Judentum und evangelische Theologie 1909-1965: Das Bild des Judentums im Spiegel der ersten drei Auflagen des Handwörterbuchs "Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart" (review)

As I opened this book I asked myself whether, in view of its title, it held anything for me. My hesitation increased when, as a Protestant-Reformed theologian, I saw that John Calvin's theology is absent from this book; the evangelical-reformed tradition does not play a part in the articles of this encyclopedia about Judaism. But I soon revised my first impressions. The author of this book has produced a very noteworthy investigation that is also exciting to read.

He paints with brilliant precision just what the subtitle promises: "the picture of Judaism in the mirror of the first three editions of the encyclopedia Religion in History and the Present Time." And he does so with a magnifying glass in his hands. He focuses sharply on his subject, analyzes it exactly, and helps the readers grasp his points by printing the crucial quotations in boldface type. He shows not only the differences between the three editions and the progression of their views, but also what is common to the different editions, especially the origin, in at least the first two editions, of the New Protestant liberal theology (pp. 18, 76). The third edition seems to be more interested in a Christian theological perspective, whereas the Judaistic research in the fourth edition is free from it (pp. 333f).

Above all this book is important because it shows the differences between the treatments of the same topics by Protestant theologians and Jewish scholars. The former were not willing to amend their statements even in view of well-founded corrections from the Jewish side; this is why the periodical History and Science of Judaism once mocked the "argumentum ex ignorantia in majorem ecclesiae gloriam" (i.e., the argument of ignorance in favor of the greater glory of the Church) (p. 105). It may be asked here whether the subtitle "The image of Judaism in the mirror . . ." invites us to take seriously the prohibition of images in the Bible and to distinguish between "Judaism" and the "image of it."

According to Oelschläger, that "image" includes the attempt to subsume "Judaism" under the label of the law, understood in the negative sense of legality, in contrast to the Christian word of God's grace. Oelschläger claims that the RGG presents "the picture of Judaism as a rigid religion of legality—a picture which developed following Luther in Protestant theology and which has been cultivated since Julius Wellhausen in historical-critical scientific research" (p. 150). In this sense the articles in the RGG speak about "Talmudism" (p. 150), about the legality "of the Pharisees" or "of the Jews" (pp. 150, 160ff). Thus the Jews are foreigners in the nations which are their landlords ("in ihren 'Wirtsvölkern'"), as was still found in the 1959 edition of the RGG (p. 211, cf. p. 72). In the thirties Protestant theologians discussed this question, debating whether conversion to the Christian faith would cause the Jews to emerge from their obduracy, or whether their behavior is incorrigible because of their race.

Among the figures discussed in this book, to me the most exciting is the New Testament scholar in Tübingen, Gerhard Kittel. He emphasizes the full belonging of Jesus to his people and his mission to it. He stresses that Paul also after his conversion remained obliged to his people; he maintains this idea in distinction to Rudolf Bultmann, who points out the relation of Paul to Hellenism (pp. 259ff). Kittel even declares that "the history of Israel is not an accidental past, but the acting of God with his people" (p. 261). But the idea that the Christian communion is "the new people of God" (p. 262) leads him to the idea of the essential contrast between the Jewish "religion of work...