ARNALDO MOMIGLIANO ASPECTS OF HELLENISTIC JUDAISM LECTURES DELIVERED IN LONDON, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO, OXFORD, AND PRINCETON 1977-1982 Edizione critica, introduzioni e note a cura di LEA NICCOLAI e ANTONELLA SOLDANI Pisa 2016 Risorsa elettronica 1 Sommario Indice delle sigle e delle abbreviazioni ................................................................................................ 4 Abbreviazioni delle opere e delle lectures di Momigliano (selezione) ............................................... 7 Note sull’apparato critico ................................................................................................................... 11 Introduzione ....................................................................................................................................... 12 Le carte della serie P-o nell’Archivio Arnaldo Momigliano. ....................................................................... 15 Between Synagogue and Apocalypse: il primo ciclo, da Londra ad Oxford (1977-79)............................... 17 Tra Polibio e Daniele, Demostene e i Maccabei: il secondo (1979-1980) e il terzo (1981) ciclo sul giudaismo ellenistico. ................................................................................................................................... 23 Between Synagogue and Apocalypse, Oxford 1982: ultimo atto di un unico grande progetto? .................. 27 Aspects of Hellenistic Judaism: un libro inedito (o più di uno?) ................................................................ 29 GL 1979 I Prologue in Germany........................................................................................................ 35 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati .............................................................................................. 35 2. Versioni precedenti della lezione: i documenti. ....................................................................................... 36 3. Argomento della lecture ........................................................................................................................... 37 4. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione e il rapporto con i testi editi. ........................................ 38 GL 1979 II The Greeks outside the Persian Empire ...................................................................... 56 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati .............................................................................................. 56 2. Argomento della lecture ........................................................................................................................... 56 3. Note di contenuto: l’evoluzione della lecture e il rapporto con i testi editi. ............................................. 57 GL 1979 III The Jews inside the Persian Empire ............................................................................. 73 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati .............................................................................................. 73 2. Argomento della lecture ........................................................................................................................... 73 3. I motivi della rielaborazione e i rapporti con GL 1979 IV (Defence). ..................................................... 74 GL 1979 IV The Defence against Hellenization ............................................................................... 90 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. ............................................................................................. 90 2. Argomento della lecture .......................................................................................................................... 91 3. Note di contenuto: le finalità della lecture e il rapporto con i testi editi. ................................................. 91 CL 1979 I ......................................................................................................................................... 109 Two Types of Universal History: The Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber............................. 109 1. Una “premessa di metodo”: Freeman, Weber e l’universalismo. ........................................................... 109 2. Argomento della lecture ......................................................................................................................... 109 GL 1980 I Universal History in Greece and Rome .................................................................... 111 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. ........................................................................................... 111 2. Argomento della lecture ......................................................................................................................... 112 3. Note di contenuto: le finalità della lecture e il rapporto con i testi editi ................................................ 113 2 GL 1980 II Daniel and the World Empires ..................................................................................... 129 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati ............................................................................................ 129 2. Argomento della lecture ......................................................................................................................... 129 3. Note di contenuto: le fasi di rielaborazione della lecture e il rapporto con i testi editi. ......................... 130 GL 1980 III Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography ... 146 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati ............................................................................................ 146 2. Argomento della lecture ......................................................................................................................... 147 3. Note di contenuto: Flavio Giuseppe, tra testi editi e nuovi progetti. ...................................................... 147 CL 1981 I, II The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism ...................................................................................................................................... 163 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. ........................................................................................... 163 2. Argomento della prima lecture (Greece). ............................................................................................... 164 3. Argomento della seconda lecture (The East) .......................................................................................... 164 4. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione e il rapporto con i testi editi. ...................................... 165 CL 1981 III Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World ........................................................ 189 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati ............................................................................................ 189 2. Argomento della lecture ......................................................................................................................... 190 3. Note di contenuto: i temi della lecture e il rapporto con i testi editi. ..................................................... 190 CL 1981 IV From the World of Maccabees to Philo ....................................................................... 205 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. ........................................................................................... 205 2. Argomento della lecture ......................................................................................................................... 205 3. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione e il rapporto con i testi editi. ...................................... 206 GL 1982 I Jews and Gentiles ........................................................................................................... 222 1. Osservazioni preliminari ......................................................................................................................... 222 2. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati ............................................................................................ 222 3. Argomento della lecture ......................................................................................................................... 223 3. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione .................................................................................... 224 GL 1982 II The Jewish Sects in the Sources .................................................................................. 243 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. ........................................................................................... 243 2. Argomento della lecture ......................................................................................................................... 244 3. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione e il rapporto con i testi editi. ...................................... 244 Appendice a The Jewish Sects in the Sources: The New Letter by “Anna” to “Seneca” .......................... 258 GL 1982 III The decline of History and Apocalypse...................................................................... 262 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati ............................................................................................ 262 2. Argomento della lecture ......................................................................................................................... 263 3. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione e il rapporto con i testi editi. ...................................... 264 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” ................................................................................................. 287 3 The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) .................................................................................. 287 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. ........................................................................................... 287 2. La caduta delle Religious foundations: riprese e scarti. ......................................................................... 288 3. Argomento della lecture ......................................................................................................................... 289 Appendice II CL 1977 III The Rabbis and the Communities .......................................................... 308 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. .......................................................................................... 308 2. L’argomento della lecture ....................................................................................................................... 308 3. Una lezione dedicata ai rabbi .................................................................................................................. 309 4. Note sul tema rabbinico in rapporto all'insieme dei cicli ....................................................................... 311 Appendice III ................................................................................................................................... 320 Da Attitudes to Foreigners (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) ................................ 320 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati ............................................................................................ 320 2. Argomento di NL Attitudes (= CL Jews and Gentiles, capp. III ss.) ..................................................... 321 3. Le prime strutture espositive del rapporto Ebrei-gentili: alcune riflessioni non recuperate................... 321 Bibliografia ...................................................................................................................................... 340 Indice delle sigle e delle abbreviazioni AAB AAM AC AIPHO AJS AMM AnnSE ANRW ARW ASNP ASTI AThR BA BAR BASOR BJRL BWAT BZ BZTS CAH CBQ Abhandlungen der Deutschen (Preussischen) Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin Archivio Arnaldo Momigliano L’Antiquité classique Annuaire de l’Institut de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves Association for Jewish Studies Review Anne Marie Meyer Annali di storia dell’esegesi Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt Archiv für Religionswissenschaft Annali della Scuola Normale superiore di Pisa. Classe di lettere e filosofia Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute Anglican Theological Review Biblical Archaeologist British Archaeological Reports Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten Testament Biblische Zeitschrift Bonner Zeitschrift für Theologie und Seelsorge Cambridge Ancient History Catholic Biblical Quarterly 4 CDAFI CE CHJ CIG CIH CIJ CIL CL CPh CPJ CQ CRAI CrL DBI EA HER EL EthL EVO FGrH FHG GL GS H&Th HThR HUCA IEG IEJ JAOS JBL JE JEA JHS JJS JNG JQR JR JRAS JRS JS JSJ JSQ JSS Cahiers de la Délégation archéologique française en Iran Chronique d’Égypte The Cambridge History of Judaism, I: Introduction. The Persian Period; II: The Hellenistic Age, ed. by W.D. Davies and L. Finkelstein; III. The Early Roman Period, ed. by W. Horbury and W.D.Davies, Cambridge 1984, 1989, 1999. Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum J.-B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum I-II (1939-1951) Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum Chicago Lecture Classical Philology V. Tcherikover, A. Fuks, M. Stern, Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum I-III (19571964) Classical Quarterly Comptes-rendues de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres Creighton Lecture (King’s College, London) Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani The encyclopedia of apocalypticism. 1, The origins of apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity, ed. by J. J. Collins, New York 1998 Études sur l’Historire des Religions Efroymson Lecture (Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati) Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis Egitto e Vicino Oriente F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker Karl Müller, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum Grinfield Lecture (Oxford) Gauss Seminar (Princeton) History and Theory: Studies in Philosophy of History Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati, edidit M.L. West, Oxford 19922 Israel Exploration Journal Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature The Jewish Encyclopedia Journal of Egyptian Archaeology Journal of Hellenic Studies Journal of Jewish Studies Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte Jewish Quarterly Review The Journal of Religion Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Journal of Roman Studies Journal des Savants Journal for the Study of Judaism Jewish Studies Quarterly Journal of Semitic Studies 5 JSNT JThSt MH MGWJ NEAEHL NL NT NTS OGIS OTS PAAJR PBA PCPhS PEQ PG PL PLG PVTG RAL RB Rbi RE REG REJ RFIC RHR RIL RQ RR RSB RSI RSO RSPh RSR SB SMSR Sstor StPh StudClas ThLZ ThT VChr Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal of Theological Studies Museum Helveticum: schweizerische Zeitschrift für klassische Altertumswissenschaft Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums New Encyclopedia of Archaelogical Excavations in the Holy Land, ed. E. Stern, 4 v., Jerusalem 1993 Northcliffe Lecture (University College London) Novum Testamentum New Testament Studies W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae I-II Oudtestamentische Studiën Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research Proceedings of the British Academy Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society Palestine Exploration Quarterly J.P. Migne, Patrum Graecorum Cursus Completus J.P. Migne, Patrum Latinorum Cursus Completus Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta, ediderunt E. Lobel et D. Page, Oxford 1955 Pseudepigrapha Veteris Testamenti graece Rendiconti della classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche dell’Accademia dei Lincei Revue biblique Rivista biblica Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft Revue des études grecques Revue des études juives Rivista di filologia e istruzione classica Révue de l’Histoire des Religions Rendiconti dell’Istituto Lombardo, Accademia di Scienze e di Lettere, Classe di Lettere, Scienze morali e storiche Révue de Qumrân Ricerche Religiose Ricerche storico bibliche Rivista storica italiana Rivista degli Studi Orientali Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Theologiques Recherches de Science Religieuse F.Preisigke – F.Bilabel, Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten, I-IX Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni Storia della storiografia Studia philosophica: Jahrbuch der Schweizerischen Philosophischen Gesellschaft Studii clasice Theologische Literaturzeitung Theologisch Tijdschrift Vigiliae Christianae 6 VT VTS ZDPV ZNW ZPE ZRGG ZWT Vetus Testamentum Vetus Testamentum, Supplement Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftliche Theologie Abbreviazioni delle opere e delle lectures di Momigliano (selezione) Alexander’s visit Alien Wisdom Anna-Seneca Apologia Attitudes Biblical Studies Momigliano Ciò che Flavio Conflict, the Contributo Daniel Daniele , teoria Decimo Flavius Josephus and Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem, in Athenaeum, n.s. LVII, fasc. 3-4, 1979, 442-448; rist. in Settimo, 319-329; trad.it. in Pagine ebraiche, 85-93 [= Momigliano 1979a] Alien Wisdom, The limits of Hellenization, Cambridge 1975; 2a ed. 1978 (con bibliografia aggiornata); ed. ted. Hochkulturen im Hellenismus. Die Begegnung der Griechen mit Kelten Römer Juden und Persern, München 1979; ed. fr. Sagesses barbares. Les limites de l’hellénisation, trad. par Marie Claude Roussel, Paris 1979; ed. it. Sagezza straniera, L’Ellenismo e le altre culture, trad. di Maria Luisa Bassi, Torino 1980 (trad. cit. come Saggezza, vd. infra) [=Momigliano 1975f] The New letter by ‘Anna’ to ‘Seneca’ (Ms. 17 Erzbischöfliche Bibliothek in Köln), in Athenaeum, n.s., LXIII, fasc. 1-2, 1985, 217-19; rist. in Ottavo, 329-332; in On Pagans, 202-205 [=Momigliano 1985a] Un’apologia del giudaismo: il «Contro Apione» di Flavio Giuseppe, in La Rassegna mensile di Israel, VI, 1-2 (seconda serie), 1931, pp. 1-8; rist. in Terzo, 513-22; in Pagine ebraiche, 63-71 [= Momigliano 1931a] Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past, NL 1977 III Biblical Studies and Classical Studies. Simple Reflections upon Historical Method, ASNP, s. III, vol. XI (1982) 25-32; rist. in Settimo, 289-96; in On Pagans, 3-10; trad. it. a c. di M. Tavoni, in Storiografia greca, 336-344, e in Pagine Ebraiche¸ 5-11 [= Momigliano 1982g]. Ciò che Flavio Giuseppe non vide. Introduzione a P. Vidal Naquet, Il buon uso del tradimento [trad.it. di Flavius Joséphe ou du bon usage de la trahison], Roma 1980, 9-21; rist. in RSI, XCI fasc. 4, 1979 [1980], 564-574; in Settimo, 305-17; in Pagine ebraiche, 73-83; trad. ingl. a c. di J. Weinberg in On Pagans, 108-119 [= Momigliano 1980c] The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, essays ed. by Arnaldo Momigliano, Oxford 1963; ed. it. Il conflitto tra paganesimo e cristianesimo nel secolo IV, trad. a c. di Anna Davies Morpurgo, Torino 1968 [= Momigliano 1963b] Momigliano, A., Contributo alla storia degli studi classici, Roma 1955 [=Momigliano 1955] Daniel and the World Empires, GL 1980 II Daniele e la teoria greca della successione degli imperi, RAL serie VIII vol. XXXV; fasc. 3-4, 1980, 157-162; rist. in Storiografia greca, 293-301; in Settimo, 297-304; in Storia antica, 39-46; in Pagine abraiche, 33-39 [= Momigliano 1980b] Momigliano, A., Decimo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, ed. a c. di Riccardo Di Donato, 2 vv., Roma 2012 [=Momigliano 2012] 7 Decline , the Defence, the Development, the The Decline of History and Apocalypse, GL 1982 III The Defence against Hellenization, GL 1979 IV Momigliano, A., The Development of Greek Biography. Four Lectures, Cambridge(Mass) 1971; ed. it. Lo sviluppo della biografia greca, trad. a c. di Guido Donini, Torino 1974 [= Momigliano 1971c] Dopo Weber Dopo Max Weber? Pref. a: Humphreys, S.C., Saggi antropologici ulla Grecia antica, Bologna 1978; rist. in ASNP S. 3, vol. 8, fasc. 4 (1978), 1315-1332; in Sesto, 295-312, e in Fondamenti, 437-454. Trad. ted. a c. di A. Wittenburg, in Schriften, Bd. 3, 283-301 [=Momigliano 1978a] Eastern Elements Eastern Elements in Post-Exilic Jewish, and Greek, Historiography, in Essays, 25-35 [=Momigliano 1977d] Ebrei e Greci Ebrei e Greci, RSI, LXXXVIII, fasc. 3, 1976, 425-443; rist. in Sesto, 527-549; in Storia antica, 151-171; in Pagine ebraiche, 13-31 [=Momigliano 1976a] Essays Momigliano, A., Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography, Middletown 1977 [=Momigliano 1977e] First Maccabees The Date of the First Book of Maccabees, in L’Italie préromaine et la Rome républicaine. Mélanges offerts à Jacques Heurgon, Rome 1976, 657-661; rist. in Sesto, 561-566 [=Momigliano 1976b] Flavius Josephus Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography, GL 1980 III Fondamenti Momigliano, A., Sui fondamenti della storia antica, Torino 1984[= Momigliano 1984c] Foundations, the The Religious Foundations of Hellenistic Judaism, versione preparatoria a NL 1977 I Fraccaro Commemorazione del socio Plinio Fraccaro, RAL s.VIII vol. XV fasc. 7-12 (1960), 361-67; rist. in Terzo, 827-35 [=Momigliano 1960] From History From History to Apocalypse, CL 1977 V From Maccabees From the Books of Maccabees to Philo, CL 1981 IV From the Pagan From the Pagan to the Christian Sybil: Prophecy as History of Religion, in The Uses of Greek and Latin. Historical Essays ed. by A. C. Dionisotti, A. Grafton and Jill Kraye, London 1988, 3-18; rist. in Nono, 725-744; ed. it. Dalla Sibilla pagana alla Sibilla cristiana. Profezia come storia della religione, ASNP, s. III; vol. XVII, 2, 1987 [1988], 407-28 [=Momigliano 1988c] Greek Historiography Greek Historiography, H&Th XVII, 1, 1978, 1-28; versione ita.: Storiografia greca, in RSI, LXXXVII, fasc. 1, 1975, pp. 17-46 (trad. a c. di Giuliana Pierallini); rist. in Sesto, 33-67; in Storiografia greca, 3-41; con il titolo Storiografia e Bibliografia, in Dizionario della Civiltà Classica, vol. I, 143-69 [=Momigliano 1978c] Greeks outside, the The Greeks outside the Persian Empire, GL 1979 II Historiography Momigliano, A., Studies in Historiography, London 1966 [=Momigliano 1966c] Interpretazioni I-III Interpretazioni minime, I-III, in Athenaeum NS 55, fasc. 1-2 (1977), 186-190; rist. in Sesto, 181-186, e Storiografia greca, 302-307 [=Momigliano 1977a] Interpretazioni IV-VII Interpretazioni minime, IV-VII, ASNP s. 3, vol. 10, fasc. 4 (1980), 1221-1231; rist. in Settimo, 105-114 [=Momigliano 1980a] Jews inside, the The Jews inside the Persian Empire, GL 1979 III Juden Momigliano, A., Die Juden in der Alten Welt, mit einer Einführung von Karl Christ, Berlin 1988 [=Momigliano 1988d] Nono Momigliano, A., Nono contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, ed. a c. di Riccardo Di Donato, Roma 1992 [=Momigliano 1992f] 8 Note on Weber, a On Pagans Opposition Origins, the Ottavo Pagine ebraiche Paradox, the Persian Empire Portata storica Prime linee Prologue Quarto Quinto Rabbies, the Reconcile Religione Romana Resistance, East Resistance, Greece Roma arcaica Romans-Maccabees A Note on Max Weber’s Definition of Judaism as a Pariah-Religion, H&T 19,3 (1980), 313-318; rist. in Settimo, 341-348; in On Pagans, 231-37 [=Momigliano 1980d] Momigliano, A., On Pagans, Jews and Christians, Middletown 1987 [=Momigliano 1987f] Some Preliminary Remarks on the “Religious Opposition” to the Roman Empire, in Opposition et résistances à l’Empire d’Augut à Trajan – Entretiens, tome XXXIII (1986), Vandoeuvres-Genève 1987, 103-133 (2a ed. in On Pagans, 120-141; e in Nono, 681-699; trad. it. in Religione Romana, 151-169; trad. ted. a c. di K. Brodsen, in Schriften, I 289-311) [=Momigliano 1986h] The Origins of Universal History (Creighton Lecture, University of London) in ASNP, serie III. vol. XII,2, 1982, pp. 533-560. Rist. in The Poet and the Historian, ed. R.E. Friedman, Chico, Calif. 1983, 133-154; in Settimo, 77-103; in On Pagans, 31-57; trad. ita. in Storia e Storicismo, 25-55; trad.ted. a c. di A. Wittenburg in Schriften, I, 111-140 [=Momigliano 1982a] Momigliano, A., Ottavo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Roma 1987 [=Momigliano 1987h] Momigliano, A., Pagine ebraiche, a c. di Silvia Berti, Torino 1987 [=Momigliano 1987e] The Paradox of Roman Empire and Christian Historiography, CL 1979 V Persian Empire and Greek Freedom, in The Idea of Freedom. Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin, ed. Alan Ryan, Oxford 1979, 139-51; rist. in Settimo, 61-75 [=Momigliano 1979c] La portata storica dei vaticini sul settimo re nel terzo libro degli Oracoli Sibillini in Forma Futuri. Studi in onore del Cardinale Michele Pellegrino, Torino 1975, 10791084 ; rist. in Sesto, 551-559 [=Momigliano 1975a] Momigliano, A., Prime linee di storia della tradizione Maccabaica, Roma 19301 (2a ed. Torino 1931; 3a ed. Amsterdam 1968) [=Momigliano 1930e] Prologue in Germany, GL 1979 I Momigliano, A., Quarto contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Roma 1969 [=Momigliano 1969e] Momigliano, A., Quinto contributo alla sotria degli studi classici e del mondo antico, 2 vv., Roma 1975 [=Momigliano 1975f] The Rabbis and the Community, CL 1977 III How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans, CL 1981 V; pubbl. In Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen. Afd. Letterkunde, N.R. 45, 9, 1982, 231-5; rist. in Settimo, 437-462; e in On Pagans, 264-88. Trad. it. in Roma arcaica, 325-245 [=Momigliano 1982f] Momigliano, A., Saggi di storia della religione romana (Studi e lezioni 1983-1986), a c. di R. di Donato, trad. di M. Tavoni, Brescia 1988 [=Momigliano 1988e] The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism. The East, CL 1981 II The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism. Greece, CL 1981 I Momigliano, A., Roma arcaica, Firenze 1989 [=Momigliano 1989] The Romans and the Maccabees, in Jewish History. Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky, ed. by A. Rapoport-Albert and S.J. Zippersstein, London 1988, 231-44; 9 Saggezza Schriften Second Maccabees Secondo Sects, the Sesto Settimo Some Exemplary Storia antica Storia e storicismo Storiografia Temple, the Terzo Tobiadi, i Two Types Universal History Weber e l’antichità Weber-Meyer rist. in Nono, 747-61; trad. it. a c. di L. Polverini in RIL, 123 (1989), 1990, 95-109 [=Momigliano 1988a] Saggezza straniera, l’ellenismo e le altre culture (trad. it. di Alien Wisdom, the Limits of Hellenization, Torino 1980, vd. Wisdom) Momigliano, A., Ausgewählte Schriften zur Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung, hrsg. von Glenn W. Most unter Mitwirkung von Wilfried Nippel und Anthony Grafton, 3 B., Stuttgart-Weimar 1998-2000 [=Momigliano 2000] The Second Book of Maccabees, CPh, LXX, 3 (1975), 81-88; rist. in Sesto, 567-578; trad. it. a c. di Mirko Tavoni in Storiografia greca, 308-321, e Pagine ebraiche, 4851 [=Momigliano 1975b] Momigliano, A., Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici, Roma 1960 [=Momigliano 1960b] The Jewish Sects in the Sources, GL 1982 II Momigliano, A., Sesto contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, 2 v., Roma 1980 [=Momigliano 1980f] Momigliano, A., Settimo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Roma 1984 [=Momigliano 1984d] Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World, CL 1981 III Momigliano, A., Storia e storiografia antica, presentazione di Emilio Gabba, Bologna 1987 [=Momigliano 1987i] Momigliano, A., Tra Storia e storicismo, Pisa 1985 [=Momigliano 1985c] Momigliano, A., La storiografia greca, Torino 1982 [=Momigliano 1982h] The Temple and the Synagogue, GL 1977 Momigliano, A., Terzo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, 2 v., Roma 1966 [=Momigliano 1966d] I Tobiadi nella preistoria del mondo maccabaico, in Atti della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, LXCII, 1931-32, 165-200; rist. in Quinto, 597-628 [=Momigliano 1932c] Two Types of Universal History. The Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber, in The Journal of Modern History, 58,1 (1986), 235-45; rist. in Studii clasice, 24 (1986), 717; in Ottavo, 121-134; trad.it. a c. di S. Scoglio, in Il Pensiero, ns. XXXIV 1, 1995, 33-44 [=Momigliano 1986i] Universal History in Greece and Rome, GL 1980 I Max Weber di fronte agli storici dell’antichità, prefazione a Weber, M., Storia economica e sociale dell’antichità, Roma 1981, vii-xiii; rist. in Settimo, 245-51 [=Momigliano 1981b] The Instruments of Decline [tit. orig. Max Weber and Eduard Meyer: apropos of City and Country in Antiquity], in The Times Literary Supplement, 8 April 1977, 435-6; rist. in Sesto, 285-93 [=Momigliano 1977b] 10 Note sull’apparato critico <-> -> <(c) (g) (p) (p-c) [AMM] [Mom] {…} all. corr. docc. def. del. id. interl. mginf mgdx mgsn mgsup msb msl msn msr msr>n segr stl. tsf tsf1 sostituzione di ciò che segue il segno con quanto lo precede (scil. nuovo testo <-> vecchio testo) cancellazione del testo che segue cancellazione del testo che precede in posizione centrale in corpo grande in corpo minore in corpo piccolo e posizione centrale (e.g.) mano di Anne Marie Meyer mano di Momigliano espunzione allegato correzione tutti i documenti esaminati testo assente intervento di cancellazione medesimo intervento testo interlineare margine inferiore margine destro margine sinistro margine superiore testo manoscritto in penna blu testo manoscritto in lapis testo manoscritto in penna nera testo manoscritto in penna rossa cambio di penna da rossa a nera (e.g.) segno di rimando sottolineato in testa al foglio in testa al foglio 1 (e.g.) 11 Introduzione A quasi trent’anni dalla morte di Arnaldo Momigliano, la discussione sul ruolo dell’ebraismo nella sua riflessione storica e storiografica – superfluo, forse, ricordare l’inscindibilità del binomio all’interno della sua personale prospettiva di indagine – continua a trarre nuovo alimento dal rinvenimento, tra le carte dell’Archivio Arnaldo Momigliano (da qui in poi AAM), di manoscritti e dattiloscritti inediti dedicati al tema in questione1. Ultimi, in ordine di pubblicazione, i Pensieri sull’Ebraismo, editi nel 2012 da Riccardo Di Donato all’interno del Decimo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico ed evidenti depositari di una riflessione sull’appartenenza all’ebraismo che, a partire da premesse contemporanee, ne travalica la prospettiva novecentesca per risalire – secondo un iter consueto all’autore – alla domanda sui fondamenti dell’eredità culturale millenaria che le è sottesa. Una nota autografa al testo consente di datare i Pensieri all’agosto del 1979, anno tra i più prolifici nella riflessione momiglianea sul giudaismo di età greco-romana. Se le carte d’archivio documentano infatti l’infittirsi, tra 1977 e 1982, di testi dedicati alla ricerca sul periodo storico contrassegnato dall’ellenizzazione della Palestina a seguito della conquista di Alessandro Magno, è proprio tra 1978 e ’79 che si apprezza un’evoluzione tangibile del percorso di indagine attraverso i cicli di lectures ad esso dedicati e un suo arricchimento per intersezione di tematiche trasversali (l’universalismo, la storiografia di resistenza) in prospettiva della progettazione di uno o più volumi sull’argomento. Dietro a tale interesse per l’incontro del mondo ebraico con quello greco risiede, come è stato ben osservato, “il tentativo di trovare, nella storia passata, una risposta alla domanda fondamentale sulle possibilità e i limiti del contatto tra culture diverse e della sopravvivenza ad esso, nell’oscillazione tra perdita di identità e resistenza all’assimilazione che poneva a Momigliano la sua doppia appartenenza di ebreo, legato alla tradizione dei propri padri, e di italo-piemontese, radicato nel paese in cui da secoli risiedeva la sua famiglia”2. È un tentativo su cui si innesta la complessa questione, cui si accennerà solo cursoriamente in questa sede, della continuità di interesse nei confronti di tematiche ebraiche e del ruolo di tale ambito nella sua ricerca. All’interno del dibattito, sorto con la pubblicazione postuma delle Pagine Ebraiche a cura di Silvia Berti, si 1 La consultazione del corpus degli inediti momiglianei è oggi resa accessibile grazie all’opera di Giovanna Granata, Archivio Arnaldo Momigliano. Inventario analitico, pref. di R. Di Donato, Roma 2006 (=GRANATA 2006), da cui sono riprese le sigle usate per identificare i documenti dell’Archivio, nonché lo schema, posto in apertura di ogni capitolo, dei rapporti genetici tra le unità testimoni di ciascuna lecture. In relazione ai testi editi nel presente volume, la sottoserie P-o/*P-o (Lectures on Hellenistic Judaism) si rimanda soprattutto alle pp. LXXVI-XCVI, 54-88. Nella realizzazione dell’edizione particolare debito di indagine si è contratto non solo con il volume di inventario, ma anche con il saggi La resistenza all’ellenizzazione. Il corpus di inediti momiglianei sul giudaismo ellenistico, 1977-82 (= GRANATA 1999), imprescindibile punto di riferimento per ogni tentativo di elaborazione della sottoserie P-o tanto per la chiarezza ricostruttiva dell’insieme dei documenti quanto per la messa in luce dell’evoluzione del pensiero di Momigliano attraverso di essi. Terzo documento di riferimento (in ordine di tempo, ma non di importanza) è infine il saggio “Aspetti del giudaismo ellenistico” 1977-1982 nell’Archivio Arnaldo Momigliano di Antonella Soldani (= SOLDANI 2009), fondamentale percorso di indagine attraverso le fasi di genesi e sviluppo del corpus, dalla premessa seminale di Alien Wisdom fino all’auspicata (ma mai realizzata) concertazione dell’insieme in una monografia dedicata al tema. Ad Antonella Soldani spetta infatti, tra gli altri, il merito di aver riconosciuto nel documento P-o 89 (testimone di Prologue in Germany, lecture di apertura del primo ciclo di conferenze) tracce di una revisione del testo, in prospettiva editoriale, che sembrerebbero risalire agli anni Ottanta e che offrono quindi un contributo fondamentale alla questione relativa al progetto editoriale di Momigliano in relazione al corpus di lectures su cui cfr. infra, pp. 29-32). 2 GRANATA 1999, 73. Per una riflessione sull’attenzione crescente a figure e memorie ebraiche del nostro tempo “come segno di una più angosciosa domanda sul ruolo della cultura ebraica contemporanea” (cit. GRANATA 1999, 74) si rimanda a GABBA 1981. 12 rileva la possibilità di distinguere il delinearsi di due tendenze interpretative contrapposte3: l’ipotesi di un’ininterrotta continuità di interesse, di matrice cospicuamente religiosa, sostenuta dalla stessa Berti4, e di contro la necessità, teorizzata da Margherita Isnardi Parente, di isolare nell’opera di Momigliano un’iniziale fase di interessamento, risalente ai primi anni Trenta, e il suo successivo recupero in età matura5. Indubbia risulta fin dalla giovinezza l’attenzione alle indagini sul giudaismo ellenistico, non a caso argomento della prima monografia (Prime linee di storia della tradizione Maccabaica, Roma 19301) e che Momigliano stesso annovererà, in una lettera a Timpanaro, tra gli ambiti di massima rilevanza per i suoi interessi di ricerca6. Altrettanto indubbio appare, d’altra parte, il diradarsi negli anni di contributi dedicati all’argomento, che – con l’eccezione di qualche recensione7 – scompare dalle pubblicazioni momiglianee per alcuni decenni. La ristampa nel 1968 delle Prime linee di storia della tradizione Maccabaica, corredate da nuova prefazione ed appendice bibliografica, e la recensione, nel 1970, del celebre e discusso saggio del teologo luterano Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus8, testimoniano un primo riavvicinamento alla questione. Ѐ soprattutto l’edizione dei Contributi a rendere però conto di un progressivo ritorno di interesse: se il Quinto, licenziato nel 1975, vede la riproposizione di saggi anche giovanili sul tema, nel Sesto (1980) la presenza di una sezione dedicata all’ebraismo è accompagnata da un’introduzione che la qualifica come “testimonianza dello sforzo di un Ebreo italiano, e più precisamente piemontese, per analizzare criticamente le complesse fonti e i molteplici debiti della sua formazione culturale” (p. 9). La pubblicazione, tra la fine degli anni Settanta e i primi anni Ottanta, di contributi isolati su Flavio Giuseppe, i Maccabei, il libro di Daniele, Filone di Alessandria9, non può quindi non ricevere nuova luce dall’ingente quantità di materiale emerso dalla sottoserie P-o/*P-o dell’AAM (lectures on Hellenistic Judaism), in prospettiva al quale i saggi editi appaiono ora tasselli di una più vasta e organica struttura di indagine. Rimane da valutare quali fattori possano aver suscitato la volontà di sottoporre genesi e sviluppo del giudaismo ellenistico a tale ricerca, in quali tempi, e a quali scopi. Se noto e caratterizzante della produzione di Momigliano è il fatto che una centralità di interesse potesse non trovare esito in una pubblicazione monografica10, una mediazione tra le divergenti prospettive della critica sopra menzionate (Berti, Isnardi Parente) appare possibile alla luce di 3 SOLDANI 2009, n. 7. Cfr. introduzione alle Pagine Ebraiche (BERTI 1987) e ID. 1988A. 5 Per cui cfr. ISNARDI PARENTE 1988A; ID. 1989. Per ulteriori contributi sulla questione del giudaismo nell’opera storica di Momigliano, si rimanda in primis ai saggi sul tema contenuti nel fascicolo della RSI 100.2 interamente dedicato alla figura dello storico: HUGHES 1988; PATLAGEAN 1988. A questi vanno aggiunti: PARENTE 1989A; ID. 1989B. Una rassegna bibliografica fino al 2006 è premessa all’inventario dell’Archivio, pp. XXXV-LIII (=GRANATA 2006); per un aggiornamento dei titoli si rimanda a SOLDANI 2009, n. 7. Va infine segnalato il recentissimo WARBURG COLL. 2014 (che propone sull’argomento i saggi di RAJAK 2014; CAMERON 2014; NORTH 2014; DI DONATO 2010). 6 Cfr. SOLDANI 2009, 3. Storiografia greco-romana e giudaica, pace e libertà degli antichi, civiltà degli ebrei ed evoluzione dell’evoluzione statale romana sono gli ambiti di ricerca identificati da Momigliano nel 1967 in una lettera a Timpanaro edita con osservazioni in DI DONATO 2004. 7 Ad es.: a R. Tramontaro, La lettera di Aristea a Filocrate (Napoli 1931), RFIC n.s. 10.3, 1932, p. 414; a F. Geiger, Philon von Alexandria als sozialer Denker, RFIC n.s. 11.1, 1933, pp. 94-98; a H. A. Wolfson, Philo. Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, Islam (Harvard 1947) RR 20, genn.-dic. 1949, pp. 199-201 (=Quarto, 625-27). 8 MOMIGLIANO 1970C. 9 Flavius Josephus and Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem (=Alexander’s visit); The New letter by ‘Anna’ to ‘Seneca’ (=Anna-Seneca); Biblical Studies and Classical Studies (=Biblical Studies); Ciò che Flavio Giuseppe non vide (=Ciò che Flavio); Daniele e la teoria greca della successione degli imperi (=Daniele); Ebrei e Greci; The Date of the First Book of Maccabees (=First Maccabees); Interpretazioni, I-VII; The Origins of Universal History (=Origins); Persian Empire and Greek Freedom (=Persian Empire); How to reconcile Greeks and Trojans (=Reconcile); Two Types of Universal History (=Two Types). 10 SOLDANI 2009, 4. La lunga gestazione redazionale e la revisione rigorosa cui Momigliano sottoponeva i suoi scritti, tornando a rivistarli anche a distanza di anni, sono sicuramente tra i fattori determinanti di questa tendenza. Cfr. in proposito il corpus, pubblicato postumo, della Sather Lectures del 1962 (= MOMIGLIANO 1990). 13 4 alcune considerazioni. Che anche negli anni di relativo “silenzio” lo sguardo sul tema sia rimasto critico si apprezza dalla riconoscibilità, già nei testi pubblicati, di un’evoluzione di prospettive. Fausto Parente si è soffermato in proposito sul passaggio dalla lettura del moto maccabaico così come formulata all’inizio degli anni Trenta, anticipatrice delle tesi di Bickerman e di Hengel11, alla critica serrata che Momigliano riserverà successivamente alla loro interpretazione dell’ellenizzazione del giudaismo. A fare infatti la parte del villain nella tesi di fondo che percorre l’intero complesso di lectures qui presentate – l’ellenismo di forma del giudaismo greco-romano come espressione di un radicale antiellenismo di sostanza – è soprattutto la prospettiva hengeliana di Judentum und Hellenismus, considerata da Momigliano debole, cristianocentrica e incapace di cogliere come la sopravvivenza del giudaismo tra i Greci sia stata ottenuta non tramite simbiosi e annullamento, ma per mezzo della ferma conservazione della propria specificità e cultura creativa. La nuova via di indagine perseguita nelle lectures, tesa ad individuare non tanto le somiglianze e le differenze tra giudaismo e culture circostanti, quanto piuttosto le modalità con cui gli Ebrei risposero alla sfida culturale lanciata dai Greco-Macedoni12, appare in tal senso chiaro indizio della volontà di Momigliano di sostanziare le obiezioni alle teorie di Bickerman ed Hengel mediante la proposizione di una pars construens depositaria della propria personale concezione su senso e origine del giudaismo postesilico. In tal senso, i documenti dell’AAM testimoniano una linea di indagine che può essere definita in fieri sotto determinati aspetti (la ristrutturazione complessiva del primo ciclo, ad esempio, o la grande domanda sui rapporti tra storiografia e apocalittica), ma che fin dalle premesse è costante nel basarsi sull’intuizione di fondo della natura resistenziale del giudaismo ellenistico, e la cui perentorietà è tale da giungere a mettere in discussione la stessa categoria storica in questione (cui Momigliano riserverà peraltro un’ironica valediction al termine della lezione prefatoria13). Al di là dell’attenzione costante all’esegesi contemporanea, dietro tale compiutezza ab origine della riflessione momiglianea sul giudaismo del Secondo Tempio è da ricercarsi – come già è stato rilevato 14 – un ulteriore fattore: l’eredità di Alien Wisdom. Non pare infatti un caso che la pubblicazione nel 1975 della monografia, dedicata specificamente alla riflessione sui limiti dell’ellenizzazione greca nelle culture limitrofe (particolarmente di Romani, Celti, Ebrei, Persiani), coincida approssimativamente con l’inizio di un’elaborazione del primo ciclo di conferenze sul giudaismo ellenistico. Gli Aspects of Hellenistic Judaism si qualificano, in tal senso, come specificazione tematica di una questione macroscopica – la risposta alla grecità – le cui fondamenta erano già state compiutamente gettate. Significativa risulta in proposito la presenza nell’introduzione ad Alien Wisdom dell’osservazione su come la fisionomia peculiare dell’ellenismo – considerato da Momigliano età assiale speculare rispetto alla Achsenzeit individuata da Karl Jaspers nel VI sec. a.C. – sia accentuata dal ruolo specifico assunto dai gruppi etnici dei Romani e degli Ebrei. È soprattutto la descrizione dei secondi a porre in nuce questioni destinate a trovare, nelle lectures, sviluppo sostanziale: The Jews basically remained convinced of the superiority of their beliefs and ways of life and fought for them. Yet they continuously compared their own ideas with Greek ideas, made propaganda for their own beliefs, absorbing many Greek notions and custom in the process – and ultimately found themselves involved in that general confrontation of Greek and Jewish values which we call Christianity (p.10) 11 I Tobiadi nella preistoria del mondo maccabaico (=Tobiadi); cfr. PARENTE 1989A. “The Jews were the only ones both to be creative under the Greeks and not to mix with the Romans. There is here a problem of survival of a civilization in very peculiar circumstances. The problem of how Judaism survived is equivalent to the problem of how Judaism emerged from Persian rule capable of reacting to Hellenism and later saved itself from the Romans”, cc. 23-24. 13 GL 1979 I (Prologue in Germany), c. 24. 14 Cfr. ad es. ISNARDI PARENTE 1988; SOLDANI 2009, 2; RAJAK 2014, 95. 14 12 L’idea qui proposta di un parallelo tra il costante assorbimento di idee e usanze greche e la strenua resistenza per la conservazione della propria unicità culturale risulta già di per sé incompatibile con le prospettive di Bickerman e di Hengel. Appare in conclusione plausibile che una convergenza di fattori distinti (l’insoddisfazione per gli esiti più recenti della ricerca sul giudaismo ellenistico; la volontà di indagare ulteriormente sugli interrogativi posti da Alien Wisdom) risieda alla base della stesura degli Aspects on Hellenistic Judaism, inedito opus magnum in cui linee di ricerca approfondite fin dagli esordi si precisano e convergono in un progetto organico di recupero e formalizzazione, prima ancora che di riscoperta. Le carte della serie P-o nell’Archivio Arnaldo Momigliano. Il grande corpus di scritti inediti relativi al giudaismo di età ellenistica e romana conservato dall’AAM consta di 190 carte, tra manoscritti e dattiloscritti, riuniti dall’inventario di Giovanna Granata nella sottoserie P-o/*P-o sotto il titolo di lectures on hellenistic Judaism15. I documenti, la cui data di composizione va dal 1977 al 1982, afferiscono a tre cicli di conferenze tenute da Momigliano in quegli anni e intitolati rispettivamente Between Synagogue and Apocalypse, Daniel and the Origins of Universal History e The Jewish Historiography of Resistance. Sono conservati in 24 raccoglitori (folders) testimoni del raggruppamento originario con cui sono pervenuti a Pisa (piuttosto che di successive fasi di sistemazione dell’archivio), e risultano così ripartibili: al di là di 8 fascicoli, che contengono materiale frammentario o eterogeneo, 103 afferiscono al primo ciclo, della cui complessità di strutturazione si renderà conto nel prossimo paragrafo16; 44 al secondo; 34 al terzo. Tutte le unità, che rispecchiano vari stadi di elaborazione del testo (dalla stesura manoscritta alla versione finale) presentano annotazioni di mano di Momigliano o della sua collaboratrice abitualmente preposta alla dattilografia e ai controlli formali, Anne Marie Meyer. Di particolare utilità nell’analisi delle fasi di sviluppo delle singole lectures è la ricostruzione, condotta da Giovanna Granata 17 , della modalità di lavoro di Momigliano: ciascun manoscritto veniva trascritto in bella copia attraverso un’opera di dattiloscrittura dalla quale, grazie all’ausilio di una carta carbone, erano prodotte una top copy (dattiloscritto di base, conservato in genere senza interventi) e due carbon copies destinate a correzioni e integrazioni eventualmente anche dattiloscritte. Non raro anche il ricorso a copie xerox (o fotocopie), spesso utilizzate nei casi in cui il testo necessitava di revisione cospicua. Alle informazioni redazionali si aggiungono quelle sulla funzione dei documenti, identificati come new version, corrected copy, reading copy da annotazioni manoscritte, spesso di mano dello stesso autore; è invece Anne Marie Mayer, di norma, a riportare sulle trascrizioni informazioni relative alla data di dattiloscrittura o all’associazione della top c. alle c.c. da essa derivate. Già la semplice sproporzione numerica sopra rilevata tra le unità testimoni di Between the Synagogue and Apocalypse e quelle relative al secondo e al terzo ciclo rende ragione della complessità di gestazione della prima serie, all’interno della quale si articola per intero quello sviluppo concettuale rispetto al quale Daniel and the World Empires e The Jewish Historiography of Resistance si qualificheranno piuttosto come ampliamenti a tema. Nel gennaio del 1977, alla presentazione di Between Synagogue and Apocalypse presso lo University College London, in occasione delle Northcliffe Lectures (= NL), la struttura del ciclo – ancora ben lontana dalla sua formalizzazione definitiva – risulta articolata in quattro lezioni: I. Prologue in Germany, II. The Temple and the Synagogue, III. Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past e IV. From History to Apocalypse. La riproposizione del ciclo tra l’aprile e il maggio 15 GRANATA 2006, part. alle pp. LXXVI-XCVI. Sull’AAM si rimanda inoltre a DI DONATO 1995; sulla sottosezione del corpus relativa al giudaismo ellenistico e, più in generale, sull’intero periodo 1975-87, cfr. invece ID. 2010 (part alle pp. 193-95), con appendice sui testi momiglianei editi sul giudaismo ellenistico e bibliografia relativa (p. 200). 16 Di cui 52 testimoni della fase Northcliffe 1977 e 51 tra quella Efroymson 1978 e la duplice serie Grinfield 1979-82. 17 Cfr. GRANATA 1999, 84, e ID. 2006. 15 dello stesso anno, nell’ambito del seminario annuale tenuto da Momigliano a Chicago in qualità di Alexander White Visiting Professor, comporterà invece un primo ampliamento in cinque Chicago Lectures (= CL). Prologue in Germany e the Temple and the Synagogue vengono conservate (con modifiche), mentre Attitudes to Foreigners and Vision of the Past è rimpiazzata dal nuovo dittico The Rabbis and the Communities e Jews and Gentiles; inalterata rimane invece la quarta, ora quinta lezione, From History to Apocalypse. È soprattutto la presentazione delle conferenze tra l’ottobre e il novembre del 1978, in occasione delle Efroymson Lectures (= EL) tenute presso lo Hebrew Union College di Cincinnati, a testimoniare un ripensamento radicale della struttura del ciclo, interessato ora non solo da un ulteriore ampliamento del numero delle lezioni ma da una revisione sostanziale di metodi e prospettive di indagine. Vengono proposte a Cincinnati sei lectures: I. Prologue in Germany; II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire; III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire; IV. The Defence against Hellenization; V. Jews and Gentiles; VI. The Decline of History and Apocalypse and the Defence against the Romans. Di questi sei interventi Momigliano sceglierà di riproporre tuttavia solo i primi quattro in occasione delle Grinfield Lectures on the Septuagint (= GL) che, pronunciate presso l’università di Oxford tra il gennaio e il febbraio del 1979, documentano quindi l’assetto testuale più compiuto e maturo del primo ciclo. La quinta e la sesta lecture, messe da parte anche e soprattutto per esigenze di approfondimento di indagine, dovranno attendere per la riproposizione l’ultimo ciclo GL, presentato tra il gennaio e il febbraio del 1982; in questa occasione Momigliano introdurrà tuttavia tra Jews and Gentiles (divenuta adesso la prima conferenza) e The Decline of History and Apocalypse una terza lecture composta ad hoc, The Jewish Sects in the Sources. L’intervallo di tempo che va dalle GL del 1979 a quelle del 1982 è colmato dalla proposizione di due cicli intermedi. Il primo, Daniel and the Universal History, è presentato in cinque conferenze tra l’aprile e il maggio del 1979, in occasione delle Chicago Lectures: I. Two Types of Universal History: the Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber; II. Universal History in Greece and Rome; III. Daniel and the Dangers of Apocalyptic; IV. The Greeks outside and the Jews inside the Persian Empire; V. The Paradox of the Roman Empire and Christian Historiography. Con l’eccezione della prima lecture, presto destinata a pubblicazione autonoma (anche e soprattutto in virtù del carattere a sé stante dell’argomentazione), e della quarta, sintetica riproposizione delle GL 1979 II e III, le lectures saranno ripresentate a Princeton nel novembre del 1979, in occasione del Gauss Seminar (= GS). La nuova struttura del ciclo, I. Universal History in Greece and Rome, II. Daniel and the World Empires e III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography, sarà infine proposta a Oxford in occasione della seconda Grinfield Lecturership di Momigliano (gennaio-febbraio 1980). La terza e ultima serie, The Jewish Historiography of Resistance, viene invece composta ad hoc in occasione del terzo ciclo Grinfield, tenuto l’anno successivo, tra il gennaio e il febbraio del 1981. In questa sede la serie risulta articolata in tre lezioni, I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism; II. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World; III. From the Books of Maccabees to Philo. I tre interventi diventeranno però cinque con la ripresentazine del ciclo a Chicago, tra l’aprile e il maggio del 1981, tramite l’ampliamento della prima conferenza in due distinti interventi, uno dedicato alla Grecia, l’altro all’Est, e grazie all’aggiunta di una lecture conclusiva (How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans), tematicamente eccentrica rispetto all’ambito del giudaismo ellenistico e infatti licenziata da Momigliano l’anno successivo come saggio autonomo. Già questa preliminare ricognizione per titoli e sedi delle lectures dal 1977 al 1982 permette di apprezzare come, in tre casi su quattro (ossia in corrispondenza agli anni 1979, 1980 e 1982) lo stadio testuale più avanzato e conforme alla volontà dell’autore sia quello documentato dai fascicoli destinati alla lettura Grinfield; si è dunque scelto di proporre per l’edizione il testo GL, con l’eccezione delle conferenze afferenti al terzo ciclo (The Jewish Historiography of Resistance, 1981) in cui l’ampliamento e la rielaborazione in occasione della riproposizione a Chicago ne rende 16 i documenti testimoni più completi. Posta tale premessa, due questioni rimangono da affrontare in sede di introduzione: una presentazione sintetica dell’evoluzione struttuale e contenutistica dei singoli cicli, che ne confermi o smentisca la natura di unico grande complesso argomentativo, e infine un breve riesame dell’iter editoriale che permetta di valutare per quali testi e in quali tempi Momigliano avesse progettato forme di pubblicazione. Between Synagogue and Apocalypse: il primo ciclo, da Londra ad Oxford (1977-79). BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND APOCALYPSE NL 1977 (gen.) 1 Prologue in Germany CL 1977 (apr.-mag.) 1 Prologue in Germany EL 1978 (ott.-nov.) 1 2 The Temple and the Synagogue 2 The Temple and the Synagogue 2 3 Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past 3 The Rabbies and the Communities 3 4 4 4 From History to Apocalypse Jews and Gentiles 18 GL 1979 (gen.-feb.) 1 Prologue in Germany Prologue in Germany The Greeks outside the 2 The Greeks outisde the Persian Empire Persian Empire The Jews inside the Persian Empire 3 The Jews inside the Persian Empire The Defence against 4 The Defence against Hellenization Hellenization 5 From History to Apocalypse 5 Jews and Gentiles 6 The Decline of History and Apocalypse and the Defence against the Romans forti rielaborazioni rapporto diretto, con rielaborazioni di minor rilievo Intitolato inizialmente Between Romance and Apocalypse: The World of Jewish Hellenistic Literature19, il primo ciclo non sarà mai presentato al pubblico con tale nome. È plausibile che i riferimenti al romanzo e alla letteratura ellenistica fossero stati in un primo momento cercati da Momigliano perché consoni all’occasione di presentazione, quelle Lord Northcliffe Lectures in Literature che, come il nome stesso suggerisce, offrono una sede privilegiata per la discussione di argomenti letterari20; dopo una prima fase di elaborazione – testimoniata dalle cc. P-o 5 e 16, in cui il titolo viene corretto, ma il sottotitolo conservato – il ciclo sarà tuttavia presentato nel gennaio del 1977 come Between Synagogue and Apocalypse. Il contesto di indagine appare così individuato fin dalle premesse tra i poli della sinagoga, istituzione fondante del giudaismo di età ellenistica, e della letteratura apocalittica, sui cui rapporti con il contesto sinagogale – nello specifico del rabbinato – Momigliano avverte l’esigenza di indagare a fondo. La struttura quadripartita che il primo ciclo assume rispecchia piuttosto fedelmente la sequenza già prospettata in una lettera datata al 24.11.1976, in cui si fornisce un primo schema di articolazione del progetto: 18 Fonte del grafico: SOLDANI 2009, 22. Cf. c. 1 del fascicolo P-o 2. 20 SOLDANI 2009, 4. 19 17 Between Synagogue and Apocalypse: Aspects of Hellenistic Judaism 1) Prologue in Germany 2) The Foundations of Hell. J. 3) The Vision of the Past 4) The Vision of the Future Benché i titoli siano stati modificati la connessione tematica rimane tangibile, come una breve rassegna dei contenuti può mostrare. Alla base di Prologue in Germany, testo la cui valenza introduttiva abbraccia l’intera riflessione momiglianea sul giudaismo ellenistico21, risiede l’esigenza di individuare premesse di metodo che, prima ancora che nell’antichità, sono da ricercarsi nella storiografia moderna e contemporanea. Come, dove e perché sia nata l’attenzione europea per gli sviluppi del giudaismo postesilico sono gli interrogativi a cui Momigliano tenta di dare risposta risalendo nella storia degli studi fino a Kant e Schiller e alle discussioni di natura teologicofilosofica, sorte in Germania agli inizi del XIX secolo, sulla nascita del cristianesimo. La prospettiva parziale di tali premesse (alimentate da un’irriducibile dicotomia tra il giudaismo palestinese rabbinico e la variante alessandrina poi subordinata a funzioni di praeparatio evangelica) si conserva come vizio di forma nella volontà con cui la critica contemporanea guarda al giudaismo ellenistico per cercare gli elementi greci che lo pervadono (Bickerman, Hengel) o quelli che, al contrario, appaiono irriducibili ad influssi ellenistici. Necessaria appare quindi l’individuazione di una “terza via di indagine” che, alla ricerca della vera peculiarità del giudaismo, ne indaghi piuttosto “le caratteristiche con cui è emerso dal dominio persiano e grazie alle quali ha potuto sostenere l’impatto con la cultura greca”22. Non è un caso che la seconda Northcliffe lecture, The Temple and the Synagogue, corrisponda nell’elenco del 1976 al titolo Foundations of Hell. J.: la riflessione sulle religious foundations, nello specifico di un’analisi dei rapporti tra Tempio e sinagoga, è proposta a Londra come aspetto imprescindibile della riflessione storica relativa23. La terza lezione, Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past, risponde invece all’esigenza di indagarne le prospettive sul passato. Frutto di un intenso lavoro, terminato (come attesta l’epistolario) a fine novembre del 1976, Attitudes documenta l’iniziale strutturarsi in un’unica sequenza di due grandi nuclei argomentativi (incentrati rispettivamente sul tema resistenziale e su quello storiografico) destinati a trovare, nei cicli successivi, articolazioni e collocazioni differenti. Al termine della prima serie NL si pone infine From History to Apocalypse, dedicata a quell’indagine sui rapporti tra storiografia e apocalittica che rimarrà un nodo imprescindibile per tutto l’arco di sviluppo della riflessione momiglianea sul tema. Prime, significative modifiche a tale disegno d’insieme emergono già dalla ristrutturazione del ciclo in prospettiva delle Chicago Lectures dell’aprile-maggio del 1977, a cominciare dalla ridistribuzione dei materiali del Prologue NL, le cui premesse generali sulle istituzioni religiose confluiscono nella lezione della serie CL ad esse deputata, The Temple and the Synagogue. Il risultato si apprezza in un Prologue più centrato sulle premesse europee di metodo e in cui lo spazio ricavato dallo spostamento del capitolo dedicato al tempio e alla sinagoga viene impiegato per articolare il concetto chiave di resistenza all’ellenizzazione. È quindi evidente come, malgrado le successive rielaborazioni24, i punti fermi del Prologue siano tali fin dalle stesure del 1977: lo sguardo critico al ricorso a una categoria storica giudicata approssimativa nel ridurre la complessità 21 Cfr. introduzione alla lecture, n. 1. GRANATA 1999, 79. 23 “Only through a clear understanding of the tension between Temple and Synagogue can we arrive at proper appreciation of how Judaism defined itself in relation to Hellenism and ultimately survived it”, c. 13. 24 Cfr. in proposito l’introduzione alla lecture. 18 22 della temperie che designa ad appendice della grecità25, e insieme la percezione – chiaro lascito di Alien Wisdom – per cui un riesame degli sviluppi del giudaismo debba implicarne la valorizzazione delle componenti attivamente oppositive, creative. Al di là degli sviluppi del Prologue, il ciclo CL mostra un particolare processo di raffinamento nelle tre lectures che seguono. La prima, intitolata come la corrispondente NL The Temple and the Synagogue, si presenta ora come l’esito di un primo accorpamento della sezione finale di Prologue con la successiva NL 1977 II e di una successiva sintesi dell’insieme, motivata da esigenze espositive26. Di rilievo risulta però soprattutto l’integrazione dell’indagine sulle istituzioni del giudaismo con l’analisi sui suoi più rilevanti sviluppi comunitari, così come condotta nella CL 1977 III, The Rabbis and the Communities. Al riconoscimento della sinagoga come struttura per mezzo della quale il giudaismo postesilico ha preservato la propria identità culturale, all’insegna di una religiosità rifondata su preghiera e devozione, viene qui ad affiancarsi la considerazione crescente riservata alla nascita della classe laica interessata a partecipare a tale vita religiosa, il rabbinato, e alla sua operazione di rinnovamento del sistema educativo in prospettiva dell’idea di eternità e centralità della Legge. Due distinte Northcliffe lectures sono, anche in questo caso, all’origine della nuova lezione: la sezione finale della NL 1977 II (The Temple), dedicata a un abbozzo preliminare di presentazione dei rapporti tra sinagoga e rabbini, e la prima parte della NL 1977 III, Attitudes (capp. I-II), grosso modo incentrata sulla pluralità linguistica del giudaismo della diaspora e sulla rilevanza assunta dall’operazione di traduzione del testo biblico nel tentativo di arginare il processo di separazione tra comunità. The Rabbis and the Communities, testo destinato a non essere mai riproposto da Momigliano dopo Chicago 1977, risulta tuttavia di grande rilevanza nella valutazione del suo progetto d’insieme. In particolare, come ha rilevato Giovanna Granata, si osserva al suo interno un’identificazione tra genesi della classe rabbinica e principio di difesa all’ellenizzazione 27 , plausibile presa di distanza rispetto alla precedente mancata presa di posizione in Ebrei e Greci e che senz’altro va messa in relazione a quella crescita di interesse per le dinamiche tra correnti interne al giudaismo che avrebbe trovato esito nella GL 1982 II, The Jewish Sects in the Sources. Nuova risulta infine anche la quarta lezione del ciclo CL, Jews and Gentiles, risultato di un’espansione della seconda metà della NL 1977 III, Attitudes, incentrata sula valutazione critica delle eventuali aree di contatto e scambio, sia in ambito religioso che culturale, tra Ebrei e Greci. La conclusione raggiunta da Momigliano è che tale comunicazione tra culture sia stata in realtà di tipo superficiale, complessivamente estranea al confronto approfondito e allo scambio. L’unico ambito ad emergere come effettivo spazio di relazione intellettuale è la storiografia, per quanto anche in questo contesto la costante rivendicazione della priorità cronologica delle rispettive culturaee i mezzi perseguiti allo scopo di provare tale assunto (produzione e alterazione di fonti storiche) testimonino debolezza e superficialità di approccio. Sono due, ad ogni modo, gli spunti di riflessione offerti da Jews and Gentiles e destinati a rivestire un’importanza nodale nei successivi sviluppi dell’indagine: l’importanza del ruolo della storiografia nell’opposizione ebraica alla sfida culturale greco-macedone e lo speculare problema posto dalla perdita di interesse del giudaismo rabbinico per la ricerca sul proprio passato. È a questa seconda questione, colta in relazione all’importanza assunta in età ellenistica dalla letteratura apocalittica, che tenta di dare risposta – ancora provvisoriamente – la quinta e ultima Chicago Lecture, From History to Apocalypse. Per citare nuovamente Giovanna Granata: 25 Per quanto una vera e propria scelta di superamento della nozione sarà formulata in modo esplicito solo nel testo GL (“this first lecture was intended to be a valediction to the notion of Hellenistic Judaism”). 26 L’Appendice I non riporta il testo della versione abbreviata proposta come CL 1977 II e testimoniato dal fascicolo P-o 36, ma la sua versione estesa (ds. P-o 31). Appare evidente come le 35 cc. di cui si compone (e che rappresentano la trattazione più ampia che Momigliano abbia mai dedicato al tema) apparissero troppe per la presentazione a una pubblica lettura. 27 Cfr. GRANATA 1999, 87. 19 Una volta verificato, cioè, che l’elemento portante della rivoluzione ellenistica che conduce all’istituzione della sinagoga è costituito dal concetto anti-storico di eternità della legge attorno a cui si è costruita la identità religiosa e culturale del mondo giudaico, si tratta di verificare due ipotesi che si escludono a vicenda e che Momigliano riassume così: “If you start from the synagogue you will rather end in apocalypse than in history” oppure “the synagogue was meant to save the Jews both from apocalypse and from history?”28. Sarà però la rielaborazione di From History to Apocalypse, presentata nel 1978 a Cincinnati con il titolo, già di per sé eloquente, di The Decline of History and Apocalypse and the Defence against the Romans, a fornire risposta al quesito: al di là di forti divergenze di prospettiva, storiografia e apocalittica condividono un aspetto fondamentale, la riflessione sul cambiamento. La fortuna di entrambe in età ellenistica troverà il suo corrispettivo nel declino parallelo a cui andranno incontro con il prevalere degli ideali di permanenza e stabilità della legge, a vantaggio dei quali il giudaismo rabbinico rinuncia non solo alla pratica dell’indagine storica ma al tempo stesso anche alle promesse apocalittiche di salvezza e di intervento divino nel mondo. Tale conclusione è destinata a rimanere inalterata fino all’ultima lecture dell’ultimo ciclo: proposta in occasione delle EL dell’ottobre-novembre del 1978, The Decline of History and Apocalypse dovrà attendere il ciclo oxoniense del febbraio del 1982 per essere ripresentata nel suo assetto definitivo. La perentorietà dell’assunto di partenza appare così un’ulteriore prova della rilevanza della fase di Cincinnati nell’elaborazione definitiva degli Aspects. Già sul finire del 1976 Momigliano era stato invitato da Samuel Sandmel a tenere sei Gustav A. e Mamie W. Efroymson Memorial Lectures presso lo Hebrew Union College di Cincinnati, tra il 1978 e il 197929. Come ha rilevato Antonella Soldani, tale nuovo contesto di presentazione – la prima istituzione ebraica di alta istruzione in America, fondata nel 1875 dal leader del Reform Judaism, Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, non è affatto indifferente agli sviluppi del progetto: il ciclo marca “un nuovo inizio (…) un momento di espansione di vita: lettere di quel periodo lasciano affiorare la gioia per il successo ottenuto e per il calore dell’accoglienza, e anche il coinvolgimento almeno emotivo in esperienze condivise30”. La presentazione Efroymson rappresenta infatti un momento di ripensamento fondamentale, definibile nei termini di una vera e propria rivoluzione nelle prospettive e nelle modalità di ricerca. La lezione incipitaria, Prologue, viene mantenuta complessivamente inalterata, con piccole ma significative differenze (ad esempio, la premessa di omaggio alla tradizione di studi del Collegio o alcuni approfondimenti per i quali l’ambiente di Cincinnati potrebbe aver agito da stimolo, cfr. l’introduzione alla lecture); si individua però alla fine del testo un’aggiunta cruciale, che condizionerà l’intero sviluppo del ciclo EL, e che consiste non in un incremento degli argomenti trattati, ma piuttosto nella recusatio del tema romano31. Nelle lezioni tenute a Cincinnati la presenza dei Romani sarà infatti limitata al tema della difesa contro di essi così come proposto nel finale della sesta conferenza. Al taglio operato sulla parte “bassa” della cronologia (versante romano e rabbinico) corrisponde però un ampliamento “in alto” coerente non solo con l’opzione meyeriana celebrata da Momigliano (attenzione per le relazioni tra Greci e Persiani32) ma anche, in un certo 28 GRANATA 1999, 80. Lettera al 14.10.76. 30 Di particolare importanza documentaria appare in tal senso la lettera ad Anne Marie Meyer del 18.11.78 che riporta le impressioni generali al termine del ciclo di lezioni (“Cincinnati è finito veramente bene. È ovvio che le mie lectures siano state apprezzate, e la cordialità era genuina ed ebraica nel senso migliore”) e il significato attribuito ad alcuni momenti, su cui cfr. SOLDANI 2009, n. 17. 31 P-o 72, c. 19bis = cc. 24-5 del testo GL edito. 32 Su cui cfr. Prologue, c. 22. 20 29 senso, con la diffidenza dello storico ad avventurarsi tra quei testi della letteratura rabbinica in cui sentiva meno saldo il proprio dicastero33. La principale novità del ciclo EL è tuttavia rappresentata dalla sostituzione del dittico CL dedicato alle istituzioni del giudaismo ellenistico, The Temple and the Synagogue e The Rabbis and the Communities, con tre lezioni del tutto nuove. Nella prima, The Greeks outside the Persian Empire, Momigliano propone un’indagine sulla reazione greca all’incontro con la Persia, allo scopo di fornire una base di partenza nell’individuazione delle peculiarità nella risposta giudaica allo stesso incontro che costituisce invece l’oggetto della successiva The Jews inside the Persian Empire. Se nel caso di The Greeks outside Momigliano lavora essenzialmente in eredità di Alien Wisdom, attingendo quindi da materiale ampiamente autonomo rispetto al ciclo, nel caso di The Jews inside risalta la consistente ripresa tematica di sezioni testuali provenienti dalla CL 1977 II, The Temple and the Synagogue, soprattutto in relazione agli aspetti politici ed istituzionali, economici e sociali della funzione del Tempio in rapporto alla potenza achemenide. Discorso analogo può essere condotto per la successiva Efroymson lecture, The Defence against Hellenization, in cui il materiale utilizzato proviene in buona parte non solo da The Temple and the Synagogue ma anche e soprattutto dalla dissolta The Rabbis and the Communities.34 Momigliano struttura qui la propria riflessione su come a trasformare la devozione sacerdotale del giudaismo persiano nel sistema accademico per lo studio della Torah sia stata l’assimilazione ebraica della fede dei Greci nell’educazione organizzata. Segue infine la riproposizione della CL 1977 IV, Jews and Gentiles (per la cui evoluzione testuale in questa fase si rimanda all’introduzione alla lecture) e, come sesta e ultima conferenza, The Decline of History and Apocalypse and the Defence against the Romans, depositaria di un raggiungimento di conclusioni valide per tutto il corpus delle lectures35. In conclusione, quello che soprattutto si apprezza dal ripensamento delle modalità di indagine sancito dal ciclo Efroymson è la scomparsa dalle lectures di interventi che isolino come temi a se stanti le analisi del binomio Tempio-Sinagoga e del rabbinato, con conseguente predilezione per un reinserimento di genesi e sviluppo delle due istituzioni nel contesto persiano (The Jews Inside) o resistenziale (The Defence). Tale trasformazione non ha valore meramente formale. Per citare, ancora una volta, la fine analisi condotta da Giovanna Granata a riguardo: la versione precedente le Efroymson premetteva all’analisi dei rapporti tra Ebrei e gentili la trattazione relativa al ruolo sociale, religioso e culturale dei rabbini. Non è banale affrontare il tema del giudaismo in età ellenistica a partire da questa prospettiva nella quale trova la sua formulazione più drastica l’idea di Momigliano riguardo alle caratteristiche del giudaismo come sistema di reazione all’ellenismo. (…) La rielaborazione dei temi (…) sottolinea le aree attraverso cui questa reazione è stata messa in atto, il sistema educativo e il controllo linguistico del testo biblico, con minore enfasi sulla nuova struttura (la sinagoga) e la nuova classe dominante (i rabbini) che ne sono il prodotto (p. 87). Inevitabile porre tuttavia nel solco di tale conclusione la questione, se la rielaborazione Efroymson conduca o meno a una svalutazione del ruolo di rabbini e sinagoga (la cui centralità nel ciclo di Chicago appare sotto ogni aspetto indiscutibile) o se prescinda piuttosto da relativi giudizi 33 “To pass from the Qumran texts and the Gospels to the Mishnah and Tosefta requires a jump I am too old to make” (GL 1982 III, c. 17bis). 34 Per l’esatta ripartizione di paragrafi tra The Jews Inside e The Defence si rimanda all’Appendice I. 35 Per quanto (come rileva SOLDANI 2009) il paragrafo finale della versione EL di The Decline, destinato ad essere rimpiazzato nella versione GL 1982 da una chiusa di tono e prospettive differenti (cfr. Appendice alla lecture, tagli al testo Efroymson: da “There is another story to tell” fino a “Talmud Bab. Ta’anit 7a”, cc. 30-31), abbia carattere ancora provvisorio e plausibilmente subordinato al contesto: “l’aneddoto, scelto da Momigliano per terminare il suo ciclo di lezioni è inteso a esemplificare forme di continuità tra il giudaismo ellenistico e il giudaismo rabbinico di cui la persistenza tradizionale si pone a garanzia, e di cui il rispetto per le “alien cultures” dei Greci e dei Romani appare un tratto qualificante. Questo testo, però, non sarà più letto dopo Cincinnati (…) ed è lecito porsi la questione (…) se la scelta sia dovuta alla sua particolare adeguatezza del primo ad un contesto riformato”. 21 di valore. La riproposizione pressoché letterale dei materiali utilizzati a Chicago – che in taluni casi finiscono anzi per essere accresciuti36 – induce in ultima analisi a ridimensionare l’ipotesi di una polarizzazione tra un momento preliminare di sopravvalutazione del tema (Chicago) e la sua successiva perdita di importanza. Unico fattore in grado di limitare effettivamente la presenza rabbinica nei testi sarà piuttosto l’esclusione tematica di Roma dal focus di indagine (annunciata, come si è visto, a Cincinnati, ma apprezzabile soprattutto nella definitiva riformulazione di The Defence per il ciclo GL 1982), con conseguente selezione cronologica: una scelta, tuttavia, più di pragmatica che di principio. L’ultima riproposizione del ciclo Between Synagogue and Apocalypse, a Oxford, nel gennaiofebbraio del 1979, si pone dunque al termine di questo complesso percorso di formazione. L’occasione è quella delle Grinfield Lectures on the Septuagint, tradizionalmente destinate allo sviluppo in ambiente non ebraico di riflessioni su temi del giudaismo ellenistico, particolarmente in relazione alla Settanta. L’invito a riferire delle proprie ricerche presso la prestigiosa sede è accolto da Momigliano con sorpresa e gioia, come documenta l’introduzione anteposta per l’occasione al testo di Prologue in Germany (cc. 1-4 dell’edito), in cui una nuova indagine sulle premesse italiane alla riscoperta tedesca del giudaismo ellenistico è fatta precedere da una brillante premessa di taglio autobiografico. I testi Grinfield, al di là degli interventi particolari (per i quali si rimanda all’introduzione alle singole lectures) risultano complessivamente interessati da una generale operazione di inquadramento, contestualizzazione e raffinamento del focus di indagine che si apprezza soprattutto nella stesura di nuove introduzioni e conclusioni dal valore esplicativo e riepilogativo. È il caso – per portare un esempio significativo – della nuova conclusione del Prologue, dedicata alla presentazione dei temi su cui la ricerca andrà concentrandosi: “These three themes [i.e. Il rapporto di Greci ed Ebrei con la Persia; le forme di comunicazione tra Ebrei della diaspora; i limiti dello scambio tra Ebrei e gentili] will occupy me in the remaining two lectures of this year and in three lectures which I hope to deliver next year” (c. 24). Dalla circoscrizione tematica emergono due interessanti constatazioni. La prima si lega al riferimento alle “lezioni rimanenti per l’anno” 37 – progetto strutturale, quindi, del primo ciclo – all’interno del quale Momigliano sceglie di limitarsi alla presentazione dei primi quattro interventi EL. È un modo per chiudere la serie con un punto di domanda: l’ultima GL, The Defence against Hellenization – che riveste non a caso ruolo mediano nel ciclo Efroymson – è un testo che solleva più interrogativi di quanti non ne risolva, aprendo la strada tanto a Jews and Gentiles, per ciò che concerne l’analisi dei punti di contatto tra Ebrei e Greci, quanto a The Decline of History and Apocalypse per le interconnessioni tra i due generi letterari. Sul fatto che nella nuova conclusione del Prologue la materia di tali lezioni venga rimandata all’anno successivo38 si innesta la seconda possibile constatazione sul passo, relativa alla valutazione dell’organicità del progetto momiglianeo nel suo complesso e della sua evoluzione nel tempo: il ciclo a cui lo storico rimanda non può certo essere identificato nelle GL 1980 né, tantomeno, in quelle del 1981, ma corrisponde chiaramente alla quarta e ultima serie. Ciò significa che nel gennaio del 1979 Momigliano non era ancora arrivato all’idea di una quadripartizione dell’indagine e di un suo ampliamento in direzione dei temi – ai quali andava interessandosi in parallelo – della storiografia universale e resistenziale. 36 Cfr. in proposito Appendice II, (The Rabbis and the Communities). Singolarmente indicate come due, anziché come le tre che effettivamente seguono Prologue (Greeks outside; Jews inside; Defence). Potrebbe però trattarsi di un semplice lapsus, considerata la stretta vicinanza tematica delle prime due lezioni. 38 Un’analoga promessa di completamento del percorso di indagine nell’anno a venire è aggiunta, non a caso, anche in apertura a The Defence: “This year I shall only be able to say something about the first point – the linguistic situation. The rest of my analysis of the methods by which the Jews organized their intellectual world inside the intellectual world of the Greeks must be left to my second series of lectures”. 22 37 Tra Polibio e Daniele, Demostene e i Maccabei: il secondo (1979-1980) e il terzo (1981) ciclo sul giudaismo ellenistico. DANIEL AND THE ORIGINS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY CL 1979 (apr.-mag.) 1 Two Types of Universal History. The Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber. 2 Universal History in Greece and Rome 3 Daniel and the Dangers of Apocalyptic 39 GS 1979 (nov.) 1 Universal History in Greece and Rome GL 1980 (gen.feb.) 1 Universal History in Greece and Rome 2 Daniel and the World Empires 2 3 3 Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian HIstoriography Daniel and the World Empires Flavis Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography [4 The Greeks outside and the Jews inside the Persian Empire] 5 The Paradox of the Roman Empire and Christian Historiography La ricerca di un’area di contatto privilegiata nelle relazioni culturali tra Ebrei e Greci successive all’ingresso di Alessandro Magno in Palestina determina un progressivo spostamento dell’interesse dal giudaismo ellenistico tout court alla produzione storiografica dell’epoca, emersa in The Defence against Hellenization come l’ambito culturale di maggior impatto. Oggetto del secondo ciclo di lectures, Daniel and the World Empires, è infatti lo sviluppo del genere greco della storiografia universale prima e dopo la sua reinterpretazione giudaica. Da sottolineare come anche in questo caso il percorso di indagine non rappresenti per Momigliano tanto una scoperta, quanto piuttosto un recupero: l’epistolario testimonia come lo storico si dedicasse al tema già nel 1978, in contemporanea alla presentazione del ciclo Efroymson a Cincinnati40. Non si esauriscono però in questo aspetto i punti di contatto tra il nuovo percorso di indagine e il primo ciclo. Lo sguardo ravvicinato al libro di Daniele – considerato da Momigliano un testo chiave nella misura in cui recupera il modello storiografico greco di successione degli imperi del mondo e se ne appropria ricollocandolo sub specie aeternitatis – permette l’approfondimento di quella riflessione sui rapporti tra storiografia e apocalittica che, già oggetto della EL 1978 VI (The Decline), era stata accantonata in sede Grinfield in attesa di ulteriore indagine. Le profezie di Daniele sul superamento degli imperi mondani in prospettiva del regno di Dio vengono ora interpretate come antesignane di quella visione apocalittica giudaica che sarà poi mutuata a Roma dalla storiografia cristiana ed applicata, con vari esiti, ai rapporti tra Chiesa e Impero. Daniel and the Origins of Universal History viene proposto una prima volta tra l’aprile e il maggio del 1979, nel contesto delle Chicago Lectures. In quest’occasione il ciclo si compone di cinque lezioni, di cui solo tre verranno recuperate per la riproposizione nelle sedi successive. La prima CL, Two Types of Universal History: the Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber, dedicata a sviluppi e tendenze contemporanee del genere letterario, si presenta fin da subito come lezione 39 40 Fonte del grafico: SOLDANI 2009, 22. Lettera al 6.10.78. 23 eccentrica, di introduzione al metodo, né sorprende la sua successiva pubblicazione come contributo autonomo41. Ad essere accantonata sarà anche la quarta CL, The Greeks outside and the Jews inside the Persian Empire (di cui l’AAM non conserva il testo, ma che doveva verosimilmente offrire una sintesi delle GL 1979 II e III a beneficio del pubblico di Chicago, al quale – ricordiamo – il primo ciclo era stato proposto prima della composizione delle due lectures in questione). Le rimanenti Universal History in Greece and Rome; Daniel and the Dangers of Apocalyptic; Flavius Josephus e The Paradox of the Roman Empire, sono invece conservate in occasione della riproposizione del ciclo come Gauss Seminar a Princeton nel novembre dello stesso anno, pur andando incontro a consistenti operazioni di ristrutturazione. Nel caso della prima, dedicata alle premesse greco-romane del tema (vari modelli greci di rappresentazione degli sviluppi dell’umanità e loro fortuna in ambito poetico e filosofico; formalizzazione scientifica del genere da parte di Polibio) si apprezza una certa continuità di forma e contenuti nel passaggio alla versione GS42. Più complesso invece il rapporto instauratosi tra la seconda lecture, incentrata sul ruolo di Daniele e sulla sua eredità letteraria (gli oracoli sibillini, l’Apocalisse di Giovanni) e la terza, il cui titolo CL (The Paradox of the Roman Empire and Christian Historiography) si richiama in modo significativo al problema per cui interprete privilegiato del destino di Roma diventa paradossalmente una scuola storiografica cristiana che mutua dall’apocalittica giudaica una visione ostile all’Impero. La trasformazione del testo di Daniel passa ora infatti per l’inserimento di ampi stralci recuperati da The Paradox, con la conseguenza di una parziale sovrapposizione testuale tra lectures per la cui soluzione in questa sede editoriale si rimanda alle rispettive introduzioni. Il passaggio a Daniel di cospicue sezioni provenienti da The Paradox determina inoltre un consistente spostamento del focus di quest’ultima e una sua ristrutturazione in prospettiva di un tema che va assumendo importanza crescente nell’indagine di Momigliano, il ruolo storico – e storiografico – di Flavio Giuseppe: è su di lui che si incentra la nuova sezione incipitaria della lecture (cc. 1-9), coerentemente rinominata Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography43. La riproposizione Grinfield del ciclo, presentato ad Oxford tra il gennaio e il febbraio del 1980, vede una sostanziale continuità con le versioni di Princeton: quello che si apprezza ancora una volta è il raffinamento della forma, ottenuto mediante l’aggiunta di paragrafi in apertura e chiusura dei testi che assolvono a un ruolo di raccordo e di focalizzazione tematica: tre nuove pagine di introduzione vengono premesse a Universal History, due a Daniel, tre a Flavius Josephus, senza considerare i singoli interventi e le aggiunte minute, per i quali si rimanda all’introduzione ai singoli testi. La conclusione del percorso di indagine condotto nel secondo ciclo non ha tuttavia portato fino in fondo le possibilità esplorative offerte dalla tematica storiografica in contesto ellenistico. Al contrario, ha contribuito a rafforzare l’attenzione di Momigliano per la dimensione resistenziale del rapporto tra cultura ebraica e cultura greco-romana, di cui emerge adesso la necessità di indagine in merito alla stessa documentazione storica fornita dai contemporanei. In altri termini, l’indagine sulle origini dell’opposizione culturale ebraica va trasformandosi in un’indagine sulle origini della storiografia di opposizione – ebraica, ma non solo. 41 Vd. Two Types, infra, pp. 109-10. Si rimanda comunque all’introduzione alla lecture (pp.111-14) per le singole modifiche, comunque presenti. 43 Per il ruolo di Flavio Giuseppe nella riflessione di Momigliano cfr. il par. 3 dell’introduzione alla lecture, pp. 147-49. 24 42 THE JEWISH HISTORIOGRAPHY OF RESISTANCE 44 GL 1981 (gen.-feb.) 1 The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism CL 1981 (apr.-mag.) 1 The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to GrecoMacedonian and Roman Imperialism. Greece. 2 2 Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World 3 From the Books of Maccabees to Philo The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to GrecoMacedonian and Roman Imperialism. The East. 3 Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World 4 From the Books of Maccabees to Philo 5 How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans Il tema trova sviluppo nel terzo e ultimo ciclo di lectures, significativamente intitolato The Jewish Historiography of Resistance, proposto per la prima volta direttamente ad Oxford – tra il gennaio e il febbraio del 1981 – e poi ripresentato a Chicago tra l’aprile e il maggio dello stesso anno, in versione ampliata (da tre a cinque lectures). Al cuore dell’indagine si pone, ancora una volta, il privilegiato ma controverso rapporto che Momigliano coglie tra storia ed apocalittica. Apocalittica che trova nel contesto un habitat ideale, per così dire, in virtù di premesse gettate fin dal ciclo sulla storiografia universale: Daniel and the Origins of Universal History aveva infatti contribuito a mettere in luce come la prospettiva universalistica fosse al tempo stesso al cuore dell’espressione dell’opposizione giudaica alla conquista greco-macedone prima e romana poi. Quello che Momigliano si propone ora è costruire, intorno a questo nodo fondamentale, una storia dello sviluppo delle pratiche resistenziali che metta a confronto il modello greco con quello non solo giudaico ma più genericamente orientale, ripercorrendo l’arco dei secoli già tracciato nel ciclo precedente, sia pure con diversa prospettiva. Ai primi due modelli è dedicata la lezione incipitaria del ciclo GL, The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Roman and Macedonian Imperialism (destinata ad essere poi riarticolata in sede CL in due lezioni, 1. Greece; 2. The East). Qui trovano spazio l’analisi della dimensione essenzialmente politica della resistenza greca verso Macedoni e Romani e il parallelo confronto con le tendenze orientali – egizie, iraniche e fenicie – all’opposizione religioso-profetica e alla pratica di attingere dal proprio patrimonio mitico e sacrale, idealizzandone la tradizione. A dare un giro di vite alla riflessione momiglianea sulla questione è però la constatazione, sviluppata nelle successive Some Exemplary Stories of the Jewish World e From the Book of Maccabees to Philo, che la letteratura resistenziale ebraica documenti sia componenti del modello greco che del modello orientale e che la presenza di entrambi gli aspetti sia diacronicamente distinguibile. In Some Exemplary, dedicata ai libri ellenistici di Ester, Giuditta, Tobia, ne viene infatti delineata la natura di prodotti della diaspora su sfondo del dominio persiano, recuperando in particolare – soprattutto nel caso di Giuditta e del suo plausibile modello erodoteo – la questione della pratica giudaico-ellenistica del ricorso a materiale greco in chiave ostile. Per quanto tra loro differenti, Ester, Giuditta e Tobia condividono un tratto in comune: ai protagonisti, minacciati in quanto appartenenti a un gruppo etnico, non è mai richiesto di abbandonare l’ebraismo; non 44 Fonte del grafico: SOLDANI 2009, 23. 25 compare e non agisce ancora quella nozione determinante di “apostasia”, di scelta tra obbedienza e disobbedienza a Dio, che discende direttamente dalle persecuzioni di Antioco IV e che sarà invece al cuore dei libri dei Maccabei45. In From The Books of Maccabees to Philo si mostra infatti come la rappresentazione degli Ebrei come gruppo etnico stabile subirà invece nei libri maccabaici un ripensamento in chiave religiosa, di caratterizzazione come gruppo etnico-religioso mobile, aperto alla modifìca per il tramite dell’apostasia. È un’interpretazione che finisce per individuare un ulteriore punto di intersezione con il ciclo Daniel and the Origins of the Universal History, nella misura in cui è il libro di Daniele il primo a formulare tale criterio di apostasia con lo scopo di sottrarsi alle consolazioni generiche dell’oracolistica che lo precede. Risalta così doppiamente la specificità dell’operazione culturale del suo autore, che se da una prospettiva universalistica aveva mutuato il modello greco di successione degli imperi per adeguarlo a prospettive ebraiche, sul piano resistenziale innova nel leggere la dominazione di Antioco IV attraverso categorie interpretative destinate a godere di grande fortuna per il tramite della letteratura maccabaica. Con una riflessione sulla compresenza di entrambi i modelli (etnico ed etnico-religioso) nella produzione politica di Filone di Alessandria, e sulla sua scelta di valorizzare il secondo modello in un tentativo di compromesso con il potere politico romano, ha termine il terzo e ultimo ciclo momiglianeo sul giudaismo ellenistico. Una quinta lecture, How to reconcile Greeks and Trojans, è presentata in chiusura della serie di Chicago, ma la natura eccentrica dei suoi contenuti rispetto al corpus faranno presto optare Momigliano per un licenziamento autonomo, al pari di Two Types of Universal History46. A questo punto di sviluppo degli Aspects, due lezioni del primo ciclo, le EL 1978 Jews and Gentiles e The Decline of History and Apocalypse, non sono però ancora mai state presentate al pubblico di Oxford; la loro funzione e, se vogliamo, il loro stesso assetto testuale, sono rimasti in un certo senso in sospeso. È nella loro direzione che guarda la chiusa di From the World of Maccabees to Philo (“But the choice is now primarily with the individual Jew: and the choice is between Greek life and Jewish life”), sintetica anticipazione dei nuclei concettuali del quarto e ultimo ciclo, dedicato all’individuazione di quei punti di contatto tra giudaismo ed ellenismo attraverso i quali la componente resistenziale torna ad oltrepassare il confine della produzione storiografica e a riverberarsi in ogni ambito culturale. 45 Per una recente valutazione di tale intepretazione momiglianea della letteratura maccabaica si rimanda a RAJAK 2014, 96, che le contrappone la posizione opposta sostenuta da G. Bowersock in Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge 1995) arrivando alla conclusione per cui “neither of these extremes is, in my view, sustainable”. 46 Vd. Reconcile. 26 Between Synagogue and Apocalypse, Oxford 1982: ultimo atto di un unico grande progetto? Tra il gennaio e il febbraio del 1982 Momigliano torna ad Oxford per proporre, un’ultima volta, le sue Grinfield Lectures on the Septuagint. Sufficiente a marcare il carattere conclusivo della ricerca proposta è già il titolo del ciclo, Between Synagogue and Apocalypse,che recuperando quello utilizzato nel 1979 riconduce all’origine il punto di arrivo dell’intero arco di riflessione. BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND APOCALYPSE EL 1978 5 6 Jews and Gentiles The Decline of History and Apocalypse and the Defence against the Romans 47 GL 1982 (gen.-feb.) 1 Jews and Gentiles 2 The Jewish Sects in the Sources 3 The Decline of History and Apocalypse I testi qui presentati, non a caso, non saranno più riproposti altrove. Si tratta di tre lectures, di cui la prima (Jews and Gentiles) e la terza (The Decline of History and Apocalypse) costituiscono la rielaborazione finale di quelle due conferenze omonime della serie Efroymson (EL 1978 V e VI) che erano state accantonate nella presentazione del primo ciclo ad Oxford, e che ne confermano l’intuizione di partenza per cui It has now become a commonplace that there is no aspect of Jewish life between Alexander the Great and the destruction of the Second Temple which was not affected by Hellenism. Which is also to say that there is no aspect of Judaism of that period which is not marked by the effort to challenge 48 Hellenism in the very act of taking it into account . È una conclusione su cui va ad innestarsi la seconda lecture, The Jewish Sects in the Sources, approfondimento composto ad hoc ma la cui necessità era stata già sollevata in sede Efroymson, in corrispondenza all’indagine sui rapporti tra rabbinato e storiografia: il declino degli interessi storiografici e apocalittici successivo alla produzione di Flavio Giuseppe, che Momigliano riconduce in The Decline of History and Apocalypse all’operazione culturale rabbinica di valorizzazione dell’eternità della Legge a discapito del divenire storico, è confermata in The Jewish Sects in the Sources dal disinteresse talmudico nel ricostruire, adottando criteri storiografici scientifici, ideologie e divergenze delle correnti interne al giudaismo di età ellenistica. A rispettare nella presente edizione l’originaria collocazione delle lectures GL 1982 – senza riunire in un’unica serie i due cicli omonimi, alterando così la sequenza della conferenze – ha indotto la ricostruzione del progetto momiglianeo di ricomposizione organica dei quattro cicli. Si è visto come secondo e terzo ciclo contribuiscano a sostanziare l’argomentazione di Between Synagogue and Apocalypse da prospettive parallele, convergendo nel delineare il destino comune di storiografia ed apocalittica. La questione che si impone di conseguenza è se la collocazione di lectures dal valore riassuntivo alla fine del percorso di indagine debba essere ritenuta un’operazione a posteriori, per cui, giunto al ciclo GL 1982, Momigliano avrebbe deciso di recuperare i contenuti dei cicli intermedi con sguardo di sintesi, o se si possa invece cogliere una volontà di concertazione anteriore all’elaborazione delle ultime lectures. 47 48 Fonte del grafico: SOLDANI 2009, 23. Jews and Gentiles, c. 2. 27 È indubbio infatti il tentativo di reductio ad unum delle GL 1982, affidato – ancora una volta – alla composizione di sintesi introduttive e conclusive. Ciò si apprezza particolarmente in Jews and Gentiles, la cui nuova posizione incipitaria richiede un prologo in grado di fare da ponte con i temi affrontati nei cicli precedenti. Lo scopo è raggiunto da Momigliano con una trattazione di cinque pagine che solo con grande difficoltà può essere considerata alla stregua di una ‘sutura’ estemporanea, data l’ampiezza concettuale perseguita e la sua efficacia nell’illuminare relazioni e implicazioni tra le principali tematiche. Chiave interpretativa è posta nel riconoscimento della centralità della riflessione sulla pratica storiografica, collocata fra i due temi polari di sinagoga e apocalisse, in evidente tentativo di fusione con i cicli intermedi. Si apprezza inoltre nella lecture il ricorso a tagli del testo laddove sia presente una certa sovrapponibilità con tematiche già affrontate in testi editi (è il caso, ad esempio, della rimozione di un’excursus dedicato ai rappresentanti della storiografia giudaico-ellenstica49) o nei cicli mediani50: operazione che sembrra suggerire qualcosa anche in merito alla natura del progetto editoriale sugli Aspects of Hellenistic Judaism che sarà argomento del prossimo paragrafo. Il carattere restrospettivo di tali interventi potrebbe indebolire la possibilità di considerarli prodotto di un progetto sviluppatosi in itinere; getta tuttavia nuova luce sulla questione un breve documento, la cui rilevanza per la ricostruzione del corpus è parsa chiara solo nell’ultima fase del presente lavoro di edizone, che riporta un’introduzione manoscritta (forse mai dattiloscritta, o la cui dattiloscrittura è andata perduta) alla GL 1981 I, The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism. Tale documento, un foglio a righe allegato al fascicolo P-o 129 e scritto a mano da Momigliano51, riporta il seguente testo: Ladies and Gentlemen, It is not for me to judge my youngers and betters. They did me the honour of extending my Grinfield lectureship from two to four years and therefore presented me with the dilemma of either diluting the three lectures I had already prepared into nine lectures or inventing six new lectures. My English not being good enough for a dilution of such propositions (such things must be left to the natives) I had really no choice. I have therefore decided to devote the two intermediate years to a more detailed exploration of two aspects of Jewish historical thinking within its Greco-Roman context: first universal history, as typified by the book of Daniel; and secondly, what one might call the historiography of resistance from Esther and Judith to Philo, the IV Maccabees and Flavius Josephus, and perhaps the Seder ‘Olam Rabbah. My purpose (as defined in my first lecture last year) remains the study of certain intellectual developments which contributed to making Judaism the only creative native culture in territories controlled by the Greeks after 250 B.C. Dietro il tono scherzoso della recusatio linguistica, pretestuosamente autoironica, emerge un senso di continuità progettuale la cui chiarezza difficilmente può essere messa in discussione e le cui origini appaiono piuttosto precoci, risalendo forse addirittura allo stesso febbraio del 1979, ossia a quando, al termine del primo ciclo GL, Momigliano avrebbe ricevuto un ampliamento dell’invito. Che il contratto originario prevedesse la presentazione di soli due cicli (rispettivamente di quattro e tre incontri) risulta d’altronde coerente con i richiami, inseriti nelle nuove introduzioni e conclusioni dei testi GL 1979, a un “next year” e a una “second series of lectures” in cui completare il percorso 49 “As I have characterized Jewish Hellenistic historiography in my previous lectures and published works, I shall not go into details” (Jews and Gentiles, c. 18). 50 Per quanto vada sottolineato come non tutte le operazioni di taglio o di integrazione testuale nelle lectures del ciclo GL 1982 rispondano univocamente a tale volontà di concertazione. Per le ulteriori esigenze di contesto si rimanda all’introduzione delle singole lectures in questione. 51 Una c.c. del foglio, testimone di uno stato redazionale anteriore (risulta infatti priva delle successive correzioni mss.) è riportata anche in allegato a P-o 138. Per l’edizione del testo si rimanda all’appendice alle lectures CL 1981 I e II. 28 intrapreso con le EL rimaste fuori dall’organizzazione, Jews and Gentiles e The Decline of History and Apocalypse52. L’ampliamento di contratto da due a quattro cicli deve aver indotto Momigliano – che nel frattempo aveva già iniziato a lavorare sul tema della storiografia universale e doveva quindi averne anche già compreso la produttività in ambito giudaico-ellenistico – ad accantonare temporaneamente le tre lezioni già previste per il ciclo successivo (le due EL rimaste fuori, più la nuova The Jewish Sects in the Sources) per orientare l’indagine in direzione di un approfondimento storiografico. Che tale indagine costituisse d’altronde parte integrante di un percorso globale si evince in un certo senso anche da un possibile argomento ex silentio: se nel 1979 Momigliano avesse ritenuto conclusa la propria indagine sul giudaismo ellenistico, nulla gli avrebbe impedito di presentare l’anno successivo le tre lectures già preparate e di postporre a queste i due nuovi cicli, in qualità di terza e quarta Grinfield Lecturership. Al contrario, Momigliano voleva che i suoi stessi ascoltatori fossero consapevoli del progetto d’insieme, come si evince dal fatto che, nel gennaio del 1981, avesse a cuore di descrivere loro in che modo il ciclo quadriennale si andava strutturando. Aspects of Hellenistic Judaism: un libro inedito (o più di uno?) Ogni tentativo di valutazione dell’organicità del progetto momiglianeo non può tuttavia prescindere dalla speculare, complessa questione relativa alla destinazione editoriale delle lectures. Se, come si è considerato all’inizio dell’introduzione, non tutti gli argomenti centrali nella riflessione di Momigliano hanno necessariamente preso la strada di una pubblicazione monografica, nondimeno nel caso del ciclo in questione risulta ben documentata la volontà di non limitare la ricerca all’ambito “aurale” delle Lectureship ma di destinarne i risultati a una sede editoriale. Risale al settembre del 1978 (appena un mese prima della presentazione delle Efroymson Lectures) il contratto, stipulato con la Cambridge University Press, in cui Momigliano si impegna infatti a pubblicare un libro dal titolo From Synagogue to Apocalypse. Copia del contratto è conservata nell’AAM (D-b 9, c.8): Proposed title: From Synagogue to Apocalypse. The Jews between Greeks and Romans from 300 B.C. to A.D. 100 Length: Six chapters of approximately 180-200 pp. (the length of my previous book, Alien Wisdom) Provisional title of the individual chapters: 1. Prologue in Germany: The Ambiguities of the Notion of Hellenistic Judaism. 2. The Heritage of the Persian Rule and the Encounter with the Greeks. 3. Greeks ad Jewish Education: the Synagogue 4. From Greco-Macedonian to Roman Rule 5. History and Apocalypse 6. A Roman World The Text includes the Northcliffe Lectures delivered at the University of London (University College) in January 1977 in a second version which will be presented as Efroymson Lectures at Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati in November 1978. My aim is to define the changes in Jewish life and thought which can be associated either with Greek rule or later with Roman rule. The emphasis is on the diversity of situations inherent in the transition from the former to the latter. Special attention is given to the preservation of the religious unity of the Jews, notwithstanding the difference in languages, political allegiance, social organization and education between Jews. 52 Cfr. la nuova conclusione del Prologue: “These three themes will occupy me in the remaining two lectures of this year and in three lectures which I hope to deliver next year” (c. 24) e la nuova introduzione di The Defence, “This year I shall only be able to say something about the first point – the linguistic situation. The rest of my analysis of the methods by which the Jews organized their intellectual world inside the intellectual world of the Greeks must be left to my second series of lectures” (c. 1). 29 Già a un primo sguardo risulta evidente l’affinità del titolo CUP con quello del primo ciclo, Between Synagogue and Apocalypse. Meno perspicua, invece, la sovrapponibilità dei singoli capitoli all’argomento delle lectures: a giudicare dai sei titoli, il cui numero si rifà evidentemente alla strutturazione del ciclo Efroymson, era prevista una consistente rivisitazione dei contenuti, con compattamento di The Greeks outside e The Jews inside in un’unica sezione (cap. 2), recupero di un’autonomia di The Temple and The Synagogue (cap. 3, con particolare focus sulla valorizzazione del sistema educativo), assenza di una sezione specificamente dedicata alla difesa contro l’ellenizzazione e, soprattutto, composizione ex novo di un’intero capitolo sulla distanza degli sviluppi del legalismo rabbinico di età romana con il giudaismo di Flavio Giuseppe, Filone e dell’apocalittica53. Il libro, tuttavia, non sarà mai pubblicato. La questione della mancata realizzazione del progetto editoriale è stata già affrontata con chiarezza da Giovanna Granata54 e ripresa – con significativo avanzamento – da Antonella Soldani55. Rilevante appare una nota manoscritta di Momigliano apposta sul folder VIII (lo stesso che conteneva il contratto di pubblicazione),“Contract for publication in 1979 with Cambridge University Press. To be published in case of my death only after consultation with experts and declaring that the author considered them in need of through rewriting”. Come rileva Granata, è evidente che “già un anno dopo l’impegno contrattuale e l’indicazione abbastanza precisa di quello che doveva essere il testo da pubblicare, l’autore riteneva necessaria una sua riscrittura”. Per quanto il tipo di revisione che Momigliano aveva in mente sia difficile da stabilire, indizi significativi sono offerti sia dalle modalità di riproposizione delle EL IIV come GL 1979 – senza variazioni sostanziali, come si è visto – che dall’interruzione della sequenza, l’anno successivo, con lo sviluppo di secondo e terzo ciclo. Se già era stata sollevata l’ipotesi che la necessità di riscrittura del testo destinato alla pubblicazione fosse stata imposta dall’allargamento del disegno iniziale, il rinvenimento dell’introduzione manoscritta alla GL 1981 I (The Religious and Intellectual Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism), per cui cfr. supra (p. 28), pare la prova migliore dell’esigenza momiglianea di continuare ad approfondire il complesso ruolo della storiografia negli sviluppi del giudaismo ellenistico. In una lettera a J. Mynott datata al 7.2.1980 (all’indomani, quindi, della presentazione a Oxford del ciclo Daniel and the Origins of the Universal History) è Momigliano stesso a mettere in relazione il nuovo ciclo sulla storiografia universale con il ritardo nella pubblicazione del libro CUP, motivando la procrastinazione con il progetto, sopravvenuto nel frattempo, di licenziare autonomamente la seconda serie di lectures: The reason why I have kept so silent about my book is that three chapters of it have emerged as an independent product, The Origins of Universal History, which I have just read as the Grinfield Lectures at Oxford this year… to be published independently as a little book on its own. The other book will follow as promised, probably under the original title56. Anche da Daniel and the Origins of Universal History, tuttavia, Momigliano non ricaverà mai una monografia indipendente, optando piuttosto per la pubblicazione – sia pure in forma ridotta o 53 In direzione di una maggiore vicinanza del ciclo Efroymson rispetto al progetto edito vanno, inoltre, le annotazioni conservate sui raccoglitori o folders delle lectures di serie P-o. Il VII, che contiene il testo delle “revised Northcliffe” reca infatti l’annotazione “not to be published in case of my death as needing still much revision, July 1977”. La data e il contenuto della cartella permettono di ricondurre la nota, con buona plausibilità, all’assetto testuale Northcliffe. Il VI, invece, che contiene il testo delle Efroymson, ne identifica il contenuto come “Efroymson – CUP”, suggerendo come quindi fosse questa la versione destinata alla pubblicazione. 54 GRANATA 1999, 88-92. 55 SOLDANI 2009 (part. alle pp. 7, 11, 17-18). 56 Cfr. inoltre quanto Momigliano scrive in una lettera ad Anne Marie Meyer del 9.5.79, in riferimento al secondo ciclo: “Le lezioni di qui, ridotte a tre (2,3,5) potrebbero fare un piccolo libro non stupido”. 30 parziale – dei singoli contributi: se Two Types of Universal History (per il quale non era comunque previsto l’inserimento nel volume) viene edito autonomamente57, una versione riassunta e conflata di Universal History e Daniel sarà proposta a breve distanza come Creighton Lecture a Londra e poi licenziata con il titolo The Origins of Universal History58, mentre alcuni degli spunti della terza lecture saranno riproposti nel breve saggio Ciò che Flavio Giuseppe non vide59. Il materiale dato alla stampa non esaurisce tuttavia né l’indagine del secondo ciclo né, tanto meno, della ricerca nella sua interezza. Come già osservato da Riccardo Di Donato nell’introduzione all’edizione italiana delle Sather Classical Lectures, appare plausibile che “la pubblicazione di singoli tasselli avesse per Momigliano carattere provvisorio e che lo stesso autore intedesse l’importanza del quadro generale della sua ricerca anche per la comprensione dei singoli elementi”60, soprattutto se si considera come lo stesso terzo ciclo di conferenze fosse destinato plausibilmente ad essere riassorbito in From Synagogue to Apocalypse. A corroborare tale ipotesi è ancora un’annotazione manoscritta dell’autore alle lectures di Chicago, “provisional text for all the lectures in Chicago revised to 9-V-81. If I die, this may be considered for publication after revision and checking… declaring circumstances.” Posto come l’annotazione renda chiara la determinazione dell’autore a onorare l’impegno assunto con la CUP, ne deriva che la mancanza di pubblicazione possa essere ricondotta a due ordini di problemi, già rilevati da Giovanna Granata61: in primo luogo, la necessità di una revisione formale del testo, che – nato per essere letto – aveva bisogno di un apparato di note e di un controllo rigoroso delle citazioni; ancora, è plausibile che Momigliano stesso provasse incertezza nel definire il taglio editoriale dell’opera, considerato il progressivo ampliamento e arricchimento del progetto iniziale. In tal senso, non appare improbabile che proprio la mancata pubblicazione autonoma del piccolo libro sulla storia universale valga come indizio di un ripensamento rispetto a quanto annunciato nella lettera a Mynott e della volontà di tornare a riproporre la sezione dall’interno di un quadro più generale. Il sopraggiungere di impegni e interessi paralleli faranno comunque sì che il progetto editoriale, quale che fosse, non venga mai portato a compimento. Oltre ai titoli sopra menzionati, di tutto il materiale complessivo solo due lectures saranno date alle stampe da Momigliano: la GL 1979 II, The Greeks outside the Persian Empire62, e la CL 1981 V, How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans63. A queste si possono aggiungere le Indicazioni Preliminari su Apocalissi ed Esodo che riprendono la riflessione sulla letteratura rabbinica a distanza di qualche anno (siamo ormai nel 1985) e, l’anno successivo, la pubblicazione della conferenza di Chicago sulla storia delle religioni, From the Pagan to the Christian Sybil; in entrambi i casi l’ulteriore elaborazione dei temi fa tuttavia sì che siano abbastanza pochi i contatti testuali con le lectures. Ne deriva come di fatto poco dei cicli sul giudaismo ellenistico sia stato pubblicato e che From Synagogue to Apocalypse sia rimasto – evidentemente per ragioni di tempo, prima che di interesse – un libro inedito. C’è però una prova che Momigliano fosse tornato a mettere mano al progetto a distanza di anni (forse addirittura nel 1985) ed è con questa prova che il percorso di ricostruzione della storia degli Aspects of Hellenistic Judaism può concludersi. Il completamento del regesto AAM da parte di 57 Cfr. Two Types. Cfr. Origins. Per le modifiche strutturali rispetto alle due lectures da cui deriva si rimanda alle rispettive introduzioni. Un’analisi della teoria momiglianea sul libro di Daniele viene proposta anche nel saggio Daniele e la teoria greca della successione degli imperi (=Daniele). 59 Cfr. Ciò che Flavio. 60 DI DONATO 1992, X. 61 GRANATA 1999, 91. 62 Cfr. Greek outside. Pubblicata già nel 1979 all’interno della Festschrift dedicata ad Isaiah Berlin, offre in questa sede un’introduzione di notevole importanza nella ricostruzione del progetto editoriale sul giudaismo ellenistico: “I offer here to Isaiah Berlin an attempt to define the Greek attitude (or attitudes) towards the Persians, reserving the comparison with the Jewish attitude (or attitudes) for a little volume which I am writing at present”. 63 Cfr. Reconcile. 31 58 Giovanna Granata ha infatti permesso ad Antonella Soldani di individuare un documento che conserva evidenti interventi editoriali di Momigliano sulla GL 1979 I (Prologue), testimoniando una revisione dello scritto in vista della pubblicazione. Si tratta di P-o 89, dattiloscritto che, oltre a interventi puntuali (per la rassegna dei quali si rimanda all’introduzione alla lecture) offre, nell’ultima pagina, la significativa sostituzione del rimando “in my next lecture” con un “in my next chapter”64. È plausibile che il testo sia stato ripreso in considerazione negli anni Ottanta65, essendo conservato con annotazioni di Anne Marie Meyer di cui l’ultima è databile al 1985. Ulteriore indizio della funzione editoriale del fascicolo è la conservazione in allegato di due fogli manoscritti che riportano estratti del contratto con la CUP e uno schema delle Grinfield Lectures datato al 2.10.81. La presenza in quest’ultimo di tutti e quattro i cicli (e non soltanto del primo e del quarto) risulta l’ultimo di una serie di indizi a favore della profonda interconnessione del sistema di lectures e della volontà di Momigliano di dare, per così dire, ragione all’insieme. In conclusione, per quanto non abbia valore determinante nella ricostruzione della struttura del libro (o forse dei libri) progettati e mai realizzati, la scelta di proporre in questa sede l’esatta successione cronologica delle lectures intende restituire l’ultima struttura perseguita – e comunicata – dell’indagine, nel rispetto della complessità di impostazione degli Aspects of Hellenistic Judaism. Lea Niccolai Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 64 Va tuttavia segnalato come tale sostituzione si accompagni alla conservazione, nella pagina immediatamente precedente (c. 24), dell’espressione “this first lecture was intended to be a valediction” (cfr. infra, p. 53). Possibile dimenticanza, la definizione di “lecture” non risulta ad ogni modo problematica nella valutazione di P-o 89 come testimone privilegiato del processo di elaborazione editoriale, posta la tendenza di Momigliano a conservare l’oscillazione tra le espressioni “lecture” e “chapter” nei volumi editi a partire da raccolte di conferenze: emblematico il caso di Alien Wisdom, in cui la definizione dei capitoli come “lectures” si mantiene in quattro casi (“In the next lecture I shall produce some evidence that about 190- 185 b.C. (…)”, p. 4; “I shall therefore devote the substance of my lecture to a study of the cultural connections (…)”, p. 6; “we shall have to ask ourselves in the next lecture (…), p. 21; “with the consequences which I hope to illustrate in my next lecture (…)”, p. 49). 65 Cfr. SOLDANI 2009, 17. 32 I CICLI DI CONFERENZE SUL GIUDAISMO ELLENISTICO DI ARNALDO MOMIGLIANO, 1977 - 198266 NL 1977 (gen.) 1 Prologue in Germany BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND APOCALYPSE CL 1977 EL 1978 (apr.-mag.) (ott.-nov.) 1 1 Prologue in Germany Prologue in Germany GL 1979 (gen.-feb.) 1 Prologue in Germany 2 The Temple and the Synagogue 2 The Temple and the Synagogue 2 The Greeks outside the Persian Empire 2 3 Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past 3 The Rabbies and the Communities 3 The Jews inside the Persian Empire 3 4 4 4 4 From History to Apocalypse Jews and Gentiles The Greeks outisde the Persian Empire The Jews inside the Persian Empire The Defence against Hellenization The Defence against Hellenization 5 From History to Apocalypse 5 Jews and Gentiles 6 The Decline of History and Apocalypse and the Defence against the Romans DANIEL AND THE WORLD EMPIRES GS 1979 GL 1980 (gen.feb.) (nov.) 1 1 Universal History in Universal History in Greece and Rome Greece and Rome CL 1979 (apr.-mag.) 1 Two Types of Universal History. The Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber. 2 Universal History in Greece and Rome 2 Daniel and the World Empires 2 3 3 Daniel and the World Empires Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian HIstoriography 3 Daniel and the Dangers of Apocalyptic Flavis Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography [4 The Greeks outside and the Jews inside the Persian Empire] 5 The Paradox of the Roman Empire and Christian Historiography THE JEWISH HISTORIOGRAPHY OF RESISTANCE GL 1981 CL 1981 (gen.-feb.) (apr.-mag.) 1 1 The Intellectual and Religious The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and and Roman Imperialism Roman Imperialism. Greece. 2 Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World 2 The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism. The East. 3 From the Books of Maccabees to Philo 3 Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World 4 From the Books of Maccabees to Philo 5 How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans 66 Fonte del grafico: SOLDANI 2009, 22-23. 33 5 BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND APOCALYPSE EL 1978 GL 1982 (gen.-feb.) 1 Jews and Gentiles Jews and Gentiles 6 The Decline of History and Apocalypse and the Defence against the Romans 2 The Jewish Sects in the Sources 3 The Decline of History and Apocalypse forti rielaborazioni rapporto diretto, con rielaborazioni di minor rilievo 34 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany GL 1979 I Prologue in Germany Sedi e date: NL 1977 (17 gennaio – cfr. D-a 1) CL 1977 (ante 15 aprile – cfr. carteggio). EL 1978 (29 ottobre – cfr. D-a 1) GL 1979 (24 gennaio – GRANATA 2006, 419). Documenti - [Old] Prologue in Germany a) NL 1977 I [The Religious Foundations of Hellenistic Judaism] P-o 2, P-o 3: ms. P-o 5: top c. con aggiunte P-o 4 (a), P-o 30 (a), P-o 31 (a): c.c. di P-o 5. - [New] Prologue in Germany a) CL 1977 I – EL 1978 I P-o 87 ms. P-o 159: c.c. di P-o 5 + P-o 87 P-o 16, P-o 30 (b): xerox di P-o 159 P-o 35: top c., nuova versione basata su P-o 30 (a-b) P-o 60, P-o 71, P-o 72 (a) : c.c. di P-o 35 P-o 72 (b) aggiunte mss. b) GL 1979 I [cfr. Bibl. 610 bis] P-o 61, aggiunte mss. P-o 62, P-o 73, P-o 89: nuova versione ds. basata su P-o 61 + 72, c.c. 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati La Grinfield Lecture intitolata Prologue in Germany è stata pubblicata nel 1992 da Riccardo Di Donato e posta in seguito da Glenn Most, in traduzione tedesca, a chiusura della raccolta momiglianea da lui curata1. La versione che si intende riproporre qui coincide ampiamente, ma non interamente, con quella precedentemente edita: grazie al completamento nel 2006 del regesto AAM da parte di Giovanna Granata si è individuato infatti un documento che pare conservare gli ultimi interventi di Momigliano sulla lezione, presentando piccole differenze con il testo edito2. Si tratta di P-o 89, una c.c. di 25 carte dss. con correzioni autografe e di mano di AMM: la presenza in allegato di due fogli mss. connessi all’impegno contratto con la Cambridge University Press, unitamente a una significativa correzione (sostituzione di “in my next lecture” in “in my next chapter”, c. 24) hanno indotto a pensare che la copia testimoni un ritorno al progetto editoriale sottoscritto nel novembre del 1978. P-o 89 non offre il testo letto a Oxford il 24 gennaio 1979 3: annotazioni mss. di AMM identificano piuttosto la reading copy in P-o 62, ds. di 25 carte corredato da interventi mss. per lo più autografi. Aggiunte e modifiche su P-o 89 e P-o 62, peraltro discedenti da un originale comune (P-o 61 + 72), non risultano sempre perfettamente coincidenti. La reading copy appare testimone esclusivo di alcune importanti correzioni e integrazioni mss. d’autore, che segnalano progettualità (la possibile articolazione dei due cicli oxoniensi sul giudaismo ellenistico, c.254; il proposito di 1 Nono, 543-562 (le citazioni bibliografiche, nella forma esatta e completa riportata nel testo, si devono all'intervento redazionale di AMM); G. W. Most in MOMIGLIANO 2000, 367-368 (cfr. particolarmente p. 368 per le ragioni che inducono a porre la lecture, qui definita eine der tiefsinnigsten und zugleich persönlichsten in Momiglianos ganzem Oeuvre). 2 GRANATA 2006, XCI. 3 Data ms. da AMM su P-o 89, c. 1. 4 “These three themes [i.e. Il rapporto di Greci ed Ebrei con la Persia; le forme di comunicazione tra Ebrei della diaspora; i limiti dello scambio tra Ebrei e gentili] will occupy me in the remaining two lectures of this year and in three lectures which I hope to deliver next year” (n. 74). L’affermazione appare significativa tanto per il rimando alle due lectures successive (anziché alle tre che effettivamente completano il ciclo GL 1979) quando per l’annuncio di un successivo ciclo di tre lezioni destinato alla conclusione dell’indagine sul giudaismo ellenistico. Se il primo dato potrebbe rappresentare un semplice lapsus (le due lectures GL 1979 II e III rispondono insieme a uno solo dei tre 35 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany pubblicare uno studio su Moritz Friedlaender, c. 12) e ripensamento di nozioni (la citazione di una “Sinagoga degli ellenisti” in Gerusalemme di Atti 6,9 diventa un più generico riferimento alla presenza di “Ellenisti”, c. 14; è cancellato un enunciato sull’immediata ellenizzazione del cristianesimo, c. 17). È probabile tuttavia che sia stato lo stesso Momigliano a scartare queste varianti: le caratteristiche di P-o 62 e di P-o 89 lasciano supporre che il primo documento, la cui tendenza alle correzioni contrasta con il ductus lineare delle trascrizioni sul secondo, sia stato ripreso dopo la lettura ad Oxford e utilizzato come fonte di correzioni e addenda da riportare sulla quasi identica base ds. di P-o 89 per iniziare a formare il libro. Certa è la recenziorità di P-o 89 anche rispetto a un terzo documento Grinfield, P-o 73: una c.c. di 25 carte, riveduta e corretta a mano da AMM, del tutto simile a P-o 89 e P-o 62 per quanto riguarda il testo dattiloscritto e le correzioni formali. Mancano tuttavia nel testo, divenuto poi la base per l’edizione nel Nono contributo, alcuni interventi che risultano quindi varianti per così dire congiuntive di P-o 89 e P-o 62. Va sottolineato come, rispetto al testo pubblicato, l’apporto di P-o 89 alla conoscenza del pensiero dell’autore non sia sostanziale: il nuovo documento restituisce tuttavia alcune variazioni di sfumatura, aggiunte bibliografiche e piccole precisazioni5. 2. Versioni precedenti della lezione: i documenti. Le reading copies conservate nell’AAM permettono di identificare un susseguirsi di interventi che plasmano il testo di Prologue in Germany, sia per aggiunta che per sottrazione di materiali, fino al raggiungimento della forma Grinfield. Testimonia la struttura di NL 1977 I la reading copy P-o 4, c.c. fittamente annotata di P-o 5, che conserva tra l’altro anche i primi titoli assegnati da Momigliano alla lezione e all’intero ciclo Northcliffe: The Religious Foundations of Hellenistic Judaism e Between Romance and Apocalypse: the World of Jewish Hellenistic Literature. Solo il primo dei due capitoli delle Foundations (cc. 1-13) corrisponde nei contenuti ai temi del Prologue nella sua forma più recente; il secondo (cc. 14-26), destinato a sviluppo autonomo come parte iniziale della CL 1977 II, The Temple and the Synagogue, rivolge piuttosto la sua attenzione alla fondazione e alla storia delle due istituzioni. Così il lunghissimo (37 cc.) e composito documento P-o 159, malgrado l’indicazione “Northcliffe Lectures I” apposta sulla prima carta, raccoglie in realtà insieme il testo di CL 1977 I (prime 22 cc.) e CL 1977 II (ultime 14 cc.), di cui risulta reading copy grazie alla presenza delle consuete note di lettura: l’attribuzione al ciclo NL leggibile sulla prima carta si spiega perché originariamente presente sul documento di cui P-o 159 è xerocopia6. La varietà della paginazione e della dattiloscrittura del documento rivelano modifiche profonde rispetto all’assetto precedente del testo, in rapporto alla ristrutturazione complessiva cui Momigliano sottopone la propria ricerca subito dopo il primo ciclo Northcliffe del 1977. Documento base di P-o 159 è P-o 5, top copy NL 1977 I con aggiunte, interessata da due correzioni autografe di rilievo (riportate anche su P-o 159): la modifica del titolo dell’intero ciclo, interrogativi proposti, la relazione di Greci ed Ebrei con la Persia, offrendo per così dire un nucleo argomentativo unitario) la seconda allusione appare invece di grande importanza nella valutazione dell’organicità del progetto momiglianeo e della sua evoluzione nel tempo: il ciclo a cui lo storico rimanda non può infatti essere identificato nelle GL 1980 né in quelle del 1981, ma corrisponde chiaramente alla quarta e ultima serie (1982). Ciò significa che nel gennaio del 1979 Momigliano era ancora lontano dall’idea di una ripartizione quadripartita dell’indagine complessiva e di un suo ampliamento in direzione dei temi, ai quali andava interessandosi in parallelo, della storiografia universale e resistenziale. Per l’evoluzione del progetto in tal senso sulla plausibile base di modifiche del contratto si rimanda all’ Introduzione al testo. 5 Ad esempio, la modifica nella “percentuale di sfiducia” espressa in relazione alla Formgeschichte, c.1; i riferimenti a Weber e Sanders, c.5, e a Geiger, c.11; l’esplicitazione dell’opinione dell’autore sul ruolo della Persia in relazione alle origini della capacità di reazione del giudaismo, c. 24; il riferimento al progetto editoriale, c. 25. 6 In GRANATA 2006 P-o 159 è invece classificato sub NL 1977 I insieme a P-o 87 (aggiunte mss.), anch'esso plausibilmente testimone della versione CL. 36 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany con la sostituzione della parola Romance con Synagogue, e un intervento su quello della singola lecture, che affianca alle Foundations la dicitura Prologue in Germany7. Una terza reading copy testimonia infine la versione Efroymson. Si tratta di P-o 72, c.c. riveduta, corretta a mano e corredata da carte mss. autografe per un totale di 23 fogli. Il lavoro destinato al pubblico dello Hebrew Union College di Cincinnati consiste soprattutto di aggiunte alla versione CL: occorre però segnalare che almeno due di queste sembrerebbero contenere testo Grinfield (certamente la c. 10 bis, ma probabilmente anche la c. 13 bis), per cui P-o 72 appare plausibile testimone di una prima fase di preparazione della GL, svolta come di consueto sulla reading copy del testo più recente8. Proprio al testo di questa lezione, che reca per la prima volta il solo titolo Prologue in Germany, Momigliano apporterà le ultime aggiunte per la GL 1979 I: una nuova introduzione (P-o 89, cc. 1-4) e un nuovo finale (P-o 89, c. 25). 3. Argomento della lecture Il problema della comparsa della Septuaginta prima e della sua sparizione poi dal patrimonio culturale ebraico coincide con quello della natura e dei limiti del giudaismo ellenistico. Preso in considerazione già da Azariah de’ Rossi, che nella Mantova del 1573 riflette per primo sulla letteratura al crocevia tra antico testamento e testi rabbinici, è destinato però a dover attendere l’idealismo ottocentesco per imporsi definitivamente all’attenzione del panorama scientifico tedesco. Ѐ la medietà del giudaismo ellenistico tra Oriente e grecità a suscitare nuovo interesse tra gli Ebrei tedeschi profondamente integrati nella vita culturale della Germania: alla condanna hegeliana dell’ebraismo come espressione di una frattura tra Dio e Natura, sanabile solo dal cristianesimo, risponde nel periodo 1830-35 il dibattito sul ruolo del pensiero giudaico-ellenistico e della sua figura più emblematica, Filone di Alessandria, nella preparazione al cristianesimo stesso. Va in direzione alternativa a questa tesi la posizione di Droysen, che nel clima di riscoperta degli studi sull’antico Oriente coglie alle origini del cristianesimo la soluzione di un conflitto fra civiltà, risemantizzando su questa base il termine “ellenismo” allo scopo di identificare un periodo storico culturalmente, politicamente ed economicamente inquadrabile. Le scoperte di Qumran e Nag Hammadi hanno ulteriormente contribuito ad ampliare e a migliorare la prospettiva della ricerca novecentesca sul giudaismo. L’impressione che ogni testo composto dai tempi di Alessandro fino a Costantino mostri influenze greche ha portato alcuni studiosi (Bickerman, Hengel) a definire come “ellenistica” la produzione letteraria dell’intero arco cronologico menzionato. L’alternativa di Daniélou, che isola dottrine e pratiche tardogiudaiche e cristiane irriducibili a influenza greca, identificando così una continuità privilegiata tra Sinagoga e Chiesa, induce però Momigliano a cercare una terza via di indagine, tesa non tanto a riconoscere somiglianze e differenze tra giudaismo e culture circostanti, quanto a individuare le modalità con cui gli Ebrei risposero alla sfida culturale lanciata dai Greco-Macedoni. Il giudaismo va in conclusione riconsiderato in una prospettiva diacronica, dai primi sviluppi determinati dal contatto con la cultura persiana fino agli esiti rabbinici e normativi di età romana, in un’ottica di superamento piuttosto che di adesione alla categoria dell’”ellenismo”: valida nei limiti della distinzione, debole e di prospettiva cristiana, tra il giudaismo farisaico di Palestina e quello ellenizzato di Alessandria, la definizione fallisce nel cogliere come la sopravvivenza del giudaismo tra i Greci prima e tra i Romani poi sia stata ottenuta non tramite simbiosi e annullamento, quanto piuttosto per mezzo di una ferma conservazione della propria specificità e cultura creativa. 7 L’assetto del titolo risulta però ancora in fieri: Momigliano scrive a mano a) Prologue in Germany e aggiunge una b) davanti a The Religious Foundations. 8 Non così in GRANATA 2006, dove la presenza di aggiunte Grinfield in P-o 72 non è segnalata; il contenuto delle c. 10 bis (Domenico Diodati sul greco come lingua di Cristo, cfr. attuale c.14) e 13 bis (il giudaismo ellenistico di Hengel come praeparatio evangelica e le difficoltà che derivano da tale prospettiva, cfr. c.18) induce però a considerarle riferibili al ciclo oxoniense. 37 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany 4. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione e il rapporto con i testi editi. Nel momento in cui Momigliano inizia a pensare e a comporre la lezione incipitaria per il suo primo ciclo di lectures, Prologue in Germany è ancora lontana dall’esistere. Le versioni più vecchie sono ancora contrassegnate dal titolo The Religious Foundations of Hellenistic Judaism, e solo nell'imminenza dell'esposizione pubblica il Prologue inizierà a emergere come unità a sé stante. Alla diversa designazione risponde la profonda discrepanza dell'oggetto designato. Già il plurale dei “fondamenti” pare rimandare a una stesura bipartita: un primo capitolo che affronta da una prospettiva metodologica i presupposti religiosi e l'origine teologica della nozione di giudaismo ellenistico; un secondo, che sceglie invece di delineare lo stretto rapporto della civiltà degli Ebrei nel periodo ellenistico con i "fondamenti religiosi" del Tempio e della sinagoga che avevano contribuito a produrla9. La sistemazione del ciclo Northcliffe, con la frammentazione del nucleo tematico Tempio/sinagoga tra prima e seconda lezione, deve però essere apparsa presto insoddisfacente a Momigliano. Già nell'aprile-maggio dello stesso 1977 lo storico apporta modifiche sostanziali al ciclo per presentarlo a Chicago: la trattazione sulle istituzioni religiose postesiliche viene riunita in un'unica sede a esse dedicata, più ampia e organica della Northcliffe Foundations, e preceduta da un Prologue ampliato in misura rilevante. La nuova CL 1977 I presenta, rispetto alla versione Grinfield, due differenze formali di immediata evidenza: non è divisa in capitoli e non si chiama ancora semplicemente Prologue in Germany, ma appare piuttosto corredata di doppio titolo (documentato da P-o 159) che potrebbe forse rispondere all’effettiva bipartizione contenutistica, considerando come solo la prima parte sia incentrata sulle "origini in Germania", mentre la seconda (= capp. III e ss. GL) esce dall'ambito esclusivo della cultura tedesca per affrontare i diversi orientamenti teologici relativi all’argomento. Tale struttura viene tuttavia conservata anche nelle versioni successive, dove scompare invece il titolo bipartito. Sul piano contenutistico la lezione di Chicago risulta arricchita da diverse aggiunte. La critica alla scuola di Tubinga introduce un approfondimento relativo alla duplice vexata quaestio degli influssi greci sull'essenismo e dell’eventuale ruolo di quest’ultimo nella preparazione al cristianesimo (P-o 159, cc. 3-6). Lo spostamento del capitolo su Tempio e sinagoga permette a Momigliano di dedicare spazio a chiarire un punto importante della sua proposta di metodo, il superamento delle impostazioni "comparativiste" a vantaggio del proprium dell'indagine: gli Ebrei, ciò che accadde loro nell'incontro con l'ellenismo, che cosa gli opposero. Fa così il suo ingresso nel prologo il richiamo esplicito alla linea di ricerca di Eduard Meyer10: per presentarla vengono scritte nuove pagine, che rispondono certo alla necessità di allargare la trattazione per il nuovo ciclo in cinque lectures 11 , ma che appaiono anche coerenti con l'abbandono dell’idea di chiudere il "prologo" Northcliffe con un'opzione di (moderata) maggior vicinanza all'interpretazione storica di Daniélou piuttosto che a quella di Bickerman. I due studiosi vengono ora accomunati nella presa di distanza dalla loro comune debolezza di impostazione: la volontà di spiegare con il giudaismo le origini del cristianesimo. Un’indagine sulla resistenza degli Ebrei all’ellenizzazione richiede piuttosto che si tenga conto dell'indagine meyeriana su quanto il giudaismo debba, nel suo costituirsi, alla Persia. La successiva rielaborazione del Prologue in vista del ciclo Efroymson di Cincinnati presenta, rispetto al testo di Chicago, differenze non vistose, benché significative. A parte la breve premessa 9 Da segnalare inoltre come in The Religious Foundations of Hellenistic Judaism la simmetria contrastiva della struttura rispetto a The Historical Foundations of Post-Biblical Judaism di Bickerman (1949) sia troppo perfetta per non essere voluta. La scelta sembra esprimere un intento emulativo sotteso agli esordi della vicenda che sarà tuttavia quasi subito abbandonato, almeno per quanto riguarda l’esplicitazione formale nel titolo. 10 Cfr. Le radici classiche della storiografia moderna. Sather Classical Lectures, ed. it. di Momigliano 1990, a cura di R. Di Donato, Firenze 1992, cap. I, "Storiografia persiana, storiografia greca e storiografia ebraica", part. alle pp. 23 ss. 11 Cfr. lettera al 15.4.1977: "E devo allargare quella che è diventata la quinta lecture su Apocalissi. Ho allargato la prima parte con un paio di pagine su E. Meyer" 38 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany di omaggio alla tradizione di studi dell'Hebrew Union College (P-o 72, c. [1] ms.12), e alcuni approfondimenti per i quali l'ambiente dello Hebrew Union College può aver agito da stimolo (e.g. sul liberale Friedlaender, P-o 72, c. 7bis13), l'aggiunta cruciale si individua alla fine e consiste non in un incremento degli argomenti affrontati, ma al contrario in una vera e propria recusatio del tema romano (P-o 72, c. 19bis14). Nelle lezioni tenute a Cincinnati la presenza di Roma è infatti limitata al tema della "defence against the Romans" così come si presenta nel sesto e ultimo intervento: al taglio operato sulla parte "bassa" della cronologia (versante romano e rabbinico della ricerca) corrisponde un ampliamento "in alto", coerente con l'opzione meyeriana (Greci e Persiani) e, si è tentati di dire, con un ambito storiografico in cui il magistero di Momigliano era più che mai sicuro. Anche se molti lavori della maturità che si trovano a toccare aspetti della storia degli studi sul giudaismo ellenistico risultano a questo punto già scritti da alcuni anni e i punti di vista dell'autore appaiono ormai consolidati, non si può non osservare la particolare attenzione dedicata a Eduard Meyer nei saggi che dal 1977 al 1981 accompagnano, nei cicli di lezioni sul giudaismo ellenistico, il progressivo concentrarsi sull'età greca e l'approfondimento in direzione degli elementi fondanti, collocandosi a monte (piuttosto che a valle) del tema in analisi: la pervasività della riflessione di Meyer non è tuttavia che un aspetto di un progetto che va modificandosi secondo un metodo – dalla visione sintetica nel concepimento di un tema, al procedimento analitico in profondità che tende a delimitarlo e/o scandagliarne singole parti – non certo insolito per Momigliano e difficilmente riconducibile a una singola motivazione o influenza15. Rimane come unico terreno sicuro quello delle motivazioni dichiarate, e nel nostro caso i documenti sono espliciti: già a Cincinnati Momigliano sottolinea (P-o 72, 19bis) la cesura che la dominazione romana segna nella storia del giudaismo, costituendo rispetto al periodo greco un oggetto distinto di studi che limiti di competenze e tempo lo spingono a non affrontare. Conseguenza è che la stessa età dei rabbini viene sospinta al di fuori dell’indagine, come Momigliano torna a ribadire nell'ultima Grinfield: “To pass from the Qumran texts and the Gospels to the Mishnah and Tosefta requires a jump I am too old to make” (GL 1982 III, c. 17bis). L’ultima e definitiva versione della lecture, l’oxoniense GL 1979 I, nasce per accrescimento rispetto alla EL 1978 I: P-o 89, P-o 62, P-o 73 si presentano come riscritture prodotte a partire da un testo che viene suddiviso in capitoli e arricchito all’inizio e alla fine da importanti aggiunte. L'ampia e densa introduzione (4 cc., conservate ms. in P-o 61) trascende evidentemente l'occasione: il tema, connesso al contesto Grinfield, della dipendenza del ciclo di lectures dall’indagine sulla Septuaginta, permette a Momigliano di cogliere l'opportunità di un approfondimento nella forma di un "preludio italiano" che va a ricollegarsi a momenti significativi della propria storia familiare e della personale vicenda di studioso. Nelle nuove considerazioni finali – prima del cenno alla successiva lezione (o capitolo, in P-o 89) – appare evidente come Momigliano sia giunto a definire con la massima chiarezza e rigore il proprio progetto di indagine. Più decisa che in passato risulta la scelta di superare la nozione di giudaismo ellenistico, troppo vincolata a implicazioni teologiche ("this first lecture was intended to be a valediction to the notion of Hellenistic Judaism"). Per la prima volta vengono resi espliciti i centri di interesse sulle origini dell'identità giudaica e sulle forme e i limiti della comunicazione tra Ebrei e Greci. Il progetto così delineato appare ormai non solo corrispondente in linea di massima all'effettivo svolgimento del primo e dell'ultimo ciclo Grinfield, ma anche compatibile con gli estesi sviluppi storiografici dei due cicli intermedi sulla storia universale e sulla storiografia della resistenza. 12 Vd. apparato ad loc., n. 26. Paragrafo poi conservato nel testo della versione GL, vd. c. 12. 14 Confluita nelle cc. 24-5 della versione GL (da “I have neither the time nor the competence to go into the second question of how the Jews saved themselves from the Romans” fino alla chiusa “I am, after all, a student of historiography”). 15 Sugli "studi non realizzati in modo corrispondente al disegno originario" anche e soprattutto in relazione al giudaismo ellenistico, cfr. particolarmente DI DONATO 1992, x. 39 13 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany I [Between Synagogue and Apocalypse] *16 Introduction Nowadays every self respecting17 ancient historian expects to find a theological forger under his bed. No wonder that when I18 received the honour of being invited to be the Grinfield Lecturer on the Septuagint for two academic years I suspected a theological forgery.19 But20 the authenticity of a letter from Miss C. L. Lee of the University of Oxford can be more easily ascertained than the authenticity of a letter by Plato or St. Paul. The letter was authentic. I had to find its “Sitz im Leben”. Neither “Quellenforschung” which I trust 80 percent of the time nor “Formgeschichte”, which I distrust 7021 percent of the time could be of help. I was left with “ratio ipsa”; and “ratio ipsa” suggested that if the electors to the Grinfield Lectureship had thought of me, it meant that they did not want me to speak on the Septuagint. But “ratio”, as we all know, is valid “praesertim accedente Vaticani veteris suffragio”. I therefore asked a kind friend at Christ Church to make some verifications on my conjecture. The “suffragium” came. I was left to decide in what sense a lecturer on the Septuagint might lecture without talking about it. The decision was perhaps not so difficult. I was born in a house full of books – or, to maintain the traditional distinction among Italian Jews, full of sefarim and of libri. Bibles were abundantly present both among sefarim and libri; but among the Greek books there was a New Testament, not an Old Testament. When as an undergraduate I acquired my own copy of Tischendorf’s Septuagint, the lofty thought traversed my mind that this was the first Septuagint to enter my family’s library since the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The “terminus ante quem” for the break between my ancestors and the Septuagint had of course to be put before February 13, A.D. 553, when the Emperor Justinian tried to prop up the use of [2] the Septuagint in the Synagogues by his truly remarkable Novella 146. It is, however, not so easy to be epoch-making, and one minute of reflection was enough to persuade me that the credit for overcoming the taboo on the Septuagint rather belonged to my father’s first cousin Felice Momiglianoi who, as professor of philosophy in the University of Rome and as a writer, so profoundly and subtly wove together the Hebrew prophets and the thinkers of the Italian Risorgimento – and incidentally introduced Claude Montefiore’s work on Jesus and the Gospelsii to the Italians. This is to say that, if in my life I have thought little about the appearance of the Septuagint among the Jews, I have thought much more about its disappearance among the Jews. The problem basically coincides with that of the nature and the limits of Jewish Hellenism or Hellenistic Judaism. I have therefore decided to take the Grinfield Lectureship as an opportunity for an attempt to define the main characteristics of Hellenistic Judaism within the wider terms of reference of * Documento preso come base: P-o 89. Si riportano le varianti di P-o 62 (reading copy di GL 1979, c.c., basata su P-o 72 + 61) e di P-o 73 (ulteriore c.c.). Dei testimoni di versioni non GL (P-o 72, EL; P-o 159, CL; P-o 4, NL) si segnalano in apparato le varianti significative. P-o 89, 73, 62: Introduction, tsf; P-o 72: Between Synagogue and Apocalypse: the World of Jewish Hellenistic Literature – I. Prologue in Germany; P-o 159(privo di introduction): Between Synagogue (<-> Romance, ms[Mom]) and Apocaplypse: the World of Jewish Hellenistic Literature – I. a. Prologue in Germany, interl.ms[Mom]- <b.> The Religious Foundations of Hellenistic Judaism; P-o 4 (privo di introduzione) Between Romance and Apocalypse: The World of Jewish Hellenistic Literature – I. The Religious Foundations of Hellenistic Judaism. 16 P-o 89: re-typed 8.1.79, tsfmgsn,ms[AMM]; Grinfield I - 24 Jan. 79, mgdx; P-o 73:Introduction (new, 1979) to Grinfield Lectures (pp. 1-4), tsfms[AMM]. 17 P-o 89, 62: self respecting, interl.ms[P-o 89 AMM, P-o 62 Mom]; P-o 73: def. (= Nono). 18 P-o 89, 62: when I -> unexpectedly, del.; P-o 73: corr. def. (= Nono). 19 P-o 62: forgery. What did I know about the Septuagint?, interl.ms[Mom]; P-o 89, 73: def. (= Nono). 20 P-o 89: But -> contrary to widespread opinion, del.; P-o 73: corr. def. (= Nono). 21 P-o 89, 62: 70 <-> 80, interl.ms[P-o 89 AMM, P-o 62 Mom]; P-o 73: 80 (= Nono). 40 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany Judaism inside the Hellenistic World. As I have no need to explain to theologians – even if there is no hope of making the point palatable to ancient historians – not only is Hellenistic Judaism a theological notion, but Hellenism itself, as a term for the civilization which developed out of Alexander’s conquests, is a theological notion too. We have to grasp this point and start by questioning the legitimacy of the research on Hellenistic Judaism which has been going on now for almost two centuries. Hence my prologue in Germany. But this prologue must be qualified by two observations. 1) The first observation is almost obvious after my allusion to Justinian’s Novella 146. Though, as far as our information goes, creative Jewish thought in the Greek language ceased more or less at the time of Hadrian, the use of Greek in liturgy and polemics went on for several more centuries. 2) The second observation is that though the initial stage of the research on Jewish Hellenism is clearly to be placed in Germany and in the early decades of the nineteenth century, there was a moment, about 1573, when the stage was [3] set for a prelude in Italy – more precisely in the Jewish quarters of Mantua and Ferrara. The intellectual formation of Azariah de’ Rossi, who came out with his Me’or ‘Enayim, “The Light of the Eyes”iii, in his native Mantua at the age of sixty, remains a mystery. He had lived for years in Bologna not far from Carlo Sigonio who shared his interests in chronology and in Jewish institutionsiv, but I do not know of any evidence that they learned from each other. He was about when Scaliger toured Northern Italy 22 and was delighted to talk, apparently in Biblical Hebrew, with the slightly puzzled23 local Jews; but there is no sign that Scaliger and de’ Rossi ever mentioned each other. The traditional learning of Jewish and of Christian scholars was obviously at de’ Rossi command, but what suddenly impelled this man, who had never written a book before, to put to himself the questions of the origin and value of the Septuagint, of the orthodoxy of Philo and of the chronology of the Hellenistic world, remains so far unexplained. Perhaps a clue is now provided by a letter made known by Johanna Weinberg in her important paper on de’ Rossi last years just published in the Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa [1978, p. 511]v. The letter is by the Inquisitor of Ferrara, who had friendly relations with de’ Rossi – and describes him as “brutissimo di corpo” but “di bellissimo e singolarissimo ingegno”. The Inquisitor had had hopes for de’ Rossi’s conversion, but now underlines that de’ Rossi was himself active in reconverting Marranos to Judaism in Ferrara, where Marranos abounded. The interest in Marranos seems to be also implicit in de’ Rossi’s poems for the death of Marguerite de Valois, the wife of Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy. De’ Rossi’s autograph in three languages – Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin (the Italian section is missing) – is preserved in Bodley’s. The text has been repeatedly publishedvi , but it does not seem to have been observed that when Marguerite died in 1574 her husband had just been compelled by Spain to repeal the decree of 1572 which opened up24 the Dukedom of Savoy to the settlement of Marranos: Marguerite had been known to support the project. De’ Rossi was therefore lamenting the death of a friend of Marranos. It was, I suspect, the meeting with Marranos, rather than [4] the by now traditional cross-fertilization of Jewish scholars and Italian humanists, which encouraged the new problems and the new answers. De’ Rossi, who took the trouble of translating the Letter of Aristeas into Hebrew, was unaware that Juan Louis Vives in an out-of-the-way note to St. Augustine’s De Civitate Dei 18, 42vii had recognized it as a pseudepigraphon. De’ Rossi considered the Letter of Aristeas to be unimpeachable evidence for the high quality25 of the Septuagint and consequently explained the discrepancies with the Hebrew text as later corruptions, most of which would have been due to ill-intentioned Greeks and Egyptians. At the same time de’ Rossi felt that the Septuagint betrayed an Aramaic substratum: an idea which he later tried to extend to the Gospels in some of his letters to ecclesiastical scholarsviii. 22 P-o 89, 62: He was about when Scaliger toured Northern Italy <-> In 1572 he was living in Ferrara when Scaliger appeared, interl.ms[P-o 89 AMM, P-o 62 Mom]; P-o 73: corr. def. (= Nono). 23 P-o 89, 62: slightly puzzled, interl.ms[P-o 89 AMM, P-o 62 Mom]; P-o 73, 61: def. (= Nono). 24 P-o 73, 89: up, mgdxmsn[AMM]; P-o 62: def. (= Nono). 25 P-o 89, 62: De’ Rossi considered the Letter of Aristeas to be unimpeachable evidence for the high quality <-> He gave it full value as evidence for the quality, interl.ms[P-o 89 AMM, P-o 62 Mom]; P-o 73: corr.def. (= Nono). 41 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany Chaotic as it may seem to us, the Me’or ‘Enayim placed for the first time what was known of Jewish Hellenistic literature between the Old Testament and the Rabbinic texts. Though enchanted by the little Greek he knew, de’ Rossi mostly used Latin translations, such as that by Gelenius for Philoix. Even in Italy his experiment was too much for a Jewish culture which was still firmly committed to preferring the Talmudic authorities and was simply not used to treating the Septuagint, Philo and the rest as part of the national legacy. The book was never anathematized in the form which the great Joseph Caro was supposed to have been planning before he died in 1575. But there were reprobations and refutations (one of them from Judah Loew Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague)x. Then there was silence around the book for more than two centuries. The first reprint of the Me’or ‘Enayim, after the original Mantua edition of 1573, was that of Berlin in 1794xi – which is enough to confirm that what might have been a prologue in Italy had became a prologue in Germany.26 [5] Prologue in Germany27 I A piece of news circulated among the German intelligentsia on the eve of the nineteenth century: Kant’s philosophy was a revival of Judaism. It was exactly New Year’s Day 1798 when the poet Friedrich Hölderlin broke the news to his brother Karl: Kant was the Moses of the German Nation; like Moses he had brought down the Law from the holy mountain. “Kant ... Moses unserer Nation ... der das energische Gesetz vom heiligen Berge bringt”xii. Kant’s holy mountain was of course Königsberg. Hölderlin was not alarmed, but others were. In the same winter of 1798-99 young Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hölderlin’s school-fellow and friend, composed his long fragment – never published in his lifetime – on “Der Geist des Christenthums”xiii in which he condemned Jerusalem in order to condemn Königsberg. The transcendence of the Kantian God repeated the transcendence of the Jewish God; Kantian and Jewish sublimity stood against Greek beauty, “Schönheit”. It was apparently one of the tasks of Christianity to save Greek “Schönheit”. In young Hegel’s interpretation the incarnate Logos of St. John was meant to heal the Jewish separation between God and Nature. The great tragedy of the Jewish people – Hegel pressed on – is not a Greek tragedy; it cannot inspire either terror or compassion... it can only inspire horror. “The destiny of the Jewish people is the destiny of Macbeth who detached himself from nature”. Kant could not to be disposed of so easily. The question whether Kantian morality was Jewish legalistic morality remained a living issue, as we know, throughout the nineteenth century. It is therefore much earlier than the appearance in 1880 of the book System der altsynagogalen palästinischen Theologie by Ferdinand Weber, who is the villain in the recent important work by E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism.28xiv It would be interesting to have precise research about the effect of this characterization of Kantian ethics as Jewish ethics on the fortune of Kantian philosophy. Hermann Cohen, who at the end of the century from his chair at Marburg made the 26 P-o 4, 159, 72: manca l’Introduction GL; P-o 72: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, what I owe to present members of this College will, I hope, be made clear, howewer insufficiently, from my lectures. But before I start, I should like to be allowed to pay homage to the memory of the past members of this College who have left a permanent mark in the study either of Judaism or of the ancient world or of both. Together with the names of the three leaders, Kaufmann Kohler, Julian Morgenstern and Nelson Glueck, I shall only mention two other names, those of Jacob Lauterbach - the incomparable master of sober interpretation of texts - and of Isaiah Sonne who together with Umberto Cassuto contributed more than anybody else in this century to the history of Italian Jews. Nor can I forget that Isaiah Sonne became an Italian citizen only to share some of the worst experiences of us Italian Jews, ms[Mom] su c.[1]. 27 P-o 72: Reading copy, tsfmgsn, ms[Mom]; revised Northcliffe Lecture I, tsfmgdxmsl[JW]; P-o 159: Northcliffe Lecture I, tsfms[JW]; P-o 4: Northcliffe Lecture I, tsfmsl[JW]. 28 P-o 89: It is therefore much earlier ... the recent important work... Judaism, mginfms[Mom]; P-o 62: It is therefore much older ... the recent important treatise... Judaism, mginfms[Mom]; P-o 73 e prec.: def. (= Nono). 42 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany identification of the two moralities the corner-stone of his Neo-Kantian position, had been [6] educated in the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau. What matters to us here is that Hölderlin, Hegel and their other school-fellow, Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, in their anxiety to heal the Jewish separation between God and Nature, between goodness and beauty, found themselves exposed to the dangers of becoming Jewish gnostics. Three years after Hegel’s death his pupil Ferdinand Christian Baur discussed the question openly in his book Die christliche Gnosis oder die christliche Religions-Philosophie in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (1835). He revived a distinction proposed in 1818 by Augustus Neanderxv between Jewish and anti-Jewish gnostics and included Hegel among the Jewish or pro-Jewish gnostics, but classified Schleiermacher among the anti-Jewish gnostics. Jewish gnosticism, theosophy, even Kabbalah were words which circulated freely in those years – to indicate both the starting point of Christian theology and what to many Germans seemed to be the final development of Christian theology – the philosophies of Schleiermacher, Schelling and Hegel. It was the Jewish convert David Mendel – universally respected under the name of Augustus Neander as one of the most important Lutheran theologians – who presented the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria as the gnostic predecessor of St. Paul. From a different angle Friedrich Creuzer came to contribute to the same revaluation of Alexandrian Jewish thought. This was hardly his original intention. In the last volume of his Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen, the first edition of which was published in 1812 and the second in 1822, he compared the Palestinian Essenes and the Egyptian Therapeutae with the Pythagoreans and concluded that the similarity was due to Persian or more generally Eastern influences on both the Pythagoreans and the Jewish sects29. This was taken a step further by Ferdinand Christian Baur in his Apollonius von [7] Tyana und Christus oder das Verhältniss des Pythagoreismus zum Christenthum of 1832 in which he maintained the direct influence of Pythagoreanism on Essenism and in its turn of Essenism on at least some groups of early Judeo-Christian such as the Ebionites. In a dissertation of the previous year, 1831, De Ebionitarum origine et doctrina ab Essenis repetenda, he had already interpreted the doctrines of the Ebionites as a Christian variety of Essenism. At this point, consciously or unconsciously, Baur rejoined the theory which had been widespread among deists and rationalists of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century that Christianity was a variety of Essenism. Some people, like John Anderson in his The Constitution of the Free-Masons of 1723, had gone even farther: they had included Pythagoreans and Freemasons in the company of Essenes and early Christians. What had been free fantasy for propagandists of deism and for Freemasons became a serious historical theory with Ferdinand Christian Baur. The seriousness is confirmed by the fact that other very competent scholars expressed similar views more or less at the same time and probably independently from Baur. In the same year 1831 in which Baur published his dissertation on the Ebionites, August Gfrörer issued his celebrated work Philo und die Alexandrinische Theosophie, in which he took Philo to be an Essene – and the Essenes to be Pythagoreans. He also took Rabban Gamaliel to be an Essene who knew his Philo. As Gamaliel was the teacher of Paul according to Acts (22.3), the influence of Greek thought on St. Paul did not need further demonstration. Three years later August Ferdinand Dähne, then a Privatdozent in Halle, published two thick volumes of a Geschichtliche Darstellung der jüdisch-alexandrinischen Religions-Philosophie (1834) in which he supported a similar point of view with more sobriety. Pythagoreanism was for him only one element of the doctrine of the Essenes and of the Therapeutae, whom he considered two different sects. But it remained true for him that the Essenes influenced early Christianity. Dähne was the first to study in depth the whole literature by Jews in Greek language. As a by-product of his interest in the relation between Philo, Essenes and Christians, he became the founder of modern [8] research on the Jewish literature in Greek. 29 P-o 89, 62: and the Jewish sects <-> and the two Jewish sects, mgnms[Mom]; P-o 73 e prec.: corr.def. (= Nono). 43 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany It may be added that the importance attributed to the relations between Pythagoreans and Essenes for the origin of Christianity explains the part played by this idea in the mind of Eduard Zeller, the unsurpassed historian of Greek philosophy. He was Ferdinand Christian Baur’s son-inlaw and considered himself the interpreter and the defender of the Tübingen Schoolxvi, but, needless to say, would not have been moved by family considerations to devote so much time and space to the relations between Pythagoreans and Essenes if it had not been a question of the origins of Christianity. In 1899, at a distance of about 50 years from his first publications on this subject, he still reiterated Baur’s theory that Pythagoras introduced30 a Greek element into Christianity via the Essenes. In this particular paper he also involved the Orphics as non-separable from the Pythagoreans of the Hellenistic period. The title of the paper is “Zur Vorgeschichte des Christenthums. Essener und Orphiker” (Kleine Schriften II, 1910, 120-84). In the very middle of Zeller’s activity there is the chapter on the Essenes in the Philosophie der Griechenxvii (III, 2, 4 ed., 1903, 298-384) – a chapter 100 pages long to illustrate the penetration of Pythagorean, that is, Greek ideas into the Jewish world. In a history of Greek philosophy one would not expect to find even one page on the Essenes. When Zeller’s theory was taken up again and perfected with characteristic subtlety and learning by Isidore Lévy in his book of 1927 on La légende de Pythagore de Grèce en Palestine, the theological implications were no longer very clear. Isidore Lévy himself was apparently unaware that the notion of the Pythagoreanism of the Essenes had been propounded by theologians before Zeller. Lévy apprehended this theological background only later when, under the impact of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, he went back to the question of the origins of the Essenes and took the view that the new documents confirmed the Pythagorean origin of their thought. He wrote papers on this [9] subject about 1955 which were published posthumously by L. Robert and J. Février in 1965 (Recherches essénéennes et pythagoriciennes). It is perhaps unnecessary for me to add that the Dead Sea Scroll, whether Essene or not, have nothing specifically Pythagorean. The real importance of this theory can only be understood if one goes back to the discussions of the years between 1830 and 1835 on the significance31 of Jewish Hellenistic thought or, as it was then called, the Jewish Alexandrian School for the preparation of Christianity. The debate involved Jews who had accepted baptism like Neander, Jews who were still uncertain whether to accept baptism and orthodox Jews who saw in this new gnosticism a support for the cabbalistic and pantheistic trends internal to Judaism. One of Hegel’s most distinguished pupils, Eduard Gans, was active, together with Heinrich Heine, in the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, with the aim of reforming Judaism according to Hegelian principles: both Gans and Heine ultimately decided for conversion. A relative of Heine, the rabbi Isaak Bernays, found basic agreement between Schelling’s speculations and cabbalistic doctrines. His most32 rare booklet Der Bibel’sche Orientxviii (of which he never explicitly admitted authorship) is meant to prove this33. Isaak Bernays was the father of one of the greatest classical philologists of the nineteenth century, Jacob Bernaysxix, who shared the orthodoxy and the Schellingian beliefs of his father and played no little part in the study of Jewish Hellenism. Not to quote the obvious, I would like to call attention to the letters by Jacob Bernays to Zeller which are to be found in an appendix to Zeller’s paper of 1880 on Philo’s De aeternitate mundi (Zeller’s Kleine Schriften I, 1910, 225-27)xx. It is clear, however, that Bernays followed Zeller’s speculations on the relations between Essenes and Pythagoreans with considerable scepticism. On the other hand, a granddaughter of Rabbi – or, as he liked to be called, Chachamxxi – Isaak Bernays married Sigmund Freud and brought into the marriage a tradition of Jewish mysticism, classical scholarship and interest in German thought, of 30 P-o 73: introduced <-> induced, ms[AMM] (= Nono); P-o 89, 62 e prec.: corr. def. P-o 89, 62: significance <-> importance, ms[P-o 89 AAM, P-o 62 Mom]; P-o 73 e prec.: corr.def. (= Nono). 32 P-o 89: His -> most, del; P-o 62, 73: corr. def. (= Nono). 33 P-o 72, 60: is meant to prove this, msn[Mom] <-> is one of the unrecognized treasures of the Mocatta Library of University College London. 44 31 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany wich Sigmund was acutely conscious34. The basic [10] question was the one raised by Augustus Neander in 1818: to what extent did Philo’s philosophy, which was by common agreement interpreted as a Jewish version of gnosticism, mediate between the Old Testament and the New Testament, or more precisely between Moses and St. Paul? If Philo had performed this operation, then there was no permanent barrier between the Old and the New Testament, between God and Nature, between moral law and beauty, between Justice and Love. Hegel could fight Kant and Moses to his heart’s content and still be classified as a distant descendant of Philo, the Jew from Alexandria. II In the Romantic period there was an intermingling of German-Jewish social relations which cried out for clarification. Within two generations the families of Moses Mendelssohn and of David Friedlaender, the champion of Jewish Enlightenment, had turned into leading Christian families. It fell to the lot of Felix Mendelssohn to channel Johann Sebastian Bach’s music into the mainstream of German Protestant emotional life. Another Jewish convert, Friedrich-Julius Stahl, was the theoretician of Prussian reaction against the French Revolution. Another of these young men, called Karl Marx, later received some attention. His first target was Schelling. But his essay on the Jewish questionxxii is different from anything produced in the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, in so far as Marx had come to identify the social revolution with the abolition of Judaism. But for those who conceived the abolition of Judaism not as a detail of the abolition of capitalism, but as a gradual process of conversion to Christianity, or alternatively for those who defended the right of Judaism to exist within German Christianity, Alexandrian Judaism had suddenly acquired a new significance. It was an era of contact and transition. The comparison of Moses Mendelssohn with Philo became a commonplace; it is still popular among Jews of German education35. Hence the sharp polemics of Hermann Cohen in his last period against Philo as a betrayer of Jewish transcendence which was also the Kantian transcendence of Godxxiii . [11] Hermann Cohen was in fact saying nothing new. He was remembering and summarizing what his teachers of the Breslau Jewish Seminary had said seventy years before. The “Programm” for the opening of this Seminary on 10 August 1854 contains a dissertation by the director of the Seminary, Zacharias Frankel, Ueber palästinische und alexandrinische Schriftforschung. It is a comparison of the Philonian and of the rabbinic exegesis of the Bible and concludes with an uncompromising proclamation of the superiority of rabbinic exegesis. “Die Schrift blieb Schrift”, not vague mysticism. The man who wrote this dissertation was the first Jew to study the Septuagint in depth as a Jewish documentxxiv : an event comparable in importance to the rediscovery of Jewish Hellenistic literature36 by Azariah de’ Rossi about 157337: and there is of course a direct connection between these two events. As we have seen38, Azariah de’ Rossi’s book The Light of the Eyes (Me’or ‘Enayim) – a product39 of the late Italian Renaissance in its Jewish version – was treated for all practical purposes as a prohibited book by the Jews even in Italy for about two centuries. But it was rediscovered in the age of Mendelssohn and helped to form the generation of Jewish critical students of Judaism to which Zacharias Frankel belonged. Frankel 40 was convinced that the 34 P-o 159: conscious -> and which has never been properly investigated, del. P-o 72, 60: Jews of German education <-> German Jews, msn[Mom]; P-o 159: as the name Philo is the equivalent of the Jewish name Jedidia, Mendelssohn was called by one of his earliest Jewish biographers as Jedidiah Haseni, mginfmsb[Mom]. 36 P-o 159: Jewish Hellenistic literature <-> Philo as Jewish thinker, interl.msn[Mom]. 37 P-o 72: about 1573 <-> in 1571, msn[Mom]; P-o 159: 1571 <-> the late sixteenth century, msn[Mom]. 38 P-o 89, 73, 62: As we have seen <-> As we know, interl.ms[AMM]; P-o 72, 159: corr. def. (= Nono). 39 P-o 159: an extraordinary product. 40 P-o 159: Frankel <- Frankel's two volumes on the Septuagint were an achievement which was insufficiently appreciated both by Jewish and Christian scholars in his own time and makes him one of the pioneers of the study of Hellenistic Judaism, del; P-o 89 e prec.: def. 45 35 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany Septuagint in each main deviation from the Hebrew Masoretic text or in its peculiar interpretations of the Hebrew text reflected a definite tradition of understanding the Bible which had to be measured against the Palestinian and the Babylonian traditions. He guided his pupil Bernhard Ritter to write the first research on “Philo und die Halacha” (that is, Rabbinic Law) which finally appeared in 1879xxv. The problem of the relation between Philo’s Judaism and Talmudic Judaism was still alive in the Breslau Seminary in 1931-32 when Rabbi Isaak Heinemann, a pupil of Wilamowitz and one of the last great masters of the Seminary before its destruction by the Nazis, published his Philons griechische und jüdische Bildung. Already in 1857 in his Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel Abraham Geiger, the leader of the Reform movement, had opposed to Frankel an attempt to evaluate all the variant readings of the Bible, including the Masoretic ones, as expressions of internal conflicts in Judaism.41 To keep the problem alive there was the intense effort42 of a liberal Jew with both Talmudic and classical training, Moritz Friedländer, who in a series of books written between 1872 and 1908xxvi (if not later) presented the Essenes and Philo [12] as the alternative to Pharisaism which in his view the Jews ought to have made their own in the first century A.D. What Moritz Friedländer, who worked so devotedly in Vienna for the improvement of the situation of Galician Jews, never made clear is whether he thought that the victory of Essenic and Philonic Judaism would have meant a total conversion of the Jews to Christianity or alternatively would have made Christianity unnecessary.43 But was Philo indeed enough? Could Philo really represent the transition between the Old and the New Testament? Could he bear the weight put on him? The question was bound to be asked in an age in which the study of the ancient Oriental civilizations had entered a new stage. In 1771 Anquetil-Duperron had published the first translation of the Zend-Avesta. In the next decades the treasures of Sanskrit poetry and law had been made accessible by the efforts of Sir Charles Wilkins, Sir William Jones and their successors. The Book of Kings by Firdausi was being translated and edited by Julius Mohl. Champollion deciphered hieroglyphics; Georg Friedrich Grotefend and Henry Rawlinson found the key to cuneiform. All the great civilizations which Alexander had conquered and his successors had ruled were beginning to speak for themselves – in truth, for the first time. It was natural to ask what had happened in this wider encounter of East and West after Alexander the Great. Theologians would naturally prefer the narrower comparison between Greeks and Jews: though modernized by the insertion of Philo, this was a traditional approach. Historians of politics and of literature would be tempted to measure the consequences of the Greco-Macedonian conquest of Egypt and Asia. Most notably in 1833, Johann Gustav Droysen started to publish a History of Hellenism, the avowed purpose of which was to enlarge the enquiry into the origins of Christianity by examining what Greeks and Orientals gave to each other in the three centuries between Alexander and Augustus. Droysen was another pupil of Hegel, though his classical scholarship came from the teaching of August Boeckh. He was himself involved in the tangle of JewishGerman [13] relations. The son of a Lutheran parson, he married the daughter of a converted Jew and had converted Jews, among them Felix Mendelssohn, among his closest friends. One of his juvenile ambitions was to revive the spirit of Greek tragedy in collaboration with Felix Mendelssohn. His influence on Wagner would deserve further studyxxvii . Droysen never attributed great importance to Philo and Alexandrian Judaism. He saw the rise of Christianity as the resolution of a wider conflict between Greek and Oriental civilizations. We cannot say how exactly he conceived the conflict and how precisely he visualized its resolution because he never went beyond the section of his History of Hellenism which was concerned with the political history of the third century B.C. He was soon attracted by modern history and probably also realised that the evidence at his disposal was not sufficient to answer the question he was asking himself. With our hindsight 41 42 43 P-o 89, 62: Already in 1857 ... conflicts in Judaism, mginfms[Mom]; P-o 73 e prec.: def. (= Nono). P-o 72: effort <- and by no means incompetent, del. P-o 62, 89, 73: unnecessary. -> I hope to publish special research on Moriz Friedländer, del. (= Nono). 46 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany we can recognize that it was a premature task while the Oriental texts were still only half understood and the social and religious background was still vague. In its programmatic aspects, which are quite explicit, Droysen’s work presented a clear alternative to the view that the Jewish culture of Alexandria should be seen as the decisive step towards Christianity. He invited his readers to study the religious and social life of the Near and Middle East in order to understand why paganism collapsed, Judaism was superseded and Christianity triumphed. III Thus two points of view opposed each other. One attributed decisive importance to Alexandrian Judaism in the preparation of Christianity, the other saw Christianity as the result of the religious syncretism favoured by the conquests of Alexander. Mithras, Zoroaster, Isis, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, indeed even Buddha were credited with some part in the process. With these two views went two different terminologies. The champions of Alexandrian Judaism spoke readily, as we have heard, of gnosticism. Droysen chose the word Hellenism to indicate the dissolution of classical Greek civilization in consequence of its diffusion over Oriental countries. [14] The choice of this word was paradoxical and confusing because at least from the end of the sixteenth century it had ofted been used to indicate the Greek language as spoken by Jews and consequently Greek thought as interpreted by Jews. The story of the word Hellenismus, which used to be mysterious, is now reasonably clear. Since the Renaissance the Greek of the Gospels had worried its Western students. It is obviously a rather barbarous Greek, if the Greek of Lysias and Demosthenes is the term of comparison. It was soon suspected that Hebrew or Aramaic influences were behind it. The curious reference in the Acts of the Apostles to a synagogue of Hellenists44 in Jerusalem (VI: 9) seemed to support the notion of a special type of Greek spoken by Jews. One could not expect the purity of Attic Greek from the Jews of Jerusalem. We now know that Semitic influence accounts for only a small part of the peculiarities of New Testament Greek. Indeed even in the seventeenth century it did not escape the polymathic genius of Hugo Grotius that the Greek of the Gospel of Luke is reminiscent of Polybiusxxviii . Claudius Salmasius (Saumaise), who had a great familiarity with late Greek texts, also expressed doubts about the existence of a special Greek dialect spoken by Jewsxxix . But the contrary opinion, which somehow originated with Scaligerxxx and was supported by Daniel Heinsiusxxxi , prevailed. Hellenismus, Hellenismos, came to signify the linguistic influence of Hebrew and Aramaic on the language of the Gospels: more generically it indicated the kind of Greek the Jews were supposed to speak, when they spoke Greek. There were45 scholars who thought that even Jesus had spoken Greek. In 1767 Domenico Diodati published in Naples a book De Christo graece loquente exercitatio, to prove that Greek had been the language of Jesus: it had also been the language of the Neapolitans in ancient times. Diodati’s patriotic book was admired by contemporaries, including the Empress Catherine of Russia who saw the relevance of this point to her war on behalf of the Greeks46 against the Turks. Diodati’s work was reprinted in England in 1843. Edward William Grinfield declares in his Apology for the Septuagint, published [15] in 1850, that he discovered this book too late for it to be decisive in the formation of his thought about the inspiration of the Septuagint, but was obviously encouraged by it to formulate his theory that in Galilee Jesus read his Bible in Greek. So there is a Neapolitan element in the Grinfield Lectureship on the Septuagint. From the language the word Hellenismus was extended to the thought of Hellenized Jews, and as such we find it used by Herder and, even later, by specialist students of Jewish Alexandrian thought. For instance, Jacques Matter, a French scholar under German influence, spoke in 1820 of 44 45 46 P-o 62: Hellenists <-> a synagogue of Hellenists, msn[Mom];P-o 89, 73 e prec.: corr.def. (= Nono). P-o 89, 62: there were -> let us not forget, del.; P-o 73 e prec: corr. def. (= Nono). P-o 89, 62: on behalf of the Greeks, interl.ms[P-o 89 AMM, P-o 62 Mom]; P-o 73 e prec.: def. (= Nono). 47 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany Hellénisme as a manner of thinking and writing typical of the Jews of Egypt (Essai historique sur l’école d’Alexandrie). But this meaning of the word did not prevail. Even Herder had occasionally stretched the word to signify a generic mixture of Oriental – rather than Jewish – and Greek elements. Perhaps the Greek of Philo was recognized to be too pure to be described with a word which indicated a mixture of Greek and non-Greek. Gnostic rather than Hellenistic appeared to be the correct description of Philo’s mind. In any case it was Droysen’s decision to use the word Hellenismus in its amplest meaning to indicate the meeting of East and West in the period after Alexander. Thanks to Droysen, Hellenism came to signify the historical period between Alexander and the Roman conquest of the East. As such the term progressively passed from German into the other European languages – not without difficulties. In French and English hellénisme and Hellenism had been used for a long time47 to indicate either the language or the culture of classical Greece. It was rather confusing to have the same word used now to indicate the dissolution of Greek civilization in the period after Alexander. But somehow even in England the majority of classical scholars seems to have become reconciled to this ambiguity. Hellenism is now increasingly used to indicate what is not purely Hellenic. The possibility of using a different adjective, Hellenistic, to correspond to the new meaning of Hellenism has undoubtedly helped. [16] There is no justification for trying to reverse a well-established semantic development. Hellenism is now the international word to indicate a specific historical period: the rise and fall of the monarchies which originated from Alexander’s conquest. Historians have been ready to characterize the Hellenistic period as a period of ancient capitalism or colonialism or imperialism. Julius Belochxxxii and Michael Rostovtzeffxxxiii described the Hellenistic Age as a happy and prosperous capitalistic phase of the ancient world which the Roman conquest destroyed. For Sir William Tarn the Greeks and the Macedonians who conquered the East and reached India were quite obviously the predecessors of the English and Scots who controlled the Near East and founded the British Empire in India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries xxxiv . Neither Beloch nor Rostovtzeff nor Tarn was concerned with the origins of Christianity though Tarn liked to see the Macedonians as puritanical Scots and even attributed love of mankind to that improbable being, Alexander the Great. We must not forget, however, that Droysen, who introduced the word Hellenism to indicate this historical period, did have an explicit theory about the origins of Christianity. This theory was opposed to the other theory which attached decisive importance to the Jewish-Greek schools of Alexandria and more specifically to Philo. To follow up the development of these two lines of thought would be equivalent to writing the history of the research on early Christianity in the last century. There is a direct line from Droysen to Frank Cumont, Richard Reitzenstein and Hermann Gunkel, the masters in the study of ancient syncretism. On the other side the question of the relation between Jewish Hellenistic thought and Early Christianity was still central for such diverse theologians as Adolf Harnack, Albert Schweitzer, Rudolf Bultmann and Gerhard Kittel48. I am not going to discuss these developments here because my purpose [17] is rather to underline the radical reorientation of such studies, as a consequence of the discovery of new evidence in Palestine and Egypt in the last thirty years and of a general revaluation of the Jewish material. No observer can fail to recognize the decline of the interest in syncretism, that is, in the alleged Iranian influences on the origins of Christianity or in the relation between Greek mysteries and Christian mysteries.49 No one, I believe, would today repeat with Gunkel that Christianity is a syncretistic 47 P-o 62: a long time outside theological circles, interl.ms[Mom]; P-o 89,73 e prec.: def. (= Nono). P-o 62: Kittel, or indeed C. H. Dodd, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 89, 73 e prec.: def. (= Nono). 49 P-o 89, 62, 73,72: I am not going to discuss ... Christian mysteries; P-o 159: I am not going to discuss ... Christian mysteries <-> If a radical change has to be noticed in the research of the last thirty years is the decline of the interest in syncretism, interl. e mginf, msn[Mom]. 48 48 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany religion or with Reitzenstein that St. Paul must have read Hellenistic mystical literature and derived from it his apostolate and his freedom.50 IV The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and of the gnostic texts of Nag Hammadi has given plenty to do and to ponder nearer home. It is increasingly realized that Egyptian and Iranian texts can only provide background information for the development of Christianity. Even classical Greece is less relevant than the Hellenistic kingdoms. Jewish texts, whether in Greek, in Hebrew or in Aramaic, offer an enormous amount of far more relevant unexploited material.51 Naturally enough, this has given a new impetus to the study of Greek elements in Judaism. After all, the rise of Christianity within Judaism was soon followed by the Hellenization of Christianity. The52 impression seems now to prevail that it is enough to read any Jewish text written between Alexander the Great and (say) Constantine the Great to find Greek influences in it. Thus the term Hellenistic is being applied more and more to the whole of Judaism between these chronological limits. The opposition between Hellenistic Judaism and normative, rabbinic Judaism, which was still the point of departure for Erwin Goodenough’s monumental work Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (1953 ff.)xxxv , is now increasingly recognized as obsolete.53 An authoritative54 representative of the new attitude is the German historian and theologian Martin Hengel who suddenly emerged into international [18] fame with his book Judentum und Hellenismus published in 1969 and now available in an English translationxxxvi . In a more recent book Juden, Griechen und Barbaren (1976) Hengel proposes to call “Hellenistic Judaism” the whole of the Judaism of the period between Alexander the Great and the end of the Western Roman Empire, because Greek elements are present everywhere. True enough, for Hengel this Hellenistic Judaism is, as a whole, a “praeparatio evangelica”: it leads directly from Alexander the Great to Jesus and St. Paul. This point, if developed, will probably involve Hengel in difficulties he had not foreseen. It is therefore important to emphasize that Hengel’s interpretation of Judaism is not necessarily dependent on this peculiar version of the notion of “praeparatio evangelica”. In fact55 the same attitude is to be found, and more subtly without the theological implications, in Morton Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics that shaped the Old Testament (1971). What is even more significant is that both Martin Hengel and Morton Smith ultimately derive their point of view from the undisputed master of Jewish Hellenistic studies, Elias Bickerman, though they seem to me to simplify his position – indeed his experience of Jewish life from inside. In the view of Hengel and Smith, but not necessarily of Bickerman, there are so many Greek elements in Judaism from the end of the fourth century B.C. to the end of the ancient world that there is no point in making a distinction between Jews of Palestine and Jews of Alexandria, between traditional Jews and Hellenized Jews. This school of thought consequently denies that one can make a distinction 50 P-o 4: To follow up the development of this two lines of thought... his freedom <->Theologians have longer memories than political historians. They have never forgotten the religious undertones of the word Hellenism.For them the word immediately suggests questions of syncretism. Until twenty years ago it chiefly reminded them of the great importance attributed by Richard Reitzenstein to Iranian influences on the origins of Christianity, or of discussions on the relation between Greek mysteries and Christian mystery. But in more recent times theologians and historians of religion have been less and less inclined to turn to classical Greece, Iran or Egypt for their understanding of Christianity, ms su c. 9 bis. 51 P-o 72: unexploited material. -> The study of what is loosely known as Talmud has traditionally been an esoteric activity for rabbis only. It would be ridiculous to add in this place that the scientific exploration of the Talmud, open to men of all creeds, has just begun – though nobody will ever beat a traditionally trained rabbi in the understanding of the texts. Judaism is again, more than ever, at the centre of scholarly attention in relation to the history of early Christianity, del.; P-o 89, 62, 73: id. (= Nono). 52 P-o 62: The <- After all… Christianity, del. 53 P-o 159: The opposition ... obsolete, interl. e mgsn, ms[Mom]. 54 P-o 159: An authoritative <-> The most authoritative, msn[Mom]. 55 P-o 72: True enough, for Hengel ... In fact, ms[Mom], su c. [13bis], con segr; P-o 159, 4: def. 49 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany between Pharisaic Judaism irreducible to Christianity and Hellenistic or Alexandrian Judaism paving the way for Christianity. Negatively, Hengel and Smith agree with Droysen in finding Hellenism outside Alexandrian Judaism. On the other hand, Hengel and Smith – and in this case most specifically their master Bickerman – are no longer prepared to attribute central importance to the non-Jewish, Oriental influences, which were prominent in Droysen’s thought and were later at the centre of the research of Franz Cumont, Richard Reitzenstein and their followers xxxvii . Bickerman’s school, if I may use this [19] simplification, reserves the word Hellenism for the interpenetration of Greek and Jewish elements which are to be found everywhere in Judaism after Alexander the Great and before Constantine. They include in their horizon the more recent books of the Hebrew Bible, such as Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus, and Daniel; the totality of Jewish literature in Greek, the Dead Sea Scrolls and finally all the juridical, legendary and exegetical texts which go under the name of Talmudic literature. For the interpretation of56 the last group of writings they naturally depend much on the pioneer work done by Saul Lieberman57xxxviii . In this view Hellenism becomes a specific period of Jewish thought after the Persians and before the Arabs. While the distinction between Alexandrian and normative Judaism is abolished, the meaning of Hellenism, as applied to Judaism, is far more restrictive than that of Droysen. Before we take position on all this, it is necessary to mention another theological point of view, largely to be identified with the name of Père, later Cardinal, Jean Daniélou. Daniélou reacted against what he considered the overvaluation of the Greek elements in late Judaism or in early Christianity. He tried to isolate and define those theological doctrines and liturgical practices which seemed to him irreducible to Greek thought. He extended his notion to the peculiarities of early Syrian Christianity, given that the Syrians thought in a Semitic language. The main purpose – explicitly stated – of his famous book Théologie du Judéo-Christianisme (1958)xxxix was to reverse the process initiated by St. Paul. Whereas traditional Christian apologetics tended to oppose the Synagogue to the Church, Père Daniélou emphasized the debt of the Church to the Synagogue and therefore the elements of continuity. In the very different athmosphere of post-Nazi Europe in the late fifties Daniélou was taking into account a situation which had some elements in common with the situation of the German Jews in the age of Romanticism. Behind Père Daniélou it is easy to recognize the shadow of Simone Weil who in her quest for a meditation between the Old Testament and the New, between the Greeks and the Christians, underwent self-inflicted [20] martyrdom, but refused baptism. Nor was Simone Weil alone. Henri Bergson, too, accepted Christianity but refused baptism. Daniélou explicitly offered his “Judéo-Christianisme” as a means of re-absorbing the modern Jews into the body of the Church without doing violence to their cultural and linguistic peculiarities. He looked from Paris to Jerusalem. In his view the Early Church offered abundant justification for those who wanted to remain Jews while becoming Christians. If Bickerman and his followers seem to say (but I doubt whether Hengel would agree)58 that the Jews can remain Jews because after all they are not unlike Greeks, Père Daniélou emphatically asserted that the Jews can become Christians without having to become Greeks, because Christianity is so deeply rooted in the un-Hellenic soil of Judaism. We are not here to discuss questions of survival or of conversion, but it is a simple fact of life that such questions crop up every time Judaism is seriously discussed. What interests me is that the two attitudes I have described represent two real possibilities for the present-day researcher on the Judaism of the Greco-Roman period. The researcher can either concentrate on the elements which Judaism had in common with the surrounding culture or cultures or choose to emphasize what differentiated the Jews from their neighbours. The choice is of course determined by the facts the researcher is able to collect and interpret: it is a question of fact, not of wishes or motivations. But the choice does not simply depend on crude evidence. It depends rather on the relative importance 56 57 58 P-o 62: interpretation of the Greek elements in, interl.ms[Mom]; P-o 89, 73 e prec.: corr.def. (= Nono). P-o 159: Lieberman -> quem honoris causa nomino, del. P-o 72: (but I ... agree): interl.msn[Mom]. 50 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany one is prepared to attribute to certain aspects of the evidence. If, for instance, the creation of the Synagogue and the pursuit of apocalyptic speculations are considered to be typically Jewish and are recognized to occupy a central part in Jewish life, it will be difficult to maintain that the Jews were thoroughly Hellenized.59 There is, however, a third possibility which I should like to present as my own. The question which I want to answer is slightly different from the question which my old friend Elias Bickerman on the one side and Cardinal Daniélou on the other asked themselves. What concerns me is not [21] whether the Jews looked like Greeks or whether they looked like Jews, but what happened when the Jews were faced by Greek civilization in the form or forms which Greek civilization took after Alexander the Great. 60 My question is: must we interpret the development of Jewish culture between Alexander the Great and the final destruction of Jewish61 political autonomy under the Emperor Hadrian in the early second century A.D. as a conscious attempt to organize Jewish life in antithesis to the Greek way of life? In short, can we speak of post-biblical Judaism as a reply to Hellenic culture as a whole? Local situations and individual preferences must of course be respected. It makes a difference whether you have Greek or Aramaic as your first language. Nor is Philo a Palestinian or Babylonian rabbi transplanted to Greek Alexandria62. But with all its varieties Judaism remained a recognizable entity both in ideas and in institutions. Those who wanted to create a new society in which there was no difference between Jews and Hellenes ultimately became the founders of a new religion. As long as Jews remained Jews when challenged by Greek doctrines and institutions we must ask what they opposed to this challenge.63 V It is as a trained Hellenist that I have been studying Judaism under Greek rule and in Greek surroundings. Unless I have forgotten what the Greeks are like – an accident which has happened to other Hellenists – my Jews, even when they spoke excellent Greek, will appear to have produced most un-Greek answers to Greek questions. Very often they seem to me even to have produced Greek questions in order to give un-Greek answers.64 If I venture to differ from both Bickerman and Daniélou it is because I feel that before he attempts to explain why Judaism produced Christianity the historian has to explain how Judaism survived as a distinct culture in a Hellenistic context65 and beyond its Hellenistic context. 59 P-o 72: Hellenized. -> There is an urgent need to visualise Jewish life of any period as a whole, instead of pursuing the aspects one likes or dislikes most, del.; P-o 4: There is... dislikes most. In these lectures I shall confine myself as a rule to the period between Alexander the Great and the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. It will not be my purpose to separate what is Greek from what is non-Greek in the Judaism of that period. I am interested in seeing what emerges from the evidence when taken in its complexity. My question is: can we speak of a Jewish reply to Hellenic culture? However, as I am supposed to have done my homework before giving these lectures, I may anticipate that I find myself nearer to the historical interpretation of Père Daniélou than to that of my life-long friend Elias Bickerman. Judaism, in its three or four hundred years before the destruction of the Temple, seems to me a very Jewish thing. It is as a trained Hellenist that I have been studying Judaism under Greek rule and in Greek surroundings. Unless I have forgotten what the Greeks are like - an accident which has happened to other Hellenists - my Jews will appear very un-Greek. 60 P-o 62: Alexander the Great. -> What interests me, in other words, is the texture of Jewish society, its style of life and thought, del.; P-o 89, 73: id. (= Nono). 61 P-o 89: Jewish culture between Alexander the great and the final destruction of Jewish political autonomy; P-o 73: def. (=Nono). 62 P-o 159: Alexandria -> as Eduard Schwartz once implied. When Eduard Schwartz called Philo a rabbi he was overreacting to those who treated Philo as a Greek philosopher, del. 63 P-o 62: to this challenge. -> What interests me is not so much the separation of what is Semitic from what is Greek in Jewish religion, as the texture of Jewish society with its style of life and beliefs as a whole, del. 64 P-o 72: Very often ... answers, mgsn con segr, msn[Mom]. 65 P-o 159: in a Hellenistic context. -> If I shall not speak of Christianity in my following lectures it is because the very logic of research as it has developed in the last 150 years seems to me to impose a preliminary clarification of what 51 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany I am myself convinced, of course, that the old distinction between Alexandrian Judaism and Palestinian Judaism is no longer viable. One of the [22] many reasons for abandoning it is that we have no reason to believe that Alexandrian Jews were the only ones to write in Greek and to show acquaintance with Greek thought. The Wisdom of Solomon, with its well known semiticismxl, could have been written in Palestine just as well in Egypt. And it is a fact that a translation of the Book of Esther into Greek was made in Palestine and sent to Egypt probably about 75 B.Cxli. However, if Hellenistic elements can be found everywhere in Judaism after Alexander, one fundamental difficulty faces the historian and can be exemplified by reference to the great name of Eduard Meyer. Eduard Meyer is indeed a great name, but one to which students of the interTestamentary period do not turn frequentlyxlii. This may seem absurd in view of the fact that he had the unique satisfaction of seeing his theories on the religious policy of the Persian kings and on the function of Aramaic as the language of the Achaemenid chancery vindicated and confirmed against Wellhausen by the discovery of the papyri of Elephantina. Yet his very triumph there concealed real problems. The substance of Eduard Meyer’s masterpiece on Die Entstehung des Judentums of 1896 and of his chapter on Judaism in the third volume of the Geschichte des Altertums of 1901 was to present Judaism as the creation of imperial Persia in the double sense that the political and social organization of the Temple-State of Jerusalem had been established by the kings of Persia and that the specific combination of universalism, individualism and legalism in the post-exilic religion of the Jews was made possible by the insertion of the Jews in a civilized and basically peaceful empire. When Eduard Meyer tried to continue his tale and reach the age of Jesus, he could not quite harmonize his earlier findings with the obvious fact that what we know about the Judaism of the first century A.D. is very different from what we more or less see of the Judaism of the fifth century B.C. Meyer had assumed that rabbinic Judaism was basically the creation of Ezechiel, Ezra and Nehemiah: he found himself facing a Judaism which with its apocalyptic books, the Damascus document [23] (which he carefully studied when the Dead Sea Scrolls were still buried in their caves) and with the writings of the Books of Maccabees, Philo and Flavius Josephus, had travelled very far from the books of the Bible attributed to the Persian period. Meyer was too good historian not to pause and reflect that the author or authors of Daniel use Persian scenery to conceal Hellenistic contents. But the curious duality of this Judaism, which is both Persian and Hellenistic in origin, baffled him and to a certain extent is still baffling and challenging us. Meyer’s masterly work is unsatisfactory in its logical construction rather than outdated in its evidence. VI This leads to my conclusion for this evening. We started from a type of questions which were raised by German theologicians in order to explain the origins of Christianity. We have now found ourselves with quite a different type of questions66 which really aim to explain the origins of Judaism itself. Let us not forget that the change happened very largely in Harvard under the influence of George Foot Moorexliii . This means, first of all, that we have to understand how Judaism developed in its transition from the Persian surroundings to the Greek surroundings imposed by Alexander the Great. But as soon as we see the Jews surrounded by the Greeks, and later ruled by the Romans, the very question of the survival of Judaism presents itself to the historian. Between Alexander the Great and, say, A.D. 70 not a few civilizations either went underground for centuries or disappeared altogether. The Celts, the Phoenicians, the Syrians and the Egyptians had to wait for Christianity to reassert themselves. The Roman phase of this process was punctuated by the literal annihilation of centres of political power and civilization like Carthage, Corinth, Numantia, became of Hebrew life and thought under the impact of Hellenism before one can try to understand those Jews and non Jews who decided to replace the Synagogue by the Church, del. 66 P-o 89, 73: quite a different type of questions; P-o 72: questions of quite a different type (= Nono) 52 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany Gergovia, and Jerusalem. Only two civilizations survived the Roman onslaught with undiminished vitality, the Greek and the Jewish. Greek civilization survived through a cultural symbiosis with Latin civilization. The Jews were the only ones both to be creative under the [24] Greeks and not to mix with the Romans. There is here a problem of survival of a civilization in very peculiar circumstances. The problem of how Judaism survived is equivalent to the problem of how Judaism emerged from Persian rule capable of reacting67 to Hellenism68 and later69 saved itself from the Romans. I have neither the time nor the competence to go into the second question of how the Jews saved themselves from the Romans. I shall, however, try to remember at the right moments that the basic documents of Rabbinic Judaism were put together in a world ruled, not by Greeks, but by Romans. While the destruction of the Temple was still commented upon in Greek by the historian Flavius Josephus, the rebellions under Trajan and Hadrian resulted in the virtual end of Greek as vehicle for the expression of new Jewish thought. The rabbis who are behind Mishnah and Tosefta are surely to be compared with the Roman jurists rather than with the Greek philosophers, however inadequate even this comparison may be. If we want to go on speaking about Hellenistic Judaism we should separate it from Roman Judaism. But my suggestion is that we should do without either notion.70 As you may by now have realized, this first lecture was intended to be a valediction to the notion of Hellenistic Judaism. This notion was useful as long as it served to distinguish one type of Judaism (normative, Palestinian, Judaism) from another type of Judaism (Philonic, Alexandrian, Judaism) – though I must add that even in its heyday it was perhaps more useful for the understanding of Christianity than for the interpretation of Judaism. As we are now convinced that Hellenistic elements are to be found in every aspect of Judaism after Alexander the Great, the proper71 question to ask is why or rather how the Jews turned Hellenization into a very effective challenge to the Hellenistic style of life and thought. By comparing the Greek and the Jewish views of the Persian Empire we can begin to understand what separated the Jews from the Greeks; which was after all Edward Meyer’s [25] problem. Secondly, we have to ask ourselves how the Jews went on communicating among themselves and looking upon themselves as one nation when they were no longer all talking the same language and sharing the same political institutions. Thirdly, we have to define more precisely the limits of communication between Jews and non-Jews.72 No doubt there are many other problems in the history of Judaism between 300 B.C. and A.D. 100. But everyone has to make his own choice, and it may help to avoid vagueness if, even within the three themes I have chosen, I give preference to expressions of historical judgement and historical self-awareness. I am after all a student of historiography. In my next chapter73 I shall try to show how Greeks and Jews, even before knowing each others, gave some intimation of the different structures of their respective civilizations by reacting differently to the world-empire of the Persians.74 i "Mio secondo maestro" lo definisce Momigliano nella Prefazione a Pagine Ebraiche, XXX; "indimenticabile maestro" è chiamato nello stesso anno in CRACCO RUGGINI 1989A, 112, n. 1. Cfr. inoltre MOMIGLIANO 1949A, con aggiunte (=Terzo, 843-849). Sul ruolo di Felice Momigliano nella formazione del nipote si rimanda a FUBINI 1998; cfr. 67 P-o 89,62: emerged from ... reacting <-> reacted, interl.ms[Mom]; P-o 72, 73, 159: corr.def. (= Nono). P-o 159: fine ts. CL 1977 I. 69 P-o 89, 62: later, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 73,72: def. (= Nono). 70 P-o 72: fine ts. EL 1978 I. 71 P-o 89, 62: proper <-> real, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 73: corr.def. (= Nono). 72 P-o 62: Jews and non-Jews. These three themes will occupy me in the remaining two lectures of this year and in three lectures which I hope to deliver next year, mginf con segr, ms[Mom];P-o 89, 73: def. (= Nono). 73 P-o 89: chapter <-> lecture, mgsnmsn[Mom]; P-o 62, 73: corr. def. (= Nono). 74 P-o 89, 62: In my next chapter ... of the Persians, mginfmsn[Mom]; P-o 73: def. (= Nono). 53 68 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany inoltre le valutazioni di BERTI 1987, XII, e ISNARDI PARENTE 1988A. Un ampio profilo biografico si ricava, infine, da CAVAGLION 1988. ii MONTEFIORE 1910. iii Rossi, A. de’, Zeh Sefer Me'or `enayim, le-R. `Azaryah min ha-Adumi. Mantuva, Nidpas `a.y. Mosheh Elishama`, 23 Kislev 5334 [18 Nov. 1573]. Per altre edd., cfr. J. WEINBERG 1978, 493, n. 1 e ID. 2001 (con bibliografia). iv Cfr. Caroli Sigonii De republica Hebraeorum libri 7. Bononiae 1582, e la raccolta postuma: Caroli Sigonii De antiquo iure ciuium Romanorum, Italiae, Prouinciarum, ac Romanae iurisprudentiae iudiciis, libri 11. Eiusdem, De republica Atheniensium, eorumque ac Lacedaemoniorum temporibus, libri quinque. Aubrii, 1609. v WEINBERG 1978. vi Cfr. WEINBERG 1978, 499, n. 17. vii Aurelii Augustini opus absolutissimum de Ciuitate Dei ... emendatum per Ioan. Lodouicum Viuem, Basileae 1522. viii Cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1932B per un’opinione giovanile. ix Philonis Judaei Lucubrationes omnes quotquot haberi potuerint, nunc primum latinae ex graecis factae per Sigismundum Gelenium, Basileae apud Nicolaum Episcopium juniorem, 1554 (2a ed. Basileae 1561). x Loew ben Bezalel, J., Be'er ha Golah [The Well of the Diaspora], Praha 1598 (rist. Jerusalem 1970). xi Rossi, A. de', Sefer Me'or Enayim, Berlin, Ne-Arim 1794. xii Hölderlin, F., Sämtliche Werke, Briefe und Dokumente, 12 voll., hrsg. von D. E. Sattler, München 2004. xiii Hegel, G. W. F., Der Geist des Christentums und sein Schicksal, Tübingen 1907. xiv SANDERS 1977. xv Neander, A., Genetische Entwickelung der vornehmsten gnostischen Systeme, Berlin 1818. xvi Per l’opinione dell’autore sulla scuola di Tubinga cfr. soprattutto MOMIGLIANO 1970F. xvii ZELLER 1903, III.2, 298-384. xviii [Bernays, I.], Der Bibel’sche Orient, 2 v., München 1821. Per la storia e i temi del testo si rimanda a R. GottheilM. Kayserling, in JE, s.v. xix Cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1969A. xx ZELLER 1880. xxi La scelta del titolo di chacham ("saggio", al posto dell'allora usuale rabbi) nell'assumere il ruolo di rabbino capo ad Amburgo va intesa come rivendicazione d'autorevolezza e prestigio (il titolo denotava gli antichi maestri della Legge – cfr. Abot 1, 4; 2, 15 - e fu più tardi riservato dal rabbi, in segno d'onore, ai predecessori morti), e insieme come sottolineatura del carattere ufficiale del compito di riforma dell'istruzione elementare ebraica che Isaak Bernays intraprese nella propria comunità nel 1822. Cfr. JE: G. Deutsch-A. Feilchenfeld, s. v. Isaak Bernays; K. Kohler, s.v. Wisdom; S. Schechter-L. Ginzberg, s.v. Hakam. xxii Marx, K., Zur Judenfrage, [geschrieben August bis Dezember 1843], in “Deutsch Französische Jahrbücher”, 1, Februar 1844 (trad. it.: La questione ebraica : Zur Judenfrage, a c. di G. Scuto, Bolsena 2003). xxiii Cfr., e.g., H. COHEN 1910. xxiv FRANKEL 1841. xxv RITTER 1879. xxvi Friedländer, M., Patristische und talmudische Studien, Wien 1878 (rist. Farnborough 1972); Das Judenthum in der vorchristlichen griechischen Welt. Ein Beitrag zur Enstehungsgeschichte des Christenthums, Wien-Leipzig 1897 (rist. Farnborough 1972); Der vorchristliche jüdische Gnosticismus, Göttingen 1898; Der Antichrist in den vorchristlichen jüdischen Quellen, Göttingen 1901; Geschichte der jüdischen Apologetik als Vorgeschichte des Christentums, Zürich 1903; Griechische Philosophie im Alten Testament, Berlin 1904; Die religiösen Bewegungen innerhalb des Judentums im Zeitalter Jesu, Berlin 1905; Synagoge und Kirche in ihren Anfängen, Berlin 1908. xxvii Per i recenti sviluppi del tema, cfr. e.g. MAGEE 1988; ROSE 1992; MALTE 2000; ROSS 2009. xxviii Grotius, H., Annotationes in Novum Testamentum, 3 voll., Amsterdam-Paris 1641-1650. xxix Salmasius, C., Funus linguae hellenisticae, sive confutatio exercitationis de hellenistis et lingua hellenistica, Lugduni Batavorum ex Officina Ioannis Maire 1643. xxx Sull'uso del termine Hellenistae in Scaligero per indicare gli Ebrei che conoscevano solo il greco cfr. e.g. DE JONGE 1996. L'argomento era già stato affrontato in termini simili da MOMIGLIANO 1970A. xxxi Heinsius, D., Aristarchus sacer, in Sacrarum exercitationum as Novum Testamentum libri XX, Lugduni Batavorum ex Officina Elseviriorum 1639, 653 e 668. xxxii BELOCH 1893 – 1904. Per un precedente contributo dell’autore, cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1966E. xxxiii ROSTOVTZEFF 1926. Per la prospettiva momiglianea sull’opera e la figura di Rostovzev, vd. MOMIGLIANO 1933A; ID. 1943; ID. 1954; Id. 1966F. Si rimanda infine alla pubblicazione postuma di due lettere in BONGARD – LEVIN E MARCONE 1995 e a MARCONE 2000. xxxiv TARN 1938; cfr. inoltre ID. 1952 (ed. riv.). xxxv GOODENOUGH 1953-1968. Cfr. in proposito MOMIGLIANO 1956. Diversa (ma evidentemente non contraddittoria) la valutazione espressa in gioventù sui lavori filonici di Goodenough (MOMIGLIANO 1930D, part. a p. 34 del Nono) 54 GL 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Prologue in Germany xxxvi HENGEL 1969. Cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1969C. Sulla valutazione di questo lavoro come testo di svolta verso una interpretazione sostanzialmente resistenziale del giudaismo ellenistico, cfr. particolarmente PARENTE 1989A e 1989B e GRANATA 1999, 74-75. xxxvii Su Reitzenstein e Cumont come "seguaci inconsapevoli" del primo Droysen, cfr. già MOMIGLIANO 1935A, part. alle pp. 191-2). xxxviii LIEBERMAN 1950; preceduto da ID. 1942. xxxix DANIELOU 1958. xl Cfr. GL 1979 IV - The Defence, cc. 22-24. xli Cfr. GL 1979 IV - The Defence, cc. 9-10. xlii Per l’attenzione di Momigliano alla riflessione e alla figura di Meyer, cfr. Weber – Meyer [= MOMIGLIANO 1977B]; Dopo Weber [= MOMIGLIANO 1978A]; MOMIGLIANO 1981A. xliii FOOT MOORE 1927-30. 55 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire GL 1979 II The Greeks outside the Persian Empire Sedi e date: EL 1978 (1 novembre – cfr. * D-a 1) GL 1979 (31 gennaio – cfr. GRANATA 2006, 419) Documenti: a) EL 1978 II – GL 1979 II P-o 41 ms. P-o 43 top c. di P-o 41. P-o 42, P-o 79, P-o 80: c.c. di P-o 43. P-o 74, P-o 81, P-o 169: xerox di P-o 79 b) Persian Empire and Greek Freedom [= Bibl. 605] P-o 90, P-o 63, P-o 168 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati Con l’aumento a sei del numero di lectures, il ciclo Efroymson 1978 consente (o giustifica) l’espansione dell’indagine sul rapporto tra Persia ed Ebrei a un confronto preliminare con lo scambio intercorso tra Persia e Grecia. È qui che viene letta per la prima volta The Greeks outside, lezione destinata a essere riproposta a breve distanza (il 31.1.19791), e pressoché senza modifiche, all’interno del primo ciclo Grinfield. Nello stesso anno, Momigliano stesso licenzia la lecture con il titolo di Persian Empire and Greek Freedom all’interno della Festschrift oxoniense dedicata a Isaiah Berlin, apportando al testo poche variazioni riconducibili al rinnovato titolo e contesto. Come testimoni della lecture l’AAM conserva P-o 41 (ms. pulito e quasi del tutto privo di annotazioni, verosimilmente una bella copia), la sua top copy corrispondente, P-o 43 (anch’essa priva di annotazioni, se non per un paio di refusi) e le tre c.c. derivanti, P-o 42, 79, 80. Rispetto alle altre P-o 79, documento scelto come base per l’edizione, offre un testo migliore perché interamente corredato da note mss. tra cui si rinvengono, in testa alla c. 1, anche indicazioni di collocazione della lecture (“II”, “Sept. 1978”). Da P-o 79 sono state a loro volta tratte tre xerocopie: P-o 169, interessata da pochissime annotazioni (tutte riportate in apparato); P-o 74, xerocopia di un’ulteriore copia – non conservata – di P-o 792, e infine P-o 81, documento privo di note dal quale sono state tratte ulteriori copie xerox preparatorie al testo edito. Queste ultime sono rappresentate da: P-o 168, fascicolo che conserva qualche significativo appunto di lavoro mai ripreso successivamente; P-o 63, reading copy EL (= GL) ricca di interventi significativi (soprattutto proposte di cancellazione) che testimoniano una prima fase di ripensamento della struttura della lecture in prospettiva della pubblicazione e che però vennero complessivamente tralasciate nella preparazione del testo definitivo; e infine P-o 90, c.c. di sole 16 carte, che una nota ms. di AMM (“For I. Berlin Festchrift O.U.P.19.12.78 [also part of Grinfield II, 31.I.79]”, c. 1) identifica con la versione Festschrift, contribuendo a confermare al tempo stesso come il testo Grinfield coincidesse non con l’edito, ma con la sua versione “lunga”, letta in sede Efroymson. Rispetto a P-o 90 la versione pubblicata presenta però piccole discrepanze (in particolare alla fine dell’introduzione) che vengono segnalate, all’evenienza, in apparato. 2. Argomento della lecture Le speculazioni ottocentesche sui contatti tra Erodoto e gli Ebrei tentavano di rispondere al problema della mancata presenza, nelle fonti storiche greche anteriori ad Alessandro, del popolo ebraico. Le informazioni sul giudaismo postesilico ci provengono da fonti interne (profeti, Ezra e Neemia) nel paradosso per cui i reperti materiali sembrerebbero però attestare scambi commerciali con i Greci che, abituati ai “barbari”, verosimilmente non dovettero notare la variante ebraica. 1 2 P-o 90, c. 1, annotazione ms. di AMM. Reca infatti annotazioni fotocopiate assenti su P-o 79. 56 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire Ebrei e Greci condividono il fatto di essersi definiti in relazione alla Persia. Se la società ebraica si sviluppa all’interno dell’impero, maturando una prospettiva filiale e reverenziale, l’autoconsapevolezza culturale acquisita dai Greci in conseguenza degli sviluppi istituzionali, tecnici e militari di VI sec. li porta invece a incontrare i Persiani con sguardo critico. La crescita di interesse per la solidità delle istituzioni mediterranee è il fattore che induce i sovrani persiani a tentare le prime alleanze con i Greci. Alla fama di magnanimità e cultura acquisita con questi primi contatti subentra tra i Greci un sentimento di ostilità suscitato dallo svelamento delle mire espansionistiche dell’impero: matura un ideale di identificazione tra democrazia e libertà autentica a cui si affianca l’equazione tra opposizione alla tirannia e opposizione ai Persiani. Sia durante che dopo le guerre i Greci continuano però a studiarne usi e costumi, per quanto l’ostacolo rappresentato dalla loro resistenza all’apprendimento di lingue straniere li porti talvolta a travisarne il pensiero politico o religioso. L’indagine ha il pregio di contribuire all’autodeterminazione di punti salienti della cultura greca, come la coalescenza tra l’amore per la libertà e il rispetto per i veri dèi. Benché la reputazione dei Persiani fosse indubbiamente peggiorata nel corso dei conflitti, si frappongono a grossolane semplificazioni le prospettive critiche di Eschilo e di Erodoto. Se il primo mostra nei Persiani come i sudditi siano i primi a soffrire per la hybris di Serse, il secondo, riferendo dell’eliminazione dei tiranni dalle città ioniche operata dal re Dario all’indomani della rivolta in Asia Minore, dimostra la compatibilità potenziale tra governo persiano e la democrazia: il ruolo di provocatrice affidato ad Atene evidenzia la reputazione tirannica acquisita dalla città, conducendo il lettore a un’identificazione dell'imperialismo persiano con quello ateniese. Scopo di Erodoto non è la cancellazione delle differenze tra nazioni, quanto la riconduzione dell’ascesa di entrambe allo stesso dissidio: la scelta tra il dominare e l’essere dominati. Tra gli storiografi successivi nessuno formulerà lo stesso concetto con pari profondità, benché la lettura senofontea ne erediti parzialmente i principi interpretativi, sia pure attraverso uno schema di lettura viziato dall’esaltazione acritica del passato e dell’ideale militare. Le nozioni vaghe e idealizzate di Zoroastro e dei Magi, diffuse nei circoli platonici e pitagorici durante il IV sec., mostrano come l’opinione dei Greci sui Persiani finisca presto per oscillare, con scarsa soluzione di continuità, tra disprezzo e idealizzazione. I limiti comunicativi mantengono però vivo il pregiudizio che la coesione dell’impero si fondi esclusivamente sul sistema burocratico-amministrativo: la valutazione passerà ai sovrani macedoni, determinandone il sentimento aggressivo di superiorità politicoculturale che caratterizzerà il primo secolo della dominazione in Asia e in Egitto. 3. Note di contenuto: l’evoluzione della lecture e il rapporto con i testi editi. The Greeks outside è un testo Efroymson nella misura in cui viene concepito e messo per iscritto specificamente per il ciclo dell’ottobre/novembre del 1978: l’aumento del numero di lectures e il conseguente ripensamento della struttura del ciclo determina a Cincinnati uno spostamento del focus di indagine dallo sguardo sintetico e diacronico alle grandi istituzioni del giudaismo di età ellenistica, la sinagoga e il rabbinato (su cui cfr. Appendici I, II), all’analisi in itinere dei mutamenti determinati dal confronto e dallo scambio degli Ebrei con i dominatori del passato, i Persiani, e con quelli del presente, i Greco-Macedoni. Se a questi ultimi è dedicata una lecture a parte (EL/GL 1979 IV), ai Persiani spetta invece il dittico costituito dall’analisi del rapporto con gli Ebrei (EL/GL 1979 III, The Jews inside) e da una preliminare ricognizione dei rapporti tra Persia e Greci che fornisce un solido punto di appoggio nell’individuazione delle peculiarità della reazione giudaica. Se la lecture nasce quindi in occasione del ripensamento di Cincinnati, non lo stesso può essere detto del materiale di cui si compone. Con l’eccezione della derivazione dalla CL 1977 II (The Temple and the Synagogue) della sezione di apertura, dedicata alla menzione della bizzarra tesi di Guérin du Rocher per cui Erodoto sarebbe stato storico del popolo ebraico senza saperlo e alla ben più seria questione storiografica che le è sottesa (il disinteresse degli etnografi greci per gli Ebrei, fino ad Alessandro), The Greeks outside spicca per autonomia rispetto alle altre lezioni del ciclo. Qualche punto di contatto si individua con il riccamente articolato ma ancora essenzialmente preparatorio saggio Ebrei e Greci del 1976 (la genericità della nozione di Palestina presso i Greci; 57 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire la speculare occorrenza dell’etnico Yawan, Ionia, in alcuni passi biblici); è soprattutto Alien Wisdom, tuttavia, il testo rispetto al quale The Greeks outside tradisce non solo dipendenza, ma dialogo costante. Il richiamo implicito – e obbligato – è evidente già dalla cursoria menzione di quelle testimonianze archeologiche, epigrafiche e numismatiche (cc. 1-2) esposte nel dettaglio in Alien Wisdom, 75-6 (cap. 4, The Hellenistic Discovery of Judaism); la questione dell’apparente ignoranza degli Ebrei da parte dei Greci trova riscontro nelle pagine successive (77-8), mentre la presenza di Greci nei testi della Bibbia, accennata alla c. 2, riprende pressoché verbatim le pp. 78 e 79. A partire dal cap. II dell’edito (cap. III in P-o 79) la lecture sviluppa invece un legame privilegiato con un ulteriore capitolo di Alien Wisdom, The Iranians and the Greeks (pp. 123-50), rispetto alla cui ampiezza cronologica (che spazia dalle ipotesi linguistiche di Benveniste su eventuali contatti risalenti al X sec.a.C.3 fino all’idealizzazione della cultura iranica in età romana), la lecture procede per isolamento e approfondimento degli eventi di VI - IV secolo alla luce di una domanda specifica, in che modo il confronto con l’impero achemenide abbia sollecitato l’individuazione e l’elaborazione di punti imprescindibili nella costruzione dell’identità culturale greca. Acquista così nuova profondità il ruolo ermeneutico di Erodoto, di cui Momigliano apprezza lo sguardo non pregiudiziale e il rifiuto delle facili semplificazioni nell’analisi delle dinamiche tra Grecia e Persia; viene meno invece il discorso preparatorio, ampiamente ipotetico-ricostruttivo, relativo alle fonti anteriori al sesto secolo (cronache reali persiane, presocratici), per quanto la lecture contenga una ritrattazione in merito alla possibilità di individuare influenze greche sull’arte persiana, avallata in Alien Wisdom4 e qui giudicata, di contro, un’illusione (c. 13). Viene meno anche la diffusa analisi sulla ricezione della sapienza iranica nel dopo Alessandro, contenuta nelle ultime pagine di The Iranian and the Greeks (pp. 142-9); e tuttavia, la fugace menzione all’idealizzazione della figura di Zoroastro presso i circoli di Platone e Pitagora (c. 20) la presuppone. Il testo della lecture, così come emerge da questo processo compositivo, non coincide perfettamente con quello che sarà dato alle stampe, nello stesso 1979, con il titolo di Persian Empire and Greek Freedom. Testimonia una fase preliminare di ripensamento P-o 63, reading copy EL (= GL) su cui Momigliano torna a lavorare in preparazione dell’edito. Il documento è percorso da una serie di proposte di cancellazione finalizzate all’eliminazione di piccoli incisi ed excursus5, conservati nel testo edito a vantaggio di quella che parrebbe un’operazione di “omogeneizzazione” contenutistica: ai tagli sparsi viene preferita l’eliminazione dal testo Festschrift delle sezioni incipitarie, considerate plausibilmente eccentriche rispetto al tema affrontato. Persian Empire and Greek Freedom risulta quindi ricavato per sottrazioni, se si esclude l’aggiunta della dedica di apertura6: comincia infatti direttamente dall’enunciazione di quell’elemento comune a Greci ed Ebrei – la definizione di sé, o autocoscienza, sviluppata nel confronto con la Persia – in grado per Momigliano di legittimare una messa in relazione fra i due popoli ancor prima che contatti reciproci divengano documentabili. Nel testo della lecture qui edito, P-o 79, tale sezione è invece preceduta 3 BENVENISTE 1966. “Greek architects, sculptors and stone cutters worked to build Pasargadae, Susa and Persepolis. Though the details are uncertain, and there is an element of subjectivity in the evaluation of the contribution of the Greeks to these works, their participation is certain (C. Gullini, La Parola del Passato 12-4, 1972, 13-39)”, p. 125. 5 Vengono cancellati, in P-o 63: il riferimento all’excursus sugli sforzi dei Persiani per il controllo del territorio e l’inciso su Demarato e Temistocle (c.8); l’aneddoto erodoteo sulla cena tra Tebani e Persiani alla vigilia della battaglia di Platea (c.9); la citazione di Focilide (c. 10); la menzione tucididea della lettera scritta in caratteri assiri (c. 11); il riferimento ai Gathas (c. 12) e tutta la sezione relativa all’influenza dell’arte greca su quella persiana (c. 13); l’aneddoto sulla proskynesis (c. 14) e quello su Serse quasi persuaso da Artabano a rinunciare alla conquista della Grecia (c. 16); la parziale eccezione rappresentata dagli Egizi (c. 21). 6 “I offer here to Isaiah Berlin an attempt to define the Greek attitude (or attitudes) toward the Persians, reserving the comparison with the Jewish attitude (or attitudes) for a little volume which I am writing at present. Isaiah Berlin is, in any case, the last man to need to be reminded of this side of our common Jewish heritage”, Persian Empire, 139 (= P-o 90, c. 1). 58 4 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire da due pagine incentrate sulla teoria di Guérin du Rocher sopra menzionata e su premesse relazionali fra Ebrei e Greci composte sulla falsa riga di Alien Wisdom, reputate verosimilmente tralasciabili in sede editoriale. Il taglio di maggiore significatività appare però quello che coinvolge il cap. II della lecture, dedicato allo sviluppo dei caratteri della civiltà greca (cc. 3-8): la sua eliminazione comporta infatti la perdita nell’edito dell’inciso relativo alla questione, fondamentale nella riflessione di Momigliano a partire almeno dagli anni Quaranta, sul concetto greco di libertà, anche e soprattutto nella sua variante costituita dalla parrhesia, la libertà di parola.7. 7 Cfr. soprattutto Momigliano, A., Liberty and peace in the ancient world, Nono, 483-501; Id., Peace and Liberty in the Ancient World, Decimo, 3-105 (part. alle pp. 65-77); ma vd. anche MOMIGLIANO 1974A. Per una generale illustrazione sul tema in Momigliano si rinvia inoltre a DI DONATO 1995; ID. 1996; cfr. inoltre DIONISOTTI 1997. 59 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire II The Greeks outside the Persian Empire8 I [1] Among the books of my library that I particularly cherish there is9 one entitled Hérodote historien du peuple hébreu sans le savoir. It is anonymous and was allegedly published in The Hague in 1786. It is in defence of a previous book by l’Abbé Guérin du Rocher, Historie véritable des temps fabuleux, and is clearly written by l’Abbé Guérin himselfi. He has a theory that in his book on Egypt Herodotus wrote the history of the Jews under Egyptian names; apparently the Egyptians told Herodotus the history of the Jews instead of telling their own. This fancy is by no means isolated in eighteenth century historiography. It tries to answer a question which had already troubled the mind of Flavius Josephus and other Jews in antiquity and was inherited by Christian historians: why is Herodotus silent about the Jews while he knows so much about Egyptians and Phoenicians? It must be admitted that I should probably be here to tell a different story if Herodotus had gone up to Jerusalem instead of stopping at the sinful harbour of Tyre. Two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, suddenly lighten10 up the sky of Judaea about 520 B.C. and allow us to see something of the return of the exiles from Babylon. About seventy years Nehemiah was writing down his memoirs in what must have been for the Jews, as it was for the Greeks, a new literary genre – which we call autobiography, using a term probably invented in A.D. 1793ii. Either a few years earlier than Nehemiah, about 458 B.C., or more probably many years later about 398 B.C., Ezra the Scribe also compiled his memoirs. If the evidence is not badly 11 misleading, both Nehemiah and Ezra gave an account in self-defence of their struggle to reorganize the State of Judah12. How and when their memoirs were mutilated, used, integrated and at least partially recomposed to make the present Book of Ezra and Nehemiah is unknown. This is all – or nearly all – the primary literary evidence we have about the birth of Judaism such as it was passed down from generation to generation [2] even to us. Archaeology, epigraphy and numismatics help, but not very much. In so far as they help, they accentuate the paradox of our ignorance. For13 archaeology and numismatics leave us in no doubt that Greek traders and mercenaries went up and down in Palestine before and during the Persian regime of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.iii The first coins of Judaea acknowledge this fact and display the Hebrew word Jehud together with the Athenian owl – to indicate that Athenian silver currency was respected. The Greeks and the Jews evidently knew each other on the daily scene. But before Alexander the Great the Greeks seem to have ignored even the name of the Jews and to have known nothing about the peculiar religion of the Jews. * Documento preso come base: P-o 79, c.c. di P-o 43 contenente il ts. EL (=GL) della lecture corredato di annotazioni mss. di mano di Momigliano. Si riportano in apparato eventuali discrepanze del documento con la sua c.c. gemella, P-o 42 e con le copie xerox P-o 169 e 74, interessate da annotazioni non sempre riportate nell’edito. Le divergenze tra P-o 79 e la versione edita vengono segnalate tramite riferimento a P-o 90, identificato da una nota di AMM su c.1 come ts. edito, tranne quando in cui la lecture stampata diverge anche da questo documento (in tal caso si fa riferimento direttamente a Persian Empire). Vengono infine segnalate le note di lavoro presenti su P-o 168 e le varianti (soprattutto i tagli) riportate su P-o 63, reading copy EL che testimonia una fase intermedia di ripensamento del ts. in prospettiva dell’edizione. 8 P-o 79: Sept. 1978, mgsupmsb[AMM]. 9 P-o 63: I started my first lecture with a book I had not at home: the Septuagint. I shall start this lecture with a book I had, mgsupmsb[Mom]. 10 P-o 74: light <-> lighten. 11 P-o 74: seriously <-> badly. 12 P-o 169: within the State of Persia, mgsnmsn[Mom]. 13 P-o 63: Tyre -> Two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah [c.1] … our ignorance. For, del. 60 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire Trained as they were to observe and describe the specific features of each barbarian nation, they did not notice that particular variety of barbarians we call Jews. The Jews remained to them indistinguishable from the other Palestinians. The Jews themselves took rather more notice of the Greeks in their holy books. They had a name for the Greeks – the one current throughout the East, Yawaniv – and, though they knew them above all as second-hand traders of Jewish slaves, somehow included them in the economy of the Messianic age. The pericope in the last chapter of the present text of Isaiah – pointing to Tarsis, Pul, Lud, Tubal, Yawan and the distant islands as those who have not yet seen the glory of God but will in the future come to the holy mountain – can hardly refer to the ingathering of Jewish exiles from all these countries: it14 must refer to the Gentiles of these15 countries. But Athens and Sparta, Miletus, Massalia and the other centres of Greek civilization are not mentioned in the Bible, and the wisdom of the Greeks was a thing for the future. Before Alexander the Great, Greek "paideia" was hardly better known to the Jews than Jewish barbarism was known to the Greeks. When the Jews and the Greeks faced each other, both had behind them what we can call the classical period of their history. By then they were conscious of having been shaped by something which had happened in their past. They defined themselves in terms of the values of a tradition to which they intended [3] to remain faithful. It is the depth and the length of their respective traditions and of their respective differences that gave importance to their encounter in the Hellenistic age. However much we play down the facts, there is Christianity to be explained. And before Christianity the actions of Antiochus IV Epiphanes remain the first full-scale religious persecution in the Greek world just as much as16 the Maccabaean reaction remains the first religious rebellion in the Greek world.17 18 There is a common feature in Greek and in Jewish history which allows a direct comparison of the two nations even before their cultural contacts become tangible in the ordinary sense of the word19. Both Greeks and Jews defined themselves in relation to Persia. But Greek religious, political and social life had already reached it classical form before the Greeks fought against the Persians. Their victory against the Persians added much to their self-consciousness and no doubt contributed to the specific developments of the fifth century B.C. in Athens and elsewhere. Yet, fundamentally, the Greeks were right in feeling that they were what they were before the Persians entered upon the scene. The Jews, on the other hand, shaped their theocracy inside the Persian Empire and were aware of their permanent debt to the founder of the Persian Empire v . A paradoxical consequence was that the Greek came to notice certain basic points of similarity between their own political predicaments and those of the Persians, whereas the Jews, while calling Cyrus a Messiah, never dreamt of being like the Persians or of finding acceptable model of behaviour in Persia. A more precise analysis of this aspect of the difference between Greeks and Jews may repay the effort, even if it inevitably compels us to include much that, in itself, is obvious20. II 14 P-o 79: they; P-o 42: it <-> they, msn[Mom]. P-o 79: those; P-o 42: these <-> those, msn[Mom]. 16 P-o 74: as -> much as, del. 17 P-o 63: to the Greeks -> When the Jews and the Greeks faced each other…. Greek world, del. 18 Qui inizia il ts. di Persian Empire; P-o 90: For I. Berlin Festschrift, O.U.P. 19.12.78 [also part of Grinfield I, 31.I.79], mgsupmsb[AMM]. 19 P-o 90: recognizable by ordinary criteria <-> tangible in the ordinary sense of the word. 20 P-o 79, 90: may repay the effort… obvious; Persian Empire: may be worth the effort. I offer here to Isaiah Berlin an attempt to define the Greek attitude (or attitudes) towards the Persians, reserving the comparison with the Jewish attitude (or attitudes) for a little volume which I am writing at present. Isaiah Berlin is, in any case, the last man to need to be reminded of this side of our common Jewish heritage. 61 15 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire By the end of the sixth century B.C. some characteristic features had emerged in Greek societies. First, they formed a civilization which spread extensively from the Black Sea to Spain and Africa but, outside Greece proper, [4] was almost exclusively confined to the coasts. It was therefore a civilization which relied on the superiority of military techniques and on seamanship to defend itself against aggressors. The strong sense of unity was due to common language (notwithstanding dialectal differences), common literature, common religion, common artistic taste, common basic political institutions and common games. The outsider was the man who "speaks incomprehensibly", that is, the barbarian. The mystery ceremonies at Athens were opened with a proclamation excluding all those who speak a barbarous language. But each Greek city tended to be more aggressive towards other Greek cities than towards barbarians: the fear of being ruled by other Greeks and losing one's own independence was constant. Self-identification inside Greek culture presupposed separation from non-citizens. To be Greek meant the capacity to organize one's own life against other Greeks, if they did not belong to the same polis. This alone implied that religion, however strongly felt, did not dominate life, for there was a definite trend in Greek religious beliefs and cults towards overcoming city boundaries. Religious conformism was more presupposed than imposed. There was no priestly class to speak of. Reflections on the nature of gods were left mainly to private initiative. Myths – stories of gods and heroes – were mainly transmitted and elaborated by poets who at the utmost claimed private inspiration. The more mystically inclined were initiated into mysteries which seldom changed the pattern of ordinary life. The business of earning one's daily bread by agriculture, crafts or trade was accepted as normal, though with no enthusiasm. Few, outside Sparta, were in a position to do without work. But the spread of slavery and the relative cheapness of slaves gave a considerable margin of leisure, even to those who were engaged in manual work. Slavery was basically rooted in war and conquest: in older times it produced the serfdom of whole populations; in more recent times (mainly from the seventh century onwards) it took the form of selling and buying prisoners of war (chattel slaves). For obvious reasons the Greeks preferred to buy foreign, non-Greek, slaves. Slaves could be freed but, unlike Roman slaves, did not become citizens. Slavery for debt was probably never [5] an important source of chattel slaves (as distinct from serfs) and disappeared from the more civilized centres during the sixth century. The liberty of the citizens was dependent on the existence of slavery: the greater the number of the slaves, the greater the solidarity of the citizens in the defence of their privileges as mastersvi. The psychology of the ordinary free citizen was conditioned by the implicit assumption that his behaviour towards other free men was different from his behaviour towards slaves. The slave could be tortured, sexually exploited and humiliated even in cities which, like Athens, had a justified reputation for treating their slaves with generosity. On the other hand, the fact that much of the education of children was in the hands of slaves must have had disturbing consequences: in what ways could slaves educate children to be free? It must be noted for future reference – and no doubt will have been noticed by my audience – that so far I may have seemed to have expanded certain remarks made by Josephus in Against Apionvii when he was concerned with the same problem of understanding the difference between Greeks and Jews. Josephus, too, emphasizes the coastal character of Greek settlements and the Greek inclination towards piracy and war, for which he found precedents in Thucydides. He significantly observes "we pride ourselves on the education of our children" (1, 60)viii. What I have now to add is, however, not so easily to be found in Josephus, and his silence on these further points may ultimately also turn out21 to be relevant. Conscious of their freedom, the citizens of Greek towns gathered for public deliberation in open spaces or public buildings and developed a special manner of reasoning and persuasion. Freedom of speech, especially in Athens and in the Ionian cities, became the hallmark of democracyix. Freedom of speech always remained a sign of political and social freedom rather than intellectual superiority. But where political freedom was firmly established it was easier to examine religious beliefs and to formulate questions about the nature of 21 P-o 79: out, msn[Mom]. 62 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire things without fear of persecution. This was made even more easy by the basic distrust which the Greeks felt for their own gods. They envied [6] the gods because the gods could do almost anything and because they were immortal. But the gods eliminated in their own societies all the contrasts by which human life was made tolerable and intelligible: the contrasts by which human life was made tolerable and intelligible: the contrasts between justice (dike) and insolence (hybris), between law (nomos) and nature (physis), between active and contemplative life, between peace and war, between knowledge and ignorance, between civilization and savagery, etc. When a man tried to behave like a god he was a tyrant or a madman; rape, adultery, cruelty, guile and murder were inextricably connected with the power of the gods, while these activities could be repressed, if not eliminated, in the world of men. The gods could help; indeed Zeus was the guarantor of justice. But their company was not reassuring: they asked of men what they were not prepared to do themselves. The observation of nature was less terrifying. Knowledge was power: "Wisdom is much more valuable than the strength of men and horses"x said Xenophanes when Ionian philosophy was in its beginning. Medicine was consequently regarded, not as an enquiry into the weaknesses and misery of human life, but as the art of healing; and the doctor was universally respected. Outside the realm of medicine, and perhaps of the visual arts, manual work did not rank highly. Artisan activity (techne) was never recognized as belonging to the World of Knowledge (episteme). The artisan was too near the slaves – and perhaps too near the gods who had shaped the world like artisans. In the sixth century B.C. Ionia was the most advanced in the field of the study of natural phenomena, but Athens, after the tyrants, rapidly became a centre for free discussion and free thinking and attracted Ionian philosophers. The Greek colonies in Sicily and Magna Grecia fostered a more religiously orientated enquiry (Pythagoras, Empedocles) but the underlying principle was the same: discovery of the organization of the universe by observation and reasoning. If medicine was the most obvious approach to the understanding of the human body, mathematics was the most trusted approach to natural (including astronomical) phenomena. Geography was intensively studied and included an examination both of the shape of the earth and of the diversity of its [7] inhabitants. Myths were freely analysed and often found unbelievable. Teaching of all these subjects began to be formalized: there were schools at various levels in the sixth century B.C. What did not yet exist – and even later never acquired a precise status in the curricula of the schools – was history. But history, as we understand it, began to be considered an autonomous pursuit of knowledge in connection with the Persian conflict. Even more than epic and tragic poetry, history became the proper literary genre for reflecting on the causes, the conduct and the outcome of the clash between Greeks and Persians. History therefore plays a prominent role in clarifying for us what the Greek learned from their encounter with the Persians xi . Correspondingly, though historiography was an established subject in Hebrew literature long before the Persian rule, it takes a new turn in Judaea to accommodate the new experiences of life inside the Persian Empire.22 III23 [8] The rise of the Persian Empire was not only dangerous to the Greeks: it had placed them in an ambiguous position. The Persian State was pulled in two directions: one ended in the Mediterranean; the other, if pursued fully, would have led the Persian kings towards India, as it did their successor Alexander the Great24. What at best contributed to coordinating the expansion in the two directions (and at worst prevented the Empire from falling to pieces) was the careful 22 Cap. II: def. in P-o 90. P-o 79: III; P-o 90: II <-> III. 24 P-o 90: Towards the Mediterranean and towards India <-> One ended in the Mediterranean… Alexander the Great; Persian Empire: corr. def. 63 23 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire organisation of internal communications and the constant search for new river and sea lanes. We know comparatively very little of the efforts of the Persian kings to control the whole of the Iranian plateau and to create a barrier against the nomadic tribes on the North-East of their State. Persian control there meant the introduction of a system of taxation and military vassalage among people in conditions of natural economy.25 In the East the Persian kings had their most difficult work to do and therefore looked with special relish in the opposite direction – where power could be organised on the basis of pre-existing institutions, glory was obtained against a background of monumental cities and respected temples, and collaborators could be won from old-established urban aristocracies. Persian interest in Greek collaboration went beyond the field of Greek mercenaries and artisans, whose reputation among the Persian was undisputed. The Persians attracted intellectuals, especially doctors, from Greece and turned for political and military advice to Greek exiles. We know perhaps about 300 names of Greeks who served26 the Persians in the two centuries before Alexander (ordinary mercenaries and artisans are by definition excluded as their names would be known only exceptionally). An ex-king of Sparta, Demaratus, and one of the leaders of Athens, Themistocles, belong to this company; and of course the two historians, Ctesias and Xenophon, are in it, the first as a court doctor, the second as a leader of mercenaries27. If a large part of the Greece – including the Thebans and, de facto, the Argives – sided with the [9] Persians during Xerxes’ invasion of 480479 B.C., if even the oracle of Delphi ‘medised’ on that occasionxii, this must be accounted for by more than sheer fright before what appeared to be the overwhelming power of the Achaemenids. There must have been an element of attraction towards a stable international order which seemed to ensure protection for the wealthy class and furnished28 shelter from restless neighbours like the Athenians or the Spartans. Even in Athens public opinion was by no means unanimously against Persia. The tyrants had left friends behind. And Sparta, like Delphi, had not forgotten her failure to defend Croesus of Lydia against the Persians – with consequent loss of prestige. The Persians had acquired the reputation of being wealthy, generous and easy going masters; they had been seen at close quarters to be civilized, god-fearing, ‘truth-telling’ aristocrats, good at riding and hunting just as Greek aristocrats liked to be. We shall never know for certain, but29 a little story told by Herodotus must be authentic. Before the battle of Plataea a wealthy citizen of Thebes gave a banquet to which he invited the Persian commander Mardonius, fifty of the noblest Persians, and fifty of the most distinguished Boeotians. One of the Greek guests (from Orchomenos, not from Thebes) was Thersander, who lived long enough to entrust30 his recollections of the evening to Herodotus. A Persian and a Greek sat side by side on each couch, and the Persian who shared Thersander’s couch addressed him in the Greek tongue and ‘inquired from him from what city he came’. After these formalities the Persian frankly expressed his fears of a Persian (and therefore Theban) defeat and added: ‘Many of us Persians know our danger, but we are constrained by necessity to do as our leader bids us. Verily it is the sorest of all human sorrows, to abound in knowledge and yet have no power over action31’ (9.16). Here we learn of a Persian who could speak Greek, and even more of the very human anxiety he could express to his Greek comrade on the eve of the decisive battle.32 25 P-o 63: Alexander the Great -> What at best contributed… natural economy, del. P-o 90: We know perhaps… served; P-o 79: A German dissertation has collected about 300 names of Greeks who are known to have served. 27 P-o 63: exceptionally). -> An ex-king of Sparta… leader of mercenaries, del. 28 P-o 74: provided <-> furnished. 29 P-o 74: but <- Although we shall never know for certain, I feel that, del. 30 P-o 74: pass on <-> entrust, msb[Mom]. 31 P-o 79: over action; P-o 90: def. 32 P-o 63: behind -> And Sparta, like Delphi, had not forgotten her failure to defend Croesus… eve of the decisive battle, del.; P-o 90, 63: of the decisive battle. Both in the fifth and in the fourth century there were Iranian or Iranized aristocrats who displayed in Greek those sentiments which made them respectable to Greeks. The Lycian prince 64 26 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire And yet, at any given moment, the Greek world was only of peripheral importance to the Persian State. Even in Asia Minor the Greeks were after all [10] a small minority. The commercial groups prospering under Persia were centred in Mesopotamia, like the Murašu family, and in the Phoenician towns rather than in the Greek cities. Aramaic letters and neo-Babylonian tablets have told us much about the affairs of Aršan (Arsames to the Greek), who was a satrap of Egypt in the second part of the fifth centuryxiii. A member of the royal family, he had wealth in Babylonian real estate and close connections with the Murašu family. Carthage, a Phoenician colony which was involved in continuous struggles with Greek competition and remained influential among the Phoenicians of the motherland, certainly encouraged the latter to side with the Persians rather than with the Greeks. Ancient tales and modern speculations about the alleged alliance between Persians and Carthaginians against the Greeks in 480 can be discounted. But the fact remains that in 480 both the Persians and the Carthaginians made war against the Greeks.33 It is another fact that for many Greeks – and more specifically for the citizen of Sparta and Athens – the attractions of Persia and the solid merits of life in a Greek polis were incompatible. They were developing a style of political discussion, judicial decision and intellectual debate which they knew to be peculiar to themselves. They thought that by obeying their own laws they avoided human masters and could truly be considered free. As Phocylides said of Assyria, and his reference could easily be extended to Persia: ‘an orderly city, though small and set on a rock, outranks senseless Niniveh’. We do not know where and by whom freedom was first associated with democracy, freedom of speech thus becoming one of the most important aspects of democracy. Whether or not those Ionian citizens who passed from Croesus’ control to Cyrus’ rule regarded democratic freedom as the antithesis of Persian despotism, the antithesis was clear to Spartans and Athenians – and to those who fought with them. There are clear indications that as soon as the Persian replaced the Lydians as rulers of Asia Minor many of the Greeks felt that the whole fabric of their life was in danger. There where projects, duly reported by Herodotus, of abandoning Asiatic Ionia for distant and barbaric Sardinia, and at least the citizens of Phocaea and Teos actually emigrated to other countries and faced unpleasant adventures in their search for new homes.34 Internal social conflicts in the Greek cities helped to identify the anti-Persian groups with the enemies of tyranny. Though the connection between the internal social conflicts of the Greek cities of Asia and the presence of the Persians was ambivalent in contemporary eyes, there was no doubt about the support which the Persians gave to the exiled tyrant of Athens, Hippias. In Athens Phrynicus depressed the Athenians by his tragedy, The Capture of Miletus, which he composed before 480 B.C., in a very different mood from that of35 The Phoenician Women, which is later than 480. Nor were the Greeks alone in finding the Persians [11] less accommodating than they had wished or hoped. The story of Pythius, the Lydian magnate who “entertained Xerxes and his whole army in a most lavish fashion, offering at the same time to give him a sum of money for the war”, is too good not to be enjoyed in its Herodotean context, 7.27-8. But the second instalment of the story, in chapters 38-9, must be spelt out because it36 shows that collaboration with the kings of Persia had its dangers: the king expected not only lavish entertainment and money from his protégés, but presence on the battlefield. Pythius, who tried to get his eldest son excused from service, doomed him to death. Arbinas who was advised by a Greek devine who boasted of being good at everything in which wisemen are good: archery, virtue and equitation (L. Robert, Journ. Sav. 1978, 5), mginfmsn[AMM] con ser; Persian Empire: def. 33 P-o 90: it is another fact that for many Greeks… there was no doubt about the support which the Persians gave to the exiled tyrant of Athens, Hippias <-> P-o 79: Most of the evidence we possess about the Greek attitude toward the Persians is later than 478 and come from Athenians or from those who sympathised with Athens. Reaction before 480 must have been even more extreme. 34 P-o 63: considered free -> As Phocylides said of Assyria… for new homes, del. 35 P-o 79: in a very different mood from that <-> and before congratulating them in, interl.msn[Mom]. 36 P-o 74: What is particularly relevant to my theme is the second instalment of the story in chapters 38-39, which <-> But the second … because it, interl.msb[Mom]. 65 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire IV37 It was only to be expected that the Greeks during and after the wars with Persia should look with attention at the Persian constitution, history and customs. Herodotus had both predecessors and successors, though probably none with his brilliance and intellectual generosity. Empedocles composed a poem, Persika, about the expedition of Xerxes. The story reported by Diogenes Laertius (8.2.57) is that either his sister or his daughter destroyed it. The Hellenized Lydian Xanthus informed the Greeks about the Persian Magi. One Greek at least really learned Persian: Themistocles. But he did so out of necessity. In the late fifth century, however, the Athenians and the Spartans must have had some experts to interpret Aramaic texts 38 . An Aramaic letter (Thudycides says ‘a letter written in Assyrian characters’) was sent by the Persians to the Spartans. It was intercepted by the Athenians and duly translated (4.50). 39 We must immediately add that neither the linguistic nor the religious situation for the Persian Empire was likely to impress the Greeks deeply40, at least in the fifth century. The fact that imperial Persian texts were also available in Elamite, Accadian, Egyptian and Aramaic translations, though not necessarily all of them together, only made the [12] inferior status of the Greek language in the Persian Empire more obvious. No doubt official letters to Greek States and individuals were often drawn up41 in Greek by the Persian chancellery, and there were displays of bilingual texts in Persians (or Aramaic) and Greek when they could be of special relevance to Greek speakers (Herodotus 4.78). But Greek was not one of the privileged languages of the Empire. And – with the exception noted above – what was not in Greek was usually not read by the Greeks. Darius’ stelae celebrating the reopening of the old Suez Canal in Persian, Elamite, Accadian and Egyptian – or the statue of Darius, which turned up in Susa in 1972 with inscriptions in the same four languagesxiv are symbolic of the invisible barrier separating the monolingual Greeks from the multilingual Empire42. The linguistic barrier was enough to prevent any Greek from appreciating the subtleties of Persian religious thought, even if the Gathas had already been written down by the fifth century B.C. and had been know in the imperial circles of Persia – which is of course very doubtful. But perhaps we ought not to mention the Gathas because we risk being asked how much of them we can understand ourselves.43 Linguistic incompetence alone would make it impossible for any Greeks to appreciate the religious policy of the Persian kings in its real terms and in its local and temporal variations. Even Herodotus was compelled to be, to say the least, one-sided in his report of the persecution of the Egyptian priests by Cambyses because the epigraphical evidence was inaccessible to him (3.28-9). Cyrus’ respect for Yahweh and for Marduk made all the difference to the Jews and to the Babylonians. As it happens we do not even know of any step taken by Cyrus in favour of Greek cults44. What is usually put on a par with Cyrus’ policy towards Jews and Babylonians is a letter from Darius to his satrap Gadatas for the purpose of confirming privileges to a wealthy temple of Apollo in Magnesia45xv. The text, which I for one consider authentic, provides excellent comparative evidence for the Persian legal terminology used in edicts reported in the 37 P-o 79: IV; P-o 90: III <-> IV. P-o 79: if necessary; P-o 90: if necessary, del. 39 P-o 79: As we are here to compare the Greek and the Jewish evaluation of the Persians in order to understand Greeks and Jews: P-o 90: def. 40 P-o 63: favourably <-> deeply, interl.msb 41 P-o 74: drawn up <-> redacted, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 79: redacted. 42 P-o 168: Why? As Hdt. IV.87 suggests, if a statue or stele of Darius were set up in Greek speaking territories it would be written in P-E-A and Greek, interl.msl[Mom]. 43 P-o 63: Persia -> which is of course… understand ourselves, del. 44 P-o 168: No. But in 358 we have the Aramaic-Greek-Lycian stele text from Xanthus. I bet this wasn’t an isolated instance, mgsnmsl[Mom]. 45 P-o 79: (Tod, I, 10). 66 38 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire Bible in favour of the Temple of Jerusalem.46 But the benefits which the Greeks of Asia Minor in general could derive from privileges granted to one of their temples were almost negligible. Outside Asia Minor Darius’ letter to Gadatas probably [13] remained unknown. In any case, after the Ionian rebellion and Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, there was another side. The Persian had shown the Greeks how they could treat the temples belonging to their enemies. They had sacked the templeoracle of Branchidae (Herodotus 6.19) and had burned down the sanctuary on the acropolis of Athens while killing those who had sought refuge in it as suppliants (8.53). A last misapprehension to be cleared up concerning the attitude of the Greeks to the Persian Empire is that about47 Greek influences in Persian art. In 1929 archaeologists were alerted by the discovery of the Susa foundation text which stated: ‘The stone cutters who worked the stone they were Ionians and Sardians’xvi. Later the influence of Greek artistic techniques and styles was established at Pasargadae and Persepolis just as much as at Susa. A well known inscription in a quarry of Persepolis tells us that the Greek Pytharchos was its superintendent, if not the ownerxvii. Although today nobody would repeat what Gisela Richter stated as a fact in 1946, that Persian art was “peripheric Greek art”xviii , the impression seems still to prevail that the architecture and the sculpture of the capitals of the Persian Empire must have looked familiar and understandable to the Greeks because the Greeks contributed so much, in workers and techniques, to their creation. This is probably an illusion. Persepolis remained almost unknown to the Greek world until Alexander burned it down. Even Susa, where Greek ambassadors used to go, was visited by few Greeks, and there is no telling what they felt about Achaemenid imperial buildings. There is no sign that the Persian liked Athenian pottery (as the Etruscans did), and there is no sign that the Greeks liked the emphasis of Persian art on the majesty of the King of Kings. There is not even clear evidence that they noticed itxix.48 V What defined the reaction of the Greeks to the Persians was of course political49 evaluation. They were reconfirmed in their faith in law and freedom and consequently in their dislike of tyrants. Their experience of tyranny was after all very recent, and the wars with Persia had indicated that it was by [14] no means a foregone conclusion that the word ‘tyrant’ should for ever be confined to the memories of the past.50 What emerges from Aeschylus and from Herodotus, who knew his Aeschylus well (2.156), is trust in freedom. Democritus said that ‘poverty in democracy is better than wealth in serfdom’ (Fragment 251); he must have thought of the Persians who had generally the reputation of being rich. According to Herodotus, Demaratus made the same point about the Spartans in one of his alleged conversations with the King of Persia: ‘Law is the master whom the Spartans have; and this master they fear more than thy subjects fear thee’xx. When the Spartan commander Pausanias, who had previously despised Persian luxury (Herodotus 9.82), adopted Persian dress, he was discredited (Thucydides 1.130). In Greek eyes there was little to choose between Greek tyrants and Persian kings. In its turn the trust in freedom was rooted in the awareness that Greek tyrants or Persian kings go beyond the natural limits of humanity and try to acquire divine attributes. Dislike of the Persian monarchy consequently crystallized round the notion of proskynesis – the act of homage to the Persian kings. It was considered unworthy of a Greek. The prevailing opinion of the Greeks appears to have been that proskynesis meant falling prostrate before the master (this must be Aeschylus’ meaning in Persians 588). Plutarch has the curious story of how the Theban Ismenias avoided the indignity by a subterfuge: “he threw his ring down on the ground in front of him and then stooped 46 47 48 49 50 P-o 63: Magnesia -> The text, which I for one… Temple of Jerusalem, del. P-o 90: about; P-o 79: concerning. P-o 63: suppliants (8,53) -> A last misapprehension to be cleared up… noticed it, del. P-o 90, 63: political, not religious, interl.msn[Mom]; Persian Empire: corr. def. P-o 63: Their experience… of the past, del. 67 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire and picked it up, thus giving the impression that he was making the proskynesis” (Artaxerxes 22,4). The symbolism of proskynesis was apparently a troubling one when Alexander tried to have himself recognized as the Persian King of Kingsxxi. What precise acts and gestures the different categories of subjects were supposed to perform in front of the King is another matter. It would appear that a Persian dignitary kissed his own hand and bowed in the presence of the kingxxii, but this is irrelevant to what the Greeks [15] thought and felt. In any case, both bringing one’s hand to one’s mouth and prostration were, for the Greeks, acts of cult: extending them to mortals was sacrilege. Love of freedom and respect for the true gods here coalesced. It was also to be expected that after the defeats at Salamis, Plataea and Mycale the Greeks would conclude that the Persians were bad soldiers. Neither Aeschylus nor Herodotus had a high opinion of their military attitudes. The Hippocratic author of the treatise on Airs, Waters and Places (written perhaps about 440 B.C.) emphasises the non-martial character of the Persiansxxiii . In the fourth century B.C. the same evaluation was strongly expressed by Xenophon. It is Xenophon who transmits to us the report of a Greek ambassador that he had found in Persia many cooks, but no man fit to fight the Greeks (Hellenica 7.1.38). Stories circulated both in the fifth and in the fourth century that Persian soldiers had to be driven by the lash into battle (Herodotus 7.56 and 223; Xenophon, Anabasis 3.4.26). It was said, in conflict with other statements, that the Persians were corrupt, cruel, soft, faithless, incestuous and generally51 pleasure-loving: their many wives and concubines and their harem intrigues (all evidently upper-class phenomena) were contrasted with Greek sexual and family life. These facile and contemptuous judgments are most frequent in the fourth century. The Greek reaction to the Persians might easily have terminated at this low point. If it had, we should have been deprived of its more thoughtful suggestions. Some Greeks realized that there was a difference between a king like Darius, who repressed the rebellion of his own subjects and tried to punish the Athenians as supporters of rebels, and a king like Xerxes, who aimed at conquering the whole of Greece. What is more, this distinction, once introduced, led to some questions on the nature of Persian ambitions which were bound to emphasise the similarities, rather than the differences, between Greeks and Persians. At a superficial level victory encouraged the Greeks to consider themselves different from, and superior to, the Persians. At a deeper level the differences became blurred. Neither statement would have made sense to the Jews under Persian rule or after it52. [16] Granted the improbability of the Greeks’ going beyond the most overt aspects of Persian life because of lack of linguistic equipment, it was inevitable that some Persian kings should be found more guilty than other of overweening53 pride, hybris. Pride, to the Greeks, was an individual, not an institutional characteristic. Attention was therefore diverted from Persian institutions to the individual attitudes of the Persian kings. Xerxes became one of the worst examples of oriental tyranny, whereas Darius – not to speak of Cyrus the Great – got away with little criticism and much sympathy. In Aeschylus’ Persians, performed eight years after the battle of Salamis, Xerxes’ superhuman attitudes are condemned by the ghost of his father Darius. Xerxes, in his father’s judgment, had not respected the limits imposed by the gods on the Persian Empire, he had wanted too much.xxiv Thus the Persians were the first to suffer from the transgressions of their kings54: as subjects they were not held responsible for the deeds of their masters. The tragedy as seen by Aeschylus was the tragedy of a nation let down by its leader; it explained the Greek victory with reference to what the Persian King had done to his own people. However alien the customs of the Persians could seem to the Greeks (and Aeschylus was certainly ready to underline their slightly comic peculiarities), the Athenian spectators were asked to give their sympathy to the Persians. 51 52 53 54 P-o 90: generally, msn[Mom]; P-o 79: def. P-o 79,74,81: At a superficial level victory… or after it, def.; P-o 169: ts. aggiunto mginfmsn[Mom]. P-o 79: overwhelming; P-o 169: overweening <-> overwhelming. P-o 79: king 68 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire Herodotus is even more restrained in his judgment of the Persian defeat. There is no need here to recapitulate the initial chapters of his seventh book, which must surely be reckoned among the most penetrating pages ever written about human temptations. Xerxes himself, however avid for glory, is on the point of being persuaded by his uncle and adviser Artabanus that he must give up the ambitions of conquering Greece. As Artabanus forcefully puts it, when the choice is55 between counsel tending to increase pride and counsel tending to its abatement, the latter must be preferred. Yet some demon repeatedly in dreams coerces not only Xerxes, but Artabanus too, to follow the worse counsel.56 The doom of Xerxes and his armies is willed by the gods. Xerxes’ arrogance is not so much a sin as an indication of divine disfavour. This conclusion is bound to [17] affect the whole question of Greco-Persian relations. It puts other statements by Herodotus into proper perspective. Herodotus is not certain that the conflict between Persians and Greeks was inevitable. He has no sympathy for the instigators of the Ionian rebellion against Persia. He says in so many words that by involving themselves in this rebellion the Athenians were ‘the beginning of many evils for Greeks and Barbarians’ (5.97). He had already said in the first chapters of his history that according to the Persians the Greeks were greatly to be blamed because in the Trojan War they had invaded Asia before the Persian had attacked Europe (1.4). Quite pointedly Herodotus remarked that after the repression of the Ionian rebellion Darius eliminated the tyrants from the Greek cities against all expectations. This proved according to Herodotus that the Persian government was not essentially incompatible with democracy (6.43). In its turn this Persian understanding for democratic institutions shows, always in the eyes of Herodotus, that at a certain moment of their history the Persians had genuinely faced the choice between monarchy, aristocracy and democracy and had preferred the first after debate (3.80-2). Herodotus obviously enjoyed reporting the story that Cyrus the Great rebuked the Spartan ambassador with the words: ‘I never yet feared men who have a place set apart in the midst of their city where they deceive each other by committing perjury57’ (1.153). This is backed by the remark presented as Herodotus’ own that in allowing themselves to be persuaded to help the Ionian rebels (whereas King Cleomenes of Sparta had refused to do so) the Athenians proved that it was easier to deceive thirty thousand men than one (5.97). In other chapters Herodotus amuses himself by comparing the powers of the Spartan kings with those of the Persian and Egyptian kings (6.59). Herodotus does not see any contradiction in extolling the courage and love of liberty of Spartans and Athenians while recognising that Athens at least had been guilty of gratuitous provocation towards Persia and was vulnerable in its institutions. He does indeed announce what he declares to be [18] an unpopular truth in his day: that the Athenians had been the saviours of Greece. ‘Having chosen to keep Greece free, they [the Athenians] raised up that portion of the Greek nation which had not gone over to the Medes and so, next to the gods, they repulsed the invader... They had the courage to remain faithful to their land and await the coming of the enemy’ (7.139). Herodotus is obviously careful not to give himself away by commenting on anything that happened after 479. He mentions Pericles, but only in the context of a dream which his mother had a few days before giving birth to him: ‘She fancied she had delivered a lion’ (6.131). To call a man a lion is not, in Greek imagery, a safe complimentxxv. We shall not try to guess what Herodotus had in mind. He was obviously aware of criticism against Athens in general and Pericles in particular. He lived to recognise what Thucydides was to express in so many words, that the Athenians had gained the reputation of being tyrants of unwilling subjects. But whereas Thucydides concentrates on the inner logic of the development of power in Greece, Herodotus regarded results as being beyond human calculation. All that human beings can do is not to forget what is good because badness is mixed with it. The last words of Herodotus’ history are of suspense and warning. The lesson is attributed to Cyrus the Great. No one can mistake the importance of what Herodotus is 55 56 57 P-o 79: when the choice is, def. P-o 63: temptations -> Xerxes himself, however avid for glory… the worse counsel, del. P-o 90: where… perjury; P-o 79: where they perjure themselves and deceive each other. 69 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire saying, or the meaning of the choice of speaker. When they were already the masters of Asia, the Persians asked Cyrus to give them a better land. Cyrus answered that a more comfortable climate would make them weaker, less capable of ruling an empire. ‘And the Persians [concludes Herodotus] departed with altered minds, admitted that Cyrus was wiser than they, and chose rather to dwell in a barren land and be rulers than to cultivate plains and be slaves of others’ (9.122). The names of Cyrus and the Persians are interchangeable with those of Pericles and the Athenians. The anti-Persian league founded by the Athenians in 478 had soon turned into an instrument of Athenian power. The Athenians created their own empire and pointedly imitated the Persians by imposing a tribute on their subjects and by repressing any rebellion. In Athens, as in Persia, [19] freedom required power, because power is a condition of freedom, but power proved in fact unobtainable without ruling others. We have been ushered by Herodotus into the age of Greek imperialism via Persian imperialism. Herodotus clearly did not intend to obliterate the difference between the two nations. His sympathetic characterisation of the Persians, who teach their sons three things only – to ride, to draw the bow, and to tell the truth (1,136) – is also an indication of the limits he saw in their minds. This is confirmed not so much by some specific statements on the Greeks, which may even be suspected of being tinged with irony (especially 1.60), but by the picture of Greek life as it emerges as a whole from his history. What, however, Herodotus proclaims at the end of his long search, his long historia, is the common predicament of Greeks and Persians in their acquisition of power. For Greeks or for Persians, the choice is between ruling or being ruled. Nobody after Herodotus expressed the same view with similar depth and shrewdness. His rival Ctesias, who had lived inside the Persian court for many years, rather developed that analysis of dynastic conflicts and harem intrigues which makes him such a useful counterpart to the Book of Esther; and this usefulness would be greater if his text were preserved in its entirety58. But the interpretation of the character of the Persians, and more specifically of Cyrus the Great, which we find in Xenophon – the many-sided student of Persian affairs – is based on presuppositions comparable with those of Herodotus. In Xenophon the Persians act according to political principles which are intelligible to the Greeks, owe much to Greek collaboration and, in the specific case of Cyrus the Great, are inspired by a type of education in which the Greeks can mirror themselves. Two major assumptions of Xenophon are the legitimacy of imperialism – that is, of unlimited rule and economic exploitation of conquered enemies – and the pre-eminence of the political and military institutions capable of supporting imperialism. The difference between Herodotus and Xenophon is of course that Xenophon reaches the point at which idealization of the past (Cyrus the Great and, [20] to a lesser extent, the younger Cyrus) conceals reality and becomes a factor in misunderstanding the present, and therefore a weakness. In the same way there is a disturbing element of mere imagination in the vague and idealized notions which begin to circulate in the circles of Plato and Pythagoras about the figure of Zoroaster and the teaching of the Magixxvi . After all, in the fifth century the Greeks had been the masters of their own destiny and had alone taken the decision to fight the Persians. In the fourth century they were led to conquer the Persians by the Macedonians. There is a lack of self-control in what the Greeks say about the Persians in the fourth century: their judgments oscillate between the extremes of contempt and idealisation. Xenophon is even half-conscious of his own contradictions, which became more acute in old age when he wrote the pamphlet on the ‘Revenues’ – an essentially pacifist pamphlet. But one thing the Greeks continued seriously to believe before and after the conquest of Alexander the Great. The Persian Empire was an aggregate of subject territories held together by a central force. No religious link, no common language or literature, no common art helped to make the Empire what it was. It was basically a question of the relation of strength between the centre and the periphery. The personality of the King contributed to this relation in the Greek terms of greater or lesser wisdom: it contributed so much that after Herodotus no one in Greece asked himself (to the best of my knowledge) whether there could be an alternative to monarchy in Persia. But there was 58 P-o 90: in its entirety; P-o 79: completely. 70 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire no effort to see what kept the Empire together behind the administrative facade; and – most significantly – there was no attempt to understand how people lived under Persian rule. If the Egyptians were an exception, it was because the Egyptians had been well known to the Greeks before the Persian conquest and managed to regain independence from the Persians with Greek help for long periods between Cambyses and Alexander59. When the Greeks provided the Macedonians with the necessary technological and ideological apparatus to govern what had been the Empire of the Achaemenids, [21] they transmitted their conclusions to their new Macedonian sovereigns. These conclusions determined the policy of the heirs of Alexander. We know now what these conclusions were. The superiority of the Greek way of life had once again been proved on the battlefield, and nobody was there to make sophistic distinctions between Greek hoplites and Macedonian phalangists. Conquest was self-justifying. Monarchy was necessary in the East, if not elsewhere. And therefore a monarch had to exercise self-control – as Alexander’s lack of control had just made evident60. But there was not much one needed to know about the Persians, and even less about their subject. No real acquaintance with their language or, indeed, with their religion was required, except at the most external points of contact between cults and government. An imperial climate singularly devoid of religious and ethical scruples characterizes61 the first century of Greco-Macedonian rule of Asia and Egypt. This did not exclude pleasant surprises in which intellectuals had every reason to indulge in discovering pockets of wisdom either in India or in Persia or in that most unfamiliar territory – Judaea. But the meaning and the consequences of these discoveries will have to be considered against the background of an aggressive feeling of superiority displayed by the Greco-Macedonians. The Greeks settled in the countries they conquered to an extent which was unthinkable under the Persians. They made relations with the natives conditional on their acceptance of Greek language and customs. They offered the natives many more opportunities of employment and emigration than the Persians had probably ever done. If they cared little about what their subjects believed, even in so far as this might be relevant to the administration of their State, they nevertheless62 made Hellenization the condition for favour and advancement. They adopted the imperialism of the Persians and rather incongruously added to it a policy of Hellenisation. The Jews who had been given two centuries by the Persians in which to think about themselves now found that they had to think about their new masters, too63. i Bonnaud, J.J., Hérodote historien du peuple hébreu sans le savoir, Ou, Lettre en réponse à la Critique Manuscrite d’un jeune Philosophe, sur l’ouvrage [sic] intitulé: Histoire véritable des Temps Fabuleux par l'Abbé G[uerin] du [Rocher], La Haye 1786. ii L’eliminazione di un cenno a Isaac D'Israeli come inventore del termine "autobiography" si lega verosimilmente all'intento di non introdurre una questione qui collaterale, che aveva interessato Momigliano fin dalle Carl Newell Jackson Lectures, tenute ad Harvard nel 1968 e pubblicate nel 1971 come The Development of Greek Biography (= Development; cfr., sulla questione, p. 16 della trad.it.). Il dotto inglese Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848), noto per i cinque volumi ancora ristampati delle sue Curiosities of Literature (London 1791-1823) e per essere stato il padre del primo ministro Benjamin Disraeli (la modifica del cognome risale agli anni Venti dell’Ottocento), è generalmente ritenuto il primo ad utilizzare il termine "self-biography" (benché non nel 1793 ma nel 1796, in I. D'Israeli, Some Observations on Diaries, Self-Biography, and Self-Characters, in Id., Miscellanies, London 1796, 95-110). Userà il termine "autobiography" (con trattino separatore) solo in seguito, nella Review of The Memoirs of Percival Stockdale, "Quarterly Review", May 1809, p. 386, pubbl. anonima; la coniazione di "autobiography” si attribuisce invece al divulgatore della 59 P-o 63: Persian rule -> If the Egyptians… Alexander, del. P-o 79: as Alexander’s lack of control was soon to make evident <-> as Alexander was soon to confirm, interl.msn[Mom]. 61 P-o 79: scruples characterizes <-> concerns prevails in, interl.msn[Mom]. 62 P-o 90: nevertheless, msn[Mom]; P-o 79: def. 63 P-o 168: They were faced by an empire which unlike the Persian empire compelled them to think about assimilation. The answer is in Daniel: a book against empires, because it is a book against Hellenization, mginfmsl[Mom]. 71 60 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse II. The Greeks outside the Persian Empire cultura romantica tedesca William Taylor, che in una recensione al lavoro di D’Israeli apparsa nel 1797 in "Monthly Review" (n. 24, p. 375; la recensione è citata da Momigliano come di autore anonimo) ne fa registrare il primo uso. Sull'emergere della parola e del tema nella letteratura inglese fra Settecento e Ottocento, cfr. e.g. OGDEN 1961 e il più recente KEYMER 2004. iii Per una disamina momiglianea dei documenti e delle testimonianze in questione, cfr. Alien Wisdom, 75-6. iv Cfr. la genealogia del mondo che compare in Gen. 10, 2-4, e ancora Isa. 66, 19; Ezech. 27,13; Dan. 8, 21; 10, 20; 11, 2; Zacc. 9, 13. v Sullo sviluppo del tema all’interno del ciclo cfr. la lecture successiva, GL 1979 III (The Jews inside); ma vd. anche GL 1979 I (Prologue), c. 21, per lo spunto di riflessione offerto a Momigliano dagli studi di E. Meyer sul giudaismo postesilico come ‘creatura’ dell’impero persiano. vi Sull’antichità dell’idea greca di eleutheria, intesa come libertà dalla schiavitù (e quindi come indipendenza dagli stranieri), cfr. Peace and Liberty, 66. Le prime occorrenze del termine con tale accezione (in forma aggettivale) si riscontrano già Il.6.455, 6.528. Per la ricorrenza del significato nella lirica e nell’elegia arcaica, cfr. Alceo fr. 45 Diehl (=PLF 72, 12-13), Solone fr. 24,7 Diehl (= IEG 36, 7). vii Cfr. e.g. Ios. Ap. 1,24 (cura formale dei Greci per il linguaggio), 1,60 (carattere marittimo e commerciale della civiltà greca), 2.250-54 (libertà e licenza nella rappresentazione degli dèi). Per le prospettive di Giuseppe sulla cultura greca, sia all’interno che fuori del Contro Apione, si rimanda a TROIANI 1977; RAJAK 1983; DROGE 1996. viii Ios. Ap. 1, 60. “Ora, noi né abitiamo una regione marittima né troviamo piacevoli la pratica dei commerci né i contatti con gli altri che ne derivano; invece, le nostre città sono costruite all’interno, lontane dal mare; abitando una terra fertile, la lavoriamo con alacrità, soprattutto mettendo ogni studio nell’educazione dei figli” (trad. it. di L. Troiani). ix Cfr. Liberty and Peace, 491 (con bibliografia in nota) e part. Peace and Freedom (lecture VI), 68, sulla nozione di parrhesia, termine che sin dalle sue prime attestazioni (Democrito, fr. 226; fr. 554 Nauck adesp.; Eurip. Hipp., 422) assurge a tratto fondante dell’idea greca di libertà. x Xenoph. B 2 Diels-Kranz (apud Athen. 413 F), 11-12. xi Cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1992E. Per la ripresa e rielaborazione delle Sather Lectures del 1962 negli anni 1975-1978, cfr. DI DONATO, ibid., IX-X (ed. ingl.): si rimanda in particolare a MOMIGLIANO 1965B e 1975H. xii Hdt. 7. 140-3 xiii DRIVER 1954 88-96. Per l’aristocrazia ellenizzata cfr. invece ROBERT 1978, 5. xiv PERROT 1974. xv MEIGGS – LEWIS 1988, 20-22, n.12. Sul problema dell’autenticità del documento, contestata da Beloch (GG ii2. 2. 154 s.) e a favore della quale si esprime Momigliano, cfr. part. p. 21. xvi KENT 1953, 144. xvii PUGLIESE CARRATELLI 1966. xviii RICHTER 1946. xix ROOT 1979. xx Hdt. 7.104. xxi BICKERMANN 1963. xxii FRYE 1972. xxiii Hipp. De aere acquis lociis, xvi. xxiv Aesch. Pers. 749-51. xxv Per un’eventuale allusione erodotea alla prepotenza di Pericle si rimanda a STRASBURGER 1955; contro un’interpretazione “ambigua” del passo cfr. invece NENCI 1998, 310-11, commento ad loc. xxvi Cfr. Alien Wisdom, 142-9, per una disamina momiglianea del ruolo “ambiguo e paradossale” giocato da Platone nell’incremento del prestigio di Zoroastro nell’immaginario filosofico greco e per un’indagine sulla sua ricezione a partire da Filippo di Opus, Ermodoro, Eraclide Pontico, Eudemo, fino a Plotino e Porfirio. Per una rassegna della questione, con bibliografia aggiornata, si rimanda a BECK 2003. 72 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire GL 1979 III The Jews inside the Persian Empire Sedi e date EL 1978 (5 novembre – cfr. *D-a 1) GL 1979 (7 febbraio – cfr. GRANATA 2006, 419) Documenti a) EL 1978 III P-o 44 ms. P-o 45 top c. di P-o 44. P-o 46, P-o 64, P-o 65, P-o 126: c.c. di P-o 45. P-o 47 xerox di P-o 126. b) GL 1979 III P-o 64 c.c. di P-o 45 corretta. P-o 91 nuova versione basata su P-o 64, top c. P-o 92 c.c. di P-o 91. 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati Terza lezione del ciclo EL e GL, The Jews inside prosegue la riflessione momiglianea sui processi di autodefinizione che il confronto con la potenza persiana innesca in Greci ed Ebrei, e torna, dopo la parentesi ellenica, a rivolgere l’attenzione al versante mediorientale. Fin dalla versione Efroymson risulta evidente la consistente ripresa tematica di materiale proveniente dalla CL 1977 II (The Temple), soprattutto per quanto riguarda gli aspetti politici ed istituzionali, economici e sociali della funzione del Tempio in rapporto alla potenza achemenide1. Testimoniata da una prima stesura ms. in 24 cc. (P-o 44), la Efroymson lecture è documentata, oltre che dalla corrispondente top c. ds. P-o 45, anche da tre successive c.c. variamente annotate: Po 46, datata al 22.9.78, interessata da un ridotto numero di correzioni essenzialmente formali; P-o 64, reading copy riconducibile anch’essa al settembre 1978 e fornita di un numero consistente di annotazioni autografe mss.; P-o 65, ulteriore copia corretta del febbraio del ’79; e P-o 126, c.c. del settembre del 1978, rivista formalmente da AMM e da cui a sua volta è stata tratta la copia xerox Po 47. Fra le copie Efroymson P-o 64 offre la versione meglio rappresentativa dello stato del testo, non solo per la significatività e per il numero delle annotazioni autografe, quanto anche per la collocazione stemmatica della copia che ne fa il punto di partenza della revisione oxoniense. Come testo della definitiva lecture Grinfield si individua P-o 92, un fascicolo di 25 carte dss. basato su P-o 91, a sua volta una rielaborazione di P-o 64: per evidenziare l’evoluzione del testo dallo stadio Efroymson a quello successivo si riportano quindi in apparato sia le fasi di intervento in P-o 64 rispetto a P-o 45 che quelle in P-o 92 (= 91) rispetto al testo di P-o 64. 2. Argomento della lecture In età ellenistica Gerusalemme è divenuta una solida città-tempio affine a tante analoghe strutture presenti in Asia, benché la ricostruzione del Tempio concessa da Ciro di Persia al termine dell’esilio babilonese non prevedesse la creazione di uno stato annesso. Sulle ragioni per cui l’evoluzione imprevista si fosse affermata già nel corso delle vicende del ritorno in patria degli esiliati gettano qualche luce i libri biblici di Ezra, Neemia, Ester e Daniele. Ne emerge l’impressione che gli stessi Persiani abbiano favorito la politicizzazione dei templi per timore del rafforzamento di autonomie civiche, potenziali acquirenti di mercenari. L’evoluzione della struttura sociale ed economica della Giudea è successivamente accelerata dalla figura carismatica di Neemia. Al cuore rimane il Tempio, che raccogliendo trasversalmente tutte le classi sociali assolve la funzione di mitigarne i conflitti sociali; nasce però in suo supporto l’istituzione sinagogale, le cui origini remote potrebbero essere ricondotte già all’esilio babilonese, ma il cui sviluppo definitivo è determinato dal rinnovato sentimento di vita comunale e religiosa del 1 Per un’analisi puntuale delle riprese cfr. infra, Appendice II (the Temple and the Synagogue, una lezione dissolta). 73 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire giudaismo del Secondo Tempio. Entrando in Palestina nel 330, i Greco-Macedoni trovano un gruppo etnico complesso e autoconsapevole, sviluppatosi in autonomia rispetto alle civiltà circostanti. Ѐ all’unicità delle istituzioni che Momigliano fa infatti risalire il successo nella resistenza all’ellenizzazione: se il Tempio, ben inquadrabile negli schemi culturali ellenici, è destinato a essere riconosciuto e assimilato, l’incompresa istituzione sinagogale passa inosservata e sopravvive a Greci e Romani. Il nuovo senso di urgenza, generato dalle continue imprese dei Greci e dalle loro rivendicazioni di terre, determina tuttavia la fine di quell’atteggiamento di distaccata gratitudine che era stato riservato dagli Ebrei ai Persiani. I successori di Alessandro trasferiscono progressivamente il controllo dei contadini alle classi altolocate (ellenizzate o elleniche), riducendoli a una condizione servile e coinvolgendoli in processi di emigrazione spontanea o forzata, destinata a esiti di maggiore o minore integrazione. La nuova e imprevista fase di espansione provoca negli Ebrei sostanziali mutamenti di prospettiva: si esaurisce la vena profetica e uno stretto monoteismo soppianta i lasciti del politeismo canaaita. Il confronto con il modello greco li induce a cercare nuove vie di indagine su se stessi, di cui il libro di Qohelet offre la prima fondamentale testimonianza. Pur non menzionando mai la cultura greca, lo sguardo perplesso che l’autore rivolge a una situazione sociale in cui il potere di Dio non è confermato dalla sua giustizia è percepito da Momigliano come indizio della sua riconducibilità al primo ellenismo. La successiva canonizzazione del libro conferma la vasta risonanza che le sue domande dovettero incontrare presso gli Ebrei di età ellenistica. 3. I motivi della rielaborazione e i rapporti con GL 1979 IV (Defence). L’effettiva possibilità di un’intersezione tematica tra The Jews inside e la lecture successiva, The Defence against Hellenization, determina il principale problema editoriale che coinvolge le due lezioni, la presenza di duplicati testuali: in altre parole, la versione definitiva o Grinfield di The Defence2 ripropone in due punti materiale tematico già presente in The Jews inside nella sua versione Grinfield P-o 92 (= P-o 91). Il primo caso riguarda un breve excursus sulle origini e sviluppi della sinagoga, presente alle cc. 13-14 e 16 di P-o 92. Benché la versione adottata come testo base per The Defence, P-o 75 (nuova versione ds. di GL 1979), ne sia priva, le sue c.c. P-o 68 (reading copy GL) e P-o 93 (datata da AMM al 26.1.79) ripropongono l’excursus come allegato al cap. IV (cc. 13 a-d). In P-o 69, altra c.c. di P-o 75, l’allegato manca, ma è menzionato da una nota ms. di Momigliano (“add some pp. 13 a-b-c-d on Synagogue”). Sembra quindi possibile concludere che lo stesso paragrafo, già presentato in The Jews inside, sia stato reinserito anche nella lecture successiva. La scelta è stata plausibilmente dettata da esigenze di completezza (plausibilmente in prospettiva di una riflessione editoriale), vista la già considerata intersezione tematica tra le due lectures e soprattutto il valore della breve pericope in cui Momigliano formula la teoria che la sopravvivenza della sinagoga rispetto al Tempio sia da ricondurre all’incapacità del sistema culturale greco-romano di classificarla e assorbirla. Da un punto di vista editoriale, resta però chiara la provenienza dell’excursus da The Jews inside3: uno spostamento in via definitiva del paragrafo alla lecture successiva avrebbe comportato, secondo l’usus momiglianeo, la parallela rimozione del paragrafo dal contesto di origine, che invece lo conserva; va inoltre tenuta in considerazione la glossa di AMM sulla c. 1 di P-o 93 “Grinfield part of III (7.2.79) and part of IV”, che allude in modo esplicito alla presenza nel documento di materiale appartenente a due distinte lezioni. Il secondo caso di duplicazione testuale coinvolge il tema del politeismo semitico e dell’eventuale filiazione, contestata da Momigliano, del partito degli “ellenisti” sviluppatosi sotto Antioco IV dal culto di Baalim ancestrali. Il testo, ds. su un foglio allegato alla c. 21 di P-o 92 e 2 I principali documenti testimoni della lecture sono P-o 75 e le sue c.c. P-o 68, 69, 93. Le aggiunte al testo in P-o 68 e 93 (pp. 13 a-d) contengono i duplicati in questione. Si rimanda al par. 1 dell’introduzione al capitolo successivo per una rassegna analitica. 3 E prima ancora da CL 1977 II (The Temple and the Synagogue), lezione di peculiare estesione dedicata all’analisi delle principali istituzioni del giudaismo post-esilico, sulla cui decostruzione e recupero all’interno del rinnovato ciclo Efroymon 1978 cfr. infra, Appendice I. 74 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire collegato con segno di rimando alla sezione finale del cap. VI, costituisce la riproposizione delle cc. 21-22 di P-o 75. Contrariamente al caso precedente, il paragrafo risulta estrapolato dalle IV lecture per la III, e non viceversa: in entrambi i testi il discorso si ricollega alla riflessione sulla relazione degli Ebrei con i culti ellenistici, ma in The Jews inside l’aggiunta, apposta come precisazione finale a una riflessione più generica su affinità e differenze tra Ebrei e Greci, tradisce la sua natura di appendice e sembra rispondere più a un’esigenza estemporanea di integrazione del testo. Nella presente edizione si è scelto di non riproporre all’interno del testo di The Jews inside il paragrafo in questione, segnalando in apparato il punto di inserzione dell’aggiunta e rimandando per la lettura alla corrispondente pagina in The Defence. In relazione invece al caso di duplicazione sopra discusso, ossia quello relativo all’excursus sinagogale, la questione è complicata dal fatto che alla sostanziale coincidenza del paragrafo originario e del suo duplicato nella sezione finale fa da controparte una consapevole variazione tematica nella sezione d’apertura. Per questo, malgrado una certa sovrapponibilità tra i due testi, si è scelto di conservare il paragrafo sia all’interno del suo contesto d’origine (The Jews inside) che in quello di adozione (The Defence), in considerazione della natura complessivamente incompiuta e “aurale” del ciclo di lectures. 75 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire III The Jews inside the Persian Empire*4 I When the first Greek observers began to take notes on Judaea for the satisfaction of their curiosity, if not for the benefit of the Macedonian rulers, they had no doubt that Jerusalem had always been a Temple-State, such as these which were numerous in Asia. Hecataeus of Abdera, who wrote about the Jews before 300 B.C., firmly stated that the famous and good man Moses built the Temple and put a High Priest in charge when he was compelled to leave Egypt (fr. <III A264 F6> Jacoby = fr. <11> Stern). A hundred and fifty years later Polybius defined the Jews as these who live around the Temple called Hierosolyma (fr. <32 Stern> ap. Joseph. Ant. Jud. 12, 3, 3, 136). In the Hellenistic age it was difficult for a non-Jew (and in a sense, as we shall see, even for a Jew) to be aware that when Cyrus, the King of Persia, decided to allow the Jews to rebuild their Temple in 538 B.C. he did not contemplate the creation of a temple-state. Mysterious as remains the process of the return of the exiles – the first substantial batch of them appears only in 520 B.C. and the Temple was dedicated in 515 B.C. – there seems to be little doubt that the leader of the return was Zerubbabel, a member of the previous royal family. He is the man with whom, according to the Book of Ezra, the alleged enemies of Judah and Benjamin deal when they claim a share in the work of the construction of the Temple (4, 1-2). The prophets Haggai and Zechariah presented Zerubbabel as a Messianic King. It was a marvellous dream, with the universalism one can expect from members of a world empire. The new community, Zechariah asserted, will include many nations, and the days of fast will be turned into days of joy, when many people and strong nations shall come to see the Lord of Hosts in Jerusalem and to pray before the Lord. Haggai is even more sanguine in his prophecy when he speaks (according to the most probable interpretation of 2, 7-8i) of the nations bringing tribute to the Temple, obviously as they had to the Persian [2] king. Six centuries later his words still echoed, at least partially, in the mind of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (12, 26-28). But Zerubbabel disappeared from history as quickly as he had appeared. We are not even given time to consider whether his repudiation of the Samaritans was in the spirit of universality which characterizes his prophetic supporters. We are thrown back into a definite space in which walls have an essential function and in which the precise regulation of corporate and individual behaviour is of paramount importance. Nehemiah’s deep concern for the state of the walls of Jerusalem, understandable and moving as it is, is far removed from Zecheriah’s expectation that Jerusalem will not need a wall because God himself is the wall (2, 3-9). The King of Persia remained at the centre, but not because direct divine inspiration moved his heart, as we had sensed in reading the Deutero-Isaiah and had been given to understand in the introductory chapter of the present Book of Ezra – which is also the last chapter of the Paralipomena. Nowadays there is not much we can say in favour of Spinoza’s theory that the Books of Ezra, Nehemia, Esther and Daniel were all written by one man (Tractatus TheologicusPoliticus X, p. 509 van Vloten and Land). But Spinoza recognized that the four books had something in common. The basic stories of Ezra, Nehemia, Esther and Daniel – whatever degree of historicity you attribute to them and in whatever chronological order you put them – start with an event inside the royal palace: the initiative of a Jew inside the royal palace (most frequently the Persian royal palace) determines the sequence. This was of course sound knowledge of Oriental * Documento preso come base: P-o 92, c.c. di P-o 91 (top c. GL 1979); allo scopo di evidenziare l’evoluzione della lecture dallo stadio Efroymson al successivo, si riportano inoltre le varianti di P-o 64 (c.c. corretta EL 1978), della sua top c. P-o 45 e, eventualmente, delle ulteriori copie EL P-o 46, 47. 4 P-o 92: Re-typed 20.1.79. NB. x in margins to be corrected in top copy, mgsnmsb[AMM]; Grinfield II and part of III (31 Jan. and 7 Feb. 79), mgdxmsb[AMM]. 76 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire courts and more specifically, as the Greek historians confirm, of the Persian court. Palace intrigues were structurally inherent in the Persian state. The same texts, however, show little curiosity for the institutions and the political developments of the Achaemenid Empire. Nothing is said about the administration of the state and very little about its wars. There is a reference to the proskynesis in Esther (3, <2-5>); the plurality of languages in the [3] empire is magnified (Esther 8, 9); an alleged rule that the Persian laws cannot be repealed is quoted in Daniel (6, 15) and perhaps presupposed in the Esther story (ch. 8-9). Within the space of time granted to the Persians in Daniel there is only one allusion to a specific war – the expedition of Xerxes against the Greeks as the precedent for the expedition of Alexander, incidentally a point of view of clear Greek origin (11, 1). If we had to rely only on the biblical texts, we should derive the impression that after Cyrus and before Alexander the Persian empire was almost constantly at peace. This is particularly remarkable as, after all, the Book of Daniel was concerned with the position of the Persian empire in the divine economy of the succession of kingdoms. We have to recover accounts of the rebellions by the Jews themselves against the Persian rule in Palestine from late Christian and pagan sources (Hieron. Chron., II, 113 Schoene; Solinus 35, 4). If, as seems probable, Sulpicius Severus (Migne, P.L. 20, 136 ff.) was correct in finding some connections between the story of the Book of Judith and the troubles in Palestine under Artaserses III Ochos, we are left to wonder how the historical nightmare we all know could have developed. The connection of Psalm 445 with these troubles is a modern and uncertain theoryii.6 Our texts do not even give us reliable information about the administrative organization of Judaea under the Persian ruleiii. There is no explicit statement about the reciprocal relations of Samaria and Judaea as administrative units. We have in the so-called Malachi prophecies an allusion to offerings due to the Persian governor (1, 8), but no historical text clarifies the allusion. What Esther (at least in the Greek version) and Daniel emphasize is how important it is to have influential Jews at the Persian court and how ultimately success at the King’s Palace is not incompatible with obedience to ancestral law.7 Biblical and post-biblical Jewish sources (and we must here include not only the Megillat Ta’anit, but also Book XI of the Jewish Antiquitates by Flavius Josephus) are notorious for mistakes about the number, the names, the order of succession and altogether the chronology of the Persian kings. It [4] is no sufficient explanation of such mistakes that Daniel in its present form belongs entirely to the Greek period; that this very probably applies to Esther too; and that a date after 330 B.C. is on the cards (though never demonstrated) for the present redaction of what we call Paralipomena, Ezra and Nehemiah. We must assume a basic disinclination of the Jewish historians to concern themselves with the Persian empire as a political and institutional phenomenon – the opposite of what we found in the Greek sources. It would be useful to know what precisely Josephus was thinking of when in the Contra Apionem (1, 41) he wrote: “From Artaxerxes to our own time the complete history has been written, but has not been deemed worthy of equal credit with the earlier records because of the failure of the exact succession of prophets”. Did Josephus have specific works in mind in this characterization of Jewish historiography about the Persian and Greek epoch? What he himself produced as Jewish history under the Persians is a paraphrase of the Biblical books with the addiction of a few episodes derived from a source8 interested in Temple affairs and consequently in the relations with the Samaritans. The best known item is the intervention of the Persian general Bagoas when a High Priest killed his brother in the precincts of the Temple. This must have happened in the context of a rebellion against the Persians, but Josephus – that is, his source – seems to be unaware of or uninterested in the connectioniv. 5 6 7 8 ָ ,‫ֱֹהים׀ בְּאָזְ ֵ֬נינוּ‬ P-o 64, P-o 65: ‫שׁ ַ֗מעְנוּ‬ ֤ ִ ‫ א‬, mgsnmsn[Mom?] P-o 64: The connection of Psalm 44 ... uncertain theory, interl.msn[Mom]. P-o 64: What Esther ... ancestral law, mginfmsn[Mom]. P-o 64: sources, interl.msn[Mom]. 77 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire This is not the place to go into the question of Iranian influences on the religious belief of the Jews. But it must be stated that what emerges from a consideration of the religious beliefs of the Jews is not different from what emerges from the political attitudes of the Jews toward the Achaemenids. The evidence for Iranian influences on Jewish religion during the Persian period and the first two centuries of Greek rule does not indicate any deep penetration of Iranian tenets or any familiarity with Iranian religious institutions and rituals. The word for mistery, raz, and the devil Asmodaeus are of good Iranian stock, as may be some of the superstitious practices going on in the Book of Tobit. But the multiplication of angels and devils or, to speak a loftier language, the reassessment of the twin questions of [5] Evil and of the mediation between God and Man – seems to be internal to the new situation of Judaism as a proselytizing religion in the late Hellenistic and in the Roman world. What Professor Rivkin has called the Aaronid revolution v remains mysterious because the Jewish texts are so reluctant to define the structure of power in ancient Judaea. The compilers of the present Books of Ezra and Nehemiah are not interested in telling us at what point of the pyramid the High Priest found himself after the intervention of the two envoys extraordinary from the King: the powers of Ezra and Nehemiah themselves are described analytically without any precise reference to the others authorities of the land. The main preoccupation of the new leaders was the renewal of the Covenant. The present Book of Nehemiah is symbolically right in making Ezra and Nehemiah attend together at the ceremony of the renewal (10, 1), though it is practically certain that they could not have been there together. After the discovery of the Qumran texts the temptation has indeed been strong to treat the whole story of the renewal of the Covenant as a fiction concocted by sectarian predecessors of the Qumran sectarians. This radical solution creates more difficulties than it solves and seems to me unlikelyvi. Even if accepted, it would not change the basic fact that Ezra and Nehemiah kept faith with their calling by defining for themselves and their followers a zone of obedience to God, within which no interference from a foreign king was valid. The total effect was to assume a Jewish commonwealth to which the presence of foreign rulers should be, strictly speaking, irrelevant. But this irrelevance of foreign rule, neither easy to formulate nor to put into practice, was to remain a basic problem for Judaism.9 There10 were enough difficulties to be faced in treating Judaea as a sacred territory: delimitation of the community in terms of purity of descent; rights of priests and Levites; co-operation between town and country; reduction of debts; payment of dues to the Temple. The list would no doubt be considerably longer if we could [6] safely isolate the sections of the Priestly Code which were added or modified in the fifth and fourth centuries B.Cvii. What ensured the success of what we call Nehemia’s settlement was its broad agreement with Persian policy of support for national religious organizations. One has the impression that the Persians either deliberately or instinctively favoured, whenever possible, the politicization of the Temples as an alternative to civic autonomies which, whether Greek or modelled on Greek poleis, were proving very difficult to handle. Many of the temple-states so interestingly described by Strabo in Book XII of his Geography did well under the Persians. They were often very old. In some case we can even go back to the Hittite period. We know, for instance, how the great temple of the goddess Hepat of Cumana in Cappadocia struggled through the centuries with the kings of the land for privileges and exceptions from taxes (A. Archi, La Parola del Passato 64, 1975, 32744). This archaism commended the temple-states to the Achaemenids. What they had to fear most of all was the concentration of mobile wealth in the hands of political bodies and individuals (like the satraps) who would use it to hire mercenaries. Yet the Temple of Jerusalem did not quite fit into the pattern. The Temple was not a landowner, as most temples11 were. The land of Palestine was in private hands, though it is by no means clear 9 10 11 P-o 64: But this irrelevance ... for Judaism, interl.msn[Mom]. P-o 64: At that moment, there mgsnmsb[Mom]. P-o 64: temples apparently were, interl.ms. 78 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire whether at least in principle it remained inalienable within the clans. The priesthood depended on the contributions it received. It was even subsidized by the sovereigns, that is, successively by the kings of Persia, Egypt and Syria. It was helped by the offerings of the Jews of the diaspora and of Gentiles who were interested in the Temple. But above all it relied on the tithes Palestinian Jews had to pay. No wonder that with the passing of time the enforcement of the tithes produced a body of regulations and customs to delight any lawyer. As capital accumulated in the Temple of Jerusalem, and direct investment in land was not foreseen, financial transactions must have multiplied. It does not follow [7] that the priest were the only, or even the biggest profiteers. The priestly class itself was divided, as the episodes of violence and even of murder confirm. We also dimly perceive that the Levites, whom Nehemiah had brought to Jerusalem, did not retain their rights and privileges and, as far as the Temple was concerned, became indistinguishable from the singers and the vergersviii. Laymen became partners in the administration of the Temple and in the use of the revenues it collected. Tax collectors for the foreign sovereigns, backed as they were by foreign troops, were desirable agents in the collection and administration of the Temple revenues. What exactly the powerful Jewish sheiks of Ammanitis – the Tobiadsix – and their partners were doing in the time of Nehemiah is anybody’s guess. They had, however, close links with the Persian governor of Samaria Sanballat (Neh. 4, 3 ff.) while participating at the same time in the administration of the Temple where they had had the use of a chamber. Two centuries later the same Tobiad family was acting as tax collectors for the Ptolemies and still had, or had again, a foothold in the Temple. They had allies in the priestly class and were related to the High Priests (Jos. Ant., 12, 60). The story with which the second Book of Maccabees begins shows the superintendent of the Temple, Simon the brother of the future High Priest Menelaus, calling the attention of King Seleucus IV to the amount of money which was stored in the Templex. The High Priest Onias III tried to avoid its plunder by pointing out that part of the money belonged to the Tobiadsxi. Considering how scanty our information is, there are strong indications that both laymen and priests were involved in the service and in the exploitation of the Temple and had complicated relations with the foreigners authorities. Temple treasures were a guarantee12 for tributes, and the ruling power was not above treating them as emergency funds. II Some consequences are immediately noticeable. The social and economic structure of Judaea evolved towards a city-state more definitely than the Jewish planners and the Persian controllers could ever have intended. Modern [8] historians of Judaismxii did not go too far astray in comparing Nehemiah with the Greek city reformers – Solon, Cleisthenes, Themistocles, Pericles and, less flatteringly, Pisistratus. Nehemiah had to deal with debts, like Solon; with the building of the walls, like Themistocles; with the local aristocracies, like Pisistratus and Cleisthenes. He introduced purity tests for citizenship, like Pericles, and had even to deal with a secession of the Levites who had not received their dues – which may well remind us, if not of Athens, at least of Rome in the same fifth century. Nehemiah cared about Jerusalem as a city, not only as a Sanctuary, and the seganim, the officials, to whom he turned to get the Levites back (13, 11), were certainly not priests. In 408 B.C., about forty years after Nehemiah, the Jewish settlers of Elephantina in Egypt appealed for help to the Persian governor of Judaea, to the High Priest Johannes, to his colleagues the priests who are in Jerusalem, to a man simply called Osthanes brother of Anani, and to the nobles of the Jews (A. E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C., 1923, nos. 30-31). It is clear that at that moment the High Priest and his priestly colleagues shared some power with a council of city notables. Two centuries later the evolution of Jerusalem toward a city-state had gone some steps further. The first Greek document to give us a picture of the administration of Jerusalem as seen by the foreign ruler is the letter of Antiochus III to his officer Ptolemy. This is a relatively late text, but it 12 P-o 92: guarantee <-> guaranty, msb[AMM]; P-o 45, 46, 47: guaranty <-> guarantee, msb[Mom?]. 79 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire is pre-Maccabaean and therefore seems to reflect the internal evolution of the state of Jerusalem before evolution was interrupted by revolution. The document shows that about 200 B.C. the Seleucid King, having succeeded the Ptolemies as rulers of Judaea, treated Jerusalem as a polis in which priests, scribes and singers stood between Senate and people, the usual ingredients of a Greek polis. The letter, which is reported by Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities (12, 3, <3, 138-144>), does not explain how the senate was constituted. Because the [9] High Priest, against all expectations, is not mentioned, the chances of the letter being authentic are considerably increased. This indirectly reinforces the claims to authenticity of the following letter by Antiochus III to his minister Zeuxisxiii about sending two thousand Jews to Phrygia and Lydia as military colonists – a point of some interest in view of the recent strong attack against the authenticity of this letter by Jörg-Dieter Gauger (Beiträge zur jüdischen Apologetik, Köln-Bonn 1977, 1-154). We cannot conclude from the silence of Antiochus’s letter to Ptolemy that the High Priest did not preside over the Council of Jerusalem. The letter does, however, show that his constitutional position, not being well defined in Jewish eyes, was also unclear to the ruling power. The two hundred years which had passed between the murder in the Temple narrated by Josephus and the celebration of the High Priest Simon in Ecclesiasticus may well have witnessed a decline in the political power but an increase in the spiritual dignity of the High Priest. The legend reported by Flavius Josephus (Ant. Jud. 11, 8, 5xiv) that Alexander the Great entered Jerusalem hand in hand with the High Priest presupposed the prestige of the High Priest at the time in which the legend was formulated.13 What moves Alexander to show friendship to the Jews and to invite them to fight with him against the Persians is a dream he had had when he was still in Macedonia. In the dream a man had encouraged Alexander to undertake the war against the Persians. Now, in meeting the High Priest of the Jews, Alexander recognized in him the man of this dream. The legend in its main outline must go back to a time14 (not likely to be later than 150 B.C.) when the Jews or at least certain Jews were anxious to appear to be supporters of the Macedonian monarchies and to receive some credit for the destruction of the Persian Empire. This is just the opposite of the hostility towards Alexander which is so emphatic in the initial sentences of the First Book of Maccabeesxv and which has its counterpart in the transformation of Haman the Agagite into Haman the Macedonian15 in the Greek version of Esther (16, 10). The pre-Maccabaic dating has several consequences for the analysis of the text of Josephus which [10] I can only mention in passing. I assume that it was not part of the original story that the priests should show the Book of Daniel to Alexander (which would imply a date later than 165 B.C.); and I consider it very unlikely that the story of the building of the Samaritan Temple was connected with the original version of the visit of Alexander to Jerusalem. It is in any case evident that neither the presentation of the Book of Daniel nor the foundation of the Samaritan Temple has an organic connection with the main theme of the Alexander story as told by Josephus. This passage, the eldest Jewish16 contribution to the legend of Alexander, characteristically highlights the national religious authority rather than the foreign king. It attributes the salvation of Israel to the High Priest. It gives a dignified picture of the High Priest which strongly reminds us of the concluding chapter of Ben Sira. The power of the High Priest was inseparable from the privileged position of the priestly class as a whole: “Fear the Lord and honour his priests” was Ben Sira’s advice (7, 29). As there is no sign that Ben Sira himself was a priest, this is more significant than Josephus’ claim that “membership of priesthood is with us a sign of nobility of origin” (Vita, 1), for Josephus was a priest. We could be certain that priests married within their order and tended to be wealthy even if we did not have a considerable amount of evidence for both phenomena. I shall only recall to memory the endogamy in the priestly family of John the Baptist (Luke 1, 5), and the estate near Jerusalem of the historian 13 14 15 16 P-o 64: formulated -> P-o 45: The legend is clearly pre-Maccabaic, del. P-o 64: to a time and places, interl.ms; P-o 92: corr.def. P-o 45: the Macedonian <-> the Greek, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 64: the eldest known Jewish, interl.msb[Mom] < -> P-o 45: the oldest Jewish. 80 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire Josephus (Vita, 422). But ultimately the power of the priesthood was a reflection of the prestige of the Temple. 17 The Temple had not been rebuilt easily, it did not live on easily: some dissenters were not sure that it was the authentic Temple.18 But it was there. In the emptiness of the Holy of Holies, which only the High Priest visited once a year, the God of the Fathers was again present. The common19 people rejoiced at the Temple. The mere pleasure of being together – men of different social classes and of different places – remained an attraction up to the [11] end of the Second Temple and was still remembered later. Philo, who was once a pilgrim in Jerusalem (De Providentia, 2, 64), recorded this pleasure: “Friendships are formed between those who hitherto did not know each other and the sacrifices and libations are the occasion of reciprocity of feeling and constituted the secret pledge that all are of one mind” (De Special. legibus, 1, 70, transl. F. H. Colson). This unity included the peasants and gives to the Judaism of the Second Temple the curious mixture of aristocratic and plebeian features which did not escape the trained eye of Max Weberxvi . Social conflicts, as we have said20, did exist: they almost produced a disaster under Antiochus IV and under Pompey; they certainly contributed to the disaster of A.D. 70. Ben Sira was in no doubt about the unfitness of the workers to be rulers. But one of the functions of the Temple was to mitigate the contrasts and to provide common ground for worshipping, rejoicing – and repenting. Perhaps because it is so familiar the final redaction of Leviticus is seldom appreciated as a genuine preparation and anticipation of the togetherness which was to become characteristic of the ethos of the Second Temple. Within the same chapters of Leviticus purity norms alternate with direct appeals to love one’s neighbours. The Jews are asked to respect the old, the orphan and the widow and to provide a minimum of subsistence for them. The neighbours were not only the other Jews but the foreigners in the land. The Jews are reminded that they had themselves been strangers in the land of Egypt (Lev. 19, 34). By itself the ritual of the Temple, with its daily round of sacrifices and with the annual offering of first fruits, had ceased to fulfil basic needs of Jewish social life. The concentration of the cult in Jerusalem had cut the direct link which had existed before Josiah’s reform of 621 B.C. between sacrifices and eating animal food. Ordinary killing of animals for the purpose of consumption was no longer – if it ever had been – a sacrifice to God. The seasonal festivities had lost their immediate connection with agricultural life. I cannot explain the very strange information of the Book of Nehemiah 8 that the Jews under the guidance of Ezra celebrated the [12] feast of booths (Sukkot) as they had not done since the days of Joshua son of Nun. But the information implies a break with the past – the awareness of a change. The celebration of the festivals in Jerusalem – that is, for most, away from home – helped to attribute more importance to the Temple and to its priests and less to their sacrifices. In a curious way the Second Temple was getting nearer to fulfilling the prophetic prescription that not sacrifices in themselves, but circumcision of the heart and justice were pleasing to God. Prayers had always been recited in21 the Temple, even if the dedication prayer by Solomonxvii is, in its present form, a Deuteronomic product. But it is something new that the Temple should be defined by Trito-Isaiah as a “house of prayers for all the nations” (56, 7). The relation between the Psalms and the cult remains mysterious partly because of questions of dating, partly because very few psalms – if any – explicitly refer to definite ritual practices – which is significant in itself. But it will not be far from the truth if the Psalms are taken as the most important documents of the common sentiments of priests and laymen during the Second Temple. The other evidence inevitably emphasizes ad hoc prayers: the prayers of Ezra and Nehemiah, Judith, Esther and Tobit and his son. 17 18 19 20 21 P-o 64: incipit cap. III. P-o 64: some dissidents ... the authentic Temple, mgsnmsn[Mom]. P-o 64: common, interl.msn[Mom]. P-o 92: As we have said, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 64: recited by individuals in, interl.ms; P-o 92: corr. def. 81 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire But this does not affect the question of when and how standard prayers were introduced22. I shall do no more than express my scepticism about the attractive theory of Elias Bickerman23 that the original nucleus of the Eighteen Benedictions was a prayer for the city of Jerusalem introduced under Hellenic influence about 200 B.C. (Harv. Theol. Rev. 55, 1962, 163-185xviii ). III24 There is no indication that the ordinary Jew felt out of place in the Second Temple. Documents as different as the Letter of Aristeas and the sectarian Temple Scroll given to us by Yigael Yadinxix show to what degrees of idealization the Temple could lend itself. Such was the prestige of the Jerusalem Temple that its minor imitations in Egypt – first at Elephantina and then at Leontopolis – could ultimately be accepted. Precautions were [13] taken. It seems that after the destruction of that Temple about 400 B.C. the Jerusalem priests obtained an assurance from the Persian that holocausts would not be allowed at Elephantina – though the episode is very obscurexx; and in any case the temple of Elephantina was not rebuilt25. In the second century B.C. there must have been some alarm at Jerusalem about the foundation of the temple of Leontopolis by fugitive members of the Zadokite priesthood. The letters which introduce the present text of the Second Book of Maccabees and perhaps even the Letter of Aristeas are witnesses to propaganda undertaken both in Jerusalem and Alexandria for the rights of Jerusalem. But some modus vivendi must soon have been reached. Philo does not seem to have been aware that Leontopolis represented a problem. The same must be said even more emphatically about the temple the Tobiads seem have built on their ancestral estate in Ammanitis, if it is true that there was a temple there. The conflict with the Samaritans is another matter: they had by then a sanctuary which claimed superiority over Jerusalem. It represented a divergent form of Israelitic cult – perhaps more archaic and as such more attractive to some people – even in Jerusalem26. The Synagogue – revolutionary though it may appear to us – was born to support the Temple. No biblical text either authentically describing or purporting to describe the life of the Jews under the Persians knows of the Synagogue. The only exception which has been suggested is God’s promise in Ezechiel 11, 16: “I will be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come”xxi. But I am, once again, sceptical. The paradigmatic scene of reading of the Law in the Book of Nehemiasxxii implies that about 450 B.C., after their return from Babylonia, the Jews had no institution for the regular reading and interpretation of the Torah. Nehemiah read the Torah as Herodotus read his own Histories27. However, if the Jews remained Jews during the exile, they must have done something more than sitting down by the rivers of Babylon and weeping. They may be some intangible element of truth in the theory which Talmudic texts had already suggestedxxiii and which, to my knowledge, Carlo Sigonio was the first to formulate in scholarly terms in his De republica Hebraeorum of 1583 – namely, that the Synagogue had its origins in the Babylonian exile. [14] What really matters is that the Synagogue grew out of the new feeling of personal involvement in religious practices, study of the law and communal life which the Second Temple fostered by its presence and for which it offered a model. The need for places in which to congregate, study and pray was obviously greater in the diaspora. It will become progressively clearer from our exposition that the Synagogue represented also the Jewish counterpart to the religious associations which were so common in the Hellenistic states. But even in Judaea the desire 22 P-o 64: Traditional hostility to committing prayers to writing is well attested in the Tosefta (Sabbath 13, 4) whereas the Qumran Covenanters seem to have had no objection to prayer books, mgsnmsn[Mom]. 23 P-o 64: Of Elias Bickerman <-> P-o 45 of my friend Elias Bickerman. 24 P-o 64: IV. 25 P-o 45, 46: and… rebuilt, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 64: id., mginf con segr, msr[Mom]. 26 P-o 64: It represented ... in Jerusalem, mgsnmsn[Mom]. 27 P-o 92: Nehemiah read ... his own Histories, interl.ms[AMM]. 82 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire to meet in order to study the Law of the Most High (the occupation which Ecclesiasticus attributed to his ideal Sefer) must have been widespread. And there was the education of children. Centuries were to pass before we could grasp in clear outline the character of the institution which a Jerusalem inscription written in Greek in the first century A.D. defines as “a place for reading of the Law and for instruction about the Commandments” (Corpus Inscr. Iud. 1404). Though many buildings have been identified with synagogues, specific architectural features of synagogues have not yet been found before the second century A.D. A Greek word like proseuché, first documented in the third century B.C. to indicate the Jewish house of prayerxxiv , is not by itself very instructive. We have no idea of what teaching, preaching and study consisted in the two Persian centuries and in the first two Greek centuries – and also our notion of what prayer was at that time is hazy. But praying, teaching, preaching and study must have happened, because without them the Jewish diaspora would have been absorbed by the surrounding cultures and the Judaean community would not have stood up to Hellenization. We may further suspect that the development of the Synagogue was fostered by specific groups such as the “pious” who played a conspicuous part in the first stages of the Maccabaean revolt. Though there is no reason for connecting the Synagogue specifically with the Pharisees28, [15] it seems impossible to separate the lay movements, which Josephus was later to compare to Greek philosophic sectsxxv, from the free association, discussion and communion which went on in the synagogues. IV29 What has emerged, I believe, from this brief discussion of very well known texts is a more precise definition of the boundaries the Jews of the Return had imposed on themselves during the two centuries of Persian rule. They had remained substantially indifferent to the structure of the Persian Empire and were only moderately concerned with their own political structure. In comparison with the Greeks they showed an extraordinary lack of sensitivity to the political problems of their own age – even, at least in their constitutional aspects, to their own political problems. Political debates, theatre, eloquence, and games were no prominent features of social life in Judaea.30 But the community the Jews had created in and around Jerusalem showed no sign of entrusting its present or its future to the clergy. Laymen appeared even in the exploitation of the Temple. The city of Jerusalem was given a shape in which the Greeks were bound to recognize a close approximation to a polisxxvi . When the Greco-Macedonians entered Palestine about 330 B.C., they had made their own the imperialistic aims of the Achaemenids and were trying to reconcile them with a policy of Greek settlements and general Hellenization which directly affected the territory surrounding Judaea. They found in Palestine an ethnic group which was neither committed to the Persian political system nor conversant with Greek civilization, but which could not be controlled by the simple means the Greek used with barbarians – either indirect rule through reliable local chieftains or military settlements and garrisons. The form of government in Judaea was different from the Greek one, yet comparable to it in complexity and in the capacity for self-expression. There was a style of life, a public opinion, a body of written laws, a set of oral traditions and of values, and a system of education which unmistakably separated the Jews [16] from their neighbours. The net of relations between the Jews of Judaea and those of the diaspora added a new complication, for what happened to Jews in Jerusalem was bound to have echoes in Alexandria or Babylonia and vice versa – the more so because the acceleration of urbanization and the rationalization of agriculture in the East in consequence of the Greco-Macedonian conquest increased the opportunities of emigration for the 28 29 30 P-o 64: there is no reason ... the Pharisees, msn[Mom] <-> P-o 45: we have no precise evidence to back our guess. P-o 64: V P-o 64: Political debates ... in Judaea, mgsupmsn[Mom]. 83 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire Jews. The area of the diaspora was continuously enlarging and by 150 B.C. had reached Rome. All this made the Jews difficult to understand and difficult to govern – not for the last time in history. Greek culture had exceptional capacities for translating into its own terminology the ideas and the institutions of other nations, but it also had limitations which are sometimes surprising. Here we meet what is perhaps the most interesting paradox of the encounter between Jews and Greeks. The Temple of Jerusalem was something the Greek could categorize in their own terms without much difficulty and without much deformation. As I have said, already by the end of the fourth century B.C. Hecataeus of Abdera spoke of the Temple and of its priestsxxvii with substantial correctness, not to mention sympathy.31 The Greeks could understand that the God of the Jews had defended his own sanctuary in Jerusalem against Antiochus IV, as Apollo had defended Delphi against the Gauls32. Even when the Jews were suspected of worshipping an ass, that is, a Typhon-like god (a notion which we find explicit for the first time in the second century B.C. in Mnaseasxxviii ), the estimate of the Temple as the centre of Jewish life was not modified. Also Jewish festivals and practices – such as Sabbath, circumcision, and some purity laws – could easily be included in the33 pre-existing category of superstition (deisidaimonia). As superstition they were treated by men like Agatharchidesxxix and Strabo, though Agatharchides did not believe that Jews fast on Sabbath, as Strabo among many didxxx. But the Synagogue did not enter into any obvious category of Greek thought. It was given little attention. It did not invite observers – even extremely [17] intelligent observers like Posidonius or Plutarch – to reflections on what really separated Jews from non-Jews. The Temple was destroyed, but the Synagogue survived.34 Perhaps ultimately Judaism owes its survival to this oversight of the Greeks and, consequently, of the Romans. V As for the Jews, they found themselves faced by peoples toward whom, to say the least, it was not easy to maintain the attitude of detached gratitude and puzzled respect which had characterized the Jewish stand in relation to the Persians. The new Greco-Macedonian rulers were geographically much nearer than their Persian predecessors. Their administrative language, unlike Aramaic, was unknown to the Jews and difficult to learn; yet it had to be learnt by anyone who wanted to communicate with the new masters, because they were not inclined to speak anything but Greek. Greco-Macedonian officials prepared to pick up some Hebrew or Aramaic are not known to me. That an agreeable poet, Meleager of Gadara who incidentally may have been of Semitic origin, could say both chaire and shalom, or something like shalom, proves little either way (Anth. Gr. 7, 419). If we compare the fifth-century Aramaic letters of the Jews of Elephantina to Persian officers with the letters which our old acquaintances the Tobiads wrote to Zeno, the Ptolemaic agent, about 260 B.C., we may at first feel that there is no great change of situation. Ordinary business is transacted; the immediate concerns of daily life prevail in both cases. If the Elephantina Jews had blessed in the name of both Yahu and Khnum, Tobias the Jew expresses many thanks to the gods (C. Pap. Jud. 4). Aramaic epistolary style is just as adequate as Greek epistolary style to express this type of relations. Why should be otherwise? Yet even at this level of routine the Greeks introduced new urgency by the variety of their enterprises and consequently of their requests. In the year in which he looked after the interests of Apollonius, the treasures of Ptolemy II in Palestine and Syria, Zeno was everywhere, and [18] everywhere established personal connections. Agriculture, to which the Persians had already devoted considerable attention, had further to be improved and modified according to Greek standards, trade in grain and olives was supervised, 31 32 33 34 P-o 92: sympathy -> The centrality of the Temple for the Jews is still a matter of course for Strabo, del. P-o 64: The Greeks could ... against the Gauls, mgsnmsn[Mom]. P-o 92: included in the < -> relegated into the, interl.msb[AMM] P-o 64: It did not invite ... Synagogue survived, mgsnmsr>n[Mom]. 84 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire flocks and herds had to be registered (Sammelbuchxxxi 8008). Wealthy landowners in general – not only the well established lords of Ammanitis, the Tobiads – were involved both in the trade and in the administration. One understands why Ecclesiastes puts together kings and wealthy citizens as those who can be dangerous because of the spies they command: “even in privacy do not revile a king, nor in your bedroom abuse a rich man, for a bird of the air may carry your voice”xxxii (10, 20). The system inevitably implied an intelligence service, just as it involved a net of garrisons and fortresses. Jerusalem itself had Ptolemaic and later Seleucid garrisons, though we do not know how continuously. Garrisons have always produced more or less legalized mixed marriages. Behind the traders and the soldiers – and not easily distinguishable from either – there was the new settlers. Greco-Macedonians and other privileged individuals were given land and rights of citizenship either in newly founded cities or in old villages and towns which were refurbished according to Greek models and often with Greek names. Inside the territory which owed allegiance to the Jewish High Priest there was no Greek city foundation under the Ptolemies, but Samaria and Gaza were rebuilt as Greek settlements. In Transjordania the Decapolis developed as a complex of Hellenized cities; Rabbat-Ammon became Philadelpheia in honour of the second Ptolemy. Bet-Shean, though west of the Jordan, was considered part of the Decapolis (Jos. Bell. Jud. 3, 446), and received the unexplained name of Scythopolis. Acco was renamed Ptolemais; and Tyre, Sidon, Beirut and Jaffa were Hellenized. Thus Judaea could be defined as an enclave in a Hellenized territory. In the Tobiad’s land – so a Zeno papyrus of 259 B.C. tell usxxxiii – a Greek mercenary from Cnidus sold a Babylonian girl to a Greek from Egypt: a Jew and a Macedonian were witnesses. Somewhere in Palestine an Aramaic-speaking tradesman who characterized himself as kapelos – that is, with the Greek name for his profession – gave money to a Hellenized [19] Jew. The transaction which may belong to the time of Ptolemy II or Ptolemy III was registered in a bilingual ostrakon (Bull. Amer. Orient. Schools 220, 1975, 55-61xxxiv )35. How Exactly the Ptolemies dealt with the priestly class of Jerusalem we do not know; but it is hard to believe that a new High Priest could be chosen without the consent of the ruling power. VI The strength of the Palestinian Jews lay in the freedom and self-respect of the peasants. The Ptolemies did not find serfs on the land and did not try to create them. Though the sword of Alexander had subjugated lands of very different social structures, the impression one receives from the increasing amount of evidence is that he himself and his successors uniformly tended to transfer the control of the native peasants to the Hellenized – and often really Hellenic – upper class. W. W. Tarn’s once famous dictum “The Greek city then was a boost to the Asiatic peasant and tended to raise his status" (Hellenistic Civilization, 3rd ed., 1952, 135) is now difficult to defend. Isocrates – or whoever wrote the letter to Philip for him – had precisely asked the contrary of the Macedonian king. He asked Philip “to compel the barbarians to serve as helots to the Greeks” (3, 5). Isocrates was nearer to reality than Dr. Tarn. But the Jews accepted the common fate, and [19 a] we should like to know more about how that happened36. Here it is enough to remind ourselves of two facts. The partisan army of Judas Maccabaeus was made up of peasants who returned to their fields in the intervals between campaigns. It was not an army of desperate serfs and slaves, such as became fairly common throughout the Mediterranean world in the next generations. The First Book of Maccabees which reflects the point of view of these peasants celebrates the government of Simon with the formula “Every man sat under his vine and his fig tree, and there was none to fray them” (14, 12)37. It followed that, however big the pressure, there was some space to manoeuvre, some right to talk freely. The comparison of Egypt and Babylonia – infinitely more powerful than Judaea 35 36 37 P-o 64: Somewhere in Palestine ... 1975, 55-66), mgsnmsn[Mom]. P-o 64: and we should ... that happened, mginfmsn[Mom]. P-o 64: Here it is enough ... to fray them”(14, 12), mginf,dxmsn[Mom]. 85 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire in terms of demographic and economic resources, but paralysed by the exploitation of the peasants and perhaps by the lack of confidence of these peasants in their priestly and lay masters – shows how much more effectively the Jews defended their religious and intellectual patrimony by slowing down the general process of the concentration of land in a few hands38. Nor were the Babylonians saved by the Arsacides who Iranised Mesopotamia. The Egyptians had to wait for the Christians or even the Arabs – neither of whom exactly rescued the old native culture. There was no cultural movement inside [20] Mesopotamia and Egypt to be compared with the Jewish renaissance under the Greeks and Romans. The situation of the Jewish peasantry was made safer by the emigration to Hellenized countries which almost immediately followed Alexander’s conquest and involved all categories of the population. The details of this emigration are uncertain, and its juridical aspects are even more open to discussion. Though Josephus and the Letter of Aristeas are not authoritative evidence for either, it was in the natural order of things that Ptolemy I should carry away a great number of Jews as slaves in consequence of his occupation of the territory (Jos. C. Ap. 1, 210; Ant. 12, 7; Ps.-Aristeas 4, 12 and 22). Since Jewish slaves do not figure prominently in later Egyptian documents, it is probable that some change in their status followed swiftly. “The Myth of Jewish Slavery in Ptolemaic Egypt”, as it has been called (by E. L. Abel, Rev. Ét. Juiv. 127, 1968, 253-8xxxv ), must perhaps be redefined more modestly as a problem which, given the evidence, we cannot solve. On the other hand there was plenty of voluntary emigration; and again it would be surprising if there were no truth in Josephus’ statements that in Alexandria, Antioch and elsewhere there were Jews with full rights of citizenship (Ant. 12, 8; 14, 188; 19, 281; C. Ap. 2, 32 and 69 for Alexandria; Ant. 12, 119 for Antioch). In the scramble of city foundation nobody was going to be very choosy. But the Jews who became citizens must have remained a minority; and they never obtained their status of citizens by virtue of being Jews, but rather, probably, qua soldiers or traders or suitable artisans. The whole history of the Jews of Alexandria would become incomprehensible if Jews qua Jews had obtained citizenship there. In a case in which the situation is described objectively, that of Cyrene by Strabo (here quoted by Josephus, Antiq. 18, 372), the population was divided into Greek citizens, Libyan peasants, metoikoi and Jews. What the Ptolemies and probably the other Hellenistic monarchs recognized was the right of the Jews to a certain degree of communal self-government within the city they inhabited. Whether the term politeuma the modern historians [21] use for such limited self-government of ethnic groups within the Greek cities is invariably the right one is another question – not of great importance. The Jews found themselves39 equipped to expand rapidly and on the whole successfully in the late fourth century and in the third century B.C. The union of Judaea with Egypt helped, and so did the need of the Greco-Macedonian minority in Egypt for mercenaries, civil servants, artisans and traders to control the Egyptian peasantry. But emigration was not confined to Egypt.40 What was implied was ability to learn to speak and write a difficult foreign language, to fit into foreign armies and bodies as supervisors, and to understand very alien minds41. Perhaps the experience of the exile and the collaboration with the Persian had trained the Jews to be good emigrants – whether as soldiers, or civil servants or free entrepreneurs.42 One further observation may help. There was a basic element in common between Jews and Greeks in the Hellenistic period. Both had a diasporaxxxvi . Both easily moved from country to country with a reasonable expectation of finding work. Yet they would not find themselves at home anywhere outside their country of origin – Judaea for the Jews; Greece, or rather a specific Greek city, for the Greeks. They faced a different economic and social environment in each country to 38 P-o 64: by slowing ... few hands, mgsnmsn[Mom]. P-o 64: <- P-o 45: What is really the important fact is that, del. 40 P-o 64: -> P-o 45: and we are still left with the basic question of how the Jews found themselves suited to such tasks, del. 41 P-o 64: -> P-o 45: Perhaps the most satisfactory answer in general terms to such a question is that, del. 42 P-o 64: -> P-o 45: But it is not an answer which takes us very far. mgdxmsn[Mom]. 39 86 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire which they went. Forms of production, of taxation and of relations with the natives varied from state to state. But there was a Greek culture to keep the Greeks together as there was a Jewish culture to keep the Jews together. Daily life seemed dangerous; wars were frequent. Some of these wars appeared catastrophic to contemporaries. For both Jews and Greeks religion and/or philosophy provided a sense of identification and an escape from worldly commitments. Neither Jews nor Greeks excluded proselytism. Incompatibility between Jews and Greeks, when it developed, presupposed common factors43, it presupposed above all something which was never made explicit, that in the East both Jews and Greeks were minorities and supported each other. 44 VII No doubt the majority of the Greeks did not even care to know about the [22] Jews, and altogether the ordinary Greek denied monotheism far more aggressively than the Persians could ever have done. Many Greeks came to dislike the Jews simply as bad mixers45. At a higher level of culture, the Greeks offered alternative views and values on almost every aspect of Jewish life – from marriage to education, from art to medicine. What was perhaps even more disturbing from the Jewish point of view was that on any of these important subjects the Greeks seemed to have more than one opinion, and none of these views coincided with what the Jews were learning from their sacred books or were told by the increasing number of their lay masters. Yet the common propensity towards learning, meditation and dialectics and common experiences of danger, nostalgia and sorrow soon had their effects. In the case of the Greeks, it was not so much a better understanding of Judaism46 as an increased respect for Oriental wisdom in general which indirectly also affected the evaluation of Judaism. Conversion to Judaism became a possibility. 47 For the Jews it was a far more painful and complicated reaction, which we shall have to try to analyse in the following lectures, but which cannot be understood without a preliminary recognition that the Jews were led by the new situation to question themselves in a new way – no longer through prophets, but through teachers, sectarian doctrines and apocalyptic seers – and consequently had to rearrange their lives. Some questions may have been formulated by the Greeks and accepted by the Jews as valid. But the general impression I for one have derived from the evidence is that the Jews questioned themselves more than they were questioned by Greeks. In this context it is right to take Qohelet, the Ecclesiastes, as the first Jew who was shaken to his depths by the encounter with the Greeks. He never mentions the Greeks, and no allusion to Greek writers has been found in his workxxxvii . Strictly speaking, we do not even know when he lived. The whimsical author apparently called himself ‘King of Israel in Jerusalem’. He must have lived in Jerusalem, because he speaks of the Temple in tones of familiarity: “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God; to draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifices of fools” (6, 1). The friend [23] who edited his work assures us that Qohelet “taught the people knowledge, weighing and searching and fashioning many proverbs” (12, 9). The word Qohelet, if it means “speaker, assembler”, may bear out that he was a popular teacher much as one met in Hellenistic cities. He uses the Persian word pardes in the way in which the Greeks used its Hellenized form paradeisos to denote orchard48. Two historical allusions, which must have been clear to contemporaries, are lost on us: one is to a king “who came out from the prison-house to rule” (4, 13-14), the other to a small 43 P-o 92: common factors ... supported each other, msb[AMM]<-> P-o 64: basic factors of coexistence; P-o 64: Incompatibility ... basic factors of co-existence. interl.msn[Mom]. 44 C. 21 bis, ds., fissata con graffetta e segr alla c. 21. Per il testo vd. The Defence, cc.21-22. 45 P-o 64: Many Greeks ... bad mixers, mgsnmsn[Mom]. 46 P-o 64: -> P-o 45: - though the success of Jewish proselytism means something, del. 47 P-o 92: Conversion ... possibility <-> P-o 64: The moderate – but definite – success of Jewish proselytism among Hellenes is only the prologue of the acceptance of Jewish tenets and institutions implied by conversion to Christianity. 48 P-o 46, 64: He uses ... orchard, mgdxmsr[Mom]; P-o 45: id., mgdxmsb[AMM]. 87 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire city which “was besieged by a great king and saved by the wisdom of an obscure citizen” (9, 1415). Both allusions, however, presuppose a Hellenistic context.49 Qohelet was not an Epicurean or a Cynic or any other kind of Greek philosopher. No Greek thinker ever centred his meditation on man’s inability to discover the meaning of God’s work which is under the sun. But Qohelet is the first to deserve to be called an Apikoros, an Epicurean in the sense the Hebrew word came to take of a man who doubts what cannot be doubted: God’s justice. Qohelet was concerned about his own God whose existence and power he did not question: what he was not able to perceive was a pattern in God’s actions, especially in the retribution of wickedness. This appeared to him a situation in which the Jews – or perhaps men in general – were placed not because their own faults, but as consequence of the general organization of the world. The traditional Jewish crisis in the relation between God and his people is substituted by a new puzzlement about the whole world – whether populated by Jews or by Gentiles. What seems to me unmistakably early Hellenistic atmosphere of the book is not to be found in linguistic patterns or in facile analogies about “carpe diem”, but in the author’s puzzled look at a social situation in which God’s power is not verified by God’s justice. The later rabbis who codified Qohelet may have been impressed by the fact that the author or perhaps his editor implicitly identified King Qohelet with King Solomon: anything could be expected of King Solomon. But those who supported the contested canonization – and among them was Hillel, the sage of the first century B.C. – [24] must have considered Qohelet’s questioning legitimate and must have felt that it would ultimately lead to the true recognition of God’s Work on earth. The canonization, however, was an admission that Qohelet’s questioning – very different from that of the Book of Job, which is not interested in social organization – was justified in its own terms. If you look at the World, the World – so Qohelet thought – does not make much sense. Clearchus tells us that once Aristotle met a Jewish sage who was a Greek not only in language, but in soul and was able to instruct himxxxviii . The story is almost certainly without factual foundation. In any case Clearchus could not have had Qohelet in mind, though perhaps he was a contemporary of Qohelet. Everything is uncertain about Qohelet, except that he was no Greek either in language or in soul.50 i Aggeo 2:7 pone un problema di mancata concordanza tra il verbo, plurale, e il sostantivo singolare (hemdat, il desiderio) che lo regge. Un’ipotesi di lettura è quella di postulare un’errore nella trasmissione del verbo (“il desiderio di tutte le nazioni verrà”), interpretando così il passo in senso messianico; migliore risulta l’alternativa, cui allude Momigliano, di recuperare la lezione della LXX καὶ ἥξει τὰ ἐκλεκτὰ πάντων τῶν ἐθνῶν, "e affluiranno le cose desiderabili di tutte le nazioni", come riferimento ai tesori portati per abbellire il tempio del Millennio. ii La datazione del salmo al 345 a.C., in coincidenza della spedizione in Giudea di Artaserse III, risale a H. Parker 1978. iii Per l'attenzione del giovane Momigliano agli assetti amministrativi del territorio, cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1930B; ID. B 1934 . iv Ios. Ant. 11, 297. v RIVKIN 1971; ID. 1978. I due momenti fondamentali di autodefinizione ebraica nel contesto del Secondo Tempio vengono identificati da Rivkin nelle rivoluzioni aaronide e farisaica: la creazione e la promulgazione del Pentateuco da parte della nuova élite postesilica determina una presa di potere della classe sacerdotale aaronide destinata a durare fino allo sviluppo della nozione di Legge duplice con cui la classe farisaica si assicurerà l’autorità sulla vita spirituale del popolo. vi Per una recente panoramica (corredata da riferimenti bibliografici) della discussione sul tema del Patto nei testi qumranici cfr. SCHIFFMAN 2010, part. alle pp. 249-253. vii Velata espressione di scetticismo circa la nota teoria di Wellhausen che attribuisce alla fonte P la suddivisione del clero tra sacerdoti e leviti. Per la distanza di Momigliano dall’inclinazione di Wellhausen a cercare “principi immanenti di sviluppo dell’Ebraismo”, cfr. Dopo Weber in Sesto, 302; BERTI 1987, xiii. viii Il dato è sottolineato anche in WEBER 1921. Momigliano non si addentra nella questione del rapporto tra sacerdoti e leviti, cruciale all’interno della cosiddetta "teoria di Graf-Wellhausen" (cfr. GRAF 1866; WELLHAUSEN 1884, part. ai 49 P-o 64: Both allusions ... context, interl.msn[Mom]. P-o 64: Everything ... or in soul, mginfmsb[Mom]; P-o 45: Qohelet was Greek neither in language nor in soul, b ms [AMM]. 50 88 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse III. The Jews inside the Persian Empire capp. 4 e 5). Va tuttavia rilevato come i cenni all’argomento lascino trapelare una maggiore vicinanza alla prospettiva weberiana, sostanzialmente derivata da Meyer, rispetto a quella di Wellhausen, che nell’ambito di una complessiva valutazione dell’influenza della fonte sacerdotale P sul Pentateuco nella retrodatazione di dati e realtà risalenti all’epoca della composizione sostiene ad es. la recenziorità di Ez. 44, 6-16. ix Cfr. I Tobiadi nella preistoria del moto maccabaico (= Tobiadi). x II Macc. 3, 4-6. xi II Macc. 3, 10-11. xii Cfr. e.g. SMITH 1971, 170 ss., per un confronto di Neemia con Pericle e KIPPENBERG 1982, 55-62, per quello con Solone. xiii Ios. Ant. 12, 148-52 Marcus. xiv Ios. Ant. 11.329-39 Marcus. xv I Macc.1, 2-3; sui successori (in particolare Antioco Epifane), cfr. 1, 9-10. xvi Cfr. Sects and Cults of the Post-Exile Period, in WEBER 1952, part. alle pp. 392 – 400. xvii I Re 8, 22-61. xviii BICKERMAN 1962B. xix YADIN 1983. Momigliano possedeva il resoconto preliminare, YADIN 1967; nel 1985 (o dopo) ne acquistò anche la versione per il grande pubblico (YADIN 1985). xx Cfr. COWLEY 1923, n. 33 (= DAE 104). Il papiro che documenta l’episodio – piuttosto danneggiato e quindi di lettura incerta– è databile al 407 a.C., ossia tre anni dopo la distruzione del tempio compiuta dalle truppe del governatore di Siene Vidranga e ci fornisce la risposta di quattro rappresentanti della colonia di Yeb alle condizioni poste dal satrapo persiano per la ricostruzione: gli Ebrei locali non compiranno più olocausti, ma solo offerte di incenso, cibi e bevande, versando in aggiunta ai governatori denaro e mille ardab (misura persiana) di orzo. xxi King James Version. xxii Neemia 8:2-10. xxiii Per un quadro sintetico della riflessione sulle origini della sinagoga nei testi talmudici cfr. STEMBERGER 1979, 110-121. Il Talmud offre differenti prospettive sulla questione: se in Targum Jer. I in Es. 18,20, la Sinagoga viene fatta risalire al tempo di Mosè, in corrispondenza all’affermazione di Ezechiele 11,16 per cui “nei paesi della diaspora Dio è diventato per il suo popolo un piccolo santuario (lemiqdash meat)”, Bab. Megillah 29a interpreta l’espressione in riferimento alla Sinagoga. Lo stesso testo fa risalire anche le sinagoghe di Chu Tsal e di Shabjatib di Nehardea all’esilio. Un’intepretazione parallela è quella che considera modelli dei servizi religiosi sinagogali le riunioni degli anziani davanti al profeta Ezechiele (Ez. 14,1; 20,1). xxiv OGIS, No. 726 = CII, No. 1440 = LIFSCHITZ 1967B, No. 92, p. 78. Si tratta di una iscrizione di Schedia, datata al regno di Tolomeo III Evergete (246-222 a.C.). xxv Ios. BJ II, 8,2-14 Niese. xxvi Claudio, citato da Giuseppe in Ant. 20,11 Marcus, si rivolge Ἱεροσολυµιτῶν ἄρχουσι βουλῇ δήµῳ Ἰουδαίων παντὶ ἔθνει, “agli arconti, boulé, demo di Gerusalemme e a tutto il popolo ebraico”. La figura dei dieci governanti, i δεκάπρωτοι, viene menzionata in Ant. 20.194, BJ 5.532; il βουλευτήριον compare in BJ 2.405, il segretario della βουλή in BJ 5.532 (cfr. LEVINE 1999, 84). xxvii Fr. 11 Stern (=FrGH 264 F6) Aegyptiaca, apud Diod. Sic., Bibl. Hist., 40, 3, 3-5; fr. 12 Stern (=FrGH 264 F21) De Iudaeis, apud Ios., Ap. I, 183-204, particolarmente 187 (Ezechia), 198-199 (Tempio e sacerdoti). xxviii Fr. 28 Stern (apud Ios., Ap. II, 112-114). xxix Fr. 30 a-b Stern (=FrGH 86 F20a-b) apud Ios. Ap. I, 205-211; Ant. XII, 5-6. xxx Strab., Geogr. XVI, 40 (fr. 115 Stern); Id., Historica Hypomnem., ap. Ios., Ant. 14, 66-68 (fr. 104 Stern =FrGH 91 F15). xxxi SB 8008. xxxii La traduzione del versetto parrebbe di Momigliano, non corrispondendo a nessuna delle versioni consultate. xxxiii P. Cair. Zen. 1. 59001 = Scholl, R., C. Ptol. Sklav., 37 = BAGNALL – DEROW 1981, 237, n. 143. Il papiro, duplicato di un atto di vendita del 259 a.C., documenta l’acquisto della schiava babilonese Sphragis alla presenza di sei testimoni. Per una riproduzione fotografica, vd. CAVALLO – MAEHLER 2008, 13, fig. 11; CAVALLO 2008, 33. tav. 10. xxxiv GERATY 1975. xxxv ABEL 1968. xxxvi Il ricorso alla nozione di diaspora per i Greci di età ellenistica si osserva già in Bickerman (cfr. in proposito From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees, p. 32). xxxvii Per una precedente analisi momiglianea di Qohelet cfr. Ebrei e Greci, 23, in cui già risultano presenti, sia pure in forma sintetica, i punti nodali dell’argomentazione così come formulati nella lecture: particolarmente la presenza “sotterranea” della cultura greca, mai nominata ma proprio per questo tanto più pervasiva, e la perdita di fiducia dell’Ecclesiaste nei confronti del senso della storia, “o meglio il senso di una direzione negli avvenimenti che caratterizza tutti gli altri testi biblici, compreso persino Giobbe”. xxxviii Clearchus apud Ios. Ap. I, 180-181 (cit. anche in Eus. P.E. 9.5) = fr. 6 Wehrli. 89 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization GL 1979 IV The Defence against Hellenization Sedi e date: EL 1978 (8 novembre – cfr. *D-a 1) GL 1979 (14? Febbraio – cfr. GRANATA 2006, 419) Documenti a) EL 1978 IV P-o 48 ms. P-o 49 top c. ds. di P-o 48. P-o 50, P-o 66: c.c. di P-o 49. P-o 51, P-o 67 xerox da una c.c. di P-o 49. b) GL 1979 IV P-o 75 nuova versione ds., xerox della top c. P-o 68 (a), P-o 69, P-o 93 (a), c.c. di P-o 75. P-o 68 (b), P-o 70, P-o 93 (b) aggiunte al testo. 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. Sviluppata a partire dal ripensamento radicale delle due lectures centrali nel ciclo CL 1977, The Temple and the Synagogue e The Rabbis and the Communities1, The Defence compare per la prima volta come EL 1978 IV a chiusura di quello che potrebbe essere definito il ‘trittico’ derivante dalla loro rielaborazione. La posizione mediana della lecture mette in risalto la natura non conclusiva di un’indagine che, analizzando le forme di opposizione del giudaismo nel contesto ellenistico, apre contemporaneamente nuovi interrogativi: posta la resistenza all’ellenizzazione, in quali ambiti storico-culturali è possibile identificare l’assimilazione e la relazione intellettuale degli Ebrei con i Greci? All’immediata risposta fornita a Cincinnati dalle due lectures successive (e conclusive), Jews and Gentiles e The Decline of History and Apocalypse, Momigliano opporrà ad Oxford un’assenza di risposte: se la versione Grinfield della lecture risulta generalmente improntata alla ricerca di formulazioni più caute e rigorose, la domanda con cui conclude l’intero primo ciclo oxoniense sul giudaismo ellenistico non può non rimandare all’esigenza di continuare a indagare nella direzione individuata. Come testo base per l’edizione di The Defence si è scelto un testimone del testo Grinfield, P-o 75, classificato da Granata 2006 come xerocopia della nuova versione ds. per GL 1979. P-o 75 pone un lieve problema di datazione, in quanto reca in calce all’ultima pagina la data “September 1978”, piuttosto adeguata a una lezione Efroymson che a una Grinfield: considerata la sua natura di xerocopia, la difficoltà non pare tuttavia insormontabile e si giustifica per dipendenza dal modello. P-o 75 è infatti l’esito di una rielaborazione del testo di Cincinnati, testimoniato essenzialmente da una copia ms. (P-o 48, 22 cc.), dalla sua trascrizione ds. (la top c. P-o 49), e dalle sue c.c. P-o 50 (esiguamente annotata da AMM), P-o 66 (EL reading copy). Un’ulteriore c.c. di P-o 49 sembra infine alla base di due xerocopie di EL, P-o 51 e P-o 672. P-o 75 risulta a sua volta riprodotto in tre c.c.: P-o 68, annotata in testa alla c. 1 come “reading copy. Feb. 1979”; P-o 69 (c. 1: “revised Feb. 1979”) e P-o 93 (ulteriore c.c. di P-o 75, ribattuta a macchina il 26.1.79 secondo le indicazioni di AMM). Tutte e tre le copie carbone sono interessate da interventi di maggiore e minore entità, riportati all’occorrenza in apparato; il motivo per cui non sono state adottate come documenti base della lecture risiede in primo luogo nella discordanza tra alcuni degli interventi e scelte testuali adottate, tra cui risulta impossibile stabilire una priorità cronologica; in secondo luogo, perché il principale intervento operato rispetto al testo di P-o 75, l’inserzione delle cc. 13 a-d (un excursus sull’istituzione sinagogale testimoniato dal nucleo b di P-o 68 e 93 e dalla corrispondente versione ms., il fascicolo di 3 cc. P-o 70), risulta in buona sostanza 1 Per una rassegna analitica delle riprese cfr. infra, Appendici I e II. Che si tratti di copie xerox di una c.c. di P-o 49 e non di copie dirette si evince dal fatto che in entrambi i fascicoli compaiono fotocopiate correzioni di Momigliano che su P-o 49 sono invece ricopiate a mano da AMM. 2 90 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization un duplicato delle cc. 13-14 e 16 della precedente lecture (The Jews inside). Benché la funzione del testo possa essere ricondotta non a una scelta di ricollocazione editoriale da parte di Momigliano, quanto piuttosto alla volontà di riproporre una pericope d’importanza nodale nello sviluppo complessivo del discorso, in ottemperanza a un’esigenza di completezza espositiva (sulla questione dei duplicati tra GL 1979 III e IV cfr. supra, alle pp. 74-5), la presenza di lezioni alternative tra il passo e la sua ripresa, concentrate soprattutto nella prima parte, ha indotto a riproporre anche in The Defence il materiale di P-o 70. Si riportano infine anche le varianti di P-o 49, allo scopo di mettere in risalto le principali modifiche apportate nel passaggio dalla versione Efroymson a quella Grinfield. 2. Argomento della lecture A trasformare la devozione sacerdotale del giudaismo persiano nel sistema accademico per lo studio della Torah è l’immersione degli Ebrei nel mondo ellenistico e la conseguente assimilazione della sua fede nell’educazione organizzata. Non si tratta tuttavia dell’unica manifestazione di quello che Momigliano considera il formalismo ellenistico dietro al quale si cela, a partire dal III sec.a.C., l’anti-ellenismo “di sostanza” del giudaismo. Sotto i Greci, rimasti estranei alla poliglossia dell’impero achemenide, gli Ebrei di area linguistica greca (Alessandria) vengono ridotti al monolinguismo: nella conservazione dell’unità nazionale assume così ruolo preminente la traduzione del testo sacro, in prospettiva di un’operazione di consolidamento culturale in cui il bilinguismo greco-aramaico degli Ebrei di Palestina svolge funzione di coordinamento. Entro la fine del II sec.a.C. la Bibbia è disponibile in greco: la più importante fonte sulla traduzione del Pentateuco, la Lettera di Aristea, riconosce la preminenza di Gerusalemme (da cui provengono testo e traduttori) nell’operazione, ma ne individua la sede in Alessandria e attribuisce a Tolemeo II l’impulso per la sua realizzazione. Il coinvolgimento del sovrano, storicamente infondato, prova come gli Ebrei della città tentassero di riconciliare la loro devozione a Gerusalemme con la lealtà verso i Tolemei: indizio della portata dell’operazione di traduzione, la cui inevitabile componente interpretativa appare sempre più un potenziale pericolo per l’unità del giudaismo. Se per limitare l’arbitrio dei targumim, le libere versioni in aramaico, i rabbini producono infatti liste di passi “vietati”, è significativo come sul versante greco Filone si senta in dovere di identificare l’abilità filologica dei traduttori con il dono divino della profezia. All’assimilazione linguistica va affiancandosi nel tempo un’accelerazione nell’evoluzione dell’istruzione ebraica determinata dalla progressiva competizione con quella greca. Il sistema educativo giudaico resta oscuro sotto vari aspetti: articolato in una fase elementare e una avanzata (la Yeshivah) dedicata allo studio della relazione tra Legge scritta e orale, è stato a lungo sottoposto a indagini finalizzate a valutare quanta parte vi rivestissero elementi del sistema filosofico e retorico greco. L’individuazione di potenziali punti di raffronto, desunti da Filone o dai testi rabbinici palestinesi (la nozione di diadoche, le sette leggi o middot di Hillel per l’interpretazione legalistica della scrittura) è tuttavia inficiata in partenza, per Momigliano, dal fatto che nessuno di questi autori si proponesse di reinterpretare il giudaismo in termini greci, limitandosi piuttosto a prestiti superficiali finalizzati a dare sostegno alla propria chiave ermeneutica. Peculiare agli Ebrei appare infine la convergenza degli sforzi per tenere viva e unificata la fede davanti alla rinnovata minaccia politeista, affiancata dalla tentazione costante della civilizzazione ellenistica. La straordinaria varietà di prodotti letterari che caratterizza la letteratura giudaica tra il 200 a.C. e il 100 d.C. dimostra come la vera risposta alla domanda posta dalla civiltà ellenistica non venne trovata nel tempio, quanto nell’educazione. 3. Note di contenuto: le finalità della lecture e il rapporto con i testi editi. Una prima differenza tra la stesura Efroymson e quella Grinfield del testo si apprezza nella ricerca di formulazioni più caute e rigorose, meno tranchantes: rispetto alla versione GL, la EL è maggiormente esplicita nell’individuare possibili conseguenze del tentativo imperialista asmoneo a 91 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization livello di psicologia collettiva (“perhaps, a concealed sense of shame and fear in later Jewish society”, c. 1), mentre la lecture oxoniense contrappone a questa densa ma generica supposizione una più precisa caratterizzazione della resistenza ebraica in termini religiosi e culturali, sostanzialmente anti-politici. Un analogo affinamento si evidenzia nella rivalutazione di talune fonti (ad es. il riferimento alla yeshivah in Ecclesiastico, c. 15), evidentemente sottoposte a revisione, nello smussamento di divagazioni polemiche (eliminazione del passo sulla ricerca dello Zeitgeist “interesting to discover, but elusive to analyse”, c. 18), o infine nelle rifiniture relative a notazioni di tipo sociale (ad es. l’aggiunta di una breve riflessione relativa all’esigenza di tempo e denaro nella scelta di uno stile di vita rabbinico, c. 20). L’aggiunta introduttiva al cap. I (cc. 1-2), dedicata all’opzione metodologica di partenza, fornisce un’indicazione operativa nel delimitare l’argomento della lecture al primo di tre punti proposti per la comprensione dell’identità ebraica in età ellenistica (la situazione linguistica; il sistema educativo; le aree di maggiore scambio culturale) rinviando l’esame degli altri due a una serie successiva3; ma al tempo stesso esprime un’opzione interpretativa di fondo nel riconoscimento del debito con i Greci: è dai Greci stessi, infatti, che gli Ebrei traggono gli elementi fondanti del loro rinnovato sistema socio-culturale in grado, a sua volta, di resistere all’ellenizzazione. Va rilevato come nel corso della lecture Momigliano non si attenga però strettamente al programma proposto in apertura: malgrado la premessa, il sistema educativo viene trattato di fatto anche in questa sede, almeno per ciò che concerne gli aspetti imprescindibili nella considerazione della situazione linguistica. La sinagoga in sé e per sé resterà, invece, questione da affrontare a parte4. Tra le altre modifiche di rilievo va inoltre considerato come, in relazione alle teorie sulla genesi della LXX (cc. 8-9), nella Efroymson Momigliano eviti di prendere posizione riguardo all’affidabilità storica degli eventi descritti dalla Lettera di Aristea (la Settanta come traduzione “statale” realizzata per impulso dei Tolemei), definendo la scelta tra opposte interpretazioni “a question of honest preference” (forse allo scopo di conciliare l’auditorio di Cincinnati5, ma non appare implausibile ipotizzare una forma di riguardo per la posizione di Bickerman già menzionata in Alien Wisdom, 95; cfr. nota xv alla lecture) Nella Grinfield viene invece esplicitata una propensione per la lettura della Lettera di Aristea come leggenda nata per spirito emulativo nei confronti delle traduzioni ufficiali greche, risalenti al 200 a.C. ca., di testi legali egiziani. Anche in relazione alla questione dei Targumim aramaici, l’aggiunta GL (c. 12) sulle liste di passi intraducibili sembra rispondere a un’istanza di maggior rigore, così come la precisazione per cui il “playful element” delle traduzioni non fosse una componente usuale, ma solo occasionale. Infine, un breve intervento in GL sull’interpretazione filoniana della Legge (c. 16), contribuisce a ridurre la genericità della corrispondente formulazione EL, presentando l’operazione di Filone come in grado di trascendere l’uso pratico della Legge alla ricerca di un senso che soddifacesse il filosofo stesso, prima ancora che i concittadini suoi contemporanei. 3 Notevole il richiamo a un secondo ciclo di lectures, conforme a quanto già annunciato in chiusura della prima GL 1979 I, Prologue (“These three themes [i.e. il rapporto di Greci ed Ebrei con la Persia; le forme di comunicazione tra Ebrei della diaspora; i limiti dello scambio tra Ebrei e gentili] will occupy me in the remaining two lectures of this year and in three lectures which I hope to deliver next year”, c. 25). L’annuncio appare rilevante nella valutazione dell’organicità del progetto momiglianeo e della sua evoluzione nel tempo: considerato come il ciclo a cui lo storico rimanda non possa essere identificato nella seconda serie Grinfield (GL 1980, dedicata alle origini della storia universale), ma piuttosto nella quarta, è evidente come fino all’ultima Grinfield lecture 1979 Momigliano fosse ancora lontano dall’idea di una ripartizione quadripartita dell’indagine complessiva. Per l’evoluzione del progetto in tal senso sulla plausibile base di modifiche di contratto si rimanda all’Introduzione al testo. 4 L’enunciazione incipitaria del programma risulta contraddittoria anche rispetto alla sua riproposizione in chiusura del testo: qui Momigliano dichiara infatti di aver trattato i primi due punti (lingua e educazione), promettendo di occuparsi in altra sede del terzo, le relazioni degli Ebrei con i vicini Greci o grecizzati. 5 Tentativo che potrebbe essere messo in relazione ad altre accortezze plausibilmente riservate da Momigliano agli ascoltatori di Cincinnati: l’omissione della riflessione relativa alle esigenze economiche dei rabbini, inserita poi in GL (c. 20), o la battuta su una divergenza di opinioni tra R. Meir e R. Judah (c. 15), eliminata dalla formulazione del testo GL, che presuppone un pubblico di specialisti. 92 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization IV The Defence Against Hellenization* I We must now try to define how the Jews managed to establish themselves as a well recognizable cultural entity in the Hellenistic world – the only culture to stand up to Hellenism within the latter’s borders. Outside there were of course the Parthians and the Romans. It will be enough here to observe that both probably accepted more Greek habits and ideas than the Jews ever did and that they maintained their autonomy by passing from defence to offence and ultimately dividing the Hellenistic world between themselves. True enough, also the Jews embarked on minor imperialism under the Hasmoneans. What that adventure in conquest and forced conversion did to the Jews themselves remains an obscure but important question. Certainly it did not give them more security: on the contrary, the almost immediate result was their having to accept a king, Herod, whom they were never able to trust. It remains obvious, however, that the Jews were neither in a position nor in the mood to proceed to the offensive against the Greeks on a grand scale. Their resistance against Hellenization had to be religious and cultural. 7 I propose to choose for consideration three aspects of the overt situation: the linguistic8 problem involved in entering into the Hellenistic world; the building up of a Jewish system of education; and the areas of greater intellectual exchange between Jews and Gentiles. This year I shall only be able to say something about the first point – the linguistic situation9. The rest of my analysis of the methods by which the Jews organized their intellectual world inside the intellectual world of the Greeks must be left to my second series of lectures. But any analysis of this unusual phenomenon – the building of a Jewish culture within the Greek culture – must start from an elementary constatation. While the Jews had their own religion, their own national customs and their own traditions of writing poetry and history before they knew the Greeks, they [2] had no organized, self-conscious class of intellectuals and no elaborate system of education before they had to stand up to the Greeks. Whether we look at Qohelet – lonely, but not so lonely as to be without an admiring pupil ready to collect his many proverbs (12, 9) – or at Ecclesiasticus “much given to the reading of the Law and the prophets and other books of our fathers” (Prologue) – or at Daniel with his group of mashkilim “who understand among the people and shall instruct many” (11, 33), we find new types of intellectuals among the Jews of the third and second centuries B.C. They are the predecessors of the rabbis who were slowly to become the teachers and the religious leaders in the following centuries. In the same way the “house of learning” of Ecclesiasicus 51, 23, whatever its precise meaning, is the forerunner of the rabbinic schools of later days. What transformed the Judaism of the Persian period, with its priestly piety and worldly ambitions, into the lay, self-centered, unworldly, academic organization for the study of the Law10 6 * Documento preso come base: P-o 75, xerocopia della nuova versione ds. per GL 1979. Si riportano in apparato le varianti significative delle c.c. di P-o 75 P-o 68 (reading copy Feb. 1979), P-o 69 e P-o 93. Si considerano all’evenienza anche lezioni di P-o 49 (top c. EL 1978), allo scopo di evidenziare l’evoluzione da EL a GL. 6 P-o 68: the, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 75 def 7 P-o 75, 68: True enough, also the Jews ... had to be religious and cultural. <-> P-o 49: The Jews embarked on minor imperialism under the Asmoneans but – apart from the fact that the almost immediate result was their having to accept a king, Herodes, whom they were never able to trust – it would be difficult to argue that that adventure in conquest and forced conversion tangibily contributed to the cultural physiognomy of Judaism in the Hellenistic period; the consequences, if any, are of a more intangible nature, perhaps a concealed sense of shame and fear in later Jewish society. 8 P-o 68: the linguistic and social, interl.msn[Mom]. 9 P-o 68, 93: in its connection with the origins of the Synagogue, interl.ms[P-o 68 Mom, P-o 93 AMM]. 10 P-o 68: - and by law I mean the Torah -, interl.msn[Mom]. 93 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization of the later periods is the immersion of the Jews in the Hellenistic world. They learned from the Greeks the importance of education. From this point of view Judaism has remained Hellenistic ever since. It derives from its Hellenistic past its tenacious faith in organized education and learning. But it would only create confusion to infer that most of Jewish culture of the Hellenistic age, even when formulated in Greek, had a Greek origin and was acceptable to the Greeks. Understanding Judaism as it developed between the third century B.C. and the end of the first century A.D. is to find the exact relation between the Hellenism of the forms and the anti-Hellenism of the substance.11 II Educated men of the first millennium B.C. were normally bilingual. Bilingualism had profound roots in Mesopotamia where Sumerian as a literary language accompanied Akkadian through the ages. The Persian Empire made Aramaic almost compulsory as the language of administration. Even Egypt was [3] affected by it. The Jews increasingly used Aramaic instead of Hebrew in ordinary speech. They passed from Hebrew to Aramaic in the same book of the Bible without giving much attention to the facti. In the Western Mediterranean it was Greek that provided Carthaginians, Etruscans, Romans and, to a certain extent, Celts with a second language. But the Greeks themselves were, as we all know, the great exception. They remained almost uncompromisingly monolingual. Those who had to learn a second language, like Democedes and Ctesiasii, both doctors to Persian kings, concealed the fact. Themistocles, who promised to spend a year learning Persianiii, remains so far the only known exception to the great exception. It was as a consequence of living among Greeks that certain Jews were reduced to monolingualism, the one language being Greek. If there is any sign12 of Philo’s really having absorbed Greek culture, it is that he was stupendously ignorant of Hebrew. Some kind scholars have tried to help him out of his Greek monolingualismiv – an embarrassment to them, but not to him. The prestige of Hellenism created a new phenomenon: Jews separated from other Jews because they did not know either Hebrew or Aramaic. In fact, at least from the end of the second century B.C. not all the Jews lived within the Greek and later Roman world. The Jews of Mesopotamia were placed outside it by the Parthian conquest about 130 B.C. Judaism was thus divided into three zones: that in which Aramaic dialects were normally spoken, with some Iranian dialects as an auxiliary language; that in which Aramaic prevailed with Greek as the second language; and that in which Greek prevailed (later, in some places where Greek prevailed, Latin became a possible second language). Where Aramaic prevailed, Hebrew remained alive as a written and perhaps spoken language of the intellectual élite. After the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a conspicuous part of which is in Hebrew, scholars are less sure than they used to be that Hebrew had entirely ceased to be a spoken language in Palestine in the Hellenistic Age. If unity was to be preserved in Judaism, channels of communication had to be maintained between people speaking different languages in different countries. Translation [4] played a pre-eminent part in keeping the Jews united around the Bible: I do not know of any similar phenomenon in Antiquity. With the Bible as the unifying element, prayer and – what mattered most – regulations for daily life had a chance of remaining reasonably uniform. A Jew could recognize his fellow-Jews from Seleucia in Mesopotamia to Rome, whatever language they happened to speak. In this vast operation of continuous repair and consolidation the Jews of Palestine were bound to exercise for centuries the most important role, not only due to the prestige of Jerusalem, but because Palestine was more genuinely bilingual in Greek and Aramaic, and more abundantly provided with intellectuals in command of Biblical Hebrew, than any other region. As nothing is simple, there were difficulties for the Palestinian Jews in keeping their Greek in working order. Even Josephus needed Greek-speaking helpers to write his historical books in 11 12 P-o 75: This year I shall only be able…. and the antihellenism of the substance; P-o 49: def. P-o 68, 93: proof <->sign, interl.msb[Mom]. 94 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization Greek. Some of the anguish ordinary people felt in having to speak or write in Greek is expressed in a letter from an unknown correspondent to Zeno (Zenon Papyri II no. 66): “They treat me with contempt because I am a barbarian ... Please order that ... they pay me my salary, so that I am not starved to death because I do not know Greek well enough”. In Palestine there was furthermore a strong temptation to treat Greek as an enemy language. Greek was after all the language of paganism and of Greek tax collectors. But it is interesting to note that to the best of my knowledge the learning of Greek was not prohibited in Palestine during the period of conflict with Hellenistic kings. A rabbinic prohibition is first vaguely attestedv in relation to the attack by Pompey against the Temple. It is well attested for the great rebellions of the time of Trajan and Hadrian (in the relevant text of Mishnah, Sotah 9, 14 the right reading is Quietus, that is the general of Trajan, not Titusvi). The fact that in a letter discovered by Y. Yadin at Nahal Hever one of the officers of Bar Kochba in the rebellion against Hadrian should have to apologize for writing in Greek may confirm that Greek was altogether discouraged in those years [5] (cf. B. Lifshitz, Aegyptus 42, 1962, 240vii; cf. Tal. Yer. Shabb. 1, 6). It is outside my purpose to discuss the limits and meaning of this prohibition which in any case, when it came, can hardly have been lasting and effective. About A.D. 100 the Academy of Gamaliel II, as we all remember, had the reputation of bringing together 500 students of the Torah and 500 students of Greek Wisdom (B. Sotah 49b) – a piece of information which cannot have been totally invented, though registered at a late date and obviously not to be taken literally. About A.D. 200 the Mishnah allowed a certain number of prayers to be said in any language (Sotah 7, 1) and was altogether sympathetic towards the Greek language. The hostility towards the Greek language – in whatever form it was expressed – appears to be one of the new features of the Jewish reaction to the Roman world in the first century A.D. (and perhaps earlier in the first century B.C.)13 which will occupy us later. The pre-Roman reaction to Greek in Palestine seems to have been to use it to good purpose. III The Bible had to be kept at the centre of Jewish life, even if Jews no longer understood the language in which it had been written. In Aramaic-speaking congregations the Bible was read in Hebrew and translated extempore into Aramaic. The use of a written Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch in synagogues, at least for Sabbath worship, was for a time explicitly forbidden (Talmud Jer. Megillah 4). But nothing could prevent private use of Aramaic translations of the Bible. The discovery of an Aramaic translation of the Book of Job in one of the Qumran caves has proved that such translations did exists: the14 Qumran Job has been dated in the second15 century B.C. The discovery incidentally gave new respectability to the Talmudic story that an Aramaic translation (or Targum) of Job had existed in the time of Rabban Gamaliel I in the early first century A.D. and had reappeared, after having been withdrawn, in the time of his grandson Gamaliel II (Talmud Bab. Shabbat 115 a; Tosefta Shabbat 14 etc.). On the whole recent research on the Aramaic translations of the Bible has been increasingly inclined to make them more ancient than one used to believe them [6] to be. Scholars now speak of the Peshitta, the Syriac translation, as being based on a Palestinian Aramaic text of the first century A.Dviii. The Targum Onkelos seems to have its roots in second-century A.D. Palestine. The complete text of the Pentateuch Targum identified in the Neophyti Codex I of the Vatican Library is dated by its discoverer and editor Alejandro Diez Macho in the second century A.D. Others would go even earlier. Even if Diez Macho and his followersix are proved to have been too sanguine, this text, which remained unknown until 1956 and began to be published in 1968, can hardly be later than the fourth century A.D. Though on the 13 14 15 P-o 75: (and perhaps ... century B.C.); P-o 49: def. P-o 68: traslation of, interl.msn[Mom]. P-o 68: and even in the third, interl.msn[Mom]. 95 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization present evidence the Greek translation of the Bible remains older than the earliest Aramaic texts16, the gap is narrowing. The whole corpus of the writings which we call the Bible, perhaps with the exception of Esther, had apparently been translated into Greek by the time the grandson of Ben Sira wrote the introduction to his own version of Ecclesiasticus about17 132 and 116 B.C.: he speaks of the Law, the Prophets and the rest of the books. 18 The question of what to translate into Greek may well have contributed to the formation of the Hebrew canon. A Greek translation of the Book of Esther made in Jerusalem seems to have arrived in Egypt about 78 B.C. This at least is the most likely interpretation and date of the mysterious colophon of the Greek Book of Esther which says: “In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dositheus who said he was a priest and a Levite, and Ptolemy his son brought the preceding letter of Purim which they said was genuine and was translated by Lysimachus the son of Ptolemy one of the residents in Jerusalem” x . Like Ecclesiasticus, the Book of Esther – or a different redaction of it – was translated into Greek by a Palestinian Jew. 19 It would, however, be rash to conclude that the majority of the biblical books was translated in Palestine rather than in Egypt. Whatever may be the value of the Letter of Aristeas as a source for the story that the Pentateuch had been translated at the time, and by order, of Ptolemy II, the letter represents current opinion in the second century B.C. about the Alexandrian origin of [7] this text. Philo supports the opinion of an Alexandrian origin by recording that the Jews of Alexandria celebrated the translation of the Bible into Greek with a yearly festival on the island of Pharus in which non-Jews participated (Vita Mosis II, 41). However fond of festivals Hellenistic peoples were, I wonder whether there is a parallel to this holiday in memory of a translation. The function20 of the Palestinian Jews in the development of the Septuagint is rather to be sought in the discussion which developed about its reliability in comparison with the original Hebrew text. Not everyone – above all not everyone who knew his Hebrew – was prepared, like Philo, to take the translators as “prophets and priests” (Vita Mosis 2, 40) and to treat their translation as a document divinely inspired as was the Hebrew text. Philo’s clearest proof for this inspiration of the Septuagint – that the Chaldeans (that is, Jews) who had learned Greek and the Greeks who had learned Chaldean (that is, Hebrew), regarded both versions, the Chaldean and the Greek, as “sisters or rather as one and the same”xi – must be treated with caution21. Justin in his Dialogue complains to the Jew Tryphon about the criticism of the Septuagint by contemporary rabbisxii. The Greek scroll of the minor prophets discovered in 1952 in the desert of Judaea has at least proved that Justin was referring to an existing revision of the text of the Septuagint made by a Palestinian Jew who disapproved of some of its renderings (D. Barthélemy, Rev. Bibl. 60, 1953, 1829)xiii. There must have been many predecessors of Aquila who painstakingly tried to provide a literal version of the Bible into Greek against which to control the Septuagint. The legend which developed around the Septuagint in the second century B.C., and which was perhaps first formulated by Aristobulus about 160 B.C. and then by Pseudo-Aristeas, recognized the role of Jerusalem as custodian of the unity of Judaism: both the text of the Law of Moses and the translators were said to have come from there. On the other hand the Alexandrian authors were obviously anxious to make it clear that the translation had the approval of the Ptolemies. There are signs that the Ptolemies followed the example of [8] the Persians in making Egyptian laws accessible to the ruling foreigners of the day. It is recorded that Darius I ordered his satrap to engage Egyptian scholars for a compilation of Egyptians laws in Aramaic and Demotic (W. Spiegelberg, Die sogenannte demotische Chronik, Leipzig 1914, 30-1). In the last few months we 16 P-o 68: with the possibile exception of the Qumran Job, mgdx con segr, msn[Mom]. P-o 68, 93: between <-> about, interl.msn[Mom]. 18 P-o 68: Whether oral translation preceded written translation in Greek as in Aramaic, it is impossible to say, mgsnmsb[Mom]. 19 P-o 68: 78 B.C. -> This is at least… Palestinian Jews, del.; P-o 69, 93: corr. def. 20 P-o 68, 93: the part <-> the function, interl.msb[AMM]. 21 P-o 68: the Hebrew text. –> Philo’s clearest proof … must be treated with caution, del. 17 96 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization have learned from Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 3285 (vol. 47, 1978) that the so-called Demotic legal Code of Hermopolis contained in a papyrus of the third century B.C. was translated into Greek. The papyrus on which the available copy of the Greek version is preserved happens to be of the second century A.D., but that simply confirms that Roman administration was interested in what it called “the law of the Egyptians”. References in Greek papyri of the Ptolemaic period to the “law of the land” leave little doubt that the translation from Demotic into Greek was made fairly early in the Hellenistic period. A terminus ante quem is in any case provided by the record of the Hermias trial of 116 B.C. which quotes these laws; the trial itself was started as the result of a petition made in 125 B.C. (Mitteis, Chrest. 31xiv). Those who believe in the intervention of Ptolemy Philadelphus in the translation of the Septuagint are therefore now entitled to invoke in their support the analogy of the translation of Demotic laws into Greek. But I remain sceptical for three reasons. First, I find it difficult to separate the role of Ptolemy II from the rest of the story which is obviously legendary. Secondly, I fail to see what use the Ptolemaic administration could have made of all the Hebrew history which is mixed up with Hebrew law in the Pentateuch. Thirdly, the translation of Hebrew law should be later than the translation of Egyptian law, but so far we have no evidence to show that Egyptian legal texts translated into Greek existed in the third century B.C.: we know only that they existed before 125 B.C.22 The period which a priori seems to be more appropriate for a translation of Egyptian law into Greek is the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator at the end of the third century, when the status of the natives changed in Egypt and they were admitted to the army. I must add that I do not know of any reference to the Pentateuch as a Jewish code of law [9] in any of the legal papyri so far published. The matter is clearly controversialxv. But I venture to suggest that Aristobulus and the Letter of Aristeas reported a legend inspired by the fact that Egyptian legal texts had been officially translated into Greek about 200 B.C.23 IV What the legend of Pseudo-Aristeas proved24 is that in the second century B.C. there were Jews in Alexandria who tried to reconcile their devotion to Jerusalem with their loyalty towards the Ptolemies and, interestingly enough, chose the translation of the Pentateuch as a symbol of that harmony. It is also worth mentioning that25 Ps.-Aristeas clearly implied that both at Jerusalem and in Alexandria the persons involved in the business would act in accordance with the best standards of philological method. As translating was not one of the activities of the librarians in Alexandria, Ps.-Aristeas could only apply to the translation of the texts the careful method of comparison and collation characteristic of text editions, the translators arriving at an agreement on each point by comparing each other’s work (302). According to Ps.-Aristeas the High Priest himself26 made the essential contribution by lending a most excellent Hebrew manuscript and selecting translators capable of satisfying all the Alexandrian requirements. In fact in the second century B.C.27 there were men in Jerusalem anxious to give the Temple the reputation of a repository of reliable Hebrew texts (as Alexandria was for Greek texts). The second letter which prefaces II Maccabees (late second century) reports the legend of a library of holy28 texts built up by Nehemiah and adds that Judas Maccabaeus also assembled books in the Temple. The writer offers to send copies of these 22 P-o 75: we know only that they existed before 125 B.C.; P-o 49: def. P-o 75: The matter is clearly controversial. But I venture to suggest ... into Greek about 200 B.C. <-> P-o 49 The matter is clearly controversial, and the choice between opposite theories is for the present a question of honest preference. I leave it at that. 24 P-o 68, 93: in any case proves <-> proved, interl.msn[Mom]. 25 P-o 68: harmony. -> It is also worth mentioning, del. 26 P-o 75: According to Ps.-Aristeas the High Priest himself <-> P-o 49 The High Priest himself. 27 P-o 75: In fact in the second century B.C. <-> P-o 49 What is not often observed is that we have independent evidence that in fact in the second century B.C. 28 P-o 49: holy <-> tidy, interl.msn[AMM]. 23 97 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization books to the Jews of Egypt, should they need them. In other words the Jews of Jerusalem were giving polite notice to the Jews of Alexandria that they, too, had libraries and were ready to provide copies of books. It was no inane boast, for we know that they sent a translation of Esther to Egypt. We cannot be so definite about other texts. But we observe that the Book of Daniel which in its present [10] form cannot be earlier, or indeed later, than circa 165 B.C. was already known in Egypt about 150-140 B.C., as the Third Book of Sibylline Oracles shows. We may also ask whether the Second Book of Maccabees itself was prepared in Jerusalem for the specific purpose of despatch to Egypt and of recommending the participation of the Egyptian Jews in the yearly celebration of the festival commemorating the purification of the Temple after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes. This would explains why somebody felt impelled to compile29 this Greek summary of a historical work in Greek by Jason of Cyrene about the events of the time of Antiochus IV. The priestly circles which30 sent a translation of the Book of Esther from Jerusalem to Egypt had perhaps the similar aim of commending the festival of Purim to the Egyptian Jews. Neither the Book of Esther nor the festival it explains gained easy credit among the Jews. The Book of Esther is, so far, the only biblical book of which no fragments have been found in the Qumran cavesxvi . For some reasons Philo does no mention the festival of Purim. And there is the well known story of Rabbi Meir who, when he went in31 Asia Minor in the early second century A.D. in order to “intercalate the year”, discovered to his surprise that certain communities had no Hebrew text of Esther. As he was a professional scribe and knew his Bible by heart he produced a copy about which no complaint was ever made (Bab. Megillah 18 b; Tosefta Megillah II, 5 p. 223 Zuckermandelxvii; cf. Jer. Megillah 1, 7, 70 d. for another difficulty). If in the synagogue of Dura of the third century A.D. the paintings gave pride of place to the story of Mordechai and Esther, we may indulge in the speculation that this was a remote result of the homogenizing influence exercised by the Palestinian scribes through their distribution of Esther either in the original or in authenticated translations.32 Not all can be fanciful in the various Tannaitic stories of manuscripts of the Law preserved in the Temple which were duly collated to establish the correct reading (Sopherim 6, 4; Abot de-Rabbi Nathan, 46 ed. Schechter p. 129). We are told that the scribes adopted the reading of two MSS. and discarded the reading given by one MS. only (J. P. Siegel, The Severus Scroll, Missoula [11] 1975). Flavius Josephus adds nothing to our knowledge of the texts preserved in the Temple by his various references to them in connection with biblical episodes (Ant. 3, 38; 4, 303; 5, 61 and cf. Vita 418). Nor do we know from where came the scroll of the Synagogue of Severus in Rome mentioned by David Kimchi (to Gen. 1, 31): the identification of this scroll with the one taken away33 by Titus (Jos. Bell. J. 7, 162) and represented in his triumphal arch is only a pleasant fantasy (A. Epstein, Mon. Gesch. Wiss. Jud. 34, 1885, 337). But the importance of this dual phenomenon – a strong centralization of the Hebrew text of the Bible in Jerusalem and a steady interchange between Judaea and the diaspora in matter of translations – is easy to grasp. It meant availability and authentication of texts. Laymen now had the means to read and study sacred texts, even if they did not know Hebrew. The scribes, whose existence was recognized by Antiochus III about 200 B.C.xviii, were or became laymen: if priests and Levites, they owed their authority in textual problems not to their ritual status, but to their learningxix. Both the Aramaic and the Greek translations of the Bible were something more than a simple means of making the contents of the sacred books available to Jews with little or no Hebrew. They conveyed an interpretation of the Bible; and as Professor J. L. Seeligmann rightly emphasized, any translation is an actualization of the text, especially if the text is a prophecy (The Septuagint Version 29 P-o 49: compile <-> complete, interl.msn[AMM]. P-o 49: which -> probably later, del. 31 P-o 49: to. 32 P-o 68: to the Egyptian Jews -> Neither the book of Ester nor the festival… either in the original or in authenticated translations, del. 33 P-o 68: fron Jerusalem, interl.msn[Mom]. 30 98 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization of Isaiah, 1948xx). Here, too, there was a potential danger to the unity of Judaism.34 Different interpretations of the Bible, and different translations, might easily turn into sectarian interpretations. This is after all what happened when the Christians ceased being Jews. But within the framework of the Old Faith such a consequence seems to have been avoided. The different translations obviously satisfied, or left dissatisfied, different needs and different people, but, to the best of my knowledge, never became a source of lasting religious disagreements between Jews in the Hellenistic and in the Roman period. One point seems to be worth underlining.35 [12] The Aramaic translations, being more self-consciously an explanation of the original text, which was assumed to be easily accessible, could allow themselves greater liberties. For this reason the rabbis became concerned with the danger inherent in translating certain passages and produced lists of passages not to be translated (and even not to be read in public in the original.). The lists were always short: and the oldest (Mishnah, Megillah 4, 10) is the shortest. There is occasionally an almost playful element in the Targumim. To mention a famous example, one of the Aramaic translations, the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, transforms the quarrel between Cain and Abel into a dispute between a Sadducee – Cain – who does not believe in the importance of good works and in the existence of the world hereafter, and a good Pharisee – Abel – who believes in both. The end remains the old one: Cain kills his brother (J. Bowker, The Targum and Rabbinic Literature, 1969, 132). This is not to say that there may not have been extempore synagogal translations into Greek, as there were into Aramaic; but as far as our evidence goes, texts of Qumran included, it may be assumed that the one original Greek translation of each of the various books of the Hebrew text of the Bible gave rise to various revisions and recensions of what we call Septuagint.36 The Greek translators are anonymous, yet well marked personalities; and when all is said, what remains surprising is the restraint of their interpretations. No generalization about their intentions is legitimate. The old notion that they were uniformly hostile to anthropomorphism was exploded as soon as Professor Harry Orlinsky and others turned to a detailed analysis of the evidencexxi.37 It is remarkable38 that what was good enough for Ps.-Aristeas in order to prove the value of the Septuagint is no longer sufficient for Philo. He replaces the philological skill of the translators with their prophetic gifts and therefore introduces or adapts39 the interesting notion of the translator, qua interpreter, as a prophet of God and partaker of His mysteriesxxii. There is no doubt a personal element of Philo in all this, but he cannot have invented [13] the main point that each translator miraculously produced the same rendering of all the Pentateuch. The attacks to which the translation had been subjected probably necessitated a more irrational apology than that offered by Aristeas. We shall perhaps not go wrong in postulating two other factors: the decline of the prestige of Alexandrian philological methods and the increased detachment of the Jews from the surrounding Hellenized world. Both factors are in keeping with the new atmosphere produced for the Jews by the Roman conquest of the East40. [13a] No doubt the Bible was translated in order that it should be read by any Jew or proselyte in any language at any time. But more specifically, as we have already implied, the Bible was translated in order to have it read and explained in public at fixed dates for the benefit of people who would not have been able to understand a public reading and explanation of the Hebrew text. 34 P-o 69: of the Bible; -> and as Professor J.L. Seeligmann… unity of Judaism, del. P-o 68, 69: the Roman period. -> One point seems to be worth underlining, del. 36 P-o 75: various revisions and recensions of what we call Septuagint. <-> P-o 49: various recensions. 37 P-o 68, 69: -> The Aramaic translations, being more self consciously an explanation… to a detailed analysis of the evidence, del. 38 P-o 75: It is remarkable <- P-o 49:Contemporary Septuagint research is rightly turning its attention to the individual style, the individual bias and the individual competence of each translator – a business complicated by the multiplicity of revisions to which the texts were submitted in various places throughout the centuries, del. 39 P-o 68, 69: introduces -> or adapts, del. 40 P-o 68: inserzione delle cc. 13 a-d con segr; P-o 93: id, senza segr(per cui cfr. P-o 68; P-o 69: def., ma nota msn[Mom]: “add some pp. 13a-b-c-d on Synagogue”. 35 99 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization The diffusion of the translations of the Bible into Aramaic and Greek is connected with the custom of reading and explaining in public certain portions of the Bible at stated intervals (in the first centuries A.D. not only on the Sabbath and other festivals, but also on Mondays and Thursdays). In this respect the public reading and interpretation of the Bible is inseparable from the institution of the Synagogue – the meeting place where the Bible was read. There is not much else we can safely say about the origins of the Synagogue. There may be some intangible element of truth in the theory already to be found in the Talmud (Bab. Meg. 29a) and to my knowledge formulated for the first time in scholarly terms by Carlo Sigonio in his De Republica Hebraeorum of 1583 – namely that the Synagogue had its origins in the Babylonian exile. But Ezechiel 11:16 (God’s words) “I will be to them as a little sanctuary in the country where they shall come” – cannot easily be taken as a reference to a synagogue. Nor does Psalm 74:8 “They have burnt up all the meeting places” necessarily refer to synagogues, apart from the question of the date of this Psalm. What is more, when Nehemiah summoned the meeting in Jerusalem to read the Law, he was doing something unusual. He read the Law, the Torah, as Herodotus, more or less in the same years, read his Histories in Athens. No biblical text either authentically describing or purporting to describe the life of the Jews under the Persians has a clear reference to a synagogue (in Hebrew ha-kesenet or bet ha-keneset, if the reference is specifically to the meeting place). Houses of prayer with the name of proseuchai begin to be documented in Egypt in the middle of the third century; apart from their name there is little to tell us what the Jews where doing in them. The Third Book of [13b] Maccabees, which may belong to the first century B.C. and reports a tall story relating to Ptolemy IV about 200 B.C., ends with the Jews rejoicing and building a proseuche at Ptolemais in gratitude to God and apparently also in defence to the sovereign of the land. To inscribe proseuchai in honour of a “king of flesh and blood” (to repeat the traditional Jewish expression) was a habit of Egyptian Jews. Hard facts begin to appear in the first century A.D. when associations called synagogai in Greek multiply both in Palestine and in the diaspora. These associations either owned or had the use of buildings the legal physiognomy of which gave rabbinic lawyers much to think about: in Roman law the associations themselves were probably collegia licita. To pagan eyes they represented the Jewish counterparts of the thiasoi which were so common around the Mediterranean (Ant. Jud. 14, 215). The clearest definition of a synagogue is in the Greek inscription of Theodotus of Jerusalem of the first century A.D.: “a place for the reading of the Law and for instruction about the Commandments” (Corp. Inscr. Iud. 1404): a definition which of course finds support in Matthew (4:23; 9:35). Since they were free associations with their own elected officials there was no fixed limit to the number of synagogues in each place. The Jerusalem Talmud speaks of 480 synagogues in Jerusalem before the destruction of the Temple (Megillah 3,1), which is not a figure meant to be taken literally, but Acts point to several synagogues. Philo implies the existence of several synagogues in Alexandria (ad Gaium, 132), one of which is described in glowing terms by the Tosefta, Sukkot 4,6, after it had been destroyed under Trajan. In Rome inscriptions seem to imply the co-existence of about twelve synagogues. Jews could therefore easily group themselves according to the language they spoke an the place from which they came. In Jerusalem there were synagogues for Greek-speaking Jews; in Caesarea there was one which was famous because even the Shema’ Israel, the most elementary prayer, was recited in Greek (Talmud Jer. Sotah 7:1, 21b); in Sepphoris in Galilee, which is credited with twenty synagogues, one was called the Synagogue of the Babylonians; and in Rome there was a Synagogue of Hebrews, that is, probably of Aramaicspeaking, in contrast to Greek-speaking, Jews. Latin-speaking synagogues are not documented, but [13c] Umberto Cassuto offered some argument for a tradition of Latin reading of the Bible in Italy. Travellers would naturally seek a synagogue where they could find Jews speaking the same language. The Jerusalem inscription of Theodotus which I have already mentioned alludes to a guest-house adjoining the synagogue “with rooms and supplies of water for those who are in need when coming from abroad”. 100 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization Whatever uniformity was achieved in the activities of the synagogues was the result of free acceptance of self imposed rules. The existence of translations of the Bible helped the spread of synagogues, but in its turn the basic uniformity of activities which characterized the synagogues limited the consequences inherent in diversities of language. Ordinary Jews learned to know the whole of the Pentateuch and sections of the Prophet and Hagiographa by frequenting their own synagogue. A sermon commenting on the text read in synagogue soon became another regular feature; and some prayers were a permanent part of the service. There is no sign that before A.D. 70, when the Jews were profoundly divided in matters of religious belief, the synagogues were the place for hostile encounters. Later, the free character of the association, the relative smallness of the congregations, and the basic simplicity of what was taught made the synagogues the ideal centre of Jewish life when the Temple was no longer in existence. In the synagogues the Jews were sure to find the God of their Fathers in their hours of need. Finding God became almost equivalent to learning the Bible, and learning the Bible meant remaining Jews. This explains why often enough the synagogue was used as a school or had a school nearby.41 [13d] In studying the Jews one becomes aware that Greek culture, with all its exceptional capacities for translating into its own terminology the ideas and the institutions of other nations, had limitations which are sometimes surprising. Here we meet what is perhaps the most interesting paradox of the encounter between Jews and Greeks. The Temple of Jerusalem was something the Greeks could categorize in their own terms without much difficulty and without much deformation. As I have said, already by the end of the fourth century B.C. Hecataeus of Abdera spoke of the Temple and of its priests with substantial correctness, not to mention sympathy. The Greeks could understand that the God of the Jews had defended his own sanctuary in Jerusalem against Antiochius IV, as Apollo had defended Delphi against the Gauls. Even when the Jews were suspected of worshipping an ass, that is, a Thyphon-like god (a notion which we find explicit for the first time in Mnaseas in the second century B.C.), the estimate of the Temple as the centre of Jewish life was not modified. Also Jewish festival and practices – such as the Sabbath, circumcision, and some purity laws – could easily be included in the pre-existing category of superstition (deisidaimonia). As superstition they were treated by men like Agatharchides and Strabo, though Agatharchides did not believe that Jews fast on the Sabbath, as Strabo among many did. But the study of the Bible in the42 Synagogue did not enter into any obvious category of Greek thought. It was given little attention. It did not invite observers – even extremely intelligent observers like Posidonius or Plutarch – to reflections on what really separated Jews from non-Jews. The Temple was destroyed, but the Synagogue survived. Perhaps ultimately Judaism owes its survival to this oversight of the Greeks and, consequently, of the Romans, about the singularity of the Synagogue. V [13]Whether in Hebrew or in Aramaic or in Greek, Jewish children had to learn their three R’s. Extensive literacy has already to be assumed for the Persian period, as the Aramaic papyri suggest. With the Ptolemies the Jews found themselves in one of the most paper-conscious societies the world had ever seen before the eighteenth century. As we Jews know by traditional experience, if the Jew has to compete within the frame of a non-Jewish society and wants, or is required, to preserve his traditional patrimony, he will be found to be deficient on one of the two sides or more probably on both, unless he is prepared and able to put in an extra effort and to work more than those who are safely inside one culture. In the Hellenistic age the problem became probably more acute in Palestine than elsewhere because Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek co-existed there more naturally than elsewhere. But if you were monolingual in Aramaic or in Greek, you would require xxiii 41 P-o 93: But it is not my intention today to go into the subject of schools and general education with which I shall hope to start my lectures next year. 42 P-o 93: study of the Bible in the, interl.ds. 101 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization the same patrimony of knowledge as your Gentile neighbours who spoke the same language. And if, more specifically, you were a Greek speaker, you had an enormous patrimony to assimilate in order to be accepted as educated by educated Greek-speaking Gentiles; furthermore, you had to make sense of whatever you knew of your Jewish traditions when they were presented to you in Greek. We are deplorably ignorant – or, to put it more cautiously, I am deplorably ignorant – about how these problems were solved in practice in the last three centuries B.C. We are almost entirely dependent on inferences from later periods, [14] especially from the post-Mishnaic period when rabbis liked to reflect and to tell anecdotes about education. This is evidence to be treated with great caution, not only because it reflects preoccupations of the age in which it was collected, even if it refers to prior periods, but because Greek education too kept changing through the centuries. In the third century B.C. the Jewish intellectual, such as he is depicted in Ecclesiastes and in Ecclesiasticus, still had much of the traditional wise man who was good at riddles and proverbs. Five centuries later he was pre-eminently either a lawyer or a preacher. In the intervening period there are seers such as Daniel and the authors of Enoch; historians in a quasi-traditional manner, like the author of the Hebrew First Book of Maccabees, or in a quasi-Greek manner like Josephus; and philosophers like the anonymous author of the Wisdom of Salomon and Philo. Each of them presupposes a training which we cannot even imagine. There remains the general fact that, like contemporary Greek education, Jewish education must have been based on a distinction between elementary education and higher education. At the level of learning how to write and read and how to understand classical texts there was probably no great difference between Jews and Gentiles, whether the former received their primary training in Aramaic or in Greek. The existence of a formalized elementary education, obvious a priori, is later confirmed by Talmudic terminology and by such nice stories as that of Genesis Rabbah (63, 9) in which Esau and Jacob went together to an elementary school, a bet hasefer, until they were thirteen, and then parted company – Esau to go to the house of idols and Jacob of course to an institution of advanced learning, the bet hamidrash. Children soon started, in one form or another, to read the Bible. The Bible represented, in terms of schooling, a selection of various literary genres which in scope and variety was not inferior to or incommensurable with the selection of Greek classic studied by Greek boys. Two points, however, must be kept in mind. There was a link between school and synagogue, but this link is not clearly perceptible in the Hellenistic age. We are therefore unable to appreciate the real implications of an effort to [15] make education available to everyone in Palestinian villages which is reported to have been set on foot before A.D. 70, though the exact date and the details are uncertain (Bab. Baba Bathra 21 a). Secondly, I do not know whether physical training was a part of Jewish education in this period. I know only of an isolated – and in any case later – rabbinic rule that a father is supposed to teach his son to swim (Bab. Kiddushin 29 a). The Greek gymnasium was, in certain periods, the symbol of what a young Jew should avoid in order to remain a Jew. This is not to say that there was not among the Jews keen interest in athletic games – or even widespread desire to be admitted to the gymnasium. We know that in Alexandria admission of the Jews to the gymnasium was a serious issue under the Emperor Claudiusxxiv . It was an issue arising from the recurrent desire of the Jews to take a full part in the life of their neighbours without being compelled to renounce their own way of living. I leave aside here the faint traces we must recognize of a three-tier system of education in the Hellenistic period, because I am unable to give a precise content to a saying of the Fathers variously attributed to Samuel the Small (first century A.D.) or to Jehudah ben Tema (date uncertain): “at five years for the Mikrah (the Scripture), at ten years for the Mishnah, at thirteen years for the fullfilment of the commandments, at fifteen for the study of the Talmud” (5, 21). What Mishnah 102 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization and Talmud may mean in this context is unclear. 43 But it is worth recalling that the same Sayings of the Fathers allow astronomy and geometry as “hors-d’oeuvre” to Wisdom (3, 19). Where Greek and Hebrew education really began to be incommensurable was at the upper or highest level, of which the first mention seems to be in the allusion to the yeshivah in Ecclesiasticus 50, 29, if this is the correct reading44. The incommensurability applies in different manner to both the Palestinian and the Egyptian varieties of Jewish education, as far as I can visualize them. The Gentile Greeks went for eloquence, philosophy or more rarely a combination of mathematics and philosophy. Law became a subject for study by itself in Rome, not in Greek cities. At the same level the Jews were [16] increasingly concerned with the relation between written law and oral law and with the exact formulation of the latter. We need not discuss here to what extent the notion of a double law – biblical and oral – was peculiar to the sect of the Pharisees, nor how widespread the sect of the Pharisees was either in the first century B.C. or in the first century A.D. xxv Supplementation of the written texts by oral tradition and reinterpretation of the transmitted texts according to recognized rules of reasoning were preoccupations which cannot be identified with Pharisaism or geographically limited to Palestine. They represented the dominant issues in Jewish intellectual life as we know it in the Greek period. Clearly the implications of the study of the Law looked different in Jerusalem and in Alexandria. In Jerusalem, Jewish Law was the law of the land, the differences between sects in their evaluation of it were a constant challenge, and though it might have been desirable it was not necessary to make out a case for Jewish law which would be acceptable to people (Jews or non-Jews) with a Greek education. In Alexandria, Philo who could claim this Greek education, or anybody like him, had to present a case for Jewish law which transcended its practical use. Philo had to satisfy himself – even before satisfying his Jewish or Gentile Hellenized neighbours – that the law made sense45. Little is gained in opposing Hillel, about whom we know so little, to Philo, about whom we know so much. Both strove to interpret a precisely formulated law which they presupposed to be divinely inspired and unquestionably right. No Hellene ever worried about a comparable problem or faced such a task. Greek philosophical and rhetorical patterns are certainly not lacking in Palestinian rabbinic texts, and some of them at least may be dated before or not much later than the beginning of the Christian era. The notion of the chain of transmitters, of diadoche, is to be found both in Jewish rabbinic schools and in Greek philosophic schools. The Sayings of the Fathers provide obvious parallels for Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers. More specifically Judah Goldin has shown that the celebrated discussion on the [17] “good way for man” in the Sayings of the Fathers 2, 9 is similar in form to the summary of Stoic doctrines in Diogenes Laertius 7, 92 (“A Philosophical Session in a Tannaite Academy”, Traditio 21, 1965, 1-21). Henry Fischel has successfully extended the research to texts which are probably laterxxvi . He has been able to produce some striking Epicurean parallels to rabbinic texts, though I would not go so far as to believe that the passage of the Babylonian Talmud about the four sages who entered Paradise (Bab. Hagigah 14 b) is based on a misunderstood account of Epicurean experiences by the Four Rabbis. On the other hand it is an old commonplace that there is something Greek in the seven rulesxxvii , the so-called middot, which Hillel is supposed to have introduced, or given authority to, for the interpretation of Scripture in legal termsxxviii . The rules had success and according to the traditional interpretation of the evidence, into which I need not enter, other rules were added by later rabbis. Any one of us senses that there must be some relation between these rules and certain categories of Greco-Roman rhetoric. The rule of inference a minori ad maius appears as the first rule of Hillel as kal va-homer. 43 P-o 49: Even R. Meir and R. Judah disagreed about the meaning of Mishnah (Bab. Kiddushin 49 b), one took it to be Halachoth, the other Midrash. 44 P-o 75: 50, 29, if this is the correct reading; P-o 49: def. 45 P-o 75: In Alexandria, Philo ... that the law made sense. <-> P-o 49: In Alexandria, Philo, who had this Greek education, or anybody like him, had to present a case for Jewish law according to Greek philosophic terminology in order to satisfy himself – even before satisfying his Jewish or Gentile Hellenized neighbours. 103 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization It would immediately appear absurd to submit Philo to the same type of search.46 The Greek impact on him is massive. He had a clear notion of what the Greek encyclopaedia (general education) stood for and presented it as subordinate to philosophy (De congr. erud. 79). He pictured his ideal Jew, Moses, as learning mathematics and symbolism from the Egyptians, language and astronomy from the Assyrians and the rest of the encyclopaedia from the Greeks: a truly international education (Vita Mosis I, 23-24). He himself, Philo, like any Greek philosopher, quoted Greek poets and historians; in fact Epicurus was more restrained than Philo in such a display. Many of his quotations are probably second-hand from florilegia, but this was the custom of the age. His knowledge of Plato is undoubtedly first-hand and not superficial. And he tells us that he was present at a performance of Euripides (Quod omnis 141). We must return47 to our starting point that neither the pre-tannaitic Palestinian sages nor Philo and his like were in any sense reinterpreting [18] Judaism in Greek terms. The case of Hillel’s rules is exemplary. In Greek rhetoric there is no system comparable to Hillel’s system. Personally I doubt whether, even if each rule is taken individually, these seven rules have exact parallels in GrecoLatin texts. Great scholars like Saul Lieberman (Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 1950, 46-82) and David Daube (“Rabbinic Method of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric”, H.U.C.A. 22, 1949, 239-264; cf. J.R.S. 38, 1948, 115-117), who have tried to derive the individual rules from Greek models, have not quite succeeded. For the second rule of the Gezerah Shawah (“equal cut”), analogy of words in two laws, only vague parallels have so far been adduced. But the really serious question is whether rhetorical rules were ever used by Hellenistic and Roman jurists to interpret the law. One has the impression that Hillel, or somebody else for him, produced a new approach out of not very perfect information about Hellenistic hermeneutic.48 In the same way, but for different reasons, it is useless to ask how Greek Philo’s approach was to Jewish Scriptures. He adopted Greek modes of allegory. Indeed it is becoming increasingly probable, since the pioneer essay by Jacob Z. Lauterbach, “The Ancient Jewish Allegorists in Talmud and Midrash” (J.Q.R., N.S. 1, 1910-11, 291; 503), that some of these modes are reflected also in the Midrashic interpretation of the Bible. But Philo’s goal remained un-Greek: the understanding of the word of God as transmitted to the Jews in order to fulfil the covenant between God and Israel. As Philo says in a passage of the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain: “the fountain of the devout contemplation of the only wise being, on which Israel’s rank is based, is the habit of service to God” (120, transl. F. H. Colson). Philo’s ideal education was no criticism of, or alternative to, the Palestinian and Mesopotamian type of Jewish instruction. Philo and the Sages agreed on essentials. Their common understanding was not provided by Greek forms of thinking. It was prompted by the very un-Greek conviction that education was the road to God because God had a special covenant with Israel. [19] This conception of education automatically opened up two problems: the possibility of making it available to all Jews and the legitimacy of making it available to non-Jews. To us the second question may seem to be more serious, but in fact the first question proved to be far more intractable. For Philo, as for his contemporaries in Palestine who were accused of compassing sea and land to make one proselyte (Matt. 23,15), the Torah was meant for anyone who wanted it. Partial or total conversion to Judaism was a fairly common event. How proselytism could be made to agree with the election of Israel had always been a subject for reflection, but in practice during the Hellenistic period Jewish education was available to the outsiders who wanted it. When rabbis became recognizable personalities in the first century B.C., we meet figures of rabbis, such as Shemaia and Abtalion, the teachers of Hillel, who were said rightly or wrongly to have been proselytes or sons of proselytes. Good stories circulated about impatient proselytes and patient 46 P-o 75: It would immediately ... the same type of search <-> P-o 49: It is characteristic that it would immediately appear absurd to submit Philo to the same type of search. 47 P-o 75: We must return <-> P-o 49: Yet when all this is recognized, we must return. 48 P-o 75: about Hellenistic hermeneutic. -> P-o 49: The Zeitgeist, as we all know from bitter experiences as researchers, is interesting to discover, but elusive to analyse, del. 104 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization rabbis – and vice versa – of the same periodxxix : they are significant, even if not authentic. There were precedents for the tradition that Rabbi Meir, the pupil of Akiba, was a proselyte, even a descendant of the Emperor Nero, who in the East had a better reputation than in the West. It was an authentic proselyte, Aquila, who provided a new translation of the Bible into Greek when the attraction of the Septuagint began definitely to fade at the end of the first century A.D. VI The problem of the education of proselytes had the advantage of being capable of solution case by case. But economic barriers and intellectual limitations remained operative against the diffusion of higher education to all classes. The link between school and synagogue was probably just as serious an obstacle to completing one’s education as the lack of educational facilities, of leisure and of intellectual ability. Not everyone was willing to study the Torah day and night or to encourage his own son to do so. Jewish education [20] presupposed a specific religious state of mind which not everyone can be supposed to share. Superficially, the uneducated among the Jews, the amhaarez, is similar to the agrikos or rusticus of Greco-Roman civilization; the name am-haarez, people of the soil, may or may not point to the peasants, as do the names agroikos and rusticus. But the name – whatever its original meaning – was soon overlaid with religious connotations. It indicated a man who did not care for ritual purity and scrupulous payment of tithes. It also implied a sinful resistance to proper education: it marked the man who does not care to have a teacher. With the increasing belief in the next life, his position became dubious both in this world and in the world to come (Abot de-Rabbi Natan 41; Mishnah, Demai 2, 1; Bab. Sotah 22 a etc.). Our evidence does not allow us to say exactly how these Tannaitic connotations go back to the Hellenistic age: they must in any case have their roots there. Purity regulations were legalized by Antiochus III (Jos. Ant. 12, 145) and described in the Letter of Aristeas as a natural feature of Jerusalem (106): in the second century B.C. the am-haarez had already plenty of opportunities for offending his neighbour. It was Hellenistic economy at large49 that made it possible for certain free men and their slaves to specialize in reading, teaching, librarianship, commentary on texts, erudition and elaboration of philosophical and ethical systems. The Romans added to these professions a semi-professional class of lawyers – too late certainly to influence the beginning of the rabbinate, but not too late to present a pretty problem to any scholar who is prepared to ponder the simple fact that the compilation of the Mishnah about A.D. 200 coincided with the classical jurisprudence of Papinian, Ulpian and Paul. Even the rabbis who lived on their manual work – and we know a good number of them under the Romans – must have had some spare time and spare money for buying (or copying) and studying books and for memorizing oral tradition. 50 In other words, the social conditions which made it possible for the Jews both to use and to [21] support their schoolmasters, academicians and codifiers are those of the Hellenistic world at large. After all, the Jews lived the normal life of ordinary subjects of the Hellenistic kings (and for a while, later on, of the Roman emperors). There was no ghetto, no restriction or specialization of professions to separate them from Gentiles. The surplus on which the Jewish schools, academies and libraries were built was part of the general surplus produced by the Hellenistic economy or economies. What is peculiar to the Jews is the convergence of the efforts to keep a faith alive and unified in the face of a civilization, such as the Hellenistic one, which was appreciated and therefore was a constant temptation. The more traditional temptations of the Canaanite Baalim, against which the prophets of the First Temple had had to fight, had disappeared for good. In the opinion of the majority of the Jews, the prophets themselves had disappeared together with those temptations. The 49 50 P-o 68: the distribution of power and resources in Hellenistic society <-> Hellenistic economy at large. P-o 75: Even the rabbis ... memorizing oral tradition; P-o 49: def. 105 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization two events can be placed in the fourth century B.C. About 400 B.C. the Jews of Elephantina51 in Egypt still combined the cult of Yahu (another name for Yahweh) with that of Ishumbethel and Anathbethel. It would be surprising if residues of polytheism had not survived in Judaea for a while after the restoration. If there were still polytheists among the Palestinian Jews, they must have imitated their Egyptian brethren.52 The evidence such as it is does not seem to indicate that except for the period of Antiochus IV the tendency to combine – or alternate – the cult of Yahweh with the cult of other gods was a problem in Hellenistic Palestine. I cannot find facts in favour of the theory so vigorously presented by Morton Smith in his epoch-making Palestinian Parties and Politics that shaped the Old Testament (1971) that the Hellenizers in Jerusalem of the Maccabean era simply continued the traditional struggle of the syncretistic worshippers of Yahweh against the followers of the “Yahweh alone” party. It is very doubtful whether any of the new devotees of Zeus Olympios who filled the new gymnasium of Jerusalem felt any nostalgia for the ancestral Baalim. [22] The attempt of Antiochus IV to assert the prestige of Zeus Olympios and of a Greek way of life in Jerusalem makes sense if there were Jews who appreciated the surrounding Greek civilization and its religious and political attitudes. It does not make sense as a return to Semitic polytheism. The Greek gods53 represented after all a passport to free circulation in the Hellenistic territories; and the Jews experienced every day, however favourable general conditions for emigration might be, that there were special difficulties for them in travelling or settling among Gentiles.54 Neither the old Canaanite polytheism nor incidentally the new Iranian demonology making its appearance in the Book of Tobit was the real problem. The course of events under the Hasmonaeans confirmed that the answer to the question put by Hellenistic civilization was not to be found in the Temple – at least not in the Temple alone. It had to be found in an education increasingly involving the laity as both teachers and pupils. Greek education had to be counteracted by Jewish education.55 It was not an education to encourage creativeness; nor was contemporary Gentile education a creative one, for that matter. The very notion of intellectual creativeness cannot be rendered exactly in either ancient Greek or ancient Hebrew. In later rabbinic theory and practice the emphasis on memorizing is notorious and typified by the saying of that most humane of the rabbis, R. Meir, that “he who forget a single word loses his soul” (Abot 4, 12) – though it must be added that the rabbis knew how to distinguish a sage from “a basket full of books” (B. Meg. 28 b). If it did not encourage originality, this education did not preclude it. The astonishing variety of literary products, whether in Hebrew or Greek, which characterizes Jewish literature between 200 B.C. and A.D. 100, is the demonstration. It is worth taking a closer look at one of these books, because the anonymous writer seems to have been bilingual and to have had his roots in Palestine. The date of the author of the Wisdom of Salomon is not too certain. He is later than Ecclesiastes and probably earlier than St. Paul who may or may not have read him. He certainly wrote before the [23] destruction of the Temple. A date in the first century B.C. seems to be right, though it would be difficult to prove. Jerome admired him as a notable stylist in the Greek language and did not find anything Hebrew in him: “Liber qui Sapientia Salomonis inscribitur apud Hebraeos nusquam est, quin et ipse stylus Graecam eloquentiam redolet”xxx . One does not like to have to disagree with St. Jerome in the matter of style. But the Hebraisms of the text are evident, and there is “parallelismus membrorum”, the mark of Hebrew poetic style. Hebraisms are more profuse in the first five chapters, remain conspicuous in the next five chapters and only become a secondary phenomenon in the last nine chapters. It has therefore been suggested that the first five chapters or possibly the 51 P-o 49, 68, 93: Elephantina; P-o 75, 69: Elephantine. P-o 68: Yahwistic monotheism seemed, however, to be the rule both for Palestinian and Egyptian Jews in the third century B.C. <-> If there were… Egyptian brethren, interl.msn[Mom]. 53 P-o 68: There were intrinsic attractions in the Gods of Homer and Plato, and in daily life the Greek gods, interl.msn[Mom]. 54 P-o 75: The more traditional temptation of the Canaanite Baalim ... travelling or setting among Gentiles. = P-o 91, 92 [Jews inside], 21 bis. 55 P-o 75: Greek education had to be counteracted by Jewish education; P-o 49: def. 52 106 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization first ten chapters were originally written in Hebrew. A strict proof has never been provided. But a choice presents itself: either a writer translated into Greek some Hebrew chapters and added a few chapters of his own or a writer moving freely from Hebrew to Greek was capable of stylistic variations in Greek according to what he had to say. I prefer the second hypothesis. In the first chapters the author attacked sceptics like Ecclesiastes and therefore might easily be tempted to use a Hebrew style to counteract arguments expressed in Hebrew. In the next seven chapter he was concerned with the good old Wisdom of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiasticus and therefore still had scope for abundant Hebraisms; but he was no longer replying to specific Hebrew speakers. In the last chapters he moves to an attack against idolatry – especially Egyptian idolatry; a more sober Greek style might appear preferable. Whether this analysis is correct or not, it seems to me certain that we have here an author who is at home both in Hebrew and in Greek. It is consequently difficult to say where he found the notion of immortality of the soul, for which his text is taken to provide the first clear-cut available evidence in Jewish thought. The difficulty partly arises from the fact that though the notion is certainly there, it is not so unambiguous as is often assumed56. We may stretch 3, 4 to mean that the souls of the righteous can expect immortality, but what about the unrighteous? The [24] writer is equally open to more than one interpretation when he states that “God created man for immortality ... it was the devil’s spirit (envy) that brought death into the world” (2, 23-24). What seems to be original in him is the association of the immortality of the soul with Wisdom. “Immortality (he says) is in kinship with Wisdom” (8, 17). He finds in divine retribution after death the answer to the doubts about divine justice expressed by Ecclesiastes. Essenes and Pharisees would have understood, and probably shared, his notion of immortality. As the attack against Egyptian gods is perhaps too strong for a man who wrote in Egypt (though Philo has some harsh words on that) 57, I should not to be surprised to be told that the author of Wisdom was a Palestinian Jew who discussed matters with Hillel. I should be more surprised if his text were shown to have been intelligible and, if intelligible, interesting to a Gentile who had never read Ecclesiastes and did not know Jewish history. This leads us to the third, and final, section of this part of our enquiry: given the linguistic and educational equipment, what were in fact the intellectual relations of the Jews with their Greek or Hellenized neighbours? i Il riferimento è al libro di Daniele, in cui i vv. 1,1-2,4a sono scritti in ebraico, i vv. 2,4bb – 7,28 in aramaico e i capp. 8-12 nuovamente in ebraico (per altri passi dell’AT scritti in aramaico cfr. inoltre Esdra 4,8-6,18; 7,12-26; Ger. 10,10-11; Gen. 31,47). ii L’idea che Ctesia avesse appreso il persiano durante i suoi anni di permanenza a corte è avanzata già da Plutarco (Artax. 13.4-7 = FrGH 688 F23) che suggerisce come Ctesia facesse da traduttore tra il Re e i Greci. Per una recente analisi della questione e delle fonti ad essa relative, cfr. LLEWELLYN-JONES – ROBSON 2010, 55-65. iii Plut., Themist., 29.5 Ziegler. iv Cfr. WOLFSON 1947 I 88-90 e BELKIN 1940, 29-48, per l’uso del testo ebraico della Bibbia da parte di Filone. Si rimanda a SCHÜRER 1998, III.2, 1140-41, per una rassegna delle prospettive della critica sulla questione, a partire dalle Sacrae exercitationes di J.B. Carpzovius (1750) fino al rifiuto di HEINEMANN 1932, 524 ss., e NIKIPROWETZKY 1977, 50-81. v Sotah 49b riporta l’aneddoto per cui, in occasione delle guerre civili tra Ircano II e Aristobulo II (63 a.C. ca.), un anziano uomo di cultura greca sarebbe stato responsabile dell’interruzione dei sacrifici del Tempio, attirando così una maledizione su di sé e su chiunque insegnasse il greco al proprio figlio. vi Per la lettura "Quietus" cfr. e.g. SMALLWOOD 1976, 424 s. e n. 143; contra, e.g., NEUSNER 1989, che a p. 76 (tr. it.) legge "Tito". vii LIFSHITZ 1962. viii I siriacisti moderni concordano in realtà nel ritenere la Peshitta dell’Antico Testamento una diretta traduzione dall’ebraico, realizzata verosimilmente (in considerazione dei rapporti tra la Vorlage ebraica utilizzata e il testo masoretico) nella seconda metà del II sec.d.C.: cfr. BROCK 1997, 13; ID. 2006, 3-4 (si ringrazia il prof. Pier Giorgio Borbone per i riferimenti bibliografici). È possibile rilevare tuttavia all’interno di certi libri, in particolare Pentateuco e Cronache, tratti isolati caratteristici dei Targum che sembrerebbero attestare una certa conoscenza delle traduzioni 56 57 P-o 75: it is not so unambiguous as is often assumed <-> P-o 49: it is not unambiguous. P-o 75: (though Philo has some harsh words on that); P-o49: def. 107 Grinfield Lectures 1979 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse IV. The Defence against Hellenization esegetiche giudaiche. È nel filone di studi relativo all’analisi dei rapporti tra Peshitta e retroterra targumico che verosimilmente si colloca la fonte di Momigliano, il quale sembrerebbe rifarsi qui per la sua affermazione (la Peshitta come versione di un testo aramaico palestinese di I sec.) alla cosiddetta ipotesi “Kahle-Baumstark”, vale a dire alla teoria, sostenuta da BAUMSTARK 1927 e recuperata poi da P. KAHLE 1930 nella prefazione alla sua edizione dei frammenti targumici della Genizah del Cairo, per cui la concordanza di vari punti della Peshitta con il testo dei frammenti permetterebbe di considerarla, piuttosto che una traduzione diretta dall’ebraico, il frutto della tradizione targumica palestinese. L’ipotesi, non priva di conseguenze importanti (in quanto parte di tale tradizione, la Peshitta sarebbe stata di origine ebraica, nata non nell’Adiabene ma qui solo rielaborata a partire da un targum aramaicooccidentale appositamente importato dalla Palestina) risulta abbandonata però già nell’anno successivo all’edizione in BAUMSTARK 1931, che nega l’individuabilità di particolari relazioni tra Peshitta e frammenti, e da SPERBER 1935. Per gli ulteriori sviluppi nella riflessione relativa ai rapporti tra Peshitta e Targumim, si rimanda a DIRKSEN 1993, 37-52, 64-74. ix DÍEZ MACHO 1969 - 1979. x Ester 10, 31. xi Phil. Vita Mosis II 40. xii Iustin., Dial. Triph., 71-73. xiii BARTHÉLEMY 1953. xiv MITTEIS –WILCKEN 1912. xv Per la confutazione momiglianea alla difesa di E. Bickerman della tradizione su Tolomeo II promotore della traduzione della LXX, cfr. Alien Wisdom, 95. xvi Sull’assenza del libro di Ester a Qumran e sulle sue cause si rimanda a C. MOORE 1971, xxi. xvii ZUCKERMANDEL 1937. xviii Ios. Ant. 12.142 Marcus. xix Sull'origine "professionale" della formazione dei Leviti come gruppo sociale, cfr. WEBER 1952 , 258 ss. xx SEELIGMANN 1948. xxi Su antropomorfismo e Septuaginta, cfr. part. ORLINSKY 1944; ID. 1956; ID. 1959-61,. Per una recente valutazione dei contributi di Orlinsky in quest'ambito si rimanda a HAUSER- WATSON 2003, 95 ss. xxii Phil. Vita Mosis II 40. xxiii L’espressione, in uso nelle aree di cultura anglosassone, indica per mezzo delle iniziali fonetiche le tre abilità di base insegnate nella scuola tradizionale: reading, (w)riting,‘rythmetic. xxiv P. London 1912 (Lettera dell’imperatore Claudio agli Alessandrini), Select Papyri II, edd. A.S. Hunt & G.C. Edgar, 1934, pp. 75-89 = CPJ I 151. Nel testo, pubblicato dal nuovo prefetto L. Aemilius Rectus nel novembre del 42 d.C., l’imperatore permette agli Ebrei di conservare la libertà religiosa garantita da Augusto, vietando al contempo estensioni dei diritti civili tra cui la possibilità di avere accesso alle attività atletiche del ginnasio. xxv Cfr. GL 1982 II (The Jewish Sects), part. alle cc. 7-8, 11, 14-16. xxvi Cfr. FISCHEL 1968 e part. FISCHEL 1973 (p. 4 e 106, nn. 47-48, per le acquisizioni sul tema anteriori alla sua ricerca; pp. 51-89 per l’indagine sul Midrash di Simeon ben Zoma in Talmud Bab. Berakhot 58a e Talmud Jer. Berakhot 13c, IX.2). xxvii DAUBE 1949. xxviii Tosefta, Sanhedrin 7,11; Abot de-Rabbi Nathan, rec. A, 37 (ed. Schechter, p 110). xxix Vd. Bab. Shabbat 31a per la più famosa vicenda di conversione di un impaziente proselito, che illustra bene i discordi atteggiamenti dei rabbi Shammai e Hillel. Per la bibliografia relativa, cfr. SEGAL 2014 (part. alle pp. 591 ss.) xxx Hieron. Praef. in libros Salom. PL xxviii.1242 (cfr. anche Isid. Hispal. Etymol. vi 2.30). 108 Chicago Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Two Types of Universal History. The Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber CL 1979 I Two Types of Universal History: The Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber Sedi e date: CL 1979 (12 aprile, cfr. D-a 1) Documenti: a) CL 1979 I P-o 115, P-o 116 mss. P-o 95 top c. ds. di P-o 116, poi revisionata per pubblicazione. P-o 94, P-o 117 (a1-3): c.c. di P-o 95. *P-o 1 xerox di P-o 95, base per la nuova versione di P-o 128. P-o 128 nuova versione per «JMH» e per Pippidi Festschrift [Bibl.700] top c. P-o 96 c.c. di P-o 128. P-o 189 xerox, cfr. P-o 128, P-o 96. 1. Una “premessa di metodo”: Freeman, Weber e l’universalismo. Two Types è una lezione eccentrica e, in quanto tale, destinata a essere presto separata dal suo contesto di origine. Proposta come CL 1979 I in apertura del secondo ciclo momiglianeo sul giudaismo ellenistico, Daniel and the Origins of the Universal History, il suo valore di introduzione al metodo di indagine (la storia universale rimane un’espressione essenziale dell’eredità greca ed ebraica, ma se ne possono mostrare sviluppi e tendenze in età contemporanea) rappresenta l’anello di congiunzione tra l’analisi del sistema weberiano di interpretazione della storia attraverso la religione, quello di E.A. Freeman – storico comparatista che crea un ibrido razzista tra la successione delle istituzioni politiche e il ruolo della razza germanica – e le prime manifestazioni del genere, dai prodromi poetici della Grecia arcaica fino agli esiti tardi e cristiani di Eusebio e Agostino. Posto questo elemento di contatto, è la distanza dal corpo tematico del ciclo di lectures a determinarne la sua finale destinazione editoriale specifica, già all’indomani della presentazione al Warburg: il Gauss Seminar di Princeton sarà infatti aperto nel novembre del 1979 direttamente dalla seconda lezione del ciclo originario, Universal History in Greece and Rome. La scelta editoriale è quella di non riproporre il testo della lecture, scritto da Momigliano per la Festschrift D.M. Pippidi con il nome Two Types of Universal History: The Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber (= Bibl. 700), pubblicato in The Journal od Modern History (1986), 235-45 e ristampato successivamente in “Studii Clasice” 24 (1986), 7-17, e in Ottavo Contributo, 121-134. La rassegna dei documenti in Archivio attesta infatti l’assenza di interventi successivi all’edizione del testo: la serie P-o conserva due documenti mss. (P-o 115, 116) di cui il secondo rappresenta una versione rivista e corretta rispetto al primo; la top c. basata su P-o 116, P-o 95, un fascicolo di 16 cc. dss. che offre il testo letto come CL 1979 I e quindi in stato pre-editoriale1, e le sue due c.c. P-o 94 e P-o 117. Una copia xerox di P-o 95, *P-o 1, risulta evidente base per la nuova e definitiva versione del testo (= Bibl. 700), P-o 128: top c. di cui sono conservate una c.c., P-o 962, e una copia xerox, P-o 189. 2. Argomento della lecture La storiografia universale di XIX secolo introduce per la prima volta l’idea che l’umanità sia ripartibile in gruppi coesistenti dalle caratteristiche permanenti: in questa riflessione rappresentano due tappe significative le riflessioni di Freeman e Weber. Le opere storiche del primo (una Storia del Governo Federale, sei volumi sui Normanni, quattro sulla Sicilia) risultano percorse da una visione dello sviluppo dell’umanità fortemente razzista, improntata sulla fiducia nell’imperialismo germanico. Il filo conduttore della storia è individuato infatti nelle istituzioni delle nazioni ariane, in 1 IL documento presenta l’annotazione: “Warburg seminar 1979, CL 1979 (AMM); Copy revised 5 Sept 1982 to be sent to Journal of Modern History of Chicago (AM)”, c. 1. 2 “New version typed by Miss D. 10.9.82 for McNeill issue of Jl. Of Mod. Hist.; AMM corrected 1.9.82”, c. 2. 109 Chicago Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Two Types of Universal History. The Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber particolare di quelle greca, romana e teutone; guardando al futuro, la riflessione sulle costituzioni federali conduce Freeman a individuare la soluzione dei problemi politici europei nell’estensione della Prussia nel Mediterraneo e nella conseguente restaurazione del Sacro Romano Impero. Il pensiero di Freeman appare quindi un buon esempio della situazione in cui gli storici universali si trovano quando accettano i conflitti di potere come il tratto più importante della storia e li considerano la conseguenza della coesistenza di gruppi razziali incompatibili. La prospettiva storica di Weber non appare meno universalistica di quella di Freeman, ma si sottrae al ricorso di categorie storiografiche all’epoca di moda (tra cui quella di nazione o stato) considerando la nozione di razza irrilevante per il sociologo. L’interesse di Weber, che riconosce solo l’individuo come agente, è piuttosto rivolto ai metodi di legittimazione dell’autorità: la sua ostilità alla tradizione borghese e socialista lo porta a dare alla religione la massima importanza come principio di classificazione delle realtà sociali. Fondamentale in questa prospettiva risulta la ricostruzione del percorso che va dalla credenza all’istituzione: per il Weber maturo è per mezzo degli intellettuali che i gruppi religiosi apprendono a praticare attività economiche e politiche compatibili con le loro convinzioni religiose, in una scala di successo valutata con criteri che classificano la differente approssimazione delle religioni alla razionalità necessaria per lo sviluppo del capitalismo. L’indagine sul giudaismo, condotta con uso pionieristico del Talmud come documento di storia sociale, apre tuttavia una breccia nella sua valutazione del sistema capitalista come il più razionale e funzionale: la tesi weberiana per cui gli Ebrei sopravvissero alla perdita di un centro nazionale grazie a un’interpretazione rabbinica dei libri profetici che enfatizza l’etica dell’umiltà e della dignità di una vita condotta “a margine”, lo porta a dover fronteggiare la constatazione per cui gli Ebrei, pur scavalcando le substrutture dell’autorità politica, avessero tuttavia prodotto una società integrata e razionale, benché non capitalista. 110 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome GL 1980 I Universal History in Greece and Rome Sedi e date: CL 1979 (19 aprile, cfr. D-a 1) GS 1979 (8 novembre, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 420) GL 1980 (23 gennaio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 422) Documenti a) CL 1979 II P-o 97 top c. P-o 119, P-o 122, P-o 174: c.c. di P-o 97. b) GS 1979 I P-o 122 (a-b): (a) c.c. di P-o 97 + (b) aggiunte ms. per GS 1979 I P-o 98, P-o 118: xerox di P-o 122. P-o 99 (b) nuova versione ds. per GS basata su P-o 122 (a-b). P-o 100 (b), P-o 173 (a), P-o 121 (b): c.c. di P-o 99 (b). c) GL 1980 I P-o 99 (a): nuova introduzione e aggiunte per GL 1980 I P-o 100 (a), P-o 121 (a), P-o 173 (b), P-o 175 c.c. di P-o 99 (a). 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. Presentato per la prima volta a Chicago nell’aprile-maggio 1979 con un’articolazione in 5 lectures, il ciclo Daniel and the Origins of Universal History viene riproposto nel novembre dello stesso anno a Princeton (Gauss Seminar) ridotto a sole tre conferenze; è con quest’ultima struttura, all’interno della quale Universal History assume posizione incipitaria, che Momigliano ripresenterà il ciclo a Oxford agli inizi dell’anno successivo1. Tra le carte conservate nella serie P-o dell’AAM testimoniano la versione per Chicago P-o 97, top c., e le sue tre c.c. P-o 119, 122 e 174. Una quarta c.c. corredata da inserti mss. (cc. 10 bis e 15 bis), P-o 122, offre invece la prima stesura GS. Una nuova versione ds., destinata allo stesso ciclo e basata su una rielaborazione di P-o 122 (a-b), è invece ricostruibile dal sottogruppo di documenti formato da P-o 99 e dalle sue sue c.c., che con l’inserto di una nuova introduzione (cc. 1-3) e aggiunte varie (cc. 13-15, 15bis) risulta al tempo stesso testimone del testo Grinfield. Il documento preso come base per l’edizione della lecture è P-o 100, una c.c. di P-o 99. Come la sua top c. si compone di 24 carte dalla numerazione discontinua2, frutto di riutilizzazione di materiali precedenti e riscritture. Entrambi i fascicoli recano le stesse, rade correzioni (per lo più semplici refusi) di mano di AMM. Piccoli ripensamenti lasciano pensare che siano state riportate da P-o 100 su P-o 99 piuttosto che viceversa; P-o 100 è inoltre corredato di titolo e indicazioni su data e storia della costruzione del testo (per cui cfr. c.1, nota ad loc.) che inducono a preferirne la stesura anche rispetto a P-o 121, fascicolo che reca aggiunte mss. di Momigliano e la nota autografa “Reading copy to be kept present to future revision, Nov. 1979” (c.1), ma che parrebbe testimoniare una fase preparatoria anteriore perché diversi degli interventi che riporta (tra cui brevi proposte di taglio, annotate a margine3) risultano tralasciati nel corso della revisione finale di P-o 100. Si è considerato nell’edizione del testo anche P-o 173, catalogato da GRANATA 2006 come ds. del ciclo di Princeton (settembre 1979): colpisce nel testo la mancata aggiunta della parte introduttiva (cc. 1-3[bis]) funzionale a compensare l’eliminazione della prima Chicago lecture ed 1 La sequenza CL (I. Two Types of Universal History: Universal History between Politics and Sociology: the Cases of E.A: Freeman and M. Weber; II. Universal History in Greece and Rome ; III. Daniel and the Dangers of Apocalyptic. IV. The Greeks outside and the Jews inside the Persian Empire. V. The Paradox of the Roman Empire and Christian Historiography) viene ridotta di due lezioni tramite l’eliminazione della prima, ‘eccentrica’ lecture (per cui cfr. supra, pp. 109-10) e della quarta, accorpamento sintetico delle due lectures omonime già presentate ad Oxford come GL 1979 II (The Greeks outside) e GL 1979 III (The Jews inside). 2 Cc. 1-3 (a1); 1-9 (b1); 9 bis (a2); 10-12 (b2); 13-15bis (a3); 16-19 (b3). 3 Cfr. ad es. l’eliminazione dell’excursus informativo su Diodoro (c.17) o di quello su Nicola Damasceno (c. 18). 111 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome effettivamente presente negli altri dss. GS; i fogli 12-15 bis mostrano inoltre alcune differenze, debitamente riportate in apparato, rispetto agli altri documenti (una diversa formulazione del rapporto fra Polibio e Erodoto da un lato, Ctesia ed Eforo dall’altro, cc. 12-14; una trattazione più sintetica su Nepote e Attico, c. 15). L’esame della top c. CL 1979 P-o 97 induce invece a non prenderne in considerazione le varianti, trattandosi di stesura più breve e anteriore, le cui correzioni significative risultano già accolte dal gruppo di dss. di cui sopra. Diversamente da questi P-o 97 presenta, oltre alla prevista assenza di introduzione, una formulazione più breve e meno approfondita degli ultimi due capitoli. Universal History in Greece and Rome ha infine già conosciuto, benché non nella forma qui presentata, una sua destinazione editoriale autonoma, venendo pubblicato in maniera ridotta come prima parte di un saggio nel quale confluiscono anche sezioni della seconda Grinfield lecture, Daniel and the World Empires: un testo di sintesi, già presentato come Creighton Lecture (University of London, 2.2.1981) e successivamente pubblicato con il titolo The Origins of Universal History (= The Origins), per le cui modalità di realizzazione e confronto con le lectures presentate a Oxford cfr. infra, par. 3. 2. Argomento della lecture Il tentativo di leggere una successione negli eventi dell’umanità ha inizio in Grecia prima ancora della nascita della storiografia: al concetto folkloristico di perduta età felice subentra nelle Opere e Giorni di Esiodo l’inserzione di uno schema di successione metallica delle razze che conduce dai primordi al presente. Certo preesistente a Esiodo stesso e non privo di aporie, tale schema è destinato a godere di grande fortuna e di una traduzione, nel passaggio alla cultura romana, del concetto di genos chryseion inteso come tipologia umana in quello di saeculum aureum, tempo aureo ciclicamente ripetibile, recuperato dalla propaganda come attributo del potere imperiale. Un secondo schema di distinzione tra le età dell’uomo (schema biologico) risulta invece più efficace nella descrizione della vita delle singole nazioni che di quella del’umanità intera: nella storiografia imperiale la nozione di vecchiaia di Roma si alimenta infatti del contrasto con la giovinezza dei barbari, mentre un generale concetto di senectus mundi troverà terreno fertile solo tra gli autori cristiani, finendo però per essere trasfigurato sul piano metastorico (la vecchiaia della città dell’uomo è giovinezza in quella di Dio). Un terzo schema, quello tecnologico (processo di acquisizione delle arti, indagine sulle condizioni favorevoli per lo sviluppo della civiltà), rimane di minor fortuna rispetto agli altri, finendo per essere relegato a supporto di teorie filosofiche. La svolta nella direzione di una vera e propria storiografia universale si deve però all’attività di Polibio, il primo storico politico che rivendichi l’appartenenza al genere. Polibio considera la storia universale diretta conseguenza di uno sviluppo storico: è l’instaurazione dell’impero mondiale di Roma a offrire universalità di prospettiva. Nessuno dei precenti imperi parziali poteva infatti garantire le condizioni per la scrittura di quella storia universale che sono i Romani stessi a creare, conquistando il mondo o influenzandolo in senso lato. Le conclusioni polibiane aprono la strada a una nuova scuola storiografica (Posidonio di Apamea, Strabone di Amasia) che accoglie, con maggiore o minore adesione, la sua eredità. Non accettano invece i limiti cronologici fissati da Polibio, risalendo fino all’antichità remota, Cornelio Nepote, Tito Pomponio Attico, Diodoro, Trogo Pompeo, Nicola di Damasco. Dai frammenti emerge, come tratto comune di questi storici, lo spazio concesso ai meriti delle civilizzazioni greche e orientali, di cui si enfatizza l’influenza esercitata sulla cultura latina delle origini, e la schiettezza di prospettive nel valutare le responsabilità romane. L’idea della successione di imperi è destinata infine a tornare anche negli storici di età augustea o successiva (Dionigi di Alicarnasso, Appiano), benché al di fuori di un contesto di storia universale, e a essere recepita dagli stessi Ebrei, che colgono un’imprevista funzionalità nell’enfasi che lo schema pone sulla transitorietà del potere umano. 112 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome 3. Note di contenuto: le finalità della lecture e il rapporto con i testi editi Sono essenzialmente due i saggi momiglianei editi a breve distanza di tempo da Universal History e ad essa ricollegabili sia sul piano contenutistico che formale4: in misura forse minore, certo limitata a specifici nuclei tematici, Two Types of Universal History: the Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber (= Two Types), che prima ancora di essere edita all’interno della Festschrift Pippidi precedeva nel ciclo di Chicago Universal History, fornendole premesse e un inquadramento di metodo (per cui cfr. supra, pp. 109-10); e poi soprattutto The Origins of Universal History (=The Origins), testo di sintesi tra una versione rivista e riassunta di Universal History e parti dalla GL1980 II, Daniel and the World Empires. Che il processo di sintesi proposto in The Origins sia anche un processo di riformulazione si apprezza fin dall’introduzione. L’incipit Grinfield è dedicato a una spiegazione dei tratti di selettività e finalità ordinatrice della storia universale e dell’ampia applicabilità della nozione, da Esiodo fino a Marx (cc. 1-3bis): un inquadramento, il cui valore generale è confermato dalla ricorrenza verbatim in apertura di Two Types, per cui la distinzione proposta tra la prospettiva della storiografia universale greca (successione degli imperi come “scheletro della storia”) e quella ebraica, che contrappone a tale schema la religione come “fattore di durata e perfezione”, permette di costruire un parallelo ideale (evocato da Momigliano stesso in Two Types, p. 123) tra Freeman e Polibio da un lato, Weber e Daniele dall’altro 5 . Nella Creighton lecture si propone invece preliminarmente un’articolazione del testo in una parte dedicata ai tre schemi della storiografia universale (metallico, biologico, tecnologico), dallo sviluppo prettamente letterario e filosofico, e in una seconda incentrata sull’unico schema che abbia goduto di rilievo propriamente storico, la successione di imperi. Se l’escamotage ha il pregio includere Daniele fin dalle premesse, il suo inserimento al termine di una rassegna paratattica di modelli lo priva però di quel ruolo nodale conferitogli dall’articolazione del ciclo Grinfield, dove non assolve una funzione di complemento e conclusione, ma piuttosto di svolta decisiva in direzione del peculiare sviluppo del genere della storia universale nel contesto giudaico, in cui la connessione tra imperi terreni e futuro regno celeste getta le basi per una traduzione della storia in apocalittica destinata a essere ereditata dagli scrittori cristiani. Si assiste dunque in The Origins a un processo, non raro nell’opera di Momigliano, di delimitazione tematica e, in un certo senso, di spostamento del focus. Se la Grinfield si apre nel segno dei massimi sistemi della storiografia mondiale per arrivare poi a concentrare la ricerca in direzione di una specificità ebraica, la Creighton omette le premesse generali, limitandosi a proporre l’analisi dello sviluppo di uno schema storiografico che va dalla Grecia a Daniele. Anche altri tagli e mutamenti si apprezzano nella risistemazione del materiale Grinfield in vista della ridotta estensione espositiva Creighton. Se il resto del cap. I coincide sostanzialmente nelle due versioni, eccezion fatta per piccole divergenze complessivamente riconducibili alla volontà di eliminare elementi non necessari (ad es. la menzione di Housman a sostegno di una lezione in Giovenale), si constata comunque una più concreta riformulazione del parallelo antitetico fra Esiodo e Claudiano (p. 80, c. 4). Poche variazioni riguardano anche il cap. II (schema biologico), reso nella Creighton completamente romano mediante uno spostamento della trattazione su Dicearco, e il cap. III, incentrato sullo schema tecnologico. Qui viene chiarito l’ambito d’interesse di tale storia ‘culturale’, relegata al circolo dei filologi e degli antiquari (p. 83); nella Grinfield la scarsa fortuna dello schema era stata invece più genericamente ricondotta alla sua estraneità dall’ambito politico-militare (c. 9). Altre piccole aggiunte al testo edito sembrano rispondere 4 Un ampliamento del raggio di indagine ai saggi momiglianei che precedono la lecture e che ne sono, in qualche misura, presupposti, non può non tener conto anche di un terzo titolo, Alien Wisdom. L’analisi condotta nel II capitolo (pp. 22-49) sull’operazione culturale e scientifica perseguita da Polibio in relazione al genere storiografico, e sulla ricostruibilità della sua ricezione grazie ai frammenti di Posidionio di Apamea, getta le basi in Universal History per una riproposizione sintetica del tema della storiografia ellenistica a Roma con sguardo rivolto all’oriente giudaico. 5 Il duplice parallelismo così delineato non è però rigido, ma si presta a rielaborazioni. Cfr. in proposito GL 1980 II (Daniel), c. 11 n. 41: qui Momigliano stabilisce una linea di continuità tra Daniele e E.A. Freeman “who, as we recognize, was still thinking in terms of the Holy Roman Empire in the Sixties of the nineteenth century”. 113 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome piuttosto alla volontà di allargare la prospettiva: la breve menzione incipitaria dell’antichità di Genesi 4 come testimonianza della ricorrenza delle figure di eroi culturali, e la ricerca di una priorità nella civilizzazione sui Greci da parte di scrittori orientali come Filone di Biblos (p. 84). È soprattutto il IV capitolo, risultante dalla fusione di due distinti capitoli GL, a presentare però rimaneggiamenti di rilievo. Se la prima parte, incentrata sulle prospettive polibiane (cc. 10-11, pp. 85-87), appare sostanzialmente identica nelle due versioni, quella successiva viene dedicata nella Creighton a considerazioni preliminari alla trattazione del libro di Daniele: il ruolo dell’Egitto e di Babilonia nella successione degli imperi, la declinazione profetica che lo schema assume ad Est (e che sarà poi recuperata in CL 1981 II nell’ambito di una più estesa analisi sulla resistenza dell’Oriente all’invasione greco-macedone) e, in chiusura, una sintesi dei temi trattati nel cap. V Grinfield (l’allargamento di prospettiva nei “continuatori di Polibio” Posidonio e Strabone di Amasia e il significato di “resistenza anti-romana” che la storia universale assume negli storici provinciali del I a.C. – Diodoro, Trogo, Nicola e Timagene). È a questo punto che si inserisce nell’edito il discorso su Daniele e che le riprese Creighton da Universal History hanno termine. Sui rapporti tra il V capitolo di The Origins e la GL 1980 II Daniel and the World Empires, cfr. infra, p. 131. 114 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome I Universal History in Greece and Rome* 6 Introduction I would be making the understatement of the century if I were to say that universal history has never been a clear notion. Taken literally, the idea of universal history verges on absurdity. Who can tell everything that has happened? And who would like to listen if he were told? But both in the Greek and in the Hebrew tradition of history-writing the urge to tell the whole story from beginning to end has been apparent, and universal history has become one of the most problematic components of our twofold Jewish and Greek heritage. Among the texts which have reached us directly it is a Greek text – Hesiod’s Works and Days – that gives us the oldest scheme of a succession of ages; but the Jews of the Hellenistic age outbid the Greeks by taking the story beyond the present into the future and gliding from history into apocalypse. The mixture of the Historic and the Messianic has seldom been absent in the account of universal history produced by ecclesiastical and secular historians from the Revelation of St. John to Arnold Toynbee’s Study of History; and there is no sign that the universal history industry is flagging. As universal history cannot be total, in the sense of including the totality of past events, we may start from the assumption that all it can do is to isolate types of events and to attribute a meaning to the replacement of one type by another type. A golden age may be followed by a silver age, the Assyrian empire by the Persian empire. Polytheism may be succeeded by monotheism, slavery by feudalism, sailing-ships by steamers. The universal historian isolates and defines certain categories of events and tries to make their appearance or disappearance meaningful. By giving more importance and therefore more attention to certain types of events than to others he provides his own universal history with a characteristic line of development. He may recognize progress or circular return or complete disorder – for this, too, can have its meaning. [2[bis]] So far, I believe, our definition of universal history may apply equally to Hesiod and to Daniel, to Bossuet, Marx and Toynbee7. But what I am specifically trying to do in these lectures is to clarify for myself – and, if I am lucky, for my audience – one aspect of the development of the idea of universal history which presented problems to me when I went back to the Book of Daniel after a great deal of reading of Greek historians. Chapters 2 and 7 of Daniel, as we all remember, develop the notion of four successive world empires –8 Babylon, Media, Persia and Macedon – which are going to be replaced by an everlasting kingdom of the true God. This scheme of the succession of empires is generally considered to be of Oriental origin. A scholar whom I greatly admire, David Flusser, has gone as far as to postulate a lost commentary of a lost book of the Avesta as the source of Daniel (Israel Oriental Studies 2, 1972, 148-175i). The succession of empires as a scheme for universal history is, however, a well documented notion in Greek historiography at least from the fourth century B.C. (if not from Herodotus) onwards. It was familiar to Hellenistic historians like Polybius who wrote more or less at the time when the Book of Daniel was put together in its present form, about 164 B.C. * Documento preso come base per l’edizione: P-o 100, c.c. di P-o 99 (nuova versione ds. GS 1979 integrata dalle aggiunte GL 1980). Si riportano all’occorrenza anche le varianti presenti in P-o 121 e 173, ulteriori c.c. di P-o 99, e eventuali lezioni significative presenti in P-o 122 (c.c. di P-o 97, top c. CL 1979 con aggiunte GS) e nella sua xerocopia P-o 98. 6 P-o 100: Grinfield I (23.1.80) - Universal History (in Greece and Rome) tsf(g-c)msb[AMM]; New introduction to Princeton lectures (Nov. 79) / 1.10.79 / (new p. 15bis typed 17.11.79; 2 c.c. sent to Chicago) / (new pp. 13-15, 13.1.80), mgdxmsb[AMM]. 7 I would be making the understatement of the century… to Bossuet, Marx and Toynbee: cfr. Two Types, 121. 8 P-o 121: probably, interl.msn[Mom] 115 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome The question which I asked myself is whether the Book of Daniel owed its scheme of the succession of the empires to Greek sources – which we know to have existed – rather than to Persian sources, the existence of which we should have to postulate for the benefit of Daniel. This first question in its turn produced another question. If Daniel, ex hypothesi, derived the notion of the succession of empires from Greek historical thought how did he come to combine it with a religious or rather apocalyptic vision of history which was entirely alien to Greek historians? Seen in this perspective, the originality of Daniel would appear to have consisted in the notion that ultimate survival depends on a religious choice: true religion is the foundation of an everlasting kingdom. Two types of universal history therefore presented themselves to me as [3[bis]] worth exploring: the Greek one which treated the mere succession of empires as the pattern of events, and the Jewish one which, perhaps on the basis of the Greek theory of empires, saw religion as the determining factor of duration and perfection. In these precise terms, the two rival schemes are of course characteristic of the ancient world, where that of Daniel became even more authoritative among early Christians than among Jews. Neither scheme could quite remain what it was once St. Augustine had outlined a very different model of universal history founded on a conflict between the terrestrial and the heavenly city which would last as long as the world would last. The point of St. Augustine’s criticism was that there was no hope of a celestial city, no hope of a millennium, in this world. Yet, Augustine notwithstanding, the vitality and resilience of the ancient historiographical categories is confirmed also in this case. There is no need to emphasize that the political scheme of the succession of empires survived the criticism of St. Augustine and much else besides: it remained an accepted principle for organizing historical events and a stimulus to the imagination until yesterday, if not until today. On the other hand, the religious evaluation of political organizations is at the root of much of the ecclesiastical and philosophic historiography since the Reformation. We even come across authoritative attempts to reconcile the two positions of ancient universal history. The searching analysis to which Professor Leonard Krieger has of late submitted Ranke’s historical thought shows that Ranke arrived at his confidence in the viability of a world history by recognizing two dimensions of itii. One dimension of universal history was the extension of political power, the other the depth of the spiritual and, more specifically, religious movements permeating the political structures. This is Polybius combined with Daniel – or, if not Daniel, Eusebius.9 I10 Anyone inclined to dismiss universal history as a superfluous genre of historiography may usefully reflect on the simple fact that attempts to impose a pattern on the events of mankind began in Greece long before anything like history (as understood both by the Greeks themselves and by us) came into existence. The traditional father of Greek historiography, Hecataeus, lived at the end of the sixth century B.C.; the two men who shaped Greek historiography in the way we know it, Herodotus and Thucydides, operated in the second half of the fifth century B.C. But Hesiod presented a scheme of universal history at a date which can hardly be later than the end of the eighth century B.C. It is also virtually certain that Hesiod had at his disposal a pre-existing model for his cogitations on the development of mankind through a succession of various races, the golden race, the silver race, etc. What is more, even after the invention of critical historiography in the fifth century B.C. (as exemplified by Herodotus and Thucydides), schemes to embrace the whole development of mankind were often proposed by non-historians with little reference to what historians were doing or observing. 9 P-o 97, 122, 98, 193: Introduction def. P-o 100: num.I msb[AMM]; Retyped version (for Princeton, Nov. 79), tsf, mgdxmsb[AMM]; Universal History in Greece and Rome, ds(c). La numerazione delle cc. riprende con sequenza autonoma (P-o 99, 100, 121). 10 116 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome This, of course, is not the whole truth. Polybius considered himself a universal historian, presupposed the existence of other historians who claimed to be like himself universal historians and, though he denied the validity of their claim, singled out as his predecessor Ephorus of Cume11, a fourth-century historian who, as far as we know, had never wished to be considered a universal historian. Later on, in the century of Caesar and Augustus, universal history appeared to have a special appeal for historians: Diodorus, Trogus Pompeius12 and Nicolaus of Damascus belong here. We shall, however, soon see that what historians called universal history (or, to use Polybius’ expression, ta katholou graphein, “to write general history”, 5, 3313) was merely one of the [2] less bold varieties of the genre of “universal history”.14 Contrary to the prevailing opinion that most of the time universal history played only a small part in Greek culture, there was a continuous and considerable production of pattern intended to give, if not a meaning, at least some order to the story of mankind. But these had their origins in what we can loosely call the mythical or the philosophical imagination of the Greeks rather then in the empirical collection and critical interpretation of past events called historia. The first thing to learn from the Greeks is that schemes of universal history can be invented before historical research makes its appearance in a given culture and that they can be multiplied after historical research has established itself without necessarily taking into account what professional historians have to say. For centuries the Greeks played with two basically distinct, but interconnected schemes of the evolution of mankind which can hardly be described as being rooted in the observation of human events. One was the succession, already mentioned, of the different races, named according to metals (gold, silver, bronze, iron); the other was the biological scheme according to which not only individuals, but nations and even mankind as a whole go through the stages of childhood, youth, maturity and old age. The concept of a happy period in the distant past – in which men lived and died painlessly and even joyfully – is, as we all know or suspect, a rather common feature of folklore. What is far more refined and therefore far less common is the elaboration of a scheme presenting various stages in the transition from the happy primitive age to the present. Hesiod’s scheme is distinguished by two further complications. For motives which at least in the case of the golden race are entirely mysterious and in the cases of the successive races (silver, bronze, heroic, iron) by no means self-evident, the gods, to say the least, allow the elimination of the existing race and its replacement by another which (with one exception) they like less than the one they have just suppressed. The one exception – the race of heroes inserted between the bronze and the iron age – is anomalous in so far as it does [3] not receive its name from a metal and interrupts for a while the decline characterizing the process as a whole. Long ago it was seen that the insertion of the race of heroes in the scheme of the four races named according to metals was secondary and necessitated by the importance attributed to heroes in Greek traditioniii. A previous scheme of four ages had to be accommodated to the keen interest the Greeks took in their heroic past – that is, the period in which Heracles had performed his labours, and the Greeks had gone overseas to conquer Troy or had fought great battles for the rule of Thebes. Whether it was in fact Hesiod who performed this adaptation of the scheme of the four ages to specific Greek requirements we cannot say. But Hesiod remains the strongest candidate because, as we shall see, the scheme of the four races characterized by the four metals was very probably imported from the East, and Hesiod or rather his father came from the East to wretched Ascra, bad in winter, sultry in summer and good at no timeiv. The image of the young poet Hesiod with his bags full of oriental wisdom making himself utterly unpopular among his less sophisticated fellow-citizens of Ascra is not without attraction. At moments one has the impression that he did not really grasp all the implications of the myth he was introducing or popularising among Greeks. The races of gold and 11 12 13 14 P-o 121: Cume <-> P-o 173 Cumae . P-o 121: Strabo, interl.msb[Mom]. P-o 121: cf. Diodorus “common histories”, 1, 1, 1), mginf con segr, msb[Mom]. P-o 122: Incidentally, Herodotus calls universal history “κοιναὶ ἱστορίαι” (1,1,1), mgdxmsn[Mom]. 117 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome of bronze, and the heroic race, each15 seem to be limited to one generation – which would mean that the gods from the start did not endow them with the faculty of reproduction. Only the race of silver is explicitly given children, but it is also the only race about which it is explicitly stated that it was destroyed by the gods themselves. Hesiod has no remarks on this16. All the later writers in Greek or Latin about the four races, outside Judaism or Christianity, depended directly or indirectly on Hesiod. Plato used the myth freely, especially in the Republic (3, 415 a-c), to support the hierarchical structure of his state. Hellenistic poets like Aratus (third century B.C.) and Ovid refurbished the Hesiodic myth to express a nostalgia for the golden race which Hesiod, far more sensitive to the pains of the iron race than to the attractions of previous times, had really never felt. The [4] races could be reduced in number – or increased. It will be remembered that according to a MS. reading defended by Housman Juvenal in Satura XIII, 28, speaks of the ninth race without having a metal name for it: he defines the ninth as worse than the iron age. “Nona aetas agitur peioraque saecula ferri temporibus”. He probably mixes up the scheme of the four ages with that of the ten generations which we shall encounter in my last lecturev. It must here be observed that the transition from Greek to Latin produced by itself a momentous difference. The saeculum aureum or saeculum felicissimum of the Latins is not identical with the genos chryseion, “the golden race”, which it purports to translate. The Greeks underlined the type of men, the Romans put the character of the age to the fore. The difference made it easier for the Romans to exploit the myth for political propaganda. A good emperor could more easily be expected to change the character of his age than the race of his subjects. The return of the Golden Age was a more plausible theme for propaganda in poetry or inscriptions or coins than the return of the Golden Race. Altogether the Romans felt free to develop the implications of a cyclical return to the Golden Age which the Greek versions had never underlined. In considering the evils of the iron race Hesiod had been unable to repress the ‘cri de coeur’: “Would that I were not among the men of the fifth generation, but either had died before or been born afterwards”vi. Yet it is very doubtful whether he implied circularity in the scheme of the ages and a possible return from iron to gold. Roman political propaganda on the contrary had to presuppose, or at least to imply, circularity in the scheme of the ages in order to make plausible the image of an emperor taking his empire back from the iron age to the Golden Age. Quite ominously, in A.D. 400 the poet Claudian depicted not a Roman emperor, but the German general Stilicho as the man bringing the Golden Age back to Rome. The scene in the second book of the Laudes Stilichonis (424 ff.) with the sun going to the cave of Eternity (“spelunca immensi aevi”) to recover the Golden Age for the consulate of Stilicho deserves to be placed against Hesiod’s lines in Works and Days: if Hesiod ushered in, Claudian ushered out classical civilization. [5] In any case, whether in the Roman or in the Greek form, there was very little historical observation and experience behind the17 scheme. Whether we take Hesiod or Aratus or Ovid – or the philosophers and moralists who played with this story – they did not really talk about any remembered or recorded past. The designation of the bronze age may have preserved some recollection of the time in which iron was not yet in use: it did not, however, define a technology. The collective image of the heroic age very probably preserved some obscure memory of the Mycenaean age – but not more than what one could find in the epic poems or in some tragedy. The schematization did not add to knowledge; and in any case there was no folk memory behind the notions of Gold and Silver Ages. For all practical purposes, the iron age was the only age which belonged to the historical field: the four previous ages were ideal alternative forms of human life recaptured by myth and impervious to history. The scheme of the metal ages, as reported by non- 15 16 17 P-o 121: and the heroic race, each, fra parentesi quadre, con x nel mgsn., msb. P-o 121: nor have I, mgdxmsb[Mom]. P-o 121: this <-> the, interl.msn[Mom]. 118 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome Jewish and non-Christian writers, was part of classical mythology rather than of classical historiography.18 II Different considerations are suggested by the biological scheme, but again we shall find that in pre-Christian writers it was only marginal to history and hardly affected the writing of universal history. The biological scheme, in distinguishing between childhood, youth, maturity and old age (with further optional refinements) proved to have greater historiographical possibilities when applied to single nations rather than when applied to the whole of mankind. Confused ideas that certain nations are younger than others floated about in Greek ethnography. Since Herodotus it had been generally admitted that the Egyptians were a much older nation than the Greeks, and Herodotus knew, too, that as a nation the Scythians were about a thousand years old (4, 7). The notions of “a life of Greece” and of “a life of the Roman people” became current after Alexander. Dicaearchus, who gave authority to the notion of the life of Greece, apparently combined the biological scheme with that of the decline from a golden to an iron age though he also had some [6] idea of technological stages such as nomadism and agriculturevii . Varro, too, presupposed that Roman life had been at its best in the beginning. Lactantius in his Institutiones (7, 15, 14) states that Seneca – whether the rhetorician or the philosopher is debatable – constructed a scheme of Roman history from Romulus to Augustus based on this metaphor. We do not know how Seneca elaborated this scheme, but under the Emperor Hadrian Annaeus Florus composed his elegant summary of Roman history according to the same guiding idea. Since it is preserved (it proved to be immensely successful) it gives us the best idea we can form of this type of biological history. Florus attributes to Rome a childhood of 250 years under the kings, an adolescence of comparable length, and then a maturity of 200 years which ends with Augustus. The next hundred years under the emperors are old age; but Florus sees signs of rejuvenation under the Emperors Trajan and Hadrian under whom he happens to live. Interestingly enough, he does not go beyond Augustus in his actual narration. As the Roman Empire was often identified with the whole of the world, one might expect an easy transition from the notion of an ageing Rome to the notion of an ageing human race. But I have no evidence that any pagan historian took the step of presenting world history in terms of the ageing of an individual. And on reflection I am not surprised that the step was not taken. The notion of an ageing Rome derived much of its historiographical strength from the realistic impression that beyond the borders of the Empire – or even inside them – there were nations ready to take advantage of the weakness of Rome. Tacitus would not have written the Germania without the uneasy feeling that the barbarians were ready to prey on the ageing Rome. Even more explicitly, in the late fourth century, Ammianus Marcellinus connects the old age of Rome with the increasing frivolity and vulgarity of its ruling class, which in its turn provokes the enemies of the Empire to increasing audacityviii. It did not make sense for a historian rooted in the political tradition of Rome to identify the old age of Rome with the old age of the world: the danger, as he saw it, was in the contrast between the lethargy of Rome and the energy [7] of her youthful enemies. This may explain why, as far as I know, a clear formulation of the senectus mundi – of the old age of the world – is to be found only in Christian writers and goes not become an operative historiographical notion until St. Augustine. 19 A clear adaptation of the biological scheme to Christian notions of history is already to be found in Tertullian’s De Verginibus Velandis (1, 7): the world reaches its infancy with the Mosaic law; its youth with the Gospel and its maturity with the Paraclete. But this is said in a perfunctory way. It takes a St. Augustine to face the senectus mundi 18 P-o 121: Analogous considerations may be applied to these philosophic myths which operate with notions of cataclysms (Plato’s Timaeus). They are meant to explain something of human nature, not something of a remembered past, mgsnmsb[Mom]. 19 P-o 121: until St. Augustine -> Lucretius (5,[vacat]) has something vague, msb[Mom], del. 119 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome in the precise clinical manifestation of the sack of Rome and to conclude that what appears to be old age in the City of Man may be youth in the Heavenly City: “Do not try20 to stick to this old World; do not refuse to find your youth in Christ who tells you the World is transient, the World is ageing, the World declines, the World is breathless in its old age. Do not fear: your youth will be renewed as that of the Eagle” (Serms. 81)ix. We shall come back to St. Augustine, but it is by now evident that outside such audacious metahistorical applications there was little scope for the biological scheme in universal history. We must conclude that in classical pagan historiography the application of the biological scheme to the history of mankind was scarcely more successful than the application of the scheme of the metallic ages. III There remains to be considered a scheme which, though born outside historical research, like the previous two schemes, was soon felt to be open to empirical verification. Gods or culture-heroes who reveal technological secrets to helpless mankind are of course to be found everywhere. What seems to characterize the Greeks is that they did not remain content with their culture-heroes, impressive as they may have been. Already in Aeschylus’ Prometheus (the question whether Aeschylus is the real author of the Prometheus is here irrelevant), the culture-hero symbolizes mankind in its efforts to [8] reach knowledge. Sophocles in the Antigone can dispense with the culture-hero and make man himself the source of all the ambiguous achievements which intelligence brings about. Even when mythical forms are retained (as in the new version of the Prometheus story told by Protagoras in Platox), the problem of how man acquired the arts becomes the focus for reflection. Individual men or individual cities were sometimes singled out for praise. The praise of Athens as a civilising city goes back at least to Isocrates. The Epicureans would naturally emphasize the enlightened traditions of the city to which Epicurus, after all, belonged. We therefore find the praise of Athens in Lucretius’ Book VI. But as a rule the effort to encompass the discovery of the arts went beyond individual names of gods, men and cities and tried to envisage the conditions which favoured discoveries in general. Climatic conditions, fear of animals, development of language, discovery of metals and of forms of cultivation, organization of social life, cumulative influence of observation in various fields, etc., are factors considered in the two most important discussions we have of the technical progress of mankind: Diodorus, Bibliotheca, Book I and Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book V. We may add Vitruvius, De Architectura, Book II and Manilius, Astronomicon, Book I in the following century. But partly as a result of the classicistic selection operated by late Greeks and Romans we have not much of their predecessors – the Sophists of the fifth century B.C. and the specialized students of discoveries of the late fourth century B.C.21 and of the early Hellenistic period. We are informed about a refined and subtle study on sacrificial customs composed by Aristotle’s pupil Theophrastus only because Porphyrius happened to be very interested in it in the third century A.D.xi We expect Posidonius to have said something very influential on the subject of the discoveries of the arts in the generation before Lucretius and Diodorus. But sources being what they are, our main information about Posidonius’ opinions on cultural history depend on Seneca’s Letter 90. There Seneca agrees with Posidonius that the philosophers were the natural leaders of mankind during the golden age, but he does not accept Posidonius’ further conjecture that the philosophers discovered the arts [9] and techniques which myth had considered to be Prometheus’ province. This is very little, and therefore scholars have been able to state or deny with equal assurance that Posidonius is the source behind Diodorus’ chapters in Book I about the evolution of mankind. The ravages of time, that is, the loss of so many original sources (like Posidonius himself), give perhaps an unjust impression of the poverty of the results obtained by the ancients in this field. We 20 21 P-o 121: (he says in Sermon 81), mgdxmsb[Mom]. P-o 121: such as Ephorus, mgsnmsb[Mom]. 120 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome would be wiser if we had more of Posidonius, or more of Theophrastus, or even more of Critias and Protagoras on this subject. The problems were recognized, and it is remarkable that such a variety of approaches – from fear of animals to climate and language – presented itself to the Greeks and remained present to the Romans. But even if we were much better informed, we would hardly find cultural developments as one of the central themes of Greek historical research: more specifically, we would not find universal history built on schemes of cultural development. We are brought back to the hard fact that before Christianity Greek and Latin historians saw political and military events as the natural subject of their researches. If universal history was to have a place in historical research, it had to have military and political events as its subject. Cultural history was important for philosophers and for those érudits who derived inspiration from philosophers in their choice of subjects for research, but it never reached the point of offering an independent contribution to the betterment of men – which is what political and military history claimed to do. Whereas it was generally admitted that by studying political history one could avoid past mistakes and improve future performances, cultural history at best provided confirmation of some philosophical theory. It was not meant to help the future development of culture and remained at the level of curiosity and exemplification. [9bis] One point is implicit in the previous considerations and must now be made explicit. If neither the succession of races, nor the succession of ages nor technical progress provided a viable scheme for universal history there was even less place for genealogical speculations in that direction. The Greeks cared of course about genealogies and used them to explain many facts – from the internal divisions of the Greek nation to the friendships and enmities between Greeks and non-Greeks. Genealogies supported the aristocracies and their rights to specific priesthoods. They helped to measure time. One of the oldest branches of what we called historiography collected and ordered genealogies. But in Greece genealogy was never a principle of organization of historical narration except for the heroic age. There was no genealogical history of Greece or of individual Greek states: even less can we expect a genealogically structured universal history. To find universal history in full dress we must therefore go back to Polybius, the political historian who claimed to be a universal historianxii. He is the first preserved author to make this claim, though, as I have said, not the first to have made it. IV [10] Polybius saw himself as a universal historian because he saw himself as seriously involved in a chain of political and military events which truly appeared to affect the whole world. According to Polybius the Romans created universal history by conquering the world or at least by affecting directly or indirectly the future of the whole world. This meant that Polybius could not envisage universal history as the recognition of patterns of behaviour common to all men qua men. To him universal history came into being at a certain date, say, the second Punic War, about 220 B.C., because of a new historical development. The idea of universal history from the origins of mankind would have been unintelligible to Polybius. He was, however, prepared to admit that in the more remote past certain historical situations had already brought mankind near to political unity and that some historians had understood this predicament and therefore examined the facts with something like the self-consciousness of the universal historian. In what we have of Polybius’ work (and we must remember that we have perhaps about one third of it) there is enough to correlate his views about past approximations to universal history and his judgements about past (authentic or spurious) universal historians. The situations which Polybius believes to be comparable with Rome’s conquests are the processes of formation of previous empires. Persia, Sparta and Macedon are his explicit terms of reference. Characteristically he leaves Athens out, for he did not like Athenian democracy. He speaks of Rome and Carthage as the two powers which disputed the rule of the world (τῆς τῶν ὅλων ἀρχῆς) before Rome won. Since the succession of empires is the central point of Polybius’ historical 121 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome vision, it is useful to remind ourselves of his precise words22: “The paradoxicality and greatness of the spectacle with which I propose to deal will become most clear if we single out and compare with the Roman hegemony the most famous of the previous empires – the ones which have provided historians with their chief theme. Those worthy of being thus set aside and compared are the following: the Persians ... the Spartans ... the Macedonians ... [11] But the Romans have subjected to their rule not portions, but nearly the whole of the world” (1, 2). This was not only an intellectual perception, but an emotional finding. Falls of empires are to Polybius occasions on which a dignified man is entitled to let himself go, to be disturbed and even to cry. He knew he had a literary tradition behind him to justify his emotions and to give appropriate words to them. After having concluded his account of the fall of the Kingdom of Macedon under Perseus in 168 B.C. – the end of the third23 empire – Polybius picked up a treatise on Fortune in which Demetrius of Phalerus had commented upon the fall of the first24 empire – Persia – and generally animadverted on the inconstancy of human fortunes. Polybius was impressed by the fact that in the generation after Alexander Demetrius had foreseen that Macedon would one day fall in its turn. He quoted from Demetrius and concluded: “I, as I wrote and reflected on the time when the Macedonian monarchy perished, did not think it right to pass over the event without comment, as it was one I witnessed with my own eyes, but I considered it was for me also to say something befitting such an occasion, and recall the words of Demetrius” (29, 21 transl. W. R. Paton, Loebxiii). It is perhaps25 superfluous to quote the other more famous passage (38, 21)xiv in which Polybius tells us of how he was near Scipio Aemilianus, the Roman commander, when Carthage was burning in 146 and had Scipio grasping his hand and repeating Homer’s line: “A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish”xv. The fall of empires was to Polybius not only a well known chronological scheme, but also a recognized emotional experience. In other words, Polybius saw the history he was dealing with – the history of the rise of Rome to become a world empire – as the culmination of previous attempts at establishing a world empire. Each of these attempts, by unifying a large part of the world, created favourable conditions for writing something close to universal history, but only the empire of the Romans created the ideal conditions for writing the perfect universal history. Polybius presented in fact a theory of the succession of empires which was at the same time a theory [12] about the conditions of development of historiographical forms. The notion of a succession of empires was not of course new. In my next lecture I shall have to consider the relation between Greek thought and the Jewish version of the same scheme of a succession of empires which the Book of Daniel formulated in Jerusalem more or less in the same years in which Polybius was writing in Rome. Here it will be enough to say that26 Polybius was probably not even the first to import the scheme of the succession of empires into Rome. We happen to know from a strange gloss inserted in Velleius Paterculus 1, 6, 6 that Aemilius Sura, an otherwise unknown author of a book, De annis populi Romani, placed the Romans at the end of a succession of empires starting with the Assyrian and continuing with the Medes, the Persians and the Macedoniansxvi. More precisely, he dated the beginnings of the Roman World Empire during the reigns of Philip V of Macedon and of Antiochus III of Syria, that is, either before 179 B.C., the date of Philip’s death, or before 187 B.C., the date of Antiochus III’s death. There are too many difficulties in this text to be certain when it was written, but one is inclined to believe that Aemilius Sura gave such a precise date because he wrote in the earlier part of the second century B.C. and was himself a witness of the Roman victories against Macedonia and Syria. I have also heard it suggested that his name, Aemilius Sura, seems to indicate that he was a man of Syrian origin who became a slave and then a freedman of a member of the gens Aemilia. But Sura is the “cognomen” 22 P-o 121: I quote, interl.msb[Mom]. P-o 100, 99: third <-> fourth, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 121 id., interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 173: corr. def. 24 P-o 100, 99: first <-> third, msb[AMM]; P-o 121 id., interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 173: corr. def. 25 P-o 100, 99: is perhaps <-> would be, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 121 id., interl.msn[Mom]. 26 P-o 100, P-o 99: In my next lecture ... to say that, ts. fra parentesi quadre, affiancato in P-o 100 da punto interrogativo in mgsn, msn[Mom?]); P-o 121, -> In my next… to say that, del. 23 122 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome of several Romans of unimpeachable Italian extraction, such as the Catilinarian P. Cornelius Lentulus Sura. Sura means in Latin “calf of the leg”. Our Aemilius Sura is therefore likely to have been of Italian origin. But he may have imported into Rome a scheme of the succession of empires which was current in the Greek East27 in the early second century B.C.28 [13]29 Ultimately the scheme went back to Herodotus and Ctesias. Both Herodotus and Ctesias had a clear and explicit notion of the succession of empires. Herodotus states in so many words that the Persians became the rulers of Asia in succession to the Medes (I, 95; 130). He structured his whole work around the notion of the Persian Empire. He included in his history those nations which Persia had either subjugated (such as Egypt, Lydia and Babylonia) or tried to subjugate (like Scythia and Greece). He even promised to write a special account of Assyriaxvii , though for reasons unknown he did not do so. Ctesias fulfilled this desideratum and introduced Persia by way of an extensive account of the Assyrian Empire. He devoted much space to Media as an intermediate stage between the empires of Assyria and Persiaxviii . Diodorus says that he owes to Ctesias most of what he knows about the succession of empires in the East. Given these achievements of Herodotus and Ctesias, it may seem strange that Polybius should have picked as his predecessor Ephorus who, as I have said, does not seem ever to have claimed the title of universal historian. But Polybius had the advantage, which we have not, of being able to read Ephorus. Furthermore, even with our limited knowledge of Ephorus’ fragments, we can recognize some features which would have appealed to Polybius. Neither Herodotus nor Ctesias had complied with Polybius’ requirement that the universal historian should explain “whence, how and why the final situation was brought about” (5, 32). Neither of them had perceived Fortune, in Polybius’ sense, directing events towards “one and the same goal”. Neither of them had brought before the reader a synoptic view “of the operations by which Fortune accomplishes the unification of world affairs”xix. Indeed, without pretending to hold any brief for Herodotus or for Ctesias, I venture to believe that they would have been glad to be left out of this business of world history, if world history was what Polybius thought it to be. But Ephorus had tried hard to associate closely Greek and non-Greek history in the periods in which the Greeks found themselves fighting against Persians, Macedonians and Carthaginians. There is no certain sign that he [14] lived long enough to see the foundation of Alexander’s Empire in Asia, but he certainly described as a contemporary the rise of Macedon under Philip II and, generally speaking, organized his Greek history around the hegemonies of Sparta, Athens and Thebes, while paying due attention to the leading role of Syracuse in the West. Polybius admired Ephorus’ technique of knitting together different trends of history. That Ephorus had prefaced his history with a sketch of world geography would of course be another good point in his favour. Polybius therefore forgave him for being too fond of genealogies, colonial history and other frivolities (9, 1) and for being more competent on naval than on land warfare (12, 25 f.). Polybius’ choice of Ephorus as his predecessor in the writing of world history confirms the limitations of his interests as a historian. He convinced himself – probably a very original thought – that one must have a situation of world empire in order to have a universal history. But he was not interested in the world empires which had preceded Macedon; and Ephorus was of course more helpful about Macedon than Herodotus and Ctesias. When we come to consider the relations between Daniel and Greek historical thinking, we shall have to keep in mind that the Greek historians of the fifth and fourth centuries had already examined the succession of Eastern world empires and that Aemilius Sura with his concern for the same subject was perhaps a contemporary of Polybius and therefore of Daniel. It is not surprising that as a Greek living in Rome in the middle of the second century B.C. Polybius should not have 27 P-o 121: Greek speaking world <-> Greek East, interl.msn[Mom]. Per il testo alternativo di P-o 173 da qui all’inizio del cap. V, precedente rispetto a quello di P-o 100, 99 e 121, vd. infra, Appendice a GL 1980 1, pp. 127-28. 29 P-o 100: [NB pp. 13-15 new, typed 13.1.80] tsf,mgdxmsb[AMM]. 28 123 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome given much thought to Assyria, Media and Persia. But I wish we knew more about Agatharchides of Cos, indisputably his contemporary, who reached his own view of universal history by an independent route. Having worked in Alexandria for the better part of his life, he probably had a less Europe-centred vision of universal history than Polybius could form in Rome. In any case he divided his universal history into two uneven sections, one including Asia and Egypt and the other, much longer, on Europe. He kept the Oriental events separate from the European ones for the period before Alexander, but one essential feature of his history we do not know [15] well enough: how he organized the story of the Macedonian and Roman empires down to the middle of the second century B.C. Some of Agatharchides’ preoccupations are revealed by a small ethnographical pamphlet which he wrote in his last years (perhaps about 130 B.C.) about the Red Seaxx. There his condemnation of any imperialism, whether Ptolemaic or Roman, is fairly explicit. He idealizes primitive nations which are independent and undisturbed by conquerors and exploiters. V Some of the universal historians directly under the influence of Polybius accepted in full his premise that proper universal history could not be written before the rise of Rome as a world empire. Therefore they continued Polybius down to their own day: Posidonius of Apamea to about 60 B.C. at the latest and Strabo of Amaseia to the end of the civil wars, perhaps about 30 B.C. The novelty which Posidonius transmitted to Strabo, in so far as it was transmissible, was the use of Herodotaean ethnography to illustrate the interpenetration of cultures brought about – chiefly but not exclusively – by Roman conquest. Most of the world Posidonius had conjured up in his vivid, rich prose has, alas, disappeared with the loss of his work. He was probably superior to any of the other post-Polybian universal historiansxxi . But in the first century B.C. there was another school of thought which did not accept the chronological limits imposed by Polybius and bravely imitated Ephorus in going back to remote antiquity. Though individually no match for Posidonius, as a group they were more interesting.30 They tried to offer some resistance to a view of world history which was an implicit (and even explicit) glorification of Rome. They gave pride of place to the old civilizations of the East and of Greece: and they emphasized either the relative barbarism of the recent conversion of the Romans to Greek customs (which amounted to the same). [15bis] These historians were active in the second half of the first century B.C. They lived in a revolutionary age and showed it in their strange personal lives and in their unusual attitudes of mind. Circumstances lifted them out of their native surroundings and their intrinsic mediocrity. They started their intellectual career in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the years of Julius Caesar. Some of them concluded their lives under the traditionalistic, strictly Italic, reaction of Augustus. We may suspect – and we shall later find support for our suspicions – that they were more at ease under Caesar than under Augustus. Two of these writers, interestingly enough, were Italians: the others were provincials. But one of the two – who was also the earlier – came from the border territory of Gallia Cisalpina: Cornelius Nepos. He wrote a universal chronicle in three books which his friend Catullus advertised, probably before 54 B.C. The other Italian, Titus Pomponius Atticus, the friend of Cicero, had lived in Greece for about twenty years. Circa 48-47 B.C. he published a Liber annalis, one book, which, though mainly devoted to Roman republican history, included foreign events. Nepos was a pioneer in writing universal history in Latin, but his work was little read. On the other hand the more famous Liber annalis by Atticus, which helped Cicero to clarify his ideas about Greek and Roman chronology (F. Muenzer, Hermes 40, 1905, 50-100) xxii, was too short to provide more than basic synchronism between Greek and Roman history. The provincial competitors, who wrote at far 30 P-o 100, 99, 121: He was probably superior ... more interesting. <-> P-o 173: Though Posidonius was probably superior to any of the other post-Polybian universal historians, those who did not accept the chronological limits imposed by Polybius and bravely imitated Ephorus in going back to remote antiquity were, as a group, more interesting. 124 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome greater length, ultimately gained more readers: two of them, Diodorus and Trogus Pompeius, partially survived, the latter in a summary.31 [16] Diodorus lived32 in the small Greek town of Agyrium in Sicily and apparently left it only to look for books and other historical information in cultural centres like Roma and Alexandria. Trogus Pompeius was a Gaul from Gallia Narbonensis whose grandfather had been given Roman citizenship by Pompey and whose father had served under Julius Caesar. He wrote in Latin a vast work curiously called Historiae Philippicae – an echo of the title of Theopompus’ great book on Philip II. This work was summarized by Justin, perhaps in the second or third century A.D.; and this summary, together with an index of the contents of the original text, is almost all we have. The third universal historian of the age, Nicolaus of Damascus, was probably a Hellenized Syrian who managed to be tutor to the children of Cleopatra and Antony, secretary and envoy of King Herod of Judaea for many years, and finally a friend of Augustus, of whom he wrote a biography. Timagenes, the last of this group33, was forcibly removed from Alexandria to Rome about 56 B.C., wrote a universal history in Greek called “Kings” and created for himself the reputation of being a bitter critic of anything Roman34. Augustus, who apparently did not dislike Timagenes, was at long last obliged to cut him off, but Asinius Pollio, that cautious republican – a historian himself with some experience of persecution – gave him undisturbed shelter in his own house. We cannot expect to find a uniform attitude towards Rome in the surviving books of Diodorus (about half his entire work), in Justin’s summary of Trogus, in the abundant fragments of Nicolaus of Damascus and in the scanty remains of Timagenes. But they seem to have three features in common: they expatiate on the merits of Oriental and Greek civilizations; they allocate a comparatively small space to Roman history and they face frankly the social issues raised by the Roman civil wars.35 Diodorus seems to have been a great admirer of Julius Caesar. Apparently he had meant to carry on his history to the triumphs of Caesar in 46/5 B.C., but Caesar’s murder in 44 persuaded him that it was more prudent to stop at the [17] uncontroversial year 60/59 B.C. In any case, as a member of the educated Greek society in Sicily, he and his ancestors had had 150 years in which to learn prudence in their relations with the Romans. He is, to my knowledge, the first Greek historian to claim command of Latin as an asset for his historical work (1, 4, 6). All the more impressive is his emphasis, even in the introduction to book I, on the superior merits of Greek education. Quite consistently he chose Ephorus as his main guide to Greek history. As a good pupil of Isocrates, Ephorus had put into historical prose the master’s creed about the cultural differences between Greeks and barbarians and about the necessity of replacing local loyalties by pan-Hellenic patriotism. Even the Celtic Trogus retold with deep emotional involvement the story of the end of Greek freedom at the battle of Chaeroneia in 338 B.C. He was obviously aware of other more recent battles lost in defence of freedom. He was not afraid of saying at another point that the Romans were generous in giving what did not belong to them, “facile de alieno largientibus” (36, 3, 9).36 In the contemporary polemic, of which we have echoes in Livy, as to whether the Romans had reached world power by fortune or by merit, Trogus seems to have been definitely on the side of the supporters of fortune (30, 4, 16; 39, 5, 3). His master-stroke – a piece of really good historical imagination – was to conclude his work by bringing together the free Parthians of the East and the no longer free Celts and Spaniards of the West. He simply declared that the Parthians were sharing the rule of the world with the Romans after having won three wars against them (41, 4). We know 31 P-o 121: se già 5,50 tagliare ultime pagine, mginfms[Mom]; per il testo alternativo di P-o 173 f. [15bis] vd. infra, Appendice a GL 1980 I, pp. 127-28. 32 P-o 121: as we all know, interl.msb[Mom]. 33 P-o 100, P-o 99: the last of this group, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 121: id., interl.msb[Mom]. 34 P-o 121: the surrounding society <-> anything Roman, interl.msn[Mom]. 35 P-o 121: They used the succession of empires to remind themselves and their readers that there had been greatness in the world before Rome had conquered the world, interl.msn[Mom]. 36 P-o 121: Diodorus seems to have been… 36, 3,9), ts. evidenziato a mg. e annotato con NO. 125 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome how these victories had hurt the Romans. Augustus never really managed to wipe them out, and all the imperialistic rhetoric of the Augustan poets sounded hollow when the Parthians were mentioned. Trogus had hit where it hurt most. He seems to have been left undisturbed – or unnoticed. How precisely Nicolaus of Damascus organized the 144 books of his Universal History – the biggest ever composed in Antiquity – remains a mystery. He wrote part of them in Jerusalem to please Herod but apparently finished [18] them in Rome after 4 B.C. It is a fair guess that the Jews loomed larger in his Universal History than they did in the contemporary writings of Diodorus, Trogus and Strabo. Nicolaus of Damascus had defended Jewish customs before Agrippa and was well acquainted with Biblical traditionsxxiii . Unfortunately we have not much information about the Jewish section in his Universal History. Apart from some very problematic references in the tenthcentury Hebrew Yosippon, our main source for Nicolaus of Damascus is Flavius Josephus who evidently did not need Nicolaus to find his way through the Bible and its rabbinic interpreters. Flavius Josephus used Nicolaus chiefly for his account of Herod xxiv . We know more about Nicolaus’ sympathetic treatment of other Oriental civilizations, for which he used sources written in Greek, for instance Xanthus on Lydia and Ctesias about Persia. We also know that in his history there was a definite disproportion in favour of the Greeks agains the Romans.37 The anti-Roman bias of the last of these four historians, Timagenes, needs no demonstration. It was recognized by his readers38, such as Seneca in De ira III, 23, 4; and may be reflected in the disparaging remark by Livy about the “levissimi ex Graecis” who prefer the Parthians to the Romansxxv. But the surviving fragments of Timagenes are few and most of them geographical (as an authority on the Celts he was still read in the fourth century A.D.). Modern scholars have tried the usual method of enlarging our knowledge by making Timagenes the source of Trogus Pompeius and of Strabo. As a guess, it is not impossible; it may even be probable, but it cannot be provedxxvi . The idea of the succession of empires also appears in historians – either of the Augustan age (like Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I, 2, 2-4) or of later times (such as Appian in the late second century) – who did not write universal history. By the time the Christians took it over, it had achieved respectability among pagans. In the last 150 years before Christ both the apologists of Roman imperialism and those who had more or less stringent reservations about it used the idea of the succession of empires as an argument. Succession of [19] empires and universal history had become almost synonymous terms in Polybius and remained synonymous for his successors. The difference is that several of them used the succession of empires to remind themselves and their readers that there had been greatness in the world before Rome had conquered the world.39 Indeed Trogus, and perhaps Timagenes, looked to the Parthians to reassure themselves that not all the world was Roman. We can begin to see why the Jews40 found the idea of the succession of empires congenial: it could be used to emphasize the transience of empires41. But we now have to examine the special twist the Jews gave to the idea before they passed it on to the Christians. To a large extent, the transmission was not direct from pagans to Christians, but from pagans to Jews, and from Jews to Christians. We shall furthermore have to ask why, notwithstanding the popularity of the idea of the four empires, so little universal history was written by pagans after Augustus. i ii 37 38 39 40 41 FLUSSER 1972. KRIEGER 1977. P-o 121: Augustus never really managed ... against the Romans, ts. evidenziato a mg. e annotato con NO. P-o 121: ancient sources <-> his readers, interl.msn[Mom]. P-o 121: The idea of the succession ... had conquered the world, ts. Evidenziato a mg. e annotato con un NO. P-o 100, 99: Jews <-> Christians, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 121: id., interl.msb[Mom]. P-o 100, 99: it could be ... of empires, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 121: id., mginfmsb[Mom]. 126 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome iii Il riferimento verosimilmente è a MEYER 1910 (part. alle pp. 51-53). Hes. Op. 640 v GL 1980 III (Flavius Josephus), cc. 3-4. vi Hes. Op. 174-5, tr. di H.G. Evelyn-White (Loeb 1914). vii Cfr. Varr. RR II 1,3; Porph. De Abst. IV 2.1-9 ; Hier. Adv. Jovin. II 13 (= frr. 48-50 Wehrli). viii Per l’excursus su Roma e i suoi vizi vd. Amm. Hist. xiv 6.2ss. (cfr. inoltre MATTHEWS 1989, 250). ix August. Serm. 81.8 x Plat. Prot. 320c-322d. xi Porph. De abst. II 26.1-4 B.-P. xii Cfr., e.g., Pol. Hist. 1, 4, 2 e 5, 33, 1. xiii Paton, W.R., Polybius, the Histories, London-Cambridge (Mass) 1967-72. xiv Per un precedente contributo momiglianeo sul tema, cfr. Alien Wisdom, pp. 22 ss. xv Il. 6.448. xvi Cfr. Hellegouarc’h, J. (ed.), Velleius Paterculus, Histoire Romaine. Tome I. Livre I., Paris 1982, per il commento ad loc. Il passo, un’interpolazione inserita nel testo dal Delbenius nell’edizione aldina del 1591, rappresenta l’unica menzione dello storico, verosimilmente autore di un compendio di storia universale, e che già MOMMSEN 1861 considerava contemporaneo di Silla. Sul rifiuto di una sua identificazione con il Mamilio Sura di cui parla Plinio, N.H. 18,16, cfr. SCHANZ – HOSIUS 1914- 35, II, 587-88; BARDON 1952-56, I 195; si rimanda invece a SWAIN 1940 per un’ipotesi di datazione dell’opera di Emilio Sura tra il 189 e il 171 a.C. xvii Herod. 1, 184. xviii FrGH 688 F. 5 (=Diod. Sic. 2.32.4-34.6); cfr. inoltre FF. 6 - 8. xix Polyb. 1.4.1 xx WOELK 1966; BURSTEIN 1989. xxi Cfr. Alien Wisdom, pp. 32 ss. xxii Me inflammavit studio illustrium hominum aetates et tempora persequendi, in Brut. 18.74 (cfr. Settimo, 91). xxiii Sui negoziati condotti con Agrippa cfr. Ios. Ant. 12,3,2 (=FrGH 90 F 81); per Nicola come fonte di Giuseppe su storia e tradizioni ebraiche, vd. (e.g.) Ant. 16,7,1 (=FrGH 90 F 101,2); Ant. 13,8,4 (= F. 92); Ant. I1,3,6 (=F 72); Ant. 7,2 = F 19. xxiv Bellum, lib. I ; Ant., l. XIV-XVIII. Per un’analisi delle fonti si rimanda a SCHÜRER 1985 (vol. I), 59. xxv Liv. 9.18.6 xxvi L’ipotesi risale a VON GUTSCHMID 1882, che cercò di dimostrare come Pompeo Trogo non fosse altro che “un’edizione latina di un’opera originariamente in greco”, quella di Timagene; alla tesi si oppose tuttavia già WACHSMUTH 1891 (cfr. ID. 1895, 114ss.). Per i riferimenti bibliografici al dibattito successivo si rimanda a SCHÜRER 1985, I 50. iv Appendice a GL 1980 I: Divergenze del testo di P-o 173 da P-o 100, P-o99 e P-o 121. 1. f. [13] ss. second century B.C. -> What seems to be unprecedented in Polybius, therefore, is the persuasion that you must have a situation of world empire in order to have a universal history. He does not say explicitly in his allusion to Ephorus why he considered him his own first and only serious predecessor as a universal historian, but he must [13] have meant that Ephorus had competently described and analysed some of the previous situations in which the world had come near to being a world empire. In his evaluation of Ephorus Polybius was substantially correct. Though Ephorus himself, as I have said, does not seem ever to have claimed the title of universal historian, he had tried hard to associate closely Greek and non-Greek history in the periods in which the Greeks found themselves fighting against Persians, Macedonians and Carthaginians. There is no certain sign that he lived long enough to see the foundation of Alexander’s Empire in Asia, but he certainly described as a contemporary the rise of Macedon under Philip II and, generally speaking, organized his Greek history around the hegemonies of Sparta, Athens and Thebes, while paying due attention to the leading role of Syracuse in the West. Polybius had many technical objects against Ephorus. He considered him too fond of genealogies, colonial history and other frivolities (9, 1); he found him more competent on naval than on land warfare (12, 25 f.). But he admired his technique of knitting together different trends of history. 127 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History I. Universal History in Greece and Rome It would of course be easy to make a case against Polybius and in favour of Herodotus and Ctesias as universal historians. Both Herodotus and Ctesias had an idea of the succession of empires. More particularly, Herodotus structured his whole work around the notion of the Persian Empire. He included in his history those nations which Persia had either subjugated (such as Egypt, Lydia and Babylonia) or tried to subjugate (like Scythia and Greece). He even promised to write a special account of Assyria, though for reasons unknown he did not do so (Ctesias, however, fulfilled this desideratum and introduced Persian history by way of an extensive account of the previous empire). But one must admit that Herodotus did not comply with Polybius’ requirement that the universal historian should explain “whence, how and why the final situation was brought about” (5, 32). This is what Polybius considered to be the historian’s proper attitude to what he called Fortune: “Just as Fortune has bent almost all the affairs of the world in one direction and has compelled them to incline [14] towards an one and the same goal, so history must bring before the readers a synoptic view of the operations by which Fortune accomplishes the unification of world affairs” (1, 4, 1). Without pretending to hold any brief for Herodotus, I venture to believe that he would be glad to be left out of this business of world history. He saw an ultimate unifying factor in the will of the gods, but a strictly pragmatic unification, in Polybius’ sense, was outside his mental horizon. Since Polybius, as far as we know, theorized the Greek form of universal history, we may accept his verdict that Herodotus and, a fortiori, Ctesias are outside that line of thought which does not go back beyond Ephorus. There remain enough universal historians in the Polybian sense either among his contemporaries or among his successors. Some of them are mere names. Among those whom we know a little better, one of the most intriguing is Agatharchides of Cnidos, because, as a contemporary of Polybius, he seems to have worked independently and reached his own view of universal history. Having worked in Alexandria for the better part of his life, he had probably a less Europeocentric vision of universal history than Polybius could form in Rome. In any case he divided his universal history into two uneven sections, one including Asia and Egypt and the other, much longer, on Europe. He kept the Oriental events separate from the European ones for the period before Alexander, but one essential feature of his history we do not know well enough: how he organized the story of the Macedonian and Roman empires down to the middle of the second century B.C. Some of Agatharchides’ preoccupations are revealed by a small ethnographical pamphlet which he wrote in his last years (perhaps about 130 B.C.) about the Red Sea. There his condemnation of any imperialism, whether Ptolemaic or Roman, is fairly explicit. He idealizes primitive nations which are independent and undisturbed by conquerors and exploiters. 2. f. [15bis] ss. These historians were active in the second half of the first century B.C. Two were Italians, Cornelius Nepos and Titus Pomponius Atticus. The others were romanized provincials writing either in Greek or in Latin. They lived in a revolutionary age and showed it in their strange personal lives and in their unusual attitudes of mind. Circumstances lifted them out of their native surroundings and their intrinsic mediocrity. They started their intellectual career in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the years of Julius Caesar and concluded their lives under the traditionalistic, strictly Italic, reaction of Augustus. We may suspect – and we shall later find support for our suspicions – that they were more at ease under Caesar than under Augustus. Cornelius Nepos opened the series about 50 B.C. His three books on universal history were commended by his friend Catullus who, like him, came from Gallia Cisalpina. We know almost nothing about their contents, but the extant short biographies show Nepos’ wide sympathies going beyond Greeks and Romans and including Carthaginians and Persians. Cornelius and Atticus were friends themselves, besides being friends of Cicero. Atticus imitated Nepos on an even smaller compass. His one book began with the foundation of Rome but, according to the decisive information from Cicero (Orat. 34, 120; cf. Brut. 3, 14), included non-Roman events. The two friends are obviously important because they wanted to make the Romans familiar with a universal history which did not start with Rome’s hegemony. The brevity of their works – which could hardly include more than lists of facts and dates – seems to indicate, however, that in intrinsic importance they never competed with Diodorus and the other non-Italian authors. 128 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires GL 1980 II Daniel and the World Empires Sedi e date: CL 1979 (26 aprile, cfr. D-a 1) GS 1979 (15 novembre, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 422) GL 1980 (30 gennaio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 422; c1 P-o 106 AMM) Documenti: a) CL 1979 III [Daniel and the Dangers of Apocalyptic] P-o 101 ms. P-o 105 (b) top c. di P-o 101. P-o 106 (b), P-o 177, P-o 183 (b), c.c. di P-o 105. P-o 102 xerox di P-o 183(b), cfr. P-o 103, P-o 104. b) GS 1979 II [Daniel and the World Empires] P-o 123 ms., introduzione per GS 1979 II. P-o 105 (c), aggiunte, cfr. P-o 109 (CL 1979 V1), top c. P-o 106 (c), aggiunte, cfr. P-o 110 (CL 1979 V); P-o 183 (c), aggiunte, cfr. Po 111 (CL 1979 V), c.c. c) GL 1980 II P-o 105 (a) introduzione e aggiunte per GL 1980 II, top c. P-o 106 (a), P-o 183 (a): c.c. di P-o 105 (a) P-o 137 xerox di P-o 106 (a-b-c). 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati Il modesto numero di documenti conservati in archivio su Daniel and the World Empires non rende a prima vista ragione della complessa evoluzione testuale della lecture, condotta – secondo un usus consolidato – tramite l’arricchimento di materiale preesistente per mezzo di integrazioni o modifiche tali da rendere uno stesso fascicolo testimone dell’intero arco di sviluppo del testo. È il caso del documento preso come base per l’edizione, P-o 106: un testo composito, che conserva intorno al nucleo di partenza b (CL 1979 III) le aggiunte per Princeton (c) e quelle, comprensive di una nuova introduzione, della definitiva versione oxoniense (a)2, per un totale di 29 cc. dalla numerazione discontinua e spesso ricorretta a mano3. Lo stesso stato testuale della c.c. P-o 106 si riscontra tanto nella sua top c. P-o 105, quanto nella c.c. “gemella” P-o 183: a rendere P-o 106 testimone privilegiato è però la presenza di correzioni di mano di AMM, ripartibili in tre fasi grazie all’uso di penne differenti (penna blu chiaro, per i refusi – non riportati in apparato –; penna blu scuro; penna rossa). Ulteriori documenti conservati sono: P-o 101, il testo ms. della prima versione della lecture, presentata come CL 1979 III con il titolo di Daniel and the Dangers of Apocalyptic; le successive riproduzioni della sua top c., nucleo b di P-o 105 (oltre alla c.c. P-o 177 e alle xerocopie scarsamente annotate P-o 102, 103 e 104); la nuova introduzione ms. per GS 1979 II, P-o 123 (in cui compare per la prima volta il nuovo titolo Daniel and the World Empires) e le sue riproduzioni (sezione c di P-o 105, 106, 183); infine, P-o 137, una xerox della versione completa GL di P-o 106 (a-b-c) priva di annotazioni significative. 2. Argomento della lecture Il ricorso alla figura di Daniele, nell’omonimo libro, si basa sulla grande antichità della sua figura e sulla sua reputazione di uomo giusto e saggio. Fatto prigioniero da Nebuchadnezzar dopo la caduta di Gerusalemme (600 a.C. ca.) è presentato come l’unico fra i maghi del regno in grado di interpretare il sogno del sovrano: una statua dalle parti metalliche, frantumata da una pietra del 1 The Paradox of the Roman Empire and Christian Historiography. Datata al 30.1.80 da un’annotazione ms. di AMM, c.1. 3 I primi due fogli sono “numerati” a-b (a1); la sequenza successiva, normalizzata a mano a partire da materiale eterogeneo (sezioni a e b, cfr. supra) vede in ordine: 1 (b1); 2-2bis (a2); 3-5 (b2); 6-6bis (a3); 7-8 (b3); 9-12 (a4); 8-9 (c1); 15-15 bis (a5); 11-19 (c2). 2 129 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires cielo, che simboleggia la successione dei regni terreni interrotta dall’instaurazione di quello divino. A questa prima e più antica parte del libro ne segue una seconda riconducibile al periodo di sudditanza ad Antioco IV: qui il tentativo di armonizzazione con le precedenti sezioni del testo induce l’autore a recuperarne il medesimo schema profetico, sostituendo al simbolismo dei metalli quello degli animali feroci. Se il modello elaborato da Daniele è quello greco di successione degli imperi del mondo, sia pure rivisitato in chiave religiosa, il motivo del mancato riconoscimento da parte della critica della sua origine ellenica deriva dalla tradizionale riconduzione della statua vista in sogno da Nebuchadnezzar a influenze orientali. Il processo di deterioramento metallico, indifferente – se non contraddittorio – in ottica ebraica, trova tuttavia spiegazione solo in quanto prestito esiodeo; allo stesso modo, benché tracce di analoghi simbolismi siano presenti nella letteratura dinastica persiana, la nozione di successione degli imperi come spina dorsale della storia rimane in sé greca. Del tutto ebraico è invece l’esito apocalittico che porta all’instaurazione del Regno di Dio: Daniele sembra quindi mutuare lo schema greco al fine di trasformarlo in una critica radicale del potere mondano. A distanza di pochi decenni, la prospettiva storicistica di Daniele è raccolta dagli Oracoli sibillini, scritti apocrifi con cui gli Ebrei prima e i Cristiani poi recuperano l’oracolistica pagana adattandone i contenuti alla propria visione storica e teologica. Emerge da questi libri un forte elemento di novità, rappresentato dal riconoscimento (in chiave ostile) di Roma come impero del mondo, lettura destinata ad essere trasmessa dagli oracoli ebraici a quelli cristiani. Su piano analogo si muove l’Apocalisse di Giovanni4 - collocata da Ireneo sotto Domiziano, ma retrodatata da Momigliano in età neroniana (cfr. voce corrisponente su CAH 1934) – che affianca a un’attitudine contraddittoria nei confronti della popolazione ebraica la netta speranza che l’impero romano scompaia, e contribuisce così a mettere in luce l’importanza dell’apocalittica nella resistenza ai Romani. 3. Note di contenuto: le fasi di rielaborazione della lecture e il rapporto con i testi editi. La trasformazione del testo dalla redazione per Chicago a quella per il Gauss Seminar di Princeton, a sua volta destinata a essere sostanzialmente ripresa (salvo qualche aggiunta incipitaria) nella versione oxoniense, passa per l’inserimento di ampi stralci recuperati dalla prima stesura della conferenza successiva (CL 1979 V, The Paradox of the Roman Empire and Christian Historiography), riproposta anch’essa a Princeton come GS 1979 III con il titolo di Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography. L’integrazione, documentata sia da P-o 105 che da P-o 106, consiste nella trasposizione alla fine del testo delle cc. 8-9 e 11-19, confluite rispettivamente da P-o 109 (in P-o 105) e da P-o 110 (in P-o 106). La prima sezione spostata verte sulla trasformazione della materia oracolare tramite l’adozione della forma sibillina da parte di Ebrei e cristiani, mentre in quella successiva si approfondiscono le questioni della perdita di interesse della storia universale per gli antichi imperi, della progressiva predilezione cristiana per il tema del contrasto tra Roma e regno di Dio e del doppio esito individuabile nell’ottimismo storico di Eusebio e nel compromesso agostiniano con l’Apocalisse. Il problema che la trasposizione delle due sezioni pone è di natura affine a quello incontrato nell’analisi dei rapporti tra The Jews inside (GL 1979 III) e The Defence (GL 1979 IV), vale a dire la presenza di duplicati nella redazione definitiva del testo5: il fatto che la sezione finale di The Paradox sia spostata in Daniel (sia GS che GL) non comporta in parallelo l’eliminazione della sezione stessa dalla sua conferenza di origine. Al contrario, nella sua rielaborazione GS e GL come Flavius Josephus, The Paradox mantiene una parte consistente del materiale in questione: se il paragrafo sui libri sibillini (cc. 8-9) viene sostituito da una riflessione sul classicismo della storiografia pagana imperiale, la sezione finale del testo, dedicata alla storiografia cristiana, è non 4 5 In appendice alla lecture, pp. 143-44. Per cui cfr. supra, pp. 74-75. 130 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires solo integralmente conservata ma anche rivista e sottoposta a correzioni minute (Daniel cc. 22-24 = Flavius Josephus cc. 18-20). È proprio in considerazione di tali interventi, evidentemente testimoni di un’ulteriore avanzamento compositivo, che si propone in questa sede un’edizione del testo di Daniel privo dei paragrafi duplicati6. Non si può tuttavia negare la natura di compromesso della soluzione: la reiterata trasposizione della sezione in Daniel (P-o 109, 110), il fatto che sia poi stata trascritta nuovamente nelle copie GS e in quelle GL, il continuo ripensamento del testo, sono tutti indizi che inducono a ritenere che Momigliano attribuisse carattere unitario, organico, alla sequenza di argomenti così ottenuta7. È plausibile che, in prospettiva di un progetto futuro di revisione delle lectures a scopo di pubblicazione, si proponesse di continuare a riflettere sulla collocazione delle cc. in questione. Va d’altronde osservato come la versione di Daniel comprensiva di tutte le aggiunte, un documento composito dalla lunghezza di 29 cc. dss., vada ben al di là delle possibilità concesse dai tempi di esposizione: c’è quindi anche e soprattutto una ragione pratica dietro alla motivazione, documentata su P-o 106 da una nota ms. di AMM datata al 20/01/19808, di concludere la lettura Grinfield con il foglio n. 23 (= c. 18). Il testo edito si fa terminare anche qui in coincidenza di tale interruzione; si propone tuttavia in appendice il testo successivo alla segnalazione di fine lettura (nonché a un ulteriore paragrafo di raccordo, già spostato però da Momigliano in Flavius Josephus, c. 3). L’appendice offre infatti un’analisi dell’Apocalisse che non sarà recuperata altrove ma che pure è presupposta dalla formulazione della teoria di Agostino interprete di Roma avanzata nel finale di Flavius Josephus, che nella ridotta formulazione della lecture di appartenenza può avvalersi solo di un rapido cenno introduttivo (“He [scil. Agostinus] culled from Revelation…”, c. 19). Per quanto concerne i rapporti di Daniel con la prima lecture del ciclo (GL 1980 I, Universal History), si segnala l’operazione di riedizione parziale a cui i due testi sono andati incontro insieme nella pubblicazione del saggio The Origins of Universal History (= The Origins). Recuperata come conclusione di una generale riflessione su origini e sviluppi della storia universale (per cui cfr. supra, pp. 113-14), la materia di Daniel risulta qui condensata in un paragrafo finale di appena sei pagine; una differenza di estensione che corrisponde evidentemente – al di là della ridotta disponibilità di spazio argomentativo rispetto al ciclo di Chicago – allo spostamento del focus tematico che il titolo stesso del saggio preannuncia. In The Origins Daniele compare soltanto come una tra le voci che delineano lo sviluppo del tema generale: rilevante, anche perché conclusiva, ma non oggetto di riflessione specifica. Del resto già un anno prima della Creighton (1980) Momigliano aveva dato alle stampe, benché con carattere di “comunicazione preliminare”, il suo pensiero su Daniele e la teoria greca della successione degli imperi (= Daniele, teoria). Si tratta di un testo particolarmente breve e sintetico, che non presenta novità rispetto ai contenuti della Grinfield lecture ma che offre piuttosto una sintetica panoramica delle sue principali acquisizioni. Va tuttavia segnalata la sfumatura leggermente possibilista riservata nell’edito alla trattazione dell’eventualità che la successione metallica in Daniele subisca influenze da fonti iraniche, al contrario recisamente negata in Daniel (cfr. infra, n. xiv in fondo al testo). 6 Per i punti in cui le cc. 22-24 di Daniel divergono da quelle di Flavius Josephus, cfr. GL 1980 III, apparato ad locc. Significativo, in tal senso, quanto Momigliano stesso scrive in una lettera ad AMM databile in fase di elaborazione del ciclo GS: “Come vedrai, ho riorganizzato la seconda lecture in modo da includere gran parte della terza: e cioè contenere quanto voglio dire su Daniel e i Sibillini, nonché Revelation. La terza è costituita dalla parte nuova su Giuseppe Flavio, una parte della seconda lecture [i.e. c.3, n.d.C.] e il finale della terza lecture. Il tutto è forse un po’ breve. Ma è possibile che aggiunga alla terza lecture ancora un paio di pagine alla fine o verso la fine, dipenderà dal tempo” (Chicago, 31.X.79). 8 Cfr. apparato ad loc., n. 59. 7 131 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires II*9 Daniel and the World Empires10 I In my previous lecture I tried to establish the following four points: 1) Universal history is a notion which received its classical formulation from Polybius in the middle of the second century B.C. He connected the notion of universal history with the notion of the succession of empires. His particular line of succession was: Persian Empire, Spartan Empire, Macedonian Empire, Roman Empire. Only the latest empire, the Roman Empire, was really universal and therefore suitable for world history. 2) We do not know whether Polybius was the first to formulate explicitly the equivalence of the notion of the succession of world empires with the notion of world history. But the notion of the succession of world empires had been familiar to the Greeks since Herodotus and Ctesias. Both Herodotus and Ctesias imply with different degrees of clarity that Assyria, Media and Persia were world empires in succession. The same world empires, with Macedonia as the fourth, reappear in Aemilius Sura’s list which I attribute to the second century. In any case the idea of world history originated in critical research about the succession of world empires. In its turn the succession of world empires was formulated by political historians working in the Greek tradition. 3) This is not to deny that before and after Polybius Greeks and Romans experimented with nonpolitical schemes of historical development which were potentially capable of producing universal histories. Such were the scheme of the succession of five ages characterized by metals, the scheme of biological development according to which political organizations move from childhood to old age, and the scheme of technological progress. But, to the best of my knowledge, none of these schemes was elaborated so as to account for what the Greeks and Romans themselves considered the past of mankind. [b] 4) A group of historians who lived in the first century B.C. gave the Polybian notion of universal history a new dimension by emphasizing the importance of pre-Roman world empires. These historians were not necessarily anti-Roman (even the extent of Timagenes’ opposition to Rome is open to question), but in effect they vindicated the importance of non-Roman achievements in history. Trogus Pompeius, Diodorus and Nicolaus of Damascus belong to this group. It will by now be no surprise if I try to show that the Book of Daniel is based on a Greek notion of the succession of empires and used it, as some Greek and Roman historians did, but more radically, to criticize the ruling power of the day. The Jews had just passed from the world empire of the Persians to the world empire of the Greeks and were in a good position to understand the meaning of the Greek theory of the succession of empires. They were also in a position to appreciate that for the Jews themselves the new world empire of the Greeks was no improvement on the old one of the Persians. Indeed some particularly pious Jew was bound to ask whether God was not altogether tired of this succession of empires. I * Documento preso come base: P-o 106. Si tratta di una c.c. riveduta e corretta di P-o 105, documento composito che conserva insieme al nucleo CL 1979 le aggiunte GS 1979 e Gl 1980, per un totale di 29 pp. dalla numerazione discontinua (cc. a-b, 1-24 con 2bis, 6bis, 15bis). Le correzioni su P-o 106 sono di AMM e appaiono eseguite in tre momenti, segnalati dall’uso di penne diverse: penna blu chiaro (prevalente e dedicata ai refusi, non segnalata); penna blu scuro; penna rossa. Si considerano all’occorrenza in apparato le varianti presenti sulla seconda c.c. di P-o 105, Po 183, oltre che eventuali lezioni alternative presenti su P-o 102, 103 e 104, copie xerox del nucleo CL 1979 di P-o 183. Per i passi derivanti dalla GL 1980 III, Flavius Josephus, si cita dal testo base, P-o 114. 9 P-o 106: II, (former III), msb[AMM]; (Xerox to Pisa 11.2.80), mgsnms[AMM]; New beginning for Grinfield lecture II, 30.1.80 (20.1.80), mgdxms[AMM]. 10 P-o 106: World Empires <-> Dangers of Apocalyptic, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 105: id., interl.msb[AMM]. 132 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires suggest that the Book of Daniel represents the answer to this simple question. The answer is of a kind as to make the book the most conspicuous Jewish intervention in the classical debate about the structure of world history. [1] II11 12 It was customary in the Hellenistic period both among Jews and among Gentiles to attribute sayings, visions and books in general to wise men of the past. Moses, Enoch, Elijah and Ezra are among the Hebrew men of the past to whom literary works were attributed: the Greeks used the names of Orpheus and Pythagoras for a similar purpose. Daniel was not such a big name, but his reputation had been on the increase for some centuries. The prophet Ezechiel 14: 4 chose Noah, Daniel and Job as the prototypes of righteousness. Ezechiel 28: 3 taunts the King of Tyre: “are you wiser than Daniel?” So Daniel was not only just, but wise. And he was probably not Jewish, as Noah and Job were not strictly speaking Jewish. In the Book of Jubilees 4: 20, which is more or less contemporary with the final version of the Book of Daniel as we have it, we find a Daniel or rather Danel whose daughter married Enoch, the other more important biblical figure to whom apocalyptic books were attributed in the second century B.C. If Danel and Daniel are two variant spellings of the same name, which seems undoubted, the figure of the just man Danel may go back to the Ugaritic text of the fourteenth century B.C., “The Tale of Aqhat”, were we find a King Daniel who “Judges the cause of the widow, tries the cause of the orphan”i. Thus Danel or Daniel was a well thought out hero of the past. What is surprising is to find him placed in the courts of Babylon and Persia by the book to which he gives his name. According to the book he would have been taken prisoner at the fall of Jerusalem at the beginning of the sixth century B.C. (600 B.C. according to the approximate chronology of the Book of Daniel itself)13. At present we have no idea when and how Daniel became a hero in the sixth century B.C. According to the Book of Daniel, he was at the court of Nebuchadnezzar to begin with, and there he and three Jewish friends had their first adventure. They were better magicians and exorcists than all other professional magicians of the kingdom. They [2] 14 were trained as courtiers and given Babylonian names: Daniel for instance was called Beltheshazzarii. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream which none of the non-Jews could interpret, and he was determined to kill his professional advisers. Dreams, needless to say, were a constant preoccupation in real life. In an ostrakon from Elephantina of the fifth century B.C. a man writes to his wife: “From then I have been exceedingly feverish, I saw a vision. All is well. Sell all my belongings. The children may eat. There should be not a few left?” (J. C. L. Gibson, Aramaic Inscriptions, II, 27iii). In our case Daniel was brought in, gave the right interpretation and thereby saved his gentile colleagues or rivals. The dream is that of the great image with the head of fine gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, feet part iron and part clay. A stone from heaven (according to the dream) shattered the statue. In Daniel’s interpretation, the different metals in the different parts of the statue each symbolize one kingdom, and the kingdoms are not concurrent but successive. Like most interpreters of the present day, I regard it as virtually certain that Daniel implied that the head of gold is Babylon, silver means Media, bronze Persia, iron Alexander, and iron and clay his Macedonian successors. But it is important to remember that our text of Daniel chapter 2 does not make these identifications explicit. The reasons why the identifications seems to me certain are various. Firstly, the same identifications are mandatory for the final part of Daniel, especially for chapters seven and eleven: indeed in chapter eleven Persia and Greece are mentioned by name. Whether or not chapter two was written by the same author 11 P-o 106: III (former) Daniel and the Dangers of Apocalyptic, tsf (former msb[AMM]); 4.4.79 – 2 c.c.’s sent to Chicago; II <-> I, mgdx,sup ms[AMM]. 12 P-o 102, 103, 104: cc. a-b deff. 13 P-o 183: -> 600 B.C.… of Daniel itself, del. 14 P-o 106: New 20.1.80, mgdx,supmsb[AMM]. 133 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires who wrote chapter seven, the compiler of the present Book of Daniel evidently took the four metals of chapter two to correspond as symbols of world empires to the four beasts of chapter seven. Secondly, the description of the fourth kingdom in chapter two as composite or divided can only allude to the breaking up of Alexander’s kingdom after his death. Thirdly, the stone does not put an end to just one dynasty, but to all earthly kingdoms – which implies that the preceding kingdoms were not successive members of a dynasty, but successive stages of the world. This interpretation is negatively confirmed by the [2bis]15 constatation that all attempt to interpret the four kingdoms of chapter two as four successive reigns in the same dynasty have so far failed. I shall mention only a recent one by Professor John Gamnie in Journal of Biblical Literature 95, 1976, 191-204iv because it is excellently argued. Gamnie sees in the four kingdoms an allusion to the first four Ptolemies of Egypt, but is unable to explain, among other things, why the reign of Ptolemy IV should be described as divided or composite. In any case Daniel makes it clear that the stone is the true God, and what follows the destruction of the statue is the establishment of the Kingdom of God which will endure forever. Some recent interpreters (John Collinsv) have thought that the kingdom which endure forever was originally meant to signify the return of gold, or rather of the golden age, associated with Babylon. Thus we would have here a pagan (Oriental) prophecy refurbished and reinterpreted by the Jewish author. But the stone smashes all the elements of the statue, including the golden head. The story, as we have it, excludes the return to a past golden age; it sets an eternal Jewish Kingdom of God in place of all the empires of the past taken together. It indicates the transition from the ages of mortal empires to the age of the one and permanent God. The statue is not meant to represent a succession of empires: it rather symbolizes the co-existence of all the past, as it had developed through a succession of empires, at the moment in which all the past is destroyed by the divine stone and replaced by a new order. [3] Before we explore the implications of this unusual idea, we must remind ourselves of two or three other features of the Book of Daniel, such as it has reached us. The next four chapters tell other stories about Daniel and his friends as courtiers – always talking about them in the third person, as if the writer were registering events of the distant past. Chapter three does not concern Daniel, but only his friends who refuse to worship a golden image set up by Nebuchadnezzar. These Jews are thrown into a furnace, but are not burned. The King blesses the God of the Jews and prohibits any offensive act against him. Chapter four is the story of the insanity of Nebuchadnezzar. It is to a great extent couched in the form of an autobiographical letter by the King himself with additional information from a narrator. The transition from the third to the first person reminds one of the Books of Tobit and of Ezra-Nehemiah. The King confirms that only Daniel had been able to interpret the dream which foreshadowed his insanity. Chapter five is the story of the writing on the wall for Belshazzar who is presented as the son of Nebuchadnezzar and the last King of Babylon – although he was neither: as a matter of fact, also Darius the Mede, who is supposed to have conquered Belshazzar, is a strange invention. It is unnecessary to add that in 539 B.C. Cyrus the Persian, not Darius the Mede, entered Babylon and imprisoned the last Chaldaean king, Nabonidus, whose son and co-regent was in fact called Belshazzar. One of the Qumran texts, the “Prayer of Nabonidus”vi, has at least shown that other Jewish Hellenistic writers knew about the identity of the last King of Babylon. Chapter six shows Daniel ascending even higher on the ladder as a minister of Darius. The other courtiers, jealous of his influence, trick Darius into ordering an exclusive cult to himself for thirty days. Daniel, who prays to the true God three times a day (perhaps the earliest evidence of this Jewish custom, unless Psalm 55: 17 has the same meaning16), obviously cannot obey this order and is thrown into the lion’s den. But of course in the end all is well. These episodes may have indirectly had some meaning for the generation of [4] Jews which rebelled against Antiochus IV and his attempt to Hellenize the cult of Yahwe in Jerusalem. Daniel 15 16 P-o 106: New 20.1.80, mgdx,supmsb[AMM]. P-o 183: “evening and morning and at moon I will pray”, ‫ ָא ִ ֣שׂיחָה‬. ‫ ו ָ֣ב ֹ ֶקר ֭ ְו ָצה ֳַרי ִם‬.‫ ֶ ֤ע ֶרב‬, msb[Mom] con segr. 134 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires and his companions exemplified steadfast Jews who preferred death to the cult of foreign gods or of living kings. But while these chapters presuppose Alexander the Great and the formation of the Hellenistic monarchies, they do not allude specifically to Antiochus IV or his time. They envisage Jews living at the courts of kings and managing in spite of all to reconcile worldly success as courtiers with the duties of pious Jews. The situation resembles that of the Book of Esther more than that of the Books of Maccabees. Another parallel is represented by the tale of the Tobiads in the Jewish Antiquities of Flavius Josephusvii. The Tobiads have nothing of the prophetic powers of Daniel, but are altogether successful in being both courtiers of foreign kings and devoted Jews. The emphasis is on privileged Jews, as they existed in real life, who remained faithful Jews among the temptations of a pagan court. The second part of Daniel is differently oriented. It is clearly concerned with the situation of Jerusalem and the rest of Judaea under Antiochus IV and has Daniel directly communicating his visions in the first person. The stories about Daniel and his companions are replaced by the words of Daniel himself. It seems obvious, however, that the author or authors who composed what now constitutes chapters 7-12 of the Book of Daniel knew the first part well. Two visions are placed in the reign of Belshazzar, who is the last Babylonian king according to chapter five. Chapter nine, the third vision in the second section, is placed in the reign of the imaginary Darius the Mede who appears in the first section as the conqueror of Belshazzar. Finally, the fourth vision in chapters 1012 happens under Cyrus the Persian, who according to Daniel17 succeeded the non-existent18 Darius the Mede. There are in fact other signs that the Book of Daniel, though composed of heterogeneous elements, was put together with conspicuous care by an editor who was interested in producing an impression of coherence and even stylistic harmony. The task was by no means easy because, as we all know, Daniel is one of the two books of the Bible which are written [5] partly in Hebrew and partly in Aramaic, the language most, if not all, Jews spoke in Palestine during the Second Temple.19 The other book is Ezra. What is more peculiar is the quick transition from one language to the other in the same text. In the Book of Ezra the transition is combined with the quotation of certain Persian decrees in Aramaic, but the main Aramaic section goes beyond the simple quotation of documents to an extent which is difficult to understand. As for Daniel, there is at least a pattern which indicates that the editor had some idea of how to compose a bilingual work. With the present division of chapters,20 the first chapter is in Hebrew, the next six chapters are in Aramaic; in the second section of the book the order and the proportions are inverted: one chapter in Aramaic is followed by six chapters in Hebrew. We may as well forget the word “chapters” because the division of the Bible into chapters is late21 medieval; but the fact remains that in the first section of the Book of Daniel a short portion in Hebrew is followed by a long section in Aramaic, whereas in the second section a short portion in Aramaic is followed by a long section in Hebrew. This must be by design and indicates that the editor of the book did his best to give it an appearance of unity. This would be even more true if we were to follow H. L. Ginsberg in his very acute, but to my mind unconvincing theory that the text of Daniel was originally all in Aramaic, but was later partly translated into Hebrewviii. What matters to us is that the man who put together the stories about Daniel now in the first section and the visions of Daniel now in the second section wanted to emphasize the unity of the work and the relevance of the first section to the interpretation of the second section. Now the second section develops that philosophy of history which we have already found in the second chapter of the first section. It must immediately be emphasized that the idea of the 17 P-o 106: according to Daniel, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 183: id., mgdxmsb[Mom]. P-o 106: the non-existent, interl.msb[AMM]. 19 P-o 106, 183: the language most ... Second Temple <-> Both Ezra and Daniel were put together in the period of the Second Temple when the Jews spoke Aramaic in daily life, but still used Hebrew as their liturgical language, interl.msb[106 AMM, 183 Mom]. 20 P-o 106: With the present division of chapters, interl.msb[AMM]. 21 P-o 106: late, interl.msb[AMM]. 18 135 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires succession of empires is taken up again and expanded, but the symbolism of the metals which was associated with it in the statue of chapter two is not retained. In chapter seven Daniel tells of [6]22 his dream of the four beasts: lion with eagle wings, bear, winged leopard, and a nameless monster with ten horns. The first23 three beasts must respectively symbolize Babylon, Media and Persia. The ten horns of the fourth monster certainly symbolize three Macedonian and seven Seleucid kings, and the eleventh little horn which later developed among them is Antiochus IV. Each beast dies in turn, and what follows the four empires is the kingdom and dominion of the people of the Saints of the Most High – an everlasting kingdom. Whereas the first four kingdoms are represented by beasts, the fifth kingdom is symbolized by the Son of Man. The allusion to Antiochus IV also includes a reference to his war with Egypt in 169 B.C., as the pagan philosopher Porphyry recognizedix in the third century A.D. There is also a clear reference to some persecution of the Jews, but not, as far as we can see, to the prohibition of circumcision and of the Sabbath. It would seem, therefore, that chapter seven was written between 169 and 167 B.C., and the author expected the persecution to last three and a half years.24 In chapter eight Daniel reports another vision. This time the ram symbolizing Iran is trampled down by the goat representing Alexander the Great. The ram as Persia is to be found also in traditions of astrological geography analysed by F. Cumont in Klio 9, 1909, 265-273x. This is essential confirmation of the interpretation which identifies the last monarchies with Persia and Macedon. A rapid transition brings us to Antiochus IV and his prohibition of burnt offerings in the Temple of Jerusalem, which we know to have happened about December 167. The persecution is supposed to last 2,300 evenings and mornings, that is 1,150 days or three years and three months, not three years and six months. We deduce that the prophecy of chapter eight must have circulated independently of the prophecy of chapter seven. Chapter nine interrupts the prophecies of the succession of empires and is a meditation by Daniel on the text of Jeremiah predicting that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. It begins with a prayer of atonement which became a model for Kippur prayers (or vice versa). Then the Archangel Gabriel explains that Jeremiah’s seventy years really mean “seventy weeks of years”, that is 490 years, which [6bis]25 would take us from about 587 B.C. to about 97 B.C. I have never seen a reasonable explanation of this. If taken as a prophecy post eventum, it would date this chapter beyond the Maccabean period well into the reign of Alexander Jannaeus. Probably Daniel did not know how to count or – rather – only wanted to appropriate Jeremiah’s prophecy and did not pay attention to chronological implications. If so, there is some excuse for those of his interpreters who stretched the seventy weeks of years as far as the resurrection of Christ or the destruction of the Second Temple. [7] The last vision in chapters 10-12 is far simpler. In a style which is more reminiscent of a Greek chronicle than of Hebrew prophecy, the seer anticipates the main outline of events from Cyrus the Persian to Antiochus IV. The writer, by now clearly a contemporary of Antiochus IV, ventures his one and only prophecy on the future of Antiochus and goes wrong. He prophesies that Antiochus will wage another campaign against Egypt, that he will win, but that he will meet his end “between the sea and the holy mountain”, that is between the Mediterranean and Jerusalem on the Phoenician coast. But Antiochus IV died during an Eastern campaign when he vainly tried to pillage a sanctuary in Elymais about November 164. As the news of his death had reached Babylon before December 18, according to the well-known cuneiform text published by Sachs and Wisemann in Iraq 16, 1954, 202-9xi, it must have been known in Jerusalem not later than January 163 B.C. From this we deduce that Daniel wrote his prophecy turned wrong not later than the end of 164 B.C. The book concludes on an eschatological note. There is hope of resurrection for the 22 P-o 106: New 27.1.80, mgdx,supmsb[AMM]. P-o 183: The first <- According to Babylonian astral geography as reported by an old source, Teucer of Babylon (F. Cumont, Klio, 9, 1909, 263-73), del. 24 P-o 103: and a half years -> but the prophecy about the length of the persecution may have been added later, when the persecution was [non legitur] to have lasted about three years and a half, interl.msn[Mom], del. 25 P-o 106: New 27.1.80, mgdx,supmsb[AMM]. 23 136 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires righteous: “Some will live forever, while others will become everlasting objects of contempt and abhorrence” (12: 2). Daniel does not speak as if he were alone. We knows himself to be surrounded by people who act wisely, those whom he calls the “mashkilim” (11: 33). They will help the multitude to understand and will receive some little help from somewhere: the mysterious allusion has been taken to point to Judas Maccabaeus and his followers, and this seems to me still the best explanation. The wise men surrounding Daniel do not identify themselves with the revolutionary armed activists guided26 by Judas Maccabaeus: yet they admit to being on the same side. If we had only the second section of the Book of Daniel – which is directly inspired by the crisis in the reign of Antiochus IV and written while he was still alive – it would have been recognized long ago that the author or authors [8] of these visions worked on the basis of the Greek concept of a succession of world empires. The religious interpretation, the apocalyptic finale, is of course the specific Jewish contribution to the reading of the situation. The desecration of the Temple is for Daniel the sign that the end of the Greco-Macedonian world empire is in sight: something like a Messianic kingdom will replace it, though its outlines are still vague, and even the extent of individual resurrections is left prudently undetermined. But the foundation of all this Messianic structure is provided by the scheme of the succession of empires which we found in Polybius, and which Polybius presupposed to be widely accepted in his own time. Traces of it are evident even for us in preceding historians like Ephorus27 and Ctesias; and we have seen that Aemilius Sura who, like Polybius, contributed to divulging the scheme among the Romans is likely to have lived in the first half of the second century B.Cxii. True enough, Polybius and Sura extended the scheme to involve the Romans. There is no reason to be surprised if people writing in Jerusalem about 164 B.C. did not yet consider Rome a world empire to be added to their scheme. All they seem to have known about the Romans – whom they called Kittimxiii – was that they had stopped Antiochus IV when he tried to occupy Egypt. A few years later the situation would have appeared differently. In 161 B.C. Judas Maccabaeus sent an embassy to conclude an alliance with Rome: about forty28, or perhaps even only thirty29, years later, the author of the First Book of Maccabees was in no doubt about the position of Rome as a world empire. In 164 B.C., even outside parochial Judaea, there must have been many Greeks and Hellenized Orientals who still looked at the heirs of Alexander as the latest world empire. We must not forget that Trogus Pompeius who wrote in the age of Augustus was still using a scheme which only with difficulty admitted Rome into the series of the world empires30. If it is not generally recognized that the Book of Daniel turns a Greek scheme of world empires into a scheme for the preparation of the Messianic age, this is of course because in the first section of the book the interpretation [9]31 of the statue as a scheme of world empires seems to prove its Oriental origin. But is this inference correct? Let us return to chapter two and its statue. The statue is made of four different metals: it is destroyed by God’s stone. In the opinion of Daniel, the interpreter, the four metals represent four successive empires – very probably Babylonia, Media, Persia and Macedon, and the destruction of the statue prefigures the Kingdom of God. The symbol is impressive because, as we have already observed, it delivers Daniel’s message effectively: all the kingdoms of the past are going to be replaced by a new divine order. But the metallic ingredients can hardly be said to make sense in the context. The four metals – gold, silver, bronze and iron (to which the mixture of terracotta and iron is added to represent the successors of Alexander) – must be deemed to represent successive stages in the decline of the earthly kingdoms. Daniel does in fact say, as a natural compliment to the King whom he is addressing, that the next kingdom will be lower (2, 39). But Daniel does not appear to be interested further in the process of 26 27 28 29 30 31 P-o 105, 106: guided <-> led, interl.msb[Mom]. P-o 106: Herodotus <-> Ephorus, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 106: forty <-> fifty, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 106: thirty <-> forty, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 183: We must … empires, ts. tra parentesi quadre. P-o 106: New 21.1.80, mgdx,supmsb[AMM]. 137 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires deterioration. His prophecy as a whole is not a description of the progressive deterioration of the world, as Hesiod’s account of the five ages was. It would indeed be remarkable if a Jewish writer gave the highest mark to Babylonia which had destroyed the First Temple. It seems evident that the author of Daniel chapter two found the scheme of the metals somewhere and applied it to another scheme, that of the world empires to which it did not belong. Now it cannot be an accident that the scheme of the metals, where we find it outside the Book of Daniel, has nothing to do with the scheme of the world empires. We found it in Hesiod, who describes a procession, not of empires, but of human races, each worse than its predecessor. In Persia the symbolism of the metals was used to indicate a succession of rulers in Persia, reflecting different stages of their attitude towards Zoroaster and his doctrine. The details are notoriously confusing because the basic text of the Avesta – and more precisely of the Vohuman Yasn – is lost, and what we have are medieval commentaries, the Dînkart and the Bahman Yasht, which do not agree between themselves on the meaning of the basic text. But fortunately for our purpose the details do not matter much because it is at least clear that the Avesta and its commentaries – whatever their dates – [10]32 were concerned with a succession of historical periods inside Persia, not with a succession of world empires. We may agree that it is33 much more probable that the Jews should have learned the symbolism of the succession of the metals from the Persians rather than from the Greeks: they were nearer to the Avesta than to Hesiod, chronologically, geographically and intellectually. But Daniel chapter two cannot derive from a Persian source in its combination of a series of metals and a series of empires because, as far as we know, the notion of the succession of empires as the backbone of history is a Greek notion34. The most we can concede is that somebody in Persia had already combined metals and Persian kings before the author of Daniel chapter two combined metals and world empiresxiv. The combination of metals and world empires is to be found for the first time in this chapter of Daniel, and we shall be well advised to consider it a creation of its author until the evidence to the contrary is provided.35 In the Hellenistic age36 a myth of human changes expressed in terms of a succession of metals circulated both in the East and in Greece37. The author of Daniel chapter two, who was attracted by the Greek notion of the succession of empires, had the idea of combining the two notions of metal ages and world empires38 even if the result was bound to be somewhat incoherent. Whether the author of Daniel chapter two was also the first to put all the metals inside a statue I cannot say for certain; but I would consider this probable, because the co-existence of all the ages in one image was in perfect agreement with his notion of the advent of the eternal Kingdom of Good. It may, indeed, have been the attraction of the symbol of the statue that persuaded him to use the combination of metals in order to express, however inadequately, the coexistence of various ages in the statue. In other words, he used the metals to indicate, not deterioration, but temporality against eternity. The author of Daniel chapter two was certainly writing before the time of Antiochus IV, to whom he makes no reference. He was therefore the model for the later author of chapter seven. The most recent historical allusion to be found in Daniel chapter two is in verse 43 where there seems to be a fairly evident reference to the tragic outcome of the marriage between the Seleucid Antiochus II and Berenice, the daughter of Ptolemy II, about 250 B.C.: “Just as you saw the iron mixed with terracotta, they will be mingled by intermarriage, but they will not hold together”. The alternative interpretation that there is here an allusion to the marriage between Ptolemy V and Cleopatra, 32 P-o 106: New 21.1.80, mgdx,supmsb[AMM]. P-o 106, 183: We may agree that it is <-> It is certainly, interl.msb[AMM]. 34 P-o 106: because, as far as we know ... a Greek notion, interl.msb[AMM]. 35 P-o 183: As the late Professor Arthur Darby Nock one said to me: “I have reluctantly reached the conclusion that somebody may occasionally have an original idea”, mgsup con segr, msb[Mom]. 36 P-o 106: In the Hellenistic age, interl.msb[AMM]. 37 P-o 106: both in the East and in Greece <-> in the East, interl[106 msbAMM, 183 msnMom]. 38 P-o 106: notions of ... empires <-> successions, interl.msb[AMM]. 33 138 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires daughter of Antiochus III, about 193 B.C. is far less convincing, because this marriage lasted39. Thus it would appear that Daniel chapter two was written not much later than 250 B.C. I do not know, of course, whether this date can apply to the whole set of chapters 1-6 [11]40 which is in any case earlier than the reign of Antiochus IV, that is earlier than about 175 B.C. What we can now see is that already the author of Daniel chapter two used the Greek scheme of the succession of empires. He combined it with the basically extraneous scheme of the metal ages. The seer or seers who wrote the second part of Daniel (chapters 7-12) were rooted, even more than he was, in Greek culture and easily encouraged by his example to use the Greek notion of the succession of empires to illuminate the ways of God and to express the conviction that the Kingdom of God was near, very near indeed. III If my story is correct, the Book of Daniel as a whole will have to be seen as a book which uses a Greek political interpretation of history – the scheme of empires – to reach the very un-Greek conclusion that the Kingdom of God is approaching.41 For the moment let us consider some of the implications of Daniel’s having introduced the notion of the succession of empires into Jewish thought either in the third or, at the latest, in the second century B.C. The assumption that about 250 B.C. the Greek idea of world empires may have been circulating among Jews either in Palestine or elsewhere should not cause surprise. It was a very relevant – and very simple – idea: certainly far simpler than those philosophic notions about life, pleasure and death which exercised the mind of Qohelet, the Ecclesiastes, about the same time. Before 200 B.C. there were already in circulation historical works written in Greek by Jews such as Demetrius, whom Flavius Josephus foolishly mixed up with Demetrius of Phalerum. These Jews who learned to write history in Greek must have read some Ctesias, if not some Herodotus, and were possibly acquainted with some of the Hellenistic writers of world history whom Polybius despised to the point of being silent about them. That the Book of Tobit in ch. 14, 4-7 presupposes a succession of Assyria, Media and Persia and apparently by-passes Babylonia is neither a confirmation nor a refutation of what I have been saying. The Book of Tobit is not concerned with world history, but with the fact that Media and Persia granted [12]42 peace to the Hebrew nation, while Babylonia destroyed Jerusalem. It is a different perspective from that of Daniel. Besides, we do not know either the date or the place of origin of Tobit. The book has been dated in the fourth, third and second centuries B.C. and placed either in Persia or in Palestine. To my knowledge, the discovery of Aramaic fragments of Tobit in Qumran has not contributed to resolving any of our questions about this book43. The notion of empires is conspicuously absent from other apocalyptic compositions of the second century B.C., such as the so-called Apocalypse of Weeks and the so-called Animal Apocalypse in the First Book of Enoch (the Ethiopian Enoch: chapters 91, 12-17 and 93 for the former; and 83-90 for the latter). Both Apocalypses show signs of having been written about 165 B.C. The Apocalypse of Weeks divides Jewish history into ten periods, three of which are still to come. The author lives in the seventh week, one of persecution. 39 P-o 106: because ... lasted, mgdx,infmsb[AMM]. P-o 106: New 21.1.80, mgdx,supmsb[AMM]. 41 P-o 103: is approaching.->A corollary of this interpretation is that Daniel, in so far as he uses the scheme of empires, finds himself on the side of Edward Augustus Freeman who, as we recognize, was still thinking in terms of the Holy Roman Empire in the sixties of the nineteenth century. There is another side to Daniel which would have been less palatable to Freeman, notwithstanding his Christian upbringing: the expectation of a Kingdom of God. But this other side we shall have to examine later, del. 42 P-o 106: New 20.1.80, mgdx,supmsb[AMM]. 43 P-o 106: questions ... book <-> doubts, interl.msb[AMM]. 40 139 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires The most immediate heirs to Daniel’s universal history are not the typical apocalyptic books44 but the Jewish and Christian Sibylline books. They share with Daniel the interest in details of past history. Furthermore, it has been demonstratedxv that within twenty-five years from the appearance of the Book of Daniel there were in circulation Jewish Sibylline oracles influenced by Daniel’s views on history. Oracles uttered by women in trance called Sibyls were being collected as early as the sixth century B.C. Such collections were known to the philosopher Heraclitus who describes their character: “The Sibyl with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and rough, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the God” (fr. 92xvi). We are reminded that in later times the Sibyls uttering such oracles were supposed to be a thousand years old. The Romans gave to the Sibylline oracles a place in their official religion and consequently burnt many a Sibylline answer which was considered to be contrary to the interests of the State. [13] 45 There is no evidence that such collections of pagan Sibylline oracle expressed any coherent view either of the past or of the future of mankind. They seem to have been made up of miscellaneous predictions about individual events. When the Jews, and later the Christians under Jewish influence, adopted the form of the Sibylline message to convey their beliefs and expectations, a transformation of the contents slowly took place. Individual predictions yielded to comprehensive descriptions of the history of mankind from the creation of the world – or at least from Noah – to the end of the world. Doctrinal preoccupations were broadcast loudly. What used to be piecemeal forecasts tended to become universal pronouncements (a compound of history and theology). The evolution from the pagan to the Judeo-Christian form is still recognizable in the surviving collection of Jewish and Christian Sibylline oracles. It is a collection in twelve books of uneven lengthxvii . Owing to some peculiarity of the manuscript tradition, the collection gives the unjustified46 impression of a gap between book VIII and book XI47. At least books I to VIII seem to have been known in their present form already to Lactantius, the Christian writer of the early fourth century. These books are therefore earlier than A.D. 300. Internal references and other scattered quotations help to place them between A.D. 80 and A.D. 180 circa, with exception of book III, which belongs to the second century B.C. Through the device of Sibylline oracles allegedly uttered by pagan prophetesses, Jews and Christians were able to communicate to the pagan readers something of their own view of history which was different from that of the surrounding world. On the other hand few Jews and Christians living in a pagan society were prepared to despise a confirmation of their beliefs and expectations if it came or was supposed to come from an authoritative pagan source. To all appearances, the Sibylline books were not only meant to persuade (or deceive) the pagans: they were meant to encourage (if necessary, by using deception) the Jews and Christians themselves. The Christian Fathers – not only the ignorant Emperor Constantine – eagerly invoked the support given by the [14]48 Sibylline oracles to the Christian faith. The scholarly side of Judaism – if this is the right definition for the rabbinic schools – was far more distrustful. I do not know of any quotation of Sibylline books in rabbinic texts. As a pagan Sibyl was supposed to utter the Jewish or Christian truth, there was less opportunity, or perhaps less temptation, to give sectarian versions of the Jewish or Christian beliefs. The emphasis on monotheism against pagan polytheism is obvious. Nor must we underrate the value of the Sibylline books as short handbook of universal history, impressive in their imagery and easy to memorize, being written in verse. As Lactantius shows in his frequent quotationsxviii , they were also easy to anthologize. They were less precise, but more intriguing, than the pedestrian pagan summaries of universal history. 44 45 46 47 48 P-o 106: apocalyptic books -> (such as Revelation and Second Ezra), del. P-o 106: 13 <-> 8, msb[AMM]. P-o 106: unjustified, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 106: and book XI -> which is, however, more apparent than real, del. P-o 106: 14 <-> 9, msb[AMM]. 140 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires The third Sibylline book is both the oldest and the most complex of the collection: it must have been difficult to put together. Since it mentions Ptolemy VII as the most recent King of Egypt, its main section can hardly be later than 140 B.C. The much later date suggested by Valentin Nikiprowetsky in his valuable book on the Third Sibyl (1970)xix is, as I have indicated elsewherexx, an unwarranted extension to the whole book of what is obviously the date of its proemium, which contains allusions to the second triumvirate and to Cleopatra and must be dated between 40 and 30 B.C. The author is interested in the immediate past and in the imminent eschatological future, but sees them in a perspective of universal empires which, in its precise formulation, betrays both the direct influence of Daniel and the Jewish-Egyptian origin of the text. According to this book, the struggle between God and Titans was also the beginning of war among men. War produces empires (ll. 159-161). The successive empires are: 1) Egypt; 2) Persia with its appendages of Media, Ethiopia and Assyrian Babylonia; 3) Macedon; 4) Egypt again, that is, Ptolemaic Egypt after Alexander the Great; 5) Rome. The double mention of Egypt is enough to reveal the author as an inhabitant of Egypt. This Egyptian Jew recognized Rome as a world empire not later than in 140 B.C. Less than [15]49 twenty-five years before, the new empire had not yet been perceived by his master Daniel. The third Sibylline book is certainly anti-Roman (ll. 350-365), which confirms the impression that the mention of Rome as the fifth world empire is not likely to be a later addition, as has been suggested. The author seems to believe that after the Empire of Macedon two empires now co-exist – the Egypt of the Ptolemies and Rome – which would correspond to the situation of about 140 B.C. Recognition of the eminence of Rome and hatred of Rome often went together. If we accept that the anti-Roman allusions are part of the second-century text, the book seems indeed to be the first literary expression of Jewish hostility towards Rome. In being anti-Roman our author, who lived in Egypt, simply shared a widespread feeling among Greeks and Orientals who had been humiliated either by Roman conquest or Roman protectorship. Not all the Jews must be supposed to have shared the sympathy and admiration for Rome shown by the First Book of Maccabees – written perhaps about 130-120 B.C., but echoing the gratitude to Rome felt by Judas Maccabaeus who had been helped by the Romans against the Seleucids. According to Valerius Maximus 1, 3, 3 the Jews were expelled from Rome exactly in 139 B.C., which seems to be more or less the date of the anti-Roman utterings of the third Sibylline book. The coincidence is significant. In the early first century B.C. (to judge from the Vegoia prophecyxxi ) there were analogous antiRoman speculations in Etruria: they were based on the Etruscan scheme of successive saecula which bears a strong resemblance to the weeks scheme of Enoch and may ultimately go back to a common model. The inclusion of Rome in the scheme of empires and the expression of dislike or of hatred towards Rome also go together in later Sibylline books. When these books was written no rival was left to Rome except the distant Parthians. Only God and the Parthians were in a position to harm Rome, and it was fairly evident that God would have to make the greater contribution. Given the political and social structure of the Empire, apocalyptic hopes [15bis]50 were as realistic or as unrealistic as any other hope of change. The fourth book is of special interest because it was written by a Jew about A.D. 80 – ten years after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. It treats the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, which destroyed Pompeii, as a sign of God’s wrath against the Romans. Like the Book of Revelation, it expects the return of the Emperor Nero from the East as part of the divine visitation. Tacitusxxii and Suetoniusxxiii prove that there were many pagans who believed that Nero was not dead and would return at the head of a Parthian [16]51 army. The author of Sibylline IV mourns the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, but is not interested in the Temple cult itself. He seems 49 50 51 P-o 106: New 27.1.80, mgdx, supmsb[AMM]. P-o 106: New 27.1.80, mgdx,supmsb[AMM]. P-o 106: 16 <-> 11, msb[AMM]. 141 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires therefore to have been not very distant from the circle of Johannan ben Zakkai, the rabbi who was quietly rebuilding Judaism without the Temple. Contrary to authoritative opinion, this lack of interest in the Temple, even if combined with an eloquent invitation to the sinners to wash their persons in perennial waters (an echo of the first chapter of Isaiah) xxiv , is no argument for considering book IV of the Sibylline Collection as the work of a member of a Jewish baptist sect. What we read is rather the expression of the feelings of an Egyptian Jew with Pharisaic sympathies ten years after the disaster. He knows five empires – Assyria, Media, Persia, Macedon and Rome – and expects or hopes that the end of the Roman Empire will come about in consequence of an Asian rebellion started by the return of Nero. One curious feature of his calculations is that he attributes a certain number of generations to each empire, except Rome: Assyria is given six generations, Media two, Persia and Macedonia one each, Rome none. Rome is left outside the ten generations. As early as the second century B.C. (as we can read in chapters 91-93 of the First Book of Enoch) the tenth generation or the tenth week indicated the time immediately preceding the Universal Judgement. We know from Servius’ commentary on the Fourth Eclogue of Vergil that an oracle attributed to the Sibyl of Cumae divided the history of mankind into the four metal ages and assigned ten generations to these four ages taken together.52 There is an evident similarity between the Jewish Fourth Sibylline and this pagan product of the Sibylline industry, but the mere fact that the pagan put the tenth generation under the rule of Mithras (the sun god) indicates the difference of outlook between the two writers. Justice and happiness, Mithra’s gifts, were not what the Jewish Sibyllist expected from the tenth generation and even less from Rome which followed it. Our author, in leaving Rome outside the scheme of the ten generations, probably meant to imply that the empire of Rome was not the last stage of mankind, but the first stage of the end of the world, so bad an empire it was. [17]53 Even more explicitly, the fifth book announces its anti-Roman character in its first line: “Now come to hearken to the woeful chronicle of the sons of Latium”. There are in the book a couple of explicit Christian statements which can easily be treated as interpolations into a text which appears otherwise entirely Jewish (l. 68; ll. 256-9). The real difficulties of the fifth book are elsewhere. First, the list of the emperors goes as far as Marcus Aurelius, though in the54 text there seems to be no allusion to specific events later than a comet of A.D. 7355 known also from Pliny, Nat. Hist. 2, <22>56xxv. Secondly, the Emperor Hadrian, who ruthlessly repressed the rebellion of Bar Kochba and made Jerusalem uninhabitable to Jews, is defined in the same list as “a most excellent, most noble and dark-haired prince” (ll. 48-49). We know of course from certain rabbinic sources that in the first years of Hadrian’s reign some Jews were hoping that he would order the reconstruction of the Templexxvi . But the fifth book is under no delusion of this kind. The writer expects the end of the world – and the destruction of Rome, “the unclean city of Latin land”xxvii . This excludes any hope of his part for a restoration of the cult in Jerusalem by imperial concession. I suspect that most of the text of the fifth book was written immediately after the destruction of the Temple, that is about A.D. 75; but I have no explanation for what would be later additions and in particular for the strange compliment paid to Hadrian. Perhaps the characterization of Hadrian was introduced in irony by a later reader who could count on the widespread Jewish and Christian dislike of an emperor who (apart from anything else) had deified his lover Antinous57. 52 P-o 183: Sibyllini, quae Cumana fuit et saecula per metalla divisit, dixit etiam quis quo saeculo imperaret, et Solem ultimum, id est decimum voluit: novimus autem eundem esse Apollinem, <Servius in Verg.Ecl. 4,4>, mginfmsb[Mom] con segr. 53 P-o 106i 17 <-> 12, msb[AMM]. 54 P-o 183: following, interl.msb[Mom]. 55 P-o 183: 73-4 probably known, interl.msn[Mom]. 56 Docc.: 2,25. 57 P-o 106: Perhaps the characterization ... his lover Antinous, ts. affiancato da x, mgsnmsb; P-o 183: I cannot believe that the characterization of Hadrian is a disguised sarcasm by a later reader who could count on the widespread Jewish and Christian dislike of a homosexual emperor <-> Perhaps the characterization… his lover Antinous, interl.ms. 142 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires Enough has been said to indicate the atmosphere of anti-Roman feeling and of eschatology which, against a background of universal history, characterizes the Jewish Sibylline books. The Christian Sibylline books followed the Jewish model in this. The Christian book VIII, which probably belongs to the age of Marcus Aurelius, take the third book as a model. It defines Rome as the fifth empire and enjoys describing the progressive decline of her power, “for indeed the glory of the eagle-bearing legions shall fall” (78). [18]58 Books I and II, which were originally a unity, represent the transitional stage from the Jewish to the Christian Sibyllines. Indisputably Christian in their present form, and probably belonging to the middle of the second century A.D., they tell the story from the creation to the end of this world, and the destruction of the Roman Empire as an inevitable stage in the process. They confirm that in the first two centuries of the empire hatred of Rome united many Jews and Christians, notwithstanding their doctrinal disagreements. We can only admit that Gibbon was consistent in his admiration for the golden age of the Antonines and in his dislike of Jews and Christians.59 Appendice: l’Apocalisse di Giovanni [19] Let us take Revelation as our example: it is the one with which we are all familiar. The identity of the author – a John who is confined on the island of Patmos and writes circular letters to seven churches of Asia – does not matter much: it may even be that the initial letters have a different author from the rest of the book. The date of the visions does matter. A tradition going back at least to Irenaeus (Adv. Haeres. 5, 30, 3) in the late [20]60 second century dates Revelation under the emperor Domitian (81-96) who harrassed both Jews and Christians – to what extent we have not enough evidence to determine. But the Domitianic date does not emerge from the text itself. We may indeed suspect that it is in conflict with the evidence provided by the text. In chapter 17 there is a rather complex piece of description of the Roman State as a beast with seven heads and seven hills on which a harlot sits. The seven hills are clearly the seven hills of Rome, and the seven heads are seven Roman emperors. The harlot sitting on the hill must be the city of Rome, the new Babylon, even if some commentators drag their feet over this. Five of the heads (the text says) – that is, five of the emperors – have already passed away, the sixth is now reigning and he will be followed by a seventh for a brief period. The eighth, and last, king will not be new, but rather one of the previous seven. If we start from Caesar, whom Suetonius considered one of the legitimate emperors, the seventh emperor is Galba who effectively reigned only for six months, from June 68 to January 69 – the brief period mentioned by Revelation. In such a chronology Nero is the sixth emperor. He is also undoubtely the eighth emperor who is said by Revelation to be not new, but one of the previous seven. No other emperor could be characterized as both one of the first seven and the eighth. As we know, many Romans did not believe that Nero had committed suicide in June 68 and expected him back from the East. To judge from the text, the author of Revelation says that he himself is writing under the reign of Nero, but in fact he knows of Nero’s elimination and his replacement by Galba. He also knows that Galba is about to fall and that many people are waiting for Nero’s return. His knowledge stops at this point – which means that he wrote in the later part of A.D. 68. The empire was torn by rebellions in the provinces and by civil war; Nero, the emperor who had persecuted the Christians and launched the massive military operations against the Jews in Palestine, had disappeared, whether for good or to return with the Parthians. An appropriate moment to foresee the imminent end of the world. I must therefore confirm my old allegiance to the Neronian date for Revelation, which I declared in 1934 when my chapter on Nero appeared [21]61 58 P-o 106: 18 <-> 13, msb[AMM]. P-o 106: end of Grinfield II, mgdxmsb[AMM]. Le successive cc.18-19(inizio) sono evidenziate a mg. in P-o 106 con linea ondulata verticale, accompagnate da nota ms.[AMM] “This § to go on p. 3 of Grinfield lecture III” e spostate ad loc.: The Sibylline books were bravely trying ... such distinctions were perhaps not always clear-cut), per cui vd. c. 3. 60 P-o 106: 20 <-> 15, msr[AMM]. 61 P-o 106: 21 <-> 16, msr[AMM]. 59 143 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires in the Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. Xxxviii . The date seems to be corroborated by the notorious passage of the measurement of the Temple in chapter 11. Whatever this passage may mean, prima facie it presupposes the existence of the Temple of Jerusalem which was destroyed in the year A.D. 70. Revelation presents Rome as the only empire worth considering. Rome is the antithesis of a city which is also a Temple, Jerusalem. In so far as Rome is the antithesis of Jerusalem, it can also be characterized as Babylon – the previous enemy of Jerusalem. It seems to me that the author of Revelation takes it for granted that in the Messianic millennium preceding the Universal Judgement there will be a Temple in Jerusalem. As the Temple in Jerusalem had not yet been destroyed (or at least it had not been reported as destroyed) when he wrote, there was no need to say explicitly that the Temple would be there during the millennium: ex hypothesi it was just there. Unlike the Jesus of the Gospels the author of Revelation does not expect – and in any case does not want – the destruction of the Temple. The confirmation is that when in his opinion there will be a time without a temple, he makes this crystal clear. After the Last Judgement the new Jerusalem, which is the centre of the New Heaven and Earth, will have no temple of stone, because its Temple will be the very sovereign Lord God and the Lamb. In the same spirit there will be no sun or moon and consequently no night, because the Lamb will be the Light. The specific attitude of Revelation towards the contemporary Jews is no part of our argument. It cannot escape attention, however, that there is a difference on this point between the introductory seven letters to the Churches and the main body of the textxxix . The introductory letters speak of the Jews “as those of Satan’s synagogue who claim to be Jews but are lying frauds” (3, 9). The main body of the text has no hostile word against the Jews and foresees salvation for 144,000 Jews (12,000 for each of the twelve tribes). We may ask ourselves whether the man who wrote the introductory letters to the seven churches is also the man who wrote the main text. The linguistic evidence, [22]62 taken alone, is indecisive about the unity of Revelation. In any case the work as a whole shares with important strata of the Jewish population the hope that the Roman Empire will disappear. Jewish apocalyptic had a determining part in persuading the Jews to fight and die against the Romans.63 i Leggenda di Aqhat, rr. 24-25. Dan. 4.9, 19. iii GIBSON 1975, 27. iv GAMNIE 1976. v J.J. COLLINS 1975A; ID. 1975b; ID. 1977. vi 4Q242 (4QPrNab) vd. MILIK 1956, tav.I; CROSS 1984; GARCIA MARTINEZ 2003, 475-6. vii Ios. Ant. 12, 154-241 (per i successi di Giuseppe e Ircano prima della costruzione della fortezza presso Tyros e della ellenizzazione degli ultimi Tobiadi, cfr. 12.160-227); per un precedente contributo momiglianeo sul tema si rimanda a I Tobiadi nella preistoria del moto maccabaico (= I Tobiadi). viii GINSBERG 1948; ID. 1949. ix Porphyr. CChr, fr. 43a Harnack (= 464a Stern); cfr. BERCHMAN 2005, 157. x CUMONT 1909. xi SACHS- WISEMANN 1954. xii Vd. GL 1980 I (Universal History), c. 12 e n. xvi. xiii Originariamente la parola Kittim designava in ebraico la città di Kition su Cipro (o l’intera isola). Geremia 2, 10 sembra attestare per primo un’estensione dell’espressione al distante ovest, mentre Daniele 11, 30 ricorre a Kittim indicando miratamente i Romani, in riferimento al loro intervento in Egitto del 168 a.C. Cfr. in proposito The Romans and the Maccabees (= Roman-Maccabees), 747. xiv Cfr. Daniele 37-8 per un ulteriore contributo momiglianeo sull’argomento. Il passo in questione risulta più possibilista rispetto a GL 1980 II rispetto alla prospettiva di uno scambio tra letteratura iranica e Dan. 2, benché ii 62 P-o 106: 22 <-> 17, msr[AMM]. Da qui alla fine del documento: P-o 106 = P-o 114 (Flavius Josephus), cc. 18-20 (cfr. apparato ibid. per eventuali discrepanze). 63 144 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History II. Daniel and the World Empires concordi nel negare che l’autore di Daniele trovasse in tali fonti il principio di adattamento dei metalli all’interpretazione della storia universale come successione di differenti imperi. xv FLUSSER 1972. xvi Die Fragmenter de Vorsokratiker, ed. by H. Diels and W. Kranz, 6th ed., Zurich 1951, I, fr. 92 = Plut. De Pythiae oraculis 397A. xvii Per le edizioni di riferimento (dello stesso Momigliano, cfr. From the Pagan to the Christian Sybil [=From the Pagan] 730, n. 5) si rimanda a GEFFCKEN 1902, al testo dei libri I-XI in traduzione tedesca e commento di KURFESS 1951 e alla traduzione inglese di Collins, J.J., in CHARLESWORTH 1983-85 I, 317-472. Vd. inoltre J.J. COLLINS 1987 (cfr., per un aggiornamento, ID. 1997) e Goodman, M., in SCHÜRER 1986, III 617-54. xviii Per una rassegna delle cinquantasette occorrenze di versi sibillini presenti nelle Institutiones di Lattanzio, cfr. BOWEN-GARNSEY 2003, 18. xix NIKIPROWETSKY 1970, 216, data l’intero libro alla età del I sec.a.C., considerandola una composizione unitaria risalente al tempo di Cleopatra VII e del secondo triumvirato: solo il v. 736 (su Camarina) e i vv. 63-74, che descrivono la Samaria come “Sebaste” e vanno quindi datati dopo il 25 a.C., sarebbero aggiunte posteriori. xx Momigliano, A., La portata storica dei vaticini sul settimo re nel terzo libro degli Oracoli Sibillini (= Portata storica), cap. II; cfr. inoltre la ripresa in Id., From the Pagan to the Christian Sybil (= From the Pagan) 733-36. xxi LACHMANN 1848, I 350. Si rimanda inoltre allo studio di HEURGON 1959, che in nota di apertura si dichiara “very much indebted to A. Momigliano and S. Weinstock for valuable suggestions”. xxii Tac., Hist. II.8 xxiii Suet., Nero LXII. xxiv Or.Sib. V 165; Is. 1,16. xxv Il passo a cui Momigliano sembra fare riferimento è Or. Sib. V 298-9: dopo la menzione, ai vv. 286-97, di un fortissimo terremoto che parrebbe identificabile con quello del 17 d.C. menzionato da Tac. Ann. ii, 47 e Plin. N.H. ii, 86, la Sibilla allude a una meteora successiva provocata dalla collera divina. Il riferimento a Pl. N.H. 2.25 (vd. apparato) è però verosimilmente un lapsus: nel passo in questione si parla infatti di una cometa avvistata nel 42. a.C., quando Decimo Bruto fu assediato a Modena da Antonio, mentre è in Pl. N.H. 2.22 che si menziona un avvistamento avvenuto in occasione del quinto consolato di Tito. xxvi Genesis (=Bereshit) Rabbah 64,10. xxvii Or.Sib.V168 xxviii MOMIGLIANO 1034D. xxix Per un ulteriore contributo momiglianeo sul tema dell’unità del testo cfr. From the Pagan to the Christian Sybil (=From the Pagan), par. IV. Qui si fa riferimento, in particolare, alla divisione nelle attribuzioni proposta da MASSYNGBERDE FORD 1975, 28-37, che prevede l’assegnazione del principale corpo della visione a Giovanni Battista. Momigliano ritiene tuttavia che né l’attribuzione in questione né la separazione delle lettere preliminari dell’Apocalisse dalla visione centrale possano considerarsi legittime, posta anche e soprattutto l’omogeneità stilistica che caratterizza complessivamente il testo. 145 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography GL 1980 III Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography Sedi e date: CL 1979 (10 maggio, cfr. D-a 1) GS 1979 (29 novembre, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 420) GL 1980 (6 febbraio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 422) Documenti a) CL 1979 V [the Paradox of the Roman Empire and Christian Historiography] P-o 107 (a), P-o 108 mss. P-o 176 (b) top c. di P-o 108 P-o 107 (c), P-o 120: c.c. di P-o 176 (b). P-o 109 [escluse pp. 8-19, confluite in P-o 105(c)1] nuova versione ds. basata su P-o 107 (a-b-c), top c. P-o 176 (a), P-o 110 [escluse pp. 8-19, confluite in P-o 106], P-o 111 (b) [escluse pp. 8-16, confluite in P-o 183(c)]: c.c di P-o 109. (P-o 106, P-o 183) c.c. b) GS 1979 II [Flavius Josephus] P-o 111 (a) ms. + (b). P-o 112 xerox di P-o 111 (a-b) P-o 113 (b) nuova versione ds., top c. basata su P-o 111(a-b) P-o 114 (b), P-o 125 (a), P-o 124 (b): c.c. di P-o 113 (b) c) GL 1980 III P-o 113 (a) top c., introduzione e aggiunte per GL 1980 III P-o 114 (a), P-o 125 (c), P-o 183 (d) c.c. di P-o 113 (a) 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati Come nel caso della precedente lecture, anche per Flavius Josephus il passaggio nei tre cicli Chicago – Princeton – Oxford ha determinato accanto a un ripensamento della struttura anche quello del titolo, divenuto tale solo in occasione del Gauss Seminar a partire da un originario The Paradox of the Roman Empire and Christian Historiography. Di questa prima versione CL si conservano come testimoni P-o 107 (parzialmente ms.; dopo le pp. 1-9 segue la versione ds.) e P-o 108, a sua volta base della top c. P-o 176; le c.c. di P-o 176, P-o 107 (c) e P-o 120, così come la nuova versione ds. basata sull’assemblamento delle componenti mss. di P-o 107, la top c. P-o 109. Già in P-o 109 si individua un intervento significativo nell’evoluzione dallo stadio di Chicago a quello di Princeton, lo spostamento di una consistente sezione centrale (cc. 8-19) dal testo di The Paradox a quello della lecture precedente, Daniel and the World Empires2. Lo stesso spostamento è presente anche nelle altre c.c. di P-o 109, P-o 110 e 111. P-o 111 si qualifica a sua volta come documento composito e già evidentemente testimone della versione GS: il nucleo ds. CL (cc. 1-7; 17-19) è qui preceduto dall’inserto manoscritto con la nuova sezione incipitaria della lecture (cc. 19), dal titolo Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography. Questo stato provvisorio del testo, riprodotto dalla copia xerox P-o 112, appare modificato nella versione rivista P-o 113 e nelle sue c.c. P-o 114, 125 e 124. Come già altrove, queste stesse copie GS vengono recuperate da Momigliano per l’integrazione in vista della definitiva versione GL tramite l’inserimento di una nuova introduzione (cc. 1-3) e aggiunte (c. 15). Come base per l’edizione della lecture si è scelto P-o 114. Si tratta di un fascicolo di 21 cc. dss., rivedute e corrette a mano. L’ultima fase di interventi, effettuati con penna rossa, sembra risalire al 4.2.1980 (cfr. nota su c. 183). Tutte le pagine risultano c.c. di P-o 113, tranne tre: c. 7 (la parte finale, la cui dattiloscrittura in P-o 113 appare frettolosa e con interlinea ridotto, è ricoperta da una 1 Daniel and the Dangers of Apocalyptic, aggiunte da P-o 109 (CL 1979 V) prob. per GS 1979 II. P-o 109 reca infatti la nota ms. su c.1: “Pp. 8-13 removed from this set and inserted (as pp. 13-18) in Grinfield Lecture II (Daniel and the World Empires) 27.1.80; also pp. 14-19 (= 14-24) as end of lecture II”, mgaupmsn[AMM].. 3 New 4.2.80, mgsupmsr[AMM]. 2 146 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography striscia ds. corretta); c. 16 (le ultime due righe, che hanno in P-o 114 interlinea ridotto, presentano in P-o 113 un interlinea normale); c. 18a (la quartultima e la terzultima riga mostrano in P-o 114 interlinea ridotto). Infine, indicazioni mss. di AMM sulla c. 3 inducono a confermare la presenza di una porzione di testo proveniente da P-o 106 (GL II 2, Daniel): cfr. infra, apparato alla lecture, nn. 7 e 8. Sulla presenza di duplicati nel testo, interessato nel finale (cc. 18-20) dalla riproposizione letterale di un intero paragrafo di GL 1980 II (Daniel and the World Empire), si rimanda invece all’introduzione alla lecture in questione (par. 3, alle pp. 130-31). 2. Argomento della lecture Fino al I sec. d.C. lo schema (mutuato da Daniele) di successione degli imperi viene conservato negli Oracoli Sibillini come sfondo dell’attesa messianica, benché con il passare del tempo gli imperi più antichi perdano progressivamente di interesse e il vero contrasto venga sempre più identificato, come si evince dalle apocalissi della seconda metà del secolo, in quello tra Roma e regno di Dio. La particolare attenzione di Flavio Giuseppe per Daniele acquista significatività se colta in prospettiva a questi scritti contemporanei e alla sua volontà di neutralizzare qualsiasi interpretazione ostile al potere dell’impero romano. Lo storico recupera Geremia, Ezechiele e soprattutto Daniele come profeti di Roma anche al prezzo di inevitabili imbarazzi esegetici: è costretto a tralasciare l’esito apocalittico delle visioni contenute in Daniele; costruisce un intero episodio, quello della visita di Alessandro Magno al Tempio di Gerusalemme, allo scopo di fare del profeta una figura propizia agli imperi. Questo conduce inevitabilmente Giuseppe a sottovalutare la portata della componente apocalittica in Daniele e insieme anche di tutta quella presente nella letteratura contemporanea; al tempo stesso, la sua resistenza alle tendenze centrifughe rispetto all’impero gli impedisce di cogliere l’importanza di sinagoghe e rabbini. In ambito romano, se Livio riasserisce la validità del vecchio tipo di annalistica nazionale, spontaneamente centrata su Roma, gli storici pagani non danno segno di voler emulare l’universalismo polibiano, finendo piuttosto per isolare la storia di Roma in paradossale parallelo con la visione storica dei Sibillini. I sentimenti pessimistici che animano tali storici non sfociano però mai nell’idea che l’impero possa finire: a corruzione e minacce dall’esterno fa da contraltare il sentimento classicista di consapevolezza della nobiltà passata che si accompagna, in una visione ciclica, alla speranza di un ritorno dell’età aurea. Saranno piuttosto gli storici cristiani ad adoperarsi per ricordare la transitorietà del mondo, assumendosi il compito di sviluppare le idee sibilline e apocalittiche in direzione di un’analisi critica delle possibilità di riconciliazione tra impero di Roma e regno di Dio. La conversione di Costantino induce Eusebio a credere nella possibilità di una convergenza tra i piani; Agostino, teorico dell’antagonismo permanente tra città terrena e città celeste, perde invece questa certezza, ma assegnando a Roma una funzione di preparazione alla civitas Dei ottiene una mediazione tra l’immagine satanica riservatale dall’Apocalisse e l’ottimismo provvidenziale di Eusebio. 3. Note di contenuto: Flavio Giuseppe, tra testi editi e nuovi progetti. Come le altre lezioni del ciclo Daniel and the Origins of Universal History, anche Flavius Josephus è andato incontro nel 1980 a una destinazione editoriale autonoma, sia pure in forma ridotta (storici pagani e nascita della storiografia restano ai margini dell’operazione), all’interno dell’introduzione alla traduzione italiana del saggio di P. Vidal Naquet, Flavius Josèphe, ou du bon usage de la trahison. Ѐ un’introduzione dal taglio peculiare, come si apprezza fin dalla scelta del titolo, Ciò che Flavio Giuseppe non vide (= Ciò che Flavio), finalizzato – prima ancora che alla presentazione della monografia – all’enunciazione di una concezione di Flavio Giuseppe come interprete fallimentare del giudaismo rinnovato, che rappresenterà il punto di partenza di ogni nuova riflessione di Momigliano sullo storico della guerra giudaica: 147 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography Per Flavio Giuseppe l’adozione del greco ha il significato opposto [i.e. rispetto alla traduzione giovannea del sentimento apocalittico] di indicare la desiderabilità che il giudaismo, così come egli lo concepisce, viva entro la civiltà greco-romana. Ma apocalisse e sinagoga sono estranee a quel modello di giudaismo che egli, a torto o a ragione, ricava dalla Bibbia e dalla sua esperienza e presenta ai suoi lettori gentili o, se ebrei, ellenizzati. (…) Preferisce accentuare quanto si è già avverato, cioè il dominio di Roma, e conservare nell’ombra quanto è ancora nascosto, perché futuro. La diffidenza contro gli entusiasmi apocalittici qui si combina in misura non accertabile con la prudenza di chi sa di essere sorvegliato4. Non è una prospettiva lusinghiera. In Ciò che Flavio Momigliano valuta con durezza tanto il ruolo socio-politico di Giuseppe quanto, soprattutto, la sua ricettività di storico. L’errore di prospettiva, considerato frutto del calcolo “di chi sa di essere sorvegliato”, costa a Giuseppe il giudizio di “un giudaismo appiattito, non falso e non triviale, ma retorico, generico e poco reale” così come la definitiva esclusione “dalle correnti vitali del giudaismo del suo tempo” (p. xix). L’analisi condotta finisce dunque per affiancarsi, piuttosto che sovrapporsi, a un’ulteriore pubblicazione licenziata sul tema appena un anno prima, Flavius Josephus and Alexander’s Visit to Jerusalem (=Alexander’s visit). Qui Momigliano attinge piuttosto dal materiale legato all’episodio della visita di Alessandro Magno al Tempio, così come descritta nell’XI libro delle Antichità Giudaiche: dopo l’alleanza con i Samaritani, Alessandro marcia alla conquista di Gerusalemme, ma si ferma presso le porte riconoscendo nel sacerdote Jaddus l’uomo che in sogno gli ha promesso l’impero persiano. Viene quindi condotto all’interno del Tempio dove riceve lettura del libro di Daniele, in cui trova conferma della profezia di vittoria (11, 337); per la gioia concede allora agli Ebrei di vivere secondo la propria legge, privando in parallelo i Samaritani dei suoi favori. L’individuazione di una sovrapposizione tra fonti (due, discordanti, sui rapporti tra Alessandro e i Samaritani, oltre che l’intrusione di un duplicato profetico al racconto del sogno, rappresentato dall’episodio della lettura di Daniele nel Tempio) porta Momigliano a una formulazione di un giudizio non positivo sulla padronanza di Flavio Giuseppe nell’uso delle fonti (giudizio che costituirà poi un elemento portante della futura GL 1982 II, The Jewish Sects), ma soprattutto offre spunto per la suggestiva tesi dell’autoinvestitura di Giuseppe a “erede profetico” di Daniele, tramite l’elevazione del secondo a fonte di legittimazione del potere macedone e – in prospettiva – di quello romano, che appare al cuore anche della sezione dedicata a Flavio Giuseppe nella GL qui presentata (cc. 4-10). Nella lecture si apprezza, in proposito, un fenomeno rilevante. La tesi del recupero strumentale di Daniele da parte di Flavio Giuseppe e quella del rifiuto di quest’ultimo per l’apocalittica dialogano tra loro, finendo per sostenersi vicendevolmente; l’efficacia della costruzione così ottenuta apre uno spiraglio sulle nuove possibilità di indagine di una figura il cui complesso valore storico finisce per trascenderne opportunismo e debolezze metodologiche. Questo emerge con chiarezza dal breve giudizio, ambiguo ma illuminante, che Momigliano riserva in Flavius Josephus alle “conseguenze indirette” della strumentalizzazione operata da Flavio sulle profezie di Daniele, a vantaggio dei Romani: By common Jewish consent, the Bible had an apocalyptic dimension. Josephus could do his best to reduce it, but he could not abolish it. What he did achieve, as far as he was concerned, was to trivialize it, with an interesting consequence. Without a real emphasis on the Messianic age – which would have been equivalent to an anti-Roman message - the four or five world empires were bound to lose importance in Jewish eyes. Thus the succession of the empires became a rather peripheral and not sharply defined section of Josephus’s historical territory. (c.9) In sintesi, la strategia politica di Flavio Giuseppe finisce per anticipare involontariamente quella prospettiva universalistica degli oracoli sibillini che sarà poi alla base della produzione degli storici 4 Ciò che Flavio, xvii. 148 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography cristiani. Il dato è sufficiente per ravvivare l’interesse di Momigliano: lo documentano cenni fugaci, tra il terzo e il quarto ciclo di lectures, alla sua intenzione di riflettere ancora sul ruolo e sulla figura di Flavio Giuseppe, nei cui confronti pare avvertire quasi un debito di indagine non sanato, la percezione di una necessità di continuare ad approfondirne il ruolo storico5. Di tale intenzione la GL 1982 II (The Jewish Sects) rappresenterà un primo tentativo, inevitabilmente parziale: la valutazione dell’affidabilità di Flavio nella ricostruzione delle sette giudaiche di età ellenistica offre solo uno spaccato della questione e non riveste che valore preparatorio rispetto al proposito, formulato esplicitamente in GL 1982 I (Jews and Gentiles), di “riesaminare l’intera opera di Flavio Giuseppe dalla prospettiva della reazione del giudaismo rabbinico sia alla storia che all’apocalittica”. Forse è la mole del progetto auspicato, di chiara impostazione sistematica (se non monografica), a far sì che rimanga irrealizzato; ma il migliore indizio della direzione verso cui Momigliano intendeva indirizzarlo si ricostruisce probabilmente dal fugace giudizio con cui in Jews and Gentiles chiude il suo cenno allo storico: “For it seems to me that Flavius Josephus is both the greatest Jewish representative of the historiography of the oppressed and a chief witness for that disenchantment of the Jews with history which was to continue down to modern times for more than 1500 years” (c. 9). 5 Cfr. ad es. CL 1981 III (Some Exemplary), c. 2: “The limits of my time will prevent me – at least this year – from extending my examination to Flavius Josephus. But what I am saying shoud contribute to a better understanding of Flavius Josephus too”. 149 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography III Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography*6 I If my previous story has any substance, Greek and Roman historians used the notion of a succession of empires to explain world history, and the notion was never an unqualified support for the empire of the day. Polybius was more concerned with understanding than with praising Rome’s rise to world power. Some of his successors of the first century B.C. tried to give their due to past empires or to those unexpected competitors of Rome, the Parthians. It was, however, reserved to a Jew to turn the Greek notion of world empires into a condemnation of all empires. That Jew, if I am correct, was the author of Daniel chapter 2 and wrote about 250 B.C. He combined the notion of the succession of world empires which, as far as I know, is to be found only in Greek historians with the notion of metal ages that was to be found almost everywhere in the Hellenistic age. He envisaged the coming of a Kingdom of God which would put an end to the succession of world empires. His idea of universal history was received and developed by the group of enlightened people, of mashkilim, who operated in Jerusalem about 165-164 B.C. at the beginning of the Maccabean revolutioni and put together the present Book of Daniel. What Greek political historians had described as a series of world powers was interpreted as the prelude to the Kingdom of God. Sibylline books of Jewish – and later of Christian – manufacture seized on this idea. The earliest we have, the Third Sibylline Book, is probably only twenty-five years later than the Book of Daniel, though clearly under its influence. It acknowledges Rome as a world power – the first Jewish text we know to do so. With the Third Sibylline Book Rome entered the horizon of Jewish eschatological thought, never to leave it. The Christians followed the Jewish precedent. Religious resistance to Roman imperialism was of course not confined [2] to Jews and Christians. It was to be found more or less everywhere the Romans went. But far less has survived of what Greek oracles, Syrian seers, Etruscan haruspices and Celtic Druids said against Rome. And we would not expect from them the Jewish idiosyncrasy of the Kingdom of the One God, the God of Abraham. Until at least the early second century A.D., if not later, the Sibylline books7 bravely tried to keep the scheme of the empires as a background for their Messianic and anti-Roman expectations. This was after all Daniel’s legacy. But as time progressed the preceding empires were becoming less and less real. Alexander the Great proved an exception, but as a man and a conqueror, not as the founder of a specific Greco-Macedonian empire. Even the Sibylline books were obviously beginning to yield to this tendency. The scheme of the four or five empires becomes vague, and in the Jewish fifth and in the Christian second book is indeed difficult to perceive. The same characteristic applies to the famous prophecy of the Tiburtine Sibyl and would be very relevant to our argument if we could be persuaded by Professor David Flusser to take it as “an early Jewish Christian document” to be dated in Domitian’s time. Professor Flusser carefully argued paper recently appeared in Paganisme, Judaïsme, Christianisme. Mélanges offerts à Marcel Simon (Paris 1978, 153-183)ii. The profecy itself, as is well known, has a complicated textual history both in Greek and in Latin which was studied by Ernst Sackuriii and later by Paul J. Alexanderiv and is now summarized, rather inadequately, by Bernard McGinn in his Visions of the End, 1979, 43-50. * Documento preso come base: P-o 114, c.c. rivista e corretta di P-o 113, nuova versione GL 1980 basata sul nucleo GS P-o 111 con l’aggiunta di introduzione e integrazioni. Nei casi di duplicazione testuale si riportano, nel testo o in apparato, le lezioni di P-o 106, ts. base della GL 1980 II Daniel and the World Empires (per cui cfr. supra). 6 P-o 114: New beginning (pp. 1-3) for Grinfield Lecture III, 6.2.80 (typed 3.2.80), tsfmgdxmsb>r[AMM]. 7 P-o 114: da the Sibylline books fino a not always clear-cut) ts. proveniente da GL 1980 II (Daniel), ff. 18-19 di P-o 106, cfr. note ad loc. e qui, infra. 150 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography The basic text common to all versions drops the four empires and divided world history into ten generations: it includes an explicit allusion to Constantine. Flusser has to eliminate this allusion to Constantine in order to get his date under Domitian. That excision by itself is not difficultv. But I remain with the impression that the preceding section of the Latin version, which Flusser himself treats as part of the original text, is intelligible only as a reference to events of the third century. It is a description of the ninth generation when “duo reges de Syria ... obtinebunt civitates et regio[3]nes Romanorum usque ad Calcedoniam”. Who else can be these two Kings of Syria invading Roman territory but Odenathus and Vaballathus of Palmyra? If so, the oracle of the Tiburtine Sibyl in its earliest version is certainly to be treated as evidence for the decline of the notion of the four empires, but has to be placed in the fourth century. Leaving the Tiburtine Sibyl and returning to the earlier Sibylline books, it is evident that even in them the real contrast was increasingly between Rome and the Kingdom of God – and this was better expressed in the straight dualism of apocalyptic works like the Second Ezra, the Syrian Apocalypse of Baruch, and of course Revelation. In this sense the apocalyptic books of the second half of the first century A.D. are more modern than the contemporary Sibylline books. They also indicate the way which was to lead to the conflict between the Terrestrial and the Heavenly City in St. Augustine. Consequently the apocalypses pay altogether less8 [19 ex P-o 106] attention to the historical setting and far greater attention to the salvation of individual souls, which plays little or no part in the Sibylline booksvi. Making no pretence of speaking as pagan oracles, the apocalypses can spell out their religious claims without any inhibition. They do not entirely forget the four or five empires. But they have nothing interesting to say about the empires which preceded Rome (as the locus classicus of II Baruch 39, 5 exemplifies). They are, however, in line with Daniel and his Sibylline followers in two essential features. The apocalypses invariably see the end of the world as a political event: the last empire, Rome, is both condemned and destroyed. In II Esdras, written in the late first century A.D., and only preserved in Latin, Syriac and more recent translations, God himself explains to Ezra that Daniel did not interpret correctly the symbol of the eagle when he identified it with Macedon. As a good and gentle scholar, who respects other scholars’ opinions, God says to Ezra: “This is the interpretation of the vision you saw: the eagle you observed coming out of the sea is the fourth Kingdom that appeared in a vision to Daniel your brother. But it was not interpreted by him in the same way that I interpret it to you or as I have interpreted it [previously?]9. Indeed days are coming when a kingdom will rise on earth that will be more dreadful than all Kingdoms that existed before it” (transl. J. M. Myers, Anchor Bible, 12, 11-13)vii. This kingdom is of course Rome. Furthermore, in the apocalypses, as in Daniel, the process of destruction leads to a new order of realities which can be characterized as a new and eternal Israel (either a Jewish Israel or a Christian Israel, but such distinctions were perhaps10 not always clear-cut).11 [4]12 Flavius Josephus’s interest in Daniel and his reinterpretation of prophetic utterance in the Jewish Antiquities becomes meaningful against the background of contemporary or near contemporary sibylline and apocalyptic writings. We can assume that he knew what his fellow-Jews were thinking and hoping, and we can quote some definite passages of his work in support of this assumptionviii. But above all we can infer from his own presentation of Daniel that he was trying to neutralize other interpretations. He had already done something like that during the war when he had referred to Vespasian (Bell. Iud. 3, 402) the ambiguous oracle “likewise found in the sacred scriptures” of the Jews (6, 312) that one from their country would become ruler of the world – an 8 P-o 114: [add here p. 19 from Lecture II (Daniel and the World Empires) from “attention to ...” to “not always clearcut)]”, mgdxmsr[AMM]. 9 P-o 106: [previously?],msn[AMM], cfr. n. 7. 10 P-o 106: were perhaps <-> are, msn[AMM], cfr. n. 7. 11 P-o 106: NB. This § to go on p. 3 of Grinfield lecture III (Flavius Josephus), mgsnmsr[AMM]. 12 P-o 114:Revised version (pp. 1-7 new, part of original Lect. II; and end of original Lect. III), as send at Princeton, 29.XI.79. Retyped by miss. D., 16.11.79 (2 c.c. expressed to Chicago), tsfmsb[AMM]; -> Lecture III – Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography. I, tsfds., del. 151 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography oracle “which more than all else had incited them to the war”. Apart from this specific reference I am not aware that Josephus allows us to know precisely which contemporary text he read. If he was acquainted with John’s Revelation he does not tell us. He had plenty of time to read it if Revelation was written, as I believe, in A.D. 68 or 69.13 When Flavius Josephus wrote his Jewish Antiquities under Domitian, the best and the worst of his life were behind him. He had failed as a politician and a general among his fellow-Palestinian Jews; he had abandoned (and by implication betrayed) them. He also seems to have failed in his first attempt at writing an account of the war of A.D. 66-70 which was meant to explain the Roman victory to Aramaic-speaking Jews. This work has left no trace in Jewish tradition.14 On the other hand he had been the protégé of emperors to whom he had predicted the throne in a bout of prophetic inspiration which may even have been genuine. He had had his Greek version of the Jewish War authenticated by Titus in a form for which I know no precedents in classical literature. His material existence had been made secure by the emperors, and he was settled in Rome among Diaspora Jews who had not fought in the Jewish war and could therefore hardly reproach him for having run away. He had learnt their Greek and wrote, if not exclusively for them, certainly for them [5]15 as well as for educated pagans. If the Greek Book of Baruch was put together in Rome about A.D. 75 by Jews who were anxious to see prayers for the emperors restored in Jerusalem, these Jews would have been friendly to Josephus. But Domitian’s government was creating some problems both for him personally and for his fellows-Jews of the Diaspora. Josephus16 dedicated his last two great works, the Antiquities and the Contra Apionem, to a freedman, Epaphroditus, no doubt an important personage, but quite a come-down from the lofty protectors to whom he was accustomed ix . Epaphroditus, incidentally, seems to be identifiable with a bibliophile from Chaeronea who shared generic love of learning and specific curiosity for Jewish things with his more distinguished countryman Plutarch. Josephus claimed in his autobiography that Domitian added to his honoursx, but he had little to show for this claim. The Diaspora Jews in general were subject to harassment by Domitian who was bent on discouraging Jewish proselytism and on humiliating individual proselytes. What we know from our sources hardly explains the rebellion of the Diaspora Jews under Trajanxi which reached colossal proportions in Africa and ended in equally colossal disaster. We have little indication of the atmosphere of anguish and self-questioning in which the rebellion must have17 matured. It is relevant to remark that not even the rebellion proved sufficient to bridge the chasm existing between Diaspora and Palestinian Jews. The Palestinian Jews did not join the Diaspora rebellion under Trajan and were themselves left alone by the Diaspora in their own rebellion under Hadrian which receives its name from Bar-Kochba. Flavius Josephus was clearly set against movements hostile to Rome18 and therefore against the encouragement they received from the anti-Roman interpretation of prophetic texts, especially of Daniel. He had never given up his pretension to prophetic gifts. He claimed them for the sect of the Pharisees to which he belonged19 (Ant. Jud. 17, 43); he attributes them to his ancestor on his mother’s side John Hyrcanus (Bell. Jud. 1, 68; Ant. Jud. 13, 299). But above all he presents himself as skilled in divination and prophecies. Talking in the third person he describes himself as “an interpreter of dreams and skilled in divining the meaning [6]20 of ambiguous utterances of the Deity; a priest himself and of priestly descent, he was not ignorant of the prophecies in the sacred books” (Bell. Jud. 3, 351-4)xii. It was not by chance that he felt such sympathy towards Daniel and dedicated a conspicuous number of pages to paraphrasing most of his book. As he explained, “we 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 P-o 114: Apart from ... A.D. 68 or 69, mgsn e interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 114: This work ... tradition., interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 114: 5 <-> 2, msr[AMM]. P-o 114: Josephus <-> He himself, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 114: must have, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 114: movements hostile to Rome <-> anti-Roman movements, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 114: belonged, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 114: 6 <-> 3, msr[AMM]. 152 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography are convinced that Daniel spoke with God, for he was not only wont to prophecy future things, as did the other prophets, but he also fixed the time at which these would come to pass. And, whereas the other prophets foretold disasters and were for that reason in disfavour with kings and people, Daniel was a prophet of good tidings to them, so that through the auspiciousness of his predictions he attracted the goodwill of all” (Ant. Jud. 10, 267-68)xiii. Two were, therefore, the special virtues of Daniel as a prophet: he was less vague about chronology than his fellow-prophets and, above all, he produced good tidings. The irksome question, however, was: good tidings for whom? Josephus did all he could to show that not only Daniel, but other prophets had been uttering prophecies in favour of Greeks and Romans. He stated that Jeremiah had left behind “writings concerning the recent capture of our city” (Ant. Jud. 10, 79), by which he clearly meant the Roman capture of Jerusalem. From the same passage it would appear that Ezechiel also had said something on this subject. More curiously, Josephus seems to add a reference to the destruction of the Temple and to the dispersion of the Jews in his paraphrase (Ant. Jud. 8, 296) of the prophecy of Azariah as given in II Chronicles 15, 1. But it is of course Daniel who provides the most impressive pieces of evidence: “In the same manner Daniel also wrote about the empire of the Romans and that Jerusalem would be taken by them and the temple laid waste” (Ant. Jud. 10, 276). True enough, this passage, as I have here reported it in a translation, is partially preserved only in a quotation by John Chrysostom, Adversus Judaeos 5, 9, not a source one would consider a priori above suspicion. But I do not know of any serious argument for doubting the authenticity of his quotation of a passage which in the transcripts of the manuscripts of the21 original text is evidently incomplete. Josephus of course knew – and said so twice (in the very passage and in [7]22 Ant. Jud. 12, 322) – that Daniel’s prophecy about the desolation of the Temple had become true at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes; but this did not prevent him from believing that the same passages or other passages of Daniel were intended for Rome. In the same way St. Jeromexiv took passages of Daniel to be allusions both to Antiochus and to the Antichrist.23 What Josephus was trying to do was to accept the contemporary trend of the Jewish exegesis of Daniel which made him out to be a prophet of the Roman rule, but to suppress that part of the exegesis which was manifestly anti-Roman. He was bound to find himself in embarrassing situations. He agreed with those interpreters who saw in the four kingdoms of Daniel’s chapter 2 Babylonia, Persia, Macedon and Rome. He could not therefore escape the implication that the divine stone, by destroying the statue of the empires, would ipso facto destroy Rome. It is interesting to see how he tried to avoid drawing this conclusion from his premises: “And Daniel also revealed to the king the meaning of the stone, but I have not thought it proper to relate this, since I am expected to write of what is past and done and not of what is to be; if, however, there is anyone who had so keen a desire for exact information that he will not stop short of inquiring more closely but wishes to learn about the hidden things that are to come, let him take the trouble to rend the Book of Daniel, which he will find among the sacred writings” (Ant. Jud. 10, 210). There was indeed worse in Daniel when seen through the eyes of contemporary Jewish exegesis. As I have mentioned, the prophecy of the four beasts in Daniel 7 had been interpreted to include the Romans: the apocalyptic II Esdras24 made God himself vouch for this interpretation. It is a notable feature of these anti-Roman interpretations that they are put into the mouth of God himself, to avoid any chance of error. Thus in the Second Baruch 38-9, the so-called Syriac Baruch, it is God himself who interprets the vision about the four kingdoms: “And I prayed and said: ‘O Lord, my Lord ... make known to me the interpretation of this vision ...’ And he answered and said unto me: Baruch, this is the interpretation of the vision which thou hast seen ... And after these things a fourth kingdom will arise, whose power will be harsh and evil far beyond those which were before it ... When the time 21 22 23 24 P-o 114: manuscripts of the, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 114: 7 <-> 4, msr[AMM]. P-o 114: In the same way ... Antichrist., interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 114: Esdras <-> Ezra, msb[AMM]. 153 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography of its consummation that it should fall25 [8]26 has approached, then the principate of my Messiah will be revealed’.” (transl. by R. H. Charles). Josephus, who was aware of the weight attached by his fellow-Jews to the interpretation of the fourth beast of Daniel 7 as Rome, decided not to mention the contents of this chapter at all. The omission is not fortuitous. Josephus tells instead at great length the story of the visit of Alexander the Great to the Temple of Jerusalem and inserts in it an episode concerning the Book of Daniel which could not be better from his point of viewxv. Josephus, as is well known, is our earliest evidence for the story of the visit of Alexander to Jerusalem. A second version is contained in a scholion to the rabbinic Megillat Ta’anit under the date of 21 Kislev and in a passage of the Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 69 a. A third version in Pseudo-Callisthenes II, 24 used to be treated as independent of the first two, but is now suspected of being a late interpolation from Josephus. I may add dogmatically that I do not believe in the historicity of this visit of Alexander to Jerusalem which is unknown to any of the best27 source. It is a legend which Josephus found in the Jewish tradition. The one detail of the legend which interests us here appears in Josephus only. When Alexander is taken inside the Temple he is shown the Book of Daniel in which his victory over the Persians was prophesied. The priests apparently did not tell him that he was mentioned in the book. He was left to make the discovery for himself, and he was greatly pleased. One peculiarity of this episode, as told by Josephus, is that it has no essential function. The prophecy about Alexander’s victory is a mere reduplication of Alexander’s previous dream which, on the contrary, is essential. When the Samaritans decided to pass over to Alexander’s side (so Josephus tells us), the Jews were determined to remain faithful to their oath of loyalty to Darius King of Persia. Therefore Alexander marched against Jerusalem. But God told to High Priest not to panic: he and his fellow-priests were to go to meet the King in their white robes. Alexander was awe-struck. He prostrated himself before the High Priest and explained to his companion Parmenion that he had seen the same figure in a dream when still in Macedon: the man had [9]28 promised him the empire of Persiaxvi. Thus, Alexander had no need to read in Daniel that he would win the war. The High Priest had already told him in the dream. The substance of the story, which connects Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem with the rivalry between Samaritans and Jews, has nothing to do with Daniel. It has been suggested by others that it may have been first put into circulation in Egypt when Samaritans and Jews brought their dispute about the legal rights of their respective sanctuaries before Ptolemy VI Philometor about the middle of the second century B.C. Ptolemy Philometor apparently found for the Jews (Ant. Jud. 13, 74-79) xvii . As I indicated in a recent paper of mine in Athenaeum 1979xviii ,29 I suspect that the detail about Alexander the Great being given Daniel to read was not a part of the original legend and was in fact invented by Josephus himself. It was not a detail anyone would invent as long as the Book of Daniel was read in an anti-Macedonian key. But neither was it the invention one would expect from a man who read Daniel in an anti-Roman key. I attribute the invention to Josephus because there cannot have been many who saw Daniel in the rosy colours in which Josephus saw him. But of course Josephus may already have found this detail with the rest of the story which in his time was traditional: in that case all we can say is that it was for him a congenial discovery. What remains true is that Josephus would have liked Daniel (and perhaps by implication30 himself) to be a dispenser of world empires to deserving candidates. But it was not so easy for a man who like Josephus31 had never given up his ancestral faith and never dissociated himself from the interpretation of the Bible current in his own time. By common Jewish consent, the Bible had an apocalyptical dimension. Josephus could 25 P-o 114: to avoid any chance ... it should fall: f. originale ricoperto da una striscia ds. corretta con interl. normale, contenente lo stesso testo di P-o 113. 26 P-o 114: 8 <-> 5, msr[AMM]. 27 P-o 114: any of the best <-> Hellenic, msb[AMM]. 28 P-o 114: 9 <-> 6, msr[AMM]. 29 P-o 114: As I indicated ... 1979, interl.msb[AMM]. 30 P-o 114: and perhaps by implication <-> or perhaps, msb[AMM]. 31 P-o 114: like Josephus, interl.msb[AMM]. 154 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography do his best to reduce it, but he could not abolish it. What he did achieve, as far as he was concerned, was to trivialize it. With an intersting consequence. Without a real emphasis on the Messianic age – which would have been equivalent to an anti-Roman message – the four of five world empires were bound to lose importance in Jewish eyes. Thus the succession of the empires became a rather peripheral and not sharply defined section of Josephus’s historical territory. He did not care much for world history. In his effort to avoid apocalyptic only made him more32 parochially [10]33 Jewish. Even in telling the story of the Jewish rebellion of A.D. 66-70 Josephus was incapable of grasping the evident fact that the Jews were not alone in rebelling against Rome. Modern historian who still isolate the Jewish rebellion of 66 from the anti-Roman agitations in other provinces – and indeed from the civil war of the year of the four emperors – are under Josephus’ spell. He underrated the Messianic trends expressed by apocalyptic books, sibylline books and finally by what we call the Gospels. What he said about Jesus is very little, even in the most uncritical evaluation of the Testimonium flavianumxix. Though he had made himself a Jew of the Diaspora, he did not even see what was the most important phenomenon of the Diaspora – the spreading of the Synagogues. He does not show any sign of understanding that rabbis and synagogues were ensuring the survival of Judaism and its unquenchable intellectual vitality. His vision of Biblical history was singularly devoid of any direction toward the future. Placed as he was at the crossing between apocalypse and synagogue, he turned his eyes away from the former and did not see the latterxx. But we must not hasten to look down on Josephus. His position as a man and a historian was difficult enough. In his Jewish War he indicates in an indirect way what sort of alternatives he had been obliged to consider. He had faced suicide and had decided not to die (3, 364-378). But the leaders of Masada had decided for suicide, and he transferred to the speech which he put into the mouth of their representative, Eleazar, some of the thoughts which had obviously been his own (7, 320-388). He knew, as this speech shows, that facing failure of Messianic hopes was tantamount to facing suicide. Furthermore in this static attitude of mind, which underrated past empires and indications of change in the structure of the Roman Empire, Josephus was rejoining most of his fellow-historians of the gentile persuasion. Like him, they were less and less interested in the succession of empires or capable of a universalistic outlook. [11]34 II As we saw, the provincials who in the time of Caesar and Augustus had been given for the first time the chance of taking a close look at the Roman Empire produced books of history which placed Rome in the course of universal history. This35 was done by Trogus Pompeius, Diodorus, Timagenes and Nicolaus of Damascus, respectively a Celt from France, a Greek from Sicily, a Greek from Egypt and a Hellenized Syrian. In the time of Caesar, they were supported or perhaps guided on a minor scale by Italian writers such as the Cisalpine Cornelius Nepos and Cicero’s friend Pomponius Atticus. But the next generation of36 Italians who had received Roman citizenship en masse and considered themselves the ruling group of the Empire preferred reflecting in their own way on Rome’s destiny – Vergil and Horace in verse, Livy in historical prose. In fact, Livy conspicuously reasserted the validity of the old type of Roman national historiography by writing Annals which gave an account of Roman military and political events year by year. With these Italians the rhetoric and the universality of the Roman Empire went on side by side with the historiographical practice of writing annalistic history centred on Rome without any pretence of producing a world view of events. It was Cicero who before Vergil had said: “it is against sacred 32 33 34 35 36 P-o 114: only made him more <-> he merely remained, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 114: 10 <-> 7, msr[AMM]. P-o 114: 11 <-> 8, msr[AMM]. P-o 114: This -> as we have seen, del. P-o 114: next generation of, interl.msb[AMM]. 155 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography law for the Roman people to serve: the immortal gods wanted them to rule the other nations” (Phil. 6, 19). And it was a contemporary of Cicero, the so-called author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (4, 13), who, as far as we know, first identified the Roman Empire with the inhabited “orbis terrarum”.37 What interest us is that its provincial corrective in the time of Caesar and Augustus – universal history – did not find any continuators of the same importance. Brief pagan summaries of universal history have reached us from later centuries. We have a Liber Memorialis by L. Ampelius and the Epitome of Trogus Pompeius by Justin written either in the second or in the third century A.D. Most of the historical literature of the imperial period is [12]38 of course lost. But there is no sign that any pagan historian writing either in Greek or Latin carried on universal history in the dimensions characteristic of the Caesarean and Augustan age. A typical example of the decline in the writing of universal history in the second century A.D. is the mysterious Kephalion, a historian who apparently lived under Hadrian as an exile in Sicily. Though most of his work is lost, we know enough of it to form an opinion because he was appreciated in Late Antiquity by the historian of Antioch, John Malalasxxi . Furthermore, Patriarch Photius had Kephalion’s Universal History before him and gives some idea of its structure, though he does not seem actually to have read the whole of itxxii. It was a work in nine books, like Herodotus’, and was written in the artificial Ionic dialect used by those who wanted to imitate Herodotus. It included the history of the known world from Ninus and Semiramis, the traditional founders of the power of Assyria, to Alexander the Great. The author boasts of having consulted 140 authors with a total of 2.428 books in order to compile his first five booksxxiii : the number of authors and books consulted for the remaining four was given but is lost. The figures we have – 140 authors and 2.428 books – are more than even a research assistant in a modern university is expected to produce for his employer in a period of economic depression. Kephalion was obviously pulling his reader’s leg. What he says about mythical events in Greece does not improve this impression, though one must admit that no historian is at his best when dealing with myths. Universal history was becoming a farce. A serious man, Plutarch, who was interested in so many aspects of the historical scene – from politics to religion – used biography, not universal history, as the frame for his picture of the dual civilization of Greece and Rome under which he lived. He developed a parallel treatment of which Varro had given a crude example in his Imagines. About half a century later a Hellenized native of Bithynia in Asia Minor, who had become a Roman consul, Flavius Arrianus, wrote about Alexander the Great and his immediate successors and about the history of the Parthians, but never thought of putting the Roman Empire in some organic connection with the Macedonian Empire which had preceded [13]39 it or with the Parthian Empire which was its rival and enemy in the East. Arrian’s historical outlook was less unified than that of Trogus Pompeius two centuries earlier. More significantly, another Greek from Bithynia, Dio Cassius, who became a consul in A.D. 218 under the Emperor Severus Alexander, adopted the annalistic tradition of the Romans when he wrote in Greek 80 books of Roman History, probably the biggest Roman history composed after Livy and certainly the most influential in the Greek world. Dio Cassius continued to be read either in the original text or in an abbreviated form throughout all periods of the Byzantine Empire. To my knowledge he was the first Greek historian to accept in full the conventions of Roman annalistic historiography. Only Appian, in the brief passage of the introduction of his history of Rome, compares the Roman Empire to the previous empires of Assyria, Media, Persia and Macedon, in order to affirm the superiority of the Roman Empire in extension and duration. But he does not return to the subject inside his historical work.40 37 P-o 114: “orbis terrarum” -> This rhetoric – rhetoric which remained rhetoric even when it was turned into fine poetry – did not stop with the ruin of the Roman Empire and shall not occupy us any longer, del. 38 P-o 114: 12 <-> 9, msr[AMM]. 39 P-o 114: 13 <-> 10, msr[AMM]. 40 P-o 114: Only Appian ... historical work, interl. e mgsup, msb[AMM]. 156 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography We have to register41 the strange fact that the important pagan historians living in the Roman Empire after Augustus isolated the history of Rome. Whether they wrote in Greek or in Latin made no difference. They forgot Polybius’ teaching, did not relate the rise of Rome to the decline of previous empires and treated the Parthians as a marginal phenomenon of Roman history, not as the heir of the Persian Empire. The Roman Empire was felt to have a vitality and a rhythm of its own: it was often treated (as we had the opportunity of remarking in a previous lecturexxiv ) as an individual going through the stages of life from childhood to old age. It was a Roman Empire virtually living alone. The good pagan of the golden age of the Antonines did not care to communicate in an active way with the world which had preceded the Roman Empire or with the world which was outside it. Classicism contributed to this isolation because it offered literary and philosophical models, not as products of specific social and political conditions of the past, but as eternally valid. In historical matters our good pagan was by no means self-assured. He was happy to be told that he had had noble ancestors and would have noble descendants. If he was an Athenian or a Spartan with a great past, he wanted to be reassured by the Sophists that, glorious as his past might have been, there was perfection in the present, too. If, notwithstanding these reassurances, he remained a pessimist, this pessimism was, as a rule, nurtured in isolation, inward-looking and confined to the destiny [14]42 of the Roman Empire. Tacitus at the end of the first century and Ammianus Marcellinus, his ideal disciple in the late fourth century, did not shut their eyes to tyranny, corruption and external dangers. But they never envisaged the possibility of the Roman Empire’s emerging from or sinking into other empires. The science of politics can hardly develop where there is no desire to reflect on different political systems. The Romans of the imperial age had little inclination for comparative studies. Therefore they had no science of politics. The only allusion to the scheme of empires I know in Tacitus is, characteristically enough, in his excursus about the Jews (Hist. 5, 8-9):43 “While the East was under the sway of the Assyrians, the Medes and the Persians, the Jews were the most contemptible of the subject tribes. When the Macedonians became supreme, King Antiochus strove to destroy the national superstition of the Jews44 and to introduce Greek civilization” (transl. A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribbxxv). In this excursus about the Jews Tacitus repeats what his Greek source had told him about the Jews: he is likely, therefore, to preserve a Greek attempt to place the Jews in universal history. He uses the scheme of universal history, not for Rome, but for a nation which he, like his source, considered neither civilized nor amenable to civilization and therefore deserving of destruction. If for Daniel the scheme of the empires serves to put the Jews above history, for Tacitus and his source in this passage the scheme served to put the Jews below history. In the Greek and Roman pagan literatures of the imperial epoch, the notion of a succession of empires was mostly confined to rhetorical compositions and even there it did not play a conspicuous role. Thus at the end of the first century A.D. Dio Chrysostom in his speech 7945 “On Wealth” (5-6) expressed the fear that Rome might fall, as Assyria, Media and Persia had fallen in the past, because of the corruption brought about by wealth. About A.D. 155 Aelius Aristides delivered in Athens his grand Panathenaic Speech in which he celebrated Athens’ contribution to civilization.46 Briefly, but pointedly, he stated that Athenian civilization [15]47 had begun at the time of the Assyrian Empire, continued to prosper under the empires of the Persians and the Macedonians, and now under the Roman Empire “which is in every way the best and the greatest, it has the precedence over all (the rest of) the Greek race” (335). A compliment to Athens’ capacity to survive every change of empire is conflated with a well chosen adulatory allusion to Rome. The same Aelius Aristides briefly compared Rome with the other empires in his panegyric of Rome (26, 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 P-o 114: register <-> face, msb[AMM]. P-o 114: 14 <-> 11, msr[AMM]. P-o 114: (Hist. 5, 8-9): -> I quote, del. P-o 114: of the Jews, interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 114: 79, interl.msr[AMM]. P-o 114: civilization.-> It was one of those “reassuring” orations I have mentioned, del. P-o 114: 15 <-> 12, msr[AMM]. 157 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography 91). He implied that Rome had always been an empire, while the other empires had replaced each other in turn:48 “For you alone are rulers, so to speak, according to nature. Those others who preceded established an arbitrary tyrannical rule. They became masters and slaves of each other in turn, and as rulers they were a spurious crew ... Macedonians had a period of enslavement to Persians, Persians to Medes, Medes to Assyrians, but as long as men have known you, all have known you as rulers” (J. H. Oliver, TA Philos. Assoc., N.S. 43, 4, 1953xxvi ). In these two passages by Aelius Aristides there is little more than adulation. Finally, and more poignantly, Rutilius Namatianus in the poem of A.D. 416, De reditu suo, when Rome had already been sacked by Alaric, alluded to previous empires while reasserting his faith in Rome: “The stars never looked on a fairer empire (nullum viderunt pulchrius imperium). The Assyrian arms never linked together an empire like your empire. The Persians only subdued neighbours of their own. The mighty Parthian kings and Macedonian monarchs imposed laws on each other through varying changes. It was not that at your birth you had more souls and hands: but more prudence and more judgement were yours” (Minor Latin Poets, edd. J. W. Duff and A. M. Duff, p. 771, modified). There may be more allusions to the scheme of empires in the extant pagan and rhetorical literature about Rome than I happen to know. But they cannot be very many and are nothing as compared to all the other rhetorical and ideological armoury at the service of Roman propaganda. The scheme of empires appears to be conspicuously absent from the imperial panegyrics and from inscriptions and coins. Roman propaganda does not seem to have relied much on [16]49 the comparison with the previous empires. Dio Chrisostom and Aelius Aristides, the two most conspicuous exceptions, both came from Asia. Although I am not prepared to subscribe to the thesis by Professor J. H. Oliver that Aelius Aristides’ Panathenaicus is an anti-Christian speech in disguise (TAPhA N.S. 58, 1, 1968, n. 1xxvii ), I would not exclude a generic influence of the Jewish and Christian society of Asia Minor in keeping alive the imagery of the four or five empires for writers like Dio Chrysostom and Aelius Aristides who were born in that part of the world. As for Rutilius Namatianus, he knew only too well that he was living in a world corrupted by Jews and Christians. He answered them by extolling the immortality of Rome. III When the pagans seemed either to imply the permanence of the Roman Empire or at least to avoid radical criticism of it, Jews and Christians made it their business to remind themselves and the surrounding nations that anything in this world is transient, any empire bound to disappear – except the final Kingdom of God (in whatever form it might be conceived). We are often told that the main achievement of Christian historical thought was to give a precise place in universal history to the empire created by Caesar and Augustus. This is true.50 A thought of this kind was improbable in a Jewish mind; when it came to be formulated, it was an indication of how far the Christians had diverged from the Jews. Yet even this radical deviation from Jewish thought would not have been possible inside the Christian communities if many Christians, like many Jews, had not been51 puzzled by the ultimate meaning of the Roman Empire which affected their lives so deeply and seemed to affect in mysterious ways the economy of redemption itself. The literary forms the Jews had elaborated or refurbished to express their reaction to the surrounding empires – apocalypses and sibylline books – were adopted by the Christians. With the form went at least part of the substance. Apocalypses and sibylline books intimated the dangerous features of the Roman Empire and often 48 P-o 114: in turn: -> I quote, del. P-o 114: 16 <-> 13, msr[AMM]. 50 P-o 114: This is true <-> This is only one aspect of the matter, and a relatively late one, though Eusebius’ notion of the providential role of the Roman Empire had precedents, interl.ms[AMM]. 51 P-o 114: Yet even this radical ... had not been, interl.msb[AMM]<-> But in the first three centuries the Christians remained close to Jewish thought in the sense that, like the Jews, they were. 49 158 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography propounded visions of its [17] 52 impending doom. There are good reasons to think that the Christians christianized existing Jewish apocalyptic and sibylline books. The opposite case, of Christian books turned Jewish by Jewish editors cannot be excluded a priori53, but I have never seen it propounded as a fact54. However, as we have seen, not all the Jews who dealt with apocalyptics wanted or expected the imminent fall of Rome (as the case of Josephus shows); nor are the Jewish sibylline books uniformly hostile to Rome, as we have also seen55. This in itself indicated various possibilities for Christian re-thinking about Rome. Ultimately it favoured the concentration of Christian reflection on that unique relationship between Christianity and Roman Empire, which was indicated by the mere fact that Christ was born under Augustus, and was later confirmed by Constantine’s conversion. I shall not even attempt here to sketch the development of this historiography which either turned Jewish apocalyptics into a justification of the Roman Empire (Eusebius) or created on the same basis a structure of permanent dialectical opposition between the “civitas terrena” and the “civitas dei”. I should like only, by way of conclusion, to indicate one aspect56 of this evolution. Relying on the apocalyptic57 hopes they had been given, the Jews fought three times, under Vespasian, Trajan and Hadrian, with a courage their opponents were compelled58 to recognize, and they died by the million. The Judaism which emerged from these three disasters was bound to be very different. It was a ruined society which avoided demoralization, despair and ultimate dissolution by submitting itself to the discipline and limitations we call Talmudic Judaism. Greek was abandoned as a literary language, and together with Greek history and philosophy disappeared. There would be no other Philo or Flavius Josephus for a long time. Apocalyptic speculations were never suppressed entirely. They remained what has happy been called the hidden dimension of Rabbinismxxviii . But they were effectively controlled – so effectively that all the apocalyptic books written by Jews, with the exception of Daniel, slowly disappeared from the hands of the Jews and were preserved only in the translations and adaptations made by more or less orthodox Christian groups. The great Jewish apocalyptic literature ends [18]59 roughly with Bar Kochba and Hadrian. The Jewish sibylline literature, being in a more popular vein and partly destined for pagan readers, lingered on a little longer, perhaps to A.D. 200. But here again we owe its preservation to the Christian followers and imitators. Only in a few Talmudic passages do we catch rabbis dreaming of Romans falling into the hands of the Persians, just as the Babylonians had fallen (Bab. Yoma 10, a; Berakhot 56a). At least in the third century there was a marked tendency among rabbis to resign themselves to the reality of the Roman Empire60. Paradoxically – but not absurdly – it was left to the Christians to develop the ideas which Jewish apocalyptic and sibylline books, beginning with Daniel, had introduced into the interpretation of history. Unlike the Jews, the Christians did not turn into collective action the hatred of the Roman Empire which permeated Revelation and their own sibylline books. The many doubts educated Christians felt about Revelation – doubts which went so far as to suspect the book being a forgery by heretics – indicate that at the theoretical level, too, apocalyptic expectations encountered opposition. Respect for and obedience to the Roman Empire were based on a long series of authoritative statements, the earliest of which was attributed to Jesus himself (John 19, 11). Nobody, however, was going to deny that the Roman Empire presented a problem to any Christian. 52 P-o 114: 17 <-> 14, msr[AMM]. P-o 114: a priori, interl.msb[AMM]. 54 P-o 114: but I have ... propounded as a fact <-> but is unlikely, interl.ms[AMM]. 55 P-o 114: have also seen <-> shall soon see, interl.ms[AMM]. 56 P-o 114: one aspect <-> the main steps, interl.ms[AMM]. 57 P-o 114: da Relying on the apocalyptic alla fine del testo: ± P-o 106, capp. III (fine) e IV, cfr.supra, GL 1980 II, cc. 22-3, e infra, note ad locc. 58 P-o 114: compelled <-> bound, interl.msb[AMM]. 59 P-o 114: 18 <-> 15, msr[AMM]; New 4.2.80, mgsupmsr[AMM]. 60 Only in a few talmudic passages… Roman Empire, def. in P-o 106. 53 159 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography The problem involved the whole status of classical civilization, as is clear from Tatianxxix in the late second century. The other empires could only be a distant background to the discussion. The Roman Empire was the present reality. The pagans themselves, as we have seen, had restricted their horizon to the present empire. The Christians had to recognize, and to face in its implications, this narrowing of historical experience. But61 the Christians, with Daniel behind them – and more recently Revelation – were able to ask how the Roman empire could be reconcilied with the Kingdom of God. Though they did not provide alternatives to Rome, they could question the purpose of the Roman Empire62. They could not follow the Roman pagans who had stopped thinking seriously about the Roman Empire and were at best arguing about how much power should be given, or left, to the Senate. The Christians never took the eternity of Rome for granted, and were acutely aware of the variety of nations inside the Empire.63 One64 [18a]65 solution for the Christian was to turn the Roman Empire into a near approximation to the Kingdom od God – and this was the solution that Constantine’s conversion made plausible. It was spelt out, historically justified and made respectable by Eusebius and his followers. But we must not forget that it had already been anticipated by Melitonxxx in a time of persecution at the end of the second century.66 For Eusebius the Roman Empire was equivalent to the world. Thus the Roman peace could be seen both as the peace of the world which had favoured the spreading of the Gospel and, to a considerable extent, as the Messianic peace promised by the Jewish prophets. The building of the Church [19]67 of the Holy Sepulchre ordered by Constantine was identified by Eusebius (Vita Constant. 3, 33) with the descent of Heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation. Orosius, who passed for a pupil of St. Augustine, still agreed with Eusebius about the providential mission of Rome.68 More insidiously, the Church was given the geographical dimensions of the Roman Empire. That meant that people outside the Empire were treated with special suspicion by the Christians. The identification of the Black with the Devil was spread by the Christians – especially monks – of the African marginal zones of the Empire where the Black was the outsider par excellence. Others remained less certain of the providentiality of the Empire. At the beginning of the third century Hippolytus of Rome firmly identified Rome with the fourth empire of Daniel only to put it nearer to the Antichrist (Comm. in Danielem 2, 7-13; 4, <7-16>; De Ant. <25>)xxxi ; and about two centuries later St. Jerome adopted that order of ideas, though less emphatically.69 With the advantage or disadvantage of the same70 historical experience (which turned out to be one of wars, defeats and humiliations for the Roman Empire), Augustine too was no longer so certain as Eusebius. He culled from Revelation – perhaps through the mediation of Ticonius71 - the permanent antagonism between the earthly Babylon and the heavenly Jerusalem and codified it in his De civitate dei. He saw first in Assyria and then in Rome the main embodiments of the earthly city which prides itself instead of loving God: he declared all the other empires mere appendages of these two kingdoms (18, 2). For an heir of Greco-Roman civilization as after all St. Augustine was, this thought is remarkable enough to deserve quotation: “But among the numerous kingdoms of the world, into which the society motivated by world by advantage or satisfaction, which we call by the 61 The Christians… experience. But, def. in P-o 106. Though they did not … Empire, def. in P-o 106. 63 The Christians never took… the Empire, def. in P-o 106. 64 P-o 114: da Revelation – were able a inside the Empire. One, ds. con interl. ridotto (cfr. Introduzione, par. 1). 65 P-o 114: 18a <-> 15, msr[AMM]. La parte iniziale del f. conteneva, un ts. pressoché identico a quello di P-o 106 (GL 1980 II), cc. 22 (fine)-23, poi cancellato, per cui cfr. supra, ad loc. 66 P-o 114: But we must ... second century., mginfmsb[AMM]. 67 P-o 114: 19 <-> 16, msr[AMM]. 68 P-o 114: Orosius ... mission of Rome., mgsupmsb[AMM]., def. in P-o 106. 69 That meant that other people… though less emphatically, def. in P-o 106; P-o 114: Others remained ... less emphatically, ds. con interl. ridotto, scrittura originale, cfr. Introduzione, par. 1]. 70 P-o 114: the same <-> another century, interl.msb[AMM]. 71 P-o 114: -perhaps… Ticonius - , interl.msb[AMM], def. in P-o 106. 62 160 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography general name the ‘city of this world’ has been divided, we note that two powers have gained far greater fame than the rest, first that of the Assyrians, and later that of the Romans, as neatly arranged and well spaced from each other in time as in place” (transl. E. M. Sanford and W. McA. Green, Loeb. ed.)72. But St. Augustine not only eliminated the Greeks: he also eliminated73 the Jewish millennium to which the author of Revelation, still close to his Jewish roots, had clung. By eliminating the millennium, St. Augustine was able to save the Roman Empire in the sense that the Roman Empire had a function in the present world in relation to the heavenly city: “The Roman Empire was expanded to be glorious among men not merely to pay such men such recompense as they deserved. It was also intended for the benefit of the citizens of the eternal city while they are pilgrims here” (5, 16 transl. W. M. Green, Loebxxxii ). Ultimately, therefore, St. Augustine offers a mediation between the satanic picture of the Roman Empire [20]74 presented by Revelation and the providential mission attributed to it by Eusebius. The three choices (Revelation, Eusebius and St. Augustine) are still with us. Indeed75, they are probably nearer to us than the political interpretation of empires propounded by Polybius from which we started. This follows from the fact that76 Daniel had interposed himself between Polybius and his Jewish contemporaries – and gave a new direction77 to historical thinking about empires78. i Per un precedente contributo momiglianeo sul tema cfr. Momigliano, A., Prime linee di storia della tradizione maccabaica (=Prime linee), cap. I, part. alle pp. 14-18. ii FLUSSER 1978. iii SACKUR 1898. iv P.J. ALEXANDER 1967. v Cfr FLUSSER 1978, 183; SACKUR 1898, 4-15 (part. 14-15), et post eos consurget alius rex C nomine [= i.e.Constantinus], potens in proelio qui regnabit a. XXX et edificabit templum Deo et legem adimplebit et faciet iustitiam propter Deum in terram (cfr. ts. gr. ai rr. 178-194, in cui l’imperatore in questione è chiamato Olibos, e ai rr. 85-88, in cui si menziona Costantino). vi Per una riproposizione di questa conclusione cfr. From the Pagan to the Christian Sybil (=From the Pagan), Nono, 738-9, dove Momigliano contrappone l’interesse degli oracoli cristiani per il tema della salvezza individuale alla predilezione, in quelli ebraici, per “eschatological woes, cosmic judgement and finally perennial happiness for the saved”. vii MYERS 1974, 12. viii Per la consapevolezza di Flavio Giuseppe sulle speranze dei suoi connazionali, cfr. BJ 2.258, 6.285; per la sua conoscenza dell’interpetazione antiromana della profezia di Dan. 2,34 relativa alla pietra divina che spezza la statua degli imperi, cfr. invece Ant. 10,210 e il supplemento offerto da Giovanni Crisostomo, Adv. Judaeos 5,9 (= PG 48, 897). Sul passo in questione, e sulle problematiche che pone dal punto di vista testuale, cfr. Ciò che Flavio Giuseppe non vide (=Ciò che Flavio), cap. IV n. 2, e Flavius Josephus and Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem (=Alexander’s visit), cap. IV. ix Ios. Ant. 1.8, Vita 430, Ap. I, 1, ii.1, 296. Problematica risulta un’identificazione definitiva di questo personaggio, definito da Giuseppe “uomo devoto a ogni forma di apprendimento, ma soprattutto a quello della storia”: si individuano infatti in questo periodo due distinti uomini di nome Epafrodito. Uno, protettore di Epitteto, liberto e segretario di Nerone, fu fatto giustiziare da Domiziano nel 95 d.C. (Tac. Ann., 15,55; Suet., Nero 49,3; Domit. 14,4; Suda, Lex., s.v. Ἐπίκτητος); l’altro, Marco Mettio Epafrodito, era invece un grammatico formatosi ad Alessandria che visse a Roma dal tempo di Nerone a quello di Nerva e che lì raccolse una grande biblioteca, acquisendo fama di mecenate e cultore delle arti (Suda, Lex., s.v. Ἐπαφρόδιτος; CIL VI 9454). Per i problemi di cronologia relativi al primo Epafrodito cfr. THACKERAY 1930, x-xi; vd. inoltre SCHÜRER 1985, I 82,89. x Ios. Vit. 429. 72 For an heir… Green, Loeb, ed.) def in P-o 106. P-o 114: But St. Augustine not only eliminated the Greeks: he also eliminated, interl.ms[AMM] <-> But St. Augustine eliminated. 74 P-o 114: 20 <-> 17, msr[AMM]. 75 P-o 114: Indeed <-> At least, msb[AMM]. 76 P-o 114: This follows from the fact that <-> In any case, interl.msb[AMM]. 77 P-o 114: direction <-> dimension, msb[AMM]. 78 This follows… empires, def. in P-o 106. 73 161 Grinfield Lectures 1980 – Daniel and the Origins of Universal History III. Flavius Josephus, the Pagan Historians and the Birth of Christian Historiography xi Per un recente lavoro sul tema – meno studiato della ribellione che portò alla fine del Tempio e di quella di Bar Kochba, ma importante nella riflessione di Momigliano – si rimanda a PUCCI BEN ZEEN 2005, che ne offre un’accurata ricostruzione e nuovi spunti interpretativi. xii Ios. BJ 3,351-4, trad. di H.St. J. Thackeray, Cambridge Mass. 1927 xiii Ios. Ant. 10. 267-8, trad. di R. Marcus, Cambridge Mass 1937. xiv Hier. In Danielem, xi. 21 ss. (PL 565 ss. = Commentarium in Dan. libri III, cura et studio Francisci Glorie, Turnhout 1964, 914 ss.). xv Ios. Ant. 11.336-9 xvi Ios. Ant.11.302-35. Sui rapporti tra Samaritani ed Alessandro e sull’ellenizzazione della città di Samaria ad opera del sovrano macedone cfr. part. SCHÜRER 1985 I 206-7. Giuseppe ricorda in questo passo come i Samaritani conquistarono il favore di Alessandro edificando, proprio con il suo consenso, il tempio separatista sul monte Garizim che sarebbe stato distrutto da Giovanni Ircano nel 128 a.C. (Ant. 13.255-6). Tracce di quello che sembra esser il podio del tempio sono state in effetti scoperte sotto le fondamenta del tempio adrianeo di Zeus Hypsistos, cfr. BULL – WRIGHT 1965; IDD. 1968. xvii Cfr. FREUDENTHAL 1874, 103; FRASER 1972, I 285-6, e II 445-6, n. 793. xviii Cfr. Flavius Josephus and Alexander’s Visit to Jerusalem (=Alexander’s visit), 442-448. xix Ios. Ant. 18.63 xx Per una riproposizione momiglianea dell’argomento, cfr. Ciò che Flavio Giuseppe non vide (=Ciò che Flavio), part. alle pp. 4-6, 9-11. xxi FrGH 93 T4-7. xxii FrGH 93 T2. xxiii FGrH 93 T2a. xxiv GL 1980 I (Universal History) cc. 6-7. xxv The History of Tacitus, translated into english by A.J. Church and W.J. Brodribb, Cambridge-London 1864. xxvi OLIVER 1953. xxvii OLIVER 1968. xxviii RIVKIN 1978. xxix Cfr. Tatianus, Oratio ad Graecos, part. capp. I-III, VIII-X, XIV, XVII-XIX, XXI-XXVI. xxx Hall, S.G., Melito of Sardis. On Pascha and Fragments, Oxford 1979, fr. 2 (Chronicon Paschale). Qui Melitone sottolinea il sincronismo tra la nascita del cristianesimo e quella dell’impero romano, proponendo l’associazione tra la diffusione del primo e la prosperità del secondo (sulla rilevanza ideologica dell’operazione vd. MORESCHINI – NORELLI 1995, I 209-10, con relativa bibliografia). xxxi In Dan. 2.7-13 (=PG 10, 644); 4,7-16 (=PG 10, 646); De Ant. 25 (=PG 10, 747). xxxii Augustinus, De civitate dei, transl. W. M. Green, London-Cambridge 1969. 162 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece CL 1981 I, II The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism Sedi e date GL 1981 I (21 Gennaio, cfr. P-o 131, GRANATA 2006, 424) CL 1981 I , II (aprile/maggio – giorno? – cfr. GRANATA 2006, 424) Documenti a) GL 1981 I P-o 182 ms. P-o 129, P-o 138, P-o 152: top c., ds. di P-o 182 P-o 130 nuova versione ds. basata su P-o 152, c.c., cfr. P-o 139 (a 1-2), c.c.; P-o 140 (a1), xerox. b) CL 1981 I ( Greece) P-o 139 (a-b), c.c. di GL 1981 I con aggiunte. P-o 140 xerox di P-o 139 P-o 147, P-o 153, P-o 184: nuova versione ds. basata su P-o 139, 140. c) CL 1981 II (East) P-o 141 (a-b), c.c. di GL 1981 I con aggiunte. P-o 142 xerox di P-o 141. P-o 185 top c., nuova versione ds. basata su P-o 141, 142. P-o 148, P-o 154, P-o 155: xerox di P-o 185. 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. Nell’edizione della lecture di apertura del terzo ciclo momiglianeo sul giudaismo ellenistico il confronto tra la versione Grinfield 1981 e quella per Chicago 1981 induce a preferire nettamente la seconda. Le ragioni non risiedono soltanto nella sua posteriorità (la GL è di febbraio, la versione CL fu presentata in aprile), quanto anche e soprattutto nella sua maggiore articolazione: il testo di partenza GL viene sviluppato in due lectures (1. Greece; 2. The East) risultanti dalla separazione dei principali nuclei argomentativi e dal loro successivo ampliamento tramite aggiunte consistenti. La serie P-o dell’AAM conserva una prima versione ms. del testo GL (P-o 182) e la sua trascrizione ds. in 22 cc., in triplice copia (P-o 129, 138, 152). Due dei fascicoli (P-o 129 e 138) recano un foglio ms. di introduzione alla lecture e al ciclo che appare di grande importanza nella ricostruzione del processo di composizione delle conferenze sul giudaismo ellenistico, contribuendo a gettare luce non solo sull’unità complessiva del progetto, ma anche sulla volontà di Momigliano di rendere i suoi ascoltatori consapevoli già in itinere dell’organicità del suo percorso (per il testo dell’introduzione e la sua analisi, cfr. infra, Appendice al testo). Un nuovo ds. in 30 cc., P-o 130, copia carbone di un originale non conservato, offre invece il testo di una versione ampliata su base GL in prospettiva della bipartizione CL 1981 I e II1. La successiva serie di testimoni della conferenza segue infatti la divisione tra il nucleo di indagine greca (Resistance, Greece) e quello orientale (Resistance, East). Il primo è documentato da P-o 139, una c.c. in 16 cc. dss, e dalla corrispondente xerox non annotata P-o 140. Documento preso come base per l’edizione è P-o 184 (il cui testo è presente anche in P-o 147, 153) una copia xerox che offre la nuova e definitiva versione ds. della conferenza. Resistance, East è invece testimoniato in una prima versione da P-o 141 (24 cc. dss., c.c. di GL 1981 con aggiunte) e dalla sua xerocopia P-o 142. Come testo base di questa seconda lecture si è scelto P-o 185, top c. in 25 cc. che presenta (rare) annotazioni di mano di Momigliano e di cui si conservano tre copie xerox, P-o 148, 154 e 1552. Posta la derivazione sia di P-o 184 che di 185 da P-o 130, in entrambi i casi si segnalano in apparato solo le divergenze del testo CL con la versione GL: quando non diversamente indicato, il testo va considerato come coincidente. 1 2 Cfr. annotazione di mano di AMM, c.1: “Chicago I + II (April) = Grinfield I (Feb. 81) with new additions, 30.3.81”. Erroneamente catalogate da GRANATA 2006, 81-2, come copie carbone. 163 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece 2. Argomento della prima lecture (Greece). Con la conquista di Alessandro i Greci diventano partner nella costruzione dell’impero macedone, fornendo lingua, tecnologie e cornice socioculturale. Previene tuttavia da indentificazioni semplicistiche il fatto che molte città stato greche continuassero a sentirsi minacciate dalle monarchie ellenistiche, finendo per divenire più vittime che beneficiari del nuovo sistema. Conseguenza è la creazione di un’opposizione greca all’interno dello stesso imperialismo greco-macedone che finirà per influenzare le future modalità di opposizione all’imperialismo romano, per quanto sia difficile individuare un pattern coerente tra manifestazioni resistenziali che non rivelano continuità o unanimità di propositi. La lunga familiarità con i conquistatori alimenta una progressiva divaricazione dei fronti, riassumibile nell’opposizione tra Polibio e scuola demostenica: se il primo accusa Demostene di aver preteso che gli interessi della Grecia coincidessero con quelli di Atene, nell’ambito della seconda il retore viene rivalutato come patriota esemplare, in un processo di idealizzazione che coinvolge anche le sue competenze letterarie e filosofiche, determinando il paradosso dell’esemplarità di Demostene presso i Romani proprio nei secoli in cui il suo corpus veniva proposto come modello di letteratura di resistenza. A differenza dell’opposizione di matrice orientale, quella greca poggia difficilmente su argomenti mitici o utopistici: dei pochissimi documenti che esprimono condanna religiosa dei Romani l’unico esempio esteso è offerto dai Fatti Mirabili di Flegonte di Tralle, una raccolta di età adrianea di oracoli ed eventi miracolosi tra cui spiccano le profezie di distruzione dell’impero fatte risalire alla guerra tra Siria e Roma. È un filone destinato a godere di fortuna crescente a mano a mano che il potere romano si rafforza, come dimostrano documenti quali il III libro dei Sibillini, il papiro di Amburgo, la “lettera di Annibale agli Ateniesi”; la politica di sterminio perseguita dai Romani nel 146 a.C. finirà per fornire nuova ampiezza a questo conflitto ideologico, benché dopo la sconfitta di Mitridate re del Ponto (88-86) nessun leader politico antiromano avrà più la statura per sostenerne l’eredità profetica. Con l’eliminazione dello stato seleucide, Pompeo introdurrà la Giudea nell’impero, facendo al contempo dei Parti l’unica alternativa rimasta ai suoi nemici. 3. Argomento della seconda lecture (The East) La conquista greco-macedone del Vicino Oriente determina l’instaurazione di una nuova classe di conquistatori e una conseguente sottomissione linguistica e culturale. Alle classi dirigenti preesistenti viene offerta l’alternativa tra una lenta assimilazione o una pronta eliminazione. L’Egitto è un valido esempio della devitalizzazione prodotta su un’antica cultura dalla conquista macedone: malgrado i tentativi di resistenza la lingua egizia perde progressivamente di prestigio, finendo per recuperare margine solo dopo l’avvento della cristianizzazione. Tratto caratteristico delle manifestazioni resistenziali dei gruppi etnici asiatici nei confronti dell’imperialismo greco-macedone prima e di quello romano poi è il recupero del patrimonio mitico e sacrale per il tramite di profezie o sogni. Pubblicato da Grayson nel 1975, il primo documento di resistenza religiosa ad Alessandro che sia arrivato fino a noi è una profezia post eventum della sua conquista di Babilonia, culminante nell’incoraggiamento ai Babilonesi ad attendere il ritorno di un re nativo. In ambito egizio, paragonabili testimonianze di odio per gli stranieri e nostalgia per l’indipendenza sono l’Oracolo del vasaio, il papiro Krall di Vienna e la cronaca demotica di Spiegelberg. È comune il ricorso a memorie della passata grandezza per supportare le speranze future, sia pure entro cornici letterarie in cui il materiale autoctono appare fortemente influenzato da topoi greci. Molto discusso è in particolare il legame tra materiale novellistico egizio e greco: negando validità alle teorie di Kerenyi e Merkelbach sull’originario sviluppo del romanzo greco a partire dalla storia sacra di Iside e Osiride, Momigliano considera erronea la deduzione per cui la presenza di elementi orientali in un genere letterario sia una prova della sua diretta filiazione dal patrimonio mitico orientale, ribadendo in parallelo come l’umiliazione della cultura egizia sia passata anche e soprattutto per l’indifferenza e il disinteresse che i Greci le riservarono. 164 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece Sulla letteratura di resistenza persiana le testimonianze sono invece tarde e confuse: l’unico documento ostile ai Romani pervenutoci è l’oracolo di Istaspe, trasmesso in duplice redazione (una cristianizzata, con allusioni a Cristo, l’altra iranica, improntata alla caratteristica dicotomia tra Est e Ovest). Ultimo caso di un’antica civiltà sottovalutata dai Greci è la Fenicia: tramite Eusebio si conservano frammenti della Storia Fenicia di Filone di Biblos, versatile erudito vissuto ai tempi di Adriano. Presentato come insegnamento del dio Taatos al mitico Sanchuniathon, figura anteriore alla guerra di Troia, il testo – un racconto delle dottrine cosmologiche e teologiche fenicie – rappresenta un tentativo di dimostrare sistematicamente la superiorità dei Fenici sui Greci. La volontà di sollevare i Fenici rispetto agli altri popoli finisce per coinvolgere anche gli Ebrei in un’ulteriore opera, la Storia degli Ebrei, in cui Filone di Biblos cerca di screditare la Bibbia producendo una versione sacerdotale alternativa che ne neutralizzi le pretese di antichità. Tratto comune dei testi asiatici di resistenza appare quindi, in conclusione, l’idealizzazione della propria tradizione religiosa e culturale, in opposizione al modello improntato alla riflessione politica che sostanzia le forme di dibattito in Grecia. 4. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione e il rapporto con i testi editi. L’originaria ripartizione in sei capitoli di P-o 130 è destinata a perdersi nella redazione CL che propone, in entrambi i casi, un testo continuo. P-o 184 (Greece) recupera in modo pressoché identico l’esteso cap. I di P-o 130, incentrato sulle differenze nell’opposizione all’imperialismo tra Grecia e Oriente. La riflessione sulle ragioni della scarsità delle espressioni greche contro Roma e sul confronto con la relativa prolificità orientale, proposta in apertura di P-o 130, è eliminata qui e trasposta alla c. 9 di P-o 184. Dopo un paragrafo di coincidenza (l’opposizione greca non mostra continuità né struttura) le due trattazioni divergono: P-o 184 propone un testo del tutto nuovo, una trattazione sull’opposizione ideologica tra Polibio e scuola demostenica che si estende fino alla c. 8 compresa. Dalla c. 9 di P-o 184 ricomincia invece il testo di P-o 130, recuperato a partire dal cap. IV: il senso di superiorità culturale e retorica previene i Greci da manifestazioni resistenziali di tipo utopico o religioso, la cui unica attestazione estesa è rappresentata dalle Storie Strane di Flegone di Tralles, testo di età adrianea. La ripresa di P-o 130 prosegue fino alla fine della lecture (c. 16), che si chiude con una riflessione su Mitridate re del Ponto come ultimo grande leader antiromano e sullo spostamento in Persia, sotto Pompeo, del fronte di opposizione all’imperialismo. I capp. II-III (caratteri della resistenza in Egitto e a Babilonia) e il primo par. del IV passano invece a P-o 185 (The East) pressoché interamente, con l’eccezione dell’inizio del cap. II, che viene espunto: But let us go back to the earlier stages of Hellenization. This cannot be done without recognizing that while Jews, Egyptians, Syrians, etc., were engaged in trying to save themselves from complete Hellenization, the Macedonians and the Greeks were involved in self-defence against the Romans. Indeed, if we went to be completely fair, we have to recognize that there were moments in the third century B.C. in which the Romans themselves felt in danger of soccumbing either to GrecoMacedonians alone or to an alliance of Carthaginians and Greeks: the war of Pyrrus and the alliance between Hannibal and Philip V of Macedon must be taken for what they were at their inception, a very serious menace to Rome. One fact has to be stated from the start without equivocation. Those who escaped Hellenization most effectively were those who either avoided Greco-Macedonian rule or endured it for a short period. The Romans avoided Macedonian rule by defeating Pyrrhus, the epigone of Alexander, who tried to extend Macedonian conquest to Italy. Later in the same century, they avoided the rule of another foreigner, strongly supported by the Greco-Macedonians – Hannibal. On the opposite side of the map of the ancient world, the Iranians soon slipped out of the Seleucid State and re-established a state of their own, which stood up to Greco-Macedonians and, later, Romans, and was to yeld only the Arabs some ten [5] centuries later. Even the Jews, after all, broke away from the Macedonians comparatively early, about 165 B.C., and had almost a century of uneasy independance before falling into Roman hands. 165 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece Con l’esclusione di questo passo, P-o 185 riprende l’intero testo del cap. II, in cui si descrive come l’Egitto offra l’esempio più evidente di una cultura devitalizzata dall’imperialismo macedone. Per contrasto, la scarsità di documentazione testimonia la diversa condizione di Babilonia, dove a rimpiazzare la dominazione greca non arrivano i Romani, bensì i Parti. Nel cap. III, riproposto in successione, si esaminano documenti egiziani della resistenza religiosa contro i Greco-Macedoni e i Romani. Dopo il salto del cap. IV (utilizzato, come si è visto, in P-o 184), anche i capp. V e VI di P-o 130 passano interamente a P-o 185: qui si analizzano rispettivamente la letteratura di resistenza iranica (oracolo di Istaspe) e quella fenicia, rappresentata dall’opera di Filone di Biblos. Nel contesto di analisi di questa figura il testo viene ampliato da due aggiunte consistenti: la rivendicazione filoniana di un’antichità pre-troiana e la contrapposizione tra il carattere politico dell’opposizione greca e quello religioso oriental. Chiude P-o 185 un’anticipazione, aggiunta ad hoc, sull’argomento delle due lectures successive, il cui scopo consisterà nell’esaminare alla luce di questa (non assoluta) opposizione alcuni testi ebraici, lasciati intenzionalmente da parte. Benché The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism non sia mai andato incontro a forme di edizione autonoma, né nella sua versione unitaria né nella più complessa articolazione di Chicago, è possibile in alcuni casi individuare una buona base di confronto con passi licenziati all’interno di Some Preliminary Remarks on the “Religious Opposition” to the Roman Empire (=Opposition), saggio edito postumo in Opposition et résistances à l’Empire d’Auguste à Trajan - Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique, tome xxxiii (1986), pp. 103129, ristampato successivamente in On Pagans, Jews and Christians, Middletown 1987, pp. 120141 (= Nono, 681-699), e nella traduzione italiana contenuta in Saggi di storia della religione romana, alle pp. 151-169. Si rimanda all’apparato per l’individuazione dei passi in comune, rispetto ai quali si segnalano i casi in cui la ripresa risulta perfettamente coincidente (= =), complessivamente uguale ma con differenze formali (=) oppure solo da mettere in relazione, per diversa ampiezza o differenze significative (cfr). 166 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece I The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece *3 1 - Greece4 There must be something in Daniel’s visions of the four empires if they had such a sustained success throughout the centuries. In fact, they epitomize a chain of events which still appeals to our historical imagination. No doubt Daniel made a concession to the special concern of Jerusalem for Babylonia when he presented Babylonia instead of Assyria as the first great empire. The Greeks, from Herodotus onwards, were more clear-sighted in this respect. But Media, Persia and Macedonia were agreed stages of the translatio imperii both on the Greek and on the Jewish map of events; and the Romans were soon recognized by everyone as the successors of the Macedonians. Imperialism involves oppression and exploitation. There is a story to be told of complaints about, and reactions to, Assyrian and Persian conquest. I am leaving this out of my present consideration. But I shall try to say something about the ideological reaction to the conquests of Alexander the Great – what we call the Hellenization of the Near East – and, later, to the replacement of the Greco-Macedonian imperialism by a Roman imperialism. At the beginning of the fifth century B.C. the Greeks of Europe had succeeded in stopping the expansion of the Persians and had even, for a short period, [2] liberated the Greeks of Asia. Thus, they gave themselves the right to look at the Persian Empire from outside and to consider it an inferior institution created by barbarians. Though we could mention exceptions, it is not the voice of the oppressed which characterizes the attitude of the Greeks towards the Persians. On the contrary, there is self-assurance about the superiority of Greek freedom and of Greek military competence. What is new in the conquests of Alexander is the transformation of the Greeks into partners in the building of the Macedonian Empire and in its exploitation. Not only do the Greeks powerfully contribute to the conquering army and to the contingents of new settlers in the conquered countries, but for all practical purposes they also provide the language, the technology and the social and cultural framework of the new empire. The fact that Alexander’s conquests were soon divided among several monarchies did not change the predominantly Greek character of Macedonian imperialism. The Greeks were by now inside, not outside, the imperialistic way of life. There is, however, a feature of the new political structure of the Hellenistic age which prevents any simplistic identification of the Greeks with a new imperialistic race corresponding to the older imperialistic races of the Assyrians and the Persians. The greater part of the Greeks of Europe remained citizens of city-states and of leagues which felt threatened by the great Hellenistic monarchies. They fought for survival, and at first for5 obvious geographic reasons they considered the state of Macedonia in the North as the greater danger. With the useless wisdom of hindsight we can shake our heads at their bickering6 rivalries, short-lived pacts and long-lasting delusions. But the fundamental contradiction in their situation has to be understood. The Greeks outside the ruling classes of the new Hellenized East were rather the victims than the beneficiaries of a political * Documento preso come base: P-o 184, copia xerox di un originale non conservato della nuova e definitiva versione CL 1981 I. Si riportano in apparato le divergenze con P-o 130, fascicolo di 30 ff. che offre un testo GL ampliato anteriore alla bipartizione CL (quando non diversamente indicato, il testo di P-o 184 può considerarsi coincidente) e, all’occorrenza, lezioni significative di P-o 185, testo base di CL 1981 II derivato dalla seconda parte di P-o 130. Si segnalano inolte eventuali paralleli con Some Preliminary Remarks on the “Religious Opposition” to the Roman Empire (= bibl. 712), citato come Opposition, specificando se i passi sono identici (= =), quasi uguali (=) o solo da mettere in relazione, ma con differenze significative (cfr). 3 P-o 130: Chicago I + II (April) = Grinfield I (Feb. 1981) with new additions tsfmsr[AMM]. 4 P-o 184: 1 – Greece <-> P-o 130: I. 5 P-o 184: and at first for <-> P-o 130 and for. 6 P-o 130: bickering, rivalries; P-o 184: bickering rivalries. 167 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece system which would have been [3] impossible without the participation of Greeks. It follows that there was a Greek opposition to Greco-Macedonian imperialism. It was much more political, in the strict sense, than any native opposition in the East could ever be, because there were Greek states in existence which did not want to be merged into the Greco-Macedonian monarchies. Athens and Sparta were still active and respected. The Aetolian and the Achaean Leagues had found new strength. As long as this opposition was able to operate in terms of conventional war and diplomacy and to take advantage of the conflicts between the great monarchies, we must not expect the Greeks to react as often as the helpless natives of the Eastern monarchies did in terms of religious or utopian hopes. Political manoeuvres of the ordinary kind were still possible in Greece; they were impossible among the natives of Egypt or Syria. This consideration applies also to the attitudes of the Greeks towards the Romans in the second century B.C. Until 168 B.C. and more markedly until 189 B.C., many Greeks were uncertain whether the Romans represented the lesser evil in comparison with Macedonia. After all, the Romans appeared to be more remote. Even when it became obvious that the Macedonians were no longer in a position to compete with the Romans for the control of Greece, there was no unanimity among the Greeks about their own paramount interests. The history of the relations between Rome and Greece in the second century B.C. is capable of many interpretations, but at least two points, as they emerge from our sources, are uncontroversial: 1) the Romans offered the upper classes of the Greek cities a certain degree of social security, provided they were ready to play; this involved a steadly elimination of those members of the Greek upper class, (of those principes as Livy would call them) who were no ready to play. Thus any progress of the Romans almost automatically implied the elimination of those Greek leaders who were not prepared to support them. 2) Dissension [4] favoured the Romans and when something like a consensus emerged in the opposition to Rome – as happened in the war between the Achaean League and Rome in 146 (Polyb. 38, 11) – there was no time left for dreaming or praying. The Romans of Mummius sacked Corinth, massacred the men and sold women and children into slavery. Corinth remained a ghostcity for a century, and hence a warning. There are some modern scholars who have tried to find a coherent pattern in the resistance of the Greeks to the Romans, most notably, among the recent students of this subject, Jürgen Deininger in his book of 1971i. Though in many ways very valuable, Deininger’s book has provided the demonstration e contrario that there was no continuity and no pattern in this opposition. The prevalence of the diplomatic game, the continuous interference of local rivalries and social conflicts, and for a long time the shadow of Macedonia prevented the Greeks from unanimity of purpose and even from stability of feelings. Polybius offers the most important evidence for this state of affairs. He himself had been an opponent of Rome and was therefore taken hostage by the Romans. Long familiarity with the conquerors and deep reflection had convinced him that it was helpless to resist Rome. But this does not mean that he had discovered that the Romans were a good thing for the Greeks. In his historical work, as far as we have it, he never says so. The way he tells the events of the tragic years around 146 B.C., when both Corinth and Carthage were destroyed, is particularly ambiguous.7 7 P-o 184: But this does ... ambiguous. <-> P-o 130: But in his historical work, as far as we have it, he never says that the Romans were a good thing for the Greeks, and the way he tells the events of the tragic years around 146 B.C., when both Corinth and Carthage were destroyed, is particularly ambiguous; P-o 130: ambiguous -> If in my subsequent account we shall find little evidence of voices from the oppressed on Greek soil, we must remember that Polybius himself leaves us in suspense. II- But let us go back to the earlier stages of Hellenization. This cannot be done without recognizing that while Jews, Egyptians, Syrians, etc., were engaged in trying to save themselves from complete Hellenization, the Macedonians and the Greeks were involved in self-defence against the Romans. Indeed, if we went to be completely fair, we have to recognize that there were moments in the third century B.C. in which the Romans themselves felt in danger of succumbing either to Greco-Macedonians alone or to an alliance of Carthaginians and Greeks: the war of Pyrrus and the alliance between Hannibal and Philip V of Macedon must be taken for what they were at their inception, a very serious menace to Rome. 168 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece Polybius, properly read, can show what is different in the attitude of the metropolitan Greeks from the attitude of the oriental nations who succumbed to the superiority of Macedonian and, later, of Roman power. It was the feeling that the dispute was not between gods, but between men and had to be transacted as well as one could in terms of prudence, shrewdness and patience. This did not necessarily imply abandonment of any hope of independence: it did, how[5]ever, imply a continuous appeal to realism against illusion. If we read Polybius in this key, we can also identify the men whom he had in mind as his main adversaries in Greece. By identifying his opponents, we can isolate a current of Greek political thought which came very near to giving the Greeks some common ideality and purpose, though it never quite succeeded: I mean the disciples and admirers of Demosthenes. Let us take a look at one of the most famous, and yet most puzzling, surviving fragments of the lost books of Polybius. After the great lacuna of book XVII, which seems to have been lost early in the Middle Ages, we have some very significant fragments of book XVIII. Then Polybius (chapters 13-15) involves himself in a discussion of what is real treachery. With an eye at his own situation, he vehemently denies that a politician who changes his allegiance must necessarily be considered a traitor. He has no difficulty in quoting near contemporary events as telling examples of politicians who proved wise in moving from one camp to the opposite: “If Aristaeus had not then in good time made the Achaeans throw off their alliance with Philip and change it for that with Rome, the whole nation would evidently have suffered utter destruction.” By a sudden switch, Polybius then turns to the events of almost two hundred years before and attacks Demosthenes as the man who had wrongly treated as traitors the politicians of the other Greek cities simply because they did not follow Athens in her struggle against Philip II of Macedonia. Polybius does not reproach Demosthenes for having misjudged the real interests of the Athenians. There may be an element of this in his general evaluation of Demosthenes, but it is not the element which emerges from the extant chapters. What he finds intolerable in Demosthenes’ attitudes is the pretension that the interests of Athens were identical with those of the rest of Greece. As Polybius puts it: “Measuring everything by the interests of his own city, thinking that the whole [6] of Greece should have its eyes turned on Athens, and if people did not do so calling them traitors, Demosthenes seems to me to have been very much mistaken and very far wide of the truth.” According to Polybius, the Greek politicians who invited Philip II to enter the Peloponnesus and to humiliate Sparta “simply differed in their own judgement of facts, thinking that the interests of Athens were not identical with those of their countries” (transl. W. R. Paton, Loeb Libraryii). Polybius would not have gone out of his way to attack these ghosts of the fourth century B.C. if he had not felt that these ghosts were very present (and from his point of view very harmful) in the contemporary scene. The fact is that the leader who had guided Athens and Thebes to the disaster of Chaeronea in 338 and had been hounded out by Alexander the Great, had made a posthumous spectacular return to Athens a few decades after his death. From Athens his reputation as a great patriot had extended to any place where Greek was read; and by the middle of the third century, it was difficult to distinguish his glory as the greatest orator of Greece from his exemplarity as a courageous and far-sighted patriot. It will be enough to remind ourselves of some of the stages of this come-back. In 280 the Athenians decreed to set up a statue of Demosthenes in the agora and to give the eldest of his direct descendants the permanent right to free meals in the Prytanaeumiii – an One fact has to be stated from the start without equivocation. Those who escaped Hellenization most effectively were those who either avoided Greco-Macedonian rule or endured it for a short period. The Romans avoided Macedonian rule by defeating Pyrrhus, the epigone of Alexander, who tried to extend Macedonian conquest to Italy. Later in the same century, they avoided the rule of another foreigner, strongly supported by the Greco-Macedonians – Hannibal. On the opposite side of the map of the ancient world, the Iranians soon slipped out of the Seleucid State and re-established a state of their own, which stood up to Greco-Macedonians and, later, Romans, and was to yield only the Arabs some ten centuries later. Even the Jews, after all, broke away from the Macedonians comparatively early, about 165 B.C., and had almost a century of uneasy independence before falling into Roman hands, del.; P-o 130 prosegue con il resto del cap. II, il cap. III e il primo par. del IV, che nel passaggio al testo CL confluiscono in P-o 185 (2. The East, cfr. infra). 169 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece honour he would share with the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the traditional liberators of Athens from the tyranny of the Pisistratids. The man who had brought about this change of feelings was himself a nephew of Demosthenes, Demochares. Now it is interesting that one of his enemies in Athens was the exile historian Timaeus: yet Timaeus was one of the first Greek historians to praise Demosthenes and the other Athenian orators for their stand against the deification of Alexander (Polyb. 12, 12bc). More or less at the same time Demos[7]thenes is recognized by members of the peripatetic school traditionally hostile to him as the greatest Greek orator, to be preferred to Isocrates. Such is the opinion of Hieronymus of Rhodes and is developed by Cleochares of Myrleaiv into a glorification of the politician. With the consolidation of the reputation of Demosthenes goes together the interest professional biographers – such as Hermippusv and Satyrusvi – take in him. We do not expect idealization from them: they like sensational or scandalous stories of any kind. But ultimately the biography of Demosthenes is made to conform with the idealization of his politics and with the reputation of his oratory. Demosthenes is even made a pupil of Plato – an unlikely thought. The glorification of Demosthenes was not, as we have seen from Polybius, an unopposed development. Panaetius, the stoic philosopher of the second century B.C., seems to have had reservations on Demosthenes the man in comparison with Demosthenes the orator (Plutarch, Demosthenes 13). But in the second century B.C. Demosthenes was already a model to the Roman Cato the Censor, and of course in the first century B.C. he inspired Cicero. The admiration of the readers of the first century A.D., as we can gather from Quintilian and Plutarch, was based on a long tradition. Curiously enough, modern scholars have never clearly related this posthumous ascent of Demosthenes with the political resistance of the Greeks against Macedonians and Romans. but this relation is stated by Polybius, who tried to defend the realism of the opponents of Demosthenes insofar as he identified his own realism with theirs. Consequently, nobody has commented on the paradox that Demosthenes should become a model to Roman politicians in the centuries in which he was read by the Greeks to learn how to resist the Romans. The best book we have on the reputation of Demosthenes in Antiquity by Engelbert Drerup (Demosthenes im Urteile des Altertums, 1923vii) was meant to support in the post-First World War atmosphere the damning judgment on Demos[8]thenes Drerup had published in 1916 with the explicit purpose of contributing to war propaganda on the German side. The title is good enough: Aus einer alten Advokatenrepublik (Demosthenes und seine Zeit), Auch ein Kriegsbuch. Unnecessary to say, the modern advocates against whom Drerup thought he was fighting were the London, Paris and Rome advocates of 1916. “Advokaten gegen Könige” is the title of the Introduction. There was no prospect of understanding the posthumous reputation of Demosthenes from this point of view. On the other hand, not much was gained when P. Cloché, one of the most serious students of Demosthenes, got involved in the task of proving to his own satisfaction that Polybius’ criticism on Demosthenes bore scanty relation to the situation of the fourth century (“Ant. Class.” 8, 1939, 361-370)viii. What matters is that the reputation of Demosthenes in the Hellenistic age cannot be separated from the model of political resistance he represented against foreign conquerors. In its turn, the existence of this model confirms the political character of his resistance. Idealized or criticized, Demosthenes remains the example of the gifted orator who devoted his life to keep his own country free. If we want to identify a specific Greek tradition of resistance, this is clearly provided by that literary monument – the corpus of the political speeches of Demosthenes, a corpus which was read, commented upon and even supplemented during the Hellenistic period. Incidentally, we must remember that the insertion of documents into the political speeches of Demosthenes which used to be considered a product of editors of the Roman imperial age has now been shown by papyrological evidence to have happened in the second or first century B.C. – at least in the most important case 170 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece of the documents added to the oration On the Crownix. These insertions were meant to satisfy the curiosity of the readers of Demosthenes in an age of political struggles.8 [9] More in general, when the Greeks found themselves, in relation to the Macedonians and the Romans, in a position comparable with that in which they had placed the oriental nations, there was no dearth of rhetorical and rational arguments 9 on their side. Unlike the Egyptians or the Babylonians10, the Greeks were trained in dialectic. Their philosophers and orators, whom they used as diplomats,11 knew how to argue with the Romans even at the risk of being thrown out of Rome. As a rule, both the Macedonians and the Romans 12 appreciated Greek education and therefore were ready to be lectured – at least up to a point. The argument could be sublimated into the philosophy of Panaetius which in its original formulation is lost, and into the historiography of Polybius which has partly survived. That so much argument went on in rational or at least in rhetorical terms may help to explain why there is relatively little trace in our Greek evidence13 of mythical, religious and even utopian protest against Rome14. We must make due allowance for the peculiarities of our evidence which is not likely to have preserved many ephemeral Greek expressions of despair and protest against the Romans. But this applies also to the East. It is therefore of some significance that the voices of ideological and religious protest against Macedonia and Rome are much clearer in the East than in Greece proper. There are a few texts which seem to come from metropolitan Greece and express religious condemnation of the Romans, and I shall try to show by a quick analysis of them that they are not only rather exceptional, but also probably due to some oriental influence.15 The only extensive text which can be described as evidence for religious and utopian resistance to Rome in Greece is contained in the “strange stories” (<περὶ θαυµασίων>)16 by Phlegon of Tralles, a freedman of the Emperor Adrian in the first part of the second century A.D. This text deserves some careful consideration because, though it is obviously good evidence for ideological [10] disapproval of Rome, it is not equally clear evidence for Greek17 disapproval of Rome. The book has fortuitously survived in an incomplete form in one manuscript only, the Palatinus Graecus of Heidelberg 398 of the tenth century. It collects miraculous events from older sources, and has transmitted to us some Sibylline oracles, perhaps through the mediation of Posidonius. The section which concerns us more specifically purports to derive from an account of events about 192-189 B.C. by the peripatetic philosopher Antisthenesx. This Antisthenes reports two connected episodes of the war between Syria and Rome and more precisely of the aftermath of the battle of Termopylae where the Romans decisively defeated Antiochus III and compelled him to flee back to Asia Minor. An officer of Antiochus called Buplagos, who was left for dead on the battlefield of Thermopylae, rose from the dead (as the writer says) and recited an oracle which promised revenge against the Romans and their ultimate ruin. Then he died again for good. The Romans were terrified and made various purifications and sent a delegation to question Apollo at Delphi. The answer was another warning to Rome, though in a milder formulation. The Romans thereupon decided to suspend the war in Europe and to offer propitiatory sacrifices in an alleged Panhellenic sanctuary of Naupactos on Aetolian territory which is mentioned in no other source. During these religious ceremonies a Roman general called Publius became mad and in his turn began to utter oracles. The first oracle in verse confirmed the prophecy of the Syrian Buplagos and in even more definite terms promised that 8 P-o 184: Polybius, properly read, can show what is different in the attitude of the metropolitan Greeks ... of political struggles; P-o 130: def. 9 P-o 184: rhetorical and rational arguments <-> P-o 130: rational argument. 10 P-o 184: the Egyptians or the Babylonians <-> P-o 130: the Egyptians. 11 P-o 184: whom they used as diplomats; P-o 130: def. 12 P-o 184: As a rule, both the Macedonians and the Romans <-> P-o 130: In fact, as a rule the Romans. 13 P-o 184: Greek evidence <-> P-o 130: evidence. 14 P-o 184: and even utopian protest against Rome <-> P-o 130: or even literary resistance to Rome. 15 P-o 184: There are a few texts ... oriental influence. P-o 130: def. 16 P-o 130: gap for Greek, mgsnmsl[Mom]. 17 P-o 184: Greek, stl.ms. 171 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece an army would come from Asia to reduce Rome to slavery. The second oracle, in prose, simply translated into a prophecy the story of the Roman expedition to Asia led by Lucius and Publius Cornelius Africanus, which, as we know, represented the second stage of the war against Antiochus III in 190. Being a prophecy post eventum, this had to be a prophecy of victory for the Romans; but it was immediately followed by a third oracle in verse in which Publius announced [11] utter ruin for Rome at a very uncertain point in the future connected with some miracle to be expected from a statue of the god Helios in the city of Siracuse. Why a Sicilian city like Siracuse should be involved in the future of the conflict between Rome and Asia is of course far from obvious. But General Publius had yet another surprise in store. He now prophesied that he himself would be eaten by a red wolf – which indeed very soon came about. The wolf, however, spared Publius’ head, which was therefore left with the opportunity of uttering a last prophecy of doom for Rome: the avenging army is again expected to come from Asia. Phlegon or his source Antisthenes coolly concludes the story with a short and monumental sentence: “All that Publius had said happened”xi. I hope nobody expected anything less. Now of course nothing happened just in that way, but there was a moment, about 87 B.C., when Mithridates Eupator marched from Asia to Greece and Athens opened his gates to him in which such oracles against Rome might seem to become true. It is therefore possible, or even likely, that oracles uttered against Rome in the time of Antiochus III were revived and refurbished about a century later during the last attempt of the Greco-Oriental world to shake off the rule of Rome. The link with Mithridates, which had already been suggested by E. Zeller long ago, is argued in detail by Jörg-Dieter Gauger in a very acute article in Chiron 10, 1980, 225-263xii. But though I have no difficulty in admitting that the oracles may have been re-used and perhaps slightly modified by the followers of Mithridates, I do not see, unlike Gauger, any reason to doubt that all the oracles quoted by Phlegon were actually formulated and circulated at the time in which they are placed by Phlegon himself and presumably by his source, too.18 The period of Antiochus III also provides the most likely identification for Publius, the Roman general. This looks prima facie like an allusion to Publius Scipio Africanus, who in fact accompanied his brother Lucius [12] during part of the war against Antiochus III. The Greeks were in the habit of calling a Roman by his praenomen. The identification of the source of Phlegon, the philosopher Antisthenes, is a far less serious matter. But it so happens that a historian Antisthenes of Rhodes is known to us from Polybius as his senior contemporary (16, 14; 15). This Antisthenes of Rhodes may well be identical with the Antisthenes who was the source of Phlegon. In any case we must envisage the series of oracles transmitted by Phlegon as having been broadcast at various moments during the war between Antiochus III and the Romans. The more the Romans won, the more the oracles foretold the future defeat and doom of Rome. Some of the oracles presented the revenge against Rome as a direct operation by the gods; some others expressed the hope that a king of Asia would came back to settle accounts with the Romans. What seems to be remarkable in these texts is that the Greeks play no part in them. Though they were the major victims of Rome, they apparently leave it to the kings of Asia rather than to19 the Olympian gods to turn the tables. It may in fact be that these oracles were forged in the circles of Antiochus III and reflected the orientalized atmosphere of Seleucid society rather than the convictions of the Greeks. It seems, therefore, that these texts confirm our thesis that the Greeks were reluctant to present their fights against Rome with religious undertones. If they made these oracles their own they accepted by implication their message that the only hope for the enemies of Rome was in a victorious return to Europe by a king of Asia. This is remarkable enough when one thinks of the Greek tradition of opposition between Hellas or Europe and Asia. The notion of a saviour king was of course widespread in Asia, or in Egypt, not necessarily with the specific Messianic connotations with which we are familiar in Judaism. It is characteristic that the oracles preserved by Phlegon do not promise a future triumph for Greece, but for Asia. 18 P-o 184: there was a moment ... his source, too. Cfr. Opposition, 683, dove si accenna a Flegone di Tralles come cosa nota. 19 P-o 184: Asia rather than to <-> P-o 130: Asia to pray to. 172 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece Antisthenes’ story is perhaps the oldest prophecy of doom for Rome known [13] to us. Later, the Sibylline Books – or, more precisely, that section of the Third Sibylline Book which repeated pagan oracles – confirmed this message and the inherent promise of a return of Asia to power. Contemporaries had indeed been aware since the beginning of the second Punic War that rule over the whole world was at stake. Polybius 5, 103 reports for the year 217 B.C. the speech of the Aetolian Agelaos in which this state of suspense is described with all the clarity one could wish. Livy, in a section which may depend on Polybius, attributes the same awareness to Hannibal (Livy 30, 33, 10-11), while Plutarch in the Life of Flamininus 9 follows a source which attributes world ambitions to Antiochus III. When Hannibal lost all hope for himself, he naturally turned to Antiochus III as the only one left to stay the Romans in their advance to world empire. A Hamburg papyrus published by R. Merkelbach in 1954 contains an obviously forged letter from Hannibal to the Atheniansxiii in which the Carthaginian boasts of his victories in Italy and promises to give the Romans a worse lesson than that which the Greeks had given to the ancestors of the Romans, namely the Trojans. We should like to know when and why this letter was forged. What is particularly interesting is that the forger used anti-Trojan motifs to please the Greeks and to offend the Romans. Emilio Gabba, to whom we owe so much good work about the ideological warfare on the second century B.C., has shown that the Trojan myth of the origins of Rome could be used to offend the Romans (in M. Sordi, ed., I canali della propaganda nel mondo antico, Milano 1976)xiv. Pyrrhus had already presented himself as a new Achilles come to take revenge on the Trojans (Paus. I, 12, 1); others, beginning with Menecrates of Xanthos of uncertain date, but earlier than Dionysius of Halicarnassus (I, 48, 3), had described Aeneas as a scoundrel who saved himself by betraying Troy. Dionysius of Halicarnassus tried to put an end to those innuendoes with his theory that in primitive Italy Aborigenes, Pelasgi, Arcades, even Trojans, had all been Greeks of a sort. Thus Rome was a Greek city founded in a territory where Greeks abounded. [14] If the wars of the Romans against Hannibal and Antiochus III had been conscious conflicts of world ambition and therefore a fertile field for apocalyptic expectations, the policy of ruthless extermination pursued by the Romans about 146 and the subsequent desperate attempts of the lower classes of Greece, Sicily and Asia to extricate themselves from Roman rule gave new, though more limited, scope to ideological warfare. When Polybius pictured Scipio Aemilianus meditating and crying over the succession of empires while Carthage was burning, he gave an indication of contemporary feelingxv. The late additions to his work which we can date more or less securely after 146 seem to indicate that he himself was personally very uneasy about what the Romans were doing (cf. 36, 9, 3-4). I must maintain my friendly disagreement with Professor F. W. Walbank on this point (cf. his paper in Historiographia antiqua, Leeven 1977, 138-62 xvi ). About 132 B.C. Aristonicus, the anti-Roman leader in Asia Minor, and his philosophic adviser Blossius of Cumae adopted the City of the Sun as their symbolic term of reference. What they meant must remain uncertain. They certainly freed slaves and promised greater social justice (T. W. Africa, Int. Rev. Social History 6, 1961, 110-124xvii). The same applies to the two slave wars in Sicily of 135-131 and 106-100 B.C., in which oriental cults and practices played a role. Eunus, the organizer of the first revolt, was relying on the help of the Syrian goddess and displayed the arts of prophecy and wonder-working we would expect in a desperate charismatic leader: Posidonius, the probable source of our source Diodorus, treated him as a charlatan.20 About 88-86 B.C., King Mithridates of Pontus was the last anti-Roman leader to raise widespread hopes of liberation in Greece and Asia Minor. When the philosopher Athenion appeared in Athens as the messenger of the king he was greeted as the messenger of the New Dionysus. In his speech, immortalized in purple pages by Posidonius and saved for us by Athenaeus (F. Gr. Hist. 87 F 36), [15] Athenion graphically described the coming universal rule of Mithridates. Athenion was not the only philosopher to be attracted by the call to fight the Romans. After his mysterious disappearance, the Epicurean philosopher Aristion became a much more effective leader in Athens 20 P-o 184: Eunus ... as a charlatan. = Opposition, 683. 173 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece and contributed to the wave of successes for Mithridates. The rebellion against Rome spread throghout Greece (Appian., Mithr. 28-29). Sulla had to take Athens by siege. We can easily believe that the upper classes of Greece and Asia Minor did not like the dangers which the combination of Mithridates’ war and social unrest brought about. They may have breathed more freely when it was all over, but this does not yet mean that they liked the Romans. As the title of the New Dionysus and several fragments of Sibylline oracles seem to prove, there had been a religious background to Mithridates’ war in Greece. A small portion of this background was certainly Greek. But most of it was oriental, and there is a clear oriental flavour in the description of young Mithridates preparing for his mission in isolation as we find it in the summary of Trogus Pompeius by Justinxviii . Though21 neither the Parthians when they defeated Crassus nor Cleopatra’s Egyptians when they supported Antony were ever a serious menace to the power of Rome as a whole, one may well say that at no moment between 70 and 20 B.C. did the prophets of doom remain silent inside the Empire. Etruscan prophets of the end of the “saeculum” encouraged the Catilinarians (Cicero, In Cat. 3, 9, 19). Sallust, or the author of the second letter to Caesar, recognized the possibility of the end of Rome (II, 3, 6), and of course Horace foresaw the bones of Romulus being scattered about the Forum and a journey for the reprieved towards the Islands of the Blessed. Caesar was suspected of having entertained the notion of abandoning Rome, and Livy must have remembered something like that when he showed Camillus refusing to move away from Rome after the Gallic disaster (5, 51-54). No doubt people felt that there were enemies of the em[16]pire other than the visible ones beyond the borders.22 However, by eliminating the Seleucid State, Pompey had done two things which proved more momentous than he could possibly have expected. He introduced Judaea into the Roman Empire and made the Parthians the only viable alternative to the Romans for those who disliked them. Nothing is more significant in this connection than the letter Sallust attributes to Mithridates Eupator in which he tries to induce King Arsaces of Parthia to join him in the war against Rome in 69 B.C. Sallust makes Mithridates say to Arsaces: “The Romans have one inveterate motive for making war upon all nations, people and kings, namely a deep-seated desire for dominion and for riches” (5). “I pray you then to consider whether you believe than when we have been crushed you will be better able to resist the Romans or that there will be an end to the war” (16). How acutely the men of the Caesarian and Augustan age felt that Parthia was the last bastion against Rome is shown by the whole plan of the history of Trogus Pompeius, where Rome and Parthia are the ultimate antagonists. This is of course confirmed by Livy’s attack on the “levissimi ex Graecis” who sympathize with the enemies of Rome and finally by all the anti-Parthian rhetoric of Augustan poetry. i DEININGER 1971. Polybius, The Histories, with an Engl. transl. by W. R. Paton, 6 voll., London – Cambridge (Mass) 1922-1927. iii [Plut.] Vit. X or., 874a. iv Phot. 176.121b 9-16; Herod. 3,97 Spengel. v Frr. 71-75 Wehrli. vi F. 22 Schorn (= [Plut] Vit. X or. 847a-b = FrHG 162 F 7). vii DRERUP 1923. viii CLOCHE 1939. ix Cfr. CANFORA 1967; ID. 1974, vol. I, Discorsi all’assemblea, 94. Se DROYSEN 1893, 248-50, argomentava come Cicerone non leggesse ancora le aggiunte nell’orazione Sulla corona, traendo la conlusione che i documenti allegati fossero entrati nel testo nell’arco di tempo che lo separava da Plutarco (conclusione seguita da Drerup e Pasquali, cfr PASQUALI 1934, p. 275 e n. 4) i papiri hanno mostrato come già circolassero edizioni corredate da documenti. Nel caso dell’orazione Sulla Corona, parr. 167-68, il papiro di Ossirinco 1377 (I sec. a.C.) fornisce il testo della risposta ai Tebani, mentre il papiro Rylands 57 (II/III sec. d.C.) la omette. x Phlegon, de Mirab. 3.1 ii 21 22 P-o 130: Though <- num. V, del. P-o 184: Etruscan prophets at the end ... beyond the borders. = = Opposition, 683. 174 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e I. The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – Greece xi Phlegon, de Mirab. 3.15 GAUGER 1980. xiii Merkelbach, R., in SNELL 1954, n. 129. Cit. anche in How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans (=Reconcile). xiv GABBA 1976. Per un fondamentale contributo momiglianeo sulla questione relativa all’utilizzo della variante troiana del mito delle origini di Roma per offendere i Romani si rimanda a How to reconcile Greeks and Trojans (=Reconcile). xv Cfr. GL 1980 I (Universal History), c. 1, e Alien Wisdom, cap. II. xvi WALBANK 1977. xvii AFRICA 1961. xviii Pompei Trogi Hist. Phil. Epit. 37, 2 Seel. xii 175 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East II The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism *1 2 – The East2 The Greco-Macedonian3 conquest of the Near East, as I have said, meant the establishment of a new leading class of conquerors, the foundation of new cities governed in the traditional Greek way, and the establishment of the Greek language and Greek culture as the standard modes of communication and evaluation. It presented the old native ruling classes with the alternative either of slow assimilation to the Greco-Macedonian ruling class or of a not so slow decline in status and ultimate elimination. There was resistance everywhere to the Greek supremacy, as there was later to Roman supremacy. Those who had lacked the military strength to defeat the Macedonian phalanx before it was too late could resort to guerrillas and insurrections – for a time. When even that proved of no avail, they could stick to their native language, literature and religion as another form of protest; but this as a rule meant going underground in face of a materially and intellectually superior power. In moments of special tension, for instance during insurrections, native religion could be channelled or manipulated to produce symbols of protest and hope against hope: and foreign symbols of protest were syncretistically borrowed and assimilated when the native [2] ones were not sufficient. The Egyptians are the most evident example of an old culture which was degraded and devitalized by Macedonian conquest. It is also the culture which, thanks to the papyri, we know best: the underdogs bark more clearly from Oxyrhynchus, Tebtunis and other spots of the Egyptian land than from any other Hellenistic territory. The Egyptians were more or less endemically rebellious, especially in the second century B.C. They even succeeded on two or three occasions in putting up a king of their own against the reigning Ptolemy. The peasant knew how to run away in protest from their residences: their flight is dignified by the technical term anachoresisi. But the conquerors were invariably capable of re-establishing their own superiority. Notwithstanding the freshness and variety of the literature in demotic,4 the Egyptian language had less prestige than the language of the conquerors5 and got a new lease of life only when pure Hellenism was replaced by Christianity, which gave native languages a new place throughout the Near East. If the wealthy natives had almost automatically reduced their chances of competition because of their insufficient command of the Greek language, and Greek manners and thought, their less wealthy brethren were in no better position. The conquerors were not all upper class; they became competitors in those agricultural and artisan jobs to which the natives had so far had almost exclusive access. The Greeks had also some notions of efficiency which they used to good effect to annoy the natives. Like the Jews, the Egyptians were hampered in their dealings with the Greeks by old taboos. As Herodotus tells us (II, 41), they would not use a knife touched by the Greeks, let alone kiss a Greek. Like the Jews, the Egyptians were horrified by the Greek habit of exposing children (Diod. I, 80). If there were good reasons for rebellion, there were even stronger reasons, in the given circumstances, for compromise. The Ptolemies wanted, and obtained, religious recognition as the * Documento preso come base: P-o 185, ds. originale della versione CL 1981 II. Si riportano in apparato le divergenze con P-o 130, fascicolo di 30 ff. che offre un testo GL ampliato anteriore alla bipartizione CL (quando non diversamente indicato, il testo di P-o 185 può considerarsi coincidente) e, all’occorrenza, di P-o 184, testo base di CL 1981 I (Greece) derivato invece dalla prima parte di P-o 130. Si segnalano inoltre eventuali paralleli con Some Preliminary Remarks on the “Religious Opposition” to the Roman Empire (= bibl. 712), citato come Opposition, specificando se i passi sono identici (= =), quasi uguali (=) o solo da mettere in relazione, ma con differenze significative (cfr). 1 P-o 130: Chicago I + II (April) = Grinfield I (Feb. 1981) with new additions tsfmsr[AMM]; 2 P-o 184: 1 – Greece; P-o 130: I. 3 Ts. da P-o 130, cap. II (cfr. Introduzione, par. 3). 4 P-o 185: Notwithstanding ... demotic, ds.; P-o 130: def. 5 P-o 185: had less prestige than the language of the conquerors <-> P-o 130: lost its attraction for the native educated classes outside the temples. 176 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East legitimate sovereigns of the land.6 Even the temples, notwithstanding immemorial wealth and great prestige, had a precarious life. Their wealth in [3] itself led to prudence and to accommodation. On the Ptolemaic side, there was readiness to extend protection in exchange for collaboration. Besides, the Greeks were as a rule tolerant towards foreign gods. A series of royal orders show the Ptolemies returning sacred land, granting immunities to temples and protecting their precinct and their peasants against the encroachment of soldiers and functionaries. The Rosetta stone of 196 B.C. (OGIS 90) – a decree of the Egyptian priests assembled at Memphis – is the classical example of how the Ptolemies managed to buy the collaboration of the native clergy by concessions and privileges. In Babylonia Macedonian rule ceased earlier (about 130 B.C.) and was replaced by the Parthians, not by the Romans. Of course, native texts in Greek are far less abundant in Mesopotamia than in Egypt, but there is a large amount of cuneiform texts, not all of which have been exploited. Great temples were perhaps even more in danger in Mesopotamia than in Egypt. They had memories of confrontation with the Persian rulers which were probably worse than those of Egyptian temples (if we discount the stories of Cambyses’ persecution of Egyptian religion). Xerxes had actually destroyed the great temple of Marduk in Babylonia and taken away the statue of the godii. The Seleucids in their turn were not above sacking Asiatic temples to replenish their own coffers. The landed and mercantile aristocracy of Mesopotamia, which included Jews and Iranian, depended on the stability of the institutions and on the goodwill of the king’s officials to avoid loss of trade and, worse, confiscation. According to Polybius (30, 25, 16), a secretary of Antiochus IV put his personal slaves into a royal parade, each slave with a silver plate of one thousand drachmas in his hand. One wonders how much confiscation, bribery and extortion were necessary to reach such a distinction. Unlike Egypt, the lands of Hellenized Asia, including Mesopotamia, were full of cities of old and recent foundation. The villages tended to be [4] assigned to neighbouring cities, which in itself implied subordination of the rural natives to the Hellenic or Hellenized bourgeoisie. This leaves open the question of how willingly even the native bourgeoisie accepted Hellenization. No doubt class interests separated the well-to-do from the poor and affected both the nature and the limits of the opposition to the Hellenistic rulers. The social cleavage became even more the determining factor when, confronted by the Romans, the Greco-Macedonians themselves turned from conquerors into conquered. Old political divisions and increasingly divergent social interests prevented the Greco-Macedonians from ever presenting a common front against the Romans. This applies especially to the Greeks of Greece, though it may well help to explain the collapse of Egypt and Syria. To return to what I said at the beginning, inside each Greek state the Romans exercised a patchy, but ultimately effective, practice of dividing the poor from the rich and the pro-Roman rich from the anti-Roman rich. In the end, they collected enough pro-Roman members of the upper class to rule through them. If we want a symbolic text, let us take the inscription of Dyme of 115 B.C. (Syll.3, 684)iii, which records what was probably a local episode without major repercussions. The local authorities of Dyme in Achaia and the proconsul of Macedonia Q. Fabius Maximus Eburnus joined hands in getting rid of local revolutionaries who had destroyed the local archives and clamoured for remission of debts. Such collaboration, however, was not easily or invariably achieved. The Romans had to seize a thousand young hostages from the Achaean league in 168 and, worse, to destroy Corinth in 146 before they could sit down in relative tranquillity for a few decades. Even so, it was enough that Mithridates Eupator should blow his trumpet about 88 B.C. to have the Greeks turning anti-Roman by the thousand; and they cannot all have been poor, as they certainly were not all uneducated. More conspicuously, the Romans failed to counterpose one class to another in [5] Carthage and had to resort to the wholesale destruction and massacre which marked the end of civilised Carthage. There is a last general remark to make. For some, or rather most, of the ethnic group involved in our story, conquest by foreign powers was not an unusual experience. It is not by chance that 6 P-o 185: The Ptolemies ... of the land; P-o 130: def. 177 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East Herodotus, Ctesias and other Greek historians, either coming from Asia Minor or reflecting on events of that region, spoke of the succession of world empires. Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia either conquered or interfered with Western Asia. Hellenistic historians could add Alexander and, later, the Romans. Having shared the same experiences, the Jews, like the author of the Book of Daniel, were ready to accept and develop that scheme for their purposes. These conquests had succeeded each other rather rapidly. About two centuries separated Cyrus from Alexander, less than one hundred and fifty years separated Alexander from the Roman Flamininus. In the near East, being conquered was not such an unusual experience. The situation was different in Western Europe where, apart from the limited territories colonized by the Greeks or controlled by the Carthaginians, the Roman conquest may well have been the first conquest by an organized, selfconscious, imperial power. We know, however, very little, or nothing, of what the Celtic expansion had represented to those regions a few centuries earlier. What matters to us, for the purpose of the present discussion, is that the people of Western Europe were in any case the most unlikely to record in transmissible forms what they felt when the Romans came. Later, some Romans like Tacitus tried to fill the lacuna by lending words to conquered native leaders such as Calgacus of Britain. This is the classical case of bad conscience: Tacitus the imperialist felt his own liberty endangered by the very success of the imperialism for which he worked. Fond as we may be of comparison, we cannot quite compare the Lydians, the Asiatic Greeks, the Jews, the Syrians and the Egyptians with those Indians of [6] South America whose reaction to the Spanish conquest have been so intelligently studied in recent years by several scholars such as Miguel Léon-Portilla and Nathan Wachtel, whose book titles significantly echo each other: Vision de los vencidos (1959), La vision des vaincus (1971)iv. The Indians, of course, had earlier known expanding empires of their own. The Spaniards derived advantage from offering support to those discontented with the Atzec rule of Mexico and the Inca domination of Peru. Yet the arrival from the sea of strange ships, strange beings of uncertain status – perhaps men, perhaps gods – of animals and weapons never seen before was a shock not comparable with anything experienced by Near Eastern nations, even by the Egyptians when they were invaded by Alexander: after all, they had been seeing Greeks for centuries. The trauma experienced by the Indians of America has no parallel in the history of the classical world that I know of. It is therefore all the more remarkable that there are points of similarity in the religious reactions. The dreams, prodigies and prophecies reported by natives as belonging to the years before and after the Spanish conquest resemble some of the dreams, prodigies and prophecies we shall have to report. The symbolism of human anxiety and defeat seems after all not to be unlimited. Monsters, comets, fires, prophecies post eventum pervade the evidence of the visions of the conquered in South America (as reported by the reliable Friar Bernardino da Sahagun in his Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Españav): they appear also in apocalyptic and non-apocalyptic books of the Hellenistic age. The earliest7 document of religious resistance to Alexander which I happen to know comes from Babylonia and was published for the first time in 1975 by A. K. Grayson from a cuneiform tablet in the British Museum (Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts, 26-37). The text has the form of a prophecy which foresees a series of events affecting Babylonia from the rise of the neo-Babylonian empire [7] to the Hellenistic age. In my opinion, which differs considerably from that of the editor, Grayson, and subsequent interpreters, this prophetic chronicle, like certain sections of Daniel, is more than a collection of prophecies post eventum. At a certain point it jumps into real prophecy and tries to predict what has still to happen: as in Daniel, the true prophecy turns out to be a false prophecy, because the seer fails in his guess. In this Babylonian text, the prophecy of the past, which of course is correct, includes, and ends with, Alexander’s conquest of Babylon (330). After that, there is a brief account of the return and victory of the legitimate king of the land – which, in my opinion, is a real prophecy and also represents the real purpose of the text. Like most real 7 P-o 130: The earliest <- num. III, del. 178 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East prophecies, it goes wrong. The combination of prophecy post eventum and prophecy ante eventum was meant to persuade the reader that the writer was a good prophet: the reader was consequently invited to believe and hope that the Macedonian rule would not last long. I am not sure whether the king who is expected to return is King Darius himself or one of the later pretenders. We must remember that in Cappadocia a certain Ariarathes who claimed to be a member of the Persian royal family stood up against the Macedonians from 331 to 322 and had to be dealt with by Perdiccas and Eumenes after Alexander’s death (Diod. 18, 6; 31, 19, 4). The chronicle becomes very fragmentary and obscure in the last section, and I cannot pretend to understand the details of what it says. If, however, I am basically correct in considering this section a genuine prophecy, the text as a whole must be taken as a message trying to encourage the Babylonians to expect and therefore to help the return of a native king. In Egypt a comparable text is, of course, the Potter’s Oracle, which we know much better after the publication of Pap. Oxyrhynchus 2332 and its republication by L. Koenen in Zeitschr. f. Papyrologie und Epigraphik 2, 1968, 178-209 (an appendix ib. 13, 1974, 313-319)vi. The Potter’s Oracle has reached us in dif[8]ferent versions and was still read in Roman imperial times. It presents itself as a Greek translation from an Egyptian original: the potter’s prophecy is addressed to King Amenophis; but it seems doubtful whether there ever was an Egyptian original. The potter himself was probably an incarnation of the potter god Chnum. The oracle, as it is, presupposes the existence of the city of Alexandria and the cult of Serapis. It is anti-Greek and seems to foresee, and hope for, the dissolution of Greek rule through internal struggles. Certain indications in the text seem to allude more precisely to events of the second century B.C., such as Antiochus IV’s invasion of Egypt about 170-168 and the troubles with the natives of about 131-127 under Ptolemy Euergetes II. In any case, the return of a previous king, presumably a native, is promised as a gift by the Sun-God Re. If the oracle was still read with pleasure in imperial times, it must have acquired an anti-Roman connotation. There can be no doubt about the anti-Roman bias of a text which is closely connected with, and possibly inspired by, the Potter’s Oracle, namely the apocalyptic section of the so-called Asclepius in the Corpus Hermeticum. As is well-known, the Asclepius in its original Greek form was read by Lactantius: it must be earlier than the fourth century A.D. The Latin translation, which alone preserves for us the text in full, has some allusions to the Christian persecutions of pagans which must have been interpolated after Lactantius and before St. Augustine. If we accept chapter 27 of the Asclepius as the conclusive part of this apocalypse, the demiurgos is expected to restore to power the ancient Egyptian gods who had retired to a Libyan mountain while the foreigners ruled Egypt. Jewish apocalyptic influences, perhaps transmitted by Sibylline texts, combine with the tradition of Egyptian prophecy to convey an image of present desecration by barbarians which the “god first in power and demiurgos of one god” (deus primipotens et unius gubernator dei) will paradoxically heal by restoring the ancient gods and collecting all the right [9] people of the world in a sort of Egyptian counterpart to Messianic Jerusalem. The traffic between Jewish apocalyptic and Egyptian prophecy was perhaps not one-way only. It has been suggested that the Lamb of St. John’s Revelation has a predecessor in the Lamb which gives the name to another Egyptian oracle. The present text of the Lamb’s oracle is dated under Augustus (4/5 A.D.), but refers to the reign of King Bocchoris of the XXIV dynasty (about 715 B.C.). The Lamb announces that a disaster will break over Egypt after nine hundred years, and it also pronounces that ultimately God will care again for the Egyptians and will give them back the sacred objects the Assyrian had taken away. The historical allusions may not be too clear, and the nine hundred years may be just a round figure. I am also doubtful about the connection between the Egyptian Lamb and St. John’s Lamb. But it seems beyond doubt that in the Lamb’s prophecy the Assyrians symbolize all the foreign invaders. We are reminded of the symbolic value of the Assyrians in the Books of Judith and Tobit.8 In other Egyptian texts the hatred of foreign rulers and 8 P-o 185: the Potter’s Oracle, which we know much better ... and Tobit. = = Opposition, 687-8. 179 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East the nostalgia for power and independence have less conventional patterns. One of the lunar omina of the Vienna Demotic Papyrus published by R. A. Parker in 1959vii seems to allude to a rebellion of Egyptian soldiers (p. 47).9 The so-called Demotic chronicle re-edited by W. Spiegelberg in 1914 and commented on historically by Ed. Meyer in the Sitz. Berlin Akademie, 1915, 287-304viii, presents in the form of an oracle uttered under the reign of Tachos in 362/1 B.C. a sketch of recent Egyptian history up to the Macedonian conquest. The interpretation of details is not easy. It has been made the object of a careful investigation by Janet H. Johnson of Chicago University since her first paper in Enchoria 4, 1974ix. She seems inclined to conclude that the allusions to the Greeks were interpolated into an originally anti-Persian text. 10 An experienced demoticist, 11 Edda Bresciani, in offering a translation of the text (Letteratura e poesia dell’antico Egitto, 1969, 551560), stated that the prophecy ends by announcing the advent of a Ptolemy who will bring peace. But it seems far more probable that the oracle in its present form12 announces, or hopes for, an Egypt without Greeks in which a native (presumably a priest) from Heracleopolis becomes King and Isis is happy. The [10] Chronicle itself must have been written in the priestly circles of Heracleopolis during the Ptolemaic period at an uncertain date, probably between 217 and 168 B.C. In other texts the last native king, Nectanebus, who about 342 B.C. had to yield to the Persians and flee to Ethiopia, plays the role of the returning native king. In the best known version of the romance of Alexander – the so-called A-version edited by W. Krollx – Nectanebus displays the arts of a magician and astrologer in seducing Olympia, impersonating the god Ammon and becoming the father of Alexander the Great. A papyrus published by U. Wilcken in Urkunden der PtolomäerZeit (U.P.Z), I, 81xi, relates a dream of Nectanebus and breaks off when a love adventure is just beginning. This papyrus of the second century B.C. is of special interest because it shows traces of translation from Egyptian and therefore confirms that Nectanebus was pushed into the Alexander legend by Egyptian story-tellers. As I have already mentioned, memories of past greatness supported the expectation or hope of future revenge. Already in Herodotus the semi-mythical King Sesostris is presented as superior to Darius the Persian, who rather good-naturedly conceded the point (II, 110). But no Greek writer before Alexander really attributed to Egypt a period of universal empire to be compared with the Assyrian or the Persian Empire. It was left to a Greek writing in Egypt about 300 B.C. – Hecataeus of Abdera – to elevate Sesostris to the dignity of a universal ruler. In Hecataeus’ account which we have in Diodorus’ summary (I, 53), Sesostris’ father gave his son the education befitting a future cosmocrator, and Sesostris proved to be the model emperor of the world. Hecataeus of Abdera was in the habit of idealizing barbarians. It does not matter very much whether the Egyptians put ideas into his head or vice versa. Three centuries later, Strabo (17, 816) was told with the help of suitable inscriptions that the Egyptians had once governed the Scythians, Bactrians, Indians and Greeks: the story [11] was repeated, more or less in the same terms, by another priest when Germanicus visited Egypt (Tacitus, Ann. II, 60). But a contemporary of Hecataeus, Megasthenes, who learned that Sesostris had penetrated India well beyond the conquests of Alexander, was rather sceptical (Strabo, 15, 686). This perhaps contributed to the relative moderation of Manetho, who attributed to a king Ramses the conquest merely of Cyprus, Media and Assyria (Josephus, C. Apionem I, 99). By contrast the Asclepius, chap. 27, describes the period of Egyptian decline as the one in which all those previously conquered barbarians (including Scythians and Indians) will invade Egypt. Other stories of old times, without any precise political implications, were kept alive or revived simply because they belonged to the national tradition. But it is indicative of the penetrating power of the Greeks that such old stories absorbed elements of the dominant culture. The story of the visit of Setne to the Netherworld in which he is guided by his son Si-Osire (a story which offers, as is well known, a parallel to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16, 19-31) includes details of 9 10 11 12 P-o 185: One of the lunar omina ... of Egyptian soldiers (p. 47), ds.; P-o 130: def. P-o 185: She seems ... anti-Persian text, ds.; P-o 130: def. P-o 130: demoticist -> like, del. P-o 185: in its present form, ds.; P-o 130: def. 180 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East evident Greek origin, such as Tantalus’ penalty (see M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature III, 125 ff.). Even more clearly, the struggle for the cuirass of Inaros, preserved in the Krall papyrus of Vienna and now more fully available in the reconstruction of the text made by Edda Bresciani (1966), is an imitation of the struggle for Achilles’ armour. Homerically, Osiris sends two demons to make trouble. Another story about Amazons imitates the motif of Penthesilea’s love for Achilles, but has a happy ending (Bresciani, Letteratura e poesia dell’antico Egitto, 673-4). At this point it becomes inevitable to give at least passing consideration to a more general question. We have seen Greek tales like the Alexander Romance with Egyptian elements, and we have found Egyptian stories showing Greek influence. But the links between Egyptian and Greek novelistic materials are not limited to [12] details. Twenty-five years ago, the late Professor John Barns, the Oxford Egyptologist, made some important points in his communication to the Eighth Papyrological Congress under the title “Egypt and the Greek Romance” (Akten d. 8 Kongr. für Papyr. 1956xii). He was then working on a Demotic papyrus of the first or second century A.D., which told the story concerning the Egyptian King Djoxr of the third dynasty and his famous vizier Imuthes. The story involves an Assyrian sorceress-queen and immediately reminds us of the oldest Greek novel to have come down to us (at least partially) in a papyrus of the first century A.D., the story of King Ninus and Queen Semiramis. Egypt had an immemorial tradition of using historical characters for fictional tales. Did the Egyptians transmit this habit to the Greeks? And did they transmit with this habit also nationalistic elements? There are plenty of religious elements of Egyptian origin in Greek novels, and it would not be unnatural to attribute them to the influence of Egyptian novels. K. Kerenyi in his book of 1927 and R. Merkelbach in his even more [15] authoritative work of 1962, Roman und Mysterium in der Antikexiii, have maintained that the Greek romance developed from the sacred story of Isis and Osiris. In 1967, Ben Edwin Perry dismissed the whole theory in a few words: “this is all a nonsense to me” (The Ancient Romancesxiv, p. 336, n. 17), and he was in good company. But the masterly first edition by Albert Henrichs of a new papyrus fragment of the novel “Phoenician Stories” by Lollianus in 1972xv brought a new argument in favour of the religious and Egyptian origins of the Greek novel. Lollianus, to all appearances a writer of the second century A.D., includes a ritual murder in his novel as a central episode. Henrichs with good reason sees it as a ritual practice by Egyptian boukoloi, the Egyptian peasant rebels well known to us from the historical evidence of the second century A.D. and especially from Cassius Dio, 71, 4. Here again there would be a link with Egypt and Egyptian secret rituals. [13] Notwithstanding all this, I cannot say that even after the discovery of Lollianus’ novel (which is called Phoenician, not Egyptian, stories) we are any nearer to a demonstration that the Greek novel started in Egypt under native influences. The fact is that Oriental stories are already to be found in the earlier Greek historians, such as Herodotus and Ctesias. These stories were often reported not because they were believed to be true, but because they were amusing. Slowly, under the chief influence of Thucydides, true stories and fictional stories parted company, but the separation was never absolute. In the Hellenistic period we have both erotic fictional stories involving persons who did exists and true historical works including fictions and Utopias. As we know, the Greeks did not even achieve a terminological distinction between history and novel. In such a situation it is impossible to give priority to the Egyptian elements in Greek novels. They are prominent, but they do not predominate, nor indeed determine the genre. It is arbitrary to reduce the love stories of Greek novels to the prototype of the story of Isis and Osiris. It is also unlikely that writers like Lollianus would attribute much religious value to the tales of secret rituals which they were wont to include in their books. They just aimed at dramatic effect. In the particular case of Lollianus, he was obviously exploiting contemporary curiosity in the peasant rebels of the Nile Delta with their gruesome rites. If we cannot talk of an exclusively Egyptian origin of the Greek novel, we can talk even less of Egyptian resistance literature embedded in the Greek novel. What is Egyptian in the Greek novels is enough to confirm the vitality of the old nation which after all impressed the world with the cult of Isis, but it does not notably enlarge the field of Egyptian 181 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East resistance literature (cf. the remarks by J. J. Winkler, “Lollianus, and the Desperadoes”, Journ. Hell. Stud. 100, 1980, 155-181). [14] No13 other ancient culture was so effectively humiliated and slowly reduced to silence as Egyptian culture. The Greek conquerors neither cared for its language nor for its social order. They did not escape the attraction of some individual gods (such as Isis) or of some customs (such as marriages between full brothers and sisters), but relentlessly controlled the Egyptian countryside from the Greek city of Alexandria. Rooted in a wisdom and in a ritual which could hardly analyse the facts of foreign rule or involve the rulers in a rational discussion, the Egyptians who cared for the past found their model in Prince Khamvas, the fourth son of Ramses II, “who had spent his time in the study of ancient monuments and books” (M. Lichtheim, III, 127)xvi.14 The only conspicuous document of hostility among Persian religious groups to the Roman rulers seems in fact to be specifically anti-Roman and to have been divulgated in the first century B.C. It is the so-called oracle of Hystaspes. Before we turn to it as my final point in this argument, some background clarification seems to be required. We often hear of Iranian opposition to the Greeks during the Hellenistic period. But we see more of that in modern than in ancient texts. Greeks in the fourth century B.C., like Plato in Laws 3, 693 A, had a sound contempt for the Persians of their day. It deserves to be reciprocated. But our Persian evidence is deplorably late and garbled. The Dînkart of the ninth century talks of the accursed villain Alexander who stole the Avesta and had it translated into Greek (E. M. West, Pahlavi Texts IV, p. xxxixvii ). Alexander or the Macedonians may or may not be symbolized in the fourth branch of the tree of the Kingdom in the Brahman Yasht, I, 3-5, which is in itself a medieval text, though it must represent a much older tradition. A Manichean fragment from Sogdiana (which is taken by W. B. Henning, “The Murder of the Magi”, JRAS, 1944, 133-44, to be a translation from an earlier Middle Persian or Parthian document) ascribes the murder of the [15] Magi to King Alexander. No doubt there were colonies of Persians in Asia Minor with their Magi. When they moved in is a question by itself. The locus classicus on these colonies is a letter by S. Basil (258) as late as the fourth century A.D. In the second century A.D., Pausanias (5, 27, 5) was able to witness religious ceremonies in temples of Persian gods in Lydia where the gods were invoked in a barbarian language which the Greeks could not understand. Whether and how these colonies of Persian – or Aramaic –speaking Iranians were centres of anti-Greek or anti-Roman feelings does not emerge from the available evidence. But Hystaspes’ text is enough to show that somebody was exploiting Persian lore to beat the Romans, if not the Greeks. Hystaspes’ text was read in imperial times in two versions: the evidence is easily avalaible in Cumont-Bidez, Les Mages hellenisésxviii . One version was clearly Christianized and was known directly or indirectly to Clement of Alexandria in the second century (Strom. 615; 43, 1) and to the Theosophy attributed to Aristocritus, perhaps fifth century A.D. (see Buresch, Klaros 1889, 95xix). Clement, in fact, ascribes a quotation of Hystaspes to St. Paul: he must have found a reference to it in some apocryphical text attributed to him. In this Christianized version Hystaspes alludes to Christ. The other version, though utilized by Lactantius in his Institutiones and read by him in a Christian key, was un-Christian. It predicted the destruction of the Roman empire at the end of the sixth millennium and the return of the East to power. The collapse of Rome would be followed by anarchy and natural disasters, after which the world would enjoy peace and prosperity for one thousand years, presumably under Eastern kings. At the end of the seventh millennium (as in St. John’s Apocalypse) the world will be renewed by God, and the just will enjoy perpetual happiness. [16] In Hystaspes’ text, the prophecy of the fall of Rome takes the form of a dream by a king of Media, Hystaspes, who lived before the Trojan war. The dream itself is interpreted by a child: “Romanum nomen, quo nunc regitur orbis, tolletur a terra et imperium in Asiam revertitur ac rursus 13 P-o 130: No <- num. IV, del. P-o 130: segue il testo passato in P-o 184, dal f. 9 (When the Greeks found themselves in relation to the Romans) al 16 (rhetoric of Augustan poetry). 14 182 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East Oriens dominabitur atque Occidens serviet ...” (Inst., 7, 15). The opposition between East and West, in other words between Parthia and Rome, could not be clearer. Though Bidez and Cumont (Mages, II, 367) have stated that this dream, like Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel, presupposes the theory of the four monarchies, I do not find any evidence for this. If there were anti-Greek implications in an older version of the text, they have disappeared with this hypothetical older version. In the version transmitted by Lactantius, the king of Media represents the original Eastern rule and the Romans the present Western rule. This is the ordinary dichotomy of Persian historical thinking, even in late texts. According the Zamasp-Nâmak, a Pahlavi text of the Sassanian period studied by E. Benveniste (Rev. hist. rel. 106, 1932, 337-80xx), the empire of Iran will pass to its enemies, but later will return to Iran. The dichotomy was accepted by St. Augustine when he opposed the new Babylon, Rome, to the old Babylon in Book XVIII of De civitate dei. No wonder that the circulation of the prophecy of Hystaspes had been prohibited in Rome some time before Justin the Martyr published his apology in the middle of the second century A.D. (Apol. 1, 44, 12). Justin, however, goes so far as to assert that the death penalty had been enacted in the past against those who read such an oracle. This is more than we would reasonably expect and does not seem to be comparable with the death penalty established by an unknown emperor for those who consulted astrologers in order to know the future of living emperors (Paul, Sent. 5, 21, 3).15 The text itself, in its pre-Christian version, cannot be earlier than the beginning of serious conflicts [17] between the Romans and the Parthians in the first century B.C. We reach the same chronological limits if we connect it with Mithridates’ wars. Mithridates, incidentally, claimed descent from the Achaemenids. In any case, the text owes its preservation and apparently its diffusion to the Christians, who interpreted it in a Christian key and even interpolated prophecies about Christ into it. There was an anti-Roman tradition that died hard among Christians. It has a Jewish origin, as St. John’s Revelation shows, but was reinforced by other currents, one of which evidently came from Persia or, better, Parthia. We are beginning to recognize that though the Jewish evaluation of the hostile imperial world (whether Greco-Macedonian or Roman) was in many ways different, it had much in common with what other enemies of Greek and Roman imperialism felt about the same subject. I would16 like to conclude this lecture by turning to another strange text which purpots to present the case for Phoenicia as a very old and respectable civilization underrated by the Greeks. The claim was made by a Phoenician from Biblos named Philo about the end of the first century or the beginning of the second century A.D. Philo of Byblos was a polymath who had a very long life and survived the Emperor Hadrian, about whose reign he wrote. He also wrote on cities and their great men and about how to acquire and select books: titles which are enough to endear him to any of us. But Philo attracted the attention of the pagan Porphyry and then – through Porphyry – of the Christian Eusebius with two works, one longer one (of at least eight books) on the Phoenicians and another shorter one on the Jewsxxi. Thanks to Eusebius, we know at least the outlines of the work on the Phoenicians, whereas we have very scanty information about the book on the Jews (the fragments in Jacoby Fr. Gr. Hist. 790). The [18] Phoenician History was not a political history of the Phoenicians. It was rather an account of the ancient Phoenician doctrines about cosmology, theology and the origins of culture. It is presented as a translation of an earlier work by Sanchuniathon, who, according to Porphyry followed by Eusebius (Praep. Evang. 1, 9, 20-22), had lived before the Trojan War in the days of Semiramis, queen of Assyria. As Porphyry cannot have invented the date of Sanchuniathon, we must assume that he found it in Philo. In any case, Philo stated explicitly that Sanchuniathon, a man of great learning and curiosity, had derived his facts from Taatos, whom the Egyptians called Thout and the Greeks Hermes – a god, and a very learned god at that. In a more critical age the claim to have translated a pre-Trojan War book which in its turn depended on the lore of a god was enough to discredit Philo. In the nineteenth century and in the 15 16 P-o 185: the death penalty ... living emperors, cfr. Opposition, 684. P-o 130: I would <- num. VI, del. 183 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East early twentieth century, Philo was suspected of being either dishonest enough to have invented Sanchuniathon or stupid enough to have believed in a forgery which laid claim to venerable antiquity. But we are no longer in a critical age, and some rather irrelevant circumstances have helped Philo and Sanchuniathon back to the respectability they had lost. The discovery of the Ugaritic texts in the ‘thirties seemed to confirm both the authenticity of Philo’s information and its remote antiquity. As the mythological texts of Ugarit go back to the second millennium B.C., why should Philo not have a source going back to the Trojan War? This was O. Eissfeldt’s opinion (since his 1939 book on Ras Shamra und Sanchunjathonxxii ). Professor W. F. Albright, though a great follower and admirer of Eissfeldt, contented himself with a date for Sanchuniathon of the sixth century B.C., which had no justification as it corresponded neither to the date of the Ras Shamra texts nor to the date claimed by Porphyry – and therefore presumably by Philo – for Sanchuniathon. In fact, [19] Albright gave himself away by claiming too much. He knew that “Sanchuniathon was a refugee from Tyre who settled in Berytus about the second quarter of the sixth century B.C.” (Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, London 1968, 195). The truth is that the similarities between the Ugaritic texts and Philo are not so close as to provide any support for an archaic date of Philo’s material. The structure of his book is utterly different from that of the Ugaritic texts. As James Barr in a salutary warning remarked: “the systematic structure of a theogony with multiple generations, as found in Philo, is strange to the world of Ugaritic myth” (‘Philo of Biblos and his Phoenician History’, Bull. John Rylands ... 57, 1974, 53xxiii ). However, the Ras Shamra texts have confirmed what an internal analysis of Philo had already shown earlier – namely, that Philo was acquainted with authentic cosmological and theological doctrines of the Phoenicians, for instance with the struggle between Baal and Yam (the sea). But there are two specific arguments, each of which should be sufficient to discredit the alleged remote antiquity of Philo’s sources. The first argument (which so far seems never to have been formulated) is that Philo made two different claims about Sanchuniathon, one in the History of the Phoenician, the other (to all appearances) in the book on the Jews. About the Phoenicians he maintained, as I have said, that Sanchuniathon followed the god Thoth. About the Jews he claimed for Sanchuniathon sources of less divine origin. He stated that Sanchuniathon had derived his information about the Jews from memoranda put together by Hierombalos, a priest of the god Ievo, who had dedicated his history to the King of Berytus, Abibalos. Abibalos and other experts had testified that Hierombalos was a truthful historian. Now it is not difficult to see why Philo claimed a different type of sources for Sanchuniathon in the case of his Jewish History. The evidence for [20] Phoenicia had of course to derive from the highest possible authority. Who better than the god Thot, the inventor of writing, the secretary of the gods? As for Jewish history, Philo was evidently out to contradict the pretension of the Jews and to establish instead the priority of the Phoenicians as the founders of civilization. Let us not forget that Philo was a contemporary of Flavius Josephus who was working in the opposite direction to try to capture priority for the Jews. If writers like Josephus had the Bible as the major document about the Jewish past, Philo of Byblos had to find evidence old enough and respectable enough to discredit the Bible, or at least the Pentateuch. It is stated that he knew of Moses, whom he considered a leper (Photius, Bibl. 279). He seems to have hit upon the idea of providing Sanchuniathon with a priestly source, the history by Hierombalos priest of Ievo, the authenticity of which was guaranteed by a Phoenician king. If the god Ievo, whose priest Hierombalos was, is identical with Yahve (as seems probable), Moses had a dangerous rival among his own kin; and the good faith of Hierombalos had been ascertained by a contemporary Phoenician king. We are reminded of Josephus’ boast that his work on the Jewish War had been declared reliable by no one less than the Emperor Titus – and Josephus, too, was, after all, of priestly extraction. Be that as it may, it is obvious that Philo of Byblos had selected the sources of his source Sanchuniathon with some care, that is, according to a shrewd evaluation of his own polemical aims. If absolute authority was obtained for the Phoenician traditions by connecting them with the best 184 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East informed god, the claims of the Bible were neutralized by producing another priestly version of the Jewish traditions. But Philo was not primarily interested in polemizing with the Jews. He wanted to eliminate the rival claims of the Jews only so as to proceed without [21] rivals to a systematic demonstration of the superiority of the Phoenicians over the Greeks. His claims against the Greeks are stated in unambiguous words quoted by Eusebius in Praeparatio Evangelica 1, 10, 44: “The Greeks who surpass all men in their natural cleverness first appropriated most of these tales. They then dramatized them in various ways with additional literary arguments and intending to beguile with the delights of myths, they embellished them in all sort of ways. Whence Hesiod and the highly touted cyclic poets fabricated their own versions and made excerpts of Theogonies and Giants’ Battles and Titans’ Battles which they carried about and with which they defeated the truth. Our ears have for ages become habituated to and predisposed by their fictions” (transl. H. W. Attridge and R. A. Oden, Philo of Byblos, The Phoenician History, Washington 1980). This brings us to the second argument which, unlike the first, is almost conventional. Though Philo of Byblos presents Sanchuniathon as attacking Hesiod and the cyclic poets, there is no question that Sanchuniathon combines17 Greek and Phoenician traditions and furthermore interprets by that characteristic method of Hellenistic theology, the reduction of gods to deified human benefactors, which has become known as Euhemerism. Such a method could hardly have been introduced in Phoenicia prior to the Greek occupation towards the end of the fourth century B.C. We are therefore back with our old dilemma. Either Sanchuniathon is a figment of Philo’s imagination, and we have saved Philo’s reputation as a clever man; or we must consider him the dupe of a forger of the Hellenistic age who claimed for himself remote antiquity and for his sources an even more august status. Indeed, we are reminded of that banal forgery of the early first century A.D., the history of the Trojan War attributed to Dictys Cretensis, a writer in the Phoenician language contemporary with the Trojan War itself. [22] Dictys may have been the model for Sanchuniathon. Whether a rogue18 or a dupe, Philo of Biblos had made his point. He had claimed against the Greeks that Phoenicia had been the cradle of civilization. People there had discovered the various arts, even the most elementary ones of making fire, fishing, hunting, making bricks, etc. Being a Phoenician counterpart to Flavius Josephus, Philo is most useful in helping us to understand the kind of intellectual claims against the Greeks which continued to be put forward for Orientals during the Roman Empire. It is obvious – so obvious that one is almost embarrassed in having to say it – that Philo of Byblos cannot give us authentic pieces of cosmology of the second millennium B.C. His primary value is that of evidence for his own time. He is a Hellenized Phoenician living in the Roman Empire who emphasizes the value of his native tradition against Greeks and Jews, more especially against Greeks. He could not do that without having a tradition behind. He was obviously in contact with the priestly circles of his own country, knew their lore and, in this sense, preserves for us authentic pieces of Phoenician religious and cosmological thought. But it is most unlikely that he had any access to books written during the second millennium B.C. before or during the Trojan War. It was a common literary device to attribute to ancient books what one thought for himself or learnt from one’s own neighbours. In Roman imperial times there were in circulation enough books purporting to be written in pre-Trojan times to fill up a library. Let us call it the Library of preTrojan Fathers. The type of indigenous knowledge Philo had is comparable with that displayed by Lucian in his description of the native cult of the Syrian goddess with the only difference that Lucian does not claim to have read pre-Trojan Fathers. Lucian, too, however, in his own ironical way, plays a trick on his [23] readers. He wrote on the Syrian goddess in the Ionian dialect which he never used in his other works to imitate Herodotus and give the impression that he combined the qualities of a learned native and of an experienced traveller. 17 18 P-o 185: combines <-> P-o 130: contaminates, ms[Mom]. P-o 185: a clever man <-> P-o 130: a rogue, ms[Mom]. 185 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East With Philo of Byblos I have exhausted the oriental texts, apart from the Jewish ones, which I want to analyze and characterize however briefly. They have in common the idealization of the religious and cultural tradition of the country concerned. They use it to express dissatisfaction with and protest against Greco-Macedonian and Roman hegemony. The expectation of, or at least the hope for, the end of foreign rule is often explicitly stated and can be presupposed even when it is not stated, though we know that idealization of the past is not always equivalent to desire to have it back. What is characteristic is the elimination of the political problem as such. There is never a serious discussion of how the country should be governed if free – and of what sort of international order it should become part. Cosmology and theology replace politics of the common Greek type, the one to be found at one level in the marketplace and at another level in the theoretical books of the philosophers. As I have already said in my previous lecture, to return to Greece, either under the shadow of Macedonian or under the shadow of Roman hegemony, is to meet politics again. I am speaking here chiefly of metropolitan Greece. The case of the Greeks living in the cities of Asia Minor, not to say of Egypt, is more complicated. Insofar as these Greeks had migrated to the East and had become the ruling class of the Hellenistic monarchies, they were almost entirely absorbed in the task of any conquering minority, that of organizing and controlling the conquered territory. However, the mere fact of having Greek cities within the territorial monarchies kept local politics alive, and local politics [24] could easily clash with monarchic politics. The amount of autonomy each city was allowed to retain was a matter of negotiations, maneauvring and ultimately of effective resistance to encroachment. Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria became famous for being unruly. They became even more so of course when the Roman monarchy replaced the Macedonian monarchies, and the local populations of the cities of the East had to adapt themselves to a new regime. But mob agitations do not normally lead to authentic political movements for independence or selfgovernment. In this sense, the Greeks who had settled in the Eastern monarchies gave up, ipso facto, any claim to independent political life and subordinated their interests to those of the ruling monarchies at least as long as the ruling monarchies were Greco-Macedonian. The situation was radically different in metropolitan Greece from Thessaly to Laconia. There the political confrontation between foreign rulers and native Greeks never quite stopped, even in the first century of the Roman empire, and it was certainly very intense during the third and second centuries B.C. when Macedonia and, later, Rome did their best to control Greece: indeed, for about fifty years between 220 circa and 168 B.C. Macedonia and Rome went to war against each other in order to decide who should control Greece. The situation of the Greeks of Southern Italy and Sicily was similar to that of the metropolitan Greeks. They fought for their independence against the Romans. If I leave them aside, it is only because they were rapidly eliminated as independent powers by the overwhelming superiority of the Romans.19 The game was played according to all the Greeks rules, but it was played only too briefly. * * * I hope I have made good my claim that when we find in Greek territory texts which turn politics into something like praeternatural events or utopias, we are not only outside the great tradition of Demosthenic resistance, but probably also under the influence of models of ideological protest coming from the East. I do not want to make a rigid distinction between the apocalyptic mood characteristic of the East and the political argument characteristic of the Greeks. But I believe that the distinction is real and rooted in the difference between the two cultural traditions and the two political situations. The Greeks had a longer time to argue and to fight than the Eastern nations.20 As we are about to consider certain Jewish attitudes towards Greeks and Romans, it is useful to remind ourselves that there is one aspect of the relations of the Jews both with the Greeks and with 19 P-o 185: If I leave them ... of the Romans, mgsupms[Mom] con segr. P-o 185: It is obvious – so obvious that one is almost embarassed in having to say it ... Eastern nations, ds.; P-o 130: def. 20 186 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East the Romans which does not exist in the corresponding case of Phoenicia, and indeed to a large extent of Egypt and Asia Minor. The Jews had real wars of their own against Greeks and Romans. The fall of Jerusalem may remind us of the fall of Corinth and of Carthage two centuries before; it has no parallel in the history of Phoenicia or of Egypt. No Phoenician writer, such as Philo of Byblos, nor any Egyptian writer like Apion (the immediate opponent of Flavius Josephus) could tell of any war against the Romans; and he would have found it difficult to report a total native war (not a partial rebellion) against the Greeks. In my next two lectures I shall try to interpret some documents of Jewish origin in the light of what we have learnt (or tried to learn) about the two different model of religious resistance and of political resistance – one prevalently Oriental, the other prevalently Greek. Though undoubtedly religious resistance prevails among Jews, as among the other Eastern nations, politics diplomacy and conventional warfare occupy a place in Jewish texts, like the Books of Maccabees and later the works of Flavius Josephus, which is not to be found in other Eastern texts and corresponds to the reality of Jewish life in its relation to Ptolemies, Seleucids and Romans.21 Appendice al testo Introduction GL 1981 I22 Ladies and Gentlemen, It is not for me to judge my youngers and betters. They did me the honour of extending my Grinfield lectureship from two to four years and therefore presented me with the dilemma of either diluting the three lectures I had already prepared into nine lectures or inventing six new lectures. My English not being good enough for a dilution of such proportions (such things must be left to the natives)23 I had really no choice24. I have therefore decided to devote the two intermediate years to a more detailed exploration of two aspects of Jewish historical thinking within its Greco-Roman context: first universal history, as typified by the book of Daniel; and secondly, what one might call the historiography of resistance from Esther and Judith to Philo, the IV Maccabees and Flavius Josephus, and perhaps the Seder ‘Olam Rabbah25. My purpose (as defined in my first lecture last year) remains the study of certain intellectual developments which contributed to making Judaism the only creative native culture in territories controlled by the Greeks after 250 B.C. i Per il riferimento all’anachoresis vd. PRÉAUX 1939, 500-502; ROSTOVTZEFF 1957, II 758 s.v. Anachoresis (entrambi volumi posseduti da Momigliano nella sua libreria). ii Hdt. I 183. iii SIG3 684 = CIG I 1543. Per i riferimenti bibliografici si rimanda a SHERK 1969, 246-8, no. 43. iv LEON-PORTILLA 1959 ; WACHTEL 1971. v Bernardino da Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Med. Palat. 218-220). Per un’edizione moderna con trad.ingl. si rimanda a ANDERSON – DIBBLE 1950-82. vi KOENEN 1968 e ID. 1974; cfr. ora anche ID. 1984. vii PARKER 1959. viii SPIEGELBERG 1914; MEYER 1915. 21 P-o 185: In my next ... and Romans, ds.; P-o 130: def. F. a righe, msb[Mom], allegato a P-o 129; riportato anche in P-o 138, come c.c. ms., anteriore alla correzione, del f. precedente. 23 (Such things… natives), def. in P-o 138. 24 P-o 129: no choice -> That is why I think that all University lecturers should be obliged by law to lecture in a foreign language of their choice, msb, del.; P-o 138: corr. def. 25 Rabbah, def. in P-o 138. 22 187 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e The Intellectual and Religious Resistance to Greco-Macedonian and Roman Imperialism – The East ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix xx xxi JOHNSON 1974. KROLL 1926. WILCKEN 1922-23, I B. n. 81, Der Traum des Nektonabos, pp. 369-74. BARN 1956. KERÉNYI 1927; MERKELBACH 1962. PERRY 1967. HENRICHS 1972. LICHTHEIM 1973-80; v. III (The Late Period) 127. WEST 1892, xxxi. CUMONT-BIDEZ 20073 (I ed. 1934), II 357-77. BURESCH 1889. BENVENISTE 1932. Per un contributo momiglianeo sulla questione cfr. Il libro sugli Ebrei di Filone di Biblos (in MOMIGLIANO 1980a). xxii xxiii EISSFELDT 1939. Cfr. anche ID. 1952B e ID. 1952C. BARR 1974. 188 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World CL 1981 III Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World Sedi e date: GL 1981 II (28 gennaio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 424). CL 1981 III (aprile/maggio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 424) Documenti: a) GL 1981 II P-o 131, P-o 143 (b), P-o 144 (b), P-o 156, P-o 187: dss. b) CL 1981 III P-o 143 (a), P-o 144 (a): aggiunte mss. P-o 149, P-o 150, P-o 186 nuova versione ds. basata su P-o 143, 144 (a-b). 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati Di questa lecture l’AAM conserva otto documenti: cinque dss. riferibili alla lezione Grinfield, due dei quali (P-o 143, 144) provvisti di aggiunte preparatorie al testo di Chicago, e tre riconducibili a questa seconda versione. Come nel caso delle altre conferenze del ciclo The Jewish Historiography of Resistance, viene proposto il testo CL 1981, punto di arrivo – seppur provvisorio – di un’elaborata revisione di cui l’apparato cerca di rendere conto. Preso come base è il testo che si presenta identico in P-o 149 e 150, due fascicoli dss. di 24 cc. conservati nel folder XVIII dell’archivio1, che differiscono soltanto perché le correzioni mss. autografe presenti nel primo ricompaiono dss. nel secondo. Lo stesso testo, benché a uno stadio meno elaborato, è proposto da Po 186, una c.c. di P-o 150 realizzata prima che il modello venisse corretto. Il confronto con le precedenti versioni mostra come il testo CL sia percorso da una serie di minuti interventi linguistici in generale volti a migliorare sfumature sintattiche. Compaiono però anche occasionali sviste di copiatura rispetto a P-o 144 (come un salto di riga alla c. 14): uno, e non il maggiore, dei motivi che inducono a considerare quest’ultimo fascicolo come di notevole importanza per la ricostruzione del processo di costruzione del testo “definitivo”. Testimone ds. della versione GL, è arricchito all’inizio da 2 cc. mss. da Momigliano ([1]-2) e dal foglio 17 bis, per un totale di 24 carte. Accenti e segni di pausa lo qualificano come reading copy GL, presumibilmente recuperata come base per il ripensamento della versione per Chicago. Il documento presenta numerose correzioni mss. a penna, sia autografe che di AMM. Le annotazioni di quest’ultima, condotte in due fasi (penna rossa e penna blu) e di natura formale e stilitica, non vengono riportate in apparato ma messe direttamente a testo, essendo peraltro completamente accolte dalla versione CL. Si segnalano invece in apparato gli interventi di Momigliano legati a necessità esplicative prodotte dall’occasione (ad es.: “Targumim” = translation into Aramaic). L’apparato testimonia inoltre alcuni brevi passi di P-o 144, tutti mss. da Momigliano, che non sono stati ripresi dal testo di CL o, se ripresi, hanno subito riduzioni e modifiche (cfr. e.g. la menzione della possibilità che il rotolo del tempio contenga allusioni al libro di Ester, c.6). Un altro documento significativo è P-o 143, testimone GL con aggiunte CL, che risulta pressoché identico nella parte ds. a P-o 144 (per quanto il f. 17 non coincida esattamente e manchi un refuso presente in P-o 144 e P-o 131, Asmonean al posto di Hasmonean). Le correzioni di P-o 143, mss. da Momigliano, riprendono quasi totalmente gli interventi fatti su P-o 144, e sono segnalate solo in caso di discordanza tra le versioni. Benché un rapporto di discendenza fra i due documenti non possa essere davvero postulato (P-o 143 presenta talvolta interventi posteriori), P-o 144 viene privilegiato in apparato sia perché reading copy Grinfield, sia perché consente di distinguere tra gli interventi mss. di Momigliano e di AMM, testimoniando lo svolgimento di una 1 La cartella contiene anche questa nota ms. di Momigliano (allegata da R. Di Donato con la precisazione “found elsewhere”): “Provisional text for all the lectures in Chicago revised to 9.5.81. If I die this may be reconsidered for publication after revision and checking, declaring circumstances”. 189 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World “prima mano” di correzione. Un’annotazione di Momigliano sul margine inferiore del primo foglio prova, inoltre, un ulteriore ritorno dello studioso su questo documento2. Si segnalano infine in apparato le divergenze rispetto a P-o 144 e 143 di P-o 131, privo di aggiunte mss. e testimone della versione GL, che appare complessivamente identico a P-o 144 per la parte ds. e per le correzioni di tipo formale (prevalentemente di mano di Momigliano). 2. Argomento della lecture Malgrado le relative difficoltà di contestualizzazione geografica e cronologica, per la comprensione del pensiero resistenziale giudaico in età ellenistica assolvono una funzione fondamentale i libri biblici di Ester, Giuditta e Tobia. Sembra possibile rintracciare connotati ellenistici nel primo, in cui l’ambientazione persiana ha i caratteri del territorio semimitico e la verosimiglianza cronologica è estramamente labile. Lo sviluppo narrativo privo di implicazioni religiose, in cui un’ostilità generica tra pagani ed Ebrei non è mai postulata, fa della storia essenzialmente una questione di solidarietà nazionale in contesto diasporico piuttosto che un’espressione di opposizione all’esperienza dell’ellenizzazione forzata. Il fatto che la festa di Purim, di cui Ester narra l’eziologia, sia descritta in II Maccabei, sembra confermare infatti l’anteriorità del libro rispetto alla politica di Antioco IV e alla guerra maccabaica. Ben diversa situazione presuppongono invece le aggiunte al testo greco di Ester (pervenuto in due distinte redazioni), probabile traduzione di un testo ebraico accresciuto. Il fatto che una delle due redazioni fosse stata realizzata con certezza a Gerusalemme prima di essere portata ad Alessandria fa del testo rimaneggiato un esempio del tentativo degli Ebrei palestinesi di mantenere a Gerusalemme il centro religioso e intellettuale del giudaismo della diaspora. La componente devozionale e legale delle aggiunte è un indizio dell’attualizzazione cui il testo originario fu sottoposto per adeguarlo al revival religioso maccabaico. È un giudaismo militante antigreco ad animare invece il libro di Giuditta, collocato anch’esso sullo sfondo di una mitica Assiria (simbolico “oppressore dell’est”), tra numerosi nonsense storici. Qui la resistenza militare dei cittadini di Betulia lascia trapelare forti paralleli con le vicende delle Termopili così come narrate nel VII libro delle Storie di Erodoto: ipotesi corroborata anche dalla probabile conoscenza dell’autore di Giuditta di un’ulteriore fonte greca sulla resistenza ai Persiani, la cronaca di Lindo (99 a.C.). A sostegno di una datazione sotto gli Asmonei (II-I sec.a.C.) vanno anche le simpatie dell’autore per l’indipendenza della Giudea e l’attenzione alla purità. Al centro del libro di Tobia, infine, c’è piuttosto un messaggio di unità, solidarietà e speranza mandato probabilmente dalla diaspora persiana al resto degli Ebrei: testo poliedrico dalle evidenti influenze iraniche, in cui la pietà non rappresenta solo una questione di purità rituale ma risulta attiva e partecipata, è proiettato su uno sfondo di finale provvidenza divina. Benché manchino criteri esatti di datazione, è improbabile collocare dopo la distruzione del Secondo Tempio questa “storia borghese”, dove non c’è segno di imminente catastrofe e in cui l’attesa messianica lascia trapelare il radicamento dell’autore in una cultura pia e superstiziosa. 3. Note di contenuto: i temi della lecture e il rapporto con i testi editi. Nel percorso di definizione delle origini della letteratura giudaica di resistenza, superate le premesse di approfondimento del contesto greco (CL 1981 I) e genericamente orientale (CL 1982 II), Some Exemplary marca il passaggio e la progressiva focalizzazione verso quello che potrebbe essere considerato un primo modo ebraico di fare letteratura di opposizione. Si tratta quindi, in un certo senso, di un testo di arrivo e di partenza. È un testo di arrivo se colto in prospettiva di quegli interrogativi sulla produzione resistenziale giudaica formulati già nel 1977, quando nel saggio Eastern Elements in Post-Exilic Jewish, and Greek, Historiography (=Eastern Elements) Momigliano si interrogava “whether the reform in Jewish historiography should be placed against the background of positive and negative reactions to Persia”, valutando la natura dei libri di 2 “This text contains an addition on p. 18 which is not to be found in the Chicago new typescript. Add it!” 190 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World Giuditta ed Ester come prodotti della diaspora su sfondo del dominio persiano al pari di varie tra le storie contenute nel primo libro di Erodoto, in Ctesia e nella Ciropedia di Senofonte (pp. 25-27). Some Exemplary riconferma e approfondisce l’intuizione di partenza, ricalibrandone però il taglio di ricerca in direzione di quella pratica al ricorso a materiale ellenistico in chiave profondamente antigreca che rappresenta d’altronde il fil rouge dell’indagine sulla specificità culturale del giudaismo-ellenistico a partire da Prologue in Germany (GL 1979 I) fino alle conclusioni raggiunte in The Decline of History and Apocalypse (GL 1982 III). Tale fenomeno è esemplificato con particolare chiarezza in Giuditta, libro in cui l’autore mutua l’espressione di ostilità nei confronti di un nemico (un’Assiria priva di contorni storici definiti, sovrapponibile ai Greco-Macedoni) da una fonte eminentemente greca, il settimo libro delle storie di Erodoto3. La tesi, già esposta da Momigliano presso il Warburg Institute il 23.3.81 in una conferenza dal titolo The Books of Esther and Judith and Herodotus, verrà riproposta all’interno del saggio licenziato nello stesso anno, Biblical Studies and Classical Studies. Simple Reflections upon Historical Method (= Biblical Studies). Svariati sono i punti di contatto individuati tra il testo greco e quello biblico: la corrispondenza topografica del passaggio alle Termopili con lo stretto passo montano che, in Giuditta, conduce alla città assediata di Betulia; il parallelo tra il discorso di Demarato, che illustra a Serse le qualità guerresche degli Spartani che non conoscono altri padroni se non la loro legge, e quello di Achior, che spiega ad Oloferne come gli Ebrei non possano essere sconfitti se non peccano contro il loro dio; e ancora Giuditta, che ingannevolmente si presta a rivelare il segreto passaggio montano agli Assiri, come in Erodoto Efialte fa con i Persiani. Con Giuditta sono altri due i libri biblici raggruppati da Momigliano in quest’analisi: Ester (con ulteriore distinzione tra il testo ebraico, “uncomplicated matter of national solidarity”, e la versione greca dalle aggiunte improntate al rinnovato fervore religioso determinato dalla rivolta maccabaica) e Tobit, messaggio di unità e speranza mandato dalla diaspora persiana al resto degli Ebrei. Ciò che consente l’isolamento dei tre testi, dalla controversa collocabilità (sia geografica che cronologica) e notevolmente diversi tra loro, è d’altra parte la considerazione della loro distanza concettuale dalla produzione maccabaica, vero e proprio punto di arrivo dell’intera riflessione condotta in The Jewish Historiography of Resistance. È in questo senso che Some Exemplary può essere definito anche, in certa misura, un testo di partenza: nei libri su cui si sofferma non compare e non agisce ancora quella nozione determinante di “apostasia”, di scelta tra obbedienza e disobbedienza a Dio, che sarà invece al cuore dei Maccabei, e finirà per determinare una divaricazione secolare tra le possibilità di connotazione degli Ebrei come gruppo etnico e come gruppo religioso aperto alla modifica per il tramite della conversione (per cui cfr. infra, CL 1981 IV, From Maccabees). 3 Oltre a una plausibile dipendenza dalla Cronaca di Lindo (o fonti affini), già segnalata nel 1959 da M. Hadas, per cui cfr. infra, c. 17 e nota ad loc. 191 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World III*4 Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World5 I In my first two lectures I tried to define two different models of resistance against GrecoMacedonian and Roman imperialism. The first model is of religious protest and of hope for divine liberation. The second model had its roots in the Demosthenic tradition of diplomatic and political agitation against Philip II and Alexander the Great of Macedonia. These two models are, of course, not mutually exclusive, but I pointed out some of the reasons – partly founded on tradition, partly on circumstances – why the religious model prevailed in the East, while the political model prevailed in Greece. The East was conquered so rapidly by Alexander and later by the Romans as to have little chance for diplomatic and military resistance. The kingdom of Pergamum was actually bequeathed to Rome by its last king, Attalus III. However, several peripheric territories of the Seleucide State reconquered independence at various periods. One of them, Iran, under the leadership of the Parthians and later of the Persians, kept its independence for about one thousand6 years, until the Arab conquest. Though the story of the relations between the Parthians and Hellenism is a complex one, we may trust the Parthians to use their celebrated cavalry to defend themselves. Other native states which emerged for longer or shorter periods of independence are Cappadocia, Commagene and Judaea. The one we know best is, of course, Judaea. The Jews of Palestine were not more able than the oriental nations to resist Alexander, [2] later legends notwithstanding. But in the second century B.C. they managed by a combination of daring wars and able diplomacy to gain relative independence from the Seleucids. Even later, when the Romans reduced Judaea to a province, there were long intervals in which native kings (Herod and Agrippa I) were entrusted by the Romans with the government or at least with the administration. The texts we shall examine reflect these different situations and oscillate between the religious and the political pole. They also reflect the differences between the Jews of Palestina and those of the diaspora. The limits of my time will prevent me – at least this year – from extending my examination to Flavius Josephusi. But what I am saying should contribute to a better understanding of Flavius Josephus too.7 Whoever8 tries to form an idea of what was going on in Jewish minds in the last three centuries before Christ has to come to terms with some discouraging features of the evidence. We do not know the date or the place of composition of most of the famous Jewish books which we customarily consider Hellenistic. Though modern scholars are almost certainly justified in attaching this label of “Hellenistic” to the books of Esther, Judith, Tobit and Ecclesiastes, we can only make guesses about their exact date and place of composition. Even texts delimited in time and location * Documento preso come base: P-o 149 (identico a P-o 150, ma con annotazioni mss.), fascicolo di 24 c. dss. che documenta la nuova e definitiva versione CL 1981. Eventuali discordanze con P-o 186, testimone ds. CL anteriore alla correzione del testo, vengono riportate in apparato. Si segnalano inoltre eventuali discrepanze rispetto a P-o 144, testimone ds. di una versione GL arricchita da aggiunte CL e da una ricca serie di minuti interventi stilistici di mano di AMM (complessivamente messi a testo senza segnalazione in apparato, cfr. Introduzione, par. 1), e rispetto a P-o 143 (pressoché identico, almeno nella parte ds., a P-o 144) . Si riportano infine eventuali divergenze tra P-o 144 e P-o 131, documento GL privo di aggiunte mss. 4 P-o 149: Copy X, tsf1,mgsn; Chic. & Grinfield 1981, mgdxms[Mom]; P-o 186: pp. 1, 2 top, and 24 new (and not in Grinfield II, 1981) – Chic. 1981 – 1980 del. – dec. 1981, , tsf1ms[AMM]. 5 P-o 144: This text contains an addendum on p. 18 which is not to be found in the Chicago new typescript. Add it!, mginfmsb[Mom]. 6 P-o 149, 186: for about one thousand; P-o 144: to almost 1000. 7 P-o 144: In my first two lectures ... Josephus too; P-o 131: def. 8 P-o 144: Revised copy, tsf1msb[Mom]; Lecture III <-> II, msr – Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World; P-o 143, f. 1: id.; Grinfield 28.1.81, msb[AMM] – NB. P 17 to be replaced [to be, del.] by new version (as in carbon copy 27.1.81) mgsupmsl[AMM]. 192 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World by the subjects with which they deal – say the four Maccabean books – are in fact much more difficult to date than we should be inclined to expect. On reflection these difficulties are perhaps not too surprising. In the Hellenistic period Jews lived as minorities in a variety of countries from Persia and Media to Italy and North Africa; they spoke and wrote different languages. They had varying degrees of intellectual and social intimacy with the Jews of Palestine, who, at least round Jerusalem, represented the majority of the population and felt they were living in a country of their own – guaranteed, under certain conditions, by God and [3] recognized, under certain limits, by governmental acts of the Persian kings and their Macedonian successors. Many Jews moved from country to country and must have been fluent in both Greek and Aramaic – though we may ask what Greek and what Aramaic. The notion of a diaspora mentality in comparison with a Jewish Palestinian mentality is of course not false, but is insufficient to enable us to classify books. If we want to get nearer to an exact appreciation of what the Jews felt and did when the Persian Empire collapsed and they found themselves in a world which experienced the impact of Greek ideas, institutions and fashions, even when it escaped Greco-Macedonian rule, we must allow the texts to speak for themselves, without much worrying about their date and place of composition. Let us begin by taking Esther, Judith, and Tobit in almost casual order, because we have no sufficient clue to their date and place. Tentative dating must come later. II The book of Esther – a book of superb literary beautyii – may well combine three motifs which had originally been independent: the theme of the queen who disobeys the king’s order and is punished; the theme of the queen who gets rid of a hostile prime minister; and, finally, the theme of the rivalry between two courtiers, the bad one and the good one. After all, neither Esther nor Mordechai are Jewish names. Esther, apparently, is Ishtar, the name of the Babylonian goddess, and Mordechai is obviously connected with Marduk, the Babylonian god. Nor has the institution of the festival which concludes the story any intrinsically Jewish character: it is a carnival. But all this belongs to the prehistory of the book, as we have it. This prehistory is no doubt a good research ground for students of folklore. The [4] present text is a Jewish story with Jewish protagonists; and the Jewish protagonists are no more embarrassed by carrying names of Babylonian gods than their correligionists called Isidore were and are embarrassed by being identified as a gift from an Egyptian goddess. The story, as we have it, defies any attempt to separate the three sections on which it is built. It is meant to explain and to justify the existence and character of a festival called Purim, of which nobody knew the real origin. The story of the recusant Queen Vashti is not only necessary to explain why the King needs a new queen. It introduces us to the reckless and unreligious society within which Esther and Mordechai will emerge as two heroes. What guides the King and his counsellors in their reaction to Vashti’s pride is male pride supported by drunken obstinacy. If the queen is allowed to get away, who will keep the women of the realm quiet? When they arrive on the scene, Esther and her guardian, Mordechai, seem to fit easily into this society. Esther enters the competition for the succession to Vashti without any higher motive. If her adviser, Mordechai, had one, he keeps it to himself. As soon as success is achieved, moral dilemmas and duties impose themselves upon the two adventurers. The writer is quite determined not to allow the story to become religious, but he knows with whom he has to deal. Mordechai discovers a conspiracy and saves the King. He refuses to perform proskynesis (3.2, “to bow down and do obeisance”) before the new minister Haman. The writer does not provide an explanation for Mordechai’s behaviour, but lets us know emphatically that Mordechai is a Jew. When this fact is reported to Haman, it is enough to involve all the Jews in the fate he prepares, with the King’s consent, for the disrespectful Mordechai. If the connection between the refusal to perform proskynesis and the Jewish origins of Mordechai is left vague, there is no vagueness in the order which Mordechai sends to Esther as soon as he knows about the persecution of the Jews: [5] “Do not imagine that you alone of all the Jews 193 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World will escape because you are in the royal palace”. Esther knows that she must risk her life to save her people. She asks Mordechai and the other Jews to fast with her for three days before she faces her ordeal. Her words “and if I perish I perish”9 iii have been central to the book for its Jewish readers throghout the centuries. The Midrash Rabbah on Exodus 30, 4 compares Esther to Moses because she risked her life for the people of Israel. All the Jewish past imposes itself on the protagonists. But the writer considers it superfluous to explain why Esther fasts three days and wants the Jews to fast with her. A few pages earlier, he had found it unnecessary to explain the implication of the genealogy connecting Mordechai with Kish, the father of Saul, whereas Haman is a descendant of Agag, the king of the Amalekites whom Saul had defeated and spared contrary to Samuel’s advice (I Sam. 15: 7-9). All the subsequent developments keep on10 this line which avoids making explicit the religious implications of the Jewish victory over Haman and his partisans. At the level on which the story is told, there is no supernatural element. Mordechai wins because his merit in discovering the conspiracy against the king is recognized in time. He wins above all because ha can rely on Esther’s support, and finally because his position persuades the provincial governors to collaborate with him. There are gentiles who become Jews in order to be on the winning side. We must not press such a sober writer to tell us more than he intended. He certainly does not presuppose a general hostility between gentiles and Jews. When the King and Haman sat down to dinner after having decided about the extermination of the Jews, the city of Susa was perplexed (3, 15) navōchā – the Hebrew term being used almost in the connotation made famous by Maimonidesiv. The war is confined between the Jews and the followers of Haman. I am sure that when the writer mentions the fact that the victorious Jews “did not touch the plunder” [6] (9, 10) he knows his readers will remember that Saul committed the sin of touching the plunder in his war against Haman’s ancestors. Furthermore, it is self-evident that the Jews are loyal to the king, and his best support. Even when they knew they had been condemned they did not rebel against the king. Bickerman has reminded us that in the XVII century Bossuet find it scandalous that the victims of St. Bartholomew did not imitate Esther’s Jews in their loyalty to the kingv. The story is an uncomplicated matter of national solidarity. The beautiful Esther became a heroine because, after having married a king, she did not forget her kin and was prepared to die for them. The writer seems to say that before and after royal banquets you have to fast three days to recover your courage – and you must be sure that your people are with you. The rest is written in the Bible, of which the author of the book of Esther never expected to become part. The Qumran sectarians, who were not conspicuous for leaving things unsaid, perhaps11 found this book distasteful – to judge from its absence so far in their library. But we must not make too much of this absence.12 Esther’s story may have Hellenistic connotations. The refusal of proskynesis is Greek, as Herodotus <already>13 knew (7, 136). The refusal had become an issue again under Alexander. It could hardly be appreciated outside the sphere of Greek culture. If the author has to explain that what the Persian king writes and seals with his seal cannot be declared void (8, 8; cf. 1, 19), he seems to imply that the readers of his book do not live under Persian kings. Like the BabylonianPersian landscape of the book of Daniel, the Persia of Esther, with its center14 in Susa, is a semimythical territory. Incidentally, Daniel is the only other source we have for the information that the kings of Persia cannot change their own laws. There is again not much to choose between Daniel and Esther in the matter of exact chronology. If Ahasueros is King [7] Xerxes, Mordechai, having been deported by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 B.C., would have been about one hundred and twenty 9 P-o 144: ‫אָבָ ֽדְ תִּ י‬. ‫אָבדְ תִּ י‬ ֖ ַ ‫ ְו ַכ ֲא ֶ ֥שׁר‬, mginf con segr, msb; P-o 149, 186, 131: def. P-o 149, 186: on; P-o 144, 131: to. 11 P-o 144: perhaps <-> naturally, msb[Mom]. 12 P-o 144: absence. -> There is however the question whether the Book of Esther is quoted in the Temple Scroll without being mentioned by name. This question implies three other questions: whether the two passages involved are correctly interpretated, whether the Temple Scroll was originally written for the Qumran sect and when it was written, interl. e mgdxmsb[Mom], del. 13 Docc.: always. 14 P-o 149, 186: center; P-o 144, 131: centre. 10 194 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World years old when Xerxes came to power, about 485 B.C., and he had still the best of his life before him. Palestine simply does not figure in the book, though it would have been affected by Ahasueros’ policies, whether anti-Jewish or pro-Jewish. What the author tells us is a diaspora story set in an unreal Persia where kings do not know whom they marry. One minister may hate the Jews, and the next minister may be a Jew. A return of the Jews to Judaea is not on the cards – either for the Persian kings or the Jews themselves. If there is any reality behind this façade, it is rather that of the diaspora of early Hellenism – preferably in Persia or Media, but possibly in Mesopotamia or Syria – when there was no problem of a return to Palestine, no clash with the king of the land and no struggle in definite religious terms. The Jews had their enemies, as any ethnic group is bound to have, but they also had their friends; and the king had to choose. On the other hand, the book of Esther ignores the novel experience of having a king (Antiochus IV) who demands the Hellenization of the Jewish cult in Jerusalem. In fact, the festival of Mordechai is already presupposed as existing (that is, practised in Palestine) in II Maccabees 15, 36, which can hardly have been written after 124 B.C. In Esther, you are persecuted and may be killed for being a Jew, but there is no temptation to avoid the consequences by becoming an apostate, which is the novelty of the time of Antiochus IV. Esther takes her Jewishness so much for granted that she has no need to mention her God. We may conclude that the present Hebrew text of Esther was certainly written in ignorance of the Maccabean revolution, and probably composed before that revolution happened. It may reflect a situation of the diaspora about which we have no other information: some conflicts between ethnic groups, in which religion was involved only indirectly.15 The vitality [8] of the book is in the way it tells a story of elementary ethnic solidarity.16 III We must now turn to the additions to the Hebrew Esther in its Greek translation or translations, because they presuppose a different situation. An examination in detail would have to take full cognizance of all the variants of the Greek text or texts. The LXX text or B-text differs from the socalled Lucianic recension (A-text) to such an extent that one may speak of two separate versions from the Hebrew and even of two different Hebrew texts behind the two versions. Torreyvi, to whom I shall return, advanced the notion of two Aramaic originals behind the Greek texts.17 Furthermore, Flavius Josephus used for his Jewish Antiquities a Greek text which is not identifiable beyond doubt either with the B-text or with the A-text. True enough, Josephus is noted for the liberties he took with the text of the Bible. Other translations do not help much. Jerome’s Vulgate is very free, and the two Targumim18 add much Haggadic material19. For our purpose, it is enough to say that all the important Greek additions to the Hebrew text figure both in the B-text and in the Atext. Most of these additions seem to have been written originally in Hebrew and translated into Greek, but the two royal letters which the Greek text adds seem originally to have been written in Greek. This state of affairs can be explained in many ways, but as the additions which seem to have been translated from Hebrew do not differ in Greek style from the rest of the B-text, the most economic explanation is that the LXX or B translator translated a Hebrew text which already had most of the additions. The two royal letters (composed in Greek) would have a different origin, but could still have been introduced into the B-text by the translator responsible for it. [9] Now we happen by a piece of luck to know the name and some of the circumstances of one Greek translator. He was a certain Lysimachus who worked in Jerusalem and whose Greek 15 P-o 144: was involved only indirectly; P-o 149, 186: was indirectly involved. P-o 144: It may reflect ... ethnic solidarity, interl. e mgsn, msb[Mom]; The vitality of the book ... ethnic solidarity <-> The vitality of the book is not in what it tells, but in the way it tells it. Like many other novels it owes its survival to both its style and to having a happy ends, msb[Mom], del. 17 P-o 144: Torrey ... Greek texts, mgdx con segr, msb[Mom]. 18 P-o 144: Targumim, the two translations into Aramaic, interl.msr[Mom]. 19 P-o 144: Haggadic material, that is further novelistic material, mgdxcon segr, msr[Mom]. 16 195 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World translation was brought to Egypt by a certain Dositheus in the fourth year of the reign of an uncertain Ptolemy and an uncertain Cleopatra. We are told all this by the colophon of several manuscripts of Esther both in the B-text and in the A-text, which means that if we are inclined to assume two different translators for the two texts, we cannot say whether Lysimachus is the translator of B-text or of A-text. This colophon deserves to be quoted in full, at least in translation: “In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra Dositheus who said that he was a priest and a Levite, and his son Ptolemy brought the above book of Purim which they said was authentic and had been translated by Lysimachus son of Ptolemy, a member of the Jerusalem community”. Three dates are compatible with the fourth year of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, either 114 B.C. under Ptolemy VIII Soter or 77 under Ptolemy XII or 48 under Ptolemy XIV. What is interesting is that the translation was made in Jerusalem and brought to Egypt by two people in an official capacity. What Dositheus meant by declaring himself a priest and a Levite is anybody’s guess: he may simply have explained that as a Levite he was a sort of a priest. But the man who took down his declaration evidently thought that the priestly qualification added value to Dositheus’ declaration of authenticity for the translation. In Jerusalem, somebody was interested in having the text of Esther translated into Greek and sent to Egypt; and in Egypt there was somebody happy to receive the text with its declaration of authenticity. We are reminded that the grandson of Jesus ben Sira declared that in the thirty-eighth year of King Ptolemy VII Euergetes II – that is, in 132 B.C. – he came to Egypt from Palestine and there translated his grand[10]father’s book, Ecclesiasticus. We are also reminded that the present II Maccabees, which is an epitome of a larger book by Jason of Cyrene, was composed in Jerusalem and despatched with an official letter of introduction the date of which is 124 B.C. In all three cases, we have a work made known to the Egyptian Jews by agents coming from Palestine. Ecclesiasticus and the book of Esther are translated into Greek by Palestinian Jews: Jason’s work, which was in Greek, is summarized in Greek by somebody in Palestine apparently for the precise purpose of making it available to the Egyptian Jews. Ecclesiasticus is translated into Greek to make available to Egyptian Jews a recent piece of Palestinian wisdom which emphasizes the dignity of the High Priests of Jerusalem. The book of Esther and II Maccabees are sent in Greek to Egypt in order to encourage the Egyptian Jews to celebrate religious festivals held in Palestine: this is explicitly said in II Maccabeesvii and seems to be implied by the colophon of the Greek Esther. We get an interesting sample of the activity of the Jerusalem Jews who were determined to keep Jerusalem as the religious and intellectual centre of Judaism in relation to the diaspora. Even if the book of Esther had originally been written in the Eastern diaspora – say in Susa – it reached Egypt via Jerusalem after having been translated into Greek in Palestine. But this is not all. The original book of Esther, as ultimately preserved in Hebrew and canonized, was, as I have said, a diaspora book, insofar as it did not contemplate any Jewish State, any temple, or any situation arising from a territory where the majority was Jewish. It expressed the feelings of Jewish minorities strong enough to have ambitions, but unsure of their position and dependent on royal support. It might appeal as such to the Egyptian Jews but it had no anti-Hellenic or antiMacedonian allusion. 20 However, by the time Esther had been translated into Greek, 21 the Maccabean revolution had [11] brought about a religious revival: the “hassidim” supporting the Maccabees and the Pharisees emerging from the Maccabean victory had a more precise faith in immortality, a more intense experience of prayer and, generally, a more direct contact with the God of the Fathers than the Jews pictured in the original book of Esther. The book of Daniel shows that an apocalyptic element contributed to the faith of some, if not all, the fighters in Palestine about 165 B.C. The book of Esther in its Greek version tries to do justice to this religious revival, if not to the political revolution which went with it. It adds apocalyptic and devotional features to the Hebrew text, and these additions may conceivably already have existed in a different version of the Hebrew 20 21 P-o 144: but it had no ... allusion, mgsup con segr, msr[Mom]. P-o 144: by the time ... into Greek, mgsn con segr, msb[Mom]. 196 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World text which has not reached us –22 a textus auctus which did not succeed in replacing the original for the Hebrew readers. The Greek text furthermore defined the legal aspects of the conflict better by introducing legal texts which are clearly invented. The apocalyptic atmosphere is created by the dream of Mordechai at the beginning – a fight between two dragons – and by the interpretation of the same dream at the end. The God of the Fathers, who was only implicitly present in the original Hebrew text, is now prayed to by Esther and Mordechai, and their prayers are given in extenso. Esther’s prayer is also meant to allay the fears of the orthodox that she might have forgotten the purity laws about marriage and food23: “From the day I arrived here until now, your maid servant has not delighted in anything except you, Lord, the god of Abraham” (Addition C. 29). Here we have the post-Maccabean interpolator at work.24 I wish we could be certain it was this post-Maccabean interpolator who turned Haman into a treacherous Macedonian who, while serving Persia, wanted or tried to give the rule of Persia to the Macedonians (E. 10). This is perhaps the most sensational change introduced into the original text of Esther, because [12] it destroys the presupposition of the original text that the fight between Mordechai and Haman continues the battle between Saul and the Amalekites. But the presentation of Haman as a Macedonian is not constant in the Greek text. Haman is called Macedonian in the Atext of Addition A, that is Mordechai’s dream, 1.17; in the B-text of 9.24, where it replaces “Agagite” of the Masoretic Hebrew text, and finally in the B-text of Addition E, 1.10 (Second Royal Letter). We simply do not know when somebody hit into25 the idea of turning Haman into a Macedonian.26 There is a slight presumption that the qualification of Macedonian for Haman penetrated first into the Septuagint text or B-text and passed from there into the so-called “Lucianic recension” or A-text. Even after having passed through Palestinian hands after the Maccabean revolution, the story of Esther could not be turned into an episode of a war for the purity of the Jerusalem cult and for political autonomy. But the new version introduced a note of religious militancy which the original text lacked. At least at a certain stage the enemy, Haman, was definitely identified as a Macedonian. On the other hand, the king was even more emphatically described as pro-Jewish. In a sentence of the second royal edict, which is not present in all27 manuscripts and therefore may be a secondary supplement, the king is made to recognize the festival of Purim as a royal holiday. As it happened, the increased militancy and religiosity of the refurbished text or texts corresponded not only to the mood of the Palestinian senders but also to that of the Jewish-Egyptian recipients. In those years, the Jews of Egypt took a conspicuous part in internal dynastic struggles. About 103 B.C., they were the only ones to remain faithful to Cleopatra III in her conflict with Ptolemy IX Lathyros. At the same time, they showed signs of their increased religious [13] fervour. Although a Hebrew temple of dubious status was established in Egypt by the exiled descendants of the high priest Onias, there is also increased evidence of devotion to Jerusalem, of study of the Jewish law, and of conflicts with the Samaritans. Aristobulos’ literary activity and perhaps Aristeas’ letter belong to the second part of the second century B.C. What I have said is perhaps enough to explain why I consider very improbable the theory enunciated by28 Ch. C. Torrey in a paper in Harv. Theol. Rev. 37, 1944, 1-40, that the Greek Esther represents the Greek translation of an original Aramaic book of Esther, while the Hebrew text would be a shortened secularized version: Torrey was a great scholar, but he seems to have been driven to his unlikely theory by the desire to meet Luther’s criticism of the heathenism of the book of Esther in its Hebrew formviii. Though we are yet very far from seeing clearly into the history of 22 P-o 144: in a different ... reached us , interl.msr[Mom]. P-o 144: I quote from Esther’s prayer, interl.msr[Mom]. 24 P-o 144: Here we have ... at work, interl.msb[Mom]. 25 P-o 149, 186: onto; P-o 144, 131: into. 26 P-o 144: He does not seem to be the original translator and to have tampered with a pre-existing translation, mgsn con segr, msb[Mom]; 149, 186: def. 27 P-o 144, 131: Greek; P-o 149, 186: def. 28 P-o 144: the late Professor, interl.msr[Mom]; P-o 131, 149, 186: def. 23 197 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World Esther’s story, this story can tell us something of what Jewish resistance and survival came to mean in different sections of the diaspora and in post-Maccabean Jerusalem. The original Hebrew text is a diaspora story of ethnic conflicts in which religion is not absent, but implicit. Under the influence of the events of the anti-Hellenic movement in Palestine which we call the Maccabean revolution, the Greek version or versions of the book of Esther were provided with a new explicit religious selfconsciousness and militancy.29 IV We are now ready to face an even more mysterious text, the book of Judithix. The historical nonsense in this book is extraordinary. A non-existent king of Assyria in Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar, who is contemporary with a non-existent King Arphaxad of Media, decides to take revenge on all the nations [14] who did not help him to fight Arphaxad. He chooses as his own general Holofernes, who happens to have a Persian name and reminds us of an Orophernes allied to Demetrius I of Syria, who about 158 B.C. became King of Cappadocia. Among the intended victims of the expedition of Holofernes are the Jews, who – another extraordinary piece of information – had just come up from their captivity and were busy at putting their temple in order. We need hardly remind ourselves that Nineveh was destroyed in 612 B.C., while the first temple was destroyed in 586 and rebuilt about seventy years later.30 No state of Assyria existed when the temple was rebuilt. The scenery of the book is unreal. According to Judith, the children of Israel were then governed by the high priest and the gerousia (4, 18; 11, 4; 15, 8). It is worth noting that our first evidence for the gerousia in Jerusalem is in the letter of Antiochus III to Ptolemy (Ant. 12, 142) of about 198 B.C. – about four hundred years later than the alleged date of the events in Judith.31 Now Holofernes came with his army from the North. Nobody resisted him, except, of course, the Jews, who, however, devoted more time to fasting and prayer than to organizing their line of defence. Joakim, the high priest, had at least the sense to write to those “who dwelt in Bethulia and Betomesthaim, which is over against Esdraelon toward the plain which is nearby Dothan, telling them to get possession of the passes into the hill country because through them was the entrance into Judaea, and it was easy to prevent them from approaching, for the approach was narrow, with room for but two men at the most” (4, 6-9, transl. M. S. Enslinx). As Bethulia turns out to be the Jewish Thermopylae, it is worth pointing out that we do not know where it was, and it is rather doubtful that the writer intended to help us to know. It is an old theory that Bethulia could be the Samaritan Shechem, basically because the Samaritan Shechem was unmentionable in honest Jewish circles. Some support was sought for this theory in the fact [15] that the heroine Judith, a denizen of Bethulia, belonged to the tribe of Simeon (9, 2), which, according to one of the possible interpretations of the mysterious story of Dinah in Genesis 3432, took possession of the city of Shechem when the Shechemites were exterminated. But it still remains mysterious why the author of the book of Judith should want to allude to Shechem in such a devious way: the more so as Shechem is explicitly mentioned in the same book, though in another context (5, 16)33. What may well be true is that a certain nostalgia and revaluation of the destroyed Kingdom of the North appears in this and other Hellenistic texts (we shall meet another example in the book of Tobit). This nostalgia, however, can be detected more in the mention of the longvanished tribe of Simeon than in the name Bethulia. There is no need to repeat at length the story of what happened in and near the Jewish Termopylae. The Assyrians cannot pass, but manage to cut the water supply. Therefore the inhabitants of Bethulia give themselves five days before surrendering. They are in fact testing God and challenging Him to help His people (7, 30). At this point, Judith makes her first appearance, with all 29 30 31 32 33 P-o 144: The original Hebrew text ... and militancy, interl. e mginf, msb[Mom]. P-o 144: Judith’s story is clearly placed in Never-Never Land, interl. e mgdx msn[Mom]; P-o 131, 149, 186: def. P-o 149, 186: date of the events in Judith; P-o 131, 144: date of our events. P-o 144: one of the possible ... Genesis 34 <-> Jewish tradition, interl.msb[Mom]. P-o 144: the more so as Shechem ... (5, 16), interl.msn[Mom]. 198 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World her genealogy which, remarkably, leaves out the name of Simeon, but gives the names of the son of Simeon and of the father of Simeon – Israel himself (8, 1). The name of Simeon is, however, explicitly mentioned in a later passage (9, 2). It may have been a calculated omission to flatter the reader’s historical knowledge. What Judith proposes is to present herself to Holofernes as a traitress who “will show him a way whereby he shall go and master all the hill country, and there shall not be lost of his men one person or one life” (10, 13). It is unnecessary to add that when she is introduced to Holofernes Judith has something more urgent to do than playing Ephialtes, the traitor of the Greek Termopylae34, to the new, or rather older, Xerxes. The citizens of Bethulia have no need to surrender after the fifth day; the enemy has run away. [16] I have said enough to ask straightaway the obvious question which has never been asked (at least to my knowledge): how exactly did the author of Judith know his Herodotus? For clearly he knew him. The answer does not lie in details, which may be controversial. I do not know, for instance, whether the description of the walls of Ecbatana at the beginning of the book imitates the description of the walls of Babylon in Herodotus I, 178. But one structural similarity is decisive. As we well remember, according to Herodotus Xerxes at the beginning of his expedition asks the Greek, or rather Spartan, Demaratus, whether the Greeks will rexist him. Demaratus, after some hesitation, tells what he thinks to be the truth: the Greeks, or rather the Spartans, will resist. Indeed, the Spartans are the best warriors, because they obey their laws (7, 101-4). Demaratus gives a warning. The next crucial episode is Thermopylae, where the Spartans would have been able to resist but for the betrayal of Ephialtes or of somebody else. In any case, the Spartans35 ultimately win, as Demaratus had foreseen.36 In the book of Judith, Holofernes has his Demaratus in Achior “the chief of all the sons of Ammon” (5, 5). Achior on request37 warns Holofernes that the Jews are unconquerable as long as they obey their own law. Holofernes’ reaction is to hand over Achior in contempt to the defenders of Bethulia: he boasts that38 the Assyrians will get Achior back as soon as they get Bethulia. Bethulia of course is not captured, and Achior, though an Ammonite, becomes a Jew – which makes his similarity with Demaratus, a Spartan among Spartans, even more conspicuous (14, 10). There is, of course, something more than simple imitation of Demaratus in Achior’s speech and later in his conversion. The author of Judith knew only too well that according to Deuteronomy 23, 4 an Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the assembly of Yahweh, even to the tenth generation. But the author of Judith was determined to make the point that an [17] Ammonite can enter into the assembly of Yahweh. The author of the book of Ruth had previously made the point that a Moabite can enter into the assembly of Yahweh – and with what results, if David was a descendant of the Moabite Ruth39. These writers – the authors of Ruth and Judith – considered the old taboo absurd and were not afraid of challenging what passed for Mosaic law. Rabbinic opinion of the first century A.D. was still divided about the acceptance of Ammonite proselytes, as the discussion between Rabban Gamaliel and Rabbi Joshua in Mishnah Yadaim 4, 4 and Tosefta 2, 1740 shows. It is interesting that the liberal opinion prevailed. So much said, the fact remains that Achior played the part of Demaratus in the Jewish Thermopylae. The book of Judith has the structure of the second part of Herodotus VII insofar as it moves from the speech of warning to the episode of Thermopylae. The Jewish writer, who is not bound by history, can demonstrate the truth of the warning much more quickly and radically than Herodotus could. While the Greeks have a traitor in their midst, the Jews have a woman who acts as if she were a traitor, but does so in order to be their saviour. 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 P-o 144: the traitor ... Termopylae, interl.msr[Mom]. P-o 149, 186: Spartans; P-o 131, 144: Greeks. P-o 144: In any case ... foreseen, interl.msb[Mom] P-o 144: on request, interl.msb[Mom]. P-o 144: he boasts that, interl.msb[Mom]. P-o 131, 144: of the Moabite Ruth; P-o 149, 186: of Ruth. P-o 149, 186: Tosefta 2, 17; P-o 131, 144: Tosefta, Yad. 2, 17. 199 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World I am confident in my assertion that the author of Judith must have known Herodotus – because it has long been recognized that he knew also another story of the Greek resistance to Persia. In 1959 Moses Hadas41 in his Hellenistic Culturexi (p. 166) noticed that the five days which the thirsty men of Bethulia give themselves before surrendering have an exact counterpart in the story of Darius’ expedition.42 According to the chronicle of Lindos, which was put together in 99 B.C. from previous recordsxii, the Lindians on43 the island of Rhodes were besieged by Datis, admiral of Darius, and were suffering from an acute water shortage. They had only enough left for five days, when one of their leaders in a dream was promised relief by the goddess Athena herself. The Lindians had so much confidence in their [18] goddess that they told Datis that they would surrender after five days if the goddess had not helped them. Sure enough, rain came in time, and with perfect consideration of the circumstances, because the Persians had none of the water. The good-natured Datis sent presents to the goddess and declared publicly: “These men are protected by the gods”. It would appear that the Jewish author of Judith had looked carefully at stories of the Greek resistance to the Persians before composing his own story. Judith appears to have been written in Hebrew before being translated into Greek, though in the absence of obvious mistranslations it is always difficult to distinguish between what is a translation from a Hebrew text and what is a Greek original by an author who thought in Hebrew. I must add here that Père44 A. M. Dubarle’s attempt to prove that extant medieval tales of Judith in Hebrew represent the original text of Judith and not retranslations 45 from Greek or Latin is clearly misconceived, though done with great learning and ingenuity (Judith, Formes et sens des diverses traditions, Rome I-II, 1966xiii)46. What matters to us is that47 there would have been no difficulty for a Jew acquainted with the Greek language to know Herodotus in Palestine or elsewhere at any moment during the last three centuries B.C. To be more precise about the date of Judith is obviously difficult. The silence of Josephus about the story of Judith has hardly any chronological significance, because his contemporary Clement of Rome knew it. Josephus may simply have distrusted or disliked the whole story: if so, other Jews (as I shall soon say) shared his feelings.48 Two remarks, however, help to restrict the chronological limits. If the author of Judith got the detail about the five days of water from a chronicle of Rhodes (not necessarily from the extant chronicle of Lindos of 99 B.C.), we should probably have to place him in the second or first century B.C., when such a combination of Greek erudition and Jewish patriotism is more plausible. Another consideration seems to push us into the period of the Hasmonean49 rule in Judaea. Our story, which is firmly [19] placed in Palestine, celebrates the victory over an invader. The author seems to be aware of and sympathetic with50 the newly acquired independence of Judaea. Furthermore, Judith, the new Jael, has the concern for ritual purity which we expect from a Pharisee of the post-Maccabean period. The Assyrians were by now a mythical name to indicate those for whom51 the prophets had predicted doom. It was a good name to conjure up in a patriotic story. Whereas Esther was of limited value in Palestine in the second and first centuries B.C. and had to be refurbished, Judith was obviously 41 P-o 144: In 1959 Moses Hadas <-> In 1957 Y. M. Grintz in his commentary in Hebrew on the Book of Judith and two years later Moses Hadas, msb[Mom]. 42 P-o 144: Darius’ expedition. -> The citizens of Lindos gave themselves five days before surrendering to Darius in an analogous situation, del. 43 P-o 149, 186: on; P-o 144: of; P-o 143: in. 44 P-o 144: Père, mgdxmsb[Mom]. 45 P-o 149, 186: retroversions; P-o 131, 144: retranslations <-> retoversions. 46 P-o 144: (Judith, Formes ... 1966) <-> (1966), interl.msb[Mom]. 47 P-o 149, 186: What matters ... is that; P-o 131, 144: def. 48 P-o 149, 186: if so, other ... his feelings; P-o 131, 144: def. 49 P-o 144, 131: Hasmonean <-> Asmonean, msb[Mom]; P-o 143: Hasmonean. 50 P-o 149, 150, 186: with; P-o 131, 143, 144: to. 51 P-o 131, 143, 144: whom; P-o 149, 150, 186: which. 200 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World topical – not least52 because she reminded the reader of Deborah and Jaelxiv. The author stressed the similarity with Deborah (that with Jael was obvious) by making Judith sing her own songxv. A certain revival of Israelite (as53 opposed to Judaic) patriotism may well have encouraged the choice of Assyria as the enemy. But the author was acquainted with Herodotus, knew other stories about the Persian wars and altogether appreciated the patriotic literature of the Greeks in relation to Persia as something akin to his own feelings. As a good Jew, he would never turn the Persians into villains, but could see that the Greeks would. Furthermore, our author may have heard or read novels or romances of the Greek type where patriotism and eroticism intermingled. Wilamowitz observed long ago that Judith had parallels in heroines of Greek erotic storiesxvi. Plutarch derives from Polybius in the Mulierum Virtutes, 258 E, the story of the Galatian woman Chiomara who brought to her husband the head of the Roman who had dishonoured her. He also tells twice the story of the Galatian widow Camma who exploited her beauty to attract an enemy to his death (Mul. Virt. 257 E; Amat. 768, the source of Tennyson’s “The Cup”)54. Thus Judith was more modern, more Greek55 and more warlike than Esther, and by the mere fact of being warlike, she gained56 some of the attractions of the courageous women of the age of Judges. She was both ruthless and pious, and [20] she clearly competed with the Greeks as depicted by Herodotus. It is obviously the last point which deserves57 our critical attention. It says something that a Jewish author, most probably writing in Hebrew, discovered for himself Herodotus’ book VII and modeled on it the structure of his story. He obviously envisaged the Jews, like the Greeks of old, fighting for their freedom and obeying their58 own law. He could not extend the comparison to the point of considering the Persians as enemies. As I said, a Jew59 felt his debt of gratitude to Persian kings, especially to Cyrus, the anointed of60 Yahwe. But the Assyrians were a symbolic name for oppressors throughout the Eastern World. It was left to the reader to decide whom he would recognize in the Assyrians. My suggestion is that in the historical circumstances in which the author of Judith wrote, the Assyrians stood for the Greco-Macedonian regime of the Seleucids, and perhaps more precisely of Antiochus IV. If this is correct, it immediately defines the limits within which the model of Herodotus was valid. It emphasized the fact that both the Greeks of old (or perhaps the Spartans) and the Jews of any time received their strength from their determination to obey61 their respective laws62. But beyond this point, the author of Judith recovered his freedom. He developed his story midway between the Biblical tradition of the woman leader risking her life in a daring adventure and the contemporary Hellenistic fashion for courageous women who, by killing their seducers, have revenge of the enemies of their own country. We are left with the question whether this story – which used both Herodotean and Hellenistic motifs in a frame of impeccable pharisaic orthodoxy – was ever successful among the Jews. Did they recognize either Greeks or Romans behind the symbolic Assyrians? Did they like Judith? We would expect that thay did, but the surprise is that63 the evidence is not unequivocal. In the third century A.D.,64 Origen was aware that the Jews of his time no longer [21] read the book of Tobit or the book of Judith. In fact, Origen did not find a Hebrew text of these books. (Ep. ad Africanum 52 P-o 131, 144: not least; P-o 149, 186: none the less. P-o 149, 186: as, interl.ds. 54 P-o 149, 186: (Mul… Cup”); P-o 131, 144: Tennyson turned the latter story into his play The Cup (Mulier. Virt. 257 E; Amat. 768 B). 55 P-o 149, 186: more Greek; P-o 131, 144: def. 56 P-o 149, 186: gained; P-o 131, 144: acquired. 57 P-o 149, 186: which deserves; P-o 131, 144: to deserve. 58 P-o 149, 186: their; P-o 131, 144: to their. 59 P-o 143: As I said, a Jew <-> P-o 144: As a Jew he, msr[Mom]. 60 P-o 149, 186: anointed of; P-o 131, 144: anointed by. 61 P-o 143: obey <-> P-o 144: obey to, msr[Mom]. 62 P-o 144: received their strength ... respective laws <-> were ready to fight and die for their law, msr[Mom]. 63 P-o 143: We would expect ... is that, interl.msr[Mom]; P-o 144: def. 64 P-o 144: In the third century A.D., intelr.msb[Mom]. 53 201 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World 13). The Aramaic text used by Jerome may have been65 a translation from the Greek or, less probably, a Targum from Hebrew.66 On the other hand, as I mentioned, there are Hebrew stories, midrashim, of uncertain date and origin67 about her, and she is even mentioned in the liturgy of Shabbat Hanukkah together with the wise Ammonite Achior. In one of these midrashim Holofernes is turned into a Greek kingxvii – just as Haman was turned into a Macedonian.68 A peculiarity of such texts is precisely to connect Judith with the Maccabees. But it was the book of Esther, not that of Judith, that was canonized. The lesser heroism of simple devotion to one’s own people finally obtained the higher prize. Origen knew what he was doing by putting together the book of Tobit with the book of Judith as two books which had lost popularity among the Jews of his time and were not to be found in the Hebrew language. We may now take a look at the book of Tobit and conclude this lecture with it. Qumran fragments, which have remained too long unpublished, seem to make it probable that the original text of Tobit was in Aramaic rather than in Hebrew (J. T. Milik, Rev. Bibl. 73, 1966, 522-530xviii ).69 In a few cases, the absurdities of the Greek can be conjecturally corrected by postulating mistranslation from a Semitic70 text. One case is 6, 18 where Raphael, the archangel in disguise, promises Tobias that the children he, Tobias, will have from Sara will be brothers to him, Tobias – which is strange. But a retranslation into Hebrew shows that without a change even of one letter the phrase can be made to mean: “The children of you, Tobias, from Sarah shall be to me, Raphael, as brothers”, which is more reasonable. Judith and Tobit are both placed in the Assyrian period. Tobit lives in Nineveh, he belongs to the tribe of Naphtali, and before being deported there he was an exception in the northern kingdom for his devotion to the [22] Temple of Jerusalem. Here again, we meet nostalgia for an Israel reconciled with Judah. The story concludes with a resounding declaration of faith by the dying Tobit in Nineveh in the future of the Jewish remnant and in the reconstruction of the Temple in71 Jerusalem. It is obvious to me that the theory that this part of the story is a later addition to the text will not do. Pious Jews cannot be left to die in Nineveh without some reference to the future of the city. If Tobit dies in Nineveh, he has to command his son to leave Nineveh as soon as he has buried his father and his mother there. Tobias is told to find a safe place in Media, that is in that Persian Empire to which the Jews always looked in gratitude and hope, even when it became the Parthian Empire. By keeping chapters 13 and 14 as an integral part of the story, the meaning of the book as a whole becomes clearer. The book of Tobit is altogether manysided. To begin with, Tobit’s piety is not only a question of ritual purity: it is shown by burying the dead children of Israel, feeding the hungry, being the first to speak in an encounter with any visitor – just as Yohanan ben Zakkai used to greet first even a heathen in the marketplace (Talmud Bab. Berakhot 17a; cf. Abot 4, 20). Furthermore, Tobit is the72 wise man in the classic oriental fashion. Therefore, our novelist has the right instinct in making him a kinsman of the typical wise man Ahiqar, which implies annexing Ahiqar, not of Hebrew stock in his original context, to the tribe of Naphtali. Ahiqar is not the only one to be Judaized. The story goes on with the seven archangels, one of whom is Raphael, and the evil demon Asmodeus: they look suspiciously Iranian in their pedigree. And there is a great deal of 65 P-o 144: may have been <-> was probably, inter.msb[Mom]. P-o 144: The Aramaic text ... from Hebrew, interl.msb[Mom]; less probably ... Hebrew <-> a survival of older times, interl.msb[Mom]. 67 P-o 131, 144: and origin; P-o 149, 186: def. 68 P-o 144: In one of these ... Macedonian, interl.msb[Mom]. 69 P-o 149, 186: Qumran fragments... 522-530); P-o 144: Qumran fragments, which have remained too long unpublished, seem to make it certain that the original text of Tobit was in Aramaic rather than in Hebrew (I rely on the preliminary communication of J. T. Milik, Rev. Biblique 73, 1966, 522-530) <-> P-o 143, 131: It is even more probable in the case of Tobit than in the case of Judith that the original text was in Hebrew, mginfmsb[Mom] [La notazione su Qumran in P-o 144 è probabilmente l’addendum da riportare nel testo CL per cui cfr. apparato alla lecture, n. 5]. 70 P-o 144: Semitic <-> Hebrew, mgdxmsb[Mom]. 71 P-o 149, 186: in; P-o 131, 144: of. 72 P-o 149, 186: the; P-o 131, 144: a. 66 202 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World straight international magic in the operations which repel Asmodeus and later give Tobit back his eyesight. But what could be a pleasant, slightly self-satisfied story of risks overcome and goodness rewarded gets a different dimension by being set against a background of exile, uncertainty about the future, divine punishment and ultimate [23] divine providence not only for the remnants of Israel, but “for all the nations in the whole world” who “shall turn and fear God in truth” (14, 6). Tobit, who had experienced deportation and various other vicissitudes, has to enjoin his son to find another country to live in. It will be another exile, but in the end there will be the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the Messianic hope for all mankind. We have no reason to think that the writer composed his piece after the destruction of the Second Temple. There is no sign of recent catastrophe in this bourgeois story. But of course the writer knew his prophets and their promises which went beyond the rebuilding of the Temple into a Messianic age. By putting his story in the Assyrian age, he could play freely with history. One can hardly maintain that he was wellacquainted with it. The Vaticanus (B) and the Alexandrinus (A)73 give as the names of the kings of Babylonia and Media who will destroy Nineveh Nebuchadnezzar and Assueros, where we would expect Nabopolassar and Cyaxares. The Sinaiticus hardly improves the matter by having Ahiqar or Achiacharos as King of Media. I do not know of really exact criteria for dating this text. It was well known to Christian writers of the early second century A.D. It contains in the present Greek text a reference to a Macedonian month (2, 12), but if the original was Aramaic or Hebrew74 this tells us little about its place and date. It is just possible that the allusion to Sennacherib (1, 18), who slew Jews and did not allow them to be buried, is an anticipation of similar conduct by Antiochus IV according to II Macc. 9, 15. But what is perhaps nearer to an indication of place and date is that the author, though looking at Jerusalem from afar, has high Messianic expectations. This would befit a man of the Eastern diaspora who had received news of the restoration of the cult of the Temple in Antiochus’ days. Whatever its date, the book of Tobit contains a message of love for and faith in Jerusalem by a distant Jew rooted in a rather conventionally pious [24] and superstitious culture. The difference between Tobit and Esther is clear. The author of Esther does not love Jerusalem. The author of Tobit does. For the Jews who cried over the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and even more in Hadrian’s time, there was too little consolation in this book75: so Origen could register their indifference to it. But in earlier times, when Jerusalem was prosperous, this story of piety and faith which purported to come from a northern Israelite76, even before Nineveh was destroyed, must have been a very good story to read. It did its bit to keep the Jews together from Parthia to Rome, when the diaspora might well have separated itself from Jerusalem and become itself fragmented.77 In conclusion, the book of Esther was originally a diaspora story without reference to Hellenism: 78 it was partially brought up to date in a Greek translation made in Jerusalem. The book of Judith was the expression in disguise79 of a militant anti-Greek Judaism which derived some inspiration from the Greek Herodotus. The book of Tobit was ultimately a message of unity80, solidarity and hope, either sent81 or purported to be sent from the remote Persian diaspora to the rest of the Jews.82 i A Flavio Giuseppe Momigliano aveva già dedicato una lecture (GL 1980 III, Flavius Josephus) olte che due contributi autonomi contemporanei ad essa: Flavius Josephus and Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem (= Alexander’s visit) 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 P-o 144: (A) -> manuscripts, del. P-o 149, 186: was Aramaic or Hebrew; P-o 131, 144: was Hebrew. P-o 144: too little ... this book, interl.msb[Mom] <-> little the book could offer. P-o 144: Israelite <-> Jew, interl.msb[Mom]. P-o 144: when the diaspora ... itself fragmented, mginfmsb[Mom]. P-o 143: it <-> P-o 144: which. P-o 144: in disguise, interl.msn[Mom]. P-o 144: of unity, interl.msb[Mom]. P-o 143: either sent <-> P-o 144: either actually sent. P-o 144: In conclusion ... of the Jews, msb>r[Mom]. 203 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e III. Some Exemplary Stories from the Jewish World del 1979, incentrato sul particolare episodio dell’ingresso di Alessandro al Tempio e sulla profezia di vittoria che lì ricevette, e Ciò che Flavio Giuseppe non vide (= Ciò che Flavio), del 1980, dedicato agli errori di prospettiva dello storico antico nella valutazione della portata delle due correnti più significative del giudaismo del suo tempo, l’apocalittica e la sinagoga. Va inoltre menzionato il precedente contributo Un’apologia del giudaismo: il «Contro Apione» di Flavio Giuseppe, del 1931 (= Apologia), così come la valutazione dell’affidabilità di Flavio Giuseppe come fonte delle correnti interne del giudaismo che avrà luogo nella prima parte di GL 1982 II (The Jewish Sects). Some Exemplary, c. 2, non è tuttavia l’unico punto in cui Momigliano annuncia il suo proposito – destinato però a rimanere tale e a non trovare l’auspicato sbocco sistematico e, forse, monografico – di riflettere ancora sul ruolo e sulla figura di Flavio Giuseppe, nei cui confronti Momigliano pare avvertire nelle ultime conferenze come un debito di indagine non sanato, la percezione di una necessità di continuare ad approfondire il suo ruolo storico e civile. In proposito, cfr. GL 1982 I (Jews and Gentiles) c.4, in cui lo storico viene definito “both the greatest Jewish representative of the historiography of the oppressed and a chief witness for that disenchantment of the Jews with history which was to continue down to modern times for more than 1500 years”. ii Nella biblioteca personale di Momigliano sono molte le edizioni di Ester e gli studi critici relativi a un libro che doveva evidentemente rivestire per lo storico un interesse non solo scientifico. Significativo come sulla sua copia di The Five Megilloth (hebr. text, Engl. transl. and comm., ed. by A. Cohen, Hindehad, Soncino, 1944) acquistata nel dicembre 1961, compaia come indicazione autografa di collocazione “Bedroom, fireplace”. iii Ester 4.16. iv Grazie alla Guida dei Perplessi, “Moreh nevuchim” nella traduzione in ebraico di Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon. Si segnala la presenza della più popolare edizione inglese della Guida dei Perplessi di Maimonide nella Biblioteca Momigliano: Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, transl. by Shlomo Pines, introd. essay by Leo Strauss, Chicago-Toronto 1963; nel 1982, lo studioso acquista inoltre A Maimonides reader, ed. with intr. and notes by I. Twersky, New York 1972. v Cfr. BICKERMAN 1967A, 191: “In his fifth ‘Avertissement’ to the Protestants (1690) he [Bossuet] contrasts the conduct of the Jews with the later plots against Louis XIV. The Jews, even in danger of extermination, did not undertake anything against their lawful sovereign”. vi TORREY 1940. vii II Macc. 1, 9, 18; 2, 16. viii Per la presenza di Ester in Lutero cfr. BICKERMAN 1967A, 212-213 e n. 48. ix Per un ulteriore contributo di Momigliano sul tema in analisi in questo paragrafo (particolarmente sull’assedio di Betulia), cfr. le due pagine finali di Biblical Studies and Classical Studies: Simple Reflections upon Historical Method (=Biblical Studies). x ENSLIN-ZEITLIN 1972. xi HADAS 1959. Momigliano aveva recensito questo testo in RSI 73 (1961), 147-149 (=Terzo, 765-767), e ne possedeva in biblioteca, oltre all’edizione originale, anche la ristampa americana (New York, Norton 1972). Il riferimento soppresso (vd. apparato) è invece a Grintz, Y. M., Sefer Yehudith, Jerusalem 1957. xii FrGH 532 F 4, Lindian Chronicle D (Fouilles de l’Acropole 2 1941). xiii DUBARLE 1966. xiv Giudici 4-5. xv Giudici 5. xvi Nell’ambito di una valutazione complessiva delle Jüdische Erzälungen (tra cui annovera anche parti di Daniele, Ester, Tobia) come koiné romanzesca ellenistica, Wilamowitz afferma, in modo piuttosto reciso : "Und Judith mit ihrer blutigen Selbsthingabe könnte doch wohl ohne weiteres in einer Novellensammlung wie der des Parthenios Platz finden." (WILAMOWITZ 1905, 122). xvii M‘sh Yhwdyt, midrash che inizia con «e fu nei giorni di Oloferne re di Yawan (= Ionia) », wyhy bymy ‘lypwrny mlk ywn. Per l’intero testo ebraico si rimanda a ENSLIN – ZEITLIN 1972, 182-190; per altri midrashim in trad. ingl., vd. C. MOORE 1985, Appendix II, 103-108. xviii MILIK 1966. 204 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo CL 1981 IV From the World of Maccabees to Philo Sedi e date: GL 1981 II (4 febbraio, cfr. P-o 134, GRANATA 2006, 424) CL 1981 III (aprile-maggio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 424) Documenti: a) GL 1981 III P-o 132 ms. P-o 158 xerox della top c. di P-o 132 P-o 133, P-o 134, P-o 145 (a), c.c. della top c. di P-o 132 b) CL 1981 IV P-o 145 (b) aggiunte mss. P-o 146 xerox di P-o 145 (a-b) P-o 188 nuova versione ds. basata su P-o 145,146, top c. P-o 151, P-o 157 xerox di P-o 188 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. Della lecture, presentata nel febbraio del 1981 come terza Grinfield e poi, con qualche lieve variazione, riproposta tra l’aprile e il maggio dello stesso anno come quarta lecture a Chicago, l’AAM conserva, tra manoscritti e dattiloscritti, nove documenti. Una prima stesura è testimoniata da P-o 132, una versione ms. (datata al 24 dicembre 1980) in cui il titolo, preceduto dall’indicazione “Lecture III”, rimanda all’articolazione del ciclo Grinfield; dalla copia xerox della trascrizione ds., P-o 158 (fascicolo di 19 cc. che reca sulla prima l’annotazione “unrevised copy”) e dalle 3 c.c. della stessa top c., P-o 133, 134, 135. Tra queste, P-o 133 si presenta come un documento corredato da minime correzioni mss. di AMM, essenzialmente frutto di una rilettura finale tesa ad apportare piccoli ritocchi che passeranno (con pochissime eccezioni) nella versione CL. Rilevante nel processo di elaborazione della versione di Chicago è la reading copy P-o 145, documento composito di cui la parte ds. (nucleo a) coincide con P-o 133, ma che vede l’aggiunta, oltre alle consuete annotazioni per la lettura e a qualche correzione, di integrazioni mss. per la nuova versione in forma di appunti sui margini liberi del ds. (quando la lunghezza lo consente) o di fogli a parte (4 bis, 18 bis). Discendono da P-o 145 P-o 146, una copia xerox priva di annotazioni mss., e P-o 188, ds. di 23 cc. testimone della definitiva versione CL. Il nuovo testo è arricchito da citazioni bibliografiche circostanziate e presenta un ricorso alla punteggiatura (soprattutto virgole) più abbondante rispetto alla versione GL, oltre all’utilizzo di qualche vocabolo dalla grafia americana1. Rispetto a P-o 145, piccoli aggiustamenti (ad es. la modifica dell’inizio del terzo paragrafo, cfr. c. 2) sembrano rivelare un testo destinato a dei lettori più che a un auditorio. Di P-o 188 si conservano due copie xerox identiche e prive di annotazioni, P-o 157 e 1512: allo scopo, puramente formale, di individuare un testo base per l’edizione si fa riferimento (salvo rari casi, opportunamente segnalati, in cui la variante accolta proviene da altro documento) a P-o 151, la cui annotazione ms., sulla c. 1, di AMM “Chic. & Grinfield 1981” ne qualifica la destinazione. 2. Argomento della lecture Dei libri ebraici analizzati nella precedente lecture nessuno condivide con il corpus maccabaico l’esperienza nodale della resistenza al pericolo di apostasia: ai protagonisti, minacciati in quanto 1 Cfr. ad es. la sostituzione di centre con center (c. 6 n. 20), honour con honor (c. 13 n. 59) o favourite con favorite (c. 14 n. 65). 2 Di cui la prima erroneamente catalogata da GRANATA 2006 come c.c. Da precisare è anche il rapporto di filiazione tra le due copie: P-o 151 è catalogata in AAM come copia xerox di P-o 157, quindi copia della copia di 188. Benché le due versioni siano del tutto identiche e prive di annotazioni mss. autonome (quelle presenti sono tutte fotocopiate) la presenza di piccole macchie di inchiostro su P-o 188 (pp. 16,17) e fissate diversamente sulle due xerox induce a pensare che anche 151 sia una copia diretta di P-o 188. 205 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo gruppo etnico, non è mai richiesto di abbandonare l’ebraismo. Ѐ sotto Antioco IV che la tentazione esercitata sul giudaismo dalla cultura greca assume per la prima volta la forma della coercizione. A portare alla luce il problema è il libro di Daniele (164 a.C. ca), che distanziandosi dalle generiche promesse dell’oracolistica sul trionfo degli dèi nativi propone per primo una scelta tra obbedienza e disobbedienza a Dio che sarà al cuore di I Maccabei (104 a.C ca.). II Maccabei, epitome dell’opera storica di Giasone da Cirene, si distingue da I Maccabei per l’enfasi miracolistica e la centralità che assegna nella sezione incipitaria al Tempio di Gerusalemme. L’insistenza sulla pratica di Giuda Maccabeo di custodirvi libri sacri appare un tipico tratto ellenistico, riconducibile alla volontà dell’autore di impressionare gli Ebrei di Alessandria. Non soprende che in tale clima celebrativo alcuni Ebrei della diaspora avvertissero la necessità di giustificarsi agli occhi della Palestina: III Maccabei rappresenta il tentativo di ambientare in Egitto una saga locale degna di confronto. L’assenza di generalizzazioni antigreche lascia supporre che il libro preceda il peggioramento dei rapporti tra Greci ed Egizi provocato dall’arrivo dei Romani. IV Maccabei (20-50 d.C. ca.) testimonia invece un’altra forma di resistenza giudaica, la celebrazione dei martiri di età maccabaica. Profondamente ellenizzato nella forma, il sermone sembra essere stato scritto per gli Ebrei di Antiochia, città in cui il culto cristiano dei sette martiri maccabaici ebbe origine da precedenti giudaici. Il confronto del corpus maccabaico con i libri ellenistici che ignorano il pericolo di apostasia (Ester, Giuditta, Tobia) mette quindi in luce come la politica di Antioco IV abbia determinato una divaricazione tra due possibilità di connotazione degli Ebrei, intesi non più solo come gruppo etnico ma anche come gruppo etnico-religioso aperto alla modifica per il tramite della conversione. Le rappresentazioni non risultano tra loro mutuamente esclusive: Filone di Alessandria le riflette entrambe (forse incosapevolmente) tra In Flaccum e Legatio ad Gaium. Se nel primo testo, pur accusando gli Alessandrini di profanare le sinagoghe con immagini dell’imperatore, ne legge i conflitti con gli Ebrei in chiave politica, nella Legatio riconduce invece l’ostilità degli Alessandrini al fatto che gli Ebrei neghino onori divini all’imperatore. Sostenitore del potere romano, Filone predilige in tal senso una strategia di modifica dello status del giudaismo dal ruolo di nazione interna all’impero a quello di gruppo religioso, accentuandone l’elemento di non conflittualità con il potere. Il suo è un tentativo di compromesso destinato a perdere di senso nell’arco di una generazione dalla distruzione del Tempio: i grandi fattori del giudaismo post 70 d.C. diventeranno la reazione al dominio romano e alla ‘terza via’ del Cristianesimo. 3. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione e il rapporto con i testi editi. Il percorso di indagine sulla nascita e l’evoluzione della letteratura resistenziale giudaica si chiude, per così dire, con un ritorno alle origini: i libri dei Maccabei, ovvero l’argomento della monografia pubblicata nel 1930 da un giovanissimo Momigliano con il titolo di Prime linee di storia della tradizione Maccabaica (=Prime linee) e riedita successivamente nel 1931 e nel 1968. Il costante ritorno ai problemi posti da struttura e tematiche mostra come l’attenzione ai libri (particolarmente al primo e a secondo) sia destinata a rimanere viva negli anni: se dopo la pubblicazione nel 1932 de I Tobiadi nella preistoria del mondo maccabaico (=Tobiadi) una lunga pausa dall’argomento pare suggerire una perdita di interesse, il progressivo avvicinamento al giudaismo-ellenistico che prelude alle prime composizioni di lectures sul tema produce nuove pubblicazioni in merito: nel 1975 esce The Second Book of Maccabees (=Second Maccabees), in cui si analizzano la natura dell’epitome, i documenti inclusi in essa e i rapporti con l’originale, e nel 1977 The Date of the First Book of Maccabees (=First Maccabees), focalizzato invece – come già il titolo suggerisce – sui problemi relativi alla datazione del primo libro, individuata da Momigliano tra il 135 e il 129 a.C. (cfr. c. 7). Chiude la serie un ulteriore titolo, The Romans and the Maccabees (= Romans-Maccabees), pubblicato postumo nel 1988. From Maccabees attinge dal materiale di tutti questi saggi e fonda su di esso la propria argomentazione per tracciare la fine di una riflessione che, dalle generiche premesse di contesto incentrate su letteratura resistenziale greca (CL 1981 I) ed orientale (CL 1981 II), ha condotto 206 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo all’individuazione di una specificità della letteratura ebraica resistenziale che nei libri maccabaici, e in Daniele prima ancora, trova la propria realizzazione più matura. Rispetto al nucleo di libri ellenistici isolati in CL 1981 III (Some Exemplary), ossia Ester, Giuditta e Tobia, è solo a partire dalla reazione alla dominazione di Antioco IV che trova infatti espressione in letteratura la nuova esperienza giudaica della scelta tra apostasia e rovina (o eventualmente tra apostasia e guerra): profondamente vincolata alla fascinazione esercitata dalla cultura greca, essa implica – a differenza dell’antico politeismo semitico – un tradimento che va al di là della sfera religiosa, toccando aspetti del vivere e del pensare intrinsecamente connessi allo stile di vita greco. Se l’input in direzione della comprensione della radicalità del problema è dato da Daniele, che per primo mette al centro della propria predicazione la scelta tra obbedire e disobbedire a Dio, appare chiaro come la lecture finisca per rappresentare su un piano strutturale un punto di intersezione profondo tra il percorso delineato attraverso il terzo ciclo, The Jewish Historiography of Resistance, e il principale nucleo argomentativo del secondo, Daniel and the Origins of Universal History, identificabile nell’individuazione di una specificità della formulazione storiografica postulata da Daniele e mutuata verosimilmente da modelli greci. From Maccabees è, in altre parole, un punto di convergenza tra i due percorsi, nella misura in cui mette in luce un rapporto di interdipendenza tra la prospettiva resistenziale maccabaica e la formulazione sui generis dell’universalismo greco in Daniele. Non a caso si apprezzano nella lecture numerosi richiami ai contenuti della GL 1980 II, Daniel and the World Empires (definita solo “elsewhere” alla c. 5, ma probabilmente in considerazione della pubblicazione in parallelo di ulteriori contributi sul tema); così come non pare azzardato vedere nella lettura momiglianea di Daniele come profeta ‘duro’, che rifugge le facili consolazioni (“Daniel refuses to give hope to whoever wants hope”, c. 5), una presa di distanza nei confronti di quella singolare, ‘rosea’ valutazione identificata come peculiare di Flavio Giuseppe in GL 1980 III, Flavius Josephus (“there cannot have been many who saw Daniel in the rosy colours in which Josephus saw him”, c. 9). Il disegno complessivo è ormai chiaro, e i quattro cicli sul giudaismo ellenistico intrinsecamente legati. Dopo una conclusione dell’indagine dedicata a Filone e al suo tentativo di compromesso con il potere politico romano – destinato a fallire con la distruzione del Tempio del 70 d.C. – la conclusione di From Maccabees appare già proiettata verso l’ultima serie di lectures. “But the choice is now primarily with the individual Jew: and the choice is between Greek life and Jewish life” (c.24), è una sintetica anticipazione dell’indagine dell’ultimo ciclo, dedicata all’individuazione di quei punti di contatto tra giudaismo ed ellenismo attraverso i quali la componente resistenziale oltrepasserà il confine della produzione storiografica, assumendo una valenza più diffusamente culturale. 207 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo IV*3 From the Books of Maccabees to Philo I In my previous lecture I analyzed4 three texts – the book of Esther, the book of Judith and the book of Tobit. The book of Esther in its Hebrew form shows5 no love for Jerusalem, no interest in a Jewish State and no care for Levitic purity. It represents the outlook of a Jewish group which is selfconscious, surrounded by hostility and only implicitly relying on God’s help. The Greek version of Esther brings the Hebrew book up to date in the matter of purity requirements, as one would expect from a book translated after 150 B.C., but does not modify the attitude of the original text to Jerusalem, to the Temple or indeed to the future of the Jews. The book of Judith pays only secondary attention to Jerusalem and the Temple as such, but is both formalistic in its attitude to the Law and belligerant in relation to the enemies of Judaism. Interestingly enough, both formalism and belligerency are identified with a woman: there were of course biblical precedents for both roles, if we think of Ruth for the first role and of Deborah and Jael for the second. But the very fact of making one woman the sole cause of the liberation of Israel creates difficulties if one tries to see in the book of Judith the expression of that faith in God which led the Jewish peasants to fight with Judas Maccabeus against the Syrians and to win against all expectations. I hesitate, therefore, to treat this book as a Palestinian book and prefer to believe that the wars of the Maccabees affected it from a distance: the book of Judith appears to me to have been written in the Diaspora. The book of Tobit surely must also come from the Diaspora6; a moving document, as I see it, of the allegiance of a remote group of Jews, or perhaps even of one individual Jew, to the Messianic [2] hopes connected with the restoration of Jerusalem. Thus none of these three books is Maccabean in the sense of facing – or rather having to face – the peculiar experience of the Jews under Antiochus IV, that is, the danger of apostasy, whether imposed by a foreign king or brought about by the propaganda of7 Jewish assimilationists attracted by the beauty of Yawan. The Jews of Esther, Judith and Tobit felt the fear of persecution and destruction, such as any ethnic group may feel. They were not faced by the choice between apostasy and ruin. They were menaced qua Jews: they had not been asked to relinquish Judaism as they understood it in order to survive. Characteristically enough, none of the three books I analyzed8 mentions the Greeks. They claim to describe situations of the Assyrian and Persian periods. Their Hellenistic date can be discovered only by work of scholarly detection. The books I am going to analyze in the following pages9 mention the Greeks by name and oppose them, in so far as the Greeks interfere with Jewish law, but they do not condemn Greek * Documento preso come base: P-o 151, copia xerox (identica a P-o 157) di P-o 188, fascicolo di 23 cc. testimone della nuova e definitiva versione CL 1981. Si segnalano inoltre in apparato le varianti presenti nel documento composito P-o 145, una c.c. della versione GL corredata dalle aggiunte CL, e in P-o 133, ulteriore c.c. della versione GL interessata da correzioni (per lo più formali) di AMM. Sono riportate infine all’occorrenza le lezioni alternative di P-o 132, ms. alla base della versione GL, allo scopo di evidenziare l’evoluzione della lecture a partire dalla sua prima stesura. 3 P-o 151: IV; P-o 145: IV <-> III, ms[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: III; P-o 151: Chic. & Grinfield 1981, tsf1, mgdx ms[AMM]; P-o 145: 25 Wed. Feb. 3-5 – 26 Thursd. 3, tsf1, mgsn; Reading copy, mgdx msb[Mom]. 4 P-o 151: analyzed; P-o 132, 133, 145: analysed. 5 P-o 151: shows; P-o 132: shows <-> has. 6 P-o 151: The book of Tobit ... Diaspora; P-o 133, 145: The book of Tobit ... Diaspora <-> From the Diaspora surely must come the Book of Tobit, ms[133 AMM, 145 Mom]. 7 P-o 132: the propaganda of, interl.msn. 8 P-o 145: I analyzed -> last week, msb[Mom], del. 9 P-o 151: I am going ... pages; P-o 145: I shall analyse today, msb[Mom]. 208 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo civilization as such.10 The new experience of Judaism in the Maccabean and post-Maccabean period is the internal choice between apostasy and ruin – or alternatively between apostasy and war. The temptation of “other gods” was of course as old as the Jewish people itself. But the old temptation had never taken the precise form of an order from outside: it was, literally, a direct temptation by the “other gods”. Now the Greeks – or at least kings who spoke Greek – seemed to require apostasy, and there were Jews who were ready for it. Individual cases of apostasy among Jews in the service of kings are already known for the third century. The classic example is the apostate Dositheusi who saved the life of Ptolemy IV according to III Maccabees 1, 3.11 In so far as apostasy was a temptation to betray the God of the Fathers, it re-introduced into Jewish history the old conflicts of the First Temple, about which one had heard much less during the [3-4] Second Temple, which12 had arisen under the protection of the Persians. Thus Jewish history returned to God through temptation. But we must be clear that it was temptation of a different kind from the previous one. It was mainly a foreign temptation; and the foreigners had beautiful songs, beautiful games and above all attractive thoughts. Ultimately, the confrontation which the Greeks were now creating, and to which Esther, Judith and Tobit are still insensitive, went far beyond the religious sphere and touched aspects of living and thinking which had hardly been problematic to previous generations of Jews. Whether one took part in the life of the gymnasium or went to the theatre or simply read Greek books, there were new issues. The book which opens the new era of choice between apostasy and faithfulness is13 the book of Daniel, which can be dated rather exactly about 16414 B.C. I am not concerned with the formation of this book, which shows traces of a long evolution. As I have said elsewhereii, chapter 2, with its characteristic formulation of the four world empires, is most probably to be dated about 250 B.C. If chapter 6, where Darius the Mede is said to have imposed a cult exclusive15 to himself, belongs to the earlier section of the book of Daniel, which is uncertain, it would be an interesting indication that some Jews had been expecting new inducements to apostasy16 from the spreading of the royal cult.17 Nor am I concerned here with the additions which are to be found in the two Greek translations, the one of which we conventionally call the LXX and the other attributed to Theodotion, which had largely replaced the LXX in the Christian Church by A.D. 250 (only the Syro-Hexaplar text and the earliest quotations of the Vetus Latina follow the LXX). These Greek additions to Daniel increase the number of dramatic or curious episodes in the lives18 of Daniel and his companions. They also increase the share of prayers and hymns in the ritual of preparation of men for martyrdom. But unlike the additions to the Greek Esther, these additions to Daniel (that [5] is, the stories of Susanna, of Bel and the Snake, and the prayers of Azariah and his companions in the furnace) do not contribute to the updating of the book either in political or even in religious terms. They simply make the book more interesting and devout for the superficial reader and are therefore difficult to date and to place. I can hardly believe that there are many students today prepared to follow Nehemiah Brühl (Jahrbücher für Jüd. Geschichte und Literatur 3, 1877, 1-69)iii in the idea that 19 Susanna’s story was invented to polemize against Sadducean methods of questioning witnesses as soon as the authentic cult of Yahweh was restored in the Temple of Jerusalem after its profanation by Antiochus IV. For our purpose what counts is the half-Hebrew, 10 P-o 145: Characteristically enough, none ... as such, mgsup,snms[Mom]; P-o 132, P-o 133: def; P-o 145: -> There is a Jewish objection to Greek interference, but no Jewish objection to Greek civilization, mgsnmsb[Mom]. 11 P-o 145: Individual cases of apostasy ... 1, 3, mgsnmsb[Mom]; P-o 132, P-o 133: def. 12 P-o 151: which; P-o 132, 133: that. 13 P-o 132: faithfulness is -> undoubtedly, del. 14 P-o 151: 164; P-o 132: 165; P-o 133, 145: 164 <-> 165, ms[133 AMM, 145 Mom]. 15 P-o 151: a cult exclusive; P-o 145: an exclusive cult, msb[Mom]. 16 P-o 151: new inducements to apostasy; P-o 145: troubles <-> new inducements to apostasy, msb[Mom]. 17 P-o 145: If chapter 6, where ... royal cult, mginf,dxmsb[Mom]; P-o 132, P-o 133: def. 18 P-o 132, 133, 151: lives; P-o 145: life <-> lives, msb[Mom]. 19 P-o 151: to follow ... in the idea that; P-o 132, 133: to believe with ... that; P-o 145: to follow ... in the idea that msb[Mom] <-> to believe with ... that. 209 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo half-Aramaic book of Daniel20, which was hurriedly put together at that time. The hurry is manifest in the loose composition of the book itself. It uses three not very well amalgamated kinds of materials: first, the sayings of Daniel as an interpreter of somebody else’s vision; secondly, the episodes of courage shown by him and his companions; thirdly, the personal visions of Daniel himself regarding the future of Israel. Whether intentionally or not, the Jewish seer seems to have two functions: he is capable of interpreting on request the signs given to non-Jews; at the same time he has direct access to the future of his own people. As for the Jews, Daniel offers no collective salvation; rather, he envisages redemption for those who understand and are the saints of the Most High. Consequently, no political programme is proposed, not even open support for the Maccabean rebels, though there is a notorious allusion in 11, 34 to the little help which is apparently expected from them. Daniel makes the choice between obedience and disobedience to God the center21 of his speculation on the whole of human history and connects the expectation of the realm of God with this choice. Certainty is confined to the advent of the realm of God: there is no saying how many will choose to enter it. Daniel refuses to give hope to whoever wants hope. There is a difference between his prophecy and those prophecies, say the Egyptian Potter’s [6] Oracleiv, which promise the end of foreign rule and the triumphs of the native gods. Daniel is not so much concerned with the victory of the true God as with22 the experience of suffering23 which will bring it about (“they shall fall by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder”, 11, 33). The first and second books of Maccabees (the ones among the Maccabean books which tell the history of this period) are in a hundred ways different from Daniel. They are not apocalyptic and to a great extent eschew the dimension of universal empires in which Daniel places the conflict between Antiochus IV and the Jews. There is just an allusion to the Macedonian world-empire at the beginning of I Maccabees, without consequence for the rest of the book. But both I and II Maccabees agree with Daniel in recognizing the new element introduced into Jewish history by Antiochus. The war against the Greeks is not an automatic reaction against aggression: it is a deliberate choice by certain Jews, not by all Jews. The war cry of Mattathias in I Macc. 2, 27 expresses this choice: “let everyone who is zealous for the Law and supports the covenant come out with me”. In II Maccabees, even more conspicuously, the actual rebellion of the Maccabees is preceded by the martyrdom of Eleazar and of the Seven Brothers. War is preceded (and therefore characterized) by martyrdom. Daniel would have approved. Before we proceed to a more detailed analysis of these two books, let me emphasize the very elementary fact that what is surprising is that these books exist at all. As we have received them in a Christian context (the Jews soon forgot them), we are not used to consider how exceptional it is to have accounts of wars (and holy wars at that) written from the point of view of the enemies of the Greco-Macedonian empires. They offer the rare opportunity of seeing the world from the other side; and one must immediately add that the opportunity is not made easier by the complicating factor that the authors of [7] the two books were in varying measure influenced by their enemies. Both books are deeply Jewish and yet in a hundred details reflect the ways of thinking of the surrounding Greeks. I am the last to claim to be able to disentangle what is Hebrew and what is Greek in the I and II Maccabees: the entanglement involves not only moral and religious judgments, but the very technique of describing a war, an art which the Greeks had been perfecting throughout the centuries.24 The first book of Maccabees, as we all know, was originally written in Hebrew in conscious imitation of the biblical historical books, especially of Samuel and Kings. It cannot be later, in its 20 P-o 145: of Daniel, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 132, P-o 133: def. P-o 151: center; P-o 132, 133: centre. 22 P-o 132: Daniel is not so much concerned with the victory of the true God as with <-> In Daniel resistance is no generic notion: it is related to. 23 P-o 132: suffering <-> martyrdom. 24 P-o 145: Before we proceed to a more detailed analysis ... the centuries, ts.msb[Mom] su f.4bis; P-o 132, P-o 133: def. 21 210 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo original Hebrew text, than 104 B.C. I have in fact suggested in Mélanges Heurgon 1976 a date between 135 and 129 B.C., mainly on the basis of the Roman data contained in chapter 8v. I Maccabees reflects the period in which relations between Jews and Romans developed rather idyllically in the common hostility to the Seleucids. The chapter25 on the Romans is also the one for which it would be most difficult to find parallels in biblical historiography. It is a sort of ethnographical characterization of the Romans of a type which was current among Greek historians. This piece is very different from most of the rest, where the style itself tries to establish continuity with earlier and more heroic stages of Hebrew history. The dirge for Judas Maccabeus (9, 21) echoes David’s lamentation over Saul and Jonathan (II Sam. 1, 19; 27). When the author praises the government of the High Priest Simon as a time when “Judaea was at peace ... old men sat in the streets talking together of their blessings, and the young men dressed themselves in splendid military style” (14, 9), the echo of Zechariah 8, 4-5 must have been obvious to his readers: “Once again shall old men and old women sit in their streets of Jerusalem ... and the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing”. The reader, incidentally, must also have been aware of the novelty of the allusion to young men in robes of [8] war (στολὰς πολέµου), which is far from Zechariah’s intentions and perhaps reflects Greek habits26. In I Macc. 7, 7 there is even an explicit quotation of Psalm 79. But as the author has a sensitive eye for each situation and can differentiate between the atmosphere of religious enthusiasm of the early days of Judas Maccabeus and the more prosaic generations which followed, his account is hardly meant to edify the reader. After all, he ends his story with a tale of murder and attempts to murder. This, too, perhaps was biblical: the ruthless description of realities. The second book of Maccabeesvi is a Greek summary of a book originally written in Greek: more precisely, an epitome27 in the Hellenistic style of a work in five books by Jason of Cyrene. The scope of the epitome (and presumably of Jason’s text) is narrower than that of I Maccabees. It ends in 160 B.C. with Judas’ victory over Nicanor, which is the occasion for the creation of a new festival. In curious contrast to this conclusion, II Maccabees begins with three letters from the Jews of Jerusalem to the Jews of Egypt, the most recent of which is dated in 124 B.C.: these letters, and especially the last28, commend the celebration, not of the day of Nicanor, but of the purification of the Temple which belonged to a different month and had no military character29. There are various possible explanations for this disharmony between the beginning and the end of the book (the former commending what became known as the festival of Hanukkah, the latter emphasizing the importance of a festival of victory called the day of Nicanor, placed suspiciously one day before the festival of Purim, which, we must not forget, was also called the day of Mordecaivii ). The simplest explanation, however, is that the author of II Maccabees30 preserved the end of the original history by Jason of Cyrene, with its partiality for the festival of Nicanor’s day, but added of31 its own initiative the letters at the beginning which modified the emphasis of Jason’s work and made [9] the purification of the Temple the more32 important episode from the point of view of the Jewish religious calendar. We may think33 that Jason of Cyrene wrote between 160 and 124 B.C., more probably very near to 160 B.C., while the anonymous epitomist wrote in 124 B.C. to support the Jews of Jerusalem, when they turned to the Jews of Egypt in a third34 effort to persuade them to adopt the festival of the purification of the Temple. If this hypothesis is accepted, some consequences follow for both the original work of Jason and its epitome. The emphasis on the 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 P-o 145: chapter -> 8, msb[Mom], del. P-o 151: and ... habits; P-o 132, 133: def; P-o 145: and rather Greek, interl.msn[Mom]. P-o 151: is a Greek summary ... epitome; P-o 132, 133: is a summary or epitome. P-o 132: and especially the last, interl. P-o 132: and had no military character, interl. P-o 132: of II Maccabees <-> of the epitome which we call II Maccabees. P-o 133, 145: on <-> of, ms[AMM]. P-o 151: more; P-o 132: most; P-o 133, 145: more <-> most, ms[133 AMM, 145 Mom]. P-o 132: We may think <-> It would follow. P-o 132: third <-> new and determined. 211 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo prehistory of the persecution of Antiochus – including Heliodorus’ attempt to rob the Temple and the struggles between the priestly factions of Jerusalem – may well35 go back to Jason. Jason must also be responsible for the emphasis on miracles and on heroic deaths by martyrs of the faith. This is not something that could be added gratuitously36 by the epitomist. Such a combination of miracles and martyrdom is in itself unusual. Stories of miracles were conventional in Hellenistic accounts or chronicles of temples: the chronicle of the temple of Athena in Lindos is the standard example viii . More specifically, a god was expected to intervene miraculously against the robbers of his own temple. Far less common, as far as I know, is the description of episodes of martyrdom, though of course Greek philosophy, at least since Socrates, knew and cultivated courage in the face of death as one of the supreme forms of personal virtue. Jason of Cyrene seems to have superimposed on the conventional account of temple miracles an unusual interest in episodes of martyrdom. Furthermore, his notion of martyrdom was not identical with that of Greek philosophers but reflected new trends within the Jewish religion. It is also likely that the striking isolation of Judas Maccabeus in the present II Maccabees reflects Jason’s view of the hero whom he put at the center of his book. If Jason had given the father of Judas, Mattathias, anything like the space he receives in I Maccabees, the epitomist would have been compelled to say some[10]thing about him. Jason, therefore, not the epitomist, seems to be responsible for the bold decision to suppress the deeds of Mattathias and to present instead episodes of martyrdom. The origins of the rebellion are thus placed, not in the priestly family of Mattathias, but in the almost anonymous sacrifice of pious individuals. Here again we see the confluence of two motifs. One is the imitation of the biblical style of the book of Judges, where each individual chieftain creates the new situation without much reference to his family. The other is the implicit preference given to37 individual martyrdom over38 priestly leadership. The epitomist – that is, the author of the II Maccabees as we have it –39 seems to be a less bold fellow. Where he explicitly speaks in his own name, as in chapter 6, 12-17, he contributes40 some rather trivial philosophy of history: “The Lord did not see fit to deal with us as he does with the other nations: with them he patiently holds his hand until they have reached the full extent of their sins, but upon us he inflicted retribution before our sins reached their height”. On other points all we can say is that II Maccabees is different from I Maccabees.41 The book expresses belief in resurrection and in the efficacy of sacrifices for the dead (12, 45). Though the book is about struggles against Greek or Macedonian enemies, there is a remarkable absence of anti-Greek feelings: the news of the death of the High Priest Onias provokes indignation among many Gentiles (4, 35); the citizens of Tyre feel sympathy with Jewish victims (4, 49), and the city of Scythopolis is spared by Judas because its citizens had helped the Jews in previous times (13, 30). The common origin of Jews and Spartans stated in the book (5, 9) may simply be one of those diplomatic devices characteristic of the age, but it provokes no qualms. The author is not, and does not want to be taken for, a hater of the Greeks.42 [11] What quite clearly could not have existed in Jason because it is in the opening letters – that is, outside the narrative of the book – is the emphasis on the purification of the Temple. This is a new component in the epitome and had been absent from Jason’s original text.43 The third of these three44 letters is at the same time the most Jewish and the most Greek piece – and altogether the 35 P-o 132: may well <-> must. P-o 132: gratuitously <-> easily, interl. 37 P-o 132: preference given to <-> adequation of. 38 P-o 132: over <-> in comparison with ms[AMM]. 39 P-o 132, 133: - that is ... we have it -, def; P-o 145: interl.ms[Mom]. 40 P-o 151: contributes; P-o 132: makes; P-o 133, 145: contributes <-> makes, ms[AMM]. 41 P-o 132: Maccabees. -> it is more difficult to distinguish the hand of the epitomator fom that of Jason, del. 42 P-o 145: The author is not ... of the Greeks, mginfms[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 43 P-o 145: original text. -> The three opening letters are the most Jewish – and most puzzling – section of the II Maccabees, interl.ms[Mom], del. 44 P-o 145: three -> opening, msn[Mom], del. 36 212 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo most puzzling.45 While the first46 of the letters is dated in 124 B.C., and the second (quoted by the first) in 143 B.C.47, the third48 appears to have been written by the senate (gerousia) of Jerusalem and by Judas Maccabeus himself either in the year of the purification of the Temple after its desecration by Antiochus IV or on the first anniversary of the purification; that is, either in 164 B.C. or in 163 B.C. This letter, as we have it, connects the purification with previous actions in the same direction by King49 Solomon and by50 Nehemiah. With some51 ability, the writer leaves the nature of this connection rather obscure, while implying a miraculous element in the events of 164 B.C. by their very comparison with the miracles of earlier times, which he describes at length. The compiler of the letter goes on to establish another point of similarity between Judas Maccabeus and Nehemiah: both collected sacred books in the Temple. The letter in fact includes an offer to the Egyptian Jews to provide copies of these books, if they want them: “These books are in our possession and if you need any of them send messengers for them” (2, 15). Pride in a central library and readiness to provide copies of rare books are, needless to say, typical features of Hellenistic culture. The composer of the letter knows how to impress the Jews of Egypt. If we remember that the one Egyptian Jew who is selected for specific mention among the addressees of this letter is the apologist Aristobulus, who is probably our earliest source for the story of the semi-miraculous translation of the Pentateuch into Greek by the Septuagint, the detail of the Temple library in our letter becomes [12] even more significant. One of the most important elements of the LXX story is that both the text for translation and the translators had been provided by the Jerusalem Temple. Our letter seems to tell Aristobulus and his fellow-Jews of Alexandria that books are still obtainable from Jerusalem for further translations. The sophisticated Jews of Alexandria are reassured that the Jews of Jerusalem are not behind the times in the matter of libraries.52 Thus the three letters at the beginning of II Maccabees taken together combine the purpose of keeping the Egyptian Jews well informed about Palestinian events with the purpose of reaffirming the authority53 of Palestinian Judaism both in the matter of festivals and of sacred books. The ultimate implication is that the Diaspora Jews must follow the example of the Palestinian Jews. Two questions are obviously raised by these prefatory54 letters and more specifically by the one attributed to the senate and Judas Maccabeus in 164 or 163 B.C. Were these letters inserted into the present text by the compiler of the epitome? And – a more delicate question – is the long letter of 164 B.C. (in its entirety or in its central excursus about miracles) a forgery concocted in Jerusalem to reinforce the two more recent letters, which are almost certainly authentic? There is no certain55 answer to these questions, as far as I know. As I have already hinted, my subjective impression is that it was the compiler himself who inserted the three letters into his text as a sort of suitable proem56. It is also my impression that the letter attributed to the gerousia and to Judas with a date of 164 or 163 B.C. is too good to be true: I prefer to think of it as a text compiled during one of the later attempts 57 to persuade the Egyptian Jews to adopt the Hanukkah festival. But I must immediately add that my friend Professor Ben-Zion Wacholder, whose judgement I deeply respect, has expressed exactly the opposite point of view in the Union College Cincinnati Annual (UCCA) 49 (1978), pp. 89-133ix. He sees in the [13] letter a first-class authentic document of the beliefs and 45 P-o 145: The third of these three ... the most puzzling, mgsupmsn[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. P-o 151: first; P-o 132, 133: third; P-o 145: first <-> third, msn[Mom]. 47 P-o 145: and the second quoted by the first in 143 B.C., mgsnmsn[Mom]; P-o 132,133: def. 48 P-o 151: third; P-o 132, P-o 133: first; P-o 145: third <-> first, ms[Mom]. 49 P-o 145: King, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 50 P-o 154: by, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 132, 133, 151: by, def. 51 P-o 132: some <-> singular, msn. 52 P-o 132, 133: def; P-o 154: The sophisticated Jews of Alexandria ... of libraries, mginfmsn[Mom]. 53 P-o 132: authority <-> centrality, ms[AMM]. 54 P-o 151: prefatory; P-o 132: prefatorial <-> initial, ms.[AMM]; P-o 133, 145: prefatory <-> prefatorial, ms[AMM]. 55 P-o 151: certain; P-o 132: dogmatic; P-o 133, 145: certain <-> dogmatic, ms[133 AMM, 145 Mom]. 56 P-o 151: proem; P-o 132: proemium. 57 P-o 132: during one of the later attempts <-> about 124 B.C. when it was decided in Jerusalem to make a final attempt. 46 213 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo intellectual ambitions of Judas Maccabeus in 163 B.C.: Judas Maccabeus would have been58 a collector of books on behalf of the Temple. I suspect on the contrary that Judas Maccabeus was turned into a book-collector by somebody who wanted to impress and please the Jews of Alexandria.59 The exceptional character of I and II Maccabees is in any case established by their very nature as accounts of a successful resistance. Though far from enthusiastic about the story they tell, both books end in the legitimate constatation that the Jews have regained their freedom. As I Maccabees says, in quoting the text of the inscription in honor60 of Simon: “he with his brothers and his father’s family had stood firm, fought off the enemies of Israel, and ensured his nation’s freedom” (14, 26). II Maccabees quietly concludes with the memorable words: “and from that time Jerusalem has remained in the possession of the Hebrews” (15, 37). But if freedom was already a problematic notion for the Greeks, it was even more so for the Jews. For Herodotus, and perhaps more generally for the Greeks, gaining or regaining freedom did not immediately pose the problem of what you will do with your freedom to please your gods. For the Jews, acquiring freedom could not be an end in itself. It raised immediately a double series of questions: on the temporal61 level, how a Jewish state could remain Jewish if it had to defend itself62; and on the divine level, how it could serve God truly if it remained Jewish. For the Greeks successful defense63 or recovery of freedom was evidence for the superiority of one’s own political institutions. For the Jews worldly success, as the case of Solomon had proved, was no longer equivalent to64 conformity with God’s will. [14] II Before the Palestinian Jews were made aware of their dilemma by an unexpected factor – Roman conquest – the Jews of the Diaspora found themselves in a curious situation in relation to their brethren in Palestine. They were committed to support the cult of Jerusalem and consequently did not remain indifferent to events in Palestine; but they needed the Temple less and less and even found it possible to pray in languages other than Hebrew or Aramaic. In this slightly ambiguous situation it is perhaps not surprising that some Diaspora Jews should feel impelled to justify before God (and perhaps before their Palestinian brethren) their own life outside Palestine. One way was to show that Diaspora Jews had their own troubles and were protected by God no less than Palestinian Jews. The third book of Maccabees is an attempt by Egyptian Jews to create a local saga worthy of comparison with the Maccabean saga. The present text does not allude explicitly to the Maccabees, but we must remember that something is missing at the beginning. Whoever gave the book its present title must have felt that there was an analogy between the story told in it and the feats of the Maccabees. As in the book of Esther and in II Maccabees, the point of departure of the III Maccabees65 is an existing festival. It was celebrated every year for seven days by the Jews of Alexandria and, at a different date, by the Jews of the rest of Egypt. III Maccabees provides an explanation for this festival. It tells us that during his victorious campaign of 217 B.C. against Syria Ptolemy IV Philopator tried to gain admittance to the sancta sanctorum of the Temple of Jerusalem but was prevented from entering it. In revenge he decided to Hellenize the Jews of Alexandria and to offer them citizenship in exchange for their participation in the cult of Dionysus (whom we know 58 P-o 145: have been -> himself, interl.ms[Mom], del. P-o 145: Judas Maccabeus would have been ... the Jews of Alexandria, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 60 P-o 151: honor; P-o 132, 133: honour. 61 P-o 132: temporal <-> earthly, ms[AMM]. 62 P-o 132: if it had to defend itself <-> within the demanding Hellenistic system by which it was surrounded. 63 P-o 151: defense; P-o 132: defence. 64 P-o 151: was no longer equivalent to; P-o 132: was never equivalent to <-> never made superfluous other tests to assess; P-o 133: was never equivalent to. 65 P-o 145: of the III Maccabees, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 59 214 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo independently to have been the favorite66 god of this king). As the Alexandrian Jews refused to yeld, the king proceeded [15] to direct persecution. By a strange non sequitur67 which the writer cannot justify, Ptolemy IV went beyond punishing the Alexandrian Jews: he ordered the transport of the Jews of the Egyptian hinterland to the hippodrome of Alexandria where they were joined voluntarily by the Alexandrian Jews. The purpose was to have them trampled on68 by elephants. However, the elephants turned against their attendants and spared the Jews. This was an obvious miracle, and Ptolemy IV was persuaded by it to adopt a more reasonable attitude. The Jews were sent home and a seven-day festival was arranged for them by the king at his expense. The Jews decided to repeat the celebration every year, but as we have seen the Jews of Alexandria kept a different date from the Jews of the hinterland. As it happens, we have another much shorter and less elaborate version of a similar story in Flavius Josephus, Contra Apionem 2, 53-55. There is no reference here to an unfortunate visit to Jerusalem or to the cult of Dionysus. Indeed, the persecutor is not Ptolemy IV, but Ptolemy VIII, Physcon, and the persecution is more credibly69 limited to the Alexandrian Jews who had supported a rival candidate for the throne. However, the central episode of the elephants returns in this version with the same miraculous consequence; and Josephus explicitly alludes to the commemorative festival, which is limited to one day. Notwithstanding all the differences, it would seem probable that Josephus provides a variant version of the story told by III Maccabees. By his time the seven-day festival may have been reduced to one day. If so, it seems clear that nobody remembered the origins of the festival exactly, and various explanations were supplied. Whether there is any truth in either of the two explanations which have reached us, it is impossible to say. The one provided at length by III Maccabees builds up a picture of a religious persecution which starts in Jerusalem when a Ptolemy, like Heliodorus, tries to penetrate into the holiest [16] part of the Templex. The attempt at Hellenizing the Jews of Alexandria reminds us of Antiochus IV. One has the impression that the author of III Maccabees had in fact read II Maccabees. He introduces a pious and wise old man, Eleazar, into his story (6, 1) as a counterpart to the martyr Eleazar of II Maccabees. Like II Maccabees, III Maccabees is anxious to avoid any generalized anti-Greek or even anti-Alexandrian feeling. The author says that the Greeks of Alexandria were in sympathy with the Jews. He is less kind to the native Egyptians, but even in what he says about them, we are still far from the atmosphere of direct confrontation and dislike which characterizes the age of Philo and Flavius Josephus. I therefore tend to agree with an admirable essay by Bacchisio Motzo published in 1913 and republished recently in the posthumous collection Ricerche sulla letteratura e la storia giudaicoellenistica (1977), 351-416 xi that III Maccabees must have been written before the Roman intervention in Egypt worsened the relation between Jews and Greeks, if not between Jews and native Egyptians. Nowadays, III Maccabees is more often70 given a Roman date, because one sees71 in the text (2, 28) an allusion to a poll-tax which was probably introduced72 by the Romans about 22 B.C. Consequently, it has been suggested (for instance by Mary Smallwood in her valuable book on The Jews under the Roman Rulexii, p. 232) that III Maccabees is a historical novel with Augustus disguised as Ptolemy IV. But what the text says is that the Alexandrian Jews who disobeyed Ptolemy IV were reduced εἰς λαογραφίαν καὶ οἰκετικὴν διάθεσινxiii. Οἰκετικὴν διάθεσιν certainly means “servile condition”. What λαογραφία means in the context is less certain. The meaning of “poll-tax” is not the only one (cf. C. Préaux, L’Économie royale des Lagides, 1939xiv, 380-387; L. 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 P-o 151: favorite; P-o 132, 133, 145: favourite. P-o 151: non sequitur; P-o 133, 145: non sequitur <-> inconsequence, msn[AMM]. P-o 151: trampled on; P-o 132: stampeded; P-o 133, 145: trampled on <-> stampeded, msn[AMM]. P-o 132: more credibly, interl.ms. P-o 145: more often, interl.ms[Mom]; P-o 132, P-o 133: def. P-o 151: sees; P-o 132: finds; P-o 133, 145: sees <-> finds,[133 AMM, 145 Mom]. P-o 151: was probably introduced; P-o 132: was introduced. 215 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo Neesen, Untersuchungen zu den direkten Staatsabgaben der römischen Kaiserzeit, 1980xv, 125)73 and is not the most obvious in this context: slaves, as far as I know, [17] are not supposed to pay poll-tax.74 If we75 take here λαογραφία to mean “census” – a meaning current in the late Ptolemaic Egypt, as shown by Papyri Tebtunis 103, 121, 189 of the first century B.C. – we may interpret the sentence as a whole to say that the recalcitrant Jews will be registered and reduced to slavery. Immediately afterwards the text adds that the same Jews will be branded by fire with an ivy-leaf, a symbol of Dionysus. Branding by fire was the mark, or, if you like, the registration of a runaway slave. In preferring a Ptolemaic date for III Maccabees I would not, however, go earlier than 100 B.C. In his classic article about the Makkabäerbücher in Pauly-Wissowa, E. Bickerman gave some formal arguments, which seem to me still valid for a date in the first part of the first century B.C. xvi ; we may add the meaning λαογραφία as “census”xvii . The author undoubtedly managed to indicate that even in the Diaspora (and more precisely in the Great Diaspora of Egypt) the Jews were ready to face76 death in obedience to the Law of the God of their Fathers. The way in which the persecution was presented – as a consequence of attempted profanation of the Temple of Jerusalem – reasserted the natural link between the Jews of Egypt and the Temple of Jerusalem: not a superfluous reassertion when there was in Egypt a Jewish Temple of dubious status. By these events under Ptolemy IV the Jews of Egypt would have shown the way77 to the Jews of Jerusalem under Antiochus IV.78 My conclusion is that, as far as we can judge, there is no factual truth in the story told by the III Maccabees. Unlike the first two books, the III Maccabees is a fiction meant to give some religious respectability to the Jews of Egyptxviii in the eyes of other Jews and to convey a message of religious and ethnic solidarity. It is a fiction like the book of Esther, but unlike the book of Esther and like the book of Tobit it declares obedience to and love for Jerusalem.79 III [18] Another form in which the idea of active Jewish resistance to Hellenization spread was through the celebration of the martyrs of the Maccabean era, of those martyrs first mentioned in the II Maccabees80 who, significantly enough, were later called by the Christians the Maccabean martyrs tout court. The fourth book of Maccabees present itself as a sermon about them. Deeply Hellenized in form (with clear echoes of Platonic and Stoic texts), this sermon, however, defends the Torah. It may have been read during a yearly commemoration of those martyrs. In Antioch the Christian cult of the seven Maccabean martyrs seems to have originated from Jewish precedents. If so, it is not unlikely that IV Maccabees was written for a Jewish audience81 in Antioch. Commemoration of martyrs is not unknown to the Jewish tradition. The ten martyrs of the Hadrianic period, whether authentic or not, are even now commemorated in the liturgy of Kippur. The author of IV Maccabees gave the title “governor of Syria, Phoenicia and Cilicia” (4, 2) to the general82 who, on behalf of Seleucus IV, came to ransack the Temple of Jerusalem. This is an anachronism clearly suggested 73 P-o 132: not the only one (cf. ... 125) <-> hardly to be reconciled with the reduction of the Jews to servile condition: those who paid poll-tax under the Romans were not slaves, but free men of inferior classes. 74 P-o 145: and is not the most obvious ... to pay poll-tax, mginfms[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 75 P-o 132: If we <-> I am inclined to. 76 P-o 145: to face -> slavery and, interl.msn[Mom], del. 77 P-o 132: shown the way <-> preceded and given an example. 78 P-o 132: By these events ... Antiochus IV, mginfmsn. 79 P-o 145: My conclusion is that ... for Jerusalem, inter. e mgsn, msn[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 80 P-o 145: first mentioned in the II Maccabees, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 81 P-o 151: a Jewish audience; P-o 132: an audience; P-o 133, 145: a Jewish audience <-> an audience [133 AMM, 145 Mom]. 82 P-o 151: gave the title ... to the general; P-o 132: called ... the general; P-o 133, 145: gave the title ... to the general <-> called ... the general [133 AMM, 145 Mom]. 216 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo (as E. Bickerman observed thirty-five years agoxix) by Cilicia and Syria being associated in one Roman province between 20 and 50 A.D. The passage is an indication not only of the probable date of the text, but also of the probable area in which the text was written, Syria. Another text celebrating episodes of the Maccabean story is likely to have an Antiochean origin. The Antiochus Scroll or Megillat Antiochus has reached us in several versions83, the oldest of which, in Aramaic, seem to belong for linguistic reasons to the period between the second and fifth centuries A.D. A critical edition has been provided by M.-Z. Kadari in the Annual of Bar-Ilan University, 1-2, 1963-4xx. As I have observed elsewherexxi , the Antiochus Scroll [19] connects the names of Antiochus and his general Bagris (a modification of the name of the authentic general Bacchides) with the names of the city of Antiochia and of its outskirts Pagrai. Only an Antiochean writer with an eye to Antiochean readers could make such a connection. The Antiochus Scroll does not, however, speak of the so-called seven martyrs, but of the true Maccabean brothers and especially of their father Mattathias. It seems therefore to be a text produced in Antioch when the seven Maccabean martyrs had already been christianized, and the Jews had to go back to what they could remember (not very much) of the history of Mattathias and his sons in order to keep alive the memory of the Maccabees84 among the Jews of Antioch. In this the Megillat Antiochus was more than successful. When I-II and IV Maccabees had for all practical purposes been forgotten by the Jews, the Antiochus Scroll remained popular reading for them85. It was in the main read privately, but in the late Middle Ages it penetrated into the Synagogue service. I must now emphasize what seems to me the most important result of our inquiry. The Jews, being a specific nation with a specific religion, faced the dangers any specific nation with a specific religion would had to face in antiquity. If conquered – or singled out for persecution as a minority within a given State – humiliation would be extended to its own God or Gods. This is the situation represented by the book of Esther or the book of Judith. Egyptians, Babylonians and Celts might have written similar stories 86 . Indeed, the Egyptians, to all appearances, did so. 87 But the persecution of Antiochus IV was a different story. It opened a new era in which the Jews were essentially offered the choice between being persecuted or adapting themselves to forms of cult acceptable to the ruling power. Humiliation was no longer an inescapable situation resulting from membership of a particular ethnos: it was a situation from which escape was offered through some kind of apostasy. The novelty of [20] this situation must be seen against the background of what A.D. Nock has rightly defined as the new feature in the religion of the post-classical period: the feature of conversionxxii . Apostasy and conversion obviously go together; they represent alternative points of view for describing the same phenomenon, which is of cutting one’s own religious roots and modifying the whole of one’s life. Though conversion was possible under certain conditions within paganism, for instance in philosophic and mystical circles, it became characteristic of the transition from paganism to Judaism or to Christianity88, or, more seldom, from Christianity to Judaism.89 Just as the notion of apostasy was connected with hopes of earthly gains by those who disapproved of it (and perhaps also by some who submitted to it), so refusal of apostasy implied 83 P-o 151: versions; P-o 132: redactions; P-o 133: versions <-> redactions, ms[AMM]; P-o 145: versions <-> redactions, msn[Mom]. 84 P-o 132: Maccabees <-> Maccabean rebellion. 85 P-o 151: popular reading for them; P-o 132: regular reading for the Jews; P-o 133, 145: popular reading for them <> regular reading for the Jews, ms[133 AMM, 145 Mom]. 86 P-o 132, 133: similar stories -> though the problem remains why, to all appearances, they did not write them, del.; P-o 145: similar stories -> and the chances are that some of them did [<-> that they did] to judge from the little that survives, mgsupmsn[Mom], del. 87 P-o 145: Indeed, the Egyptians, to all appearances, did so <-> though the problem remains why, to all appearances, they did not write them, interl.ms[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 88 P-o 132: or to Christianity -> Viceversa, apostasy came to denote transition from Judaism or Christianity to paganism or from Judaism to Christianity, del. 89 P-o 145: or, more seldom, from Christianity to Judaism interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 217 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo danger of martyrdom (and in effect led some people to martyrdom). All the four books of Maccabees illustrate the new perspective of apostasy and martyrdom. The book of Daniel had introduced this perspective at the very beginning of the Maccabean rebellion: it had even anticipated what was later to become an important ingredient of any invitation to apostasy, namely the cult of the sovereign. In so far as the Jews were faced with requests of apostasy which would have made no sense to Egyptians or Syrians, or indeed to Greeks, the Jews were in a unique position, and their destiny could appear – both to them and to the Gentiles – as exceptional. What made the Jews exceptional in the Hellenistic world was not their monotheism, taken by itself, but the alternative90 of apostasy which Jewish monotheism implied.91 The connotation of the Jews as a permanent ethnic group and the connotation of the Jews as an ethnico-religious group open to change through apostasy were of course not mutually exclusive. Apostasy after all affected92 only minorities. Until anti-semitism became completely racist in the twentieth century A.D., it had always been possible93 to treat the Jews as a closed group, but to open the [21] gates to apostates.94 In the early first century A.D., Philo reflected both connotations in his two accounts (in In Flaccum and in Legatio ad Gaium) of the troubles for the Jews of Alexandria during the reign of the emperor Gaius (Caligula) – the first serious troubles they had under the Romans. Philo’s In Flaccum is primarily concerned with the Jews as a closed95 ethnic group which comes into conflict with its neighbors96 in the city of Alexandria and with the local Roman authorities. The Legatio ad Gaium takes us to Rome and is at least in part aware of the alternative to persecution which is provided by conformity or apostasy97, and more specifically by adoption of the ordinary practices of the imperial cult. As Philo was both a communal leader and a religious thinker, we may well ask how far98 he was conscious of this duality reflected in his writing.99 Both works were written not long after the events which are dated within the brief reign of Gaius between 37 and 41 A.D. It emerges from the texts themselves that In Flaccum was preceded by another book now lost, while the Legatio ad Gaium was followed or at least due to be followed by a Palinode which is missing from our corpus of Philonian writings. Eusebius in Hist. Eccl. 2, 5 speaks of five books in which Philo narrated what happened to the Jews in the time of Gaius. This text can be interpreted in different ways, but fundamentally confirms what we can deduce from Philo’s own words. It is evident that at best we have one-half and at worst two-fifths of Philo’s original account of these matters. Our interpretation is inevitably open to a large margin of error. Yet any reader of In Flaccum is struck by the fact that though Philo says in so many words that the Alexandrians desecrates synagogues by setting up images of Gaius (41), most of this treatise is taken up by the conflicts between Alexandrians and Jews about civic rights100 and by the decision of Flaccus, as a governor of Egypt, to strip the latter of their traditional privileges as inhabi[22]tants of Alexandria. By contrast, the Legatio ad Gaium is centered on the question of imperial cult and contains a violent attack against this emperor for his claim to divinity. Philo here connects the hostility of the Alexandrians to the Jews with their awareness that the Jews are the only ones to deny Gaius divine honorsxxiii . In101 Legatio the pogrom precedes the desecration of the synagogues, whereas <in> In Flaccum the desecration of the synagogues by the Alexandrian leads to the 90 P-o 145: chance <-> alternative, msn[Mom]. P-o 145: What made the Jews exceptional ... monotheism implied, interl.msn[Mom]. P-o 132, 133: def. 92 P-o 145: affected -> in practice, interl.msn[Mom], del. 93 P-o 132, 133: been possible -> for anti-semites, del.; P-o 145: for other religious groups <-> for anti-semites, interl.ms[Mom]. 94 P-o 145: Until anti-semitism became ... to apostates, del. 95 P-o 151: a closed; P-o 132: an invariable; P-o 133, 145: a closed <-> an invariable [133 AMM 145 Mom]. 96 P-o 151: neighbors; P-o 132, 133, 145: neighbours. 97 P-o 145: or apostasy, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 98 P-o 151: how far; P-o 132, P-o 133: whether; P-o 145: how far <-> whether, ms[Mom]. 99 P-o 145: it is interesting that he reflected this duality in his writing but was not very conscious of it msn[Mom], del <> we may... in his writing. 100 P-o 133, 145: about civic rights [133 AMM, 145 Mom]; P-o 132: def. 101 P-o 132: in <- Consequently, del. 91 218 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo pogrom. The In Flaccum is confined to the narrow Alexandrian horizon: the Alexandrians and the Roman governor are the villains. In Legatio ad Gaium the main issue is the imperial cult, and Gaius is the villain. The amplification of the horizon produced a correspondingly wider problem: did the Jews remain loyal subjects of Rome if they refused to worship the emperor?102 Philo is therefore careful to emphasize in Legatio the profound devotion of the Jews to the Roman Empire and produces a panegyric to Augustus the sincerity of which we have no reason to doubt. Philo belonged to the Jewish upper class of Alexandria, which had supported the Romans since the times of Caesar and had everything to lose by breaking with them. I am not convinced by Erwin Goodenough, who in his Politics of Philo Judaeusxxiv suggested that in The Allegories of Law Philo presented the biblical Joseph as a political opportunist in order to caricature the opportunistic Roman governors. Philo preferred contemplative to political life – and therefore must have had some difficulties with the worldly biblical Josephxxv – but this was a further good reason for leaving to the Romans the dirty job of policing the world and making it safe for contemplative men like the Therapeutae and Philo himself103. Of course even the most loyal Jew could not accept the emperor as god. Though to all appearances very friendly with his apostate nephew Tiberius Alexander, Philo had no intention of following him down the way to apostasy (Joseph. Ant. Jud. 20, 100). But this does not cancel104 what seems to me one of the basic [23] assumptions of Philo’s thought: he needs the Roman Empire in order to be the Jew he is.105 Some other traits of his explicit thought seem to confirm his readiness to accept the Roman Empire as a suitable frame for the development of an austere, philosophic Judaism. His interest in and sympathy for unpolitical106 sects like the Essenes and the Therapeutae are obvious. His notion of Jewish Law is one of regulations supplementing and improving the rules obtaining in the pagan world. The arguments in favor107 of this point of view vary in the different works of Philo, but when he comes closest to an apologetic work intended to be read by pagans, namely in the Hypothetica or “Exhortations”, he says that Jewish Law is better because it is stricter than pagan laws, and furthermore any Jew knows it without having to turn to experts (7, 14). In speaking of Philo’s thought, we must never forget that what he says is surrounded by a zone of silence.108 Philo never mentions the Messiah; he has only one specific reference each to the return of the dispersed Jews to the Holy Land (Praem. 28-29) and to the conversion of the Gentiles to “our laws” (Mos. 2, 44). He must have thought much about these things: no educated Jew of his time could easily avoid such subjects. But he did not choose to speak109 about them. It is useless to try to press Philo to say more than he intended to say. The logic of his philosophy was perhaps to move Judaism from the role of a nation within the Roman Empire to that of a philosophic or religious sect, thereby accentuating the element of free choice in the profession of Judaism and the need of support from an external power like Rome.110 But there is no such thing as logic in the relation between a man and his religious faith.111 Within one generation the world of Philo had disappeared. The Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed and the Jews of Egypt were involved in the mortal struggles under Trajan. Philo himself112 seems to have been forgotten by his fellow-Jews very [24] soon and owes his survival to readers he had not foreseen: the intellectual 102 P-o 145: The amplification of the horizon ... the emperor?, mgsnms[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. P-o 151: the Therapeutae and Philo himself; P-o 132, P-o 133: Philo. 104 P-o 145: But this does not cancel <-> We have here reached, interl.msn[Mom]. 105 P-o 145: But this does not cancel ... Jew he is, interl.ms[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 106 P-o 145: unpolitical, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 107 P-o 132, 133: favour; P-o 151: favor. 108 P-o 132, 133: In speaking of ... of silence, def; P-o 145: silence -> What he explicitly says tends to present Judaism as something oscillating between an ethnic and a philosophic corporation, del. 109 P-o 132, 133: to speak -> aloud, del. 110 P-o 145: and the need of support ... like Rome, interl.ms[Mom]; P-o 132,133: def. 111 P-o 132: relation between ... faith <-> human solutions; P-o 145: religious philosophy <-> religious faith, interl.msn[Mom]; faith -> Philo the man may have been much more traditionalistic than his religious philosophy seems to imply. 112 P-o 145: Philo himself -> (like the Books of Maccabees), interl.ms[Mom], del. 103 219 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo Christians of second- and third-century Alexandria. Given the existence of a diaspora, the destruction of Jewish Jerusalem did not mean the death of a nation as in the case of the destruction of Carthage. It was perhaps rather more like the destruction of Corinth which put an end to Greek independence, but not to Greek thought. But Jewish survival could no longer be sought in direct confrontation with the Greeks (which was still Philo’s situation): indeed, what could any confrontation with the Greeks possibly mean after A.D. 70? The two big factors of Jewish life were Roman rule, from which it had become impossible to escape either by rebellion or by limited autonomy, and rising Christianity, which offered the promise of a third way to those who were tired either of Jewish Law or of Roman values. Judaism after A.D. 70 is mainly characterized by reactions to institutions, events and beliefs which are very seldom mentioned explicitly. For most Jews were never attracted by Roman values and never tired of the Torah. I have confined myself to what we may call the Greek stage of the Jewish situation, though Philo was probably already born as a Roman subject. What I think we have learnt from the texts I have been considering is that a group of texts113, such as Esther and Judith,114 was115 basically dominated by an idea of a static Jewish nation menaced by the surrounding nations. The more recent texts are increasingly emphasizing the dangers of apostasy; that is, of internal disintegration. No doubt the danger of internal disintegration is brought about by the example and indeed by the requests of foreign nations which are more powerful.116 But the choice is now primarily with the individual Jew:117 and the choice is between Greek life and Jewish life.118 119 i Per un altro riferimento momiglianeo a Dositeo, vd. Ebrei e Greci, 17. GL 1980 II (Daniel), c. 10. iii BRÜHL, 1977. iv Sull’Oracolo del Vasaio vd. CL 1981 II (Resistance, East) , cc. 7-8. v Cfr. The Date of the First Book of Maccabees (=First Maccabees). vi Per ulteriori momiglianei su II Macc., cfr., oltre a Prime linee di storia della tradizione maccabaica (=Prime linee), The Second Book of Maccabees (=Second Maccabees) e il postumo The Romans and the Maccabees (=RomansMaccabees). vii Cfr. CL 1981 III (Some exemplary), c. 7. viii Cfr. CL 1981 III (Some exemplary), cc. 17-18. ix WACHOLDER 1978. x II Macc. 3, 21-28. xi MOTZO 1913. xii SMALLWOOD 1976. xiii III Macc. 2, 28. xiv PREAUX 1939. xv NEESEN 1980. xvi BICKERMANN 1928. Per la datazione del libro nella prima parte del I sec. a.C., vd. part. gli argomenti alla col. 798: dipendenza di III Macc. da II Macc. per il ritratto di Filopatore nel tempio (= Eliodoro nel Tempio, II M.3), per i due angeli in III 6.18 (= II 3, 16ss); citazione, in III 6, 6, di un’aggiunta apocrifa a Daniele (i tre giovani nella fornace, Dan. 3, 50); l’assenza di attributi divini rivolti al sovrano nel prescritto della lettera a 3, 12 rispecchia formulazioni anteriori al 41 a.C.; se identificata con la metropoli di Arsinoite, la Ptolemais menzionata a 7, 17 fornisce un terminus a quo, dal momento che la città aveva assunto tale nome (abbandonando il precedente Crocodilopolis) tra il 117 e il 114. xvii Cfr. TCHERIKOVER 1945, pp. 91 ss., e HADAS 1976, 19-21. xviii Si rimanda sul tema a STROUMSA 2003. xix BICKERMAN 1945. ii 113 P-o 145: a group of texts <-> the earlier texts, msn[Mom]. P-o 145: Judith -> and even the I Maccabees, del. 115 P-o 145: was <-> were, ms[Mom]. 116 P-o 145: more powerful -> But there is now a choice before the Jews and between Jews. The dilemma had been known to the prophets of old, but had been less evident during the Persian rule and in the first 150 years of Hellenistic rule. It is now not so much [...], del. 117 P-o 145: individual Jew: -> a choice which the existence of a large diaspora makes easier, the choice between Greek life and Jewish life, del. 118 P-o 145: I have confined myself ... Jewish life, msn[Mom]; P-o 132, 133: def. 119 P-o 145: life. -> Greek life is never condemned in itself, at least in the texts I have considered, ms[Mom], del. 114 220 Chicago Lectures 1981 – T h e J e w i s h H i s t o r i o g r a p h y o f R e s i s t a n c e IV. From The World of Maccabees to Philo xx KADARI 1963-64. Cfr. Prime linee sulla tradizione maccabaica (= Prime linee), part. alle pp. 58 ss. xxii NOCK 1933. xxiii Phil. Leg. 114-9. xxiv GOODENOUGH 1938. xxv Piuttosto oscillante risulta la valutazione filoniana della figura di Giuseppe, in bilico tra elogio e riprovazione: se nel De Josepho (cfr. part. il par. 70) è ritratto come uomo di stato ideale, disinteressato agli onori, agli incarichi, privo di presunzione, giusto e moderato, è nelle Legum Allegoriae che si radica l’accusa di “medietà”, percepita da Filone come l’incapacità di Giuseppe di scegliere tra la dimensione umana e quella divina. Giuseppe è definito altrove φιλοσώµατος καὶ φιλοπαθὴς νοῦς, una mente che ama il corpo e le passioni (Quod deus sit immutabilis 111), che si interessa all’eccellenza fisica e ha un avido desiderio di riuscire in questioni terrene (De somniis 2, 11): per una valutazione della questione nelle sue implicazioni con la riflessione filoniana sull’idolatria, si rimanda a SANDELIN 1991. xxi 221 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles GL 1982 I Jews and Gentiles Sedi e date: CL 1977 (aprile-maggio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 415) EL 1978 (12 novembre, cfr. *D-a 1) GL 1982 (20 gennaio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 426) Documenti a) CL 1977 IV P-o 39 top c., nuova versione basata su P-o 33 (xerox di P-o 21 = NL 1977 III1, con aggiunte mss.) P-o 82, P-o 52 (b), P-o 181: c.c. di P-o 39. b) aggiunte per EL 1978 V P-o 52 (a), P-o 182: aggiunte mss. P-o 54 (b) nuova versione basata su P-o 52 (a-b) P-o 54 (c) nuova versione delle pp. 17-21 basata su P-o 55 (c.c. della precedente versione, ulteriormente corretta) P-o 59 (a), P-o 162 (b), P-o 180 (b) c.c. di P-o 54 (b-c) c) aggiunte per GL 1982 I P-o 53 aggiunte mss. P-o 54 (a) top c. di P-o 53. P-o 162 (a), P-o 180 (a): c.c. di P-o 54 (a). 1. Osservazioni preliminari Prima di prendere in analisi il testo di Jews and Gentiles occorre considerarlo in rapporto al ciclo di cui fa parte, l’ultimo in ordine di tempo, presentato a Oxford nel 19822: il titolo, Between Synague and Apocalypse, recupera quello della Grinfield Lecturership del 1979, delineando in tal modo una sorta di Ringkomposition che riconduce all’origine il punto di arrivo della riflessione momiglianea sul giudaismo ellenistico. A rispettare questa sistemazione – senza riunire in un’unica serie i due cicli omonimi, alterando così la sequenza delle conferenze – induce la constatazione dell’effettiva esistenza di un progetto organico di concertazione dei quattro cicli, per il cui progressivo costituirsi si rimanda all’Introduzione alla presente edizione. Attraverso l’analisi di storia e apocalittica, colte da una prospettiva universalistica e resistenziale, la seconda e la terza serie contribuiscono a sostanziare l’argomentazione della quarta da prospettive parallele, convergendo nel delineare quel duplice declino di entrambe le manifestazioni letterarie che costituisce un nucleo fondamentale, secondo l’interpretazione di Momigliano, del passaggio dalla cultura ebraica di età ellenistica alle forme codificate del giudaismo rabbinico3. La scelta di riproporre qui l’esatta successione cronologica delle lectures intende quindi riprodurre quella che appare l’ultima struttura complessiva perseguita – e comunicata – dell’indagine, nel rispetto della sua complessità d’impostazione. Nulla afferma invece, naturalmente, circa la struttura – che rimane ipotetica – del libro (o forse dei libri) progettati e mai realizzati. 2. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati Così come proposto nella sua ultima versione (GL 1982 I), il testo di Jews and Gentiles ha alle spalle una storia complessa, che la ricostruzione condotta da GRANATA 1999 rende possibile dipanare: la lecture ha origine da un nucleo proveniente dalla terza conferenza Northcliffe 1977 (Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past), riproposto con il titolo di Jews and Gentiles prima a Chicago, nel maggio-giugno dello stesso anno, e poi a Cincinnati, nel novembre 1978. In 1 Attitudes. Per l’articolazione dei cicli, cfr. part. GRANATA 1999, 76-78 e ID. 2006, lxviii-lxxi. 3 Nella stessa direzione sembra andare anche un dato documentario: su un foglio sciolto contenuto nel fascicolo P-o 89 (che reca il testo della prima Grinfield, Prologue) AMM riporta, alla fine del 1981, l’elenco delle Grinfield lectures svolte e in programma, ripartendole per anni ma non per cicli. 2 222 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles occasione del suo ultimo ciclo Grinfield, a oltre tre anni di distanza, Momigliano riprende in mano il testo EL per rielaborarlo ulteriormente: testimoniano la versione definitiva i quattro principali documenti a cui si farà riferimento per l’edizione della lecture, P-o 53, 54, 162 e 180. Del precedente stadio di composizione l’AAM conserva la top c. ds. CL 1977, P-o 39, e le sue tre c.c.; i primi documenti mss. di elaborazione delle aggiunte EL, P-o 52 e 182; e infine P-o 55, c.c. della versione provvisoria delle pp. 17-21 di P-o 54. Rispetto a questo stadio, l’apparato si propone di privilegiare piuttosto la fase GL di elaborazione. Compaiono qui modifiche di grande importanza, indicate dalla stessa AMM sul fascicolo che testimonia la prima rielaborazione del testo EL in prospettiva GL, P-o 544: “This Efroymson Lecture V (1978) has become Grinfield I, 20.1.82 (5 new pp. at beginning [therefore Efroymson p. 1 = Grinfield p. 6], and insertion of pp. 6a and 6b on p. 6. Also numerous additions elsewhere)”. Le 29 c. dss. di cui si compone contengono in effetti le 5 pp. del nuovo inizio e le 2 pp. inserite come 6a e 6b (di cui P-o 53 offre l’originale ms.); tuttavia, per ritrovare le altre “numerous additions” bisogna piuttosto cercare (sempre secondo le indicazioni di AMM) nelle due c.c. tratte da P-o 54, P-o 162 e P-o 1805. È P-o 180 a documentare meglio le modifiche Grinfield sul testo Efroymson: reading copy GL, il documento mostra una certa stratificazione (testimoniata dal ricorso a diverse penne) di interventi di modifica di mano di Momigliano stesso; alla ricchezza di aggiunte mss. in margine (di cui due, particolarmente estese, vengono ricopiate a macchina su foglietti allegati alle pp. 15 e 24) si affianca anche una presenza consistente di tagli al testo. Le modifiche e le aggiunte di P-o 180 (ma non i tagli, dato di cui è doveroso tener conto) ricompaiono, trascritte con penna rossa da AMM, sull’altra c.c. di P-o 54, P-o 162, un fascicolo la cui revisione è stata quindi evidentemente condotta sulla base del precedente. Come testo di riferimento per l’edizione si propone quello di P-o 180 che, per le caratteristiche appena descritte, si presenta come il documento più autorevole; tuttavia, l’assenza in P-o 162 delle indicazioni di taglio, unita alla possibilità che la loro funzione in P-o 180 assolva il fine pratico di non oltrepassare i tempi di esposizione, induce a riservare pari considerazione editoriale a entrambi i documenti in corrispondenza dei passi in questione. 3. Argomento della lecture La vitalità del giudaismo nella sua particolare relazione con l’ellenismo è esemplificata dallo sviluppo della paideia ebraica della sinagoga e dalla nascita di una storiografia che rivisita modelli greci (Daniele). Tra le ulteriori aree di contatto si individuano inoltre la lingua (influenza del greco su lessico, sintassi, ordine delle parole), il conformismo sociale (il recupero dell’onomastica greca teoforica, la forma dei documenti) e il rispetto dei sovrani negli ambienti religiosi. Emerge il fenomeno della pseudoepigrafia ebraica, di frequente rivolta ai gentili: paradossale testimonianza della debolezza di dialogo tra Ebrei e non Ebrei nel mondo ellenistico, esprime il disagio di una comuncazione che per realizzarsi deve ricorrere all’espediente di un sincretismo artificiale. Su questa scia si colloca il disinteresse degli autori pagani per la Bibbia o per il giudaismo, mai davvero studiato allo scopo di essere compreso. Non esistono discussioni teologiche o filosofiche tra Ebrei e Greci e lo stesso interesse di pensatori ebrei come Filone per la filosofia greca appare finalizzato a trarne supporto per il proprio sistema teologico. Il proselitismo diventa l’unico vero spazio di relazione intellettuale, per quanto anche qui l’incontro del singolo proselita con la Bibbia sia successivo e non anteriore alla conversione al giudaismo, la cui forza attrattiva va piuttosto ricondotta alla nozione ebraica di Dio o alle pratiche cultuali e magiche. Unica vera area di comunicazione intellettuale che emerge da tale analisi è la storiografia: se la tradizione storica degli Ebrei, la Bibbia, non dà ovviamente spazio a Greci e Romani, la forzata coesistenza ne rende necessaria la rivisitazione. Un primo aspetto centrale nell’operazione è la cronologia e la conseguente discussione tra Greci ed Ebrei (Eupolemo, Apione, Giuseppe) sulla priorità delle rispettive storie. La battaglia di dati viene sostenuta dai documenti – topos comune 4 5 Riproposte poi in apertura di P-o 162 e P-o 180, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 63. “See additions and alterations in carbon copy of Grinfield Lectures”. 223 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles alla storiografia ellenistica – molti dei quali risultano il prodotto della libera iniziativa degli storici, talvolta responsabili di massicci processi di interpolazione. Un secondo aspetto centrale del dibattito è offerto invece dall’ingresso di Roma nella prospettiva storiografica ebraica, che inizia a guardarne istituzioni ed eventi proponendosi come destinatario un pubblico misto, ebraico-romano (Giuseppe Flavio, Filone di Biblo). La discussione è destinata tuttavia a esaurirsi con l’opera di Giuseppe: benché abbia verosimilmente contribuito a smorzare l’interesse storiografico la perdita dell’indipendenza, la causa profonda della cessazione della storiografia giudaica va indagata in parallelo all’analogo destino di un altro genere letterario, l’apocalittica. 3. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione Una prima, immediata evidenza sulla natura delle modifiche operate da Momigliano nella versione GL non può non tenere conto della necessità di bilanciare un testo subordinato a tempi di esposizione: alla cospicua aggiunta di circa 14.200 battute risponde infatti la riduzione proporzionata di quasi altrettante (13.7006). Ѐ inoltre chiaro come la posizione incipitaria acquisita dalla lecture richiedesse la stesura di un prologo in grado di fare da ponte tra l’ultimo ciclo e i temi affrontati in quelli precedenti. Momigliano raggiunge lo scopo con una trattazione di cinque pagine che solo grande difficoltà può essere considerata alla stregua di una ‘sutura’ estemporanea, data l’ampiezza concettuale perseguita e la sua efficacia nell’illuminare relazioni e implicazioni tra le principali tematiche. Chiave interpretativa è il riconoscimento della centralità della pratica storiografica, collocata fra i due temi polari di sinagoga e apocalisse: chiaro tentativo, già colto da Giovanna Granata, di reductio ad unum o rinnovata fusione tra il progetto organico dei due cicli omonimi Between Synagogue and Apocalypse e lo sviluppo di distinti nuclei tematici incentrati sulla storiografia universalistica e su quella della resistenza7. Di diversa natura rispetto all’aggiunta incipitaria risultano le inserzioni, sufficientemente cospicue da richiedere una trascrizione dattiloscritta. Occupa i ff. 6a-b un tentativo di chiarimento sulle ragioni della divergenza fra le espressioni letterarie rinascimentali di cosmopolitimo ebraico e la produzione giudaico-ellenistica, influenzata da un progressivo processo di separazione fra Ebrei e gentili. Sempre nell’ambito di un’accentuata attenzione a un terreno sociale comune si colloca anche l’aggiunta del f. 15bis, in cui il ricorso dei gentili al nome sacro in ambito magico è affiancato alla pratica ebraica delle “vie degli Ammoniti”. L’inserzione delle osservazioni su Filone di Biblos (24 [bis]) è riconducibile invece all’interesse crescente di Momigliano, fra il 1978 e il 1982 (del 1980 è l’Interpretazione minima dedicata a Filone in ASNP 8 ), per un autore che contribuisce a ricollocare in una prospettiva più ampia la ricerca di “legittimazione regale” perseguita da Flavio Giuseppe. Tra i tagli che interessano la lecture, il più cospicuo – per importanza e quantità – riguarda l’excursus di circa due pagine e mezzo (cc. 18-20) sviluppato a partire da un’analoga disamina proposta in Alien Wisdom (pp. 92-4) e dedicato ai rappresentanti della storiografia giudaicoellenistica. È Momigliano stesso a motivarne l’elisione: “As I have characterized Jewish Hellenistic historiography in my previous lectures and published works, I shall not go into details except on two points: one is the interest in chronology and the other is the intervention of the Romans in the debate” (c. 18, P-o 180). I due cicli centrali, unitamente ai singoli contributi licenziati sull’argomento negli stessi anni (su quali cfr. nota xxxiv al testo), rendono quindi superfluo questo breve quadro d’insieme. 6 Il conteggio tralascia i piccoli interventi su poche parole; comprende invece le aggiunte “maggiori” (cc. 1-5: 9.296; cc. 6a-6b: 3563; c. 15[bis]: 579; c. 24[bis]: 764 – totale: 14.202 battute) e i tagli corposi (13.656 battute). 7 “I due nuovi cicli nascono invece in maniera molto più autonoma, rappresentando lo sviluppo di distinti nuclei tematici, la cui fusione rispetto al testo originario è semplicemente affidata alle nuove premesse delle Grinfield dell’82” (GRANATA 1999, 92). 8 MOMIGLIANO 1980a. 224 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles Nel trascrivere su P-o 162 i numerosi interventi mss. su P-o 180 AMM non tiene però conto di questa né di altre indicazioni di taglio. Rimane dubbio se tale scelta sia stata determinata da un’attesa di conferme dirette da parte dell’autore, o se Momigliano stesso abbia richiesto il mantenimento nella copia delle parti di testo eliminate, forse allo scopo di riconsiderare quegli interventi che i limiti dell’esposizione orale avevano reso necessari. Si tratta in entrambi i casi di ipotesi non verificabili: può tuttavia contribuire alla riflessione una presentazione sintetica delle cancellazioni più rilevanti. I primi due tagli vengono operati all’interno dello stesso incipit: Momigliano elimina un’osservazione generale sui caratteri della resistenza e dell’assimilazione ai Greco Macedoni e ai Romani, considerata forse fin troppo nota al suo pubblico (nonché già oggetto di approfondimento nella GL 1981 I, The Resistance), e taglia anche sulla questione samaritana, già accennata nella GL 1979 III (The Jews Inside) e su cui dà in generale l’impressione di non volersi addentrare. Vengono infine eliminate porzioni di testo relative a temi già proposti altrove: sulla nozione di mistica, Filone e le sette (cfr. tagli alle cc. 13-14), sulla storiografia (cc. 22-23 e 24). Il taglio sull’ultima pagina risponde plausibilmente all’intento di evitare piuttosto anticipazioni sul nucleo tematico della lecture di chiusura. L’eliminazione (ripetuta da AMM su P-o 162, f. 10) di poche righe sui libri sibillini appare invece riconducibile a un desiderio di ripensamento su un tema che Momigliano, alla fine della vita, recupererà due volte9. 9 MOMIGLIANO 1987C; From the Pagan to the Christian Sibyl: Profecy as History of Religion (=From the Pagan). 225 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles I Jews and Gentiles*10 I The resistance of the conquered to the conquerors is nothing surprising. But the GrecoMacedonian conquest of the East included two unusual features. First, the Greeks were at the same time partners in the conquest and the victims of it. They ruled the East in the service of the Macedonian kings, but had to defend their liberties in the old cities of Greece against Macedonian kings, and they did not always do so very successfully. Secondly, when after 150 years the conquerors were in their turn progressively transformed into subjects of another empire, Rome, there was a chance for some of the minor political entities of recovering for a while a precarious political freedom under Roman protection. This was the case of the Jews for about a hundred years between Antiochus IV of Syria and Pompey. The combination of these two features helps to explain why the Jews never completely identified Greek culture with the culture of their oppressors. There was even a question of kinship between Spartans and Jews while the Jews were fighting against the Seleucid kings. Greek language, Greek political, social and legal ideas were never repudiated as coming from the enemy. On the other hand, there was a period, so eloquently documented by chapter 8 of the First Book of Maccabees, of collaboration between Jews and Romans against the Greeks or at least the Seleucids. The will to collaborate with the Romans survived Pompey’s attack on the Temple of Jerusalem and became characteristic of a large section of the Jewish upper class both inside and outside Judaea. Philo’s family in Alexandria collaborated firmly. Julius Caesar was supposed to have extended his cosmopolitan sympathies to the Jews. Hence the contrasting aspects of the attitude of the Jews towards Greeks and Romans. Jewish resistance to Greeks and Romans has more than the usual share of what characterizes resistance to Greeks and Romans anywhere: intense devotion to native cults and native priests; distrust [2] of foreigners and ultimately rebellions coloured by religious hopes. At the same time the Jews were next to the Romans the most attentive to the basic features of Greek civilization and very ready to absorb elements of Greek education and social life: Greek became one of the languages of Judaism for several centuries. Much attention was also devoted to the organization of the Roman state and to Roman legal thinking, though Roman influence on the Jews is far more limited than that of the Greeks11. It has now become a commonplace that there is no aspect of Jewish life between Alexander the Great and the destruction of the Second Temple which was not affected by Hellenism. Which is also to say that there is no aspect of Judaism of that period which is not marked by the effort to challenge Hellenism in the very act of taking it into account. * Documento preso come base: P-o 180, c.c. di P-o 54 e reading copy GL 1982, che offre la migliore documentazione di aggiunte e modifiche Grinfield sul testo Efroymson. Si riportano inoltre le varianti di P-o 162 (c.c. “gemella” la cui revisione è stata condotta sulla base di quella di P-o 180 ma che si differenzia per l’assenza di alcuni tagli al testo), ed eventuali lezioni significative presenti in P-o 54, fascicolo composito di 29 ff. che testimonia la prima fase di rielaborazione del testo EL in prospettiva GL. Si segnala infine, all’occorrenza, il testo di P-o 53, originale ms. delle aggiunte GL. 10 P-o 180: Reading copy – Jan. 82, tsf, msb[AMM]; New beginning Grinfield I, Jan. 82, then Efroymson V, 1978 from p. 6 (with additions) – (Found Latymer Court, Feb. 91), tsf, msn[AMM]; P-o 162: New beginning of Grinfield I, 20.1.82 [from p. 6 = former p. 1 = Efroymson V, 1978] tsf, msr[AMM]; P-o 54: su un f. sciolto: See additions and alterations in carbon copy of Grinfield Lectures. This Efroymson Lecture V (1978) has become Grinfield I, 20.1.82 (5 new pp. at beginning [therefore Efroymson p. 1 = Grinfield p. 6], and insertion of pp. 6a and 6b on p. 6. Also numerous additions elsewere). AND Efroymson Lecture VI has become Grinfield III, 3.2.82 – with many changes, deletions and additions. See carbon copy (removed from this folder and now in Grinfield Lectures 1982 folder), msr[AMM]; P-o 53: tsfmsr[AMM]: New beginning of Grinfield I, 20.1.82 to Efroymson V. 11 P-o 53: Roman influence on the Jews is far more limited than that of the Greeks <-> there is no comparison between Greek and Roman influence on the Jews. 226 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles It must be emphasized once again that neither of these two aspects is absent from the story of the resistance, say, of the Egyptians and of the Babylonians against the Greco-Macedonians, or of the Egyptians and of the Celts against the Romans. There, too, we find on the one hand the familiar picture of the religiously motivated rebellions and, on the other the inclination to absorb the culture and the techniques of the conqueror. But, to judge from results, both resistance and assimilation went deeper among the Jews than among Egyptians, Babylonians and Celts. Under Greeks and Romans Judaism acquired a vitality and an intellectual coherence which we miss in other cultures of the oppressed in the same period.12 In my previous Grinfield Lectures I tried to exemplify this vitality of Judaism13 with reference to two topics. The first was the specific type of Jewish education, or, if we like the Greek word, paideia, in its correlation with the development of the synagogue: synagogue and class-room go together from the very beginning. The second topic was the appearance of a corpus of Jewish historical writing which was under the influence of Greek models, but reinterpreted the Greek suggestions in Jewish terms. I shall only [3] mention the transformation of the Greek theory of the four monarchies into Daniel’s vision of the reign of God replacing the four monarchies, and the elaboration of motifs evidently coming from Herodotus Book VII in the story of Judith. The point I have just made about Daniel reminds us that Jewish apocalyptic incorporated Greek historical elements. In the concluding Lectures of this year I should like to define three points. First, I should like to define, more precisely than I have done so far, the zones where intellectual contacts between Jews and Gentiles were more likely. Secondly, I want to go into the paradoxical situation which makes us far better informed about the external contacts of Judaism than about the inner currents of Judaism, especially for the period 150 B.C.-A.D. 50. The situation has been made even more paradoxical by the Qumran discoveries because we know much more about the Essenes (or, if we want to be very cautious, about Essene-like groups) than about Sadducees and Pharisees. I shall ask myself: what do we know about Sadducees and Pharisees? But my ultimate purpose is to try to understand better why our Jewish sources (Flavius Josephus, Philo and the rabbinic texts) are so oriented as not to give us any insight into Sadducees and Pharisees. This will lead me to the third point of my enquiry: the joint decline of historical and apocalyptic interests in large circles of Jewish thinkers during the last period of the Second Temple and immediately after the destruction of the Temple. The first impression is of course just the opposite14. The historical literature about Jewish rebellions and resistance goes together with apocalyptic literature. The Books of the Maccabees are accompanied and even preceded by Daniel and parts of Enoch. At the end of this period15 Flavius Josephus’ history of the war against Rome is accompanied or preceded by such apocalyptic books as Sibylline IV and V, IV Esdras and, if you like, Revelation. But this parallelism between historiography and apocalyptic is too obvious to be completely authentic. If history and apocalypse go together, they also [4] subtly erode each other. More fundamentally, many Jews became tired both of history and apocalypse and showed it in the way they dealt with historical and apocalyptic subjects. This tiredness prepares the revulsion against both history and apocalypse which was to become characteristic of rabbinic Judaism. In my third Lecture I propose to examine some aspects of the reaction against both history and apocalypse. To my regret I cannot do here what I propose to do elsewhere – to re-examine the whole work of Flavius Josephus from this point of view. For it seems to me that Flavius Josephus is both the greatest Jewish representative of the historiography of the oppressed and a chief witness for that disenchantment of the Jews with history which was to continue down to modern times for more than 1500 years16i. 12 13 14 15 16 P-o 180: account. -> It must be emphasized once again ... the same period, del. P-o 180: of Judaism, interl.msr[Mom];P-o 162, 54, 53: def. P-o 53: The first impression is of course the opposite <-> The opposite is of course also true, msb[Mom]. P-o 53: period <-> development, msb[Mom]. P-o 53: more than 1500 years <-> two thousand years, msn[Mom]. 227 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles A last preliminary remark. Neither in surveying the relations between Jews and Gentiles nor while going into the question of the groups within Judaism shall I examine the attitude of the Jews to the Samaritans. I am not of course particularly disturbed by the question whether the Samaritans were Gentiles who had absorbed a few Hebrew17 notions (which is the opinion of II Kings 17, 2541 in its present obviously re-elaborated form) or were Jewish18 schismatics or heretics according to ways of thinking which have their roots in rabbinic and patristic sources. But I am paralyzed by the reticence of the Jewish sources on the Samaritans and one could say the same about the Christians19. This is an extreme case of that retreat from reality which I have already pointed out in relation to the rise of Pharisaismii. We know enough to sense that the conflict between Jews and Samaritans had central importance in the development of Judaism during the Second Temple; but it is not easy to say more on the present evidence. If the temple on Mount Gerizim was built towards the end of the fourth century – with or rather without the encouragement of Alexander the Great – the competition of the two priestly classes of Jerusalem and Shechem must have been acute in the third century B.C. At the beginning of the second century Ben Sira could allude to the [5] foolish people of Shechem without much explanation. I incline furthermore to agree with those who believe that the conflict intensified when under Antiochus IV the Samaritans had their own Hellenizers, like the Jews of Judaea, but failed to produce their own Maccabees. In consequence the Maccabees, or rather the Hasmonean John Hyrcanus who was not conspicuous for humanity and tact, destroyed the temple of Gerizim and later the city of Samaria. However, by the time Josephus and rabbinic sources are ready to tell us something more about the Samaritans. Jews and Samaritans had already been affected by other events which included a great deal of common suffering under the Romans. It is this later, puzzling, evidence which compels me to silence. A good general introduction to the Samaritans is provided by J. D. Purvis in the recent Festschrift for F. M. Cross, Traditions in Transformation, Winona Lake, Indiana, 1981, 323-351iii.20 [6]21 It is not unusual for the writing of non-Greeks who accepted Greek as their literary language to be self-conscious. Meleager the Syrian from Gadara in Transjordania even suggested that Homer was a Syrian because, as if in accordance with Syrian sacred rules, he did not make his heroes eat fish, though the Hellespont is full of fish (Athen. 4, 157 b.). But the self-consciousness of Meleager is different from that of his Jewish neighbours. He talked of Gadara as the new Athens in the Syrian land and recalled another citizen of Gadara, the cynic Menippus. He concluded: “Was I a Syrian? Does it matter? My friend, the world is the fatherland of the mortals and the same chaos generated all men”iv. We do not find in any Jewish author of the Hellenistic period, as far as I remember, this engaging combination of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. It is perhaps no accident that no epigram by a Jewish poet found its way into the Greek Anthology. The men of Jerusalem joked in a friendly way about the men of Athens whom they considered less clever than themselves: we have a string of such jokes in the most unlikely place, Midrash Rabbah to Lamentationsv. But to the best of my knowledge, no Jew ever said that Jerusalem was the real Athens. Circumstances did not even favour that particular situation which is familiar to us from other periods of Jewish history when Jews wrote their most serious works in Hebrew and their light literature in whatever language they happened to speakvi. I do not know in the Hellenistic period of an equivalent of Immanuel Romano writing Italian poems indistinguishable from ordinary fourteenth-century Italian poetryvii or of an 17 P-o 53: Hebrew <-> Jewish, msn[Mom]. P-o 53: Jewish, interl.msn[Mom]. 19 P-o 180: and one could ... the Christians, interl.msr[Mom];P-o 162, P-o 54, P-o 53: def. 20 P-o 180: Pharisaism -> We know enough to sense that the conflict between Jews and Samaritans ... 1981, 323-351, del.; P-o 53: fine della nuova Introduction GL (5 ff. ms. da Mom., ff. 1-5); il ms. prosegue con i ff. poi inseriti in P-o 180 e 162 come 6a e 6b (v. infra). 21 P-o 180: Reading copy Sept. 1978, tsf,msb[Mom]; P-o 162: AMM 29.9.79, tsfmgdx, msb[AMM]; [This is p. 6 in Grinfield 1982 version] – Efroymson V = also Grinfield I, 20.1.82 with new beginning, pp. 1-5 and insertion pp. 6 a + b., msr[AMM]. 18 228 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles Eliah Levita, the great pioneer in the study of the Hebrew text of the Bible, amusing himself and his fellow-Ashkenazis by translating into Yiddish the Italian poem Buono d’Anconaviii.22 [6a]23 This may appear strange because in the Italy of the fourteenth or of the sixteenth century Jews were isolated from their Christian neighbours by a combination of external prohibitions and internal regulations which does not bear comparison with the prevalent mild24 restrictions in the social relations between Jews and Gentiles either inside or outside Judaea in the second or first century B.C. But the answer (or the beginning of an answer) is that in the second century B.C. both Jews and Gentiles were in the process of25 building up the walls which were to separate them from each other for millennia, whereas at least in Italy Humanism and the Renaissance were making these walls look rather questionable in educated circles – at least until the Counter-Reformation was fully established. The precise limits of the social and legal restrictions in the daily relations of Jews and Gentiles in the Hellenistic and early Roman age remain obscure. We have a mass of rabbinic rules and opinions about the goyyim, the Gentiles; and there can hardly be any doubt that some of these are much older than our evidence. But exact dating is almost impossible, and we have no idea of how generally such regulations were obeyed even in Judaea. Confirmation from other sources is rare and, when it appears, poses new problems. Talmudic scholars have found it difficult to accept the authenticity of the regulation or programma enacted by Antiochus III to protect the holy status of Jerusalem. I believe that the authenticity of the text quoted by Josephus in Antiquities 12, 145-6 is confirmed precisely by the circumstance that it does not entirely agree with later rabbinic notions. E. Bickerman, whose recent death we all mourn, wrote one of his masterpieces in commenting on this text in Syria 25, 1946, 67ix. That a Jew should not eat at a Gentile table or partake of Gentile food is repeated by so many sources of the Hellenistic period from Daniel (1:8) to Judith (10:5), from Tobit (1:10) to Jubilees (22:16) that one must take it as a fairly well established rule. But how many will have observed it? Certainly Josephus [6b] tells us that it was observed by some of his priestly friends when they were prisoners in Rome (Vita 3; 14). Even the Mosaic prohibition of images was not universally observed. While it is true that when Pilate ordered Roman troops carrying portraits of the emperor into Jerusalem a near-revolutionary situation developed (Bell. 1, 648; Ant. 17, 149), we have many instances to the contrary of toleration of images. Gymnasia were a bad thing in Judaea, as any reader of the Books of the Maccabees knows. But we find the Jews of Alexandria trying to introduce themselves into the local gymnasium, much to the disgust of the Emperor Claudiusx. And we are told by the archaeologists that the synagogue of Sardi was built in the compound of the local gymnasium. No doubt the Jews had created for themselves a reputation of misanthropy since the time of Hecataeus of Abdera at the end of the fourth century B.C. (cf. Diod. 40, 3, 4). The letter of Aristeas had to explain that association with Gentiles was compatible with the observance of dietary laws. Let us hesitate. Eratosthenes was obviously guilty of unwarranted generalization when he stated that all the barbarians were in habit of throwing out foreigners (Strabo 17, 1, 19). He forgot that Sparta, which specialized in this operation, was Greek.26 The Jews adopted important Greek modes of expression readily enough, but this was not meant to facilitate contacts with non-Jews or to transmit [7] non-Jewish works to Jews. It was often meant to reassure the Jews about themselves against the temptations and objections offered by Greek culture. I should like to emphasize this point especially in relation to the indisputable use by Jews of Greek methods of reasoning and interpretation. Since the second century B.C., Greek allegorical interpretation had been applied to the Bible. The first Jewish practitioner of allegorical interpretation in the Greek language known to us is Aristobulus of Panion – an authoritative figure in the Egypt of Ptolemy VI. When allegory came to Philo it had already a long tradition behind it. 22 23 24 25 26 P-o 162: Insertion pp 6 a + b, mgsn msr[AMM]; P- o 180: id., mginf con segr, msb[Mom]. P-o 162: - 6 a – (in new Grinfield I version, 20.1.82), tsf, msr[AMM]. P-o 180, 162: mild, interl.ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: mild, interl.ds;P-o 53: def. P-o 53: in the process of <-> just, msb[AMM]. fine di P-o 53. 229 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles The main purpose of allegory was to reinforce the confidence of the Jews about the validity of their Bible. It provided a new interpretation of what had become insignificant or objectionable. Allegory is less persuasive when made to explain the products of one’s own culture to those who live in another culture. In any case, the aim of making pagans interested in Jewish texts is not very evident in Philo’s allegorical interpretations; and we know too little about Aristobulus to be able to say that he used allegory to present Judaism to Ptolemy VI and to other Gentile readers. The same is basically true for the use of rhetorical examples and of modes of arguing in rabbinical texts. Though there are a few exceptions, the rabbis intended to regulate Jewish life, not to polemize with pagans. With all these Greek materials the Jewish authors, whether in Greek or in Hebrew or in Aramaic, were building their own castle; and the castle was meant to keep idolatry out. II Areas of contact and friendship existed of course between Jews and Gentiles, just as much as areas of friction and enmity. If27 they had not existed the Jews would not have been able to live as minorities. The number of Greek words which penetrated into Hebrew and Aramaic is eloquent proof of these contacts, and we are only at the beginning of the study of Greek influence on Hebrew and Aramaic syntax and word order. Only a few years28 ago we were told such a simple thing as that the legend Jehonathan melech in a bulla of the Hasmonean [8] king Alexander Jannaeus betrays Greek influence by the absence of the definite article in the apposition: the model is the formula29 Alexandrou Basileos (Gad. B. Sarfatti, Israel Exploration Journal 27, 1977, 204-206xi).30 In reading the Mishnah a student coming from the Greek of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius feels an impalpable similarity: the same sharp, thrusting dialectics; the same economy of words; and the same lack of well organized argumentation. Let us remember that Jews might pay homage to foreign gods simply as a matter of courtesy in a decent exchange of signs of respect. After all there were Gentiles who sent offerings to the Temple of Jerusalem, and the Jews were naturally proud of this (Joseph. Bell. 2, 412). Since at least31 the time of Deutero-Isaiah 56, 7 the sacrifices of Gentiles had been acceptable, and later rabbinic doctrine allowed pagans to build altars and to sacrifice to the Jewish God everywhere (Sifra, Lev. 17, 3 II p. 58 ed. Jerusalem 1975). The second-century B.C. Jewish historian Eupolemus attributed to Solomon the gift of a gold pillar to Hiram King of Tyre for the local temple of Zeus (<723 F 2b> Jacoby): this may be one of the pillars32 mentioned by Herodotus 2, 44. Solomon simply imitated in suitable proportions what many wealthy Jews were in fact doing for the gods of their neighbours in the Hellenistic age. In the second century B.C. Nicetas son of Jason from Jerusalem gave the city of Iasos in Asia Minor a hundred drachmae for the local feast of Dionysus (C. I. Jud. 749). There is probably not much more to the gift of three hundred drachmae sent by the High Priest Jonathan to Tyre for the celebration of sacrifices to Hercules (II Maccab. 4, 18-20). The LXX translation itself seems to recommend respect for the gods of the nations in the notorious translation of Exodus 22, 28 “thou shalt not revile the gods”, where the ‘gods’ renders ‘Elohim’; Philo (Vita Mosis 2, 205; Spec. Leg. 1, 53) and Josephus (Ant. 4, 207c; c. Ap. 2, 237) took this verse33 to forbid vilification of foreign gods. In some cases, no doubt, Jews tried other gods when the God of the Fathers appeared not to answer. What is perhaps the oldest Greek inscription by a Jew is the by now famous dedication of the Jewish slave Moschos son of Moschion [9] who went to the oracle of Amphiaraus in Boeotia to 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 P-o 162: If <-> It, msr[AMM]; P-o 180, 54: corr.def. P-o 180, 162: years <->, months interl.ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]. P-o 180: the model is the formula, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: def. P-o 180: and word order -> Only a few years ago ... 204-206), del. P-o 180: at least, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: deff. P-o 180: may be one of the pillars <-> must be the pillar, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: must be the pillar. P-o 180: verse <-> line, msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: line. 230 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles seek advice about regaining his freedomxii. About 250 B.C. there can34 have been very few Jews in Boeotia to warm the heart of the poor slave; if they existed, they probably were slaves too. In other cases the identification of the real god to whom the dedication was made was left open. Some Jewish sailors in Upper Egypt made dedications in a sanctuary to the god Pan when they were saved from shipwreck; they thanked God, and, no doubt, meant the God of their fathers (A. Bernard, Le Paneion d’El Kanaïs, 1972, 34; 42xiii). Apostasy does not seem to have been common. Tradition preserves very few names of apostates: Dositheus at the end of the third century B.C. (III Macc. <1,3>), Tiberius Alexander, the nephew of Philo, in the first century A.D. Giving one’s own children Greek theophoric names – Apollonius, Artemidorus, Demetrius, Hermaius, Isidorus, etc. - did not imply any religious commitment. As this practice was shared by other ethnic groups and was often accompanied by the precaution of giving the child two names – one Hellenic and the other native - there is nothing more to it than social conformism. It is indeed one of the recurrent questions in interpreting the life of other people whether marked conformism or marked non-conformity is the better defence of internal freedom. In the social relations of the Hellenistic age, which were simple, but characterized by great care for the right forms and by little relish for surprises, the Jews seem to have accepted the prevailing trend. The sepulchral epigrams of Leontopolis in Egypt and the manumission documents of Panticapaeum in the Crimea have become by-words of paganizing texts. I am not sure that they can tell us much about the religious and national emotions of those Jews who composed them. As quite clearly there were limits to what a Jew could do while remaining a Jew, he also had to pay some compensations. Keeping outside any form of dynastic cults, the Jews of Egypt dedicated some of the synagogues (or rather proseuchai xiv ) 35 to their kings – and in the Temple of Jerusalem there were prayers for the sovereigns of the day. Institutions have to be understood and, to a certain extent, to be accepted not only by those [10] who live in them, but also by the outsiders. Therefore the Synagogue, which probably originated before the time and outside the zone of Hellenistic associations, came in many respects to resemble the cult associations of the Gentiles. Indeed, it is possible that Jews36 were inspired by the Greek clubs – eranoi – to create their problematic37 fraternities to which I shall return in my next lecture38. One has simply to open the Mishnah at its first page to find that Rabban Gamaliel had sons who enjoyed symposia (Bereshit 1, 1). But Greek youths did not return home to confess to their fathers that they had not recited the Shema’ 39; and the observation may be extended, mutatis mutandis, to all the parallel developments, imitations or transformations we can discover in comparing Jewish and Hellenic associations. They indicate co-existence of Jews and Gentiles rather than communication between them. One cannot escape the fact that communication between Jews and non-Jews in the Hellenistic world was poor. This is confirmed by the fact that a considerable portion of what the Jews circulated among pagans was fraudulently attributed to pagan authors; most commonly to wellestablished authorities of the old days. The Sibyls were supposed to have produced prophecies in the Hebrew spirit and with due appreciation of Jewish achievements.40 Pseudo-Orpheus, pseudoPhocylides, pseudo-Sophocles, pseudo-Aratus and even pseudo-Homer and pseudo-Hesiod circulated on Jewish initiative. They could not speak exactly like Jews. The forgers therefore created an artificial syncretism. It seems to me unnecessary subtlety to doubt that such forgeries were primarily meant for Gentiles. They could be used for the purpose of proselytism or simply to show off: it was nice to have been remembered by Homer. But one may well wonder whether the pagans were impressed. 34 P-o 180, 162: can <-> must, interl.ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: must. P-o 180: (or rather proseuchai), interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: def. 36 P-o 180: Jews <-> the Pharisees, msb[Mom]; P- o 162, 54: the Pharisees. 37 P-o 180: problematic, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 162: problematic, interl.msr[AMM]; P-o 54: def. 38 P-o 180: to which I shall ... lecture, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: def. 39 P-o 162: Israel, msr[AMM]; P-o 180, 54: def. 40 P-o 180, 162: achievements. -> In the extant collection of Sibylline poems, Books III and V are of Jewish origin. Book III mainly belongs to the second century B.C., Book V is of early imperial times, del. 35 231 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles In any case, forgeries have seldom been an instrument for genuine contacts between different groups: they betray unease, if not hostility. It is reassuring to note that [11] Philo never used such texts to buttress his arguments. Philo defended his integrity by accepting isolation.41 True enough, the Jews did not confine their forgeries to alleged pagan texts. There is no dearth of works or at least of sayings42 attributed to Enoch, Abraham and the other patriarchs, Solomon, Elijah, Esdras, etc., which were for internal consumption by Jewish groups. I am convinced that these forgeries, too, betray uneasiness and lack of rectitude in those who perpetrated them – and perhaps also in those who believed them and I extend this evaluation to analogous forgeries by pagans for pagans.43 But there is a difference between forging texts as if they had been written by one’s own ancestors in order to put across certain beliefs to one’s own brethren and forging texts as if they had been written by eminent members of a different civilization in order to mislead other members of that civilization. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the various sections of the Book of Enoch, even if backed by great names, would be acceptable to Jews only if their contents appealed to them. The Testament of Orpheus, the false lines attributed to Phocylides, Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the book on Abraham allegedly by Hecataeus of Abdera were deliberate attempts to make Gentiles believe that men they respected had held opinions unknown from other sources. In the case of Jewish pseudepigrapha for Jewish consumption the forger imparted some of his repressed thoughts and may subjectively even have been convinced that by doing so he interpreted the mind of one of his ancestors. In forging pagan texts the Jewish forger could not possibly have been inspired by mystical experiences. He simply cheated, and his cheating probably took in other Jews, too. The allegorist Aristobulus seems to have been one of these credulous Jews. He quoted Pseudo-Homer and Pseudo-Hesiod to prove that the Jewish Sabbath was known to themxv. He seems to have been in good faith.44 Gentiles were not the only victims of Jewish forgeries45. III Few pagans seem to have read the Bible for the purpose of finding out what the Jews thought or believed. Even the philosopher Posidonius, who admired Moses and was interested in the Jewish past and present, never set [12] eyes on the Bible – as far as we know. Anti-Jewish polemists never purchased a copy of the Septuagint. I cannot share the opinion that Apollonius Molon (first century B.C.) shows direct knowledge of the Septuagint, more precisely Genesis 21, 6, by calling Isaac Gelos (“the laugh”)xvi. To write against the Jews Molon must of course have collected some information somewhere. But if the controversy about the Jews had been based on the Bible, it would have had a different complexion. From time to time scholars think they have found echoes of some biblical passages in pagan46 Hellenistic writers. Such findings have been announced for Theocritus, Callimachusxvii and even Vergilxviii . They have invariably failed to command wide assent. The first clear quotation of the Bible in a pagan author is still the quotation of a line of Genesis 1 in the Sublime attributed to Longinus and now commonly dated in the first century A.D. (though there has been one authoritative defence of the third-century date)xix. Pseudo-Longinus is himself an enigma. Eduard Norden was so struck by the isolation of the author of the Sublime that he rather irrationally placed him in Philo’s circle in Alexandria. However, his isolation is not so total after all. The anonymous author of the Sublime shows some connection47 with the rhetorician 41 P-o 180: Philo ... isolation, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: but Philo ... isolation, interl.ms[AMM]. P-o 180: or at least sayings, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: or at least of sayings, interl.ms[AMM]. 43 P-o 180: and I extend ... for pagans, mgsn msb[Mom] <-> I shall have to return to this point later; P-o 162: and they extended ... for pagans <-> I shall have to return to this point later, interl.msr[AMM]; P-o 54: believed them -> I shall have to return to this point later, del. 44 P-o 180, 162: He seems ... good faith, interl.ms[180 AMM, 162 Mom]; P-o 54: def. 45 P-o 180, 162: of Jewish forgeries, interl.ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: def. 46 P-o 180: pagan, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: def. 47 P-o 180, 162: However, his isolation ... connection <-> His most obvious literary connection is, interl.ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: corr. def. 42 232 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles Caecilius of Calacte whom by chance we know to have been a Jew. Before the Sublime a dubious allusion to the account of creation in Genesis may be found in the treatise on the nature of the world attributed to the Pythagorean Ocellus Lucanus (second or first century B.C.) xx. Even if a few more passages were to turn up showing an acquaintance with the Bible, it would still remain true that no pagan studied Judaism on the basis of authentic texts in order to understand in what ways Jewish thought differed from Greek thought. There was no theological and philosophic discussion between Jews and Gentiles on the level of the later discussions between Christians and Gentiles. No Hellenistic philosopher considered it necessary to read the Bible before he sat down on his chair to instruct his pupils. There was no Celsus, or Porphyry, or Plotinus or emperor Julian to controvert Jewish doctrines.48 It follows that such Jewish interest as existed in Greek philosophy and religion was unilateral. The Jews, or certain Jews, took the trouble of [13] seeing where Judaism stood if confronted with Greek philosophy: Philo more so, of course, than the Palestinian sages. With a writer like Philo it is even conceivable that he wrote some of his treatises with pagan readers in mind. He may have done so in some of his treatises which presuppose little or no knowledge of Judaism, such as Quod omnis probus liber or De Abrahamo. However, he never addresses a pagan audience. He never declares any intention of speaking to non-Jews. Basically Philo argued to reassure himself and his fellowJews that what they had learned from their Bible was confirmed by Plato or by Zeno the Stoic. It was once again an internal operation to consolidate Judaism. Such an enterprise must not be underrated and, as Harry Wolfson so clearly sawxxi, it was fraught with immense consequences for the future. The issue was the reconciliation of revelation and philosophy, a process which Philo started and nobody seems to have brought to a perfect conclusion. It has also been observed by Professor Sandmel49xxii that in the depth of his heart Philo preferred Abraham, who saw God but did not receive the whole of the Law, to Moses, who brought down the complete Torah from Mount Sinai. One of the curious and unforeseen results of the confrontation of Jewish revelation with Greek philosophy was to emphasize one aspect of Judaism which rabbinic Judaism was bound to undervalue: the age of the Patriarchs, when the true God and the true pattern of religious life had been recognized without the need of a full-dress revelation. This goes together with the inclination which is characteristic not only of Philo, but of the Wisdom of Solomon and perhaps also of the Fourth Book of Maccabees, to treat Judaism as a mystery to which access is granted through Wisdom. The mystic type of language must not lead us to think that Philo was looking for a substitute for the mysteries of Eleusis or of Isis in which he was not allowed to take part. Judaism was presented as an initiation to which the ordinary pagan was not admitted. As we know, there have been repeated attempts to connect the Essenes with the Pythagoreansxxiii . The most recent is the one to which Isidore Lévy devoted his extraordinary learning and acumen (Recherches esséniennes et pythagoriciennes, 1965xxiv ). Isidore Lévy even believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed his [14] opinion. But50 the Dead Sea Scrolls discourage any theory about any connection of any Jewish sect with Pythagoreanism, because they have revealed the deep Jewish roots of such societies. If we concede for a moment that the Essenes were Pythagoreans in disguise, we should have to conclude that their purpose was to keep the Gentiles out. Even in the account of Josephus, the Essenes appear as extreme supporters of Levitical purity51. The confrontation between Jewish revelation and Greek philosophy was, therefore, a unilateral Jewish initiative, to which there was little response on the other side. Gentile men of letters expressed their opinions on the cult and the mentality of the Jews. These opinions became progressively less favourable, as we can see from Josephus’ Contra Apionem which is our main source of information. The Jews were even supposed to worship an ass-head and to commit ritual murder. The evaluation of the cult went together with a certain amount of speculation about the 48 49 50 51 P-o 180, 162: There was no Celsus ... doctrines, interl.ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: def. P-o 180: by Professor Sandmel <-> I need not saying by whom, mgsnmsb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: corr. def. P-o 180, 162: But <-> It seems to me that, ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: corr. def. P-o 180, 162, 54: purity -> laws, del. 233 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles history of the Jews. But there was never a serious discussion of the basic tenets of Jewish religion or of any of the Jewish rituals (say Atonement Day) for the simple reason that Bible was not read. There was apparently no Greek philosopher ready to discuss Philo, as Philo was ready to discuss Greek philosophers. Philo was perfectly capable of polemical writing, as his historical pamphlets Against Flaccus, and The Legation to Gaius show.52 If he53 is the exception among the philosophic writers in the Greek language, in so far as he did not write polemical books against specific philosophic opponents, the probable explanation is that no pagan philosopher controverted Jewish tenets on revelation, resurrection, Messianic age, etc. It is also noticeable that Josephus stops dropping names of antagonists in his Contra Apionem when in book II he passes from refuting vulgar calumny to comparing Jewish religion with Greek religion. At this higher level he had no real opponent.54 One suspects that far more popular common ground for Jews and Gentiles was magic, from which at least in imperial times it is difficult to separate astrology. The name of Yao – a variant of Yahwe – and other Hebrew names [15] are common in amulets. [15[bis]] On the other hand we are told by the Second Book of Maccabees55 (12, 39) that some of the soldiers of Judas Maccabeus used the idols of Jamnia to protect themselves in battle – and of course were killed. The “ways of the Ammonites” – to use the expression by which the rabbis indicated the superstitious practices they disapproved of – are too many to be followed in detail. As we know from the Sefer Harazim, the Book of Secrets published by Mordecai Margalioth in 1966xxv, Jews of the third or fourth century A.D. used in magic formulas prayers to Helios and appeals to Aphrodite.56 [15] Origen in Contra Celsum 1, 22 claims that pagans abused the name of the God of Abraham for magic. Pliny (N.H. 30, 11) and Apuleius (Apol. 90) consider Moses a magician; Vettius Valerius (II, 28, 96 Kroll) attributed astrological books to Abraham, and Vettius seems to have Hermippus, the third-century B.C. admirer of Jewish wisdom, as his source. Abraham was internationally well-known as a master of astrology. Correspondingly, at a very early date, at least from the second century B.C. onwards, certain Jewish writers took pride in presenting him as the man who instructed the Egyptians in astrology. This was the claim of Artapanus, probably a Jewish57 second-century writer (<FGrHist 726 F 1>) who was backed by a Samaritan writer whose extracts have come down to us under the name of Eupolemus. We must, however, notice that when the reputation of Abraham as astrologer stood undisputed in pagan circles in the first century A.D., Philo repeatedly made the pointed remark that Abraham abandoned astrology and polytheism for the knowledge of the true God (De Virt. 212; Cong. erud. 9 etc.). There is a similar statement in a later well-known Talmudic passage (Bab. Shabbat 156 a). In the days of their cruder attempts to gain sympathy and support in the Hellenistic world, the Jews used Abraham as a suitable ambassador to Gentile lands. We know that in the second century B.C. the Jews also claimed, in good Hellenistic manner, ancestral connections through Abraham with Sparta and Pergamum (II Macc. 12, 20; Jos. Ant. Jud. 14, 225). But when at least the reputation of Abraham as the inventor of astrology began to be taken seriously by the Gentiles, the Jews seem to have backed down. This issue must not be confused with the wider one internal to Judaism, whether astrology was valid knowledge and, if so, whether the Jews could free themselves from the influence of the stars by the study of the Law. What I am suggesting here is that the Jews seem to have refrained from using Abraham as a link with the pagan world as soon as this link began to work.58 52 P-o 180: full-dress revelation. -> This goes together with the inclination which is characteristic not only of Philo [c.13] ... to Gaius show, del. 53 P-o 162, 54: he; P-o 180: Philo <-> he, msb[Mom]. 54 P-o 180, 162: At this higher ... opponent, interl.ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: def. 55 P-o 180: by the Second Book of Maccabees; P-o 162: by II Maccabees. 56 P-o 180: On the other hand we are told ... Aphrodite, msb[Mom] mgsup,dx,inf, copiato ds. su f. 15bis, con indicazione su mgsup: insertion l. 1, msr[AMM]; P-o 162: ts f15,msr[AMM]; P-o 54: def. 57 P-o 180, P-o 162: Jewish, ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: def. 58 P-o 180: to work. -> Unless my memory plays me a very bad trick, there is very little about Abraham in the Sepher Harazim, mginfmsb[Mom], del. 234 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles There may be a serious reason for this. If the confrontation between Jewish revelation and Greek philosophy had reinforced the tendency, which is [16] conspicuous in the whole of Jewish thought during the Hellenistic age, to feel isolated in a Gentile world, it had correspondingly encouraged the welcoming of proselytes from the pagan world. Abraham himself had been a proselyte of a sort (Philo consciously describes him from that angle), and it was important to prevent the model proselyte from being regarded as the teacher of astrology by pagans59 who had no intention of becoming proselytes. The point about Abraham abandoning astrology for the knowledge of God is well taken in the circumstances. Long before Philo, the Book of Jubilees, a text perhaps60 of the end of the second century B.C., had gone into another question. Had Abraham had to learn Hebrew? The author’s answer was positive: Abraham did have to learn Hebrew, and he learnt it in the six months of the rainy season (Jub. 1211-14). Perhaps better informed, the Antiquitates Biblicae which are attributed to Philo, but were written after the destruction of the Temple, correct the opinion of the Book of Jubilees and state that Abraham had been spared the trouble of learning Hebrew because he had refused to take part in the building of the tower of Babel: Hebrew had remained his language. We may well ask, without being able to answer, whether such discussions on the language of Abraham were connected with the question of the duty of a proselyte to learn some Hebrew. Proselytism61 was in fact the only specific situation which transformed the intellectual relations between Jews and Gentiles. Whether the initiative came from Jews or from Gentiles, the issue was conversion from polytheism to monotheism. I wonder whether acquaintance with the Bible ever attracted pagans to Judaism. We must assume that the Bible – or at least the Books of Moses, the Psalms and perhaps some prophets – played a part in the instruction of proselytes: the proselyte depicted by Juvenalxxvi knows the Book of Moses. But this is a different question from what first attracted pagans towards Judaism. The little evidence we have seems rather to indicate that pagans would be struck by the Jewish notion of God, by Jewish religious [17] ceremonies and taboos and perhaps by Jewish magic rather than by Jewish legal and prophetic books. Nobody seems to have read the Bible before he or she became a proselyte. In Josephus’ story Izates, the crown Prince of Adiabene, is found reading the Law of Moses before circumcision, but long after he had decided to become a Jewish proselyte (Ant. Jud. 20, 17-56). Simple books instructed the proselyte about moral principles, if we accept the very likely theory that the first six chapters of the Didaché, with the exception of the first paragraph, were lifted bodily by a Christian missionary from a Jewish “guide” for the proselyte. The later Talmudic rule that the dialogue with the proselyte must not be extended nor must it go into an excess of details (Bab. Yebamot, 47 a-b) is certainly already found operating in these chapters of the Didaché. The Wisdom of Solomon, the IV Maccabees and certain books of Philo, though particularly suitable for proselytes, have nothing to show that they were written either to attract or to comfort proselytes. But the Testament of Job, a Greek text first published by Angelo Maixxvii at the beginning of the nineteenth century, may perhaps be considered to aim specifically at the edification of the proselyte. Scholars have vainly tried to find Christian elements in it. The book stresses the fact that Job was a pagan who turned to the true God, presents him as an ex-satrap of Egypt under Persian rule (28, 8; cf. 17, 1), and gives pride of place to his daughters. They receive from him phylactery-like objects with long cords which change their hearts and make them speak in angelic language. We are reminded that saintly women play their part in the Jewish-Egyptian society of Therapeutae described by Philo, but we are even more directly reminded that Judaism attracted pagan women, including Nero’s Poppaeaxxviii . IV 59 60 61 P-o 180, 162: pagans <-> people, ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]. P-o 180, P-o 162: perhaps, ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]. P-o 180: Proselytism <- num. IV, msb[Mom], del. 235 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles If we discount proselytes, there is only one area of intellectual life in which we must admit some continuous communication between Jews and pagans: the area of historiography. There are very good reasons for this. The Jews had their own historical tradition in the Bible, which gave no space worth [18] mentioning to the Greeks before Alexander and never mentioned the Romans. The Greeks and Romans had their own historical tradition which virtually ignored the Jews. It was impossible to co-exist – or to quarrel – without at least comparing notes on the past. The reasons, however, are such as not to modify the essential isolation of the Jews in the pagan world. Traditionally in the Hellenistic world each nation was supposed to produce some account of its own past for circulation in the wide world of Greek speakers. How the custom originated and developed remains unclear, though we know that it goes back to the fifth century B.C. when Xanthus of Lydia wrote an account of his own national history in Greek. Manetho, the Egyptian; Berossus, the Babylonian; and Fabius Pictor, the Roman, are the schoolbook examples of this tendency in the third century B.C. The genre was intrinsically ambiguous. It was meant to satisfy the curiosity of the natives as much as of the foreigners, in so far as both had Greek education and therefore certain interests suggested by Greek culture. What was intelligible to the native was not necessarily intelligible to the foreigner, even if both had read their Herodotus or their Timaeus, which as we shall see did not happen in our case. The Jews did not fail to contribute to this international literature. As the translation of the Bible into Greek was not regarded as an equivalent of the national histories produced by Manetho and Berossus, the Jews had to do something new. Of all their historical books we have only tiny fragments, except for Flavius Josephus who was one of the very last to write in this tradition. Some of this writings was even in poetry; and we may at this point ask ourselves whether Ezechiel the poet composed his tragedy on the Exodus as a form of historiography62. Under Ptolemy IV Philopator (222-205 B.C.) a Jew called Demetrius presented some Jewish history according to the methods of Greek chronography. He was basically an expositor of the Bible. He gave the years from Creation according to the Septuagint text and is therefore our oldest witness for the existence of the Septuagint translation of Genesis. He divided history into epochs: from Adam to the deluge; from Abraham’s birth to Jacob’s arrival in Egyptxxix . In this notion of epochs he anticipated the Book of Daniel [19] which is 40 years later. The notion of epoch was pagan – Greek – but not surprising to Jews, as Genesis knows a pre-deluge age, and Chronicles isolate the seventy years of desolation as an epoch. Demetrius’ Greek education is probably confirmed by his rhetorical device of question and answer (ἀπορίαι καὶ λύσεις) which, though abundantly used in Midrashic hermeneutics, seems to be of Greek origin. Flavius Josephus, who can have known this Demetrius only at second hand, stupidly identified him with the pagan Demetrius of Phalerum who had lived about a hundred years earlierxxx . Next comes Eupolemus’ work on “The Kings of Judaea”. Eupolemus is firmly dated by one of his fragments (fr. 5 xxxi ) in about 158 B.C. and therefore must probably be identified with the Eupolemus who was an ambassador to Rome on behalf of Judas Maccabaeus in 161. If so, his father had been involved in diplomatic dealings with Antiochus III. His Greek is sufficiently affected by Hebrew syntax to make it certain that the author was brought up on Hebrew and Aramaic. He had much to say about the splendour of Solomon’s Temple and reported letters exchanged between Solomon and fellow-kings: neither chronology nor common sense was respected. When he maintained that the prophet Jeremiah saved the ark from Babylonian looters, he followed a tradition to be found also in the Epistula Jeremiae and in one of the initial letters of II Maccabeesxxxii . On the other hand the mention of king Astibares of Media in fr. 4 seems to depend on Ctesias. The date of composition, 158 B.C., excludes any probability, if not the possibility, that Eupolemus brought his history to Rome when he went there as an ambassador. As we know nothing about a Philo, author of another book on the Kings of Juda, whom Clemens Alexandrinus puts together with Demetrius and Eupolemus, the other author to be considered is Artapanus. He is 62 P-o 180, 162, 54: Some of this writings… historiography, interl.ms[180 Mom, 54 e 162 AMM]. 236 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles earlier than circa 70 B.C. because he was read by Alexander Polyhistor. He is famous for making the Egyptians dependent on Jewish instruction. Abraham introduced the Egyptians to astrology, Joseph brought agriculture, and Moses, to be identified with Musaeus and to be considered the teacher [20] of Orpheus, brought in practically everything else from shipbuilding to hieroglyphics and the cult of animals. No wonder that the Egyptians called him Hermes, that is, Thot. Though the book is quoted as Iudaika, it was perhaps a biography of Moses with some introduction about the patriarchs. For the moment all I want to say is that Artapanus must have considered himself a Jew and was obviously familiar with the Pentateuch. Samaritans did not write very different history from Jews. Alexander Polyhistor attributed to Eupolemus a fragment about Abraham which cannot be by him, but obviously comes from a Samaritan author because it makes Abraham and Melchisedek meet on Mount Garizim, the Samaritan sanctuary. Since the same Polyhistor quotes another fragment on Abraham as a specialist in astrology with the remark that it comes from an anonymous author, it is evident that Alexander Polyhistor attributed the first fragment to Eupolemus only by an oversight. All this was seen by Jacob Freudenthal long agoxxxiii . The author quoted the Bible in the Septuagint version. He, too, made some attempt to equate Oriental and Greek chronology: he identified the Babylonian Belos with Kronos. Finally, a mysterious Cleodemus Malchus, whom Josephus calls prophetes (Ant. Iud. 1, 260-1), made Hercules marry a granddaughter of Abraham in Libya. I would consider Cleodemus a Jew rather than a Samaritan or a pagan.xxxiv 63. [20] V64 From the first65 point of view – chronology –66 historical67 works certainly contributed to a real debate between Jews and Gentiles – about the length of their respective histories and therefore about priority in civilization. The debate is best documented in Josephus’ Contra Apionem, both a contribution to and a summary of such a quarrel. By the end of the third century B.C. the Peripatetic polymath Hermippus had already accepted what must have been a Jewish claim that Pythagoras had Jewish masters. If we take, as I think we must, the long fragment of Vettius Valerius on Abraham’s astrological books as deriving from Hermippus, then he was also acquainted with an analogous claim related to the origins of astrology.68 Eupolemus asserted that Moses was the first wise man and imparted the alphabet to the Jews who passed it on to the [21] Phoenicians, from whom it was received by the Greeks. The Jews tended to lengthen their past. If the Hebrew Bible puts 1,948 years between Adam and Abraham, the Septuagint increased the interval to 3,334 years – which is also the figure to be found in Demetrius. But significantly the Septuagint reduced to 215 years the 430 years in Egypt of Exodus 12, 40. The Jewish claims to superior antiquity were certainly noticed and questioned by pagan historians, especially in Egypt. I shall give only one example, the implications of which do not seem to have been considered. In the first century A.D. that firm opponent of Jewish claims, Apion of Alexandria, stated that Moses had lived in the eighteenth year of Bocchoris’ reign, i.e. 753 B.C. This is intriguing; it makes Moses a contemporary of Romulus, the Exodus contemporary with the foundation of Rome according to the Varronian date69. But Apion is silent about Rome; he presents 63 P-o 180: As I have characterized Jewish Hellenistic historiography in my previous lectures and published works, I shall not go into details except on two points: one is the interest in chronology and the other is the intervention of the Romans in the debate, interl. e mgsn, msn[Mom] < -> Traditionally in the Hellenistic world each nation was supposed to produce some account of its own past [c. 18] … rather than a Samaritan or a pagan; P-o 162, 54: <-> def. (conservate cc. 18-19). 64 P-o 180: num. V, msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54:def. 65 P-o 180, 162: the first <-> one, ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: one. 66 P-o 180: - chronology – interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: def. 67 P-o 180: historical <-> these – interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: these. 68 P-o 180: Jewish masters. -> If we take ... astrology, del. 69 P-o 180: of 753 B.C., interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: def. 237 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles instead the Exodus as contemporary with the foundation of Carthage (Jos. Contra Ap. 1, 17 = 616 F 4 Jacoby). In other words Apion accepts Timaeus’ synchronization of the foundation of Rome with the foundation of Carthage, transfers it from 814 B.C. to 753 B.C. and thus succeeds in making the two enemies of Rome – Carthage and Judaea – coeval and of course far more recent than Egypt. Synchronisms were never insignificant to classical historians. By skilful use of chronology Apion presents the Jews as enemies of Rome and far less ancient than the Egyptians.70 The battle of dates was backed by documents, as temple cultures are always rich in documents. Flavius Josephus adapts to his case a commonplace of Hellenistic historians from Eastern countries when he claims that the Jews, owing to their temple archives, were better documented than the Greeks about their own past. What Josephus did not know or could not say is that temples are not only repositories of documents, but also centres of forgeries. Furthermore, many of the documents circulating in the literature available to him did not even come from temples. They were the product of the free enterprise of historians. The Greek additions to the Book of Esther include forged documents, and Eupolemus forged the correspondence of Solomon with his fellow kings. Forgeries could be interpolated in pagan books [22] of history in order to change their character. Two nonJewish writers, Hecataeus of Abdera in the late fourth century and Manetho in the early third century, received additions. In the case of Hecataeus it seems that the interpolation amounted to one or two sections on Jews to supplement the not unsympathetic authentic remarks already existing in the text. The manipulation of Manetho is more obscure. Manetho’s history of Egypt reached Josephus in a version which seems to have been unknown to other ancient readers of Manetho. The explanation which appeals to me is that the text of Manetho which Josephus read had received both Jewish and anti-Jewish insertions: the anti-Jewish element prevailed. But the matter is dubious. What is not dubious is that somebody thought it necessary to tell the story of the Exodus from the Egyptian angle. As there was no record (or at least no available record) all the Greco-Egyptian historians could do was to identify the Jews with the unpleasant Hyksos and turn them out of the country in a humiliating mannerxxxv . Alexander Polyhistor is the best example of how the Jews managed to force themselves on the attention of the Gentiles. This Greek freedman worked hard in the neighbourhood of Rome in the first century B.C. to compile extracts from historical books about practically all the “barbarian” countries of the known world. Fittingly enough, he died with his library when his house was burnt down. The Jews were only one of his specialities, and there is really no reason to suspect that he was a Jew in disguise. He is quoted as having said that Moses was a woman (273 F 790), though he would certainly only have transmitted somebody else’s opinion. VI71 Thus there was some debate on historical matters between Jews and Gentiles. The Jews had to accommodate some Greek history, and the Greek historians had at least to take cognizance of the existence of a Jewish past. This knowledge was passed on to chronographers and universal historians without specific interest in the Jews. While Castor of Rhodes about 60 B.C. apparently still ignored the Jews, the Roman72 Varro made one or two entries about them. Trogus Pompeius [23] knew of Abraham and Moses. For Alexander Polyhistor the synchronism of Moses and Ogygus, the first king of Attica about 1796 B.C., seemed to be an established fact: true enough, he wrote before Apion. History was something that enabled Jews and Gentiles to display some knowledge of each other on the basis of common standards of judgment: chronological priority, authenticity, genealogical trees, etc. were criteria on which they agreed. 70 71 72 P-o 180, 162: By skilful use ... Egyptians, interl. ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM], interl.; P-o 54: def. P-o 180: num. VI, msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: def. P-o 180: the Roman, msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: def. 238 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles However, the question which were discussed could be a source of pride or humiliation for the parties concerned, but were not likely to change their reciprocal understanding of their ways of life. If the Gentiles did not know the Bible, few Jews seem to had made an73 effort to study and understand Greek history and institutions. They did not read Herodotus, Thucydides, Ephorus and Timaeus in order to learn Greek history: they checked whether the Jews were mentioned in them, and at best they transferred some episodes of Greek history to Jewish history. This is the case of the Book of Judith.74 Philo, who knew that history had some part in the encyclopedia of knowledge of his time as a sub-section of grammar (De Cherub. 105), does not show any precise familiarity with Greek history.75 The matter must not, however, be left there, because some significant change happened in relation to Rome.76 With Alexander Polyhistor we are in Rome, and he worked for the Roman aristocracy. In Rome history was not the product of free-lance workers, mainly expatriates, as it was normally in Greece. It was firmly, though not exclusively, controlled by the ruling class. The foreigners who in Rome or for Rome wrote books on other foreigners were directly or indirectly helping the Roman upper class to orient itself in its relatively new role of masters of the Mediterranean world. Alexander Polyhistor must have provided the information which cultivated Romans wanted to have about the foreign countries they had conquered or considered conquering. When the Roman upper class lost interest in his findings, the Jewish section of his compilation was saved from total oblivion by the Christian Fathers. The Jews had no particular [24] interest in him. Even Josephus is not greatly interested in Alexander Polyhistor. A new factor had inserted itself between Greeks and Jews: the Romans. The attitude of the Jews in historical matters changed correspondingly. With the arrival of the Romans, two features became prominent in Jewish historians. One is perhaps of limited consequence. The Jews paid some attention to Roman institutions and events. Chapter 8 of the First Book of Maccabees on Rome is exceptional in Jewish historiography for its keen, if hardly exact, evaluation of Roman institutions. Philo, too, displays considerable interest in contemporary Roman history; and Flavius Josephus makes a definite effort to give objective information about Rome: he includes in his Bellum a list of the Roman legions (<II, 366-87>). If Roman rule increased the demand for historical detail about Jews, the Jews developed a corresponding interest in Roman institutions. 77 As for the second change, its importance cannot be disputed. Flavius Josephus is, to our knowledge, the first and perhaps the only Jewish historian about whom we are sure that he constantly kept a mixed Jewish and Roman audience in mind. All his works, including his autobiography, were written with an eye to the Roman masters. Josephus went as far as to ask Titus for official approval of his history of the Jewish war. The story he tells in his autobiography (363), that Titus affixed his seal to the text, is extraordinary, and I cannot quite understand what it means. [24bis] It is, however, worth mentioning that Philo of Byblos, according to Porphyry (cf. Euseb. Praep. Evang. 10, 9, 11) declared that his source Sanchuniathon wrote a history of the Jews the contents of which had been pronounced as truthful by the king of Berytus Abibalos. The text is not completely clear, but the authentication by a very ancient king seems to be beyond doubt. To say the least, Philo of Byblos shows that there was an oriental notion of authentication of history by kings. As Philo of Byblos was a younger contemporary of Flavius Josephus this piece of evidence is particularly relevant. I 73 P-o 180, 162: few Jews seem to have made an <-> the Jews had made no, ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: corr. def. 74 P-o 180, P-o 162: and at best they transferred ... Judith, interl.ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: def. 75 P-o 180: somebody else’s opinion. -> VI – Thus there were some debate on historical matters between Jews and Gentiles [c.22]... history, del. 76 P-o 180, P-o 162: The matter must not ... Rome, ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM] <-> It remains true that with Alexander Polyhistor and later Josephus a certain change is noticeable. The conditions of this change are not far to seek. 77 P-o 180: institutions and events. -> Chapter 8 of the ... institutions, del. 239 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles believe furthermore that Philo of Byblos was in fact opposing Josephus’ claims about the priority of Jewish antiquities by his claim on Phoenician antiquitiesxxxvi .78 [24] Though the intellectual terms of reference of Josephus are still those of the relation between Jewish and Greek laws and philosophies, the Romans cast their shadow on whatever he wrote. Characteristically, he chose as a model for his Jewish Antiquities the Roman Antiquities by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a work written by a Greek for a mixed Greco-Roman audience. Like Alexander Polyhistor, Josephus soon ceased to be of interest to the Romans and never succeeded in becoming indispensable to the Jews. He was saved by the Christians, and the Jews who in the Middle Ages became again [25] acquainted with him learned 79 to know him from Christian readers.80 VII81 We are therefore faced by a curious situation. Alexander Polyhistor on the pagan side and Josephus on the Jewish side – not to speak of other writers about whom we know less such as Justus of Tiberias, Josephus rival82 - indicate that the Romans got more serious historical information about the Jews than the Hellenistic monarchs had ever obtained. On the other hand, there is no indication that either Alexander Polyhistor or Josephus had lasting success with the Romans, nor that they left continuators. What is even more important is that Jewish historiography in Greek came to an end in Josephus’ time, and it was not substituted by Jewish historiography in Hebrew and Aramaic. The Talmudic texts on Greek and Roman history are notoriously few and inexact, though occasionally very shrewd at defining the reality of Roman power at large.xxxvii Nor can we find Hebrew or Aramaic books of Jewish history, if we except the lost Hebrew original of the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum attributed to Philo which cannot, in any case, have been much later than Josephus. Turning at least partially to the Romans, as Flavius Josephus and perhaps Justus of Tiberias did83, was the last act of ancient Jewish historiography before it died. This would at first sight appear to offer a simple explanation of the end of Jewish historiography in Antiquity. It is generally recognized that there is not much inducement to write the history of one’s own nation once independence is lost. The Greeks stopped writing their own history during the Roman Empire. Yet on reflection this cannot be the whole explanation in the case of the Jews, for political independence had been taken away from them long before the destruction of the Temple, while their spiritual and religious independence survived the disappearance of the Temple. The intervention of the Romans and, above all, the trauma of the loss of the Temple have, no doubt, something to do with the end of Jewish historiography, but they do not constitute a satisfactory explanation. [26] Further reflection multiplies the doubts. We cannot isolate the end of Jewish historiography from other concurrent developments – least of all from the rise and decline of apocalyptic thought. Can it be chance that Jewish apocalyptic starts in strength in the second century B.C., when Jewish historiography of the Hellenistic period begins, and ends in a paroxysm about A.D. 100-120 when historiography also died? What does this parallel rise and decline mean? Having decided that Jewish historiography was only of limited importance in the relations between Jews and Gentiles, we discovered that there had perhaps been a change when the Romans came in: they interested the Jews more directly and perhaps they themselves took some practical interest in knowing Jewish history. But the change was not such as to give new and lasting84 vitality 78 P-o 180: It is, however, worth mentioning that Philo ... antiquities, msn,b[Mom] su mgsn,dx,inf, copiato ds. su f. 24bis, con indicazione su mgsup: Insertion end of § 1, msr[AMM]; P-o 162: tsf24, msr[AMM] interl.mginf,sn; P-o 54: def. 79 P-o 162: learned <-> learnt, msr[AMM];P-o 180, 54: learnt. 80 P-o 180: readers. -> Yosippon, mgdxmsb[Mom], del. 81 P-o 180: numm. VII <-> V, msb[Mom]; P-o 162, 54: V. 82 P-o 180, 162: such as Justus ... rival, interl.ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: def. 83 P-o 180, 162: and perhaps Justus of Tiberias did, interl.ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: def. 84 P-o 180, 162: and lasting, interl.ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: def. 240 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles to the Jewish attitude to history, it was rather one of the manifestations which prepared the death of Jewish historiography. However, the death of Jewish historiography was accompanied, if not by the death, at least by the paralysis of Jewish apocalypse.85 Our inquest must ultimately86 turn to the balance between history and apocalypse and must end by assessing the ultimate meaning of the decline of both. In this decline we shall find the Romans again, but in a different role. But before we are doing that, we must ask ourselves some stringent questions about our evidence on the internal currents of Jewish life in the last two centuries before the destruction of the Temple.87 i Sulla presenza di Flavio Giuseppe nel ciclo sul giudaismo ellenistico e sul proposito momiglianeo di riesaminare l’intera opera dello storico dal punto di vista della reazione giudaica alla storia e all’apocalittica (progetto evidentemente mai realizzato) cfr. l’introduzione a GL 1980 III (Flavius Josephus), par. 3, pp. 147-49, e CL 1981 III (Some Exemplary), n. i. ii Il riferimento è alla conclusione del saggio del 1976 Ebrei e Greci e alla sua connessione tra il trionfo del Farisaismo successivo al 70 e l’affermazione di una “prospettiva ottimistica e contemplativa” connessa alla perdita del senso di continuità della storia (p. 443). iii PURVIS 1981. iv Anth. Gr. 7.417, 5-6. v Cfr. Midrash Rabbah, Lam. I, 1, 4-13, in cui ben dieci storie si basano sul confronto tra l’intelligenza di Ateniesi e Gerosolimitani, a tutto vantaggio di questi ultimi. vi Cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1975C per la recensione di un volume di I. Zinberg sul tema. vii Per i sonetti e la frottola sulla corte di Cangrande della Scala vd. Rime volgari di Immanuel Romano, poeta del XIV secolo, nuovamente riscontrate sui codici e fin qui note, Parma 1898; I sonetti volgari di Immanuel Romano, Torino 1904; Il Bisbidis di Manoello Giudeo secondo il Codice Casanatense d.V.5, a c. di G. Mazzoni, Roma 1887. viii Scritto fra il 1507 e il 1508, il Bovo-Bukh di Elia Levita è disponibile in una recente traduzione in J. SMITH 2003. ix BICKERMAN 1948. x Cfr. GL 1979 IV (Defence), c. 15. xi SARFATTI 1977. xii Vd. D. LEWIS 1957; l’articolo, con edizione del testo greco e traduzione inglese dell’epigrafe, è citato da Momigliano stesso in un altro contributo sull’argomento (Alien Wisdom, 86-7). xiii BERNARD 1972. xiv Sulla proseuche cfr. anche Ebrei e Greci, 15. xv Eus., PE, XIII 12, 13-14 (cfr. DENIS 1970B, 225-226). xvi Ha ora inizio una sequenza di valutazione di alcuni discussi riferimenti biblici in autori gentili (per cui cfr. Anche Alien Wisdom, 92-4), in cui è plausibile che Momigliano avesse presente SAFRAI - STERN 1974-1976, II, 11261146, data la riproposizione, con sostanziale accordo dei punti di vita, degli argomenti affrontati (cfr. note successive). xvii Cfr. SAFRAI-STERN 1974-1976, 1139 e n. 1 (dove si rimanda inoltre, per la possibile conoscenza della Bibbia greca da parte di Callimaco e Teocrito, a FRASER 1972, II 1000 n. 255). xviii Cfr. SAFRAI-STERN 1974-1976, 1146, per l’unico (presunto) riferimento "ebraico" diretto in Virgilio (Georg. 3, 12: Idumaeas palmas), e ibid., n. 3, per la questione dell’influenza del messianismo ebraico sulla IV Ecloga. xix Ps.-Long., De Subl. 9, 8. Cfr. Alien Wisdom, 91, e SAFRAI-STERN 1974-1976, 1139-1141 (con bibliografia di riferimento). xx Cfr. SAFRAI-STERN 1974-1976, 1139, dove è proposto in particolare il confronto di Gen. 1, 28 con Ocellus Lucanus, De Universi Natura, 45-46 (ed. R. Harder 1926, 22 = THESLEFF 1965, 135-136). xxi WOLFSON 1947; cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1949B. xxii SANDMEL 1971. Di Sandmel Momigliano possedeva anche il dattiloscritto preparatorio a SANDMEL 1979 (dal titolo Philo Judaeus: an introduction to the man, his writings, and his significance). xxiii Cfr. GL 1979 I (Prologue), cc. 6-10. xxiv LÉVY 1965. xxv MARGALIOTH 1966. xxvi Iuven. 14, 102 ss. 85 P-o 180: apocalyptic thought. -> Can it be chance that Jewish apocalyptic starts in strength ... apocalypse, del. P-o 180, 162: ultimately <-> now, ms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: now. 87 P-o 180, 162: But before we are doing ... Temple, mginfms[180 Mom, 162 AMM]; P-o 54: def.; P-o 180: But before we are doing ... Temple <-> I have reserved for my last lecture the analysis of this strange combination of historiography and apocalyptic writing among the Jews of the period from the Maccabean rebellion to Bar Kochba rebellion. When both apocalyptic and historical writing are silenced, then we know that we are in a new age, mginfmsb[Mom]. 86 241 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – Between Synagogue and Apocalypse I. Jews and Gentiles xxvii Mai, A. (ed.), Scriptorum veterum nova collectio, vol. VII, Roma 1833, 180-191. L’interessamento e la favorevole disposizione di Poppea nei confronti degli Ebrei sono testimoniati da Ios. Ant. 20, 195 (cfr. anche Ant. 20, 252, per il suo ruolo nella nomina di Floro a procuratore della Giudea). Assai discussa è l’ipotesi di un’eventuale adesione di Poppea al giudaismo, basata sull’interpretazione della qualifica di θεοσεβής in Ant. 20, 195 (cfr. bibliografia in STERN 1974–84, II 5-6 e n. 12) e della sua sepoltura difforme dal Romanus mos in Tac. Ann. 16, 6 (STERN 1974-84, II 42-43). xxix FrGH 722 F 1. Per la datazione di Demetrio si rimanda a WACHOLDER1968, part. alla p. 454. xxx FrGH 722 T 1 = Ios. Ap. 1.218. xxxi FrGH 723 F 5 = Eus. P.E. 9.39. xxxii II Macc. 2, 1-7. L’individuazione di un ulteriore testimone della tradizione (Geremia salvatore dell’arca durante il saccheggio babilonese) nella breve Epistola di Geremia, benché il testo di quest’ultima non contenga al suo stato attuale alcuna allusione all’episodio, suggerisce che Momigliano volesse collocarsi nel filone della critica che identifica in un’ipotetica versione originaria “estesa” dell’Epistola la fonte del sopracitato passo di II Macc. 2, dove si fa riferimento a delle generiche ἀπογραφαὶ Ἱερεµίας (chiamate anche γραφή in II Macc 2,4) attribuendo loro sia l’invito del profeta all’astensione dall’idolatria (effettivo argomento dell’Epistola) che una narrazione del salvataggio dell’arca. Sulla dibattuta (e forse irrisolvibile) questione si rimanda a BALL 1913; C. MOORE 1977. xxxiii FREUDENTHAL 1874-5, 82-103. xxxiv L’ elisione delle cc. 18-9 nel testo GL e l’aggiunta esplicativa in P-o 180 (per cui cfr. apparato critico ad loc.) testimoniano la volontà di ricongiungere al quadro generale i due cicli intermedi di lectures del 1980 e 1981. Il riferimento ai testi editi è rivolto ai contributi sull’argomento dati alle stampe in quel periodo e riuniti poi nel 1984 nella sezione “Storici del Giudaismo” in Settimo; fra questi, risultano incentrati su Giuseppe e su Daniele Flavius Josephus and Alexander’s visit to Gerusalem (= Alexander’s visit); Daniele e la teoria greca della successione degli imperi (=Daniele, teoria); Ciò che Flavio Giuseppe non vide (=Ciò che Flavio). Fra i lavori di poco precedenti, che documento una progressiva focalizzazione d’interesse a partire dalla seconda metà degli anni ’70, si ricordano: Greek Historiography; The Date of the First Book of Maccabees (=First Maccabees); The Second Book of Maccabees (=Second Maccabees); Interpretazioni I-III. Per la disamina degli storiografi giudeo-ellenistici eliminata in P-o 180 (cfr. apparato) si rimanda invece ad Alien Wisdom, 92-4. xxxv Per contributi successivi sull’argomento, si rimanda a SCHÄFER 1997 e ASSMAN 1998. xxxvi Cfr. la settima Interpretazione minima su Filone di Biblos (Interpretazioni IV-VII, 111-114) di poco precedente alla lecture di Chicago. xxxvii Sul possibile uso storiografico del Talmud Babilonese cfr. KALMIN 2006 (part. al cap. 1, “Roman persecutions of the Jews”). xxviii 242 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources GL 1982 II The Jewish Sects in the Sources Sedi e date: GL 1982 III (27 gennaio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 426) Documenti: P-o 163 ms. P-o 164 top c. di P-o 163. P-o 160, P-o 165 (b): c.c. di P-o 164. P-o 165 (a): aggiunte per Leo Baeck College Lecture 1985 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. The Jewish Sects in the Sources è stata proposta in due occasioni, in forme tra loro così diverse che non sarebbe scorretto parlare, più che di una, di due lezioni dallo stesso titolo. La prima volta è stata presentata come GL II il 27.1.1982; la seconda come singolo intervento presso il Leo Baeck College, il 9.1.1985. La trattazione oxoniense prevedeva, oltre all’ampia sezione su Giuseppe, due capitoli finali incentrati sulle fonti rabbiniche e neotestamentarie. Al Leo Baeck, tre anni dopo, i due capitoli in questione vengono tralasciati a favore dell’inserimento in apertura di una discussione, allora in stampa per Athenaeum, sulla Lettera di ‘Anna’ a ‘Seneca’1. L’edizione della versione del 1985 implicherebbe una riproposizione di tale inserimento; tuttavia, il fatto che nelle carte conservate ogni riferimento relativo alla discussione sulla Lettera non vada oltre l’accenno porta a concludere che la versione Leo Baeck sia andata perduta. Come ha messo in evidenza GRANATA 2006 (pp. lxiv-lxv), il fatto il testo stampato da Athenaeum rimanga del tutto estraneo alla questione delle “sette” ebraiche2, e quindi al nucelo tematico sostanziale di The Sects, dissuade dall’ipotizzare che la trattazione momiglianea della Lettera presso il Leo Baeck coincidesse con il testo stampato da Athenaeum e che sia quindi ricostruibile sulla base della versione pubblicata3. Alla luce di queste difficoltà oggettive, e nell’intento di rendere accessibile una trattazione – quella dei due capitoli Grinfield caduti – non altrove pubblicata e mai definitivamente “scartata” dall’autore4, si presenta in questa sede la versione Grinfield. Preso come base è il testo di P-o 160, una c.c. ds. di 20 cc. corredata da interventi mss. blu e neri di mano dell’autore; la tipologia di molti di essi identifica il fascicolo come reading copy GL, su cui Momigliano – come di consueto – sarebbe poi tornato a lavorare in preparazione del testo Leo Baeck (cfr. inserzione alla c. 12). Le variazioni apportate per quest’ultima versione sono documentate invece nella forma più completa da P-o 165, c.c. che nella parte ds. risulta identica a P-o 160 e su cui gli interventi di Momigliano, ricopiati a mano da AMM, vengono affiancati da indicazioni redazionali di AMM stessa finalizzate alla nuova versione: si riportano in apparato gli aggiornamenti e chiarimenti di maggior rilievo, che si sarebbe tentati di mettere a testo se non trattenesse la necessità di evitare di produrre un ibrido, mai proposto dall’autore in quella forma. Tra gli altri documenti, P-o 164 rappresenta infine l’originale ds. delle due c.c. P-o 160 e P-o 165, privo di interventi di rilievo; esso offre un testo fedele a quello del ms. P-o 163 (23 ff. a righe), documento in cui Momigliano sembrerebbe aver ricopiato, con due penne diverse e pochi, piccoli interventi in corso di lavoro, una prima stesura di cui non rimane traccia documentaria. 1 MOMIGLIANO 1985a (= Anna-Seneca). L’AAM conserva il ds. originale, il documento P-l 19, identico al contributo stampato. 3 Essenzialmente P-l 6, documento composito rubricato come Chicago Lecture 1985, che pur presentando l’apposizione (di mano di AMM) del titolo The New Letter by Anna to Seneca sulla prima pagina non fornisce propriamente una trattazione relativa al tema, e P-l 18, frammento di 5 ff. mss. della Chicago version che si riporta in apparato per permettere di rilevare le differenze rispetto all’edito P-l 19. 4 Significativo in proposito il fatto che sul f. 12 di P-o 160, correggendo a mano il ds. Grinfield in vista della lecture al Leo Baeck, Momigliano scriva: “It is not my purpose to go beyond Josephus this evening. I shall deal elsewhere with the Gospels and the Talmudic sources.” 2 243 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources 2. Argomento della lecture Le scoperte di Qumran, portando alla luce la complessa organizzazione della setta essenica, hanno contribuito a mettere in evidenza l’inadeguatezza della descrizione che ne offre Giuseppe Flavio e a gettare dubbi anche sulla sua presentazione di Farisei e Sadducei. Risulta difficile da stabilire la loro riconducibilità a determinati filoni della letteratura intertestamentaria, a causa di un circolo vizioso creato dalla mancanza di informazioni certe sulle correnti interne al giudaismo ellenistico e sui testi loro attribuibili, il cui fattore determinante va individuato nella reticenza delle stesse fonti primarie (Giuseppe Flavio, i testi rabbinici e il Nuovo Testamento). Alle conoscenze mostrate sugli Esseni, per i quali doveva disporre di fonti informative, Giuseppe affianca infatti il trattamento superficiale di Farisei e Sadducei, in cui si osservano la mancanza di un’analisi sistematica del loro disaccordo sulla Legge orale e una caratterizzazione politica incoerente sia in relazione alla mancata assunzione di ruoli definiti nella lotta di potere tra Aristobulo II e Ircano II, sia nella descrizione dei rapporti con Erode: tutti fattori imputabili alla dipendenza troppo stretta di Giuseppe dalle sue fonti, inquadrabile in un processo descrittivo che tende a farsi più confuso con l’avvicinarsi della ribellione anti-romana. L’esame dei testi rabbinici (Mishnah e Tosefta) dà l’impressione che il mondo in essi descritto, una comunità coesa di saggi che riconosce l’autorità reciproca, non attribuisca alcuna preminenenza a Farisei e Sadducei, subordinandone l’autorità a quella dei rabbini. A differenza che in Giuseppe le differenze di opinione diventano qui puntuali, per quanto l’esiguità dello spazio loro riservato e la natura spesso marginale o cavillosa del dibattito non permettano una valutazione complessiva. Una netta distinzione tra Farisei e Sadducei è evitata: la stessa espressione “Legge orale” (comunque rara nei testi tannaitici) non è mai usata per contrapporli; la considerazione per i Farisei oscilla tra simpatia e ostilità, secondo un’alternanza di giudizio di volta in volta subordinata alle posizioni assunte da autorità rabbiniche rispetto a un mondo evidentemente sentito come lontano. Con le fonti rabbiniche il Nuovo Testamento condivide una perdita di interesse per gli Esseni e una maggiore simpatia per i Farisei piuttosto che per i Sadducei, ma se ne discosta per l’impressione di vivo contatto con la quotidianità che discende dal tipo di narazione. La struttura che ne emerge non è tuttavia esente da conflitti: spiccano soprattutto le discrepanze tra Vangeli sull’identificazione tra Farisei e scribi, sentita comunque molto più che nei testi rabbinici. Il disinteresse delle fonti nel presentare un quadro corerente delle sette giudaiche ha quindi per conseguenza il fatto che il profilo delle fazioni di maggiore responsabilità storica, i Farisei e i Sadducei, rimanga indefinito, mentre il gruppo di cui possediamo le informazioni migliori è paradossalmente quello di minore influenza (gli Esseni). 3. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione e il rapporto con i testi editi. The Jewish Sects in the Sources è una lezione nuova, scritta da Momigliano per l’occasione specifica offerta dalle GL 1982. Sottolineare la novità del tema è importante per diverse ragioni: non risultano altri contributi momiglianei incentrati sull’argomento, e la lezione appare nel complesso il frutto di un approfondimento relativamente recente sul ruolo delle fonti scritte nel determinare, ed eventualmente alterare, i connotati delle articolazioni interne – siano esse politiche o dottrinali – della società ebraica in età ellenistica. Il confronto con le posizioni espresse altrove da Momigliano su singole questioni affrontate nella lezione permette di apprezzare l’intensità con cui qui viene dato rilievo alla mancata percezione, da parte dei rabbini, della propria continuità rispetto ai Farisei. Continuità che nell’opera momiglianea è fuori discussione: se si pensa all’ultima pagina di Ebrei e Greci (1976) e alla sua trattazione del “trionfo del farisaismo”, l’identificazione dei Farisei con i saggi/rabbini, o per così dire l’evoluzione della prima categoria nell’altra, risulta implicitamente accettata5. Che in The Jewish Sects in the 5 Cfr. anche il lavoro La ribellione giudaica, scritto per la CAH nel 1934. In uno dei suoi ultimi lavori, la recensione su CPh del 1988 al libro di Will e Orrieux su Ioudaïsmos-hellénismos, non è messo in discussione il fatto che il 244 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources Sources venga analizzata la distanza che separa nelle fonti il mondo dei rabbini da quello dei farisei potrebbe quindi apparire una contraddizione in termini: ma la contraddizione è solo apparente, se si considera come il fuoco della lecture dell’82 sia rivolto a una prospettiva parziale e specifica, la valutazione della capacità delle fonti esaminate di “fare storiografia”. In altre parole, non interessa qui all’autore la risposta all’interrogativo, se corrisponda a verità storica o meno il fatto che il rabbinato discenda dal farisaismo: l’obiettivo è piuttosto sottolinare come i rabbini non conoscano e non indaghino storicamente il loro passato, nel tentativo di dimostrare come la perdita di interesse per la storia che le fonti evidenziano costituisca un aspetto sostanziale della cesura che segna il passaggio, per gli Ebrei, a nuove forme e strutture di identità e vita sociale. Non si può tuttavia escludere che la modifica apportata alla versione Leo Baeck, ossia l’eliminazione dell’esame del Nuovo Testamento e in particolare delle fonti rabbiniche, possa essere messa in relazione con una certa insoddisfazione dell’autore nei confronti alle parti eliminate. La disamina di testi rabbinici, dichiaratamente parziale, poteva parere inadatta a un pubblico di specialisti. Era escluso dall’analisi, ad esempio, il Talmud babilonese, in cui Neusner avrebbe segnalato a breve un passo talmudico (Kiddushin 66a), in stretta relazione con il racconto di Giuseppe sulla rottura fra i Farisei e Giovanni Ircano citato da Momigliano nella lezione Grinfield (Ant. 13, 288-299), in cui la prospettiva di identificazione tra Farisei e saggi risulta indiscutibile6. farisaismo “can survive even without the support of a Jewish state because it sacralizes most of ordinary life” (Nono, 764). 6 NEUSNER 1987, pp. 284 ss. (Giovanni Ircano è Alessandro Janneo in Kiddushin). 245 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources II*7 The Jewish Sects in the Sources8 I We know far less about the internal currents of Judaism inside and outside Palestine in the period between 200 B.C. and the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 than we know about the relation between Jews and Gentiles in the same period. This may at first seem unbelievable if one considers that it is Flavius Josephus’ explicit aim to give us very precise information about these currents – Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes and the “fourth philosophy” which he ominously leaves unnamed. Furthermore, the rabbinic texts and the New Testament provide, as we all know, ample material to compare with Josephus. But the difficulty of obtaining any clear impression of the internal social and intellectual stratification of Judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman period has been felt since the end of the sixteenth century when the famous dispute on Jewish sects developed between Johannes Drusius, the Jesuit Nicholas Serarius and no less a person than Joseph Scaliger. The texts of this controversy were collected in 1619 at Arnhemi and dedicated to John Prideaux who is described9 as Vice-Rector of Exeter College and Professor of Holy Scriptures at Oxford. About 250 years later, in one of the earliest momentous interventions of Jewish scholars in what was after all the history of their own Judaism, Abraham Geiger gave an interpretation of the Jewish sects which, by introducing an element of social and political history while relying heavily on Talmudic texts, appeared revolutionary. Geiger’s book of 1857, Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel,ii was followed in rapid succession by Joseph Derenbourg’s Essai sur l’histoire et la géographie de la Palestine of 1867 and Julius Wellhausen’s monograph on Pharisäer und Sadduzäer of 1874iii which, while deprecating the rabbinic sources, basically accepted Geiger’s new social approach to the religious groups. But no basic agreement ensued on the interpretation of the so-called Jewish “sects” or “philosophies”, though the words Epicurean and Pythagorean were rather freely [2] used when Sadducees and Essenes were examined.iv The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls had among its consequences that of making evident at least one factor in the obscurity of the previously known sources. With the Damascus rule now solidly inserted among the Qumran texts (some scholars had * Documento preso come base: P-o 160, c.c. di 20 ff. reading copy GL corredata da interventi mss. dell’autore; si riportano in apparato gli interventi condotti sul testo in vista della riproposizione presso il Leo Baeck College (documentati nella forma più completa da P-o 165) e le lezioni alternative eventualmente presenti in P-o 164, top c. alla base delle due c.c. 160 e 165, o nell’ originale ms. P-o 163 di cui P-o 164 appare trascrizione fedele. Si segnalano inoltre le lezioni presenti nel documento P-p 99 (sottoserie inediti AAM), quaderno “miscellanea” che alle pp. 1-23 reca il testo di The Jewish Sects GL 182 II. 7 P-o 160: II Grinfield Lecture 27.II.82, tsfmsb[Mom]; Also: Leo Baeck College, Jan. 85 (with a new beginning), f ts msl[AMM]; P-o 165: Grinfield II, 27.1.82 (new), c.c. 3, mgsupmsr[AMM]; Corrections in this copy transferred to the second (<-> third) c.c. and sent to A. in Chicago (who now has c.c. 1 and c.c. 2), 17.4.82, tsf(sn)msb[AMM]. 8 P-o 165: su due ff. allegati al f. 1: [f. a] I shall begin where I should not begin – with an almost irrelevant text. But the text is new, fascinating, and may even teach us something about Jewish sects and help us to evaluate Josephus. Cf. THE NEW LETTER BY “ANNA” TO “SENECA”, to be publ. in Athenaeum. (new beginning of lecture at Leo Baeck College, 9.1.85) [f. b] (Insertion on p. 1 of Leo Baeck College lecture, 9.1.85) We can now go to the real subject of my lecture. The stray piece of evidence which I have so far discussed is a further indication of how complicated matters really are when we examine the ancient texts about the Jewish sects with the precise intention of avoiding simplification. What we found at first sight in the new text was a Sadducee high priest making propaganda for the immortality of the soul in a letter to the pagan philosopher Seneca. True enough, even a superficial analysis of the new text indicated the possibility that the letter had not been written by a Sadducee high priest and had not been addressed to the pagan philosopher Seneca. But the fact remains that somewhere in the Latin West there were some Latin-speaking Jews who insisted on the immortality of the soul, but not on the Oral Law. If we follow the conventional description, this particular Jew was perhaps better than a Sadducee, but not quite as good as a Pharisee. But on what do we base our conventional view? 9 P-o 160: described <- curiously, del; P-o 165, 163, P-p 99: corr. def. 246 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources defined it, when still isolated, as a Sadducean text) and with the Manual of Discipline10 added to it, it became clear that at least in this case the internal organization of a Jewish sect was far more complex than we would have expected. If then as appeared overwhelmingly probable for reasons of location and chronology, the Qumran sect had to be identified with the Essenes, it also became evident that the description of the Essenes provided by Josephus was not only inadequate but misleading. The whole conflict centred on the Teacher of Justice, an essential episode in the story of the Qumran sect on any interpretation, was simply ignored by Josephus. It became legitimate to ask whether his account of Sadducees and Pharisees was not equally or more misleading. It had not escaped attention even before the Qumran discovery that Josephus, a self-confessed Pharisee, had so little to say on both Pharisees and Sadducees – far less than on the Essenes. Furthermore, if the discovery of the Qumran library directly raised the problem of how far these books scattered in different caves would be considered the expression of one sect, indirectly it called attention to the confused state of our knowledge about the relation of the other sects to the surviving intertestamentary literature. Was the absence of Pharisaic connotations, such as belief in resurrection, sufficient to make the Ecclesiasticus by Ben Sira or the First Book of Maccabees a Sadducean book? Vice versa, would belief in resurrection necessarily make the Book of Daniel or the Second Book of Maccabees Pharisaic? The more evident our ignorance about Sadducees and Pharisees became, the less certain we felt about the attribution of specific books to either sect. The interpretation of the Psalms of Solomon is a cautionary tale in itself. In 1874 Wellhausen lent his authority to the view that the Psalms of Solomon were the product of Pharisean circles. Consequently the Cambridge edition of [3] 1891 by H. E. Ryle and M. R. James presented them as Psalms of Pharisees commonly called the Psalms of Solomon. Indeed these Psalms show faith in the resurrection of the good and in the punishment of the wicked. They are for freedom of the will. They oppose priests and members of the Synedrion; they express hope in the Davidic Messiah. All these notions can be more or less11 safely12 attributed to the Pharisees. The historical allusions are in keeping. The allusions to the siege of Jerusalem and the occupation of the Temple by Pompey are fairly clear. The death of Pompey by murder in Egypt is even more clearly alluded to in Psalm 2, 30, especially if one slightly emends ἐπὶ τῶν ὀρέων Αἰγύπτου “on the hills of Egypt” into ἐπὶ ὀρίων Αἰγύπτου “on the borders of Egypt”, as Hilgenfeld suggestedv before Wellhausen. The bulk of these Psalms must have been put together between 70 and 40 B.C. when there were plenty of Pharisees about. The Psalms may well reflect their hostility not only to Pompey, but also to the last Hasmoneans. And yet we must ask ourselves what we mean by saying that these Psalms are Pharisaic. We know next to nothing about what the Pharisees thought of Pompey. On the other hand, as we shall see, we have some reason to believe that the Pharisees placed a special emphasis on the distinction between written law and oral law and on the authority of the latter; but there is no sign of this in the Psalms of Solomon. Nor is there any indication that the Psalms emanated from an organized fraternity or at least a well definite circle of religious activists, as the Pharisees are generally recognised to be. We are therefore presented with the dilemma of either accepting as satisfactory a definition of Pharisaism which is far vaguer than the definitions circulating at present or admitting that the Psalms of Solomon, though including Pharisaic notions, are not, strictly speaking, Pharisaic. It is remarkable that in his recent work on the Psalms of Solomon, Joachim Schüpphaus (Die Psalmen Salomos, Leiden 1977), though operating from the doubtful presupposition that one can discover innumerable additions to the original text, feels nonetheless unable to repeat the old definition of Pharisaic psalms. Schüpphaus says that the Psalms of Solomon represent a “Vorstufe des späteren Pharisäismus”, a previous stage of later Pharisaism. But this 10 11 12 P-o 163: Manual of Discipline <-> Rule of the Community, msn[Mom]; P-p 99: id., c.c. P-o 163: more or less, interl.msb[Mom]; P-p 99: id., c.c. P-o 163, P-p 99: safely; P-o 160, 165, 164: def. 247 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources simply raises the further question of whether Schüpphaus [4] or anybody else is capable of recognizing different stages in the development of Pharisaism.13 In other words the example of the Psalms of Solomon indicates in an acute form that any attribution of extant intertestamentary texts to Sadducees or Pharisees – or indeed to Essenes –14 is made uncertain, or more precisely unsafe, by the difficulty we have in grasping the characteristics of these sects. In its turn the lack of texts to be attributed with certainty to either sect makes it difficult to characterize the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The vicious circle is not easy to break. Indeed we may begin to suspect that in a strict sense it is impossible to break. It is not enough to say that we have an altogether insufficient knowledge of the internal structure of the Jewish groups or sects – with the exception of the Qumran sect. The fact is that our sources – Flavius Josephus, the rabbinic texts and the New Testament – are so constructed as not to answer our questions about the origins of the sects, their internal organization (with the possible exception of the Essenes), their mutual behaviour, their organs for intervention in the political and legal activities in Judaea, and their attitudes towards pagan surroundings. We should of course not be surprised if Flavius Josephus did not ask himself the questions we learned to ask from Max Weber and his belated pupil Ernst Troeltsch in the first decades of this centuryvi. But the reticence of our sources goes beyond what is normal in ancient historical sources. If we take Sadducees and Pharisees as primarily social and political groups, then we are told far less about them than the Greek and Roman historical sources tell us about oligarchs and democrats, patricians and plebeians, optimates and populares and so on. If we take them (as Josephus would seem to present them) as primarily doctrinal factions, schools of thought, then Diogenes Laertius is incomparably more informative. He knows how to trace back a Greek sect to its founder and to characterize the original setting of a philosophic school. Dr. Vermes remarked in his fairly recent paper on “The Essenes and History” in Journ. Jewish Studies 32, 1981, 18-31 that our sources, including Josephus, treated this sect in a way which is unhistorical, not in relation to modern ways of writing [5] history, but to Greek and even earlier Jewish types of historiography. The first two Books of the Maccabees have a far more realistic vision of how divisions developed in Judaea than Flavius Josephus has. We return, therefore, to the phenomenon which I have tried to emphasize many times in my writings15vii – that Flavius Josephus is only up to a point an interpreter of Jewish history according to Greek methods. Indeed, when we approach him from the angle of the internal currents of Jewish life of the Hellenistic and Roman period he bears witness to the loss of historical orientation which characterizes Jewish thought in the late first century A.D. In different forms non-historical orientation characterizes rabbinic and Neo-testamentary sources alike. We have therefore to reckon with a far more fundamental difficulty than insufficient evidence in dealing with the internal life of Judaism in the period, say, between 200 B.C. and A.D. 50. We are asking our evidence to answer questions which it does not want answer16. II With these considerations in mind, let us then go nearer to our sources, and first to Josephus. There is no need to give here a bibliography because a recent and excellent one is provided in the new revised Schürer, The History of the Jewish People, Vol. II, which appeared in 1979viii. But 13 P-o 160: the development of Pharisaism. In 1982 E.-M. Laperrousaz could revive the equally unconvincing theory that the Psalms of Solomon are Essenic in his book L’attente du Messie en Palestine à la veille et au début de l’ère chrétienne. I return with pleasure to the book by A. Büchler, Types of Jewish-Palestinian Piety from 70 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.: the Ancient Pious Men, now more than fifty years old, even if it is only a partial interpretation of the Psalms of Solomon, interl. e mgsup, dx, msb[Mom]; P-o 165: id., interl. e mgsup, msb[AMM]; Addition on Leo Baeck lecture, mgsnmsb[AMM]; P-o 163, 164, P-p 99: def. 14 P-o 160: - or indeed the Essenes -, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 163, 164, 165, P-p 99: def. 15 P-o 160, 165: have tried to emphasize many times in my writings <-> already mentioned at the end of my previous lecture,ms[160 Mom, 165 AMM]; P-o 163, 164, P-p 99: def. 16 P-o 163: does not want answer <-> is not suitable, msn[Mom]; P-p 99: id., c.c. 248 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources three books which were published after the completion of that bibliography may be mentioned: A Hidden Revolution by Ellis Rivkin, 1978 – mainly on the Pharisees; Judaism. The Evidence of the Mishnah by J. Neusner, 1981; and George W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah, 1981. There is also a recent collection of essays, Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period, published as the second volume of a series entitled Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, 1981ix, which contains much of interest. Flavius Josephus begins to be elusive where he seems to be most explicit. He tells us in his autobiography that at the age of sixteen he decided to become personally acquainted with Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes successively in order to decide which of the three sects was the best: after three years he chose the [6] Pharisees as his own permanent group. But in the next line he blandly explains that he passed the three years in the wilderness as a disciple of a man called Bannus, “wearing only such clothing as trees provide, feeding on such things as grew themselves and using frequent ablutions of cold water”x. Bannus, to all appearances, was an independent religious leader owing no allegiance to any of the prevailing sects. We are therefore left to wonder when and where Josephus found the time to make his personal acquaintance with the life of these sects. In any case he made his choice, but when he wrote down his three17 main accounts of the three sects – first in Bellum II, 118-166, then in Antiquities XIII, 171-173 and XVIII, 12-1518 with explicit backreference to Bellum – he hardly concealed his sympathy with the Essenes – which, again, is not what we expected. For Josephus the Essenes are different from Sadducees and Pharisees in so far as they put themselves outside ordinary society. They live for themselves and therefore their style of life is more important than their tenets. This partly explains why Josephus goes much more into the details of their rules and habits. But one can hardly avoid suspecting that the complexity of his description of the Essenes is due to the circumstance that he had predecessors in that description, whereas it is doubtful whether he had sources to rely upon for a systematic account of Sadducees and Pharisees. Philo of Alexandria, who to my knowledge never explicitly mentions Sadducees and Pharisees, has a precise description of the Essenes in the Quod omnis probus liber sit,xi a pamphlet which may or may not belong to his youth, but is certainly one of the few of Philo’s writings which would have been intelligible to a Gentile. The question whether Josephus followed Philo is immaterial because there were other analogous descriptions of the Essenes for the benefit of the Gentiles, one of which is summarized by Pliny Nat. Hist. 5, 17, 73. The “gens aeterna ... in qua nemo nascitur”, as Pliny says, was a curiosity for export. Not so the Sadducees and Pharisees. It is important to form a precise idea of what Josephus tells us about them. In Bellum 2, 118 Josephus mentions the rising of Judas the Galilean. As soon as Judaea was turned into a Roman province in A.D. 6, Judas the Galilean [7] incited his countrymen to revolt against the Romans and upbraided them for consenting to pay the tribute. He became the founder of a sect of his own, which had nothing in common with the pre-existing sects. This offers Josephus an opportunity to describe the three pre-existing sects. The Pharisees and Sadducees are perfunctorily described as two philosophic sects of the Greek type, one of which (the Pharisees) believed in fate and immortality of the soul – with the good men reincarnate and the bad ones suffering eternal punishment – whereas the Sadducees refused to believe in immortality and fate. Josephus alludes to the different style of behaviour of the two sects: the Pharisees being affectionate to each other and on good terms with the rest of the Jews, whereas the Sadducees were boorish in their reciprocal relations, rude to non-Sadducees19. We are left to guess the relevance of these details, and we may negatively notice that in this description the famous contrast between the Pharisees as supporters of Oral Law and the Sadducees as the opponents of its authority is not even mentioned.20 17 P-o 163: three <-> two, msb[Mom]; P-p 99: id., c.c. P-o 163: and XVIII, 12-15, mginf con segr, msb[Mom]; P-p 99: id., c.c. 19 P-o 160: non-Sadducees -> and severe in applying the Law, mgsnmsb[Mom], del.; the Pharisees being affectionate ... rude to non-Sadducees, stlnmgsn[Mom], con nota ms.: not mentioned. 20 P-o 160: the famous contrast ... not even mentioned, stlnmgsn[Mom] con nota ms.: contrast. 18 249 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources Antiquities 13, 171-3 provides the second passage. It is not quite clear why Josephus should choose just this point of Jewish history in the middle of the second century B.C. for introducing the three sects. He actually adds nothing to the text in Bellum to which he refers. Oral Law is again conspicuous by its absence. In Antiquities 18 he returns to the situation of Judaea under Quirinus21 in A.D. 6 and to the revolt of Judas the Galilean whom he calls Judas the Gaulanite and associates with Saddok the Pharisee. He repeats his summary of the three tenets. It becomes even clearer that Josephus, in dealing with the three traditional sects, is mainly interested in separating them, as innocent and rather noble, from the subversive behaviour of the fourth school, which is anti-Roman. The new point to emerge from the brief description in Antiquities Book 18, 11 ff. is that the Pharisees control the cult practice because the inhabitants of the cities like them, while the Sadducees stick to the Laws (νόµοι)22, not to the Law, discuss the right path to wisdom with their teachers, are fewer in number and accomplish nothing because the masses compel them to comply [8] with the Pharisaic rules. In Antiquities 18 Josephus comes slightly nearer to saying that the Pharisees call the tune in the matter of ritual, but he is still far from saying that the notion of oral law separates Pharisees from Sadducees. The disclosure that a basic disagreement on the nature of the Torah separates Pharisees and Sadducees is made only by the way within an account of the political conflicts in which the two sects were involved. If Josephus cannot establish a relation between the philosophical and theological ideas which he attributes to the two sects and their political activities, he can give us some impression of where and when they made an impact on the politics of the Hasmoneans. The most important episode is of course the break of John Hyrcanus and his sons Aristobulus and Alexander Jannaeus with the Pharisees, a break which Alexander Jannaeus’ widow Alexandra tried to heal with only moderate success.23 According to Josephus (Ant. 13, 288 ff.) John Hyrcanus, who was at first supported by the Pharisees, fell out with them because one of them – evidently on behalf of his group – asked him to give up the High Priesthood and to content himself with the political leadership of the Jewish State.24 The Sadducees took advantage of this conflict and persuaded Hyrcanus to abolish unspecified legal regulations patronized by the Pharisees. At this point Josephus reveals that the Pharisees “passed on to the people certain regulations handed down by former generations and not recorded in the Laws of Moses, for which reason they are rejected by the Sadducean group, who hold that only those regulations should be considered valid which were written down and that those which had been handed down orally25 by the fathers need not be26 observed”xii (Loeb translation by H. St. J. Thackeray). Here finally we have an admission of the difference between Pharisees and Sadducees in the matter of oral law. But we cannot say that this clarifies the conflict between the Hasmoneans and the Pharisees. With Alexander Jannaeus it became open warfare, in which apparently the Pharisees turned to the King of Syria, Demetrius III, as an ally. Josephus speaks of 800 Jews nailed on crosses by Alexander in one day. Though he does not say that these Jews were Pharisees [9] (Bell. 1, 97; Ant. 13, 380) he compels us to make the equation, because when the Pharisees returned to power under Alexandra they took revenge for the 800 (Ant. 13, 410). Alexandra was ultimately compelled to seek a sort of balance of power between the Pharisees and their opponents whom Josephus now identifies with the dynatoi (the powerful ones), not specifically with the Sadducees (Ant. 13, 411). Alexandra put these powerful ones in control of some of the fortresses (Ant. 13, 417) which prepared the second downfall of the Pharisees on her death. Whatever the details and the uncertain implications of this account by Josephus, what he had not prepared us for and now asks us to accept is that the Pharisees were a political party with 21 22 23 24 25 26 P-o 160, 165, 164: Quirinus; P-o 163, P-p 99: Quirinius. P-o 160: νόµοι, msb[Mom]; P-o 163, P-p 99: νόµων; P-o 165: νόµων, msr[AMM]. P-o 160: The most important episode ... moderate success, stlnmgsn[Mom]. P-o 160: asked him to give up ... Jewish State, a fianco, mgsnmsn[Mom]: here only Oral Law. P-o 160, 164, 165: orally; P-o 163, P-p 99: [orally]. P-o 160, 164, 165: not be; P-o 163, P-p 99: not to be. 250 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources armed followers sufficient to make a difference to the balance of power within the little Jewish state. Surprise soon turns in the opposite direction. We would expect the Pharisees and Sadducees to play a considerable part in the struggle between Aristobulus II and Hyrcanus II which precipitated the intervention of Pompey, but there is nothing of that in Josephus. The equation of the followers of Hyrcanus II with the Pharisees and of those of Aristobulus II with the Sadducees is if anything, modern, not ancient. When Herod appears on the scene, we hear from Josephus (15, 2-4) that he especially honoured Pollion the Pharisee and his pupil Samaias (whom modern scholars like to identify, not without risk, with the rabbinic couple of Shemeyah and Abtalionxiii). Pollion, according to Josephus’ story, would have told the Jewish judges, when Herod had been on trial for his life in earlier days, that if they spared Herod’s life they would in the future be persecuted by him. Herod allowed the prophetic Pharisee and his pupil to refuse to take the oath of allegiance to him. If there was a point of Pharisaic doctrine in refusing an oath of allegiance we are not told. Later, in Antiquities 17, 41-45, Josephus tells us (as if he were introducing something never mentioned before) that “a group of Jews calling themselves Pharisees, priding themselves on their adherence to ancestral custom and claiming to observe the laws on which the Deity approves”27 had a great influence on the women [10] of Herod’s court. These men, six thousand in number, refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Romans and to Herod. They were consequently fined. As a faction in Herod’s court came to their rescue, some of the most influential Pharisees were killed. We may sympathize with Professor Ellis Rivkin who in his book on A Hidden Revolution (pp. 322-4) refuses to take the Pharisees of this passage as ordinary Pharisees and describes them as a group of fanatics “engaged in Rasputin-like palace intrigue to unseat” Herod. We may sympathize with Rivkin, but we must regretfully conclude that there is no more incoherence in this passage than in any other passage by Josephus on the Pharisees. At most we can concede that in this passage of Book 17 on the Pharisees, just as in a passage of Book 15, <371-379xiv>28 on the friendship of Herod for the Essenes, Josephus may have followed a bit too closely the pagan terminology of his probable source Nicolas of Damascus, the secretary and historian of Herodxv. Copying secondary sources is not an exclusive undergraduate activity29. But Josephus would not have copied hostile passages to the Pharisees if in the Antiquities he had been determined to make propaganda for the Pharisees before his Roman readers: if I cannot follow Rivkin I can ever less believe my friend Morton Smith’s theoryxvi that in the Antiquities Josephus tries to sell the Pharisees to the Romans.30 We could go on and analyse the few remaining passages on Pharisees and Sadducees in the historical books of Josephus, but the analysis would not be very productive. The nearer Josephus gets to the rebellion against the Romans, the more confused the picture becomes, for the simple reason that there appears to be no one whose actions are controlled by previously valid principles – to begin with Josephus himself, who after all is a Pharisee. If in Bell. 2, 411-4 the most notable of the Pharisees seem to be set against the revolt, in Vita 190-8 the most resolute opponent of Josephus in Galilee is Simon son of Gamaliel, one of those Pharisees who have the reputation of being unrivalled experts in their country’s laws. On the other hand the Sadducees almost disappear as such from the account of Josephus. We learn without apparent motive that the High Priest Anan the Young was following Sadducean principles in A.D. 62 (Ant. 20, 199). The Essenes enter into the late history of Judaea as individuals rather than as a group: Simon the Essene interpreted correctly a dream of Archelaus son of Herod (Ant. 17, 346), and John the Essene was one of the zone commanders in the war against Rome (Bell. 2, 567). Yet Josephus pays a moving tribute to the courage [11] shown by the Essenes in general during the war against the Romans (Bell. 2, 152). If the purpose of Josephus is, as I believe, to separate the three old respectable sects from the new anti-Roman one of Judas the Galilean, he is perhaps less than successful in his purpose. For he 27 28 29 30 P-o 160: Josephus tells us ... the Deity approves”, stlnmgsn[Mom], con nota ms.: another passage on Oral Law. P-o 160, 163, 164, 165, P-p 99: Book 15, 2-4. P-o 163: Copying secundary sources ... activity, interl.msn[Mom]. P-o 160: But Josephus would not ... the Romans, mginfmsb[Mom]; P-o 165: def. 251 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources tells us that “this school agrees in all other respects with the opinion of the Pharisees except that they have a passion for liberty which is almost unconquerable”. This leaves us no wiser about the Pharisees and even less so about the fourth sect. I shall not complicate matters further by discussing the old question whether the fourth school of philosophy of Judas the Galilean is to be identified with the Zealots. It will be enough to say that Flavius Josephus, who talks a lot about the Zealots, never identifies them with the fourth philosophy. He rather connects, at least implicitly, the followers of Judas the Galilean with the Sicarii who held Masada during its last period (Bell. 7, 2525). The traditional identification of the fourth party with the Zealots has nothing to commend it. A good discussion of the evidence can be found in the article by Menachem Stern in the Yearbook 1973 of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, 135-152xvii . I see no great progress in Martin Hengel’s new appendix to the second edition of his book on Die Zeloten of 1976xviii .31 To sum up. The Pharisee Josephus gives a coherent account only of the Essenes – whether reliable or not. He does not even attempt to indicate the precise activities of the Sadducees and Pharisees and establishes no meaningful relation between their theological opinions and their political activities. Though in one context, which is not that of the characterization of the sects, he hints at the difference between Pharisees and Sadducees regarding oral law, he does not attribute any special importance to it and, in any case, does not give sufficient details to make the difference significant to the outsiders. To say with Professor Rivkin that in the account of Josephus “the Unwritten Law thus emerges from the pattern of action as the core of Pharisaism” seems to me wishful thinking. Consequently it would be too much to expect from Josephus any clarification of the position of Sadducees and Pharisees in relation to priests, Levites, scribes and rabbis or sages. In fact it is very doubtful whether [12] Josephus ever perceived scribes and rabbis as specific groups. This conclusion is somewhat depressing because it means that Josephus does not provide us either intentionally or unintentionally with a coherent picture of the sects among which he lived and of which he claimed to have made a special study in his youth. There is in fact an even more disturbing question arising from this conclusion. The Pharisee Josephus is obviously not thinking of Jewish history from a Pharisaic point of view. Nothing suggests that his Jewish Antiquities would be different if he had not been a Pharisee.32 We may take leave of Josephus for the moment with the question: What difference did it make to him to be a Pharisee? Or alternatively: would we recognize a Pharisee or a Sadducee if we met one in the street after having read Josephus?33xix III 31 P-o 160: I see no great progress ... of 1976, mgsn, msb[Mom]; P-o 165: interl.msr[AMM]; P-o 163, 164: def. P-o 160: It is not my purpose to go beyond Josephus this evening. I shall deal elsewhere with the Gospels and the Talmudic sources, mgsn con segr, msb[Mom]; P-o 165:def.; P-o 160, ds. su f. spillato alla c. 12 con segr dopo a Pharisee: The fact is that Josephus, though a Pharisee, does not commit himself to a recognizably Pharisaic point of view. I am aware that Morton Smith in his famous essay of 1956 on “Palestinian Judaism in the First Century” (Israel: Its Role in Civilization, ed. M. Davis) presented the thesis that in his Jewish Antiquities Josephus tried to depict the Pharisees as “the leading candidates for Roman support in Palestine” after the destruction of the Temple. According to Morton Smith this would be a departure from the attitude of Josephus in the Jewish War, where he still favoured “the group of which his family had been representative – the wealthy, pro-Roman section of the Priesthood”. Morton Smith is a scholar of such stature that any disagreement with him must be expressed with hesitation. But I cannot see a real change of attitude in Josephus in the Jewish Antiquities, where he has some very strange passages on the honesty of the Pharisees – it does not matter for our purpose whether these were copied from Nicolaus of Damascus. Furthermore, the question is wider. How far is Josephus interested in the real religious world of his Jews? He has nothing of the real Qumran – whatever he may say about the Essenes. He has nothing of Philo and all that goes with Philo. And finally he has really almost nothing about Jesus. Ellis Rivkin in his very recent What crucified Jesus? (Nashville 1984) has tried to supplement Josephus on Jesus, a new testimonium flavianum, so to speak, from the Hebrew Union College side. I do not underrate the meaning of this gesture. But it simply confirms that Josephus was silent.; P-o 165: id., inserito al f. 12 con segr dopo a Pharisee e nota msb[AMM]: Insertion in Leo Baeck lecture, 9.1.85. 33 P-o 160: The new text I have produced this evening seems to imply that this is not quite the case. The fault may be that of the new text – but it may also be that of Josephus, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 165: id., msb[AMM] con nota msb[AMM]: end of Leo Baeck lecture. 32 252 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources The trouble is that this question becomes even more acute when we turn to the rabbinic sources. I shall confine myself to what the Mishnah and the Tosefta have to say. The former is traditionally dated at the very beginning of the third century A.D., though nobody likes to be asked what he means by saying that the patriarch Judah compiled it: was it an oral or a written compilation? As for the Tosefta, we know even less. The language is very close to that of the Mishnah, and the internal evidence does not seem to go beyond A.D. 240. But in what precisely the Tosefta should be considered a supplement to the Mishnah and at what moment and place this supplement was put together are two questions not yet rigorously answered. Authoritative scholars put it at the end of the fourth century and make it contemporary with the Talmud of Jerusalem for reasons which are not self-evident. There is indeed ample scope for disagreement in the interpretation of the rabbinic passages on the Sadducees and Pharisees, but the overwhelming impression they leave on the reader is that the world of the two sects and the world of the rabbis are different. The world of Mishnah and Tosefta is a world of individual rabbis or sages who know they belong to the same society and therefore reciprocally presuppose and recognize each other’s authority. [13] They are the confrères of a sort of Institut of France rather than the Fellows of the British Academy who have not yet developed the implicit solidarity and mutual esteem engendered by intellectual disagreement on individual topics. The opinions which count are given in the Mishnah and Tosefta either under the individual names or collectively under the names of sages, Hachamim. Sadducees and Pharisees do not appear either individually or collectively as authoritative. No Sadducee or Pharisee, as such, has an individual face; and no rule is authoritative simply because it is given either by Sadducees or by Pharisees. If in specific cases the sages accepted the rules of the Pharisees they gave authority, as sages, to what they learned from the Pharisees34. I am not going beyond Mishnah and Tosefta in using rabbinic passages, because I am satisfied that the passages in the two Talmuds and in the early Midrashim, of which a representative selection is collected by John Bowker in his well-known book Jesus and the Pharisees, 1973, would not change the picture while raising desperate problems about the transmission of the information and its reliability. To pass from Josephus to Mishnah and Tosefta is of course to pass from texts in which the difference of opinion between Pharisees and Sadducees is so lofty as to be invisible to texts in which the differences are precise. There is always a legal point at stake. Furthermore, the rabbis have a formula to indicate these differences of opinion: “The Sadducees say, we cry out against you, oh Pharisees ... The Pharisees say, we cry out against you, oh Sadducees”. However, it soon becomes evident that these conflicts of opinion are extremely few, if measured against the two thousand pages or so to which any joint English translation of the Mishnah and Tosefta would run (the Mishnah alone in Danby’s translationxx has more than 800 pages). The disagreements are about details, even if they are important details. For instance, in the treatise “The Hands” (Yadaim) the Sadducees are shown to be indifferent to the Pharisaic notion that the Holy Scriptures render the hands unclean, whereas they object to the Pharisaic habit of writing the name of the current ruler in order to date35 [14] a letter of divorce. In the former case the Sadducees are reducing the gap between holy and prophane books whereas in the latter case they objected to the Pharisaic practice of recognizing by implication any ruler, even a foreign ruler, as legitimate, by dating according to him. The contrast between holy and profane books would became even more dramatic if we could accept the attractive conjecture that the Sadducees gave as an example of profane books not the otherwise unknown books of Hamiram (as the vulgate text seems to say) but the perhaps better known books of Homer. The slight and easy emendation is supported by Saul Lieberman in Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 1950, 106xxi. Even so, there is no suggestion that the dividing line between Pharisees and Sadducees is rigid and continuous. In fact there is no intimation of cumulative disagreement. Each case stands by itself and has to be judged on its own merits. Though the notion of oral law is clearly implied at the beginning of the most popular (in every sense) 34 P-o 163: they gave authority ... Pharisees, msb[Mom] <-> and gave them authority, they were uninterested in recognizing the fact – uninterested rather than unwilling. 35 P-o 160: the Sadducees are shown to be indifferent ... in order to date, stln[Mom]. 253 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources treatise of the Mishnah, Abot (“The Sayings of the Fathers”) the notion itself is never used to define Pharisees as against Sadducees. The expression “oral law” in any case is not very common in Tannaitic texts. It is attributed to Shammai in Abot de-Rabbi Nathan, version A, 15, 61 and to Hillel in Babylonian Talmud Shabbath 31a (cf. also Sifré Deuteron. 351).36 Secondly, there are passages both in Mishnah and Tosefta from which the sympathy of the sages with a given opinion of the Pharisees, and even the identification of the sages with a given opinion of the Pharisees, seem to emerge. Over the question whether the holy books defile the hands, the great Rabbi Jochanan ben Zaccai is conspicuously brought in to support the Pharisees. He asks the Sadducees ironically: “Have we only this case of complaint against the Pharisees?”. In other passages the opinion of the Sadducees is opposed to the opinion of the sages, which may or may not imply the intention of identifying the opinion of the sages with that of the Pharisees. This is the case of Mishnah, Makkot (“Stripes”) 1, 6 where the ruling of the Sadducees about putting to death false witnesses is contrasted with that of the sages. Finally, in this order of ideas I would attribute more importance than is usually given to the emotional declaration of Sotah (“The Suspected Adulteress”) 9, 15: “When Rabban [15] Gamaliel the Elder died, the glory of the Law ceased, and purity and Pharisaism died”. I have translated prīshūth literally by “Pharisaism”, though here the word is usually translated by “ascetism”. Rabban Gamaliel is (apart from the couple Pollion and Samaias in Josephus) the only rabbi of whom we know for certain, thanks to Acts 5: 34 and by implication to St. Paulxxii , that he was a Pharisee. It seems to me not by chance that the Mishnah introduces into his epitaph the word prīshūth - perhaps making a pun on the double meaning of “Pharisaism” and “abstinence”. If in such passages the sages seem to indicate their contiguity with Pharisaism and their sympathy for it, there are other passages in which the Pharisees are kept at a distance. What is more surprising, there are finally passages in which the hostility against Pharisaism is plain. I shall only refer to two characteristic passages of the Mishnah expressing or implying remoteness from the Pharisees. In the treatise of the Mishnah, Hagigah (“Festal Offering”) 2, 7, mention is made of a strange hierarchy of ritual uncleanness according to which the garments of ordinary Jews ignorant of the Law (the am-haarez) are a source of uncleanness for the Pharisees, and the garments of the Pharisees for the priests, and so on. Here the Pharisees are given an intermediate status between ignorant peasants and priests, quite outside the world of the sages.37 In Menahot (“Meal offerings”) 10, 3 the messengers of the Court, that is the Beth-Din, mobilize public opinion in the village assemblies against the ruling of the Boëthusians about the offering of barley before the new harvest (the so-called Omer). For reasons which may be left aside here but which are cogent, the Boëthusians are to be taken as a synonym for Sadducees. We have therefore a contrast between Court (Beth-Din) and Sadducees from which the Pharisee are ostensibly excluded. Also in the Tosefta there are passages in which either the sages or the Beth-Din or even the ignorant peasants, the am-haarez, take the Sadducees to task. Tosefta, Sukkah 3, 1 is quite instructive38 on the revolt of the peasants against the Sadducees or rather Boëthusians who did not want them to beat the willow branches on the Sabbath during the festival of Tabernacles. The Pharisees are left out. [16] Decisive, however, are the passages in which both Mishnah and Tosefta express hostility towards the Pharisees. In Mishnah, Sotah 3, 4 an obvious anti-feminist passage, we read that “a foolish pious man and a Pharisaic woman and the self-inflicted39 wounds of the Pharisees, these ruin the world”. Though modern translators render isha prusha, “Pharisaic woman”, by something like “sanctimonious woman”, there can hardly be any doubt that the text points disapprovingly to a 36 P-o 163: The expression “oral law” in any case ... Sifré Deuteron. 351) <-> To the best of my knowledge, the explicit terminology of oral law is first to be found in a statement attributed to Hillel only in Babylonian Talmud Shabbath 31a to which Midrash Tannaim to Deuteronomium p. 15 [vacat] can be added. The words “Oral Torah” are not, strictly speaking, mishnaic, msb[Mom]. 37 P-o 160: Here the Pharisees ... world of sages, stln[Mom]. 38 P-o 163: instructive <-> amusing, msn[Mom]. 39 P-o 160: self-inflicted <-> ascetic, msn[Mom]; P-o 165: corr. def. 254 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources woman whose spiritual director is a Pharisee. The disapproval extends to the ascetic practices attributed to the Pharisees. In a similar passage of Tosefta, Sotah 15, 11-12 the Pharisees are rebuked by the sages for having turned to ascetic practices after the destruction of the Second Temple. Finally, in Tosefta, Berakhot (“Blessings”) 3, 25 we find the extraordinary statement that the pericope against the heretics, minim, which is part of the so-called Eighteen Blessings (Shmone Esre)40, is meant to include the prushim, the Pharisees, in the condemnation. It is easy of course to suggest that in this particular case prushim does not mean the ordinary Pharisees, but a wicked group of dissenters. Inconvenient facts must not be eliminated so easily. 41 However, that passage of the Tosefta is not entirely isolated in its negative evaluation of the Pharisees. Positive and negative evaluations of the Pharisees alternate in Mishnah and Tosefta probably as a consequence of different historical situations and of different groups of sages adopting attitudes towards Pharisaism and Sadduceanism. But the main impression is, I repeat, of distant reactions to a remote world. Pharisees and Sadducees are ghosts of the past for the sages.42 This remoteness explains why Mishnah and Tosefta, and a fortiori the two Talmuds, leave us in doubt about the relation between the Pharisees and the Haverim. Haverim, “companions”, are the members of a voluntary association to which candidates were admitted by stages. Admission was apparently decided by three senior members (cf. Talmud Bab. Bekhorot 30 b, whereas Tosefta, Demai (“Products not certainly tithed”) 2, 14 speaks of admission by the association as a whole; but there was a rabbinic rule that three members of the synagogue are like the synagogue43, Jer. Megillah 3, 74 a). Membership of the association implied duties which automatically separated an individual from the ordinary ignorant layman or [17] am-haarez. As Tosefta, Demai 2, 2, a difficult text, seems to say: “He who takes upon himself four things is accepted as a haver (“companion”): that he will not give terumah (heave-offering) and tithes to an am-haarez, that he will not prepare his food in the observance of the laws of purity with an am-haarez, and that he will eat his ordinary44 food in a state of purity”. This was however not the only definition in circulation of the duties of a haver because the Abot de-Rabbi Nathan, version A (p. 132 Schechterxxiii ) indicates as the four things required of the haver: “he does not go to a cemetery, does not breed small cattle, does not give terumah and tithes to a priest who is an am-haarez and he eats ordinary45 food in the observance of the laws of purity”. The clause that a haver is not allowed to rear small cattle may or may not date the version of the rule in the Abot de-Rabbi Nathan after the destruction of the Temple: the whole question of the obstacles to rearing small cattle introduced by the rabbis both for ideological preferences and in view of the economic situation is too complex to be dealt with here46. Though the haver was so severely separated from the am-haarez, an am-haarez could seek admission to the association and be accepted as a full member. Tosefta, Demai 2, 3; 5 speaks roundly of an am-haarez who “took upon himself the obligations of a haver”. Now there is a circumstance which may seem to imply the identification of these companions (haverim) with Pharisees. I previously quoted a passage from the Mishnah (Hagigah, “Festal Offerings” 2, 7) in which the am-haarez is hierarchically just below the Pharisee, and the Pharisee below the priest, etc. Now in at least one passage of Mishnah, Demai 1, 3 the same position above the am-haarez is conferred upon the haver – though there is no specification about the relation between haver and priest. So there is at least some indication that the haver has a position analogous to that of the Pharisee in relation to the am-haarez. But the rest of the evidence is against 40 P-o 160: Shmone Esre, mgsnmsb[Mom]; P-o 65: def. P-o 163: Inconvenient facts must not be eliminated so easily, mgsup con segr, msn[Mom]; P-o 160, 165, 164: def. 42 P-o 163: Pharisees and Sadducees ... sages <-> which is still famous, but no longer well remembered and only vaguely relevant, msn[Mom]. 43 P-o 160: Tres faciunt collegium [Neratius Priscus in Digestum 50, 16, 85], mssnmsb[Mom]; P-o 165: def. 44 P-o 163: ordinary <-> secular, msn[Mom]. 45 P-o 163: ordinary <-> secular, msn[Mom]. 46 P-o 160: the destruction of the Temple ... to be dealt with her <-> the destruction of the Temple, when the prohibition to rearing small cattle was introduced by the rabbis in view of the economic situation, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 165: id.,interl.msr[AMM]. 41 255 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources the identification of47 Pharisees and haverim. Firstly, none of the rabbinic texts equates haverim and Pharisees. Secondly, none of the rabbinic texts implies that there were formalities of admission to Pharisaism. Thirdly, none of our sources specifies the obligations of the Pharisees as it specifies the obligations of the haverim. Even less do we find indications that [18] an am-haarez could turn himself into a Pharisee, as he could turn himself into a haver, by accepting definite and limited obligations. In fact, if there is anything negatively certain about the Pharisees is that they were different from the haverim. The haverim look much more Hellenistic than the Pharisees. Formally, they are one of the many free associations which developed in the Hellenistic world, with their rules of admission and limited obligations. It remains of course very obscure why this particular association especially attracted the attention of the rabbis – beginning with Hillel and Shammai who apparently contributed their legal acumen to the formulation48 of the49 rules of admission (Tosefta, Demai 2, 11-12; Bab. T., Bekhorot 30 b). But Mishnah and Tosefta know of other associations such as the associations of Jerusalem “some of which went to betrothal feasts and some to wedding feasts” (Tosefta, Megillah 4, 15) or the “companies celebrating religious acts” mentioned in Mishnah, Sanhedrin 8, 12. We hear also of specific associations for the celebration of the paschal meal (Pesahim 7, 13; 8, 3). These meal-fellowship must have been very common. What is surprising is that the Pharisees are never described as a meal-fellowship – which is enough to dispose of the fashionable view, countenanced, albeit with reservations, by Professor Neusner, that the Pharisees were a table-fellowshipxxiv . All we know from the rabbinic texts about the Pharisees is that they had specific solutions for specific points of sacral law. Their ruling was sometimes identical with that of the sages or rabbis, but no complete identification is ever implied. We have heard voices to the contrary among rabbis. And we are more than ever in the dark about origins, developments, obligations and motivations of the Pharisees. IV One can easily see why passing from the rabbinic texts to the New Testament gives an immediate impression of a fresher contact with daily life in Judaism. Some common features of the Gospels with the rabbinic texts are of course obvious: the lack of interest in the Essenes, the greater importance attributed to the Pharisees in comparison with the Sadducees, and I would add the clear preference for the former [19] over the latter, even in the most polemical contexts. Besides, we have seen that the sages were not above disapproving of Pharisaic attitudes and habits. The impression of fresher life is of course inherent in the type of narration. Jesus and his disciples meet the Pharisees in synagogues, houses, streets and fields. Though a pattern of conflicts ultimately emerges, this is by no means a foregone conclusion. Each Gospel, as we know, has its own evaluation of the encounters. Luke is the only one to register on three different occasions that Jesus dined in the house of a Pharisee – once apparently by inviting himself to the table of one of their leaders (7: 36; 11: 37; 14: 1). Luke (13: 31) is also the only one to tell of the warning given by Pharisees to Jesus about Herod Antipas’ intentions, though the interpretation attributed to Jesus of this act is not kind 50 . There is furthermore a discrepancy within the Synoptics in the degree of implicit identification between Pharisees and scribes. Matthew is more emphatic in connecting the two groups, though I find it difficult to derive any conclusion from the pattern of distribution of the terminology concerning scribes and Pharisees in the different Gospels. What is undeniable is the far greater proximity of the Pharisees to the scribes in the Gospels than in the rabbinic writings. I can only recall a passage in Mishnah, Yadaim (“Hands”) 3, 2 in which by implication the scribes or 47 P-o 163: is against the identification of <-> points to strong differences between, msb[Mom]. P-o 163: formulation; P-o 160, 164, 165: formation. 49 P-o 163: contributed their legal ... formulation of the <-> gave different opinions about the, msn[Mom]. 50 P-o 160: though the interpretation ... is not kind [<-> favourable], mgsnmsb[Mom]; P-o 165: though the interpretation ... is not favourable, mgsnmsr[Mom]. 48 256 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources soferim may be identifiable with the Pharisees; but I am personally in doubt even about this passage. Granted the liveliness, the drama, of these individual encounters, what matters for our enquiry is that the Gospel do not preserve the memory of an institutional organization of Pharisees and do not give us any indication about the origins, political activities or general aims of Sadducees and Pharisees.51 The New Testament may be informative about the reactions of the Pharisees to a new religious situation, but leaves us where we were as regards the institutional, political52 and doctrinal framework of Sadducees and Pharisees. If I were under the obligation of writing an encyclopaedic article or a chapter of a Cambridge History53 on Pharisees and Sadducees, I should probably be able to extract from54 the evidence supplied by Josephus, the rabbinic sources and the New Testament enough material to make a decent historical report. Some authentic facts can of course be put together.55 But [20] in these lectures I am not paid56 to make the best of a bad situation. What we must realize is that in a strict sense we do not know, or know very indistinctly,57 who the Pharisees and the Sadducees were, though we are now in a position to say something definite about the most isolated, self contained and presumably least influential group,58 the Essenes, or about the communities we have agreed to define collectively as Essenian. If I am correct, this means that we are for the time being unable to tell the story of59 the internal religious life of Judaism from say 150 B.C. to the destruction of the second Temple. The main reason for our ignorance is that the sources transmitted to us are not meant to provide an ordinary historical picture of the two sects. This, in my mind, is connected with the decline in historical interest which is characteristic of the Judaism of the first centuries of the Christian era. But we can also state the situation in different terms. Ordinary Greek and ordinary Jewish historiography, each in its own way, was certainly capable of explaining the rise of new social, political and religious groups. It was also used to explain the consequences of collective action by a group.60 In comparison Josephus lets us down. If Josephus lets us down, it would be absurd to complain that legal rabbinic texts and Christian texts proclaiming a new faith are not doing what Josephus omitted to do. However, even the best Greek and Jewish historians were not able 61 to pursue the development of organized religious groups beyond a certain point. The existence of several definite political parties, each with its own theological orientation, was unknown to Greeks and Romans and after all was rather new even among the Jews themselves.62 One has to wait for Eusebius to have an ecclesiastical history. What we would like to have but know we cannot have is a Jewish Eusebius of the first century A.D. 51 P-o 160: Granted the liveliness ... and Pharisees, stln[Mom]. P-o 160, 165: political, interl.ms[Mom]. 53 P-o 163: of a Cambridge History, interl.msn[Mom]. 54 P-o 163: to extract from <-> to combine enough of, msn[Mom]. 55 P-o 160: Some authentic facts ... together, mginf con segr, msb[Mom]; P-o 165: id., interl.msr[AMM]. 56 P-o 163: in these lectures I am not paid <-> I am not here, msn[Mom]. 57 P-o 160: or known very indistinctly, mgsup con segr, msb[Mom]; P-o 165: id., interl.msr[AMM]. 58 P-o 160: the most isolated ... group, mgsn con segr, msb[Mom]; P-o 165: id., interl.msr[AMM]. 59 P-o 163: to tell the story of <-> to reconstruct, msn[Mom]. 60 P-o 160: It was also used ... by a group, mginf con segr, msb[Mom]; P-o 165: id., interl.msr[Mom]. 61 P-o 163: However, even the best ... not able <-> But it was not quite traditional either for Greek or for Jewish historians, msn[Mom]. 62 P-o 160: The existence... Jews themselves, mginf con segr, msb[Mom]; P-o 165: mginf con segr, msr[AMM]. 52 257 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources Appendice a The Jewish Sects in the Sources: The New Letter by “Anna” to “Seneca” (P-l 18 - Chicago version, primavera 1985) Il ms. P-l 1863 si presenta come una prima (e tormentata) stesura, percorsa per intero da correzioni eseguite con la stessa penna nera con cui il testo è stato steso. Si interrompe a metà di una frase, benché in un contesto in cui il nesso con l’inizio della trattazione relativa alle “sette ebraiche”, così come conservata in P-o 160, può già dirsi stabilito. Il testo mostra una somiglianza strettissima con l’omonimo articolo pubblicato su Athenaeum, rispetto al quale si segnalano in apparato le differenze più rilevanti (essenzialmente legate allo stile e all’organizzazione dell’argomentazione, oltre all’aggiunta di citazioni dirette). Diversamente dal testo edito, in questa versione per Chicago la considerazione dei problemi è sottoposta agli students of Judaism (vd. quarto paragrafo), con significative conseguenze nell’argomentazione (notevole appare ad esempio la convinzione con cui si presenta l’ipotesi di una priorità della Lettera rispetto al cosiddetto carteggio fra Paolo e Seneca). [1] I I shall begin where I should not begin – with an almost irrelevant text. But the text is new, fascinating and may even teach us something on Jewish sects. Bernhard Bischoff, the great Munich master of Medieval Latin Philology, has just published one of those books which were ordinary in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but are now very unusual: a collection of 42 medieval Latin literary texts discovered in various European libraries. The title of the book indicates its contents: Anecdota novissima. Texte des vierten bis sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1984). It is not superfluous to add in this place that Professor Bischoff is the last of the German scholars who can consider themselves the pupils of the pupils of Ludwig Traube, the Jew who at Munich placed Latin medieval philology on a new basis64. Several of these new texts touch Jewish matters: a Hebrew-Latin glossary of the tenth century, an antiJewish Easter sermon by Liutprandus of Cremona, a parody of a biblical text, etc. But the most important of these texts gives itself as a letter, written by an individual called Anna to Seneca65. This Latin text is preserved in the library of the Archibishop of Cologne in a ms. of the early IX century. The text is not complete, though it is fairly long for a letter, about four pages of a modern book66. What this man Anna tells Seneca is that pagan polytheism is indefensible – even in its philosophic forms. The truth is to be found in strict monotheism67. The author does not utter the words Jews or Judaism in any form, but he repeatedly alludes to passages of the Old Testament68. Furthermore he abundantly uses the apocryphal Wisdom of Salomon which he may have read in Greek rather than in Latin. The truth is defined “veritas nostra”. The text does not contain any sign either of Christianity or of [2] polemical concern with Christianity. The abundant allusions to the Old Testament are in marked contrast with the absence of references to Christian texts or events. The author is neither Christian nor disturbed by Christianity. He speaks to educated pagans and criticizes ordinary Roman paganism 69 from the point of view of Old Testament but with an emphasis on the immortality of the soul70. Now, as we all know from Flavius Josephus, there was a contemporary of Seneca who was called Anna and was famous for his eloquence: the man who was 63 Sottoserie P-l: Chicago Lectures 1985 (cfr. GRANATA 2006, lxxxii). It is not superfluous… on a new basis: def. in Athenaeum. 65 P-l 18: Incipit, interl.msb; Athenaeum: Incipit Epistola Anne ad Senecam de Superbia et Idolis. 66 Athenaeum: Professor Bischoff calls his editio princeps “Der Brief des Hohenpriesters Annas an den Philosophen Seneca – eine jüdisch-apologetische Missionschrift (Viertes Jahrhundert?)”. 67 Athenaeum: “iactant sese creaturae signa cognoscere, cum ignorent ipsum Dominum creatorem mundi”. 68 Athenaeum: from Genesis to Job. 69 Athenaeum: with special reference to the cult of Liber Pater 70 P-l 18: from the point of view of Old Testament ... of the soul, interl; Athenaeum: “quod de terra natum est, in terra revertetur; anima autem caeleste munus exspectabit”. 64 258 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources a high priest for a brief period in 62 and was deposed for his responsibility in the condemnation of James, the brother of Jesus71. After his deposition he remained very authoritative until he was killed in 68: a pro-Roman Sadducee who accepted to play a part in the struggle against Rome72. Professor Bischoff has suggested that we must identify this Sadducee leader Anna or Ananos or Hanan with the alleged author of the title given by Bischoff to73 the letter to Seneca, and I think he is correct, as far as the incipit goes. Only a very important Jew could be supposed to write to Seneca.74 But this is only the beginning of a series of questions which the students of Judaism under the Roman Empire will have to answer in relation to the new text. We are in no need for being reminded that since the time of St Jerome there was in circulation a Latin correspondence between St Paul and Seneca. As this correspondence was known to St Jerome but not yet known to patristic authors like Lactantius in the early IV century, it is now generally, and surely correctly, inferred that these letters were forged in the fourth century. Curiously enough, a few years ago an eminent Italian student of Medieval Latin, Ezio Franceschini, thought he could defend this correspondence as authentic (Studi E. Paratore, Bologna 1981, 827-841). We shall ultimately see that the new letter by Anna to Seneca is in comfort to any one who want to believe in the authenticity of that correspondence between [Seneca] and St. Paul.75 The new text now shows that at least one letter alleged to be76 by a Jewish high priest to Seneca was in existence. It is natural to ask in what relation this new letter stands to the famous exchange between Seneca and St Paul. But before we ask this natural question we have to take other facts into account77. [3] But first of all a complication must be noticed which Professor Bischoff has noticed but underrated78: even the most superficial analysis of the contents of the letter shows that it is not a real letter to Seneca. True enough the incipit of the new letter says that it is a letter by Anna to Seneca: “Incipit Epistola Anne ad Senecam de superbia et idolis”. But in the text the writer speaks to several people79, not to Seneca. These people – the recipients of the message – are called fratres80: they are clearly potential proselytes. In other words: the name of Seneca is a secondary interpolation. Somebody turned a letter or a sermon directed to a group of potential proselytes into a letter to Seneca. If the original text was not addressed to Seneca, it may still have been written by a man called Anna.81 But an Anna disconnected from Seneca needs not to have been identical with the famous high priest contemporary with Seneca: he may be an otherwise unknown Jewish propagandist in Latin called Anna, who wrote a letter or a sermon to fratres, potential converts. We are therefore faced by the probability that our text had really nothing to do with Seneca and by the possibility that the name Anna had originally nothing to do with the Sadducee high priest of 62. In other words, the story of our text may have had two stages: the first in which it was a simple propaganda text by a Latin speaking Jew trying to attract proselytes, the second in which it was turned into a letter to Seneca. In this second stage the author of the text – whether called Anna or otherwise – must have been thought to be the high priest Anna or Ananos or Hanan, because Seneca could not be addressed by a Jew of no consequence. A text in Latin to attract proselytes to Judaism is not, as far as I know, something very common. Future research into the Latinity of the text will have to give us an approximate date of the text. It will not to be an easy task because we know so 71 Athenaeum: Ant. XX, 199. Athenaeum: Josephus admired him, at least when he wrote the Bellum (IV, 319-25). What he wrote in his autobiography is another story. 73 the title given by Bischoff to, interl.msb. 74 Only a very important. ... to write to Seneca, interl. 75 We shall ultimately see ... and St Paul, mginf con segr. 76 alleged to be, interl. 77 But this is only the beginning of a series of questions … we have to take other facts into account: def. in Athenaeum. 78 first of all a complication ... underrated, mgsup con segr. 79 several people <-> fratres. 80 Athenaeum: “vehementer admiror, fratres… Videtis ergo, fratres…”. 81 If the original text was not addressed ... called Anna, mgdx <-> This in its turn opens the new question whether the original text without Seneca may have been attributed, either as a letter or as a sermon, to a man called Anna. 72 259 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources little about the Latin used by Jews and indeed about the Latin versions of the Biblical texts they used. As we might expect, the text has signs of having being written by a man whose Latin was strongly influenced by Greek82. All that I can say at present is that our text does not look one written [4] by a Sadducee, whether high priest or not.83 Future study will have to say whether it may have written in the second or third century when the Latin speaking Jews of Rome included cultivated individuals, such as the one who wrote the famous epitaph for Regina now in the Corpus Inscr. Judaic. n. 476.84 With these complications in mind we can now return to the relation between our text and the correspondence85 between St Paul and Seneca. A Jew may well have thought of opposing a correspondence between the high priest Anna and Seneca to the correspondence between St Paul and Seneca. This in an easy solution but the easier solution is not always the better. It is also obvious that the interpolator did not interfere with text by adding polemical allusion to Christianity. So there is no clear sign that a Jew intended to turn Anna into a competitor of St Paul as a correspondent with Seneca. Our incipit “Epistula Anne ad Senecam de superbia et idolis” implies that our letter was not a part of a correspondence between Anna and Seneca. So there is no direct imitation of the correspondence between Seneca and St Paul86. Against my will, I feel inclined to suspect that somebody thought of a letter by the high priest to Seneca before the correspondence between Seneca and S. Paul had been forged. The existence of the alleged letter by Anna to Seneca may have preceded and inspired the composition of the correspondence between S. Paul and Seneca.87 Nobody could, however, think of an Anna writing to Seneca unless he knew exactly that a high priest Anna was the exact contemporary of Seneca. The obvious place to find this information was Flavius Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities. But of course other histories, for instance that by Justus of Tiberias, might provide the information. The only thing which seems certain in so many uncertainties is that if somebody chose the Sadducee high priest Anna or Ananos as the writer of a letter to Seneca emphasizing the immortality of the soul, he did no longer know who a Sadducee was88. And this brings me back to the real subject of my lecture. Christians have read Flavius Josephus through the centuries. They have got their ideas about the Jewish sects of Jesus’ time by combining the Gospels with Josephus. We Jews have hardly gone back to Josephus in order to know about Pharisees and Sadducees before the XIX century. A real examination of Josephus on Jewish sects in comparison with both the Gospels and the [5] Talmudic texts is a very recent enterprise both for Jews and for Christians, and it happens to be pursued when the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has enormously complicated matters. The stray piece of evidence which I have produced this evening from the new text published by Bischoff is a further, however small, indication of how complicated matters really are. What we have found in the new text is a Sadducee high priest who is supposed to make propaganda for a Judaism emphasizing immortality of the soul in a letter to the pagan philosopher Seneca. Even if we leave aside the names of Anna and Seneca we shall have to cope with the precise fact that somewhere in the Latin West there was somebody insisting on the 82 we know so little about the Latin ... by Greek <-> first because the thext has passed through copies made by medieval scribes and secondly because we know so little about Latin versions of the Biblical texts made by Jews in the first centuries of the Empire, mginf con segr. 83 whether high priest or not <-> given the insistence on the immortality of the soul, interl. 84 Athenaeum: In any case a text in Latin written to attract proselytes to Judaism is not, as far as I know, something we encounter at every corner. Proselytes in Rome certainly existed. Another Roman inscription (CII 523) celebrates a women who became a proselyte at the age of 70 and died at the age of 86 after having been “mother” of two synagogues. 85 With these complications in mind ... our text and <-> At this point it would be easy to suggest that the original piece was turnedinto a letter to Seneca because there was already in circulation a correspondence, interl. 86 This is an easy solution ... and St Paul <-> It is an easy solution, but does not quite account for the absence of any awareness of the existence of Christianity in our text, interl., mgdx. 87 Athenaeum: A third possibility (though not a very likely one) is that the introduction of the name of Seneca into Anna’s letter and the forgery of the correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul are two unrelated events. 88 he did no longer know who a Sadducee was <-> the name Sadducee had lost any precise theological implication in the mind of, interl. 260 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e II. The Jewish Sects in the Sources immortality of the Soul, but not on oral Law: better than a Sadducee, yet not quite good as a Pharisee, if we follow the conventional description. But whose is the conventional description ... 89 i Ioh. Drusii De sectis Iudaicis commentarii Trihaeresio & Minervali Nic. Serarii Iesuitae Mogunt. oppositi, atque antehac seorsim editi. Accessit denuo Iosephi Scaligeri I.C.F. Elenchus Trihaeresii ejusdem. Sixtinus Amama omnia in unum volumen redegit atque secundam hanc editionem variis additamentis locupletiorem accuravit, ... Arnhemiae, Apud Ioannem Iansonium. Typis Frederici Heynsii Typogr. in Acad. Franckerana, 1619. ii GEIGER 1857. iii WELLHAUSEN 1874. iv Cfr. GL 1979 I (Prologue), part. alle cc. 6-10. v HILGENFELD 1868. vi Per la riflessione momiglianea su Weber, cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1977B (=Weber-Meyer); ID. 1978A (=Dopo Weber); B ID. 1981 (=Weber e l’antichità); ID. 1980D (=A Note on Weber); ID. 1986I (=Two Types). Per il ruolo di Troeltsch nello storicismo si rimanda invece all’analisi di MILLER 2007, 363; tra i contributi di Momigliano, vd. MOMIGLIANO 1963B (= The Conflict), intr. p. 6. vii Il riferimento alla “previous lecture” GL 1982 I (Jews and Gentiles), in cui era già stata messa in luce questa caratteristica di Giuseppe, viene soppresso in occasione dell’intervento presso il Leo Baeck College. In considerazione del numero di testi momiglianei dedicati al ruolo storiografico di Flavio Giuseppe (per cui vd. supra, GL 1982 I, nota i) viene accolta a testo in questo caso la versione Leo Baeck. viii SCHÜRER 1973-1987. ix SANDERS-BAUMGARTEN-MENDELSON 1981. x Ios. Vita 11, with an Engl. transl. by H.St. J. Thackeray, London-Cambridge(Mass) 1923. xi Phil. Prob. 75-91. xii Jos. Ant. 13, 297. xiii Per l’atteggiamento “farisaico integralista” dei due personaggi, che compaiono in Ant. 14, 172 ss. e 15, 370, cfr. SCHÜRER 1985, 373, e SCHALIT 1969, 768 ss. xiv Tutti i documenti esaminati citano Ant. 15, 2-4, passo già incontrato in relazione ai farisei Pollione e Samaias. La buona disposizione mostrata nei loro confronti da Erode ad loc. torna a essere menzionata quando Giuseppe descrive, in Ant. 15, 370-9, la simpatia del monarca verso gli Esseni. Trattandosi di un lapsus plausibilmente causato da una citazione a memoria, si sostituisce con la numerazione corretta. xv Per una rassegna delle discussioni relative all’eventualità di una dipendenza di Flavio Giuseppe da Nicola di Damasco, cfr. FELDMAN 1989 (part. alle pp. 402-403). xvi SMITH 1956, 67-81. Momigliano tornerà sulla questione con maggior ampiezza tre anni dopo, nella versione per il Leo Baeck College: si veda l’inserzione alla c. 12 di P-o 160 e P-o 165, supra, in apparato. Una completa e autorevole adesione alla tesi di Smith si può trovare argomentata in NEUSNER 1987. Per altre posizioni, cfr. FELDMAN 1989, 421-422. xvii STERN 1976B. xviii HENGEL 1976. xix Il new text a cui fa riferimento Momigliano nel testo riportato in apparato (P-o 160, interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 165, interl.msb[AMM] con annotazione End of Leo Baeck lecture) va identificato con la Lettera di Anna a Seneca, per cui cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1985A (=Anna-Seneca). xx DANBY 1933. xxi LIEBERMAN 1950. xxii Cfr. Atti 22: 3; 23: 6. xxiii Masekhet’Avot de-Rabi Natan, hujus libri recensiones duas collatis variis apud bibliothecas et publicas et privatas codicibus edidit, prooemium notas appendices indicesque addidit Salomon Schechter, Vienna 1887 . xxiv Su questa posizione assunta in precedenza da NEUSNER 1971 si rimanda alla valutazione critica di SANDERS 1990, 117 (in cui le dispute farisaiche concernenti la purità dei cibi rituali vengono stimate all’1%, di contro al 67% di Neusner); lo stesso Neusner ha successivamente ritrattato la propria ipotesi (NEUSNER 1987, 290). 89 Il testo si interrompe qui. 261 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse GL 1982 III The decline of History and Apocalypse - [Old] From History to Apocalypse. Sedi e date NL 1977 IV (31 gennaio, cfr. D-a 1) CL 1977 V (maggio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 415) Documenti a) NL 1977 IV P-o 27 ms. P-o 40 (a), P-o 13 (a): top c. di P-o 27. P-o 26 (a), P-o 58 (a), P-o 84 (b): c.c. di P-o 40 (a). P-o 34 xerox di P-o 84 (b). b) aggiunte (prob. per CL 1977 V) P-o 25, P-o 13 (b) = P-o 26 (b,c), P-o 84 (c,d) P-o 28 nuova versione ms. delle aggiunte basata su P-o 84 (c,d). P-o 40 (b) top c. di P-o 28. P-o 56 (b), P-o 58 (b): c.c. di P-o 40 (b). c) CL 1977 V P-o 40 (a-b), P-o 84 (a,b,c,d). P-o 58 c.c. di P-o 40 (a,b). P-o 29, P-o 85 [escluse pp. 28-30, utilizzate per EL 1978 VI1]: xerox di P-o 58. - [New] The decline of History and Apocalypse Sedi e date: EL 1978 VI (15 novembre, cfr. *D-a 1) GL 1982 III ( 3 febbraio, cfr. Granata 2006, 424) Documenti a) EL 1978 VI P-o 56 (a) aggiunte mss., (b) c.c. di P-o 40, (c) pp. provenienti da P-o 242, (d) ds. da una c.c. di P-o 363 P-o 86 xerox di P-o 56. P-o 57 nuova versione ds. basata su P-o 56. P-o 166 (b) c.c. di P-o 57. b) GL 1982 III P-o 166 (a) aggiunte per GL 1982 III. 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati The Decline of History and Apocalypse è la lezione che Momigliano scelse per chiudere la Grinfield Lecturership tenuta senza interruzioni per quattro anni, dal 1979 al 1982. Se l’intero ciclo GL 1982 rappresenta in sostanza una rielaborazione dell’ultima sezione del suo iniziale progetto d’insieme sul giudaismo ellenistico (apprezzabile, nella sua variante preliminare più estesa, con le sei Efroymson lectures del 1978) The Decline si presenta come definitiva riscrittura della sesta e ultima EL, The Decline of History and Apocalypse and the Defence against the Romans. Tra i numerosi testimoni conservati dall’AAM, il ds. P-o 166 – cui si fa riferimento come testo base per l’edizione – documenta con accuratezza i cambiamenti apportati sul testo Grinfield a partire da quello Efroymson, di tre anni precedente. Il documento si compone di 40 carte dss., in parte originali e in parte c.c., testimoni di due distinte fasi (come confermano le note apposte sul ds. da AMM): le pagine in c.c. riproducono la versione EL (di cui P-o 57 fornisce l’originale), interessata da cospicue eliminazioni o riassunti, mentre quelle dss. (cc. [1], 11, 14-15, 18-22) recano aggiunte e modifiche GL. 1 2 3 Decline. Ds. di CL 1977 III (Rabbis) Top c. CL 1977 II ([New] Temple). 262 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse Prima di prendere in esame questi interventi finali è opportuno ripercorrere brevemente la storia della composizione della lecture, ricordando come la stessa Efroymson fosse il risultato di importanti rielaborazioni condotte sul testo di una conferenza dal titolo From History to Apocalypse, presentata per la prima volta allo University College London nel 1977 (NL 1977 IV) e in versione rivista, nello stesso anno, in occasione delle Chicago lectures (CL 1977 V). Nel passaggio dal ciclo di Chicago (1977) a quello Efroymson (1978) l’intero ciclo di lectures è sottoposto a un consistente ripensamento che porta a sostanziali modifiche strutturali, istituendo rapporti nuovi fra i temi trattati4. Nel caso specifico di The Decline, il cambiamento più cospicuo risulta dall’accorpamento in un’unica sede (EL 1978 VI) della lezione CL 1977 V (From History) con parti provenienti dalla CL 1977 II (The Temple and the Synagogue) e dalla CL 1977 III (The Rabbis and the Communities)5. È la struttura composita del fascicolo P-o 56 a permettere apprezzare pienamente il processo di costruzione del testo: la complessità della composizione, che una descrizione in apparato potrebbe rendere indecifrabile, induce a proporne piuttosto un riassunto in sede introduttiva. P-o 56 (di cui P-o 86 risulta copia xerox e P-o 57 una nuova dattiloscrittura in 31 cc.) consta di 35 carte, in parte mss. e in parte dss. I primi 11 fogli, vergati a mano da Momigliano, contengono la nuova introduzione EL; le carte successive, rinumerate a mano come 12-18, sono c.c. delle pp. 2228 della CL 1977 V From History to Apocalypse (P-o 40); nuova è la c. 19 (ms.), a cui segue un’estesa sezione di 16 carte dall’origine composita: le cc. rinumerate a mano come 20-30 (già 515) provengono dalla CL 1977 III The Rabbis and the Communities (P-o 24); le due successive (3132, già 26-27), sono prese da una copia della CL 1977 II The Temple and the Synagogue (P-o 36), mentre le ultime carte provengono nuovamente dalla CL 1977 V From History to Apocalypse. Il confronto fra le versioni EL e GL evidenzia coincidenze e differenze di cui si cercherà di rendere conto in dettaglio tra apparato e appendice al testo, in cui si riportano i passi Efroymson soppressi dagli interventi più massicci. Nello specifico, i capp. I-V, mss. per la Efroymson (cc. 1-11 di P-o 56), vengono conservati nella versione Grinfield, mentre i capp. VI-VII, provenienti dalla CL 1977 V From History to Apocalypse (cc. 12-18 di P-o 56), subiscono tagli e rielaborazioni; infine, il cap. VIII della Grinfield (che nella versione EL si articolava in tre capitoli, VIII-X) riprende la pagina di apertura scritta a mano per la Efroymson, per riassumere poi fortemente, in soli 5 fogli, la lunga “sezione composita” proveniente dalle conferenze di Chicago (cc. 20-35 di P-o 56). 2. Argomento della lecture La consuetudine alla lettura sinagogale integrale della storia sacra delle origini, il Pentateuco, conferisce all’idea ebraica di storia una centralità incomparabilmente più profonda di quella sviluppata dai Greci, presso i quali la storiografia si definisce tardi, ha oggetto indefinito e finalità tendenti alla retorica o alla costruzione di teorie etiche o politiche. A questo approccio al passato, spesso al confine con la novellistica, si adeguano gli Ebrei che cercano terreno di incontro con la cultura greca. È il caso della ripresa del genere degli exitus virorum illustrium nella forma talmudica delle “ultime parole dei rabbi”: la scelta di isolare il messaggio supremo, eventualmente profetico, di un rabbino o di un patriarca ha l’esito di creare un legame con il passato, chiamando a condividere o anticipare le nuove speranze di immortalità proposte dal cosiddetto pensiero farisaico, senza implicare però un rinnovato processo di produzione storica. Alla soppressione della storia a favore della pietà e della saggezza si accompagnano attese escatologiche e un incremento nel senso di premonizione della fine del mondo. Una datazione complessiva dei resoconti apocalittici affidati a grandi figure del passato (Enoch, Daniele, Mosé, Ezra) induce a collegare il sorgere del genere all’età maccabaica (II sec.a.C.). I due secoli di vita dell’apocalittica (fra Antioco IV e Adriano) sono d’altra parte gli stessi in cui si consolida l’istituzione della sinagoga, la cui fede nell’eternità della Torah sembrerebbe a prima vista trovare completamento proprio nella prospettiva dell’apocalittica, che sottolineando la transitorietà di 4 5 Cfr. Introduzione, pp. 20-22. Cfr. GRANATA 1999 e 2006. 263 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse questo mondo garantisce l’eternità di quello futuro, fondato sulla Torah. Sarebbe però erroneo considerare tale genere la “dimensione segreta” della pietà ebraica, non solo perché gli Ebrei lo abbandonarono presto, ma anche perché i loro leader religiosi non lo guardarono mai con particolare simpatia. Al contrario, è proprio in nome della Torah, che è permanenza, che il giudaismo rabbinico finisce per reprimere la storia e l’anti-storia dell’apocalittica, che riportano il cambiamento. Il periodo che va dal 150 a.C. al 100 d.C. vede la progressiva affermazione del pensiero rabbinico in contrapposizione a entrambi i generi. Le origini della classe, pur rimanendo oscure, sembrano riconducibili al momento dell’incontro con l’ellenismo. Le sue scuole condividono infatti con quelle filosofiche greche mobilità sociale e ambizioni politiche, per quanto a differenza loro vivano in continuo contatto con la società, plasmandone l’ideale di vita. Fattore legante per il popolo ebraico diventa infatti la Legge comune derivata dall’interpretazione rabbinica: una prospettiva che contribuisce a spiegare la reticenza sul cristianesimo e sui conflitti interni al giudaismo, individuando una tendenza a non parlare delle divergenze più pericolose e radicali. In conclusione, i punti forti del sistema educativo creato dagli Ebrei per resistere all’impatto con la cultura greca si individuano nello stretto legame fra scuola e casa di preghiera e nel significato religioso del rapporto tra allievi e maestri, all’interno di una piramide educativa che culmina in Dio stesso. In questa prospettiva il giudaismo può essere definito come un prodotto dell’ellenismo solo nella misura in cui nasce come modello di resistenza all’ellenismo stesso. 3. Note di contenuto: i motivi della rielaborazione e il rapporto con i testi editi. Nel processo di rielaborazione del testo GL 1982 risalta il diverso trattamento riservato a ciò che era stato scritto ex novo per la Efroymson, che viene conservato, rispetto ai materiali provenienti dal ciclo di Chicago, per i quali si rendono necessari interventi sostanziali. Una prima riscrittura relativa ai limiti della dimensione apocalittica nei testi rabbinici risponde essenzialmente a un intento di sintesi e al desiderio di riorganizzare l'argomentazione, attribuendo la priorità a un dato concreto (la perdita dei libri apocalittici degli Ebrei) piuttosto che a ipotesi ex silentio. Sulla questione degli scritti orientali, invece, l'intervento di Momigliano mira a restringere l’orizzonte di indagine proposto a Chicago e a Cincinnati per concentrarsi esclusivamente su testi ebraici. Va rilevato come nel frattempo la trattazione di scritti egizi o iranici (Cronaca Demotica, Oracolo del Vasaio, Rivelazione di Istaspe), ancora materia di The Decline nel 1978, avesse trovato nel 1981 uno sviluppo autonomo dapprima in sede Grinfield e poi, più estesamente, a Chicago (The Resistance, GL 1981 I e CL 1981 I). Meno evidenti appaiono le motivazioni del radicale intervento di riduzione del "vecchio" testo su Qumran. Si può ipotizzare che Momigliano abbia modificato negli anni il proprio pensiero circa la rilevanza dei testi qumranici rispetto al taglio della sua riflessione sull'apocalittica; l'ipotesi sembra suffragata dal fatto che in uno dei suoi ultimi testi, che riprende il tema della lecture con diversa prospettiva – ma alcuni punti di contatto - la presenza di Qumran è ridotta a un cenno appena sulla scoperta nella caverna IV di frammenti dell'Enoc aramaico6. La variazione che più colpisce nell’elaborazione Grinfield rimane tuttavia il grande taglio del finale (caratteri delle scuole rabbiniche, cap. VIII; conflitti interni al giudaismo, cap. IX; conclusioni, X), che non può essere giustificata semplicemente su base contestuale (ad es. tempi di esposizione ridotti). Il fatto che Momigliano rimuova il cap. IX sui conflitti interni tra le "sette" ebraiche ha una ragione evidente: nella riformulazione oxoniense del ciclo al tema è dedicata una conferenza apposita, elaborata proprio a partire dal materiale tagliato (The Jewish Sects, GL 1982 II). Nel caso della trattazione del rabbinato e dell’intero capitolo conclusivo le ragioni risultano invece più sfuggenti, per quanto si constati una certa ricorrenza di tagli “in prospettiva”, ossia rivolti a parti di testo che oltrepassano il contesto giudaico-ellenistico arrivando fino al cristianesimo o al "salto ... alla Mishnah e alla Tosefta" che Momigliano si dichiara troppo vecchio 6 MOMIGLIANO 1986c. 264 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse per compiere7. Da un lato sembrerebbe quindi ravvisabile un’esigenza di precisa delimitazione tematica; dall'altro non mancano però anche interventi volti a eliminare le formulazioni più assertive in merito agli aspetti di unità e continuità del giudaismo: una per tutte, la conclusione del cap. VIII EL, che insiste nel ridimensionare la varietà del giudaismo ellenistico. In conclusione, la ricostruzione della storia del testo e delle sue modalità di revisione porta a concludere come Momigliano non considerasse affatto la versione Efroymson un’espressione insoddisfacente del proprio pensiero, soprattutto in relazione al pubblico (vicino alle posizioni del giudaismo riformato) a cui l’aveva presentata. Tuttavia, la riproposizione a distanza di alcuni anni dello stesso argomento a Oxford dovette verosimilmente sollecitarlo a sottoporre la conferenza a un vaglio rigoroso finalizzato ad espungerne, insieme a quanto già trattato nel nuovo ciclo GL, ciò che risultava eccentrico e non strettamente funzionale rispetto al tema proposto, anche nei casi in cui la riduzione comporta (come nel cap. X) la rinuncia a passi di grande forza suggestiva. 7 L’osservazione è tra l’altro riproposta in tutte le versioni della lecture (P-o 166, 17; P-o 57, 17; P-o 56, 19). 265 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse III The Decline of History and Apocalypse*8 [Introduction] In my previous lectures I tried to argue four main points: 1) The Jews found themselves faced by a nation, such as the Greek nation, which not only claimed for itself superiority of education, but tried to assimilate other peoples by education. The Jews reacted by creating an education of their own which preserved the unity of Judaism, geographical and linguistic difficulties notwithstanding. The main sign of Hellenization among the Jews was that they created an anti-Hellenic system of education. 2) At the level of exchange of ideas communication between Jews and non-Jews was very limited. No doubt the Jews were more interested in Greek ideas and institutions than the Greeks were in Jewish ideas and institutions, but even the Jewish interest in Greek culture did not go very deep. There were no Jewish mathematics, astronomy, geography, theory of politics, medicine, etc. worth comparing with the Greek ones. In any case two are needed to make a dialogue: the Greek intellectual was seldom prepared to speak to the Jew. 3) Historiography represents the partial exception. Jews and Greeks discussed each other’s claims about antiquity and achievements. But even these discussions did not go very far: the Greeks knew very little of Jewish history, and the Jews very little of Greek history. 4) What is more, the attitude of the Jews to their own life precluded them from being able to account for their own internal factions and parties. Whoever cares to talk about Sadducees and Pharisees with a sense of responsibility has to reckon with the two facts that we have no historical account of them and have not yet recovered their libraries, if any, as we have for the Qumran group.9 I want now to return to the third and fourth points for further probing10. As we know11, [1]12 the Jews of the Hellenistic age had behind them a tradition of religious thought in which historical events mattered enormously. The Biblical God, at higher or lower levels of ethical refinement, demonstrated his existence, his power, his preferences, and even the inaccessible nature of his thoughts, by direct interventions in the affairs of the Hebrew nation. Specific historical events such as Exodus, the Revelation on Sinai, the conquest of the Promised Land, the building and the destruction of the First Temple, had demonstrated God’s choice of Israel and his approval – or disapproval – of Israel’s behaviour. The most significant events concerning the Chosen People, from Abraham’s vocation to the destruction of the First Temple, were told in a continuous series against a background of world history. Parts of this history, albeit not yet with the precise ritual which obtains today, were read in the Synagogue. The festivals themselves re-enacted some of the past events. However blurred the contours, Jewish history was in fact seen as emerging from Adam’s fall, Cain’s murder and Noha’s merits – though the theological implications of these * Documento preso come base: P-o 166, ds. di 40 cc., in parte originali e in parte c.c., che documenta con accuratezza i cambiamenti apportati sul testo GL 1982 a partire da quello EL 1978: le cc. originali testimoniano le aggiunte GL, mentre le parti in c.c. riproducono la versione EL e risultano interessate da cospicue eliminazioni (le più estese delle quali sono riportate integralmente nell’Appendice – Tagli al testo Efroymson, pp. 277-86). Si segnalano inoltre in apparato eventuali discrepanze tra P-o 166 e P-o 57, ds. di 31 cc. che documenta l’ultima versione EL 1978 e di cui la sezione c.c. di P-o 166 è copia. 8 P-o 166: Grinfield Lecture III, 3.2.82, tsf, mgdx ds.; (amended Efroymson VI). [pp. 1, 11, 14, 15, 18-22 new. Old 15, 16, 18-31 of Efroymson not used in Grinfield version], msb[AMM]. 9 P-o 166: Whoever cares to talk about Sadducees ... Qumran group, mginf con segr, msb[AMM]. 10 P-o 166: to the third and fourth points for further probing <-> to this fourth point, msb[AMM]. 11 P-o 166: testo fin qui su c. non numerata, assente in P-o 57. 12 P-o 166: tsf: VI – The Decline of History and Apocalypse and the Defence against the Romans – I, ds,; [Efroymson lecture VI], mgsupmsb[AMM]; 9.10.78 – 2 cc's to Chicago, mgsup,dxmsn[AMM]; P-o 57: VI – The Decline of History and Apocalypse and the Defence against the Romans – I. 266 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse primeval events may still have been hazy. Whatever the date of the final redaction of this Biblical history may be, the essential fact is that there was no comparable sustained attempt to turn the events of the Second Temple period into a continuous sacred history. The reconstruction of the Temple, or rather the reconstruction of the Jewish State, especially under Ezra and Nehemiah, was still included in the sacred story. But a gap was left between the history of the First Temple and the construction of the Second Temple: there is no biblical history of the exile in Babylon. Nor has the Bible any continuous account of the events under the Persians and the Greeks. Until the revolutionary situation of the time of Antiochus IV posed new problems of a quite unprecedented nature, what [2] one finds in the Bible – and outside it – is a series of mainly biographical episodes. They differ greatly from the main body of Biblical history, though occasionally they go back to patterns of the patriarchal age. Esther13 and its14 Greek additions, or the Letter of Aristeas and the account of the Tobiads utilized by Josephusi, are no more than accounts of important episodes. So are the Second Book of Maccabees, a festal book to justify the celebration of Hanuccah, and the so-called Third Book of Maccabees, which is an account of an episode of persecution of the Jews by Ptolemy IV Philopator. None of these books presents itself as part of a continuum. The First Book of the Maccabees is a partial exception, being a conscious imitation of the Books of Kings. It is representative of a dying outlook; and it does show the weakness of the tradition in its unclear patterns of thoughts. Daniel with its Greek additions is of course different. It offers no less than three different summaries of universal history. But it is a universal history of the pagan world - that is, of world empires: clearly of non-Jewish inspiration. When Daniel turns to specifically Jewish history it tells either biographical episodes concerning Daniel and his friends or specific events, such as the persecution of Antiochus IV15. A further 16 restriction of the historical horizons is implied in the separation between the Pentateuch and other Biblical texts which emerged during the Hellenistic age. In the synagogue only the Pentateuch was read completely by sections. The other Biblical texts were read only in selection and the choice of the passages to be read was not as a rule dictated by their value as historical documents17. The consequence was that for the members of a synagogue continuous history went from the creation of the world to the death of Moses. After the end of Moses history as a continuum stopped: only specific episodes were recalled. Thus for the ordinary synagoguefrequenting Jew historical development stopped with the death of the legislator Moses. The Torah given on Mount Sinai became the end of continuous history. Oral law was not excluded, because, as we know, oral law too was supposed to have been entrusted by God to Moses on that occasion. Even the conquest of Canaan lost its most profound appeal as the leading motif of Jewish life. At the same time the word ‘Torah’ was increasingly confined to designate the Pentateuch. The first formal identification of the Torah with the Pentateuch seems to be the Greek prologue of Ecclesiasticus, but there are precedents in the Books of [3] Ezra (3, 2; 7, 6) and Nehemiah (8, 3). The text of Ecclesiasticus, originally written in Hebrew, still sees the whole history from the origins to Nehemiah as a unity. At the end of the first century B.C., if this is the right date for the Wisdom of Solomonii, Wisdom leads history only until the age of Moses. II18 We must be clear about this elementary point. The Jews were encouraged by the Bible to take an interest in the past of the Hebrew nation which was incomparably deeper and more exacting than the interest taken by the Greeks in their own past. For a Jew to come into a world dominated by 13 14 15 16 17 18 P-o 166: Esther, -> Daniel, del. ; P-o 57: corr. def. P-o 166: its <-> their, msb[AMM] P-o 166: Daniel with its Greek additions... of Antiochus IV, mginf con segr, msb[AMM]; P-o 57: def. P-o 166: A further <- But there is more to add, del. P-o 166: historical documents -> though it might be suggested by historical allusions, del.; P-o 57: corr. def. P-o 166, 57: num. II, msb[AMM]. 267 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse Greek culture did not necessarily mean coming into a world dominated by Greek history, and even less by Greek historiography. The position of history – and of its conscious registration, historiography – was by no means central and secure in Greek education and ordinary intellectual life. Historians had appeared on the Greek horizon fairly late. History became a specialized craft only in the fifth century B.C., and even then it was something of an ill-defined subject. One of the two recognized masters, Herodotus, encouraged the study of foreign customs; the other, Thucydides, was a model for the description of Greek wars and political struggles. It was never quite clear for whom the historians wrote – and for what precise purpose. Rhetoricians claimed, with considerable success, though never decisively, that historiography was a form of rhetorical encomium. The majority of the philosophic schools never took history seriously, as it was not conducive to understanding what is permanent and therefore important. The most significant exception is Aristotle, not because he liked the look of the historiography he had before his eyes, but because he encouraged an alternative form of historiography which consisted in collecting certain facts in order to construct theories of politics and ethics. The study of individual political constitutions would lead to a theory of politics, the study of individual biographies would lead to a typology of human behaviour. Schools did not teach history, even Greek history, systematically, though some historical writers were read for their eloquence, historical allusions in poetical texts were commented upon, and in general historical situations [4] were used as themes for declamations or as examples in them. The gradual change in the Jewish attitude towards the Hebrew past which is evident in the Hellenistic period is to a certain extent an adaptation to the more frivolous mood of the Hellenistic Greeks with respect to their own history. Polybius who was serious lived in a different world, Rome19. In many ways the Jews imitated some of the most superficial products of Hellenistic writers in their accounts of the past. This explains both why Jews and non-Jews found it easier to communicate through history than through philosophy or poetry and why their communication was on a superficial level20. The Second Book of Maccabees, and, presumably, the historical book by Jason of Cyrene which it epitomizes, are in the style of the pathetic historiography of Phylarchus criticized by Polybius. The stories of Judith and Esther are comparable with Hellenistic novels. The similarity is more evident in stories written in Greek, such as that of the family of the Tobiads told by Flavius Josephus. Recently a competent scholar, J. A. Goldstein, developed the theory that Flavius Josephus summarized the authentic autobiography of the Tobiad Joseph (Studies for Morton Smith, III, 1975, 85-193iii). This raises the interesting question whether in an age given to frivolous novels even autobiographies would be indistinguishable from novels. But perhaps it is, after all, more natural to take the story of Joseph the Tobiad as a novel, and leave it at that. Young Joseph the Tobiad is an even less attractive imitation of the biblical Joseph; and it was observed long ago that Flavius Josephus also turned the story of the biblical Joseph into a Hellenistic novel. In fact we have another story by an anonymous author which purports to produce a new chapter of the life of the biblical Joseph. The Story of Joseph and Aseneth develops the biblical hint that Joseph married Aseneth, the daughter of the priest of Heliopolisiv. Aseneth is the beautiful and virtuous proselyte for love. Like the model woman proselyte for love, Ruth, she repeats, though in many more words, the archetypal promise: “Your people become my people, your God is now my God”v. As professor G. D. Kilpatrick demonstrated in a classical papervi, there are serious religious aspects to the story of Aseneth which touch upon mystery. But the general pattern is that of a Hellenistic novel; and even without going [5] along too far with Professor R. Merkelbachvii, one has to admit that religious episodes and motifs found a ready reception in Greek novels, as a fairly recent addition to fragments of novels in papyri, Lollianus’ Phoenician History, has shown. We are led to suspect that in the Hellenistic period the Jews consolidated their national consciousness more effectively by opposing Jewish novels to Greek novels than by opposing Jewish historiography to Greek historiography. This tendency to choose the isolated episode as an 19 20 P-o 166: Polybius who ... Rome, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 57: def. P-o 166: This explains both why Jews ... level, interl. con segr, msb[AMM]; P-o 57: def. 268 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse expression of faith is even more conspicuous in another literary genre which is represented in both Greek and Roman literature but seems to have prospered particularly in Roman times. Following Plato’s inspiration, Greek biography was traditionally very attentive to last words and testaments. A special branch of Greek biography specialised in preserving the memory of what illustrious and brave men had done and said in their last hours. But it was in the first century A.D. that political and philosophic opposition to the Roman emperors found expression in accounts of exitus virorum illustrium. There are obvious similarities, which may be due to direct influence, between this type of literature and some of the last words of the rabbis. The most famous of the latter were conveniently collected by Israel Abrahams under the title of Hebrew Ethical Wills (Philadelphia 1926) – a book which also illustrates the revival of this genre in medieval Judaism. One thinks immediately of the Talmudic report (Bab. Pesahim 112 a) about R. Akiba, the martyr of the Hadrianic period. It collects what he said in prison before execution, and one would like to think that21 there is22 a mark of authenticity in the surprising things he is supposed to have uttered23: “Live not in a city whose heads are scholars, enter not thy home suddenly, still less thy neighbour’s house ... If thou wishest to be strangled, hang thyself on a big tree, and when thou teachest thy son, teach him out of a correct book” (cf. Berakhot 61 b). III24 Though last wills were often reported in biographies of Greek philosophers, it was not the legal document that interested the Jews. They were alert to the possibilities inherent in combining Biblical precedents with Greek models. The literary form of testament was, so to speak, a biography without history. [6] Whether it was applied to the patriarchs of old or to the recent rabbis, it brought the audience close to a great figure at that supreme moment when the wisdom acquired throughout a lifetime had to be communicated in the most urgent and concentrated message. Last words characterized a man, indicated his peculiarities, among which his prophetic gifts, but did not place him in a definite historical situation. It was in relation to the legendary figures of the past that the “last words” or testament genre could most effectively exercise its function of creating a link with history without producing historiography. The patriarchs were interpreted in new terms and became the carrier of a new message from the profoundest strata of Hebrew tradition. The ultimate model was of course in the blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49). The patriarch was evoked in his last deeds and words. He was asked to take a share in the new ambiguity of death created by the new hopes of immortality in what we conventionally call Pharisaic thought. A text which seems to represent rather well some of the subtle attitudes of this literary genre is the Testament of Abraham, apparently dating from the first century A.D. It is not a superficial idealization of Abraham and it takes full account of the belief in immortality. Abraham had lived his span of 999 years when God decided that it was time for him to die. His life had passed “in quietness, mildness and justice; he had been just and hospitable”. But Abraham refused to die. One of his moves to delay death was to ask, and to be permitted, to see the whole of the inhabited world. Not being used to transgressions, what he saw was a shock to him. As he had not sinned, he had no mercy for the sinners. God had to tell Abraham: “I made the world, and I do not want to destroy any of it” (ch. 10, ed. M. Stone 1972viii). Abraham was more acceptable to God when he prayed to improve the fate of the dead (14). The belief in intercession for the dead had grown up with the new belief in immortality and resurrection and is, for instance, to be found in II Maccabees (13, 44). If F. Schmidt was right in finding the influence of the description of the shield of Achilles in the 21 22 23 24 P-o 166: one would like to think that, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 57: def. P-o 166: there is -> perhaps, del; P-o 57 corr. def. P-o 166: is supposed ... uttered <-> could utter, msb[AMM]; P-o 57: corr.def. P-o 166, 57: num. III, msb[AMM]. 269 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse Iliadix on certain cosmographic details of the Testament of Abraham, contacts with Greek sources would be reinforced (Rev. Hist. Rel. 185, 1974, 122-126). [7] IV25 The suppression of history in the name of piety and wisdom went together with an increased sense of premonition about the end of the world. The patriarchs who were there at the beginning were expected to play a part at the end. Every patriarch was an antithesis to Adam, as Adam had been weak, and they were strong. As the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch of the late first century A.D. sums up: “O Adam, what have you done to all of those who are descended from you” (48: 42). Because of their clear Messianic references, it would be important to be certain about the origins and date of the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs, which are the most notable specimen of the testament genre. In Genesis Jacob had predicted the future of each tribe. In the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs each of the sons continues the story with special reference both to the moral lessons to be derived from his personal experience and to the destiny of his tribe. The present text is, of course, Christian. But the opinion, probable in itself, that behind a superficial Christian façade there is a solid Jewish construction has received some support from the discovery of Aramaic fragments very similar to one of the Testaments, the Testament of Levi, in Qumran Caves 1 and 4. On the other hand the Testament of Naphthali 5, 8 makes better sense if composed at a time when the Romans were not yet in Judaea. As the terminus post quem seems to be represented by two probable references to the desecration of the Temple by Antiochus IV in Testamentum Levi 14 and 17, the natural inclination would be to put at least one version of the text of all Testaments in the second century B.C. But the uncertainties of this conclusion make it difficult to utilize with sufficient confidence the probable allusion to a second Messiah coming not from the descendants of Judah and David, but from Levi, which is to be found in Testamentum Levi 18. The Qumran people, as we all know26, also operated with the notion of two Messiahs.27 [8] Other respectable figures like Enoch, Daniel, Moses and even Esdras were given the task of reporting about the end of mankind in indisputably Jewish texts. Enoch comes up from the depths of Genesis 5, and Genesis 5 seems to know more than it says about Enoch. Daniel, the non-Jewish mythical figure who has a dominant role in Ugaritic texts, makes his first appearance in the Bible in Ezechiel (14, 14 and 28). In an ironical passage28, Ezechiel 28, 3, the King of Tyre is wiser than Daniel: no secret can be hidden from him. As Genesis 5 on Enoch belongs to the priestly source which is probably not earlier than Ezechiel, we may well ask whether in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. there were already Hebrew texts dealing exclusively with Daniel and Enoch. The Book of Jubilees of the late second century B.C. makes Enoch the son-in-law of Daniel (4, 20). When the Book of Jubilees was written, at least sections of the surviving Books of Daniel and Enoch were in circulation. [The oldest part of the so-called Pentateuch of Enoch is probably the Book of Watchers (929-31 of the Ethiopic text), which may contain an even older nucleus in 6-19. The Book of Watchers looks like a text of the early second century B.C., yet unaffected by the Maccabaean revolution. It contains a simple vision of the end of the Age of Evil and of the beginnings of the Golden Age. By contrast the Book of Dreams (83-90) describes a battle which seems to be the 25 P-o 166, 57: num. IV, msb[AMM]. P-o 166: as we all know, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 57: def. 27 P-o 166: two Messiahs. -> The Manual of Discipline contains the formula “the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel”, and the so-called Order of Congregation, which seems originally to have been a section of the Manual of Discipline, presents the order of a banquet in which the Chief Priest [8] has precedence over the Messiah of Israel. What at least we can say is that a Christian author would hardly have involved himself in Messianic speculations presented under cover of testaments of patriarchs without Jewish precedents, del.; P-o 57: corr. def. 28 P-o 166, 57: an ironical passage, interl.msb[AMM]. 29 P-o 166, 57: 9 <-> 1, msb[AMM]. 26 270 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse Battle of Betheur in 164 B.C., a victory of Judas Maccabaeus. This section of Enoch is therefore likely to be almost contemporary with the Maccabaean chapters in Daniel.]30 V31 A Davidic Messiah was not a necessary ingredient of the new and final world which the apocalyptic writers were trying to anticipate by their imagination. The Book of Daniel which became a model for apocalyptic thinking does not contemplate an individual Messiah, or alternatively32 alludes to him (7, 13) in such a way as to make him unrecognizable. In the composite Ethiopic Enoch the [9] Davidic Messiah, if such a one is meant, plays a secondary role in ch. 90, which belongs to the Book of Dreams. The much more prominent Son of Man from the section of Parables was apparently absent, together with that whole section, from the copies of Enoch in the possession of the Qumran sectarians at the beginning of the first century A.D. Apocalyptic expectations are spread over a wide spectrum and we must accept variety and surprise. At one extreme of the spectrum there is the expectation of a personal Messiah who will free and unite the people of Israel, subdue his enemies and reign with justice and piety – which is more or less what we find in the XVII Psalms of Solomon, probably33 of the first century B.C. At the other extreme we find the great cosmic dramas which insert the Messianic hopes into the picture of universal judgement. Such are the Syrian Apocalypse of Baruch (which is a translation of a Greek translation of an Aramaic text) and the book variously transmitted and variously called Apocalypse of Ezra, II Esdras and IV Esdras (in the Vulgate), both belonging to the period between A.D. 70 and A.D. 100 after the destruction of the Temple. Near the middle of the spectrum we may perhaps place the Assumption of Moses, a text which is probably earlier than A.D. 70 and later than 4 B.C., though it may contain Maccabean elements not easy to isolate34. There is no Messiah, and it is doubtful whether the description of God’s intervention on behalf of Israel in ch. 10 amounts to a universal judgement: astral immortality, not a reign in this world, is what seems to be reserved to the faithful. One of the principal functions of the apocalypses was to describe the shape and the activities of “the world to come” in the double (and therefore ambiguous) meaning of Heaven and the future world. Physical nature and mankind are treated as being involved in the same destiny. A new genesis is in sight. In a devious way apocalypses took cognizance of the geographical and intellectual horizon within which Hellenistic Jews had to live. Apocalypses, it has often been observed, have the function of universal history – of that universal history of which Polybius, Diodorus, Nicolas Damascenus and [10] Trogus Pompeius were producing samples of the Greek variety in the same centuries. [The succession of empires for which Daniel is famous was known to the pagan culture of the same age. The idea may have come from Persia and was spread by the Romans by Licinius Sura, a Syrian as the name suggestsx, who is quoted by, or interpolated into, Velleius Paterculus (I, 6).] 35 But the point of Jewish apocalypses is that universal history is only a quick introduction to the lengthy process of the end of the world. Both Greco-Roman universal history and Jewish apocalypse presuppose the large horizons opened up by the conquests of Alexander the Great: in their mature forms both also presuppose the Roman rule over the Mediterranean basin. But Jewish apocalypse, quite unlike Greco-Roman universal history, is a protest against Hellenistic civilization and Roman imperialism: it indicates the Jewish refusal to accept either. 30 P-o 166: [The oldest part ... in Daniel], parentesi quadre mss.; P-o 57: parentesi assenti. P-o 166, P-o 57: num. V, msb[AMM]. 32 P-o 166: alternatively, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 57: def. 33 P-o 166: probably <-> perhaps, msb[AMM]; P-o 57: corr. def. 34 P-o 166: though it may contain ... to isolate <-> It survives in a partial Latin translation which could be called more correctly the Testament of Moses, msb[AMM]; P-o 57: corr. def. 35 P-o 166: [The succession ... (1-6)], parentesi quadre mss.; P-o 57: parentesi assenti. 31 271 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse VI [11] 36 By implication I have already assumed – and I do not claim it is a very original assumption - that the writer of an apocalyptic book does not necessarily expect the end of the world to happen next morning. The mere fact that the prophecy or vision of the end is most often attributed to great men of the past absolves the real anonymous37 author from too serious a commitment to what he writes. No doubt38 the anonymous writers felt that they had to face real and powerful enemies. The author of Daniel was moved to write by conflicts in the Eastern Mediterranean which involved the profanation of the Temple of Jerusalem. He was well aware that the operations of Antiochus IV in Judaea had to be understood within the framework of the conflict between Egypt and Syria and of the Roman intervention to save Egypt. Daniel after all virtually says that he belongs to a group of intellectuals who prided themselves of their knowledge of the situation: he was aware of the limitations of Judas Maccabaeus’ party. The oldest sections of Enoch equally reflect the situation of the second century and add a social dimension to it. The Dead Sea Scrolls have now given us the opportunity of seeing an apocalyptic community in operation. The simple catalogue of the Qumran library indicates that the Qumran community was a storehouse of apocalyptic books. But it is not easy to define in what precise sense the Qumran community or indeed the intellectuals surrounding pseudo-Daniel lived in the belief that they were the last generation at the end of age. The Cosmic Order was not left to look after itself. The mixture, however variable and unequal, of straight Messianism and cosmic revolution allowed plenty of room for human intervention. Judas Maccabaeus and the author of Daniel not only co-existed but complemented each other: so did Bar Kochba and the author of the Apocalypse of Baruch. The trouble of course is that human intervention very seldom fulfils the expectations of apocalyptic books: history has its own way of discrediting apocalypse.39 [12]40 VII41 As the two centuries in which apocalyptic thinking prospered among Jews – between Antiochus Epiphanes and the Emperor Hadrian – are also those of the spreading and consolidation of the synagogal revolution it is tempting to argue that apocalyptic thinking was in fact the obverse42 and complementary side of synagogal piety43. The argument would run approximately like this. Apocalyptic thinking tried to answer the questions and to express the anxiety raised by the corporate life of the Synagogue. The Jews loved God deeply and felt his presence continuously. They loved even more the Torah, that stern daughter of God who according to rabbinic legend has been consulted by her Father before he created the world and had disapproved of the idea. xi [13] The Jews expected happiness from obedience to the Torah. But more the Jews obeyed the Torah, the more disasters happened. How sure could a Jew be of having fulfilled God’s commandments? How sure could a Jew be of having understood God’s intentions? Apocalyptic expectations, though varied in their contents, were united by the presupposition that the Just would finally find happiness, while the wicked would finally find lasting punishment. They emphasized the transitory nature of this world in comparison with the stability of the world to come. As the Torah was eternal, it was the foundation of the world to come. The world to come would be for those who had observed the Torah. The Second Esdra, because it is 36 P-o 166: c. 11 <-> capp. VI-VII (= cc. 10 - 13 di P-o 57), sull'apocalittica non giudaica. Per il testo caduto, vd. infra, Appendice - Tagli al testo Efroymson. 37 P-o 166: anonymous, interl.msb[AMM]. 38 P-o 166: No doubt, interl.msb[AMM]. 39 P-o 166: The trouble of course ... apocalypse, mginf msb[AMM]. 40 P-o 166: [12] <-> [13], msr[AMM]; P-o 57: corr. def. 41 P-o 166: VII, msb[AMM]. 42 P-o 166: obverse <-> reverse, msb[AMM]; P-o 57: corr. def. 43 P-o 166: synagogal piety <-> rabbinic thinking, msb[AMM]; P-o 57: corr. def. 272 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse the most mature and articulate of the Apocalypses, is also the one which best shows the structural link between the world of apocalypses and the world of the synagogue. The eternity of the Torah is reaffirmed, but at the same time it is made clear that God created this world for the many and the next world for the few. The end of the world implies a choice from among the chosen. But tempting as it is to argue in this way and to treat the apocalypses as the hidden dimension of Jewish piety44, the evidence, as a whole, is not in favour of this theoryxii . [14]45 First of all, the Jews literally lost their apocalyptic books. Most of what survives of the Jewish apocalyptic literature of Antiquity has been transmitted to us through Christian channels and often in Christianized versions. While the original texts were lost, Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Slavonic and other translations multiplied on Christian initiative. Secondly, there is no valid evidence that religious leaders wrote apocalyptic books. Even Rabbi Akiba, who believed in the Messianic nature of Bar Kochba’s leadership and sacrificed his life for it, had shown himself hostile to non-canonical books and therefore to apocalyptic books (M. Sanh. 10, 1). The Mishnah keeps out of apocalyptic speculations. Apocalyptic speculations were of course known to the rabbis, and some of them indulged in them, as later Talmudic texts show. But such participation in apocalyptic thinking remained marginal and extraneous to the collective life of the synagogue. Simple Messianic expectations were rooted in the Bible and necessary for survival in difficult times. Even so, after the disaster of Bar Kochba’s revolt individual rabbis seldom favoured Messianic movements. Perhaps the most telling expression of the prevailing rabbinic attitude is what three rabbis at the end of the third century A.D. are reported to have said about the Messiah: “May he come, but I do not want to see him” (Sanhedrin 98 a). The Mishnah, which only once refers to the demons in the aberrant treatise Abot (5, 6), has also only one page about the Messiah. That page testifies how badly equipped rabbinic Judaism was to define in legal terms the nature of the Messianic age – and to give clear guidance about the problem of how to recognize the true Messiah. The signs of the Messianic age indicated in that page, at the end of the treatise Sotah, could hardly be of any use to anyone. They amount to a conventional description of disorder, shortage and criminality. With great common sense, but no great theology, Rabban Gamaliel defended Jesus’s apostles in the Synedrion. His [15] argument was: if their work comes from men it will not last, if it comes from the God you cannot fight against it (Act. 5, 40). Success only, in these terms, could decide whether the Messiah was authentic. The later history of Judaism confirms how difficult it was for the Jews to determine the authenticity of Messianic claims. Professors Gershom Scholem has shown how vague and haphazard were the criteria which the Jews of the seventeenth century had at their disposal for deciding whether Sabbatai Zevi was the true Messiahxiii. One apocalyptic element, no doubt, remained inextricably connected even with the most simplified version of Messianic hopes: the expectation of the resurrection of the dead. The Amidah – the central daily prayers for about two thousand years – include in their present form both the invocation for the Messiah to come and a blessing for the God who gives life to the dead. It was nevertheless intimated that the Messiah would have to study the Torah – that ultimate guarantor of permanence. If a formula has to be produced it is that rabbinic Judaism repressed, in the name of the Torah, both history and that type of anti-history which is apocalyptic thinking. What historiography and apocalypse have in common is the description of, and the reflection on, change. The rabbis loved the Torah and meditated on the Torah, because it was permanence. It is on the notion of the eternity of the Torah, even in the Messianic age, that Judaism continued to rest – and therefore to be distinct from Christianity. The Greek-speaking philosophers of Alexandria who did not give much thought to the Messiah and the Aramaic-speaking rabbis of 44 P-o 166: Jewish piety <-> the rabbinic mind, msb [AMM]; P-o 57: corr. def. P-o 166: cc. 14-15 <-> cc. 14, 15 e 16 di P-o 57, contenenti una trattazione più estesa degli aspetti apocalittici e messianici nei testi rabbinici. Per il testo caduto vd. infra, Appendice - Tagli al testo Efroymson. 45 273 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse Palestine and Babylonia who were not entirely reassured about his intentions were agreed on this point. What potentialities they attributed to the word of God as expressed in the Torah is another matter. Rabbinic Judaism assigned to the prophet Elijah the function of reconciling at the end of time the conflicting interpretations of the Torah.46 [17]47 VIII My impression is that between the 150 B.C. and A.D. 100 history and apocalypse competed with each other and weakened each other reciprocally. That give the rabbis their opportunity for establishing themselves against both history and apocalypse.48 The men who pushed history and apocalyptic to the margins of Judaism were also the men who acquired the authority for making laws. The emergence of their class is still shrouded in mystery, and there is no need for me to explain here that the attempts, however valuable, of applying form criticism to the various Talmudic works in which the rabbinic interpretations are recorded are subject to the intrinsic limitations of every form criticism. A literary form reflects, but does not explain, the situation which provokes a saying. What is worse, it neither reflects nor explains the long-term situation which gives authority to a text, if this situation is distant in time or space from the situation in which the text originated. The question whether about 200 B.C. a particular sage ever uttered the saying “Let your house be a house of meeting for the sages, sit at their feet, etc.” (Abot 1, 4) is perhaps less relevant than the other question about the meaning of “house of meeting” and “sages” in this context. Though we do not know when the sages began to have a distinct physiognomy and therefore a distinct role in society, they must have started their work when the Jews had to decide day by day how much of Greek life and thought they were prepared to make their own. Later, after the destruction of the Second Temple, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that a Jew could survive as a Jew under the Romans. What changes this implied in the physiognomy of the rabbis is at present difficult to say.49 To pass from the Qumran texts and the Gospels50 to the Mishnah and Tosefta requires a jump I am too old to make. As we see from the rabbis in our earliest texts, mystical journeys to Heaven, miracles and prophecies were not impossible for them. Some had secret doctrines for their pupils. They lived in a society where magic was rampant. One would like to know more about this aspect of their activities, and also whether one is justified in sensing that there was more of it in Babylonia after A.D. 200 than in Palestine in previous centuries. [18]51 But as they avoided becoming mandarinsxiv, so the rabbis as a class avoided becoming medicine men. Their concern was rather with holiness. They were not ascetic, but greatly aware of sin and perdition. They cared about ritual purity and respected Temple and priesthood. When the Temple was destroyed they made what to us may appear a pathetic effort to preserve and develop Temple regulations with a view to its restoration. For all practical purposes they took the place of the priests in controversies about sacred law. They came to conceive of themselves as depositories of the oral Law which integrated the written Law of the Pentateuch. They understood oral Law as law given together with the written Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, but transmitted from generation to generation until it reached the sages themselves. Thanks to the exemplary work by Harold Cherniss on the Early Academy (Berkeley 1945)xv and John Patrick Lynch on Aristotle’s School (Berkeley 1972)xvi and to other research, we are now in a better position to compare the rabbinic schools with the Greek institutions of higher learning than we could have done forty years ago. The illusion that Greek philosophic schools were universities 46 P-o 166, nota: to page 17, mgdxmsr[AMM]; P-o 57: def. P-o 166: nella rinumerazione ms. delle cc. il numero 16 viene omesso. 48 P-o 166: My impression is ... history and apocalypse, mgsup e interl. con segr, msb[AMM]; P-o 57: def. 49 P-o 166: to say -> Both the Qumran texts and the Gospels presuppose rabbis in action. But, del.; 50 P-o 166: the Qumran texts and the Gospels <-> them, msb[AMM]. 51 P-o 166: nota, pp. 18-22 new Grinfield III, 3.2.82, mgsup,dx msb [AMM]; P-o 166: cc. 18-22 <-> 18-31 di P-o 57, trattazione in quattro capp. (VII-X) sulle scuole rabbiniche. Per il testo caduto, vedi infra, Appendice - Tagli al testo Efroymson. 47 274 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse in the modern sense has disappeared; what remains is the image of private institutions, the continuity of which was essentially founded on the appointment of a successor either by the incumbent head of the school or (perhaps less frequently) by the surviving teachers of the school. Mobility of schools was a characteristic among Greeks as among Jews. And social mobility – that is, recruitment from lower classes – was also common to both. But it is perhaps where the similarity is greatest that the difference becomes more conspicuous. Both Jewish rabbis and Greek philosophers had political ambitions. Greek philosophers tried several times to run individual cities or to act as advisers to sovereigns. They occasionally succeeded for a longer or shorter period. Plato in Sicily and the Pythagoreans in Southern Italy are the most obvious examples; it is not by chance that in both places the Greeks were a colonial minority. But unlike the Jewish rabbis the Greek philosophers never [19] succeeded in establishing themselves permanently as the leaders of their nation and in impressing their own thought on the social organization of the Greeks at large. The Greek philosophic schools were fundamentally isolated institutions in the middle of Greek society and transmitted themselves to posterity as systems of thought. The rabbinic schools, by keeping in touch with synagogue and elementary education, shaped the conduct of the surrounding society and transmitted themselves to posterity both as a way of thinking and as an ideal way of life for a nation – which means that their sphere of action extended to the whole of the Jewish community. what we do not yet know is when and how this happened. We know only the result.52 What kept the Jewish people together was a common law which basically resulted from the rabbinic interpretation of Mosaic law. It is this emphasis on the Torah which ultimately explains the brevity and elusiveness of our sources about conflicts and disagreements within Judaism with which I dealt in my previous lecture. This restraint is to be found both outside and inside specifically rabbinic texts, with the only exception – which is therefore a confirmation – of apocalyptic texts. We have seen how restraint, to the point of blurring the facts, is apparent in Flavius Josephus, who is most laconic when he speaks of John the Baptist and Jesus. I do not know of any certain reference to either Jesus or Christianity in rabbinic texts of the period when Christianity could still be treated as a deviant form of Judaism. The Mishnah, which was put together about A.D. 200, is silent about Jesus. Its only likely allusion to Christianity – the prophecy that the kingdom (of Rome) will fall to heretics (leminuth) in the treatise Sotah 9, 15 – is an addition which was recognized to be later than the conversion of Constantine by J. S. Lauterbach (Rabbinic Essays, 553)xvii . Later Talmudic references are less relevant to us, inserted as they are in a situation in which Christianity had ceased to be an internal Jewish problem. Even so, the allusions are remarkably few and trivial. An apparent exception is offered by the rabbinic discussions on the status of the Samaritans. Their credentials for being treated as Jews were formidable; and they posed legal problems, especially after the [20] destruction of the Temple, which nobody could ignore. “The foolish nation that dwelleth in Shechem”, as Ecclesiasticus called the Samaritans (1, 25), is treated with altogether remarkable restraint in rabbinic texts. Allowing for this exception of the Samaritans, the evidence about Jewish sects in Jewish texts – either Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek – carries with it an unmistakable indication. The more dangerous and radical the differences, the less likely our authorities are to speak about them. The attitude to isolated individuals suspected or convicted of error or deviation is different. The notion of minuth (roughly equivalent to heresy) must have been formalized in Judaea in the first century A.D. A prayer against the minim, heretics, or rather a brief formula of a prayer, was introduced into Jewish liturgy at the end of the first century A.D. But the relation between the theoretical notion of minuth and the practice of ban or excommunication which developed with it is by no means clear. Rabbis who disagreed with majority decisions about ritual law in academies were in danger of being banned by their fellow-academicians. We know that Eliezer ben Hyrcanos, the teacher of Rabbi Akiba, was both accused of heresy – that is, probably of Christian sympathies 52 P-o 166: What we do not yet know ... result, interl.msb[AMM]. 275 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse – before a Roman tribunal and excommunicated by his fellow-rabbis (J. Neusner, Eliezer ben Hyrcanos, I, 1973, 401 and 423). He remained in the tradition as one of the most honoured rabbis. Tradition shows him dying on Sabbath eve surrounded by his pupils, as a sage should die. Elishah ben Abuyah, the pupil of Rabbi Akiba and the master of Rabbi Meir, did not get off so easily. He remained in the tradition as the prototype of the sage who passed to the other side. All sorts of nasty things were reported about him, from violation of the Sabbath to collaboration with the Romans. This was the time of Hadrian, and ben Abuyah’s master, Akiba, had died a martyr’s death. Yet Elishah ben Abuyah is not rejected with contempt. Tradition preserves and canonizes some of his aphorisms. It register the devotion of his pupil Meir who went on discussing the Torah with him [21] and expressed, after the death without repentance of his master, the certainty that he had been saved. The figure of Elishah ben Abuyah who tried everything – mystical experience, Greek songs and low forms of prevarication (Jer. Megillah 1, 9; Bab. Hagigah 16b, etc.) – remained the ambiguous symbol of the attraction of the “other” – the classical world of the Greeks and Romans. He was not denied the hope of resurrection with the Just. The situation must not be misunderstood. Elishah ben Abuyah was after all an isolated individual. The new rabbinic orthodoxy of the second century felt safe in relation to individuals: it was disturbed by, and therefore silent or reticent about, large movements. In approaching my conclusion I must return to my starting point. In facing a civilization like Greek civilization, which was based on education, the Jews had to give themselves an education which could stand up the Greeks. Whereas Greek schools, even if they put themselves under the protection of a specific god, were essentially different from prayer-houses, the Jewish school and the Jewish prayer-house were united by the Bible. They were also united by the religious significance the Jews attributed to the relation between teachers and pupils.53 The school pyramid culminated in God himself: “let the fear of thy master be like the fear of Heaven” (Abot 3, 9). This educational system, which probably received its starting-point and certainly derived its significance from the Hellenistic surroundings, was taken to be of immemorial origin. Midrashic texts transferred it back to the patriarchal period. What could Moses do in the forty days spent on the mountain to receive the Law but study the Scripture in the day-time and the Mishnah at night? (Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer 46, transl. G. Friedländer, p. 359xviii ). Indeed an academy was available during the forty years of the wandering in the wilderness (Bab. Yoma 28b). God himself had to have his own academy, his own bet hamidrash, in Heaven where he taught the Law to the righteous – what was sometimes called the Heavenly Academy. A rabbi even [22] knew the exact part of the day God reserved for the study of his own Torah: the first three hours of the day (Bab. ‘Abodah Zara 3b). The common care for the study of the Torah gave a new warmth to the relation between God and the Jew. Clearly much of these imaginings must belong to the period after the destruction of the Temple, when Judaism was saved by its school system, and it was felt that “by the breath from the mouth of schoolchildren the world is sustained” (Bab. Shabbat 119b). One would like more specifically to know the origin of the tradition according to which the Greek philosopher Oenomaus of Gadara, a contemporary and an acquaintance of R. Meir in the second century A.D., was asked what one could do against the Jews and answered: “As long as the voice of the children will be heard in the schools and in the synagogues you cannot subjugate this people” (Genesis Rabbah 65, 20; cf. Pesikta deRab Kahana, ed. M. Friedmann, 121axix). Yet the sages could smile at their own schools. They told the story of how Moses – the Lawgiver Moses – was allowed by God to sit on the eighth bench of the school of Rabbi Akiba but was unable to follow the subtle argument about a point of the Law he had brought down from Mount Sinai (Bab. Menahot 29b). “Not being able to follow their arguments he (Moses) was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciple said to the master ‘Whence do you know it?’ and the latter replied ‘It is a Law given unto Moses at Sinai’, Moses was comforted”. 53 P-o 166: and pupils. -> What must be emphasized is that the fear of the master is compared to the peace of Heaven, del. 276 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse We shall not delude ourselves that Jews and Greeks searchingly examined each other. Much or what was Greek escaped the Jews, and the Greeks knew very little about Judaism. But the difficult paradox is that Judaism itself, as we know it, is characterized by intellectual defence against Hellenism: in this sense Judaism is a product of Hellenism, that is54, Judaism was originally55 a model for survival under the pressures of Hellenism56. The model was faith in a book and obedience to it, accompanied by daily communal prayer and instruction both for children and adults. This model which had its negative consequence in ritual separation, allowed the Jews to live even without a land of their own.57 Appendice - Tagli al testo Efroymson Si riportano qui integralmente le sezioni di testo Efroymson (P-o 57) interessate da tagli sostanziali e interventi di sintesi in vista della versione Grinfield (P-o 166). 1. Sull’apocalittica egiziana e iranica e Qumran (P-o 57, cc. 10-13). VI It is by now a commonplace that the Greco-Macedonian rule, and, later, the Roman rule provoked deep resentment in the subjected nations which expressed itself in religious hopes, dreams and utopies. Oracles and prophecies more or less explicitly directed against the Greeks and Macedonians, and later the Romans, were ascribed to Zoroaster and Hystaspes in Iranian or Iranized circles and to Amenhotep (Potter’s Oracle) and Tachos (Demotic Chronicle) in Egypt, while the Sibyls were active everywhere. When the Romans entered Greece, they found religious hostility not unlike that which the Greeks had met in the East. But what has yet to be demonstrated is that outside Jewish society real apocalyptics were the expression of immediate political dissatisfaction. I do not know anything comparable to Daniel or to the apocalyptic Ezdra outside Judaism. The Demotic Chronicle and even the Potter’s Oracle are modest in their expectations with the cosmic background of the political struggle envisaged by the Jewish seers. The Potter’s Oracle expects the Greeks to be destroyed by internal rivalries, not by the Egyptians. To my knowledge [11] (and, of course, I may be misinformed) only in Jewish apocalyptics is there a clear interdependence between cosmic revolution and actual political struggles. The closest parallel to Jewish apocalyptics is the Revelation of Hystaspes, but it is clear from Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 6, 5, 43) that it had received Christian interpolations. What Lactantius reports about it in the fourth century may therefore be affected by Jewish and Christian ideas. Not every Jewish apocalyptic book is inspired by an immediate emergency. But there is no generic Weltschmerz. The anonymous writers felt they had to face real and powerful enemies. The author of Daniel was moved to write by conflicts in the Eastern Mediterranean which involved the profanation of the Temple of Jerusalem. He was well aware that the operations of Antiochus IV in Judaea had to be understood within the framework of the conflict between Egypt and Syria and of the Roman intervention to save Egypt. Daniel after all virtually says that he belongs to a group of intellectuals who prided themselves on their knowledge of the situation. He was aware of the limitations of Judas Maccabaeus’ party. The oldest sections of Enoch equally reflect the situation of the second century and add a social dimension to it. The Dead Sea Scrolls have now given us the opportunity of seeing an apocalyptic community in operation. The simple catalogue of the Qumran 54 P-o 166: in this sense Judaism is a product of Hellenism, that is <-> it becomes the story of how the Jews learned to live as Jews without a land of their own, msb[AMM]. 55 P-o 166: originally, interl.msb[AMM]. 56 P-o 166: under the pressures of Hellenism, interl.msb[AMM]. 57 P-o 166: This model allowed the Jews to live as Jews without a land of their own, mginfmsb[AMM]; which had its negative consequence in ritual separation, interl.msb[AMM]; End of Grinfield III, msb [AMM] mginf,dx. 277 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse library indicates that the Qumran community was a storehouse of apocalyptic books. This does not mean that the members of the community were the authors of the majority of the books collected. It would be arbitrary to speak of Enoch and Jubilee as Qumran books. But the Qumran community lived in the belief that they were the last generation at the end of the age. The Rule of the Congregation begins with the words “This is the order for all the Congregation of Israel in the last days when they are gathered”. Last generation”, “day of slaughter”, “day of vengeance” and “day of judgment” are recurrent terms. The Qumran people had not broken with official Judaism; it remains arguable that they sent their offerings to [12]Jerusalem like any other Jews. But they disapproved of the other Jews outside the community and considered themselves the “elect”. They had or rather had had a leader, the “Teacher of Righteousness” who had been persecuted. They did not claim for him miracles or other indications of supernatural powers. They expected the Messiah or rather two Messiahs, neither of whom had apparently anything to do with the Teacher of Righteousness. The grievances of these people seem at first sight to have been disproportionate to their apocalyptic conclusions. Furthermore, while their grievances were against other Jews, the apocalyptic war they were expecting between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness was a fight between Jews – perhaps good Jews only – and non-Jews. The tribes of Levi, Judah and Benjamin were expected to go into the final battle against Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. The ability to produce an apocalyptic situation out of a comparatively minor disagreement inside Judaism is evident. We shall be less surprised to find apocalyptic writings emerging from the destruction of the Temple and the rebellion of despair under Hadrian led by Bar Kochba. The Cosmic Order was not left to look after itself. The apocalyptic writers were impatient. The mixture, however variable and unequal, of straight Messianism and cosmic revolution allowed plenty of room for human intervention. Judas Maccabaeus and the author of Daniel not only co-existed but probably understood each other: so did Bar Kochba and the author of the Apocalypse of Baruch. VII What I have said should not conceal that there are similarities both in basic presuppositions and in important details between Jewish and Iranian apocalyptic thought. Satan, who is mentioned in the Bible as a specific individual only three times – Job 1, Zacharias 3 and I Chronicles 21 (none of them, in all probability, pre-exilic) – may well have become the leader of the bad spirits under Iranian pressure. His cohorts of devils are foreign to Biblical Hebraism. Somehow the seven archangels dear to apocalyptic lore (Enoch 40; 87 etc.; II Esdr. 5, 20; cf. Tob. 12, 15) must be connected with [13] the Zoroastrian Amesha Spentas, even if the Amesha Spentas were originally only six. And the angels who protect specific individual and nations may owe some of their peculiarities to the Zoroastrian fravashis – the pre-existing Souls of all good men and women. After all the appearance of the Magi in the Nativity story must have Jewish roots: it is not simply a riposte to the visit of the Magi to the Emperor Nero, as has been suggested (cf. Plin. N.H. 30, 1, 16; Suet. Nero 13; Dio Cass. 63, 1, 7). The identification of Zoroaster with the prophet Ezechiel which is reported by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 1, 15, 69) seems to have been known to Alexander Polyhistor in the first century B.C.: it indicates awareness of similarities between Jewish and Zoroastrian thought. What the simple analysis of correlations between Jewish and Iranian thought does not explain, however, is the sudden need the Jewish felt for celestial armies to fight their wars against all sorts of external and internal enemies, and most conspicuously Greeks and Romans. The celestial cohorts from Persia were, so to speak, summoned to fight the oppressors and the tempters from the West. One is reminded of the occasions on which the Jews turned in reality or in hope to the Parthian armies for help against Greeks and, especially, Romans. 278 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse 2. Contro l’interpretazione dell’apocalittica come dimensione nascosta della pietà giudaica (P-o 57, cc. 14-16) First of all, there is no valid evidence that rabbis wrote apocalyptic books. Even Rabbi Akiba, who believed in the Messianic nature of Bar Kochba’s leadership and sacrificed his life for it, had shown himself hostile to non-canonical books and therefore to apocalyptic books (M. Sanhedrin 10, 1). The Mishnah keeps out of apocalyptic speculations and incidentally never mentions Angels. Apocalyptic speculations were of course known to the rabbis, and some of them indulged in them, as later Talmudic texts show. But such participation in apocalyptic thinking remained marginal. The fact was that the Jews literally lost their apocalyptic books. Fragments of the lost original Aramaic text of four sections of the Book of Enoch have recently been recovered in the caves of Qumran. Most of [15] what survives of the Jewish apocalyptic literature of Antiquity has been transmitted to us through Christian channels and often in Christianised versions. While the original texts were lost, Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Slavonic and other translations multiplied on Christian initiative. The third-century Rabbi Hillel – a grandson of Judah Ha-Nasi – reached the point of denying the future coming of the Messianic King by saying that the Messiah had already come with King Ezekiah in the eighth century B.C. (Bab. Sanhedrin 99 a). This was unusual. Simple Messianic expectations deprived of the cosmic speculations which went with them were seldom or never repudiated by the rabbis. They were too strongly rooted in the Bible. Even so, after the disaster of Bar Kochba’s revolt individual rabbis seldom favoured Messianic movements. Perhaps the most telling expression of the prevailing rabbinic attitude is what three rabbis at the end of the third century A.D. are reported to have said about the Messiah: “May he come, but I do not want to see him” (Sanhedrin 98 a). The Mishnah, which only once refers to the demons in the aberrant treatise Abot (5, 6), has also only one page about the Messiah. That page testifies how badly equipped Rabbinic Judaism was to define in legal terms the nature of the Messianic age – and to give clear guidance about the problem of how to recognize the true Messiah. The signs of the Messianic age indicated in that page, at the end of the treatise Sotah, could hardly be of any use to anyone. They amount to a conventional description of disorder, shortage and criminality. With great common sense, but no great theology, Rabban Gamaliel defended Jesus’s apostles in the Synedrion. His argument was: if their work comes from men it will nor last, if it comes from God, you cannot fight against it (Act. 5, 40). Success only, in these terms, could decide whether the Messiah was authentic. The later history of Judaism confirms how difficult it was for the Jews to determine the authenticity of Messianic claims. In his great book about Sabbatai Zevi, Professor Gershom Scholem has shown how vague and haphazard were the criteria which the Jews of the seventeenth [16] century had at their disposal for deciding whether Sabbatai Zevi was the true Messiah. His prophet Nathan of Gaza had to adduce visions to buttress his faith. No simple formula of course does justice to the relations between apocalyptic thinking and rabbinic Judaism. But if a formula has to be produced it is that rabbinic Judaism repressed, in the name of the Torah, both history and that type of anti-history which is apocalyptic thinking. What historiography and apocalypse have in common is the description of, and reflection on, change. The rabbis loved the Torah and meditated on the Torah, because it was permanence. One apocalyptic element, no doubt, remained inextricably connected even with the most simplified version of Messianic hopes: the expectation of the resurrection of the dead. The Amidah – the central daily prayers for about two thousand years – include in their present form both the invocation for the Messiah to come and a blessing for the God who gives life to the dead. It was nevertheless intimated that the Messiah would have to study the Torah. If the rest of the Bible ceases to be binding in the Messianic age the Book of the Torah will remain in force (Jer. Megillah 1, 5 (4), 70 d in the name of Rabbi Jochanan, third century A.D.). 279 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse The rabbis saw to it that the Torah did indeed remain the principle regulating the life of the Jews in this world. In doing so they obviated the demoralization and the disintegration of a nation which had been left without land and without normal political institutions. It is ultimately on the notion of the eternity of the Torah, even in the Messianic age, that Judaism continued to rest – and therefore to be distinct from Christianity. The Greek-speaking philosophers of Alexandria and the Aramaic-speaking rabbis of Palestine and Babylonia were agreed on this point. What potentialities they attributed to the word of God as expressed in the Torah is another matter. Rabbinic Judaism assigned to the prophet Elijah the function of reconciling at the end of time the conflicting interpretations of the Torah. 3 - Sulle scuole rabbiniche e le correnti giudaiche (P-o 57, cc. 18-31). [In Palestine the] [18] rabbinic rain-makers were perhaps fewer, the situation less humorous. Honi ‘the circle-maker’, a learned and celebrated rain-maker of the first century B.C. (Megillat Ta’anit 3, 8), was stoned to death when he refused to curse one of the factions in conflict and prayed: “Master of the Universe, these men are thy people”. (Jos. Ant. Jud. 14, 24). But as they avoided becoming mandarins, so the rabbis as a class avoided becoming medicine men. Their concern was rather with holiness. They were not ascetic, but greatly aware of sin and perdition. They cared about ritual purity and respected Temple and priesthood. When the Temple was destroyed they made what to us may appear a pathetic effort to preserve and develop Temple regulations with a view to its restoration. For all practical purposes they took it upon themselves to decide in controversies about sacred law. They turned themselves into judges about their superiority over the individual priests. They came to conceive of themselves as depositories of the Oral Law which integrated the Written Law of the Pentateuch. They understood Oral Law as law given together with the Written Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, but transmitted from generation to generation until it reached the Sages themselves. This is the doctrine of Oral Law that made it increasingly difficult for Sadducees to join the Sages, as the Sadducees treated additions to the Mosaic law as post-Mosaic and collected them in a written Book of Ordinances which became a bone of contention between Sadducees and Sages (Megillat Ta’anit 4, 1, and its commentary). The relation, if any, between the Sages and the so-called confraternities of Pharisees is equally obscure: indeed the very nature of the Pharisaic confraternities (haburot), which (as already hinted) seem to have been modelled on Greek eranoi (friendly societies) for communal meals and funerals, is far from being clear. In the late first century B.C. Hillel and Shammai organized their “houses” on the lines of Greek philosophic schools. Like Greek philosophic [19] schools they sought and obtained influence and clienteles. Some public remuneration is documented. Inherited wealth helped, but some Sages, as I said, were proletarians who supported themselves by work. Direct payment by adult students to teachers does not seem to have been usual or respectable; but there were good people who maintained both a Sage and his pupils, though the story of Genesis Rabbah 72, 5 on Zebulun the trader and Isachar the scholar is not to be taken literally. There was formal ordination of rabbis by imposition of hands. At first the teacher ordained his best pupils; but when Rabbi Akiba died, another rabbi ordained his pupils. The earliest evidence about ordination is analogical: it is in the Acts of the Apostles. The main material for our picture naturally comes from Palestine and Babylonia, where the most prestigious rabbinic academies had their residences, but rabbis existed elsewhere. About A.D. 95-96 a delegation of scholars from Palestine found in Rome a religious leader, Theudas (Thaddeus), whom they considered not very learned, but respected as a man. They are said to have sent him a message: “If you were not Theudas we would excommunicate you” (Bab. Pesahim 53 b; Midrash Tehillim 28). Later in the second century A.D. an academy led by a Palestinian rabbi of repute, Mattia ben Cheresh (Bab. Sanhedrin 32 b), existed in Rome. Thanks to the exemplary work by Harold Cherniss on the Early Academy (Berkeley 1945) and John Patrick Lynch on Aristotle’s School (Berkeley 1972) and to other research, we are now in a better position to compare the rabbinic schools with the Greek institutions of higher learning than 280 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse we could have done forty years ago. The illusion that Greek philosophic schools were universities in the modern sense has disappeared; what remains is the image of private institutions, the continuity of which was essentially founded on the appointment of a successor either by the incumbent head of the school or (perhaps less frequently) by the surviving teachers of the school. Some estate was tied to the school, but how the estate was transmitted through generations is not always clear: in some cases it is certain that [20] the head of the school directly inherited it from his predecessor (which was easy if he had been designated by his predecessor). Public places (such as the Academy, the Lycaeum and the Stoa Poikile in Athens) were used by the schools together with, or in substitution of, private buildings. Each school was associated with some religious symbols and had communal meals: in the case of the Epicureans there was even some worship of the founder Epicurus. But there is no evidence that the school as such was a religious association or thiasos. The only learned institution which had real religious status was the Museum of Alexandria which was in the charge of a priest appointed by the king (Strabo, 17, 794 c), but we are not entitled to extrapolate from this case: the Museum of Alexandria was chiefly a library, and libraries often were religious institutions in the Near East. Either fees (e.g. Diog. Laert. 4, 12) or gifts (Plato, Ep. 13) or both helped the school, but teachers contributed from their wealth, if any. The schools lasted for centuries, but while there is evidence that Stoics and Epicureans continued to flourish in the first and second centuries A.D., the continuity of the Academy and of the Peripatos, that is, of the Platonic and of the Aristotleian schools, seems to have been interrupted for a couple of centuries (cf. Seneca, Nat. Quaest. 7, 32, 2, Diog. Laert. 10, 9; Acta Apost. 17). Nor is it certain that the establishment of four endowed chairs of philosophy in Athens for the four main philosophic doctrines by Marcus Aurelius (Philostr., Vit. Sophist. 2, 2, p. 566xx; cf. Dio Cass. 72, 31, 3) means that all schools went back to full activity. The neo-Platonics who felt persecuted by Justinian and left Athens in 532 A.D. (Agathias II, 30) were probably the continuators of a fifth-century revival rather than the direct heirs of Plato. On the other hand it is clear that the teaching of the doctrines of the main philosophic sects existed outside Athens; there were Platonists in Syria, Aristotelians in Alexandria, Stoics at Rhodes, Epicureans at Naples in various times and circumstances. Mobility of schools was as characteristic among Greeks as among Jews. [21] There are indeed so many obvious similarities and differences between Jewish rabbis and Greek philosophers that it would be a waste of time to dwell on each of them. But it is perhaps where the similarity is greatest that the difference become more conspicuous. Both Jewish rabbis and Greek philosophers had political ambitions. Greek philosophers tries several times to run individual cities or to act as advisers to sovereigns. They occasionally succeeded for a longer or shorter period. Plato in Sicily and the Pythagoreans in Southern Italy are the most obvious examples; it is not by chance that in both places the Greeks were a colonial minority. But unlike the Jewish rabbis the Greek philosophers never succeeded in establishing themselves permanently as the leaders of their nation and in impressing their own thought on the social organization of the Greeks at large. It is of course probable that the Jewish rabble would not have succeeded but for the destruction of the Temple. Whatever the explanation, the difference remains. The Greek philosophic schools were fundamentally isolated institutions in the middle of Greek society and transmitted themselves to posterity as systems of thought. The rabbinic schools shaped the conduct of the surrounding society and transmitted themselves to posterity both as a way of thinking and as an ideal way of life for a nation – which means that their sphere of action extended to the whole of the Jewish community. There were indeed customary ties between diaspora and Palestine, such as the pilgrimages to Jerusalem and the annual contribution to the Temple which were collected among the diaspora Jews. But the basic connection was the organization of the Jewish communities. Notwithstanding the variety of states and political regimes in which the Jews lived there remained enough uniformity in Jewish institutions to ensure conformity of thought and similarity of achievements. The synagogue became the centre of communal life everywhere outside Jerusalem, even in Judaea. The leaders of the synagogue were recognized as communal leaders. The Greek, the Parthian and the 281 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse Roman authorities accepted, either officially by charter or unofficially [22] by custom, the existence of some measure of Jewish self-government. It was taken for granted that controversies between Jews would be settled according to Jewish law either by local courts or by local arbitrators. In difficult cases the local Jewish administrators would turn for advice either to better provided communities or to rabbis of recognized authority. The Talmud recalls the advice asked by the Alexandrian Jews of Joshua ben Chaninah, a Palestinian teacher of the second century A.D. (Nidd. 69 b). Philo himself wrote extensively on legal problems arising from Mosaic texts. In the last century Heinrich Graetz thought that Philo might reflect in his De specialibus legibus the regulations of the dissident temple of Onias in Egypt (Gesch. der Juden, ed. 1905, II, 29 ff.xxi ). More recently E. R. Goodenough tried to prove that Philo, who was after all a communal leader of Alexandrian Jewry, wrote to guide the local courts of his native cityxxii . There is no evidence for either theory. Philo may well have done nothing more than expound Mosaic Law to the best of his own reflections. What remains important is that Philo could not avoid interpreting Jewish Law. Whether he did so to offer a Jewish counterpart to Plato’s law or an Alexandrian counterpart to the contemporary rabbinic legal exegesis (Halakhah) of Jerusalem or Babylonia does not alter the basic fact that any serious involvement in Jewish religion implied involvement in details of Jewish Law. Philo warned his fellow allegorists that allegorical interpretation of the Law was not to be construed as an excuse for not observing it (Migr. Abrah. 88). The rebels of the Qumran were of the same opinion. They fought against the priests of Jerusalem, but they stuck to Jewish Law more or less in the form which was current in their time. This was recognized by the great Louis Ginzberg when the only document of their sect was still the so-called Zadokite text found in the repository of the synagogue of Old Cairo at the end of the last century (Eine unbekannte jüdische Sekte, 1922xxiii ). The documents found in the caves near the Wadi Qumran in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea since 1947 have confirmed this attitude of the sectarian [23] followers of the Teacher of Righteousness. One of the great merits of the admirable Qumran Studies by Chaim Rabinxxiv is to have emphasized the legalism of the sectarians, though it would be difficult to follow Rabin in his inference that the sectarians were Pharisees in retreat. The Hellenistic age of Judaism has often been defined as the age of variety. The interpretation goes back to Flavius Josephus who tried to present to a pagan audience the Jewish sects of Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes. Variety has indeed to be emphasised. But before we emphasise it, let us be clear that what is remarkable is the relative uniformity of Jewish life. The spreading of the Jews along the Mediterranean coasts and in the Middle East had been due to the most diverse circumstances, from military settlement to deportation, from trade to slavery. What kept all these people together was a common law which basically resulted from the rabbinic interpretation of Mosaic Law. If Homer, the Delphic Oracle, the Olympic games and the philosophers kept the Greeks together, Moses, the Jerusalem Temple, whether operating or destroyed, the Synagogue and the rabbis kept the Jews together. IX One feature of Judaism under the Romans deserves more attention than it normally receives: the extraordinary restraint and brevity of our sources about conflicts and disagreements within Judaism. This restraint is to be found both outside and inside specifically rabbinic texts, with the only exception, which is therefore a confirmation, of apocalyptic texts. Flavius Josephus is our only systematic informant about the three sects of Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, and he is very brief. On John the Baptist and Jesus he is even more laconic; and there are later interpolations in his text. Philo has nothing about Sadducees and Pharisees, but much about Essenes and a great deal about the Therapeutae of Egypt on whom he is our only source. Essenes and Therapeutae were for Philo the representatives of [24] two different religious attitudes, one ascetic, the other contemplative. He may have invented the Therapeutae in order to describe his ideal of monastic contemplation. More probably the Therapeutae were a short-lived community inspired by Philo or by somebody like Philo. After all, according to the Karaite al-qirqisani, in the tenth century the sect 282 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse of the Magharians used a work by the “Alexandrian” who must be Philo (N. Golb, JAOS, 80, 1960, 348xxv ). The Qumran community seems to have remained unknown to all the ancient sources. It is now fashionable to treat the Qumran brethren as Essenes, because Pliny the Elder placed the Essenes near the Dead Sea, were the residence of the new sect was found (N.H. 5, 15, 73). But neither Philo nor Josephus connect the Essenes with the Teacher of Righteousness who looms large in the Qumran texts. Nowhere is it said that the Essenes lived – as the Qumran brethren undoubtedly lived – in the expectation of an imminent Messianic age. Prudent scholars must therefore conclude that the identification of Essenes and Qumran is far from proved. The silence of ancient sources about Qumran remains striking. Even more striking is the reticence of rabbinic sources about the Pharisees. If many modern scholars are convinced that the Pharisees by their insistence on Oral Law created rabbinic – that is, Talmudic – Judaism, the rabbis who put together what makes up the Talmud are not conscious of this filiation, and mix praise and blame in the rare cases in which they mention the Pharisees. The Mishnah attributes to Rabbi Joshua of the first century A.D. the following saying: “A foolish Saint (hasid), a cunning wicked man, a woman who is a Pharisee and the self-inflicted wounds of those who are Pharisees, these wear out the world (Sotah 3, 4). Pharisaic men and women are here treated as severely as in the contemporary Gospels by a rabbi who is supposed to have been one of them. I do not know of any certain reference either to Jesus or to Christianity in rabbinic texts of the period when Christianity could still be treated [25] as a deviant form of Judaism. The Mishnah, which was put together about A.D. 200, is silent about Jesus. Its only likely allusion to Christianity – the prophecy that the kingdom (of Rome) will fall to heretics (leminuth) in the treatise Sotah 9, 15 – must be an interpolation later than the conversion of Constantine (J. Z. Lauterbach, Rabbinic Essays, 553xxvi ). Later Talmudic references, even if authentically going back to rabbis of the first century, are less relevant to us, inserted as they are in a situation in which Christianity had ceased to be an internal Jewish problem. Even so, the allusions are remarkably few and trivial. Before Christianity the Samaritans had been the greatest scandal within Judaism. They considered themselves Jews, they were Jews. They had a text of the Pentateuch which was essentially identical with that preserved in Jerusalem. Jews and Samaritans had parted company in circumstances which nobody in Antiquity knew exactly and nobody in modern times has been able to clarify convincingly. The account of Josephus combined events of the time of Nehemiah in the fifth century B.C. with events under Samballath whom we know from recently discovered texts to have governed in Samaria in the fourth century B.C. “The foolish nation that dwelleth in Shechem”, as Ecclesiasticus called the Samaritans (1, 25), is treated with altogether remarkable restraints in rabbinic texts. The brief Talmudic treatise Kuthim, of uncertain date but with old material, concludes with the words: “The Samaritans in some of their ways resemble the Gentiles and in some resemble Israel, but in the majority they resemble Israel”. As a whole the evidence about Jewish sects in Jewish texts – either Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek – carries with it an unmistakable indication. The more dangerous and radical the differences were, the less likely our authorities are to speak about them. The Essenes who were the least dangerous are the most spoken about. Qumran recusants and Christians are not mentioned or mentioned sparingly. The Sadducees, who as conservative [26] defenders of the primacy of the Temple cult and of the literal application of the Mosaic law lost to the Pharisees, play a minimum role in the tradition. Even the Pharisees, who with their doctrines on the Oral Law, the immortality of the Soul and the subordinate importance of the Temple sacrifice had a special right to attention, are relatively seldom allowed to appear and are treated with detachment. Not even Josephus, a declared Pharisee, identifies himself with them. The most defiant profession of Pharisaism comes from St. Paul. This attitude can be observed in other respects of Jewish life and may help us to understand the Jewish-Hellenistic attitude toward recent history. As we have already had occasion to mention, in the Hellenistic age the Temple of Jerusalem had not been alone in receiving the sacrificial worship of the Jews, as required by a doctrine which had become official in the late seventh century B.C. 283 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse The Jewish tradition forgot about the temple of the Tobiads, the evidence for which, if any, is archaeological; and speaks very little – and never bitterly – about the Egyptian temple. Even more curious is the attitude to individuals suspected or convicted of heresy. Heresy (minuth) is a concept which must have been formalized in Judaea in the first century A.D. A prayer against the minim, heretics, or rather a brief formula of a prayer, was introduced into Jewish liturgy at the end of the first century A.D. Some practice of ban or excommunication developed with it. Rabbis who disagreed with majority decisions about ritual law in academies were in danger of being banned by their fellow-academicians. It is not difficult to visualize the historical situation which led to this closing of the ranks. It added a new crime to that of blasphemy, for which there is no need to go beyond Acts and Mishnah, Sanhedrin. The more remarkable is rabbinic mildness and even the sympathy towards individuals tainted with heresy. Eliezer ben Hyrcanos, the teacher of Rabbi Akiba, was both accused of heresy – that is, probably of Christian sympathies – before a Roman tribunal and excommunicated by his fellow-rabbis [27] (J. Neusner, Eliezer ben Hyrcanos, I, 1973, 401 and 423). He remained in the tradition as one of the most honoured rabbis. Tradition shows him dying on Sabbath eve surrounded by his pupils, as a Sage should die. Elishah ben Abuyah, the pupil of Rabbi Akiba and the master of Rabbi Meir, did not get off so easily. He remained in the tradition as the prototype of the Sage who passed to the other side: he was called Aher, the other. All sorts of nasty things were reported about him, from violation of the Sabbath to collaboration with the Romans. This was the time of Hadrian, and ben Abuyah’s master, Akiba, had died a martyr’s death. Yet Elishah ben Abuyah is not rejected with contempt. Tradition preserves and canonizes some of his aphorisms. It register the devotion of his pupil Meir who went on discussing the Torah with him and expressed, after the death without repentance of his master, the certainty that he had been saved. According to one of the Talmudic legends on the subject Meir spread his mantle over his master’s grave and reassured his soul: “Rest here in the night; in the dawn of happiness the God of mercy will deliver thee; if not, I will be thy redeemer” (Bab. Hagigah 15 a). The daring reference to the words of Boas in the Book of Ruth (3, 13) is explicit in the text. The figure of Elishah ben Abuyah who tried everything – mystical experience, Greek songs and low forms of prevarication (Jer. Megillah 1, 9; Bab. Hagigah 16b, etc.) – remained the ambiguous symbol of the attraction of the “other” – the classical world of the Greeks and Romans. He was not denied the hope of resurrection with the Just. The situation must not be misunderstood. Elishah ben Abuyah was after all an isolated individual. The Qumran people had probably lost importance after A.D. 70. The silence of the Mishnah about Christians is not the whole story. The feelings of Jews towards Christians, when we can test them, were no kinder than the feelings of Christians towards Jews. But playing down differences and keeping endless discussion going between disagreeing individuals and disagreeing branches of Judaism was perhaps not less important [28] than the reorganization of communal life in helping to maintain some sort of unity and consequently surviving against overwhelming odds. Whereas Greek schools, even if they put themselves under the protection of a specific god, were essentially different from prayer-houses, the Jewish school and the Jewish prayer-house were united by the Bible. They were also united by the religious significance the Jews attributed to the relation between teachers and pupils. “Let the honour of thy disciple be as dear to thee as thine own; and the honour of thy schoolfellow be like the fear of thy master, and the fear of thy master be like the fear of Heaven” (Abot 3, 9). The school pyramid culminated in God himself. This educational system, which probably received its starting-point and certainly derived its significance from the Hellenistic surroundings, was taken to be of immemorial origin. Midrashic texts transferred it back to the patriarchal period. What could Moses do in the forty days spent on the mountain to receive the Law but study the Scripture in the day-time and the Mishnah at night? (Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer 46, transl G. Friedländer, p. 359). Indeed an academy was available during the forty years of the wandering in the wilderness (Bab. Yoma 28b). God himself had to have his own academy, his own bet hamidrash, in Heaven where he taught the Law to the righteous – what was sometimes called the Heavenly Academy (Bab. Baba Metziah, 86 a; Deut. Rabbah 7 in a text 284 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse attributed to the third century, Joshua b. Levi; Tanna debe Eliyahu R. 1, 4). A rabbi even knew the exact part of the day God reserved for the study of his own Torah: the first three hours of the day (Bab. ‘Abodah Zara 3b). The common care for the study of the Torah gave a new warmth to the relation between God and the Jew. Clearly much of these imaginings must belong to the period after the destruction of the Temple, when Judaism was saved by its school system, and it was felt that “by the breath from the mouth of schoolchildren the world is sustained” (Bab. Shabbat 119b). One would like more specifically to know the origin of the tradition according to which the Greek philosopher Oenomaus of Gadara, a contemporary and an acquaintance of [29] R. Meir in the second century A.D., was asked what one could do against the Jews and answered: “As long as the voice of the children will be heard in the schools and in the synagogues you cannot subjugate this people” (Genesis Rabbah 65, 20; cf. Pesikta deRab Kahna, ed. M. Friedmann, 121a). Yet the Sages could smile at their own schools. They told the story of how Moses – the Law-giver Moses – was allowed by God to sit on the eighth bench of the school of Rabbi Akiba but was unable to follow the subtle argument about a point of the Law he had brought down from Mount Sinai (Bab. Menahot 29b). “Not being able to follow their arguments he (Moses) was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciple said to the master ‘Whence do you know it?’ and the latter replied ‘It is a Law given unto Moses at Sinai’, Moses was comforted”. X If Judaism, as I have tried to show, is the answer given in different languages and with different emphases to Hellenism, the answer must be declared effective. The Torah kept the Jews together. Not only was Judaism the only pre-Hellenistic national culture to survive in the Mediterranean zone; it also created a model for survival. The model was faith in a book and obedience to it, accompanied by daily communal prayer and instruction both for children and adults. By giving birth to Christianity Judaism produced that religious movement which ultimately revived the dying national cultures of the Roman Empire. It was Christianity which brought to life Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Celtic and other literatures and gave a new purpose to the Latin and Greek cultures of several Roman provinces, such as Africa, Gallia and Cappadocia. From this point of view, Christianity did for several nations what synagogal Judaism had done for the Jews several centuries before. It is easy to imagine how weak and dispirited the Jewish diaspora in Greek lands must have become after the failure of the great rebellion under Trajan – a more serious disaster than BarKochba’s rebellion in Palestine [30] under Hadrian. The destruction of the great synagogue of Alexandria became symbolic of the loss. Every year, for at least a century, in the village of Oxyrhynchus the residents celebrated the defeat of the Jews: a reversal of Hanuccah (<P.Oxy. 705, coll. 1-2>). We must also assume numerous conversions to Christianity among Greek-speaking Jews. And it was the rise of a powerful Christian culture in the Greek language at Alexandria that permanently changed the conditions of life for Greek-speaking Jews and made them relinquish to Christianity not only the Septuagint and much of the apocryphal literature, but even Philo and Josephus. In the fourth century the legend began to circulate that Philo had become a Christian convert. Flavius Josephus was very probably interpolated to make him a witness for Christianity. The Jews defended themselves – where best they could – in Palestine and Babylonia, but they had to take refuge in the Aramaic language. Even Hebrew yielded to Aramaic as the main rabbinic idiom. Remarkably enough, when Greek was lost, Hebrew also faded out, though not so totally. The two Talmuds were written in Aramaic dialects, while the Mishnah had been written in Hebrew. Like many other historical developments, the elimination of Greek from Judaism can be envisaged both as a necessity and as a distortion. To judge from the evidence we have, Greek had never represented for the Jews a vehicle for meeting Greek culture, even half-way. It had been turned by the Jews into a 285 Grinfield Lectures 1982 – B e t w e e n S y n a g o g u e a n d A p o c a l y p s e III. The decline of History and Apocalypse second language for reading and justifying the Torah and for defining the difference between Jew and Gentile. There is another story to tell – a story which has never been told properly – of how the culture which produced both Philo and the Mishnah was replaced by the culture which produced the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmud two or three centuries later. The story of which I have tried to define some salient features in these lectures is on the whole the story of the only nation which survived Hellenization and Romanization without loss of continuity and creativity. But it is also by implication a story in which the alien cultures of Greece and Rome were respected and the sense of a common [31] humanity was finely perceived. Let us therefore conclude with an anecdote which goes back in all probability to the Mishnaic period, but is transmitted in the Babylonian Talmud and in another post-Mishnaic text (Genesis Rabbah 13, 4-6) and may thus symbolize an element of continuity in the name of humanity between these two periods. A Gentile said to Rabbi Jochanan ben Zaccai – or according to the other version to Rabbi Joshua ben Karcha: “we have festival seasons and you have festival seasons, we have a calendar and Saturnalia and Kratesis, and you have Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. What is the day in which you and we can rejoice together?” Rabbi Jochanan answered: “The day in which the rains fall”. As another rabbi explained: “The day of rain is more important than the day of resurrection, for the day of resurrection is for the righteous only and not for the wicked, while the day of rain is for the righteous and for the wicked” (Talmud Bab. Ta’anit 7 a). i Ios. Ant. 12, 154-241. Cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1932c (=Tobiadi). Per i problemi di datazione del libro della Sapienza si rimanda a SCARPAT 1967 (articolo plausibilmente letto da Momigliano) e ID. 1989, 258-64. Per quanto la questione relativa al terminus ante quem del libro resti aperta, il terminus post quem di composizione può essere fissato con relativa certezza intorno al 30 a.C. ca. iii GOLDSTEIN 1975. iv Per una precedente valutazione momiglianea su Giuseppe e Aseneth, con bibliografia relativa, si rimanda ad Alien Wisdom (= MOMIGLIANO 1975F) 117-8. v Ruth 1, 16; cfr. Giuseppe e Aseneth, 11-13. vi KILPATRICK 1952-3. vii MERKELBACH 1962. viii STONE 1972. ix Il. 18, 478-607. x Per la confutazione dell’ipotesi di un’origine sira del cognomen di Emilio Sura cfr. invece GL 1980 I (Universal History), c. 12, in cui Momigliano preferisce ricondurlo alla voce latina sura, -ae, “polpaccio”). xi Momigliano potrebbe aver tratto la storia della consultazione di Dio con la Torah e dell’esitazione di quest’ultima – riportata senza identificarne la fonte - dal cap. I, vol. I, di GINZBERG 1909, volume contenuto nella sua biblioteca personale. L’ed. italiana dell’opera (cfr. bibliografia) risulta dotata di un apparato di note, in cui si rimanda per il passo in questione a Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, 3 [7] e a Yalqut Re'ubeni a Gen. 1, 3. xii Cfr. RIVKIN 1978. xiii SCHOLEM 1957. xiv Cfr. Appendice II, CL 1977 II (The Temple), c. 32 (ripresa Q). Momigliano segue la lettura di WEBER 1920 nel contrapporre il rabbinato al mandarinato cinese inteso come casta accentratrice di privilegi e beni materiali all’interno di uno stato patrimoniale. xv CHERNISS 1945. xvi LYNCH 1972. xvii LAUTERBACH 1951. xviii FRIEDLÄNDER 1916. xix Pesikta de Rab Kahna, 15, 5. Momigliano cita dall’ed. di FRIEDMANN 1880. xx W. WRIGHT 1952. xxi GRÄTZ 1807-1911. Vol. III, t.2.: Geschichte der Judäer von dem Tode Juda Makkabis bis zum Untergange des judäischen Staates, 5. verb. und verm. Aufl. bearb. von M. Brann, Leipzig 1905. xxii Cfr. part. GOODENOUGH 1926; ID. 1929; ID. 1938. xxiii GINZBERG 1922. xxiv RABIN 1957. xxv GOLB 1960. xxvi LAUTERBACH 1951. ii 286 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) Sedi e date: NL 1977 II (24 gennaio, cfr. D-a 1) CL 1977 II (aprile-maggio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 415) Documenti - [Old] The Temple and the Synagogue a) NL 1977 II P-o 7, P-o 76 mss. P-o 8 top c. di P-o 7. P-o 9, P-o 10 (a) c.c. di P-o 8. P-o 17 (a), P-o 78 (a): xerox da una c.c. di P-o 8. P-o 6, P-o 10 (b), P-o 17 (b), P-o 78 (c) aggiunte. P-o 77 nuova versione basata su P-o 10 (a-b), con correzioni. P-o 11, P-o 12 (a), P-o 31 (c), P-o 32 (b): c.c. di P-o 77. b) aggiunte (prob. Per CL 1977 II-III) P-o 12 (b) ms. P-o 78 (b), P-o 32 (a) xerox di P-o 12 (b). - [New] The Temple and the Synagogue a) CL 1977 II 1 P-o 31 (a) c.c. delle pp. 14-26 di P-o 5 , (c) c.c. delle pp. 1-19 di P-o 77, (b) aggiunte mss. P-o 36 nuova versione basata su P-o 31 (a-b-c), top c. P-o 18, P-o 23 (a): c.c. di P-o 36. 31 79(GL 1979 II = EL 1978 II The Greeks outside) P-o 7,8 , 9, 10, 11 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. Il testo qui proposto (ds. P-o 31), preparato in vista del ciclo di Chicago 1977, offre la trattazione più ampia che Momigliano abbia mai dedicato al tema “Tempio e sinagoga”: 35 cc. risultanti dall’unione della sezione finale della NL 1977 I (The Religious Foundations of Hellenistic Judaism) con la successiva NL 1977 II (The Temple and the Synagogue), che Momigliano stesso dovette reputare eccessivamente lunghe per una pubblica lettura, finendo per proporre come CL 1977 II la versione abbreviata testimoniata dal fascicolo P-o 36. Il ripensamento delle modalità di indagine conseguente alla “svolta storiografica” dal ciclo Efroymson 1978 (per cui cfr. l’introduzione generale alle pp. 20-22) determina la rimozione di un intervento volto a isolare il binomio Tempio-sinagoga come tema a sé stante e la concomitante predilezione per un reinserimento dell’analisi di genesi e sviluppi delle due istituzioni nel contesto persiano (The Jews inside) o resistenziale (Defence). Benché il diverso focus provochi la caduta di osservazioni e riflessioni non irrilevanti, il pensiero – e i materiali di lavoro – non si perdono con la lezione. Ad alcuni argomenti (il proselitismo, l’astrologia) Momigliano dedicherà in altre sedi (in particolare, ma non esclusivamente, in Jews and Gentiles) ampia considerazione. Altri saranno invece marginalmente recuperati in trattazioni specifiche di taglio diverso, come è il caso della lezione dedicata ai libri dei Maccabei (From Maccabees) all’interno del terzo ciclo di Chicago. La lettura della versione estesa di The Temple and the Synagogue permette di osservare significative riprese di intere porzioni testuali, recuperate pressoché verbatim, rappresentando così un prezioso strumento di comprensione della progressiva evoluzione della riflessione di Momigliano sul tema, dai prodromi Northcliffe fino al ripensamento di Cincinnati. 1 NL 1977 I (The Religious Foundations of Hellenistic Judaism). 287 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) 2. La caduta delle Religious foundations: riprese e scarti. Nel 1977, a Londra, la riflessione sulle “religious foundations” del giudaismo ellenistico, nello specifico di un’analisi dei rapporti tra Tempio e sinagoga, è proposta come aspetto cruciale dell’indagine storica relativa: “only through a clear understanding of the tension between Temple and Synagogue can we arrive at proper appreciation of how Judaism defined itself in relation to Hellenism and ultimately survived it”. È nel solco di questa indicazione, e in concomitanza di una rielaborazione della lecture di apertura del ciclo di Chicago (Prologue), che si colloca la successiva scelta di dedicare al tema un’unica trattazione, autonoma ed esaustiva, articolata in quattro capitoli (di cui due provenienti dalla fine di NL 1977 I e due dall’inizio in NL 1977 II). La dissoluzione della lecture in coincidenza del ripensamento Efroymson porterà a ridistribuirne le riprese in due lezioni, EL 1978 III (= GL 1979 III, The Jews inside) e EL 1978 IV (= GL 1979 IV, The Defence)2. Nella prima confluiscono soprattutto le sezioni relative ad aspetti politici e istituzionali (riprese A, C), economici e sociali (riprese B, E) del Tempio, o comunque pertinenti al tema persiano (ripresa I); il ritorno, in forma molto abbreviata, al tema della preghiera (ripresa F) testimonia una modifica del punto di vista relativo all’influsso greco su questa pratica. Nella seconda lezione si riscontra invece una maggiore attenzione agli aspetti culturali, più specificamente connessi all’educazione (riprese G, H, L, M, N, P, Q), oltre al tema cruciale della tentazione politesitica e dell’attrazione esercitata dal mondo greco (ripresa D). Due recuperi di rilievo riguardano invece la EL 1978 VI – GL 1982 III (The Decline): ricompaiono qui alcuni paragrafi sulla sacertà dello studio della Torah (ripresa O) e il cenno, di chiara ascendenza weberiana, alla mancata evoluzione del rabbinato in mandarinato (ripresa Q). La natura e la distribuzione dei recuperi, generalmente improntati a un’accentuata attenzione alla dimensione sociale, appaiono conformi al ripensamento del precedente approccio monografico all’interno di una nuova struttura i cui centri d’interesse sono rappresentati dal contatto degli Ebrei con altri popoli e dai fattori identitari del sistema educativo e del libro sacro. Con l’eliminazione della lezione, ad ogni modo, non tutte le parti vengono riprese. Il confronto tra “scarti” e “riprese” permette di apprezzare due distinti livelli di intervento. In primo luogo, non trovano più posto argomentazioni eccentriche rispetto al percorso individuato, come ad esempio quelle a esclusiva connotazione religiosa; cadono quasi interamente le prime tre cc. del cap. I, in cui si sottolinea la “dimenticanza” ebraica del periodo persiano che “fece degli Ebrei una teocrazia”3; si perdono, all’inizio del cap. III, i cenni alle visioni del Tempio in sogno e le trattazioni della confessione e della preghiera. A un secondo livello di interventi si collocano invece veri e propri mutamenti di prospettiva. L’opinione espressa riguardo all’ipotesi di Bickerman circa l’influenza greca sul nucleo dell’Amidah (c. 17) è soggetta a modifiche nel passaggio da Chicago a Cincinnati: considerata prima “bold, but non impossible”, diventa in The Jews inside oggetto di una decisa dichiarazione di scetticismo (c. 12). Nella stessa direzione di allontanamento dalle tesi di Bickerman punta significativamente la mancata ripresa di una lettura della crisi del Tempio dal 167 agli Asmonei in cui è sottolineato con enfasi il ruolo svolto dai conflitti interni alla società ebraica (c. 8). Fondamentale appare il cambiamento di prospettiva che investe la Sinagoga: vengono cancellati passaggi cruciali che ne definiscono la centralità funzionale e il nesso con fattori di innovazione originati dal rapporto con la civiltà dei Greci, come la fine del cap. II (in cui l’istituzione sinagogale è indicata come “the effective Jewish answer to the Greek challenge”), o come un breve ma importante passo del cap. III (cc. 21-22) che riconnette l'ascesa della Sinagoga con la nascita, in seno al Tempio stesso, di nuovi orientamenti “grecizzanti”, il cui primo testimone si individua nello “strano libro” di Qohelet. Induce infine a riflettere la tendenza a porre in secondo piano (se non a espungere) la funzione liturgica della Sinagoga: se la scelta trova indubbiamente le sue ragioni nella risposta a un nuovo progetto argomentativo generale, assai concentrato sulla forza specifica del sistema educativo e 2 3 Per le singole riprese testuali si rimanda alle note a testo della lecture. Per cui cfr. Ebrei e Greci (= MOMIGLIANO 1976A), 15. 288 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) cronologicamente delimitato dalla fine del Secondo Tempio (la preghiera sinagogale sostituirà il culto del Tempio solo dopo la sua distruzione), non può tuttavia sfuggire la consonanza di questa scelta con la posizione privilegiata che i talmudisti attribuivano allo studio nei confronti della preghiera (cfr. e.g. gli episodi relativi a grandi rabbi in R.H. 35 a; Shab. 10 a; Er. 65 a). 3. Argomento della lecture Limitano la conoscenza delle origini del giudaismo del Secondo Tempio la scarsità di informazioni risalenti al periodo della dominazione persiana e il silenzio delle fonti storiografiche greche, in particolare di Erodoto. Benché gli osservatori greci di età ellenistica guardino agli Ebrei come a un eterno stato-tempio, l’instaurazione di un governo di tipo sacerdotale si data in età postesilica per diretta opposizione dei Persiani a eventuali sviluppi statali ispirati alle poleis greche. Lo stato-tempio di Gerusalemme assume nel tempo caratteri specifici: privo di proprietà terriera, con un capitale dipendente dalle decime, vede lo sviluppo di un enorme corpo normativo e di un conseguente specialismo legale di origine laica, destinato a evolvere in forme di convergenza tra interessi dei laici e dei dominatori greci. La perdita dei privilegi dei Leviti e la formazione di correnti settarie sono alcune delle conseguenze dei conflitti sociali interni che concorrono, sotto Antioco IV, alla crisi di cui almeno una parte della classe sacerdotale appare responsabile. Gli eventi del 167-64 precipitano la trasformazione della classe sacerdotale dominante in un gruppo disomogeneo e non strutturato. In questo clima rinnovato, dominato dall’ingresso di Roma sulla scena politica, il Tempio fallisce nel tentativo di fornire una guida morale e intellettuale o una politica religiosa coerente. La perdita di centralità nella vita e nel culto trova risposta nell’istaurazione del rivale e successore dell’istituzione, la sinagoga, la cui tensione con il Tempio è un fattore fondamentale per la comprensione del Giudaismo ellenistico. L’origine della sinagoga non è riconducibile al periodo dell’esilio babilonese, come vorrebbe un’interpretazione forzata della pubblica lettura in Neemia: la documentazione archeologica relativa non permette infatti di risalire oltre il I sec.a.C. La sua funzione è quella di insegnare agli adulti che non accedono all’accademia, la yeshivah; il significato del movimento sinagogale non può tuttavia essere compreso se non alla luce della centralità che il libro acquisce in età ellenistica. L’educazione giudaica condivide con quella greca la dipendenza da un libro (però sacro) e la mancanza di una dimensione creativa, differenziandosi per il ricorso a ogni livello di formazione del corpus biblico e soprattutto per l’unione di religione e educazione. Il sistema tende a differenziarsi a seconda dei luoghi (molto greco in aree di cultura greca, come Alessandria) ma condivide ovunque il fine di individuare una via verso Dio. Diventa problematica la possibilità di estendere il sistema a tutti gli Ebrei: lo studio continuo che richiede risulta troppo impegnativo, così come costituisce un ostacolo il nesso fra sinagoga e scuola. Da ciò il prodursi di articolazioni sociali che prevedono la condizione di popolano incolto, ma non lo sviluppo parallelo di un mandarinato, in assenza di un potere politico di supporto. 289 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) The Temple and the Synagogue*4 <I> To begin with, these Jews had been the subjects of Persia for two hundred years before they passed under the rule of the Greeks. We know little about the Persian period. Indeed it is a problem by itself why the Jews, when they became the subjects of Hellenistic kings, remembered so little about Persian rule. But the consequences of Persian rule were immense. The Jews became a theocracy under the Persians. They were recognized as a theocracy by the Greeks. Among the books of my own private library I particularly cherish there is one entitled Hérodote historien du peuple hébreu sans le savoir. It is anonymous and was allegedly published in The Hague in 1786. It defends a previous book by l'Abbé Guérin du Rocher, Histoire véritable des temps fabuleuxi, and is clearly written by l'Abbé Guérin himself. He has a theory that Herodotus in writing his book on Egypt told the history of the Jews under Egyptian names; apparently the Egyptians told Herodotus the history of the Jews instead of telling their own. This fancy is by no means isolated in eighteenth century historiography. It tries to answer a question which already troubled the mind of Flavius Josephus and other Jews in antiquity and was inherited by Christian historians: Why is Herodotus silent about the Jews, while we knows so much about Egyptians and Phoenicians? It must be admitted that I should probably be here to tell a different story if Herodotus had gone up to Jerusalem instead of stopping at the sinful harbour of Tyre. Two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, suddenly lighten up the sky of Judaea about 520 B.C. and allow us to see something of the return of the exiles from Babylonia. About seventy years later Nehemiah was writing down his memoirs in what must have been for the Jews, as it was for the Greeks, a new literary genre - which we call autobiography, [2] using a term probably invented5 in A.D. 1793ii. Either a few years earlier than Nehemiah, about 458 B.C., or more probably many years later about 398 B.C., Ezra the Scribe also compiled his own memoirs. If the evidence is not badly misleading, both Nehemiah and Ezra gave an account in self-defence of their struggles to reorganize the state of Judah. How and when their memoirs were mutilated, used, integrated and at least partially recomposed to make the present Books of Ezra and Nehemiah is unknown. This is all - or about all - we have of primary literary evidence about the birth of Judaism, such as it passed ledor vador, from generation to generation, even to us. Archaeology, epigraphy and numismatics help, but not very much. In so far as they help, they accentuate the paradox of our ignorance. For archaeology and numismatics leave us in no doubt that Greek traders and mercenaries went up and down in Palestine during the Persian regime in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. The first coins of Judaea acknowledge this fact and display the Hebrew word Jehud together with the Athenian owl to indicate that the Athenian silver currency was respected.6 The Greeks and the Jews evidently knew each other on the daily scene, but ignored each other on the literary scene. Before Alexander the Great the Greeks seem to have ignored even the name of the Jews.7 The Jews did have a name for the Greeks - the one current throughout the East, Yawan - and knew about them as nasty slave * Documento preso come base: P-o 31, ds. di 35 cc. testimone della versione di Chicago 1977 e risultante dall’unione della sezione finale della NL 1977 I (Foundations) con l’inizio della successiva NL 1977 II (The Temple [old]). Si riportano in apparato eventuali lezioni alternative di P-o 7, ms. alla base del testo NL, della sua top c. P-o 8 e delle successive c.c. P-o 9 e 10, allo scopo di evidenziare l’evoluzione della lecture a partire dalla prima stesura. Le lezioni di P-o 11, se segnalate, individuano divergenze del testo edito rispetto a una seconda versione NL (= P-o 77), accresciuta in preparazione al testo di Chicago. Le successive riprese in GL 1979 II (Greeks outside) vengono segnalate tramite riferimento al ds. base, P-o 79. Per un sintetico commento alle parti di testo riproposte nelle lectures successive, cfr. infra, Note sulle singole riprese testuali, alle pp. 305-7. 4 P-o 31: tit. ms. [AMM]; Northcliffe II, p. 1, tsf, ms[AMM]; AMM's copy. pp. 1-13bis given to mrs Donahne for retyping new version of lecture I, 15.6.77, ms[AMM], del.;cc. 1-13 = NL 1977 I (Foundations) cc. 14-26. 5 P-o 31: invented -> by Isaac Israeli, del. 6 P-o 31: respected. -> It was more easily obtainable than the golden Persian darici coveted by the venal Greeks, del. 7 Among the books of my library … even the name of the Jews: cfr. P-o 79, cc. 1-2. 290 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) traders. But they were not much wiser as a result. Athens and Sparta are unknown to the Hebrew Bible, and the Hochmat-Yewanit, the wisdom of the Greeks, was a thing of the future. Greek civilization was unknown to the Jews before Alexander. [3] When Palestine became a part of the Macedonian kingdom of Egypt under the dynasty of the Ptolemies this reciprocal ignorance was no longer possible. The Jews had to learn to speak Greek to their new masters who were also the new tax collectors. They received employment from their new masters, especially in the army. In the new social mobility created by the Greco-Macedonian hegemony, extending from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus river, there was relief for the demographic pressure and class struggles in Judaea. The Jews emigrated from Palestine either to lands where Jewish colonies already existed, such as Mesopotamia and Egypt, or to other countries where Greek or Aramaic was spoken. By becoming the subjects of a Macedonian king instead of being the subjects of a Persian king, the Jews faced Greek as a cultural language for the first time. Aramaic dialects remained predominantly the spoken language of Jewish Palestine itself; and Aramaic dialects remained the medium for internal use and international exchange beyond the Euphrates. But along the Nile and the greater part of the Mediterranean coasts the Jews had to speak Greek to be understood. When the first Greek observers began to take notes on Judaea for the satisfaction of their curiosity or the benefit of the Macedonian rulers, they had no doubt that Jerusalem had always been a temple-State, such as those which were numerous in Asia. Hecataeus of Abdera who wrote about the Jews before 300 B.C. firmly stated that the famous and good man Moses built the Temple and put a High Priest in charge when he was compelled to leave Egyptiii. A hundred and fifty years later Polybius defined the Jews as those who live around the Temple called Hierosolyma (Jos. Antiq. Jud. 12, 136 = Polyb. <xvi 39.4>). In the Hellenistic age it was indeed impossible to be aware that when in 538 B.C. Cyrus, the King of Persia, decided to allow the [4] Jews to rebuild their Temple he did not contemplate the creation of a temple-state. Mysterious as may be the process of the return RIPRESA of the exiles – the first substantial batch of exiles appears only in 520 B.C. and the (A) -> EL III e Temple was dedicated in 515 B.C. – there seems to be little doubt that the leader of the 1978 GL 1979 return was Zerubbabel, a member of the previous royal family. The prophets Haggai and III - The Inside Zechariah did their best to turn him into a Messianic king. It was a marvelous dream, with Jews the Persian the universalism one can expect from members of a world empire. The new community, Empire, cc. Zechariah asserted, will include many nations, and the days of fast will be turned into inizio, 1-2 days of joy, when many people and strong nations shall come to see the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to pray before the Lord. Haggai is even more sanguine in his prophecy IL TEMPIOwhen he speaks of the nations bringing tribute to the Temple, obviously as they did to the STATO E Persian king (2, 7-10). Six centuries later his words still echoed in the mind of the author L'UNIVER -SALISMO of the Epistle to the Hebrews (12, 26-28). Admittedly about 520 the Persian Empire was only just beginning to take shape, but Jerusalem was controlled by a Persian governor, even if not yet formally part of the satrapy it was soon to become. Zerubbabel disappeared from history as quickly as he had appeared. The process of reconstruction was slowed down for 70 years. The Messianic dream was postponed indefinitely. Prophecy assumed a more subdued form - whatever date we are inclined to attribute to Joel and Malachi. The younger prophet who is now the second part of Zechariah turned against prophets altogether (13, 5) without noticing the irony of his position. Malachi took cognizance of the offerings the Jews had to make to the pehah, that is, the Persian governor (1, 8). Any hope of reviving the kingdom of Judah was repressed, and the vassal city of Jerusalem came into being with about 1.000 square [5] miles of territory. Though the priestly character of the new organization revived memories of Melchisedek, King of Salem and priest of the highest God, to whom Abraham had paid tithes in exchange of bread, wine and blessing (Gen. 15, 17-20), there was no continuity or even similarity between Melchisedek's Salem and Persian Jerusalem. The Jewish priestly government, as Eduard Meyer squarely put it, was a creation of the Persian government. 291 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) Even more precisely it was imposed, after hesitations and internal crises, by a lay, though Jewish, agent of the Persian government, Nehemiah. It was Nehemiah who reorganized the Jewish settlement and to begin with gave Jerusalem its new walls. Nehemiah's behaviour has been compared with that of Solon, or less flatteringly, with that of Pisistratus. It certainly had some of the features of the Greek reforms: new legislation, cancellation of debts, reassignation of land, resettlement of population, and a new social equilibrium between town and country8. He had to reconcile various parties and to persuade the priests and the intellectuals who had returned from exile to co-operate with those Jewish families which had remained on the land and had repeatedly had to change their status, either for the better or for the worse. But what distinguished his actions9 from anything that had happened in Greece was the purpose of his reform - namely to give the Jews what they were not used to, a priestly government. One of his most urgent tasks was to find a new formula of compromise for the old claims of the Levites against the priests. The fiction that the priests were a privileged branch of the Levites had probably been accepted long before Nehemiah. What he could do was to interpret it in such a way as to give a share in the cult of the Temple, and consequently a share in the tithes, to the Levites. [6] Nehemia’s settlement was of course in broad agreement with Persian policy of support for national religions and organizations within the Empire. One has the impression that the Persians favoured, whenever possible, the politicization of the Temples as an alternative to civic autonomies which, whether Greek or modeled on Greek poleis, were proving very difficult to handle. Many of the temple-states so interestingly described by Strabo in Book XII of his Geography did well under the Persians, even if they were born before their coming. In some case we can even go back to the Hittite period and see how the great temple of the goddess Hepat of Cumana in Cappadocia struggled through the centuries against the kings of the land for privileges and exceptions from taxes (A. Archi, Parola del Passato 64, 1975, 329-44)10. But there is no primitive element in these temple-states. If they had a god to thank for their prosperity under the Persians it was Ahura-Mazda. This applies to the Temple of Jerusalem, too. The Temple of Jerusalem, however, was not a landowner, as most of the temples of the East were. The land of the country was in private hands, though it is by no means clear whether at least in principle it remained inalienable within the clans. The priesthood was dependent on the contributions it received. It was even subsidised by the sovereigns, RIPRESA that is, successively by the kings of Persia, Egypt and Syria. It was reinforced by the (B) - > EL III e offerings of the Jews of the diaspora and of gentiles who for one reason or another were 1978 GL 1979 interested in the Temple. But above all it relied on the tithes Palestinian Jews had to pay. III - The Inside No wonder that the enforcement of the tithes produced a body of regulations and customs Jews the Persian to delight any lawyer. As capital accumulated in the Temple of Jerusalem, financial Empire, cap.Itransactions multiplied around it, as they did around all the other temples. But it does not fine inizio cap. follow that the priest were the only or [7] even the biggest profiteers. Laymen were II, cc. 6-7. involved in the financial administration of the Temple. Tax collectors for the foreign SOCIETA' sovereigns, backed as they were by foreign troops, became desirable partners in the E ECOcollection and administration of the Temple revenues. The powerful Jewish sheiks of NOMIA Ammanitis – the Tobiads, who had already given trouble to Nehemiah – became royal tax collectors in the late third century B.C. and as such acquired a foothold in the Temple. Even the superintendents of the Temple treasury do not seem to have been invariably loyal to the priestly class as a whole. The story, by which the Second Book of Maccabees begins, shows one of them calling the attention of King Seleucus IV to the amount of money which was stored in the Temple. The King sent Heliodorus to steal the money; and miracles, in good Hellenistic style, followed to save it for Yahveh. 8 9 10 Nehemia’s behaviour… town and country: prosegue ripresa (A). P-o 31: actions <-> wisdom, ms[AMM]. Nehemia’s settlement was of course… 329-44): prosegue ripresa (A). 292 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) The priestly class was itself divided: we know of conflicts, violence and even murder within it. We also dimly perceive that the Levites, whom Nehemiah had brought to Jerusalem, did not keep their rights and privileges and, as far as the Temple was concerned, became indistinguishable from the singers and the vergers. Laymen become more involved in the service of the Temple. They increasingly shared with the priests the knowledge of the Law and at least from 200 B.C. onwards they began to organize themselves into sects or groups with specific religious outlooks. Elements of social tensions and of conflicting interests - between upper-order priests and lower-order priests, and between priests and laymen - where inherent in the organization which Judaea received from Nehemiah in the middle of the fifth century. The prestige of the higher priests was affected when they proved themselves unable or unwilling to defend the Temple against the attempt by Antiochus IV to desecrate it and to transform it into a syncretistic cult of Zeus - with a [8] corresponding transformation of the character of Jerusalem. The events of 167-164 B.C., in which at least part of the priests and of the Jewish upper class collaborated with Antiochus IV, was both the culmination and the turning point of a social conflict which had matured within the Temple State created by Nehemiah. II Until the Maccabaean rebellion, a foreign governor controlled the land of Judaea: first a Persian satrap with his subordinates, then a Macedonian hyparchos or strategos, sent RIPRESA (C) - > EL by the Ptolemaic kings, until about 200 B.C., and by the Seleucid kings between 200 and 1978 III e 1979 140 B.C. circa. The hereditary High Priest was recognized as the representative, the GL III - The leader and perhaps the supreme judge of the Palestinian Jews. His moral authority Jews Inside Persian extended to the diaspora. The difficulty in interpreting the evidence is mainly due to the the Empire, fact that literary sources attribute undisputed, albeit undefined, supremacy to the High cap. II, cc. Priest, whereas texts with some claim to being considered juridical show the High Priest 8-9 surrounded and to a certain extent controlled by Jewish lay elements. IL The legend reported by Flavius Josephus (Ant. Jud. 11, 8, 5) that Alexander the Great SOMMO SACERDO entered Jerusalem hand in hand with the High Priest implies that the High Priest was the TE supreme Jewish authority of the land. The legend is certainly without foundation. Alexander, like Herodotus, never saw Jerusalem. But the legend assumes that the status of the High Priest was recognized by everyone. About 200 B.C. the author of Ecclesiasticus described the dignity of the High Priest Simon in the same vein. On the other hand in 410 B.C. the Jewish settlers of Elephantine in Egypt appealed for help to the Persian governor of Judaea, to the High Priest Johannes, to his colleagues the priests who are in Jerusalem, to a man simply called [9] Ostanes brother of Anani and to the nobles of the Jews. It is clear that at that moment, fifty years after Nehemiah, the High Priest and his priestly colleagues shared some power with a council of notables. The man Osthanes brother of Anani was probably the president of the council of notables. Even more surprisingly, about two hundred years later, when Ben Sira was writing Ecclesiasticus, Antiochus III of Syria in a letter reported by Flavius Josephus (Ant. Jud. 12, 3 <3, 138-144>) defined the Jewish community as composed of a senate, priests, scribes, sacred singers and other people. This document shows that about 200 B.C. the Seleucid King, having succeeded the Ptolemies as ruler of Judaea, treated Jerusalem as a polis ruled by a senate or gerousia. His letter does not explain who presided over the council and how it was constituted. The High Priest is not specifically mentioned. Such evidence as we have favours the conclusion, therefore, that the council of the city of Jerusalem was not necessarily presided over by the High Priest. At this point we must ask ourselves whether the senate about which the Greek sources speak is identical with the Sanhedrin of the Talmudic sources. Sanhedrin is of course a good Greek word (synedrion); and there is no ancient source to support the modern conjecture that Jerusalem had two senates or two sanhedrin, one political, the other religious. Indeed the Talmudic sources never 293 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) imply that the Sanhedrin was presided over by the High Priest. Consequently there is a prima facie case both for identifying the Sanhedrin with the council of Jerusalem mentioned in Greek sources and for accepting the theory that the High Priest was not ex officiis the head of the Sanhedrin. If Mishnah, Tosefta and Gemara give a description of the Sanhedrin which is very different from that of the Greek sources the reason seems to be that they provide an idealized picture, or rather a utopia. One third-century rabbi even required a knowledge of seventy language in each of the seventy (or seventy-one or seventy-two) members of the Sanhedrin (Bab. Sanh. 17 a). We are no wiser about the competence of the Sanhedrin in the matter of capital punishment or other such controversial issues, but we can at least conclude that the power of the High Priest was neither necessarily nor regularly founded upon the presidency of the Sanhedrin. The High Priest's authority was real but precarious.11 The desecration of the Temple in 167 precipitated changes in a ruling class which lacked not only homogeneity, but a rigorous hierarchical structure. This time it was not destruction of the Temple and of the city, as with the Babylonians. It was something less cruel, but more offensive, because the attempt to turn the Temple of Yahveh into a syncretistic cult of Zeus was supported by a section of the priests and of the Jerusalem upper class. The crisis was too short-lived to allow serious agitation among the Jews of the diaspora. The old cult was restored three years [10] later in 164. In Judaea the rebellion led by the Hasmonean family - the Maccabean brothers - took on the aspects of a civil war. The victory of the Maccabees naturally confirmed and increased the devotion to the Temple, but at the same time made a transformation of the government inevitable. In 152 Jonathan became High Priest, to be succeeded about 142 B.C. by another of the Maccabean brothers, Simon, who was called both a High Priest and a Prince. A later member of the family, Alexander Jannaeus, had himself called King, though remaining High Priest. Some of the dispossessed priests escaped to Egypt and established with Ptolemaic support a schismatic temple in Leontopolis. It was soon realized that restoring the purity of the cult in Jerusalem was not enough to eliminate the problems of surviving in a Hellenistic world and of keeping together the various groups which had produced the victory. In order to fight the Macedonians Judas Maccabaeus had to open the doors to the Romans - who would have entered anyway even if they had not been asked to come, because they were determined to interfere with that was left of the Seleucid Empire. Furthermore, to make the State economically and militarily viable, the Hasmonean had to embark on a policy of territorial expansion accompanied by forced conversion to Judaism, which produced dubious subjects and dubious Jews. The introduction of Hellenic customs which had been stopped on the battlefields reasserted itself in the mere process of having to live as a vassal state of the Romans. Chapter 8 of the First Book of Maccabees which was perhaps written about 130 B.C. is a characteristic document of this concern of the Jews with Roman power: it is a report on a remote country which is considered to be both friendly and formidable.12 About seventy years later, in 63 B.C., it was impossible to stop Pompey from penetrating defiantly into the Holy of Holies. In 55 B.C. the Romans themselves must have been surprised to find among their newly minted coins one presenting Bacchius Iudaeus as a conquered enemyiv. This was an allusion either to a Jewish rebel called Bacchius or Dionysus, who is mentioned by Josephusv, or more probably to the identification of Yahveh with Bacchus-Dionysus [11] which Hellenizers had fostered, but the Maccabees had hoped to have eliminated for good. At last the Hasmoneans were replaced by a leader coming from a family of recent converts to Judaism. Herod, imposed by the Romans, made the splendour and 11 P-o 31: At this point we must ask ourselves whether... but precarious <-> This is exactly what the Talmudic sources say about the Sanhedrin - a good Greek word (synedrion). Consequently there is a prima facie case both for indentifying the Sanhedrin with the council of Jerusalem and for accepting the theory that the High Priest was not ex officiis the head of the Sanhedrin. His authority was real, but precarious, ms[Mom] su f. 9bis (con nota msr [AMM]: Handwritten insertion here) 12 P-o 31: Chapter 8 ... formidable., mginf con segr, ms[AMM]. 294 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) prosperity of the Temple one of the corner-stones of his political and economic programme, but pious Jews could not trust him. It would be ridiculous to suggest that Judaea fell to the Romans because the Hasmoneans were unable to produce a coherent religious policy. As Plinio Fraccaro was fond of repeating, all the Hellenistic states were subjugated one after the other by the Romans because, unlike the Romans, none was able to raise four legions each yearvi. But it was under the Hasmoneans that the Temple of Jerusalem, though more than ever the emotional centre of Jewish life, was patently no longer capable of giving moral guidance and intellectual satisfaction to the faithful. The traditional temptations of the Canaanite Baalim, against which the prophets of the First Temple had had to fight, had disappeared for good. The prophets themselves had disappeared together with those temptations. The two events can be placed in the fourth century B.C. In Egypt about 400 B.C. the Jews of Elephantina still combined the cult of Yahu (another name for Yahveh) with that of Ishumbethel and Anathbethel. It would be surprising if residues of polytheism had not survived in Judaea for a while after the restoration. But the Jews of Egypt soon turned to a more rigorous monotheism. If there were still polytheists among the Palestinian Jews, they must have imitated their Egyptian brethren. The evidence such as it is does not seem to indicate that except for the period of Antiochus IV the tendency to combine – or alternate RIPRESA – the cult of Yahveh with the cult of other gods was a problem in [12] Hellenistic (D) - > EL III e Palestine. I cannot find facts in favour of the theory so vigorously presented by Morton 1978 GL 1979 Smith in his epoch-making Palestinian Parties and Politics that shaped the Old III - The Inside Testament (1971) that the Hellenizers in Jerusalem of the Maccabean era simply Jews the Persian continued the traditional struggle of the syncretistic worshippers of Yahveh against the Empire, VI, c. followers of the “Yahveh alone” party. It is very doubtful whether any of the new cap. 21 bis; EL devotees of Zeus Olympios who filled the new gymnasium of Jerusalem felt any nostalgia 1978 IV e GL 1979 for the ancestral Baalim. IV - The Nor were the worshippers of Jerusalem unduly troubled by the new demons arriving Defence from Persia. Stories which can be confidently dated after the exile, such as the Book of Against Hellenizati Tobit, allow us to see that Persian demonology was making some impression on Jews. on, cap. VI, The evil demon Asmodaeus who killed the seven successive husbands of Sarah daughter cc. 21-22 of Raguel in the Median city of Ecbatana was of course of good Iranian stock. But after TENTAthe earthly paradise of Adam and Eve and before the earthly paradise of Marx and ZIONI DEL POLIEngels, occasional forays of foreign devils have never been a surprise to either Jew or TEISMO E RISPOSTA gentile. EBRAICA The attempt of Antiochus IV to assert the prestige of Zeus Olympios and of a Greek way of life in Jerusalem makes sense if there were Jews who appreciated the surrounding Greek civilization and its religious attitudes. It does not make sense as a return to Semitic polytheism. The Greek gods represented after all a passport to free circulation in the Hellenistic territories; and the Jews experienced every day how difficult it was for them either to travel or to settle among gentiles. Neither the old Canaanite polytheism nor the new demonology was the real problem. But the very course of events under the Hasmonaeans had confirmed that the answer to the questions put by Hellenistic civilization [13] was not to be found in the Temple – at least not in the Temple alone. Even before the Maccabean crisis, the raise of the laity and its increasing part in religious life had expressed itself in a new institution. After Antiochus IV this new institution steadily increased in popularity and efficiency. We shall call this new institution by its Greek name - synagogue, though Hebrew names are not lacking, to emphasize the paradox that ultimately the Synagogue proved to be the effective Jewish answer to the Greek challenge. The correlated paradox is that the Synagogue was not originally meant to replace the Temple or even to supplement the Temple. It was, and in a sense is even now, an expression of love for the Temple. But the tension between Synagogue and Temple is the first and perhaps the most important feature of Hellenistic Judaism. If the synagogal movement derived new impetus from the victory of Judas Maccabaeus over Antiochus IV, it was already going strong before it: perhaps it even made this victory possible. 295 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) Only through a clear understanding of the tension between Temple and Synagogue can we arrive at a proper appreciation of how Judaism defined itself in relation to Hellenism and ultimately survived it.13 [14] III14 The Temple was there again. It had not been rebuilt easily, it did not live on easily. But it was there. In the emptiness of the Holy of Holies which only the High Priest visited once a year, the God of the Father was again present15. The people rejoiced at the event. As God's feelings were transparent to the Jews, the people also rejoiced in God's joy at having found his people again. The Temple had been seen by Ezechiel in his vision. It did not matter much that Ezechiel's dream was not verifiable in all its details. Dream after dream came to support Ezechiel's dream. Dreams in Hebrew, like that of the Temple Scroll from Qumran, the publication of which we still await from Professor Yigael Yadin, who has however already given us some of the essential facts for its appreciationvii. Dreams in Greek, like the description of the ideal Jerusalem in the Letter of Aristeas, almost certainly of the late second century B.C. Chapter 50 of Ecclesiasticus by Ben Sira indicates perhaps better than anything else how RIPRESA (E) -> EL a Jew with his eyes open saw the majesty of the Temple and of its High Priest more than 1978 III e 1979 three centuries after its rebuilding, when all the illusions might well have been spent: "as GL III - The the sun shining upon the temple of the most High, and as the rainbow giving light in the Jews Inside Persian bright clouds”. The mere pleasure of being together – men of different social classes and the Empire, of different places – remained an attraction to the end of the Second Temple and was fine cap. II, remembered still later. Philo, who was once a pilgrim in Jerusalem (De Providentia II, cc. 10-12 <64>), recorded this pleasure: “Friendships are formed among those who hitherto knew RITI ED not each other, and the sacrifices and libations are the occasion of reciprocity of feeling ETHOS and constitute the secret pledge that all are of one mind” <(De Special. legibus, 1, 70)>. The Mishnah says that [15] even King Agrippa brought his own basket on his shoulder when he came to offer the first fruits to the Temple (Bikkurim 3, 4). In such rabbinic stories King Agrippa – that is almost certainly King Agrippa I, the contemporary and client of the Emperor Claudius – is, like King Alfred, the symbol of the good old days. This unity included the peasants and gives to the Judaism of the Second Temple the curious mixture of aristocratic and plebeian features which did not escape the trained eye of Max Weber. Social conflicts did exist: they almost produced a disaster under Antiochus IV and under Pompey; they certainly contributed to the disaster of A.D. 70. But one of the functions of the Temple was to mitigate the contrasts and to provide a common ground for worshipping and rejoicing. This, as we shall see, was more difficult, though not impossible, for the Synagogue. If we take the final redaction of Leviticus as the product of approximately the time of Nehemiah we can find in it – together with a pedantic punctiliousness in the matter of cultic purity which is the expression of the priestly class – a genuine preparation and anticipation of the togetherness which was to become characteristic of the ethos of the Second Temple. Within the same chapters of Leviticus, purity norms alternate with direct appeals to love one’s neighbours. The Jews are asked to respect the old, the orphan and the widow and to provide a minimum of subsistence for them. The neighbours were not only the other Jews but the foreigners in the land. The Jews are reminded that they had themselves been strangers in the land of Egypt (Lev. 19, 34). By itself the ritual of the Temple, with its daily round of sacrifices and the annual offering of first fruits, had long ceased to fulfill basic needs of Jewish social life. The concentration of the cult in Jerusalem had cut the direct link which had existed [16] before Josiah’s reform of 621 B.C. 13 P-o 31: fine testo NL 1977 I (Foundations). P-o 31: III -> II The Temple and the Synagogue, del; 2nd Northcliffe lecture (revised), tsfmsl; Re-typed version 24.3.77, ms[AMM], del.; cc. 14- 32 = NL 1977 II (The Temple [old]) cc. 1-19. 15 P-o 9: the God of the Fathers was again present, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 7, 8: there was again the God of the Fathers. 14 296 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) between sacrifices and eating animal food. The ordinary killing of animals for the purpose of consumption was no longer a sacrifice to God. Also the seasonal festivities had lost their direct bearing on agricultural life. This may explain the very strange information in the Book of Nehemiah (ch. 8) that the Jews under the guidance of Ezra celebrated the feast of booths (Sukkot) as they had not done since the days of Joshua son of Nun. As Sukkot was the traditional yearly celebration of grape-gathering, one can only suspect that the novelty was its celebration in Jerusalem, that is, away from home, in new surroundings. While the cult ceremonies had become divorced from daily life at home, prophetic thought had spread the notion that it was not the sacrifices in themselves but circumcision of the heart and justice which were pleasing to God. There is evidence that this teaching had sunk into the heart of those who visited the Second Temple. The relation between the Psalms and the cult of the Temple remains mysterious, because very few Psalms are reflections on ritual practices – which is significant enough. There is much to be said for taking the Songs of Ascent (120-134) in the traditional way as connected with the pilgrimage to the Temple. They contain16, as we all know, some of the most intense expressions of joy at seeing Jerusalem. They also firmly connect purity of heart with religious elation. But there is no allusion to the ceremonies and sacrifices the pilgrims were expecting to witness. If anything, these march songs are prayers in the ordinary sense. Prayers were not the most conspicuous feature of the Temple ritual, though the High Priest prayed for the community on the Day of Atonement. No doubt special prayers in times of distress or of RIPRESA (F) -> EL joy had always been uttered in the Temple.The intensely personal [17] prayer of King 1978 III e 1979 Ezechias of Judah for his own health, as reported by Isaiah, ch. 38, at the end of the eighth GL III - The century B.C., connects songs with the “House of God”, that is, the Temple. Prayers became Jews Inside Persian an essential experience in Jewish life only after the Babylonian exile. Daniel is supposed to the Empire, have prayed three times a day (6, 10) and Psalm 55, 18 seems to imply the same habit, fine cap II, which may help to date the Psalm itself. Prayers were17 retrospectively introduced into the c. 12 history of the Temple. The marvellous prayer of King Solomon for the dedication of the LA Temple (I Kings 8; II Chron. 6) has all the signs of a post-exilic product. One suspects that PREGHIE RA if, according to the Mishnah (Tamid 5,1), the priests who had offered the daily sacrifices went into the Chamber and recited the Decalogue, the Shema' and additional blessings, this must be a recent innovation of the Pharisaic period. (Elias Bickerman even suggested that under Greek influence the Jews began to pray for Jerusalem in the Temple about 200 B.C. - and this would be the oldest nucleus of what we know as the Amida18, the Eighteen Benedictions (Harv. Theol. Rev. 55, 1962, 163-185). A bold, but not impossible view. Praying was an important ingredient of Hellenistic culture. Even Greek philosophers composed their own private prayers: Aristotle to Virtue, Cleanthes to Zeus. If the rabbis were, as we shall later see, the Jewish counterpart of the Greek philosophers, it is not surprising that some of the rabbis, too, should wish to compose their own prayers. According to the Jerusalem Talmud (Y. Ber. 4, 4) the great and unconventional R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanos of the late first century A.D. “would pray a new prayer every day”. Though19 the Psalter as a whole has something to do with the Temple, it became available to individuals as a collection of prayers and hymns for private recitation and singing. As God always does what a good Jew does, God too began to pray. God prays, according to the Babylonian Talmud – or rather to Rab Zutra bar Tobiah (Berahot 7 a), that [18] his anger and his other attributes may not overcome his mercy20. 16 P-o 9: There is much to be said… contain, interl.msb[Mom] <-> P-o 7, P-o 8: But at least one group of Psalms had a direct connection with the pilgrimage to the Temple. These fourteen Psalms (119- 133) contain. 17 P-o 31: were; P-o 8 became. 18 P-o 9: the Amida, inter.msb[Mom]; P-o 8: def. 19 P-o 9: Thought <-> if; P-o 8: If. 20 P-o 8: that his judgment may not overcome his mercy. 297 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) One old ritual undoubtedly kept its emotional value: the collective confession of sins which was part of the Kippur (Atonement Day) ceremonial and was also practised in hours of stress. Both Ezra and Nehemiah organised collective confessions. But here again individual confession tended to prevail, not necessarily in the Temple, but rather as a precept of moral integrity. As the Book of Proverbs says, “The just is the first to accuse himself”. The date of the Seven Psalms which the Church calls penitential is of course uncertain, but they seem to be post-exilic. This particularly applies to the most heart-searching of them all, Psalm 51, which is put into the mouth of David, an attribution contradicted by the text itself. Further doctrinal development, for instance the notion that confession before death is the final atonement for sin, presupposes belief in life after death and therefore no longer belongs to the traditional lore about confession as put into practice in the Temple (cf. Mishnah, Sanhedr. 6, 2).21 There was yet little concern with complex speculations about the relations between stars and gods. Babylonian astrology was of course well known to the Jews. It had troubled earlier prophets, especially Jeremiah (10, 3) and the Deutero-Isaiah (47, 13). In the period of the Second Temple the Jews seem to have been rather proud of their own indifference towards the stars. The Jewish third book of Sibylline oracles which belongs to the second century B.C. praises the Jewish people for refraining from astrology (III, 219-33). The Book of Jubilees, which again can be dated in the late second century B.C., depicts the patriarch Abraham as abandoning astrology (12, 16). In a passage which seems fairly early, that is, second century B.C., the Book of Enoch (8, 3) includes astrology among the sinful sciences of the primitive giants. [19] Philo is against astrology. Exile in the land of astrology at least partially, or let us say officially, 22 immunized the Jews against astrology for some centuries. Perhaps we may add absence of astrology to the plebeian traits of Jewish culture during the Persian and the Greek periods. One must have leisure to elaborate a working astrological lore. It was under the Romans, as Josephus testifies (Bell. 6. 288 ff.), that astrology came to dominate the Jewish mind. Some rabbis tried to reassure themselves and their fellow-Jews by stating that all the other nations are subject to the stars, but not Israel. As Rabbi Yochanan put it, there is no star (planetary influence) for Israel (B. Shabb. 156 a). It was too late. In the Roman world very few entirely escaped astrological beliefs. The majority of the Talmudic sages came to believe in the stars and the Jews began to be appreciated as competent astrologers. To judge from the letters the Warburg Institute receives, they have kept this reputation until now. Still as a Temple phenomenon, but pointing in the direction of the Synagogue, I should finally like to consider the multiplication of religious texts in Jerusalem in the Hellenistic age. The text of the Pentateuch was more or less in the form we have it before Samaritans and Jews definitely parted company, which on any hypothesis must have happened before 170 B.C. Not only the four major prophets, but the twelve minor ones constitute a corpus for Ben RIPRESA (G) -> EL Sira who wrote about 200 B.C. The Book of Kings was read in a form substantially 1978 IV e 1979 identical with our own by the Levitic compiler or compilers of Chronicles, a work23 which GL IV - The can hardly be later than 250 B.C. and is probably much earlier. The concern with the text Defence of the Bible is obvious from Ezra the Scribe onwards. The second [20] letter which Against Hellenizati prefaces II Maccabees (late second century) reports the legend of a library of holy texts on, inizio IV, c. built up by Nehemiah and adds that Judas Maccabaeus also had one. The writer offers to cap. 9 send copies of these books to the Jews of Egypt, if they need them. Later there were stories of manuscripts of the Law preserved in the Temple which were duly collated to BIBLIOTE CHE E establish the correct reading (Sopherim 6, 4; Abot de-Rabbi Nathan 46, ed. Schechter p. SCRIBI 129). The rabbis adopted the reading given by two Mss. and discarded the reading given by one MS. only (J. P. Siegel, The Severus Scroll, Missoula 1975). Quite clearly the Jews 21 P-o 9: Sanhedr. 6,2) -> We are still within the boundaries of the Temple cult, but by now very near the territory of the new Synagogue, when we observe that there was little concern with complex speculations about the relation between stars and gods, del.; P-o 7,8: corr. def. 22 P-o 9: at least partially - or, let us say, officially – <-> P-o 8: obviously, interl.msn[Mom]. 23 P-o 10: a work; P-o 8: def. 298 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) were now living in a civilization which appreciated libraries and knew how to prepare critical editions. The Museum of Alexandria was spreading its influence. The writers of the letter included in II Maccabees were giving polite notice to the Jews of Alexandria that they too had libraries and were ready to provide copies of books. It was no inane boast, for we know that they sent a translation of Esther to Egypt. In Judaea, as in the diaspora, the availability of texts and their authentication had unique consequences. Laymen now had the means of reading and studying sacred texts. The scribes, whose existence was recognized by Antiochus III about 200 B.C., were or became predominantly laymen: if priests and Levites, they owed their authority not to their ritual status, but to their learning. Thus, emphasis on prayer, on purity of heart and on confession; care for the humble; love and study of books - and their multiplication - were developing in the Temple in a way that pointed to a new religious attitude. However contradictory it may seem to us, this development did not reduce the importance of the rules of ritual purity. The opposite is true. Just because the differences between laymen and priest decreased, the laymen were [21] increasingly submitted to the purity rules of priests and levites.24 The priestly city of Jerusalem was giving birth to her companion, rival and ultimate successor, the synagogue. Both the new orientation of Temple activities after Alexander the Great and the rise of the synagogue near the Temple are conditioned at a visible distance by Greek institutions, Greek cultural values and Greek linguistic modes. We should, however, never entirely understand what made the synagogue such a necessary integration of the Temple, if one stray word and one stray book did not allow us to postulate a phase of anxiety and doubt in Jewish history which otherwise left no evident trace. The word is of course Apikuros, Epicurean, which in Mishnaic Hebrew is the current denomination of any sort of unbeliever and scoffer among the Jews. How the word penetrated into Hebrew and who among the Jews was firstly labelled "Epicurean" is beyond our reach. But the word indicates that the Epicureans, that is, the most thoughtful deniers of the intervention of the gods in human affairs, had become known among Jews and had created a type. Philo confirms from his own point of view that Epicureanism was the only Greek philosophy incompatible with Judaism. The stray book is of course Qohelet, Ecclesiastes. Its whimsical author called himself "King of Israel in Jerusalem". He must have lived in Jerusalem, because he speaks of the RIPRESA Temple with assured familiarity: “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God; to (H) -> EL draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifices of fools” (6, 1). The friend who 1978 IV e GL 1979 edited his work assures us that Qohelet “taught the people knowledge, weighing and IV - The searching and fashioning many proverbs” (12, 9). The word Qohelet, if it means Defence Against “speaker, assembler”, may bear out that he was a popular teacher, [22] such as one met in Hellenizati Hellenistic cities. But we do not know when he lived and are not always sure of on, inizio cap. IV, c. understanding what he believed - or doubted. The Hellenistic atmosphere seems to be 9 indisputable, and if Ben Sira, the Ecclesiasticus, read the Ecclesiastes and reacted against QOHELET him, his date must be earlier than 200 B.C., though presumably later than 300 B.C. Two historical allusions, which must have been clear to contemporaries, are lost on us: one is to a king “who came out from the prison-house to rule” (4, 13-14), the other to a small city which “was besieged by a great king and saved by the wisdom of an obscure citizen” (9, 1415).25 Qohelet was concerned about his own God whose existence and power he did not question: what he was not able to perceive was a pattern in God’s actions, especially in the retribution of wickedness. He was not an Epicurean or a Cynic or any other kind of Greek philosopher. No Greek thinker ever centred his meditation on man’s inability to discover the meaning of God’s work which is under the sun. But Qohelet was an Apikuros, an Epicurean in the sense the Hebrew word came to 24 P-o 10: However contradictory it may seem… levites, mginfmsb[AMM]; P-o 8: def. P-o 7: (9, 14-15) -> Qohelet was not an Epicurean or any other kind of Greek philosopher, because man cannot discover the meaning of God’s work which is under the sun, del. 25 299 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) take of a man who doubts what cannot be doubted: God’s justice.26 Yet his work was canonised, treated as holy and made part of the Bible. The canonization did not happen without resistance, but one of its supporters was Hillel, the sage of the first century B.C. who more than anybody else contributed to the foundation of rabbinic Judaism. No doubt the fact that the author or rather his editor implicitly identified King Qohelet with King Solomon helped, for anything could be expected of King Solomon. It is also possible that a few interpolations smoothed the original text, but we must not be too confident of having discovered them: the contradictions of the present text may well be characteristic of the author's mind. What is obvious is that the rabbis who canonized Qohelet must have considered his questioning legitimate and must have felt that it would ultimately lead to the true recognition of God’s Work on earth. [23] There is an analogy in their acceptance of the Book of Job, though it is only a partial analogy, and the Book of Job was in any case much older than Qohelet. By implication the rabbis both shared Qohelet's doubts and went beyond them. When in the second part of the first century A.D. Rabbi Eleasar ben Arach taught "know what answer to give to an Apikuros" (Ab. 2, 19), the situation was already under control27. Qohelet was canonized by people who had already found the path leading out of the forest in which he had lost himself. The path is indicated very simply in what is now an appendix to the Sayings of the Fathers: "The Torah is superior to kinghood and priesthood"viii. IV28 As long as the Temple of Jerusalem was standing, the Jews were ready to die for it, but they survived because at some time in some place, while the Second Temple was still RIPRESA their centre, they created the synagogue. According to one of the early Midrashic (I) -> EL III e compilations - Numbers Rabbah (11, 2) - God jumps and leaps from synagogue to 1978 GL 1979 synagogue so that he may bless Israel. This is a very unbiblical vision of God. Though III - - The Inside scholars, ancient and modern, have tried to find traces of the synagogue in the Bible, Jews the Persian most particularly in a passage of Ezechiel 11, 6, there is no evidence in the Bible for the Empire, inizio cap. existence of the synagogue. III, cc. 13The theory that the synagogue had its origins in the Babylonian exile has obvious 14 attraction and still commands support. It is suggested by Talmudic texts29. As far as I ORIGINI know, it was first proposed in scholarly terms by Carlo Sigonio in his De republica DELLA RIPRESA (L) -> -> Hebraeorum (1583). Sigonio was one of the first students of Roman institutions to apply SINAGOGA1978 EL his humanistic still to the interpretation of Jewish institutions. He was a contemporary of IV e GL Azariah [24] de' Rossi, and there is research to be done on their relations30. But I do not 1979 IV believe that the evidence favours Sigonio's hypothesis. The Book of Nehemiah has the The Defence paradigmatic scene of the reading of the Law by Ezra and Nehemiah before the Against assembled people. The historicity of the scene is hardly to be doubted, though it is most Hellenizati on, cap. V, unlikely that both Ezra and Nehemiah were present. But if the scene is basically c. 15 authentic, it has an implication: about 450 B.C., after their return from the Babylonian CURSUS exile, the Jews had as yet no institution for the regular reading and interpreting of the DI STUDI Torah. Archaeology is of no real help until much later, in the second and third centuries A.D., when the specific architectural features of what we call a synagogue become identifiable. What we are told by archaeologists about the synagogues of the first century A.D., which they claim to have found at Herodium and Masada, is at best likely. Language and epigraphy are more helpful for the Hellenistic centuries - at least if we are prepared not to know too much. Late Biblical 26 27 28 29 30 P-o 31: qui segr probabilmente per un’ inserzione (che però manca). P-o 9: When in the secondo part … control: mginf con segr, msn[Mom]; P-o 7, 8 def. P-o 31: IV <-> III. P-o 9, 10: It is… texts, interl.ms[9 Mom, 10 AMM]. P-o 10: He was … relations, interl.msb[AMM]. 300 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) and Mishnaic Hebrew distinguishes bet ha-midrash, house of learning, and bet ha-knesset, house of assembly. Bet ha-midrash, house of learning, seems to have applied mainly to higher learning. By the third century A.D. it was apparently already traditional to call the elementary Bible school bet sefer (house of the books)31 and an intermediate school for the study of the Mishnah bet talmud (T.J. Meg. 3, 1, 73 a32). Bet ha-knesset, house of assembly, was increasingly used to indicate the house of prayer and was translated into Greek either by proseuché or by synagogé. In the early third century A.D. the witty and profound sage Joshua ben Levi ruled that a house of assembly (bet haknesset, synagogue) can be turned into a house of learning (bet ha-midrash) but not vice versa, because the house of learning is the place where the Torah is exalted, whereas the house of assembly (bet ha-knesset) is the place where prayer is exalted. [25] All would be simple if we could really be certain that the school was kept separate from the prayer-house. But Philo calls a synagogue a place of instruction (De Vita Mosis III, 27), and even more precisely a Jerusalem inscription in Greek of the first century A.D. defines the synagogue as a place for the reading of the Law (Torah) and for instruction about the commandments (Corpus Inscr. Jud. 1404). There is no way of isolating the school from the synagogue, for the simple reason that the service in the synagogue included reading, interpretation and translation of the Bible scholastic activities, if any. A saying of the Fathers variously attributed to Samuel the Small (first century A.D.) or to Jehudah ben Tema (date uncertain)33: “at five years for the Mikrah (the Scripture), at ten years for the Mishnah, at thirteen years for the fullfilment of the commandments, at fifteen for the study of the Talmud” (5, 21). But the same Sayings of the Fathers allow astronomy and geometry as “hors-d’oeuvre” to Wisdom (3, 19). What Mishnah and Talmud may mean in this context I shall not try to define. Even R. Meir and R. Judah disagreed about the meaning of Mishnah (Bab. Kiddushin 49 b), one took it to be Halachoth, the other Midrash34. The student was not left off easily: "Stuff him like an ox" was the pedagogical advice of one of the Sages at the beginning of the third century A.D., no doubt on good precedent (B. Ket. 50 a). The same Rav declared that anyone who insults a scholar is an unbeliever (Apikuros) (B. Sanh. 99 b). At the top of this education there was the academy, the yeshivah, the first evidence for which is perhaps in the final chapter of Ecclesiasticus, written, as we know, at the beginning of the second century B.C. When the "houses" of Shammai and Hillel emerged in the late first century B.C. the institution was already well established. [26] It was the convinction that education in the Torah never ends that blurred the distinction between the school and the synagogue, between the house of learning and the house of prayer. The adult who was not interested in or suitable for the specialised instruction of the academy would find further instruction in the synagogue where the Bible was read, translated and commented upon, and sermons were preached. Thanks to the great work by Jacob Mann on The Bible as read and preached in the Old Synagogue and the discussions and criticism it provoked, we now know more about the structure of such synagogal teaching. I am not aware that any Hebrew or Aramaic sermon which has come down to us can safely be dated before the fourth century A.D. The sermon by R. Tanhum of Neva preserved in the Babylonian Talmud (Shab. 30, a-b) should belong to the second part of that century, and the rich collection of the Pesikta de-Rav Kahana is generally considered a Palestinian compilation of the fifth century including earlier material. But there is much in Philo which can legitimately be treated as lectures in the synagogue; and the Fourth Book of Maccabees is probably a sermon of the first century A.D. preached at a place like Antioch where veneration for the seven brothers who suffered martyrdom under Antiochus IV was particularly intense. Philo himself in his Life of Moses (II, 216) and elsewhere alludes to sabbath school meetings, Didaskaleia. 31 32 33 34 P-o 9: “house of the books”, interl.msn[Mom]; P-o 8: def.. P-o 8: (T.J. Hag, 1, 7, 7 b.c. compared with T.J. Meg. 3,1,73 b); mgsnmsl[Mom?]. P-o 8: gives the stages of such education and confirms its religious character; P-o 31: def. P-o 10: Even R. Meir … Midrash, mgsnmsb[AMM]; P-o 8: def. 301 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) Seen as a whole this educational movement has its evident significance. Just as the interpretation and the transmission of the text of the Bible must be evaluated within the context of scholarly activities of the Hellenistic world, so the diffusion, if not the creation, of the synagogue happened in the typically Hellenistic context of multiplication of schools and religious [27] associations. In both cases the purpose of the Jews was not to imitate the Greeks, but to preserve and develop their own heritage in a world dominated by Greek culture and institutions. The Jewish notion of education, as it appears to have been elaborated by the Sages (Hachamim)35 in the dual and interlocking structure of school and synagogue, agreed with the Greek notion of education in three essential points: a man must have a teacher; education must be for its own sake; it must guide daily behaviour. But other features separated Jewish from Greek education. Jewish education never disdained manual work. Teaching a trade was a duty for parents only second to teaching of the Torah. The RIPRESA teachers themselves often practised a trade of manual work, though this was apparently (M) -> EL IV e more frequent among the earlier Sages than with the rabbis of Late Antiquity. On the 1978 GL 1979 36 other hand physical training was never a part of Jewish education. [27bis] There is, IV - The however, an isolated rabbinic rule that a father is supposed to teach his son to swim Defence Against RIPRESA (Bab. Kiddushin 29 a). The Greek gymnasium was, at least in certain periods, the symbol Hellenizati (N) cap. -> EL on, V, of what a young Jews should avoid in order to remain a Jew. This is not to said that there 1978 c. 15 IV e was not, among Jews, keen interest in athletic games – or even widespread desire to be GL 1979 - The EDUCAadmitted to the gymnasium. We know that in Alexandria admission of the Jews to the IV Defence ZIONE Against FISICA gymnasium was a serious issue under the Emperor Claudius.37 More decisively, Jewish education was an education based on a Holy Text and Hellenizati on, cap. V, therefore giving great importance to interpretation. As such it was not essentially c. 15 e cap. different from Hellenistic education. The Bible represented, in terms of schooling, a VI, c. 22 selection of various literary genres which in scope and variety was not inferior to or EDUCAZ. E incommensurable with the selection of Greek classics studied by Greek boys. GRECA EBRAICA Creativeness was not encouraged in either type of education. The very notion of - COMPAintellectual creativeness is not exactly translatable in either ancient Greek or ancient RAZIONE Hebrew. Where Greek and Hebrew education really began to be incommensurable was at the upper level. The Greeks went for eloquence, philosophy or, more seldom, a combination of mathematics and philosophy. Law became a subject for study by itself in Rome, not in Greek cities. At this level the Jews were increasingly concerned with the relation between written law and oral law, and with the exact formulation of the latter. We need not discuss here to with extent the notion of a double law – Biblical and oral – was peculiar to the sect of the Pharisees, nor how widespread the sect of the Pharisees was either in the first century B.C. or in the first century A.D. Supplementation of the written texts by oral tradition became in any case the dominant issue in Jewish intellectual life as we know it in the Greco-Roman period. It must have affected the upper strata of Jewish education at least from the first century B.C. onwards, if not earlier. For those who accepted the existence of a second Torah transmitted orally since Moses it became necessary to memorize what by definition could not be [27 ter] written down. On the other hand it became possible to extend the Torah by additional material according to recognized rules. This double - and partly contradictory - process of memorizing the oral law and extending it is still very obscure, both in its theological implications and in its logical rules. We have the finished product - the Mishnah - of about A.D. 200, but we know very little of what led to it in the previous centuries which are our concern. When the rabbinic schools had stabilized their procedures no [27] man was entitled to present himself to his prospective bride as a "tanna", as a 35 P-o 9: Hachamim; P-o 8: def. P-o 31: Insertion (attached) - Insertion: handwritten pp. 27bis and ter, mgsn e interl.msr[AMM]. 37 P-o 31: On the other hand… Emperor Claudius <-> P-o 7, 8: On the other hand physical training was never a part of Jewish education. Indeed the Greek gymnasium was, at least in certain periods the symbol of what a young Jew should avoid in order to remain a Jew. There is, however, an isolated rabbinic rule that a father is supposed to teach his son to swim (Bab. Kiddushin 29a). 36 302 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) professional transmitter, if he did not know by heart "Torah, Sifra, Sifre and Tosefta" - quite a lot for the connoisseur (Bab. Kiddushin 49 b). The rabbis themselves knew that simple memorization made a "basket full of books", not a sage (Bab. Megillah 28 b). Still, the most humane of RIPRESA the rabbis, R. Meir, insisted that "he who forgets a single word loses his soul" (Abot 4, (O) -> GL 12). The whole question of why the rabbis - in contrast to temple priests and Qumran 1982 III The sectarians - and incidentally to apocalyptic writers - put such [28] emphasis on oral Decline of learning deserves further enquiry. But one wonders whether in any Hellenistic school History and Apocalypse creativeness was encouraged. I am here to describe a culture, not to assess its , cap. VIII, comparative merits.38 A look at the Declamationes attributed to Quintilian or to Libanius' c. 21-22 e App. Meletai indicates what a young Jew was spared39. The Bible was the common ground (Esau e and was the natural link between school and synagogue. Whereas Greek schools, even if Giacobbe, in Defence they put themselves under the protection of a specific god, were essentially different Against from prayer-houses, the Jewish school and the Jewish prayer-house were united by the Hellenizati on, c. 14) Bible. They were also united by the religious significance the Jews attributed to the relation between teachers and pupils. “Let the honour of thy disciple be as dear to thee as LO STUDIO thine own; and the honour of thy schoolfellow be like the fear of thy master, and the fear SACRO of thy master like the fear of Heaven” (Abot 3, 9). The school pyramid culminated in God himself. This educational system, which probably received its starting-point and certainly derived its significance from the Hellenistic surroundings, was taken to be of immemorial origin. Midrashic texts transferred it back to the patriarchal period. We are told that Esau and Jacob went together to an elementary school, to a bet hasefer, until they were thirteen, and then parted company – Esau for the house of idols and Jacob of course for an institution of advanced learning, the bet hamidrash (Genes. R. 63, 9). And what could Moses do in the forty days spent on the mountain to receive the Law but study the Scripture in the day-time and the Mishnah at night? (Pirke de R. Eliezer 46, transl. G. Friedländer, p. 359). Indeed an academy was available during the forty years of the wandering in the wilderness (B. Yoma 28b). God himself had to have his own academy, his own bet hamidrash, in Heaven where he taught the Law to the righteous – what was sometimes called the Heavenly Academy40 (B. Baba Metziah, 86 a; Deut. R. 7 in a text [29] attributed to the third century, Joshua b. Levi; Tanna debe Eliyahu R. 1, 4). A rabbi even knew the exact part of the day God reserved for the study of his own Torah: the first three hours of the day (B. A.Z. 3b)41. Clearly some of these imaginings belong to the period after the destruction of the Temple, when Judaism was saved by its school system, and it was felt that “by the breath from the mouth of schoolchildren the world is sustained” (B. Shab. 119b). One would also like to know the origin of the tradition according to which the Greek philosopher Oenomaus of Gadara, a contemporary and an acquaintance of R. Meir in the second century A.D., was asked what one could do against the Jews and answered: “As long as the voice of the children will be heard in the schools and in the synagogues you cannot subjugate this people” (Genesis Rabbah 65, 20; cf. Pesikta deRab Kahna, ed. M. Friedmann, 121a). Yet the Sages could smile at their own schools. They told the story of how Moses – the Law-giver Moses – was allowed by God to sit on the eighth bench of the school of Rabbi Akiba but was unable to follow the subtle argument about a point of the Law he had brought down from Mount Sinai (Bab. Menahot 29b). “Not being able to follow their arguments he (Moses) was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciple said to the master ‘Whence 38 P-o 31: I am here... merits., interl.msb[AMM]. P-o 31: More decisively [37 bis] … was spared <-> P-o 7, 8: More decisively, Jewish education was an education based on a Holy Text and therefore ultimately limited to interpretation. Creativeness was not encouraged. But one wonders whether in any Hellenistic school creativeness was encouraged. 40 P-o 10: the Heavenly Academy, interl.msb[Mom] <-> P-o 7, 8: the Upper Yeshivah. 41 P-o 9: A rabbi… 3b), interl.msb[Mom]; P-o 7, 8: def. 39 303 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) do you know it?’ and the latter replied ‘It is a Law given unto Moses at Sinai’, Moses was comforted”.42 With the Jews spreading from Persia to Spain and conditions changing rapidly from the conquest of Alexander to the fall of the Temple, it would be absurd to expect uniformity of syllabus or of teaching methods. As we shall soon see, differences of language had a determining impact on Jewish life. Here it is enough to say that where Jews were Greek speakers, exclusive attention to Jewish matters was practically impossible. In the first century A.D. RIPRESA [30] Philo of Alexandria himself displayed a refined Greek education and attributed an (P) -> EL IV e exceptionally wide and varied education to his exemplary Jew, Moses, who like him had 1978 GL 1979 been educated in Egypt. Philo had a clear notion of what the Greek encyclopedia (general IV - The education) stood for and presented it as subordinate to philosophy (De congr. erud. 79). Defence Against Like any Greek philosopher, he quoted Greek poets and historians: in fact Epicurus was Hellenizati cap. V, more restrained than Philo in such a display. Philo tells us that he was present at a on, cc. 17-19 performance of Euripides (Quod omnis 141). Many of his quotations are probably secondhand from florilegia, but this was the custom of the age. His knowledge of Plato is FILONE PROSELIundoubtedly first-hand and not superficial. As for Moses, Philo presented him as learning TISMO mathematics and symbolism from the Egyptians, language and astronomy from the Assyrians and the rest of the encyclopedia from the Greeks: a truly international education (Vita Mosis43 I, 23-24). But Philo’s ideal education was no criticism of, or alternative to, the Palestinian and Mesopotamian type of instruction. The goal remained the same, that is the understanding of the word of God as transmitted to the Jews in order to fulfil the covenant between God and Israel. As Philo says in a passage of the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain: “the fountain of the devout contemplation of the only wise being, on which Israel’s rank is based, is the habit of service to God” (120, transl. F. H. Colson). For Philo, as for the Palestinian rabbi, education was the road to God. This conception of education automatically opened up two problems: the possibility of making it available to all Jews and the legitimacy of making it available to non-Jews. To us the second question may seem to be more serious, but in fact the first question proved to be far more intractable. For Philo, as for his [31] contemporaries in Palestine who were accused of compassing sea and land to make one proselyte (Matt. 22, 31), the Torah was meant for all men, indeed was meant to establish the "ways of peace" among men (B. Gitt. 59). Partial or total conversion to Judaism were a fairly common event. Some of the most authoritative rabbis - from Shemaia and Abtalion, the teachers of Hillel, to Rabbi Meir, the pupil of Akiba, were said rightly or wrongly to have been proselytes or sons of proselytes: Rabbi Meir was even made out to be a descendant of the Emperor Nero, who in the East had a better reputation than in the West. How proselytism could be made to agree with the election of Israel was, no doubt, a subject for reflection: but in practice Jewish education was available to the outsider, and there are good stories about impatient proselytes and patient rabbis or vice versa. It was an authentic proselyte, Aquila, who provided a new translation of the Bible into Greek when the attraction of the Septuagint began to fade at the end of the first century A.D. On the other hand economic barriers and intellectual limitations remained operative against what Jacob Neusner has called the ideal of rabbinizing all the children of Israel. An effort to make education available to everyone in the Palestinian villages is known to have been set on foot before A.D. 70 (B. Baba Bathra 21 a), though the exact date RIPRESA (Q) -> EL 1978 IV e GL 1979 IV - The Defence and the details are uncertain. It was not entirely successful. The link between Against Hellenization, cap. school and synagogue was probably just as serious an obstacle as the lack of VI, c. 19-20 (mandarini, in GL 1982 III educational facilities or the lack of intellectual ability to pursue the subject. The Decline of History and Not everyone was willing to study the Torah day and night or to encourage Apocalypse, cap. VIII) GLI ESCLUSI DALL' his own son to do so. Superficially, the uneducated among the Jews, the amEDUCAZIONE 42 43 P-o 10: “Not being able … comforted”, interl.msb[AMM]; P-o 8: def. P-o 9: Mosis <-> Moysis; P-o 7,8: corr. def. 304 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) haarez, is similar to the agrikos or rusticus of Greco-Roman civilization: the name am-haarez, people of the earth, points to the peasants, as do the names agroikos and rusticus. But the [32] name – am-haarez was also a man who did not care for ritual purity and scrupulous payment of tithes. Only by progressive simplification of the situation did he become the ignorant man par excellence who does not care to have a teacher. With the increasing belief in the next life, his position became dubious both in this world and in the world to come (Abot de Rabbi Natan 41; Mishnah, Demai 2, 1, 2, 3; B. Sotah 22 a etc.). The way was open to an aristocratic and arrogant conception of learning which produced in later centuries the not altogether admirable character of the Talmid Hacham, the pupil of the Sage, who exploits a society ready to give him credit. The process cannot be separated from the role the rabbis increasingly assumed of defenders and regulators of the purity laws. Though anthropologists - and most especially the anthropologists of University College London44 have done much to make us understand obsessions with purity in other cultures, there are still a lot of puzzles in the Jewish notions of ritual purity. But the rabbis as a whole never degenerated into a mandarin class. They remained faithful and responsible servants of the society which produced them, and shared the pains of common people. Jewish life was not of a type to allow of a mandarinate. There was no political power to support it.45 Note sulle singole riprese testuali RIPRESA (A) -> EL 1978 III e GL 1979 III - The Jews Inside the Persian Empire, inizio, cc. 1-2. IL TEMPIO-STATO E L'UNIVERSALISMO. Il testo viene recuperato, con qualche piccola modifica (menzione di Ecateo ed Ezra 4, 1-2 su Zerubbabel), come inizio di The Jews Inside (cc.1-2), fino al cenno alla persistenza di speranze universalistiche nella Lettera agli Ebrei. Vi si ricorda il carattere di stato-tempio di Gerusalemme, noto ai Greci fin dal primo ellenismo (Ecateo, Polibio), e quello di ‘re messianico’ attribuito a Zerubbabel dai profeti Aggeo e Zaccaria. Rispetto a The Jews inside, The Temple illustra con maggior ampiezza i modi e le ragioni dell'infrangersi delle aspettative post-esiliche, e dedica diverso taglio alla riforma di Neemia, per cui cfr. c. 5 e 8 di The Jews Inside. RIPRESA (B) - > EL 1978 III e GL 1979 III - The Jews Inside the Persian Empire, fine cap. I - inizio cap. II, cc. 6-7. SOCIETA' E ECONOMIA. Dell’azione di Neemia la ripresa in The Jews inside sottolinea il carattere di svolta verso la città-stato piuttosto che verso il governo sacerdotale; viene evocato un parallelo con Roma tramite la questione dei Leviti (affrontata più brevemente) e si menziona la restrizione del corpo civico in base alla nozione di purezza. Risulta quasi identica l'espressione dell'accordo di Neemia con la politica persiana, compresi i riferimenti a Strabone e all'articolo di A. Archi; all'osservazione sul "debito di riconoscenza" con il mazdeismo si sostituisce però, nella ripresa, una considerazione di tipo politico. Le caratteristiche dell'economia del Tempio vengono riproposte fedelmente, ma si apprezza un’estensione del coinvolgimento dei laici nell’amministrazione, piuttosto che nel ristretto ambito finanziario. L'ordine degli argomenti appare leggermente mutato e viene affrontata con maggiore ampiezza la storia delle relazioni dei Tobiadi con il Tempio, di cui si esplicita il carattere esemplare nell’analisi delle implicazioni sociali del giudaismo. RIPRESA (C) - > EL 1978 III e GL 1979 III - The Jews Inside the Persian Empire, cap. II, cc. 8-9. IL SOMMO SACERDOTE Nella ripresa vengono sviluppate con maggiore ampiezza la menzione della leggenda della visita di Alessandro al Tempio e la trattazione sulla lettera in cui Antioco III si rivolge a Gerusalemme come a una polis; Momigliano accentua il punto di vista esterno e greco nella valutazione del documento come fonte per la ricostruzione delle istituzioni gerosolimitane e propende per l'ipotesi che il Sommo Sacerdote presiedesse al concilio dei notabili; ripropone infine, quasi verbatim, la menzione della richiesta d'aiuto degli Ebrei di Elefantina (410 a.C.). 44 P-o 31: University College of London, interl.msb[AMM] <-> P-o 11: our own College. P-o 10: There was no political power to support it, mgdxmsb[AMM]; P-o 31: c. 32 tagliata, dal confronto con P-o 77 (NL 1977 II, the Temple [old]), c. 19, si ricostruisce: This brings us back to the leaders of the Synagogal revolution, the rabbis themselves. The relation of the rabbis or Sages (hachamim) in various periods to the priests, to the Pharisees, to the pious (chasidim) and to the scribes (sopherim) was uncertain to the ancients and consequently remains uncertain to us, etc. (ts. poi recuperato all’inizio della CL 1977 III Rabbis, cfr. Appendice II). 45 305 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) RIPRESA (D) - > EL 1978 III e GL 1979 III - The Jews Inside the Persian Empire, c. 21 bis e > EL 1978 IV e GL 1979 IV - The Defence Against Hellenization, cc. 21-22. TENTAZIONI DEL POLITEISMO E RISPOSTA EBRAICA Sia in The Jews inside che in The Defence si ripropone in modo pressoché uguale, contro le teorie di Morton Smith, la distinzione fra il sincretismo di età ellenistica e i residui politeistici dell'età del primo Tempio. Altri temi recuperati sono l'apprezzamento ebraico dei vantaggi del politeismo greco, sotto Antioco IV, e il carattere non problematico del vecchio politeismo cananeo e della nuova demononologia. Su quest’ultimo punto The Temple contiene qualche considerazione in più che non sarà però recuperata neppure nella trattazione su Tobit in GL 1981 II (Some Exemplary). Importante appare soprattutto la diversa risposta che The Temple fornisce, rispetto a The Defence, alla fondamentale domanda su ciò che gli Ebrei contrapposero all’ellenizzazione: The Defence va in direzione dell’individuazione di un sistema educativo autonomo, mentre The Temple guarda al complesso dell’istituzione sinagogale, senza fare ancora riferimento specifico alla sua funzione educativa. RIPRESA (E) -> EL 1978 III e GL 1979 III - The Jews Inside the Persian Empire, fine cap. II, cc. 10-12. RITI E ETHOS La descrizione della socialità religiosa del Tempio è solo apparentemente simile a quella di The Jews Inside; benché le citazioni da Filone e le osservazioni di Weber siano riprese quasi con le stesse parole, la vecchia versione risulta improntata a una visione complessivamente meno conflittuale (mancano i riferimenti ai dissidi sul Tempio, alla conflittuale visione sociale di Ben Sira; e il cenno a momenti non lieti della vita religiosa nel Tempio) e più concentrata su aspetti religiosi, talvolta mistici (visioni del Tempio in sogno, gioia condivisa con Dio, racconto mishnaico di Agrippa al Tempio). Se la cesura costituita dal Tempio rispetto ai luoghi e ai tempi delle feste è trattata nelle due lezioni in modo molto simile (con precisazioni nella più recente), notevole appare però la caduta, in Jews and Gentiles, di un'affermazione sull'impossibilità per la Sinagoga di emulare il Tempio nel mitigare i contrasti. RIPRESA (F) -> EL 1978 III e GL 1979 III - The Jews Inside the Persian Empire, fine cap II, c. 12. LA PREGHIERA La ripresa in The Jews Inside si limita a un breve cenno alla presenza di preghiere nel rituale del Tempio, con l'aggiunta di una precisazione relativa ai dati dell'evidenza documentaria, e a una sintetica connessione con i Salmi. RIPRESA (G) -> EL 1978 IV e GL 1979 IV - The Defence Against Hellenization, inizio cap. IV, c. 9. BIBLIOTECHE E SCRIBI Come per la maggior parte dei recuperi relativi a temi di cultura, l'interesse di questo – rimasto quasi invariato nel passaggio alla nuova lezione - risiede nel contesto di difesa contro l'ellenizzazione in cui è collocato. Sulla radice laica dell'autorità, conferita dallo studio, la nuova lezione torna in più punti. Per la caratterizzazione e il ruolo degli scribi, cfr. tuttavia soprattutto GL 1982 II (The Jewish Sects). RIPRESA (H) -> EL 1978 III e GL 1979 III - The Jews Inside the Persian Empire, inizio cap. VII, c. 22. QOHELET In The Jews Inside appare maggiore l'insistenza sulla dimensione sociale dei dubbi di Qohelet, così come più recisa l’affermazione finale sul carattere non greco di questo apikuros ("no Greek either in language or in soul"). RIPRESA (I) -> EL 1978 III e GL 1979 III - The Jews Inside the Persian Empire, inizio cap. III, c. 13-14. ORIGINI DELLA SINAGOGA Nella ripresa non torna il tentativo di messa a punto della relazione, all'interno della sinagoga, fra funzione rituale e funzione educativa. Il primo aspetto - la casa di preghiera - non sarà più affrontato. RIPRESA (L) -> -> EL 1978 IV e GL 1979 IV - The Defence Against Hellenization, cap. V, c. 15. CURSUS DI STUDI Vedi ripresa (G). RIPRESA (M) -> -> EL 1978 IV e GL 1979 IV - The Defence Against Hellenization, cap. V, c. 15. EDUCAZIONE FISICA Vedi ripresa (G). RIPRESA (N) -> EL 1978 IV e GL 1979 IV - The Defence Against Hellenization, cap. V, c. 15 e cap. VI, c. 22. EDUCAZIONE GRECA E EBRAICA – COMPARAZIONE Vedi ripresa (G). Da notare, però, come la questione (posta subito dopo il testo recuperato) circa la coesistenza di una dimensione orale accanto a quella scritta nella trasmissione e produzione dei testi ricompaia in modo meno problematico nella ripresa. La GL 1982 II (The Jewish Sects) darà occasione a Momigliano di argomentare ulteriormente la propria convinzione della non esistenza di un rapporto esclusivo tra oralità e farisaismo. RIPRESA (O) -> GL 1982 III - The Decline of History and Apocalypse, cap. VIII, c. 21-22 e GL 1979 IV - The Defence Against Hellenization, cap. V, c. 14. LO STUDIO SACRO 306 Appendice I: una lezione “dissolta” The Temple and the Synagogue (CL 1977 II) L'importanza che Momigliano attribuiva al carattere distintivo - religioso - della scuola ebraica rispetto alla greca è evidente nella collocazione finale del brano, mantenuto quasi invariato in conclusione dell'ultima lezione dell'ultimo ciclo. RIPRESA (P) -> EL 1978 IV e GL 1979 IV - The Defence Against Hellenization, cap. V, cc. 17-19. FILONE – PROSELITISMO L'argomentazione sulla finalità tutta ebraica e religiosa dell’"enciclopedia greca" filoniana non varia nella ripresa; anche nella nuova lezione è subito seguita dalla questione del proselitismo, proposto come un aspetto del più generale problema relativo alla valutazione dell'educazione ebraica come via verso Dio. RIPRESA (Q) -> EL 1978 IV e GL 1979 IV - The Defence Against Hellenization, cap. VI, cc. 19-20 (mandarini, in GL 1982 III - The Decline of History and Apocalypse, cap. VIII, c. 18). GLI ESCLUSI DALL'EDUCAZIONE Il versante sociale del problema dell’estensibilità dell'educazione ebraica accompagna quello religioso in The Temple come nella ripresa. Nella vecchia lezione, tuttavia, all'esame dello status dell' ‘am-haarez si collega una riflessione sulle evoluzioni, connesse al tema della purità, della classe rabbinica; al tempo stesso, del rabbinato nel suo insieme si sottolinea come l’assenza del supporto di un potere ancora politico ne abbia impedito la trasformazione in mandarinato. Quest’ultima osservazione si perde nella ripresa in The Defence (per tornare, svincolata dal contesto ragionativo di cui era originariamente parte, nella trattazione sui rabbini contenuta in GL 1982 III), dove lo sviluppo della riflessione appare piuttosto rivolto a individuare, nell'età ellenistica, le origini di aspetti sociali (le posizioni definite, gli specialismi culturali e religiosi) che appaiono ben delineati solo nell'età dei tannaim. i Vd. GL 1979 II (The Greeks outside), n. i. Vd. GL 1979 II (The Greek outside), n. ii. iii Fr. III A264 F6 Jacoby = fr. 11 Stern. iv Per una discussione sul mutamento di rapporti e di forme di contatto in ambito religioso fra Roma e Giudea cfr. Roman-Maccabees, 757-758. v Ios. Ant. 14, 39. vi Sulla interpretazione di Fraccaro della radice militare della potenza romana, cfr. MOMIGLIANO 1960B (=Fraccaro). vii Vd. GL 1979 III (The Jews inside), n. xix. viii Pirke Aboth, VI, 6. ii 307 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) Appendice II CL 1977 III The Rabbis and the Communities Sedi e date CL 1977 III (aprile-maggio, cfr. GRANATA 2006, 415) Documenti a) CL 1977 III P-o 32 (a) aggiunte ms., (b) c.c. di P-o 771 pp. 20-30, (c) xerox di P-o 21 (a1) P-o 37 nuova versione basata su P-o 32 (a-b-c), top c. P-o 23 (a1), P-o 24 [escluse pp. 5-15, usate in P-o 562], P-o 38: c.c. di P-o 37 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati. La terza CL 1977, The Rabbis and the Communities, è il risultato dell’unione di parti di due Northcliffe contigue: la sezione finale dalla NL II The Temple, dedicata alla descrizione di sinagoga e rabbini, e la prima della NL III Attitudes (capp. I-II), grosso modo incentrata sulla situazione linguistica e sul testo sacro. Si propone in questa appendice il testo dei soli capp. I-III, provenienti – con aggiunte e modifiche – dalla seconda parte della NL II The Temple. Non saranno invece riprodotti i capp. IVV, ripresi dalla parte iniziale della NL III Attitudes, perché nel passaggio dalla versione Northcliffe a quella di Chicago il testo non ha subito modifiche di sorta: per il testo si rimanda all’appendice III, Attitudes. P-o 32, scelto come testo base, è il documento che meglio testimonia la maniera in cui la lezione sui Rabbis venne ricavata a partire dalle due Northcliffe. Momigliano costruisce il nuovo testo utilizzando copie dss. delle pp. 20-30 di The Temple3 e delle pp. 1-7 delle Attitudes4, in sequenza, e integrando il testo così ottenuto con l’aggiunta di 6 carte mss.5: un nuovo capitolo introduttivo e addenda che saldano fra loro le due Northcliffe lectures in un’unica, diversa lezione6. Gli altri documenti disponibili nell’AAM aggiungono poco o nulla al testo di P-o 32, dal quale derivano direttamente: si menzionano P-o 37, copia ds. e messa a pulito del lavoro di P-o 32, priva di annotazioni significative, e le c.c. dello stesso P-o 37 (P-o 38, completa; incomplete, perché in parte riutilizzate per la Efroymson The Decline, P-o 23 - con un solo intervento ms., riportato in apparato, c. 1 - e P-o 24). 2. L’argomento della lecture Il mezzo con cui il giudaismo ellenistico persegue competizione e sopravvivenza all’interno della dominazione culturale prima greca e poi romana viene individuato nello sviluppo di un complesso sistema educativo, culturale e religioso, improntato alla singolare combinazione di sinagoga e scuola da cui resta escluso il popolo minuto (‘am-haarez). È nell’ambito di quella che appare una vera e propria “rivoluzione sinagogale” che emergono come leaders i rabbini. Rimane incerta, anche presso gli antichi, la loro relazione con saggi, pii, scribi, rispetto ai quali bisogna tenere conto della comune appartenenza a un più largo contesto socio-economico ellenistico, incline alla produzione di specialisti (giuristi, accademici, maestri, bibliotecari). A partire dalle prime notizie sui saggi (Ben Sira) e agli aspetti magico-segreti della loro attività si segue lo sviluppo della classe rabbinica, sottolineandone tanto il mancato esito nel mandarinato quanto, in parallelo, l'oscurità dei rapporti con la setta dei farisei. Nel confronto fra scuole rabbiniche e scuole filosofiche greche emerge, al di là di molte somiglianze, una differenza fondamentale: mentre le scuole greche restano luoghi di sola trasmissione di sistemi di pensiero, i 1 2 3 4 5 6 NL 1977 II ([Old] Temple). EL 1978 VI (Decline). Dalla c.c. di P-o 77 (cc. 20-30 rinum. 5-7, 9-16 in P-o 32). Dalla xerox di P-o 21 (cc. 1-7 rinum. 17-23 in P-o 32). Xerox di P-o 12, b. Inoltre, c. 24 ms. orig. [Mom.] che riproduce l'inizio di c. 8 in P-o 21. Tale costruzione è descritta da Momigliano in una nota su su c. 1 di P-o 16 . 308 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) rabbini diventano guida della nazione, strutturandone la società e riempiendo il vuoto lasciato dalla distruzione del Tempio. Alla base della loro autorità si pone la Legge. L'organizzazione delle comunità di cui sono guida, improntate a forme di autogoverno al cui centro si colloca la sinagoga, rappresenta ciò che unisce Palestina e diaspora. I caratteri di unità della vita ebraica che emergono dal quadro finiscono per prevalere sull'interpretazione del giudaismo ellenistico come età della varietà che risale alla presentazione delle sette in Giuseppe. Nei confronti delle correnti interne al giudaismo, le fonti (Giuseppe, Filone, Plinio) risultano in realtà di scarso valore documentario e tanto più reticenti quanto più le differenze appaiono radicali. L’ultimo capitolo proposto, il III, muove dalla questione per affrontare il problema delle articolazioni interne (Qumran, i Samaritani) e il concetto di eresia o minuth, e si conclude con una riflessione sulla tolleranza interna che, per mezzo dell’organizzazione delle comunità, consente agli Ebrei di sopravvivere in un contesto quasi interamente romanizzato. 3. Una lezione dedicata ai rabbi Già in GRANATA 1999 si rileva come la lezione, mai riproposta da Momigliano dopo Chicago 1977, identifichi nei rabbini un punto di partenza nella difesa contro l’ellenizzazione. Il ripensamento strutturale del ciclo Efroymson porterà però la riflessione a riorganizzarsi intorno alle differenti priorità del sistema educativo e del testo sacro, ponendo rabbini (e sinagoga) alla fine, piuttosto che all’inizio del processo resistenziale. Ne deriva ovviamente la questione, se tale rielaborazione conduca a una svalutazione del ruolo di rabbini e sinagoga, o se prescinda invece da giudizi di valore. Colpisce, in primo luogo, come i materiali utilizzati a Chicago nella trattazione rabbinica vengano di fatto riproposti per intero nella EL VI (The Defence), finendo anzi per essere accresciuti da ulteriori considerazioni in coda. Già questo dato rende implausibile l’ipotesi di una svalutazione, nel testo Efroymson, del ruolo rabbinico; a indebolire ulteriormente l’ipotesi del deprezzamento dei rabbi può poi contribuire il confronto tra le sezioni CL recuperate in sede EL e quelle abbandonate. Un primo spunto di riflessione è offerto dalla definizione dei saggi/rabbini e dal problema dell’indistinzione formale tra categorie. La lezione di Chicago riflette il punto di vista già espresso in Ebrei e Greci, in cui i saggi erano definiti “quei maestri e studiosi che acquistarono autorità individualmente o come scuole dal II sec. a.C. alla fine del II secolo d.C.”7, senza preoccupazioni tassonomiche di sorta rispetto alla qualifica di rabbi. Identica definizione si ritrova in The Rabbis: i rabbini sono qui considerati “the scholars and academicians at the highest level of Jewish education” e vengono riconnessi, senza soluzione di continuità, alla descrizione dei saggi in Ben Sira. Per quanto manchino riprese verbatim, la qualificazione dei rabbini come accademici rimarrà essenziale a Cincinnati e a Oxford 1982, dove verrà ribadita l’inestricabilità (cc. 11,12,18) – stante la situazione delle fonti – dei singoli rapporti tra i gruppi8. La continuità tra saggi e rabbini non va tuttavia intesa come rappporto di identità. Il punto, esplicitato in The Defence, c. 2 (“Whether we look at Qohelet… or at Ecclesiaticus… or at Daniel with his group of mashkilim… we find new types of intellectuals among the Jew of the third and second centuries B.C. They are the predecessors of the rabbis who were slowly to become the teachers and the religious leaders in the following centuries”), era già comparso in realtà anche a Chicago nella forma di un rifiuto a proiettare tout court nel II a.C. la figura del rabbi (c. 4). È in sede EL, del resto, che Momigliano chiarirà come i rabbini divengano personalità riconoscibili nel I a.C. (c. 19), identificando come fattore di sviluppo fondamentale la distruzione del Tempio e la conseguente assunzione rabbinica del ruolo di guida della nazione (c. 21). La centralità dell’evento sarà integrata, all’interno della più articolata e finale formulazione Grinfield, dall’affiancamento di un’ulteriore data cruciale, il 167; 9 non risultano però in generale cambiamenti di impostazione circa 7 Ebrei e Greci, 542 (=MOMIGLIANO 1976A) EL Decline, c. 26 = GL Decline c. 20, cfr. GL Sects, c. 13. 9 Cfr. e.g. STERN 1976, 619: "The Sage is the scribe who has been tempered in the crucible of the repressive decrees of the time of Antiochus". Nella trattazione di Stern, vicina per certi aspetti (in particolare la caratterizzazione sociale) a 8 309 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) il ruolo sociale dei saggi/rabbini o i tempi e i modi in cui acquisirono una funzione centrale nel preservare l’identità nazionale. L’incertezza sulle origini del loro ruolo, che Momigliano sottolinea nell’ultima revisione della lezione ponendosi quasi da un punto di vista risultativo (Decline, c. 19), appare difficilmente distinguibile da quanto giù scritto sui Rabbis a Chicago, al termine della mai utilizzata introduzione: In such a world the Jews took the momentuous decision to build up a system of education capable of competing with Greek education for the specific purpose of justifying the existence of a Jewish nation with its claim to be the Holy Nation. The new structure had to conform to certain conditions. It had to be an elaborate education – capable of opposing classical texts to classical texts, institutions to instituions, moral outlook to moral outlook, historical tradition to historical tradition, and above all one God to many gods. This the Jews achieved by their unique combination of synagogue and schooling. […] the positive pole of which was increasingly represented by the rabbis (cc. 2-3)10. A sostegno della sostanziale continuità tra la lecture CL e le sue successive riprese va infine la constatazione che le eliminazioni operate nel passaggio da Chicago a Cincinnati offrano un corpus troppo esiguo per indicare un mutamento radicale. I tagli più estesi, relativi all’introduzione (cc. 14) e al “finale interno” al terzo capitolo (cc. 15-16), risultano una semplice conseguenza della ricollocazione dei temi all’interno della EL Decline. L’introduzione CL delinea un quadro della difesa contro l’ellenizzazione che riecheggia la visione di Alien Wisdom, e in cui il richiamo a Gibbon ha lo scopo di comprendere la disintegrazione delle culture d’Oriente ad opera di Roma: al di là dell’eliminazione materiale delle pagine, tale ambito complessivo rimarrà sempre un implicito sfondo di riflessione. Lo stesso può dirsi del finale del terzo capitolo: sul fatto che l’organizzazione delle comunità costituisca un aspetto specifico della difesa dell’identità ebraica Momigliano non cambierà mai idea, benché non si ritrovi più, espressa tanto arditamente, un'opzione emulativa nei confronti del cristianesimo come "religione universale". Altrettanto unica – ma solo per la forma esplicita qui assunta – appare l'opinione sul sincretismo, definito nell’introduzione "my favourite synonim for trivialization" (c. 2) Gli altri tagli, di scarsa estensione (e che per questo non sembrano rispondere a un'esigenza di brevità11), mirano piuttosto a ritagliare l'ambito di applicazione della definizione sia di rabbi che di Sage, escludendone personalità e gruppi variamente apparsi in contatto con l'ellenismo e/o di particolare interesse per i cristiani. Ѐ il caso della qualifica di rabbi riferita a Filone, dell'identificazione di Sages (la cui fisionomia è peraltro assai discussa12) a Qumran (c. 4), e plausibilmente del taglio che colpisce la connessione di Ben Sira con i saggi (cc. 4-5) e che più che all'intento di rispettare il discrimine cronologico del 167 suggerisce la volontà eliminare dalla figura del saggio ogni sospetto di diretta derivazione scribale (e, in definitiva, greca). quella momiglianea, è comparativamente maggiore l'accentuazione dell’aspetto ispirato, elettivo (per cui cfr. URBACH 1975), e più stretto il rapporto dei saggi con farisei e scribi. 10 Per ruolo e caratteristiche dei rabbini cfr. anche MOMIGLIANO 1980c (= Ciò che Flavio), e la formulazione dei limits of Hellenization nella recensione a MEEKS 1983 pubbl. in Ottavo, 399-402 ("The Rabbis, humane and alert as they were, chose or were driven to create a new Jewish culture, which touched only the fringes of Greek culture", 401). Per una breve valutazione di quest’ultima questione punto di vista si rimanda a RAJAK 2001, 337. 11 Poco interesse, sul piano dell'impostazione, ha l’eliminazione di un cenno informativo al tempio di Leontopoli e a quello dei Tobiadi (c. 13), reso superfluo dalla presenza del tema in altre lezioni di Cincinnati e Oxford (part. Jews Inside, c. 13). Scompaiono alcune osservazioni filologiche e bibliografiche sul farisaismo (c. 3), riassorbite nel quadro della più estesa trattazione di Cincinnati, e una breve storia rabbinica, gradevole ma scarsamente funzionale. Analoga considerazione vale per la rimozione dell’allusione alla regola di Hillel che prescrive di non separarsi dalla comunità (in c. 6; Abot 2, 15): la notissima "regola d'oro" appariva forse come troppo sfruttata e addomesticata ai più vari contesti per essere proposta al pubblico di Cincinnati. 12 Cfr. la recente disamina in LANGE 2008. 310 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) 4. Note sul tema rabbinico in rapporto all'insieme dei cicli Per ridimensionare l’ipotesi di una polarizzazione tra il culmine di sopravvalutazione del rabbinato nella fase Chicago e la successiva perdita d’importanza del tema è sufficiente osservare come, nella più estesa e cronologicamente scandita struttura delle Efroymson, i rabbini trovino una collocazione altrettanto soddisfacente all’interno di un rafforzamento (e di un affinamento della trattazione) degli aspetti più unitari e identitari del giudaismo ellenistico. Sarà soltanto con l’esclusione, a Oxford, di Roma dal focus d’indagine, e con la conseguente selezione cronologica che ne discende, che il sistema rabbinico resterà al di fuori della prospettiva di indagine. Il testo di Chicago testimonia una presa di distanza di Momigliano rispetto alla posizione tutto sommato anodina sulla continuità tra saggi/rabbini e farisei ancora espressa l'anno precedente13, presa certo da mettere in relazione con l'approfondimento sul tema delle "sette" giudaiche che avrebbe trovato esito nella discussione del 1982 (GL II - The Jewish Sects in the Sources) e nel suo proposito di scardinare l’assunto di un rapporto diretto dei rabbini con i farisei, membri del giudaismo dagli innegabili tratti "ellenizzati" e troppo spesso ritenuti interlocutori privilegiati nel primo confronto con il cristianesimo14. Rimane ineludibile la questione posta dal rapporto fra il trattamento del tema dei rabbini e quello della sinagoga nel succedersi dei cicli. Uno sguardo analitico alla rielaborazione del materiale conservato mostra come tale rapporto sia caratterizzato da una crescente attenzione nei confronti dei rabbini da un lato (prima, come si è detto, della definitiva rinuncia a trattare l'età romana), e da una corrispondente riduzione del tema della sinagoga, passato all’interno delle nuove lezioni Jews inside e Defence. Si può avanzare l'ipotesi che i due fatti siano solidali, e testimonino una sorta di tentativo di Momigliano di porsi al livello di self-awareness dei suoi protagonists15, stante la reticenza degli Ebrei del Secondo Tempio a parlare della sinagoga, percepita come istituzione provvisoria e ideologicamente poco connotata rispetto all'ideale di unità ebraica che il Tempio - pur svilito o distrutto - non cesserà di incarnare16. La stessa vaghezza delle fonti sulla preghiera in sinagoga trova una certa corrispondenza nel rilievo comparativamente scarso (rispetto allo studio) che la preghiera assume nella trattazione di Momigliano. 13 Ebrei e Greci (= MOMIGLIANO 1976a) 541-542. Per il farisaismo come fondamento del giudaismo rabbinico cfr. RAJAK 2001, 335-352. La natura del rapporto farisei/rabbini è oggetto di una viva discussione, anche successiva alla morte di Momigliano, che coinvolge la valutazione degli aspetti cruciali di legalismo e pietà, ellenizzazione e identità. Si riconoscono, con forte semplificazione, una linea Neusner-Hengel che mira ad accentuare la continuità, e quella opposta in cui si collocano S. COHEN 1984, SANDERS 1990, SCHÄFER 1991. Per un precoce tentativo di messa a punto (che rende conto anche del trattamento del classico e sempre fondamentale Schürer nelle varie edd.), cfr. DE LACEY 1992. Alla base della discussione si colloca lo studio seminale di BICKERMAN 1952A, che tracciando una linea continua tra farisei ellenizzati e estensori della "catena tradizionale" della Legge univa direttamente Mosè ai rabbis post-Yavneh, per il tramite della figura di Antigono di Soko (BICKERMAN 1951B). All’opposto si colloca la prospettiva di FINKELSTEIN 1950 che individua le origini della catena non nell’ellenismo ma in una riflessione di tipo genealogicosacerdotale, e alle cui conclusioni Momigliano rimane più vicino. Per la centralità della "catena" nella discussione sul rapporto farisei-rabbini-cristiani cfr. TRAPPER 2003; sul farisaismo come crocevia di dibattito ebraico-cristiano si rimanda invece a BASSER 2000. Per una valutazione specifica dei farisei in Giuseppe cfr. invece Rajak, T., Ciò che Flavio Giuseppe vide: Josephus and the Essenes, in RAJAK 2001, 219-240: è qui riassunto, con presa di distanza, l'approccio tradizionale discendente da SMITH 1956 e sviluppato da NEUSNER 1972 e S. COHEN 1979, che identifica nella trattazione flaviana dei farisei il risultato di una proiezione al tempo prebellico delle istanze politico-religiose successive al 90. Per la critica Momiglianea di Smith, cfr. GL 1982 II, The Jewish Sects, e la collocazione nella linea Bickerman-Hengel in Prologue. 15 Così Momigliano, a proposito dei Romani, in CL 1987 I, The Self-Awareness of the Protagonists (= MOMIGLIANO 1992D) 16 Cfr. COHEN 1999, part. allle pp. 313 (fonti ellenistiche) e 319-20 (rabbiniche). 14 311 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) The Rabbis and the Communities*17 I I hope that in my previous lecture I made one point clear. Judaism was, no doubt, organized or reorganized under Persian rule. But when Alexander destroyed the Persian Empire, the Jews both of Mesopotamia and of Palestine found themselves in a new political, social and linguistic environment dominated by the exacting and all-pervasive Greek culture. As Isocrates had already proclaimed in the fourth century B.C., to be a Greek was to be educated in the Greek way. It was not a simple question of being accepted socially in States ruled by Hellenized Macedonians with the support of a Greek or Hellenized bureaucracy. It was a question of competing and surviving in a situation in which Greek education dominated and eliminated opponents 18 . The Jews of Mesopotamia probably never felt this pressure as much as the Jews of Palestine and of the diaspora. About 30 B.C. they became again the subjects of an Iranian state, when the Parthians definitely replaced the Seleucids as rulers of Babylonia. Yet even after 130 B.C. the Jews of Mesopotamia had to reckon both with the powerful impact of Hellenism on the Parthian themselves and with the need of keeping in touch with the Jews who lived in Hellenistic territories. The Roman intervention in the East did not change this basic situation because the Romans accepted Greek language, administration, law and education as the foundation of their rule in the Eastern Mediterranean. If anything, the Romans extended the scope and strength of Hellenization. They were themselves imbued with Greek education, and their upper class for all practical purposes was bilingual - with Greek as the second language. In their conquests they had purchased enough Greek educated slaves to ensure that no well-born Roman boy would be deprived of a Greek pedagogue. [2] The consequences of this policy of Hellenization, especially when it was supported by the Romans, became evident everywhere. Local cultures either disappeared or went underground. Phoenician culture withered away and became the shadow we can contemplate in the fragments of Philo of Byblos, perhaps of the first century A.D. The most important centre of Phoenician culture, Carthage, was wiped out by the Romans in 146 B.C. The disappearance of Egyptian culture is a more difficult problem simply because Orientalists refrain from reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall and therefore never trouble to describe the disintegration of the cultures to which they have dedicated their lives. But the outsider cannot help suspecting that the Greeks and Romans managed to dissolve Egyptian culture, the most tenacious and coherent of all Oriental cultures, through financial starvation, political humiliation and above all religious trivialization, which is my favourite synonym for religious syncretism. On the specific Roman side the repression and partial destruction of Celtic culture from the Atlantic to the Balkans was the continuation of the same policy. We shall never know what the wisdom of the Druids was - indeed, whether there was any wisdom in the Druids - because, if any, it was buried by the Romans after having received its funeral speech from Posidonius. In such a world the Jews took the momentous decision to build up a system of education capable of competing with Greek education for the specific purpose of justifyiing the existence of a Jewish nation with its claim to be the Holy Nation. The new structure had to conform to certain conditions. It had to be an elaborate education - capable of opposing classical texts to classical texts, institutions to institutions, moral outlook to moral outlook, historical tradition to historical tradition, and above all one God to many gods. This the Jews achieved by their unique combination of * Documento preso come base: P-o 32, fascicolo derivante dall’unione della sezione finale della NL 1977 II The Temple (a cui si fa riferimento come P-o 77; per i paralleli con passi della nuova versione della lecture, vale invece il testo base dell’edizione, P-o 31) e dalla prima parte della NL 1977 III Attitudes. Si propone qui esclusivamente il testo dei capp. I-III, provenienti da The Temple; per i capp. IV-V si rimanda all’Appendice III, Attitudes. Si riportano infine in apparato eventuali varianti testuali presenti nelle c.c. di P-o 32 P-o 37 e 23. 18 P-o 23: It was a question ... opponents. -> text of Zeno papyrus, mgsn ms[Mom], del. [cfr. GL 1979 IV - Defence, cap. II]. 312 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) synagogue and schooling which kept a considerable portion of Jewish men involved in the study and meditation of the Torah from childhood to old age. It was an educational and religious establishment which could be more easily [3] accessible to foreign proselytes than to rustic or neglectful19 Jews. Thus the 'am-haarez, the rusticus, became the negative pole of Jewish education, the positive pole of which was increasingly represented by the rabbis. This brings us back to the leaders of the Synagogal revolution, the rabbis themselves. The relation of the rabbis or Sages (hachamim) in various periods to the priests, to the Pharisees, to the pious (chasidim) and to the scribes (sopherim) was uncertain to the ancients and consequently remains uncertain to us.20 This is the first reason why the now fashionable attempts to ascribe the rabbis to definite Jewish sects or social group are founded on very uncertain ground. If we must remain very sceptical about the modern reconstructions of the history and organization of the sects of Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes (I shall give later in this lecture some reasons for the reticence of our sources about themi), we must be even more sceptical about the attempts to identify the social position and the ethics of the Pharisees. Meritorious and pioneering as these attempts have been (for instance in the well known books and articles by Louis Finkelstein, Ellis Rivkin and Jacob Neusnerii), they cannot be made to agree with the few data of our scattered sources. For instance Professor Rivkin in his very valuable paper "Defining the Pharisees", Hebrew Union College Annual 40-41, 1969-1970, 205-249iii, is unable to explain why no passage of the Mishnah identifies Sages or rabbis with Pharisees, and why this identification is to be found only in one passage of Tosefta (Yoma 1: 8) and one of the Babylonian Talmud (Nidda 33 b) and goes against several other Talmudic passages. There is furthermore a serious argument which discourages any attempt to determine the physiognomy of the rabbis purely as members of Jewish society. It was Hellenistic society at large that made it possible for free men and even slaves to specialize in teaching, librarianship, commentary on texts, erudition and elaboration of philosophical and ethical systems. The Romans added to these professions a semi-professional class of lawyers - too late [4] certainly to influence the beginning of the rabbinate, but not too late to present a pretty problem to any scholar who is prepared to ponder on the simple fact that the compilation of the Mishnah about A.D. 200 coincided with the classical jurisprudence of Papinian, Ulpian and Paul, whereas the great compilations of the two Talmuds in Palestine and Babylonia more or less stretched from the compilation of the Codex Theodosianus of 438 to the Codex Iuris Civilis of 528 circa. In other words, the social conditions which made it possible for the Jews both to use and support their school-masters, academicians and codifiers are those of the Hellenistic world at large. After all the Jews lived the normal economic life of ordinary subjects first of Hellenistic kings and later of Roman emperors. There was no ghetto, no restriction or specialization of professions to separate them from the Gentiles. The surplus on which the Jewish schools, academies and libraries were built was part of the general surplus produced by the Hellenistic-Roman economies. It would be very strange indeed if Sages or rabbis were confined to one sect or one social stratum alone. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has proved that the Qumran sectarians had their own legal authorities - probably those who made up "the session on the many" (moshab ha-rabbim); and we always knew that Philo was a rabbi in his own way. II21 It is therefore wiser to confine ourselves to asking what the rabbis - that is, the scholars and academicians at the highest level of Jewish education - looked like. Ben Sira was the first to 19 20 21 P-o 32: negletful <-> negligent, msb[AMM]. P-o 32: This brings us back to the leaders ... to us: verbatim dal cap. II di NL 1977 II - Temple (P-o 77, c. 19). P-o 32: num. II, interl.msb[Mom]. 313 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) describe the sages22. According to him, they gave their mind to the Law of the Most High, they sought out the wisdom of the ancients and were occupied in prophecies; they served among great men and appeared before princes (39, 1-5). Ben Sira was himself one of them. Another of them, who lived more or less at the same time about 200 B.C., indicated their central position in society: "Let your house be a house of meeting for the sages, sit at their feet as their pupils and drink in their words with thirst" (Abot 1, 4). Mystical journeys to [5] Heaven, miracles and prophecies were not impossible for them. Some had secret doctrines for their pupils. They lived in a society where magic was rampant. One would like to know more about this aspect of their activities, and also whether one is justified in sensing that there was more of it in Babylonia after A.D. 200 than in Palestine in previous centuries. The following story is famous but bears repetition. Two rabbis of the early fourth century feasted together at Purim. They got drunk, Rabbah rose and cut R. Zera's throat. The next day Rabbah prayed and resurrected R. Zera. The following year he asked R. Zera: "Will your honour come and feast with me?". R. Zera answered: "A miracle does not always happen" (<B>23. Meg. 7 b; J. Neusner, There we sat down, 1972iv, 84). In Palestine the rabbinic rain-makers were perhaps fewer, the situation less humorous. Honi 'the circle-maker', a learned and celebrated rain-maker of the first century B.C. (M. Ta'anit 3, 8), was stoned to death when he refused to curse one of the factions in conflict and prayed: "Master of the Universe, these men are thy people" (Jos. Ant. Jud. 14, 24). In any case, just as they avoided becoming mandarins, so the rabbis as a class avoided becoming medicine men. Their concern was rather with holiness. They were not ascetic, but greatly aware of sin and perdition. They cared about ritual purity and respected Temple and priesthood. When the Temple was destroyed they made what to us may appear a pathetic effort to preserve and develop Temple regulations with a view to its restoration. For all practical purposes they took the place of the priests as the highest religious authorities and took it upon themselves to decide in controversies about sacred law. They turned themselves into judges in private litigation between Jews. They were brutally sincere about their superiority over the individual priests. They came to conceive of themselves as depositories of the Oral Law which integrated the Written Law of the Pentateuch. They understood oral Law as law given together with the written Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, but transmitted from generation to generation until it reached the Sages themselves. This is the doctrine [6] of Oral Law that made it increasingly difficult for Sadducees to join the Sages, as the Sadducees treated additions to the Mosaic law as post-Mosaic and collected them in a written Book of Ordinances which became a bone of contention between Sadducees and Sages (Megillat Ta’anit 4, 1, and its commentary). Yet it was a basic principle of the Sages not to set themselves apart from the nationv. How they organized themselves and managed to live before the first century B.C. is unknown. The relation, if any, between the Sages and the so-called confraternities of Pharisees is equally obscure: indeed the very nature of the Pharisaic confraternities (haburoth), which (as already hinted) seem to have been modeled on Greek eranoi (friendly societies) for communal meals and funerals, is far from being clear. In the late first century B.C. Hillel and Shammai organized their “houses” on the lines of Greek philosophic schools. Like Greek philosophic schools they sought and obtained influence and clienteles. Some public remuneration is documented. Inherited wealth helped, but some Sages, as I saidvi, were proletarians who supported themselves by work. Direct payment by adult students to teachers does not seem to have been usual or respectable; but there were good people who maintained both a Sage and his pupils, though the story of Gen. R. 72, 5 on Zebulun the trader and Isachar the scholar is not to be taken literally. There was formal ordination of rabbis by imposition of hands. At first the teacher ordained his best pupils; but when Rabbi Akiba died, another rabbi ordained his pupils. The earliest evidence about ordination is analogical: it is in the Acts of the Apostlesvii. The main material for our picture naturally comes from Palestine and Babylonia, where 22 23 P-o 32, 23, 37: the Sages; P-o 77: them. B[abylonian Talmud] <-> P-o 32, 37: C. 314 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) the most prestigious rabbinic academies had their residences, but rabbis existed elsewhere. About A.D. 95-96 a delegation of scholars from Palestine found in Rome a religious leader, Theudas (Thaddeus), whom they considered not very learned, but respected as a man. They are said to have sent him a message: “If you were not Theudas we would excommunicate you” (B. Pesahim 53 b; [7] Midr. Tehillim 28). Later in the second century A.D. an academy led by a Palestinian rabbi of repute, Mattia ben Cheresh (B. Sanh. 32 b), existed in Rome.24 [7a]25 Thanks to the exemplary work by Harold Cherniss on the Early Academy (Berkeley 1945)viii and John Patrick Lynch on Aristotle’s School (Berkeley 1972)ix and to other research, we are now in a better position to compare the rabbinic schools with the Greek institutions of higher learning than we could have done forty years ago. The illusion that Greek philosophic schools were universities in the modern sense has disappeared; what remains is the image of private institutions, the continuity of which was essentially founded on the appointment of a successor either by the incumbent head of the school or (perhaps less frequently) by the surviving teachers of the school. Some estate was tied to the school, but how the estate was transmitted through generations is not always clear: in some cases it is certain that the head of the school directly inherited it from his predecessor (which was easy if he had been designated by his predecessor). Public places (such as the Academy, the Lycaeum and the Stoa Poikile in Athens) were used by the schools together with, or in substitution of, private buildings. Each school was associated with some religious symbols and had communal meals: in the case of the Epicureans there was even some worship of the founder Epicurus. But there is no evidence that the school as such was a religious association or thiasos. The only learned institution which had real religious status was the Museum of Alexandria which was in the charge of a priest appointed by the king (Strabo, 17, 794 c), but we are not entitled to extrapolate from this case: the Museum of Alexandria was chiefly a library, and libraries often were religious institutions in the Near East. Either fees (e.g. Diog. Laert. 4, 12) or gifts (Plato, Ep. 13) or both helped the school, but teachers contributed from their wealth, if any. The schools lasted for centuries, but while there is evidence that Stoics and Epicureans continued to flourish in the first and second centuries A.D., the continuity of the Academy and of the Peripatos, that is, of the Platonic [8] and of the Aristotelian schools, seems to have been interrupted for a couple of centuries (cf. Seneca, Nat. Quaest. 7, 32, 2, Diog. Laert. 10, 9; Acta Apost. 17). Nor is it certain that the establishment of four endowed chairs of philosophy in Athens for the four main philosophic doctrines by Marcus Aurelius (Philostr., Vit. Sophist. 2, 2, p. 566x; cf. Dio Cass. 72, 31, 3) means that all schools went back to full activity. The neo-Platonics who felt persecuted by Justinian and left Athens in 532 A.D. (Agathias II, 30) were probably the continuators of a fifth-century revival rather than the direct heirs of Plato. On the other hand it is clear that the teaching of the doctrines of the main philosophic sects existed outside Athens; there were Platonists in Syria, Aristotelians in Alexandria, Stoics at Rhodes, Epicureans at Naples in various times and circumstances. Mobility of schools was as characteristic among Greeks as among Jews. There are indeed so many obvious similarities and differences between Jewish rabbis and Greek philosophers that it would be a waste of time to dwell on each of them. But it is perhaps where the similarity is greatest that the difference become more conspicuous. Both Jewish rabbis and Greek philosophers had political ambitions. Greek philosophers tries several times to run individual cities or to act as advisers to sovereigns. They occasionally succeeded for a longer or shorter period. Plato in Sicily and the Pythagoreans in Southern Italy are the most obvious examples; it is not by chance that in both places the Greeks were a colonial minority. But unlike the Jewish rabbis the Greek philosophers never succeeded in establishing themselves permanently as the leaders of their nation and in impressing their own thought on the social organization of the Greeks at large. It is arguable that the Jewish rabbis would not have succeeded but for the destruction of the Temple. Some real political life was left to the Greeks by the Romans, whereas after A.D. 70 none was left to the Jews 24 P-o 32: existed in Rome. Interl.ms[AMM] con segr: Insertion. Insert here handwritten pp.7a and 8. P-o 32: cc. 7a-8 mss.[Mom] = P-o 12, 22bis-ter; tsf7a: p. 22, second lecture, now third lecture: put this, 22bis-22ter between first and second paragraph "Existed in Rome. There was indeed", ms[Mom]. 25 315 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) qua Jews. Whatever the explanation, the difference remains. The Greek philosophic schools were fundamentally isolated institutions in the middle [9] of Greek society and transmitted themselves to posterity as systems of thought. The rabbinic schools shaped the conduct of the surrounding society and transmitted themselves to posterity both as a way of thinking and as a way of ordinary life for a nation – which means that their sphere of action extended to the whole of the Jewish communities.26 There were indeed customary ties between diaspora and Palestine, such as the pilgrimages to Jerusalem and the annual contribution to the Temple which were collected among the diaspora Jews. Philo mentions the dispatch of first fruits and tithes from Alexandria (Leg. F. 78; Spec. Leg. I 153-5; cf. Joseph. Ant. Jud. 14, 9, 21). But the basic connection was the organization of the Jewish communities. Notwithstanding the variety of states and political regimes in which the Jews lived there remained enough uniformity in Jewish institutions to ensure conformity of thought and similarity of achievements. The synagogue became the centre of communal life everywhere outside Jerusalem, even in Judaea. The leaders of the synagogue were recognized as communal leaders. The Greek, the Parthian and the Roman authorities accepted, either officially by charter or unofficially by custom, the existence of some measure of Jewish self-government. It was taken for granted that controversies between Jews would be settled according to Jewish law either by local courts or by local arbitrators. In difficult cases the local Jewish administrators would turn for advice either to better provided communities or to rabbis of recognized authority. The Talmud recalls the advice asked by the Alexandrian Jews of Joshua ben Chaninah, a Palestinian teacher of the second century A.D. (Nidd. 69 b). Philo himself wrote extensively on legal problems arising from Mosaic texts. In the last century Heinrich Graetz thought that Philo might reflect in his De specialibus legibus the regulations of the dissident temple of Onias in Egypt (Gesch. der Juden, ed. 1905, II, 29 ff.xi). More recently E. R. Goodenough tried to prove that Philo, who was after all a communal leader of Alexandrian Jewry, wrote to guide the local courts of his native cityxii. There is no evidence [10] for either theory. Philo may well have done nothing more than expound Mosaic Law to the best of his own reflections. What remains important is that Philo could not avoid interpreting Jewish Law. Whether he did so to offer a Jewish counterpart to Plato’s law or an Alexandrian counterpart to the contemporary rabbinic legal exegesis (Halacha) of Jerusalem or Babylonia does not alter the basic fact that any serious involvement in Jewish religion implied involvement in details of Jewish Law. Philo warned his fellow allegorists that allegorical interpretation of the Law was not to be construed as an excuse for not observing it (Migr. Abrah. 88). The rebels of the Qumran were of the same opinion. They fought against the priests of Jerusalem, but they stuck to Jewish Law more or less in the form which was current in their time. This was recognized by the great Louis Ginzberg when the only document of their sect was still the so-called Zadokite text found in the repository of the synagogue of Old Cairo at the end of the last century (Eine unbekannte jüdische Sekte, 1922xiii). The documents found in the caves near the Wadi Qumran in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea since 1947 have confirmed this attitude of the sectarian followers of the Teacher of Righteousness. One of the great merits of the admirable Qumran Studies by Chaim Rabinxiv is to have emphasised the legalism of the sectarians, though it would be difficult to follow Rabin in his inference that the sectarians were Pharisees in retreat. The Hellenistic age of Judaism has often been defined as the age of variety. The interpretation goes back to Flavius Josephus who tried to present to a pagan audience the Jewish sects of Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes. Variety has indeed to be emphasised. But before we emphasise it, let us be clear that what is remarkable is the relative uniformity of Jewish life. The spreading of the Jews along the Mediterranean coasts and in the Middle East had been due to the most diverse circumstances, from military settlement to deportation, from trade to slavery. What kept all [11] these people together was a common law which basically resulted from the rabbinic interpretation of Mosaic Law. If Homer, the Delphic Oracle, the Olympic games and the philosophers kept the 26 P-o 32: [Continue with § beginning "There were indeed..." on p. 7], mgsnmsr[AMM]. 316 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) Greeks together, Moses, the Jerusalem Temple, the Synagogue and the rabbis kept the Jews together. III As for the variety of Jewish sects and practices in the Hellenistic age, I shall only indicate one point of view: the extraordinary restraint and brevity of our sources about conflicts and disagreements within Judaism. Flavius Josephus is our only systematic informant about the three sects of Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, and he is very brief. On John the Baptist and Jesus he is even more laconic; and there are later interpolations in his text. Philo has nothing about Sadducees and Pharisees, but much about Essenes and a great deal about the Therapeutae of Egypt on whom he is our only source. Essenes and Therapeutae were for Philo the representatives of two different religious attitudes, one ascetic, the other contemplative. He may have invented the Therapeutae in order to describe his ideal of monastic contemplation. More probably the Therapeutae were a shortlived community inspired by Philo or by somebody like Philo. After all, according to the Karaite alqirqisani, in the tenth century the sect of the Magharians used a work by the “Alexandrian” who must be Philo (N. Golb, JAOS, 80, 1960, 348xv). The Qumran community seems to have remained unknown to all the ancient sources. It is now fashionable to treat the Qumran brethren as Essenes, because Pliny the Elder placed the Essenes near the Dead Sea, were the residence of the new sect was found (N.H. 5, 15, 73). But neither Philo nor Josephus connect the Essenes with the Teacher of Righteousness who looms large in the Qumran texts. Nowhere is it said that the Essenes lived – as the Qumran brethren undoubtedly lived – in the expectation of an imminent Messianic age. Prudent scholars must therefore conclude that the identification of Essenes and Qumran is far from proved. The silence of ancient sources about Qumran remains striking. [12] Even more striking is the reticence of rabbinic sources about the Pharisees. If many modern scholars are convinced that the Pharisees by their insistence on Oral Law created rabbinic – that is, Talmudic – Judaism, the rabbis who put together what makes up the Talmud are not conscious of this filiation, and mix praise and blame in the rare cases in which they mention the Pharisees. The Mishnah attributes to Rabbi Joshua of the first century A.D. the following saying: "A foolish Saint (hasid), a cunning wicked man, a woman who is a Pharisee and the self-inflicted wounds of those who are Pharisees, these wear out the world" (Sotah 3, 4). Pharisaic men and women are here treated as severely as in the contemporary Gospels by a rabbi who is supposed to have been one of them. I have no solution for what somebody called the Pharisaic riddle. I do not know of any certain reference either to Jesus or to Christianity in rabbinic texts of the period when Christianity could still be treated as a deviant form of Judaism. The Mishnah, which was put together about A.D. 200, is silent about Jesus. Its only likely allusion to Christianity – the prophecy that the kingdom (of Rome) will fall to heretics (leminuth) in the treatise Sotah 9, 15 – must be an interpolation later than the conversion of Constantine (J. S. Lauterbach, Rabbinic Essays, 553). Later Talmudic references, even if authentically going back to rabbis of the first century, are less relevant to us, inserted as they are in a situation in which Christianity had ceased to be an internal Jewish problem. Even so, the allusions are remarkably few. Before Christianity the Samaritans had been the greatest scandal within Judaism. They considered themselves Jews, they were Jews. They had a text of the Pentateuch which was essentially identical with that preserved in Jerusalem. Jews and Samaritans had parted company in circumstances which nobody in Antiquity knew exactly and nobody in modern times has been able to clarify convincingly. The account of Josephusxvi [13] combined events of the time of Nehemiah in the fifth century B.C. with events under Sanballath whom we know from recently discovered texts to have governed in Samaria in the fourth century B.C. “The foolish nation that dwelleth in Shechem”, as Ecclesiasticus called the Samaritans (1, 25), is treated with altogether remarkable 317 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) restraint in rabbinic texts. The brief Talmudic treatise Kuthim, of uncertain date but with old material, concludes with the words: “The Samaritans in some of their ways resemble the Gentiles and in some resemble Israel, but in the majority they resemble Israel”. As a whole the evidence about Jewish sects in Jewish texts – either Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek – carries with it an unmistakable indication. The more dangerous and radical the differences were, the less likely our authorities are to speak about them. The Essenes who were the least dangerous are the most spoken about. Qumran recusants and Christians are not mentioned or mentioned sparingly. The Sadducees, who as conservative defenders of the primacy of the Temple cult and of the literal application of the Mosaic law lost to the Pharisees, play a minimum role in the tradition. Even the Pharisees, who with their doctrines on the Oral Law, the immortality of the Soul and the subordinate importance of the Temple sacrifice had a special right to attention, are relatively seldom allowed to appear and are treated with detachment. Not even Josephus, a declared Pharisee, identifies himself with them. The most defiant profession of Pharisaism comes from St. Paulxvii . This attitude can be observed in other respects of Jewish life and may help us to understand the Jewish-Hellenistic attitude toward recent history. Even in the Hellenistic age the Temple of Jerusalem had not been alone in receiving the sacrificial worship of the Jews, as required by a doctrine which had become official in the late seventh century B.C. In the second century B.C. a dissident priestly group migrated from Jerusalem to Egypt [14] and there founded a temple which required daily sacrifices like the Temple of Jerusalem. Memories of an older Jewish temple in Egypt during the Persian period helped to create an establishment which received some support from the Ptolemies and played a part in their dynastic conflicts. At the gates of Judaea in Ammanitis the powerful family of the Tobiads kept going another temple of their own, while preserving religious prestige and financial influence in Jerusalem. The Jewish tradition, as far as I know, forgot about the temple of the Tobiads, the main evidence for which is archaeological; and speaks very little – and never bitterly – about the Egyptian temple. Even more curious is the attitude to individuals suspected or convicted of heresy. Heresy (minuth) is a concept which must have been formalized in Judaea in the first century A.D. A prayer against the minim, heretics, or rather a brief formula of a prayer, was introduced into Jewish liturgy at the end of the first century A.D. Some practice of ban or excommunication developed with it. Rabbis who disagreed with majority decisions about ritual law in academies were in danger of being banned by their fellow-academicians. It is not difficult to visualize the historical situation which led to this closing of the ranks. The more remarkable is rabbinic mildness and even the sympathy towards individuals tainted with heresy. Eliezer ben Hyrcanos, the teacher of Rabbi Akiba, was both accused of heresy – that is, probably of Christian sympathies – before a Roman tribunal and excommunicated by his fellow-rabbis (J. Neusner, Eliezer ben Hyrcanos, I, 1973, 401 and 423xviii ). He remained in the tradition as one of the most honoured rabbis. Tradition shows him dying on Sabbath eve surrounded by his pupils, as a Sage should die. Elishah ben Abuyah, the pupil of Rabbi Akiba and the master of Rabbi Meir, did not get off so easily. He remained in the tradition as the prototype of the Sage who passed to the other side: he was called Aher, the other. All sorts of nasty things were reported about him, from violation of the Sabbath to collaboration with the Romans. [15] This was the time of Hadrian, and ben Abuyah’s master, Akiba, had died a martyr’s death. Yet Elishah ben Abuyah is not damned. Tradition, paradoxically, is rather in sympathy with him. It preserves and canonizes some of his aphorisms. It registers the devotion of his pupil Meir who went on discussing the Torah with him and expressed, after the death without repentance of his master, the certainty that he had been saved. According to one of the Talmudic legends on the subject Meir spread his mantle over his master’s grave and reassured his soul: “Rest here in the night; in the dawn of happiness the God of mercy will deliver thee; if not, I will be thy redeemer” (B. Hag. 15 a). The daring reference to the words of Boas in the Book of Ruth (3, 13) is explicit in the text. The figure of Elishah ben Abuyah who tried everything – mystical experience, Greek songs and low forms of prevarication (Y. Meg. 1, 9; B. Hag. 16 b, etc.) – remained the ambiguous symbol 318 Appendice II The Rabbis and the Communities (CL 1977 III) of the attraction of the “other” – the classical world of the Greeks and Romans. He was not denied the hope of resurrection with the Just. Playing down differences and keeping endless discussion going between the disagreeing branches of Judaism was perhaps not less important than the reorganization of communal life in helping to maintain some sort of unity and consequently surviving against overwhelming odds. What in about 300 B.C. was still a tribal religion appealing from Jerusalem to Semitic speakers had become two centuries later a potentially universal religion spreading from Parthia to Italy and Northern Africa. Greek had become almost as important a language as Hebrew or Aramaic. The followers of this religion had already faced the Samaritan schism and the attempt by Antiochus IV to transform the Temple of Jerusalem into an acceptable syncretistic temple. They were soon to realize that they had won bloody wars against the Greeks only to be conquered by the Romans. They also had to learn - as the Gauls, the Spaniards, the Britons and the Greeks learnt that rebellions against the Roman government never succeeded, whatever the [16] initial success of the rebels might be. There could be no illusion of easy confrontation. If the Jews managed among defeats and humiliations to remain themselves (whereas the Celts of Spain, Gaul and Britain and the Phoenicians of Africa lost their identity for centuries), they did so through the combination of communal organization and relative internal toleration. Christianity gave back an element of national pride and linguistic autonomy to Celts, Egyptians, Syrians, Armenians and - in a different way - to Latinized Africans and even to Greeks. One of the many reasons why the Jews remained outside Christianity is that they had saved themselves from Romanization much earlier - at what price, I need not repeat.27 i Cfr. part. alla c. 13. Per una nota di aggiornamento sul tema, a distanza di qualche anno, cfr. GL 1982 II (The Jewish Sects), c. 5, dove Momigliano rinvia alla bibliografia "recent and excellent ... provided in the new revised Schürer, The History of the Jewish People, Vol. II [...] 1979", e la integra con pubblicazioni successive: RIVKIN 1978 ("mainly on the Pharisees"); NEUSNER 1981; NICKELSBURG 1981; SANDERS 1981 ("which contains much of interest"). iii RIVKIN 1969-70. iv NEUSNER 1972. v Una delle "regole di Hillel", cfr. Abot 2, 15. vi CL 1977 II (Temple) c. 27. La formulazione "as I said" sembrerebbe tuttavia alludere a una notizia appena menzionata, piuttosto che espressa in una precedente occasione. Ѐ forse una formulazione residuale della versione Northcliffe, in cui il rimando era effettivamente presente all’interno della stessa lezione. vii Atti 6: 6. viii CHERNISS 1945. ix LYNCH 1972. x Philostratus and Eunapius, The Lives of the Sophists, with an Engl. transl. by W. C. Wright, LondonCambrdige(Mass) 1952. xi GRAETZ 1807-1911. Vol. III; t. 2.: Geschichte der Judäer von dem Tode Juda Makkabis bis zum Untergange des judäischen Staates, 5. verb. und verm. Aufl. bearb. von M. Brann, Leipzig 1905. xii Cfr. part. GOODENOUGH 1926; ID. 1929; ID. 1938. xiii GINZBERG 1922. xiv RABIN 1957. xv GOLB 1960. xvi In Ant. XI. xvii Atti 23: 6. xviii NEUSNER 1973B. ii 27 Seguono i cap. IV-V, su cc.17-24. Per questa sequenza non riprodotta qui, cfr. Appendice III, Attitudes. 319 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) Sedi e date NL 1977 III (27 gennaio, cfr. D-a 1) Documenti a) NL 1977 III P-o 19 ms. P-o 83 top c. di P-o 19. P-o 1, P-o 167: xerox di P-o 83. P-o 161 nuova versione ds. basata su P-o 83. P-o 20, P-o 21 (a): c.c. di P-o 161. P- o 22, P-o 33 (b), P-o 32 (c): xerox di P-o 21 (a) b) aggiunte (probl. Per CL 1977 IV) P-o 21 (b) ms. P-o 33 (a) xerox di P-o 21 (b). 1. Il testo proposto e i documenti collazionati La NL 1977 III Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past è il frutto di un intenso lavoro, terminato a fine novembre 19761 nella consapevolezza di avere "ancora molto da fare sul senso storico del giudaismo ellenistico"2. La lezione documenta l'iniziale strutturarsi in un'unica sequenza di due grandi nuclei argomentativi (rispettivamente incentrati sul tema resistenziale e su quello storiografico) destinati a trovare, nei cicli successivi, articolazioni e collocazioni differenti. P-o 21, il documento su cui si basa il testo presentato in questa appendice, testimonia anche la prima rielaborazione subita da Attitudes in vista del ciclo di Chicago, nel quale le 7 carte iniziali passano alla chiusura della lezione sui Rabbis (per diventare successivamente parte della EL The Defence, cfr. Appendice II, p. 308 n. 4), mentre le cc. da 8 a 29 diventano, con qualche incremento, la prima versione della nuova lezione Jews and Gentiles. La ridistribuzione non ha, naturalmente, carattere definitivo: la versione di Jews and Gentiles proposta a Chicago subirà ulteriori aggiunte e sottrazioni di materiali (tendenzialmente a favore della nuova lezione The Defence) in occasione del ciclo Efroymson prima e di quello Grinfield poi3. P-o 21 si presenta come copia xerox del fascicolo P-o 161 (nuova versione ds. di Attitudes, frutto di rielaborazione e revisione di un primo testo rappresentato a sua volta dal ms. P-o 19 e dal ds. che lo riproduce, P-o 83). Un’annotazione ms. di AMM sulla c. 1 prova la natura di reading copy di P-o 21, mentre è lo stesso Momigliano (ms. ibid.) a identificare il fascicolo come "the more accurate description of the third lecture". Benché non sia chiaro a quale "third lecture" la valutazione faccia riferimento (se alla NL III, Attitudes, o alla CL III, Rabbis, posto come annotazioni sul documento provino il suo riutilizzo come reading copy a Chicago), si ha comunque la certezza che il testo che offre sia quello sottoposto alla revisione più recente. Resta difficile decidere se i molti interventi mss. riportati dall’autore, con penne e grafie diverse, risalgano all'ultima revisione della Northcliffe o alla rielaborazione in vista delle nuove lezioni di Chicago (si possono attribuire con certezza alla seconda fase solo gli addenda su cc. mss.); è infine possibile che P-o 21 sia stato effettivamente ripreso in mano (invece forse insieme al testo EL 1978) per l'ultima versione di Jews and Gentiles (GL 1982), in quanto si conserva nel documento una scheda bibliografica compilata post 19804. 1 Lettera 30.11.76. Lettera 23.11.76. 3 Cfr. Introduzione a GL 1982 I, supra, pp. 222-25. 4 F. ms[Mom], in P-o 21: John Collins, Structure and Meaning in the Testament of Job, SBL/ASP-Abstr. Seminars Papers (1974), I, 35-52; M. Delcor, Le Testament d'Abraham, Leiden Brill 1973; M. De Jonge, The Testament of the XII 2 320 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) La divisione in capitoli, rimasta incoerente dopo i diversi rimaneggiamenti, non è stata corretta per l’edizione: si restituisce qui la sequenza numerica originaria, affiancata da quella - ricostruita di Jews and Gentiles, a partire dal punto in cui la nuova lezione inizia. 2. Argomento di NL Attitudes (= CL Jews and Gentiles, capp. III ss.) Il breve capitolo introduttivo (= CL Rabbis I -> EL/GL Defence II-III) ha per temi il bilinguismo degli uomini di primo millennio – con la patente eccezione dei greci – e la separazione linguistica che intercorre tra gli Ebrei in età ellenistica, fronteggiata grazie a rinnovate strategie di comunicazione interna. L'unità degli Ebrei (= CL Rabbis I-II -> EL/GL Defence IV), al di là delle barriere di lingua, è mantenuta attraverso un sistema di interpretazioni/traduzioni della Bibba (Targumim, Settanta) e di compilazione di libri festali. Vale un’osservazione generale: se le forme di bilinguismo ebraico di età ellenistica non risultano sovrapponibili a quelle degli Ebrei italiani medievali e moderni, l’attività di mediazione esercitata dal bilinguismo greco/ebraico della Palestina ellenistica ostacola una netta separazione fra parlanti aramaico/ebraico da un lato, e parlanti solo greco dall'altro. La tesi (= CL Jews and Gentiles II -> EL/ GL Defence VII) di una grecizzazione pervasiva, ma non profonda, viene articolata nel cap. III attraverso due esempi: le complesse implicazioni filosofiche di nomos e dabar in Filone e l’analisi del singolare impasto stilistico e tematico del libro della Sapienza. Segue un capitolo incentrato sulle aree di contatto fra Ebrei e Greci (cc. 12-17) che nei cicli posteriori EL e GL sarà ripartito, in proporzioni disuguali, fra Jews and Gentiles e The Defence. Confluiscono nella prima lecture (cap. III) le considerazioni relative all’area religiosa e artistica e all’autoconsapevolezza, identitaria e non cosmopolita, degli Ebrei che scrivono in greco. In The Defence (cap. V) vengono invece collocati i raffronti fra middot e retorica greca, così come fra scuole rabbiniche e filosofiche. Passano in Jews and Gentiles EL/GL (capp. II-III) gli argomenti trattati nel cap. V a dimostrazione della povertà di comunicazione tra Greci ed Ebrei: la scarsa conoscenza della Bibbia, da parte pagana, cui risponde l’ignoranza della filosofia greca da parte ebraica; la conseguente valutazione del pensiero di Filone, i cui nuclei vengono individuati nel tentativo di conciliare filosofia e rivelazione e nella preferenza accordata alla sapienza e alla mistica. Il breve capitolo VI (= CL Jews and Gentiles V -> EL/GL Jews and Gentiles III), distaccato dal precedente con un intervento successivo alla stesura, prende in considerazione i limiti dell'importanza del proselitismo, non originato dal contatto con la Bibbia quanto piuttosto dall’idea di divino e dalla ritualità, com l’eccezione dell’unico testo che sembra essere stato scritto per proseliti, il Testamento di Giobbe. Considerata unica reale area di comunicazione, la storiografia ebraica – e samaritana – in lingua greca rientra nel più vasto quadro della produzione ellenistica (= CL Jews and Gentiles VI -> Jews and Gentiles IV-VII); interpolazioni, ricorso a documenti templari, dibattito sull'antichità sono i temi affrontati nell’ultimo capitolo. Fra gli autori, vengono ricordati Demetrio, Eupolemo, Artapano, Cleodemo Malco, e naturalmente Giuseppe e Alessandro Poliistore, che condividono la destinazione romana della propria opera e la sua preservazione in ambiente cristiano. 3. Le prime strutture espositive del rapporto Ebrei-gentili: alcune riflessioni non recuperate. Nel passaggio dal ciclo Northcliffe a quello di Chicago si apprezza la nuova autonomia che caratterizza il tema del rapporto fra Ebrei e gentili, cui sembra far riscontro lo sviluppo successivo della riflessione sulle Visions of the past nella foma di un rinnovato nucleo di indagine imperniato sulla questione storiografica. Di un certo rilievo – benché presente solo in questo testo - è anche la Patriarchs, 1953; Id., Studies in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Leiden Brill 1975; J. Becker, Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Testamente der Zwölf Patriarchen, Leiden Brill 1970; DeJonge, The Testament etc. in Aufstieg und Niedergang; Ideal Figures in Ancient Judaism: Profiles and Figures [ma: Paradigms], Scholars Press 1980. 321 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) pagina sul ricorso ai termini nomos e logos in Filone (cap. III): se la riflessione sulle prerogative linguistiche e stilistiche del libro della Sapienza, affrontata nello stesso capitolo, verrà ripresa in the Defence, la discussione sulla terminologia filosofica di Filone sarà definitivamente accantonata. È possibile in tal senso che nel progetto del primo ciclo Filone fosse un personaggio più presente di quanto non appaia nelle successive rivisitazioni dei testi5. Di rilievo appare anche la presentazione (forse la più chiara tra quelle formulate da Momigliano) del problema del rapporto sinagoga/storia/apocalisse, presente in coda al cap. VII con la proposta di un’indagine fondata su due proposizioni che si escludono a vicenda: 1. “if you start from the synagogue, you will rather end in apocalypse than in history”; 2. “the synagogue was meant to save the Jews both from apocalypse and from history”. Sul piano dell'impostazione generale si osserva la tendenza, nella serie Northcliffe prima e in quella di Chicago poi, a una considerazione unitaria degli aspetti di civilizzazione del "GrecoRoman world" di cui la stessa denominazione rappresenta una spia; non pare infatti casuale che, nei cicli più recenti, il nesso "Greco-Roman" veda una frequenza sempre minore e un ricorso selettivo – piuttosto raro – all’interno di espressioni dalla valenza delimitata (e.g., greco-roman "audience", "rethoric", "historiography"). L'impressione complessiva di un incremento nella selettività delle definizioni e di un'evidente istanza di approfondimento e precisazione trova riscontro in un ulteriore dettaglio terminologico: se a Chicago i "maestri" vengono ancora chiamati “rabbis”, nei cicli successivi Momigliano recupererà (anche verbatim) brani testuali che ad essi si riferiscono ricorrendo per i più antichi fra loro alla denominazione di "Sages"6. 5 Cfr. lettera 10.10.76: “Sto cercando adesso di mettere insieme la parte su Filone delle mie Northcliffe Lectures e leggo in argomento”. 6 Cfr., in proposito, GL 1982 III - Decline, cap. VIII. 322 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past*7 <I> As I have implied, one of the most important aspects of the Jewish cultural situation was the linguistic one8. Educated men of the first millennium B.C. were normally bilingual. Bilingualism had profound roots in Mesopotamia where Sumerian as a literary language accompanied Akkadian through the ages. The Persian Empire made Aramaic almost compulsory as the language of administration. Even Egypt was affected by it. The Jews increasingly used Aramaic instead of Hebrew in ordinary speech. They passed from Hebrew to Aramaic in the same book of the Bible without giving much attention to the fact. In the Western Mediterranean it was Greek that provided Carthaginians, Etruscans, Romans and, to a certain extent, Celts with a second language. But the Greeks themselves were, as we all know, the great exception. They remained almost uncompromisingly monolingual. Those who had to learn a second language, like Democedes and Ctesias, both doctors to Persian kings9, concealed the fact. Themistocles, who promised to spend a year learning Persian, remains so far the only known exception to the great exception. It was as a consequence of living among Greeks that certain Jews were reduced to monolingualism. If there is a sign of Philo’s really having absorbed Greek culture, it is that he was stupendously ignorant of Hebrew. Some kind scholars have tried to help him out of his Greek monolingualism – an embarrassment to them, but not to him. The prestige of Hellenism created a new phenomenon: Jews separated from other Jews because they did not know either Hebrew or Aramaic. Yet these Jews, as we have seen, remained Jews with the same Bible, the same synagogue, the same schools and basically the same customs, notwithstanding their apparent inability to converse with their Hebrew- or Aramaic-speaking brethren. We have to explain how the Jews maintained their unity across the linguistic barriers. What I shall try to show is that in reality there was more communication between Greek-speaking Jews and Aramaic- or Hebrew-speaking Jews than between Greek-speaking Jews and Greekspeaking Gentiles. II 10 [2] After11 the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the majority of which are in Hebrew, scholars are less sure than they used to be that Hebrew had entirely ceased to be a spoken language in Palestine in the Hellenistic Age. It remains true, however, that Hebrew was no longer the first language even in Palestine where Aramaic prevailed and Greek was spoken by a considerable minority. Elsewhere Jews spoke either Greek or Aramaic, and Aramaic was spoken in different dialects. If unity was to be preserved in Judaism, channels of communication had to be maintained between people speaking different languages in different countries. The Bible had to be kept at the centre of Jewish life, even if Jews no longer understood the language in which it had been written. In Aramaic-speaking congregations the Bible was read in Hebrew and translated extempore into * Documento preso come base: P-o 21, fascicolo le cui 7 cc. iniziali confluiranno in CL 1977 III The Rabbis (cfr. supra, Appendice II), mentre le pp. da 8 a 29 diventeranno, con qualche incremento, la prima versione della nuova lezione Jews and Gentiles. Degli altri testi presi in considerazione si riportano, in apparato, eventuali lezioni alternative presenti in P-o 83, manoscritto della prima versione NL 1977 della lecture e del suo ms. di base P-o 19, allo scopo di evidenziare l’evoluzione del testo a partire dalla sua prima formulazione. Si segnalano all’occorrenza eventuali discrepanze con P-o 161, fascicolo che testimonia la nuova versione ds. della lecture basata su P-o 83 e di cui P-o 21 è c.c. 7 P-o 21, tsf: Reading copy, mgdxms[AMM]. 8 P-o 21: As I have ... one, interl.ms[Mom]. 9 P-o 21: both doctors ... kings, mgsnms[Mom]. 10 P-o 21: II, ms[Mom]. 11 P-o 21: After <- As I have implied, one of the most important aspects of the Jewish cultural situation was the linguistic one, del. 323 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) Aramaic. The use of a written Aramaic translation in synagogues was forbidden at least until the third century A.D. But nothing could prevent private use of Aramaic translations of the Bible. The discovery of an Aramaic translation of the Book of Job in one of the Qumran caves has proved that such translations did exists: the Qumran Job text has been dated in the second century B.C. The discovery incidentally gave new respectability to the Talmudic story that an Aramaic translation (or Targum) of Job had existed in the time of Rabbah Gamaliel I in the early first century A.D. and had reappared, after having been withdrawn, in the time of his grandson Gamaliel II (B. Shabb. 115 a; Tosefta Shabb. 1412 etc.). On the whole recent research on the Aramaic translations of the Bible has been increasingly inclined to make them more ancient than one used to believe them to be. Scholars now speak of the Peshitta, the Syriac translation, as being based on a Palestinian Aramaic text not latter than the first century A.D. The complete text of the Pentateuch [3] Targum identified in the Neophyti Codex I of the Vatican Library is dated by its discoverer and editor Alejandro Diez Macho in the second century A.D. Others, such as Rabbi Menachem Kasher, the compiler of Torah Shelemahi, would go even earlier13. Even if Diez Macho and his followers are proved to have been too sanguine, this text, which remained unknown until 1956 and began to be published in 1968, can hardly be later than the fourth century A.D. Though on the present evidence the Greek translation of the Bible remains older than the earliest Aramaic texts, the gap is narrowing. As we all know, the whole corpus of the writings which we call the Bible was translated into Greek from the third to the first century B.C., and the question of what to translate into Greek may well have contributed to the formation of the canon which on the Hebrew side was closed after the destruction of the Temple. We are not obliged to believe the Letter of Aristeas and to take the translation of the Pentateuch as having been ordered by Ptolemy II. The need for a Greek translation of the Bible was not limited to the diaspora. Fragments of the Bible in Greek have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and among the texts put aside by the followers of Bar Kochba during the reign of Hadrian. In other words, there were people reading the Bible in Greek even in Palestine. A Greek translation of the Book of Esther made in Jerusalem seems to have arrived in Egypt about 78 B.C. This at least is the most likely interpretation and date of the mysterious colophon of the Greek Book of Esther which says: “In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dositheus who said he was a priest and a Levite, and Ptolemy his son brought the preceding letter of Purim which they said was genuine and was translated by Lysimachus the son of Ptolemy one of the residents in Jerusalem”. The colophon seems to state that the Book of Esther was translated into Greek in [4] Jerusalem not much before 78 B.C. The translator and the messengers, like many other Palestinian Jews of their time, had good Greek names which confirm that in Palestine too the social environment was Greek. It would, however, be rash to conclude that the majority of the biblical books was translated in Palestine rather than in Egypt. Whatever may be the value of the Letter of Aristeas as a source for the story that the Five Books of Moses had been translated at the time of Ptolemy II, the letter represents current opinion in the second century B.C. about the Alexandrian origin of this text. Philo supports the opinion of an Alexandrian origin by recording that the Jews of Alexandria celebrated the translation of the Bible into Greek with a yearly festival on the island of Pharus in which non-Jews participated (Vita Mosis II, 41). However fond of festivals Hellenistic peoples were, I wonder whether there is a parallel to this holiday in memory of a translation. Philo leaves us in no doubt about the authority of the Septuagint translation which for him, as for the majority of the Greek-speaking Jews, replaced the original. In most cases he interprets the Bible according to the Septuagint. The translation was accepted by the Palestinian rabbis for a long time (Meg. 1, 8). Only in changed circumstances did they come to consider the Septuagint translation a national disaster, an event to be compared with the golden calf: even the sun had gone into eclipse on that day14 (Soferim 1, 8, 7 f.; Meg. Ta'an. 13). 12 13 14 P-o 21: Tosefta Shabb. 14 <-> P-o 83: Tosefta Shabb. 13 (14) ) p. 128 Zuckermandel, ms[Mom]. P-o 21: Others ... earlier, mgsupms[Mom]; P-o 83: Rabbi Menahem Kasher has given its support to much, ms [Mom]. P-o 83: that day - > "since the Torah could not be accurately translated", del. 324 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) It is possible that at least in some synagogues the reading of the original text preceded the reading of the Septuagint translation. But there is no evidence that the synagogal use of the Greek translation was subject to the limitations and controls we know for the Aramaic translation. Philo in any case neither [5]speaks of a synagogal use of the Hebrew Bible nor gives clear signs of ever having looked at a Hebrew book. If sometimes his interpretation does not exactly correspond to the text of the Septuagint as we have it, there are other explanations than the influence of the Hebrew texts. The Septuagint was never a monolith. And even before the Christians appropriated it, there must have been alternative versions available to Jews. Both the Aramaic and the Greek translations of the Bible were something more than a simple means of making the contents of the sacred books available to Jews with little or no Hebrew. They conveyed an interpretation of the Bible which modernized some religious notions: for instance, it attenuated some anthropomorphic aspects of God which had become offensive.ii In translating Genesis 31, 53 which in Hebrew makes a clear distinction between the god of Abraham and the god of Nahor, that is, it recognizes the existence of different national gods, the Septuagint eliminates the plurality of gods. The Jews must have had more than an inkling of what in Christian exegesis is the distinction between simple transference from one language to another (kataballein) and exegetical process (hermeneuein). Now this too was a potential danger to unity. Different interpretations of the Bible might easily turn into sectarian interpretations. This consequence was avoided. The different translations obviously satisfied different needs and different people, but, to the best of my knowledge, never became a source of lasting religious disagreements betweeen Jews. The Aramaic translations, being more self-consciously an explanation of the original text than the Greek translations ever were, could allow themselves greater liberties unconnected with theological issues15. To mention a famous example, one of the Aramaic translations, the [6] Targum PseudoJonathan, transforms the quarrel between Cain and Abel into a dispute between a Sadducee – Cain – who does not believe in the importance of good works and in the existence of the world hereafter and a good Pharisee – Abel – who believes in both. The end remains the old one: Cain kills his brother (J. Bowker, The Targum and Rabbinic Literature, 1969, 132). But even the Greek text indulged in some contemporary allusion16. At least in one of its variants the Septuagint turns Haman, the persecutor of the Jews in the Book of Esther, into a Macedonian. The author of the variant was thinking of Antiochus IV or, more modestly, of the Greco-Macedonian tax collector.17iii One must add that care was obviously taken to spread new texts and information about new festivals. The Book of Daniel which in its present form cannot be earlier, or indeed later, than circa 165 B.C., was already known in Egypt about 150-140 B.C., as the Third Sibylline Book shows. About 130 B.C. a grandson of Ben Sira translated Ecclesiasticus into Greek: the book included a personal canon of Hebrew sacred texts which must have attracted the attention of Greek-speaking Jewish readers. Perhaps a few years later the Jews of Jerusalem sent to Egypt a summary in Greek of a historical work also in Greek by Jason of Cyrene about the events of the time of Antiochus IV: this is what we call the Second Book of Maccabees. The dispatch of the book had the purpose of recommending the participation of the Egyptian Jews in the yearly celebration of the festival commemorating the purification of the Temple after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes. Those who fifty years later sent a Greek translation of the Book of Esther from Jerusalem to Egypt had perhaps the similar aim of commending the festival of Purim to the Egyptian Jews. This is an 15 P-o 21: unconnected ... issues, interl.ms[Mom]. P-o 21: But even ... allusion, interl.ms[Mom]. 17 P-o 83: tax collector. -> As I mentioned in my first lecture, pioneer work in comparing the Aramaic translations of the Bible with the Greek translations was done by Zacharias Frankel 150 years ago in order to discover both common trends and differential features in the various sectors of Judaism [FRANKEL 1841]. But for a long time there was limited progress. The newly discovered texts, such as the Neophyti Targum and the Qumran scrolls, have now provided new problems. As substantial agreement in the interpretation of the Bible was necessary to keep together communities which were literally speaking different languages, it will be interesting to see what emerges from impending studies. At the moment we can only assume that this unity was maintained and indicate some of the means by which it was achieved, del. 16 325 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) interesting possibility. Neither the Book of Esther nor the festival it [7] explained gained easy credit among Jews. The Book of Esther is, so far, the only biblical book of which no fragments have been found in the Qumran caves. When Rabbi Meir went to Asia Minor in the early second century A.D. in order to “intercalate" the year he discovered to his surprise that certain communities had no Hebrew text of Esther. As he was a professional scribe and knew his Bible by heart he produced a copy about which no complaint was ever made (Bab. Meg. 18 b; Tos. Meg. II, 5 p. 223 Zuckermandel18; cf. Jer. Meg. 1, 7, 70 d - for another difficulty). Philo does not know - or at least does not mention - the festival of Purim which is connected with the Book of Esther. But in the synagogue of Dura of the third century paintings gave pride of place to the story of Mordechai and Esther. The festival of Purim had by then become acceptable everywhere: a result of the homogenizing influence exercised by the rabbis.19 These continuous and effective contacts raise the question whether we are ultimately justified in postulating a radical opposition between Aramaic-speaking and Greek-speaking Jews. It is easy to visualise on the one side Aramaic speakers who could go back to Hebrew for further inspiration and on the other side Greek speakers for whom Hebrew would only be one of the many incomprehensible languages of the world, but to whom the treasures of Greek culture were wide open. As a model to oppose to the situation of the Jews in medieval and modern Europe, this is correct enough. In later times the Jews living in Christian countries were capable in different degrees of thinking, writing and speaking concurrently in a Semitic and in an Indo-European language. The situation in Arabic countries was of course different20. In nineteenth-century Italy there were still dozens of rabbis - the greatest of whom was of course Samuel Davide Luzzatto - who were at home both in Hebrew and in Italian. Yet Italian Jews have spoken Latin and its derived dialects for more than 2,000 years. 21 The social and political presuppositions [8] which explain the SumerianAssyrian bilingualism or the preservation of Hebrew as second and even first literary language among medieval and modern Indo-European speakers called Jews did not obtain in the Hellenistic world. But men who knew both Greek and Hebrew existed, perhaps more in Palestine than elsewhere: the translator of Ecclesiasticus was one of them; the historian Eupolemus of the second century B.C. was another. It is this situation we must clarify. [Inizio di CL 1977 IV - Jews and Gentiles] Before I start my lecture I should like to say that I have heard only yesterday that Professor Henri Marrou died in Paris about Easter. He was one of the great historians of our time. He remains one of the most striking examples of how a firm religious belief (he was of course a Catholic) can guide historical research without deviating or damaging it. He was also an extraordinary man: courageous and frank in difficult political moments, an authority on troubadours and popular songs, and the most amusing and loyal of friends. [1] 22 IV Jews and Gentiles23 18 P-o 21: 18 b; Tos. Meg. II, 5 p. 223 Zuckermandel, interl.ms[Mom]. P-o 21: a result ... rabbis, interl.ms[Mom]. 20 P-o 21: The situation in Arabic countries was of course different, interl.ms[Mom]. 21 P-o 21: Yet Italian Jews have spoken Latin and its derived dialects for more than 2,000 years", interl.ms[Mom] <-> Two languages radically different in vocabulary and grammatical structure can co-exist and form one culture - as Sumerian and Assyrian show; P-o 21: p. 8 to "It is this situation we must clarify" - Here end of lecture, mginfms[Mom]. Il riferimento è alla c. 24 (originariamente 8) di P-o 32 (Rabbis), l'unico documento che corrisponda ai dati dell'indicazione. Qui e con queste parole termina dunque la CL 1977 Rabbis. La Northcliffe Attitudes proseguiva invece con la trattazione della Sapienza di Salomone (cc. 8-9) che a Chicago, in Jews and Gentiles, sarà spostata nella posizione indicata dall'autore su P-o 21 (cfr. nota infra). 22 P-o 21: da qui, cc. msn1-3, fra c. 7 e c. 10. Per le cc. 8-9, sulla Sapienza di Salomone, cfr. nota infra che segnala il punto di c. 12 dove devono essere inserite. 23 P-o 21: IV - Jews and Gentiles, msb[Mom]. 19 326 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) At this stage of my lectures it should have become clear to my listeners why, in my opinion, the traditional question about what Hellenistic Judaism represented for the origins of Christianity has to give precedence to the question of how Judaism managed to survive under the impact of Greco-Roman civilization. Judaism was the only national culture to survive between the Atlantic Ocean and the river Euphrates. Celts, Phoenicians, Syrians, Aegyptians and other Mediterranean and Micro-Asiatic nations either lost their culture or had it reduced to a shadow of its former self. The Jews were the exception to survive with a resilient and even expanding culture, but their survival is characterized by a complete reconstruction of their religious and social institutions: the survival and the reconstruction conditioned each other and are both unique in quality. The other cultures neither reformed their structures nor survived. Of course Zoroastrianism did survive with a vitality which is comparable with Judaism. But since the middle of the third century B.C. Zoroastrianism was protected by the excellent archery of the Parthian army. It was outside the reach of the Hellenistic phalanx and of the Roman legion. If my research is about what, I suppose, would nowadays be called creative survival, it will no longer appear surprising that Christianity should emerge out of the only culture which stood up against Greeks and Romans. However much the Christians came to diverge from the Jews, their success among the nations depended on the alternative the Jews - and the Jews only -24 had offered to Greco-Roman value, and more explicitly to the claim by the Romans that they were entitled to be served, paid and worshipped. There is nothing new in saying that the reconstruction of Judaism in a Hellenistic milieu expressed itself in the creation of the synagogue, of a complex educational system culminating in the Rabbinic academies and [2] of a new class of political and intellectual leaders, the Rabbis themselves. It is less obvious that the world in which Judaism grew up was on the one side the most unfavourable to the development of any national culture and on the other side the most endowed with institutions and ideas suitable for a nation prepared to defend itself, as the Jewish nation was. The survival of Judaism is therefore also an adaptation to the Greco-Roman world. The GrecoRomans both tried to destroy Judaism and gave it the instruments for survival.25 But not all the Jews lived within the Greco-Roman world. The Jews of Mesopotamia were outside it. And not all the Jews within the Greco-Roman world spoke the same language. Judaism was in fact divided into three zones: that in which Aramaic dialects were normally spoken, with some Iranian dialects as auxiliary language; that in which Aramaic prevailed with Greek as the second language; and that in which Greek prevailed with the Latin as a possible second language. Where Aramaic prevailed, Hebrew remained alive as a written and perhaps spoken language by the intellectual élite; but even there the Bible had to be translated into Aramaic in the synagogues to be understood by the majority. Where Greek prevailed, Hebrew was in danger of dying out, and the Greek translation of the Bible replaced the original text. As I have indicated in the previous lecture, translation played a preeminent part in keeping the Jews united around the Bible: I do not know of any similar phenomenon in Antiquity. With the Bible as unifying element, prayers and - what mattered most - regulations for daily life remained reasonably uniform. A Jew could recognize his own fellow Jews from Seleucia in Mesopotamia to Rome, whatever language they happened to speak. In this vast operation of continuous repair and consolidation the Jews of Palestine were bound to exercise for centuries the most important role not only owing to the prestige of Jerusalem but because Palestine was more genuinely bilingual in Greek and Aramaic, and more abundantly provided with intellectuals in command of Biblical Hebrew, than any other region. As nothing is simple, there were difficulties for the Palestinian Jews in keeping [3] their Greek in working order. Greek was after all the language of paganism, of Greek tax collectors and of Roman governors. The temptation to treat Greek as an enemy language was strong. In emergencies the rabbis of Palestine prohibited the learning of Greek. The prohibition is well attested only for the great rebellions of the time of Trajan and Hadrian (in the relevant text of Mishnah, Sotah 9, 14 the right reading is Quietus, that is the general of Trajan, 24 25 P-o 21: - and the Jews only -, interl.msb[Mom]. P-o 21: The Greco-Romans both tried ... survival, interl.msb[Mom]. 327 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) not Titusiv). The prohibition is more vaguely attestedv in relation to the attack by Pompey against the Temple. What the rabbis meant by this prohibition is difficult to say. Perhaps it was confined to the teaching of < Greek>26 to children. But the fact that in a letter discovered by Y. Yadin at Nahol Heifes one of the officers of Bar Kochba in the rebellion against Hadrian should have to apologize for writing in Greek may well indicate that Greek was altogether discouraged in those years [5] (cf. B. Lifshitz, Aegyptus 42, 1962, 240vi ; see also Tal. Yer. Shabb. 1, 6) 27vii . In any case, the prohibition when it came, can hardly have been lasting and effective. About A.D. 100 the Academy of Gamaliel II had the reputation of bringing together 500 students of the Torah and 500 students of Greek Wisdom (B. Sotah 49 b). The tradition for various reasons is not to be taken literally, but under Hadrian many of these pupils were still alive to transmit knowledge of Greek.28 [10] About 200 the Mishnah allowed a certain number of prayers to be said in any language (Sotah 7, 1) and was altogether sympathetic towards the Greek language. Both the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmud mention a synagogue in Palestinian Caesarea where even the simplest prayer was recited in Greek. One rabbi was disgusted, but another calmed him down with the remark that a prayer in Greek is better than no prayer (Jer. Sot. 7, 1; Bab. Ber. 13 a; Bab. Meg. 17 a). Lexicographers tell us that about the great numbers of29 Greek words penetrated into the language or rather the languages - Hebrew and Aramaic - of the Talmud. Talmudic lexicographers are not very reliable about their etymologies, their statistics and their inferences - but the Greek words are there to be seen - more interestingly.30 Recent research is beginning to sense the influence of Greek on synctactic peculiarities of Mishnaic Hebrew such as the tense system, the function of prepositions and the absolute nominative. In reading the Mishnah a student coming from the Greek of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius feels an impalpable similarity: the same sharp, thrusting dialectics; the same economy of words; and the same lack of well organized argumentation.viii III <II Jews and Gentiles> Greek was not only necessary. It was attractive. There was a rabbi who would have liked to leave it as an ornament to women (T. Jer. Sotah 9, 3). Another, more judiciously, declared Greek most suitable for songs, Latin for war, Syriac for laments, Hebrew for [11] ordinary speech (Jer. Meg. 1, 71, b. 53).31 I am not competent to say what difference it made to a Jew to talk in Aramaic instead of Hebrew - except that he avoided being overheard by the angels, if it is true, as we have it from sound authority (Johanan ben Nappacha, 3 cent., Bab. Shab. 12 b), that the angels do not understand Aramaic. But I can guess some of the consequences of talking Greek. Guesses of this kind have indeed been made before. I shall only give two examples connected with the word Torah, law. The most common Greek translation of Torah was nomos which immediately presented the choice, if 26 Docc.: Hebrew. P-o 21: But the fact that in a letter ... 1, 6) <-> At least one of the Bar-Kochba letters of the early second century clearly indicates that in some circumstances it was easier for a Palestinian to write Greek than Hebrew (B. Lifshitz, Aegyptus 42, 1962, 240). 28 P-o 21: In emergencies the rabbis ... knowledge of Greek, ms. su c. 3 <-> P-o 83: With Greek it was a different matter. In emergencies the rabbis of Palestine prohibited the learning of Greek - that is probably the teaching of Greek to children. The prohibition is well attested for the time of the destruction of the Temple (Sot. 9, 14) and for the [10] rebellion under Hadrian (Y. Shabb. 1, 6; Sotah 9, 14); it is more vaguely attested in relation to the attack by Pompey against the Temple. The prohibition, when it came, can hardly ever been effective. About A.D. 100 - that is between the two best attestated prohibitions - the Academy of Gamaliel II had the reputation of collecting 500 students of the Torah and 500 students of Greek Wisdom (B. Sotah 49 b). The tradition is unreliable for various reasons, but presupposes the vitality of Greek as an academic subject in Palestine. Even ritual objects of the Temple were inscribed in Greek, ds. su cc. 9-10. 29 P-o 21: the great numbers of <-> 2,000, interl.ms[Mom]. 30 P-o 21: Talmudic lexicographers ... interestingly, mgsnms[Mom]. 31 P-o 21: b. 53). -> At least one of the Bar-Kochba letters of the early II century clearly indicates that in some circumstances it was easier for a Palestinian to write Greek than Hebrew (B. Lifshitz, Aegyptus 42, 1962, 240), del. 27 328 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) choice it was, of situating the Torah either in the sphere of political law or in the sphere of the cosmic law. Torah was however basically a form of binding instruction which could be given either by God directly or by priest or by father and mother. Proverbs 4, 1-2 is now translated in the New English Bible: "Listen my sons to a father's instruction, consider attentively how to gain understanding, for it is sound learning I give you; so do not forsake my teaching". What is rendered by "my teaching" in English is ton emon nomon in Greek and toradi in Hebrew - in one of the tenderest sentences of the Bible which the Sayings of the Fathers transferred from the earthly to the heavenly father. In Proverbs 1, 8 the New English Bible has again the same terminology: "Attend my son to your father's instruction and do not reject the teaching of your mother". The Hebrew for the "teaching of your mother" is torat imecha. But the Septuagint seems to hesitate to attribute nomos to a mother and uses thesmous instead. The concept of torah is being split. The [12] chasm between torah and nomos is even more evident when the notion of oral law is introduced. In Rabbinic terminology oral Torah, as opposed to the Pentateuch, is Torah she-be'al pe, approximately the Torah transmitted orally - a Torah, as we know, revealed to Moses, transmitted orally and equally as valid as the written Torah. For Philo torah she-be'al pe become agraphos nomos: the translation was of course not his own, he received it. But agraphos nomos automatically implied notions of Greek philosophy. Before he knew where he was, Philo was turning Yahweh's second revelation into the law of nature - an ideal pattern and model for Moses' written law. With Philo one never knows where the influence of a linguistic tradition ends and the attraction of a specific philosophy begins. Under the influence of the LXX Philo takes logos as the natural equivalent of Hebrew davar as word of god. His logos is a mediating figure between god and man or nature. It is never identical with the logos of either Platonists or Stoics. Yet he uses logos about 1300 times, and it would be a brave man who would exclude Platonic or Stoic undertones in all these 1300 occurrences.32 [8] To confirm this, it is worth taking a closer look at an anonymous writer who seems to have been bilingual: the author of the Wisdom of Solomon. His date is not too certain. He is later than Ecclesiastes (Qohelet) and probably earlier than St. Paul who may or may not have read him. He certainly wrote before the destruction of the Temple. A date in the first century B.C. seems to be right, though it would be difficult to prove. Jerome admired him as a notable stylist in the Greek language and did not find anything Hebrew in him: “Liber qui Sapientia Salomonis inscribitur apud Hebraeos nusquam est, quin et ipse stylus Graecam eloquentiam redolet”33ix. One does not like to have to disagree with St. Jerome in the matter of style. But the Hebraisms of the text are evident, and there is “parallelismus membrorum34”, the mark of Hebrew poetic style. Hebraisms are more profuse in the first five chapters, remain conspicuous in the next five chapters and only become a secondary phenomenon in the last nine chapters. It has therefore been suggested that the first five chapters or possibly the first ten chapters were originally written in Hebrew. A strict proof has never been provided. But a choice presents itself: either a writer translated into Greek some Hebrew chapters and added a few chapters of his own or a writer, moving freely from Hebrew to Greek, was capable of stylistic variations in Greek according to what he had to say. I prefer the second hypothesis. In the first chapters the author attacked sceptics like the Ecclesiastes and therefore [9] might easily be tempted to use a Hebrew style to counteract arguments expressed in Hebrew. In the next seven chapter he was concerned with the good old Hochma (Wisdom) of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiasticus and therefore still had scope for abundant Hebraisms, but he was no longer answering specific Hebrew speakers. In the last chapters he moves to an attack against idolatry – especially Egyptian idolatry; a more sober Greek style might appear preferable. Whether this analysis is correct or not, it seems to me certain that we have here an author who is at home both in Hebrew and in Greek. It is consequently 32 33 34 P-o 21: [pp. 8-9 on Wisdom of Solomon], interl.ms[Mom]. P-o 21: is not to be found in Hebrew: in fact the same style shows [<-> smells of] Greek eloquence, interl.ms[Mom] P-o 21: membrorum <-> verborum, ms[Mom]. 329 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) difficult to say where he found the notion of immortality35, for which his text is the first clear-cut evidence in Jewish thought. He never explicitly speaks of immortality of the soul, though we may stretch 3, 5 to mean that "the souls of the just ... have a sure hope of immortality". He is equally open to more than one interpretation when he states that “God created man for immortality ... it was the devil’s spirit that brought death into the world” (2, 24).36 The idea certainly circulated among Essenes and Pharisees: it just happens that our evidence about them is probably later than the Book of Wisdom. On the other hand our author, who translated Hebrew nephes by psyche, may have got the notion from Plato. What seems to be original in him is the association of the immortality of the soul with Wisdom. “Immortality (he says) is in kinship with Wisdom” (8, 17). He finds in divine retribution after death the answer to the doubts about divine justice expressed by Ecclesiastes. I should not to be surprised to be told that the author of Wisdom was a Palestinian Jew who discussed matters with Hillel. I should be more surprised if his text were shown to have been intelligible and, if intelligible, interesting to a Gentile who had never read Ecclesiastes and did not know Jewish history. [12]37 IV <III Jews Gent.> This brings us to the boundaries of the intellectual and religious relations between Jews and Gentiles. The areas of contact and friendship existed just as much as the areas of friction and enmities. If they had not existed, the Jews would not have been able to live as minorities in the diaspora38. As the latter are better known than the former, let us remember that Jews might pay homage to foreign gods simply as a matter of courtesy in a decent exchange of signs of respect. After all there were Gentiles who sent offerings to the Temple of Jerusalem, and the Jews were naturally proud of this (Joseph. Bell. 2, 412). Since the time of Deutero-Isaiah 56, 7 the sacrifices [13] of Gentiles had been acceptable; and later rabbinic doctrine allowed pagans to build altars and to sacrifice to the Jewish God everywhere (Sifra, Lev. 17, 3 II p. 58 ed. Jerusalem 1975). The second-century B.C. Jewish historian Eupolemus attributed to Solomon the gift of a gold pillar to Hiram King of Tyre for the local temple of Zeus (<723 F 2b> Jacoby): this must be the pillar mentioned by Herodotus 2, 44. Solomon was simply imitating in suitable proportions what many wealthy Jews were in fact doing for the gods of their neighbours in the Hellenistic age. In the second century B.C. Nicetas son of Jason from Jerusalem gave the city of Iasos in Asia Minor a hundred drachmae for the local feast of Dionysus (C. I. Jud. 749). There is probably not much more to the gift of three hundred drachmae sent by the High Priest Jonathan to Tyre for the celebration of sacrifices to Hercules (II Maccab. 4, 18-20). II Maccabees (4, 18-20) tells the story in a hostile spirit which indicates that not everybody agreed with Jonathan. In some cases, no doubt, the Jews tried other gods when the God of the Fathers appeared not to answer. What is perhaps the oldest Greek inscription by a Jew is the by now famous dedication of the Jewish slave Moschos son of Moschion who went to the oracle of Amphiaraus in Boeotia to seek advice about regaining his freedom. About 250 B.C. there must have been very few Jews in Boeotia to warm the heart of the poor slave. In other cases the identification of the real god to whom the dedication was made was left open. Some Jewish sailors in Upper Egypt made dedications in a sanctuary to the god Pan when they had been saved from a shipwreck; they thanked God, and, no doubt, meant Yahveh (A. Bernard, Le Paneion d’El Kanaïs, 1972x, 34; 42). Apostasy39 does not seem to have been common. Tradition preserves very few names of apostates: Dositheus at the end of the third century B.C.; Tiberius Alexander, the nephew of Philo, in the first century A.D. 35 36 37 38 39 P-o 21: immortality -> of the soul, del. P-o 21: He never explicitly speaks ... (2, 24), mgsn e interl.ms[Mom]. P-o 21: il testo riprende su c. 12 dopo l'inserzione delle cc. 8-9. P-o 21: If they had ... diaspora. <-> As the latter are better known than the former, mginfms[Mom]. P-o 21: apostasy -> however, del. 330 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) [14]40 One suspects that far more popular common ground for Jews and Gentiles was magic, from which at least in imperial times it is difficult to separate astrology. The name of Iao – a variant of Yahwe – and other Hebrew names are common in amulets. Origen in Contra Celsum 1, 22 claims that pagans abused the name of the God of Abraham for magic: they could not have done so without Jewish or later Christian co-operation. Pliny (N.H. 30, 11) and Apuleius (Apol. 90) consider Moses a magician; Vettius Valens (II, 28, 96 Kroll) attributed astrological books to Abraham. Abraham was internationally well-known as a master of astrology. On a higher level there may have been art and poetry in common between Jews and Gentiles. Jews shared the pleasure of theatre going. We have the greater part of a tragedy by a poet Ezechiel on the Exodus which is earlier than the first century B:C. Jews and Samaritans wrote poems on their own history. Twenty-four lines survive of a poem on Jerusalem by a Philo who lived before 70 B.C.: the whole poem is said to have filled at least 14 books. A Samaritan called Theodotus answered back with a poem on Schechem of which 47 lines have come down to us. On present evidence the Samaritan was the better poet. We know from archaeology that many Jews had little objection to decorating their houses and their synagogues with human figures or even pagan gods. In the Dura Synagogue King David looks like Orpheus. By chance we know that a famous rhetorician of the late I century B.C., Caecilius of Calacte, was of Jewish extraction. Many Jews were enslaved, and slavery was an avenue to intellectual professions in the Greek and Roman world41. And yet we should not rush to conclusions. It is not unusual for the writing of non-Greeks who accepted Greek as their literary language to be self-conscious. Meleager the Syrian from Gadara in Transjordania even suggested that Homer was a Syrian because [15] according to Syrian sacred rules he did not give fish to eat to his heroes, though the Hellespont is full of fish (Athen. 4, 157 b.). But the self-consciousness of Meleager is different from that of his Jewish neighbours. He talked of Gadara as the new Athens in the Syrian land and recalled another citizen of Gadara, the cynic Menippus. He concluded: “Was I a Syrian? Does it matter? My friend, the world is the fatherland of the mortals and the same chaos generated all men”. We do not find in any Jewish author of the Hellenistic period this engaging combination of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. It is perhaps no accident that no epigram by Jewish poets, as far as I can recollect, found its way into the Greek Anthology. The men of Jerusalem joked in a friendly way about the men of Athens whom they considered less clever than themselves: we have a string of such jokes in the most unlikely place, Midrash Rabbah to Lamentationsxi. But to the best of my knowledge, no Jew ever said that Jerusalem was the real Athens. Circumstances42 did not even favour that particular situation which is familiar to us from other periods of Jewish history when Jews wrote their most serious works in Hebrew and their light literature in whatever language they happened to speak. I do not know in the Hellenistic period of an Immanuel Romano writing Italian poems indistinguishable from ordinary fourteenth-century Italian poetryxii or an Eliah Levita, the great pioneer in the study of the Hebrew text of the Bible, amusing himself and his fellow-Ashkenazis by translating into Yiddish the Italian poem Buono d’Ancona. The absorption by Jews of important forms of Greek expressions was very real, but was not meant to facilitate contacts with non Jews or to transmit non Jewish works to Jews43. It was often meant to reassure the Jews about themselves against the temptations and objections offered by Greek culture. I should like to emphasize this point especially in relation to the indisputable use by Jews of Greek methods of reasoning and interpreting.44 Since the second century B.C., Greek allegorical interpretation had been applied to the Bible. The first Jewish practitioner of allegorical interpretation in the Greek language known to us is Aristobulus of Panion – an authoritative figure in the Egypt of [16] Ptolemy VI. When allegory came to Philo it had already a long tradition behind it. The main purpose of allegory was to 40 41 42 43 44 P-o 161: Northcliffe Lecture III continuation, ms - Reading copy, tsf ms[AMM]. P-o 21: in the Greek and Roman world, interl.ms[Mom]. P-o 21: Circumstances <- Historical, del. P-o 21: or to transmit ... to Jews, interl.ms[Mom]. P-o 21: I should like ... interpreting, interl.ms[Mom]. 331 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) reinforce the confidence of the Jews about the validity of their Bible. It provided a new interpretation of what had become insignificant or objectionable. The purpose of making pagans interested in Jewish texts is, at least in Philo, much less evident. Rabbinic scholars are now refining their methods of studying what in the Midrashic interpretation of the Bible may reflect modes of Greek allegory. They have gone beyond the pioneer essay by Jacob Z. Lauterbach, “The Ancient Jewish Allegorists in Talmud and Midrash” (J.Q.R., N.S. 1, 1910-11, 291; 503). Whatever the historical relation between Philonic allegory and the rabbinic form of spiritual interpretation of the Bible may have been, the purpose was identical - to modernize the message of the Bible for the Jews themselves. The new purpose often implied a radical transformation of what had been borrowed from the Greeks. In the first century B.C. Hillel suddenly introduced seven rules, the so-called middot, for the interpretation of Scripture in legal terms. The rules had success, and others were added by later rabbis. It is not difficult for any of us to sense that there is some relation between these rules and certain categories of Greco-Roman rhetoric. The rule of inference a minori ad maius appears as the first rule of Hillel as kal va-homer. Yet Saul Lieberman (Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 1950, 4682) and David Daube (“Rabbinic Method of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric”, H.U.C.A. 22, 1949, 239-264), who have tried to derive the rabbinic rules from Greek models, have not quite succeeded. Personally I doubt whether, even if each is taken individually, these [17] seven rules have exact parallels in Greco-Latin texts. To the famous rule of the Gezerah Shawah (“equal cut”), analogy of words in two laws, only vague parallels have so far been adduced. Indeed one may well ask whether rhetorical rules were ever used by Hellenistic and Roman jurists to interpret the law. The impression is that Hillel, or somebody else for him, produced something new out of not very perfect information about Hellenistic hermeneutic. His purpose in any case was obviously not discussion with Gentiles, but regulation of internal Jewish controversies. Research on Greek philosophic patterns in Rabbinic texts is now fashionable. The notion of the chain of transmitters, of diadoche, is unquestionably to be found both in Jewish rabbinic schools and in Greek philosophic schools. The Sayings of the Fathers provide obvious parallels for Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers. More specifically Judah Goldin has shown that the celebrated discussion on the “good way for man” in the Sayings of the Fathers 2, 9 is similar in form to the summary of Stoic doctrines in Diogenes Laertius 7, 92 (“A Philosophical Session in a Tannaite Academy”, Traditio 21, 1965, 1-21). In his turn Henry Fischel has to produced some striking Epicurean parallels to rabbinic texts, though I would not go so far as to believe that the passage of the Babylonian Talmud about the four sages who entered Paradise (b. Hagigah 14 b) is based on a misunderstood account of Epicurean experiences by the Four Rabbis. The result, however, is once again to provide the rabbis with patterns of thought for internal consumption. Though there are a few exceptions, the rabbis intended to regulate Jewish life, not to polemize with pagans. The same is basically true for Philo.45 With all these Greek materials the Jewish authors, whether in Greek or in Hebrew or in Aramaic, were [18] building their own castle; and the castle was meant to keep Greek idolatry out.46 <V47> <IV Jews Gent.> One cannot escape the fact that communication between Jews and non-Jews in the Hellenistic world was poor. This is confirmed by the other fact that a considerable portion of what the Jews circulated among pagans was fraudulently attributed to pagan authors: most commonly to wellestablished authorities of the old days. The Sibyls were supposed to have produced prophecies in 45 P-o 21: The same ... Philo, interl.ms[Mom]. P-o 21, 161: own castle; and the castle ... idolatry out; P-o 83: their own castle to defend themselves against the Greeks <-> their own castle - of which the gate was narrow; P-o 21: idolatry out. -> Personally, I am less convinced that the famous seven hermeneutic rules attributed to Hillel have clear Greek models, but if they have, the conclusion must be the same: the models were transformed for internal Jewish consumption, del. 47 IV (per errore). 46 332 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) the Hebrew spirit and with due appreciation of Jewish achievements. In the extant collection of Sibylline poems, Books III and V are of Jewish origin. Book III mainly belongs to the second century B.C., Book V is of early imperial times. Pseudo-Orpheus, pseudo-Phocylides, pseudoSophocles, pseudo-Aratus and even pseudo-Homer and pseudo-Hesiod circulated on Jewish initiative. They could not speak exactly like Jews. The forgers therefore created an artificial syncretism. It seems to me an unnecessary subtlety to doubt that such forgeries were primarily meant for Gentiles. They could be used for the purpose of proselytism or simply to show off: it was nice to have been remembered by Homer. But one may well wonder whether the pagans were impressed. Furthermore, there are signs that some Jews were taken in by what other Jews forged. The allegorist Aristobulus seems to have been one of these credulous Jews. He quoted Pseudo-Homer and PseudoHesiod to prove that the Jewish Sabbath was known to them48. In any case, forgeries have seldom been an instrument for genuine contacts between different groups: they betray unease, if not hostility.49 Few pagans seem to have read the Bible for the purpose of finding out what the Jews thought or believed. Even the philosopher Posidonius, who admired Moses and was interested in the Jewish past and present, never set eyes on the Bible. Anti-Jewish polemists never purchased a copy of the Septuagint. I cannot share [19] the opinion that the first century B.C. anti-Jewish polemist50 Apollonius Molon proves direct knowledge of the Septuagint, Genesis 21, 6, by calling Isaac Gelon ("the laugh"51). To write against the Jews Molon must of course have collected some information somewhere. But if the controversy about the Jews had been based on the Bible, it would have had a different complexion. From time to time scholars think they have found echoes of some biblical passages in Hellenistic writers. Such discoveries have been announced for Theocritus, Callimachus and even Virgil. They have invariably failed to command assent. The first clear quotation of the Bible in a pagan author is still the quotation of a line of Genesis 1 in the Sublime attributed to Longinus and now commonly dated in the first century A.D. But Pseudo-Longinus is himself an enigma. His most obvious literary connection is with the rhetorician Caecilius of Calacte, whom we know to have been a Jew. Eduard Norden was so struck by the isolation of the author of the Sublime that he rather irrationally connected him in Philo’s circle in Alexandria. Wilamowitz practically vetoed the publication of his friend Norden's learned and elaborate phantasy. Norden's paper appeared in the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy after the last war when he and Wilamowitz had long been dead. Before the Sublime, a dubious allusion to the account of creation in Genesis may be found in the treatise on the nature of the world attributed to the Pythagorean Ocellus Lucanus (second or first century B.C.). Even if a few more passages were to turn up showing an acquaintance with the Bible, it would still remain true that no pagan studied Judaism on the basis of authentic texts in order to understand in what ways Jewish thought differed from Greek thought. There was no theological and philosophic discussion between Jews and Gentiles on the level of the later discussions between Christians and Gentiles. It follows that the Jewish interest in Greek philosophy [20] and religion, such as existed, was unilateral. No Hellenistic philosopher thought he had to read the Bible before he sat on his chair to instruct his pupils. The Jews, or certain Jews, took the trouble of seeing where Judaism stood if confronted with Greek philosophy: more Philo of course, than the Palestinian rabbis52. With a writer like Philo it difficult to say whether he ever wrote anything exclusively or principally for pagan readers. He may have done so in some of his treatises which presuppose little or no knowledge of Judaism, such as Quod omnis probus liber or De Abrahamo. However, he never addresses a pagan audience. He 48 49 50 51 52 P-o 83: known to them. -> After all Jews misled Jews by what we call biblical pseudo-epigrapha, del. P-o 21: In any case, forgeries ... hostility, interl.ms[Mom]. P-o 21: the first century ... polemist, interl.ms[Mom]. P-o 21: "the laugh" <-> "the man who laughed", ms[Mom]. P-o 21: more Philo ... rabbis, interl.ms[Mom]. 333 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) never declares the intention of speaking to non Jews.53 Basically Philo argued to reassure himself and his fellow-Jews that what they had learned from their Bible was confirmed by Plato or by Zeno the Stoic. It was again an internal operation to consolidate Judaism.54 Such an enterprise must not be underrated and, as Harry Wolfson so clearly saw, was fraught with immense consequences for the future. The issue was the reconciliation of revelation and philosophy, a process which Philo started and nobody seems to have perfectly concluded. It has also been observed that in the depht of his heart Philo perhaps preferred Abraham, who saw God, but did not receive the whole of the Law, to Moses who brought down the complete Torah from Mount Sinai. One of the curious and unforeseen results of the confrontation of Jewish revelation with Greek philosophy was to emphasize one aspect of Judaism which the rabbis were bound to underrate: the age of the Patriarchs when the true God and the true pattern of religious life had been recognized without the need of a full-dress revelation. Hence the inclination which is characteristic not only of Philo, but of the Wisdom of Solomon and perhaps also of the Fourth Book of Maccabees, to treat Judaism as a mistery to which access is granted through Wisdom. The mystic type of language must not lead us to think that Philo was looking for an Ersatz to the mysteries of Eleusis or of Isis in which [20 bis]55 he was not allowed to take part. Judaism was presented as an initiation to which the ordinary pagan was not admitted. As we know, there have been repeated attempts to connect the Essenes with the Pythagoreans. The most recent is the one to which Isidore Lévy devoted his extraordinary learning and acumenxiii. Isidore Lévy even believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed his opinion. It seems to me that the Dead Sea Scrolls discourage any theory about any connection of any Jewish sect with Pythagoreanism, because they have revealed the deep Jewish roots of such societies. But if we concede for a moment that the Essenes were Pythagoreans in disguise, we should have to conclude that their purpose was to keep the Gentiles out. Even in the account of Josephus, the Essenes appear as extreme supporters of Levitical purity laws. [21] The confrontation between Jewish revelation and Greek philosophy reinforced therefore the tendency, which is conspicuous in the whole of Jewish thought during the Hellenistic age to exclude gentiles qua gentiles but to welcome proselytes56. Abraham himself, in Philo's picture, had been a proselyte of a sort, who had abandoned astrology and polytheism for the knowledge of the true God. According to the Book of Jubilees, a text of the end of the second century B.C., Abraham had even had to learn Hebrew: he learnt it in the six months of the rainy season (Jub. 1211-14). True enough, according to the perhaps better informed Antiquitates Biblicae attributed to Philo, but written after the destruction of the Temple, Abraham had been spared the trouble of learning Hebrew because ha had refused to take part in the building of the tower of Babel: Hebrew had remained his language. However, Abraham was for everybody the protoptype of the pagan who had come to recognize the true God. There were even rabbis who classified Sarah as a daughter of Shem, Hagar as a daughter of Ham and Keturah as a daughter of Japhet: so all the nations stemmed from Abraham (Yal. Shim. 904). We know that in the second century B.C. the Jews could claim ancestral connections in the good Hellenistic manner with Sparta and Pergamum through Abraham (II Macc. 12, 20; Jos. Ant. Jud. 14, 225). Proselytism went together with the emphasis on Abraham. <VI>57 <V Jews Gent.> Proselytism was in fact the only specific situation which transformed the intellectual relations between Jews and Gentiles. Whether the initiative came from Jews or from Gentiles, the issue was 53 P-o 21: He never ... non Jews, interl.ms[Mom]. P-o 21: It was again ... Judaism, interl.ms[Mom]. 55 P-o 21: 20 bis, c. interam. ms[Mom]; il testo che contiene si trova già, in prima stesura, ms[Mom] nel mgsn di c. 21, da dove è stato ricopiato. 56 P-o 83: to exclude gentiles qua gentiles, interl.ms[Mom]. 57 V (per errore). 54 334 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) conversion [22] from polytheism to monotheism.58 I wonder whether acquaintance with the Bible ever attracted pagans to Judaism. We must assume that the Bible – or at least the Books of Moses, the Psalms and perhaps some prophets – played a part in the instruction of proselytes: the proselyte depicted by Juvenalxiv knows the book of Moses. But there remains the question of what first attracted pagans towards Judaism. The little evidence we have seems rather to indicate that pagans would be struck by the Jewish notion of God, by Jewish religious ceremonies and taboos and perhaps by Jewish magic rather than by Jewish legal and prophetic books. No specific effort seems to have been made to write books in order to solve the difficulties of proselytes. Even if we assume that some books of Philo or the Wisdom of Solomon or IV Maccabees were particularly suitable for proselytes, there is nothing to show that they were written either to attract or to confort proselytes59. I can think of only one book which may be considered to aim specifically at the edification of the proselyte. This is the Testament of Job, a Greek text first published by Angelo Maixv, in which scholars have vainly tried to find Christian elements. The book stresses the fact that Job was a pagan who turned to the true God, presents him as an ex-satrap of Egypt under Persian rule (28, 8; cf. 17, 1), and gives pride of place to his daughters. They receive from him phylactery-like objects with long cords which change their hearts and make them speak in angelic language. We are reminded that saintly women play their part in the Jewish-Egyptian society of Therapeutae described by Philo, but we are even more directly reminded that Judaism attracted pagan women, including Nero’s Poppaeaxvi . <VII60> <VI Jews Gent.> If we discount proselytism, there is only one area in which we must admit some continuous communication between Jews and pagans: [23] the area of historiography. There are very good reasons for this. The Jews had their own historical tradition in the Bible, which gave no space worth mentioning to the Greeks before Alexander and never mentioned the Romans. The Greeks and Romans had their own historical tradition which virtually ignored the Jews. It was impossible to coexist – or to quarrel – without at least comparing notes on the past. The reasons, however61, are such as not to modify the essential isolation of the Jews in the pagan world62. Traditionally in the Hellenistic world each nation was supposed to produce some account of its own past for circulation in the wide world of Greek speakers. How the custom originated and developed remains unclear, though we know that it goes back to the fifth century B.C. when Xanthus of Lydia wrote an account of his own national history in Greek. Manetho, the Egyptian; Berossus, the Babylonian; and Fabius Pictor, the Roman, are the schoolbook examples of this tendency in the third century B.C. The genre was intrinsically ambiguous. It was meant to satisfy the curiosity of the natives as much as of the foreigners, in so far as both had Greek education and therefore certain interests suggested by Greek culture. What was intelligible to the native was not necessarily intelligible to the foreigner, even if both had read their Herodotus or their Timaeus, which as we shall see is not our case. 58 P-o 83: But here two points must be made which limit the practical consequences of this attitude. First, I am not aware that [25] Philo - or other writers in Greek such as the authors of the Wisdom of Solomon or of IV Maccabees were particularly inclined to emphasize proselytism or to solve the difficulties of proselytes. Whereas proselytes were a practical concern for Palestinian rabbis, they seem to be only a theoretical category for the more philosophically minded writers in Greek. Secondly I wonder [...]. 59 P-o 161: No specific effort ... to confort proselytes.; P-o 83: This confirms the intellectual isolation of the Jews even when they wrote in Greek about their own faith. 60 V (per errore). 61 P-o 21: There are very good reasons for this ... however <-> There are historical reasons for this, but the reasons. 62 P-o 161: If we discount ... pagan world.; P-o 83: I am left with what is considered to be the area of most continuous communication between Jews and Greeks: the area of historiography. 335 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) The Jews did not fail to contribute to this international literature. As the translation of the Bible into Greek was not regarded as an equivalent of the national histories produced by Manetho and Berossus, the Jews had to do something new. Of all these historical books we have only tiny fragments, except for Flavius Josephus who was one of the very last to write in this tradition. Under Ptolemy IV Philopator (222-205 B.C.) a Jew called Demetrius presented some Jewish history according to the methods of Greek chronography. He was basically an expositor of the Bible. He gave the years from Creation according to the Septuagint text and is therefore our oldest witness for the existence of the [24] Septuagint translation of Genesis. He divided history into epochs: from Adam to the deluge; from Abraham’s birth to Jacob’s arrival in Egypt. In this notion of epochs he anticipated the Book of Daniel which is 40 years later. The notion was pagan – Greek – but not surprising to Jews, as Genesis knows a pre-deluge age, and Chronicles isolate the seventy years of desolation as an epoch. Demetrius’ Greek education is probably confirmed by his rhetorical device of question and answer (aporiai kai lyseis) which, though abundantly used in Midrashic hermeneutics, seems to be of Greek origin. Flavius Josephus, who can have known this Demetrius only at second hand, stupidly identified him with the pagan Demetrius of Phalerum who had lived about a hundred years earlier. Next comes Eupolemus’ work on “The Kings of Judaea”. Eupolemus is firmly dated by one of his fragments (fr. 5) in about 158 B.C. and therefore must probably be identified with the Eupolemus who was an ambassador to Rome on behalf of Judas Maccabaeus in 161. If so, his father had been involved in diplomatic dealings with Antiochus III. His Greek is sufficiently affected by Hebrew syntax to make it certain that the author was brought up on Hebrew and Aramaic. He had much to say about the splendour of Solomon’s Temple and reported letters exchanged between Solomon and fellow-kings: neither chronology nor common sense was respected. When he maintained that the prophet Jeremiah saved the ark from Babylonian looters, he followed a tradition to be found also in the Epistula Jeremiae and in one of the initial letters of II Maccabees. On the other hand the mention of king Astibares of Media in fr. 4 seems to depend on Ctesias. The date of composition, 158 B.C., excludes any probability, if not the possibility that Eupolemus brought his history to Rome when he went as an ambassador there. As we know nothing about a Philo, author of another [25] book on the Kings of Juda, whom Clemens Alexandrinus puts together with Demetrius and Eupolemus, the other author to be considered is Artapanus. He is earlier than circa 70 B.C. because he was read by Alexander Polyhistor. He is famous for making the Egyptians dependent on Jewish instruction. Abraham introduced the Egyptians to astrology, Joseph brought agriculture, and Moses, to be identified with Musaeus and to be considered the teacher of Orpheus, brought in practically everything else from shipbuilding to hieroglyphics and the cult of animals. No wonder that the Egyptians called him Hermes, that is Thot. Though the book is quoted as Iudaika, it was perhaps a biography of Moses with some introduction about the patriarchs. For the moment all I want to say is that Artapanus considered himself a Jew and was obviously familiar with the Pentateuch. Samaritans did not write very different history from Jews. Alexander Polyhistor attributed to Eupolemus a fragment about Abraham which cannot be by him, but obviously comes from a Samaritan author because it makes Abraham and Melchisedek meet on Mount Garizim, the Samaritan sanctuary. Since the same Polyhistor quotes another fragment on Abraham as a specialist in astrology with the remark that it comes from an anonymous author, it is evident that Alexander Polyhistor attributed the first fragment to Eupolemus only by an oversight. All this was seen by Jacob Freudenthal long ago. The author quoted the Bible in the Septuagint version. He too made some attempt to equate Oriental and Greek chronology: he identified the Babylonian Belos with Kronos. Finally, a mysterious Cleodemus Malchus, whom Josephus calls prophetes (Ant. Jud. 1, 260-1), made Hercules marry a granddaughter of Abraham in Libya. I would consider Cleodemus a Jew rather than a Samaritan or a pagan. [26] From one point of view these works certainly contributed to a real debate between Jews and Gentiles – about the length of their respective histories and therefore about priority in civilization. 336 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) The debate is best documented in Josephus’ Contra Apionem, both a contribution to and a summary of such a quarrel. By the end of the third century B.C. the peripatetic polymath Hermippus had already accepted what must have been a Jewish claim that Pythagoras had Jewish masters. The Jews tended to lengthen their past. If the Hebrew Bible puts 1,948 years between Adam and Abraham, the Septuagint increased the interval to 3,334 years which is also the figure to be found in Demetrius. But significantly the Septuagint reduced to 215 years the 430 years in Egypt of Exodus 12, 40. Eupolemus asserted that Moses was the first wise man and imparted the alphabet to the Jews who passed it on to the Phoenicians, from whom it was received by the Greeks. The Jewish claims to superior antiquity were certainly noticed and questioned by pagan historians, especially in Egypt. I shall give only one example, the implications of which do not seem to have been considered. In the first century A.D. that firm opponent of Jewish claims, Apion of Alexandria, stated that Moses had lived in the eighteenth year of Bocchoris’ reign, i.e. 753 B.C. This is intriguing; it makes Moses a contemporary of Romulus, the Exodus contemporary with the foundation of Rome according to the Varronian date. But Apion is silent about Rome; he presents instead the Exodus as contemporary with the foundation of Carthage (Jos. Contra Ap. 1, 17 = 616 F 4 Jac.). In other words Apion accepts Timaeus' synchronization of the foundation of Rome with the foundation of Carthage, transfers it from 814 B.C. to 753 B.C. and thus succeeds in making the two enemies of Rome – Carthage and Judaea – coeval and of course far more recent than Egypt [27] Synchronisms are never insignificant to ancient historians. The battle of dates was backed by documents. A temple culture is always rich in documents. Flavius Josephus adapts to his case a commonplace of Hellenistic historians from Eastern countries when he claims that the Jews, owing to their temple archives, were better documented than the Greeks about their own past. What Josephus did not know or could not say is that temples are not only repositories of documents, but also centres of forgeries. Furthermore, many of the documents circulating in the literature available to him did not even come from temples. They were the product of the free enterprise of historians. The Greek additions to the Book of Esther include forged documents, and Eupolemus forged the correspondence of Solomon with his fellow kings. Forgeries could be interpolated in pagan books of history in order to change their character. Two non-Jewish writers, Hecataeus of Abdera in the late fourth century and Manetho in the early third century, received additions. In the case of Hecataeus it seems that the interpolation amounted to one or two sections on Jews to supplement the not unsympathetic remarks by the author on the Jews. The manipulation of Manetho is more obscure. Manetho’s history of Egypt reached Josephus in a version which seems to have been unknown to other ancient readers of Manetho. The explanation which appeals to me is that the text of Manetho which Josephus read had received both Jewish and anti-Jewish insertions: the anti-Jewish element prevailed. But the matter is dubious. Thus there was some debate on historical matters between Jews and Gentiles. The Jews had to accommodate some Greek history, and the Greek historians had at least to take cognizance of the existence of a Jewish past. While Castor of Rhodes about 60 B.C. still ignored [28] the Jews, Varro made one or two entries about them. For Alexander Polyhistor the synchronism of Moses and Ogygus, the first king of Attica about 1796 B.C., seemed to be an established fact: he wrote before Apion. Alexander Polyhistor is the best example of how the Jews managed to force themselves on the attention of the Gentiles. But how much of this historical work should we know if Alexander Polyhistor had not gone through it in the second part of the first century B.C.? This Greek freedman worked hard in the neighbourhood of Rome in the first century B.C. to compile extracts from historical books about practically all the “barbarian” countries of the known world. He must have provided the information Roman cultivated people wanted about the foreign countries they had conquered or considered conquering. Fittingly enough, Alexander Polyhistor died with his library when his house was burnt down. The Jews were only one of his specialities, and there is really no reason to suspect him as a Jew in disguise. He is quoted as having said that Moses was a woman (273 F 790), though he would certainly only have transmitted somebody else’s opinion. But 337 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) Alexander Polyhistor already imposes a problem. What is significant is the exceptional character of his knowledge. And he would not know about his work about the Jews if it had not interested the Christian Fathers. Even Josephus is only vaguely acquainted with him. The other Jews forgot him. He saved something of a literature which few pagans had read, and he himself was saved from oblivion by the Christians. The fate of Flavius Josephus confirms this situation. He wrote what was perhaps in extension and depth the greatest work in Greek on Jewish history, his twenty books on Jewish Antiquities. He wrote them with the model of Dionysios of Halicarnassus before his eyes and with full knowledge of the methods of Greco-Roman historiography as practised in his century. He wrote mainly for pagans, though he was certainly trying to satisfy the requirements [29] of Jews with a Greek education. He wrote during decades when the Jews were not certain of being able to survive. He was hardly read by the pagans, and he was soon forgotten by the Jews. The Jews who in the Middle Ages became acquainted with him got to know him from Christian readers, the only ones who had constantly remained interested in him. The Jewish historiography meant to interest both pagans and Jews had become interesting to Christians only. Josephus was saved by the Christians as Philo was saved by the Christians.63 The failure to involve pagans in Jewish history confirms the isolation of Jewish-Greek culture in its Hellenic context - before the Christians came in. [30]64 It is furthermore equally evident that there was no effort on the Jewish side to study and understand Greek history. No Jewish text known to me, including Philo and Flavius Josephus, betrays any intimate acquaintance with non Jewish history. The Talmudic texts on Greek and Roman history are notoriously few and inexact, though occasionally very shrewd at defining the reality of Roman power at large. If the confrontation between Greeks and Jews was superficial at the level of philosophy or theology, it was even more superficial at the historical level. The mass of literature involved encourage a different impression65. What clinches the matter is that the Jews themselves appear to be only very moderately interested in their own history - at least after the death of Moses. They lose interest in the history of their kings, never write the history of the Babylonian exile, and are only spasmodically concerned with their more recent past. That the world of the Synagogue is not a world propped up by history needs no demonstration: indeed there is little cause for surprise. We must however establish the precise limits of the interests of the Jews in their own history and correlate them with the function which whatever history was left had in protecting the unhistorical world of the Torah against the claims of Greeks and Romans. To put it in a different way, I suggest for consideration in our final discussion two mutually exclusive propositions. The first says that if you start from the synagogue you will rather end in apocalypse than in history; the second says that the synagogue was meant to save the Jew both from apocalypse and from history. We shall have to decide which of these propositions is correct.66 i KASHER 1927-1995. Per una formulazione più articolata sull’ostilità all'antropomorfismo, cfr. GL 1979 I (Defence), c. 12. iii Il testo riportato in nota risulta eliminato nella nuova versione della lezione, come testimonia la reading copy, e mai ripreso alla lettera. Tuttavia, la continuità e anzi la crescita di interesse per le articolazioni interne del giudaismo è ii 63 P-o 21: Josephus was saved ... Christians, ms. interl. [Mom.]. P-o 21: c. 30 interam. ms. [Mom.]. 65 P-o 21: The mass ... impression <->, though the mass of literature involved may give a different impression, interl.ms[Mom]. 66 P-o 21: It is furthermore equally ... is correct. <-> But we have still to explain why the Jews themselves were only moderately intersted in their own post-Biblical historians. Here we reach the most serious question. I suggest as a subject for our final discussion the proposition that if you start from the synagogue, you will rather end in apocalypse than in history. 64 338 Appendice III Da Attitudes to Foreigners and Visions of the Past (NL 1977 III) a Jews and Gentiles (CL 1977 IV) evidente nella produzione stessa della nuova GL 1982 II (The Sects); vd. ibid., c. 6, per un aggiornamento bibliografico di Momigliano sulla questione (SCHÜRER II; RIVKIN 1978; Aspects of Judaism 1981). iv Vd. GL 1979 IV (Defence), n. vi. In un primo tempo, come testimonia P-o 83 (“The prohibition is well attested for the time of the destruction of the Temple”, cfr. supra, n. 28), Momigliano aveva accolto la lezione "Titus". La ripresa della versione CL 1977 IV in GL 1979 IV (Defence), cap. II, cc. 4-5, presenta rispetto alla NL modifiche riconducibili ad approfondimenti nell'analisi dei documenti (oltre allo spostamento della proibizione al tempo di Traiano e non più a quello di Tito si veda anche la rivalutazione della lettera già attribuita a Bar Kochba). v B. Sot. 49 b. Cfr. GL 1979 IV (Defence), c. 4, v. 5. L'episodio riportato nella Gemara al noto passo mishnaico Sot. 9, 14 (B. Sot. 49 b) riporta un episodio di esecrazione dell'insegnamento del greco riferibile al tempo di Pompeo perché esplicitamente collocato all’epoca del conflitto fra i due figli di Alessandro Ianneo, Aristobulo e Ircano. vi LIFSHITZ 1962. vii La citazione, che ricorre solo qui a c. 11, del passo della lettera in questione (P. Yad. 52 = SB 9843), mostra la perplessità di Momigliano circa il testo proposto dall’editore ai rr. 12-13, διὰ τ[ὸ ὁρ]µὰν µὴ εὑρηθ[ῆ]ναι Ἑβραεστι γ[ρά]ψασθαι (LIFSHITZ 1962), in base alla quale la lettera sarebbe stata scritta in greco perché "on n'a pas eu envie d'écrire en hébreu" (p. 243). Sull'attribuzione della lettera a Bar Kochba stesso (LIFSHITZ 1962, 243-244, che identifica nel nome dello scrivente, Soumaios, la versione greca di Shimon), Momigliano cambia invece parere, come evidente nella modifica del testo riportata in apparato. Resta tuttavia convinto della capacità del suo autore, volendo, di scrivere in ebraico. Di avviso contrario Yadin, che traduce "as we have no one who knows Hebrew", ed è convinto che l’autore della lettera, Soumaios, sia un greco (YADIN 1971, 130). Ancora diversa la posizione di Howard e Shelton, che nel 1973 avevano già proposto una integrazione differente dal διὰ τ[ὸ ὁρ]µὰν di Lifschitz e una conseguente nuova interpretazione del testo, a loro parere scritto in greco (non da Bar Kochba) per irreperibilità dell'unico scriba in grado di farlo in ebraico: "because [Her]mas could not be found to write in Hebrew" (HOWARD - SHELTON 1973). Momigliano non parrebbe comunque incline a letture riduttive circa la conoscenza dell'ebraico fra gli uomini di Bar Kochba (per ulteriori discussioni sulla lettera, cfr. HESZER 2001, part. alle pp. 277 ss.; per una bibliografia essenziale sulle lettere, vd. LEWIN 2001, 218 n. 16). viii La ripresa in GL 1982 I (Jews and Gentiles), cap. II, c. 8 segue una più sintetica considerazione circa l'influenza linguistica. ix Vd. GL 1979 IV (Defence), n. xxix. x Vd. GL 1982 I (Jews and Gentiles), n. xi. xi Vd. GL 1982 I (Jews and Gentiles), n. iv. xii Vd. GL 1982 I (Jews and Gentiles), n. vi. xiii Vd. GL 1982 I (Jews and Gentiles), n. xxiii. xiv Vd. GL 1982 I (Jews and Gentiles), n. xxv. xv Vd. GL 1982 I (Jews and Gentiles), n. xxvi. xvi Vd. GL 1982 I (Jews and Gentiles), n. xxvii. 339 Bibliografia Bibliografia ABEL, E. 1968 Abel., E.L., The myth of Jewish slavery in Ptolemaic Egypt, in REJ 127 (1968) 253-8 ABEL, F. 1931 Abel, F.-M., [recensione a:] Momigliano, A., Prime linee di storia della tradizione maccabaica, Roma 1930, RB (1931), 116-119 ID. 1946 Abel, F.-M., Hellénisme et orientalisme en Palestine au déclin de la période séleucide, RBi 53 (1946), 385-402 ID. 1949 Abel, F.-M., Les Livres des Maccabées, Paris 1949 ABRAHAMS 1917-1924 Abrahams, I., Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, 2 v., Cambridge 1917-1924 ID. 1926 Hebrew Ethical Wills,selected and edited with an introduction by I. Abrahams, Philadelphia 1926 (2. Ed. with a new foreword by J. Goldin, Philadelphia 1976) ABRAMSONAbramson, G.-Parfitt, T. (edd.), Jewish Education and Learning, Chur 1994 PARFITT 1994 ACHTEMEIER 2003 Achtemeier, P. J. (ed.), Il dizionario della Bibbia, ed. it. a c. di P. Capelli, Bologna 2003 ACKROYD 1953 ID.1968 Ackroyd, P. R., Criteria for the Maccabean Dating of O. T. Literature, VT 3 (1953), 113-132 ID. 1970 Ackroyd, P. R., Israel under Babylon and Persia, Oxford 1970 ADAMS 2003 Adams, J. N.-Janse, M.-Swain, S. (ed.), Bilingualism in Ancient Society, Oxford 2002 AFRICA 1961 Africa, T. W., Aristonicus, Blossius, and the City of the Sun, IRSH 6 (1961), 110-124 ALEXANDER, P. J. 1967 Alexander, P. J., Oracle of Baalbek: The Tiburtine Sibyl in Greek Dress, Washington 1967 ALEXANDER, P.S. 1990 Alexander, P. S., Quid Athenis et Hierosolymis? Rabbinic Midrash and Hermeneutics in the GrecoRoman World, in A Tribute to Geza Vermes: Essays on Jewish and Christian Literature, ed. P. R. Davies and R. T. White, Sheffiel 1990, 101-124 ALLO 1933 Allo, E. B., Saint Jean, l’Apocalypse, texte, trad. et comm., 4. ed., Paris 1933 ALON 19801984 Alon, G., The Jews and Their Land in the Talmudic Age, 2 v., Jerusalem 1980-1984 Ackroyd, P. R., Exile and Restoration, London 1968 ALTHEIM 1956 Altheim, F., Römische Religiongeschichte, 2 v., 2. ed., Berlin 1956 ALTMAN 1963 Altman, A. (ed.), Biblical and Other Studies, Cambridge 1963 ANDERSON– Anderson, A. J. O.-Dibble, C. (edd.), Florentine Codex: History of the Things of New Spain, transl. and. DIBBLE 1950- ed., 13 voll., Salt Lake City 1950-1982 82 APPLEBAUM Applebaum, S., Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene, Leiden 1979 1979 ARENHOEVEL 1967 Arenhoevel, D., Die Theokratie nach dem 1. und 2. Makkabäerbuch, Mainz 1967 340 Bibliografia ARNDTGINGRICH 1957 Arndt, W. F. – Gingrich, F. W. (edd.), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Chicago 1957 ASSMAN 1998 Assman, J., Moses the Egyptian: the memory of Egypt in western monotheism, Cambridge 1998 (trad. it. Milano 2000) ATTRIDGE 1984 Attridge, H. W., Josephus and His Works, in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, ed. M. E. Stone, Assen 1984 AUERBACH 1962 Auerbach, E., Der Aufstieg der Priesterschaft zur Macht im alten Israel, VTS 9 (1962), 236-249 AUSCHER 1967 Auscher, D., Les relations entre la Grèce et la Palestine avant la conquête d’Alexandre, VT 17 (1967), 8-30 AVERINCEV Averincev, S. S., Atene e Gerusalemme. La Grecia come letteratura, il mondo ebraico come tradizione, 1994 trad. it. Roma 1994 AVIGAD 1951 Avigad, N., The Rock-Carved Facades of the Jerusalem Necropolis, IEJ 1 (1950-1951) ID. 1954 Avigad, N., Early Tombs in the Kidron Valley, Jerusalem 1954 [ebraico] ID. 1976 Avigad, N., Beth She’arim 3, New Brunswick (NJ) 1976 ID. 1980 Avigad, N., Discovering Jerusalem, Jerusalem 1980 AVI-YONAH 1961 Avi-Yonah, M., Oriental Art in Roman Palestine, Roma 1961 ID. 1975 Avi-Yonah, M., Une école de mosaïque à Gaza au VIe siècle, in Colloque international pour l’étude de la mosaïque classique, 2 : La mosaïque romaine, Paris 1975 ID. 1976 Avi-Yonah, M., The Jews of Palestine: A Political History from the Bar Kokhba War to the Arab Conquest, New York 1976 BAER 1968 Baer, Y., The Persecution of Monotheistic Religion by Antiochus Epiphanes, Zion 33 (1968), 101-124 (ebraico) BAGNALL – Bagnall, R.S., – Derow, P., Greek Historical Documents: the Hellenistic Period, Chico (Cal.) 1981 DEROW 1981 BALL 1913 Ball, C.J., Epistle of Jeremy, in The Apocrypha and Pseudoepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. R.H. Charles, II voll., Oxford 1913 BAMMEL 1953 Bammel, Zum jüdischen Märtyrerkult, ThLZ 78 (1953), 119-126 BARAG 1987 Barag, D., A Silver Coin of Yohanan the High Priest and the Coinage in Judea in the Fourth Century B.C., INJ 9 (1986-1987), 4-21 ID.1992 Barag, D., A Coin of Bagoas with a Representation of God on a Winged-Wheel, Qadmoniot 25 (1992), 97-99 [ebraico] BARCLAY 1988 Barclay, J. M. G., Obeying the Truth: a study of Paul’s ethics in Galatians, Edinburgh 1988 ID. 1992 Barclay, J. M. G., Thessalonica and Corinth: social contrasts in Pauline Christianity, JSNT 47 (1992), 49-72 ID. 1996 Barclay, J. M. G., Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: from Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE-117 CE), Edinburgh 1996 (trad. it.: Diaspora. I giudei nella diaspora mediterranea da Alessandro a Traiano, Brescia 2004) ID. 1998 Barclay, J. M. G., Paul and Philo on circumcision, NTS 44 (1998), 536-556 ID. 2002 Barclay, J., Apologetics in the Jewish Diaspora, in Bartlett 2002, 129-148 341 Bibliografia ID. 2002 Barclay, J. M. G., Flavio Giuseppe e i conflitti culturali nell’antichità, Quaderni del Dip. di Filologia A. Rostagni, Torino 2002, 29-45 BARDON 1952- Bardon, H., La littérature latine inconnue, Paris 1952-6 56 BAR-KOCHVA Bar-Kochva, B., Pseudo-Hecataeus “On the Jews”: Legitimizing the Jewish Diaspora, Berkeley 1996 1996 BARN 1956 Barn, J.W., “Egypt and the Greek Romance”, Akten des VII Int. Kongr. für Papyrologie, Mitteilungen aus der Papyrussamlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, 5 (1956), 29-36 BARON 1952- Baron, S. W., A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 18 v., New York 1952-1983 1983 BARON 1964 Baron, S., History and Jewish Historians: Essays and Addresses, Philadelphia 1964, 23-42 [su L. Finkelstein], 322-343 [su L. Herzfeld] BARR 1974 Barr, J., ‘Philo of Biblos and his Phoenician History’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 57, 1974, 17-68 BARTHÉLEMY Barthélemy, D., Redécouverte d’un chaînon manquant de l’histoire de la Septante, RB 60 (1953) 18-29 1953 BARTLETT 2002 Bartlett, J. R. (ed.), Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities, London-New York 2002 (rec.: Robinson 2003) BARTON 1968 Barton, J., Oracles of God : Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy in Israel after the Exile, London 1968 BASSER 2000 Basser, H. W., Studies in exegesis. Christian critiques of Jewish Law and Rabbinic responses, 70-300 C.E., Leiden 2000 BAUCKHAM 1995 Bauckham, R. (ed.), The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting 4: The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting, Grand Rapids 1995 BAUMSTARK 1927 Baumstark, A., Wege zum Judentum des neutestamentlichen Zeitalters, BZTS 4 (1927), 24-34 ID. 1931 Baumstark, A., Pešīṭtā und palästinische Targum, BZ 19, 1931, 257-70 BECK 2003 Beck, R., Zoroaster, as perceived by the Greeks (2003), Encyclopaedia Iranica BEER 1916 Beer, G., Die Entstehung des Judentums. Das Frühjudentum (430-200). Das Spätjudentum (200-63). Der Untergang des jüdischen Gemeinwesens (63 v. bis 135 n. Chr.), capp. 10-13 s.v. Juda und Israel, in RE, vol. 9.2, Stuttgart 1916, coll. 2428-2458 BELKIN 1940 Belkin, S., Philo and the Oral Law, Cambridge Mass. 1940 BELOCH 1893- Beloch, K.J., Griechische Geschichte, 3 voll., 1893 – 19041; 2. ed. Berlin – Leipzig 1922 – 1927 (rist. 1904 Berlin 1967) BENGTSON 1988 Bengtson, H., History of Greece: From the Beginning to the Byzantine Era, transl. and updated by E. F. Bloedow, Ottawa 1988 BENTZEN 1952 Bentzen, A., Daniel, 2. ed., Tübingen 1952 ID. 1970 Bentzen, A., King and Messiah, 2. ed., Oxford 1970 (ed. orig.: Zürich 1948) BENVENISTE 1932 Benveniste, E., Une apocalypse Pehlevie: le Zamasp – Namak, RHR (106) 1932, 337-80 ID. 1966 Benveniste, E., Relations lexicales entre la Pere et la Grèce ancienne, in La Persia e il mondo grecoromano, Atti del Convegno Acc. dei Lincei, Roma 1966, 479-85 342 Bibliografia BERCHMAN 2005 Berchman, R.M., Porhypry Against the Christians, Leiden – Boston 2005 BERNARD 1972 Bernard, A., Le Paneion d’El Kanaïs: les inscriptions grecques, Leiden 1972 BERNAYS 1866 Bernays, J., Theophrastos’ Schrift über Frömmigkeit, Berlin 1866 BERTI 1987 Berti, S., Introduzione a A. Momigliano, in Pagine ebraiche, Torino 1987, IX-XXV ID. 1988A Berti, S., Autobiografia, storicismo e verità storica in Arnaldo Momigliano, RSI 100. 2 (1988), 297-312 ID. 1988B Berti, S., Gli insegnamenti di Federico Chabod, Belfagor 43.2 (1988), 423-439 BERTRAM 1935 Bertram, G., Der Hellenismus in der Urheimat des Evangeliums, Archiv fuer Religionswissenschaft 32 (1935), 265-281 ID. 1942 Bertram, G., Josephus und die abendländische Geschichtsidee, in W. Grundmann, Germanentum, Christentum und Judentum, Leipzig 1942, v. 2, 41-84 BEVAN 1928 Bevan, E., Sibyls and Seers, London 1928 BICHLER 1983 Bichler, R., Hellenismus: Geschichte und Problematik eines Epochenbegriffs, Darmstadt 1983 ID. 1991 Bichler, R., Über die Geschichte des Hellenismus-Begriffs in der Deutschen Historiographie, in Said 1991 BICKERMAN 1927 Bickerman, E. J., Ritualmoral und Eselskult, MGWJ 71 (1927), 171-187 e 255-264 ID. 1928 Bickerman, E. J., Makkabäerbücher, I-III, RE XIV.1 (1928), coll. 779-800 ID. 1930 Bickerman, E. J., Zur Datierung des Pseudo-Aristeas, ZNTW 29 (1930), 280-298 ID. 1933 Bickerman, E. J., Ein jüdischer Festbrief vom Jahre 124 v. Chr., ZNTW 32 (1933), 233-254 ID. 1935A Bickerman, E. J., Die Makkabäer. Eine Darstellung ihrer Geschichte von den Anfängen bis zum Untergang des Hasmonäerhauses, Berlin 1935 (trad. ingl.: The Maccabees. An account of their history from the beginnings to the fall of the house of the Hasmoneans, New York 1947 = Bickerman 1962, 91186) ID. 1935B Bickerman, E. J., La Charte Séleucide de Jérusalem, REJ 100 (1935), 4-35 ID. 1937 Bickerman, E. J., Der Gott der Makkabäer, Berlin 1937 (trad. ingl.: The God of the Maccabees, Leiden 1979) ID. 1937 Bickerman, E. J., Un document relatif à la persécution d’Antiochos IV Epiphane, RHR 115 (1937), 188223 ID. 1939 Bickerman, E. J., Sur une inscription grecque de Sidon, in Mélanges syriens offerts à M. R. Dussaud, I, Paris 1939, 91-99 ID. 1944A Bickerman, E. J., Héliodore au Temple de Jérusalem, AIPhO 7 (1939-1944), 5-40 ID.1944B Bickerman, E. J., The Colophon of the Greek Book of Esther, JBL 63 (1944), 339-362 ID. 1945 Bickerman, E., The date of Fourth Maccabees, in Louis Ginsberg Jubilee Volume, English Section, New York 1945, 105-122; rist. in Bickerman, E., Studies in Jewish and Christian History, 3 voll., Leiden 1976-1986, vol. 1, 275-281; new ed. in Engl., includ. The God of the Maccabees, intr. by M. Hengel, ed. by A. Tropper, 2 voll., Leiden 2007 ID. 1948 Bickerman, E. J., Une proclamation séleucide relative au temple de Jérusalem, Syria 25 (1946-1948), 67-85 343 Bibliografia ID.1949 Bickerman, E. J., The Historical Foundations of Post-Biblical Judaism, Finkelstein Bd. I., 1955 2. ed., pp. 70-114 (1. ed.: 1949; 2. ed., =Bickerman 1962, 1-90) ID. 1950 Bickerman, E. J., The Date of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, JBL 69 (1950), 245-260 ID.1951A Bickerman, E. J., Notes on the Greek Book of Esther, PAAJR 20 (1951), 101-133 ID. 1951B Bickerman, E.J., The Maxim of Antigonus of Soko, HTR 1952, 153-165 ID.1952A Bickerman, E.J., La chaîne de la tradition pharisienne, RB 49 (1952), 44-54 ID. 1952B Bickerman, E. J., Sur la chronologie de la sixième Guerre de Syrie, CE 27 (1952), 396-403 ID. 1952C Bickerman, E. J., La chaîne de la tradition pharisienne, RBi 59 (1952), 44-54 ID.1962 A Bickerman, E. J., From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees. Foundations of Post-Biblical Judaism, New York 1962 (riunisce, in trad. ingl., The Historical Foundations of Post-Biblical Judaism, Finkelstein Bd. I., 1955 2. ed., pp. 70-114 (1. ed.: 1949); Die Makkabäer. Eine Darstellung ihrer Geschichte von den Anfängen bis zum Untergang des Hasmonäerhauses, Berlin 1935 – 1. trad. ingl.: The Maccabees. An account of their history from the beginnings to the fall of the house of the Hasmoneans, New York 1947) ID. 1962B Bickerman, E. J., The Civic Prayer for Jerusalem, in Harvard Theological Review 55, 1962, 163-85 ID. 1963 Bickerman, E.J., A propos d’un passage de Chares de Mitilène, in La parola del passato 91, 1963, 24355 ID. 1967A Bickerman, E. J., Four Strange Books of the Bible, New York 1967 ID. 1967B Bickerman, E., [rec. a] Goodenough, E., Jewish Symbols in the Graeco-Roman Period, 13 v., New York 1953-1968, Syria 44 (1967), 131-161 ID.1988 Bickerman, E. J., The Jews in the Greek Age, Cambridge 1988 BICKERMANSMITH 1979 Bickerman, E. J.-Smith, M., The Ancient History of Western Civilization, New York 1979 BLACK 1961 Black, M., The Scrolls and Christian origins : studies in the Jewish background of the New Testament, Chico (Cal.) 1961 ID. 1970 Black, M., Apocalypsis Henochi Graece, Leiden 1970 BLASSDEBRUNNER 1990 Blass, F. – Debrunner, A., Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, 17. Aufl. bearb. von R. Rehkopf, Göttingen 1990 (1. ed. 1976) BLENKINSOPP Blenkinsopp, J., A history of prophecy in Israel : from the settlement in the land to Hellenistic period, 1984 London 1984 BOHAK 2002 Bohak, G., Ethnic Continuity in the Jewish Diaspora in Antiquity, in Bartlett 2002, 175-192 BÖHL 1914 Böhl, F. M. T., Die Juden im Urteil der griechischen und römischen Schriftsteller, ThT 48 (1914), 371389 e 473-498 BOKSER 1984 Bokser, B. M., The origins of the Seder : The Passover rite and early rabbinic Judaism, Berkeley 1984 ID. 1984 Bokser, B., The Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism, Berkeley 1984 BONGARD LEVIN, MARCONE 1995 – “Ora devo cercare di vivere”. Una richiesta di aiuto da Momigliano a Rostovtzeff, a c. di G. BongardLevin e A. Marcone, Athenaeum 83 (1995), 510-512 BOUSSET 1906 Bousset, W., Die Offenbarung Johannis. Kritisch-exegetisches Kommentar, 5. ed., Göttingen 1906 344 Bibliografia ID. 1926 Bousset, W., Die Religion der Judentums im späthellenistischen Zeitalter, 3. ed. a c. di H. Gressmann, Tübingen 1926 ID. 1926 Bousset, W., Die Religion des Judentums im späthellenistischen Zeitalter, 3. ed., Tübingen 1926 BOWENLactantius, Divine Institutes, tr. with an introduction and notes by A. Bowen and P. Garnsey, Liverpool GARNSEY 2003 2003 BOWERSOCK 1990 ID. 1991 Bowersock, G. W., Hellenism in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 1990 Bowersock, G.W., Momigliano’s Quest for the Person, in The Presence of the Historian: Essays in memory of Arnaldo Momigliano,ed. by M. P. Steinberg, H&Th Beiheft 30, Middletown 1991, 27-36 BOWKER 1973 Bowker, J., Jesus and the Pharisees, Cambridge 1973 BOWMAN 1975 Bowman, J., The Samaritan problem : studies in the relationship of Samaritanism, Judaism, and early Christianity, Pittsburgh 1975 (ed. orig.: Samaritanische Probleme : Studien zum Verhältnis von Samaritanertum, Judentum und Urchristentum, 1967) BOWMAN 1977 Bowman, J. (ed.), Samaritan documents : relating to their history, religion and life, Pittsburgh 1977 BRAUN, M. 1938 Braun, M., History and Romance in Graeco-Oriental Literature, Oxford 1938 BRAUN, R. 1973 Braun, R., Kohelet und frühhellenistische Populärphilosophie, Berlin 1973 BRAVERMAN Braverman, J., Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel, Washington 1978 1978 BRECCIA 1927 Breccia, E., Juifs et Chrétiens de l’ancienne Alexandrie: conférence donnée au siège de l’Organisation sioniste le 18 avril 1927, Alexandrie 1927 BRIGHT 1959 Bright, J., A History of Israel, Philadelphia 1959 BROCK 1972 Brock, S. P., The Phenomenon of the Septuagint, OTS 17 (1972), 11-36 ID. 1997 Brock, S.P., A Brief Outline of Syriac Literature, Baker Hill, Kottayam 1997 ID. 2006 Brock, S.P., An Iintroduction to Syriac Studies, Piscataway NJ 2006 BROOKE 1985 Brooke, G. J., Exegesis at Qumran : 4Q florilegium in its Jewish context, Sheffield 1985 BROOTEN 1982 Brooten, B. J., Women leaders in the ancient Synagogue : inscriptional evidence and background iussues, Chico (Cal.) 1982 BROSHI 1974 Broshi, M., The Expansion of Jerusalem in the Reigns of Hezekiah and Manasseh, IEJ 24 (1974), 21-26 ID. 1978 Broshi, M., Estimating the Population of Ancient Jerusalem, BAR 4/2 (1978), 10-15 BROWN 1988 Brown, P., Arnaldo Dante Momigliano, 1908-1987, PBA 74 (1988), 405-42 BRÜHL 1977 Brühl, N., Das apokryphische Susanna-Buch, in Jahrbücher für Jüdische Geschichte und Literatur 3 (1977) 1-69 BRÜNE 1913 Brüne, B., Flavius Josephus un seine Schriften in ihrem Verhältnis zum Judentume, Gütersloh 1913 BUBER 1960 Buber, M., The prophetic faith, New York 1960 ID. 1961 Buber, M., Two types of faith, New York 1961 BUCHANAN Buchanan, G. W., The consequences of the Covenant, Leiden 1970 345 Bibliografia 1970 BÜCHLER 1922 Büchler, A., Types of Jewish-Palestinian piety from 70 B. C. E. to 70 C. E. : the ancient pious men, London 1922 ID. 1922-1924 Büchler, A., Ben Sira’s Conception of Sin and Atonement, JQR N.S. 13 (1922-1923), 303-335; 461-502; 14 (1923-1924), 55-83 BUDDE 1905 Budde, K., Die Religion des Volkes Israel bis zur Verbannung, 2. wohlf. Ausg., Giessen 1905 BULL – Bull., R.J. – Wright, G. E., Newly Discovered Temples on Mt. Gerizim in Jordan, HThR 58 (1965), 234WRIGHT 1965 37 IDD. 1968 Bull., R.J. – Wright, G.E., The Excavation of Tell el Ras on Mt. Gerizim, BA 31 (1968), 58-72. BUNGE 1971 Bunge, J. G., Untersuchungen zum zweiten Makkabäerbuch, Bonn 1971 BURCHARD 1965 Burchard, C., Untersuchungen zu Joseph und Aseneth, Tübingen 1965 BURESCH 1889 Buresch, K., Klaros. Untersuchungen zum Orakelwesen de späteren Altertum, Leipzig 1889 BURKITT 1914 Burkitt, F. C., Jewish and Christian Apocalypses, London 1914 BURSTEN 1989 Burstein, S.M., Agatharchides of Cnidus, on the Eythraean Sea, London 1989 BYATT 1973 Byatt, A., Josephus and Population Numbers in First Century Palestine, PEQ 105 (1973), 51-60 CADBURY 1955 CAIRD 1966 Cadbury, H. J., The Grandson of Ben Sira, HThR 48 (1955), 219-225 CAMERON 2014 Cameron, Av., Momigliano and Christianity, in WARBURG COLL. 2014, 107-127 Caird, G. B., A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine, with. transl., London 1966 CANFORA 1967 Canfora, L., Formazione del corpus demostenico e primi inventari, Padova 1967 ID. 1974 Canfora, L., Discorsi e lettere di Demostene, Torino 1974 ID. 1987 Canfora, L., Ellenismo, Roma-Bari 1987 ID. 1989 Canfora, L., L’”Ellenismo” di Momigliano, StudStor 30, 1 (1989), 53-58 CAPELLI 2002 Convegno: Saggezza straniera. Roma e il mondo della Bibbia (Bibbia, Ebrei e Oriente greco-romano dal I sec. av. e. v. al III sec. e. v.), Verbania Intra, 31 gennaio-3 febbraio 2002, presentato da P. Capelli, http://www.biblia.org CARDASCIA 1951 CARDAUNS 1967 Cardascia, G., Les Archives des Murasû, Paris 1951 Cardauns, B., Juden und Spartaner, Hermes 95 (1967), 317-324 CASSUTO 1973 Cassuto, U., Biblical and oriental studies, 2 v., Jerusalem 1973 CAVAGLION 1988 Cavaglion, A., Felice Momigliano (1866-1924). Una biografia, Bologna 1988 CAVALLO 2008 Cavallo, G., La scrittura greca e latina dei papiri, una introduzione, Pisa – Roma 2008 CAVALLO – MAEHLER 2008 Cavallo, G. – Maehler, H., Hellenistic Bookhands,Berlin – New York 2008 346 Bibliografia CERVELLI 1989 Cervelli, I., L'ultimo Momigliano: costanti e variabili di una ricerca, StudStor 30, 1 (1989), 59-104 CERBELAUD 2002 Cerbelaud, D., Bulletin d’études juives et judéo-chretiennes: judéo-christianisme antique, dialogue judéo-chrètien actuel, RSPh 86 (2002), 123-144 CHARLES 1912 Charles, R. H., The Book of Enoch, Oxford 1912 ID. 1920 Charles, R. H., A critical and exegetical commentary on the Revelation of St. John, with introduction, notes, and indices, also the Greek text and English translation, 2 v., Edinburgh 1920 ID. 1929 Charles, R. H., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Oxford 1929 CHARLESWORT Charlesworth , J. H. (ed.), John and Qumran, London 1972 H 1972 ID. 1980 Charlesworth, J. H., The Origins and Subsequent History of the Authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Four Transitional Phases among the Qumran Essenes, RQ 10 (1980), 213-233 ID. 1983-1985 Charlesworth, J. H. (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments; 2: Expansions of the “Old Testament” Legend, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms and Odes, Fragments of lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works, London 1983-1985 CHERNISS 1945 Cherniss, H., The Riddle of the Early Academy, Berkeley 1945 CHRIST 1988 Christ, K., Arnaldo Momigliano e la storiografia tedesca dell’antichità, RSI 100. 2 (1988), 313-325 CII Frey, J. B., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum, Roma 1936-1952 CLEMENTS 1978 Clements, R. E., Prophecy and tradition, Atlanta 1978 CLOCHÉ 1939 Cloché, P., A propos d’un chapitre de Polybe, AC 8 (1939), 361-70. CODY 1969 Cody, A., A history of Old Testament priesthood, Rome 1969 COGGINS 1975 Coggins, R. J., Samaritan and Jews : the origins of Samaritanism reconsidered, Oxford 1975 COHEN, B. 1966 COHEN, G. 1991 ID. 1994 Cohen, B., Jewish and Roman Law: A Comparative Study, New York 1966 COHEN, H. 1910 Cohen, H., Innere Beziehungen der Kantischen Philosophie zum Judentum, in Bericht der Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin 28 (1909), Berlin 1910 COHEN, S. 1981 Cohen, S. J. D., Patriarchs and Scholarchs, PAAJR 48 (1981), 57-85 ID. 1984 Cohen, S. J. D., The Significance of Javneh, HUCA 55 (1984) 27-53 ID. 1985 Cohen, S. J. D., The Origins of the Matrilinear Principle in Rabbinic Law, AJS Review 10 (1985), 19-53 ID. 1987 Cohen, S. J. D., From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, Philadelphia 1987 ID. 1999 Cohen, S. J. D., The Temple and the Synagogue, in CHJ III – The Early Roman Period, ed. by W. Horbury, W.D. Davies, J. Sturdy, Cambridge 1999, 298-325 Cohen, G. D., Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures, New York 1991 Cohen, G. D., The Blessing of Assimilation, in Great Jewish Speeches throughout History, ed. S. Forman, North Vale (NJ) 1994, 183-191 COHEN, S.Cohen, S. J. D.-Frerichs, E. S. (edd.), Diasporas in antiquity, Atlanta 1993 FRERICHS 1993 347 Bibliografia COLLINS 1973 Collins, J. J., The Provenance of the Third Sibylline Oracle, Bulletin of the Institute of Jewish Studies 2 (1974), 1-18 ID. 1974 Collins, J. J., The Sibylline Oracles of Egyptian Judaism, Missoula 1974 ID. 1975A Collins, J. J., Jewish Apocalyptic against Its Hellenistic Near Eastern Environment, BASOR 220 (1975), 27-36 ID. 1975B Collins, J. J., The Court Tales in Daniel and the Development of Jewish Apocalyptic, JBL 94 (1975), 218-234 ID. 1977 Collins, J. J., The Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, Missoula 1977 ID. 1983 Collins, J. J., Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora, New York 19831 (Gran Rapids 19992, ed. accr. di 70 pp.) ID. 1984 Collins, J. J., The apocalyptic imagination: an introduction to the Jewish matrix of Christianity, New York 1984 ID. 1987 Collins, J. J., The Development of the Sibyilline Tradition, in ANRW II. Principat, XX, 1, Berlin 1987, 421-459 ID. 1997 Collings, J. J., Seers, Sibyls and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism, Leiden 1997 COLLINS, A. Y. Collins, A. Y., The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation, Missoula 1976 1976 ID., A. Y. 2000 Collins, A. Y., Cosmology and eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism, Leiden 2000 COLPE 1967 C. Colpe, Jüdisch-hellenistische Literatur, in Der kleine Pauly, vol. 2, Stuttgart 1967, coll. 1507-1512 CORNELL 1988 Cornell, T., Arnaldo Momigliano (1908-1987), RSI 100. 2 (1988), 326-333 COWLEY 1923 Cowley, A. (ed.), Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C., Oxford 1923 CRACCO Cracco Ruggini, L., Arnaldo Momigliano: lo storico antico che ha trasformato "le fonti in vita del RUGGINI 1989A passato", StudStor 30, 1 (1989), 105-127 ID. 1989B Cracco Ruggini, L. (ed.), Omaggio ad Arnaldo Momigliano. Storia e storiografia nel mondo antico, Como 1989 CRENSHAW 1971 CROSS 1958 Crenshaw, J. L., Prophetic conflict : its effect upon Israelite religion, Berlin 1971 ID. 1963 Cross, F. M., The Discovery of the Samaria Papyri, BA 26 (1963), 110-121 ID.1966 Cross, F. M., Aspects of Samaritan and Jewish History in Late Persian and Hellenistic Times, HThR 59 (1966), 201-211 ID. 1984 Cross, F.M., Fragments of the Prayer of Nabonidus, IEG 34 (1984) 260-64 Cross, F. M., The Ancient Library of Qumrân, London 1958 CUMONT 1909 Cumont, F., La plus ancienne géographie astrologique, Klio 9 (1909) 265-273 CUMONTBIDEZ 1934 Cumont, F. - Bidez, J., Les Mages Hellénisés : Zoroastre, Ostanès et Histaspe d’après la tradition grecque, Paris 1937 (3. ed. Paris 2007) DAICHES 1910 Daiches, S., The Jews in Babylonia in the Time of Ezra and Nehemiah, London 1910 DALBERT 1954 Dalbert, P., Die Theologie der hellenistisch-jüdischen Missionliteratur unter Ausschluss von Philo und Josephus, Hamburg 1954 348 Bibliografia DAN 1989 Dan, J., The Ancient Jewish Mysticism, Tel Aviv 1989 [ebraico] ID. 1995 Dan, J., Jewish Gnosticism, JSQ 2 (1995), 309-328 DANBY 1933 The Mishnah, transl. from the Hebrew, with introd. and brief explanatory notes by H. Danby, Oxford 1933 DANIÉLOU 1958 Daniélou, J., Théologie du judéo-christianisme, Paris 1958 2. ed., a c. di M.-O. Boulnois, J. Paramelle, M.-J. Rondeau, Tournai-Paris 1991 ID. 1962 Daniélou, J., The Dead Sea Scrolls and primitive Christianity, New York 1962 (ed. orig.: Les manuscrits de la Mer Morte et les origines du Christianisme, Paris 1957) DAUBE 1949 Daube, D., Rabbinic Method of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric, HUCA 22 (1949), 239-46 ID. 1956 Daube, D., The New Testament and rabbinic Judaism, London 1956 DAVIDSON 1924-1933 DAVIES 1974 Davidson, I., Otzar Hashira Vehapiyyut, 4 v., New York 1924-1933 Davies, W. D., The Gospel and the land : early Christianity and Jewish territorial doctrine, Berkeley 1974 DAVIS 1956 Israel: Its Role in Civilization, ed. M. Davis, New York 1956 DEININGER 1971 Deininger, J., Der politische Widerstand gegen Rom in Griechenland, Berling 1971 DEISSMANN 1919 Deissmann, A., Paulus, Tübingen 1910 DE JONGE 1996 De Jonge, H.J., Joseph Scaliger's Historical Criticism of the New Testament, Novum Testamentum 38, 2 (1996), 176-193 DE LACEY De Lacey, D.R., In Search of a Pharisee, Tyndale Bulletin 43, 2 (1992) 353-72. 1992 DEL MEDICO 1958 DELCOR 1971 Del Medico, H. E., Le mythe des Esséniens : des origines à la fin du Moyen Âge, Paris 1958 ID. 1978 Delcor, M. (ed.), Qumrân : sa piété, sa théologie et son milieu, Louvain- Paris 1978 ID. 1979 Delcor, M., Études bibliques et orientales de religions comparées, Leiden 1979 Delcor, M., Le Livre de Daniel, Paris 1971 DELLING 1969 Delling, G., Bibliographie zur jüdisch-hellenistischen und intertestamentarischen Literatur 1900 -1965, in Verb. mit G. Zachhuber und H. Berthold, Berlin 1969 ID.1974 Delling, G., Perspektiven der Erforschung des hellenistischen Judentums, HUCA 45 (1974), 133-176 (Abs. in StPh 5 (1978), 124 ss.) ID. 1975 Delling, G., Bibliographie zur jüdisch-hellenistischen und intertestamentarischen Literatur 1900-1970, in Verb. mit M. Maser, Berlin 1975 DENIS 1970A Denis, A.-M., Héraclès et ses cousins de Judée, in Hommages M. Delcourt, Bruxelles 1970, 168-178 ID. 1970B Denis, A.-M., Fragmenta Pseudepigraphorum quae supersunt graeca, Leiden 1970 DERRON 1986 Derron, P. (ed.), Sentences de Pseudo-Phocylides, Paris 1986 DES PLACES 1973 Des Places, E., Le Dieu Incertain des Juifs, JS 1973, 289-294 DESTRO-PESCE Destro, A.-Pesce, M., Antropologia delle origini cristiane, Bari 1997 349 Bibliografia 1997 DHORME 1937 Dhorme, E., L'évolution religieuse d'Israël. 1: La religion des Hébreux nomades, Bruxelles 1937 DI DONATO 1992 Di Donato, R., Introduzione a Le radici classiche della storiografia moderna, Firenze 1992 ID. 1995 Di Donato, R., Materiali per una biografia intellettuale di Arnaldo Momigliano, I. Pace e libertà nel mondo antico, in Athenaeum, n.s. 83 (1995) 213-44. ID. 1996 Di Donato, R., Introduzione. Uno storico, un testo, un contesto, in Momigliano, A., Pace e libertà nel mondo antico, con un’appendice documentaria e ventuno lettere a Ernesto Codignola, a c. di R. Di Donato, Firenze 1996. ID. 1999 Di Donato, R., I Greci selvaggi. Antropologia storica di Ernesto De Martino, Roma 1999 ID. 2004 Di Donato, R., Arnaldo Momigliano dall’antiquaria alla storia della cultura: alcune ragioni per una ricerca, Eikasmos 15 (2004), 443-461 ID. 2006 Di Donato, R., Gli anni di Londra, in POLVERINI 2006, 125-136 ID. 2010 Di Donato, R., Arnaldo Momigliano. L’ultimo Contributo. Belfagor 386, 2010, 183-200; ed. ingl. The final Contributo, in WARBURG COLL. 2014, 165-177 DIAZ 1988 Diaz, F., Momigliano e la riflessione sulla storia, RSI 100. 2 (1988), 334-347 DIEZ MACHO 1969 – 1979. Díez Macho, A., Neophyti I. Targum Palestinense MS de la Bibliotheca Vaticana, I (Génesis) 1968; II (Éxodo), 1970; III (Levítico), 1971; IV (Números), 1974; V (Deuterónimo), 1978; VI (Apéndices), 1979 DILLON 2002 Dillon, J., The Essenes in Greek Sources: Some Reflections, in Bartlett 2002, 117-128 DIONISOTTI 1988A ID. 1988B Dionisotti, C., Commemorazione di Arnaldo Momigliano, RSI 100. 2 (1988), 348-360 ID. 1989 Dionisotti, C., Ricordo di Arnaldo Momigliano, Bologna 1989 ID. 1997 Dionisotti, C., Momigliano e il Contesto, in Belfagor, LII, 6, 30 novembre 1997 (n. 312), 633-48, rist. in Ricordi della Scuola italiana, Roma 1998, 587-604 Dionisotti, C., Arnaldo Momigliano e Croce, Belfagor 43.2 (1988), 617-642 DIRKSEN 1993 Dirksen, P.B., La Peshitta dell’Antico Testamento, ed. ita. a c. di P.G. Borbone, Brescia 1993 DOMBROWSKI Dombrowski, B., HaYahad in 1QS and To Koinon: An Instance of Early Greek and Jewish Synthesis, 1966 HThR 59 (1966), 293-307 DORNSEIFF 1939 ID. 1959 Dornseiff, F., Echtheitsfragen antik-griechischer Literatur, Berlin 1939 DRERUP 1923 Drerup, E., Demosthenes im Urteile des Altertums: von Theopomp bis Tzetzes. Geschichte, Roman, Legende, Würzburg 1923 DRIVER 1954 Driver, G.R., Aramaic Documents of the Fifth Century B.C., Oxford 1954 DROGE 1996 Droge, A.J., Josephus between Greeks and Barbarians, in Josephus’ Contra Apionem. Studies in Character & Context, edd. L.H. Feldman & J.R. Levinson, Leiden 1996, 115-142 Dornseiff, F., Kleine Schriften, I: Antike und Alter Orient, 2. ed., Leipzig 1959 DROYSEN 1893 Droysen, J. G., Kleine Schriften, Leipzig 1893 DUBARLE 1966 Dubarle, A. M., Judith: formes et sens des diverses traditions, Rome 1966 DUNN 1999 Dunn, J. D. G., Who did Paul think he was? A study of Jewish-Christian identity, NTS 45 (1999), 174350 Bibliografia 193 DUPONTSOMMERPHILONENKO 1987 DYCK 2002 Dupont-Sommer, A.-Philonenko, M. (ed.), Ecrits intertestamentaires, Paris 1987 Dyck, J., Philo, Alexandria and Empire: the Politics of Allegorical Interpretation, in BARTLETT 2002, 149-174 EISENMAN 1983 Eisenman, R., Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran : a new hypothesis of Qumran origins, Leiden 1983 EISSFELDT 1939 Eissfeldt, O., Ras Shamra und Sanchunjaton, in Beiträge zur Religionsgeschichte des Alterturms, Heft 4 (1939) ID. 1952A Eissfeldt, O., Einleitung in das Alte Testament (3. ed., Tübingen 1964) ID. 1952B Eissfeldt, O., Sanchunjaton von Berut unf Ilumilku von Ugarit, in Beiträge zur Religionsgeschichte des Alterturms, Heft 5 (1952) ID. 1952C Eissfeldt, O., Taautos und Sanchuniaton, in Sitzungberichte der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1952), n. 1. ELBOGEN 1993 Elbogen, E., Jewish Liturgy: a Comprehensive History, Philadelphia 1993 ENSLINZEITLIN 1972 The Book of Judith, Greek text with an Engl. transl., comm. and crit. notes by M. S. Enslin; ed. with a general intr. and append. by S. Zeitlin, Leiden 1972 FALK 1985 Falk, H., Jesus the Pharisee : a new look at the Jewisness of Jesus, New York 1985 FARMER 1956 Farmer, W., Maccabees, Zealots and Josephus, New York 1956 FEARGHAIL Ó Fearghail, F., The Jews in the Hellenistic Cities of Acts, in Bartlett 2002, 39-54 2002 FELDMAN 1960 Feldman, L. H., The Orthodoxy of the Jews in Hellenistic Egypt, “Jewish Social Studies” 22 (1960), 215237 FELDMAN 1963 Feldman, L. H., Scholarship on Philo and Josephus (1937-1962), New York s. d. [1963], 1-26 ID. 1977 Feldman, L., Hengel’s “Judaism and Hellenism” in Retrospect, JBL 96 (1977), 371-382 ID. 1987 Feldman, L., How Much Hellenism in Jewish Palestine?, HUCA 57 (1987), 83-111 ID. 1989 Feldman, L. , A Selective Critical Bibliography of Josephus, in Josephus, the Bible, and History, ed. by L. H. Feldman and G. Hata, Leiden 1989, 330-448 ID. 1993 Feldman, L., Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian, Princeton 1993 (Bibliografia: 594-596) ID. 2007 Feldman, L., Hellenistic Judaism, s.v. Judaism (2007) in Encyclopaedia Britannica Online : http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9105859 FESTUGIÈRE 1950-1954 Festugière, La révelation d’Hermès Trismegiste, 4 v., Paris 1950-1954 FINKEL 1974 Finkel, A., The Pharisees and the Teacher of Nazareth : a study of their background, their halachic and midrashic teachings, the similarities and differences, Leiden 1974 FINKELSTEIN 1943 ID. 1949 Finkelstein, L., Pre-Maccabean Documents in the Passover Haggadah, HThR 36 (1943), 1-38 Finkelstein, L. (ed.), The Jews: their history, culture, and religion, New York 19491 (New York 19552) 351 Bibliografia ID. 1950 Finkelstein, L., Introduction to the treatises Abot and Abot de-Rabbi Nathan [heb.], New York 1950 ID. 1966 Finkelstein, L., The Pharisees : the sociological background of their faith, 3. ed., Philadelphia 1966 FINLEY 1966 Finley, M. I., introd. a: The Jewish War and other Selections, London 1966 FIORENZA 1976 Fiorenza Schüssler, E. (ed.), Aspects of religious propaganda in Judaism and early Christianity, Notre Dame (Ind.) 1976 FISCHEL 1949 Fischel, H., Rabbinic Methods and Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric , HUCA 22 (1949), 239-264 ID. 1953 Fischel, H., Alexandrian Methods of Interpretation and the Rabbis, in Festschrift Hans Lewald, Basel 1953, 27-44 ID. 1968A Fischel, H., Story and History: Observations on Greco-Roman Rhetoric and Pharisaism, American Oriental Society, Middle West Branch, 1969 ID. 1968B Fischel, H., Studies in Cynicism and the Ancient Near East: The Transformation of a ‘Chria’, in Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, ed. J. Neusner, Leiden 1968, 372-411 ID. 1973 Fischel, H., Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy, Leiden 1973 FISCHER 1978 Fischer, U., Eschatologie und Jenseitsewartung im hellenistischen Diasporajudentum, Berlin-New York 1978 (Diss. Heidelberg) ID. 1978 Fischer, U., Eschatologie und Jenseitserwartung im hellenistischen Diaspora-Judentum, Berlin 1978 FITZMYER Fitzmyer, J., Languages of Palestine in the First Century AD, CBQ 32 (1970), 501-531 1970 FITPATRICK Fitzpatrick-McKinley, A., Synagogue Communities in the Graeco-Roman Cities, in Bartlett 2002, 55-87 2002 FLUSSER 1972 Flusser, D., The Four Empires in the Fourth Sibyl and in the Book of Daniel, Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972), 148-175 ID. 1978 Flusser, D., An early Jewish-Christian Document in the Tiburtine Sibyl, in Paganisme, Judaïsme, Christianisme. Mélanges offerts à Marcel Simon, Paris 1978, 153-183 FOERSTER 1981 Foerster, W., From exile to Christ : a historical introduction to Palestinian Judaism, Philadelphia 1981 (ed. orig.: 3a ed. riv., Hamburg 1959: Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte I : das Judentum Palästinas zur Zeit Jesu und der Apostel) FOOT MOORE Foot Moore, G., Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, 3 v. (1927–30, reprinted 1966–67) 1927-1930 FORKMAN Forkman, G., The limits of the religious community : expulsion from the religious community within the 1972 Qumran sect, within rabbinic Judaism, and within primitive Christianity, Lund 1972 FORMAN 1994 Great Jewish Speeches throughout History, ed. S. Forman, North Vale (NJ) 1994 FRANKEL 1841 Frankel, Z., Historisch-Kritische Studien zu der Septuaginta Nebst Beiträgen zu den Targumim: Vorstudien zu der Septuaginta, Leipzig 1841 FRASER 1972 Fraser, P.M., Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3. v., London 1972 FREUDENTHAL Freudenthal, J., Hellenistische Studien, Heft I. Alexander Polyhistor und die von ihm erhaltenen Reste 1874 jüdischer und samaritanischer Geschichtswerke, Breslau 1874 FREYNE 2002 Freyne, S., Introduction: Studying the Jewish Diaspora in Antiquity, in BARTLETT 2002, 1-5 FRIEDLÄNDER Friedländer, M., Patristische und talmudische Studien, Wien 1878 1878 352 Bibliografia ID. 1898 Friedländer, M., Der vorchristliche jüdische Gnosticismus, Göttingen 1898 ID. 1903 Friedländer, M., Geschichte der jüdischen Apologetik als Vorgeschichte des Christentums, Zürich 1903 ID. 1905 Friedländer, M., Die religiösen Bewegungen innerhalb des Judentums im Zeitalter Jesu, Berlin 1905 ID. 1916 Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, according to the text of the manuscript belonging to Abraham Epstein of Vienna, transl. and annotated with introd. and indices by G. Friedlander, London 1916 (New York 19814) FRIEDMANN 1880 Pesikta Rabbati: Midrash für den Fest Cyclus und die ausgezeichneten Sabbate, krit. bearb., comment. [...] von M. Friedmann, Wien 1880 FRITZ 1972 Fritz, K. von (ed.), Pseudepigrapha. I, Pseudopythagorica. Lettres de Platon. Littérature pseudépigraphique juive, huit exposés suivis de discussion par R. Syme, W. Burkert, H. Thesleff, M. Hengel, Vandoeuvres-Gèneve 1972 FRYE 1972 Frye , R. N., Gestures of Deference to Royalty in Ancient Iran, Iranica Antiqua, 9, 1972, 102-7 FUBINI 1998 Fubini, G., Storicismo, storia della storiografia e ebraismo in Arnaldo Momigliano, in Appartenenza e differenza: Ebrei d’Italia e letteratura, a c. di J. Hassine, J. Mian Montefiore, S. Debenedetti Stow, Firenze 1998, 43-65 GABBA 1976 Gabba, E., Sulla valorizzazione politica della leggenda delle origini troiane di Roma fra III e II secolo a.C., in M. Sordi (ed.), I canali della propaganda nel mondo antico, CISA 4, Milano 1976, 84-101 ID. 1988 Gabba, E., Aspetti della storiografia di Arnaldo Momigliano, RSI 100.2 (1988), 361-380 GAFFIN 1997 Gaffin, I., Land, center and diaspora, Sheffield 1997 GAGER 1969 Gager, J. G., Pseudo-Hecataeus Again, ZNTW 60 (1969), 130-139 ID. 1972 Gager, J. G., Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism, Nashville 1972 (rec.: Stern 1973) GALLING 1964 Galling, K., Studien zur Geschichte Israels im persischen Zeitalter, Tübingen 1964 GAMNIE 1976 Gamnie, J. G., The Classification, Stages of Growth and Changing Intentions in the Book of Daniel, JBL 95 (1976), 191-204 GARCIA García Martínez, F., Testi di Qumran, ed. ita a c. di C. Martone, Brescia 20032 (19961) MARTINEZ 2003 GAUGER 1980 Gauger, J.-D., Phlegon von Tralleis, Mirab. III. Zu einem Dokument geistigen Widerstandes gegen Rom, Chiron 10 (1980), 225-263 GEFFCKEN 1902 GEIGER 1857 Geffcken, J., Komposition und Entstehungszeit der Oracula Sibyllina, Leipzig 1902 Geiger, A.,Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der innern Entwicklung des Judenthums, Breslau 1857 GELLER 1978 Geller, M., New Sources for the Origin of the Rabbinic Ketubah, HUCA 49 (1978), 227-245 GERA 1998 Gera, D., Judea and Mediterranean politics, 219 to 161 BCE, London 1998 GERATY 1975 Geraty, L.T., The Khirbet el-Kôm bilingual ostracon, in BASO 220 (1975) 55-66 GIARRIZZO 1988 GIBLET 1963 Giarrizzo, G., Storia sacra, storia profana: la tradizione come unità vissuta, RSI 100. 2 (1988), 381-399 GIBSON 1975 Gibson, J.C.L., Textbook of Syrian Semitic Incriptions, vol. II: Aramaic Inscriptions, Oxford 1975 Giblet, J., Eupolème et l’historiographie du Judaïsme hellénistique, EThL 39 (1963), 539-554 353 Bibliografia GINSBERG 1948 Ginsberg, H.L., Studies in Daniel, New York 1949 ID. 1949 Ginsberg, H.L., In Re My Studies on Daniel, JBL 68 (1949) 402-7 GINSBURG 1934 Ginsburg, M. S., Sparta und Judaea, CPh 29 (1934), 117-122 GINZBERG 1909 Ginzberg, L., The Legends of the Jews, 7 voll., New York 1909, 3. (shorter version: New York 1971; ed. it. Le leggende degli Ebrei, trad. it. di E. Loewenthal, Milano 1995-) ID. 1922 Ginzberg, L., Eine unbekannte jüdische Sekte, New York 1922; orig. pubbl. In MGWJ 55 (1911) – 58 (1914); 2. ed., riv. e aggiorn., New York 1976 GIOVANNINI- Giovannini, A. – Müller, H., Die Beziehungen zwischen Rom und den Juden im 2. Jh. v. Chr., MH 28 MÜLLER 1971 (1971), 156-171 GLUSTROM 1973 Glustrom, S., The language of Judaism, New York 1973 (1. ed: 1966) GOLB 1960 Golb, N., Who were the Magariya, JAOS 80 (1960), 347-359 GOLDIN 1972 Goldin, J., Several Sidelights of a Torah Education, in Ex Orbe Religionum. Studia G. Widengren, Leiden 1972, v. 1, 176-191 ID. 1988 Goldin, J., Studies in Midrash and Related Literature, Philadelphia 1988, 57-76 GOLDSCHMIDT Goldschmidt, R. P., Jerusalem in First Temple Times, in Levine, L. I. (ed.), The Jerusalem Cathedra 2, 1982 Jerusalem 1982, 328-351 GOLDSTEIN 1975 Goldstein, J., The Tales of the Tobiads, in Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty, ed. J. Neusner, 4 voll., Leiden 1975, III, 85-193 ID. 1981 Goldstein, J., Jewish Acceptance and Rejection of Hellenism, in Sanders 1981 GOODBLATT 1975 Goodblatt, D. M., Rabbinic instruction in Sasanian Babylonia, Leiden 1975 GOODENOUGH Goodenough, E.R., Philo and Public Life, JEA 12 (1926), 77-79 1926 ID. 1929 Goodenough, E. R., The Jurisprudence of the Jewish Courts in Egypt: Legal Administration by the Jews under the Early Roman Empire as described by Flavius Josephus, New Haven 1929 ID. 1938 Goodenough, E.R., The Politics of Philo Judaeus: Practice and Theory, New Haven 1938. ID. 1953-1968 Goodenough, E.R., Jewish Symbols in the Graeco-Roman Period, 13 v., New York 1953-1968 (rec.: Bickerman, E., Syria 44 (1967), 131-161) ID.1962 Goodenough, E. R., An Introduction to Philo Judaeus, 2nd rev. ed. Oxford 1962 (1a ed. Yale Univ. Press. 1940). ID.FEST. 1968 Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, ed. J. Neusner, Leiden 1968 ID.1994 Goodman, M., Jewish Attitudes to Greek Culture in the Period of the Second Temple, in G. Abramson-T. Parfitt (ed.), Jewish Education and Learning, Chur 1994, 167-174 GOODMAN 1998 GOTTWALD 1964 Goodman, M. (ed.), Jews in the Greco-Roman period, Sheffield 1998 Gottwald, N. K., All the Kingdoms of the Earth. Israelite Prophecy and International Relations in the Ancient Near East, New York 1964 354 Bibliografia GOUDRIAN Goudrian, K., Ethnicity in Ptolemaic Egypt, Amsterdam 1988 1988 GRABBE 1995 Grabbe, L. L., Hellenistic Judaism, in Judaism in Late Antiquity. Part 2: Historical Syntheses, ed. J. Neusner, Leiden 1995, 53-83 GRABBE 2002 Grabbe, L. L., The Hellenistic City of Jerusalem, in Bartlett 2002, 6-21 GRAF 1866 Graf, K.H., Die Geschichtlichen Bücher des Alten Testaments, Leipzig 1866 GRANATA 1998 Archivio Arnaldo Momigliano. Guida all’Archivio e regesto delle carte, a c. di G. Granata; avvertenza di R. Di Donato. Preprint, Pisa, 1998 ID. 1999 Granata, G., La resistenza all’ellenizzazione. Il corpus di inediti momiglianei sul giudaismo ellenistico, (1977-1982), “Studi ellenistici” 12 (1999), 73-92 ID. 2000 Granata, G., Momigliano, Arnaldo Dante (1908-1987), in Guida agli archivi delle personalità della cultura in Toscana tra ‘800 e ‘900. L’area pisana, a c. di E. Capannelli e E. Insabato, coord. R. P. Coppini, Firenze 2000, 207-214 ID. 2006 Granata, G., Archivio Arnaldo Momigliano. Inventario analitico, Roma 2006 GRANT 1959 Grant, F. C., Ancient Judaism and the New Testament, New York 1959 GRÄTZ Grätz, H., Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, 11 voll. In 13 tt., Leipzig 1807-1911 ID. 1846 Grätz, H., Gnosticismus und Judenthum, Krotoschin 1846 GREEN 1978 Green, W. S., Approaches to ancient Judaism : Theory and Practice, Missoula 1978 ID. 1985 Green, W. S., Approaches to ancient Judaism : studies in Judaism and its Greco-Roman context, Atlanta 1985 GRELOT 1972 Grelot, P., Documents araméens d’Egypte, Paris 1972 GRIMAL 1968 Grimal, P., et al., Hellenism and the Rise of Rome, London 1968 GRÖZINGER 1981 Grözinger, K. E. (ed.), Qumran, hrsg. von K. E. Grözinger, N. Ilg, H. Lichtenberger, G.-W. Nebe, H. Pabst, Darmstadt 1981 GRUEN 2002 Gruen, E. D., Diaspora : Jews amidst Greeks and Romans, Cambridge-London 2002 ID. 1998 Gruen, E. D., Heritage and Hellenism: the reinvention of Jewish tradition, Berkeley 1998 GRUENWALD 1980 GRUNDMANN 1942 GUIGNEBERT 1935 GUTMAN 19581963 GUTMANN 1974 ID. 1981 Gruenwald, I., Apokalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, Leiden 1980 GUTSCHMID, VON, A. 1882 von Gutschmid, A., Trogus und Timagenes, RhM 37, 1882, 548-555 (= Kleine Schriften V, 218-22) W. Grundmann, Germanentum, Christentum und Judentum, Leipzig 1942 Guignebert, C., Le monde juif vers le temps de Jésus, Paris 1935 Gutman, Y., The Beginnins of Jewish Hellenistic Literature, 2 v., Jerusalem 1958-1963 [ebraico] Gutmann, J. (ed.), The Synagogue, New York 1974 Gutmann, J. (ed.), Ancient Synagogues : the state of research, Chico (Cal.) 1981 HACHLILI 1988 Hachlili, R., Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel, Leiden 1988 HADAS 1959 Hadas, M., Hellenistic Culture: Fusion and Diffusion, New York 1959 355 Bibliografia ID. 1976 Hadas, M., (ed.) The Third and Fourth books of Maccabees, New York 1976 HALPERIN Halperin, D., The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision, Tübingen 1988 1988 HANSON 1971 Hanson, P. D., Jewish Apocalyptic against its Near East Environment, RB 78 (1971), 31-58 ID. 1973 Hanson, P. D., Zechariah 9 and the Recapitulation of an Ancient Ritual Pattern, JBL 92 (1973), 37-58 HARAN 1978 Haran, M., Temples and temple service in ancient Israel : an inquiry into the character of cult phenomena and the historical setting of the priestly school, Oxford 1978 HARRISON 1994 Harrison, R., Hellenization in Syria-Palestine: The Case of Judea in the Third Century BCE, BA 57 (1994), 98-108 HAUSER – Hauser, A. J. –Watson, D.F. (eds.), A History of Biblical Interpretation. Vol. I: The Ancient Period, WATSON 2003 Grand Rapids (Mich.)-Cambridge 2003 HEICHELCHEIM Heichelcheim, F. M., Ezra’s Palestine and Periclean Athens, ZRGG 3 (1951), 251-253 1951 HEILMAN 1973 Heilman, S. C., Synagogue Life, Chicago 1973 HEINEMANN 1919 ID. 1931 Heinemann, I., Poseidonios über die Entwicklung der jüdischen Religion, MGWJ 63 (1919), 113-121 ID. 1932 Heinemann, I., Philons griechische und jüdische Bildung, Breslau 1932 ID.1938 Heinemann, I., Wer veranlasste den Glaubenszwang der Makkabäerzeit?, MGWJ 82 (1938), 145-172 ID. 1940 Heinemann, I., The Attitude of the Ancient World towards Judaism, RR 4 (1940), 385-400 ID.1962 Heinemann, I., Philons griechische und jüdische Bildung. Kulturvergleichende Untersuchungen zu Philons Darstellung der jüdischen Gesetze, Hildesheim 1962 HEINRICHS 1972 Henrichs, A., Die Phoinikika des Lollianus. Fragmente eines neuen griechischen Romans, Bonn 1972 HENGEL 1971 Hengel, M. Proseuche und Synagogue, in Tradition und Glaube. Festschrift K. G. Kuhn, Gottingen 1971, 157-184 (rist. in Judaica et Hellenistica: Kleine Schriften I, Tubingen 1996, 171-195) ID.1969 Hengel, M., Judentum und Hellenismus. Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jh.s v. Chr., “Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament“ 10, Tübingen 1969, (2. ed. ampl. Tübingen 1973; tr. ingl.: Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 v., Philadelphia 1974; trad. it. a c. di S. Monaco: Giudaismo ed ellenismo. Studi sul loro incontro con particolare riguardo per la Palestina fino alla metà del II secolo a.C., Brescia 2001) ID.1972 Hengel in Fritz, K. von (ed.), Pseudepigrapha. I, Pseudopythagorica. Lettres de Platon. Littérature pseudépigraphique juive, huit exposés suivis de discussion par R. Syme, W. Burkert, H. Thesleff, M. Hengel, Vandoeuvres-Gèneve 1972 ID. 1976A Hengel, M., Die Zeloten : Untersuchungen zur jüdischen Freiheitsbewegung in der Zeit von Herodes I. bis 70 n. Chr., 2. ed., Leiden 1976; trad. it. a c. di G. Firpo: Brescia 1996 ID.1976B Hengel, M., The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish-Hellenistic Religion, Philadelphia 1976 ID. 1976C Hengel, M., Juden, Griechen und Barbaren. Aspekte der Hellenisierung des Judentums in vorchristlicher Zeit, Stuttgart 1976 (trad. ingl.: Jews, Greeks and Barbarians, Philadelphia 1980; trad. it.: Giudei, Greci e Barbari. Aspetti dell’ellenizzazione del giudaismo in epoca precristiana, Brescia 1981) Heinemann, I., Antisemitismus, in RE Suppl. 5, 1931, 3-43 356 Bibliografia ID.1989A Hengel, M., The “Hellenization”of Judaea in the First Century after Christ, London-Philadelphia 1989 (trad. it.: L’ “ellenizzazione” della Giudea nel I sec. d.C., Brescia 1993) ID. 1989B Hengel, M., The Johannine Question, London 1989 ID. 1989C Hengel, M., The Interpretation of Judaism and Hellenism in the Pre-Maccabean Period, in CHJ, vol. 2, ed. W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein, Cambridge 1989, 167-228 ID. 1991 Hengel, M., The Pre-Christian Paul, London 1991 HENRY 1969 Henry, M.-L., Prophet und tradition : Versuch einer Problemstellung, Berlin 1969 HENTEN-HOST Henten, J. W. van-Host, P. W. van der (edd.), Studies in early Jewish epigraphy, Leiden 1994 1994 HERFORD 1962 Herford, R. T., The Pharisees, Boston 1962 HERR 1978 Herr, M. D., Hellenism and Judaism in Eretz Israel, Eshkoloth NS. 2-3 (1977-1978) [ebraico] HESCHEL 1969 Heschel, A. J., The Prophets, 2 v., New York 1969 ID. 1992 Heschel, S., Abraham Geiger on the origins of christianity: the political strategies of Wissenschaft des Judentums in an era of acculturation, in Jewish Assimilation,Acculturation and Accommodation: Past Traditions, Current Issues and Future Prospects, ed. M. Mor, Lanham (Nebr.) 1992, 110-126 HESZER 2001 Heszer, C., Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine: Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, Tübingen 2001 HEURGON 1959 Heurgon, J., The Date of Vegoia’s Prophecy, JRS 49 (1959), 41-45 HILGENFELD 1868 Hilgenfeld, A., Die Psalmen Salomo’s und die Himmelfahrt des Moses, griechisch hergestellt und erklärt, ZWT 11, 1868, 273–309 HILL 1914 Hill, G. F., A Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Palestine, London 1914 HILL, C. 1992 Hill, C. C., Hellenists and Hebrews: Reappraising Division within the Earliest Church, Minneapolis 1992 HOHEISEL 1978 Hoheisel, K., Das antike Judentum in christlicher Sicht : ein Beitrag zur neueren Forschungsgeschichte, Wiesbaden 1978 HOLLADAY 1977 Holladay, C. R., Theios aner in Hellenistic Judaism : a critique of the use of this category in New Testament Christology, Missoula (Mont.) 1977 HÖLSCHER 1914 Hölscher, G., Die Profeten : Untersuchungen zur Religionsgeschichte Israels, Leipzig 1914 ID. 1948 Hölscher, G., Drei Erdkarten. Ein Beitrag zur Erderkenntnis des hebräischen Altertums, Heidelberg 1949 HORST 1978 Horst, W. van der (ed.), The sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, Leiden 1978 ID. 2005 Horst, P. W. van der, Philo’s Flaccus: the first pogrom, intr., transl. and comm., Atlanta 2005 (1. ed. Leiden 2003) HOWARD 1971 Howard, G. E., The Letter of Aristeas and Diaspora Judaism, JThSt n.s. 22 (1971), 337-348 HOWARDHoward, J. – Shelton, J.C., The Bar Kokhba Letters and Palestinian Greek, IEG 23 (1973), 101-2. SHELTON 1973 HRUBY 1971 Hruby, K., Die Stellung der jüdischen Gesetzeslehrer zur werdenden Kirche, Zürich 1971 357 Bibliografia HUGHES 1988 Hughes, S. H., Arnaldo Momigliano: la storia universale, la civiltà ellenistica, e gli Ebrei, RSI 100 (1988), 414-421 IDEL 1988 Idel, M., Kabbalah: New Perspectives, New Haven 1988 ISAAC 2004 Isaac, B., The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, Princeton 2004 ISNARDI PARENTE 1988A ID.1988B Isnardi Parente, M., Arnaldo Momigliano, la VII Epistola e l’autobiografia, Belfagor 43.1 (1988), 245254 ID. 1989 Isnardi Parente, M., Momigliano magnetofonico, Belfagor 44 (1989), 342 Isnardi Parente, M., Tradizione orale, Belfagor 43.2 (1988), 711 JACKSON 1981 Jackson, B. S., On the Problem of the Roman Influence on the Halakhah and Normative Self-Definition in Judaism, in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, 2: Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period, ed. E. P. Sanders (et al.), Philadelphia 1981, 157-203 JACOBSON 1983 JAEGER 1938 Jacobson, H., The Exagoge of Ezekiel, Cambridge 1983 Jaeger, W., Greeks and Jews, JR 18 (1938), 127-143 (= Scripta Minora, Roma 1960, v. 2, 169-183) JAUBERT 1963 Jaubert, A., La notion d’alliance dans le Judaïsme aux abords de l’ère chrétienne, Paris 1963 JEREMIAS 1943 Jeremias, J., Die Einwohnerzahl Jerusalems zur Zeit Jesu, ZDPV 66 (1943), 24-31 JOHSON, J., 1974 Johnson, J.H., The Demotic Chronicle as an Historical Source, Enchoria 4 (1974), 1-17 JOHNSON , S. 1972 Johnson, S. E., Unsolved Questions about Early Christianity in Anatolia, in Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Honor of A. P. Wikgren, Leiden 1972, 181-193 JUSTER 1914 Juster, J., Les Juifs dans l’Empire Romain, Paris 1914 KADARI 1963- Kadari, M.-Z., The Aramaic Megillat Antiochus, Annual of Bar-Ilan University, 1 (1963), 81-105 e 2 64 (1964), 178-214 KAHLE 1930 Kahle, P., Masoreten des Westens, BWAT 14, Stuttgart 1930 ID. 1947 Kahle, P., Die Septuaginta. Prinzipielle Erwägungen, in O. Eissfeldt Festschrift, Halle 1947, 161-180 KAHRSTEDT 1926 Kahrstedt, U., Syrische Territorien in hellenistischer Zeit, Berlin 1926 KALMIN 2006 Kalmin, R., Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine: decoding the literary record, New York-Oxford 2006 KANAEL 1963 Kanael, B., Ancient Jewish Coins and their Historical Importance, Biblical Archaeologist 26 (1963) ID. 1967 Kanael, B., Altjüdische Münzen, JNG 17 (1967), 159-298 KASHER 1927- Kasher, M.M., Torah Shelemah (The Complete Torah) : a Talmudic-Midrashic Encyclopedia of the 1995 Pentateuch, 44 voll., Yerushalayim 1927-95 (ebre., trad. ingl., abbrev. e parziale: Kasher, M. M., Encyclopaedia of Biblical Interpretation: a Millenial Anthology, transl. under editorship of H. Freedman, 9 voll., New York 1953-79) KASHER 1985 Kasher, A., The Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. The struggle for equal rights, Tübingen 1985 KATZ 1956 Katz, P., The Old Testament Canon in Palestine and Alexandria, ZNTW 47 (1956), 191-217 KATZOFF 1989 Katzoff, R., Sperber’s Dictionary of Greek and Latin Legal Terms in Rabbinic Literature: A Review Essay, JSJ 20 (1989), 194-206 358 Bibliografia KAUFMANN 1961 Kaufmann, Y., The religion of Israel : from its beginnings to the Babylonian exile, ed. rid. e trad. ingl. di M. Greenberg, London 1961(ed. orig. in 8 vol.: Tel Aviv, 1937-1956) ID. 1977 Kaufmann, Y., History of the religion of Israel : from the Babylonian captivity to the end of prophecy, New York –Jerusalem-Dallas 1977 (History of the religion of Israel ; 4) KEIMER 2004 Keymer, T., Sterne and Romantic Autobiography, in Keymer, T.- Mee, J. (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, Cambridge 2004, 1740-1830 KENT 1953 Kent, R.G., Old Persian, New Haven 19532 KERÉNYI 1927 Kerényi, K., Die griechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur in religionsgeschtlicher Beleuchtung: ein Versuch, Tübingen 1927 ID.1962 Kerényi, K., Die griechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur, 2. ed., Darmstadt 1962 KERESZTES 1973 Keresztes, P., The Jews, the Christians and Emperor Domitian, VChr 27 (1973), 1-28 KILPATRCK 1952-3 Kilpatrick, G. D., Living Issues in Biblical Scholarship: the Last Supper, in Expository Times 64, 195253, 4-8 KIPPENBERG 1971 Kippenberg, H. G., Garizim und Synagoge : traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur samaritanischen Religion der aramäischen Periode, Berlin-New York 1971 ID. 1978 Kippenberg, H. G., Religion und Klassenbildung im antiken Judäa : eine religionssoziologische Studie zum Verhältnis von Tradition und gesellschaftlicher Entwicklung, Göttingen 1978 ID. 1982 Kippenberg, H. G., Religion und Klassenbildung im Antiken Judäa, Göttingen 1982 KITTEL 1926 Kittel, G., Die Probleme des palästinischen Spätjudentums und das Urchristentum, Stuttgart 1926 KLAUSNER 1904 Klausner, J., Die messianischen Vorstellungen des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter der Tannaiten, Berlin 1904 KOCSIS 1962 Kocsis, E., Ost-West Gegensatz in den Jüdischen Sibyllen, NT 5 (1962), 105-110 KOENEN 1968 Koenen, L., Die Prophezeiungen des Töpfers, ZPE 2 (1968), 178-209 e 3 (1968), 137-138 ID. 1974 Koenen, L., Bemerkungen zum Text des Töpferorakels und zu dem Akaziensymbol, ZPE 13 (1974), 313319 ID. 1984 Koenen, L., A supplementary note on the date of the Oracle of the Potter, ZPE 54 (1984), 9-13 KOHLER 1893 Kohler, K., Über die Ursprunge und Grundformen der synagogalen Liturgie, MGWJ 37 (1893), 441451, 489-497 KOLBE 1926 Yvotte, J., L’Egypte ancienne et les origines de l’antijudaïsme, RHR 163 (1963), 133-143 KRAFT 1974 Kraft, H., Die Offenbarung des Johannes, Tubingen 1974 KRAFTKraft, R. A. – Nickelsburg, G. W. E. (ed.), Early Judaism and its modern interpreters, Atlanta 1986 NICKELSBURG 1986 KRAUS 1967 Kraus, C., Filone Alessandrino e un’ora tragica della storia ebraica, pref. di A. Ferrabino, Napoli 1967 KRAUSS 1899 Krauss, S., Griechische und Lateinische Lehnwörter im Talmud, Midrash und Targum, 2 v., Berlin 1899 KREISSIG 1962 Kreissig, H., Der Makkabäeraufstand. Zur Frage seiner sozialökonomischen Zusammenhänge und Wirkungen, StudClas 4 (1962), 143-175 359 Bibliografia ID. 1978 Kreissig, H., Rom und die Entwicklung der judäischen Kultur, Atti CeRDAC 10 (1978), Milano, 83-97 KRIEGER 1977 Krieger, L., Ranke. The Meaning of History, Chicago-London 1977 KROLL 1926 Kroll, W., Historia Alexandri Magni (Pseudo-Callisthenes), Berlin 1926 ID. 1941 Kroll, W., Phokylides, in RE 20.1 (1941), coll. 503-510 KRÜGER 1906 Krüger, P., Philo und Josephus als Apologeten des Judentums, Leipzig 1906 KUHRTSHERWINWHITE 1987 Kuhrt, A., - Sherwin-White, S. (eds.), Hellenism in the East, London 1987 KURFESS 1951 Kurfess, A.-M., Sibyllinische Weissagungen, Berlin 1951 LACHMANN 1848 Lachmann, K., Gromatici Veteres, Berlin 1848 LA’DA 2002 La’da, C. A., Foreign ethnics in Hellenistic Egypt, (Prosopographia Ptolemaica, 10), Leeuven-Paris, 2002 LAGRANGE 1931 Lagrange, M.J., Le Judaïsme avant Jésus-Christ, Paris 1931 LANDMAN 1979 Landman, L. (ed.), Messianism in the Talmudic era, New York 1979 LANGE 2008 Lange, A., Sages and scribes in the Qumran literature, in Scribes, sages, and seers: the Sage in the Eastern Mediterranean World, ed.by L. G. Perdue, Göttingen 2008, 271-294 LAPERROUSAZ Laperrousaz, E.-M., Qoumrân : L'établissement essénien des bords de la Mer Morte : histoire et 1976 archéologie du site, Paris 1976 ID.1982 A Laperrousaz, E.-M., Les Esseniens : Selon leur témoinage direct, Paris 1982 ID. 1982B Laperrousaz, E.-M., L'attente du Messie en Palestine à la veille et au début de l'ère chrétienne à la lumière des documents récemment découverts, Paris 1982 LAPIDE 1978 Lapide, P. E., Auferstehung : ein jüdisches Glaubenserlebnis, 2. ed., Stuttgart-München 1978 LARCHER 1969 Larcher, C., Etudes sur le livre de la Sagesse, Paris 1969 LA SOR 1972 La Sor, W. S., The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, Grand Rapids 1972 LAUTERBACH 1951 LE MOYNE 1972 LEANEY 1958 Lauterbach, J. S., Rabbinic Essays, Cincinnati 1951 Le Moyne, J., Les Sadducéens, Paris 1972 Leaney, A. R. C. (ed.), A guide to the Scrolls : Nottingham studies on the Qumran discoveries, London 1958 LEBRAM 1970 Lebram, J. C. H., Apokalyptik und Hellenismus im Buche Daniel, VT 20 (1970), 503-524 LEIPOLDT 1933 Leipoldt, J., Antisemitismus in der Alten Welt, Leipzig 1933 LEVI DELLA VIDA 1938 Levi Della Vida, G., Les sémites et leur role dans l'histoire religieuse : Trois leçons au Collège de France, Paris 1938 LÉONLéon-Portilla, M. (ed.), Vision de los vencidos. Relaciones indigenas de la conquista, introd., selecc. y PORTILLA 1959 notas. Trad. A. M. Garibay Kintana, México 1959 360 Bibliografia LEVINE 1982 Levine, L. I. (ed.), The Jerusalem Cathedra 2, Jerusalem 1982 ID. 1999 Levine, L. I., Judaism and Hellenism in antiquity : conflict or confluence?, Peabody (Mass.) 1999 LEVINE, B. A. Levine, B. A., In the presence of Lord : a study of cult and some cultic terms in ancient Israel, Leiden 1974 1974 LEVINE, L. I. 1985 Levine, L. I., Ma'amar ha-hakhamim be-eretz-Israel bi-tequfat ha-Talmud, Jerusalem 1985 ID. 1987 Levine, L. I. (ed.), The Synagogue in Late Antiquity : A Centennial Publication. Conference, Jewish Theological Seminary of America - Oct. 21-24, 1984, Philadelphia 1987 ID. 2000 Levine, L. I., The ancient Synagogue: the first thousand years, New Haven 2000 (trad. it.: La sinagoga antica, Brescia 2005) LÉVY 1927 Lévy, I., La légende de Pythagore de Grèce en Palestine, Paris 1927 ID. 1955 Lévy, I., Les deux Livres des Maccabèes et le Livre Hébraique des Hasmonéens, Sem 5 (1955), 15-36 ID. 1965 Lévy, I., Recherches esséniennes et pythagoriciennes, Genève-Paris 1965 LEWIN 2001 Lewin, A., Gli Ebrei nell’impero romano. Saggi vari, trad. it. a c. di D. Asheri e R. Volponi, Firenze 2001 LEWIS, D. 1957 Lewis, D. M., The First Greek Jew, JSemSt 2 (1957), 264-266 LEWIS, N. 1986 Lewis, N., Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt. Case studies in the social history of the Hellenistic world, Oxford 1986 LEWIS, N. 1989 The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters. Greek papyri ed. by N. Lewis, Aramaic and Nabatean signatures and subscriptions ed. by Y. Yadin and J. C. Greenfield, Jerusalem 1989 LEWY 1932 Lewy, H., Hekateios von Abdera περὶ Ἰουδαίων, ZNTW 31 (1932), 117-132 ID. 1937 Lewy, H., Aethioper und Juden in der antiken Literatur, MGWJ 81 (1937), 91-101 LICHTHEIM 1973-80 Lichtheim, M., Ancient Egyptian Literature, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 1973-80 LIEBERMAN 1942 Lieberman, S., Greek in Jewish Palestine. Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the IIIV centuries C. E., 2. ed., New York 1942 (2. ed.: 1965) (trad. ebr., con Lieberman 1950: Greek and Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 2. ed., Jerusalem 1984) ΙD. 1950 Lieberman, S., Hellenism in Jewish Palestine. Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs and Manners of Palestine in the I century B. C. E.-IV century C. E., 2. ed., New York 1950 (2. ed.: 1962) (trad. ebr., con Lieberman 1942: Greek and Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 2. ed., Jerusalem 1984) ID. 1963 Lieberman, S., How Much Greek in Jewish Palestine?, in Biblical and Other Studies, ed. A. Altman, Cambridge 1963 ID. 1987 Lieberman, S. J., A Mesopotamian Background for the So-called Aggadic “Measures” of Biblical Hermeneutics, HUCA 58 (1987), 157-225 LIFSHITZ 1962 Lifshitz, B., Papyrus grecs du désert de Juda, Aegyptus 42 (1962), 240-56 ID. 1965 Lifshitz, B., L’hellénisation des Juifs de Palestine, RB 72 (1965), 520-538 ID. 1967A Lifshitz, B., Greek and Hellenism among the Jews of Eretz Israel, Eshkolot 5 (1967), 20-28 [ebraico] 361 Bibliografia ID. 1967B Lifshitz, B., Donateurs et fondateurs dans les synagogues juives, Paris 1967 LIGHTSTONE 1984 Lightstone, J. N., The commerce of the sacred : mediation of the divine among Jews in the GraecoRoman diaspora, Chico (Cal.) 1984 LIMBECK 1971 Limbeck, M., Die Ordnung des Heils : Untersuchungen zum Gesetzeverständnis des Frühjudentums, Düsseldorf 1971 LINDBLOM 1962 Lindblom, J., Prophecy in ancient Israel, Oxford 1962 LLEWELLYN- Llewellyn-Jones, Ll. – Robson, J., Ctesias’ History of Persia, London – New York 2010 JONES – ROBSON 2010 LOEWE 1937 Loewe, H. (ed.), Judaism and Christianity. II. The Contact of Pharisaism with Other Cultures, London 1937 LOEWE 1955 Loewe, R., The Earliest Biblical Allusion to Coined Money, PalEQ 87 (1955), 141-150 LOISY 1933 Loisy, A., La religion d'Israel, 3. ed., Paris 1933 LORETZ 1964 Loretz, O., Qohelet und der Alte Orient, Freiburg-Basel-Wien 1964 LÜDERITZ 1994 LUPIERI 1999 Lüderitz, G., What is the Politeuma, in Henten-Host 1994, 183-225 LURIA 1960 Luria, S., Die Belagerung von Jerusalem bei Alkaios, Acta Antiqua 8 (1960), 265-266 LYNCH 1972 Lynch, J.P., Aristotle’s School: A Study of a Greek Educational Institution, Berkeley 1972 MACCOBY 1991 Maccoby, H., Paul and Hellenism, London 1991 MAGEE 1988 Magee, B., Aspects of Wagner, Oxford 1988 MAIER 1982 Maier, J., Jüdische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Christentum in der Antike, Darmstadt 1982 MAIERSCHREINER 1973 Maier, J.-Schreiner, J. (ed.), Literatur und Religion des Frühjudentums : Eine Einführung, Würzburg 1973 MALTE 2000 Malte, J., Richard Wagners ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’, Frankfurt 2000 MARCONE 2000 Marcone, A. (a c. di), Momigliano e la riedizione inglese della Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire di Rostovtzeff, a cura di A. Marcone, Athenaeum 88 (2000), 604-607 L’Apocalisse di Giovanni, a c. di E. Lupieri, Milano 1999 MARCUS 1946 Marcus, R., Antisemitismus in the Hellenistic-Roman World, in Pinson, K. S. (a c. di), Essays on Antisemitism, 2. ed., New York 1946, 61-78 ID. 1947 Marcus, R., A Selected Bibliography (1920–1945) of the Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman Period, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 16 (1946–47), 97-181 ID. 1956 Marcus, R., The Hellenistic Age, in Leo W. Schwarz (ed.), Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People, 1956, 93–139 ID. 1960 Marcus, R., Hellenistic Jewish Literature, in Finkelstein, L., (ed.), The Jews: Their History, Culture and Religion, 3. ed., vol. 2, 1960, 1077–1115 MARGALIOTH Margalioth, M., Sepher Ha-Razim: A Newly Recovered Book of Magic from the Talmudic Period, 1966 Jerusalem 1966 [ebraico] 362 Bibliografia MARKHØLM 1966 Markhølm, O., Antiochus IV of Syria, Copenaghen 1966 MASSYNGBERD Massyngberde Ford, J., Revelation. A new translation with introduction and commentary, New York E FORD 1975 1975 MASON 1993 Mason, S., Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian Philosophies, in Approaches to Ancient Judaism, new ser., 4, ed. J. Neusner, Atlanta 1993, 1-28 MASSYNGBERD Massyngberde Ford, J., Revelation, Garden City, NY 1975 E FORD 1976 MATTA 1926 Matta, R., Gli Atti di martiri alessandrini, Didaskaleion 4 (1926), fasc. 1, 69-106; fasc. 2, 49-84 MATTHEWS 1989 Matthews, J., The Roman Empire of Ammianus, Baltimore 1989 MAZAR 1957 Mazar, B., The Tobiads, IEJ 7 (1957), 137-145; 229-238. ID. 1982 Mazar, B., Jerusalem in Biblical Times, in L. I. Levine (ed.), The Jerusalem Cathedra 2, Jerusalem 1982, 1-24 MCCOWN 1957 McCown, C. C., The Araq el-Emir and the Tobiads, BA 20 (1957), 63-76 MCGING 2002 McGing, B., Population and Proselytism: how many Jews were there in the Ancient World?, in BARTLETT 2002, 88-106 MEEKS 1983 Meeks, A. W., The first urban Christians. The social world of the Apostle Paul, New Haven 1983 MEIGGS – LEWIS 1988 Meiggs, R. – Lewis, D., Greek Historical Inscriptions, Oxford 1988 MEINHOLD 1909 Meinhold, H., Sabbat und Sonntag, Leipzig 1909 MENDELS 1979 Mendels, D., Hellenistic Utopia and the Essenes, HThR 72 (1979), 207-222 ID. 1992 Mendels, D., The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism, New York 1992 MENDELSON 1982 Mendelson, A., Secular Education in Philo of Alexandria, Cincinnati 1982 MERKELBACH Merkelbach, R., Roman und Mysterium in der Antike, München 1962 1962 MESHORER 1982 Meshorer, Y., Ancient Jewish Coinage, 2 v., Dix Hills (NY) 1982 MEYER, E. 1910 Meyer, E., Hesiods Erga und das Gedicht von den fünf Menschengeschlechtern (1910) in Kleine Schriften, II, Halle 1924, 15-66 ID. 1915 Meyer, E., Ägyptische Dokumente aus der Perserzeit, I : eine eschatologische Prophetie über die Geschichte Ägyptens in persischer und griechischer Zeit, in Sitzungberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1915, 287-304 ID. 1921-1923 Meyer, E., Ursprung und Anfänge des Christentums, 3 v., Stuttgart 1921-1923 MEYER, M. 1975 Meyer, M., Abrahan Geiger’s Historical Judaism, in New Perspectives on Abrahan Geiger: an HUC-JIR Symposium, Cincinnati 1975, 3-16 MEYERS 1992 Meyers, E. M., The Challenge of Hellenism for Early Judaism and Christianity, BA 55 (1992), 84-91 363 Bibliografia ID. 2002 Meyers, E. M., Aspects of Everyday Life in Roman Palestine with Special Reference to Private Domiciles and Ritual Baths, in BARTLETT 2002, 193-220 MEYERSMeyers, E.-Strange, J., Archaeology, the Rabbis and Early Christianity, Nashville 1981 STRANGE 1981 MIDDENDORP Middendorp, T., Die Stellung Jesu Ben Siras zwischen Judentum und Hellenismus, Leiden 1973 1973 MILIK 1956 Milik, J.T, Prière de Nabonide et autres écrits d’un cycle de Daniel, fragments de Qumrân 4, RB 63, 1956, 407-11 ID. 1966 Milik, T. J., La patrie de Tobie, RB 73, 1966, 522-530 MILLAR 1978 Millar, F., The Background to the Maccabean Revolution: Reflections on Martin Hengel “Judaism and Hellenism”, JJS 29 (1978), 1-21 ID. 1983 Millar, F., The Phoenician Cities: A Case-Study of Hellenisation, PCPhS 209 (1983), 55-68 ID. 1993 Millar, F., The Roman East, 31 BC-AD337, Cambridge 1993 MILLER 1973 Miller, P. N., The divine warrior in early Israel, Cambridge 1973 MILLER 2007 Miller, P. N., Momigliano, Benjamin, and Antiquarianism after Historicism, in Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences, ed. by P. N. Miller, Toronto 2007, 334378. MITTEIS – Mitteis, L.-Wilcken, U., Grundzüge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, 2 vol. in 4 t., I: Historischer 1 2 WILCKEN 1912 Teil; II: Juristischer Teil, Leipzig-Berlin 1912 (Leipzig 1965 ) MODRZEJEWSK Modrzejewski, J. M., How to be a Greek and yet a Jew in Hellenistic Alexandria, in Cohen, S.-Frerichs I 1993 1993, 65-92 MOMIGLIANO 1929 Momigliano, A., Il decreto trilingue in onore di Tolomeo Filopatore e la quarta guerra di Celesiria, Aegyptus 10, n. 2-4 (1929), 180-189 (=Quinto, 579-589) ID. 1930A Momigliano, A., Un’ignota irruzione dei Galati in Siria al tempo di Antioco III?, BFC 36, n. 6 (192930), 151-155 (=Quinto, 591-596) ID. 1930B Momigliano, A., Errori intorno alle toparchie della Palestina, RFIC 8 (1930), 71-74 (=Nono, 9-11) ID. 1930C Momigliano, A., Il profeta Micha e il vaticinio di Elia contro Achab, RR 6 (1930), 298-303 (=Nono, 2327) ID. 1930D Momigliano, A., Aspetti dell’antisemitismo alessandrino in due opere di Filone, La Rassegna Mensile di Israel, S. 2, 5 (1930), 3-14 (=Nono, 33-43) ID. 1930E Momigliano, A., Prime linee di storia della tradizione maccabaica, Roma 1930 (2. ed. riv. Torino 1931; rist. con pref. e bibliografia aggiornata, Amsterdam 1968) [rec.: Pincherle 1931; Abel 1931] ID. 1931A Momigliano, A., Un’apologia del Giudaismo: il “Contro Apione” di Flavio Giuseppe, La Rassegna Mensile di Israel, 2. ser., 5 (1931) fasc. 1-2 (=Terzo, 513-522) ID. 1931B Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Leon, Harry J., The Jews of Ancient Rome, Philadelphia 1960 [5721], Gnomon 34 (1962), 178-182 (=Terzo, 749-754) ID. 1931C Momigliano, A., Eliseo e il re di Siria in II Re VI-VII, SMSR 7 (1931), 223-226 (=Quinto, 751-755) ID. 1931D Momigliano, A., Intorno al Contro Apione, RFIC ns 9, fasc. 4 (1931), 485-503 (=Quinto, 765-784) ID. 1931E Momigliano, A., Un nuovo frammento dei così detti “Atti dei Martiri Pagani”, Rendic. Pontif. Accad. Rom. Archeol. 7 (1931), 119-127 (=Quinto, 789-798) 364 Bibliografia ID. 1931F Momigliano, A., Un’apologia del Giudaismo: il “Contro Apione” di Flavio Giuseppe, La Rassegna Mensile di Israel, 2. ser., 5 (1931) fasc. 1-2 (=Terzo, 513-522; =Momigliano 1987e, 63-71) ID. 1931G Momigliano, A., I nomi delle prime “Sinagoghe” romane e la condizione giuridica della comunità in Roma sotto Augusto, La Rassegna Mensile di Israel, 2. ser., 6 (1931) fasc. 7, 283-292 (=Terzo, 523-533) ID. 1932A Momigliano, A., L'opera dell'imperatore Claudio, Firenze 1932 ID. 1932B Momigliano, A., Per la data e la caratteristica della Lettera di Aristea, Aegyptus 12 (1932), 161-172 (=Quarto, 213-223); Appendice: Un documento della spiritualità dei Giudei Leontopolitani, 223-224 ID. 1932C Momigliano, A., I Tobiadi nella preistoria del moto maccabaico, Atti R. Acc. S. Torino 67(1931-32), 165-200 (=Quinto, 597-628) ID. 1932D Momigliano, A., La personalità di Caligola, ASNP S. 2, 1 (1932), 205-228 (=Nono, 191-217) ID. 1932E Momigliano, A., Postilla metodologica ad una critica sull’opera di Claudio, La Nuova Italia 3 (1932), 320-321 (=Nono, 219-222) ID. 1932F Momigliano, A., I Tobiadi nella preistoria del moto maccabaico, Atti R. Acc. S. Torino 67(1931-32), 165-200 (=Quinto, 597-628) ID. 1933A Momigliano, A., Aspetti di Michele Rostovzev, “La Nuova Italia” 4 (1933), 160-164 (=Contributo, 327335) ID. 1933B Momigliano, A., Giuramento di Sarapiastai? Contributo alla storia del sincretismo ellenistico, Aegyptus 13, n. 1 (1933), 179-186 (=Quinto, 757-764) ID. 1933C Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Geiger, F., Philon von Alexandria als sozialer Denker, Stuttgart 1932, RFIC 11 (1933), 94-98 (=Sesto, 825-829) ID. 1933D Momigliano, A., Per il centenario dell’ “Alessandro Magno” di J. G. Droysen. Un contributo, “Leonardo” 4 (1933), 510-516 (=Contributo, 263-274)] ID. 1933E Momigliano, A., Aspetti di Michele Rostovzev, “La Nuova Italia” 4 (1933), 160-164 (=Contributo, 327335) ID. 1934A Momigliano, A., Severo Alessandro Archisynagogus. Una conferma alla Historia Augusta, Athenaeum, N.S. 12 (1934), 151-153 (=Quarto, 531-533) ID. 1934B Momigliano, A., Ricerche sull’organizzazione della Giudea sotto il dominio Romano (63 a.C.-70 d.C.), ASNP S.2, 3 (1934), 183-221 e 347-396 (=Nono, 227-323) ID. 1934C Momigliano, A., Josephus as a Source for the History of Judaea. Note, in CAH, vol. 10, 1934, cap. 11, pp. 384-387; (=Nono, 348-350) ID. 1934D Momigliano, A., Nero. (With a note on the Persecution of the Christians), transl. by M. P. Charlesworth, in CAH, vol. 10, 1934, chap. XXI, pp. 702-42, 887-8; Bibliography on pp. 978-84 ID. 1934E Momigliano, A., La ribellione giudaica, trad ingl.di M. P. Charlesworth in CAH, vol. 10, 1934, cap. 25, pp. 860-865; l’orig. it., conservato ds. presso Dionisotti, fu presentato al concorso per il Premio Cantoni, Firenze 1932; pubbl. per la prima volta in Nono, 393-408 ID. 1934F Momigliano, A., Nero, trad ingl.di M. P. Charlesworth in CAH, vol. 10 (1934), 704-742 ID. 1934G Momigliano, A., Rebellion within the Empire, in CAH, vol. 10, Cambridge 1934 ID. 1935A Momigliano, A., Genesi storica e funzione attuale del concetto di ellenismo, “Giornale critico della filosofia italiana”, 16 (1935), 10-37 (=Contributo, 165-193) ID. 1935B Momigliano, A., Genesi storica e funzione attuale del concetto di ellenismo, “Giornale critico della 365 Bibliografia filosofia italiana” 16 (1935), 10-37 (=Contributo, 165-193) ID. 1937 Momigliano, A., Uno schema etnografico e una presunta legge punica, RSO 16 (1935-37), 228-229 (=Quarto, 515-517) ID. 1938 Momigliano, A., Una osservazione sulla politica tributaria di Roma in Oriente, in Atti del IV Congresso Nazionale di Studi Romani, 1938, vol. I, 280-283 (=Quinto, 641-644) ID. 1940 Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Goodenough, E. R., An Introduction to Philo Judaeus, New Haven 1940, JRS 34 (1944), 163-165 (=Quarto, 619-624) ID. 1943 Momigliano, A., Rostovtzeff's Twofold History of the Hellenistic World, JHS 63 (1943) 116-117 (=Contributo, 335-339) ID. 1944 Momigliano, A., [rec. a] The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. X: The Augustan Empire, 44 B.C.-A.D. 70, ed. by S.A. Cook, F. E. Adcock, M. P. Charlesworth, Cambridge 1934, JRS, 34 (1944), 109-116 (=Quinto, 986-1002) ID. 1945 Momigliano, A., La storia antica in Inghilterra, Il Mese 3, n. 18, 1945, 728-733 (=Sesto, 761-768) ID. 1947 Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Wolfson, Harry Austryn, Philo. Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Cambridge (Mass.) 1947, Ricerche Religiose 20 (1949), 199-201(=Quarto, 625-627) ID. 1949A Momigliano, A., Felice Momigliano, 1866-1924, in Nel 25. anniversario della morte di Felice Momigliano, Mondovì 1949, 19-21 (=Terzo, 843-849) ID. 1949B Momigliano, A., [rec. a] WOLFSON 1947, in RR 20 (1949), 199-201 (=Quarto, 625-627). ID. 1950A Momigliano, A., Panegyricus Messallae and “Panegyricus Vespasiani”: Two references to Britain, JRS 40 (1950), 39-42 (=Quarto, 523-529) ID. 1950B Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Walzer, R., Galen on Jews and Christians, Oxford 1949, RSI 62 (1950), 575577 (=Quarto, 637-640) ID. 1954 Momigliano, A., M. I. Rostovtzeff, “The Cambridge Journal” 7 (1954), 334-346 (=Contributo, 341-354; Studies in Historiography, 91-104) ID. 1955 Momigliano, A., Contributo alla storia degli studi classici, Roma 1955 ID. 1956 Momigliano, A., Problemi di metodo nella interpretazione dei simboli giudeo-ellenistici [E. R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, I-IV], Athenaeum, N.S. 34 (1956), 237-248 (=Secondo, 355-364; Pagine ebraiche, 53-62) ID. 1960A Momigliano, A., Commemorazione del socio Plinio Fraccaro, RAL . VIII vol. XV fasc. 7-12 (1960), 361-67 (=Terzo, 827-35) ID. 1960B Momigliano, A., Secondo Contributo alla storia degli studi classici, Roma 1960 ID. 1961A Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Hadas, Moses, Hellenistic Culture, Fusion and Diffusion, New York-London 1959, RSI 73 (1961), 147-149 (=Terzo, 765-767) ID. 1961B Momigliano, A., The Jews of Ancient Rome, The Jewish Chronicle, 15 Dec. 1961, pp. 21 e 38. A review of H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome, Philadelphia 1960 (=Sesto, 579-582) ID. 1962A Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Boman, Th., Das Hebräische Denken im Vergleich mit dem Griechischen, 3. ed., Göttingen 1959, RSI 74 (1962), 603-607 (=Terzo, 759-764) ID. 1962B Momigliano, A., Discussione con gli storici sovietici. I. Risposta ad un critico russo; II. Fatti e prospettive, RSI 74 (1962), 139-142, e 75 (1963), 604-607 (=Terzo, 795-802) 366 Bibliografia ID. 1963A Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Toynbee, Arnold, A Study of History, vol. XII: Reconsiderations, Oxford 1961, EHR 78 (1963), 275-276 (=Terzo, 793-794) ID. 1963B Momigliano, A., The Conlict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, Oxford 1963 ID. 1965A Momigliano, A., Remarks on Eastern History Writing, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1965, 447-451 (=Terzo, 229-238) ID. 1965B Momigliano, A., Fattori orientali della storiografia ebraica post-esilica e della storiografia greca, RSI 77 (1965), 456-464 (=Terzo, 808-818) ID. 1966A Momigliano, A., Time in Ancient Historiography, H&T 6 (1966), 1-23 (=Quarto, 13-41) ID. 1966B Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Pines, S., The Jewish Christians of the Early Centuries of Christianity according to a New Source, Jerusalem 1966, RSI 78 (1966), 980-981 (=Sesto, 729-730) ID. 1966C Momigliano, A., Studies in Historiography, London 1966 ID. 1966D Momigliano, A., Terzo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Roma 1966 ID. 1966E Momigliano, A., Beloch Karl Julius, DBI, Istituto dell’Enciclopedia italiana, Roma 1966, VIII 32-45 (= Terzo, 32- 45; trad. ingl. in Momigliano, A., Studies on Modern Scholarship, ed. by G.W. Bowersock and T.J. Cornell,1994, 97 – 120) ID. 1966F Momigliano, A., Michael Rostovzev, Il Sedicesimo 6 (1966), 1-4 ID. 1967 Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Will, E., Histoire politique du monde hellénistique, I: De la mort d’Alexandre aux événements d’Antiochos III et de Philippe V, Nancy 1966, RSI 79 (1967), 512-513 (=Sesto, 691-693) ID. 1968A Momigliano, A., Prospettiva 1967 della storia greca, RSI 80 (1968), 5-19 (=Quarto, 43-58) ID. 1968B Momigliano, A., The Greater Danger – Science or Biblical Criticism? A discussion of R. H. Popkin “Scepticism, Theology and the Scientific Revolution in the Seventeenth Century”, in Problems in the Philosophy of Science, edd. Lakatos-Musgrave, Amsterdam 1968, 33-36; R. H. Popkin, ib., 1-28 (=Quinto, 1020-1022) ID. 1968C Momigliano, A., Prospettiva 1967 della storia greca, RSI 80 (1968), 5-19 (=Quarto, 43-58) ID. 1968D Momigliano, A., Prime linee di storia della tradizione maccabaica, Amsterdam 1968 (rist. con pref. e bibliografia aggiornata della 2. ed. riv., Torino 1931) ID. 1969A Momigliano, A., Jacob Bernays, MKNAW, Afd. Letterkunde, N. Reeks, 32, n. 5 (1969), 151-178 (=Quinto, 127-158; trad. it. in Pagine Ebraiche, 157-180) ID. 1969B Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Bravo, B., Philologie, histoire, philosophie de l’histoire. Étude sur J. G. Droysen, Historien de l’antiquité, Varsovie 1968, RSI 81, fasc. 3 (1969), 679-682 (=Quinto, 898-902) ID. 1969C Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Bravo, B., Philologie, histoire, philosophie de l’histoire. Étude sur J. G. Droysen, Historien de l’antiquité, Varsovie 1968, RSI 81, fasc. 3 (1969), 679-682 (=Quinto, 898-902) ID. 1969D Momigliano, A, Quarto contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Roma 1969 ID. 1970A Momigliano, A., J. G. Droysen between Greeks and Jews, H&T 9, fasc. 2 (1970), 139-153 (=Quinto, 109-126) ID. 1970B Momigliano, A., Introduzione all’ellenismo, RSI 82, n. 4 (1970), 781-799; Lezione tenuta alla Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa nel Dicembre 1969 (=Quinto, 267-291) ID. 1970C Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Hengel, M., Judentum und Hellenismus. Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jh.s v. Chr., Tübingen 1969, JThS, NS 21 (1970), 149-153 (=Quinto, 931-936) 367 Bibliografia ID. 1970D Momigliano, A., Introduzione all’ellenismo, RSI 82, n. 4 (1970), 781-799; Lezione tenuta alla Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa nel Dicembre 1969 (=Quinto, 267-291) ID. 1970E Momigliano, A., Hellenismus und Gnosis, Randbemerkungen zu Droysens Geschichte des Hellenismus, Saeculum 21 (1970), 185-188 ID. 1971A Momigliano, A., La libertà di parola nel mondo antico, RSI 83, fasc. 3 (1971), 499-524 (=Sesto, 403436) ID. 1971B Momigliano, A., Empietà e eresia nel mondo antico, RSI 83, fasc. 4 (1971), 771-791 (=Sesto, 437-458) ID. 1971C Momigliano, A., The Development of Greek Biography, Four Lectures, Cambrdige (Mass) 1971 ID. 1974A Momigliano, A., The Social Structure of the Ancient City, ASNP S. 3, vol. 4, fasc. 2 (1974), 331-349 (=Sesto, 459-476) ID. 1974B Momigliano, A., Jews in Classical Scholarship, Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem, Year Book 1974, 223-225 (=Sesto, 583-587) ID. 1974C Momigliano, A., [rec. a] MacMullen, R., Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. to A.D. 284, New Haven 1974, RSI 86 (1974), 405-407 (=Sesto, 697-700) ID. 1975A Momigliano, A., La portata storica dei vaticini sul settimo re nel terzo libro degli Oracoli Sibillini, in Forma Futuri. Studi in onore del Cardinale Michele Pellegrino, Torino 1975, 1079-1084 (=Sesto, 551559) ID. 1975B Momigliano, A., The Second Book of Maccabees, CPh 70 (1975), 81-88 (=Sesto, 567-578) ID. 1975C Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Zinberg, I., Italian Jewry in the Renaissance Era. A History of Jewish Literature, vol. IV, transl. and ed. by B. Martin, Cincinnati-New York 1974, Jewish Journal of Sociology 17 (1975), 235-236 (=Sesto, 730-732) ID. 1975D Momigliano, A., The Second Book of Maccabees, CPh 70 (1975), 81-91 ID. 1975E Momigliano, A., The Fault of the Greeks, Deadalus, Spring 1975, 9-19 (vol. monografico dal tit.: Wisdom, Revelation and Doubt: Perspectives of the First Millennium B.C.; pubbl. anche come Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 104, n. 2) (=Sesto, 509-523) ID. 1975F Momigliano, A., Alien Wisdom : The Limits of Hellenization, Cambridge 1975; 2. ed 1978 Momigliano, A., Quinto contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Roma 1975 ID. 1975G ID. 1975H Momigliano, A., Storiografia greca, RSI 87, 1975, 17-46 (= Sesto, 33-67 e rist. nella raccolta La storiografia greca, Torino 1982; ed. ted. Griechische Geschichtsschreibung, in Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, Bd. 2, hrsg. von E. Vogt, Wiesbaden 1981, 305-335; ed. ingl. Greek Historiography, H&T 17, 1978, 1-28; ed. fr. in Problèmes d'historiographie ancienne et moderne, Paris 1983 ID. 1976A Momigliano, A., Ebrei e Greci, RSI 88 (1976), 425-443 (=Sesto, 527-549) ID. 1976B Momigliano, A., The Date of the First Book of Maccabees, in L’Italie préromaine et la Rome républicaine. Mélanges offerts à Jacques Heurgon, Rome 1976, 657-661 (=Sesto, 561-566) ID. 1976C Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Barnes, T. D., Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study, Oxford 1971, JRS 66 (1976), 273-276 (=Sesto, 707-713) ID. 1977A Momigliano, A., Interpretazioni minime, I-III, Athenaeum NS 55, fasc. 1-2 (1977), 186-190 (=Sesto, 181-186) ID. 1977B Momigliano, A., Max Weber and Eduard Meyer: a propos of City and Country in Antiquity, TimesLS, 8 apr. 1977, 435-436 (=Sesto, 285-293) 368 Bibliografia ID. 1977C Momigliano, A., After-dinner speech on the occasion of the award of the degree of D.H.L.H.C. at Brandeis University, 22 May 1977, in Ottavo, 431-432. ID. 1977D Momigliano, A., Easter Elements in Post-Exilic Jewish and Greek Historiography, in Momigliano 1977E ID. 1977E Momigliano, A., Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography, Middletown 1977 ID. 1978A Momigliano, A., Dopo Max Weber?, ASNP S. 3, vol. 8, fasc. 4 (1978), 1315-1332 (=Pref. a: Humphreys, S.C., Saggi antropologici sulla Grecia antica, Bologna 1979 = Sesto, 295-322) ID. 1978B Momigliano, A., The Historians of the Classical World and their Audiences: Some Suggestions, ASNP S. 3, vol. 8, fasc. 1 (1978), 59-75 (=Sesto, 361-376) ID. 1978C Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults. Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty, ed. by J. Neusner, 4 v., Leiden 1975, JThS 29 (1978), 212-217 (=Sesto, 773-778) ID. 1978D Momigliano, A., Greek Historiography, H&Th 17, 1 (1978), 1-28. ID. 1979A Momigliano, A., Flavius Josephus and Alexander’s Visit to Jerusalem, Athenaeum NS. 57, fasc. 3-4 (1979), 442-448 (=Settimo, 319-329; = Momigliano 1987E, 85-93) ID. 1979B Momigliano, A., Two Types of Universal History: The Cases of E. A. Freeman and Max Weber, scritto per la Festschrift D. M. Pippidi, 1979, pubbl. in Studii Clasice 24 (1986), 7-17 (=Ottavo, 121-134) ID. 1979C Momigliano, A., Persian Empire and Greek Freedom, in The Idea of Freedom. Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin, ed. by A. Ryan, Oxford, 1979, 139-151 (= Settimo, 61-75) ID. 1980A Momigliano, A., Interpretazioni minime, IV-VII, ASNP S. 3, vol. 10, fasc. 4 (1980), 1221-1231 (=Settimo, 105-114) ID. 1980B Momigliano, A., Daniele e la teoria greca della successione degli imperi, RAL S. 8, vol. 35, fasc. 3-4 (1980), 157-162 (=Settimo, 297-304) ID. 1980C Momigliano, A., Ciò che Flavio Giuseppe non vide, introd. a Vidal-Naquet, P., Il buon uso del tradimento (trad. it. di: Flavius Josèphe ou du bon usage de la trahison), Roma 1980; RSI 91, fasc. 4 1979 (1980), 564-574 (=Settimo, 305-317) ID. 1980D Momigliano, A., A Note on Max Weber’s Definition of Judaism as a Pariah-Religion, H&T 19 (1980), 313-318 (=Settimo, 341-348) ID. 1980E Momigliano, A., Saggezza straniera. l’Ellenismo e le altre culture, Torino 1980 (ed. orig.: Alien Wisdom. The Limits of Hellenization,Cambridge 1975) ID. 1980F Momigliano, A., Sesto contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, 2 v., Roma 1980 ID. 1981A Momigliano, A., Premesse per una discussione su Eduard Meyer. Introduzione a un seminario su E. Meyer nella Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 12-13 febbr. 1981, RSI 93, fasc. 2 (1981), 384-398 (=Settimo, 215-231) ID. 1981B Momigliano, A., Max Weber di fronte agli storici dell’antichità, Prefazione a Weber, M., Storia economica e sociale della antichità, Roma 1981, VII-XIII 507 (=Settimo, 245-251) ID. 1981C Momigliano, A., Biblical Studies and Classical Studies: Simple Reflections upon Historical Method. Centennial Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Dallas, 6 nov. 1980, ASNP S. 3, vol. 11, fasc. 1 (1981), 25-32 (=Settimo, 289-296) ID. 1981D Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Doran, R., Temple Propaganda: The Purpose and Character of 2 Maccabees, Washington 1981, CPh 79 (1984), 177-178 (=Ottavo, 387-389) ID. 1981E Momigliano, A., Greek Culture and the Jews, in The Legacy of Greece: a New Appraisal, ed. by M. Finley, Oxford 1981, 325-346 (qui anche History and Biography, 155-184) 369 Bibliografia ID. 1982A Momigliano, A., The Origins of Universal History, Creighton Lecture, University of London, 2 Febr. 1981, ASNP, S.3, vol. 12, fasc. 2 (1982), 533-560 (=Settimo, 77-103) ID. 1982B Momigliano, A., Considerations on History in an Age of Ideologies. First Georges Lurcy Lecture at the University of Chicago, 4 May 1982, The American Scholar 51 (1982), 495-507 (=Settimo, 253-269) ID. 1982C Momigliano, A., L’assenza del terzo Bickermann, RSI 94 (1982), 527-551 (=Settimo, 371-375) ID. 1982D Momigliano, A., Books on the Maccabees. [Rec. a] Gauger, J.-D., Beiträge zur jüdischen Apologetik: Untersuchungen zur Autentizität von Urkunden bei Flavius Josephus und im I. Makkabäerbuch, Cologne-Bonn 1977; [Rec. a] Fischer, T., Seleukinden und Makkabäer: Beiträge zur Seleukidengeschichte und zu den politischen Ereignissen in Judäa während der 1. Hälfte des 2. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Bochum 1980, CPh 77 (1982), 258-263 (=Settimo, 481-488) ID. 1982E Momigliano, A., [rec. a] Brooten, B. J., Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue, Chico 1982, RSI 97 (1985), 325-327 (=Ottavo, 389-392) ID. 1982F Momigliano, A., How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans, MKNAW, n. r., 45, 9 (1982), 231-254 (= Settimo, 437-462) (trad. it. in Roma arcaica, 325-345) ID. 1982G Momigliano, A., Biblical Studies and Classical Studies. Simple Reflections upon Historical Method, ASNP s. III, vol. XI (1982) 25-32 (=Settimo, 289-96). ID. 1982H Momigliano, A., La storiografia greca, Torino 1982 ID. 1984A Momigliano, A., Religion in Athens, Rome and Jerusalem in the First Century B.C., ASNP S. 3, 14 (1984), 873-892 (=Ottavo, 279-296) ID. 1984B Momigliano, A., F. W. Walbank, JRS 74 (1984), n. p. (=Ottavo, 424-426) ID. 1984C Momigliano, A., Sui fondamenti della storia antica, Torino 1984 ID. 1984D Momigliano, A., Settimo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Roma 1984 ID. 1985A Momigliano, A., The New Letter by “Anna” to “Seneca” (Ms. 17 Erzbischöfliche Bibliothek in Köln), Athenaeum 63 (1985), 217-219 (=Ottavo, 329-332) ID. 1985B Momigliano, A., Questioni di metodologia della storia delle religioni. [Rec. a] Filoramo, G., Religione e ragione tra Ottocento e Novecento, Bari 1985; Kitagawa, J. M. (ed.), The History of Religions. Retrospect and Prospect, New York 1985, RSI 98 (1986), 120-125 (=Ottavo, 402-407) ID. 1985C Momigliano, A., Tra storia e storicismo, Pisa 1985 ID. 1986A Momigliano, A., Profezia e storiografia, in Momigliano 1987e, 109-116 ID. 1986B Momigliano, A., Ancient Biography and the Study of Religion in the Roman Empire, ASNP S. 3, 16 (1986), 25-44 (=Ottavo, 193-210) ID. 1986C Momigliano, A., Indicazioni preliminari su Apocalissi ed Esodo nella tradizione giudaica, RSI 98 (1986), 353-366 (=Ottavo, 211-224) ID. 1986D Momigliano, A., How Roman Emperors become Gods, The American Scholar, Spring 1986, 181-193 (=Ottavo, 297-311) ID. 1986E Momigliano, A., The Disadvantages of Monotheism for a Universal State, CPh 81 (1986), 285-297 (=Ottavo, 313-328) ID. 1986F Momigliano, A., Jewish Evaluations of Latin in the Roman Empire, ASNP S. 3, 16 (1986), fasc. 2 (=Ottavo, 355-358) ID. 1986G Momigliano, A., Per la storia delle religioni nell’Italia contemporanea: Antonio Banfi ed Ernesto De Martino fra persona e Apocalissi, in Annali dell’Istituto Antonio Banfi 1 (1986-1987), 37-61 (=Nono, 370 Bibliografia 701-721) ID. 1986H Momigliano, A., Some Preliminary Remarks on the “Religious Opposition” to the Roman Empire, in Opposition et résistances à l’Empire d’Augut à Trajan – Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique, tome XXXIII (1986), Vandoeuvres-Genève 197, 103-133 (=Nono, 681-699). ID. 1986I Momigliano, A., Two Types of Universal History. The Cases of E.A. Freeman and Max Weber, in The Journal of Modern History 58.1 (1986), 235-45 (=Ottavo, 121-134). ID. 1987A Momigliano, A., Historiography of Religion: The Western Tradition, in The Encyclopedia of Religion, v. 6, New York 1987, 383-390 (=Ottavo, 27-44) ID. 1987B Momigliano, A., Roman Religion in the Empire, in The Encyclopedia of Religion, v. 12, New York 1987, 462-471 (=Ottavo, 239-259) ID. 1987C Momigliano, A., Sibylline Oracles, in The Encyclopedia of Religion, v. 13, New York 1987, 305-307 (=Ottavo, 349-354) ID. 1987D Momigliano, A., Pagine ebraiche, a c. di S. Berti, Milano 1987 ID. 1987E Momigliano, A., On Pagans, Jews, and Christians, Middletown 1987 ID. 1987F Momigliano, A., From the Pagan to the Christian Sibyl: Profecy as History of Religion, in The Uses of Greek and Latin. Historical Essays, ed. by A. C. Dionisotti, A. Grafton and J. Kraye, London 1988, 3-18 (trad. it. di A. M.: ASNP 17 (1987), 407-428(=Nono, 725-744) ID. 1987G Momigliano, A., Ottavo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Roma 1987 ID. 1987H Momigliano, A., Storia e storiografia antica, presentazione di E. Gabba, Bologna 1987 ID. 1988A Momigliano, A., The Romans and the Maccabees, in Jewish History. Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky, ed. by A. Rapaport-Albert and S. J. Zipperstein, London 1988 (trad. it. di L. Polverini.: RIL 123 (1989), 95-109)(=Nono, 747-761) ID. 1988B Momigliano, A., On Hellenistic Judaism [rec. a: Will, E.-Orrieux, C., Ioudaïsmos-hellénismos: essai sur le Joudaïsme judéen à l’époque hellénistique, Nancy 1986], CPh 83 (1988), 248-251 (=Nono, 763-766) ID. 1988C Momigliano, A., From the Pagan to the Christian Sybil: Prophecy as History of Religion, in The Uses of Greek and Latin. Historical Essays ed. by A. C. Dionisotti, A. Grafton and Jill Kraye, London 1988, 318 (=Nono, 725-44) ID. 1988D Momigliano, A., Die Judein in der Alten Welt, mit einer Einführung von K. Christ, Berlin 1988 ID. 1988E Momigliano, A., Saggi di storia della religione romana (Studi e lezioni 1983-1986), a c. di R. Di Donato, tr. di M. Tavoni, Brescia 19888 ID. 1989 Momigliano, A., Roma arcaica, Firenze 1989 ID. 1990 Momigliano, A., The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, Berkley-Oxford 1990; ed. it. Le radici classiche della storiografia moderna. Sather Classical Lectures, a c. di R. Di Donato, Firenze 1992 ID. 1992A Momigliano, A., Prologue in Germany, in Nono, a c. di R. Di Donato, Roma 1992, 543-562 ID. 1992B Momigliano, A., Liberty and Peace in the Ancient World, inedito [vd. nota esplicativa], in Nono, 483501 ID. 1992C Momigliano, A., From Bachofen to Cumont, inedito [vedi nota esplicativa], Nono, 593-607 (trad. it. di M. Tavoni in Saggi di storia della religione romana. Studi e lezioni 1983-1986) a c. di R. Di Donato, Brescia 1988 ID. 1992D Momigliano, A., The Self-Awareness of the Protagonists, in Nono, 609-629 371 Bibliografia ID. 1992E Momigliano, A., Storiografia persiana, storiografia greca e storiografia ebraica in Le radici classiche della storiografia moderna. Sather Classical Lectures, a c. di R. Di Donato, Firenze 1992, 12-34 (ed. orig.: Persian Historiography, Greek Historiography, and Jewish Historiography, in The Classical foundations of modern Historiography, with a forew. by R. Di Donato, Berkeley 1990, 5-28) ID. 1992F Momigliano, A., Nono contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, ed. a c. di R. Di Donato, Roma 1992 ID. 2000 A. Momigliano, Ausgewählte Schriften zur Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung, hrsg. von G. W. Most unter Mitwirk. von W. Nippel und A. Grafton. Band 3: Die moderne Geschichtsschreibung der Alten Welt, hrsg. von G. W. Most, Stuttgart-Weimar 2000 (=Ausgewählte Schriften 2000), 369-392 ID. 2012 Momigliano, A., Decimo Contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, ed. a c. di R. Di Donato, 2 v., Roma 2012 MOMMSEN 1861 Mommsen, T., Mamilius Sura, Aemilius Sura, L. Manlius, RhM 16 (1861) 282-4 MONTEFIORE 1910 Montefiore, C. G., Some elements of the religious teaching of Jesus, according to the Synoptic Gospels, London 1910 (rist. New York 1973) MONTGOMERY Montgomery, J. A., The Samaritans, the earliest Jewish sect: their history, theology and literature, 2. 1968 ed., New York 1968 (1. ed.: 1907) MOORE, C. 1971 Esther, translated with an introduction and notes by C.A. Moore, Garden City 1971 ID. 1977 Moore, C.A., Daniel, Esther and Jeremiah: The Additions, New York 1977 ID. 1985 Moore,C.A. (ed.), Judith, The Anchor Bible, Garden City 1985 MOORE, G. 1958 Moore, G. F., Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era : The Age of the Tannaim, 3 v., Cambridge 1958 (1. ed. 1930) MOR 1992 Jewish assimilation, acculturation and accommodation: past traditions, current issues and future prospects, ed. M. Mor, Lanham (Nebr.) 1992 MORALDI 1971 Moraldi, L., I Manoscritti di Qumran, Torino 1971 MORESCHINI- Moreschini, C.-Norelli, E., Storia della letteratura cristiana antica greca e latina, Brescia 1995 NORELLI 1995 MORRAPPAPORT 1982 Mohr, M. – Rappaport, U., Bibliography of works on Jewish History in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, 1976-1980, Jerusalem 1982 MOTZO 1913 Motzo, B. R., Esame storico-critico del III libro dei Maccabei, in Entaphia: in memoria di E, Pozzi, Torino 1913, 211-251 (rist. come: Motzo, B. R., Ricerche sulla letteratura e la storia giudaicoellenistica, a c. di F. Parente, Roma 1977, 351-416) MOWINCKEL 1927 ID. 1956 Mowinckel, S., Le décalogue, Paris 1927 MOWRY 1966 Mowry, L., The Dead Sea scrolls and the early church, Notre Dame (Ind.) 1966 MUILENBURG 1960 Muilenburg, J., The Son of Man in Daniel and the Ethiopic Apocalypse of Enoch, JBL 79 (1960), 197209 MURPHY- Murphy-O’Connor, J., The Essenes and Their History, RB 81 (1974), 215-244 Mowinckel, S., He that cometh, Oxford 1956 372 Bibliografia O’CONNOR 1974 ID. 1976 Murphy-O’Connor, J., Demetrius I and the Teacher of Righteousness, RB 83 (1976), 400-420 MURRAY 1967 Murray, O., Aristeas and Ptolemaic Kingship, JThSt 18 (1967), 337-371 ID. 1972 Murray, O., Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture, CQ 22 (1972), 200-213 ID. 1977 Murray, O., [rec. a] Momigliano, A., Alien Wisdom, JRS 67 (1977), 177-178 ID. 1988 Murray, O., Momigliano e la cultura inglese, RSI 100. 2 (1988), 422-439 MUSSIES 1971 Mussies, G., The Morphology of Koiné Greek as used in the Apocalypse of St. John, Leiden 1971 MUSTI 1966 Musti, D., Lo Stato dei Seleucidi, SCO 15 (1966), 61-197 MYERS 1974 Myers, J.M. (tr.), II Esdras, Garden City 1974 NAVEH 1962 Naveh, J., The Excavations at Mesad Hashavyahu, IEJ 12 (1962), 89-113 ID. 1973 Naveh, J., Some Semitic Epigraphical Considerations on the Antiquity of the Greek Alphabet, AJA 77 (1973), 1-8 NEESEN 1980 Neesen, L., Untersuchungen zu den direkten Staatsabgaben der römischen Kaiserzeit (27 v. Chr.-284 n. Chr.), Bonn 1980 NENCI 1998 Nenci, G. (ed.), Erodoto, le Storie, vol. VI: la battaglia di Maratona, Milano 1998 NEUSNER 1965 Neusner, J., History and Torah : essays on Jewish learning, New York 1965 ID. 1971 Neusner, J., The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, 3 vol., Leiden 1971 ID. 1972 Neusner, J., There we sat down : Talmudic Judaism in the making, Nashville-New York 1972 (rist. con nuova pref., New York 1978) ID. 1973A Neusner, J., The idea of purity in ancient Judaism, Leiden 1973 ID. 1973B Neusner, J., Eliezer ben Hyrcanos: the Tradition and the Man, Part I: The Tradition; Part II: Analysis of the Tradition, Leiden 1973 ID. 1975A Neusner, J., First-century Judaism in crisis : Yohanan ben Zakkai and the Renaissance of Torah, Nashville-New York 1975 (ed. abbrev. di: A life of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, ca. 1-80 C. E., Leiden 1962) ID. 1975B Neusner, J., Early rabbinic Judaism : historical studies in religion, literature and art, Leiden 1975 ID. 1976 Neusner, J., Talmudic Judaism in Sasanian Babylonia : essays and studies, Leiden 1976 ID. 1981 Neusner, J., Judaism. The Evidence of the Mishnah, Chicago-London 1981 ID. 1984A Neusner, J., Judaism in the beginning of Christianity, London-Philadelphia 1984 ID. 1984B Neusner, J., Messiah in context : Israel's history and destiny in formative Judaism, Philadelphia 1984 ID. 1986 Neusner, J., Judaism in the matrix of Christianity, Philadelphia 1986 ID. 1987 Neusner, J. Josephus’ Pharisees: A Complete Repertoire, in Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, ed. by L. H. Feldman and G. Hata, Leiden 1987, 274-292 ID. 1989 Neusner, J., Foundations of Judaism, Philadelphia 1989; tr. it. di P. Stefani, Firenze 1992 373 Bibliografia ID. 1995 - 2001 Judaism in Late Antiquity. Part 1: The Literary and Archaeological Sources, ed. by J. Neusner, Leiden 1995. Part 2: Historical Syntheses, ed. J. Neusner, Leiden 1995. Part. 3: Where We stand: issues and debates in ancient Judaism, ed. by A. J. Avery-Peck, J. Neusner, Leiden 1998. Part 4: Death, life afterdeath, resurrection and the world-to-come in the Judaisms of antiquity, ed. by A. J. Avery-Peck, J. Neusner, Leiden 2000. Part 5: Judaism of Qumran: a systematic reading of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. by A. J. Avery-Peck, J. Neusner, B. D. Chilton, Leiden 2001 NEUSNERNeusner, J. – Frerichs, E. S. (edd.), "To see ourselves as others see us" : Christians, Jews, "others" in FRERICHS 1985 late antiquity, Chico (Cal.) 1985 NEUSNERGREENFRERICHS 1987 NICKELSBURG 1972 Neusner, J. – Green, W. S. – Freichs, E. S. (edd.), Judaisms and their Messiah at the turn of the Christian era, Cambridge 1987 Nickelsburg, G. W. E., Resurrection, immortality, and eternal life in intertestamental Judaism, Cambridge-London 1972 NICKELSBURG Nickelsburg, G.W.E., Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah, London 1981 1981 NICKELSBURG- Nickelsburg, G. W. E.-Stone, M. E. (ed.), Faith and piety in early Judaism : texts and documents, STONE 1983 Philadelphia 1983 NIEBUHR 1847-51 Niebuhr, B. G., Vorträge über alte Geschichte, an der Universität zu Bonn gehalten, von B. G. Niebuhr, hrsg. von M. Niebuhr, 3 Bände, Verlag Reimer, Berlin, I. Band: Der Orient bis zur Schlacht von Salamis. Griechenland bis auf Perikles, 445 S., 1847; II. Band: Griechenland bis zur Niederlage des Agis bei Megalopolis. Sicilien's Primordien. Der Orient bis zum Tode Alexander's des Großen. Philipp und Alexander von Makedonien, 508 S., 1848; III. Band: Die makedonischen Reiche. Hellenisirung des Orients. Untergang des alten Griechenlands. Die römische Weltherrschaft, 762 S., 1851 NIEHOFF 1998 Niehoff, J., Das Judentum von Alexander d. Gr. bis 800 n. Chr., s.v. Judentum in Der neue Pauly, Bd. 5, Stuttgart-Weimar 1998, coll. 1194-1200 NIKIPROWETZK Nikiprowetzky, V., Temple et communauté, REJ 126 (1967), 7-25 Y 1967 ID. 1970 Nikiprowetzky, V., La troisième Sibylle, Paris 1970 ID. 1971 Nikiprowetzky, V., Le Nouveau Temple, REJ 130 (1971), 1-30 ID. 1977 Nikiprowetzky, V., Le commentaire de l’Ecriture chez Philon d’Alexandrie, Leiden 1977 NOACK 1971 Noack, B., Spätjudentum und Heilsgeschichte, Stuttgart 1971 NOCK 1933 Nock, A.D., Conversion: the old and the new religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo, Oxford 1933 ID. 1972 Nock, A. D., Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, Oxford 1972, 2 v., Oxford 1972 NORDEN 1921 Norden, E., Jahve und Moses in hellenistischer Theologie, in Festgabe A. v. Harnack, Tübingen 1921, 292-301 (=Kleine Schriften, Berlin 1966, 276-285) ID. 1954 Norden, E., Das Genesiszitat in der Schrift vom Erhabenen, AAB 1954, n. 1 (=Kleine Schriften, Berlin 1966, 286-313) NORTH 2014 North, J. A., Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Thinking of Arnaldo Momigliano, in WARBURG COLL. 2014, 129-145 OGDEN 1961 Ogden, J., A Note on "Autobiography", N&Q 206, 1961, 461-462 OLIVER 1953 Oliver, J.H., The Ruling Power. A Study of the Roman Empire in the Second Century after Christ through the Roman Oration of Aelius Aristides, TAPhA n.s. 43.4,1953, 871-1003 ID. 1968 374 Bibliografia Oliver, J.H., The Civilizing Power. A Study of the Panathenaic Discourse of Aelius Aristides against the Background of Literature and Cultural Conflict, TAPhS 58.1, Philadelphia 1968 OMAGGIO 1989 Omaggio a Momigliano: storia e storiografia sul mondo antico. Cuneo-Caraglio, 22-23 ottobre 1988, a c. di L. Cracco-Ruggini, Como 1989 OPPENHEIMER Oppenheimer, A., The `am ha-aretz : a study in the social history of the Jewish people in the Hellenistic1977 Romam period, Leiden 1977 ORLINSKY 1944 Orlinsky, H.M., Review of Fritsch, Ch., The Anti-Anthropomorphisms of the Greek Pentateuch, Crozer Quarterly 2 (1944), 156-160 ID. 1956 Orlinsky, H.M., The Treatment of Anthropomorphisms and Anthropopathisms in the Septuangint of Isaiah, HUCA 27 (1956), 193-200 ID. 1959-61 Orlinsky, H. M., Studies in the Septuagint of the Book of Job. Chapter III: On the Matter of Anthropomorphisms, Anthropopathisms, and Euphemisms, HUCA 30 (1959), 153-167 e HUCA 32 (1961), 239-268 OSTENSACKEN 1969 Osten-Sacken, P. von der, Die Apokalyptik in ihrem Verhältnis zu der Prophetie und Weisheit, München 1969 PARENTE 1989A Parente, F., Ellenismo e giudaismo nell’interpretazione di Arnaldo Momigliano, in Omaggio 1989, 89102 ID. 1989B Parente, F., Arnaldo Momigliano e il giudaismo. Tra storia e autobiografia, SStor 16 (1989), 65-74 PARKER H. 1978 Parker, H.M., Artaxerxes III Ocus and Psalm 44, JQR 68,3 (1978), 152-68 PARKER R. 1959 Parker, R. A., A Vienna Demotic Papyrus on an Eclipse- and Lunar-Omina, Providence 1959 PASQUALI 1934 Pasquali, G., Storia della tradizione e critica del testo, Firenze 1934 PATLAGEAN 1988 Patlagean, E., Ebraismo e storia degli studi classici secondo Arnaldo Momigliano, RSI 100 (1988), 440446 PAUL 1969 Paul, A., Écrits de Qumran et sectes juives aux premiers siècles de l'Islam : recherches sur l'origine du Qaraïsme, Paris 1969 PENNA 2001 Penna, R., Vangelo e inculturazione. Studi sul rapporto tra rivelazione e cultura nel Nuovo Testamento, Cinisello Balsamo 2001 PERETTI 1943 Peretti, A., La Sibilla babilonese nella propaganda ellenistica, Firenze 1943 PERGOLA 1998 Pergola, P., Le catacombe romane, Roma 1998 PERROT 1974 Perrot, J., Une statue de Darius découverte à Suse, CDAFI 4 (1974) 61-72 PERRY 1967 Perry, B. E., The Ancient Romances: a literary-historical account of their origins, Berkeley-Los Angeles 1967 PESANTE 2002 Pesante, M. L., Momigliano, la tradizione e la situazione storica, QS 37, 111 (2002), 747-783 PETERS 1913 Peters, N., Das Buch Jesus Sirach oder Ecclesiasticus, Münster 1913 PFEIFFER 1937 Pfeiffer, R. H., Hebrews and Greeks before Alexander, JBL 56 (1937), 91-101 ID. 1949 Pfeiffer, R. H., History of New Testament Times, New York 1949 375 Bibliografia PFISTER 1914 Pfister, F., Eine jüdische Gründungsgeschichte Alexandrias, SHAW 11 (1914) PHILONENKO 1968 Philonenko, M., Joseph et Aséneth. Introd., texte critique, trad. et notes, Leiden 1968 PINCHERLE 1931 Pincherle, A., [recensione a:] Momigliano, A., Prime linee di storia della tradizione maccabaica, Roma 1930, SMSR 7 (1931), 238-247 POLVERINI 2006 Polverini, L. (ed.), Arnaldo Momigliano nella storiografia del Novecento, Roma 2006 PORTEN 1968 Porten, B., Archives from Elephantine, Berkeley 1968 PORTEOUS 1965 Porteous, N. W., Daniel. A Commentary, London 1965 PRÉAUX 1939 Préaux, C., L’Économie royale des Lagides, Bruxelles 1939 PREMERSTEIN Premerstein, A. von, Zu den sogenannten alexandrinischen Märtyrerakten, (Philologus 16, Suppl. Bd. 2), 1923 Leipzig 1923 PREUSS 1971 Preuss, H. D., Verspottung fremder Religionen im Alten Testament, Stuttgart 1971 PRITCHARD 1955-1969 Pritchard, J. B. (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 2. ed., Princeton 1955 (Suppl. 1969) PUCCI BEN ZEEN 2005 Pucci Ben Zeen, M., Diaspora Judaism in Turmoil, 116/117 CE: Ancient Sources and modern Insights, Leuven 2005 PUGLIESE CARRATELLI 1966 Pugliese Carratelli, G., Greek Inscriptions of the Middle East, East and West 16 (1966) 31-6 PURVIS 1981 Purvis, J. D., The Samaritan Problem: a Case Study in Jewish Sectarianism in the Roman Era, in Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith. Festschrift for Frank M. Cross, ed by B. Halpern and J. Levenson, Winona Lake 1981, 323-350 ID. 1988 Purvis, J. D., Jerusalem the Holy City, Metuchen (NJ) 1988, 93-55 RABIN 1957 Rabin, C., Qumran studies, London 1957 (2. ed.: New York 1975) RADICE 1983 Radice, R., Filone di Alessandria. Bibliografia generale, 1937-1982, Napoli 1983 RAJAK 1983 Rajak, T., Josephus: The Historian and His Society, Philadelphia 1983 ID. 1990 Rajak, T., The Asmoneans and the Uses of Hellenism, in A Tribute to Geza Vermes: Essays on Jewish and Christian Literature, ed. P. R. Davies and R. T. White, Sheffiel 1990, 261-280 ID. 2001 Rajak, T., The Jewish dialogue with Greece and Rome. Studies in cultural and social interaction, Leiden 2001 ID. 2002 Rajak, T., Synagogue and Community in the Graeco-Roman Diaspora, in BARTLETT 2002, 22-38 ID. 2014 Rajak, T., Momigliano and Judaism, In WARBURG COLL. 2014, 89-106 RANKIN 1936 Rankin, O. S., Israel’s Wisdom Literature, Edinburgh 1936 RAPPAPORT 1992 Rappaport, U., On the Hellenization of the Hasmoneans, in Jewish assimilation, acculturation and accommodation: past traditions, current issues and future prospects, ed. M. Mor, Lanham (Nebr.) 1992, 1-13 REICKE 1969 Reicke, B., The New Testament Era, London 1969 (2. ed. ingl. di: Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, 376 Bibliografia 1964) REIFENBERG Reifenberg, A., Ancient Jewish Coins, 2. ed., Jerusalem 1947 1947 REINACH 1895 Reinach, T., Textes d’auteurs grecs et romains relatifs au Judaïsme, Paris 1895 REINACHBLUM 1930 REINHARDT 1995 Flavius Josèphe, Contre Apion, texte ét. et ann. par Th. Reinach et trad. par L. Blum, Paris 1930 Reinhardt, The Population Size of Jerusalem and the Numerical Growth of the Jerusalem Church, in Bauckham, R. (ed.), The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting 4: The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting, Grand Rapids 1995, 237-265 REITZENSTEIN Reitzenstein, R., Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen. Ihre Grundgedanken und Wirkungen, Leipzig 1910 1910 RICHES 1982 Riches, J., Jesus and the transformation of Judaism, New York 1982 RICHTER 1946 Richter, G., Greeks in Persia, in American Journal of Archaeology 50 (1946), 15-30 RIIS 1970 Riis, P. J., Sukas I. The North-East Sanctuary and the First Settling of Greeks in Syria and Palestine, Copenaghen 1970 RITTER 1879 Ritter, B., Philo und die Halacha. Eine vergleichende Studie unter steter Berucksichtigung des Josephus, Leipzig 1879 RIVKIN 196970 Rivkin, E., Defining the Pharisee, HUCA 40-41 (1969-70), 205-49 ID. 1971 The Shaping of Jewish History: a Radical New Interpretation, by Ellis Rivkin, New York 1971. Newly revised and expanded ed. under the title The Unity Principle: the Shaping of Jewish History, Springfield N.J. 2003 ID. 1975 Rivkin, E., Ben Sira: the Bridge between the Aaronide and Pharisaic revolutions, Eretz Israel 12 (1975), 95-103 RIVKIN 1978 Rivkin, E., A Hidden Revolution: the Pharisees’ Search for the Kingdom Within, Abingdon 1978 ROBERT 1968 Robert, L., Fouilles d’Aï Khanoum, I, Paris 1973, 107-237 (=CRAI 1968, 416-457) ID. 1978 Robert, L., Les conquêtes du dynaste lycien Arbinas, Journal des Savants 1978, 3-34 ROBERTSON SMITH 1882 Robertson Smith, W., The prophets of Israel and their place in history to the close of the eight century B. C. Eight lectures, Edinburgh 1882 ID. 1894 Robertson Smith, W., The religion of the Semites : the fundamental institutions, 2. ed. 1894 (1 ed. 1889) ROBINSON 1976 ID. 2003 Robinson, J. A. T., Redating the New Testament, London 1976 ROFÉ 1991 Rofé, A., Jerusalem: The City Chosen by God, in Amit, D.-Gonen, R. (ed.), Jerusalem in the First Temple Period, Jerusalem 1991, 51-62 [ebraico] Robinson, T. A., [rec. a] Bartlett 2002, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2003.12.03 ROKEAH 1982 Rokeah, D., Jews, pagans and Christians in conflict, Jerusalem-Leiden 1982 ROOT 1979 Root, M.C., The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art. Essays in the Creation of an Iconography of Empire, Acta Iranica 19, Tehran - Liège 1979 ROSE 1992 Rose, P.L., Wagner: Race and Revolution, London 1992 ROST 1976 Rost, L., Judaism outside the Hebrew canon : an introduction to the documents, Nashville 1976 (trad. di: Einleitung in die alttestamentlichen Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen einschliesslich der grossen 377 Bibliografia Qumran-Handschriften , Erlangen 1971) ROSTOVTZEFF Rostovtzeff, M., The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 3 voll., Oxford 1926; 2. ed. 1926 revised by P.M. Fraser, Oxford 1957; trad. ita. Storia economica e sociale dell’impero romano, prefazione di G. De Sanctis, trad. di G. Sanna, Firenze 1976 RUDOLPH 1959 Rudolph, W., Vom Buch Kohelet, Münster 1959 RUSSELL 1964 Russell, D. S., The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, 200 B.C.-A.D. 200, London 1964 ID. 1986 Russell, D. S., From early Judaism to early church, London 1986 ID. 1999 Russell, D. S., L’apocalittica giudaica (200 a.C.-100 d.C.), ed. it. a c. di P. G. Borbone, Brescia 1999 (ed. orig.: The method and message of Jewish Apocalyptic) RUTGERS 1995 Rutgers, L. V., The Jews in late ancient Rome, Leiden 1995 RYLE 1892 H. E. Ryle, The canon of the O.T., London 1892 SACCHI 1981 Sacchi, P., a cura di, Apocrifi dell'Antico Testamento, con la collab. di F. Franco, L. Fusella, A. Loprieno, F. Pennacchietti, L. Rosso Ubigli, UTET 1981 (Classici delle religioni. Sezione seconda diretta da P. Rossano: La religione ebraica) SACHSWISEMANN 1954 Sachs, A.J., - Wisemann, D.J., A Babylonian King List of the Hellenistic Period, Iraq 16 (1954), 202-209 SACKUR 1989 Sackur, E., Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen : Pseudomethodius, Adso und tiburtinische Sibylle, Halle an der Saale 1898 SAFRAI 1976A Safrai, S., Religion in Everyday Life, in Safrai, S.-Stern, M. (ed.), The Jewish People in the First Century, Philadelphia 1976, v. 2, 817-823 ID. 1976B Safrai, S., The Temple, in Safrai, S. – Stern, M. (ed.), The Jewish People in the First Century, Philadelphia 1976, v. 2, 898-906 ID. 1987 Safrai, Z., et al., The Literature of the Sages, Fortress Press 1987 (2. ed. Van Gorgum 2006) SAFRAI-STERN The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political Geography, Political History, 1974-1976 Social Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions, ed. by S. Safrai and M. Stern in co-operation with D. Flusser and W. C. van Unnik, Philadelphia 1974-76 SAID 1991 Said, S., Hellenismos. Quelques jalons pour l’histoire de l’identité grecque, Leiden 1991 SANDERS 1981 Sanders, E.P. (ed), [et al.], Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period, 1981 SANDERS 1990 Sanders, E.P., Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah. Five Studies, London- Philadelphia 1990 SALMERI 2000 Salmeri, G., Regioni, popoli e lingue epicoriche d’Asia Minore nella Geografia di Strabone, in Biraschi, A.M. – Salmeri, G. (ed.), Strabone e l’Asia Minore, Napoli 2000 ID. 2006 Salmeri, G., “Alien Wisdom”, in POLVERINI 2006, 149-179 SANDELIN 1991 Sandeli, K.-G., The Danger of Idolatry According to Philo od Alexandria, Temenos 27, 1991, 109-150 SANDERS 1977 Sanders, E. P., Paul and Palestinian Judaism : a comparison of patterns of religion, London 19771 (rist. 1981; trad. it. Brescia 1986) ID. 1981 Sanders, E. P. (ed., con Baumgarten, A. I. e Mendelson, A.), Jewish and Christian self-definition, vol. 2: Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman period, London 1981 378 Bibliografia ID. 1990 Sanders, E.P., Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, Philadelphia 1990 SANDERSAspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period, edited by E. P. Sanders with A. I. Baumgarten and A. BAUMGARTEN- Mendelson, (Jewish and Christian Self-Definition: 2), London 1981 MENDELSON 1981 SANDMEL 1962 Sandmel, S., Parallelomania, JBL 81 (1962) ID. 1969 Sandmel, S., The first Christian century in Judaism and Christianity: certainties and uncertainties, New York 1969 ID. 1971 Sandmel, S., Philo’s place in Judaism: a study of conceptions of Abraham in Jewish literature, New York 1971 ID. 1977 Sandmel, S., Hellenism and Judaism, in Great Confrontations in Jewish History, ed. S. M. Wagner and A. D. Breck, Denver 1977, 21-38 ID. 1978 Sandmel, S., Judaism and Christian beginnings, New York 1978 ID. 1979 Sandmel, S., Philo of Alexandria: an introduction, Oxford 1979 SÄNGER 1980 Sänger, D., Antikes Judentum und die Mysterien : religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu Joseph und Aseneth, Tübingen 1980 SARFATTI 1977 Sarfatti, G. B., Notes on the Inscriptions on Some Jewish Coins and Seals, JEJ 27, 1977, 204-206 SARNA 1966 Sarna, N., Understanding Genesis, New York 1966 SCARPAT 1967 Scarpat, G., Ancora sull’autore del libro della Sapienza, RBi 2 (1967), 171-189 ID. 1989 Scarpat, G., Libro della Sapienza, 3 voll., Brescia 1989 SCHÄFER 1978 Schäfer, P., Studien zur Geschichte und Theologie des rabbinischen Judentums, Leiden 1978 ID. 1991 Schäfer, P., Der vorrabinische Pharisäismus, in Paulus und das antike Judentum, hrsg. Von M. Hengel und U. Heckel, Tübingen 1991, 125-172. ID. 1997 Schaefer, P., Judeophobia: attitudes towards the Jews in the ancient world, Cambridge 1997 (trad. it. Roma 1999) ID. 2003 Schäfer, P., The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World, rev. and corr. ed., London-New York 2003 (1a ed. ingl. Harwood Academic Publishers 1995; 1a ed., in ted., Stuttgart 1983) ID. 1969 Schalit, A., König Herodes. Der Mann und sein Werk, Berlin 1969 ID. 1971 Schalit, A., Die Denkschrift der Samaritaner an König Antiochos Epiphanes, ASTI 8 (1970-1971), 131183 SCHALLER 1963 Schaller, B., Hekataios von Abdera über die Juden, ZNW 54 (1963), 15-31 SCHANZ – Schanz, M. -Hosius, C., Geschichte der römischen Literatur bis zum Geetzgebungswerke des Kaisers HOSIUS 1914- Justinian, München 1914- 35 35 SCHIFFMAN 2010 Schiffman, L. H., Qumran and Jerusalem: studies in the Dead Sea scrolls and the history of Judaism, Eeerdmans 2010 SCHELKLE 1990 Schelkle, K. H., Paolo. Vita, lettere, teologia, Brescia 1990 379 Bibliografia SCHLATTER 1925 SCHNEIDER 1939 Schlatter, A., Geschichte Israels von Alexander d. Gr. bis Hadrian, 3. ed., Stuttgart 1925 Schneider, C., Die griechischen Grundlagen der hellenistischen Religionsgeschichte, ARW 36 (1939), 300-347 SCHOLEM 1957 Scholem, G., Sabbetai Sevi we-ha-tenu'ah ha sabbeta'it bi-yme hayyaw, 2 voll., Tel Aviv 1957 (trad. ingl.: Sabbatai Sevi: the Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676, London 1973; trad. it. a c. di M. Ranchetti, Torino 2001) ID. 1960 Scholem, G., Jewish gnosticism, Merkabah mysticism, and Talmudic tradition, New York 1960 SCHORSCH 1975 Schorsch, I., Ideology and History, in Graetz, H., The Structure of Jewish History and Other Essays, ed. I. Schorsch, New York 1975, 1-62 SCHRECKENBE Schreckenber, H., Die Flavius-Josephus-Tradition in Antike und Mittelalter, Leiden 1972 RG 1972 SCHULTZ 1981 Schultz, J. P., Judaism and the gentile faiths : comparative studies in religion, London -Toronto 1981 SCHUNCK 1959 Schunck, K. D., Drei Seleukiden im Buche Kohelet?, VT 9 (1959), 192-201 SCHÜPPAUS 1977 Schüppaus, J., Die Psalmen Salomos, Leiden 1977 SCHÜRER Schürer, E., The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C. – A.D. 135), a new English version rev. and ed. by G. Vermes, F. Millar, M. Black, 3 vol. in 4 t., Edinburgh 1973-1987 (Ed. orig.: Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, 2. neubearb. Aufl., Leipzig. 1890; 1. ed. ingl., in 5. vol., transl. by J. Macpherson, S. Taylor and P. Christie, 1880; trad. it. della nuova ed. ingl. riv. a c. di V. Gatti, Brescia 1985-1998 SCHWARTZ 2000 Schwartz, D. R., How at home were the Jews of the Hellenistic diaspora?, CPh 95 (2000), 349-357 SCHWARZ 1956 Schwarz, L. W., (ed.), Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People, New York 1956 SCHWEID 1985 Schweid, E., Judaism and Mysticism According to Gershom Scholem: A Critical Analysis and Programmatic Discussion, Atlanta 1985 SCROFANI 2005 SEELIGMANN 1948 SEGAL 1963 Scrofani, G., La diaspora secondo J. M. G. Barclay, Kervan 2 (2005), 139-145 ID. 1977 Segal, A. F., Two powers in heaven : early rabbinic reports about Christianity and Gnosticism, Leiden 1977 ID. 1986 Segal, A. F., Rebecca's children : Judaism and Christianity in the Roman world, Cambridge (Mass.) 1986 ID. 2014 Segal, A.F., Conversion to Judaism, in The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, ed. By L.R. Rambo, Ch.E. Farhadin, Oxford 2014, 578-97 Seeligmann, I. L., The Septuagint Version of Isaiah, Leiden 1948 Segal, A. F., The Hebrew Passover : from the earliest times to A. D. 70, London 1963 SELLERS 1933 Sellers, O., The Citadel of Beth Zur, Philadelphia 1933 SEVENSTER 1968 Sevenster, J., Do You Know Greek? How Much Greek Could the First Jewish Christians Have Known?, Leiden 1968 SHAKED 1972 Shaked, S., Qumran and Iran, Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972), 433-446 SHAKED 1984 Shaked, S., Iranian influences on Judaism: First Century BCE to Second Century CE, in The Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. W.D. Davies and L. Finkelstein, vol. 1, Cambridge 1984, 308-325 380 Bibliografia SHERK 1969 Sherk, R.K., Roman Documents from the Greek East, Baltimore 1969 SHESTOV 1968 Shestov, L. I., Athens and Jerusalem, trad. di B. Martin, New York 1968 SIEGERT 2003 Siegert, F., Bibliographie des Josephus-Projekts, in Internationales Josephus-Kolloquium, Dortmund 2002. Arbeiten aus dem Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum, hrsg. von J. U. Kalms, F. Siegert, Münster 2003, 195-201 SIEVERS 2001 Sievers, J., Synopsis of the Greek sources for the Hasmonean period: 1-2 Maccabees and Josephus, War 1 and Antiquities 12-14, Roma 2001 SIGONIO 1583 Caroli Sigonii De republica Hebraeorum libri VII, Coloniae 1583 SIMON 1960 Simon, M., Les sectes juives au temps de Jésus, Paris 1960 SIMON FEST. 1978 Paganisme, judaïsme, christianisme. Influences et affrontements dans le monde antique, Mélanges offert à Marcel Simon, ed. par A. Benoit, M. Philonenko, C. Vogel, Paris 1978 SIMON-BENOIT Simon, M.-Benoit, A., Le judaïsme et le christianisme antique : d'Antiochus Epiphane à Constantin, 1968 Paris 1968 SISTI 1964 Sisti, A., Riflessi dell’epoca premaccabaica nell’Ecclesiastico, Rbi 12 (1964), 215-256 SMALLWOOD 1976 Smallwood, M., The Jews under Roman Rule from Pompey to Diocletian, Leiden 1976 SMITH, J. 2003 Smith, J.C., in Elia Levita Bachur’s Bovo-Buch: a Translation of the Old Yiddish Edition of 1541, Fenestra Books 2003 SMITH, M. 1956 Smith, M., Palestinian Judaism in the First Century, in Israel: Its Role in Civilization, ed. M. Davis, New York 1956, 67-81 ID. 1958 Smith, M., The Image of God. Notes on the Hellenization of Judaism, BJRL 40 (1957-58), 473-512 ID. 1961 Smith, M., The Dead Sea Sect in Relation to Ancient Judaism, NTS 7 (1960-1961), 347-360 ID. 1967 Smith, M., Goodenough’s Jewish Symbols in retrospect, JBL 86 (1967), 53-68 ID. 1971 Smith, M., Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament, New York 1971 SMITTEN 1974 Smitten, T. W. Historische Probleme zum Kyrosedikt und zum Jerusalemer Tempelbau von 515, Persica 6 (1974), 167-178 SNELL 1954 Snell, B., Griechische Papyri der Hamburger Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg 1954 SOLDANI 2009 Soldani, A., Aspetti del giudaismo ellenistico: “1977-1982” nell’Archivio Arnaldo Momigliano, https://www.academia.edu/9198949/Aspetti_del_giudaismo_ellenistico_19771982_nell_Archivio_Arnaldo_Momigliano SPEISER 1964 Speiser, E. A., Genesis, New York 1964 SPENSER 1686 Spenser, J., De legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus et earum rationibus, 3 v. leg. in 1, Hagae Comitum : apud Arnoldum Leers, 1686. SPERBER 1935 Sperber, A., in Peschitta und Onkelos, Jewish Studies in Memory of George A. Kohut, 1874-1933, S.W. Baron – A. Marx (edd.), New York 1935, 554-564 SPIEGELBERG 1914 Spiegelberg, W., Die sogenannte Demotische Chronik des Pap. 215 des Bibliothèque Nationale zu Paris, Leipzig 1914 381 Bibliografia SPIRO 1951 Spiro, A., Samaritans, Tobiads and Judahites in Pseudo-Philo, PAAJR 20 (1951), 279-355 STEGEMANN 1971 STEIN 1954 Stegemann, H., Die Entstehung der Qumrangemeinde, Bonn 1971 ID. 1957 Stein, S., The Liturgy of Hanukkah and the First Two Books of Maccabees, JJS 5 (1954), 100-106 e 148155 Stein, S., The Influence of Symposia Literature in the Literary Form of the Pesah Haggadah, JJS 8 (1957), 13-44 ID. 1973A Stern, M., [rec. a] Gager 1972, AThR 55 (1973), 94-98 ID. 1973B Stern., M., Zealots, in EJ Yearbook, Jerusalem 1973, 135-152 ID. 1976 Stern, M., Aspects of Jewish society. The priesthood and other classes, in The Jewish people in the first century. Historical geography, politica history, social, cultural and religious life, II, ed. by S. Safrai, M. Stern, in co-operation with D. Flusser and H. C. Van Unnik, Amsterdam-Philadelphia 1976, 565-63 ID. 1974-1984 Stern, M. (ed. and comm.), Greek and Latin authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 v., Jerusalem 1974-1984 STERNStern, M.-Murray, O., Hecataeus of Abdera and Theophrastus on Jews and Egyptians, JEA 59 (1973), MURRAY 1973 159-168 STERN, S. 2002 Stern, S., Jewish Calendar Reckoning in the Graeco-Roman Cities, in BARTLETT 2002, 107-116 STOLZ 1972 Stolz, F., Jahwes und Israels Kriege : Kriegstheorien und Kriegserfahrungen im Glauben des alten Israel, Zürich 1972 STONE 1972 The Testament of Abraham: the Greek Recensions, transl.by M. Stone, Missoula 1972 ID. 1980 Stone, M. E., Scriptures, sects and visions : a profile of Judaism from Ezra to the Jewish revolts, Cleveland 1980 ID. 1984 Stone, M. E. (ed.), Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, Assen 1984 S TP H – Hilgert, E., A Bibliography of Philo Studies 1963-1970, StPh 1 (1972), 57-71; Id., A Bibliography of HILGERT 1972- Philo Studies 1971, with addictions for 1965-1970, StPh 2 (1973), 51-54 1980 STERNBERGER Sternberger, G. Das klassische Judentum: Kultur und Geschichte der rabbinischen Zeit, Muenchen 1979 1979 (trad. it: Il giudaismo classico: cultura e storia del tempo rabbinico, dal 70 al 1040, Roma 1991) STRASBURGER Strasburger, H., Herodot und das perikleische Athen, in Historia 4, 1955, 1-25 1955 STROUMSA 2003 Stroumsa, G., Alexandria and the Myth of Multiculturalism, in L. Perrone, ed., Origeniana Octava: Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition / Origene e la tradizione alessandrina, Leuven 2003, vol. I, 23-29 ID. 2007 Stroumsa, G., Arnaldo Momigliano and the History of Religions, in Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences, ed. by P. N. Miller, Toronto 2007, 286-311 SWAIN 1940 Swain, J.W., The Theory of the Four Monarchies: Opposition History under the Roman Empire, CPh 35 (1940), 1-21 TARN 1930 Hellenistic Civilization, London 1930 (3. ed. rev. by G. T. Griffith, London 1952) ID. 1938 Tarn, W. W., The Greeks in Bactria and India, Cambridge 1938 (2. ed. 1951) TÄUBLER 1926 Täubler, E., Tyche, Leipzig 1926 ID. 1947 Täubler, E., Jerusalem 201 to 199 B.C.E. On the History of a Messianic Movement, JQR 37 (1946-1947), 1-30; 125-137; 249-263 382 Bibliografia TCHERIKOVER Tcherikover, V., The Jews in Egypt in the Hellenistic-Roman Age in the Light of the Papyri, Jerusalem 1945 1945 ID. 1958 Tcherikover, V., The Ideology of the Letter of Aristeas, HThR 51 (1958), 59-85 ID. 1961 Tcherikover, V., Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews, engl. ed., Philadelphia 1959 (rev. engl. ed., Philadelphia 1961; ed. orig., in ebr., 1931) ID. 1964 Tcherikover, V., Was Jerusalem a “Polis”?, IEJ 14 (1964), 61-78 TESTUZ 1960 Testuz, M., Les idées religieuses du Livre des Jubilés, Genève 1960 THACKERAY 1923 Thackeray, H. St John, The Septuagint and Jewish Worship, London 1923 ID. 1930 Thackeray, H. St. J., Josephus, vol IV: Jewish Antiquities, books I-IV, Cambridge Mass. 1930 THEISSEN 2004 Theissen, G., La religione dei primi cristiani, Torino 2004 THESLEFF 1965 The Pythagorean Texts of the Hellenistic Period, ed. H. Thesleff, Âbo 1965 THIERING 1981 Thiering, B. E., The Gospels and Qumran : a new hypothesis, Sidney 1981 ID. 1983 Thiering, B. E., The Qumran origins of the Christian Church, Sidney 1983 TIMPE 1974 Timpe, D., Der römische Vertrag mit den Juden von 161 v. Chr., Chiron 4 (1974), 133-152 TORREY 1940 Torrey, C. C., The Letters Prefixed to Second Maccabees, JAOS 60 (1940), 119-150 ID. 1944 Torrey, C. C., The Older Book of Esther, HThR 37 (1944), 1-40 TOWNER 1982 Towner, W. S., Hermeneutical Systems of Hillel and the Tannaim: A Fresh Look, HUCA 53 (1982), 101135 TRAPPER 2003 Trapper, A., Tractate Avot and Early Christian succession lists, in The ways that never parted. Jews and Christians in late antiquity, ed. by A. H. Backer and A. Y. Reed, Tübingen 2003, 159-188 TREBILCO 1991 Trebilco, P., Jewish communities in Asia Minor, Cambridge 1991 TROIANI 1977 Troiani, L., Commento storico al “Contro Apione” di Giuseppe, Pisa 1977 ID. 1985 Troiani, L., Osservazioni sopra l’opera storiografica di Menandro d’Efeso, EVO 8 (1985), 521-528 ID. 1997 Apocrifi dell’Antico Testamento, sotto la dir. di P. Sacchi. Vol. 5: Letteratura giudaica di lingua greca, a c. di L. Troiani, Brescia 1997 ID. 1998 Troiani, L., L’identità di Israele in Flavio Giuseppe e nella letteratura giudaico-ellenistica, RSB 1 (1998), 67-69 ID. 2000 Troiani, L., Il giudaismo negli autori greci e latini dei primi secoli d.C., AnnSE 17 (2000), 341-353 ID. 2001 Troiani, L., Greci ed ebrei, ebraismo ed "ellenismo", in Storia Einaudi dei Greci e dei Romani. IX: I Greci oltre la Grecia. Incontri, confronti, conflitti, a c. di S. Settis, Torino 2001, 203-230 ID. 2006 Troiani, L., Le “Pagine ebraiche”, in Polverini 2006, 139-148 UNNIK 1978 Unnik, W. C. van, Flavius Josephus als historischer Schriftsteller, Heidelberg 1978 URBACH 1959 Urbach, E. E., The Rabbinical Laws of Idolatry in the Second and Third Centuries in the Light of Archaeological and Historical Facts, IEJ 9 (1959), 149-165, 229-245 383 Bibliografia ID. 1975 Urbach, E. E., The Sages : their concepts and beliefs, 2. ed., 2 v., Jerusalem 1975 (1. ed.: Jerusalem 1971) VERMÈS 1968 Vermès, G., The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, Harmondsworth 1968 VERMES FEST. A Tribute to Geza Vermes: Essays on Jewish and Christian Literature, ed. P. R. Davies and R. T. White, 1990 Sheffiel 1990 VIDALVidal-Naquet, P., Il buon uso del tradimento, intr. di A. Momigliano (=Momigliano 1980f), Roma 1980 NAQUET 1980 (trad. it. di: Flavius Josèphe ou du bon usage de la trahison, Paris 1976) VIVIANO 1978 Viviano, B. T., Study as worship : Aboth and the New Testament, Leiden 1978 VOLZ 1934 Volz, P., Die Eschatologie der jüdischen Gemeinde im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, Tübingen 1934 WACHOLDER 1963 Wacholder, B. Z., “Pseudo-Eupolemos”, Two Greek Fragments on the Life of Abraham, HUCA 34 (1963), 83-113 ID. 1968 Wacholder, B.Z., Biblical Chronology in the Hellenistic World, HThR 61, 1968, 451-81 ID. 1978 Wacholder, B. Z., The letter from Judah Maccabee to Aristobulos. Is II Maccabees 1.106-2.18 authentic?, HUCA 49, 1978, 89-133 ID. 1983 Wacholder, B. Z., The dawn of Qumran : the sectarian Torah and the teacher of righteousness, Cincinnati 1983 WACHSMUTH 1891 Wachsmuth, C., in Timagenes und Trogus, RhM 46, 1891, 465-479 ID. 1895 Wachsmuth, C., Einleitung in das Studium der alten Geschichte, Leipzig 1895 WACHTEL 1971 Wachtel, N., La vision des vaincus: les Indiens de Pérou devant la conquête espagnole, 1530-1570, Paris 1971 WAGNER 1960 Wagner, S., Die Essener in der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion : vom Ausgang des 18. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1960 WAGNERBRECK 1977 Great Confrontations in Jewish History, ed. S. M. Wagner and A. D. Breck, Denver 1977 WALBANK 1977 Walbank, F. W., Polybius’ last ten books, in Historiographia antiqua. Commentationes Lovanienses in honorem W. Peremans, Leuven 1977, 139-162 WALTER 1964 Walter, N., Der Thoraausleger Aristobulos, Berlin 1964 ID. 1964 Walter, N., Frühe Begegnungen zwischen jüdischem Glauben und hellenistischer Bildung in Alexandrien, in E. C. Welskopf (ed.), Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte der Alten Welt, I, Berlin 1964, 367378 ID. 1965 Walter, N., Zu Pseudo-Eupolemos, Klio 43-45 (1965), 282-290 WARBURG COLL. 2014 The Legacy of Arnaldo Momigliano. Ed. by T. Cornell & O. Murray, London – Turin 2014 WEBER 1920 Weber, M., Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen, Teil I: Konfuzianismus und Taoismus, Tübingen 1920 (trad. ingl. The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, transl. By H. H. Gerth, New York – London 1968. ID. 1921 Weber, M., Das Antike Judentum. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, Bd. 3, Tübingen 1921 (ed. ingl.: Weber 1952) ID. 1952 Weber, M., Ancient Judaism, transl. and ed. by H. H. Gerth and D. Martindale, New York-London384 Bibliografia Glencoe 1952 (ed. orig.: Weber 1921) WEINBERG J. 1978 Weinberg, J., Azariah dei Rossi: towards a reappraisal of the last years of his life, ASNP s. III, 8 (1978), n. 2, 493-511 ID. 1991 Weinberg, J., Where three civilizations meet, in The presence of the historian: essays in memory of Arnaldo Momigliano, ed. by M. P. Steinberg, History and Theory. Beiheft 30, Middletown (Ct) 1991, 13-26 ID. 2001 Rossi, A. de’, The light of the eyes, transl. from the Hebr. with an introd. and annotat. by J. Weinberg, New Haven 2001 WEINBERG S.S. Weinberg, S. S., Post-Exilic Palestine. An Archaeological Report, Proc. Israel Acad. 4 (1969-1970), 781970 97 WEINERT 1977 Weinert, F. D., A Note on 4Q159 and a New Theory of Essene Origins, RQ 9 (1977), 223-230 WEINFELD 1986 Weinfeld, M., The Organizational Pattern and the Penal Code of the Qumran Sect, Friburg 1986 WELLHAUSEN Wellhausen, J., Die Pharisäer und die Sadduzäer. Eine Untersuchung zur inneren jüdischen Geschichte, 1874 Greifswald-Bamberg 1874 ID. 1884 Wellhausen, J., Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, Berlin 18832 WERNER 1970 Werner, E., The sacred bridge : liturgical parallels in Synagogue and early Church, New York 1970 WERNER 1992 Werner, J. (ed.), Zum Umgang mit fremden Sprachen in der griechisch-römischen Antike, Stuttgart 1992 WEST, E. 1892 Pahlavi texts: Part IV, transl. by West, E.M, Oxford 1892 WEST, S. 1974 West, S., Joseph and Aseneth, CQ n.s. 24 (1974), 70-81 WEWERS 1975 Wewers, G. A., Geheimnis und Geheimhaltung im rabbinischen Judentum, Berlin 1975 WHITLEY 1969 Whitley, C. F., The genius of ancient Israel : the distinctive nature of the basic concepts of Israel studied against the cultures of the ancient Near East, Amsterdam 1969 WHITTAKER 1984 Whittaker, M., Jews and Christians: Graeco-Roman views, Cambridge 1984 WIKGREN FEST. 1972 Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Honor of A. P. Wikgren, Leiden 1972 WILCKEN 1922-23 Wilcken, U., Urkunden der Ptolomäerzeit, Berlin 1922-23 WILAMOWITZ Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, Die griechische Literatur des Altertums, in U. v. W.-M., K. Krumbacher, J. Wachernagel, F. Leo, E. Norden, F. Skutsch, Die Griechische und lateinische Literatur 1905 und Sprache, Die Kultur der Gegenwart : I.8, Berlin-Leipzig 1905 WILKINSON 1974 Wilkinson, J., Ancient Jerusalem: Its Water Supply and Population, PEQ 106 (1974), 33-51 WILLIAMS 1998 Williams, M., The Jews among Greeks and Romans : a diasporan sourcebook, London 1998 WILLRICH 1895 Willrich, H., Juden und Griechen vor der Makkabäischen Erhebung, Göttingen 1895 ID. 1900 Willrich, H., Judaica: Forschungen zur hellenistisch-jüdischen –Geschichte und Literatur, Göttingen 385 Bibliografia 1895 ID. 1924 Willrich, H., Urkundenfälshung in der hellenistisch-jüdischen Literatur, Göttingen 1924 WILSON 1980 Wilson, R. R., Prophecy and society in ancient Israel, Philadelphia 1980 WILSON 1986 Wilson, R., The City in the Old Testament, in P. S. Hawkins (ed.), Civitas: Religious Interpretations of the City, Atlanta 1986, 9-13 WINSTON 1966 Winston, D., Iranian Components in the Bible, Apocrypha and Qumran, History of Religion 5 (1966) WOELK 1966 Woelk, D., Aghatarchides von Knidos, über das Rote Meer, Übersetzung und Kommentar, Freiburg 1966 WOLFSON 1947 Wolfson, H. A., Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, 2 voll., Cambridge 1947 (rev. ed. 1962) WRIGHT, G. 1962 Wright, G. E., The Samaritans at Shechem, HThR 55 (1962), 357-366 WRIGHT, W. 1952 Philostratus and Eunapius, The Lives of the Sophists, with an Engl. transl. by W. C. Wright, London – Cambridge(Mass) 1952 YADIN 1962 Yadin, Y., The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, Oxford 1962 ID. 1967 Yadin, Y., Un nouveau manuscrit de la Mer Morte : "le rouleau du temple", CRAI, nov.-dic. 1967 [pubbl. 1968], 607-619 ID. 1971 Yadin, Y., Bar Kokhba. The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Second Jewish Revolt Against Rome, London- New York 1971 ID. 1983 Yadin, Y. (ed.), The Temple Scroll, 3 v., Jerusalem 1983 ID. 1985 Yadin, Y., The Temple Scroll : The Hidden Law of Dead Sea Sect , London 1985 YVOTTE 1963 Kolbe, W., Beiträge zur syr. und jüdischen Geschichte, Stuttgart 1926 ZEITLIN 1962- Zeitlin, S., The Rise and Fall of the Judaean State: A Political, Social and Religious History of the 1967 Second Commonwealth, 2 v., Philadelphia 1962–1967 ZELLER 1880 ID.1903 ZIADÉ 2007 Zeller, E., Der Pseudophilonische Bericht über Theophrast, Hermes 15 (1880), 137-146 = E. Zellers Kleine Schriften, hrsg. von O. Leuze, I-II, Leipzig 1910, vol. I, 215-225. Zeller, E., Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Leipzig 1903 (trad. it. a c. di Mondolfo, R., La filosofia dei greci nel suo sviluppo storico, 10 voll., Firenze 1932 – 1979) Ziadé, R., Les martyrs Maccabées: de l’histoire juive au culte chrétien. Les homélies de Grégoire de Nazianze et de Jean Chrysostome, Leiden-Boston 2007 ZUCKERMAND Tosefta, based on the Erfurdt and Vienna codices, with parallels and variants by M. S. Zuckermandel, EL 1937 Jerusalem 1937 ZUNZ 1837 Zunz, L., Die Namen der Juden. Eine geschichtliche Untersuchung, Leipzig 1837 ID. 1865 Zunz, L., Literaturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie, Berlin 1856 386 Bibliografia 387