Books in Brief

012

Exodus and Revolution

Michael Walzer

(New York: Basic Books, 1985) 177 pp. $15.95

The ancient rabbis made the bold, and at first glance, far-fetched assertion that if God had not brought the Israelites out of Egypt then “we, and our children, and our children’s children, would still be slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt.” Michael Walzer, a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, draws a conclusion that suggests the rabbis had a correct political insight. The Israelite Exodus from Egypt was the beginning of history, not only for the Israelites and their descendants, but in Western political thought.

Walzer describes the Exodus as a radical departure marking the beginning of progression in political history. The Israelites move from the corruption and oppression of Egypt towards the objective of dwelling in the Promised Land. Once the Israelites leave Egypt, they do not return to it. They may murmur about some of the attractions of Egypt, but the movement is through the wilderness, the acceptance of a moral covenant with God at Mt. Sinai, the wanderings in the desert for 40 years, and then into Canaan, the Promised Land.

Before the Exodus, according to Walzer, history was viewed cyclically. Mankind was not marching toward any goal, merely reiterating what had occurred previously. History had no end or objective because it always resumed to the beginning. The Exodus changed that perception.

The ancient rabbis also admonished that “even if we are all wise, all men of knowledge and understanding, all advanced in years and all versed in the Torah, we are, nonetheless, commanded to relate the going out of Egypt, and whosoever does so at great length, he is surely to be praised.”

Walzer’s analysis is in accord with this prescription, for he considers this more than thrice-told tale in fascinating detail. He revisits “the going forth from Egypt,” the text a Jew is commanded to remember “all the days of thy life” to the extent that a daily prayer makes specific reference in order to assure compliance. How then to add a fresh thought to an epic that is seemingly so thoroughly familiar?

Walzer sets two objectives for his study to understand the story in its own terms and to understand how the story has affected the Western world’s view of the possibility of revolutionary change. He analyzes a range of Jewish commentaries focusing on the meaning of the story as understood within Jewish history, and then shows through pertinent quotations how the story was used at times during the 35 ensuing centuries to express the politics of such diverse personalties as Oliver Cromwell, Savonarola, Calvin, the Puritans, blacks in the United States, Leninists, the liberation theologists of the Catholic Church in Latin America, and the American Founding Fathers. Benjamin Franklin proposed that the Great Seal of the United States show Moses with arms uplifted as the Red Sea enveloped the Egyptian chariots, while Thomas Jefferson suggested the more pacific scene of the Israelites following “God’s pillars of cloud and fire” across the Sinai desert. Each was identifying American independence as a liberation in the model of the Exodus. Not surprisingly, Christianity uses images from the Exodus, and even the French revolutionaries, who tried to avoid all references to religion, were forced to acknowledge the enduring impact the Exodus has in all thinking about political revolutions.

Walzer’s achievement in dealing with the Biblical text is to provide it with the vocabulary and concepts of the political philosopher. For example, he suggests that the Israelite slavery represents oppression through the use of state power. The Israelites as slaves in Egypt were not owned individually as chattel, unlike the slaves of the New World who belonged to individual masters. Also, the Israelites were not acquired as slaves through the “legitimacy” of conquest, as were the slaves of ancient Greece. Rather, the Israelite community, which had come as invitees to the land, were in time forced to labor ceaselessly on behalf of the arbitrary power of the state. Oppression and state power were linked.

Freedom from this bondage is not the sole objective for the Israelites. The values of the old regime must be rejected. Therefore the Israelites cannot remain in Egypt. Walzer notes that the ten plagues become emblematic of Egyptian corruption. Corrupt Egypt “represents revolutionary defeat,” the symbol for “going back” in moral time and space.

New values are not easily inculcated. The recently freed slaves murmur, comparing the positive aspects of what they have given up with what they now have in the desert. Worse yet, the people challenge the new authority, that of God, by raising and worshipping the golden calf. Walzer raises disturbing questions about the “purge” that ensues when Moses and the Levites destroy the opposition through violence. What are the restraints on political violence? Terror and destruction are all too often justified by revolutionaries to maintain revolutionary purity.

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Walzer suggests, at various points through out the book, that later revolutionary traditions find paradigms within the Biblical text. For example, Walzer suggests that the promise of going to Canaan has “a complex two fold character”: God will bring the Israelites into a land “flowing with milk and honey,” but the people are also to be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” a condition which is never quite achieved.

To the Leninist, this can be expressed as various forms of consciousness. The mass of workers focuses on the material improvement in the better life, while the vanguard is concerned with establishing a new society. Of the Christian view of the thoughts embedded in the passage, Walzer writes that “the people have carnal desires, while Moses, a prototype of Christ, glimpses a spiritual end that he cannot yet reveal (or which the people cannot yet understand).”

Elsewhere, Walzer suggests that “Jewish messianic thought, and so all messianic thought, had its origins in this idea of a second Exodus.” He argues that messianism “derives from the Exodus but stands radically apart from it” because a key concept of messianism is that “history will stop—an idea entirely alien to the Exodus texts, which almost seem designed to teach that the promises will never definitively be fulfilled, that backsliding and struggle are permanent features of human existence.”

Walzer anticipates the criticisms that can be made against retelling the Exodus story and then drawing from it the broad general themes common to later revolutionary processes in the West. He boldly asserts that the “revolutionary process” of “oppression, liberation, social contract, political struggle, new society (danger of restoration)” is common to Western thought, but is not a universal pattern. How other cultures think of the revolutionary process is not described, though the comparison might add force to his central thesis, that the Exodus has so penetrated Western thought as to virtually exclude other ways of looking at the revolutionary process. What are the ways in which non-Western cultures view the revolutionary process?

Certainly, intellectual models affect perceptions. The invention of the mechanical pump is credited with providing the basis for the physiologists’ understanding of the role of the heart within the circulatory system. Political events do not make for such a seemingly perfect fit between model and the observed phenomenon. However, Walzer is certainly persuasive in showing how the Exodus may have given inspiration to some revolutionaries or, at the least, suggested a way of viewing a stage in the revolutionary process.

Nonetheless, great differences exist between the Exodus and other revolutions as well as among revolutions generally. Indeed, in some senses the Exodus story is not about a classic revolution. The Israelites are not an activist group seeking to cast out the existing leadership and create a new society within its present land. The Israelites were not seeking either to displace Pharaoh or to acquire control over Egypt. They only wanted out.

Moreover, the objectives of revolution differ profoundly no matter what they have in common in process. The fact of common rhetoric in the revolutionary process appears to have nothing to do with a common goal. For the Israelites, the goal was to leave the physical bondage of Egypt and re-establish the commitment to God made by their forebears, which each Israelite renewed while standing before Sinai.

Perhaps the metaphor for revolution is the birthing process. Each birth follows a well-established and generally familiar process, but the child that enters the world differs markedly from all the others. So too, commonality in the revolutionary process does not establish any kinship in the political ideas borne by the revolution itself.

The Rise of Christianity

W. H. C. Frend

(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 1022 pp., $49.95

Few modern historians of early Christianity venture to write a really big book on the subject or, for that matter, to go beyond Constantine’s rise to power and his promulgation (in 313) of the so-called Edict of Milan, which granted Christianity legal recognition. Modern scholars find dealing with a more limited period easier, and writing about martyrs more interesting than writing about monks. And modern scholars are afraid of the corrupting influence of the power that accrued to the Church when Christianity became a state religion. They prefer to imagine a time when the Church was powerless and pure.

Frend’s book provides an invaluable corrective to this sort of thinking. The author, for many years professor of ecclesiastical history at Glasgow University, gives us an intelligent, clear and lively treatment of the history of Christianity. He starts with 015Christianity’s Jewish background and the ministry of Jesus and then covers almost six centuries, concluding in 604 with the death of Pope Gregory the Great. By 604 the theological and political disputes that led to the final split between the eastern and western branches of the Church were well under way. An account of the subsequent centuries would be less unified, more incoherent; the story would lose some of its zest. What Frend tells is attractive and even enthralling.

Though the death of Constantine is often treated as marking the end of true Christianity, this event comes only halfway through Frend’s account. He does not let us neglect the life of the Church as a whole (or of the churches in particular areas) after the Roman state recognized Christianity. Everything having to do with the Church did not change, fall, decline or terminate when fierce persecution ended (313) or when Constantine pressured and cajoled feuding bishops into agreeing on a common creed at the Council of Nicaea (325). One must be on guard against scholars who slice up history into artificial periods. Slicing up Church history is especially dangerous, because many scholars wield theological and personal axes and look for an original golden age from which the Church fell. Frend’s book is especially exciting because, it seems to me, he speaks intelligibly and sympathetically to readers who may prefer Both/And to Either/Or and who are trying to achieve a balanced interpretation of the Church and its history.

Frend organizes the themes of his book along chronological lines. Part 1, “Jews and Christians,” draws on material from 587 B.C. to 193 A.D. Part II, “Christianity and the Roman Empire,” deals with life and thought within the Church as well as with political matters. “From Constantine to Chalcedon,” Part III, covers the prospering of the church after it became the favored religion of the empire. Part IV, “The Parting of the Ways,” takes us to the point where a break between the eastern and western branches of the Church seemed inevitable. The student whose acquaintance with the history and literature of the Roman world needs refreshing can find a highly useful “synopsis of events” in 64 pages near the end of the book.

A good example of Frend’s moderation occurs in a chapter called “Acute Hellenization,” in which he treats the early speculative heresy called Gnosticism. The chapter’s heading is not novel; the great church historian Hamack used it years ago. But Frend adds two additional and necessary steps to Hamack’s approach. First, he balances his treatment of the Greek elements in the Gnostic systems that competed with early Christianity by giving a section on the influence of “Jewish thought, both Hellenistic and Palestinian.” This influence, he says, “underlay the absorption of any pagan ideas and values that found their place in different Gnostic systems” (p. 202). Since early Christian thought as a whole was similarly influenced first by Jews and then by gentiles (note what the Apostle Paul says about this! [Romans 1:16, 2:9, 10: “to the Jews first”]), it is clear that the differences between the Gnostic heretics and their more orthodox contemporaries have often been exaggerated. Second, Frend notes that in the mid-second century “neither orthodox nor unorthodox … [had] boundaries as fixed and defined … as Irenaeus of Lyon, writing c. 185, would have his hearers believe” (p. 195). Frend’s treatment of the early Christian apologists is fair and accurate, as is his discussion of nearly everything that I have studied in detail. “Fair and not fanciful” is an accurate summary.

Frend was originally an archaeologist, and he has kept his concern for places and tangible things; maps and pictures help to place 016the Church he describes in the real world. He deals not with merely literary or even theological history but with persons and events. Of course, no history of the Church can neglect literature or ideas, but to overemphasize ideas means coming close to writing philosophy or to practicing a kind of “docetism,” leaving out the real human life that history records. The kind of history written in this book can be used with confidence by theologians and philosophers, indeed by any one interested in the subject. Frend’s book is essentially reliable.

If we compare his book with the important volume on early Christianity by Jean Daniélou and Henri-Irenée Marrou (The First Six Hundred Years, Volume I of The Christian Centuries, [London, 1964]), we find that in some areas Frend may lack their special concerns with Jewish Christianity and Greek education. More important, however, Frend’s book is more unified and more “catholic” than theirs, and Frend does not overemphasize any special interests. He reminds us of Kenneth Latourette (A History of Christianity [New York: Harper and Row, 1975]) except that he relies on original sources. The Rise of Christianity may be compared to the two volumes on the early Church by Philip Carrington (The Early Christian Church [Cambridge, 1957]), but Frend covers more ground than Carrington, and Frend is more of a specialist, in a good sense, in a variety of areas. His book is very well balanced. This big book is a big agathon—to be translated as “good” or even “blessing.”

I have recommended The Rise of Christianity strongly to colleagues and students. Any reader interested in the early history of Christianity will find this book useful over a long period of time—to browse through, to read and to reread.

Highlights of Archaeology from the Israel Museum

(Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1984) 159 pp.

Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem, writes in the forward to this glossy, exquisitely photographed catalogue: “It is appropriate that highlights of archaeology should begin the series … of publications planned by the Israel Museum which will present a selection of the voluminous treasures housed in the various departments.”

The objects highlighted in this first volume of the series, in 26 superb color photographs and 51 black-and-white examples, present the history of human culture in Eretz Israel—the Land of Israel—and in the Middle East. The oldest artifact pictured is a set of fossil horns from a giant one million-year-old member of the ox family. The five-foot-span bones were found in Ubeidiya, in the Jordan Valley south of Lake Kinneret.

The Early Bronze period (c. 3000–2200 B.C.) is represented by a beautiful selection of copper spearheads and a mother and child clay figurine. From the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000–1550 B.C.) are a silver cup, a fish-shaped pottery vessel and a collection of silver figurines of deities from the Canaanite sanctuary at Nahariya, a Mediterranean coastal site north of Haifa. A cult mask, some 017anthropoid sarcophagi from Deir el-Balah in northern Sinai, and jewelry from Akko and Deir el-Balah represent the Late Bronze period (c. 1550–1200 B.C.).

The largest collection in this volume is from the Israelite period (Iron Age). It includes a bronze bull statuette from the Samaria region, the famous chair-shaped female figurine nicknamed “Ashdoda,” a decorated Philistine jug and cult stand, an ivory sphinx from Samaria, “Astarte” figurines, juglets, seals, an ostracon from the “House of God” at the Negev site of Arad and many more.

The Persian period in the sixth to fourth centuries B.C. is not represented in the present publication, while the Hellenistic period that followed is represented only by one photograph of three molded glass bowls. The early and late Roman, the Byzantine and Moslem periods are all represented by many objects, both religious and secular. Included also are a representative collection of objects from other cultures—Iranian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Anatolian, South Arabian and Cypriote.

Highlights does not overlook the ancient scroll collections housed in the Shrine of the Book museum on the same grounds as the main buildings of the Israel Museum. Included are fragments from a Ben Sira scroll found at Masada and a portion of the 29-foot-long Temple Scroll from Qumran, the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Also included is a letter written by a Jewish woman named Babatha, who, in the second century A.D., hid from attacking Romans in a cave near the Dead Sea.

Most of the photographs are by Nahum Slapak of the Israel Museum. Slapak’s work is noteworthy for its sharp reproduction of details. He also takes the trouble to shoot against carefully controlled backgrounds. The delicate shading, the occasional shadow cast by an object, are esthetic enhancements that distinguish Slapak’s archaeological photography. Each picture is accompanied by a description and a bibliography written by one of the curators of the Israel Museum. The curators participating in this publication are Tamar Noy (prehistoric periods), Miriam Tadmor (Chalcolithic to Late Bronze), Ruth Hestrin (Israelite period), Yael Israeli, Uri Avida and Tamar Schick (Hellenistic to Byzantine), Ya’akov Meshorer (numismatics), Naama Brosh (Islamic), Rivka Merhav (Near Eastern), Daphna Ben-Tor (Egyptian), Uri Avida (classical) and Magen Broshi (manuscripts from the Shrine of the Book).

Although each object is dated, a chronological chart would have been a bonus. Also, the visitor to the museum would have found a floor plan indicating each period’s exhibit very helpful. The lack of these features does not distract from the quality of this publication, but it makes the recent and attractive Israel Museum Guide (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1983), by Rafi Grafman, a necessary companion.

Recent Discoveries and the Biblical World

Raymond E. Brown, S.S.

(Wilmington: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1983) 101 pp., paper $4.95

This brief but helpful handbook assesses the impact of a number of significant archaeological discoveries on our understanding of the 018Biblical world.

Covering mostly 20th-century excavations, Recent Discoveries is divided into two parts. The first is devoted to “Discoveries of Tablets and Scrolls” that range from the cuneiform of Ebla, to the hieroglyphic of Tell el-Amarna, to the alphabetic of Qumran. Part II, “Archaeological Discoveries and History,” describes artifacts from such major sites as Jericho, Hazor, and Megiddo and explores how the prevailing interpretations of these finds affect our understanding of the Bible.

In this latter section, Brown purposefully illustrates how archaeology both clarifies and confuses the information we obtain from the Bible. For example, he points out that “If the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, they did so centuries before (the supposed time of Joshua in the 1300s or 1200s B.C.)” (p. 57). He reminds us that excavations at Megiddo, as at Hazor, “confirm part of the Biblical report about Solomon’s building activity, but also challenge the Bible’s neglect of Omri and Ahab” (p. 62).

Brown’s book is a helpful treatment of sites and discoveries. However, his explicit goal to squelch any tendency his readers might have toward a fundamentalistic attitude toward the Bible is unwarranted and inappropriate.

Fundamentalism he defines as “a mindset wherein the expression of divine revelation is thought not to be time-conditioned” (p. 15). The idea that the Bible is time-conditioned is one way of reconciling the Biblical narrative with modern sciences. Time-conditioning with regard to the Bible refers to the idea that the Biblical writers’ views about the way in which God created were influenced by the time in which they lived. Brown claims that the fundamentalist rejection of this notion causes a “religious tragedy” by which, for example, the sciences that have proposed evolution are rejected in favor of what the fundamentalist sees as the higher truth of the Bible. Fundamentalists, according to Brown, either reject the testimony of science in favor of the literal Biblical testimony, or they glibly harmonize the contradictions between them.

I wonder whether fundamentalism can be defined so precisely. I venture to think that this label is being applied by scholars to individuals who hold a high view of the Bible as the word of God and who do not quickly accept the “assured results of scientific research,” an expression that means “the current consensus.” Many fundamentalists who read the Bible as revelation can also be open-minded about the way in which God revealed himself in history. Conservative Bible readers have every right to be as skeptical of the current assured results as scholars have the right to be skeptical of the Bible reader who will allow no time-conditioning in revelation. Archaeology is a science that deals with the fragments of history, and its conclusions may always be modified by new material evidence.

Although some scholars call fundamentalists “fanatics,” there is certainly some merit to the fundamentalist reluctance to accept every new interpretation of archaeological data. Yet scientists and fundamentalists are both of the same species—human—and ought, therefore, to treat one another in a more kindly spirit, since both are subject to error. At the least, we can say that Dr. Brown is both erudite and honest. He did not hide his bias against fundamentalists. One can benefit from his erudition by overlooking the bias.

Exodus and Revolution

Michael Walzer

(New York: Basic Books, 1985) 177 pp. $15.95