Creatio ex Nihilo Theology in Genesis Rabbah in Light of Christian Exegesis

Maren R. Niehoff

doi:10.1017/S0017816006001118

Creatio ex Nihilo Theology in Genesis Rabbah in Light of Christian Exegesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2006

Maren R. Niehoff

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Maren R. Niehoff: Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Article contents

Extract
Rabban Gamaliel and the Philosopher
Bar Kappara's Interpretation of Gen 1:1–2 and Its Integration into the Redactional Process of Genesis Rabbah
R. Hoshaya's Interpretation of Gen 1:1
Conclusion
Footnotes

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Extract

“The Ways that Never Parted” is the title of a recently published collection of articles that reflects an increasing tendency in scholarship. A significant number of scholars no longer interpret the emergence of Christianity from Judaism as a clear separation between the two religions either at the end of the first or the beginning of the second century. Instead, they envision a prolonged process which, according to some, may even have lasted until the late fourth century. This process is thought to have been shaped by both segregation and rapprochement, creating ambiguity and “fuzziness” rather than clear boundaries. A central notion is the idea of sororal relations between Judaism and Christianity. These scholars no longer see Judaism as the mother figure giving birth to the daughter religion, while remaining unchanged herself, but rather as a sister developing and changing during the first centuries of the Christian era. This interpretation then sees Jews as an integral part of the Roman Empire, which eventually became Christian and (im)posed certain religious challenges.

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Type: ARTICLES
Information: Harvard Theological Review , Volume 99 , Issue 1 , January 2006, pp. 37 - 64
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017816006001118 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: © 2006 Cambridge University Press

“The Ways that Never Parted” is the title of a recently published collection of articles that reflects an increasing tendency in scholarship.¹

Adam H. Becker and Annette Y. Reed, eds., The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 95; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2003).

A significant number of scholars no longer interpret the emergence of Christianity from Judaism as a clear separation between the two religions either at the end of the first or the beginning of the second century. Instead, they envision a prolonged process which, according to some, may even have lasted until the late fourth century.²

Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) esp. 4–5, 89–90.

This process is thought to have been shaped by both segregation and rapprochement, creating ambiguity and “fuzziness” rather than clear boundaries.³

See also Martin Goodman, “Modeling the ‘Parting of the Ways’,” in The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Y. Reed; Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 95; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2003) 121–29; Judith M. Lieu, “‘The Parting of the Ways’: Theological Construct or Historical Reality?” JSNT 56 (1994) 101–19; eadem, Neither Jew Nor Greek? Constructing Early Christianity (London: T&T Clark, 2002) 11–30; Guy G. Stroumsa, “Religious Dynamics between Christians and Jews in Late Antiquity” in Cambridge History of Christianity 300–600 (eds. W. Loehr and F. Norris; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

A central notion is the idea of sororal relations between Judaism and Christianity. These scholars no longer see Judaism as the mother figure giving birth to the daughter religion, while remaining unchanged herself, but rather as a sister developing and changing during the first centuries of the Christian era.⁴

See esp. Yehuda Liebes, “Mazmiah Qeren Yeshu'ah” [in Hebrew], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 3 (1983–4) 313–48; Israel J. Yuval, “Two Nations In Your Womb,” in Perceptions of Jews and Christians[in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 2000); Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 64 C.E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Daniel Boyarin, “A Tale of Two Synods: Nicea, Javneh und Ecclesiology,” Exemplaria 12 (2000) 21–62; for Jacob Neusner, see below. Cf. the more cautious approach of Marc Hirshman, A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity (Albany N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1996), and idem, “Polemic Literary Units in the Classical Midrashim and Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho,” JQR 83 (1993) 369–84, who tends to point to the independent ways of each exegetical tradition or to their polemical engagement; David Rokeah, Jews, Pagans and Christians in Conflict (Jerusalem-Leiden: Magnes Press and Brill, 1982) esp. 40–83, who argues that Jews related to Christianity only in order to reject it.

This interpretation then sees Jews as an integral part of the Roman Empire, which eventually became Christian and (im)posed certain religious challenges.⁵

Recently, Amram Tropper, Wisdom, Politics, and Historiography: Tractate Avot in the Context of the Greco-Roman Near-East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), has most forcefully argued for the Greco-Roman context of Pirqe Avot and its editors.

In light of this new approach I wish to examine whether rabbinic interpreters of Gen 1:1–2 were familiar with Christian exegesis and if so, how they engaged with it. Before presenting a detailed analysis of the relevant texts, I will make a few introductory clarifications, beginning by outlining my general understanding of the issues. This can best be done by distinguishing my views from those expressed in the most recent monograph on the topic, Daniel Boyarin's Border Lines. While agreeing with the author's effort to interpret emerging rabbinic Judaism in the context of early Christianity, I cannot accept his broad conclusion that “until the end of the fourth century … Judaism and Christianity were phenomenologically indistinguishable as entities …” (89). Differences, it seems to me, were not only running internally through each of the two groups, as he suggests, but significantly also between them.⁶

This view was presented in greater detail at a colloquium with Daniel Boyarin on his book, organized by Galit Hasan-Rokem at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (January 2005).

Looking at the parting of the ways from a Jewish point of view, it is clear that an awareness of difference dawned at an early stage. Long before rabbinic scholars commented on the “Minim,” thus perhaps sometimes referring to Christians,⁷

Reuben Kimmelman, “Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity,” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition (ed. E. P. Sanders et al; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981) 2:226–44; Martin Goodman, “The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” in Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion. Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag (ed. Herbert Cancik, Hermann Lichtenberger and Peter Schäfer; 3 vols.; Tübingen; Mohr/Siebeck, 1996) 1:501–10; Philip S. Alexander, “‘The Parting of the Ways’ from the Perspective of Rabbinic Judaism,” in Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways A.D. 70–135 (ed. James D. G. Dunn; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) 1–25.

an anonymous Hellenistic Jew, quoted by Celsus, made succinct statements about the new religion.⁸

Celsus's Jewish sources have not been sufficiently studied, but in the meantime see Hans Bietenhard, Caesarea, Origenes und die Juden (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1974) 42–47; Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as The Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984) 112–17.

Writing probably in the early second century in Alexandria, he mocked the story of the virgin birth, suggesting that it was nothing but a cover for Mary's extramarital relations.⁹

Cels. 1:28

(quotations according to ed. Marcovich 2001; transl. by H. Chadwick with emendations).

Celsus's Jew also said to the Christians, “Thousands will refute Jesus by asserting that the prophecies which were applied to him were actually spoken of themselves.”¹⁰

(Cels. 1:57). See also the rhetorical question in Cels. 1:57.

This statement suggests clear boundaries between Jews and the followers of Jesus, who wrongly applied certain prophecies to their spiritual leader. Celsus's Jew conveys the feeling that an injustice has been done to his religion. Ancient Jewish traditions were abused when the new movement recruited them for its own purposes:

Why do you on the one hand trace your origins to our holy things, and then in the course of time dishonour them, while on the other hand you cannot claim any other origin for your teaching than our law? (Cels. 2:4)¹¹

Distinct boundaries are constructed in this passage. As far as Celsus's Jew is concerned, anyone truly accepting the holy things and the law of the Jews belongs to “us,” while those tracing their origin to Jewish traditions, though in reality dishonoring them, are followers of Jesus. Celsus's Jew looks back to a deep breach. “You have rejected,” he says, “the law of our fathers.”¹²

(Cels. 2:4).

This reaction is hardly surprising. From early on Christians defined themselves in relation to Mosaic law and Jewish traditions.¹³

See esp. Judith M. Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996); eadem, “History and Theology in Christian Views of Judaism,” in The Jews Among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire (ed. eadem et al., London: Routledge, 1992) 79–96.

Already in the writings of Paul the theme of exemption from the law for pagan Christians plays a central role.¹⁴

Rom 2:28–9, 9:1–11:23; Gal 5:2; Phil 3:2–11. The literature on this topic is vast and cannot possibly all be quoted here. Suffice it to mention two different approaches, one sociological, the other philosophical: Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) esp. 23–48; Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “Paul's Necessity” in Beyond “Reception”: Judaism, Christianity and Antique Culture (ed. Anders L. Jacobsen, David Brakke and Jörg Ullrich; Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity 1; Basel: Peter Lang, forthcoming).

The tendency to construct Christian identity in relation to Jews and Judaism increased with the emergence of orthodoxy, amounting to a special legislation on the Jews in the Christian empire.¹⁵

I use the term orthodoxy in the sense coined by Walter Bauer's seminal study, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (ed. and trans. Robert A. Kraft; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971; Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesteten Christentum, 1934), namely, as a reference to a relatively late phenomenon which imposed itself on a great variety of views among early Christians. For a useful survey of the history of Bauer's reception in modern scholarship, see Daniel J. Harrington, “The Reception of Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity,” HTR 73 (1980) 289–98. See also the more recent account by Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 163–80. On the connection between emerging orthodoxy and Christian self-definitions vis-à-vis the Jews, see also Paula Fredriksen, “What Parting of the Ways?” in The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Y. Reed; Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 95; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2003) 35–63. See also Amnon Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1987); Fergus Millar, “The Jews of the Greco-Roman Diaspora between Paganism and Christianity, AD 312–438,” in The Jews Among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire (ed. Judith Lieu et al., London: Routledge, 1992) 97–123.

Given the nature of much of Christian rhetoric, Jews could hardly ignore the difference which prominent leaders of the new movement claimed.

The christianization of the Roman Empire was a momentous event that ushered in crucial developments and eventually changed the reality of the ancient world. Christian appropriations of ancient traditions and texts were rather offensive and seriously challenged pagans as well as Jews. Ancient cultures could no longer remain the same, but instead reconstituted themselves within the new reality of the Christian empire.¹⁶

See also Seth Schwartz, “Types of Jewish Christian Interaction in Late Antiquity,” [in Hebrew] in Continuity and Renewal. Jews and Judaism in Byzantine-Christian Palestine (ed. Lee I. Levine; Jerusalem: Dinur Center for the Study of Jewish History, Yad Ben Zvi and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2004) 343–54, who stressed that interaction and influence are not dependent on friendly relations between the respective parties, but may well take place in a hostile environment.

While pagans and Jews initially opposed the new religion, they increasingly accepted its reality, eventually turning inwards and collecting their own traditions. Ostensibly turning their back to the Christian regime, they sought to reinforce their own identity from within. Pagan philosophers thus began to define their identity as Greeks around new foundational texts, such as Plato's Timaeus, which had never before defined the boundaries of a community.¹⁷

For more details, see Maren R. Niehoff, “Did the Timaeus Create a Textual Community?” in The Dominion of Letters, (ed. Guy G. Stroumsa and Margalit Finkelberg; Select papers of a conference at the Inst. for Advanced Study of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, July 2005, forthcoming).

The Platonic creation account assumed a role parallel to the biblical story of creation, stimulating running commentaries and theological discussions of doctrine. A pagan credo or catechism emerged.¹⁸

Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion (2nd ed.; New York: Doubleday,1955) 171.

Some of the new pagan doctrines, however, resembled those of their detested Christian neighbors. Boundaries proved to be permeable.

Jewish accommodations to the new reality of the Christian empire must be understood in this context. Judaism, too, could no longer remain the same, but went through significant changes. As the church established itself and created a new religious atmosphere, Christian influence had to be reckoned with, and Christian assumptions may gradually have permeated into Judaism as they did into pagan culture.¹⁹

See also Martin Goodman, “Palestinian Rabbis and the Conversion of Constantine to Christianity,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Greco-Roman Culture (ed. Peter Schäfer and Catherine Hezser; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2000) 2:1–9. Goodman suggests that such permeation may have taken place despite the fact that the rabbis did not even explicitly refer to such events as Constantine's conversion. For a particular case study, see Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

Certain Jewish positions may have emerged in reaction to developments on the Christian side.

My second introductory clarification pertains to my choice of topic and sources. I shall focus on the interpretations of Gen 1:1–2, because the story of creation is shared by Jews and Christians without having provoked overt polemics, as in the case of Sarah and Hagar. Moreover, in contrast to the issue of circumcision, we hear in Christian sources no rhetoric against contemporary Jewish positions.²⁰

See Maren R. Niehoff, “Circumcision as a Marker of Identity: Philo, Origen and the Rabbis on Gen. 17:1–14”, JSQ 10 (2003) 102–14.

Origen, for example, formulated his views on the creation mainly in works composed either wholly or mostly in Alexandria, while virtually ignoring this topic in his later sermons when also addressing Jews and circles close to them.²¹

Princ. 2, 1:1–4; 2, 3:6; 2, 9:1–4; 3, 5:1–3; 4, 4:4–7, on which see Monique Alexandre, “Le statut des questions concernant la matière dans le Peri Archon” in Origeniana: Premier Colloque International des études origéniennes (ed. Henri Crouzel et al., Bari: Instituto Letteratura Cristiana Antica, 1975) 64–81; Comm. Gen. (ed. Migne, Patrologiae Graecae XII). Concerning the chronological and geographical framework of these two works, see Joseph W. Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third-Century Church (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1983) 89–94. See also Ruth A. Clements, “Origen's Hexapla and Christian-Jewish Encounter in the Second and Third Centuries,” in Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Caesarea Maritima (ed. Terence L. Donaldson; Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000) 303–329; Marie-Anne Vannier, “Origène et Augustin: interprètes de la création,” in Origeniana Sexta: Origen and the Bible (ed. Alain Le Boulluec; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1995) 729.

Creation was thus no special issue in Origen's relations with his Jewish environment in Caesarea.²²

On Origen's contacts with Jews, see the seminal study by Nicolas R. M. de Lange, Origen and the Jews: Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations in Third-Century Palestine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), who, however, does not examine these contacts from a Jewish point of view.

On the other hand, Christian thinkers in the second and third century began to formulate a creatio ex nihilo theology that eventually became a central part of the Christian credo. While this doctrine was initially formulated in view of Greek philosophy and religious groups usually identified as gnostic, it became a dominant and pervasive view among Christian writers.²³

Gerhard May, Schöpfung aus dem Nichts. Die Entstehung der Lehre von der Creatio ex Nihilo(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1978); Hans-Friedrich Weiss, Untersuchungen zur Kosmologie des hellenistischen und palästinischen Judentums (TUGAL 97; Berlin: Akademie, 1966). On the problems of defining the category “Gnosticism”, see Karen L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003) esp. 5–19, 218–36; Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism:” An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) 26–53; Robert M. Wilson, “Gnosticism,” in Religious Diversity in the Greco-Roman World: A Survey of Recent Scholarship (ed. Dan Cohn-Sherlok and John M. Court; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 164–81.

Pagans reacted by unanimous insistence on the Aristotelian notion of an eternal cosmos that was never created.²⁴

See esp. Salustius, About the Gods and the World chap. 7 (Engl. transl by Murray, Five Stages 197–8); Porphyry and Iamblichus apud Proclus, In Plat. Tim. 1:382. For a detailed interpretation of these texts in the context of Christianity, see Niehoff, “Did the Timaeus Create a Textual Community?”

It is likely that Jews also encountered the creatio ex nihilo theology. We have to examine how they reacted: did they adopt a similar approach as their pagan neighbors or, rather, did their commitment to the biblical creation account prompt them to adopt different strategies?

The main rabbinic source I will consider in this article is Genesis Rabbah (GR), the first extant compilation of interpretations on the whole book of Genesis, redacted in the early fifth century C.E., possibly in Caesarea.²⁵

Marc Hirschman, “Reflections on the Aggada of Caesarea,” in Caesarea Maritima: A Retrospective after Two Millenia (ed. Avner Raban and Kenneth G. Holum; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 469–475, rightly stressed that the academic study of Palestinian Midrashim is still in its infancy. While tractates of the Jerusalem Talmud have been historically analyzed, an equivalent study of the Midrashic sources is still an urgent desideratum. An important step in this direction has nevertheless been made by the Wissenschaft des Judentums, esp. Maier Lerner, Anlage und Quellen des Bereschit Rabba(Berlin: Julius Banjamin, 1882), who argued that the original layer of the Midrash is a continuous, literal commentary on the biblical book, while haggadic expansions were added later. See also the important analysis of the sources of GR by Hanoch Albeck, “Introduction to Bereschit Rabba,” [in Hebrew] in Bereschit Rabba mit kritischem Apparat und Kommentar (Jerusalem: 1965) 3:44–89. Cf. also Hans-Jürgen Becker, Die großen rabbinischen Sammelwerke Palästinas (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1999), who suggested a somewhat deconstructionist approach, claiming that no distinct corpus of text can be identified beyond the variants in the manuscript tradition. The criticism of this position by Chaim Milikowsky, “On the Formation and Transmission of Bereshit Rabba and the Yerushalmi: Questions of Redaction, Text-Criticism and Literary Relationship,” JQR 92, 3–4 (2002) 521–67, is highly justified.

This midrash is of particular interest, because many of its contributors, such as Rabbi Hoshaya, were active in Caesarea when Christian exegesis flourished there under the leadership of Origen.²⁶

Lee I. Levine, Caesarea under Roman Rule (Leiden: Brill, 1975), esp. 88; Irving M. Levey, “Caesarea and the Jews,” in The Joint Expedition to Caesarea Maritima (ed. Charles T. Fritsch; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1975) 1:57–9.

Moreover, this midrash is famous for its great amount of Greek loanwords indicating close contacts with its Hellenistic environment. Regarding notions of creation, GR is especially important. Menahem Kahana has shown that its redactor took a particular interest in the first verses of the book of Genesis, carefully rearranging the available exegetical material with a view to both the recurrence of the number six and the refutation of interpretations held by “Minim.”²⁷

Menachem Kahana, “Interweaving Six: On the Arrangement of the Parasha ‘In the Beginning God Created’ in the Midrash Genesis Rabbah,” [in Hebrew] forthcoming in Yonah Frankel Festschrift. See also Ophra Meir, “A Garden in Eden – Remarks on the Way of Redaction in Genesis Rabbah,” [in Hebrew] Daphim le-mechkar be-sifrut 5–6 (1989) 309–30; eadem, “The Redaction of Genesis Rabba and Leviticus Rabba,” [in Hebrew] in Te‘uda XI. Studies in the Aggadic Midrashim (ed. Meron B. Lerner and Mordechai A. Friedman; Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1996) 61–90, who showed the editor's impact on the composition of other Parashot in GR.

Moreover, this midrash discusses new questions not attested in earlier Jewish writings. For the first time the issue of pre-existing matter is seriously investigated. Rabban Gamaliel defends a creatio ex nihilo theology as if this doctrine were self-evident.

The exegesis in GR is particularly striking in view of earlier Jewish positions. Philo, for example, focused on the question, hotly debated in antiquity, whether the cosmos was eternal or created.

²⁸

On the debate see esp. Matthias Baltes, Die Weltentstehung des Timaios nach den antiken Interpreten (Leiden: Brill, 1976); David T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Leiden: Brill, 1986) 32–58.

In the wake of an Aristotelian renaissance in Rome, after Sulla had transferred Aristotle's library there, Philo criticized prevalent metaphorical interpretations of the Timaeus, arguing that Plato had meant his creation story literally.²⁹

For more details, see Maren R. Niehoff, “Philo's Contribution to Contemporary Alexandrian Metaphysics” in Beyond “Reception”: Judaism, Christianity and Antique Culture (ed. Anders L. Jacobsen, David Brakke and Jörg Ullrich; Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity 1; Basel: Peter Lang, forthcoming); Runia, Philo and the Timaeus; idem, Philo of Alexandria: On the Cosmos of the World according to Moses. Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 1; Leiden: Brill, 2001), esp. 156–173; cf. Gregory Sterling, “Creatio Temporalis, Aeterna vel Continua? An Analysis of the Thought of Philo of Alexandria,” StPhA 4 (1992) 15–41.

On this reconstruction, which was shared by Plutarch and Atticus as well as some eminent modern scholars, the cosmos in the Timaeus was created out of pre-existing matter and in the image of an ideal model.³⁰

Tim. 27d–28a, 29e–30a. Regarding Plutarch and Atticus, see Niehoff, “Philo's Contribution”; regarding modern scholars arguing for a literal meaning of the Timaeus, see esp. Gregory Vlastos, “Creation in the Timaeus: Is It a Fiction?” in Studies in Plato's Metaphysics (ed. Reginald E. Allen; London: Routledge, 1956) 401–19; Robert Hackforth, “Plato's Cosmogeny (Timaeus 27dff),” CQ N.S. 9 (1959) 17–22; cf. Francis M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology (London: Routledge, 1937) 24–27; Arye Finkelberg, “Plato's Method in the Timaeus,” Am. J. Phil. 117 (1996) 391–409. According to metaphorical readers of the Timaeus, such as those mentioned by Aristotle in De Caelo 279b32–280a2 or Taurus in the second century C.E., the cosmos was only said to be created for the “purpose of instruction,” meaning that the cosmos is in an eternal state of becoming and change, depending for its nature and persistence on divine benevolence. On this reconstruction matter was not created by God, but existed permanently. The precise place of the pre-cosmic material within Plato's overall system is difficult to determine; see Jerry S. Clegg, “Plato's Vision of Chaos,” CQ N.S. 26 (1976) 52–61.

It was destined to last forever. Inferior stuff was transformed into the best possible world, Plato insisted, because the demiurge was good and lacked any sense of envy.³¹

The creator god is described as

and as

(Tim. 28c–29a), of whom it is said

(Tim. 29e).

Therefore he looked to a perfect as well as unchanging model when creating the cosmos, and took providential care of his creation.³²

In Tim. 30c Plato stresses that the world resulted

[…]

Philo wholeheartedly accepted Platonic cosmology, suggesting that the same holds true for the Torah as well. In his view, Moses described the cosmos as having been created in virtually the same way: taking an ideal model, God transformed the “passive element, which is in itself without life and without motion”, into “the most perfect masterpiece.”³³

Opif. 9. It is well-known that Philo, in contrast to Plato, did not assume this model to be an independent entity, but argued that God first created in his Logos an ideal cosmos in the image of which he then created its material counterpart.

This transformation was brought about by the divine

and

³⁴

See also Runia, Philo of Alexandria: On the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses 114–9, 152–5.

Philo considered the biblical and the Platonic accounts of creation to be so congenial that he claimed Mosaic origins for the ideas later expressed in the Timaeus (Aet. 19).

Evidence from other authors confirms that throughout the Second Temple period no explicit creatio ex nihilo theology was formulated in Jewish circles. On the contrary, creation

is mentioned in the Wisdom of Solomon 11:17. Neither the author of the book of Jubilees nor Josephus regarded

(formless void) as a theological problem that required treatment.

³⁵

Jub. 2:1–2; Josephus, Ant. 1:27. For this reason I find it difficult to accept the view of Menahem Kister, “Aggadic Traditions and Exegetical methods in the Literature of the Second Temple Period and in Midrashic Literature” in Jonah Fraenkel's Jubilee Volume (ed. Yoshua Levinson, Jacob Elbaum and Galit Hasan-Rokem, forthcoming), who takes Jub. 2:1–2 as the earliest extant evidence for a creatio ex nihilo theology. This is so, he suggests, because the emphasis on the creation of the abyss, the darkness and the water expresses a nonphilosophical intuition that God's creation is all-encompassing. In order to explain the absence of

from the above list Kister interprets it in light of a later Talmudic source (b. Hag. 12a), suggesting that the expression

which appears there, did not require inclusion in Jub. 2:1–2, because in LXX Gen 1:1–2 it is interpreted as “a state of the world rather than real things.” This solution, however, seems problematic. Initially, the LXX translation of

does not negate the existence of this “stuff,” but, on the contrary, implies that chaos preceded order. Moreover, it is difficult to see why the author of Jubilees should have relied on the LXX version rather than the Hebrew. Finally, we cannot assume that the author of Jubilees, without saying so, shared the views of a much later Talmudic passage. Kister offers a similar interpretation for Philo, Opif. 29, which speaks, however, about the ideal forms of the first elements.

The author of 2 Maccabees, on the other hand, says in passing that “God made them out of things that did not [really] exist.”³⁶

(2 Macc 7:28).

This famous statement, which has often been taken as evidence for an early Jewish notion of creatio ex nihilo, rather seems to convey Platonic ontology, suggesting that matter does not belong to the realm of real existence.³⁷

May, Schöpfung aus dem Nichts 6–8; Jonathan A. Goldstein, II Maccabees. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1983) 307–15; cf. J. C. O'Neill, “How Early is the Doctrine of ‘creatio ex nihilo’ ?” JTS 53 (2002) 449–65, who recently advocated again the interpretation of 2 Macc 7:28 as evidence of an early Jewish creatio ex nihilo theology.

It is in any case striking that the author does not show any awareness of breaking new ground. If he had indeed advocated a revolutionary idea subversive to the biblical creation account, he would surely have explained himself in more detail. He would have expounded the opening of Genesis. His omission of such indicates that he was not yet troubled by the issue of pre-existing matter. This conclusion is corroborated by the fact that even in early rabbinic literature this issue is not yet discussed. Tannaitic scholars instead investigate the precise sequence of the creation of heaven and earth as well as the number of students in whose presence one may expound the story of creation.³⁸

Mechilta de Rabbi Ishmael, Pisha 1. Mechilta de Rabbi Simon b. Yochai, Beschalach 15:11 (ed. Epstein 93); t. Hag. 2:1: m. Hag. 2:1.

Julian the Apostate thus seems to capture the situation well when insisting that in contrast to Christian doctrine Moses did not advocate a creatio ex nihilo theology. The latter was in his view utterly un-Jewish. Julian stressed that “in all this, you observe, Moses does not say that the deep was created by god or the darkness or the waters” (C. Gal. 49D). In Julian's view, moreover, the LXX expression

positively suggests a creation out of pre-existing matter (C. Gal. 49E). Julian presented this biblical evidence in order to show that the Christian dogma of creatio ex nihilo was a severe breach of the Mosaic tradition to which his opponents claimed allegiance (C. Gal. 43A).

The idea of creatio ex nihilo, however, surfaces in GR. Rabban Gamaliel presents it as a self-evident doctrine. How can this remarkable shift be explained? How did the contributors and redactor of this midrash come to regard creatio ex hylis as a grave theological problem? I shall argue that the key to answering these questions can be found in rabbinic familiarity with Christian exegesis. Years ago, Jacob Neusner drew attention to the fact that the final redaction of GR took place in an era when the Roman Empire had already become Christian.³⁹

Jacob Neusner, “Genesis Rabbah as Polemic: An Introductory Account,” HAR 9 (1985) 252–65.

Applying historical-critical methods, Neusner attributed more importance to the final redaction than to individual, possibly much earlier traditions, because even the latter were inevitably modified in the process of transmission and redaction.⁴⁰

Jacob Neusner, “What Use Attributions? An Open Question in the Study of Rabbinic Literature,” in When Judaism and Christianity Began. Essays in Memory of Anthony J. Saldarini (ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck, Daniel Harrington and Jacob Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 2004) 441–60.

Neusner consequently demanded that GR be read as a systematic reaction to the revolutionary changes in the Roman Empire. This midrash, he argued, confronted the new state religion in a comprehensive fashion, searching for answers to its religious challenge of Judaism. It is with this background in mind that we can now approach central passages in GR, examining whether they indeed engaged in a Christian discourse.

Rabban Gamaliel and the Philosopher

A famous exchange between Rabban Gamaliel II and a philosopher is reported in Genesis Rabbah. Its topic is creatio ex nihilo. While the philosopher claims that this doctrine is not expressed in the biblical account of creation, Gamaliel attempts to show that it is indeed written in Scripture:

A philosopher asked Rabban Gamaliel and said to him: Your God was a great painter, but he found good colours that assisted him.

He responded: which are these?

[The philosopher answered:] Chaos, darkness and water and wind and the abyss.

“May that man die!” exclaimed Gamaliel, “regarding all of these creation is written in Scripture. Regarding chaos, “I make peace and create evil” (Is 45:7); regarding darkness, “I form the light and create darkness” (ibid.); regarding the water, “Praise Him, you heavens of heavens and you waters that are above the heavens [and the water]” (Ps 148:4) – why? “because he commanded and they were created” (ibid. 5); regarding the wind, “for he that forms the mountains and creates the wind” (Amos 4:13); regarding the abyss, “I [wisdom] was brought forth when there was not yet an abyss” (Prov 8: 24).” (GR 1:9)⁴¹

This passage is quoted and translated according to the Geniza fragment in Michael Sokoloff, The Geniza Fragments of Bereshit Rabba (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Printing, 1982) 79–80; see also a virtually identical version in the critical edition by Theodor and Albeck.

The philosopher who challenges Rabban Gamaliel is obviously not Jewish, because he speaks of “your God” (

). He compares the biblical creator God to a painter, who used pre-existing materials for his work. Gamaliel's reaction is striking: he curses the philosopher, wishing that he may drop dead. The Aramaic formula

(May that man die!) appears here for the first time in rabbinic literature, being absent in the Tannaitic sources.

⁴²

Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1990) 355, translated this formula literally as “May the breath of that man expire.” It is highly interesting that this expression recurs on two other occasions in Genesis Rabbah, both of them in the context of discussions with foreigners (R. Aquiva responding to the wicked Tinneus Rufus in GR 11:5 and another rabbi encountering Alexander the Great and King Kazia in GR 33:1).

After cursing the philosopher, Gamaliel also explains Scripture by using Scripture, assuming that all biblical writings form a homogeneous unity. He thus quotes verses from the prophets and wisdom literature in order to show that each of the elements mentioned by the philosopher has in fact been created by God. The proof-texts fulfill their function to varying degrees. In the cases of darkness and wind, Gamaliel has indeed found verses directly stating their creation by God. This, of course, neither implies that the authors of the books of Isaiah and Amos principally denied the concept of pre-existent material nor that such a concept was shared by the author of Gen 1:1–2. Gamaliel, however, takes the proof-texts to mean precisely that. The cases of the water and the abyss are more complicated. The creation of the water emerges from the context of the proof-text, while Prov 8:24 does not at all say that the abyss was created by God. Wisdom rather states that she was brought forth when there was as yet no abyss. Gamaliel took this verse in an extremely broad sense to mean that the abyss was created by God from nothing. The notion of chaos indeed poses a particular problem, because Gamaliel's proof-text does not even contain the word

(formless void). The only other verse in Scripture where this term appears, Jer 4:23, has not been adduced here, presumably because it refers precisely to the kind of Urchaos which Gamaliel denies. Instead, Isa 45:7 has been chosen where God says “I make peace and create evil.” This proof-text indicates that Gamaliel associates pre-existing material with evil, insisting that this, too, was created by God.

Reading Gamaliel's proof-texts, one can hardly avoid the impression that he made considerable efforts to prove something from Scripture that cannot be proven. His procedure shows that there is a fundamental gap between his own views and those of the biblical writers. While Gamaliel himself is deeply worried about the prospect of pre-existing matter implied in Gen 1:1–2, the biblical writers remain strikingly indifferent to this issue and formulate no particular teaching on this topic. It is moreover remarkable that Gamaliel's position is not systematically maintained throughout Genesis Rabbah. Rabbi Yochanan b. Nappacha subsequently presupposed hyle in the process of creation (GR 10:3).

These facts prompted David Winston to argue that Gamaliel's argument is merely a fragmentary and highly exceptional phenomenon not reflecting the rabbis' opinio communis. Instead, it was formulated as an ad hoc reaction to a gnostic.⁴³

David Winston, “The Book of Wisdom's Theory of Cosmogony,” History of Religions 11 (1971/72) 187–91; similarly Alexander Altmann, “Gnostic Themes in Rabbinic Cosmology,” in Essays in Honour of the Very Rev. Dr. J. H. Hertz (ed. Isidore Epstein, et al.; London: E. Goldston, 1942) 28.

Winston considered Gamaliel's harsh reaction understandable in the context of his assumption that the rabbi was actually confronted with the gnostic notion of a second god. Given the implications of this thesis, it is surprising that Winston does not refer to any gnostic source that may have served as a Vorlage for the philosopher's query. It is moreover conspicuous that the gnostic ideology to which Gamaliel supposedly reacted, namely, the idea of two gods, is patently absent in the rabbinic passage.⁴⁴

Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism” 26 and 51–53, has identified a distinction of some sort between a truly transcendent deity and the creator god described in the Hebrew Bible as a “basic common feature” of the texts usually classified as “gnostic” for which he instead suggests the category “biblical demiurgical traditions.” See also Ithamar Gruenwald, “The Problem of the Anti-Gnostic Polemic in Rabbinic Literature,” in Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions Presented to Gilles Quispel on the Occasion of His 65^th Birthday (ed. Roelof van den Broek and Maarten J. Vermaseren; Leiden: Brill, 1981) 171–89, who identified similar cases where a “gnostic” background has been claimed for a rabbinic passages without much justification. Menahem Kister, “Let Us Make Man,” [in Hebrew] in Issues in the Study of the Talmud: Conference on the Occasion of the 5^th Anniversary of Prof. Efraim Urbach's Death (Jerusalem: The Israel National Academy of Sciences, 2001) 58–60 (English version forthcoming in JSJ), similarly criticized Winston's interpretation.

Instead, the philosopher merely claims that the God of the Hebrew Bible used pre-existing materials in his creation. The identification of this rather general statement as “gnostic” clearly is a modern construct that confuses more than it clarifies. Finally, Winston's suggestion that Gamaliel formulated his views spontaneously on the occasion of meeting the philosopher is open to severe doubt. A close reading of the rabbinic story reveals that Gamaliel does not in fact appear like someone formulating ad hoc a completely new idea, trying it out so to speak for the first time. On the contrary, he emerges as someone defending a well-established teaching against a heretic. His answer to the philosopher is a curse. This posture presupposes some form of authority as well as a rather clearly defined set of ideas which is thus defended.

The language of our rabbinic story provides some clues that point in an altogether different direction and open radically new avenues for interpretation. Two central statements by Gamaliel are transmitted in Aramaic. He asks the philosopher

(Which are these?) and curses him in Aramaic (

[May that man die!]).

⁴⁵

Only MS Oxford 1 presents Gamaliel's question in Hebrew

, and this is undoubtedly a later Hebraisation of the earlier Aramaic.

As already mentioned, the Aramaic curse formula appears only in Amoraic sources, while naturally being absent in Tannaitic literature. Ahron Mirsky, who pleaded for a Tannaitic date of our passage, admitted that the Aramaic expressions seriously challenge his thesis.⁴⁶

Midrash Tannaim on the Book of Genesis [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-Rav Kook, 2001) 5.

Indeed, the Aramaic phrases indicate that the text in its present form was the product of Amoraic activity.

This insight has crucial implications for our overall understanding of the story. It emerges that it was redacted long after Gamaliel's death. The story in its present form is Amoraic, belonging to the third or fourth century, while Rabban Gamaliel was active in the first century, assuming leadership of the new rabbinic center at Yavneh after Yochanan ben Zakkai and becoming Nasi around 80 C.E. This time gap between the historical figure and the story gives rise to important questions: does the story reflect Tannaitic material or does it rather convey the image of Gamaliel as he was perceived some two or three hundred years after his death?⁴⁷

These questions have been overlooked by Jonathan A. Goldstein, “The Origins of the Doctrine of Creation Ex Nihilo,” JJS 35 (1984) 131–33; idem, “Creation Ex Nihilo: Recantations and Restatements,” JJS 38 (1987) 188–89, who simply took Gamaliel's statements as a proof for the existence of a creatio ex nihilo theology in the first century.

Put differently, is only the style of the story later or its contents also?

We find a first clue to answering these questions when we consider Rabban Gamaliel's personality. His character in our story significantly differs from his image in the Tannaitic sources closer to his lifetime.⁴⁸

For an overview of sayings attributed to Rabban Gamaliel II, see Wilhelm Bacher, Die Agada der Tannaiten (vol. 1; Strassburg: K.J. Trubner, 1903) 73–95; see also Ben Zion Wacholder, “The Stories of Rabban Gamaliel in the Mishnah and the Tosefta,” [in Hebrew] in Proceedings of the Fourth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: The World Union of Jewish Studies, 1967) 1:143–44.

In early rabbinic texts Gamaliel is frequently presented as encountering pagans, especially pagan philosophers. On all of these occasions Gamaliel's attitude is open and tolerant.⁴⁹

See also Tropper, Wisdom, Politics, and Historiography, 126–29.

Once he is depicted as explaining to a Roman official that the Torah was transmitted in both a written and an oral version (Sifre 351). Another time he is said to respond to a philosopher's question why God, who is supposedly omnipotent, did not destroy all the pagan idols. Gamaliel answers that God does not abolish the stars and other items he created only because the pagans mistakenly worship them (Mekilta 20:5). The most famous example of Gamaliel's involvement in Greco-Roman culture is to be found in m. Avodah Zarah 3:4, where he is said to have met “Proclus the son of Philosophos” in the bathhouse of Aphrodite. The rabbi justified his visit there by insisting that the Greek goddess is merely a decoration and therefore no threat to his religious integrity.⁵⁰

Seth Schwartz, “The Rabbi in Aphrodite's Bath: Palestinian Society and Jewish Identity in the High Roman Empire,” in Being Greek under Rome (ed. Simon Goldhill; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 335–61.

Throughout rabbinic literature composed prior to Genesis Rabbah Gamaliel emerges as someone well integrated into Hellenistic culture and on good terms with its intellectual representatives. In the extant Tannaitic sources Gamaliel shows no interest in the story of creation. His portrait in GR 1:9 is thus highly exceptional.

The riddle of Gamaliel's portrait in GR can be solved. The story of his encounter with the philosopher is, I suggest, pseudepigraphic, attributing statements to Gamaliel which he himself never made.⁵¹

Methodologically, I follow here the lead of Louis Jacobs, “How Much of the Babylonian Talmud is Pseudepigraphic?” JJS 28 (1977) 46–59.

A discourse stemming from a later time has retroactively been associated with Gamaliel. It was not the Tannaitic rabbi who encountered a philosopher pleading for creatio ex hylis. Instead, Amoraic teachers became familiar with the Christian creatio ex nihilo theology and constructed a similar dichotomy between “orthodox” and “heretical” ideas in their own community. It is rather natural that such a dispute should have been attributed to Rabban Gamaliel, because he was famous for his encounters with pagan philosophers. His leadership position in Yavneh furthermore made him a highly suitable candidate to curse ideas that were found to be dangerous errors.

This proposition is not as audacious as it may seem at first sight. A passage in the Babylonian Talmud shows that the figure of Rabban Gamaliel was indeed modernized and retroactively associated with the challenge of Christianity. Gamaliel is presented there as meeting a Christian philosopher, who said to him: “On the day when you were expelled from your land, Moses' Torah was rendered invalid and the gospel was revealed.”

⁵²

b. Shabbat 116b

Rabban Gamaliel's reaction is extraordinary: he refers to “the Evangelion” (

), quoting from the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus had not come to abolish the Law, but rather to fulfill it. The language of Gamaliel's reply indicates that this story must have been written much after his death. It is striking that Gamaliel is made to refer to the

. Its Greek or Latin equivalent (

, “evangelium”) is a technical term for the Gospels as a collection of four canonical writings. This term in its technical sense appears in Christian literature only towards the end of the second century when Irenaeus discussed problems of the Christian canon (Haer. 3:11.7–8).

⁵³

Ehrman, Lost Christianities 229–46; Robert M. Grant, “The New Testament Canon,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible (ed. Peter R. Ackroyd and Christopher F. Evans; Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1970) 1:286–97. I would like to thank Prof. Mogens Müller from the University of Copenhagen for drawing my attention to the late date of the term

in its technical sense.

If this term was put into Gamaliel's mouth in the Babylonian Talmud, we are obviously dealing with an anachronistic attribution of later traditions to this figure.⁵⁴

Regarding the Babylonian stories about Gamaliel, Allan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977) 116, has already expressed doubts regarding their historical authenticity and spoken of “folk romance” without, however, considering their Christian background.

This case encourages us to understand also Gamaliel's dispute with the philosopher in GR 1:9 as a text that emerged in a much later context, when Judaism confronted the challenge of a well-established Christian church.

If my thesis is correct and our story in GR 1:9 reflects issues at the time of its redaction, we have to investigate the topical context in which it emerged. Clear traces lead to Christian disputations against earlier philosophers defending a creatio ex hylis. Before the appearance of orthodox structures in the church, Christian writers, such as Justin and Clement, still enjoyed the freedom to express their affinity to the Platonic tradition. They spoke without inhibition of a creation out of pre-cosmic matter.⁵⁵

Edwin R. Goodenough, The Theology of Justin Martyr (Amsterdam: 1968) 206–11; May, Schöpfung aus dem Nichts 122–35; Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966) 46–48.

Clement moreover drew attention to the fact that the LXX expression “the earth was invisible and without order” (Gen 1:2) was rather commonly interpreted as an indication of the “material substance” from which the world was created (Strom. 14:90.1).

Theophilus and Irenaeus, however, radically changed this situation towards the end of the second century. Platonic cosmology was rejected and adherence to it among Christians was treated as a severe theological error.⁵⁶

May, Schöpfung aus dem Nichts 150–82.

Theophilus and Irenaeus began to formulate a creatio ex nihilo theology that was intended to supersede current philosophical notions. Both writers consciously rejected the Platonic model. Theophilus accused the Platonists of disgracing God by assuming pre-existing material and thus, in his view, equating God with matter (Autol. 2:4). “What would be marvelous,” asked Theophilus, “if we assume that God created the cosmos from pre-existing material?” (ibid). One must not imagine the deity to be an artist, since he is far more independent in his creativity than the former. Theophilus insists that divine power can precisely be seen in the fact that God “creates the things he wants out of the non-existent.”⁵⁷

(Theophilus, Autol. 2:4).

Irenaeus similarly argued that God used “no other means” of creation except his word (Haer. 2.2.5).

Tertullian's disputation Against Hermogenes propagates a similar position and is of particular interest. Hermogenes himself is little known. He must have been active in the region of Syria in the late second century, because he had already provoked Theophilus to a no longer extant treatise against him.⁵⁸

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4:24.

Between 203–213 he may have spent time in Carthage and there challenged Tertullian. Hermogenes himself was identified as a Christian, and was known as such to Clement of Alexandria.⁵⁹

Clement, Ecl. 56, quoted by Katharina Greschat, Apelles und Hermogenes. Zwei theologische Lehrer des zweiten Jahrhunderts (Leiden: Brill, 2000) 144.

Tertullian, however, regarded him as someone beyond the limits of the church. He accused him of betraying Christianity by adhering to the Platonic academy.⁶⁰

Herm. 1:4, Heinrich Dörrie, “Was ist ‘spätantiker Platonismus’? Überlegungen zur Grenzziehung zwischen Platonismus und Christentum,” TRu N.F. 36 (1971) 285–302, stressed the unbridgeable gap between Platonism and Christianity, leading to a situation that any Christian who did not express an anti-Platonic position “risked … to slip into heresy” (298). This view was challenged by Cornelia J. De Vogel, “Platonism and Christianity: A Mere Antagonism or a Profound Common Ground?”, VC 39 (1985) 1–62.

Tertullian insisted that a Christian has to decide between these two poles and cannot claim allegiance to both. This construction of a deep dichotomy between the church and the academy throws significant light on the process of Christian self-definition vis-à-vis earlier forms of Christianity.⁶¹

See also Jan H. Waszink, “Observations on Tertullian's Treatise against Hermogenes,” VC 9 (1955) 129–49; Gerhard May, “Hermogenes—ein frühchristlicher Theologe zwischen Platonismus und Gnosis,” SPSP 15 (1984) 462–73.

It indicates how orthodox structures began to emerge.

Tertullian's image of Hermogenes is extremely important for a proper understanding of our story in GR 1:9. Tertullian presents him as adducing biblical proof-texts for the notion of creatio ex hylis. Hermogenes is no longer satisfied, as Justin still was, to transmit Platonic cosmology, but makes efforts to ground these views in Scripture. Parallel to the philosophers mentioned by Clement, Hermogenes paid special attention to the opening of Genesis, taking Gen 1:2 as a proof for pre-existing matter that God used to create the world as described in Gen 1:1. The LXX rendering, “the earth was invisible and without order,” is of particular importance to him, because it corresponds to the Platonic description of pre-cosmic chaos. Moreover, the imperfect form

, or in Tertullian's words “erat,” supports Hermogenes's notion of a continuous state of pre-cosmic matter.

⁶²

Herm. 22:1; ed. Frédéric Chapot, Tertullien, Contre Hermogène. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et commentaire (SC 439; Paris: Cerf, 1999), translations are mine.

Hyle indeed played a significant role in his theology. Like Plato, he assumed that it is the origin of the world's imperfection (Herm. 25:3). This explanation, Hermogenes suggested, acquits God from responsibility for something utterly unlike him.

Tertullian's refutation of Hermogenes is of equal importance for us. Several strategies are used: rhetoric against Hermogenes's profession as a painter, a curse, biblical proof-texts and, finally, philosophical arguments. Tertullian initially mocks his opponent's views and threatens with a curse:

But concerning the idea that all things are so to speak created from underlying material, I have nowhere read about it thus far: Hermogenes's workshop should show that it is written. If it is not written, however, let it fear the woe reserved for those who add or subtract something from Scripture.⁶³

Herm. 22:5 “An autem de aliqua subiacenti materia facta sint omnia, nusquam adhuc legi: scriptum esse doceat Hermogenis officina; si non est scriptum, timeat uae illud adicientibus aut detrahentibus destinatum.”

Tertullian continues in his rhetorical attack, insisting that Hermogenes's interpretation is typical of those who always twist the simple meaning of Scripture, creating problems where none in reality exist (Herm. 25:3). On several other occasions Tertullian returns to the motif of the painter. Once he remarks cynically that Hermogenes found the idea of pre-existing material “on his palette, since in God's Scripture he could not have found it.”⁶⁴

Herm. 33:1. [S]ed dum illam Hermogenes inter colores suos inuenit—inter scripturas enim dei inuenire non potuerit.

The verb “invenio” is used here for a nice play on words, with Tertullian suggesting that his opponent found the colors on his palette and was inspired by them to invent the notion of pre-existing material. Having insulted Hermogenes a few more times as a confused painter, Tertullian closes his treatise with the following remarks:

By describing the same condition of matter as his own, namely as raw, disordered and turbulent, moved by a double movement both declining and descending, Hermogenes has painted himself and given proof of his art.⁶⁵

Herm. 45:6 “Nisi quod Hermogenes eundem statum describendo materiae quo[d] est ipse, inconditum confusum turbulentum, ancipitis et praecipitis et feruidi motus, documentum artis suae dum ostendit, ipse <se> pinxit;” other polemics against Hermogenes as painter can be found in Herm. 36:3, 38:1.

Tertullian's rhetoric relies on Hellenistic prejudices against painters, who were associated with low social status and superficial philosophy.⁶⁶

Chapot, Tertullien, Contre Hermogène, 435–36.

These Hellenistic traditions are now turned against an early Christian thinker deeply imbedded in that culture. Hermogenes's exegesis is thus caricatured as the fantastic product of a painter's unbridled mind. Tertullian suggests that he fabricated his creator god according to his own image. The god whom Hermogenes imagines resembles the painter himself rather than the god of Scripture.

Besides these rhetorical attacks, Tertullian also makes efforts to refute Hermogenes's exegesis by utilizing serious arguments. His readers must not be misled by his opponent's ideas and should instead grasp their weaknesses. Tertullian initially refers to verses from the prophets and wisdom literature, most of them the very same ones as were later used in Genesis Rabbah. Tertullian thus explains that the abyss cannot be identified as pre-existing matter, because Prov 8:24 militates against it. This verse, he stresses, says that wisdom was created before the abyss “so that you can be sure that also the abyss was created.”⁶⁷

“ut credas abyssum quoque genitam” (32:2).

Tertullian uses Prov 8:24 in the same way as Gamaliel, spelling out what his rabbinic colleague left implicit. Furthermore, Tertullian, like Gamaliel, adduces Isa 45:7 as a proof for the creation of darkness by God. He, too, relies on Amos 4:13 to prove the creation of the wind. Only Prov 8:29, suggesting the creation of the water, is not paralleled in our rabbinic story (Herm. 32). Moreover, Tertullian solves the problem of Gen 1:2 in a way slightly different from Gamaliel. The LXX rendering, “the earth was invisible and without order,” is explained by its immediate context, namely Gen 1: 1. In contrast to Hermogenes, Tertullian takes the latter as a summary of all creation processes. While Hermogenes thought that the creation described in Gen 1:1 was based on the pre-existing material mentioned in Gen 1:2, Tertullian identified Gen 1:1 as an introductory statement on creatio ex nihilo which is then discussed in greater detail in Gen 1:2.⁶⁸

See also Peter Schäfer, “Bereshit Bara Elohim. Zur Interpretation von Gen. 1:1 in der Rabbinischen Literatur,” JSJ 2 (1971) 161–66, who pointed to the exegetical potential of Gen 1:1, which can be read either as an independent summary of the whole process of creation or as part of a longer statement that is completed only in Gen 1:2.

Tertullian also produced philosophical arguments against Hermogenes. His main target was the view that pre-existing matter is the origin of evil in the world. Tertullian refutes this idea by pointing to the true nature of God which is in his view incompatible with this notion. Being omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly benevolent, God cannot have relied on pre-existing material which turns out to produce evil. If Hermogenes were right, God would be reduced to a rather powerless slave of matter.⁶⁹

Herm. 8:1–11:3; see also Adelbert David, “Hermogenes on Matter,” in Eulogia. Mélanges offerts à Anton A. R. Bastiaensen à l'occasion de son soixante-cinqième anniversaire (ed. Gerard J. M. Bartelink, et al; De Hague: Nijhoff, 1991) 29–32.

Tertullian prefers to think of God as omnipotent and benevolent without, however, offering an answer to the question of evil.

It is in this context that the rabbinic story about Gamaliel and the philosopher becomes meaningful. The image of the philosopher is evidently constructed in the image of Tertullian's Hermogenes. He speaks precisely from the position of the outsider that Tertullian assigned to his opponent. Challenging Gamaliel about “your” God, this philosopher is positioned outside the community. He has moreover adopted the rhetoric of the painter that Tertullian originally used to dismiss his adversary. Parallel to the caricatured Hermogenes, Gamaliel's philosopher applies to God notions from the painter's work. He, too, speaks of pre-existing matter in terms of the colors found on the palette. Regarding Gamaliel, there is a striking resemblance to Tertullian's Adversus Hermogenem. Gamaliel's style of refutation closely resembles that of his Christian predecessor. He curses the philosopher on account of his misleading exegesis and adduces mostly the same biblical proof-texts for his creatio ex nihilo theology. The curse formula in the third person furthermore strengthens the impression that the philosopher is not directly present, but instead refuted from a distance.⁷⁰

The other two occurrences of the formula in Genesis Rabbah reflect the same distant perspective in equally fictional encounters with Tinneus Rufus (GR 11:5) and Alexander the Great (GR 33:1).

This perspective is the same as that of Tertullian, who speaks about rather than to his opponent.

Important conclusions may be drawn. Initially, it emerges that the Amoraic scholars responsible for the story in GR 1:9 must have been familiar with Christian exegesis. How are we to imagine the circumstances of this familiarity? Are we to assume the physical presence of Tertullian's treatise in the rabbinic Beit Midrash? Geographical distance and the Latin composition of Tertullian's text rather argue against it. The contents of Tertullian's treatise, however, circulated in the works of other writers as well. Tertullian himself may have drawn part of his rhetoric from Theophilus's lost disputation. The latter seems to have enjoyed wide popularity, being known to many ancient writers. Hippolytus, for example, drew on this material around 230 in Rome (Haer. 8:17, 1–4). Augustin and Theodoret of Cyrene, who had been educated in Antiochia, were still familiar with Hermogenes's views and transmitted the material.⁷¹

Greschat, Apelles und Hermogenes, 145–59.

It is remarkable that these later writers merely produced abbreviated versions of the earlier polemics without engaging in fresh disputations with contemporary adherents of Hermogenes. The issue of creatio ex nihilo seems to have been settled for them. The dispute with Hermogenes was only remembered as a struggle of the early church. It had become an icon in the Christian discourse, upholding structures of orthodoxy. In view of these developments on the Christian side it is not surprising that Amoraic teachers were familiar with this icon.⁷²

As I realized after writing this article, Kister, “Let Us Make Man,” 60–61, relying on his student Clemens Leonhardt, also points to the resemblance between Gamaliel's and Tertullian's philosophers. Kister, however, does not consider the rabbinic story to be dependent on a Christian tradition, but instead argues that it continues an old Jewish tradition that is in his view testified already in Philo and the book of Jubilees (see my discussion of this interpretation in note 35).

Moreover, we have identified an extraordinary case of Jewish acculturation. Amoraic scholars appropriated a discourse, which originally served to define the identity of the crystallizing church vis-à-vis earlier forms of Christianity. This discourse was reconstructed in Genesis Rabbah for a Jewish community. Rabbinic scholars outlined the contours of a proto-orthodox synagoga that would stand beside the ecclesia.⁷³

See also Haim Lapin, “Jewish and Christian Academies in Roman Palestine: Some Preliminary Observations,” in Raban and Holum, Caesarea Maritima: A Retrospective, 507, who cautiously considered the possibility that both church fathers and rabbis were “engaging in articulating an ‘orthodoxy.’ ”

Like their Christian colleagues and predecessors, they hoped to establish general theological standards that were to be normative. Put differently, parallel to their pagan neighbors Amoraic scholars began to think about their tradition in terms of a religion that could be defined by dogma. Philo made some incipient steps in this direction when suggesting that Jews betraying the values of Judaism in an exceptionally severe manner actually cease being Jewish.⁷⁴

Regarding Philo, see Maren R. Niehoff, Philo on Jewish Identity and Culture (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2001) esp. ch. 2

Similarly, Tannaitic teachers had begun to speak about “Minim.” Yet neither of them discussed a particular dogma, identifying precisely what were right and wrong beliefs.⁷⁵

The lack of such details has been emphasized by Goodman, “The Function of Minim.”

The story about Gamaliel fills in this gap, thus creating some initial orthodox structures within Judaism.

Bar Kappara's Interpretation of Gen 1:1–2 and Its Integration into the Redactional Process of Genesis Rabbah

It remains for us to investigate how prevalent these orthodox structures of discourse became throughout Genesis Rabbah. How consistently were the boundaries drawn between right and wrong beliefs? We have already seen that the creatio ex nihilo theology attributed to Gamaliel was not systematically put into the mouth of subsequent teachers. Rabbi Yochanan b. Nappacha instead described the creation of the world from pre-existing matter, while Rabbi Eliezer assumed that the

(formless void) was “uprooted” before the creation of the heaven and earth became apparent (GR 10:2–3). The editor of Genesis Rabbah clearly refrained from updating all the earlier exegetical material available to him. He did not intend to create a homogeneous tractate neatly replacing previous “errors.” His approach remained rather pluralistic within certain limits and did not amount to a systematic heresiology. This openness probably resulted from the fact that orthodox structures infiltrated from without and were therefore never upheld with the same degree of consistency as in Christian circles where they had emerged. At the same time, however, two other vignettes of exegesis on Gen 1:1–2 suggest familiarity with Christian forms of discourse. It is to them that we must now turn.

Genesis Rabbah preserves an exceptionally interesting interpretation of Gen 1: 2 by Bar Kappara, which is integrated into a larger Peticha. Unlike Gamaliel, Bar Kappara lived in Caesarea, where he founded the first rabbinic academy just before Origen established his center of study there.⁷⁶

Levey, “Caesarea and the Jews,” 55–57.

As the teacher of Rabbi Hoshaya, he served as an important link between Tannaitic and Amoraic teachers. Bar Kappara was not only renowned for his collection of authoritative earlier traditions, but also for his lenient position regarding the interpretation of the story of creation. He is remembered as an authority that set relatively broad limits of investigation, which were accepted by a later teacher as well as the redactor of GR:⁷⁷

Kahana, Interweaving Six, appendix, showed that the redactor of GR accepted Bar Kappara's position in the dispute and even went beyond it, starting his collection of Midrash with Gen 1:1.

Rabbi Yona said in the name of R. Levi: why was the world created with the letter b?⁷⁸

Rabbi Yona refers to the opening of the Biblical creation account

The reason is that the b is closed on all its sides, but open only in the forward direction. In the same way it is not allowed to investigate what is above and beneath as well as what is before and after.

Bar Kappara said: “ask concerning the first days, before your time, from the day of creation onwards” (Deut 4:32). “From the day onwards” when the days were created, you may inquire, but you may not inquire into what was beforehand. “From one end of the heaven until the other end of heaven” (ibid.) you may inquire and examine, but you may not inquire what was beforehand.

R. Yehuda ben Pasi inquired into the story of creation in the way that Bar Kappara had said. (GR 1:10)⁷⁹

(text and translation according to ms Vatican 60, on the quality of which see Menachem Kahana, “Genesis Rabbah MS Vatican 60 and Its Parallels” [in Hebrew], in Friedman and Lerner, Te'uda 17–60.

This discussion reflects the concerns and terminology of the Tannaitic period. It echoes m. Hagigah 2:1, where the prohibition to investigate

(work of creation) in the presence of two” is recorded.

⁸⁰

See also Philip S. Alexander, “Pre-Emptive Exegesis: Genesis Rabbah's Reading of the Story of Creation,” JJS 43 (1992) 233–36, who discussed the apparent disregard in GR for this prohibition.

Bar Kappara emerges as someone whose concerns are firmly grounded in the world of the Mishnah. His leniency regarding the interpretation of the creation account, however, foreshadows the interests of the Amoraic period.

Bar Kappara belongs to the “old generation” also in another important respect: he advocates creatio ex hylis:

Rab Huna said in the name of Bar Kappara: if it were not written [in Scripture], it would be impossible to say: “God created heaven and earth” (Gen 1:1)—from where? From: “the earth was

(tōhû wābōhû)” (Gen 1:2)

⁸¹

GR 1:5:

(text and translation according to Theodor and Albeck; the Geniza fragment is damaged at this point, but the crucial words by Kappara are preserved:

(Sokoloff, Geniza Fragments 77).

This argument for creatio ex hylis is precisely the same as Hermogenes had advocated. Gen 1:2 is read as a reference to pre-existing matter from which God created the heaven and the earth as described in Gen 1:1. Here, however, it is transmitted by Rab Huna as the view of Bar Kappara. In comparison to Hermogenes, Bar Kappara expresses himself more apologetically, stressing that “if this were not written [in Scripture], it would be impossible to say.” Who is the audience addressed by Bar Kappara? What kind of criticism did he anticipate? Given the larger context of his exegetical concerns, it is likely that Bar Kappara feared to be accused of launching precisely into the field of inquiry that he himself had forbidden. He therefore stressed that he only paraphrases what is written in Gen 1:1–2. He is not, as some might suspect, investigating into what was “before.”

A later editor, however, understood Bar Kappara's statement in the context of his own time, especially in the context of creatio ex nihilo theology. While preserving the original statement, he placed it into an altogether new context, namely the discussion of unorthodox views of creation:

Rab Huna said in the name of Bar Kappara, “let the lying lips be dumb that speak arrogantly of the righteous” (Ps 31:19). Let them be bound, dumb and silenced. “Bound” as it says in the verse “For behold, we were binding sheaves” (Gen 37:7); “dumb” as it says in the verse “Or who made a man dumb or deaf” (Exod 4:11); “silenced” as the word is understood.

“[Lying lips] that speak arrogantly against the righteous” (Ps 31:19), meaning [speaking] against the righteous who is the Life of all worlds, things that [God] has kept away from his creatures.

“with pride” (Ps 31:19) – in order to be proud and say, “I [expound] the

(work of creation).”

“And contempt” (Ps 31:19) – he condemns my glory! As R. Jose b. Chanina said: [everyone] who believes he can gain honour by disgracing his friend has no part in the world to come. All the more so in regard to disgracing God! What is written thereafter? “How abundant is your goodness that you have preserved for those who fear you” (Ps 31:19).

Rav said: He may have no part in God's goodness. In our world [it is common that a] human king builds [his palace] in a place of sewage, a place of garbage and a place of rubbish. Everyone who passes by and says: “This palace [was built] in a place of a sewage canal, in a place of garbage and in a place of rubbish” disgraces (the king). Does not similarly everyone who passes by and says “the world is created from

and darkness disgrace (God)”?

Rab Huna said in the name of Bar Kappara: if it were not written in Scripture, it would be impossible to say: “God created heaven and earth” (Gen 1:1) – from where? From: “the earth was

” (Gen 1:2).

⁸²

GR 1:5, text and translation according to Geniza fragment, Sokoloff 77, with fillings of the lacunae from Theodor and Albeck 2–3:

This is a long-winded and complicated Peticha which juggles two rather different discourses. These have been amalgamated not without leaving some visible traces. Menachem Kahana and Theodor Albeck identified this Peticha as a creation of the editor, who thus embellished Kappara's exegesis of Gen 1:2 (“if it were not written … ”).⁸³

Kahana, Interweaving Six 8; Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba 1:2 and 3:14–16, suggested that the attribution of many Petichot, including Bar Kappara's in GR 1:5, was not based on knowledge that a particular teacher was indeed responsible for that Peticha, but rather on the editor's judgment that it fits a known exegesis of that teacher.

While Kahana studied stylistic features, focusing on numerological arrangements, I would like to investigate traces of changing notions about creation. Put differently, can we isolate different redactional layers each with its theological characteristics?

It is immediately conspicuous that this Peticha is highly polemical. While dealing again with the topic of

(work of creation), Bar Kappara is now made to quote Ps 31:19, accusing the “lying lips” of transgressing into a field which God “kept away from his creatures.” Unlike the exegesis transmitted in his name in GR 1:10, Bar Kappara now sets out to fight errors and lies. More importantly, two Amoraic teachers are introduced: Rabbi Jose b. Chanina and Rav. While the former remains close to Ps 31:19, Rav raises the issue of creatio ex nihilo. Parallel to Theophilus,

⁸⁴

Theophilus, Autol. 2:4 (for details, see above).

he insists that the assumption of pre-existing matter is a serious insult to God. His rhetoric recalls that of his Christian colleagues, who were concerned to construct boundaries of faith beyond which there is no salvation. Rav similarly excludes from “God's goodness” the one who says that “the world is created from

and darkness.” His parable suggests a highly negative view of pre-existing matter, which is compared to “sewage, garbage and dung.” It has become an element detrimental to the glory of God. Therefore one must not directly speak about it. While its existence is still acknowledged, hyle has been excluded from the proper discourse about God.

Placed into this distinctly Amoraic context, Bar Kappara's interpretation appears in a completely new light. It looks now as though it were originally formulated, in view of a prevalent creatio ex nihilo theology. The editor of this Peticha thus reconstructed exactly the same dichotomy that we encountered in our previous example. Once more we encounter the image of a rabbinic establishment confronting a representative of an earlier, problematic approach to Gen 1:1–2. While in the story about Gamaliel this representative was an outsider, in this Peticha he comes from within, albeit from the Tannaitic period. The rhetoric in this Peticha is less fierce than in the story in GR 1:9, but the message is the same.

One important question remains to be addressed: did Rav himself formulate the creatio ex nihilo theology attributed to him or is this attribution instead pseudepigraphic as in the case of Rabban Gamaliel? Did the editor, in other words, place an available saying by Rav into the new context of Bar Kappara's exegesis, thus changing the latter's thrust, or did he himself make up the statement on creatio ex nihilo and then attribute it to Rav? In comparison to the story about Gamaliel, the question here is more difficult to determine. In the case of Rav there are no overt signs of a discrepancy between the historical figure and the saying attributed to him. Being an Amoraic teacher, he flourished precisely at a time when rabbinic teachers encountered the Christian creatio ex nihilo theology. Leaving Palestine before Origen established himself there, he could have encountered the doctrine in one of the diffuse ways we suggested in the context of Gamaliel's story: either by direct contact with any of the Christian documents promulgating creatio ex nihilo or general familiarity with the topos. Theophilus may have been influential. Furthermore, Rav's statement is consistent, being based on a “Qal wa-Chomer” analogy rather than on forced proof-texts from Scripture. The kind of textual indications that led us to suggest pseudepigraphy in the case of Gamaliel are thus missing in Rav's statement.

Nevertheless, one may suspect that an editor, who put the creatio ex nihilo theology into Gamaliel's mouth, would wish to do the same for the founder of the influential academy in Sura. Two important rabbinic leaders would thus be theologically aligned. Furthermore, one may wonder whether Rav's statement fits his overall profile. It is only in a much later source that he returns to the issue of creatio ex nihilo, arguing in b. Hag. 12a for the creation of

on the first day. However, while Rav's statement does not reflect any of his personal traits, such as his Babylonian background or his interest in mantic states of consciousness,

⁸⁵

GR 16:3, GR 49:10, 17:4, 44:12, 44:17; see also J. S. Zuri, Rab. Sein Leben und seine Anschauungen (Zürich: Bruchdrukerei G. v. Ostheim, 1918) 122–25.

it does not contradict the general picture of his personality. On the contrary, it corresponds well to his other interpretations of the process of creation (GR 4:2, 4:7). Nothing therefore seems to argue against the assumption that Rav himself encountered the creatio ex nihilo theology in Palestine and subsequently exported it to Babylonia. The editor of GR seems to have used an available tradition, placing it in the new Peticha beside Bar Kappara's exegesis.

R. Hoshaya's Interpretation of Gen 1:1

The last exegetical vignette to be examined in this article is transmitted in the name of Rabbi Hoshaya, who settled in Caesarea at the same time as Origen. He, too, founded a rabbinic academy there, which he led for twenty years parallel to its Christian equivalent. These chronological and geographical factors place Hoshaya right at the center of a milieu in which exchanges between Jews and Christians took place. It is thus especially intriguing to see how Hoshaya reflected on the issue of creation. A famous Peticha in his name opens Genesis Rabbah:

“In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” (Gen 1:1)

R. Hoshaya opened (his interpretation with a quotation from Prov 8:30) “I was with Him

”….

“Amon” should be vocalized as “Uman” (

) – an artist or architect. The Torah said: I was the instrument of the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He. A human king usually builds his palace not according to his own device, but according to the device of an architect, and the architect in turn does not build according to his own device, but he has plans and diagrams in order to know where to arrange rooms and doors. In the same way the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He looked into the Torah and created the world. And the Torah said: “At the beginning God created” (Gen 1:1), and “beginning” is nothing else but Torah, as it is written: “God created me at the beginning of his ways.” (Prov 8:22)

⁸⁶

GR 1:1 (text and translation according to Geniza fragment, Sokoloff 77, with fillings of the lacunae according to Theodor and Albeck 1):

Hoshaya applies here the well-known image of the architect or artist to the creator God. Unlike the philosopher in the story about Gamaliel, Hoshaya uses the image in a positive way, stressing the good arrangement of the world created by God. It is truly a cosmos in the original sense. The parable furthermore highlights that the material creation is dependent on some ideal, metaphysical structure. Hoshaya indicates that God, like a human king, did not act on his own initiative, but relied on plans in the image of which the artifact was shaped. Both the contents of the parable as well as its Greek loanwords (

[plans and diagrams])

⁸⁷

, piece of leather, esp. as writing material;

, plate with anything drawn or engraved.

have reminded scholars of Philo's parable of the architect.⁸⁸

See esp. David Winston, “Philo's Nachleben in Judaism,” Studia Philonica Annual 6 (1994) 104–5; David T. Runia, “Caesarea Maritima and the Survival of Hellenistic-Jewish Literature,” in Caesarea Maritima: A Retrospective after Two Millenia (ed. Avner Raban and Kenneth G. Holum; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 492–93; Harry A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975) 1:243, merely pointing to the parallel between Philo, Opif. 17 and GR 1:1, and 1:268, where Wolfson suggests that Philo followed GR 1:1 and interpreted Prov 8:22 in terms of a feminine wisdom figure (Ebr. 31); Yonah Frankel, The Ways of Aggadah and Midrash [Hebrew] (Givataim: Massada, 1991) 1: 74–75; see also Urbach, The Sages 163–64, and Kister, “Let Us Make Man” 47–48, suggesting a common source for the Philonic and the rabbinic parable.

It is indeed conspicuous that both exegetes employ the parable when interpreting Gen 1:1. Both moreover employ it in order to point to the ideal plan of creation. Both even rely on the same introductory formula:

(usually) in GR 1:1,

in Opif. 17. Can we thus follow David Winston and conclude that Hoshaya adopted Philo's parable, revising it slightly by exchanging the notion of Logos by the more specific Torah?

Some significant differences between Philo's and Hoshaya's parable rather call for caution. Initially, Philo's parable is far more detailed. He enumerates many characteristic elements of the Hellenistic city, including gymnasium, market place, town hall, temple, etc. (Opif. 17). Hoshaya, by contrast, shows no interest in the details of the Hellenistic city, referring only in a general way to the king's palace. Furthermore, Philo is concerned about defining the nature and location of the ideal cosmos. He stresses that one must not imagine it as something residing in a corporeal place, but rather as an aspect of the divine Logos (Opif. 19–20). Philo thus amalgamated the figures of the king and the architect. Each of them represents, in his view, a different aspect of God who is both entirely transcendent and active in his creation. Hoshaya's parable, by contrast, is centered differently. He assumes an architect distinct from the king, who uses as a plan the Torah which is, so to speak, the word of God in the flesh. It is moreover remarkable that Hoshaya grounds his exegesis in Prov 8:30, thus recalling a long tradition of speculation about the personification of divine wisdom, especially in Ben Sira chapter 24.

⁸⁹

See esp. Sir., ch. 24, where wisdom is identified with the Torah and traced to the “mouth of the Most High.” In Ben Sira, however, neither Prov 8:30 nor the parable of the architect are explicitly mentioned.

Most importantly, however, Hoshaya is concerned to claim the notion of beginning for the Jewish tradition. As if to exclude other interpretations, he stresses:

(‘Beginning’ is nothing else but Torah).

⁹⁰

See also Ben Sira's main message in ch. 24 that there is no wisdom except Torah.

A fresh investigation into the historical context of Hoshaya's exegesis is thus called for. Wilhelm Bacher already drew attention to the role of Origen whom he identified as a mediating figure familiarizing Hoshaya with Philonic exegesis.⁹¹

Wilhelm Bacher, “The Church Father Origen and Rabbi Hoshaya,” JQR 3 (1890) 359.

He imagined Hoshaya as using the books in Origen's library, among them also the Philonic corpus. This was a seminal suggestion that has been adopted and elaborated by Dominique Barthélemy, R. Ascough and David Runia.⁹²

Dominique Barthélemy, “Est-ce Hoshaya Rabba qui censura le ‘Commentaire Allégorique’?” in Philon d'Alexandrie. Colloques nationaux du Centre national de la recherche scientifique (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1967) 45–78; Richard Ascough, “Christianity in Caesarea Maritima,” in Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Caesarea Maritima (ed. Terence L. Donaldson; Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000) 167; David T. Runia, “Caesarea Maritima and the Survival of Hellenistic-Jewish Literature,” who takes GR 1:1 as a central proof for the availability of Philo's work in Origen's library in Caesarea.

In one respect, however, this approach requires some reconsideration. Origen's role does not seem to have been purely technical. Instead, he may have played a far more active role, transmitting to Hoshaya not only a particular Philonic tradition, but also its Christian interpretation. The transmission of Philo's texts was thus not only a technical process, amounting to a flow of information from one quarter to another, but implied also a significant degree of cultural translation and modernization. When we read Hoshaya's exegesis closely, we recognize that he reacted precisely to such Christian mediation.

Within the framework of this article we cannot possibly do justice to all of Origen's discussions on the creation of the world. In order to appreciate Hoshaya's exegesis, however, it suffices to focus on two key texts that indicate an important development in his thought on the topic. Having moved to Caesarea, Origen increasingly departed from Philo's views, embellishing his exegesis with christological elements from the Gospel of John. In his Commentary on Genesis, composed for the most part still in Alexandria, Origen spoke in distinctly Philonic terms:

As much as it were absurd to say of the cosmos, which is arranged so artfully, that it has become this way without a wise artist, in the same way it is illogical to assume concerning the hyle, which is of such size and quality and yields to the artist, God's Logos, that it is without beginning. (Origen apud Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 7:20)

Origen uses here the image of the artist in order to point to the metaphysical order of the world. The nature of the cosmos, he argues, requires the assumption that it was formed by the divine artist. Philo makes the same point when insisting that the cosmos was created by God in the image of an ideal cosmos (Opif. 7–22). Origen applies this argumentation also to the hyle. In contrast to Philo and the Platonic tradition, he no longer accepts it as something pre-existing, but insists on its creation by God.⁹³

In recent scholarship the significance of Origen's position has been disputed. While Gerald Bostok, “Origen's Philosophy of Creation,” in Origeniana Quinta. Papers of the 5^th International Origen Congress, Boston College, 14–18 August 1989 (ed. Robert J. Daly; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992) 255–57, argued for strong Platonic roots of Origen's thought and tried to limit the significance of his creatio ex nihilo theology; Mark J. Edwards, Origen against Plato(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002) 61–65, convincingly identified Origen's interpretation of creation as a prime example of his departure from Platonism.

It is remarkable that even on this issue, where Origen follows the Christian fathers, he uses typically Philonic language.

In his Commentary on the Gospel of John Origen presents a different interpretation. He links the notion of beginning to two new figures: wisdom and Christ. The divine artist, by contrast, has retired into the background. A new christological orientation thus emerges, which appropriates

, for the Christian tradition:

Look whether this is so and the text

(In the beginning was the Word) can be understood according to its spiritual interpretation, namely in the sense that everything was created according to wisdom and the form of a superior plan whose notions are contained in the word. I think that as much as a house or a ship is built and formed according to the plans of an artist, in the sense that this house and this ship contain as a principle (

) the plans and words of the artist, in the same way everything was created according to the words which God in his wisdom predetermined for his creatures, (as is written) “In wisdom you have made everything.” (Ps 103:24)

It is not difficult to say in a slightly coarser way that the principle (

) of all existing things is the Son of God, who says:

. (Rev 22:13). (Comm. Jo. 113–116)

Origen explores here the meaning of

, interpreting it metaphorically as principle rather than beginning.

⁹⁴

On metaphorical interpretations of Plato's Timaeus, see above.

He is no longer predominantly interested in the origin of the world, but in its overall frame and abiding structure. The parable of the artist is consequently mentioned in a rather abbreviated form and with a new purpose. The idea of a model for creation remains in the background, while Origen focuses on its ultimate purpose. The connection between God's word, his wisdom and Jesus has now become crucial. Divine wisdom is not only cosmic, underlying the creation of the whole world, but also highly specific, pointing to the Christian redeemer figure. The universal beginning has been appropriated for Christianity, which is thus inscribed “in the beginning.”

Hoshaya's exegesis of Gen 1:1 strikingly resembles Origen's. He, too, merely mentions the palace of the king without further details. He, too, explores the meaning of

(beginning) in the metaphorical sense of an underlying principle. He, too, moves from Gen 1:1 to the notion of divine wisdom. In contrast to Origen, however, Hoshaya interprets this beginning and wisdom with regard to the Torah transmitted by the Jews. We have already noted that his formulation

(‘Beginning’ is nothing else but Torah.) suggests that he was aware of another interpretation. It seems that Origen's exegesis was that other interpretation. Hoshaya adopted a Christian discourse, but translated it into rabbinic terms, thus countering the Christian claim to the origin of the world.

Given the circumstances of his life, Hoshaya is likely to have been the author of the tradition attributed to him. As a contemporary and fellow-citizen of Origen, he can easily have been familiar with his exegesis. Living at a time when some Jewish-Christian debates seem to have taken place in Caesarea, Hoshaya may well have responded to Origen's christological interpretation which challenged contemporary Jews. The impression of Hoshaya's authorship is further supported by the style of our passage that lacks signs of editorial interference.

Conclusion

This analysis of three exegetical vignettes in Genesis Rabbah has shown that some rabbinic interpreters of Gen 1:1–2 were familiar with Christian exegesis. In particular, Amoraic teachers were aware of the new theological trends introduced by the church. They adopted the idea of creatio ex nihilo, reconstructing for their own communities a significant dichotomy between correct and erroneous views. In this way they created a Jewish discourse whose structure and basic assumptions resembled their Christian counterparts. Only when Origen appropriated the notion of beginning for the Christian tradition, thus excluding Judaism, can we recognize a more polemical response on the rabbinic side. Hoshaya countered by insisting that “beginning” was nothing but Torah. It thus seems that as long as Christian constructions of identity were concerned with fighting general philosophical notions, rabbinic teachers did not consider it necessary to make emendations. Rather, the church created a new religious atmosphere which eventually also permeated rabbinic texts.

This case of rabbinic acculturation to the christianized Roman Empire needs to be appreciated in a larger context. We have already noted that pagans began to think about their traditions in terms of dogmas. We moreover saw that the rabbis refrained from the kind of extremism which we encounter on the Christian side. Even in Genesis Rabbah other “erroneous” views of the creation were allowed to be expressed. Rabbinic literature remained polyphonic within certain limits. The program of orthodoxy thus remained partial and did not reach the same systematic implementation as found in Christian circles.

Footnotes

This research was supported by The German Israeli Foundation and the ISRAEL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (grant no. 810/03). An initial version of the article was presented at the Theological Faculty of the Humboldt University in July 2004. I wish to thank Prof. Christoph Markschies for his hospitality and Tal Ilan for her question on that occasion. Menahem Hirshman, Menahem Kahana, Menahem Kister and Yehuda Liebes read a draft of this article, improving it by their valuable comments. Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Menahem Kahana, Menahem Kister, Chaim Milikowsky and Guy G. Stroumsa kindly gave me manuscripts of articles not yet published. My assistant Sergey Minov significantly contributed by his responsible and independent work. After writing this article I noticed two essays by Menahem Kister treating some of the materials discussed here independently. My approach to them differs significantly as will become apparent in the discussion. Last, but not least, I would like to thank the anonymous readers of the HTR for their helpful and constructive comments.

Article contents

Creatio ex Nihilo Theology in Genesis Rabbah in Light of Christian Exegesis

Extract

Information

Rabban Gamaliel and the Philosopher

Bar Kappara's Interpretation of Gen 1:1–2 and Its Integration into the Redactional Process of Genesis Rabbah

R. Hoshaya's Interpretation of Gen 1:1

Conclusion

Footnotes

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