1995 - stroumsa - savior et salut

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THEJEWISHQUARTERLY REVIEW, XXX VI, Nos. 1-2 (July-October, 1995) 195-197

GEDALIAHUUYSTROUMSA.avior et Salut: Gnoses e I Antiquite Tardive .Paris: Les Editions du Ce rf, 1992. Pp.404

The best way to get a sense of the subject matter of this book is to glanceat the index of primary sources. The Jewish Scriptures and the New Testa-ment; Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; the Coptic Nag Hammadi library;

Manichaean texts in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and M iddle Persian; the gamu t ofJewish literature: Talmud, midrash, mystical and magical writings, worksfrom Qum ran, Maimonides; patristica: Greek, Latin, and Syriac treatises andcommentaries, letters and sermons; pagan and Islamic texts-Stroumsaweaves them all together to present a rich tapestry of religious life andthought in Mediterranean antiquity. And because he concentrates on 'minor-ity' groups and theologies-Gnostics, Manichaean s, Jewish Christians-hisoverall pattern has the dreamlike quality of being at once both strange andfamiliar: strange, because these groups are history's losers; familiar, becau se

together with their dominant cousins, Catholic Christianity and RabbinicJudaism, they share a common matrix: the narrative and hermeneuticalconundrums of the Bible.

In a brief Foreword, which both recalls Han s Jonas and goes beyond him,Stroumsa establishes the themes contouring his study. Two essential com-ponents, he maintains, mark antiquity's various religions:knowledge andsalvation. Kn ow ledge imp lies both a social con text within w hich tradition,whether spok en or written, is transmitted, and a so teriological orientation:esoterica which saves. Salvation too has a dual focus, embracing both theindividu al and the universe. De faqon lapidaire on pourrait dire qu'il n'ya pas de savoir sans salut, ni de salut sans savoir. C'est la conn aissanc ereligieuse, avan t tout, qu i sauve (p. 9).

Stroum sa seeks to trace and ana lyze the interaction of these ideas withinand between various groups in the mutating religious environment of theanc ient M ed iterran ean . At issue is the formation of identity-the primalparent (and thus, in a sense, the Oedipal target) of all, late Secon d TempleJuda ism(s); the 'genetic m aterial' of all, the Bible. S troum sa underscores

divine anthropomorphism as a particular problem inherent in biblical dis-cussion of Go d. Do es God have a body ? In what sen se? Of what sort? If n ot,in what way can God be 'seen'? What is revelation, and how does Godreveal? And how do these questions, or their answers, in turn impact uponthe problem of evil within a monotheist system ? (See also pp. 98f.) EsotericJewish traditions, in response, develop theologies of different angels orpowers in heaven; the rabbis speculate on God's cosmic body; differentChristian groups evolve various Christologies linking the (embodied?)divine son to G od.


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Gnosticism represents a radical resolution to these problems of identityand divinity. It settles the ambivalence between vetus Israel and verusIsrael, inherent in mainstream Christianity, by totally rejecting any connec-tion between Israel and the (New or True) Elect; it settles the problem ofGod-and thus of evil-through its dua list cosm ology and anthropology.But here Stroum sa makes a nicely nuanced observation: G nostic dualism ismitigated at best, and it is 'motivated' by mo notheism . I1 semble bien quel'attitude dua liste ne soit qu'un cas particulier, exacerbC, du monothCisme.Si donc le ch ristianisme est si aisCment tent6 par le dua lisme, la raison est

peut-&tredan s l'ambigu'itC m & m e du monothCisme chrCtien (p.11 .The body of the volume collects twenty-one essays, originally published

in English, French, or Germa n during the decade 1979-89. Stroumsa assem-bles them into fou r groupings, following no chronological order within eachgroup. Part I, Traditions Juives, investigates and com pares Christian,Gnostic, an d Jewish traditions on certain themes: angels and hypostatic pow-ers (they can be visible, thus embodied, in a way that God cannot); divinepolymorphy; the status of ethics and history within these three traditions;views of soteriology. The final, and briefest, essay in this section was one ofmy favorites: Vetus Isr ae l: les juifs dans la 1ittCrature hiCrosolymitained'Cpoque byzantine. Draw ing on all sorts of ev idence, from imperial legis-lation to ecclesiastical gossip, Stroumsa places Christian anti-Jewish invec-tive in the social contex t of imperial Jerusalem to discern its true target: notJews per se , but Jewish Christians. Anom aly underm ines identity, and by thefourth century, these survivors of the earliest church were a living anachro-nism, and thus a threat.

Part 11, La Tentation Gnostique, cons iders the similarities and differences

between Gnostic and Christianpara dosis , asceticism , and allegory, especiallyas these last touch on the problem of the incorpore ality of G od . Part 111, Orig-ines ManichCennes, ranges over the Cologne Mani Codex, heresiologicalreports, and Augustine for insights into Manichaeism, its founder, and thesources of its appeal and missionary effectiveness. And finally, Part IV, LeDCfi ManichCen, gives a vivid sense of the convulsive rejection Man-ichaeism inspired on the part of its many (and wildly various) opponents-Christian bishops from North Africa to Edessa, Neoplatonic philosophers,Muslim critics. (The last essay, co-authored with Sarah Stroumsa, analyzes an

Islamic theodicy couched as anti-Manichaean polemic.)The essays, taken together, are a tour de force. While they do not build

to any single conclusion (Stroumsa's summ ary statemen t comes in his Fore-word), they demonstrate the historical analytical value of the author's inter-pretive themes: the continuing influence of Judaism-both 'normative' andesoteric-on all sorts of Christian move men ts, both ma instream and heret-ical; Christian c onsciousness of and anxiety about this influence; Christianassertion of its own Jewishness when challenged by pagans or other Chris-


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tians (brilliantly characterized, in an analysis of Origen's Co ntraCelsum as'the Balaam syndrome', p. 101); the theological coherence and logic ofdualism as a response to biblical monotheism. Also to be praised are theauthor's substantial notes, considerately given at the bottom of each page.Drawing together a vast range of primary and secondary bibliography, theypresent a valuable dossier of sources for the study of these movements.

Criticisms? Inevitably, a few. One tiny point: on p. 36, paraphrasingAugustine, the author might give the impression that he, too, thinks of Paulas the author of Timothy. La ter (p. 103), Stroumsa's Paul, oppressed by hissen se of the omnipresence of sin, convinced that ma n, as a sinner, could notexpiate sin but had to depend solely on God, seems more Augustinian (andLutheran) than Pauline to me. I am suspicious, too, of the distinctionsStroumsa draws between Gnostic and Catholic asceticism ( Ascbse etgnose, essay no. 8): Gnostic asceticism, h e holds, is a function of Gnostichatred of the world; Catholic, of the fea r of sin: its mo tivation is essentiallyethical. A Catholic might agree (A ugustine had said much the sam e in his twoanti-Manichaean booksDe nzoribus). But would an ancient G nos tic? Was his

or her ascetic sensibility not also ethically motivated? Can these two formsof asceticism-rather, the asce ticism of these two different com munities-be distinguished meaningfully in this way?

I closed the book wishing there were yet more of it: further explorationof the relation betwe en the explosion of Christian ascetic ism in the fourthcentury, on the one hand, and the appeal of M anichae ism on the other; moresaid on angels and Christology; som e considera tion of Christian apoc alypticeschatology as another example of 'Jewishness' both repudiated and em-braced . It is not the least of Professor Stroumsa's con tributions here that he

has marked out directions for future research for all of us who work in thereligions of late antiquity.

Boston University

1995 - stroumsa - savior et salut

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