Book Write-Up: The Book of Acts in Its Diaspora Setting, by Irina Levinskaya

Irina Levinskaya.  The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting, Volume 5: The Book of Acts in Its Diaspora Setting.  Grand Rapids, William B.Eerdmans/Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, 1996.

This book is the fifth volume of a series about the historical context of the Book of Acts.  Russian scholar Irina Levinskaya is the author of this particular volume.  Levinskaya narrates in her preface that she had an interest in the New Testament as a student of the classics at St. Petersburg University, but one of her professors discouraged her from that particular field of study.  Levinskaya speculates that this was because the professor “had spent ten years of his life in one of Stalin’s camps and ten years in exile”, and thus he was “especially careful” in what he recommended to his students, out of concern for their well-being (page vii).  In the course of her studies, Levinskaya came across the cult of the Most High God in the ancient Bosporan Kingdom in Crimea and the Taman peninsula.  Because that cult was considered pagan, she felt free to study it under Communist auspices, which had no problem with paganism.  She concluded, however, that this cult was influenced by Judaism and appeared similar to the phenomenon of the God-fearers in the Book of Acts: the God-fearers were Gentiles who did not fully convert to Judaism yet worshiped the God of Israel.  Her interest in the Book of Acts was kindled!

Levinskaya participates in scholarly discussions about ancient Jewish proselytism and the God-fearers.  On the issue of Jewish proselytism, she sides with Martin Goodman’s view that the Jews in the first century C.E. welcomed converts but lacked an active missionary program, which would explain why the Book of Acts does not mention it.  What about Jesus’ statement in Matthew 23:15 that the scribes and Pharisees travel by sea and land in search of converts?  Does that not demonstrate that Jews had an active missionary program in the first century C.E.?  According to Levinskaya, it does not.  She believes that Matthew 23:15 was saying that the Pharisees were trying to convert other Jews to Pharisaism, not Gentiles to Judaism.  Levinskaya argues that the Greek term proselutos can have a broader meaning than a Gentile convert to Judaism and can mean someone coming to something from something else (since proselutos is from the Greek word proserchomai, to come to).  Christians used the term to refer to converts to Christianity, and Acts 13:43 contains the odd statement that God-fearing proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas.  The reason that this statement in Acts 13:43 is odd is that God-fearers and proselytes are supposed to be different: God-fearers worship God without circumcision or a formal conversion to Judaism, whereas proselytes are Gentiles who have converted to Judaism.  How can one be a God-fearer and a proselyte at the same time, in the Book of Acts?  According to Levinskaya, the proselytes in Acts 13:43 are not Gentile converts to Judaism, but rather they are Gentile God-fearers who are interested in coming to Christianity.

On the issue of the God-fearers, there is scholarly debate about whether there were such people in antiquity.  Some maintain that they were a literary device in Acts designed to set the stage for the Gentiles coming to Christianity.  There are inscriptions that use labels that several scholars believe pertain to God-fearers, but detractors argue that these labels may refer to especially pious Jews, not Gentiles who worship the God of Israel.  Levinskaya sides with the view that God-fearers actually existed in antiquity.  On page 81, she notes a second century C.E. altar in Pamphylia, which contains the inscription “For the truthful and not-handmade god (in fulfillment of) a vow” (in whatever translation Levinskaya is using).  She does not believe that the altar is Jewish or Christian because it is an altar: her point here may be that Jews and Christians ordinarily did not set up altars.  And she does not believe that the altar is pagan because its vocabulary is not what Gentiles ordinarily used.  Her belief is that this altar to the “not-handmade god” is that of God-fearers, Gentiles who worshiped the God of Israel.  Overall, she argues that the cult of the Most High God in antiquity was a God-fearing phenomenon.  While Zeus was called most high, the cult that she is discussing does not mention Zeus, plus it differs from the Zeus cult.

Levinskaya discusses other issues as well, such as the question of whether synagogues were independent of each other or part of a single group.  She seems to side with the former.

This is an informative book.  Personally, I do not rule out that Jews may have had an active missionary enterprise in the first century C.E., on account of various pieces of ancient evidence (i.e., Josephus).  I am also not entirely convinced by Levinskaya’s argument that proselutos in Matthew 23:15 meant converts to Pharisaism, for it so often has the technical meaning of conversion to Judaism, and I believe that the Christians later adopted that term to refer to converts to their own sect.  On the topic of the God-fearers, I am open to their historical existence, and I find Levinskaya’s discussion of altars and cults to the Most High God to be interesting and important.

Book Write-Up: The Nations That Know Thee Not

Robert Goldenberg.  The Nations That Know Thee Not: Ancient Jewish Attitudes Toward Other Religions.  New York: New York University Press, 1998.

Robert Goldenberg’s The Nations That Know Thee Not is largely about ancient Jewish views on Gentile religions.  There was the view that there is only one God, and the view that other gods existed and God permitted the Gentiles to worship them.  There was the view that idolatry was foolishness, and the view that it was wicked and immoral.  There was the view that Gentiles could worship their gods, and that what was important was that they be moral people.  There was a strong Jewish desire to uproot idolatry from the holy land.  However, there were devout Jews who may not have participated in idolatry, but they were not phobic about pagan temples or pagan people.  Overall, ancient Jews were attempting to navigate their way through a world in which they were vulnerable, and that shaped their interaction with Gentile idolatry.

I was hesitant to write a blog post about this book, not because I disliked it (since I did like it), but rather because I had already read and blogged about other books that pertain to Jewish views of Gentiles and Gentile religions: Terence Donaldson’s Paul and the Gentiles has an excellent section about this topic, which I blogged about, and I also blogged about Louis Feldman’s Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World, David Novak’s The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism, and Shaye Cohen’s The Beginnings of Jewishness.  Overall, the data in Goldenberg’s book is the same as the data in the other books, although Goldenberg does disagree with how Novak applied the data, at times.  There were some new things that I learned from Goldenberg’s book, however: how the ancient Israelites who worshiped gods in addition to YHWH were trying to make themselves secure by getting more of the pantheon on their side; devout Jews who felt no compunction about hiding in pagan temples or making pagan items for Gentile worship; Hellenistic Jewish literature that appears to have no problems with Gentiles worshiping idols, just so long as they are moral people; reasons that Philo believed that God forbade Jews to blaspheme other gods (i.e., doing so would desensitize them to blaspheming the true god); statements in Josephus and the Jerusalem Talmud about representatives of Temple authorities going out and collecting tithes from Israelite farmers; and the list goes on.

One concern that I had in reading Goldenberg’s book is that I saw that scholars do not always interpret statements in an absolute, straightforward manner.  When an ancient Jewish text says that God is the only God, does it mean that God is the only God, or is that rather a sign of enthusiasm, nationalism, or devotion, not an absolute theological statement?  When Jephthah in the Bible was acknowledging to a Gentile nation the existence and power of its god, did that truly reflect Jephthah’s beliefs, or was that diplomatic maneuvering on Jephthah’s part?  It is difficult for an Aspie like me not to take what people say at face-value, and I wonder what boundaries there may be once one does not.  Yet, who can deny that humans are complex creatures, and that there is more behind what they are saying than their actual words?

There is a part of me that wishes that Goldenberg’s book had more historical explanation.  I can understand why someone would take issue with me on that, for Goldenberg does discuss important aspects of historical context: how Gentiles viewed Jews and Jewish religion, both negatively and positively; the impact of Hadrian’s decree against genital mutilation; Christian fears of Judaism winning Gentiles over, alongside Jewish reluctance to proselytize, etc.  I cannot exactly say why, but there is a part of me that does not think that Goldenberg was diachronic enough, but rather was referring to different Jewish stances on Gentile religions, without mounting a sufficient historical explanation for those stances.  Maybe I was wishing that he would make the connections between the stances and the history more clear and linear than he did (according to my impressions).

Good book, though.

The Law As a Mirror

My church for its Bible Study is going through Romans: The Letter That Changed the World, with Mart De Haan and Jimmy DeYoung.  I got to attend last night, but I won't be able to attend next week because I'll be in Indiana for my sister's wedding.  But I'll still be blogging about next week's lesson, since I was able to watch it online, plus I can answer the questions in the booklet, in my own way.  The only problem is that I won't be able to communicate to you what others in the group say, but at least I'll be writing something!

But let's proceed to last night's session!  I have three items.

1.  One question that I have often asked on this blog is whether Paul understood the law of Moses to be for Israel alone, or for Gentiles as well.  I've written posts in which I've speculated about this issue myself, and I've written posts in which I've gone through what biblical scholarship has said about the topic.  See here and here if you are interested in these posts.

How does our curriculum handle this issue?  Well, my impression is that it regards the law of Moses as something that God gave to physical Israel alone.  Why, then, does Paul talk to Gentiles about how the law points out people's sin, how the law condemns people because they do not obey it, and how trying to be justified by the law is futile?  Does that not imply that the law is somehow relevant to Gentiles, not just Israel?  The answer that I got from the curriculum is that Paul was not just criticizing the use of the Mosaic law to achieve salvation, but any law, including Roman law.  Over the past several weeks, the curriculum has said that the Romans tried to appease the gods through their own efforts: through sacrifice, through adherence to virtues (i.e., self-discipline), etc.  But the message of the Gospel is that we cannot climb our way to God through our own efforts, for we are sinful, and so God has come down to us by sending Jesus Christ to save us.

(UPDATE:  I do remember someone implying on the DVD that Roman law was not good enough, for it fell short of God's standards for people.  Roman law stressed outward compliance, but God desired for people to be morally pure on the inside, not just the outside.  The idea may be that, even if Gentiles were not subject to the authority of the Mosaic law, God still held them to certain standards.  In my opinion, Romans 2:14 expresses this.)

The irony is, however, that, when our group went on to discuss how the law is a mirror to us in that it points out our sin, we didn't look at Roman virtues; rather, by "law", we meant the Ten Commandments, which are part of the Torah that was supposedly given only to Israel.  That brings me to my next point.

2.  When we talked about how the law is a mirror that points out our sins to us, and how we all fall short of the law, we mentioned the Ten Commandments, but we did not really talk about which specific commandments we have violated.  I seriously doubt that anyone in the group has killed anyone (though people there may have hated others, and Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says that hate is murder, but I'm really hesitant to say that Paul had the Sermon on the Mount in mind when he said that we disobey the law).  Rather, when we discussed our shortcomings, we focused more on how we have failed to behave consistently in a Christ-like manner.  We may blow our stack with certain people rather than treating them with respect and kindness, for example.  But "Thou shalt not lose your temper and blow your stack with people" is not one of the Ten Commandments (though I do recall that, as a child, my Dad assigned us kids to come up with our own commandments, and "Thou shalt not lose your temper" was the very first one).  So, by "law", the people in my group seemed to mean more than the Ten Commandments.

Maybe.  Someone in the group later referred to Jesus' summary of the law in Matthew 22:36-40, as Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18: that we love God with every fiber of our being, and that we care for our neighbor's needs the same way that we care for our own.  The person making this point said that this is a high standard that we can't reach.  Apparently, for my friend, we actually do fall short of the Mosaic law, for we do not love God with every fiber of our being or love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

I wonder, though, if this standard was intended to be so high that we could not reach it.  In II Chronicles 15:15, we read that the Judahites during the reign of King Asa swore with all of their heart and their whole desire to love God within God's covenant.  Apparently, they met the standard!  II Kings 23:25 says that King Josiah turned to the LORD with all of his heart, all of his soul, and all of his might.

Apparently, Josiah met the standard!  And these were imperfect human beings, just like we were.  I'm somewhat doubtful, therefore, that Deuteronomy 6:5 calls for absolute perfection.  There is some standard there, but I don't think that, within the Hebrew Bible, it's as high as the person in the Bible study group may think it is.  What about Leviticus 19:18's command that we love our neighbor as ourselves?  I'm not certain that it does mean that we have to care for every other person's needs in the exact same proportion as we care for our own needs.  Of course we care for our own needs first.  When most people have a job, they're working primarily to support themselves and their families.  But I think that the Mosaic Torah exhorted the Israelites to think of others besides themselves: to help out the poor with gleanings, the corners of the field, and tithes; to let the poor person who owes money to sleep in his own cloak; to respect people's lives and properties; etc.  I still find that I fall short of even the Mosaic law's standard, though, for I bear grudges (in violation of Leviticus 19:18) and I usually don't rebuke my neighbor when I have a problem with him (contra Leviticus 19:17).

3.  Okay, my friend in the Bible study group said that it's impossible for us to love God with every fiber of our being and to care for our neighbors the same way that we care for ourselves.  That's why we need Christ as our Savior, the evangelical message runs.  So, once we accept Christ, do we no longer have to love God with every fiber of our being and care for our neighbors as we care for ourselves?  Is the point of Paul's Gospel that we're sinners and Christ has paid the penalty for our sins, so now we'll go through the pearly gates after death rather than hell?  I've thought about this as we've gone through our Romans curriculum.  Some in the group present salvation as a free gift that God has given to us, which we cannot lose.  Yet, they also maintain that God has changed the hearts of those who receive Christ.  In the DVD that we watched, one of the people talking did not only refer to faith, but also surrender to God.  So there do seem to be elements of Lordship Salvation, if you will, in our curriculum and in our group discussions.  And yet, there's also a recognition that, even when we are Christians, we are far from being perfect.  That makes me wonder how good I have to be before I can have assurance that I am saved, something that I have discussed on this blog before.  Nowadays, though, I just don't worry about it.  If I have a theology, it's that God is love, and that I'm on a path of becoming more loving, even though I fall short.

Universal Sabbath; Powers and God's Personality; Ethics; Who Said

For my write-up today on The Cambridge Companion to Philo, I'll do what I did yesterday: I'll refer to some things that stood out to me in each essay that I read (or began to read, or finished reading).

1.  I finished Christina Termini's "Philo's Thought within the Context of Middle Judaism".  I especially appreciated her discussion of the Sabbath in Philo's thought, for I am interested in the question of ancient Jewish beliefs regarding the relationship of the Gentiles to the Mosaic Torah (perhaps because I grew up in churches that held that the Sabbath is commanded for everyone----Jews and Gentiles).  On page 117, Termini states that Philo regarded the Sabbath as "a holy, public, and universal holiday that celebrates the birthday of the world."  According to Termini, Philo thought that people in ancient times forgot the weekly calendar, and so it was re-established under Moses (Life of Moses 1.205-207; 2.263-269).  Termini cites Decalogue 96, in which Philo states that there are other peoples who keep a holy day every month, but the Jews keep the Sabbath every seventh day.  Termini appears to be arguing that Philo believed that the Sabbath was somehow applicable to the Gentiles.  Perhaps she's right, for Philo in Decalogue 100 says that it would be a good thing if people set aside a day for rest and philosophical contemplation.  But did Philo maintain that Gentiles were commanded to keep the Sabbath?  At the present time, I'm rather skeptical, for Philo in Decalogue 98 presents the Sabbath as something that God commanded for "this state", namely, Israel.

2.  The next essay that I read was Roberto Radice's "Philo's Theology and Theory of Creation".  Like Termini, Radice wrestles with the issue of how Philo conceptualized the "powers" that were a part of God----were they actual beings, or were they metaphorical descriptions of how God acts, or what?  Radice seems to treat them as intermediate beings, but what I thought as I read Termini and Radice's treatments of this issue is that perhaps Philo wasn't fully consistent about what the powers were.

I especially liked Radice's discussion on pages 126-127 about how Philo conceived of God.  At times, Philo appears to regard God as personal, which would accord with the Hebrew Bible.  At other times, however, Philo seems to view God as impersonal and to regard the personal depictions of God in the Hebrew Bible as anthropomorphisms for common people, and that would accord more with ancient philosophy.  Radice states on page 127 that Philo's position was probably between these two poles: that God has a personality in the sense that he has thoughts, like human beings, and yet God is above human beings, in terms of both thoughts and also God's "physical aspect" (Radice's words).

3.  The next essay, Carlos Levy's "Philo's Ethics", was probably my favorite one in the book.  Philo was an ascetic, and he arguably drew from Stoicism.  But did Philo agree with the Stoic notion that the passions should be extirpated?  Levy argues that he did not.  Levy notes passages where Philo supports moderation (which Abraham exercises in grieving for Sarah), sees a legitimate role for some passions (i.e., procreation), or does not encourage people to jump into philosophical contemplation immediately but rather to prepare themselves for it, through education or political involvement.

4.  I started Folker Siegert's "Philo and the New Testament".  What stood out to me in this essay was Siegert's discussion of who said the words that are in the Scriptures.  Siegert says that, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Psalms are believed to contain the words of the Holy Spirit, words that the Father addressed to the Son, and words of the Son himself.  Similarly, Philo treated the words of Jacob in Genesis 37:10 (in which Jacob rebukes Joseph for his dream) as uttered by the orthos logos.  They were Jacob's words, in a sense, and yet they were much more.

Starting the Decalogue in Jewish and Christian Tradition

I started The Decalogue in Jewish and Christian Tradition, which was edited by Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman.  I have two items.

1.  Is there any significance in the order of the Ten Commandments?  Edward Greenstein refers to two scholars who answer in the affirmative.  The first four commands are about people's relationship with God, whereas the last six concern how people treat their neighbors.  Moshe Greenberg held that the worship of God comes before honoring God's name and observance of the Sabbath.  And Patrick Miller said that the fourth commandment----the Sabbath command----was "a bridge from God to neighbor" (Miller's words).  This makes sense, since the fourth command talks about allowing one's manservant and maidservant to rest on the Sabbath.  The fifth commandment----honor your parents----concerns how people treat those who are closest to themselves, and then the rest of the commandments deal with how to treat the broader community, as well.  The LXX and the MT are slightly different in how they order the last five commandments, but that does not affect Miller's idea.

2.  I mostly disagreed with Yair Hoffman's characterization of David Aaron's Etched In Stone.  Hoffman says on page 46 that Aaron "suggests that the Decalogue is a post-exilic document that was composed as a reaction to a previous priestly Decalogue, that had been supported by Ezra" (page 46).  By and large, that's not my understanding of what Dr. Aaron argued.  As I talked about in my post here, Aaron argues that there was a secular Decalogue, which was the basis for what we see in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, and later some priests reacted against the secular Decalogue by developing a cultic Decalogue, the one in Exodus 34.  In short, whereas Hoffman characterizes Aaron as arguing that the secular Decalogue was a response to the priestly (or cultic) one, Aaron actually argues the opposite.

But does Aaron say that the secular Decalogue was post-exilic, as Hoffman states?  To be honest, I'm not entirely clear on this.  Aaron maintains that the proto-narrative that has the secular Decalogue addressed the Diaspora----by showing that Israel could have a law code without a king, and covenant tablets (like the pillars of the covenant in Joshua 24:26-27, only portable) outside of the Promised Land (see here).  So you'd think that he believes that the secular Decalogue emerged in exile, right?  Well, not so fast!  In a class one time, he did raise the question of how a document could be written in exile, when Jewish scribes would need a sponsor to even write (but I do vaguely recall him saying at some point that there was Jewish scribal activity in the Diaspora----as at Elephantine).  He also said that the Diaspora co-existed with the post-exilic period, after some point, for there were many Jews who were in the Diaspora even after some exiled Jews returned to Palestine.  And, in Etched in Stone, Aaron notes that the Book of Nehemiah lacks the Decalogue as we understand it.  So perhaps he does think that the Decalogue was post-exilic.

Hoffman raises an interesting point about Aaron's argument that the Decalogue is late because it is absent in so much of the Hebrew Bible.  Hoffman essentially points out that it's absent in the Dead Sea Scrolls, too, and it appears only rarely in the Mishnah.  Why?  Hoffman speculates that there was a "reluctance to create an unneeded hierarchy within the halakhah" (page 47).  Because the Ten Commandments were directly spoken by God, one could easily get the impression that they are more important than the other laws in the Torah.  But Judaism wanted to avoid giving that impression, and so it downplayed the Decalogue.  Aharon Oppenheimer later in the book contends that this was in response to Christians and Jewish-Christians, who emphasized the Decalogue at the expense of the other laws, and there are rabbinic passages that refer to minim (heretics) in explaining why the Decalogue is not read every day (B. Ber. 12a; Y. Ber. 1.3c, col 9).  But Hoffman notices that this trend goes back to pre-Christian days, and he interprets the minim to be Gentiles, not necessarily Christians.

Sabbath and Law in the Apostolic Constitutions

In my latest reading of By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism, Erwin Goodenough referred to W. Bousset's treatment of the Apostolic Constitutions, as well as interacted with the Apostolic Constitutions himself.  The Apostolic Constitutions was a fourth century Christian document, whose provenance was probably Syria (see here).  The argument of Bousset and Goodenough is that there are parts of the Apostolic Constitutions that were Hellenistic Jewish but that have Christian interpolations.  In this post, I will talk about the Sabbath and the Mosaic law in the Apostolic Constitutions.

1.  Regarding the Sabbath, Goodenough quotes Apostolic Constitutions VII.36.  I found a translation of the Apostolic Constitutions on the New Advent site (see here), and that's what I will be quoting in this post.  According to Bousset, the Hellenistic Jewish part of VII.36 exalts the Sabbath as a time for people to reflect upon creation, God's laws, and God's blessings, as well as to desist from words of anger.  It also refers to God bringing "our fathers" out of Egypt.  But a later Christian hand inserted stuff that says that God created the world by Christ and that affirms that the Lord's Day is superior to the Sabbath. 

Armstrongite scholar Bob Thiel, in his article here, refers to other parts of the Apostolic Constitutions that mention the Sabbath.  I will post those parts here and comment on them.

One passage is Apostolic Constitutions VII.23, which states:

"But let not your fasts be with the hypocrites; for they fast on the second and fifth days of the week. But do you either fast the entire five days, or on the fourth day of the week, and on the day of the Preparation, because on the fourth day the condemnation went out against the Lord, Judas then promising to betray Him for money; and you must fast on the day of the Preparation, because on that day the Lord suffered the death of the cross under Pontius Pilate. But keep the Sabbath, and the Lord's day festival; because the former is the memorial of the creation, and the latter of the resurrection. But there is one only Sabbath to be observed by you in the whole year, which is that of our Lord's burial, on which men ought to keep a fast, but not a festival. For inasmuch as the Creator was then under the earth, the sorrow for Him is more forcible than the joy for the creation; for the Creator is more honourable by nature and dignity than His own creatures."

This passage exhorts Christians to observe the Sabbath and the Lord's Day, and I do not think that it is a Hellenistic Jewish passage that has Christian interpolations.  The passage with which Bousset interacts, Apostolic Constitutions VII.36, looks like a Jewish document with blocks of Christian material inserted into it----you can actually separate out the Christian parts, and it would make sense as a Jewish document.  But Apostolic Constitutions VII.23 looks Christian from beginning to end.  At the same time, there does appear to be tension within Apostolic Constitutions VII.23, and I wonder if that could be due to different Christian hands behind the passage.  Apostolic Constitutions VII.23 tells Christians to observe the Sabbath as a memorial of creation, then it says that Christians should only observe one Sabbath in the entire year----the fast that commemorates Jesus' burial.

The other passage that Thiel cites is Apostolic Constitutions VIII.33:

"I Peter and Paul do make the following constitutions. Let the slaves work five days; but on the Sabbath day and the Lord's day let them have leisure to go to church for instruction in piety. We have said that the Sabbath is on account of the creation, and the Lord's day of the resurrection. Let slaves rest from their work all the great week, and that which follows it— for the one in memory of the passion, and the other of the resurrection; and there is need they should be instructed who it is that suffered and rose again, and who it is permitted Him to suffer, and raised Him again. Let them have rest from their work on the Ascension, because it was the conclusion of the dispensation by Christ. Let them rest at Pentecost, because of the coming of the Holy Spirit, which was given to those that believed in Christ. Let them rest on the festival of His birth, because on it the unexpected favour was granted to men, that Jesus Christ, the Logos of God, should be born of the Virgin Mary, for the salvation of the world. Let them rest on the festival of Epiphany, because on it a manifestation took place of the divinity of Christ, for the Father bore testimony to Him at the baptism; and the Paraclete, in the form of a dove, pointed out to the bystanders Him to whom testimony was borne. Let them rest on the days of the apostles: for they were appointed your teachers to bring you to Christ, and made you worthy of the Spirit. Let them rest on the day of the first martyr Stephen, and of the other holy martyrs who preferred Christ to their own life."

This passage also appears to be Christian from beginning to end.  It says that slaves should rest on the Sabbath as a day to commemorate creation and Christ's passion, as well as on other days (i.e., the Lord's Day, the Ascension, Pentecost, and Epiphany).

2.  Regarding the Mosaic law, Goodenough refers to Apostolic Constitutions VIII.12.6-27.  According to Goodenough (and perhaps Bousset), the Jewish Hellenistic part is saying that God gave the natural law to the patriarchs, and that was sufficient for them, but God later gave the Mosaic law to ordinary people , as a supplement to the natural law, and this, along with Israel's possession of the Promised Land, seems to have solved the problems of creation.  Goodenough states that a Christian hymn or prayer regards the law as inadequate, which was why Christ had to come, and yet he notes that there is no heavy-handed Christian interpolation in VIII.12.6-27, which has a couple of "through Christ"s, and affirms that the logos whom Abraham saw was Jesus.

I'm curious as to the audience of the Apostolic Constitutions.  Syria, the document's provenance, has been believed by many scholars to have been the provenance of the Gospel of Matthew, which is deemed a Jewish-Christian Gospel.  Even John Meier, who believes that a Gentile wrote Matthew, holds that the Gospel of Matthew comes from a church that was Jewish-Christian in its early days and retained Jewish-Christian traditions (see here).  Could that be why the Apostolic Constitutions is open to Jewish customs?

Gentile (Christian?) Idolatry

I finished Idolatry, by Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit.  I have two items, both pertaining to the issue of Gentile idolatry.

1.  On pages 210-213, Halbertal and Margalit talk about the question of whether Judaism considered Christians to be idolaters, and how that impacted the relationship between Jews and Christians during the Middle Ages.  Tractate Avodah Zarah in the Babylonian Talmud restricted relations between Jews and idolaters, including in the business realm.  Rabbinic authorities and Maimonides deemed Christianity to be idolatrous, on account of its belief in the Trinity and the incarnation, and the application of their teaching "prevented the Jews from doing business with the Christians at all" during the Middle Ages (page 210). 

Some Jews simply ignored these teachings and did business with Gentiles.  But there were others who sought to allow Jews to do business with Gentiles while being faithful to Jewish tradition.  One way was to appeal to Rabbi Tam's opinion (which is mentioned in the medieval Tosafot to Tractate Avodah Zarah 2a) that Jews can do business with Gentiles, so long as the object of their commerce is not used in an idolatrous worship service.  Another way was to refer to Rabbi Jochanan's view in Babylonian Talmud Chulin 13b that "Gentiles outside of the land of Israel are not idolaters, but they are merely following the customs of their ancestors" (Jochanan's words, as quoted by Halbertal and Margalit).  According to Halbertal and Margalit, the eleventh century rabbi Gershom Meor Hagolah, who cited Rabbi Jochanan's teaching, still believed that Christianity was idolatrous, probably because Jews were continually struggling against it, but he thought that Jews could do business with Christians because many Christians "were not devoted adherents of their religion but were simply following the customs of their ancestors" (Halbertal and Margalit's words on page 211).  The third approach was that of Rabbi Menahem Ha-Meiri, who maintained that Christians who were moral were not idolaters, for Rabbi Menahem Ha-Meiri thought that Tractate Avodah Zarah was talking about immoral nations when it referred to Gentile idolatry.

2.  On page 256, Halbertal and Margalit argue that the Bible prohibited Gentiles from worshiping idols only in the land of Israel, whereas it allowed them to do so outside of there.  They refer to such passages as II Kings 17 and Deuteronomy 4:19.  Halbertal and Margalit contend that the view that Gentile idolatry is forbidden under the Noachide commandments emerged in Talmudic times, and they cite Tosefta Tractate Avodah Zarah 8.4; Genesis Rabbah 16:16; and Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 56a.

I asked a few posts ago why Exodus 34:15 described Canaanite idolatry as harlotry, when Canaanites were not Israelites and thus were not in a covenant relationship with God that banned them from worshiping other gods.  Part of the answer may be that the Canaanites were worshiping in the holy land, where idolatry was prohibited.  I have another idea: perhaps some of the Canaanites were believed to be in covenant with God.  At Harvard Divinity School, one teaching assistant suggested that Ezekiel 16 depicts Sodom as having some sort of covenant with God.

Gentiles and the Sacrifices

For my write-up today on Jonathan Goldstein's Anchor Bible commentary on II Maccabees, I'll quote something that Goldstein says on pages 214-215:

"The high priest [in II Maccabees 3:32-35] offered an expiatory sacrifice for Heliodorus.  In the Hebrew Bible sin and guilt offerings were brought only by the individual or corporate sinner, though Jason of Cyrene knows of sin offerings on behalf of the dead (12:43-45...).  We do not know what system of Jewish law Onias followed.  According to rabbinic law a non-Jew could not bring a sin or guilt offering but he could bring a burnt offering (M. Sheqalim 1:5), and Onias or Heliodorus' friends could bring a burnt offering on Heliodorus' behalf (cf. Job 1:5).  Such a burnt offering could secure atonement (Lev 1:4; the requirement of laying hands upon an animal did not apply to a non-Jew...)."

I checked Herbert Danby's translation of Mishnah Shekalim 1:5.  It says that Gentiles and Samaritans cannot pay the Shekel (which I take to be the Temple tax discussed in Exodus 30:13ff.) nor "Bird-offerings of a man or woman that has a flux or of a woman after childbirth, or Sin-offerings or Guilt-offerings, but they may accept of them vow-offerings or freewill-offerings."  I wonder if a burnt offering counts as a freewill offering.

This passage in Goldstein's commentary stood out to me for three reasons.  First, I have been curious about what laws Judaism (which is diverse, I know) believed that Gentiles could or had to follow, and which ones it thought were restricted to Israelites.  Second, I'm curious as to the difference between a burnt offering and a sin or guilt offering.  All of them atone for sin, right?  In terms of their meaning and function, is there some nuance differentiating them from each other?  Third, I thought about the issue of whether or not a blood sacrifice was necessary for atonement.  According to Goldstein, Gentiles according to the Mishnah could not gain atonement through a sin or guilt offering, but they could get it through a burnt offering, which they could offer themselves or someone else could offer on their behalf.

I think that Michael Brown's remarks on pages 152-153 of Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, Volume Two: Theological Objections are relevant:

"In b. Sukkah 55b (see also Pesikta deRav Kahana, Buber edition, 193b-194a) we read that the seventy bulls offered every year during the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot; see Num. 29:12-34) 'were for the seventy nations,' which Rashi explains to mean, 'to make atonement for them, so that rain will fall throughout the world.'  In this context----and in light of the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E.----the Talmud records the words of Rabbi Yohanan: 'Woe to the nations who destroyed without knowing what they were destroying.  For when the Temple was standing, the altar made atonement for them.  But now who will make atonement for them?'"

I doubt that what Michael Brown presents above was the only game in town when it came to early Judaism's view on the necessity for blood atonement, for Yochanan ben Zakkai said that prayers substituted for sacrifices after the Temple was destroyed.  But (if I'm not mistaken) Yochanan concluded that after great perplexity, and that tells me that he thought that the Temple and its sacrifices indeed were important, and he wondered what Jews would do when they were absent.

Starting E.P. Sanders' Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah

I started E.P. Sanders' Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies.  There were a variety of interesting items in my latest reading:

----I remember reading in Samuele Bacchiocchi's From Sabbath to Sunday a while back that Judaism banned fasting on the Sabbath.  On page 13 of Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, Sanders offers documentation for this, citing passages from Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism (Josephus' Life 279; Judith 8:6; Mishnah Taanith 1:6).

----On pages 17-18, Sanders discusses the question of whether Jewish authorities in first century Palestine were allowed to inflict the death penalty.  Jewish authorities tell Pilate in John 18:31 that they were not allowed to put people to death, and yet Stephen was stoned in Acts 7.  Sanders says that the high priest was most likely not allowed to impose the death penalty without Roman permission (except when a Gentile entered forbidden parts of the Temple), but a Roman official may have turned a blind eye to an execution if nothing subversive against Rome would come out of it.  Galilee, however, was a client state that was not ruled directly by Rome and was not occupied by a substantial number of Roman soldiers.  (And, of course, Antipas had John the Baptist killed.)  According to Sanders, Antipas was concerned about enforcing some elements of Jewish law but not others.  He obviously was not concerned too much about purity, for example, for he had the city of Tiberias built over a graveyard!  Sanders says that Antipas, like many rulers, most likely left law enforcement to local authorities, and, while Sanders infers from Josephus' War 2.571 that they probably couldn't "inflict the death penalty" (Sanders' words), he acknowledges that there could have been times when "popular enthusiasm" led to people being stoned to death.

----On pages 29-30, Sanders talks about ritual purification from corpse impurity.  This purification had to be done with special Temple water, which means that "by biblical law all Jews in the Diaspora had, or were assumed to have, corpse-impurity until they made a pilgrimage."  But Sanders says that Philo seems to have developed "an extra-biblical purification, valid for life in the Diaspora, for those who contracted corpse impurity."  Presumably, this purification occurred in the Diaspora.  That brings me to my next point.

----I wrote a post a while back about the question of whether Jews believed that Jews had to attend corporate worship on the Sabbath.  On page 78, Sanders says, "It is striking that three ancient authors regarded assembly on the sabbath as a Mosaic decree (Philo, Hypothetica 7.12-13; cf. Creation of the World 128; Josephus, Apion 2.175; Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiq. 11.8, who make it part of the ten commandments)."  Josephus even "quotes Apion as saying that Moses erected houses of prayer 'in the various precincts of the city, all facing eastwards' (Apion 2.10)" (page 77).  I wonder if Jews believed they had to be ritually purified in order to engage in this corporate worship.  On the one hand, Josephus says in Antiquities 14.258 that local Jews were allowed by a decree of Halicarnassus to "worship near the sea 'in accord with ancestral custom'" (page 77).  On the other hand, Josephus refers to a house of prayer in Tiberias, a city that was perpetually impure because it was built over a grave.

----On page 33, Sanders says that "some Pharisees restricted giving work to Gentiles that might carry over to the sabbath."  Does this imply that Gentiles were somehow forbidden to work on the Sabbath?  Technically, rabbinic Judaism did not appear to require Gentiles to observe the Sabbath (or at least that is my impression, based on my reading; see here), but there was concern that Israelites might benefit from the labor of Gentiles at certain holy times, which would be a no-no (see my post here).

There were other interesting items in my latest reading, but I'll stop here.

Completing Novak's The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism

I finished David Novak's The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism. I have three items.

1. On page 248, Novak refers to the existence of thirty Noachide commandments. But weren't there only seven? According to Novak, Menahem Azariah di Fano (who died in 1620) sought to harmonize this by "making the seven laws seven categories having a total of thirty precepts." If you're interested in what the thirty Noachide commandments are, check out the article here, which features two versions.

2. On page 262, Novak is discussing a view within Judaism (one view that existed among other views) that the Gentiles are not held accountable for idolatry for the reason that only Israel is commanded to worship the LORD alone. Novak states:

"This view was also put forth, in more traditional form to be sure, by R. Solomon ibn Adret in the thirteenth century (Responsa Rasha, 4, no. 334) and later by Rabbenu Bahya. The latter writes: 'Therefore, we do not find in the entire Torah in any place that Scripture considers the nations guilty of idolatry, but only Israel who are specified as his portion' (comment to Deut. 31:15 re Deut. 4:19-20...). He continues, re II Kings 17:26, that gentile idolatry is only considered prohibited when practiced in Eretz Israel, even when the Jews are not there. See also Lev. 18:27-28; SR 15.23 re Lev. 26:1. See Rashbam to Deut. 4:19. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the condemnation of the Jewish survivors of the Temple's destruction by Ezekiel (33:24-25), a condemnation that lists idolatry among their sins, was interpreted on T. Sot. 6:9 to refer to gentiles for the violation of all the Noahide laws."

Initially, that last sentence does not appear to jive with what comes before it, but it makes sense when you check out Tosefta Sotah 6:9. Essentially, that passage is arguing that the Gentiles cannot possess the land of Israel because they have violated the Noachide commandments (and the ones that are mentioned are eating a limb from a live animal, idolatry, murder, stealing and perverting justice, fornication, and pederasty).

3. On page 280, Novak refers to "the rabbinic view that Noahides can only offer whole burnt offerings...but not peace offerings...those offerings eaten in fellowship." Novak cites B.T. Zev. 116a and Sifra, Vayikra, 13a re Lev. 3:1.

The Noachide Laws: Jewish/Gentile Relations and Idolatry

I started David Novak's The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism. Novak talks about the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple literature, rabbinic literature, medieval Jewish literature, and modern Jewish literature, in terms of their stances on the Gentiles and the moral requirements to which Gentiles were believed to be subject. In my post here, I'll talk about ideas that I encountered in Novak's book, without necessarily placing those ideas in a specific historical context. I know that's not good scholarship, but I want to get this post done this morning because I have other things to do!

My reading of Novak last night clarified things that I read in another book by Novak, Natural Law in Judaism. In The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism, Novak talks about the Noachide laws, the seven commandments that elements of rabbinic (and subsequent) Judaism said that Gentiles needed to obey. Novak discusses the relationship of the Noachide laws to the Torah. One stream of thought viewed the Noachide laws as part of the Torah----the part of the Torah that Gentiles would have to obey were they to dwell in Israel or (in the Messianic Age) be under Jewish authority; a similar view that associated the Noachide laws with the Torah held that the Gentiles became obligated to the Noachide laws once the Septuagint was promulgated. Another stream of thought basically equated the Noachide laws with natural law by viewing the Noachide laws as rationally discernable. What was the purpose of the Torah, if there was a natural law telling people (including Jews) the difference between right and wrong? The Torah essentially was regarded as superior to the Noachide laws, and some even treated the Noachide laws as commandments that could prepare Gentiles to become Jews and embrace the entire Torah, or at least more of the Torah.

The belief in the Noachide laws enabled Jews to live at peace with their Gentile neighbors. Jews were often regarded as clannish and misanthropic, and they could appeal to the Noachide laws to convince the Gentiles that Jews did not view the Gentiles as immoral, for Jews had a concept that Gentiles could be righteous by observing the seven Noachide laws. Jews could also attain a degree of political autonomy by persuading the Gentiles that the Jews overlapped with the Gentiles on certain moral principles, and so granting the Jews autonomy would not violate the morality of the larger society. And, on a practical level, Jews could accept the decisions of Gentile courts by telling themselves that Gentile morality overlapped with the Torah because it was consistent with Noachide commandments.

I'd like to touch on Jewish views on Gentile idolatry. The prohibition against idolatry is one of the seven Noachide laws, which Gentiles are bound to observe in order to become righteous. Does that mean that most Gentiles are unrighteous, since they worship idols or other gods?

According to Novak, there was a degree of latitude. Philo in the first century C.E. believed that people should not even blaspheme pagan gods, for he assumed "that the pagan mention of god or gods is really directed at the One God", which means that "polytheism is a philosophical mistake, but behind its error is latent monotheism" (Novak's words on page 3). On the basis of such passages as Ben Sira 17:17 and Rabbi Jochanan's remarks in B.T. Shabbat 156a, Novak sees a Jewish notion that Gentiles could approach God through visible intermediaries (such as the heavenly bodies). And then there was the acknowledgement that avoiding idolatry was quite difficult outside of the land of Israel, as one can see in David's belief that his flight from Saul into other lands put him at risk of worshiping other gods (I Samuel 26:19), and Elisha's concession to Naaman that allowed Naaman to participate in an idolatrous rite in Syria, even though Namaan worshiped the God of Israel (II Kings 5).

Completing Segal's Paul the Convert

I finished Alan Segal's Paul the Convert. Here are some items that interested me:

1. Segal maintains that Paul was an apostate because he did not feel bound by the ritual laws of the Torah, and perhaps also because he was affirming that Gentiles could enter God's community without observing those laws. On account of Paul's apostate status, he was endangered by the capital punishment that Judea could have had for apostates (but Segal does not know to what extent this was practiced), or, at the very least, by flogging.

2. Segal says that Paul's Pharisaism was stricter in observance than was Diaspora Judaism, and also the Judaizers whom Paul criticizes in such books as Galatians. According to Segal, when Paul became a Christian who did not consistently observe the ritual laws of Judaism, he looked down on Judaizers for not keeping those laws "right"----for not being as rigorous as he was when he was a Pharisee. That's how Segal interprets Galatians 6:13, where Paul denies that the Judaizers even keep the law.

3. Segal says that Paul converted from Pharisaism to a Gentile-Christian community. I remember Terence Donaldson speculating that Hellenistic Christians had an outreach to the Gentiles, and that Paul was persecuting them on account of this, until he became a Christian and had his own mission. Would this be where the Gentile-Christian community that Paul joined came from: it was a congregation founded as a result of Hellenistic Christian missionary activity?

4. On page 274, Segal makes an interesting point about the locations of rabbinism and Christianity, and likely reasons for them: "Rabbinism...became most powerful in the smaller cities of the Galilee where Jesus preached, and Christianity spread most quickly in the large Hellenistic cities, where more anomalous and uprooted people were to be found. The social structure of the small cities and towns favored rabbinism."

There is much to unpack from this, so I'll hazard my guesses as to what some of the implications are. In Galilee, you had small cities, and that was a good place for rabbinism----for the rabbis could govern there, people already recognized their authority, etc. It was like a small town and perhaps a rather homogenous comminity. Outsiders were tolerated, but not overly welcome. In the large cities, however, there were lonely, uprooted, and anomalous people who thirsted for community and a belief-system that could give them security and meaning, and a marginal movement like Christianity could provide them with that.

5. On page 331, Segal discusses the prominence of Mithraism in the Roman empire, especially among the Roman army. This stood out to me because, on page 136, Segal discusses the question of whether Paul was influenced by mystery cults, with their themes of symbolic death and rebirth, immortality, union with the divine, etc. Segal notes that the church fathers likened Christianity to a mystery cult, but he himself does not deem it necessary to posit a connection between Paul and such a cult, for union with the divine and death and rebirth were themes in the Hellenistic world and could have influenced the Hellenistic church that Paul joined. Segal refers to Ovid (first century B.C.E.-first century C.E.) and also later mystery cults, where initiates went through symbolic death and rebirth. Christian apologists argue that saying that Paul ripped off ideas from mystery cults is problematic, for the mystery cults came later, and there were differences between the mystery cults and Christianity. But why should we just assume that Christianity came up with concepts such as death and rebirth on its own? The ideas could have existed elsewhere when it was a young movement, and it could have drawn from its cultural surroundings----even if the evidence we have for the existence of mystery cults post-dates Christianity, or Christianity departs from mystery religion in areas.

Advantage of Being an Israelite; Romans 7 and the Temptation of Law

I'm continuing my way through Alan Segal's Paul the Convert. A few things stood out to me.

First, I have long wondered: If many Jews believed that Gentiles could become righteous and enter the World to Come without becoming Israelites and keeping the entire Torah----and, if my impression is correct, Segal does appear to believe that there were many Jews who believed this way, on the basis of references to God-fearers on inscriptions and in literature----then why was Paul so revolutionary and provoking towards Jews when he said that Gentiles did not have to be circumcised in order to be saved? And why did many Jews believe that being part of Israel was such an honor, if they did not even think that one had to be an Israelite in order to be saved?

On pages 194-195, Segal tackles this question. Segal says that, according to Pharisaism, being a part of Israel was a special honor, like the priesthood. One did not have to be a priest to be righteous, but being a priest was an honor. And with the honor of being a part of Israel (and being a priest, for that matter) came purity rules. According to Segal, purity rules separated Jews from Gentiles and hindered social interaction between them (particularly sharing a meal). But Paul was coming along and saying that Jews and Gentiles could join together into a holy community and could interact with each other----even going so far as to share meals together. That, for Pharisaic Judaism, was quite radical.

Second, Segal offers a unique (as far as I can see) perspective on Romans 7, in which Paul appears to struggle with his sinful nature. According to Segal, Paul is actually struggling against something else in this chapter: his desire to keep the Torah. For Segal, Paul believes that Gentiles do not have to be circumcised and keep the ritual laws of the Torah in order to be a part of God's people, and Paul probably doesn't think that Jews have to do those things, either, for he, as a Jew, does not feel bound by them. But Paul did make accommodations for the sake of church unity or to be tactful, as when he had Timothy circumcised because Timothy had a Jewish mother. (Against those who note that Judaism at this time believed in patrilineal rather than matrilineal descent, Segal says that Acts may be getting things wrong, and also that Judaism may be more diverse on this issue than we think.) For Segal, Paul in Romans 7 is planning to tolerate the observance of Jewish dietary laws among Christians, and even perhaps to keep them himself when he feels that the situation calls for that, but he is afraid that this will make him one who relies on the flesh rather than the Spirit. He notes that he has a desire to keep God's law, and so he fears that observing some Jewish rituals will draw him back into the Jewish religion, or a Jewish-Christianity that he believes promotes confidence in fleshly observances rather than the Spirit. In the end, for Segal, Paul resolves to tolerate Jewish-Christian practice when necessary, while remembering that faith is what is important.

Segal on Paul, Judaism, and Conversion

I'm continuing my way through Alan Segal's Paul the Convert. I have two items:

1. For this first item, my understanding may be flawed, but, for the purpose of interaction with this book (however imperfect that interaction may be), I'll still say how I am understanding Segal's argument. Segal says at one point that instantaneous conversions were looked down upon in the ancient world, since many people preferred for conversions to occur after a period of education. Paul's conversion was instantaneous, even though it was followed by a degree of education within the Christian community, for Paul does quote Christian teaching that was handed down to him. At the same time, although Paul's instantaneous conversion was unusual compared to how conversions back then often took place, there are (according to Segal) a few places in ancient Judaism in which conversion is accompanied by some sort of ecstatic experience, which is what Paul undergoes.

This item is about conversion, so I will highlight another point that Segal makes about that topic. Segal does not believe that Paul was simply a Jew who was embracing and proclaiming the one whom he believed was the Jewish Messiah. Segal acknowledges that there were Jewish-Christians who fit this description, which means that they were technically not converts, for they were remaining within Judaism, on some level. (My understanding here may be flawed, however, for Segal does argue that joining a new religious community with its own set of values is an element of conversion, and it is the case that Jews who became Jewish-Christians joined the Christian community, even though they also remained part of the larger body of Israel, by worshiping at the temple, etc.) Paul, however, was a convert from one system of thought to another. He went from being a Pharisaic Jew to being one who viewed the Torah as temporary and did not think that Gentiles (or, presumably, he himself) had to observe its ritual requirements to be part of Israel (but, according to Segal, Paul did regard the moral requirements of the Torah, the Noachide Commandments, to be binding on Gentiles). Paul was a convert, not a Jewish-Christian. (Paul was a Jew and also a Christian, but not a Jewish-Christian, the way that Jewish-Christians were.)

2. I turn now to the Noachide Commandments, the laws that many rabbis believed were binding on Gentiles, whom they did not think had to observe the entire Torah. Segal argues that this belief emerged because conversion to Judaism was stigmatized in the first century C.E. Josephus' story about Izates (see here) shows that Gentiles did not like for their Gentile rulers to become circumcised, and so there were Jews who held that Gentiles could please God and honor the Torah without circumcision. And, in the late first century, in the aftermath of Jewish revolts, there were Roman imperial attacks on proselytism. On page 112, Segal says that some Jews thought Gentiles should obey the entire Torah, whereas others held that Gentiles could observe the Noachide Commandments to please God, since conversion would result in a blacklash from Gentiles----against the converts and also against the Jews.

New Torah? Chaunivistic Tannaim? Free Prayer?

I have three items for today's write-up on Justification and Variegated Nomism, Volume 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism:

1. On page 280, Philip Alexander states: "The question of whether or not there will be a new Torah in the messianic age is raised in some rabbinic sources, but in general the idea is rejected. See W.D. Davies, Torah in the Messianic Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1952)...The subject became important, however, in later Jewish mysticism. The Zohar raises the question of whether the Torah, which, as it stands, addresses a broken, imperfect, sinful world can apply to the world to come when the fractured state of the broken world will be mended (see Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, vol. 3 [London: Littman Library, 1991], 1078-1121). It looks forward to a new Torah for the new age, as do, apparently, some form of modern Hasidism..."

I wrote some about this topic here, but I'd do well to read more about it. In my reading yesterday, I came across a Second Temple Jewish idea that the evil inclination will be destroyed in the eschatological era, but I did not jot down in my notes the exact reference. Does a change of circumstances entail a change in the Torah? If people will be inherently good in the Messianic era, will they need a Torah to tell them what to do and to punish them for infractions? I think that there are some rabbinic references that indicate that the Messianic era and the World to Come will be different from life today, and so the Torah will be different. But many contend that this opinion is marginal within rabbinic Judaism.

2. On page 291, Alexander states: "See also Pisqa 31, 'The name of God rests upon Israel in greatest measure'; Pisqa 344, God loved Israel more than the nations. Further Pisqaot 345 and 315, 'I am going to make you dwell alone in the age to come, and none of the nations will benefit from you in any way.' There is an ongoing tension in rabbinic thought over the role of Israel as an elect people within humanity as a whole. One chauvinistic strand of thought stresses the idea that Israel alone is benefitted by her election. Another strand, however, sees Israel's election as ultimately benefitting humanity as a whole. She plays a priestly role within humanity, bearing divine revelation and the knowledge of God. Tannaitic literature tends to take the more chauvinistic line."

This is of interest to me, since I have been reading a lot about Judaism's view on the salvation of the Gentiles and the question of whether or not Gentiles had to observe the Torah. I have read that Tannaitic literature, such as the Mishnah, expresses skepticism about proselytes. But then there was Hillel, who welcomed proselytes. It would be interesting to trace chauvinism and universalism in Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism----both Tannaitic and also Amoraic rabbinic Judaism----and to seek to account historically for whatever phenomena is found.

3. On page 287, Alexander quotes Mishnah Avot 2:13, which exhorts Jews not to make their prayers a fixed form, but rather to plea for mercy and to supplicate God. But my experience of Judaism is that it has fixed prayers. If I want to hear extemporaneous, free-flowing prayer, I'd go to a Pentecostal service, not a synagogue or temple.

McKnight on Matthew 23:15

I finished Scot McKnight's A Light Among the Gentiles. Like Martin Goodman in Mission and Conversion, McKnight questions the idea that Second Temple Judaism had an active missionary program to the Gentiles. Matthew 23:15, however, says that the Pharisees travel on sea and on land to make one proselyte. How do Goodman and McKnight explain that? Quite differently. For Goodman, Matthew 23:15 is saying that the Pharisees try to convert other Jews to Pharisaism. McKnight, by contrast, says that what is going on is that the Pharisees are encouraging Gentile God-fearers----Gentiles who are interested in the Torah and observe some Jewish customs----to go all the way and to become circumcised. McKnight refers to Josephus' Antiquities 20:40-42, in which the Jew Eleazar encourages the Gentile king Izates (who is devoted to the Torah) to become circumcised (see here). Eleazar was not an active missionary, traveling specifically to convert Gentiles to Judaism. But he did try to persuade Izates to go from being a partial convert to being a full convert. Because this sort of thing was going on in Jesus' day, McKnight interprets Matthew 23:15 in light of that.

Goodman on the Noachide Laws

I finished Martin Goodman's Mission and Conversion. What I'll focus on in this post is the Noachide laws, the seven commandments that parts of rabbinic Judaism held were binding on Gentiles (whereas Jews had to keep the entire Torah).

In Babylonian Talmud Bava Kamma 38a, we see the assumption that most Gentiles did not obey the seven Noachide commandments, and Rabbi Joseph in Babylonian Talmud Avodah Zarah 2b goes so far as to say that the Gentiles "were so incapable of keeping the laws that they were released from them" (Goodman's words on page 115). While Rabbi Joshua b. Hananiah affirmed in Tosefta Sanhedrin 13.2 that "the righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come" (Rabbi Joshua's words), presumably by keeping the Noachide laws, Rabbi Judah in Tosefta Sotah 8:6 states that all of the Gentiles knew of the Torah in their own language and ignored it, and so they deserved to go to hell. Rabbi Judah's opinion implies that Gentiles were somehow obligated to the Torah. And, in Babylonian Talmud Hullin 13b, an opinion attributed to Rabbi Hiyya b. Abba in the name of Rabbi Yohanan says that Gentiles outside of the land of Israel are technically not idolaters but merely follow their own ancestral customs. According to Goodman, this "seems to imply that such gentiles should be allowed to practise paganism as long as they are outside the holy land" (page 119). And so there was some diversity within rabbinic Judaism on the Noachide laws.

On page 151, Goodman refers to the view that belief in the Noachide laws developed after Hadrian in the first century C.E. prohibited circumcision, as a way for the Jews to say that Gentiles could be saved apart from the ritual of circumcision. Goodman disagrees with this view because he thinks that state opposition should have stimulated missionary zeal among Jews rather than dampen it. But the view (which Goodman attributes to William Braude and J. Juster) does intrigue me because I wonder why Jews under Hadrian would want to show that Gentiles could be saved apart from converting to Judaism. Was it to convince others that Jews were not xenophobic, as they were often accused of being? Was it to garner support from Gentiles in a time when they (the Jews) were vulnerable?

Beginning Goodman's Mission and Conversion

I started Martin Goodman's Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire. Goodman's argument so far is that Jews before 100 C.E. did not have an agenda of seeking to convert Gentiles to Judaism. But does not Matthew 23:15 say that the Pharisees go about sea and land to make one proselyte? According to Goodman, that passage is referring to Pharisaic attempts to convert fellow Jews to Pharisaism, not their efforts to convert Gentiles. Goodman acknowledges that there were Gentiles who converted to Judaism, but there was ambiguity within Judaism about whether or not they were considered fellow Israelites as a result of their conversion.

Goodman surveys Jewish literature and concludes that Judaism before 100 C.E. largely believed that idolatry was stupid, but not prohibited to Gentiles. There were some strands (such as the Septuagint) which even encouraged the Jews to respect the names of Gentile gods. An exception would be the Wisdom of Solomon, which lambastes Egyptian idolatry. While there was a hope that Gentiles would convert to the worship of the God of Israel in the eschaton, they were not expected to do so in the present day and age. On pages 60-61, Goodman acknowledges that Jews may have even considered themselves "religious mentors" to Gentiles, as the Jews encouraged the Gentiles to admire the Jewish way of life, respect the Jewish God, and be ethical. But Goodman says that this is not "an impulse to draw non-Jews into Judaism in the present."

Goodman also does not think that the Jews' pagan contemporaries sought converts. While the Romans encouraged the imperial cult within the empire, they did not have a mission outside of its borders to win converts. And the Cynics were rather exclusivist.

There were a couple of interesting items in my reading. First, on page 24, Goodman mentions Plutarch's dismissal of the belief of Euhemerus that the gods were "ancient humans, deified by a grateful posterity for their great deeds". This reminded me of the Wisdom of Solomon's attempts to account for the origins of idolatry. Second, on page 54, Goodman states that Gentiles embracing monotheism would have had to leave Gentile society. I think this is because polytheism was an integral part of that society, even if there were Gentile thinkers who gravitated towards a monotheistic notion of the divine (without, of course, feeling that they must abstain from the public worship of the gods). Third, I appreciated Goodman's discussion about intimacy on page 25: "As in human friendships, not many people can strike up a close friendship with everyone they meet. Most people will remain neutral or mildly benevolent towards those with whom they have no time to forge a firmer bond."

David Novak on the Noachides

I have two items for my write-up today on Christianity in Jewish Terms, and they draw from conservative Jew David Novak's essay, "Mitsvah":

1. Yesterday, I talked about the Noachide commandments that rabbinic Judaism believed were incumbent upon Gentiles. One of them is a prohibition on idolatry. I asked about Judaism's stance on Christians----whether Judaism believes that Christians are idolaters and thus in violation of the Noachide commandment. I referred to David Ellenson's essay in this volume, which says that the rabbis did not care for Christian conceptions of God (such as the Trinity and the incarnation), but that Jews after the twelfth century began to see Christianity as monotheistic and thus in accord with the Noachide rule. Ellenson said and documented, though, that Maimonides regarded the Christians to be idolaters under Talmudic law.

Novak's essay, however, presents a slightly different picture, or at least it adds another consideration. Maimonides addresses the issue of the righteous Gentiles who will have a place with the Jews in the World to Come. While Maimonides believed that certain moral laws were "rationally discernable" and that "Gentiles can thus live a moral life that is consistent with what Jews regard to be minimal non-Jewish morality" without reference to the Bible (page 118), he thought that the righteous Gentiles were those who followed the Noachide laws specifically because they were laid out in the Torah (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: Melachim 8:11). According to Novak, Christians fit this description because they saw their morality as "fundamentally biblical in origin" (page 118).

2. At Hebrew Union College, a professor of mine once said that Judaism holds that Gentiles of other religions (other than Judaism, that is) are righteous before God if they follow the Noachide commandments. That did not seem correct to me because one of the Noachide commandments is against idolatry, and wouldn't that invalidate the righteous state of several people of other religions, many of whom worship gods other than the God of Israel? Novak actually addresses this issue (on some level) on page 119: "...it...seems that when the rabbis saw Gentile respect for the other Noahide laws, especially the respect for human life involved in the prohibition of bloodshed, they had a tendency to regard any cultural vestiges of idolatry in such societies quite leniently." I wonder what "cultural vestiges" means, though: How idolatrous did one have to be to move from the status of "righteous Gentile" to "unrighteous Gentile"?

Ellenson on Christians as Idolaters (Or Not)

I started Christianity in Jewish Terms, which has essays by Jews and Christians. The essay that I really enjoyed last night was by David Ellenson, who is the President of Hebrew Union College, which is where I go to school. Within rabbinic Judaism, there is a prominent belief that Jews have to observe the Torah, whereas Gentiles to be righteous only have to obey seven Noachide commandments. One of these commandments is against idolatry.

There's a good chance that I'll be talking about the Noachide commandments tomorrow. Today, I'll focus on a question that Rabbi Ellenson addresses: Did Jews believe that Christians were in violation of the Noachide commandment against idolatry? I have heard from Jews that to worship a man as God (as Christians do to Jesus) is idolatry. So are they saying that Christians are idolaters? And, as a professor I once had at Jewish Theological Seminary asked, what are the implications of Christians being idolaters on the presence of churches in Israel? Do Jews believe that Christian idolatry is polluting the holy land?

I don't have the answer to all of these questions, but I do think that Rabbi Ellenson shed a significant amount of light in his contribution to this book. According to Ellenson, writings in the rabbinic period (i.e., the Jerusalem Talmud Berachot 9:1; Exodus Rabbah 29:5) lambast Christian doctrines, such as the Trinity and the incarnation, and a negative attitude toward Christianity "and its visions of God had hardened in many Jewish precincts" by the Middle Ages. In addition, Maimonides considered Christians to be worshipers of idols, in his comments on Mishnah Avodah Zarah 1:3 and the Mishneh Torah (Hiclhot Avodat Zarah 1:3). But, starting with the twelfth century in Christian Europe, there was a tendency to view Christianity as a form of monotheism and the worship of the one true God, the God of the Bible, who created the heavens and the earth. Jews were forbidden to associate another personality (such as Jesus) with God, a practice that is called shituf. But Gentiles could do so, according to normative Jewish law, without violating the prohibition on idolatry, perhaps because, in their minds, they were worshiping the one true God.