Nicholas de Lange, “Reflections on Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity,” in Raanan S. Boustan, et al., eds., Envisioning Judaism: Studies in honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, vol. 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 167–182 (original) (raw)
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Jews Judaeans Judaizing Judaism Problems of Categorization in Ancient History
Th e very title of this journal reflects a commonplace in scholarly discourse. We want to understand "Judaism" in the Persian and Graeco-Roman periods: the lives and religion of ancient Jews. Some scholars in recent years have asked whether Ioudaioi and its counterparts in other ancient languages are better rendered "Jews" or "Judaeans" in English. Th is essay puts that question in a larger frame, by considering first Ioudaismos and then the larger problem of ancient religion. It argues that there was no category of "Judaism" in the Graeco-Roman world, no "religion" too, and that the Ioudaioi were understood until late antiquity as an ethnic group comparable to other ethnic groups, with their distinctive laws, traditions, customs, and God. Th ey were indeed Judaeans.
It is crucial to distinguish between the era of sacrificial cults in antiquity and the world of monotheistic religions. In ancient empires, cults primarily served as a political tool to create a common denominator to consolidate the ruler's power and unify different populations through shared customs and uniform symbols. Meanwhile, popular beliefs held a more prominent place in the daily life of the people. Therefore, it is imperative to separate official priestly worship from popular beliefs. This study focuses on Jews rather than Judaism. The term "Judaism" is a modern concept that gained theological significance only in the 18th century within the study of religions. Rabbinic Judaism, in accordance with its texts, is more concerned with authorized or prohibited actions than with beliefs and opinions. This does not mean that outside of it, there haven't been developments like mystical currents such as Hasidism and Kabbalah or rationalist thinkers like Maimonides, who sought to understand Judaism from different perspectives. Indeed, the Jewish religion emerged long after the era of blood sacrifice worship in temples, but the complexity of this evolution is undeniable. The concept of religion, in the Christian sense, does not precisely apply to the definition of the Jewish entity, especially before modern times and particularly in the 19th century according to Jewish thinkers in Europe. To be precise, the notion of religion was nonexistent in the ancient world. Various categories of "Judaisms" were later born based on the intellectual currents of the time. The analysis of New Testament texts, the Talmud, and their influence on Jewish existence reveals this complexity. These two research domains, rich in often challenging interpretations, have been shaken by innovative research in recent decades. To deepen these studies, the historian is faced with the need to sift through the most relevant topics, a challenging task involving the ability to break free from outdated previous research while considering historical heritage. My study does not aim to provide a comprehensive monograph of Jews or fully trace their history. Instead, it focuses on topics highlighting disagreements with certain old research hypotheses or predominant national narratives. These interpretations could only emerge thanks to the publication of works conducted in recent decades.
"Forming Jewish Identity by Formulating Legislations for Gentiles"
The following paper explores the formulation of universal commandments for non-Jews within the book of Jubilees and compares it with rabbinic traditions that also deal with Gentiles and law observance. The discussion concerning commandments incumbent upon all of humanity in Jubilees betrays a remarkable preoccupation in promoting the observance of particular laws (e.g., Sabbath and circumcision) for Jews alone—universal law becomes a means for highlighting Israel’s special covenantal status. The bitter opposition expressed in Jubilees against Gentiles is best understood as a polemical response to events redefining Jewish-Gentile relations during the second century BCE.
Jew, Judean, Judaism in the Ancient Period: An Alternative Argument
Applying the terms "Jew" and "Judaism" in the ancient period has recently been challenged by a number of scholars. First, the terms translated as Jew and Judaism are rare in the ancient period, and second, it is argued that these terms retroject later understandings of Judaism as a religion back into a period when Israelites and Yehudim/Ioudaioi are rather understood as an ethnic group. "Judeans" is preferable as a designation to "Jews." Two challenges have arisen. Some argue that the ethnic meaning of Yehudim/Ioudaioi changed to a more religious meaning in about 100 B. C. E.. Others insist that "Jew" and "Judaism" have always communicated both an ethnic and religious meaning-and still do-and so to insist on an ethnic-only meaning ("Judeans") in the ancient period is misleading. Here I take up a number of the previous arguments and modify them to form an alternative proposal: Yehudi (feminine Yehudiyah) and related terms arose as assertive, emotive identity terms to reflect a strong affirmation of identity in an international situation. Much as "Quaker" or "American" can be assertive, emotive identity terms relative to the default Society of Friends or United States respectively, so Yehudi/Yehudiyah was used occasionally, then more often, as a strong identity term relative to the default Israel/Israelite. Every twenty years or so, scholars take up each of their most used terms and exclaim, "I can't believe that this term has accumulated so many unexamined accretions." The term is then thrown into the wash on the heavy-duty cycle to wash away the accretions, and when it is taken out again and held up, the term has shrunk, unable to do the work it once did. The goal is a sort of precision and linguistic purity, perhaps an inevitable result of the "linguistic turn" in theory (which, ironically, also includes a critique of the possibility of an objective precision). These terms sometimes bounce back, but sometimes they remain permanently shrunk and reduced in their use. Within Jewish Studies it has recently been argued that "Judean" should be used rather than "Jew" as a translation for Yehudi or Ioudaios, and "Judeans," understood as an ethnic group, rather than "Jews" or "Judaism" as a religion. 1 A correlative challenge is the question of when "Judaism" began, or when "Jew" should be used as the appropriate term for a member of the Jewish "religion." These interrelated questions have 1 See Paula Fredriksen's article, "Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins Whose Time Has Come to Go," Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 35 (2006): 231-46, although it is important to note that she does not suggest retiring "Jew" or "Judaism." The substance of this article was first delivered as the Presidential Address of the New England and Eastern Canada Region of the Society of Biblical Literature, at Andover Newton Theological Seminary, April 24, 2015. I would like to thank those who responded there and others who helped me shape this argument:
Jewishly-Behaving Gentiles and the Emergence of a Jewish Rabbinic Identity
Jewish Studies Quarterly, 2018
In antiquity, Jesus-orientation was not a clear demarcation between Jews and Christians, but an option within the broader Jewish community. This paper discusses the role that Jesus-oriented Jews and Gentiles played for the emergence of a Jewish rabbinic identity. It suggests that the adoption of Jewish practices by Gentile Jesus-followers and the closer social contacts between Jesus-oriented Jews and Jesus-oriented Gentiles led to a blurring of the boundary between Jews and Jewishly-behaving Gentiles within the Jewish community, and that this was one of the factors which contributed to a redefinition of Jewishness in rabbinic terms that identified Jews alone as members of God's covenant and bound by its laws.