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Pesher, Ha-Zonah, and Teshuvah in Solomon's Apocalypse: Text And University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository History ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations Summer 7-15-2017 Pesher, ha-Zonah, and Teshuvah in Solomon’s Apocalypse: Text and Context of The hrC onicle of Solomon bar Samson Natalie E. Latteri Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Latteri, Natalie E.. "Pesher, ha-Zonah, and Teshuvah in Solomon’s Apocalypse: Text and Context of The hrC onicle of Solomon bar Samson." (2017). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/178 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in History ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Natalie E. Latteri Candidate History ! Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Michael A. Ryan ! Timothy C. Graham ! Sarah Davis-Secord ! Devorah Schoenfeld ! Ruth Mazo Karras ! ! ! ! ! i """"" Pesher, ha-Zonah, and Teshuvah in Solomon’s Apocalypse: Text and Context of The Chronicle of Solomon bar Samson """"" """"" By Natalie E. Latteri A.A., History, San Joaquin Delta College, 2006 B.A., History, University of California at Davis, 2008 M.A., History, Purdue University, 2011 """"" DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy History Degree Title Awarded The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico July, 2017 ii Dedication "" "" For my mother, Suzanna, my partner, Nathan, and our children, Jonas and Amalie iii Acknowledgements The writing of this dissertation has been an expensive, long, complicated, and often lonely process. I have, more often than I would like to admit, found myself uncertain of everything and the purpose of anything. I am fortunate to have been surrounded by a community of scholars, friends, and family who remind me. Funding for my doctoral research, travel to conferences, and the last fifteen months of writing has been provided, in part, by the American Association for Jewish Research (AAJR), the Midwest Jewish Studies Association, the Medieval Association of the Pacific, and numerous grants from associations, organizations, or departments at the University of New Mexico. I am grateful to the Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellowship Foundation, UNM Regents, the UNM Graduate and Professional Student Association, the UNM History Graduate Student Association, the UNM Department of History, the UNM Feminist Research Institute, and the UNM Institute for Medieval Studies. This dissertation could not have been written without the invaluable insights provided by my dissertation committee. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Devorah Schoenfeld from the Department of Theology at Loyola University, Chicago, and Timothy C. Graham from the Department of History at the University of New Mexico. These two committee members regularly took time out of their extremely busy schedules to read over and comment on individual chapters as I wrote them, and to regularly meet with and advise me. Ruth Mazo Karras of the Department of History at the University of iv Minnesota and Sarah Davis-Secord of the Department of History at the University of New Mexico have also provided extensive and provocative comments on the nearly finished dissertation project that have much improved the final product here. And my doctoral advisor, Michael A. Ryan, has always provided me with the freedom to explore topics and subject matter that interest me, and the encouragement to trust my instincts and develop arguments as I saw fit. Unofficial academic advisors beyond my committee members are numerous. Foremost among these is Judah Bob Rosenwald, who has been the source of so much transcription and translation assistance throughout the writing of this dissertation, the fount of truly disparate information ranging from string theory to soup recipes, ever a sympathetic ear, and an endless joy. I am also so very grateful to David Stern, the Harry Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature at Harvard University, and the chief grant reader for the AAJR, who not only had faith in my project, but who was also kind enough to provide encouragement, letters of reference, and introductions to Hebraists worldwide. Among these, César Merchan-Hamann, Director of the Leopold Muller Memorial Library and Curator of Hebraica and Judaica at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, was kind enough to provide me access to otherwise restricted material and patient enough to supervise my handling of it. I would also like to thank another fellow of the AAJR, Martha Himmelfarb of the Department of Religion at Princeton, who has been exceedingly generous with her thoughts on the Sefer Zerubbabel and has graciously shared her latest research on the subject both before and after publication. I would also like to thank Shamma Boyarin of the Department of English at v the University of Victoria and David Goodblatt of the Department of History at the University of California at San Diego for sending me copies of their work, which I have incorporated in my dissertation. Noel Pugach of the Department of History at the University of New Mexico has been a continued source of support, provoking questions, and much appreciated banter. Patricia Risso of the Department of History at the University of New Mexico has been a soothing voice of compassion and the epitome of wisdom and strength. And I am grateful to Marian Hessink of the Department of English at the University of New Mexico for providing clarity at a crucial time and wit always. Additional friends who have helped along the way by lending an ear, sharing their thoughts, and ever cheering me on include Liz Ebel, Thomas Franke, Jillian Krasuski, and Sarah Obenauf. Finally, I would like to thank my family. While each member of my very large extended family has supported me, I would be lost without my mother, Suzanna, my partner, Nathan Brown, and our children, Jonas and Amalie Latteri-Brown. Thank you for believing in me and for giving me something to believe in. vi Pesher, ha-Zonah, and Teshuvah in Solomon’s Apocalypse: Text and Context of The Chronicle of Solomon bar Samson by Natalie E. Latteri A.A., History, San Joaquin Delta College, 2006 B.A., History, University of California at Davis, 2008 M.A., History, Purdue University, 2011 Ph.D., History, University of New Mexico, 2017 ABSTRACT This dissertation analyzes the text and context of a mid-twelfth-century Hebrew narrative composed by a Northern European Jew writing pseudonymously as Solomon bar Samson. The so-called Chronicle of Solomon bar Samson treats the perceived reasons for and Jewish responses to the Rhineland pogroms of 1096 C.E., which were carried out by burghers, peasants, and crusaders traveling to the Holy Land. The reasons expressed range from divine retribution for Jewish transgression to Christian vengeance for Christ’s crucifixion while responses range from voluntary conversion aimed at preserving life to suicidal and homicidal martyrdom enacted in the hopes of securing atonement and redemption. Though it depicts historical events, employs elements of contemporary historical methodology, and scholars have designated it as a chronicle which lauds the victimized Jewish community as exemplars of piety, this dissertation contends that Solomon’s narrative neither represents a history nor an homage. A comparison of Jewish literary genres reveals, instead, that Solomon’s narrative bears similarities to and most likely was intended to function as an apocalypse. This emerges in Solomon’s employment vii of pesher biblical exegesis, in which apocalypticists commonly conflated periods of persecution in Israel’s history; the well-known Jewish trope of Israel as a promiscuous woman, and the related trope of Israel’s seduction by a promiscuous woman, a zonah; and the doctrine of reform, teshuvah. Through these, Solomon critiqued what he perceived to be religious leniency, both among the generation of 1096 C.E. as well as his own contemporary society, in the manner of a Jewish apocalypse. Namely, he suggested that all past moments of potential messianic redemption, including 1096 C.E., had not come to fruition because of over-familiarity with or assimilation to the dominant Christian culture. And, like all apocalypticists, he called for reform as a means of securing messianic redemption and ushering in the new and final era. viii Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1 Prelude to an Apocalypse……………………………………………..23 Chapter 2 ‘The End Is (and Was, and Will Be) Nigh’……………………………83 Chapter 3 Liaisons of an Adulterous Woman……………………………..……145 Chapter 4 Teshuvah………………………………………………………….…..211 Afterword……………………………………………………………………….269 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….276 ix Introduction At the Council of Clermont in November of 1095 C.E., Pope Urban II (1088-99 C.E.) called upon Western European Christian warriors to cease fighting among themselves and to unite against a common religio-political and ethnic enemy—the Dar al’Islam—in a Holy War that would come to be known as the First Crusade. Tensions had been mounting against Muslims whom Christians commonly, if less than accurately, had recognized as both Turci, “Turks,”1 and gens Persica, “a race of Persians,” over the course of the previous century.2 Animosity was owing, in no small part, to the Church’s aggressive program of evangelism and religious reform,3 the attending trends in penance and pilgrimage, and the territorial conflict over sacred sites associated with these practices.4 Each of these elements reflected and contributed to piqued eschatological anticipation throughout the Levantine and Mediterranean regions, Continental Europe, 1 Frutolf of Michelsberg, Chronica, in Frutolfi et Ekkehardi Chronica necnon Anonymi Chronica Imperato- rum. Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken, und die anonyme Kaiserchronik, ed. Franz-Josef Schmale and Irene Schmale-Ott (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972), 106.
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