Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Review
Author(s): Amy-Jill Levine
Review by: Amy-Jill Levine
Source: The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 86, No. 1/2 (Jul. - Oct., 1995), pp. 230-232
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1454842
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THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW,LXXXVI, Nos. 1-2 (July-October, 1995) 230-232

HYAM MACCOBY.Paul and Hellenism. London: SCM Press; Philadelphia:

Trinity Press International,1991. Pp. x + 222.

This "more academic treatment"(p. ix) of issues addressedin Maccoby's

controversialPaul the Mythmaker(1986) is an assertive amalgamof insight-
ful observation,historical fancy, and inconsistent argument.By positing rel-
atively narrowdefinitions of Gnosticism, Pharisaism, Judaism, and Pauline
thought, the work proffers two major but not always clearly related theses:
first, that Gnosticism produced the seed of antisemitism which Paul and his
fellow Christiansbrought to full flower; and second, that Paul himself was
a failed proselyte to Judaism whose Christology is a product not of Jewish
traditionbut of Gnostic cosmology and the soteriological views of Greco-
Roman mystery cults. Much of the work is stimulating:discussion of the Eu-
charist (a development of his NTS 1991 article); warnings of the antisemitic
potential inherent in Pauline thought even in passages usually hailed as ec-
umenical highlights; challenges to Lloyd Gaston; connections drawnamong
Gnostic thought, mystery religions, and Pauline Christology; and Maccoby's
ability to locate possible flaws in contemporaryexplications of Pauline texts.
Yet Maccoby's new book does not lack the controversial aspects of his
previous works. That some forms of Gnosticism existed both anteriorto and
apartfrom Christianityis quite likely. Less clear, however, is the role of the
Jews in Gnostic thought. Because the acosmism of the movement renders
historical figures and groups irrelevant, Jews would not be a primary con-
cern in Gnosticism.
Recognizing this, Maccoby shifts from assertingthatJews play a "key role
in the cosmic dramaof good and evil" to the more common observationthat
they have a "very insignificantrole" (p. 36). The connection between biblical
figures and "Jews"per se is fuzzy. His major example of a Gnostic text that
disparagesbiblical heroes-the "Second Treatise of the Great Seth"-is, as
he acknowledges, influenced by Christianity.His assertion is correct that the
Gnostic reading of Genesis 1-3 in light of the Platonic Demiurge (with the
casting of the biblical deity in roles ranging from the inept to the malevolent)
can lead to a condemnation of those who claim to be the chosen people of
this god. But the Gnostic texts do not, as Maccoby himself notes, mention
contemporaryJewish heroes, recapitulatethe polemics against Judaism fa-
miliar from Manetho and Apion, or define members of the Gnostic move-
ment over and against Jews.
These gaps, while likely the result of Gnostic ahistoricism, nevertheless
serve also to compromise Maccoby's claim that Gnosticism developed to
counter Jewish appropriationof Hellenistic theology, and, more specifi-
cally, that it evinces "considerable anger at Jews and Judaism"(p. 13). For

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 PAULANDHELLENISM-LEVINE
MACCOBY, 231

example, Maccoby does not (and perhaps cannot) support his claim for a
strong Jewish missionary movement in Alexandria. The mere presence of
Jews and/or some general familiarity with the Genesis myth could lead to
Gnostic observations. How to distinguish between reaction to a text and re-
action to a community holding that text as sacred is a methodological prob-
lem not addressed.In other words, antisemitism does not requireJews at all.
While sanguine not only about his assumption of Jewish missionary
activity in Alexandriabut also about his ability to reconstructPharisaismon
the basis of the rabbinictexts, Maccoby is not convinced by claims that Paul
himself has a strong Jewish connection. Dismissing the Pharisaic overcoat
worn by the Lukan Paul as well as the apostle's self-description in Philippi-
ans-ironically, he had earlier suggested (Revolution in Judea, 1980) that
Jesus was a Pharisee-Maccoby proposes ratherthat Paul'sChristology and
manner of argument derive from, respectively, mystery cults and failed
imitation. Thus, for example, he finds alien to Judaismthe concept of a pre-
existent heavenly visitant who becomes incarnateand who performs a sote-
riological function through humiliation and death.
Yet early Jewish texts offer the building blocks for the various ideas:
Wisdom speculations, the sufferingof the righteous, martyrologies,heavenly
visitors, sacrifice, Enochic traditions,etc. Paul may be seen less as an appro-
priator of pagan theology than a bricoleur who constructs a system out of
what would be in Jewish circles a contradiction:a messiah who dies without
bringing about a manifest shift in history.The violent death of the savior need
not be derived from the model of mystery cults; it may be located in the
hermeneutics of Golgotha. Moreover, that Jews would have believed in
Paul's system, or, more benignly, that Jews would have accepted Jesus as
their messiah, suggests that such christological claims were not entirely alien
to their world view. And, given that the confession of Jesus as the messiah
was not accepted by the majorityof their coreligionists, the origins of Chris-
tian anti-Judaismmay be located more easily in actual social tensions than
in soteriological speculation. All this is not to deny that Paul was influenced
by the mystery cults or Gnostic speculation;the issue is a matterof emphasis
here. (For an alternative view, with an emphasis on the "Jewishness" of
Pauline mystical speculation, see Alan Segal's Paul the Convert, 1990.)
Concerning Paul's own Pharisaism,Maccoby might have addressedmore
fully the question of literary and social context. For Maccoby, Paul tried to
give the impression of Pharisaictraining.Yet one might distinguish between
those rabbinic comments preserved over time, expressed in a formalized
manner designed in part for memorization, and relating to ideal social con-
structs on the one hand, and ad hoc advice dictated by an individual in re-
sponse to pressing social questions on the other.Paul's"conversion"certainly
would have caused a shift in his exegetical approaches: his textual inter-
pretation had to conform both to his christological presuppositions and to
the specific needs of the communities to which the epistles were addressed.

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232 THEJEWISHQUARTERLY
REVIEW

Furthermore,Paul was not living in a culturalvacuum, and Pharisaism,what-

ever it was, was neither monolithic nor stagnant.
Several less central claims are also problematic. The Gospels do not
develop Judas "to incapsulate in one person the guilty role of the Jewish
people" (p. 85); indeed, the figure of Judas does not, in the context of the
Gospels, serve as a metonymy for ethnic or religious Judaism. Nor need
1 Thess 2:14-16 be seen as an interpolation:the dualistic worldview and its
attendantrejection of Judaismmay well result from Paul'searly enthusiastic
apocalypticism,and the divine wrathcould refer to any of a host of tragedies
that befell Jews in the first century,ratherthanjust to the debacle of 70. The
insistence thatGal 3: 19b-the ordainingof the Torahby angels-has no pos-
sible Jewish influence needs considerationin light of the studies by T Callan
(e.g., JBL 1980). Finally, ratherthan see Christianantisemitism as develop-
ing primarily from Paul's appropriationof Gnosticism, one might locate a
strongercatalyst in Christianreactions against Gnosticism:respondingto the
Gnostic rejection of the "Old Testament."
Maccoby should not be dismissed. While his own reconstructions may
not be convincing, his challenges to the more popular readings of Pauline
thought and Gnostic origins will enrich debate, and at the very least remind
readers that what is held as Gospel is not as secure as one might hope.

Vanderbilt University AMY-JILL LEVINE

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