Notes
• Notes • 1. Female Imaging of the Torah: From Literary Metaphor to Religious Symbol This study was published in From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism Intellect in Quest of Understanding: Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, ed. J. Neusner, E. S. Frerichs, and N. M. Sarna (Atlanta, 1989),2:271-307, and is here reprinted with permission of Scholars Press. 1. The point was made earlier by A. Green, "Bride, Spouse, Daughter: Images of the Feminine in Classical Jewish Sources," in On Being a Jewish Feminist, ed. S. Heschel (New York, 1983), p. 253. The scholarly literature on the Jewish conception of Wisdom is vast. I will mention here only several studies that emphasize the view that the figure of Wisdom in Israel is derived from or represents a revision of an authentic mythic goddess. See U. Wilckens, Weisheit und Torheit (Tubingen, 1959), pp. 193-95; H. Conzelmann, "The Mother of Wisdom," in The Future of Our Religious Past, ed. J. M. Robinson (New York, 1971), pp. 230-43; B. L. Mack, Logos und Sophia (Gottingen, 1977), pp. 34--62; E. S. Fiorenza, "Wisdom Mythology and Christological Hymns," in Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. R. Wilkens (Notre Dame, 1975), pp. 29-33; B. Lang, Wisdom and the Book ofProverbs: An Israelite Goddess Redefined (New York, 1986), pp. 126-36; and M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine During the Early Hellenistic Period, trans. J. Bowden (Philadelphia, 1974), 1:154-55. For the feminine characterization of Sophia in Philo of Alexandria, especially as the "daughter of God," see H. A. Wolfson, Philo, Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christiani~v and Islam (Cambridge, Mass., 1947), 1:256, and J. Laporte, "Philo in the Tradition of Biblical Wisdom Literature," in Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christiani~v, pp. 116-18. In the case of Philo there is some evidence for an interchange between the feminine figure of Wisdom and the masculine Logos; see Mack, Logos und SoplJia, pp. 153-58, 123 124 NOTES TO PAGES 1-2 and Hengel, judaism and Hellenism, 2:111 n. 418. Such a process is clear as well in the case of early Christian doctrine where the Jewish conception of the incarnation of Wisdom in the Torah served as the basis for the eventual Christological identification of Jesus with Sophia, as expressed, for instance, in Matthew 11:28-30. See J. M. Robinson, "Jesus as Sophos and Sophia," in Aspects of Wisdom in judaism and Early Christianity, pp. 1-16, and V. R. Mollenkott, The Divine Feminine (New York, 1983), pp. 100-1. On the possible influence of Jewish-Wisdom speculation on the Gnostic conception of Sophia, see the review of the problem by G. MacRae, "The Jewish Background of the Gnostic Sophia Myth," Novum Testamentum 12 (1970): 86-101. 2. See Hengel, judaism and Hellenism, 1:161. 3. See H. A. Fischel, 'The Transformation of Wisdom in the World of Midrash," in Aspects of Wisdom in judaism and Early Christianity, pp. 70--71, 82, and J. Neusner, Torah: From Scroll to Symbol in Formative judaism (Philadelphia , 1985), pp. 118-19. 4. This theme has been discus~'ed by many scholars. See Hengel, judaism and Hellenism, 1:171, and other sources cited in 2:111-12 n. 420. On the anthropomorphization of the Torah 5croll in Jewish texts and rituals, see also the evidence adduced by H. E. Goldberg, "Torah and Children: Some Symbolic Aspects of the Reproduction of Jews and Judaism," in judaism Viewed from Within and from Without: Anthropological Studies, ed. H. E. Goldberg (Albany, 1987), pp. 111-18. Goldberg (pp. 113-14) entertains the possibility that the Torah scroll is metaphorically linked either to a male (most likely, the royal personage of the king) or to a female. Additional support for his claims can be gathered from the sources that I discuss in this study, although I think the weight of the evidence suggests that the female personification is more prevalent and that many of the ritualistic behaviors associated with the Torah are rooted in this conceptual ground. An interesting and highly mythical personification of the Torah scroll as the masculine king appears in Kaleb Afendopolo, Patshegen Ketav ha-Dilt, MS New York, Columbia University X893 Af2, fol. 16b. 5. B. Shabbat 89a. See ibid., 88b, where in a different aggadic tradition the same expression is used to describe the Primordial Torah. 6. See my discussion in Chaplo?r 3, "Erasing the Erasure," p. 190...
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