Biblical Views: Judaism—Back to Basics

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“You never get too good for the basics.” Some such caution will be familiar to anyone who has trained in a sport, musical instrument or language. We understand that we will have to get through the basics at the start. The hard part is realizing, months or years into training, that we can never leave behind those building blocks: working endlessly on balance and form; constantly practicing scales; struggling with the unsexy conjugation of verbs.

It is the same with academic work. Important insights have originated in the teaching of introductory courses. That is where we come to grips over and over again with the most basic tools and evidence of our disciplines. Each year, as our specialized research and writing progress, we return to the basics with new eyes. And the constant questioning of these foundations, by us and by our students, can expose weaknesses in the fundamentals. I suggest that one of our most rudimentary categories, ancient “Judaism,” could benefit from rethinking.¹

In the study of ancient Judea, there is no more basic category than “Judaism.” It seems obvious: ancient Jews practiced Judaism. Since there was a Greek word, Ioudaismos, which looks like “Judaism,” some scholars have suggested that Jews were unique among the ancients in embracing an –ism (there was no Romanism, Athena-ism, Isis-ism, etc.). Our debates have been focused on whether we should speak of early, middle or (surely not) late Judaism, rabbinic, Palestinian, normative, common or sectarian Judaism. And should it be Judaism, or Judaisms, as some scholars have proposed?

But there is a problem. In a search of the more than 9,000 texts available in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae,² the noun Ioudaismos appears 342 times. Of these, all but five (i.e., 337) are in Christian texts, and 331 of those are from the third century or later. Of the five occurrences in Jewish texts, four are in a small work of only 15 chapters: 2 Maccabees (2:21, 8:1, 14:38); the other is in 4 Maccabees (4:26), which is derived from 2 Maccabees. The Latin form Iudaismus appears exclusively in Christian authors from the third century on, and there was no ancient Hebrew or Aramaic equivalent.

Let’s pause to take this in. In spite of the ubiquitous talk of ancient Judaism, the possibly corresponding ancient terms appear exclusively in Christian literature, aside from 2 and 4 Maccabees. We find no “Judaism,” then, in the many Greek and Latin texts by observers of Judea and Judeans. It does not appear in Josephus’s 30 volumes, which are devoted to explaining Judean law and culture, or in the roughly comparable library of Philo. The word is absent from Biblical and post-Biblical (apocryphal and pseudepigraphical) texts outside 2 and 4 Maccabees.

Without going further, we can already say confidently that Ioudaismos was a significant part of later Christian discourse, and nearly absent elsewhere. As for the few appearances in 2 and 4 Maccabees, we seem to have only three options: (a) The author of 2 Maccabees coined Ioudaismos for “Judaism” but his experiment did not catch on until the Christians revived it; (b) it was in wide use but by some fluke does not surface in other literature; or (c) the author of 2 Maccabees did not use Ioudaismos to mean “Judaism.” We may set aside (b) as highly unlikely, given the concentration of Ioudaismos in 2 and 4 Maccabees and its absence everywhere else, leaving us to decide between (a) and (c).

The specific purposes and context of 2 Maccabees require us to prefer (c). Greek nouns ending in –ismos are deceptive. They do not indicate “isms” in the English sense of ideologies or belief systems (Anglicanism, Buddhism, atheism, Stalinism), but rather actions. For example, the verbs ostrakizō, Attikizō, Lakōnizō, exorkizō and baptizō produce nouns ending in –ismos, which are best translated as gerunds. We see this in their English descendants: ostracism is the action of ostracizing as baptism is the action of dunking.

Further, the subgroup of these terms that pertain to cultures, such as Mēdismos, Attikismos and Lakōnismos, had decidedly negative connotations. They had become popular words in the political strife that racked the Greek cities during the fifth century B.C.E. They referred to the defection of cities or individuals to the Persian, Athenian or Spartan cause. Although such capitulation may have been unavoidable, it was inglorious. Greek Ioudaismos would most readily be understood, therefore, as a similar alignment with Judean interests. Although Greeks and Romans did adopt Judean culture often enough to attract outside comment, that comment was invariably hostile because faithfulness to one’s ancestral traditions—whatever that tradition—was considered a bedrock value in the ancient world.³ Invoking the politically loaded term Ioudaismos, if it did not bring a sneer, would raise an eyebrow.

Why, then, would the author of 2 Maccabees have used such a term? This work was composed in a unique moment of Judean history. The same author 032was also the first to use two other –ismos words: Hellēnismos (“Greek-izing”) and allophylismos (“foreign-izing”). It cannot be a coincidence that these neologisms share the same brief narrative with Ioudaismos. In the story, the other two words refer to the discreditable activity of Judean leaders, who abandon their ancestral customs to embrace foreign Greek traditions (2 Maccabees 4:13, 6:24). I would argue that Ioudaismos appears as the countermovement of the Hasmonean priests, who revolt against this “foreign-izing” priestly leadership. In this context, the author ironically describes their program as “Judaizing”—Jerusalem, its desecrated Temple (by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 164 B.C.E.) and its leadership—to drive home the point that these should have remained Judean from the start. That Ioudaismos found no use among later Judeans or their observers is no more surprising than that its counterpart allophylismos (“foreign-izing”) had no later uptake. They were brilliant coinages of the moment.

Two centuries after 2 Maccabees was written, and in a completely different world, two Christian authors (who were likely familiar with that work) reactivated Ioudaismos for their rhetorical purposes. Both the apostle Paul and Ignatius of Antioch exploited the inherently negative connotations of Ioudaismos as adherence to Judean interests.⁴ Their gentile Christian followers were becoming keen on Judean ways, and they wanted them to stop.

Although Paul devotes much space in his letters to Judean law and culture (e.g., in Romans), it never occurs to him to use Ioudaismos in those contexts because the word did not mean “Judean law, practice and belief.” He uses the term only in the context of Galatians, where he describes his past efforts—before his own miraculous conversion—to persecute the early followers of Christ and bring them back to Jewish law and practice (Galatians 1:13–14). Paul had long since abandoned this “Judaizing,” whereas Peter and James were still advocating circumcision and adherence to the law for all newly baptized Christians—a practice that Paul finds problematic (Galatians 2:14, 6:12–14). Ignatius faces the same issue. But after presenting Judaizing (Ioudaismos) as the problem, he coins another –ismos word for the ironic antidote. For him—standing 2 Maccabees on its head—“Christianizing” (Christianismos) is the proper activity for Christians, not this alien Judaizing (Ioudaismos).

This linguistic move by the prestigious bishop of Antioch begins to explain later Christian interest in Ioudaismos. Christians went through a long period of social and political vulnerability during the first and second centuries because they did not fit into existing social-political categories. (Ignatius was writing en route to his execution.) They could not say “we are a religion” because no such category existed. Nor were they—unlike the Judeans—a recognized nation (ethnos) with ancestral city, temple, altar and priest-led cult. They were merely a voluntary association, and such clubs were inherently suspect and vulnerable to local authorities.

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By the early third century, Christians in many locations were beginning to enjoy a measure of security and strength. This encouraged such thinkers as Tertullian of Carthage to begin reshaping their self-understanding and, along with that, their lexicon. Tertullian saw a new potential in Ignatius’s “Christianism.” He began to use its Latin form (Christianismus) for something much more than a clever alternative to Judaizing: It could stand for a whole system of belief and practice (i.e., Christianity). Although the category had not existed before, a true –ism was born.

Part of the attraction of creating this new category of –isms was that it invited the shaping of the rest of the world in comparable terms. So were born “Judaism” (Latin Iudaismus) and “paganism” (paganitas), reducing the two great cultural traditions against which Christians had struggled for so long to a more manageable size. Paradoxically, Christians appear to have invented both Judaism and paganism.

“You never get too good for the basics.” Some such caution will be familiar to anyone who has trained in a sport, musical instrument or language. We understand that we will have to get through the basics at the start. The hard part is realizing, months or years into training, that we can never leave behind those building blocks: working endlessly on balance and form; constantly practicing scales; struggling with the unsexy conjugation of verbs. It is the same with academic work. Important insights have originated in the teaching of introductory courses. That is where we come to grips […]