Biblical Exegete Research Articles

Creation in Christ in Aquinas’s Creation Theology in the Light of His References to the Pauline Letters

Creation in Christ in Aquinas’s Creation Theology in the Light of His References to the Pauline Letters

Chastening Germany: Graetz’s Lusty Jew And Asexual Jewess As Semitic Saviors

Abstract Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891), the famous historian and biblical exegete, penned his commentary to the Song of Songs in 1871 to counter rising antisemitism fueled by racialized fantasies of Jewish gender and sexuality. Graetz contested antisemitic tropes of Jewish masculinity and femininity by reconfiguring the Song of Songs, this most blatantly erotic book of scripture, as a testament to and celebration of Jewish chastity. Against the lascivious femme fatal, Graetz introduced the tender Sulamit, whose paradigmatic chastity renders romantic ardor into asexual, sisterly affection. In contrast to the effeminate Jew, Graetz introduced the Friend, a brawny adventurer whose masculine attempt at chastity only reveals his sexual potency. Graetz leverages the co-constitutive relationships among gender, class, and race to bestow on these figures not only the bourgeois virtues connoted by their chastity, but also associations of whiteness and middle-class belonging. Graetz’s exegetical construction of new models of Jewish femininity and masculinity was no mere theoretical exercise, but a response to matters of life and death as the rise of sexually transmitted diseases coalesced into a public health crisis. With the specter of syphilis in the background, Graetz’s commentary to the Song of Songs proffered German Jews—and German Christians—a Semitic path to redemption from the immorality crippling fin-de-siècle Germany.

Translated Selection from Hrach῾ya T῾amrazyan’s Գրիգոր Նարեկացի եւ Նարեկյան Դպրոցը Grigor Narekats῾i and the School of Narek (Volume 2: pps. 53–63): Khosrov Andzewats῾i’s work Commentary on the Hours as a Pedagogical Program and its Role in the Formation of the Academic-Educational Curriculum of the School of Narek

Translated Selection from Hrach῾ya T῾amrazyan’s Գրիգոր Նարեկացի եւ Նարեկյան Դպրոցը Grigor Narekats῾i and the School of Narek (Volume 2: pps. 53–63): Khosrov Andzewats῾i’s work Commentary on the Hours as a Pedagogical Program and its Role in the Formation of the Academic-Educational Curriculum of the School of Narek Translated with an Introduction by Christopher Sheklian Introduction Life and Work of H.H. T῾amrazyan No Armenian scholar has done more to place the literary works of St. Gregory of Narek (Grigor Narekats῾i) in its larger context than Hrach῾ya T῾amrazyan. In a series of studies spanning three decades, the late director of the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, known as the Matenadaran, argued for the idea of the “school of Narek.” T῾amrazyan’s first academic monograph, published in 1986, described the life and works of Anania of Narek, the influential first abbot of the monastery and the first cousin of St. Gregory’s mother. Anania, alongside a certain biblical exegete Peter, founded the monastery with the support of King Gagik I, the Artsruni ruler of the Armenian kingdom of Vaspurakan. After his monograph on the abbot of the monastery, T῾amrazyan continued to study the monastery and its notable teachers and writers, especially Anania, Grigor, and Gregory’s father Khosrov Andzewats῾i. Along with the bishop and historian Ukhtanēs Sebastats῾i, who also studied at the monastery, these three are the major figures associated with the monastery, especially in the important moment around the turn of the last millennium. In 1999, with the publication of T῾amrazyan’s The School of Narek it became possible “to speak of a veritable school of Narek.”1 [End Page 141] Throughout the rest of his life, T῾amrazyan published studies relating to various aspects of the writers associated with that school, notably its most famous monastic/monk, St. Gregory of Narek. In addition to a biographical work, The Life of St. Gregory of Narek, which has been translated into French, T῾amrazyan explored the reception of Neoplatonism in the thought of St. Gregory.2 The selection translated here originally comes from his 1999 work The School of Narek. It was reprinted as part of his three-volume magnum opus Gregory of Narek and the School of Narek, which gathered and rearranged much of his previous work to provide a comprehensive account of the “school” of Narek.3 The third volume was published after his death by his daughter Arusyak T῾amrazyan. These three volumes solidified Hrach῾ya T῾amrazyan’s reputation as the preeminent contemporary Armenian scholar of the Monastery of Narek, building not only on his earlier dissertations and monographs, but also his extensive work as editor of the definitive editions of the works of the authors associated with the monastery for the monumental Matenagirk῾ Hayots῾, the series of Classical Armenian texts, which Abraham Terian describes as a “‘Patrologia Armena.’”4 T῾amrazyan sifted through all the texts attributed to the various authors named Anania in the Armenian literary tradition, presenting a coherent body of work from the pen of Anania of Narek. He likewise argued for the authenticity of several works attributed to Gregory of Narek, including them in the Matenagirk῾ Hayots῾. Hrach῾ya Hranti T῾amrazyan was born in Yerevan, on 5 December 1953. He graduated from the N. Kupskaya (currently Nikol Aghbalyan) High School in 1971, and from the Philological Department of the Yerevan State University in 1976. He worked at the Mashtots Mate-nadaran from 1977 to 1988, during which time he defended his thesis, “Anania of Narek and Tenth-century Armenian Poetry.” In 1999, he earned the degree of Doctor of Philological Studies with his doctoral [End Page 142] dissertation, “The School of Narek.” He worked for a time as the editor of “Nairi” Publications, as the head of the publishing bureau of the Republic of Armenia, and again at “Nairi” as its executive director before returning to the Matenadaran. From 2007 until his death in 2016, he served as the Director of the Matenadaran. During that time, he implemented new and exciting programs, increased the staff, and left an impressive legacy at the largest depository of Armenian manuscripts in...

From Dialogue to Revelation: Alterity and the Concept of Fraternity (Fraternité) in Léon Askenazi’s Biblical Hermeneutics

In Love: Accusative and Dative, Paul Mendes-Flohr explores ancient and modern Jewish engagements with the commandment to love the Re’a (neighbor) in Leviticus 19:18. Drawing on Rosenzweig’s phenomenology of divine–human love, Mendes-Flohr seeks to delineate the possibility of a humanist ethics of compassion that is not dependent, as in Rosenzweig, on hearing the divine voice. Taking Mendes-Flohr as point of departure, this paper explores the concept of fraternity (fraternité) as it figures in the thought of Yehuda Léon Askenazi (1922–1996), a North African kabbalist thinker and an important spiritual leader of Francophone Jewry in the twentieth century. Looking at two interrelated moments in Askenazi’s long career as a biblical exegete, I quarry Askenazi’s notion of fraternity for an account of alterity. Based on his discussions of the Cain and Abel story, as well as other biblical episodes, I argue that, for Askenazi, the challenge of fraternity, as figuring repeatedly in the Genesis narrative, is the preferred model to think of second-person relationships. Furthermore, I suggest, in contrast to Rosenzweig’s top-down account of revelation and human love, Askenazi’s approach represents a bottom-up model of love of one’s neighbor, which, when achieved, brings about divine revelation.

Philosophy and Kabbalah. Elia Benamozegh (1823–1900), a Progressive/Traditional Thinker

Elia Benamozegh (born—1823 in Livorno and died—1900 in Livorno)—philosopher, biblical exegete, teacher at the Rabbinical College—was an original and fruitful thinker. At a time when the Jewish kabbalah, or esoteric tradition, was considered by the protagonists of Jewish studies as the result of an era of intellectual and religious decadence, Benamozegh indicated it to be the authentic theology of Judaism. In numerous works of varying nature, in Italian, French and Hebrew, the kabbalah is studied by comparing it with the thought of Spinoza and with German idealism (Hegel in particular), and, at a later stage, also with positivism and evolutionism. Benamozegh formulated a pluralistic religious philosophy open to progress by constantly referring to the first phase of Vico’s historicist philosophy and above all to the work of Vincenzo Gioberti. We can read this philosophy as an original and consistent response to the challenges of Modern, secularized thought.

THE CAROLINGIAN RENEWAL IN EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE THROUGH HRABANUS MAURUS'SCOMMENTARY ON MATTHEW

Hrabanus Maurus'sCommentary on Matthewprovides a lens through which to view the centrality of biblical studies to Carolingian reform initiatives. The commentary sits amid a burst of interest in Matthew's Gospel in the first quarter of the ninth century. It also occupies a central place in Hrabanus's program for clerical education and renewal. Hrabanus imagined the work as a user-friendly reference guide or introductory text and structured the commentary with highly sophisticated and complementary indexing, organizing, and searching features to privilege ease of use. Hrabanus's design allows for quick appreciation and simple interpretation of the Gospel's overall narrative structure, its principal episodes, and its individual verses. Moreover, Hrabanus took painstaking effort to document the numerous patristic sources upon which he drew in building the commentary, as well as to acknowledge when he contributed thoughts of his own. The manuscript record, epistolary remarks, sermon texts, and literary references — including in the vernacular — testify to broad dissemination and use of the commentary by Hrabanus's network of patrons, peers, and students across Frankish Europe. Attention to the structure, content, and influence of the commentary expands scholarly appreciation of Hrabanus's genius beyond his achievements as an abbot and bishop or as a prolific biblical exegete, to include resourcefulness and practicality in teaching. Moreover, the study illumines the close association Carolingian leaders saw between biblical studies and broader cultural renewal along with the networks connecting leaders across the Frankish world as they reflected upon and promoted reform.

Why is Simeon Dancing? The Unity of Exegesis, Theology and Devotion in the Work of Bonaventure

Why is Simeon Dancing?The Unity of Exegesis, Theology and Devotion in the Work of Bonaventure William Hyland (bio) INTRODUCTION Bonaventure (1274) is generally regarded as one of the central representatives of the earliest phases of Franciscan scholasticism, and as a mystical theologian and ecclesiastical statesman of the first rank. Despite this acknowledgement, Bonaventure's significant work as a biblical exegete has witnessed relative neglect from scholars.1 While Bonaventure's academic exegesis is noted by Gilbert Dahan and others as important, particularly the Old Testament commentaries,2 his exegetical writings have received far less scholarly attention than his other works. In recent years, the English translations of Bonaventure's academic commentaries on Luke, John and Ecclesiastes have begun to spur interest in this aspect of his corpus in the Anglophone world.3 Led by the work of the Franciscan Fr. Robert Karris, these translations hopefully will lead to more attention being given to the exegetical aspect of Bonaventure's work, and to its importance in reception history.4 Bonaventure's academic exegesis was by no means done in isolation from his theological and devotional concerns. While it is important to understand the various purposes and audiences of his work in different genres, they can and must be seen as mutually enriching each other. This is in stark contrast to what is so often the case today, where strict boundaries between academic exegesis and theology, and both of these areas and writings usually classified as "devotional," are still all too evident. This perpetuates what Ryan Brandt has aptly described as a bifurcation and polarization of "the otherwise inseparable realties of academic reading and personal reading of Scripture."5 But for Bonaventure, there is ultimately no separation of the work of the exegete from the spiritual guide, nor the theologian from the mystagogue. Ilia Delio has written eloquently of Bonaventure's "propensity for integration, uniting faith and reason, intellectual and spiritual, speculative and symbolic, knowledge and love."6 For Bonaventure, all genres were seen as the opportunity to pursue the imperative of seeking wisdom and living out the imitation of Christ, and while each genre had a specific purpose and to some degree particular methodology, they ultimately interweave and enrich one another in order to engage and [End Page 267] integrate all the grace-illuminated faculties of human experience in pursuit of holiness. In order to apprehend the fullness of Delio's suggestion about integration in Bonaventure's work, it is necessary to include the way Bonaventure did his academic exegesis, and how this exegesis is reflected in his "devotional" works. Such an investigation illuminates the goal of integration of devotion and exegesis with theology, and presents the Seraphic Doctor as a much-needed model of how this spiritual unity of purpose can be recovered and achieved. In order to illustrate this approach of Bonaventure, the present article analyzes Bonaventure's exegesis of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, along with the closely-related Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an episode found in Luke 2: 22–39. The particular focus will be on how Bonaventure treats the elderly Simeon and Simeon's canticle, known in Latin as the Nunc Dimittis. This topic is an appropriate choice to illuminate Bonaventure's exegetical method for several reasons. Firstly, the episode plays an almost unique role in the later medieval devotional tradition, forming as it does, along with the Finding of Christ in the Temple at the age of Twelve, one of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, but also one of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary. This complexity of the episode reflects that while the parents of Jesus are marveling at Simeon's words, the elderly man then prophetically indicates doleful things in Mary's future; as Robert Karris remarks, "In a stage whisper Luke announces the Cross."7 Secondly, in his commentary on Luke, Bonaventure himself will assert the unique importance of Simeon's canticle as an expression of the gospel, "the most brief capsulation of the evangelical story (totius evangelicae historiae quaedam brevissima comprehensio)."8 In this way he also will explain the appropriateness of Simeon's song in the daily prayer of the Church. Thirdly, this...

Heinrich Graetz and the Exegetical Contours of Modern Jewish History

Heinrich Graetz, known to twenty-first-century readers as a famous historian of the Jews, was also a prolific and influential biblical exegete. With his passing in 1891, Graetz was remembered by subsequent generations as both historian and exegete, but by the mid-twentieth century Graetz's exegetical scholarship had been dropped from his intellectual biography. Recent publications have overwhelmingly focused on Graetz's historical writings, and we still lack a comprehensive account of Graetz's biblical hermeneutic and its broader cultural and political significance. Restoring Graetz's exegetical scholarship to his oeuvre substantially reorients our understanding of his thought: we regain access to some of the most fascinating and influential scholarship Graetz published that is not visible in his historical writings; we perceive a series of dialogical networks woven across the pages of his exegetical publications; we encounter several of Graetz's most polemical interventions in German historical and biblical scholarship; and we gain access to the full meaning of his historical writings. Even as we await a thorough account of Graetz's biblical hermeneutic, this essay offers an entree into to Graetz's exegetical oeuvre by detailing how Graetz's exegetical scholarship determined the contours of his famous History of the Jews.

The Biblical Criticism of Ibn Hazm the Andalusian: A Medieval Control for Modern Diachronic Method

This study tests a widely held assumption in the diachronic study of the Hebrew Bible: that the narrative poetics used by the biblical authors are fully accessible to modern scholars, so they are rightfully empowered to determine a text’s unity, or lack thereof. To test whether the canons of narrative prose are relatively unchanged over time we need to find the work of a biblical exegete who lived in premodern times and yet was as committed to identifying fissures in the received text as are modern critical scholars. This study brings to light and examines just such an analysis: the biblical criticism of the eleventh-century Muslim theologian Ibn Hazm the Andalusian, whose critique of Hebrew Scriptures is more comprehensive than anything penned prior to the eighteenth century in Europe. The study concludes that, while Ibn Hazm identifies many of the types of inconsistencies that have been the basis for modern diachronic readings of the Hebrew Bible, he makes no mention of repetition or of narrative doubling as a sign of fissure in the text. Ibn Hazm worked in a climate in which repetition in literature was widely accepted. By contrast, nearly all modern scholars are heirs to the Aristotelian tradition of narrative unity laid out in his Poetics. Perforce, scholars cannot assume that ancient authors would necessarily have shared all of their notions of literary unity, which are demonstrably Aristotelian in nature.

J. Severino Croatto’s Rereading of Empire in Isaiah 47

Anyone attempting to engage Latin America’s contributions to the field of biblical studies for the last fifty years cannot avoid the prolific scholarship of José Severino Croatto. His hermeneutical lens reflects a liberationist “rereading” strategy that ethically aims to privilege the lived experiences of oppressed and disenfranchised peoples of the world. Much of Croatto’s liberationist gaze focused on the Isaianic version of Israel’s “founding” message. Here, he oscillates between social critic and biblical exegete in a way that gives his rereading relevant specificity. As a case study into Croatto’s rereading of the materiality of empire in Isaiah, this essay interrogates his exegesis of empire in Isaiah 47 in order to better understand Croatto’s social critique of modern empire. In the end, Croatto’s assessment of empire has as its primary ethical concern the experiences of the oppressed people of Latin America. This explicit social obligation requires that he distill and sustain in full view the materiality of empire inscribed in Second Isaiah’s rhetoric. To achieve this, he harnesses a “sociopolítico” meaning within the text in such way that he makes accessible a theological rhetoric for critiquing the contemporary reality of empire.

Catholic Bioethics for a New Millennium by Anthony Fisher

500 BOOK REVIEWS Catholic Bioethics for a New Millennium. By ANTHONY FISHER. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. 346. $30.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-521-25324-6. Anthony Fisher’s first book brings together a collection of previously published essays and conference presentations on a variety of hotly debated topics in Catholic medical ethics. It was probably no easy task for Fisher to decide what to include, since he has published extensively on bioethics over the last twenty-five years. While Fisher begins the book with three chapters on methodological questions (culture, conscience, and cooperation), the heart of the book consists of six chapters on controversial issues that preoccupied much of bioethics, especially Catholic medical ethics, at the turn of the millennium. Chapters 4-6 focus on aspects of the abortion debate (e.g., “when human life begins,” embryo experimentation, and pre-natal testing), and chapters 7-9 take up questions “at the other end of life” (8) (e.g., transplantation, medically assisted nutrition and hydration, and euthanasia). The final two chapters employ the case-study method to examine two types of Catholic participation in the public square, namely, how Catholic healthcare facilities and Catholic politicians may serve the authentic common good of contemporary Western societies. Fisher argues his views vigorously and at times polemically, not unexpectedly for a work in bioethics with a strong constructive approach on a variety of neuralgic issues. He is most nuanced and generous on the issues (e.g., in the chapters on transplantation and Catholic political participation) where the disputed viewpoints within the Catholic tradition tend to be less rancorous, or where he takes a more exegetical and pastoral approach (as in the chapter on euthanasia). However, most noteworthy about the book is not its arguments about the controversial issues. For the most part Fisher does not aspire to novel takes on the issues, but stakes out in an intelligent, sophisticated, and at times pithy way—ground well-trodden by the kinds of Catholic bioethicists typically associated with Catholic Church-sponsored bioethics centers (e.g., Anscombe/Linacre Bioethics Centre, Pontifical Academy for Life). What makes this book noteworthy—and very difficult to review—is that it seeks to be “all things to all people.” Anthony Fisher plays many roles: he is a Dominican, a lawyer, a philosopher, a bishop, and a pastor. The book is an amalgam of genres: at times he argues as a philosopher, at other times he writes as a bishop offering guidance to his flock, at times he speaks as a casuist, at times as a public intellectual proffering pithy slogans, at times as a biblical exegete, at times as a lawyer, and at times as a pastor. And at times he integrates many of those roles in a masterful way. However, if the reader does not appreciate that different chapters of the book have rather different audiences and approach issues in diverse way, the book may well seem somewhat disjointed. The unity of the book does not lie in a particular genre or mode of argumentation. BOOK REVIEWS 501 What unites Catholic Bioethics for a New Millennium is Fisher’s reference to himself as one of the “John Paul II generation” (1). This is no mere pious reference. Every chapter in the book seems to draw as extensively as possible on the thought of Pope St. John Paul II. The index has at least five times as many references to the works of John Paul as any other thinker. The encyclical Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life) receives far more citations than any other document, and Fisher dubs it John Paul’s “bioethical charter” (4). Back in 1995 when Evangelium vitae first appeared, Fisher appraised it as “undoubtedly the most authoritative statement of Christian bioethics to date” (“Theological Aspects of Euthanasia,” in Euthanasia Examined: Ethical, Clinical and Legal Perspectives, ed. John Keown [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], 330 n. 22). In addition, Fisher displays the influence of John Paul in his strong integration of issues of sexuality and the family (and John Paul’s Theology of the Body) with biomedical issues. Even the title of the book is an allusion to a work of John Paul, namely his...

Pedalling the Death of a Life: A Late Victorian Variation on Dealing with Grief

This article seeks to explore how one forgotten, Victorian-formed individual sought to deal privately with the death of his publicly esteemed father. Through the journey that carried a cyclist and train traveller from the north to the south of England, we discover the conjunction of athleticism and mortality, place and people, pilgrimage and passages, religion and leisure, photography and memorialisation, discipline and dissipation, networks and mourning. It provides a counterpoint to the accent on death-bed and grave in Victorian England during a time of national readjustment by arguing that the particular method of dealing with a significant death carved by Henry Westcott for himself was novel, cathartic, and yet constantly interacting with and informed by the legacy of a range of Victorian values. Those values are explored through the writings of his father, Brooke Foss Westcott, a famous biblical exegete who provided a distinctive interpretation of the key scriptural text of Victorian death: the Gospel of John, chapter 11. Those values became a legacy that is both reinforced in Henry through the death of his famous father and also subtly interrogated and eroded as Henry pedalled through the complexities of disentanglement from the paterfamilias, a journey that Henry recorded in diary and photograph.

“Better a Meal of Vegetables with Love”: The Symbolic Meaning of Vegetables in Rabbinic and Post-Rabbinic Midrash on Proverbs 15.17

THOUGH CLASSICAL JEWISH tradition and cuisine look meat-centered at first sight, there is a strong vegetarian undercurrent that stretches to the garden, the Garden of Eden. Then, according to the Torah, human beings and animals coexisted harmoniously, and man had seedbearing plant. . . upon the earth . . . and eveiy tree that has seed-bearing fruit ... all the green plants for (Gen 1.29-30). Only after the Flood did God grant to humans the right to consume meat: creature that lives shall be yours to eat, as with the green grasses (Gen 9.3).1 There has been a revival of interest in early dietaiy myth especially among contemporaiy Jewish activists concerned about the environment, food resources, social justice, and personal health (among them Richard Schwartz, Robert Kalechofsky, Arthur Green, and many of the contributors to the web blog The Jew and the Carrot).2 They advocate a modern Jewish vegetarianism, or an eco-kashrut that more or less subscribes to Michael Pollan's ecotarian mantra Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.3 Modem Jewish vegetarianism has its roots in the meatless utopian visions of a messianic future and Edenic past in the Bible, early and medieval rabbinic literature, and the first chief rabbi of Israel, Rav Kook.4 This longing to go back to the garden is also hinted at in several of the postbiblical interpretations of the of in Prov 15.17: Better a meal of vegetables where there is love, than a bull where there is hate. Thus, the medieval Spanish Jewish biblical exegete Rabbenu Bahya ben Asher infers from this verse that id human nature to want small and light portions of food, such as 'a meal of vegetables' or something similar in the company of friends, rather than bulls in the company of enemies.5 Granted R. Bahya's main emphasis here is the contrast between in the company of friends versus those in the company of enemies, experiences of concord rather than discord. But, in the Garden of Eden before the Fall, when there was concord between man and woman, between human beings and God, and between human beings and animals, the diet of all God's creatures was meals of vegetables. After the Fall, relations broke down between human beings and God, and even between human beings and animals. Permission to indulge in a new meat diet now characterized this discord-friends became food. If it is our human nature to be satisfied with it is nature from which we have now fallen.What is the nature of the relationship between Proverbs' of vegetables (yerakot) and the company of one's friends? Taken in apposition to the syntactically parallel verse immediately preceding it: Better a little with fear of the Lord, than great wealth with confusion (Prov 15.16), it seems the small quantity of the of is contrasted to the substantial meal of fattened bull. On the other hand, the term yerakot, literally, calls attention to their appearance-what they look like, and perhaps by implication, their taste, smell, and feel. According to Yehuda Feliks, a leading authority on plants in the Bible and rabbinic literature, the in Prov 15.17 probably refer to edible wild herbs gathered in the field, what the Mishnah later calls field vegetables, as opposed to those cultivated in gardens (garden vegetables).6 They might be mallow leaves (Heb., halamut), orach (Heb., maluoh, for its salty taste), rocket (Heb., orot), or maror (an edible weed that in Feliks's addendum to a modem commentaiy on the mishnaic order of Seeds \Zera'un looks like dandelion greens, as well as the generic term for any bitter herb suitable for the Passover rite).7 This reinforces the connotation of the of greens as a low-status food of poor people, since anyone can gather field freely in the wild, even in times of famine.8 That being said, the term yerakot could possibly evoke the taste and mythic historical associations of the yerakot required for dipping, discussing, and eating as bitter herbs for rabbinic and postrabbinic Jews familiar with the rabbinic Passover seder. …

The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image by Daniel B. Schwartz (review)

Reviewed by: The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image by Daniel B. Schwartz Jay Geller The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image Daniel B. Schwartz. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012. 270 pp. Daniel B. Schwartz’s The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image is an important addition to the ever-extending list of new thinking about the life, works, and reception of Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza, the seventeenth-century philosopher, political theorist, and biblical exegete, who was excommunicated by Amsterdam’s Sephardic Jewish community. The interplay of his book’s title and subtitle indicates Schwartz’s primary concern and contribution. Rather than engaging in a history of ideas, he examines the constructions of a conjunction—the figure of “the first modern Jew” (as the cover emphasizes) and its identification with the figure “Spinoza”—and the diverse purposes they served at crucial moments in the history of contestations over Jewish identity. As it moves from Spinoza’s first biographers (J.-M. Lucas, P. Bayle, and J. Colerus) at the turn of the eighteenth century to the turn-of-the-millenium efforts of Y. Yovel, S. Nadler, S. B. Smith, and R. Goldstein, The First Modern Jew delimits its purview to critical assays of the role of Jewish tradition and social location on Spinoza’s work. Further, aside from those early Gentile readers who addressed the question of Spinoza’s Jewishness, he focuses almost exclusively on Jewish authors and what he identifies as the “Jewish reclamation of Spinoza.” Not all Jewish readings sought to “reclaim” the apostate (although he never converted to Christianity) for the Jews; consequently, what distinguish the authors Schwartz analyzes are not only their ethnic or religious provenance but their motivations as well: “to validate—and in some cases critically interrogate—their own identities and ideologies” (3). Ultimately, Schwartz directs his attention at those for whom this reclamation project was also the means by which they generated genealogies of how to embody “modern” and “Jew.” His choice of “modern” rather than “secular” is also apt, since the identification of the “secular Jew” with the “modern Jew” has become a commonplace; however, as Schwartz demonstrates, the identification of the “modern” with the “secular” is only [End Page 137] one of a number of diverse identity choices Jews have made since the eighteenth century. Given the many different life-worlds in which reclaiming a Jewish Spinoza as the first or prototypical modern Jew played a significant role in grounding a modern Jewish identity over and against a hegemonic traditional one, Schwartz selects four moments that vary in time, place, language, and religious observance/notion of religion: 1830s Germany, 1850s Galicia, 1920s Palestine, and 1920s Warsaw/1940s New York. Prior to his case studies, Schwartz describes how in the first century after Spinoza’s death, as the greater Jewish community remained virtually silent, his Jewishness was being constructed by Gentile commentators along two trajectories: ex-Jew and eternal Jew. The second chapter takes up the breach of Jewish observance of the ban on discussing Spinoza by the other usual contender for the title “first modern Jew,” Moses Mendelssohn. In his first (Philosophical Dialogues) and last (Morning Hours) works Mendelssohn situated Spinoza (“someone other than a Christian”; cit. 39) in the progressive history of metaphysical thought and, if his work were to be properly “refined” (52), as not incompatible with Judaism. The initial identification of Spinoza as the “first modern Jew,” however, only emerges in the Bildung-intoxicated, early-nineteenth-century German-Jewish community on the cusp of Emancipation exploring religious reform and seeking social integration portrayed in chapter 3. While detailing a number of Jewish engagements with Spinoza from Saul Asch to Moses Hess, this chapter turns on a discussion of how liberal humanist author Berthold Auerbach, with the publication of his Spinoza novel (and of his translation, the first complete German one, of Spinoza’s works, both in 1837), proffers a Spinoza incarnating a universal Judaism that portended the modern ideal of a universal human community. In his next chapter Schwartz moves eastward to the Hebrew Haskala and its pursuit of other intellectual models immanent to the Jewish tradition...

Eusebe d'Emese: Commentaire de la Genese. Texte armenien de l'edition de Venise (1980). Fragments grecs et syriaques. Translated by FRANCOISE PETIT, LUCAS VAN ROMPAY, and JOS J. S. WEITENBERG.

The writings of Eusebius of Emesa, the fourth-century biblical exegete and Christian theologian, are now considerably more accessible to the scholarly world, thanks to the publication of this new edition of the Commentary on Genesis. The surviving Armenian, Greek, and Syriac texts appear on the book’s left-hand page and a literal French translation is printed on the right. The volume is divided into three parts, sections of which have been previously published and sections of which are completely new. In Part I, the Armenian text of the Commentary on Genesis is reproduced from Hovhannessian’s edition (Eusèbe d’Émèse: Commentaire de l’Octateuque, 1980), accompanied by a freshly revised French translation prepared by Lucas Van Rompay and Jos Weitenberg. In Part II, the editors reprint Eusebius of Emesa’s Greek fragments on Genesis as recovered from the writings of Procopius of Gaza by Françoise Petit (La Chaîne sur la Genèse, I–IV, 1991–6), appending a French translation commissioned for this volume. The Syriac fragments in Part III are reproduced from Jacques-Marie Vosté and Ceslas Van den Eynde’s Commentaire d’Išocdad de Merv sur l’Ancien Testament (1950), with a modestly revised version of Van den Eynde’s 1955 French translation. The present volume therefore gathers together the fruit of many decades of painstaking research.

Scripture, Hermeneutics, and Matthew's Jesus

Eschewing a truncated focus on single proof-texts, Matthew's Jesus interprets Scripture by Scripture across the canon in creative and provocative ways. His hermeneutical methods and aims resist narrow profiling. Above all, Matthew's Jesus emerges as the church's authoritative biblical exegete and teacher.

Deep Symbols and Mythic Imagination in the Hermeneutics of Creation Texts

This article reflects on creation through the lens of different traditions of Christian scholarship, and argues for a returning of the theology of creation to its rightful place at the centre of theological discourse about God's relationship with the world—intrinsically linked to the economy of salvation and not in opposition to it. It posits a necessary re-visioning of the relationship between humanity and other-than-human creation via a re-evaluation of the epistemological function of symbol and myth, and a re-examining of the governing principles within myth typologies and their implicit axioms within creation theology. The hermeneutical insights of philosopher Paul Ricoeur and biblical exegete Claus Westermann are brought into conversation. Building on the Ricoeurian epistemological axiom that ‘the symbol gives rise to thought’, the article avers the creation imaginary as a deep and formative symbol of God's free and loving purposes enacted through different and even contesting cultures and traditions and within the whole cosmos. In imaginative dialogical rereading, the community of faith can be open to God's free and loving relationship with all creation, thus also participating in the divine work of renewing the face of the earth.

Anne Lock's Poetics of Spiritual Abjection

AbstractIn her 1560 sonnet sequence, Anne Lock's poetics offer a new understanding of the emergence of poetic subjectivity in early modern verse. Lock constructs an abject poetic persona based on biblical figures of penitent sinners and unprofitable servants, and simultaneously authorizes herself as a talented biblical exegete, a Calvinist, and a poet. This article uses Julia Kristeva's theory of the abject to examine Lock's construction of spiritual identity. Additionally, Kristeva's theories of the semiotic and the symbolic elucidate tensions within Lock's verse between poetic and sacred discourses, and illustrate how Lock defies conventional disapproval of women speaking publically, while asserting her identity as a member of the Geneva exiles’ reform movement.

The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (review)

The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, by Leon R. Kass. New York: Free Press, 2003. 700 pp. $35.00. If evidence were needed for the profundity of the book of Genesis, it may be found in the unceasing flood of volumes which seek to plumb its depths. Contemporary scholarship now interacts with biblical texts in ways undreamed of a mere generation ago. More conventional interpreters sometimes look askance at such innovations, but Kass's volume, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, provides much food for thought on how this ancient text may speak to a contemporary readership. There are numerous exegetical, historical, and theological readings of Genesis which approach the text with divergent presuppositions and which arrive at multifarious and often mutually exclusive conclusions. Kass's approach is to investigate Genesis from a philosophical perspective, that is to say, to approach it with the expectation that it will speak to those who wish to acquire the wisdom necessary to live an enlightened life in the 21st century. The moral perspective of Genesis, and how this challenges much that is crass in western (American) culture, is a major thread woven by Kass throughout his book. Yet this is no pious moralistic homily addressed to the faithful by an author expounding the authority of the Bible as Scripture. Kass is neither a biblical scholar nor an active participant in a community of faith. He writes as a distinguished bio-ethicist from a secular Jewish perspective. In several places Kass himself expresses surprise that a person from his background should have engaged with Genesis in the first place, and even more amazingly, have been won over by its moral vision. At 700 pages this is a long book. Its length is a testament to how significant and enriching Kass considers Genesis to be. However, its size makes it impossible to provide more than a broad view of its content. Essentially the book takes a holistic, final-form approach to Genesis, arguing for its total coherence, in which every word counts and juxtapositions are important (p. 14). Kass's presuppositions soon become obvious. This is an essentially modernist interpretation, yet which at the same time conveys a deep skepticism about the values of modern culture-its technological strengths merely mask its deep weaknesses. He frequently dismisses postmodernism (e.g., p. 243). More than once he vigorously attacks feminist hermeneutics. He accuses contemporary feminists of reading thoughtlessly and tendentiously because like most of the rest of their society they do not reflect, philosophically (pp. 112-113). At the same time, however, he shows sensitivity to gender issues and attempts to show how Genesis argues against male domination (e.g., p. 115). As well as broad brush strokes there is detailed engagement with the text. For example, he provides a comparison of the verbs used in the creation and flood narratives (p. 231), examples of paranomasia in Gen. 32 (p. 450), and the precise etymology of Israel and its implications (p. 460). However, all of the above is already present in the literature. Does this volume merit a place on bookshelves or in library catalogues already over-crowded with works on Genesis? As a biblical exegete rather than philosopher myself, I must admit to some skepticism on first picking up The Beginning of Wisdom. …

On the Cutting Edge: The Study of Women in Biblical Worlds. Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Edited by Jane Schaberg, Alice Bach, and Esther Fuchs. Pp. vi + 254. New York and London: Continuum, 2004. isbn 0 8264 1589 X (hardback) and 0 8264 1582 2 (paper). $29.95

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is one of the founders of feminist biblical interpretation. The founding of the ‘Women in the Biblical World’ section of the Society of Biblical Literature, together with her many publications, has shaped a generation of feminist biblical scholars. This collection of essays gives a flavour of the way in which she has inspired many others writing in this field. Some of the essays explore Schüssler Fiorenza's influence directly. So Fuchs (pp. 1–20) notes the ways in which Schüssler Fiorenza's major theories (such as feminist biblical historiography, the hermeneutics of suspicion, and critique of the ‘malestream’) resonate with her own work. Elizabeth A. Castelli (pp. 36–52) explores the idea of the Ekkle-sia of women in feminist utopian thought, and Joseph (pp. 53–68) compares the writing of Schüssler Fiorenza with an influential Indian biblical exegete, George M. Soares-Prabhu. Other essays use Schüssler Fiorenza's work as a springboard into further exploration of feminist biblical interpretations. The result is a rich variety of material. It includes those who employ her hermeneutics in their own studies of the text, such as Tina Pippin (pp. 143–53), who uses a ‘hermeneutics of creative imagination’ to reinterpret the story of the woman who anoints Jesus, and Athalya Brenner, who adopts a hermeneutics of suspicion in order to reread the marriage metaphor in Hebrew scriptures, alongside those who use her life as an inspiration. For example, Ute E. Eisen (pp. 154–70) uses Schüssler Fiorenza's own crossing of many boundaries as an inspiration for reading Acts 10:1–11:18.