Judaism: From Heresy to Pharisee in Early Medieval Christian Literature

JUDAISM: FROM HERESY TO PHARISEE IN EARLY MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN LITERATURE By JONATHAN ELUKIN During the Middle Ages, Christians largely accommodated themselves to the small number of Jews who lived amongst them. Augustine (354-430) explained that God had punished the Jews after their rejection of Jesus by destroying the Temple and sending them into exile. Their survival was divinely guaranteed, however, because the presence of the Jews, Augustine believed, testified to the authenticity of Scripture and the fulfillment of the prophecies upon which Christianity built its faith.1 The Jews themselves, of course, argued that God had never truly rejected his chosen people. By claiming the Jews as their witnesses, Christians inadvertently accepted the Jews' identity as the descendants of the biblical children of Israel. This proved to be increasingly irksome to many Christians. Christians had appropriated the text of the Hebrew Bible by reading into it allegories of Christianity's ultimate truth (which included seeing themselves as the true Israel). As I hope to show in this article, Christians during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages tried other ways to counter the Jewish claim of enduring "chosenness." They did this by trying to present contemporary Judaism as unworthy of being the heir of the Judaism of the Bible. In other words, contemporary Jews could not claim to be the true descendente of the Israelites and the preservers of the biblical tradition. Some Christian intellectuals , largely in the Greek tradition, sought to make contemporary Judaism into a collection of heresies in contrast to the unity of biblical Judaism. Others, mostly Latin writers following Jerome's lead, sought to cast the Judaism of their day as a monochromatic but corrupt Pharisaism equally alien to the nature of biblical religion. The evidence for portraying Judaism both as a fragmented array of heresies and a tradition undermined by Pharisaism can be found, of course, in the New Testament. The authors of the Gospels presented Judaism as divided into several main groups with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Samaritans, 1 Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (New York, 1986), 4.34, p. 178. I would like to thank the editors and referees of Traditio for their very helpful comments and criticisms, as well as the audiences at Hebrew University and Trinity College where earlier versions of this paper were delivered. Dr. Jeffrey Kaimowitz, the curator of the Watkinson Library at Trinity College, also provided welcome assistance. 50TRADITIO and occasionally the Nazarenes and Herodians playing important roles.2 Such a picture suggests a religious system with significant divisions but not yet overwhelmed by heresy. The narratives of the Gospels, however, do provide fertile ground for readers inclined to see the omnipresent sectarian nature of Judaism. Indeed, the priests, scribes, or elders seem often to represent discrete groups.3 Moreover, there was evidence of recurring sectarianism in the figures of Theudas and Judas the Galilean, who gathered sympathetic followers and provoked revolts against Roman taxation. Accounts of these last two figures — as well as the other sects to different degrees — are so vague and abbreviated that they could easily serve as the nucleus of elaborate historical fantasies. At the same time, the accounts in the New Testament of first-century Jewish life emphasize the prominence of the Pharisees. Described by the Gospel authors as almost uniformly hostile to Jesus, the Pharisees are indicted for their hypocrisy and blindness, for being overly zealous protectors of the Mosaic laws, and for waiting to trap Jesus in ritual transgressions . Although not named as part of the group of chief priests and elders that brought Jesus to Pilate (Matt. 27:1), the Pharisees were clearly portrayed as seeking to eliminate Jesus.4 The Pharisees are accused of adding their own laws to God's revelation; they became the chief corrupters of the Jewish religion.5 Josephus's (37/8-ca. 100) analysis of the three main sects in his own portrait of Judaism enhanced the sense of a fundamentally divided and potenThe literature on the Jewish sects is extensive. A good introduction with emphasis on the uncertainties of the research can be found in Gary G. Portón, "Diversity in Postbiblical Judaism," in Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters, ed...