As cultural complaints go, lamenting that the Bible doesn’t get its fair share of attention might seem a nonstarter. Didn’t it top best-seller lists for centuries before anyone in the Great Chain of Being even invented best-seller lists? Doesn’t it still enjoy pride of place in your hotel room, just as its author does in the universe at large?
Fair points. Yet here in Jerusalem, they also merge into reasons for taking the complaint seriously. For this is where many a Talmudic rabbi once smiled upon the distinctive logical inference called the qol va-homer (Hebrew for “light and heavy”), often equated with the Latin a fortiori (“all the more so”). Scholars trace its authority in rabbinic logic back to sources as various as Moses’ last oration to the Hebrews, “If you have been rebellious against God while I was still alive with you, how much more so will you be after my death?”
Most observers agree that the rigor of the qol va-homer lags a tad behind that of the syllogism. Still, you can see its appeal here. If the Bible is such a darn big deal, shouldn’t it be an even bigger deal in Western political philosophy? Who took the “Judeo” out of “Judeo-Christian”?
In late December, the question hung wonderfully over Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem’s distinguished guest house. Inside the complex, more than 130 attendees from nine countries milled about the colloquium on “Political Hebraism: Jewish Sources in the History of Political Thought.” Political theorist Yoram Hazony, of the Shalem Center, the 13-year-old research institute playing host, gently noted during opening remarks that their rising scholarly sun — political Hebraism — increasingly lit up Western political thought, revealing forgotten elements.
In Carolingian France, Hazony noted, people spoke of “the New Israel,” and addressed Charlemagne as King David. The Venerable Bede bore biblical notions in mind as he put forth the English people as a nation. English kings, some thought, should follow Deuteronomy before worrying about the Greek polis or Roman republic.
Plato and Aristotle may have been lost in the Dark Ages, Hazony continued, but the Bible was not. In contrast to the “German story,” or canon of political philosophy, drafted in German universities, Hazony conjured, “Imagine political theory in the West as something that begins with the Bible, and continues with the English-Dutch adoption of the Bible, leading to the creation of the U.S. and Israel.”
Yet, he pointed out, courses on the Bible’s political ideas — the concept of a nation, the aspiration for international peace among independent nations, the subordination of a king to law, the notion of authority that does not arise out of rebellion — hardly exist.
“One thing is sure about these texts,” concluded Hazony about the books of the Bible. “They are overwhelmingly political.”
Political Hebraism. Mark the phrase. Prepare to meet its makers. During four days here, the new scholarly field flexed its muscles, determined to grow. In this neighborhood, the words “If you will it, it is no dream” pack a certain punch. The Shalem Center, founded by a group of Princetonians who made aliyah to Israel, willed it.
The subject’s rise began at a conference organized here in August 2004, the topic more chronologically limited to “Jewish Sources in Early Modern Political Thought.” Out of that emerged Hebraic Political Studies, a peer-reviewed journal co-edited by Arthur Eyffinger of the Huygens Institute (The Hague), and political scientist Gordon Schochet of Rutgers University, with the all-round assistance of Associate Editor Meirav Jones, a doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The fifth and final issue of Volume 1 came out at the tail end of 2006, with lead articles such as Joshua Berman’s “Constitution, Class, and the Book of Deuteronomy” and “The Political Thought of John Locke and the Significance of Political Hebraism,” by Fania Oz-Salzberger, the keynote speech of the first colloquium by the University of Haifa scholar and daughter of novelist Amos Oz.
The squib on the journal’s inside front cover indicates its broad mission: “Hebraic Political Studies is an international, peer-reviewed journal that aims to evaluate the place of the Jewish textual tradition, alongside the traditions of Greece and Rome, in political history and the history of political thought. Hebraic Political Studies publishes articles that explore the political concepts of the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature, the significance of reflections on Judaic sources in the history of ideas, and the role of these sources in the history of the West.”
Yet December’s invited papers and discussion demonstrated that “political Hebraism” poses — what would you expect around here? — uncertain borders. Was the Hebrew political tradition the same as the Jewish? Should the “Judeo-Christian tradition” itself be questioned? “I don’t completely understand what ‘political Hebraism’ is,” admitted Bernard M. Levinson, a professor of Jewish studies and Hebrew Bible at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, at the first session.
Co-editor Schochet tried to address the mystery in opening remarks, after paying tribute to pioneers of the field such as Michael Walzer in his book Exodus and Revolution (Basic Books, 1985). Schochet expressed the hope that political Hebraism’s gestation period would continue. He urged a Wittgensteinian development according to the principle of “meaning as use” — a field that would be “what people make of it.” He expressed pleasure that disagreements about the subject, and what the journal should include, kept mushrooming.
Schochet got his wish — the shape of things to come played out paper by paper. Political Hebraism included Harvard’s Noah Dauber arguing that “when the biblical notion of wisdom was applied to politics in the 13th century, it supplied a way of thinking through political challenges that did not rely on instrumental, means-end, or goal-oriented thinking.” And James Diamond, of the University of Waterloo, focusing on the final verse of Judges — “In those days there was no king of Israel; everyone did as he pleased” — in a draft smartly titled “Humility as Political Doctrine: Cutting the Biblical King Down to Size in Medieval Jewish Thought.” And Erin Dolgoy, of Michigan State, pondering what to make of the claim that Francis Bacon’s use of the Bible amounted to “scriptural sophistry.”
The angles went forth and multiplied. While the core enterprise of many papers remained how well-known non-Jewish thinkers and institutions used Jewish materials — Hugo Grotius drawing on the story of Joseph, Milton reading Rashi, English common law finding its doctrine of sovereign immunity as far back as ancient Israel — surprises kept appearing. Could anyone have expected, a few years back, the paper on “Kant’s Jewish Problem,” a wonderful dead-on view by Susan Meld Shell of Boston College?
New scholarly fields, like new magazines and newspapers, form themselves from a mix of creative tension and cooperation. The colloquium contained just that sort of electricity. Levinson argued that amateurs in the Hebrew material needed to take “biblical criticism seriously,” adding, “We have to raise ourselves up to the complexity of the Bible.” If materials were going to be handled “naïvely,” he warned, “it risks the whole project.”
And Levinson played his part. When one young international-studies scholar described the battle between the Israelites and the Philistines as partly determined by the former lacking metal weapons and the latter having them, Levinson gently corrected him: The difference was between bronze and iron.
And hey you over there! You cited the wrong number from Deuteronomy!
On the last day, Levinson hadn’t completely converted. “I hate to say it,” the Jewish-studies scholar confessed, “but I still don’t understand what political Hebraism is.” Oz-Salzberger suggested a small extension of the final session, but Jones demurred. People had places to go: “Sorry, it’s Friday afternoon.”
That left it to co-editor Eyffinger to bring the curtain down. “I’m presumptuous enough to be standing before you with a big smile,” he said. “Have we opened Pandora’s box?” His question, mixing metaphors and cultures, referred to the “tsunami of submissions” arriving at the journal. Like Schochet, he announced, he harbored no wish to predetermine the field. “We have decided more or less on laissez-faire.”
Political Hebraism would grow up and evolve, not spring from stipulation. The initial “old boys’ network” had evolved into debates beyond a dozen people. A “confrontation of methodologies” looked to be emerging. The first meeting of HPS’s international editorial board of 12 men and two women had come off. The Shalem sponsors looked pleased.
Declaring that “we have already become a discipline of our own,” Eyffinger crowed, “we have overcome the Tower of Babel.”
Not so fast, one wanted to say. Political Hebraists don’t casually announce “mission accomplished” about a biblical edifice. Site visit first, triumphalist declaration later.
Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle and literary critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, teaches philosophy and media theory at the University of Pennsylvania.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 53, Issue 21, Page B13