The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity. By Guy G. Stroumsa.

Abstract

Joram Rozov’sMount Hebron, which adorns the jacket of Guy Stroumsa’s new book, is a landscape of terrible desolation beneath a darkening sky. Is the choice of cover a subtle comment on the legacy of Abraham? Or is the emptiness of the scene a reminder that the figure of Abraham is as imagined as the religions that claim his patrimony? The word ‘making’ in the title hints at the latter but demands more precision. Indeed, the lack of a sharper title turns out to be the harbinger of a missing thesis. Yet this is not altogether surprising, since nine of the book’s ten chapters, as well as the final ‘Envoi’, are ‘derived from’ previous publications (p. xi). Following an introduction, frustrating at times for its lack of clarity and metaphorical mix, two chapters make up Part I, ‘Transformations of Religion in Late Antiquity’. Stroumsa attributes ‘The End of Sacrifice’ (ch. 1) principally to the rise of ‘book religion’. But this begs the question whether sacrifice ever really ended or was reimagined, and in the process rendered portable (as well as a whole lot cheaper). Stroumsa’s observation, that ‘Christianity, a religion centered upon a sacrificial ritual celebrated by priests, represents a more obvious continuity with the religion of Israel than that of the rabbis’ (p. 36), is brilliant, but sadly undeveloped. In ‘Patterns of Rationalization’ (ch. 2), Stroumsa finds one in the rejection of Gnosticism by the ‘church fathers’, but struggles to explain how their ‘disenchantment of the world’ occurred at a time of increasing fascination with ‘magic’ (p. 47; cf. p. 121). If this sounds Weberian, it is, and there is more to come. Though Stroumsa recognizes ‘how complex things are’ (p. 49), his claim that ‘[p]atristic Christianity and rabbinic Judaism … follow different patterns [of rationalization]’, with the former emphasizing ‘orthodoxy’ and the latter ‘orthopraxy’ (p. 53), oversimplifies. The analysis here is much too impressionistic, and more asserted than argued.