The Benefit of the The Doubt: Workshop Reflections

I had the pleasure of participating in a workshop entitled, “The Benefit of the Doubt. Between Scepticism and Godlessness, Critique or Indifference in Ancient Mediterranean Religious Traditions” in February.  Sponsored by Humboldt University and Leipzig University, it took place in Berlin.  A short description and the conference program is here.

The workshop, in a sense, picked up where Tim Whitmarsh’s book, Battling the God: Atheism in the Ancient World left off.   Whitmarsh (who was not at the workshop) actually plays a bit loose with what he means by “atheism,” lumping into it other manifestations of doubting not only the existence but also the power of the deities.  The workshop organizers, Dr. Nicole Hartmann and Dr. Franziska Naether, followed this productive ambiguity, encouraging the participants to think broadly about how and why those in antiquity, from across a wide geographical and temporal distance, expressed and discussed this larger issue of “doubt” of the divine.

Before this workshop, even after reading Whitmarsh’s book, I never thought much about atheism in antiquity.  If it existed at all, it was, I thought, a fringe phenomenon; after all, wasn’t atheism really a modern phenomenon?  Thus, in thinking about the classical rabbis, my mind did not go much past the famous locus classicus of heresy in early rabbinic texts, Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1:

All Jews have a share in the World to Come, as it says, (Isaiah 60:21), “Thy people are all righteous; they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified.” These have no share in the World to Come: One who says that [the belief of] resurrection of the dead is not from the Torah, [one who says that] that the Torah is not from Heaven, and an epicurios. Rabbi Akiva says: also one who reads outside books, and one who whispers [an incantation] over a wound, saying, (Exodus 15:26) “I will bring none of these diseases upon thee that I brought upon the Egyptians for I am the Lord that healeth thee.” Abba Shaul says, also one who utters the Divine Name as it is spelled. (Translation modified from Sefaria.org).

This passage has been discussed extensively.  It hints at issues of atheism and doubt (perhaps the meaning of epicurios) but never explicitly, and turns the issue to a presumably public act – “one who says” – rather than one of private belief.  Aside from this passage, though, it was difficult for think of much other rabbinic evidence for doubt.

Now, though, I see doubt everywhere.  While the term “atheist” is attested already most influentially in Plato, the concept of “atheism” as we usually mean it – the complete denial of the existence of supernatural beings or conscious forces – is very rare.  The label “atheist”, perhaps like the label epicurios in rabbinic texts, is only used as a term to insult others.  On the other hand, it turns out that within many ancient cultures there was much room to voice critiques of divine actions or doubt about their powers.  Hittites, for example, constructed an elaborate ritual procedure for oracular consultation of their gods because they were skeptical about the divine ability to communicate clearly.  They asked a series of questions that essentially badgered the gods: “Sure about that?  Let me rephrase it, just so that we know we’re on the same page.  So if I got you right, yes or now, you meant to say….”  In Byzantine Christian circles, an entire literature of “questions and answers” grew to largely concern issues of faith and doubt.  2 Peter 3:4 acknowledges (or rhetorically creates) the existence of those who doubted that Christ had come, and treats that skepticism quite seriously.

The workshop had only one (excellent) paper on rabbinic texts (by Reuven Kipperwasser), but it is clear that rabbinic literature can yield many of its own examples.  There are multiple discussions, for example, of God’s role in theodicy and doubts about God’s own justice, some of which have been nicely explored by Dov Weiss in his book, Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism (which, previously, I had never thought of quite in the context of “doubt”).  Messages from God are tested and God’s power is often questioned, even if only to be upheld on most occasions.  There is little if any evidence of true “atheists,” but there was certainly room enough in rabbinic culture for questioning much else about the divine.

There are plans to publish the revised papers and I anticipate an excellent volume.