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The Contribution of Professor Salo W. Baron to the Study of Ancient Jewish History: His Appraisal of Anti-Judaism and Proselytism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2009

Louis H. Feldman
Affiliation:
Yeshiva University, New York, N.Y.
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Extract

A few years ago, a committee, of which I was a member, was asked to select, for a prize awarded by Moment magazine, the greatest living man and woman scholars in the field of Jewish studies. There was immediate consensus as to the former: who else but Professor Salo W. Baron? It is indicative of his almost legendary range of knowledge, of both primary and secondary sources, in the dozen or more languages in which he was fluent, of the general literature in the fields of the humanities and the social sciences, and of his prodigious productivity that a question frequently asked about him was whether he had assistants in the composition of his numerous works. The answer to that question was a resounding no! His only assistant was his late wife. His unflagging industry was matched only by the independence of his critical judgment.

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Articles
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Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 1993

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References

1. Jewish Quarterly Review 43 (1952–1953): 97110.Google Scholar

2. 1.250. All references, unless otherwise indicated, are to volumes and page numbers of Professor Baron's, ASocial and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed., vols. 1 and 2 (New York: Columbia University Press and Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1952).Google Scholar

3. See Feldman, Louis H., “Pro-Jewish Intimations in Anti-Jewish Remarks Cited in Josephus' Against Apion,” Jewish Quarterly Review 78 (1987–1988): 187, n. 1.Google Scholar

4. In Tradition 1 (1958–1959): 2739.Google Scholar

5. In Baron, Salo W., “World Dimensions of Jewish History,” in Aaron Steinberg, ed., Simon Dubnow: The Man and His Work (Paris: French Section of the World Jewish Congress, 1963), p. 36.Google Scholar

6. In his last published work, The Contemporary Relevance of History: A Study in Approaches and Methods(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 30, Professor Baron suggests that the stress on the lachrymose conception of history was consciously or unconsciously placed at the service of the Jewish Emancipation movement, since it helped to refute the argument that giving Jews full equality would hurt society through the expansion of usury by Jews. By emphasizing the sufferings of the Jews, these historians emphasized that the shortcomings of Jews were due to the discrimination and oppression to which they were constantly subject, and that once these disappeared the Jews would become integrated with the rest of society.Google Scholar

7. See also Baron, Salo W., “Changing Patterns of Antisemitism: A Survey,” Jewish Social Studies 38 (1976): 10.Google Scholar

8. In Alexander Severus, Scriplores Historiae Auguslae 29.2.Google Scholar

9. Baron, “Changing Patterns of Antisemitism,” p. 5.Google Scholar

10. Ibid, pp. 5–38.

11. See Feldman, Louis H., “Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World,” in David Berger, ed., History and Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986), pp. 1542.Google Scholar

12. See Balsdon, J. P. V. D., Romans and Aliens (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), pp. 6061 and sources cited on p. 269, n. 12.Google Scholar

13. Ibid, p. 64.

14. Ibid, p. 66.

15. Ibid, pp. 67–68.

16. Bellum Alexandrinum 7.2, cited by Balsdon, ibid, p. 69.

17. Ibid, pp. 31–33.

18. Stern, Menahem, ed., Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974–1984).Google Scholar

19. The percentages in the two substantive volumes are essentially the same. In vol. 1, from Herodotus in the fifth century B.C.E. through Plutarch in the first century C.E., 47 notices are favorable (16 percent), 69 are unfavorable (24 percent), and 165 are neutral (60 percent). In vol. 2, covering the period from the second through the sixth century, 54 are favorable (20 percent), 61 are unfavorable (21 percent), and 174 are neutral (59 percent).Google Scholar

20. See Feldman, , “Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World,” pp. 3032.Google Scholar

21. Apion, cited in Josephus, Against Apion2.91–96; and Damocritus, in Suidas, s.v.Google Scholar

22. Seneca, ap.Augustine, De Civitate Dei 6.11.Google Scholar

23. Ap.Josephus, Against Apion1. 176183.Google Scholar

24. Ap.Augustine, De Civitate Dei4.31.2.Google Scholar

25. Some scholars, such as Ziegler, Konrat, “Das Genesiscitat in der Schrift Peri Hupsous,Hermes 50 (1915): 572603, have argued that the citation from Genesis breaks the train of thought of “Longinus,” and that the parallels with Jewish thought and vocabulary could not possibly stem from him.Google Scholar But Mutschmann, Hermann, “Das Genesiscitat in der Schrift Peri HupsousHermes 52 (1917): 161200, correctly noted that the passage in question is very much in place and is, indeed, the climax of the argument by “Longinus.”Google ScholarNorden, Eduard, “Das Genesiscitat in der Schrift vom Erhabenen,” Abhandlungen der deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Klasse fur Sprachen, Lileratur und Kunst, 1954, no. I (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1955), has suggested that “Longinus” was a pagan Greek author who knew and used Jewish writings, especially those of Philo.Google ScholarMommsen, Theodor, Romische Geschichte (Berlin: Weidmann, 1885), 5:494;Google Scholar Wilhelm von Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur, bis auf die Zeit Justinians, 4th ed. (Munich: Beck, 1905), p. 788; and Sedgwick, Walter B., “Sappho in ‘Longinus’ (X,2, Line 13),” American Journal of Philology 69 (1948): 198199, have called him a Hellenized JewGoogle Scholar. Goold, George P., “A Greek Professorial Circle at Rome,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 92 (1961): 177, says that he belonged to the same environment which produced Philo, and that he was in some sense a JewGoogle Scholar. Gager, John G., Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), p. 63, plausibly states that since the line of demarcation between Greeks with Jewish sympathies and Hellenized Jews was extremely vague in cultural, philosophical, and religious matters, we cannot draw any convincing conclusion in the matter.Google Scholar

26. An intriguing question is why the church, which was, to some degree, at least, responsible for the preservation of classical writers both in the East and in the West, permitted the anti-Jewish writings of the six leading anti-Jewish authors cited by Josephus in his Against Apion–Manetho, Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Apion, Poseidonius, and Apollonius Molon–to be lost. In my “Pro-Jewish Intimations in Anti-Jewish Remarks Cited in Josephus' Against Apion,” Jewish Quarterly Review 78 (1987–1988): 191194, I conjecture that one of the reasons why the church decided not to preserve the anti-Jewish writings was that they contained some pro-Jewish concessions or implications or were more neutral than the church preferred.Google Scholar

27. Ap. Against Apion1.229. Baron (1.383, n. 36), following Laqueur, Richard, , s.v. “Manethon,” Realencyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1928), 27:10601101, notes that the authentic fragments ascribed to Manetho show no anti- Jewish bias, and that, of the amplifications by both Egyptians and Jews, some are pro-Jewish and some are anti-Jewish. But see my “Pro-Jewish Intimations,” pp. 188–189, n. 2.Google Scholar

28. See, e.g., Herodotus 2.2; Diodorus 1.11.5–6; and Philo, De Specialibus Legibus1.1.2.Google Scholar

29. Ap.Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica10.10.16.Google Scholar

30. Tacitus 5.5 and Juvenal 14. 103104.Google Scholar

31. See my “Pro-Jewish Intimations,” pp. 207210.Google Scholar

32. Thucydides 5.68; Plutarch, Lycurgus 21 A;Josephus, Against Apion 2.259.Google Scholar

33. Ap. Against Apion 2.148.Google Scholar

34. See Feldman, Louis H., “Proselytism by Jews in the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Centuries,” Journal for the Study of Judaism, in press.Google Scholar

35. See ibid.

36. See Baron “Changing Patterns of Antisemitism,” p. 9.Google Scholar

37. Josephus, Cf., War 6.312.Google Scholar

38. See Horace, Odes4.15; Suetonius, Augustus31.14.Google Scholar

39. Dio Cassius 51.20.68.Google Scholar

40. Baron, Salo W., “The Israelitic Population under the Kings,” in Leon Feldman, A., ed., Ancient and Medieval Jewish History: Essays by Salo Wittmayer Baron (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 2373;Google Scholar originally published in Hebrew, in Abhandlungen zur Erinnerung an Hirsch Perez Chajes (Vienna: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1933), pp. 76136.Google Scholar

41. Hume, David, “On the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” in his Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, ed. by Green Hill, Thomas and Hodge Grose, Thomas (London: Longmans, Green, 1875), p. 58. Cited by Baron, “Israelitic Population under the Kings,” p. 23.Google Scholar

42. Baron, Salo W., ” in Feldman, Leon A., ed., Ancient and Medieval Jewish History: Essays by Salo Wittmayer Baron (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1972), p. 373, n. 1.Google Scholar

43. Baron, Salo W., , s.v. “Population,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971), 13:869.Google Scholar

44. Professor Baron notes that Titus had four legions, whereas previously three legions had been sufficient to conquer all of Armenia (2.92). Again, Josephus would have been a laughingstock if his statement (War1.1) that the war between the Jews and the Romans was the greatest not only of the wars of his time but of all wars that had ever been waged had not had a real basis in fact.Google Scholar

45. See Butzer, Karl W., Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt: A Study in Cultural Ecology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 9192.Google Scholar

46. As to why no missionaries are mentioned, we may suggest that the one author who might have been expected to name them, Josephus, is not particularly interested in religious history and, in any case, is careful not to offend his patrons, the Romans, who were very sensitive about proselytizing. As to the rabbis in the talmudic corpus, they were, for the most part, living at a time (after the Bar Kochba rebellion) when proselytizing had diminished in volume and had even become dangerous; they, too, were, in general, not interested in antagonizing the Romans.

47. In typical fashion, Professor Baron, recognizing the importance of economic factors in religious movements, conjectures that Ananias, the Jewish merchant-missionary who converted the royal family of Adiabene, may have been prompted more by a wish to enlist royal support for his commercial transactions than by religious zeal (1.173).

48. Tcherikover, Victor, “Jewish Apologetic Literature Reconsidered,” Eos 48 (1956): 169193.Google Scholar

49. See now Harris, William V., Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 175284.Google Scholar

50. For further reasons why Tcherikover's thesis must be challenged, see Feldman, , “Pro- Jewish Intimations,” pp. 230243.Google Scholar

51. We may also suggest that the synagogues were attractive to non-Jewish businessmen for economic reasons. If, indeed, it was important, as the new inscriptions from Aphrodisias show, to list the occupations of donors, it may be that a particular synagogue attracted those who had certain occupations, just as we hear that in the great synagogue in Alexandria seating was by trade (Sukkah 51b). Hence, people in specific trades may have come to the synagogue to meet those with whom they did business or who were members of the same craft.

52. One of the inscriptions from Aphrodisias, dated in the third century, according to its editors, mentions a patella,which they interpret to mean a soup kitchen, to which the list of names that follows contributed. This, then, we may suggest, may have been one of the attractions to Judaism, or at any rate to the synagogue, on the part of those who were povertystricken. See Reynolds, Joyce and Tannenbaum, Robert, Jews and Godfearers at Aphrodisias (Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, Supplementary vol. 12, 1987), p. 27Google Scholar, and the discussion by Feldman, Louis H., “Proselytes and ‘Sympathizers’ in the Light of the New Inscriptions from Aphrodisias,” Revue des études juives 148 (1989): 287288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53. In Egypt, however, we may note, on the basis of the loan documents that have survived in the papyri, Jews were lending money to their fellow-Jews at the usual rate of interest. See Feldman, Louis H., “The Orthodoxy of the Jews in Hellenistic Egypt,” Jewish Social Studies 22 (1960): 236.Google Scholar

54. Acts 10:2, 22, 35; 13:16, 26, 43, 50; 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7.Google Scholar

55. War2.454, 463, 7.45; Antiquities14.110. See the discussion of these and other passages referring to “sympathizers” in Feldman, Louis H., “The Omnipresence of the God-Fearers,” Biblical Archaeology Review 12, no. 5 (September-October 1986): 5869.Google Scholar

56. For other evidence as to the existence of “God-fearers,” see Feldman, , “Proselytes and ‘Sympathizers,’” pp. 274282.Google Scholar

57. E.g., Zeitlin, in his review of the first two volumes of Professor Baron's Social and Religious History of the Jews(p. 105), objects to his use of the term “semiproselytism,” asserting that Judaism has never recognized semiproselytism. But we may reply, in Professor Baron's defense, that he never says that Judaism gave recognition to semiproselytes; in fact, he says (2.149) that the rabbis fought against incomplete conversion with all means at their disposal. But what Professor Zeitlin cannot deny is that there were such people.Google Scholar

58. Baron, , “Changing Patterns of Antisemitism,” p. 9.Google Scholar

59. Valerius Maximus 1.3.3, in the epitome of Januarius Nepotianus (ca. 500 C.E.).

60. Valerius Maximus (1.3.3), in the epitome of Julius Paris (ca. 400 C.E.).

61. For similar reasons rhetoricians and philosophers had been expelled in 161 and 154 B.C.E.

62. See Josephus, , Antiquities18.81–84; Tacitus, Annals2.85; Suetonius, Tiberius36; Dio Cassius 57.18.5aGoogle Scholar. Abel, Ernest L., “Were the Jews Banished from Rome in 19 A.D.?Revue des études juives 127 (1968): 383386, concludes that the decree was directed against proselytes alone, since Tiberius was a strict adherent of the law and would not have banished a citizen without a trial, and that all that Tiberius insisted upon was that Judaism be practiced only by those who were Jewish by birth. A likely allusion to the episode apears in Seneca, who notes, though without mentioning the Jews by name, that in Tiberius' reign some foreign rites were introduced and that the proof that a person was an adherent of the new cult was his abstention from the flesh of certain animals, a possible allusion to Jewish dietary laws (Epistulae Morales108.22).Google Scholar

63. Dio Cassius, to be sure, says that Claudius did not expel the Jews, inasmuch as they had increased so greatly in numbers, but ordered them, while continuing their traditional mode of life, not to hold meetings (60.6.6). In any case neither Josephus, who is very full at this point, nor Tacitus makes any mention of an expulsion. If, as most scholars believe, the reference to Chrestus is actually to Christus, i.e., Jesus, perhaps only the Christians were expelled, though Acts 18:2 very clearly states that Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 2.116, suggests that perhaps Claudius did, indeed, intend to expel all the Jews from Rome and may even have issued an edict to that effect, but that, under pressure from the Jews and presumably especially from Agrippa I, who was so instrumental in getting the imperial throne for him (Josephus, Antiquities 19.236–244), he revoked the order and forbade only the right to assemble.

64. Zeitlin, in his review, pp. 9899, criticizes Professor Baron for not differentiating between the views on proselytism of Hillel in the first century and those of Eleazar ben Pedat in the third century; but the fact is that there is continuity on a theoretical level toward proselytism. The differences come in point of fact when proselytism is forbidden upon pain of death.Google Scholar

65. See Feldman, , “Proselytes and ‘Sympathizers,’” pp. 265305.Google Scholar

66. See Feldman, , ldquo;Proselytism by Jews.”Google Scholar

67. See MacMullen, Ramsay, Roman Government's Response to Crisis, A.D. 235–337 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), esp. pp. 9194.Google Scholar

68. See the discussion by Feldman, “Proselytes and ‘Sympathizers,’” pp. 282297.Google Scholar

69. See Chrysostom, John, Adversus Judaeos 1.2.27.847, 2.3.4.861, 4.7.3.881, 7.1.2.915.Google Scholar

70. Baron, “Changing Patterns of Antisemitism,” p. 10.Google Scholar

71. See Philo, De Specialibus Legibus1.12.69 and De Providentia (ap.Eusebius, )Praeparatio Evangelica8.14.398B.Google Scholar

72. According to Josephus a crowd of not less than 3 million Jews denounced the procurator Florus to Gallus in 65 (War2.280). Even if this figure is exaggerated, as it appears to be, the number must have been impressive.

73. See Feldman, “Omnipresence of the God-Fearers,” p. 67, n. 32.Google Scholar

74. Well aware that his readers would question his statement about the great wealth of the Temple, Josephus notes that “there is no lack of witnesses to the great amount of the sums mentioned, nor have they been raised to so great a figure through boastfulness or exaggeration on our part, but there are many historians who bear us out, in particular Strabo” (Antiquities 14.111).

75. Professor Baron conjectures that the anti-Jewish riots recorded in Alexandria in 88–87 B.C.E. may have been caused by the passions aroused by the charge of double loyalty that presumably resulted from this incident (1.216).

76. Stern, Menahem, “Antisemitism in Rome,” in Shmuel Almog, Antisemitism Through the Ages(Oxford: Pergamon, 1988), p. 14, correctly remarks that the Roman victory in this war was considered the greatest military exploit of the Flavian dynasty, as seen in the various allusions to it in the Latin poetry of that generation (e.g., Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica1.12–14; Silius Italicus, Punica3,600–606). Furthermore, as Stern points out, a famous inscription dating from the year 80 in honor of Titus refers to him as one who had subjugated the Jewish people and the city of Jerusalem and remarks that this was an achievement which no general or king or people had ever previously accomplished (Corpus Inscriplionum Latinarum6.944 = M. McCrum andGoogle ScholarWoodhead, A. G., Select Documents of the Principates of the Flavian Emperors, Including the Year of Revolution [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966], no. 53).Google Scholar