Bible Books
010
Raising Cain
The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism
Regina M. Schwartz
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997) 211 pages, $22.95 (hardcover)
In this age of Danielle Steele and Stephen King, it’s not often that books about the Bible rate the label “best-seller.” But, although it will never match Steele’s and King’s million-copy sales, Regina Schwartz’s The Curse of Cain comes about as close to “bestseller” status as any book of biblical scholarship can, with its own Internet home page and reviews in major newspapers and in magazines like The New Yorker and The New Republic. The reason is Schwartz’s provocative thesis: that the biblical understanding of the one God, Yahweh, who chooses one people, Israel, to live in one promised land has implicit within it an ideology of divine exclusivism, whereby God divides the world into the favored “us” versus the despised “them.” Schwartz argues that this same ideology—that “God is on our side”—dominates in certain areas of western political thought, especially European and American nationalistic movements. She posits a causal relationship: that the Bible’s understanding has given rise to ours.
The core of Schwartz’s analysis depends on a careful reading of the Hebrew Bible and its descriptions of the ways in which ancient Israel inscribes boundaries to separate itself from all others. Schwartz identifies five: (1) covenant, the designation of Israel as a people “chosen” apart from everyone else; (2) land, especially Israel’s claim that its sole occupation of the “promised land” is divinely sanctioned; (3) kinship, the description of Israel as a biologically “closed” group (you’re either born into it or you’re not); (4) nationhood, particularly the Bible’s rhetoric of Israel as a nation over and against the nations roundabout; and (5) memory, Israel’s sense of itself as a people who share a collective past that others do not.
I did not find much that was new or groundbreaking here—this understanding of biblical texts as narratives of identity formation is already found, for example, in Ilana Pardes’s work on the Pentateuch as Israel’s “national biography”—but, still, Schwartz’s presentation is intelligent, insightful and eminently readable.
What is new are the enormous implications Schwartz believes this reading has for western political history. For me, it is here that her argument falters. It fails first because Schwartz neglects to present her case regarding western nationalism in the same detail as in her analysis of the biblical materials. She tends to assert rather than prove the Bible’s influence on European and American nationalistic movements. Perhaps that’s because she assumes the “biblical connection” can be taken for granted, and this is probably true for at least one of Schwartz’s most commonly cited examples: Puritan New England. Nonetheless, in a book so concerned with “legacy” (see the subtitle), I would have expected a more thorough exposition. Moreover, while Schwartz is careful not to claim that the origins of nationalistic violence lie in ancient Israel, she does make clear her belief that, without the biblical paradigm, the nationalistic phenomenon in the West would be absent or at least profoundly muted. But this almost scientific description of “cause and effect” should require, as does a good science experiment, a control group. The obvious one to choose, given Schwartz’s focus on the “West,” is Asia, or the “East.” 012She does make a nod in that direction, but only in a footnote in her acknowledgments. There, drawing on the work of anthropologist of religion Stanley Tambiah, she suggests that the eastern experience of nationalistic violence is different. I wonder. Surely, the great imperial traditions of China and Japan should have been considered.
Further reflection brought to my mind the Bhagavad Gita, the great Hindu classic set on the eve of a battle between two branches of a noble Indian family. The hero of the story, the warrior Arjuna, agonizes over the moral dilemma this conflict raises, pitting loyalty to family against a soldier’s duties, but, eventually, urged on by the god Krishna, he goes forth to fight. To be sure, Krishna’s counsel that Arjuna fight with an attitude of detachment differs from the passion that Schwartz’s title character, Cain, brings to his conflict with his brother Abel. Nevertheless, the two tales, where fratricide is “egged on” by a deity who takes sides, are not all that dissimilar, which suggests to me that the description of divinely-sanctioned exclusivism that Schwartz sees embedded in biblical narrative is not so much a phenomenon of western culture as it is intrinsic to human nature. Cain, after all, is the son of the parents of all humanity, Adam and Eve, not a descendant of the more particular lineage of Israel on which Schwartz—mistakenly?—focuses her critique.
014
Elusive Israel: The Puzzle of Election in Romans
Charles H. Cosgrove
(Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1997) xiii + 134 pp., $16.00 (paperback)
When Paul boldly claims that “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26), what does he mean? Is he referring to all Jews? Or does “Israel” refer only to those Jews, like Paul, who have accepted Jesus as the Christ?
From antiquity on, and especially since the Reformation, many Christians have read Paul’s letter to the Romans (and Galatians too) as an affirmation of justification by faith in Jesus Christ, which by definition rejects the law and Judaism as an inferior and outdated form of religion. The destructive history of Christian anti-Semitism and the horror of the Holocaust have thrown that comfortable theological paradigm in grave doubt. At the same time, increasingly sophisticated literary and historical studies of Paul’s letters have prompted scholars to question the received theological reading of Paul. A flood of books and articles has questioned whether Paul even has a consistent theology or system of thought, given the severe tensions and outright contradictions found in his letters, especially concerning law.
A sustained and detailed historical investigation of Jews in the first century has exposed many of Paul’s polemics against the law as inaccurate and the Christian construct of “Judaism” based on these polemical letters as hostile and artificial. Against this background Paul’s separation of the law from God’s righteousness stands in stark contrast to many first-century Jewish works, such as the document known as the Community Rule among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which links the law and commandments to the righteousness and love of God.
The Christian version of salvation history—which sees Israel as rejected and Christians as God’s new people—has also collapsed, partly because of Paul’s insistence that God still loves and is faithful to Israel and will save Israel (Romans 3:1–6, 9:1–5, 11:1–32). Given these conflicts over the interpretation of Paul’s letters, what was he trying to say about Israel, and why do his letters (seem to) say contradictory things?
Charles Cosgrove, of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, argues that Paul’s letters as they have been preserved are truly unclear (“irreducibly indeterminate,” in his words) concerning the place of Israel in God’s plans. Since the letters are authoritative Scripture and are continually used for guidance in Christian life and thought, Cosgrove recommends interpreting Paul’s letters for contemporary life in a way that will solve the issue of Israel in favor of Jews and against anti-Semitism.
When Christians read Paul’s letters they interact with the text and participate in determining its meaning. Since modern audiences cannot know Paul’s intentions and thoughts directly, they must seek a reasonable range of plausible meanings the letters may have had for their first-century audience and choose responsibly among them in the light of the whole of Scripture (the canon), of which the letters form a part. Cosgrove recommends an ethical hermeneutic that attends to the consequences of each interpretation in the contemporary world.
Paul is torn between Israel (the Jews as God’s people) and an emerging definition of Israel as a people of God that includes the nations (gentiles) brought to God 016through Jesus Christ (Romans 9:6). Throughout Romans, and especially in chapters 9–11, Paul experiments with the overlapping boundaries of these two Israels, rebuking both his fellow Jews for not accepting the gentiles into Israel through Jesus and the gentiles for brashly seeking to displace the Jews as God’s people. In the end the meaning of Paul’s climactic statement, “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26), remains highly ambiguous. Paul might be indicating that all Jews will be saved by God in some special way at the end of the world (which Paul expects during his lifetime) or that they might finally acknowledge Jesus Christ as God’s son and savior. Or “all Israel” might refer to the part of Israel (see the “remnant” in Romans 9:27, 11:5) that has been faithful to God by accepting Jesus as the Christ, as Paul has done. To put the problem another way, Paul affirms that God has not rejected his people (Romans 11:5), that Israel has the covenants, law, adoption by God, etc. (Romans 9:3–5), and that it is advantageous to be a Jew (Romans 3:1–4); at the same time, he insists that God has sent Jesus Christ, and he rebukes his fellow Jews for not recognizing this (Romans 3, 9–10).
Cosgrove solves the dilemma over Israel in Paul’s letters by appealing to the fundamental New Testament principle of love of neighbor and by rejecting of Pauline polemics as inappropriate to the relationship of Jews and Christians today, after almost 2,000 years of anti-Semitism. Thus the salvation of “all Israel” (Romans 11:26) includes all Jews. The “hardening” Paul attributes to his fellow Jews (Romans 11:7, 25) is not a fatal moral flaw or a rejection of God, but a limited refusal to recognize Jesus Christ as sent by God. Central to Cosgrove’s understanding of God as portrayed in Paul’s letters is God’s impartial love for and faithfulness toward Israel. In this interpretation, God must not be homogenized into a vapid universal. God chose and stands by Israel in all its particularity, but because God is impartial, God gives to all humans what God has given to Israel. To put it another way, God accepts all humans in their differences from one another without discriminat-ing against them: “Divine impartiality refracted through the sign of Israel means that God cherishes the varied flesh of human beings in their concrete social identities, formed by unrepeatable histories and unique memories. Among God’s many children, each people turns out to be like Israel, God’s favorite child.”
Cosgrove’s reading of Paul supports contemporary Christian attempts to reform theological thought so that Christian identity does not depend on the denigration of Judaism and so that adherence to Jesus Christ does not entail rejection of Israel as God’s faithful and beloved people. Those accustomed to clear answers from Scripture and wedded to the traditional understanding of Paul will feel uncomfortable with Cosgrove’s frank embrace of Paul’s ambiguity. However, Cosgrove reads Paul carefully and faithfully, pointing out the gaps, overlaps and fuzzy edges in Paul’s categories and arguments. Thus Cosgrove has responded to one of the traditional purposes of Scripture, to discomfort the complacent and stimulate them to hear God’s word anew.
017
Old Testament Theology
Horst D. Preuss
The Old Testament Library
(Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1995) 2 vol., 384 pp., $34.00 each (hardcover)
The notion of an Old Testament theology is an old and venerable one in biblical scholarship. Most trace this intellectual movement back to the German scholar Johann P. Gabler, who, in the late 18th century, suggested that the duty of the biblical theologian was to address the historical questions posed by the Bible on its own terms and to describe, as fully as possible, the time-bound statements of its authors. Gabler presumed that the biblical authors expressed their ideas in a way different from later Christian theology. Specifically, Gabler wanted to see how critical biblical study would differ from systematic theology, a discipline that sought in the Bible eternal truths with which to instruct the faithful. The revolution that Gabler spawned led scholars to take that time-bound nature seriously.
Our own generation has witnessed numerous biblical theologies, including the famous works of Gerhard von Rad, Walther Zimmerli, Brevard Childs and now Horst Preuss, to mention just a few. Each of these writers has chosen a specific organizing principle around which to compose his work. For Preuss the organizing principle is election, God’s choice of Israel to be his own people.
Undoubtedly, election is a major theme of the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, the notion of election appears to be unique to the Israelite people. No precise parallel can be found in ancient Near Eastern documents, although there are analogues, as in royal inscriptions that depict the divine selection of a king over his peer.
The theme of election serves Preuss well when he considers the event of the Exodus, the gift of the land and the choice of Jerusalem as the spot for the Temple because each of these events depends on the singling out of a person or place for special recognition and exaltation. The book founders, however, when Preuss turns to wisdom literature (particularly Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes), which presents a surprising universalism—and a lack of interest in the very theological issues that were the private and special domain of Israel.
Preuss’s book is a storehouse of knowledge about all matters biblical. One will find up-to-date discussions of numerous scholarly concerns, such as the problem of the Israelite conquest of Canaan, the dating of the Pentateuchal sources and so on. This breadth of discussion can come at some cost. The focus on election is severely tested as Preuss discusses anthropology and ethics. These topics deal with man in his generic role as moral agent; God, when he is mentioned, is rarely addressed with specific Israelite features. Election, however, presupposes a specific field of action for which the God of Israel has selected someone. As the reader confronts this wide and interesting range of biblical materials, the theological center of the discussion gets lost. Nevertheless, this remains a rich and deeply learned survey of the issues. We are indebted to the life’s work that has made these two volumes possible.
Raising Cain
The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism
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