To sin or transgress, according to one dictionary definition, is to go beyond a limit, to cross what is supposed to be a clear border. In this sense, one can say that Gary Anderson has succeeded in writing a very sinful book. Like Sennacherib as the rabbis describe him, Anderson is (he “erases boundaries between nations”)—only I use this phrase to describe Anderson in rather a more positive sense than the rabbis intended it when they applied it to the Assyrian emperor.Footnote ² Throughout this book we are discussing, Anderson crosses boundaries between academic disciplines: biblical criticisms that study the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, Qumranic scholarship, rabbinics, patristics, the study of both medieval Catholic and early Protestant theology. He crosses boundaries within some of these fields, as well: for example, by attending to modern Israeli biblical scholarship in a way that is, alas, all too rare among non-Jewish scholars in North America and Europe; or by showing scholars of rabbinics what they can learn from the study of the New Testament, especially when that study is conscious of its roots in medieval and early modern theology. Most importantly, Anderson tears down artificial barriers that separate historical, philological, descriptive scholarship on the one side from constructive theology and inter-religious dialogue on the other.

The erasure of boundaries is a consistent trope in this book, for Anderson demonstrates that many academic boundaries are at best artificial and at worst the products of biases that they in turn reinforce. Again and again, Anderson breaks apart clichéd scholarly categories, especially when those categories work to the detriment of Judaism. This is most clearly the case when he discusses what he calls “the Christian critique of rabbinic religion” (Anderson, pp. 105–7). Modern New Testament scholars have claimed that the deity of rabbinic religion employs a strict, economic model for judgment. New Testament scholars contrast this legalistic understanding of divinity with the Christian view that emphasizes God's love and grace. Anderson stands every aspect of this set of caricatures on its head. First, he shows that the economic metaphor found in rabbinic texts is found just as often in Christianity—and not only in Latin Christianity, but in early Church Fathers who wrote in Greek and Syriac, and in the New Testament itself. Further, he shows that for both the Rabbis and the Church Fathers this economic metaphor does not simply amount to a mechanical or legalistic form of accounting. Rather, the Rabbis and Fathers use it to emphasize God's grace. Rabbinic and patristic writings alike insist that the divine economy does not follow the rules of a human economy, for God erases a great deal of human debt with only a small amount of human payment, and often—in both Judaism and Christianity—without any payment at all. Finally, Anderson points out that those New Testament scholars who focus on the rabbis' economic metaphor are tendentious, since they ignore other metaphors the rabbis used to describe divine activity, metaphors that could have been known to modern New Testament scholars once works such as Solomon Schechter's Aspects of Rabbinic Theology Footnote ³ and George Foot Moore's Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era Footnote ⁴ were published originally in 1909 and 1927, respectively.

Similarly, while many readers, including not a few modern scholars, have dichotomized Jesus and the early rabbis, Anderson, following the lead of scholars such as E. P. Sanders, repeatedly shows Jesus to be following practices and beliefs that would eventually be codified in the Mishna and the Gemara. Take, for example, his treatment of the story of the rich young man and Jesus as it appears in Mark 10:17–31. Anderson discusses the premise behind Jesus' advice when he tells the young man that by giving up all his wealth, he will store up a treasure that will aid him a hundredfold in this world and the world to come. This advice is entirely consonant with the teachings of the rabbis in m. Pe'ah 1:1, according to which acts of kind generosity () are among the select list of activities for which one is rewarded in this world and the world-to-come. Moreover, Anderson shows that various questions about the story can be readily cleared up if we realize that Jesus and the Mishna share a basic outlook towards almsgiving. For example, Anderson notes (p. 177) that “the majority of New Testament scholars have wondered why Jesus' commandments [in Mark 10:19] remain on a horizontal rather than a vertical plane. They concern what takes place between human beings rather than between human beings and God.” He goes on to show, however, that the early rabbis, the Church Fathers, and presumably our passage in Mark as well, do not regard almsgiving as taking place on a human-to-human plane. Rather, almsgiving involves a human-divine plane, for “to give alms to a poor person was just like bringing a gift to the temple. Just as the altar was a direct conduit of sacrificial donations to heaven, so, too, was the role of the poor person who receives another's coins…. Jesus's injunction to give alms was meant to turn the young man's earthly focus heavenward through the agency of the poor” (p. 177). The impressive exegetical sensitivity of Anderson's argument—which depends not only on the comparison with tannaitic literature but also on the literary structure of this chapter in Mark—is not my concern now; rather, what is important for the point I wish to make is how Anderson uses this story to tear down the false dichotomies many readers of this passage want to set up.

At the same time, Anderson notes a significant difference regarding almsgiving in early Christianity and in rabbinic Judaism as it crystallized in the post-Mishnaic period. This difference involves what he calls “heroic almsgiving”—that is, giving allone's goods to the poor, and thus ending up joining that class even as one helps it (the former permanently, the latter for one last time). The Talmud forbids this practice, though Anderson notes that there are some indications that some tanna'im, like many early Christian thinkers, regarded heroic almsgiving positively, and that this sort of practice was prohibited only in the later literature of the amora'im. One way of explaining the way rabbinic law crystallized in this case is to note that the rabbis' ultimate aversion to this practice might be a reaction to its privileged position among Christian thinkers.

Now, this way of understanding the change in rabbinic attitude is somewhat reductionist and uninteresting, though not for those reasons inaccurate. At the same time, Anderson notes, the difference between Christian views of this practice and the final rabbinic ones reflects a larger difference of values between these two religious movements. Heroic almsgiving is one thing for a young man who is not married—that is, for a young man in a religious world that valorizes celibacy, which is to say: in early Christianity. But it is altogether a different thing in rabbinic Judaism, which condemns celibacy and valorizes the establishment of families. In the latter worldview, giving away all one's wealth to become poor is not merely selfless but also selfish and deleterious to innocent parties, for it harms one's wife and children (even if by this term we mean the future wife and children a pious young man ought eventually to have). What is noteworthy here is how the contrast Anderson draws differs from the contrast as drawn by some other scholars. Anderson manages to describe an ethical difference between the two religions on the basis of a sympathetic view of both, without in any way implying that one or the other religion is superior. Here Anderson emerges as a better historian than many of his predecessors, since he can describe without judging. He is also rather a better theologian, at least in the eyes of those Christians and Jews who hope to see dialogue progress without hidden insults or implied critiques.

In his defense of rabbinic Judaism, Anderson repeatedly reminds his readers that rabbinic Judaism puts great emphasis on divine grace and God's love. We see this, for example, when Anderson points out that the story of the Akedah functions in rabbinic literature in a way analogous to the crucifixion in Christianity.

Anselm wrote:

This could be slightly altered to read:

To be sure, the Akedah does not play as central a role in rabbinic Judaism as Christ's death does in Christianity, except during the penitential season and especially on Rosh Hashanah, when it becomes a core motif of the liturgy. But its role in the process of forgiveness is quite similar: a (near-)sacrificeFootnote ⁶ in ancient times comes to the aid of Abraham's descendants, who lack the ability to redeem themselves on their own.

Just as Anderson corrects fallacies concerning the alleged polarity of law and grace, so too he addresses what he shows to be the false dichotomy—“works vs. faith.” To ask whether salvation results from the one or the other, he shows, is to ask the wrong question, for works and faith are two sides of the same coin; neither exists in a genuine form without the other. He demonstrates that for the Church Father Ephrem,

Further, it is ludicrous to think that a sinner, or even a saint, can provide God with enough payment to satisfy the debts incurred through transgression. Rather, Ephrem and other Fathers suggest, in a discussion of Nebuchadnezzar (whom Daniel advises in Dan 4:24 [=Dan 4:27 in some editions] to give charity to pay down the enormous debt his sins incurred), that

As the references to Ephrem and Augustine in the two previous quotations make clear, Anderson presents us with a defense of Eastern and Catholic Christianities against the claims of some reformers. At the same time, Anderson's defense of works that follow divine commands can function as a defense of Judaism and its commitment to the law. This seems clear, for example, when he uncovers the “specifically Protestant sources” of the claim that it is presumptuous to think one can really keep the law (see 232–33 n. 42). Discussing whether it is almsgiving or faith in Jesus that Mark 10 praises, Anderson argues (against many New Testament commentators) that Mark praises both, and that “there is nothing intrinsic to the Christian tradition that demands … a low appraisal of the deed itself” (231 n. 41). Indeed, one hears an echo of Abraham Joshua Heschel, and of traditional midrashim on Exod 24:7 (“we will act, and [then] we will listen”) when Anderson writes, “One might expect that faith would come first and that deeds would follow. For Ephrem, however, the order is reversed: … after putting [a divine command] into action, one comes to believe”Footnote ⁷ (p. 158).

In the course of his defense of both Judaism and Catholicism/Eastern Orthodoxy, Anderson breaks down unnecessary boundaries and demythologizes toxic assumptions in ways that are noteworthy for two reasons. First, here and elsewhere,Footnote ⁸ Anderson redraws the lines: rather than a theological debate between Jews and Christians, Anderson presents us with a debate between Jews, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians on one side and Protestants, or at least some Protestants, on the other. Second, Anderson doesn't present this debate as one between those who believe in the efficacy of works versus those who believe in the efficacy of faith. Rather, it is between those who understand works and faith to form an integral whole on the one hand and those who erroneously believe that works and faith form a dichotomy on the other. (Again, a similarity with Heschel emerges; much of the burden of God in Search of Manis the insistence that for Judaism neither belief nor action can be valorized on its own. It is for this reason that much of the Heschel's bookFootnote ⁹ sounds like a traditionalist Jewish polemic against what we might term Buberian Judaism, if this term is not an oxymoron, while the rest sounds like a liberal Jewish polemic against what we might call hyper-Pharasaic Jewish Orthodoxy.Footnote ¹⁰)

Most of all, it seems to me that Anderson's reconstrual of this debate attempts to cut a Gordian knot. He does not simply say the Reformers were wrong to insist that works cannot bring salvation; rather, he shows that Catholic, Orthodox, and for that matter Jewish theologians never really claimed that they did. On this one issue, at least, Anderson suggests that we're all on the same page; we all agree that human works do not suffice to erase the debts we have incurred, and we all agree that a gracious God accepts a type of belief, specifically the intention behind the works, as good enough to bring us salvation even though the works are, inevitably, less than adequate. Anderson does not suggest that the early Protestants' theological claim about works is wrong; rather, he suggests that they misunderstood their opponents. Thus Anderson's polemical trope does not involve vanquishing his enemy but showing that they needn't be enemies in the first place. In the end, his polemic is an irenic one.Footnote ¹¹

By now, I trust it is clear what I meant when I said that Anderson breaks down walls not only between Jews and Christians, but also between scholars in different fields and between descriptive and constructive tasks.Footnote ¹² One learns from Anderson, the historian of ideas, even as one learns from Anderson, the religious thinker. Further, one realizes that the texts he treats are all part of a web of related traditions, and that to understand any text fully, one has to attend to several contexts in which it functions. The Jew who wants to know how Tosefta Pe'ahrelates to the Book of Daniel gains something from reading Mark through the lens of Ephrem and the Counter-Reformation. The Christian who wants to hear the voice of her redeemer clearly only benefits from studying a stream of ideas that leads from ancient Israel through Second Temple Judaism into the Mishna. To know any part, one needs to know the wholes it makes up, just as to know the whole, one must undertake a detailed philological analyses of its parts. Anderson told us that this notion would be central to the book early on, when he wrote,

But, as readers of this book will know, attention to that longue durée does not imply that one can gloss over details that some scholars consider tedious, difficult, or arcane. On the contrary, Anderson's grand theses become evident only in light of his attention to particulars of word choice, syntax, and stylistic constructions of texts written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.Footnote ¹³

Understanding the relation of parts and wholes in this book leads, I would like to suggest, to an understanding of what Anderson is really up to in his scholarly work in general. Here let me pause to recall the famous distinction Isaiah Berlin posited between two types of thinkers, hedgehogs and foxes.Footnote ¹⁴ The hedgehogs, Berlin tells us,

Foxes, on the other side,

Borrowing language from the Greek poet Archilochus, Berlin tells us that foxes know many things, while a hedgehog knows one big thing. (Of course, we biblical critics know that there is a third kind of thinker: the scholar who knows one little thing, and stays with it for decades.)

To which category does Anderson belong? A glance at Anderson's curriculum vitae quickly suggests one answer. Anderson has worked in biblical criticism of the classic sort, writing on priestly literature, the sacrificial cult, Leviticus and Numbers, all this seen from the point of view of historical-philological criticism in an ancient Near Eastern context. He has also written on Qumran, Apocrypha, and Pseudepipgrapha. He is a master of the history of interpretation, at home in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew texts, all of whose interpretive strategies he unlocks with unusual aplomb. He is also a participant in a conversation of many centuries standing between Catholics and Protestants, representing, one might say, a very late and irenic Counter-Reformation voice. In short, he seems a clear example of what Berlin terms a fox, since, in terms of field of specialization, there seem to be several Gary Andersons.

I would like to suggest, however, that Sin: A History shows Anderson to be something else. He is in fact a hedgehog disguised as a fox. (Precisely the same claim has been made, incidentally, about Berlin himself.Footnote ¹⁷) This becomes clear when we compare the book under consideration with the topic that Anderson addressed at the outset of his career, starting with his first book, Sacrifices and Offerings in Ancient Israel: Studies in their Social and Political Importance, which was published two decades before Sin.Footnote ¹⁸ When one compares his work in these two areas, one realizes that the questions they treat are essentially the same. In Sin, he examines a question theologians ask about charity in relation to sin, and he shows that this question is identical to one anthropologists have asked about sacrifice in cultures around the world: “How is it that the human being can give so little (a single animal) and receive so much (the promise of divine blessing in its many varied forms)?”Footnote ¹⁹ This is a question about asymmetry, and for many students of sacrifice, whether in the Old Testament or elsewhere, it served as a stumbling block. Some scholars ridiculed sacrifice or regarded it as hopelessly primitive, for it seemed to represent such a silly quid-pro-quo: one gives to God or the gods, and one gets; but one gets so much after giving so little—indeed, after giving to a Being or beings to whom the sacrificed animal belonged to begin with!

But already in the early 1990s, Anderson pointed to the work of more recent anthropologists who noted the error of this critique of sacrifice. Of course the humans offering the sacrifice knew that the pigeon, or bull, or hecatomb, was next to nothing for the deity. They also knew that gifts are not a simple exchange, but a way of establishing a particular kind of relationship. Sacrifice establishes and acknowledges an asymmetrical relationship; the whole point of the process is that the human gets so much for so little. Thus, Anderson pointed out in his 1992 article on sacrifice, in a sacrificial system “reciprocity can coexist with hierarchy, and … sacrificial exchange can represent the gods' superiority over men.”Footnote ²⁰ What Anderson wrote about sacrifice years ago applies equally to almsgiving in rabbinic Judaism and the Church Fathers, and indeed to works generally. How can gifts to the poor, or any deed, wipe away sin? How can humans pay down the debt their misdeeds created, especially since anything they give to God, God does not need, and God gave to them in the first place? Deeds, like sacrifice, are effective only because God has gamed the system to begin with. Works work only because of grace; works, in short, are all about grace, and not about self-redemption at all. This was Anderson's subject in his first contributions to biblical criticism decades ago, and it is his subject in the present book.

Further, this was one of the main theses of a book Anderson published in 2001 concerning early interpreters of the Garden of Eden Story, The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination.Footnote ²¹ In this study of Second Temple, New Testament, patristic, and rabbinic exegesis, Anderson shows that “Adam and Eve did not thwart the designs of God but, paradoxically, advanced them.” Even when disobeying a divine command, Adam and Eve brought God's plan to fruition, because God's grace overwhelmed their act; indeed, it was precisely God's grace that may have led God to set them up to commit their sin.Footnote ²² From this perspective, one can even say: their happy sin.Footnote ²³

When one realizes that seemingly disparate books Anderson published in 1987,Footnote ²⁴ 2001,Footnote ²⁵ and 2009Footnote ²⁶ ultimately concern themselves with God's surprising grace in response to humanity's insurmountable debts, it suddenly becomes clear that there is one Gary Anderson, not two (the biblical critic, the historian of exegesis) or four (the student of Frank Moore Cross, the disciple of James Kugel, the Catholic theologian, the rabbinic interpreter). In his fox-like attention to multiple fields throughout his career, Anderson has in fact been expressing the one big idea of the hedgehog. It's all about grace. It's all about the way human beings accept God's grace and express that acceptance through works. In this latest book by Anderson and in the works that led up to it, the philologist, the historian of ideas, the theologian, and the participant in interreligious dialogue emerge as a single person, and an unusually well-integrated one at that. Studying his work, and emulating it, will yield rich rewards for the scholars of many stripes whom Anderson addresses.