Peter Brown’s now famous biography of Augustine, first published in 1967, established his reputation as an authority. Since then he has made dozens of other contributions to history and religion in the western world. He has been the recipient of multiple awards, almost twenty honorary degrees from institutions around the world, and numerous fellowships for his writing. In 2008 he won the Kluge Prize from the Library of Congress, and in 2011 he was awarded the coveted Balzan Prize. He is currently Rollins Emeritus Professor of History at Princeton.

In Part 1 of this interview, Brown talks with our editor Ioannis Mylonopoulos about how his boredom with Augustine led to the invention of the field of “Late Antiquity”, about utopian views of the past, and why he focused on writing on the West.

Ian Christopher Levy, Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages, Notre Dame University Press, 2012, 336pp., $38.

Biblical hermeneutics is the key to understanding the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Or so traditional Protestant historiography would have us believe. Yet there is surprisingly little research on biblical exegesis in the fifteenth, and as a result the view of John Wyclif as the “morning star of the Reformation” has enjoyed a long life. In recent years John Frymire’s The Primacy of the Postils and Christopher Ocker’s Biblical Poetics before Humanism and Reformation have fundamentally changed the notion that the Reformation marked a radical departure in attitudes towards scripture. Now Ian Christopher Levy joins the debate and points out that the Reformation was characterized more by questions of authority than scriptural hermeneutics.

Wyclif’s scriptural theology was a less radical departure from its own time than Protestant historiography has made it out to be. The portrait of Wyclif and Hus as strict biblical literalists was very much a creation of their adversaries, who, however, encountered great difficulties defining authority in a satisfactory and consistent way of their own. The debate that Levy describes here did not lead to satisfying conclusions in their own time, and in a way they are still a point of division among the various confessions within Christendom.

No late medieval theologian would deny that the literal sense of scripture was the basis for authoritative statements on Christian doctrine and practice. Most would have agreed that the literal sense took a primacy over the other senses (allegorical, anagogical, and moral), an idea espoused by Thomas Aquinas and emphasized by Nicholas of Lyra. But while the literal sense of scripture was clear on many irrelevant matters (that Tobias owned a dog, for instance), it was opaque on more important theological matters (such as the real presence of Christ in the elements of the Eucharist, or the exact relation of the three persons of the Trinity). Taken to an extreme, the literal sense might even appear contrary to common-sense logic, as when Jesus said “I am the door.”

Wyclif developed his own scriptural hermeneutics against the fourteenth-century Oxford Ockhamists, who argued for the primacy of logic over scripture. The latter maintained that scripture could be false in its literal sense “ex virtute sermonis.” Wyclif argued that an apparent error in scripture is rather the fault of the interpreter, not that of the text. The interpreter should know the special internal logic of scripture to figure out these apparent contradictions and falsities. Even more, in faith he should seek to adapt his own speech to that of sacred scripture and conform himself to scripture, rather than try to make it conform to the rules of logic.

Like Wyclif, most medieval theologians defined the literal sense as the one intended by its author, the Holy Spirit. But just as both sides in the debate agreed on the primacy of scripture’s literal sense, they also accused each other of distorting that literal sense. Unlike Wyclif, who maintained that any biblical text could be explained by reference to another biblical text, his critics emphasized that some extra-scriptural authority was needed to establish the “true sense” of scripture. William Woodford and Thomas Netter, for instance (each receives a chapter in Levy’s book), emphasized the role of the church—whether it be the highest office, the pope, or the ecclesiastical tradition more broadly—to determine the exact meaning of those things that were taught only implicitly by scripture. However, what happened when the church and tradition erred? And who was the ultimate authority in church matters: the pope, a general council, masters in theology, or canon lawyers? Issues like these remained essentially unresolved in the fifteenth-century debates.

They came to a head, however, with the condemnation of Wyclif’s follower, Jan Hus, at the Council of Constance in 1415. Hus was sent to the stake without having been given the opportunity to defend, or even elucidate, his positions. Levy dedicates a substantial portion of his book to discuss Hus’s conception of scripture and theology compared to that of his opponents, the conciliarists Pierre d’Ailly, Dietrich of Niem, and especially Jean Gerson. Hus, like Wyclif, had a Christological understanding of biblical truth. For him, scripture was not a text but an emanation of the living Christ.

Ironically, Hus’s conception of scripture was very close to that of his main opponent at the council, Jean Gerson, who was ultimately responsible for sending Hus to his death. Gerson was an anti-papalist like Hus, but the latter was ultimately condemned as the “ideal heretic.” His execution was intended to deter more radical heretics such as the Taborists, whose political clout threatened the establishment in Bohemia. But in many respects, Hus was more traditionalist than the proponents of orthodox theology, and Gerson’s appeal to the authority of the council was a practical solution to an insoluble dilemma.

The theological idea of conciliarism, condemned in 1460 by the papal bull Execrabilis, was, however, short-lived. A number of issues other than scriptural hermeneutics determined the discussion on authority in the fifteenth century. One of them was the tension between presbyterium and magisterium in questions of Church doctrine. Were the answers to such questions to be determined by those vested in the apostolic succession, or by the insight of theologians? Rivalry between canon lawyers and theologians, and between secular masters and mendicants also played important roles. Wyclif, Hus, and Gerson were as united in their aversion to the mendicant orders as they were in their scriptural hermeneutics.

But the most divisive issue was ecclesiology. Was the Church the community of all the predestined, or the mixed body of all those baptized who would be separated at the Last Judgment according to their merit? Wyclif argued that there were many people “in” the church who were not ultimately “of” the church; by contrast, Gerson firmly believed in the redemptive sacramental power of the priesthood. It is perhaps over this subject, rather than over scriptural hermeneutics, that the real battle was fought.

It might be tempting to view Wyclif in a teleological light as a precursor to the theologies of Luther and John Calvin. Levy consistently avoids such a teleological interpretation in this study, and rightly so. He sets Wyclif against the discussion of his own time and finds that his opponents have consistently painted him in a more radical light than he defined himself. Still, at the end of this book one might be left with the impression that both Wyclif and Hus were condemned for no good reason at all, except for the malice of their adversaries.

Perhaps I am too much of a Calvinist to go along completely with this revisionism. Their contemporaries were on to something when they saw in the theologies of Wyclif and Hus a radical departure from the boundaries of medieval catholic traditions, and this is perhaps a point that Levy underemphasizes in the present study. The point of departure was not in Wyclif’s and Hus’s scriptural hermeneutics, which did not differ too much from that of their adversaries, but in their ecclesiology, and especially in their view of predestination and their theology of grace. But this does not detract from the value of Levy’s analysis; this seminal study of late medieval theology deserves its place alongside Heiko Oberman’s Harvest of Medieval Theology or Steven Ozment’s Age of Reform.

A. Rodrigue and S.A. Stein (eds.), A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica: The Ladino Memoir of Sa’adi Basalel a-Levi, Stanford University Press, 2012, 432pp., $27.95.

The modern memoir typically follows a narrative arc similar to the one Augustine applied in his Confessions, tracing the protagonist’s struggles to overcome internal weakness or external challenges that impede their effort to live a good and moral life. In most cases, the narrator ultimately remains a fundamentally flawed person, albeit one who derives life lessons to provide an example for others. At its best, the memoir offers a window onto the author’s motivations, emotions, and endeavors, all the while demonstrating that, although the particulars of life’s struggle vary, the fact that life is a struggle is universal. As James Olney has observed, the drive to narrate the development of the self is fundamentally linked to memory. The reader—whether an anonymous spectator to a relative stranger’s life or an intimate addressee to whom the personages and locations are close at hand—becomes a voyeur who, for a time, occupies the narrative time and space inhabited by another. Reading a good memoir can therefore produce the experience of an intense, sometimes disturbing, intimacy with the author.

The publication of memoirs has exploded during the past quarter century. The documentary nature of historical memoirs—the perception that these texts afford direct and unrestricted access to the emotional and material experiences of people who lived in a very different world—is appealing to contemporary readers. These qualities also make memoirs, and especially memoirs of ordinary lives, immensely valuable for historians as research and pedagogical tools.

A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica: The Ladino Memoir of Sa’adi Besalel a-Levi adds a new voice to an already rich body of historical Jewish autobiographical narratives in mass circulation. Sa’adi’s memoir maps the history of the Jewish community of Salonica spanning much of the nineteenth century, along with the distinct experiences of its author, a prominent Jewish printer and musician. Sa’adi began composing this work in 1881, as he declares in his preface, “to inform future generations how much times have changed within half a century.” Reflecting on his youth and years of professional struggle, the author interweaves momentous events in the history of Salonica—including plagues, political turmoil, fires, and earthquakes—with personal and benchmark events in his own life such as childhood traumas, professional challenges and victories, marriage, parenthood, and personal conflicts. The result is an autobiographical text that self-consciously addresses larger themes relating to the confrontation between traditional rabbinic leadership of the Jewish community and a growing number of members of this community who were drawn to the opportunities opened by modern technology, international politics and culture, and loyalty to the imperial government in Istanbul.

Sa’adi’s memoir stands at the intersection between traditional memoir, which offers an account of the circumstances of the author’s life as a product of a unique time and place, and autobiography, a genre described by Olney as a narrative “not of events of the past but … [of] memories of those events.” Sa’adi plotted his memoir as a heroic tale of the successful effort to break free from a retrograde conservative religious fanaticism. Sa’adi situates himself at the epicenter of the struggle to loosen the grasp of a despotic rabbinic ruling class that benefitted from exorbitant taxes and fees for protection and services. His professional endeavors, first as a printer of newspapers and books in Ladino, French, and Hebrew, and then as a singer, stand at the crux of this challenge to the established structures of Jewish leadership and authority. Running afoul of the rabbis’ decisions, capricious or otherwise, could cost an individual dearly. And Sa’adi repeatedly suffered under the weight of this authoritarian structure.

Because his repertoire as a performer included modern arrangements of traditional Jewish liturgical works and translations of such works into Turkish (“a la turka”) as well as original Turkish music, Sa’adi found himself in a continuous cycle of offending and begging the forgiveness of a community notable who bristled against modernizing or innovating Jewish ritual and liturgy. Sa’adi’s reluctant deference was necessary in order to avoid both the herem, or ban of excommunication from the Jewish community, and corporal punishment (in the form of lashes) as the payment for release from the ban. His career as a printer was similarly troubled when he tangled with a group of powerful thuggish rabbis who targeted Sa’adi and his family for challenging their corrupt taxation schemes. Eventually, however, he circumvented the oppressive political and religious structure by maneuvering around these obstacles to find more powerful allies outside the community who supported and protected his printing enterprise.

To provide a full picture of the contours, rhythms, and transformations of Jewish life in nineteenth century Salonica, Sa’adi also describes marriage ritual, educational traditions, the complex process of selecting and appointing leaders, levying taxes from members of the Jewish community, as well as culinary and eating habits and customs of dress. His description of the customs of daily life is purposefully ethnographical, drawing attention to class and generational differences. For example, his description of an ordinary home emphasizes the modesty of daily life: “A typical house had a tiny curtain on the windows, five to six rudimentary chairs, and a small, framed mirror, barely sufficient to reflect one’s face.” The sparse nature of common living conditions is made more vivid by the comparison it invites with his description of the relative luxury of an elite household.

In similar fashion, the description of typical attire and changing fashions draws attention to differences of class and age: “Men’s clothing falls into four categories. Some wore a fur cap, a man’s robe, and loose robe. Others, who were the majority in Salonica, wore a round cap. Middle-class men wore a turban in the style of a round cap with a fez underneath. Lower-class individuals wore a twisted turban.” Because the author seems to represent change within the Jewish community of Salonica as difficult but inevitable, his narrative is virtually devoid of nostalgia, making such details fresh, exciting, and deeply engaging.

Salonica has until very recently remained fairly marginal in the landscape of modern Jewish historiography. The thorough introduction by Aron Rodrigue and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, the two foremost scholars of modern Sephardic history and culture today, provides a cogent and accessible historical context for Sa’adi’s memoir. To make the memoir comprehensible to specialists and lay readers alike the introduction carefully fills in details that the author failed to delineate (whether because he assumed that his reader would already possess a first-hand knowledge of local politics and personages or because he felt such details were irrelevant to his story), while illustrating the inherent fascination that the history of Salonican Jewry holds. The history of Salonica itself embodies the radical economic, demographic, and cultural changes that were taking place over the course of the nineteenth century across Europe. Comprising nearly half of the city’s population, the Jewish community represented a cross-section of the great religious, cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic diversity characteristic of an imperial port city. The introduction provides much crucial information about the demographic makeup of the Jewish community of Salonica, Jewish immigration and settlement patterns, and the intricacies of Ottoman imperial governance.

Rodrigue and Stein’s appreciation of the Ladino press amplifies Sa’adi’s status as an arbiter of the religious, literary, and political culture that thrived in Salonica. The editors’ effort to extend their fascination with Sa’adi and his world to their reader is facilitated by the fact that Isaac Jerusalmi’s fluid translation of the Ladino text preserves a compelling informal and familiar narrative voice. Moreover, since the volume includes a transliterated version of the Ladino text and also directs the reader to a high-resolution scan of the original manuscript, the editors pose a welcome challenge to students of Judaism to engage more actively with the world this memoir represents.

As Rodrigue and Stein indicate, this is not a great piece of writing. Nor is it a memoir that offers deep insights into the human condition. What it provides is a very idiosyncratic and personalized snapshot of a world that the author recognized to be vanishing—for better and for worse. Like all snapshots, this text reproduces the author’s vantage point while also capturing random peripheral details that entered the frame, whether accidentally or by design. It is an important contribution to the corpus of texts illustrating how communities and individuals experienced the transition from life in a traditional Jewish community to citizenship in the modern nation-state.

Photo: Sören Wibeck

Geza Vermes passed away one week ago today. On many occasions during seven years in Oxford from 2005-2012, I witnessed his captivating personality combined with a sharp (or perhaps: still sharpening) intellect. At times this was over a cup of tea; at others, while I furiously took notes of his lecture. He was warm, and even though approaching ninety, as vibrant as he must have been when he first began what became an august career.

He was loved and esteemed from Oxford to the other side of the world. I encountered numerous people in those years in various parts of Europe and North America who, when I mentioned where I was based, wanted me to know that they knew Geza. The first time I spoke to Simon Winder at Penguin, he proudly boasted that he had been Geza’s publisher for some years.

Today we honor his legacy with personal tributes from his friends, students, colleagues, and admirers, and I specifically requested a reflection on his major intellectual contributions from another dear to me, Fergus Millar, whose name repeatedly appears alongside Geza’s in the other tributes. There is some repetition, but given the nature of these deeply personal memories, we did not interfere. We invite you to use the Comments section below to add your own words to these below, and all of them will be made available to the family he has left behind.

As so many have already said, may his name be for a blessing.

T.M. Law
Editor-in-Chief

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Geza Vermes’ arresting autobiography, Providential Accidents (1998), recorded the details of his life up to 1993. Rather than rehearsing them again only a few days after his death, I will take this occasion to offer a view of his most significant intellectual contributions from his vast range of publications.

Geza’s most famous achievement was his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was the first ever to write a doctoral thesis on the scrolls. His work in Louvain resulted in Les manuscrits du désert de Juda (1953) and its English version Discovery in the Judaean Desert (1956). These early works established the historical and religious framework (the Hasmonean and Herodian period) that has been (almost) universally accepted ever since. From 1962 he produced successive editions and expansions of The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. These have sold more than a million copies, providing the prime means of access for non-specialist readers.

Geza campaigned tirelessly for the publication of the Scrolls to resume the speed and effectiveness of the early phase of the 1950s. These efforts were rewarded over the last few decades by the magnificent completion, under the editorship of Emanuel Tov, of the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert in 40 volumes. Geza himself joined Philip Alexander to edit volume XXVI (1998) on the Community Rule from Cave 4. Although this was the only Qumran text of which he published the standard edition, it is not too much to say that in all aspects of the Scrolls except the biblical texts his work was fundamental to the evolving understanding of the historical context and the sectarian character of the community at Qumran, from the very beginning until the present.

One of several ‘providential accidents’ led to the preparation of the revised English Schürer by Geza and myself, with Martin Goodman joining us for vol. III. The work involved the integration of new material of all kinds, and it proved extremely laborious. But in my view, by far the greatest novelty resides in two chapters in that volume. First on “The Writings of the Qumran Community,” and an even more masterly one preceding it on “Jewish Literature Composed in Hebrew or Aramaic.” When Schürer had done his truly remarkable work, almost no such literature was available in the original language; still less were derived from contemporary manuscripts. The integration of the literary material from Qumran—genre by genre, with texts ultimately dated to this period but known only from later manuscripts and from translations into other languages—was a major work of scholarship in itself. Its significance is all the greater because in the case of some major texts, such as Jubilees, Qumran supplied the only known Hebrew fragments, conclusively demonstrating the origin of the work in the Jewish society of the Second Temple period.

Another major contribution was his innovative study of 1973, Jesus the Jew. He boldly set out to discern between the lines of the Gospels the Jewish holy man who preached a profound spiritual and moral message but did not claim any divine status. As was his custom, he followed this line of thought with a number of further studies, some of a more popular kind. Geza’s vivid and succinct evocation of a truly Jewish, truly human Jesus was a major breakthrough. It was to be followed by two further works that took him outside the area of “Jewish studies,” first into the field of the New Testament itself, and then into Patristics and early Christianity.

The first major step was The Changing Faces of Jesus (2000), seeing both Jesus himself and the earliest Christian works which speak of him in the context of Jewish culture and belief, but also exploring in detail the contrasting understandings of him in the works that make up the New Testament. The structure of these books was unmistakably original. Geza worked back from the doctrinal conceptions that inform the Johannine corpus to Paul, Acts, and the Synoptic Gospels, finally to reach the “real Jesus.” In this work, one could say, he was still within the field of study explored nearly three decades earlier in Jesus the Jew.

His final step was published last year, his 88^th. Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea, AD 30-325 extends the same enquiry through a range of literature on which he had never published before, namely Christian writings up to the first half of the fourth century and the Council of Nicaea. “Christian Beginnings” here means the evolving, and conflicting, conceptions of Jesus and his divine status over three centuries. Geza did not involve himself in dialogue with the extensive bibliography of this field but explored the sources with a fresh eye. He saw the doctrines developed in them as human constructs that led progressively away from a true understanding of the human Jesus.

This is not a memoir but a brief appreciation of his work. All the same, it would be out of order not to record his two happy and creative marriages, to Pam, who died in 1993, and then to Margaret, whom he married in 1995.

There is much else to say, not least about the clarity and force of his writing, or his sheer intellectual and practical efficiency shown in his editorship of the Journal of Jewish Studies since 1971. It is no mere cliché to say that we shall not see his like again.

Fergus Millar
University of Oxford

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In many ways the passing away of Geza Vermes at the blessed age of 88 was untimely since Geza still had so much to give as a scholar and a human being, and it is hard to imagine a world without him. He lived a long and productive life, not without distress, but definitely full, rewarding, and eventful. While he lived a quiet life on Boar’s Hill in Oxford, far from the city center, his intellectual activities were closely followed around the world through his many writings. He will probably be remembered best for his books depicting the Jewish background of Jesus, his reworking (together with Sir Fergus Millar and Martin Goodman) of Schürer, his seminal work on the “rewritten Bible,” and his many activities around the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In the area of the study of the scrolls Vermes has become a household name beyond academic circles because of the wide distribution of his Penguin edition of the translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which in seven editions has sold more than a million copies. Samples of these editions, his Introduction to the scrolls, and his other books, translated into many languages, have a place of honor in his living room. Unhappy that he was not included in the original editorial team editing the scrolls, he was satisfied that in the second round of that team he was to have his own DJD volume, XXVI (Serekh Ha-Yahad, 1998), together with his former student Philip Alexander.

Providential Accidents (1998), Vermes’ autobiography, describes very eloquently the various stages in his turbulent life and the development of his academic interests. In 1974, as a young post-doc in Oxford (at the time we never used that term) I met Geza (never “Professor Vermes”) for the first time and immediately fell under his spell, and years of warm friendship followed. I took some of his courses, participated in his seminar, and learned from his experience. He was a combination of a British gentleman and a Hungarian expatriate, who in a rather un-British way made no secret of his views in pursuit of scholarly truth and in support of academic causes. I vividly remember his appearance in the Congregation meeting in the Sheldonian Theatre in the spring of 1975 where he spoke passionately against the proposal to abolish the requirement of ancient languages for theology students. With the same fervor he spoke in favor of public access to the scrolls, and against the monopoly of the international team. In the fall of 1991, weeks after I had been appointed editor-in- chief, he called me, emotionally pleading for such freedom of access. Before too long, this freedom came about.

Geza’s intellectual capacities, intensity, and warmth will remain in our thoughts.

Emanuel Tov
Hebrew University, Jerusalem

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“I will send you From Nazareth to Nicaea,” Geza wrote to me a few weeks ago. “Rowan Williams described it as ‘a beautiful and magisterial book.’ ” I heard the cadences of Geza’s voice as I read these lines, which means that I saw the light in his eyes, the humor in his wry smile, as he continued: “Whether it is that or not, I do believe that it is a good read.”

So much learning, worn as lightly as he wore those steel-wool tweeds on a June Oxford day. On the merit of which of Geza’s ma’asim tovim does his scholarly fame most rest? Conceiving, organizing, and writing the new Schürer? Working on late Second Temple traditions of biblical interpretation? Illumining the Dead Sea Scrolls—and helping to bring down their old cartel? All good and important works, all composed in Geza’s lambent English—his third vernacular.

Geza would number among the greats for any of these achievements. His broadest fame, however, still attaches to his work on Jesus. Jesus the Jew brought Jesus into a new world. It constructed an Aramaic, Jewish interpretive context within which to place the synoptic evangelists’ portraits. Within that context, Geza introduced Jesus into the company of other Galilean holy men, prophets, charismatic healers; and—to the then-surprise of many readers—Jesus fit right in. It is hard to remember what a revelation this was back in 1973. Thanks in part to this book, perspectives shifted, things changed. Indeed, as Geza notes in The Changing Faces of Jesus (2001), “The Jewishness of Jesus is now axiomatic . . . [even for] those New Testament scholars who can only pay lip service to it.”

The life that led to these works was indeed a series of Providential Accidents—the title of Geza’s gripping autobiography. He described there the twists and turns that brought him, in 1945, back in Hungary, to the study of a professor of Scripture, whose books lay scattered in heaps in the wake of the Soviet army. Attempting to bring order to the chaos, the young Catholic seminarian picked up a Tanakh. In prose worthy of Book 8 of Augustine’s Confessions, Geza narrates the transformation worked in this moment. The Bibles’ pages “filled me with . . . an irresistible urge to learn Hebrew.” Learn it he did as, through it, he passed eventually out of the seminary and out of the church; into two happy marriages, first to Pam, then to Margaret; ultimately into the halls of Oxford, and onto the international stage of first-rank scholarship.

And now, with his death, Geza passes into history. “Oh Paula,” I can hear him say, eyes alight, smile implicit. “So sad and serious?” And he has a point: my tone ill suits his temperament. I’ll do better in a while, Geza, once this sudden absence is not so deafening. And thanks to your indefatigable energy, we still have the company of your many books. Beautiful and magisterial. And—yes, Geza!—good reads.

Paula Fredriksen
Hebrew University, Jerusalem

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Out of a store of vivid memories of Geza stretching over decades, the earliest come to the fore in my mind. A big part of the very first day of my DPhil work was Geza, eying quizzically from behind his desk this unexpected new arrival at his postgraduate class who claimed she was embarking on a study of the whole of Josephus. But once the name of my supervisor (Fergus Millar) had provided complete reassurance, I was welcomed as though into a family, and before very long, felt I was treated as a colleague and a friend. Thanks to Geza, my research in the Oxford Lit. Hum. Faculty was complemented by a deepening understanding of the significance of Josephus as biblical interpreter, and of his mindset as a Jerusalemite formed by that same world of discourse to which the Qumran sectaries and Jesus belonged.

That indispensable insight has never left me—indeed, I do not think I have yet got to the bottom of it. Geza’s readiness to place trust in novice scholars was generous, and also shrewd, and it played a large part in my academic growing up—whether through revising the Josephus section of the new Schürer, or cutting my teeth as a book reviewer in the Journal of Jewish Studies. I think my very first assignment was Rengstorf’s massive Josephus lexicon. And, in 1975, as he used to like to say, “we founded the British Association of Jewish Studies in a Wimpy Bar on Clapham Common”: for that was indeed the unlikely venue for the fledgling organization’s first committee meeting. Geza was its initiator and convenor and the first President of BAJS, while I became the first secretary.

Matters turned even more familial when my newborn son, Saul, participated, sometimes actively from his crib, in the organization’s inaugural conference, to Geza’s evident delight. Recently, it was Geza alone who was proved correct when he unhesitatingly identified the venue of that first conference (Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford). Over the years, his wit and wisdom, his thoughtfulness, and, not least, his touch of central European charm and gallantry, made every encounter something to look forward to and relish in retrospect. Visits to the cottage and garden on Boar’s Hill, always Margaret’s elegant hospitality, were a huge treat.

But, when I look back on it, much transpired simply on the telephone, and perhaps it is the loss of those stimulating and sparkling conversations—in which Geza unfailingly came over as his quintessential brilliant and humorous self—that will leave the largest gap in my life. When I was co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Studies, meetings, ably steered by Margaret as the journal’s manager, were fun and highly creative; but Geza’s unerring judgment on any dilemma, whether academic or practical, was indispensable, and that was readily and economically dispensed over the distance.

The exchanges of recent years, even after the onset of Geza’s at first slow-moving illness, were truly astonishing, more often than not announcing yet another book completed or testing reactions to yet another idea for a new one, which, needless to say, would have been not only agreed with a publisher but already begun. And then perhaps a query about exactly where, if anywhere, in Josephus this or that interesting detail might be found. Geza’s lightly-worn learning, his remarkable memory, his inventiveness, his sureness of touch, his sense of his audience, and his sheer delight in the twin processes of problem-solving and writing, seemed just to gather strength. One felt it would never end; and in one sense, it never will, for the immense legacy of a unique scholar and friend will continue to enrich and inspire us all, and undoubtedly future generations too.

Tessa Rajak
Somerville College, Oxford

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For me, it is very sad to lose Geza Vermes in my life. He was brilliant scholar, a truly wise man, someone who had a wonderful glint of humour, a real warrior when he needed to be, and a man of perception, compassion and plain common sense. His books have changed the way we see Jesus and created a foundation for the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He has been a mentor and a friend for so many scholars of my generation. He will be very much missed by many, and greatly by me.

I first “met” him as the author of a book that shaped my life. At 22 I was working in Covent Garden, during what is now called a “Gap Year,” post-BA, wondering what to do with my life. I went into a Penguin Bookshop and found his book The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. I read it voraciously under the counter of the craft shop I was working in, scribbling in all the places where I thought the Dead Sea Scrolls connected with the New Testament. It made me think that I really wanted to go and visit Qumran and learn more about the world of Jesus, and the way to do that, cheaply, at that time was to go to work on a kibbutz. So off I went, for three months. I ended up hitchhiking around and found my way to Qumran, with Geza’s book in my backpack. After I returned to New Zealand, I kept thinking about what I had learnt, and decided to do postgraduate study at Knox Theological College, Dunedin, with a major in New Testament, after which I went on to doctoral research, returning to Jerusalem for research on site and then pursuing my studies at New College, Edinburgh. As I went about, Geza’s book went with me, and many years later Geza signed it for me, after I told him this story. I know it meant a lot to him to hear it.

I can honestly say that I would not be in my present career had it not been for Geza Vermes. I first met Geza in person as a doctoral student. I was rather awed by him then; the first time I ever read an academic paper, at a Jewish Studies conference, Geza was in the chair, and I trembled from start to finish.

I tell the story of the book and my own journey because Geza had a remarkable and valuable talent: not only could he be extremely innovative and use his vast knowledge to further academic study, he could translate that into words that would inform and inspire people. He has written books that are easily read by those outside academia, and he could lead them through scholarly controversies and his argument, but also through information that would otherwise remain unknown. When I said that to him recently he responded that it was because his father was a journalist, and so he knew how to write like one.

How many lives has he touched? How much do we owe him? I am sure he would smile to read this, and be touched, and tell me about something new he is writing. He always felt he had to set something right, and was often fed up by small-minded people and self-serving behaviour. There was something quite innocent in his pleasure in achieving success, in rocking the boat, or winning a battle. He was always eager to get on with the next new thing, and he took delight in a sound perspective.

I will miss him.

Joan Taylor
King’s College, London

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I owe Geza an immense debt of gratitude on both a personal and intellectual level. He was responsible for me adopting an academic career in Jewish Studies, having persuaded me to stay on at Oxford to do a doctorate with him after I finished Schools in Oriental Studies in 1969, and he kept a benign eye on my developing career, intervening from time to time when he thought he could do me some good. He went from being a formidable teacher to being a dear friend, whose warmth and friendship I will sorely miss.

I admired and have tried to emulate the clarity of his thinking and writing, his uncannily sound historical judgement, his ability to make valid generalizations. In some ways he made things look too easy. Some less discerning readers of his work constantly complain about his lack of methodology—only to be surprised, when they criticise him, how strong and well thought out his positions are. It takes courage and intellectual self-confidence in today’s jargon-laden world for an academic to write in such an accessible, popular way.

I was intrigued by his religion. In the latter part of his life he was not religious in any conventional sense of the term. Though he attached himself to the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, I don’t think he attended. But from time to time a profound religious sensibility showed through—in flashes in his autobiography, in casual one-to-one conversation, at Pam’s memorial service. He felt a deep affinity with Jesus the Jew, and was determined to rescue him from the layers of misinterpretation he felt the Church had heaped upon him, because the real message of Jesus was still one worth hearing. He was a doughty campaigner—whether it was attacking the biblical obscurantism and endemic anti-Judaism of the Catholic Church in his Paris years, or leading the charge from Boar’s Hill in the great battle for the liberation of the Scrolls.

His life had been one of constant triumph over setback and adversity. He himself felt he had won through because of “providential accidents,” and he certainly had some narrow escapes and lucky breaks, but he had the strength of character to seize the moment, and in many ways made his own luck. He offered leadership to his discipline—as founding member and first president of both the British and the European Associations for Jewish Studies, and as a strict but benign Doktorvater to a talented group of research students, many of whom have made their own mark in Jewish Studies. And all this while publishing truly landmark studies in three distinct fields—the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish Bible-interpretation (Midrash and Targum), and Christian origins.

He will be missed, but it was a life well lived, which has left a huge legacy.

Philip Alexander
University of Manchester

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I first encountered Geza Vermes in written form as an undergraduate at Trinity College in 1979. I was taking a course in apocalyptic literature, and one of our textbooks was Geza’s first edition of The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. It was a much thinner book back then! When I was a graduate student, his introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls was an important reference work for all of us working on the Scrolls.

I did not have the pleasure of meeting Geza until long after my graduate days. Whenever we were together at a conference, I was always struck by his attentiveness at any paper he attended—he was always the first to ask a question, and that question was always probing, getting to the heart of the thesis in question. This past fall I was a Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, of which Geza was a founding member. In spite of his illness, he attended the papers at the Centre, as well as the post-graduate seminar at the Oriental Institute. My husband and I enjoyed a delightful dinner at his home, with his beloved wife Margaret, and Sir Fergus Millar and his wife Susanna. That evening will be a cherished memory of a warm, cultured and gracious scholar, who will be greatly missed by all who knew him.

Sidnie White Crawford
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Chair of the Board of Trustees
W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research
Jerusalem

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Last Thursday, I woke up to the sad news of Geza Vermes’ passing. Although we were not close, he was my tutor in Dead Sea Scrolls and Post-Biblical Hebrew at Oxford, and later served as the supervisor of my DPhil dissertation. Like many people, I used his translation of the Scrolls as an undergraduate, but it was when I read his book on Jesus the Jew that I realised that I needed to know much more about Judaism in the Graeco-Roman period.

When I first met Geza, he was involved in the revision of Emil Schürer’s History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ. My impression was that he was languishing in Qumran scholarship, not having had access to the unpublished Scrolls from Cave 4, and turned to other interests. This all changed with the freeing of the Scrolls at the beginning of the 1990s. We ran the Oxford seminar on the Scrolls together between 1991-1994. The collection of photographs of the Hebrew Centre at Yarnton was central to the activities. Geza was re-energised, and showed flashes of his brilliance, not least in marshalling his media contacts and revising his popular translation.

Geza was not someone who had much time for methodology; he worked instinctively towards a solution. He was suspicious of discussions of method, and attributed such activities to transatlantic scholarship. His disdain for methodology often left him vulnerable to criticisms of rigour.

He had an urbane and gentle sense of humor. He was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Edinburgh. I invited him to give the Gunning lectures in 1998 in connection with the conference on the scrolls. He packed out the Martin Hall and the audience grew from lecture to lecture. He had pulling power and celebrity status and he was one of the original ‘rock-star’ academics. In the last few years, Geza published a series of popular books on the Scrolls and the origins of Christianity. His legacy is assured and I will miss him.

Timothy Lim
University of Edinburgh

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I first met Geza Vermes in the meetings of the Oxford Forum for Qumran Research convened by Geza and co-hosted with Timothy Lim. The Oxford meetings were no ordinary seminar. For one thing—and with the exception of a group of students including myself—the people in the room were an extremely high-powered crowd such as Oxford’s Hugh Williamson and Martin Goodman, Cambridge’s William Horbury and Markus Bockmuehl, Michael Knibb and Sacha Stern from London, Philip Alexander (at the time President of the Oxford Centre), and the late Edward Ullendorff. In addition, every senior scrolls scholar in the country would come to speak in turn, such as George Brooke and Philip Davies. I joined the group in 1991, the year in which images of all unpublished scrolls had first become available to all qualified scholars. It was an electrifying experience to read previously unavailable texts in this setting especially under the chairmanship of someone who had campaigned for many decades to be able to read this material. I cannot say I got to know Geza closely then though we often reminisced later about the heady days of the early 1990s. His edition of the Cave 4 manuscripts of the Community Rule—jointly prepared with Philip Alexander—was a major milestone in the publication history of the Scrolls.

Beyond the ivory towers of the academy Geza was also a major public figure with a considerable following. Hosting him to present a public lecture in the margins of a specialised international Scrolls conference in Birmingham drew a huge crowd, and he clearly relished making an “impact” beyond the academy long before it became fashionable. His Penguin translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls into English introduced several generations of English speakers to this material in many editions, and in recent years he seems to have just published a book, completed a manuscript, or planned another volume whenever we spoke.

Between 2007 and 2011 I worked closely with both Geza and Margaret (as well as Sacha Stern) as Reviews Editor for the Journal of Jewish Studies. It is difficult to capture the boundless dedication both of them shared for the Journal. It was a privilege to discover that beneath the towering scholar, who to me seemed rather terrifying in the 1990s, there was a much gentler and warm private man.

May his memory be a blessing.

Charlotte Hempel
University of Birmingham

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Geza’s scholarship leaves a lasting mark on present-day understanding of Second Temple Judaism and the beginnings of Christianity. He introduced the Dead Sea Scrolls to a wide public, providing informed and accurate information, when some wild speculations were abounding, and his translation of the Scrolls became the preferred English translation for more than one generation. His revision, particularly with Fergus Millar, of Emil Schuerer’s The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ was a very necessary updating that gave the late nineteenth century classic text a new life as a basic reference work.

But above all, his work on Jesus the Jew (1973) marked a turning point in European scholarship’s “quest for the historical Jesus.” Till then it had been assumed, and fashionable, that Jesus had stood out from his native Judaism and could only be properly understood by distinguishing him from his native religion. Geza did not single-handedly turn the tide, but after his monograph it became impossible to ignore the characteristically Jewish character of Jesus’ life and teaching. Geza was the John the Baptist of what came to be known as the third quest of the historical Jesus, in which Jesus’ Jewishness is an important starting point and seen as the principal context of Jesus’ mission, and not a subject to be tackled with some embarrassment or understated as a subsidiary issue in any resolution of the quest. Since then his many restatements of the Jewish Jesus have made his portrayals of Jesus one of the most influential at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

James D.G. Dunn
Durham University

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Geza Vermes will undoubtedly, and quite properly, be remembered as a great scholar and expounder of the Dead Sea Scrolls. His magisterial translations of these documents into English are familiar to countless readers; they are not only accurate versions of the original but are written in the most elegant and memorable English.

A less well-known, but equally important contribution to Jewish scholarship is to be found in Geza’s writings on the ancient Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible, the so-called Targumim. Once somewhat neglected in academic discourse, these translations, which often include important interpretations of biblical passages, were reinstated to the position of importance which they deserve by Geza and a handful of other scholars writing from the mid-1950s onwards.

In his support for Jewish Studies in the broadest sense, Geza was unfailing. The success of the Journal of Jewish Studies under his editorship; the sterling support he gave to David Patterson in the founding and maintenance of what was to become the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; and his untiring international efforts to promote the academic study of Judaism have been an inspiration to all who continue to follow in his path. In all this, his kindness, generosity, hospitality, and unstinting assistance to students setting out on their scholarly careers holds a special place. My years as a doctoral student working on Targum under Geza’s supervision in Oxford were among the very happiest of my life: Geza was not only a mentor, but a trusted friend, and his passing leaves for me a gap in life which can never be filled.

C.T.R. Hayward
Durham University

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I first met Geza Vermes in the early 1990s at an SBL meeting in America, although I had long been familiar with his work. Indeed I had used an early edition of his massively influential translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the first course I taught on the subject, during my first year of teaching in the late 1980s. I saw him from time to time at Oxford or at this or that conference, and we kept in touch by e-mail. He was very good about sending me notices about his publications, popular articles, and other achievements for posting on my blog, PaleoJudaica.

I recall how pleased he was on his return from a 2009 lecture tour in the United States to report that he had received a vote of congratulation by the U.S. House of Representatives, proposed by the Representative of the State of Louisiana. He wrote, “I was further overwhelmed by the gift of the keys of the cities of Monroe, LA and Natchez, MS, and the proclamation by the Secretary of State of Louisiana of 29 September (the date of my lecture in Baton Rouge) ‘Geza Vermes Day’ for the whole State. Humble academics in Britain, we are not used to this kind of treatment. Thank you, USA.”

It chanced that I was lecturing at the Qumran Forum in Oxford about a week before he passed away. The original plan was for him to chair the seminar, so we were in frequent contact in the weeks before, but in the event he had to be in the hospital while I was there, and I was very sad not to get to see him.

Professor Vermes was a tremendously influential figure in the field of Second Temple Judaism, especially, but by no means exclusively, the Dead Sea Scrolls. He also published much stimulating work about Christian origins and the historical Jesus. He was truly both a scholar and a gentleman, his bearing always dignified, but with a deadpan sense of humor that sometimes took one by surprise. Once, in tribute to the ever-tardy British rail system, he welcomed my arrival at the Oxford rail station in a voice of astonishment with “Your train was on time!”

A giant in our field has passed from the earth, a giant and a good and gracious man. I will miss him a great deal. May his memory be for a blessing.

Jim Davila
University of St Andrews

Michael J. Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas, The Catholic University of America Press, 2012, 328pp., $55

In Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist NeoDarwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, philosopher Thomas Nagel offers a fairly modest dissent from the reigning reductionism of biological theory:

[I]f we are trying to imagine a secular theory, according to which the historical development of conscious life is fully explained not by intervention but as part of the natural order, there seem to be only two alternatives: either this development itself depends entirely on efficient causation, operating in its later stages through the mechanisms of biological evolution, or there are natural teleological laws governing the development of organization over time…This is a throwback to the Aristotelian conception of nature, banished from the scene at the birth of modern science…

Nagel is an atheist and makes it clear that he is speaking of a wholly natural teleology: no designers need apply. Yet the acolytes of atheology have wasted little time in rejecting, and little energy in ridiculing, Nagel’s modest proposal, however softened their barbs might be by faux commiserations for a once great mind overthrown. He is accused of offering aid and comfort to the exponents of Intelligent Design, of believing that the mind provides a secure if somewhat fuzzy access to reality, and of threatening the foundations of the scientific enterprise.

Are we really supposed to abandon a massively successful scientific research program because Nagel finds some scientific claims hard to square with what he thinks is obvious and undeniable, such as his confidence that his clearest moral reasonings are objectively valid?

Michael Dodds, O.P., now makes a decisive and compelling contribution to this swirling controversy, offering a case that implies it is only within theological circles that scientifically-inspired reflections on teleology are likely to receive a fair hearing. Nagel may not care to hear it, but theology may be the only refuge for dissent from scientism.

Dodds sets the stage by articulating three fundamental assumptions. First, critical realism: we can know something true about the world, but not through any approach that claims to be unmediated and unimaginative. Second, the possibility of dialogue between science and theology: not along the lines of the sclerotic fact/value distinction but with an eye to illuminating their potential conflicts and harmonies. Third, the compatibility of revelation and natural reason: there is no fundamental contradiction between truth as discovered by science and as revealed by God. These principles place the minimal sine qua non for avoiding an uneasy and unprofitable apartheid between theological and scientific speculation.

The major arc of Dodds’s book is a narrative of the rise and fall, and rise, of causal explanation. He starts with its broad Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding, through its contraction in modern science down to a thin version of efficient causality, and thence to its current re-expansion in contemporary science. Aristotle offered, and Aquinas adopted, a broad and flexible take on causality, focused on dependence: “those things are called causes upon which things depend for their existence or their coming to be.” An inspiring face, a wise piece of counsel, an electrical charge, a stirring idea, a happy retirement, and a skilled chef can all fit within the analogical scope of causality set up by Aristotle and endorsed by St. Thomas.

The depredations visited by the scientific revolution upon knowledge in general and causality in particular are well known. The revolutionary strategy and unparalleled success of a purely quantitative method traded breadth for depth, contemplation for control. But the grasp of science came to outstrip its reach. Thus arose scientism: a metaphysical outlook which rejects as unreal what science began simply by bracketing as unmeasurable. Of the four causes, only the efficient found a place in modern science since it could be empirically situated and mathematically expressed. Yet even efficient causality was dictated terms. It became univocal: the efficient causality of the energy that moves the atoms.

For many scientists, this univocal understanding of causality is no longer adequate on scientific grounds. Dodds is particularly instructive on the resources offered by contemporary science for the support of richer accounts of causality. From the indeterminate potentiality that Heisenberg found in quantum mechanics; to the formal causality employed in understanding the phenomenon of emergence in cognitive science, biology, chemistry and physics; to the idea of purpose in biology—the new kinds of causality that contemporary science is discovering are strikingly reminiscent of those found in the philosophies of Aristotle and Aquinas. Especially well taken is Dodds’s observation that although contemporary science is emerging from the Newtonian causal straitjacket, a number of Christian theologians are still trapped in it. I have found something like it in both Hans Küng’s The Beginning of All Things: Science and Religion and Stanley Grenz’s Theology for the Community of God.

The virtues of Unlocking Divine Action are many, not least of all its felicity of expression, clarity of structure and argument, and welcome use of texts beyond the great Summae. Drawbacks, minor though they are, can be found as well. Chief among these is the overabundance of direct quotations, some quite lengthy, from multiple sources, all in aid of the same point. A touch of synthesis would not have gone amiss.

The only major objection I would raise concerns miracles, which Dodd recognizes as the fundamental issue that jumpstarted the discussion of divine action in contemporary theology. Dodds does a fine job clarifying St. Thomas’s position that miracles are divine acts that take place outside of the natural order rather than in violation of it. A great deal would have been gained, however, by even a brief application of Thomas’s ideas, along with the new causality of science, to some specific instances. Are the Incarnation and Resurrection miracles? Dodds cites the view of others (Swinburne, Russell), but never declares himself on the question. He is also surprisingly unhelpful on the question of why life-enhancing miracles—since they possess no sharp, invasive edges that leave the gristle (or gossamer) of natural causality in tatters—are not offered more frequently by a God bent on human well-being. Finally, consider the multiplication of the loaves and fish. On the one hand, since scripture proposes no theory about it (Christ exerts control over quantum events, or causes atoms to coalesce, or teleports the contents of some distant market stalls), we may certainly agree that the question of whether natural laws are violated is not the primary issue. Likewise, no claims are made about the product itself that would demand a special scientific accounting (e.g., that the bread was abnormally nutritious or resistant to becoming stale, or the fish were of a type and size utterly unknown in that region). On the other hand, the claim that more matter results from the action of Christ is intrinsic to the story. Were some of the apostles of a mind to perform a before-and-after weigh in (and this would certainly be to miss the larger point of the miracle), the leftovers alone would register as a great deal heavier than what was on hand at the start—just as one would expect in any sort of multiplication of normal material objects. I have always wondered if this effect does not in some way come up against the conservation of matter/energy. My sense is that since no secondary causality is posited, it is impossible to say. But on this, as on other scriptural wonders, I had hoped Dodds would cast more Thomistic light.

Nathaniel Deutsch, The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement, Harvard University Press, 2011, 384pp., $27

One hundred years ago Shloyme Zanvil Rapoport, better known by his pen-name An-sky, began his ethnographic expeditions into the Russian Pale of Settlement, the western and southern area of Russia in which most of the world’s Jews lived. An-sky’s mission was both backward- and forward-looking: he wanted to capture Jewish folklore, customs, beliefs, songs, artifacts, and practices before political, social, and economic change both from within and without the Jewish community destroyed traditional Jewish culture completely.

He also wanted this knowledge and these objects to serve as a source and inspiration for assimilated, urban, and secularized Jews, who would transform them into art and a new Jewish culture for the future. The artifacts and information he gathered exist now only in fragmentary form in museums, libraries, and collections. But the Yiddish-language ethnographic questionnaire that An-sky and others created to retrieve knowledge of Jewish life from his informants has been preserved. Now, for the first time, Nathaniel Deutsch has made this document available in a generously annotated English translation.

The volume’s title may startle or disconcert some readers. How can An-sky’s journey through the Russian Pale of Settlement be compared to Henry Morton Stanley’s late nineteenth century exploration of Africa? Isn’t this language racist and colonialist? Deutsch explains that it was none other than An-sky’s colleague, the historian Simon Dubnov [also spelled Dubnow], who used this term in 1891. In his call to found a Russian Jewish historical society—a plan realized in the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society in St. Petersburg—Dubnov used the term to reflect the distance that assimilated and secularized Jews had traveled away from their fellow Jews’ traditional life world. We can witness a parallel distance between the Russian intelligentsia and the Russian peasantry. Regardless of the language about the “dark continent,” An-sky came to see his project not as a civilizing mission, but rather as a means of deepening and strengthening knowledge about and commitment to Jewish life on the part of those who, like him, had long been separated from the Pale.

There has been a recent revival of interest in An-sky’s life and work. Scholars have puzzled over the pattern of intellectual and physical departure and return that David Roskies identified as key to An-sky’s life. Deutsch recounts An-sky’s departure from the Pale of Settlement as a young man influenced by Russian Populism. He turned away from the Jewish community to work among miners in the Donbass region. While abroad in Western Europe, An-sky was a close associate of the Russian populist political theorist Petr Lavrov. Upon his return to Russia, however, An-sky decided to “return” to the Jewish people. His ethnographic project among the Jews of the Pale was a way of enacting this decision. An-sky’s approach to his own ethnographic work was in some ways similar to other imperial projects of its time: he used recording devices, including the camera and the wax cylinder, and he formulated an ambitious, lengthy questionnaire.

Deutsch shows, however, that the very notion of writing down stories—the practice of folklore collection that An-sky insisted on, and not always with the agreement or approval of his colleagues—may itself be seen in light of the Hasidic practice of recording the stories and sayings of the rebbe, the dynastic head of a particular community. According to Deutsch, the Hasidim, one of the primary target groups of An-sky’s study, were themselves proto-ethnographers, who preserved the oral lore of their spiritual leaders.  In the beginning of his work, An-sky was so distant from traditional Jewish life in the Pale as to be unsure of his spoken Yiddish, and unaware or naïve as to the difficulties he would have recording women singing in mixed company, a violation of notions of modesty in observant communities. Later, An-sky succeeded in creating a “quasi-Hasidic identity” for himself, an identity that included his manner of dress, his beard, and his participation in singing Hasidic melodies that other members of the expedition recorded.

The questionnaire that An-sky produced took nearly two years to complete and consisted of approximately two thousand questions. The outbreak of World War I, however, prevented the questionnaire from being distributed and its answers collected. To say that it covered all aspects of Jewish life from cradle to grave would be something of an understatement.  An-sky’s questions began with beliefs about the soul before it was born in a human body and after it left. Key areas of exploration included medicine, childbirth, education, wedding ceremonies, and burial customs. Some of the questions are open-ended: “Are there special prayers, amulets, or protections for a pregnant woman?” Many others, however, already contain possible answers (not unlike the traditional four questions asked at the Passover seder, which begin by asking why this night is different, and then proceed to give concrete details as to how it is different).  Question 2031 asks, “Is there a belief that if people make a blessing over a thing in which there is a reincarnated spirit, that the soul is made right again?” Question 1848, similarly, asks, “Is there a belief that during the inauguration of a new cemetery, the dead from the old one congregate near the fence and look on, and if someone sees them, he should not tell anyone?” The relation between the living and the dead, Deutsch convincingly argues, is one of the distinguishing features of Jewish life in the Pale, vastly different from our own attitudes toward death and dying.

The questionnaire, titled Der Mentsch (The person), is thus itself a vast verbal museum of Jewish life in the Pale before World War I. It is an extraordinarily rich lode of information about a world that was already undergoing radical transformation in An-sky’s own time. This world was far from static. The Jews who lived in the Pale were exploring new ideologies and new ways of life. They reinterpreted the world of their parents, and the complex planning for the expedition took these factors into account.

Deutsch’s encyclopedic work is not only an invaluable contribution to Jewish culture. It is also enjoyable to read. In his simultaneously learned and accessible work, he has demystified the complex and diverse forms of Jewish life in the Pale. I found myself reading question after question, as if to find out what happened next.

Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson is Director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, the international support and advocacy organization for women in the Reform rabbinate. She serves as an International Vice-Chair of Rabbis for Women of the Wall, is a former Chair and board member of the Hadassah Foundation, a former board member of the Rodeph Sholom School in New York, and currently is on the boards of the Yedidya Center for Jewish Spiritual Direction and Friends of Kehillat Kol HaNeshamah. Jackie has held volunteer leadership positions with the Women’s Rabbinic Network and Central Conference of American Rabbis. From 1992-2002, Jackie was the Jewish Chaplain at Harvard-Westlake School, Los Angeles, and has worked in synagogue education, adult education and hospital chaplaincy. Jackie led a Rosh Hodesh: It’s A Girl Thing! Group for four years at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, New York and is currently teaching in the field of adult spiritual formation and development. She is a graduate of the Rabbinic Enrichment program of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and serves as a spiritual director.

Jackie received her A.B. in Psychology from Barnard College, Columbia University in 1977,and was ordained as a rabbi, receiving a Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters, by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in 1983. Jackie is married to Rabbi David Ellenson; they have five children and one grandchild.

Visit Women of the Wall here.

Imranali Panjwani (ed.), The Shi‘a of Samarra: The Heritage and Politics of a Community in Iraq, I.B. Tauris, 2012, 288pp., $100.

Imranali Panjwani is Tutor in Theology & Religious Studies at King’s College London. After obtaining his LLB in Law from the University of Sheffield, he underwent hawza (seminary) training in Islamic Studies & Arabic at Al-Mahdi Institute (Birmingham) while simultaneously attending the College of Law to study on the Legal Practice Course. He obtained his PhD from King’s College London focusing on the role of the self in Islamic-Western human rights discourse using the works of Ali b. Abi Talib, Zayn al-Abidin, Kierkegaard, and Kant. He is also the editor of The Shi‘a of Samarra: The Heritage and Politics of a Community in Iraq. Panjwani has joined MRB as a Contributing Editor in the interactions between religion, politics, law, and ethics.

In this wide-ranging conversation with Michael Law at King’s College London, Panjwani discusses his recent book on an Islamic community in Samarra, and the cultural losses experienced by both people and city. He also mentions his work in Islamic ethics, particularly an earlier publication which was the first discussion about the fusion of human and animal embryos from an Islamic perspective, and then his own views of democratic movements in the Middle East arising from the Arab Spring.

Mark S.M. Scott, Journey Back to God: Origen on the Problem of Evil, Oxford University Press, 2012, 256pp., $74.

Anyone with a smattering of training in religion or philosophy knows at least two things about Origen (ca. 184-253 CE): he castrated himself, and he was condemned as a heretic of the Christian church. Today there is some doubt about the former but none concerning the latter. The Byzantine emperor, Justinian, presided over a council at Constantinople in 553 at which Origen was posthumously pronounced a heretic of the Chalcedonian church. The precise circumstances that precipitated his condemnation will likely always remain opaque. Yet in the eleventh canon of what many now recognize as the fifth ecumenical council, Origen joined the ranks of the anathematized.

He has accordingly spent much time in the scholar’s dock, subject to withering prosecution or impassioned defense. Mark Scott’s book is refreshingly free of this juridical atmosphere. Journey Back to God focuses instead on the manner in which one of the early church’s greatest intellectuals vindicated God amidst the horrors of evil and suffering. Origen’s theodicy—his “theological and cosmological strategies for explaining the reality of evil”—requires Scott to address a number of the vexing themes that precipitated the Origenist crises of late antiquity. But he resists the temptation to adjudicate on Origen’s orthodoxy.

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Scott traces Origen’s narrative of the soul’s prelapsarian contemplation of God, its descent into this corporeal world, and its ascent to the eschatological contemplation of God. Particularly urgent for Origen were the disparate conditions in which humans begin their lives. Why, for example, do some receive the privilege of being born as Greeks who cultivate wisdom, while others find themselves among Ethiopians whose reputed custom was “to feed on human flesh” (On First Principles 2.9.5)? This inequality raised pressing questions about the character of the Creator. Rather than posit an inferior Demiurge, Origen posited pre-existence—the belief that souls existed in a discarnate state prior to their embodiment. This doctrine eventually became contentious, but with many other recent scholars, Scott errs in attributing its condemnation to the fifth ecumenical council. It surfaces in a list of fifteen anathemas published by the emperor Justinian in 553, but Richard Price’s study demonstrates that this list was not issued by the council that met that same year.

Origen’s account of pre-existence is a theodicy. The reason humans commence their earthly lives under disparate circumstances is because they fell in varying degrees in the primordial realm. Rational souls were originally created equal and alike, and all were endowed with the capacity to make decisions for which they were ultimately responsible. When Origen raises the curtain on his theological drama we find these rational creatures contemplating God. With the exception of the soul that Jesus would later possess, all of them faltered. By turning away from the good, they immersed themselves in evil. Origen proposes boredom, distraction, and negligence as likely causes. Moreover, some fell more than others, thereby giving rise to diversity. God’s just judgment followed— the first judgment—and human souls became embodied and located in diverse stations on earth that corresponded to the severity of their fall. Origen framed this punishment as restorative, not vindictive. Life on earth is a proving ground where God’s providential care guides free souls back to the state from whence they fell. It is not the good and just God who is responsible for evil—and certainly not an inferior Demiurge—but rather rational creatures.

A young girl stands in Dadaab amid the freshly made graves of 70 children, many of whom died of malnutrition. Photo: Andy Hall/Oxfam.

At this point Scott’s narrative begins to unravel. He does not address what most people would understand as theodicy—i.e., a vindication of God in the face of evil. He treats the soul’s ascent to God in this life and the next, but it is not clear to me how, “[b]y embarking on the road to perfection, our lives become a theodicy.” As much as I welcome Scott’s resistance to the long-standing tendency among Origen’s biographers to pit the philosopher against the ecclesiastic, we can find clearer ways to link his theodicy to ecclesial and existential concerns. For instance, in defending the goodness and justice of the one God, Origen also defends the first article in the church’s rule, which he believed was under attack from those we customarily call “Gnostics.” In other words, the theodicy also has a heresiological function (see esp. On First Principles 2.9.2-8). In Against Celsus 5.29-33, the primordial fall helps Origen account for linguistic, religious and cultural diversity, including the seemingly prejudicial election of the Jews. And as I have suggested in Origen and Scripture, the soul’s contemplation of the living Word in the protological realm serves as a template for its contemplation of the written Word, Scripture, in this realm. There are a number of places in Origen’s oeuvre in which he links his theodicy per se to his wider concerns.

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Scott’s interpretations are usually sound and firmly within the communis opinio of Origenian scholarship. He perceptively notes, for instance, that “orthodoxy” is not a static concept. While Origen was just as interested in right belief as his ecclesiastical prosecutor, neither he nor Justinian constructed orthodoxy in precisely the same way. But Scott falters when he tells us that Origen viewed “orthodoxy more as the internal assimilation of doctrine than the external assent to propositions.” No evidence is given for this claim, and there are several passages—e.g., Origen’s preface to book one of On First Principles and the excerpts from his Commentary on Titus in Pamphilus’ Apology for Origen (sections 31-37)—in which Origen insists that the index of orthodoxy was assent to the church’s rule of faith. Scott correctly avoids the disjunctive portrayal of Origen as either a churchman or a philosopher, and recognizes that he was a Christian who drew critically and creatively upon philosophy.

There are times, however, where Scott is too comfortable with contemporary frameworks. He speaks easily of Origen’s negotiation of “philosophy and theology,” as if theology were an academic discipline in the third century. Origen never self-identifies as a theologos, and theologia in his day did not have the sense it would later acquire in, say, the medieval university. “Philosophy and theology”: this nomenclature invites us to picture Origen straddling two humanities departments, precisely the opposite of the otherwise salubrious tendency in this work to resist a polarized portrait of Origen.

The scholarship in this book is not always as rigorous as one might hope. Origen does not “dialogue” with Marcion. There is no citation of Marcion in his extant writings, and it is doubtful that Origen was directly familiar with his thought. We are also told that, “By all accounts, Origen was intensely pious and spiritual.” Yet only by some accounts. Epiphanius assures us that Origen was an idolater (Panarion 64.2.2-6). Greek words are misprinted, editions occasionally misidentified (the critical edition of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History was produced by E. Schwartz and T. Mommsen), and some passages are falsely attributed to Origen. Leontius of Byzantium, not Origen, speaks the words quoted from On First Principles 1.8.1.

Scott bypasses weighty and unresolved debates in Origenian scholarship. The contentious issue of whether Origen taught pre-existence—central to his theodicy—is handled too quickly. The author should have included an extended critique of the views of Mark Edwards (Origen against Plato, 2002) and Panayiotis Tzamalikos (Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of Time, 2006), both of whom deny Origen ever taught this doctrine. One of the largest questions hanging over this book is its relationship to Hal Koch’s magisterial study on Origen’s theodicy, Pronoia und Paideusis. As far I can tell, Scott never interacts with this book.

Journey Back to God is an argument crafted not only out of history but also out of generous measures of theory and philosophy. Its aim is retrieval, and its intended audience is, I suspect, less Origen specialists than readers concerned with the problem of evil. Many will already be familiar with the way a great western thinker like Augustine approached the problem. Scott helps us understand how a towering figure in the Greek patristic tradition wrestled with the same conundrum.