<<

RRJ 10,2_f3_162-175IIIII 11/14/07 6:41 PM Page 162

JEREMIAH 9:22–23 IN PHILO AND PAUL

Arkady Kovelman Lomonosov Moscow State University

Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his , neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD who exercises loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD. Jer. 9:22–23 The continuity of can be seen in two forms: first, in the chain of tradition (e.g., “midrashic process”); second, in the essen- tiality that would create the same phenomena in the absence of any visible connection. The philosophical of Jer. 9:22–23 may be the most striking example of the latter. Starting with Abraham bar Hiyya, Jewish philosophers construed this pericope via the Greek theory of “the ” (to agathon, ).1 extracted four values from the saying of Jeremiah. In his opinion, these four values coincide with the classes of human perfection. The “might” and the “riches” are equivalent to ’s “ of the body” and “external goods,” while the ”wisdom” and the “understand- ing of God” are equivalent to Aristotle’s “goods of the soul” (i.e., the exercise of moral virtue and the activity of contemplation). The knowl- edge and imitation of God would represent the final telos of human life. Abraham bar Hiyya and derived the three human values (wisdom, might, and richness) from the three parts of the human soul: rational, vegetative, and animal. According to A. Altmann, Maimonides based his reasoning on the elaborate discussion of the four kinds of perfection found in Ibn Bajja’s “Letter of Farewell.”2

1 See a general review of the problem in A. Melamed, “‘Let Not a Man Glory.’ Philosophical Exegesis of Jeremiah 9:22–23 in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Thought,” in Studies in Jewish Thought 4 (1985), pp. 31–82, in Hebrew. 2 A. Altmann, “Maimonides ‘Four Perfections’,” in Essays in Jewish Intellectual History (Hanover and London, 1981), pp. 65–76. On the exegesis of Jer. 9:22–23

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 Review of Rabbinic 10.2 Also available online – www.brill.nl RRJ 10,2_f3_162-175IIIII 11/14/07 6:41 PM Page 163

jeremiah 9:22–23 in philo and paul 163

Medieval Jewish thinkers did not refer to Philo the Alexandrian on this exegesis of Jeremiah. Nor could these thinkers acquire the ideas of Philo from their Moslem colleagues, as the latter were not conducting biblical exegesis in order to understand Aristotelian sum- mum bonum. Yet the similarities between Philo and medieval philo- sophical tradition are striking. To the best of my knowledge, the only one of Philo’s allusions to Jeremiah’s saying that has been noticed by scholars is Spec. Leg. I, 311–312. Klaus Berger referred to that exegesis while commenting on the paraphrase of Jer. 9:22–23 in the Wisdom Treatise from Cairo Geniza.3 The Treatise, written in the form of traditional either in the second century C.E. (according to Berger) or between the sixth and twelfth centuries (according to Rügers),4 gives five (not three) values a man should not glory in: beauty, might, wis- dom, riches, and family size. Berger pointed out that beauty (while absent in Jer. 9) also appears in Philo’s allusion to Jer. 9 in the Special Laws I, 311–312. Yet there is much more to find in this frag- ment. In paragraphs 311–312 Philo writes: Let God alone be thy boast (aukhema sou) and thy chief glory... and pride thyself neither on riches nor on reputation nor dominion nor comeliness nor strength of body, nor any such thing, whereby the hearts of the empty-minded are wont to be lifted up. Consider in the first place that these things have nothing in them of the nature of the true good; secondly, how quickly comes the hour of their passing, how they

in Maimonides see also D.H. Frank, “The End of the Guide: Maimonides on the Best Life for Man,” in Judaism 34, 4 (1985), pp. 485–495; W.Z. Harvey, “Maimonides on Human Perfection, Awe, and Politics,” in The Thought of Maimonides (Livingstone, 1990), pp. 1–15; U. Gershowitz, “The End of the ‘Guide for the Perplexed,’ Persistence of Structural Correspondence in Mediaeval Philosophical Exegesis,” in Vestnik Yevreyskogo Universiteta (The Journal of Jewish University) 25 (2002), pp. 67–90, in Russian. 3 K. Berger, Die Weisheitschrift aus der Kairoer Geniza: Erstedition, Kommentar und Übersetzung (Tübingen, 1989), p. 306. 4 H.P. Rügers, Die Weisheitsschrift aus der Kairoer Genisa. Text, Übersetzung und philologischer Kommentar, WUNT 53, 1991, p. 15. According to Rügers the treatise is a product of medieval Jewish Neo- (p. 17). Rügers noticed connections between the Treatise and the famous maxim of Ben Zoma in M. Abot 4:1 (“Who is a sage? He who learns from everybody. Who is strong? He who overcomes his desire. Who is rich? He who is happy in what he has. Who is honored? He who honors every- body”). In the Treatise 9:16 we read “Let the mighty man not glory in his might if he does not overcome his desire.” Interestingly, it was Don Isaac Abarvanel who believed the sayings of Ben Zoma in Abot 4:1 and the answers of the Elders of the South to Alexander Macedon in Bavli Tamid to be a commentary on Jer. 9.22–23 (Melamed, op. cit., pp. 60–80).