The Ancients
Ancient Judaism.
by Max Weber. Translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale.
The Free Press. 484 pp. $4.00.
One of my donnish professors used to say that when good German theories die they go to Oxford. He was probably thinking of humanistic studies. Of German theories in social science it would be more accurate to say that they go to the Universities of London, Chicago, and Wisconsin. At any rate this is true of Max Weber’s ideas.
Weber’s ingenious but imperfect theory that modern capitalism was largely a product of Calvinist Puritanism was publicized, and at the same time criticized, by R. H. Tawney in the early 1920’s. And during the past two decades several of his works on economics and on the sociology of Oriental religions have been translated from German into English by various scholars, chiefly in the Midwest. But his work on ancient Judaism, first published in the 1917-1919 volumes of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft, and republished as the third volume of his Gesammelte Anfsätze zur Religionssoziologie in 1921, soon after his death, has aroused very little interest among English-writing students of ancient Israel. Salo Baron is one of the few exceptions, and one of his criticisms will be noticed below. Even in German there was not, I think, any thorough critique of Weber as a sociologist of religion—as distinct from a social-economic philosopher—before 1931, when Joachim Wach devoted a special appendix to Weber in his Einführung in die Religionssoziologie.
Weber’s concept of Israelite historical development is, as one would expect, fully in accord with the general philosophy of history of a thinker who, as the editors succinctly put it, “rejected Marx and Nietzsche, although he learned much from both.” That is to say that he neither minimized nor exaggerated the importance of the psychological and ethical factors in the life of the ancient Israelites. And though Weber accepted the chief results of Wellhausian textual criticism, he is less rigidly systematic in his treatment of literary sources than are most professional Biblical scholars of the school of Wellhausen.
Similarly, he depends heavily on the researches of the great German historian of antiquity, Eduard Meyer, but he often refines or amplifies the results of Meyer’s researches into the social background of Israelite political history. It is Weber, I think, and not Meyer or another contemporary scholar, who is responsible for suggesting the great variations in the social composition of the Israelite tribes. Again, it seems to be Weber’s merit to have documented more fully and flexibly than his predecessors the suggestion that throughout early Israelite history there runs “a dualism of peasant and shepherd.”
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As an example of Weber’s moderation in applying sociological analysis to religious phenomena one cannot do better than cite the following passage: “The point [about the Mosaic covenant] is not that the life-conditions of Beduins and semi-nomads ‘produced’ an order whose establishment could be considered as something like the ‘ideological exponent’ of its economic conditions. This form of historical materialistic construction is here, as elsewhere, inadequate. The point is, rather, that once such an order was established the life-conditions of these strata gave it by far the greater opportunity to survive in the selective struggle for existence against the other, less stable political organizations. The question, however, why such an order emerged at all was determined by quite concrete religious-historical and often highly personal circumstances and vicissitudes.”
That Weber was immensely learned, commendably honest, and extraordinarily intelligent, all competent critics would probably admit. And that his lack of expertise in ancient Judaism (not apparent, by the way, to any but the most searching eye) is pretty well compensated for by his comparative method would also be admitted by all scholars not afflicted with the disease of vested interest. Just as the archeologist who examines the terrain from an airplane is able to detect contours that indicate the existence of buildings which are often invisible to the surface explorer, so the “comparative” sociologist may detect structures in a culture which are invisible or obscure to the scholar who works in only one area. Rationalism and objectivity are also undeniable virtues in approaching controversial fields where prejudices lie sown in the earth like military mines. But, as Wach and other sociologists and historians of religion have pointed out, the thinker who is “religiously unmusical,” as Weber with characteristic honesty admitted to being, may substitute perspective for penetration, and may deceive himself into thinking that he has understood the irrational elements that contribute to make up the peculiar genius of a person or group or even type, when he has merely delimited the possibilities of evolutionary linear development.
Conscious that I have not too clearly explained this, I shall take refuge in Wach’s brief but illuminating remark that Weber ignores the “transcendent” in religious experience. At the same time I should like to make a concession to Weber’s kind of disinterested rationalism by admitting that he has been far more appreciative of Israel’s religious experience than, say, the theologically involved Well-hausen, who projected his dislike of 19th-century German Jews on to the ancient Israelites. The more secular Weber has understood the work of priests as well as prophets because he has studied the Bible “with that beautiful, purely secular common sense which can hardly be distinguished in its more inspired moments from a saintly idealism,” as Katherine Anne Porter says of E. M. Forster.
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Let us turn now to Ancient Judaism. Perhaps the first criticism that occurs to an attentive reader is that Weber’s terminology is sometimes startlingly inept, as for example in characterizing the Hebrew prophets as “demagogues” and Diaspora Jewry as “a pariah-people.” One realizes, to be sure, that by “demagogue” Weber does not mean what most people would suppose him to mean, since he holds the prophet to have been neither a practical politician nor a partisan, but an intellectual intent upon leading the masses to true religion. This severely etymological use of “demagogue” is therefore as inappropriate to its ancient Greek meaning as it is to modern usage. As for “pariah-people,” by which Weber means “a ritually segregated guest-people,” it is equally inept. To the objection made by Salo Baron that the Jews of the Diaspora had a religion different from that of their host peoples, the editors reply in their preface that “religious differences may sharpen the distinction between guest and host”; but this does not in any way mitigate the ineptness of the term “pariah” as applied to the Jews of the Diaspora. For one thing, the pariahs of India accepted their degradation. The Jews never did. For another, the pariahs of India had no social contact with their hosts. The Jews of the Diaspora did. One might easily find other significant differences, but what has been said here may suffice.
In view of the fact that, as he himself modestly acknowledged, Weber was no expert on Israelite culture, it is remarkable how few errors of fact there are in a book crowded with facts. Two errors can be shown to be so only in the light of recently acquired knowledge. Among the arguments which Weber gives to show that the “ethical Decalogue” (in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5) was composed considerably after the time of Moses is the “fact” that the Hebrew word translated as “covet” in the Tenth Commandment is too abstract for the Mosaic age. But we now know, thanks to the discovery of a Phoenician inscription from Cilicia, that as late as about 700 B.C.E. the word in question meant “to lay covetous hands upon.” There is therefore no reason to regard the Tenth Commandment as late merely on linguistic grounds. The other instance is Weber’s supposition that speculative cschatology, as in Daniel and Enoch, emanated from the uneducated and ritually negligent Jews. We now have the Dead Sea Scrolls to support earlier conjectures that these eschatological writings came from the Essenes.
Over against the remarkably few errors of fact, one may set the many instances of conjectures which have been confirmed, providing evidence of Weber’s astonishingly sound judgment. For example, his statement that the Essenes were essentially “a radical sect of Pharisees” is borne out by the evidence of these same Dead Sea Scrolls and the closely related Damascus Covenant. Again, his references to Canaanite influences on Israelite mythology and ritual poetry are supported by the recently discovered Canaanite literature of Ugarit.
He is not, however, uniformly sound. When he denies that the Hebrew prophets were “democratic” he goes counter to much ancient evidence, to much modern opinion, and to some of his own judgments. He grants that the prophets were active fighters for freedom of speech, for freedom of conscience, and for the rights of the poor and submerged classes. He grants that they opposed royal authority and the state priests. In one place he even includes the “free prophets” among “the troublesome democratic crusaders.” There seems to be no good reason, therefore, for stressing the fact that the prophets were not democratic, no matter how severely that term is restricted. He has, it is true, made out a pretty good case for the theory that most of the prophets were intellectuals rather than plebeians, but that has nothing to do with their being democratic.
Nor does one readily follow him in asserting rather confidently that “rarely have entirely new religious conceptions originated in the respective centers of rational cultures,” including Athens, Alexandria, Rome, Paris, London. But Nippur was both the religious and intellectual center of ancient Babylonia, Athens was the birthplace of what may fairly be called the new religions of Plato and of Zeno the Stoic, Alexandria saw the creation of at least a significant variety of ancient Judaism, namely Hellenistic Judaism, and finally, Jerusalem, which Weber includes among provincial capitals, was both the religious and intellectual center of pre-Exilic as well as post-Exilic Jewry.
But all these fault-findings are meant chiefly as warnings to the prospective reader not to be carried away too easily by Weber’s deservedly high reputation. No one who has occupied himself intensively with the study of Israelite culture can fail to admire the great sweep, the prevailing accuracy, and the true sensitivity of Weber’s sociological analysis of ancient Judaism. Regrettably I have not enough space to call attention to the many sections in which the author has revealed new aspects of that culture. I can mention only a few general topics, such as his treatment of the Levitical Torah and his extremely suggestive comparison, throughout several sections, of the Levites and the Brahmins; his excellent discrimination of magical and quasi-magical elements in the religion of Israel in various periods and his explanation of their relative innocuousness; his understanding of the essential healthiness of Israelite religious worldliness; his appreciation of the concrete manifestations of Pharisaic “petty bourgeois” rationalism, of which he recognizes the partially urban character without going to the extremes of characterization to be found in Louis Finkelstein’s Pharisees (which mentions some of Weber’s writings but not his Ancient Judaism).
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From what has been sketchily indicated above, it should be apparent that even after thirty years, Weber’s Ancient Judaism is still one of the important and impressive works in the field. For that reason it is good to see an English translation appear. Unfortunately the present translation, while faithful enough on the whole, has too many lapses into infidelity to be easily forgiven. And it has other disconcerting faults. For example, though the editors have enlisted the help of a Hebraist in checking Biblical quotations, one finds that a good many of the original inaccuracies in the transcription of Hebrew words have been left uncorrected in the English text. One reads roshi for rashe, chelob for chebel or better khebel, kazir for qatzin, gedah for ‘edah. In other places the German practice has been followed in rendering Hebrew y by j, and z by s or the reverse. In one instance, where Weber writes Jezreel, meaning Yisrael (i.e. Israel), the translators give Jezreel, which makes no sense in this passage.
Moreover, the translators sometimes fail to render the German accurately or intelligibly, which, to be sure, is not always easy but is always a responsibility to be taken with the greatest seriousness. Thus, “David ist des Panzers ungewohnt” becomes, most disconcertingly, “David is unusual to mail” (p. 25). “In den zweifellosen Parallelen” becomes, in defiance of English grammar, which is not too demanding, “in the doubtless parallels.” And one is bewildered to find that “the striving of the priests for insurmountable, confessionally discriminating duties of Israel” is meant to render “das Streben der Priester nach absolut unüberstieglichen ‘konfessionellen’ Unterscheid-ungspflichten Israels.” Would any reader ignorant of German be likely to guess that the original refers to the setting up by the priests of religious obligations meant to form an insurmountable barrier to non-Israelites? Rather seriously misleading is the rendering “prophets of grace” for Heilspropheten instead of “prophets of salvation” (the term is correctly rendered elsewhere in the book). And why in the world should Babylonian omen-literature be called “scurrilous” when Weber calls it monströs ? On the same page Bilderfeinde (iconoclasts) is rendered “icon-fiends”! Finally, as examples of the complete reversal of the author’s meaning are the renderings “sanctioned” for straft (punishes), and “tarrying” for im Warren (expectant).
It is a pity that having invested so much labor in their translation, Drs. Gerth and Martindale did not take a little extra trouble and go through the manuscript with a self-critical scrutiny.
It is only fair, however, to add that the editors have made partial amends for the imperfections of their translation by providing useful indexes to the book (characteristically missing in the German original), by writing a preface that briefly and helpfully characterizes the work of Weber and also includes some well-selected references to pertinent literature on Weber and on Israelite culture, and by breaking up the two exhausting sections of the book into a large number of small ones.
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