BOOK
REVIEW Judaism's ancient voice of
reason The Philosophy of
Hebrew Scripture by Yoram Hazony
Reviewed
by Friedrich Hansen
Yoram Hazony is one of
the founders of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, an
academic research institute dedicated to the
sustenance of the Jewish People and Israel. This
scholarly book is about the extended narrative of
the ancient Hebrew Scriptures. It covers not only
the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, but all
the additional biblical texts that make up the
comprehensive History of Israel.
The
author is attempting to convince readers that by
including the context of the Mosaic Law, the
biblical covenant between God and the Children of
Israel and their proselytes, we can get an
understanding of the philosophy behind the Hebrew
Bible. But
above all this book allows us to read
the Hebrew Bible as a work of reason just like the
great Greek philosophers.
Hazony sets off
with the genuinely Christian and therefore
post-biblical dichotomy of reason and revelation -
reason being the product of man exercising
intellectual capabilities in order to grasp the
good, the beautiful and the true. In contrast,
God's revelation aims at accomplishing the same by
giving us a somewhat common sense or narrative
version, ie the literal stories of the Hebrew
Scripture.
In the history of ideas, namely
through the German-American political philosopher
Leo Strauss, this dichotomy has been addressed as
esoteric or elitist versus esoteric or everyman's
knowledge. Politically speaking, this split comes
at the price of creating a dualism that separates
a spiritual from the physical realm.
Just
as Philo of Alexandria in the first-century CE
attempted to synthesize Greek Philosophy and
Judaism, so Christianity can be depicted as quite
a different attempt to accomplish this, resulting
in a consequential Hellenization.
The
original motive of the Christian fathers might
have been to fend off all sorts of Gnostic rivals.
By contrast, as Hazony makes clear, the Hebrew
Bible, written 500 years before the dualism
appeared, did not really need to. Judaism always
lacked any missionary drive and was firmly moored
at the harbor of Jewish particularism or even
naturalism with an additional universalist touch
to it. It is against this historical background
that Hazony's book can be best understood.
Other Christian tenets that flow from the
reason-revelation split, such as the healing power
of faith and the concept of eternal life, were
also conspicuously absent from the core tenets of
Judaism. So much so that the philosopher Immanuel
Kant did not even acknowledge ancient Judaism as a
religion. This backfired during the 18th century,
when the philosophers of the Enlightenment used
the reason-revelation dichotomy to specifically
attack the philosophical underpinnings of the
Christian doctrine, rendering it as superstitious.
"Fideists and heretics alike", Hazony tells us,
"have thus had ample reason to insist on this
distinction, and many continue to do so even
today".
However, the Hebrew Bible was
ill-served historically by being interpreted
within the Christian framework of revelation
versus reason. Read as revelation, the Hebrew
Scripture is being completely distorted and its
message destroyed. In addition, this forceful
misreading had huge consequences, diminishing the
scripture's general standing and ultimately
leading to it being banned from universities and
public education.
Hazony therefore wishes
the original Hebrew narrative to be read entirely
as a work of reason. His book aims at persuading
readers of the usefulness of the Hebrew Bible as a
philosophical source for answering questions about
the nature of the universe and the right or just
life of man. To do this, he needs to dismantle
prejudices and obstacles of methodology.
Maintaining an emphasis on philosophical
argument, he furnishes examples of the
pre-Socratic philosophers such as Parmenides,
Empedocles and Heraclitus, who, in the fifth
century not long before the prophet Jeremiah
(647-572), all framed their ideas as being
revealed.
Even Socrates, as related by his
disciple Plato, had prophetic power and heard
voices delivering divine commands that prevented
him from doing certain untoward things. What
rightly puzzles Hazony is that modern historians
such as Bertrand Russell unambiguously read these
works by founders of the Western philosophic
tradition as words of reason.
Hazony
blames the different reading of Jeremiah and the
pre-Socratic philosophers on simple prejudice
rooted in the Christian dichotomy. Since the
Enlightenment, this same dichotomy has also been
upheld by the modern research of universities.
Originally developed in Germany by Wilhelm von
Humboldt, the interpretation was adopted and
implemented in the United States in the last third
of the 19th Century. From there originates the
exclusion of the Hebrew Bible from works of
reason.
Not for nothing was Greek
philosophy the main currency in continental
post-Enlightenment France and Germany. Thus, the
history of Western thought was rewritten with Kant
and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel gazing though a
Greek lens, with a rich Jewish tradition
marginalized as superstitious and rendered as
utterly worthless.
Hazony is quick to
assert that the Hebrew Bible does not offer one
single point of view, given that dozens of authors
have contributed at times contradictory accounts
to it. It is for this reason, he writes, that the
"heart" of the Bible is not easily accessible, but
has to be sought.
"Having been assembled
to embrace and heal a broken people after the loss
of its land and freedom, the Hebrew Bible could
not afford the parochialism of a narrow religious
sect, because it was consciously assembled to
serve as the basis for the thought of an entire
nation." Hazony goes even further, saying the
ambiguity and uncertainty of the biblical
narrative reflects the limits of human
intelligence or, as the author puts it, "ultimate
knowledge of God's thoughts is beyond the powers
of man, which are by nature weak and fallible".
For this reason, to get the full picture,
it is necessary to extend the reading of the
Hebrew Scripture beyond the five books of Moses,
the traditional halachic core depicting Jewish Law
sensu stricto. Only the complete narrative
all the way to the end of the Book of Kings gives
us the reading intended by the authors of the
scripture.
The complete narrative of the
History of Israel is altogether about 150,000
words and consists of nine works: Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges,
Samuel and Kings. The second half of the history
is then included in the anthology of the Prophets.
Hazony also notes that many editions of the Hebrew
Bible divide Samuel and Kings into smaller works,
but this is certainly a post-Talmudic (ancient
Rabbinic) innovation. This
brings us back to the starting point: the
reason-revelation dichotomy which is the book's
central argument.
The author concludes: "In the New Testament,
revelation is unapproachable to reason because
that which is revealed appears in the world in the
form of bare contingent facts - facts that stand
alone, without relation to anything that has come
before in human experience. Such a revelation is,
by definition, opposed to human reason, and can be
accepted only as a secret and a mystery."
The purpose of the Hebrew Bible couldn't
be more different. For its authors are anonymous -
precisely the opposite of bearing witness. It also
does not deal with secrets or predominantly with
miracles. The History of Israel in all its
embarrassment if you will, lies open before our
eyes. The destruction of the Jewish Kingdom, of
the Temple for instance, those are horrible facts,
not doubted by anyone.
The importance of
the Hebrew Scripture lies in it framing for the
first time of the History of the Jews. This
provided a broken people with a lasting
self-understanding intended to facilitate their
survival.
Hazony explains in accessible
language how the seemingly contingent and
particular narrative of the Hebrew Bible works as
an outlet of universal reason. After finishing
this book I was reminded of the late Leo Strauss,
who early on observed that the thinkers of the
Enlightenment never did their homework, such as a
thorough critique of the Holy Scripture, and
simply resorted to mockery about religion. Hazon's
book will give them pause by demonstrating that
the Hebrew Bible can be read as a work of reason.
The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture
by Yoram Hazony, Cambridge University Press 2012
(July 30, 2012). ISBN-10: 0521176670. US$24.99.
Paperback: 286 pages.
Dr Friedrich
Hansen is a physician and writer. He has
researched Islamic enlightenment in Jerusalem and
has networked on behalf of the Maimonides Prize.
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In the history of ideas, namely
through the German-American political philosopher
Leo Strauss, this dichotomy has been addressed as
esoteric or elitist versus esoteric or everyman's
knowledge. Politically speaking, this split comes
at the price of creating a dualism that separates
a spiritual from the physical realm. 
