NPP (Part 1.5): 'Normative Judaism'

There have been sustained attacks against Sanders description of Second Temple Judaism as 'normative' Judaism, mostly by scholars studying Judaism. Jacob Neusner has led the attack (I use the word attack because much of Neusner's criticisms are couched in polemics) on the notion of an orthodox, normative, Judaism of the Second Temple period. Other prominent scholars offering the same sort of criticisms, with a little less polemic, include Martin Hengel (JTS 46), Phillip Alexander (JJS 37), and Jonathan Z. Smith.

One of the more interesting outcomes of these criticisms is how Sanders is accused (rightly) of describing Judaism as an outsider, and using essentially Christian categories to do so. Scholars of Judaism have never been tempted to describe the Second Temple period as a degenerative stage in the 'histories' of Judaism, for obvious reasons. This observation, along with the variegated nature of Second Temple Judaisms, led to a number of studies on what constitutes as a Judaism (see again Neusner and Smith). This of course has profound interest for those studying when Judaism and Christianity parted ways, so to speak. I am not trying to suggest that Sanders' 'New Perspective' is directly related to the discussion of the 'parting of the ways', but rather that the revolution that Sanders invoked made Christian scholars take notice of the rich complexities of Second Temple Judaism(s).

One of the recent attempts to illustrate the variegated nature of Second Temple Judaism(s) is book of collected essays entitled, Justification and Variegated Nomism. The editors did a magnificent job of rounding up the experts in a vast spectrum of fields, in order to show just how diverse the texts actually are. The insurmountable problem with this text is the puzzling way in which the various interpretations are co-opted by the editors 'post-script'. Certainly, Sanders is taken to task for offering a 'least common denominator' description of Palestinian Judaism, but others in the volume feel that 'Covenantal Nomism' works quite well as a short hand description, and wouldn't dispense with it wholesale. One wonders why in the editor's concluding section, such an unequivocally one-sided reading of the texts is offered, as if scholarship can now move beyond the Sanders revolution.

The positive and negative of these developments is that Pauline scholarship is no longer in a position to read the Jewish religion of the first century as a simple foil to Christianity, but likewise Pauline scholars can no longer assume that the backdrop of Pauline Christianity is always everywhere that of Covenantal Nomism. There is no escaping the Sanders revolution; it just means the task for reconstructing the back drop of Pauline Christianity just got substantially harder.

You Are My Witnesses

One of the things on our 'to do list' while in D.C. was to visit the Holocaust Museum. When I was an undergrad at the University of Nebraska I took an independent research course on the Holocaust and the effects of memorials have on memory, and the Museum in D.C. played a prominent role in that research. I read many wonderful books relating to memory and memorials, but never thought it would play into my future studies.

One of the things I am now interested in, is the use of texts within other texts, and what happens to those texts when they are reused in new contexts. In fact metalepsis is a term used to denote the intertextual use of one word, or trope, in a text to denote the entire context of a previous text. An example of this can be found inside the Holocaust Museum on the west wall where it reads:

You Are My Witnesses Isaiah 43.10

Hemmed in by the shadows of what appear to be prison bars. The metal and brick architecture reproduce the feeling of oppression and fear of the death camps. This is a text that obviously signifies on many different levels.

Firstly, it is meant to be an imperative to the visitors of the Holocaust museum. Their journey through the monument initiates them into the web of witnesses, and as such the onus is on them to witness to the world what they have seen, which implies that as witnesses they will never allow such atrocities to happen again.

Secondly, the context of Isaiah 43 speaks about the motifs of exile, restoration, exodus, and the servant. It is significant that this is a passage of extreme hope; it is a passage that speaks to those who are in exile, those who have every reason to be hopeless. But it speaks of hope in a profoundly new way, for this passage speaks of the occasion where YHWH has lost the last battle, the occasion where the Babylonian gods have defeated YHWH and proved themselves to be the more powerful gods. The proof of YHWH's loss is that his people have been taken captive, and are exiled. Israel's captivity is in essence a witness to the defeat of YHWH. But in this passage the normal paradigm of Divine Warfare has been turned on its ear, for it is in this text where YHWH declares Israel to be his witness and his servant. YHWH can declare this because he has done something that no other tribal god would dare do; defeat his own people. This text tells us that YHWH has determined to deliver his own people into exile. Only the incomparable god could do such an unprecedented thing, and that is what Israel is to witnesses to the nations, that YHWH is indeed the incomparable god. And as the incomparable god YHWH gives his people a word of hope amid the darkness: that a new exodus is coming one even better than the first, that the wilderness of flames will be transformed into an idyllic paradise, and that YHWH will no longer look at the sins of his servant but blot out all her transgressions.

Thirdly, when Isaiah 43 is read in light of the Holocaust, something in which I don't feel qualified to do, it signifies in a different manner. The text resonates of hope, but one now is in a position to question such hope. The text signifies while at the same time resists any signification.

Metalepsis is the term that names how the second reading rears its head in the first, and the second and the first in the third. It is a term that speaks of intertextuality, that no text is an island unto itself, but always refers to other texts. Isaiah 43.10 as a trope elicits the whole context of Isaiah 40-55, not to mention all of 43, and transforms the source text as well as the final text. So what does a text that calls Israel to be YHWH's witness to the nations have to do with the sort of witnesses the architects of the Holocaust museum call us to be?

The New Perspective on Paul (Part 1)

What I take to be the 'consensus', in NT circles, is the notion that Judaism of the first century was not the ugly step sister of Christianity. This is developed in a number of ways, but essentially Sanders looked at the Second Temple literature of the first century, and determined that Second Temple Judaism was no more legalistic than the Christianity in which Paul proclaimed (which is to say it is not a religion based on the notion of legalism, not that there were no legalists within the religion). There have been corrections to Sanders thought since 1976 (one wonders when the word new will cease to signify?). The most important and often most overlooked is that there was no monolithic, normative, orthodox Judaism of the Second Temple period; so we should use the nomenclature that corresponds to this (Judaism(s) is just such an attempt to clarify the historical situation). There has been an attempt to highlight this fact as if it destroys the NPP, where in reality, it neither adds nor subtracts to the NPP, it just rectifies a methodological mistake made by Sanders. So the NPP really started with a new perspective on Second Temple Judaism(s)(at least from the Christian scholars perspective). It was with this new insight that commentators on Paul started to reconstruct and correct this defect by asking the question:

If Paul was not deriding the Judaic people for being legalists, then what was Paul on about?

Off To Capital Hill

Off to the capital for a short holiday. Looking forward to getting together with family to celebrate my Grandma's 80th birthday.

Who said this?

I came across this quote and was bemused as to who uttered these words.

"Modern men, obtuse to all Christian nomenclature, no longer feel the gruesome superlative that struck a classical taste in the paradoxical formula 'god on the cross.' Never yet and nowhere has there been an equal boldness in inversion: it promised a revaluation of the values of antiquity."

So who said it?