Subject: JUICE Medieval History 1
Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 01:43:41 +0000
To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
>From JUICE Administration
juice@virtual.co.il
To: Contemporary Jewish History
history@virtual.co.il
Subject: JUICE Medieval History 1
==============================================================
World Zionist Organization
Jewish University in CyberspacE
juice@wzo.org.il birnbaum@wzo.org.il
http://www.wzo.org.il
==============================================================
Course: Medieval Jewish History
Lecture: 1/12
Lecturer: Prof. Howard Adelman
While the word "antisemitism" has been very popular since it was coined in
1879, it does not explain much in Jewish history, especially prior to the
late nineteenth century. In fact, finding more specific explanations of
hostility against Jews, such as political, economic, social, political, or
religious, helps to see that often a range of specific phenomena are
subsumed under a single rubric. Jewish history involves a range of
multifaceted interconnected relationships. This complicates the task of
isolating variables and almost makes it impossible to speak about "the
Jews." There were many different Jewish communities as well as different
components to Jewish society: men and women, rabbis and lay-people, rich
and poor, adults and children. There were also many different components to
pagan Roman, Christian, and Muslim society. There were, for example, among
the Christians emperors, kings, nobles, burghers, merchants, peasants, urban
poor, popes, anti-popes, bishops, priests, and monks. Some were wealthy,
some were not; some were saints, some were sinners. These sub-groups did
not all share the same values and needs; they were often in opposition to
each other and the treatment that individual Jews received depended on the
specific alliances that they made.
Our lectures will devote attention to the culture of the Jews. They will
also advance a sense of Jewish culture that does not rely solely on rabbis
as the arbiters of a consistent or eternal set of so-called "normative
Jewish values." Jewish culture emerged as the result of fruitful
interactions between Jews and their neighbors. In fact, the differences
between the expressions of Jewish culture that emerged in different
locations constitutes further evidence that Jews were influenced by their
neighbors and capable of influencing them.
Thus on matters of both social conditions and cultural creativity, I hope to
introduce you to Jewish historiography by offering conflicting
interpretations of basic events and institutions. These historiographic
positions may on occasion go against what may be considered conventional and
comfortable in the Jewish community, and now by extension, the Christian
community, at least in the west. These lectures are not designed to foster
Jewish identity per se but the critical study of Jewish history. "Critical"
should not be mistaken for hostile. By critical study we mean to develop
the ability to read historical documents carefully and to compare competing
theories of interpretation fairly. These skills are part of collegiate
study and to preserve its place in the curriculum the study of Jewish
history must impart these skills to students as well. Moreover, the Jewish
community itself desperately needs a critical study of its history and
institutions, whether it realizes it or not. The results of such study may,
whether many like it or not, help reformulate policies and ideas held dear
by many Jews, and others as well, and hence contribute to a clearer sense of
Jewish identity.
A. The Problems
It is very difficult indeed to ascertain the historical and religious
reality of the first century. Most attempts to make clear definitions of
terms reflect either later developments or only a limited aspect of the
phenomenon of the period, including even basic terms such as "Jewish,"
"rabbinic," "pharasiac," or "Christian." During this early period these
institutions were developing so that no fixed definition can be placed on
many facets which remained in flux. Additionally, there are not many
reliable sources that date from the first century. The modern historian,
therefore, faces the dilemma of deciding whether to depict the events,
ideas, and institutions of the period based on the terminology and point of
view of the historical actors and contemporary sources or according to
terminology from his own day and an outsider's point of view using terms
that may be more familiar to his audience but would not have been recognized
by his subjects. Jewish history, in fact all history, presents a mixture of
both points of view, often at once.
Of all the terms that we will meet in this course, one of the most useful,
and certainly currently very popular, is "collective memory." While much
can be said on this fascinating subject, for now it will help our purposes
to point out that some writers use the term to refer to the recollection of
past events, others use it to show that any discussion of past events can
only be understood through the common language and experience of the
contemporary collective. We thus see the paradoxical situation that we have
described past events as an extension of contemporary experience. Many
historians today feel that the only way that people can understand history
is through the lens of the present and that the attempt to present history
as it really was, in its own terms, objectively, is a myth that actually
distorts the historical process. For them, therefore, the historian's task
is to develop a consciousness of the enterprise of writing history at every
level. For others, however, historical writing contains basic truths and it
is the historian's task to ferret them out and to construct a basic,
meaningful narrative.
In this course we shall try to combine both tasks and in this lecture we
shall examine the evidence offered by each of the sources for Jewish history
in the first century. The purpose of reviewing this material is to raise
fundamental questions about the nature of early Judaism and its legacy to
the subsequent development of the Jewish people, their religion and their
culture.
By way of introduction, the first century is marked by several major changes
in Jewish life. The Romans had conquered Palestine in 63 BCE (Jewish
history follows the convention of saying BCE, Before the Common Era, instead
of BC, and CE, the Common Era, instead of AD). Despite initial struggles,
the Jews continued semi-autonomous political and religious institutions,
demonstrated by the magnificent Temple built by King Herod (39-4 BCE) in
Jerusalem. During the first century the Jews of Palestine began to rebel
against the Romans, the rebellion was eventually quashed, and the temple and
Jewish autonomy in Jerusalem destroyed. The basis of Jewish religious life
shifted from temple sacrifice to home and synagogue ritual. The rabbis, the
sages, held religious as well as some degree of political authority over the
Jews, embodied, in part, by the Sanhedrin, the deliberative body of the
rabbis, whose teachings, both of a legal and a literary nature, were
recorded during subsequent centuries, and by the Patriarch, a position of
Jewish leadership in Palestine which continued for several centuries.
The earliest rabbinic literature, however, dates from the third century,
though it does contain earlier material. The New Testament, the sacred
scriptures of the Christians, originated at the end of the first century and
the beginning of the second, with the Pauline letters constituting the
earliest material available. The Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Hebrew writings
discovered in caves by the Dead Sea, were written before the destruction of
the Temple in 70, indeed some may be as early as the third century before
the common era, BCE. For much of the first century we have the chronicles
of the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius. Since he betrayed the Jews and
joined the Romans, but was still sympathetic to the Jews, there are reasons
to question his reliability on certain matters, but much to commend it.
Still extant are the writings of the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo
Judeus, although unfortunately the vast literature of his contemporaries is
lost forever.
1. Josephus: Josephus Flavius lived around the years 38-100 CE. Much of what
we now know about Jewish history from the time of the Maccabean revolt
against the Seleucids to the north in 165 BCE, the Hasmonean Jewish dynasty
that ruled the land of Israel from about 170 BCE, the Roman occupation of
the land of Israel in 63 BCE, the revolts of the Jews against Rome beginning
in 66 CE, the destruction of the Second Temple in 70, the fall of Massada in
73, and the nature of some of the many Jewish sects, including the
Sadduccess, Pharisees, Essenes, and even early Christians, derives from
Josephus, purportedly based upon his first hand knowledge and now lost
sources. Much of what we know about Josephus also comes from Josephus. He
was the first Jew to write an autobiography and the last until the
seventeenth century. As a youth, in Jerusalem he received a typical Jewish
education for the time. He spent three years with an ascetic named Bannus
in the wilderness. In the year 64 he went to Rome on a mission to release
Jewish prisoners. At the time of the outbreak of the Jewish rebellion
against the Romans in 66, he was a commander for the Jews in the Galilee. In
the year 67 he was caught by the Romans in the Galilean city of Jotpat with
40 other Jews. Together these Jews made a mutual suicide pact, an event
with parallels to events the same year in Gamala in the Golan and a few
years later at Massada. As one of the last two alive, Josephus surrendered
to the Romans rather than take his own life. According to his own account,
which has striking parallels to the story of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai in
rabbinic literature--which we shall examine-- when he met the Roman general
Vespasian, he predicted that Vespasian would become emperor, which he did.
Josephus ingratiated himself to the Romans and then accompanied Titus, son
of Vespasian, the new Roman commander, and tried to convince the Jewish
rebels to make peace with Rome. Josephus retired to Rome on a Roman pension
and wrote two major histories of the Jews, The Wars, and the Antiquities.
His work was many known among the Jews through a Hebrew version, Josiphon,
made in tenth century Italy. His personal life was equally complicated.
According to his autobiography he had four wives, at least one of whom left
him, a legal impossibility according to his own description of Jewish
divorce laws.
2. Philo: Very little is known about the life of Philo of Alexandria who
lived from 20 BCE to 50 CE. In the year 40 CE, after an uprising against the
Jews of Alexandria on the part of the native population which resented the
privileges given to the Jews, he served as part of a delegation of Jews who
went to Rome to protest to the emperor Gaius (37-41) against Flaccus, the
Roman official in Egypt who had not suppressed the uprising quickly enough.
They failed to obtain support for the Jews from Gaius but succeeded with
the emperor Claudius (41-54) who issued an edict in support of the Jews.
Philo's son married Bernice, the daughter of Herod, and his brother
Alexander lent money to King Agrippa. Philo's nephew, Tiberius Julius
Alexander, was one of the Roman officers who destroyed the Temple in
Jerusalem in 70. Philo wrote many philosophical works in Greek in which he
tried to show the similarity of Judaism to certain currents in Hellenistic
thought, the combination of classical philosophy and the local culture of
the middle east, particularly mysticism. Writing for both Jews and
non-Jews, he tried to show that Judaism represented the highest ideals of
Hellenism and that Hellenism itself was derived from Judaism. His works
reflect the way that Jews in the Hellenized diaspora of Alexandria read the
Bible and the nature of their exegetical traditions. He read of Scripture
as an allegory in which specific names, persons, and events represented
universal truths and he attempted to harmonize divine revelation with
philosophical speculation. Especially important for this task was the idea
of divine Logos, the word of God, referred to as an only beloved son,
presented as a mediator between the infinite deity and the finite world.
Thus, his writings would be considered sacred by the Church which preserved
them while the Jews lost touch with them until they were rediscovered in the
sixteenth century Renaissance Italy by Azaraiah de' Rossi. Recent scholars
have developed divergent views of Philo and his thought. Harry Wolfson of
Harvard, one of the leading scholars of Jewish thought during the twentieth
century, described him as a systematic religious thinker whose main
accomplishment was to make reason subservient to faith, "Philosophy is the
handmaiden of scripture," a principle which Wolfson claimed Jewish
philosophy saw as its main task throughout the middle ages until in the
seventeenth century Benedict (Barukh) Spinoza used reason to undermine
faith. On the other hand, Erwin Goodenough of Yale, who pioneered the modern
study of Jewish thought and symbolism in the ancient world, argued that
Philo was a mystic. In any case, the esoteric qualities of Philo's thought,
based on Platonic and Stoic influences, established a line of metaphysical
thought based on ideas of emanation among Jews and Christians that continues
to this day. One of the unanswered questions about Philo remains whether he
only interpreted the law allegorically or followed it strictly himself.
Many scholars have noted Philo's apparent lack of utilization of Hebrew and
have diverged as to whether he did not know it or rather did not employ it
because he was writing for an audience unfamiliar with it. Similarly he did
not seem to be aware of developments in rabbinic Judaism but he was aware of
the Essenes of Judea as well as the Theraputae sect in Egypt. The existence
of these two groups shows that intertestamental Judaism was diverse and
included more than rabbinic Judaism, which, if it had emerged, was certainly
not yet dominant, as is commonly depicted.
3. Dead Sea Scrolls: The so-called Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered starting
from 1947 in caves near the Dead Sea. The main area of discovery was near
Kumran, an archaeological site southeast of Jerusalem overlooking the
northwest shore of the Dead Sea. Other discoveries were made in other caves
along the Dead Sea-- including Ein Gedi and Massada--and in the Judean
Desert. So far eleven scrolls and tens of thousands of fragments have been
discovered in over forty caves. These discoveries, now on display in
Jerusalem at the Shrine of the Book and the Rockefeller Museum, include a
complete manuscript of the Book of Isaiah, an incomplete scroll of Isaiah,
hundreds of copies in Hebrew of all books of the Bible except Esther, the
Greek translation of the Bible, called the Septuagint, other Greek versions,
and the Aramaic translation, the Targum, for Job, Leviticus, and Ezekiel.
There are also commentaries on the Bible called Pesher, including one on the
Book of Habakkuk and one on Genesis in Aramaic called the Genesis
Apocryphon; Aramaic was the common language of the middle east during this
period. These versions of the Bible differ slightly from the Masoretic text.
Some of these texts may constitute early versions of the Bible that are
sometimes reflected in the Septuagint or Samaritan text, an ancient Jewish
sect with outs own priesthood, rituals, and Torah scrolls located on Mt.
Gerizim in Nablus/Shekhem and in Holon. For example Deuteronomy 32:8 in the
Masoretic text reads, "When the Most High gave to the nations their
inheritance, when he separated the sons of men, he fixed the bounds of the
peoples according to the numbers of the sons of Israel." The Dead Sea
version, like the Septuagint and Vulgate, the medieval Latin translation,
reads, "according to the number of the sons of God." Such a text is
significant not only for reconstructing the history of the biblical canon
but also for establishing the contours of the development of Judaism and
Christianity. Here clearly the idea of God having a son was neither alien
to first century Judaism nor an invention of Christianity.
The Dead Sea texts also contain known Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphical texts
from intertestamental literature, ancient Jewish books not included in the
sacred canon, some originally in Hebrew and most then preserved by the
Church in Greek and Latin, such as the Epistle of Jeremiah, Tobit,
Ecclesiasticus, Jubilees, Enoch, and the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs, some now available in previously unknown Hebrew versions. There
are also unknown works such as the Sayings of Moses, the Vision of Amram,
the Psalm of Joshua, and other Psalms. In addition to these works are
several scrolls called the Damascus Document, the Manual of Discipline or
the Rule of the Community--describing the initiation rites and expected
behavior of members--the Thanksgiving Psalms, the Temple Scroll, and the War
Scroll, an apocalypse of a war between the sons of light and the sons of
darkness. These texts are often identified with a sectarian group that may
have existed near Kumran, describing what seem to be the organization of a
community or communities, including ritual purification, apocalyptic
speculation, a "Messiah of Israel," "a teacher of righteousness," "a new
covenant," "the end of days," table fellowship, and both celibacy and rules
for sexual intercourse and family values, as well as the cultic laws of
Temple sacrifice. One text is a promise: " . . . to make cleave unto them
the curses of the covenant, to deliver them to the sword that shall execute
the vengeance of the covenant. . . to love every one his neighbor as
himself, and to strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy and the
stranger, and to seek every one the peace of his neighbor." A scroll made
of copper describes hidden treasures, perhaps those of the destroyed Temple.
The general assumption is that most of these scrolls were deposited in the
caves sometime between 100 BCE and 70 CE, while some of them may be older,
and some later, from the revolt of 132-135. What these documents teach
about first century Judaism is problematic for several reasons:
1. These texts were discovered only relatively recently. Their fragmentary
quality makes easy decipherment difficult. In addition, many of these have
languished in the hands of scholars for decades and controversies in recent
years have now forced easier access to the scroll fragments.
2. The conventional wisdom maintains that these are the scrolls of a
sectarian Jewish community, often identified with the Essenes, depicted by
ancient historians as celibate ascetics, who lived in a monastery in Kumram.
Today visitors at Kumran are shown a room in the ruins there that is
identified at the Scriptorium, hadar haketivah, the writing room. It is
suggested that during the wars with the Romans, these monastics hid their
scrolls in the caves.
3. There are virtually no references to known persons, events, or groups
among the Jews, including any other known or unknown sects. Recently one
scholar may have found a reference to one of the Hasmonean kings of Judea in
a fragment and another reference to an event in 88 BCE.
4. Scholars have found many parallels between these texts and early
Christianity, such as eschatological expectation, the true Israel,
fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and issues of communal property, celibacy,
and leadership, but none of the basic fundamentals of Christianity such as
the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Eucharist, or the Virgin Birth.
Similarly scholars have found many parallels with early Judaism, including
methods that adumbrate later rabbinic ways of reading the Bible, but with
some very different practices such as the calendar of Jubilees with 364 days
a year.
Recently the conventional wisdom about the Dead Sea Scrolls has been
questioned. Drawing particularly on Norman Golb of the University of
Chicago, it is possible to provide an alternative understanding of the Dead
Sea Scrolls that better explains their relationship to first century
Judaism. The ruins at Kumran are not those of a monastery but a fort with
towers and siege walls. He also notes that some of the people buried in the
cemetery are women, a problem for those who would assume that this was a
celibate community. There exists no significant evidence that any of the
documents were actually written at Kumran except for the sign placed by the
Israeli Park Service identifying the writing room after they found two
inkwells and three tables there--which soldiers could also use. Golb
suggests that these texts were written in Jerusalem and hidden in the caves
during the wars with the Romans. These texts, found beyond Kumran and
during the middle ages as existing in caves as far away as Jericho, as
attested to by Origen the Church Father who lived in Caesarea in Judea from
about 232 to around 251, thus represent the literary detritus of first
century Judaism in Judea, including Jerusalem and Damascus, before the
destruction of the Temple. If these texts are not those of a sect, they
could reflect the entire Jewish people. This could lead to radical
conclusions about the nature of first century Judaism. The significant
parallels in the texts to both Judaism and Christianity indicate that
Judaism and Christianity emerged from a first century religious world that
had more in common with each of them than with the religion of the Bible.
Many of the features commonly associated with Christianity such as belief in
the son of God and in a powerful messianic redeemer can be found in first
century Judaism. However, it is important to note there is not found among
all the textual fragments any traces of actual Christian or rabbinic
writing. This may be important evidence that neither had developed a
movement or a literature prior to the destruction of the Temple (Norman
Golb, "The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Perspective," The American Scholar
(Spring, 1989), pp. 177-207).
4. Intertestamental Literature
Other works of a pseudepigraphal (meaning "false writing," that is works
attributed to ancient authors who did not write them) nature are often dated
to the first century. These include The book of Barukh, the Psalms of
Solomon, the Sibylline Oracles. These books contain little of a specific
nature and dating them to the first century is often a matter of conjecture
based on other assumptions about the period. These books are also
considered by scholars as basically Jewish works with Christian additions.
Such speculations further cloud their usefulness. Therefore historical
reconstructions of the period often overlook these books, but nevertheless,
students should be aware of this rich literature.
B. Pharisees and Sadducees
Conventional wisdom, supported by some historical sources, but not all, sees
Judaism of the second temple period as divided into three sects, the
Pharisees (usually seen as coming from the root "perush," meaning perhaps
separatists), the Sadducees (usually seen as coming from the root "tzadok,"
the name of a line of priests, perhaps displaced by the Macabees), and the
Essenes. This tripartite division has been particularly comfortable in the
modern period where diasporan Judaism is also seen as being divided into
three parties, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform and Israeli Judaism is
divided between Haredim (ultra-pious), Datiim, (religious), and Hiloniim
(secular). So a sense--perhaps even a dialectic-- of three parties fits the
needs of many people to see in the ancient world a perfect reflection of
their own: the Pharisees were democratic; the Sadducees were aristocratic;
and the Essenes were mystics and extreme. The ancient world, however, was
much more complex. It does not easily accept our provincial notions. One
of the major problems is that the sources about each Jewish group are not
consistent.
There are three sources which provide significant information about the
Pharisees in the first century of the common era. They are: 1) early
rabbinic literature, 2) the works of Josephus, and 3) the New Testament.
Unfortunately, each of these sources presents serious difficulties. These
difficulties are enhanced by the often fascinating but greatly tendentious
readings of modern historians. In other words, at both ends of the
historical writing about the Pharisees there exist insurmountable
methodological issues which make a historical reconstruction almost
impossible but the study of Jewish historiography fascinating. The details
of these complex and interesting deliberations need not detain us here. Any
reductionist definition leaves open more problems than it solves. Some of
the key factors involved include religious polemics. In Christian
literature there a animus against the Pharisees. Rather, however, than
seeing Pharisees and Christians as merely opponents they may have engaged in
the most rigorous arguments with each other because they shared so much in
common, what Freud would later call the "narcissism of small differences."
In subsequent Jewish literature there is a common tendency to link the
Pharisees with subsequent developments in rabbinic Judaism. There is,
however, little evidence for such an assertion. In Josephus, the Pharisees
are variously presented as a political party, often involved with intrigues
with the Jewish kings of the land of Israel, and as a religious sect.
Several recent writers, have presented the groups in socio-economic terms, a
modern point of view with little ancient support in the texts. Two of the
most compelling recent studies of the Pharisees are those by Jacob Neusner
and Ellis Rivkin. (See, Neusner, From Politics to Piety (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ, 1973) and Rivkin, A Hidden Revolution (Nashville, 1978)).
Thus, interest in the Pharisees runs strong because many think that
subsequent rabbinic Judaism was their heir and that, given many of the
hostile depictions of the Pharisees in the New Testament, Jews are obliged
to defend the legacy of the Pharisees. Scholars have asked whether the
Pharisees were dominant before the year 70, whether the Pharisees were the
earliest rabbis, and whether New Testament arguments between Jesus and the
Pharisees really do represent some sort of close relationship between the
Pharisees and the early Christians. It is not clear if the Pharisees were
philosophical schools, religious sects, political parties, or table
fellowships or whether even membership in one precluded membership in
another or whether they changed their nature over time. The image of each
group is not only different in each source, but often it can shift even
within sources by the same author. Josephus' descriptions in Wars and
Antiquities are different, each Gospel does not present them in the same
light, and there is no consistent picture among the rabbis.
**************************************************************************