Excision as Exorcism

This thesis aims to study the identification of the Matthean Jesus with Wisdom or Sophia, a personified feminine figure. The roots of this identification are traced to the traditions in Judaism as depicted in Proverbs, Job, Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch and 1 Enoch. The early Christians made use of this Wisdom tradition when speculating on the identity and significance of Jesus, and scholars have identified explicit Wisdom Christologies in Paul, Q and John. The thesis has its main focus in the Matthean tradition and demonstrates that Matthew develops a high Christology from his Jewish and Christian sources by portraying Jesus as Wisdom incarnate. This thesis studies Matthew’s Wisdom Christology from the perspective of its Jewish and early Christian contexts. How has Matthew been influenced by these traditions, and how has he developed them? The nature and roles of Wisdom in Judaism differ from text to text. In some she is a distinct pre-existent being, subordinate to and distinct from God, while in others she appears to be an aspect of God and not a distinct entity. In terms of her functions, Wisdom is assigned a variety of roles. She plays a part in the creation of the universe as the assistant of God, mediates between God and humans, plays a salvific role and is identified with the Torah. Wisdom can be described in various ways, including mother, lover and counsellor. In the Judaism of Matthew’s time, Wisdom is only one of many pre-existent beings. Other figures that were thought to pre-exist and await a future revelation include the Messiah and the Son of Man, and these too play an important role in the emergent Christology of the first century. The study of the early Christian texts reveals that the Christians accessed the Jewish Wisdom traditions in different ways. Paul uses the term ‘the Wisdom of God’ for Jesus (1 Cor 1:24; cf. 1:30), but he seems not to use it as a Christological title. The concept of Wisdom as a distinct figure first appears in the Q tradition. In this Sayings Source, Jesus is not identified with Wisdom herself but as her messenger or envoy. The Gospel of John testifies to a further development. John has a clear Wisdom Christology, especially in the Prologue where the pre-existent Jesus is assigned many of Wisdom’s roles. But this author never refers to Jesus as ‘Wisdom’. He prefers the masculine term ‘the Word’. Between the Q and the Johannine traditions comes Matthew, and it is in this Gospel that the early Christian Wisdom Christology is most clearly attested. In distinction to Q, Matthew makes explicit the identification of Jesus with Wisdom herself and, in distinction to John, he has no qualms about using that particular feminine term. For Matthew Jesus is pre-existent Wisdom, subordinate to God and separate from God, who becomes incarnate in the body of a human through a miraculous conception. In portraying Jesus in this way, Matthew adopts many of the attributes and roles of Wisdom in the Jewish tradition, including her role in creation, her close relationship with God, her role as prophet and teacher, her rejection by humans and her identification with the Law. Moreover, in constructing his Wisdom Christology, the evangelist reinterprets and develops some aspects of Wisdom’s traditional roles on the basis of Christian claims about Jesus. Thus in Matthew it is significant that Jesus as Wisdom is a miracle-worker, the definitive interpreter of the Law, dies on the cross to save her people from their sins and will come in the future as the eschatological judge.

Scripture Reconceived

Paul’s interpretation of scripture and the question of its relationship to rabbinic midrash have greatly occupied scholars both of New Testament and of rabbinics. Many previous studies have focused on the relationship between Paul and midrash, and almost all of them have assumed or reified a genealogical connection between these literatures, most often seeking to reconstruct Paul’s Jewish background from tannaitic sources. The present study criticizes and deconstructs this genealogical connection, while arguing that a critique of the genealogical assumption is no reason to abandon the effort to read Qumran, Paul, and the Tannaim together. The introduction explains why studying these literatures comparatively is both compelling and fruitful, and also lays out the methodological constraints on such an inquiry. The comparative approach taken in this study considers Qumran, Paul, and the Tannaim as part of a complex matrix in which scripture was instated as a fundamental source for legal and normative guidance in late antiquity over-against traditions independent of scripture (paradosis). It contributes to our understanding of Paul’s interpretation of scripture, which can be better understood in light of its parallels in tannaitic and Qumranic literature, with all their similarities and differences. The study of midrash also benefits from the comparative approach, which allows us (1) to trace a new history of midrashic exegesis, against existing descriptions that present it as teleologically stemming from Qumran exegesis; (2) to redefine and explain hermeneutic methods shared by these literatures; and (3) to reconsider a common understanding of midrashic hermeneutics as having developed under Alexandrian Hellenistic influence. The present study shows that, at least with regard to allegory, a different Hellenistic trajectory should be preferred. Qumran literature, Paul, and the Tannaim travail to build sacred communities based on a reworking of scriptural constructs, such as “Israel” or the “seed of Abraham.” The goal of Qumran literature is to define and negotiate membership in the yahad, an attempt to redefine the “seed of Israel” as an elite minority within the Jewish ethnos. The redefinition of community is based on eschatological convictions, argued and maintained by the reading of scripture as presented by the Teacher of Righteousness. Tannaitic hermeneutics can also be understood as an exegetical endeavor undertaken with a view to found and maintain a community on the basis of scripture, demarcating on scriptural grounds the true members of the community from those outside it and those on its borders. Paul interprets scripture with view to incorporate gentiles into a community by generating reading practices that allow them to see themselves as being addressed directly by Jewish scriptures and to understand how they must live in order to be included in eschatological redemption. Formulated as such, the comparative approach this study takes allows us to step beyond the misconstrued assumptions of “influence” or “shared heritage” that dominated Paul and midrash studies in the past. Focusing on scriptural hermeneutics as a fundamental facet of community building places two of Paul’s contemporaries—Philo and Josephus (who like Paul claimed a connection to the Pharisees)—on the margins of our study. Josephus does not work to build communities, but rather, mediates Jewish history to his Roman readership. (Josephus presents his motivation to write Antiquities, so as to provide “all of the Greeks” with the possibility to study the history of the Jews, their origins, form of government, laws and customs. Josephus especially notes that the book is meant communicate the antiquities of the Jews to “others”, see Ant. 1.1–9.) Though his rewriting of scripture in the first eleven books of Antiquities could also be studied comparatively with Paul’s interpretation of scripture, his work is of marginal relevance to the current study as he is not driven by the communal motivations central to it. Philo, similarly does not share the communal goals of Qumran, Paul, and the Tannaim, and so his work will be discussed only when immediately pertinent to the matter at hand, most prominently in our study of allegorical interpretations. The present work features three case studies. The first (Chapter 1) undertakes a comprehensive mapping of the midrash-pesher technique (also known as the “pronominal pesher”). It argues that the sectarian sources in the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), Romans 10:5–13, and rabbinic literature have in common this technique, which is unknown to us from other sources. The chapter analyzes the different uses of this exegetical tool, and shows how a common method of interpretation is utilized toward different ends by these different literatures. The study of Romans 10:5–13 brings up another exegetical question: Paul constructs in Romans a contradiction between two passages (Lev 18:5 and Deut 30:12–14) which he ultimately does not resolve. This places Paul outside common exegetical practices in Jewish antiquity that display a thorough commitment to solving scriptural contradictions. Chapter 1 offers a new reading of Romans 3, which like Romans 10, also constructs the difference between righteousness by trust (pistis) and righteousness by deeds as a scriptural difference, and shows it may be used to explain Paul’s choice to leave the contradiction unresolved in Romans 10. The chapter argues that Paul has an idea of scripture as consisting of two nomoi: a nomos of trust (pistis) and a nomos of deeds. These two nomoi coexist in scripture, but they are not without contradictions, which are for Paul a scriptural fact. Paul’s notion of Torah as two Torot is then compared to other notions of double revelation. Only in tannaitic literature do we find the notion of two Torot, and Paul is the first source to mention a similar terminology, though in different form and for a different end. I use Paul’s notion of double-Nomos to reconsider and problematize the history of the terms Oral Torah and Written Torah as current scholarship conceives of it. Chapter 2 also addresses hermeneutic method, and analyzes Paul’s allegory of Hagar/Sarah in Galatians 4. Paul’s allegory has often been presented as the binary opposite of midrash. The chapter presents a close reading of Paul’s exegetical work in Galatians 4, retraces a history of allegory in Jewish antiquity (in both Hebrew and Greek literatures), and finally returns to analyze the homilies of Dorshei Rashumot in tannaitic literature. The analysis shows that the homilies of Dorshei Rashumot—identified in the early twentieth century by Jacob Z. Lauterbach as allegories, a reading that was ultimately rejected by Daniel Boyarin—are indeed midrashic-allegories. Paul’s interpretation in Galatians, which we may call “genealogical allegory,” resembles that of Dorshei Rashumot on several counts and differs significantly from Alexandrian allegories. The chapter concludes that allegory should be thought of not as a hermeneutic in and of itself, but rather as a shift to a new denotation that is established and argued for on the basis of other exegetical arguments or assumptions. Midrash and allegory are thus not binary opposites but exist instead along a continuum. Chapter 3 shifts from hermeneutic method to a consideration of hermeneutic narrative: Paul’s hermeneutics of “unveiling” in 2 Corinthians 3. Paul brings together hermeneutics and eschatology, and claims that reading “in Christ” allows (for the first time) a full and complete understanding of scripture. This he presents through the depiction of the Christ community as (reading) with unveiled faces: “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory” (3:18). The chapter compares Paul’s interpretation of the Veil of Moses (Exodus 34, the main text that Paul interprets in 2 Corinthians 3) with other interpretations of the text in Jewish antiquity. It then considers Paul’s image of “unveiled faces” in the context of a parallel term that appears in tannaitic literature: “revelation of the face” (גילוי פנים). The term occurs several times in tannaitic literature in the context of scriptural interpretation, where it denotes a shameless reading of scripture. The chapter traces a counter-hermeneutics in tannaitic (and perhaps also earlier) sources, promoting a “veiled” reading of the scriptures. The possibility that the Tannaim are directly responding to Paul’s usage in 2 Corinthians 3 is raised, and then complexified. The final chapter presents the conclusions of this study, and synthesizes its implications for our understanding of Pauline hermeneutics as well as tannaitic midrash. It demonstrates the benefits of studying Paul’s letters, Qumran literature, and tannaitic midrash together, despite the lack of literary dependence between them.

Conclusion

Introduction

Book Reviews 159 and lore as well as its rigidity. In doing this he has provided any student ofTanach with rich resources that lead to richer understanding. This is an impressive work. I look forward to the future follow-up texts discussed by the author in his introduction. Samuel M. Edelman Coordinator of Modern Jewish and Israel Studies California State University at Chico The Nations That Knew Thee Not: Ancient Jewish Attitudes Toward Other Religions, by Robert Goldenberg. New York: New York University Press, 1998. 214 pp. $37.50. This book addresses the question, "What did ancient Jews think of other religions?" One would assume that ancient religions were uniformly seen by classical Jews as illegitimate world views that should be eradicated from the face ofthe earth at the first possible opportunity. Robert Goldenberg demonstrates well that Jewish attitudes were more complex and variegated, and are ultimately impossible to reduce to one simple formula. Goldenberg walks his readers through a rich variety of ancient Jewish texts from the Bible and the Apocrypha to Hellenistic texts and rabbinic literature dealing with polytheistic religion(s). Alongside the standard, well-known negative approaches are some striking examples of tolerance. For example, a number of Hellenistic Jews, like Philo, argued passionately that it was forbidden for Jews to speak ill of any other religion. They based their view on Exodus 22:27 ('e/ohim /0' teqallel) in the Septuagint 's reading of"Do not revile any gods." Goldenberg also argues-following a standard approach ofbiblical scholarshipthat in the Bible itselfone finds two different kinds oftruth claims: that gods other than YHVH do not exist, and that gods other than YHVH are relatively inconsequential, unworthy ofworship by Israelites. The implication ofthat second position would be that Jews accorded some grudging legitimacy to non-Jews' worshipping other gods. The book is well written, interesting, and very well researched. The copious notes indicate that almost all the book's assertions are based on common-consensus scholarship. I was puzzled by the attribution of various Hellenistic works to Jewish authors on what appears to me to be flimsy evidence. But here, too, it would seem that Goldenberg follows the standard scholarly literature. What is innovative and impressive in the book is Goldenberg's ability to maintain a congruent discussion of one theme over a period of more than a thousand years of Jewish literature. 160 SHOFAR Winter 2000 Vol. 18, No.2 In the introduction, the author explains that he does not intend to divide various Jewish approaches into the categories of "fringe" and "mainstream." He argues that such a division is almost always promoted by someone who wishes to argue that a specific contemporary viewpoint is the correct approach, because that viewpoint was the dominant one in antiquity. Yet I cannot help wonder whether Goldenberg's own approach-ofpresenting a variety ofopinions and saying that Judaism has always had more than one attitude on this issue-might not also be meant to legitimate a certain type of contemporary Jewish world view. Goldenberg has appended a fascinating "unscientific" epilogue. There he explains that one of his motivations for writing this book was to counter contemporary, politically correct scholarship that defines intolerance as a necessary, even logical outgrowth of monotheism. The research, Goldenberg says, shows that while many ancient monotheists were intolerant, not all were. Accordingly the claim that monotheism always leads to intolerance is disproved. I found this idea-introduced in the last paragraph of the book-fascinating, and I only wish that the author had developed it more. I recommend this book highly as a useful resource for the serious scholar. Some of the chapters could also be used by instructors of university courses. I suggest that anyone who reads the book bear in mind the political and ideological climates not only of the ancient world, but also ofthe 1990s. Martin Lockshin Centre for Jewish Studies York University The Book ofthe Giants from Qumran, by Loren T. Stuckenbruck. TUbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997. 289 pp. DM 198. Loren Stuckenbruck has written ajoumeyman work ofphilology. In it, he reconstructs a lost book, known from Manichaean sources as "The Book ofthe Giants." In doing so, he madvertently illustrates what has...

Roman Christianity had grown in parallel with the Palestinian Jesus-movements. But there was another considerable Jesus-movement that is only too often overlooked by the historians. It had been there from the start of the Jesus-movements. This was Christian Gnosticism . Within the context of early Christianity, this Jesus-movement (or more correctly, Jesus-movements) was of great significance. The texts examined are the Nag Hammadi texts, found in Egypt, the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Judas. From these the main constituents of the Gnostic Myth are described: gnosis, The Great Invisible Spirit, Adam and Eve, Gnostic Jesus). These are then situated in the main facets of the same Myth: the search for gnosis, the Gnostic World, Gnostic Salvation and the Departture of Jesus.

The study on the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36), an ancient Jewish text of the third century B.C.E., presented here focuses on Enoch’s vision of the two houses (1 Enoch 14:8–25), which is usually interpreted as a vision of the heavenly temple and throne of God. This vision is investigated in the context of the dream account (1 Enoch 14–16) in its different versions (Aramaic, Greek and Old Ethiopic) and in particular with regard to the question of the relationship between scriptural interpretation and use of traditions. A close examination of the source material illustrates the complexity and the difficulties of the transmission process of this text and suggests in general a synoptic approach to the various textual witnesses. A detailed textual analysis of the vision and an in-depth comparison with ancient Jewish and Mesopotamian sources suggests that the two houses in 1 Enoch 14:8–25 should not be interpreted in accordance with the previous research opinion as distinct parts of a big temple complex, but rather as a contrast of the inferior earthly temple with the ideal heavenly sanctuary. Enoch’s vision of the two houses reflects in many ways ideas and traditions found in other works of its intellectual environment, but it also introduces with the evolution beyond the idea, that the earthly and heavenly sanctuary correspond, an essential temple theological innovation and articulates in this way one of the most radical temple critiques of ancient Judaism.

The introduction discusses the impact of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls on understanding the formation of scriptures in the Hellenistic-Roman period. Rather than focusing on the closure of the canon of the Hebrew Bible, this book assesses the processes by which texts become scripture. While the contemporary understanding of “liturgical” in Judaism and Christianity is related to formal fixed prayer, this study expands the concept of liturgical to include a range of practices around the study of sacred texts in Jewish antiquity. A traditioning process occurs through such practices of revelatory discernment in which scriptural interpretation is incorporated into texts which both sacralizes and extends them. The book’s methodological framework is rooted in embodied cognition and draws on insights from anthropology, ritual theory, memory studies, and neuroscience. A center of attention is the mediating role of the liturgical body in both an individual and corporate sense.

Was the end there from the beginning? In this erudite and wide-ranging work, Andrei Orlov traces how ancient Jewish and Christian works posited connections between antagonist mythic themes of the past and the coming apocalyptic transformations of the future. Demons of Change explores ‘antagonistic patterns’, especially as relating to heroic ‘apotheosis’, in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian texts. Orlov’s work demonstrates how hostile relations between key figures in these ancient works contributed to the transformation of the protagonist, and how such patterns were ‘reiterated’ across several textual traditions. Central themes and texts include the glorification of Adam in ancient Jewish and Christian literature (Chapter 1), Abraham’s ‘fiery ordeals’ in the Apocalypse of Abraham and their relations to later martyrological works (Chapter 2), antagonist-inspired transformations of priestly figures in Josephus and other ancient accounts (Chapter 3), parallels between ancient scapegoat imagery and Christ’s antagonist (i.e. the dragon) in the Book...

There was a settlement on the south-Pannonian road Siscia – Cibalae (modern-day Sisak and Vinkovci) that was in the Roman travel documents from the 2 centuries (Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia, Itinerarium Antonini, Tabul a Peutingeriana, Ravennatis anonymi Cosmographia) recorded under various names: Κέρτισσα, Cirtisa, Cirtisia, Certis, Certisia. On a fragmentary marble inscription from the 2nd – 7th nd half of the 4th - early 5 centuries, the form Certissia was inscribed. The find spot unfortunately remains unknown, but the closest candidate is the site of Štrbinci near Đakovo in NE Croatia. The inscription reads: [--- a]ccede ad Certissia[m ---]/[---] memor cupias [---]/[---] est caput v[iarum ---] ili v[iae? ---] / ----- A possible translation goes: … come to Certissia and, remembering, make a wish … here is a caput viarum or caput viae. th A mention of the administrative status of Certissia, which would support an official caput viarum there (the point from which distances were measured) is missing from the written documents. On the other hand, the Antoine Itinerary supplies an invaluable piece of information, that namely, it was exactly in Certissia that a road branched off from the main route Emona – Sirmium (modern-day Ljubljana / Slovenia and Sremska Mitrovica / Serbia) towards Dalmatia and its capital Salonae (modern-day Solin on the eastern Adriatic coast). This means that Certissia was at least a crossroads, if not exactly a caput viarum. It was exactly on the basis of this fact that I ventured the restoration caput v(iarum) or caput v(iae) in my previous discussions of the abovementioned inscription. It was extensively discussed in an early Christian context (Migotti 2012). On the contrary, in this paper the stress is put on the nature of the inscription and the arguments in favour of the restoration caput viarum. This was provoked by the fact that, while the presumption of the public inscription, as well as the reading, restoration and interpretation of the Certissia inscription, were accepted in Croatian archaeology, they were rejected in some foreign scholarly circles, who decided that the inscription was in fact en epitaph, and the restoration caput viarum incorrect. However, the idea of an epitaph should be refused on a couple of grounds. The first one is the lack of convincing parallels even among early Christian epitaphs conveying itinerary data. Secondly, the Certissia inscription starts with the praise to the town, addressed to the passer-by, with no mention of the deceased in the first part of the inscription, while such mention should figure most oddly in the reminder of the text. Accordingly, the inscription should have been public, most probably related to a building of an unknown kind. Furthermore, at least two arguments corroborate the possibility of the restitution caput viarum, the first being the administrative status of Certissia. Although capita viarum were in most cases larger towns of some importance, this was not a sine qua non, as in Late Antiquity even smaller civitates, such as Certissia must have been, could have assumed such role. Another argument is the fact that one of the roads that led from Salonae towards the inner of the province of Dalmatia ended in Servitium (modern-day Gradiška, Bosnia and Herzegovina) on the right bank of the River Sava. It has been supposed that this road, before reaching the Sava, split in two directions: westwards to Servitium and eastwards to Urbate (unidentified place in Bosnia and Herzegovina, possibly Srbac). The latter place was the point at which the road from Certissia to the River Sava ended. Therefore, while Salonae was a caput viarum for the routes within the province of Dalmatia, Certissia could have performed such role for a Pannonian extension of one of Dolabella’s Dalmatian roads.

To examine the differences between participants scoring high versus low on a drive for thinness construct concerning their visual attention toward specific body parts. We hypothesized that participants scoring high on the drive for thinness subscale would show increased attention to body regions, which are important in the assessment of body weight and thinness like the waist, hips, legs, and arms. We examined eye-gaze behavior of a nonclinical sample of 51 male and female college students with an eye-tracking system as they were looking at pictures of young, attractive males and females. In addition, we used the Eating Disorder Inventory to measure drive for thinness. Participants with increased scores on the drive for thinness subscale looked longer and more often to the waist, hips, legs, and arms as compared with low scorers. In addition, they showed decreased attention toward the head or face. The results indicate that participants scoring high on drive for thinness show an attentional bias toward body regions that are associated with assessing changes in weight. However, they neglected the face, which is the most important source of social and affective information when looking at others.

In this book, Chris Kugler situates Paul’s imago Dei theology within the complex and contested context of second-temple Judaism and early Christianity in the Greco-Roman world. He argues that Paul adapted the Jewish wisdom and Middle Platonic traditions regarding divine intermediaries so as to present the preexistent Jesus as the cosmogonical image of God (according to which Adam himself was made) and toward which the whole of humanity was destined. In this way, Paul includes Jesus within the most exclusive theological category of second-temple Jewish monotheism: cosmogonical activity. Paul’s imago Dei christology, therefore, is a clear instance of “christological monotheism.” Moreover, Kugler demonstrates that this interpretation of Paul’s imago Dei theology allows for a fresh reading of some of the most contested texts in Paul’s letters: 2 Corinthians 3–4; Romans 7–8; and Colossians 1.15–20; 3.10. He demonstrates that at the rhetorical level, Paul presents himself and his sympathizers as true philosophers who attain to the (Middle Platonic) telos of true philosophy: the image of God; while he presents his opponents as advocates of an empty and deceitful philosophy.

Things Unutterable: Paul's Ascent to Paradise in Its Greco-Roman, Judaic, and Early Christian Contexts. James D. Tabor

Literary Form, Paideia, and Religion. Comparing Case Studies from the Ancient Greek, Traditional Chinese, and Early Christian Contexts