0028–6885 | volume 55 | number 2 | april 2009
NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES Published quarterly in association with studiorum novi testamenti societas
NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES
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Paulus Oecumenicus: Interculturality in the Shaping of Paul’s Theology* AN D R I E D U TO IT New Testament Research Unit, University of Pretoria, P O Box 92345, Mooikloof, 0059 Pretoria, South Africa email:
[email protected] The growing recognition that Judaism and Hellenism were not mutually exclusive suggests that Paul should be studied from a point beyond the Judaism/ Hellenism divide. After attending to the apostle’s own multiculturality, the relevance and implications of the ‘beyond’ position are assessed by means of an enquiry into Paul’s use of charis and ecclesia. In both instances, intercultural convergence is indicated. However, the farewell to a dichotomous point of departure does not imply the denial of all distinctiveness. Studying the biblical documents from the ‘beyond’ position opens up new vistas and holds great promise for future NT research. Keywords: Paul, interculturality, presuppositions, grace, church
. Preliminary Observations
. Bridging the Judaism/Hellenism Divide The traditional notion of an unbridgeable dichotomy between Judaism and Hellenism has a direct bearing on Pauline studies. Paul the apostle was born and bred a Jew of the diaspora, nurtured in the traditions of his Jewish forebears, yet at the same time imbibing an all-pervading Hellenistic culture – hence a Hellenistic Jew in the full sense of the word, not merely a Jew who happened to preach and write in Greek. However, being simultaneously Hellenistic and Jewish encapsulates one of the most controversial issues in Pauline studies. What relative weight should we allocate to each of these epithets? Should the writer of at least seven of our oldest extant Christian documents be understood from a primarily Hellenistic perspective or a Jewish one? Or is this a false dichotomy?
* Presidential address delivered to the rd Annual Meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas at the University of Lund, July –August .
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The presumption that Jewishness and Hellenism were two incompatible, in fact, strongly oppositional entities, forced the quest for the authentic Paul into an either/or paradigm. First Ferdinand Christian Baur, followed by the history of religions school, created a thoroughly Hellenized Paul. A counter reaction was inevitable. The cumulative effect of the work of such divergent spirits as Paul Billerbeck, Joachim Jeremias, W. D. Davies, E. P. Sanders and many others largely succeeded in restoring a Jewish Paul. The last few decades saw the pendulum moving backwards once more. Indications of affinity between Paul’s oeuvre and Hellenistic culture are accumulating, thereby unmasking the one-sidedness of an exclusively Jewish approach. Following on the discovery that both Judaism and Hellenism were not monolithic entities, it is increasingly being recognized that Jewishness and Hellenism are, in many respects, not mutually exclusive. The either/or dichotomy is being unmasked as an ideologically based presupposition. In the wording of Engberg-Pedersen, we should now approach Paul from a point ‘beyond the Judaism/Hellenism divide’. Does this farewell to a dichotomous approach then imply the denial of all distinctiveness? We know that even in multi-cultural societies distinctive identities and religious diversity can stubbornly hold their ground. The ‘beyond’ should therefore rather be understood as a vantage point – one which is not distorted by a massive either/or disposition, but which allows for communalities and convergences, but also for hard-core incompatibilities. These factors should be kept in mind when we turn to the manner in which Paul communicated the Christian message within shifting contexts. We start with two aspects of his own life setting. . Situating Paul .. Paul’s own Multiculturalism In his well-known work Tarsus or Jerusalem, van Unnik stated quite categorically that these two cities represented two radically different worlds. The choice between Tarsus and Jerusalem was therefore one between two different Pauls: a universalistic, Hellenistic one, and a conservative, Jewish one. He set out to prove that Paul grew up in Jerusalem and that he was, in fact, a thoroughbred Palestinian Jew. However van Unnik’s position can no longer be maintained. On the one hand, we know today that the first century Jerusalem was The prominent scholar H. D. Betz (‘Hellenism’, ABD III ) called emerging Christianity ‘the intellectual and spiritual battleground on which the confrontation between Judaism and Hellenism was fought with unprecedented intensity’. T. Engberg-Pedersen, ‘Introduction’, Paul beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (ed. T. Engberg-Pedersen; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, ) –. Cf. J. J. Collins, ‘Cult and Culture: The Limits of Hellenization in Judea’, Hellenism in the Land of Israel (ed. J. J. Collins and G. E. Sterling; Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity Series ; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, ) – (). W. C. van Unnik, Tarsus or Jerusalem. The City of Paul’s Youth (London: Epworth, ) –.
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already quite considerably Hellenized and, on the other, Acts . cannot be used as proof that Paul grew up in Jerusalem. We must accept that Tarsus and Jerusalem both played a formative role in his development. Paul should be understood as a complex, multicultural, first-century Mediterranean who integrated various influences into his own person. In a sense, he can be compared to the ‘pluralistic person’ of the social psychologists. He had what they describe as ‘the capacity to accommodate diverse cultural influences so that they become part and parcel of your personal and social self-identity’. He shared this with countless others in that cultural melting-pot which constituted the Mediterranean basin. In fact, social psychologists assume that ‘everyone has the potential to accommodate many kinds of continually changing selves within the self, and actualise these selves within various life contexts’. Paul’s letters undeniably reflect such a multicultural aptitude. .. Paul between Ecumenicity and Ethnicity What motivated Paul to express himself multiculturally? We should distinguish between his broad theological stance and how he envisioned his own missionary task. Paul was convinced of the universal scope of the Christian gospel. It must suffice here to call to mind the inclusive character of passages such as Rom .; .–; .; .; .–; Cor .–. And he saw his personal mission as embedded in the universal scope of the gospel. For our purpose it is important to note that, although Paul’s correspondence primarily addressed gentile Christians, he would also have kept Jewish Christians in mind. Corinthians .– articulates Paul’s missionary strategy. The main thrust of his assertion is that he went out of his way to identify with his culturally diverse audiences. He would have done everything possible to find those ‘beachheads of identification’ from where they would be willing to accompany him on his journey of persuasion. The negative corollary to Paul’s rhetoric of inclusivity was the ever-imminent problem of inter-group prejudice. The delicate nature of inter-ethnic relations in general and actual socio-political friction between Jews and non-Jews in this period indicate that many first century Christian communities found themselves See A. B. du Toit, ‘A Tale of Two Cities: “Tarsus or Jerusalem” Revisited’, NTS () –. W. Jordaan and J. Jordaan, People in Context (Johannesburg: Heinemann, rd ed. ) . Jordaan and Jordaan, People in Context, (my italics). Cf. L. J. Lietaert Peerbolte, Paul the Missionary (CBET ; Leuven: Peeters, ) –. E. E. White, The Context of Human Discourse. A Configurational Criticism of Rhetoric (Columbia: University of South Carolina, ) . See, e.g., C. D. Stanley, ‘ “Neither Jew nor Greek”: Ethnic Conflict in Graeco-Roman Society’, JSNT () –.
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within a highly explosive situation. Paul would have done his utmost not to alienate sections of his ethnically diverse audience. Negatively, he would tread lightly where group sensitivities were at stake and, positively, he would accentuate their common Christian identity. . The Purpose of this Study My purpose is to assess the relevance and implications of the view from ‘beyond’ by applying it to some selected Pauline themes. What picture emerges from the possible convergence of motifs from divergent cultural backgrounds? I shall restrict myself to two key themes in Pauline soteriology and ecclesiology, namely, χάρις and ἐκκλησία. . Grace in Paul
. By Way of Introduction Grace signifies the theological sense which Paul made of his Damascus experience. It forms the gateway to his soteriology and certainly constitutes a central theological theme in Paul. However, I shall focus only on those aspects pertinent to this enquiry. . New Impetus from Hellenistic Research The ground-breaking work of Wetter on the honorific inscriptional material and the magical papyri, followed by the research of scholars such as Danker and, most recently, that of Joubert and Harrison, impacted dramatically on the traditional Jewish approach to χάρις. Harrison in particular made an invaluable contribution in this regard. The bearing of the Hellenistic notion of χάρις on Paul can no longer be ignored. M. G. Brett, ‘Interpreting Ethnicity’, Ethnicity and the Bible (ed. M. G. Brett; Biblical Interpretation Series ; Leiden/New York: Brill, ) – (–). See J. M. G. Barclay, ‘ “Neither Jew nor Greek”: Multiculturalism and the New Perspective on Paul’, in Ethnicity (ed. Brett), – (–). ‘Grace’ is used here as a cover-term for a semantic domain which includes χάρις, ἔλεος and οἰκτιρμός with their cognates. G. P. Wetter, Charis. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des ältesten Christentums (UNT ; Leipzig: Hinrichs, ). F. W. Danker, Benefactor. Epigraphic Study of a Graeco-Roman and New Testament Semantic Field (St. Louis: Clayton, ). S. J. Joubert, Paul as Benefactor: Reciprocity, Strategy and Theological Reflection in Paul’s Collection (WUNT . Reihe ; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ); ‘CHARIS in Paul: An Investigation into the Apostle’s Performative Application of the Language of Grace within the Framework of his Theological Reflection on the Event/Process of Salvation’, Salvation in the New Testament: Perspectives on Soteriology (ed. J. G. van der Watt; NovTSup ; Leiden/Boston: Brill, ) –. J. R. Harrison, Paul’s Language of Grace in its Graeco-Roman Context (WUNT . Reihe ; Mohr Siebeck, ).
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. Χάρις in the Salutatio of Paul’s Letters The Pauline salutatio typically contains a combination of χάρις and εἰρήνη, qualified by an ἀπό preceding the divine names. The exact genesis of the Pauline letter greeting is uncertain. There is a longstanding majority position that Paul’s choice of χάρις was consciously influenced by the χαίρειν greeting of the traditional Greek letter. The deft acoustic play between χαίρειν and χάρις may have played a role, but also more fundamental reasons. Furthermore Paul balances χάρις by adding εἰρήνη, which reflects the traditional Jewish peace greeting. By substituting χαίρειν with the two nominatives ‘grace’ and ‘peace’, the salutatio changed into a wish (may grace and peace be with you) or, more probably, a blessing (grace and peace to you). Both the addition of εἰρήνη and the switch to a benediction reflect Jewish influence. Early Jewish epistolography and liturgical conventions come into play. However, this process also may have evolved the other way round, first reflecting Jewish benedictory traditions in which ἔλεος and εἰρήνη functioned prominently, and ending up with the present Pauline salutatio. In that case, Paul’s general preference for χάρις, undergirded by the attractiveness of the χαίρεινχάρις word-play – which would certainly have startled and pleased discerning Greek ears – effectuated the substitution of ἔλεος by χάρις. For our enquiry, a decision between these alternatives is of little consequence. Important is the fact that Paul’s consistent choice for the dyadic greeting indicates his sensitivity for both Greek and Jewish cultural preferences.
But cf. G. A. Gerhard, ‘Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des griechischen Briefes I’, Philologus () –. Inter alia J. L. White, ‘New Testament Epistolary Literature in the Framework of Ancient Epistolography’, ANRW II /, – (); H.-J. Klauck, Ancient Letters and the New Testament. A Guide to Context and Exegesis (English version, with revisions and additions, of Die antike Briefliteratur und das Neue Testament [UTB ]) (Waco, TX: Baylor University, ) –, . Paul loved such acoustic effects. Cf. BDF §. More fundamentally, he would have wanted to replace an epistolary cliché with something meaningful. K. Berger, ‘Apostelbrief und apostolische Rede. Zum Formular frühchristlicher Briefe’, ZNW () – (–); Klauck, Ancient Letters, . For the peace-greeting in Semitic and Jewish letters, see inter alia E. Lohmeyer, ‘Probleme Paulinischer Theologie’, ZNW () – (–); J. A. Fitzmyer, ‘Some Notes on Aramaic Epistolography’, JBL () – (–); C. Breytenbach, ‘ “Charis” and “eleos” in Paul’s letter to the Romans’ (Seminar paper presented at the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense ; to be published in BETL; used with consent of the author) – (–). This was, in essence, the position of Lohmeyer, ‘Probleme’, –; recently taken up by Breytenbach, ‘Charis’, –.
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. Χάρις, ἔλεος and οἰκτιρμός Linguists have often faulted NT scholars for their logo-centrism. Linguistic theory requires that we should rather work with semantic fields. In referring to God’s benevolent dealings with man, χάρις, ἔλεος and οἰκτιρμός (with their cognates) belong to the same semantic field and should therefore be studied together. In Paul, divine χάρις signifies God’s kindly disposition and beneficial action towards undeserving humans. It can best be translated by ‘kindness’ or ‘favour’. The meanings of ἔλεος and οἰκτιρμός overlap significantly and both are semantically close to χάρις. However, in contra-distinction to the latter, they include a strong element of concern or compassion. Ἔλεος in Paul could probably best be translated as ‘pity’ or ‘mercy’ and οἰκτιρμός as ‘tender mercy’ or ‘compassion’. However, viewed from a diachronic perspective, there is another difference: ἔλεος and οἰκτιρμός both have significantly stronger OT-Jewish connotations than χάρις. Being the regular LXX translation for the strongly covenantal term חסד, ἔλεος occurs three times more than χάρις. Χάρις, in turn, is the regular translation equivalent for חןand then mostly in the sense of finding favour with someone, especially God. Significantly enough, probably due to Greek influence, the proportional occurrence of χάρις increases in the LXX deutero-canonical literature and the situation is dramatically reversed in Philo as well as in Paul. Breytenbach recently called attention to the importance of the Jewish tradition which depicted God as the compassionate and merciful One. The trajectory of this tradition, or variants thereof, can be followed from LXX Exod . (cf. .), through the prophets and the Psalms, into early Jewish literature and liturgy (cf. also Luke ., , , , ). Paul was certainly steeped in this tradition. One would have expected him to choose ἔλεος to verbalize the benevolence of God. His decision to use χάρις instead, was probably due to
For Paul, God’s grace was much more than a mere positive attitude. It was benevolence in action. Cf. J. D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ) . Ἔλεος/ἐλεέω/ἐλεάω/ἐλεήμων and οἰκτιρμός/οἰκτείρω/οἰκτίρμων were ‘twin’ concepts. Their concatenation served to strengthen the impact of a statement: LXX Exod .; Kings .; Ps .; . etc. J. P. Louw and E. Nida, Greek–English Lexikon of the New Testament based in Semantic Domains ( vols.; New York: United Bible Societies, ) .. Where χάρις appears times and ἔλεος only times. In Paul’s undisputed letters, χάρις, χαρίζομαι and χάρισμα, with God as subject, appear at least times (some instances are equivocal) and ἔλεος and ἐλεέω/ἐλεάω, with God as subject, only ten times. ‘Charis’, –. But see also H. J. Stoebe, ‘’חסד, THAT II –. See Breytenbach, ‘Charis’, –.
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(a) The greater semantic versatility of χάρις. We know from the LXX that ἔλεος, like חסד, could be used reciprocally. However, its semantic range did not cover ‘thankfulness’, which did form part of the semantic spectrum of χάρις. (b) The pervasive use of χάρις in Hellenistic benefaction. (c) The critical reserve towards ἔλεος in the Hellenistic intellectual tradition and particularly the radical Stoic attack on the passions.
The three important contexts in which Paul actually used ἔλεος/ἐλεέω/ ἐλεάω, namely, Rom –; . and Gal . are especially revealing. In all three instances, the influence of the OT-Jewish ἔλεος tradition, functioning
within a salvation-historical context, is evident. Romans – focuses on Israel in the new dispensation: in Rom .–, ἐλεέω/ἐλεάω occurs four times (cf. also .), and οἰκτίρω twice. The LXX quotation from the key verse Exod . highlights God’s mercy and compassion towards Israel. The Jewish connotations are undeniable. The same is true of Rom .–. Although the ἐλεέω word-group, in this case, is used predominantly for God’s mercy towards the nations, the broader context focuses on God’s universal future for Israel and the nations. In ., ἔλεος appears in a similar salvation-historical context. The same is true of the rather unusual Pauline pronouncement of ‘peace and mercy…on the Israel of God’ in Gal .. The situation is, therefore, that Paul regularly used χάρις in view of the fact that the majority of his readers/auditors were Greek-speaking non-Jews. But in contexts where strong Jewish associations and sensitivities were at stake, he preferred ἔλεος. In formulating, in varying contexts, the benevolence of God towards undeserving humans, Paul did not hesitate to utilize concepts from both Jewish and Greek cultural storehouses. He moved freely from the one to the other, but did so with sensitivity. Keeping in mind that the majority of his addressees were non-Jewish, he preferred χάρις; but within contexts focusing on Israel’s religious heritage and future hopes, he applied ἔλεος. He did not Harrison, Grace, . Stoebe, ‘’חסד, –. The reciprocal potential of χάρις to verbalize both grace bestowed and grace returned (= thanks) was already cryptically formulated by Sophocles: ἡ χάρις χάριν φέροι Oed. Col. ; χάρις χάριν γάρ ἐστιν ἡ τίκτουσ’ ἀεί Ajax . See esp. D. Konstan, Pity Transformed (Classical Interfaces; London: Duckworth, ). Cf. Apollonius’ disdainful dictum, quoted by Cicero: ‘nothing dries more quickly than a tear’ (Inv. I ). Breytenbach, ‘Charis’, –. Already R. Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, . Aufl. ) pointed to the salvation-historical connotations of ἔλεος in Rom – and .. Admittedly, there are a few exceptions: Rom .; Cor .; Cor . and Phil ..
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fuse these two traditions but juxtaposed them, respecting the cultural preferences of both Greeks and Jews, thus also reflecting the inclusiveness of God’s grace.
. Unilateral and Reciprocal The qualifications ‘unilateral’ and ‘reciprocal’ regularly surface in discussions on grace in Paul. In theological parlance, the first term indicates the absolute character of God’s action over against any human participation, while the second reflects bilateral involvement. This differentiation is then used to contrast the unilateral character of grace in Paul with its reciprocal nature in Hellenism. Although one can appreciate the motive behind this theologoumenon, it is nevertheless misleading. As we shall note, it will be more appropriate to accept that Paul also viewed grace as reciprocal, although he saw the roles within this bilaterality as radically disproportionate. He thought in reciprocal terms, but redefined reciprocity. Reciprocity need not imply commensurality or repayment. It all depends on how reciprocity is defined. Thanking and honouring God is already a form of reciprocity. Working on a debt of love (Rom .; .) is genuinely reciprocal. In Paul, the dual structure of the grace event is clearly evident in Rom .; ., Cor . and Cor .. In each case, a graceful action of God calls forth χάρις on the part of believers. In Cor ., for example, the χάρις of believers is their response to the privilege of sharing in God’s triumph. The two collection chapters ( Cor –) are in their entirety an exercise in reciprocity. Bilaterality is, for example, clearly active in .: in effect, this artful implicature states, ‘In Jesus Christ, God has been so incredibly kind to you; can you find it in your heart not to respond appropriately?’ This would have been a real knockover. In .–, balanced reciprocity, as encapsulated in the ἰσότης principle, is also quite evident. Reciprocity is once more active in Cor .–: the reference to the ‘surpassing χάρις of God’ immediately triggers the χάρις τῷ θεῷ. God’s kindness obliges. A grateful response is not restricted to a ‘thank you’ or a collection effort. In Rom .–, the οἰκτιρμοί of God motivates the consecration of one’s life to God. Gratitude may also take the form of praise and honouring God. In Rom .–, the references to God’s ἔλεος elicit a resounding doxology (.–). Similarly, the eulogy in Rom .– is a response to God’s mercy (.). E.g. Dunn, Theology, –; Harrison, Grace, passim. Paul would agree with Graeco-Roman moralists who regarded gratitude as the first essential reaction within the reciprocal cycle: ‘He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays his first instalment’ (Seneca Ben. II ). See also S. C. Mott, ‘The Power of Giving and Receiving: Reciprocity in Hellenistic Benevolence’, in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation (FS M. Tenney; ed. G. Hawthorne; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) – ().
Paulus Oecumenicus
The reciprocal character of χάρις may also be reflected in Paul’s use of εὐχαριστέω/εὐχαριστία. It may not be coincidental that εὐχαριστέω in the thanksgiving sections of Paul’s undisputed letters (except for Corinthians and Galatians), follows so closely on χάρις in the salutatio. Paul may have felt that his εὐχαριστέω should resonate to the immediately foregoing grace and peace benediction. What would have influenced Paul to apply the reciprocal character of χάρις so effectively? In view of
(a) the strongly reciprocal character of Hellenistic grace; (b) the pervasiveness of benefaction ideology in the first-century Mediterranean context and (c) χάρις being, in the words of Harrison, the very ‘leitmotiv of benefaction’, it seems obvious that, in Paul’s language of grace, he applied the grid of Hellenistic benefaction. . The Abundance of Grace, the Augustan Golden Age and the Quinqennium Neronis Whenever Paul elaborates on grace, his style tends to ‘explode’ into language of excess. Most exegetes agree that his eulogy in Rom .– on the superabundance of grace draws upon Jewish apocalyptic expectations. Harrison does not deny Jewish influence, but argues that the reign of grace in Rom .– should be equally situated in the Roman eschatology of the Augustan era. The reign of Augustus was indeed proclaimed and celebrated as the dawning of a golden age, characterized by peace and abundance – and not without reason, in view of the reform measures of Augustus, the stabilized socio-political situation and the impressive growth in Rome’s glory. The initial years of Nero Professor Cilliers Breytenbach first drew my attention to this. Due to shared research interests, we have had several discussions on χάρις. I wish to thank him for sharing his stimulating insights with me. F. Hauck, ‘περισσεύω κτλ.’, ThWNT VI, –; M. Theobald, Die überströmende Gnade. Studien zu einem paulinischen Motivfeld (Bonn: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, ) ; M. C. de Boer, The Defeat of Death. Eschatology in Corinthians and Romans (JSNTSup ; Sheffield: JSOT, ) –. For the eschatological abundance motif, cf. Isa .; .; Amos .; Ezek .– and particularly Ezra . (praeparata est habundantia). Harrison, Grace, . But see also Danker, Benefactor, . R. Jewett, Romans. A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, ) , emphasizes the Jewish apocalyptic background of this passage, but also refers to the ‘excess of benefaction in the civic cult’. Harrison, Grace, –. See also P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Jerome Lectures, th series; Ann Abor: University of Michigan, ) esp. –; D. Castriota, The Ara Pacis Augustae and the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman Imperial Art (Princeton: Princeton University, ) esp. –.
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were hailed by optimistic visions of the return of the Augustan golden age. This euphoria was spearheaded by no less than Seneca, acting together with Burrus as mentor for the young incoming princeps. Again, these expectations were not without a measure of justification. Good governance was initiated. Corruption was combated. The famous pax romana seemed to re-establish itself. What was later called the quinqennium Neronis was remembered as ‘the happiest period of the Empire since the death of Augustus’. Paul’s description of the bountiful reign of grace may therefore also be profiled against the Roman motif of a dawning golden age. If so, Roman culture enters here as a third factor in Pauline interculturality. We have here a conflation of Jewish and Roman expectations, christologically transformed. . Silhouetting Grace in Paul against its Jewish and Hellenistic Backgrounds Both the Jewish and the Hellenistic cultural worlds left their imprints on Paul’s thinking about grace. We start with his recasting of Hellenistic benefaction motifs. In comparing grace in Paul with Hellenistic benefaction, it would be unfair to extrapolate some of the latter’s most negative manifestations and present them as typical. Certainly, there were many instances of genuine philanthropy on the one hand and sincere gratitude on the other. However, we cannot ignore contemporary criticism of benefaction practices and the many indications that they became stereotyped and exteriorized. The structural correspondence between grace in Hellenistic benefaction and in Paul is evident. Both are reciprocal. Within this reciprocity, χάρις indicates both the gift bestowed by the benefactor and the positive reaction of the beneficiary. In both spheres, χάρις may involve vertical or horizontal interaction. B. M. Levick, ‘Nero’s Quinquennium’, Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History (ed. C. Deroux; Collection Latomus ; Brussels: Éditions Latomus, ) .–; M. Griffin, Nero: The End of a Dynasty (London: Batsford, ) –. W. Sanday and A. C. Headlam, The Epistle to the Romans (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, th ed. ) xiv. For the historical uncertainties surrounding this quinqennium, cf. O. Murray, ‘The “Quinqennium Neronis” and the Stoics’, Historia () –; Levick, ‘Nero’s Quinquennium’; Griffin, Nero, –, –. For the importance of Christ’s death within this context, see de Boer, Defeat, . Graeco-Roman moralists tried to put benefaction theory and practice on a loftier level. In his De Beneficiis, Seneca wrote extensively on this. He criticized the do ut des approach and indicated that gift giving has its own intrinsic reward: ‘Otherwise it would have been, not a benefaction, but a bargaining’ (Ben. II .). Cf. Joubert, Benefactor, –; T. Engberg-Pedersen, ‘Gift-giving and God’s Charis: Pierre Bourdieu, Seneca in De Beneficiis and Paul in Romans –’ (Seminar Paper presented at the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense; used with consent of the author) –, –. Cf., e. g., Mott, ‘Power’, ; Zeller, Charis bei Philon, –; and esp. Harrison, Grace, –, –. Significantly, this critique came mainly from Hellenistic-Jewish writers and GraecoRoman moralists.
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In both, gratitude was to be expected of the beneficiary. In both, χάρις on the part of the beneficiary could be in the form of or complemented by praise or the bestowal of honour. This correspondence undeniably indicates that Paul was significantly influenced by Hellenistic benefaction conventions. Only when we delve deeper, differences become manifest. The first and most obvious difference is that, contrary to the mostly material and often socio-political connotations of grace in Hellenistic benefaction, grace in Paul is constantly religious in character. The source of all grace is always and exclusively God and Jesus Christ. Even χάρις between Christian communities ( Cor –) rests on the basis of God’s grace. At the same time, it primarily addresses humanity’s religious needs, particularly the remission of sin. The second difference is that of motivation. Whereas God’s grace is totally unconditional, Hellenistic benefaction was to an important extent governed by the do ut des principle. Would-be benefactors would consider what return they could get from their beneficence – whether in the form of loyalty, power, honour or material benefits. Benefaction was often regarded as a kind of loan. It was therefore only natural to select those beneficiaries who were able to make a worthwhile counter-gesture. According to Paul, God offered his grace free of any condition or expectation of repayment (Rom .; .–). He offers it to rebels who bereaved him of his honour (Rom ., , etc.). His motivation was not the do ut des principle. It was divine love which prompted him to extend grace towards the godless (Rom .–). A third difference was the contingent and precarious character of Hellenistic benefaction. It depended on the changing fortunes and whims of benefactors, including the gods, while Christian grace, as Paul defines it, is a constant life experience. Hence he can speak of ‘this grace in which we stand’ (Rom .). Christian life exists under the dominion of grace (Rom .–; .). Grace is a power which escorts and protects. Regarding the Jewish roots of grace, the apostle took up the basic Jewish tradition of the kindness and mercy of Yahweh which flows like a broad stream through the entire OT and the early Jewish period and which would have been
Joubert, Benefactor, –, –. In Hellenism, the beneficence of the gods usually took the form of concrete favours – cf. Joubert, ‘CHARIS in Paul’, . They did not provide for salvation beyond death, the mystery religions being the only exception – H. Dörrie, ‘Gnade A I-II’, RAC XI –. Mott, ‘Power’, ; Zeller, Charis bei Philon, . H. Schlier, Der Römerbrief (HThKNT VI; Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, ) , calls this grace ‘staunenswert…ohne jegliche Analogie’. Cf. Konstan, Pity, (also –). Zeller, Charis bei Philon, .
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most positively received by him. God is never obliged to bestow grace – not initially, and also not as a result of manifestations of gratitude on the part of believers. He bestows grace for reasons of his own. At decisive points Paul radically transcends the ethos of Hellenistic benefaction. Love as the motivation for God’s action (Rom .) is Jewish to the core. Most importantly, christology was the diagnostic feature which decisively distinguished grace in Paul from Hellenistic grace. In all of Paul’s closing benedictions, χάρις is followed by a genitive of origin, identifying Jesus Christ the Lord as its source. And being christological, all Pauline grace is grace of the cross. It is God’s love in Christ (Rom ., ) which gives Christian χάρις its own special proprium. . Conclusion Paul is sensitive to differentiate between Jewish and Greek traditions. In his letter-greetings, he respects the cultural conventions of the two main constituencies among his addressees by first using χάρις – thereby alluding to the traditional Greek greeting – and then coupling it with the typical Jewish peace salutation, both reinterpreted from and integrated into a Christian perspective. Elsewhere in his letters he normally uses χάρις, respecting the sentiments of his mainly non-Jewish addressees; but where Jewish salvation-historical associations intersect with Christian hopes, he uses ἔλεος. This would appeal to both groups across the cultural divide. In his communication of grace, he applies all the linguistic and socio-cultural tools available to him. He takes up the OT-Jewish concept of God as the compassionate and merciful One, merges it with the basic structure and linguistic apparatus of Hellenistic benefaction and sends it through the christological prism. Thus both heritages are transformed. Jesus is now the agent and source of grace. And, most importantly, moving through this christological filter, grace acquires a cruciform shape.
. Ecclesia
. Introductory Remarks The roots of the NT ἐκκλησία concept have been hotly debated. Recently Ferdinand Hahn stated confidently that this bone of contention has at last been resolved, but many will disagree with him. Cf. the repeated combination of δωρεά(ν) with χάρις to emphasize the unsolicited, free character of grace (Rom .; ., ). In his excellently documented article, Mott, ‘Power’, amply demonstrated how original donors, including the gods, were obligated to continue their generosity when fitting gratitude was bestowed (esp. –). Rom .– and esp. vv. –; .–; .. F. Hahn, Theologie des Neuen Testaments ( vols.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) ..
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In the search for the roots of the NT ἐκκλησία, the either/or bias is often glaringly evident. Whereas Erik Peterson, some years ago, aligned the NT ἐκκλησία with the meetings of the Greek δῆμος, Leonhard Rost declared categorically that Jesus derived the word and concept of ἐκκλησία from the OT. In appropriating ἐκκλησία, the early church expressed its conviction to be the new Israel, the true people of God. Instead of even considering that the Greek notion of ἐκκλησία could have contributed to the application of ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ to individual churches, Rost resorted to a theological argument. Peterson and Rost represent two extremes. More recent studies show a greater openness towards bridging the divide. Klaus Berger’s position is commendably sophisticated: Hellenistic Judaism derived its understanding of ἐκκλησία from the provincial and monarchic manifestations of ἐκκλησία in Hellenism, and, subsequently, Hellenistic Jewish Christianity, although it borrowed the name ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ from Jewish terminology, appropriated the content of ἐκκλησία from Hellenistic Judaism. But here also the lady’s slip is showing. Although Berger is much more nuanced than Peterson, his work still reveals a predisposition towards minimizing the effect of Israelite-Jewish traditions. A third position is that of Schrage. He does not deny some influence on the part of the LXX; however, he is convinced that ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ was primarily an early Christian creation. But let us move in medias res.
. The Pauline Spectrum
Ἐκκλησία is not the only prominent early Christian self-designation in Paul. Ἅγιοι is also quite conspicuous. Paul applies these two designations so self-evidently that most researchers agree that they originated from pre-Pauline Christianity. I shall argue that the ἐκκλησία title originated within Greek-speaking early Christian circles in Jerusalem, spreading from there to Antioch. In Paul, the semantic range of ἐκκλησία covers the following:
The event of a (congregational) meeting, as in Cor .; ., , (, – Pauline authorship disputed).
E. Peterson, Die Kirche (München: Beck, ) – and nn. –. L. Rost, Die Vorstufen von Kirche und Synagoge im Alten Testament (BWANT . Folge Heft ; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, ) esp. . Rost, Die Vorstufen von Kirche und Synagoge, . K. Berger, ‘Volksversammlung und Gemeinde Gottes. Zu den Anfängen der christlichen Verwendung von “ekklesia” ’, ZThK () – (–, , , ). According to him the evidential basis for connecting the NT ἐκκλησία with Israel of the desert period is too small (‘Volksversammlung’, ; cf. ‘Kirche II. Neues Testament’, TRE XVIII ). W. Schrage, ‘ “Ekklesia” und “Synagoge”. Zum Ursprung des urchristlichen Kirchenbegriffs’, ZThK () –. Occurring times.
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An entity in the sense of a local congregation. The bulk of Pauline occurrences fall within this category. In a few instances, to which we shall return later, Paul may be referring to the supra-local, that is, the universal church, of which the individual churches are local manifestations.
Bearing this Pauline spectrum in mind, let us now pay attention to ἐκκλησία in the LXX and in the writings of Philo. . Ecclesia in the LXX and Philo – A Broad Overview .. Ecclesia in the LXX The unmarked meaning of ἐκκλησία in Greek is the event of ‘coming together’, a ‘meeting’. Within various contexts, this event can then become more specific, for instance, as a political or religious assembly. In the LXX, the more specific meanings assembly of the Lord (ἐκκλησία κυρίου) and assembly of Israel, particularly in the form of the prolifically used whole assembly of Israel (πᾶσα ἐκκλησία Ἰσραήλ), are especially relevant. Since in old Israel we cannot divide the religious from the political, both specified meanings refer to the same assembly: the one being qualified from its divine perspective, the other from its ethnic composition. Like (πᾶσα) ἐκκλησία Ἰσραήλ, ἐκκλησία κυρίου was an inclusive, supra-local term, embracing the entire people of God. Ἐκκλησία κυρίου occurs seven times in the LXX (Deut ., , [bis], ; Mic .; Chron . [cf. also Lam .]), while ἐκκλησία θεοῦ appears in Neh . and ἐκκλησία ὑψίστου in Sir .. Noteworthy is that קהל אלappears at least twice in the Qumran documents (QSa .; QM .). However, the presence of the ἐκκλησία κυρίου motif is not restricted to those instances where the divine genitive specifically indicates that the ἐκκλησία is the assembly of the Paul uses ἐκκλησία times as a group designation: Rom ., , , , ; Cor .; .; .; .; .; ., ; .; ., , , , []; .; ., (bis); Cor .; ., , , , ; ., ; .; Gal ., , ; Phil .; .; Thess .; .; Phlm . The bulk of these refer to local congregations (three of the latter to house churches: Rom .; Cor .; Phlm ). I purposefully chose the LXX as point of departure since the choice for ἐκκλησία most likely originated within the pre-Pauline Greek-speaking Christian movement. Josephus is not helpful in this regard. He uses ἐκκλησία times, but ἐκκλησία κυρίου/ θεοῦ is completely lacking. His ἐκκλησία is thoroughly Hellenized. Or small variations: Deut .; Josh .–; Kings ., , ; . (A); Chron ., ; Chron . (bis) etc. Thus ἐκκλησία κυρίου is the assembled λαὸς κυρίου; cf. Rost, Vorstufen, ; O. Linton, ‘Kirche I. Bedeutungsgeschichtlich’, RAC IV –. Professor Elisha Qimron, co-editor of Q (see E. Qimron & J. Strugnell, Qumran Cave V [DJD ; Oxford: Clarendon, ]), also known as QMMTc – informed me that Q –i (line ) may also have contained the phrase קהל אל. (There is a lacuna after בקהל.)
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Lord. In, for example, Deut .; . (A B); ., ἐκκλησία is used absolutely, but the divine genitive is implied. It should also be kept in mind that, originally, the meanings of ἐκκλησία and συναγωγή overlapped significantly, as can be gleaned from Num . and . where קהל יהוהis translated by συναγωγὴ κυρίου instead of ἐκκλησία κυρίου. There is an intriguing aspect to the semantic development of ἐκκλησία κυρίου. In Deut , where this phrase occurs five times, several entry conditions are stipulated. It seems likely that ἐκκλησία is here understood as a closed group with boundary markers and entrance requirements. The ἐκκλησία is becoming an entity which is not restricted to the occasion of the meeting event, but outlives it. This becomes even clearer in the tradition emanating from Deut . In Neh .–, separating those of foreign descent from the ἐκκλησία actually means excommunication from the people of Israel. The ἐκκλησία κυρίου is no longer a one-off assembly; it has acquired a permanent existence of its own and the meeting-aspect has become supplementary. The same may be true of Lam .. In QSa . and Q –i line , this Deuteronomic tradition surfaces again. In both instances קהלmost probably refers to the congregation of Qumran. Regarding the second text, Fabry is of the opinion that קהלfunctions as a fully fledged self-designation for the Qumran community (cf also CD .). Contrary to this line of thought, Berger categorically states that, before the NT, both קהלand ἐκκλησία were used only as designation for an ‘aktuell versammelte Gemeinschaft’. It is not clear how Berger can concede that we do find evidence of ‘generelle Kriterien von Gruppenmitgliedschaft’ in the unfolding of the Deut tradition but still persist in denying that before the NT קהל/ἐκκλησία became a ‘Gruppenbezeichnung’. One is inclined to ask how a group designation could be imagined without a group. The work of Jesus Ben Sirach requires special attention since this document bears important marks of interculturality. Searching for the happy medium between accommodation and preservation, Sirach’s use of ἐκκλησία reflects a striking amalgam of Greek and Jewish patterns: See F.-L. Hossfeld, ‘Gottesvolk als Versammlung’, in Unterwegs zur Kirche. Alttestamentliche Konzeptionen (ed. J. Schreiner; QD ; Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, ) –. Cf. also Judg .. As nowadays in ‘Assemblies of God’ the focus is not on the event of meeting but on a church. H.-J. Fabry, ‘ קהלqahal V’, ThWAT VI –. ‘Volksversammlung’, , . ‘Volksversammlung’, ; cf. also K. Berger, ‘Kirche II. Neues Testament’, TRE XVIII . He even affirms that in QFlor , where Deuteronomy is taken up once more, we have a group designation (‘Volksversammlung’, ). This inconsistency was also noticed by H. Merklein, ‘Die Ekklesia Gottes. Der Kirchenbegriff bei Paulus und in Jerusalem’, BZ () – (–). Cf. T. Middendorp, Die Stellung Jesu Ben Siras zwischen Judentum und Hellenismus (Leiden: Brill, ).
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Sirach basically has the meeting of a Greek δῆμος in mind. Nevertheless, the Jewish theocratic idea is not yet abandoned. This is clear from ., where he changes the traditional ἐκκλησία κυρίου to ἐκκλησία ὑψίστου in order not to offend Greek-oriented readers. In most cases, ἐκκλησία (like קהלin Sirach’s Hebrew text) refers to political meetings. In contrast, ἐκκλησία in Sir ., designates a markedly cultic occasion. However, in the Jerusalem of ca. BCE where the local authorities were also a priestly aristocracy, we should not differentiate too strictly between political and religious meetings. It would therefore be risky to identify the ἐκκλησία of Sir . as a purely political meeting. The fact that it is called an ἐκκλησία ὑψίστου rather points towards a primarily religious occasion. It is significant that here, under Greek influence, the term which traditionally had an inclusive, supra-local connotation, now refers to a local assembly. In fact, almost all the instances of ἐκκλησία in Sirach indicate local assemblies. Ἐκκλησία is never used in an eschatological sense. .. Philo
Ἐκκλησία in Philo shows the following contours:
No less than of Philo’s references to ἐκκλησία deal with Israel’s desert traditions. Hermeneutically, he actualizes these in favour of his philosophical argument. In these references, ἐκκλησία and in particular ἐκκλησία θεοῦ and variants thereof are self-evident designations. They have a cultic connotation and are (almost) always inclusive. The only instance where ἐκκλησία indicates a local congregation is Virt. : ‘And if any of them (scil. the Egyptians) should wish to go over to the Jewish community (τὴν Ἰουδαίων πολιτείαν) they must…be favoured in such a way that the third generation is invited to the congregation (εἰς ἐκκλησίαν) and to partake in the divine words’. But even here there
Middendorp, Stellung, . Middendorp, Stellung, , . Avoidance of the Yahweh name also contributed to this (cf. Neh . and Qumran). A twin concept to ἐκκλησία κυρίου, namely, πᾶσα ἐκκλησία (υἱῶν) Ἰσραήλ is used. Cf. Middenddorp, Stellung, –; N. A. Dahl, Das Volk Gottes. Eine Untersuchung zum Kirchenbewusstsein des Urchristentums (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, . Aufl. ) –. .; .; .; .; . (.); ().; .; .; .; in . an ‘unruly multitude’. Exodus references are: Dec. , ; Her. ; Post. . Direct or indirect references to Deuteronomy are: Conf. (bis); Deus ; Ebr. (bis); Leg. ., (bis); Migr. ; Mut. ; Post. ; Somn. ., ; Spec. .; Virt. . Of these, five contain direct quotations from Deut : Conf. ; Ebr. ; Leg. .; Post. ; Somn. .; cf. Virt. .
Paulus Oecumenicus
seems to be a correlation between the local Jewish community and the Jewish people as a whole. To join a local ἐκκλησία means becoming part of the Jewish people. Like Sirach, Philo avoids ἐκκλησία κυρίου. He uses it only in direct quotations from Dtn (Leg. .; Post. ; Ebr. ; Conf. ). Otherwise he replaces it with ἐκκλησία θεοῦ (Leg. .; Ebr. ), ἐκκλησία θεία (Conf. ), ἐκκλησία ἱερά (Deus ; Migr. ; Somn. ., ) or ἐκκλησία τοῦ πανηγεμόνος (Mut. ; cf. Leg. .). Ἐκκλησία indicates an assembly in Abr. ; Dec. , ; Her. ; Prob. ; Spec. .; .. Of these, Abr. ; Prob. and Spec. .; . refer to public meetings in the Greek sense. However, most of Philo’s ἐκκλησία statements referring to Deut seem to have the congregation of Israel in mind. Berger also accepts unequivocally that in Virt. Philo refers to a community – the parallelism between πολιτεία and ἐκκλησία being obvious. Nowhere in Philo does ἐκκλησία have eschatological connotations. .. Resumé The upshot of this overview is the following:
We followed the use of ἐκκλησία κυρίου and its variants from Deuteronomy, through Mic .; Lam ., Chron ., Neh ., Sirach and Philo, also including some significant references to Qumran. ‘Assembly of the Lord’, although not used prolifically, was a persistent and meaningful concept which stayed alive in the collective consciousness of the Jewish people well into the NT era. It was a precious part of Israel’s heritage, which rekindled perceptions of a pristine, foundational period when they were established as a nation, chosen by and holy unto Yahweh. The tendency to substitute the genitive κυρίου by means of other divine qualifications first appeared in Neh . (cf. Qumran) but then also in Sir . and very prominently in Philo. In the case of Sirach and Philo, not only avoidance of the tetragrammaton, but also Greek influence would have played a role. Although ἐκκλησία normally focused on the meeting event, there are a number of instances, particularly in the Deut tradition, where the focus
Notably Conf. (bis); Deus ; Ebr. (bis); Leg. . (bis); Migr. ; Mut. ; Post. ; Somn. ., . Conceded by Berger, ‘Volksversammlung’, –. Berger, ‘Volksversammlung’, : ‘Der entscheidende Schritt ist damit getan.’ However, the argument that the Christian adoption of ἐκκλησία derived exclusively from apocalyptic Judaism as manifested in Qumran (K. Stendahl, ‘Kirche II. Im Urchristentum’, RGG III – and especially J. Roloff, Die Kirche im Neuen Testament [GNT ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ] ; EWNT I ) atomizes a much longer tradition and has a very slender documentary basis.
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shifted to the group who attended these meetings. The shift from a meeting to a group, from assembly to congregation, was obviously not that dramatic. Originally ἐκκλησία κυρίου was an inclusive, supra-local term, referring to the entire people of God. In contrast, due to Greek influence, Sirach uses ἐκκλησία in a local sense. This is also the case in Philo Virt. . Ἐκκλησία did not have eschatological connotations per se. The semantic overloading of OT motifs is a pertinent example of what James Barr dubbed ‘illegitimate totality transfer’. Only when קהל/ἐκκλησία was contextualized into a broader, eschatological framework, as in Qumran, did it acquire eschatological connotations. . Ecclesia in the Pre-Pauline Jesus Movement
.. Finding a name For the Jesus movement, the initial period was one of self-definition. In their search to express their identity and to describe their religious ‘home’ within or alongside Jewry, the early Christians adopted a variety of names such as ‘disciples’, ‘holy ones’, ‘brothers’, ‘the elect’, ‘(followers of) the Way’, ‘Christians’. The function of these names was to reveal something typical and/or positive (honorific, inspirational) about the new movement. Ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ was such a prestigious self-designation which aligned the Jesus movement with the coveted tradition of Israel as the people of God. .. Why ecclesia tou theou and not ecclesia kuriou? The choice for ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ is in keeping with the tendency in Jewish sources to replace the tetragrammaton with other divine titles. W. Schrage showed how synagoge followed the same route: From an originally inclusive term, it became a local designation – ‘Ekklesia’, , ; ‘συναγωγή’, ThWNT VII –. For the same process in Qumran, cf. Müller, ‘qahal’, . H. Braun, Qumran und das Neue Testament ( vols.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) .–, compares the two processes. Cf. W. G. Kümmel, Kirchenbegriff und Geschichtsbewusstsein in der Urgemeinde und bei Jesus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, . Aufl. ) –; W. Schenk, ‘Die ältesten Selbstverständnisse christlicher Gruppen im ersten Jahrhundert’, ANRW II /, –; Roloff, Kirche, –. These in-group designations should be distinguished from derogatory nicknames originating from opposition groups and which were in certain instances appropriated as honorific. In QM . ‘assembly of God’ is one of several prestigious and inspiring insignia on the war banners of the community. Pace, inter alia, Dahl, Volk Gottes, –; Merklein, ‘Ekklesia Gottes’, –; Dunn, Theology, –; Hahn, Theologie, II –; T. Söding, ‘Ekklesia und Koinonia. Grundbegriffe paulinischer Ekklesiologie’, Catholica () –. This agrees with the NT tendency to replace kyrios, in referring to God, by theos. Whereas in the LXX the ratio of kyrios to theos is roughly :, it is in the NT (excluding quotations) roughly :.
Paulus Oecumenicus
.. Why ecclesia and not synagoge? Schrage proved the fallacy of playing off these two terms against one another. Although the LXX used ἐκκλησία as a translation for קהלalmost twice as often as συναγωγή, there seems to be, theologically speaking, no convincing reason why the one was preferred to the other. Although Schrage’s own theory for the choice of ἐκκλησία has not been found convincing, he was nevertheless correct in arguing that the choice for ἐκκλησία should rather be sought in first-century group dynamics. At this stage, the synagogue system was already well established. The Jesus followers needed a name that would not only express their belief that they were the rightful heirs of the precious convictions, values and hopes of Israel, but also distinguish them from contemporary Judaism. For the emerging Christian movement blatantly to claim to be the ‘synagogue of God’ would be to invite confrontation. Therefore ἐκκλησία was an obvious choice. .. In which circles did the ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ title originate? Although ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ would have been less offensive to Jewish ears, the claim to such a coveted title was still a drastic one. It should therefore rather be ascribed to the ‘Hellenists’, that is, the (more progressive) Greek-speaking Christian Jews in Jerusalem, than to the theologically conservative so-called ‘Jewish Christians’. Having originated in Jerusalem, it would have spread to Antioch and elsewhere. .. Concluding remarks about ecclesia in the pre-Pauline Hellenistic church
Like other early Christian titles, and in keeping with its traditional use,
ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ would have designated the Jesus movement in its totality. However, the need to identify individual churches would arise when the Jesus movement settled in multiple locations. We already noted how Ben Sirach adapted to the Greek convention of using ἐκκλησία for a local assembly. Likewise, the pervasive presence of Greek ἐκκλησίαι would have induced
See Schrage ‘Ekklesia’, –. Roloff’s statement (Kirche, n. ) that the LXX preferred to translate qahal with synagoge is incorrect. Ἐκκλησία translated קהל times and συναγωγή only times – cf. HRCS s.v. His argument was that the ‘Hellenists’ could not identify with the centrality of the law in the synagogue. Cf. K. L. Schmidt, ‘καλέω κτλ.’, ThWNT III, –; Campbell, ‘Origin’, ; Schrage, ‘Ekklesia’, ; M. Hengel, ‘Zwischen Jesus und Paulus’, ZThK () . For the theological position of the ‘Hellenists’, see Schrage, ‘Ekklesia’, –; H. Räisänen, ‘Die “Hellenisten” der Urgemeinde’, ANRW II . –. It is scarcely by accident that the only NT reference to a Christian synagogue occurs in James .. It cannot be absolutely ruled out that, similar to Qumran, already the Aramaic-speaking church may have called itself the קהל אל/קהלא, but this is less likely.
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early Christians to apply this title to individual churches. Once again we have to reckon with a confluence of Jewish and Greek ideas: the Jewish heritage manifesting itself in envisaging the ἐκκλησία as an inclusive, supra-local entity, Greek convention manifesting itself in the application of this title to local churches. There was another facilitating factor: theologically speaking, the divine genitive indicated that there was no essential difference between the ecumenical ἐκκλησία and an individual one. As we have seen, the early Christians were not the first or unique in implementing the semantic shift in ἐκκλησία towards a group. However, they implemented this transition on a much grander scale. The Christian innovation also did not lie primarily in their claim to be the ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ. Qumran did the same before them. It was their association with Jesus Christ which differentiated them from other ἐκκλησίαι and which qualified their existence as eschatological. . Back to ecclesia in Paul
.. A bird’s-eye view In Jerusalem or Antioch Paul would have become acquainted with the Christian use of the ἐκκλησία title. He applies ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ eight times, but the divine genitive is implied in all his references to ἐκκλησία as an institution. References to local churches dominate overwhelmingly. This is perfectly understandable in light of his pioneering pastoral work. Hellenistic convention would undoubtedly have acted as a catalyst in this process of individualization. Nevertheless, there probably are a few exceptions. Reflecting on his past in Judaism, Paul states in Gal . that he was persecuting (ἐδίωκον) the ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ and was trying to annihilate it (ἐπόρθουν αὐτήν). Significantly enough he then spells out this single entity (cf. αὐτήν) as consisting of the congregations in Judea (.–). Through his action against the congregations in Judea he aspired to exterminate the church of God in its entirety. The self-evident way in which Paul applied this term to local congregations indicates that he inherited it. Recently M. Wolter, ‘Von der Entmachtung des Buchstabens durch seine Attribute’, Sprachgewinn. Festschrift für Günter Bader (ed. H. Assel and H.-C. Askani; Arbeiten zur Historischen und Systematischen Theologie ; Münster: Lit-Verlag, ) – (–), drew attention to the far-reaching semantic implications of this genitive in Paul. I would like to thank him for his thought-provoking insights which he kindly shared with me. Cor .; .; ., ; .; Cor .; Gal .; Thess .; cf also Acts .. Of the instances of ἐκκλησία as a Christian self-designation (cf. n. ), at least refer to local congregations. J. Hainz, Ekklesia. Strukturen paulinischer Gemeinde-Theologie und Gemeinde-Ordnung (BU ; Regensburg: Pustet, ) –, influenced by Holl, argued that ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ in
Paulus Oecumenicus
Evidently Paul saw a direct correlation between the church as a whole and the concrete, local churches. Both essentially belong together, being qualified by the divine genitive. In Cor ., he uses a statement about the ecumenical church (cf. the ‘apostles’) to bring home how believers should behave within the Corinthian congregation. What is valid for the one is valid for the other (Gal .; Cor .; cf. Cor .; .; Phil .). Also Bultmann’s gut feeling that the adscriptiones of both Cor . and Cor . actually meant ‘to the church of God in so far as she is situated in Corinth’, may not be far off the mark. At any rate, we can safely reckon with at least three instances (Gal .; Cor .; .) where Paul, in keeping with early Christian custom, used ἐκκλησία in an inclusive sense. In Paul it is even more apparent that Jesus Christ was the factor which transformed this new ἐκκλησία from a primarily Jewish off-shoot into a Christian one. This is indicated by the qualification of ἐκκλησία as being ‘in Christ (Jesus)’ ( Thess .; Gal .), ‘in the Lord Jesus Christ’ ( Thess .) or simply ‘the ἐκκλησία of the Christ’ (Rom .). .. Resumé Since our enquiry focuses on the roots of ἐκκλησία in Paul and not on his theology of ἐκκλησία, a few concluding remarks must suffice:
In keeping with the historical development of the early Christian ἐκκλησία concept, its holistic character formed the initial focus. However, Paul’s concern for the young churches within the orbit of his responsibility necessitated a focus on individual congregations. He was conscious of the universal church and, within the broad scope of his missionary vision, it was indeed important to him. But at this stage it was not yet an object of focused theological contemplation. In Ephesians and Colossians, as later in the Didache, a more articulate view of the ecumenical church came into focus. In Christ ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ became a thoroughly eschatological concept, closely associated with, but still to be differentiated from ‘kingdom of God’. If ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ indicated that the church was the new, eschatological people of God, how did Paul envisage the relation between this new ἐκκλησία and Israel? In a bold statement (Gal .), he called the church
Gal . was a technical term for the mother church. However, Paul’s specification that the congregations in Judea (.–) were in fact the object of his persecution, makes this problematic. Bultmann, Theologie, ; also F. Hahn, ‘Die Einheit der Kirche nach dem Zeugnis des Apostels Paulus’, Ekklesiologie des Neuen Testaments: Für Karl Kertelge (ed. R. Kampling and T. Söding; Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, ) – (), and Dunn, Theology, . Cf. the moving eucharistic prayers in Did. .; ..
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‘the Israel of God’. This re-definition of Israel may either imply that the church replaced the historical Israel or that ‘Israel’ now included Israelite as well as non-Israelite believers. Πᾶς Ἰσραήλ in Rom . vindicates the latter option. The future coming together of πᾶς Ἰσραήλ will signal the final stage of a long trajectory originating in the desert traditions of Israel. This emphasizes salvation-historical continuity, not discontinuity. Ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ is therefore to be understood, not in the spirit of confrontation, but as an open invitation to join in as God’s salvation-historical drama draws towards its close. Once again we have to reckon with a synergism of OT-Jewish and Hellenistic elements. Whereas in the original OT view of ἐκκλησία κυρίου Israel was holistically seen as a holy people belonging to God, the Greek convention of using ἐκκλησία to indicate the assembly of the local δῆμος triggered and promoted the application of ἐκκλησία to local assemblies, as reflected particularly in the letters of Paul. Theologically, the OT heritage of Israel as the ‘assembly of God’ redefined christologically, indicates that the church, in its supra-local as well as its local sense, is the repristinated kernel of God’s people, praying and working for the consummation of ‘all Israel’.
. Major Conclusion
By the time the NT documents were written, more than three and a half centuries of inter-group contact between Hellenistic and other cultures had passed. From around the middle of the first century BCE, Roman presence also made itself felt. For too long our research paid scant attention to the impact of interculturality. After the work of Martin Hengel and others, we should have known better. For too long we thought in terms of an either/or dichotomy and were hampered by ideological predispositions and tunnel vision. Our new approach should rather be one that focuses beyond the cultural divide. But this ‘beyond’ should not, in turn, become a new shibboleth. It should signify an unbiased openness to the possibility of interculturality. We may often find that various cultures interacted, as in the case of χάρις and ἐκκλησία. In other instances it may turn out that a certain motif had either a Jewish or a Hellenistic or even a different (e.g. Roman) provenance. Also, infatuation with diverse cultural roots should not blind our eyes to the creative energy set free within an emerging faith movement such as early Christianity. And finally, the both-and does not mean that, theologically, Jewish and other influences balance one another. The Israelite basis of the Christian message remains its Wolter, ‘Entmachtung’, , aptly describes it as a ‘semantische Neubestimmung des IsraelBegriffs’. Thus in particular Hahn, ‘Einheit’, , and Theologie, ., .–.
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inalienable fountain-head. The waters flowing from that source certainly intermingled with other streams but did not forfeit their essential character. Certain elements in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition proved irreconcilable with Hellenism. In this more narrowly defined sense the ‘battlefield’ metaphor does contain an important truth. It will be necessary to distinguish between such hard-core biblical convictions and values, and the cultural vehicles by means of which they were communicated. The study of origins may certainly help us to understand the genesis and development of NT notions. It may also provide us with important clues as to their semantics. But we should be cautious. Genetics are not decisive. Decisive is the way in which the early Christians adopted, adapted and contextualized these notions into their own religious universe. Only a conscientious synchronic study of individual NT texts will reveal how various cultural and religious phenomena were received and transformed in moving through the christological prism. An exercise along these lines will certainly be full of pitfalls. One should, for instance, ask how thoroughly certain ideas or formulations were adopted – for instance, in the case of borrowed metaphors. Nevertheless, the ‘beyond’ position may deliver us from many former cul-de-sacs. It also holds promise for the future. As such, it may indeed signify the closing of one chapter and the beginning of a fascinating new one.
Additional note: This may eventually result in a new Kittel.
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0028688509000101
Torah Observance and Radicalization in the First Gospel. Matthew and First-Century Judaism: A Contribution to the Debate* E´ LI AN C UV I LL I E R Faculte´ de the´ologie protestante, Montpellier, France email:
[email protected].
L’article analyse la tension, repérable dans quelques passages du premier Évangile, entre l’obéissance aux commandements se situant à l’intérieur du cadre donné par la Loi, et la radicalisation à laquelle invite le Jésus matthéen. L’enquête débute par une exégèse détaillée de Mt , –. Dans un second temps, elle s’intéresse à trois épisodes où la tension entre obéissance et radicalisation est apparente: les antithèses du Sermon sur la Montagne (, –); la controverse sur le divorce (, –); l’épisode du jeune homme riche (, –). Dans une troisième partie, l’interrogation porte sur la cohérence des passages analysés avec la déclaration de Jésus en Mt , –. Il résulte de l’enquête le constat que le référent du premier Évangile s’est déplacé: la colonne vertébrale structurant la théologie de Matthieu—et donc son identité religieuse—n’est plus prioritairement la Loi et l’obéissance aux commandements, mais le Messie et son enseignement. Keywords: Gospel of Matthew, Law, Jewish-Christianity, Sermon on the Mount
The fact that the First Gospel is rooted in the traditions of first-century Judaism is obvious. Introductory texts and commentaries typically mention the literary characteristics of Matthew’s Gospel only to come to the unanimous conclusion that ‘the humus of the First Gospel is Semitic, Old Testament-oriented and Palestinian’. As a counterpart, they similarly highlight the sharpness of his polemical questioning of the Jewish religious leaders of his time. This goes along with Jesus’ numerous controversies with Jewish authorities, especially the
* Main paper read, in French, at the SNTS General Meeting at Lund, Sweden, in . I would like to thank colleagues for their questions and critical remarks during and after the Meeting. I would also like to express my warmest thanks to Mireille Hébert who translated my French manuscript into English and to Douglas Nelson who read it through. B. Rigaux, Témoignage de l’Évangile de Matthieu (Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, ) . An issue much commented upon. See, for example, U. Luz, ‘Le problème historique et théologique de l’anti-judaïsme dans l’Évangile de Matthieu’, Le déchirement. Juifs et chrétiens au premier siècle (ed. Daniel Marguerat; Genève: Labor et Fides, ) –;
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Pharisees, the polemical use of some passages in the OT, the invective of chap. , as well as some specific Matthean traditions in the story of the Passion intended to heighten the culpability of Israel in the death of Jesus. Scholars widely agree in their interpretation of this twofold phenomenon. Matthew, who writes his Gospel in the late first century, bears witness to an interpretive conflict which brought him into opposition to the Pharisaic Judaism of his time. It then raises the question as to whether his critiques are intra muros or extra-muros, i.e., within the walls of Judaism or outside them. In other words, does he interpret himself and his community as still belonging to Judaism or is he consciously assuming a rupture? The best place to explore the debate concerning Matthew’s identity and that of his community is his interpretation of the law. This question is a well-known crux interpretum in studies of Matthew’s Gospel and whoever studies it takes a place in an extended interpretive tradition. Contemporary interpretation often formulates
Élian Cuvillier, ‘Matthieu et le judaïsme: chronique d’une rupture annoncée’, Foi et Vie () –. Matt .–; .–, –, –; .–; .–; .–; .–; .–, –, –. See, for example, Matt .–; .–; .; .–. See, for example, Matt .– and .–. See a rather complete treatment of this issue in Warren Carter, ‘Matthew’s Gospel: Jewish Christianity, Christian Judaism, or Neither?’, Jewish Christianity Reconsidered. Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts (ed. M. Jackson-McCabe; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, ) – . Carter holds that Matthew belongs to Judaism, along with A. J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: University of Chicago, ), and J. A. Overman, Church and Community in Crisis. The Gospel According to Matthew (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, ). The more classical stance is taken by U. Luz, ‘L’évangéliste Matthieu: un judéo-chrétien à la croisée des chemins’, La mémoire et le temps. Mélanges offerts à Pierre Bonnard (ed. D. Marguerat and J. Zumstein; Genève: Labor et Fides, ) –; G. N. Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ); D. A. Hagner, ‘Matthew: Apostate, Reformer, Revolutionary?’, NTS () –. Concerning the tension between particularism and universalism which is evident in Matthew and can be linked to this issue, see Élian Cuvillier, ‘Particularisme et universalisme chez Matthieu: quelques hypothèses à l’épreuve du texte’, Biblica () –; see also idem, ‘Mission vers Israël ou mission vers les païens? À propos d’une tension féconde dans le premier Évangile’, Analyse narrative et Bible. Deuxième colloque international du RRENAB, Louvain-La-Neuve, avril (ed. A. Wénin and C. Focant; Leuven: University Press, ) –. These two contributions have been reprinted in Élian Cuvillier, Naissance et enfance d’un Dieu. Jésus-Christ dans l’Évangile de Matthieu (Paris: Bayard, ) –. Among numerous authors dealing with this subject – apart from commentaries on the First Gospel of course—see G. Barth, ‘Das Gesetzesverständnis des Evangelisten Matthaüs’, Überlieferung und Auslegung im Matthäusevangelium (ed. G. Bornkamm, G. Barth and H. J. Held; Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener, ) – (English translation: ‘Matthew’s Understanding of the Law’, Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew [London, SCM, nd ed. ] –); E. Schweizer, ‘Matt .–. Anmerkungen zum Gesetzverständnis des
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the point as follows: In his relationship to the law, does Matthew’s Jesus remain within all or part of Jewish tradition and more specifically that of the Pharisees, or does he break with it? Presented in these terms, the question infers that one must explore the understanding of the law in first-century Jewish writings in
Matthaüs’, Neotestamentica (Zürich: Zwingli, ) –; idem, ‘Noch einmal Mt ,–’, Matthaüs und seine Gemeinde (Stuttgart: KBW, ) –; G. Strecker, Der Weg der Gerechtigkeit. Untersuchungen zur Theologie des Matthäus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, nd ed. ) –; B. Corsani, ‘La posizione di Gesù di fronte alla legge seconde il Vangelo di Matteo e l’interpretazione di Mt ,–’, Ricerche Bibliche e Religiose () –; R. G. Hamerton-Kelly, ‘Attitudes to the Law in Matthew’s Gospel: A Discussion of Matthew .’, Biblical Research () –; R. Banks, ‘Matthew’s Understanding of the Law: Authenticity and Interpretation in Matthew .–’, JBL () –; idem, Jesus and the Law in the Synoptic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) –; J. P. Meier, Law and History in Matthew’s Gospel. A Redactional Study of Matt. .– (Rome: Biblical Institute, ); J. Zumstein, La condition du croyant dans l’Évangile selon Matthieu (Fribourg/Göttingen: Éditions Universitaires/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) –; J. Zumstein, ‘Loi et Évangile dans le témoignage de Matthieu’, Miettes exégétiques (Genève: Labor et Fides, ) –; L. Sabourin, ‘Mathieu , – et le rôle prophétique de la Loi (cf. Mt , )’, Science et Esprit () –; U. Luz, ‘Die Erfüllung des Gesetzes bei Matthäus (Mt ,–)’, ZThK () –; D. Wenham, ‘Jesus and the Law: An Exegesis on Matthew .–’, Themelios () –; N. J. McEleney, ‘The Principles of the Sermon on the Mount’, CBQ () –; D. Marguerat, Le jugement dans l’Évangile de Matthieu (Genève: Labor et Fides, st ed. , nd ed. ) –; idem, ‘”Pas un iota ne passera de la Loi…” (Mt , ). La Loi dans l’Évangile de Matthieu’, La Loi dans l’un et l’autre Testament (ed. C. Focant; Paris: Cerf, ) –; H.-D. Betz, ‘Die hermeneutischen Prinzipen in der Bergpredigt (Mt .–)’, Synoptischen Studien (Tübingen: Mohr, ) – (st ed. ; English trans., ‘The Hermeneutical Principles of the Sermon on the Mount’, Essays on the Sermon on the Mount [Philadelphia: Fortress, ] –); idem, The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew .– . and Luke .–) (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, ) –; P. Beauchamp, ‘L’Évangile de Matthieu et l’héritage d’Israël’, RSR (), –; F. Vouga, Jésus et la Loi selon la tradition synoptique (Genève: Labor et Fides, ), –; M. Stiewe and F. Vouga, Le Sermon sur la Montagne. Un abrégé de l’Évangile dans le miroitement de ses interprétations (Genève: Labor et Fides, ), esp. –; M. Dumais, Le Sermon sur la Montagne. État de la recherche. Interprétation. Bibliographie (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, ), esp. –: ‘L’accomplissement de la Loi (Mt , –)’; R. K. Snodgrass, ‘Matthew and the Law’, Treasures New and Old. Recent Contributions to Matthean Studies (ed. David R. Bauer and Mark Allan Powell; Atlanta: Scholars Press, ) –; D. A. Hagner, ‘Balancing the Old and the New: The Law of Moses in Matthew and Paul’, Interpretation () –; Élian Cuvillier, ‘La Loi comme réalité avant-dernière: Mt , – et son déploiement narratif dans l’Évangile de Matthieu’, Raconter, interpréter, annoncer. Parcours de Nouveau Testament (ed. Y. Bourquin and E. Steffek; Genève: Labor et Fides, ), – ; P. Foster, Community, Law and Mission in Matthew’s Gospel (WUNT .; Tübingen: Mohr, ); R. Deines, Die Gerechtigkeit der Tora im Reich des Messias. Mt , – als Schlüsseltext der matthäischen Theologie (WUNT ; Tübingen: Mohr, ); C. Focant,
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the same way as one does in the First Gospel. Such an enquiry is largely beyond the scope of this study, so I will restrict my investigation to the examination of the tensions that can be traced in the narrative between obedience to commandments within the framework of the law and the radicalization suggested by the Matthean Jesus, which shatters that framework. What is to be shown in the passages to be studied is the way in which Matthew constructs the relationship between Jesus and the law. I begin my investigation with a detailed exegesis of Matt. .–, a key pericope as far as the Matthean interpretation of the law is concerned. Then, I will analyse three passages where the tensions between observance and radicalization can be observed. First, and most naturally, the Antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount (.–); second, the divorce controversy (.–); and finally the rich
‘“D’une montagne à l’autre”. L’accomplissement de la loi et des prophètes dans le Sermon sur la montagne’, L’unité de l’un et l’autre Testament dans l’œuvre de Paul Beauchamp (Paris: Facultés jésuites de Paris, ) –; W. Reinbold, ‘Das Matthäusevangelium, die Pharisäer und die Tora’, BZ () –; M. Konradt, ‘Die vollkommene Erfüllung der Tora und der Konflikt mit den Pharisäern im Matthäusevangelium’, Das Gesetz im frühen Judentum und im Neuen Testament. Festschrift für Christoph Burchard zum . Geburtstag (ed. D. Sänger and M. Konradt; Göttingen/Fribourg: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) – . For a helpful summary of the question, see G. N. Stanton ‘The Origin and Purpose of Matthew’s Gospel: Matthean Scholarship from –’, ANRW II.. () –; D. Senior, What Are They Saying about Matthew? A Revised and Expanded Edition (Mahwah: Paulist, ) –. For a more complete bibliography (up to ), see M. Dumais, Le Sermon sur la Montagne, –. On this, see the now classic E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, ; German trans., Paulus und das palästinische Judentum. Ein Vergleich zweier Religionsstrukturen [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ]). Sanders’ theses are questioned today, and the fact that ‘covenantal nomism’ cannot account for the diversity of first-century Jewish trends is particularly stressed; cf. C. L. Quarles, ‘The Soteriology of R. Akiba and E. P. Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism’, NTS () –; Justification and Variegated Nomism. Vol. : The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (ed. D. A. Carson, P. T. O’Brien and M. A. Seifrid; Tübingen: Mohr, ); also, D. Steinmetz, ‘Justification by Deed: The Conclusion of the Sanhedrin-Makkot and Paul’s Rejection of Law’, HUCA () – (on Sanders in particular, see –). For a wider study of the law in Second Temple Judaism, see A.-M. Denis, ‘La place de la loi de Moïse à Qumrân et dans le judaïsme du deuxième Temple’, Papers on the Dead Sea Scrolls Offered in Memory of Jean Carmignac. Part . The Teacher of Righteousness: Literary Studies (ed. J. Z. Kapera; Kraków: Enigma, ) –; H. Lichtenberger, ‘Das Tora-Verständnis im Judentum zur Zeit des Paulus. Eine Skizze’, Paul and the Mosaic Law (ed. J. D. G. Dunn; Tübingen: Mohr, ) –; H. Hoffmann, Das Gesetz in der frühjüdischen Apokalyptik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ); S. Burkes, ‘“Life” Redefined: Wisdom and Law in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch’, CBQ () –. I do not discuss here the accuracy of Matthew’s presentation of the Pharisaic understanding of the law—a highly controversial debate which is beyond the scope of this study.
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young man episode (.–). The third and final part of my investigation will examine how these passages are consistent with what Jesus declares in Matt. .–. My conclusion will offer some reflections about Matthew’s relationship with the Judaism of his time.
. Matthew .–: Obedience to the Commandments and Superior Righteousness
Matthew .– is central, not only within the Sermon on the Mount, but more widely in the Gospel as a whole. It is, indeed, Jesus’ very first declaration about the meaning of his coming (v. : ἦλθον). It is significant in that it concerns his relationship to the law and the prophets. The argumentation which is used must therefore be analysed very carefully.
Verse
The beginning deserves attention. The very way in which the misunderstanding about Jesus’ coming is formulated (τὸν νόμον ἢ τοὺς προφήτας) shows that Matthew gives Jesus authority over the most basic Jewish traditions: Jesus is superior to the law and the prophets, since his coming raises the issue of whether they are permanent or coming to an end. His coming provokes a new definition of the current religious traditions and becomes the standard for re-evaluating them. In opposition to those who hold that his coming implies the abolishment of the law and the prophets (μὴ νομίσητε ὅτι ἦλθον) the Matthean Jesus actually repudiates this idea. He has not come to ‘abolish’ (καταλῦσαι), but to ‘fulfil’ (πληρῶσαι). The idea of fulfilment is typically Matthean. The verb πληρῶσαι is never used for the disciples, but is exclusively applied to the interpretation of My choice is to interpret the text in its final redaction. For the traditions used by Matthew and his redactional activity, see Meier, Law and History. It is generally held that Matthew altered the traditional form of vv. –, wrote v. and entirely composed v. . Of course, scholarship has discussed at length the details of this consensus. In the remainder of the narrative, Jesus pronounces three declarations, all starting with ἦλθον: they stress an important element of the Matthean reflection on the work of the Messiah. Besides . (Jesus fulfils the law), see . (Jesus calls the sinners), . (Jesus is the cause of discord), and . (Jesus as servant). According to Zumstein (La condition du croyant, ), ‘les paroles en ἦλθον décrivent […] de manière rétrospective et synthétique le sens de la mission du Christ’. Jesus is the ‘didascale eschatologique’, as Daniel Marguerat puts it (‘Pas un iota’, ). C. Focant, ‘Eschatologie et questionnement éthique dans l’Évangile de Matthieu’ (to be published in Actes du Colloque ‘Eschatologie et Morale’, Paris – mars [Paris: Desclée] ), aptly notes that the disciples are ‘invités à produire (ποιεȋν) du fruit (, .; , ), à
Torah Observance and Radicalization
Jesus’ coming in connection with the traditions of Judaism. Should the verb be interpreted in the sense of ‘observing’ the commandments of the law and the prophets, or of ‘fulfilling the promises’ they contain? To answer this question one must take into account Matthew’s other uses of the verb as well as the immediate context (.–). First let us note that in v. the opposition is not between ‘abolishing’ and ‘obeying’ but between ‘abolishing’ and ‘fulfilling’. And in Matthew, the verb πληρόω is used in the context of fulfilment (see the phrase ἵνα πληρώθῃ or equivalent) in order to express the conviction that the Scriptures, i.e., the law and the prophets, are accomplished in Jesus (see .–; ., –, ; .–; .; .–; .–, ; .–; .–; also ., ). It is not therefore primarily the law understood as commandments which is at stake here—that will be the case in the next verse—but the ‘law and the prophets’ as an expression of the will of God and hope for Israel. The verb ‘fulfil’ has a meaning here which goes beyond the simple issue of observance of the commandments: for Matthew Jesus fulfils the hope of Israel by giving the law and the prophets’ promises their real meaning. This will be confirmed by the Antitheses (.–) in which Jesus goes far beyond the demands of the law (see below .).
pratiquer (ποιεȋν) les commandements (, ), leur justice (, ) ou la volonté de Dieu (, ; , ; voir aussi , ..; , ; , .), à chercher (ζητεȋν) la justice du Royaume (, ) et enfin à garder (τηρεȋν) les commandements (, ; , ) ou tout ce que Jésus a prescrit’. I am very grateful to the author for having made his text available to me. This is a rather compressed way of dealing with a more complex debate. On the various interpretations of the verb (nine in total), see W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, I–VII (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ) –. On this see J. Miler, Les citations d’accomplissement dans l’Évangile de Matthieu. Quand Dieu se rend présent en toute humanité (Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, ). The phrase ‘the law and the prophets’ can be found in Matt ., which results in a long inclusion starting with .. So the Sermon on the Mount is indeed an illustration of the way Matthew’s Jesus fulfils them. And as we shall see, this fulfilling goes beyond simple legal obedience. So also Dumais, Le Sermon sur la Montagne, : ‘Jésus est venu accomplir l’Écriture, cela veut dire qu’il la porte à son achèvement, à sa perfection, à la signification complète; il la réalise, non pas en “exécutant” ses demandes telles quelles, mais en la dépassant, en lui faisant porter un sens nouveau’; Focant, ‘D’une montagne à l’autre’, : ‘Jésus ne se présente ni comme un transgresseur de la loi dans son action concrète, ni comme un strict observant toujours prêt à étendre le champ de la loi. Son interprétation de la Torah d’Israël ne vise certes pas à l’annuler. Il veut plutôt la conduire à sa plénitude’; also Zumstein, La condition du croyant, –; Meier, Law and History in Matthew’s Gospel, –; Davies and Allison, Matthew, I–VII, –. For the opposite viewpoint (i.e. by obeying its commandments Jesus ‘fulfils’ the law), see Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, : the verb πληρόω ‘describe[s] a process of legal interpretation’.
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Verses –
It is the status of the law as letter (ἰῶτα ἓν ἢ µία κεραία) and commandment (ἐντολή) which is now exposed in vv. –. The scope of reflection is reduced compared to v. (: ἀπὸ τοῦ νόμου versus : τὸν νόμον ἢ τοὺς προφήτας). Verse bears witness to the importance attached by the evangelist to the observance of the commandments of the law. The claim corresponds to numerous texts in contemporaneous Judaism which stress the immutability of the law. Matthew agrees with the majority of the Jewish trends of his time. Yet, the way he constructs the verse is quite significant. The assertion of the permanence of the law—starting with the word ‘Amen’, which emphasizes its authoritative character—is actually framed by two clauses introduced by ἕως which indicate its limits and ‘moderate [its] absoluteness’:
ἀμὴν γὰρ λέγω ὑμȋν For truly, I say to you,
ἕως ἂν παρέλθῃ ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ until heaven and earth pass away,
ἰῶτα ἓν ἢ µία κεραία οὐ μὴ παρέλθῃ ἀπὸ τοῦ νόμου not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law,
ἓως ἂν πάντα γένηται until all has happened.
As regards the meaning of the two clauses beginning with ἓως ἄν the debate is largely open. Some scholars contend that the phrase ‘until heaven and earth pass away’ stands for ‘never’, whereas for others it refers to the end of time. The debate concerning the second clause is more complicated: does ‘until all has happened’ mean ‘until all the commandments are observed’ (the ethical
Cf. Bar. .: ‘This is the book of the commandments of God, and the law, that is for ever (ὁ νόμος ὁ ὑπάρχων εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα); all they that keep it, shall come to life: but they that have forsaken it, to death’; Wis. .: ‘the incorruptible light of the law (τὸ ἄφθαρτον νόμου φῶς)’; Bar. .: ‘And though we depart, yet the law remains’; Pseudo-Philo, LAB .: ‘an everlasting law’; Josephus, Apion .: ‘for though we be deprived of our wealth, of our cities, or of the other advantages we have, our law continues immortal (ὁ νόμος ἡμȋν ἀθάνατος διαμένει)’; Ezra .–: ‘For we who have received the law and sinned will perish, as well as our heart which received it; the law, however, does not perish but remains in its glory’. Dumais, Le Sermon sur la Montagne, : ‘[Qui] viennent nuancer […] le caractère absolu de l’affirmation’. Cf. Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, : ‘The authority of Scripture is temporally limited’. U. Luz, Matthew – (Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress, ) . Meier, Law and History, ; Zumstein, La condition du croyant, .
Torah Observance and Radicalization
interpretation) or ‘until Christ accomplishes the Scripture through his death and resurrection’ (the Christological interpretation)? Or must we understand the second statement as repeating and clarifying the first one, thereby eliminating the possibility of interpreting it as ‘never’? It seems to me that the second hypothesis best corresponds to the textual data. It takes into account the specific structure of the verse: the two statements starting with ἓως ἄν echo each other and stand as a counterbalance to the affirmation of the validity of the law. On the other hand, they are to be heard in contrast with another of the Matthean Jesus’ sayings in Matt .:
ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ παρελεύσεται Heaven and earth will pass away
οἱ δὲ λόγοι μου οὐ μὴ παρέλθωσιν
but my words will certainly not pass away.
If the idea that the law will exist as long as heaven and earth do can be found in Judaism (see in particular a similar phrase introduced by ἓως ἄν in Philo, Vita Mosis, .) the affirmation that the Messiah’s words will not pass away even if heaven and earth do seems unique to Matthew’s Gospel when compared to the Jewish literature of the time. He considers that the Messiah Jesus’ sayings are absolutely permanent whereas the permanence of the law is relative. Matt Zumstein, La condition du croyant, ; Marguerat, Le jugement dans l’Évangile de Matthieu, . Meier, Law and History, –; Banks, Jesus and the Law, –. Davies and Allison, Matthew, I–VII, . Matt .– as a whole is indeed close to Matt . as far as vocabulary and phrasing are concerned. This can be clearly seen in the synoptic table below: Matt .
ἀμὴν γὰρ λέγω ὑμȋν · ἕως ἂν παρέλθῃ ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ, ἰῶτα ἓν ἢ μία κεραία οὐ μὴ παρέλθῃ ἀπὸ τοῦ νόμου, ἕως ἂν πάντα γένηται
Matt .–
ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμȋν ὅτι οὐ μὴ παρέλθῃ ἡ γενεὰ αὕτη ἕως ἂν πάντα ταῦτα γένηται. ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ παρελεύσεται, οἱ δὲ λόγοι μου οὐ μὴ παρέλθωσιν
This might point to a Matthean rewriting of . (// Luke .) on the pattern of Matt .– (// Mark .–). Furthermore, it should be noted that in . Mathew uses ἓως ἄν instead of Mark’s μέχρις. ‘But the enactments of this lawgiver are firm, not shaken by commotions, not liable to alteration, but stamped as it were with the seal of nature herself, and they remain firm and lasting from the day on which they were first promulgated to the present one, and there may well be a hope that they will remain to all future time, as being immortal, as long as the sun and the moon, and the whole heaven and the whole world shall endure ὥσπερ ἀθάνατα, ἕως ἂν ἥλιος καὶ σελήνη καὶ ὁ σύμπας οὐρανός τε καὶ κόσμος ᾖ (Vita Mosis .). On this point, the stance of U. Luz (Matthew – [Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, ] ) is rather surprising: ‘Many readers probably will also have seen here a (perhaps
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. is an indirect confirmation of the above observations about the meaning of ἦλθον: Jesus does have authority over the law. Verse stresses, however, that the permanence of the law, though relative, implies that no one can be exempted from submitting to it. Moreover, there is a qualification (κληθήσεται) inside the kingdom which depends on the quality of obedience, thus establishing a hierarchy (ἐλάχιστος ‘least’ or μέγας ‘great’). It should be noted however that this hierarchy will be minimized in the remainder of the narrative (see Matt . and .). In this verse the difficult point is to interpret the phrase ‘one of these commandments’ (μίαν τῶν ἐντολῶν τούτων [emphasis added]): they could be either the commandments of the law or the new commandments formulated by Jesus, especially in the Antitheses (see Matt ..: ‘these words of mine’, μου τούς λόγους τούτους; and .: ‘teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you’). I personally see nothing to support the latter. On the contrary, as Davies and Allison put it, ‘the
intentional) reference back to .. As in the case with the words of the Torah, Jesus’ words […] are eternally valid.’ Also n. : ‘Since “until heaven and earth pass away” most likely means “never” […], we hardly have here the case that the words of Jesus surpass the Torah’. This is in contrast with Davies and Allison’s commentary on Matt . (Matthew, XIX–XXVIII [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, ] ): ‘That the world will pass away—already stated in .…was common conviction…and ours is not the only text to contrast the passing of heaven and earth with something of greater endurance (cf. Isa .). But here that something is Jesus’ speech, which therefore sets him above Torah…and makes his words like God’s words (cf. Ps .; Isa .): they possess eternal authority’. In the same way, cf. D. C. Sim (‘The Meaning of παλινγγενεσία in Matthew .’, JSNT [] –): ‘If we take together Matt . and ., and the similarity in wording suggests that we should, then the Evangelist makes the overall point that while the Law is not eternal, the words of Jesus are. One set of teachings will survive the eschatological destruction of the cosmos and the other will not’ (); on – n. , Sim points out that Luz had initially defended the view of Matt . meaning that the law remains valid until the end of the world (cf. Luz, ‘Die Erfüllung der Gesetzes’, –). Sim adds: ‘Luz has since rejected this exegesis and now holds the alternative view that the passing of heaven and earth is a roundabout way of saying “never”; the law thus remains valid forever… This understanding of the expression runs against its normal apocalyptic meaning in Matthew’s day…and makes nonsense of the contrast in ..’ This verse is a typically casuistical formula that belongs to the vocabulary of sacred law (Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, ). An idea that can be found in rabbinic literature, in which a difference is made between ‘light’ (gallîn) and ‘heavy’ (hamarîn) commandments, and grades in the kingdom defined according to obedience (see H. L. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch [ vols.; Munich: Beck, unveränderte Auflage, –] .–). ‘Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he’. ‘So the last shall be first, and the first last’. Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, –; Dumais, Le Sermon sur la Montagne, –.
Torah Observance and Radicalization
οὖν and the flow of thought are decisive. Beyond this, where is the Matthean parallel to applying “lesser” and “greater” to the sayings of Jesus? Or to calling Jesus’ words ἐντολαί […]? And does not the λύω in . take the reader’s mind back to the καταλύω in ., where the Torah is indisputably the subject?’
Verse
If the transgression or the observance of commandments leads to the establishment of a hierarchy within the kingdom, only ‘righteousness’ (δικαιοσύνη) can attain it. More precisely, to enter the kingdom requires a righteousness superior (περισσεύσῃ … πλεȋον) to that of the scribes and Pharisees, namely, a way of understanding the law different from theirs. The Antitheses which follow (.–) will make this plain. In Matthew’s Gospel, righteousness has been ‘accomplished’ beforehand (., πληρῶσαι πᾶσαν δικαιοσύνην) by Jesus when he showed solidarity with those who needed the baptism of repentance proclaimed by the Baptist. In Matt ., Matthew gives the term a polemical dimension: to the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, he opposes the superior righteousness to which the disciples bear witness. How then must we understand the ‘surpassing’ required by the Matthean Jesus? Is it characterized by quantity or by quality? A close reading of the Antitheses should allow us to answer this question. When comparing v. and vv. –, we have noted the first shift of language: leaving the fulfilling of the law and the prophets, we have come to reflect on the permanence of the Torah. There is a new shift between vv. – and v. : passing from the idea of law to that of ‘superior righteousness’ which this time denotes a wider scope. The Torah seen as a collection of commandments is replaced by ‘superior righteousness’. This shift in language explains the tension which may be felt in this passage: transgressing even one of the least of these commandments of the law, and therefore being called the least in the kingdom (v. ), assumes that one has already been admitted. Therefore a righteousness surpassing that of the Pharisees, which alone gives access to the kingdom (v. ) must have been at work. For Matthew it is not literal obedience to the Davies and Allison, Matthew, I–VII, . The fact that this righteousness is identified as the disciples’ righteousness (‘your righteousness’; see also .) does not contradict the sense of the word δικαιοσύνη, where it points to what the Matthean Jesus has come to accomplish. Indeed, because of Matt . it appears that for Matthew, the ‘superior righteousness’ originates from Jesus’ practice. Quite different is the issue of whether the righteousness required is given to the disciples by God, a point that is widely disputed by scholarship. According to Luz (Matthew –, ), Matthew ‘does not sense’ this tension, and members of his community ‘were not able to see’ it.
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law which is primary, but the achievement of a righteousness which the evangelist considers superior to that of the scribes and Pharisees. Conclusion. From Matthew’s point of view, Jesus is the one who fulfils ‘the law and the prophets’, i.e., the promises of the Scriptures (v. ) and so gives them their real meaning. As regards observance of the commandments, the Matthean Jesus, while underlining its importance, introduces a twofold discrepancy. First, the permanence of the law is relative (vv. –); second, obedience to commandments is not the criterion for entering the kingdom of heaven. Access to the kingdom assumes the practice of a righteousness surpassing that of the scribes and Pharisees (v.). The Antitheses will show that this righteousness must exceed the ordinary observance of the Torah.
. Observance of the Law and Radicalization in Three Passages of the Gospel
. The Antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew .–) The Antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount provide a direct illustration of the understanding of the law as it is displayed in .–. In each antithesis, the leading strand is a ‘not only but also’ logic. Not only murder but also hatred, not only adultery but also the lustful look, and so on: they are all contrary to the will of God. The interpretation of the law proposed by Matthew’s Jesus surpasses simple obedience to commandments, which is the rule which enables human beings to live together. Jesus proposes an attitude which the law does not demand: he proposes to go beyond the usually required obedience to the law (.–) to gain access to a righteousness which exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees (.), a righteousness based on excess. However, it is interesting to note that what was formerly ‘told to the elders’ (ἐρρέθη τοȋς ἀρχαίοις, ., , , see also ., , ) is the basis of the Matthean Jesus’ interpretation. Indeed, the old interpretation must be assumed in order to receive the new one. Not getting angry with one’s brother (.) implies observance of the commandment not to kill him (.). Not looking with lust at a woman (.) implies the commandment not to commit adultery (.). Non-resistance to the wicked supposes the previous acknowledgment of the principle of the lex talionis (.). The twofold demand to love one’s neighbour and to hate one’s enemy (.) must have been heard before the call also to love one’s enemy (.). Insofar as the validity of the law is acknowledged, Jesus comes as a messenger whose sayings go beyond its traditional interpretation. Obedience to commandments implicitly assumed is therefore not Obviously, the fact that for Matthew Torah observance guarantees good relationships within the community underlies the evolution of the narrative when Jesus affirms: ‘And because iniquity (τὴν ἀνομίαν) shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold’ (Matt .).
Torah Observance and Radicalization
primary—although it is not secondary either—when compared with a righteousness which goes beyond the traditional understanding of the law and can even be in tension with it. By inviting his audience to acknowledge a relationship between humans and with God which surpasses the usually admitted rules, Jesus actually appears as the one who fulfils the law and the prophets, and not as the one who abrogates them (.). This fulfilling is then characterized by quality not quantity. Jesus’ radicalization of the law seeks to awaken his hearers to a new way of understanding God, oneself and others. In the remainder of the narrative, the divorce controversy (Matt .–) and the episode of the wealthy young man (Matt .–) operate as a confirmation of the Matthean hermeneutics of Jesus’ attitude to the law. . The Divorce Controversy (Matthew .–) Jesus’ sayings about divorce, addressed to the Pharisees, go beyond the commandment, just as they do in the Antitheses (see .–). To the letter of This is close to what P. Ricœur (Lectures III. Aux frontières de la philosophie [Paris: Seuil, ] esp. ff.) calls the ethics of ‘surabondance’, which for him is ‘supra-éthique’ or even ‘métaéthique’, namely, beyond ethics. Indeed, we can talk of an ethics close to what could be called common morality, i.e., the law. It is ruled by the golden rule (Matt .): be concerned by the other as another self. On the other hand, there is what could be called an ethics of the subject, which is always singular and which diverts the logic of reciprocity only to replace it by a different principle—Ricœur’s logic of overabundance – which implies giving for the sake of giving, and which then seems to surpass ethics. For Ricœur, loving one’s enemies (Matt .) is a good example since that kind of love can never be normalized by ethics; it can only be a suspension of ethics due to excess or overabundance. In other words, loving enemies can never become common law; it can only be a possible possibility for the subject to break up the logic of reciprocity to let another logic take place. For Ricœur, there is no question of choosing or mixing up the two fields – ethics or supra-ethics—but rather of articulating them or keeping them in a permanent dialectic tension which must never be settled. In a similar way, cf. also J.-D. Causse, ‘Le Sermon sur la Montagne: critique freudienne et redéploiement éthique’, Revue d’éthique et de théologie morale () – (): ‘On se tromperait à…lire [le Sermon sur la Montagne] comme un nouveau code moral, même une morale plus haute ou supérieure, faisant appel au surpassement de soi-même. La performativité du récit, pour parler le langage de la pragmatique de la communication, réside dans la naissance d’une subjectivité qui donne forme à un être et à un agir.’ The use of hyperbolic rhetoric indicates that Matthew’s Jesus’ speech does not aim at a precise depiction of practices, except to render excess reasonable and to bring superior righteousness (.) back into strict obedience to commandments which would be those of the Messiah. As Focant notes (‘Eschatologie’, ) a radicalizing tendency ‘est certes à l’œuvre dans les divers courants du bas-judaïsme. Toutefois, la radicalisation juive de la Loi à cette époque est plutôt quantitative et elle se développe de manière extensive dans la halakah, tandis que celle du Jésus de Matthieu s’éloigne de la casuistique et est plutôt qualitative.’ On this, see H. Braun, Spätjüdisch-häretischer und frühchristlicher Radikalismus. Jesus von Nazareth und die essenische Qumransekte (Tübingen: Mohr, nd ed., ); also G. Theissen, Le mouvement de Jésus. Histoire sociale d’une révolution des valeurs (Paris: Cerf, ).
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the law proclaimed by Moses (see .: Μωυσῆς ἐνετείλατο) Jesus opposes God’s original purpose (.: ὁ κτίσας ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς and .: ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς δὲ οὐ γέγονεν οὕτως). In his initial plans God never envisaged the separation of a man and his wife (.–), so that if the Pharisees do obey the commandment when they write certificates of divorce, they do so because of the hardness of hearts (.). Therefore, when they obey the commandments of the law they disobey the will of God! By putting the will of God back into the foreground, Jesus’ radicalization contests a patriarchal vision of divorce which gave husbands liberty to divorce their wives. Jesus’ stance protects de facto the weak (the wife according to the representations of the time), whereas the Pharisaic interpretation of the commandment, although more liberal, favours the powerful (the husband). The disciples’ reaction (in .– Matthew develops Mark .–) expresses one of the inferred effects of Jesus’ radicalization: according to them it is better not to get married (.: οὐ συμφέρει γαμῆσαι)! Jesus’ answer, especially in . about those who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom, confirms this logic of radicalization: if the law allows Pharisees to order their lives according to the world, Jesus invites his audience to order theirs according to the kingdom of heaven which is situated quite differently. Similarly, superior righteousness (. and –) gives access to the kingdom of heaven, and goes beyond the observance of the commandment which regulates life in a worldly community. . Dialogue with the Rich Young Man (Matthew .–) This episode is an extension of the perspective opened by the pericope about divorce. Matthew once again deals with the question of observance of Torah observance, but this time in a nonconflictual way. Jesus answers the young man seeking eternal life (.), inviting him to obey the commandments (.: τήρησον τὰς ἐντολάς) and gives him some examples (.–). When the young man replies that he has observed them since he was a child (.), Jesus adds a double demand: he should sell all his possessions and follow Jesus (.) in order to achieve ‘perfection’ (τέλειος; cf. .: τέλειοι). The sorrowfulness of the young man (.) shows that it is impossible for him to fulfil the In keeping with .–, Matthew undoubtedly limits the radicalization: see the use of πορνεία (.). However, the Matthean Jesus does part from Moses’ more liberal rule. D. C. Allison (‘Divorce, Celibacy and Joseph’, JSNT [] –) interpreted this double restriction in connection with the figure of Joseph the ‘righteous’ who, suspecting adultery, chooses to leave Mary (Matt .–). See also W. Carter, Households and Discipleship. A Study of Matthew – (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, ) : ‘Against a patriarchal understanding of marriage concerned with what a man may do to end the marriage, Jesus asserts the original divine purpose for marriage of unity and permanence’. Later, he adds that Jesus in fact limits ‘the use of male power’ ().
Torah Observance and Radicalization
demand: he cannot renounce his possessions. Jesus then qualifies the initial quest for eternal life (.): it is difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven (see .: εἰσελεύσεται εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν // .: οὐ μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν; see also .). Then comes the question of the disciples about ‘salvation’ (.: τίς ἄρα δύναται σωθῆναι). Jesus stresses that what is impossible for humans is possible for God. It is interesting to note that what is impossible for humans is not observing the commandments of the law (as it is said in ., they are adapted to the hardness of human heart) but following Christ’s demands. This confirms that the Torah is secondary compared to Jesus’ sayings, which display a logic of radicalization similar to that analyzed in .–. As in the previous episode, the reaction of the disciples—which in this case comes from Mark’s Gospel—confirms the hermeneutical frame of Jesus’ speech. The disciples claim that they have left everything to follow Jesus. They will therefore be rewarded when the Son of Man comes: their stance situates them squarely in the logic of the kingdom of heaven and of the radicalizing words of Jesus, and not in that of the world and the law. Once again Jesus’ sayings are primary with regard to the law. A last point is to be noted here. If the polemical dimension of the divorce controversy is clear cut, the rich young man episode does not present him as an adversary of Jesus. Jesus’ radicalization as it is presented by Matthew is thus not only in reaction to the Pharisaic tradition. More basically, it is constitutive of its relation to the law.
. Radicalization Put to the Test: Matthew .–
The results of our investigation should now be confronted with other passages in Matthew, in particular those which seem to follow another direction. The one I have selected is probably the most difficult to relate to the passages we have studied. It concerns Jesus’ statement about the authority of scribes and Pharisees who ‘sit on Moses’ seat’ (v. ): one must listen to their words but not replicate their deeds (.: πάντα οὖν ὅσα ἐὰν εἴπωσιν ὑμȋν ποιήσατε καὶ τηρεȋτε, κατὰ δὲ τὰ ἔργα αὐτῶν μὴ ποιεȋτε). The passage is typically considered as an illustration of the deep rootedness of the First Gospel in Jewish traditions. It is the The viewpoint of Davies and Allison (Matthew, XIX–XXVIII [Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, ] –) is completely different. Having stressed the various parallels between the story of the rich young man and the Sermon on the Mount, they conclude (): ‘In sum, both the SM and Matt .–, affirm the Torah’. On the contrary, it seems to me that the pericope .– and the Antitheses alike go beyond the Torah, at least in their traditional interpretation. In both cases Jesus’ speech carries out a kind of radicalization. What I have in mind here are all the controversies which must be taken into account to sharpen or modulate the matter. Moreover, a passage such as .– seems to lead in a direction opposite to that of radicalization.
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articulation with the passages studied above which is difficult: the Matthean Jesus seems to be clearly in continuity with the Pharisees as far as the law is concerned, and in opposition to the radicalization through excess which we have analyzed. In a very suggestive article, Mark Allan Powell exposes the problem and proposes a solution to resolve it. According to him, the passage must be interpreted as follows: The scribes and Pharisees ‘sit on Moses’ seat’ because in the firstcentury context they guard the scrolls of the Torah and are the only ones allowed to read them in public. Those who want access to the original texts are therefore completely dependent on them. In spite of this, one must not do as they do—which must be understood in a wider sense as their interpretation. In other words, Matthew’s Jesus affirms that they possess the texts (one could say the ‘letter’), yet they do not know how to interpret them (they are incapable of revealing the ‘spirit’). The episode where Herod consults the scribes in Matt .– illustrates this hypothesis. In order to confirm the birthplace of the ‘King of the Jews’, Herod must consult the scribes: they alone possess the texts and are able to read them publicly. Yet this scriptural competence does not change their attitude: they remain unmoved in Jerusalem while essential events take place in Bethlehem. Scribes can read the text but cannot interpret it. One must then listen to their reading and do as the letter of the text requires (that is what the Magi do in Matt .–), but one must not follow their actions, which reveal their interpretation (for instance, their immobility in Matt .–). Listening to the reading of the law by the scribes and Pharisees does not mean that one must follow their understanding of the way in which the commandments should be observed. Jesus invites his audience to listen to the reading of the written law given by the scribes and Pharisees, but not to their interpretation. In the Sermon on the Mount, and more generally in the entire narrative, Jesus ceaselessly opposes his own interpretation to theirs. This solution finds support earlier in the narrative, in Matt .–, where Matthew’s Jesus warns the disciples against the teaching of the ‘Pharisees and Sadducees’ (see .: τότε συνῆκαν
ὅτι οὐκ εἶπεν προσέχειν ἀπὸ τῆς ζύμης τῶν ἄρτων ἀλλὰ ἀπὸ τῆς διδαχῆς τῶν Φαρισαίων καὶ Σαδδουκαίων).
. Conclusion
If Matthew’s Gospel bears witness to a deep rootedness in first-century Judaism, various elements in the narrative suggest however that it advocates a Messianism which can be characterized as radical. The way in which Matthew envisions Jesus’ stance to the law is a good illustration of this. Though the law M. A. Powell, ‘Do and Keep What Moses Says (Matthew .–)’, JBL () –. The different identity of the opponents (‘scribes and Pharisees’ in Matt , ‘Pharisees and Sadducees’ in .–) is minor and insignificant in this case.
Torah Observance and Radicalization
remains at the heart of Matthew’s religious world, it is no longer obedience to its commandments that regulates the life of the disciples, but rather Jesus’ teaching which is characterized by the logic of excess. That logic confronts Jesus’ audience not with general rules but rather with their own individual responsibility as creatures before God and the neighbour. Matthew develops what I propose to call a radical form of Jewish Messianism— which will later be called a Christology. His reflection is an important element in the reconfiguration of the religious landscape at a time of complete transformation. However, when he writes his Gospel, boundaries between different groups are not yet what they will be in the second century. It may well be anachronistic to call him a ‘Christian’, but the evangelist is nonetheless in conflict with the post-s ‘synagogue across the street’, i.e., the Judaism whose Pharisaic identity is unquestionable. The First Gospel’s referent has been displaced: the pillar which sustains Matthew’s theology—and therefore his religious identity—is no longer primarily the law and obedience to its commandments, but the Messiah and his teaching. The radicalism of this teaching will become the issue of a hermeneutical debate which is as complex as the debate about the law; Jesus’ sayings actually raise the question of their practicability. Throughout the history of Christian theology one of the answers will be to interpret this radicalization as the impossibility for human beings to justify themselves through Torah observance.
On this, one may follow Marguerat who contends (‘Pas un iota’, ) that in Matthew’s Gospel, ‘de bout en bout, la Loi est pensée à partir de la christologie’. G. N. Stanton, A Gospel for a New People, . The expression is usually attributed to K. Stendahl, The School of Matthew and its Use of the Old Testament (Lund: Gleerup, [Philadelphia, Fortress, nd ed., ]). See, for example, Martin Luther. In a sermon on the fifth commandment as it is interpreted by Jesus in the Antitheses, he wonders about the significance of such a radicalization and answers: ‘Il [Jésus] place le but si haut que personne ne l’atteint’. From that he infers: ‘Où y a-t-il quelqu’un qui ne se met jamais en colère? Le cinquième commandement est interprété là de façon à mener à la mort et dans le feu infernal et à ne laisser monter personne au ciel.’ Indeed, this commandment cannot be observed but ‘sous l’ombre de la grâce’ (cited from Stiewe and Vouga, Le Sermon sur la Montagne, ).
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0028688509000113
‘Rewritten Gospel’: The Case of Caiaphas the High Priest AD E L E R E I N H ARTZ Department of Classics and Religious Studies, University of Ottowa, Ottowa, ON, Canada email:
[email protected] Although the term ‘rewritten Bible’ has been used primarily of postbiblical Jewish retellings of the Hebrew Bible, the phenomenon which it describes extends to the present day, and pertains to the NT as well as the Hebrew Bible. This paper examines two examples of ‘rewritten Gospel’—Dorothy Sayers’s play cycle, The Man Born to Be King (–) and Sholem Asch’s novel, The Nazarene ()—in order to argue that such postcanonical Jesus narratives should be of interest to NT scholarship just as ‘rewritten Bible’ is of interest to scholars of the Hebrew Bible. Keywords: Caiaphas, rewritten Bible, anti-semitism, Gospels
The term ‘rewritten Bible’ is commonly used to refer to postbiblical Jewish narrative texts, such as Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities or the book of Jubilees, that retell all or part of the Hebrew Bible but include ‘a substantial amount of supplements and interpretative developments’. The texts in this genre share a number of characteristics: they are sequential narratives that build on but do not highlight their scriptural sources; they cover a significant portion of material rather than one small narrative segment; they engage in both paraphrase and expansion, often on the basis of extracanonical material. The phenomenon of rewritten Bible therefore testifies to the profound engagement of postbiblical storytellers with the Bible as a repository of stories that could be told, retold, expanded and embellished in ways that expressed their own beliefs, anxieties and worldviews. Although the term ‘rewritten Bible’ has been used primarily of postbiblical Jewish retellings of the Hebrew Bible, the phenomenon which it describes has a
Geza Vermes in Emil Schürer et al., A History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ ( B.C.–A.D. ), vol. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ) . Philip S. Alexander, ‘Retelling the Old Testament’, It Is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture: Essays in Honour of Barnabas Lindars, Ssf (ed. D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson; Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) –.
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far broader application. The impulse to retell biblical stories has persisted far beyond the postbiblical era, and, as recent novels such as The Red Tent show, it continues to the present day. Furthermore, not only sections of the Hebrew Bible but also NT books, in particular the canonical Gospels, have been told and retold, expanded and embellished from the early second century to the present, in diverse genres including passion plays, scholarly lives of Jesus, historical fiction, and cinema. Like the rewritten Bible of such postbiblical authors as Josephus and Pseudo-Philo, these narratives retell the canonical stories in their own words. In doing so, they explore the gaps in the sources, add extracanonical material and thereby arrive at accounts that are recognizably related to their biblical foundations yet distinct from them in numerous ways. Most important, these retold versions provide insight into the tensions, problems and gaps within their canonical sources even as they also function as vehicles for the individual perspectives of the storytellers themselves. Just as rewritten Bible is of interest to the field of biblical studies, so too should postcanonical Jesus narratives—‘rewritten Gospels’—be of interest to NT scholarship. In the first place, these narratives highlight issues and problems in the Gospels themselves and illustrate a range of hermeneutical possibilities. Second, and more to the point, postcanonical retellings of the Jesus story testify to the profound impact of the Gospels in history, society and culture. To illustrate the value of adding the study of ‘rewritten Gospel’ to the repertoire of NT scholarship, this essay will examine two examples from the same time period: the early years of World War II. The focus of the discussion will be on the most dramatic part of the Jesus story, that is, the Passion, and, more specifically, on the most elusive figure within that climactic episode, Caiaphas the High Priest.
Caiaphas in the NT
Caiaphas looms large in most retellings of the Passion narrative. This may be surprising in light of the fact that the NT mentions him by name only nine times. In Matthew, the gathering of the chief priests and elders, at which the decision is taken to plot against Jesus’ life, takes place in Caiaphas’s palace (Matt .) and after his arrest, Jesus is taken to the palace for questioning (.). Throughout the interrogation the High Priest is referred to not by name but by title, as if to underscore his rank and role in Judean society. At the climax of the scene, the High Priest accuses Jesus of blasphemy, tears his robes, and elicits a guilty verdict from the council (.–). In Luke, Caiaphas is named only in .–, which situates the evangelist’s account ‘in the fifteenth Anita Diamant, The Red Tent (New York: Picador, ). On the exegetical value of fictional treatments of the Bible, see L. Joseph Kreitzer, The New Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow (Sheffield: JSOT, ).
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year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the High Priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas’. Luke’s passion account, however, like Mark’s, refers only to the ‘High Priest’ without mentioning Caiaphas by name. Acts . lists Caiaphas, along with other members of the high priestly family, including his father-in-law Annas the High Priest, John and Alexander, among those who arrested and interrogated Jesus’ followers. It is John’s Gospel that pays the most attention to Caiaphas. Indeed, five of the nine NT occurrences of the name Caiaphas appear in John. In the aftermath of Jesus’ dramatic restoration of the dead and decaying Lazarus of Bethany, the ‘chief priests and Pharisees’ are alarmed and call a meeting of the council to discuss what can be done about this man who performs many signs: ‘If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation’. In response, Caiaphas exclaims, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed’. The narrator comments that Caiaphas ‘did not say this on his own, but being High Priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God’. Caiaphas’s prophecy prodded the council into action against Jesus: ‘So from that day on they planned to put him to death’ (John .–). This passage draws attention to Caiaphas’s high priestly role, but even more, imputes to him a political motivation. A generous interpretation would suggest that Caiaphas is here referring to the unfortunate need to sacrifice one person for the good of the nation as a whole; alternately, it may seem that Caiaphas is motivated not so much by the good of the nation as by the need, for power and survival, of the individuals that make up the council or the classes that they represent. Like Luke-Acts, John implies a close association between Caiaphas and Annas. According to the Fourth Gospel, it is Annas and not Caiaphas who interrogates Jesus (.); although Jesus is later taken to Caiaphas’s house (.) and from there to Pilate (.), the Gospel does not indicate that any conversation between Jesus and the High Priest took place. From these brief references, it is clear that the Gospels correctly identify Caiaphas as the High Priest during the period of Pilate’s governorship of Judea, For discussion of these passages, see Helen K. Bond, Caiaphas: Friend of Rome and Judge of Jesus? (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, ); R. E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels (New York: Doubleday, ) – and passim. For discussion of the meager evidence in Josephus and other sources, see James C. VanderKam, From Joshua to Caiaphas: High Priests after the Exile (Minneapolis: Fortress, ) –.
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and that they associate him with the events leading to Jesus’ condemnation and crucifixion. What remain unclear, and therefore permit expansion and embellishment in later retellings, are issues such as the precise nature of his role in Jesus’ final days and his relationships with Jesus, Annas and Pilate.
Modern Examples of Rewritten Gospel
Caiaphas’s association with the events leading to Jesus’ condemnation and death makes him a suitable vehicle with which later writers could express their views on the Jewish role in Jesus’ death and, by extension, on Jews and Judaism more generally. Two examples of rewritten Gospel that illustrate this point are the play cycle, The Man Born to be King, by the British author Dorothy Sayers, and the epic novel, The Nazarene, by the Jewish American author Sholem Asch. These works have three things in common. The first is the era in which they were written. Sayers’s play cycle was first broadcast on the BBC in –; Asch’s novel appeared in English translation in and in the original Yiddish in . Second, both Sayers and Asch were already highly regarded and acclaimed both in their own countries and internationally, primarily though not exclusively for their works of fiction. Third, both works were highly controversial at the time of publication. By examining their respective portraits of Caiaphas it will be possible, first, to discern these authors’ attitudes towards Jews and Judaism in an era when the role of Jews as a minority group in modern democratic societies was a fraught issue for Jews and non-Jews alike; second, to examine how Sayers and Asch address, and make the most of, the gaps in the Gospel narrative; and third, to note the ongoing impact of the Gospels in the modern era.
The Man Born to be King Dorothy Leigh Sayers (–) was a British author well known for her mysteries and short stories featuring amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, her translations of Dante’s Divine Comedy and her plays and essays on Christian themes. The Man Born to be King is a cycle of twelve radio plays written for broadcast on the BBC, one play per month, beginning on Sunday December Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to Be King: A Play-Cycle on the Life of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ (London: V. Gollancz, ). Sholem Asch, The Nazarene (New York: G. P. Putnam’s sons, ). Hell (), Purgatory (), Paradise (; completed by Barbara Reynolds after Sayers’s death). For biographical information, see Mary Brian Durkin, Dorothy L. Sayers (Boston: Twayne, ); Ralph E. Hone, Dorothy L. Sayers: A Literary Biography (Kent, OH: Kent State University, ).
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. The play cycle makes for entertaining reading even for those who have never heard it performed. This enjoyment is due not only to the wit and drama of the plays themselves, but also to the detailed notes that precede each play. While originally intended to guide the producer and director, these notes display Sayers’s distinctive narrative voice and provide insight into her views of each character. Sayers’s main focus throughout the cycle is on the complex relationship between Judas and Jesus. Caiaphas, however, has a major supporting role as the leader of the Council. In this capacity, the High Priest plots Jesus’ death, hires Judas to betray him, persuades Pilate to have him crucified, exults at the success of his own scheming and is ultimately defeated, spiritually if not physically. Caiaphas makes his first appearance in the fourth play, entitled ‘The Heirs to the Kingdom’. The preliminary notes describe him as ‘the complete ecclesiastical politician—a plausible and nasty piece of work’. His main goal is ‘to get rid of [Jesus of Nazareth], without causing a popular uproar that would provoke interference by Rome’. The introductory notes to the sixth play, ‘The Feast of Tabernacles’, fill out this description: CAIAPHAS—As before; a smooth and supple politician, and completely unscrupulous. The timid decency of Nicodemus and the passionate insults of Judas slide off him like water off a duck’s back… One feels that he keeps a sinister little dossier, in which the names of disaffected or rash persons are carefully noted down for future reference… His one moment of sincerity is when he pays homage to the politician’s household god of ‘expediency’.
Caiaphas’s devious nature comes to the fore in his first interview with Judas, whom he hopes to manipulate into betraying Jesus: CAIAPHAS: The Sanhedrim have been disquieted by rumours—no doubt quite unfounded—that your Master is engaged in political activities of a Hone, Sayers, . Sayers draws from all four gospels but has a special affinity for the Fourth Gospel, making extensive use also of commentaries and other secondary sources (Man Born, –). Aliza Stone Dale, ‘The Man Born to Be King: Dorothy L. Sayers’s Best Mystery Plot’, As Her Whimsey Took Her: Critical Essays on the Work of Dorothy L. Sayers (ed. Margaret P. Hannay; Kent, OH: Kent State University, ) –. On Sayers’s treatment of Judas, see Terrie Curran, ‘The Word Made Flesh: The Christian Aesthetic in Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Man Born to Be King’, Whimsey (ed, Hannay), –. Sayers, Man Born, . Sayers, Man Born, . Sayers, Man Born, . The usual term for the council is Sanhedrin. Sayers uses the term ‘Sanhedrim’ to refer to council members, as indicated by the use of the Hebrew masculine plural ending ‘im’ and the plural verb.
‘Rewritten Gospel’ rather indiscreet kind, such as might provoke reprisals from the Government. We are very unwilling to believe that this is the case. JUDAS: You may take my word for it, the story is quite untrue. CAIAPHAS: Good. We are glad to hear it. It would be a pity that your charitable work among the—the poor, and so on—should be interfered with. But as you know, Rome does not look with favour on group activities which might have a subversive tendency.
Judas explodes with rage: JUDAS: …You think my Master belongs to the Nationalist party. You think he might encourage Jewry to shake off the Roman yoke. Little you know him! And how little you know of this nation! Rome is the punishment that this people must bear for their sins. Jewry is corrupt, and Rome is God’s judgment on her. The Roman rod is laid on the sinner’s back, and the Roman axe to the root of the rotten tree… Does that gall you, my Lord Caiaphas?… There was a time when the Lord High Priest could give orders in Israel. Today you must cringe to Caesar. That is the measure of your humiliation, and of your sin.
Annas, who is almost always at Caiaphas’s side, upbraids Judas for his insolence but the High Priest ignores Judas’s insults, notes his views on Jewish culpability, and articulates his own approach to the political realities of his time: ‘Your own views on the subject of national regeneration are most important and interesting. I think myself that a policy of reconstruction and collaboration with Rome is in the best interest of Jewry’. Caiaphas’s words to Judas can be read as a fairly straightforward elaboration upon his ‘prophecy’ to the Council according to John , for underlying the notion that it is expedient to sacrifice one man for the good of the nation is a policy of ‘reconstruction and collaboration’ according to which the Jewish leadership aims to avoid unrest and to remain in Rome’s good graces. But it is likely that Sayers is also reflecting Josephus’s account of the events preceding the Jewish Revolt against Rome. The words she ascribes to Caiaphas echo the speech that Josephus places in the mouth of King Agrippa I, in which he expresses the conviction that armed revolt against Rome is folly. Only a collaborative and constructive approach will preserve Jewish lives and at least some measure of autonomy in Judea. Agrippa urges the people to submit to Rome rather than rebel: If other, larger groups such as the Parthians saw fit to ‘bend to the yoke’ and thereby to maintain a truce with Rome, how much more so should the tiny population of Judea (B.J. ., )? He entreats his people: Spare the temple and preserve for yourselves the sanctuary with its holy places; for the Romans, once masters of these, will refrain their hands no more, seeing Sayers, Man Born, . Sayers, Man Born, .
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that their forbearance in the past met only with ingratitude… if you decide aright, you will enjoy with me the blessings of peace, but, if you let yourselves be carried away by your passion, you will face, without me, this tremendous peril (B.J. .).
Sayers acknowledges that her portrait of Caiaphas owes much to the events of her own time. The High Priest, she writes, is the consummate ‘ecclesiastical politician, appointed, like one of Hitler’s bishops, by a heathen government, expressly that he might collaborate with the New Order and see that the Church toed the line drawn by the State’. Yet the views that Caiaphas expresses to Judas also call to mind the pre-war British policy of appeasement towards Hitler and Nazi Germany. Under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, England, along with Italy and France, on September signed the Munich Pact with Germany. The pact determined the conditions under which the German-speaking Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia would be ceded to Germany on October , in exchange for a promise that Hitler would not claim any additional European territory. That Sayers was very concerned about this issue is evident from her January presidential address to the Modern Language Association, in which she criticized the role of propaganda in making possible Germany’s bloodless conquest in Austria and the Sudetenland. Sayers’s Caiaphas does not merely manipulate and deceive Judas, but he also bullies those members of his council who dare to defend Jesus against the High Priest’s accusations. CAIAPHAS: Brother Joseph, and Brother Nicodemus. Do I understand that you admit the claim of Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah? Because that is what he does claim. He does not say he is a prophet: he says he is the Christ. If you propose to support that claim publicly, you may. Of course, there is a penalty attached. A person was excommunicated the other day for the same offence. Only a pauper, certainly, but God forbid that the Sanhedrim should be any respecter of persons, however wealthy they may be, Joseph of Arimathea. If anybody takes the view that Jesus bar-Joseph is the promised Messiah and Cf. also Josephus’s own sentiments, according to B.J. .–. See Jonathan J. Price, ‘The Provincial Historian in Rome’, Josephus and Jewish History in Flavian Rome and Beyond (ed. Joseph Sievers and Gaia Lembi; Leiden/Boston: Brill, ) . Sayers, Man Born, . For detailed description and analysis of Neville Chamberlain and the policy of appeasement, see Robert J. Caputi, Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University, ); Frank McDonough, Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement, and the British Road to War: New Frontiers in History (Manchester: Manchester University, ). Hone, Sayers, . Curran, however, sees in Sayers’s Caiaphas the echo of a different war-era personality: ‘Caiaphas, a conservative Jewish leader, was no less politically motivated in convicting Christ than Marshal Pétain in donating France to the Nazis’ (‘The Word Made Flesh’, ).
‘Rewritten Gospel’ the King of Israel, he had better say so at once, and then we shall know where we are. NICODEMUS, after a pause: I have no wish to defy the Sanhedrim. JOSEPH: I am only anxious that an innocent person shall not be victimized. CAIAPHAS: The word ‘victim’ always arouses feeling. But I said before, and I say again, that it is better to sacrifice one man, rather than the whole nation. That is not persecution. It is policy.
It is in the tenth play, ‘The Princes of this World’, that Sayers’s antipathy to Caiaphas emerges most explicitly. In the introductory notes to this play, Sayers insists that ‘there is in this politician nothing of the priest, as we understand the word. The sight of a soul in torment is to him merely another irritating interruption, wasting precious minutes when he wants to hurry off to Pilate. Nothing of what Judas is saying means anything to him—how should it? since he is totally destitute of any sense of sin’. Yet Sayers is not entirely without empathy for the High Priest. A slight softening is apparent in the introductory notes to the eleventh play, ‘The King of Sorrows’, which she calls Caiaphas’s apologia: ‘For once, he is completely sincere, and speaks as a true prophet. He puts his finger on the central weakness of Jewry, and his speech is that of a man who clearly foresees the failure of his own lifework… At this point, and at this point only, we ought to feel sympathy with Caiaphas’. As the eleventh play draws to a close, Caiaphas shares with his two worrisome council members some reflections on the larger political questions at stake in the current situation: CAIAPHAS: Joseph and Nicodemus, let me tell you something. Jewry has gone for ever. The day of small nations is past. This is the age of empire. Consider. All through our history we have tried to slam that door. Jewry was to be a garden enclosed—a chosen race, a peculiar people. But the door was opened. By whom? NICODEMUS: In the strife between the sons of Alexander, when Hyrcanus appealed to Rome. CAIAPHAS: True. That strife brought us Herod the Great—the creature of Rome, who for years held Jewry together in his gauntlet of iron. And when he died, what? New strife—and the partition of Israel, with Pilate the Roman made Governor of Judaea. Under Herod a tributary nation; after Herod, three tributary provinces. With every Jewish quarrel, Rome takes another stride. One stride—two strides—the third will be the last…I have killed this Jesus, who would have made one more faction; but for one pretender crucified, fifty will arise… One day, the Zealots will revolt and the sword will be drawn against Caesar. Then the ring of fire and steel will close about Jerusalem; then the dead will lie thick in the streets, and the tramp of the Legions will be heard in the inner Sanctuary of the Temple. I, Caiaphas, prophesy. JOSEPH: What would you have us do? Sayers, Man Born, .
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CAIAPHAS: Accept the inevitable. Adapt yourselves to Rome. It is the curse of our people that we cannot learn to live as citizens of a larger unit. We can neither rule nor be ruled; for such the new order has no place. Make terms with the future while you may, lest in all the world there be found no place where a Jew may set foot. JOSEPH: Strange. You echo the prophecies of Jesus. But he, I think, would have enlarged the boundaries of Israel to take in all the world… Is it possible that he saw what you see, and would have chosen to fling the door wide open? Not to exclude, but to include? Not to lose Israel in Rome, but to bring Rome into the fold of Israel?… CAIAPHAS (drily): Quite mad. It is the duty of statesmen to destroy the madness which we call imagination. It is dangerous. It breeds dissension. Peace, order, security—that is Rome’s offer—at Rome’s price. JOSEPH: We have rejected the way of Jesus. I suppose we must now take yours. CAIAPHAS: You will reject me too, I think… Be content, Jesus, my enemy. Caiaphas also will have lived in vain.
To the end, Caiaphas asserts that he had only the best interests of his country at heart. When it is all over, Joseph asks him: JOSEPH: Caiaphas, as man to man, what do you think you have done? CAIAPHAS: The best I could for Israel.
Beneath the standard, derogatory contrast between narrow, exclusivistic Judaism and expansive, universal Christianity, can we detect at least some faint sympathy for a man who did what he could, albeit in his own misguided, manipulative and hostile way? The Man Born to Be King created a huge stir during the first season that it was broadcast. As a non-visual medium, the radio play was not subject to the prohibition against portraying Jesus in a film or play (a prohibition not lifted until ). The liveliness of Sayers’s Jesus, however, raised serious concerns for some segments of the BBC’s audience. Imagine a Son of God who joked and laughed, and in colloquial English no less! Some irate listeners held Sayers’s plays responsible for the fall of Singapore, and implored the BBC to remove them from the air before Australia was lost as well. Others, by contrast, credited the plays with British victories in Libya and Russia. Within the media and in the church, the debate eventually blew over. The play cycle was broadcast in its entirety numerous times, to great acclaim. Certainly Sayers, Man Born, –. Sayers, Man Born, . James C. Robertson, The British Board of Film Censors: Film Censorship in Britain, – (London: Croom Helm, ) –, . See the Forward by Dr. J. W. Welch, who commissioned the plays as Director of Religious Broadcasting BBC, in Sayers, Man Born, –; Janet Hitchman, Such a Strange Lady: An Introduction to Dorothy L. Sayers (–) (London: New English Library, ).
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Sayers’s depiction of Caiaphas is to some extent allegorical, pointing to the attitudes of certain British politicians and ecclesiastical leaders in her own era. But the use of a Jewish leader to make these points, and, more generally, the criticisms of Jewry that emerge throughout the play cycle, make it difficult to avoid the question of Sayers’s own attitudes to Jews and Judaism at this critical period. British anti-Semitism in this period has been well documented. In his essay entitled ‘Anti-Semitism in Britain’, George Orwell noted: The Jews are not numerous or powerful enough, and it is only in what are loosely called ‘intellectual circles’ that they have any noticeable influence. Yet it is generally admitted that anti-Semitism is on the increase, that it has been greatly exacerbated by the war, and that humane and enlightened people are not immune to it. It does not take violent forms (English people are almost invariably gentle and law-abiding), but it is ill-natured enough, and in favourable circumstances it could have political results.
Sayers’s novels contain a number of Jewish characters whose ethnic identities are mentioned but not belabored. Man Born to Be King, by contrast, implies a sense of discomfort not so much with respect to individual Jews but the role of the Jewish people in society. Sayers addressed this question directly in her wartime correspondence. In a letter to Sir Wyndham Deedes, dated April , Sayers was critical of what she perceived as the unwillingness of Jews to adhere to British social norms and mores: The British Jewesses in dashing to the bank and announcing in loud tones: ‘of course, we’re sending all our money to America’; the children who cannot learn the common school code of honour; the Jewish evacuee offering his landlady double the rent she asked in order to secure the rooms and then informing against her to the billeting authorities; the inhabitants of a London street complaining bitterly that everybody, from the high-class publishers’ staff at one end to the little rookery of prostitutes at the other, eagerly did their turn of Carolyn G. Heilbrun, ‘Dorothy L. Sayers: Biography between the Lines’, Dorothy L. Sayers: The Centenary Celebration (ed. Alzina Stone Dale; New York: Walker & Co., ) –. Heilbrun laments Barbazon’s assessment of Sayers’s anti-Semitism, although she acknowledges that Sayers continued to help her own Nazi governess even after the war. George Orwell, ‘Anti-Semitism in Britain’ (), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. . As I Please, – (ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus; London: Secker & Warburg, ), –; http://orwell.ru/library/articles/antisemitism/english/e_antib. accessed January On Sayers’s portrayal of Jewish characters in her novels, see Robert Kuhn McGregor, with Ethan Lewis, Conundrums for the Long Week-End: England, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Lord Peter Wimsey (Kent, OH: Kent State University, ) –; Nancy-Lou Patterson, ‘Images of Judaism and Anti–Semitism in the Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers’, Sayers Review / (June ) –; Malcolm J. Turnbull, Victims or Villains: Jewish Images in Classic English Detective Fiction (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University, ) –.
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fire-watching—all except the houseful of Jews in the middle. They word it in different ways; but it all really boils down to the same thing: ‘bad citizens’.
The most important factor shaping Sayers’s attitude to Jews was their rejection of Christ. As she wrote to a Mr. Lynx in : I cannot, you see, bring myself to approach the question as though Christ had made no difference to history. I think, you see, that He was the turning-point of history, and the Jewish people, whose religion and nation are closely bound up with the course of history, missed that turning-point and got stranded: so that all the subsequent course of their history has to be looked upon in the light of that frustration’.
In response to Mr. Lynx’s persistent requests, Sayers produced an article for a symposium on ‘The Future of the Jews’. The article amounted to a complex theological treatise arguing that Jewish misfortune must be seen as ‘the sad but inevitable consequence of their failure to recognize their Messiah when he came’. Mercifully, this article, being both too long and too dense for public consumption, was never published, no doubt the outcome that Sayers had intended all along. Sayers’s letters make explicit the attitudes that lurk just beneath the surface of her play cycle. Caiaphas is made out to be the spokesman for Jewish otherness and parochiality, and the beleaguered Pilate, who tried so hard to have Jesus set free, expresses the views that may well have reflected those of Sayers herself: ‘I don’t trust Jews’. Nevertheless, Sayers does not blame only the Jewish High Priest, and, by extension, the Jewish people, for Jesus’ death. Rather, she sees humankind as complicit both in that ancient crime and in the catastrophe of World War II. Not only is Caiaphas like one of Hitler’s bishops. The elders of the ancient Synagogue, she suggests, ‘are to be found on every Parish Council—always highly respectable, often quarrelsome, and sometimes in a crucifying mood’. But, she insists, Tear off the disguise of the Jacobean idiom, go back to the homely and vigorous Greek of Mark or John, translate it into its current English counterpart, and there every man may see his own face. We played the parts in that tragedy, nineteen and a half centuries since, and perhaps are playing them to-day, in the same good faith and in the same ironic ignorance. But to-day we cannot see the irony, for we the audience are now the actors and do not know the end of the play. But it may assist us to know what we are doing if the original drama is shown to us again, with ourselves in the original parts.
James Brabazon, Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography (New York: Scribner, ), . Brabazon, Sayers, . Brabazon, Sayers, . Sayers, Man Born, . Sayers, Man Born, .
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These remarks suggest that despite Sayers’s obvious ambivalence towards Jews, her portrayal of Caiaphas is intended not only to attribute some measure of responsibility to him for the chain of events leading to Jesus’ death but also to mount a critique of the political leadership of her own country in the pre-war period and to comment on the experience of the British people in the early war years.
The Nazarene Sholem Asch (–) was a Polish-born American novelist, playwright and essayist in the Yiddish langage. His novel, The Nazarene, is the first and best known of a trilogy of so-called Christian novels that also includes The Apostle () and Mary (). The Nazarene presents the life and death of Jesus from the perspectives of three characters: Cornelius, a Roman centurion who had the ear of Pilate; Jochanan, a disciple of the Pharisaic Rabbi Nicodemon, and Jesus’ betrayer Judas. These three stories are framed by a narrative, set in s Poland, that features an elderly Pole, Pan Viadomsky, who hires an impoverished Jewish student to help him translate the long lost ‘Gospel of Judas’. Viadomsky is a virulent anti-Semite who collaborates with a priest on a treatise designed to prove that Jews made use of Christian blood to prepare their Passover Matzot. Yet he develops a love/hate dependency on his young Jewish assistant, to whom he reveals his shocking secret: Pan Viadomsky is himself the Roman centurion named Cornelius. Furthermore, the student too was alive in the early first century, when he was the young disciple Jochanan who became a follower of Jesus. Although it is very long—close to pages in English translation—The Nazarene is one of Asch’s most accessible novels. The improbability of the frame narrative contrasts with the vivid detail and realism of the three intersecting stories set in Jesus’ era. The book is rich in content, texture and suspense, a real page-turner even now, almost seven decades after its publication. In contrast to Sayers’s work, The Nazarene pays attention to both the religious and the political aspects of the high priestly role. Nevertheless, it sets the High Priest apart from the people and emphasizes the Jews’ dislike for the office: The High Priest…was the highest religious functionary, and, at the same time, the uncrowned king. He could send out his messengers to arrest Jews even beyond the frontiers of Judaea. And the Priesthood was like a leech, sucking the blood and marrow out of the people. The High Priests were bloated with Asch’s ‘Gospel of Judas’ is not to be identified with the Gnostic text known by the same name. On the latter, see Andrew Cockburn, ‘The Judas Gospel’, National Geographic Magazine (May ) –; April D. De Conick, The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says (New York: Continuum, ); Bart D. Ehrman, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed (New York: Oxford University, ); Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer and Gregor Wurst, The Gospel of Judas: From Codex Tchacos (Washington, DC: National Geographic, ).
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wealth; for apart from the tithes and the first-fruits, payable in kind, they imposed additional taxes on the people.
The Jews’ antipathy towards their High Priest was set aside on the annual Day of Atonement, when he entered the Holy of Holies. As Cornelius narrates: During these festivals of theirs the Jews were even capable of wild ecstasies of joy. What a sight they were, for instance, on the night of the ending of their most solemn sacred day, the Day of Atonement, when their High Priest issued from the mysterious Holy of Holies unharmed by his contact with supreme sanctity! The bitterness which they felt throughout the whole year against the High Priest and his acolytes was forgotten and forgiven on that day.
As members of the higher aristocracy, the High Priests were Rome’s natural allies but the relationship was tense nonetheless. At their first meeting, Caiaphas’s attempts to assure Pilate of his loyalty met with an equivocal response: Pilate’s fleshy nose sank downward; he glanced at the [High Priest’s] party furtively from under his heavy eyelids and said, briefly: ‘That we shall see. It depends on good will’. ‘On one side at least that good will always exists’, answered the High Priest. ‘That will have to be proved by deeds’, said Pilate.
Indeed, from the moment of his arrival in Jerusalem, Pilate’s disdain for and even hatred of Jews was evident, at least to Cornelius. After Pilate’s first confrontation with the High Priest, Cornelius teases him: ‘Procurator’, I said, ‘the first thing you will have to do on reaching the Antonia, is to send for leeches, to have the bad blood drawn from your veins’. ‘I am thinking of very different methods for ridding myself of my bad blood’. ‘I know it, Procurator. By drawing the blood of the Jews’.
In addition to highlighting the tension between the Jewish High Priest and the Roman governor, Asch creates a subplot that involves jealousies and intrigues within Caiaphas’s own family. Most troublesome to Caiaphas’s peace of mind were the former High Priest Hanan (Annas) and his youngest son, also named Hanan. Cornelius wrote: Hanan ben Hanan was a born fighter, and there was occasion enough for fighting. It was no light thing either for us Romans or for the Jewish Priesthood to
Asch, The Nazarene, . Asch, The Nazarene, –. Asch, The Nazarene, . Asch, The Nazarene, –. Asch, The Nazarene, .
‘Rewritten Gospel’ retain power in Jerusalem, and the boy was hungry for power. Hunger for power shouted from his person, as it did, for that matter, from the person of his father. But while the old man had learned, from long experience, to go about its satisfaction with infinite cunning and patience, contenting himself with the outward show of the civil authority delegated to him by his son-inlaw, Hanan ben Hanan was too young, too impetuous, and too inexperienced to conceal his envy of the regnant High Priest.
The various conflicts and tensions—within the high priestly family, between the Romans and the Jews, and between Pilate and Caiaphas—come to a head in the events leading to Jesus’ death. In Asch’s novel, however, neither the High Priest nor the Roman governor bears the weight of responsibility for Jesus’ arrest. That role belongs to Cornelius. On his deathbed, Pan Viadomsky confesses to his Jewish assistant that it was he, Cornelius, who, in the aftermath of the ‘cleansing of the temple’, initiated the events leading to Jesus’ death: I am he, the man who laid the first hand on your Rabbi, when our frightened little servants of the High Priest thought that if they but touched him they would be consumed by the fire of his mouth… The fact is that your frightened little Jews did not dare to place a hand on the Rabbi. I have good grounds for believing that even your foxy old Hanan was infected by the terror; he took your Rabbi for a fiery angel direct from heaven. They were frightened out of their wits before I brought the man to them, a prisoner; and even afterwards, in the very court of Hanan, they shied away from him. The fact is that the High Priests gave me a great deal of trouble in connection with your Rabbi, particularly after you [Jesus’ followers] proclaimed him the Jewish King and brought him in procession to Jerusalem.
In Cornelius’ version of the story, Caiaphas, far from desiring and plotting Jesus’ death, did what he could to forestall Jesus’ arrest. His first tactic was to downplay Jesus’ importance: ‘Kaifa pretended to be very phlegmatic. “Why”, he said, “Every year our Jews proclaim a new King-Messiah, and no harm is done; the Roman Government still stands where it did, and Herod’s authority is not diminished by a hair. Let them have their little joke”’. The High Priest insists that Jesus’ behaviour in the Temple was just an internal matter but Cornelius disagrees and threatens the High Priest with reprisals. ‘What happened in the Temple court’, I replied, firmly, ‘was not directed solely against the Temple administration. It was an assault on the whole system of laws and a threat against all order in the Province of Judaea. Considering the harm which the man did to your prestige, we cannot but wonder that you extend your protection to him. How can we help suspecting that you have Asch, The Nazarene, . Asch, The Nazarene, –. Asch, The Nazarene, –.
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your own reasons? We have neither the time nor the means to untangle all the details of your mystical, complicated religious affairs, which so easily take on the aspect of rebellion. Our straightforward Roman commonsense tells us that if the supreme religious authority extends its protection to a man who has delivered such a blow against its prestige, then this same highest religious authority must find it to its interest to make common cause with a rebel and a disturber of the peace. That interest cannot be in consonance with the wellbeing of the constituted order’.
Caiaphas asks, fearfully: ‘Hegemon, do you dare to doubt our loyalty to Rome?’ Cornelius presses the point: ‘It is not a question of doubting or of not doubting. Can such an attitude on the part of the High Priesthood seem otherwise than suspicious to the legate and the Procurator?’ Cornelius demands that Caiaphas produce Jesus immediately. Despite the Roman’s threats, however, the High Priest remains evasive: ‘But we assure you that we do not know where the man is; and we promise we shall take immediate steps to discover his whereabouts. The moment we ourselves know, we shall transmit the information to you’. Here ensues a debate within the high priestly family; the elder Hanan is willing to hand Jesus over, and the younger Hanan insists upon it, but Caiaphas refuses. Eventually, Jesus is found and brought to the council for investigation, a process that is nearly scuttled by the fierce arguments between the Sadducean and Pharisaic members with regard to interpretation of the Law. Finally, Jesus utters the words that even Caiaphas considers to be blasphemous, and the High Priest tears his robe as a sign of mourning (Matt .). Still, the question remains: Should Jesus be turned over to Pilate as the Hegemon had demanded? Predictably, both Hanan senior and his youngest son argue vigorously that the Council must comply with Cornelius’ demands: ‘If not, it would mean that we believe [Jesus’ claims] to be true, and we would have to prostrate ourselves at his feet and proclaim him the King-Messiah’. Others object: ‘If this man has transgressed against us, against the Jewish faith, then we will be the judges. Since when does Israel admit strangers into his garden, to do the weeding for him?’ Old Hanan prevails, however. Jesus is handed over, and the story ends as it always does: with Jesus dying on the cross. The length of this novel affords Asch the time and space fully to develop the setting, the characters and the plot. But as a Jewish immigrant to the United States from Eastern Europe, writing in the Nazi era for a primarily Jewish audience, Asch is also motivated to provide a more complex view. Asch draws a
Asch, The Nazarene, . Asch, The Nazarene, –. Asch, The Nazarene, –. Asch, The Nazarene, . Asch, The Nazarene, .
‘Rewritten Gospel’
three-dimensional High Priest who is not without his faults but also not blinded by hatred or political ambition. Most important, Asch attributes to Caiaphas the same sort of conflict—between tradition and modernity, adherence to religion and adopting secular ways—that was central to the Jewish experience in Europe in the modern era, and to the experience of immigration to the United States from the late nineteenth century onwards. This inner-Jewish cultural debate is adumbrated in the novel by the contrast between the high priestly family and Joseph of Arimathea, who became one of Jesus’ followers. Like the high priestly family, Joseph was ‘a man of great wealth, steeped in Hellenistic culture and in company of Roman officials and circle of Greek philosophers’. Whereas the High Priests kowtowed to Rome, Joseph was engaged in a fierce internal conflict: The unhappy struggle between the Greek and Jewish worlds found its echo in Joseph’s heart. His strict adherence to the tradition of his people had by no means killed in him the inclination toward the brilliant world of the gentiles. He carried on a perpetual if secret war within himself; he dreamed of finding reconciliation with the temptations of Hellenism without at the same time destroying the barriers which the Jewish sages had put up against its spiritual barrenness.
Whether Joseph’s struggle would have rung true to Hellenized Jews like Philo of Alexandria is difficult to say. But Asch’s description accurately reflects the dilemma faced by modern Jews in the transition between a closed and intense religious life and the openness of Western culture. The emotional tenor of these struggles was heightened by the experience of anti-Semitism, which had a long European history but reached new depths in the Nazi context. At the time Asch was writing, the war had not yet begun, yet in Jewish circles the alarm was already extremely high due to the Nazi persecution of Jews that had begun with Hitler’s rise to power. The Nazarene quickly became a national best seller, ranking ninth in national sales in and fifth in , and was praised by some prominent Jewish book reviewers such as Clifton Fadiman in the New Yorker and Alfred Kazin in the Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven, CN/ London: Yale University, ). Asch, The Nazarene, . Asch, The Nazarene, . On the impact of enlightenment and emancipation on Jewish religious life, see David Harry Ellenson, After Emanicipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, ); David Rudavsky, Modern Jewish Religious Movements: A History of Emancipation and Adjustment (New York: Behrman House, rd rev. ed.). This concern is hinted at in the novel, in the repeated references to the German soldiers that Rome had at its disposal and who were fiercely hated by the Jews (Asch, The Nazarene, ).
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New Republic. But in Yiddish literary circles, the novel’s highly favourable portrayal of Jesus and his followers created a major storm, and precipitated Asch’s fall from his position as the most popular and respected Yiddish writer of twentiethcentury America. Asch’s long-time editor, Abraham Kahan, refused to serialize the novel in the Forverts, the foremost Yiddish newspaper of the era. Kahan accused Asch of currying favour with non-Jews and of proselytizing; he even went so far as to attack Asch’s knowledge of history, his mastery of Hebrew and his use of Yiddish in previously published works. The original Yiddish version of The Nazarene was finally published in by the Jewish communist paper, Di Frayhait. The communist connection did nothing to endear Asch to his Yiddish readership, but at least it meant that they could read the novel. The sympathetic use of Christian subject matter was certainly not new to Jewish culture or to Yiddish literature. Asch himself had written previous works about Christianity, and other Jewish writers, scholars and artists had portrayed Jesus in sympathetic terms. One thinks, for example, of Joseph Klausner’s book, Jesus of Nazareth, and the paintings of Marc Chagall such as White Crucifixion. The turn to Christological themes has been described as an ‘expression of the hybrid culture in which modern Americans lived, a turn to a figure whose historical significance in shaping Western culture could not be ignored’. In the early twentieth century in Europe and America, Jesus could be seen as a Jewish brother, and the language of crucifixion and Christian martyrdom could be used to describe the Jewish experience of anti-Semitism and persecution. Theologically, some Jews were ready to reclaim Jesus as a Jew, by emphasizing that Christianity as such was a later development. In the immediate pre-war and war periods, however, concerns about the role of Christianity in anti-Semitism were riding high and, parenthetically, still run high among some segments of the Jewish population even today. In writing so positively about Jesus on the eve of the Holocaust, and publishing his novel first in English Hannah Berliner Fischthal, ‘Reactions of the Yiddish Press to the Nazarene by Sholem Asch’, Sholem Asch Reconsidered (ed. Nanette Stahl; The Yale University Library Gazette, Occasional Supplement ; New Haven, CT: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, ) . Anita Norich, ‘Sholem Asch and the Christian Question’, Sholem Asch Reconsidered (ed. Stahl), . Fischthal, ‘Reactions’, . Fischthal, ‘Reactions’, . Asch’s earlier Christian works include the story ‘In a Karnival Nacht’, perhaps written as early as . See Hoffman, ‘True Christians’, . Joseph Klausner and Herbert Danby, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching (New York: Macmillan, ). Edward N. McNulty, ‘Three Artists View Christ: Marc Chagall, Abraham Rattner, and Robert Lentz’, Christianity and the Arts () –. Norich, ‘Sholem Asch’, . Hoffman, ‘True Christians’, –.
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rather than in Yiddish, Asch, some felt, had betrayed his primary Yiddish audience. The focus on Asch’s favourable depiction of Jesus distracted his Jewish audience’s attention from the important ways in which The Nazarene differed from most other retellings of the Jesus story. For Asch, Caiaphas is not an unscrupulous politician intent on ridding the world of Jesus, but a complex individual with the unenviable task of mediating between an oppressed and unruly populace and the Empire that would keep them in check. Neither is first-century Judea a society divided between the poor who long for a savior to deliver them from Roman rule and the authority figures—Priests, scribes, Pharisees—who collaborate with Rome in oppressing their people. Asch allows us to imagine our way into the midst of Jewish society, its rivalries and tensions, as well as the seriousness with which it took Jewish belief and practice, in all its solemnity and joy. In doing so, Asch provides a rich medium with which Jews in the twentieth, and, I might add, in the twenty-first century as well, can think through the push and pull between Jewish identity and practice on the one hand, and participation in a free and open society on the other.
Conclusion
The Man Born to be King and The Nazarene are straightforward examples of a category of the ‘rewritten Bible’ genre that we may term ‘rewritten Gospel’. Aside from their twentieth-century dates, these imaginative works display the full set of characteristics associated with the genre ‘rewritten Bible’: they tell the story of Jesus in a sequential way; they are clearly and obviously based on the Gospel accounts; they follow the overall order and narrative thrust of the Gospels while adding and expanding from other sources and the fertile imaginations of their authors. Both Sayers and Asch use Caiaphas’s prophecy in John as the starting point for their depictions of the High Priest as a political figure caught between his Jewish compatriots and the Roman imperial machine. Both authors make the most of the ambiguities and gaps of the Gospels and use Josephus as well as other sources to amplify their depictions of Judea under Roman rule and the role of the High Priest in the decades prior to the first Jewish Revolt against Rome. Both also acknowledge the ambiguity of the Gospels with regard to the roles and responsibilities of Annas the former High Priest during the tenure of his son-in-law Caiaphas. In Sayers’s play cycle, Annas is at Caiaphas’s side throughout. Asch, by contrast, casts the former High Priest as the central figure in a complex subplot involving jealousy and intrigue in the highest quarters. While the details are Asch’s, he uses Josephus’ accounts of the tenures of Norich, ‘Sholem Asch’, .
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Annas, Caiaphas and the younger Annas as the framework for this subplot. For neither Asch nor Sayers is Caiaphas a likable figure. Yet both authors acknowledge the difficult situation in which a first-century Jewish High Priest would find himself vis-à-vis the Judean population on the one hand and the Roman governor on the other. Finally, both authors place the story of Jesus, and the role of Caiaphas within that story, in the broader context of the history of Jewish relations, beginning from the first century down to their own, very difficult days. Despite the profound differences in their ethnic identities and personal experiences, Sayers and Asch both lament the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity. Their laments, however, reflect opposing perspectives. Asch argued that Judaism and Christianity were a single culture and civilization; in his view, anti-Semitism was caused by the decision of Jesus’ followers to separate from Judaism. Sayers, on the other hand, believed that the Jews were tragically mistaken to reject the Christian message and justified anti-Semitism as the inevitable consequence of the Jews’ ongoing insistence on difference. While their creative approach to these problems does not shed light on the historical issues of the first century as such, Sayers and Asch address the same exegetical problems as do commentators, theologians and historians. The Man Born to Be King and The Nazarene, like other examples of the ‘rewritten Gospel’ and the larger category of ‘rewritten Bible’ into which it fits, demonstrate the pivotal role that biblical narrative continues to play as a vehicle through which not only to address historical issues or develop theological positions but also to address the central issues and conflicts of successive generations.
According to Josephus, the younger Annas did eventually become high priest (in CE) and is best known for his actions against James, the brother of Jesus (Ant. .–). VanderKam, High Priests, –. Matthew Hoffman, ‘Sholem Asch’s True Christians: The Jews as a People of Christs’, Sholem Asch Reconsidered (ed. Stahl), . Norich, ‘Sholem Asch’, .
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0028688509000125
The Material Spirit: Cosmology and Ethics in Paul T R O E L S E N G B E R G-P E D E R S E N Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Koebmagergade 46, DK-1150 Copenhagen K, Denmark email:
[email protected] This essay argues that the traditional dichotomy between ‘apocalypticism’ and philosophy should be transcended with regard to Paul’s understanding of the pneuma in relation to sarx. The essay first analyses the cosmology of the pneuma in connection with the future resurrection of believers ( Cor .–), then considers its presence in the bodies of believers here and now ( Corinthians –), then interprets the ‘anthropology’ of Thess . and Cor .– and . and its connection with Paul’s ‘ethics’, and finally proposes a reading of Rom .– in relation to .– that is based on Paul’s concrete cosmology. Keywords: Paul, pneuma, apocalypticism, philosophy, Stoicism, Romans .
Introduction: Dichotomies
La vérité est toujours concrète. This article argues that this famous claim is also true of Paul at a crucial point in his thought: his understanding of pneuma (‘spirit’) in its relation to the body and sarx (‘flesh’). I will argue that Paul thought of pneuma and sarx in wholly concrete, cosmological terms. Thus, in addition to everything else that should be said of it, pneuma is a material entity that is made up of the cosmological elements to be found above in heaven, which in the ancient world were thought to be fire and air. And in addition to everything else that should be said of it, sarx refers to physical bodies down here on earth, which in the ancient view were made up of the two remaining elements, water and earth—but also, to some extent, of fire and air. My theme, of course, is also the wider significance of these claims. The importance of the pneuma in Paul’s thought can hardly be overstated. In fact, once one has become attuned to it, one will find the pneuma everywhere in Paul, even where it is not actually mentioned. That is a problem in itself. A far greater problem is that one will need to decide upon the framework within which to understand Paul’s talk of the pneuma. That is the problem of finding the best categories of interpretation. A look at the rich scholarship on the topic
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shows that it has been very extensively focused on deciding in what cultural contexts one should situate Paul’s ideas. That is perfectly legitimate and indeed quite necessary. Unfortunately, the scholarly discussions have also been hampered by almost always operating with sharply drawn dichotomies: Paul’s thought about the pneuma belongs here—and not there. These dichotomies are well known: a Jewish, perhaps even an ‘Old Testament’ view against a Greek one; a Palestinian Jewish view (as, e.g., in Qumran) against a Hellenistic Jewish one (as, e.g., in Alexandria: Philo, the Wisdom of Solomon and the like); an ‘apocalyptic’ view against a ‘philosophical’ one; an understanding of the pneuma as a ‘power’ against a ‘substantive’ or an ‘idealistic’ or an ‘individualistic’ or an ‘existentialist’ one; an immaterial understanding of the pneuma against a material one; or finally—at the bottom line—a ‘theological’ understanding against a ‘naturalistic’ one. There is no end to these dichotomies. Of course, we need categories to make any sense of what we read, but we must beware of simplifying dichotomies. The better we are able to allow for interplay between those categories we necessarily erect, the better we will be able to see what is actually going on in our texts. And of course, the texts are far more interesting than those dichotomies. Predecessors: Gunkel, Horn, Martin
It is natural to begin an ultra-brief Forschungsbericht with the small masterpiece by Hermann Gunkel that was published years ago: Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes nach der populären Anschauung der apostolischen Zeit und der Lehre des Apostels Paulus. Though Gunkel’s analyses are in many respects sound, they were also articulated through dichotomies: (i) Paul drew on the ‘popular view’ of the pneuma in the early church—and not on the ‘Old Testament’ or ‘Hellenistic Judaism’. But why the opposition? (ii) In Paul the pneuma is a divine power that is ‘supernatural’ and ‘transworldly’—and so not ‘natural’. But where does this contrast come from? Other views of Gunkel’s Do I also wish to go beyond the dichotomy between a metaphorical and a literal reading in relation to Paul’s many forms of expression concerning the pneuma (as Margaret Mitchell has very pertinently asked about my position)? No. On the contrary, the brunt of my argument is that in spite of everything that can be (rightly) said about the ineliminability of metaphorical language in human talk and thought, there is and remains a clear distinction, which should precisely be enforced in relation to Paul’s talk of the pneuma. Hermann Gunkel, Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes nach der populären Anschauung der apostolischen Zeit und der Lehre des Apostels Paulus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ). See Gunkel, Die Wirkungen, – (‘Old Testament’) and – (‘Hellenistic Judaism’). Thus Gunkel, Die Wirkungen: ‘supernaturalistisch’ (), ‘Supernaturalismus’ (), ‘übernatürlich’ (, , ). Gunkel does realize that ‘auch für die urapostolische Anschauung die Grenze des Uebernatürlichen und Natürlichen der Natur der Sache nach nicht immer scharf gezogen werden konnte’ (). Seen from our perspective, this observation should have led him to query the distinction itself.
The Material Spirit
were more straightforward and, as I will argue, basically correct: (iii) The pneuma in Paul is a material phenomenon. (iv) The pneuma directs the whole life of believers. From Gunkel I will make a giant leap forward to two books from the s that directly set the stage for the present inquiry. In Friedrich Wilhelm Horn published his magisterial book on Paul’s pneumatology, Das Angeld des Geistes. Here, among many other things, Horn helpfully distinguishes between six uses of pneuma in Paul: a functional one (where the pneuma is active in making believers act or speak the way they do), a substantive one (when the pneuma is said to ‘live in’ believers), a material one (as applied in sacramental contexts), a ‘hypostasis’ use (of the pneuma as distinct from God and believers), a normative one (where the pneuma has ethical implications) and an anthropological one (where Paul speaks of ‘my’ or ‘your’ pneuma). What I miss, though, is an attempt to hold those various uses together in a single grip. For instance, is the pneuma active, that is, does it function in believers, by being present as a substance in them? Does it function, and is it substantively present, in them as a material entity? If so, is it perhaps in all cases an ‘anthropological’ entity? And is it in this form that it has a normative function, too? Finally, if the answer to all the other questions is affirmative, how is the pneuma in this form related to the pneuma as ‘hypostasized’ and a
See Gunkel, Die Wirkungen, –, for the early church (‘ein übersinnlicher Stoff’, ; ‘stofflich oder an ein stoffliches Substrat gebunden’, ) and – for Paul (the pneuma is ‘mit einem himmlischen Stoff verwandt’, ; cf. , where Gunkel also uses the term ‘verwandt’). Note, however, that while he recognizes this aspect of Paul’s understanding of the pneuma, Gunkel criticizes Holsten, Lüdemann and Pfleiderer for having made ‘die Stofflichkeit des Geistes zum Ausgangspunkt der Schilderung…der paulinischen Lehre vom πνεῦμα’ (). Gunkel, Die Wirkungen, : ‘[D]as ganze Leben des Christen ist eine Wirkung des πνεῦμα, das bedeutet: das ganze Leben des Christen offenbart eine gewaltige, überweltliche, göttliche Kraft’. According to Gunkel, this idea was Paul’s own invention. Friedrich Wilhelm Horn, Das Angeld des Geistes (FRLANT ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ). Horn, Das Angeld, . E.g. Thess .–; Gal .; Cor .; .. E.g. Thess .; Cor .; .; Rom ., . E.g. Cor .; .; Cor .–; .; Rom .. E.g. Cor .; Rom .; .–. E.g. Gal .; .; Cor .; Rom .; .. E.g. Cor . v.l.; .; Rom .. As against this, Horn explicitly finds—and argues all through the book—that only a developmental perspective can explain the different aspects of the pneuma addressed in the letters: ‘Solange…dieses Werden [sc. “der pl Briefe”] und die situative Bedingtheit der pl Aussagen missachtet werden, muss der Exeget bei der Feststellung eines Nebeneinanders unterschiedlicher Aussagen stehenbleiben’ (Horn, Das Angeld, [my italics]).
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messenger between God and men? Some of these questions, at least, will be addressed in what follows. The other book I have in mind is Dale B. Martin’s wonderfully refreshing book from on The Corinthian Body. As the title indicates, this book is not directly about the pneuma, but more broadly about Paul’s highly variegated talk of body in Corinthians. But the pneuma comes in, too, since Martin argues (not unlike Gunkel and to a large extent drawing, like Gunkel, on the ‘populäre Anschauung’ of Paul’s own day) that the pneuma should be understood as some form of material ‘stuff’. With Martin, however, we come across a set of dichotomies that both have a long history and are also very much with us at present. One is between what we might call ordinary folks, to whom Paul belonged, and the elite, not least philosophers. Behind this lies an even more fundamental one, between ‘apocalypticism’ and philosophy. On Paul’s nonelitist construction of the body in Corinthians, according to Martin, the body is a porous entity that is exposed to the surrounding powers. What matters, therefore, is that you are connected to the right power, God. This is part of Paul’s ‘apocalypticism’, which Martin construes as being in direct opposition to philosophy. It is curious to note the extent to which Martin’s overall picture of Paul resembles an older one that continues to have a strong grip on scholars, that of Ernst Käsemann with its emphasis on Paul’s ‘apocalypticism’ and his famous Unfortunately, there is no room to discuss here the last question concerning the relationship between the pneuma as entering into human beings and as a messenger between God and men. For some speculation in this regard, see n. towards the end. Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven/London: Yale University, ). Martin, The Corinthian Body, . There is the vital difference from Gunkel, however, that where the latter referred almost exclusively to the ‘populäre Anschauung’ of the early church, Martin does a splendid job of surveying the generally accepted views in the Graeco-Roman world far more broadly. In spite of this, there is a bit of dichotomic reading in Martin’s argument since he claims that the ancient world did not really have the notion of the ‘immaterial’ at all, which only came in with Descartes (–). That claim is manifestly false. Platonism certainly operated with the notion of the ‘immaterial’. Indeed, it is quite probably correct to say that the intuitive, modern understanding of Paul’s talk of pneuma as referring to something ‘immaterial’ or ‘spiritual’, an understanding that very much remains with us and against which Martin was rightly reacting, is the result of the invasion of Platonism into early Christian thinking. Note, however, that this only happened after Paul and the first century CE, probably via a route that goes from Philo to Clement of Alexandria and into mainstream Christianity. To call this a dichotomy to be overcome will not appeal to people with Marxist leanings. I am not myself a Marxist even though I recognize the risks of ideological thinking. And I do believe that there was a closer connection than a Marxist (or even a Nietzschean) would acknowledge between the views of ancient philosophers and those of the non-elite (so-called ‘popular morality’). If so, there is a dichotomy to be overcome here, too. On the body: Martin, The Corinthian Body, –. On powers and ‘apocalypticism’: e.g. –.
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talk of opposed spheres of power. What we see here—in spite of all remaining differences—is a similarity that has its roots in what is perhaps the fundamental dichotomy in the Western consciousness: that between religion and philosophy. We should try hard to overcome this dichotomy, at least if we are talking about the ancient world. If we do that, we shall find that while Paul was certainly an ‘apocalypticist’, he was also in contact with the philosophy of his day. This means two things. First, Paul fills in his fundamental, ‘apocalyptic’ view of the world by drawing on contemporary philosophical ideas about the structure of the world. That is, he thinks in wholly concrete terms ‘cosmologically’ and even ‘naturalistically’, not just ‘cosmically’ in an unspecified (and ‘theological’), ‘apocalyptic’ sense. Second, Paul argues for his various claims in ways that qualify as being ‘philosophical’ in the following two senses: he attempts to combine the various central concepts with which he works into something like a coherent system; and he attempts, in particular, to integrate his talk about God, Christ, the pneuma and much more into an account of the world that makes sense of it (if nothing more) to believers and non-believers alike. By understanding Paul’s thought in this way, we have left behind anything like a ‘Judaism/Hellenism divide’. That is one more obsolete dichotomy that we need to transcend. Compare Käsemann’s famous claim that ‘[d]ie Apokalyptik…die Mutter aller christlichen Theologie gewesen [ist]’ in ‘Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie’ (), repr. in Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen, vol. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, rd ed. ) –, esp. . Also ‘Zur paulinischen Anthropologie’ in Paulinische Perspektiven (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, nd ed. [st ed. ]) –, esp. , with a thrice-repeated ‘Apokalyptisch ist…’ On spheres of power, see the same article on ‘Herrschaftswechsel’, ‘Mächte der Dämonie’ and more (). These differences are huge inasmuch as Martin’s approach is fundamentally anthropological, whereas that of Käsemann is, of course, strongly theological. I confess that I am quite sceptical about the use of ‘kosmisch’ or ‘cosmic’ in the KäsemannNachfolge. ‘Kosmologisch’ and ‘cosmological’ should be taken to mean just that, and the former pair should be avoided until somebody manages to give it a precise sense. This linguistic and conceptual point slurs an otherwise fine survey by Martinus de Boer of ‘Paul and Apocalyptic Eschatology’, The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. (ed. J. J. Collins; New York/London: Continuum) –. It does not, however, in itself undercut de Boer’s distinction between two distinct patterns of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, one being ‘cosmological’ and the other ‘forensic’ (see de Boer, ‘Paul and Apocalyptic Eschatology’, –). The battle over whether Paul was a ‘systematic thinker’ or not was wholly appropriate in its own time and place (the s and s). By now, while we should remember the frontiers of that battle, we should also allow ourselves to look for coherence. It is not an either/or. Perspectives of ‘development’ or ‘situational’ explanations remain valid. But they do not render invalid the attempt to discover some degree of systematic coherence. This was the great idea that lay behind the Library of Early Christianity (eight splendid volumes published in – by the Westminster Press, Philadelphia). In the words of its general editor, Wayne Meeks, ‘[t]his series of books is an exercise in taking down fences’ (see ‘Foreword’ to Robert M. Grant, Gods and the One God [Library of Early Christianity ;
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Summary and Procedure
To summarize so far: Paul was an ‘apocalypticist’, but he also worked philosophically. In trying to understand his view of the pneuma and the body, we must allow ourselves to analyse what he says in the light of the broadest possible understanding of his context and without letting ourselves be guided by any of all those modern dichotomies that bedevil our view. Only then, I contend, will we be able to grasp what he says in all its strangeness and power. The procedure will be as follows. Paul speaks of the pneuma both in the present and in connection with Christ’s future return and the resurrection of believers. It is best to begin from his account of these future events, where we find the clearest elaboration of the pneuma. Then we shall go back to the pneuma as present in believers’ bodies here and now and consider this ‘anthropologically’ and ‘ethically’. Finally, we shall discuss a single passage, Rom .– . For of course, the basic point of clarifying Paul’s concept of pneuma is to help us understand better the individual text. Even more: the ultimate argument for the adequacy of some overall grasp lies in the extent to which we feel that it helps to elucidate the individual texts. In addition, Rom .– belongs to what is probably Paul’s last letter. It is permissible, therefore, to draw on all the previous letters for the analysis of this text.
The Role of the Pneuma at the Resurrection
The basic point about the future is succinctly stated in Rom . when Paul says that God, ‘who has raised Christ from the dead will also make alive your
Philadelphia: Westminster, ] –, esp. ). ‘The history of Christianity’s beginnings is part of the history of Judaism in antiquity, and both are part of the history of Greco-Roman culture’ (see Meeks, ‘Foreword’ to Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah [Library of Early Christianity ; Philadelphia: Westminster, ] –, esp. [Meeks’s italics]). The scare quotes around ‘anthropological’, ‘ethical’, ‘apocalyptic’ etc. are intended to remind us all the time that these are modern constructs (with more or less clear bases back in history) that have no explicit foothold in Paul himself. While we can certainly use these terms, we must with all accessible means try to avoid absolutizing them as if there were, for instance, an independent field of discourse in Paul that one might identify as constituting his anthropology (etc.). Once more on ‘systematic’ versus ‘developmental’: I am not denying the developmental view. Nor do I reject the view that one should always primarily consider any given topic or concept in Paul within the individual letter to which it belongs. On the contrary, I applaud these views. Still, one must also be allowed to try to think somewhat more systematically, as it were trying to adopt a bird’s-eye view on all the (genuine) letters taken as a whole.
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mortal bodies by means of his pneuma that lives within you’. The pneuma is the power that was operative in raising Christ from the dead, that lives within believers in the present and that will also at the eschaton make their mortal bodies come alive. How will the latter thing happen? That is the question Paul intends to answer in Cor .–. I only need to make a few observations here on this crucial text. Paul’s question is, of course, with what body (σῶμα) the dead will arise (.). And his argued reply is that it is a body (a σῶμα) that is ‘pneumatic’ (.). It follows that this body must qualify as a genuine body. Otherwise, there is no point at all to Paul’s argument. He also explicitly states that the resurrection body is not one of ‘flesh and blood’ (.), but ‘this mortal or corruptible (something or body)’ (.–) as changed (.–). Here he appears to reflect a distinction already drawn by Aristotle between so-called substantive change, where an individual changes from being dead or alive to its opposite (comingto-be and passing-away), and so-called accidental change, where the individual remains the individual that it is, but changes in its quality, quantity (like size) or whatever. So far, then, the picture is clear enough. But how will the body be changed? And what is a ‘pneumatic body’? This is what Paul explains in the remainder of the passage (.–). The net result is that the resurrection body, which is generated by Christ as life-generating pneuma (.) and which is itself a pneumatic body, is also eo ipso a heavenly one. Christ is now in heaven and will return from heaven (cf. Phil .). As lifegenerating, heavenly pneuma, he will change or transform the earthly, ‘psychic’ and mortal body of flesh and blood into a body that is heavenly, ‘pneumatic’ and immortal. Where nothing is noted, translations are my own, based on Nestle-Aland th ed. I have set out parts of the argument more substantially in ‘A Stoic Understanding of Pneuma in Paul’, Philosophy at the Roots of Christianity (ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen and Henrik Tronier; Working Papers ; Copenhagen: The Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, ) –. For substantive change in Aristotle, see De Generatione et Corruptione I., b–: ‘there is “alteration” when the substratum is perceptible and persists, but changes in its own properties… The body, e.g., although persisting as the same body, is now healthy and now ill; … But when nothing perceptible persists in its identity as a substratum, and the thing changes as a whole (when e.g. the seed as a whole is converted into blood, or water into air, or air as a whole into water), such an occurrence is no longer “alteration”. It is a coming-to-be [γένεσις] of one substance and a passing-away [φθοϱά] of the other…’ (trans. H. H. Joachim in W. D. Ross, The Works of Aristotle, vol. [Oxford: Clarendon, ]; the italics are, of course, neither Aristotle’s nor Joachim’s, but mine). The same picture lies behind Phil ., Cor .– (I contend) and Rom .. Still, do I not let very much hang on Corinthians (as John Barclay has queried)? Both yes and no. Yes, in the sense that this text provides the key that shows (as I take it) how Paul understood the pneuma. No, in the sense that the rest of the material analysed below provides additional support once one sees how it is opened up by that key.
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Paul’s argument makes straightforward and immediate sense on one supposition: that the pneuma is specifically tied to heaven and that it is a physical element (like heaven itself) that may enter into and transform an earthly, physical body of flesh and blood so that it will obtain the same form as a heavenly, physical body like the sun, the moon and the stars (.). Where in Paul’s context does one find such an idea? Answer: in Stoicism and, I believe, nowhere else. If this is correct, then we have a situation where Paul is both stating the basic ‘apocalyptic’ framework of his thought—and also spelling it out in some detail by relying on ideas (a basic, Stoic cosmological framework and a specific, Aristotelian idea) that are derived from contemporary philosophy. Apparently Paul himself did not see any opposition here, e.g. between ‘apocalyptic’ revelations and Stoic cosmology. But in that case, why should we? I am presupposing here that the reader has a rough sense of what one might call the Stoic pneumatology. The Stoic pneuma is a material element or energy made up from a mixture of the two finest elements of the four: fire and air. It extends throughout the world but has its principal place in the uppermost regions of the world. But the Stoic pneuma is also a cognitive entity. It is what gives human beings a share in rationality and reason (logos and nous). The Stoics therefore said (and I am quoting from Paul’s contemporary, Seneca) that ‘Reason is nothing other than a part of the divine spirit descended (or sunk) into a human body’. There are many differences between Stoic cosmology and the cosmology presupposed by Paul’s argument about the resurrection body. What matters here is For Stoicism, see, e.g., Michael Lapidge, ‘Stoic Cosmology’, The Stoics (ed. J. M. Rist; Berkeley/ Los Angeles/London: University of California, ) –. See also, e.g., A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. (Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) –. The best argument for the claim that the idea is specifically Stoic may be the fact that when Philo, who was fundamentally a Platonist, gets near to ideas about the connection between heavenly bodies and earthly ones mediated by the pneuma, he invariably turns Stoic. An example: Leg. .– is Philo’s famous exegesis of Gen ., in which he basically employs Platonic categories in his analysis of the immaterial nous. At ., however, he connects nous with pneuma and contrasts pneuma with the pnoe of Gen . by the following technical Stoic terms: τὸ μὲν γὰϱ πνεῦμα νενόηται κατὰ τὴν ἰσχὺν καὶ εὐτονίαν καὶ δύναμιν. That this is, in fact, the case is suggested by the transition he makes from his apparently more philosophical and cosmological argument in .– to the more picturesque, ‘mythic’ and ‘apocalyptic’ account in .–. He introduces the new section at . by a Τοῦτο δέ φημι in the sense of ‘What I mean is this: …’ And he is quite unconcerned that the more philosophical points he makes in . and .– surround a revelation by him of an ‘apocalyptic’ ‘secret’ concerning the change that believers will undergo. Ep.Mor. .: Ratio…nihil aliud est quam in corpus humanum pars divini spiritus mersa. One difference is that in Stoicism soul and body are separated at death. Whereas the soul of the non-wise person stays on for a brief time, that of the wise person (compare believers in Paul) lives on in heaven in a manner like that of ‘the other stars’ (SVF .) until the final conflagration (ἐκπύϱωσις); cf. SVF . and –. Compare on this A. A. Long, ‘Soul
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that it is this quite concrete kind of thinking that Paul is presupposing and that he introduces ideas from it quite smoothly into his overall ‘apocalyptic’ framework. There is no opposition in Paul between ‘apocalypticism’ and a quite concrete cosmology as articulated in philosophy.
The Role of the Pneuma in the Present: Bodily Transformation Here and Now?
Believers have received the pneuma when they were converted, either in connection with faith or in baptism. But how is the pneuma present in believers? Second Corinthians – suggest an answer. At . Paul famously says that ‘seeing the glory of the Lord with uncovered heads, we are being transformed into that same image [that is, into the Lord] from glory into glory inasmuch as (it happens) by the Lord (who is) pneuma’. Here the pneuma seems to be operative in believers both materially (the transformation) and cognitively (the vision). Note also that already at . Paul has suggested that the Lord, that is, the risen Christ, is the pneuma, a point that he seems to presuppose in .. At . Paul then describes what is probably his own conversion vision. There is no mention of the pneuma, but .– spells out how the conversion ‘treasure’ is present in Paul’s physical body of flesh and blood, and here the pneuma gradually obtains an important role. I take it that in two crucial places in this text Paul in fact speaks of the presence and behaviour of the pneuma in his own mortal body.
and Body in Stoicism’, Phronesis () –, esp. . (Also in Long, Stoic Studies [New York: Cambridge University, ].) Question (as put to me by Cilliers Breytenbach): If Paul thought of the pneuma along Stoic cosmological lines in terms of two of the four cosmological elements, then why is he so disparaging in Gal . and of precisely the στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου? Answers: First, in Galatians he is comparing heathen gods with God, not speaking of the pneuma. Second, he has a predecessor for the same move in a text that nevertheless draws on the pneuma in its Stoic form: the Wisdom of Solomon. Here .– clearly describes wisdom in terms derived from the Stoic account of the pneuma. At .–, however, an account of the (Stoic) gods in terms of the elements is rejected as being wholly inadequate as an account of (the author’s own) God. Cf., e.g., Gal .–, , – + .– and Rom .–. Is Paul not rather engaged, in ., in a hermeneutical interpretation of the text from Scripture that he quotes in . (as Wayne Meeks and Peder Borgen have independently asked)? Surely, yes. But this should not exclude that he also means what he ‘hermeneutically’ finds in Scripture. Paul hardly did ‘hermeneutics’ in the modern way. He probably thought that Scripture described the world more or less directly. Thus he will have thought that the risen Christ was pneuma or at least a ‘pneumatic’ being, which does not necessarily imply that the two cannot also be notionally separated. Compare his easy change in Rom .– from pneuma Christou to Christos.
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The first is in .–, where he states that he constantly carries around in his own body the killing of Jesus and while still living is also constantly being given over to death because of Jesus ‘… in order that the life of Jesus, too, may be made visible (φανεϱωθῇ) in our body (σῶμα)’, that is, ‘in our mortal flesh (θνητὴ σάϱξ)’. The visibility generated here is a present one, corresponding to the present transformation from glory to glory of .. And it is one for which the pneuma is responsible. The second indirect reference to the pneuma is in ., where Paul famously distinguishes between his ‘outer human being’, that is, his physical body, which is gradually wasting away, and his ‘inner human being’ that is being renewed day by day. Here, too, I take the latter expression to refer to the bodily pneuma as present within Paul’s physical body or to Paul’s body as ‘pneumatized’. The proposal is that Paul had the idea that the future transformation at the resurrection that would turn the mortal body of flesh and blood into an equally physical, but immortal body of pneuma was already solidly and quite concretely under way in the bodies of believers, who in connection with faith and baptism had received the pneuma from God. I confess that I had some qualms about this reading until I realized that it had, in fact, been proposed in a splendid article from by Samuel Vollenweider. Where I had toyed with using the term ‘atrophy’ for what happens to the ‘outer’ physical body—it atrophies, it dies away—Vollenweider had suggested speaking of ‘entropy’. The idea is the same, and it shows how concretely one must understand Paul. If we are to find a proper term to categorize this picture of believers, we might of course speak of Paul’s ‘pneumatology’ (even though we have not spoken properly of the Holy Spirit itself). Or we might coin a new term and speak of his ‘somatology’ since this is all very much about his conception of the body of the believer. Most naturally, however, we would place our picture under Paul’s ‘anthropology’. Then there is another point: Paul’s anthropology cannot be separated from his
As already argued by Gunkel (Die Wirkungen, ), but the point is contested. This goes against the interpretation of Hans Dieter Betz in his presidential address, ‘The Concept of the “Inner Human Being” (ὁ ἔσω ἄνθϱωπος) in the Anthropology of Paul,’ NTS () –: ‘the indwelling of the spirit is identical with the indwelling of Christ; … this indwelling is not identical with the ἔσω ἄνθϱωπος’ () and ‘the ἔσω ἄνθϱωπος is not identical with the indwelling Christ. Christ is not an earthly ἄνθρωπος, but the divine κύριος present in the heart through the πνεῦμα’ (, my italics). But does the italicized sentence not virtually imply that the ‘inner human being’ is the pneuma/Christ as present in the heart of the believer? However, a substantial discussion of Betz’ excellent analysis would require considerably more space. Samuel Vollenweider, ‘Der Geist Gottes als Selbst der Glaubenden’, ZThK () –, esp. . (Also in Vollenweider, Horizonte neutestamentlicher Christologie [WUNT ; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ].) Incidentally, on p. Vollenweider connects the idea of a ‘pneumatic self’ with the ‘inner human being’ of Cor ..
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cosmology. It reflects it and is part and parcel of it. Here is another dichotomy that should not make us miss what is actually there—the wholly concrete connection between ‘anthropology’ and cosmology. And here, too, Paul is in complete conformity with the philosophers of his day. In Stoicism, for instance, the anthropology is embedded in the cosmology.
The Role of the Pneuma in the Present: ‘Ethics’
As an entry into the theme of the pneuma in relation to ‘ethics’, we may note a few passages where Paul speaks most explicitly about what we would call ‘anthropology’. First Thessalonians . is one such passage, with its distinction between the Thessalonians’ pneuma, soul (ψυχή) and body (σῶμα). Another similar set of passages is Cor .–, with the famous distinction between ‘psychic man’ (ψυχικὸς ἄνθϱωπος, .) and ‘the pneumatic (man’: ὁ πνευματικός, .), and Cor ., with the distinction between the ‘psychic body’ and the ‘pneumatic body’. The idea in all three cases is probably a very simple one. Believers have a body and a soul as does everybody else. Differently from everybody else, however, they also have the pneuma—in their ensouled bodies. That is, in their body and soul, which initially defined them as being merely ‘psychic men’, they have concretely received the pneuma and are therefore on their way, as we have seen, towards being completely transformed into bodies and souls that are ‘pneumatic’. In this process, the pneuma both has a cognitive role to play and a material one, just as in Stoicism. Its role is cognitive in Corinthians (cf. .) and material in Corinthians . What is important right now is that Paul has placed the pneuma in these two roles at the beginning and end of the letter as a framework for his concrete advice in between, which, as we would say, is mainly ‘ethical’. Even more, his cosmological elaboration of the pneuma in Corinthians shows that his ‘ethical’ advice is also to be understood in the cosmological terms reflected in the anthropology we have just considered. Or to spell it out: Compare also Ernst Käsemann, ‘Zur paulinischen Anthropologie’, Paulinische Perspektiven (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], nd ed. [st ed. ] ) –, esp. , : ‘Anthropologie ist auch im Bereich des Glaubens Kosmologie in concreto’ (). The difference between Käsemann and myself is that I understand ‘cosmology’ wholly concretely and do not oppose it to ‘philosophy’. Allow me to repeat an earlier point: there is no ‘anthropology’ in Paul. Let me emphasize the simplicity of this understanding. On the one side there is a being with a body and a soul—as any Greek philosopher would say. On the other side there is the same kind of being who has now also received the pneuma and whose body and soul have already been transformed and are also continually undergoing a transformation. Thus there are basically only two types of being here, not three.
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sarx in Paul, which is, of course, the great, ‘ethical’ enemy, stands for the ensouled physical body that is—in quite concrete cosmological terms—an earthly one as opposed to a heavenly, pneumatic one. We need, of course, to distinguish between two uses of sarx: a neutral use where it simply stands for the physical body of flesh and blood, and another use where it has distinctly negative connotations. For the former, see Cor . and .; for the latter, see Cor .–, where the reference to ‘jealousy and quarrelling’ (ζῆλoς καὶ ἔϱις) shows that we are already into ‘ethics’. But the point of distinguishing between the two uses is to bring out their inner connection: that it is sarx in the neutral sense that explains why sarx also has a negative side to it. Elsewhere, I have argued that embedded in Paul’s vice lists there is a real theory of desire, which he spells out most clearly in Romans , a theory that connects desire intrinsically with (i) the physical body and (ii) the self that necessarily goes with having an ensouled physical body. The idea is that desire is a phenomenon that can only be found where there is the first-person perspective that in itself requires the presence of a physical body of flesh and blood which also is endowed with perception. If we are allowed to ascribe to Paul, too, this theory, which is spelled out in Stoicism, then we can see that Paul’s ‘ethics’ is grounded in his cosmology, namely, in his quite concrete understanding of the cosmological composition of the physical body of flesh and blood. This also gives us the key to seeing the ‘ethical’ role of the pneuma. By concretely transforming the body of flesh and blood even in the present, the pneuma eradicates what constitutes the physical basis for sarkic, sinful desires and practices. And so the Corinthians literally become God’s holy temple (.–; .), members of Christ (.), a single body energized by the single pneuma See my Paul and the Stoics (Edinburgh/Louisville: T. & T. Clark/Westminster John Knox, ) – and –. I am not denying that something like the understanding of bśr to be found in the Qumran texts may well lie behind Paul’s talk of sarx, as has been argued by Jörg Frey, ‘Die paulinische Antithese von “Fleisch” und “Geist” und die palästinisch-jüdische Weisheitstradition’, ZNW () –, against Egon Brandenburger, Fleisch und Geist (WMANT ; Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener, ). But Paul’s use of sarx and pneuma is not identical with the one in the Qumran texts. And as always, it seems to me that there is room for both Frey’s ‘palästinisch-jüdische’ tradition and Brandenburger’s ‘hellenistich-jüdische’ tradition—and for the line offered here. There is one corollary of this reading that I would like to spell out. In Cor .– Paul has distinguished between the ‘psychic man’ and the ‘pneumatic man’. When he then speaks in .– of the Corinthians as being σάϱκινοι (.) and σαϱκικοί (.), he is not introducing a third type of figure. On the contrary, the merely ψυχικὸς ἄνθϱωπος is also, necessarily, σάϱκινος and σαϱκικός. Compare for this the distinction in Cor .– between the ‘psychic body’ and the ‘pneumatic body’, which is then almost immediately followed by a statement on σὰϱξ καὶ αἷμα, which evidently refers back to the ‘psychic body’. Cf. Gal . on the ‘pneumatics’: …τὴν σάϱκα ἐσταύϱωσαν σὺν τοῖς παθήμασιν καὶ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις.
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(chap. ) and so forth. Here the self has been transcended for the sake of what is shared, which is Christ or the pneuma. And it is all to be understood quite literally. The ‘anthropology’ grounds the ‘ethics’, but is itself an expression of the concrete cosmology.
‘Somatology’ in Romans .–
We are now ready to look at our main passage: Rom .–. We can only take up a few points in connection with this extremely rich passage. The passage provides the solution to the problem described with graphic intensity in .–. That problem is the one of akrasia (‘weakness of will’), to be understood as the best possible state of a pre-Christian Jew who wishes to follow God’s law. In a series of statements of ever-increasing horror, Paul describes how the ‘I’ realizes the presence of sinfulness in his limbs (.), which turns his body into a body of death (.). Once more, Paul is quite simply talking of the physical body of flesh and blood, which can never get rid of such sinfulness and which does die. But nobody would probably deny that in his account of the heightened self-reflection that leads to the exasperated cry in ., Paul is philosophically at work. And nobody should deny that he is relying very strongly, whether directly or indirectly, on the intensive discussion of akrasia in Graeco-Roman philosophy. The crucial question is, then, how what Paul says in .– may constitute a solution to the problem as described in .–. How will ‘the law of the pneuma of life in Christ Jesus’ free the person described there from ‘the law of sin and death’ (.) in such a way that from now on there is no longer any condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (.)? The very simple answer is that this happens, and can only happen, when the earthly, physical body of desire, sin and death is filled up in its interior by the heavenly body of pneuma to such an extent that the physical body is actually (if not quite literally) dead, or atrophied, and has become merely an outer shell. Then the δικαίωμα of the law—a difficult term that probably refers both to the law’s concrete requirements and to its ultimate goal, which is life—will be Compare the careful way in which Paul has laid out this duality in .–, where . prepares .– and . prepares .–. The reading of .– that I am presupposing here has been defended in ‘The Reception of Graeco-Roman Culture in the New Testament: The Case of Romans .–’, The New Testament as Reception (ed. M. Müller and H. Tronier; JSNTSup ; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, ) –. Ulrich Wilckens rightly emphasizes the first half of this (referring to Rom .); see Der Brief an die Römer (EKK VI/; Zürich/Einsiedeln/Köln: Benziger; Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener, ) –. Compare also the commentaries by James D. G. Dunn, Romans – (WBC A; Dallas, TX: Word, ) and Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans (AB ; New York: Doubleday, ) ad loc. However, the use and context of δικαίωμα in Rom . taken together with . suggest that the term may also have the other meaning.
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fulfilled, namely, in those who walk not in accordance with sarx but with pneuma (.). In .– Paul in effect recapitulates the content of .– in a description both of those—and these are actual people—who are either in accordance with sarx (.) or in it (.) and of sarx itself as a power or kind of ‘hypostasis’ of the sheer physicality of an ensouled physical body (.–). Note, however, that what Paul here says of sarx in highly mythological language is actually quite true phenomenologically as an account of the sheer physicality of an ensouled physical body when .– is read as a summary of .–. In .–, then, Paul provides his cosmologically based answer to the question of how the problem of .– has been solved: his addressees are in the pneuma; God’s pneuma lives in them; they have Christ’s pneuma; Christ is in them. And in ., on which I wish to concentrate, he explains how this single fact (given in so many forms) constitutes the solution. The answer is that the Romans’ body as qualified by sin, their sarkic body of flesh and blood in whose ‘limbs’ Paul previously saw sin at work (cf. .), is now—dead. νεκϱόν means ‘dead’, not ‘mortal’ (cf. .). Of course, the Romans are not literally dead. Their bodies remain alive in some form or other. However, Paul is telling them that if Christ(’s pneuma) is in them, then these bodies are only a hollow shell—and in this sense actually dead—as compared with the pneuma inside the shell, which stands for life. I propose that we take this as literally and concretely as we can. Just as Paul had said of himself in Cor . that his outer human being was being destroyed or withering away, so he is now transferring the same basic idea to the Romans. Their bodies are actually dead, atrophied, and what gives them life both now and in the future is the pneuma within them that they have received as part of having been made righteous. However, this mixture of death (of the sarkic body) and life (of the pneuma within them) is, of course, a complicated matter. The Romans are not dead and Note how carefully Paul distinguishes between the people and sarx itself. He does not say that the people are ‘enemies of God’, which would not either fit his account in .–. By contrast, the φϱόνημα of sarx itself is ἔχθϱα εἰς θεόν (.). This is my reading of διὰ ἁμαϱτίαν. The interpretations of . by commentators are myriad. For instance, Fitzmyer translates the first half concessively: ‘though the body be dead because of sin, the spirit has life because of uprightness’, and comments: ‘Without the Spirit, the source of Christian vitality, the human “body” is like a corpse because of the influence of sin…; but in union with Christ, the human “spirit” lives, for the Spirit resuscitates the dead human body through the gift of uprightness’ (Romans ad loc., my italics). Fitzmyer at least takes νεκϱόν to mean ‘dead’. By contrast, Byrne in his otherwise excellent commentary translates ‘while the body may be mortal because of sin’ and explicitly obtains this meaning from θνητά in . (B. Byrne, SJ, Romans [Sacra Pagina ; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, ] ad loc., my italics). But νεκϱόν does mean ‘dead’. Jewett concludes that ‘no completely satisfactory explanation of all the details [of .] is currently available’ (see Robert Jewett, Romans [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, ] ). Perhaps this is because scholars have balked at Paul’s wholly concrete and quite stark idea.
The Material Spirit
they have only received the pneuma as a down payment. Paul therefore reassures them in . by stressing very emphatically that if God’s pneuma actually ‘lives in you’, then God will also ‘make your mortal bodies alive (ζῳο-ποιήσει) by means of his pneuma, which (already) lives in you’. So, while the Romans’ bodies are already dead (as sarkic bodies), they are also mortal (and here Paul does use the term θνητά) in the sense that in the future the Romans will either literally die (completely, we might say) or else be transformed completely by the pneuma. The overall point of this reading is as follows. In .– Paul has described the problem of weakness of the will vis-à-vis the Mosaic law in terms of a growing realization in the person described of the presence of ‘sin in his limbs’. (i) Here sin may be understood as an ‘apocalyptic’ power that takes the person captive (cf. .). Conversely, the pneuma of .–, which brings about the solution to the problem, may be understood as a power that vanquishes its adversary. (ii) However, one may also understand Paul’s account of the problem as spelling out an actual feature of the bodies of human beings of flesh and blood, which is tied to their sheer physicality. Then Paul’s account of the solution to the problem will also focus on actual features of the bodies of believers in terms of the cosmological elements of which they are made up. (iii) Yet another way of seeing the relation between problem and solution is to focus on the element of cognitive realization in the suffering person of the fix in which he finds himself. Then one will take Paul’s account of the solution to rely on a feature that is not brought out explicitly by him, but is nevertheless presupposed: that possession of the pneuma implies that its possessors understand the whole account of the solution that Paul provides. For as we know, the pneuma is both a material and a cognitive phenomenon. That is, since they have received the pneuma, they will also understand Paul’s account, not just of the problem, but also of the solution. (iv) Finally, there is one more way of seeing the relation between problem and solution, namely as focusing on ‘ethics’ and describing a step from a situation in which weakness of will persistently remains a terrible possibility into one in which the possibility of sinning is no longer there. If God’s pneuma and Christ live in the Romans in such a way that the sarkic body, which was responsible for the problem, is dead, then the problem of weakness of will has been solved. And as Paul very clearly implies, believers will now fulfil the law. The claim here is that these are different ways of reading the text, all of which are to the point. I personally think that the concrete, cosmological and somatological reading and also the cognitive one are very important since they capture something that is being said and also give precise, concrete and tangible meaning to the more mythological one. But we should not create a This idea, on which Horn rightly places much emphasis, is found in Cor ., . and Rom ..
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dichotomy here. And we should not let ourselves be forced to settle for one reading only. Then .–. I am convinced—fortunately with some others—that these verses constitute the paraenetic conclusion, not only to .– and .–., but to the whole passage that begins at .. That cannot be argued here. Nor can we discuss the supposed problem it raises for a satisfactory understanding of Pauline paraenesis. Let us just note that in .–, Paul does not restrict himself to pointing out the obvious: that ‘we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh [—but to the pneuma, to live in accordance with that]’ (.). Instead, he brings in once more (.) the fundamental contrast between sarx and death and the pneuma and life: If you live (in the present) in accordance with sarx (which you, of course, do not), then you will die (in the future). If, however, by means of the pneuma (that you do have) you kill the acts of the (physical, sarkic) body (as you do since that body is dead), then you will live (in the future). In . (as against .) Paul is not providing paraenesis, but rather summing up the cosmological and theological facts about the connection between sarx and death and pneuma and life that grounds his paraenesis. Death and life are his ultimate trump cards. By summarizing the contrast between sarx and death and pneuma and life that he has developed in .–, a contrast that climaxed in ., Paul puts all the power of his account of what has happened concretely to the Romans behind his paraenesis that they should now also show this in practice. What has triggered this whole essay is a difficulty I had in Paul and the Stoics (esp. –) of accounting well enough for the precise relationship between the ‘apocalyptic’ vocabulary of .– and the philosophical and cognitive terminology in which Paul has in .– stated the problem to which .– provides the solution. The precise understanding offered here of Paul’s concept of pneuma removes the difficulty. I have argued for this claim in some detail in Paul and the Stoics, and –, with references to Wilckens, Der Brief an die Römer ad loc., Rudolf Schnackenburg, ‘Römer im Zusammenhang des Römerbriefes’, Jesus und Paulus (ed. E. E. Ellis and E. Grässer; FS W. G. Kümmel; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) –; P. von der OstenSacken, Römer als Beispiel paulinischer Soteriologie (FRLANT ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ); N. Elliott, The Rhetoric of Romans: Argumentative Constraint and Strategy and Paul’s Dialogue with Judaism (JSNTSup ; Sheffield: JSOT, ); and Fitzmyer, Romans ad loc. To these may now be added Byrne, Romans ad loc., and D.J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, ) . I am referring to the problem of the whole point of exhortation if the addressees are supposed to be doing the proper thing anyhow. The solution lies in understanding paraenesis as a reminder, a feature that has been very importantly brought to the fore in the work of Abraham Malherbe (e.g. ‘Hellenistic Moralists and the New Testament’, ANRW II.. [Berlin: de Gruyter, ] –). (As an example, think of a former smoker who has given up smoking, but may still need to be reminded of its dangers.) This is perhaps the best place to add a few words on the pneuma in Paul as a messenger between God and human beings, inasmuch as this figure is most explicitly addressed in the
The Material Spirit Consequences
It is time to draw out some of the consequences of this analysis. I have been arguing against coming to the discussion of Paul with a set of dichotomies. In principle, I should think, there will not be much disagreement on this point. The problem is, however, that all those dichotomies—Judaism/Hellenism, Palestinian Judaism/Hellenistic Judaism, religion/philosophy, have-nots/elite, practices/ideas, Christianity/everything else—are firmly settled at the back of our minds and it is very, very difficult to extricate oneself from their grip. But try we must. In this essay my main target has been the dichotomy between ‘apocalypticism’ and philosophy. I have agreed, and I think it cannot be sufficiently emphasized, that Paul’s thought was ‘apocalyptic’ from one end to the other. But his ‘apocalypticism’ was filled in with philosophical cosmology in a
immediately following text of Romans: .–. Here Paul twice (. and ) speaks of ‘the pneuma itself’ as distinct from ‘our pneuma’ (.). How did he think of the pneuma in this form? In its function, at least, it appears to operate exactly like Christ himself: both are said to ‘petition’ God (ἐντυγχάνειν) on behalf of the Christians (.– for the pneuma, . for Christ). Perhaps Paul just saw both figures as literally (and physically) operating in the kosmos between human beings at one end, whom they would enter and thus become ‘our pneuma’, and God at the other end, with whom they would have a relationship that remains a mystery. (There is no indication in Paul of any ‘cosmological’ understanding of God himself. I suppose Paul’s God was, as it were, nothing other than—the Jewish God.) There are a number of consequences that I have no space to mention. The most important is that the basic, underlying problem that Paul addresses in Romans – is not a faulty relationship with God, but sinful behaviour connected with the physical body of flesh and blood. Paul’s strategy in these chapters is then to construct a theory that explains this problem in terms of a faulty relationship with God. This leads directly to his postulation of the Christ event as constituting the solution to the problem since the proper relationship with God, which is πίστις in relation to the Christ event, will remove the concern for the individual body that constitutes the problem. For this focus on ‘self-mastery’ as the underlying problem, compare Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven/London: Yale University, ) and ‘Paul and Self-Mastery’, Paul in the GrecoRoman World (ed. J. Paul Sampley; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, ) –. This essay is my attempt finally to solve the problem raised for me by J. Louis Martyn in his careful and extensive review of Paul and the Stoics: that I unduly neglected the ‘apocalyptic’ dimension of Paul’s thought. (See Martyn, ‘De-apocalypticizing Paul: An Essay Focused on Paul and the Stoics by Troels Engberg-Pedersen’, JSNT [] –.) My own reply to Martyn still stands (‘Response to Martyn’, JSNT [] –) since I remain convinced that Martyn settles for emphasizing Paul’s ‘apocalypticism’ too quickly, that is, before he has tried to spell out what it means. (This is what I call the Käsemann gesture, about which I am quite sceptical.) In the present essay I have attempted to give precise content to Paul’s ‘apocalypticism’. In the words of Martinus de Boer, Paul’s apocalyptic eschatology must not be ‘reduced to his understanding of the parousia and the end but also encompasses his understanding of Christ’s advent, death, and resurrection’ (‘Paul and Apocalyptic Eschatology’, n. ). Personally,
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manner that had extensive and precise consequences for his conception of the human being in the world, down to his ‘anthropology’, his ‘somatology’ and his ‘ethics’. It all hangs firmly together. I conclude with a hermeneutical reflection. Elsewhere, I have asked to what extent Paul’s thought constitutes what I called a ‘real option for us’. In this essay I have tried to develop certain cosmological elements in Paul that definitely do not constitute such an option. The cosmology, say, of Stoicism just cannot be ours. Faced with such a situation, one might decide to forget about cosmology and focus instead on something apparently more attractive: Paul’s critique of human bodily, social and political life in the present, earthly world. However, the net result of my analysis is that this side of his thought is, in fact, completely mixed up with his cosmology. So, there is not much to be gained from making such a move. However, I am convinced that there is something wrong (though not everything wrong) with looking for a ‘real option for us’ in Paul. If we cannot immediately adopt Paul’s cosmology, neither can (or should) we adopt his views on the body, on social life and even on politics just as they were. But this should not in the least prevent us from learning from studying him. What I myself find particularly fascinating about Paul is his radicality. When he speaks of a ‘new creation (καινὴ κτίσις)’, he means it, and he means it quite concretely. True enough, it is not yet quite there. But it is there already, and to such an extent that what is still lacking is of no real concern to him. However, this ‘enthusiasm’ did not prevent him from looking closely at the real world, too. Paul was also a realist. And so, being suspended between his conviction that an altogether different world had already been established and his realization of what the world actually looked like both
I would say that it contains much more, in particular, reception of the pneuma in believers, revelation through the pneuma of what God has given—plus the whole set of ideas that we have been discussing of the transformation of the body by the pneuma both now and in the future. See Paul and the Stoics, –. It should be noted, however, that the modern physicist Shmuel Sambursky argued strongly that Stoic physics ‘anticipated basic ideas which have governed physical thought since the seventeenth century’ (Physics of the Stoics [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ] vii). The strength of Stoic physics (including the theory of seeing the world as a continuum) may also explain why it was felt to be so attractive by a would-be Platonist like Philo. The hermeneutical tool we need to make sense of our both using Paul for contemporary purposes and also not using him directly is that of analogy. We can find analogies in our own world to what Paul was saying within the confines of his own time and place. (We should also, however, be prepared to reject parts of Paul’s views even where they only have their counterparts in analogical form.) τὰ ἀϱχαῖα παϱῆλθεν, ἰδοὺ γέγονεν καινά ( Cor .).
The Material Spirit
inside and outside his communities, he spent an enormous effort on spelling out to his addressees, and even in philosophical terms, what it was that had taken hold of them: a genuinely new creation. When he fulfils this task, the audacity and radicality of his thinking are truly breathtaking.
After I had delivered the lecture at the SNTS meeting in Lund on which this essay is based, I came across what appears to be proof that the great Origen actually read Paul on pneuma in the way for which I have argued. In his treatise on the resurrection, the bishop Methodius said the following about and against Origen: Πᾶν γὰϱ τὸ ἐκ καθαϱοῦ ἀέϱος καὶ καθαϱοῦ πυϱὸς συνιστάμενον σύγκϱιμα, καὶ τοῖς ἀγγελικοῖς ὁμοούσιον ὑπάϱχον, οὐ δύναται γῆς ἔχειν ποιότητα καὶ ὕδατος, ἐπεὶ συμβήσεται ἔσεσθαι αὐτὸ γεῶδες. τοιοῦτον [i.e. τοῖς ἀγγελικοῖς ὁμοούσιον] καὶ ἐκ τούτων [i.e. ἐκ καθαϱοῦ ἀέϱος καὶ καθαϱοῦ πυϱὸς συνιστάμενον] τὸ ἀναστῆναι μέλλον σῶμα ἀνθρώπου ὁ ʼΩριγένης ἐφαντάζετο, ὃ καὶ πνευματικὸν ἔφησεν. (Methodius, On the Resurrection .. [GCS ; ed. G. N. Bonwetsch; Leipzig: Hinrichs’sche, ] .) If Origen could φαντάζεσθαι this, so should we.
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0028688509000137
Zwei harte Knoten: Todes- und Gerichtsangst im Hebra¨erbrief* KN UT BAC K HAU S Lehrstuhl fu¨r Neutestamentliche Exegese und biblische Hermeneutik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universita¨t Mu¨nchen, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, D–80539 Mu¨nchen, Germany email:
[email protected] Hebrews .– goes beyond the epistle’s cultic symbolism and embeds its image of Christ in a poly-mythic framework, thereby illuminating its existential relevance. Faith enables the believer to see through death in order to cope with fear of death. The author does not reflect explicitly on anxiety about death but integrates it into the Christ drama, thus inspiring his addressees to transform their conceptualization of self and purpose (‘terror management’). Arousing eschatological fear of judgment (.–; .–; .–) forms part of the deliberative rhetorical strategy. Immediately subsequent to the warnings, the addressees are guided to the opposite emotion of hope. To postulate a theological perpetuum (exclusion of ‘second repentance’) on the basis of a pathetic temporale would be to miss the emotion-centred guidance of the hearer, the rhetorical truth game, and the pragmatic intention of Hebrews. Keywords: Epistle to the Hebrews, fear of death, second repentance, rhetoric, eschatology, ars moriendi
‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust.’
„Wie beeindruckt doch die Seele, die zu sterben bereit ist“, notiert Mark Aurel. Er fügt hinzu: „Diese Bereitschaft muss aber aus eigenem Entschluss stammen, darf keineswegs schlichtem Steifsinn folgen wie bei den Christen. Sie sollte auf vernünftiger und ernster Erwägung beruhen und sich ohne theatralisches Gehabe äußern, sodass auch der Andere davon überzeugt wird“ (vgl. Ad se ipsum .). Christen also haben, so sieht es der Stoiker, die Todesangst
* Main Paper read at the SNTS General Meeting at Lund, Sweden, in . As against the draft handed out on this occasion, the references for further reading are considerably reduced. — Dedicated to Professor Joachim Gnilka on the occasion of his th birthday. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (I, Z.) in Collected Poems – (London: Faber and Faber, ).
Zwei harte Knoten
zwar überwunden, aber in Form der pathetischen Pose. Epiktet und Lukian sehen es ähnlich: Christen scheinen frei von Todesangst, doch diese Freiheit beruht auf naiver Gewohnheit. Im Neuen Testament bringt nur der Hebräerbrief den φόβος θανάτου ausdrücklich zur Sprache, und zwar mit einem einzigen Satz: .–. Bei diesem ungewöhnlichen Text setze ich an. Im zweiten Schritt schaue ich auf dessen christologischen Kontext und glaubenspraktische Konsequenz: die ars moriendi christologica, wie sie den Brief insgesamt prägt. Doch ist in diesem Fall der Tod nicht der letzte Feind. Das Problem mit Hebr fängt erst nach ihm an, und zwar in jenen drei buchstäblich feurigen Passagen (.–; .–; .–; vgl. .), die wie selten sonst im Neuen Testament Gerichts- und Höllenangst evozieren. Sie haben mit ihrem harschen Ausschluss einer zweiten Umkehr bereits die Frühkirche irritiert und Luther zu dem Urteil veranlasst, unser Schreiben habe eyn harten knotten. In der Tat ist Angstverhalten ein wichtiger Indikator religiösen Selbstverständnisses. Hebr hat dazu weniger Typisches als Reizvolles beizutragen. Wir stoßen hier auf eine Weise, Theologie zu treiben, die angesichts des kultspekulativen Rufs, in dem er steht, Überraschungen birgt. Unsere Leitfrage lautet: Welche Bedeutung und Funktion hat im Hebräerbrief die Angst vor dem Sterben und vor dem Gericht?
. Hebr .–: Todesangst und Lebensfreiheit
In der planvoll angelegten kultsymbolischen Landschaft unserer Rede wirkt der halb mythische, halb moderne Doppelvers wie ein Meteorit aus anderer Welt. Er passt in manches antike Denksystem; in die vertikale Typologie des Hebr passt er nicht. Dies gilt bereits wortstatistisch: Die zwei Verse weisen neun Epiktet führt im Traktat Περὶ ἀφοβίας die Γαλιλαῖοι als Beispiel für die Freiheit von Todesangst an, die sich aber statt Vernunftgründen lediglich der Gewohnheit (ἔθος) verdanke (Diatr. ..). In der ersten paganen Beschreibung urchristlichen Gemeindelebens stellt Lukian von Samosata satirisch die Todesverachtung der Gläubigen heraus, schreibt sie aber deren Unbedarftheit zu (Peregr. ). Vorrhede auff die Epistel zu den Ebreern, (WA. Deutsche Bibel ) . Ich ergänze das Knoten-Bild um die Todesangst, die Luther vor allem in seinem Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben, (WA. Werke ) bes. –, angstpsychologisch höchst sensibel, als Terrorinstrument des Teufels ausmalt. Vgl. H. Balz u. G. Wanke, ‘φοβέω κτλ’, TWNT () (Balz). Obschon das φόβος-Motiv nach Textgut und Wirkpotential das Makrogefüge des Hebr kennzeichnet, ist es monographisch nur von Patrick Gray untersucht worden: Godly Fear: The Epistle to the Hebrews and Greco-Roman Critiques of Superstition (Academia Biblica ; Atlanta: SBL, ). Der enge syntaktische Anschluss von V. , die fehlende Nennung des Subjekts und der semantische Gehalt von ἐπιλαμβάνομαι lassen die Möglichkeit zu, die Sequenz auszudehnen: „Denn doch wohl nicht die Engel ergreift die Todesangst, sondern die
KNUT BACKHAUS
HapaxlegomenaHebr auf. Diese semantischen Eigentümlichkeiten sind Ausdruck der theologischen Konfiguration, die von einem anderen Kontext als dem literarischen bestimmt scheint: Der endzeitliche Satanskampf als Befreiungsakt für „Blut und Fleisch“ wirkt inkompatibel mit der in den Folgeversen eingeführten Sühnopfer-Christozentrik. Plausibilität scheint die Aussage nur unter Voraussetzungen zu gewinnen, die Hebr selbst nicht ausführt, die daher von außen entliehen werden. Sogleich meldet sich hier die alte Aporie der HebrExegese: Nicht Mangel herrscht an triftigen Kandidaten für religionsgeschichtliche Inspiration, sondern Überschuss. Versuchen wir zu ordnen, bleibt am Ende kein einliniger Einfluss, sondern Einsicht in eine Syntheseleistung: (a) Die Handlungsträger gewinnt Hebr aus dem Repertoire frühjüdisch-urchristlicher Apokalyptik. Hier erhält der Gegenspieler des Lebens die Züge des Teufels und die Befreiungstat den Charakter endzeitlicher Vernichtung. Tod und Teufel
Nachkommenschaft Abrahams ergreift sie“; so M. E. Gudorf, ‘Through a Classical Lens: Hebrews :’, JBL () –; zur Diskussion Gray, Fear, –. Das kontextuell vorherrschende Interesse an der Beziehung zwischen Jesus und dem Gottesvolk und die in VV. – stringente Subjektlinie lassen mich an der herkömmlichen Subjektbestimmung (Jesus) festhalten. Von den vier finiten Vollverben kommen drei—κοινωνέω, καταργέω, ἀπαλλάσσω—in Hebr nicht mehr vor, ferner das Adverb παραπλησίως, das Adjektiv ἔνοχος sowie die Nomina κράτος, διάβολος, δουλεία und φόβος. Abgesehen vom ersten Verb und letzten Nomen fehlen auch anwendungsverwandte Derivate. Die Wendung διὰ παντὸς τοῦ ζῆν im Sinne der Lebensspanne ist neben der theozentrischen, christologischen und soteriologischen Akzentuierung des Wortfelds „Leben“ in Hebr singulär. Das hindert viele Ausleger nicht daran, unseren Passus sühne- und erhöhungschristologisch zu erklären. Gray, Fear, –, verfolgt die Entmachtung der Todesangst durch die gesamte Christologie und Gemeinde-Ethik des Hebr. Dies ist insofern legitim, als der Vf. nicht in Versblöcken, sondern kontextuell denkt, doch bleibt im Makrotext das hier angelegte Motivreservoir eben ungenutzt, und diese Redundanz ist erklärungsbedürftig. Auf recht sublime Weise zeigt sich die Verlegenheit, unsere Verse kreuzestheologisch einzuholen, im Versuch von T. E. Schmidt, die T-Assonanz in V. b als Hinweis auf die den Tod besiegende Macht des Kreuzes zu lesen: ‘The Letter Tau as the Cross: Ornament and Content in Hebrews ,’, Bib () –. Vgl. z.B. QM I –; As. Mos. .; T. Jud. .; Offb .–, , –. Von der Vernichtung (καταργέω) des Todes handeln ausdrücklich Kor .; Tim .; Barn. ., von der des Antichrist Thess .– (vgl. Barn. .). Dass der Teufel durch Angst herrscht und durch den Kyrios entmachtet wird, betont der Hirt des Hermas: Mand. VII ; XII .–; .; .. Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Beziehung von .– zum himmlischen Krieger-Priester in QMelch sieht A. Aschim, ‘Melchizedek and Jesus: QMelchizedek and the Epistle to the Hebrews’, The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus (ed. C. C. Newman et al.; JSJSup ; Leiden: Brill, ) –. Gegen den oft hergestellten Bezug zum gnostizistischen Erlösungsmodell sprechen, abgesehen von der Quellenchronologie, die Betonung von Fleischwerdung und Leiden; vgl. H. W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, ) –.
Zwei harte Knoten
sind natürliche Verbündete; der Neid des Teufels bedingt Versuchbarkeit, Sünde und Todesgeschick des Adam und seiner Nachkommen. Jedoch sind die Unterschiede nicht zu übersehen: Gottferne ist in Hebr condicio humana, nicht signum mortis; es geht um Todesangst, nicht um Sünde und Sterblichkeit, und das kontextuell entfaltete Syngeneia-Motiv lässt (mit finalem Anschluss in V. b) die Menschwerdung als Befreiungstat erscheinen, nicht das Endgericht. (b) Entnimmt unser Passus die dramatis personae frühjüdisch-urchristlicher Tradition, so stellt ihn das dramatische Dreieck selbst—Macht des Todes, knechtende Angst, Freiheit zum Leben—unmittelbar in den aktuellen Diskurs. Die Selbst-Befreiung von Trauer und Todesangst ist gängiger Topos der zeitgenössischen Konsolationsliteratur. Der Euripides-Trimeter τίς δ᾽ ἐστὶ δοῦλος τοῦ θανεῖν ἄφροντις ὤν; (frg. ; vgl. Orest. –) gehört zum vielzitierten Erfahrungswissen (vgl. Cicero Att. . [a].; Plutarch Adol. poet. aud. B; Cons. Apoll. D). In Anlehnung an dieses Zitat zeigt Philo, dass „nichts so sehr seiner Natur nach den Geist versklavt wie der Schrecken vor Tod aufgrund der Sehnsucht nach Leben“ (Prob. ). Im ersten Jahrhundert sind es Seneca und Epiktet, die die Trias „Tod—Angst—Freiheit“ am intensivsten durchdenken. Nur wenn der Mensch seine ganze geistige Kraft gegen die Todesangst richtet, wird er wirklich frei, lehrt Epiktet (Diatr. ..–). Die Meisten versklaven sich jedoch: Dem unvermeidlichen Tod gilt die Angst, die vermeidbare Todesangst bleibt unreflektiert. Doch gerade hier ist der Anspruch „Nur freie Menschen können gebildet werden“ ins Philosophische zu wenden: „Nur gebildete Menschen sind wirklich frei“ (Diatr. ..; vgl. ..–). (c) Gehen wir einen Schritt weiter, so stoßen wir auf den Plot des Dramas: Im Heroenmythos ringt der Befreier Hades und Thanatos nieder und erlöst so die Seinen. Allgegenwärtiger Prototyp ist Herakles. Seit hellenistischer Zeit wird er mit zunehmend heilandhaften Zügen als Brecher der Todestyrannei gezeichnet. Der Löwenkampf, das Heraufholen des Kerberos, die Befreiung der Alkestis aus dem Totenreich inspirieren die Deutung des Jupiter-Sohns als mortis victor, der schließlich sich selbst den Zugang zum Himmel bahnt. Als kulturell plausible In der fortschreibenden Rezeption von Gen verführt der Teufel den Menschen und unterwirft ihn so dem Tod, weil er ihn als Rivalen fürchtet und um dessen von Gott gewährte Schöpfungsstellung beneidet (L.A.E. –; Apoc. Mos. –; En. .–; .–; Apoc. Sedr. .–.; vgl. Weish .); dazu G. Gäbel, Die Kulttheologie des Hebräerbriefes: Eine exegetisch-religionsgeschichtliche Studie (WUNT II/; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) –. Zu Epiktet vgl. noch Diatr. ..–; ..; ..–; ..–; ..–; ..–; ..–; ..–; zu Seneca bes. Ep. ; ; zur Todesangst bei Plutarch Gray, Fear, –. In semantischer Opposition zum Wortfeld δουλεία dominiert im philosophischen Diskurs der Stamm ελευθ-. Der existentiellen Bestandsaufnahme zu vergleichen ist in der frühjüdischen Weisheit Sir .–; .–. Ovid Metam. .; Seneca Ben. ..; Statius Silvae ..–; Dio Chrysostomus Regn. (Or. ) –, . Selbst für Philo, hierin stoisch inspiriert, dient Herakles als Prototyp für die „Freiheit des Tüchtigen“ (vgl. Prob. –). Den mythographischen Befund in
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Erlösungschiffre dient er bis in die christliche Kultur hinein als gängiges Motiv sepulkralen Bildbestands und individueller Heilshoffnung. Gerade im Rom des ersten Jahrhunderts war dieser Mythenstoff unter dem stoisch-vorbildethischen Aspekt der in duldendem Leiden besiegten Todesangst durch Senecas Drama Hercules furens lebendig. Im Anschluss an Seneca arbeitet gegen Ende des ersten Jahrhunderts die Tragödie Hercules Oetaeus die übermenschlichen Züge, das proexistente Leiden, die kosmische Wirkung und den himmlischen Triumph des Befreiers heraus. Herakles-Frömmigkeit war in allen sozialen Schichten verbreitet; die heroische Führung verdichtet sich im ἀρχηγός-Prädikat (Dio Chrysostomus Tars. [Or. ] ; Heraklit All. .; vgl. Lukian Symp. ). Die unmittelbare Rezeption von .– ist davon zweifellos beeinflusst. Darüber hinaus scheint mir die Annahme von Harold Attridge triftig, dass der Auctor ad Hebraeos selbst gezielt an den Mythos vom Sieger über Tod und Todesangst anknüpft. Dann finden wir hier den frühesten Beleg für die christliche Descensus-Vorstellung, die sich freilich noch gar nicht als solche begreift. Denn die Inkohärenz des Passus mit der im Folgenden entfalteten Soteriologie ist dadurch zu erklären, dass Hebr das Mythologem keineswegs zur postmortalen Fortschreibung der Jesus-Geschichte einsetzt, sondern—wie Philo oder Seneca—zur existentiellen Chiffrierung eines humanen Vorgangs, nämlich des—in jeder Hinsicht inkarnatorisch verstandenen—Sterbens Jesu, seines descensus ad mortales. Nicht die Sterblichkeit ist das Problem, sondern die
späthellenistisch-frühreichsrömischer Zeit tragen Diodorus Siculus Bibl. .– und Apollodori Bibl. ..–.. zusammen. Vgl. insgesamt J. Fink, ‘Herakles—Held und Heiland’, Antike und Abendland () –; A. J. Malherbe, ‘Herakles’, RAC () –; D. E. Aune, ‘Heracles and Christ: Heracles Imagery in the Christology of Early Christianity’, Greeks, Romans, and Christians: FS A.J. Malherbe (ed. D. L. Balch et al.; Minneapolis: Fortress, ) –. Vgl. Aune, ‘Heracles’, –. Vgl. Attridge, Hebr, –, –; Ders., ‘Liberating Death’s Captives: Reconsideration of an Early Christian Myth’, Gnosticism and the Early Christian World (ed. J. E. Goehring et al.; Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, ), bes. –; G. Barth, Der Tod Jesu Christi im Verständnis des Neuen Testaments (Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener, ) –; H. Löhr, ‘Wahrnehmung und Bedeutung des Todes Jesu nach dem Hebräerbrief: Ein Versuch’, Deutungen des Todes Jesu im Neuen Testament (ed. J. Frey u. J. Schröter; WUNT ; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) –. Die einflussreichste Fassung in der altkirchlichen Literatur bietet Ev. Nic. – (–): Satan und der verängstigte Hades bemühen sich vergeblich, die Pforten der Unterwelt gegen den machtvoll einziehenden Auferstandenen zu verteidigen; schließlich nimmt Hades den gefesselten Satan selbst in Gewahrsam. Auch . lässt sich trotz der ungewöhnlichen Formulierung (ὁ ἀναγαγὼν ἐκ νεκρῶν) nicht für eine veritable Descensus-Vorstellung geltend machen. Vielmehr wird hier das ἀρχηγόςMotiv durch das des Hirten variiert und das „Hinaufführen“, das heißt: die Erhöhung, Jesu mit der Vollendung der „Schafe“ verbunden (vgl. .). Wie auch sonst in Hebr geht es also um den „Aufstieg“ von der irdisch-menschlichen Lebenswelt in die göttliche Sphäre. Zur
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Todesangst. Jesus bricht in heroischem Kampf ihre Macht, indem er seinen Tod in menschlichem Gehorsam durchsteht. Der Teufel ist Personifikation im Kampfmotiv. Dürfen wir Hebr ein solches polymythisches Hantieren mit Traditionen zutrauen? Die Frage nach dem Wahrheitsspiel wird uns weiter beschäftigen. (d) Ein letzter Schritt: Herakles dient von den griechischen Ursprüngen an der Legitimierung von Herrschaft und gerade auch der Inszenierung des kaiserlichen Charismas. Namentlich unter Domitian wurde der Jupiter-Sohn als göttliches Rollenmodell des Kaisers stilisiert. Zu der religiösen Renaissance unter diesem Prinzeps gehörte auch die persönliche Akzentuierung der Rolle des Pontifex Maximus. Ein herrscherkritischer Impuls ist Hebr mit seiner Vorliebe für soziomorphe Kontrastbegriffe und seinem Appell zum Auszug aus der irdischen Polis (vgl. .–) durchaus zuzutrauen. Zwei Verse weiter nennt er zum ersten Mal jenes kultische Motiv, auf das es ihm im Folgenden ankommt: der barmherzige und treue Hohepriester. So ziehe ich eine erste Bilanz: Der Reiz unseres im Inneren isolierten Passus liegt gerade in seiner Anschlussfähigkeit nach außen. Er setzt vor die Einführung des Hohepriester-Motivs ein Rezeptionssignal, das seine Christologie polymythisch einbettet, kulturell attraktiv macht und in ihrer existentiellen Relevanz beleuchtet. In
Diskussion vgl. W. R. G. Loader, Sohn und Hoherpriester: Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Christologie des Hebräerbriefes (WMANT ; Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener, ) –; H.-F. Weiß, Der Brief an die Hebräer (KEK ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) –. Domitian berief sich bevorzugt auf Minerva und Jupiter Custos; seine Identifizierung mit Hercules unter dem Aspekt seines Übertritts in die Götterwelt schließt das nicht aus. Zu den wiederkehrenden adulatorischen Motiven bei Martial gehört das von Domitian als dem größeren Hercules: Der Prinzeps steigt in dem von ihm gestifteten Hercules-Tempel an der Via Appia in dessen Gestalt und wird vom kleineren (mythischen!) Hercules verehrt: Herculis in magni voltus descendere Caesar dignatus…maiorem Alciden nunc minor ipse colit (Epigr. ..–, ; vgl. ..–). Die Gesichtszüge Domitians auf der Hercules-Plastik erweisen den göttlichen Ursprung des Hercules (Epigr. .). Im Bild des kleineren Alciden verehren wir den größeren, Domitian (Epigr. .). Wie sehr sich Martial als Sprachrohr des Zeitgeists begriff, dokumentiert nach der Wende von n. Chr. Epigr. .. Andere Herrscher legten Gewicht auf andere Züge im anpassungsfähigen Hercules-Bild: Philo fühlt sich durch die entsprechende heroische Aufmachung Caligulas abgestoßen (vgl. Legat. – ); auch Nero und bes. Commodus inszenieren eine eher populäre Heldenvariante. Unter Trajan wird Hercules Symbol herrscherlicher Tugend und Pflichtenstrenge, Domitian dagegen zu einem neuen Eurystheus (vgl. Plinius d.J., Pan. .). Der Eindruck ist oft ein anderer: Hebr „lays great weight on one analogy for the death of Christ, putting almost all of his eggs, so to speak, in the cultic basket, and attempting to wring out of this one image more than the image will coherently yield“, so A. J. M. Wedderburn, ‘Sawing Off the Branches: Theologizing Dangerously Ad Hebraeos’, JTS () –. Zur Pluralität der Wahrnehmungen des Todes Jesu in Hebr vgl. dagegen Löhr, ‘Wahrnehmung’, bes. –.
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der soteriologischen Landschaft des Hebr ist „Christus der Befreier“ kein verirrter Meteor-Einschlag, sondern eine planvoll angelegte Aussichtshöhe, die eine perspektivische Weitung ermöglicht. Sie lässt den Betrachter ein Christus-Bild sehen, das Antworten auf Fragen birgt, die er tatsächlich empfindet. So weckt der Vf. eine steile Erwartung: Christsein befreit von Todesangst. Wie löst er diese Erwartung ein?
. Der Makrotext: Die ars moriendi christologica in Hebr
.. Die Befreiungstat (.–) Unsere Verse stehen in einer Dynamik, die von V. b ihren Ausgang nimmt und in V. mündet. Zuvor (VV. –a) wurde Ps einer christologischen Relecture unterzogen: Was ursprünglich die Hoheit des Menschen besang, wird jetzt zum Ausdruck der Kenosis des Sohnes, für kurze Zeit unter die Engel gestellt. Gott unterwarf Jesus alles—ihn unterwarf er dem Leiden. Was „wir sehen“ (βλέπομεν) von der himmlischen Welt, ist (erstmals mit schlichtem Eigennamen) „Jesus—um des Erleidens des Todes willen mit Herrlichkeit und Würde bekränzt, auf dass er durch Gottes Gnade für jeden schmecke (γεύομαι: leiblich-sinnenhaft erfahre), was Tod ist“ (V. ). Der rätselhafte Finalsatz antizipiert die ganze Soteriologie des Hebr. Der nächste, begründende Vers führt den ἀρχηγός-Titel ein, und zwar in einem Kontext, in dem die Inkarnation als Ausdruck der göttlichen Heilsführung so konsequent vorangetrieben wird wie nirgends sonst in der urchristlichen Literatur: Die uneingeschränkte Seinsund Schicksalsgemeinschaft zwischen Christus und den Glaubenden entspricht (ἔπρεπεν) dem Gottesbild. Der „Sohn“ und die „Söhne“ sind ἐξ ἑνός. Die ausgeprägte Familienmetaphorik im Kontext lässt hier an den gemeinsamen Zur Auslegung A. Vanhoye, Situation du Christ: Hébreux – (LD ; Paris: Cerf, ) – ; E. Gräßer, ‘Die Heilsbedeutung des Todes Jesu in Hebräer ,–’ (), Aufbruch und Verheißung: Gesammelte Aufsätze zum Hebräerbrief (ed. M. Evang u. O. Merk; BZNW ; Berlin: de Gruyter, ) –; R. H. Bell, Deliver Us from Evil: Interpreting the Redemption from the Power of Satan in New Testament Theology (WUNT ; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) –. Dass Jesus den Tod in aller Bitterkeit durchleidet, lässt sich zunächst kaum als Gnadenerweis verstehen. So ist der Finalsatz von einzelnen Auslegern konjektural getilgt worden. . * vgms; OrmssAmbr Hiermss Fulg lesen (statt χάριτι θεοῦ) χωρὶς θεοῦ; bei der so entstehenden Aussage denken einige Kommentatoren an die Gottverlassenheit des Kreuzestods (vgl. Mk . par.). Aber gerade das paradoxale Gegenüber von Tod und Gnade, verstanden als die Bahn ebnender Hinzutritt (vgl. V. ) in die göttliche Wirklichkeit, birgt die Pointe. Es fällt schwer, diese provozierende Pointe nachzuvollziehen. Gerade deshalb dürfen wir die Lesart für ursprünglich halten. Zur Diskussion E. Gräßer, An die Hebräer I–III (EKKNT ; Zürich/ Neukirchen–Vluyn: Benziger/Neukirchener, –) I, –; Weiß, Hebr, –; C. R. Koester, Hebrews (AB ; New York: Doubleday, ) –.
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geschöpflichen Ursprung denken: Die Menschwerdung ist Teilnahme an der geschwisterlichen Gemeinschaft in Blut und Fleisch und damit bis zuletzt durchgetragene Sym-Patheia. Die inkarnatorische Logik mündet in die Zielaussage VV. –, mit der in einer Atmosphäre von Fleisch, Blut, Tod, Angst und Erdnähe der himmlische Hohepriester programmatisch angekündigt wird: „worin er gelitten hat, selbst versucht, vermag er denen, die versucht werden, zu helfen“. Jesus hat die παθήματα, die hier unter dem Aspekt des für alle Menschen gleichen Daseins zum Tode stehen, bis ans Ende treu durchgetragen. Er wurde so, kultsprachlich gesagt, „vollendet“, das heißt: durch die ontische Schranke hindurch in die Heiligkeitssphäre Gottes geführt. Als ἀρχηγὸς τῆς σωτηρίας αὐτῶν hat er diese Schranke zugleich für die Seinen geöffnet. Hebr nimmt den Tod also wahr und hin. Er gehört zur condicio humana, selbst für den Sohn Gottes, der durch seine Schule muss. Dessen Auferstehung wird nirgends ein Thema. Der Kreuzestod wird, vom Heroenmythos inspiriert, als bestandener Lebensweg dargestellt, der zugleich den Weg für die Glaubenden bahnt. Im Folgenden wird der gleiche Tod mit der gleichen Folge als irdischhimmlische Kulthandlung dramatisiert: Der Hohepriester durchschreitet opfernd den Vorhang zum Allerheiligsten und reinigt so das Bundesvolk (vgl. bes. .–). Zumal im Rahmen des Zentralteils (vgl. .–; .–) wird dabei abermals deutlich, dass es ein Lebensweg ist, genauer: die personale Selbsthingabe, die in das biblische Verstehenssystem des levitischen Kults eingezeichnet wird. Das Tieropfer entspricht nicht der Verheißungsgeschichte; in der Menschwerdung hat Gott dem Sohn einen Leib bereitet, damit dieser kommt, um Seinen Willen zu tun (vgl. .–). Hebr kritisiert den Kult nicht; er personalisiert ihn. Erst dadurch gelangt der Kult an jenes Ziel, das die Antike ihm zuschreibt: den Immediatverkehr mit Gott.
V. : πολλοὶ υἱοί; V. –, : ἀδελφοί (ter); V. –: παιδία (bis); V. : σπέρμα ᾿Aβραάμ. Der religionsgeschichtliche Hintergrund der Wendung kann angesichts der kontextuellen Denotation „Familiengemeinschaft“ vernachlässigt werden: Handelt es sich um einen Genetiv Neutrum, ist an ein Seinsprinzip, wohl Blut und Fleisch (V. ), zu denken, nicht an die Präexistenz der Seelen, die in Hebr nirgends in ihre Heimat zurückkehren. Bei einem Maskulinum ist kaum der Schöpfer gemeint, der in Hebr transzendent bleibt. Adam ist eine näherliegende Möglichkeit, kommt aber in Hebr sonst nicht vor. Eher wird an die (ethnisch entgrenzte) Herkunft des Gottesvolks von Abraham (vgl. V. ) zu denken sein (vgl. Philo Gig. –). Zur Diskussion Weiß, Hebr, –; P. Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews (NIGTC; Grand Rapids/Carlisle: Eerdmans/Paternoster, ) –; Koester, Hebr, –; J. Swetnam, ‘᾿Eξ ἑνός in Hebrews ,’, Bib () –. .– ist die erste jener soteriologischen Kernthesen, in denen Hebr seinen Entwurf hörerfreundlich vergegenwärtigt (vgl. .–; .; .–). Nach dem für ihn kennzeichnenden Gliederungsverfahren kündigt er ein Leitthema zunächst an, nimmt den so gesetzten Spannungsbogen zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt wieder auf (.–) und leitet damit zur eingehenden Interpretationsarbeit über (.–.).
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Damit setzt .– vor die kultsymbolische Reinterpretation der ChristusHomologia lektüreleitend die personalen und existentiellen Vorzeichen von Solidarität und Befreiung: Jesus durchschreitet die mors humana und macht sie so für die Seinen durchschreitbar. Sein Tod öffnet die Pforte ins Ewige. In diesem Sinn löst der „Anführer ihres Heiles“ die Seinen zunächst insofern aus der Todesangst, als er diese Versuchung von Blut und Fleisch uneingeschränkt auf sich nimmt, durchsteht und so Vor-Bild eines standfesten Gottesglaubens wird. Aber Hebr transponiert die Vorbild-Ethik ins Soteriologische hinein. Aus dem Vorbild wird der „Vorläufer für uns“, der den Weg, den er als ModellGlaubender geht, zugleich als ewiger Sohn öffnet, das Ziel, das jenseits des Todes liegt, erschließt und dort, wo Angst herrscht, „vorausliegende Hoffnung“ stiftet: den „Seelenanker“, der in die Wirklichkeit Gottes geworfen ist (.–). .. Der Hohepriester, schreiend und weinend (.–) Der in .– angekündigte Hohepriester betritt in Kap. die erzählte Welt. Mit seinem lauten Geschrei und Tränen, seinem Flehen aus Todesnot heraus, mutet er den Adressaten, die ihn gerade noch „ganz oben“ über den Engeln bestaunt hatten, einiges zu. Wir entgehen den zahlreichen Aporien dieses Absatzes, wenn wir die Getsemani-Szene (Mk .– parr.) ausklammern: Rettung wie Erhörung sind hier schwerlich unterzubringen; Hebr bietet nirgends episodische Auskunft über Jesu Vita, und der kenotische Anspruch unserer Szene setzt viel radikaler an. Es ist, wie auch sonst (vgl. .–; .– ), die Psalmpoesie, die die intertextuelle Matrix bildet, um Jesu Erdenleben als Ganzes verstehbar zu machen. Mit gebetssprachlichen Mitteln versetzt die plastische Miniatur den Sohn wie die Adressaten anschaulich in das ihnen vertraute Milieu des biblischen Klageund Bittpsalms und zugleich nach „ganz unten“. Die Situation ist Todesnot, die Bitte zielt auf Rettung, die Folge ist Erhörung. Tränen, lautes Schreien und, gattungstypisch, Erhörung wie Rettung ἐκ θανάτου gehören zum Standardmuster (vgl. bes. Ps –LXX []). Nicht eine Episode, sondern Jesu „Fleischestage“ (.) insgesamt werden als eine einzige Gebetshandlung Jesus betet dann etwa um die Auferweckung, oder er ist „aus seiner Angst heraus“ (ἀπὸ τῆς εὐλαβείας) erhört und von ihr befreit worden, oder er betet für seine Jünger, die Feinde usw. In einer entschlossenen Konjektur hat sich A. von Harnack, ‘Zwei alte dogmatische Korrekturen im Hebräerbrief ’, Studien zur Geschichte des Neuen Testaments und der alten Kirche (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte ; Berlin: de Gruyter, ) –, des Problems durch die Interpolation eines οὐκ entledigt: Wenn Christus, obschon er Sohn war, nicht erhört wurde, um wie viel weniger dürfen dies dann die Christen erwarten; zustimmend R. Bultmann, ‘εὐλαβής κτλ’, TWNT () –. Tränen: Ps .; .LXX (.); .LXX (.); .LXX (.). Schreien: Ps .LXX (.); .LXX (.); .LXX (.); .LXX (.). Erhörung: Ps .; ., LXX (., ); .LXX (.); .LXX (.); .LXX (.). Rettung aus Tod: Ps .; .LXX (.); .LXX (.); .LXX (.).
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gezeichnet: die σάρξ—Jesu Humanum in seiner erdgebundenen Todesverfallenheit—schlägt die Brücke zu .–. Als Echoraum der zuvor zitierten Gottessprüche (Ps .; .) wird das Menschsein des Sohnes Teil des Dialogs mit dem λαλήσας πρὸς αὐτόν (V. ) und vollzieht, was die Bestallung zum Hohepriester bezweckt. Es ist also abermals die personale Selbsthingabe, die die Kultsemantik ans Ziel führt. Sie wird mit dem den Kontext sprengenden Verb προσφέρω beschrieben, das noch in VV. , das hohepriesterliche Sühnopfer denotiert. Auch hier also geht es nicht um Kultkritik, sondern, entscheidender, um die Personalisierung kultischen Denkens: Was nach Todesangst aussieht, erweist sich als εὐλάβεια. Todesangst wird durchstoßen auf gehorsame Gottesfurcht im Lernprozess des Leidens: μανθάνω—„sich durch Erleben aneignen“—bietet eine Analogie zu γεύομαι (.). Gott erhört nicht, indem er vor dem Tod rettet, sondern indem er aus dem Tod rettet, d.h. aus dem in . beschworenen κράτος τοῦ θανάτου. Der Tod bleibt Jesus nicht erspart, aber er ist machtlos geworden, weil er in die Vollendung führt. Der Gedankengang kommt erneut ohne das Auferstehungskerygma aus. Aus der Todessphäre rettet Gott ins Allerheiligste hinein, indem er das Opfer der gehorsamen Erdenexistenz annimmt. Abermals wird Jesus in Ansehung seiner Sterblichkeit sowohl ethisch als Vorbild standfester Frömmigkeit (εὐλάβεια) gezeichnet als auch soteriologisch als Bahnbrecher in die Ewigkeit (αἴτιος σωτηρίας αἰωνίου). So zeigt und öffnet er das „unerschütterliche Königreich“ (.) „für alle, die ihm gehorchen“, und das heißt: die so gehorchen wie er.
Zu εὐλάβεια als Haltung angemessener Gottesscheu vgl. ausführlich Gray, Fear, –. Lexikalisch nach Bauer/Aland () ad voc.: „sich aneignen weniger durch Belehrung als durch Erleben, Erfahren oder Gewöhnung, Übung“ (). Die Parechese ἔμαθεν ἀφ’ ὧν ἔπαθεν ist vielzitierte Erfahrungsregel und wird von Philo religiös geweitet: Durch Leiden lernen wir Gott allein zu gehören (vgl. Somn. .–). Zur Auslegung vgl. J. Roloff, ‘Der mitleidende Hohepriester: Zur Frage nach der Bedeutung des irdischen Jesus für die Christologie des Hebräerbriefes’ (), Exegetische Verantwortung in der Kirche: Aufsätze (ed. M. Karrer; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) –; M. Bachmann, ‘Hohepriesterliches Leiden: Beobachtungen zu Hebr ,–’, ZNW () –; Gräßer, Hebr I, –; Weiß, Hebr, –; M. Karrer, Der Brief an die Hebräer I–II (ÖTK ; Gütersloh/Würzburg: Gütersloher Verlagshaus/Echter, / ) I, –. Die Taufkatechese des Hebr setzt die Auferstehung der Toten voraus (.), von der traditionssprachlich auch in der digressio die Rede ist (., ; vgl. .). . variiert das Erhöhungsmotiv. Die Auferstehung Christi wird in Hebr insgesamt von der Erhöhung her betrachtet; im engeren Sinn österliche Motive (Osterzeugen, Auferweckung am dritten Tag, leeres Grab usw.) treten nicht in den Blick. Ich halte es für wahrscheinlich, dass Hebr die Ostertradition nahezu „modern“ reinterpretiert: Die Auferstehung findet im Kreuzestod als Moment der Erhöhung selbst statt. Doch stößt die Argumentation e silentio an methodische Grenzen. Vgl. H. Braun, An die Hebräer (HNT ; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) .
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.. Die Ästhetik des Ziels Hebr, so stellten wir fest, unternimmt keine ausdrückliche Deutungsanstrengung, um die Befreiung von Todesangst zu erklären. Er stiftet sub specie aeterni eine andere Todeswahrnehmung. So bietet das Corpus nach allen Regeln rednerischer ἐνάργεια (vgl. Quintilian Inst. ..–; ..–; Cicero De or. ., § ; Rhet. Her. ., § ; Ps.-Demetrius Eloc. –) eine Bildergalerie beispielhaften Sterbens und durchschauter Todesfälle. Die Adressaten werden gleichsam Augenzeugen der schwindenden Realität des Todes angesichts der wachsenden Realität jener kognitiven Gegenwelt, die der Glaube zugänglich macht. Zunächst: Das κεφάλαιον des Hebr ist Jesu elender Verbrechertod in der erstaunlich verfremdeten Form einer kultischen Bewegungshandlung, einer sakralen Kontaktnahme, eines Übergangs „durch den Vorhang“ in den Immediatraum Gottes oder—davon sachlich nicht zu trennen—der sessio ad dexteram (vgl. bes. .–; .–). Der menschliche Tod und die Todesangst sind keine ausdrücklichen Leitthemen des Hebr. Aber diesem Heilsdrama zugeordnet, werden sie Teil eines umgreifenden Sinnzusammenhangs. So gerät im Corpus auch das menschliche Sterben vom Ewigen her in ein neues Licht: Das Vorbildlichste an den Gemeindeleitern scheint ihr Abgang gewesen zu sein (.). Im Glaubensenkomion des elften Kapitels werden die Heroen gerade als ex omnibus saeculis contemptores mortis (Seneca Ep. .) gezeichnet, genauer: als berufene Moribunde, die sich im Diesseits allenfalls als Gast-Arbeiter fühlen, weil ihre Zielperspektive ins Jenseits reicht. Den Anfang macht Abel, der noch „als Gestorbener“ vom Unsichtbaren spricht (.; vgl. .). Die Erzväter Im Ansatz kennt Plutarch eine vergleichbare Strategie: Er glaubt nicht, dass der Mensch der Todesangst ausweichen könne, sondern plädiert dafür, die innerweltliche Perspektive angstlindernd auf das Ewige hin zu weiten (Suav. viv. B–C; vgl. Cons. Apoll. D–E). Zur Ewigkeitsoption des Hebr vgl. auch W. Übelacker, ‘Die Alternative Leben oder Tod in der Konzeption des Hebräerbriefs’, Lebendige Hoffnung—ewiger Tod?! Jenseitsvorstellungen im Hellenismus, Judentum und Christentum (ed. M. Labahn u. M. Lang; Arbeiten zur Bibel und ihrer Geschichte ; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, ) –. Die Wendung ἔκβασις τῆς ἀναστροφῆς dürfte sich am ehesten auf den Lebensertrag unter Einschluss eines standfesten Todes, möglicherweise ein Verfolgungsschicksal, beziehen; zur Auslegung Weiß, Hebr, –; Koester, Hebr, , –. Vgl. A. D. Bulley, ‘Death and Rhetoric in the Hebrews “Hymn to Faith”‘, SR () –; P. M. Eisenbaum, The Jewish Heroes of Christian History: Hebrews in Literary Context (SBLDS ; Atlanta: SBL, ) –. Zur Bedeutung des exemplum mortis in der griechisch-römischen Rhetorik M. Vogel, Commentatio mortis: Kor ,– auf dem Hintergrund antiker ars moriendi (FRLANT ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) bes. –. Die auffällige Wendung mag an Gen .LXX anknüpfen, wo allerdings βοᾷ statt λαλεῖ steht, zumal auch in . nicht das Blut, sondern Abel selbst spricht: Der Glaube Abels ist durch den Tod nicht verstummt und bezeugt die unsichtbare Wirklichkeit; zur Auslegung Attridge, Hebr, ; Gräßer, Hebr III, ; Koester, Hebr, –.
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wohnen nur deshalb in Zelten, um zu demonstrieren, dass es auf Erden keine bleibende Stadt gibt (.–; vgl. .). Jakob segnet, sterbend über seinen Stab gebeugt, weil sein Glaube weiter reicht als sein Tod (.). Aus gleichem Grund blickt Josef, ebenfalls sterbend, auf den Exodus voraus (.). Mose hält die „Schmach Christi“ für größeren Reichtum als Ägyptens Schätze, weil er durch Realismus stark ist „wie einer, der den Unsichtbaren schaut“ (vgl. .–). Am Ende sehen wir jene Glaubenszeugen, denen kein Tod erspart scheint: Prügelfolter, gesteinigt, zersägt, erschlagen und verstoßen—sie, deren die Welt nicht wert war, sind der Verheißung wert und damit einer Sichtweise, die die irdischen Grenzen sprengt (vgl. .b–). Hier nähern wir uns dem Herzstück der digressio: „Nach Glaubensart starben all diese (κατὰ πίστιν ἀπέθανον οὗτοι πάντες). Sie empfingen die Verheißungsgüter nicht, sondern sahen sie von fern, grüßten sie und legten das Bekenntnis ab, Fremdlinge und Beisassen zu sein auf Erden“ (.). So verkörpern diese kognitiven Nomaden die Definition des Glaubens in .: Sie sind so sehr vom Unsichtbaren überführt, dass das Ziel ihrer Hoffnung realer ist als die irdische Heimat (vgl. .–). Sie werden zu Mustergestalten der Eschatologie, denn der Sterbende hat keine andere Zukunft als das Unsichtbare. Wo die Weitsicht weiter reicht als der eigene Tod, ist der Glaube zum Ernstfall geworden. Diese Redefinition von Wirklichkeit vollendet sich im „Anführer und Vollender des Glaubens“ (vgl. .–). Zum einzigen Mal nennt Hebr (vgl. .) hier das Kreuz. Wenn es unter dem Aspekt der sozialen Marginalisierung (αἰσχύνη) betrachtet wird, schlägt sich darin wieder die Vorbild-Funktion Jesu für die Adressaten nieder. Vor allem aber ist die Motivation für diese contemptio mortis (καταφρονέω) bedeutsam: die vorausliegende Freude. Der Tod ist erneut actus transcendendi, in dem der Sohn sich zur Rechten Gottes setzt. Der nächste Absatz versucht die „seelenschlaffen“ Adressaten durch den eigenen Agon hindurch auf das ὕστερον auszurichten (.). Hier berühren wir eines der umstrittensten Felder der Hebr-Forschung: die Eschatologie. Ausleger stoßen auf gespannte Parusie-Erwartung oder individuelles Gericht im Jenseits, wägen ab zwischen perfektischen, präsentischen und futurischen Denkfiguren und ringen um die Frage, ob der Verfasser sich in apokalyptischer Weise ein veritables Himmelsheiligtum vorstellt oder einen Gott, der nach mittelplatonischer Manier die Ewigkeit mit einem einzigen Nῦν ausfüllt (vgl. Plutarch E Delph. A). Jede Partei kann Gründe und Texte für ihre Position beibringen; jede muss Inkonsistenzen hinnehmen, mit denen
Der Bezug auf Christus (vgl. Ps .–LXX), dessen Passion Hebr adressatenorientiert gerade unter dem Gesichtspunkt des Ehrverlustes (ὀνειδισμός) deutet (vgl. .; .), dürfte als Analogie gemeint sein. Zur Diskussion vgl. Gräßer, Hebr III, –; D. A. deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Epistle “to the Hebrews” (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) –.
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Hebr aber anders als seine Ausleger offenbar zu leben vermag. Auch die Eschatologie ist ihm ein Wahrheitsspiel, das nicht auf Kongruenz angelegt ist und dem er sich mit Vernetzungsgewinn in multipler Metaphorik nähert. Worauf es ankommt, sind nicht die topographischen und chronologischen Auskünfte, sondern die Zielbilder, ihre poetische Kraft und ihr pragmatisches Potential. Hier wird keine Idee von Endzeit durchgeführt, sondern es werden gleich mehrere, verschiedene Fenster der Lebenswelt für Transzendenzwahrnehmungen geöffnet. Eschatologie wird von einem Zukunftskonstrukt zu einer perspektivisch entgrenzten Lebensform. Um der tyrannischen Todesangst zu begegnen, behauptet Cicero, bedarf es der „zahlreichen, bunten und kraftvollen Blickspiele des Geistes an den himmlischen Orten” (Tusc. .–). Genau diese bietet unser Schreiben. Nicht ohne Grund prägt es die christliche Todesmetaphorik und -poesie bis heute: von der ewigen Ruhe über die Erdenpilgerschaft bis zum Land der Verheißung. Freilich Dazu gehören die chronologischen Aporien: Wann wird Jesus Hohepriester? Welchen Status gewinnt er durch die Erhöhung, den er nicht schon vorher besaß (vgl. dazu den Exkurs bei Braun, Hebr, –)? Die Symbolik des Heiligtums wird je nach Gesichtspunkt unterschiedlich entfaltet: unter Betonung der ontischen Bipolarität von Himmel (Allerheiligstes) und Erde (Vorzelt), ohne Zweiteilung als Kultsymbol des Himmels überhaupt, unter verheißungsgeschichtlichem Aspekt von erstem und neuem Gottesbund, anthropologisch in der Spannung von Fleisch und Gewissen (vgl. Koester, Hebr, –, –). Wie verhalten sich Passagen, die Naherwartung forcieren (vgl. ., ), zu solchen, die ein postmortal-jenseitiges Gericht voraussetzen (vgl. .; .; .)? Die oft betonte Einsicht, dass die Paränese eher von der Parusie her denkt, die lehrhaften Ausführungen eher von der vertikalen Typologie, stellt keine Lösung, sondern den Verzicht auf eine solche dar. Dass Harmonisierungsbemühungen nicht greifen, betont Wedderburn, ‘Sawing Off the Branches’, freilich mit dem Fazit: „The fault of the auctor ad Hebraeos is not so much his incoherence as his failure to perceive that he has been incoherent and that he indeed must be incoherent, given the nature of that which he sets out to describe“ ()—gerade die offenkundigen Inkonsistenzen in dieser multiplen Eschatologie legen aus meiner Sicht nahe, dass der Auctor ad Hebraeos der von Wedderburn kritisierten Fehleinschätzung keineswegs unterliegt. Als Analogie ist Plutarch zu nennen: Oft wird ein Widerspruch zwischen dem aufklärerischen Traktat De superstitione (bes. F–A; vgl. Suav. viv. A–C) und den Schreckensbildern ewiger Strafen in De sera numinis vindicta (E–E) festgestellt; das moderne Bedürfnis nach Sachkonsistenz führt bis zu Authentie-Zweifeln. Das Problem relativiert sich, achtet man auf die Funktion der jeweiligen Aussage. Die abergläubische Jenseitsangst wird theologisch kritisiert; die eschatologischen Mythen ästhetisieren und pädagogisieren—wohl gezielt übergrell—den Gerechtigkeitstopos. Vgl. näher H.-J. Klauck, ‘Plutarch von Chaironeia über Aberglaube, Dämonenfurcht und göttliche Vergeltung’, Alte Welt und neuer Glaube: Beiträge zur Religionsgeschichte, Forschungsgeschichte und Theologie des Neuen Testaments (NTOA ; Freiburg i.Ue./Göttingen: Universitätsverlag/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) bes. –, –. Das Bild ist von Peter L. Berger inspiriert, der seinerseits den Titel seines wissenssoziologischen Standardwerks von unserem Schreiben (.) verdankt: A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, ) .
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dienen ihm diese spectacula nicht als Verbildlichung postmortaler Existenz, sondern als ermutigende Zielvorgaben für das in der Glaubenswanderung ermattete Gottesvolk. Aber gerade dadurch, dass Hebr das προκείμενον (vgl. .; .) ins Bild setzt, löst er den Befreiungsanspruch von . ein. Anders gesagt: Es ist ein kennzeichnender Grundzug des Hebr, dass er vom Ziel her denkt. Stets sind Christus und die Glaubenswanderer in Bewegung gezeichnet, im Transzendieren einer ontischen Grenze, im Modus des προσέρχεσθαι, εἰσέρχεσθαι, ἐγγίζειν usw. Jeder der drei Hauptteile steht wesentlich im Zeichen von Zielbildern: Im ersten ist es die ewige Sabbatruhe im Verheißungsland, im Zentralteil das Allerheiligste und der Thronsaal; die peroratio schließlich kumuliert die Bilder: Berg Sion und Stadt des lebendigen Gottes, kultische Festversammlung zehntausender Engel, Ekklesia der Himmelsbürger, unerschütterliches Königreich, bleibende Polis (vgl. bes. .–). Was diesen unterschiedlichen Imaginationen Zusammenhang gibt, sind, karg genug, die Bipolarität zwischen vorläufigem Weg und endgültigem Ziel und der ontische Status des Himmlischen. Aber was ihnen Wirkung gibt, ist ihre affektive Aufladung, ihre ästhetische Bedeutsamkeit. Das Leben als Ganzes wird transitorisch. Der Tod wird im Wortsinn durchschaubar und kann so auch durchstanden werden. Ich ziehe die zweite Bilanz: Hebr reflektiert die Todesangst nicht; er ordnet sie planvoll in das Christus-Drama ein. Man mag diese Weise, durch symbolisches Ordnungshandeln zur Todesfurcht zu befähigen, als eidetische Soteriologie bezeichnen: Nicht erklärt wird, was das Heil ist, sondern im personalen Bild gezeigt, wo es liegt und wie es ergehbar wird. Christus verkörpert zum einen das Rollenmodell für den bis ans Ende standfesten Glauben; zum anderen öffnet er die Perspektive auf das Ziel, das in wechselnden Bildern und Dringlichkeiten den Adressaten eschatologisch ausrichtet, ihm eine andere Selbst- und Todeswahrnehmung ermöglicht. Diese Zielbilder haben ihre pragmatische Funktion im Rahmen dessen, was die Religionspsychologie als „TerrorManagement“ bezeichnet: Der Tod wird Bestandteil der christlichen An Knotenpunkten der Leserlenkung steht προσέρχεσθαι: .; .; .; ., ; vgl. .. Breiter verteilt ist εἰσέρχεσθαι: ., –; ., , –, –; .–; ., ; ἐγγίζειν: .. Zu diesem auf den Kulturanthropologen Ernest Becker (–) zurückgehenden Ansatz vgl. S. Heine, Grundlagen der Religionspsychologie: Modelle und Methoden (UTB ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ) –; G. Theißen, Erleben und Verhalten der ersten Christen: Eine Psychologie des Urchristentums (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, ) –. Was ich deskriptiv-exegetisch zur Sprache bringe, lässt sich religionspsychologisch als transformationsdynamisch fundierte Affektkontrolle beschreiben: Der Affekt der Todesangst wird dadurch gezügelt, dass sein Träger sich einem anderen Machtbereich zuordnet: Er wird—ganz im Sinn von .–—aus dem „satanischen“ Machtbereich des Todes genommen und in den des ἀρχηγός des Glaubens gestellt; vgl. zu diesem Konstrukt P. von Gemünden, ‘La culture des passions à l’époque du Nouveau Testament’, ETR ()
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Großerzählung und damit einer unverwechselbar-bedeutsamen Geschichte. Er wird relativiert, indem er integriert wird. Er bleibt wichtig, aber verliert seine versklavende Macht als „absoluter Herr“. Denn er führt nicht in die Beziehungslosigkeit, sondern wird, im Gegenteil, mit allen metaphorischen Farben als Gottesbeziehung vitalisiert. So werden die Adressaten Mitspieler in einem Geschehen, das mit Abel begann, in Christi Menschwerdung seinen Höhepunkt erlangt und das noch immer weiter reicht als ihr Augenmaß. In diesem Sinn hat Eberhard Jüngel die christliche Hoffnung auf die Kurzformel gebracht: „Gott ist mein Jenseits“.
. Der affektive Kontext: Die rhetorisierte Gerichtsangst
.. Mobilisierung von Angst und Redekultur Auch das Jenseits kann lebenslang versklaven. Nicht nur eine irrationale Freiheit von Todesangst haben die frühesten Beobachter dem Christentum nachgesagt, sondern sie haben es vornehmlich als superstitio wahrgenommen (Tacitus Ann. ..; Plinius Ep. ..–; Sueton Nero .). Damit wird von Theophrast bis Plutarch eine „Feigheit gegenüber dem Göttlichen“ (Theophrast Char. .; vgl. Plutarch Superst. B–D) bezeichnet, zumal die irrationale Knechtung durch Jenseitsangst: „Wahrhaft, diese süßliche Leichtgläubigkeit verdirbt das vorzügliche Gut der Natur, den Tod, und verdoppelt noch den Schmerz dessen, der sterben muss, durch die Vorstellung von dem, was danach kommt“ (Plinius d.Ä. Nat. .). „Was danach kommt“, wird in Hebr an jenen berüchtigten drei Stellen zum Thema, die Gerichts- und Strafangst mobilisieren (.–; .–; .–). In allen drei Fällen geht es darum, dass Gott selbst die Umkehr nach dem Glaubensabfall ausschließt und den Abgefallenen endgültig verwirft. Einen Meilenstein in der Angstgeschichte hat vor allem der Passus .– gesetzt. Auf den ersten Blick haben wir hier, durch das Adjektiv φοβερόν (VV. , ) gerahmt, ein Beispiel für jene angstbesetzte Erwartung, die aus der Sicht der Elite der sozialen Randschicht zuzuschreiben ist: quae est anus tam delira, quae timeat
bes. –.; Dies., ‘Affekte und Affektkontrolle im antiken Judentum und Urchristentum’, Erkennen und Erleben: Beiträge zur psychologischen Erforschung des frühen Christentums (ed. G. Theißen u. P. von Gemünden; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, ) , –. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (GW ) . Tod (Themen der Theologie ; Stuttgart: Kreuz, rd ed. ) . In . geschieht dies mittelbar durch den Hinweis auf das nach dem Glaubensabfall nicht mehr zugängliche Sühnopfer. So hat V. Hebr einen zweifelhaften Ehrenplatz im Hexenhammer (ed. J. W. R. Schmidt, I, ) gesichert.
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ista? (Cicero Tusc. .). Auf den zweiten Blick sehen wir eine Fülle exegetischer Literatur, die darlegt, der Verfasser meine gar nicht, was er hier sage. Auf den dritten Blick haben wir den Eindruck, dafür, dass es nicht gemeint sei, klinge das Gesagte allzu eindeutig. Auf den vierten Blick sehen wir hier Regeln walten, wie sie die Schulrhetorik für die indignatio oder δείνωσις empfiehlt: die Form pathetischen Fragens (Quintilian Inst. ..), die Betonung des freiwilligen Antriebs, für den es keine Gnade gebe (Cicero Inv. ., § ; vgl. Rhet. Her. ., § ), die Autorität des Verletzten und seine verhöhnte Ehre, die Gegenüberstellung cum aliis peccatis, die zeigen soll, dass das jetzt zur Rede stehende Unrecht um vieles furchtbarer sei als das früherer Zeit (Cicero Inv. ., § ). Vor allem soll die Untat den Zuhörern derart erlebnisförmig dargetan werden, dass diese meinen, selbst zu Augenzeugen zu werden. Erschwerend sei dabei zu zeigen, dass der, der das Unrecht verübe, genau der sei, von dem es am wenigsten begangen werden dürfe. Entscheidungen, so sei zu betonen, seien gemeinhin reversibel, die jetzt zu treffende jedoch keinesfalls, da sie, „wenn sie ein für alle Mal (semel) gefällt worden ist, weder durch irgendein Urteil abgeändert noch durch irgendeine Macht berichtigt werden kann“ (Cicero Inv. ., § ; vgl. Inv. ., § –., § ; Rhet. Her. ., §§ – ). Die pathetische amplificatio muss mit Phantasiebildern (φαντασίαι) das Gemüt der Adressaten derart erregen, dass ihnen eine an sich abstrakte Schuld möglichst konkret vor Augen tritt (vgl. Quintilian Inst. .., –; ..; ..). So aufgewühlt unser Passus also wirkt, so nüchtern ist der pragmatische Zweck: Die δείνωσις führt den parteiischen Abneigungsschauder herbei und soll damit in einer offenen Entscheidungskultur vom falschen Entschluss (im Wortsinn) ab-schrecken. Hebr ist eine Überzeugungsrede, die Christen zu standfestem Glauben ermutigen und von der Preisgabe des Christseins abhalten will. Erster Leitaffekt deliberativer Reden ist der metus (vgl. Quintilian Inst. ..; ferner Aristoteles Rhet. ..–; Cicero De or. ., § ; Isidor von Sevilla Orig. ..). Nun wendet sich der Vf. mit V. selbst schaudererregt ab und die durch metus angelegte Spannung gleitet im nächsten Schritt der Hörerführung in den zweiten deliberativen Leitaffekt über: die spes. Auf das apokalyptische Schreckensszenario folgt unmittelbar, abermals nach gängiger Schulrhetorik, die mitigatio, die Abmilderung durch Hinweis auf die frühere Lebensweise. Dies hindert Cicero nicht daran, bei rednerischer Gelegenheit selbst die ewigen Strafen für die Verstorbenen zu beschwören (vgl. Cat. .). „Scheint solcher Freimut allzu viel Schärfe zu bergen, ist sie mit vielerlei Milderungen zu lindern. Denn unmittelbar darauf mag man etwas folgender Art hinzufügen: Hier frage ich nach eurer Tüchtigkeit, wünsche sehnlich eure Weisheit, rufe eure frühere Lebensweise auf!“ (Rhet. Her. ., § ); zum Verhältnis von asperitas und lenitas auch Cicero De or. ., § . Vgl. B. Nongbri, ‘A Touch of Condemnation in a Word of Exhortation: Apocalyptic Language and Graeco-Roman Rhetoric in Hebrews :–’, NovT () bes.
KNUT BACKHAUS
Punkt für Punkt werden in VV. – die Kontraste gesetzt: Tod und Leben, Rache und Belohnung, Preisgeben und Bewahren, schauderhafte Erwartung und freudiger Freimut. Der metus wird in einer theologischen Hypothesenbildung mobilisiert, die spes in erfahrungsgebundener Rückbesinnung: der hinsichtlich der Gemeinde-Frühzeit ebenfalls veranschaulichten memoria virtutum. In Bezug auf die konkreten Adressaten mündet die affektive Dynamik beider Teile in eine Beschreibung der Zugehörigkeit (Gen. pertinentiae) oder des Charakters (Gen. qualitatis) mit Finalkonstruktion: „Wir aber gehören nicht zu denen, die zurückweichen zum Verderben, sondern die glauben zur Bewahrung der Seele“ (.). Der metus-Teil demonstriert: „Eine künftige Umkehr ist unmöglich“, der spes-Teil richtet auf: „Eine künftige Umkehr ist unnötig“. Ist diese Beobachtung sachgerecht, muss sie sich an den anderen pathoshaltigen Spitzentexten bewähren. .– (metus) mit seinem kraftvollen ἀδύνατον zur künftigen Umkehr und .– (spes) sind in der Aussagerichtung ähnlich und in der Funktion gleich angelegt. Der Vf. macht es uns insofern leicht, als er die mitigatio beim Übergang von der hypothetischen metus- zur memoria-bezogenen spes-Passage als adressatenbezogenen Widerruf formuliert: „Überzeugt sind wir aber, was euch, ihr Geliebten, betrifft, von dem, was besser ist und zum Heil führt, wenn wir auch so reden“ (.). Nachdem er in .– das dritte Mal eine künftige Umkehr ausgeschlossen hat, versichert der Vf. seinen Adressaten im Perfekt, sie seien nicht zu jenem Berg hinzugetreten, an dem
–. Die Abfolge von zunächst harten und dann tröstlichen Worten galt in tannaitischer Zeit als Merkmal der Synagogenpredigt und wurde auf Mose und die Propheten zurückgeführt (vgl. Sifre Dtn .); dazu E. Stein, ‘Die homiletische Peroratio im Midrasch’, HUCA / (/) . Vgl. unter diskurstheoretischem Aspekt A. H. Snyman, ‘Hebrews .–: From a Semiotic Discourse Perspective’, Discourse Analysis and the New Testament: Approaches and Results (ed. S. E. Porter u. J. T. Reed; JSNTSup ; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, ) –. D. A. deSilva, ‘Hebrews :–: A Socio-Rhetorical Investigation’, TynBul () –, –, betont die Reziprozitätsleistung des Gunstempfängers gegenüber dem Patron im Wertgefüge der sozialen Umwelt. Das metaphorisch auf den Glaubensabfall zu beziehende exemplum des Esau als πόρνος ἢ βέβηλος ist in der aggadischen Entfaltung des Esau-Bilds verankert und beleuchtet erneut den frühjüdischen Traditionshintergrund und dessen eigenständige und situationsbezogene Aneignung in Hebr: Esau als Prototyp dessen, der die Gnade mutwillig abtut, ist zwar bereit umzukehren, doch Gott verweigert ihm die Gelegenheit (μετανοίας τόπος); vgl. näher H. Löhr, Umkehr und Sünde im Hebräerbrief (BZNW ; Berlin: de Gruyter, ) –, –. Damit handelt der ewige Richter unnachgiebiger als der menschliche, der solchen Christen, die bereit sind, sich vom Glauben loszusagen, einen paenitentiae locus einräumt (Plinius d.J. Ep. ..); Trajan entscheidet sich dafür, ihnen veniam ex paenitentia zu gewähren (Ep. ..).
Zwei harte Knoten
selbst Mose von φόβος καὶ τρόμος ergriffen wurde (vgl. .–), sondern mit allen Bürgerrechten in das Fascinosum des Himmels selbst (.–). Freilich, auch die, die das „unerschütterliche Königreich“ empfangen, verlieren das „verzehrende Feuer“ nicht aus dem Blick, mit dem das abschließende TheophanieMotiv (vgl. Dtn .) Gott gleichsetzt (.–). Der „suspense“-Effekt bleibt. Doch die Haltung der Glaubenden μετὰ εὐλαβείας καὶ δέους entspricht jetzt jener Ehrfurcht, die auch Jesus gezeigt hat (vgl. .–) und die, wie Jesus, letztlich die Adressaten im Dialograum des Psalters verortet: „sodass wir Mut haben zu sagen: Der Herr ist mir Helfer. Ich werde mich nicht fürchten (οὐ φοβηθήσομαι)“ (. mit Ps .LXX). Gerichtsangst wird also nicht entkräftet, sondern durchgespielt. Apokalyptische Bilder gewinnen das ästhetische Moment eines vorläufigen Verweilens. Die Hörer lassen sie hinter sich, freilich so, dass die spes nicht apodiktisch wird. Jedoch mäßigt sie die extremreligiöse eschatologische Angst zur moderatreligiösen Furcht. Sie geht in jenem christlichen Existential auf, das Hebr an Schaltstellen der Leserlenkung (.; .; ., ) mit einem rhetorischen Wertbegriff παρρησία nennt: Unerschrockenheit gegenüber menschlicher Macht und Mehrheit und geschenkte Zuversicht gegenüber dem heiligen Gott. .. Wie unmöglich ist die zweite Umkehr? Die Rezeptionsgeschichte unserer drei Drohtexte verrät viel über christliche Lektüreweisen und wohl auch einiges über die Entwicklung der Redekultur: Gerade im kirchlichen Umfeld drängte die Verkündigung von Wahrheit und deren epideiktischer Preis die deliberative Rhetorik zurück. Drei Tendenzen sind zu unterscheiden: (a) Die erste, für die etwa Tertullian (Pud. ) steht, nahm die Absage an die zweite Umkehr wörtlich und fand rigoristische Freude an ihr. (b) Die großkirchliche Auslegung war seelsorgerlich darum bemüht nachzuweisen, dass die Texte ganz anderes bedeuten, als der Wortlaut nahelegt. Die bis heute fortgesetzten Versuche sind eher zahlreich als triftig. (c) Der philologische und theologische Ernst der Neuzeit—hier ist wegweisend Luther zu nennen—gelangte zu einem anderen Resultat: Der Vf. meint tatsächlich, was er sagt; die Aufgabe des Auslegers ist die der Sachkritik. Nun setzt Sachkritik voraus, dass der Ausleger näher an der Sache ist als die Texte, die von ihr handeln, und über Kriterien verfügt, die sich aus dem Verfahren historischer Sinnerhebung jedenfalls nicht ergeben. Die rhetorische Analyse mag hier insofern einen Beitrag leisten, als sie vom spezifisch neuzeitlichen Pathos der Wahrhaftigkeit zur antiken Diskussion zurückblendet, die eher .b, bezieht sich unmittelbar auf die Befreiung der christlichen Minorität von Menschenfurcht, wirft aber zugleich ein Licht auf das Verständnis der in .– beschriebenen λατρεία für den lebendigen Gott (vgl. .). Vgl. zur explosiven apokalyptischen Angst und ihrer Verarbeitung im Urchristentum Theißen, Erleben, –.
KNUT BACKHAUS
um die Wahrhaftigkeit des Pathos kreist. Die Grenzen zwischen veritas und utilitas, dem affektiven Spiel und der Durchsetzung von Wahrheitsansprüchen sind in der antiken Diskussion fließender, als es intellektueller Redlichkeit heute billig scheint. Zeitgenössisch hat sich Quintilian eingehend mit dieser Frage befasst, und er kann heuristisch den Blick für die „Sache“ des Hebr öffnen. Zur indignatio gehört die Selbstaffizierung des Redners: Die ganze Kunst des Pathos liegt nach einem Schlüsseltext (Inst. ..–; ähnlich Cicero De or. .–, §§ –) darin, jene Gefühlswirkungen, die man erregen will, selbst mit allem Ernst zu empfinden und ihnen sein ganzes Wesen hinzugeben. Was der Wahrheit gleichen soll, muss sich der Leidenschaft einprägen: „Nichts entfacht den Brand außer Feuer“ (..; vgl. ..; ..–; ..–; Cicero Or. Brut. , §§ – ); oft habe er Schauspieler noch weinen sehen, nachdem sie die Maske abgelegt hätten (..). Und so laute die erste Regel, sich von dem, was man pathetisch sage, so ergreifen zu lassen, als sei es wahr. Der pathetische Ausschluss der künftigen Umkehr, so gesehen, ist tamquam verum. Der Redner glaubt an sie, als sei sie wahr. Die verbreitete Faustregel lautet zugleich: ἦθος perpetuum, πάθος temporale (..). Eine Weile ( parumper) soll sich der Redner die Empörung zu eigen machen (vgl. ..). Die drei metus-Passagen entfalten ihre affektive Wirkung also gerade in gezielter Vorläufigkeit. Dann aber ist es eine Fehlentscheidung, wenn man sie aus ihrer pathetischen Sequenz herausnimmt, isoliert betrachtet und auf ihren propositionalen Gehalt als dogmatische Aussage oder bußrechtliche Weisung hin liest. Aus dem heilsamen Schrecken wurde so die schreckliche Heillosigkeit. Erst dort entstand der „harte Knoten“, wo man den Textfaden nicht weiterverfolgte. Jedenfalls haben die je nachfolgenden spesPassagen rezeptionsgeschichtlich keine annähernd vergleichbare Aufmerksamkeit gewonnen. Doch auch in ihnen dürfte der Redner gemeint haben, was er sagte: dass er im Blick auf seine Adressaten von ganz anderem überzeugt sei, und genauso ἀδύνατον wie die künftige Umkehr ist es am (rhetorischen) Ende, dass Gottes Verheißung täuscht (vgl. .). Seine letzte Wahrheit
Nach dem Kompendium des Quintilian liegt die Königsaufgabe des Redners gar bei der ab ipsa veri contemplatione abducenda mens (Inst. ..; vgl. ..–). Bezeichnend etwa: „Wenn aber der Sinn der Hörer derart schwankt und die Wahrheit so vielen Übeln ausgesetzt ist, dann muss voll Kunst gestritten und herangezogen werden, was nützlich ist! Denn wer vom geraden Wege verdrängt worden ist, den kann man nicht anders als mit einer Biegung zurückführen“ (Inst. ..)—dies gehe, zumal wenn man zu imperiti spreche, nicht ohne Einsatz des affektiven Spiels, das Wahrheit eher durchsetze als kritisch vermittle (vgl. ..–); ferner ..–, –; ..; ..–. in iis primum est bene adfici et concipere imagines rerum et tamquam veris moveri (..). Vgl. P. Lampe, ‘Psychologische Einsichten Quintilians in der Institutio Oratoria’, Erkennen und Erleben: Beiträge zur psychologischen Erforschung des frühen Christentums (ed. G. Theißen u. P. von Gemünden; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, ) –.
Zwei harte Knoten
hat der Redner auch damit nicht verkündet. Letztwahrheiten sind nicht die Sache deliberativer Redner. Rhetorik ist eine pragmatische Kunst. So wage ich abschließend eine Spekulation: Hätte der Auctor ad Hebraeos situativ vor dem Problem der zweiten Umkehr gestanden, wäre seine Lösung ebenfalls pragmatisch gewesen. Wie gnädig der Wohltäter am Ende zu sein hat, hätte er aus Sicht der Heilsempfänger tunlichst offen gelassen, aber im konkreten Fall für eine nützliche Lösung plädiert. Im, wie ich vermute, benachbarten stadtrömischen Milieu klingt die Antwort des Hirt des Hermas bezeichnend: „Unmöglich (ἀδύνατον) ist es, dass der, der im Begriff steht, jetzt seinen Herrn zu verleugnen, gerettet wird. Für jene jedoch, die einst verleugnet haben, scheint es Umkehr zu geben! Wenn einer also im Begriff steht, Umkehr zu tun, beeile er sich…!“ (Herm. Sim. IX .; vgl. Vis. III .). Ich ziehe die dritte Bilanz: Die deliberative Strategie führt ihre Hörer gezielt in die parteiische Gerichtsangst. Sie führt sie unmittelbar danach ebenso gezielt aus ihr hinaus. Apokalyptisches Bildgut wird eingesetzt, um lege artis Befreiung zu inszenieren. Wo man im pathetischen temporale den Anspruch auf das theologische perpetuum verortet, verfehlt man die affektzentrierte Hörerführung, das rhetorische Wahrheitsspiel und die Wirkabsicht des Hebr. Angst, so hatten wir eingangs gesagt, ist ein Indikator religiösen Selbstverständnisses. Hebr bemüht sich, die Angst vor dem Tod, ein Erbteil des Menschen, in den Sinnkosmos der christlichen Großerzählung zu integrieren. Zu seinem Erbteil gehört—ob wir wollen oder nicht—auch die jüdisch-christliche Gerichtsangst. Er hat sie nicht beseitigt, aber er hat sie durch den Gegenaffekt gezügelt, rhetorisch dienstbar gemacht, in eine vielschichtige Deutungsoffenheit überführt und so kultiviert. Die letztgültige Wahrheit über Tod und Gericht hat er damit nicht verkündet. Neuzeitliche Theologie rechnet mit der Unveränderlichkeit von Wahrheitsansprüchen. Deliberative Rede rechnet mit der Veränderlichkeit wahrheitsfähiger Hörer. Ihr—vielleicht zwiespältiger— Charme liegt nicht zuletzt darin, dass sie niemals glaubt, das letzte Wort zu haben.
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0028688509000149
L’Identification de Je´sus au Mode`le du Hasid Charismatique Galile´en: Les The`ses de Geza Vermes et de Shmuel Safrai Revisite´es DAN JAF FE´ Bar-Ilan University, 52900 Ramat-Gan, Israel email:
[email protected] Numerous studies have been undertaken with the objective of putting forward an identity of Jesus according to the Jewish movements of the end of the Second Temple period. Geza Vermes and Shmuel Safrai present an unusual thesis: they suggest that Jesus was a hasid, i.e. a charismatic Galilean prophet. They base themselves principally on the personalities of Hanina ben Dosa and Honi the Circlemaker to draw a behavioral model appropriate to Jesus according to the hasid model. This article explores the theses of these important scholars and refutes them, refusing to see the hasidim of the first centuries as a separate group from the general group of the Sages. Thus Jesus was considered to belong to one of the numerous Pharisee identities. Keywords: Hasid, Pharisee, Hanina ben Dosa, Honi the Circlemaker, Charismatic Galilean prophet
Parmi les nombreuses identifications de Jésus ayant vu le jour durant le XXe siècle, deux historiens juifs: Geza Vermes et Shmuel Safrai ont développé des problématiques aussi intéressantes que singulières. Selon ces critiques, Jésus est apparenté à un hasid, ou prophète charismatique qui est une des nombreuses figures galiléennes du Ier siècle. Le travail de Vermes et de Safrai trouve son point d’ancrage méthodologique dans l’analyse du monde juif galiléen des deux premiers siècles de l’ère chrétienne. C’est en effet en se fondant sur ce contexte historique que la figure du Jésus de l’histoire peut être mieux appréhendée. Il s’agit donc de replonger Jésus dans son monde juif originel, la Galilée. Pour ce faire, ces deux historiens s’appuient sur le modèle du hasid ou prophète charismatique qu’ils affilient à l’homme de Nazareth. Le prophétisme charismatique de Jésus selon Geza Vermes
Vermes considère que l’image de Jésus décrite par les évangélistes s’apparente à celle d’un prophète. Il estime en effet que la désignation prophétique con vient le mieux à Jésus compte tenu de deux points fondamentaux:
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
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Les témoins sympathisants de l’activité galiléenne de Jésus le tenaient soit pour Jean le Baptiste, soit pour Elie ou l’un des prophètes. C’est donc l’idée d’un prophète redivivus. La croyance populaire en la caractéristique prophétique de Jésus peut être prouvée par l’attitude réservée ou plus nettement désapprobatrice, voire même moqueuse que lui manifestent certains de ses adversaires (par exemple Lc . qui présente un pharisien choqué de voir Jésus se laisser parfumer les pieds par la femme pécheresse; Mt . ou encore Lc .: Fais le prophète! Qui est-ce qui t’a frappé?)
Selon Vermes, l’idée et la représentation que se font de lui ses proches, semblent s’accorder avec l’idée que Jésus a de lui-même. En effet, Jésus se considère lui-même comme un prophète et attribue à son destin prophétique tous les désagréments qu’il rencontre. Cette analyse est étayée par Mc . et parallèles: Un prophète n’est mésestimé qu’en son propre pays, dans sa parenté et dans sa maison. Dans ce même esprit, Jésus déclare être sans fondement la volonté qu’a de le tuer Hérode Antipas, tétrarque de Galilée. Il dit selon Lc .: Il est inadmissible qu’un prophète périsse hors de Jérusalem. Vermes considère que les caractéristiques du prophète sont étroitement liées chez Jésus aux caractéristiques du thaumaturge. Selon ce critique, ces deux fonctions peuvent être considérées comme synonymes dans deux domaines distincts: la conscience qu’a de lui-même Jésus, celle qu’ont de lui ses disciples. Ce qui est remarquable, souligne Vermes, est que dans la critique que lui adresse ses adversaires, la notion de thaumaturgie n’apparaît pas. On ne retrouve que celle de prophétie, au sens d’un don intellectuel qui implique la connaissance de secrets. Cette caractéristique prophétique qui relie les aptitudes à accomplir des miracles et le fait d’être autorisé par le divin qualifie Jésus identifié par Vermes à un hasid galiléen. Ainsi, pour Vermes les critiques qui lui sont adressées ne mentionnant pas la thaumaturgie ne font que conforter sa perception du Nazaréen comme hasid charismatique. Cette description de Jésus comme hasid galiléen que Vermes retrouve dans l’attitude des personnages talmudiques de Honi ha-meagel (Honi le traceur de cercles) et Hanina ben Dosa l’amène à établir un point de rencontre entre deux comportements indissociables: la mission prophétique et l’activité charismatique. G. Vermes, Jésus le juif. Les documents évangéliques à l’épreuve d’un historien (Paris: Desclée, ) –. On notera que la critique des adversaires de Jésus porte sur son activité d’exorciste (par exemple Mc .–). G. Vermes, Jésus le juif, –. Sur les aspects charismatiques de l’activité de Jésus, on consultera principalement: G. Dumège, ‘Le Christ médecin dans la littérature chrétienne des premiers siècles’ Rivista archeoligia cristiana () –; R. Riesner, ‘Jesus as Preacher and Teacher’, Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition (ed. H. Wansbrough; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, )
DAN JAFFÉ
Vermes voit dans la relation qu’établit Jésus entre l’activité prophétique et les personnages bibliques d’Elie et d’Elisée la volonté de mentionner des exemples emblématiques. Ce genre de parallèles, en particulier avec le prophète Elie, soulève la question de la relation entre la réputation du prophète, la conscience prophétique qu’avait Jésus de lui-même, et l’attitude du hasid charismatique. Jésus est assimilé par Vermes à des figures rabbiniques tels Hanina ben Dosa qui guérissait les malades et qui était désigné comme prophète. Ce même Hanina ben Dosa qui prononce une prière en mettant la tête dans ses genoux pour adopter une attitude ressemblant à celle du prophète Elie, ramène donc au comportement de Jésus. Jésus guérit également les malades; or à son époque, le thaumaturge est assimilé à Elie ou à une réplique d’Elie. Il est toutefois important de souligner qu’il s’agit d’une réplique d’Elie et non du retour d’Elie lors de l’avènement messianique. Le rapprochement établi cadre avec Elie en tant que personnage biblique du passé et non avec une figure prophétique qui accompagnerait le Messie lors de sa revelation. En conséquence, Vermes conclut que les représentations propres à la figue du hasid n’étaient en rien liées à une quelconque conception eschatologique. Pour résumer, Vermes déclare que: « Si l’on replace le problème du Nouveau Testament dans le cadre du judaïsme charismatique, on peut dire ceci avec justesse: pour que les références à Jésus comme prophète ou en tant qu’Elie prennent leur sens, il n’est pas nécessaire de recourir aux concepts eschatologiques d’un dernier médiateur de révélation ou d’un précurseur du Messie ». On peut certes accepter l’idée de voir en Jésus une figure prophétique aux élans charismatiques. On doit cependant s’interroger au moins sur un point: peut-on parler de judaïsme charismatique comme d’un phénomène socio-religieux structuré durant l’époque de Jésus? N’est-il pas plutôt opportun de voir en Honi ha-meagel ou en Hanina ben Dosa des pharisiens dépositaires d’une autre forme de relation à la Torah? Il semblerait en effet—dans une perspective
–; S. C. Mimouni, ‘L’aspect charismatique des actions et des paroles de Jésus’, Carisma profetico. Fattore di innovazione religiosa (ed. G. Filoramo; Brescia: Centro di Alti’ Studi in Scienze Religiose di Piacenza, ) –. Sur cette question voir F. Manns, Une approche juive du Nouveau Testament (Paris: Cerf, ) –. G. Vermes, Jésus le juif, –. Voir sur le personnage de Hanina ben Dosa les études que lui a consacrées G. Vermes: ‘Hanina ben Dosa. A Controversal Galilean Saint from the First Century of the Christian Era’, JJS () –, () –. Voir sur les pratiques de thérapeute thaumaturgique de Hanina ben Dosa, notre ouvrage: D. Jaffé, Le judaïsme et l’avènement du christianisme. Orthodoxie et hétérodoxie dans la littérature talmudique Ier-IIe siècle (Paris: Cerf, ) –.
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
purement historique—qu’il soit plus représentatif de considérer ces individus comme des Sages parmi d’autres Sages présentant une vision de la Torah axée sur l’action plus que sur l’étude et associée à un comportement établi sur des actes thaumaturgiques irrationnels. Le postulat méthodologique consiste à éviter de considérer le mouvement pharisien en tant qu’entité monolithique d’où une unique conception émergerait. C’est bien à une mouvance aux approches fragmentées que l’on doit penser quand on s’intéresse à ce groupe juif de la fin du Second Temple. C’est donc au sein de cette mouvance qu’il convient de replacer Jésus le Nazaréen. Certes on doit souligner que Honi et Hanina ben Dosa représentent deux modèles quelque peu en dysharmonie avec le courant pharisien majoritaire pour au moins deux raisons:
Le mouvement pharisien se fonde sur l’étude comme point de ralliement social et comme schéma fondamental de vie juive. Le mouvement pharisien rejette les moyens qui trouvent leur source dans des pratiques bouleversant le cycle de la nature. Il suffit d’avoir à l’esprit la véhémente réaction des Sages à l’égard de R. Eliézer ben Hyrcanus (TB Baba Metsia b) qui, pour asseoir son argumentaire, se fonde sur des actes surnaturels, ce qui lui valut son exclusion de la maison d’étude.
Il est intéressant de souligner que l’approche de Vermes quant au caractère prophétique de Jésus reste peu courante. En effet, selon ce critique, Jésus est à apparenter davantage à un hasid charismatique qu’à un prophète classique. Le modèle comportemental du hasid se retrouve par exemple avec Honi hameagel (Honi le traceur de cercles) ou Hanina ben Dosa, c’est-à-dire à un juif pieux marginal face aux pharisiens usuels. Pour un hasid charismatique, la prière, la supplication, le miracle, le bouleversement du cycle de la nature et une grande proximité avec le divin sont de l’ordre du quotidien. Pour le hasid, l’étude, qui est le point d’orgue fondamental du pharisien et plus tard du monde des Sages, est secondaire par rapport à l’action. Pour Geza Vermes, Jésus se retrouve typiquement dans le modèle du hasid galiléen charismatique. Dans la notion de « prophète », Vermes entend celle de « faiseur de miracle ». Selon cette approche, le prophète est davantage celui qui est capable d’apporter la guérison alors que l’état du patient est désespéré, que celui qui est autorisé par le divin et qui doit accomplir une mission ordonnée par Dieu. Selon cette grille de lecture, le prophète ne réprimande pas le peuple pour sa mauvaise conduite mais effectue des actes qui témoignent de son caractère inspiré. Dans cette perception, on comprendra aisément que, pour Vermes, la croyance en Jésus en tant que prophète eschatologique est plus tardive que l’époque durant laquelle Jésus a
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véritablement été actif. Elle est le fruit d’une théologisation élaborée par l’Evangile selon Jean et les Actes des Apôtres. Les réalités du monde juif que Vermes explore pour parvenir à une thèse cohérente sont celles de la Galilée de l’époque de Jésus et celles des hassidim charismatiques du monde juif des premiers siècles. A ce niveau, il revient sur Honi le traceur de cercles, Hanina ben Dosa et autres Sages thaumaturges, guérisseurs ou faiseurs de miracles. Vermes assimile Jésus à la tradition des hassidim qui représentent une forme particulière de piétisme et de dévotion dans le monde juif de l’Antiquité classique. Il trouve donc judicieux de revenir sur ce rapprochement entre l’homme de Nazareth et plusieurs figures charismatiques du judaïsme galiléen qui ont évolué autour de l’an , notamment Honi le traceur de cercles et Hanina ben Dosa. Les caractéristiques de ces hommes étaient de faire primer l’action sur l’étude et de mettre particulièrement l’accent sur la piété. Ils se démarquaient par leur souci appuyé de compassion et d’attention pour leurs semblables. Ils furent tous célébrés « comme des libérateurs des juifs en proie à la famine, la maladie et la domination des forces de ténèbres sans compter que quelquesuns le furent aussi en tant que maîtres de religion et de moralité ». Pour l’auteur, les Evangiles laissent transparaître l’image d’un Jésus qui ressemble à Honi, à Abba Hilqiah ou à Hanina ben Dosa. Ces hommes s’adressaient simplement à Dieu comme à un père afin de lui adresser leur prière et n’hésitaient pas à lui transmettre leur mécontentement si la prière n’était pas exaucée. Ils pouvaient guérir des malades atteints de maladies incurables et surtout, ils n’hésitaient pas à avoir recours au miracle dans leur piété. La confiance qu’ils mettaient en Dieu était sans borne et allait même jusqu’à ne pas faire cas du danger qu’ils encouraient. En bref, on retrouve chez ces hassidim plusieurs caractéristiques qu’il est possible également de déceler chez Jésus. A ce titre, on peut énumérer:
La prière insistante et exaltée. La prédication.
On notera que parmi les historiens juifs contemporains de Vermes, cette approche ne fait pas l’unanimité. Voir à titre d’exemple D. Flusser, ‘The Son of Man: Jesus in the Context of History’, The Crucible of Christianity (ed. A. Toynbee; London: Thames & Hudson, ) – qui voit en Jésus un prophète mais qui acquiesce toutefois avec Vermes sur le rejet de l’idée de prophète eschatologique. Pour un avis différent parmi la critique juive, voir H. J. Schonfield, The Passover Plot: A New Interpretation of the Life and Death of Jesus (New York: Element, ) , , . G. Vermes, Enquête sur l’identité de Jésus. Nouvelles interprétations (Paris: Bayard, ) –. L’expression « prière exaltée » doit être comprise dans ce contexte comme une prière prononcée avec une ferveur hors du commun entraînant chez celui qui la prononce une sorte d’état second.
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
Une existence caractérisée par la pauvreté. Les guérisons et les exorcismes.
On doit cependant souligner que dans la pratique thérapeutique, le modus operandi de Jésus diffère de celui de Hanina: là où Jésus guérit habituellement par le toucher ou par la parole, Hanina le fait par une prière miraculeuse; cependant, leur approche se recoupe dans son aspect irrationnel et surnaturel. En dehors du fait de pouvoir être défini comme un maître galiléen charismatique, Jésus est « un maître insurpassable dans l’art de révéler le fondement de la vérité spirituelle, ramenant chaque question à l’essence même de la religion, à savoir la relation existentielle d’homme à homme et d’homme à Dieu ». La thèse de Vermes sur l’affiliation de Jésus à un hasid charismatique tel Honi le traceur de cercles, Abba Hilqiah ou Hanina ben Dosa est certes à prendre en considération. Toutefois, certaines remarques doivent être faites: En premier lieu, se dégage l’impression que Vermes a tendance à isoler ces personnages au sein de la société des Sages et à les considérer comme des marginaux. Or, une lecture attentive des passages talmudiques qui leurs sont afférents montrent invariablement qu’ils ne sont nullement marginaux. Ils font intégralement partie du monde des Sages bien que présentant une tendance indéniable à exacerber certaines pratiques ou certains comportements plutôt que d’autres. Cependant, force est de reconnaître que des caractéristiques telles une piété prononcée, une vie de dénuement, des actes de guérison hors du commun, une récitation de prières pour que la pluie apparaisse etc. font intégralement partie du monde des Sages des premiers siècles. Il n’est que de citer l’exemple de R. Siméon ben Yohaï dont il est dit qu’il était accoutumé aux miracles (TB Me’ila b), qu’il expulsa un démon nommé ben Temalion et qu’il guérit la fille d’un l’empereur romain. On pourrait également ajouter le cas de ce prosélyte qui pria pour que la pluie parvienne et fut exaucé, ce qui engendra l’admiration de R. Judah le Prince (TB Taanit a) ou encore R. Yehoshua ben Levi qui décréta un jeûne pour que la pluie tombe et fut exaucé (TB Taanit a). Un cas similaire se retrouve chez R. Yosse le Galiléen qui réussissait à faire pleuvoir ou encore chez R. Aqiba qui réussit à faire apparaître la pluie par le mérite de sa grande humilité. Bien entendu, il n’est pas question d’entrer dans le détail de ces textes légendaires, il suffit de les évoquer—tout en sachant que ce ne sont que quelques exemples significatifs parmi d’autres—pour montrer que les cas que cite Vermes ne sont en rien anormatif parmi les Sages. Ceci ne peut d’ailleurs qu’affermir l’idée maintes fois relevée par la critique selon laquelle Jésus est à replacer G. Vermes, Enquête sur l’identité de Jésus, . TJ Berakhot V, , a; V, , b. TB Taanit b.
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dans le groupe d’appartenance de ces personnages. En procédant par analogie, on peut affirmer que les actes miraculeux de ces Sages ou de Jésus ne sont en rien en marge dans le monde juif de cette époque. On doit donc reconnaître que ces Sages sont des maîtres d’abord distingués par leur enseignement qui pour certains exercent une activité thérapeutique ou récitent des prières particulières. On conclura donc qu’il est difficile de rattacher Jésus à un quelconque groupe de hassidim charismatique pour la simple raison qu’un tel groupe n’existe pas en tant que catégorie socio-religieuse au sein de la société des Sages. On acceptera à ce propos les conclusions auxquelles parvient C.A. Evans qui montre que le hasid est aussi un Sage enseignant exactement comme ses condisciples. On suivra également l’analyse d’Evans qui entrevoit les actes miraculeux de Jésus dans le sens d’une démarche prophétique ou même d’une perspective messianique. En conclusion, on dira qu’une différence de sens autant que de contenu ne sont pas à retenir entre la figure du Sage et la figure de l’homme saint telles qu’elles apparaissent dans la littérature talmudique. Honi le traceur de cercles, Abba Hilqiah, Hanina ben Dosa ou encore Jésus le Nazaréen ne sont pas à distinguer ou à marginaliser au sein du monde pharisien ou du monde plus tardif des Sages. Cela nous amène à résumer notre propos de la façon suivante:
– –
Jésus peut être apparenté à un des groupes pharisiens issus de la polyphonie que ce mouvement englobe. Les hassidim existaient mais ne formaient pas un groupe défini aux frontières hermétiques au sein du groupe des Sages.
Notons que c’est également la conclusion à laquelle parvient B. Chilton, The Temple of Jesus: His Sacrificial Program Within a Cultural History of Sacrifice (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, ) n. . On peut ajouter que Hillel est appelé hasid alors qu’aucun miracle ne lui est associé. Cf. T Sota XIII, (ed. M. S. Zuckermandel, ); TJ Sotah IX, , b. Sur le personnage de Hillel, voir N. N. Glatzer, Hillel the Elder: The Emergence of Classical Judaism (Washington, DC: B’nai B’rith, ). Ajoutons que Shmuel ha-qatan est également nommé hasid en T Sotah XIII, (ed. M. S. Zuckermandel, ). Pour une première approche sur les textes relatifs aux personnages de la littérature talmudique appelés hasid, voir A. Büchler, Types of Jewish-Palestinian Piety from B.C.E to C.E: The Ancient Pious Men (London: Jews’ College, ) –. Cf. C. A. Evans, ‘Jesus and Jewish Miracle Stories’, Jesus and his Contemporaries: Comparative Studies (Leiden: Brill, ) –. On consultera aussi A. George, ‘Les miracles de Jésus dans les Evangiles Synoptiques’, Lumière et vie () –; X. Léon-Dufour (ed.), Les miracles selon le Nouveau Testament (Paris: Seuil, ); M. Smith, Jesus the Magician (San Francisco: Harper & Row, ); J. Nadich, Jewish Legends of the Second Commonwealth (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, ) –, –; E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (London: SCM, ) –; C. Brown, ‘Synoptic Miracle Stories: A Jewish Religious and Social Setting’, Forum () –.
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
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Le hasid, le guérisseur thérapeutique, le faiseur de miracle ou encore celui qui possède le pouvoir de faire pleuvoir, sont tous des Sages qui se distinguent d’abord par leur enseignement et non par leurs actes.
La catégorie socio-religieuse du hasid galiléen charismatique développée par Vermes, ne semble donc pas pertinente dans la désignation de Jésus le Nazaréen. Jésus hasid galiléen selon Shmuel Safrai
Selon Safrai, le groupe pharisien était loin de représenter un groupe aux frontières circonscrites mais offrait plutôt les contours d’une mosaïque aux tendances diverses. En plus des multiples approches dont ce mouvement se compose, Safrai rajoute une tendance indépendante et s’y intéresse plus particulièrement: les hassidim. Les hassidim sont un groupe juif ayant évolué du Ier siècle avant l’ère chrétienne et jusqu’à la fin de l’époque de la Mishna, au IIe siècle. Les hassidim étudiaient la loi avec les pharisiens et les Sages, mais ne doivent pas être identifiés avec ces derniers. Ils ont en effet inauguré une conception socio-religieuse particulière dont il est possible de dire qu’elle les singularisaient. Ils ont également inauguré une tradition halakhique émanant de leur propre groupe qui était structurellement différente de celle des pharisiens. Leur mode de vie qui découlait de leur perception et de leur explicitation de la loi était bien entendu également différent de celui des pharisiens et de celui des Sages. Selon Safrai, les hassidim représentent une forme de piétisme se caractérisant par différentes pratiques que l’on peut énumérer succinctement de la façon suivante: • • • • • • • • • •
Une localisation topographique de ce mouvement en Galilée. Une vie de grande pauvreté. Une place prééminente des femmes dans les sources relatives aux hassidim. Une profonde piété accompagnée d’actions charismatiques. Une priorité donnée à l’action plutôt qu’à l’étude. Des guérisons miraculeuses effectuées quelquefois à distance. Une faculté à intercéder pour faire survenir les pluies. Une relation privilégiée avec le divin s’illustrant par un rapport filial. Un mode d’expression avec Dieu considéré comme trivial, voire irrespectueux, par les autres Sages. Un élan total vers le divin basé principalement sur la prière et non sur l’étude du texte révélé.
Voir les études de D. Levine, ‘Holy Men and Rabbis in Talmudic Antiquity’, Saints and Role Models in Judaism and Christianity (ed. M. Poorthuis et J. Schwartz; Leiden: Brill, ) – et surtout de C. Safrai et Z. Safrai, ‘Rabbinic Holy Men’, Saints and Role Models (ed. Poorthuis et Schwartz) –.
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Bien que les textes relatifs aux hassidim soient relativement peu nombreux, Safrai considère ce mouvement comme un groupe indépendant au sein de la société juive des premiers siècles. Afin de parvenir à une compréhension plus globale de ce dossier, Safrai traite de la question du statut et de la population de la Galilée aux deux premiers siècles de l’ère chrétienne. Il expose ses vues sur ce dossier et critique à juste titre les conceptions visant à amoindrir le niveau intellectuel et la pratique religieuse de la population galiléenne. Selon ce critique, l’observance des préceptes et le niveau d’étude de la Torah n’étaient en rien inférieurs à celui de la Judée. Il avance même que les résidents galiléens possédaient un niveau d’érudition et une aptitude à l’accomplissement des préceptes qui surpassaient ceux des populations judéennes. Ainsi, bien qu’une grande partie de la critique pense différemment, selon Safrai, le niveau d’érudition et surtout de pratique religieuse des habitants de Jérusalem n’équivalait pas celui des habitants de la Galilée. Il en conclut que Jésus, homme de la Galilée, n’est absolument pas à identifier avec un ignorant dans la connaissance de la loi et dans l’étude érudite de la Torah. Il est au contraire à définir comme un savant, épris d’étude et de pratique religieuse, évoluant selon le modèle des populations galiléennes auxquelles il appartenait. Safrai s’intéresse également à la phraséologie employée par Jésus quand il s’adresse à Dieu. Il cite les expressions courantes mentionnées dans les Evangiles telles « notre Père qui est aux Cieux » (abinu she-ba-shamayim) ou « le Père qui est aux Cieux » (ab she-ba-shamayim) et formule une importante
Safrai a consacré d’importantes contributions au dossier des hassidim. Voir S. Safrai, ‘Teaching of Pietists in Mishnaic Literature’, JJS () –; S. Safrai, ‘L’enseignement des hassidim dans la littérature tannaïtique’, Et voici, il n’y avait pas Joseph. En mémoire de Joseph Amoraï (Tel-Aviv: Ofek, ) – [en hébreu] (=S. Safrai, ‘L’enseignement des hassidim dans la littérature tannaïtique’, A l’époque du Temple et de la Mishna, (Jérusalem: Magnes, ) – [en hébreu]). Cet article est une traduction hébraïque de l’original anglais avec quelques remaniements: S. Safrai, ‘Les hassidim et les hommes d’action’, Zion () – [en hébreu] (=S. Safrai, ‘Les hassidim et les hommes d’action’, A l’époque du Temple et de la Mishna, .– [en hébreu]). S. Safrai, ‘Jésus et le mouvement des hassidim’, Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies. Jerusalem, August –, . The History of the Jewish People (Jérusalem, ) I/b, – [en hébreu]; en version plus longue: S. Safrai, ‘Jésus et le mouvement des hassidim’, Les juifs dans le monde hellénistique et romain. Etudes à la mémoire de Menahem Stern (ed. I. M. Gafni, A. Oppenheimer et D. R. Schwartz; Jérusalem: Zalman Shazar, ) – [en hébreu]. Safrai se fonde sur les analyses de G. Alon, Histoire des juifs en terre d’Israël durant la période de la Mishna et du Talmud, vol. (Tel-Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad, ) – [en hébreu]. Voir dans une même perspective la stimulante étude de A. Oppenheimer, La Galilée à l’époque de la Mishna (Jérusalem: Zalman Shazar, ) [en hébreu].
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
remarque. Il souligne en effet que l’expression « mon Père qui est aux Cieux » (abi she-ba-shamayim) n’apparaît dans aucune occurrence de la littérature talmudique (Mishna, Tosefta, Talmud de Jérusalem, Talmud de Babylone, Midrash Aggada etc.). En revanche, cette expression apparaît fréquemment sous cette forme dans un corpus extra-talmudique s’intitulant Tana debe Eliahu. Ce corpus est un Midrash ancien représentant selon Safrai un antique vestige de la littérature des hassidim enfoui dans la littérature talmudique classique. La relation fils/père parallèle à homme/Dieu, récurrente dans la littérature talmudique, se teinte d’une nouvelle coloration chez les hassidim. Les textes sur lesquels Safrai se fonde mentionnent des Sages tels Honi ha-Meagel (Honi le traceur de cercles) ou encore Hanina ben Dosa précédemment évoqués dans l’analyse des thèses de Geza Vermes. Selon Safrai, le premier texte à prendre en considération est issu de M Taanit III, : Pour tous les malheurs qui arrivent sur la communauté, on sonne [du shofar] à l’exclusion d’une abondance de pluies. Evénement où ils dirent à Honi ha-Meagel: Prie pour que la pluie tombe. Il leur dit: Sortez et rentrez les fours de Pessah afin qu’ils ne s’amollissent pas. Il prie [Honi ha-Meagel] et la pluie ne tomba pas. Que fit-il? Il traça un cercle, se tint à l’intérieur et dit: Maître du monde, tes enfants ont mis leur confiance en moi (ont mis leurs faces sur moi), car je suis comme un fils de la maison devant toi. Je jure par ton grand nom que je ne bougerai pas d’ici jusqu’à que tu prennes tes enfants en pitié. Les pluies commencèrent à tomber par petites gouttes. Il dit: Ce n’est pas comme cela que j’ai demandé. [Je veux] des pluies fortes pour remplir les puits (des pluies de puits, de fosses et de grottes). Les pluies commencèrent à tomber avec force. Il dit: Ce n’est pas comme cela que j’ai demandé. [Je veux] de bonnes pluies (des pluies de volonté, de bénédictions et d’offrandes). La pluie tomba selon sa volonté, jusqu’au point qu’Israël sorti de Jérusalem vers le Mont du Temple à cause des pluies. Ils vinrent et lui dirent: De même que tu a prié pour que la pluie tombe, prie à présent pour que la pluie cesse. Il leur dit: Sortez et voyez si ‘la pierre de ceux qui se trompent’ [pierre où se rendait celui qui trouvait un objet perdu afin que celui qui l’avait égaré puisse le récupérer] est effacée (peut aussi être traduit par « amollie »). Siméon ben Shatah lui envoya: Si tu n’étais pas Honi haMeagel (Honi le traceur de cercles), j’aurais décrété une mise au ban (niduy) contre toi. Mais que puis-je faire? Tu fais des caprices devant Dieu et Il agit selon ta volonté, comme un fils qui fait des caprices à son père et dont ce dernier agit selon sa volonté. Et sur toi l’Ecriture dit: ‘Que ton père et ta mère se réjouissent, que jubile celle qui t’a enfanté’ (Pro .). Sur la relation fils/père dans la littérature juive des deux premiers siècles, on consultera A. Goshen-Gottstein, Dieu et Israël comme père et fils dans la littérature des Tannaïm (Thèse de Doctorat; Université hébraïque de Jérusalem, [en hébreu]). Voir également T Taanioth II, (les manuscrits de Erfurt et de Londres mentionnent ce texte en chap. III, ed. S. Lieberman, –); TB Taanit a.
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On peut, à la lecture de ce texte édifiant qui oscille entre humour et stupéfaction, formuler quelques remarques sur sa phraséologie. On souligne dans le cadre de l’étude menée par Safrai la mention de locutions totalement originales dans le corpus talmudique. Honi ha-Meagel est présenté comme un fils de la maison c’est-à-dire un coutumier de la maison divine. Il peut ainsi se permettre d’apostropher Dieu, d’être mécontent de ce qu’Il lui donne, voire de Le mettre en demeure d’agir selon sa volonté. Cette attitude, qui d’ailleurs engendre le courroux mêlé d’impuissance de Siméon ben Shatah, se retrouve parfaitement dans l’attitude de Honi envers Dieu. Il est admis par Dieu comme un fils de la maison et profite de cette prerogative. De plus, le récit mentionne le fait que Honi fasse des caprices, ce qui, du point de vue terminologique et littéraire, renvoie au champ de la relation paternelle. Relation d’ailleurs mise en exergue par la fin du récit avec le parallélisme entre les caprices de Honi à Dieu, et les caprices du fils envers son père. Comme il a déjà été relevé, le second personnage identifié par Safrai en tant que hasid est Hanina ben Dosa. Ce dernier vivait à la fin de l’époque du Second Temple dans la ville de Arav en Galilée. Un intéressant passage le qualifie d’ailleurs de cette façon:
Chaque jour, une voix (divine) sort du mont Horev et dit: Le monde entier est nourri pour Hanina mon fils et Hanina mon fils ne se contente que d’un peu de caroubes de vieille de Sabbath en veille de Sabbath. On notera malgré tout que cette admission et cette liberté ont des limites que la fin du récit avec la ‘pierre de ceux qui se trompent’ met bien en évidence. Notons que cette attitude libertaire envers Dieu accompagnée d’une sorte de « mise en demeure » est exceptionnelle dans la littérature talmudique. Exception qui d’ailleurs amène Safrai à faire de Honi le traceur de cercles un personnage singulier au sein du monde des Sages. On peut, à titre d’exemple, mentionner ce passage de TB Taanit b–a dans lequel le fils de R. Yosse de Youqrat est fustigé par son père pour avoir causé un dérangement à Dieu. Ce dérangement provient du fait que ce fils ait prié pour qu’un figuier donne ses fruits en dehors de la saison des récoltes. Ces fruits devaient servir à nourrir les ouvriers de son père. La conséquence de son acte engendra la colère furieuse du père (R. Yosse de Youqrat) et la tragique mort de son fils. Le récit talmudique attribue à R. Yosse ces effroyables paroles: « Mon fils, tu as fatigué ton créateur pour faire sortir une figue en dehors de son temps, tu seras toi-même cueilli en dehors [avant] de ton temps ». Cet énigmatique et légendaire récit met en évidence un point fondamental: la terrible et injustifiée malédiction du père à l’égard de son fils qui a osé prier pour que la nature change son cycle et nourrisse les ouvriers de son père. Il va sans dire que la démesure frénétique qui caractérise la réaction du père véhicule un enseignement comportemental qui demanderait une étude en soi. On renverra pour le moment au beau livre de A. Kosman, ‘R. Yosse de Youqrat: le Don Quichotte talmudique’, Traité sur les Hommes: Rav et le boucher et autres histoires. Sur la masculinité, l’amour et l’authenticité dans l’histoire aggadique et dans l’histoire hassidique (Jérusalem: Keter, ) – [en hébreu]. Cf. TB Berakhot b; TB Taanit b; TB Hulin a. S. Safrai, ‘Jésus et le mouvement des hassidim’, n. remarque que les formules « Eléazar mon fils » à propos de R. Eléazar ben
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
Deux éléments fondamentaux composent ce court passage:
Hanina ben Dosa est appelé « mon fils » par la voix divine. Hanina ben Dosa se contente de très peu de nourriture afin de se sustenter.
On sait par ailleurs que ce personnage se distingue des autres Sages de son temps par des pratiques relativement singulières. Il soigne grâce à des prières thaumaturgiques, il guérit à distance et a le pouvoir de savoir si un malade va vivre ou mourir. Il est décrit comme un personnage d’une piété exceptionnelle possédant une force que lui procure sa prière. En outre, il est célèbre pour la pauvreté absolue dans laquelle il vit. De ces textes, Safrai conclut que les hassidim s’adressaient à Dieu comme un fils s’adresse à son père. La proximité qui se dégage de ces passages va au-delà de la relation paternelle entre Dieu et le peuple juif dont témoignent les textes du corpus talmudique. Il s’agit présentement d’une relation d’un fils accoutumé à la maison de Dieu. De plus, à la différence de leurs semblables, les prières formulées par Hanina ben Dosa et par Honi sont le plus souvent récitées en privé. Le hasid se retire et prononce sa prière de guérison; il opère ainsi une sorte de recul qui lui permet certainement une plus grande concentration. En témoigne ce passage relatif à Hanina ben Dosa mentionné en TB Berakhot b (TJ Berakhot V, , d): Les Maîtres ont enseigné: Le fils de R. Gamaliel tomba malade. Il envoya deux disciples à R. Hanina ben Dosa pour lui demander de prier pour lui. Lorsqu’il les vit, [R. Hanina ben Dosa] monta [dans la chambre haute] et pria pour lui. En redescendant, il leur dit: Vous pouvez partir car la fièvre l’a quitté. Ils lui dirent: Es-tu prophète? Il répondit: Je ne suis ni prophète ni fils de prophète. Mais ainsi j’ai reçu: Si ma prière coule aisément de mes lèvres, je sais que le malade est reçu [qu’il vivra]. Si ce n’est pas le cas, je sais qu’il est rejeté [qu’il mourra]. Ils s’assirent et notèrent exactement l’heure. Lorsqu’ils arrivèrent auprès de R. Gamaliel, celui-ci leur dit: [Je le jure] par le service du Temple! [C’est bien à l’heure que vous indiquez,] ni plus tôt, ni plus tard, que la chose s’est produite: à ce moment précis la fièvre l’a quitté, et il nous a demandé à boire.
Pedat ou « Meir mon fils » mentionnées respectivement en TB Taanit a et TB Hagiga b n’ont pas la même teneur que dans le cas de Hanina ben Dosa. Voir sur le personnage et son contexte historique et littéraire: S. Freyne, ‘The Charismatic’, Ideal Figures in Ancient Judaism (ed. J. J. Collins and W. E. Nickelsburg; Chico, CA: Scholars, ) –; J. M. Van Cangh, ‘Miracles de rabbins et miracles de Jésus. La tradition sur Honi et Hanina’, RTL () –; B. M. Bokser, ‘Wonder-Working and the Rabbinic Tradition: The Case of Hanina ben Dosa’, JSJ () –. La version de TJ Berakhot V, , d note: « Je suis sûr que le fils de R. Gamaliel est guéri de son mal ».
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Comme il a été remarqué, une des caractéristiques de ce texte est le fait que Hanina ben Dosa soigne le malade à distance, sans avoir aucun contact avec lui. Il lui suffit de s’isoler et de procéder à la récitation d’une prière certainement personnelle, pour savoir que le fils de R. Gamaliel est guéri. Dans ce contexte, il se heurte à l’incrédulité des deux disciples qui d’ailleurs notent l’heure de sa déclaration afin de la transmettre à R. Gamaliel. Une tradition supplémentaire en relation avec les guérisons opérées par R. Hanina ben Dosa est également mentionnée dans TB Berakhot b à la suite de la Baraïta: Voici un autre événement à propos de Hanina ben Dosa qui alla étudier la Torah auprès de R. Yohanan ben Zakaï, et dont le fils tomba malade. Il lui dit: Hanina mon fils, prie pour lui [demande pitié] et il vivra. Il mit sa tête entre ses genoux, pria pour lui et il fut rétabli. R. Yohanan ben Zakaï dit: Si ben Zakaï avait mis sa tête entre ses genoux toute la journée durant, on ne lui aurait pas prêté attention [Dieu serait resté indifférent]. Sa femme lui dit: Hanina serait-il plus grand que toi? Il lui dit: Non, mais il ressemble à un esclave devant le roi [qui peut se rendre chez le roi à chaque instant], et moi je ressemble à un prince devant le roi [qui ne peut se rendre chez le roi que de façon ponctuelle].
Il est des plus intéressant de souligner que, dans ce passage, la guérison s’opère en présence du père du souffrant, R. Yohanan ben Zakaï. Il ne s’agit donc plus d’une prière à distance qui s’effectue sans qu’un contact avec le malade ne survienne. Il est même question d’une forme de pratique d’ordre thérapeutique qui consiste à prendre la tête du souffrant entre les genoux et à prier. Comme il a été souligné, cette étrange pratique dévotionnelle est certainement déclinée sur l’attitude d’Elie sur le mont Carmel, dont il est également dit qu’il mettait son visage entre ses genoux. Notons que certains passages de la littérature néo-testamentaire présentent également des guérisons à distance effectuées par Jésus. C’est le cas notamment de la guérison de l’enfant d’un centurion en Mt .–; de la guérison de l’esclave d’un centurion en Lc .–; de la guérison du fils d’un fonctionnaire royal en Jn .–. Ce dernier passage présente des similitudes très nettes avec le texte de TB Berakhot b. Sur ces deux textes, voir E. E. Urbach, Les Sages d’Israël. Conceptions et croyances des maîtres du Talmud (Paris: Cerf, ) –; J. M. Van Cangh, ‘Miracles de rabbins et miracles de Jésus’, –, qui suggère que les analogies entre TB Berakhot b et Jn .– sont le fruit d’un tronc commun dont les deux textes dépendraient. Cf. également les intéressantes remarques de S. Légasse, ‘L’historien en quête de l’événement’, Les miracles de Jésus selon le Nouveau Testament (ed. X. LéonDufour; Paris: Seuil, ) –, qui présente les similitudes entre les deux textes, et conclut: « qu’un récit déjà constitué dans la tradition chrétienne a été corsé par la suite à partir du fond légendaire juif. » Cf. II Rois .. Voir également G. B. A. Sarfatti, ‘Les Hassidim, les hommes d’actions et les premiers prophètes’, Tarbiz () – [en hébreu], qui se livre à une étude comparative entre les sources relatives aux hassidim de la littérature talmudique et quelques textes bibliques relatifs à certains prophètes.
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
En conclusion, de quelques façons que s’effectuent les guérisons de Hanina ben Dosa, force est de reconnaître que celles-ci s’opèrent toujours au moyen de la prière. Qu’elles s’accomplissent à distance, ou au contraire en présence du malade, la prière semble servir d’élément constitutif à l’acte thérapeutique. On trouve même une source médiévale mentionnant des actes d’expulsion d’esprits malfaisants relatifs à Hanina ben Dosa. On l’aura compris, Hanina ben Dosa est couramment défini comme un personnage atypique de la littérature talmudique. Ses actes miraculeux, qui souvent s’accompagnent d’une piété et d’une dévotion exacerbées, font de lui un Sage à la personnalité inaccoutumée. On admettra à ce stade que le parallèle établi par Safrai entre la dévotion des hassidim et leur capacité à guérir les malades, et les thérapies effectuées par Jésus peuvent emporter l’adhésion. Il est certes vrai que nombre de démarches similaires, telles les modalités d’expression, l’attitude dans la prière ou l’acte de guérison se retrouvent chez Honi, Hanina ben Dosa ou Jésus. Cependant, on se doit de reconnaître qu’une question reste en suspens: Quid des prières qui visent à faire tomber la pluie? Celles-ci n’apparaissent pas dans les sources à notre disposition concernant Jésus. Ce point a bien entendu était soulevé par Safrai qui essaie d’y répondre selon deux paramètres:
Durant le court ministère de Jésus, il n’y eut certainement pas de saison des pluies. La demande d’intercession pour que la pluie apparaisse s’effectue par l’institution des Sages; or, aucune institution de ce type ne s’adressa à Jésus.
Safrai se confronte également à une question cruciale: pourquoi les textes relatifs aux actes miraculeux de Jésus tels les guérisons se trouvent en bien plus grand nombre dans les Evangiles que les récits relatifs aux hassidim dans le Talmud? Afin de proposer des éléments de réponse, il énumère plusieurs idées qu’il est possible de résumer de la façon suivante:
Les Evangiles ont comme objectif de proposer des biographies de Jésus, ce, à la différence des récits talmudiques qui n’introduisent un récit ou une anecdote seulement quand le contexte halakhique le suggère. Cela revient à dire que le récit est enclavé dans un cadre légaliste auquel il sert uniquement de
Cf. Judah ben Kalonimos de Spire, Yihuse Tannaïm ve-Amoraïm (ed. J. L. ha-Cohen Mïmon; Jérusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, ) [en hébreu]. Voir sur cette question A. Büchler, Types of Jewish–Palestinian Piety, –; H. Cousin, Récits de miracles en milieux juif et païen (Paris: Cerf, ) –. Cf. S. Safrai, ‘Jésus et le mouvement des hassidim’, –. Bien que Safrai donne l’avantage à la deuxième option comme raison historique au fait que Jésus n’ait pas prié pour la pluie, on doit remarquer que ses arguments ne sont nullement convainquants.
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support illustratif ou discursif. En conséquence, la prière de Honi ha-Meagel pour faire tomber la pluie intervient pour montrer qu’on ne prie pas pour faire interrompre les pluies; les guérisons de Hanina interviennent pour montrer la différence entre un esclave devant le roi et un prince devant le roi etc. Les sources littéraires relatives aux hassidim sont partie intégrante d’un autre corpus littéraire auquel il convient de ne pas l’assimiler. En effet, il y a lieu, selon Safrai, d’établir une différence entre la littérature des hassidim et la littérature talmudique.
On doit pourtant constater qu’il n’existe aucune littérature du mouvement des hassidim dont une quelconque source ferait état ou de laquelle il resterait un vestige digne de ce nom. Il semble plus plausible que les textes relatifs aux hassidim doivent être replacés dans le contexte littéraire plus dense de la littérature talmudique. Les hassidim étant somme toute des Sages parmi d’autres Sages présentant de singulières pratiques, il ne semble pas opportun de les classer dans un groupe indépendant et autonome. Une telle taxinomie serait, de par l’objet même qu’elle entend traiter, inacceptable. Bien que Honi ha-Meagel, Hanina ben Dosa ou encore R. Pinhas ben Yaïr soient des Sages dont le comportement s’inscrit dans une attitude originale au sein de la maison d’étude, ils sont cependant à introduire dans cette maison d’étude. Leur littérature autant que leurs actions ne doivent pas être compris comme s’excluant de la société— certes très composite—qui est celle des Sages. On peut, pour essayer d’entrevoir cette problématique plus clairement, prendre un exemple antagoniste: le cas de Elisha ben Abuya. Ce Sage considéré comme apostat est nommé péjorativement dans le Talmud aher (l’autre), c’est-à-dire celui qui, littéralement, est passé de l’autre côté; qui n’est plus à placer au sein du groupe des Sages. Le déviant aher dont la pratique et les paroles expriment l’hétérodoxie est, envers et contre tout, considéré par R. Meir comme son maître. Cela montre de façon limpide que la notion d’appartenance ou de non appartenance est fort subjective et dépend de celui qui la détermine. Etant donné que le monde des Sages ne fonctionnait pas comme une entité institutionnelle avec hiérarchie et pouvoir directif précisant la voie à suivre, il est difficile de nettement dessiner les contours de la dissidence. De plus, le judaïsme ne fonctionnant pas avec une regula fidei définissant les positions de l’orthodoxie, il devient fort malaisé de définir de façon péremptoire ce que représente la singularité ou la marginalité parmi les Sages. On s’en rend bien compte en Ce point nous paraît cependant contestable. En effet, il n’est pas du tout avéré qu’il faille séparer ces deux littératures. Au contraire, il y a tout lieu de penser que les sources talmudiques relatives aux hassidim font partie intégrante du Talmud et ne témoignent d’aucune indépendance. Il est également difficile de croire que ces sources pourraient provenir d’un support littéraire originellement plus dense qui aurait été perdu à une période plus tardive.
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
étudiant ces textes; des Sages évoluant au sein de la maison d’étude peuvent épisodiquement en être exclu (Akabya ben Mahalalel ou R. Eliézer ben Hyrcanus) ou encore être considérés comme momentanément marginaux et se voir vilipender. La maison d’étude revêtant un caractère hétérogène et souvent dynamique, il est complexe de tracer les voies de l’intramuros. La possession de biens accompagnée d’une grande richesse est définie par Safrai comme pouvant être conforme au modèle d’existence préconisé par les Sages du Talmud. Cela s’oppose cependant à la vie de profonde pauvreté dans laquelle croupissaient les hassidim, pour lesquels—c’est le point que Safrai veut mettre en évidence—le dénuement était une aspiration propre de l’existence. L’extrême pauvreté se retrouve effectivement chez les hassidim tels Hanina ben Dosa dont il est dit que sa femme l’implora d’obtenir un moyen de subsistance. Ce moyen survenu en la présence miraculeuse d’un pied de table en or qui put assurer leur pitance. Ce miracle fut cependant refusé par Hanina ben Dosa qui craignît que la part de son monde futur soit amputé à cause de ce don du ciel. A propos de la notion de miracle, Safrai fait judicieusement remarquer que l’invocation du miracle est quasiment absente de la tradition tannaïtique. De nombreux exemples de la littérature talmudique attestent clairement que le miracle en tant que bouleversement du cycle de la nature ne constitue pas un moyen d’attester la véracité d’une opinion. De façon générale, dans le monde des Sages du Talmud, on n’invoque pas le miracle pour mettre en valeur une opinion halakhique, faire état d’une certaine grandeur spirituelle, ou bien mettre en évidence la nature de sa relation avec le divin. Dans certains cas extrêmes où la tradition talmudique exhorte au martyr plutôt qu’à la violation de certains préceptes fondamentaux, on n’aspire pas à ce qu’un miracle se produise pour avoir la vie sauve. De la même façon, celui qui prononce une prière et se trouve confronté à un quelconque danger se doit de s’interrompre plutôt que de mourir. Là non plus, il n’est pas question de songer à un sauvetage miraculeux qui surviendrait in extremis. En outre, il est stipulé dans la Mishna et la Baraïta que si des ennemis d’Israël réclament un membre de la communauté en menaçant s’il n’est pas remis de porter atteinte à toute la communauté, Voir sur le personnage de Elisha ben Abuya, la monographie que lui a consacré A. GoshenGottstein, The Sinner and the Amnesiac: The Rabbinic Invention of Elisha ben Abuya and Eleazar ben Arach (Stanford: Stanford University, ). On remarquera que dans cette importante étude, Goshen-Gottstein parle pour qualifier Elisha ben Abuya de sinner et non de heretic. Voir aussi dernièrement N. Beeri, Sorti vers une mauvaise voie. Elisha ben Abuya— l’autre (Tel-Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, [en hébreu]). Cf. TB Taanit a. On doit noter qu’une telle attitude est tout à fait unique dans les sources talmudiques, qui par ailleurs, n’hésitent aucunement à mettre en évidence la richesse protubérante d’autres Sages. Cf. TB Sanhedrin a; TJ Sanhedrin III, , b; TJ Sheviit IV, , b; Sifra, (ed, I. Weiss, b). Cf. TJ Berakhot V, , a; TB Berakhot a.
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qu’on doit leur remettre cette personne et éviter ainsi un massacre collectif. Dans ce cas non plus, on n’attend pas qu’un miracle se produise. On s’en rend compte, l’approche des Sages du Talmud est profondément pragmatique et ce, dans leur jurisprudence halakhique autant que dans leurs décisions ponctuelles. Safrai a raison de souligner que les pratiques propres aux hassidim s’inscrivent en droite ligne dans de telles conceptions. En effet, certaines figures talmudiques que Safrai identifie aux hassidim, présentent de singulières pratiques quant à leur perception du miracle. L’exemple archétypal est à n’en pas douter celui de Hanina ben Dosa. Bien qu’il ne soit pas explicitement mentionné, ce personnage nous conduit de nouveau à considérer un passage fort peu commun que l’on peut lire en M Berakhot V, I: On ne peut commencer à prier qu’avec la tête lourde [soumission et crainte de Dieu]. Les premiers hassidim patientaient une heure avant de commencer leurs prières afin d’orienter leurs cœurs vers Dieu. Même si un roi fait un salut, on ne s’interrompra pas; même si un serpent est enroulé à son talon, on ne s’interrompra pas non plus.
Ce texte surprenant doit être compris seulement dans le contexte d’une orientation halakhique parallèle à celle des pharisiens/Sages. En effet, une grande quantité de références talmudiques expriment une approche contraire à son contenu. D’après eux, on doit préserver sa vie en cas de danger imminent. Or, selon l’esprit talmudique, les deux exemples évoqués dans ce passage témoignent d’un danger. Dans le cas du roi, il s’agit d’un danger à venir, manifestée par la réaction impassible du prieur, interprétée comme une atteinte à l’honneur qui lui est dû. Dans le second cas, il s’agit d’un danger imminent dont on comprend aisément la portée. Il est en outre pertinent de noter que les textes midrashiques ont établi une relation sous forme de recoupement de ces deux dangers: « De même que le serpent siffle (melahesh) et tue […] la royauté murmure (melaheshet) sur l’homme et le tue ». Ainsi, le parallèle est structuré sous forme d’analogie: d’une part la royauté (malkhut)—qui désigne sous cette forme le pouvoir romain—et d’autre part, le serpent, peuvent tous deux
Cf. particulièrement TJ Terumot VIII, , b. Voir sur le dossier de la perception talmudique du martyr et de la mort « au nom de Dieu »: A. Oppenheimer, ‘La sanctification de la vie et le martyr à la suite de la révolte de Bar-Kokhba’, La sanctification de la vie et le martyr. Etudes en l’honneur de Amir Yekutiel (ed. I. M. Gafni et A. Ravitzky; Jérusalem: Zalman Shazar, ) – [en hébreu]; R. Kalmin, ‘Rabbinic Traditions about Roman Persecutions of the Jews: A Reconsideration’, JJS () –; A. M. Gray, ‘A Contribution to the Study of Martyrdom and Identity in the Palestinain Talmud’, JJS () –; A. Amit, ‘The Death of Rabbi Akiva’s Disciples: A Literary History’, JJS () –.
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
s’avérer meurtriers. Il est intéressant de noter que le serpent exprimant le danger et entraînant la mort se retrouve dans un étrange passage midrashique, de nouveau aux côtés de Hanina ben Dosa. Ainsi, on peut lire: Histoire concernant R. Hanina ben Dosa qui était debout et priait. Vint un serpent qui le mordit. Ses disciples fuirent. Une heure plus tard, ils vinrent et trouvèrent ce serpent mort avec un trou dans la bouche. Ils dirent: Malheur à l’homme qui est mordu par un serpent; malheur au serpent qui mort R. Hanina ben Dosa.
Ce passage édifiant focalise sur un point essentiel: le serpent qui illustre le danger et la mort n’a aucun impact sur le hasid Hanina ben Dosa, qui est audelà de ce danger « terrestre ». Plus que cela, il peut par sa prière, s’élever audessus des contingences auxquelles sont soumis les autres hommes (en l’occurrence ses disciples). Il est significatif de noter que la variante du Talmud de Babylone ajoute que Hanina ben Dosa s’empara du serpent afin de le montrer à ses disciples et leur dire: « Ce n’est pas le serpent qui tue, c’est le péché qui tue ». Trois remarques peuvent être émises à la lecture de ce surprenant passage:
Hanina possède une force particulière dont on peut supposer qu’elle lui vient de la prière. C’est l’action, représentée par cette prière, qui est mise en évidence dans ce passage comme étant rédemptrice et pouvant sauver de la mort. La fin du passage de la version babylonienne: « Ce n’est pas le serpent qui tue, c’est le péché qui tue » met en exergue la conception des hassidim: l’acte religieux permet de littéralement dépasser les lois de la nature et donc de vivre le miracle.
Ces remarques doivent être comprises dans le contexte propre à Hanina ben Dosa, qui avait le pouvoir de guérir des malades grâce à ses prières, et savoir s’ils allaient vivre ou succomber. Il est opportun, dans le contexte de la confiance à accorder au miracle, de se pencher rapidement sur le passage de TJ Terumot VIII, , b qui raconte que Cf. Midrash Tanhuma, Vaera ; Exode Rabba, Vaera (ed. A. Shinan, ); Midrash Yilamdenu édité par J. Mann, The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old Synagogue, vol. (New York: Ktav, ) [partie hébraïque]. Le mot e’rod ou e’rvad selon les différentes version de ce passage désigne un serpent venimeux ou un autre reptile très dangereux. Il peut peut-être aussi faire référence à un onagre. Cf. TJ Berakhot V, , a; TB Berakhot a; Midrash Tanhuma, Vaera ; Midrash Yilamdenu édité par J. Mann, The Bible as Read, . Voir sur cette question l’étude de D. Flusser, ‘It is not a Serpent that Kills’, Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes, ) –. Cf. S.S. Safrai, ‘Teaching of Pietists in Mishnaic Literature’, –. Cf. pour une version parallèle Midrash Genese Rabba (ed. J. Theodor et C. Albeck, –).
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les Romains demandaient qu’un homme du nom de Ula ben Qosher leur soit livré. Devant la menace qu’ils imposaient et la ville qu’ils encerclaient, R. Yeoshua ben Levi réussit à convaincre Ula ben Qosher de se livrer. En conséquence de cet acte, le prophète Elie accoutumé à apparaître à R. Yeoshua ben Levi cessa de se dévoiler à lui. Ce ne fut qu’après de longs jeûnes qu’il réapparut. Le Sage demanda à Elie la raison de cette « absence » et le prophète lui répondit qu’il n’apparaît pas aux délateurs. R. Yeoshua ben Levi lui répondit qu’il a agi selon la loi et le prophète lui rétorqua: « Mais tel est l’enseignement des hassidim (mishnat hassidim)? ». Ce texte fascinant, dont l’aspect littéraire oscille entre le pathétique et le tragique, peut historiquement être révélateur de conceptions que l’on retrouve de façon constante chez les hassidim. En résumé, on peut relever les points suivants:
R. Yeoshua ben Levi n’outrepasse pas la loi mais s’y réfère scrupuleusement. Ce respect fidèle de la loi engendre cependant l’absence d’apparitions du prophète Elie. Le reproche adressé à R. Yeoshua ben Levi est de ne pas s’être conformé à l’enseignement des hassidim. Le passage suggère que certains hommes, les hassidim, se doivent de dépasser la loi pourtant valable pour les autres hommes. R. Yeoshua ben Levi aurait dû exprimer une extrême confiance envers Dieu s’illustrant par le fait de ne pas livrer Ula ben Qosher.
Il est fort intéressant de remarquer, à ce stade de la recherche, que l’idée de dépassement de la loi peut être appliquée dans le regard qu’entretient Jésus envers la loi. En effet, Jésus semble demander à ses semblables de dépasser l’injonction formelle de la loi et de se soumettre à un au-delà de la loi. A la différence du modèle légaliste proposé par les Sages, Jésus semble se situer dans une volonté de scruter la source de la faute. Jésus recherche la cause profonde de la transgression et propose dans un élan radical et utopique de l’interdire. De la même manière qu’il est reproché à R. Yeoshua ben Levi de n’avoir seulement fait que respecter la loi, Jésus prône un dépassement de la lettre de la loi. Cette démarche se retrouve dans nombre de catégories néo-testamentaires qu’il n’est pas possible dans le cadre restreint de cette étude d’analyser. On se contentera de l’exemple de Mt .– sur l’adultère: Vous avez entendu qu’il a été dit: Tu ne commettras pas l’adultère. Eh bien moi je vous dis: Quiconque regarde une femme pour la désirer a déjà commis, dans son cœur, l’adultère avec elle. Il est évident que le regard porté sur une autre femme que la sienne ne peut strictement être considéré comme un adultère et être à ce titre interdit. Cependant, Jésus semble considérer que le désir que va faire naître le regard est potentiellement vecteur d’adultère. Plus encore, le désir va ouvrir un champ insoupçonné jusqu’alors, propice à la dérive. De façon lapidaire et en paraphrasant les
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
versets matthéens, on peut dire que le désir généré par le regard porté sur une autre femme est déjà l’adultère. Il est la faute car il en est la racine, le moment où se déclenche un cheminement que nul ne pourra plus enrayer. Cette perception certes impraticable et utopique de la loi offre une idée fort significative de la notion de dépassement de la loi. La notion de miracle, comme il a été déjà souligné, n’a pas de place dans le monde des Sages. Cependant, force est de constater que certains maîtres s’en remettaient aux miracles dans leur interprétation de la loi. Le miracle en tant que bouleversement du cycle de la nature avait pour eux fonction de preuve de leur opinion alors qu’il est admis communément que seul le verset scripturaire sert de support à une argumentation. L’exemple le plus prégnant de recours au miracle dans la littérature talmudique est certainement celui de R. Eliézer ben Hyrcanus. Un célèbre passage de TB Baba Metsia b qui expose une controverse à propos de la pureté d’un four appartenant à un certain Akhnaï exprime sans réserve le phénomène de recours aux miracles: On a enseigné: Ce jour-là, R. Eliézer a solutionné toutes les questions mais ils ne reçurent pas [ses réponses]. Il leur dit: Si la halakha est comme je le pense, que ce caroubier le prouve. Le caroubier fut déraciné de sa place de cent mesures (amah) et certains disent de quatre cents mesures. Ils lui dirent: On n’apporte pas de preuve d’un caroubier. Il poursuivit et leur dit: Si la halakha est comme je le pense, que cette source d’eau le prouve. La source d’eau revint en arrière. Ils lui dirent: On n’apporte pas de preuve d’une source d’eau. Il poursuivit et leur dit: Si la halakha est comme je le pense, que les murs de la maison d’étude le prouvent. Les murs se penchèrent jusqu’à tomber. R. Yeoshua s’énerva contre eux et leur dit: les Sages (talmidei hakhamim) débattent entre eux de la halakha, en quoi cela vous regarde-t-il? Ils ne tombèrent pas par respect pour R. Yeoshua et ne se relevèrent pas par respect pour R. Eliézer; ainsi, ils sont toujours inclinés et relevés. Il leur dit: Si la halakha est comme je le pense, que le ciel le prouve; une voix sortit et dit: qu’avez-vous envers R. Eliézer car la halakha est selon son interprétation en chaque endroit. R. Yeoshua se tint sur ses pieds et dit: ‘Elle n’est pas dans les cieux’ (Dt . ). Que signifie: ‘Elle n’est pas dans les cieux’? R. Yirmiah dit: La Torah a déjà été donnée sur le mont Sinaï, nous ne nous reposons pas sur une voix céleste, car la Torah a déjà écrit sur le mont Sinaï: ‘On Pour une étude de textes de la littérature talmudique relatifs à cette idée de dépassement de la loi par rapport à l’interdiction d’adultère, voir J.J. Rabinowitz, ‘The Sermon on the Mout and the School of Shammai’, HTR () ; B. S. Jackson, ‘Liability for Mere Intention in Early Jewish Law’, HUCA () –; S. T. Lachs, A Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (Hoboken: Ktav, ) –. On rencontre souvent dans la littérature talmudique la formule hirhure averah qui signifie « pensée de transgression » et qui peut, dans certains cas, être apparentée à une faute véritable. Une étude exhaustive sur cette question dans le Talmud accompagnée d’une analyse comparative avec les Evangiles serait cependant de rigueur.
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opine selon la majorité’ (Ex .). R. Nathan rencontra le prophète Elie et lui demanda: Que fit Dieu à ce moment? Il lui répondit: Il sourit et dit: « Mes enfants m’ont vaincu, mes enfants m’ont vaincu ».
Daniel Boyarin a développé une série de remarques pertinentes sur ce passage. Selon ce critique, R. Eliézer s’est efforcé de défendre sa position en utilisant des « formes rabbiniques ‘normales’ d’argumentation rationnelle (teshouvot) dans lesquelles on pourrait voir une définition de la rationalité rabbinique. » Quand cette démarche échoua, il choisit de s’orienter vers une autre méthode: les oracles et les miracles célestes. En ce qui concerne le positionnement et la réflexion halakhiques, D. Boyarin écrit: Rabbi Eliézer est peut-être conservateur en ce qui concerne ses positions halakhiques, si nous acceptons comme pertinentes d’autres traditions qui lui sont attribuées ou associées, mais il ne l’est guère quand il s’agit de ses mécanismes de justification et de preuve. En un sens, c’est un montaniste rabbinique. Ce qui me semble être en jeu ici, c’est l’institution et la consolidation du pouvoir de la majorité des Rabbins afin d’imposer l’autorité de leur position halakhique sans l’effet déstabilisateur de voix prophétiques individuelles. Je pense que « ce jour-là » est une locution d’un mode sémiotique virtuel pour les légendes qui sont fondatrices pour l’autorité rabbinique et pour les modes de rationalité rabbinique et d’autorisation religieuse.
On doit en effet reconnaître que le genre argumentaire évoqué par R. Eliézer est des plus singulier. Il consiste à ériger la pertinence de la tradition à l’aide de moyens surnaturels. On est en droit de penser qu’une telle méthode est menaçante pour l’autorité de l’institution halakhique ainsi que pour les schémas classiques d’argumentation des Sages. Dans une étude sur la nature du miracle dans la conception juive, A. Guttmann a proposé une thèse intéressante en essayant d’expliciter l’interdépendance entre le procès romain de R. Eliézer et son excommunication. Selon ce critique, cet événement serait à situer à la fin du Ier siècle, époque durant laquelle le christianisme était en pleine ascension. Etant donné que pour les Sages cette époque marque le début d’une volonté formelle de lutter contre les courants judéo-chrétiens, A. Guttmann en déduit que ces divers courants représentaient un foyer hostile pour les Sages. Cette atmosphère aurait donc été propice à la mise au ban prononcée à l’encontre de R. Eliézer, suspecté d’affinités avec des croyances chrétiennes. Parallèlement, A. Guttmann établit une analogie entre les manifestations miraculeuses provoquées par R. Eliézer dans le récit de TB Cf. D. Boyarin, Mourir pour Dieu. L’invention du martyr aux origines du judaïsme et du christianisme (Paris: Bayard, ) . Cf. D. Boyarin, Mourir pour Dieu, – n. (c’est nous qui soulignons). A. Guttmann, ‘The Significance of Miracles for Talmudic Judaism’, HUCA () –.
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
Baba Metsia a-b, et l’importance vouée aux miracles fort répandus dans les milieux chrétiens. De plus, la voix céleste acquiesçant les propos de ce dernier étant une notion paroxystique de dévoilement divin, est comparée à la notion de révélation, récurrente dans les mouvements chrétiens. Il est vrai que le recours à des signes d’ordre surnaturel comme facteur de preuve, est des plus rarissimes dans les discussions légalistes entre les Sages. Or, c’est au terme d’un débat sur un problème rituel (le statut de la pureté d’un four) que la mise au ban de R. Eliézer est décrétée. En outre, de semblables questions resurgiront peu avant la mort de R. Eliézer lors de la visite que lui feront d’anciens condisciples. Selon A. Guttmann, ces questions servirent de vérification afin de constater si ce dernier restait opiniâtre ou s’il se rétracta. Au vue de ses réponses, les Sages, rassérénés, purent annuler son anathème par l’intermédiaire de R. Yeoshua. Attendu que certains groupes chrétiens lésinaient sur les observances rituelles relatives à la pureté, A. Guttmann infère que grâce à son changement de conception, R. Eliézer ne fut plus suspecté. Toujours est-il que le récit aggadique du four de Akhnaï a représenté un motif de polémique entre juifs et chrétiens durant de longues périodes. Sur la voix divine, voir les travaux de S. Lieberman, Le grec et l’hellénisme en terre d’Israël (Jérusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, [en hébreu]) –; B. Chilton, ‘Bath Qol: The Cases of Hillel and Jesus’, Profiles of a Rabbi. Synoptic Opportunities in Reading about Jesus (Atlanta: Scholars, ) –. Notons que S. Lieberman a suggéré que l’extrême sévérité avec laquelle R. Eliézer fut traité était le résultat de soupçons qui planaient sur lui à propos de ses relations avec les judéochrétiens. Voir D. Boyarin, Mourir pour Dieu, n. , qui fait référence à des cours inédits cités par M. Hirshman, Midrash Qohelet Rabbah (Thèse de Doctorat, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, ), partie .. Cf. TB Sanhedrin a. Cette thèse peut être corroborée par un texte de TB Berakhot b dans lequel est également mentionnée la visite que rendirent ses élèves à R. Eliézer avant qu’il ne succombe. Les disciples demandent alors au maître de leur indiquer « le chemin de la vie afin d’accéder au monde futur ». Une des réponses de R. Eliézer est d’éviter que leurs enfants ne se plongent dans des spéculations hérétiques. Le terme higayion (logique) a été compris par des exégèses de la période guéonique comme étant relatif à des propos à tendance hérétiques. Voir notamment B. M. Lewine, Otsar Hagueonim. Teshuboth Gueone Babel Upirushéem al pi Seder Hatalmud, vol. (Haïfa/Jérusalem: The Hebrew University, –) –. Cependant, certains critiques comme Löw cité par J. Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, the Relation between Church and Synagogue (Grand Rapids: Baker, ) n. , ont proposé une lecture interprétative en suggérant de lire non pas higayion mais ha-guilayion qui serait donc la translittération hébraïque du vocable grec euangelion (Evangiles). Bien entendu, cette lecture permettrait de réhabiliter R. Eliézer des suspicions ayant plané sur lui grâce à cette ultime exhortation d’éviter l’étude des Evangiles. Toutefois, cette lecture quelque peu singulière n’étant absolument pas fondée, il est difficile de la prendre en considération. Voir à ce propos la captivante étude de I. Brand, ‘Le four de Akhnaï—une aggada au cœur de la polémique’, Tarbiz () – [en hébreu].
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Safrai étudie également la phraséologie propre à Jésus et aux hassidim dans leurs actions thaumaturgiques. Par exemple, lorsque Hanina ben Dosa expulse un démon d’un être possédé, il enjoint le mauvais esprit de quitter le corps de cette façon: « Ses élèves lui dirent: Rabbi, regarde cette pauvre, combien ce mauvais esprit (ruah raah) la tourmente. Hanina ben Dosa lui dit: pourquoi tourmentes-tu la fille d’Abraham? » Quand Jésus délivre la femme courbée un jour de Sabbath (Lc .), il lui dit: « Et cette fille d’Abraham, que Satan a liée voici dix-huit ans, il n’eût pas fallu la délier de ce lien le jour du Sabbath? » Bien entendu, on ne peut que mettre en évidence la façon commune de recourir à la figure d’Abraham pour délivrer du mauvais esprit. Ce qui attire particulièrement l’attention, est que dans les deux cas, il s’agit d’une femme possédée par un esprit, laquelle est définie comme « fille d’Abraham ». On peut également rapprocher deux autres péricopes dont la terminologie est une fois encore relativement proche. Il s’agit de nouveau de Hanina ben Dosa lors de la guérison du fils de R. Gamaliel. Selon la version judéenne du Talmud de Jérusalem, on peut lire: « Il [ Hanina ben Dosa] monta, redescendit et leur dit [à ses disciples]: je suis sûr que le fils de R. Gamaliel est guéri de ses douleurs. Et ils notèrent le moment [durant lequel c’était survenu]. A ce même moment, [le fils de R. Gamaliel] demanda de la nourriture. » Le Talmud de Babylone (TB Berakhot b) note: « A ce moment précis la fièvre l’a quitté, et il nous a demandé à boire ». Dans une perspective semblable, selon Jn .–, Jésus soigne le fils d’un fonctionnaire royal. Dans ce passage, Jésus guérit l’enfant sous cette forme: Jésus lui dit: Va, ton fils vit. L’homme crut à la parole que Jésus lui avait dite et il se mit en route. Déjà, il descendait, quand ses serviteurs, venant à sa rencontre, lui dirent que son enfant était vivant. Il s’informa auprès d’eux de l’heure à laquelle il s’était trouvé mieux. Ils lui dirent: C’est hier, à la septième heure, que la fièvre l’a quitté. » Le père reconnut que c’était l’heure où Jésus lui avait dit ‘Ton fils vit’ et il crut, lui avec sa maison tout entière.
Dans ces deux passages dont les affinités invitent à une analyse circonstanciée, plusieurs similitudes sont à relever: • •
Les actes de guérisons de Hanina ben Dosa et de Jésus se font grâce au pouvoir de la parole énoncée sous forme de prière. Les formules employées par Hanina ben Dosa et Jésus permettent de penser qu’ils étaient convaincus que la guérison était complète et qu’aucun doute ne pouvait planer.
Cf. Judah ben Kalonimos de Spire, Yihuse Tannaïm ve-Amoraïm, . Cf. S. Safrai, ‘Jésus et le mouvement des hassidim’, –. TJ Berakhot V, , d.
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
•
Les unités de mesure qui servent de référents sont identiques dans les deux récits.
On l’aura compris, selon Safrai, les rapprochements relevés entre Jésus et les hassidim révèlent à n’en pas douter une affinité particulière entre les deux. L’historien de Jérusalem termine son étude par ces termes: Je ne prétends pas que Jésus était un hasid d’entre les hassidim qui vivaient et étaient actifs à son époque, principalement en Galilée. Cependant, on a pu s’apercevoir que les ressemblances, la proximité et l’identité sont nombreuses dans le contexte relationnel entre Jésus et les pharisiens et entre les hassidim et les Sages.
Il y a lieu de souligner l’importance de ces quelques lignes de conclusion. En effet, les nuances et la pondération dont fait montre Safrai n’ont d’égal que la pertinence de ses propos. On ne peut qu’obtempérer avec Safrai sur la question des affinités de Jésus avec le groupe des hassidim. Il est toutefois difficile de cautionner une totale appartenance de Jésus à un quelconque groupe de la société juive du Ier siècle. Jésus présente des affinités avec diverses mouvances juives connues, et ce, même si l’on peut dire que c’est avec le mouvement pharisien qu’il est le plus proche. De cette façon, il est bien malaisé de classer de façon absolue Jésus dans une taxinomie socio-religieuse. Comme l’a montré Safrai, Jésus présente indéniablement des similitudes avec les perceptions religieuses et le comportement rituel des hassidim. Cependant, il n’est pas à définir comme appartenant formellement à ce groupe. De plus, comme cela a déjà été souligné précédemment, est-on réellement certain que les hassidim représentaient un groupe hermétique aux frontières bien définies? Ne s’agit-il pas plus certainement d’une branche du pharisaïsme comme les haverim (« associés » ou « compagnons ») ou les neemanim (« fidèles ») pouvaient en être une également? De plus, Safrai émet une analogie entre Jésus et les pharisiens et les hassidim et les Sages. Or, ces quatre catégories proches les unes des autres ne sont peut-être pas à différencier. Jésus est proche des pharisiens et représente certainement une des nombreuses tendances du pharisaïsme; de la même façon, les hassidim sont une des nombreuses facettes existantes parmi les Sages. Il faut encore une fois souligner que ces catégories ne doivent pas être pensées en termes monolithiques. C’est plutôt à une véritable entité composite et diversifiée à laquelle il faut avoir recours dans l’étude des dossiers relatifs au groupe pharisien, au personnage historique de Jésus, au mouvement des hassidim et enfin à la société des Sages. J. M. Van Cangh, ‘Miracles de rabbins et miracles de Jésus’, –; B. M. Bokser, ‘WonderWorking and the Rabbinic Tradition’, –. S. Safrai, ‘Jésus et le mouvement des hassidim’, .
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On acceptera donc l’analyse nuancée que propose Safrai, de même qu’on acquiescera en grande partie avec son travail de recherche sur l’approche des hassidim et sur celle de Jésus. On formulera cependant une réserve non négligeable que Safrai ne semble ne pas avoir pris en considération. Cette critique se fonde sur le rapport entretenu par Jésus envers l’observance des préceptes et celui dont témoigne la littérature talmudique à propos des hassidim. Sur cette question qu’il n’est pas possible de traiter exhaustivement dans le cadre de ce travail, des différences fondamentales existent entre Jésus et les hassidim. Alors que Jésus semble se montrer peu attentif au respect de certaines règles telles le prélèvement des dîmes, voire qu’il propose une remise en question de l’acte de divorce, les hassidim se distinguent au contraire par un accomplissement scrupuleux de ces préceptes et des règles de la halakha en général. Le dépassement de la loi que nous évoquions précédemment s’opère de façon ostensiblement différente chez Jésus et chez les hassidim: avec Jésus c’est une prise de distance avec la lettre de la loi qui permet un dépassement de celle-ci. Chez les hassidim c’est une totale immersion dans la loi qui permet ce dépassement. Enfin, un autre point d’une grande importance: comme l’ont relevé nombre de critiques, Jésus ne se réfère aucunement à une quelconque autorité qui lui servirait de source d’inspiration interprétative de la Torah; il est l’interprète du texte révélé et aucun maître n’est mentionné comme autorité de référence. Ainsi, il est difficile de dire qu’il appartient à une forme de tradition ou de chaîne dont il serait l’un des maillons. Cela à la grande différence des hassidim, qui s’inscrivent dans la lignée d’une des catégories du modèle pharisien et se réclament de la maison des Sages. Les hassidim présentent certes des différences avec les Sages dans certains modèles comportementaux, cependant, ils se réfèrent à des maîtres qui les ont précédé et d’autres maîtres qui leur succèdent, se réfèrent à eux. Cela à la différence de Jésus. Cf. D. Marguerat, ‘Introduction: Jésus de Nazareth’, Histoire du christianisme. Le nouveau peuple (des origines à ), vol. (ed. J.-M. Mayeur et al.; Paris: Desclée, ) qui écrit: « On peut le constater, jusques et y compris dans la liberté qu’il prend face au commandement, Jésus ne brise pas le monde de la Torah. Jusques et y compris dans son refus de codifier l’obéissance, il n’attente pas à l’autorité de la Torah. Mais le Nazaréen n’en reste pas là. Non content de ne jamais se situer dans la chaîne séculaire des interprètes de la loi, répugnant même à valider son exégèse par la formule directe « Moïse à dit… », Jésus met en avant son « je ». Vous avez appris qu’il a été dit aux anciens…mais moi je vous dis » (Mt .–). Se poser ainsi face à la loi mosaïque est sans précédent en tradition juive. Même le grand rabbi Hillel, dont l’intelligence libérale de la loi consonne plus d’une fois celle de Jésus, s’est retenu de faire ce pas. Notons bien que le prophète de Nazareth ne révoque pas l’Ecriture; il réclame pour lui le droit de l’interpréter souverainement, et cette autorité ne se légitime ni devant Moïse ni devant la tradition orale, mais face à l’urgence du Règne de Dieu qui pointe. » (C’est nous qui soulignons). Voir également H. Merklein, Jesu Botschaft von Gottesherrschaft (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, ), – qui pointe le substrat apocalyptique propre à la lecture de la loi chez Jésus.
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen Les hassidim des premiers siècles et Jésus: histoire d’un continuum?
Dans une importante contribution, David Rokeah reprend à nouveau frais la relation entre Jésus et le mouvement des hassidim et s’intéresse particulièrement à l’expression talmudique hassidim ve-anshe maasseh qui signifie littéralement « hassidim et hommes d’action. » Selon Safrai, cette expression qualifie ceux qui réalisent de bonnes actions, des actes de bienfaisance, et doit être comprise à la lumière de M Sukah V, —qui offre une description des pratiques propres aux hassidim et aux hommes d’action—selon deux termes qui n’en font qu’un. Ces deux termes signifient que les hassidim sont l’équivalent des hommes d’action. Pour Vermes, cette expression concerne plus précisément Hanina ben Dosa qui accomplissait des actes thaumaturgiques et était un guérisseur charismatique. Selon Rokeah, cette explicitation de l’expression « hassidim et hommes d’action » n’est pas valable et ne revêt pas nécessairement une connotation liée au miracle ou à l’action charismatique. Ce critique énumère une série d’exemples afin de montrer que le terme action (maasseh) auquel fait référence cette expression n’est pas obligatoirement relatif au miracle ou à la thérapie thaumaturgique. Ainsi, Hanina ben Dosa, désigné dans la littérature talmudique par les termes hasid et ish maasseh (« pieux » et « homme d’action »), ne représente pas l’homme pieux doté de pouvoirs de thaumaturge ou bien le guérisseur charismatique qu’en a fait Vermes. Selon Rokeah, la notion de maasseh (« action ») relative à Hanina ben Dosa doit être comprise selon l’éclairage évoqué dans le passage de M Abot III, : R. Hanina ben Dosa dit: Celui dont la crainte du ciel précède la sagesse; la sagesse se concrétise [dans les actes]. Celui dont la sagesse précède la crainte du ciel; la sagesse ne se concrétise pas [dans les actes]. Il disait: Celui dont les actes sont plus nombreux que la sagesse; la sagesse se concrétise [dans les actes]. Celui dont la sagesse est plus grande que les actes; la sagesse ne se concrétise pas [dans les actes].
Ce texte qui exprime parfaitement l’approche de Hanina ben Dosa implique l’idée de prééminence de l’acte sur la sagesse. Or, à sa lecture, on ne peut qu’adhérer à l’approche de Rokeah qui comprend le terme de maasseh (« action ») non comme acte miraculeux ou charismatique mais plutôt comme « acte bienfaisant » ou encore « acte de bonté ». Rokeah se livre à une étude fouillée de nombreuses références néo-testamentaires afin d’établir la relation de Jésus au Sabbath. Il parvient à la conclusion que Jésus Cf. D. Rokeah, ‘Les amei-ha-aretz, les premiers hassidim, Jésus et les chrétiens’, Mehqerei Talmud. Recueil d’essais talmudiques et de domaines connexes offerts en souvenir du prof. Ephraim E. Urbach, vol. (ed. Y. Sussmann et D. Rosenthal; Jérusalem: Magnes, ) – [en hébreu]. Cf. D. Rokeah, ‘Les amei-ha-aretz’, –.
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se montrait relativement laxiste dans nombre de règles propres au Sabbath. Il souligne dans ce contexte que telle n’était pas le cas des hassidim dont l’accomplissement des préceptes mosaïques et rabbiniques était sans faille. Rokeah est cependant en accord avec Safrai pour discerner en Jésus certaines caractéristiques conformes aux conceptions en vigueur parmi les hassidim. Parmi celles-ci, il note: • • • •
La perception de la pauvreté et l’existence démunie. La prédominance accordée à l’acte bienfaisant plutôt qu’à l’étude de la Torah. La capacité à soigner les malades par des moyens qui sortent du cadre des lois imposées par la nature. La faculté à accomplir des actes miraculeux.
Après l’énumération de ces différents points, Rokeah s’empresse à juste titre de souligner que de telles pratiques étaient fort répandues dans le monde antique. Rokeah voitenJésus uneoppositionouverteà certaines règlesdela halakhacomme les notions de pureté et plus spécialement l’acquittement du paiement des dîmes (maasser). Pour lui, ces notions sont considérées comme secondaires alors que pour le monde pharisien et donc pour les hassidim, elles sont primordiales. On peut d’ailleurs tenir le même argumentaire concernant les observances liées au Sabbath. Dans cet esprit, Rokeah relève que plusieurs commandements bibliques non halakhiques formellement, sont reconsidérés par Jésus. A ce titre, cet historien mentionne plusieurs injonctions qu’il convient de brièvement citer:
En Mt .–; Lc .–, Jésus remet en question la règle de ius talionis (« œil pour œil, dent pour dent ») selon Ex .–. La relation à entretenir avec certaines peuplades comme les Ammonites et les Moabites (Dt .–) et l’amour du prochain (Lv .) sont revisités par Jésus qui enjoint d’aimer son ennemi et de prier pour lui (Mt .– et parallèles).
On ne peut effectivement qu’accepter cet argument de Rokeah qui d’ailleurs ne fut pas pris en considération par Safrai. Voir sur les lois relatives au Sabbath dans le quatrième Evangile, M. Asiedu-Peprah, Johannine Sabbath Conflicts As Juridical Controversy (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ). Cf. D. Rokeah, ‘Les amei-ha-aretz’, –. Voir également l’étude de D. Hill, ‘Jesus and Josephus, « Messianic Prophets »’, Text and Interpretation. Studies in the New Testament Presented to Matthew Black (ed. E. Best and R. McL. Wilson; Cambridge: Cambridge University, ) –. Notons cependant que D. Rokeah, ‘Les amei-ha-aretz’, souligne que les hassidim n’étaient pas très scrupuleux sur les règles de pureté. Voir sur ce point: H. L. Strack et P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, vol. (Munich: Beck, ) –, –; D. Rokeah, ‘Philon d’Alexandrie, le Midrash et l’antique halakha’, Tarbiz (), – et spécialement [en hébreu].
L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen
Jésus relativise le principe fondamental énoncé par Hillel l’Ancien: Ce que tu hais, ne l’inflige pas à ton prochain qui est une paraphrase négative du commandement ‘Tu aimeras ton prochain comme toi-même’ (Lv .) lorsque les pharisiens lui demandent quel est le plus grand précepte de la Torah. A cette question, Jésus répond: ‘Tu aimeras l’Eternel ton Dieu de tout ton cœur, de toute ton âme et de tout ton esprit’ selon Dt .. Ensuite il cite Lv . , Tu aimeras ton prochain comme toi-même, seulement en tant que second commandement. Rokeah termine son étude par ces mots qu’il convient de citer in extenso: A la lumière de tout ce que nous avons vu, il est douteux à mes yeux d’englober Jésus dans le groupe des premiers hassidim. On trouve des parallèles à une partie de ses actions et de ses conceptions parmi les hassidim mais également parmi les prophètes et les faiseurs de prodiges du monde païens. Leur place n’est pas absente non plus parmi le peuple juif. Mais, finalement, Jésus est une figure en soit sui generis.
On ne peut effectivement qu’acquiescer à cette déclaration qui peut laisser l’historien bien méditatif. Il aura compris qu’il faut beaucoup d’humilité et beaucoup de lucidité dans la démarche de la recherche historique de Jésus. Il pourra rassembler plusieurs éléments qui seront des vérités éparses tout en sachant que l’unique vérité ne sera jamais accessible.
Conclusion
Les approches de Vermes et de Safrai ont sans nul doute apporté une importante contribution à la contextualisation du personnage de Jésus dans la société juive de son temps. Comme il a été déjà souligné, il ne fait aucun doute que des éléments de rapprochements peuvent être décelés entre la figure du hasid galiléen et celle de Jésus le Nazaréen. Une question doit cependant être posée: d’autres rapprochements de même importance sont-ils à relevés entre Cf. Mt .–; Mc .–; Lc .–. Il est intéressant de comparer avec Mt .: « Ainsi, tout ce que vous voulez que les hommes fassent pour vous, faites-le vous-mêmes pour eux: voilà la loi et les prophètes » qui est une forme d’affirmation positive de la règle de Hillel l’Ancien. On notera l’intéressante exégèse de R. Aqiba ben Joseph sur l’amour du divin en Mekhita de Rabbi Ismaël, Masekhta de-shira, (ed. H. S. Horovitz et I. A. Rabin, ), où on peut lire: « ’C’est mon Dieu, je le célèbre’ (Ex .); R. Aqiba dit: Je vais parler en termes de louanges envers Celui qui a dit ‘Que le monde soit’ devant toutes les nations du monde. Car les nations du monde questionnent Israël en disant: Qu’a donc ton bien-aimé de plus que les autres pour que tu nous conjures de la sorte? (Ct .) Pour que vous mourriez pour lui et que vous vous fassiez tuer pour lui, comme il est dit: ‘C’est pourquoi les jeunes filles t’aiment’ (Ct .); t’aiment, jusqu’à la mort, car il est écrit ‘Mais pour toi, nous subissons tout le jour la mort’ (Ps .). » Notons enfin que selon le Talmud de Babylone (TB Berakoth b), R. Aqiba mourut comme martyr de la foi, torturé à mort par les Romains. Cf. D. Rokeah, ‘Les amei-ha-aretz’, –.
DAN JAFFÉ
Jésus et les autres mouvements juifs de la fin de l’époque du Second Temple? Il nous semble, à la différence des deux éminents historiens évoqués dans cette contribution, que tel est le cas. Jésus ne peut être catalogué au sein d’un unique groupe juif de son époque. Les enseignements et les caractéristiques que nous livrent les évangélistes se retrouvent dans les nombreuses tendances de la mosaïque juive des premiers siècles de l’ère chrétienne. Les éléments à notre disposition, de par leur aspect épars et leur approche édificatrice, ne peuvent aucunement nous amener à pointer tel ou tel mouvement afin d’y insérer le personnage de Jésus. Il semblerait que la seule conclusion valable que nous puissions tirer de la littérature néo-testamentaire est que Jésus appartenait au mouvement pharisien. Définir de façon péremptoire à quelle branche ou tendance de ce mouvement il doit être replacé relève davantage de la spéculation érudite que de la réalité historique. On pourrait—pour faire référence à une métaphore empruntée aux mathématiques—dire que le personnage de Jésus est telle une asymptote: on s’en rapproche sans pour autant ne jamais s’en saisir.
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press
STUDIORUM NOVI TESTAMENTI SOCIETAS THE SIXTY-THIRD GENERAL MEETING July – August
The sixty-third General Meeting of the Society was held at Lund University in Lund, Sweden from July – August , under the presidency of Professor Dr Andrie B. du Toit. About members, spouses and guests were present. On the first evening, the Society was welcomed on behalf of the University at a reception by the Rector Magnificus of Lund University and the Dean of the Theological Faculty in Lund. Participants were warmly welcomed to the University. The President delivered his Presidential Address with the title “Paulus oecumenicus: Interculturality in the Shaping of Paul’s Theology” at the opening plenary session of the Society. Main Papers in plenary sessions were read by Prof. Dr Elian Cuvillier, “Obéissance à la Loi et radicalisation dans le premier Évangile: Contribution à la question du lien entre Matthieu et le Judaïsme du premier siècle”; Prof. Adele Reinhartz, “Caiaphas’ Post-Canonical Career”; Prof. Dr Knut Backhaus, “Zwei harte Knoten. Todes- und Gerichtsangst im Hebräerbrief”; and Prof. Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “The Material Spirit: Cosmology and Ethics in Paul”. Eighteen short papers were given in simultaneous sessions by Peter Arzt-Grabner, “Papyrologisches zur Frage der Einheitlichkeit des . Korintherbriefes”; Craig Blomberg, “The Structure of James”; Guy Bonneau, “Des loups féroces qui n’épargneront pas le troupeau: la fonction des conflits dans la communauté de Luc”; Eugene Botha, “The SNTS Orality Seminar: An Aural and Visual Presentation of its Work”; Delbert Burkett, “Q Material Unique to Matthew”; William Campbell, “‘I rate all things as loss’: Paul’s Rhetoric of Comparison”; Jan Willem van Henten, “Matthew : and Josephus’ Portrayals of Herod”; David Instone-Brewer, “Rabbinic Reflections on Living Sacrifices at Romans :”; JeanClaude Loba-Mkole, “The Greek-Swahili Interlinear NT. A Case Study in Intercultural Mediations”; James A. Kelhoffer, “Persecution, Persuasion and Power in the Revelation of John”; Margaret Y. MacDonald, “Children in the Household Codes of Colossians and Ephesians: New Questions in Light of Recent Research on Families”; Odette Mainville, “La paix messianique dans la perspective lucanienne: Quand et pour qui?”; Gerben S. Oegema, “Non-Canonical Writings and New Testament Theology”; Eckhard Rau, “‘Nicht einmal in Israel habe ich einen so großen Glauben gefunden’: Die Boteninstruktion als Fokus der Logienquelle”; Gesine Robinson, “The Gospel of Judas in Light of the New Testament and Early Christianity”; Lars Rydbeck, “Albert Wifstrand’s Views on the Distinctive Character of New Testament Metaphors”; Michael Wojciechowski, “A Typology of Various Forms of Ancient Judaism according to their Attitudes to Hellenism”; Norman H. Young, “Romans :- and Colossians : in their Social Context”.
STUDIORUM NOVI TESTAMENTI SOCIETAS
Seminars were held on ‘Christliche Literatur des späten ersten Jahrhunderts und des zweiten Jahrhunderts/Christian Literature of the late first century and the second century’ (Prof. F. Prostmeier and Dr H. van de Sandt); ‘Colossians’ (Prof. P. Müller); ‘The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament: Language, Culture, Ideas’ (Dozent Dr L. Rydbeck and Prof. S. E. Porter); ‘The Greek of the New Testament’ (Profs. C.C. Caragounis and J.W. Voelz); ‘Inhalte und Probleme einer neutestamentlichen Theologie’ (Profs. U. Schnelle and M. Seifrid); ‘The Johannine Writings’ (Prof. Dr R. Bieringer and Prof. C.R. Koester); ‘The Septuagint and the New Testament’ (Profs. W. Kraus and W.R.G. Loader); ‘New Challenges for New Testament Hermeneutics in the st Century’ (Profs. B. McLean and O. Wischmeyer); ‘The New Testament in History and Culture’ (Profs. R. Fowler, W. Kelber and B. Olsson); ‘Paul and Rhetoric’ (Profs. P. Lampe and J. P. Sampley); ‘The Reception of Paul’ (Profs. D. Moessner and D. Marguerat); ‘Shaping Traditions about Jesus’ (Profs. I. Gruenwald and P. Pokorny); ‘Textual Criticism’ (Profs. H.-G. Bethge and J. K. Elliott); ‘History and Theology of Mission in the New Testament: Global Challenges and Opportunities’ (Profs. J. Ådna, J. Kanagaraj, S. Tofana); ‘Pauline Theology in Galatians and Romans (Profs. B. Gaventa, J.M.G. Barclay, and M.C. de Boer); ‘Acts of the Apostles and Ancient Historiography’ (Profs. K. Backhaus, J. Schröter, and G. Sterling); ‘Christian Apocryphal Literature’ (Profs. T. Niklas, C. M. Tuckett, and J. Verheyden). At the Business Meeting of the Society, Prof. Dr Andreas Lindemann (Germany) accepted the Society’s invitation to become President-Elect (to take office as President at the General Meeting in Vienna), and Prof. Adela Yarbro Collins (USA) was invited to become Deputy-President-Elect (to take office as President at the General Meeting in Berlin). Prof. Margaret M. Mitchell (USA) and Prof. Dr Udo Schnelle (Germany) retired from the Committee and Prof. Beverly Gaventa (USA) and Prof. Dr Max Küchler (Switzerland) were elected to serve in their places. Prof. J. J. Kanagaraj (India) and Dr J.-C. Loba-Mkole (Kenya) were elected to serve on the Committee as co-opted members, replacing Prof. J.N.K. Mugabe (Kenya) and Prof. M. Sato (Japan). The Society elected Prof. Bernard Lategan (South Africa) to be its first Assistant Secretary for International Initiatives for a three year term from January . The Society received the Treasurer’s Report and formally accepted the statement of accounts. Dr. B.W. Longenecker completed his term as Treasurer in . The Society elected Dr. Helen Bond (UK) to be its new treasurer for a five year term from January . The Editor of New Testament Studies, Prof. J. M. Lieu, reported an ongoing increase in consortia subscriptions and online access to the journal. From members of the Society who subscribe to the journal will receive free on-line access as well as a hard copy. It is now possible to search not only the current
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issue but also past issues. She was pleased to report that the European Science Foundation has given the journal an “A” rating. Prof. Lieu also reported on behalf of the Editor of the Monograph Series, Dr. J.M. Court, who was absent. Four monographs were published after the conference in Sibiu in . Two other works were still in production. Volumes no longer automatically go out of print. Since , monographs have been available electronically as well as in hard copy. Prof. Lieu completed her term as Editor in , having served for six years. Prof. J.M.G. Barclay (UK) was nominated by the Editorial Board to succeed her for a term of five years from January ; the Society approved the appointment. The Editorial Board nominated (and the Society approved) Prof. Dr C. Gerber, Prof. C. Karakolis, Prof. L. McDonald, Prof. A. Reinhartz, Assoc. Prof. D. Sim and Prof. G. Steyn as members of the Board ( January – December ) in place of Professors T. Engberg-Pedersen, W. R. G. Loader, J. Schröter, T. K. Seim, L. T. Stuckenbruck, and M. M. Thompson who were due to retire at the end of . The Society received with regret news of the deaths of the following members: Gottfried Fitzer, Benedict Green, Erhardt Güttgemanns, David M. Hay, Augustyn Jankowski, X. Léon-Dufour, Eduard Massaux, C. F. D. Moule (President in ), J. Müller-Bardorff, J. Reiling, Harald Riesenfeld (President in ), and Krister Stendahl. The following nominees for membership were elected to the Society: Dr Charalambos Atmatzidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), Dr Sotiris Despotis (University of Athens, Greece), Dr Kathy Ehrensperger (University of Wales, Lampeter, UK), Dr Johan Ferreira (Bible College of Queensland, Australia), Ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr Konrad Huber (Universität Innsbruck, Austria), Prof. Dr Stephen J. Hultgren (Fordham University, New York, USA), Dr Thomas Jürgen Kraus (Willibald-Gluck-Gymnasium, Neumarkt, Germany), PD Dr theol. habil. Manfred Lang (Martin-LutherUniversität, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany), Prof. Dr Jean-Bosco Matand Bulembat (Catholic University of Kinshasa, Congo), Dr Alan Mitchell (Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA), Dr Andrei A. Orlov (Marquette University, Milwaukee, USA), PD Dr theol. habil. Enno Edzard Popkes (LudwigMaximilians-Universität München & Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany), Asst. Prof. Dr Ioannis Skiadaresis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), Dr Thomas Witulski (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany), Dr Konstantinos Th. Zarras (University of Athens, Greece). Prof. Dr Ulrich Luz was thanked for his years of outstanding service as the President of the Eastern European Liaison Committee. Prof. Dr Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, the new President of the EELC, informed members of the Committee’s activities and plans. Reports were received on the progress of the Biblical Libraries in St. Petersburg and Sofia. Prof. Niebuhr also reported briefly
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on the successful symposium held in Romania in , and he announced that the next East-West symposium would take place in Minsk, Belarus, in . A project to translate into Russian scholarly texts for use in teaching was also proceeding well. Social events at the conference included a reception sponsored by the mayor of Lund, and a dinner hosted by the Bishop of Lund. Optional excursions on the Saturday included the following: () “Around the Sound” / Öresund, including stops at Danish Helsingør and Copenhagen; () South-East Skåne “Österlen”, including stops at Ystad, Ales Stenar and “Backåkra”; and () “Castle, Pottery and Nature”, including stops in North-West Skåne at Vallåkra, Sofiero, the Höganäs ceramic works and Kullaberg nature reserve. The Society will hold its General Meeting in Vienna in , in Berlin in , in Annandale-on-Hudson (USA) in , and in Leuven in . ..
M.C. de Boer
STUDIORUM NOVI TESTAMENTI SOCIETAS COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND OFFICERS FOR – Committee
Professor A.B. du Toit (South Africa), President Professor D. Marguerat (Switzerland), Past President Professor A. Lindemann (Germany), President-Elect Professor A. Yarbro Collins (United States), Deputy President-Elect (auditor/ observer) Professor C. Focant (Belgium) Professor B.R. Gaventa (United States) Professor J.J. Kanagaraj (India) Professor Dr M. Küchler (Switzerland) Professor Dr W.R.G. Loader (Australia) Dr J.-C. Loba-Mkole (Kenya) Professor Dr T.K. Seim (Norway) Professor Dr A. Standhartinger (Germany)
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instructions for contributors Submissions Materials submitted for publication should be sent to the Editor, Professor John M.G. Barclay, at
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volume 55 | number 2 | april 2009
NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES Articles Andrie Du Toit (Pretoria, South Africa) Paulus Oecumenicus: Interculturality in the Shaping of Paul’s Theology [121–143] Élian Cuvillier (Montpellier, France) Torah Observance and Radicalization in the First Gospel. Matthew and First-Century Judaism: A Contribution to the Debate [144–159]
Knut Backhaus (Munich, Germany) Zwei harte Knoten: Todes- und Gerichtsangst im Hebräerbrief [198–217] Dan Jaffé (Ramat-Gan, Israel) L’Identification de Jésus au Modèle du Hasid Charismatique Galiléen: Les Thèses de Geza Vermes et de Shmuel Safrai Revisitées [218–246] Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas: The Sixty-Third General Meeting [247–250]
Adele Reinhartz (Ottowa, Canada) ‘Rewritten Gospel’: The Case of Caiaphas Officers and Committee Members, the High Priest 2008–2009 [160–178] [251] Troels Engberg-Pedersen Membership List, 2009 (Copenhagen, Denmark) The Material [252–278] Spirit: Cosmology and Ethics in Paul [179–197]
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