Post-biblical Judaism Research Articles

Jewish Mysticism from Ancient Times through Today by Marvin A. Sweeney

Reviewed by: Jewish Mysticism from Ancient Times through Today by Marvin A. Sweeney Joshua Ezra Burns marvin a. sweeney, Jewish Mysticism from Ancient Times through Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020). Pp. xvi + 432. $60. The stated purpose of this volume is to present "an account of the development of visionary and mystical experience in Jewish tradition from antiquity to the present" (p. 8). What it actually presents amounts to two accounts of varying quality and coherence. The first, comprising chaps. 1 through 5, reads like a primer on prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish literature of the Second Temple period highlighting its visionary themes. The second, comprising chaps. 6 through 10, surveys postbiblical Jewish texts and concepts belonging to the general order of esoteric or mystical theology, from the Hekhalot, or heavenly ascent texts of late antiquity, through the medieval Kabbalah and contemporary Hasidism. The two halves of the book do not mesh especially well. Linking them is an underdeveloped argument positing that the appearance of scriptural visionary motifs in postbiblical Jewish mysticism indicates a religious phenomenon whereby the visionary accounts of Israel's prophets informed the development of subsequent Jewish thought and devotional [End Page 310] practice involving sensory experience of the divine. That is a dubious analytical premise. Where prophecy was supposedly initiated by God, the pursuit of communion with God that typifies Jewish mystical speculation is meant to be initiated by the individual. Sweeney's elision of that distinction renders his reasoning more suggestive than persuasive. The greater part of the book is given not to reasoning but to description. In the first half of the book, S. summarizes a wide range of prophetic texts and depictions of prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures and early Jewish literature. His analysis of those materials is capable but largely derivative, often drawing upon his own extensive body of scholarship. The second half, focusing on mystical texts, is almost entirely descriptive. Annotations are sparse, nebulous, and often conspicuously out of date. The contrast gives the impression of a scriptural scholar dabbling in a field of expertise not his own. S. occasionally offers comments challenging the stance of Gershom Scholem (e.g., Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism [New York: Schocken, 1941]) and his followers setting mysticism in opposition to the rationalistic intellectual pursuits of rabbinic Judaism. S. notes that Torah study and prayer, quintessential rabbinic acts of devotion involving the consumption of prophetic writings, historically have been regarded in mystical circles as means of accessing the divine realm. He likewise highlights the appearance of classical rabbinic personalities in mystical lore. Those observations, by no means original, represent the clearest efforts on the author's part to substantiate his location of prophecy and mysticism in a linear phenomenological continuum. The book is not easy to digest. It is unreasonably dense. Its literary summaries are supplemented by all sorts of ancillary information: form-critical commentaries, historical excursions, biographical legends, and so forth. These passages are impressionistic, repetitive, and, in the second half of the book, poorly documented. As for the summaries themselves, they are packed with too much information for the casual reader to retain reasonably. That is a tremendous liability as S. proceeds from the simple visionary claims of the prophets to discuss the more sophisticated cosmological schemes and metaphysical concepts of later ages. The net effect is that of an overambitious survey of literature embedded in a chronicle of Jewish history and burdened by a thesis that is not argued cogently. Aspiring to accomplish too much, the study ends up accomplishing too little to justify reading it from cover to cover. In view of the foregoing, I am at a loss to imagine an ideal audience for this book. Scholars acquainted with its subject matter will find the book superficial. Graduate students and seminarians will find it tedious. Undergraduates will find it impenetrable. S. seems to pitch his work to a reader in need of remedial education in the Hebrew Scriptures yet conversant in postbiblical Judaism, its culture, and its religious lexicon. I can imagine it working for adult learners with healthy attention spans interested in exploring formative Jewish texts seldom read outside of Hasidic circles. But I would not recommend...

Law and Lawlessness in Early Judaism and Early Christianity

Law and Lawlessness in Early Judaism and Early Christianity

“The Sincerity of Their Historians”: Jacques Basnage and the Reception of Jewish History

Jacques Basnage (1653–1723), author of the first comprehensive history of postbiblical Judaism, has elicited starkly contrasting evaluations. Some historians have been inclined to see him as the founder of the pro-Jewish tradition in the Enlightenment; in Heinrich Graetz’s view, Basnage’s History of the Jews offered an incalculable service to Other, more recent historians have condemned Basnage’s harsh portrayal of the Talmud and his adherence to a Christian presumption of an eventual Jewish conversion, sometimes even branding his work as antisemitic. This essay expands the analysis of Basnage by proposing that an important feature of his historiography was the broad reception of Jewish historians, many of whom he studied in translations by Christian Hebraists. In his presentation, he consistently excised Jewish claims about the theological meaning of history but otherwise tried to retain as many Jewish sources—and voices—as possible for reconstructing history, often even including Jewish accounts of doubtful historicity. As is evident in his reception of Solomon ibn Verga and Isaac Cardoso, Basnage was especially determined to include Jewish records of Christian persecutions and atrocities, all of which he validated as he constructed a historical argument against Christian oppression of Jews and Judaism.

Prophecy in Roman Judaea: Did Josephus Report the Failure of an ‘Exact Succession of the Prophets’ (Against Apion 1.41)?

AbstractIn Ag. Ap. 1.41, after stressing that the Jewish holy books are rightly trusted because only prophets wrote them, Josephus remarks that Judaeans do not trust later writings in the same way. The reason he gives is usually translated as “the failure of the exact succession of the prophets.” Whereas older scholarship played down this reason to insist on the absence of prophecy in post-biblical Judaism, the prevailing view today holds that Josephus meant only to qualify later prophecy, not to exclude it. This essay broaches the more basic question of what an ἀκριβὴς διαδοχή means. Arguing that an exact diachronic succession of prophets makes little sense, it offers two proposals that better suit Josephus’ argument. It further contends that Josephus is talking about the ancient Judaean past, the subject of this work, not about the work of later historians including himself. He distinguishes sharply between prophecy and historical inquiry.

Dangerous Liaisons in Cairo: Reginald Q. Henriques and the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Manuscript Collection

When Solomon Schechter published his opus magnum, the co-edited volume of The Wisdom of Ben Sira, in 1899, he took the trouble to express his gratitude towards one Reginald Q. Henriques for his help in the past and still ongoing. This article attempts to answer the question: who was this Mr. Henriques and what was the nature of his connection to Schechter? Using previously unpublished archival evidence, this question is explored in depth, as well as the question of why Schechter chose to acknowledge this individual precisely at that point. It also provides an in-depth account, together with transcriptions of original letters, of the activities of the various genizah manuscript collectors operating in Cairo during the late 1890s and the unspoken race to recover the original Hebrew version of the Book of Ben Sira. These activities are viewed against the backdrop of an all-pervasive scholarly culture that was critical of post-biblical Judaism, as well as prevailing Cairene attitudes and behaviors towards those engaged in the recovery and export of antiquities, and the varying (often arbitrary) authorizations and restrictions exercised by Cairo's European and Egyptian administrators. Finally, it takes a closer look at the contents of today's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection at Cambridge University Library in an attempt to discover greater details about its exact provenance.

Translating the ‘Hebraeo-Hellenic Apostles’: Hugh Broughton and the Scholarly Context of the English New Testament

It is well known that the sixteenth century’s surge of vernacular biblical translation was enabled by a greater knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. But by the century’s end, the most exciting work on these languages had far surpassed issues of comprehension. In the chiefly continental, Latinate world of the most advanced biblical scholarship, scholars studied the Semitic influence on New Testament Greek, explained strange features of the Gospels through post-biblical Judaism, and analysed the historical-philological connections between the Testaments. Despite the significant implications such work had for vernacular translation, the relationship between these two fields has rarely been explored. This article will offer a preliminary study by using new evidence relating to the biblical scholarship and translation efforts of the English Hebraist Hugh Broughton (1549–1612). It will demonstrate how the theories and methods he developed in the course of his own research into Apostolic Greek were not only central to his vision of the English Bible, but also affected such details of translation as style and lexical choice. In doing so it argues that, for Broughton, it was within vernacular translation that the implications of the most innovative contemporary biblical scholarship were applied, explored, and developed further.

Poetry of Secular Memorialization: Charles Reznikoff’s “Kaddish” and George Oppen’s “In Memoriam Charles Reznikoff”

ABSTRACT In declaring, finally, the superfluity or disposability of “prayers and words and lights” before the presence or memory of a dead loved one, Charles Reznikoff’s “Kaddish” exemplifies a break with the traditional kaddish, and appears to mediate a self-consciously secular memorialization. Yet it does not merely reflect or represent a secular regime as it has developed outside the world of the poem; rather, it labors to articulate an uncertain, yet recognizably Jewish, sensibility of the secular. This sensibility should be understood in the context of the poet’s broader concerns with the modern significance of biblical and post-biblical Judaism, concerns that can be read in the very cycle of which “Kaddish” is the conclusion, the 1941 “Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down.” In addition, George Oppen’s own poem in memory of Charles Reznikoff enables us to identify an aesthetics of the humble that, intertwined with an ethics of humility, is distinctive of Reznikoff’s work, and that leads to the conclusion that the secular sensibility in “Kaddish” amounts to more than a simple act of negation, a simple disregard or scorn for the trappings of traditional ritual.

Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom M. Paul on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Edited by Chaim Cohen, Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, Avi Hurvitz, Yochanan Muffs, Baruch J. Schwartz, and Jeffrey H. Tigay. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008. Vol. 1: Pp. xxxvii + 548; vol. 2: Pp. x + 522. $99.50

<i>Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom M. Paul on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday</i>. Edited by Chaim Cohen, Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, Avi Hurvitz, Yochanan Muffs, Baruch J. Schwartz, and Jeffrey H. Tigay. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008. Vol. 1: Pp. xxxvii + 548; vol. 2: Pp. x + 522. $99.50

Aramaic in Postbiblical Judaism and Christianity: Papers from the 2004 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar at Duke University

Aramaic in Postbiblical Judaism and Christianity: Papers from the 2004 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar at Duke University

Land as an Issue in Christian-Jewish Dialogue

T wo tendencies played prominent role in shaping the Christian outlook on the issue of the Jewish People and the land of Israel over the centuries. These tendencies have their roots in the early centuries of Christianity. The first of these tendencies was the so-called theology of perspective with respect to the Jewish People. This theology became so imbedded in popular Western culture that even plant came to bear its name. According to the theology, Christians look upon Jews as forever relegated to the status of displaced persons among the nations of the world. A prevailing mindset is evident in many of the patristic writings. When the veil of the Temple was rent and the covenant between God and his people broken permanently as result, Jews received a bill of divorce, as it where, and from that time onwards they were doomed to roam restless over the face of the This perpetual wandering theology continued in force throughout Christian history into the modern period. The noted biblical scholar who in fact defended Nazism Gerhard Kittel and served as editor of the very influential Theological Dictionary of the New Testament viewed post-biblical Judaism as largely community in dispersion. Authentic Judaism, he wrote abides by the symbol of the stranger wandering restless and homeless on the face of the earth. And even the great Cardinal Augustin Bea, who played such central role in the development, passage

Following the Virgin Mary through Auschwitz: Marian Dogmatic Theology at the Time of the Shoah

This article examines the political ideology of the Roman Catholic Church in Nazi Germany through the writings of Karl Adam and Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber. Both theologians used the dogma of the Immaculate Conception to disengage the Jewish roots of Christianity from any racial connection to post-biblical Judaism. At no time since the Holocaust has either theologian has been critiqued according to the context and reasoning of this presentation, which leads this article to question the validity of an authentic post-Shoah theology of the Catholic Church.

Prophets and Prophecy in the Qumran Community

It has long been axiomatic in the study of postbiblical Judaism that prophecy had become a dormant institution. For scholars studying Judaism in its many ancient manifestations, prophecy was a phenomenon closely related to the heritage of biblical Israel. It disappeared as biblical Israel gave way to Judaism in the aftermath of the Babylonian exile. This scholarly assumption has found support in several texts from ancient Judaism that indeed espouse such a position. In recent years, the dominance of this consensus has begun to wither away as scholars have become both more fully aware of the diverse forms of Judaism in the Second Temple and rabbinic periods and more sensitive to the multiple modes of religious piety in ancient Judaism. In this article, I would like to extend the contours of this conversation by mapping out some methodological rubrics for the study of prophecy in ancient Judaism and discuss one context for the application of this methodology—the Qumran community.

The Dead Sea Scrolls as Background to Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity: Papers from an International Conference at St Andrews in 2001. Edited by James R. Davila

The Dead Sea Scrolls as Background to Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity: Papers from an International Conference at St Andrews in 2001. Edited by James R. Davila

Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders (review)

Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders, by Moshe Idel. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2005. 249 pp. $41.95. The ascent from lower to higher realms is central theme in literary sources associated with Jewish mysticism. The most significant contribution of this book, written by of leading scholars of Jewish mysticism, is its engagement with research agendas of Ioan P. Culianu and Mircea Eliade in their studies of ascensions to higher realms in various religions. The author enriches his analysis of images and imaginings about ascent of body, mind, or soul on pillars, lines, and ladders, which appear in Jewish sources, by giving critical consideration to premises, methods, and results of Culianu's and Eliade's research, and, where possible, applying their categories to analysis of ascent in Jewish mysticism. The choice of ascension on high itself is reflection of Culianu's research interests and is offered by author as memorial to Culianu (p. ix). The result is an interesting exploration of contributions that Culianu's and Eliade's work can make to understanding varieties of Jewish mysticism. The exploration of ascent unfolds in an introduction, five chapters, and concluding remarks. The introduction surveys eight approaches to study of and introduces two additional approaches which form methodological basis for studies in book. The first is a general, loose approach called methodological eclecticism, which resorts to different methodologies when dealing with various aspects of religion (p. 9). The second is perspectivism, which involves the possibility of interrogating certain religious literature from perspective of acquaintance with another religious literature. . . . It is . . . an attempt to better understand logic of systems by comparing substantially different ones and learning about from other (p. 11). The introduction concludes with an exposition and critique of an aspect of Gershom Scholem's analysis of Kabbalah, in which author argues that Scholem's historical analysis of Kabbalah rests on theological understanding of Kabbalah as symbolic system. In contrast to this approach, author asserts that he will try to emphasize . . . some other, and more experiential, aspects of this mystical lore (p. 19). Chapter One presents typological analysis of ecstatic ascents undergone while alive. Here Idel presents central thesis of his analysis of ascensions on high, namely that one of major developments in post-biblical Judaism is continuous growth of apotheotic vector in general economy of Judaism, theophanic in its first manifestation, through emergence and flowering of some forms of Jewish mysticism (p. 25). This reviewer is not convinced of this thesis, although Idel's analysis of pillar does conform to suggested pattern. Chapters Two through Four present an extended analysis of pillar in Jewish sources from Rabbinic texts to Hasidic texts. In these chapters, Idel adopts perspectivist approach, comparing representations of pillars in Jewish sources with analyses of pillars in works of Romanian scholars, particularly Eliade and Culianu. The thrust of Idel's analysis is to extend Eliade's and Culianu's distinctions and classifications concerning ascensions to representations of pillars as means of ascent in Jewish sources which were ignored or overlooked by Eliade and Culianu. Chapter Two provides background for analyzing pillar as means of ascent from world to another by considering representations of pillar itself in post-biblical Jewish mystical literature. Idel discerns an architectural-static (axis mundi) and ritualistic-dynamic (the righteous as pillar) (p. 79) conception of pillar in rabbinic literature and shows how these conceptions are harmonized in kabbalistic sources. …

The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam (review)

The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by David M. Goldenberg. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003. 448 pp. $35.00. The biblical verse, "Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers" (Genesis 9:25), has had a long, tortuous career with disastrous results. The original intent of the verse was probably to grant legitimacy to the conquest of the land of Canaan and the settlement there of the tribes of Israel, as well as to the holding of non-Israelite-"Canaanite"-slaves by the Jewish people. Consequently, it ignored the fact that the Canaanites were a "Semitic," not a Hamitic people. The word "Canaanite" was identified with a slave, and in the Middle Ages that was the name given to the sklavs by the Jews. Hence, the universal aspect of biblical and post-biblical Judaism did not apply to the institution of slavery. Later interpretation - Jewish, Christian, and Muslim-dealt with the question of how Ham's progeny, the inhabitants of Africa, became black-skinned; and from the fifteenth century, the curse was transferred from Canaan to his father Ham and linked to the attitude towards the black man as inferior and primitive, thus becoming an accepted theological justification for the slave trade and slavery. This process was helped along by the identification of Ham with "Black Africans." The result was the view that the black man's slavery is part of the divine order. In this way, the biblical verse, as well as several midrashim on it, became in the eyes of both the advocates of slavery and its victims the source of the horrible crime of enslaving the black man. Not only a justification, but a source and cause! I believe I would not be wrong in saying that it was not mere intellectual curiosity, but rather a desire to explore the roots of this myth and to refute it, that motivated the author to embark on this journey of scholarly research, so rich in detail and so impressive in its erudition (and its notes and references), in which he traces the various transformations of the names Cush and Ham as well as the representations of blacks in biblical and rabbinic literature. He does all this while including a discussion of the images of the black man in classical literature, as well as in Christian and Muslim literature. There can be no disagreement about the Bible's attitude towards the black man. In fact, the Bible shows no interest in ethnography or physiognomy. The Cushim, or Kushites, mentioned in it-whether they were the Aethiops of Greek literature, or Nubians, whose presence in Canaan was known as far back as the time of Amarna, or (which is less probable) "blacks" (the Nigri of Roman literature) from sub-Saharan Africa, or tribes living in the Arabian peninsula or Sinai-are not mentioned with a negative connotation, and certainly not in the context of slavery. At the same time, the Bible and post-biblical Judaism accepted slavery as a self-evident institution. There were probably black slaves from Africa in Jewish households in the Second Temple period or in the time of the Talmud, but Jews did not need a theological legitimation for this situation, and the discussions in the post-biblical literature about the fate of Ham were intended to reconcile contradictions in the biblical story. Josephus, for example, tried (Jewish Antiquities, 1:8, 131-132) to explain why no harm was caused to Ham's son Kush, but only to Canaan. The midrashic literature, on the other hand, which identified Ham with "black," attempted to explain why only one of Noah's sons became black. In any event, the writers of that literature did not deal with the ethnographic or social reality of their time, but only with hermeneutic debates, the fruit of their imagination. Hence, regardless of what interpretation is given to that group of midrashim which reflects the representation and image of the black man in the rabbinical literature and the medieval biblical interpretation, there is no doubt that in this literature any explicit link between the negative image of the black man as ugly and bestial and the institution of slavery, which is a result of the biblical curse on Canaan, is totally marginal. …

Faith Transformed: Christian Encounters with Jews and Judaism (review)

Reviewed by: Faith Transformed: Christian Encounters with Jews and Judaism Carl D. Evans Faith Transformed: Christian Encounters with Jews and Judaism, edited by John C. Merkle. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 2003. 216 pp. $23.95. This book is a gem. Twelve Christian scholars give their autobiographical reflections on how their encounters with Jews and Judaism, primarily through Jewish-Christian dialogue, have transformed their faith and life-work as Christians. The editor, John Merkle, deserves high praise for conceiving and bringing to fruition such a fine collection. Contributors are Walter Harrelson, Alice Eckardt, Eva Fleischner, Franklin Sherman, Norman Beck, Clark Williamson, [End Page 151] John Pawlikowski, Eugene Fisher, Michael McGarry, Mary Boys, and John Merkle. The first thing that struck me about these essays is that all of them are both personally reflective—the authors' first encounters with Jews and Judaism, their early impressions, how they became aware of deeper issues, and their reflection on what they have learned—and thoughtful contributions that enrich, correct, and transform the way Christianity has been understood and practiced. Response to the "teachings of contempt" against Jews and Judaism occupies a central place in most of the essays. Several authors cite Fr. Edward Flannery's oft-quoted statement—"The pages Jews have memorized have been torn from our histories of the Christian era"—to talk about how unfamiliar they were, initially, with this part of Christian history. Its "discovery" has prompted deep soul-searching, repentance, and extensive theological re-thinking in Christian circles. The essays by Clark Williamson and John Pawlikowski are especially effective in responding to the history and teachings of anti-Judaism. Pawlikowski is convinced that reconciliation with Jews will never be full and complete until the lost pages that Flannery refers to are restored to Christian textbooks. Christians need to know that history and to repent "as the first and necessary step in any process of reconciliation between Christians and Jews" (p. 116). While Pawlikowski alludes to the torn-out pages, Williamson devotes several pages to retelling what one finds in those pages and then shows how the realizations about anti-Judaism have transformed his understanding and practice of the Christian faith. Among other important points, Williamson avers that "we need to find more adequate ways to tell the Christian story" (p. 104). The typical way of telling the story of Christian redemption—Adam's sin is passed on to all; Christ's redeeming work is available to those who believe in him—relegates the redemptive work of God with Israel to irrelevance and encourages a triumphalist articulation of the Christian message. As an alternative, Williamson recommends a theology of blessing in which Jews and Christians can draw insights about redemption from both religious traditions. In various ways the contributors acknowledge their (and Christianity's) profound indebtedness to Judaism. The spiritual vitality reflected in the Hebrew Scriptures, the power of the prophetic message, the authentic yearnings for God in the Psalms, the transformations in Post-Biblical Judaism, and the importance of land and people receive the attention of several writers. All of these points provide ways to correct notions of Christian superiority and to rethink relationships untainted by the false assumptions that underlie the teachings of anti-Judaism. [End Page 152] The most important contributions of the book are on those topics where Christians continue to learn from Jews and Judaism as they seek to understand and articulate their faith. Eckardt makes a plea to incorporate the Shoah in reflections about the Christian faith, and to develop a theology of a suffering God: "I am convinced that only a suffering God, one who continues to suffer with human beings, can speak to us since the Shoah's whirlwind of destruction, and that we mortals, empowered by God, have the obligation to help each other overcome suffering" (p. 29). Eugene Fisher discusses the centrality of the family to the Jewish experience of worship, and commends its potential for deepening the sense of God's presence in all of life. Mary Boys stresses the importance of interreligious learning for transformation: "interreligious learning takes dialogue to a greater depth by involving persons in a relationship of mutual study" (p. 171). Michael McGarry asserts, along...

The curse of Ham: race and slavery in early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by David M. Goldenberg. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003. 448 pp. $35.00. The biblical verse, Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers (Genesis 9:25), has had a long, tortuous career with disastrous results. The original intent of the verse was probably to grant legitimacy to the conquest of the land of Canaan and the settlement there of the tribes of Israel, as well as to the holding of non-Israelite-Canaanite-slaves by the Jewish people. Consequently, it ignored the fact that the Canaanites were a Semitic, not a Hamitic people. The word Canaanite was identified with a slave, and in the Middle Ages that was the name given to the sklavs by the Jews. Hence, the universal aspect of biblical and post-biblical Judaism did not apply to the institution of slavery. Later interpretation - Jewish, Christian, and Muslim-dealt with the question of how Ham's progeny, the inhabitants of Africa, became black-skinned; and from the fifteenth century, the curse was transferred from Canaan to his father Ham and linked to the attitude towards the black man as inferior and primitive, thus becoming an accepted theological justification for the slave trade and slavery. This process was helped along by the identification of Ham with Black Africans. The result was the view that the black man's slavery is part of the divine order. In this way, the biblical verse, as well as several midrashim on it, became in the eyes of both the advocates of slavery and its victims the source of the horrible crime of enslaving the black man. Not only a justification, but a source and cause! I believe I would not be wrong in saying that it was not mere intellectual curiosity, but rather a desire to explore the roots of this myth and to refute it, that motivated the author to embark on this journey of scholarly research, so rich in detail and so impressive in its erudition (and its notes and references), in which he traces the various transformations of the names Cush and Ham as well as the representations of in biblical and rabbinic literature. He does all this while including a discussion of the images of the black man in classical literature, as well as in Christian and Muslim literature. There can be no disagreement about the Bible's attitude towards the black man. In fact, the Bible shows no interest in ethnography or physiognomy. The Cushim, or Kushites, mentioned in it-whether they were the Aethiops of Greek literature, or Nubians, whose presence in Canaan was known as far back as the time of Amarna, or (which is less probable) blacks (the Nigri of Roman literature) from sub-Saharan Africa, or tribes living in the Arabian peninsula or Sinai-are not mentioned with a negative connotation, and certainly not in the context of slavery. At the same time, the Bible and post-biblical Judaism accepted slavery as a self-evident institution. There were probably black slaves from Africa in Jewish households in the Second Temple period or in the time of the Talmud, but Jews did not need a theological legitimation for this situation, and the discussions in the post-biblical literature about the fate of Ham were intended to reconcile contradictions in the biblical story. Josephus, for example, tried (Jewish Antiquities, 1:8, 131-132) to explain why no harm was caused to Ham's son Kush, but only to Canaan. The midrashic literature, on the other hand, which identified Ham with black, attempted to explain why only one of Noah's sons became black. In any event, the writers of that literature did not deal with the ethnographic or social reality of their time, but only with hermeneutic debates, the fruit of their imagination. Hence, regardless of what interpretation is given to that group of midrashim which reflects the representation and image of the black man in the rabbinical literature and the medieval biblical interpretation, there is no doubt that in this literature any explicit link between the negative image of the black man as ugly and bestial and the institution of slavery, which is a result of the biblical curse on Canaan, is totally marginal. …

Do You Not Remember? Scripture, Story and Exegesis in the Rewritten Bible of Pseudo-Philo

Do You Not Remember? Scripture, Story and Exegesis in the Rewritten Bible of PseudoPhilo, by Bruce Norman Fisk. JSPSup 37. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. Pp. 375. $105 (cloth). Bruce Fisk claims that Pseudo-Philo's time has finally (p. 13); the ancient author has now begun to attract sustained attention from scholars. In this work, a revision of his dissertation completed under Richard Hays at Duke University in 1997, Fisk examines one aspect of Pseudo-Philo's Liber antiquitatum biblicarum (L.A.B.): its use of biblical material to supplement and explicate seemingly unrelated biblical episodes. Fisk, with a clear and clever writing style, demonstrates Pseudo-Philo's inteipretive subtlety. Those interested in early Jewish biblical interpretation are sure to profit by careful examination of this book. Fisk's central concern is what he calls Scripture. These texts vary from the obvious (quotes delimited by citation formulas) to the subtle (barely discernible allusions); they may function as rhetorical window-dressing or as essential part of Pseudo-Philo's message. Fisk then demonstrates that the complexity of Pseudo-Philo's work requires an interpretive (p. 32) using both synchronie and diaehronic approaches. After addressing dating and provenance issues (which are almost impossible to resolve), Fisk turns to three exemplary works for assistance in deriving his own model: Michael Fishbane's Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, Richard Ilays's Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, and Daniel Boyarin's Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash. In eh. 3, Fisk presents his model based on six guiding hypotheses drawn from his exemplars: (1) postbiblical judaism's herineneutics is grounded in the intmlextual hermeneutics of the Hebrew Bible; (2) exegesis responds to gaps or excesses in the text; (3) exegesis is marked by a combination of repetition and transformation; (4) exegetical appropriations vary from subtle to blatant; (5) the original context of a secondary citation may determine its use in the story; and (6) secondary citations may illuminate or transform the passage but may be transformed as well. These hypotheses reappear (both as citations and as subtle allusions) in the rest of the work. Next, in dialogue with Fishbane, Fisk pursues the relationship oftraditio and traditum, developing a grid not unlike the Cartesian coordinate system from first-year algebra (p. 119) upon which to plot static to dynamic reuses (the y-axis) and the relative prominence of traditum or traditio (the x-axis). This grid enables Fisk to categorize various secondary citations, bringing some order to Pseudo-Philo's varied palette. Fisk (again using Fishbane) then moves to anchor interpretation in early Judaism's mental matrix (p. 126). For Fishbane and Fisk, interpretation is linked to social crises: moral lapses of the people, declining relevance of Scripture, and/or historical dislocation (e.g., the exile, post-70 events). Fisk structures his analysis of L.A.B. 12-24 on these three categories of social crises. As Fisk reads Pseudo-Philo reading, he focuses on compositional and strategy. Compositional technique refers to the identification and analyzing of secondary citations, while hermeneutical strategy points to the examination of the function of these citations in Pseudo-Philo's primary narrative and larger argument (p. 321). In short, Fisk moves from locating the citational animal in the guidebook to understanding the way that animal functions ecologically. This may sound like a wooden procedure, but it is a tribute to Fisk's writing ability and interpretive insight that his readings come across as anything but a preprogrammed exercise. Any condensation of Fisk's readings will tend to diminish them. Nevertheless, the reader may find a summary of Fisk's results helpful. …

This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during the Greco-Roman Period (review)

Reviewed by: This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during the Greco-Roman Period Paul Corby Finney This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during the Greco-Roman Period, by Steven Fine. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. 280 pp. 44 illustrations. $35.00. This informative survey consists of a preface, five chapters, a conclusion, end notes, a useful bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and an index of primary sources. The line drawings are clear and clean; the halftones are sometimes muddy. Footnotes would have been preferable. The book lacks a subject index, which diminishes its usefulness considerably. There is no separate listing of illustrations following the Table of Contents, further diminishing the book’s usefulness. The beginning of the Introduction rehearses the contents of the chapters to follow: a redundancy that would not have been missed. Informative discussion follows on historiography, on concepts of holiness, on holiness derived by extension from Scripture and from God, on the organization of holiness into time periods. The author makes it clear that this is a revisionist study, intended to correct an interpretive point of view which has suggested that after 70 C.E. Jews did not attach attributes of holiness to the places where they worshipped; hence in Jewish eyes those places, both in Palestine and in the Diaspora, were to be classified under the secular rubric. Fine does not mention the fact that this tradition of interpretation goes back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, or that it was especially important to European Protestant scholars in the Calvinist tradition who promoted a particular view of post-biblical Judaism as the predecessor of Christianity. These are issues that belong to the historiography of Fine’s subject. On the basic point, namely the attribution of holiness to Jewish places of worship, it is good that Fine is now setting the record straight. It is amazing how long the secular view of synagogues has prevailed, despite the overwhelming accumulation of conflicting evidence. Chapter 1 attempts to reconstruct the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman circumstances that gave Jews the impetus to attribute holiness to their synagogues. Fine devotes most of this discussion to Philo and Josephus, and in the end he comes up with a non licet. He writes that the origins of synagogue holiness are derived by extension either from Scripture or from the Temple, generalizations which Fine repeats throughout the book. He also thinks that the carriers of the synagogue holiness concepts were marginal groups, such as the holdouts as Masada, the Qumran covenanters, and Philo’s Essenes. The place where this story should have begun is Jerusalem in the years 169–67 B.C.E. It is surely the atrocities committed under Antiochus IV, Menelaus, Apollonius, and Jason that gave Jews the occasion to rethink their ideas of worship and holiness, including the attributions of holiness to the places where they congregated for reading and prayer (but no longer for animal sacrifice). Fine’s analysis of this subject would have benefited from a longer analysis of Seleucid Jerusalem. [End Page 113] Chapters 2 and 3 are concerned with Tannaitic and Amoraic sources which over time increasingly attribute holiness to Jewish places of worship. After 70 C.E. sacred places (synagogues) increasingly became markers of Jewish identity; Jews were understandably bewildered by the troubles they encountered, and synagogues provided a refuge, a locus of community identity where the faithful could pray and could listen to the reading of their sacred narrative, a holy place where the biblical scrolls were housed and where the epithets of traditional Temple holiness gradually gained ground. The scrolls, the cabinet housing the scrolls, the textile wrappers that protected the scrolls, the lampstands and other lighting instruments that illumined the synagogue interiors—all of these things were gradually elevated and sanctified in the community’s view of itself. Naturally the buildings that housed these sacred furnishings also grew in status. Since these two chapters are based on literary evidence, it would have been appropriate for Fine to consider the role that the spiritualization of cult played in the language propounded especially on the fringes by sectarian groups, such as the Qumran...

Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam (review)

Reviewed by: Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam Tamara Albertini Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam. By Jacob Lassner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Pp. xv + 281. Jacob Lassner gives a fascinating account of the fate of the Queen of Sheba in both Judaism and Islam. After a careful review of postbiblical Jewish and medieval Islamic sources, the author examines the ways in which Islam appropriated the biblical story of the legendary meeting between the Queen of Sheba (the koranic Bilqis) and King Solomon, and also how Islamized narratives of that same meeting found their way back into Judaism. Following the transformation of the original biblical theme, the reader is led to discover a consensus rarely reached in the history of the two religious communities. It appears that both traditions ended up agreeing that the self-confident biblical Queen of Sheba posed a challenge to the natural, that is, male-dominated, order. Instead of focusing on the Queen's political astuteness, Judaism and Islam eventually viewed her as a subtle seductress and, hence, as (morally) inferior to Solomon. Sometimes the sexual cleverness of the female biblical figure is explained by inventing her a jinn (demon) for mother. Whatever outstanding qualities are left, these can then be imputed to the Queen's superhuman origin. Lassner concludes his book with a rich appendix including valuable Jewish and Islamic source materials in English translation. One wishes Lassner had been aware of the virulent debate kindled by Sheikh Ghazali's book on The Traditions of the Prophet (Beirut, 1990) when Lassner was gathering the materials for Demonizing the Queen of Sheba. Sheikh Ghazali, one of today's leading Muslim scholars, justified female political rule on the basis of a koranic verse referring to the Queen of Sheba: "Lo! I found a woman ruling over them, and she hath been given (abundance) of all things, and hers is a mighty throne" (XXVII.23). Today, Bilqis may go through yet a new metamorphosis and help shape modern Islamic feminism. [End Page 322] Copyright © 2001 University of Hawai'i Press