Michael L. Satlow

Then and Now

academic

Philo’s Definition of “Judaism”

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With the publication of Daniel Boyarin’s book, Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion, “Judaism” is back on the scholarly agenda.  The book (for which I supplied a blurb) was recently the center of an interesting forum in Marginalia, and comes on the heels of a few books dealing with the usefulness of the term “religion” to denote anything in antiquity (including one that Boyarin also co-authored) and Cynthia Baker’s book, Jew, tracing the genealogy of that term as well (and which I reviewed here).

This is a topic that I’ve long thought about.  How do we define “Judaism”?  This actually breaks up into two related clusters of questions.  The first is whether, and how, Jews themselves have defined “Judaism,” whether they use that term (attested relatively late) or not.  The second is how outsiders – including academics – define “Judaism,” and the extent to which those definitions due useful work.  The former is known as an emic definition, the latter as an etic one.

My own work has been more on the etic side.  How can scholars create a non-normative definition of “Judaism” that is useful to our work?  I discussed this both in my book, Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice and in an essay I published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.  While I actually prefer to avoid using the word “Judaism” in most of my own scholarship, I do think that when carefully defined it can be useful for scholars.  In those works, I develop a simply map for charting the different manifestations of what we might call “Judaism.”

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I have new article on this topic, called “Defining Judaism: The Case of Philo,” in a new, excellent collection edited by Nickolas P. Roubekas, Theorizing “Religion” in Antiquity (Equinox, 2019), pp. 245-264.  In this article I use the map that I previously developed to chart the contours of Philo’s “Judaism.”

Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity: Taking Stock

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I am just emerging from a colloquium that earlier this week I co-organized with Ishay Rosen-Zvi on “Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity.”  As such things go, it was a bit unusual: we focused on five “meta” issues (state of the academic field; undergraduate education; graduate education; the relationship between Israeli and American scholars; and our place in and response to the wider societal sources in which we work), discussing them as a group rather than having formal presentations.  I made brief opening remarks, Ishay made brief closing remarks, and Shaye J. D. Cohen delivered a keynote, but otherwise the group participants took turns facilitating the discussions.  I may have more to say later about what I got out of this colloquium but in the interim below are my slightly redacted opening remarks:

 

My name is Michael Satlow, from the Program in Judaic Studies and Department of Religious Studies here at Brown University.  Ishay Rosen-Zvi and I are delighted to be able to welcome you to our colloquium on Jews and Judaism in late antiquity.

This idea for this colloquium arose out of a happenstance.  The Program in Judaic Studies at Brown University administers a fund, the Ruth and Joseph Moskow Endowment, used to sponsor a colloquium or symposium most every year.  A bit over a year ago at a program meeting, I discovered that the symposium for which the funds had been earmarked for this year had been canceled and I somewhat impulsively volunteered to organize one for this year.  To be honest, my ideas were rather vague at that time.  I knew that despite my ability to have many wonderful intellectual conversations here at Brown, I have very few opportunities on a day-to-day basis to have ones that are very field specific.  So what I really wanted to do at that time was to bring together a group of people who share a passion for this topic as well as a basic vocabulary.  (Try explaining the stam to a theorist of French literature.)  What exactly we would talk about I was not at all clear about.

At that point I contacted Ishay.  Brown and Tel Aviv developed a memo of understanding some years ago, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to put it to use.  Together we settled on a topic and format that if not unheard of, are unconventional.  We thought that what would be most useful – what we don’t, as a collective, have enough time to do – is to reflect together on the big picture, the meta-issues of our field specifically.  Where are we and where are we going?  In order to accomplish this goal, we also decided to forego paper presentations in order to foster a more serious discussion.  At the larger professional conferences, after all, what many of us enjoy most, and what we find most productive, are the side conversations that occur between paper presentations and over meals.  It made us wonder if you could design a whole colloquium around loosely structured conversations.

Given the unconventional nature of this gathering – and our inability to fund travel or honoraria – it was far from clear to either of us that anyone would actually want to come.  And yet, to our great surprise, almost everyone we invited accepted.  Maybe, it made us think, we are onto something here.  I hope that by the end of the day tomorrow the exact nature of that “something” will be much clearer, but in advance of that let me say how grateful we are that you are here to join us in this endeavor.

Let me add some personal comments to give some context to these upcoming conversations.  I entered graduate school in 1987 and received my Ph.D. in 1993.  Over the past few years I have been becoming increasingly aware of how the field, and maybe the profession, has shifted, and concerned about my own ability to respond to these shifts.  I have thought about these shifts under the four major rubrics of our conversations – the state of the field; undergraduate education; graduate education; and the relationship between scholars working in the United States and in Israel, and I want to say some very brief words about each.

First, the state of the field.  When I got my first job, it was a field that was animated by a few core issues.  These issues – such as the reliability of rabbinic reports and the authority of the rabbis – at times got a bit tedious, but they did serve as an intellectual axis mundi that helped to create a common conversation.  At the same time, the study of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity – which we often, if incorrectly, simply labelled “rabbinics” – was exciting.  The field was seen as the virtual core of “Jewish studies.”  Even if the reasons for this mostly arose from the incomplete separation between traditional and academic approaches to rabbinic texts, the field still pushed to make contributions to the wider academy, particularly in classics, religious studies, and literary theory.

Today, I’m not sure if I can say any of those things about our field.  Are there core issues around which we have common conversations and around which larger research agendas form?  Or is what unites us simply our shared interest in a common dataset, and perhaps a methodology here or there?  While it is clear to me that our status within the world of Jewish studies has severely eroded with the growth and acceptance of other fields within Jewish studies, it is unclear if we are making the same impact in the wider academy, or, indeed, if we even want to.

Second, undergraduate education.  My experience teaching undergraduates has also changed and I’m not sure to what extent that has been the result of wider shifts or of the different cultures at the institutions at which I’ve worked.  Interest specifically in the rabbis has never been very high, but there was some undergraduate recognition of and interest in the Talmud (in English translation) and until recently enrollments in such courses were usually healthy.  That has changed and in my own experience undergraduate interest in anything that smacks of being “too Jewish” or “too old” has severely weakened.  This, of course, is consistent with general trends in the humanities and Jewish studies, at least in the United States, and both students and educational institutions increasingly emphasize STEM fields and relevance.  I know that I can get students into my classes if I offer easy grades – and once they are in the course, they do work, learn, and enjoy.  But I struggle with trying to balance student interest, my own areas of strength and weakness, and my old-fashioned sense of rigor.

Third, graduate education.  From my first tenure track job in 1994 I have been involved in graduate education.  My approach to graduate training combines the traditional with the practical.  On the one hand, students need to be prepared to do scholarship that is on a high-level and impactful: they should have good linguistic skills; solid methodological capabilities; and broad acquaintance with the major issues of the field.  On the other, though, they also need always to be aware that graduate training is first and foremost professional training, a certification that will help one get a job.  There is a delicate balance to be struck here as we try to train students in five or six years.  Given the wider shifts occurring throughout the academy, should we continue to train in the same way, or do we need to think differently about what a PhD in the field really means?  Complicating these decisions, of course, is the job market.  For years, I’ve told graduate students that the market in our field is robust enough that most – not all, but most – graduates who have been diligent about their works will get tenure track jobs.  While our graduates continue to get good jobs, I have been shaken enough by the market – which is downright scary – that I no longer use this line on our students.  It is no longer the case the every JS program feels it needs someone trained in rabbinics.

And, finally, the relationship between scholars in Israel and the United State.  During graduate school I spent two years studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  For me, this was a critically formative experience, especially perhaps because it came at a time when American and Israeli scholars were explicitly discussing their different approaches.  Prior to the 1990s, it was indeed expected that American scholars in the field would have some significant connection to Israeli colleagues, a connection that might mean actually studying there or at least knowing Modern Hebrew and attending the World Congress.  At the same time, there was a recognized tension between the approaches and goals of American and Israeli scholarship in the field.  Here I wonder if we have seen a major change, almost a reversal.  American scholars increasingly have asserted their independence and, implicitly, have placed Israel toward the margins; it has become easier to ignore Israeli scholarship and the value of engaging with scholarship in Modern Hebrew has lessened.  Instead, I see far more Israeli scholars spending time in the United States, whether as graduate students or post-docs, and that is changing what Israeli scholarship looks like.  If this observation is correct, what does it mean and how do we respond to it, especially as we train our own graduate students?

I want to emphasize that I am not claiming that the field has changed for the worse, and that somehow I lived in a golden age.  Nor am I claiming the reverse, namely that all is glorious now and that we are marching into a better, kinder world.  It’s just that things have changed and continue to do so, and we – indeed, this is generally true of all academics – respond slowly in the face of change.  Maybe we need to tweak things; maybe we need to completely overhaul our assumptions and approaches.  I’m not sure, but I am convinced that these new challenges and opportunities that are worth at least exploring.

As you have noticed, in sending invitations we have focused on what loosely might be described as the “mid-career” demographic.  This was intentional; most of us have already experienced some of the changes that I’ve flagged, and others, but we are still in a position to act on whatever insights and suggestions we take out of these discussions.  These are discussions that I hope don’t dwell on the reasons for the changes, particularly those that we cannot control.  They should look forward: how do we respond to, change, and take advantage of our new landscape.

I expect, and hope that the discussions we have will be open, honest, and respectful.  This is not exactly a case of “what is said in Providence stays in Providence” – because I do hope that we’ll all bring back nuggets that we want to share with others – but I do want to create a space in which we all feel free to articulate half-baked thoughts without fear that we will be judged or held accountable to them.  A safe-space, if you will.  We are a group of equals and the role of the facilitators is to help keep a discussion moving and orderly, not to sit as the resident experts of their sessions.

The goal of these discussions, at least as I see it, is rather simple: to emerge from these discussions, as individuals, with a better sense of what can be done to grow professionally.  If, in addition to this, we emerge with a group consensus about certain issues, or even larger collaborative projects, that would be a great but added bonus.  We are here primarily to learn from each other.

Ishay and I welcome you once again to this colloquium and look forward to our conversation.

 

The “Isaiah Seal”

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Biblical Archaeology Review just published this new, tiny find from the excavations at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem: a clay seal (or bulla) that seems to contain the name Isaiah with (a little more doubtfully) the word “prophet” written underneath.  The top register of the seal seems to depict an animal, perhaps a doe.  The article, “Isaiah’s Signature Uncovered in Jerusalem:  Evidence of the Prophet Isaiah”  can be accessed here and has been picked up quickly by a number of news sites.  Paleojudaica also has a nice write-up about this.

How significant is the find?

Popular media tends to keep rewriting the same story for finds of this sort: they prove the veracity of the Bible.  In this case, however, nobody seriously doubts the existence of Isaiah, who is also attested outside of his own book in the Bible in some of the more historical writings (2 Kings 18).  Finding the a seal of the biblical prophet Isaiah would indeed be interesting but the fact that it would then attest to his actual existence is perhaps the least interesting thing about it.  (The headline, incidentally, is slightly misleading.  It is the seal that is the “signature,” not the writing on it, which was probably carved on the stamp by someone else.)

To my mind, there are instead three things of genuine interest about this seal:

  1. It attests to the formal, institutionalized nature of “the prophet.”  Seals tended to go on official correspondence and the fact that Isaiah would have one with his title strongly suggests that he holds some kind of official position, like “court prophet.”  This confirms other evidence from the Bible that prophets were not only, as we tend to think of them, random people who were believed to have received divine communication but that they also could hold official jobs in the court or temple.
  2. It suggests that either Isaiah or (probably more likely) his retinue was literate.  Prophecy was usually an oral phenomenon.  Other biblical books contain examples of prophecies being put into writing (e..g, Baruch writes down Jeremiah’s prophecies in Jeremiah 36) or otherwise thematizing writing (Ezekiel 3) but the process by which the prophet’s words became text is enigmatic.  Some time ago, a seal that may have belonged to Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, was found (there remain questions about its authenticity).  This seal, if authentic, would show the prophet sending correspondence in his own name, not that of his scribe.  This has potential implications for understanding the interplay of the oral and written in prophetic circles.
  3. Finally, I’m intrigued by the iconography.  Why would the prophet Isaiah use a doe?  Is there anything significant about this choice or, for that matter, any of the iconography that appears on ancient Israelite seals (of which we have many)?

The seal is hardly earth shattering, but it is also not insignificant.  If it really is what it is being claimed to be.

The Meaning of “Torah”: A Report from the Enoch Seminar

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A couple of months ago I attended a meeting of the Enoch Seminar in Camaldoli, Italy.  The conference, which included an extraordinary range of scholars, grappled with the meaning of the word and concept of “Torah” from the biblical period through Late Antiquity.  There were a mix of session topics and formats and I have no intention of trying to summarize the many papers and areas of disagreement.  The publication of the papers is being organized by William Schniedewind and Jason Zurawski.  I will focus here on my own contributions to the conference and one important area of what I thought was consensus.

My paper was entitled, “Torah: The Material Evidence.”  In it, I posed a simple question: If we did not have the literature of the rabbis, what we would know about the Torah and its role in Jewish communities in Late Antiquity?  Based on my survey of the artistic, archaeological, epigraphical, (meager) papyrological, and literary (law codes and patristic literature) I developed three main conclusions:

  • Scrolls of the Torah were stored, and most likely read, in the synagogues;
  • Writings from the Torah served an apotropaic role for Jews (and maybe non-Jews) in Late Antiquity;
  • There is no evidence that being learned in Torah was valued by most Jews

As to the first conclusion – well, duh.  This is amply attested in rabbinic literature, so no surprise there.  The second and third conclusions are more intriguing.  At least some Jews saw the Torah as a “magical” text; its actual content could have little to do with this.  The absence of mention of Torah learning among the epithets used in epitaphs was also striking, especially when seen in contrast to Jewish epitaphs from the medieval period.  These conclusions do not (at least yet) add up to an answer to the question of what “Torah” meant to these Jews but they set some important areas to consider.

I also served as a respondent to a paper by Lutz Doehring called “Torah and Halakhah in the Hellenistic Period.”  Lutz’s paper made the case that many Jews during this time used the Torah as a source of “halakhah,” and thus was important, in some sense, to the larger Jewish community.  I was skeptical, not only of the entire notion of “halakhah” in the Hellenistic period (the term is used for the first time by the rabbis, who wrote in the Roman period) but of whether almost every case cited by Doehring cannot be explained at least equally well by appealing to traditional Jewish practices that exist independently of Torah, even if they are also attested there.  So it is clear that Jews (many? most?) observed the Sabbath in the Hellenistic period but that does not mean that they justified or authorized their practice by appeal to a text.  Maybe they did, but there is almost no explicit evidence to this effect.

Now for the agreement:  On the narrow philological question of what did the word “torah” mean throughout antiquity, we all agreed that it shifted depending on the author and time.  “Torah” never had a stable referent.  For most people today, the term is usually taken as referring to a set text (i.e., the Pentateuch).  That usage is attested in antiquity, but this is one of its least popular meanings.  Early Jewish writers frequently used “torah” in the loose sense of wisdom or teaching (its literal meaning) usually having some connection to the divine or to Moses.  For me, some of the more interesting papers argued that in antiquity the word Torah often served as a gerund, denoting a process of transmission rather than its stable contents.  In some cases, it was the Sage whose behavior embodied Torah (a notion that can be found in rabbinic literature as well).  The conference thus successfully destabilized “Torah,” leaving me with the take-away that there is no linear development in how it was understood but rather that it is a core concept whose exact meaning was (and is?) continually renegotiated in each and every Jewish community.

 

Naming Rabbis: A Digital List

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A little over five years ago I posted an idea about creating a social network analysis of the rabbis found in classical rabbinic literature.  In the interim I have thought a lot about this project but have done very little on it.  I still believe it is worth doing, though, and I have finally taken a concrete step forward.

First, a brief justification for the project.  According to several scholars, most of the rabbis we find in classical rabbinic literature (e.g., the Babylonian Talmud) worked in small disciple circles rather than larger educational institutions (e.g., the yeshiva) which only began to emerge at the end of Late Antiquity.  These small circles formed a loose network.  Students, for example, could move back and forth between circles, transmitting knowledge.  It is unclear how often or in what contexts individual rabbis would have contact with their colleagues.

Rabbinic literature, particularly the reports of cases and individual sayings (as opposed to the less reliable stories, or aggadah), mentions interactions between these rabbis.  Sometimes these statements note simply that “rabbi x said in the name of rabbi y,” others mention biological or pedagogical relationships between them.  The idea is to use social network analysis to visualize these networks.  How did knowledge move within and between the nodes (circles of rabbinic disciples) of this network?  Who are the rabbinic connectors, leaders, and isolates?  How did information move between circles in Palestine and Babylonia?  Where do we locate “center” and “periphery”?  Does a visualization help us?

The first step to creating such a visualization, not to mention other larger scale projects that involve rabbinic literature, is to create a digital list of all of the rabbis mentioned in the literature.  Next, with the help of a collaborator, we will seek to identify the “connecting words” that describe all the different relationships between rabbis and to code these relationships into a software package that will perform the visualizations.

The first step is finally complete.  We created a spreadsheet of all the names of rabbis as enumerated in the three volume Hebrew work by Aaron Hyman, Toldot Tanaʾim ṿe-Amoraʾim : mesudar ʻa. p. a.b. ʻim beʾurim ṿe-hagahot ṿe-girsaʾot shonot (London, 1910).  Since this list can be used in other digital projects as well, I am making it available here (Rabbis_Names) in Excel.  We broke out each of the components of the name into a different column and indicated where more than one name can be referring to the same individual.  The spreadsheet should be easy to use for those who know how to work with such things.

And for the rest of you, in case you were wondering, there are somewhere in the range of 5,000 individual rabbis named in the literature surveyed by Hyman.