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

This book is about Jewish and Christian thought during the historical period 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E., a period referred to by various names, including but not limited to Second Temple Judaism, Second Commonwealth, Formative Judaism, Greco-Roman Judaism, Early Judaism, Late Judaism, Hellenistic Judaism, pre-Rabbinic Judaism, and/or Roman-period Judaism. In fact, this plethora of titles, and the research strategies and hermeneutics implied by the titling of the period forms the starting point for Boccaccini's analysis. Boccaccini's contribution to the problem of naming the matrix of religious thought articulated in writing by Jews in the Eastern Mediterranean during this period is the appellation "Middle Judaism." Following the introduction of this term, Boccaccini presents analyses of selected aspects of religious thought as a means of exemplifying the differences made by this new name and new hermeneutic. Hence, the test of the book's success is the logical and cultural validity of the framework, as well as the question of whether the new name indeed makes a worthwhile difference in the intepretation of this period in the history of Judaism.

Middle Judaism is divided into three sections. Part 1, "Methodological Lines," voices Boccaccini's critique of a "confessionally divided scholarship" (11). Boccaccini characterizes a scholarly tradition that organizes its work exclusively around "confessionally divided sources," by which he means individual groupings of text—Tanach, New Testament, Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, and so on. Instead, Boccaccini argues for "a comprehensive approach" in which the "the task of the historian of thought is to describe an age in its complexity and in the contradiction of its expressions, using all the material available, canceling and verifying every traditional division without confessional presupposition" (13). Scholars must evaluate Jewish texts from the period 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. in order to see the pluralism and diversity of Judaism, as well as to look for its "clear, distinct, and unitary personality" (14). The term "middle Judaism," and the hermeneutic Boccaccini associates with it, is meant to re-orient the study of religious literature produced by Jews in the period 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. by replacing prior models with a non-confessionalist nomenclature.

Boccaccini's desire to encapsulate into Judaism both pluralism and unity underlies one of his central claims: Judaism is a genus classification of which Christianity is a species. Telescoping the twentieth century to the early centuries of the millennium, Boccaccini argues that in light of this classificatory scheme, "Christianity and Rabbinism are the two most successful Judaisms of modern times" (14). To buttress this interpretation of the term "Judaism," Boccaccini contends that the notion of Judaism as a religion of a specific people is "rooted in the legal obedience of the law," a definition given to Judaism by Rabbinism; hence, the taxonomy is confessional and in as much need of revision as the archaic christianized terminology of "Late Judaism." The remaining two sections of the book examine selected texts with this hermeneutic in mind. Section two treats religious themes in texts which he dates to the second century B.C.E., Ben Sira, Qohelet, Daniel, and the Letter of Aristeas. Part three, "Some Preparatory Sketches," examines Philo, Josephus, James, and Paul. The book concludes with a return to the thematics of pluralism and unity and argues that the "mature position" of (Christian) universalism may be found in various aspects of "Middle Jewish" thought.

The instinct of this book—to read against and expose the problematic theological categories that have undergirded much of the (academic) study of the Greco-Roman religions of Christianity and Judaism—is to be applauded. However, serious problems with its argumentation and execution should be noted. The book is framed, by means of J. Charlesworth's forward, as an exemplar of new critical tendencies within Italian biblical scholarship and as a contribution to ongoing discussions about how best to produce reliable, accurate, and honest knowledge...