Recherche – Detailansicht

Ausgabe:

März/2017

Spalte:

207–210

Kategorie:

Neues Testament

Autor/Hrsg.:

Avemarie, Friedrich

Titel/Untertitel:

Neues Testament und frührabbinisches Judentum. Gesammelte Aufsätze. Hrsg. v. J. Frey u. A. Stand-hartinger unter Mitarb. v. M. Schmied u. S. Weigert.

Verlag:

Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2013. XXXIII, 966 S. = Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 316. Lw. EUR 179,00. ISBN 978-3-16-152600-8.

Rezensent:

Andrew Chester

Friedrich Avemarie was an exceptional scholar and a deeply good and generous human being, who lived out his Christian faith to the full. This alone would set him apart as a remarkable person, but the nature of his scholarly work was also altogether out of the ordi-nary. He was outstanding as a New Testament scholar, but equally so in the complex field of Rabbinic Judaism. Indeed, he was one of those very few scholars who have been able to come to the New Testament with a profound, first-hand knowledge of Jewish liter-ature. His dreadfully sudden and tragically premature death, shortly before his 52 nd birthday, left his family and all of us who knew him utterly bereft. It was also an immense loss to scholarship: his expertise was unmatched, and seems irreplaceable.
Hence this present volume is enormously to be welcomed. His colleague at Marburg, Angela Standhartinger, and his close friend, over decades, Jörg Frey, have rendered an immense service to scholarship, as also to the memory and scholarly legacy of A., by bring-ing together 32 of the most important of his published articles and essays, along with four others that still awaited publication at the time of his death. The usefulness of the volume is further enhanced by a complete bibliography of A.’s writings (including monographs, as also reviews), and an extremely helpful Introduction by Jörg Frey, giving an excellent outline of A.’s life and work, and the main distinctive contribution made in each of his main areas of expertise, with specific reference to the articles contained in the volume, as well as other pieces by him not included here.
The first essay here, on ancient Judaism as a growing challenge to New Testament scholarship, is in many respects programmatic for this entire volume, and for the whole of A.’s scholarly work. He stresses the constant need for New Testament scholarship to en-gage closely with ancient Jewish sources, treating them with proper respect, not least when their distinctive emphases and themes differ from and indeed come into conflict with those variously found in the New Testament.
The 13 essays in the second, and longest, section of the book are concerned with a whole variety of issues within early Judaism, and draw on an enormous range of (often disparate and difficult) primary Jewish texts. They also illustrate at least something of the range and depth of A.’s profound knowledge of these Jewish sources and their significance. His greatest work, the superb monograph Tora und Leben, deals with central themes of Rabbinic theology, and the discussion of these in scholarship of the last century or more, above all the question of the relation between the Law (Torah) and »salvation« in Rabbinic thought. By means of sophisticated selection and analysis of relevant texts from the vast Rabbinic corpus, he is able to show that neither the older view – that Judaism is a religion of »works-righteousness«, governed by the concept of reward for observing Torah – nor the more recent, so-called »New Perspective« – that Judaism is a religion of grace, governed by the concept of divine election – is, on its own, satisfactory. In fact the Rabbinic sources provide support for both positions, but what this shows, as A. argues, is that these texts resist any attempt to impose a systemazing theology on them. In his essay included in the pres ent book, on »Election and Reward: on the optional structure of Rabbinic soteriology«, he gives a brief and helpful summary of this whole thesis, and stresses again that both these portrayals of Judaism have a certain validity, but neither can be held to the exclusion of the other: the picture we gain from the Rabbinic texts is much more complex than that.
In a further substantial essay, on »covenant« in Rabbinic literature, A. again provides a richly detailed and differentiated picture of the wide range of usage that is to be found. From this, he finds that there is considerable support for E. P. Sanders’ influential concept of »covenantal nomism« (which is central to the »New Perspective« and his depiction of Judaism as a »religion of grace«, undergirded by the divine election of Israel) – that is, the main themes that Sanders sees as bound up with this are variously found in relation to co-venant in Rabbinic texts. Nevertheless, as A. makes clear, Sanders’ position needs to be modified in a number of significant ways. Then, in another essay here on the tension between God’s command and Israel’s obedience in early Rabbinic literature, he points out that Sanders, although emphasizing Israel’s election and co-ven­ant as central and determinative for Rabbinic thought, and playing down the role of obedience and retribution in these texts, nevertheless gives most space to the ways Israel could react to the divine command, and the various consequences of these. Yet even so, as he shows, Sanders refers to only a very small part of the whole range of human response to the divine command in the Rabbinic sources.
There are further perceptive essays on themes relating to the Rabbinic writings: on monotheism, and the treatment of the middot, Metatron, and Shekinah in relation to this; on the way in which Rabbinic texts treat the theme, in Genesis, of Adam, and humans, being in the image or likeness of God; and on indications of an apologetic awareness within the Rabbinic corpus. So also there are three essays dealing with aspects of martyrdom, and noble death, in Rabbinic writings, with another examining traditions of martyrdom in ancient Judaism more generally. Along with these, an essay on »Witness in Public: on the development of the concept of the sanctification of the divine name« sifts out early traditions where this is not set within a martyrological context from those where it is. A. shows his command of the whole range of relevant Jewish sources, and not simply Rabbinic literature, in a substantial essay on the light that Jewish inscriptions (from diverse areas and periods) throw on the self-understanding of a wide variety of Jewish Diaspora communities; as also in his discussion of exegetical techniques in the Qumran texts and in Paul that have some af-finities with the Gezara sheva in Rabbinic texts.
In this last essay, then, A. discusses Rabbinic usage in relation to part of the New Testament corpus. In fact, however, an important and constant emphasis in his writing is on the need to treat and understand Rabbinic texts, as Jewish sources more generally, in their own right, and for how they help inform our understanding of Judaism, and not (as has too often happened in Christian scholarship) as merely a backdrop to the study of the New Testament. Nevertheless, it is also an important part of his work, and achievement, to show how a thorough and profound knowledge of Jewish sources (and not least Rabbinic texts) can help inform our understanding of much of the New Testament. The remaining 500 or so pages of the present volume consist of 21 further essays that pro-vide a wide range of examples of how he has himself undertaken this task. Thus, in relation to Jesus and the Gospel tradition, he shows how Mark 7 and Rabbinic halakoth concerning purity can illuminate each other; examines and compares the feeding of the 5000 in Mk 6 and the feeding of the 4000 in Mk 8; argues that, in light of the Matthean understanding of discipleship and right-eousness, the way in which the owner of the vineyard pays the workers, in the parable of the vineyard in Matt. 20, demonstrates a concrete paradigm for Christian action; considers the New Testament presentation of Jesus’ death on the cross in relation to Jewish martyrological traditions, and concludes that the fundamental differences between them do not allow a fruitful comparison; and suggests that the way in which the figure of Joshua is portrayed in Jewish traditions can be seen to inform something at least of how Jesus is seen within the New Testament.
In view of A.’s major work, Tora und Leben, it is scarcely surpris­ing that the most extensive of the New Testament sections in the present volume is that on Paul and the Torah. Indeed, in a delightful essay, he argues that James 2:14–16 belongs to the very early reception history of Paul, and may well serve to show that by »works of the law« Paul denotes not Judaism’s ethno-religious identity markers (as is held by the modern reading of Paul – the so-called »New Perspective«), but the active fulfilment of the law, as James itself clearly understands it. In several further essays here, A. again uses his profound and extensive knowledge of Jewish sources to explore related central aspects of Paul’s thought. Thus he argues that Paul’s inconsistent use of Lev 18:5 shows that he is having to counter the traditional Jewish interpretation of it, as used by his opponents, and develops (different) alternative interpretations of it. Linked with this is his treatment, in another essay, of the theme of Israel’s disobedience in Rom 10. So also, in further essays, he discusses the idea of a »new covenant« in 2 Cor 3 in light of the Jewish context, and close links (including several passages relating to the law) between Paul and traditions found in Rabbinic writings, as also the complex issue of predestination and free will in Romans, in relation to Rabbinic and other Jewish tradition, and a study of Paul’s use of »image of God« and »image of man« in relation to Jewish interpretations of Gen 1:26–27.
A.’s Habilitationsschrift was a study of the baptism narratives of Acts, and the present volume contains five essays on Acts and Early Christianity. Two of these are concerned with the Apostolic Decree in Acts 15: its Jewish roots, and the way that Acts is concerned to defend the Jewish loyalty of Paul, in light of the decree and of Paul’s Gentile mission. The other essays contain a discussion of Paul’s cas­ting out of a demon in Acts; a comparison of Philo and Acts in their portrayals of Jews appearing before the Roman authorities; and an engaging argument for understanding the miracle theme in Acts as being portrayed as emanating from the figure of Jesus Christ.
Of the remaining essays, there is an excellent study of ways in which Jerome availed himself of Rabbinic scriptural exegesis, along with Jewish tradition more generally, in producing the Vulgate. The three further essays all derive from lectures given to a student or lay audience: on the necessity and importance of historical method for exegesis; on the striking variety, and paradoxical nature, of the ways in which the New Testament represents rebirth in relation to Christian hope; and on the various ways in which the New Testament depicts the relationship between hope of salvation and how life is to be lived.
There is, then, an enormous range of topics that are treated in this volume, characterized throughout by scholarship of the high-est order. Inevitably, we are left deeply regretting that there will not be more. The essay on Jerome, set in relation to Jewish biblical exegesis, was just the start of a much larger project of setting Pa-tris­tic writers within the context of Rabbinic and wider Jewish tradition; but so also in all the different areas of his expertise, there was the promise of so much that cannot now be realized. It is hard to think of anyone who can come close to matching A.’s massive and profound knowledge of so vast a range of Jewish material, and his deeply perceptive theological insights. Nevertheless, we should be enormously grateful for all that we have been given in this present volume, and all that A. achieved in a life so cruelly cut short.