By Paul E. Nahme

In the past decade, Moses Mendelssohn’s work has been the subject of renewed study and interpretation with growing interest in his philosophical writings, biblical commentary and translation work, as well as his general historical significance for modern Judaism. While many recognize Mendelssohn’s importance, there is however no single systematic and authoritative explanation of his work. Alexander Altmann’s magisterial 1973 biography of Mendelssohn is perhaps the closest to an exception of this characterization, but it nevertheless distills Mendelssohn’s life through the lens of a biographical rather than a systematic narrative. Instead, many contemporary explanations for Mendelssohn’s continued relevance range from focus upon his political writings and his attempt to reconcile liberalism and Jewish tradition, to his epistemological and theological sincerity, his significance as an interlocutor of the philosophies of Leibniz and Kant, to historical studies of his involvement in polemics with Johann Kasper Lavater and Johann David Michaelis, and perhaps most importantly for the history of nineteenth-century German philosophy, his debate with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi concerning the role of Spinozism and Pantheism in the thought of their mutual friend Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Each of these approaches reveals something deeper at work in Mendelssohn’s general philosophical motivations, a motivation perhaps impossible to fully reveal.

The work under review, Michah Gottlieb’s Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn’s Theologico-Political Thought, stands out as an attempt at both representing Mendelssohn’s thought in systematic terms and at reconciling these competing spheres of politics and metaphysics. Indeed, Gottlieb combines stellar intellectual history and precise philosophical exegesis to probe one possible motivation tying together Mendelssohn’s many voices. Gottlieb focuses upon what I believe to be one of the most relevant consequences of Mendelssohn’s thought for modern Judaism: the theologico-political predicament. While the term evokes images of Weimar-era debate, the theologico-political predicament, as Gottlieb rightly treats of it, comprises the epistemological and metaphysical debates surrounding rationality, freedom, human action, and the orientation of human knowledge. Gottlieb situates these philosophical arguments within the context of a political philosophy of Enlightenment rationalism, and uses this larger concern with the theologico-political in order to stake out a position between two dominant interpretations of Mendelssohn. On the one hand, Allan Arkush has argued that many of Mendelssohn’s arguments attempting to present an epistemological and metaphysical defense of traditionalist Jewish theology are either problematic or fail outright and that a more accurate understanding of Mendelssohn may be found in interpreting him as a covert deist who believes Judaism is a the more compelling framework for this deeper argument. On the other hand, David Sorkin has argued that Mendelssohn synthesizes Enlightenment rationalism and Jewish traditionalism on the model of “Andalusian rationalism” and that complete harmony between rationalism and Jewish traditionalism is indeed his goal. According to Gottlieb, a more accurate interpretation is that Mendelssohn should be read as a theologian and that he “does what all theologians do; namely, he adopts a selective attitude toward the Jewish tradition, drawing on sources that reflect his deep-seated commitments and ignoring or marginalizing contrary perspective” (9). Considering the sources of influence for Mendelssohn that Gottlieb addresses most explicitly, namely, Maimonides and Spinoza, it is a compelling argument. And all this is in addition to the book’s greatest contribution: a focus upon the Pantheism controversy between Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Mendelssohn as the fundamental site of the latter’s theologico-political arguments, where Gottlieb stakes out a new direction for the study of Mendelssohn.

Gottlieb begins by placing Mendelssohn in direct confrontation with Spinoza and Maimonides (chapter 1 and 2), his two greatest Jewish philosophical influences. Through a careful interpretation of how Maimonides’ rationalization of God’s negative attributes drove a wedge between divine providence and natural necessity, which was exploited by Spinoza, Gottlieb shows how one of Mendelssohn’s fundamental claims is that the Bible has a basic insight into the idea of God’s goodness and that Mendelssohn’s attempt is to philosophically justify such a view (10, 20), not only as a theological or metaphysical concept but also as a political one. Through Gottlieb’s discussion of the debates of early modern philosophy, from the occasionalism of Malebranche to the doctrine of pre-established harmony of Leibniz, two theories relating mind and body or nature and reason, he conveys this historical context back to Mendelssohn’s original attempts in his Philosophical Dialogues at understanding the meaning of “God’s goodness” in terms of “happiness,” since “an omnipotent, all-good God seeks our happiness and the development of our faculties” (21). The very idea of Providence, therefore, has a practical importance. But just what significance the idea of God has for politics remains to be explored within the context of law. And since Maimonides and Spinoza fundamentally differ upon just this point of contact between metaphysics and politics in the law, Gottlieb’s second chapter furthers this line of reasoning.

In chapter 2, Gottlieb examines both Spinoza and Maimonides’ attempts to relate knowledge and practice within the sphere of law. Gottlieb provides a thorough treatment of Spinoza and Maimonides not only in the manner that Mendelssohn interpreted them, but also through carefully reconstructing these thinkers in their own philosophical terms and contexts. Here Gottlieb’s responsible work as an intellectual historian is tightly woven into his skilled exegesis. But after such a review of Spinoza and Maimonides, Gottlieb’s achievement also lies in showing how Mendelssohn’s adaptation of these various influences conditions his position in the Pantheism controversy and his stance on Enlightened Absolutist politics. For example, whereas Maimonides clearly believed that the law was a vehicle for perfection of the intellect, Spinoza famously derided the law as just the hindrance to perfect human imagination and intellect. For Gottlieb, one of Mendelssohn’s major concerns in interpreting these thinkers lies not in refuting either precursor, but in synthesizing their philosophical positions according to the demands of his own political context. Hence, Gottlieb maneuvers from philosophical precision to unpacking the historical context of Frederick the Great’s Enlightened Absolutism to shore up one particularly important theme in Mendelssohn’s work; namely, that an aesthetic dimension of perfection relegates the hierarchical ordering of either Maimonidean or Spinozan theories of human perfection, and focuses more squarely on a “humanistic” element (44). Indeed, Mendelssohn’s doctrine of common sense is interpreted by Gottlieb as another attempt at reconciling Biblical insight into the Good with rational perfection, whereby even the indistinct, intuitive common judgments which all people make of aesthetic and even religious beliefs can nevertheless enable the non-philosopher to grasp both ethical and metaphysical truths. Common sense becomes “a way of perfecting one’s intellect that is available to all” (45). But this expanded meaning of rationalism also enables Gottlieb to view common sense as the vehicle for his unique argument concerning Mendelssohn’s theologico-political contribution, and by framing the argument in theses terms, he can advance a middle position between the interpretations Arkush and Sorkin. Since the laws derived from the Bible indicate that goodness and human flourishing are the proper goals of duty, and common sense can judge happiness and flourishing as a goal, practice rather than dogma can constitute the basis of perfection. Only after having proper actions can one attain proper metaphysical beliefs, hence, the enduring significance of the halakha (54). While this seems a compelling interpretation of Mendelssohn, one remaining point of clarity could be made concerning whether this was not equally the view of Maimonides as well, although Gottlieb certainly accounts for the scholarship informing his preferred presentation of Maimonides as an Aristotelian. Nevertheless, with a view toward the practical consequences of metaphysical and epistemological arguments and beliefs, Gottlieb is able to introduce the pre-modern Jewish philosophical dimension of Mendelssohn’s thought into his discussion of the Pantheism controversy, a unique scholarly contribution in its own right.

In 1785 Mendelssohn was embroiled in a public debate concerning Spinoza’s philosophy with the pietist Christian philosopher, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Known as the Pantheismusstreit, this debate centered on whether their mutual friend, the famous German playwright G.E. Lessing, had professed a secret commitment to “Spinozism.” Briefly put, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the problem of determinism in relation to human freedom in Spinoza’s thought had been designated as antithetical to Theism, and of course to Orthodox Christian theology. Thus, the claim of “Spinozism” was often taken as libelous. Yet the debate between Jacobi and Mendelsson had a lasting influence on the following century, becoming a question of how to ground all human knowledge in a first coherent and immanent principle while securing human autonomous reason. Hence, the unique blend of medieval and early modern thought, which many scholars have noted in Spinoza’s philosophy, as well as the symbolic representative of a Sephardic or Spanish Philosophical tradition, was insinuated into eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German Philosophy, and in this respect, Gottlieb has precisely characterized a hidden dimension of Jewish thought within modern German Philosophy.

Chapters 3 and 4 therefore translate the arguments concerning Mendelssohn’s intellectual formation into a deeper understanding of the Pantheismusstreit, understood as a leading example of how these metaphysical and epistemological arguments bear upon the political sphere. Indeed, it is through the careful navigation of seemingly unrelated problems in the previous two chapters that Gottlieb now ties together what I believe is a unique argument concerning the political stakes of this controversy. After surveying the historical dimensions of both Mendelssohn’s and Jacobi’s relationships with Lessing and their various conversations, Gottlieb presents Mendelssohn’s proposal that Lessing held a “modified Spinozism” as an argument attempting to reconcile political rationalism and freedom with enlightened religious conviction. By breaking down Mendelssohn’s arguments against Spinoza more systematically, Gottlieb is able to better represent what he sees as Mendelssohn’s political attack on Jacobi. The major thrust of this argument against Jacobi hinges upon Mendelssohn’s identification of a difference between two types of truth, infinite and finite. While infinite truth is the agreement between all particulars or things as they actually exist, and the mind, finite truth is a consensus reached between finite subjects concerning “certain” and “probable” truths, which is to say, between sense impressions or aesthetic judgments, which are probably true, and mathematical axioms which might be certain but are not “actually” found in existence. In either instance, however, finite truth must be ratified as shared or common representations, which other human beings also hold. As part of his attack on Jacobi, Mendelssohn’s distinction between these kinds of truth enables him to defend the principle of sufficient reason against Jacobi’s charge of determinism and rather enables him to explain how uncertain knowledge need not be reduced to the principle of sufficient reason, since according to Mendelssohn the latter is deducible from the principle of non-contradiction. Hence, the principle of non-contradiction becomes the keystone of reason, and even socially held, finite truths can be oriented better on the basis of this principle.

But even further, Mendelssohn’s attack on Jacobi also involves reinterpreting Spinoza, and this is part of Gottlieb’s nuanced contribution to study of the Pantheism controversy. For example, in addition to his rendering of finite and infinite truths as a means to defending the principle of sufficient reason against Jacobi’s reductive interpretation, Mendelssohn also sees the distinction between intensive and extensive magnitudes as a means of rescuing arguments on behalf of providential theism. While the distinction between magnitudes enables Mendelssohn to rescue Lessing’s affirmation of the cosmos comprising an infinite number of causes, this infinite causal series is not the same as the intensive, infinite force of a magnitude that could be identified with God, the creator. Rather, the intensive infinite and the extensive infinite must be distinguished, according to Mendelssohn, in order to retain the freedom, particularity, and individuality of each human being, which we intuit through our faculty of common sense (97ff). While this example is just one of a set of four arguments that Gottlieb outlines in his characterization of Mendelssohn’s position, I believe it is an acute demonstration of the richness of his study of Spinoza’s impact on Mendelssohn.

By contrast to Mendelssohn’s attempt to critically renegotiate with Spinoza’s philosophy, Jacobi argued that Spinozism sees the primary distinction of thought and extension as an attempt at construing the infinite both analytically and synthetically. Hence, God is both intensive and extensive, natura naturans and natura naturrata. But while Gottlieb weaves these considerations into a larger argument, I believe he builds a case wherein this distinction between intensive and extensive becomes part and parcel of Mendelssohn’s later discussions of infinite and finite truth. This argument concerning two types of truth follows the assumption that infinite truth could only remain the property of God, while finite truth, divided into certainty and probability, relates to shared representations of the world around which human beings, qua finite agents, orient themselves (91). In my view, this distinction is one of Gottlieb’s most compelling reconstructions of Mendelssohn’s thought for future study, and is sustained through Mendelssohn’s defense of Lessing, primarily his Natan der Wise.

The distinction between infinite and finite truth also leads to what is yet another example of Gottlieb’s reading of Mendelssohn as having contemporary significance, namely, that we should understand Mendelssohn as a “religious pragmatic idealist” (ibid.; 116), a position that endorses a metaphysical claim based upon the degree to which such a claim can advance our goal of happiness, the good, and general human flourishing, rather than its ontological and metaphysical certainty. Indeed, the defense of uncertain beliefs, including common sense, helps articulate this “pragmatic” appellation of Gottlieb’s Mendelssohn.  And while I believe Gottlieb has presented us with sufficient material to corroborate such a claim and reconstruction of Mendelssohn’s thought, I want to conclude with a brief consideration as to why I think this latter claim falls short of its full potential.

Short of a brief consideration of this dual-layered theory of truth, Gottlieb does not present a full account of what could have been his most acute argument on behalf of this “pragmatic religious idealism.” If Gottlieb’s argument is correct, then Mendelssohn becomes a prime example of where Jewish thought can be mined in its normative dimensions. For example, since finite truth requires a social agreement concerning meanings, symbols, and truths, this “sociality of reason” enables human beings to interpret their world in communicative agreement, without imposing mutually exclusive religious dogmas upon each other. Without requiring commitment to wholly unknowable truth, as Jacobi’s mysticism would have it, and likewise without submitting to the kind of despotic political organization that Jacobi defended, Mendelssohn’s theory of rational religion (Verunftreligion) could be recovered as a kind of social semiotics or a theory of representation that helps explain the religious pluralism of the post-secular world, while seeking a normative basis for politics beyond parochial commitments.

Indeed, Gottlieb makes gestures at what this might look like in his conclusion, but only in terms of a promissory note. I believe that the epistemological and metaphysical arguments presented in Faith and Freedom lay the foundation and beckon further study of what this pragmatic religious idealism might look like in just as rigorous of a philosophical presentation as Gottlieb achieves in his exposition of Mendelssohn. For example, would Mendelssohn’s argument concerning infinite and finite truth bear criticism from the realm of normative interpretations of Hegel, such as those of Terry Pinkard, Robert Pippin, and Robert Brandom? Would the dialectical self-reflection on our social institutions of knowledge find room in Mendelssohn’s account?

Similarly, we could approach this question from a perspective that has come to the fore in recent scholarship in Jewish thought, namely, the role of Protestantism in the development of an actual category of “religion” within the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, this added insight might shed light on how Mendelssohn might have had an additional concern with reinterpreting Maimonides and Spinoza through the lens of a “religious pragmatic idealism”, since this interpretation would allay any potential reductions of Judaism to Spinozism. That the latter may be a concern is suggested by Mendelssohn’s weariness of misconstrued presentations of Spinoza, to which he gestures in naming Lavater and Jacobi in a “common plot” against him (76); namely, a philosophical campaign of anti-Judaism. An additional chapter exploring these ramifications of Gottlieb’s erudite interpretation of Mendelssohn would be a welcomed addition, and regardless, should become an avenue of further research based upon Gottlieb’s groundwork.

While it remains to be seen how the full extent of Mendelssohn’s thought can be recovered in a larger philosophical and even political context, the significance of the contribution in Faith and Freedom is that a clear path for such work can now be historically contextualized and charted. We find in it a welcome and, I believe, accurate assessment of what has been a forgotten dimension of the Pantheism controversy. While Gottlieb acknowledges the Weimar-era fascination with the controversy in service of larger socio-political arguments, wherein Leo Strauss counts as quite prominent, the emphasis of Faith and Freedom upon careful intellectual history, philosophical exegesis, and balanced assessments of medieval and early modern philosophical contexts makes Gottlieb’s work a new milestone in Mendelssohn scholarship and should become required reading for all students of Modern German-Jewish thought.

By Lynn Kaye

Assistant Professor of Rabbinics

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

Sergey Dolgopolski’s The Open Past: Subjectivity and Remembering in the Talmud offers a sustained philosophical description and critique of modern critical Talmud scholarship. It is an ambitious and challenging piece of work. Because he presents a description of the methods of modern critical Talmud scholarship (especially as they address the Talmud’s redaction) in light of theoretical models as disparate as Greek philosophy , Heidegger and modern filmmaking, there is a lot happening in the book. Dolgopolski offers the language, themes and texts of contemporary critical theory as portals through which to grasp the distinctiveness of Talmudic thinking and presentation of material. This approach is refreshing, but might also be challenging for readers who have less philosophical background.

The book is especially intriguing to me since Dolgopolski’s discussion of memory involves an approach to Talmudic temporality, the subject of my doctoral dissertation. According to Dolgopolski, memory is the primary conduit for thinking in the Talmud. Its associative connections evoke film montage, a metaphor he uses to describe the temporality of Talmudic redaction. “The time line of the Talmudic montage is in no way a time of linear progression from one point of presence to the next, not even in the sense of going from a present in the past to what ‘now’ stands for as the present in the present…Hiddush or invention, the intellectual event of the Talmud is the discovery of something that has always been there, but that does not belong to any present whatsoever” (244). Memory’s rupture of conventional temporal structures mirrors Dolgopolski’s methodology in the book. Talmudic practice is compared with classical and contemporary philosophical understandings of memory, thinking and who thinks, as a corrective to the prevailing historical Talmudic scholarship.

Critical Talmudic scholarship has centered on the way the Talmud came to be. When were traditions gathered, and by whom? Was this done gradually, with a center of preserved material growing layer by layer, or did formal compilation occur mostly later? What is the source of the anonymous debates and discussions that weave together sayings attributed to Amoraim in Palestine and Babylon? Why are they anonymous while the originators of other material are cited by name? Dolgopolski examines the philosophical assumptions underlying theories about the identity and functions of Talmudic editors, focusing primarily on the work of David Weiss Halivni and Shamma Friedman.

These scholars have observed textual phenomena and sought to project a history of how these phenomena came to be, while Dolgopolski seeks to reframe the project. “The question … should be asked differently, in terms of what Talmud those functions produce, not only and not primarily in terms of the historical chronology in which this production took place” (246).

His book explores notions of authorship in the Talmud and the mode of being or existence suggested by the role of remembering. Dolgopolski seeks to untangle assumptions about the personhood of the thinker and its relation to thought and memory. He highlights “the inapplicability of the modern concept of ‘thinking subject’ to the period of late antiquity”(3). In his view, intellectual practices in the Talmud do not logically presume an empirical author or thinker either standing outside the production, or even within it. “Understanding memory in the Talmud involves the question of personal being as such, or a performed existence…the remembering being who is performed in the Talmud” (40). What makes the Talmud’s understanding of memory, thought and subjectivity distinct from other classical and modern traditions is that, “in the Talmud, an individual…exists first of all as one who remembers the traditions…of the past…His or her remembering may include and in many cases requires the critical analysis of the data of memory but thinking remains an added feature, and remembering stands at the core of what it takes to exist as a talmid hakham” (42). In other words, remembering is the primary mode of intellectual engagement, critical analysis is a secondary tool, and these processes constitute the existence of the individual.

Dolgopolski frequently includes references to modern literature to illustrate his points, such as the figures of Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens in his discussion of authorship. In the course of the book he retraces the classic critical Talmudic questions, formulating them in fresh terms, couched within ideas from both the analytic and the phenomenological philosophical traditions. In this way, the book makes the intellectual categories and processes of Talmud accessible to scholars of the humanities, especially of literature and critical theory. For Talmudists, the book is an unusual critical companion to the discipline, not only to the Talmud. In a way, this book is like certain works of Jewish historiography such as Y.H. Yerushalmi’s Zakhor, which simultaneously describe, contribute to and question the assumptions and practices of a discipline. In this book, Talmud scholars have something like literary criticism of their own discipline, as well as a new way to look at the Talmud itself.

Jurisprudence is generally thought to consist of two main classical rival branches — natural law and legal positivism — followed by a bunch of modern schools — legal realism, law and economics, critical theory, legal pragmatism, etc. In this essay I argue that three main branches of jurisprudence have existed, and battled, for centuries, not two, but the third goes unrecognized as such because it has traveled under different labels and the underlying connections have been clouded by various confusions. The core insights and focus of this third branch, what I call “Social Legal Theory,” trace in a continuous thread from Montesquieu, through historical jurisprudence, sociological jurisprudence, and legal realism, up to the present. This third branch, I argue, provides a contrasting/complementary perspective, in conjunction with natural law and legal positivism, which rounds out the full range of theoretical angles on law: natural law is normative; legal positivism is analytical/conceptual; and social legal theory is empirical. (Among a number of clarifications, I answer the common objection that empirically-grounded theories are not sufficiently theoretical.) The conventional jurisprudential narrative is redrawn in this essay in a way that exposes unseen connections among theoretical schools and brings into focus critical issues about the nature of law that currently are marginalized by natural law and legal positivism.

 

In his book Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times, Jacob Katz outlined Ashkenazi rabbinic attitudes and conduct toward Christians from the time of Rabbeinu Gershom Me’or Ha-Golah until and including Moses Mendelssohn.¹ In this article, we will try to fill in the gaps that we believe exist in Katz’s treatment of the subject.

As a rule, the Jews in the Middle Ages related to the Christians on the theoretical level as idolaters, while they were forced on the practical level to adopt a more moderate attitude toward the Christians for economic reasons.² The generalization of viewing Christianity as an idolatrous religion went through a process of qualification within the context of the practical needs of the Jewish community during the Middle Ages, such as the permissibility of transacting business with Christians on their holy days. These qualifications were based on the position of Rav Yochanan that “Gentiles in the Diaspora are not actually idolaters, but merely maintain the practices of their ancestors”, or as alternatively formulated by Rashi and other halachic authorities in the Middle Ages: “Gentiles in our times are not well versed in the nature of idolatry.”³ Another qualification voiced by the Tosafists, and reiterated in the 17th and 18th centuries, indicated that “The sons of Noah are not prohibited regarding ‘shittuf’ (i.e., belief in the Trinity).” In other words, only the Jews are required to believe in absolute monotheism, in contrast to others, such as the Christians, whose belief in the Trinity does not constitute a violation of the prohibition of idolatry.⁴ These qualifications, which already appeared in rabbinic literature in the Middle Ages, did not flow from a principled approach but were designed to create leniencies in matters of business relationships with idolaters that were forbidden to Jews by Talmudic law, and that were untenable for the conditions within which the Jews lived in the Middle Ages as a minority group within a Christian majority.

By Shalom Holtz

sholtz@yu.edu

The volume under review brings together eighteen articles, all but one of which originate at a conference held in Marburg in September, 2009.  As the title indicates, most of the articles pertain to biblical literature (Jewish and Christian): six articles treat the Hebrew Bible, three address the Apocrypha, and four focus on Luke-Acts.  The remaining five articles address extra-biblical Jewish or non-Jewish sources: two articles on classical Greco-Roman literature, and one each on Neo-Babylonian legal documents, the Babatha archive from the Judean desert, and rabbinic legal narratives.  Overall, then, the volume offers a culturally and historically broad inquiry into various questions pertaining to the main topic of “law and narrative.”

One can characterize this volume’s overarching theoretical agenda as an investigation of the implications of the “and” that joins “law” and “narrative” in the title.  In one way or another, all of the essays in the book address this subject. Many take up the question based on texts that are best classified as “narratives.” The editors remark in their preface:

[R]eferences to legal norms in literary texts are most tangible when in the background of a narrative an institutional legal system is operative by which the demeanour and concerns of the acting persons are directly shaped. (p. vi)

From this perspective, the “and” juxtaposes two separate entities; “law”– legal norms known from stories themselves or otherwise– stands in the background of the “narrative.” Western literature provides numerous examples of this kind of relationship, in which fictional narratives are anchored in legal situations and institutions.   A number of contributions in this volume expose some of the earliest examples of rooting narrative in law.  Rachel Magdalene shows how the Book of Job uses trial law to create a fictional, yet plausible, legal narrative.  Similarly, Beate Ego explores the Book of Tobit in light of laws in the Torah and other Jewish practices, and Cana Werman reads two episodes in the Book of Jubilees in light of developments in rabbinic halakha.

If, as in the examples just enumerated, the law informs the narrative explicitly, at times, pursuing a narrative’s background in the law exposes a more dynamic relationship hiding behind the “and” in “law and narrative.” Nili Wazana reads the narratives of the impalement of the Canaanite kings (Joshua 8:29, 10:16-27) together with Deuteronomy’s legislation on the treatment of the impaled corpse (Deuteronomy 21:22-23), but notes that the narratives make no explicit connection to the law.  According to her, law and narrative both react against a third element (again unnamed in the Bible):  unabashedly violent Assyrian warfare practice and propaganda.  Instead of a law-based narrative, or a narrative in service of a law, Wazana argues that each genre, independently, makes a similar ethical statement about the humane treatment of the dead.

The “and” between “law” and “narrative” need not, however, privilege narrative and relegate law to serving as background.  Instead, narratives can serve legal and broader moral-ethical purposes by shaping their audiences’ attitudes.  Douglas Hume applies ideas from Adam Zachary Newton’s Narrative Ethics to probe exactly how the descriptions of the early Christian community in Acts 2:41-47 and 4:32-35 served (and may still serve) as examples for believing readers.  Non-Christians might balk at Hume’s quest for “how contemporary readers may see their moral imaginations evoked and shaped by these passages” (p. 329; see pp. 342-345). Nevertheless, Hume’s historical insights and close readings, which occupy most of his article, merit the attention of anyone interested in understanding early Christianity and its literature.

Klaus-Peter Adam takes a comparable approach to the Hebrew story of David and Saul in 1 Samuel 26.  According to him, the very purpose of this narrative is, in fact, to teach the law.  Thus, Adam reads the story of David and Saul as a “didactic case narrative,” comparable to later rabbinic haggada, designed to promote “discursive public dispute settlement when private enmity could potentially have resulted in homicide” (p. 118).  Adam’s argument stands on firmest ground when he invokes inner-biblical evidence to buttress his legal readings (see pp. 112-116).  Less convincing (although not critical to his overall point) is the suggestion, based on superficial comparisons with the ancient Greek drama Rhesus and with the Iliad, that “the authors of Samuel were familiar with some form of the Greek [espionage] plot” which they adapted to compose the biblical story (pp. 109-110).

By interpreting law as narratives’ goal, studies like those of Hume and Adam reverse the usual implications of the “and” between law and narrative.  However, any assertion of a narrative’s purpose, be that purpose legal or otherwise, requires an argument to support it.  This volume demonstrates the very need for and value of argument because it includes two articles with nearly conflicting views of the same text: the Apostolic Decree in Acts 15.  Eyal Regev interprets the decree as legislation of sorts, whose four main requirements (renouncing idolatry, fornication, eating strangled animals and eating blood) break open a legal path towards widespread conversion of pagan Gentiles by conferring legal status upon practices already customary among early “God fearers.” Friedrich Avemarie, in contrast, argues that, from the narrative’s perspective, “the focus of Luke’s interest in the decree lies neither in the moral betterment of Gentile converts nor, for that matter, on the traditional observances of Jewish Christians” (p. 389). Accordingly, the decree (if one can even call it that) is more a literary device than legislation.

If, indeed, law can be narrative’s purpose, then one must also ask, more broadly: Can narrative inform our understanding of law? Historians of ancient law regularly grapple with this problem when, because of an absence of legislation, they must rely on non-legislative sources to reconstruct legal institutions.  Joachim Hengstl’s contribution to the volume is a fine theoretical investigation of the subject as it pertains to the Torah, where law and narrative are thoroughly intertwined.  The questions Hengstl raises, especially those regarding the origins and purpose of this inter-generic combination, are as relevant to the Talmudic and later Rabbinic legal corpora as they are to the Torah.  Therefore, Hengstl’s article is a “must read” for anyone studying Jewish law.

For most of the articles in this volume, “narrative” exists in a text, which can be compared to more overt “law” or from which one can derive “law.”  Two articles, however, consider the reverse scenario, when one can read “law” but must imagine the “narrative.”  Cornelia Wunsch provides an expert account of how one can tease legal narrative out of Neo-Babylonian court records.   Wunsch’s approach to the Neo-Babylonian texts resembles Tal Ilan’s review of the Babatha archive, specifically Babatha’s litigation against her late husband’s family who refused to meet the terms of her marriage contract. Ilan seeks the reason for the family’s refusal to pay, and finds it in “the killer-wife topos” (p. 266). The idea that Babatha’s husband’s family thought of her as a killer wife may be fanciful and, in the end, impossible to prove from the texts themselves.  Nevertheless, Ilan’s article is valuable for its survey of the killer-wife against “the sort of social-cultural atmosphere . . . and the sort of beliefs, superstitious or otherwise” contemporary with the Babatha archive (p. 265).

Scholars working on any of the particular bodies of literature that the volume addresses will obviously begin by turning to the contributions in their area of specialty. To judge from the articles in this reviewer’s area, specialists will find useful, current studies that advance the field in interesting ways.  To derive the most benefit from the volume, however, specialists must overcome the temptation to remain within the “comfort zone” of their research area.  Doing so will provide them with meaningful cross-cultural and cross-historical perspectives on the relationships between law and narrative.

With contributions from some of the most prominent voices writing on gender, law and religion today, this book illuminates some of the conflicts at the intersection of feminism, theology and law. It examines a range of themes from the viewpoint of identifiable traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, from a theoretical and practical perspective. Among the themes discussed are the cross-over between religious and secular values and assumptions in the search for a just jurisprudence for women, the application of theological insights from religious traditions to legal issues at the core of feminist work, feminist legal readings of scriptural texts on women’s rights and the place that religious law has assigned to women in ecclesiastic life.Feminists of faith face challenges from many sides: patriarchal remnants in their own tradition, dismissal of their faith commitments by secular feminists and balancing the conflicting loyalties of their lives. The book will be essential reading for legal and religious academics and students working in the area of gender and law or law and religion.

Table of contents is as follows:

 Religious and Secular Encounters: A contemporary Catholic theory of complementarity, Elizabeth R. Schiltz;

Deconstructing equality in religion, Cheryl B. Preston;

The catholic Church and women: the divergence between what is said and what is heard, Susan J. Stabile;

What is the matter with Antigone?, Emily Hartigan;

Privatizing diversity: a cautionary tale from religious arbitration in family law, Ayelet Shachar;

From third wave to third generation: feminism, faith, and human rights, M. Christian Green;

A meditation on mahr, modernity and Muslim marriage contract law, Asifa Quraishi-Landes;

Co-creating the family: a Lutheran view of marriage and divorce law, Marie A. Failinger;

With compassion and lovingkindness: one feminist Buddhist’s exploration of feminist domestic violence advocacy, Deborah J. Cantrell;

‘Men are the protectors of women’ negotiating marriage, feminism and (Islamic) law in American Muslim efforts against domestic violence, Juliane Hammer;

Why women are re-interpreting the Qu’ran and re-thinking the Hadith: a transformative scholarship-activism, Nimat Hafez Barazangi;

Modesty disrobed: gendered modesty rules under the monotheistic religions, Frances Raday;

Jewish law: the case of wife-beating, Naomi Graetz;

Competing approaches to rape in Islamic law, Hina Azam;

Catholic women and equality: women in the code of Canon Law, Sara Butler;

Daughters of the Buddha: the Sakyadhita movement, Buddhist law and the position of Buddhist nuns, Rebecca Redwood French;

Chinese women lawyers and judges as priests, Mary Szto.

By Alexandria Frisch

af925@nyu.edu

The recent documentary, “The Gatekeepers,” highlights the dangers of scriptural interpretation that legitimizes violence. Segments of the film focus on Gush Emunim, a group of Israeli settlers who carried out terrorist acts in the 1980s. Upon hearing the destruction caused by car bombs, one of the group’s founders, Rabbi Haim Drukman, is reported to have exclaimed, “Thus may all Israel’s enemies perish!”—an allusion to the Song of Deborah (Judg 5:31). Thus, a poetic declaration of tribal victory from 3,000 years ago has been reread to justify a modern act of terrorism. It is incidents such as this (indeed, Gush Emunim is referenced on p. 46) that have inspired the collection of articles in Fighting Words: Religion, Violence, and the Interpretation of Sacred Texts.

The scholars who have contributed to this volume have undertaken to “explore the connection, both actual and perceived, between sacred sources and the justification of violent acts” (2). The book is divided into eight chapters, each focused on a different religious tradition: Jewish, Christian (Christianity is treated twice in relation to the Old and New Testaments), Islamic, Baha’i, Zoroastrian, Hindu, and Sikh. The introduction provides a succinct overview of each faith and its main texts, making the book a good introduction to both world religions and scriptural interpretation.

Rather than treat each of these chapters (and, thus, traditions) separately, I would like to put them into conversation with one another by grouping them based on the reading strategies that they highlight. As stated in the introduction, each scholar pays attention to “the virtually universal phenomenon of variant methods of interpreting sacred texts that sanction, mandate, or explicitly rule out violent means” (2). It is around these three interpretive modes—sanctioning, mandating, and ruling out—that I wish to cluster the various religious traditions.

In “Violence in the New Testament and the History of Interpretation,” Leo Lefebure focuses on New Testament descriptions of violence, which mostly depict intra-Jewish conflicts such as those between Jesus and the Pharisees. Lefebure then shows how, in the hands of later Church Fathers, these accounts were taken out of their original, historical contexts and made universally applicable, so that “later generations of Christians often saw virtually all Jews throughout the ages as rejecting God and God’s messengers” (87). Therefore, violence against Jews was often sanctioned, perhaps most prominently in the Crusades. Michael Sells points to a similar phenomenon in “Finhās of Medina: Islam, ‘The Jews,’ and the Construction of Militancy.” For instance, the Quran cites disputes between Mohammed and a Jew, Finhās, and his companions who blasphemed God and as a result are cursed. Yet, Sells underscores how, similar to early Christian polemicists (whom he cites on p. 104), various modern, Islamic interpreters have universalized these particular references, so that Finhās’ curse means that all Jews are accursed. It is this exegetical maneuver that has served as the basis for sanctioning violence against Jews (and Israel). Sells concludes with a warning that is also applicable to Lefebure’s essay: by ignoring the original “frame of reference” (p. 126) of group names, interpreters of religious texts can create “pastiches of terror, by dismembering the sacred texts of their own tradition or of the traditions of others, then stitching together selected pieces, without the historical, rhetorical, and theological tissues of the original” (p. 127).

The two essays that focus on the mandating of violence include Reuven Firestone’s “A Brief History of War in the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish Interpretive Tradition” and Bernhard Asen’s “Annihilate Amalek! Christian Perspectives on 1 Samuel 15.” Not coincidentally, both focus on passages in the Hebrew Bible in which war is divinely commanded. For example, in 1 Sam 15:3, the prophet Samuel instructs Saul to “utterly destroy” the Amalekites. When Saul fails to do so, he is punished. In response to “texts of terror” such as this (p. 56), Asen advocates a perspective similar to Sells’, namely, modern readers must keep in mind the past, historical context of these passages and “cease looking for Amalekites” (p. 70) in the world around them. Firestone similarly softens the mandated violence of the Bible. He identifies a teleological assumption inherent in the biblical text—if Israel obeyed God they would be victorious in wars, but, if they disobeyed, then they would suffer defeat—and then demonstrates how early rabbis used this assumption to exegetically do away with divine war. After a series of military losses at the hands of the Romans, the rabbis came to the conclusion that these defeats were a sign of Jewish disobedience and, more particularly, an indication that their leaders had lost the ability to discern God’s commands. Divinely mandated war was no longer an option until 1967, when the seemingly miraculous victory of the Six-Day War led some Jews to revive the notion that God supported war. For these Jews, therefore, holy war was once again possible and even mandated.

Thus, we can see in the case of the rabbis that scripturally mandated warfare did not always necessitate actual warfare. This is true of Zoroastrianism as presented in the article by Jamsheed Choksy, “Justifiable Force and Holy War in Zoroastrianism.” With a dualistic concept of evil, followers of this faith are commanded to use physical force to combat evil in the world. Yet, at the same time, evil is also understood spiritually and can be battled through good deeds. A similar tension exists in the Sikh faith, though, it is not based on dualism, but rather competing textual traditions. In “Words as Weapons: Theory and Practice of a Righteous War (Dharam Yudh) in Sikh Texts,” Pashuara Sing explores the differences between gurus who commanded retaliation against those that persecuted them and gurus who focused on internal spiritual struggles.

The concept of spiritual warfare is echoed in the remaining essays that focus on the ruling out of violence. Todd Lawson’s “The Baha’i Tradition: The Return of Joseph and The Peaceable Imagination” emphasizes how non-violence is an inherent part of the Baha’i revelation, which is largely a reinterpretation of Islam. This revelation has abolished the violent aspect of jihad and replaced it with a concept of jihad as an inner struggle to attain good. Similarly, Laurie Patton, in “The Failure of Allegory: Notes on Textual Violence and the Bhagavad Gita,” draws attention to the ways in which accounts of warfare in a Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, are reread allegorically as spiritual quests to achieve harmony. Despite its non-violent outcome, Patton criticizes allegorical readings for reducing a text’s plurality of meaning to a signal meaning. In turn, she offers an alternative reading practice based on Indian poetics that preserves plural meanings.

It is suggestions like Patton’s that ultimately most differentiate the chapters from one another. Some of the scholars—Patton, Asen, Sells—offer new interpretive strategies that they hope will better serve the texts and the people reading them. In this they follow the corrective set out by the editor John Renard, who, in his introduction, argues that when viewing another religious tradition “it is never fair to assume that another tradition condones [violence],” nor is it fair to “interpret their scripture as only the extremists among them would” (p. 26). In contrast, the chapters by Firestone, Lefebure, Lawson, Choksy, and Singh read as surveys of past and current interpretive modes without suggestions for new exegetical strategies. These two approaches do make the overall objective of this book somewhat unclear. Ultimately though, for any reader—those who want an academic study of religions and those who want forward-looking answers to interpretive dilemmas—this book serves to demonstrate the profound link between religious violence and religious interpretation.

The Association for the Philosophy of Judaism invites you to take part in an online symposium about Yitzhak Melamed’s paper, “Salomon Maimon and the Failure of Modern Jewish Philosophy”, which will take place April 7-13. The symposium will be led by Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins University), Michah Gottlieb (New York University), and Abraham Socher (Oberlin College).

Melamed’s paper advances a provocative thesis both about Modern Jewish Philosophy and about the relationship between Jewish Philosophy on the one hand, and Tanakh and Talmud on the other.  Please join us for what promises be a lively conversation!  The symposium will take place at the APJ’s blog, here: http://www.theapj.com/blog/.