Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. (review)

152 SHOFAR Fall 1992 Vol. 11, No. 1 philosopher, to make aU of this more explicit. In this task he succeeds admirably. I have only two criticisms of the book: one exegetical, the other philosophical. Exegetically, Kellner too facilely lumps the position of Judah Halevi and the position of the Zobar together. There are significant differences between Halevi's historically conceivedJewish uniqueness and the Zobar's ontologically conceived Jewish uniqueness. Philosophically, Kellner seems to ignore the fact that the Maimonidean position can be seen as a paradigm for the type of dogmatism involved in another current polemic among religious Jews, viz., the polemic between those who would effectively read out of Judaism all those whom they regard as heretics (who turn out to be the vast majority of the Jewish people), and those who are willing to work out some sort of modus vivandi with all Jews by emphasizing ontological sources of Jewish peoplehood. In other words, just as Maimonides can function as an authority for the religious humanism Professor Kellner identifies with, so can Maimonides function as an authority for the religious dogmatism I think he would not identify with. (In that Jewish community there is surely no place for philosophers, even religious ones.) This latter point, especially, is one I invite Professor Kellner to address in his future work that will be part, hopefully, of the most impressive scholarly and intellectual trajectory of his work heretofore. David Novak Department of Religious Studies University of Virginia Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E., by Gabriele Boccaccini. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991. 289 pp. Boccaccini offers the reader an introductory study ofJewish thought from 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. He by no means claims that it is a comprehensive intellectual history; rather, it is a "... voyage through the thought of some of the protagonists, and through some of the themes that were under discussion at the time" (po 1). He aims to communicate the unity and diversity of thought within Judaism by examining in tandem some key documents as representing systems of thought. He divides the book into three parts. The first ("Methodological Lines") confronts the issue of confessional bias. Judaism, in his opinion, Book Reviews 153 is still often seen as a monolithic entity identical with Rabbinic Judaism; Christianity came along to replace this late form of the religion. The result of confessional bias has been that the texts from antiquity are divided into artificial compartments: Old Testament, the specific literatures ofJudaism and Christianity, and aU the rejected books. These divisions sustain confessional biases and entail that related texts are read and studied in isolation from one another. For Boccaccini, "... the foCus of attention should be shifted from the corpora to the age in which the constituent writings were composed, thus freeing the documents from the cage of their respective corpora and placing them on the same level" (p. 13). Once they are studied in this way, new insights are gained, among which is the fact that RabbinicJudaism and Christianity are two survivors from the many Judaisms present in the period. "Christianity and Rabbinism are the two most successful Judaisms of modern times" (p. 14). The period under study he prefers to designate as "Middle Judaism" rather than "Early Judaism" because the term better expresses the fact that something came before it. The second chapter of the first section contains a bibliographical sketch of scholarship on Middle Judaism from Josephus to 1990. Part II ("ACross-Section: The Second Century B.C.E.") offers several illustrations of his method for showing how in the surviving literature different ideological systems compete and interact. He first studies Ben Sira, Qohelet, and Apocalyptic (as attested in 1 Enoch 6-36; 72-82) and highlights the ways in which the author of the first book reacts to the two others. Next he moves to Daniel and the Dream Visions in 1 Enoch 83-90 (he denies that Daniel belongs in the apocalyptic tradition). In a final section he deals with the Letter of Aristeas in dialogue with Greek education. Part III ("Some Preparatory Sketches") presents studies ofPhilo, James, Paul (and Jesus), and Josephus. The headings under which...