Hebraism and Hellenism reconsidered

Judaism, Spring, 1994 by Louis H. Feldman

Moreover, the Greeks do not conceive of the gods as creating the universe, but rather see the world as eternal. Their conception of the gods identifies them with nature; they evolve out of a primordial substance antedating and transcending them. In contrast, the Jewish God transcends nature. As Yehezkel Kaufmann contends, an abyss separates the religion of Israel from that of paganism. The difference is not merely an arithmetical one between monotheism and polytheism, since the Jewish conception of God rejects the pagan idea of a realm beyond deity and recognizes His sovereign transcendence over all.

The importance of time for Judaism may likewise be seen in the fact that in determining from which commandments women are free, the criterion is positive commandments which have a particular time attached to them (Mishnah, Kiddushin 1:7). In fact, the ethical code is grounded on historical events, notably the prohibition to oppress the stranger, "for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exod. 22:21, Deut. 10:19) and indeed, the commandment (Lev. 19:34, Deut. 10:19) to love the stranger as oneself.

In summary, Judaism is centered on time rather than on space. In answer to the question, "What was God doing before creation?" Augustine replies that He was creating a Hell for those who ask this question The answer, of course, is that for God there was no "before," since God is not limited by time but created time itself; but for the Jew, "before" and "after" are key terms. Indeed, time is arguably the greatest thing that God created; and hence for the Jew to waste time is sharply condemned, since a primary article of the Jewish faith is that time is sacred. A child asked Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk: "Where is God?" He answered: "Whenever you let Him in, not 'where' but 'whenever.'" For the Jew, not place but time and history are the true loci of godliness. And regardless of their theological tenets, all Jews share a common history; and recent history has taught that even those who did not share a common faith had a common fate.

NOTES

1. Lionel Trilling, Matthew Arnold (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), p. 234.

2. Warren D. Anderson, Matthew Arnold and the Classical Tradition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1965), p. 176, notes that it is to Heine, and ultimately to Heine's source, Borne, that Arnold owed the antithesis of Hebraism and Hellensim.

3. Milton Himmelfarb, The Jews of Modernity (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 299.

4. Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, trans. by Jules L. Moreau (London: Westmininster, 1960), p. 205.

5. John Ferguson, Moral Values in the Ancient World (London: 1958), p. 51.

6. See my Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), especially pp. 288-415.

7. So Arnaldo D. Momigliano, Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1977), p. 195.

8. An exception, perhaps, was the fifth-century. B.C.E. Anaxagoras. See G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1957), p. 390.