To substantiate his theory that the name Israel is reserved only for the meritorious, Moyal provides a scriptural proof-text, citing the phrase “an Israelite, in whom there is no deceit.” This line serves, for Moyal, as further evidence of the use of Israel or Israelite exclusively to denote an ethical individual. The source of this line, intriguingly, is neither a prophet in the Hebrew Bible nor a rabbinic dictum; rather, these are the words of Jesus found in the Gospel of John. “When Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him,” John 1:47 reports, “he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.’ ” Moyal makes no effort to disguise the source of this phrase; he openly identifies it as one that appears “more than once in the Gospels [al-injīl].”79 This argument functions on a number of levels. First, of course, is the explicit contention that, when properly understood, the opening line of Pirkei avot reveals nothing morally damning about Judaism. Somewhat more subtle is the implication that Judaism and Christianity are so fundamentally linked that the meaning of a phrase in the sacred canon of Judaism can actually be ascertained through a knowledge of Christian scripture. Finally, in responding to Christian attacks on the ethics of the Talmud, Moyal, in a shrewd polemical tactic, attempts to undermine the criticism by using Christian scripture as his definitive proof-text.
In fact, the New Testament appears frequently in Moyal’s at-Talmūd. In his exegesis of Rabbi Hanina’s instruction to “pray for the peace of the government” (Pirkei avot 3:2), Moyal notes:
The speaker did not limit his directive only to the peace of the Israelite government, despite the presence of the Roman occupation at the time and the limitation of legal authority to Roman administrators and, similarly, collecting taxes and tithes. [Rather,] he [Hanina] commanded obedience to the ruler without regard to his religion [dīnihi] or nationality [wa-jinsiyyatihi]. According to this principle, the author of the Gospel who came after him said “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.”80
In his gloss on this phrase, Moyal contends that Jews are instructed to obey the government under which they live, regardless of whether it is their own “Israelite government” or that of another, even a government of “occupation” (iḥtilāl). Perhaps with contemporary Christian accusations of Jewish political disloyalty in mind (whether concerning European governments or that of the Ottoman Empire), Moyal is careful to relate this rabbinic dictum to yet another New Testament statement of Jesus, this time a famous line from the synoptic Gospels. Moyal suggests not only that Judaism and Christianity espouse a similar position concerning obedience to governments, but also that Jesus’s view corresponded with the view articulated by Rabbi Hanina. From the standpoint of rhetoric, if not logic, a stronger defense against Christian accusations could hardly be imagined.
Although he seeks to link Jesus’s New Testament teachings to the Talmud, Moyal is at pains to argue against the contention that Jesus himself is discussed (and, more relevantly, denigrated) in the Talmud.81 Moyal has occasion to address this matter in his remarks on Pirkei avot 1:6. This mishnah records a saying of Joshua ben Perahiah, who is identified by one of Moyal’s main sources, David ha-Nagid’s Judeo-Arabic commentary, as the teacher of Jesus (ustedh yeshua‘). Moyal writes:
Among his students was a man who was called Jesus the Nazarene (yasūʿ an-nāṣirī), but he was not Jesus the son of Miriam, the one who proclaimed Christianity. This correspondence of names has caused confusion among some historians who conflated the two…. We allude to this error here briefly and perhaps we will return to the details later on, when we discuss the trial of Christ [maḥkamat al-masīḥ].82
Moyal insists that, in the early rabbinic period, there were two men named Jesus, both from Nazareth. Thus when one encounters a talmudic story concerning a figure named “Jesus the Nazarene,” one must not presume that this story concerns “the one who proclaimed Christianity.”83 The alluring possibility of an extended discussion of “the trial of Christ” remains unfulfilled; perhaps Moyal intended to return to the matter in a future volume, one of the many he had planned for his grand translation project.
Moyal does not explain why he considers it important to highlight the distinction between the two men named Jesus. The medieval (or pseudo-medieval) source on whom Moyal often relies, David ha-Nagid, was satisfied simply by describing Joshua ben Perahiah as the teacher of Yeshua‘. It would seem that Moyal, once again, had antitalmudic polemics in mind and used this textual opportunity to rebut accusations. In particular, both Faris and Nasrallah cited a number of (the same)84 allegations about the Talmud’s approach to Jesus and Christians more generally: that Jesus the Nazarene is “in the abyss of hell between tar85 and fire”; that he was conceived when his mother Miriam prostituted herself to the soldier Pandera; that Christian churches are places of filth and those who preach within them are like “barking dogs”; that killing a Christian is a commandment; that a contract with a Christian is not binding; and that it is a Jew’s duty to curse thrice the leaders of the Christian faith.86 None of these allegations was novel, to be sure, but, perhaps because of their recent translation into Arabic and diffusion within the Arabic-reading world, Moyal felt a sense of urgency to confront them at the first opportunity afforded him within his commentary.
In his presentation of the history of Hellenized Judaism in ancient Alexandria—a three-page section titled “The Israelite Temple in Alexandria”87—Moyal lays out his most developed argument about the historical connection between Judaism and Christianity. After discussing the founding of the city of Alexandria, the creation of the Israelite Temple of Onias,88 and the mass Israelite emigration from Judea to Egypt during the time of Antiochus,89 Moyal turns to the topic of cultural exchange between the Jews and the Greeks:
When the assimilation [ikhtilāṭ] of the Jews among the Greeks increased, the two groups exchanged their sciences and ideas. Yet the Israelite religious philosophy influenced the Greek philosophy more than the Greek philosophy influenced the Israelite religion. This was because the Alexandrian Israelites accepted, with great pleasure and delight, the philosophy of Plato, which was widespread at the time. They began to reconcile it with the Torah and they worked hard to explain the anthropomorphic expressions as symbols and signs (allegory), according to the custom of the Greeks.90
There seems to be some confusion in this passage. Moyal insists that “the Israelite religious philosophy” more substantially influenced “Greek philosophy” than vice versa, but the discussion that follows appears to highlight precisely the opposite: the influence of Greek philosophy. Whether this muddle can be ascribed to Moyal’s concern about the sensibilities of contemporary Jewish readers,91 a typographical error, an inconsistency within his sources, or something else entirely, the matter of the direction of net influence between Greek and “isra-elite” philosophy does not appear to be at the core of Moyal’s interest in this discussion.
Rather, Moyal’s concern here seems to be identifying the (Hellenistic) Jewish roots of Christianity, an identification that simultaneously serves apologetic and polemic purposes vis-à-vis Christianity. He explains that Philo of Alexandria was “the one who first created the term logos,” which Moyal immediately notes is “the term Paul the Apostle used in the New Testament.”92 Similarly, according to Moyal, Philo introduced the term paraclete, “which also appears in the Gospels.” These terms “indicate the presence of an intermediate power,” an idea that “the Christian Church Fathers [ābāʾ al-kanīsa al-masīḥiyya] who lived shortly after him [Philo] learned from him.” Through his writing on the “Israelite temple in Alexandria,” Moyal sought to highlight the shared origins of Judaism and Christianity and, in so doing, it would seem, to convince his readers that the two faiths are not so fundamentally opposed as might otherwise be believed.
However, in the same section of the text, Moyal declares that Philo’s philosophy, and the “ideas of the Alexandrian Israelite scholars” found in the Septuagint, are “greatly distanced from the true Isr
aelite spirit [ar-rūḥ al-isrāʾīlī al-ḥaqīqī].” Moyal goes on to discuss the tensions between the Jewish scholars of Judea and those of Alexandria. His conclusion, indeed the very last remark Moyal offers before beginning his analysis of Pirkei avot, once more turns to Christianity. The “Greek Israelite books,” he argues, “cleared the way for the spread of the religion that newly came into existence at that time, that is, the Christian religion, which, at first, was nothing more than one of the ways of Israelite theology.”93 Given the contention that these “Greek Israelite books” violated “the true Israelite spirit,” Moyal’s linking of Christianity to ancient Alexandrian Judaism should not be understood as an attempt to equate true Judaism (as Moyal conceived of it) with Christianity. Moyal’s writing on ancient Judaism’s relationship with the origins of Christianity thus serves two purposes: on the one hand, to underscore the affinities between Christianity and Jewish concepts (for example, Philo), and, on the other hand, to emphasize that Christianity grew out of a deviant, “inauthentic” form of Judaism, namely, Hellenistic Judaism (of the Diaspora), rather than out of the “true Israelite” religion.
AT-TALMŪD AND ISLAMIC TERMINOLOGY
Moyal’s intended readers, Arabic-speakers, were not, of course, only Christians. Muslims represented the vast majority of the Arab population, and thus, to succeed in his goal of combating “misunderstanding,” Moyal would have to address the concerns of Muslim readers as well. In general, Moyal makes fewer direct references to Islam than he does to Christianity. At least three reasons for this disparity might be suggested. First, the translation project, as discussed above, was originally initiated by a Christian, Jurji Zaydan; thus from the start, Christian-Jewish matters were paramount. Second, the anti-Jewish sentiment that was percolating through the Middle East was being carried, it was believed, by Christians, whether native Arabs or Europeans. To the extent that Moyal wrote at-Talmūd as a response to this phenomenon, he would have reasonably chosen to focus more on Christianity than on Islam. Finally, we must consider the context in which at-Talmūd was written and meant to be read—namely, a predominantly Muslim society (even as the British were in political control of Egypt, where the book was published). Engaging with Islam for a non-Muslim was surely a more perilous enterprise than dealing with Christianity. Given that Christians were in any case viewed as the more critical demographic, Moyal might well have felt it unnecessarily hazardous to discuss Islam in significant detail. Though there are a few explicit references to Islam in the text, there are other more subtle ways in which Moyal addresses a Muslim audience. In particular, he presents Judaism in characteristically Islamic terms94 and thereby provides the Muslim reader with a sense of comfort and acquaintance with Jewish religion and history.
It is necessary to begin the discussion of the use of Islamic language within Moyal’s text with a word of methodological caution. Given the historical relationship between Arabs (and their language) and Islam, religious terminology in Arabic inevitably evokes Islamic connotations and associations. In analyzing Moyal’s Arabic presentation of Jewish history and ideas, then, there is a danger of misinterpreting each of his uses of religious (seemingly Islamic) terminology as attempts to make Judaism appear similar to Islam. As vast as the Arabic lexicon is, words with Islamic religious resonance are not always reserved for Islamic contexts; they may also be used to describe aspects of other religions, where appropriate.95 Thus, we must be careful in this analysis not to overinterpret Islamic-tinted language. However, we must not ignore those instances in which we can decipher uses of classical terms of Islam that appear out of the ordinary and, perhaps, designed to evoke a sense of commonality and shared discourse among a Muslim audience.
One case in which the Islamic sense of a word Moyal uses seems to be relevant, and perhaps intentional, is that of taḥrīf. This word, which means “corruption” or “distortion,” in Islamic contexts typically refers polemically to the way in which Jews and Christians allegedly distorted their own, originally divine, scriptures. Moyal uses the term in his discussion of the Septuagint. He presents both the traditional myth of the composition of the Septuagint text (by seventy rabbis for King Ptolemy II Philadelphus) and the skeptical, academic critique (that the Greek translation of the Bible was made for Jews who no longer understood Hebrew). He explains that “the Israelites do not accept the sanctity of the Septuagint.” Rather, “they disavow anything within it that contradicts the Torah that is in their hands. They consider anything that is inconsistent to be a corruption [taḥrīf] that was introduced later into the Septuagint for religious purposes.”96 In this case, I would argue, Moyal must have had the Islamic polemical concept of taḥrīf in mind as he wrote these words. He appears to be attempting to show that Jews are aware of the problem of taḥrīf and eschew those texts that suffer from it. This may well be a nod to Moyal’s Muslim readers, an effort to portray Jews as sensitive to the matters that concern Muslims about Judaism and at the same time to defend Judaism’s own scripture.
There is, however, another potential implication of this passage. The Septuagint was, after all, accepted by the Orthodox Church. One standard piece of evidence mustered to support the Islamic accusation of biblical taḥrīf is the fact that there were three different versions of the Bible: the Jews’ Hebrew Bible, the Samaritans’ Bible, and the Christians’ “Greek Bible” (the Septuagint).97 By associating taḥrīf with the Septuagint, Moyal may be intimating that Muslims were correct in discerning textual “corruption” in the Bible; Muslims were simply mistaken in their assumption that the Jews’ Hebrew Bible was not the original. Taḥrīf, in other words, may have occurred, but the results can be found only in the Christians’ Bible, the Septuagint, that product of corrupted Hellenistic Judaism. If this reading of Moyal is correct, it would be a case of simultaneous apologetics toward Islam and polemics against Christianity. Perhaps because of Moyal’s interest in gaining the sympathy of Christian Arab readers, this point is not made explicit.98
Muslim polemicists’ charge of Jewish taḥrīf at times extended beyond corruption of the Bible. “Jewish oral tradition, seen as an unauthorized addition to Scripture,” explains Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, “is also considered to be part of this falsification.”99 Thus Moyal’s decision to begin his at-Talmūd not only with Pirkei avot, which itself begins with an account of the transmission of the Oral Law from Moses, but also with his own extensive introduction to the chain of oral tradition in Judaism, might be understood as an attempt at answering Muslims’ taḥrīf claim. On a more basic level, the project of tracing the Jewish shalshelet ha-kabbalah, the chain of tradition100 would have particular resonance, and perhaps attraction, to Muslims familiar with their own isnād tradition for ḥadīth literature.101 Moyal’s choice of the subject for the first volume of his projected translation series may well have been informed, at least in part, by his recognition of this commonality with Islam.
In fact, Moyal’s account of the composition of the mishnah employs another term with Islamic associations—a term we considered in detail in chapter 2. To explain how the Oral Torah, which Jews had been forbidden from writing, could suddenly, in the days of Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, be composed in a book, Moyal appeals to the notion of ijmā‘, or consensus, found prominently in Sunni Islam.102 He writes that “the scholars [al-ʿulamāʾ] of his [Judah ha-Nasi’s] age consented [ajma‘] upon them [the books of the mishnah] without exception or opposition.”103 Moyal repeats this claim several times in the course of his work. In a subsequent rendition of this account, he explains that, fearing that the Oral Torah be forgotten, “the scholars [al-ʿulamāʾ] deliberated on lifting the ban on writing it down and, by a consensus of opinions [bi-ijmāʿ al-ārāʾ], allowed the writing of the mishnah.”104 In other words, the prohibition against writing the Oral Torah was overturned by the ijmāʿ of the scholars of Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi’s generation. Given its use of Islamic legal terminology, this is an account that would—and may well have been intended to—appeal to Muslim readers, a presentation of J
udaism not only in their own language, but also in terms that they could be expected to hold in high regard.
Consider two other telling instances in which Moyal uses distinctly Islamic terminology in his writings on Judaism. Well-known are the so-called Pillars of Islam (arkān ad-dīn), including profession of faith, pilgrimage, prayer worship, fasting, and alms-giving.105 In his gloss on Rabbi Shimon’s exhortation in Pirkei avot to “be careful with the reading of shemaʿ,” Moyal explains that “shemaʿ is the most important pillar [ahamm arkān106] of the morning and evening prayers [ṣalātay aṣ-ṣabāḥ wa-l-ghurūb].”107 Especially in the context of prayer (ṣalā), this use of the term arkān, it is fair to presume, was not accidental; it was part of the broader project of the text to emphasize the shared features of Judaism and the other religions of an-nāṭiqīn bi-ḍ-ḍād (Arabic-speakers). The same might be said of Moyal’s curious use of the term jihād. Of Rabbi Ishmael, Moyal writes that he would try to provide sustenance for women whose “fathers and husbands were engaged in holy war [jihād].”108 Jewish legal literature, to be sure, has a developed discourse on the “commanded war,” (milḥemet miẓvah),109 but in classical Judeo-Arabic texts, the term jihād is not typically used to refer to these wars.110 Of course, it is possible that by using jihād, Moyal may have intended nothing more than simply to translate the concept of milḥemet miẓvah into Arabic. Regardless of Moyal’s intent, however, the impact on the reader would once again likely have been the same, leaving him or her with the impression—a reasonable one, to be sure—that Judaism and Islam are remarkably similar and, by extension, that Judaism need not provoke apprehension or fear.
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