) cannot hide his amazement at ‘the mystery’, that the Gentiles have now become ‘fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel’ (Eph 3:6). Clearly, the writer no longer wrestles with the question of the destiny of the Jewish People, on which Paul spent so much ink in his letter to the church in Rome. He is no longer concerned with the larger, not-Jesus-believing part of Israel, but with the unity of the new community of Jews and Gentiles that has come into being (Von der Osten-Sacken 1982, 100–103; Beker 1992, 64–72). This Pauline disciple is nevertheless still in awe of the mystery that Gentiles who ‘at that time were separated from Christ, from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world’, have now from faroff ‘been brought near in the blood of Christ’ (Eph 2:12–13). In this letter, the Gentile Christians are firmly reminded of their former status. Their earlier position as pagans was not that of Gentile proselytes in the Jewish community, but was still further removed; they were entirely outside the Jewish people and the synagogue, excluded from the politeia (both ‘citizenship’ and ‘religious commonwealth’) of Israel (Eph 2:12). They formed no part of ‘God’s People’ and were beyond the Covenant of God with Israel. They were therefore regarded as people without hope, as ‘atheists’ (atheoi ), that is to say,
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they lived outside the realm of the God of Israel. Through the cross of Christ peace has now been established between Jews and Gentiles, hostility is abolished, and people may now be drawn from all the nations to share also in the privileges of Israel as God’s People (Cf. also Kraus 1983, 490–493. For example: ‘Christen sind in einem sekundären, zweitrangigen Sinn “Volk Gottes”. Gott war längst am Werk, bevor es Kirche gab’). 2.4
The Gospel of Matthew
Little is said about ‘the Church’ in the four gospels, and whenever the Church is referred to there, as in the response of Jesus to the confession of Peter: ‘I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church’ (Mat 16:18), these words have generally been considered as the outcome of the theology of the early Christian Church (Luz 1990, 452–466). The expression ‘my Church’ in Mat 16:18 is undoubtedly to be understood from a later viewpoint, in the second half of the first century, when Christian communities existed beside synagogues. With these words, the evangelist intended to make known that through Jesus a special ecclesia was to be built; a text that would later have an especially great influence in the Roman Catholic tradition, specifically in the founding of the papacy in Rome. Mat 21:43 must be cited in this context. After the parable of the wicked tenants (Mat 21:33–46), the evangelist puts the following words in the mouth of Jesus: ‘Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation (ethnos) producing the fruits of it’. This text is explained by Church Fathers, Reformers, and exegetes as an allusion to the rejection of Israel as God’s People. Only a few, such as Calvin, interpret the text as a warning to the Church and its leaders, that election is never selfevident and that the Church does not have election as its property (On Irenaeus, Cyprianus, Origenes, Hieronymus, Zwingli, Calvijn, Erasmus and Hugo Grotius, see: Luz 1997, 220–221). Various Jewish authors hold the view that this text is anti-Jewish and consider it a later addition. So David Flusser: ‘The rejection of the Jews and the transfer of the divine election to the Gentiles belong to the ideology of Matthew, who most probably was a Gentile-Christian, and the earliest witness of Gentile-Christian anti-Judaism’ (Flusser 1975, 37–45). Pinchas Lapide is of the opinion that the aggressive wording of verse
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43 can scarcely be attributed to Jesus himself, and therefore should be viewed as a creation of Matthew or as a gloss by a later editor (Lapide 1985, 108–113). However, inserted or not, as a part of the canonical text of the Gospel of Matthew this verse has played an important role in the anti-Jewish tradition of Church and theology. The question still remains whether it is as certain as the Church would like to believe that the Church is the ‘people’ identified in the text, bringing forth the fruits of the Kingdom. The New Testament scholar Wim Weren has gone a different route as with regard to this Bible section. According to him, in the text of Matthew not a single proof can be found as evidence that the ‘people’ mentioned there means any other people than the People of Israel. The parable of Jesus in his opinion is a form of prophetic proclamation within the People of Israel. He comes to this remarkable conclusion through an intertextual analysis of Is 5:1–7 and Mat 21:33–46 (Weren 1983, 35–64). In connection with the song of the vineyard in Is 5, Jesus, it is supposed, told a juridical parable, fully intending to shock his listeners into recognizing themselves in it. Just as King David pronounced his own judgment on himself, when the prophet Nathan told the parable of the young ewe (2 Sam 12:1–14), so Jesus’ listeners pronounced judgment on themselves with their reaction to his question: ‘When, therefore, the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? They said to him: He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and let the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons’ (Mat 21:40–41) In the story of the vineyard in Is 5 as much as in the parable of Mat 21, one can see a contrast between the authorities and the ordinary people. In the Old Testament, and in the Targum and Midrash on the text of Is 5, the dread prophetic warning never means that Israel will cease to be God’s People. But the text does contain an outright ethical call. Jesus’ words to the leaders are to be understood in the line of this prophetic tradition. He calls them, fervently, to realize their great responsibility. In the parable, two kinds of reactions within the one People Israel are opposed to each other: the attitude of the authorities is opposed to the attitude of the common people, as expressed most vividly in the same chapter by the faith of harlots and publicans (Mat 21:32). The latter are upheld as ‘the people that brings forth the fruits of the vineyard’. According to Weren, the parable cannot be explained as a confirmation of substitution theology. It is, anyway, exegetically clear,
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that by ethnos (‘people’) in Mat 21:43 the Church is not meant (Luz 1997, 226–227). It is at the same time certain that such a parable would be completely wrenched from its original meaning if it were turned around into an ideological weapon and used against the Jewish people as a whole. 2.5
1 Peter 2:9
The locus classicus for the ‘Church-as-God’s-people’ theology is undoubtedly 1 Pet 2:9.4 In this oft-quoted text, the Church is crowned with the Old Testament titles of Israel from Exod 19:5–6: ‘You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people’. In 1 Pet 2:10, with an allusion to Hos 2:23, the author identifies the Church with God’s People. 1 Peter is difficult to date precisely, and could be placed anywhere between 70–100 ce, written by an unknown writer who stood more or less in the Pauline tradition (Brox 1979, 38–51). Old Testament material plays a very important structural role in 1 Peter (Wells 2000, 203–246). This role is theological: The writer re-reads and re-interprets the authoritative text of the Old Testament from a new perspective, in light of what he regards as the definitive revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The text of 1 Pet 2:9–10 is regarded by commentators as the pivot of 1 Peter. In the preceding verses 2:6–8 the ‘stone’, quoted and ‘lifted’ from Ps 118:22, is christologically applied in a totally new context: ‘Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s regard chosen and precious’, and those who believe in Jesus Christ are called themselves ‘living stones . . . built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood’. The mentioning of the holy priesthood in this verse is already an allusion to Exod 19:6 and leads in 1 Pet 2:9–10 to the more explicit quotation of Exod 19:5–6, in which the titles of Israel seem to be clearly transferred to the Church. (See for a modern elaboration in the Lutheran tradition of this theme for the ecclesiology and liturgy of the Church: Lathrop 1993, 207–227) The conclusion of the biblical theologian Wells is: ‘All the terms and associations of Israel’s election, which were initially attributed to Christ, are now applied to the body of believers in their relationship to Christ. So we find expressed here the themes of holiness— 4 See in this book the contribution of P. Beentjes, who warns against a quick identification of 1 Pet 2:9 and substitution theology.
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the special status, the special character, the special purpose—focused upon the people of God in Christ’ (Wells 2000, 222). The emphasis of the author of 1 Peter, however, is not in the first place ecclesiological; he has a much more ethical and missionary purpose. He wants in his letter to encourage Christians, in their situation of estrangement as ‘aliens and exiles’, to live up to the high standard of their election and calling: ‘that you may declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light’ (1 Pet 2:10). In this way, the New Testament canon established a new context for reinterpreting the themes of holiness and peoplehood (See for the reinterpretation of the Old Testament in the New Testament: Schoon 2001, 161–177). The conclusion from this review of a number of texts is that upholding the Church as ‘People of God’ may not be seen merely as a later development, and therefore as a negative outgrowth of the substitution doctrine, but can refer back to various texts of the New Testament. It has been demonstrated that it is also possible to find different emphases in the New Testament and to put forward different nuances. Though in the New Testament the honorary titles for Israel are only seldom entirely transferred to the Church, this happened on a large scale in church history. That this was also the case in Protestantism will be shown below with a number of classical examples. 3. Some Classical Views in Reformed Protestantism Three examples of classical Reformed Protestantism are chosen here to delineate the main line of thought on the theme of ‘Holy People’. First we make reference to the well-known Reformer of Geneva, John Calvin, after whom the Calvinist part of Protestantism is named. Secondly, we will mention the Dutch theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper, whose name is connected with neo-Calvinism. Thirdly, we cite the most important Protestant theologian of the 20th century, Karl Barth. 3.1
John Calvin
For Calvin (1509–1564) the Church is chosen by God before the foundation of the world. The holiness of the Church derives from Christ and is effected and preserved in the practical life of the Church
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by the proclamation of the Word, the administration of the sacraments, and the enforcement of Church discipline (Richel 1942, 189–192; Weber 1962, 609–625). To prove the holiness of the Church, Calvin often refers to 1 Cor 1:30, where Paul writes that the believers are sanctified by Jesus Christ: ‘He is the source of your life, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification, and redemption’. On the one hand, he dissociates himself from the Roman Catholics, whom he accuses of setting up an ideal of the holiness of the Church in it self, apart from Christ. On the other hand, he turns himself against the Anabaptists, who according to him want to establish a Church without any sin and error, in the tradition of the Donatists and Cathars. Because the holy Church cannot be ‘to the dishonor of God . . . a conspiracy of wicked and abandoned men’, he regards Church discipline as one of the notae ecclesiae that serves ‘like a bridle to restrain and tame those who rage against the doctrine of Christ’ (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Ed. J.T. McNeill 1960, Book IV, Ch. XII on Church Discipline, quotations: IV/XII/1, 5; See for an attempt to modernize the practice of Church discipline: Wentsel 1998, 786–813). Calvin’s struggle for a ‘holy Church’ and his doctrine of Church discipline must be seen in the context of his time, in which he tried to establish a kind of theocracy in Geneva and saw the Roman Catholic Church as a revelation of the Antichrist. Often the Jews are mentioned and used in the Institutes of Calvin to illustrate the terrible failures of the Catholics, whom he refers to as the ‘Romanists’. The Jews of the Old Testament serve as a ‘model of disobedience’ to expose the sins of the ‘Romanists’ of his time: ‘The Romanists, therefore, today make no other pretension than what the Jews once apparently claimed when they were reproved for blindness, ungodliness, and idolatry by the Lord’s prophets’ (Calvin, Institutes, Book IV, Ch. II/3). However, unlike Luther, Calvin was not so harsh in his criticism toward Jews, because he had not much contact with them and they were no serious threat to his reformation in Geneva. There was also a major doctrinal reason: he was convinced of the unity of the Old and New Testament. He emphasized the one covenant, and believed in the continuing use of the law by Christians (Robinson 1992). Although Calvin could openly speak about the Church as ‘the (holy) People of God’, a Church which existed for him already in the time of the Old Testament, yet he preferred the term ‘covenant’
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to the name ‘holy Church’. His Institutes are built up around this central concept. For him the unity of the one covenant was a very important conviction, a covenant which had started in Old Testament times, and was widened and fulfilled by Jesus Christ. The same salvation which was revealed in its fullness in the New Testament, was already the salvation of the Old Testament, but there it was only present in ‘shadows’. The Law of the Old Testament is fulfilled, not finished, in the New Testament, and serves not only as a means to discover sins, but is primarily meant to show believers the way to live according to God’s will in thankfulness. Calvin mentioned the historical dispensations of the one covenant, which relate in his view to God’s pedagogical motives in his revelation to Israel and the Church. The essence or substance of the covenant remains the same in the different dispensations, namely the person of Christ (Calvin, Institutes, Book II, Ch. X/4). There is not much room in his christological thinking for a dynamic history of the covenant of Israel during the time of the Old Testament and there is no room at all for an active continuation of the covenantal history of Israel after Christ. Except for some remarks in his exegesis of Rom 11 he does not speak about the future of Israel and the Jews. Yet his emphasis on the one and only covenant and his extensive attention to the Old Testament has given later Calvinist tradition many points of contact to elaborate on the theological significance of the Jewish People (H.-J. Kraus 1989, 3–13). 3.2
Abraham Kuyper
It is a leap in history, jumping from Calvin of Geneva in the 16th century to the neo-Calvinism of Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) in the Netherlands of the 19th and 20th centuries. Kuyper was an influential theologian and statesman. He succeeded in mobilizing a following, primarily of the less well-to-do petit bourgeoisie, and gave them their own church, their own university, and their own political party. He was of great significance for the emancipation of a large part of the Protestant population in the Netherlands. It followed naturally from his battle-cry ‘In isolation lies our power’, that he made them a tightly disciplined movement with its own particular organizations, wielding power and influence on all fields of the political and social spectrum. In this struggle, he notably saw the Jews as his rivals. In 1907 Kuyper wrote on ‘the Jewish problem’
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after a journey through many countries around the Mediterranean. On the one hand he was fascinated by the sheer endurance and intellectual strength of the Jews; on the other hand he wrote of their ‘love of money’ and eagerness for political and social domination. The Dutch people could deal with that Jewish danger in his opinion, but that was not the case in poor countries like Romania and Russia. Therefore it was a good thing that there was inequality in civil rights for Jews in those countries (Kuyper 1907, 239–324). The conceptions of Kuyper were congenial with the thoughts of the antiSemitic Berlin court-chaplain Adolf Stöcker. Kuyper was adamantly opposed to the philosemitic and millennialist current within those Reformed Churches in the Netherlands which had been founded by him, and succeeded by his personal prestige in pushing through his views on Jews and Judaism during the Synod of his Church in Middelburg (1896). In his opinion a constant struggle was to be waged by Christians against Jews, because they rejected Jesus and resisted in this way the breakthrough of God’s kingdom in the world. In the documents of the Synod of 1896 the terms ‘Israel’ and ‘Jewish People’ were avoided; only ‘the Jews’ as individuals were mentioned. The choice of the name ‘Jews’ instead of ‘Israel’ had a clear ideological background that was resolutely propounded by Kuyper. His approach towards Jews was solely missionary and is characterized as ‘a crusade against the Jews’ (Van Klinken 1996, 113–134). In his view they were violators of God’s covenant, who should be called on to join the Church. Because he regarded the Church as the only ‘true People of God’, there could be no place for the Jews as a people, as an ethnic group. The first aim of the Mission to the Jews was, in the eyes of Kuyper, the fight against Judaism as a false religion. The second aim was ‘to win the Jews for Christ’. His views should be seen in the context of his efforts for the emancipation of the Reformed part of the population. In this struggle he saw the Jews as dangerous adversaries. His conviction was, however, also coloured by anti-Jewish conceptions, which were expressed in several of his publications and exerted considerable influence in the Reformed Churches (Van Klinken 1996, 23–53). Only after the Second World War did this ‘crusading attitude’ toward the Jews totally disappear from Reformed Protestant thinking.
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Karl Barth
Many Protestants regard the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968) as the ‘church-father’ of the 20th century. He wrote extensively on the Jewish People in his Church Dogmatics. As a Reformed theologian—in line with the Reformer Calvin—he took his starting point in the concept of the one covenant. He regarded this covenant, which God had begun with the people Israel, as the basis of God’s plan to reach the whole world. By the universalization of this covenant through the event of Jesus Christ, the Church became the real partner of the original covenant. The fulfilment of the covenant in Christ was already meant as its deepest intention during the period of the Old Testament. It is Barth’s conviction that the covenant of God with Israel had never been abrogated, though it was undoubtedly fulfilled and confirmed in Jesus Christ. This christological fulfilment is regarded as the anticipation of the coming Kingdom of God. Yet, in the theology of Barth many remnants of the anti-Jewish ‘teaching of contempt’ of the Christian Church can be found. On the one hand, he introduced a much more dynamic concept of covenant than was common in Christian theology at that time and emphasized strongly the significance of ‘biblical Israel’ as a people of God. On the other hand, he could not—by the very christological concentration of his theological project—give genuine room to the living continuation of the covenant-history of the Jewish People after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in the year 70 (Barth 1959, K.D. IV/3, 74–78). He regarded Israel as the ‘natural context of Jesus Christ’ (Barth 1942, K.D. II/2, 216). So he recognized theologically the concrete ‘Israel after the flesh’, but only in the light of Jesus Christ. He spoke about Israel and the Church as the two figures of the one Community of God in the world, but because of the rejection of Jesus by the synagogue Israel is called by Barth ‘the witness of God’s wrath’ and ‘the mirror of God’s judgment’. In contrast, the Church is described as ‘the witness of God’s grace’ (Barth 1942, K.D. II/2, 286–287). After the crucifixion of Christ the history of Israel should not have been continued in Barth’s opinion, and when it was, it can only be seen by him as ‘unfruitful’, ‘ghostly’ and ‘lacking the true prophecy’ (Barth 1959, K.D. IV/3, 76; Marquardt 1967, 266–345). At the consummation of history, the synagogue will find its fulfilment when it will be integrated into the Church.
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When Barth speaks about the Church as ‘people of God’, he speaks about the present; when he calls Israel the ‘people of God’, he speaks about the past. For him the Church is ‘holy’ because God has set it apart, decisively, from the surrounding world as a being with its own distinct origin, nature, law, and direction. The holiness of the Church is the reflection of its ‘Head’ Jesus Christ. According to Barth, Christians cannot believe in the Church as they believe in God, because the creed says credo ecclesiam and not credo in ecclesiam (Barth 1953, K.D., IV/1, 765–783; On ‘the community of the saints’, see: Barth 1955, K.D., IV/2, 747–765). As long as the Christian community lives in the world, its invisibility is hidden by its visibility. The Church is guilty of failure and error, but it rests on the power of Christ’s promise and cannot therefore perish. In the final volume of his Church Dogmatics he deals with ‘The People of God in the World’ and compares the present position of the Church as the ‘people of God’ with the experiences of Israel as the ‘people of God’ in the time of the Old Testament (Barth 1959, K.D., IV/3, 780–872; On Israel in the Old Testament, see: 788–792, 830–831, 835–838). Unlike his friend and pupil the Dutch theologian Miskotte he did not show any interest in living Judaism and rarely engaged in a real dialogue with Jewish thinkers. 4. Some Developments in Reformed Theology in the Netherlands after 1945 Only two Dutch theologians after the Second World War will be mentioned in this context, Kornelis Heiko Miskotte and Hendrikus Berkhof. Their thinking is representative of a new direction in Dutch Protestant theology of this period. Most other Dutch theologians still defended the position of substitution theology, like Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer (1903–1996), for many decades the most influential theologian in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Berkouwer 1960, 312–321; 1963, 110–153), the second Protestant church after the Dutch Reformed Church, to which Miskotte and also Berkhof belonged. 4.1
Miskotte
Kornelis Heiko Miskotte (1894–1976) was undoubtedly the most important Dutch theologian of the 20th century. He was strongly
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influenced by Karl Barth and Franz Rosenzweig, but has also trod his own theological paths, especially in his study of and confrontation with contemporary Judaism. He experienced the catastrophe of the First World War as a tremendous crisis of culture and political society. Listening to Barth and Rosenzweig, he tried to find new theological directions for the Church. In 1932 he wrote, in only six months time, his dissertation Het Wezen der Joodsche Religie (‘The Essence of the Jewish Religion’), in which he presented a description and analysis of the essential ideas of Judaism, mainly on the basis of the great thinkers of the Liberal Judaism of his time (Miskotte 1933). With his interest in and knowledge of Judaism, he was a remarkable exception in his time, when it was not common for a Christian theologian to be so thoroughly engaged in Jewish thought. He had no specific interest in the doctrine concerning the Church. He attempted to address, critically, the triumphalism of empirical Christendom and of the Church as an institution. His scope was the prophetic analysis of the culture of his time and the place of the Church therein, rather than an ecclesiological theory. In his phenomenological comparison of paganism, Judaism, and Christianity, he regarded Judaism as the religion of the ethical human being and saw the essence of Judaism in the doctrine of the correlation between God and human beings. It is rightly questioned whether he has in this way given an authentic picture of Judaism. When he was labeling Judaism as ‘titanic humanism’, he was in fact fighting against the liberal-ethical neo-Protestantism of his time. But in the meantime, with these labels he confirmed old caricatures which had a long history in Christianity. For many, coming to know the work of Miskotte meant the opening up of new horizons in the encounter, at that time with an almost unknown Judaism, and also the rediscovery of the theological significance of the Old Testament (Miskotte 1966, 179–304). He won many followers and exercized a deep influence on a whole generation of Dutch theologians. Not that all of them are proceeding in the same theological direction. At least two schools of thinking in the Dutch theological scene regard themselves as his pupils, but they fight each other fiercely. They have very divergent views on Judaism and on the Jewish People as ‘People of God’. These contrary opinions are illustrative of many discussions between Christians and Jews, and Christians amongst each other. On one side there is the group which has discovered the self-understanding of the Jewish People,
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and in this new encounter has recognized the biblical name ‘Israel’ in contemporary Judaism and in the setting of the modern State of Israel. The other group from the school of Miskotte prefers to deal with the biblical concept of ‘Israel’ as a critical notion both regarding the present-day Church and regarding the modern Jewish People and State. For the last group, the direct self-identification of the Jewish People and the Jewish State with the name ‘Israel’ is objectionable. So, they prefer the phrase ‘dialogue between Church and Synagogue’ to the term ‘dialogue between Church and Israel’. 4.2
Hendrikus Berkhof
As a real pioneer, Berkhof (1914–1995) gave Israel a special place in his theological exposition of the Christian faith. In his ‘Introduction to the Christian Faith’, he dedicated a specific chapter to ‘Israel’ between the chapter on ‘Creation’ and the chapter on ‘Jesus the Son’ (Berkhof 1973, 221–264). Although this meant a radical departure from the prevailing theological tradition, Berkhof did not, in this approach, give serious theological attention to post-biblical Judaism and the contemporary People Israel. With ‘Israel’ he did not mean the Jewish People, but in his exposition of Christian doctrine he specifically wanted to deal with the place and significance of the Old Testament. With this intent, he tried to trace the footsteps of Calvin, who gave the Old Testament its own place in his Institutes. He describes the way of Israel in the Old Testament as representing humanity as a whole. In this approach, he looks at Israel as being driven into a dead end by its refusal to follow God in his way of salvation with the world. The threatening words of the Old-Testament prophet are interpreted by Berkhof as a declaration of bankruptcy towards Israel. In his thought, Israel is a special ‘experimental garden’; the experiences gained there are significant for the rest of the world. In this manner the Old Testament can only be read in a straight line, from the Torah to the Prophets, and the Old Testament cries, as it were, for Jesus Christ, the true partner of the covenant. He follows Barth in the subdivision of his ecclesiology in speaking about the Church as institution, the Church as Body of Christ, and the Church as ‘People of God’ (Berkhof 1973, 335–413). In the last function Berkhof calls the Church ‘the first-born of God’s intentions in the world’. But Israel is also in his eyes God’s ‘first-born’ among the nations. The Church is, in his view, just like Israel, ‘an experimental garden of a new humanity’.
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It is clear that in the concepts of Miskotte and Berkhof there is room for the Biblical Israel but no real theological place for the continuing story of God with the People of Israel in the present. There are, though, in the thoughts of Miskotte and Berkhof promising new beginnings, but there is not a definite removal of all the remnants of substitution theology. 5. Some Newer Theological Approaches In recent decades, some Protestant theologians have explored new theological paths in their approach to the complicated and delicate questions around the themes of ‘Holy People’, ‘People of God’, ‘People Israel’ and ‘the Church as People of God’. I will mention three of them in this context: the American theologian Paul M. van Buren (1924–1996), and two German theologians, Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt (1928–2002) and Bertold Klappert (born 1939). 5.1
Paul van Buren
In Van Buren’s view, the Church is not ‘the People of God’, which is the title of Israel, but ‘the Church of God from the nations’. When he writes on the ‘Holy Peoplehood’ of Israel, he emphasizes that Israel is witness to the total claim of God upon the total life of the whole Jewish People (Van Buren 1983, 159–166). Therefore, he warns of the danger of secularization in the State of Israel, because Israel should never become a nation like all other nations. Although, according to Van Buren, the empirical evidence in Israel will always be ambiguous, it is a theological judgment that Israel has to live up to the Torah-standard set by its election. Of course, Van Buren realizes that it could be dangerous for a Christian theologian to define the calling of Israel, but for him this is a consequence of his theology (Haynes 1995, 120–140). The Gentile Church has not realized its reliance on Israel, when it has called itself ‘the People of God’ and ‘Holy People’. There is in Van Buren’s opinion not ‘The Church of England’ or ‘The Church of Sweden, expressions he regards as ‘remnants of the distortions of “Christendom”’, but only a church in England an a church in Sweden’, or in any other nation. He sees Jesus as ‘Israel-for-the-Gentiles’; only through Jesus, the Jew, does the Gentile Church know the God of Israel (Van Buren 1983, 259–264). Therefore it is an ‘incredible idea’, that the Gentile Church
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should try to reach the Jewish People with its Gentile mission, by setting up the incoherent phenomenon of a special ‘mission to the Jews’ (Van Buren 1983, 324–328). From a strictly orthodox Protestant and Reformed standpoint, Van Buren’s approach is, of course, labelled as ‘liberal reductionism’ (Bader-Saye 1999, 77–80), but in his own view it is theologically the only radical way-out after almost 2000 years of an anti-Jewish Church and theology, the beginning of a reconciliation between the ‘Church of God’ and the ‘Israel of God’ (Van Buren 1988, 102–106). 5.2
Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt
The German theologian Marquardt has chosen a new and provocative path in trying to work for and describe a new relationship between the Church and the Jewish People. He realized that Christian theology after Auschwitz could not simply go on as if nothing has happened. It also could not continue by tinkering with cosmetic changes in its doctrines. Only a revolution in Christian theology could, in his view, be an honest response to the abyss of Auschwitz. Never again should Christians make Israel the object of their theology. Jews can speak as subjects for themselves and should not be made mute in Christian theology. Christian theological reflection must be characterized by a radical Umkehr (‘turn’, ‘repentance’) (Marquardt 1988, 74–150). This can only be realized in a living dialogue with Jews. After Auschwitz the many burning questions must remain open, even the question whether God lives. Only God himself can respond to this question in the eschaton, ‘if He wants and lives’. Christians can not give up their theological and philosophical reflection on God, because only in this way can they find and describe their identity in relation to the People of Israel (Marquardt 1997, 426–430). Marquardt does not write much on the doctrine of the Church in his extensive volumes on systematic theology (Marquardt 1994, 155–164; 1996, 468–488). He prefers a low-profile ecclesiology in contrast with the ecclesiastical triumphalism of the past. Although the Church is founded on Israel, it has become a Church of the Gentiles. The Church is sent to the nations, but should never forget that its way began in Jerusalem and is meant to lead back to Jerusalem. The Church is called to be the representative of God and of His people Israel in the world of the nations. It does not replace
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Israel amongst the nations, because Israel can speak for itself. But the Church has the role of expressing before the nations the ‘antipagan witness of God’ in confrontation with the idols and powers of the world (here he uses the wording of the Dutch theologian Miskotte). Its task is not to boast of its high titles, like ‘People of God’ or ‘Holy People’, but to keep and to preach and to practice God’s Word in the world. So Marquardt can describe the Church with a metaphor, derived from the exodus-story of Israel. He discovers the Church in a not so flattering image, in ‘the riff-raff ’ (in Hebrew: èrev rav), the crowd of hangers-on that is following Israel out of the slavery of Egypt on its way to the promised land (Exod 12:38) (Marquardt 1994, 160–164). In Die fünf Bücher der Weisung Buber and Rosenzweig translate Exod 12:38 as follows: ‘Auch wanderte vieles Schwarmgemeng mit ihnen hinauf ’ (Buber, Rosenzweig 1976). In a more friendly image Marquardt describes the Church as ‘maker of hymns’, for him a beloved way to express the essence of the Church (Marquardt 1997, 283). 5.3
Bertold Klappert
The title of a book of essays by Bertold Klappert expresses very well his view on the relation between the Church and the Jewish People: ‘Joint Heirs of the Promise’ (Klappert 2000). He regards Israel as ‘the first-chosen People of God’ and the Church as ‘the also-chosen ecumenical People of God from all the nations’. This does not make the Church replace Israel but gives the Church a special relation with the covenant that God began with Israel. So Israel and the Church are in his view ‘joint heirs of the promise’, equal before God but not the same, first-chosen and also-chosen, or in Pauline language: the Church grafted into the ‘cultivated olive tree’ Israel (Rom 11:17–24). He warns of a Christian over-reaction to the substitution theology of the past, by which reaction the special link that binds the Church to the covenant of the God of Israel and therefore to the People Israel can be denied. He does not want the Church to lose this special solidarity by viewing Church and Israel as totally different and separate entities. The prophetic vision of the pilgrimage of the nations to Zion (cf. Is 2:1–5, Mic 4:1–5) is decisive for the formulation of his christology and ecclesiology. According to his exegesis, Paul has taken up this vision in Rom 11 and especially the pupil of Paul has elaborated on this view in Eph 2:11–22, 3:6
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(Klappert 2000, 203–234). In the thoughts of Klappert, the pilgrimage of the Gentile nations to Mount Zion is an important biblical metaphor for the Church, which can still inspire us. The visions of Micah, Deutero-Isaiah, and Trito-Isaiah should provide the biblical background for a definition of the place of the Church in our time. Along these lines, Klappert wants to develop an ecclesiology in which the substitution theology has been abolished, but in which the special bond with the People Israel is preserved. Moreover, this would confirm that both Israel and the Church are still looking out in expectation as to what still holds the future of the kingdom of God. 6. New Official Declarations In the last half century, a lot of work has been done to amend theory and doctrine of the Church on Jews and Judaism. Various attempts have been made on the part of many churches in official documents to break away from supersessionism and substitution theology and to develop a different perspective on the Church-Israel relationship. These official church documents are perhaps even more important than the groundbreaking studies of individual theologians, although their theological studies prepared the ground for the official church statements (Fisher 1990; Brockway 1988; Rendtorff 1988; Henrix 2001). The conclusion must be that much has changed in the confessional language of the Church about the Jewish People as ‘(Holy) People of God’, but that there has not been much rethinking—as follow-up of these changes—on the issue of the status of the Church as ‘People of God’. It must also be noted that the changes are largely limited to the European and American churches. Many Christians in the Third World see the Jewish-Christian dialogue as a ‘western hobby’. They are of the opinion that this special European and American fascination springs from the western Christians’ feelings of guilt about the centuries-long persecution of European Jewry and from their recognition of Christian co-responsibility for this history. But in recent years some minor developments can be detected in other parts of the world. An institutional dialogue has been set in motion by representatives of Judaism and the Eastern Orthodox Churches in former Communist countries. After the Iron Curtain came down, many East Europeans rediscovered the rich Jewish heritage in their countries. New Councils of Christians
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and Jews have been established here, which encouraged churches to catch up with the times and to fight anti-Judaism in theology and religious practice. Also churches in the Middle East, especially through the efforts of the Middle East Council of Churches in Cyprus, and the Sabeel Institute for Palestinian Liberation Theology in Jerusalem, have become interested in Jewish-Christian dialogue, but they are mainly focusing on the religious aspects of the political conflict between Israelis and Palestinians (Ateek, 1989; from the time of the first intifada: Ateek 1992. See also the publications of the Sabeel Institute in Jerusalem www.sabeel.org). Many churches link themselves very closely with the historical fate of their land and people. In the past, churches contributed much to the survival of their particular national or ethnic group. The Armenian Orthodox Church is one of the clearest examples of a church that has tried to maintain through the centuries the unity of church, land, and people. These churches often feel more affinity with the biblical language on land and people than churches in the West, and they define their own churches almost automatically as a ‘holy people’. On the one hand, this leads, for theologians from those churches who have experienced Jewish-Christian dialogue, to the discovery of a special closeness between the Christian and Jewish concepts of ‘holy people’. Some of them have made trips to Israel, or have actually studied there for longer periods, thereby discovering that the encounter with living Judaism can be immensely rewarding. On the other hand, there is the danger in those churches with no experience at all in Jewish-Christian encounter that in their official doctrines the substitution theology is continued and no room is allowed for the recognition of the living Jewish People as ‘people of God’. In some Third World Theologies it has been shown to be possible to speak about the Church as ‘people of God’ without any intention of substitution theology (Ucko 1996). History records a persistent danger that the proclamation ‘people of God’ or ‘holy people’ becomes the instrument of triumphalism, which causes denigration and contempt of the other. Religious traditions can define others as alien, different, pagan, not belonging, an object over against themselves as subject. The ‘out-group’ only serves the purpose of contrast, of putting the spotlight on the election and special status of the ‘in-group’. M. Buthulezi recalls that the name ‘Zulus’ means ‘people of heaven’, while the Zulus call all other peoples simply ‘people of nations’. He himself speaks without substitution theology about both Israel and
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the Church as ‘peoples of God’ (Buthulezi 1993, 76–103). But there are also examples of theological speaking about a people of God instead of the people of God, allowing for other peoples of God. Then the liberation of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt is taken as a paradigm or root metaphor which can be applied to the suffering peoples in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. This is worked out in different liberation theologies, like the minyung (‘powerless people’) theology in Korea and the dalit (‘broken, downtrodden’) theology in India. This does not mean that those theologies are not aware of the fact that that the paradigm ‘people of God’ comes originally from the Jewish religious experience and tradition. In the words of the Indian theologian Israel Selvanayagam: ‘If the Jewish people claim to be the “first-born”, there are thousands today who may claim to be “newborn” (Selvanayagam 1996, 80)’. 7. Conclusions In the concluding part of this study we seek to answer the following questions: What does it mean for Christian theology to confess that the Jewish People remains ‘God’s People’? Should Christians give only Israel or only the Church the title ‘Holy People’ or ‘People of God’? Or should they rather affirm that both Israel and the Church may appropriate the title ‘Holy People’ in their own way? Concluding, I would like to defend the thesis that the essence of the Church should not only be expressed by mentioning the four classical notae ecclesiae, but that a new nota should be added, calling the rootedness of the Church in Israel also a nota ecclesiae. 7.1
Only Israel the ‘People of God’?
Some Christian scholars, like Van Buren and Marquardt, have drawn the theological consequence from their encounter with the Jewish People and Judaism by calling only Israel the ‘People of God’. They are convinced that if Christians read the Hebrew Bible in the first place as the Book of Israel, they have to take the self-definition of the Jewish People seriously. They have to accept that the term ‘People of God’ cannot be deduced from a general and already known ‘Gentile’ or philosophical concept ‘people’, consequently applied to the special case of Israel. The Hebrew name for ‘holy people’ (am or goj qadosj ), is actually untranslatable and its meaning can only be
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outlined and explained in approximate theological terms. Theologians like Van Buren and Marquardt speak of Israel as the ‘People of God’, next to the ‘Church of Christ’. This position does justice to Jewish self-understanding but not to Christian self-understanding. In the 20th century the Church has re-discovered Israel as ‘God’s Chosen People’. This was formulated in many official statements and messages. The theological consequences of this change of paradigm must still be drawn. In my opinion, the Church should read the Hebrew Bible first as the Book of Israel and secondly as the ‘Old Testament’, i.e. as Book of the Church. Both ways of reading must be accepted as theologically valid for Christians. The Church should listen to the self-understanding of the Jewish People. According to Jewish religious conviction the election of Israel to be God’s People is not a matter of an idea, but a phenomenon in history, connected to the concrete corporeal reality of the Jewish people, as the ‘Body of Faith’ (Wyschogrod 1989, 175–177). Every trace of gnosticism and spiritualizing is excluded from this reality. The origin of this community is not ‘natural’, but the outcome of God’s goodness and election that is only realized in the physicality and concrete history of the People Israel. Giving up the names ‘People Israel’ and ‘God’s People’ would mean for the Jewish People full assimilation in the world of the nations and therefore the discontinuation of Jewish identity. 7.2
Only the Church the ‘People of God’?
For theologians like Calvin, Kuyper, and Berkouwer it was absolutely clear that the Church had replaced the People of Israel as Gods elected people and that the Church was the only legal heir of the title ‘People of God’. It has become clear in this article that I reject this position. It is not necessary and certainly not helpful to call the Church ‘Israel’, even not when it is sometimes explicitly emphasized that this choice of name is not meant to ‘expropriate the identity of Israel’ as Church, but only to ‘appropriate the identity of Israel’ (Lindbeck 2000, 106–113, 357–366; ‘Losing the image of the church as Israel destroys the self-image of the church as a community chosen by God’, p. 109). Why should the Church appropriate the name ‘Israel’, if the New Testament does not do so? Why this insistence after such a long anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic Wirkungsgeschichte of the use of this title for the Church? In the volume of Jewish and Christian
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contributors ‘Christianity in Jewish Terms’ only the Jewish author Irving Greenberg shows some sympathy for this idea, all the others reject it out of hand (Greenberg 2000, 158). There are many other images and metaphors for the Church, which clarify the essence of the Church perhaps even better than the term ‘People of God’, for example the biblical metaphor ‘body of Christ’ (cf. 1 Cor 12:12–26) and names like ‘children of God’ (cf. Rom 8:16) and ‘new creation’ (cf. 2 Cor 5:17) (Selvanayagam 1996, 67–81). 7.3
Both Israel and the Church ‘People of God’
In the beginning of this contribution, the question was asked: Should churches be ready to drop their self-definition as ‘the Church as God’s People’? Would such a move be helpful for the Jewish-Christian dialogue? Or does the use of this concept for the Church in the New Testament and the long tradition of Christianity make such a radical change impossible? There is in my opinion no need to try to stop the Christian use of this concept, as long as it is not combined with anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic doctrine and rhetoric. It is not easy to erase all remnants of anti-Judaism from the Christian doctrine on the Church, which is shown, for example, in the dogmatic volumes of Karl Barth, where Israel is called ‘the witness of God’s wrath’ and ‘the mirror of God’s judgment’. In the classical conception, which still exists, the People Israel only in the time of the Old Testament have the role of ‘foreshadowing’ the coming of the ‘Holy Church’ in the time of the fulfillment in Christ. However, in a very different context, for example, in the practice of many churches in the Third World, the concept ‘People of God’ can be used as a liberating term for the poor and oppressed, without any anti-Jewish connotation. The best option would be in my opinion, to speak of Israel as the first-chosen People of God and of the Church as the also-chosen ecumenical People of God from all the Nations (following Klappert). The Dutch-Reformed theologian Berkhof calls the church the ‘firstborn’ and ‘forerunner’ of the Kingdom of God, names which he also applies to the People of Israel (Berkhof 1973, 402–413). The American-Lutheran theologian Stanley Hauerwas has a special preference for the term ‘resident aliens’ to refer to the diaspora-existence of the Church in post-modern times, borrowed from Israel in the Old Testament but also used for the Church in 1 Peter, a term with
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which he wants to mark a radical break with the age-long triumphalism of church history (Hauerwas 1989). Why should we not choose a name the New Testament used for the first followers of Jesus: ‘people of the Way’ (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14)? Perhaps there is a feeling that this name is too pretentious after the practice of almost 2000 years of Christianity? Then one could opt for the modest metaphor for the Church, chosen by Marquardt from Exod 12:38, when he compares the Church with the ‘mixed multitude’ (èrev rav) that follows Israel in the desert out of the house of slavery on its way to freedom. The conclusion could be that the Church may be called also—as one of many different names and metaphors—‘People of God’, when the Church is ready to acknowledge that it is not the first and not the only one to be chosen as God’s People. It is not the People of God, but a People of God, as is mentioned in Acts 15:14: ‘God first visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name’. The Church as ekklesia represents the eschatological people of God as they are gathered in worship and as they witness to the hope for the coming kingdom of God. It is ‘holy’ when it reflects the holiness of God in the name of Jesus Christ. 7.4 Nota Ecclesiae In my dissertation in 1982, I proposed to call the ‘rootedness of the Church in (the People of ) Israel’ one of the notae ecclesiae (Schoon 1982, 253). This is not a totally new attempt, because several theologians have tried to add new notae to the four classical notae ecclesiae ( John Calvin has already been mentioned. More recently: Berkhof 1973, 398–413; Moltmann 1975, 363–388). I would like to confirm and to qualify my earlier position by stating that Christian theology has to develop and to reformulate its christology and ecclesiology on the basis of the criterion: ‘Salvation comes from the Jews’ ( John 4:22). Or, in the words of the apostle Paul to the Gentile Christians in Rome: ‘Remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you’ (Rom 11:18). From the side of the Church there should be a clear confession of solidarity towards the Jewish People, which is grounded in God’s election, a solidarity that does not exclude others. This relation of solidarity between Christians and Jews will always include an irreducible element of dispute and even rivalry, because of the fact that the ‘joint heirs of the promises’
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interpret these promises of God differently. Both communities call themselves ‘holy’ in their self-definition and both regard themselves called to be ‘holy’ by God. In the Protestant view, the ‘holy Church’ is holy when it is a Church of metanoia, of repentance, because the Church must be semper reformanda, ‘always reforming’. After a long and dreadful history, the Church and the Jewish People could perhaps, on their different ways to the kingdom of God, join forces in a ‘competition for holiness’ to work for the ‘restoration of the world’, separately and together. LITERATURE Ateek, N.S., Justice, only Justice. A Palestinian Theology of Liberation, New York 1989. ———, M.H. Ellis, R.R. Ruether (Eds.), Faith and the Intifada. Palestinian Christian Voices, Maryknoll, 1992. Bader-Saye, S., Church and Israel after Christendom. The Politics of Election, Boulder/Oxford 1999. Barth, K., Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, Band II/2–IV/3, Zürich 1942–1959. Beker, J.C., Paul the Apostle. The Triumph of God in Life and Thought, Edinburgh 1980. ———, Heirs of Paul. Paul’s Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today, Edinburgh 1992. Berkhof, H., Christelijk geloof. Een inleiding tot de geloofsleer, Nijkerk 1973 (19937). Berkouwer, G.C., Divine Election, Grand Rapids 1960. ———, De Wederkomst van Christus, II, Kampen 1963. Brockway, A., P. van Buren, R. Rendtorff, S. Schoon, The Theology of the Churches and the Jewish People, WCC Publications, Geneva 1988. Brox, N., Der erste Petrusbrief, EKK XXI, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1979. Buber, M. and F. Rosenzweig, Die fünf Bücher der Weisung, Heidelberg 1954 (19762). Buren, P.M. van, A Christian Theology of the People Israel. A Theology of the JewishChristian Reality, Part 2, New York 1983. ———, Christ in Context. A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, Part 3, San Francisco 1988. Buthulezi, M., ‘People of God-People of Nations’, in: People of God—People of Nations, Lutheran World Federation, Geneva 1993. Calvin, J., Institutes of the Christian Religion, Ed. J.T. McNeill, Transl. F.L. Battles, Philadelphia/London 1960. Fisher, E.J. and L. Klenicki, In Our Time. The Flowering of Jewish-Christian Dialogue, New York/Mahwah, 1990. Flusser, D., ‘Two Anti-Jewish Montages in Matthew’, Immanuel 5 (1975). Greenberg, I., in: T. Krymer-Kensky e.a., Christianity in Jewish Terms, Colorado/Oxford 2000. Hauerwas, S.H. and W.H. Hamilton, Resident Aliens. A provocative Christian assessment of culture and ministry for people who know that something is wrong, Nashville 1989. Haynes, S.R., Reluctant Witnesses. Jews and the Christian Imagination, Louisville 1995. Henrix, H.H. and W. Kraus (Hg.), Die Kirchen und das Judentum. Dokumente von 1986–2000, Band II, Paderborn/München, 2001. Klappert, B., Miterben der Verheissung. Beiträge zum jüdisch-christlichen Dialog, NeukirchenVluyn 2000.
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Klinken, G.J. van, Opvattingen in de Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland over het Jodendom, 1896–1970, Kampen 1996. ———, ‘Het kruistochtmotief in de jodenzending van de Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland 1896–1945’, in: A. Jelsma, G.J. van Klinken (red.), Kruis en zwaard. Terugblik op de kruistochten 1096–1996, Zoetermeer 1996. Koffeman, L.J., Kerk als sacramentum. De rol van de sacramentele ecclesiologie tijdens Vaticanum II, Kampen 1986. Kraus, H.-J., Systematische Theologie im Kontext biblischer Geschichte und Eschatologie, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1983. ———, ‘“Israel” in der Theologie Calvins. Anstösse zu neuer Begegnung mit dem Alten Testament und dem Judentum’, Kirche und Israel (1) 1989. Kuyper, A., Om de Oude Wereldzee, deel I, Amsterdam 1907. Lapide, P., ‘Jezus heeft zijn volk nooit verworpen’, in: P. Lapide/U. Luz, Jezus de Jood. Thesen van een Jood, antwoorden van een christen, Kampen 1985. Lathrop, G.W., Holy People. A Liturgical Ecclesiology, Minneapolis 1993. Lindbeck, G., ‘Postmodern Hermeneutics and Jewish-Christian Dialogue’, in: T. Krymer-Kensky e.a., Christianity in Jewish Terms, Colorado/Oxford 2000. Luz, U., Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (Mt 8–17), EKK Band I/2, Neukirchen/Vluyn 1990. ———, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (Mat 18–25), EKK Band I/3, NeukirchenVluyn 1997. Marquardt, F.-W., Die Entdeckung des Judentums für die christliche Theologie. Israel im Denken Karl Barths, München 1967. ———, Vom Elend und Heimsuchung der Theologie. Prologomena zur Dogmatik, München 1988. ———, Was dürfen wir hoffen, wenn wir hoffen dürften? Eine Eschatologie, Band 2, Gütersloh 1994; Band 3, Gütersloh 1996. ———, Eia, wärn wir da—eine theologische Utopie, Gütersloh 1997. Miskotte, K.H., Het Wezen der Joodsche religie. Bijdrage tot kennis van het joodse geestesleven in deze tijd, Amsterdam 1933, Verzameld Werk 6, Kampen 1982. ———, Wenn die Götter schweigen. Vom Sinn des Alten Testamentes, München 1966. Moltmann, J., Kirche in der Kraft des Geistes. Ein Beitrag zur messianischen Ekklesiologie, München 1975. Osten-Sacken, P. von der, Grundzüge einer Theologie im christlich-jüdischen Gespräch, München 1982. Rendtorff, R. and H. Henrix (Hg.), Die Kirchen und das Judentum. Dokumente von 1945 bis 1980, Paderborn/München, 1988. ———, Theologie des Alten Testamentes. Ein kanonischer Entwurf. Band 2: Thematische Entfaltung, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2001. Richel, P.J., Het kerkbegrip van Calvijn (diss.), Utrecht 1942. Robinson, J.H., John Calvin and the Jews, New York 1992. Schmidt, W.H., ‘“Volk” Gottes. Einsichten des Alten Testamentes’, in: K. Wengst, G. Saß (Hg.), Ja und nein. Christliche Theologie im Angesicht Israels, FS Wolfgang Schrage, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1998. Schoon, S., Christelijke presentie in de Joodse Staat. Theologische overwegingen betreffende de verhouding kerk en Israel naar aanleiding van enkele vormen van christelijke presentie in de staat Israel, Kampen 1982. ———, ‘De Schrift: Basis voor gesprek tussen joden en christenen?’, in: C. Houtman, L.J. Lietaert Peerbolte, Joden, christenen en hun Schrift. Een bundel opstellen aangeboden bij het afscheid van C.J. den Heyer, Baarn 2001. Selvanayagam, I., ‘People of God and Peoples of God: Asian Christian Discussions’, in: Ucko 1996. Ucko, H. (Ed.), People of God, Peoples of God. A Jewish-Christian Conversation in Asia, Geneva 1996.
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Weber, O., Grundlagen der Dogmatik, Band II, Neukirchen 1962. Wentsel, B., De Heilige Geest, de kerk en de laatste dingen. De kerk als het saamhorige volk Gods, Dogmatiek deel 4b, Kampen 1998. Wells, J.B., God’s Holy People. A Theme in Biblical Theology, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 305, Sheffield 2000. Weren, W., Intertextualiteit en bijbel, Kok 1993. Wyschogrod, M., The Body of Faith. God in the People Israel, San Francisco 1989.
WHO WE SAY WE ARE: JEWISH SELF-DEFINITION IN TWO MODERN DUTCH LIBERAL PRAYER BOOKS Judith Frishman Catholic Theological University of Utrecht, The Netherlands Liberal and/or Reform Judaism, according to the liturgist Lawrence Hoffman, have known three distinct stages, which he designates as Classical, Peoplehood and Personalist (Hoffman 1991:10ff ). These stages may be said to be not only historically in succession, but also concomitant, the dominant elements varying at any given time. The Pittsburgh Platform, a statement issued by the American Reform rabbis in 1875, may help to clarify the opinions held in the classical stage concerning 1) God, 2) the Jewish people and its mission, and 3) the Torah and religious practice. The editors of this platform, while recognizing that every religion entails an attempt to grasp the Infinite One, are of the opinion that Judaism presents the highest conception of the God-Idea as taught in the Holy Scriptures and developed and spiritualized by the holy teachers. As for the Jewish people and its mission: Judaism is a progressive religion striving to be in accord with the postulates of reasons whose mission it is to spread monotheistic and moral truth, and to solve on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society. No longer a nation but a religious community, neither a return to Palestine nor restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state are expected. Finally, the Mosaic legislation is a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine. Today, the writers of the statement declare, we accept as binding only the moral laws and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives. Laws regulating diet, priestly purity and dress fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness. Observance today is apt rather to obstruct than further spiritual elevation. Recently Jacob Neusner stated concerning this platform: ‘all this forms a full and encompassing Judaism, one that, to its communicants, presented truth of a self-evident order. But it was also a truth
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declared, not discovered, and the self-evidence of the truth of statements competed with the self-awareness characteristic of those who made them. . . . Their system explained both why and why not . . .: the affirmative side covered why the Jews would persist as a separate group and the negative would account for the limits of differences . . .’ (Neusner 2002:72). However, World War I, the Shoah and the founding of the State of Israel would change all that, causing the rabbis and lay people to reframe the system, expressing— in 1937 and again in 1976—worldviews and notions of peoplehood and group identity quite different from the ones expressed in Pittsburgh in 1875. While the Peoplehood stage developed in the mid-1960s, by the 1980s the Personalist stage was clearly underway. In this stage a new accent was placed on persons or individual spirituality and attempts were made to include more categories1 than had hitherto been the case (Hoffman 1991:17). It would be possible to enumerate the changing visions of God, the Jewish people and its mission and the Torah in Liberal Judaism in the period after the Pittsburgh Platform by means of later statements.2 However, I will do this instead by way of a presentation of two Dutch Liberal prayer books, both entitled Seder Tov Lehodot. The first was published on Shavu"ot 1964 and the second in 2000. If liturgy in any way reflects the worldview of a religious group or people—and of course I believe it does—than Seder Tov Lehodot should provide us with ample evidence of who Dutch liberal Jews say they are. Seder Tov Lehodot I While liturgies are unique to groups—and by extension to countries from which they issue—no liturgy, reform or otherwise, comes into being ex nihilo. The prayer book archaeologist is able, at least at times, to unearth previous layers and point to their origins. The backgrounds of our two versions of Seder Tov Lehodot differ greatly. The newest publication (2000) comes at the end of a cycle of thirty years of liturgical renewal, ushered in by the British Union of Liberal 1 The categories referred to here include amongst others women, homosexuals, single parents, and interfaith marriages. 2 Cf. Borowitz 1983: Appendix for an overview of the Reform platforms between 1885 and 1976. for the most recent period cf. Borowitz 1991 and Breslauer 2002.
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and Progressive Synagogues’ Avodat Halev of 1967 and culminating with the American Reconstructionists’ Kol Haneshamah (‘Let every living thing Yah’s praises sing’) of the 90s.3 The first Seder Tov Lehodot precedes this flourish of activity and as such is one of the first postwar European siddurim.4 One might expect to find here, for the first time, reflections on the Shoah and the State of Israel. According to its anonymous editors—R. Levisson and Rabbi J. Soetendorp—the siddur rests on two pillars. The first is the liturgy composed by Rabbi Dr. J. Norden (of Elberfeld, Wuppertal), Rabbi Dr. H. Hirschberg, R.J. Spitz and L. Levisson between 1932 and 1938.5 The second pillar is the Einheitsgebetbuch (Tefilot Lekol Hashanah—Gebetbuch für das ganze Jahr) commissioned by the Liberaler Kultus-Ausschuss des Preussischen Landesverbandes jüdischer Gemeinden (ed. C. Seligmann, I. Elbogen and H. Vogelstein) in 1929 in Frankfort a.M. However, these two pre-war (primarily) German sources are supplemented, according to the editors, by the traditions of the Liberal Jewish communities of Amsterdam and The Hague. Special attention has been paid to restoring texts omitted by the Einheitsgebetbuch, comprising a prayer for the restoration of Jewish independence on its own soil (‘joodse onafhankelijkheid in eigen land’) and a prayer for the State of Israel which has been adopted from the prayer book of the Liberal community in Jerusalem (Seder Tov Lehodot 1964:3–5). Seder Tov Lehodot I, unlike many of its German (e.g. Hamburg 1819 or the Einheitsgebetbuch) and Anglo-Saxon predecessors, opens from right to left in the fashion of Hebrew books. An interesting feature is the interspersion of Dutch translation between the Hebrew texts as opposed to the custom of reproducing the Hebrew on the right hand side of the page and the translation on the left hand side. The editors note that this lay out follows the service of the Liberaal Joodse Gemeente (the Dutch Liberal Jewish Community) in which the Hebrew is translated aloud and allows those not sufficiently literate in Hebrew to follow the translation more easily during the Hebrew readings. Thus while indicating that this siddur breaks with Liberal tradition and should be considered a Hebrew book, its editors admit that the 3
The Reform movement in the United States is in the process of publishing its new prayer book Mishkan T "filah, two drafts of which have already appeared. 4 For a chronological bibliography of European Liberal and Reform prayer books from 1816–1967 cf. Petuchowski 1968:1–21. 5 See Michman 1988 for the history of Liberal Judaism in the Netherlands and the role played by Norden, Hirschberg, Spitz and Levisson between 1929–1943.
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translation is not of secondary but of primary importance, on equal standing with the original language. Here the message transmitted is mixed at best. While the editors claim that they have reinstated prayers for the restoration of Jewish independence, this claim is only partially true. In the Orthodox service, the return to Zion is inevitably linked to the coming of the messiah, the reinstitution of the Davidic dynasty and the Temple offers. In Seder Tov Lehodot, the second and third berakhot (benedictions) following the reading of the haftarah (the prophetic reading following the reading from the Pentateuch) are omitted. In those two benedictions God is not only asked to have compassion on Zion, but to bring Elijah and the kingdom of the house of David. So too, in the fourth benediction of the Shabbat amidah,6 the reze, the Dutch prayer book follows the Einheitgebetsbuch in omitting reference to the Temple service and fire offerings while asking God to accept Israel’s prayers. The conclusion of the berakhah is interesting, in that two versions or hatimot are presented consecutively. First is the request to behold God’s return to Zion (vetehezenah eneinu beshuvkha lezion) which is then followed by the 1868 Hamburg version, ‘Praised be Thou O Lord whom alone we serve in reverence’ (barukh atah . . . she"otkha levadkha beyirah na"avod ). Thus the fourth blessing is inadvertently divided up into two whose contents are not linked.7 Not surprisingly for a Reform community, the entire musaf or additional prayer corresponding to the extra offerings on special days in Temple times has been wholly omitted. Yet here the Dutch prayer book goes further than the Einheitsgebetbuch, which offers an alternative paragraph for the tikkanta shabbat, the passage which refers specifically to the sacrifices.8 It is clear that Dutch Liberal Jews, like their 19th c. German and Anglo-Saxon forefathers, did not desire the rebuilding of the Temple. What is not clear, however, is the relationship between the Zion of the prayers and the State of Israel. In the brief Dutch—but not the Hebrew—version of the prayer for
6 The reze is the seventeenth benediction in the weekday amidah. Seder Tov Lehodot (1964) contains services solely for the Sabbath and holidays. 7 The hatimah of modim, the fifth berakhah of the amidah on Friday evening and Shabbat morning, has been inadvertently omitted altogether. 8 In this context one should take note of the new version of The Authorised Daily Prayerbook 1990:897–202, which ends with ‘Some Thoughts of the Chief Rabbi on Animal Sacrifices in Judaism: Probings into a Psycho-religious Drama’. Jakobovits’s conclusion is that we are today not spiritually able to grasp the notion of sacrifices.
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Israel, God is asked to bless the State in which the beginning of redemption is flowering (‘waar het begin van onze verlossing ontluikt’, a variant of reshit zemihat ge"ulateinu attributed to Rav Kook). God is also entreated to allow those who defend Israel to be victorious. Neither this nor the previous petition reflects the Hebrew text derived from the Israeli siddur.9 What Dutch Jews also don’t hold stock in is angels: reference to them is omitted both in the texts preceding the shema as well as in the kedushah.10 They are also not certain about life after death. Thus the second benediction of the amidah, the gevurot, retains the words mehayeh metim atah rav lehoshi"a (you revive the dead, you have the power to save), mehayeh metim berahamim rabbim (you revive the dead with great mercy), and melekh memit umehayeh umazmi"ah yeshu"ah. Vene"eman atah lehahayot metim barukh atah yy mehayeh hametim (King who puts to death and restores life and causes salvation to flower. You are sure to revive the dead. Blessed are you Lord who revives the dead). Consistent in following the German versions, the traditional Hebrew is retained while the translation substitutes immortality for resurrection. The form this immortality is to take is made explicit in the hatimah where the dead are said to live on in the memories of the living (‘die doet de herinnering aan de doden voortleven’). More surprising perhaps, in connection with the theme of life and death, is the omission of the second and third paragraphs of the shema, i.e. Deut 11:13–21 and Num 15:37–39a, in which—in Eric Friedland’s words (Friedland 1997:245)—the ‘meteorological consequences of the Israelites’ ethical behavior’ are described. Unlike the Einheitsgebetbuch, the Hebrew original is absent, and there is no attempt to formulate an alternative prayer or substitute these paragraphs with other biblical or biblically inspired texts such as Deut. 28:1–6 and Deut. 30:15–19 as would be the case only later starting in the 1970s.11 9 The Liberal Service of the Heart of the 60s always indicates when the translation does not correspond with the Hebrew by the use of an asterisk. 10 But see J. Soetendorp and R.A. Levisson, Hagadah voor Pesach 1959, which opens with Shalom Aleichem, a Sabbath song which welcomes the ministering angels! 11 This choice of alternative passages is from Siddur Kol Haneshama 1994. C. Seligmann (ed. Israelitisches Gebetbuch, Frankfort a.M. 1910) was one of the very few to offer a paraphrase of the traditional paragraphs of the shema in which the meteorological consequences of forsaking God read, ‘The sky would be darkened for you, and the earth would withhold its blessings from you. And ye would walk upon the blessed earth with discord in your heart, and with remorse in your soul.’ (cf. Petuchowski 1968:317). Petuchowski 1968:82 notes that in ‘Independent Reform’
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I will conclude this brief description of the 1964 edition of Seder Tov Lehodot with the question of particularism and mission. The Dutch siddur carefully avoids labelling those belonging to other peoples as evildoers or idol worshippers. It also shies away from any form of vengeance. Thus in its version of the ge"ulah—the berakhah following the shema—reference is made neither to the clause ‘He is our God who on our behalf dealt out punishment to our foes, and brought retribution upon our mortal enemies’ (although God does redeem us from the grasp of tyrants) nor to the words ‘who let us tread upon the high places of our enemies and raised our pride above all our foes . . . who performed miracles and vengeance (nekamah) upon pharaoh’. The Dutch translation is even further censured, omitting all references to miracles as well. If we are at all chosen, then it is, in the words of Seder Tov Lehodot’s aleinu, as follows: shebahar banu leyahed et shemo vekerevanu la"avodato. Whereas the Dutch translation reads: ‘die ons een speciale taak gegeven heeft en ons opgedragen heeft de eenheid van zijn naam te verkondigen en die ons waardig heeft gekeurd om in zijn dienst te staan’ (who has endowed us with a special task and commissioned us to proclaim the unity of his name, and who has deemed us worthy to serve him), the Einheitsgebetbuch translates the same Hebrew phrase as: ‘He has made us worthy to confess His unity and has called us to His service’. How then should we picture the Dutch Liberal Jew who prayed from Seder Tov Lehodot ? He or she, twenty years after the war, still had not incorporated the Shoah into the prayer book, preferring perhaps to grieve on Memorial Day (annually on May 4th), the day when the Dutch nation commemorates the victims of the Second World War (and more recently of all wars). Would they thereby indicate that although the fate of the Jews differed from that of most of their fellow citizens, yet their sorrow and loss had to be experienced by themselves and others as part of Dutch history? This is but part of a large-scale debate concerning the treatment of the Jews after World War II and the belated Jewish reaction. The Dutch government, insisting that separate treatment and compensation for the Jews after the war would be discriminatory, refused to recognize their specific suffering and problems. Nevertheless, one can hardly prayer books (rather than those where reform took place ‘from within’), the traditional three paragraphs of the shema are given up and the shema is reduced to its first paragraph. So too the musaf service is omitted and no attempt is made to preserve the full eighteen or seven benedictions of the amida.
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attribute the absence of the Shoah in the prayer book to an absence of awareness of the War. At best one can consider it an attempt to get on with life and rebuild the Jewish community—a daring sign of courage. This community still held to its hopes of universal peace, expurgating expressions of wrath and vengeance attributed to God, demanding super-human qualities from themselves. Despite claims to having re-instituted prayers for independence, the tie with both the land and the State of Israel remain inchoate.12 Messianic fulfilment in universal garb, enacted by a peace-seeking God, abetted by those deemed worthy to serve Him and proclaim His unity, is the message perceived, a message that rarely deviates from classical 19th c. Reform. Seder Tov Lehodot II The new Seder Tov Lehodot differs in many ways from its forerunner. A glance at the cover reveals that this siddur is intended for weekdays and Shabbat. The frontispiece adds ‘and other occasions’. Its size is no less daunting than its scope: its total of 732 pages almost triples the number of pages of the siddur of the 60s. Whereas the Dutch Liberal Jews were formerly assumed to pray once or perhaps twice a week (on Friday evening and/or Saturday morning), they now—like their Orthodox and non-Orthodox contemporaries around the world—are expected to pray three times daily. Those using the siddur are assumed to know the prayer service so well that they easily flip pages from the daily shaharit to the Shabbat shaharit at the appropriate point, something that is not, for example, demanded of the Orthodox worshipper using Siddur Rinat Yisra"el. Moreover, Seder Tov Lehodot provides no accent marks in the Hebrew text, reinforcing the impression that congregants have achieved an advanced level of Hebrew. A glance at the transliterated berakhot before and after the torah reading indicates that this expectation belies reality. While the cover and opening statement would seem to invalidate our theory that liturgy reflects the identity of those who use it,13 in 12 Seder Tov Lehodot deviates from the Einheitsgebetbuch but follows the example of many other pre-war prayer books when including or hadash and its translation. Cf. Petuchowski 1968:285–288. 13 None of the Liberal Jewish synagogues in the Netherlands or elsewhere for that matter, hold regular weekday services.
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many ways this still holds true. For new liturgy—albeit no more than wishful thinking at times—more often reflects work in progress, i.e. changes that have been implemented or requested over a period of time. Liturgy, while formative, is thus not necessarily the beginning but rather the record of work in progress, a process that will have been carried out through the course of time. In the case of the (re)new(ed) Dutch siddur, the process recorded spans a decade. In that period several drafts were published for use in services, commencing most logically with the Shabbat prayers, the day when most Liberal Jews pray. The final version of the siddur as well as these drafts include changes long effectuated but not recorded. Among these are an increased emphasis on Hebrew and the Shoah and a (revised) theological position on the State of Israel. But one need not be a keen observer to note all this. The editorial board—no longer anonymous14—has provided us with an introduction in which light is shed on the intentions of its members after the source of a good deal of their inspiration has been disclosed. The present day Jew, according to the introduction, is one who prays out of protest against a God whose ways are incomprehensible, unjust even. It is only in the second instance that prayer is said to be uttered in joy and thanksgiving as well. That this siddur opens its introduction with a theological question is no coincidence. This siddur is clearly the siddur of survivors, their children and grandchildren, and the Shoah is the most prominent event to find its way on the pages of the prayer book, followed by the founding of the State of Israel. Not only are services included for Yom Hasho"ah and/or the fourth of May (it is unclear whether these commemorative occasions are interchangeable), Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha"atsma"ut; the Shoah has found its way to the very heart of the service, i.e. in the ge"ulah, the first berakhah following the shema. Whereas the Orthodox siddur refers to the killing of the first born in Egypt in the ge"ulah, Seder Tov Lehodot leaps from the oppression in Egypt to the Shoah and the miracle (nes) of the ingathering of the exiles and return (and in the translation, the rebuilding) of the Land. The revised Hebrew text— in which changes have been implemented without indicative markings to the traditional version—makes a somewhat awkward impression 14 The members of the editorial board are Rabbi D. Lilienthal (chair), Rabbi R. Bar Ephraïm, Rabbi M. ten Brink, Rabbi S. Herman, Rabbi A. Soetendorp and Rabbi E. van Voolen. Its translators are Ms. M. Bakker and Prof.dr. C.I. Dessaur.
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due to the incongruous change in style and language.15 But before proceeding to a discussion of the prayers themselves, we will first devote some further attention to the introduction. A Jew, then, according to Seder Tov Lehodot’s editors, should pray because Jews like to argue; not only with God, but apparently among each other. This obviously underlies the inclusion of a brief history of the prayer book, from its inception through the emancipation period, which I will characterize as an apology. The editors find it important for the congregant/reader to know that liturgical innovation did not originate in Amsterdam between 1989 and 2000. Rather the siddur has evolved in the course history, things having been both added and subtracted.16 Yet standing in the tradition of Liberal Judaism, the agenda established at Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1850 still serves as a program for change in 2000.17 Thus the Liberal Dutch Jew belongs to both ‘mainline’ Judaism (whatever this may refer to) and the Liberal tradition, the siddurim of 1964 and 2000 ‘taking a stance somewhere between a traditional and a radical approach’ (Seder Tov Lehodot 2000:xxiv). Lawrence Hoffman prefers to talk of ‘People and Pluralism’ and ‘novel progressive identities’ rather than ‘back to traditionalism’. Instead of the monolithic and therefore ‘Orthodox’ approach of the classical liturgies, the modern liturgies are, according to Hoffman, pluralistic (Hoffman 1991:16–17). Jacob Neusner takes a different position, although his view at times is parallel to Hoffman’s. Neusner will 15 The text, interspersed with biblical quotes, has been composed by the editorial board and translated into Modern Hebrew (as opposed to the Rabbinic Hebrew of the traditional prayers) by Rabbi R. Bar Ephraïm. 16 Most of the members of the congregation are not familiar with the traditional prayer book but rather consider that with which they are familiar as traditional. Therefore not only changes towards the modern but also change from a more Reform text to a more traditional text need be justified. It is interesting to note that while this siddur mainly adds rather than subtracts material, the additions are not indicated in consequent fashion: they are either located at the bottom of the page or simply inserted without commentary. 17 Seder Tov Lehodot 2000:xxiii refers to a pamphlet published by the “Israëlitische Hoge Raad van Mecklenburg-Schwerin” most likely Der israelitische Oberrath von Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Den öffentlichen cultus betreffende Differnzpunkte zwischen den verschiedenen religiösen Partheien (Schwerin 1850). The points of discussion include whether or not reference should be made to God’s vengeance, whether prayers referring to past events should be recited, whether the reading of the torah should occur in an annual or triennial cycle, whether one should pray for the restoration of sacrifice and the return to Palestine, and in what language one should pray. Cf. Petuchowski 1968:xiii–xiv.
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agree that the 19th century reformers were not pluralistic. To the contrary, he avers, ‘they defined not a Judaism but Judaism. They set forth Reform Judaism as the natural, right, authoritative, true Judaism and dismissed all others as wrong, inauthentic and untrue. This attitude derived from theology: a systematic, intellectual program built upon logical lines within a well-crafted rationality’ (Neusner 2002:76). The contrast between contemporary and historical Reform Judaic theologians and historians is, according to Neusner, stark: ‘The one apologizes for what the other took pride in.’ Neusner is in more than one way correct when implying that present-day Jews lack an intellectual program.18 For all its pluriformity, one notices hesitance in the siddur. According to its editors, where possible personal berakhot have been formulated in both the masculine and the feminine and in positive rather than negative terms. In the psukei dezimra both men and women thank God for having been ‘created in His image’ rather than the traditional ‘as a man’ and ‘according to His will’ for men and women respectively. So too we thank God for having been ‘created a Jew’ rather than having ‘not created me a non-Jew (goy)’.19 Despite a restrictive policy in the Liberal synagogues concerning the wearing of a tallit by women in practice, the siddur formulates the blessings recited when donning tefillin or tallit in both the masculine and the feminine. When it comes to God language, however, a choice has been made for male terminology, if only for the so called paradoxical reason ‘that male terminology is in practice the most gender neutral terminology, if only because we are so used to it’ (Seder Tov Lehodot 2002:xxxi). On the few occasions when the editors offer a choice, their overt preference is indicated by placement on the upper half of the page, alternatives being relegated to the bottom half. Thus the first berakha of the amida, the avot, is printed with the names of the forefathers on the top half of the page. Below the line dividing the page in two we find the text bearing the title Awot We"imahot. Common experience indicates that the reader’s choice is automatically dictated by the layout of the text, which presents
18 It is characteristic of postmodern Judaism not to maintain one program or one meta-narrative but to make use of multiple programs and meta-narratives. Cf. Ophir 1996. 19 Seder Tov Lehodot follows here the example of the American conservative movement’s Siddur Sim Shalom.
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one text as standard or authoritative and the other as alternative. So too in the aleinu the version of the text in which God is praised for not having made us like all the other nations (shelo asanu kegoyei ha"arazot, velo samanu kemishpehot ha"adamah, shelo sam helkenu kahem vegoralenu kekhol hamonam)20 is above the divide. The version printed in both the 1964 Dutch Liberal prayer book and the Einheitsgebetbuch is located below (shebahar banu leyahed et shemo ve karevanu la"avodato). Particularism would seem to be back, were in not for the intellectually dishonest translation, which reads: ‘He made us other than the peoples of the world and has given us a unique role among the families of the earth (—a positive formulation—J.F.). He has not apportioned us the same lot, so that ours differs from all others (—a tautology J.F.).’ While themes like offers and resurrection remain taboo,21 all the paragraphs of the shema as well as the musaf prayer in general have been reintroduced. In the translation of the shema an alternative ecological interpretation of Deut 11:13–21 may be found: Justice among humankind leads to better protection of the environment whereby an end will come to violence. As for the musaf, the tikkanta Shabbat is only partially reproduced; the offers are omitted and in their stead is the explanation that since our exile, our prayers have replaced sacrifice.22 The tikkanta Shabbat ends with a plea for a return of those in exile to our land, where we may serve God as in days of yore. This yore, however, is not the same as it used to be. In what is one of the most remarkable theological innovations of this siddur, God is said to have already rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem (av harahamim, hetavta birzonkha et zion. Banita homot yerushalayim . . .). This goes a considerable step further than the traditional text (Ps 51:20 heitivah birzonkha et zion. Tivneh homot yerushalayim) and even than reshit zemihat ge"ulateinu, introduced by Rav Kook. Yet once more the translation—‘Be good to Zion; complete the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s
20 The sentence following this text—shehem mishtahavim lehevel varik—has been retained by Siddur Rinat Yisra"el 1973, inserted between brackets in Siddur Ahavat Shalom 1984, and omitted in both the Hebrew and the English in The Authorised Daily Prayerbook 1990. 21 Offers are mentioned neither in the Hebrew nor in the Dutch texts. Resurrection is maintained in the Hebrew but paraphrased in the Dutch translation. 22 This text was written by Rabbi R. Bar Ephraïm on the basis of zekher lemusaf of Siddur Ha"avodah Shebalev, Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism ( Jerusalem 1982).
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walls’-fudges, untrue to both the Hebrew text at hand and Psalm 51:20 which is indicated between brackets. Who then are the members of the Dutch Liberal Jewish community according to their own siddur? They include, as the section on life cycle indicates, those who have not been able to become pregnant and those who have given birth to a stillborn baby. They are adoptive parents, Jewish fathers married to non-Jewish wives, ‘doe het zelvers’ or creative liturgists who follow instructions for composing their zeved habat ceremony. They are converts, handicapped, retired and/or ill. But they do not menstruate or experience menopause nor are they gay. They still envision God in the abstract and in the masculine,23 calling Him Eternal and denying Him vengeance. They identify simultaneously with Holland and Israel, singing with equal conviction (or equal indifference) both the Hatikvah and the Wilhelmus, the Dutch national anthem. They are no longer merely a religious denomination but have they then double loyalty? They are everything and nothing, yet beyond all else war victims and their (grand)children. It is therefore not surprising that the Yom Hasho"ah service is, in my view, the most authentic and the most moving service in Siddur Tov Lehodot, citing mainly from Dutch Jewish authors whose experiences are theirs. LITERATURE Borowitz, E.B., Reform Judaism Today, Vol III. How We Live, New York 1983. ———, Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew, Philadelphia 1991. Breslauer, S.D., ‘Building a Postmodern Reform Judaism: The Example of Eugene B. Borowitz’, in: D. Kaplan (ed.), Platforms and Prayer Books. Theological and Liturgical Perspectives on Reform Judaism, Lanham, Maryland 2002, 247–260. Friedland, E.L., ‘Were Our Mouths Filled With Song’: Studies in Liberal Jewish Liturgy, Monographs of the Hebrew Union College 20, Cincinnati 1997. Hoffman, L. and N. Weiner, ‘The Liturgical State of the World Union for Progressive Judaism’, European Judaism 24,1; 1991, 10–22. Michman, D., Het Liberale Jodendom in Nederland 1929–1943, Amsterdam 1988. Neusner, J., ‘When Reform Judaism was Judaism’, in: D. Kaplan (ed.): Contemporary Debates in American Reform Judaism, New York 2001, 69–89.
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It is noteworthy that it is precisely the alternative text to the avot that is found on the bottom half of the page. The insertion of the imahot elsewhere seems to be less problematic. For a wholly different understanding of the function of masculine language used about God see Siddur Lev Chadash 1995:xx: ‘. . . to use exclusively masculine language about God is the most powerful way of diminishing the status of women and is, besides, a blatant anthropomorphism.’
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Ophir, A., ‘The Poor in Deed Facing the Lord of All Deeds’, in: S. Kepnes (ed.), Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age, New York 1996, 181–217. Petuchowski, J.J., Prayerbook Reform in Europe. The Liturgy of European Liberal and Reform Judaism, New York 1968. Soetendorp, J. and R.A. Levisson, Hagadah voor Pesach, Verbond van Liberaal Religieuze Joden, 1959. Prayer Books The Authorised Daily Prayerbook of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Lord I. Jakobovits (Ed.), Centenary edition, London 1990. Avodat Halev. The Service of the Heart, Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues, London 1967. Einheitsgebetbuch (Tefilot Lekol Hashanah—Gebetbuch für das ganze Jahr), bearbeitet im Auftrag des Liberalen Kultus-Ausschusses des Preussischen Landesverbandes jüdischer Gemeinden, C. Seligmann, I. Elbogen and H. Vogelstein (Eds.), Frankfurt am Main 1929. Forms of Prayer, Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, London 1977. Mishkan T’filah. The New Reform Siddur, The Central Conference of American Rabbis, E. Frishman (Ed.), New York (forthcoming). Seder Ha"avodah. Israelitisches Gebetbuch für Sabbath- und Festtage, nach dem Gebrauche des Israelitischen Tempel-Verbandes in Hamburg, Hamburg 1868. Seder Tov Lehodot. Gebeden voor Sjabbat en Feestdagen ten gebruike in de LiberaalJoodse Gemeenten in Nederland, Het Verbond van Liberaal Religieuze Joden in Nederland, Sjawoe’oth 5724—mei 1964. ———. Teksten, gebeden en diensten voor weekdagen, Sjabbat en andere gelegenheden, Verbond van Liberaal-Religieuze Joden in Nederland, Amsterdam 5760–2000. Siddur Ahavat Shalom. The Complete Artscroll Siddur, N. Scherman (Ed.), New York 1984. Siddur Kol Haneshama, The Reconstructionist Press, Wyncote, Pa. 1994. Siddur Lev Chadash, Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues, London 1995. Siddur Rinat Yisra"el, Nusah Ashkenaz, Ministry of Religious Affairs of the State of Israel, Sh. Tal (Ed.), Jerusalem 5733/1973. Siddur Sim Shalom, The Rabbinical Assembly, New York 1985.
THE HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH Herwi Rikhof Catholic Theological University of Utrecht, The Netherlands Introduction One of the striking moments in the various necrologies of pope John Paul II on television were the pictures of his visit to Jerusalem in March 2000 and his prayer before the Wailing Wall. He put a piece of paper in the Wall with his prayer: God of our fathers, you choose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: we are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the People of the Covenant. This profound gesture and heartfelt prayer was not an incident, somehow called for by the occasion: it appeared to be a symptom of a much broader process, of the desire to heal the wounds of division and separation outside and within the Christian churches and of the conviction that the Roman Catholic Church could only enter the third millennium adequately if the Church had come to terms with her sinful past. In line with this conviction a moving ceremony took place at the beginning of Lent 2000, as part of the celebration of the Great Jubilee. The pope and seven senior cardinals asked God for forgiveness for the sins committed by members of the Church, and in the name of the Church, for the use of ‘non-evangelical methods’ in the service of faith (Inquisition), for the sins that have caused division among Christians, for the sins committed ‘against the people of the Covenant’, for the sins against love, peace, the rights of peoples, respect of cultures and religions, the dignity of woman and the unity of mankind, the poor. The act has provoked a variety of reactions, from ‘too much’ to ‘not enough’. From a theological point of view, the document published by the International Theological Commission is especially interesting, since it aims at giving an interpretation of this confession of sin. The International Theological Commission is an official commission
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and therefore the document does not present the private view of one particular theologian. But there is another, important feature to the document, that contains also a key to understanding it: it places itself firmly within the reception process of Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). That is not surprising, for the current Roman Catholic theology can be said to be, in all its variety, a reception of that Second Vatican Council. This is certainly the case when the church is the topic of reflection. As always with the reception of councils and counciliar decisions, that process is far from easy and quick. But, although it may not be surprising that this document of the International Theological Commission locates itself in this process of reception, it is nevertheless highly significant and revealing. Surveys of the reception of the Second Vatican Council do not only show acceptance, but also rejection and all the shades in between those two extremes. (Alberigo 1992) It seems that this process in the case of Lumen Gentium, one of the central documents of the council, is even more complicated then usual. The reason is the kind of text Lumen Gentium is. Compared to documents of councils like Vatican I or Trent, Lumen Gentium is rather long and has a more or less narrative character. But the real complication is caused by internal tension, even contradictions in the text. These can be explained by the historical circumstances and by the procedures followed before and during the council. The first draft was rejected in the first session of the Council (December 1962), but the second draft discussed in the second session (1963) was not a completely new one. Important parts and ideas of the first draft were incorporated in this new draft. This second draft was then gradually rewritten, the order of chapters was changed, some elements were removed, others elements were added. The final text was accepted in November 1964. If ones traces this process, one can see that it takes time before all the consequences of new insights are realized, how much time it takes and that people who participate in this process are not always able to oversee the whole process. (Alberigo, Magistretti 1975) That long and complicated process explains the tensions and contradictions in the final text. It is therefore not so strange that quite different views present themselves as genuine interpretations of the council. And it is therefore not so surprising that the reception of this document is far from clear and obvious. In this contribution, I will concentrate on one particular topic in
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this reception process: the question of the holiness of the church. This topic belongs traditionally to any theological reflection on the church. In the period before the Second Vatican Council some discussion took place with regard to the question how the holiness of the Church is related to the sins of the members of the church. In Lumen Gentium, this reflection on holiness and sinfulness receives a new impulse, because of the new approach to the church. One can say that the Pope’s prayer and the Lenten liturgy were made possible by this new approach. They certainly fit in which the picture Lumen Gentium presents of the church. I will start my analysis of the recent discussion on the holiness and sinfulness of the Church with some general remarks about how the holiness of the church is seen in the period before the Second Vatican Council. The second part is concerned with that Council. In the third part I will analyze that recent document of the International Theological Commission. I will conclude with an evaluation. 1. Holiness as One of the Notae Ecclesiae On Sunday the Creed is said or sung in the Eucharist. Whether the Apostle’s Creed is used or the Creed that was formulated at the council of Constantinople (380) on the basis of the creed accepted at the first ecumenical council (Nicea 325), in both type of creeds the Church is confessed to be holy. In the case of the Apostles Creed, the Church is also confessed to be catholic; I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church”. In the case of the Nicea-Constantinopolitanum, holiness is one of four terms used to characterize the Church: “I believe the one holy catholic and apostolic Church”. In the theological reflection on the Church or in the commentaries on the Creed attention is given to these characteristics of the Church. Before the 16th century theologians use a variety of terms to qualify these characteristics like conditio, signum, qualitas. But proprietas and especcially nota become the prevalent terms in the 16th century.* With these terms, a specific interest is introduced. The historical context is not so much a commentary of the creed, but a discussion with Protestants, not so much an explanation to the faithful but an apology against outsiders. The term nota receives the meaning of * See for these notae in the Reformation, Simon Schoon in this volume (p. 278).
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those properties that are characteristic for the church and that make the church knowable. Only that property is considered a nota that is more known than the church itself, that is accessible to all people, that is proper to the true church and that is insoluble to the church. In these apologetical treatises, theologians refer to a variety of notae. A theologian like Bellarmin e.g. mentions 15 and Bozio even hundred, but gradually the four mentioned in the Nicea-Constantinopolitanum become the notae ecclesiae par excellence. (Döring, 1998) As Congar remarks in his classical study of the notae ecclesiae, it is not so difficult to construct on the basis of these notae an argument that easily reaches a successful conclusion,—namely that the Roman Catholic Church is characterized by these four notae—if one remains within the enclosure of the own institution or the school and limits oneself to writing. In the real discussion though, matters are more complicated. Congar discerns therefore not just an adaptation of the strategy in view of the interlocutors—those aspects of holiness are e.g. stressed that that this of that other ‘church’ lack—but he sees also a shift towards a discourse that effectively aims at conversion, a discourse that appeals to e.g. the experience of beauty. (Congar 1972, 357–367) It seems, though, that an even more fundamental change occurs with Vatican II. The apologetic use of the notae ecclesiae, effective or not so effective, presupposes a treatment of the church that locates itself outside the theology proper and within the field of apologetics. Despite several attempts in the 19th and early 20th century to develop a genuine theology of the church, the predominant view in the manuals and in the official documents remained mainly apologetic, with a strong focus on structure and organisation. Significantly, in the neo-scholastic manuals of that period the church is not discussed as a locus in the dogmatic theology proper, but as part of preliminary considerations concerning revelation, knowledge and authority. (e.g. Scheeben 1874; van Noort 1909) When the holiness of the church is discussed, the holiness is understood as referring to doctrine and prescriptions, to institutions, like sacraments and to the fruits of holiness to be found in the saints. (de Groot 1906, 163–172; van Noort 1909, 152–159) As indicated, in the 19th century some attempts are made to approach the Church differently, less from the outside, more from the inside, less as an institution like others, more like a community of believers and a communion of grace, less from an apologetic per-
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spective, more from a truly theological perspective. Central in these attempts is the use of ‘mystical body of Christ’ as the central designation for the Church. At the First Vatican Council, though, this designation is rejected as too protestant and too vague. When in 1943 Pope Pius XII issues an encyclical on the Church entitled Mystici Corporis, the title suggests that what was previous rejected is now accepted. But if one reads the encyclical carefully, it becomes clear that this theologoumenon, the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, is still used within an apologetic and juridical frame and more importantly, that it is determined by that frame. With regard to holiness, two passages are of interest, one in the part dealing with the term ‘body’ and one in the part dealing with the qualification ‘mystical’. In the first passage, the pope states that not only those who excel in holiness are members of the body, but that those who sin belong to the church as well. The scope of this discussion is right at the beginning determined. Only those persons can be considered to be real members, who are baptized, confess the true faith and are not separated from the body by their own deeds (schism, apostasy) or are removed by the legitimate authority (heresy). (Mystici Corporis 21–22) The second passage deals with the human weaknesses and splendor of the church. The weaknesses are due to the frailty of the human nature, the lamentable inclination to evil of the individuals, present even in the higher members, but are not to be attributed to the juridical structure of the church. Mother church shines forth in sacraments, in faith, in holy laws, in fruits of holiness, like the saints. The weakness or illness of her members can not be attributed to her. (Mystici Corporis 65–66). It is clear that a crucial distinction is made between on the one hand the individuals and on the other hand the church. The individuals are connected with weakness and sin; the church is emphatically not connected with sin. The church is mentioned in two ways, as a juridical structure and as mother, but in both cases, the trespasses of the individuals, of the members or of the children do not have any consequences for structure or for mother church. In the period between the encyclical (1943) and the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), theologians have proposed different views on this point. Journet e.g. develops the distinction between the holy church and the sinful members further and argues that the members of the church as far as they are sinners do not belong really to the
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church: they are still in the world. ( Journet 1951) In a work, posthumously published, Mersch had argued, though, that the holiness of the church, which is due to God, is realized and should be realized through and in the human sinful environment. God helps his church ‘to battle against sin that is in her, both in leaders and members, and that is in her contrary to what she ought to be . . .’ (Mersch 1949, II 231). When during the first session of the Second Vatican Council (September–December 1962) the first draft of a document about the Church was presented, it was a draft in the vein of Mystici Corporis. It was rejected because, in the formulation of one of the bishops, it was too triumphalistic, too juridical, and too hierarchical. This rejection is important, because a view on the Church as presented in that first draft can not be said to be according to the intention of the Council fathers. Consequently, an interpretation of the final text along the lines of the first draft (and the tradition behind it) can not be considered a genuine interpretation of Lumen Gentium. Moreover, the final text, despite the already mentioned internal tensions and contradictions, shows clearly a new and truly theological approach to the Church. This becomes clear when one reads the text as a whole and pays attention to structural elements and leading ideas. (Rikhof 1993) 2. Lumen Gentium The new truly theological view on the Church that Lumen Gentium (hereafter LG ) presents can be sketched nicely in three points when one takes the three characterizations that capture the already mentioned criticism of the first draft as starting points. First, instead of an almost exclusive attention to the hierarchy the primary focus now is on the community, on what is common to all. This primary attention to what is common is a structural feature of the constitution that appears on the level of chapters, but is repeated within the chapters. Second, instead of the predominant attention to juridical structures and relationships of power and authority in the church now the mystery of the church is first and foremost. The relation with God Father Son and Spirit is the foundation of the church and the history of salvation is her context. Third, instead of a triumphalist declaration that the concrete church is identical with the Church of
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the creed,—a central argument in the encyclical Mystici Corporis— now the Church of the Creed is to be found in (subsistit in) the concrete church and that consequently the Roman Catholic Church is not wholly identical with the one, holy catholic and apostolic Church. This means that the concrete church is still on the way to the kingdom of God. On earth, the church is ‘the initial budding forth of that kingdom’. Connected to this change is the use of not just one, but a number of images. The church as the mystical body of Christ is one of the images used in the first chapter on the mystery of the church (LG 1–8) and now this designation is interpreted within this salvation historical view. Part of this view is the recognition that the Church is ‘at the same time holy and constantly called to purification’. (LG 8) Moreover, the term ‘people of God’ is used as the dominant qualification for the second chapter (LG 9–17). It is a term that because of its biblical connotation carries with it not only the notion of common to all, but also the notion of history, of the history of salvation, the notion of pilgrimage. Because of this historical, salvation historical view of the church, because of the difference or distinction between the Church of the Creed and the concrete church, the character of the notae ecclesiae changes too. They can not be considered any longer as descriptions, that fit adequately and precisely the concrete church, but they are to be considered as something like demands or requirements. They form so to say together the permanent agenda of the church. These are the issues the church has to work on constantly in order to realize her identity and to maintain her identity. Certainly with regard to holiness this shift is noticeable in the text of Lumen Gentium. First, one can notice that holiness is not simply considered as a fixed quality, but rather as a continuous process of becoming holy. The Spirit was sent ‘to sanctify the church continuously’. (LG 4) ‘The church embracing sinners in her bosom is at the same time holy and always in need of being purified and incessantly pursues the path of penance and renewal’. (LG 8) ‘Moving forward through trial and tribulations, the church is strengthened by God’s grace . . . moved by the H. Spirit she may never cease to renew herself, until through the cross she arrives at the light which knows no setting’. (LG 9) ‘Every one in the church is called to holiness, as Paul says God wants you to become holy’. (LG 39) Second, one can notice that not only holiness is considered as a
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process, but that the other aspect of this process, sin, failure, and imperfection, are also noticed and mentioned as well. The attention to imperfection and sin is implied in the just mentioned quotations; rather implicit in the remark about the constant need of renewal, more explicit in the remarks about the church embracing sinners in her bosom and in the remarks about the church in permanent need of purification. The most explicit statement is to be found in the chapter on the eschatological nature of the church: ‘Here on earth the church is marked with a genuine be it imperfect holiness’. (LG 48) It is important to note that in this quotation and in the remark from Lumen Gentium 8, quoted earlier, sin is not only present in the church because the church embraces sinners, but that the church herself is subject of the permanent need of purification. Similarly, in another passage, the church is subject of temptation or trial (LG 9). But it is also important to notice that nowhere in the text of Lumen Gentium the church self is said to be sinful, although that would seem to be a consequence of the implicit and explicit statements just quoted. On the contrary, one can notice some reluctance to draw that conclusion. E.g. in the chapter on Mary, in the section on Mary as type of the church, the church is the subject of perfection, but the faithful are the subject of imperfection and sin. ‘While the church in the blessed Virgin has reached already the perfection, by which she is without spot or wrinkle (cf. Eph 5,7), the faithful have to make an effort to grow in holiness by conquering sin’. (LG 65) So, the change of perspective has important consequences for understanding the holiness of the church. It is seen as a process, as a calling. Moreover, the other side of holiness—sin, failure, mistakes—is recognized as well. But these remarks are mainly directed to individual sinners in the church. The possible or even logical consequence that the church should be called sinful is not drawn and the question whether the church is not only holy but sinful as well is not explicitly discussed. It is one of the unfinished aspects of Lumen Gentium, one of the tensions showing thought in progress. This raises the question whether in the reception of Lumen Gentium, that question is addressed fully and explicitly and if so what kind of answer is given.
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3. Memory and Reconciliation (Dec. 1999) As The Tablet of 18 March 2000 comments, the ceremony on the first Sunday of Lent 2000, in which God was asked pardon for the wrong done by ‘the sons and daughters of the Church’ was certainly an unprecedented ceremony. Not in the sense that this was the first time John Paul II had asked for forgiveness: he had done so before and on several occasions (Accatoli). Neither was he the first pope to do so. Pope Paul VI acknowledged mistakes and trespasses. He mentioned in his opening address of the second session of Vatican II four points as the principal aims of the Council. When he mentioned as one of these points the unity among Christians, he turned to the side where the observers of other churches were seated and said: ‘If we are to blame in any way for that separation we humbly beg God’s forgiveness and ask pardon, too, of our brethren who feel themselves to have been injured by us.’ This saying of the pope is echoed in the documents of Vatican II about the ecumenism: we ask therefore in humble prayer God and our separated brothers for forgiveness (UR 7) And in the constitution Gaudium et Spes, the council acknowledges the responsibility of Christians for the tension between faith and science and for the emergence of atheism. (Gaudium et Spes 36) And there is the confiteor of the only Dutch Pope, Hadrian VI. He is adamant and outspoken in his message to the Reichstag of Neurenberg in 1522. With an ‘unusual frankness’ he confesses and admits ‘the guilt of curia and church’ (Iserloh 110). The sorry state of the church, the division within the church happen, the pope says, because of the sin of people, especially the priests and prelates. ‘Holy Scripture’, he continues, ‘teaches us that the sins of the people have their origin in the sins of the hierarchy. We know well that also around this Holy See many horrible things have happened: abuse in spiritual matters, trespassing of commandments . . . One should, therefore, not be surprised that the illness has spread from head to members, from pope to prelates. We all, prelates and priests have erred from the right way and for long there has been none that does well (Ps. 14,3). Therefore, we all must give God honour and bow down before him.’ (Iserloh, 110–111) But because John Paul II asked forgiveness in a liturgical ceremony and because the faults and sins were so wide ranging and so explicitly mentioned, made it an unprecedented event. How unusual
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and therefore how problematic the dramatic action of Pope John Paul was, is shown by the fact that the International Theological Commission was commissioned to provide a clarification. The president of that Commission, cardinal Ratzinger published the result under the title Memory and Reconciliation. It is to this document I will turn now and especially to the third chapter, entitled Theological Foundations. It contains a systematic reflection on the church’s holiness and sinfulness. Does it contain new insights? Does it develop what Lumen Gentium has said about holiness and sin with regard to the church and if so, in what direction? Does it resolve the tensions present in Lumen Gentium? The introduction to the third chapter opens with a passage from John Paul II’s programmatic apostolic letter Tertio Millenium Adveniente. ‘Hence it is appropriate that as the second millenium of Christianity draws to a close the Church should become ever more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel and, instead of offering to the world the witness of a life inspired by the values of faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal. Although she is holy because of her incorporation into Christ, the Church does not tire of doing penance. Before God and man she always acknowledges as her own her sinful sons and daughters’. In his letter the pope closes this passage with a quotation from Lumen Gentium: ‘The church embracing sinners in her bosom is at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, and incessantly pursues the path of penance and renewal’ (LG 8). That quote is left out here, but it plays a little later an important role in determining the topic of the theological foundations. This ‘at the same time holy and always in need of purification’ is in Memory and Reconciliation qualified as the paradox which is characteristic of the mystery of the church. The subject of the systematic reflection is this paradox: how to consider both aspects together? Can one ‘reconcile’ these two aspects? After this introduction four sections follow: ‘The mystery of the Church’, ‘The holiness of the Church’, ‘The Necessity of Continual Renewal’ and ‘The Motherhood of the Church’. The titles suggest already that the two middle parts are concerned with the paradox and these sections are enclosed by two more general considerations about the church.
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The title of the first part takes up a theme central to Lumen Gentium and is in fact the title of the first chapter of the constitution. Memory and Reconciliation concentrates on the final section of that first chapter, the section that is concerned with the relationship between the hierarchical organized society and the mystical body of Christ, between the visible and the invisible, between the human and the divine element. As in Lumen Gentium, this complex reality is presented analogous to the incarnation of the Word. In Lumen Gentium, the difference between Christ and ‘his ecclesiastical body’ is (briefly) indicated in one sentence, but in Memory and Reconciliation this difference receives more emphasis and attention. The difference is qualified as ‘fundamental’, the sentence from Lumen Gentium is quoted in full and elaborated upon. After this general presentation of the church as a complex reality, as a ‘constant confrontation of holiness and weakness, of redemption and failure’ the two aspects are considered each in turn. The section on holiness starts with stating that Christ is the origin of the holiness of the church—the church is holy because she is made holy by Christ—and that this holiness is maintained by the Spirit, who constantly shapes the church. The second step consists in the introduction of a distinction: holiness of the church and holiness in the church. The holiness of the church is due to these missions of Son and Spirit. The holiness in the church is the personal, subjective holiness of the faithful. This holiness in the church is not just in the church because of the presence of these individual members, but since personal holiness is directed towards God and the other, this ‘in the church’ indicates also an ‘essential social aspect’. The third section on the church as community in constant need of penance and purification starts with a quotation from Lumen Gentium: the church is ‘marked by a true be it imperfect holiness’’ (LG 48). This is elaborated by two quotations, one from Augustine and one from Thomas Aquinas. Both stress that in the earthly condition the church will never be without sin and that the sinless church, the perfectly holy church belongs to the eschaton. The next step resembles the analysis in the previous section of the personal holiness. On the one hand, the sins of the individual members of the church are mentioned, on the other hand it is pointed out that the sins of one person concern the others. Sin does not have ‘an exclusively individual relevance’. That means that sin ‘truly touches the Church in
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her entirety, across the various tines and places’. This conclusion is supported by a quote from Ambrose: ‘let us beware then that our fall not becomes a wound of the Church’. The section is closed with a repetition of the remark from Tertio Millenium Adveniente quoted in the introduction: ‘before God and man she (the church) always acknowledges as her own her sinful sons and daughters’. This quotation forms the bridge to the final section about the church as ‘mother’. But before I analyse that final section, it might be good to point to an important and crucial element in this section on sin. The text draws explicitly a parallel between holiness and sin. But the parallel is a rather limited and not a complete one. The element used for the parallel is that it is not sufficient to consider only the personal and subjective aspect of holiness and of sin. Both holiness and sin have a social aspect. One can even say that this social aspect is not just an accidental feature: it is intrinsic in both. But while in the case of holiness the church is called holy, in the case of sin this conclusion is not drawn. One could understand the remark that sin ‘truly touches the Church in her entirety across the various times and places’ as in fact expressing that conclusion. But Ambrose does not state that one’s fall implies a wound of the church, but warns for this possible consequence. And in the other quotation, the pope calls the ‘sons and daughters’ sinful, but not the church: she is called holy. Moreover, the distinction in the church and of the church that is made and applied with regard to holiness, does not return in this section with regard to sin. The final section uses an image for the church that is said to be as the core of the patristic ecclesiology: ‘mother’. This ‘idea’ is used to ‘express in a particularly effective way’ that the church ‘can make herself responsible for the sin of her children’. In this patristic vision, that also can be found in Vatican II (LG 64), the church realizes herself continuously ‘in the exchange and communication of the Spirit from one believer to another’. The church is thus ‘the generative environment of faith and holiness’. Because of this communication of the Spirit, each baptized person can understand himself or herself as a member of the church in so far as he is born out of her, and, as mother church in so far as he or she contributes with his or her faith new sons and daughters. The individual is even more mother church, the more perfect his or her holiness is, the more he or she communicates to others what he or she has received. Turning to sin
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and sinner the document observes that the sinner does not cease to be a child and can always come back and remove the burden imposed ‘on the entire community of Mother Church’. And the church ‘as a true Mother cannot but be wounded by the sin of her children of yesterday and today’. She continues to love them by making herself responsible for their mistakes. The remarks about the ‘generative environment’ and about the double use of ‘mother’ mirror the early remarks about the social aspect of holiness. But while in the third section that social aspect is also mentioned with regard to sin, in this final section statements to that effect are lacking. So, in this section, where both holiness and sin are considered together, an important element from the previous analysis about sin is missing. The next step of this final section contains the conclusion of the whole chapter. ‘Holiness and sin in the Church are reflected therefore in their effects on the entire Church, although it is a conviction of faith that holiness is stronger than sin, since it is the fruit of divine grace’. The reason for this conclusion is that there is ‘no parallelism between grace and sin, nor even a kind of symmetry or dialectical relationship’. This section contains also the answer to the question whether the church can be called sinful: ‘. . . [the Church] confesses herself a sinner, not as a subject who sins, but rather in assuming the weight of her children’s faults in maternal solidarity’. The parallel that was discovered in the comparison between the two previous sections is confirmed by the conclusion reached in this section. The parallel noticed in the previous sections was concerned with the ‘in’. In the conclusion with which this paragraph starts— ‘Holiness and sin in the Church are reflected therefore in their effects on the entire Church’—that parallel is drawn too. The second part of that conclusion—‘although it is a conviction of faith that holiness is stronger than sin, since it is the fruit of divine grace’—does not deny the fact that both holiness and sin occur in the church and that both have consequences for the entire church. It only indicates a difference in strength. But it seems that this discovery of a certain be it limited parallel is at the same time corrected or even rejected by the reason given: no parallelism, no symmetry, no dialectical relationship. Much can be said about this threefold denial. In the context of this analysis, at least one remarkable aspect should be noticed. The remarks about
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no parallelism etc. are concerned with grace, not with holiness, or to be more precise, not with the holiness in the church. But the conclusion is about that holiness. The connection between conclusion and reason is therefore rather weak, to say the least. The answer is also somewhat problematic. From the conclusion that sin in the church has effects on the entire church, one could infer that therefore that the church is to be called sinful. That inference is not drawn, but it is not clear why not. One could suppose that this inference is not drawn due to the fact, already noticed, that ‘mother’ is used in a double sense when holiness is discussed, but not when sin is the topic. But this supposition does not solve the problem. It only relocates it. This final section is somewhat disappointing. It does not uses all the elements from the previous sections and shows a remarkable lack of clarity in concepts and reasoning. The final answer falls therefore short. 4. Evaluation If my analysis of Memory and Reconciliation is correct, this document contains an important and insightful contribution to the ongoing reflection on the holiness and sinfulness of the church. Important because it discusses explicitly and earnestly the question whether the church can or should be called both holy and sinful. Moreover, it shows and stresses the intrinsic social quality of holiness and sin and does not relegate sin to the individual believer only. Insightful, because in the elaboration of this quality one can notice a difference when holiness is concerned and when sin is concerned. The impact of the effect on others, certainly when sin is concerned, is insufficiently recognized. And that leads to conceptual inconsistencies and unnecessary, even unreasonable, reticence with regard to the sinfulness of the church. Because of this ambivalent character of Memory and Reconciliation, the question of the reception of a reception of Lumen Gentium has to receive also an ambivalent answer. The document can in more than one sense can be qualified as a reception of Lumen Gentium. It shares with Lumen Gentium the truly theological approach to the church. Moreover, it discusses explicitly a question that in the constitution hardly surfaces: whether the church can or should be called sinful
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as well. On these points it carries on what in Lumen Gentium is started. On one aspect it furthers the reflections in an important direction, namely by stressing the social aspect of holiness and sin. But Memory and Reconciliation is also in another sense a reception of Lumen Gentium. Because in the elaboration of this aspect, certainly when sin is concerned, insufficiently the impact of the effects are recognized, it reproduces the tensions of Lumen Gentium. The reflection Vatican II started on the complicated relationship between holiness and sin within the church is still not finished. LITERATURE Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 35 (1943) 193–248. Lumen Gentium, in: Sacrosanctum Oecumenicum Concilium Vaticanum II. Constitutiones, Decreta, Declarationes. Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis 1966, 93–206. Unitatis redintegratio, in: Sacrosanctum Oecumenicum Concilium Vaticanum II. Constitutiones, Decreta, Declarationes. Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis 1966, 243–260. Gaudium et Spes, in: Sacrosanctum Oecumenicum Concilium Vaticanum II. Constitutiones, Decreta, Declarationes. Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis 1966, 681–751. Pope John Paul II, Incarnationis Mysterium (www.vatican.va). Pope John Paul II, Tertio Millenium Adveniente (www.vatican.va). International Theological Commission, Memory and Reconciliation (www.vatican.va). Accatoli, L., Quand le pape demande pardon, Paris 1997. Alberigo, G. and F. Magistretti, (Eds.) Constitutionis Dogmaticae Lumen Gentium, Synopsis Historica, Bologna 1975. Alberigo, G., (Ed.), Kirche im Wandel. Eine kritische Zwischenbilanz nach dem Zweiten Vatikanum. Düsseldorf 1992. Congar, Y., ‘Die Wesenseigenschaften der Kirche’, in: J. Feiner, M. Löhrer (Eds.) Mysterium Salutis Grundriss heilgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, Einsiedeln etc. 1965–1981 Bd 4/1 (1972), 357–599. Döring, H., Notae Ecclesiae, in: Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche, 3rd ed. (1993–2001) Bd 7 (1998) 918–921 (with references to the recent literature). Groot, J.V., Summa Apologetica de ecclesia catholica ad mentem S. Thomae Aquinatis, Regensburg 1906. Journet, Ch., L’Eglise du Verbe Incarné, Paris 1951. Mersch, E., La théologie du Corps Mystique, Paris Brussels 1949, 2 vols. Noort, G. van, Tractatus de Ecclesia Christi, Amsterdam 1909. Rikhof, H., ‘Kerk als sacrament. Een pleidooi voor een realistische ecclesiologie’, in: H. Warnink (Ed.), Ius propter homines. Kerkelijk recht op mensenmaat, Leuven 1993, 19–61. Scheeben, M., Handbuch der Katholischen Dogmatik, Freiburg 1874–1903.
PILGRIMS ‘COMMUNITAS’ IN THE HOLY LAND: THE CASE OF MORMON PILGRIMAGE* Yael Guter Bar-Ilan University, Israel 1. Preface and Methodology The Mormon people see themselves as a holy community, descendants of the tribes of Israel, while they refer to non-Mormons as ‘Gentiles’. The name of their Church emphasizes their sainthood: ‘The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints’. They refer to themselves as ‘the saints’. This study follows the dynamics of such a ‘holy community’ going through a communal type of experience, while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Victor Turner showed how, on pilgrimage, a group of individuals becomes a community (Turner 1969, 1974, 1978, Turner and Turner 1978). The following paper focuses on the communal aspect, in the context of the existential, spiritual experience of pilgrimage. What factors challenge the sense of community, and what factors intensify it? What are the impacts of the cultural background of pilgrims, versus the exclusive impacts of the sacred place itself? Among the various aspects of pilgrimage, this paper highlights the question of Communitas. Anthropological methodology was used for the collection of data and its analysis. Tour guiding experience with Mormon pilgrims over several years provided in-depth familiarity with the dynamics and nature of Mormon tours. Guides may start their tour keeping a certain distance, and later penetrate deeper into the group, taking a more active part in various activities and gaining further intimacy with the participants. Personal interviews and 700 questionnaires supplemented the data. Content analysis was implemented to personal diaries, group journals, letters, personal e-mail correspondence and
* This paper is based upon my doctoral dissertation in the Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar Ilan University. I should like to thank my doctoral advisor Prof. Yvonne Friedman, Dr. Jackie Feldman for his significant review and Dr. Amos Ron for his helpful comments regarding the United Order.
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pictures, and further information was collected in Northern America from participants, directors, guides and tour organizers. The following impression illustrates the leveling impact of the tourbus. Dr. Blair VanDyke, a young, successful Seminary teacher in Utah, who directed a number of Mormon-groups to the Holy Land in the past years, commented: In our capitalistic society it is easy to make distinctions about social and economic status. Homes, cars, clothing, and jewelry all play a role in these subtle, yet obvious, distinctions. However, on a bus stuck in a traffic jam on the outskirts of Tel Aviv it is not easy to make those distinctions. As I led tours, I was impressed by the equalizing affect of the bus as a mode of transportation. In America nobody rides the bus. Therefore, when a group of Latter-day Saint tourists step onto a bus they step onto neutral territory where the economically challenged and the economically privileged are prone to melt into one. (VanDyke 2002)
Equality is a significant characteristic of communitas. What characteristics of the ideology and organization of the LDS church make such dynamics possible? 2. The Mormon Pilgrims The Mormon Pilgrims belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints (‘LDS’). Aside from the Bible, their corpus of sacred scriptures includes the Book of Mormon, which they believe to have been written by an ancient prophet, and which was discovered by their founder, Joseph Smith, in the 19th century. The Mormons believe they are the descendants of the Ten Tribes of Israel. They see themselves as the people of Israel. This may influence their experience in the Holy Land. Most Mormon Pilgrims who took part in my research joined a tour organized by the travel study program of Brigham Young University (BYU), the most important Mormon University, located at Provo, Utah. Its organizer defines it as a study tour, led by an academic scholar. One may earn academic credit by joining a tour, presenting a piece of study and writing a concluding paper. Most BYU tour participants are rather orthodox, conservative members of the LDS church. Participants of BYU tours usually do not know each other before the tour. All they share in common is their faith. The group and its Mormon American director meet their Palestinian
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bus driver and Jewish Israeli tour guide at Ben-Gurion airport. While the division of responsibilities is negotiable, in general the tour guide provides the ‘secular’ information about the land and its inhabitants, while the director provides the religious, spiritual study and worship. The tour focuses on sacred sites, and lasts ten to fourteen days. The director and the guide use long bus stretches for teaching or interpreting the scenery. Other bus activities help in forming a group: hymn singing, praying, getting acquainted with each other—formally or informally, and various social activities. The participants observe their commandments on the voyage as they do at home: they refrain from drinking alcohol, coffee or tea, and they do not smoke. They wear their special undergarment and dress as prescribed by their dress code. The groups hold Testimony Meetings on various occasions; these play an important part in their spiritual experience. In such meetings, participants share their spiritual and religious feelings, their difficulties and challenges. They get emotional and often break out in tears, and conclude with personal testimony to Jesus as their Savior. Their strong faith, along with the group bonding and firm spiritual guidance, encouraged the group to undertake challenges during their pilgrimage (Guter 2000). Such challenges are manifested in their desire to visit sites in areas described as ‘unsafe’, such as BeitEl, Hebron or Shiloh, as well as their customary habit to roam around the Old City of Jerusalem late at night. 3. The Guided Tour Mormon pilgrims, like most other pilgrims to the Holy Land, visit the Holy Land as part of a guided tour. The tour group becomes part of the pilgrimage experience. Schmidt enumerates the advantages of the guided tour (Schmidt 1979). The guided tour spares its participants the tension of making decisions of where to go and what to do. The guide is a cultural broker, shielding the group from the native surroundings by choosing carefully what to point out. The group leader contributes to the social dynamics within the group. These factors contribute to group integration in the limited time and space of the tour: the environmental bubble (MacCannell 1976). Gorman described the social integration during the guided tour:
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conflicts leading to social dynamics, interactions within the group rather than outside it, shared experiences, and the creation of a group culture along with inevitable conflicts among the group members (Gorman 1979). While previous writers have demonstrated how the environmental bubble of the guided tour constructs and intensifies group experience, most of their research has focused on pleasure-seeking sightseers. In the case of Mormon pilgrims, spiritual values are an important factor of in-group dynamics. This study wishes to explore the elements that determine the extent of conflict or harmony of such groups. 4. Constructing Communality A group of BYU pilgrims is walking down the paths of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem. Wearing their nametags on their blue jackets, they all look much alike. Rich or poor, well-educated or ignorant, righteous or sinful—they all walk at the same pace, sing hymns together, address each other as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ and share their spiritual, intimate witness. All that illustrates the external equality of the group: the common look, the common behavior and the family feeling. The director and the guide have tiny microphones and transmitters, which enable them to speak quietly, directly into the ears of their listeners. They all hear the same narratives and interpretations. All participants have an equal chance to hear the director and the guide. Moreover, the participants are secluded from the rest of the world. That way, the information and interpretations they get are controlled. Solidarity towards the in-group and indifference towards those outside are two sides of the same coin. Dalia, an Israeli guide, describes the situation: The participants don’t come from the same neighborhood. It makes it easier for them to start anew . . . They can introduce themselves any way they want to. The others are not aware of their social status, family background, their successes or failures. (Dalia 2002)
The participants enjoy the opportunity for anonymous acquaintance. They choose when and how to reveal parts of their life, depending on the nature of the group and the dynamics of the tour. Haws Marble, who is in charge of BYU travel study to the Holy
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Land, suggests that Mormon groups have better chances to develop stronger group ties and intimacy in the first place: I think we have less social structure in our LDS society than most other groups. By both our theology and our US citizenship, we see everyone as equal. As a lot of us have missionary experiences in various lands and among various socio-economic levels, we try to feel comfortable with all. Thus on the bus it is easy for a group to bond and feel comfortable with everyone else . . . (Marble 2002)
The Mormon Church is missionary by nature. Towards the time for serving their mission (boys at 18, girls at 19), Mormons receive a Mission call home. They may not choose where to go. The church may send them to China, Hungary, the Netherlands or elsewhere. While serving on their mission, they share strict equal conditions. Their chances to call or e-mail home are determined and limited. They are dress alike, receive the same amount of expense money and enjoy the same standard of living. The Mission serves as a significant rite of passage and it has a major effect on their life and status. The feelings of equality and sharing are no mystery to them anymore. Many of the participants of the BYU tours have served on a mission; furthermore, they retell their mission experience to their family and friends. The mission experience serves a paradigm for thir ideal future behavior. Moreover, their community choruses bring them closely together. They are called by the Church to serve in various ways, with no earthly pay or overtime restrictions (Dunn 1996). Any member may be called to serve at any position, regardless of their social status. They are taught to respect church authority. Equality is also expressed through Temple Service. Michael Torrie, a young participant, comments: Mormon beliefs promote this ‘flat’ social structure and many aspects of LDS life manifested it. During temple worship, for example: wealthy or poor, all wear the same white clothing. There is no distinction. The word used to describe this flat (somewhat idealist) social condition in LDS theology is ‘Zion’ . . . (M. Torrie 2002)
In Temple, all wear similar clothes: White, simple cotton or linen ware. All share the same status. All are children of God . . . This is refined through the concept of Zion. Zion is the ideal state of the Mormon community, where all are equal. Another materialization of that ideal is a form of cohabitation, practiced by some Mormon
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communities, defined as ‘the united order’ (Israelsen 1992). This lifestyle is also named ‘the order of Enoch’ (Eames 1992). The united order is an ideal collective life, similar to the utopian lifestyle that, according to the Mormon philosophy, prevails in heaven. It is a form of community, where all are equal, all share the community wealth, with no private property.1 It is clear to see how desirable the situation of a leveled society is. In real life, it is not so, but on various occasions the ideal is manifested, in a symbolic way. The more the Mormons participate in non-Mormon, capitalistic society, the greater the longing for the idealistic state of ‘Zion’. This idealistic state is systematically interwoven into their life. It catalyzes the creation of such a state on pilgrimage, and provides spiritual legitimacy for the camaraderie that often occurs inside the environmental bubble (of the guided tour). Where better to create ‘Zion’ if not in Zion? 5. Fissures in Group Solidarity In Mormon culture, study is important. As the participants are on a study tour, all are ‘students’, eager to learn about the unknown landscape they explore together. This can result in fissuring group solidarity. Dr. Frank Bradshaw, 74 years old, and with much experience as a tour director, refers to the educational aspect of the tour as a cementing factor: . . . That unity is even greater when we travel in Israel because we all want to get the most out of the experience. We generally have study assignments of the area and of the scriptures . . . Members of the group do make presentations not to impress the group but to edify them (Bradshaw 2002).
Nevertheless, not all come with the same knowledge. For some, it is not their first visit to the land. They gain a higher status almost immediately. Dr. Blair VanDyke expresses his discomfort: Those who visited Israel previously sometimes act ‘in the know’ and treat others as ‘rookies’ in the land . . . On the second, third or fourth
1 In the past, Mormons who lived in such communities practiced plural marriage (polygamy) as well, as part of their tradition and heritage. As a result, the US government forbade both plural marriage and cohabitation.
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trip to Israel, one is more comfortable with the lay of the land, the money system, and the people . . . This often creates a ‘tourist gap’ between themselves and the other participants (VanDyke 2002).
Others come with an impressive knowledge due to preparation work, done at home, before the tour. Eugene Peterson describes how he felt about it, as a participant: Educationally, there were many pilgrims who prepared for the tour by research and study . . . Their understanding of the historic significance, socio-economic and religious contexts of each site visited put them in an enviable class. It divided the group to the learned and unlearned . . . I wish that I had been better prepared for this trip educationally. I felt like the dummy in the group as I sat and absorbed information. Certainly by the end of the trip, educational differences amongst the people were well known (Peterson 2002).
Obviously, there is a gap between those who prepared for the tour and those who did not. Although the gap may lead to differential status, the group provides an opportunity for the learned to share with the unlearned. Another distinguishing factor is money. Since most essential services are pre-paid, there is little use of money during the tour. Shopping breaks that rule. Dr. VanDyke expresses his wrath: When a member of the group spends $4000–$5000 on olive wood it becomes immediately evident who the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ are (VanDyke 2002).
It is hard to hide one’s wealth when shopping. This is learned from observations, as well as from guides’, participants’ and directors’ reports. However, what may unite people in spite of differences in wealth is the common quest: after a long day and before an early wake up the next morning, all pilgrims find themselves physically, economically and emotionally struggling in search for the most appropriate piece of olive wood, each one in accordance with his or her own means. What the Mormon pilgrims appreciate best is their spiritual heroes ( Joseph Smith, John Wayne, Brigham Young, etc.) carved in olive wood. Observing such scenes reflects that the great pressure pilgrims suffer from solicitant, professional, smooth merchants is very hard to resist and sucks the little energy left in their sore bones by the end of the day. Making their way back to the hotel at midnight, carrying their heavy shopping bags and light, empty wallets, pilgrims
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feel they have fulfilled a challenging, yet important part of their pilgrimage mission. The pilgrims treat their olive wood pieces as sacred relics at home: presented on special occasions, such as Christmas, and demonstrated on selected shelves, as a form of ‘Holy Land exhibit’. They serve as a proof of their common voyage and as a status symbol, declaring them to be devoted Holy Land Pilgrims (Gordon 1986). They all want to have such an item, to mark them as Mormons who have ‘been there’. 6. Analysis: Pilgrimage as a Rite of Passage and As the Precipitant of Communitas The data obtained from the observation of Mormon tours takes on new importance when viewed through frameworks provided by the anthropology of pilgrimage, particularly the work of Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner and Michael Sallnow. Arnold Van Gennep (Van Gennep 1960) defined the term ‘Rites of Passage’. Van Gennep referred to rites accompanying changes in one’s state, place, age or social position. A typical rite consists of three stages: 1. separation, i.e. detachment from one’s current cultural conditions and/or social state. 2. liminal phase when the subjects ritual characteristics are ambiguous. 3. reaggregation: the ritual subject is in his or her relatively stable, new state. Victor Turner adopted Van Gennep’s framework demonstrating how pilgrimage functions as a rite of passage (Turner 1969, 1974, 1978, Turner and Turner 1978). Turner describes how pilgrims pass through a liminal stage in which status differences and social hierarchies are effaced while they transit from their previous status before the tour to their new status after. Turner shows how such state of communitas leads to the passage to a new status, after the pilgrimage. The state of communitas in the case being studies leads to a new status. Holy Land Mormon pilgrimage functions as a rite of passage for its participants (Guter 1997). They leave their familiar home society and voyage to the unfamiliar, remote destination, where they share a liminal experience. They report that it was a ‘life changing’ experience for them. They arrive home with a stronger faith, stronger ties to the scriptures, to God and to other participants. Their status has changed. Their pilgrimage functions as a rite of passage.
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During the liminal passage, participants experience an existential oneness different than and outside existing socio-economical hierarchies. In this state, the participants share a ‘flat’, equal status, regardless of their former status at home. They go through a liminal stage, a threshold between their former state and their new one. At this point their pilgrim character is ambiguous. It is a miraculous ‘moment in and out of time . . . in and out the profane social structure’ (Turner 1969: 96–97) . . . ‘when the other becomes a brother’. Turner’s claims that communitas and anti-structure are universal characteristics of pilgrimage, have been criticized by Michael Sallnow on empirical grounds. Sallnow (Sallnow 1981, 1999, Eade and Sallnow 1999) demonstrated that pilgrimage is often marked by animosities and strong boundary-marking procedures between ethnic and geographical sub-groups of pilgrims that reflect the structure of their home society (Eade and Sallnow 1999). Therefore, insofar as communitas exists at the sacred place, it is a result of previously existing cultural homogeneity, rather than the ‘miraculous’ existential experience of the sacred place itself. The application of these theoretical concepts enables us to gain a clearer understanding of why such phenomena occur the way they do. 7. Conclusions In the course of their week-long journey, participants get to know each other better. This reveals differences as well as similarities. These differences can be considered as external and not relevant if the tour circumstances foster other values that are cherished and adored more. Colleen Torrie, a Canadian participant, comments: As we got to know the tour participants we realized that there really was a wide range of social statuses and economic backgrounds but they didn’t matter because of the spirit of the church and also because of our common desire to be in Israel . . . So other considerations truly became irrelevant (C. Torrie 2002).
Colleen sees the common faith and its values as the cement, which keeps the participants together during the tour and later in the future. Eugene summarizes his insights:
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yael guter In our trip to Israel, our group had many opportunities for interaction, where we got to know our neighbor. When that happened, our differences started to pop out. Even though there were many differences amongst the people, the trip, and the shared experiences, it all tended to bond us together as a group. We will never forget the beauty, friendliness and special experiences of Israel. It was for me a significant lifetime experience, one that I would like to do again, one that I will never forget (Peterson 2002).
Pilgrimage is a window of opportunity to experience communitas, a deep existential experience of the merging of natures and consciousnesses. The activities of the voyage—hymn singing, testimony meetings, bus activities and the open, informal spirit of the groupare not the ‘miraculous’ expressions of the communitas that must inevitably occur on pilgrimage. These activities can ‘work’ to make the voyage ‘a significant lifetime experience’ that it is for many, because the sense of communality is rooted in Mormon ideology. Although they come from various localities, Mormon pilgrims share a common religious ideology, which overcomes geographical differences. Furthermore, Mormon pilgrims share a unique ‘tool kit’, which enables them to make their Holy Land voyage a life-changing and unifying experience. As described earlier, Temple worship, Mormon mission and the ideal state of Zion are Mormon expressions of unity that transcends class and local community. Moreover, acting as a united existential community, in remote places ‘out there’, is a situation familiar to them from other life experiences. Mormon mission, Temple (as opposed to Church) worship and Zion are not part of Mormon daily life, nor do they necessarily reflect the socio-economic structures of the local community. Mormons serve on mission ‘out there’, and know well what it is to be united as Mormons in a foreign environment. The mission experience serves as one of the paradigms for Mormon faith and dedication, even for those who have not taken part. The pilgrimage destination further amplifies their paradigms of communality. At times, their visions of the ideological ‘Zion’ may color their experience of the earthly one. The Mormon pilgrims are all sojourners on the road ‘going up to Zion’. Thus, their religious values shape group consciousness prior to their arrival at the sacred place. Based on the empirical finds, I suggest that Mormon pilgrims follow the following route on their way to communitas:
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1. Pilgrims arrive with their previous cultural background from home. This cultural background includes experiences of communitas outside of their home communities as part of their common spiritual heritage. 2. Communitas starts to form, when the participants are not yet familiar with one another, and the ‘environmental bubble’ of the ‘center out there’ (Turner 1978) can work its effects. 3. As participants get to know each other and experience the voyage together, group spiritual and emotional interaction tightens group solidarity and oneness. Furthermore, the sites of the Holy Land and the spiritual values attributed to them recall and enhance previous communitas-generating experiences in the Mormon Church. 4. The display of wealth, especially through shopping, challenges group oneness and communitas. 5. If the group resists the divisive display of wealth successfully, it can maintain an intense, ‘miraculous’ form of communitas throughout the trip and beyond. The Mormon pilgrimage experience may help us analyze other types of pilgrimage as well: Turner showed how, while on pilgrimage, we see an inversion of the original society, with hierarchical social relations replaced by the existential equality of communitas (Turner 1969, 2974, 1978, Turner and Turner 1978). Sallnow disagreed, demonstrating how, in his case study, pilgrimage could reflect existing social fissures and exacerbate tensions (Sallnow 1981, 1999, Eade and Sallnow 1999). Turner and Sallnow devoted little attention to the presence or prominence of models of communality relating to places away from the day-to-day center within the particular religious faith and tradition of the pilgrims. This factor may determine whether, on a particular pilgrimage, groups and individuals will be hostile and competitive towards each other, or whether the communality of shared faith and worship will overcome such tendencies. A group with an ideal of communitas, even if attenuated in daily life, can rediscover and practice that ideal in an ‘environmental bubble’. I suggest that both shared cultural backgrounds as well as the experience at the pilgrimage site interact in the making of communitas. Shared religious ideals of communality, based on other occasions where church members experience communality (especially if they too are ‘out there’), make it easier for them to ‘throw the switch’ at
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the ‘center out there’. This may add new insight to the ongoing discussion between Turner and Sallnow, and refine the analysis of other pilgrimage experiences. LITERATURE Church Educational System, Church History in the Fullness of Times—The History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City 1989, 397–403. Dunn, E., ‘Money, Morality and Modes of Civil Society among American Mormons’, in: Chris Hamn and Elizabeth Dunn (eds), Civil Society—Challenging Western Models, London and New York 1996, 27–49. Eade, J. and M. Sallnow, ‘Introduction’, in: J. Eade and M. Sallnow (eds), Contesting the Sacred: the Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage, London and New York, 1999, 1–6. Eames, R.D., ‘Enoch’, in: Daniel H. Ludlow, (ed.), Encyclopedia of Mormonism, New York 1992, Vol. 2, 457–459. Gennep, A. van, The Rites of Passage, London 1960. Gordon, B., ‘The Souvenir: Messenger of the Extraordinary’, Journal of popular Culture, 20 (1986) 135–146. Gorman, B., ‘Seven Days, Five Countries—The Making of a Group’, Urban Life 7(4) (1979) 469–491. Guter, Y., ‘Challenges and Troubleshooting in Tourism to Israel, Palestine and the West Bank: Special Interests Tours to the Holy Land’, in: Ron French (ed.), Challenged Tourism, Girne 2000, 85–93. ———, Mormon Christian Pilgrimage to Israel—Pilgrims Experience, a dissertation for an MA, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan1997 (Hebrew). Hahn, C., ‘Loca Sancta Souvenirs: Sealing the Pilgrim’s Experience’, in: Robert Ousterhout (ed.), The Blessings of Pilgrimage, Urbana and Chicago 1990, 85–96. Israelsen, D.L., ‘United Orders’, in: Daniel H. Ludlow (ed.), Encyclopedia of Mormonism, New York 1992, Vol. 4, 1493–1495. MacCannell, D., The Tourist—A New Theory of the Leisure Class, New York 1976. Sallnow, M.J., ‘Communitas Reconsidered: The Sociology of Andean Pilgrimage’, MAN 16 (1981) 164–182. Sallnow, M., ‘Pilgrimage and Cultural Fracture in the Andes’, in John Eade and Michael Sallnow, (eds), Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage, London and New York, 1999, 137–153. Schmidt, C., ‘The Guided Tour: Insulated Adventure’, Urban Life 7(4) (1979) 441–467. Turner, V., The Ritual Process, London 1969. ———, Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society, London 1974. ———, ‘The Center Out There: Pilgrim’s Goal’, History of Religions, 12 (1978) 191–230. Turner, E. and V. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture—Anthropological Perspectives, Oxford 1978, New York 1995.
THE HOLY PEOPLE AMONG THE PHILOSOPHERS—A GRIM TALE Victor Kal University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands 1. Enlightened Europe: The Philosophical Scheme and the Jewish Reality In his learned tract Der Streit der Fakultäten (1798), Kant called for ‘the euthanasia of Judaism’. Kant’s intentions were not quite so bad. It reads ‘euthanasia of Judaism’, and not ‘euthanasia of the Jew’. In Kant’s perspective, the one could not be substituted for the other. In his view, the Jewish citizen, like everyone else, had a right to be respected and protected. Nevertheless, on one important point, Kant did not disagree with those who would have liked to apply the intended euthanasia, in the brutal sense, to the Jewish people. After all, according to Kant too, the Jewish people would eventually, if all went well, no longer be there. In the philosophical vision of a united humanity, there would no longer be any room for this people. It is only on the means by which this goal was to be achieved that Kant disagreed with the brutal murderer. The end aimed at was the same. The friendly euthanasia of Judaism propagated by Kant, like the barbaric euthanasia practised by Nazism, was a form of euthanasia. The relation between the philosophical scheme and the Jewish reality, i.e. the Jewish people, is not an innocent one. If ‘philosophy’ can be viewed as the art of capturing reality, or some part of it, within a universally valid scheme, then the philosopher becomes annoyed when a particular reality, for its part, appears not to obey the systematic order that he has so carefully set up. In that case, the bit of reality in question puts philosophy to shame, and does so merely by not disappearing from the scene as a reality. From that moment onwards, it is make or break. Either some other part of reality comes to the aid of philosophy in order yet to realize the intended course of history, but now with the might of reality itself; or philosophy finds itself with no alternative but to be corrected by a reality the force of which appears able to resist the power of philosophy. Possibly, the reality in question would do well to reject the
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philosophy by which it is threatened in time, and to unmask publicly the pretence of insight on the part of the philosopher as an illusion and a lie. It is, after all, not unthinkable that a philosophy may have a grim purport and really be life threatening. In the case of Kant, the conflict between the philosophical scheme and the Jewish reality also came to expression in a difference of opinion between him and Mendelssohn. Kant was of the opinion that Mendelssohn should preferably leave his Judaism behind him. For his part, however, Mendelssohn was not prepared to do so. Mendelssohn remained true to his Judaism. He was of the view that, within the universal, common humanity of the philosophical, there could also be room for the Jewish people. ‘Tolerance’ was his motto. This Jewishness indeed seems extremely particularistic and exclusive from the outside, explained Mendelssohn, but in essence it nevertheless corresponds fully to the universal ideal of an enlightened humanity. Kant, in turn, was unimpressed by Mendelssohn’s view. As he saw it, there would be no place for a Jewish ‘apartheid’ in the enlightened Europe of the future. Mendelssohn’s position was exceedingly vulnerable. If it were indeed true that Jewishness sat so well with the enlightened ideals, with nothing essential being either detracted from or added to them by the external appearance of that Jewishness, then it was no longer clear why the Jew could not or would not be assimilated into the new, enlightened world that was coming into existence. Spinoza had already arrived at this conclusion. Hence the important role played by his attempts to relativize the notion of the ‘election’ of the Jews in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670). In Mendelssohn, concepts like ‘election’ and ‘holy people’ likewise lost their centrality. Henceforth, the extension of these terms would encompass the whole human race. Yet the claim that the success of the project of holiness, implied by the concepts ‘election’ and ‘holy people’, in principle encompasses the whole human race, was precisely what made it impossible to continue to use these concepts. Accordingly, they were superseded, in Kant, by a new concept, which sounds very different: ‘world history’ was the name of this new perspective. Kant went further where Spinoza had left off. In the Tractatus, Spinoza had pointed sharply and cruelly to the hopeless position of the Jew. On one side, the Jews had lost their own state. They were now part of a European, Christian, universally thinking world. On the other side, despite everything, they persisted obstinately in a
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specifically Jewish way of life. In that same Europe, this could evoke nothing but hatred and isolation. It was precisely modern, enlightened Europe that would exhibit anti-semitism, as those with sufficient insight could learn from Spinoza. Nevertheless, Spinoza blamed this on the Jew, rather than on Europe. The philosophical scheme obtained universally, and had no patience with the Jewish reality. The tolerance for which Spinoza pleaded, applied only to thought, i.e. to philosophy. As a practical and visible dissident, the Jew was not granted any space. There was no question, at the time, of a so-called ‘permissive society’; according to Spinoza, conformity to the universal norm was required of everybody. This state of affairs forces one to draw a bitter conclusion: if the friendly euthanasia of Judaism ever turned unexpectedly into the barbaric euthanasia of the Jewish people, then the philosopher’s motive for resisting this would, it seems, be very feeble. After all, the aim of the operation would not really upset him. There is, however, a twofold escape from this conclusion, one of which was already mentioned by Spinoza (see below, par. 4). But, first, the need to find this escape route was made even more urgent, and that in a way that we could not learn from Kant. 2. Being Holy: Judaism Defeated on Jewish Ground In the Bible, we read: “Be holy, for I am holy”. This call is directed at the people as a whole as well as to every individual as a representative of this people. Thus the institutions and legal ordinances of the people come first; then follows the heart of the individual. Right from the start, however, it was known that the holiness of a collectively performed rite was meaningless unless the individual heart, in its moral life, did not answer to it with the same degree of holiness. The principle that the ‘circumcision of the flesh’ and the ‘circumcision of the heart’ belong together is not foreign to philosophers. They too have traditionally believed that people are good when they belong to a good society, and that a society is good when it is borne by good people. Yet, as philosophers, they were not bound to a collectivity the constitution of which had its centre of gravity in a religious cult in such a way that this cult encompassed the entire life practice of the individual. When confronted with such a collectivity, philosophers rather tended to lay emphasis on the individual. This tendency continued in the context of Christianity: the orientation
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towards deep inwardness and the possible holiness of the individual heart ultimately brought the individual into a critical, and quite often dismissive, relation to organized religion. In the case of Christianity, the cult only served to strengthen this possibility; here, the collectivity appeared to be digging its own grave. The prototype of the intended holy individual, who was at the same time at the centre of the cult, was, after all, the Christ of the Christians—from Spinoza (!) to Nietzsche, he was the great revolutionary. Thus, in philosophy, the holiness of the Holy People was by no means rejected; it was appropriated. In this appropriation, the intended holiness was, however, universalized (in principle, all peoples participate in it) and decentralized (it is first of all as individuals that people participate in it). Yet as soon as one takes one’s point of departure in a potentially holy individual, the existence of a particularly holy people becomes an anachronism. Henceforth, every exclusive claim to holiness could be rejected, and this could be done with reference to true holiness, which represents the all-encompassing moral imperative for each human individual. It would seem that, at this point, the Jewish people had been so successful that they had thereby rendered themselves superfluous. The philosophical tradition has formulated this somewhat differently: thanks to the Christ of the Christians, all humanity acquired a connection with the inwardness of the heart; but, for the sake of this, it was necessary that Christ freed himself from a Judaism that had arrived at the dead end of a purely external, and frankly sterile, cult. This view is encountered, in one form or another, in a wide range of thinkers: Spinoza, Kant and Hegel; but also Nietzsche, Buber, Bergson, Levinas, and Derrida. Meanwhile, the philosophical tradition remained true to itself. It thought it could let Christianity play a limited, serving role within its own philosophical and secular project. Since the second half of the 20th century, philosophers have preferred not to mention Christianity at all in this connection. What has just been sketched can also be pictured in spatial terms. The Jews have their holy place in the House that they have built themselves in accordance with the command given to Moses (and they do not cease to refer to this sanctuary now that it has been destroyed). The philosophers, by contrast, maintain and honour such a sanctuary in the form of a heart defined as pure ‘inwardness’. What was not entirely clear was whether this heart also needs to be built. It would seem as if its interior by itself already left nothing more
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to be desired, and as such already represented the absolute accessibility for what God wants from humanity. A certain exaltation therefore descended upon philosophy. The great, world-encompassing, holy (!) space was now no longer sought in the particular cult by which a very special people had, paradoxically, felt themselves defined as the truly universal people. On the contrary, the larger space was henceforth sought in the individual heart. This meant that ‘holiness’ had now come within reach of the entire human race. The aversion to those who lived cultically, and to their exclusive claims, was thus felt all the more strongly. There was contempt for the ‘externality’ of their cult, and a sense of having superseded their claims in sovereign inwardness. The dynamics of the heart possessed by holiness was all encompassing. By virtue of the connection with this heart, the great desiderata to which the Holy People had equally looked forward had now, for the first time, truly come within human reach: the unity of all humanity, a universal kingdom of justice and peace, and liberation from materialism, narrow-mindedness and oppression. All these lofty things were still expected to issue from the holy place. Yet, with the sanctuary now situated inwardly, this sanctuary had been universalized and decentralized, as said earlier. This only served to increase the glory and power emanating from it. Kant had a sense that world history was only now properly beginning. As encompassing as was the accelerating history of the human race, so little room would it, nevertheless, eventually leave for a people who, as a Holy People, kept itself at a distance from these great events. Would it not, in this situation, be advisable for such a people to search for a possibility of escape from a world history that appears to reduce every peoplehood to folklore, and to depart from this modern empire, possessed as it is by a secular and therefore boundless drive towards holiness? 3. A Sense of Election: From the Individual Back to the People The idea of a universal humanity enables individuals to emancipate themselves from subjection to any and every particular tradition or community. In Europe, the universal principles that support this emancipation also applied to the Jew. The modern, liberal state was indeed no longer necessarily a Christian state. Mendelssohn was already
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very conscious of this new state of affairs. As welcome as the new principles were to the self-emancipating citizen, so indifferent were they, initially, to the peoples of Europe. Accordingly, some Jews resolutely declined the Emancipation. They realized that the subordination of the Jew to the modern state also demanded the loyalty of the Jew to that state. In their eyes, this meant that they had to make their peace with a quite novel and exceedingly dangerous relativising of their own peoplehood. After all, in the context of the ‘universal’ state, a Holy People appeared either as a curiosum, or as a corpus alienum—Spinoza used the former term, Kant the latter. It seemed that Judaism—and thus also the Jewish people—would have to disappear from the public space of Europe. In principle, what applied to the Jewish people applied no less to the Christianity that had its abode in Europe. The specifically Christian, church-bound state now indeed also came slowly but surely to an end. Due to its universal claims and excessive detachment (here, territory and descent were not decisive), this Christianity had in any case not succeeded in becoming well and truly a Christian people. Paradoxically, the Christian nations in Europe only came into being at the moment that a more or less secular state appeared on the scene. After all, the citizens of Europe were now, unexpectedly, also expressing their emancipation collectively. They now exerted themselves for the advent of a national state. This state was both particular and universal at the same time, that is to say, it was by following its own particular calling that a nation brought its universal mission to expression. Henceforth, the particular historical heritage was no longer experienced as limiting at all—on the contrary. To be sure, the heritage had a Christian texture, but other elements could also come into play, and even become dominant. The secular, open character of the new state had the consequence hat anything was possible. As a result, the nation state came to be unpredictably divided between its particular, more or less romantic dreams on the one hand, and its commitment to universal, generally acceptable principles on the other. It was precisely by being the state for this people that this state was meant eventually to become a state for all peoples—a grand project, a risky affair, and the beginning of a series of catastrophes. The nation state is a secular state. In this respect, this state differs fundamentally from the old Jewish state as sketched by Spinoza, which had been a theocracy. Apart from this difference, the resemblance between the nations of Europe and the Jewish people reached
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its zenith in the nation state. This is already evident from the formulation used above: it was precisely by being the state for this people that this state could eventually become a state for all peoples. Rosenzweig had good reason to speak, in his Stern der Erlösung (1921), of the ‘thoughts of election’ that had come to life in the nations of Europe. The holiness of the Holy People was, thereby, not only multiplied (a series of nations regarded themselves as elected), but also secularised. The result was immediately apparent: the secularisedchristian nation no longer had any reason to withdraw upon itself or into its own cultic life, as the Holy People did. On the contrary, it would set out into the world in order to demonstrate actively and, if need be, violently, its own universality. The combination of, on the one hand, the strong resemblance of the Holy People to the secularised-christian nations of Europe, and, on the other, that one, so decisive difference between a life regulated by a religious law and one that is secularized—this combination was what really made the position of the Holy People in Europe an awkward one. Where a people emancipated themselves by giving shape to their national calling from within their own territory, it became difficult for another people to continue to manifest themselves as a people in the same place. Peoplehood in an exclusively religious sense no longer made any sense to the modern citizen. The situation became even more difficult than it had been: where there used to be no place for the Jewish people in the humanity of the future (Kant, Marx), there was now no longer a place for the Jewish people in the non-Jewish notions of election that were already being expressed in the present. There was an additional factor: where, in the Christian consciousness, the Jews had still been a well localized and objective—albeit illegitimate—brute fact, they were now transformed, in the new national, more or less romantic and always troubled consciousness, into ‘alien intruders’, and thereby into the malicious spectre that had come to spoil the nation’s—in principle so exceptionally illustrious and successful—project; in the most extreme case, even the title ‘human’ was no longer regarded fitting for them. 4. The Holy People in a Tight Corner: Four Possibilities Given the state of affairs sketched above, the Jewish People had four (!) remaining options: (1) to disappear from the public domain
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as a people by becoming fully assimilated into the new nation—the option of Spinoza, and of Napoleon; (2) the opposite movement: to assimilate the (German) nation into their own ( Jewish) peoplehood— the imperial option of Cohen in Germany; (3) to depart from the territory that had become so dangerous and, as a secularized people, to form, in their turn, a modern—in this case secularized-Jewish— nation elsewhere—the option of Buber; (4) as a Holy People, to act as if there is nothing new under the sun and, whether in Europe or in a secularized-Jewish state, to hold their own as an annoying anachronism—the option of Rosenzweig. Both the first and the third option sat well with modern philosophy. In both cases, it was a question of assimilation and normalization. In the first case, the Jewish people let themselves be reduced to folklore. In the second case (i.e. the third option above) the Jewish people acquired their own nation state, like the other peoples of Europe, albeit in a distant territory. In this state, there could be no question of a Holy People, except in the tourist sense, but this did not detract from the fact that, here too, secular notions of election could now emerge for the first time. In this as in other respects, the new Jewish state could not avoid a strong resemblance with the secularized-Christian state. The main outlines of this third, and also the first, option can already be discerned in Spinoza. One difficulty, in this connection, was that the modern state remained committed to both options simultaneously, i.e. both to the universally human and to the particularly national. Here, the former appeared to represent especially the future, and the latter the heritage of the past—a somewhat uneasy perspective for the Jewish state to adopt. The balance between the two points of view was a function of a range of factors, and, for the time being, had to be redefined continually. Whenever the universal point of view was stressed, and the national toned down, the Jewish state came under pressure anyway. For the sake of the safety of her Jewish population, and due to an unusually strong loyalty to inherited, specifically Jewish regulations, this state could not, after all, agree too easily to an excessive moderation of its own, strongly national identity. Yet, this time around, philosophers could stand in the breach for the Jewish state by pointing to the fact that the transitional position in which this state, in their view (!), found itself, did not differ in principle from that of any randomly selected European state.
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The second option mentioned above—that of Cohen—became a tragic curiosum in the history of thought. Precisely that nation in which Cohen had placed all his trust soon after turned out to have been unworthy of that trust. The catastrophe has not prevented later thinkers (Levinas, Derrida) from once again suggesting that humanity is already prepared to be assimilated into the Jewish project of ‘holiness’, and they too are willing, in this connection, to let the title ‘Holy People’ merge with a universal ‘Jewishness’ of some kind. Finally, the fourth option—that of Rosenzweig —has not been properly grasped by philosophy at all. Yet it is especially with reference to this option that the nature of the contemporary relation between philosophy and the Holy People can be illuminated. 5. Rosenzweig: The ‘Comeback’ of the Holy People Rosenzweig’s starting point was not so different from that of Spinoza, Kant and Hegel: modern Europe constitutes a secularised-christian project with a universal intent. Within this project, we have seen, certain nations took the lead. In this connection, Rosenzweig referred, among other things, to the French Revolution. Here, a unique people (the French nation) became the bearers of certain universal ideas (liberty, equality and fraternity). They regarded themselves as ‘chosen’ to spread these ideas throughout the world. Thus the Revolution was, unavoidably, linked to War. Yet Rosenzweig did not denounce this rather grim course of events. In his view, the projects of modern Europe, driven by a holy fire, served the dissemination of the eternal, unquestionably tenable values on which true religion turns. The fact that, in this process, one regime always has to make room for another did not detract from this in any way. On the contrary, it was only proper that the beams of the fire burning in the heart of secularised Christianity should involve the world in the grand project in ever new directions. Yet this secularized-Christian project did create a problem. According to Rosenzweig, this problem did not lie in the expansive, missionary and imperialistic manner in which the events unfolded. It was rather the opposite; Rosenzweig feared a premature consolidation. Illusion always lurked, so that a people would be tempted to think that the intended goal was already within reach. Further expansion
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would then no longer be necessary. In this way, a part of the world would miss out on the anticipation of something noble. This evil could not, however, be conquered by the secularized-Christian nations themselves. They let themselves be absorbed, always only as long as it lasted, by the holy urge to let the world share in their fire. Filled with that fire, and to some extent intoxicated by the realisation of its boundless power, they were not sufficiently aware that the whole thing was, above all, a wondrous affair—i.e. an affair that does not easily let itself be steered towards a good end by human hands. It is in this context that Rosenzweig let the Jewish people make a comeback. Whereas secularized Christians had to prove their idea of authentic life by showing that they could unify the whole world in its name, the Jews were relieved of this. The Jews, said Rosenzweig, already lived an eternal life. They did so by establishing that eternity themselves, simply by living a specifically Jewish life dictated by God himself. The non-secularized, purely liturgical character of a life that is Jewish in a specific and exclusive sense guarantees the intensity that always comes to be compromized again and again in the extensive, secularized projects of the modern world. As such, the Jewish people always stand apart as a holy people, and, simply by existing and not giving up their cultic life, break through the complacency and triumphalism to which the peoples of the world succumb. After all, the unity of the world is not yet realized as long as a single people are not included in that unity. Thus, in Rosenzweig, the Jewish people made a comeback on the world stage in function of a modern, secularized-Christian problem. Precisely as an a-historical people, they were not to be done without in an era when every nation would have wanted to be the motor of world history. In this era, they were the spoilsports, and their function was to irritate. In this way, they made sure that the modern nations did not lose themselves in their extensive manoeuvres, and that the intensity on which it all turned would be renewed. Neither assimilation to the universal ideals of the modern world, nor normalization as a people with their own state in their own territory was desirable for this people. Consequently, according to the scheme of the Stern der Erlösung, the Zionist project should also be viewed as a secularized-Christian project—inside the ‘Jewish’ state that arose within that framework, the Jews, as Rosenzweig saw them, could, again, only constitute an irritant factor. After all, in the nonsecularized life in which the specifically Jewish identity of this Jew con-
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sisted, he never envisaged a fusion of the domain of the holy with that of the profane, or of the domain of the specifically religious with that of the moral or political. Without intending it, (the later) Leibowitz was perhaps Rosenzweig’s best pupil on this point. With his defense of a Judaism that was, in a particular respect, hyper-traditional, Rosenzweig distinguished himself both from his Jewish teacher (Cohen) and from his Jewish companion (Buber), and at least as much from his most famous philosophical admirer (Levinas). His views are somewhat related to those of Leo Strauss; he too was convinced that there was no neat and conclusive solution for the ‘Jewish problem’ in question. The difference between Rosenzweig and all those mentioned here is that Rosenzweig saw the permanently dormant conflict between a Holy People and the over-ambitious nations of the world as something meaningful and fruitful. 6. Conclusion Rosenzweig is unique among the philosophers; he is the only one who has built a philosophical model such that the Jewish people and the peoples of the world both retained their specific roles on the world stage. In this design, the one role forms the complement of the other; only the whole can lead to the intended goal. In Rosenzweig’s view, ‘universality’, that great desideratum of the entire philosophical tradition, presupposes, on one side, that the fire of holiness, in its wondrous intensity, should be kept in view, and on the other, that the beams of that fire should reach into the most distant corners of the world. The former was to be the task of a Holy People, the latter the work of ever new peoples somewhere in the world. Rosenzweig assumed, justifiably, that the idea of a Holy People would only be accepted by the philosopher under certain preconditions: (1) that very Holy People should guarantee the universality and the unity with which the philosopher is concerned; (2) as bearers of the philosophical tradition and of a secularized culture, the peoples of the world can, always again, only be reminded by an outsider of the allencompassing, absolute, holy and lastingly wondrous character of what they envisage in their grand projects. The design with which Rosenzweig enriched the philosophical tradition places the contemporary philosopher before grave difficulties. A smaller problem is perhaps the anti-semitic reaction it evokes. In
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the Stern der Erlösung, Rosenzweig already anticipated this with much emphasis. A second difficulty is the secular character of a major part of contemporary thought. To this extent, it is no simple matter at all to make clear the meaningfulness and relevance of the theme. Yet the greatest difficulty is of a quite different kind. Suppose that someone had gained insight, with the help of the Stern der Erlösung, regarding the two great roles Rosenzweig recognized on the world stage. Why, in that case, would the person in question be willing to remain locked up within the limited viewpoint of only one of these roles?! We may wonder, moreover, whether such a closing and such one-sidedness was indeed so characteristic of the Jewish tradition in a period when it had not yet been faced with the modern, secularizedChristian world. LITERATURE Kant, Immanuel, The Conflict of Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten), in: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, P. Guyer and A.W. Wood (Eds.), Cambridge 1996. Mendelssohn, Moses, Jerusalem, or, On Religious Power and Judaism ( Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum), Hanover 1983. Rosenzweig, Franz, The Star of Redemption (Der Stern der Erlösung), New York 1971. Spinoza, Benedictus de, Theological-Political Treatise (Tractatus theologico-politicus), New York 1951.
ON THE HOLINESS OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL IN THE THOUGHT OF ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL Alexander Even-Chen Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Israel The Jewish philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) states that not only the people of Israel is holy. No particular religion has a monopoly on holiness: Holiness is not the monopoly of any particular religion or tradition. Wherever a deed is done in accord with the will of God, wherever a thought of man is directed toward Him, there is the holy. (Heschel 1966, 247)
These words are rooted in a theology which considers man, any man, to be holy: Many things on earth are precious, some holy, humanity is holy of holies. (Heschel 1966, 238)
The term ‘holy of holies’ is used to denote the most sacred place in the temple in Jerusalem. Heschel uses it to refer to humanity in its entirety. The immense importance Heschel accords to man is expressed in a Yiddish poetry book he published in his youth, titled: ‘Mankind: God’s Innefable Name?’ (Heschel 1933). The book’s title refers to the special bond between God and Man. God’s special holy and secret name is paramount to Mankind. I believe that Heschel hints that the nature of Divinity may be revealed when we discover the true nature of Man. Further on we shall see that Heschel talks of a concurrent revelation, of both God and Man. This humanistic attitude gives rise to many questions. In Jewish tradition we find theories which emphasize the uniqueness of the People of Israel vis-à-vis other nations. In contrast, Heschel believes that any religion may lead its believers to the attainment of holiness. There may be substantial differences of opinion as to how holiness may be attained, and in this paper we shall attempt to examine the theology which leads Heschel to strive for inter-religious discourse, based on the premise that despite our differences we have much in common.
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We shall also try and examine the basis for the uniqueness of the Jewish people in Heschel’s mind, and why he believes that it should continue to adhere to the Jewish faith, despite his claim that Christianity is also ‘holy’. The topic of the holiness of the People of Israel is repeatedly addressed in all of Heschel’s writings. In the last chapter of his book God in Search of Man Heschel addresses the issue of the holiness of the People of Israel. This is the main book in Heschel’s theological work, and it is therefore not surprising that Heschel has chosen to express his view of the people of Israel and its special standing towards this end. An examination of the book’s structure would be useful in understanding Heschel’s intent. The book is composed of three parts: God, Revelation and Response. This triple structure mirrors the ideal bond between God and Man. In the following pages we shall examine what brought Heschel to deal with the holiness of the people of Israel within the context of human response. In doing so we shall describe the status of the people of Israel in Heschel’s thought, as expressed in God in Search of Man as well as in his other writings. The Voice of God and the Voice of Man We commence with the epistemological basis of Heschel’s theology. Heschel claims: The encounter with reality does not take place on the level of concepts through the channels of logical categories; concepts are second thoughts. All conceptualization is symbolization, an act of accomodation of reality to the human mind. The living encounter with reality takes places on a level that precedes conceptualization, on a level that is responsive, immediate, preconceptual, and presymbolic. (Heschel 1955, 115)
We note that Heschel distinguishes the experience of direct contact with reality from its ‘translation’ through conceptualisation. It is especially interesting that both intellectual conceptualisation and religious symbolism are considered attempts made by humans to accommodate ‘reality’ to the human mind. It is therefore apparent that mystic symbolism does not in itself represent divine reality, but rather the ‘processing’ of man’s encounter with God. According to Heschel, this is
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also true of the religious experience. Every religion should set as its goal to retain the flame of direct contact between Man and God: Philosophy of religion must be an effort to recall and to keep alive the meta-symbolic relevance of religious terms. Religious thinking is in perpetual danger of giving primacy to concepts and dogmas and to forfeit the immediacy of insights (. . .) Concepts, words must not become screens; they must be regarded as windows. (Heschel 1955, 116)
Heschel criticized all religious attempts to ‘sanctify’ concepts, words or symbols. This holds true for Judaism as well. Drawing the distinction between ‘screens’ and ‘windows’, Heschel exposes two different ways of observation. Observing through a ‘screen’ is not paramount to direct contemplation, but rather absorption of ‘primary’ data through the categories set by the screen. These categories predetermine what we shall retain and what data we should forego. The categories therefore select and order the data. We should not be surprised that Heschel’s remarks are reminiscent of Kantian epistemology. However, unlike Kant, Heschel believes that direct encounters with reality are possible. While Kant assumes that man cannot achieve direct cognition of reality, because of the ‘limits of reason’, and is therefore limited to what can be discerned through the human senses (Kant 1993, 47), Heschel believes that concepts and symbols may be construed as ‘windows’. Man may open a ‘window’ and gaze directly at the divine reality. Heschel does not limit this conceptualization to Judaism, but sees it as a basis for what he terms ‘Depth Theology’. The purpose of this theology is: To apprehend the depth of religious faith we will try to ascertain not so much what the person is able to express as that which he is unable to express, the insights that no language can declare. (Heschel 1955, 7)
Judaism is therefore one of the many ‘translations’ of the direct encounter between Man and God. Yosef Dan claims that the mystical phenomenon is an oxymoron, because it expresses that which it claims to be inexpressible in human language (Dan 1988, 64). The mystics, and Heschel among them, resort to human language to express their mystical experiences. Dan adds that one of the principle characteristics of of the mystics is their negative attitude toward the knowledge achieved through the senses or through the intellect. We see that Heschel regards mystical symbolism as one of the means used by Man in his attempt to ‘accommodate’ divine reality, revealed
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through deep and direct religious experience, to categories of human thought. These symbols may however serve as ‘windows’ which would allow for direct contact with divine reality. It is no coincidence that Heschel was very active in interfaith discourse. His concept of Depth Theology allowed him to regard different monotheistic religions as partners in the quest for understanding of infinite divine will. Heschel was, however, committed to the theological ‘translation’ specific to his own people. Each monotheistic religion enjoys a specific point of view: We may disagree about the ways of achieving fear and trembling, but the fear and trembling are the same. (Heschel 1966, 240)
Heschel choice of wording, ‘Fear and Trembling’, is telling. He chose to make use of the concepts used by the existentialist Soren Kierkegaard in one of his major works. In his book, Kierkegaard describes the religious experience undergone by Abraham in the binding of Isaac. Abraham could only achieve the religious experience of standing before God after completely debunking all moral and social values. Kierkegaard believes that only then could Abraham face the absolute God as an ‘absolute’. (Kierkegaard 1954, 69–74). In this, Kierkegaard attempted to free the individual from Hegel’s dictatorial philosophy, which considers man as no more than as a small cog in the wheel of the Absolute. In making use of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling terminology, Heschel indicates that the individual’s religious experience knows no spiritual nor national fronts. As Heschel puts it, the way of achieving the deep religious experience of Fear and Trembling may be different, but the experience remains the same. We may assert that if religious experience is the essence of belief, and it is also equivalent in all religions, we should be bound to unite and to erase the divisions between faiths. Heschel maintains that the pluralism of ways and beliefs in our world is rooted in Divine Will: Does not the task of preparing the Kingdom of God require a diversity of talents, a variety of rituals, soul searching as well as opposition? Perhaps it is the will of God that in this eon there should be diversity in our forms of devotion and commitment to Him. In this eon diversity is the will of God. (Heschel 1966, 244)
Heschel strongly criticizes both Jews and Christians who maintain that their beliefs are exclusive manifestations of the divine Will. Furthermore, he asserts that:
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Religion is a means, not an end. It becomes idolatrous when regarded as an end in itself. (Heschel 1966, 243)
Despite the commitment of the Jew to Judaism and of the Christian to Christianity, both have to remember that: Over and above all being stands the Creator and Lord of history, He who transcends all. To equate religion and God is Idolatry. (Heschel 1966, 243)
These words are spoken to Jews and Christians alike. They are directed at all those who do not distinguish between the ways in which faith is manifested and God Himself. The ‘ways’ are but human reflections, they are not God Himself. Heschel is aware that his words may damage the standing of religions, and therefore adds: One truth comes to expression in many ways of understanding. (Heschel 1966, 244)
As for the relations between Judaism and Christianity, he says: Both communication and separation are necessary. We must preserve our individuality as well as foster care for one another, reverence, understanding, cooperation. (Heschel 1966, 241)
He claims that in seeking to find the uniting factors between Judaism and Christianity, we may reduce both to the lowest common denominator. (Heschel 1966, 241). Only through preservation of their uniqueness and their particular perception of the voice of God may Jews and Christians both fulfill the roles intended to them by the divine Will: A Christian ought to realize that a world without Israel would be a world without the God of Israel. A Jew, on the other hand, ought to acknowledge the eminent role and part of Christianity in God’s design for the redemption of all men. (Heschel 1966, 242)
Prophecy and Mysticism The uniqueness of the divine revelation to the people of Israel is made apparent through Heschel’s comparison between prophetic experience and mystical experience. Heschel claims that the goal of mystic revelation is to achieve ‘extinction of the person’ and therefore ‘self-extinction’ is the price of mystical receptivity. On the other hand:
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alexander even-chen The prophetic personality, far from being dissolved, is intensily present and fervently in what he perceives. The prophetic act is an encounter of a concrete person and the living God. The prophet is responsive, not only receptive. (Heschel 1962, 137)
The prophetic personality is therefore not nullified through divine encounter. Moreover, Heschel employs rabbinical stance concerning testimony as applicable to prophecy. The rabbinical claim is that if two people repeat identical testimony, their words are not acceptable, because it would indicate prior collusion. Every witness has his own particular point of view, as does every prophet. Furthermore, every people has its own ‘personality’ and therefore its own ‘point of view’. If I may add, it seems that the words of Saadya Gaon apply in this case. He interpreted the verse ‘How manifold are Thy works, O Lord’ (Ps. 104, 24) as indicating the greatness of God through diversity (Saadia 1951, 358). It follows that the people of Israel has its unique version of divine encounter. Heschel sees a parallel between the religious experience of the prophet and that of the people of Israel. He uses the word ‘responsive’ to describe the state of the prophet during revelation. This is also the term he uses as the title for the third section of God in Search of Man, addressing the response of the people of Israel to the divine call. We note that in posing ‘revelation’ as a bridge between God and Man, Heschel does not consider God as the only being to reveal Himself: prophecy consists of a revelation of God and a co-revelation of man. (Heschel 1955, 260)
This is then a double revelation, God ‘reveals’ Himself to Man, and Man reveals himself to God. The third section of God in Search of Man deals with Man’s response to the divine Call, and Heschel chooses to address the response of the people of Israel. This is the source of the holiness of the people of Israel. While Rabbi Judah Ha-Levi, in his book The Kuzari, claims that the holiness of the People of Israel stems from a quality immanent to the People of Israel’s soul (Halevi, part 1, 27–103), Heschel disagrees, and points to the response of the people of Israel to the divine Call as the source of holiness. While Rabbi Judah Halevi emphasizes the gulf between the people of Israel and the rest of
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humanity, Heschel tends to regard the uniting factors, alongside the unique role played by the people of Israel. This is apparent in the following excerpt from God in Search of Man: No man is able to hear the voice of God as it is . . . God addressed every individual according to his particular power of comprehension . . . It is the marvel of the voice to split up into seventy voices, into seventy languages, so that all nations should understand. (Heschel 1955, 261)
Heschel is well aware that his conception that there may be more than one way to grasp the divine Will, may lead to a weakening of loyalty to Judaism, and therefore emphasizes that ‘this does not imply subjectivism’. (Heschel 1955, 261) This is because although God wills that His voice be heard in different ways, this is because He assigns different roles to different nations. The unique role assigned to the People of Israel in the course of human history is the reason for its holiness: God does not reveal Himself, he only reveals His way. Judaism does not speak of God’s self-revelation, but of the revelation of His teaching for man. The Bible reflects God’s revelation of His relation to history, rather than of a revelation of His very Self. (Heschel 1955, 261)
These ideas are in line with the aforementioned distinctions made between prophecy and mysticism: Unlike the mystic experience, the significance of prophecy lay not in those who perceived it but in those to whom the word was to be conveyed . . . The purpose was not in the perception of the voice but in bringing it to bear upon the reality of the people’s life. (Heschel 1955, 225)
The prophet, as opposed to the mystic, does not aspire to relieve himself of the material world and thus to redeem his soul. His aim is to bring about a change in this world. This is also the purpose of the People of Israel. The holiness of the people of Israel does not emanate from its own being, but from its holy role. This role is the same as that of Man: To be is to stand for, and what man stands for is the great mystery of being His partner. God is in need of man. (Heschel 1955, 413)
The above sentence is the closing of the chapter titled ‘Freedom’. In this last sentence Heschel directs us to the highest purpose of man, any man. The highest expression of freedom is for man to
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become God’s partner. ‘God is in need of Man.’ Only through the cooperation of God and man can we achieve salvation in this world. Heschel goes as far as to claim that God needs man to the extent of not being omnipotent: The whole conception of God’s Omnipotence, I suspect, was taken over from Islam. God is almighty, and powerful. Man has nothing to say and nothing to do except to keep quit and accept. But, actually, God needs man’s cooperation. There will be no redemption without the cooperation of man. God cannot function in the world without the help of man. (Heschel 1969, 159)
Heschel proceeds to clarify that Absolute Omnipotence ‘is a nonJewish idea’. He bases this claim on the analysis of mystical tradition and on the philosophy of Maimonides (Heschel 1969, 160). He repeatedly asserts that Man is God’s partner in assuming responsibility for what goes on in his world. The Messianic Role of Israel Heschel quotes Rabbi Simeon Ben Yohai, the disciple of Rabbi Akiba: ‘If you are my witness, I am God; if you are not my witnesses, I am not God’. Heschel says: Now, this is perhaps one of the most powerful statements found in Rabbinic literature. It is paradoxical, to be sure, in that it indicates what I mentioned before—the necessity of cooperation. In this world God is not God unless we are his witness. (Heschel 1969, 163)
The people of Israel is entrusted with a special role in this world because it is witness to the divine Will ‘to find’ Man. The book’s title, God in Search of Man, is a principle tenet in Heschel’s theology. The first question addressed by God to man after the sin, ‘Where art thou’, is an eternal one, attesting to the divine Will to ‘find’ man. The God of Abraham Joshua Heschel is not Aristotle’s perfect divinity, devoid of feeling, engaged in self contemplation (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. Lambda). Heschel’s God has emotions. One of the main concepts in Heschel’s theology is Divine Pathos. God rejoices in the success of his children and suffers their failures. God constantly addresses Man. Heschel disagrees with the claim that prophesy has ceased. God continues to call Man, but Man is unwilling or unable to listen to his voice. In Heschel’s words:
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Our mind is obscured, not the sun. (Heschel 1973, 19)
God is in constant need of Man because Man is the conduit of Divine Light into this world. This is what makes Man into God’s partner. It is the role of the People of Israel to strengthen this bond. As we saw before, Heschel is at odds with Rabbi Judah Halevi’s view of the people of Israel as the Chosen People, based on a special quality imminent to their souls. He sees need to address this opinion, as it is still held by certain Jewish circles: The ‘chosen people’ means a people approached and chosen by God . . . It signifies not a quality inherent in the people but a relationship between the people and God. (Heschel 1951, 11)
The meaning of ‘chosen’ refers to the choice made by the people of Israel to be the announcers of divine Will. Just as revelation was bilateral, with both Man and God revealing themselves, so was choice. God has chosen the people of Israel and the People of Israel have chosen Him. This implies reciprocal commitment. The people of Israel and its God join together in turning the world into the divine Kingdom. In striving to sanctify this world, the People of Israel achieves holiness: We are God’s stake in human history . . . We carry the Gold of God in our souls to forge the gate of the kingdom. The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. (Heschel 1951, 11)
Heschel is acutely aware of the fate of his people and of his immediate family during the Second World War. The evil which overtook the world has not marred Heschel’s belief in the sacred role of the Jewish people. The people of Israel is ‘God’s stake’ in human history. Its very survival attests that hope is not gone. The Divine Kingdom shall reign when Man is ready to instate God as the Ruler of the world. God cannot achieve this on his own. This will only happen if Man truly aspires and wishes for this state. The people of Israel are God’s remaining stake, surviving the turmoil and hardship of this world. Heschel believes in Man’s capacity to rise from the ruins and out of the blood and the pain and to mend himself and the world. We may detect a messianic tone in his voice, but this is not an apocalyptic brand of messianism, where God intervenes in the world and changes its orders. The days of the
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Messiah, and the divine Kingdom will only arrive if Man cooperates with God. In Heschel’s mind, the very existence of the People of Israel bears testimony: It is our destiny to live for what is more than ourselves. Our very existence is an unparalleled symbol of such aspiration. By being what we are, namely Jews, we mean more to mankind than by any particular service we may render. (Heschel 1951, 8)
What makes the People of Israel so symbolic? I believe that Heschel holds that the message conveyed by the People of Israel is the prophetic attempt to realize a holy life in this world. As mentioned before, Heschel distinguishes between the prophet and the mystic on this point. While the mystic attempts to flee the material unholy world where his soul is trapped, the prophet aspires to make this world into a Kingdom of God, to purify the unholy and to sanctify it. This prophetic aspiration belongs to the essence of the Jewish belief. Heschel sees the Jewish observation of Mitzvot (the precepts of Jewish Law) as an expression of the Jewish striving to realize the prophetic vision. The system of Mitzvot endows human actions with spiritual meaning. Through the Mitzvot Judaism achieves a holy way of life: Israel is a spiritual order in which the human and the ultimate, the natural and the holy enter a lasting covenant, in which kinship with God is not an aspiration but a reality of destiny. (Heschel 1951, 7)
In making the Mitzvot a way of life the people of Israel makes holy life a reality. The practical, albeit ‘legalistic’ nature of the precepts is the basis of holiness in this world. The people of Israel are a living example of the possibility of achieving a holy life in our world. Therefore, says Heschel: Our share in holiness we acquire by living in the Jewish community. What we do as individuals is a trivial episode; what we attain as Israel causes us to grow into the infinite. (Heschel 1951, 7)
Heschel’s concept of holiness is that of the community. In that again he differs from the mystics who aspired to personal happiness and holiness. Judaism and the Jewish prophets have sought to bring happiness and holiness to the world as a whole. In Heschel’s mind, as individuals we are engulfed in the tumultuous waves of the world.
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As members of a community we can influence the world, and possibly take control of the destructive forces erupting in it. Heschel’s sees need to add a complementary remark, again rejecting subjectivism. Divine Will, as revealed to the prophets and wise men of Israel, demands that the People persist in filling its holy role as an inspiration to all: For us Jews there can be no fellowship with God without the fellowship with Israel. Abandoning Israel, we desert God. (Heschel 1951, 7)
These are harsh and straightforward words said in context of a social reality where a person may choose to disassociate from the Jewish community. In modern life, continued affiliation with the Jewish people may be construed as a matter of personal choice. Heschel wishes to clarify to his readers that abandonment of the community entails relinquishing the vision of a holy. He reiterates the strong bond between all children of Israel through a metaphor: Israel is the tree, we are the leaves. It is clinging to the stem that keeps us alive. (Heschel 1951, 7)
This is not simply a poetic exercise in words, although Heschel did practice poetry, and his work was described by Kaplan as ‘Holiness in Words’. The use of poetic means is a attempt to express a spiritual reality, beyond clear terminology, in human language (Kaplan, pp. 45–59). In describing the people of Israel as a tree to which all of the Jewish persons cling, Heschel wishes to express the bond between all these individuals. The trunk of the tree, the ‘People of Israel’, is the source of life, and its ‘leaves’ are bonded together through history by mutual commitment. In this context, Heschel addresses the destiny of the Jewish people: It is our destiny to live for what is more than ourselves. Our very destiny is an unparalleled symbol of such aspiration. (Heschel 1951, 8)
The People of Israel does not have to acquiesce with the dictates of reality. It should rebel against norms which do not conform with the ideal of a holy world, which it is destined to achieve. As Heschel puts it: There is a war to wage against the vulgar, against that glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear than
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This is how Heschel transports the age-old struggle waged by the prophets against idolatry into the twentieth century. In the 20th century idolatry means the devotion of man to material values of wealth and hedonism, forsaking the latter-day vision. Heschel does not condone asceticism, but he demands that man may rise above his reality and gaze into the good world towards which he should strive. One of the most frequently cited sentences written by Heschel is: Lift up your eyes on high and see. Who created these? (Isaiah 40:26)
Heschel would like Man to follow the teaching of the prophet, to lift his eyes and perceive the Divine presence ‘in the common’. The ability to do so is the main message conveyed by the people of Israel to this world, the message saying that the infinite may be discovered within our finite reality: A sense of contact with the ultimate dawns upon most people when their self-reliance is swept away by violent misery. Judaism is the attempt to install in us that sense as an everyday awareness. (Heschel 1955, 422)
The sense of Divine presence in our routine existence makes great demands on our lives, because every single deed we perform is instilled with meaning: It leads us to regard injustice as a metaphysical calamity, to sense the divine significance of human happiness, to keep slightly above the twilight of the self, enabling us to sense the eternal within the temporal. (Heschel 1955, 422)
This perception led Heschel to deep social involvement. His picture marching aside Martin Luther King is well known. Heschel was quoted saying that he felt his feet praying during the march. This is an expression of his belief that an infringement of human rights is an immense spiritual danger to the Divine plan to achieve a holy world. Judaism and Freedom We saw that the chapter titled ‘Freedom’ in God in Search of Man ended with the saying that God needed Man and that Man is his
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partner. Heschel’s general view is further clarified in the last two chapters of his book. Having established that Man’s role is to be God’s partner, Heschel turns to the specific role accorded to the People of Israel. It appears that there is a strong link between freedom and the essence of Judaism. Heschel defines freedom: Freedom is the state of going out of the self, an act of spiritual ecstasy, in the original sense of the term. (Heschel 1955, 410)
Freedom is ecstasy because it allows Man to transcend national, social, psychological and physical barriers. In order to clarify that, Heschel describes what he calls the ‘Creative Man’, he who: is not carried away by the streams of necessity, who is not enchained by processes, who is not enslaved to circumstances. (Heschel 1955, 410)
Heschel echoes Kierkegaard and other existentialists in striving to free the inner self, and stipulating that this be achieved through release from ‘slavery’ to the nation, to society, or to any other oppressive force. Heschel distinguishes between ‘event’ and ‘process’. We are slaves when operating solely as a link in the social, natural or mental chain. In these cases, we do not make sovereign choices. Our decisions and actions are a result of an often unfamiliar ‘process’. An ‘event’ is an occurrence which defies processes. This deviance from processes is an expression of freedom: Freedom comes about in the moment of transcending the self. (Heschel 1955, 411)
Freedom should not be construed as living ‘as we please’, but rather as the ability to reach higher spiritually and to gain a level where existence is holy. Heschel views the creation of the world as an expression of divine Freedom. He points out that ‘cosmos’ in the sense of order, is a major concept in Greek thought. Perfection, according to the Greeks, is the ultimate expression of order and regularity, to the point where attribution of change to God is interpreted as a slight to divine perfection. This was also the perception accepted by rationalist thought in the Middle Ages. Heschel counters this: Translated into eternal principles, cosmos means fate, while creation means freedom. (Heschel 1955, 412)
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Just as God, Man can choose freedom. Heschel considers the Sabbath as an expression of the ‘Spirit of Judaism.’ Creation lasted for six days. The seventh day was sanctified by God. What makes the Sabbath a holy day? A reminder of every man’s royalty; an abolition of the distinction of master and slave, rich and poor, success and failure. To celebrate the Sabbath is to experience one’s ultimate independence of civilization and society, of achievement and anxiety. (Heschel 1955, 417)
The people of Israel are holy just as the Sabbath is holy. Both carry the role of symbolizing the possibility of human freedom. The holy man is he who knows how to sanctify time, he who does not rule out the world but rather: Not deceived by the splendour of space, he remains tangent at the whirling wheel of living. (Heschel 1955, 418)
Heschel believes that for six days of the week we live under the tyranny of ‘things of space.’ On the Sabbath the people of Israel is ‘attuned to holiness in time’. The Sabbath liberates the Jewish people from the rules governing our lives (Heschel 1951, 9–10). The holiness of the day signifies its differentiation. This notion of holiness of time is meant to criticize religious sanctification of ‘places’. This criticism is directed at Christianity and at certain Jewish sects alike. The spirit of Judaism is embodied in the Sabbath. Still there appears to be a conflict between the sanctification of time advocated by Heschel, and the holiness of the Land of Israel, which is an earthly place. Heschel dismisses this conflict, saying that the Land of Israel in itself is not holy. Without the People of Israel it is just as any other place. Its holiness is rooted not in its physical being, but in its perception by the People of Israel (Even-Chen, 1999, 142–147). According to Heschel, the continued existence of the Jewish people is in itself a historical anomaly: Our very existence is a refusal to surrender to normalcy, to security and comfort. (Heschel 1955, 424)
The Jewish people has sustained continuous attacks, generation after generation, and in all probability should have disappeared. Here Heschel voices the hard experience endured by the Jewish people during the Holocaust. In the commencement of his discussion of the Jewish people Heschel states:
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In trying to understand Jewish existence a Jewish philosopher must look for agreement with the men of Sinai as well as the people of Auschwitz. (Heschel 1955, 421)
We must be aware of the opposing powers in the history of the Jewish people. On the one hand, there is the Divine Revelation at Mount Sinai. On the other hand, there is the appearance of satanic evil in the death camps. Heschel’s humanist optimism leads him to retain his faith in God and in mankind. Despite the repeated threats to its existence, the People of Israel should always remember the encounter with God at Mount Sinai. The continued existence of the People of Israel testifies to continued revelation, and to Man’s capability, as God’s partner, to establish the Divine Kingdom in this world: We remember the beginning and believe in an end. We live between two historic poles: Sinai and the Kingdom of God. (Heschel 1955, 426)
Days of the Messiah? Gershom Scholem distinguished several types of the Messianic idea: conservative, restorative and utopian. The conservative version is that which wishes to preserve the present, the restorative strives to return to a past state considered ideal, while the utopian aspires to a new reality, different from all that was before it. These three brands of Messianism were all present in the history of Jewish thought (Scholem 1974, 3). Heschel’s Messianic thought is a blend of restoration and utopia. He regards Biblical times as an era when the People of Israel engaged in deep spiritual relation with God. On the other hand, human history is perceived as progress towards the rule of the divine Kingdom. The establishment of the State of Israel led Heschel to believe that the realization of a new era for humanity was nigh: The State of Israel is not the fulfilment of the Messianic promise, but it makes the Messianic promise plausible. (Heschel 1967, 223)
Just as the individual may attain religious uplift when freed of his chains, so the people of Israel. Heschel’s existential philosophy leads him to think of the establishment of the State of Israel as the possibility afforded to the Jewish people to expose its inner soul to itself and to the rest of the world. This was not possible during the long
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harsh years spent in the Diaspora. God continues to address us, but at certain times we were not able to listen to His voice. The establishment of the State of Israel allows us anew to lend an ear to Him. As we saw previously, Heschel’s Messianic vision is the sanctification of the world in its entirety. Only thus can the people of Israel fulfil the role accorded to it by its partnership with God. Thus: The ultimate meaning of the State of Israel must be seen in terms of the vision of the prophets: the redemption of all men. (Heschel 1967, 225)
Within the State of Israel the Jewish people, taking sovereign possession of its own fate, the Jewish people may further the Vision of the prophets and bring redemption to all humanity. This is an expression of God’s and Man’s continued interaction, from the reception of the Torah at Mount Sinai to our very days: The giving of the written Torah [Hebrew Bible] is the beginning, not the end, of Torah. (Heschel 2005, 663)
The return of the Jewish people to its land is an opportunity to renew the full interaction between Heaven and Earth, an interaction started already during Biblical times. Heschel does not hesitate to say that new Biblical chapters may be written in our times (Heschel 1967, 49). These words reflect the euphoria which seized Heschel and many others after the Six Day War in 1967. The liberation of Jerusalem and the return to the Western Wall symbolized for Heschel the potential for a renewal of the total religious experience, for which the People of Israel had prayed during the long and hard years in the Diaspora. For Heschel, this is not a purely national goal, but an opportunity for a renewed partnership between God and Man and a new and better world. LITERATURE Dan, J., On Sanctity—Religion, Ethics and Mysticism in Judaism and other Religions (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1998. Even-Chen, A., A Voice from the Darkness—A.J. Heschel Phenomenology and Mysticism (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1999. Halevi, J., The Kuzari, New York 1964. Heschel, A.J., Der Shem Hameforash: Mentsh, Warsaw 1933.
holiness of the people of israel
377
———, ‘To Be a Jew: What Is It’, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, New York 1996. First Published in: Zionist Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1 (Summer, 1951), pp. 78–84. ———, God in Search of Man, New York, First published 1955, twentieth printing 1998. ———, The Prophets, New York 1975. First published: New York 1962. ———, ‘No Religion is an Island’, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, New York 1996. First Published in: Union Seminary Quarterly Review, vol. 21, no. 2, part 1 ( January 1966), pp. 117–134. ———, Israel: An Echo of Eternity, New York 1967. ———, ‘Jewish Theology’, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, New York 1996. First Published in: The Synagogue School, vol. 28, no. 1 (Fall 1969), pp. 4–18. ———, A Passion for Truth, New York 1973. ———, Heavenly Torah—As Refracted through the Generations, New York & London 2005. This book was translated from Hebrew by Gordon Tucker with Leonard Levin. The Hebrew edition Torah min ha-shamayim be-aspaklaria shel ha-dorot was published as: vol. 1, London-New York 1962; vol. 2, London-New York 1965; vol. 3 was published after Heschel’s death, Jerusalem 1990. Kant, I., Critique of Pure Reason (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1993. Kaplan, E., Holiness in Words, New York 1996. Kierkegaard, S., Fear and Trembling, New York 1954. Saadia Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, New Haven 1951. Scholem, G., The Messianic Idea in Judaism, New York 1974.
INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS Aachen 156 Aaron 62 Abraham 9, 95, 151, 155, 364 Abstinence 165, 169 Acts of the Apostles (apocryphal) 72 Acts of John 73 Acts of Thomas 73 Adam, Karl 268–269 Admission 56 Agapemeals 72 Akiva (rabbi) 127, 136, 138, 140, 142, 144–145 Albigenses xvii, 187 Albigensian crusade 188 Alcuin 152–153, 160 Aleinu prayer 316 Alexandria 99 Alkabez, Solomon 237, 249, 253–254, 257 Allegorical exegesis 151 Altar 48, 121–122 Ambrose of Mailand 202, 332 Amidah, see Shmoneh Esreh Anabaptists 288 Angels 47, 57–58, 190, 192, 224, 311 Animal sacrifices 121 Animals 120 Anselm of Alexandria 196 Anskar of Hamburg 149–159, 169–181 Anthropological 109 Antichrist 191 Antioch 143 Anti-Semitism 194, 196–197, 264, 271, 290, 301, 351, 359 Apocalypse 156 Apocalyptic 101 Apocryphal Acts of Thomas 73 Apollinarius of Laodicea 44 Apostolic church 192 Apostolic Tradition 81 Apostolic 197 Aquinas, Thomas 267–268, 270, 331 Asaph 43, 48 Asceticism 187, 190, 372 Ashkenazic Judaism 221, 218, 223
Ashkenazic law xvii Atonement 55 Augustine 170, 217 Baraita de R. Pinhas ben Yair 221 Barth, Karl 268, 291–293 Ben Azzai (rabbi) 136, 138, 144–145 Babylon 47 Baptism 74–85, 104, 166–167, 175, 187 Beda Venerabilis 45, 152, 159–160 Beer-Sheba 20, 23 Belial 58 Belibaste, Guillaume 188, 192, 195 Benedict XII (pope) 188 Benjamin 155 Bergson, Henri 352 Berkhof, Henricus 292, 294 Beth Shemesh 21 Birkat Ha-Mazon 88–92, 98, 103 Birkat Ha-Minim 86 Birkat Ha-Yerushalayim 93 Blood 40, 44, 49–50, 119 Bloodshed 132 Body 94, 189 Boniface 149, 152, 159, 162–170, 180 Boundaries 17, 69–70, 73, 75, 83, 112 maintenance of xv–xvi, 31–32 Bread 60, 76, 80, 98 Buber, Martin 352, 356, 359 Buren, Paul van 295–297 Byzantine Empire 205 Caesarius of Arles 203 Calvary 43 Calvin, John 287–289, 294 Captives 179, 207–208 Carcassonne 185 Catechumens 82 Cathar Church 194 Cathars xvi, 185, 187, 192, 196, 288 Catholic Church xvii, 191, 193, 195, 264 ff. Cedar 20 Centers of the world 112
380
index of names and subjects
Charity 207, 213 Charlemagne 150, 151, 156, 166 Chénu, Marie-Dominique 266, 268 Children 58 Chorazin 46 Chosenness, see also Election 12–13, 96–97, 230, 272–273, 282, 286, 297, 312, 350, 353, 357, 369 Chosen sojourners 96 Christ 44, 151, 191, 294, 331, 352 Christian society 218, 233 Christianity 47, 145, 199, 354, 364–365, 374 Christological 44, 47, 275 Chunitrud 163 Church Fathers 42, 50 Church 76, 97–98, 103–104, 265, 270, 296, 300 as mother 325, 330, 332–333 Circumcision 351 Citizenship 96 City of David 19 Clovis 161 Coherence 76 Colombanus 180 Comestor, Peter 230 Communion 82 Communitas 111–112, 116, 119, 123, 126 Community of the saints 192, 337, 344 Community 199 Concentric 119 Confession of sins 250, 321, 329, 333 Congar, Yves 263–267, 270–271, 324 Consolamentum 187, 189–190, 195–196 Conversion xiv, 97, 160, 167, 175, 324 of gentiles 104 Cordovero, Moses 237, 255 Corpse 30, 65 Corpus mysticum 230–231, 325 Cosmology 119 Cosmos 116 Courts of law 227–228 Covenant 282, 288–291, 321 Creation 373 Creed 323 Cross 274, 284 Crucifixion 291 Crusaders 201, 207, 212–213, 219
Cup 76 Cyprian 81, 310 David 43, 45, 48, 243, 250, 285 David ben Zimra 246 Day of Atonement 122 Deformities 58 Depth theology 363 Derrida, Jacques 352, 357 Desecration 160, 161 Devil 189 Diaspora 92, 99–100, 110, 125, 376 Didache xvi, 72, 74–78, 85–107 Didymus the Blind 44 Dietary laws 75, 79 Dionysius Aeropagita 157 Dispersion, see Diaspora Divine Pathos 368 Divine Presence 255 Dogs 77 Donatists 288 Donin, Nicholas 228 Douglas, Mary 29 Dream 156, 159, 169–170 Drink 56, 90 Dualism 94 Easter 275 Ebbo of Reims 174 Ecclesiology 189, 191, 271, 275, 279, 296, 321 ff. Echternach 168 Edom 47 Election xiv, 10, 12, 282, 287, 301, 350, 353 ff. Eleusis 121 Eliade, Mircea 110, 258 Eliezer b. Yitzhak of Mainz 226 Eliezer Qalir 219 Elijah 310 Emancipation 353–354 Enoch 342 Esarhaddon 10 Eschatology 58, 59 Ethnocentrism 29 Eucharist 69–70, 72, 76, 80, 82, 85, 87, 98, 230 Eucharistein 89 Eucharistic Prayers xvi, 70 Eusebius 44 Evil 190 Exclusiveness 76 Excommunication 212, 228
index of names and subjects Exodus 60 Expulsion 253 Ezekiel 66 Fallen angels 189–191 Fast 85–87, 177, 187 First Testament 194 First-fruits 120 Flusser, David 284 Food 56, 63, 69–70, 76, 93, 221 Forgiveness xiv, 159 Four Empires 48–49 Fourth Council of Constantinople 202 Franks 212 Freedom 373 Frisians 152 Fulbert 159 Gaius Caligula 99 Galilee 241–246, 250, 252, 256–257 Garden Tomb 340 Garments 255, 339, 341 Gathering of the Church 104 Geniza 208, 211, 213 Gennep, Arnold van 111 Gentile Christianity 75, 283 Gentile xvi, 104, 119, 135, 143, 145, 282 conversion of 104 Ger 130, 133 Gift 118 Gittith 45 God-fearers 142–145 Good Christian 187, 192 Good Samaritan 131 Gospel 86 Gottschalk of Orbais 153 Grace 270 Grace after meals, see Birkat-Hamazon Greece 47 Greenberg, Irving 302 Gregory of Utrecht 149–150, 162, 164, 166, 180–181 Gregory the Great 170, 180 Group Sanctity 67 Group Solidarity 74 Hadrian VI (pope) 329 Hagiographers xvii Hajj 123 Halevi, Abraham 242 Handicapped xiv Harvest 41, 47
381
Hatikvah 318 Hazzan 224 Heavenly Jerusalem 101 Hebrews, Letter to the 102 Hebron 339 Hegel 357 Hell 44, 180 Hellenistic Judaism 90, 98 Hellenistic 70 Herem 229, 231 Heresy 186, 188 Herod 114 Heschel, Abraham Joshua xv, xviii Hierarchy 171 of sainthood 159 Hoffman, Lawrence 307, 315 Holiness 50, 59, 178, 202, 207, 322 ff., 361, 362 Holy City 211, 237, 238 Communion 82 community 201, 238, 337 Land 213, 265, 347, 374 landscape xvii, 249, 257, 374 people xv, 3, 13, 50, 194, 237, 241, 256, 279–280, 295, 299, 349–353, 356–361, 366 spirit 191 war 201 Idolatry 145, 159, 229, 312, 365, 372 Imitating 191 Imitation of Christ 163, 165 Impure food 79 Impurity 57–58, 63, 79, 119, 139 of pagan temples 77 Incense 119 Initiation 56 Innocent III (pope) 206 Inquisition, papal 188, 321 Ireland 153, 168 Iron Age xv, 17 Isaac 95, 155, 364 Isaiah 48 Ishmael (rabbi) 138 Islam 205, 211, 213, 368 Israel 190, 265, 279, 292, 293, 297, 298, 349, 361 State of 272–273, 275, 307, 309, 313–315, 354, 356, 362, 375 Jacob 95, 155 Jacob Berav 244, 251–252 Jacob Tam 223
382
index of names and subjects
Jerome 43 Jerusalem 19, 23, 41, 44, 64, 91–93, 98–104, 109–115, 230, 239, 244, 251, 256, 291, 296, 317, 321, 339, 376 Jesus Christ xv, 12, 70, 131, 155, 172, 177, 202, 273–274, 279, 289, 291–292, 339 Blood of 283 Jewish Cathars 196 Jewish liturgy 85 Jewish Quarter 20 Joachim of Fiore 192, 196 Job 175 Johannes Judaeus 196 John Paul II (pope) xiv, 276, 321, 329–330 John the Baptist 156 Joseph b. Jacob Hababli 208 Joseph b. Joshua Hacohen 253 Joseph Bonfils 211 Joseph della Reina 243 Joseph Rosh Haseder 209 Joseph (biblical) 155 Josephus Flavius 113, 143 Jubilees 89 Judah b. Meir ha-Kohen 226 Judah Halevi 366, 369 Justinian Code 203 Kabbala 186 Kant, Immanuel 349–351, 354, 357, 363 Karo, Joseph 237, 242 Kashrut 75 Kedusha 309 Kelal gadol 137–138, 140–141, 143 Kierkegaard, Søren 364 Kimhi, rabbi Joseph 204 Klappert, Bertold 297–298 Kook, Rav 317 Korah 43 Kuyper, Abraham 289–290 Languedoc 185 Last Supper 73–74, 80 Law 101, 125, 289 Leah 155 Lekha Dodi xvii, 249, 250, 256–257 Letter to Diognetus 96 Levi 62 Levinas, Emmanuel 352, 357, 359 Levites 120
Levitical legislation 60, 62 Liberal Judaism 293, 307 ff. Liturgy 307–319, 358 Liudger 149–150, 152, 162–167, 178, 181 Lord’s Prayer 85 Louis the Pious 151, 174 Lumen Gentium 265, 274, 322–335 Lunel 185 Luria, Isaac 237, 243, 249, 254, 257 Mahzor Vitry 222 Maimonides 211, 221, 245–246, 368 Mainz 222 Marquardt, Friedrich Wilhelm 296–297 Martin of Tours 161, 163, 179 Martin Luther King 372 Martyrdom 152, 155–156, 158, 160, 163, 166–167, 169, 171, 176, 178, 181, 192, 196 Martyrdom of Polycarp 96 Mary 112, 328 Matthew 86, 87, 103 Meal 69–71, 77, 123–125 Media 47 Medieval church xvii Megillat Ahima’az 232 Meir ben Isaac of Worms 224 Meir ben Simon 186 Meir of Rothenburg 213 Mendelssohn, Mozes 350 Meshullam ben Qalonymos 232 Messiah 49, 50, 59, 241–247, 256–258, 276, 310, 368, 370, 375 Messianic banquet 59 Michael 58 Minyan 228, 229 Miracles 160, 161, 175, 312, 314 Miskotte, Kornelis Heiko 292 Mission Mormon 346 To the Jews 296 Missionaries xvii, 114, 149–181 Mitzvot 370 Monastic life 150–151, 168 Mormons xiii–xiv, 337–348 Moses 8, 95, 155 Moses de Castro 246 Mount Sinai 14 Music 120, 121 Muslim 186, 195–196, 201, 205, 208, 243
index of names and subjects Mussaf prayer for Rosh Hashana 88 Mystery of Israel 265, 283 Mysticism 237–260, 363, 365 Name of God 77 Narbonne 185–186, 204 Natan b. Yehiel of Rome 220, 225 Nation 13, 50 National-socialism 269, 349 Neighbor xvi, 127–146 Neo-scholastic theology 268 Neusner, Jack 307, 315–316 New Testament xv, 113 New Year 254 Nietzsche 352 Noahide laws 144–145 Non-Israelite 30, 131, 133 Non-Jewess 226, 318 Notae ecclesiae 280, 288, 300, 303, 323, 327 Nuns 163, 164 Oil 118 Old age 60 Ophel 19 Ottomans 237 Pagan gods 104 Paradise 157 Palestinians 272–273, 275, 299 Passion of Christ 177–178 Passover 120 Patriarchs 96, 165 Patrick 151 Paul 74–78, 101–102 Paulus VI (pope) 329 Pax Christi movement 272 Pax Romana 114 Penance 82, 157 Pentecost 156 People of God 103, 185, 194, 265–267, 270–274, 281–282, 290, 293–298, 300, 302, 307 People of heaven 299 People of Israel 190, 194, 271–272, 281, 283, 338 Peregrinatio 151, 155, 162 Persecution 42, 196 Persuasion 160 Peter, First letter of 102 Peter (apostle) 79, 156, 192, 284 Pharisees 86–87, 113, 116, 121–126, 195
383
Philo of Alexandria 92–93, 97–99, 110, 123 Phoenicians 18 Physical deformities 60 Pierre Autier 195 Pilgrimage xiii, xvi, 94, 99–100, 109–126, 298, 337 ff. Islamic 116 Pittsburgh Platform 307 Pius XI (pope) 264 Pius XII (pope) 325 Piyyut 225 Polycarp, Epistle of 96 Polygamy 342 Pottery xv, 17–35 Poverty 163 Prayer 77, 85–86, 88, 120, 177, 179, 190, 219, 220, 223–224, 228, 313, 316, 321, 372 Direction 255 Prayerbook xiv, 307–319 Predestination 153 Priesthood xvi, 12–13, 54, 60, 62, 109, 120–125, 193, 276, 286 Prophecy 365 ff. of the child 242 Prophet 176–177 Protestant theology xv Psalter 169 Pseudo-Clementine homilies 79 Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 79 Pseudo-Clementine writings 73 Pseudo-prophets 191 Punishment 40, 45, 47–48, 50 Pure food 56 Purgatory 156 Purity rules xv Purity 30, 42, 50, 55–57, 60, 64–65, 67, 78, 113, 115, 123–124, 221–222, 307, 327–328, 331 Qahal 218, 220 Qehillah Qedosha xvii, 217 ff., 232 Qumran xvi, 53 ff. Rachel 155 Radbod 161 Ransom of captives xvii, 199 ff. Rashi 220–221, 225, 230 Ratzinger, Joseph 330 ‘Real Catholics’ 192 Red Sea 19 Redeemed 190
384
index of names and subjects
Redeeming 192 Redemption 60, 193–195, 239–240, 243–245, 249–253, 256–258, 311, 376 of captives, see Ransom Reform Judaism 307–319 Remission of debt 144 Resurrection 275, 311, 317 Reuveni, David 242 Revelation 171, 366–367, 375 Rimbert 150, 152 Rites 125 Rites of passage 111, 341, 344 Ritual bath 123 Ritual meal 69, 78–79 Ritual 144 Rome 242, 284 Rosenzweig xiv, 293, 355–360 Royal priesthood 13 Rule of St Benedict 166 Sabbath 143, 249, 250, 253, 255, 258, 310, 314, 317, 374 Sacrament 265, 288, 325 Sacred center 110 Sacred community, see Qehilla Qedosha Sacred geography 117, 257 Sacred space 116, 337, 345–346 Sacrifice 12, 55, 75, 77, 99–100, 114, 119, 310, 315, 317 Sacrificial food 75, 77 Sadducaean Priesthood 66, 113, 121, 122 Safed xvii, 237–258 Sainthood 149, 171 Sallnov, Michael 344, 347 Salvation history 197, 270 Samaria 22 Samuel (biblical) 155 Sanctity 60 Sanhedrin 244, 246, 258 Satan 195 Schillebeeckx, Edward xiv, 263–275 Scholem, Gershom 186, 375 Second Vatican Council 265, 280, 322, 324–326 Secularization 294, 357 Self-government 227 Semikha (ordination) 227 Separate 55 Sephardic Judaism 221 Sephirot 249 Seventy languages 367 Shavuot 120
Shema 88, 311, 317 Shemoneh Esreh 88, 91, 316 Shoah 263, 271, 274, 276, 281, 296, 308, 312–314, 318, 374–375 Shofar 228 Siddur, see Prayer book Sign of the cross 193 Simon bar Yohai (rabbi) 240, 247, 253, 255–256, 368 Sinai xv Slander 132 Slaughter 63 Slavery 135, 144 Smith, Joseph 338, 343 Social exchange 118 Social status 116, 347 Son of Man 41, 103 Soul 94 Speyer 230 Spinoza 350–352, 354, 356 State of Israel 272, 275, 294–295 Stealing 132 Stranger 96, 129–130 Strauss, Leo 359 Study 223–224, 342 Sukkah 221 Sukkot 120–121 Supersessionism xv, 279, 285–286, 292, 295, 297 Sylvester I (pope) 191 Synagogue 193 Synagogue worship 144 Table community xvi, 69 ff. Tallit 316 Tanhuma (rabbi) 136 Targum 49, 50 Teacher of Righteousness 58 Tefillin 316 Temple 46–49, 54, 61–66, 77, 92, 98–99, 109–116, 123–126, 140, 211, 255, 276, 291, 310, 341, 346, 352–353, 361 city 65 cult 77, 119 Mount 57, 120, 123 Scroll 66 spiritual 12 Teruma 117 Theodore of Mopsuestia 44 Theology xv Tibbonides 186 Tombs 240, 255–256 Tolerance 350
index of names and subjects Torah study 59, 144 Tree 371 Tribes, twelve 62, 65–66, 338 Trinitarian Order 213 Trinity 43 Troyes 211, 212, 226, 230 True apostolic church 191 Turner, Victor 74, 110–111, 258, 337, 344, 347 Two Ways doctrine 104 Vegetarianism 169 Vengeance 50 Vikings 203 Vineyard 43, 46 Visions 156–157, 170, 173, 177, 179 Vital, Haim 237, 243, 246, 253 Volkstum 267–268 Wailing Wall 321, 376 War 57 Water-Libation 122 Wealth 347
Weren, Wim 285 West 255 Whore 193 Wicked Priest 58 Wicked Tenants (Parable) 284 Widukind 166 Willehad 150, 152, 167–169, 181 Willibald 152, 164 Willibrord 149 ff. Wine 60, 80, 118, 229 Winepress xvi, 39 ff. Women 58, 243, 316 Wool 239, 247 World Council of Churches 280 Worms 222, 230 Worship 85, 87, 144 Yeshua b. Joseph Hacohen 208 Yevki b. Abu Razin 208 Zadok, Sons of 59 Zion 310, 341–342, 346, 358 Zohar 240, 245–246, 253
385
INDEX OF SOURCES hebrew bible Genesis 1:27 5:1 12:1 12:2–4 18:18 22:18 23:4 26:2–3 27:29 47:9 49:10–12 49:11
137 136–137, 144 151 9 9 9 95 95 151 95 49 49, 241
Exodus 2:13 6:2–8 10:21–23 11:2–3 12:38 12:45 12:48 19 19:3–6 19:5–6 19:6 20:14 22:9 22:17 22:24–25 23:22 24:3–8
131 282 11 131 297, 303 134 134 14 8 3–4, 9, 279, 286 8–9, 12–13 133 138 109 131 9 9
Leviticus 1:2 6:2 6:21 11:33 15:12 19:11–13 19:16 19:18 19:33–34
138 139 30 30 30 131, 134 134 127, 129, 131–138, 140 129, 133, 135, 142
22:10 24:22 25:6 25:40 25:47–48 26:12
134 134 134 134–135 210–211 282
Numbers 3:14–39 15:3 15:16, 29 15:37–39 24:17 25:4 31:20–24 33:4 35:4–5
62 144 134 311 246 210 30 145 63
Deuteronomy 1:8 1:35 4:37 5:1 5:1–26:19 5:18 6:4 6:10 6:23 7:1–6 7:6 7:7 7:12 8:1 9:5 10:11 10:15 11:9 11:13–21 11:21 12:1 13:7 14:1 14:2 14:21 14:26
7 7 10 6 5 133 127 7 7 4–5 3–4, 6–7, 10, 282 282 7 7 7 7 10 7 311, 317 7 6 131 5 3–7, 10, 282 3, 5–7 138
index of sources 15:14 16:13 16:16 19:8 19:14 23:15 23:25–26 26:3 26:15 26:16 26:16–19 26:17 26:18 26:19 28:1–6 28:1–14 28:9 28:10 28:11 30:1–5 30:15–19 30:20 31:21 31:23 34:4
40 40 109 7 131 58 131 7 7 6–7 7–8 7 4 3, 5, 7 311 7 3, 7–8 8 7 91 311 7 7 7 7
1Samuel 18:1–3
129
2Samuel 5:24 8:20 12:1–14 12:28
252 9 285 8
1Kings 3:8 18:10
10 9
1Chronicles 16:35 29:3
91 4
Nehemiah 1:8–9
91
Job 24:11 40:30
46 27
Psalms 1 8:1 14:3
45 43 329
387
33:12 46:7 51:20 71:15 78:68 79 81:1 84:1 84:7–8 89:16 104:24 105:13 106:47 118:22 124:6 135:4 144:15 147:2
10 9 317–318 210 10 45 43 43 252 3 366 9 91 12, 286 210 4 207 91
Proverbs 6:27–29
145
Isaiah 2:1–5 5 8:14 11:12 13:4 14:1 19:25 23:8 27:13 28:16 29 40:26 41:8 43:5–7 43:10 43:20–21 44:1–2 49:6 (Vulgate) 49:7 49:22 51:9–52:2 52 56:8 60:12 62:12 63:1–6 63:2 63:3 63:18 63:19 66:6
297 46, 283 12 91 9 10 282 27 91 12 245 372 10 91 10 10, 13 10 177 10 91 251 245 91 9 3 41, 44 48 47 3 8 49
index of sources
388 Jeremiah 1:10 13:11 15:5 18:7 23:8 25:30 30:18 31:8–10 31:33b 33:9 33:24 39:37 (LXX)
9 7 251 9 91 40 254 91 282 7 10 91
Lamentations 1:15
46
Ezechiel 10:8 11:17 20:5 20:34 22:9a 28:25 34:11–16 37:21 37:22 39:27 45 48 Daniel 8:22 8:24 12:7
229 91 10 91 132 91 91 91 9 91 117 117
Hosea 1:6 1:9 1:10 2:1 2:3 2:22 2:23 2:25 12:8
12 12 282 12 12 282 286 12 27
Joel 2:24 4:13 4:14
40 41, 47 46
Micha 2:12–13 4:1–5 4:12
91 297 91
Zephaniah 1:11 3:8 3:13
27 9 233
Zechariah 2:10 (LXX) 8:7–8
91 91
Maleachi 3:17
4
9 3 3
targum Pseudo-Yonatan Deut 14:1
5
Neofiti I Gen 49:11
49
Targum to the prophets Isa 5 285 Isa 63:1–3 50
apocryphal⁄deuterocanonical books Baruch 4:8–10
100
2Maccabees 1:24–29 1:27 2:7–18
91 91 91
Sirach 36:1–16 36:11 51:12 51:12a–q (Hebr.)
91 91 91 91
Tobit 13:5
91
index of sources Wisdom 17:1–2 17:1–18:4
10 13
17:2 17:2–21
389 3, 11 11
old testament pseudepigrapha Assumptio Moysis 7:9–10
124
2Baruch 3:1–3 77–78
100 91
1Enoch 57:1 90:28–29 90:34
91 101 91
4Ezra 7:26 10:7 10:27 10:38–44
101 100 101 100
10:54 13:36 13:39
101 101 91
Jubilees 8:19 22:5 22:6–9
100 89 89, 93
Psalms of Solomon 8:27–28 8:28 11:2–6 17:26–44 17:30–31
91 91 91 91 91
Testament of Asher 7
91
dead sea scroll 1QS 3:13–4:26 6:2–5 6:13–23 8:5–9 8:10 8:11 8:12–13 8:17 8:20
58 60 56 54 59 54 55 54 54
1QSa 1:6–11 1:19–22 2:3–11
58 60 55, 60
1QM 7:6 12:7–8 4Q491
55 58 58
11QT 29:2–10 29:3
61 63
36:3–7 38:12–15 39:11–13 40:5–11 40:13–41:11 41:17–42:6 44:3–45:2 45:12–14 46:4 46:11–12 46:13–15 46:16–47:1 47:8 47:10–11 47:14 47:18 48:11–13 48:14–17 49:5–50:16 51:7–8 52:19–20 53:1 56:5
62 62 62 62 62 62 62 63 63 63 63 64 65 63 65 63 63 63 63 63 63 63 63
index of sources
390
new testament Matthew 6:1–18 7:6 16:18 21:32 21:33–46 21:40–41 21:43 22:35–40 23:38–39 23:37 24:31 25:36, 39, 43 28:16 28:19
86 76 284 285 284–285 285 284–285 127 276 100, 276 103 202 173 151
Mark 12:28–34 13:27 16:15
127 103 173
Luke 10:25–28 10:36–37 13:34 19:43–44 23:35 John 4:22 10:15–16 11:52 12:32 Acts of the Apostles 4:32 9:2 10 13:16, 26 15:14 17:4, 17 19:9 19:23 22:4 24:14 Romans 9:25 11 11:18 11:28 14:6
1Corinthians 1:30 10:14–22 10:16–17 10:18 10:30 11 11:17–34 11:18 11:21–22 11:26
288 73 74, 76 282 89 78 73 283 74 283
2Corinthians 3:18 5:1–5
267 101
Galatians 4:26
101
127 131
Ephesians 2:11–22 2:12–13 3:6 5:7
297 283 283, 297 328
100 173
Philippians 3:20–21
95, 101
1Tessalonians 1:10 4:17
101 101
2Tessalonians 2:1
103
1Timothy 4:3–4
89
Hebrews 11:8 11:10 12:22–24 13:14 13:13–14
102 102 96 95 102
James 1:1
97
1Peter 1:1 1:17 2:4–10
95–97 96 12
303 103 103 103 163 303 79 142 303 142 303 303 303 303 96, 282 282 303 282 89
index of sources 2:5 2:6–8 2:7 2:9 2:10 2:11
12 286 12 3, 12–13, 286 96, 286–287 95–96
Revelation 4:4 5:9 12:7 14:14–20 19:11–15 21
391 156 267 190 41 41 101
patristic sources Apostolic Tradition 26 27 29C Augustine De Civitate Dei 18:46 De Gen. ad Litteram 12:53–54 Enarr. In Psalmos 8 Beda Venerabilis Comm. on Psalms 8 Didache 1–6 6:2–3 7–10 7 8 8:1–2 9 9:2–3 9:4 9:5 9–10 10:2 10:3 10:4 10:5
Epistle to Diognete 5:4–9
81 81 80
217
Eusebius Comm. in Isaiam 8,2 Comm. in Psalmos 8,8
45 44
45
Gregory the Great Dialogi 4:50–56
171
45
Hieronymus Tractatus de Psalmo 81,1
43
Justin First Apology 65–67
81
Pseudo-Clementine Homilies 1:22 13:4 14:1
79 79 72
Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1:19 7:29
79 79
Tertullian Apologeticum 39
80
170
104 75 85 85 104 85, 87 72, 74–75 88 76, 87–88, 92, 93, 96, 98, 103 76 87–88, 102 90 90 76 76, 87, 92–94, 96, 98, 103
greek and latin authors Procopius De bello Persico 2:5
96
203
index of sources
392
jewish hellenistic literature Josephus Antiquitates 3:179–183 5:180 5:458–459 10:213 12:145 15:417–418 Bellum Judaicum 2:427 3:52 4:414 7:412 ff. Contra Apionem 2:282 Philo De agricultura 65 De cherubim 120 De confusione linguarum 77–78 79–82 176-177 De exsecrationibus 165 De gigantibus 61 De migratione Abrahami 9
109 124 109 124 119 119 125 100 125 125 143
95 94 95 95 94 91 95 94
De praemiis et poenis 117 165–172 De providentia 2:64 De somniis 1:181 De specialibus legibus 1:68 1:69 2:145 2:175 2:210–211 3:205 In Flaccum 45–46 46 Legatio ad Gaium 203 225 278 281 288 294 299 305 334 346 Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin 4,75
91 100 110 95 110 99 120 89 117 123 110 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 94
rabbinic literature Mishna Abot 1:2 Berachot 6:8 Bikkurim 3:2–5 Demai 2:2–3 Gittin 4:6
125 89
Hagiga 3:8
122
Kelim 1:6–9
119
Ma'aser Sheni 1:1 3:1
118 119
Nega'im 8:9
123
Sanhedrin 2:1 9:6
124 119
120 124 206–207
index of sources Shabbat 7:1 19:1
140 140
Sheqalim 1:3–4
124
Shevi'it 7:1
140
393
4:2 4:4 4:7
125 121 121
Yom Hakippurim 1:8–9 1:12 1:15
122 124 123
Palestinian Talmud Sukkah 4:5 4:9 5:1 5:4 Yoma 2:2 3:3 5:2
121 121 121 121 124 123 122
Tosefta Demai 2:2–3 Hagiga 3:5 3:35
124 122 122
KelimBaba Kama 1:6 Ma'aser Sheni 1:1–2 1:3 1:12 5:14 Menahot 13:21 Nega'im 8:9 Shevuot 1:7 Sukkah 3:1 3:15 3:16 4:1–9
118 117 117 117 124 123
Bava Metsia 7:1 (11b)
141
Ma'aser Sheni 1 (52c)
118–119
Nedarim 9:3 (41c)
127, 137
Shabbat 1:3 (3b) 3a
221 220
Sheqalim 3:1 3:3 (47c)
117 221
Babylonian Talmud Avodah Zara 20b
221
Bava Batra 3b 8b
202 201
Bava Qama 46a
141
Berachot 58a
117
Beza 11b 14a
124 220
Eruvin 19a
252
Gittin 45a
205–206
138 121 46 122 121
index of sources
394 Hullin 105b Megilla 26a 29a Moed Qatan 16a
Midrash 228 117 91
Gen Rabba 24:7 31:2
137 46
Ex Rabba 7:4
252
228–229 Lam Rabba
Niddah 34a
124
Petihta 32 Petihta 34 (Buber)
45 45
Pesachim 117a
91
Kohelet Rabba 9:9
220
Rosh Hashana 31b 33b
245 229
Mechilta de R. Ishmael Neziqin par 18
142
Sanhedrin 58b–59a 96b 98a 107b
143 46 244 228
Midrash on Psalms 8:1 8:8 62:2 84:1 84:2
47 48 46 49 48
Shabbat 31a 139a
127 244
Pesiqta Zutrati Balaq 58
246
Sukkah 51b
121
Abot de Rabbi Natan A35 B39
117 117
Sifra Tsav 1:7–9 Qedoshim 4:12 Sifrei Deut § 345 § 354
139 127, 135–137 145 124
medieval and later sources Calvin Institutions 2:10:4 4:2:3 4:12:1–5
289 288 288
Jacob ben Samson On Avot 1:3 On Avot 2:2
223 222
Joseph Kimhi Book of Covenant
204
Koran 47:5 9:60 Maimonides Mishne Torah Agriculture II, 8:11 Sanhedrin 14:12 Talmud Torah 1:11
205 205
202, 209 245 223
index of sources Rashi Commentary on the Bible On Gen 48:4 On Ex 12:6 On Ex 22:29 On Ex 25:8 On Ex 31:15 On Lev 19:2 On Num 5:18 On Num 10:7 On Deut 23:3 On Deut 32:2–3 On 1Sam 21:6 On Jer 2:3 Commentary on the Talmud On Beza 27a On Hullin 52a Second Vatican Council Gaudium et Spes 36 Lumen Gentium 1–8 4
220 220 221 221 221 221 221, 230 220 220 221 221 221 222 222
329 327 327
8 9–17 39 48 64 65 Unitatis redintegratio 7
395 327, 330 327 327 328, 331 332 328 329
Sefer Hassidim no. 1074
222
Tosafot On Av. Zar. 19b On Qidd. 30a On R. H. 34b
223 223 229
Zohar I:119a (Gen) II:7b (Ex) II:9a (Ex) II:20a (Ex)
245 245 251 246
REVELATION
