a thought: judaism as we understand is a creation of christianity. judaism as it was for the past 2,000 years was mostly a christian (and muslim) creation. as some of you might know before the year 300 or so there were many judaisms. specifically there was a difference between what might be called ‘hellenistic’ judaism and rabbnical judaism. orthodox judaism is the direct line descendant of the latter. with a few exceptions rabbnical judaism had the floor for nearly 1500 years, between 300 and 1800. what happened to hellenistic judaism? many argue most hellenistic jews became christian, that christianity is actually just a successful hellenistic jewish cult. the differences between rabbnical judaism and christianity are stark. those between hellenistic judaism (which was a plural movement which we define post facto) and christianity likely less so. in a christian environment rabbinical judaism was the only stable equilibrium for jews, or more precisely, the jewish community.
i thought about this when reading about the catholic church in the hapsburgh empire auditing jewish writings and works to make sure that it didn’t go beyond “old testament” principles. jews were given sufferance to exist because they were witness to the pre-christian covenant, and christians had specific ideas of what jews could be. this changed after 1800 as the monopoly of the christian church was broken, and constraints on jewish religious creativity were removed. reform judaism wouldn’t have been possible before 1800 because they would have been persecuted as heretical by christians and rabbincal jews. there is a reason that many reform jews explicitly feel kinship with hellenistic judaism: they fill the same space on the religious spectrum.
It’s an interesting notion and one that’s crossed my mind a few times, although to me he’s underemphasizing the Muslim contribution to that. Judaism has for at least 1,500 years had to define itself in large part by what it is not, and in the East that almost always meant “not Muslim” and in the West that almost always meant “not Christian.” Judaism is a tribal religion that defines itself by its people, and its people defined by their tribal religion; where the religion dies out, the Jews eventually die out within a generation or three due to cultural assimilation.
Christianity and Islam are also theologically disturbing to Judaism, as both claim to be worshiping exactly the same God and honoring most of the same prophets, but both claim things that are fundamentally incompatible with Torah (both oral and written), at least from their perspective.
Judaism has also found itself very much a religion of the minority, usually a quite small minority, in big seas of believers who think a lot of the same things but are (to the Jewish mind) just too different on too many big things. They not only have to define where and how they’re different, but if they don’t explain that to their kids and make sure they get it, the kids will just become Muslims, Christians, or something similar, which to them means the death of the Jewish people and the abrogation of their Covenant with God.
Hellenistic Judaism was certainly interesting, and produced all sorts of interesting groups, and I think Razib may be on to something; Hellenistic judaism would be particularly vulnerable to all of those assimilationist forces, with it universalist mentality. The same knock is made on Reform Judaism today, which is for the most part dying on the vine because it lacks any firm “this is us and this is why we’re fundamentally different” philosophy.
The knock on the Catholic church he makes is somewhat over the top, as Protestants during the Reformation era were quite a bit nastier to Jews in a number of ways than the Catholics. Martin Luther was especially a virulent Jew-hater; early on, Protestantism did not usher any new age of religioius freedom, they believed the church in Rome was not the legitimate Church but they were, and they sought as much if not more political power than the Catholic church already had.
But the century and a half of war between Protestants and Catholics, and between various flavors of Protestants, did eventually produce a movement toward freedom of conscience which the Jews obviously benefitted from.
Efforts by religioius authorities in the West (Catholic or Protestant alike) and in the East (mostly Muslim) to define what was or was not acceptable Judaism would actually have been done in a spirit of support for the Jewish community–at least in the mentality of those eras.
(Above comment reposted from my own blog, sorry, I didn’t notice I’d referred to you in the third person, Razib.)
dean, tx for the response.
a few points.
1) yes, i overfocused on christianity. in large part because i am weighting toward the jewish experience between 1800 and 1950, when the shape of judaisms as we understand them took place. before the holocaust 90% of the jewry was ashkenazi.
2) as a point of fact rabbnical judaism was shaped by a non-christian milieu to a greater extent than a christian one during its formative period. the talmud was codified in its present form in the 6th century, and the most authorative version was produced by the jews of persia, resident mostly in what is today iraq. even in the roman empire, the talmudic production was mostly during periods of non-christian rule, and christian anti-semitism and assertiveness really didn’t kick in as a constraining force until the late 300s.
3) that being said, since the rise of islam jews have mostly been affected by christian and islam. the jews of india and china are marginal cases, and in the chinese case the kaifeng community was assimilated by the 19th century. that shows that rabbnical judaism doesn’t seem to be able to maintain its coherency in the face of a majority which is totally not invested in jewish identity in any way. the records suggest that many prominent jewish males outmarried and entered the mandarinate. there just weren’t enough of them in the end to save themselves from a freak natural disaster (flood). in india the case is different because they turned into a caste, and, received rather continuous infusions from the outside world until as late as the 17th and 18th century (from as far away as jewish refugees expelled from german cities!).
4) i would argue that jewish tribalism in the form of an endogamous society is to a large extent a product of their embedness within christianity and islam. conversion to judaism was a capital crime generally from these religions. this is one reason that christian authorities constrained jewish slave ownership; they were worried about judaizing trends among slaves owned by jews from christian backgrounds.
5) i disagree that reform judaism is dying on the vine. in fact, it is the largest movement in america, and has recently been “eating into” the conservative movement. it is not jewish in a way that he orthodox is jewish, there are many interfaith families, and temples are filled with people from non-jewish backgrounds, often as spouses. i think reform judaism is appropriately analogized to “christianity with curly hair”
the original german reform movement quite explicitly was mimicking christian confessionalism in germany at the time, where individuals belonged to lutheran, calvinist and catholic churches. that is why the reform repudiated jewish peoplehood early on, they viewed themselves as a religion and not a nation. they’ve recently reaccepted the nationhood proposition, but it points to the reality that reform is very fluid and by its nature will be affected by a lot of “churn.” just like christian denominations.
6) please note that the rabbinical commentaries do treat christianity and islam differently. both are false religions, but there is not great debate that muslims are monotheists. there is on the other hand debate whether christians are monotheists because of their trinity. this crops up in practical considerations; are jews allowed to worship in churches and mosques? are they allowed to use as a synagogue a building which was once a church or mosque? in the case of a mosque it is much less contentious than a church, because there is debate among jews whether christians are pagan idolaters are (i.e., is the trinity monotheistic? are uses of statues and icons idolatrous?).
7) so there are differences between how jews related to these two groups, though for the purposes of my discussion i don’t think they matter that much. the points you’ve alluded to are more salient; jews are a small minority who lack power vis-a-vis the majority. and, the majority religion in the case of christianity and islam have a relationship to judaism which treats it not as “just another religion.”
let me make something explicit here: the rabbnical authorities did use christian and muslim authorities to persecute “heretical” jews. in medieval spain for example they suppressed the karaites, sometimes in collusion with the christian state. with the enlightenment and the opening of the ghetto some rabbis complained bitterly that they no longer had authority to impose punishment upon jews for deviation from “orthodoxy.”
9) i wasn’t making a statement vis-a-vis anti-semitism and catholicism and protestantism. i was rather giving one explicit example of where the christian authorities were taking a proactive interest in moulding and shaping jewish religious practice.
10) and the reason is as you give above, that practice served some role in the religious practice of the majority community. excessive deviation from rabbinical judaism might have been a new religion, and christianity would have felt that that was competition or heresy. on the other hand, rabbinical judaism, for all its vitality within its constraints, was perceived to be a useful fossil. their error was sometimes claimed to be a teachable moment for genuine believers.
11) on the jews of islam, and the relationship between islam and judaism.
a) it seems to me that arabia itself was a religiously pluralist domain, and the whole region of the levant and mesopatamia was characterized by a host of cults. on a minor point, by the time of the rise of islam anti-trinitarianism in the form of arianism was not an issue, it was rather anti-chalcedonian christianity that was more an issue; monophysite (the coptic, jacobite syrian and armenian churches descend from this) and nestorian (the persian church of the east) theologies had/have some differences with chalcedonian forms of christianity in terms of the nature of christ. but the differences are relatively minor when set next to arian
anti-trinitarianism.
b) maimonides did reside in egypt, but he was by provenance a sephardic jew from spain. it seems that the center of the jewish world shifted several times in terms of intellectual production. in 600 it was mesopatamia. in 1200 it was spain (though rashi might argue against this). in 1600 it was east-central europe. after the jews were expelled from spain the sephards resettled in the ottomman empire, but note that they generally took a position of dominance vis-a-vis the indigenous jews. and no offense to the mizrachi, but they really haven’t had much of an impact outside of their own communities for the past 1,000 years until the rise of shas in israel.
Citations please.
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