Canonization and Alterity

Heresy in Jewish History, Thought, and Literature

Gilad Sharvit, Willi Goetschel, Gilad Sharvit, Willi Goetschel

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783110992403
• eBook ISBN: 9783110668179
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: Literature

This volume offers an examination of varied forms of expressions of heresy in Jewish history, thought and literature. Contributions explore the formative role of the figure of the heretic and of heretic thought in the development of the Jewish traditions from antiquity to the 20 th century. Chapters explore the role of heresy in the Hellenic period and Rabbinic literature; the significance of heresy to Kabbalah, and the critical and often formative importance the challenge of heresy plays for modern thinkers such as Spinoza, Freud, and Derrida, and literary figures such as Kafka, Tchernikhovsky, and I.B. Singer. Examining heresy as a boundary issue constitutive for the formation of Jewish tradition, this book contributes to a better understanding of the significance of the figure of the heretic for tradition more generally.

Part 1: Jewish Antiquity

Was Hellenism a Jewish Heterodoxy?

Erich S. Gruen

“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” That famous statement, memorably uttered by Tertullian in the late third century CE, remains emblematic of the long-standing conception that Hellenism and Judaism represented two independent strands in tension or in conflict with one another (Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum, 7). Friction and confrontation marked the encounter in antiquity, it was assumed, until Christianity entered the scene to blend the two strands into an amalgam long overdue and long foreordained. Such is the comfortable teleology that underpinned conceptualization in the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth.¹ In the formulation of Matthew Arnold, Judaism, or “Hebraism” as he termed it, entailed a focus on moral conduct, a rigid straitjacket that dwelled on sin and righteousness, evidently a reflection cast back from his own contemporary Puritanism, whereas “Hellenism” epitomized critical thinking, rationality, and intellectual and artistic achievement (Arnold, 1869/1965).² The contrast echoed a similar one fashioned by Heinrich Heine somewhat earlier, between those who seek a joyless religion (the Jews) and those who take pleasure in life: everybody else (Heine 1961–1964, xi.14–16; Rajak 2000, 542–544).

However, scholarship in the past generation or so has shifted away from that simplistic dualism, softened those contours, complicated the contrasts, and challenged the idea of a “Kulturkampf.” The prevailing notion now is that of the infiltration of Hellenism into Jewish heritage, an overlapping or interpenetration, indeed a blending, an alloy, a fusion (e.g. Hengel 1974; Goldstein 1981, 64–87; Will and Orrieux 1986; Gruen 1998; Levine 1998; Collins 2000; Collins 2005, 1–20). But that leaves the fundamental concept intact. A Verschmelzung is hardly a more productive image than a Kulturkampf. In either perspective, Hellenism and Judaism constituted two separate and distinct entities, either in contention with one another or brought together as a merged amalgam. In other analyses, emphasis rests on Hellenism as a cultural phenomenon and Judaism as a religion, a distant echo of Matthew Arnold’s old distinction. What possible meaning could one attach to such formulation? That Jews had no culture and that Greeks had no religion? A reductio ad absurdum. We obviously need a different conceptualization.

Was there in fact ever a collision of Hellenism and Judaism that required resolution through some composite mixture? Or, to put it in the terms of this volume, did the entrance of Hellenism into Jewish life and tradition introduce a heterodox element into a normative world?

The presumptive confrontation itself may be a modern fabrication. Given the enormous ink spilled over “Hellenism” and “Judaism,” it is remarkable how rarely those terms ever surface in ancient texts. The classic site for the framing of this issue comes in the Second Book of Maccabees, with reference to the background and circumstances of the Maccabean rebellion. The terms appear there for the first time in our evidence. The author five times makes reference to “Hellenismos,” and three times to “Ioudaismos.”³ But nowhere does he pit them against one another as rival or competing concepts. What resonance would “Hellenism” carry anyway to readers of the text? It is noteworthy that the meaning varies in each of the passages that conveys the term. The “Hellenism” that Jews encountered in second-century BCE Palestine was itself an amalgam of Greek, Phoenician, and Syrian elements, not some pure strain of Attic high culture. And how should one understand the essence, if there be any such thing, of second-century Judaism, with its diverse strands, sects, and practices? Hybridity inhered on both sides. And if there was no orthodoxy, could there be a heterodoxy?

Where did the idea of a cultural confrontation arise? The locus classicus for the insertion of Hellenism into the society of the Judeans is the introduction of a gymnasium into Jerusalem. The quintessential Hellenic institution entered the very heart of Jewish life and tradition. The fact is bitterly bemoaned by the author of 2 Maccabees, who reckons the gymnasium to be the “peak of Hellenism and the accession of foreignness” (2 Macc. 4:13). That is the core testimony for most modern reconstructions of a compromise of Jewish integrity. Worse still, the impetus for the gymnasium came not from the wicked Hellenic king Antiochus IV, but from the Jewish High Priest Jason himself. And its installation gained a warm welcome from the other priests who joined enthusiastically in the sporting events of the palaestra (2 Macc. 4:8–14). The author of 2 Maccabees a half century or more later found the development abhorrent. For him the embrace of this emblem of Hellenism by the priestly leaders of the nation constituted an odious injection of heterodoxy (2 Macc. 4:15). Yet it is noteworthy that Jason’s contemporaries expressed no displeasure. Judah Maccabee took up arms against the abominations of Antiochus IV, not against the Hellenic way of life. Even more striking is the fact that nothing in our evidence, not even in 2 Maccabees, suggests that the gymnasium was ever torn down. If Judah Maccabee’s success in the Jewish ­uprising and in the rededication of the Temple was accompanied by ­destruction of the gymnasium, the author of 2 Maccabees would hardly have missed the opportunity to gloat over it. But he says not a word.

There is no need here to go into the history of Judah Maccabee and the Hasmoneans who followed him. Their adoption of various Hellenic features and elements are well known. The Hasmoneans engaged regularly in diplomatic dealings with Greek kings, adopted Greek names, donned garb and paraded emblems redolent with Hellenic significance, erected monuments, displayed stelae, and minted coinage inspired by Greek models, and even took on royal titulature.⁴ One of them indeed designated himself as “philhellene” (Jos. BJ, 1.70; AJ, 13.301). None was charged with betraying the legacy of the revolt. Embrace of a range of Hellenic customs and institutions was perfectly compatible with maintaining adherence to the traditions of the forefathers.

One can argue, of course, that none of this is relevant to the core of Judaism. Greek coinage, Greek monuments, Greek names, even participation in Greek gymnasial games are merely marginal to what constitutes the central institutions of the people. They simply nibble around the periphery. But where is the center? The essential norms in the period of the Second Temple are not easy to isolate. But one element surely belongs there: embrace of the Torah as the foundational document of the nation, transmission of the word of God. Now, the Torah itself, in some version at least, experienced a monumental shift in this period: its translation into Greek. Exactly how and when this happened is unknown to us, unless one wishes to believe the fanciful tale in the Letter of Aristeas that it was all done in one fell swoop by the 72 sages from Jerusalem at the behest of Ptolemy II in Alexandria in the mid-third century BCE.⁵ Whatever one thinks of that legend, a Greek version or versions at least of the Pentateuch was/were available by the end of the third century, for we have texts that drew on what later took shape as the Septuagint already in the second century BCE. The process occurred surely not because Ptolemy wanted a readable copy of the Hebrew Bible to add to the shelves of the Alexandrian library, but because many Jews in the Diaspora had lost the use of Hebrew. Scriptures in Greek were not only valuable for liturgical purposes but also allowed Jews to maintain a more meaningful connection to their origins.

Did this inject an element of heterodoxy? A rendering into Greek as such would not do so. But might it not encourage tampering with the text, tinkering with traditions, altering the central narrative of the nation’s history? This is no mere idle speculation. Sacred scriptures had powerful impact. One did not meddle with them lightly. For this we have forthright and unequivocal testimony from Josephus. At the outset of his 20-volume work on Jewish antiquities, he asserts that he ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Jewish Antiquity
• Part 2: Jewish Mysticism from the Middle Ages to Modernity
• Part 3: Literature in Jewish Modernity
• Part 4: Modern Jewish Thought
• Index