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The Christian Invention of “Judaism”

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The Christian Invention of “Judaism” The Christian Invention of “Judaism” Daniel Boyarin University of California at Berkeley In this lecture, I argue that “Judaism” was invented by Christians to serve the formation of the Church (with a capital C) as a new form of human collective. Jewry, however, I suggest, remained forever the old form of human collective, in which a People (locatively defined) worshipped its god and practiced its historical practices. A Palinode In a much earlier adumbration of the argument that I am making here, I proposed that the invention of “Judaism” by Christian writers was part and parcel of the invention of “religion” in the fourth and fifth centuries. As demonstrated at length by Brent Nongbri in his Yale dissertation, some of my key evidence was simply misconstrued by me, in large part because I committed what I take to be now a cardinal sin, depending on translations for scholarly work. Consequently I now am convinced that the idea expressed there that “religion” in something close to the modern sense discussed above in the first chapter was fabricated in the fourth century is generally invalid.1 Nongbri himself, writes, however that “in spite of these points of disagreement, I think that Boyarin’s recognition that this time period marks a certain epistemic shift is an acute observation.”2 Nongbri’s own account of that epistemic shift is of great interest and has much to teach us. I would focus here, however, on the transformations of “Ioudaismos” that I see taking place then. If, in its earlier and very rare usage, as I have argued in chapter 2 above, Ioudaismos in the pens of Palestinian Judeans means only loyalty to Judean doings, now it comes to mean, but only in Christian parlance, something quite distinct from that. Abandoning the (now clearly perceived as) anachronistic term, “religion,” in my analysis, I am going to term the new turn—not claiming, of course, any originality here—as the invention of “orthodoxy,” as well as its concomitant body, the Church, for which here, however, I will use the Greek term Ekklesia. Put in other terms, it involves the shift from locative to non-locative accounts of group boundaries and definitions. According to Rowan Williams, “Orthodoxy” is a way that a “religion,” separated from the locativity of ethnic or geocultural self-definition as Christianity was, asks itself: “[H]ow, if at all, is one to identify the ‘centre’ of [our] 61 Westar Fall 2016 Boyarin, Christian Invention 62 religious tradition? At what point and why do we start speaking about ‘a’ religion? . .”3 I will modify this only by suggesting that in place of “religion” here and to keep things clear, let us substitute Ekklesia, not as the building or as the local community but as the corporate body of Orthodox Christianity as well as its supernal homologue. The Ekklesia, we might say, invents “Judaism” as an alternate, as the dark double of the true Ekklesia, transforming Jews from a People to an Ekklesia via the medium of orthodoxy, an Ekklesia that it names Ioudaismos in Greek. The crux of the matter seems to me to be that in order for there to be a true Ekklesia, there had to be a false one too. Let us go back, then, and look at the beginnings of the Christian naming of Ioudaismos, and work our way up to the period in question at the end of the fourth century. What I hope to show is that the development of Christian orthodoxy involved not only the production of Christian heresies but also the interpellation (hailing into existence) of another “orthodoxy,” another Ekklesia, as it were, with an orthodoxy of its own, that of the Jews. This dark double of the true Ekklesia was frequently, at least later on, named, in fact, Synagoga. Needless to say, this word never has such a meaning in Jewish sources, as it refers in them only to a building and a community that worships in it and not a corporate body [corporeal or mystical] at all.4 This latter orthodoxy, the orthodoxy of the phantasmal Synagoga, was named by Christians, Ioudaismos. As we shall observe, this term, originally used by its earliest Christian writers as an internal flaw or tendency in Christianismos, through the fourth century becomes the name for that other (false) orthodoxy, “Judaism.” Ignatius; or, Ioudaismos Becomes “Judaism” Ignatius of Antioch is apparently the first Christian writer (I am not including Paul as a Christian, who may, nonetheless, have been his source for the word). The bishop and future martyred saint inveighed mightily against those who blurred the boundaries between Jew and Christian. His very inveighings, however, are indicative of the ideological work that he is performing. In Ignatius’s time (and, I will hypothesize, for many generations after), “Ioudaismos” and “Christianismos” constituted a very fuzzy category, or better, set of categories.5 The “fuzzy category” is referred to by Ignatius as the “monster”: “It is monstrous to talk of Jesus Christ and to practice Ioudaismos” [Magnesians 10:3],6 he proclaims, thus making both points at once, the drive of the nascent orthodoxy—understood as a particular social location and as a particular form of self fashioning and identity making7—, to normative separation and the lack of clear separations “on the ground.” What is most important for my purposes here, however, is to see that for Ignatius, Ioudaismos is clearly a matter of praxis, not yet an institution, not yet a Synagoga. Westar Fall 2016 Boyarin, Christian Invention 63 The question of names and naming is central to the Ignatian enterprise. Near the very beginning of his letter to the Ephesians, in a passage the significance of which has been only partly realized in my view, Ignatius writes, “Having received in God your much loved name, which you possess by a just nature according to faith and love in Christ Jesus, our Savior--being imitators of God, enkindled by the blood of God, you accomplished perfectly the task suited to you” [1:1]. 8 Although this interpretation has been spurned by most commentators and scholars of Ignatius,9 I would make a cornerstone of my construction the to read this as a reference to the name “Christians.”10 It was, after all, in Ignatius’s Antioch that the people were first called by that name (Acts 11:26). Ignatius is complimenting the church in Ephesus as being worthy, indeed, to be called by the name of Christ owing to their merits.11 Indeed, as Schoedel does not fail to point out, in Magnesians 10:1, Ignatius writes, “Therefore let us become his disciples and learn to live according to Christianity [Christianismos]. For one who is called by any name other than this, is not of God.”12 Even more to the point, however, is Magnesians 4:1: “It is right, then, not only to be called Christians but to be Christians.”13 Ignatius tells the Ephesians, then, that they are not just called Christians but are Christians, by nature [φύσει], as it were.14 Ignatius goes on in verse 2 to write, “For hearing that I was put in bonds from Syria for the common name and hope, hoping by your prayer to attain to fighting with beasts in Rome, that by attaining I may be able to be a disciple, you hastened to see me.”15 Once again, the interpretative tradition seems to have missed an attractively specific interpretation of “name” here that links it to the “name” in the previous verse. It is not so much, I opine, the name of Christ that is referred to here16 as the name of “Christian,” which equals “disciple” (cf. again Acts 11:26: “And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.”). The “common hope” is Jesus Christ (cf. Eph. 21:1; Trallians 2:2),17 but the common “name” is “Christian.” I would suggest that Ignatius represents here the martyrological theme of the centrality of martyrdom in establishing the name “Christian” as the legitimate and true name of the disciple; this, in accord with the practice whereby “Christianos eimi” were the last words of the martyr, the name for which she died.18 Similarly in the next passage, Ignatius explicitly connects martyrdom with “the name”: “I do not command you as being someone; for even though I have been bound in the name, I have not yet been perfected in Jesus Christ” [3:1]. The “name” in which Ignatius has been bound (i.e., imprisoned and sent to Rome for martyrdom) is the name “Christianos.”19 The nexus between having the right to that name and martyrdom or between martyrdom and identity, and the nexus between them and heresiology, separation from Ioudaismos is also clear.20 In opening his letters with this declaration, I think, Ignatius is declaring one of his major themes for the corpus entire: the establishment of a new Christian identity, Westar Fall 2016 Boyarin, Christian Invention 64 distinguished and distinguishable from Ioudaismos. If this is seen as a highly marked moment in his texts, then one can follow this as a dominant theme throughout his letters, and the protoheresiology21 of Ignatius is profoundly related to this themes, as well. This issue is most directly thematized, however, in Ignatius’s letter to the Magnesians. He exhorts: “Be not deceived by erroneous opinions nor by old fables, which are useless. For if we continue to live until now according to Judaism, we confess that we have not received grace” [Magnesians 8:1].22 Ioudaismos is defined here by Ignatius, a erroneous opinions and old fables, but what precisely does he mean? Let us go back to the beginning of the letter.
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