How Judaism Withstood Hellenism

...to the completion of the Babylonian Talmud about 500 C.E...

...Both are well aware of the range of scholarship on various phases of their respective books, but Cohen is more decisive in taking stands on issues where scholars are divided whereas Schiffman carefully reports different points of view—both traditionalist and critical—generally without revealing his preference...

...The answer, as Schiffman so beautifully demonstrates, lies in rabbinic Judaism's paradoxical self-confidence and defensiveness, ¦ its unity and diversity, its stubbornness and flexibility...

...Two themes reflecting the latest scholarship dominate Schiffman's book...

...His Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World will be published by Princeton Univ...

...When Jews confronted the attractions of Hellenism, as Schiffman correctly points out, relatively few Jews defected...

...Professor of classics at Yeshhra University, Louis H. Feldman is author and editor of several books on Josephus...

...H. L. Mencken once remarked that for every complex problem there is an answer that is short, simple—and wrong...

...This book, justifiably does much to refute the old lachrymose approach to the history of these 1,000 years, which saw this period as an age of suffering and martyrdom and which viewed Judaism more as a fate than a faith...

...To see the vast differences that emerged during this millennium one need only compare a typical biblical book with a typical treatise of the Talmud or of the Midrash...

...It is tempting to compare it with Shaye J. D. Cohen's From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Westminster, 1987), which, to be sure, covers a much shorter period (somewhat less than 400 years...

...Samuel Butler remarked that even God cannot alter the past but historians can and do...

...The second theme is that the many different approaches in Judaism are tied together by the common bond of biblical text and tradition...

...The first is that Judaism was continuous from the biblical period through the completion of the Babylonian Talmud...

...299 pp., S39.50 cloth, S16.95 paper Reviewed by Louis H. Feldman One thousand years of Jewish history are examined in this book, from the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E...

...Though he does not attempt to draw lessons for the present, those lessons are not far to seek...

...In fact, Schiffman might have made more of the philojudaism of a number of distinguished writers, notably Aristotle and Theophrastus, as well as the conversion of many thousands— perhaps hundreds of thousands—to Judaism...

...the later Judaism of the rabbis is deeply rooted in the Judaism of the period following the destruction of the First Temple...

...It is this development, in its political, religious and cultural aspects that From Text to Tradition endeavors to cover...

...It was a Judaism that, according to the Jerusalem Talmud, had room for debate within itself, with 24 different sects, including one that actually dared to deny the validity of the oral Torah itself (as it was to be later codified in the Talmud), another that demanded celibacy and a third that had a different calendar...

...As newly discovered inscriptions, notably from Aphrodisias, in Turkey, indicate, Judaism, even when it was competing with Christianity for souls, was attracting many gentiles as full-fledged Jews or, more usually, as "God-fearers" who observed certain Jewish practices without officially converting.* From Text to Tradition does much to explain the power of Judaism that enabled it during this millennium to remain strong despite the challenge of Hellenism and later of Christianity arid even to counterattack...

...Although Schiffman does not use footnotes to show his sources, virtually every statement has been carefully weighed and worded...

...It may be that for this very reason they are useful to God, and that is why God tolerates their existence...

...Both Schiffman and Cohen write for those who have relatively little background, but Cohen writes for the college or seminary student whereas Schiffman's book is more popular and is ideal as a textbook for adult education classes in synagogues...

...To his great credit, even in a brief book, Schiffman avoids that kind of oversimplification and views the period in carefully nuanced terms...

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