Rabbi Prof Bradley Artson offers a response to my interview with Sam Lebens. Here, the discussion is kept brief, but the issues could be debated in much longer form. Artson has written extensively on chosenness from a very different perspective than Lebens, offering us a solid contrast. Artson reacts to the analytic premises as hiding Lebens’s subjective viewpoints. He also singles out the rejection of the apersonal God as not sufficiently defined or delineated. Finally, he points out there is still too much superiority in Leben’s approach. For Artson, choseness is a fact-supported theory calling for responsibility, calling, and distinction.
Dr. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson is the AJU Goldstine Distinguished Scholar and previously served as the Abner and Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies since July, 2000, while also serving as Vice President of American Jewish University in Los Angeles. Rabbi Artson is the author of 12 books and over 250 articles. He is currently publishing a new book, Judaism Beyond Belief: Wisdom for People who Simply Want to Thrive (Monkfish Book Publishing).
As background to the discussion, I did a long and thorough interview with Artson a few years ago. I just reread it and it remains a comprehensive introduction to Artson’s theology.
As a direct taste of Artson’s views, here is a nice quote from one of his earlier books God of Becoming and Relationship:
In the dominant theology with its either/or dichotomies, either the Jews are chosen, hence superior, or all peoples are equal, and none are chosen. If God is the active choosing partner, then Israel must be the passive recipient of God’s choice. But Process Theology’s dipolarity allows us to transcend these binary dichotomies. Israel is an active partner in the process of chosenness … . Jews choose/are chosen to live Torah in the world, both to build communities of justice and inclusion and to model that it is possible to embody such a life. But other peoples choose/are chosen, too, in ways that match their particularity and distinctiveness . … Jews choose/are chosen for Torah and mitzvot, although most emphatically not because of intrinsic superiority. Other peoples are chosen/choose their own paths to holiness and righteousness (104f).
Bradley Artson, Choseness, Personhood, and Metaphysics: A Response to Samuel Lebens
It is a pleasure to engage the thought of Professor Samuel Lebens, and the invitation to respond to his interview with our colleague/teacher, Professor Alan Brill, is a privilege. I approach the task with some concern: it is patently unfair to judge a person or their thought based on a single interview or even a review of his most recent book. Indeed, going online and sampling a few of his interviews reveals a thinker of great passion, breadth, and depth. Lebens is a thinker worth engaging, even in those points of particular curiosity or dissent. So, in that spirit, having pondered his interview, here are some places where my questioning crystallized.
Lebens begins by explicating five central Biblical models of closeness, which is a helpful fleshing out, but creates a false impression that these are distinct and separate categories. Yes, he notes that they are not “exhaustive” because there are instances of choseness that do not neatly fit one of the five. But he doesn’t note that these are not so much categories as emphases — the Bible does not seem to think of them as separate entities. Particular instances mix and blend, perhaps emphasizing one facet of chosenness over others, but they are not hermetically sealed from each other, as Lebens also acknowledges when he says, “my aim is to trace all of the major lines of development and to find, where possible, the best fit between them all; without pretending that all of the sources are in agreement.” I would only add, also without pretending that there are hardened categories in Biblical or Rabbinic thought on the topic.
That recognition raises a larger concern I often have with so-called “analytical” thinking: the pretense to scientific objectivity, while surreptitiously smuggling in deeply subjective opinions, often with invisible assumptions, often retrojecting the contemporary perceptions of the viewer to recontextualize the more intuitive organic thinking/feeling of the original work itself.
So with the very important, to Lebens, matter of God being a personal being, which he strongly advocates: The main consequence of this insistence, from his perspective, is that God can enter into particular relationships with any individual or community and his rejection of the “apersonal theology that motivated it.” But an inkling of his subjectivity (he’s fine saying Rambam is 100% on the apersonal side), is to criticize Wyschogrod for taking the personality thing “too literally. His God seems capricious.”
It turns out that Leben’s invocation of a personal vision of God isn’t scientifically or linguistically objective and precise. Apparently one can be too hot or too cold, and he means to distinguish an intuited subset of what “personality” normally evokes. In this case, the invisible assumptions are that somehow God lacks a body yet can impact the physical, has personal attributes of emotion, consciousness, and will, yet doesn’t get angry, moody, or have favorites (despite his choosing of Abraham and family as being biblically contrasted to God’s assessment of everyone else! Despite the predictable invocation of Amos 9:7, the Biblical more than once frames Israelite choseness as being in contrast to (and above) all other peoples or nations). Apparently, the tools of the analytic philosopher allow one to dope out the parameters of God’s personhood even at odds with the Peshat of Biblical verses. Which attributes of personality remain and which are dropped is never made explicit, systemic, or distinguished from the predilections presupposed by the individual philosopher.
I find it difficult to understand how even Lebens’ sanitized choseness doesn’t imply superiority, despite his sensitivity to this challenge. In his own words, his Two-Track Model (Jews be Jews, Gentiles be Gentiles) still shows “equal love” through “God allow[ing] the people of the world to see, just a sample of the saving grace and love that He [sic] has in store for all human beings in the eschaton.” You Gentiles get French cuisine and the Parthenon. We Jews, get intimacy, firstborn status, the Holy of Holies, and a verbal transcript of God’s love. That sounds co-equal, doesn’t it?
Oh, and God is somehow still a male. Boy, that part of personhood sticks, unquestioned!
Finally, there is the way language, properly understood, needs to be employed to address this core challenge. My reading of Rambam diverts a bit from Lebens, influenced no doubt by Solomon Schechter, Mordecai Kaplan, Alfred North Whitehead, John Cobb, and Catherine Keller among others. Turns out that not only God, but every “thing” (what Whitehead would call an occasion) is in process, dynamic, and on some level ineffable. Certainly any human description of God falls short from the literally true, even if it points toward some deeper reality. And I would add that this limitation of language remains accurate for descriptions of any of us or any other creature or occasions within Creation. We are all of us on the way, changing across time and retaining continuity with our former selves.
There is no Being (an abstraction from a series of becomings), there is only becoming. That is true for God no less than for the rest of us.
That being the case, it isn’t a choice between personal and apersonal, as the analytic thinkers would have us believe. God can have attributes we experience as personal and attributes we experience as apersonal, both. God is, literally, neither a person nor an aperson (monstrous term!), just as there is no literal North north of the North Pole. The concept simply is poetry at that point, but not literally real. If so, the poetry of personhood illumines crucial experiences of the divine, as do images of apersonhood. Lebens acknowledges Biblical images of God as fountain, mountain, Life of the Cosmos, etc. Are those literally true or false too?
If we recall that language can only point toward a reality that lies just beyond language, then we can crawl out of the constricting dichotomy of either or to a more nuanced and embracing both. Jewish precedent for this insight is found, as Lebens notes, in the grand thinking of Rabbenu Saadya Gaon, Rabbi Nathaniel bin Fayumi, and to my reading, the Rambam himself. That metaphysical claim (really, Process Thought) opens us to a broader understanding and articulation of these apparently-conflicting claims, to a better hermeneutic for the welter of biblical language and portrayals, and a reconciliation with much of contemporary philosophy and science.
For my own take on Choseness, I invite the reader to check out my presentation on the subject at the lecture I gave; here is the YouTube video.
In that discussion, I present a Process-influenced demonstration that the Biblical/Rabbinic assertion of chosenness is no longer a theological claim, but the best explanation and integration of the facts of Jewish and world history. No longer a faith-based creed, Choseness is a fact-supported theory (like evolution or the Big Bang). And then I flesh out what choseness entails as responsibility, calling, and distinction.
Conclusion
I am not here meaning to doubt that Lebens isn’t both a serious thinker and a good, compassionate leader. He is both of those and he is struggling to articulate a Jewish theology of God that is both authentic to the central impulses of the sacred sources and at the same time responsive to a contemporary philosophic critique. Kudos to him on both scores. I have lots of concerns and questions about what strikes me as a false dichotomy (either a person or not, as though that is a literal claim that is mutually exclusive) and a brute method of analysis that holds reason to be a separate distillate from feeling, and one that precludes poetic metaphor, with its attendant sloppiness, not to mention what appears to me to be an inadequate appreciation of the way language both reveals and masks and renders (as Rambam alerts us) every event/occasion and instance ineffable in some important ways. The gap between description and what is described, between systemic speculation and the reality itself, is built in. We can only use reason and experience to grow asymptotically closer. But, as the British remind us, we still need to mind the gap.
The concept of a chosen people preferred by God challenges core ideas about fairness, divine love, and human equality. If God loves everyone equally, singling out one specific group for a special covenant or status appears to contradict that fairness. If God is over all of humanity, then how could God pick one people? It seems to imply a capricious deity or one closer to Greek myths. More importantly in our era, the concept generates arrogance, racism, chauvinism, or violence. It implies that one group is inherently better than the rest and often demeans the humanity of the other group. However, the concept of the Jewish People chosen from among all the people is a substantial part of the Bible and Jewish everyday liturgy.
The latest volume to offer a solution to this problem is an excellent new book by Rabbi Dr. Samuel Lebens, God’s Chosen People: Judaism’s Most Divisive Doctrine (Oxford, 2026). Lebens is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa specializing in early analytic philosophy especially Bertrand Russell, the nature of propositions, the nature of fiction, and writes widely on the analytic philosophy of Judaism. His PhD is from Birkbeck College, University of London, and he completed post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Notre Dame and at Rutgers University with Rabbinic Ordination from Rabbi Zalman Nechemia Goldberg.
Leben’s method takes as a fundamental given the tenets of Judaism, which, for him, include existence of God, revelation, and Bible interpreted through Rabbinic method. He does not argue for these, rather they are his starting premises. Like many Evangelical analytic theologians, who Lebens studies, the goal is to formulate a position that he can live with, a Judaism with enough analytic philosophy defense to be cogent and defensible.
However, Lebens is more Biblically based than Gelman, analyzing five Biblical models of choseness of the Jewish people. You can read about the models in the interview. This is analytic presentation of materials is Leben’s strong suit; his collecting the data from a broad range of materials: Biblical, Talmudic, Medieval Philosophic, Rosenzweig, and Modern Orthodox thinkers. This extensive range is unique to this book compared to his predecessors.
In addition, Lebens emphasizes his belief in a personal God as the Jewish view. He rejects all abstract views of God and all impersonal views. His belief in this is strong enough for him to discount medieval Jewish thought and all Jewish views of an abstract God. Therefore, despite his broad historical reach, mainly of the thinkers he discusses are presented for him to reject them.
Lebens makes good use of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’ ideas. And Lebens is part of a growing trend to follow the thought of formerly obscure thinker Rabbi Nathaniel ibn Fayumi who taught that God sends a prophet to every nation. (See my prior posts on the use of Nathanel ibn Fayumi by Rabbi Yaakov Nagen and by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed). Lebens, however, is original in how he presents ibn Fayumi as a continuity of Rabbi Saadiah Gaon.
In the 1948 debate between Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston, on the nature of God and philosophy, Russell argued for modern analytic logic thereby rejecting the medieval classics and Copleston argued for the classic scholastic theism. It was exemplar in showing two methods for reading texts from prior centuries, are they treated as objects for analytic analysis or as traditions received. Lebens is clearly on the side of Russell. I am much less comfortable rejecting Maimonidean positions. And Lebens chapter on Jewish mysticism, was unnecessary in its current form.
Since the book only sporadically dips into the scholarship, it missed a few books that would have help develop his arguments such Chosen and Unchosen: Conceptions of Election in the Pentateuch and Jewish-Christian Interpretation (2009)by Joel N. Lohr. The book directly deals with the Biblical models of choseness and election in both Jewish and Christian thought, and specifically deals with Wyschogrod, Novak, and Jon Levenson.
My bigger issue is how his book relates to actual Jews and Jewish opinions. I tried pushing these issues in several of my questions. In 1983, Prof Arnold Eisen, wrote a book The Chosen People in America: A Study in Jewish Religious Ideology where he states: “A Jewish ethnic identity was illegitimate in democratic America; in clinging to the illusion of chosenness which demanded such an identity, Jews brought their sufferings upon themselves.” Eisen quotes the Conservative Rabbi Milton Steinberg who observed in 1934: “Only a people of acrobats could preserve a semblance of poise on a footing so unstable.” Based on this, does Leben’s book speak to a reader who does not accept his premises?
I think it does. It offers for Jews an exemplar example of Evangelical analytic theology based on Biblical truth. The rigor, extensiveness, and overview of many positions make it almost a basic reader on the topic. Most prior analytic works were articles arguing for a single position. Lebens offers range and depth. The book would make an ideal book for an introduction to Jewish thought especially in Modern Orthodox high schools or in gap year program. The book would raise the level of discussion to sophisticated levels. I make this recommendation, with the caveat that the instructor should complement the book by arguing for their own positions including those of Halevi, Maimonides, or Kabbalah, as well as modern thinkers who are not modern Orthodox.
Finally, even though the book is being published by Oxford University Press, an earlier draft is also available on the Virtual Beit Midrash of Yeshivat Har Etzion as forty-five digestible lectures as Choosing a Theory of Chosenness. I emphasize this because the list price for the new book is $165. The book is worth reading, worth arguing with, and stay tuned for some responses here.
Why did this topic interest you?
My children had some disturbing experiences in the religious school system in Israel. On numerous occasions, they were witness to hateful and racist statements, not merely from their peers, but even from their teachers. Those experiences cemented my opinion that Jewish supremacism is growing steam in the rank and file of the Religious Zionist community in Israel. My decision to excavate and thoroughly explore the notion of chosenness was my attempt to do the intellectual heavy lifting required to challenge that supremacism, using the sources of the Jewish tradition itself.
2. What are the Biblical models of choseness and why did you pick two as best?
I found there to be five central Biblical models of the election of Israel:
One- The Genesis Model: The main notions within this model are that the choice of Abraham and his progeny was somewhat arbitrary (in that there may have been other individuals, no less qualified than Abraham); the choice of Abraham was intended to bring blessing to all of the families of the world – such that the election is a means to that universalistic end; the chosen are called upon to showcase and embody the political virtues of justice and equity (i.e., tzedek and mishpat); the chosen are to be liminal, and to utilize that liminality as a counter-cultural voice in the conversation of humanity; and they are called upon to struggle with man and with God.
Two- The Marriage Model: This refers to the idea that the chosen were not chosen for any mission in particular. Instead, they were chosen because God had fallen in love with them. The Torah and its laws, on this construal of the relationship, function like a marriage contract.
Three- The Priesthood Model: The guiding slogan of this model is that we are to be a “kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.” Whatever the Levitical priests are supposed to provide to Israel, the Israelites are called upon to provide for the nations of the world.
Four- The Zechut Avot Model: “Zechut Avot” refers to the merit of the ancestors. On this model, the Jewish people have a special status, not in virtue of their own achievements, but merely in virtue of the merit of their illustrious ancestors.
Five- The Name-bearing Model: On this model, the Jewish people are to be witnesses to the existence of God, and to carry His name, or His reputation, among the peoples of the world.
These models aren’t exhaustive, since they neglect various other metaphors: God is the farmer and Israel is His vineyard; God is the shepherd, and Israel are His sheep; God is the potter, and Israel are His clay; God is the King, and Israel are His subjects; we are the allotment of land that He inherits, and He is our inheritor. But none of these metaphors are developed as extensively as the five models I’ve identified.
I found that Models iv and v are easily subsumed into the other models. For example, you might think that the Marriage Model is true, but that God didn’t fall in love with us so much as with our ancestors. Alternatively, you might think that bearing God’s name in the world is part of the mission of a global priesthood, or part of the mission bestowed upon Abraham. That leaves us with three main models.
In later stages of the book, I argue that the Genesis Model and the Priesthood Model can be combined into one coherent picture.
The Marriage Model can’t be taken too literally, for Biblical reasons, if we’re to reconcile it with other models of the election. Theologically, when taken too literally, the Marriage Model renders God guilty of favoritism and caprice. Accordingly, I would say that the relationship between Israel and God is aptly described as a passionate marriage, but only in some respects. It is the first two models that must take the lead.
3.How do you deal with difficult Rabbinic texts on this topic?
Many of the most difficult Rabbinic texts, ones that reputedly dehumanize non-Jews, have been well dealt with already by others. To that end, I lean heavily upon (and embellish) Rabbi Eliezer Berkovitz’ masterful early work, What is the Talmud?
But more than that, I discover two potentially surprising data points.
First: with a proper understanding of their etiology and underlying symbolism, the Rabbinic laws known as eiva and darkei shalom – which prohibit actions that would cause animosity between Jews and non-Jews, and mandate various acts of kindness towards non-Jews – are not to be understood as political exigencies, or compromises. On the contrary, they are motivated by central ethical convictions of the Rabbis.
Second: the Rabbis take the most problematic Biblical model of the election – the Marriage Model – and entirely recalibrate it. Instead of portraying Israel as the bride of God Himself, they portray Israel as the bride of God’s daughter – the Torah. God is then recast as our heavenly father-in-law. This means that we only occupy any sort of special status to the extent that we’re living our lives in accordance with the Torah. To the extent that we’re not, the status will be attenuated.
This Rabbinic Model nevertheless has to rub shoulders with other conceptions of the election. And thus, it isn’t fair or possible to flatten the Rabbinic data and to pretend that there was always consensus. On the contrary, my aim is to trace all of the major lines of development and to find, where possible, the best fit between them all; without pretending that all of the sources are in agreement.
4.The liturgy states repeatedly that God chose us- asher bachar banu mi kol Haamim- how do you deal with this?
The fact that we were chosen “from among all of the nations,” doesn’t ipso facto entail that other nations haven’t also been chosen for other purposes. To that end, see Amos 9:7.
The fact that we have been exalted over other “tongues” and above the “uncircumcised” has nothing to do with our ethnicity or race, but with the language that we’ve been co-opted into speaking – i.e., the language of Torah – and her rituals, such as circumcision.
To the extent that we’ve been sanctified as a people, the liturgy tends to insist that it’s only because we have been given the Torah and holds only to the extent that we cleave to that Torah.
There’s no doubt that Jewish supremacists will nevertheless find lots of phrases in the liturgy to cleave to, but I argue that a closer reading of those texts always falls short of endorsing any one particular model of the election. In fact, the relevant liturgical texts tend to manifest a studied neutrality when it comes to the various competing Biblical and Rabbinic models of the election. A proper understanding of the etiology of even the most offensive sounding liturgical formulations inevitably undermines their offensive appearances; or so my study has found.
5. How do you both accept and reject the approach of Maimonides?
I endorse Maimonides’ goal of articulating an entirely non-racial construal of Jewish identity. I also hope to preserve an inspiring detail of his understanding of the Priesthood Model. On his account of that model, it isn’t only the non-Levitical tribes of Israel who are invited to share in the overall mission of the Priesthood to the world; but that:
Each and every person of all the inhabitants of the world whose spirit generously motivates him, and who understands with his wisdom, to separate himself and stand before God to serve Him and minister to Him and to know God, proceeding justly as God made him, removing from his neck the yoke of the many reckonings which people seek, he is sanctified as holy of holies (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Shemitta VeYovel, 13:13).
But there are two related respects in which I think we should diverge from the Rambam. The first is that his theology entails that God is not a personal being and that, as such, God can enter into no particular form of relationship with any individual or community.
That theology is alien to the Bible’s presentation of God, and alien to much of the Rabbinic movement’s conception of God, such that Jewish believers in revelation should be very reticent to embrace it. He was operating with an Aristotelian conception of how metaphysical explanation is supposed to work. Once that background has been removed, the argument that pushes Maimonides to his apersonalist theology is no longer compelling at all.
Secondly, and as a consequence of his apersonalist theology, one finds that Maimonides basically rejects the entire notion of chosenness. To the extent that anything remains chosen, on his conception of things, it is the religion of Judaism, but not the Jews. This is a highly revisionary conception of the election.
6.Why do you reject a non-personal or abstract God?
My rejection of the abstract God stuff can be boiled down to this: Given the Biblical and Rabbinic data, and the extent to which a great deal of Judaism is built upon the notion that God is the sort of being with whom a nation can have a covenantal relationship, I think that there’s a burden of proof upon the apersonalists. I accept that if you swallow a wholly Aristotelian conception of how metaphysical explanation is supposed to work, then you end up almost automatically with a very abstract God. But I don’t swallow that metaphysics. In my book, I go through every argument that supposedly entails that God isn’t a person, and I show them to be wanting. This leads me to think that, with no working argument against a personal God, we should lean into the tradition and revelation and accept that God is a person; albeit a perfect person. So, I argue. That part of the book is inspired in part by Rabbi Heschel, and also, in part, by contemporary analytic theology, where it’s increasingly common to think of God as a person.
7. How do you solve the issue of chosenness for Yehudah Halevi?
Despite Halevi’s presentation of himself as an opponent to Aristotelian philosophy, he nevertheless contends that God is entirely above description, and so entirely apersonal. The central challenge for a Jewish philosopher who embraces an apersonalist theology is this: how can an apersonal God enter into a personal relationship with a particular people at a particular time?
Maimonides answers this question by denying that God enters into such a relationship. Judaism might be chosen, but not the Jews.
Halevi answers our question by supposing that the Jews are a species set apart from all other human beings; possessed of a special “divine influence.” By making this move, Halevi can say that God didn’t have to make a choice in revealing His Torah to just one people. Instead, there was only one people who were at all qualified to receive it.
This was a massive innovation on the part of Halevi. In fact, Ehud Krinis argues that Halevi’s whole conception of an elevated form of human being was a foreign import gleaned from Shi’ite Islam (Krinis, God’s Chosen People: Judah Halevi’s ‘Kuzari’ and the Shi’i Imam Doctrine). I reject this innovation, not least because I reject the apersonal theology that motivated it.
And yet, despite my rejection of the Rihal’s conception, my reading allows us to defend him against the accusation of out-and-out racism.
Rabbi Dr. David Novak, is his book The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People, contends that Halevi was never motivated by racist animus. As Novak details: Halevi recognizes the existence of righteous gentiles, just as he recognizes the existence of wicked Jews. Accordingly, Halevi doesn’t think that we Jews enjoy a “moral superiority over the rest of humankind.” The capacity for prophecy is the one and only advantage that Halevi thinks to be innately and uniquely possessed by the Jew. Moreover, Halevi seems to think that, in the end of days, all people will become Jewish. Indeed, on Novak’s well-reasoned reading, Halevi even concedes that the child of two converts, despite having no genealogical link by which to inherit the “divine influence,” will inherit it anyway.
To Novak’s defense, I would add just two further points. First: perhaps the central conceit of Halevi’s book was supposed to communicate to us that he still held non-Jews in the highest regard. Second: once we realize that Halevi was forced into his otherwise unsightly position by the shackles of an apersonalist theology, we can better understand the predicament that he was in; even if it isn’t one that we share.
8. How do you deal with the approach of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson?
The Rebbe was heir to the intellectual tradition, within the tapestry of Jewish thought, that seems most wedded to ethnocentrism and supremacism. There are approaches in the Kabbalah according to which non-Jewish souls derive from the dark side of reality – the sitra achra. They are repeatedly described as impure, such that Jews shouldn’t even approach them. This gave rise to a mystical tradition in which Jews and gentiles were said to have different sorts of souls. Indeed, Rabbi Chaim Vital says that Jews have two souls, whereas gentiles only have one. Despite Talmudic assurances to the contrary, these traditions often imply that only the Jews have a share in the world to come. This tradition arguably finds a firm hold in the Tanya, which was the founding text of the Lubavitch movement.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, by contrast, seems to have been animated by a profound concern for the physical and spiritual welfare of non-Jews. Accordingly, when one looks through his writings, one sees various ingenious attempts to utilize the strident monism of the mystical tradition, in an effort to dislodge from that same tradition the appearance of xenophobia.
My hope is that, against the backdrop of my book’s intellectual history, people will be better placed to appreciate what it is that the Rebbe achieved in his conception of the election. His theory manages to combine elements of (1) all of the Biblical models; (2) the incarnational elements of certain Rabbinic models of the election; (3) Maimonidean universalism; (4) the notion that God’s choice of Israel was supra-rational (since God’s choice of Israel, for the Rebbe, remains a mystery); and (5) the Two-Track Model (pioneered by certain German rabbis, according to which Israel and the gentiles are both called upon to serve God, but to do so in different co-equal ways).And yet, despite his best efforts, the resulting view still contains a residue of supremacism. Religious philosophers not so tightly wedded to the Tanya, I argue, will be better served elsewhere.
9. How do you use and then modify Prof Michael Wyschogrod’s thought?
Wyschogrod’s defense of a personalist theology is one of the most stridently formulated in the literature. How dare we be ashamed, he would ask us, to describe God in the terms that God Himself deploys in the Bible? My own personalist theology is in his debt.
But his conception of the election, though it may have been motivated by a desire to protect the spirit of Biblical theology, and to combine that spirit with a rejection of supremacism, remains deeply unattractive to me because Wyschogrod ultimately insists and defends the claim that we are, without being inherently better than others, literally God’s favorites.
His defense of God’s special love for the Jews is built upon the notion that any father, if sufficiently honest, will admit that he has a favorite child. Doubtless, Wyschogrod would accuse me of dishonesty, but – as the father of three children – I insist that I don’t have favorites. On the contrary, the three loves that I bear to them are entirely incommensurate.
In order that humankind should be able to understand God’s love for us all, God chose to love us in a distinctively human way; and – according to Wyschogrod – human love always has favorites. The non-favorite nations, like any non-favorite child, should at least take solace from the fact that God’s love for each of us is real. How do we know that it’s real? Because, like human love, it has favorites. If it didn’t, he claims, it would be more like the “love” of a faceless bureaucracy. If we want something more discerning, passionate, and personal then we’ll have to accept that it will have favorites.
Because I disagree with its central premise – that fatherly love always has favorites – I find myself entirely rejecting Wyschogrod’s conception of the election. If anything, I would argue that he’s taking the Bible’s Marriage Metaphor too literally. His God seems capricious.
10. How do you use and then modify Prof. Yehuda Gelman?
Yehuda Gellman’s work on the election is excellent. I would be proud if my work could be seen as an attempt to enfold his own conception of the election into something broader; on the basis of a more extensive survey of the relevant source material, from the Bible until today.
My own conception of the election is a version of what I call the Two-Track Model. It’s a model that I find articulated first by Rabbi Yisrael Lipschutz (the Tiferet Yisrael) and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch; later to be developed further by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. On the Two-Track Model, and for reasons I develop in the book, God calls upon humanity to serve Him in two complementary and co-equal ways: the Jews on a Jewish track, and Gentiles on a gentile track.
Gellman adds to this that the love that God explicitly showers upon the Jews, in His acts of revelation and providence, is a figuration for the love that God actually has, equally, for all people. Were God to reveal this love in equal measure to all people, they would be rendered paralyzed by it. Accordingly, in His relationship with Israel, God allows the people of the world to see, just a sample, of the saving grace and love that He has in store for all human beings in the eschaton. This view is entirely consistent with the theory I develop.
11. Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan famously wrote that modern Jews cannot accept the concept of the chosen people anymore. How would you respond?
Mordechai Kaplan is absolutely right to worry that, any attempt to cast ourselves as a light unto other nations, “smacks of arrogance.” Indeed, that worry accompanies me throughout the book as I look to articulate a version of the doctrine – deeply rooted in the relevant source material – but immune from the accusation of arrogance or cultural imperialism.
On the other hand, Kaplan’s efforts to purge the Jewish faith of this doctrine were doomed to fail. That’s because the Jewish faith walks a delicate line between, on the one hand, the belief that we have something sufficiently valuable to add to the world that it would be a shame if we were to assimilate and disappear; and, on the other hand, the belief that we have no obligation to convince gentiles to become Jewish. In other words, we neither want to assimilate nor to proselytize; and it’s hard to hold onto both of those positions unless we believe that we have been called upon (either by fate, or destiny, or God) to play a role that does not need to be played by others. That’s the job of the doctrine of the election.
12. This may be all well and good for analytic theology, but most see in real life an ethnocentric, tribal form of chosenness writing off anyone not Jewish. On the street, I would not get anything like your theology. Now what?
A Jewish theology is not automatically invalidated by the fact that it isn’t embodied in the faith of a particular Jewish community. Indeed, it might be the job of a Jewish theologian to criticize communities and to argue that, given their own theological axioms, their current form of life stands to be corrected.
To address this issue, I adopt a radical argument of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch. On his view, the mechanisms of cultural transmission and providence can be trusted to pass down an accurate presentation of what God demands from us, in each generation, formally or externally – literally, in terms of how we should behave, in order to discharge legal obligations – but they cannot be equally well trusted to make us understand how to perform those laws with the right spirit. The logic and textual basis for such a position needn’t detain us here, but it does allow me to maintain that many of the models of piety that can be found among truly sincere communities of God-fearers, might – despite their many virtues – stand in need of correction.
13 What happened to all your discussions of excreta and dreams from prior works? This work seems so much straighter.
I am a product of my upbringing in the analytical tradition of philosophy. I think it’s fair to say that – especially among the more metaphysically inclined of the analytical philosophers – our tradition is one that celebrates weird and wacky ideas. David Lewis, for example, was legendary for using his belief in an infinite number of entirely real and concrete universes to solve all sorts of philosophical quandaries. The only objection that he knew he couldn’t defuse was the so-called “incredulous stare” that his work inspired.
So too, when it comes to the metaphysics of religion, I’ve been happy to explore and to occupy the most peculiar sounding terrain, from my discussion of omnipresence, and whether it problematically locates God within so-called filthy places, to my discussion of the nature of creation, that places all things – including you and me – within the mind, or even the dream, of God.
That wacky streak isn’t entirely missing from this book – but it’s only wheeled out when absolutely necessary.
This book was written to address a particular moment in Jewish history, in the hope that it might move hearts and minds towards a more open and even pluralistic form of Judaism. To that end, I try, whenever possible, to base my arguments only upon assumptions that I think will be widely shared by the audience I would most like to move. Consequently, I keep the wackiness to a minimum.
14. How do you rely on Nathaniel ibn Fayumi? How and why do we give him such deference?
I suppose one could lean upon the fact that the Rambam lauded him so effusively in his Epistle to Yemen. That constitutes quite an approbation! But, notwithstanding the Rambam’s praise, the fact that his work made so little impact upon subsequent thinkers, such that his ideas were never assimilated into the warp and woof of Jewish thought, suggests that he isn’t owed particular intellectual deference, unless and to the extent that his arguments stand on their own two feet.
However, I give him a degree of attention in my book for two reasons. First, he stands as an interesting example of a medieval sage embracing a far-reaching and seemingly quite extreme form of pluralism. That, to my estimation, makes his work noteworthy. Moreover, his thought can help us to extend Saadya Gaon’s theory of the election to its logical extreme. And Saadya Gaon’s position as a fountainhead of Jewish thought, I think, is in no doubt.
Saadya Gaon embraces a radically reductive account of our chosenness. He seems to think that God gave a true religion to multiple nations – each one with their own public and miraculous Sinai-like event. All that renders the Jewish people special – in Saadya’s eyes – is that we have better retained our God-given religion than any of those other nations, who have largely been lost to history. Rabbi Netanel, who seems to have been a great admirer of Saadya Gaon, can be seen as extending the radical seed of Saadya’s picture to argue that God hasn’t stopped sending prophets to other nations. Moses remains our guide, but – as far as Rabbi Netanel was concerned – Mohammed may have been sent by God to guide the Gentiles of the Arabian Peninsula.
15. How do you rely on the thought of Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks?
Rabbi Sacks developed a communitarian theology that, in turn, gave rise to an interesting and often misunderstood form of religious pluralism. Rooted against the background of those views, Rabbi Sacks developed an account of our chosenness.
I argue that, in light of the Biblical and Rabbinic data, and in light of the weight of the Jewish tradition, as it has unfolded from the days of Saadya Gaon until today, Rabbi Sacks’ theory of chosenness – suitably unpacked and embellished – stands out as the most robustly supported, and philosophically attractive articulation of the doctrine to date.
Rabbi Sacks grapples with the internal conflict that Judaism hosts between the universalism of its monotheism, with its creed that all human beings were created in the image of God, and the particularism of its mission for the Jews. What emerges is a complex view that can’t give a simple “yes” or “no” answer to the question, as to whether the Jews are somehow special. The reason that it can’t be answered simply is that, according to Rabbi Sacks, we were chosen precisely so as to be the ambassadors of this notion called the dignity of difference. In his words:
God, the creator of humanity, having made a covenant with all humanity [in the covenant with Noah], then turns to one people and commands it to be different inorder to teach humanity the dignity of difference. (53)
We are chosen to be different, so to speak, in order to showcase to the world that God values cultural and even religious diversity.
Notice how this gels with Yehuda Gellman’s view, since something about our election helps to illustrate how God values every culture, so long as that culture continues to respect the moral code of the Noahide covenant. And thus, as long as polytheism, atheism, or unjust forms of monotheism exist, on the one hand, and as long as totalizing cultures continue to exist that would seek to bulldoze over cultural diversity, and refuse to recognize the varied and authentic relationships that multiple peoples can have with one God, on the other hand, the election of the Jews will still have a distinctive role to play. That is the Jonathan Sacks heart of this book.
Before I continue my series on Rabbi Eliezer Melamed and post his views of Christianity and other religions, I will take a digression and present on the classic book by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, Where Judaism Differed (Macmillan, 1958). Rabbi Silver (d. 1963) was a renowned Reform Rabbi, a prolific author, orator, American Zionist leader, and fundraiser for the new state.. His most famous book, Where Judaism Differed, explained how Judaism is different from Christianity and other religions. The book was a pillar of the thinking of American Jewry. Whenever I explain my interfaith work to an older generation or explain what I am writing, I inevitably receive some form of Silver’s words in response. I teach in a program in Jewish Christian Studies, so I know there are hundreds of better books, yet Silver’s ideas that Judaism is completely the opposite of other religions still percolate in the writings of other authors such as Rabbi Yitz Greenberg or in sermons from all denominations, or are found on social media, hence these ideas are often the basis for much in ChatGPT. (We also have the opposite on ChatGPT that Judaism and Christianity share Biblical values, the commandments, and the Golden Rule.)
In short, Silver assumes that whatever Christianity teaches, Judaism is the opposite. According to Silver, Christianity is elite, and Judaism is democratic. Christianity is about sin and salvation; Judaism has no concern with sin and salvation. Christianity is ascetic, Judaism is not. Christianity is mythic and magical; Judaism is not. Christianity assumes that all is predetermined without free will, and Judaism offers free will and social progress. Christianity advocates celibacy, Judaism does not.
Original Cover 1956
Christianity accepts a Trinity, Original Sin, Incarnation, a personal messiah, miracles, redemption through God, a virgin birth, and the need for salvation of the soul. Judaism rejects these concepts and every theological idea in Christianity. Christianity is a mystery religion, while in Judaism, “the moral life and the aspirations of man are the “sacraments: of Judaism.” (210) Christianity is otherworldly and concerned for the afterlife; Judaism has no interest in eschatology.
Christianity and Islam, in Silver’s view, wanted to be free from the law, meaning to break free from ethics and morals. (Hence, Rabbi David Novak had to pen an essay explaining to Jews that Christianity is not antinomian).
In his words, only Judaism of all the religions of the world believes in human progress. (171). Only Judaism is kind to the poor, teaches humility, and has reverence for human life as shown in his comparisons to Roman Latin authors.
Silver paints the other religions in terms of their most monastic other-worldly forms and he is especially negative toward Hinduism and Buddhism seeing them as world denying, ascetic, and having little to teach. They are fatalistic and life is predetermined; this is his explanation of karma. These Dharmic religions are pessimistic, focus on suffering, and afflicting the body. He credits Christianity and Islam with many of these same negative attributes. (Once should compare Rabbi Kook’s fascinating correspondence with Rabbi Shmuel Alexandrov for a sharp contrast, in which the Russian rabbis have positive appreciation of Buddhism). He paints the Asian religions as lacking any moral teachings. Needless to say, this is an entirely erroneous characterization. I do not need to show that they have extensive teachings on ethics, family life, forgiveness, correct speech, correct actions, and working on personal virtue.
Silver paints Judaism as engaged in a continuous historic battle against idolatry, idolatrous Canaanites, against Hellenism, against ancient paganism, against Christianity, which for him is really just part of the synthesis with pagan Greco-Roman world, and against the otherworldly pagan Calvinists of our own time. In contrast, Judaism teaches sober morality, personal piety, and the “prophetic tradition of social progress”!!!! (85) This reading of Jewish history was canonized by Heinrich Graetz in his 19th-century classic History of the Jews and the reading of Christianity as Greco-Roman, not Judaic, was the definitive position of the German theologian Adolf von Harnack. Silver cites the historian George Foot Moore’s Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, but only seems to take from it that Judaism and God-fearers were “waging war with great energy against polytheism and idolatry.”
The book also typifies a Jewish trend of creating false historical genealogies crediting many aspects of Christianity to pagan influence. In 2025, I still see on social media, by people who should know better, the acceptance of the statement that Christmas Trees are from Roman paganism, a false statement, the earliest possible record is the 15th century, or that Easter/Pascha has anything to do with Ishtar.
In the end for Silver, Judaism is a pure ethical monotheism that is unique in believing in human progress. In the background of this, one hears echoes of Hermann Cohen’s views of Judaism as a unique monotheism striving toward messianic social progress but adapted for the popular pulpit. Judaism is the only religion not death-obsessed or about self-effacement, but rather affirming human progress.
The late 20th century popular Jewish maxims that Judaism does not engage with theology or have any theology, let this book linger long in people’s conceptions. Popular ideas that Judaism has no afterlife or eschatology dovetail with this book. I lose any ability to engage with the content of Rabbinic Judaism, midrash, Aggadah, kabbalah, or even medieval Jewish philosophy. Judaism is an abstraction and defined by negation of others. There is no message of the High Holy Days, the three festivals, Chanukah, prayer, or Jewish life.
To his credit, Silver was responding to several prior decades of liberal Jewish rabbis proclaiming that Judaism and Christianity taught a common universal message of prophetic ethics. However, his solution was to negate every idea of Christianity as the definition of where Judaism differed, without offering any serious positive theology of Judaism. Basically, being Jewish means rejecting a Christmas tree and every positive Christian value. The book was written in a different era, it was before Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate, and he was formed in the heyday of social progress of the first half of the 20th century.
A recent book on religious polemics portrays Silver as driven by the need for apologetics, to stem the tide of Jewish self-hatred, to respond to the stereotypes about Jews. (Jay Newman, Competition in Religious Life, 92). Silver’s work is “vitalized by the exaggeration and caricature that characterizes almost all apologetic works.” He excuses Judaism from all its weaknesses and finds the worst in other religions. He violates one of the prime directives in interfaith comparisons: Do not compare your best to their worst.
At the time of its release in 1956, the New York Times reviewed the book with praise for showing that Judaism is different than Christianity. The CCAR proclaimed that “the best introduction to Judaism that we know.” While a more cautious Felix A Levy, a Reform rabbi, praised the book as a new apologetic Hizzuk Emunah, referring to the 16th-century apologetic work by Isaac Troki, but faults him for leaving out revelation and halakha.
On the other hand, Lou H. Silverman, Professor of Jewish Literature and Thought at Vanderbilt University, in a 1958 review, faulted the book sharply for reducing Judaism to oppositional negation. Judaism is defined as not Pauline Christianity, but we do not learn at all how Rabbinic, philosophic, and mystical Judaism understood the same issues. Silverman opines that the book fails to do full justice to the texture of the tradition.
Silverman points out that the Jewish prayer book in any version is about God having sin, God’s mercy on us, and forgiving us. To say that Judaism has no sense of superiority or racial thinking and is the only universal religion rubs Silverman the wrong way. He points out that the Reform Union Prayer Book referred to the Jewish race until 1933 and it took until 1945 to remove the racial elements. Silverman as an exclamation, asks: Where is Yehudah Halevi, Franz Rosenzweig? Silverman asks: when Silver states that a concern with “eschatology represented a sharp deviation from Classical Judaism,” what does that even mean? Silverman notes that Silver certainly excludes explicit Rabbinic concerns. Silverman ends his review by wishing that Silver had written a confessional, mature statement of his beliefs as a Reform Jew, rather than just presenting Judaism as the negation of Christianity.
Msgr John M. Oesterreicher of the Institute of Judeo-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University wrote a nine-page negative review of the book. At the time, Oesterreicher was editing a journal called The Bridge which looked at similarities and differences between Judaism and Christianity, and was already working on the 1961 “Decree on the Jews” (Decretum de Iudaeis), which is considered the first draft of Nostra Aetate.
Oesterreicher points out that Silver removes any sense of the word of God or God’s call to Abraham, or Sinai, replacing those ideas with a prophetic Jewish religious genius and ideas that we follow Judaism as utilitarian, “opportune and useful for life.” He is especially irked that Silver refers to God as a due to the Jewish genius created the universal God idea, which Oesterreicher considers “not part of the truly Jewish vocabulary.”
Oesterreicher declares that “the light in Rabbi Silver’s book is not the light of scripture” and that he is at variance with Jewish tradition. For example, neither the Hebrew Bible nor Rabbinic texts see sin as degrading; rather, they have full theologies of sin, repentance, and atonement. (This is like Silverman’s critique above that you cannot state that Judaism has no eschatology). He also notes that Silver is against mysticism and mischaracterizes both Western and Eastern mysticism.
Oesterreicher obviously thinks Silver misreads and mischaracterizes Jesus, Paul, the New Testament, and Christian teachings in many places. For example, the Sermon on the Mount is clearly rabbinic in context and not to be relegated to foreign “Greco-oriental” values. Silver psychologizes Jesus’ disciples as unable to admit their teacher was arrested and killed so they go into psychological denial, delusion, and imagine him as still alive. Silver shows no knowledge of Jewish memra theology or the variety of first-century Jewish ideas.
In conclusion, Oesterreicher agrees that Judaism and Christianity are different and cites Silver approvingly that “to gloss over differences as a gesture of goodwill is a superficial act” (289) But that does not mean they are opposites. Rather, Oesterreicher ends by saying that the discussion of similarities and differences should be pursued with an “Untiring, even painfully, open eye.”
The digitized American Jewish Archives preserve the letters that Silver received from publishers about his book. Harper and Bros rejected it based on Reviewer #2. Simon and Shuster rejected it with a long letter including the following paragraph:
The third point is, I fear, a more sensitive one, but perhaps it would be best for our mutual understanding to state it baldly. All of us have been somewhat troubled throughout the book by the invidious comparisons of Christianity with Judaism. Enduring spiritual values, I feel, are self-demonstrative; they do not need to be singled out and lauded at the expense of something else. I realize that such comparisons have an enormous controversial value, but I also feel that they have the final effect of weakening your rich, positive statements, or detracting from the dignity of a great tradition. It is for this reason, as well as for the reason that such invidious comparisons may offend and repel people of other faiths, that I venture to suggest that you reconsider them.
In the end, Macmillan published it as written. But before publication, Silver had his friend Ludwig Lewisohn read the manuscript to offer comments. Ludwig Lewisohn (1882–1955), was a novelist, outspoken critic of Jewish assimilation, and a founding faculty member of Brandeis University.
Lewisohn flags the book’s thesis that history “manifests a clear upward movement in human development,” noting that this “seems to me violently contrary to historic experience and to negate by implication the special redemptive function or the Jewish people and the meaning of its martyrdom. I do not like to see concepts like “development” and “progress” applied to Jewish history. Unless we died for the eternal Law, what did we die for?” This defense of Western liberalization (so-called) has been totally invalidated by history. After the Holocaust, pre-war optimism seemed misguided.
Also noted is that Silver credits anything he does not like in Judaism to outside influences. Lewisohn writes: “Too much importance attached to the theories of Babylonian influences, etc. These are all grounded in malice, conscious or not, and the desire to eliminate the reproach of Judaism’s uniqueness.”
Once interesting observation from the book “Here, my eye catches one of those usages that lower tone. “Judaism has little sympathy with the spiritual lone wolf.” (138) That’s a screaming incongruity–like chalk scratching on a blackboard. And were not the prophets lonely and hence embattled souls?”
Lewisohn does not want to reject the spiritual and theological teaching of Judaism just to engage in negations. Lewisohn rejects the sharp contrast with Christianity
Of course. “original sin” in the Augustinian sense is nonsense. But does not Judaism, too, recognize deeply man’s rebellion against God? Is not therefore teshuvah the end and aim of life. And does not the classical liturgy make it clear that we need God’s grace–vayihi razon milfanecba. I’m frightened for the nobility and inwardness of Judaism when these things are stated after this fashion.
I’m sorry. I think the notion of “progress” in that sense –social progress without inner change-is totally discredited and Jews and Judaism will discredit themselves by clinging to it… The essence of the whole matter is in the Alenu. Progress means obedience to God’s Law and abstention from idolatry–of man, of State, of all the idols or the market-place. And that, thank God, is Judaism.
In conclusion, we are now blessed with sixty-five years of work showing the similarities and differences between Judaism and Christianity. We have fine works on the New Testament, Patristics, Rabbinic, medieval philosophy, and modern thought. No one would write like Abba Hillel Silver anymore. But the influence of this book remains vast in common understandings. I am still greeted with citations of this work. And if you want to judge the knowledge of Christianity by contemporary rabbis and Jewish thinkers, or the recent works showing a more open approach, the benchmark was already set low. So judge them, in this context.
Guest Post by Rabbi Avraham Bronstein Rabbi Bronstein serves as North American Development Executive for Ohr Torah Stone. From 2006-2011 he was Associate Rabbi of The Hampton Synagogue. He tweets at @AvBronstein and launched a new blog, cloudpulpit.wordpress.com, where the following is cross-posted.
This is an adaptation of a sermon I delivered last week at a modern orthodox synagogue in the greater NY area. It is reworked slightly to include some material from other discussions and talks from Shabbat and beyond, and also eliminates some of the sermon filler. In conversation, I found that many people saw Korach as a sort of spiritual socialist, sort of a classic cold-war era sermon topic. I tried to make the discussion more contemporary.
Imagine a nation run as a meritocracy, where leaders rose to the top as they proved that they were brighter, more motivated, more assertive — true “leaders,” in every sense of the word. Things started well – there was a period of rapid growth and development, and everyone seemed to be sharing the rewards of the superior decisions and leadership that were coming from what was, by now, a trusted elite. Then, from out of the blue, something went very wrong. The leadership made a terrible collecive mistake, an epic misjudgment so out of line that the people assume they were collectively guilty of criminal negligence, if not outright corruption. As the grim, full reality of the disaster sets in, it becomes clear that all of the previous gains have essentially been erased, and the whole generation itself will go down in history as a wasted one.
Now imagine that, through it all, the meritocracy remains intact. The same leaders remain in charge, demanding the same levels of trust and of faith as though nothing had happened, with no effective safeguards in place to keep it from happening again. We would naturally expect the rise of popular movements to voice the people’s loss of confidence in the failed status quo. The truth is that this scenario actually happens quite often. In 2010, their motto was, “Don’t tread on me.” In 2011, they chanted, “We are the 99%.” And in last week’s Torah Portion it was Korach challenging Moses, insisting that “the entire community is holy, and God rests among them, so why do you lord yourself over the congregation of God?”
Walter Brueggemann is the William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia
He has devoted his life to a passionate exploration of Old Testament theology, with an emphasis on the relation between the Old Testament and the Christian canonical works, and the dynamics of Jewish-Christian interactions. He has published more than 59 books.
Brueggermann criticizes Brevards Childs as being too Christian and not pluralistic enough (Jon Levenson in turn uses the same arguments on Brueggermann). Walter Brueggemann is the standard mainline Protestant approach. He is the Reverend Lovejoy not the Ned Flanders. He is the standard approach now in seminaries that locating meaning in Documentary History is so 19th century skepticism and positivism, on the other hand he rejects fundamentalism or apologetics as anti-intellectual and repressive. Does he have anything to teach about moving beyond the false dichotomy?
He thinks history removes the theological sense of the text. We lose God and Sinai with criticism. We also cannot create an ethical approach with historical criticism. He is also willing to question parts of historical criticism. But on the other hand, he questions the fundamentalist approach as more concerned with external dogma and affirming an external event rather than accepting the revelation of the text.
Passages from: Brueggemann, Walter. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 1997. (pp.726-29) Old Testament Theology in Relation to Historical Criticism
No doubt Brevard Childs is correct in his contention that the relationship between Old Testament theology and historical criticism is of crucial importance to any advance in Old Testament theology. Thus I take it as a truism that Old Testament theological interpretation must be seriously engaged with criticism, and any serious student of Old Testament theology cannot retreat into a “safe” fideism because he or she fears the results of critical inquiry.
The conclusion to which I am drawn is that the enormous apparatus of high historical criticism that reached its zenith in the nineteenth century and continued its dominance well into the twentieth century is not, in the first instant, of primary relevance to theological exposition at the end of the twentieth century. By such a conclusion, I do not intend any appeal to an anti-intellectual fideism; I appeal rather to criticism that is congruent in the two ways suggested. In drawing this conclusion, I only reflect what in practice has turned out to be the case for a great number of responsible scholars at the present moment, namely, that scholars have moved well beyond the critical categories that have come to represent historical criticism.
In my judgment, historical criticism (by which I shall refer to the entire Enlightenment enterprise that came to be associated with Julius Wellhausen and that now seems to reappear as neo-Wellhausianism) was committed to a Cartesian program that was hostile (in effect if not in intention) to the main theological claims of the text.
Thus what is required in a new, antipositivistic intellectual climate is a criticism that is not thinly positivistic, but that is open to the density of social and rhetorical processes that generate social reality beyond our “realism.”
I suggest that in a new settlement still to be worked out between criticism and interpretation
Serious energy needs to be given to discern what of the older historical criticism is to be retained and how it is to be used. There is much in the history of the literature and perhaps in the history of religion that still needs to be valued, even though almost every old “consensus” opinion is now under heavy assault. The challenge in retaining learning from the older historical criticism is to do so without a hidden commitment to the theological skepticism that seemed endlessly to accompany that criticism, but was not a necessary part of a critical perspective. There may be a place for skepticism, but it should be explicit along with its grounds, and not surreptitiously taken along with critical judgment.
The real issue in the relationship between interpretation and criticism is to be aware that fideism and skepticism are twin temptations, and that criticism is an effort to be thoughtful in a way that does not permit fideism and that does not require skepticism. In much “scientific” study of the Old Testament, it is generally assumed that skepticism is much more intellectually respectable than is fideism. With the demise of positivism, that unstated but widespread assumption might well be reconsidered. Skepticism, often voiced as hostility to theological claim, is in fact not a given element in responsible intellectual inquiry. What passes for uncommitted objectivity in Old Testament study, moreover, is often a thinly veiled personal hostility to religious authority, which is displaced on the interpretive task as though such hostility is an intellectual virtue. No doubt an oppressive fideism and a hostile skepticism endlessly evoke and feed each other. We may now be at a moment when totalizing fideism is exposed as inadequate and when skeptical positivism is seen to be equally inadequate, when a genuinely thoughtful criticism can engage the density and depth of the text, which is available neither to fideism nor to skepticism.
Or a more technical plea to look at the text and not behind the text. The social world of a text does not explain the meaning of a text. For example, the social world of the Talmud does not explain the logic and meaning of the Gemara.
A mere excavating of the social world behind the text, as if the text, itself, did not enter into the social construction of reality and provide an alternative “social” world of negotiation and definition, is a species of positivist reductionism. As Clifford Geertz once argued, this short-circuits the autonomous process of symbolic formulation. Geertz claims that such symbolic reductionism usually stems from theories whose “psychology is too anemic and whose sociology is too muscular” (Geertz 1973: 202). How what is said is crucial to what is said.
The Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, has recently eloquently argued that rhetorical criticism is an indispensable complement in biblical studies to sociological analysis. Echoing Geertz’s strictures, he deplores forms of historical criticism (of which the sociology of the Bible is a sub-set) which explain away literary cunning such that “what is interesting and dense in the text has been often forfeited” (Brueggeman 1997: 103). As he puts it, historical criticism “runs the risk that the methods and assumptions to which it is committed may miss the primary intentionality of the text” (Brueggemann 1997: 104).
Brueggermann reviewed James Kugel’s 2003 The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible and thought that Kugel agreed with his seeking theological meaning as more important than history. But Kugel’s recent book sings a different song.
On the other hand, Kugel refers to “The Project” by which he seems to mean a theological investigation into the “realness of things” that lies deep beneath the appearances that are so taken for granted among us: “They [the texts] can indeed come back to life, and their world, their way of seeing, can let us in to take the measure of things that are strange” (p. 3). At the end, Kugel concludes: “It is important to glimpse how things once were otherwise; certainly we then may better understand where the present came from. And perhaps also for another reason, somewhat more sublime: to remember that that ‘otherwise’ is, for all that has intervened, not unrelated to what exists in the fullest reality of today” (p. 199).
Thus in the most restrained and almost whimsical way, Kugel’s ultimate concern is not historical but contemporary.
So what can be used from Brueggermann for an Orthodox approach? What cannot be used?
(Since my proportion of hits to the blog compared to click to links is so small, less than 1/100, I left the links out).
Since nobody had any clarifying comments on the Kugel post and it just got 600 hits in a day, let’s try a different approach.
Here was one of the useful comments by Reb Yudel- any thoughts for an Orthodoxy?
1] How much history are you willing to give up to make a usable Torah both critical and as Talmud Torah?
I’m certainly willing to give up the scholarly agnosticism over things that are unknown and cannot be proven. Kugel ignores redactional history, presumably because it’s all hypothetical. I’m willing to assume a redactor, and throw R into the mix. I’m willing to assume that J played a redactorial role, collating and creating etiological folk tales. As a result, I can preach the moral growth of Judah, as cited by Sommers. Talmud Torah, unlike academia, does not require absolute proof.
> 2] How much are you willing to defend an ethical message in the Bible despite historical origins?
That’s really the wrong question. The real question is, when did Modern Orthodoxy decide that Torah was ethical (and then why did it more recently renounce that view)? I don’t want unethical texts taught to my children, regardless of whether they were composed in the Iron Age or the Ipod Age. If Kugel makes it easier to remove Joshua from the 4th grade curriculum, so much the better.
(There’s a related question: When did Modern Orthodoxy abandon Hazal in favor of literary pshat? Why does Rashi’s division of characters into Righteous and Evil (following Hazal, of course) seem less appealing than the grays of literary analysis peshat?)
3] What needs to be added to Sommers to make it useful for Orthodoxy?
I don’t think Orthodoxy — which we can now define as the portion of Judaism which rejects the ordination of women — is impacted by any epistemology of Torah other than that which attributes absolute Divine Revelation to its current leadership. (Sort of like Mormonism, except without the transparency). Grant Daas Torah, and then the whole thing works.
For Conservative Judaism, which took the claims of academic Rabbinic scholarship as a lesson in the plasticity of Rabbinic halacha, the Sommers approach works fine: Torah SheBaal Peh simply goes back to [the putative date of] Sinai, to the tales and ballads that accompanied the evolution of our people.
As you say, Kugel is not a theologian, and his final chapter is weak: It simply peters out. Had he simply said, “I believe that part of my service to God is by following the tradition of my ancestor, and looking to the sacred anthology of Iron Age documents for meaning, knowing that the process of that search will itself create meaning” — he could have opened a door for a certain liberal Orthodoxy. Unfortunately, Kugel evinces no awareness of Talmud Torah as practiced around the Shabbos table or in the classroom..
Apropos to the Kugel discussion- Here are some quotes from Brevard Childs who was at Yale from the 1960’s until the 1990’s. Childs treats the Bible as a Christian work through the eyes of the Church even as he uses Biblical criticism. His approach is called “canonical criticism” is “an examination of the final form of the text as a totality, as well as the process leading to it.” “Whereas previous criticism asked questions about the origins, structure and history of the text, canonical criticism addresses questions of meaning, both for the community (and communities – subsequent communities are regarded as being as important as the original community for which it was produced) which used it, and in the context of the wider canon of which it forms a part.”
Childs was criticized on both sides – by Biblical scholars who wanted the text to remain in its bronze age meaning or documentary meaning and by fundamentalists who rejected any criticism. I am not advocating Childs’ approach, I repeat I am not advocating Childs’ theories. I am posting this as a sense of what most non-Jewish Bible professors that I know had to read in graduate school and it served as a basis for any further thinking they did on the topic. It also serves as a basis for many of the readings in an undergraduate Bible course. Many introductory courses try to show continuity with the tradition.
Childs’ approach influenced Levenson, Fishbane, and other Jewish scholars who read the Bible with the Second temple and Rabbinic commentary, who look for intertextuality within the Bible itself, and treat the Bible as a Jewish work. The Jewish authors developed their own approaches but Childs is one of the many building blocks. Maybe I might post on some of the other building blocks. And as Benjamin Sommers pointed out – for many people Kugel’s book The Bible As It Was – his book on Midrash was taken as an extension of Brevard Childs.
Brevard S. Childs is author of Biblical Theology in Crisis, and The Book of Exodus and Isaiah
CHILDS: I have always objected to the term “canon(ical) criticism” as a suitable description of my approach. I do not envision my approach as involving a new critical methodology analogous to literary, form, or redactional criticism. Rather, the crucial issue turns on one’s initial evaluation of the nature of the biblical text being studied. By defining one’s task as an understanding of the Bible as the sacred Scriptures of the church, one establishes from the outset the context and point-of-standing of the reader within the received tradition of a community of faith and practice. Likewise, Scripture is also confessed to be the vehicle of God’s self-disclosure which continues to confront the church and the world in a living fashion. In sum, its content is not merely a literary deposit moored in the past, but a living and active text addressing each new generation of believer, both Jew and Christian.
Childs accepts a unified approach without separate documents and looks for intertextuality. He sees the text as having a revelatory message from God. Notice his description of the human and divine elements and his definition of revelation. Later parts of the Bible were already hearing fresh insights into God’s prior words. It is quite Christian but it was still influential on Jews. Notice the subtlety of his view of revelation. On needs to hear a powerful theological message from the Bible.
Of course, the Bible is also a human work written as a testimony to God’s coercion of a historical people, and extended and developed through generations of Israel’s wrestling with its God. The goals of interpretation can be defined in countless different ways, but for those confessing its role as sacred Scripture the goal is to penetrate deeply into its content, to be illuminated theologically by its Word, and to be shaped and transformed by its gracious disclosure which witness is continually made alive by its divine communicator.
The divine and human dimensions of Scripture can never be separated as if there were a kernel and a husk, but the heart of the Bible lies in the mystery of how a fully time-conditioned writing, written by fragile human authors, can continually become the means of hearing the very Word of God, fresh and powerful, to recipients open to faithful response.
First, I remain deeply concerned with the unity of the book which, I agree, cannot be formulated in terms of a single authorship.
Secondly, one of the most important recent insights has been the recognition of the role of intertextuality. The growth of the larger composition has often been shaped by the use of a conscious resonance with a previous core of oral and written texts. The great theological significance is that intertextuality reveals how the editors conceived of their task as forming a chorus of different voices and fresh interpretations, but all addressing in different ways, and in different ages a part of the selfsame, truthful witness to God’s salvific purpose for his people.
Taken from Brevard Childs’ Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context.
If one asks what was God’s purpose, that is, his motivation in revealing himself, the Old Testament is silent. However, if one asks what was God’s purpose, that is, his goal toward which his self-disclosure pointed, then the Old Testament is eloquent in its response. God revealed himself that all may see and know who God is:
“Open my eyes so that I may see wonders of Your Torah” (Psalms 119).
I have a few observations on Kugel’s book that I have not written up because I expected someone to get there first. But neither the Orthodox or Conservative critics went in this direction. I knew people were writing reviews so I naturally assumed they would cover these points. I am not writing from the perspective of a Biblical scholar but as a theologian. I am not looking to reiterate what has been said already but I also cannot guarantee that I have seen everything out there on the web. I write this as notes for a first draft of a summer essay, so I am willing to correct anything that is overstated in this contextual understanding.
When Kugel’s book first came out, it was reviewed by the NYT (David Plotz Sept 16, 2007) as having rejected literalism and that “He also seeks a safe haven for rationalist believers. In other words, having broken all the windows, trashed the bedroom, stripped the wires for copper, sold the plumbing for scrap, and jackhammered into the foundation, Kugel proposes to move back into his Bible house.” Well, look at this review. The New York Times does not have a problem with the documentary hypothesis and it rejoices in daring works like the Book of J. So why was Kugel seen as trashing and stripping the Biblical house? My major point is that Biblical criticism is not the message of Kugel. And the problem with Kugel is not per se, the Biblical criticism. The problem is loss of the Biblical enterprise. Yes, the book is an important book and a great read. But I do not think that the critics of his work and looking at the right aspects.
1] Kugel’s concern with the possible Iron Age meanings and his not seeing any moral teaching in the Bible has little to do with the documentary hypothesis. One finds similar statements of the lack of morality in the Bible in Voltaire and other 17th-18th critics of the Bible as well as by early 20th century free thinkers who wrote books with titles like “The Bible Unmasked,” which showed the immorality of the Bible. Many of Kugel’s readings that Sommers argued against are offensive even without any Biblical criticism or separate documents.
2] For Kugel, the Bible has no moral lessons or theological ideals. He has a materialistic skeptical sound to him. There are no grand ideals or religious claims in the Bible. Contradiction and parallel texts in the text do not teach anything. Kugel’s position at this point is similar to Freidrich Delitzsch in “Babel and Bible”. Delitzsch maintained that many Old Testament writings were borrowed from ancient Babylonian tales, there is no unique ethical message or religious message. In fact, the Bible needs to be unmasked as immoral. Delitisch was the rare voice that the Bible has nothing to teach theologically and should be treated as part of Babylonian and Canaanite religion. In later years, Deliitsch saw Christianity as the moral solution, so those parts of his thought are not to be impugned to Kugel, but the implication of ancient near east parallels is similar. I do not think he is as extreme as Delizsch, but he is heading in that direction.
2] In the context of Kugel’s writings I am surprised that no one mentioned Peter Enns, a student of Kugel, was dismissed from Westminster Theological Seminary. The problem at a Protestant seminary was not the human element or the weak theories of revelation. Enns however even quotes and accepts, the anti-documentary hypothesis works like Kenneth Kitchen. The problem was that Enns says that the morality of the Bible is that of the Iron Age. He advocates accepting the moral critiques of the new atheists – that the Bible is not a moral exemplar. Kugel’s method takes the sanctity out of the Bible. There is something very skeptical about the method. Furthermore, Biblical texts are depicted as not knowing the original meaning of a story. The human part of the Bible is all too human. So human that it strips the ability for a more theological-literary-document reading. I am surprised that the Enns debate did not come up in the discussion of Kugel.
3] Why did the Introduction to Bible written by Marc Brettler not create the same stir? Why did Jon Levenson’s work create the same buzz. Both use Biblical critical methods, and both were in the broad sense of Orthodox culture. The answer is that there is a skeptical voice in Kugel. Brettler concludes his book that the Bible is great. He writes that he likes the Bible and here is how we moderns use Biblical criticism. Levenson sees the Bible as teaching Torah and mizvot, a covenant at Sinai and the giving of the land of Israel. Kugel’s tone is bursting myths and slaughtering sacred cows. Kugel reads more like Freud’s Totem and Taboo.
In his recent post, Kugel’s clarified his position from his earlier response. Kugel rejects all of the prior Jewish names in the field who use theological, integrationist, and canonical methods.. Certainly Kaufman, Sarna and Greenberg who were more theological about the virtues of Biblical religion over the pagans may be too theological. But also integrationists, that seek to combine the best of both worlds- Weinfeld, Zakovitch, Milgram, Knohl, Tigay, Fishbane, Levenson, and most other professors with whom Jews do graduate work- are too theological. Kugel has a clear disjunctive between the Bible and the Scribes of the Oral Law. There is no integration of the critical and the traditional. Kugel denies any attempt at synthesis or integration. Many of Kugel’s readers mistakenly thought that since the integrationists used Kugel’s work on Second temple period interpretation to justify their own integration of the Bible and the interpretation that Kugel would agree.
4] The Bible as the sacred scripture of Judaism in a canon needs to be seen as special, as moral, and as a religious guide. Those who reject that are usually skeptics not Biblical critics. The four qualities of later Biblical interpretation are usually assigned as qualities of the Biblical documents themselves. These four points (1) The texts are cryptic and symbolic. (2) The texts are prophetic and homiletic. (3) The texts are consistent. (4) The texts are divinely inspired/given. Most of the Jewish scholars who see Biblical criticism and the documentary hypothesis as helpful also assume that the Biblical authors themselves already ascribe those qualities to earlier Biblical material. They study topics like Intertextuality and literary prophecy that assume these points.
5] In addition, Kugel rejects literary approaches to the Bible. Already in his work on the Biblical Poetry, he presented literary methods as a modern construct based on human subjectivity having little in common with a fixed Divine meaning. Kugel based himself on Herder studies of the primitive Hebrew approach. Since Kugel’s own doctorate is in modern literary criticism and his immense sensitivity to the literary voice of a text, many people mistakenly thought he was an advocate of literary approaches to the Bible. Most scholars not only find the Bible a great work, but also the epic of Gilgamesh is fine literature. Kugel’s rejection of literary methods is the innovation, not his use of Biblical criticism.
5] The last chapter on the potential for revelation did not alleviate anything because it did not understand revelation. Theories of revelation answer how a Divine can reveal in a naturalistic order. But acceptance of revelation is not pixie dust to magically wave over a human document. Traditional theories of revelation assume a Divine in the content – that there must be a supreme content greater than other books, a verbal content, a historical transformative content or an experiential moment of communion with God. Even the most liberal Protestant theories of revelation such as Tillich assumes that the Bible is not counter to reason, rather the Bible is revelation since it offers answers to our ultimate concerns and presents models of highest ideals. For Tillich, it may be written by humans but the revelation is the model of our highest ideals. One cannot treat the Bible as primitive and then call it revelation. Revelation must transcend its context. For Rosenzweig, revelation is our love relationship with God that transcends our finitude and teaches us that “love is stronger than death.”
6] Most scholars who teach the Akkadian documents and archeology together with the Bible call themselves scholars of “Israelite Religion.” They do see a disjunctive between Israelite religion and later Judaism but they in turn respect their boundaries and do not offer up advice on Judaism or the Hebrew Bible.
I am not sure if this is completely analogous but those who teach Icelandic sagas and their use in English literature are not considered Shakespearean scholars.
7] Finally, to return to the NYT article. If one is unmasking the Bible then one is not teaching how to read it and if one is teaching the Bible then it is within a context of history, theology, and culture- from liberal to fundamentalist. The NYT called out that he wants to be both skeptic and defender of the Bible in the same breath.
Another question: why did this book wake up Orthodoxy from their dogmatic slumbers more than other works? Why are Orthodox still interested in the book?
1] It could be that just be that he speaks in Orthodox synagogues whereas Levenson and Knohl do not.
2] Or it could be that Kugel is tapping into a skeptical streak in the community, that appreciates his message. An audience with an inner skeptical voice that does not know or have patience with liberal theology. His slaughtering of sacred cows is the zero sum dichotomy that the community understands.
3] Another element is that since Modern Orthodox intellectual types have not read Brevard Childs, Fishbane, Levenson, or most canonical approaches defended by Ben Sommers, Kugel is closer to what they think is over on the heretic side. Kinda like the Chussid who goes off the derekh and eats in McDonalds but never considers Modern Orthodoxy. The Modern Orthodox who gets tied up in Biblical criticism does not consider liberal approaches but wants the skeptical approach.
4] It could just be another parallel with the evangelical world that is now trying to open up to Biblical criticism
See Kenton Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words
Enns, Sparks and the others all have blogs and post on each others blogs
5] It could be that Kugel’s rejection of literary interpretations hits home. It is right now fashionable in the Modern Orthodox world of educators to think up a novel literary interpretation in a weekend and then return on Monday to the classroom and teach that this novel interpretation is what it always meant, it was the original intention, and QED it solves all critical problems with the text.
6] The attraction could be the radical perspectivism in Kugel’s writing’s. Kugel has the Bible and the Midrashic interpretation as a complete disjunctive. At an AJS – fifteen years ago, may of the elders saw his choice between modern criticism and ancients as somewhat post-modern. Truth is perspectivism Orthodoxy may like his perspectivism. Everyone is entitled to absolute and exclusive non-foundational acceptance of one’s own view.
Even though his reply also mentioned the objective facts of archeology If the goal was irrefutable facts then he should have started with Biblical History and shown the progress away from trusting the Biblical account. Rather, he frames things as “this is the critical perspective.”
7] It could be that since he does not seem to be theologically coherent and his own religious views may be those of his book On Being a Jew Sometimes vague or ambiguous works can generate more heat because everyone can project on it.
8] Finally, this book may be important because Modern Orthodoxy has built up a confidence level that orthodoxy can handle all scholarship or at least has been inoculated to have a rejoinder to all scholarship. This book explicitly shatters the assumptions on which this rests, whereas most books on the Bible just present the critical perspective without needed to reject the Orthodox view.
Any others?
If you comment, please help me think though the issues to a more formal presentation.
I could have loaded this post with links, but I didn’t. I might make them separate posts.
I am surprised that this is not generating discussion
The current issue of JQR has a critique of Kugel by Benjamin Sommer, “Two Introductions to Scripture: James Kugel and the
Possibility of Biblical Theology,” Sommer advocates an approach like Moshe Greenberg, AJ Heschel, Michael Fishbane, or Jon Levenson and he has sympathies for Mordechai Breuer’s position.
However, Kugel wrote an online response to Sommer, where all the ambiguities about Kugel’s position are finally cleared up. Kugel rejects all of the aforementioned names. Biblical study does not contribute to Judaism or religion. For Kugel, the Bible has no moral lessons or theological ideals. There are no grand ideals or religious claims. Contradiction and parallel texts in the text do not teach anything. And there is a clear disjunctive between the Bible and the Scribes-Oral Law.
The Book of Doctrines and Opinions: 