Us and the Semites: Introduction to Akenson's Surpassing Wonder

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WONDER


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D O N A L D H A R M A N A K E N S O N

SURPASSING

W O N D E R

The Invention of the Bible

and the Talmuds

Harcourt Brace Company

N E W

Y O R K S A N D I E G O

L O N D O N


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© Donald Harman Aken son, 1998

AU rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopy recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without

permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of this work

should be mailed to: Permissions D epartment, Harcourt Brace & Com pany,

6277 Sea Harbo r Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-677 7.

Published simultaneously in Canada by McG ill-Queen 's University Press.

Printed in Canada

ISBN 0-15-100418-8


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In memory of my parents


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Contents

Figures and Tables ix

1 In t roduc t ion : Us and the Sem i t e s 3

I N V E N T I N G T H E C O V E N A N T

17

2 Ap paren t W oe and Grea t Inven t ion 19

3 Re turn in g wi th Yahw eh to Jeru sa lem 64

4 H i s t o r y ' s A i l - E m b r a c i n g A r m s : T h e C o v e n a n t 9 /

I N V E N T I V E F E C U N D I T Y A N D J U D A H I S T M U L T I P L I C I T Y :

T H E L A T E R S E C O N D T E M P L E E R A

1 7

5 S i l o a n r s T e e m i n g P o o l - 1 1 9

6 Si lo ar r f s Te em ing Poo l - I I 133

7 S i lo an r s Teem ing Poo l - I II 171

T H E I N V E N T I O N O F C H R I S T I A N I T Y 2 9

8 Th e Re -Inve nt ion of the Spe c ies

211

9 Fr om Y eshua of N azare th to Jesu s the Ch r is t 244

T H E I N V E N T I O N O F T H E J E W I S H F A I T H 271

10 D on ' t S t are a t t he Ne ighb our s

273

11 Th e Herm e t i c , Pe r f ec t M ishna h 295

12 Ta m ing the M ish na h: Trac ta te Aboth , the To sef ta , S i f ra , and

the Yerusha lmi 328


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¥ 1 1 1

· C O N T E N T S

13 The Bounteous Bavli and the Invention of the Dual Torah

366

14 Con clus ion : Surpass ing W onder 399

N o t e s 4 / 5

A P P E N D I C E S J I J

A G lossa ry 513

Β Bib l ica l Chro nology 518

c The Manuscr ip t Base of the Holy Scr ip tures 526

D M od ern Bibl ical Sch olarship and the Qu est for the Historical

Yeshua 538

Ε The Grea t Rab bin ic Co rpus: Ac cess , Dat ing , Transla t ion , M ethods ,

and Quer ies 6 6

General Index

627

Textual Index

649


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r

j igur s and Tables

F I G U R E S

ι First pa ge of the Ba vli, Viln a edition 38

2 Th e core of the Ra bbin ic Tradition 397

T A B L E S

ι Events re la ted to the Bible for which there exis t s s t rong non-bib l ica l

evidence 520

2 Even t s , non-c or robora t ed , wh ich f i t w i th ex te rna l ev idenc e 521

3 Co n jec tu ra l b ib l i ca l i t ems 523

4 Ch ron olo gy of Pers ian and H el lenic per iods 523

5 Pa le s t ine : M acca bea n revo l t t o des t ruc t ion o f Seco nd Temp le 524


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iÄchi 0 wledg ments

My debts

of gra t i tude a re as much informal as formal . Of course ins t i tu t ions

have been

he lpfu l , and i t i s a p leasure to thank them, espec ia l ly my f r iends

at

M cG i l l -Q uee n ' s Un ive r s i t y P re s s. (And , m ore fo rma l ly , I shou ld acknow l -

edge the pe rmis s ion o f Random House to quo te f rom Gore Vida l ' s Live From

Golgotha.

Less formal ly , I owe a deep debt to dozens of Swedish Bapt i s t Sunday

School teachers who put up wi th an excess ive ly l i t e ra l -minded chi ld ; to the

pa t ience of the Yale re l ig ion depar tment dur ing my undergraduate years (es -

pec i a l ly Judah Gold in and Erwin Goodenough) , who a l lowed one to be ca l -

low wi thou t l augh ing ou t l oud ; t o my men to r a t Harva rd and now long- t ime

fr ie nd , Jo hn K el leher . H is inf lu en ce has been gre a t , no t leas t bec ause he ha s

spent h i s l i fe working pa t ien t ly and wi th u tmost in tegr i ty on a se t of Cel t ic

tex ts (pre- and ear ly-Chr is t ian) tha t provide problems para l le l to those we

f ind in the three fa i ths the present book surveys : problems of tex tua l evolu-

t ion , context , mul t ip le redac t ions , in ten t iona l ly-ar t i f ic ia l h i s tory mixed wi th

in tent iona l ly-prec ise h is tor ica l wr i t ing , long genea logies , l aw codes , a l l

swir led toge ther wi th powerfu l nar ra t ives . Among o ther th ings , he taught me

tha t tough, w on de rfu l t ex ts a re , a t hear t , a ll the sam e and tha t one app roac hes

them wi th reverence .

Most impor tant of a l l my informal debts a re those to my parents who un-

ders tood tha t the scr ip turcs a re a language and one e i ther speaks i t f luent ly or

not a t a l l : they spoke Bible every day.

For he lp in var ious ways , I am par t icu lar ly gra te fu l to : Cur t i s B. Akenson,

Herber t W. Basser , Rober t Bater , Phi l ip Cercone , Joe Cheng, Nancy Cutway,

Diane Dut t le , Chr i s Fer ra l l , Roy Fos ter , Danie l Fra ik in , the la te Janice

Handfo rd , Joan Harcour t , Edward Jackman , Wi l l i am Legge t t , Ba r ry Levy ,

S u s a n n e M c A d a m , J o a n M c G i l v r a y , R o g e r M a r t i n , P e t e r M a s o n . W i l l i a m S .

Mor row, Jacob Neusne r , Aurè l e Pa r i s i en , Hannah Rappor t , t he l a t e George

Rawlyk , N icho la s Whee le r Rob inson , Gera ld Tu lch insky , Dav id Turp in .


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S U R P A S S I N G W O N D E R


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Introduction:

lis and tfie Semites

I

S O M E T I M E O R O T H E R E V E R Y U N D E R G R A D U A T E W H O T A K ES A H I S T O R Y

course is told that modern European society (and its derivative in the Americas

and A ustrala sia) is the join t pro du ct of Sem itic and He llenic roots. Th is idea is

true as far as i t goes, but i t is about as informative as saying that individual hu-

m an beings are the conjoint produ ct of heredi ty and environ me nt: how m uc h

of each? one immediately asks. Soon the query is lost in a squid-like cloud of

aca dem ic hedging, qua l i f icat ion, redefini t ion and vir tuoso havering.

Much the same thing happens with the Semit ic-Hellenic quest ion, in the

rare moments i t is engaged by modern historians. For the most part , the query

is not even raised, however, for the r ight answer is something that we just

seem to know, in the same way that the master of , say, a pre-war Oxbridge

col lege automatical ly knew whether one wore black t ie or white t ie for the

annual feast day of the col lege's patron saint . As Eric Christ iansen has ob-

served of one such don, "The best-sel l ing

History of Europe,

written in the

early 1930s by H.A.L. Fisher (to alleviate the tedium of being head of an

Oxford col lege) began with the sentence, 'We Europeans arc the chi ldren of

Hellas ' - and went on through nearly two thousand years summarizing and

judging the ' trend of events' by standards of rationality and civili ty at that

t ime usual ly associa ted wi th the Ancien t Greeks/ '

1

Of course. So much nicer and classier to be descended from patr ician

slaveholders and master intel lectuals than from disputat ious Semites, the

greatest of whose wri ters are not even known to us by name and the best of

whose intel lectual talents were given over to social l i t igat ion rather than to

the pursui t of pure reason. Even Matthew Arnold (one of the Victorian era 's

most generous students of other cul tures) could not avoid being snobbish and

dismissive. In a general ly subt le and generous essay, "Hebraism and Helle-

nism," he unselfconsciously refers to " the later , the more spir i tual , the more

at t ract ive development of Hebraism" - Chr is t ian i ty

2

In fact, in seeing Chris-

t iani ty as a branch of Semit ic rel igion, Arnold was unusual ly generous for his


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4 · S U R P A S S I N G W O N D E R

t ime. As Eric Meyers has gent ly noted, "Christ iani ty throughout history has

ident if ied more with i ts Hel lenic roots than with i ts Semit ic ones."

3

I do not think anything so sinister as anti-Semitism is here involved (that is

a very charged word, indeed, and should be reserved for very precise, very re-

barbarat ive phenomena) . Ins tead , what I see among my fe l low modern h is to-

r ians (by whom I mean anybody who makes his or her l iv ing studying the

world since, roughly, the Norman conquest - which includes al l h istorians of

the A me ricas and of the forme r Euro pean co lonia l empires) i s a cer ta in vague

and unconscious snobbishness based on the unexamined bel ief that we are

society 's vestigial gentry. A tiny vanity, a t iny snobbery.

Snobbery , however , tu rns the corner and becomes someth ing more , some-

thing nastier. I recall l istening to a visit ing English colonel, the guest of the

off icer 's mess at the Royal Mil i tary College in Kingston, expat iat ing to the

bored local mil i tary about the comparat ive vir tues of various f ight ing uni ts

with which he had served: Gurkhas, Sikhs, and on and on. "But ," he asserted,

taking a large drink of whiskey, " the Ir ish t roops are the best ." He paused.

"Especia l ly when headed by whi te o f f icers ."

Since I have spent most of my life as an historian, trying to sort out the vi-

ciously entwined tendri ls of the several Ir ish forms of Christ iani ty (with side

tr ips in Afrikaner and Israel i sacral ized cul ture) , I r ish references wil l appear

in this book n ow and again. H ere the case in point is a brief , relevant m om ent

observed in the Ir ish countryside by the sometime English Poet Laureate,

C. Da y Lew is, and told in his m yster y-w ri ter perso na of "N icho las B lak e."

He observed an Ir ish pol i t ician campaigning down the country in the early

1960s. The pol i t ician gave a great s tump speech; "Ir ish cul ture owes nothing

to Byzantium. Ir ish cul ture owes nothing to Greece or to Rome. Ir ish cul ture

owes nothing to Great Bri tain" (storms of applause) . "Ir ish cul ture is a pure

l i ly blooming in a bog." (Voice from audience "And that ' s the bugger of i t ,

mis ther ." )

4

We, as heirs of the Ancient Near East , are not l i l ies blooming

alone, self- incarnated, with no historical roots.

At minimum, we have direct and cont inuing historical roots that run back

to the Iron Age in Palest ine. That can be taken as roughly the twelf th to the

sixth centuries BCE the period in which the most important material in the

Hebrew scriptures set t led into a more or less agreed form. In that era, dynas-

t ic Egypt was in decl ine, Phoenicia was becoming the f i rst in ternat ional t rad-

ing power, and not-yet-classical Greece was pul l ing together the disparate

threads that would make a major civi l izat ion. Yet , with none of those three

extraordinary cul tures do we have cont inui ty , al though we have enough

knowledge of them to view them with appreciat ion. But our sense of empathy

with them is synthetic, in the sense that most of the corpus of classical learn-

ing we so admire was long lost to the west and only discovered af ter a long

break; and both Egyptian and Phoenician cul tures are known to us not


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Us and the Semites • 5

th rough a cont inuous l ine f rom the pas t to the present , bu t as a resu l t of mod-

e rn a r chaeo logy and ep ig raphy .

With the la te I ron Age cul ture of Israel , the West has never lost touch. In-

deed , we cannot even read about the anc ient Hebrews in Engl i sh wi thout a t

once be ing in the i r debt for the very ac t we are per forming. Many scholars

be l ieve tha t , by a c i rcu i tous route , our own a lphabet i s a descendant of an-

c i en t Hebrew. Alef bet, in a real sense, is how everything that is us begins.

2

A n y o n e w h o studies and d iscusses the Bib le and its cha rac t e r , would do well

to wear as a mot to

on

a scapular (or , more appos i te ly , as a parchment ins ide a

secular te f i l l in ) , the fo l lowing words taken f rom the preface to the 1662 revi -

s ion o f t he Book o f Common Praye r :

And having thus endeavoured to discharge our duties in this weighty affair, as in

the sight of Go d, and to appro ve our sincerity the rein so far as lay in us) to the

cons cienc es of all m en; although w e know it imp ossible in such variety of appre-

hensions, humours and interests, as are in the world) to please all; nor can expect

that men of factious, peevish, and perverse spirits should be satisfied with any

thing that can be done in this kind by any other than themselves ...

Opt imis t s , no . But because these l i turg ica l scholars were as good a t the i r

bus iness as any ever had been , they inevi tab ly were rea l i s t s .

Thei r rea l i sm i s a va luable example . Al though in present -day b ib l ica l s tud-

ies one has the p leasure of encounter ing some of the most dext rous minds of

our t ime - and the addi t iona l p leasure of employing scholar ly appara tuses ,

such as para l le l Bib les and vers ions of the Talmud tha t a re aes the t ic wonders

as wel l as scholar ly monuments - one is in need of protect ion. Part of this ne-

cess i ly s tems f rom the sheer , of ten oppress ive weight of commentary on the

Bible and i t s assoc ia ted documents tha t have p i led up over the centur ies . The

number of books , a r t ic les , t rea t i ses , and homi l ies tha t have been wr i t ten has

to be wel l over a mi l l ion in number , and one becomes aware tha t one cannot

ma s t e r even a m inusc u le p ropor t ion o f them . O ne i s a lways uneas i ly aware

tha t wha teve r i dea one has , p robab ly someone has had i t be fo re , and pe rhaps

better.

When one immerses onese l f i n r ecen t s cho la r sh ip conce rn ing the B ib l e

(m ean ing wo rk do ne s ince the end of W or ld War I I) , the e f f ec t i s cur ious ly

anes the t ic , even depress ing . Hardly anyone seems to be having any fun , and

i f they a re , they do a good job of keeping the i r p leasure wel l h idden behind

s tone faces and d i rge- l ike prose . Ins tead , i t seems to me tha t b ib l ica l scholar -

sh ip should be on e grea t ode to joy . Too ra re ly does on e encou nter "ab id in g

as ton i shm en t , " a conc ep t pu t fo rw ard by Ma r t in Bu be r and adop ted by W al te r


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Brueggemann as the t i t le of his exemplary study of the Psalms.

5

The field

presents to scholars some of the most fascinat ing puzzles that the human

mind can encounter . The quest ions are, in sum, the issue of who we are and

why. Any first-class research scientist will tell you that the real trick is to find

a problem worth solving. And here, in the Bible and i ts associated docu-

ments, are quest ions that make the nature of wee things l ike the Big Bang rel-

at ively inconsequential . This is the big one.

Yet, in biblical scholarship and its associated disciplines one finds (with a

few wonderful except ions) l i t t le sense of exci tement . On the one hand, one

encounters the work of fundamental i s t Pro tes tan ts , o r thodox Jews, and o ld-

fashioned Cathol ics, each of whose work is character ized for the most part by

compulsive-obsessive behaviour. Of course this is a general izat ion, but I have

read tons of the stuff . I t consists most ly of asking the same old quest ions, in

sl ight ly new ways, so that the answers turn out to be the good old conclu-

sions. This scholarship, if such it is, has the virtue of keeping its engagés

f ro m th ink ing about b ig issues . M uch of it remind s m e of the weeken d mo rn-

ing television cartoo ns for chi ldren , whe re one or anoth er cartoon a nima l runs

off the edge of a cl i ff and manages to keep running on thin air , always pro-

vided he does not give in to temptat ion and look down. There is , in the l i tera-

ture I am describing, a real terror: a fear of looking down, of having received

views checkcd against external real i ty .

On the other hand, Christ ian "l ib era l" schola rship - for the mo st part do ne

by Protestants, but increasingly by Ca thol ics as well - of te n has a lost , bewil-

dered and gloomy qual i ty to i t . Later ( in Appendix D) I shal l d iscuss the fa-

mous "Jesus Seminar" which typ i f ies much of l ibera l Pro tes tan t and Cathol ic

thought . Taken col lect ively, reading the publicat ions of the Jesus Seminar is

l ike stepping into a church basement where the pastor is conduct ing a support

group for guys whose par tners have dumped them.

In recent years, the group of bibl ical scholars who seem to have enjoyed

them selve s the mos t , the one that has had a genuine sense of the joy of dis-

covery , has been comprised most ly of Jewish scholars , Reformed or non-ob-

servant for the most part , with a few Orthodox outr iders. They are in the

midst of mining the great lode of material from the Qumran caves. (The way

certain scholars, most ly Christ ian, inhibi ted this work unt i l the early 1990s is

a well-known internat ional scandal .) The so-cal led Dead Sea Scrol ls have

considerable interest for the understanding of early Christ iani ty , but the real

exci tement has been on the Jewish side of the material . This is because the

most enterprising of the recent Jewish scholars have essent ial ly turned the

methods used by Christ ian scholars upside down. Instead of using the Qum-

ran material to i l luminate early Christ iani ty ( i t does that , but not nearly as

much as had been hoped in the early years af ter the Scrol ls ' d iscovery) , both

the Qumran material and the documents of early Christ iani ty are used to


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Us and the Semites •

7

bring about an understanding of the highly volat i le and t ransi t ional forms of

Judaism that existed near the end of the age of the Second Temple.

Th e scholar w ho best indicates the joy that should invariably ema nate fro m

any serious encounter with the scriptures and the great historical puzzles they

enhull , is not, however, one of the guild of full-t ime biblical scholars. It is the

l i terary cr i t ic Harold Bloom. Though ful ly competent in bibl ical Hebrew and

given to studying the scriptures with a hawklike eye, he is too fr ighteningly

bright and too much of an incorr igible beard-pul ler to be welcomed by the

more solemn of the gui ld . His

The Book of J

(1990) is a dazzling analysis of

the nature of the "J" source, the most important segment of the Books of

Moses . Having mastered the scholar ly l i tera ture , Bloom made the misch ie-

vous, but not entirely frivolous, suggestion that the author of this, the heart of

the ancient Israel i te rel igion, was wri t ten by a woman. The bibl ical establ ish-

ment dared not stone him to death, for as America 's most powerful l i terary

crit ic, he was too big a monument to be dented by flints. Instead, they just

looked the other way, as i f nothing had happened. That is too bad, because

B lo om 's book vir tual ly bubbles with joy - joy stem m ing from the envelop ing

qua lity of the intellectual pu zzle that he was enga ging , and joy at the ve ry

qual i ty of the texts that he was encountering.

6

Bo th sorts of joy are crucial . Be ing cool w hen d eal ing w ith the scriptures

does not work. Anyone who is not awe-struck by the nature of the texts , by

the qual i ty of the world-making they exhibi t , is too much of a phi l is t ine to be

al lowed into this amazing cul tural gal lery.

Rarely expressed though i t may be, the common goal of most modern bib-

lical scholars is to figure out how the Bible works. To do so, one cannot ap~

proach i t l ike some thick-f ingered mechanic who is t rying to f igure out how a

watch works. Granted, i t is easy enough to take the thing apart , but then it no

longer tells t ime. The trick is to figure out how the great device works with-

out destroying it . If ever the whole is more than the mere sum of i ts parts, this

is i t . The necessi ty of combining analysis with respect was well expressed by

the great scholar Frank C. Porter who, in his 1908 president ial address to the

Society of Bibl ical Li terature, envisioned a stage of enl ightenment wherein

"the r ights and achievements of historical cr i t icism are freely accepted,"

(and, in our own t ime, one would add phi lological , archaeological , and l i ter-

ary cr i t icism), but , s imultaneously, " the power that l ives in the book is once

more fe l t . "

7

To a remarkable degree, the scriptures tell us how to read the scriptures, al-

though these self-contained instruct ions are now out of fashion among bibl i -

cal scholars. For one thing, the Hebrew scriptures suggest that we approach

even the most serious matters with a l ightness of heart . The Hebrew Bible is a

book of puns, of irony, and the occasional joke, and these, while not the heart

of the text, are l ike a set of stage directions: read the solemn part solemnly,


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but know also that almost every word can have a second or third meaning and

that word-play is the analgesic we have been given to keep the heavy parts of

the scriptures from becoming more of a load than we can bear .

Secondly, and even more important ly , one must read the scriptures

as if

they were history That is how the book tel ls us to read the book. Taken col-

lect ively, the Hebrew and Christ ian scriptures, the Apocrypha, the Pseude-

pigrapha, are a vast set of historical investigations, wonderful in their quality,

surprising in their character. They cry out to be read as many things - as po-

etry, romance, law - but, first , they are history, because they attempt to situate

sequences of events along the skein of t ime. Even the Mishnah and the Tal-

muds can be construed as commentaries upon historical texts and t radi t ions. I

will enlarge upon that point in a moment, and will return to i t in later chap-

ters. Here the issue is that we have to encounter these documents on their own

grounds, the historical , before deal ing with other perspect ives. The sort of

historical reading one hopes for wil l be technical ly sophist icated, but always

within the context of Mart in Buber 's warning: "We shal l not regain a histori-

cal nucleus of the saga by el iminat ing the funct ion of enthusiasm from i t .

This funct ion is an inseparable element of the fragment of history entrusted to

our s tudy ."

8

(This is not to gainsay the fact that outside seminaries and departments of

rel igion, in the secular world, as i t were, some of the greatest advances in un-

derstanding how the Bible works have been made by scholars of l i terature.

The p ioneer ing work of Rober t Al ter and of Frank Kermode immediate ly

comes to mind. When transposed back into the bibl ical academy, a genre of

bibl ical scholarship has ar isen that has become vir tual ly a discipl ine of i ts

o w n .

9

This is all to the good, provided that the claim for the validity of the

purely li terary approach to the Bible and its associated texts is not con-

sciously or unconsciously a ploy for excusing one's self the labour of learn-

ing and understanding the historical background. When deal ing with an

historical document , that is more than a l i t t le dangerous.)

And, thirdly, the scriptures implicit ly tell us to be crit ical of the scriptures,

and the Talmuds tell us to argue, to think crit ically about the issues they raise.

Time and again the later books of the Bible and the associated texts ci te ear-

l ier i tems. On the surface this is always respectful ly done. But , there is of ten

an undercurrent of subversion. One frequently f inds that when the more re-

cent quotat ions of earl ier texts are checked against the originals , the meaning

has been change d , some t imes jus t a touch , somet im es complete ly subver ted .

Later wri ters and commentators are st raightening out the scriptures, correct-

ing them for their own purposes. What this implies is that the scriptures grant

the reader the l icence to recognize that they are open to cr i t icism. Indeed,

there are some very dumb things in the Bible and qui te a few that you would

not want your chi ldren to read.


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Us and the Semites •

9

When, in this book, I treat the Bible and its ancillary volumes as a series of

truly great inventions, this is largely belief-neutral. However, if you believe,

as do some, that the Bible is inerrant in i ts every word, then this study will be

of no interest to you. Anyone else, however, should be able to read onward

wi thout danger to conscience. Whether the Almighty was the au thor of these

great invent ions, or whether they are merely the greatest of human creat ions,

or both, is a matter of you r ow n fai th . To apprecia te the archi tectural in tegrity

and the extraordinary creativity of these great inventions, one does not have

to be a believ er of any sort . One can , afte r all , app recia te Ba ch w ithou t be-

l ieving in the Mass. Conversely, merely because one is a pract ising Jew or

Christian does not mean that one necessarily appreciates the full beauty of the

objects of faith: sadly, in the religious world there are fewer gourmets than

gourmands .

3

My suggest ing that the Hebrew scriptures and their derivat ives ( including the

Christian scriptures) should be read in the first instance as history, is apt to

bring a shudder to most members of the gui ld who earn their dai ly bread in

the modern scholarly study of the Bible. One could f i l l a room with books

and art icles by twentieth-century scholars, each of whom ut ters the conven-

t ional wisdom that the scriptures "are not primari ly works of history in the

modern sense of the word ."

This is a bi t unset t l ing, because the scriptures, both Hebrew and Christ ian,

announce themselves as being works of history. The heart of the scriptures is

a covenant that God makes with the human race. This covenant is reported as

an historical matter and the relat ionship of God to his people is charted down

throughout the ages. There is very l i t t le theology in the scriptures and cer-

tainly no systematic exposi t ion of theological doctr ines (which is why there

has always been a demand for theologies) . Even the st range, meteoric apoca-

lyptic books of Daniel and of Revelation are essentially historical, for they

encompass references to things past and then provide predict ive narrat ives of

things to come. They are histories of the future.

If the scriptures and ancillary documents are not "history in the modern

sense of the word," then, apparently, readers and writers of modern history are

precluded from using their skills to deal with them. Thus, as the result of a syl-

logism which is more the product of industrial sociology than of logic, the

subject has become the property of persons with stronger interests in theology

(or, if one prefers, ideology) than in history. "Biblical scholarship is viewed by

most of i ts practit ioners, and by nearly all non-practit ioners, as a theological

discipline," is the observation of one of the most independent of senior bibli-

cal scholars, Phi l ip R. Davies. "The common habi tat of the subject is the sem-

inary or the theological department of a college or university."

10

Therefore ,


23/29

1 0 · S U R P A S S I N G W O N D E R

biblical scholarship takes place in institutions that have strong ideological or

theological commitments. One notes with a certain morbid fascinat ion the

conclusion in 1970 of the influent ial Brevard Childs, that any reconstruct ion

of what real ly happened in Israel i te history was theological ly uninterest ing.

11

Rather more encouraging in i ts openmindedness is the viewpoint of one of the

leading anthropologists of our t ime, Marshal l Sahl ins: "Culture is precisely

the organization of the current situation in terms of a past. . . . The categories by

which object ivi ty is defined are themselves cosmological , ' "

2

and thus both

what "real ly happened" and what any group makes of that "object ive" past is

part of a single process of historical analysis.

"Bibl ical scholarship . . . funct ions as a pont if ical discipl ine," is the shrewd

observat ion of one of the leading historians of rel igion in North America.

1 3

This warns off outsiders, the Harold Blooms of the world. The historical nar-

rat ive that is the Bible becomes hidden in neologisms - terms such as Heils-

geschickte , salva tion-histo ry, and sco res of others - all of w hich carry the

coded message that even i f the scriptures are viewed as taking an historical

form (being history-l ike) , th is is an arcane and hermetic sort of history that is

incomprehensib le to you , ou ts iders .

That I do not buy. While having respect for the technical vir tuosi ty of many

bibl ical and Talmudic scholars (respect that passes over into awe in the case

of scholars such as Geza Vermes, David Flusser , and Jacob Neusner) , I th ink

that those scholars who posi t a chasm between the bibl ical sense of history

and that of our own t imes are dead wrong. They are correct in not ing that the

Bible does not read l ike a dissertat ion for a Ph.D. in history, but for that we

can only be thankful . The Bible does, however, deal with cause and effect ,

chronological sequences and, sometimes, origins, al l within the guise of be-

ing an historical narrative. Clearly, the form of the scriptures and the underly-

ing epistemology is not that which we would f ind in a monograph wri t ten by

a present-day historian of the modern world. But the scriptures evince an his-

torical sense similar to that of the everyday person, as i t is revealed, for exam-

pie, in the dai ly newspaper of any major ci ty in the English-speaking world.

Take the averag e new spaper. I t is a jum ble of simultane ous stories, som e of

which are verif iable, o thers of which are not ; a mélange of magical and su-

perst i t ious statements that imply fai th in the causal power of invisible forces

(the astrology column is a staple of most newspapers, and the weekend edi-

t ions usual ly have a homily from representat ives of the major churches);

there are found, often on the very same page, reports of ser ious scient i f ic ad-

vances, ideas for "folk" medicine, and, at least on the sports pages, predic-

t ions of the futur e, expre ssed in term s of what team s wil l bea t the p oint

spread; royal ty and presidents are chronicled, but so too are bir ths and deaths

of historical nobodies; "cards of thanks" to doctors, saints , and rabbis are

found in the c lass i f ied adver t i sement co lumns. The newspaper inev i tab ly has


24/29


an under ly ing ideology (which var ies according to count ry , reg ion , and who

the owner i s ) . Such present -day newspapers a re h i s tory and consc ious ly

c la im to be , but no more than the scr ip tures can they be sa id to be "h is tory in

the modern sense o f t he word . "

You see , the concept of "h is tory in the modern sense of the word" i s bogus .

I t is a concept that is being employed as a glass wal l , one that permits a l l of

us to recognize the ex is tence of a body of mater ia l tha t anyone wi th h is tor ica l

consc iousness migh t we l l i nves t iga t e , bu t wh ich we a re p rec luded f rom ge t -

t ing close to by vir tue of our being "modern." I t is t rue that the scr iptures and

the i r anc i l la ry doc um ent s a re very d i f fe ren t in s ty le and epis tem olog y f r om

modern h i s to r i ca l monographs . Bu t t he sc r ip tu re s a r e no more d i f f e r en t f rom

those same m ono grap hs than those m ono graph s a r e d i f f e r en t f ro m the eve ry -

day new spape r . Funda m enta l ly , there i s no d i f f e re nc e be tw een so r t ing out the

meanings of the i tem known as the Book of Revela t ion , and one of the publ i -

ca t ions put out by Ruper t Murdoch, save tha t the former leaves one wi th an

ent i re ly cheer ie r not ion of the fu ture .

With in the communi ty of b ib l ica l scholars there i s a misplaced not ion tha t

h is tor ians search for objec t iv i ty . The word "sc ient i f ic" s t i l l appears in h i s tor i -

ca l d i scus s ions in b ib l ica l jou rna ls ; i t i s a te rm tha t has not been used wi tho ut

embarrassment in secular depar tments of h i s tory s ince , roughly , the end of

World War I I . No one , save perhaps the odd eccent r ic , be l ieves tha t there i s

such a th ing as objec t ive h is tor ica l t ru th . Paradoxica l ly , when done wel l , p ro-

fess iona l h i s tor ica l work i s the most modes t of modern d isc ip l ines . I t i s ac-

cess ib le (not easy , necessar i ly , bu t access ib le ) to anyone wi th the equiva lent

of a univers i ty educa t ion and the wi l l ingness to do a l i t t l e homework . Only

the work of the incompetent i s smug, se l f - re ferent ia l , and impenet rable . What

professional his tor ians do is three things. Firs t we t ry to get a rough idea of

what " rea l ly" happened, a l l the whi le recogniz ing tha t a l l h i s tor ica l wr i t ing i s

mere ly a se r ies of heur i s t ic f ic t ions and tha t both comple te adequacy of de-

scr ip t ion and comple te accuracy of " fac t" i s beyond the bounds of the poss i -

b le . Second, and more impor tant , we spend our t ime s tudying what people

think hap pe ned . Th at is the hear t of our job , and in essen ce w e are eng age d in

documen t ing the deve lopmen t o f human i ty ' s consc iousness o f i t s e l f and i t s

wor ld . And, th i rd , there a re occas ions when we can observe how cer ta in

é l i tes , re l ig ious or secular , to ld people what they were supposed to th ink hap-

pened. Somet imes i t i s poss ib le to work wi th a l l th ree s t rands a t once and tha t

i s very rewarding indeed .

Modern h i s to r i ans have done an impressive jo b of s tudy ing the ev olu t ion

and meaning of re l ig ion in North American society ( the works of Perry

Mi l l e r , Mar t in E . Mar ty , Mark No l l and George Rawlyk come to mind) , and

one hopes tha t modern scholars wi l l be permi t ted to dea l wi th ear l ie r t ime pe-

r iods . I f the wel te r of sec ts and churches in Nor th Amer ica , buzz ing around


25/29


l ike a cloud of gnats around a lantern, can be successful ly deal t with , perhaps

the same methods, when appl ied to the earl ier period, would be product ive:

all the t ime recognizing that each era and each sect has i ts own integrity, i ts

own singular context , and i ts own unique cosmology.

Therefore, in the present book, I am wri t ing as much as possible with the

vocabulary and out look of a modern historian. I wil l t ry to keep the discus-

sion as free of '

4

bibl ical" jarg on as possible. M ost of the technical terms have

serv iceable Engl i sh equivalen ts . Commonly used words such as the "Hebrew

language" are perfect ly sensible, even i f some phi lologists prefer to refer to

the tongue as "Old Canaani te." Certain words wil l be avoided. One of these

is "cul t ." Although this term is almost universal ly appl ied by special ists to

the festivals and rituals associated with the worship of the ancient Israelite

dei ty , the term today has such opprobrious overtones as to be unusable. "His-

toriography" is here used only in the sense employed by modern historians.

That is, whereas in the specialist l i terature historiography refers to all writ-

ings that recount the past , here "historical wri t ings" wil l do. This has the vir-

tue of al lowing us to save "historiography" for reference to the history of

history - that is, to the way various historians have looked at a particular

matter.

The reader wil l not ice that I use the terms "Old Testament" and "New Tes-

tament" on ly in quota t ion marks . Those terms, used wi thout such qual i f ica-

t ion, are a Christ ian arrogance. They imply that the Christ ian dispensat ion

w as superior to and, indeed, replaced the "O ld " one that s tem s fr om the an-

cient Israel i tes. Such usage contains at minimum an implicat ion that the He-

brew scriptures are in some ways old, t i red, worn out . Yet , there is nothing

old about the "Old Testament ." If ever there was a book that is al ive and dis-

turbing, this is it.

Dat ing of events is done according to the increasingly common pract ice of

rep lacing BC (Before Chr is t ) and AD (An no Dom ini , the year of the Lo rd -

that is, after the birth of Jesus Christ) with BCE and CE . This is a small cour-

tesy and too much should not be made of i t . Understandably, some Jewish

scholars, while accept ing the Christ ian calendar as a social convention so

widespread in the modern western world as to be vir tual ly universal , br idled

at using terms that proclaimed Jesus to be "Lord" and to be the Christ .

Hence, they came to use the terms "Common Era" and "Before the Common

Era," implying at least an equal i ty of status as between Judaism and Chris-

tianity. In so doing they were being remarkably generous in that they sti l l

were accept ing a calendar whose fu lcrum was the b i r th of a man whom most

Christ ians took to be the conclusion to the history of the Chosen People.

(A nd jus t to add injury to insul t , the Christ ian ca lenda r did not co m e v ery

close to get t ing the date of Jesus ' b ir th r ight . This occurred by dint of the

ear ly church fa thers count ing the per iod f ro m 1 BC to 1 AD , in their system, as


26/29


a single year , and by their miscalculat ing the reign of Herod the Great . Most

scholars now place Jesus ' b ir th sometime between the year 1 BCE and the

year 5 Β CH.)

Slight ly m ore frau gh t is the quest ion of wha t one cal ls G od. Th e Lo rd

and A lmigh ty are acceptab le to a lmost everyone. How ever , the Hebrew

scriptures are most ly about a god who takes the name YHWH. Nobody know s

for certain how this name was pronounced by the ancient Israel i tes, s ince

vowels were not added to the Hebrew scriptures unt i l well in to the Common

Era. Even then, the scr ibes refused to permit the vocal izat ion of the holy

name and whenever

Y H W H

appeared in the text , p laced the vowel let ters for

the wo rd A don ai (mea ning Lo rd ) underneath the conson ants for yhw h.

Thus, every t ime the word of this dei ty was ut tered aloud, i t was pronounced

A do nai . (Fro m this ar ises the errone ous Eng lish lang uag e t ransl i terat ion

Jehovah. ) Almost universal ly in scholarly circles the convention is to pro-

nounce the divine name as Yahweh and that is here fol lowed. (And, as a con-

seque nce, later , w he n the Y ahw ist source in the Pen tateuc h is refer red to , i t

wil l be in i ts angl icized fo rm Y, not the Eu rope an fo rm J. )

Undeniably, what version, or versions, of the scr iptures one employs is of

some moment, but rather less so now than i t was even half a century ago,

when there were denominat ional wars about which vers ion was theo logical ly

most pure. (This was largely a Protestant-Catholic piece of inf ight ing.) St i l l ,

i t is fair ly confusing to consul t s tandard bibl iographic sources, such as the

catalogue of the Bri t ish Library and that of the Library of Congress and f ind

that there are more than sixty translations in English of the Bible or of indi-

vidual books of the Bible. In an era when the scholarship on the words found

in biblical texts (as distinct from the theological interpretation of those

words) is increasingly ecumenical , the sensible thing to do is to compare the

most important versions of any passage one is reading with the other major

versions and to examine the scholarly notes that are at tached. This is not dif-

f icul t , bec aus e of the paral lel Bible s that conve nient ly place the m ajo r ver-

sions side by side. That said , when wri t ing about the Bible, one should adopt

a single text and correct i t where necessary - chief ly to prevent readers from

exper iencing the jar r ing ef fects o f hav ing to jum p f rom the rhy thms and s ty le

of one translation to another.

Perforce, the basic text that I shall use will be one of the Christian versions,

since the Hebrew scriptures do not include anything of the Jesus t radi t ion, a

fundamental mat ter . The Roman Cathol ic scr ip tures are t rus twor thy (and

these days almost ident ical to the Protestant t ranslat ions) , but they include a

batch of mater ia l - the so-cal led Ap ocrypha , and De uterocan onical B oo ks

- that present-day Protestants and Jews occasional ly read as historical ly in-

terest ing, but do not consider to be authori tat ive. This material , most ly from

the two centuries before and af ter the bir th of Jesus, is indeed historical ly


27/29


valuable , but has to be read w i th a som ew hat d i f fe re nt cas t of eye than the pr i -

mary canonica l scr ip tures . For tunate ly , there i s not much d isagreement in

bas ic m at te rs be tw een the Jew ish and the Ch r is t ian vers ions of the O ld Tes-

t am en t . N o t t ha t t he two a re iden t i ca l : som e books have d i f f e ren t nam es ; t he

vers i f ica t ion wi th in books , a medieval in t roduct ion in to the Hebrew scr ip-

tures bo r row ed f ro m Chr is t ian i ty , i s so m et im es d i f f e ren t . N on e of tha t i s insu-

perable .

Ho we ver , there is a very imp or tan t poin t of d i f f e re nc e tha t mus t be re -

spec ted . The Tanakh ( the Hebrew scr ip tures) a r ranges the books of the Bible

in a s igni f icant ly d i f fe rent order than do the Protes tant and Cathol ic Bibles .

The Tanakh shares the f ive Books of Moses ( the Torah)

1 4

as the corners tone

of the scr ip tures , but thereaf te r the a r rangement in to the Prophets (Nevi

,

im)

and the Wr i t ings (Ke thuv im) i s marked ly d i f f e ren t f rom the Chr i s t i an B ib le .

Thus , the inc l ina t ion to read the col lec t ion of books tha t i s the Hebrew scr ip-

tures as a s ingle book - a lmost as i f i t were a novel penned by many hands -

has to be res i s ted . One cannot do what Nor throp Frye d id in

The Great Code

and read the Hebrew scr ip tures as progress ive ly unvei l ing a t ight ly scr ip ted

s tory .

1 5

(That Frye used the Chr is t ian order of books i s hardly surpr i s ing . The

s tory would have progressed in an ent i re ly d i f fe rent way had Frye permi t ted

the O ld Te s ta m en t to end not wi th M alac hi , but wi th I and I I Ch ronic les as

occurs in the Tanakh. ) S t i l l l ess can one legi t imate ly append to the Chr is t ian

vers ions of the O ld Te s tam en t the Ch r is t ian scr ip tures and then read the

w ho le th ing a s a un i f i ed saga . F ran k K erm od e ' s v i ew that the B ib le o f f e r s the

m os t f am i l i a r m ode l l ing o f m ean ing fu l h i s to ry - t ha t f rom in the beg in n in g

to the co nclu din g Chr is t ian apo caly pse i t pro vid es the idea l of a w hol ly co n-

cordan t s t ruc tu re

1 6

- can be sus ta ined only by a wi l fu l re fusa l to acknowl-

edge the s tructural t radi t ion of the Jewish scr iptures.

Among the ava i l ab le t r ans l a t ions , t he re a r e some f ine ve r s ions ( fo r exam-

p ie , t he New Eng l i sh B ib le o f t he 1960s and 1970s ) and some pa in fu l ones :

e spec ia l ly the Rev i sed S tanda rd RSV) Vers ion wh ich ap pea red in the 1880s

and 1890s . Al though i t usefu l ly cor rec ted a la rge number of e r rors in previ -

ous Eng l i sh - l anguage ed i t ions , t he work was done by and fo r t he tone dea f .

One t r easu res the r epor t o f t he Amer ican evange l i ca l c l e rgyman who t r i ed to

burn in his pulpi t an RSV because o f supposed e r ro r s i n t r ans l a t ion . He found

it im pos s ib le to igni te . Jus t l ike the de vi l , he ob serv ed. F i r e do es n ' t

bother it.

1 7

I f one is to use an En gl i s h- lan gu ag e Bible , we w ould d o bes t lo go bac k ίο

tha t o f t he pe r son who t augh t us Eng l i sh , Wi l l i am Tynda le . Be fo re h i s mar -

tyrdom by s t rangula t ion and burning in 1536, he had managed to t rans la te

the N ew Tes tam en t d i r ec t ly f ro m G reek , wh i l e on the run f ro m the au thor -

i t ies . (Th is bo ok , pr in ted in 1526, ha s be en des cr ib ed as the m ost im por tant

p r in t ed bo ok in the Eng l i sh l an gu ag e . Th e so le su rv iv ing copy was pur -


28/29


ch as ed in the sp ring of 199 4 by the B ritish M us eu m fo r mo re th an o ne 11111־

l ion pounds ster l ing.

1 8

) Thereafter , s t i l l on the run, Tyndalc taught himself

Hebrew and direct ly t ranslated into English the Books of Moses. This was

published in 1530. He kept t ranslat ing from the Hebrew right up to his un-

fo r tuna te end . Tynda lc

י

s t ranslat ion of the Books of Moses and of the Chris-

t ian scriptures were largely assimilated into the Geneva Bible of 1560, the

f i rs t complete Engl i sh- language Bib le that was widely avai lab le in England .

I t was f rom th is vers ion that John Bunyan and Wil l iam Shakespeare learned

the Bible stories and acquired a sense of the possibi l i ty of the English lan-

guage.

Eve n m ore important ly , in the K ing Jam es B ible (also cal led the Au tho-

rized Ve rsion ) of 1611, roughly 90 perce nt of Ty nda le 's edi t ion of the N ew

Tes tam ent s tands unal tered .

1 9

It is f rom this book that the English-speaking

world learned to read and to think. As the novel ist and cr i t ic Robert Stone has

noted , T he greatest vehicle of m ass li teracy in the Eng lish-spea king wo rld

has been the King James Bible. I t has been the great pr imer.

2 0

And that same

book taught al l those who would hear , how to l is ten to words as music.

Probably we wil l never recover the mixture of mission and ul t imate opt i-

mism that Tyndale and his immediate successors fel t concerning the scrip-

tures. Indeed, one must l i f t an eyebrow when encountering the wish of

Ty nda le ' s contemporary , Desider ius Erasmus: I wish that even the weake st

woman should read the gospel - should read the Epist les of Paul .

Even more optimistically, and with the Hebrew scriptural practice of rhe-

torical paral lel ism get t ing the best of him , Era sm us con tinued. And I wish

these were translated into all languages, so that they might be read and under-

stood, not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks and Saracens.

2 1

Granted, there are things wrong with the King James Bible (hereafter KJB),

mostly mistranslat ions that are easy enough to correct by reference to recent

translat ions . B ut there are in fact points w here the K J B S translat ions are more

accurate . The no tor ious tho u , thee , and thy are actually more accurate

than recent t ranslat ions in deal ing with the second person singular and plural

which i s obscured in presen t -day Engl i sh .

2 2

This is an important dist inct ion

to hon our in a text wh erein God is frequ ently direct ly tel l ing som eone , or sev-

eral persons, to do something, or to avoid doing something else.

The real problem is that the King James Bible sometimes is too good. I t

t ransforms some parts of the Bible that are fair ly pedestr ian into great l i tera-

ture. Krister Stendahl recal ls Arthur Darby Nock 's suggest ion that the Gospel

of John did not beco m e a bea utiful piece of l i terature unt il 1611. At that t ime,

the KJB (fol lowing Tyndale) gave i t a grace far beyond what was found in the

G r e e k .

2 3

The same holds for some of the minor prophets, whose scolding is

t ransformed f rom h igh-p i tched whines to Delphic ar ias . These are v ices that

we can l ive with .

2 4


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The scriptures teach us, everywhere and in al l p laces, that grat i tude for

good fortune is the only appropriate posture to adopt . Ingrat i tude is punish-

able, and surely. That , I th ink, is what W.H. Auden had in mind, when he re-

marked to a f r iend , concern ing the church ' s rep lacement of the King James

version of the Bible, "Why spi t on your luck?"

Us and the Semites: Introduction to Akenson's Surpassing Wonder

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Transcript of Us and the Semites: Introduction to Akenson's Surpassing Wonder