Abstract
Using M. Bakhtin’s genre-critical approach, I argue that the Torah, as a work of literature, shows similarities with the genre of the novel. This approach allows me to distinguish between Torah and rabbinic law, a difference that is relevant to understanding the categorical differences between two major moments of reappropriation and self-fashioning in light of these two distinct, though related, traditions, namely, the early modern Protestant use of the “ancient Hebrew republic” and the modern “Jewish law” (mishpat ivri) discourse in Russian Zionism and Israeli constitutional theory.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
As one of many examples see Harris (2010).
- 3.
See Ransom and Hawkins (2016).
- 4.
See Frye (1983).
- 5.
Redaction criticism has long been part of biblical scholarship and biblical theology includes wholistic approaches to the theology of Scripture. Neither of these approaches focuses on the genre of the Torah.
- 6.
See Bakhtin (1981).
- 7.
Note that Hermann Cohen’s Jewish thought locates the contribution of the Bible to western religion in the concept of t’shuvah or “turning around,” i.e., repentance. On the centrality of this idea to Cohen’s thought see Zank (2000). Bakhtin has been said to be influenced by Cohen and Marburg neo-Kantianism. See Bernard-Donals (1995), Hirshkop (1999, 102–3), Sandler (2015) and Bagshaw (2016). On Russian neo-Kantianism see Dmitrieva 2007.
- 8.
Cf. Herder (1782–3).
- 9.
Rabbinic theology as well as Jewish philosophy frequently gloss over these differences and try to harmonize between oral and written Torah or—in a more typically modern move—try to see the former as an “organic development” of the latter.
- 10.
Zionism’s appropriation of the biblical past is mostly based on the prophetic history of Joshua (conquest narrative), the Book of Judges (describing the struggle to persist in the land, vindicating the “statism” of the Ben Gurion/Mapai regime), and the “prophetic heritage” invoked in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, but not so much on the Torah, which modern Jews tend to see through the lens of rabbinic tradition.
- 11.
- 12.
The legal material included in the Torah is not just different in kind but was issued at different times, by different authorities, and for different purposes. On the purity laws of the Priestly Code see Klawans (2000). On the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26) see Knohl (1995). On the laws of centralization of Deuteronomy 12 see Levinson (1998, 23–52).
- 13.
The neologism разноречие [raznorechie] literally means “other-speech-ness.” Mikhail Bakhtin first introduced this term in his 1934 essay “Слово в романе” [Slovo v romane], English: “Discourse in the Novel.” See Bakhtin (1981, 259–422).
- 14.
The representation of the biblical and Jewish tradition as tragic may be an acutely modern accomplishment. See Wogenstein (2011).
- 15.
Aside from Ezekiel the Tragedian—see Käppel (2016)—it is particularly Philo of Alexandria in his panegyrical Vita Mosis who glosses over or interprets away all of the flaws of Moses that are present in the Torah, such as his rash slaying of the Egyptian task master or his speech impediment, and generally produces the image of self-restraint, intelligence, and other virtues Greek paideia would ascribe to the perfect philosopher-king. Philo and Josephus idolize Moses in different ways and are therefore forced to change many details of plot motivation in the Torah. Brian Britt’s analysis of the literary obscuring of Moses by means of romanticized retellings fails to account for the role of Moses in the larger edifice of the Torah that justifies those very retellings. See Britt (2004). According to Wheeler (2002), Moses provides both a model and a negative foil for Muhammad as the perfect messenger. The Samaritan tradition, which is today largely eclipsed, held Moses in the highest esteem. See Crown (1989).
- 16.
Miles (1995).
- 17.
The Torah’s narrative of divine-human interaction has close parallels in the deuteronomistic Elijah stories and the Book of Jonah, a prophetic novella.
- 18.
On the terseness of the Torah’s style see Auerbach (1953). Auerbach’s focus on style represents an older approach that was critiqued by Bakhtin and his circle who emphasized the sociality of the language of the novel rather the individuality of the author.
- 19.
Cf. Oswald (2009). I thank Prof. Oswald for comments and suggestions on a paper on the subject of political Hebraism that I had posted as a “session” on Academia.edu.
- 20.
Hobbes (1994, 252–3).
- 21.
Smith (1971).
- 22.
Oswald’s reasoning is based on the assumption that no ancient Near Eastern king would have been limited in his powers by a written constitution. The king may be law-giver as in the laws of Hammurabi, where the king is the direct recipient of divine communication, similar to Akhen-Aten’s status vis-à-vis the Aten. Deuteronomistic history, however, describes the kings as dependent on prophets, a conception incommensurate with the conditions of an actual monarchy.
- 23.
An exception are the written oracles of Jeremiah 36, recorded by his scribe Baruch and delivered to the king in his winter palace, an artful novella about the contempt between king and prophet at roughly the time when both Deuteronomy and deuteronomistic history were produced as well. Another exception is Ezekiel 3, where the exilic prophet is commanded to swallow a scroll written on both sides.
- 24.
Both facts—YHWH’s openendedness as a “living god” and the Torah’s writtenness, i.e. its closedness—were exploited by the Christian supersessionists such as the Apostle Paul: YHWH’s election of a “new Israel” was an indication of his continued presence in history and freedom over the “dead letter” of the Mosaic Torah.
- 25.
See mSanhedrin X.1: “All Israel have a share in the world to come (…) except those who deny that resurrection is a cornerstone of the Torah.”
- 26.
It is consistent with the goal of transforming the Torah into a cyclical presence that the rabbis established for the Feast of Torah Joy (simhat torah), when the annual or tri-annual reading cycle ends, to not just read the final parashah in Deuteronomy but also the opening portion of Genesis.
- 27.
It seems to me that the historical manner of orthodox Christian readings of the Torah perpetuates a pre-Christian understanding of the Judaic writings that were disseminated in form of the Greek Septuagint version.
- 28.
See Marx (1977, 69).
- 29.
Kant’s mother was a Lutheran pietist, and Schleiermacher famously called himself a “Herrenhuter of a higher order.” Lutheran pietism was a reaction to Lutheran orthodoxy but it also echoed the new scientific emphasis on empiricism and the Cartesian philosophical dichotomy of doubt and certainty. The first manifesto of pietism was Philip Jacob Spener’s Pia desideria (1675).
- 30.
Cf. Busch (2016).
- 31.
The question of a homogeneity of faith among the citizens of the Christian realm as a matter of state policy is an old one, and it has since been renewed in many ways in different places, including in Jewish and Muslim communities. It is the latter, namely, the Muslims who have perhaps the strongest credible record at maintaining ethnic and religious diversity as a matter of principle, though at times Muslim societies, too, succumbed to the temptation of manufacturing homogeneity. Cf. Fowden (1993).
- 32.
On the Christian Humanism of the young Calvin —who in his commentary on Seneca still recognizes the classical position of Romans 13, namely, that all government is from God—see McNeill (1964, 77). On the mature Calvin ’s view on government see John Calvin , The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) Book IV, Ch. 20.
- 33.
See Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “Pilgrim Fathers”, accessed May 28, 2016, http://www.britannica.com/topic/Pilgrim-Fathers and see Seligman (1994).
- 34.
- 35.
An unanticipated side-effect of this new literalism was a sharpening polemic against the Jewish exegetes and their “absurdities.” See, e.g., Jean Calvin , Commentary on Genesis, ad Gen. 2:3 (“Which God created and made”): “Here the Jews, in their usual method, foolishly trifle, saying, that God being anticipated in his work by the last evening, left certain animals imperfect, of which kind are fauns and satyrs, as though he had been one of the ordinary class of artifices who have need of time. Ravings so monstrous prove the authors of them to have been delivered over to a reprobate mind, as a dreadful example of the wrath of God.” Online at URL http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/comment3/comm_vol 1/htm/viii.htm, accessed August 21, 2016.
- 36.
- 37.
Cf. Smith (2004).
- 38.
- 39.
Cf. Sand (2009).
- 40.
David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, famously proclaimed the annulment of Spinoza’s excommunication. See, Walzer et al. (2006), 2:419.
- 41.
UNESCO Decision: 39 COM 7A.27, “Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls” (C 148 rev), at URL http://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/6243/.
- 42.
- 43.
See Likhovski (2014).
- 44.
See Richard Potz, “Islamic Law and the Transfer of European Law” (http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/europe-and-the-world/european-overseas-rule/richard-potz-islamic-law-and-the-transfer-of-europ ean-law) where Potz notes the following: “Among the codes based mainly on Ḥanafite Fiqh were the law on land rights (1858), but above all the Mecelle, promulgated from 1869 onwards, which was a code of civil law comprising law of obligations, property law and procedural law. It was not possible at first to come to an agreement with regards to family, inheritance and foundation law. The codification of family law that did take place in 1917 did not, however, achieve practical importance in Turkey but only in some successor states of the Ottoman Empire—for the longest time in Israel and Lebanon.”
- 45.
Palestine Order in Council (10 August 1922), Paragraph 46. Source: “League of Nations.” Emphasis added. URL: https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/C7AAE196F41AA055052565F50054E656 (non-stable; accessed July 1, 2016).
- 46.
Source: Laws of the State of Israel: Authorized Translation from the Hebrew, Volume 34. (Jerusalem: Government Printer, 1948–1989), p. 181. Online at http://www.israellawresourcecenter.org/israellaws/fulltext/foundationsoflaw.htm (accessed July 1, 2016).
- 47.
See HCJ 153/87 “Leah Shakdiel v. Minister of Religious Affairs et al” (May 19, 1988) at URL http://www3.lawschool.cornell.edu/AvonResources/Shakdielv.MinisterofReligiousAffairs.pdf (last accessed July 2, 2016).
- 48.
In this reading, it becomes clear that Eric Nelson ignores the polemic reasons for invoking Torah as the laws of the ancient Hebrew republic and suggests, instead, that political Hebraism is a source of liberal political ideas such as redistribution, toleration , etc. Whether or not he does so consciously, Nelson thus succumbs to the apologetic agenda of the Shalem Center/Tikvah Foundation that published his book and is known to pursue the agenda of propagating a value alliance between the “West” and a national-religious modern Israel. See Nelson (2010).
- 49.
Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum, Noʻam Zohar, Yair Lorberbaum, Ari Ackerman, The Jewish Political Tradition (New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 2003), multiple volumes.
- 50.
See Inbari (2016) and see the newly established journal Der Israelit at http://www.derisraelit.org/p/uber-uns.html.
References
Alter R, Kermode F (1987) The literary guide to the Bible. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Auerbach E (1953) Mimesis. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Bagshaw HBP (2016) Religion in the thought of Mikhail Bakhtin. Routledge, New York
Bakhtin MM (1981) The dialogic imagination. Four essays. Holquist M (ed), Emerson C, Holquist M (trans). University of Texas Press, Austin
Bernard-Donals MF (1995) Neo-Kantianism and Bakhtin’s phenomenology. In: Bernard-Donals MF Mikhail Bakhtin. Between phenomenology and marxism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 18-46
Britt B (2004) Rewriting Moses. The narrative eclipse of the text. T & T Clark, New York/London
Busch E (2016) Who was and who is Calvin? Available via http://www.calvin09.org/media/pdf/theo/070118_Text_Eberhard-Busch.pdf. Accessed 27 Mar 2016
Crown AD (1989) The Samaritans. Mohr, Tübingen
Cunaeus P (1632) De republica hebraeorum. Ex officina Elzeviriana, Lugduni Batavorum. English (2006) Shalem Press, Jerusalem
Dmitrieva N (2007) Russkoe neokantianstvo: “Marburg” v Rossii: istoriko-filosofskie ocherki (Russian Neo-Kantianism: Marburg in Russia. Historical-Philosophical Sketches). Rosspen, Moscow
Falk Z (1994–5) What is ‘Jewish Law’. J Law Relig 11(2):835–844
Fowden G (1993) Empire to commonwealth. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Friedman D (2016) The purse and the sword: the trials of Israel’s legal revolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Frye N (1983) The great code. The bible and literature. Harvest, San Diego
Gauchet M (1999) The disenchantment of the world. A political history of religion. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Halpern B (1961) The idea of a Jewish state. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Harris S (2010) Understanding the Bible. McGraw-Hill Education, New York
Harris R (2014) The Israeli law-the formative years: 1948–1977. Hakkibutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv
Hirshkop K (1999) Mikhail Bakhtin. An aesthetic for democracy. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Hobbes T (1994) Leviathan. Curley E (ed). Hackett, Indianapolis
Inbari M (2016) Jewish radical ultra-orthodoxy confronts modernity, zionism and women’s equality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Käppel L (2016) “Ezechiel” in religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart 4. Mohr, Tübingen. Available via http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2405-8262_rgg4_SIM_04936. Accessed 21 Aug 2016
Klawans J (2000) Impurity and sin in ancient Judaism. Oxford University Press, New York/Oxford
Klepper D (2007) The insight of unbelievers. Nicholas of Lyra and Christian reading of Jewish text in the later Middle Ages. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia
Knohl I (1995) The sanctuary of silence. Fortress Press, Minneapolis
Levi-Faur D et al (2014) The dynamics of change and continuity. Routledge, New York
Levinson BM (1998) Deuteronomy and the hermeneutics of legal innovation. Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York
Likhovski A (2014) “The time has not yet come to repair the world in the kingdom of God”: Israeli lawyers and the failed Jewish legal revolution of 1948. In: Mermelstein A et al (eds) Jews and the Law. Quid Pro Press, New Orleans, pp 359–383
Marx K (1977) Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right (1844). In: McLellan D (ed) Selected writings. Oxford University Press, Oxford
McNeill JT (1964) John Calvin on civil government. J Presbyt Hist 42(2):71–91
Miles J (1995) God. A biography. Knopf, New York
Navot S (2007) The constitutional law of Israel. Kluwer Law International, Alphen aan den Rijn
Nelson E (2010) The Hebrew Republic. Jewish sources and the transformation of European political thought. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Oswald W (2009) Staatstheorie im Alten Israel, Der politische Diskurs im Pentateuch und in den Geschichtsbüchern des Alten Testaments. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart
Polaschegg A, Weidner D (eds) (2012) Das Buch in den Büchern. Wechselwirkungen von Bibel und Literatur. Fink, Munich
Rabinovitch S (2014) Jewish rights, national rites. Stanford University Press, Stanford
Ransom E, Hawkins P (eds) (2016) Forum: rethinking the Bible as literature. Relig Lit 46:1
Sand S (2009) The invention of the Jewish people. Verso, London
Sandler S (2015) A strange kind of Kantian: Bakhtin’s reinterpretation of Kant and the Marburg school. Stud East Eur Thought 67(3/4):165–182
Seligman A (1994) Innerworldly individualism: charismatic community and its institutionalization. Transaction, New Brunswick
Smalley B (1964) The study of the Bible in the middle ages. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame
Smith M (1971) Palestinian parties and politics that shaped the old testament. Columbia University Press, New York
Smith AD (2004) Chosen peoples. Sacred sources of national identity. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Spinoza B (1670) Tractatus theologico politics. English (2007) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge/New York
Stahlberg LC (2008) Sustaining fictions. Intertextuality, midrash, translation, and the literary afterlife of the Bible. T & T Clark, London/New York
von Herder JG (1782–3) Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie: eine Anleitung für die Liebhaber derselben, und der ältesten Geschichte des menschlichen Geistes. Dessau
Walzer M et al (2006) The Jewish political tradition. Vol. 2: membership. Yale University Press, New Haven
Wheeler B (2002) Moses in Quran and Islamic exegesis. Routledge Curzon, London/New York
Wogenstein S (2011) Horizonte der Moderne: Tragödie und Judentum von Cohen bis Lévinas. Winter, Heidelberg
Zank M (2000) The idea of atonement in the philosophy of Hermann Cohen. Brown Judaic Studies, Providence
Zank M (2012) Jasper’s Achsenzeit hypothesis: a critical reappraisal. 30th-anniversary Festschrift for the Karl Jaspers Society of North America. In: Olson A et al (eds) Philosophical faith and the future of humanity. Springer, Amsterdam, pp 189–202
Zank M (2015) Zion. In: Diner D (ed) Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur, vol 6. Metzler, Stuttgart, pp 564–567
Zerubavel Y (1995) Recovered roots. Collective memory and the making of Israeli national tradition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zank, M. (2017). Torah v. Jewish Law: A Genre-Critical Approach to the Political Theology of Reappropriation. In: Speight, C., Zank, M. (eds) Politics, Religion and Political Theology. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1082-2_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1082-2_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-024-1080-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-024-1082-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)